The Eyes Have Me (Personal Essay by Bob Racine)

During the stretch of my childhood and most of my adult life I always had excellent vision.  I never once needed corrective lenses.  I never had trouble reading signs, large or small.  I used to amaze my mother with my ability to figure out the wording on a bus marquee, even when it was a block or more away.  I knew before my mother did and before it rolled to a stop in front of us whether or not it was the one we needed to catch to take us where we were going.  I never even needed “rest” glasses for school or play.  I could see with what I suppose was 20/20 vision, though the extent of my visual acuity was never measured precisely.  And I could read for long periods without my eyes ever tiring. 

                                        

All that changed in the year 2003, the year I turned seventy, one year after I retired.  I noticed one day in the spring of that year that I did not have completely clear sight in my left eye.  I had what looked like some kind of grime or tar-like substance around the bottom edge of the eye window and bunched up on the far right side.  When washing the eye out and putting in drops did not eliminate it, I ignored it for a few days in the hopes that it would disappear.

                                        

It did not. 

                                        

I began to suspect that I had cataracts, something I had never encountered before and I did not worry, because I knew people who had had cataract surgery and that it was no big deal.  In fact, it is supposed to improve sight.  Of course I knew that I had to see my ophthalmologist to check it out and be sure, which I did.

                                        

What he told me was quite startling.  I did not have any grime or foreign substance in my eye; I had lost cells.  A part of my eye had been destroyed, and there was no way to restore what had been lost. Some plaque in the carotid artery below the eye had compacted, pushed upward and spilled into the eye knocking out the cells.  He was quite alarmed at what he found, so much so that he picked up his phone and called my primary care physician.  Then my primary doctor by way of my ophthalmologist ordered me (not suggested – ordered me) to get myself right over to the hospital emergency room.  It was the shortest visit I have ever had with any eye care doctor.  He said I was in danger of suffering a stroke; that plaque could have traveled all the way up to my brain and done permanent damage and still could.  I did not even go home; I called my wife Ruby and informed her of what was going on and she promised to meet me at the hospital, which she did.     

                                        

I went to my ophthalmologist thinking that I was going for eye treatment, but before I knew it, I was being whisked away into the lap of big medicine, with an assortment of doctors and examiners around me and soon was occupying an overnight hospital bed, where I would remain for the next four days. 

                                        

It was unreal!

                                        

I felt as if somebody had played a trick on me – me with my excellent vision.  How could this have happened? 

                                        

The physician in the ER checked me out and told me that I was not on the verge of a stroke, but after consultation it became clear that my visit was not going to be short.  The first treatment to which I had to submit was blood thinning.  In the private room where I was finally taken I was connected to a huge machine that sat on the floor – the blood thinner.  The few times before in my life that I had been checked into a hospital I had undergone pain and powerful  drugs and general disorientation, but what was so amazing about this visit was the complete absence of any discomfort – except for boredom.  Over the next few days I had to lie there listening to this contraption grinding and murmuring without being able to disengage myself from it and having to do all my toilet stuff into a bed pan.  For three whole days I was so confined.  They were making sure that I was not going to have a blood clot; I was also in danger of that.  The thinner the blood the smoother the flow, and the safer I would be. 

                                        

I do not recall at what point during my four days I was informed that I would need surgery on that carotid artery.  It had to be opened up and cleaned out.  And during my stay, even before being admitted to a bed, I was subjected to something called a Doppler Test.  A flat surfaced device, one that in my perspective resembles an electric shaver, had been rubbed over both sides of my neck for the space of approximately a half hour, while an attached machine made bizarre sounds that put me in mind of some prehistoric animal repeatedly opening and closing its big, cavernous mouth.  I was told that the device was taking more detailed pictures of my neck.  A noisy and gross way to do it!  At least the blood thinner did not scare up that degree of clamor.  I had no way of knowing then that that very Doppler gadget many years later would become a very complicating factor in my life.  More about that when I get to it!

                                        

For the first time in my earthly existence I was told that I was about to undergo a frankly dangerous and delicate operation.  That opening up of my carotid could conceivably cause the very stroke its cleaning was designed to prevent.  So inevitably came the hour when I had to sign the form absolving the hospital of any blame in the event that the surgery produced any undesirable results, stroke or whatever.  This was a new dilemma for me. I had had doctors treating me all my life and I was accustomed to them giving me assurances as to how long I would have to suffer from the flu or mumps or any number of other infections.  I was used to being given positive report.  This new type of warning seemed not far away from being told that I had only six months to live.  Danger!  Danger!   I had the option of cancelling the surgery, checking out and taking my chances.  But what is the point of having physicians, ones who have completed med school after years of study and become qualified in their specialty, if we are not going to be guided by their advice?  If they do not know what treatment is required for healing, who would?  So I scratched my little John Hancock at the bottom of the document, knowing that in so doing I was casting my fate to the wind.

                                        

What haunted me in the hours that followed was the question of what an “undesirable” result from the surgery would be.  What would it look like?  Would I be rendered a mute or a mental defective?  Would I become a vegetable, completely helpless and have to be fed and clothed and maybe carried?  Would I end up in a wheelchair?  I suppose I could have asked the question, but I preferred at that point not to know.  What my imagination could do with just a little input from the doctors might be worse than waiting until it was over and seeing if any of my nightmare fear has become a reality.   

