Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Anatomy of a Murder (Movie Review)


Anatomy of a Murder
(2 hrs & 40 min, b&w, 1959)

Old black and white movies are still with us, and it is my hope that they always will be, not that I have a particular preference for those colorless, silvery images as opposed to the chromatic brilliance of current footage or the digital displays that are the up and coming thing.  I simply believe that there is cinematic gold in dem dere hills, however erstwhile.  I promised in my opening remarks upon the installation of this blog to do my part in keeping the classics alive by trimming some of the weedy overgrowth that hides their luster from contemporary eyesight, from time to time calling attention to the lasting quality and significance of choice works that deserve special consideration.  I now continue with my efforts to do just that by taking us back to a 1959 masterpiece that might sound upon brief description like a standard crime thriller but is actually a landmark achievement that helped reshape the public conception of how the justice system in this country works, smashing a few movie taboos in the process.       

A more appropriate title for the film would be “Anatomy of a Murder Trial.”  It has emerged as probably the best court room drama ever given movie treatment and surely one of the most realistic.  We never see any homicide nor any act of violence committed anywhere in the footage.  The crime that gets court room attention has already been perpetrated as the story begins.  The screenplay by Wendell Mayes is based upon a novel of the same name by John D. Voelker (who at the time of the book’s publication took the pen name of Robert Traver), a practicing attorney and not unacquainted with high voltage felony cases.  It was produced and directed by Otto Preminger, a film craftsman whose body of work is at best spotty; sometimes he excelled and sometimes he failed miserably.  “Anatomy” is commonly regarded as his best achievement.  If all his work had been this good, he would occupy a place in the hall of fame on a par with Alfred Hitchcock.

And what a sterling cast!  James Stewart (giving another of his seemingly flawless commanding performances) is a small town Michigan lawyer who was recently forced into private practice when he failed to be reelected as county prosecutor.  Work has since been so scarce for him that he has been able to spend many hours fishing and stuffing his bachelor refrigerator with his catch.  His underpaid secretary Eve Arden comments that if he keeps it up, that refrigerator is likely to take off “upstream and spawn.”  His luck changes when he gets a call from a young woman he has never met (Lee Remick in her first starring role, in which she really excels). She is the wife of a soldier stationed in town, and she pleads for the lawyer’s help.  Her husband is being held in the county jail for the murder of a bartender who has allegedly raped and brutalized her.  Stewart is reticent to take the case in view of the likelihood of the soldier’s guilt and the hostility of the man when he visits him in the jail, but is swayed by a has-been attorney friend (Arthur O’Connell) as needful of his bread and butter as Stewart.  Stewart takes his friend on as a partner on the case.  Ben Gazzara fills the role of the accused man in uniform, giving a static electric portrayal that did much to jump start what turned out to be a notable acting career.  As does George C. Scott, breaking out of previous obscurity as a confrontational state prosecutor who chews up more than his fair share of the scenery with searing cross examinations, earning himself his first Oscar nomination.  The judge is portrayed by Joseph Welch, an actual judge who played a very conspicuous part in the McCarthy hearings just a few years earlier.  And Duke Ellington provides a laid back jazz score and makes a brief cameo appearance. 

Yes, lots of star quality and movie-making brilliance, generously showcased!

Stewart discovers that the prosecution has evidence that points to the possibility that the soldier is an insanely jealous and violent man and that the wife, who may or may not be “coming on” to the lawyer, has a reputation for playing around.  These defense lawyers know they have their work cut out for them, and have to resort to some very devious devices to find counter evidence.  Yes, things get very dicey as this floor show gathers steam.  All we ever learn of the details surrounding the nasty murder is what we are told in testimony, dialogue and sworn statement by the parties involved, and there are no flashbacks.  The viewer has to sit through it knowing nothing more than does the jury, the opposing attorneys, the judge and those in attendance at the trial.  We get no inside look at the private lives or the psyches of the husband and wife.  The two of them never even have a scene together, except at the defense table.  Lots of ambiguity!  Lots of guesswork!  Even after the proceedings are concluded and the jury’s verdict is awaited, the defense lawyer’s secretary admits that she is not sure how she would vote, if she were on the jury.  I of course will not give away the ending, except to say that the verdict is only a part of the development that brings finality to the story.

