A Change in the Wind

Clint Eastwood: It's halftime in America

A TV news station asks the horserace question about perhaps the biggest ad of the Superbowl this year: Clint Eastwood's. Which has to do with "Imported from Detroit" car company. Will this be as big a hit as was last year's adored Emimem commercial?

Short answer: Yes. As with the rapper, Eastwood risks his credibility as an artist by selling out in order to reach the widest possible audience -- but succeeds brilliantly.   

Forty-one years ago Eastwood was Dirty Harry, the character who first and most memorably in modern times raged against the government. To have the face of anti-government rage now appropriate the language of Ronald Reagan's most famous commercial and speak for Detroit and, implicitly, the government effort to save the city, the state, and the industry...well, that's huge. 

What really happened to the developer: Chekhov

The New Yorker's great theater critic, John Lahr, hasn't been writing enough. Then on Dec. 12 the magazine doesn't put the compressed grace of his review of Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" on line, and further goes on in the truncated "abstract" it does post to mangle Lahr's dramatic wisdom.

It's criminal! But no matter -- here's the gist.

Lahr begins with the obliviousness of the central character [played by Dianne Wiest, in the image]

When a character tells Madame Ranevskaya (the vulnerable and resolate Dianne Wiest), who is as sensationally blind to her predicament as she is to herself, that he saw "a very funny show at the theater last night,": she snaps..."People shouldn't be going to plays. They should be looking at themselves. Lives are so gray...gray, and you talk about things that don't matter."

This, of course, is a perfect description of the play we're watching. 

Which raises the question -- what are we watching? 

...as the actors enter Santo Losquano's elegant circular arena, where canvas is spread on the floor as in a circus ring, spotlights isolate a toy train, a hobbyhorse, and a minaiature table and chairs. Madame Ranevskaya and her entourage recall their former bliss on their soon-to-be-lost estate ("Happiness and I would wake up together," she says) while sitting on the miniature furniture, like giants in a child's universe. 

Chekhov began the play in a nursery for a reason: the adults before us are unwilling to take responsibility for the lives they are lamenting; they are infantile and unformed. "I feel young. As a child," Charlotta (Roberta Maxwell), the governess, says, adding, "Where I'm from, who I am -- not a clue." Cluelessness is the essence of Chekhov's comedy. 

What are these alleged grown-ups missing? Something does matter...the issue of the enormous natural estate that no longer can support these feckless nobles and their serfs must be faced. 

The cherry orchard must be saved -- or not. 

"The Cherry Orchard"...was Chekhov's last and most Expressionistic play. (Less than six months after its debut, in January 1904, he died, of tuberculosis, at the age of forty-four.) Chekhov insisted to the play's first director and star, Konstantin Stanislavsky, that "The Cherry Orchard" was "not a drama, but a comedy, in places even a farce." 

In other words, this will be in part about the question of the fate of the orchard -- which could easily turn melodramatic -- but it will also be about the larger question, which is us, our foolishness.

The playwright will examine us, like the doctor he was, "interrogate" us, as the academic phrase goes, and mock us at times. It's not just an environmental question, but an existential one.

What will be our relationship with our land, our property, and, ultimately, our planet?

The pushy but compassionate Lopakhin (John Turturro), who grew up on the estate as a peasant and is now himself a landowner, has a sound suggestion: in order to liquidate their debts and keep their property, which otherwise will be auctioned off, Madame Ranevskaya and Gayev must cut down their enormous cherry orchard, divide up the land, and tease it out in small parcels, on which summer cottages can be built. "It's all just so vulgar," Madame Ranevskaya says.

After days of coaxing the family to take action, Lopakhin implores Gayev, "Tell me what you want me to do!" "About what?" Gayev says. He and his sister cannot see what's right under their noses. 

Lopakhin, who represents the new economic order, on the other hand, recognizes an opportunity and, finally, buys the estate himself. (Turturro does a fine, high-stepping boot-tapping cakewalk around the stage in celebration of this social and financial coup.) 

What could go wrong for this winner? 

