During the Q&A after Village People Radio Show, director Amir Muhammad said that the Malaysian government had banned his film, giving him seven reasons why. He said he responded with 14 rebuttals. He didn't win, but just read reason number five. Or rather, butir nombor lima:
5. Filem ini boleh sahaja dimulakan oleh perkataan yang tertera di skrin, contohnya “Amaran Oleh Kerajaan Malaysia: Fahaman Komunisme Dilarang Dan Anda Ditegah Daripada Meniru Ideologi Merbahaya Ini!’ Ayat ini boleh terbit dalam saiz font yang amat besar. Ayat ini juga boleh berkelip-kelip seperti lampu neon supaya lebih jelas. Kalau tak cukup satu tanda seru boleh guna lima atau sepuluh.
Fuck lah this is hilarious but I can't even begin to capture the humour in English, because -- need I say it again -- things just sound very funny in Malay. (Especially things to do with technology and modernity, because these words just don't exist in Malay and so we have to adopt the English words and pronounce them in Malay, which sounds terribly weird but also painfully funny when given the right context.) But let me try anyway:
5. This film could just be prefaced with some words emblazoned across the screen, for example "Warning from the Government of Malaysia: The Communist Ideology Is Against The Law And You Are Forbidden To Adopt This Dangerous Ideology!" This sentence could be shown in a very large font size. This sentence could also flash like a neon light so that it will be clearer. If one exclamation mark is not enough, you can use 5 or 10.
I watched my last two films of the SIFF today, and it was a wonderful SIFF this year. I attribute this mainly to the fact that I have gotten better at picking which films to watch, from the past 4 years of hits and many, many misses.
I want to write about my favourites, because they made me so happy, and because I think you should watch them if you ever get the chance. I really hope some of these make it to wide release and/or DVD.
Grbavica
14-year old brat of a daughter wants to go on a school trip, and her mother takes on a third job to save up money for it. Thing is, the daughter could go for free if she just brought a certificate to school showing that her father was a shaheed, a soldier who died defending Bosnia in the war. For some reason the mother doesn't have this cert and comes up with many excuses about why she can't get a copy of it. The daughter begins to suspect that her mother's been lying to her about her father's identity all this while. The secret's finally unravelled in an explosion of a climax that shows how war can still tear people's lives to pieces 14 years after it's ended.
I liked how this movie was political without mentioning politics at all. Solid acting and wonderful dialogue. From the Slate review: "Didn't I see you at a postmortem identification?" It's a pickup line no one should ever have to use. But Grbavica, like its heroine, is brave enough to try to find love among the ruins.
We Shall Overcome
I'm just a sucker for Danish films. I started out my SIFF adventure 4 years ago thinking Iranian films held the key to my soul, but now I realise I love Danish films.
This film was based on a true story. It's set in a rural Danish village in the 70s. It starts with a 10-year-old boy, Fritz, witnessing his father going into an anxiety attack and getting shipped off into a mental asylum. He returns soon enough, but by that time another problem has cropped up: Fritz gets badly abused by his school principal. His family decides to try and get him fired, but this means a long and difficult fight against the school board, which is in the principal's hands. Consequently, his mother, who's the school nurse, gets fired and his dad falls into a relapse of depression. Amidst all of this, Fritz makes friends with a hippie school teacher who encourages his interest in history, civil rights and Martin Luther King, and decides to change his name to Martin, which then leads to many surprisingly funny moments in the film.
Well it was just a nice, enjoyable film. The children were very good actors. I liked how all the different sub-plots weaved into each other and created a satisfying whole. One might say that the director was taking it a bit far, trying to equate Fritz's fight against the principal with the American civil rights movement, but I think it was more a way of showing that Fritz was a weird, sensitive kid with interests that were unusual for a 10-year-old Danish boy.
Ten Canoes
The film's narrated by an aboriginal Australian, speaking to us today. He's telling a story about his ancestors - two brothers. In this story, the older brother is telling the younger brother a story about their ancestors, whom our narrator calls the ancients. (Still with me?) So basically we're really watching a movie about the ancients. The ancients (and the ancestors too, for that matter), all walk around naked. I thought you might like to know.
Ok so anyway the story about the ancients: a younger brother lusts after his older brother's third wife. What follows is a really funny and touching morality play about why younger brothers shouldn't lust after their older brothers' wives. This story is being told by ancestor-older-brother to ancestor-younger-brother because -- guess what -- the latter is lusting after the former's third wife.
