Friday, December 6, 2024

A Real Pain 2024 Movie Review


 

A Real Pain
Jesse Eisenberg explores American Jewish identity eighty years after the Holocaust

A Real Pain is a comedy-drama Holocaust-themed film. A Real Pain was written, directed, and co-produced by Jesse Eisenberg. The film depicts the journey of two cousins, David and Benji Kaplan, who travel with a tour group to Poland. The cousins' late grandmother, Dory, was a survivor. The cousins' journey is an effort to honor her and better understand their heritage.

Eisenberg, 41, plays David; Kieran Culkin, 42, plays Benji. A Real Pain also features Will Sharpe as James, the tour guide, and other tour members Jennifer Grey as Marcia; Kurt Egyiawan as Eloge; and Liza Sadovy and Daniel Oreskes as Diane and Mark.

David is a happily married husband and father. He lives in an attractive brownstone and makes a good living selling ads. He suffers from anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, as does Eisenberg himself. David takes prescription medication to suppress his symptoms.

Benji is a "real pain" – as in, "a pain in the ass." He is disruptive and socially inappropriate. Benji lives in his mother's house and smokes a lot of marijuana. He has no committed relationships or steady work. He uses the F-word in every sentence.

David's pain and Benji's pain are set against the overwhelming pain of the Holocaust. The tour group members are flummoxed in their attempts to assimilate historical reality. They juxtapose their comfortable American lives with what Holocaust victims endured. They cannot craft a coherent narrative about the world or their own lives that encompasses that dichotomy.

Friday, November 15, 2024

Conclave 2024 Movie Review

 

Conclave 2024 Starring Ralph Fiennes

A New Movie on Papal Selection Stirs Controversy

Conclave is a 2024 film depicting, in almost docudrama fashion, the fictional death of a beloved pope followed by a conclave conducted by the College of Cardinals. The film concludes with the conclave's election of a new pope, selected from among several intriguing but of course imperfect candidates. Conclave was released on October 25, 2024. It is two hours long. Conclave has an all-star, international cast. Conclave is based on the 2016 novel by the British writer Robert Harris. Harris is the prodigiously talented, multiple-award-winning author of fifteen bestsellers. He often writes historical fiction, including novels set during World War II and the Roman Empire.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

Scary Movies Haunt Me: I Take Them On!


 

Standing Up to Scary Movies

I Say "Boo!" to Impotence in the Face of Evil

I'm so small my big brother can toss me over his shoulders without missing a step. He has to carry me sometimes because I'm always barefoot and broken glass lines the path to the factory where Mommy works. There are eight of us in this tiny house, plus dogs and cats, but one bathroom. I'm the youngest so I don't get my own bed yet. I sleep under a green quilt tossed over the couch.

I am so scared I can't move. I barely breathe. My big brothers like scary movies and the only TV in the house is just a few feet away. I'm trying to sleep, but they're watching an old 1950s sci-fi flick. Martians vaporize Earthlings. A cop sights a UFO in our town. It made the national news. The anchor mispronounced our town's name, a Lenni Lenape Indian word meaning "sassafras." I quietly wait to be vaporized, and am surprised when I am not.

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Lee 2023. New Kate Winslet Movie Dramatizes Lee Miller's World War II Photographic Career

Source

 

Lee 2023
A Fine Film Exposes As Much As It Hides

Lee is a new biopic about Lee Miller (1907 - 1977), an American-born fashion model turned photographer. Miller's most famous photo was snapped by LIFE photographer Dave Scherman. Miller is naked in a bathtub. As the viewer examines the photo, he comes to realize that there is a portrait of Hitler on the bathtub's edge, and filthy combat boots and an army jacket over a chair. Along with LIFE magazine's Margaret Bourke-White, Miller was one of only two credentialed women combat photographers during World War II. The photograph was taken on April 30, 1945, in Hitler's Munich apartment. Miller had begun the day photographing horrors at the newly liberated Dachau. Also earlier that same day, Hitler had committed suicide.

Multiple-award-winning actress Kate Winslet produced and stars. Winslet had been trying to get the film made for nine years. "It's hard to get a film made about a woman, and it's hard to get a film made as a woman," Winslet says. Alexander Skarsgard plays Roland Penrose, Miller's lover. Andy Samberg stars as Dave Scherman, Miller's colleague. Andrea Riseborough is Audrey Withers, Miller's editor at British Vogue. Josh O'Connor is Antony Penrose, son of Roland Penrose and Lee Miller.

Ellen Kuras, a cinematographer, directs only her second feature film with Lee. Veteran film composer Alexandre Desplat, winner of two Academy Awards, two Golden Globes, and two Grammys, composed the score. Lee's runtime is 116 minutes. It was released in the US on September 27, 2024.

