In the film Discovering Forrester (2000), the filmmaker Gus van Sant (Louisville, Kentucky, 1952), in the style of the best literature, although using the weapons of cinema such as ellipsis, close-ups or PPP, medium shots, atypical frames, conducts an exploration of existence and at the same time of the human condition.
by using without any morbid or prejudice, in itself a principle of creative freedom, of the relationship between the Scottish, not “Irish” writer, William Forrester, and the “African American” adolescent (as Malcolm X said) Jamal Wallace, for the former “The mark of a jam”: gesture without racist intention, in a film about racism, class struggle, ego / vanity of teachers, achievements and falls of writers and that, on the one hand, is a praise of friendship and, on the other hand, another, a criticism of the business, management and manipulation of the school institution. What his film describes (in line with Good Will Hunting , about another gifted man despite his difficult character and outcast condition), masterfully through the encounter between that talented young man divided between literature and basketball, later recruited by a school private, and a veteran writer who has spent decades confined in his apartment. from the Bronx, who according to rumors “murdered someone”, which, finally, in the script by Mike Rich, is inspired by the also mysterious figure of JD Salinger (1919-2010), author of The Catcher in the Rye , whose protagonist Holden Caulfield is to this day an icon of youth rebellion: a book that was instrumentalized by the CIA for its MK Ultra mind control program. (1)
The film begins with a RAP ( Rhythm and Poetry ) interpreter who, with his back to some buildings, releases his existential roll in an area of young people harassed by the precarious, the lack of options to study, work and move up the social ladder. Little by little, these young people appear throughout the film: among them Jamal stands out, for his genius for language, literary quotes, basketball. Although, also, for his charisma, his serenity, his loyalty. As you can see, Jamal was able to lay down his life for Forrester, without thinking at all about his being expelled from school before. While William was afraid of success or failure, Jamal did not have any kind of fear, as only he who can love in freedom, who sees in it the sacrifice made in the name of love. Only because of Jamal is Forrester fulfilling his dream of returning to Scotland, otherwise he would have died in his apartment in the Bronx, NY.
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After the rapper intervenes, showing the difficult working conditions in the city and between collapsed buildings, there is a panning of NY and itssmog. Pigeons fly over the skyscrapers, the camera follows them and stops at one of them, where a man with a red flag cares for the birds: apparently a nod toGhost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, a Jim Jarmusch film, shot a year before Van Sant’s, in 1999, with Forest Whitaker, a hip-hop fan and friend of the mobster Louie, of whom he is devoted for saving him as a child. (2) Negroes fix their hair and wear their chains, rings and other things in gold and silver. PPP to the books of William Forrester (WF): various novels by Mishima (After the banquet; The sailor who lost the grace of the sea) and others: Chekhov; Kierkegaard; Marquis de Sade; James Joyce (The portrait of the adolescent artist); Ken Kesey, author ofSome one flies over the cuco’s nidus(taken to the cinema by Milos Forman), and ofSometimes a great idea; Joyce, again (Finnegans Wake); Ray Bradbury (The illustrated man); Sam Shepard (COM)Fool for Love – City Lights). There is a tracking shot from right to left, to show Jamal about to wake up to go to school: which, incidentally, shows that he was dreaming of WF books. His mother calls him and tells him that he has an appointment with his teacher and is going to work late, which is why he asks him to prepare his dinner. Which already speaks of a mother head of the family; family whom, later it will be known, her husband has left. Before leaving, she reminds him that she thought she was going to get up before 7:30. Next plane, first ellipsis: he is already on the stairs, he reaches the first floor and leaves: because what matters here is not that Jamal eats breakfast and everything else, but to be responsible towards his hard-working mother and his commitment / vocation with and for the study.
