A different and very dark take on World War II - The Notebook

The Hungarian 2014 film The Notebook, not to be confused with the American rom-dram of same name, is another look at World War II from the point of view of average citizens in the Eastern European countries - terrified by Nazi occupation but quite willing to collaborate is necessary, using the opportunity to vent their anti-Semitism and turn against their Jewish neighbors in order be on the side of the (then) powerful, happy to welcome the liberating armies as if they played no role in the occupation and oppression and then, to their dismay, the Soviet army turns out to be as oppressive as the Nazis (or, to the Catholics, worse) - this is ground similar to that of the AA winner Ida, and it makes me think that these have been taboo topics for many years and at last we're getting a look at a different, and very dark, face of the war and of the Holocaust. Similarity of topic aside, this film is very different from Ida in its specific material and treatment: involves twin brother, 11 years old, hustled away from their home city (somewhere in Hungary) by mother who takes them to live with her mother in the remote countryside - never entirely made clear why this is necessary, but presumably they feared either some sort of action by the occupying Nazis or by the Allied troops who were charging through Europe - in any event, the grandmother is a horrendous person who badly mistreats the boys, and over the course of their year with her they become hardened in every sort of way, as they see one type of atrocity after another and endure all sorts of hardships and privations. In surprising and not necessarily (to me) credible twist at the end, they refuse to go w/ their mother who comes to claim them as the war ends - they have become independent and mistrustful through their experiences - nor do they welcome their father, who arrives after fleeing across the country still in Army uniform: not exactly clear what he's afraid of - were the Allies killing all Axis soldiers? Was he at risk as a deserter? - a lot of the plot points are very murky, including the final scene in which one but not both brothers crosses a border to what appears to be safety. That said, many of the scenes in the village are painful and powerful, and we really feel for these boys as we watch them harden and grow under the force of great pressure and oppression. Just across the border, a short walk from the grandmother's run-down farm, is one of the concentration camps; in a late-movie scene we see the camp deserted except for plumes of black smoke rising from a tall chimney - one of many haunting visual moments in this strong and very dark film.

End of season 3 and my prediction for season 4 of House of Cards - Bring it on, Netflix!

OK anyone who's reading this post on the final episodes of House of Cards Season 3 has already seen them so I don't care about spoilers, reader beware: The last episode, that cross-cut between Frank desperately trying to win the Iowa caucus with and then without Claire's support, and Doug on his mission to find and kill Rachel (its clear now that he is doing this, despite his guilty feelings for her, to completely abject himself before Frank, who may be grateful but will no doubt in the end chew and spit out Doug - when he's done w/ him). The last episode obviously does not end this series, as it just looks forward to the next segment of the campaign and of their lives. The great scenes in episode 13 (or 39) are Claire coming on to Frank: Fuck me, Francis, and his inability to do so, and her contempt; his devastating attack on her for her lack of obeisance to his greater authority - he's the President, she's not - and her final withering comment about his inadequacy. What she never says, for some reason, is that it's obvious he's attracted to men and not to women - it's not about her - but she obviously cannot even articulate this, it seems to be too humiliating for her. She also may want that as a weapon to hold over Frank. So the last moment is her saying she's leaving him, as he heads off to NH for the primary. My prediction may still be right, just premature: she will be satisfied w/ nothing less than running for president herself. (Impossibly to imagine voters liking her, but still...) Note that each of the seasons has concluded w/ a dead body on Frank's hands. My next prediction: the dead body in Season 4 will be Claire - Frank will have her assassinated as they face off as potential rivals for the presidency. Doug's killing of Rachel, btw, is also very powerful, although it's hard to see where or how he got the strength, or the gumption, to take on this grisly, horrid task. He's more of a monster than we'd thought, I guess. I don't get the generally negative reviews, as I have found HofC to be well produced, written, and acted, very engaging, very campy to be sure, pretty much knowledgeable about politics as far as I can see (and within its limited budget - crowd scenes are always an issue), and not overly complicated like some series - though I have no recollection as to what was in Claire's diary that was so sensitive or valuable.

