Nothing But Wars And Lechery

To paraphrase Shaw, in Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare came as close to the 20th Century as the 17th Century would let him. To paraphrase me, he also came as close to the Athens of Pericles as the 1600’s would let him, because Troilus has all the bite, rage and scabrous humor of a lost play by Euripides. It’s talky, it’s satirical, its world view is a bad marriage between bitter and despairing, it’s an ongoing essay on the effects of Time on everything from vows to reputations, and it’s a bleak look at the stupidity of honor, like Shakespeare got angry drunk one night and decided to wipe people’s faces with the truth behind Falstaff’s honor speech.  

None of which are lost in this production, which is  (a) the fifth time I’ve seen this play performed, and (b) the best out of the five. So if you’ve never seen Troilus and Cressida, go see this one. And if you have seen Troilus and Cressida, definitely go see this one because it’s probably better than any of the other versions you’ve ever seen.  

Why? Because for a play that’s got more tonal shifts than Schoenberg, this production manages to find a way to embrace them all in a military bear-hug, thanks in no small part to a stellar ensemble and smart, assured direction by Daniel Sullivan, who establishes a consistent tone that honors all the wounding bitterness of this play while showing you how the wound got there.  

That’s always been the problem for me with Troilus. Either you make it overtly Messagey (like the Wooster Group’s Cry Trojans), or you ride the satire over the top until it crashes and burns (like the 1995 Delacorte version which was given low marks and no wings by director Mark Wing-Davey), or you go for stratospheric camp, like the 1973 David Schweizer-directed version at the Public (with a preening Christopher Walken as Achilles, a dead horse that William Hickey’s Pandarus kept kicking during the Helen scene, and Joe Papp chewing out the director during intermission the night I saw it. Good times.). Only rarely, as in Bill Alexander’s Folger production back in ’92, do you get a solid production that creates a stage on which satire can co-exist with something that resembles reality. That production did it by setting everything in ancient Troy; this one does it by setting everything in a modern Middle East war zone.  

They also have one other thing in common: a Hector who is a flawed rock of integrity. In the Folger production it was Daniel Southern, and he was like a male version of Desdemona: you knew that he was doomed the minute he opened his mouth to talk about honor. In this production, it’s Bill Heck, who has the kind of physicality and demeanor that demands respect, the kind of intelligence that sees the problem and knows how to solve it, and the kind of religious adherence to vows and words of honor that compounds the problem and ultimately kills him.  

I’ve been thinking about this production a lot since I saw it, and I can’t think of anything it did wrong. Corey Stoll’s Ulysses is dressed in a suit like a Halliburton adviser, and he is totally the manipulative dick that Attic Greek tragedy made out of Homer’s hero, the voice of reason who literally takes reason to a homicidal level. John Glover’s Pandarus is sublime and delightful. Max Casella’s Thersites threatens to steal the show, but the one who really does that is Alex Breaux as Ajax, a dim-witted Bro to whom self-knowledge is as incomprehensible as particle physics. (Although the real star the night I saw it was the understudy for Achilles, KeiLyn Durrel Jones, who went on for the injured David Harbour, and. Was. Amazing.)  

Something else done right: the women. Sullivan says more in two scenes about women as property in a male-dominated world than Phyllida Lloyd did in all of Shrew. Helen of Troy is a weary captive with a half-filled goblet of wine that never seems to get any emptier no matter how much she drinks, and she’s drinking for a reason, because she’s a trophy, a trophy who's ghosted by two men whenever she moves, men who shadow her and block her from going anywhere Paris doesn’t want her to go. (Paris is such a tool; for this one scene alone, you love to hate him.) And when Cressida is in the Greek camp, and Diomedes is talking to her, it’s done while a bunch of soldiers are watching them, ready and willing to move in on Cressida if and when she refuses Diomedes’ protection. And she knows it. So what else can she do but break her vow to Troilus, when the alternative is gang rape? The play is full of moments like this, stinging and sharply-observed.  

As for the title characters, Andrew Burnap and Ismenia Mendes are a matched set of awkward, vulnerable youngsters whom you want to see get together. Mendes in particular is awkward in a modern way that fits the setting of the production—the words rush out of her, spoken not in verse but in bursts, like the artillery fire that keeps hammering away at the walls of Troy. But because both of them are real and likeable, it really hurts when they’re forced by circumstance to learn the hard way that whenever you make a vow in this play, the gods laugh at you, and then make you either revoke that vow and lose your honor, or keep it and lose your life.  

And not just the gods but Time, who is the presiding deity of this script. Perhaps because of the clarity of the way it’s presented, this is the first production where I actually felt like I was watching everything through a temporal kaleidoscope. Troilus keeps getting described as a second Hector; so that means, once he and Cressida get married, that he will treat her the way Hector treats Andromache, like her fears are womanish and weak. When Troilus loses Cressida, he rages like Achilles when he’s lost Patriclus, and I think: ah, this is what Menelaus must have been like seven years ago, when he first lost Helen. And now look at him: the war has beaten all the anger out of him, and every line he says in this play (and he has, what, maybe 10 lines in all?) is a cracked window opening up onto a dour and defeated soul. This is what Troilus will be in seven years.