Follow the news of El Espectador on Google NewsSubjective PPP, a stranger young people call La Ventana , watches them from his building. In shot / back shot, fast, the camera shows him with his binoculars watching them play. Everyone salutes Jamal. The man from the BMW who comes to see WF appears, alias Mr. Johannsen, whom the young people do not see, but he does. All restless and apparently oblivious to drugs. Miss Joyce (tribute to the author of Ulysses ), talks about Poe and his poem The Raven (1845), written “while he was addicted to cocaine and obsessed with death.” A young man observes: “Like the soccer team”, obsessed with death and always beaten. All this to move on to baseball, another gringo obsession: “The Baltimore Ravens, the only team named after a classic poem.” The teacher asks who has read the poem: nobody… She asks Jamal and he says “no”. She slaps her fingers as a sign of sadness and / or concern.
For them, WF is a ghost, white, like everyone else, who never comes out: it seems to be, because he killed someone. And they refer to the story of Shurrita , for some, a ‘drug addict’; for others, ‘decent’. And the ‘invitation’ arises for Jamal to go to WF’s apartment. Some think that Jamal does not dare or that “he is afraid”. A challenge to those who, at the edge of time, will demonstrate what a man with the will to power is made of and who, like no other comrade of youthful adventures, learns the only trade that the school should transmit, but does not do: the trade of man. That, in addition, goes from the illusion of knowledge, semi-culture, to concise knowledge, culture, which is not a store of books read or a simple book of literary appointments, but a transformation factor to change life and to transform the world. . Weapons loaded with the future, as Celaya would say of poetry: literature and culture in general, without forgetting cinema, art and education: not war, as is still believed in the Common Trench, that plantation of the dead.
So the challenge for Jamal is already set: to go up to the apartment where La Ventana lives. Jamal himself nods. In the talks of the young people the spirit of lying arises, perhaps due to the adverse reality; and, against him, the search for truth, as a formula to change said reality. Backlit shot: Jamal checks his locker while a young black couple kiss passionately. He makes some notes with a flashlight and leaves. Jamal on the basketball court: he shoots over and over again, looks up and sees a light in a window. It is not just any light, it is the light of knowledge, knowledge, lucidity, which goes against the darkness, ignorance, stupidity: factors that serve both inept / corrupt governments.
Jamal’s mother visits Miss Joyce, who has just received her evaluation tests: Jamal has a 6.5 GPA, enough to pass and, at the same time, not to stand out. His mother says that he reads books all the time, some that she did not read and others that she has never heard of. Also, Jamal always writes in his notebooks, as will be seen when WF intervenes on them. All that he does since his father left. Oh, and he talks about basketball all the time. Not only the only way to “gain acceptance”, as Miss Joyce says, but to be recognized and to move up the social ladder, given the racism, discrimination and marginalization that prevail in their midst. For Terrell (T), Jamal’s brother, the thing is to play for the “U” team, then write checks to everyone, in short, solve their problems. Both say goodbye.
Jamal appears with his friends, in the lower part of the building where La Ventana lives, ready to go up to his apartment. Two hours without light. According to them, WF is a thousand years old, like Methuselah (according to the Bible, 969 years; what happened when lunar and solar cycles were mixed: according to experts, if the solar ones are counted correctly, his age was 72 years) (3) and what The only thing he does is sleep: so that, falsely, he does not worry. Contrapicado to Jamal, chopped to his friends. One of them says: “… I don’t know if you should” go up, of course, but he has already decided. Go upstairs and enter through a window. As a precaution, open the apartment door. from within in order to escape, in the event of a WF response to his interference. He takes his thin paper knife, puts it in his backpack, but when he is surprised by WF, he runs off and forgets it. You will only get it back when he willingly throws it from the window onto the basketball court.
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In the apt. see baseball balls, images of Mickey Mantle (1931-1995: great hitter, very popular in the big leagues and eternal player of the NY Yankees ), the TV on (a sign that…), with music by Miles Davis in the background : Bitches Brew , one of the two pioneering albums (the other is In a Silent Way , based on a composition by Weather Report’s lead pianist Joe Zawinul) of the fusion: the mix between the technique and improvisation of jazz and electronics of rock. Which is actually R&B , but white cultural looting and the record industry turned, because of Chicago DJ Alan Freed, into R&R . The nickname, pejorative, is Rock , for stone, and Roll , for roll, an allusion to the sexual organ of blacks, which, quickly, fell into a reclining society between ignorance / misinformation and morbid. He also sees the letter opener, the immense library and, again, the books displayed at the beginning, before Jamal goes to school. Now, others are seen: The Discourse of Method , by Descartes; Lord Jim , by Conrad, whose leitmotiv is One of Us , as in Goodfellas or Good Boys : not those of ‘Wand’ but those of Scorsese which, unfortunately for the Common Grave, are the same. In addition, Dante’s The Comedy , which the Church, to soften it, renamed as The Divine Comedy : the Selected Poems , by TS Eliot; The Martians , by Ray Bradbury.