                                        

So I used what time I had left in my room to do all I could to keep my mind off the issue.  Two of my three children came to visit me (the other one was in California) and I enjoyed their stay.  They did a good job of keeping me focused elsewhere.  And Ruby was a great help that way also.  I knew that she was deeply concerned; after all, if the worst scenario played out she would have quite a load to carry, but she kept her cool.  I also had visits from friends and KC people.  What would I have done without my fellow believers?

                                        

Came the morning of the operation and I knew I was as prepared as I would ever be.  One thing that boosted my spirit a bit that day was a comment by my surgeon that he was not worried about me pulling through it.  He based his remark on his study of me since my entering the hospital.  He thought I had the right attitude and the right spirit of trust in him and in God.  As is the case now with modern medicine the anesthesia took effect immediately and I mercifully lost any sense of where I was and enjoyed a painless and dreamless sleep.

                                        

When I came out of the anesthesia I found myself on a gurney being rolled down a corridor.  There was a group of medics walking alongside me.  I heard one of them say “He’s awake!”  At once the gurney ceased to move and suddenly all their eyes were upon me.  My surgeon, one of the group, asked me to make a fist with my right hand, which I did, and all at once the group let out a big cheer.  I realized from their reaction that a lot had been riding on whether or not I would be able to make that fist.  They were shouting praise and victory and I was congratulated on making it through.  The bothersome item was the presence of a large patch attached to the left side of my head covering the incision. 

                                        

I took all this in without feeling much like celebrating, though I was pleased with the result.  It was not until a while later that I shuddered under the realization that I had had a close call.  That cheer did not cheer me for long.  I knew that I had kept everyone in suspense.  It could have been a case of “the operation. . . a success but the patient died” or “came out a basket case”.  I was so glad that I had been out of consciousness when that was still a pending question.  One little fist to tell me that I was still among the living and healthy!  What I was not allowed to forget was the existence of the right side carotid artery.  It too had some plaque in it, but the doctors did not want to tempt fate and try to clean out both at one time.  They did not feel that the amount that was in the right one merited surgery just yet.  That surgery would not take place until 2011, eight years later and did so again without any adverse results.  I was told to keep submitting to the Doppler Tests on a regular basis, which I did faithfully – until quite recently. 

                                        

Here is the real rub: I walked away from both operations knowing that I had only one really good eye, my right one.  But since this handicap had not interfered with my mobility in any way, since I could see the space in front of me in its widest aspect and since I could read with proper corrective lenses, I no longer gave my visual limitation much thought.

                                        

But at last came September 2017, and the eyes once again entered the picture and my life and in a much more restrictive and frightening way.    

                                        

It was on the first day of that month that I faithfully took myself once more to the lab and submitted to a Doppler.  Up to this point I had never had any trouble going through that extended rubbing against the sides of my neck or listening to that ghastly “prehistoric” sound; it had never taken more than twenty or thirty minutes.  No pain or complication was involved in it, and I had no reason to suppose that this time would be any different. 

                                        

Little did I know!

                                        

I slowly became aware during the procedure that I was feeling quite hot; the room felt tight; I started to evidence sweat.  I was thinking that that Doppler was taking longer than any of the others had lasted, though I later learned that that was not so; it consumed only the usual twenty to thirty minutes.  When I was finally told that it was over, I was not sure I would be able to get up off the table.  I had to struggle to get myself into an upright sitting position; I required help from the lady who administered the treatment.  When I finally got to my feet, I was feeling not only hot but rather lightheaded.  I recall that I was asked if I was okay.  I guess I replied in the affirmative, but as I look back on the moment it impresses me that I was making an assumption.  Of course I’m all right, haven’t I always been at this point?  I prided myself on being able to knock off these Dopplers as a simple matter of course.  All I thought I was feeling was that heat and a simple desire to get somewhere where the air was cooler and take a deep breath. I blamed the hot flash on the room.  

                                        

I had parked my rollator (which I have come to need to provide mobility and balance to get around with a Lumbar Stenosis condition, another long and complicated scenario of development that I will not go into here) just outside the door of the room.  I grabbed it up and started to find my way out of the building.  Exactly how long it took me to arrive at the street outside I cannot say; I just know that I had trouble figuring out exactly where I was.  I had been in this building many times before for various purposes; I knew the building, but for a short spell I was not sure I knew it after all.  I took the elevator, but somehow I landed on the wrong floor.  Though I thought I had punched for the first floor, somehow I was back on the second floor and had to ask help from a stranger, who walked me back to the elevator and made sure I punched the right button to descend. 

                                        

The strangest thing about this indoor journey was the difficulty I had steering the rollator.  I kept drifting to the left side of each aisle; I even rubbed against a few walls en route.  When at last I reached the curbing at the front of the building, I was not sure of the best way to get off the sidewalk.  Just as I started to lift the rollator over the curbing’s edge, a lady pedestrian called my attention to the presence of a ramp just a few feet from where I was standing.  Just a few feet away, and I had not seen it!  Fortunately I remembered where I had parked my car and it was just a few yards away from that ramp.  Thankfully I did not have far to walk to it.