Lopakhin, however, is blinkered in matters of the heart. In a superb, devastating scene with Madame Ranveskaya's daughter Varya (the excellent Juliet Rylance), who wants to marry him, Lopakhin lets love pass him by. 

It's a moment out of John Cage. The most devastating line in the play is the one not spoken.

The nobility cannot see one "thing that matters;" the developer cannot see another. 

Christopher Hitchens: Why I hate Christmas

Well, at least the late, great Christopher Hitchens won't have to endure any more Christmas carols. 

The core objection, which I restate every December at about this time, is that for almost a whole month, the United States—a country constitutionally based on a separation between church and state—turns itself into the cultural and commercial equivalent of a one-party state.

As in such dismal banana republics, the dreary, sinister thing is that the official propaganda is inescapable. You go to a train station or an airport, and the image and the music of the Dear Leader are everywhere. You go to a more private place, such as a doctor's office or a store or a restaurant, and the identical tinny, maddening, repetitive ululations are to be heard. So, unless you are fortunate, are the same cheap and mass-produced images and pictures, from snowmen to cribs to reindeer. It becomes more than usually odious to switch on the radio and the television, because certain officially determined "themes" have been programmed into the system. Most objectionable of all, the fanatics force your children to observe the Dear Leader's birthday, and so (this being the especial hallmark of the totalitarian state) you cannot bar your own private door to the hectoring, incessant noise, but must have it literally brought home to you by your offspring. Time that is supposed to be devoted to education is devoted instead to the celebration of mythical events.

Jesus Christ as Dear Leader! Brilliance. 

Doubt that Hitchens would be happy at peace. Here's wishing him rest. 

Disaster lurks behind every moment: Suddenly Last Summer

Nate Sinnott, who comes from the world of stage production, and has not directed before at this level, wrote his master's thesis on Suddenly Last Summer. Currently he has on a brilliant production of this play by Tennessee Williams at California Lutheran's Black Box Theater.

It’s shocking, symbolic — unlike most of Williams’ plays — and masterfully brought to life in Sinnott’s “experimental” staging. He points out that Williams wrote that the stage design “could be as unrealistic as a lyric ballet,” and chooses to put us inside the asylum with the cast. The grimy floor of black and white tiles angles down a muddy slope toward us. Broken pieces of asphalt lie about and it feels as if we’re inside a madness. Stark black and white images of strange natural phenomena on high screens add to the ominous mood. Behind the bars around the back of the stage, a phalanx of attendants dressed all in white stares coldly at Violet and Catherine as they battle desperately with their words. Disaster lurks behind every moment.

My full review here. 

 

Tree of Life: Does God love us in an abusive way?

I provoke, but really, that is the question that burns beneath the beautiful surfaces of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.

I say this as an agnostic, as one who dislikes theology and theologians, but as one who (like many other critics) finds that this movie "touches me so much I can barely stand it."  

The story opens with a title card displaying a quote from God. Job, a devout believer, has lost everything -- his family, his fortune, and his health -- and asks, in so many words: Oh Lord, why me?

In reply, the God of the Old Testament demands to know what right Job has to question him in any way.

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" 

It's a harsh response, but from God's perspective, a truthful one. (And to underline the point, Malick in the film takes the time to tell us the story of Job again, this time in a sermon. He has a minister in Waco Texas in the 1950's reminds his parishioners, including the family in the movie, of how instead of peace and kindness, God can "send flies to wounds.") Of how cruel God can be. 

The human drama begins on a related note. The graceful, kind mother in the story, played by the ethereal Jessica Chastain, speaks in voice-over. As she speaks, we see her go from being a child, wrapped safely in the loving arms of her father, to being with the father of her sons:  

There are two ways through life. The way of nature, and the way of grace. You have to choose which one to follow.

Grace doesn't try to please itself. It accepts being slighted, being forgotten. It accepts insults and injuries.

Nature wants to please itself, and for others to please it too. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. When love is smiling through everything.  

As discussed in a previous post, it seems that this voice-over in the mother's voice is actually not what she is thinking, but what her oldest son Jack thinks that she believes. And yes, it does seem she believes in grace, and her husband believes in a Darwinian nature. 

