Bergsonian Critique

• Book: Eleven Kinds of Loneliness by Richard Yates

Eleven anecdotes. Eleven fictitious portraits. “Eleven Kinds of Loneliness”. This is simply the premise of Richard Yates’ second novel after he had published his grandeur debut, “Revolutionary Road”. Akin to its herald, the novel galvanizes the artistry and the domestic realism that eloquently pervade Yates’ sparingly paced chapters, creating a hypnotic voice that rims with sentiment but remains shy of sentimentality. His stories may not be a bundle of laughs but his commentary of the world -and the state of mind it creates- is so economically and so persuasively excruciating to the fact it borders the edge of plausibility. Indeed, Yates’ characters are not scandalized by their actions but rather their struggle to find a sense of life and themselves. The zenith of such anthological descriptions of human fragility is a haunting, subtly shaded mosaic of the 1950s, the era when the American dream was finally coming true and just beginning to ring a little hollow. The latter can be attributed to few of the novel’s depictions but the rest is quenched with sublime characterizations. If you want to brush up on your vintage American literature, then think nowhere else than Yates’ oeuvres.

• Game: A Boy and His Blob (Wii) by WayForward

Nostalgia can be attributed as a sympathetic and evocatively indulgent sentiment, but it is also a concocted detraction that threads on subjective assessments and self-conceived notions. WayForward’s recent renewal of an ancient NES game, however, eschews any probability of such predisposition, while seemingly eliciting a sense of warm familiarity. “A Boy and His Blob” -through its cartoonish aesthetics and winsome, nonexistent narration- reinstates the olden, unostentatious 8-bit game designs fervidly, but its inspiring amendment of the genre’s conventions rules out its designation as a glorified remake. Concurrently, the game propels its childlike ventures on the believable friendship that exists between the boy and his blob, even without the aid of the useless yet adorable hug button. The game still obeys its antecedent’s approach of side-scrolling puzzles and transformative blob jellybeans, demanding the player to successfully navigate from point A to point B across 40 stages. Additionally, the game grants the opportunity to double this number by discovering three fiendishly hidden treasure chests per main level, which upon completion, reveals behind the scenes look through pre-art designs and production videos. The game’s flaws hinge on the merciful checkpoints and almost too instructive hint system, not to mention the rough, looped  transitions of the otherwise beautiful score. Luckily, its boss battles, guised as elaborative puzzles, supersede such abstractions with a steep difficulty and challenging confrontations.

• Film: Treeless Mountain (2008) by So Yong Kim

So Yong Kim’s “Treeless Mountain” isn’t a film about South Korea’s contemporary concerns rather than about the innocence and curiosity of childhood. Similarly, the plot’s concealed bravado is rooted within the fringe existence of male roles; men are the puppeteers whom intrinsically create the misfortunes of the two young heroins. In fact, we quickly forgive the girls’ distressing mother for leaving them behind to the uncaring devices of their “Big Aunt”, as the former strives behind the scenes to reunite with her estranged and unseen husband. Such passive response is emanated by the charms and sympathy of two young actresses, as they effortlessly overcome the director’s deficiency of contextual construction of the narrative. Indeed, stories of child negligence have been expressed numerously on the international scene, yet, “Treeless Mountain” manages to driver its plot with a mechanical candor that is perversely wheeled through the isolation and self-reliance of the endearing siblings. However, unlike Majid Majidi’s peerless direction in “Children of Heaven” and “The Color of Paradise”, its childlike redolence is formless and indistinctive, leaving us to ponder the alleged symbolism of the girls. Still, Kim’s masterful yet tentative feature exposes the coping capability of childhood, particularly when it gets plunged onto states of dejection and incredulity that are usually instigated by the atrocities of life.