                                        

Then one of life’s most embarrassing moments!  I opened the trunk to deposit my rollator into it, something I had been doing on a regular basis for close to a year, but found I did not have the strength to lift it off the ground.  Again, my pride kicked in and I tried to summon the strength anyhow.  I strained every back and arm muscle to make it rise, but all I succeeded in doing was losing my balance and falling backward onto the pavement, right on my butt.  Again, a stranger came to the rescue.  I asked him as humbly as I knew to pick up the rollator and put it in, which he did.  Then he was kind enough to help me to my feet, something I knew I would not be able to do on my own.  I thanked him and got into the car and drove home, still feeling like I was in the middle of a hot flash and as if I might faint at the wheel. Perhaps with some divine intervention I made it home without calamity.  I will spare you the dizzy details.

                                        

To make a long story short, I learned three miserable days later upon a belated medical examination that I had had a stroke during the Doppler Test, two very small ones in fact.  I suppose the reason I had not realized what had happened to me until that clinic visit is the fact that I had not noticed any symptom such as I ordinarily associate with stroke.  No slurred speech!  No palsied behavior!  No numbness in my arms or legs!  No awkwardness in my walking other than what my Lumbar condition had already inflicted upon me in the preceding few years!  This is what I noticed.  Ruby, on the other hand, reports that I was very discombobulated that whole following Labor Day weekend.  I could not sleep.  I could not dress myself without assistance or tie a shoe or carry on an entirely coherent conversation.  And yes, I did slur speech and had trouble walking a straight line.   To this very moment I have no recollection of these things.  So she got me to the clinic on Labor Day Monday morning.  Once again under doctors’ orders I had to submit to extended confinement, this time in a rehab center for two weeks. 

                                        

Now here is where the eyes come back into the picture. When someone suffers a stroke of any magnitude in the state of Maryland, that person is required by law to report its occurrence to the Motor Vehicle Administration, whereupon one’s driver’s license is suspended.  This I did upon my primary care doctor’s advice.  After being discharged from the rehab, I was required to undergo what is called Home Care with some occupational therapists for what turned out to be three weeks.  These visits were quite helpful and reinvigorating.  During all these weeks naturally I looked forward to getting my driver’s license revalidated and for this to happen I was required to be tested in various areas.  What I thought would be the most crucial testing was for cognition.  I had some fear that my cognitive test would show that I had some mental deficiency resulting from the strokes and that these would become a barrier to getting back behind the steering wheel.  It turned out that I was cleared for this.  In fact, I am supposed to be unusually sharp mentally for my 80-plus years.  This the lady examiner told me!  So I was breathing excitedly as the rest of the testing was applied.  I was like a school kid getting vetted for the first time.  I thought I was at last home safe.

                                        

But finally I was given the eye test, and that was the one that sank me!  Yes, that visual impairment I suffered back in 2003 finally caught up with me.  She could not recommend me for the road test with only one proficient eye.  After fourteen years of driving safely with it I was denied readmission to the roadway.  I am now grounded for life, dependent upon Ruby and others for transportation.  I am back again confronting the subversive workings of that carotid artery.  I feel as if some demon villain somewhere in the back of my mind is having the last laugh on me.  After fourteen years I learned that during that whole period I had been driving illegally and did not know it.  After that first surgery on that first artery no one including my eye doctor had cautioned me about driving a car.  I was never tested until the aftermath of a stroke made it necessary. 

                                        

If only that were all to disturb me!  I have been increasingly aware over these months of just how weak and deficient my eyesight has become.  Of course I use reading glasses, but I also I cannot read anymore without the use of a magnifying glass.  I require large print on all the books I read, and newsprint has become a real challenge.  I have had to enlarge the font on my word processor far beyond what it was in the beginning, the very one I am using at this moment to write this essay.  I experience a great deal of eye fatigue.  Reading is still a joy, but it has never been such a challenge. 

                                        

Maybe upon learning this some of you are thinking that the answer to my reading stress would be audiobooks.  But what would interfere with my use of one of those is another handicap I have been nursing for over forty years – hearing impairment. There are not many voices on those audio transmissions that I can follow.   I have lived with hearing loss for so long that I sometimes forget that not everybody I do business with knows about it.  I use hearing aids, but their reliability is greatly limited.  I usually have difficulty talking over the telephone.  Without access to a person’s face and lips I miss important words.  Whenever I put through a call I have to have Ruby nearby to take over in case I get stuck with someone I cannot understand.  My hearing loss comes into play in the use of television also.  I am better off with hearing aids, but they do not cover all occasions.

                                        

The one fear I have lived with since 2003 and still do is that of the right eye suffering the same fate as the left one did.  How long can this one good eye go on doing double duty?  And the worst conceivable possibility is that of having to live in a world of nothing but shadows.  I depend upon my eyes for so many things.  I envision having to give up watching, and writing about, movies, something I have been doing for most of my adult life and from which I derive so much pleasure.  Becoming blind, at least legally!  I find myself trying to imagine what that kind of existence would be like. 