Many in the movie audiences of that half century ago were aghast at the liberties with language that this audacious screenplay took (tame of course by current standards).  Words were used that no one had ever heard before on a theater screen – intercourse, panties, [sexual] climax, etc.  More importantly, the film covered many legal fine points and added considerably to the lay audience’s understanding of vital criminal codes.  Aside from being first class entertainment and at many points quite amusing, it was and is quite educational.  We see what our justice system is in real essence.  Though we never get to meet the jurors or look in on them during their sequestration, it is clear that trial by a jury of peers is what the film is so scrupulously examining.  Twelve individuals, strangers to each other, must come together to determine how the scale of justice has weighed in their eyes – twelve citizens, non-professionals, who are given the task of making sense out of the tangle of contradiction and obfuscation and fragmentation that has been dumped out before them by adversarial advocates.  They must do this knowing that society is breathing down their necks and that lives and reputations are in their hands.  Chancy, of course, but no one has ever come up with anything better in a democratic society.        

Give yourself three carefully set aside hours and have a go!  Netflix has it, as do some local libraries.


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

Monday, June 18, 2012

Gilead & Home by Marilynne Robinson (Fiction Review)


Gilead & Home by Marilynne Robinson

Over the weeks it has taken me to read and devour them, I have grown quite fond of two works by a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist named Marilynn Robinson.  They are concerned with life during the 1950s in a very small placid Iowa town (named Gilead) somewhat remote and sheltered from the busy world of social ferment and change going on hundreds of miles away.  But they are alive, ever so pleasingly alive, with characters so real and so commonplace and so wonderfully developed that it is difficult at times to believe that they are fictional creations.  Surely they must walk the path that many in small town America have traversed over the length of its days, and Robinson quietly celebrates their simple faith, struggle and frail heroism.    

The curious fact about these two sparely composed pieces – “Gilead” and “Home” (not to be confused with a novel having the exact same title recently published by Toni Morrison) – is their interrelation.  They both address the same human environment but from different points of view.  “Gilead” is not in the truest sense of the term a novel.  It is a journal containing scores of anecdotes.  A seventy-four-year-old Congregationalist pastor named John Ames is suffering from a terminal illness, with only weeks or months at most to live, and is spewing forth reams of secretive writing meant only to be read by Robby, his seven-year-old son, when he becomes a grown man.  Because of the boy’s late, late arrival in Ames’ life (this clergyman having lost his first wife by an untimely death and remarried) he will not experience his father in the flesh during most of his formative years.  Ames is afraid he will not remember enough about the man who sired him or the family background the two of them share.  By this rambling posthumous correspondence he takes the boy-to-become-a-man-someday back as far as the Civil War, in which the boy’s great grandfather played a big part.  The anecdotes he lays out, covering all the years since, are for the most part quite curious, funny and filled with quirky happenings.   He does not preach to the boy or talk down to him; this minister is not a staunch evangelical trying to indoctrinate, rather more of a humanist in the language he uses and a great lover of life.  He even assures the boy in one place that he is not a saint, and his personality embodied in his profusion of words is anything but saintly.   He in fact opens up much more on paper to his son than he has ever been able to do face to face due to the vast age gap.  We are left hoping that Robby will someday read it and take it to heart.