Bah. This all sounds way too complicated. In short, it's a brilliant film. It's really funny and charming. Unlike watching a documentary, this film doesn't exoticise this aboriginal, butt-naked tribe. Each member of the tribe has his/her own unique personality and quirks. I mean, it's really like watching any other film about any random bunch of people in modern society. You don't for a moment think, oh this is so eye-opening, these people have such cute customs or anything like that. You do come away realising that these people are exactly like you -- they have the same feelings and jealousies and idiosyncracies and human flaws and sense of humour -- and I think that's more effective than any documentary or history book in making you realise just how cruel colonial rule was.
This film was screened alongside Ten Feet Tall, a short film also from Australia. It was a shite short film, but it amused me and Um.a in that after the first line was spoken by a character, she turned to me and said, "For a moment I forgot that Australians spoke English and I was wondering where the subtitles were," and I replied, "Oh my God... me too." Signs you're too fucking artsy-fartsy for your own good, anyone?
Village People Radio Show
Well I'm partial to any film that's made by articulate, funny, intelligent and yet down-to-earth directors. The documentary's about ex-Communist Malaysians now living in a village in southern Thailand. How they lived in jungles for decades, fighting the colonists and then fighting Malaysia's own independent government. Old people are the best interviewees, they say the funniest things in the most offhand manner. And this while talking about living a lifetime of guerilla warfare.
Best line: "Korek, korek, korek, bakar." (Dig, dig, dig, burn.)
This was an old man talking about how he dug into his own leg and cauterised himself when he got shot and paralysed. He healed himself, too: "I could climb mountains after that."
Oh, also --
Old man: We would use jungle herbs as medicine. Collect them and pound them with chicks.
Amir: With chicks?!
Old man: With chicks.
Having Amir Muhammad there himself to explain some of the things in the film was great. His Q&A session was almost as entertaining as the film itself. He said, "If you liked this film, please tell your friends to watch it. If you hated it, please tell your enemies to watch it."
It's being shown in theatres here from May. Go watch it!
Black Gold
Coldplay fans already know what this documentary's all about: Make Trade Fair. I wouldn't bore the rest of you.
Not the most well-made or gripping documentary I've ever watched. Not as captivating as say, The Corporation or Supersize Me. But makes a good point and sends it across effectively enough. I would have liked it if it had examined whether products with the Fairtrade logo really do give their third world producers a better life or if they're just there to make us bourgeois capitalist pigs feel a bit better about ourselves.
Well, as my public service, I urge you to visit these websites: The Official Black Gold Site and Make Trade Fair.
After the Wedding
My second Danish film of the festival. Mads Mikkelsen, who looks like Viggo Mortensen, plays Jacob, a social aid worker in India. One day a Danish businessman mysteriously offers him a load of money to help fund his ailing orphanage. But to get the money Jacob must return to Denmark. One meeting with the businessman leads to a wedding invitation, and from there a major family drama spirals.
What a satisfying film. The kind of human drama in the likes of In the Bedroom. Nothing is predictable and everything that happens, every line that is spoken, has a point. Mads Mikkelsen has a commanding screen presence. He's like the Danish Edward Norton. And I really like that the ending isn't wrapped up too nicely. I don't like super-happy, neat endings.
The Boss of It All
I LOVE THIS FILM. No synopsis will do it justice. It's a Dogme film, which is this Danish filmmaking movement which encourages directors to strip their films down to the barest essentials -- no lighting, no props, no costumes, a lot of improvisation by the actors. Lars von Trier was one of the founders of the Dogme movement and he's known for directing a lot of super-artsy, weird films that people either hate or love. Well this film I think everyone can love, because it's a satire of von Trier's own filmmaking style.
It was hilarious. The entire theatre was laughing like mad throughout the whole film. It was magic. Best film of the festival for me. I had high expectations for the film because it's said to be von Trier's best yet, and after coming out of After the Wedding I was really thinking, this film better blow me away or it'd be a depressing end to the SIFF for me and it did! It blew me away!
In short: Ravn hires Kristoffer, an out-of-work actor, to pretend to be the boss of his company. Ravn is the real boss, but ever since he started the company 10 years ago he's been pretending that someone else, "the boss of it all", has been making all the decisions - especially the unpopular ones - in the company. (The staff in the company think that the boss of it all lives in the US.) But now Ravn needs the boss of it all to come to life because he wants to sell the company, and the Icelander who's interested in buying the company will only deal with the boss of it all. But what should have been a very simple job -- all Kristoffer needs to do is sign a fake name on a contract -- becomes complicated when Kristoffer befriends the the staff and realises that they're all being exploited by the system.
The film starts out very strong but ends a bit flatly, but it doesn't really matter. I had a fantastic time.
