Elliot’s Reading and Watching - June 2024

Billy Crystal’s one-man show 700 Sundays (2014, HBO), based on his book and written by Crystal with Alan Zweibel and directed by Des McAnuff (as that name a gag line?) is his Crystal’s life story and its by turns hilarious, heart-breaking, informative, and innovative - including a stage set that’s a 2-dimensional replica of C’s childhood Long Island house (and home, too). We learn of his difficult childhood, his father’s pioneering work developing  record label the brought many Black musicians and singers across the race lines and led to BC’s childhood friendships with many great jazz musicians and composers and singers, most surprisingly and notably Billie Holliday. Most of all the show is a display of BC’s comic - and dramatic - expertise and his ability to connect through hilarity and emotion with a live audience and an appreciative audience of admirers and others - I had no idea how funny he can be and that he had such a range of characteristics, expressions, impersonations, stage antics, and dance moves.

Willa Cathers’s penultimate novel, Lucy Gayheart (1935), can’t really stand up against her monumental, innovative novels, most notably Death Comes for the Archbishop b ut also O, Pioneers and My Antonia, but it’s an old-fashioned, even for its day, romance novel - but with several major twists and surprises that push, bend, and break conventions of its type (no spoilers). Roughly, it’s the tale of a young woman born and raised on the Nebraska plains (Cather territory) and has a great love for and prowess in great music - but her career ambition is notably deferential, i.e., she’s an accompanist. As with many novels about the arts, there are villains and heroes and victims here, but Cathers’s forte is her capacity to surprise us and uproot the conventions: who’s really the villain here? And who suffers the most from villainy? In any event, the novel is relatively short and my only wonder is: What hasn’t this been filmed? Serialized? Or has it? 

Howard Sounes’s Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan (2001) stands today, still, as by fa the best Dylan bio (not that I’ve read all of them), based on an enormous amount of documentary sources and interviews with many in Dylans’s life from early childhood through the New York years, the California years and the various marriages, and most of all through the many phases of his musical genius. HS gives us tons of info on recording sessions and concerts appearances, plus info on Dylan’s other creative ventures including photography, art, film, social justice We get many details on Dylan’s daily life practices, some not pretty, and his many romances and philandering, also not pretty. This book is not hagiographic, but it’s a tremendous analysis of BD’s work in its various phases and guises, Dylan’s rise and fall and resurrection, and Dylan’s a man and as an artist (unlike most Dylan books, this one feels entirely objective - it appears that JS as never met Dylan). I have no gripe at all with this encounter, sorrowful as much of it must be to Dylan fans (it’s not a critical analysis or theory, a la Ricks, nor a personal memoir a la Shelton); my only concern is that it’s not 2+ years in the rear view and much has occurred in BD’s life in the interim, notably the Nobel Prize (foreshadowed here) - I would welcome a 2nd volume from HS or from someone of similar skills and unclouded dedication. 

Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, by Drew Denicola (2012), tells of the rise and fall of an in dependent four-man rock band that formed as part of the network of Memphis musicians, loosely in the case tied to the then-dying Stax group of labels. In short the film begins with the release of a highly innovative album eponymous Big Star. The quartet were pioneers in the muse of synthesizers (precursor to Brian Wilson?) and in mournful poetic slightly warped and out of tune ballads, and definitely better in studio than on stage. The question raised at the outset is: How comets group never made it? In part, because they were ahead of their time, sure, but it’s also that their small label was consumed and crushed by a national label; also, sad to say, they weren’t really as great as they’re pronounced in this hagiography. I could listen to the band for a bit - but what sounds good in a snippet as pat of a doc is a long way from a full-scale song of lament - let alone for a whole album or concert. Their failure to succeed is a bit exaggerated by the many talking-head (no pun) commentators. Also, I have to say, the internal dynamics of the band, including the death of 2 players, is never made clear - in fact, it’s hard to keep any of the musicians clear in our minds as we watch them rise and fall. Did they deserve fame. Sure - but they weren’t the first or last born bore (or after) their rightful time. 

