Elliot’s Reading and Watching - May 2024

I tried, I really tried, to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 3rd book, the incredibly expectant follow up to 100 Years of Solitude and Death-Cholera - The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) but I just couldn’t do it - some books are meant to exist more or less as monuments to what a genius can accomplish but not necessarily what a reader can absorb (hello, Finnegans Wake) and this is one  a novel of I think 6 long chapters each a single “take,” Ivy witch I mean it’s not each one sentence ofr one paragraph but close to it, with each 50ish-page chapter a single observation, a single day, a single and unchanging tone, so you’re in a sense at swim with the chapter and there’s no obvious place to put theboook down for a rest, there are no rest stops upon this verbal highway or more accurately race track. Yes, there are beautiful passages, yes there is some wry humor - the “patriarch” loathed and feared by his people and his public wakes one morning at 2 am and goes outside and spoons the 6 am flare of light which is followed by the whole country’s belief that that it’s actually 6 am and living thought the whole day as if they’re six hours ahead, or behind - does it matter? - and there’s more in this novel about shit, sex , vomit, all kinds of dirt and disease not to mention tho I will mention all the torture and oppression an rape inflicted by the exalted ruler and this whole [atroiarchy and ultimately though I recognize that this is a political novel about oppression it seems also to be a comic celebration of demise and by the 3red chapter it was too much of a burden to keep everything clear and to keep my eyes awake - though I do recognize that one could skip passages with no great loss - an abridged edition ?!? anyone? More than I could manage, holding onto everything in this novel - but that’s just me. 

Stanley Kwan’s Full Moon in New York (1989) portrays the lives of 3 Asian (Hong Kong?) women in their 20s/30s quite different from one another - an Asian restaurant owner, an aspiring actress, a newly wed (to a much more “Americanized” man - and their interactions. The characters are not developed in great detail - a failing of a 3-lead-actor film I think - but there are some fine moments, notably the rooftop dancing beneath the moon, the trio singing a Chinese hit on the strangely deserted NY nighttime streets, the blowout fight between the newlyweds, and abortive audition for the Lady Macbeth role. 

Of Bertrand Tavernier’s 1999 film, Ir All Starts Today, about a young man doing his best to run a creative public preschool, underfunded and crowded, in a run-down mining province in northern France, is both warm and amusing - who would love (most of) these kids? - and deeply sorrowful as the kids are struggling against the odds (alcoholism, poverty, ignorance, cruelty) in a world bull of bureaucrats, politicians, and worse who make the young man’s job seem impossible - in fact it is impossible - but is it enough to force him to walk away from his commitment? Very important social issue here treated with sympathy and objectivity - and my only plaint is that the film - as Samuel Johnson said of Paradise Lost (I think): None has wished it longer. There are too many episodes and concluding scenarios that make the same sad point repeatedly and painful as it would have been to choose among his darlings BT should have made some judicious cuts to have greater emotional impact. 

Yes, it’s juvenile, ridiculous, over the top but Jerry Feinstein’s Unfrosted (2024) is also really funny and in that sense irresistible, with JF’s zany humor, some outrageous performances by comedic costars Amy Schumer and Melissa McCarthy in this send up of the battle between the totemic breakfast-food companies, the docile but outdated Kellogg’s and the angry upstart Post as they compete for to develop the next great breakfast food, the near-eponymous Pop Tart - so many hilarious cameos from friends of Jerry, absurdities (tips on breakfast food from dumpster-diving kids), and on point impersonations of JFK and Walter Cronkite, emblems of the early-60s culture era - nothing profound here, nothing serious, but lots of laughs and cringes. 

Lina Rodriguez’s film So Much Tenderness (2022, Canadian in English) is somewhat opaque to say the least as LR’s development of ch,aracter can be bewildering - very hard to know the relationships among them, and the difficult timeline - but scene by scene she has a deft hand, each scene almost a short film unto itself, moving, slow, careful, and steady - sometimes we don’t know what the scene is about til the last frames. The film sets out to be a thriller of sorts - an adult woman picked up by strangers and hidden in their trunk as the cross the US border into Canada; this action ends abruptly, without full explanation and with little to no focus on the outcome of this dangerous activity. That’s not her style. Each scene/segment is done pretty much by slightly jumpy handheld camera, with the one exception being the protagonist’s glimpse on a Metro of a man who apparently - this is never full clear - abandoned her at some time in the past; for the rest (roughly the 2nd half) of the film she pursues him, in a sense, without ever finally bringing the plot to a confrontation or conclusion Great film to watch but don’t expect a familiar, comfortable narrative developments. 

