Elliot's Reading & Watching 

December 2023

Elliot’s Reading & Watching - December 2023

Director Alexandra Pelosi (yes, her daughter) shows she skills as an engaged but open doc filmmaker with her latest feature, The Insurrectionist Next Door (2023, on Max), in which she interviews several (6 or 7?) men who were convicted of cries for their actions during the January 6 usurpation. It’s notable how few were arrested, of course, but taking these subjects as representative of the whole: One can make some generalizations about her subjects. Several but not most still think Trump is great and don’t blame him for misleading them into dangerous territory. Most said that’d do i again, but not all - at least one “proud boy” says he’d take it back (and remove his tats!) if he could (his guy headed toward toughest federal pen, in Colo.) Several, the majority I think, came up with lame excuses for their presence at, or in, the Capitol: I was on a road trip w/ my brother and we saw a crowd and kind of just walked over to see what was happening. Yeah, right. It was surprising to hear at least 2 say they voted for Obama - if that’s true, what happened to you?! Another talked of wanting to raise multiracial family. All of this seems so hollow and empty after the attack. AP does a good job drawing these men out and only rarely does she lose her composure, even tho her mother’s life was endangered by this hooliganism. Also, very little said about Trump; their devotion to that man defies all reason. 

Ousmane Sembene’s 1966 film Black Girl (La Noire de…)was pioneering - one of the first films from Senegal to get worldwide distribution and audits and it holds up today as a great, minimalist production that is moving and, sadly, credible. Based on one of his own short stories, Sembene tells a straightforward account of the short life of a beautiful Black woman from Dakar, Senegal, late in the era of colonialism, who with great anticipation takes a job working for a family living in some but not extreme luxury in Antibes, France. The eponymous Black Girl (Mbissine Therese Drop as Diouana) thinks she’s signed up for a job as a nursemaid for the children in a family of 5, but immediately the hateful matriarch expects Black Girl to be cook, nursemaid, cleaning woman, and general servant for all possible errands. Her mistreatment is evident from the start, and feels inevitable rather than exceptional, sadly. Diouana tries to push back, but she’s in an impossible situation: no $ to go home and, were she to do so, a lot of explaining to her rather callous mother (and her boyfriend?), as the story, and her life, head toward the inevitable conclusion. The narrative is direct, the characters credible without being complex or exceptional, the drama is intense, the score - mostly by an (East) African singer/guitarist - truly enhances rather than overwhelms the narrative. 

Second season of Julia carries on with the exploration of her friendships with other powerful women, notably Simca and J’s best friend in Cambridge, all of whom dispute w/ her usually about culinary matters; Simca in particular was a real frenamee - envious of J/s success and taking umbrage at the compromises J must make w true classical fr cuisine. There’s a lot of talk about her show going national - nd that drives the plot for this season - but if there’s a season 3 I hope it will further explore Paul’s relationship with the the espionage community and the reason for his exclusion from the diplomatic corps. All told though a bright and funny romp that leaves you hungry for the right reasons. 

Slo Horses

May December tells of an ambitious actress who really believes in the new method of getting to know the characters whose life story she will portray, so the arrival of said movie star in Savannah stores everything up; the planned portrayal is about a woman who in her 20s and a mother of 2 began a sexual relationship with a 7th-grade kid - which led to a criminal charge and a stint in jail where she delivered her next child - real tabloid stuff. Now in present the’s in her 40s and perhaps happy with her much younger cousin and the entourage of children - but can this really work? The invasion of the movie star suggests otherwise, though it may lead to a good (for some) movie. Of particular note are some very-well presented photo sequences, which sometimes put the two leads side-by-side on a mirror or other reflection and we can scrutinize the gaze of both - so different, yet gradually becoming more alike; also a terrific musical score ( no covers, composed) that captures the nuances, moods, and trauma wrought by actor’s professional visit (not that anyone in his or her right mind was host for two weeks a woman who would bring to the surface thermally trauma.).

