Dear Pynchon listserve: NP but quite Pynchon-adjacent

[Mark Kohut]

 A possibly great movie called *My Twentieth Century *
was chosen by the local Film Society I
am part of. A 1989 Hungarian movie by another of the brilliant
women making art and movies in our time. The female gaze, not the male.
Look it up. Consider watching it if you haven't or watching it again.

So, this viewing--I had seen it when released in a shallow
appreciative way--
because of immersion in Pynchon's vision and  on modernity and
and modernism since,  I saw it deeper, I think.

Major themes of this movie align with many of Pynchon's. Simplistically,
light
and electricity in themselves and as a synecdoche for the invasion of
technology
into the twentieth century. And a copy of Kropkin's* Mutual Aid* --I am
giving a local lecture on this concept and history and aliveness in our
world in the fall--plays a major role--
Kropotkin's self-organizing 'anarchism' is one of P's constant, hidden
themes and
the plot involves two twin sisters who take different paths in life, one
becoming a
bomb-carrying anarchist---but no spoilers about how or whether--so the
theme
of violence or not for social change is also major....

I think this movie, set mostly in Budapest, may have been part of the
influence 'soil', so to speak,
of* Shadow Ticket* which ends in Hungary, as we know...