Rottentomatoes gives Lee a 64% professional reviewer score and a 94% amateur reviewer score. Some reviewers dismiss Lee as a "paint-by-numbers biopic." Rex Reed is more enthusiastic. "Enough cannot be said about the film or Kate Winslet – irritating, admirable, challenging, sometimes unlikeable, always heroic – as she elevates the complex personality conflicts of Lee Miller into a cohesive, resplendent, three-dimensional whole."

I loved Lee. I was so intrigued that after the film I read about Lee Miller. What I discovered shocked and disturbed me. Now I want another movie. One that explores the richer, harsher, and ultimately more inspirational story that Lee is too afraid to address. The review, below, will provide a summary of the film. I'll close with an addendum that clues you in to the more difficult narrative I discovered that the movie refuses to touch.

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Between the Temples 2024 with Jason Schwartzman Movie Review

 


Between the Temples 2024

A New Film Comments on Jewish Identity

Between the Temples is a 2024 traumedy feature film. "Traumedy" is a genre term for a film that mixes trauma and comedy. Between the Temples stars Jason Schwartzman as Ben Gottlieb, a depressed, middle-aged cantor living in upstate New York. He has retreated to the basement of a home belonging to his mother Meira and his mother's wife Judith (Caroline Aaron and Dolly de Leon). Ben's wife died over a year before the film begins. Rabbi Bruce (Robert Smigel) allows Ben to assume his cantor's chair in front of the congregation during synagogue services, even though Ben has lost his ability to sing. Carla O'Connor (Carol Kane) was, decades earlier, Ben's grade school music teacher. She is now his septuagenarian bat mitzvah student.

Between the Temples was directed and co-written by Nathan Silver. Silver has made low-budget independent films that play at film festivals rather than obtaining wide release. He has often featured friends and relatives in his casts. Between the Temples is an hour and fifty-one minutes long. It was released in the US on August 22, 2024.

Temples has a distinctive look. The film stock is color and it is grainy. Silver shot on 16 mm of "rare Kodak film stock … we pushed at two stops" to make the film "less contrasty and it kind of gave it this look of these Soviet films that we used as our our guide." Silver says he wanted the film to have an "analog" look, to mirror Carla, an older character who was in her prime back in the 1970s. The movie poster's New Spirit Condensed font is also a throwback to the 1970s, and the soundtrack includes Hebrew language songs by Boaz Sharabi, who was popular in Israel in the 1970s.

The camera is handheld and shots are often jerky. Shots focus tightly on human faces. In one scene all the viewer sees is a person's nostrils, lips, and teeth, as the character eats. In a low-budget film, such tight close-ups eliminate the need for set design.

Professional critics lavish the film with praise. Audiences not so much. Rottentomatoes awards Between the Temples a proud 86% score from professional reviewers. Amateur reviews at the site, though, average out to a failing 40% score.

Monday, September 30, 2024

Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans. Review.

 


Hitler's People: The Faces of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans
Even if you've read many books on the topic, you'll want to read this one

I'm sitting on the couch, next to my brother Greg. I'm about five years old. The TV is our magical portal to old movies. The elegant dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The wit and romance of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. John Wayne's righteous action hero. But not today. I am witnessing horrors that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Naked, skeletal bodies stacked like firewood. Even worse, some still live, in a nether world that strips them of any concept of human dignity. They stare at the camera and at me and Greg sitting there on the couch in suburban New Jersey.

My mother is furious. "This is what they did to us!"

Friday, September 20, 2024

"Am I Racist?" Yes, Matt Walsh, You Are.

 


Am I Racist?

New Daily Wire Film Wants to be the next What Is a Woman?



Am I Racist? is a one-hour-and-forty-minute documentary from The Daily Wire. It was released in the U.S. on September 13, 2024. It stars Matt Walsh. Walsh had previously starred in the Daily Wire's 2022 documentary, What Is a Woman? That film interrogated trans extremism. Woman enjoys a high 78% score from professional reviewers at the Rottentomatoes site, and an even higher 86% score from amateur reviewers. For this reviewer, What Is a Woman? is a must-watch film that makes important points in sometimes funny ways. Am I Racist? is merely so-so. A key difference between the two superficially similar documentaries lessens the impact of the newer work. More on that, below.

Thursday, August 8, 2024

Kevin Costner's "Horizon" and "Fly Me to the Moon" with Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. Reviews.

 


Horizon and Fly Me to the Moon
Two films worth seeing in a theater

I want you to go to the movies. Specifically, I want you to see Horizon: An American Saga Chapter One and Fly Me to the Moon, even though both films received some bad reviews.

First, let me explain why I want you to go the movies at all. I'm a teacher, and I'm noticing among young people increasing difficulty in the ability to behave appropriately with other human beings. Families are smaller. Kids are growing up in Brutalist condo developments with no personality, no sidewalks, no churches, no downtown, no community centers. They spend their time alone staring at devices. Many young people today are effectively crippled. They don't make eye contact. They don't say, "Excuse me."