When WF suddenly gets up and Jamal runs away, forgetting his backpack, contrary to what one might think, there is gain, not loss. When he returns it, Jamal will see the corrections to his notebooks, for him a more serious intrusion than his own: hence, perhaps, Einstein’s relativity. However, such notes will be the spur to an unusual friendship between an old and a young man; of a black and a white; of age antipodes. All this, denied at the edge of time due to the absence of prejudices, interpersonal respect, the search for truth through words turned into actions, as in the best dialectic. Actions based on bilateral ethics, discretion, spirit to combat the mediocrity of writers, based on envy, ego, pride. As V. gr., that of those who once fail with their first book, derive critics from others: Crawford’s case, the nodal point of the film. Another ellipsis: from the plane over the place where Jamal’s backpack is left, it passes the instant when the low door of the building seems to spit at the 16-year-old intruder and who, without any prologue, rebukes: “Did you grab something? Damn! ” When they go out for a run they all look up at the building and see / hear WF yelling at the top of his lungs “son of a bitch!” to Jamal. Cattle in sow lid, if you prefer, by the African American. It is clear, among other things, that WF was not asleep, that he hardly sleeps anymore. It will be known why.
Jamal returns home smiling, like someone hiding something. Pivot the ball in the kitchen. His mother complains to him after he hits her, while she cooks and reminds him: “You already wrote Michael Jordan’s name on the floor with dirt.” When Janice finds out about the backpack, Jamal says he doesn’t know where it is. “What do you mean not …?” Then, a shot about friends and their mockery: “We wanted you to bring something, not to leave something behind.” Jamal plays in the park, looks toward the apt. from La Ventana and in it, in the window itself, he sees his backpack hanging from the clasp.
The man with the BMW arrives, to whom Jamal in the face of his arrogance, will give him a bookish / encyclopedic lesson that he will never forget to, incidentally, vindicate the knowledge of the new generations who no longer copy their elders because they have surpassed them. Eastern maxim: “The student who does not exceed the teacher, indicates that the teacher has failed.” Which should fill with pride those who apparently fail, but who actually win because their knowledge, through the Other, has reached a higher level. Something that in Common Grave is seen the other way around: as if it were indeed a setback for the teacher, that the teaching / learning is not vertical but horizontal. Of course, without a bed or moral blackmail involved.
The last thing BMW did, Jamal tells the arrogant white boy, is airplane engines and that a certain Franz Popp started the company and made an engine before 1920: the one that in WWII was the model 801 (an initiative later banned by the colonizers of the German unconscious, as Wenders says in At the Edge of Time : Made with Chewing Gum and Polaroid Photos). (4) What is not told is the reason behind the fact: neither Adenauer’s dubious economic miracle nor the help of the gringos with the Marshall Plan, was not an act of philanthropy at all. Added to this prohibition was the closure of more than 1,500 factories, as well as the inability to continue producing iron, steel or brick, which, in turn, made the gringos take full advantage of the effects of German Reconstruction. Another travesty help sham. Massie thanks Jamal for “the history class.” A fact: the student is learning from the teacher.