And I am very sorry. I'm sorry, Mr Vonnegut, that I never had the chance to meet you in person, to stand and gape in awe in front of you, and not say anything, because I would have been too nervous to speak, which would have been fine because I would probably have sounded like a complete fool anyway.
But had I found my voice, I probably would have said, "Wow. Mr Vonnegut, I'm a huge fan. I've been trying my absolute best never to use the semi-colon when I write." I hope he would have smiled.
What a thoroughly decent man. I am very sad.
Harrison Bergeron
by Kurt Vonnegut
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.
Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about.
On the television screen were ballerinas.
A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.
“That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,” said Hazel.
“Huh?” said George.
“That dance – it was nice,” said Hazel.
“Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good – no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.
George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.
Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself she had to ask George what the latest sound had been.
“Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer,” said George.
“I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,” said Hazel, a little envious. “All the things they think up.”
“Um,” said George.
“Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?” said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. “If I was Diana Moon Glampers,” said Hazel, “I’d have chimes on Sunday – just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion.”
“I could think, if it was just chimes,” said George.
“Well – maybe make ‘em real loud,” said Hazel. “I think I’d make a good Handicapper General.”
“Good as anybody else,” said George.
“Who knows better’n I do what normal is?” said Hazel.
“Right,” said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that.
“Boy!” said Hazel, “that was a doozy, wasn’t it?”
It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.
“All of a sudden you look so tired,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you stretch out on the sofa, so’s you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch.” She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in canvas bag, which was padlocked around George’s neck. “Go on and rest the bag for a little while,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re not equal to me for a while.”
George weighed the bag with his hands. “I don’t mind it,” he said. “I don’t notice it any more. It’s just a part of me.
“You been so tired lately – kind of wore out,” said Hazel. “If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few.”
“Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out,” said George. “I don’t call that a bargain.”
“If you could just take a few out when you came home from work,” said Hazel. “I mean – you don’t compete with anybody around here. You just set around.”
“If I tried to get away with it,” said George, “then other people’d get away with it and pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
“I’d hate it,” said Hazel.
“There you are,” said George. “The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?”
If Hazel hadn’t been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn’t have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head.
“Reckon it’d fall all apart,” said Hazel.
“What would?” said George blankly.
“Society,” said Hazel uncertainly. “Wasn’t that what you just said?”
“Who knows?” said George.
The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn’t clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, “Ladies and gentlemen – ”
He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.
“That’s all right –” Hazel said of the announcer, “he tried. That’s the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.”
“Ladies and gentlemen” said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.
And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. “Excuse me – ” she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.
“Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,” she said in a grackle squawk, “has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under–handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.”
A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen – upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.
The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever worn heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H–G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.
Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.
And to offset his good looks, the H–G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle–tooth random.
“If you see this boy,” said the ballerina, “do not – I repeat, do not – try to reason with him.”
There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.
Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.
George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have – for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. “My God –” said George, “that must be Harrison!”
The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.
When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.
Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.
“I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!” He stamped his foot and the studio shook.
“Even as I stand here –” he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened – I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!”
Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.
Harrison’s scrap–iron handicaps crashed to the floor.
Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.
He flung away his rubber–ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.
“I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering people. “Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!”
A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.
Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all, he removed her mask.
She was blindingly beautiful.
“Now” said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!” he commanded.
The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told them, “and I’ll make you barons and dukes and earls.”
The music began. It was normal at first – cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.
The music began again and was much improved.
Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while – listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.
They shifted their weights to their toes.
Harrison placed his big hands on the girl’s tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.
And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!
Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.
They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun.
They leaped like deer on the moon.
The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling.
They kissed it.
And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.
It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.
Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.
It was then that the Bergerons’ television tube burned out.
Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George.
But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.
George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. “You been crying?” he said to Hazel.
“Yup,” she said,
“What about?” he said.
“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on television.”
“What was it?” he said.
“It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,” said Hazel.
“Forget sad things,” said George.
“I always do,” said Hazel.
“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.
“Gee – I could tell that one was a doozy,” said Hazel.
“You can say that again,” said George.
“Gee –” said Hazel, “I could tell that one was a doozy.”
Naz.ira: I bumped into S the other day. He was with J and T.
Me: How did he look?
Naz: Oh my god. He was fat. He was waddling! I was like, what the hell happened to you man? He was so freaking fat. Thank god I'm hot! But he was seriously fat.
Uproarious laughter.
Naz: And then J said, You know S right? And I was like, uh yeah ok I gotta go now bye! Wah... it was like, "Who ate the Marshmallow Man?"
Me: "Yeah, I used to know... half of him."
Naz: "Where did that other half come from? Is that his twin brother?"
Mu.na: He ate his twin brother.