Thursday, July 18, 2024

All Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Church by Christopher J. Kellerman, SJ. Book Review


 

All Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Church
Sometimes the best defense of Western Civilization is a thorough confession

When I was a kid, Western Civilization seemed as eternal as the ancient granite hills threading through my hometown. Christian churches were packed on Sunday. Even forms as minor and ephemeral as jokes and song lyrics assumed, in the hearer, proficiency in a cultural heritage from Ancient Greece to Shakespeare to NASA. You couldn't understand Cole Porter or Johnny Carson without having been baptized into this heritage. The day began with the Pledge of Allegiance and no one sat that out or even made rude comments or eye-rolls. Classroom walls featured silhouette profiles of Washington and Lincoln.

That everything had changed hit me hardest when I was teaching. I might casually allude to a line I assumed everyone knew, like, "In the beginning … the earth was without form, and void … and God said, Let there be light: and there was light." Or, I might use a phrase like "ex nihilo," or "fiat lux." And I would be met with complete incomprehension. The Vietnam War. Nothing. The Greek Miracle. Blank stares. Normandy Beach. Huh?

Friday, July 5, 2024

Green Border 2023 Agnieszka Holland's New Film

 


Green Border
A new film about Europe's migrant crisis is making headlines

 

Green Border, in Polish, Zielona Granica, is a 2023 feature film. The film depicts the Belarus – European Union Border Crisis that began in 2021 and continues today. Polish film industry veteran, 75-year-old Agnieszka Holland, directed Green Border, co-produced it, and co-wrote the script. Polish government officials condemned the film. Holland has received death threats and she requires security. Green Border champions activists who provide food, medicine, foot massages, and legal advice to migrants. This reviewer believes that Green Border is well-made and well-meaning but incorrect.

Thursday, June 27, 2024

A Man Is Ugly. A Woman Is Fat. Are We Still Allowed to State These Facts?

 


A Man Is Ugly. A Woman Is Fat.
Are we still allowed to state these facts?

Anouk Aimee, the exquisite star of the classic 1966 French film A Man and a Woman, passed away on June 18, 2024. She was 92. Willie Mays, the "Say Hey Kid," who hit 52 home runs in the 1965 season, also passed away on June 18, 2024. He was 93.

I joked to a friend, "Death comes in threes. Now another long-lived celebrity from the 60s must die."

Thursday, June 20, 2024

Treasure 2024 Lena Dunham Stephen Fry

 


Treasure 2024
 Lena Dunam's Auschwitz tour does more harm than good.

 

Treasure is a tragicomedy starring Lena Dunham, the 38-year-old behind the HBO phenom, Girls (2012 – 2017). Her co-star is Stephen Fry, a 66-year-old English comedian. Treasure opened in the U.S. on June 14, 2024.

 

Treasure takes place in February, 1991. Ruth Rothwax travels with her father, Edek, to Auschwitz, where he and his wife had been prisoners. Their chauffeur is Stefan (Zbigniew Zamachowski), a cabbie. The film ends with Ruth and Edek hugging, crying, and apologizing for past failures to express love. Finally, Ruth and Edek unearth actual, buried treasure.

Thursday, May 30, 2024

Jane Austen, Bridgerton, and Facebook Censorship. The people, the fear, and the websites, that shut us up


 

Jane Austen, Bridgerton, and Facebook Censorship
The people, the fear, and the websites, that shut us up

 

The other night, without trying, I managed to say something so forbidden, so taboo, so radioactive, that Facebook felt it necessary to, without so much as a warning, instantaneously and permanently erase a discussion thread of dozens of posts. I didn't swear or threaten or even type in all caps. Women from all over the world were saying thought-provoking things about Jane Austen novels, and the new Netflix series, Bridgerton. I was in the middle of responding to a complete stranger telling me that my post had made her day. Facebook waved its magic censorship wand and the entire thread went POOF.

 

Does this matter? Yes, because people getting together and having frank and civil conversations about culture is one of the activities that keeps civilization going. And it matters because it was women making sure that other women didn't say anything that they didn't want "uppity" women to say. Harrison Butker didn't shut down this exchange. Women did.

Thursday, May 23, 2024

A Professor Remembers. Thoughts on the College Enrollment Crash





 A Professor Remembers

 Thoughts on the college enrollment crash

 

The campus sprawls over hundreds of acres and includes a quaint waterfall, a hike into bear territory, and Manhattan skyline views. When she is going for a walk, university lawns, bridges, and ponds intrude into her route. 

 

After Professor Josephine K. lost her teaching job, she would avert her eyes when skirting the campus' ragged border. She feared memories burning like a thorn in her heart. Instead something else happened. Rather than a pang, new awarenesses rose to the surface like the ugly head of long-suppressed boil.

 

A year after she lost her job, she stopped averting her eyes. Her eyes raked the parking lots mercilessly.