                                        

But I am not a chronic depressant.  My faith in God is stronger than ever; I belong to a solid and supportive spiritual community without which I know I could not begin to survive.  I am satisfied that I have used my life and my learning to the maximum to shape this world into the likeness of the Kingdom of Heaven and Eternal Love.  I am married to a wonderful woman and have brought forth kids and grandkids of whom I have every reason to be proud.  My life story has undergone drastic changes in the past, ones that led me to feel that I had to back up and start the creative process all over again, and I succeeded each and every time.  There is no reason to believe that such a beginning over cannot take place again, whatever it looks like.  I pray it will not come, but I will pour myself into it, when or if it does.  The peace of God in my heart will make that possible!

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.

Goodbye, Christopher Robin (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

1 hr & 47 min. color, 2017

Are the following proper names familiar to you: Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, Joey, Winnie Bear?  Of course you may know the bear’s identity better as “Winnie the Pooh”, who gives the name to the famous bestseller by A.A. Milne.  This movie tells us the fact-based tale of how it came to be under the inspiration of the author’s small son Christopher Robin (Will Tilston).  Milne, whose nickname is Blue, is played by Domnhall Gleeson as a young veteran of World War I struggling with what we today call PTSD, known then as Shell Shock, who wishes to use his writing skill to create a book that will help heal England’s postwar wounds and restore it to a measure of health.  But instead of a treatise of adult instruction he comes forth with the children’s book with which the western world is quite familiar.       

Blue discovers the attachment his son, his only child, enjoys to stuffed animals, and father and son give names to them, animals they play with until Blue is hooked on them as well.  The book he writes turns out to be what will become the most beloved children’s illustrated book of all time.  The family of three – father, mother and son become over time quite famous, but success leads to excessive exposure of Christopher to the public, one that the boy finds exciting at first but eventually confuses him.

No, this is not altogether a happy tale.  The decision of the English-bred Blue, previously an urban creator of plays and short writings, to move to a rural home in Sussex is not greeted by his wife Agatha (Margo Robbie) with much joy.  He seeks out the quiet of the countryside to escape the oppression of the city where there are so many sights and sounds that trigger his memory of the battlefield, never imagining that his writing will take the turn it eventually does.  Agatha, so seemingly strong, lively and playful, turns out to be rather fragile.  She suffers a crisis of her own over the fact that her baby is not a girl.  The most bizarre scene in the movie is one in which the baby Christopher is lying on a bed crying his heart out.  Blue traces the sound of the weeping to the baby lying alone while the mother stands at a window ignoring him and brooding over the fact that her child is a boy and not the girl she wanted.  She had hoped against all hope that she would never again have to have a male member of her family go off to war with her wondering if he will ever return.  She rebels and leaves Blue and the boy’s nanny alone with Christopher for long periods while visiting in the city with friends and other family, demanding that her husband bring forth the book he claims he has in him before she will agree to resume her role as wife, mother and mistress of the manor.  

Despite the cloud of tension and uncertainty that hangs over the unstable family’s heads, the film does treat us to some lovely scenes of father and son making discoveries together.  Christopher virtually invades the solitude that the reclusive Blue craves for himself.  Their time together takes on a serene quality.  But then the film raises the question of how much notoriety a small child can endure.  It comes to the point, after the book’s success and Agatha has returned to Sussex, that everywhere father, son and mother go they are recognized and swamped by crowds of autograph seekers and admirers.  The child is turned into a celebrity and it takes time for the parents to wake up to what they are doing. 

The individual who wakes them is the nanny whose name is Olive (Kelly Macdonald) assigned to Christopher’s care; the boy calls her Nou.  She is forbidden by the customs of the time to speak her mind, but she is fully aware of the internal struggle Christopher is having and his need of personal affection and being cared for.  It takes some drastic circumstances for her to arrive at the point where she breaks the taboo and jolts father and mother awake and at considerable cost to herself. She comes off as a very strong, sensitive and intelligent woman who plays a big part in Christopher’s maturing process.    

Is there a thin line between devoted affection and systemic exploitation?  Sounds strange, does it not?  But how much notoriety can a small child endure?  And that exploitation can be unintended.  The last chapter in the tale has Christopher confronting his father hard, the father who has been quite clueless.  “I wanted you to write a book for me, not about me.”  This transpires as he too like his father enters the armed services when World War II breaks out over two decades later (through Blue’s intervention upon the son’s request).  Here the grown-up kid (played henceforth by a young actor named Alex Lawther) has lost much of his innocence from spending some years in a boarding school where he has known considerable bullying.  Upon his departure to the front he takes an inconspicuous name in the hopes that he can live as an ordinary person unidentified as Christopher Robin and leaves his father feeling crushed.  What happens thereafter has some of the makings of an unexpected miracle, but I will not give that away.

The film is good, but it could have been better.  There are interludes that beg for more detail.  The delivery of Christopher to his boarding school is made to look unbelievably easy.  This kid has been a nature lover and a boy afloat in his own imagination.  How does Blue get him oriented to take on the rigors of that new life?  I should think Christopher would have put up some resistance to that quantum leap.  But we are not given even a clue about that.

Just as mysterious is the inevitable crisis Agatha must have gone through when her worst nightmare comes true, namely, her son going off to the battlefield.  We see so little of her once the older Christopher appears on the scene.  If she took off before, when her son was small, what was there to keep her from bolting the country manor altogether and maybe for good when that dark fear became a reality?  What has stabilized her during the interim?  The director Simon Curtis and his writers Frank Cottrell-Boyce and Simon Vaughn treat their material as if it is largely about the father and son.  The mother should have been given greater attention.  

