Eliot's Reading and Watching - April 2024

The 2nd major film by under-appreciated by French director Bernard Tavernier (written w/ Jean Aurenche) Let Joy Reign Supreme (1975) was incredibly different from his successful debut, a gentle satire about the lives of a clique of men in unfashionable (the) Arles) - this one a period piece and costume drama about the corruption and abuse of women and of power during the mid-1970s, when France was, at least technically under the rule of a preteen monarch, who of course ceded all power to the a corrupt priest - all of which leads to many fights, blasphemies, inductance of all senses and taste, and broad satire; the film posed many challenges for director and crew, many long takes involving huge groupings of actors, constantly in motion,  as is the camera. There’s lots of blasphemy and frontal nudity, far ahead of its time in the U.S. in that regard. There’s not a lot of point to the film, to be honest, it’s primarily a spectacle and send-up of a population and ideology long gone, thank God - but certainly worth watching for the techie excellence, the incredibly detailed interiors in the Palace (Versailles?), and overall tone of disdane and self-interest, a paean to  decadence. 

Peter Chan’s 1996 film Comrades: Almost a Love Story (and certainly not about Soviets, Russia, or partisan politics), written by Ivy Ho, is in a somewhat familiar cinematic material - boy and girl meet when they are quite young, even in childhood, and though it’s obvious to all in audience and in the film itself that the two are meant for each other and should figure that out eventually, after many obstacles and many years - see the current British series One Day as a good example - but Chan-Ho bring the old formulaic to new life, with a lot of help from the female interest the incomparable Maggie Chung. The film is set mostly in Hong Kong and many young people just freed to travel at the China-HK-border, hoping for (economic) success in the capitalist world. We follow the central figures across about 10 years in their on-again/off-again romance, but - like its counterpart One Day - it is by no means a romcom - their life is tough and the other lead (played by Leon Lai) isa hapless seeker. (Another interesting contemporary film is Ex Pats, which is about a really different community in HK - plenty of money there with the prospect of much more, but at what cost to family and friends?) The sound track in Comrades is really fine, accentuates the film rather than smothers it, much like New Wave cinema at or near its height in ’96.

It’s almost impossible to understand how Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) can be such a great book, a great novel - in fact, one of America’s best novels - and so unpromising. Why would I even pick up a book with this title and synopsis: Follow the lives of a few Catholic priests assigned to bring the church into the Southwest, land recently annexed by (if that’s the right term) the U.S., mostly New Mexico. The church in France assigns several young priests to go to the U.S. and establish various bishoprics; some have been in the U.S. for period of time, mostly in Ohio - but the SW was virgin territory, at least for the church but the priests assigned to this duty found plenty of local inhabitants - Navajo, and Mexican - about whom they’d known nothing except from books - even the Spanish language. This episodic novel follows the life courses of several of these itinerant priests, who travel in the sparsely settled land by foot of on horseback or mule. And from this vantage they have many hardships, and many adventures, sometimes heartwarming and subtle, others more harsh and difficult - the Navajo in particular are not always welcoming to the newcomers. The noel is told as a series of stories about life on this frontier - with particular focus on two of the priests who are polar opposites in personality but whose shared assignment makes them friends for life; this series of stories/anecdotes does not feel like a story collection, as the development of character and personality over time is clearly chronologic and structurally like a novel, as the characters and setting remain constants across all the narrative frequency - wherein they encounter extreme poverty, danger from unfriendly natives, et al., some heroism, some abject cruelty. A century since its publication it still feels timely and acute, and the ending, as the Fathers review their lives and prepare for death, as the title notes - though it’s not a novel about death, it’s a novel about living a life and preparing for or coming to terms with death, and enduring the life of solitude under the inviolable strictures of the life of scholarship that each of the priests renounces, preferring the challenges of assignment to a new land - with the sense that this assignment is a test of will and of faith, the outcome of which can be and often is death itself. 

The second season of The Tourist (2024)  is a densely plotted but none the less engaging and dramatic start to finish, a great pick up from Season 1. In this followup Australian cop Helen Chambers leaves Australia w/ amnesia victim - he no longer even n=knows his name - head to Scotland to try to make sense of “the man”s life and what he’s lost about his past - leading the two of them into the midst of a long-standing familiar rivalry - and the Man could be a descendant/member of either family, or maybe both. The series is one of the few to match great terror scenes with quirky humor, and though it’s had, maybe impossible, to unravel all the plot strands, at least at first, Season 2 holds your interest as it strains credibility (as do most thrillers) - and hints at maybe a 3rd season.  

