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Week 14

Book: A Venetian Affair by Andrea di Robilant. A packet of old love letters is the entry point to a fascinating history of 18th century Venice, full of scheming politicians and courtesans, grand palaces, masked balls and intrigue. A true story. Recommended for readers who like Venice, history, and tales of forbidden love.

Movie: Toni Erdmann. A careerist’s overscheduled life is shaken up by the arrival of her father, who likes putting on false teeth and playing practical jokes. Maren Ade’s low-key comedy topped the Sight & Sound critics’ poll last year. It’s less funny-ha ha than oddly touching, especially when it evokes the loneliness of our supposedly connected world. Recommended for viewers who live in fear that their parents will embarrass them in front of their colleagues. Like, everyone.
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Michael Fassbender does the uncanny valley.

In the not-so-distant future, assuming the species survives its current stupidity, humans might colonize other planets. Before they do I hope they see the Alien movies (and its ripoffs) and think hard about security protocols, especially those concerning contamination. And that they develop powerful portable floodlights because so much mayhem could be avoided if people could see where they were walking.

But back into the murky, slimy dark we go, and once again our guide is Ridley Scott. The movie opens with a flashback to events before Prometheus. Critics didn’t love that movie, either, but I enjoyed it a lot: it raised questions that prompted other questions that got weirder and weirder. In this prologue, the synthetic David (Michael Fassbender) has a discussion with his creator, Weyland (Guy Pearce). David, you will recall, modelled himself on David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, down to the hairstyle of that glamorous imperialist. David is disappointed in his creator and his puny species—he, the creature, is obviously the superior being. Here’s where the Alien movies merge with Blade Runner (which Denis Villeneuve is resurrecting): they are the descendants of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster. Later David even quotes a poem by Mary’s husband, which any Breaking Bad fan should be able to identify.
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Fine, you are superior.

I was going to post the scene from Casablanca again (must be plenty of people doing that today) but remembered a similar scene from perhaps a greater film, Renoir’s Grand Illusion. In a German camp, the French prisoners of war are putting on a show when they get news of a French victory.

It’s a beautiful anthem, the model for the Philippine, never mind the stuff about bathing in the blood of enemies.

We still have Paris.
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Yes, it’s a blast, almost strenuously cheerful.

1. It’s funny and the opposite of self-serious.

2. There are unexpectedly affecting moments, most of them having to do with father-son relationships. Gamora’s relationship with Nebula also gets some attention. Captain America is all about politics, Spider-Man is about adolescence, X-Men is about nerds and Guardians is about family. (Fantastic Four should’ve been about family, but they never figured it out.)

3. It has even more music in it than the first Guardians; you could view it as an exhausting series of very expensive music videos. The poster looks like an album cover.
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With Marilyn’s then-husband, Arthur Miller. Read The Feminine Heroic in The Paris Review.

There’s a play in here.

Movies:

Life: B (See my review)

Ghost in the Shell: C. I never read the manga or saw the anime, so I did not fly into a rage over this live action adaptation by Rupert Sanders. But even I could see that casting Scarlett Johansson (so effective as a post-human character elsewhere) as a Japanese woman, even if her consciousness was occupying a synthetic body, was odd. She only speaks English to her boss, Takeshi Kitano, who only speaks to her in Japanese, and no one points out the strangeness. Maybe if the setting had not been Tokyo of the near-future. The production design is beautiful, even if the writing chews over philosophical problems tackled in greater depth in Blade Runner and elsewhere.

To Walk Invisible: B. How did three young women who lived in isolation in the middle of nowhere produce Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and other spellbinding classics of Victorian literature? The Brontes are an argument for the shut-in life. This film by Sally Wainright, creator of the excellent British series Happy Valley, opens with little Charlotte, Emily and Anne creating imaginary worlds with their brother Branwell. Branwell, the only boy, was believed to be a genius. The family expected him to be a great writer and artist, but he was weak, became addicted to alcohol and opium, and often brought shame to the family. On the other hand, his dramas and afflictions shook up the quiet household and may have unleashed something in his three sisters. A fascinating study of a literary family, even if the ending makes it look like an ad for the Bronte Parsonage Museum.

Books: The Idiot by Elif Batuman and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

Both abandoned at the halfway mark because while I admired their intelligence and craft, Batuman’s explorations of language and Saunders’s relentless wit, I was in the mood for a traditional narrative in which I root for the protagonist and something happens. Maybe when the weather isn’t so hot, humid and friendly to mucus.