Supreme Fiction

Times Review of SATC

Dara writes:

Like many women I know, I am looking forward to seeing the Sex and the City movie. Knowing it would be reviewed in the New York Times today, I avidly awaited the arrival of the paper.

Reader, I cried: yes, Manohla Dargis pans the movie. In a nutshell, Dargis feels that while the small screen was suited to the show, as it was essentially trivial in many ways, the big screen amplifies the triviality. The women, especially Carrie, seem self-obsessed and petty, while the men are drawn in an even more one-dimensional manner than on the show.

I will see the film for myself, but I did want to mention the end of Dargis's review, in which she writes: "It isn’t that Carrie has grown older or overly familiar. It’s that awash in materialism and narcissism, a cloth flower pinned to her dress where cool chicks wear their Obama buttons, this It Girl has become totally Ick." Why is Obama in that last sentence? Why has Dargis brought politics into this?

The New York magazine reviewer detected racism in the film's treatment of Carrie's assistant, played by Jennifer Hudson. Perhaps Dargis agrees. Instead of addressing it head-on, however, she alludes to it by bringing in politics in an obtrusive manner.

I look forward to seeing the film and reporting back post-haste.

Sex and the City Movie

Dara writes:

As most people living in Manhattan know, the Sex and the City movie, slated for a May release, is now filming on our streets. I had seen the pictures in Us Weekly, and heard the various narratives: for instance, that fake scenes were being filmed in order to disguise the real plot twists. Yesterday, even the New York Times got in on the SATC action; Melena Ryzik penned a piece about the massive crowds accompanying each shoot. Ms. Ryzik related a charming anecdote about the confusion of Kristin Davis (Charlotte); a paparazzo told her to move and she did so, even though she was in the middle of a scene. Ms. Davis found herself asking, "Now why did I do that?" She did it because fans are omnipresent at these shoots and the crowds can boggle the mind.

The presence of the shoot in my life was minimal, until yesterday, when it made a cameo appearance. James and I were walking to dinner at Yama, a sushi place near us on 17th Street. We were heading East on 17th and saw the Panavision trucks, the klieg lights, etc. There’s always a movie or Law & Order filming in NY, so I didn’t look twice.

Fast forward about twenty minutes. We’re waiting in the restaurant, in what amounts to a glass-enclosed human cage in this tiny Japanese joint. Our total wait was almost an hour, sigh, but the beginning of it made infinitely worse by a clutch of double-daters. The alpha girl in the group, we’ll call her Mimi, looked like she was trying to emulate Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada. Prada Juniorette had on a cape and stiletto knee-high boots and was carrying a large expensive (though possibly knock-off) luxury handbag. She had bangs and big eyes and hurtled past James and me on the stairs to the restaurant, where we were waiting, exclaiming to her friends about us: “If they would just make way for me on the stairs, I wouldn’t be tripping all over myself.” I felt like saying, “No, if you weren’t wearing four-inch stiletto boots you wouldn’t be tripping all over yourself.”

Once inside, Mimi draped her arm over the shoulders of the compact man putting names on a list for tables. She purred, “Anything you can do for us? Pleeeeeaaase???” Mind you, this wasn’t Bungalow 8. Rather we were waiting online for tuna rolls in a neighborhood restaurant. Those tacky tactics were NOT going to work.

So I guess outside became inhospitable to Mimi and her crew, at which point they pushed themselves past everyone waiting online and parked themselves in front of the sushi bar to wait, blocking the comings and goings of the staff. One of the boys, we’ll call him Eric, kept saying very loudly, “Sarah Jessica Parker.” Eric kept saying, “If we tell them Sarah Jessica Parker is outside shooting the movie, everyone will want to see her and leave the restaurant!” His ploy to secure a table was laughably juvenile. Didn’t he know we were jaded New Yorkers? The last time I can recall putting on a costume and purring to a bouncer, I was in high school.

In the event, I was happy to note I wasn’t the only one recoiling from this crew. The folks next to me said they wouldn’t accept a seat next to the bunch. A woman with long blonde hair and a green suede trench coat and I kept rolling our eyes at each other. Mind you, in Grand Central Station, or the Times Square subway station, I don't care who acts in what manner. If you want to go barefoot, grow dreadlocks, and bang on a guitar as though it were a drum, be my guest (though you might want to note your competition, as there is already a busker doing just that on 40th Street underground). But this restaurant is TINY and smells strongly of tempura grease. Noise and bluster just make the experience that much more unpleasant.

As it happens, James and I were the lucky ones to secure a table next to Mimi and Eric et.al. James, my hero, refused it. The folks next to us refused it as well. Of course solidarity was then formed among us. Soon after we settled in at the sushi bar and that was that, Eric and Mimi forgotten.