Seriously: everyone in this play is a temporal echo of everyone else, from Old Man Nestor who remembers fighting with everybody’s grandfather, to Cassandra who remembers things that haven’t happened yet. Only Ulysses, asshole that he is, is untouched by Time; and whatever he’s going to do when this war is over, you can bet it won’t involve trying to get home. This guy is too much in love with running things to come up with the Trojan Horse idea. If anything, this particular Ulysses would think of it and then deliberately forget it, just to keep the war going on forever. 

Two final notes. It feels a lot shorter than its three hours, which is something I never thought I would say about a production of this play (the 1995 version was as interminable as current David Mamet).  

And how weird is it that, when you look at the last three plays Sullivan has directed for Shakespeare in the Park, it’s the two weirdos which he’s done proud (Cymbeline and Troilus) while it’s the old warhorse that was totally out of his wheelhouse (Lear).

Let's hear it for weirdos. Go see this.

 

 

 

The Trumping Of The Shrew

Young girl, get out of my mind.

 

Ever wonder what women will have to put up in a world run by Donald Trump? Look no further than Shakespeare In the Park's current all-female production of Taming Of The Shrew, directed by Phyllida Lloyd, which is just as over-the-top, and almost as incoherent, as the man it's satirizing.

Framed by a beauty pageant whose voiceover announcer is modeled on a New Yorker whose name rhymes with The Ronald, and containing a character (Gremio) who’s a cross between Trump and Sinatra, with a Vegas Rat Pack attitude towards dames, this production has a ton of energy and a RV full of great ideas, but because it panders by going for easy laughs instead of the jugular, it’s like a complacent liberal: it thinks it’s a lot sharper than it really is in exposing misogyny. If the road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom, we should be getting a lot more wisdom than we do by the time that raucous curtain call starts. Instead, we just get patted on the back for being smart. 

But fun? God yes. The play’s been trimmed down to two hours with no intermission, and you don’t miss a thing. (Although what I got was a renewed impatience with the whole Bianca subplot. It felt like there was a lot less of Petruchio and Kate in this play.) Instead of the Christopher Sly Induction, we get the beauty pageant, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about Bianca and Katherina right from the start. The Latin lesson between Lucentio and Bianca is replaced with an extended quote from Gone With The Wind. Gremio’s report of the wedding is done totally meta—he comes out with a copy of Shrew in hand to tell us what he’s supposed to say, and then goes off on a sexist rant. The curtain call dance is done to Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation,” and in a brilliant touch, it includes elements of the Maori Hata war dance. And towering above it all is Janet McTeer’s Petruchio, a lanky cross between a totally pissed Peter O’Toole and a totally entitled rock and roll bad boy, whose every move and line is just magic. If some of this production comes across as a raucous shit-show, it’s McTeer who is the shit and the show. If the rest of this production was as good as her performance, this would be one of those Park plays people talk about for years.

But it’s not. Cush Jumbo’s Katherina is a study in exuberant overkill, but her final monologue—which should be the coup de grace of the play—totally misses its target because you don’t know what it’s aiming at. She delivers it simply and honestly, with no spin or subtext, and for the first time all evening, you wonder just what is going on with this woman who has been so vocal and forthright about what she feels and believes. Is it a pose? Is it sincere?  

And then you realize that you’ve been asking the same question about a lot of things in this production: “What is this supposed to be?” Like the set. It looks like a traveling carnival, but it also seems to be a trailer park. It’s specific enough so that it should be one thing, and thematically represent something meaningful; but it doesn’t. Or like the fact that, when they get married, husbands get paid off like crooked politicians, with briefcases of cash. Are they being bribed? Are they being rewarded? (Both—right, ladies?) Or like Cush Jumbo’s visual look as Katherina, with those Pippi Longstocking pigtails and those baby doll dresses. Are we supposed to inhale the whiff of pedophilia this implies? Or get creeped out because we’re even smelling it? 

Thematically, the beauty pageant frame is meant to be Meaningful with a capital M—at the start, Bianca enters on a bike that Katherina is pedaling, and her performance is interrupted when Kate, like a protester at a Trump rally, hijacks the microphone and denounces the whole event. Which tells us, right from the start, what to look for in what we’re going to see. And sometimes it’s there, but other times it’s not; and it’s not like it has to be there all the time, but the whole point of staying on message is that you don’t mix them, and in this production, those messages have been put through a Waring blender. In a show where everything is out there, to hilarious effect, it pulls back in crucial places instead of taking that firm extra step, or at least committing to the premise behind its shenanigans. Is this the destruction of a “disobedient” woman, or is it saying that such a thing is impossible? 

