Thursday, September 6, 2018

Downsizing (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

2 hrs & 15 min., color, 2017

He stands in front of a slab for measuring human height. He is looking upward from Whit Ithe ground level, with something of a wondrous expression on his face, not sure he wants to read the figure above his head but at the same time kind of glassy-eyed and frightened. It is as if he has been overpowered by what he sees. The measurement of 5 (feet? inches?, who knows for sure!) just above his shoulder does not seem to impress him, nor the 4 behind his back. Something above his head and outside our line of vision, on the other hand, has transfixed him. There is a helpless look on the face, not desperate, not demented, just one of silent surrender. It is as if he is bound to the wall against which he is leaning, though there is no rope anywhere in sight.

What I have just described is the still animation that accompanies the menu for subtitling at the very start of a most unusual science fiction movie. What makes it unusual is the abrupt shift in mood that occurs during the course of the film. When my wife and I set our sights on seeing it, reading that it had to do with people shrinking themselves to make life more affordable and the earth more generally inhabitable, we began anticipating a fun outing, people playing with their destinies, something in the romantic comedy mode, something of the “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” variety. But those expectations were soon enough dashed. Husband and wife Paul and Aubrey (Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig) presumably agree to the change, but the wife backs out – after the hubby has undergone the surgical and cosmetic transformation, during which sequence we discover that the procedure is (gulp!) irreversible. So much for lighthearted fluff! Hubby finds himself stranded in a miniature world, where he has to make a new life for himself. Now how is that for a domestic crisis? Aubrey is suddenly gone from the picture altogether. 

Let me urge those who may be interested in seeing “Downsizing” not to expect anything funny in the plot development. This is serious science fiction, and the material becomes increasingly more so as the plot moves forward. In this fictional world a Norwegian scientist stumbles upon the formula for making shrinkage possible and over time a sizable cult has latched onto the device and made the shift. It all ultimately appeals to those who crave a life without work and without financial worries. But there is a huge catch to the promise of improved living. By the very end of the movie you will find yourself in nothing less than the bowels of an apocalypse. The option to shrink is almost forgotten, and we are face to face with an estimate of humanity at its worst.

For those who thrive on controversy the movie may have some value. I know I feasted a while on the central idea of reducing the human carbon print from the world as we know it, a proposed solution to global warming, but by the end that whole notion has been dealt a fatal blow. The only refreshing presence in the story is that of a Vietnamese servant girl named Ngoc Lu (Hong Chau), a victim of unimaginable persecution, who has an almost fantastic transforming impact upon Paul’s life. She is by far the most stirring and exciting individual you will meet. She just may make the trip worthwhile for many. 

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:enspiritus.blogspot.com. To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

All the Money in the World (Movie Review by Bob Racine)


All the Money in the World (Movie Review by Bob Racine)       
2 hrs & 12 Min, color, 2017

If one is able to count one’s money, that is a clear sign that that person is not a billionaire.  Put another way, wealth that can be tabulated is wealth that is always in danger of depletion.  So claims one of the greediest, stingiest barons of the buck that ever stepped onto a movie theater screen, if the details of this docudrama are accurate.  He is portrayed by Christopher Plummer; the name he is given is J. Paul Getty, the wealthiest individual as of 1973 according to all known records at the time.  He was an oil rich magnate. As portrayed he is the kind of crotchety fellow we movie goers have often guiltily enjoyed watching and listening to, while we wait for his comeuppance to materialize.

The screenplay is concerned with the kidnapping of one of his grandsons by a Mafia-like organization in Italy.  The kid is held for ransom, which Getty is unwilling to pay, lest he encourage other kidnappings of his scattered relatives.  At least that is the excuse he offers for his attitude of stubborn resistance.  What actually lurks in his mind is not given full disclosure until late in the film.  He refuses to deal with the kidnappers, while behind their back he hires an investigator (Mark Wahlberg) to track down where the kid is being held and work his wiles on rescuing him. 

Actually Plummer is a supporting player in this drama.  The lead is Michelle Williams in the role of the kid’s devoted mother, Getty’s daughter-in-law, who tries every devious way she can to persuade the man to pay the ransom and obtain the kid’s release.  The struggle is essentially hers, and Williams’ portrayal, while not seismic in its style of delivery, is nevertheless electrifying.  What she does with non-verbal cues and facial expressions is remarkable. She is every threatened, vulnerable, seemingly powerless person who has ever been caught on the horns of a dilemma involving the threatened life of a loved one and her own sense of human decency.  And she really makes us identify with her predicament.  How do you deal with criminal minds linked to avarice and murderous intention and keep your own sense of moral balance? 