Thursday, May 9, 2024

George Takei, Candace Owens, and the Keffiyeh

 


George Takei, Candace Owens, and the Keffiyeh
Social media reveals the power of the West's new religion

The West has retreated from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Atheists and Marxists demonize that tradition. Their new worldview is not an absence of religion; humans cannot live without religion. All humans believe in dogma; practice rituals; quote scripture; embrace a tribe; elevate teachers, healers, and saviors; model themselves after saints; interpret patterns from apparent chaos; and insist on a larger meaning.

A new religion practiced by many in the West is distinguished by several features. Genesis and Talmudic commentary insist that we are all equally made in the image of God; and we all equally descend, literally or spiritually, from the first couple, Adam and Eve. That is, the Judeo-Christian God did not create better or worse versions of humanity. In Christianity, all humans are flawed because all humans have free will and use that free will to choose away from God. Thus, we are all responsible for the problem of evil. All humans are in need of the salvation offered by Jesus. All humans benefit from humble self-reflection, confession, and repentance. Through God's grace, we are all capable of manifesting God's love in a broken world, no matter how low we have fallen.

In the West's new religion, equality is rejected. Some are good and some are bad based on their ethnicity, sex, or skin color. Guilt, shame, and the problem of evil are assigned to the West. Beneficence is found as far from the West as possible. Non-whites are better than whites. Jews are better than Christians and Muslims are better than both. Human value is relative and depends on context. A black Christian is of greater value than a white Christian and of less value than a white Muslim. Islam is prioritized because it is recognized as a greater threat to the West.

Those influenced by this new faith view moral questions through the lens of relativism. Relativism is applied selectively. Relativism is used, for example through whataboutism, to excuse atrocities committed by Muslims. "Sure, the Muslim Conquest of India is estimated to have resulted in the deaths of eighty million people, but what about the Europeans killing Native Americans?" Leftist relativism, which appears to be a flexible system that encourages open-minded tolerance of human failing, is in fact rigidly intolerant. Leftist Atheists never use relativism to relativize the West's failings. Followers of the Church of the Anti-West never say, "Sure, the arrival of Europeans in the Americas resulted in the deaths of Native Americans, but what about the Muslim Conquest of India that is estimated to have killed eighty million people?"

Atrocities committed by non-whites are often attributed to whites. The Rwandan genocide is all the fault of the white man. "The Rwandan Genocide must first be seen as the product of Belgian colonialism," insists the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. In contrast, the same institution's page devoted to the Armenian Genocide never mentions the word "Muslim" and mentions "Islam" only once – as a great monotheistic religion, but not as a factor in the genocide of Christian Armenians, as well as Christian Greeks and Assyrians, by Turkish Muslims.

The Hindu caste system, one of the worst human rights abuses in history, is rooted in the myth of Purusha in the Rig Veda, composed over three thousand years ago. Anti-Western voices, though, blame the Hindu caste system on British colonialism. Again, the reverse process never takes place. No one points out that, for example, whites in North America committed atrocities against Native Americans after the whites' loved ones were kidnapped, killed, or tortured by Native Americans. Similarly, if you mention antisemitism, you must pair it with "Islamophobia." You can, though, mention Islamophobia without mentioning antisemitism.

The Church of the Anti-West renders judgment taboo. One must not judge – non-Westerners. Cannibalism, clitoridectomy, tribal warfare, child marriage, honor killing, and, perhaps most ironic of all, unquestioning adherence to irrational dogma, are all excused with "don't judge," and, of course, with relativism. I've been told numerous times that clitoridectomy is comparable to the Catholic confirmation ceremony.

The Judeo-Christian tradition addresses the problem of evil with the process of confession, repentance, and reintegration. The Old Testament king David sinned grievously, murdering Uriah to gain sexual access to Uriah's wife, Bathsheba. God sent the prophet Nathan to confront David. David confessed, was punished, repented, and was reintegrated. The new religion rejects confession, repentance, and reintegration for whites and for the West. Muslim terrorists can be received back into society. White men must always remain outside the circle of community.

I had three encounters recently on social media that demonstrated these features of the West's new religion. I title these encounters "The Keffiyeh and the Rainbow," "George Takei and Japanese Internment," and "Candace Owens and Catholicism."

Thursday, May 2, 2024

Fleabag BBC and Amazon. Review

 

Fleabag

 

Is the BBC series the feminist masterpiece critics claim it to be?

 

Back when I was a grad student I thought someday I'd have a tenure-track job and I'd be teaching popular culture courses so I need to keep up. I was so dedicated to this mythical tenure-track job that I sat through films that bored me silly. I'm talking to you, Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter. I never got that tenure-track job and, furthermore, popular culture splintered like a dropped mirror. When I was a kid, families watched movies together. Suddenly pop culture was a prison; each inmate occupied his own cell sealed off from society. Two people could live in the same home and dance to different music, laugh at different jokes, fear different monsters, and never have any idea what the other person is feeling.