Quote found on the wonderful Internet:
I found out about bands before they were cool before finding out about bands before they were cool was cool.
So it turned out that people who came to dinner were the people who went to Cambodia.
Far.ah tells us that she should be confirmed at her job soon, which means $300 extra pay each month, which would bring the total to over $2,000. Fa.rah works 4 hours a day.
Um.a: Hey, you could give me that much for 4 hours of work a day. I won't complain.
Me: That's a lot of money. You could get married and support So.o Hia.n already, he doesn't need to work anymore.
Far.ah: Yeah, and he could do the housework.
The Russian: What? With 4 hours of work a day, you could come home and do the housework yourself lah!
Me: Yeah, everyday S.oo Hi.an just go downstairs to drink kopi then come upstairs to play guitar.
SH: Yeah I won't help with the housework one. "I don't touch that. Wash the dishes? No I don't touch that."
TR: Because your fingers are bleeding from playing the guitar! And you write angry songs about your bleeding fingers.
Me: And songs about how your wife doesn't support you, always asking you to do housework when your fingers are meant only for art!
TR: And when you run out of angry songs, you can do rap.
TR: What happened to the erhu?
Fa.rah: It's just sitting at home. It can't be played anymore.
Me: What? Why not?
Far.ah: It's the humid, warm air here... it's spoilt my erhu.
Um.a: You should get it fixed then.
TR: Yeah... at an erhu repair shop.
Me: Or you could go to the Cambodian embassy. "Excuse me, can you help me repair my erhu? This is a political crisis!"
TR: Hey maybe when you walk into the embassy you'll see rows of people sitting there mending erhus. "Oh, another one? Get in line."
Um.a: I wish I would meet A now, so I can tell him that WM got married to a really really rich guy. He's super rich. He bought her a private apartment.
TR: Sure he's rich, but is he a rapist?
On the bus, we see a trailer for The Planet Earth.
Me: Oh, Joon says we should watch that. She says it's really good. But it's showing at the same time as American Idol. How?
TR, looking at me in disgust: One is transcendental... The other is just a dumb documentary about wildlife.
The other day I was at Plaza Singapura and we walked into Carrefour and lo and behold, they were having a book clearance sale. I bought three books for $3 each, and on the bus home I took out two of the books and read the 69th page of each. I made the Russian do the same.
This is the Marshall McLuhan test to see whether you'd like a book -- I mentioned this in my very first post.
We both preferred the page in Dan Rhodes' The Little White Car to Michel Faber's The Courage Consort. That reminded me of a lesson I'd learnt in lit once -- that sometimes you can learn a lot about and from a book when you take a passage out of context. The page in Rhodes' book was more light-hearted in its tone but I could feel like it was just a gloss over some darker mood brewing in the story. You could also tell that the story was more character- than plot-driven. The page in Faber's book didn't tell me much about the characters, so I suppose it's more plot-driven, which also meant that it was harder to appreciate out of context. The writing was more polished than Rhodes', but also more distant.
I think when you take a page out of context like that, you realise these things -- the author's style, the overall tone and mood -- that could help you to understand the whole story better when you've read it from front to back. I think usually I'm so engrossed in just finding out what happens next that I don't take time to figure out the mechanics of the writing and thus lose out on some meaning (whether intended by the author or perceived by myself) I could have derived from the book otherwise.
So from that night I've made a vow to read the 69th page of a book before starting on the first page, and then after finishing the book, see if my reading of it still stands at the end.
The first book I've been able to do that with is How to Be Free by Tom Hodgkinson, which I'm beginning to read tonight. It's a sort of self-help book for anarchists and socialists, all about throwing off the shackles of capitalism and consumerism to be... well, free.
Ok, I cheated and read the introduction first, so I had a little bit of context to help me. But nevertheless, here's what I've gained from Page 69:
It starts with "Yes, yes, yes! As long as there's enough for beer and fags today, then tomorrow can look after itself."
I like the fact that the book is less instructional and more "Whopee, come play with me!" But I suspect it will also be more amusing than life-changing: The rest of the page is about how the author likes aristocrats, because they look down on work and instead spend their days being idle and throwing parties and being patrons of the arts. He says we shouldn't resent the aristocrats their money, because with great wealth comes great responsibilities and thus, shackles. It's this resentment, he says, that is an obstacle to ending the class war.
Not very realistic, I think. Someone's got to do the work while the aristocrats open up the theatres, eh? Still, I'm interested to know how he thinks we can eliminate resentment among people who have to hold three jobs to feed their kids. Also I think I'll enjoy the book. Just maybe not become a freer person at the end.
We'll see if I'm right when I finish reading it!
