days of heaven . police, adjective

i find it hard to be able to understand what to make of ‘days of heaven’. a story about three iterant laborers who swindle a rich lonely landowner for his property. not that the story mattered much- or at least for me it didn’t. not even the landscapes or the time that they represented (1919)- for me the film was only about the gorgeous way it looked- bathed in a perpetual golden light. (a ‘magic hour’ film) i was told. the most incredible for me was the scene where the locusts descend on the fields and rise in dark clouds across the sky until an angry fire burns everything to the ground.

it was just yesterday that i wrote part of the brief for this years ‘reflections’ on our gangtok and leh studies where i present a case for the disintegration of known word and meaning associations into constellations of meaning. police, adjective, a romanian film about the gap between law that civilizes and the “right thing” to do. a police inspector spends days following three youngsters after they are reported to have smoked hashish. the law insists that he prosecute while he dithers. it is only when faced with the unflinching clarity of a dictionary defining ‘conscience’, ‘law’, ‘moral’ and police that his humanity is laid to rest.