 

The splintering of pop culture coincided with the West's increasing rejection of traditional beliefs like Judeo-Christian morality. A newly Paganizing, newly splintered pop culture knew it could break all the rules. I remember the first time I heard the F-word in a broadcast, and the first time I saw the F-word in print. Do I say all these bad words? Sure. Do I want them in my cultural products? Not unless they are needed. Somehow Sophocles, Shakespeare, O'Neill and the Marx Brothers never needed any of them . Movies like Saw include scenes that I do not want inside my head, or anybody's head for that matter. Splintered media now includes niche markets for the death-to-America demographic, the school-shooter-wannabe demographic, the torture-porn demographic.  

 

I would insist to my students that studying film, fairy tales, and internet memes is every bit as important as studying physics. The movie someone watches, and the internet memes someone shares, are a "royal road to the unconscious." Have you ever lost a friend because of the meme she shares? I have. I liked Gert a lot. Then I saw her social media memes. So sexually graphic they could illustrate an anatomy lecture, but always sadistic and always disseminating some deadly conspiracy theory. I learned more about Gert from her memes than from eating lunch with her. Goodbye, Gert.

 

Do cultural products create reality or do they reflect reality? Does a TV show become popular because it is telling audiences who they are, or do media puppet masters jerk the audience's strings and manipulate behavior? It's a feedback loop.  

 

A few years ago I began to hear of something called Fleabag; Fleabag is a groundbreaking feminist masterpiece, cultural arbiters wanted me to know. Fleabag was telling women who they are, who they should want to be, and who they should become. The sources telling me this are sources that are hostile to women like me, and they are sources that promote art that I find worthless. So I avoided Fleabag during its run, 2016-2019.

 

The other day, 47-year-old Irish actor Andrew Scott appeared on the NPR talk show Fresh Air. He mentioned that he'd played a character named "Hot Priest" on Fleabag. And I thought, okay, I have to watch this show. I'll never get that tenure-track job, but I'm still interested in how popular culture depicts Catholicism.

Thursday, April 25, 2024

Irena's Vow 2023 Film Review

 


Irena's Vow

A new film dramatizes the life of an almost unbelievable heroine

Irena's Vow is a 2023 film dramatizing the World War II heroism of a young Polish nursing student, Irena Gut. Irena's Vow is a two-hour, color film. It was shot in Poland. The film is in English. It received a limited US release in April, 2024. Irena's Vow has an 86% professional reviewer rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 93% fan reviewer rating. Veteran reviewer Rex Reed calls Irena's Vow "One of the most astounding holocaust stories." He says, "It’s true, if fantastic." The film is "anchored by the powerful, heartfelt performance of Sophie Nelisse as an innocent girl whose integrity and resolve turns her into a woman of maturity and strength." Roman Haller, a Holocaust survivor, says, "It is a very great film. I expected a good film, but it is even more than I expected. … I saw my mother. I saw my father. I saw Irena … She was like a mother to me … I want to tell you there were people like that."

Dr. Glenn R. Schiraldi wrote the 2007 book, World War II Survivors: Lessons in Resilience. He devoted a chapter to Irena Gut Opdyke. She was, he writes, "a diminutive, elegant woman with warm, radiant blue eyes and delicate features. She is one of the kindest, most loving women I have encountered. She reminds one of Mother Teresa. As she spoke, I often found myself choking back tears."

Dan Gordon is a veteran screenwriter and also a former captain in the Israeli Defense Forces. Gordon says, "About 25 years ago, I was driving to my home in Los Angeles and listening to the radio. I heard a woman, Irene Gut Opdyke, telling her story. When I got home, I sat in the car in the driveway for another hour and a half, because I couldn’t stop listening." He worked for years to get the film made.

Director Louise Archambault is a French Canadian. When she first viewed the script, she says, her reaction was "Wow. What an amazing woman. If that script had been fiction, I would have refused it" because no one would believe it. But, "I fell in love with that character." Irena's story is "relevant. We want to tell that story today in 2024." Even though many films have been made about WW II, we haven't seen, Archambault says, WW II from the eyes of a young Polish Catholic girl forced by Nazis to work for them. Approximately 1.5 million Poles were forced to work for Nazi Germany, often under slave labor conditions and at the cost of their health and their lives.

Because Archambault had a relatively meager budget of five million dollars and only twenty-nine days for shooting, she developed an intimate, rather than epic style. Irena's Vow isn't Saving Private Ryan; the deaths we see are of individuals; they are murdered in a sickeningly intimate way. Yes, there is horror in the story, but there is also genuine "love, hope, and light." Archambault benefited from filming Polish actors, with a Polish crew, in Poland. They all know the history, she said; their grandparents lived it. They brought their personal experiences to the film. Also, "I put my energy on character, on human behavior."