The perfect example of how it goes right and then wrong at the same time is the final scene. Katherina extends her hand for Petruchio to step on, and what do you know? She wins the beauty queen title! Which makes perfect sense, given the beginning: you tame a woman to win male beauty prizes. And if it had ended there—with Katherina becoming either the trapped or the willing beauty queen bride—pretty, subservient, a trophy—THAT would have been the perfect sting to the tail of this production. But no sooner does Kate win the contest than she does exactly what she did in the opening: hijack the mike and denounce the whole event—whereupon she’s hustled down a trap door and locked away. While Petruchio just stands there. (While. Petruchio. Just stands there.) And Bianca is named the Beauty Queen, and everyone gets their picture taken together, the end.  

If that doesn’t leave you scratching your head and saying “Huh?” then you are going to adore this production.  

Me, I feel like it was a great concept that wasn’t fulfilled with a lot of great ideas that weren’t tied together. But it has a lot going for it. It’s appealing and enjoyable and full of itself. It blusters, and it preens; it pats itself on the back for being enlightened; it says a lot but its words cancel each other out; and it makes promises that it never commits to. 

In other words, how perfectly male.

Salem Light: The Crucible on Broadway

 

 



It is a truth universally acknowledged that there are two Ivo van Hoves. One of them directs brilliantly precise artistic revivals (like A View From The Bridge) which serve the play by using the concept to make it timeless, immediate and gripping; the other directs muddled self-servingly “artistic” revivals (like The Crucible) which undercut the play by substituting concept for connection and making it “contemporary,” shallow and confusing. 

This production is set in a classroom which (based on the schoolgirl uniforms) could be anytime between the 30’s and the 60’s, but probably represents either 1952, when the play was written, or 1953, when it was first produced. It works for the prologue that van Hove has created: all the girls of Salem in class, reciting what’s written on the blackboard about good and accepted behavior. But because it’s a common space, it feels all wrong for a young girl and an older man to be talking about their affair. And because it’s supposed to also double as John Proctor’s home, you never feel the sense of intrusion when someone from the town comes to question him, or the sense of dread when he talks about going to town to defend himself. It’s like watching a play about Robespierre’s life where all the scenes take place next to the guillotine in the Place de la Concorde. (Actually, that sounds like a pretty cool play; but this van Hove would fuck it up.) 

There is Philip Glass underscoring throughout the entire production. It is incredibly distracting and annoying. 

In a lot of ways, this production is like Bad Van Hove's Antigone at BAM. (One does not talk about his Antigone at BAM. It's like The War. But one must admit that it takes a certain kind of genius to make Juliette Binoche look bad.) The main similarity between the two: the acting level is not that high. Ben Whishaw is the best thing in this, by far. Sophie Okonedo does her best, but I didn’t feel like she was playing Proctor’s wife, only his conscience. Ciarán Hinds has been better; he’s brusque and officious in all the right ways, he plays the “Are you accusing me of wrongdoing?” card like a professional political gambler, but I only got the all-business side of Danforth from him, not the moral certainty side. Plus he was drowned out now and then by the incredibly distracting Philip Glass underscoring. 

Which reminds me: the Philip Glass underscoring is incredibly distracting and annoying. 

What are we to make of this, Part 1: The curtain lowers; then immediately rises, and we see Betty Parris, the mute still-in-shock girl from the opening scene, flying in the middle of the classroom. The vision lasts just long enough for the audience to note it, and then the curtain comes down. WTF?

Saoirse Ronan is a sad disappointment. When she speaks, she “projects” like someone who has never been on a stage before, and it’s all one note, and it’s a surface note to boot, which means there’s nothing in it that comes from inside her. I’ve said this before about other film actors when they do stage plays, and it holds true for Ronan: it’s like she’s laying down a vocal track which she can fine-tune in post-production. Tavi Gevinson as Mary Warren fares better—she has stage chops; she has a three-note range—but she still does the “projecting” thing with her voice, which makes her sound like she’s always protesting against something. But since that fits her torn-between-two-choices character, it works.  

What are we to make of this, Part 2. At the opening of Act 3 (right after intermission,) the curtain rises on a man asleep in the classroom. Enter a wolf audience right, who prowls across the stage (eating pre-set treats, if you’re sharp-eyed enough to notice), then stops at the lip of the stage, and turns and stares at the orchestra audience, before trotting off audience left. It’s a genuine Wow Moment. But it’s also a Huh? Because: what does it mean?  And if it’s not there to mean something, why is it there? 

That sound you hear is me gritting my teeth at the incredibly distracting Philip Glass music. (Oh wait—you can’t hear my teeth grinding at all, can you? Because that Philip Glass underscoring WILL NOT FUCKING STOP.) 

What are we to make of this, Part 3. After Mary Warren says that Abigail is faking it, and Abigail accuses her of being Satan’s bitch, and Mary repents and rejoins the Salem Girls, there’s what can only be described as a poltergeist event on stage. The classroom neon lights flicker, short out, and fall from their moorings; and from the audience left wall, a stream of trash and refuse hoses out onto the stage. This happens for what feels like thirty seconds, so it was probably closer to 15 or 20; and again, it’s a Wow Moment. But when you’re doing a play in which one of the questions is “Are these girls in league with the devil?” and then you show an audience evidence that something devilish appears at their command, well shit, play’s over, right?  It’s like Jack Nicholson walked onstage, grinned at the audience, and went: “He-e-e-e-e-ere’s SATAN!”

