Disaster Mon Amour
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A deep—and darkly comic—dive into the nature of disasters, and the ways they shape how we think about ourselves in the world
“In this brilliant book, David Thomson tells the story of how we came to make disaster and catastrophe our best friends—how we let terror cocoon and take over our imaginations to avoid seeing the things that really frighten us. Riveting and totally original.”—Adam Curtis, BBC filmmaker and political journalist
“Erudite. . . . Engaging. . . . A cri de coeur about art’s struggle to keep up with reality.”—Kirkus Reviews
Audiences swell with the scale of disaster; humans have always been drawn to the rumors of our own demise. In this searching treatment, noted film historian David Thomson examines iconic disasters, both real and fictional, exposing the slippage between what occurs and what we observe. With reportage, film commentary, speculation, and a liberating sense of humor, Thomson shows how digital culture commodifies disaster and sates our desire to witness chaos while suffering none of its aftereffects.
Ranging from Laurel and Hardy and Battleship Potemkin to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and from the epic San Andreas to the intimate Don’t Look Now, Thomson pulls back the curtain to reveal why we love watching disaster unfold—but only if it happens to others.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Film Scholar Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film) explores disasters both cinematic and actual in this erudite if uneven collection. The title alludes to the 1959 film Hiroshima Mon Amour, which Thomson argues exemplifies his thesis that "fearsome possibilities cannot escape some irony or romance that may amount to beauty." The opening essay, "Overture for Two Staircases," looks at Laurel and Hardy's short film The Music Box, about the characters' efforts at getting a piano up a staircase, alongside Sergei Eisenstein's tragic stairway massacre in The Battleship Potemkin, to demonstrate how closely related the hilarious can be to the horrible. "In San Andreas" offers an analysis of the movie San Andreas and a chronology of disasters in film including the 1936 movie San Francisco and 1974's Earthquake. The essay also curiously includes a fictional dialogue with an "old lady" who tells him to "get on with your book," which proves more obfuscating than illuminating. As Thomson moves away from film analysis and into the real world, particularly his views on global warming and the Covid-19 pandemic, things drag and veer more into flat reportage than illuminating critique. Film buffs will find much to consider in his cinema takes, but won't lose anything by leaving before the curtain falls.