Events in Poland contributed to the set's atmosphere. Refugees from Ukraine were arriving with their belongings in their hands and on their backs. "Every day we were reminded that war was going on next door." There was a "big van" with "big guys" on the set necessary for insurance purposes. "If shooting starts here" – shooting with bullets not with cameras – "we need to get everyone out of here."

Given how good this movie is, and how remarkable Irena's story is, one has to wonder why the film has received so little publicity and such a limited release. I have my suspicions as to what cultural trends may have sidelined Irena's Vow. More on that, below.

Thursday, April 18, 2024

On Seeing Gone with the Wind in a theater for the fifth time

 


On Watching Gone with the Wind in a Theater for the Fifth Time

 

Gone with the Wind is universal art misunderstood by elite book burners

 

On April 7, I attended an eighty-fifth anniversary theatrical showing of Gone with the Wind. In recent weeks, I've been through an earthquake, seen a solar eclipse, and spent hours in church for Easter. Even so, watching GWTW for the fifth time in a theater was a religious experience.

 

Manohla Dargis, the New York Times chief film critic, interrupts her April 12 review of a new movie to restate her righteous indignation against an unrelated film. Gone with the Wind, she insists, is a "monument to white supremacy and the myth of the Southern Lost Cause."

 

Yes, both the book and the film are racist. No, GWTW's racism is not the works' alpha and omega. And, no, GWTW is not the only flawed work of art. Have you heard any rap lyrics lately? Rather, GWTW addresses universal themes. Audiences from diverse ethnicities and social classes recognize these themes and even just the film's soundtrack reduces listeners to tears. GWTW brings the power of myth to a universal experience: growing up, leaving childhood innocence, and entering a world that isn't invested in your survival, and that can engineer relentless freight trains full of misery and steer them right at you. It's about who survives the collision, how, and why, and at what cost. "Hardships make or break people," as Rhett Butler says.

Wednesday, April 3, 2024

"One Way Back" by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. Book Review

 


"One Way Back" is a good book. It's not just a "celebrity memoir." Even if author Dr. Christine Blasey Ford were not famous, this book would be worth reading. It's well-written and like any good book it causes the reader to feel, to think, and to understand the human race a bit better. "One Way Back" is also brief and an easy read. The sentences are short and the vocabulary is basic.
 
"One Way Back" is no less beautiful for its ease of reading. Ford uses surfing as her overarching metaphor. Surfing is dangerous but it is also, for the surfer, like life itself. Yes, it entails risk, but in undertaking that risk the surfer enhances the experience of being alive. The book's title, "One Way Back," is a reference to surfing. The surfer paddles out into the ocean, and must ride the wave the ocean presents. There's only one way back to shore – riding the wave that life hands you.

 

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was not famous before summer, 2018. US President Donald Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the SCOTUS. Ford contacted her elected officials to report that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her at an informal high school gathering when she was 15 and he was 17. Ford passed a lie detector test administered by a former FBI agent. Ford was asked to testify before the Senate, and she did. In initial reactions, even FOX news, and, indeed, even Donald Trump himself assessed Ford as credible.

 

Later, the White House devised a strategy whereby Brett Kavanaugh would perform an opera similar to the one presented by the similarly accused Clarence Thomas. Thomas claimed he was a victim of a "high tech lynching." Kavanaugh said, "This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election … revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups." What Kavanaugh said here was not true. Kavanaugh spoke other untruths, see, for example, his untrue comments about "boof," about "Devil's Triangle," and about how much he drank and what parties he attended. He spoke these untruths while under oath.

 

Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and her family have been subjected to murderous harassment ever since. She has had to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars in security fees. For the past six years, people have been actively threatening to kill her and her children. Even animals are subjected to this rage. Dead animals have been thrown onto her property. Brett Kavanaugh has a lifetime ride on the SCOTUS, a position as close to royalty as America awards.

 

"One Way Back" is a quiet book. Dr. Ford records these events, but quietly. She never adopts the histrionic, fever pitch screech of Kavanaugh in his testimony, revealing temperament so totally unworthy of a judge that Saturday Night Live parodied it in one of their most popular routines.

 

Rather we get an account of a woman who apparently never wanted the spotlight, but who marched – or surfed – into it when she thought doing so was her civic duty.

 

I liked this book, but I didn't feel that I could ever get close to Dr. Ford. She is very unlike me. Her father was a self-made man. He was successful enough that he managed to send his three children to exclusive prep schools and to see them go on to advanced degrees and successful careers.

 

Young Christine didn't have to work. She went to an exclusive prep school and spent her extracurricular hours swimming and diving. It seems that her dad bankrolled her advanced education that included time spent in Hawaii. With that foundation, Dr. Ford became a successful professor and employee at two California universities. She is happily married and her sons followed her into the water and she spent her summers standing by as they received training at the beach.