Top Boy - Summerhouse 

The first of a two-part (so far) series from London, Top Boy - Summer House if for me one of the best crime series in many years; no one will seriously top Sopranos or The Wire, tho Top Boy comes close, and what makes these 3 stand out from so many others is that personalities develop and incidents outside of the strictly criminal world play a role in shaping the events and the characters - in particular the realistic portrayal of a group of preteens enamored of the criminal life, until they’re not. The series is set in one of those dreadful public-housing developments in, I think, the East End, vast scary edifices with few comforts and minimal privacy (though unlike other shows in this instance the housing if generally comfortable and tidy, except that) drug-running gangs first it out for territorial rights, which affects everyone in the complex, We focus on a young boy, Ra-nal (??) - n the 1st episode we see that his mother is in severe depression and is taken away to a hospital; one of the more kindly gangsters recognizes that if the state knew the child was left alone the kid would be sent off to a public home - which is usually a terror. The man watches over the kid to keep him safely at home till his mother returns. Yet gang pressures are everywhere, leading to some gruesome scenes of violence - non gratuitous - as the young boy tries to make his way in the world - but he and his friends are not slick enough to pull of deals that go bad or schemes in which they are cheated. I am assuming that the series will continue with a 2nd season called simply Top Boy. 

The HBO Doc 2023 (a really good service) No Accident (bad title) starts w/ footage of the white supremacists rallying and demonstrating in Charlottesville ostensibly about the removed of statue of ob art E Lee - but actually as a rallying post for the far-right. Then we move to a team of lawyers who took on he case of I think 9 plaintiffs who were injured during the violent demonstration (1 young woman was killed by a car that plowed into the crowd). his project entailed getting a team of lawyers who worked on the case for about 4 years (no spoilers) - they were not by practice lawyers wjuing for damages but most or all were criminal-trial lawyers, not really familiar with this kind of case. The main reason to watch was to see how they planned the case and how they brought it forward before a Va. judge and jury - there are something scenes of the rally leaders in conference, clippings of their remarks to groups of supporters - scary to say the least, can this happen here? Of course. Weird to see the subjects of the suit, heads of some white radical forces - some of them took a conciliatory tone, sounding innocent and cooperative - some audio was presented as evidence showing how they addressed crowds of their own people - others were at least more honest, spewing hate and anti-Semitism through all their testimony. What hard-right strategy was better. Each was sickening in its own way. Film was hurt somewhat in that public/reporters were not allowed in the courtroom (Covid restrictions), so most or all of the testimony was read-aloud from court transcriptions, just not having the impact of watching and hearing testimony from those involved. 

Never been among the fans  of John le Carre even though so many of my friends reading him religiously, if that’s the right adverb. So I gave out a holy try to look back and see what I’ve been missing or what I’d overlooked or dismissed as genre writing - and I wish it’d changed my mind as that would give me another writer to absorb, as I’ve done in past few years w/ a few I’d selected - Greene, Eliot, Wharton, a few others - but, no, he just does n to work for me; I read the first 100 or so pp of two recent JLC espionage novels - Tinker Tailor and Smiley’s People - and to me it was a blur, endless talk about various escapades and personalities with little action (compare it w/ the far less “literary” works as the funny and tense Slow Horses TV series, e.g. - just nothing happens and you’re struggling just to make sense of the nuances and revelations: who are they talking to? about whom? what happened or didn’t - I admit it does feel like genuine espionage banter put half the inflections and codes and sly references elude me and trying to read him showed me why sometimes the film version is better and more accessible as you can actually see who’s talking and they have to give you some idea as what they’re talking about. Click pause, click subtitles, clock off. 