The movie goes from quite good to better and finally to powerfully suspenseful without holding anything back.  The closing moments deliver quite a dramatic payoff.  The direction is by the renowned Ridley Scott, the screenplay by David Scarpa from a book by John Pearson.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

Thursday, August 9, 2018

Coco (Movie Review by Bob Racine)


2017, 1 hr. & 45 min., color and animation

This animated gem has introduced me, and I am sure thousands of other viewers, to a Mexican holiday we have never previously heard of.  It is called Dia de los Muertos, roughly translated Day of the Dead.  That sounds like something threatening.  Maybe a day when the dead come back in ghostly form to haunt us!  Maybe they invade our lives and spread sickness or the germs of death!  Maybe they inflict pain on us and inhabit our bodies, driving us crazy or at least attempting to!  No graves are opened, but perhaps the dead circulate among us in another and invisible form! 

Halloween, which Dia de los Muertos is not, is regarded in some tribal societies as the day when the dead speak to the living.  In the 2002 film “In America”, which I regard as one of my very favorites and have not ceased to adore, the African character Mateo, a widower afflicted with AIDS with only months to live, explains to the two girls who come trick-or-treating at his door what it means for his people.  How do the dead speak to his people?  Through the villagers dancing!  The dance movements speak for them. They do not speak pleasant words; they complain that they are not getting enough attention from the living.  You don’t feed me! I feel neglected!  When one of the girls asks if they are ever happy, he tells them that when all is well, they are not heard from. 

In Mexican tradition the tone and spirit of the Day of the Dead is much more joyous.  The families of the departed bring out and display everything that the dead during their lifetimes valued and loved – objects, keepsakes, old garments, photos, etc.  The house is dressed up in the refinery of the ancestors to entice them to come by.  The dead speak through the display and vice versa. Dia de los Muertos is a celebratory event.  It does not coincide with our Halloween; it is a hallowed time unto itself. 

The main character is a twelve-year-old boy named Miguel, who has an instinct for music, one he thinks he has received from his great great grandfather who has become a world-renowned guitarist and singer by the name of Ernesto del a Cruz, a man whose musical career was cut short by a seemingly freak accident that cost him his life.  Miguel worships the memory of Cruz and yearns to obtain a guitar of his own to follow in the great musician’s footsteps.  But one humungous obstacle stands in his way: music has come to be forbidden in his household by his elders.  It seems Cruz deserted his wife and children all those generations back, believing that he had to play for the world, not just for members of his immediate family; he left and never returned, so all music and all references to music have been banished from the home. 

In rebellious anger Miguel runs away and by some metaphysical accident lands in the Realm of the Dead. The adventures he has there are quite phenomenal and quite eye opening.  This being a fantasy, the film enlarges our imaginations and makes the place a staggeringly beautiful, jaw-dropping extravaganza.  If such a place actually existed and was known to the Living, I surmise that many would prefer to reside there; we would have an epidemic of suicides.  But no one among the Living knows about it – except now Miguel of course, and he soon yearns to be able to return to his people.  According to the laws of this make believe universe, one’s continued existence in any form depends upon the faithfulness of living family members in their strict observance of Dia de los Muertos.  Those gone and forgotten vaporize slowly from the scene.             

Soon Miguel meets, befriends and is befriended by a man threatened with vaporization named Hector.  I should say he meets the likeness of a man – a skeletal likeness to be exact.  You see, every inhabitant of this Realm of the Dead is in skeletal form!  And never has bone and marrow caricature been more amusing and fascinating to watch than the gangling, knock-need, loose jointed swarm we meet in this crazy paradise. What a treat they are, so much so that you may not want to part company with them at the end of the film.

Miguel enlists Hector’s help in making contact with Cruz, who stays most of the time out of sight, making an appearance only when he is in concert; it seems Cruz’s reputation as a gifted singer/guitarist has followed him right into the grave and beyond; a massive audience gathers to attend his concerts, an audience of skeletons that is.  Cruz himself is one.  Contact with the famous man is made and when Cruz learns that Miguel is an aspiring singer, he suddenly takes a keen interest in the boy.

Sounds promising for Miguel, does it not?  But we and the boy are in for a shock.  Cruz has a secret that he has kept for many years and the disclosure of it puts Miguel and Hector in great peril.  Hector also has a secret but one he is reticent to share with anyone – at first

I will not reveal any more for the sake of those who have not seen the film.  Believe me, the discovery of these secrets is worth the wait!  The story really gets into high gear once we learn.  Cliff hanging thrills, fanciful flights, scampering four-legged animals, a giant air-born serpent all play a major role in getting Miguel home safely. And there are heart pounding and heart melting scenes that you are likely to treasure amidst all the folklore you have ever accumulated in the course of your lives, whatever your age.

Now who is Coco?  She is a very aged, senile, hunched over woman who never moves from her chair.  She is Miguel’s great grandmother, who does not recognize people so very well anymore, with her mind fading.  The word dementia is never spoken in the dialogue, nor does it have to be.  It turns out, however, that Miguel has a deep need that only she can fill.  What a climactic scene the two of them have!  Basic to the story is the teaching that family is top priority, both in this world and the next.  Nothing comes before it. 