 

Dr. Ford is frank about how she differs from others. She is a very sensitive person and she sometimes feels shy and out of place with others' values. Reading about her decision to come forward, I felt as if I were reading about Dr. Ford being put through a food processor. So many different people gave her so much different advice. Testify, don't testify, protect yourself above all, do your civic duty above all, align yourself with this or that person … it must have been hell for her. Through it all, she was true to her own sense of civic duty. And for that unhinged, hateful misogynists defame her and encourage really bad people to continue to threaten her life and the life of her children.

 

Ford's misogynist enemies lie about her. Many of those lies have found their way into influential publications. "One Way Back" corrects those lies. Read the book.

 

Finally – Thank you Dr. Ford.

 

 


Friday, March 29, 2024

One Life and Nicky's Family: Two Films Dramatize WW II Rescue of Refugees from Prague

 


One Life and Nicky's Family
Two films depict the rescue of over six hundred children from Nazis

 

The 2023 biopic One Life concludes with a very moving scene. An elderly man is surprised by a televised celebration of heroic deeds he performed when he was young. I could not resist the scene's power. I cried. I made sniffling sounds. I didn't even try to apply the emotional brakes.

 

If only the rest of the movie were as good as that final scene.

 

One Life dramatizes the life of Sir Nicholas George Winton MBE. When he was 29 years old, Winton participated in an effort to save Jewish children from oncoming Nazis. His heroism warrants an uplifting, inspirational, unforgettable film. I was worried when I saw that One Life would be released in the US on March 15. Early March is part of the "dump months" when movies that haven't tested well are released.

 

One Life is not a bad movie. It's just not good enough. I'd give it a six out of ten, but, given that the subject matter is so important and so appealing, I will nudge that up to a seven. Nicky Winton deserves an eleven out of ten.

 

As I left the theater, I asked, "Who was Nicholas Winton? Why did he perform these heroic acts? How did he perform them?" One Life didn't answer those questions for me. I spent hours reading about Winton. I stumbled across a movie I'd never heard of before. Nicky's Family is a 2011, English language, Czech and Slovak documentary. It is currently streaming for free. Nicky's Family moved me deeply, answered my questions, and worked for me.

Thursday, March 21, 2024

The War on Children by Robby and Landon Starbuck: Movie Review

 


The War on Children by Robby and Landon Starbuck
A new documentary takes on too much and offers simplistic solutions

 

The War on Children is a documentary addressing various social trends that damage children. The War on Children premiered on Twitter in February, 2024. War is two hours, twenty minutes long. The War on Children cites the following trends that damage children: child trafficking, trans extremism, online pornography, Marxist domination of public education, greedy corporations, and water pollution. The documentary recommends the following solutions: parents spending more time with their children in outdoor activities, limiting children's internet access, attendance at Christian churches, men reclaiming their masculinity, and voting Republican.

 

War was produced and directed by 36-year-old Robby Starbuck, aka Robert Starbuck Newsome. In 2022, Starbuck ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for a Tennessee congressional seat. Before that, he was, according to his Vimeo bio, a video and film director. Interestingly, that bio states his preferred pronouns as "he/him." The bio says he has worked with the celebrities "Akon, Smashing Pumpkins, Sarah Bareilles, Metric, Megadeth, Snoop Dogg, Machine Gun Kelly & Yellowcard." Starbuck identifies as Cuban-American.

 

War also features Starbuck's wife, Landon Starbuck, and their three children. On her website, Landon Starbuck says, "I'm passionate about faith, family, freedom, truth and justice … I speak, write, make music and advocate to protect all children. I left the music industry as a Billboard charting artist to focus on fighting child trafficking … I started my own non-profit combatting child abuse, exploitation and trafficking in 2021 … All glory goes to God. I love Jesus [and] my family." 

 

I follow movie news but I had heard nothing about The War on Children. I also follow Andrew Gutmann. In 2021, Gutmann received national attention when he published a protest against Woke education at Brearley, a private K-12 school for girls in Manhattan that charges $61,500 in annual tuition. Gutmann's letter is here; a 2024 update is here. Gutmann recommended The War on Children, and Gutmann's recommendation made War a must-see film for me.

 

I watched The War on Children on Twitter, straight through, twice. Though I share many of the filmmaker's concerns, the film did not work for me. Both times, after watching it, I felt agitated, depressed, and powerless. War shares much in common with Matt Walsh's 2022 documentary, What Is a Woman? I review What Is a Woman? here. What Is a Woman? worked for me in ways that The War on Children did not.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Cabrini 2024 Movie Review. Cabrini the film is as beautiful, and as provocative, as Cabrini the woman

 


Cabrini 2024
Cabrini the film is as beautiful, and as provocative, as Cabrini the woman

On Friday, March 8 – "International Women's Day" – I stepped out into sunshine and felt as if I'd just taken a spiritual shower. My soul tingled as cleansing droplets pelted through. I was refreshed and renewed. I was walking on air. I was ready to cope with the challenges that my life in Paterson presents to me, from the garbage in the streets to the noisy car stereos blasting rap. I resolved to be a better person. And, yes, I felt all of those things because I had just seen Cabrini.