A late film from Bertrand Tavernier - Safe Conduct (2002) - is one of his most challenging for non-French viewers who may not be especially versed in the political currents of the French during the German occupation - I was puzzled at a few scenes, that is - but overall it maintains the high level of BT’s filmmaking: He dramatizes the risks and conflicts of a French screenplay writer working, not by choice, for a film company that has been taken over by the occupying Germans - forced to make cuts and other artistic choices to as not to offend the German bosses - and through the process of filmmaking (this film apparently based on real people in the film world of the time - spying for the British army, which at the time was attacking France to oust the Germans but in the process endangering and costing the lives of many of the French. The plot/drama itself can at time be Byzantine, but that aside there are some terrific moments and scenes, notably an attack on Paris sending waves of people into shelters, a dangerous parachute jump to deliver on time a message to the French - and nobody does sound effects and musical passages any better than BT. 

The Spanish series The Asunta Case (2024/Netflix) is a docudrama about a highly publicized criminal trial several years ago in Spain which a couple, then divorced, in which husband and wife were both charged with murdering their adopted preteen Asian daughter. The film apparently stays as close as possible to the ghastly events culminating in the killing, and throughout the film raises many questions, most unanswerable about the tragic events; both parents seem to put it mildly extremely strange, pigheaded and cocky (him) and emotionally and sexually a deeply troubled woman. The film also depicts the Spanish system of justice, which seems unduly biased toward conviction by any means at least cf US justice for all its faults, and accurately portrays the hysteria of the media following the case and its principals. Puzzling and troubling, the film will most likely be followed by more analysis and questioning of the verdicts. 

Quentin Tarantino’s comic-noir debut film, Reservoir Dogs (1992) is an almost unbearably brutal and dark film that somehow you can

’t take your eyes off and that is so far out the deep end that it’s from time to time hilarious - you can’t help but laughing. Essentially, it’s a classic crime story of a heist gone wrong - a team of 8 (I think) criminals under the auspices of a rightening mob boss for a posse for a major diamond heist that goes wrong because the cops were tipped off, but by whom an dhow? In the process of their attempt to flee the gangsters eventually converge on their hideout, w/ one cop hostage in tow 0 and they know someone was tipped off about the robbery, but who? They try to find out by brutal means. And all along they make all kinds of wisecracks and witticisms, the music is powerful rock, the characters are comically unpredictable and vulgar/ You may close your eyes at some of the darkest scenes, go ahead, but, overall the film  w/ Harvey Keitel in first of hs many Tarantino roles and Steve Buscemi in particularly good form - a prelude to his Sopranos persona but turned up a few notches. 

DNF Masters of the Air (Apple, 2024, by John Shiban and John Orloff, from the book by Donald L. Miller. No doubt these are some of the greatest depictions of what it’s like to fly aboard a combat bomber during WWII, as we are in the cockpit (and throughout the bomber) almost literally with a team of American Navy airmen in bombing raids and aerial warfare over Germany and occupied France - thrilling, informative, a technical marvel, and for many that will be more than enough, war historians and the adventuresome should and will watch the full (9 ?)-hour show - but honestly for me one hour/episode was worth it but enough - the plot feels thin, the acting stagey, and though I’m impressed and glad I gave it an hour I have little to no desire or even capacity to endure this series for the next 8 hours. 

DNF Jez Acharl’s Bodkin. Over the top and never credible comedy in which a totally ignorant about Ireland and/or totally reluctant to be part of this trio assigned to do a podcast about a time-back murder mystery - with the ballast coming from the podcaster in charge who’s a goofy optimistic American. Couldn’t help but feel I’d just seen similar but much better program from Australia, Tourists Season 2.