This sounds overly complex, no doubt, but in the context of the story it makes perfect sense. Jack, the oldest son, takes after his father, a stern controlling man, and not their mother, who loves them unconditonally. Jack grows up to be successful, but as he thinks back on the character, masterfully portrayed by Brad Pitt, he recalls a man who demands that his sons call him "Father," not "dad."

He thinks of how his dad tormented him, and how he in turn tormented his younger brother, a sensitive boy who takes after his mother, who refuses to fight -- either his brother or his father -- and who dies at age 19, of unknown causes, for no good reason.

Jack wonders if God the Father is as cruel as his own father, and his own self. 

As the story develops, and as we see characters enveloped by trees countless times, we may well if nature is opposed to grace, or connected to it. (Jack's pain, and his mother's beliefs, may or may not be the director's.)

But there's little doubt but that this question of the cruelty of God is what Jack is wondering about, when he lights a candle in his grimly modern apartment in honor of his brother, and begins to think back on his father, his anger, his brother's death, and his own regrets.   

We see it in the empty expression of Sean Pean, who is Jack as a grown man, successful, unhappily married, and alone. We see him yearning for the kindness and grace of his mother, and for forgiveness for them all. And as he looks back, questioning himself as much as his father, we see the harsh treatment meted out by his father paralleled by the harsh fate that struck down his younger brother.

How did she bear it? he wonders, thinking about the pain his mother felt over the loss of his younger brother. And as he mulls this, her words (in voice-over, in the past) begin to change: How did I lose you? (Is she speaking to God or his younger brother? Or to both? It's unclear.)

Who are we to you? Where are you? she asks God, the being she once trusted. The being she once believed lived in the sky, and pointed to in the clouds, assuring her infant son of his presence.    

Universes of pixels have been spent on discussions of the twenty-minute genesis of life sequence in this film, which is as overwhelming as anything seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Many a complaint has been heard, that nothing in the drama of the not-especially-happy O'Brien family of Waco, Tex., in the l950's, deserves such grandeur. But that misses the point, the connection between the God the father to us all, and the father in this story, the father to Jack. 

How can we love a father who is so cruel to us, and who insists on the goodness of his cruelty? 

It's an enormous question, brilliantly dramatized (if left unanswered, in the end). 

But what sticks with me are the last words of the mother, of the way of grace: 

You can only be happy if you love. Unless you love, your life will flash by. 

   

The not-in-denial drinker: Dwight Macdonald

Asked once why he drank so much, critic and editor Dwight Macdonald replied:

"I'm an alcoholic, Goddammit it!" 

From a really terrific NYTimes Book Review piece on a new collection of Macdonald's acerbic criticism, Dwight Macdonald's War on Mediocrity, last Sunday. Few reviews are so entertaining, but then, few critics (or writers, for that matter) threw off as many mental sparks as Macdonald. 

From Jack Shafer, formerly of Slate. 

The problem with America: Too much cake

Vanity Fair puts the entire California chapter of Michael Lewis's new book, Boomerang, on the Web, and boy is it good. Lewis really is all that. Long but highly recommended. Here's the thinky part:

The road out of Vallejo passes directly through the office of Dr. Peter Whybrow, a British neuroscientist at U.C.L.A. with a theory about American life. He thinks the dysfunction in America’s society is a by-product of America’s success. In academic papers and a popular book, American Mania, Whybrow argues, in effect, that human beings are neurologically ill-designed to be modern Americans. The human brain evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in an environment defined by scarcity. It was not designed, at least originally, for an environment of extreme abundance. “Human beings are wandering around with brains that are fabulously limited,” he says cheerfully. “We’ve got the core of the average lizard.” Wrapped around this reptilian core, he explains, is a mammalian layer (associated with maternal concern and social interaction), and around that is wrapped a third layer, which enables feats of memory and the capacity for abstract thought. “The only problem,” he says, “is our passions are still driven by the lizard core. We are set up to acquire as much as we can of things we perceive as scarce, particularly sex, safety, and food.”