The movie was produced by Disney/Pixar, under the supervision of Daria K. Anderson, directed by Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina, with script by Molina, Matthew Aldrich and Jason Katz, and brilliant camera work by Matt Aspbury and lighting by Danielle Feinberg.  Steve Bloom is responsible for the first rate editing.  The music, vocal and otherwise, was composed by Michael Giacchino, who won the Oscar for Best Song, entitled “Remember Me”. Of course the film also won Best Animated Feature.  The voice of Miguel was provided by child actor Anthony Gonzalez, that of Hector by Gael Garcia Bernal and that of Cruz by Benjamin Bratt. 

“Coco” is a richly textured masterpiece that I have seen three times and hope to again.  It has set new box office records, grossing over 950 million dollars worldwide, a stunning achievement for the first animated movie ever to feature an entirely Mexican cast of characters; not a single non-Hispanic individual ever shows up.  All who cherish family movies and sensitive ones about growth and personal discovery should hop on this and take it to heart.


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

Monday, July 23, 2018

I, Tonya (Movie Review by Bob Racine)


2 hrs, color, 2017



“Everyone has their own truth.”  Such is the declaration of the accomplished figure skater Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) as she ponders all that she has lost in the way of prestige and respect after getting caught in the scandal that ruined her professionally. We are somewhere in the middle of the 1990s, after the worst has happened.  She is talking to a nameless camera operator but her words are meant for the millions of us who are giving heed to this very thorough bio-drama that tracks her life from age 4 to age 23, when the axe fell on her.  This flimsy self-defense before the camera will not satisfy those like myself, who regard her as a glory-seeking athlete in her younger days who never learned what true self-respect requires of a headliner.  The film asks for some of the audience’s sympathy while not soft soaping her own contribution to the infamous incident that became international news.  

How many of us remember the incident?  In 1994 some misguided friends of hers, most notably her husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), thought they would take matters into their own hands to insure that champion skater Nancy Kerrigan would not be an obstacle to Tonya’s winning top honors in the 1994 Olympic trials.  They arranged for a paid hit man to attack Kerrigan, smashing her knees and disabling her from participation.  The subsequent investigation led through various phases until Harding herself was finally implicated.  Not that she planned the attack or approved of it but that she knew her husband was up to something nefarious and was very slow in reporting the same to the FBI.    

Hats off to the screen writers who took full cognizance of Tonya’s poor, redneck background and her bitter childhood under the supervision of an extremely abusive mother (Allison Janney)!  Janney very much deserves the Oscar for Supporting Actress that she won for the performance. She is a study in and of herself.  We have all been exposed to images of the fanatical stage mother, of which Ethel Merman’s character in “Gypsy” is an unforgettable example.  But this mother is something far beyond anything that even begins to feel like a cliché.  She is mean and nasty and believes that the way to “love” is through intimidation and cutting the ground out from under her daughter.  Nothing Tonya can do is able to elicit any kind or degree of praise or encouragement or positive reaction from the woman.  “You skate like a graceless bull dyke.”  Can you imagine a more deflating remark a mother could make to a young woman under her tutelage?  And the remark follows some performing we the audience see that to any ordinary eye looks to be quite smooth and professional.  Nothing Tonya ever does is good enough for this harridan.  How does anyone get it into the head that you build up by tearing down?  But skating on the ice is all from an early age that the girl has known, something that at least brings her public notice and acclaim, so she keeps on with it.  The mother even pays a young man to heckle her daughter before she descends upon the ice; fortunately that is the moment when she becomes the first skater ever to achieve a triple axel.  We are left wondering whether or not the mother was hoping to incite her to this success by the bribery.  

Sebastian Stan is magnificent too as the husband who over time also becomes abusive, though he starts off seemingly quite admiring of her and her appearance.  But one frustration leads to another and the marriage starts to implode.  What at first is admiration somehow segues into a need to control, hence the claim that his felonious behavior is a way of “protecting” her.  At one very insightful point Tonya admits that receiving abuse is the only way she has ever elicited love or anything like it, so why not marry an abuser?  It is a quite well tread tale, in numerous films, but the stars are so good and the writing so superb that they make an old story feel remarkably new.

Though I have reservations about Tonya’s motivations and her sense of personal propriety, I have to admit that the scene in the courtroom when sentence is pronounced barring her for life from any further participation in professional skating, among other penalties – fines, community service, etc. – is quite distressing and heartbreaking to watch.  Her initial sentence is eighteen months in prison, with these other things offered as an alternative on suspension of the sentence. She pleads that the major penalty of prison be imposed and that later she be allowed to continue on with her skating career.  She asks to be jailed; she is willing to endure that and she makes the plea backed up by thousands who still believe in her and want to see her continue.  She is faced with a tremendous void without skating, the one thing that has given her ragged life meaning and purpose.  Robbie in tears and simulated shock makes the moment truly penetrating.  Frankly I thought it was a fair offer.  After all, she is not a second rate performer; she has accomplished great feats in the ring.  But the judge refuses.