The final season of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm (2024), which has been running on/off since the year 2000, gets unlimited laughs from the great comic ensemble and in particular for the ruinous and eccentric behavior that Davis has honed over the years. Each season.

each episode actually, builds to one or more obsessions in LD’s life, generally of the most absurd and improbable but with just a scintilla of the possibility of true behavior. The final episode, despite some on-line quibbles, was a tremendous success, an anthology of the obsessions that hive Davis and drive others mad. In the finale, LD is an a Georgia court on trial for providing water to voters in line the cast ballots, apparently considered interfering w/elections (the choice of Georgia is interesting in itself) - and LD, as is his cantankerous wont, fights with everything and everyone, often about always on absurd but just faintly comprehensible and recognized - a comic analysis of the status quo that’s just a little screwed loose - in this episode, airplane seating, salad dressing, and unyielding drivers, among others - with cameos from various stars and episodes - notably and climactically an appearance by Seinfeld. Great series; I could watch the whole damn thing again (though I probably won’t).

It’s no surprise that the first “piece” of Ben Akers’s Steve! (Martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces (2024) is by far the funnier and most informative - as we get vast samples of his unconventional and vastly absurd comedy performances that at first nobody really understood - comedy by a comedian who is not funny - but that eventually caught fire and made Steve one of the great comis of his time - the 2nd half, tho, show SM in late career, really looking back on his life and his work, and clearly much more interested in family (2nd wife, one of his editors at the NYer, young daughter whom SM ensures dos not appear in the film) and above all his vast and highly reputable art collection - good on Steve but boring. Worth matching at least the first piece, tho. 

Bertrand Tavernier’s Captain Conan (1996), co=authored w/Jean Cosmos, based on Roger Vercel’s 1934 novel, is one of those “war is hell films - and we can see how this film stands beside BT’s excellent documentary about the personal and human disasters arising from a platoon of men drafted to fight against the Algerian rebel army. In this novel, we see how the troops are suffering after years of trench warfare - fantastic and frighteningly realistic battle scenes, when the troops get the news that the war has ended (WWI) and in the particular field of battle of this film, the opposing army of Bulgaria unconditionally surrenders. And yet - conditions hardly improve at least for the enlisteeees (officers are somewhat better off of course) and the troop is drawn into a battle against Bulgarian soldiers who apparently never got the word of the truce. The eponymous Captain refuses to fight: The war is over; they are not longer my enemies, he say - but he is drawn back into the post-war fighting, which is tremendously brutal and leaves the soldiers, those who survive that is, into bitter cynicism. 

Was eager to read William Trevor’s Death in Summer (1998), as I’ve been a #1 fan for his short stories - without a doubt one of the 2 or 3 top ss writers in the early 21st C, and even more eager when glancing at the blurbs on the back of the hardc. American ed., “A thriller lifted to high ar,’ sayeth PW, for ex plus kudos from Mocjikp et al.,, and then I’m reading the novel and thinking what the hell, I mean what a mess, an attempt, I think, to write like Faulkner and/or Joyce - impossible to keep the many characters and plot lines in mind while reading and even halfway through the book I find myself in doubt and totally forgetting the entire plot line such as it is when I return the book each day - and then realized that the back-cover kudos were for his previous novel, Felicia’s Journey - about which I completely agree, a masterpiece! - but Death in Summer is just a muddle, I still have no idea what the plot is about, it’s like each day I have to remind myself, OK, who are these people and what are they doing?, and I jumped ship at about the midpoint - and I still look forward to reading more of his short fiction - as a novelist, he’s out of control. 

Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023), based on a novel by Martin Amos, is a strange work indeed - a closely watched drama about a German family during WWII who live literally in the shadow of the vast horrendous concentration camp of Auschwitz in a spacious house with a lovely garden and all the modern amenities of their day in a suburban sort of neighborhood of safe schools and friendly people - and they don’t seem in the least trapped of mortified or guilty for deriving their stature (the husband is high-ranking military responsible for design and management of the brutal creations that loom over everyone and everything in complete ignorance and innocence. One of the daughters seems to have some understanding and remorse, but that’s it - father and mother get in marriage-threatening squabble because the top ranking general are transferring him to a new sight - but overall they have no qualms about their fortune, turning a deaf ear literally to the cries and howls that permeate the air with the arrival each new transport train, not do they seem to care that the very air they breve is smoke-contaminant, but let’s not think about the source of all these ashes, even as the family baby choke at the irritation. There’s not much of a plot line here, and the film oddly yet effectively conveys the sense of horror, dread, and isolation, everything is strangely flat - and I believe this is because the film is a series of frames - I counted only two shots in which the camera moves at all - the rest is a series of films: There is action on the screen, but almost every shot is from a camera in stance, rather than panning or advancing ore retreating, all of which adds to the terror from the unseen and limited vision of those who abide all of this terror.