A noticeable factor in Ames’ life and one he shares much about in his journaling is the family of a fellow clergyman, a Rev. Boughton, a staunch Presbyterian, a very dear friend from childhood and a fellow cleric, and Boughton’s somewhat prodigal son Jack with whom Ames has had an irksome acquaintance in years past and about whom Ames retains mixed feelings.  It seems Jack once brought scandal into his own family and the small town by his siring of an out-of-wedlock daughter whom he never publicly acknowledged to be his before she died within the first few years of her life – which brings me to the other book, “Home,” a novel, unlike “Gilead,” in every sense of the word and much more bitter sweet. 

“Home” takes us inside the Boughton family and traces the course of personal relations over the same time period.  In “Home” Ames is a supporting player, who only puts in three brief appearances in its pages, though he inadvertently catalyzes an emotional crisis in the Boughton household, one of which he is never told, at least not in the scope of either of these books.  (Robinson’s characters are rarely confrontational with each other.)  The narrative of “Home” is constructed not from the widowed Rev. Boughton’s point of view but from that of his thirty-eight-year-old unmarried daughter Glory, who has quit her teaching job in another locality and moved in with him, now that he is retired from the local pastorate and is, like Ames his neighbor, in failing health.  Glory literally takes the place of her deceased mother who was expected to be her husband’s caretaker.  She cooks and cleans for him and nurses him full time, anticipating his death, with plans to be gone after he is dead.  

Glory is the youngest of several children, too young to remember much about her older brother Jack, who left home after high school when Glory was still a child and has not been heard from for an entire twenty years.  As it so happens, Jack the prodigal returns to his father’s house early in the book, only to find Glory his kid sister, practically a stranger to him, running things.  The delicate ménage in which sister, brother and their father are forced to engage is the essence of the story and the source of this novel’s subtly provocative power and charm, with a little of the mysterious into the bargain.  At first Glory fears her brother, a very reclusive, emotionally timid, guilt-prone and inscrutable man who is stingy with information about what he has been doing for those twenty years.  She also gets drawn into the role of mother for both men and something of a mediator between their dissimilar, mutually wary souls and temperaments.  Jack does not get into heated fights with his father; he remains respectful though distant and tentative.  Fascinating things happen as the three of them abide with each other, nothing that would make headlines anywhere in the news world or provide heart-stopping entertainment but worthy of scrupulous examination by the minds and hearts of all devout and spiritual individuals.   Jack’s visit does have an impact upon the home, one the reader is likely to spend much time assaying long after the reading has been completed.

“Gilead” is written entirely in the vernacular of Rev. Ames, actually a very well educated man.  Ms. Robinson never stands apart from him or comments; she just lets him talk.  The novel “Home,” on the other hand, is the kind of writing that one cannot rush through.  The character portraits are too tightly woven and intricate for hurried reading.  I do not recommend taking it on a late plane flight when you wish to unwind with something diverting and relaxing.  It will not grab you and sweep you along.  Almost each and every paragraph is a work of literary art, scrupulously constructed and bristling with nuance, requiring clearheaded concentration.  Many times in my reading I felt the need to stop and go back and reread a passage, sensing that I had missed a shade or two of reflection, perhaps something cosmically important.  Those who prefer super thrillers and fast moving action or high drama will not relish it.          

Both books were published during the past decade – “Gilead” in 2004 and “Home” in 2008.  I strongly recommend that both be read and that “Gilead” be read first.  There are disclosures in it that will make material in “Home” much clearer in meaning when one comes to it.  Robinson’s prose in “Home” is nothing short of exquisite.  But why should I talk about it?  I am going to conclude this review by giving a few samples and letting them speak for themselves:

[In reference to the home environment during Glory’s childhood]  “Truth had sharp edges and hard corners, and could be at serious odds with kindness.” 

[Glory’s assessment of her religious heritage]  “For her, church was an airy white room with tall windows looking out on God’s good world, with God’s sunlight pouring in through those windows and falling across the pulpit where her father stood, straight and strong, parsing the broken heart of humankind and praising the loving heart of Christ.  That was church.”