Once again I have to take issue in a matter of movie classification.  It seems that in recent years it has gotten easier for one to be designated a comedy.  A Google biography of Harding calls “I, Tonya” a black comedy.  But if this is black humor, then so is the legend of Joseph McCarthy.  We cannot seize upon scattered laughs in the course of the footage or in the words of a rabble rouser and call the whole production an entertainment built upon the absurd. The absurd does not comprise the basis for the screenplay of “I, Tonya”. I had the same reaction to the release of “Get Out”, also designated a comedy, which I recently reviewed.  I considered it and still do a horror picture; it takes us on a walk through a nasty series of surreal encounters in which life and possible death are juggled.  It takes us far beyond what we could call the anticipation of bizarre captivity.  It throws the hero into the grip of sinister forces bent upon his total corruption and destruction. What is to laugh at in that predicament?  In “I, Tonya” the things that happen are based upon fact and deal in factual developments.  The characters are disturbingly plausible.  A serious issue of justice and morality is treated in deeply dramatic terms.  For me this biopic is drama.

Since it is unlikely that we will ever see a sequel to it, it seems fitting for me 
to fill you folks in on some of what has transpired in Harding’s life since that sentence was handed down to her.  For one thing she has divorced Jeff, with whom she no longer keeps company.  The same is true of her and her still living mother, and she has remarried twice since. Interestingly enough she has not given up on skating.  She still performs for select audiences and has expressed the desire to have her own skating TV show for a nationwide airing.  Now at age 47 she is still capable of doing a triple axel and remains the only skater who has ever achieved it.  Actually the first “sport” in which she took part after her dismissal was women’s boxing, securing a few unremarkable victories and suffering a few just as unremarkable defeats.  I am pleased to say that she did not stay in that arena for very long. 

She won herself a place in the cast of Dancing with the Stars, where she has thrived so much better.  She has made many TV guest star appearances.  And she claims she has found at last the happiness that eluded her before.  Her second marriage lasted only a year, but her third one has been a seeming success; by it she became the proud mother of a son in February 2011.  Whether any further offspring has emerged over these past seven years, I cannot say for lack of up-to-date information.

I think it is safe enough to assume that Harding has managed, since her great loss, to maintain respectability and we can only hope a measure of transformation as well.  At least we have heard no reports or rumors about alcohol or drug addiction.  She has not thus far landed in any ditch.    


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.coTo know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Murder on the Orient Express (Movie Review by Bob Racine)


1 hr & 54 min, color, 2017

                              

After the Bible and Shakespeare, who is responsible for the third largest publishing output in all of human history?  This author has given us a voluminous quantity of novels, plays, essays, poems and short stories that it would take years for any modern chronicler to even approach, let alone exceed.  It would require a museum to house a copy of every extant composition, and perhaps an encyclopedia to list all the titles.  Am I talking about a historian?  a scientist?  a scholar?  One would think it would be somebody of great versatility, a super intellect, or at least somebody occupying a niche in a class or category that the person shares with no one else.  One of a kind maybe? 

                              

Guess again!

                              

The individual who has achieved this feat has been with us until fairly recently; death occurred in 1976.  And who ever said that the male of the species has dominated the writing domain, since the Bard’s demise?  Yes, I am speaking of a woman, someone celebrated for as long as there has been breath in most of the bodies including my own now living on the earth. 

                              

Agatha Christie may not be the most prolific writer of renown; she has not set any standards of brilliance or blazed any new trails.  She has not raised any bar of quality to which others have been compelled to adhere.  She has just churned them out and churned them out, ever since she came into public notice, and that was before she even reached the age of twenty.  The first specialty of authorship that probably comes to most of our minds when her name is mentioned is the mystery story.  (I myself had the privilege of appearing in a performance of one of her who-done-its many years ago, a play derived from a work of hers entitled “And Then There Were None”, better known in theatrical circles as “Ten Little Indians”.)   

                              

This woman is not a shoddy writer, and she has always had the knack of weaving a clever plot, a tireless creator of suspense who can be relied upon to entertain and to stretch the viewer’s or the reader’s expectations, and “Murder on the Orient Express”, first issued in novel form in 1934 and previously adapted to the screen in 1974, is no exception. The time setting is the 1930s and in movie terms the period scenery takes almost full command of what the eye beholds.

                              

The leading character is someone who has appeared in numerous works of hers – a Belgian detective by the name of Hercule Poirot, played here quite colorfully and at times passionately by Kenneth Branagh (who also directed the film).  Poirot was introduced very early in Christie's oeuvre as a former police investigator retired to private life and preferring a detective business of his own.  The man is distinguished in this film by a very long handlebar mustache that curls most conspicuously on both ends and a thick almost French sounding accent to go with it.  In the opening sequence he is waiting by the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem to board a ferry that is to take him to Istanbul where the famous Orient Express awaits him.  But before his departure he is prevailed upon to identify the thief who has just lifted precious stones out of the Temple and hidden them.  He not only fingers the thief but uncovers the stones as well.  In this introduction we are given a taste of his deductive technique, not so very different from that of Sherlock Holmes. 

