Went to the screening of the much talked about “Rize” last night with Polina; a gritty, very real look at a cultural phenomenon that, until a day ago, I was entirely unaware of... In fact, here, I find I’m not even quite sure how to refer to the topic at hand: suffice to say that the film revolves around a group of adolescents, growing up in South Central, who either were, or might have become, gang bangers, but now, have opted to channel their energy, not into violence (as their surroundings might dictate), but into dance instead (“street dancing”, for lack of a better phrase, might serve as an apt descriptor, with this)—a kind of raw, intensely primal movement bordering, at times, on the ecstatic… And yes, the film itself was an extraordinarily visceral experience—much akin to attending a live concert that, somehow, and before you’ve even realized what’s happening, really gets under your skin, and moves you at a very basic, very subtle level.
You know you’re in for something fierce when the movie you’re about to see opens with the note, “None of the footage utilized here has been sped up in any way”—and indeed, things only take off from there: the movement, the attitude, all of it is wild, aggressive, uncontrolled, and totally cathartic. You get involved with the lives of these kids, you see them take everything negative in their lives and convert it, not only into something positive, but into what eventually becomes the foundation for a spontaneous grass roots community based on intimacy, respect, celebration… A kind of togetherness, a brothersisterhood which, when one stops to reflect for a moment, illustrates more of the “human” in all of us than any correlate I can think of off-hand in modern America today (and now, I’m once again brought to this notion of, on a macro-level, in the Western world vs the Eastern World, our own financially sound, yet emotionally and spiritually bankrupt culture)…
Truly, a film not to be missed, when it opens wide in a month or so.
After, Po and I caught dinner at Nam, a Vietnamese restaurant here in Tribeca. Discussing the film, it seemed that Po had had a much stronger reaction to the film than even my own (appropriately so, I imagine, as almost all of her time these days is spent making music), admitting that she’d always felt a very strong, very tangible connection between herself and that kind of music and culture which exhibited qualities that one could describe as (and as I later termed) “emanating from the first chakra”: primal and rhythmic. I agreed: but then, isn’t our entire pop culture catalogue, now, based on material that one could describe as having been generated from the first chakra? (Or the second, obviously, should we bring sex into it.) And then the thought, “Alas, as for myself: am I forever doomed to be stuck entirely in my own head…?”
Brian Eno: “I would describe a nerd as being someone who doesn’t have enough Africa in them.”
Nailed.