[On the sad subject of Glory’s apparently assured spinsterhood]  “Glory had always thought home would be a house less cluttered and ungainly than this one [her father’s], in a town larger than Gilead, or a city, where someone would be her intimate friend and the father of her children. . .Then she could learn what her own tastes were, within the limits of their means, of
course. . .She had dreamed of a real home for herself and the babies
. . .different from this good and blessed and fustian and oppressive tabernacle of Boughton probity and kind intent.  She knew, she had known for years, that she would never open a door on that home, never cross that threshold, never scoop up a pretty child and set it on her hip and feel it lean into her breast and eye the world from her arms with the complacency of utter trust.”

[In reference to Boughton’s idea of devoutness]  “Her father had always said, God does not need our worship.  We worship to enlarge our sense of the holy, so that we can feel and know the presence of the Lord, who is with us always.” 

“The room was filled with those things that seem to exist so that children can be forbidden to touch them – porcelain windmills and pagodas and china dogs – and Robby’s eyes were bright with suppressed attraction to them.”

“How to announce the return of comfort and well-being except by cooking something fragrant – that is what her mother always did.  After any calamity of any significance she would fill the atmosphere of the house with the smell of cinnamon rolls or brownies, or with chicken and dumplings, and it would mean, This house has a soul that loves us all, no matter what. . .You can come down to dinner now, and no one will say a thing to bother you, unless you have forgotten to wash your hands.  And her father would offer the grace, inevitable with minor variations, thanking the Lord for all the wonderful faces he saw around the table.”


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Solstice (Poetry)


This is the time of year when kids are graduating from high school and preparing to launch out into the larger world beyond the nest.  And because of that, many of us get nostalgic for the time in the perhaps distant past when we did the same, and we take a glance back over the meandering road we  have since travelled.  I thought, therefore, that this would be an appropriate time to share the following poem which I wrote a few years ago under that same influence.

                        SOLSTICE

Where has everyone gone,
the afternoon of the day but half spent? 
Only hours ago it seemed we marched together,
in tandem with the drum major
we had appointed head of the column.
We dawdled whenever we broke rank and
chased the birds across the field and
up into the eaves and the ivy on the wall.

Hot on each other’s heels we strode the
mid-morning, whispering naughty secrets
behind the trees as we stopped to catch our breath.  
In the shared confidence of make believe we
saluted one another, as if there were
no other troop and the day would never end.

Late morning brought the crowds swarming
through the backyard and over onto the playground,
mixing up our scents. 
Our affections were scattered, while yet endeared
to the simplicity of play.  Blind drunk we crossed
the silent meridian, eyes squinting under
the noon blaze of the sun.

The glee club, sweet as dewy fragrance
when the morning sun chimed in, turned into
a coarse cheering section, arms flailing,
fists tightened, every chest bloated with pride.
This, long after the whistle had blown and
our teams had dissolved upon one  another
in the hanging cloud of dust.

As my ingenuous turn of mind would have it,
I took my nap about that time.  Somewhere during
that fateful sleep they all wandered off.
If I knew where they were, what would I
hear them say?  Would it be a bellow or a sigh?
What else of them have the hours mellowed
other than their old marching feet?
Is it only in me the child yammers still?

I look across the same stamping field. 
There the attending birds nestle together
in the ancient oak, descendants no doubt of those
I chased into the eaves and the ivy on the wall.  
Only the moment presents itself to them.
It is their quaint but sad fortune to be sealed
into that moment and never have to wonder
where others of their pack have gone.


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net

Monday, June 4, 2012

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Movie Review)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
(2 hrs. & 9 min. in color)

The movie industry has learned how, after the better part of a century, to get convincing performances out of children.  They seem to get better and better in fact with time.  Here we have that rare instance of a child not only creating a viable and strong character but one who virtually carries the entire picture, something just any child actor could not be counted upon to do, however talented and well trained.  Two thumbs up and high fives for the casting department!