But the story did have a bit of a mesmerizing effect upon me.  The painterly Sussex countryside is generously on display, right from the film’s opening shot.  There is victory in the final analysis, but nothing like the kind for which Blue was hoping, not even after the publishing success.  The scenery is easy and pleasing to absorb.  A child’s world does come to life in a measure.  And, as I have already intimated, it does open the door for deep discussion about the perils of a child’s celebrity.  I only wish it had shaped up into a more well-rounded and complex family drama.  It settles for much less than it could have been.

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.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

This blog has been in operation since March 2012.  As an observance of its sixth anniversary, I am doing something I have never done before: I am republishing my review of a 2011 movie I featured shortly afterward in the spring of 2012. My wife Ruby and I recently checked it out from Netflix as a supplement to the book on which it is based and which she had started reading, unaware that I had seen the film and written about it.  We were both so deeply moved by the viewing, I even more so than before, that I could not resist the urge to rerun it.  Over the years it has lost none of its magnetic appeal.  The following is word for word what appeared in that 2012 issue.   

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.  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 I walk away feeling far more wise and enlightened than when I 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 [Oscar nominated] screen gem so remarkable is the fact that the kid 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 such as 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” 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” in extolling a child’s yen for discovery.   If you missed it upon its original 2011 release, rent the DVD now and enjoy the treat.  It is available from Netflix.  If you saw it, rent it anyway and see it again. The encounter between Oscar and his mother in the closing minutes is worth its weight in gold.

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.

Dunkirk & Get Out (Movie Reviews by Bob Racine)

                     Dunkirk (1 hr & 47 min, color, 2017)

Get Out  (1 hr & 44 min, color, 2017)

The first time I saw the very popular movie of the 1940s “Mrs. Miniver”, I experienced an adrenalin rush during the sequence in which the subject of Dunkirk came to the fore.  The title character, a very brave British wife and mother, was played formidably by Greer Garson, a woman who suffers from the German bombing of her home and community during the early days of World War II.  She sees her husband, played by Walter Pigeon, off one morning on a dangerous cruise across the English Channel. The name Dunkirk did not register in my brain at the time. I was eight years old; it was much later in my life that I was filled in on it.  

What I remember most about the way the event was filmed is the note of gallantry with which it was mounted.  Pigeon set out in a private craft along with numerous others to perform a rescue operation and was gone for many hours.  What stood out for me at that early age, with my tender mind hungry for excitement, was the size of the small fleet and the sound they made in an impressive motorized unison advancing over the water.  They looked and sounded like an armada, linked and cruising together and all pointed in one direction.  It was to my child’s sense of adventure a very thrilling sight.  All this manpower was surging forth to deliver a wallop to the sneaky and cruel Germans.  Strength in a gigantic unity!  Chills ran up and down my spine.      

But the real story of Dunkirk is something quite different.  It was May of 1940, right after Hitler’s army had invaded and captured France, that British troops sent to aid the French in the fight found themselves surrounded by the Germans. It is estimated that there were over 300,000 of them, cut off from the French, unable to get home.  An invasion force to rescue them on short notice would have been impossible, and the use of destroyers to pick them up would have been impractical for getting close enough to the beaches without themselves being attacked. The requisitioning of private small crafts was put into play instead, and they came voluntarily from all up and down the English Channel.  Churchill put out the call for them and they showed up in dribbles here and there, not in an organized armada.    

That was the situation at sea, while there was an air war going on overhead and a land war behind enemy lines.  These are the three perspectives from which the largely fictional screenplay is constructed – land, sea and air, the action shifting back and forth between them throughout the movie’s length.  The directorial competence behind the epic is Christopher Nolan aided by his wife Emma Thomas.  They have taken us deep into the tangled threads of this historic rescue operation.  They could have made a documentary, but they have chosen to dramatize the personal lives and struggles of varied characters aiming to get back to England and home.  It is a narrative of heart and soul as well as military engagement.  That is what makes it something very special.     

There was a time when if a movie was clearly and intentionally a comedy, you could tell as much from the ads.  You knew you were in funny-land almost from the moment the projector started grinding out the images or at least starting with a spoken word of dialogue that, if not hilarious, at least had a droll or cockeyed slant to it, signaling more jocular and farcical and ridiculous material to follow.  There was a tilted quality to what you were both seeing and hearing.  You knew it was safe not to take what was happening on the screen too seriously.  This has often been true even with black or grisly humor.  In “Dr. Strangelove” the world is about to come to an end, but the devices are so “far out” that it would be a crying shame if you did not laugh.       

