Black Gate

July 17 for me was a day of rest and running errands; then for my first film at Fantasia on July 18 I went to the De Sève Theatre to watch Maggie (메기). Directed by Yi Ok-seop from a film she wrote with star Koo Kyo-hwan, it’s the story of Yeo Yoon-young (Lee Ju-young), and her boyfriend Sung-won (Koo). Yoon-young’s a nurse at Love of Maria Hospital in Seoul. One day, an X-ray surfaces showing a man and a woman having sex in the X-ray room. The next day almost nobody comes in to work; the X-ray room’s a popular site for assignations, and everyone thinks they’re one of the figures in the X-ray. Yoon-young’s the only one who dares show her face, along with Doctor Lee (Moon So-ri). They end up forming an unlikely partnership as Maggie helps Lee learn to trust other people. Meanwhile, Sung-won finds work filling in sinkholes opening up in Korea, following an earthquake predicted by a catfish named Maggie — who also turns out to play an important role within the film.

This is only roughly a description of the movie, indicating just a few of the plot strands. Maggie unfolds through a series of vignettes, with flashbacks and chapter titles and an unseen narrator. It’s a consciously quirky approach to a film that isn’t afraid of punching up its plot with a certain amount of surrealism. You wonder what happens to the patients at a hospital with no staff, for example, and though we do see a few people left in the empty building, by and large the question’s unanswered.

What is most interesting, and I think in the long run surprisingly effective, is the contrast between the surface tone of light comedy and a deeper sense of abiding bleakness. The conclusion suggests hidden depths to people we think we know, and not always abysses into which we would choose to gaze. While the pacing and general approach seem to aim at a gentle comfort, much of what actually transpires depicts some real pain.

The vignette structure seems to ask the viewer to see the humour of events, and the surrealism is at first distancing, but the subject matter (of trust, of violence) has a weight that in the end can’t be ignored. This could have been a significant disconnect, and at first I felt it was. The more I thought about it — and after having seen at least one movie that tried something similar to Maggie and in my judgement failed — the more I came to appreciate this film, and suspect that I hadn’t been sensitive enough at first viewing to what it was trying to do.

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Who was the first to land on the moon? A man? How could he? Even the most “steel-like sinews” would shrink before the magnitude of the task. Only a robot, whose “sinews” were literal steel, could stand up to the crush of 50G’s during acceleration. Only a robot could stand up to the moon’s harshness. That was the idea of moon-obsessed Emil Peters, confined to a wheelchair after a childhood injury, for whom “standing up” by proxy was a lifelong dream.

“My proxy, [he explained], thanks to radio, possesses both voice and hearing. Radio television provides it with sight; that is, it enables me, sitting in this chair, to see through its artificial eyes. Radio telemechanics, or wireless control at a distance, guides its legs, arms – in fact, every movement of the body.”

“To the Moon by Proxy,” by the young writer Joseph Schlossel, appeared in the October 1928 Amazing Stories. A mere three decades later, General Electric had the same thought, unveiling “a science-fiction robot that it said conceivably could be the first ‘man’ on the moon.” And then another, and another, a string of proxies and exoskeletons that promised to allow humans to become virtual superheroes.

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Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay. If you think about it, the Muses are incredibly creepy.

Good morning, Readers!

Back in the day, just a bit before my time, creativity was once thought to be an external force. It was a supernatural intervention, the whispering of a deity in the ear of her fortunate unfortunate, compelling them to create in a fugue of mystical madness… probably. It’s likely I made that up. I have no citation.

It’s a myth that appears to have a rather oddly long life. Still to this day, people talk of creativity as if it’s some strange external thing. They do the same with talent, as if either are some kind of divine gift… or curse (some days, folks. Some days). The fact of the matter is, it’s not some strange magic. There are no spirits whispering in one’s ear, commanding creation, directing creativity.

Creativity, and talent for that matter, is a skill. It is a muscle that has been exercised relentlessly. From youth, creativity is fed on a steady supply of stories of the impossible, mind-bending images, and lots of time to ponder and play. Talent’s diet consists simply of practice. Hours and hours of practice. These things, when given freely and often in a person’s youth, creates a solid foundation for creativity.

This skill must be nurtured, the muscle flexed often, or it is lost. Like most things that are done in this manner, creativity as part of a routine can appear effortless to the outside eye. No one really sees the years of effort, practice and failure that goes into the effortless exertion they are witness to. The creative knows.

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