Making sense of House of Cards Season 3 - or trying to

Still bucking the critical trend and enjoying the deliciously cynical Netflix House of Cards Season 3, though finishing episode 9 have to admit having trouble retaining all of the details of the myriad plot lines. What's up with "Rachel", for example? Doug has been hounding his source at the FBI to give him info on Rachel's locale, and in this episode (spoilers) the source gives him a packet of materials showing that Rachel is a "Jane Doe" recently found murdered in the SW. This devastates Doug - he obviously has a romantic yearning for Rachel, and it's not clear if he even recollects that she's the one who beat him unconscious with a rock (as he was trying to relocate her for her safety - Season 2). So who murdered her? Is it just a coincidence, or did some minion of Underwood do so - as they want her out of the picture because of what she knows about Underwood's crimes? I'd thought Doug was trying to find her to rat her out to Underwood's minions, but perhaps not - maybe he was trying to find her to warn her and protect her, though how he could have done so is mysterious. Anyway, Doug is now off the deep end. The presidential campaign is a little confusing as well - obviously, Frank Underwood (Spacey) has changed his public position and is running for election; is Congresswoman Jacky his running mate? It sometimes seems as if she's running for prez, not veep. And nobody runs for veep anyway, so that's very confusing, at least to me. The most solid plot line by this point in the season is the U.S.-Russia conflict over the peacekeeping mission in Israel. The tension between Underwood and Russian prez "Petrov" is great, and it's interesting to see Claire U. (Robin Wright) learn the ropes of diplomacy. She does a great job humiliating the Russian UN ambassador and making her point: Don't fuck w/ me. I still think she will emerge as a presidential contender in her own right, either this season or next.

The many victims and suspects in Paradise Lost 3

Third and final part of Paradise Lost (Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory), the HBO documentary that becan in 1994 and concludes in 2011, brings the mystery of the killing of three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, to as much of a conclusion as we could expect or hope for, though still leaves many elements shrouded in mystery. (Spoilers coming) First of all, we never learn definitively who committed the murders; it seems totally clear that the three teenage boys convicted of the killing were the victims of a horrible trial, a prejudiced jury (there's a lot about that aspect in this installment), a stubborn judge unwilling to even consider his mistakes, an over-zealous police force, and a strangely designed judicial system in which all the appeals go before the initial judge. Yet it's never 100 percent clear that they're innocent, either. At the end, they take advantage of an unusual plea process in which they insist on their innocence but plead guilty and in return are released with time served - 17 years in prison, and the boys are now in their 30s. Obviously the state of Arkansas likes this agreement, as it prevent the guys from suing for damages and makes any further criminal investigation moot, as three have "pleaded guilty" to the murders - justice is served in a most perverse way. The movie directs our suspicion on the stepfathers in the families of two of the victims - both of whom have violent encounters with others and with the law; they're certainly odd and scary characters, but there's no solid evidence on them, either, nor is there a motive - nor has the awful crime been replicated in any way. There's a hint that a transient passing through the town may have committed the crime - but why? The three convicted guys claim quite rightly that they were the victims of a hysteria against satanic cults - a big topic in the '90s - and were victimized because of their hair, clothing, taste in music. The whole case began when one of the three, Jessie Misskelly, "confessed" after hours of police interrogation. It seems as if he was coerced - and it's clear that he has very little mental capacity, unlike the other two, especially Damion Eccles, who is highly intelligent and charismatic. You can imagine him leading his two weaker mates into some serious mischief, but not into a triple homicide. You can tell, when the guys are interviewed after their release, that there's no love between them and Misskelly, nor should there be. The police investigator hints on camera that there's a lot more evidence that for some reason they couldn't bring to trial - would be interesting to know what's still out there. Whatever the case may be, these guys, the West Memphis 3, were victims every bit as much as the three murdered children. Tragic and shameful.