His name is Thomas Horn.  Except for one interlude of just a few minutes duration, the entire story is told from the point of view of his elementary school age boy named Oskar, brilliant beyond his years, an IQ almost off the charts.  He is in just about every scene; we are locked into his state of mind and see things through his eyes.  Each happening he witnesses, each stimulus to which he is exposed, each crisis he incurs is processed by his criteria alone.  There is no overview, no commentary, no narration but his.  And yet we walk away feeling far more wise and enlightened than when we started. 

Whatever the movie’s title refers to, it most fittingly describes the boy.  At first you are likely to feel greatly affronted by his brash, in-your-face personality and imagination, his raw antagonism, his screaming fits and cunning devices.  He is a kid who is so intelligent that he imagines all kinds of dangers and threats that the average person would take in stride – rides on subways, swinging on playground swing sets, even crossing busy streets, etc.  He is obsessed over safety.  His loving father (Tom Hanks) once had him examined for possible Asperger’s Disease, something that afflicts “people who are smarter than anyone else but can’t run straight.”  Actually he is just an unusually gifted child whose imagination works overtime.  Yes, he will be an affront at first.  But I suggest you follow and stick with him on his tumultuous journey.  Believe me, there are immeasurable rewards awaiting you for your persistence.  

Such a journey could prove gripping in any set of depicted circumstances, but what makes this screen gem so remarkable is the fact that Oskar must take on nothing less than the disaster of 9/11, which claims the life of that beloved father and mentor and turns his personal universe on its head with almost shattering force.  He finds himself chosen by fate to be the last person to hear his father’s voice on the telephone answering machine before the World Trade tower in which the father is trapped collapses into a mountain of rubble on the TV screen.  Such a tragedy would be more than enough for any child, but for a youngster who already lives in fear of risk, disquieted by the noise and stridency of life in his native Manhattan and fanatically attached to the notion that there must be a scientific explanation for everything, the trauma and challenge are nothing short of colossal.  The question posed is how a child like Oscar can work through this unearthly horror on his own terms.     

What helps him is the discovery of a key among his father’s possessions, one that he believes his Dad has left him as an incitement to the kind of inquiry on which he thrives.  His extensive, frantic and at times panicky search all over the city for the lock into which the key fits constitutes the main body of the tale, a search that leads to some astounding results.
 
There are three grownups who play a big part in helping him on his journey, all of them superbly portrayed without stealing the show.  (As I have said, the entire picture belongs to Thomas Horn.)  One is the father himself (Hanks), a jeweler, with a family history made blurry by the Second World War.  He takes his son on various “expeditions” without ever having to leave their neighborhood, pushing him just enough but not too fast and not too far at a time.  This is a father that just about any one of us would have been pleased to have had.  The almost perfect rapport between him and his son, so vividly portrayed, contributes enormously to the sense of shock and loss we share with Oscar after the 9/11 tragedy.  Then there is his mother (Sandra Bullock), a working woman who is tested almost beyond the limits of her sanity over her husband’s death and her son’s extremely furious rebellion.  She must gather up all her inner resources to take on the role of a single, widowed parent.  She must find a way at last to penetrate the bewildering mind of her son, a mind the father knew how to connect with so astutely.  And finally, Oscar has a most unusual encounter with an elderly mute man (Max von Sydow, brilliant as always) living in his grandmother’s apartment across the street.  The interplay of these two decades-apart characters provides us with the film’s choicest moments of humor and moves the story toward its eventual resolution.  

“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” one of the nine movies Oscar nominated for Best Picture a few months ago, is a marvel of directing by Stephan Daldry and scripting by Eric Roth from a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer.  There are harsh segments to be gotten through; the film demands much of us emotionally speaking, but before it is all over the quality of mercy flows in many directions, back and forth, up and down and sideways.  It keeps snug company with “Hugo” (recently reviewed in this blog) in extolling a child’s yen for discovery.   Go, go, go!  Parents especially!


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com

I welcome feedback.  Direct it to bobracine@verizon.net