Apparently that policy has been revised, though who has done the revision,  who the agent of change could be, it would be difficult to determine.  “Get Out”, the bizarre story of a 26-year-old black man going to meet his Caucasian girlfriend’s family somewhere on the far edge of suburbia and finding himself walking into a swarm of unearthly oddballs, was one of the movies that competed in the recent Golden Globe Awards in the category of Comedy or Musical!!!  I saw it with the expectation of having a rambunctious good time, but I was almost all the way through the footage before I came upon anything that I would call truly funny.  Instead of humor, it is largely pure horror, especially in the later sequences – bloody and ever so grotesque.  It is a tale of slow entrapment from which our hero must extricate himself.  It kind of reflects upon the current feeling that black flesh is as cheap in some peoples’ eyes as ever.  The idea for the plot is one of singular invention. The fascination is watching how it makes use of faces to set the mood and deliver the scary goods.   Close-ups on just about everybody’s part are the most conspicuous feature.  

It is an extraordinarily well produced, acted and directed movie, as long as you can accept it on its true terms – not as a comedy but as a burgeoning nightmare.  There are brief scattered moments that are darkly humorous, but such moments do not justify calling it a comedy vehicle.   It is currently competing in the Oscars with four major nominations, including Director and Original Screenplay for newcomer Jordan Peele and Actor for Daniel Kaluuya .  It appears to be the sleeper of the year. The film’s future bears watching, as do the careers of all the consistently fine talents that make up the cast.          

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.

Writing About the Movies (Essay by Bob Racine)

My tour of duty as a movie critic for Mass Media Ministries and its bi-weekly publication (now defunct) back in the 1960s and 1970s gave me occasion, in contact with others in that profession, to find out just how diverse the standards for criticism are.  Not everyone who writes in this genre follows the same policies and principles.  Not everyone defines it the same way.  After taking a few paragraphs in my recent review of “West Side Story” to air out my grievances with Pauline Kael, who electrified readers over the space of three decades until her retirement in the 1980s, it occurred to me that I have not spoken much about my own policies and principles.  That I am about to do.

Frankly I do not know how back yonder I ever kept up with all the first run releases.  It involved a great amount of foot work and hours upon hours of viewing in the dark cushy concealment of theaters.  How the current crop of critics does it now, with production having mushroomed in volume over subsequent decades, is a wonder to me. My writings about motion pictures over the past six years since I set up this blog have been more selective. I would go mad putting in the hours these people do to cover the whole movie scene.  But as limited as my scope has become, I really do not think the basics of my approach have changed.  I would like now to share those basics with you readers.     

What is movie criticism?

For me “criticism” is the wrong word for what I wrote and now write.  I prefer the word “commentary” to the word “criticism”, which is to say I aspire to being thought of as a “commentator” instead of a “critic”.  A critic at the very least is a devil’s advocate, someone who finds fault or imagines having found fault, who holds a body of work to strict standards.  A critic is a judge, someone who passes sentence, makes determinations about a person or thing.  In a court of criminal law, a judge comes into the picture after a charge has been made, as a participant in the prosecution of a defendant who has allegedly violated a law, committed a crime.  A jury in a criminal case sifts through testimony and material entered into evidence and declares a defendant guilty or innocent.  But it is the judge who makes the final determination of punishment in the event that a guilty verdict has been reached. 

I admit that the difference in meaning between these two terms is somewhat thin, but the older I get the more certain I am that the difference is quite real.  At some point in time I suppose I did act more the critic or the judge.  Being expected to establish a viewpoint on a given movie, especially if it is one that is stirring up controversy or unrest in people’s minds, lays you open enough that it is easy to slip into the role of superior jurist and start passing out rewards and disapprovals; you are under pressure from readers who respect you and are eager for your input.  And it is ever so difficult to avoid the temptation to shock or to shake up your audience, maybe even to go on the attack, if something in the film has really rubbed you a little raw.  But it all comes down to what you strive for, whatever your lapses into the judgmental.  One strives to be objective, whether or not one always succeeds.

Let us be very frank!  There is no such thing as complete objectivity.  We who publish printed comments about motion pictures may strive to be objective, but we deal in opinions; make no mistake about it – our own opinions.  There is no escaping it.  So it behooves us to make sure our announced opinions are the result of careful thought.  I could never see a movie one day and then have my review in the paper the next day.  I need more time than that to mull over what I have seen; I would not trust myself to arrive at anything resembling objectivity if that were all the lead-in time I were allowed.  And given that we deal in the issuance of opinions, we must make sure we are issuing an informed opinion, one that draws upon knowledge of the medium as a whole, its history, tradition and a movie’s basic structure.  It helps immensely if the commentator/critic has a background in theater and a familiarity with character creation and the dynamics of performance.  One who has only screened movies spasmodically over a few young adult years and given attention only to her/his favorites has not absorbed enough data or ingested enough emotional or psychological experience to write with any kind of authority on the subject.  A critic should have a wide range of viewing experience.  All kinds and varieties of film should be of interest to him/her.  This person should be a student on the subject of cinema, with trained perceptions, perhaps even a scholarly absorption in it, though the scholarship should not get stuffy.  Movies are for entertainment mostly, a means of escape from the workaday world.  And of course a certain maturity informs opinion.  I was in my 30’s when I worked for Mass Media Ministries.  Earlier than that I do not believe I would have been ready to launch upon a career in the field.      