                              

Everybody seems to know him and admire him, even though he is reticent to take on any more cases until he has had time to enjoy an extended vacation.  But of course we know that that vacation will have to be postponed, after a murder during the wee hours aboard the Express interrupts his plans and seemingly those of all the varied passengers on board as well.  The murdered person is a man traveling under an assumed name (played by Johnny Depp) but identified by Poirot as the suspected kidnapper and murderer of a child back in the States.

                              

A rather sizeable ensemble cast of players comes under suspicion as Poirot is compelled to conduct what turns out to be a very confounding investigation.  Space would not permit me to list all of them, but aside from Branagh some of the other major ones who drive the plot are Michelle Pfeiffer, Penelope Cruz, Daisy Ridley, Josh Gad, Willem Dafoe, Derek Jacobi and Leslie Odom. In fact I find it quite hard to discuss fine details, especially vital facts about the characters, without giving away so much and spoiling suspense, so I choose to confine myself to speaking about Poirot, the ambience of the production and about what influenced Christie to compose this particular tale.

                              

It seems that divine intervention plays its part when a snow drift blocks the rails and barricades everyone on board.  What we then have is one of those secluded confrontations wherein the suspects are several and when escape to the outside world is impossible.  In “And Then There Were None” it is an island to which some famous individual has invited an assortment of people, just about all of whom die off before the real murderous instigator of the party is unmasked.

                              

Poirot is totally devoted to a black/white universe.  “There is good on one side and evil on the other with nothing in-between”.  Such is the code by which he has always lived and done his work.  But on this fateful journey across most of the Eurasian countryside he runs into a complex situation that calls his code into serious question. He is forced to ask himself if society’s system of justice is really as neat as he has always supposed it to be.  This, after he has to face a circumstance unlike any he has ever had to confront before.

                              

Poirot is drawn in this episode more vulnerable and fragile than Christie was accustomed to making him.  He finds that he cannot quite make sense of all the clues and contradictions the case turns up.  He also reveals something about his heart of hearts in his quiet reflective conversations with a beloved woman in his past, who I assume is a departed wife.  Thoughts of her bring tears to his eyes, when he is alone.  He confesses to her that for once in his long career he is stumped.

                              

“Murder on the Orient Express” is fiction, but in this case Christie was certainly influenced by fact.  Many of you I am sure have become familiar with the Lindbergh kidnapping/murder case that occurred in the early 1930s in New Jersey.   It was called the Crime of the 20th Century.  The 20-month old son of Aviator Charles A. Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the night of March 1, 1932 was lifted out of his crib and never seen alive again.  Many weeks later his body was found, victim of a bludgeoning, not very far from the Lindbergh residence.  The case dragged on for three years before a German immigrant named Hauptmann was arrested, tried and executed for the crime. The case was dominating the American newspapers at the time Christie’s book was published, though Hauptmann’s execution had not yet taken place.  There was much controversy surrounding the case’s outcome.  Many prominent people had doubts about the German man’s guilt, one to which he never admitted.  Some of the evidence used to convict him was thought to be ambiguous.  The handwriting of the ransom note had some characteristics in common with the man’s recorded samplings, but it was never precisely identified as his.  Even Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady at the time of execution, weighed in with her doubts, so much so that she strongly urged the New Jersey governor to postpone the execution until further investigation and study had been made, but to no avail.  Many to this day think perhaps it was a rush to judgment.    

                              

In the opening of the 1974 movie version, newspaper clippings spell out the details of the 1930s crime, though fictional names were used, some of the time element has been altered and additional tragedies in the wake of the crime have been added.  There are those who think they see some parallel between some of the characters in the thriller and people known to be close to the Lindberghs.  I will say no more on that subject for the benefit of those unfamiliar with how Christie resolves the story’s tension.  Any who are curious enough to do so after seeing it can make their own study of the official record and draw their own conclusions.

                              

Whatever the conclusions about the factual case and its bearing upon the Christie yarn, we have to admit that the story reminds us in elaborate form that a homicide never victimizes only one single person.  The cruel wanton killing of one victim does permanent damage to a circle of decent people, those related to and personally acquainted with the deceased.  Lives of the survivors suffer from the injustice, not just once but in a never ending spiral of recollection and angry resentment and hatefulness.  Those left behind bear the indignity.  Poirot, who is in the habit of enjoying the work of catching criminals, ones in whose fate he is not accustomed to having any personal investment, seems here to get caught in a web of emotional involvement and has to surrender a large measure of control over his usual habit of playing the judge with the last word.  He has to make a decision that leaves everyone on the train and in the audience in the grip of controversy.  After the last fadeout, you may be left wondering if in some strange way you have been compromised.    

                              



To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.