The unique thing about this production for me? It's the first time I've seen The Crucible where I've been convinced that the town of Salem has sacrificed all its male children to the Old Testament God. Because it's the first time I've ever seen the play and asked myself: "Wait a minute! Where are all the BOYS?" Which is not a question anybody should be asking during this play. 

 

You know how weird this production is? There isn’t even a lights-out at the end. You just see Elizabeth Proctor deliver the final line, and then everybody troops onstage for the curtain call. And I'll tell ya, they don’t look very happy.

Me, I’m only happy that the OTHER van Hove directed View From The Bridge.

We Interrupt This Story

 

Proposition: All stories are information delivered through time. How that information is delivered, in the time it takes to tell the story, is style. Like flashback, for instance, where a present-day character begins to talk about something that happened to her ages ago, and then we see it come to life. (For a really great example of this that you’ve probably never seen, hunt down That Hamilton Woman with Vivien Leigh.) Or like voiceover narration, where a bodiless voice comments on what we’re looking at. (Which is normally the sign of a really crappy movie, because most of the time it’s done in post-production; but for a really great example of voiceover (as a deliberate creative style) that you’ve probably forgotten, go watch The Opposite of Sex with Christina Ricci.) 

 

Two recent movies—one kind of a mess, one kind of brilliant; one told via flashback, one told via not only voiceover but fourth-wall-breaking narration—share a third storytelling technique: stopping the narrative dead in its tracks. In the flashback case, it’s to send us up the timeline to focus on the storyteller; in the voiceover case, it’s to deliver complicated pieces of information as entertainingly as possible.  

 

Because of this, one of them not only doesn’t work, its lack of success in the style area is like the icing on the failure cake. What movie am I talking about?  Here’s a hint:

 

 

So if they got the dash-in-the-title correct here . . .

In In the Heart of The Sea, pretty much everything is a mess. The CGI is a mess. The plot is a mess. There’s a Mutiny On The Bounty storyline, a class war storyline, an oil-companies-are-assholes-even-in-the-1800’s storyline, a truth versus cover-up storyline, a whaling storyline, a Jaws storyline, a Hawthorne-envy storyline from Herman Melville; and to top it all off, you also get one of the worst regional accents ever committed to film by a lead actor who’s rich enough to pay for a whole college of vocal coaches.

 

All of which is continually interrupted by the frame story, which revolves around a we-did-a-horrible-thing-to-survive secret. And when I say continually interrupted, I mean frustratingly interrupted. Every time you get sucked into the flashback, bang, you’re back listening to the heavy-set Fenian who got bludgeoned to death by Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York talking to the weedy Brit who plays Q in the current Bond movies, and you don’t fucking care. It’s like every time you round third base and head for home, you have to stop dead in your tracks while the color commentator analyzes your running technique.

 

And The Big Secret these narrative interruptions are designed to reveal? It’s no real secret at all if you know the story, and no great shakes even if you don’t, because this is a Hollywood movie and you can’t show it—although I bet if they did, they’d still get a PG-13 and not an R. They’d only get an R if somebody said “Fuck—this ensign tastes like fucking chicken.”

 

And in the end it’s just laughable. I mean, after being stranded on an island and forced to endure incredible privations at sea, our hero arrives home years later dressed in exactly the same outfit in which he left, and in pretty much the same physical condition in which he left, which made me think that Ron Howard filmed the departure and arrival scenes one right after the other, without anyone saying “Hey Ron—since, uhm, we’re gonna make Hemsworth lose a hundred pounds for the starvation scenes, don’t you think we should wait till then to film his return to Nantucket?” 

 

And it’s probably the same guy who didn’t say “Hey Ron—since we show the actual printed title of Herman Melville’s novel, don’t you think we should put the dash between Moby and Dick? Y’know, just for the sake of authenticity?”

 

Which is the kind of interruption this movie could have benefited from. In stark contrast to which, you have a movie whose interruptions are just as frequent, but not as frustrating:

 

Only two of these guys are ever in the same scene together.

 

 

The Big Short interrupts its story at least as often as In The Heart of The Beast, but it’s nowhere near as annoying. Part of this is because Beast took a simple story—“We’re supposed to be hunting whales but the whale is hunting us!”—and made it needlessly complicated by adding a longboat full of other stories simply because they didn’t trust the one they had; while Short takes an incredibly complicated subject and boils it down to one underlying message that is the foundation of the film, and why it’s a success: “What you call the truth is actually a lie.”

 

Right from the get-go, the movie has a narrator, who turns out to be one of its characters. This is what we used to refer to in the last century as Brechtian, but is now called meta—somebody in the story saying “We’re telling a story here.” And it happens throughout the film. Every now and then somebody will turn to the camera and say “That actually happened,” or “This didn’t actually happen this way,” or “Yes, we actually did that and thought of that.” Or the narrator will stop the story dead in its tracks to say, “And now, here’s Margot Robbie to explain mortgage-backed securities while drinking champagne in a bubble bath.” And she does. And it makes sense.