13 Bombs in Jakarta (2023), from Anggua Dwimas Sasongko, is an ambitious thriller that will give you all you could hopeful and more when it comes to gunfights with high-powered rifles in enclosed spaces such as warehouses. For most viewers the will bar more than enough - lots of action, but without too much gore. And yet…despite the ambition of the filmmaker, the film falls short on its premises: In brief it’s about a secretive group of terrorists who have implanted hidden bombs at 13 spots in the city - and their purpose/demand is - what? Something vague about disrupting capitalism and ending the use of crypto currency. Honestly, I expected, and needed, more on this: Who are these people? How do the think these bombs will help their cause? What’s the point of demolishing the economic system with a clear goal - or without at least a surprising, clever plan to get away with murder(s)? So, in short, a skillful thriller with the breadth or scope to move beyond conversion - though for me it’s always interesting, at the very least, to seee a familiar film in an unfamiliar setting such as the eponymous city. 

Maryland (2023, PBS) . by Susanne Jones and Anne-Marie O’Conner (dir. Susan Tully), is a complex family drama full of long-buried family guilt and mysteries and is particularly strong in its portrayal of the two adult sisters, played by Jones and Eve Best - a romance drama about family secrets that rises above the type, thanks to the great theater training familiar innerly all British TV (and stage?) productions. Theplot centers on the unexpected death of the mother (we never see her) and the stunning revelation that she had been carrying on a decades-long relationship without, amazingly arousing any doubt or suspicion on the part of her grouse of a husband who is in the early stages of a dementia (maybe not so early). The strength of the film is in the highly volatile relationship between the 2 sisters - excellent script, exceptional acting. Quibble shere about the conclusion, but still a series (3 episodes) worth watching especially for lovers of British TV dramas. 

Hit Man (2023, Netflix) w&d byRichard Linklater with writing from Glen Powell, based on the magazine article by Skip Hollandsworth, is a rock solid crime caper/romance movie - story line is that Gary (Glen Powell) is a part-time undercover cop in NO whose role it is to meet up with people who want to pay to have someone (spouse, lover, et al.) killed - with Powell playing the would-be hired assassin - except that it’s a set-up and a team of cops view and record the entire “hiring” process and then they spring it on the suspect, bring the case to court with basically a true confession, and thereby save a life, boost the department’s arrest #s, etc. There are many twists and surprises along the way, culminating in a scam gone wrong when Gary falls in love with one of his “clients,” played by the beautiful Adria Arjona, sure to be a rising star. In so many ways this who plot could run off the rails, but it’s continuously and improbably quite engaging and provocative, that rare streaming movie that rises well above the expectations of the genre. 

Alice Munro’s story collection The Love of a Good Woman (1988) is a good measure of the development of her original, accessible, and astonishing literary style. It could be said that each of her stories is a novella great novel, in miniature form - compared w/ most other fiction writers of her age (second half of the 20th century and early 2021s marks her realm) - most of whom wrote stories that gave a close look at a personality or a family or a type or an “issue” - hers are almost exclusively about relationships and the development over time of character  as a part of a marriage, a family, or a community. She can do in about 30 pp - her stories tend to be longer than most, though not rising to the level of novella - what took Tolstoy volumes. Even Chekhov, one of her heroes I would guess, writes with a sharper focus on a protagonist (different matter re his plays, which may be closer in style and spirit to AM in any event) - but I would to say that in this collection there are two highlights - The Children Stay and My Mother’s Dream. These aside, the stories can suffer from too much scope and far too man characters - to read Munro at mid-career is to commit to constantly back-page to recollect who was who. This makes her sometimes over-populated tough going. She moved on to greater clarity and focus in later career when she found her life’s worth material in her native ground, the small, rural communities of Canada on the Huron. 

Far from his greatest films, Crisis, the Swedish film (1946) that was Ingmar Bergman’s first directed film (he also wrote the screenplay based on a book/play by Leck Fischer); the film does evince that the young, theater-trained director had the capacity to get vivid and emotional performances from otherwise unsympathetic characters and that he could be adventuresome in some of his sequences (a nightmare scene, am unexpected suicide) and bold uses of montage. The message of the film is that people live, die, and suffer even in the sleepiest of Swedish villages, but there’s not the total and spiritual crisis that most of his later films recognize and develop. It’s interesting to see how he draws out the lead performance (Inga Landgre as Nelly) as an adopted daughter who leaves for a bigger locale (will a village not swinging Stockholm) and takes up work as a courtesan - he never quite shows that she was a prostitute - later films by him and others will be less delicate in the depiction of exploited women. Few would have predicted IB’s career arc from this film - but it’s a fine if not groundbreaking moral story in conversational genre. 