Why the Up series is not like Boyhood

I've now caught "up" with the Up Series, having watched Michale Apted's 56 Up last night. Overall, my thoughts are similar to what I sensed watching 49 Up pretty recently: the changes among the subjects diminish as the series progresses and the 7-year intervals become a steadily narrow interval in their lives: all of the subjects at 56 were quite recognizable, and the life changes were never dramatic at this point. The subjects now for the most part have grandchildren or their children are moving into adult lives of their own. We again see that most of the subjects have prospered to a surprising degree, despite the continued lament about the decline of the British economy under the Tories. The sense that social class plays an enormous role in the destinies of the characters, crossing generations, is reinforced: only one, maybe two of the working class subjects have defied the expectations. All but one have married at least once; all of the married subjects except perhaps one, who's kind of protective of some of his privacy, have children. We know very little about the parents of any of the subjects, other than by reference and inference - we see a few in a few clips of the films over the years but, by design, they never speak on camera. Some of the striking elements in 56: the subjects increasingly talk about the series itself and how it has affected their lives. They address Apted on camera a lot more - obviously they have grown quite close over the years, in some cases. Perhaps the smartest and most reflective discussion in this segment is between Suzy - the daughter of wealth who went to "public" school but skipped college, and the engineering professor who's settled in America: she (like many of the other subjects) laments that the series reduces her entire life to a few quotations and has missed in some essential way the story of who she is; he (I forget his name, sorry), responds that it's not about him as a person or any of them as individuals, it's about each of them as "everyman/woman" and about how people evolve over time; in other words, it's not meant to be a portrait of him in the way that a biopic or even the great recent feature film w/ often compared with Up, Boyhood, is a portrait of a particular life - it's a portrait of anyone's life, in a sense of everyone's.

A new suspect - in part 2 of Paradise Lost

Anyone who watched Paradise Lost (The child murders at Robin Hood Creek) will have a pretty good idea about how becomes the center of attention and the most likely suspect in the follow-up documentary, Paradise Lost 2, so I won't be giving anything away (I don't think) by noting that this follow up focuses on whether Byers, the stepfathers of one of the murdered boys, is the killer. There's no doubt that the three young men convicted of the crime were the victims of a terrible police investigation, very shoddy defense and a highly prejudiced judicial system - essentially convicted on the shaky, probably coerced confession of the weakest among the 3, a boy with an IQ of 72. Following the initial documentary, sympathizers from around the country bean a campaign to free the 3 and in particular rallied around Damian Ecles, the obvious leader of the three boys and a somewhat charismatic, intensive, thoughtful, and oddly alluring young man sentenced to death. The filmmakers (Berlinger and Sinofsky, who keep themselves entirely off camera and mic) faced a tough challenge in this followup in that only one of the 3 sets of defense attorneys would speak w/ them, only one member of the victims' families (Byers) would speak with them, and they were denied access to the courtroom and to other locales (many must have felt burnt by the first documentary). So this documentary focuses on the team of supporter for Damian (they are obviously selfless, devoted, liberal-progressive, and much as I admire that I found their obvious fascination with Damian and their enjoyment of the attention from media to be creepy in itself), on Jesse Misskelly's noble defense lawyer and his work with a pathologist who is determined to examine the bite marks on the victims (very upsetting, close-your-eyes scenes there), and on Byers - who by all reasonable accounts is the one guy who should refuse to participate, but he's so weird and obviously disturbed and a drama queen, as M put it, of the highest order that he provides access when he definitely should not. By the end, most viewers will be 100 percent sure that he could have done the killings and at the very least should have been a police suspect (the investigating detective, retired by the time of the sequel, remains convinced he got the right killers). It's not hard to see that Byers was a victim of abuse, that he may well have abused his stepson, and that he is so emotionally unstable that he could have committed these crimes. Not sure if we'll ever have answers, but will watch part 3 sometime soon to find out.

