Home Front by Kristin Hannah (Book Review by Bob Racine)

Published 2012 by St Martin’s Press 

The following quote is taken from the novel I am reviewing, an instance in which a mother is giving some sage advice to her twelve-year-old daughter, a mother who as a child herself experienced neglect and abuse and who endeavors to give the benefit of what hard times have taught her to her child: “One smile can matter.  Let people know you’re ready to be their friend, and if they give you a chance, take it—don’t be afraid. . .You never know when a sentence, a hello, can change your life.”  The girl is struggling with the emotional aftereffect of rejection and bullying dished out by some school mates of hers.  Not only are the words themselves sound instruction to be coming from a parent, but they take on extraordinary significance when they are read in the context of the book’s plot situation.  They are not being spoken in person, mother and daughter sitting side by side on a living room couch.  They are being transmitted to the child from halfway around the world.       

In “Home Front” we are taken into the life of an American family upon which the Iraq War delivers a stunning blow, only in this case it is not the father, the man of the family, who is snatched away for military service, but the mother.  

Jolene and Michael Zarkades are residents of Washington State, married for well over a decade, parents of two small girls, Betsy now twelve and Lulu now four.  From all appearances their lives are nothing out of the ordinary.  He is a successful trial lawyer in Seattle who commutes by ferry each day.  She is a trained helicopter pilot who belongs on a voluntary basis to the Army National Guard and always has since the two of them tied the marital knot. She thinks of hers as the best part time job on the planet.  The early morning hours of the day belong to her children.  The intervening hours are taken up in the air and she is there for them after school at the end of the day’s maneuvers.  Husband and wife have fallen into a very typical pattern: the father more wedded to his profession than to his family and the mother obliged to provide the discipline and order and nurture for the children. 

But all is not smooth sailing for them. The routine of their lives has become an irritant for Michael and his absorption in his work a growing irritant for Jolene, though most of the time she is in denial about it.  Their sex life has ground to a halt and intimate sharing is a seldom thing.  

The rickety domestic arrangement does apparently work—UNTIL the inception of the Iraq War.  Jolene finds herself deployed into the conflict and the convenient structure of their family life is decimated.   The only way left open to Jolene for providing guidance to her girls is through long distance e-mail letter, hence the exchange I earlier referred to.  Suddenly Michael is faced with the frightening prospect of becoming the sole parent on the premises.  He greets the news with disbelief and disorientation.  One sore point that this turn of events plays upon is his deep dislike not only of Jolene’s military connection but of the military crowd among whom she mingles on special occasions.  Her deployment forces him to face his dark resentments and to assume responsibilities at home that he never expected to shoulder.    

The author is Kristin Hannah, a writer with remarkable range and astute imagination.  This is the first of her novels I have read, but I am certain it will not be the last.  This fictional family is a challenge to both heart and mind right from the early pages and they take us on a journey of soul and spirit that will be difficult for me to forget however long I am fortunate enough to remain in this mortal body.  You look in vain to find the slightest wisp of soap anywhere in this narrative. You know you are in today’s real world – a world that is not always kind to the innocent or to the hard pressed working man or even to the committed energies of working mothers and a world that can be raw and brutal.  All the characters, including Mila, Michael’s mother, Tami, a longtime friend of Jolene’s, whom she met while in flight school and who gets deployed to Iraq with her, and Tami’s husband and son, who live next door, are fully alive and easily accessible.  

Hannah has superior knowledge of her characters; she knows what makes each of them tick, what drives them and how they size up and measure their world.  She never misses a single beat of any heart.  Not an angle or a tension or a fear is neglected.  It certainly could not have been an easy novel to compose.  The tempo of the tale is wonderfully strong and consistent

But nothing gets belabored.  Her sense of economy is faultless.  She knows how long to linger over a tumultuous scene and when to move on.  The story is told alternately from Michael’s and Jolene’s point of view.  The ordeal each goes through is portrayed in the most precise, agonizing terms.  And “ordeal” is not a figurative term in this case.  They are both purged through and through – purged of idols of the mind, of the remnants of their earlier innocence, of barriers long ago erected against growing pains, of rose-colored assessments of evil and good, and of defensive habits of thought and action that past grief and loss have engendered.  The rupture of their domestic arrangement is at times excruciating.  Neither one is ever the same again, especially after tragedy occurs.  The war leaves Jolene leveled in mind and body, after she loses a leg and has to sweat out the coma into which the crash of her helicopter leaves Tami, who is much more than just a friend.  She has for years been a staunch emotional buttress for Jolene, whose alcoholic parents died in a car crash when she was only seventeen, leaving her on her own.   