Wednesday, May 16, 2018

The Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle Melton (Book Review by Bob Racine)


Published by Thorndike Press, 2016

The autobiography or, as it is sometimes called the memoir, is a category of writing I usually approach with some caution.  I have found it to be overall the least dependable of source information pertaining to its subject.  Of necessity we get a biased view of developments.  I have been disappointed several times by the author being too close to the subject or by his or her interest in clearing the name, justifying actions once taken that have become suspect on the part of the public being served.  One can often sense that these writers are only telling us what they want us to know.  They do not always “come clean”; issues of a questionable ethical or moral character get skirted.  Sometimes it is not difficult at all to sense when truth is being compromised. 

But, not wishing to be misunderstood, let me say that I have read some that were quite convincing and some even inspiring.  And there are some that seem to transcend the subject and open a vast territory for inquiry and reflection.  Such a one is this powerful tome by an award-winning author named Glennon Doyle Melton.  It is the account of a married woman’s struggle to bring order out of the emotional chaos caused by her husband Craig’s betrayal. 

There are roughly four types of autobiography.  One is what I call the straight chronology comprehensive.  This is the kind in which the author presumes to “tell all”, to cover the whole story of her or his existence, usually composed sometime very late in the person’s life.  The chapters follow in chronological order; the book is usually quite long.  

We have as well the straight chronology limited.  The autobiographer is not trying to cover the whole career, to be exhaustive.  Only events within a restricted period of time are shared, but they are significant enough that they give a well-rounded picture of the person, for good or ill or suspect.   

Then there are memoirs that are revealing about the one writing, but also revolve around someone else in the experience of the author, some person or group of people.  “Tuesdays with Morrie”, which I have reviewed as a movie, having also read the book, is a splendid example.  Or those who spend months embedded with a unit of the military, those researching the lives of people struggling with disease or examining life in a slum or the state of things in nursing homes often come forth with what proves to be eye-opening revelations not just about the area of inquiry but about themselves.  We share the reporter’s experience of a thing and when we finish we feel as if we have stored away a lot about the reporter.

And lastly there is the autobiography that is structured more like a work of fiction or a novel.  The story is told in the first person, but it is also depicted in the present tense.  Each happening is portrayed as if it is taking place while you read.  And that is what we have in “The Love Warrior”.  Take the  opening as an example.  The author is getting married:

“It’s almost time.  My father and I stand at the edge of a long white carpet, laid just this morning over the freshly cut grass. Craig’s childhood backyard is transformed by the start of fall and the promise this day holds.  My shoulders are bare and I feel a chill, so I lift my face toward the sun.  I squint and the sun, leaves and sky melt together into a kaleidoscope of blue, green and orange.  The leaves, my soon-to-be husband, our families sitting upright in their dressiest clothes, and I – we are all turning into something else.”

And on and on she goes for THE ENTIRE BOOK, never once jumping into a past tense.  If you did not know anything about the book you are reading, just hearing this very short excerpt, you would think you are starting in on a crisp novel or short story.  All at once we are far removed from an academic format.  She is not straining to remember her wedding day, not fishing for memories, not setting down any documented account of the place and time.  She is reliving it by making it immediate, irresistible, and just as vivid and authentic.  This opening passage appeals to the senses, to esthetics, with emotional range one is not likely to find in an ordinary recount.  I suppose others have been composed in this fashion, but never was there one as rich as this beauty.

I must confess that it is a temptation for me to not write a review; I would love, if it were possible, to just quote you the entire text.  Each and every tidbit of it I find just as captivating.  It would lend itself to monologues, to dramatic recitations. I cannot think of a single written confessional coming from someone wrestling with addiction that could match the thoroughness and the vividness in which Glennon lays it out – the steps taken toward her self-abuse in her pre-marriage life – the rationalizations, the impulses that drive someone with so much self-doubt to take the plunges, one after another – bulimia, drink, drug use.  She demonstrates how one can grow up with many friends and acquaintances, including a very loving sister and two reasonably faithful and caring parents but still feel not at home in her own body and experience intense loneliness, the kind that makes all incidents seem strange and that makes her surroundings seem unreal. 

She never takes the easy way out by shifting into overview or simple summary.  Everything that happens, even her wedding night and the daily life of her marriage, is portrayed in minute detail, and yet it never becomes tedious.  There is a well sustained sense of what happens next.  It is as if she is actually reliving things, internally as well as externally, and giving personal report of what takes place as it transpires.

She comes to realize that she has had a representative of herself, a false self that hides her real one.  How she discovers her real honest self is through communication on Facebook, following the marital crisis.  Not knowing who if anyone is reading, she feels a sense of liberation from having to look someone else in the face.  “That’s not my representative.  That’s the real me.  I want to learn more about me, so I keep writing.  My fingers are flying now, pounding against the keyboard like they’ve been waiting a lifetime to be freed.  They type juicy, dangerous, desperate sentences about marriage and motherhood and sex and life – it all pours out fast and furious, like the real me is gasping for air, like she’s trying to get it all out at once in case she’s never allowed to surface again.”

Her realization, after discovering her husband’s years-long infidelity and his addiction to pornography, has to do with what women have come to mean for many men.  She sees that she has been part of “a system that agrees that women are for being implanted and teased and painted and then arranged and dominated and filmed and sold and laughed at. . .sex is something men do to women.”