Episode 6 of House of Cards is good to the last line - which I won't give away

I've heard that Season 3 of House of Cards has gotten generally weak reviews and I don't see why that should be so. Look, it's not the most profound series over on TV but it's a great examination of the destructive and seductive qualities of power, with a very credible Washington setting and a pretty sharp ear and eye for electoral politics and, especially in this season, for international protocol. By far the most interesting episodes, so far, are those involving the conflict with Russia - President Underwood's treaty negotiations with "Petrov" and, in particular, Claire's emerging role as a very sharp negotiator. I for one thought it was absurd that Frank had placed her as UN ambassador, but she's shown her ability to get her way in this sphere - particularly in a great scene at the end of episode 5 in which she totally humiliates the Russian UN ambassador. Episode 6 (along w/ the state dinner which was, I think, episode 3?) was one of the best of the entire series, as Claire tries to negotiate the release of a U.S. citizen imprisoned in Russia for gay activism - won't give stuff away for those who haven't seen it yet - but the writers/directors do a great job developing two stories in counterpoint: treaty negotiations alongside discussions to free the prisoner. Claire emerging as a far more formidable character than in previous episodes, where she was ice cold, vile, villainous, and a joke: I'm beginning to see where this is heading: My prediction, Frank's underhanded bid for election in his own right will fall apart along w/ his jobs plan and Claire will decide to run for President - and may have to blackmail her own husband to get his blessing, or at least acquiescence. The two other plot lines are withering a little: Doug as campaign aide to Underwood's rival is chugging along though not all that interesting; the search for the DC hooker who helped the Underwoods kill a political rival has much more potential, but it really has to get off square one as the FBI guy is spending a long time in finding out where the woman has gone into hiding. The end of episode 6 - with Frank finally losing his cool and he and Claire at last going at one another with bared fangs - is great, as is the last line of the episode - which I won't give away.

An American Tragedy: The Overnighters

Jesse Moss's fine 2014 documentary, The Overnighters, is a tremendously sad story and a movie that should shock and disturb all of us: in a very low-key way (working essentially as a crew of 1), Moss examines the way in which the natural-gas boom in North Dakota has changed the entire life and culture of the small cities on the Plains. A combination of a general recession across the country and a tremendous need for skilled and semi-skilled labor has drawn thousands of men to ND, looking for jobs in oil and gas drilling. They pay is great - but prices and rents have gone crazy, and the influx of thousands of men, many of them tough roustabouts, many of them chronically unemployed, and many plagued by various psychological troubles and demons, has put the small-town residents on edge, to say the least. Moss focuses on a Lutheran minister, Reinke, who runs a temporary housing program in his church, taking in dozens of these men and advocating on behalf of all of them, trying to get his community to love and accept these new neighbors, and trying to get the men to reach out to the community, to be good citizens, to play by the rules (go to church, don't spill coffee on the carpet, don't sleep in cars in parking lots, and on and on). His task is Herculean, and he becomes increasingly a pariah in town - I won't give away any of the elements, but there are some strange and very sad twists in the tale that lift our sorrow and pity to a tragic level. And it's also tragic that our wealthy land can do nothing more to accommodate these guys looking for work other than to leave them to fend on their own. You can compare this influx of labor to the Gold Rush, the Klondike Rush, perhaps others - but it's not quite the same. These men are desperate - many have been unemployed for years, have lost their homes and families - and they're not trying to get rich but just to make a living. In spirit, it's closer to the Dust Bowl migrants of Grapes of Wrath - but those migrants were, generally, entire families; the fact that this is an movement of men traveling alone raises the tension level. At least in the Dust Bowl, the employers felt some responsibility to provide housing (exploitative though it was) for their workers. Here, we see men - those able to get jobs - working hard all day and then sleeping in a car or a wooden shed. There has to be some way that we as a culture can help - and not entrust the "free market" to sort out every problem and inequity.

Guilty or framed?: A powerful documentary about a triple-murder

The ca 1994 HBO documentary Paradise Lost is a truly incredible account of the arrest and trial of three teenage boys charged in rural Arkansas with the murder of three 8-year-old boys in what appears to be a satanic ritual involving sexual abuse and some grotesque body dismemberment that the film depicts with unflinching, graphic detail - too much for some viewers, I think. This film is a "pure" documentary - nothing re-enacted, nothing spliced in after the fact - all of the reportage and interviews are contemporaneous with the events, and the filmmakers - Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky - earned and maintained incredible access to almost all of the parties: the accused boys, their families, the families of the victimes, and the defense attorneys - though not to much access to the prosecutors. Also, Arkansas law seems to have given them a great deal of access to live courtroom filming - so throughout we see the anguish of the community, the anger of all of the families, the courtroom drama, the media frenzy. This film is as much about the culture of trailer-park life in the Deep South as it is about this particular case. All of the families involved are very poor, poorly educated, struggling with their lives, nowhere to go - you see this in everything from the horrible condition of their teeth to the sweltering life inside their trailers to the teenage pregnancies. It's a culture of angry fundamentalism (leavened improbably at one point by a beautiful church solo) and violence: guns and knives everywhere. At the heart of the story: are the boys satanic killers, or were they framed to get the police, unable to solve the hideous crime, off the hook? It's clear that there was no solid evidence against the boy. It's also clear that one of the 3 was an intelligent and very odd leader and that the other two suffer from significant retardation. It's possible to imagine him leading their hapless kids into criminal or even satanic activities - but a triple murder? One would think a jury would need more then a flimsy, police-coerced confession. There's no clear answer, but this became the first of a trilogy, as Berlinger and Sinofksy follow the case over a decade. It's long, painful, but impossible not to watch start to finish.