Cabrini is a 2024 biopic of the Italian American nun, Sister Frances Xavier Cabrini (1850-1917). In 1946, Cabrini became the first US citizen to be canonized. Cabrini accomplished this in spite of having been dealt an inauspicious hand in life. Her parents were Italian farmers. She was one of the youngest of many brothers and sisters – sources list between ten and thirteen siblings. Only four of her siblings survived beyond adolescence. Worldwide, youngest daughters of large, agricultural families have low status and relatively low survival rates. On top of that, Cabrini was born two months premature. She was afflicted with smallpox, malaria, and tuberculosis, which compromised her lungs for life.

When she was a child, Cabrini made paper boats, outfitted them with violet flowers, and launched them on the water. These were her early, imaginary "missions." She yearned to preach Christ in China. Because of her physical frailty, three orders of nuns refused to accept her. She founded her own order.

A cardinal dismissed her ambitions, reminding her that there had never been an independent order of missionary women.

Cabrini replied, "If the mission of announcing the lord’s Resurrection to his apostles had been entrusted to Mary Magdalene, it would seem a very good thing to confide to other women an evangelizing mission."

Friday, March 8, 2024

The Boys in the Boat, The Peasants, and The Zone of Interest: Three Excellent New Films

 

The Boys in the Boat, The Peasants, and The Zone of Interest:
Three great films best seen in a theater

 

Friend, I beg of you. Go to a theater and see three great movies sometime soon: The Boys in the Boat, The Peasants, and The Zone of Interest.  

 

Leopold Staff, a Polish poet who survived the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, said that "Even more than bread we now need poetry, in a time when it seems that it is not needed at all." Movies are democratic. They are accessible and they are communal. It's fashionable to declare one's superiority by sneering at popular culture. It's harder to sneer when you remember that Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a fearless counter-jihadi, was inspired by Nancy Drew novels, and that Top Gun and Saving Private Ryan drove military recruitment. Politics is downstream from culture. The culture we support with our ticket-buying dollars is as important as the candidates we support with our votes.

 

We get something from publicly watching a movie together with our fellow citizens. The Major and the Minor is a 1942 screwball comedy. I'd watched it a couple of times at home, alone, on a small TV screen before seeing it for the first time in a jam-packed, Greenwich Village art house theater. In that crowd of rollicking laughter, I suddenly realized what a very naughty movie The Major and the Minor is. Its double entendres had flown right over my head. While watching Gone with the Wind, a loud and spontaneous sigh erupted when the camera zoomed in on Rhett Butler's handsome face (see here). Gathering in the ladies room after a movie like that is a genre of psychotherapy. While washing your hands you ask complete strangers, "Do you think Scarlett and Rhett ever got back together?" You comfort and enlighten each other and the world is warmer, more connected, less lonely and tense. Mel Gibson's The Passion depicts Christ's torture, crucifixion, and death in grisly detail. Three Muslim guys took seats directly behind me. They were joking sarcastically. Clearly, they were in the theater to mock. After the film ended, I turned around to check on them. One was doubled over, distraught. His companions were rubbing his back and speaking softly to him.

 

The loss of public movie-going erodes not just community, but also art. Ali's well is a famous, eight-minute scene in Lawrence of Arabia. Most of what we see is a completely flat, lifeless, tan desert landscape against a blue sky unbroken by any cloud. Two men draw water from a desert well. A tiny dot appears on the horizon. Slowly we realize that that dot is a man approaching on a camel. He shoots one of the men to death. As we wait, and wait, and wait for the approaching man  to arrive, we experience a fraction of the desert: the emptiness, the boredom, the terror, the sudden and irrational violence, the value system so very different from our own. That scene could never move us in the same way on a small screen. And, when we are watching alone on a small screen, we can fast forward through the parts we don't like, like, say, the grim depictions of the Holocaust in Schindler's List.

 

My students, trained on media that rushes and delivers jolts of violence and sex aimed at the lizard brain's reward-squirting mechanisms, lack the ability to sit through a scene like Ali's well. They also have trouble sitting through a complex lecture on current events, or a long story of personal struggle told by a friend. Movies, like all art, have the potential to train us to be our best selves.

 

The Boys in the Boat, The Peasants, and The Zone of Interest are three very different films, but they are all innovative, in different ways. Peasants is so innovative another movie like it may never be made again. Zone rewrote how the Holocaust will be treated in film, and how it will be understood. Boys is rebellious, counter-cultural filmmaking in ways I'll detail below. All three films have much to say about our current politico-cultural landscape. Each addresses community. Each, given their visual and auditory artistry and impact, should be seen in a theater.