I approach a motion picture as a work of art.  I am not, nor was I ever a commercial commentator.  That is, I do not let myself be influenced by the politics of Hollywood or by movie moguls who are looking for commentary to serve as publicity for the selling of their product.  It helps if the commentator is employed by a publication that allows a considerable amount of freedom in expression and sophistication in viewpoint.  One can hardly function as a free thinker/writer if editors are forever looking over your shoulder and ready to pounce if you stray an inch from tight strictures or if you are considered too offensive to the publication’s choice readers.  A motion picture has to be judged by a standard that transcends popular notions.  A commentator/critic should not consider herself/himself a performer or entertainer.  That is my objection to the writings of Pauline Kael.  Her language was too flamboyant for my taste.  

I personally like to read the comments of someone who has lived in the story or the material.  If it does not feel lived in, if it does not feel as if the film has reached the heart and soul of the writer, in such a case it sounds to me as if it has only been considered from a point of casual curiosity.  When I write a review, I must remember that it is not essentially the production that I am describing but my experience of that production, that piece of art.  One does not make hurried or flip comments about a new sculpture or a new portrait, especially if it is a departure in form from previous artworks.  The same should apply to screen works.  That is not to say that some movies are not works of obvious vulgarity or obvious amateurishness.  But even in such instances an informed and trained viewpoint does not speak carelessly.  If you do, you run the risk of your words coming back to haunt or bite you at a later date.  

I do not know how many practicing full time critics would agree with me, but I place a high value upon keeping an open mind.  There are films I am sure I would approach differently now than I did when they were new.  I am speaking of a willingness to learn over time; there is always more to take in.  The last thing I want to be called is close-minded. My employers at Mass Media, when I was starting out with them, only asked one thing of me as a guiding policy:  Don’t become God.  I took it to heart and am glad I did, though I suppose I sounded a bit like God on occasion.

It might sound reckless to say so, but there are no set guidelines for movie analysis and comment.  That is one thing just about all of us movie reviewers would agree on.  There is no form to it.  Some of it involves just plain common sense and intelligence.  One who molds clay does not follow any pattern the way a sower does. Cinema is soft, fluid and dynamic; it evolves over time.  There are always surprises that emerge out of the hand of those who approach it experimentally.  And even with those that hue to a tight tradition or seem to, nothing is for sure in terms of the final pay-off.  Nothing is cut and dried; if it were, it would be DOA for certain.  A movie maker is an explorer; each production worth its salt is an investigation.  An artist in any genre follows instinct more so than guideline.       

Reviewing, on the other hand, does require some discipline.  The writer needs to know how to compose a coherent sentence, many of them, in fact.  We obey the rules of grammar and syntax and composition.  But once we have conformed to those, the rest is a swim.  And only those who enjoy the swim keep on keeping on.  

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.

West Side Story (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

2 hrs & 31 min, color, 1961

Here is a trivia question for all you movie goers and fans: Who is the only director ever fired from a film in the middle of production who went on nevertheless to win an Oscar for that very direction? 

The answer: Jerome Robbins, co-director with Robert Wise on the movie version of “West Side Story”.  He was fired for becoming over the months of production extremely difficult to work with.  Robbins, as many of you know, was responsible for designing the choreography on the musical, not only for the movie, but for the original stage production.  In a very real sense it is his show.  And because the work of the choreographer was so essential to the staging, he was given the title credit of Director.  Practically everybody in the huge cast did both singing and dancing during the running time, and Wise was not a dance director.  He could never have brought the picture off without Robbins’ genius.  It is a picture of extensive body movement, not just in the dancing but in the walking and running and fast-stepping of the players in the fine points of their performances.  I suppose Wise oversaw the dramatic close-ups, but it was Robbins who gave the brilliant film its pace and its beat. 

It was an unprecedented screen work upon first release in 1961.  Leonard Bernstein’s score and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics were unusually demanding on the cast and crew.  It made a sound that had never been made on the Hollywood screen before, and dancing had never been used on screen before as we see it.  The Rock era was only five years along, and movie audiences had not yet grown accustomed to the strange new offbeat/backbeat/street beat, jagged footloose-ness and finger snapping of the words and melodies.  Without a doubt Robbins was an essential in the movie’s creation.       

But what tripped him up was his perfectionism.  He was never satisfied, changing his mind over and over about the setup of a choreographed scene.  On the stage he was working from scratch and had much more authority and flexibility; there was much more room for experimentation.  But making a movie is vastly different from mastering a stage.  The result of his obstinacy was tightened control by United Artists.  Not only was he threatening to lengthen the shooting time exponentially and put the producers in jeopardy of having players leaving the film to fulfill previously made commitments elsewhere, but money was also a strong consideration.  He was costing them  a lot of it at a time when movies were generally in a slump and studios were tight with a buck.  Those of you under fifty years of age in all likelihood are not aware of that.  

In some ways the stage is a stronger medium than the screen, but in other respects, quite visible and dominant here, the screen has greater possibilities.  The movie’s opening is quite a bender of expectation.  Well before there is any personal confrontation we get a sweeping overview of New York from the lower Battery up to a west side playground by way of an aerial air born camera pointed straight down  and panning steadily in a leftward direction, with finger snapping music slowly coming upon the audience’s ear.  It is like being told that “Somewhere in the big city a heart beats – maybe many hearts.  Dreams and soiled ambitions are perking in a pot.  So let’s go find and visit them.”  Then it ends with a fast zoom shot down onto the playground.  