The great narrative format of our time: Series TV (House of Cards)

Starting Season 3 of (the American) House of Cards, and am completely caught up once again in this great series about people you love to hate. It's rare that a TV show makes you think: that character's smarter than I am - which is to say that the writers are smart - but HoC is one, where it's a great pleasure to watch up close the struggles for power that go on at the top levels of government. For what I now about government, mostly at the state level albeit, the power plays seem very accurate and credible. In episode 3 the state dinner with President Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey), his ice-cold and extremely ambitious wife Claire (Robin Wright), and teh Soviet president "Petrov" - no question whom he's meant to be - a terrific bit of stunt casting w/ the actual Pussy Riot group present at the dinner and telling Petrov to go to hell in an uncalled-for toast. What's driving this season is Underwood's coy decision to not run for re-election but instead to concentrate on the big issues (he has a cockamamie America Works scheme he's trying to sell to Congress) - so how's he going to work this out so that he wins the nomination without overtly trying? At the same time, Claire pressures him into appointing her UN ambassador in a recess appointment; in episode three she plays up to the Secy of State, and it's not clear if she's doing so to push the secretary off the cliff (and take her place?), or if she truly needs a girl-ally in the administration. Lest we forget, Underwood killed not one but two prominent people in his ruthless rise to power - and there are people out there who know the facts. How will Underwood keep them quiet? Doug Stamper, former aide now recovering from a brutal beating, is a key player in this season, as Prez Underwood does all he can to keep Doug quiet - how long will it be before Doug "accidentally" drives into a bridge abutment? This season has the high production values - great art direction, cinematography, musical score - we've come to expect from Netflix and HBO (and sometimes from Showtime). Further evidence that series TV is becoming the great narrative format of our time.

A smart and surprising look at race relations on campus - Dear White People

Justin Simiens's 2014 Dear White People is an under-the-radar and surprisingly good film about race relations in a fictional Ivy League college - a rare movie, I think, in that it takes on various issues of race - including cross-race and cross-gender relationships - honestly, credibly, and without being overly polemical or doctrinaire. Essentially, we follow four students at the school through some conflicts and controversy and some battles of racial and campus politics: a popular biracial female student who's an angry provocateur who airs the eponymous campus radio broadcast, a black gay underclassman with few friends who wants to write for the campus radical newspaper, a handsome black upperclassman leader in campus politics, and a glam black woman who challenges the black radicals and who hopes to be part of a reality show filming on campus. All of the students are very intelligent, and there's a strong cast of supporting characters as well. The film builds to a big climax as the mostly white snootiest social club on campus throws party in which all are encouraged to celebrate their inner negro, or words to that effect - a highly offensive venture that leads to quite a bit of chaos and repercussions - but where the film really excels is that it's not in the least preachy or one-sided, the black students bear a strange complicity in setting up this party, and the characters are continually pushing one another, arguing, working things out (or not), forming new relationships - as students will and do. The argument in the dining hall about separatism - should the black students be allowed to have and run their own housing? or should all the housing be open to all? - is a great, powerful scene. The movie's by no means flawless - way too much info presented early on, some through campy use of intertitles that make the movie look too comical at first; the sub-plot involving the college president and dean of students, who just happen to be the dads of some of the students, is quite heavy-handed, improbable, and unnecessary. But overall a smart film that's both entertaining and thoughtful.