As he passes the street, he feels the blow of the backpack that WF throws at him from the window. Contrapicado and chopped: here said plans could mean that Jamal is below the situation and WF above. Examine his notebooks, with the “intrusions” of that one: “constipated thought”; “This passage, fantastic!”; “Specify” (recommendation); “Intense atmosphere, cheap words” (rating); “Unworthy of this reader” (WF arrogance). “He got into my stuff,” he says, like someone who can’t stop the assault on his ego. If he had already made a path, his attitude would be different. “I want to support this writer. Can we get out of the Bronx for a second? ” Another “constipated”. “Where are you taking me?” Says WF. Jamal climbs up to this one and hits twice. When the Old Man comes out, he tells him that the other night was a challenge for him and his friends; I was wondering if I could bring him other texts or perhaps write other things. WF entrusts him with 5,000 words on “why the fuck” will he not enter his house. Ellipsis: Jamal is already in his, obeying the teacher to regain the confidence lost with the assault on his house. And go back to the apt. by WF. Strike hard: he knows he’s there like a confined man in times of virus. When WF asks him to take his hands off his door, he tells him that he came to bring him the assignment.
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Then, he goes with his mother to a meeting about the interest of private schools in his talent, basically sports, not so much for his knowledge of language, literature or academic training in general. David Bradley will be the one to define his link to Jamal’s new private cloister, the Mailor-Callow School , exactly, as Janice recalls. “The best private high school in NYC and the largest private school in the Eastern US.” Immediately, the transvestite commercial blackmail of goodness comes to the fore: 40 of the best basketball players are from that school and three of them reached the professional level. And Bradley tells him that, although the offer is academic, “you will not disappoint us if you play.”
Céline, the author of Journey to the End of the Night , said that there were only two categories of men: exhibitionists and peepers. Well, the Voyeur , ‘La Ventana’, from his he watches what happens with his pupil Jamal, while Bradley starts in his Mercedes-Benz. At idle, the young man goes to the apt. by WF. Upon arriving, with surprise, he notices that it has taken his 5,000 words. This time, it doesn’t hit. Wait on the stairs. When WF asks who he was talking to, Jamal demands that before anything else he returns his text. WF leaves the door ajar: “Put the lock, if you’re going to come in.” Jamal tells him that Bradley is from a private school, where he will not have to pay anything to study there. He tells him about his brother ‘T’ and his abandoning father. He bounces the ball and gets a disapproving look from WF.
Jamal continues his filial exorcism: “My mom got tired of waiting for my dad to quit alcohol.” “And my dad got sick of trying. That’s when I started writing ”. And when he says his name, WF responds: “Sounds like a marmalade brand.” However, Jamal can be anything he wants, less flatterer, lout, or traitor to himself. It is quite the opposite: he does not praise anyone for free, except those who do not deserve it; does not drop idle words out of commitment or interest to get something in return; always remain faithful to its principles. In short, a human being who learns the only trade that the school should supply: the trade of man; He is a person focused on what he is looking for and sure of what he will achieve; For this he does not lean on others or step on anyone. The careerist is not part of his practice, rather than his theory. All this he will demonstrate with WF against R. Crawford, even against the noble / sweet Claire Spence, the daughter of the millionaire who, among others, is therefore from the Board of the Mailor-Callow .
WF asks Jamal about his age and adds “you’re black”, without racist tinge, even if it seems. By contrast, the phrase will serve to support his documented point of view (episteme), compared to common opinion (doxa), as Plato thought: in front of the people, the school, the egos / vanity of the writers; in short, those who “by failing with their first book” derive critics from others and can no longer bear the fact that no one is better than them because they are opaque / ignored, even annulled. All this leads little by little, although surely, to the epilogue, one full of brilliance, successes, objectivity, with respect to an apparently plagiarism mess, for Crawford, above all, and other directors of the Mailor , even so, of absolute honesty for his mentor, at the beginning full of cowardice to assume solidarity with Jamal as well as his accompaniment.
The first ambiguity between them arises, when WF ponders Jamal’s writing and he asks if perhaps: “Is it admirable that he is black?”, As if that had to do with something. After a brief dialogue in which WF exposes his “racist idiocies” to provoke him and throws himself at him with the letter opener that he wanted to steal from him, but could not, he is fuming: “Old fool!”