 

So right from the start, the audience gets the message that this is not the kind of movie which will require them to lean forward in anticipation as Chris Hemsworth hurls a harpoon; instead, this is the kind of movie you would get if  Michael Moore had directed Margin Call. (Another one you should hunt down.)  You’re not asked to become emotionally invested in any of the characters—you get Law And Order level backstory for pretty much everyone except Steve Carrell’s character. And the level of detail we’re given about him is so high, compared to what we get about everyone else, that it's like something from another film. But it’s not high enough to feel like more than just another interruption, one that totally wastes Marisa Tomei as Carell’s put-upon spouse and makes Carell’s one big emotional scene feel, well, kind of embarrassing, really. Me—I would have paid cash money to see Tomei kiss Carell’s forehead at the end of that scene, turn to the camera, and say: “This didn’t really happen, but we wanted to give at least one of the assholes in this movie a character arc.” That would have killed.

 

Other than that misstep, The Big Short is a very smart movie, which knows it’s smart, and ends up making you smart about stuff that people who’ve worked in the financial industry for years have always known about the business: supposedly-above-it-all rating agencies are just as venal (and capitalistic) as their clients (“If we don’t give it a good rating, they’ll go to Moody’s!”), people on the enforcement side are literally sleeping with people on the corporate side (especially when it comes to Goldman Sachs), and the sad-but-true fact that complicated financial instruments are complicated for a reason: so you’ll trust the fools who explain them to you enough to think you’re getting a steal when you buy them. But there’s always and only one steal going on here.

 

And the other wickedly fun thing about this movie? Because the underdogs (who are this movie's heroes) predicted the financial crisis of 2008, by rooting for them to win, you’re rooting for the crash to happen. 

 

Now THAT’S Brechtian.

"I love Brecht. Now f#©k off."

 

"Who's The Girl?"

A desert planet, an abandoned child, a cute robot, an experienced mentor, a cantina scene, a rescue that ends in death, a planet blown up, a dogfight with bombing runs—sound familiar? It should. The Force Awakens is like a remix of the original Star Wars (aka A New Hope), with all the Lego pieces of the original rearranged to create something that tries to be a remake and a sequel at the same time. And pretty much succeeds, if you don’t think about it too much, because for all its echoes (and it is indeed an echo chamber that sounds like it’s talking), the one thing it doesn’t feel like is a reboot. It honestly feels like a continuation. 

And the fact that it’s also a remake—the kind of remake that extends down to a fractal level, where every piece of this movie is identical to something else in the original trilogy—adds a mythic level to the story universe in which it takes place, a level that got lost (or was deliberately ignored) in the prequel trilogy.

So—by returning to the original trilogy and treating it like a mythical journey—the creators of The Force Awakens have tapped into what made those three movies so likeable and (yeah, why not) important. They’ve also made this one different enough to stand on its own, by mixing and matching the Luke/Han/Leia triangle into the Rey/Finn/Poe triangle—staging a rescue where the female captive is more than capable of escaping herself, setting up a fighter pilot with Han’s swagger and Luke’s skill, and (the best twist) creating an I-am-not-a-free-man-I-am-a-number stormtrooper who will (of course) find out and become who he truly is in the course of this trilogy. (There’s also the Hunger Games echo, with Finn as Peeta. Because it seems like whenever you have a Strong Female Character, one of the boys winds up being the damsel in distress.) 

The other big improvement is the dialogue. One can speculate about how much this is owed to the involvement of Lawrence Kasdan in the script-writing process; Kasdan (along with Leigh Brackett) wrote The Empire Strikes Back, which was parsecs light years beyond the script of its predecessor. (There’s a great story about the original movie, where Harrison Ford complained about the crappy dialogue by saying: “You can type this shit, George, but you sure can’t say it.”)  

Is it a great movie? I think it’s too early to tell. Is it everything Star Wars fans have wanted? Hells yes. Which is not necessarily a good thing, because if you satisfy your fan base without giving them a little something extra, or pushing them into a place where they feel surprised (and yet comforted) at the same time, then it’s not art, it’s fan fiction, and art always lasts longer. The weird thing about this universe is that the prequel trilogy, even though it was made by the universe’s creator, feels more and more like bad fan fiction as the years go by. 

This film doesn’t feel that way. Yet. Despite the fact that it’s a total dish of leftovers, and deeply and deliberately unoriginal, it feels fresh, it feels right, and—because it celebrates and loves everything that made the original trilogy work—it feels honorable. 

Even though it also feels like somebody at Disney is whispering “May the box office be with you.” 

Spoilers and stray thoughts: 

Ben dies in the original; Han dies in this one. Yoda trains Luke in the old second one; Luke is now Yoda, so he will train Rey in the new second one.  

If it’s a Republic, then what is the Resistance resisting?  Trade agreements from the prequel trilogy? 

Admit it—you secretly wish Adam Driver could play Annakin Skywalker in a remake of Revenge Of The Sith. 