(Todd Haynes’s) The Holdovers (2023) could have so easily been a bad movie - beloved teacher supports and encourages or “discovers” a troubled, underperforming, difficult … student(s) by teaching them to love poetry to pursue higher ed … the list could go on but in this film the teacher (Paul Giamatti) is the loser, disliked by his students, unsure of his status at a prep school, in bad graces of the dean, poor self-image, probable drinking problem, of uncertain sexuality - in any event he takes the kid, forced to stay at the school during xmas break as his mother is post-divorce and remarried to a hateful man and the kid himself, though bright and creative crosses too many barriers and is disliked by his classmates - and over the course of the film as we deftly learn more about the two leads (and the secondary players, the janitorial and culinary team on low voltage during the break) with much light humor and some shockingly revealing episodes that end up making the Giamatti character the ultimate loser - and we feel so deeply for him (counter to most student-teacher dramas). The kid’s visit to his father is an unforgettable passage, among many moving scenes, all of which contribute to deepening our understanding of and sympathy the leads - and even the secondaries: The relationship that we expect to develop between the holdover student and a lovely faculty daughter just never happens, which is the kind of surprise turn or turning away that make this film so surprising and natural - the screenwriter’s touch is light and accurate. 

I have to say that Edith Wharton is not at her best in her late (1927) novel Twilight Sleep - though the novel, in which EW resorts to her familiar clan of wealthy and well-established families (adults mostly, not mucho children) in Manhatten. The novel is potentially dramatic and moving as much of it is about the breakup of families, the indifference of children, daughters in particular, the rituals of wealth, the omnipresence of mystics and healers most of them quacks - and yet - I can’t help but feel it’s a novel that’s lost its way; EW gives us an avalanche of characters at the outset, all relative to one another through birth and marriages and break-ups and it’s so damn hard to follow the tracks of any one of these characters - found myself repeatedly returning to first pp to see who is related to whom and how - EW is clearly at her best with a  strong female lead characters and a clearly derived and explained social and moral dilemma - Lily Bart, Madam Elenska, qv - whereas this novel feels sprawling and drained of emotion. It says something when I have to go back in writing this post to see what exactly was the title of this tome?!

The 2023 Swiss film Anatomy of a Fall is a powerful example of a murder case tried in a high-level Swiss (?) court - a woman, successful as a novelist and critic, unlike her husband, a failed novelist, and their 10 year old (?) son w/ blindness - this domestic drama quickly becomes a murder mystery to which we, like the jurors, have no insight or other info- the movie is long but every moment counts, and it’s surely a bit of a nod to the famous Anatomy of a Murder - we sympathize w/ the wife/mother, but she does some horrible things the we learn of and witness (thru flashback) over the course of the testimony - especially in a hugely dramatic argument about their marriage and careers and personalities - definitely in the Bergman lineage - a totally engrossing movie that gives viewers an inside look at the strategies of both prosecutor and defense atty and leaves you gasping for breath and still wondering 0 was justice served?

Murder in Boston is another fine docuseries from HBO (2023) that re-creates through original dox and interviews with various players - police, friends and friends of family et al. - a totally weird reported case of murder, a man calling 911 saying he and his wife had been shot by a Black assailant, wounding the caller and killing the (pregnant) wife, which set off a maelstrom of a search for the killers, despite the doubts about the man’s account of the events, which in its turn led to a through search of the Black community - which we can guess from the start w/ hindsight that this was a false account of the events. The total mistreatment of Black subjects who had nothing to do with the alleged attacks reverberated across the city, which in itself have been torn by racism and hatred following judicial order to end the segregation of Boston schools. The first two episodes are totally gripping and bring those years and those places to life; part 3 is a let less strong, as we learn the morbid facts right off and the rest of the episode largely consists of people, B and W,  talking about these events and their effect on city life, which suffered from the outcome of the events and the shameful behavior or the Boston PD - then - and now? 

American Fiction (2023), w&dir. Cord Jefferson, based on Perciva[ Everett’s novel Erasure, tells of a Black writer who’s published a # of literary-fiction novels that have sold poorly. He becomes particularly irate at a reading by a highly educated young author who reads from her best-selling novel, which is written in gutter slang - and the writer (Jeffrey Wright at Monk Ellison - and we get the two jokes)  so Monk goes off to discuss his future w/ his agent and they agree that readers want to hear new, authentic novels about and from the Black community. So Monk produces one such and feels sick and fake abut it - sohepblishesit under a pseudonym and his publicist builds story around the novel, which is that the fictitious author is notably a convict but is an escaped, wanted, dangerous criminal. Complications ensue - and high praise to the writer/director as the film is easy to follow, very funny, revelatory about trends in the publishing world (movies, too) and the ending is particularly apt and original, a venture into new cinema that you think nightfall flat on its face but against all odd works as a comedy and a disturbing critique. 