But the hardest readjustment of all is required of the kids.  What they go through really shakes the pillars loose. How do you explain to a preadolescent let alone a four-year-old why their mother, the woman who gave them birth and nursed them, who provided the sturdy shoulder to which they have always clung, must put herself in harm’s way for the expanse of a whole year?  Hannah does not skim over their emotional holocaust.  The way she depicts their crying spells drained me of tears at two or three points.  I am not sure how Hannah does it, but I almost believe I can hear them crying right off the page.  The dialogue she puts into their mouths transcends literary limitations.  Betsy goes into rebellion; Lulu is assaulted by all kinds of sensitive little girl fears; her whimpering is for real.  As I earlier pointed out, no soap was needed to drive things home.  The struggle of Michael as he copes with their needs tests him right down to the bottom layer of his being.  How does he go on with his professional life as a trial lawyer, supervising a whole law firm, and be present to his children’s needs and crises without the assistance of their mother?        

Actually it is his work as a defense lawyer that delivers a strangely ironic twist to his struggle.  It seems that his current major case has to do with the defense of a man in his twenties who is charged with the murder of his wife, a man who comes across at the beginning as remote and uncommunicative, but when he starts to talk Michael discovers that he is an Iraq War vet suffering from PTSD.   This opens a gigantic door of opportunity for Michael.  His involvement in the case affords Hannah the chance to air out the issue of postwar treatment of returning vets (but without usurping the place of the personal family crisis in the book) and gives Michael a handle on how to understand and minister to Jolene’s pathological state when she returns from the same War.  Hers is almost as dire as that of Michael’s defendant.  

If Jolene and Michael were a married couple of solid rapport with each other, if they were two people deeply committed to each other and to the sacred core of their marriage, that would have been a plus factor that would make a significant difference.  A deployed soldier needs to have strong backing from the family s/he leaves behind.  But it so happens that Michael, practically on the eve of her departure, presents Jolene with the news that he does not think he still loves her.  Can we begin to imagine what it would be like to depart for the battlefront with those words or words to that effect ringing in the wife/mother’s ears.  Jolene leaves for Iraq doubtful that her marriage can be saved, though she has to leave the girls with Michael, there being no other option and there being no opportunity for further discussion or counselling.  The Army will not wait.  Her spirit is half crippled before she ever gets going and it is this uncertainty that the readers of the book take with them on that journey, a shadow that looms.      

Yes, “Home Front” is a novel of pungent emotional effect, very demanding on the human heart; I got hooked very early and finished it in just a little over a week – something most out of the ordinary for this slow reader.  Without letting any spoilers escape from the bag just let me say that love and honesty do triumph.  

Very timely!  Most enthralling!

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.

Repast: The Testimony of the Loaves and Fishes (Poetry by Bob Racine)

The following poem is one I have been working on for quite some time.  I guess I have been timid about sharing it due to its bizarre nature and its strange language.  Much of the poetry I have written over the years, like this one, has been inspired by incidents in the New Testament.  But this one might take some getting used to, so I strongly suggest that you not stop with only one read-through.  Give it a second and maybe third reading in the hopes of it becoming clearer and/or more meaningful.  It covers more territory than at first may be apparent.                        

Mark me well, name me not. 

Only know how my paltry life ceased,   

when I saved the day and the same day saved me. 

Millions of grains of cosmic truth assembled 

with five thousand I was to feed. 

A tough Prophet’s act to follow, yet I became 

the unwitting subject of abundance.  

Mark me well, name me not. 

Only know where I’ve been, where I go,  

what I know, what I am –  

a progeny of soil and water, land and sea, 

grain and sperm, a fertilized egg  

in the ovum of a little known place. 

Before that day, 

mindless morsels in bondage to human appetite, 

mere loaves and fishes without even a pauper’s praise. 

This to remain, but for the grace of someone 

building a new Kingdom of Light.

Mark well the airtight refuge I took from him 

in a traveler’s pouch. 

Know, if you will, the field of force he unleashed,

laying siege to my cloister. 

I saw him not as he harvested

thousands of grains of truth in his teeth. The scandal of 

the man, the Prophet, the Kingdom Builder, 

the Truth Reaper, lost to me in my functional innocence.

The plentiful harvest, hands that labored in the ground, 

the plow that split the furrow –  

I was of the fruit they had borne.  And now 

a harvest in the making that would feed forever 

the sons and daughters of earth! 