"Trash compacter."

And seriously—there was so much fan service in this film that I totally expected Han to say: “I ALWAYS shoot first.” 

It sure is a shame when planets full of billions of people are blown up. Especially when they’re the heart of the Republic.  Oh well. 

Speaking of which. If you’re going to suck all the energy out of a sun, and you’re, say, about as far from it as Earth is from our sun, doesn’t that mean the moment you see the sun go out, you’ve had that energy for eight minutes? Because that’s how long it takes the sun’s light to reach you, right? Which means, not, “Oh no—we only have seconds to save the day!” but this:

 

I thought the direction failed at two crucial moments: Han’s death, and the final reveal of Luke. Rey barely knows Han, but all the attention was on her when he got skewered. That didn’t do it for me; it was too much of an echo of the original film, and it didn’t feel as earned as Ben’s death, which was a sacrifice. What I wanted to see was the growing awareness and helplessness in the one character who’s known Han pretty much all his life—I wanted to see a series of slow close-in shots of Chewy as it all goes down. That would have broken my heart. And that flyaway helicopter shot at the end totally took me out of the moment. I thought it was unnecessary, and a let-down. All you really needed at that moment was to hold on Rey and Luke, and then wipe or iris-out to the credits. 

 

 

Speaking of Han’s death. I really liked the silent reaction of Leia, but I have to confess that it made me anticipate a reaction from Luke. “This is it,” I thought to myself, “this is where we first see Luke—reacting to his friend’s death because he, too, felt it in The Force.” Wouldn't that have been cool?  We wouldn’t even need to see his face.  Just a hooded man in gray, walking on a cliff.  Then stopping. Looking up into the sky. And slowly lowering his head while his shoulders slump with grief.

 

So who the hell is Rey anyway?  Is she Luke’s kid with one of the trainees that Kylo Ren killed? (And was that trainee Mara Jade? Talk about fan service!) Is she Ben Solo's twin sister? Is she Palpatine’s kid? (That would be interesting, right? If chronologically impossible. She appears to be about Kylo Ren's age, which is more grist for the twin mill.) Or maybe somebody's clone? (Which would tie in the Clone Wars.) 

Whatever her history, Han knows exactly who she is. You see it in his face when she tells him her name.  “Who’s the girl?” asks Maz Kanata in the new cantina, and the movie cuts away before Han’s answer. I’m calling it here—we get a flashback to Harrison Ford revealing who Rey is in the next movie.

Autumn Movie Rundown

Wondering what movies to see before they all get crowded out by Hunger Games 4 and holiday Oscar bait?

 

The Sure Things: Room and Spotlight

The less you know about either of these, the better. But even if you read the novel or read the Boston Globe fourteen years ago, you will not be disappointed. Spotlight is the best reporter movie since All The President’s Men, and a way better Boston movie than Black Mass. And Room is alternately sad-heartbreaking and joyful-heartbreaking.

On second thought, just leave him there.

The Crowd Pleaser: The Martian

AKA Mars Needs Potatoes.  It’s smart and fun and uplifting while you’re watching it, but on reflection it’s like the outer space version of one of those star-studded 50’s Cecil B DeMille extravaganzas, where the whole is smaller than the sum of its parts, and the thrills are ultimately bogus because let’s face it, none of the A-list actors are ever in any real danger. Except Sean Bean.  (Poor Sean. The older he gets, the more I wish he’d been James Bond instead of Pierce Brosnan.)

The Smart Thriller: Sicario

Remember how LA Confidential kept turning into a different movie every twenty minutes? This film doesn’t have that many jagged moves, but the movie it starts out to be is as different from what it turns into as Alice’s Victorian England is from Wonderland. A morally ambiguous poisoned cookie of a film that truly deserves to be compared to a Graham Greene thriller or a John le Carrè novel, unlike

 

The Faux Thriller: Bridge Of Spies

Be warned. Reviewers calling this film “morally ambiguous” or comparing it to John le Carrè are drinking the Spielberg Kool-Aid. There is never any question that Tom Hanks’ James Donovan is morally correct in everything he does, and having at least one person every ten minutes confront him by acting like a goose-stepping anti-Communist d-bag is not drama, it’s propaganda. Watch it for (a) the skillful way that Spielberg makes that propaganda feel like a real ethical struggle, instead of a foregone moral conclusion, and (b) Mark Rylance’s Rudolf Abel, whose every line and look hints at a fascinating but unknowable inner life.

The Comfort Thriller: SPECTRE

Part of the thrill of seeing Casino Royale was thinking: “Holy crap—the Bond movies can go anywhere now!” Part of the disappointment of seeing SPECTRE is thinking: “Crap—they’ve just re-set the Timothy Dalton status quo.” (And—I know it’s a big spoiler, but the pun is too good to pass up—they’ve also turned Blofeld into Bro-feld.) In a way, it’s the first old school James Bond movie Daniel Craig has made, which to me—given all that Casino Royale potential—made it like the British version of Mission Impossible 5: Our Hero Goes Rogue Again To Save The World.

