Word: despairs
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Pierrot is not a pessimistic statement on the meaningless of human existence. There is too much beauty in the film to be able to come away with a feeling of total despair. In Godard's words, "the cinema, by forcing reality to unfold itself, reminds us that we must attempt to live...
Rather, we might imagine, to supplement the right-to-left line for political stances, a linearly independent vector for romanticism. Left-romantics want to change people because they despair that systems can be changed or because they believe that systems will change to fit the change of people's needs. Left-romantics (pragmatists?) want to change the system to change the man (or perhaps for more abstract reasons, justice, etc.). George Orwell, in his essay on Charles Dickens, recognized the trends, saying, "They appeal to different individuals, and they probably have a tendency to alternate in terms of time...
...Wapshot. "Bathe in cold water every morning," Leander counseled his sons. "Relish the love of a gentle woman. Trust in the Lord." Yet literary means, like wars and prices, tend to escalate. In Bullet Park, trying to cope with up-to-date exurban alarums and filial excursions-including creeping despair and the generation gap -has widened farther than ever the consistent gap between Cheever's surface realism and the bizarre events and distorted perspectives of the moral allegories he pursues...
...gratification in triplicate to staunch Harvard Dilbert and Sullivan patrons. John McKean seems to have found, in Ralph Rackstraw, the Gilbertian lead to which he is best suited. The part calls for rapid changes of character: from a caricature of soulfulness to impetuosity to prideful rage to rapture to despair to pompous authority and back, finally, to rapture. That McKean can make so many transitions so rapidly is itself a feat worthy of praise; that he makes them so smoothly and so convincingly is simply amazing...
...majority of the Harvard community confused and dismayed. The SDS tactic was repulsive, the violent police raid used to defeat it even more disgusting, but worst of all is the prespect that the University is now splitting so violently that its survival is endangered. The temptation for moderates to despair and give up politically is overwhelming, but this is precisely the time when they must not quit as a political force...