As of this date I have ceased posting on my blogs, Elliotsreading and Elliotswatching. Thank you to those who have followed these blogs.

 As of this date I have ceased posting on my blogs, Elliotsreading and Elliotswatching.

Thank you to those who have followed these blogs.

Spike Lee, Dardenne Bros.,Three Colors,:LeCarre, Savior Complex. Bpstpnm Marathon bomb, Lupin

 La Promesse (The Promise, 1996), the first major film from the Dardenne brothers (Jean-Pierre and Lucy), who  I think will, or at least should, someday win a Nobel Prize for Literature, is a gut wrenching, revealing, sorrowful brief story of an odious opportunist who rents at exorbitant rates to newly arrived immigrants in Belgium, drawing his teenage son, like it or not, into the family business. West , without a maudlin veneer, exactly what the migrants suffer and endure in their search for a better life; yet the film is dark, never mundane, and is cinema verite in its veins. The teenage boy, Jeremie Renier, is at the heart of the story, slowly drawn into sympathy with the migrants’ struggle, which brings him into direct conflict with his odious dad who exploits the immigrants while under the delusion that the’s doing them a favor. Many fantastic scenes (the fortune teller, forgone!) and great, understated writing throughout the drama - in short, one of the best break-out films of the 90s, to say the least. 

Krzyszlof Kieslowski’s Three Colours: White (1994) is the 2nd in his colors trilogy - don’t waste too much time trying to discern how the colors work other than as references to the French flag - it seems to me that there is not evident line connecting the colors to the films but one can feel free to theorize - sort of a love story, quite different from the first in the series - opens with the protagonist, Karol, facing a divorce hearing from his wife who claims that he couldn’t gratify in their sex life - ah, the French - and when the divorce goes through she sets fire to her beauty salon recognizing that the police would consider the arson to be Karol’s vengeance - so he goes underground and lives homeless in the Metro - where he meets a man who says he knows of a man who will pay a late sum for someone to kill him (It doesn’t take a genius to know he’s talking about himself) - complications ensue -with a lot of ambiguity at the end: happily ever after? or estranged? Very complex plot not worth dwelling over the probabilities, as there are none, but some really fine scenes notably smuggling Karol out of France - and a great performance by then rising superstar Julie Delpy. 

Another great film from the Dardenne Brothers, w/ an amazing lead performance in title role from Emilie Dequenne; Rosetta (1999 is innate teens, no evidence that she’s in school at all - she’s looking desperately for work - lives in a trailer park w/ her alcoholic mother - and is clearly responsible for every aspect of familial and social. Her mother’s a wreck and there are no apparent friends, neighbors, or family (w/exception of one hideous exploiter slash drinker). At outset we see Rosetta in a burst of fury about being let go from a hospital job - simply because she’s the only temp not in the union; then we follow her on a jagged course of frustration as she tries to get another job - but the world is cold and indifferent. In a heartbreaking sequence she gets take-in by a friendly young man who runs a waffle stand (this is a Belgian film) - it looks as if fortunes have turned, but didn’t take long for Rosetta to hav to fend off unwanted advances. This film is unusual if not unique for the Dardennes in that the focus is entirely on the sole protagonist and the film seems to be in constant flight as we follow Rosetta through her day(a) - it’s almost dizzying, long passages chasing her via hand-held camera (un-Steady Cam) - and as the film builds toward a dramatic conclusion Rosetta’s life seems to be at a low point, until a moment of stasis at the end and then an explosion into all black, meaning exactly what? It’s not clear on first viewing, nor is it meant to be - neither happy nor sad, but most of all like life. 