If you're looking for a show that haws just about everything - horror, rich boy v poor boy, college frosh friendships, satire of upper crust British life, who dunnit, trick photograph, gay straight - Saltburn is not the film for you, in fact it’s not for anyone, it’s a completely fabricated and senseless story line and a milieu in which like an of the characters, in fact we don’t believe in any of the characters, and maybe great things happen in the 2nd half of the film but I didn’t get there. 

Bradley Cooper’s Maestro (2023. w/ co-author Josh Singer) is a biopic galore re Leonard Bernstein as we follow him (Cooper) from start of a career w/ surprise last-minute call to sub for Bruno Walter @ Carnegie through many artistic triumphs interspersed with several bitter arguments with his wife played by Carey Mulligan. On the plus side: Some beautiful music, including a performance of Mahler in which Cooper goes wild from the podium, like an athlete on a course; on the down side, however is that we learn almost nothing about music, esp Bernstein’s music other than that LB was prolific and talented.The movie focuses mostly on his tempestuous relationship with his wife, in particular his homosexuality, which of course anyone and everyone who know him knew of his predilections. So, big deal - we never get to seer an of his relationships as more than a couple of storm kisses - so that by the end you feel you’ve watched 3 hours of what was in effect a music video. All the pluses are there: no arguments here about the quality of the score (well, it could have shown more of his diverse talent, Broadway as well as Carnegie/London et al.); the first=c;ass (ex. preformences by the leads) - but toward what end? I’d have rather seen a true bio - or even listened to a full score of any one piece. Moments are there, but they are never build toward anything - it’s biopic as highlight reel.

Christopher Nolan’s monumental film Oppenheimer (2023, based on a bio by bio by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwinl) is an excellent feature biopic - that its to say, no characters playing themself, no significant use of period (mostly 1940s) footage; the film is an excellent study of one of the most famous people of the 20th century, not so much today - most educated people know the name but not exactly that he did. In fact Opp assemble the all-star team of physicists to develop the Manhattan Project, an A-bomb at Los Alamos NM- in the hopes that the bomb would be able to rain destruction of such a huge population as to end the war (WWII0, which it did, and be so terrorizing as to end war all together (Hah!) - we see quite vividly the social and familial and diplomatic and esoteric forces that made ROP a hero and then, a monster (nailing him because of some communist sympathies back in the 20s - it was believed or at least asserted that one of this workers at Los A was a spy for the USSR, enabling that nation to develop an A bomb of its own - which served only to make any war even more dreadful (in recent years terrorism rather than nuclear weapons is the current fear). The film holds up really well despite its length thanks late to Cillian Murphy’ Oscar-likely JRO - though in the third act/hour my interest wobbled as I tried to keep in mind the names and personal vendettas of the members of the several panels that challenged (red scare!)and degraded JRO and what he had wrought. 

Another heavyweight + 3 hours film from heavyweight director Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon (2013, MS and Eric Roth, based on book  by David Grann) (tells the sorrowful tale of a corrupt businessman who plots and connives and lies and kills (by proxy) to steal from the tenant Native tribe of Osage who own the land by rights. The “King” (De Niro) is persuasive in his snake-like manner and in particular rakes advantage of his young cousin, DiCaprio, looking older than we’d expect despite which he’s completely credible as the victim of his uncles threats and lies. Based on real events - though not a documentary - the film is sad and painful to watch, despite its obvious spectacle qualities: beautiful photography (much of which reminded me of another film in the same wheat-farm land threatened by fire - which film was that ?? - and a haunting score by the late Robbie Robertson. Overall, I think shorter and tighter would be better as many of the scenes cover the same ground and perhaps as a result the film seems sprawling w/ little character development. Do any of the leads change or grow over the course of the film? I wonder if there had been any discussion about treating this material in a series, which would I think have allowed from more character development and conflict. Still, worth watching, esp for its unique take on frontier history.