But this book is not Melton’s debut by any means.  She came to be a celebrated author back in 2014 with the publication of “Carry On, Warrior”, another book full of exciting anecdotes about her private life.  In that work also she covers a lot of ground, though she is more conventional in format and all that she depicts predates “The Love Warrior”.  In that work she does not tell a continuing story.  Each chapter is of the nature of a short essay on a given topic that relates to her life with her family and her marriage.  I have read both books, and for pure spiritual nurture I am ever so fond of both.  But I find “The Love Warrior” much more of a challenge and full of sustained energy.  It has a tension that lays claim to points and predicaments in my own experience.  It is dramatically focused.  A quite forceful and gripping memoir! 

“Carry On, Warrior” is like a Valentine with many streamers attached, very charming.  “The Love Warrior” is more explosive, more concerned with a long but successful recovery from an initial shock.  There is genuine warfare in it, inside Glennon’s body and mind and soul.  She digs deeper into herself.   

Have any of us over fifty ever taken stock and noticed that the process of self-discovery begun at an early age is still going on?  Hear it in her own words:

“I’d looked around and decided that adulthood meant taking on roles.  Adults became, became. . .  I became a wife and then a mother and a church lady and a career woman.  As I took on these roles, I kept waiting for that day when I could stop acting like a grownup because I’d finally be one.  But that day never came. My roles hung on the outside of me like costumes. . .I wake up each morning paralyzed, disoriented, stripped, naked, exposed.  Wondering, Who am I? Who was I before I started becoming other things?  What is true about me that can’t be taken away?”  At this point she is still wrestling with the question of what to do about Craig in the wake of what she has learned about him.  “Who is this woman who will or will not step back inside this family. That is the question that needs to be answered before I make this decision.”

For me, the most trenchant passage of the writing has to with the well-meant but frail attempts that friends of hers make to comfort her in the wake of the shattering discovery about Craig.  The one that really sets her off is the question “What happened?” 

“I want to pick up a crystal vase and smash it into the ground.  That’s what happened, I’d say. The few times I try to tell the shattering as a story, I regret it.  Spoken words make what happened to us too tidy, too palatable, too ordinary.  I can’t describe the ferocity of the fear and rage inside me with words tame enough for the light of day.  When I finish the telling, I want people to be as shocked and confused as I am.  I want thunder to roll and mouths to drop open.  But most often the listener makes the pain harder for me by trying to make it easier for her [the listener]”.

She goes on for several pages depicting six different types of Job’s comforters.  There is the Shover, someone who insists that there is nothing unusual about her predicament, the everything-happens-for-a-reason-this-will-be-a-blessing-you’ll-see type, someone who shoves her toward the door of hope impatiently.  “But I don’t want to be shoved.  I want to turn to that door in my own time.” 

She leaves no doubt that she is a true Christian believer.  I especially like the way she relates her faith to her three children.  A woman approaches her in the church hallway and starts to warn her about the dangers of divorce.  Divorce is not God’s plan for her family.  God’s preference is the nuclear family and if she steps outside his umbrella of safety, he doesn’t promise to protect her.  “God gave you to Craig as his helper. . .Your duty is to help him through this time.”  In other words, God values her marriage more than her soul, her safety, her freedom, or her self-respect; her marriage, however bad, is the cross upon which she should hang herself.  Then she thinks about the kids and realizes that they do not want her to become a martyr, but to show them how “a woman deals honestly with an imperfect life” and that God loves them more than the tenets of any institution of religion.

She declares that “making decisions is never about doing the right thing or the wrong thing.  It’s about doing the precise thing, and the precise thing is always incredibly personal and often makes no sense to anyone else.”  What a shrewd insight!  What shrewd piece of writing this book is!  I highly recommend it.

   
To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

The Post (Movie Review by Bob Racine)


1 hr & 55 min, color, 2017

Of all the discoveries I have made in the screening of this vital docudrama, and there are several, the one for which I am the most grateful is Katherine Graham.  She heretofore has been a total unknown to me, but thanks to the ingenuity of producer/director Steven Spielberg, the screen writing finesse of Liz Hannah and Josh Singer and the superlative acting prowess of Meryl Streep in the lead she is now and forever will remain visible to my mind, however long I go on living and breathing in this body.  Graham (now deceased) was the owner of the Washington Post in 1971 when the firestorm over the publication of what has come to be called the Pentagon Papers occurred.  The Post had been bequeathed to her upon the 1963 death of her husband Philip, who had built it up from a local feature into a nationally respected publication.

When Mrs. Graham took charge of it many thought that she was not qualified for the job and regarded her as a journalist beyond her depth, even though she had been in the newspaper business most of her adult life and the paper had been in the family even before that.  She was surrounded by many strong-minded men who played major roles in the decision-making process; they regarded her as essentially a figurehead.  She admits in the course of this drama that she has never thought of herself as having administrative capabilities on the scale that the position requires, never having dreamed that she would land in the job even upon the demise of her husband, whom she regards as a brilliant strategist. 