A seed must fall into the ground and die to give birth.

I had sprung from its core, and only he who now 

stirred above me knew my worth – 

the Lord of the harvest yet to be.

I marked myself well –  

what I was – lackluster crumbs to sustain 

lackluster life, bartered for a peasant’s pittance, 

fated to be human refuse. 

What was I in my meagerness at such a 

cosmic renaissance?  Out of my element 

I awaited the sentence of human forgetfulness

And yet, of me he spoke, as of the seed that could move 

a mound of rock and return its abundance to the sower. 

I knew not that I was of such ancestry as had given the Word 

its flesh, such flesh and such Word as now shed its light 

upon the living and the dead.

Then into the void, as pebbles upon still water, there fell 

the murmurs of a milling crowd, the shuffling of feet 

uncertain of home and what somehow I knew to be 

the invisible soul’s longings laid bare 

amidst spectator hunger and ambivalence.  

And I heard my summons, 

the curl and crackle of the cloth about me, leaving me bare 

before air and soil and water and twilight chill and 

expectant throngs of humanity awaiting my pleasure. 

“Cover me!  Cover me!” I would have cried, but heaven

had not made me the gift of a voice, at other times 

so unenviable.

It mattered not.  I was spared from attrition 

by the Prophet’s genius stroke.  

Destiny marked the place, and I, if the attributes of 

flesh and blood  had yet become mine, would have known 

to call this repast by one of love’s many names, 

my then throbbing elements borne up in hands reaching

into heaven. 

This one who placed himself above the mollification of 

the mass mind, this healer out of the world, valued me 

above the genre of raw human necessity, made me a party 

to his compassion, to intangibles I would never perceive, 

tangibles to become reconciled with intangibles 

all about me.

For all this I was rendered immortal!

The five thousand, unmarked by destiny, nameless in 

their mass generality, not perceiving, partook of me, and 

began their mortal trek homeward.  They saw not that I then 

passed into history to witness in their stead 

last Passovers and betrayals, crucifixions and Eucharists, 

vow takings and idolatries of sacred covenants.

Mine is the miracle of odyssey, 

to be touched by more than I could ever touch, 

to bear no cross, only a sign read by some, 

of things taken in and recomposed to embellish 

the weak and the hollow,

of life in substance and fullness.

Mortification – ’tis beyond my simple extremity, 

yet now I tear apart, I scatter wide,

in tempo with hearts that break for disease and distress. 

Arms to embrace – they are denied me, yet now 

I delight to be dropped on mercy missions penetrating

the wide world.  To love and befriend, win or gain favor – 

such gifts outside my purview.  

Yet now nations call to me.  I confer with them 

across their dinner tables.

But for those in high places, draining

the oceans and granaries of the world, for those 

crazed in their gluttony, fouling nature’s nest and 

crippling my kindred, for the eat-meat-greet mobs, 

in their gusto mistaken for dedicated enclaves, 

I have nothing – no tears to weep.  I must defer to

the better breed of flesh and blood.  It is for them to 

cut a delicate path through callousness, extravagance, 

monopoly and greed.  I am otherwise enjoined 

by powers impervious to human loss and shall be, 

as long as Earth is a sovereign substance in living space.

Mark me well, name me not. 

Only know where I have been since that day, what I 

sew and reap evermore.  

I answer the squalling summons of hunger and need, but

I hunger no more myself.  Before soil and water and 

expectant throngs I move and germinate and wax 

mutely eloquent, no longer jealous of any act I must follow, 

favored to pass, in search of other multitudes, through 

all that stands or crawls, while prophets and peacemakers hold

my intangible worth in escrow for the millions yet unborn.  

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.

The Bane of Human Neglect (Essay by Bob Racine)

Just about every weeknight my wife and I watch the evening news on PBS television while we eat our dinner off trays brought from the kitchen to the living room.  You might say that we fill our stomachs with the meal while we fill our heads with the details of current events.  One is a treat, the other a process of keeping educated about history in the making, not all of which is gratifying to say the least.  Normally this practice poses no great problem, but occasionally we come across things on the broadcast that leave a somewhat bitter taste in the mouth to go with the taste of supper, and they do not make for a very good mix. 

