The Medusa Touch

[Amaurote]

"Solzhenitsyn and Co. have much to answer for. Paint the horrors of their bourgeoisoviet existence in Byzantine colours and hawk their icons where they'll fetch the highest price in misplaced sympathy.

They write of 'reality' and call it degradation, dolefully implore the System that spawned them to applaud because they cry 'Freedom!'

Intellectuals.

Men who cry stinking fish knowing the Western string-pullers will gladly hear and say 'There! you rabble in the factories, you layabouts on the dole, you homeless walking the golden pavements by Democracy's grace, you millstone mortgagees - read Solzhenitsyn and Co. and think yourselves fortunate.'

Thus, certain Soviet intellectuals in their world - too stupid to see that freedom is the universal myth - truth the first victim in the universal death wish - do half the work of the Philistine propaganda machine in this.

They crave the 'Western' freedom to express their 'truth' pen to paper. They'll have it. Then let them see how much further they get.

The reality they struggle against is Siberia. Let them try their hand in a Western 'democracy' and when the scales fall from their eyes, they'll discover our Siberia is no less cold, no less deadening to the sense, no less chilling to the soul."

[Bassmama]

The reality they struggle against is Siberia. Let them try their hand in a Western 'democracy' and when the scales fall from their eyes, they'll discover our Siberia is no less cold, no less deadening to the sense, no less chilling to the soul."

Yeah- and it's called Upstate New York!!!!

[Amaurote]

Ha, the snow is terrible here at the moment, Bass...every bus I enter gets bombarded by nightmare legions of small town urchins. Sometimes I wish we had your gun laws, I really do.

I'm reading this at the moment: the film is a genuinely great B-movie, maybe even one of Richard Burton's best performances - I would rank it alongside The Omen, in fact. I picked up the novel by Peter Van Greenaway more in hope than expectation, but far from being a pot-boiler it turns out to be a clever, experimental little weird tale with some really superb passages. John Morlar is more fully distilled then he is in the film, the misanthropy, cynicism and sociopathic hatred of the establishment emerge more completely in the various journal extracts. I'm honestly amazed that this is almost out-of-print these days, because Morlar is a particularly memorable anti-hero.

[JakeD]

I was entertaining the idea of renting this, and even went to the closest store to look for it, but no dice. :(

I'll probably try CineFile (http://www.cinefilevideo.com/) later on...that place is heaven. Check out their site, yo.

[Amaurote]

It's a great film in places, Jake, hammy in others, but hey, it's Richard Burton, and he can force jetliners to fly into tower blocks with the power of his mind. Nice soundtrack, too.

The novel is different in some key respects: Zonfeld is a man, Cherry isn't French, and the existential basis for Morlar's "gift for invoking disaster" is implied much more consistently. In the film he's basically a misanthropist with a power which he uses at first inadvertently, and then later psychopathically, in accordance with his objects of political detestation; in the novel, the Medusa myth is much more central - Morlar is the embodiment of mankind's Thanatean will for self-destruction.

[Amaurote]

"Do you remember my proud boast - the man who could invoke disaster? I was wrong...I am the man with the power to create - catastrophe."

http://home.worldonline.dk/lfmat/Delmonte/medusa.jpg