Spike Lee’s monumental film Do the Right Thing (1989) is a true masterpiece and feels as real and present among us as it seemed and felt 30 years ago - clearly a different era but nothing feels dated or passee - in fact, the opposite, as it was incredibly prescient about life in a black urban community and the contentious relationship with the all-white police force. Plus ca change, right? What makes this more than a screed and a lament is the wonderful balance among the characters, some played by well-known actors (eg Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis),some by newcomers (Rosie Perez), and also the amazingly versatile Lee himself. The film consists of a series of snapshots or sketches of one city block though you could say it’s about all in the culture of BedSty in the ‘80s in the midst of a record-breaking heat wave that puts everyone at odds and out of sorts: the “mayor”of Bed Sty self-proclaimed, a radio voice that provides some occasional observations, an pizza parlor as we used to call them run by an Italo-American family and the focus of much of the film, and old men sit around and reminisce and laugh and joke in some really funny sequences - it seems a peaceable kingdom at first but one that erupts into racial violence, and other layabouts. There’s lots of laugh-out-loud humor - tho it hardly ends on an amusing note - the neighborhood explodes, and everyone comes out a loser, though it’s also likely that life will move on, as Lee raises the question, without polemics, of whether a multi-racial community can survive in a racist environment. The theme song throughout (as well as a terrific score that draws on many musical vocabularies), Public Enemy’s Fight the Power (sung and danced to by Perez), a haunting phrase, or command, heard throughout but one that leads to a devastated neighborhood, to death and destruction, and brings up the question of: Fight the power with what? How? To what end? 

Errol Morris’s 90-minute interview with John le Carre (The Pigeon Tunnel, 2023, Apple TV) held my attention and interest and made me want to read more of JLC’s work - Ive read I think 3 of his spy novels and have never been hooked but maybe I was looking for something more nuanced and literary and his work seems to be at least i part about personality and betrayal - taken as a whole there might be more than I'd thought, not just an entertainment but a world view. Notably, friend AW found this film terrible because he’s read most of maybe all of JLC’s work and, ergo, found little new or revealing in this interview - true enough, EM hardly ever pushes back against his subject, just gives him a forum. So, in the end, it’s good film for novices but of ,such less interest to lifelong fans.f the author and the genre. 

TV

Jackie Jesko’s series Savior Complex (2023, Max), like most of the best crime series leaves viewers not with a case-solved but with some mysteries and ambiguities. Here doc focuses on a young (19 or 20) woman raised by devout, evangelical Xtians, home-schooled in rural Va., who gets a calling that she should go to Uganda to help the starving children - which, amazingly, and all credit other for this, she does so, opening a clinic of sorts that provided food to man - but as might be expected she gets somewhat carries away by her zealotry - actually believing she’s taking Rx orders from God! - so that she was, eventually , stopped in her tracks by accusations, which she doesn’t really deny, that she’s administered Rx and procedures within license and no medical training. In her care, a # of children have died - though it’s indisputable that the % saved and back to health was much greater. That said, the deaths have roused a group of activists, No White Saviors (weird that a white American is a leader of this group) bring a suit for damages that essentially shuts down the clinic. The woman, Renee Bach, is a mysterious, driven personality - as are most of those who oppose her and have revealed her unsound decisions. But so many she treated are so much better off. I guess the subtitle could be “no real answers.”

The documentary American Manhunt: The Boston Marathon Bombinmg (2023, Netflix) really captures the terror, excitement, and tactical and technical (and some medical) that all in or near Boston felt at the time of the 2013 attack, the multi-agency effort to ID the killers, the frightening confrontation with the killers, all re-creating the sense it was like to live in or near the events - of done with fidelity to the rue events (much security footage used, only small moments re-enacted, for technical reasons), lots of interviews with victims and law-enforcement (maybe too much of this?), but overall a great job, especially viewed for those with a connection to the event (aside I through some running circles, and my family as a daughter was relatively near the bombsight). I wonder why it’s so under the radar - it’s difficult with a few clicks on major sources don’t reveal the name of the filmmakers, even!

Like the first two seasons, the third season of Lupin (Netflix, 2023), Season 3 is highly entertaining, highly challenging at time to follow or figure, and highly unlikely and improbable, but who cares? Though it stages as a crime series, it’s really a concept series, but the main character - Omar Sy as Assane Diop, the fictional hero based on the Arsene Lupin novels by Maurice Leblanc: He’s the man of a thousand disguises, and that’s at the heart of the comedy - he takes on daring robbery schemes that throw him into the public eye and make him a living folk hero and newspaper fodder - yet he’s able to get away with more and more audacious theft, never being recognized (and he’s not the type to blend into a crowd at about 6 foot 6? ) - only one guy, in the PD, recognizes that Arsene bases all of his theft and vanishments based on the Lupin crime novels - but no one will hear this guy out. The storyline can be challenging at times - leaping back and forth in time -  but it’s not a show to drag us along through a series of crimes and solutions, it’s pure entertainment.