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December 08, 2005
Life sentences: liking John Simon's prose, not pose
NP Thompson cherry-picks from John Simon's collected criticism in NYPress, including, while contesting accusations of Simon being homophobic, the remarkable sentence that ends his Nuits de Fauve notice: "Consider Simon's words on the French film Savage Nights, released in the United States in early 1994. The novelist and photographer Cyril Collard wrote, directed, and acted the lead role in this essentially autobiographical movie... Much like the character he portrayed, Collard lived with and died from AIDS. Simon: "What I found particularly moving is the film's clenched reluctance to let go. Toward the end, scene after scene looks to be the last, but it isn't; always there is more. You can feel Collard hanging on, literally, for dear life: as if, as long as he was making his movie, he could not die." Thompson continues: "There's no way that a homophobe could have written those lines, which betray an uncommon sensitivity.... That, quite possibly, is the quality that lodges in the collective craw of those who would paint Simon one-dimensionally—that he can be as tender as tough, and that both are equally valid, both are inescapably sides of the same coin, the human condition, the intimate dance... Simon doesn't laud every gay-themed work. But to write that "Angels in America""goes nowhere" isn't homophobic; it's good taste... "John Simon on Film" revives invigorating assessments... My favorite is... Simon's discerningly poetic take on the role of country music in Tender Mercies... "Simplistic as the songs may be, musically and verbally, they mediate between the people and the flat silence of the land, where the only sound is that of cars whooshing by—an uncomforting sound that only emphasizes the elsewhereness of the world."
Posted by pride at December 8, 2005 01:26 PM
Comments
Read that piece last night and was damned impressed, as only one can be when a persuasive argument is made for the skills of another writer one tended to have dismissed out of hand. I never denied Simon was a competent scribe, but he always seemed to me not only at least as arbitrary as Kael (all of whose books I own nonetheless), but also pointlessly bilious (something we must admit Kael often was as well). Sometimes you have to see something through another's eyes, and I'm fascinated with the degree of thought Thompson put into this. I might actually read those books now, even though other than in the case of the film essays, I usually won't know what he's talking about.
Posted by: DanYuma ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mcnblogs.com/mcindie/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 8, 2005 07:16 PM
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