The mother and her two children, ‘T’ and ‘J’, eat communally, an African-American custom: “One hand to give, another to receive, we eat together, united”. Janice asks that their minds, bodies and spirits be strengthened. He wishes Jamal congratulations and “amen,” they all say. She shows Mailor’s brochur to ‘T’, who by whose cover she sees a “school of comedians.” What deep down it is, like any school that, instead of educating, tames. Because, yes, throughout history educating has been synonymous with raising, directing, training, training, accustoming, holding the reins, monitoring / punishing, indoctrinating; also, instruct, teach. Yes, the school subjects, tames, but making human subjects conscious is not part of their plans. Jamal faces all this, in Crawford’s person, especially because of his character: a word that recalls Mike van Diem’s film, Character (1997), Oscar for Best Foreign Film, another hard clash with his father. (5) Also remember your will to power; not giving up what he is, what he pursues, what will be given to him as an echo of his dreams based on trust towards his relatives; in the security of your knowledge; in ethics as a growth factor; in freedom as the action of desire; lastly, in the certainty that the principle of pleasure can prevail over that of reality, as long as beings of integrity are involved, respectful of others and with a solid sense of solidarity, cooperation, and community.
Not that “school of comedians” that are the owners / managers of banks, businessmen, soldiers, priests, nuns (except for my sister Martha Cecilia), bureaucrats and, of course, politicians. All of them are the ones who often, in the course of History (and hysteria), produce it sometimes as a farce, sometimes as a tragedy and today everywhere as a tragic farce. With results marked by sadness, helplessness, desolation, violence, death. All crossed by a pure and simple fascism; for a capitalism that made man a slave to the machine, as Kafka foresaw: for an (in) World System that has no mercy for the homeless (“You have to be intolerant of the homeless,” said the English lapdog Tony Blair), without employment, without health, without education, without opportunities, in short, without a minimum well-being.
Jamal meets Claire Spence, whom Bradley delegates to teach him about school. He suggests not answering questions until you decide what to do; reveals that there the teachers do not take into account the participation of the students (as stated in the documentary La Educación prohibida , 2012, by Germán Doin, dedicated “to all children and young people who want to grow up in freedom”) (6); that they prefer to listen to themselves, in short, that their ego and their vanity have no limits. And the protagonist of all the above appears: the former writer, now a teacher and critic of all those who can overcome it, Crawford, who right at that moment distributes among his students copies of the only novel that (apparently) WF wrote and with the that got the Pulitzer: Avalon Landing or The Avalon Pier .
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He tells them that, at 23, in 1953, WF wrote his first book; that many budding authors wanted to write the great novel of the century (John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner et al): WF wrote it on his first try. The only book that apparently decided to publish and as far as we know the only one who decided to write: something that does not correspond to reality, as will be seen in the epilogue. Claire and Jamal talk about whether Jamal is coming back the next day and he says they do want to see him on the court. What Claire already knows already adds that Mailor is like the U .: “You get an education and they get what they want.” Perhaps both of them get what they want, as will be seen in the course of this approach to the film.
Jamal reminds WF that there is a lot of talk about him, that he is a legend, that everyone has stories about his history: as always when they talk about an outcast, an outsider , a different type. “People don’t know if he killed someone”, Jamal thinks that the place where he lives is special, that he would not move from there, that nothing is heard there. Instead, where he lives, there is nothing but noise, rowdy neighbors. The kid shouts; the father screams because that one is making noise; the mother, above all, screams, although in a different way, because she fornicates with the old man and she gasps against the wall: “Ah, ah, ah!” WF asks you to stop eschatology and rather stir the soup before it sets and you cannot digest it. And it reminds him that he does not care if he is black or did it out of racism, but that it was a test to know how much atrocities he would endure.
New shock situation: on the court, by order of the teacher, are Hartwell, a rich kid, and Wallace, impoverished. When Jamal and WF argue about Avalon Landing , the Old Man points out to the Young man for the first time how important it is to keep some things, to deprive himself of saying them and asks him not to say anything to anyone about what they talk about there. Privacy, in short. And, as you can see, Jamal fully complies with it. In return, he asks WF to help him write better. As if it could. The former responds that he will not ask questions about him, his family, or why he wrote just one play. When asked how he feels when writing what he wrote, WF answers: “Maybe you will find out.” And to his friend about whether he knows someone famous, Jamal does not break his promise: “Nobody famous lives around these parts.” He is seen with John Coleridge, who points out his proper behavior towards Crawford, for not being provoked: which, then, Jamal’s character will deny until the tyrant receives a lesson.