Recently we were indulging in our nightly banquet when a segment was run pertaining to widespread hunger.  As is PBS’s policy we were told ahead of time that some of the images we were about to see may be upsetting for some viewers.  I do not recall the exact country in which the shocking scenes were taking place; I think it was one of the African nations – Somalia perhaps or South Sudan.  But that word of caution by the station could not have been more fitting than it was on that occasion.  I remember seeing children with skeletal bodies, with flies buzzing around their heads – heads that could seemingly not move, even though the openness of their eyes indicated that there was still some life in what was left of them, but for how long?  Children, no less!  Some of these inhabitants had swollen stomachs. We saw some victims lying in roadways or curled on dusty ground and even some who were being treated in makeshift hospitals wrapped up in somebody’s embrace.   I would not be surprised to view such conditions if I had been watching scenes from liberated concentration camps after World War II, but this was 2017, a year in which industrialized barbarity was not supposed to happen, when the lessons of the past had taught us that genocide is a scourge that no one wants to repeat.     

I saw all this as I surveyed the dinner tray in front of me, all the nourishing items that my wife had so wonderfully prepared.  There they were on the screen gasping for life, and here we were living high on the hog, delighting in the plentiful bounty that was available to us in our suburban environment, in our secure and well heated and well preserved habitat.

Can we even begin to imagine what it is like to literally not know where the next meal is coming from?  When we affluent westerners run out of a commodity of fruit or vegetable or meat, we always take for granted that it can be replaced.  What do we do?  We just hop down to our favorite super market and buy more, knowing before we set foot in the place that it will be there.  And if we do not have the cash, we swipe the little card and charge it to credit.  We go through these motions without thinking about them.  Maybe we will grouse a bit, if the store is unusually crowded and we have to stand longer than we like in the checkout line.  We may complain, if one of the apples is a bit sour; we may even feel as if we have been cheated.  We do not worry that any one of our favorite foods is going to run out and become worrisomely scarce.  We all know of the hungry thousands, but we do not dwell on the subject as we spread the next serving of butter across our fresh bread or chew into our next fragment of fresh meat or silently swoon over our next mouthful of tasty peas and carrots. 

It should come as no surprise that my initial sensory reaction to those images intruding upon our dinner was the feeling that my appetite was about to desert me.  I watched the wretched bodies and suddenly I could hardly taste what I was eating.  And needless to say I was also flooded with mixed emotions.  Anyone who could watch that display of suffering and not feel at least momentarily shaken is someone for whom I feel gravely sorry.  

I have met people who sincerely believe that the resources of the earth are limited, that there is not enough to go around to everybody, hence there is supposed to be truth in the old bromide that there are “the haves and the have-nots”, that that is a fact of life, unchangeable and unalterable and that the haves must accept it.  If I believed that, I would have had no adverse reaction to those TV images, perhaps a little pity but for the most part I would have drawn a deep breath of relief that I am on the prosperous side of that implacable barrier.  And when we create this world view, we move many feet and inches and perhaps miles closer to feeling superior to those have-nots.  And beyond that we start assigning status to them, based on race, religion, skin color or station.

All kinds of emotions swept down upon me.   First of all came shock.  None of what I was seeing matched anything I had quite witnessed before anywhere.  I felt a bit numb when those images assaulted me.  This was no science fiction, no horror movie deriving from some imaginative writer/director’s pool of daring and curiosity.  This was certified realism captured by a roving camera’s eye.  

And I felt intense anger.  I was mad as hell at the powers that be in that country. How could they by any logic whatsoever have let conditions come to this?   These people were suffering from not only neglect but from political repression.  Somebody’s sense of governmental priority had been corrupted. The barons of the land had laid claim to territory for the most outrageous of reasons, ones that subordinated innocent native civilians to the ash heaps.  It was outright cruelty, insensitive, blind power used to either enslave or to crush, whichever suited the purpose of those who wrote the rules for needless warfare.  Somebody somewhere had decided not to know about things going on in their very backyard.  Of course, we are all tempted to live on that level.  We can so easily choose not to know – choose not to know – about people next door.  After all, who has the time to be bothered! 

And I felt frustration – the realization of how helpless I was; I wanted to act, but I was frozen in place. And there lurked in my mind a resentment at being forced to watch.  How dare they impose upon my supper hour!  How dare the news people interfere with my comfort!  I begin to understand those who avoid the news altogether or certain aspects of it for the simple reason that it is depressing. Why torture myself?  Why give myself nightmares, when I’m not in a position to remedy what I see? And along with this emotion comes the confounding question of how our remoteness from the centers of power can be overcome.  We want to say, “I’ve been there already; I’ve sweated through that.  Don’t make me do that again.” But of course we know we have to do it again and again.  And alongside this feeling of being invaded was the feeling of embarrassment.  Though I knew that those people on the screen could not see me, I was hesitant to look them in the eye just the same, those eyes that bulged from their faces and bore into mine.            