Even a person on a diet who sensibly avoids coming face-to-face with a piece of chocolate cake will find it hard to control himself if the chocolate cake somehow finds him. Every pastry chef in America understands this, and now neuroscience does, too. “When faced with abundance, the brain’s ancient reward pathways are difficult to suppress,” says Whybrow. “In that moment the value of eating the chocolate cake exceeds the value of the diet. We cannot think down the road when we are faced with the chocolate cake.”

The richest society the world has ever seen has grown rich by devising better and better ways to give people what they want. The effect on the brain of lots of instant gratification is something like the effect on the right hand of cutting off the left: the more the lizard core is used the more dominant it becomes. “What we’re doing is minimizing the use of the part of the brain that lizards don’t have,” says Whybrow. “We’ve created physiological dysfunction. We have lost the ability to self-regulate, at all levels of the society. The $5 million you get paid at Goldman Sachs if you do whatever they ask you to do—that is the chocolate cake upgraded.”

Years ago Sam Shepherd wrote a play -- Angel City -- about living and working in Hollywood, in which a producer turns green, slimy, and eventually into a lizard. The writer saw further than he knew, perhaps.

Lewis' story also includes an enthralling encounter with the fearless-unto-the-point-of-recklessness Arnold Schwarzenegger...really worth a look. 

The usefulness of forgetting: Tennessee Williams

 

"A bad memory is a great convenience." 

 

Tennessee Williams, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, 1950

 

The quote is from the nouvella. Here's the poster from the first movie made of this story. 

 

[My god, what a cast! Lotte Lenya?!? Who was nominated for Best Supporting for the role? I have to see this picture.] 

The Holy Family: Tennessee Williams on Van Gogh

As mentioned in an earlier post, while at the University of Iowa's dramatic writing program, Tennessee Williams, then a complete unknown, set out to write a play about Vincent Van Gogh.

He didn't get past a few scenes, but the idea still fascinates. 

In a letter to a friend William Holland, dated 11/18/1937, he wrote:

The Van Gogh trouble is that there is too much dramatic material. it is hard to make a selection. Van Gogh was a great social thinker and artist -- he had tremendous love for humanity and believed in the community of artists -- he painted common people at work and tried to establish an art colony in southern France -- but he was constantly misunderstood and persecuted -- crowds gathered outside his window, shouting "Fou-roux" -- "the red-headed madman" -- that suggests a main theme -- a man with a great love for humanity whom humanity rejected -- he formed many disappointing relationships -- his brother Theo was his only supporter -- his story would be the story of an artist's relations to society -- not one artist but all. 

From Selected Letters, pp116

Pictures of Williams at this time in his life are rare: here's a yearbook picture from 1936.  

 

 

 

Brad Pitt to win Best Actor

Reviewing Moneyball for The New Yorker, David Denby declares that Brad Pitt should win Best Actor -- for The Tree of Life. He's right about that, and he describes Pitt's performance well: 

...in Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life,” in which he plays a father who takes out his disappointments on his sons, his anger is self-wounding and tragic. It’s a performance that deserves an Academy Award.

But really it's an oblique nod to a more likely reality: Pitt will win an Oscar this year, but for the bigger picture, Moneyball, which gives him the star treatment, but doesn't challenge the audience.

Over at the fascinating Grantland site, Mark Harris runs the numbers, so to speak, and disagrees: 

Aside from all the bad metrics, Oscar voters may simply feel no particular need to nominate an actor as successful as Brad Pitt for playing a character who looks like Brad Pitt and sounds like Brad Pitt. It may be unfair that they prefer to reward the new, the old, the unfamiliar, or the ostentatiously transformative over the swing, confidence, and ease of a star in his prime, but it’s been that way since the era of Cary Grant — who, incidentally, ended his 35-year career in Hollywood with the exact number of nominations Pitt has now: Two.

Yeah, but back in Cary Grant's day, we had lots of movie stars. Now we're down to a bare few.

The cast of Oceans Eleven, pretty much.