Best Keanu: “You must permit me to treat with skepticism anything you have to say about her.”

Dangerous Liaisons features what may be Keanu Reeves’ first action sequence on film. It comes near the end, when he fences with John Malkovich.

That scene has a welcome payoff, as Keanu gets to deal a fatal blow to a child rapist. It’s also about the only redeeming thing about this movie.

I don’t care if Dangerous Liaisons is based on a novel or a play or has great costumes or good performances. It is repulsive and disgusting.

For the first hour or so, it is just boring. Then it takes a turn, and the turn it takes is into a vomit-inducing piece of shit. There is no way to justify this film. I’m not a film critic, so I won’t try.

But by way of explanation, let’s remind ourselves of this major plot point: Cécile, a teenager played by Uma Thurman, becomes one of two central chess pieces in some kind of weird, sadistic game conducted by Merteuil and Valmont, played by Glenn Close and Malkovich.

The game has something to do with the “seduction” of Cécile and Tourvel — the latter an adult, a “pure” woman played by Michelle Pfeiffer.

Cécile is infatuated with Danceny, played by Keanu. She’s also promised in marriage to some man Merteuil and Valmont don’t like.

One night, Valmont enters Cécile’s room. He strokes her legs and breasts, wakes her up, and aggressively manipulates her into having sex. It is rape by any other name.

In the moment, Cécile is terrified. In the following days, she is traumatized. She confides in her aunt, Merteuil, who gives her a feminist piece of advice: that she should let Valmont “instruct” her in the ways of sex so she can better seduce men.

So Cécile — a child — returns to her rapist. For the remainder of the film, she’s shown loving her sexual encounters with this repulsive, disgusting man.

Let’s not forget — the makers of this film had a choice of how to shoot these scenes, even if you want to justify the plot by saying it was in the original source material, published in the 1700s.

They had a choice about whether or not to show Uma Thurman stark naked in the midst of these liaisons. They chose to hypersexualize her — a child — more than once in the film, from portraying her as a nubile virgin to filling the screen with her breasts.

Taking her virginity is not just a metaphor here. It is the stated terms of the bet between Merteuil and Valmont. The movie does not ask the audience to critique this. It invites the audience to find excitement in it.

When this movie came out in 1988, Uma Thurman was 18 years old. That means that when these scenes were filmed, she herself was a teenager. She was a child.

Danceny also begins a sexual relationship, with Merteuil. This is only shown through implication, and at all times Keanu is fully clothed. Even when he is shown in bed with Merteuil, they are both costumed as if they’ve just come inside from a long walk on a winter’s night.

Dangerous Liaisons‘ treatment of Cécile, and abuse of Uma Thurman, is only the beginning of its problems. But I don’t want to talk about this movie anymore. I want to talk about Tibet.

[*]

About five years ago, my cat was very sick. She would die a few months later.

I found a list online of healing mantras for sick animals. One was teyata om bekanze bekanze mahabekanze bekanze radza samutgate soha. The list recommended this version, performed by Deva Premal and the Gyuto Monks of Tibet.

I remembered the Gyuto Monks from years before. In the early 2000s, I worked at an academic institute that hosted them for a series of events. For one week, they constructed an intricate mandala out of sand in the lobby of our building.

It was a precious thing to witness each day, although it wasn’t something I fully understood.

At the end of the week, after an elaborate ceremony, they swept up the sand, and — I heard, I didn’t go, as I had to stay behind and work — they placed the sand into the ocean.

When my boss returned from the ocean that day, I asked him how it went.

“Well,” he said, “it was low tide.”

The Gyuto Monks were a kind of precursor to a visit by the Dalai Lama, who came some time later. I’d mostly moved on from the institute by then, but still did a bit of work on the project. One of the attendees at that time, who I heard about but never met, was Robert Thurman, a well-known Tibetan Buddhist.

Robert Thurman is the president of Tibet House US. He is married to Nena Thurman, who is also on the Tibet House board. Nena Thurman was briefly married to Timothy Leary in the 1960s. Robert and Nena Thurman have a daughter named Uma, who also serves on the Tibet House board.

In March 2022, Tibet House US held its annual benefit concert. It was a two-hour, live-streamed event of previously recorded performance pieces.

Keanu Reeves participated in the event. He gave a rapid-fire, spoken-word rendition of “Pull My Daisy,” a Beat Generation collaborative poem by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Neal Cassady. Keanu channeled all of his nervous awkward energy into the camera, in that only-Keanu way where you’re not sure if it’s weird or brilliant. But it’s Keanu, so you love it.

Jay Ruttenberg, writing in The New Yorker, summarized it this way:

The Tibet House mainstay Patti Smith anchors a lineup that extends to inscrutable dazzlers (Laurie Anderson, the Fiery Furnaces), open-eared African-centered pop (Angélique Kidjo), and brainy roots acts (Margo Price, Jason Isbell, Punch Brothers). Meanwhile, Iggy Pop, Paul Simon, and others drop by with greetings. But no major event would feel appropriate to the current moment without an uncanny twist: enter Keanu Reeves, reading Allen Ginsberg.

Tibet House US was celebrating its 35th year. This means that when Keanu and Uma made a film — which shall remain nameless — together in 1988, it was a burgeoning organization only in its first or second year.

One might like to imagine that back then, young Keanu went up to very young Uma and said, “look, I’m sorry I can’t help you get your clothes back on, or convince them to take a different camera angle. But in 33 years, how about I help out Tibet House by recording some experimental spoken word art where I point to my genitals?”

The mantra helped my cat, I believe. I listen to teyata om bekanze bekanze mahabekanze bekanze radza samutgate soha all the time now. I have several versions of it. It’s the medicine buddha mantra, and it’s about eliminating pain. But it’s deeper than that of course, in ways, like with the sweeping of the mandala, I don’t fully understand. I just know it makes me feel safe.

(If you have a bit of cash, and you’re thinking of renting that film with young Keanu and very young Uma, I suggest donating the money to Tibet House instead. Not only is it a fine cause, but it is responsible for gifting the world with Keanu reciting the Beat poets, in that only-Keanu way.)

March 2022