Guilt was lurking around.  I started reviewing in my mind what I have done to answer the cry of the hungry millions.  Seeing what we saw brings you up short.  You feel as if you have been caught in the act of committing a crime.  

But you know, when you get past the shock, that no such crime has been perpetrated.  Guilt in and of itself is the bluntest of devices for treating the problem of human neglect.  It is only human to be made to feel guilty when there is no basis for the charge of real guilt.  We are all vulnerable that way.  But we have to remember that we are all individually responsible for the oversight of our own consciences.  Our feeling of guilt is no real gift to the needy.  They do not benefit from it.  The only thing they benefit from are our actions, our well planned investments of material resources, our informed donations, a well cultivated spirit of generosity.

One reason I value so much the news accounts on PBS is the time they take sifting through the subject matter, presenting all sides of a political issue, completing the picture.  There is no heavy hand of rhetoric trying to massage our brains.   No one is stumping or attempting to rabble rouse us into some kind of drastic subservience to a cause.  I can watch a program that exposes hunger and starvation in its rawest form without honestly considering myself under siege.  Disturbed maybe!  Heartbroken!  Unsettled!  But not manipulated into impotent guilt. 

So where does all this leave us?  After we have moved beyond the shock and the anger and the momentary guilt, where do we find ourselves?  Nursing our hatred for the perpetrators of such inhumanity will serve no good purpose.  It would be tantamount to gagging on our own bitterness and bile.  We cannot afford to wrap ourselves up in that cloak of abject sorrow until we smother ourselves to death.  I can only speak for myself, but for me what soothes the mind and heart is to tune my ear to hear and my eye to see the abundance of humanitarian activity presently taking place in our world answering the summons of vast need in the Gulf States and in the Caribbean where hurricanes and devastating storms have ravished the homes and the livelihoods of millions of people who themselves face the possible terror of hunger and dehumanization.  Arms and hands are being extended throughout our nation and stretching every nerve to come to the assistance of those who are under threat.  However much the increase in rains and floods may be due to the warming of the earth, however small the world may be getting it becomes clear to all who observe that people across the globe are becoming more of a family than ever before perhaps due to that smallness.  The Global Village is still in play.  Its inhabitants are looking more and more upon the suffering millions and recognizing that they are indeed our sisters and brothers.  Thousands are internalizing that realization.  In that direction the hope of humanity lies.

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.

The Healing of the Leper (Poetry by Bob Racine)

We carried nature’s vile secret wrapped up in a cloth.  

Only we knew it was worth more than the coin we begged,
the bunch of us a gaggle of sawed-off, dry-rotted stick people
wishing to become straw.

And yet we had this power – default of human fear.

Through a poisonous eye I looked past those weeds and slopes and pronounced my blunted curse upon my Enemy, as he called heaven to task upon my staved and feculent limbs.

“Make a show of it only to priests,” said he.

But only for a price had I ever kept a secret.

Who now would pay – the penurious priests?  

The rich young rulers with their backhanded charity?

The curious drew near and would have

fingered what moments before they had shunned,

had I not clung to the same scurvy cloth.

Then, as if hell were drying to the bone,

I watched their dazzled eyes dim one by one,

leaving me alone with my Undoer.  

In him I soon found that which I feared most –

the vile, hideous purity of my own soul.

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.

The Water and the Flame (Poetry by Bob Racine)

John the Baptist 

bit his heel into the dust, dug up smoke, made holy fire, 

his heart pumping thunder beneath an animal skin vest.

This

before he came to the river, 

where water flowed richer than fire. 

He took life from the sun, honey from the bees,

defied the treachery of derelict rock, 

serpents daunted by the tip of his staff, 

the ground mashed to gravel in the passage  of his feet, 

birds and locusts flushed from declivities of 

eroded sand and rotted-out log.

All this

before the muddy bank, before he came to the river, 

where water flowed richer than fire.

The house of Herod was rankled. 

Quarry stone cried to quarry stone, 

sent its blasting dispatch to Jerusalem towers, 

shuddered through the weathercock atop 

the Roman governor’s iron gate.

Then it was the multitudes saw John’s great footprint in the earth, 

heard the howl on the mountain, saw the gust of holy smoke.

They watched the unquenchable flame, 

while John knew not, nor did they, that only the river 

could calm the flame.

John heard it flowing, striking fear to his heart, 

buckling his knees into the soft shore mud. 