Actually the movie got made just in time.  Once shooting stopped, that entire section of the city was bulldozed to make room for Lincoln Center, upon which construction started immediately afterward.  That means that there is nowhere anyone can visit today in which the settings can be found.  I do not know whether it was planned that way or not, but if the city designers and the studio had not mutually cooperated, the results film-wise might have been disastrous.  

Now here is another trivia question: What famous movie critic thought “West Side Story” was corny and crude and predicted that the music would be passe and forgotten in not more than a decade.  The answer: Pauline Kael, famed critic for the New Republic magazine in her early years and for The New Yorker in her later life, not to mention her many books about movies and various special articles she wrote.  I will not go into her life; I simply mention that she made many enemies among her fellow critics and wrapped herself in a mantle of controversy that grew more and more thick the older she got before her death from Parkinson’s disease in 2001 at age 82, many years after her retirement.  She did have a shrewd way with words and could be very entertaining for readers with her humor.  She had admirers but not a lot of close friends in show business.   

It is needless to point it out but I will anyway: Kael could not have been more wrong in her prediction.  It is almost universally agreed that “West Side Story” is Bernstein’s greatest musical achievement, and considering all he composed over his long and productive life and career, that is saying a bunch.  His melodies from that scenario are heard quite frequently, on radio, TV and just about every medium you can think of.  The play has been produced dozens of times in various venues and continues to emerge within the clear hearing of the public.  And what is remarkable is that despite all the unconventional material the show contains, there are easy to follow melodies that cozy up to us with such sweet effect, ones that are not sentimental but that are heartfelt and passionate and have soul and radiance.  Every musical number is without doubt a showstopper, an event – a bridge crossed to move the plot along, not a detour or a mere dalliance.  Everything that happens musically contributes something essential.

At the core of it we have the soul and spirit of Shakespeare.  The story is basically “Romeo and Juliet”, the bard’s timeless tale about young lovers trying to penetrate walls of social division and hate to make a chosen life for themselves in the face of impending tragedy, only instead of the streets of Verona, Italy during the Renaissance we have the mean streets of New York City in the middle of the 20^th century.  Instead of two prominent well established feuding families acting out of bitter, age old rivalry we have delinquent street gangs baiting each other into open warfare to get control of neighborhood territory.  One is the native Jets and the other Puerto Rican immigrant kids who call themselves the Sharks.  Every segment of the plot comes right out of the centuries-old play starting, as the play does, in a public place in which the antagonists annoy, insult, punch, provoke, trip, chase and finally clash with each other.  Only while Shakespeare employs mostly words, Bernstein uses nothing but soundtrack music.  The seemingly runaway score proves, for those willing to get into it, not runaway at all.  It has design and organized energy and leads somewhere decisive.  It is, aside from being ingeniously composed, very forceful and confrontational.  

I know I am not giving anything away to say that the story revolves around a native teen boy named Tony (derived from Anton) weary of his delinquent past, and Maria, a sheltered Puerto Rican girl just recently arrived in the States from the Caribbean. They are the tragic, star-crossed lovers caught between the rival gangs.  Natalie Wood scores high as Maria and Richard Beymer does an earnest job of making Tony stand tall and strong, even though his sweet baby face at times gets in the way of what should be a tough demeanor.  Their scenes together draw out the very best in each, until the climactic sequence when death parts them.  Wood dominates the entire closing sequence; it is one of her finest screen moments.  We watch her turn from a dreamy kid into a hateful antagonist herself, from fantasy to crushing reality.  

Then a film that has thrived on fast movement and colliding fury fades gently out in grief and silent mortification.  All that is left are distant echoes and melodic recaps over closing credits.  Tre-men-dous!

But there is another player in this tragedy who deserves the highest marks of all.  Her name is Rita Moreno; she  fills the part of Maria’s friend Anita,  the lover of her older brother Ricardo (George Chakiris), leader of the Sharks, and when I say fills it, I mean she  makes every second of it her own.  She is totally electrifying in every respect.  Hers may be a supporting role, but I cannot imagine the film without her.  She is a very active and aggressive force, oozing sensuality out of every pore, a feisty foil for male high-mindedness all about her.  She strikes chords that ring the rafters in every direction.  She is quite a dancer too; she and Chakiris in the “America” number on the rooftop do some configuring that still astounds me after all these decades.  They are in every regard over the top.  (Moreno can currently be seen as the mother in the TV series “One Day at a Time” recently reviewed on this blog.)  

And a word needs to be said for Russ Tamblyn, who plays Riff, the acting leader of the Jets.  He is sharp and right on cue in every scene in which he appears; he too is quite an accomplished hoofer.  It was a pleasure to watch him, both in the choreography and in the dramatic moments.  

Anita and Ricardo try to take Maria and her roving eye in tow, but she slips out of their control and falls hook, line and sinker for Tony, and that is when the big trouble begins.  That is when the tribal solidarity throws up a roadblock to love and understanding.  That is when the latent savagery comes to the surface.     

“West Side Story” will live on and on.  It is the saga of displaced youth struggling for survival in a world others have created, youth forlorn, uprooted and misdirected.  It is the kind of thing that deserves front page attention in any age, including ours, wherein such deathly dangers threaten to snuff out otherwise beautiful lives.      

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.