Until James and I stepped outside after dinner and Eric’s shouts of “SJP” were remembered. A scene was rolling inside a nearby boite. J and I watched the monitors and when the director yelled cut, we got a fabulous glimpse of no less than Carrie and Mr. Big. Chris Noth, though I love him on screen, I had already seen in action in real life in a cigar bar about three years back. Don’t ask me what I was doing there, but suffice it to say that Mr. Noth and his gumbah crew impressed me as being loud and crude. But SJP: her hair was long, a glittering black shawl enveloped her, and she was wearing black patent boots. She looked adorable. As James and I strolled away, content from our meal and our brush with the stars, yellow gingko leaves fluttered in the breeze. It seemed like a New York moment.

The Lives of Others

Dara writes:

"The Lives of Others," the German winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of 2006, is a beautiful movie. What is it about Germans, that they can produce both the most extraordinary artwork and such brutal catastrophes?

The director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, is my age, and already has incredible skill. His is a subtle movie that doesn't hit you over the head. Extreme violence is portrayed, but none of it physical. The torture shown is psychological, and maybe I'm relieved because I just saw "The Departed," but it was nice to see a quiet film, though an equally powerful one.

We don't tend to think about the gruesomeness of repression, how horrible it is not to be able to think freely. We have more obvious, genocidal terrors facing us. But "Lives" shows the terror of being an expressive person and not being able to expres yourself. The GDR created a poisonous regime in which you couldn't trust your neighbors. The Secret Police, the Stasi, employed 100,000 workers, yet 200,000 informants. They were obsessed with record-keeping. The Stasi protagonist in this movie, his sole job is to record every movement of a playwright and his girlfriend. We learn quickly that the only reason the playwright is to be watched is a high Stasi official would like hiim out of the way so the official can sleep with the playwright's girlfriend.

I lived in eastern Germany not long after the Wall came down. At the university where I was employed, there were "maintenance workers" whose sole job was to water 30 feet of potted plants. Since everyone had to be employed in the socialist state, meaningless jobs were created. This movie faithfully captures the dreariness of communism: the apartment complexes, the bland party headquarters, of course the Trabant cars in which so many were smuggled. The movie captures the split quite well. On the one hand the politburo types, on the other hand the gorgeous intellectuals. Sebastian Koch plays the lead intellectual, and by golly does he give George Clooney a run for his money.

Watching this film, I both missed my time in Berlin and loathed it. In one scene, the playwright carries groceries home in a wooden crate. Germans take their aversion to plastic bags and supermarket conveniences to an extreme. I almost fainted from fright when I stood in a checkout line and realized I had not brought my own bags. "Schnell, schnell," I heard. "Achtung."

Viewing Volver

Dara writes:

I finally saw Almodovar's latest film Volver yesterday, and while I liked it and am glad I saw it, I didn't find it one of his best or as good as his three most recent films, such as Talk to Her and All About My Mother. As visually stunning as those films, Volver didn't hit me on a gut level as even Bad Education did. The story, of a group of women whose difficult and tragic lives are intertwined, and who, in the absence of men or presence of bad ones, help one another survive, struck me as a very idealized view of women that felt contrived.

The story begins with an extremely campy view of women cleaning tombstones in a graveyard. Our heroine, Raimunda (Penelope Cruz), worries about her elderly aunt, who has become senile. Raimunda's sister, Sole (Lola Duenas), fears a ghost lives with Tia Paula. When the sisters leave the small Spanish town to return to their homes, Sole in Madrid and Raimunda outside Madrid, the aunt's troubles fade into the background as Raimunda has much larger fish to fry: the death of her husband. Raimunda tackles all the obstacles in her path in charming get-ups of red skirts and cleavage-bearing purple sweaters. Almodovar very lovingly photographs Cruz. We linger on the gold religious medallions hanging between her breasts, on her breasts, her eyeliner, her perfect profile, her tousled hair. I have never seen such a beautiful actress. Sofia Loren times ten. The friend with whom I saw the movie complained that Cruz did not find her acting rhythm until thirty minutes into the film. I was so focused on her gorgeousness I did not even notice.

As usual, Almodovar's visual world stunned me, and I was happy to be a part of it, as no one does color better than he does. But the movie bored me by the end, and several elements did not add up. One of the coterie of women is Raimunda's opposite: shaved head where she has luscious black locks, no makeup where Raimunda's eyes are kohl-rimmed, cardigans versus bustiers. But I could not figure out what this foil was supposed to represent.

I saw Bad Education in the Floridablanca theater in Barcelona before I spoke Spanish. Without subtitles, I could not grasp the whole plot. Still, because Almodovar's language is visceral and visual, I got it. It moved me. Strangely, Volver, though I could comprehend it all, stirred me less.

Movies: Letters from Iwo Jima

Dara writes:

Clint Eastwood's new film "Letters from Iwo Jima" is not a date movie. James proposed it as such. I should qualify by saying he and I are both interested in traveling to Japan, which interest provided extra motivation for shelling out the $11, especially when we primarily Netflix films nowadays.

"Letters" is the flip side of Eastwood's recent film "Flags of Our Fathers." Both movies depict the battle on the island of Iwo Jima during the Second World War. While "Flags" shows the American story behind the iconic image of our men raising the flag on the top of Mount Suribachi, "Letters" shows the hell the Japanese soldiers endured while they fought to their deaths.