With his bloodshot eye he saw the stretch of its ancient arm, 

heard its pulse that would never beat at any mortal’s bidding.

He tore from his back the animal-skin vest, 

loosened his girdle, sank his staff into the mud bank, 

as if it were a lance blunted from battle, heaved the sandals 

from his tired feet, and cast his bulk upon the willful waters.

The fearless fish remembered on that day when once 

water covered the earth, as John the Baptist pushed his heel 

into the soft river bed, laid gentle hands into the stream, 

bringing with them the expectations of his people.

All this 

when he came to the river on his knees, 

where water flows richer than fire.

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 Way (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

2 hrs & 11 min, color, 2017

Historical turning points have always attracted film makers.  Especially is this true of political turning points, those in which a shift in legislative or judicial fiat drastically changes the temper of the nation or alters the perceived moral compass by which that nation is guided.  “All the Way” (this title lifted from a campaign slogan of Lyndon Johnson’s ( “All the way with LBJ”) has to do with events of the 1960s into which Johnson was catapulted upon the tragic death of John F. Kennedy.  It is about him and how he came to terms with a complicated set of pressures for change, most notably the pressure of racial demands launched by the Civil Rights Movement under the leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King and the unfinished business of the Civil Rights bill that Kennedy had introduced in Congress.  As the shrewd metaphorical phrase would have it, Johnson really “had his work cut out for him” even before he was sworn in to the office.  

Though the movie is not a masterpiece, it does reach a considerable height of excellence in the portrayal of the man by Bryan Cranston.  He won a Tony for his stage performance and an Emmy for this television adaptation in which he reprises the role.  At this point it is inconceivable to me that any other actor would ever again attempt to fill this demanding assignment.  After all, Johnson is not an easy subject to get right.  How could anyone else begin to approach the quality of the work that Cranston turns out, wherein he treats the man as quite human in a variety of particulars.  He is a person of sometimes thunderous speech and at other times he is soft spoken as he wrestles with personal anxiety and fear, and at still other times he is a coarse and blatant humorist.  He did not hesitate to use intimidation and threat to bend people to his political will.  Sometimes he could be a sulky childish complainer. Those who worked under him learned to be cautious about offending him.  The way Cranston portrays him one never knows what to expect from moment to moment.  There is not the slightest suggestion of a formula, but every facet hangs together and grinds together to make the man unforgettable.

The screenplay does not by any means overlook the misguided decision Johnson made sending in troops to respond to the Gulf of Tonkin incident and unleashing a major war from which our country has not yet fully recovered after five succeeding decades.  That decision is portrayed as something he made hurriedly while enmeshed in the Civil Rights issue, giving no careful thought to what it would entail.  Johnson died in 1973, only four years after leaving office, and it has been reported that he regretted his move long before his decision not to run again for the office was announced.  I suspect it weighed so heavily upon him that it must have served to shorten his life.  But he takes full credit for getting the Civil Rights legislation through Congress.  One wonders if anyone else, including Kennedy could have done as much.

Underneath all his brashness and seeming self-assurance we know he is aware that to be the leader of his country he must soothe many fears, compromise with many a seeming opponent, and he is toughened enough by his previous experience in politics to know how hard it is to make permanent friends.  You are always in the limelight with many eyes watching you and waiting to shoot you down as soon as you make a blunder.  No president has ever had a more difficult row to hoe than he had, with the southern Democrats counting on him to uphold the Jim Crow standard and so many northern moderates, Republican and Democrat, black and white, looking for him to make courageous decisions for change on their behalf, especially with regard to education.

But there is much more to recommend “All the Way” than one actor’s work.  There are crucial characters who are also quite admirably portrayed by some top talent.  One fellow southerner he had to tangle with was Dick Russell, Senator from Georgia, who was quite opposed to the Civil Rights bill, portrayed with quiet aplomb by Frank Langella; he is my choice for the best supporting work in this narrative.  His spoken words are spare, but he delivers himself in good understated form.  And Johnson’  wife Lady Bird comes to full life with the talent of Melissa Leo.  She rings true in every scene in which she appears.  

Actress Aisha Hinds has a cameo as Fannie Lou Hamer, an African American woman who was cruelly assaulted and beaten by a gang of local law enforcers in Mississippi for daring to inquire about what she had to do to register to vote.  This shocking incident is related in detail by her with words to a camera; an explicit portrayal of it would not have been any more shocking.  Hamer played a huge part in making the despotic extremes of southern racism vivid, even if Johnson saw fit to preempt her when on the air for fear it would alienate too many whose votes he needed.  The film does not tell you, but she became a major leader in the Civil Rights Movement.  She was an American Votings Rights activist, a philanthropist who worked primarily in Mississippi. She was instrumental in organizing Mississippi’s Freedom Summer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and she was the vice-chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which she represented at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  Her life would be a bold and vital subject for a movie within itself.  Check her out on line and you will see.