While meeting with bankers in one very crucial scene she seems a little cowed by the onus of responsibility that had always been regarded up to that time as a man’s calling.  But she comes of age in short order when her editor-in-chief Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) pushes for the printing of those classified, stolen government documents pertaining to the waging of the Vietnam War, known soon enough as the Pentagon Papers.  The documents had been smuggled into the possession of the New York Times by activist/journalist Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys).  Then later some quite furtive detective work on the part of the Post staff turns up the documents, and once in the Post’s possession as well the burden of deciding about their release to the public and risking prosecution falls squarely upon Graham’s shoulders.  How she wrestles through the dilemma and arrives at her choice and grows many feet taller in the process is worth the price of admission.  The movie belongs to and honors this woman as portrayed by Streep.    

The documents revealed upon close inspection that the heads of government, including five U.S. Presidents since the end of World War II, had been lying to the American people about the alleged need of halting the spread of Communism as a rationale for the U.S. involvement in the political and social affairs of Southeast Asia.  The myth of a Communist North Vietnam encroaching upon an innocent South Vietnam had been sold to the American people, when the fact of the matter was our imperial interest in gaining a foothold in that region.  We were the aggressors, not who we were being told was our enemy.

There is nothing about the content or style of this powerful factual thriller that I would fault.  Spielberg knew exactly what he was doing and he got the results I am sure he was looking for.  I am impressed by how Tom Hanks in the role of Bradlee seems quite willing to keep a little lower profile than ordinary.  He is fully visible and forceful, but he takes second place alongside Streep and shares the spotlight with other male figures such as Bob Odenkirk as Ben Bragdikian, the journalist responsible for obtaining of the Papers, and Bruce Greenwood as Robert MacNamara, Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson; this man played a significant role in the escalation of the Vietnam War and was a longtime friend of Graham’s.  (Good casting!  There is a striking resemblance between the two men!)

And how timely can a movie be?  In this present era of political turmoil, when the honesty and integrity of political leaders is being called into question almost daily, we need this reminder of how valuable the press is, of how journalism can lead the way into the disclosure of truth and Free Press rights can be vindicated with courage, discretion and thoroughness.

Newspapers!  Yes, they have taken a beating in many quarters with the improved sophistication of digital TV coverage and its instant delivery of the news.  Our illustrious President has reported that even the New York Times and the Post are fading out, an assertion that strikes me more as wishful thinking on his part than an informed opinion.  As a matter of fact neither paper is on the verge of demise; both have as solid and dependable a readership as they ever have had.  There is still something to be said for editorializing, for three-dimensional analysis of current trends, of controversial developments.  There is still something to be cherished about the pursuit of fine points that more routine reportage can easily, and in some cases necessarily, gloss over.  News vehicles are meant to educate not simply inform.  And I love what one Supreme Court Justice said in defense of the Pentagon Papers exposure: the right of a free press was granted by our nation’s founders because the press’s first loyalty is to the service of “the governed, not the governors”.  That is another gift I take away from my viewing of “The Post”.

And here is another:  Katherine Graham in the last scene quotes something her father, another newspaper tycoon, once declared, that “the news is the first rough draft of history”.  I have never thought of it that way, but it makes excellent sense.  History in the making!  History from the ground up!  The barest facts preserved for future specification! 

There is a disturbing aspect to what we learn here about the events of the early 1970s.  I shudder to contemplate whether a Supreme Court of today would give leave for a newspaper to print what has been classified material, however vital the upshot of it would be when shared with the public, even a public that has the right to know when it has been deceived by Congressional, Executive and Military leaders over many long years.  I trust that the people of this country would not be so easy to mislead if a major war was instigated by a power hungry chief executive, even if victory was assured from early on.  

The Iraq invasion, one for which there was no justification, never found any real support among the populace.  I trust that by now we have learned that when a major power conquers a smaller nation, that major power owns what it invades. Such was the counsel that Colin Powell gave to George W. Bush before the first shot was ever fired, counsel that apparently Bush never took to heart.  There is no easy hit and run about such an invasion.  By that move we helped further destabilize life in the Middle East.  That would have been the case, even if weapons of mass destruction had been discovered.  The American people have undergone a tremendous loss of innocence over the last six decades.  We have learned, and rightly so, to be cautious about anything our leaders tell us, about the official word.  Open minded and seekers of enlightenment we must be, but cautious!  The best antidote to nationalistic extremism!

The closing moments of “The Post” lead us right up to the door of Watergate.  It ends exactly where “All the President’s Men” (another quality work that champions journalism) begins, even though the latter was filmed forty-one years earlier.  High school Social Science teachers could use the two movies to great advantage by screening them for their students in chronological order.  Together they cover three vital years in the history of our nation.  I have disclosed before in this blog that I believe strongly in the intelligent and courageous use of the docudrama.  When a top grade one comes along you can be certain that I will write about it.  I do not imagine that you could do any better than these two. 


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.