Chinatown

“What did you do in Chinatown?”

(Gittes) “As little as possible”

Chinatown is one of those towering masterpieces of the seventies, ranking alongside with the Godfathers and Apocalypse Now among many others, which is known as the last great decade of American cinema. The movie follows the quintessential private eye who makes money off working adultery cases and other petty cases. He has moral code which he abides by and a disdain for humanity in general, which makes him perfect for the job. As the movie progresses, events reveal the other dimensions to his character, like how he has a massive ego that refuses to get hurt. The same is true with all the other characters. Consider, the femme fatale, who at first seem so bent and corrupted that we are left feeling a natural disgust with her. Or the charismatic Noah Cross, who has only 3-4 scenes in the movies, with which we find out his entire being. We never realize how our perception of each character completely changes towards the end of the movie. By the end we even cease to be judgmental, and we ascribe everything that happened to fate and the way of the world.

Chinatown works, not by simply by the sheer lucidity of its flow or the directorial or acting achievements, although all these are very much there. It combines a multitude of concepts, all old and many-time used, to portray a line of thought mainly concerned with deathly cynicism and the failure of the search of goodness which is supposed to be innate to the human soul. Its described as a “noir”, something that attaches itself with the dark, brooding b&w movies of the 40’s with contrasts of bright light and pitch dark and sharp contours overlying everything visible and implied. It is a detective movie in the oldest sense of the word, up to 3/4th of its runtime. In the end, it is in the sudden, mellow and most importantly, drastically subtle transition from the particularity of the events to the generality of human nature and the working of the laws of nature that makes it work. But even all that is done already. What makes it stand out is the spatial dimension. Chinatown is the end of the world. The movie follows each character into their personal dilemmas posed by exposure to the dark underbelly of the city. It is this character driven direction that kept me hooked to my seat. After the first time, with each viewing, the entire movie seem to reverberate with a kind of spiritual desperation that is fascinating to bear. The nostalgia returns to us in a heavier manner, but the movie avoids portraying its emotional excesses. The attitude of the film seemingly waxes to nihilism but on closer inspection, all we see is a physical impossibility, which is very much related to the circumstances.

And lastly, the score of the film fits in so perfectly with the general mood that it almost seem like a miracle. It is melancholic, riveting and always threatening to explode in your face. Its my favorite film score of all time, which is strange considering how this is also my favorite film of all time.  The strained character of the different relationships and the murkiness of the legal system  are products of the mindset of the age rather than anything else, as the time was indeed exceptional.  The various indulgences of the characters, like the trappings of the past, the sexual derision, the chauvinism and the firm grasp of the human ego all seem very much circumstantial and very much real. Especially the last scene. The alien landscape of the town stretches in all directions and the long scaled buildings and the unfriendly sign-boards are simply symbols of utter hopelessness. The “moral midnight” it creates is only in the hearts of men, and as strong as it may be, it is several steps away from reality, which refuses to budge.

What Ayn Rand will come to mean, and what she will not

“Because it’s there”
-George Mallory, on being asked why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest

           Ayn Rand proclaimed that art is the reality (which is independent of consciousness) approximated by the artist’s metaphysical value judgements. The fact that all art is rooted to some objective reality is obvious, as otherwise the world of art would be an abysmal snowstorm in which haze percolates every perception of every individual and all that would be left would be arbitrary ramblings that would make no practical sense whatsoever. So there! The mystery of art is rooted in reality, so she is right about that. She is also right in proclaiming that nature exists only for the individual, and it is the individual that uses his mind to use it and manipulate it to its maximum potential. Her advocacy of reason can also be taken, as reason exists, and understanding things on the basis of two absolutes cannot work. Man's actions should not be based on emotion.

         Now all that remains is how far she has succeeded in her endeavour of abstraction. What strikes me most is the general shallowness and lack of understanding seen in every single one of her pages. The “reality” she has created could not be further apart from the actual reality that is seen throughout history. The humanistic “anti-heroes” of her novels are superficial, annoying men and women who do not have a general understanding of what human dignity is. They are a quite distinct race which is never found in actual life because they have no self worth, without which caring for other people becomes impossible. It is as if she is ignoring the fact that all the greatest minds throughout history had,without exception, great concern for the society. I don't even have to give examples. If it necessitates her to portray such characters in the reality that she has approximated, it means one of two things: 1. She does not have what it takes to face a strong adversary, 2. She doesn’t know or understand the opposing side enough, or she doesn’t care enough. This makes Atlas Shrugged a bonafide work of hatred, fuelled by excessive self interest. Hatred is blind. A thesis which cannot empathise with the views of its adversaries is not worthy of analysis.