Bradley Whitford does a substantial job of portraying Hubert Humphrey, who catered to Johnson in search of a Vice Presidential appointment; he even bears a slight resemblance to Humphrey.  Stokeley Carmichael, Roy Wilkins and Ralph Abernathy show up in fine fettle at the hands of Mo McRae, Jo Morton and Dohn Norwood respectively.  They have a scene unto themselves in which the divided attitudes toward Johnson and what course of action his Presidency calls for them to take are incisively brought to light.  

And of course there is Anthony Mackie stepping into the shoes of Martin Luther King.  His work is good enough for a supporting role, though not as forceful as was David Oyelowo in “Selma” a few years back.  But mention of him brings to mind a disappointment I have with the film, when considered from one critical angle.  The mere two hours and eleven minute running time short changes so many people whose portrayal in finer depth would have made for a more thorough, engrossing and educational experience.  But the script revolves around Johnson, and it is satisfying to note that he is not whitewashed in the least.  

Cranston carries things quite admirably.  Jay Roach, sixty years of age, is the director of this work.  He and Cranston have collaborated before on the 2015 bio pic “Trumbo”, which I favorably reviewed last year, and I credit him in part for getting this performance out of Cranston.  I should think they know each other’s work habits and methodologies well enough by now to make a first class team.  And a favorable word should be addressed to Jim Denault for his imaginative camera work.  Under his fluid and guiding hand this becomes a genuine movie, not a mere filming of a stage work.  

The author of both the play and this screenplay adaptation is Robert Schenkkan, an award winning writer who has been active in theater and screen work for many years.  His dialogue is tough and keen-edged; it meets the challenge of writing for recent historical figures whose behind-the-scenes remarks and conversations are not a matter of record.  Not an easy assignment!  I think the most revealing words he puts into Johnson’s mouth are the following: “People think I want great power, but what I want is solace”.  One who endures the flames and arrows of outrageous Presidential fortune could crave no less.   

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.

Cool Hand Luke (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

2 hrs & 7 min, color, 1967

                                       

Two sobriquets are pinned onto the character that Paul Newman portrays in this 1960s classic.  One is the title itself, “Cool Hand Luke”, one he acquires in a game of cards.  The other is “a natural born world shaker”.  This one he picks up retrospectively at the end of the film, and it would be much more difficult to explain how it comes about.  That, as a matter of fact, is the upshot of the screenplay. 

The time setting is the late 1940s in the Deep South.  Luke is a World War II veteran who has not been able to regain his sense of self-worth since his discharge.  He has taken excessively to drink and teeters on the edge of despair.  He is not a violent person, but he gets some kind of retributive kick out of decapitating parking meters while under the influence, and this violation of public property lands him on a prison farm to serve two miserable years.  When he arrives he gives no indication that he is anything but a very passive, peaceful individual.  From all appearances he is, in contrast to the men with whom he is placed, the quiet type. 

But this apparently cool individual turns out to be a clever wielder of passive aggressive behavior and over time comes to exert a powerful influence upon his fellow prisoners that is measurable only in the most intangible of terms.  His quietly insinuating ways anger those around him on the farm at first, until he is forced to put on boxing gloves and contend with a big bruiser of a man named Dragline (a terrific George Kennedy) and gets beaten up (well, almost) while his jailers look on and do nothing to break up the match.  But strangely the treatment does not make him into a fighter – at least not with fists or physical force.  You have to observe the emanating chemistry itself over the film’s expanse to fathom how this happens, how he progresses from a quiet cool to become “a world shaker” respected by his fellow prisoners, especially Dragline, who ironically becomes his greatest friend and admirer.    

It is when Luke begins opening his mouth and dropping little hints as to why he has become a bum that the character comes to life.  He describes his downward odyssey by his observation that as a civilian he “couldn’t find elbow room”.  He also starts to evidence some yearning after divinity.  While slaving on the road at the start of a rain storm he surprises everyone by crying out for God to speak loud enough for him to know that heaven is listening, that he, Luke, is not forgotten.  But even this loud prayerful plea is not uttered in some humble, breast beating manner.  It sounds rather showy.  It becomes clear that there is a gaming trait in his personality that slowly activates his spirit.  Just for the fun of it he sets a fast pace while tarring a road; his fellows get hooked and hasten to keep up with him.  The job gets finished far ahead of schedule to the amazement of the bosses standing by.  