Jamal asks WF if he has read all the books in his library; he, with humor, responds: “No, I have them there to impress the visitors.” Jamal mocks, for so many … And tells him that at school they read his novel. WF says that they have been reading it for years, the burden is that they do not say anything, as happens with so much work that people say they have read, to escape the dictatorship due to supine ignorance. Massie from the BMW: “Mr. Johannsen? ” and Jamal is stumped. They sit down to write after asking WF: “Why are the words we write for ourselves better than the ones we write for others?” Invite Jamal to do it without thinking: first the emotion, then the coherence; the heart, then the head. Lucidity orders what passion, as suffering, alters. The first key to writing is writing, not thinking, remember WF. Writing is not inspiration, but perspiration (Faulkner). And WF presents A Season of Perfect Faith , which will lead to the climax of the epilogue. When you feel your own words, you have to start writing them; not before, because they are not their own, but borrowed.
Crawford calls Jamal to tell him that his most recent essay outperforms all previous ones. When inquiring how long he wrote it and receiving the answer: “Last night,” he smiles wryly like someone who feels that because he is old he could no longer do the same and that because he is no longer young or not so talented, either. In short, envy is the evil of minors, not of intellectual adults, Kant would say. Crawford wrote a single book, which all publishers rejected, for WF a correct decision. Instead of writing one more, he says, he took a job to teach others how to do it. “Remember that bitterly disappointed teachers can be very effective or very dangerous,” he warns Jamal about Crawford.
Notes:
(1) https://www.theclinic.cl/2012/12/07/por-que-el-guardian-en-el-centeno-es-el-libro-favorito-de-asesinos-famosos/
(2) https://rebelion.org/lenguaje-y-poder/
(3) https://es.calcuworld.com/cuantos/cuantos-anos-vivio-matusalen/
(4) https://rebelion.org/wim-wenders-o-el-arte-de-la-errancia/
(5) https://www.filmaffinity.com/es/reviews2/1/293622.html
(6) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1Y9OqSJKCc&t=73s
FICHA TÉCNICA: Título original: Finding Forrester. Español: Descubriendo a Forrester. País: EEUU. Año: 2000. Género: Drama. 35 mm; color; 136 min. Dir.: Gus van Sant. Guion: Mike Rich. Prod.: Sean Connery. Fot.: Harris Savides. Mon.: Valdis Óskarsdóttir. Int.: Sean Connery (WF); Rob Brown (Jamal W.); F. Murray Abraham (R. Crawford); Anna Paquin (Claire S.); Busta Rhymes (‘T’); April Grace (Ms. Joyce); Michael Pitt (J. Coleridge); Stephanie Berry (Janice); Michel Nouri (Dr. Spence); Richard Easton (Matthews); Glenn Fitzgerald (Massie); Fly W. III (Fly); Matthew Noah Word (Hartwell); Steven Sanderson (Matt Damon). Prod.: Columbia Pictures. Dist.: Sony Pictures / Netflix / FandangoNow.
* (Bogotá, Colombia, 1957) Father of Santiago & Valentina. Writer, journalist, literary, film and jazz critic, professor, lecturer, copyeditor, translator and, above all, reader. Contributor to El Magazín de EE, 2012, and columnist, 23 / Mar / 2018. His book Eight Minutes and Other Stories, Collection of 50 Contemporary Colombian Short Stories, was launched at XXX FILBO (Pijao, 2017). Honorable Mention by Martin Luther King: Every personal / interior change makes the world progress , at the XV Int. Essay Prize Pensar a Contracorriente, Havana, Cuba (2018). Seven essays on imperialisms – Literature and biopolitics , co-authored with Luís E. Soares, was published by UFES, Vitória (Edufes, 2020). The book The (contra) colonial statute of Humanity , a product of the III International Congress of Literature and Revolution, was launched by UFES on 20 / Feb / 2021. Author, translator and co-author, with Luis E. Soares, in the Rebelión portal. E-mail: [email protected]