DNF Phillip Barantini’s Boiling Point, 2023, via Netflix - British- (writer James Cummings) is another back scene in the kitchen of a high-end restaurant at a vital time, with all of the attendant fights and flirtations and recriminations of and pressures on the varied cast - and with a terrific opening sequence filmed as a single take in the kitchen, at the bar, at the tables, etc. all to the good, and yet, and yet: Haven’t I just seen an amazingly similar American film The Bear? Yes, bad luck for Boiling Point but I’ve got the point. 

DNF Ivy Metropol’s documentary After the Bite is quite a good examination of the rising shark population off the coast of Cape Cod, the fatal shark attack on a young man (footage included of the man being carried off on a stretcher) and the bitter fight between business and fishing interests in favor of killing the seals that have attracted the sharks v. the ecologists and government officials who argue that the humans should not intervene. A good doc but honestly too long and talkie for this material.

DNF Avinash Arun’s feature Three of Us (2023, from India), a tale of a retirement-age woman who asks her husband to take her back, from huge metropolis of Mumbi to the small village in which where she lived for a few years in her youth; they arrive int he village - quaint, pastoral, no cars at all for ex. - where she looks up her grammar-school boyfriend now working in a local bank, and the threesome explore the village where they improbably were recognized and welcomed. I watched long enough sense that this tale was without tension or crisis, although it’s possible that if I’d stayed w/ it longer than an hour something strange and mystical might happen, such as they’d all been transported into a living death? A spell? - but I bailed out while the getting was good. 

Edith Wharton’s last (completed) novel, The Gods Arrive (1932) is today seldom mentioned (in part because of the bad title?), but it deserves more notice and attention - it may be no House of Mirth but it’s a fine account of a lifetime spent in pursuit of success in work and happiness in marriage - to no avail, of course. The characters are distinctly unsympathetic which may be part of the relative obscurity of this novel, but they are readable, recognized types. The central figure is a would-be novelist, Vance, who surprised me: In the first of the 5 so-called “books” of this novel he seems like an utter phony, dreaming of his great work but doing nothing but live off his wealth. But to my surprise he becomes a terrifically successful and famous writer, and we follow his career and his marital/love misdeeds and misfortunes with EW’s famous shrewdness and sensibility about her timed place - similar to that other friend H. James, but sharper and more dark in her vision of artistic success. Not the easiest novel to pick up - but not one you’d want to put down, either. 

Musica (2024), written, directed, nd starring in Rudy Mancuso (co-written with Dan Lagana) is a totally charming, funny, and endearing film whose success is so improbable - the creator and lead character is a 20-something living at home with his Brazilian mother in what claims to be Newark (I doubt that it was filmed there) with the most improbable of career aspirations, he’s a devotee of puppet theater, and ekes out a living doing an ongoing puppet show in the Newark subway. He also has 2 girlfriends, one American of a prosperous, Waspish family, the other a worker in a fish market but w/ aspirations of her own: Each of the threesome is delightful, as is the very traditional Brazilian mom. So it’s a great rom com but so much more - incredibly active and appealing music, amazingly original choreography, a great and complex score (another one of Rudy - he goes by his real name - evinces in this film), many historical theme (the dinner with the girlfriends family, the tie when Rudy takes both girlfriends on a date - simultaneously, some film editing that’s surprising and funny, and even the puppet show, which get to see at last at the end, is laugh out loud. If that’s not enough, what is? So why is this film so under the radar? 

Andrew Jarecki, Marc Smerling, and Zac Stuart-Pontiers The Jinx: The Life and Death of Robert Durst (Season Two, 2024) stays with and develops the incredibly weird crimes that Durst committed and his extraordinarily odd testimony on the witness stand in his 2nd murder trial - his cockiness, arrogance, and despicable personality are all there, magnified from Season One. No spoilers here, but the utter captivation of documentary filming based on live tape of court proceedings strengthens the obvious, that cameras should be allowed in all courtrooms unless there’s a clear and present reason not to do so - not just for entertainment value, which there is, but for civic instruction and equity. 