The Thrill-less Gothic: Crimson Peak

Absolutely gorgeous to look at, this film would have been an instant classic if the script had been given as much work as the art direction.  But the horror movie of the trailers is actually a Gothic Bad House story, with a heroine who is like an American Bronte cousin, ghosts (all female) who actually aid her, and a mansion that is, at one and the same time, both claustrophobic and as wide-open as Grand Central Station. I walked out of this film wishing I could cast Tom Hiddleston as Percy Shelley, Mia Wasikowska as Mary Shelley, Jessica Chastain as Caroline Lamb, and Tom Hardy as Byron, and just have them tell ghost stories for two hours.

 

The Near Ms: Suffragette

Sometimes the way that a film is, well, filmed, gets in the way of the story it wants to tell. This film is all hand-held cameras, natural lighting, immense close-ups, and swift editing, which actually kept me at arm’s reach instead of bringing me closer to the characters. In other words, it’s a period piece filmed in a modern-day manner. You may have a different opinion about whether or not this works, but I walked out thinking that if I stripped the dialogue away, I would have no idea what was going on in the story. That said, there’s a great story here. I just thought it paled in comparison to the way this one is told.

Old Times, or, You Pinter--You Brought 'Er.

Roundabout/American Airlines Theatre

With Clive Owen, Kelly Reilly and Eve Best

Directed by Douglas Hodge

 

 

 

You shouldn’t have to think of synonyms

for “loud” and “fast” when you see Pinter plays.

You shouldn’t have to say: “Oh I see how

that line’s supposed to work.  Too bad it didn’t.”

You shouldn’t have to walk out thinking: “Wow—

that was a buck-a-minute show that made

Pinter look like he won the Nobel Prize

for The Emperor’s New Playwrighting Clothes.”

But I did, and it was. Thanks, Roundabout.

I just learned something that I didn’t know—

the bestest way to botch a Pinter play:

release the anger underneath the surface.

Do that, and all the venom disappears;

do that, and not a line will have a sting.

When you speak Pinter dialogue in anger,

then not a single play of his will work.

Especially when the director has

weird tonal background music playing, that

sounds like someone from Radiohead trying

to be Brian Eno, and score subsonics

beneath the lines to tell the audience

that there’s a big eruption brewing, when

the lines themselves should act like a slow fuse.

Having done that, why, don’t forget to put

your three characters on a set designed

to look like the Pole Star surrounded by

circular white star trails—a set tricked out

to say that there is something universal

in what these characters are going through.

But Pinter isn’t saying that; and this

play’s not constructed to support that weight.

It’s too precise to be some ur-encounter

between two women and a man, like say

Adam and Eve and Lilith in the Garden.

There’s nothing primal here except the need

to own a woman by owning her past,

and that’s not mythical—that’s therapy.

There are no gods here, except maybe for

Robert Newton’s painter in Odd Man Out.

So this production’s grand attempt at lifting

this play up to the Sophoclean heights

succeeds in being just another broad

stroke that smears all the subtlety away,

an act of dramaturgical hubris.

 

And then, if you’re directing this, make sure

you put the icing on the overcooked

cake by telling the actors they can floor it

when they sit in the verbal driver’s seat,

and the play will turn into serve and volley,

not spin and strategy—a power game

instead of sniper fire—where every line’s

a rocket with a payload, instead of

the polite casing for a dum-dum bullet

that does more damage when it hits its mark

than when it's shot.

 

                              Wait—sorry—wrong—in fact,

don’t even think of guns at all. Think knives.

Albee is bullets. Strindberg is dueling pistols.

Pinter is knives, not noise. Each biting line

is part of some death of a thousand cuts,

where you drop dead before you know you’re bleeding.

It’s a knife fight, where every stab and thrust

happens so fast you never see the blade—

you only see the slicing mark it leaves.

And when the verbal bombs are dropped, they’re tossed

like nonchalant grenades into the room,

exploding not with booms but with dead silence.

The only way to tell if they’ve gone off—

to know for sure that those lines are explosive—

is by their victims, not the sound they make.

Except in this production, where the booms

shatter the windowpanes.  

Speaking of which,

windows and doors exist in Pinter’s words

through which an actor can reveal the fire

that stokes her inner engine—but if she

opens these windows or walks through that door

and lets us see the furor underneath

the “I remember you dead” monologue

(for instance), then it shrinks in size and fails

to be more than melodramatic rage

when—if it was delivered with the calm

of a casual shiv between the ribs—

it should have—and it would have—pierced to the heart. 

Sadly, there’s no such piercing in this blunt

production, though it has its little moments

when, despite all the actors and director

have done to kick him to the Times Square curb,

Pinter appears onstage in all his dark

and quiet terror. It’s not like they’re bad,

the actors; Clive Owen is smug and sleazy,

Kelly Reilly is a hot mystery,

and, yes, Eve Best lives up to her last name.

It’s just that what they’re doing doesn’t serve

what should be served up: something that looks chilled

but really scorches.  

