Sofia Coppola Marries Phoenix Singer Thomas Mars

Comments

• J K says:

  August 29, 2011 at 1:06 pm

  The plot of Sofia Coppola's next film:
  Film director Sarafina Collopa and Firebird lead singer Sam Neptune are getting married in Italy. Guests at the quirky, ennui-filled wedding — which takes place at the at the Collopa family-owned mansion in Bernalda — will include Jerry Lucas, Donny Jepp, Talia Shire, Nicholson Gage and Jackson Schwartz... man. Will Sarafina be able to sigh and fret about her careless existence enough to cause each wedding guest to take her aside and tell her a heart-wrenching secret about life?
  Title: Your Own Worst Anomie.
  Sigh.

• Christian says:

  August 29, 2011 at 2:11 pm

  I'm guessing that you've never had depression and you are seemingly unaware that it affects all income levels.

• J K says:

  August 29, 2011 at 4:27 pm

  First, this was meant to be funny and not mean or belittling, but as I thought upon the nature of your critical accusation (Not thinking Sofia Coppola's films are brilliant = not having empathy for or insight into depression) it reminded me that there probably is a more bittier core to my parody.
  No. No. Please don't think I am poking fun at despair or the despairing.
  I've been there/am there.
  And I imagine that it's severely alienating to have been exposed to the terrible soul-violating power of media in youth as Sofia Coppola was.
  My very point is that her films are rapidly becoming a mockery of that pain.
  A middle-school scrap-book neon heart placed around a sulking face.
  And yes, existential angst certainly affects all conscious beings. Suffering is a big part of conscious life.
  And many of us who would qualify as "depressed" in the diagnostic lexicon have an appropriate amount of self-loathing, knowing that our inconsolability is inexcusable.
  I simply have a hard time appreciating gauzy, barely veiled narcissistic self-portraits of spoiled naval-gazers.
  It was fine to autobiographically swoon and sulk in Lost In Translation.
  (Although the film functioned mostly as a cypher for whatever big self-absorbed "sigh" the viewer wanted to project onto it.) And the ending had a kind of dignity because the two "lost" parties didn't do the easy thing and simply run off together in a state of continued avoidance.
  But to extend that same financially-spoiled-but-"emotionally-neglected"-ornament-wife bit to Marie Antoinette is a level of self-absorption so deep as to have been found (rightfully) internationally insulting.
  Poor Little Rich Girl stories certainly sell in a culture wealthy and sheltered enough to buy them. (And in need of objects which will help them find a way to explain their opulence as a disability.)
  Tragedy is cleansing and can seal the alienation that makes life unbearable. Since it places despair as an aspect of experience that is not a passive condition. You can face your suffering with courage.
  And the lost society's suggestion that you "have" depression, in the same way that one can "have" the measles is a ridiculous result of the overwhelming need to be released from existential accountability (anxiety.)
  And obeying that need is exactly what de-powers a human consciousness, ironically placing it into the helpless position it is trying to escape by feigning helplessness.
  But simply putting a frame around self-pity without insight is what folks used to call "dwelling."
  It's a kind of cowardice.
  It's the difference between carrying on with scars from wounds that were inflicted upon you, or simply sitting there making little white lines on your wrist with those rounded Kindergarten scissors, wistfully envious of the real depth that others seem to have barely borne.
  And if you want to see portraits of depression that are so cathartic as to move the soul, rent one of Bergman's films from the 70's.
  Just play MBV's Loveless over the the soundtrack if it's not "indie" enough for you.