Clara Law’s film Farewell China (1990) seems at first to be a straightforward drama about a young family (parents and son about 2) as the wife (played by Maggie Cheung) pushes her partner and her family to bless her as she gets a temporary visa for the US- all in hopes that, esp with an American degree, she can establish some sort of business or employment - as recent survivors of the Cultural Revolution they and thousands of other Chinese are eager to leave and start a new life. After the family for several months hears nothing from spuse/daughter/mother about her progress in NYC, the bus band (played by Tony Leung) sets off on his own quest for the disappeared spouse - in all of NY - and the film follows his desperate, tragic, Homeric journey through the hell of the Chinese diaspora in NY - alcohol, prostitution, and further alienation and discomfort - and at last - no spoilers here - his quest comes to a horrifying end that will shake you to the core - a great, honest, and uncompromising movie. 

Mabel Cheung’s An Autumn’s Tale (1987), written by Alex Law - possible homage in the title? Chaucer?- is an alternately sweet and troubled love story focusing on an ambitious and attractive young woman, Jennifer (Chow Yun-fat) who travels from Hong Kong to NYC to reunite w/ her boyfriend - despite parents’ concern about such a radical move - and we see from the outset that her p’s were right, she’d made a terrible mistake as her boyfriend not only doesn’t give a shit about her but he announces he’s about to move (w/ new girlfriend) to Boston - and J knows nothing about living in NY/c - gets a terrible ripoff rental and few job prospects - but she over time meets some peers whom she  likes, notably Sampan, wild & crazy, completely unstable and irresponsible - but lovable and quite affectionate with J. - but ultimately, when ex boyfriends returns to NYC and reconciles and shows his maturity and stability, she must choose between the 2 guys in he life - two different pathways, two entirely different social classes 2 futures.. No spoilers here, but the conclusion leaves us with a lot to think about and maybe to discuss. 

Willa Cather almost certainly embarked on her penultimate novel, Shadows on the Rock (1931), as a companion piece or homage to her greatest novel (Death Comes for the Archbishop) - a series of self-contained stories - linked stories, in today’s lingo - that explore the early decades of the European takeovers of vast sections of the North American continent - in this instances what is now Quebec at a point in history when the white Canadians had just begun to establish Quebec as at first a trading post and eventually into a thriving metropolis. Is it as good as DC4theA? Not really - and I think that’s because the dominating force in this novel is the struggle against an unrelenting mostly hibernate landscape: The conflicts entail survival through a rough winter in a remote, snowbound cabin; survival by eating “unclean” flesh such as dog meat or worse, and most of all complete isolation from family, friends and founders back in France as the Quebec River is impassably iced over for 5 months of the year at least. All that’s to the good, but what this novel lacks compared with its counterpart is any serious interaction between the settlers and the naive people and any significant character development: the main character is the village apothecary, which can never carry the same weight as a traveling cleric trying to spread the gospel in hostile territory. Nor is there any emotional development on his part - he ages, he gets feeble, he dies = but without the grand feeling of the summary of a life and the choices made in life, right or wrong, that makes for the stunning and emotional demise of the cleric in DC4theA. Tjis one’s a good book, easy to read, informative at leasxst from the settler perspective - but not a grand as her greatest work. 

Steven Zaillian’s Ripley (2024) more than does justice to its source, Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, in fact I’d say it surpasses the novel in many ways: it’s filmed in a fantastically beautiful b/w and SZ gets the most out of his star, Andrew Scott, who nails the con artist perfectly, who gets by with wit, charm, language skills, and a certain overwhelming smugness. The story line is intense and well-thought through - that’s largely Highsmith’s doing - and it will keep you watching with intense interest and trying to fathom the outcome, even though - possible spoiler here! - we know PH’s origin source was a series of 4 novels. 