Stax: Soulsville U.S.A., by James Wignot (2024), is a great documentary about the life and death of the legendary Memphis radio station and recording studio that were the first to support emerging Black artists of the ‘50s, most notably Otis Redding, from whose tragic death in a place crash the late 60s the record label never recovered. The series, with interviews by the founder and president (both Memphis and white) and some of the key players in the development of the Stax label and the signers who brought with them talent and fortune - and most opportunely the film shows the incredible odds against this studio, in a time and place where Black people were disestablished - race “riots” or “rebellion” as it was known to many, racism and segregation everywhere, the great Memphis garbage strike, and on it goes - plus the plain old story of vampire capitalism, in which the big swallow the small, which is what happened when white stations around the country began to realize the talent and following of Stax and developed (or stole) their own stars and eventually crushed the small studio (in a nasty battle that led to criminal charges of embezzlement against a Stax manager who incredibly was found NG by a Memphis jury that included only 2 black members - the case must have been beyond flimsy, A lot of fun to watch despite the sorrows and the sad fate of Stax, now a Memphis museum (and a great one, I’ve heard). 

The Moons of Jupiter  is one of the early story collections (copyrights 1977-82) by future Nobelist and Canada’s premier fiction writer,Alice Munro. The talent is already there, though there are some flaws in the stories that seldom appear in her later works. First of all, the first story in this collection - “Connection” - is among the best she ever write, one of the many that have produced earned comparison w/ Chekhov’s short fiction - the beauty, the surprise, the emotion, in this one story would be enough to win Munro a Nobel! The rest of the collection doesn’t rise to quite that level, but that’s a high bar for a young writer and all of the stories are intelligent, funny, and ion particular illustrative of the mental and social stance of women writers/artists of the era: early early recognition of talent, difficulty of breaking through, mistaken marriage, sexual liberation, societal expectations, and family obligations (and burdens) - esp in the first and the title story - all of which how her particular strength in first-person writing (ever[present in most young writers, but judiciously used here) and  possibly her only flaw - which she overcame for sure in later works - would be that she tends to crowd the a few of stories w/ characters that can be a devil to make sense of as we can’t possibly recall with so little preface who’s who. 

The Sympathizer (HBO 2024) miniseries. based on the novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen. about a young man of mixed Vietnamese and American lineage, Hoa Xuande as “the captain:,”who serves as a double-agent both during the (Vietnam) War in Viet Nam, allegedly serving the U.S. military and in the U.S., rescued by Americans in the fall of Saigon and settled in LA where he joins with an ex-Vietnamese officer planning an armed attack on the newly united nation led by at Vietnam exiles in the U.S. The highly complex and sinuous lot is difficult to follow, full of twists and turns and ambiguities as to the background and loyalty of the lead and his interactions w/ the victorious VC (where he is imprisoned and forced to write his “confession”),  with an American CIA leader and adversary, his secret alliance w/ the VC, and the new attachments to American society. The best part of the series I would say is the segment in which the agent is engaged in making a war film directed by a novice (Robert Downey, Jr. in one of several roles), a set of episodes tense and informative, yet the weakest part is the disappointing final episode which involves much cruelty and torture far beyond the necessary or comprehensible 

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s film from Turkey, About Dry Grasses (2023, Criterion), is an episodic account about a land/culture little known by most American filmmakers and film watchers - set in a secondary school in a remote, snowbound and isolated territory in mountainous eastern Turkey, the first thing we notice is that the primary-schoo; system differs greatly from the at in th eU.S. - for example, the joining the teaching force is much like enlisting in the military in the U.S., subject to continuous official review, assigned to a new school at will and certainly at the end of each school year, a sense from the younger teachers that they are part of a vast movement within the profession. Central to this film are two history teachers who become friends/roommates, and the drama centers on the relationships they establish particularly w/ two (entirely different )  women: one of the guys is the object of affection/worship by an socially advanced grade-schooler, a relationship he never property denounces and that brings him before a disciplinary board - and his reaction is to become more severe and mercurial in class. The roommate, much less certain about the teaching profession, falls in love with a young teacher in another school in the settlement who’s lost her right leg in what appears to have been military or terrorist bombing: In fact, both guys fall for her, and the conversations and confessions, or lack of, are the tension points in the film, quite dramatic, like the best of theater (Chechovian at times) give the film its focus and strength. Fair warning, that the film is 3+ hours, which may be too much for one sitting, as the setting and conditions can be at times confusing to and American viewer.