The rule is noise here,

and what that noise says through it all is this:  

“You want to make Pinter look like a hack?

Turn all the speakers up to ten, and make

each bomb go off as loud as dynamite.” 

“Want to make Pinter look shallow?  Then make

each subtle dig as deep as the Pacific,

and fill the stage with snarling cats and dogs

instead of men and women who will hide

their inside animals behind the veil

of civilized behavior, and not once—

not once demean the anger in their souls

by freeing it.” 

And yes, it’s possible

To do Old Times as one great big “Fuck you!”

But it was written to do that while saying

“Well, bless your heart.” Anything more than that

is less than Pinter—it’s just acting out,

not acting. It feels wrong when feelings get

exposed instead of covered up in chatter.

It reads as shallow when you play the deep.

It hangs there weightless when you give it speed.

Bring it to a fast boil, and it will steam

but never scald.  To me, Pinter’s all simmer.

You can’t allow what’s cooking to heat up

Enough to blow its top; you have to keep

It frothing, so it never comes to rest.

It is the covered pot that boils the best.

 

Copyright 2015 Matthew J Wells

 

Translations

       for Brian Friel

              I

Green hills rear up to the sky

like an animal untamed

hills where hope and fancy lie

buried like a maiden name 

catalogued and pigeonholed

with a definite position

like the eddy and the shoal

like the devious tradition 

hills with native poetry

paved and garbled by translation

ancient earthy masonry

hidden by the renovation 

till the myth, like extra weight,

is abandoned on the march

to the street sign and the gate

to the label on the larch 

to a country where the breathless

and the breathing live apart

where the tale that once was deathless

is a legend on a chart

So the map becomes the town

and the hand that used to play

marks the shape and distance down

scaling all the land away 

grinding down the mother tongue

separating blood from kin

till the songs that now are sung

smell of drink and might have been 

till each river, pond and pebble,

stream and pasture, land and field

lie imprisoned like a rebel

underneath the tyrant's heel 

              II

I sit in an Irish bar with a dark drink

surrounded by extras and understudies, friends,

and the one girl in the cast who cannot speak, 

all of them politely thinking to themselves

what I think, wondering why the actors with the names

and reputations did not bring my words alive. 

When did they give up, the words beyond them,

and simply move their mouths, making a loud

accented noise, not looking at each other ever? 

When was it when they first turned off their hearts

and all the rest became the vengeance of

the rote mechanical, connect-the-dots?   

When did the life end, and the motion start?

Like God, I offered life and they refused it,

preferring like Frankenstein to make their own. 

Now I sit here sipping a dark bitter drink

and wonder who really makes the monster failure,

is it the fault of life or those alive 

that breeds a death from rows of breathing words?

Is it the lack in us that halts the tongue

or something in the tongue that cannot speak, 

something that plays with us, like a hunting dog

tracking the thing we aim at, shoot at, kill,

only to run away, and leave us fogged  

repeating the heart of a rote speech or a song

till the words escape us, and we end the hard day

as I end this day, sitting and drinking, 

wondering what went wrong. 

                                          And then I think,

well, things go wrong--that is the way of things.

There are no other words.  Not tonight, at least. 

So I drain my drink, and stand in a cloud of smoke,

and a girl with clear tight skin falls at my feet

and gushes while I nod and laugh politely. 

Such a young thing, to be in awe of me,

whose promise hangs behind me like my shadow.

This young thing should find some words of her own, 

not borrow mine, words that she alone will taste

forever like perfection in her ear,

and never be spoken anywhere close to that 

by even the best of speakers, actors, friends,

because they will be her own kissing gifts,

heavily lying on a stranger's lip, 

heavier than the desire for bed behind

two traded tongues, heavier even than love

whose burden is to listen--or pretend to. 

And I shake this girl's hand and watch her leave,

and stumble into the tiny room where drink

is translated; and I think to myself 

that there is a kind of blessing in bad actors.

Because of them, the lines that they deliver,

the things they say that never come alive,  

are never blamed for being less than real.

The actor gets that blame; the fault is his.

Well, I'm all for that.  I'm for anything that makes 

the play look good, the words, the thought, the work.

They all survive, even when translation fails.

And though the heart, the language of the pulse 

which cries a thing unsayable in words,

seems dead, still there is life at the hard end

of this long day's work, because my words 

tonight were seeded into rows, tossed negligently

like hopeful planting in the teeth of famine

on eager fertile ground, on hopeful girls 

with clear clean skin and shining eyes, by those

like me who write and never speak their fears,

but plant a harvest in a field of ears.

 
                 III

Speaking in tongues that are and are not theirs

making their chatter kisses in the dark

dancing apart, two strangers on display

a blood red coat against a dirt brown shawl 

everything else will not be spoken of--

the hatred and the hatred in return

rote jealousy, betrayal, drunken pride--

because the unvoiced is the unbegotten 

because love is the synonym of souls

a man and woman trading pretty names

in bold misunderstood defiance of

a blood red coat against a dirt brown shawl 

 

Copyright 1995, 2015 Matthew J Wells