      Another lack of understanding is how she frequently mistakes humanism for charity. In fact, most of her book is a tirade against charity and some other-worldly concept about payment according to need other than ability, proving that once again she is completely missing the point. And she does also does quite a bit of rambling on justice as the only thing that is ethical. It definitely is. Where she fails yet again is her lack of understanding of what justice is. Justice is the closest a society can come to providing equal opportunities. When a man creates something which provides him with an immense fortune, it is just that he be able to use it any way he wants it to. What isn’t just is the fact that the next ten or more generations to come after him should benefit from that same fortune, regardless of their ability. Dignity is that which approximates one’s self worth in comparison with others. The fact that he doesn’t deserve something, or there are people out there who deserve more eats away at the consciousness of any dignified individual. In fact most of the richest men today are rich because they happen to have the "virtue" of being born in the right family. While thousands of able individuals are on the streets trapped by poverty and hunger and made to take jobs unworthy of their ability, because of their "sin" of being born in the wrong family. The end result is an immense lack of development of human resource potential, which is more important than the development of any other natural resource. Ms Ayn Rand proclaims this as justice. The rich do not move the world as they accumulate the life blood of the world and keep it idle.

       Furthermore, if contradictions do not exist and the view of man as seen by Ms. Ayn Rand is the objective reality, she is also calling for an end of all humanistic art. All descriptive arts involve a great deal of the human element, as human beings inhabit an emotional landscape that is more fascinating than anything nature has to give us. Just because it exists makes it a part of nature. Just because a mountain is the tallest gives someone enough reason to climb it, when nature poses a challenge or a problem, it gives us enough reason to delve into it and work it out, just because it is there. The task of human endeavor is to work out all of the mysteries that nature poses, to ideally achieve unity and simplicity. In fact, actual self-interest cannot be figured out if not on this ideal, as human consciousness is always in a flux and is kept together only by finding permanance and harmony in the real world. Figuring out self-interests with only our self in hand entails the worst kind of "philosophical suicide"(as Camus lies to put it), and descends itself into the absurd. And we are social animals, and most part of the the real world are real people. Above all, to understand nature and people, a desire for understanding and empathy is vital. Caring comes inevitably, as an attempt to empathise forces us to care.
 
      A person's ego is a vast, powerful thing, capable of permanantly deluding himself, even of driving him to madness(see Nietsczhe) The act of attatching any importance to our actions is actually an act of limiting our thinking. Modesty settles in as soon os one figures out the existance of the "vast sea of knowledge" that surrounds mankind. Of everything in the world, the self is what we know least about. So the object of our thinking and our affection must essentiall lie outside the self. Our self, it has the capability to change the truth  according to its wishes, which are forever impermanant. This forms the rational basis of self-lessness.

      A philosopher's life is physical testimony to the success of his or her philosophy. Most of Ayn Rand's adult life was in emotional turmoil. Her personal life was in complete shambles. She became involved in an adulterous affair with a disciple (a "reasonable" decision on her part, of course), and then went all "bat of out hell" when he made the "reasonable" decision to start an affair with a younger woman. The resulting emotional pyrotechnics were a perfect example of the impotence of Objectivism as a life creed, and gives invaluable evidence to its instability and impracticality. Numerous failures of Objectivism converts adds to this.
As to why it strikes such a chord among a large number of people, it is basically because diversion of all their interests to the self makes them blind to (any other)reason, and gives them an emotional satisfaction similar to the one produced by religion. Something as novel as a new abstraction in philosophical thinking is enticing, and it is bound to attract a following. The rich were in great need of a moral framework for defending themselves, and it isn't surprising that they adopted this. Ayn Rand's life and work will come to mean for the world, the very opposite of what it preached, because it has failed. It will show how no man is an island, and how man's interest lies outside of his self. A weak adversary who is loud enough can take the place of your strongest supporter. She will come to be the poster child of altruism, as she represented a mode of thinking that is inherently wrong. And above all, she showed us in practice(and in her book) that there are a large number of people who "just do not want to think".