Monica Beletsky’s Manhunt, based on the book by James L. Swanson, is in essence a re-creation and examination of the assassination of President Lincoln, but it’s such more complex and deep than one would expect - not just a historical documentary about the shooting by JW Booth but really.y about the conspiracy to restore the Confederacy after Lee’s surrender. It took 12 days to track and capture Booth, and of course that’s what the first two episodes or so are about, and many projects would stop there, but this much ore profound historical re-creation tells of the network of ex-confederates passing money through a Montreal bank to resurrect the Confeds and to restore slavery - and about the US attempt to capture and try Booth, Davis,  Dr. Mudd (whence “his name is Mud”), et al., and to fend off conspiracy from within as Prez Johnson tries to undo the Restoration articles the Lincoln put in place - no doubt meaning that Davis and his cronies were trying to restore and maintain slave states as the US plots to assassinate Davis - in other words, there’s lots of drama and intrigue far beyond the usual account of the assassination - how close Johnson came to resurrecting the South, for ex. Could have been yawn of a story told many times but it’s more dramatic and depp than most historical series and well worth watching and ponderingL Could it happen here? now?

DNF: Ministry of Fear, 1943. Not on the level of Hitchcock, an overdone and at times ridiculous thriller from Fritz Lang (adapted from Graham Greene no less) is maybe OK if you like “wrong man” conundrums but this one did nothing for me and I abandoned it midway through.  

DNF: Mr Bates vs The Post Office (2024), James Strong, dir., Gwyneth Hughs, writer) is a series about the mismanagement of the UK postal system through which dozens of people were threatened, lied to, and abused - looks like a fine docudrama but was too painful and disturbing for me to watch, sorry. Many would like this series I think. 

Martin Scorcese’s Raging Bull (1980). A true classic. Must see. See previous post on Raging Bull, at Elliot’s Watching (elliotswatching.blogspot.com)  July/August 2022 for comments on Raging Bull.

DNF: Nolly, on PBS, despite having Helena Bonham Carter in the lead, is an unwatchable send-up of daytime soaps and their work environment and the personal lives of their cast and crew.. Dreadful. 

DNF Norma, Santiago Girault’s 2023 film from Argentina (or was it Uruguay?) is a dreary tale of a rich woman whose life is happy - could it be any more boring than this? Don’t know, didn’t finish. 

With The Story of Lucy Gault (2002), William Trevor once again shows that his real skill - a great skill! - is the short story. Like most of his novels, this one has some great moments and a grand theme but given the additional space to break through the confines of the story he burdens the reader with far too many self-conscious observations and asides and imposes a lot of difficulty as we try to retain interest in and needed background on too many characters awkwardly introduced and summarily vanished. That said: Trevor’s a great writer when at his best and in his best form (short stories, mostly set in contemporary Ireland) and even this one for all its faults, beats many others by a mile. In essence here’s the plot: LG’s family, protestants, are targeted by local toughs who threaten to damage of destroy the Gault homestead; to dissuade them, Lucy’s father takes a rifle shot that his one of the 3 attacking boys in the shoulder - a serious but not fatal blow. Yet the Gault family determines that they had best leave this home - to Lucy’s great dismay (she’s about 12 I think). Shedoesn’t return from a walk and her family finds her clothing scattered alongtheu coastal shore and, when she doesn't return home after several days they assume she drowned herself in despair. Parents leave and lp and behold Lucy turns up - and the servants and others are unable to get the news of her safe return (today, this would be easy - the novel is set in about 1940? - but even so, the parents have no contact with anyone from the family or the town for nearly 30 years - preposterous and diabolical in my view. The bulk of the novel follows Lucy in her travails and in her eventual resurrection, some of which is credible, much of which is incredible or undeveloped (I’m still not sure what happened to the young man who fell in love with her). Some of the writing in the late chapters, particularly about confinement to an asylum is quite strange and beautiful. Read his stories for more. 

Hard to say enough about Richard Gadd’s amazing series Baby Reindeer (2024, Netflix), adapted from his one-man play - this story of a young man with great insecurity and puzzled by his sexual identity becomes the victim of a clearly deranged stalker, and his repeated efforts to get help in freeing himself from this woman lead him down blind alleys and to very bad and frightening decisions; it’ a completely disturbing film, especially is the Gadd’s episode 6 monolog, which ay disturb some viewers not because of the usual scare tactics - violence, sexual issues, et al - but for the suffering the young man reveals. In short it’s a unique and powerful work of art not at all typical of most of the dreb available - bt beware, highly sensitive issues faced head on.