The most conspicuous expression of this gaming trait is his claim that in the space of an hour he can eat fifty eggs.  His bunk fellows take him up on the claim and get him to prove it, everyone betting money on the outcome.  The demonstration comprises the funniest sequence in the entire movie; it allows us to take a huge breath before more dramatic collisions with the bosses come about.  And those collisions do come about; a lighthearted comedy this is not. 

The overseers are not by any means paper tigers.  They turn out to be not only strict but lethal when the defiance of their authority is carried beyond a certain point, either actively or passively.  You just may come away from the viewing feeling as if the wrong men are in prison behind that barbed wire.  The management turns out to be more criminal than the assumed criminals they manage.  These incarcerated men are not the hardened type of criminal, not the psychopaths or the demented gorillas.  The severe conditions to which they are subjected seem way out of proportion to the lesser crimes that they have committed, those only punishable by time in a local jail facility. 

We have all heard some version of the phrase “failure to communicate”, and in this script the words fall from the lips of the head overseer played by Strother Martin, a physically stumpy little actor who appeared in dozens of movies from the 1950s through the 1970s.  Usually he filled the shoes of a villain or of some halfwit or mentally deranged troublemaker, but here he is in charge of the operation of the farm and he projects the image of someone who is laughably unsuited for his job, but dangerous just the same.  He uses the words to refer to Luke’s snide resistance to his policies, after he slaps Luke to the ground.  “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”  At a climactic point later on Luke uses the statement to poke fun at the whole establishment and pays a bitter price for doing so.

When certain infractions of the rules occur, they have something called The Box, which requires the prisoner to spend the night standing on his feet in a very small shed, with only the option of curling up into a ball to come to a stooping position on the tiny bare floor.  The film is full of sweat, grime, summer heat and putrid conditions.  (How much the state of things has changed over the past seventy years I am not certain.  We see nothing but Caucasians among these characters; I am sure that today all penal facilities have been integrated, at least officially.) 

I would like to believe that in the twenty-first century Luke would be treated for PTSD, something that at that time had not even become a featured topic for discussion among medics, let alone among the public at large.  But despite his seeming impairment and low self-esteem, naivete does not exist inside this man.  He knows what the world at large is like, having helped fight a savage war and done his share of the killing.  He nurses a subtle disrespect for the abuse of authority and entertains no illusions about the impotence behind his captors’ bullheadedness. 

But not all the movie is concerned with life among the inhabitants of the pokey.  There are very emotionally penetrating moments as well.  One is the scene in which Luke’s mother (Jo Van Fleet) comes to visit.  She is physically a pitiful wreck, but a very tenderhearted and friendly tease, who seems to know that it is too late to expect great things of her son.  In this one and only appearance of hers death is heavy in the air.  She arrives at the gate laid out on the back of a wagon, completely incapable of bodily movement, except to pump constantly on a cigarette.  Ms. Fleet is absolute perfection in this small but crucial role.

The conversation between them is remarkable, not only for what is said but for what is not said and not needing to be said.  She knows that he is a failure, but she smiles and lovingly reminds him of the dreams for him they have shared in the past.  Strangely he calls her by her first name, Arletta.  “You did your best, Arletta!”  It is touching that he takes pains not to lay any kind of guilt trip on her and sets her conscience at ease.  Their encounter is quite sad but far more loving than just civil.  We know they are saying goodbye, that she will soon pass on from this world, which she does. 

News of her death later on brings Luke to a moment of deep tearful pathos, with him singing a song by himself with simple string accompaniment that links him with his childhood past.  Newman was never been better than in this movie and in this solitary moment he excels par excellence, reaching deep into our souls.  The mother’s death also becomes a spur to raise his gaming imagination to a new high.  It sends him running from the farm and gets him in deep, deep trouble.  But faced with the threat of annihilation he transcends his cosmic despair and finds spiritual resilience he never knew he had. 

The fine directing comes from Stuart Rosenberg and the outstanding original screenplay is the labor of Donn Pearce and Frank R. Pierson.  Because of these three men Luke’s saga is by turns disquietingly funny, heartbreaking, tender, wistful, fiercely confrontational and oddly inspiring.  This is one of my 100 favorites which I itemized on this blog just a few years back.  I not only love it; I treasure 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.