Ingmar Bergman’s 2nd directorial film. A Ship Bound for India (1947 - Bergman W&D, based on a play by Martin Soderhjelm) shows the beginnings of his extremely dramatic and emotionally tense style, with his sympathy for those spiced on and oppressed, the admixture of love and violence, and his excellent use of space and shadows. The film starts in the then-present and then flashes back 7 years - and we meet a young shipmate   serving under and disturbed and vicious father. The young man is seen as repulsive because of a humpback malformation (not rendered vividly by costume or dress, btw) who falls for a woman ashore - a dancer pop questionable character - and hopes that she will wait for him till his venture return from the eponymous Ship. Things do not go well, as the captain/father suffers Queegish obsessions and fears and takes out his agony on people and property. There’s a very soft-focused love scene that contrasts strikingly with the harsh lighting and design of some of the actions aboard the ship. A curiosity today, but still worth watching - especially to get a sense of IB’s initial interests. 

Ingmar Bergman’s Thirst (1949), screenplay by Herbeert Gravenius, based on stories by Birgit Tengrof) is a sijointed account of the willowing and suffering of two marriages, with some visceral depictions of alcohol-addiction and psychoanalysis - several scenes quite breathtaking but few Bergman films are this difficult and elusive as it is told in non-chronological series with no apparent effort or attempt to build clarity or compassion for the characters. Most scenes shot on rr cars in on various post-war European settings (one scene improbably has 2 trains setting off from Stockholm headed in  different directions, perhaps a comment on the wreckage of the war (which barely touched the “neutral” Sweden, to its shame. 

The first season of Your Honor (2020 premier, now on Netflix) , based on the Israeli series by Ron Ninio and Schlomo Mashlachand developed by Peter Moffat) is a first-rate legal crime feature win which there are numerous crises at which various characters face wrenching moral decisions the outcome from which will determine their families, profession, actual life - very well crafted, brings many of the cultures of its setting. New Orleans, to life - impossible to fully like or fully hate any of the main characters. Looking forward to watching Season 2, also on Netflix ( very good series to binge as it’s complex plot will be hard to retain over the course of 10} weeks of streaming).

Ingmar Bergman’s early film, Port of Call (1948, Holds together well B w & d, novel by Olle Lansberg) is a that point his most directly topical - and conventional - depiction of social issues- specifically and most dramatically a society that forces women unwontedly pregnant into illegal and incompetent abortionists and then places the women in custody or worse if they refuse too snitch. It’s also Bergman’s second portrayal of a a man going will (cf A Ship Bound for India)m although in this film it’s about the ravages of extreme alcoholism esp among shipmen on shore leave whereas Ship Bound it’s more directly about mental illness. Port of Call has a well-constructed plot presented in a straight sequence, unlikely his attempt at fractured narrative in Thirst. Port of Call is less of a breakthrough in technique than a well-designed screenplay, probably because it was closely modeled on the narrative frame of a novel/expose. 

William  Trevor’s 1986 story collection, The News from Ireland & Other Stories, is further evidence of his deserved recognition as one of the greatest masters of the short form since Chekhov. The stories in this collection range widely in geographic range; whereas most of his famous work is con near-contemporary settings in rural Ireland and Britain, Ireland in particular - this one includes several setting in France. The stories are often of people suffering, whether over their social isolation caused largely by a disability, a middle-aged woman on vacation with her elderly yet stylish father about whom she is embarrassed by his bumbling attempts to flirt with a young German fellow tourist, and perhaps most gripping is the title story in which Trevor graphically depicts the suffering of those hit by the famous potato famine in Ireland, which led to death and to massive emigration - the story is right with what might be called irony - how the rich v the poor were faring - were it not for Trevor’s thoughtful presentation of many aspects of the heartfelt yet hopeless some of the hopeless, even cruel, ways in which one family tried to help the nearby farmers by paying them to build a road that simply circles the manor, with no reason or purpose- except to preserve the dignity of those able to work for a wage, even a needless one. 

Irish gentry tried to