lateen

Season 3 of Twin Peaks did something interesting where it held off on reintroducing the series’ best character until the very end. This made for a unique experience where—when watching for the first time—where you’re sitting there with bated breath for them to come back the entire time, sometimes to a frustrating degree. But after it does happen and you no longer have to wait you’re like, oh ok that makes sense, everything was fine. And if you were to rewatch the whole series you wouldn’t get to have that experience again since you already know the ending, you know things are going to be fine
. You only get to have that experience once⁓unless you have memory loss, in which case remember that time you

I had a similar experience with this movie. It was a bit different too, with Twin Peaks you can sort of assume that the reintroduction won’t happen for a while, but here I really had no idea there was going to be a “everything was fine” moment. While watching I was getting a little frustrated and wrote in my notes about how the last third was losing me a bit, “maybe it’s because I’m tired,” but no, “everything was fine” and it all makes sense. The “it all makes sense” moment was also latent, I experienced it only after the credits, making it much stronger and more memorable than with Twin Peaks.

While I did get frustrated while watching, I think its fine. Knowing the whole of the film means that I never get to be frustrated over it again. I think that’s comforting. Not because I won’t get frustrated in the future, but because if I were able to be frustrated over the movie again in that way, I might be able to construe it some way unfaithful to the first time. I want to embrace the emotion I’ve experienced, and because I won’t be able to watch the same movie ever again, the memory of that emotion will be constant. With every movie I hope to be reborn with new constants.

whew what a zinger, i’d also like to mention that i really liked the to sleep so as to dream reference

This felt pretty different for Kiyoshi, a soundtrack is used more than once, if there’s two (2) characters in a room they always have some dialogue. It was strange, I thought the first half had the flavour of Kiyoshi, and the second only had a taste. It felt like it was holding back in a way, which is weird since I think this movie still adapts well to Kiyoshi’s usual style. Maybe he wanted something more normal so that when the weird shit happens its even more unnerving. The horror happens so slowly it lures you in, there’s no choice but to look.

Coming off my previous 2 (two) logs which were so personal I sort of feel guilty not being able to write more like that. Obviously not every movie is going to have such a strong emotional connection, but I like writing about movies. I want to write more, there’s just nothing I can pull from right now. Going back further through my logs I really shouldn’t beat myself up about it, it was only a couple months ago that I was writing like this. It’s weird, looking back at my Pickpocket log I wrote so little, but since then I feel a stronger connection to the movie and the characters (i’m literally him, btw). I feel like I could write something similar to my Rebels of The Neon God log about Pickpocket now.

After watching this movie I struggled a bit to come up with things to say. While watching I thought it was just OK, but the final scenes came together very nicely, and the parts I didn’t like as much were necessary to end like that. That was pretty much all I could think of. Writing this the Tuesday after I feel more of a connection to the characters.

I’ve always felt pretty good about being alone for as long as I can remember. Sure I have friends and we talk, but after we’re done meeting up I don’t feel much yearning to get back with them. I’m okay with sitting at my computer not speaking to another soul for days on end. Just because I am alone doesn’t mean I am lonely. But when I do have to talk to people who aren’t friends I’ve known for years, I feel like I’m always let down consistently. Hey this guy seems really nice—nope, homophobic—or—nope, they look at you like you’re the weirdest person they’ve ever met because you don’t talk like them or you made a joke that wasn’t based upon hatred. And I really don’t know what to do other than feel like shit. Talking with my friends online is good, but knowing that there’s only 4 people in my life that I can only sometimes meet in person isn’t very assuring when I can’t meet any more. The drain might unclog only sometimes, but that won’t end up stopping it from flooding.

What I ended up writing is very much a departure from what I normally do. I feel like a different version me would have continued on about why I connected to the characters, but here it felt right to leave it alone. Maybe its better to leave the log vague to the point where you can only get it if you watched to movie—or further, were literally me.

Oh yeah, the bass line was badass.

About every month or so I feel generally empty and frustrated with the world. Living aimlessly, going through the motions of what I know I’m supposed to do, talking very little. While in this state I’ll observe others more closely than usual, somehow making connections to what they’re doing to what I’m feeling. And then I’ll decide to take a quiet moment given to me for a bit. I don’t really think of my frustrations in that moment, I don’t think much of anything, really. Sometime after that things go back to normal. I have energy to do things, and I’m not frustrated. I’ve been aware of me doing this for a while, but I don’t think its been put into a full perspective until I watched this movie.

I was catching myself feeling this way before I watched this movie, so I felt particularly seen by it. Usually these feelings would last a few more days, but this movie ended up being cathartic. While I have seen lots of movies that speak to me personally, I don’t recall it being this comprehensive. I hope to hold this movie close to my heart, and to revisit it many times.

There’s this one point that Brennan Lee Mulligan makes about living in New York where he talks about how the population density results in being near so many people who are at life defining points in their life, and how this can result in you easily realizing that “today is really about them”. I feel like what Susumu’s character feels relates to this but expands upon it a bit. He goes around and watches people at defining points in their life, today IS about them, but he needs to see them so that today can also be his day.

Sometimes I get a bit pissy about the Hollywood style of filmmaking, and I’m sure it gets annoying, but I don’t care. This movie and the experience it provided should be normal. I took a film class in college which opened with the instructor talking about how most people consider movies to be in two camps “entertainment” and “art”, and how he knew that students would find the fact the class would delve into “art” films annoying. I’d rather the opposite be true.

Also yay! First movie where I get to see Susumu as the lead actor, he’s great.

This week I had enough time to do another radio show, and made an effort to get the log writing done before the show. Because of that I ended up feeling boxed in to what I wrote about, which is in contrast to the previous show where I talked then wrote, then felt boxed in with writing. I ended up reciting the log since I couldn’t think of anything off the cuff about the movie that I didn’t write about. Overall the show was better in my opinion, but I still think I can do better. Maybe I’ll be better at talking after doing a dozen or so more shows and will be able to say more than what I wrote, similar to how I started writing about movies.

https://lateen.org/aud/radio/2026/2026-09-25.ogg