The movie reveals what the roughly 20,000 Japanese soldiers do to prepare for the Americans to arrive on Iwo Jima, and then what happens when the Marines land. The island is inhospitable, and the General leading the troops learns quickly that no reinforcements will be sent. His soldiers know the cause is lost but must follow their military tradition of dying honorably, either at the enemy's or their own hands. This result is extremely punishing. Bombing takes up much of the movie. Many soldiers take their own lives, which is devastating. I left the movie down and pained.

Mr. Eastwood's film succeeds on several levels. He develops his characters quite well, so that we feel for them. Ken Watanabe plays General Kuribayashi. He is dignified and innovative, but many soldiers suspect his modern methods. The ancillary characters shine. The scrappy kid who doesn't want to be there, Saigo, is our hero. Shimizu, whom Saigo suspects of being a spy, is in fact, as we learn through flashbacks that round out the lives of several characters, completely honorably. And Nishi, a former Olympian, is tragically handsome. Daring and gorgeous, he is the most vulnerable of the men; he cries when his horse dies and befriends a wounded Marine, with whom he can speak of American film stars.

The deaths of many of these characters moved me to tears. The look of the movie is stupefying. Much of the action takes place in the caves the soldiers dug into Mount Suribachi to avoid attack. As a result the light is dim and gloomy. Mr. Eastwood allows us to feel as never before for the Japanese side; even though I kept saying to myself, "they sided with Hitler!," I could not help but feel for these men. (Of course, a similar movie about the hidden lives of the SS could never be staged, for obvious reasons. I wonder what certain Chinese viewers, against whose ancestors the Japanese committed atrocities, might think of this film.)

Mr. Eastwood's film falters, too. It is too long by a bit. One only needs to see so much bombing to get the point. In many scenes, nothing happens. I suppose the filmmaker captures the amount of waiting that war entails, but must the audience wait, too? Maybe. No war film, I suppose, completely escapes sentimentality. In one scene, when the soldier whom Nishi has befriended dies, Nishi reads a letter clutched in the dead soldier's hand. The soldier's mother has penned the note, and for some reason, when Nishi reads it, all the Japanese men surrounding him stand, as if to attention. The note ends, "Do what is right, because it is right." Nishi then sends his men to battle with those last thoughts as their rallying cry. This feels contrived, but the sentiment strains further when Saigo says to Shimizu (I'm paraphrasing), "I thought all Americans were savages, but that soldier's mother's words, they could have come from my own mother." Oh, really, Mr. Eastwood? Is that similarity between sides what you want us to feel?

I questioned seeing the movie when I left. I felt dogged and drained. I thought about our current world and how Mr. Eastwood might have been making a point about jingoism. General Kuribayashi and his men, almost all 20,000 of them, fight to death even though they know they have lost. Such nationalistic blindness has been ingrained. I hope we do not have such blinders on.

Postscript: "Letters" brings to four the number of movies I have seen in the theater this year. The others being "Borat," "The Devil Wears Prada," and "Sophie Scholl," about a young woman who resisted the Nazis. I am not sure if "Thank You for Smoking" counts, since I walked out of it. I actually didn't think it was so terrible, but James and I saw it squeezed in next to my parents in a tiny theater in Connecticut. We were about to get married and I think more than a satiric film we needed strong cocktails.

Movies: Blood Diamond

Dara writes:

I have not yet seen the new Ed Zwick movie Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, but I am always intrigued when reviewers I regularly read espouse opposite reactions to a film. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times hated the film; David Denby of The New Yorker liked it. I was particularly struck that the same aspects of the movie both enraged and thrilled the reviewers. David Denby referred to the film as "enjoyable" and called it Ed Zwick's best. He thought the film well-made and not sensationalized. Manohla Dargis, in contrast, writes:

"If films were judged solely by their good intentions, this one would be best in show. Instead, gilded in money and dripping with sanctimony, confused and mindlessly contradictory, the film is a textbook example of how easily commercialism can trump do-goodism, particularly in Hollywood."

Both writers agree DiCaprio is great. But about his co-star Jennifer Connelly, they diverge sharply. Mr. Denby attests, "Connelly suddenly seems like a movie star, not a warm-eyed soul mate." Ms Dargis avers that Connelly's performance is "woeful."

Hmmm. What accounts for the differences? My guess is that Denby, ever the turgid conservative, overlooks the self-righteousness of the film in favor of its cinematic slickness. Then again, even if the film is commercial, it is still bringing much-needed attention to an important topic. I rarely agree with Denby, but then again, I don't necessarily share Dargis's taste. She recently mooned over David Lynch's "masterpiece" Mulholland Drive. Perhaps if I share her sentiment on that film, I will feel more on her side in the Denby-Dargis match.

Borat: My Name A...

Dara writes:

Since I saw Sacha Baron Cohen's one-man picaresque last night, I cannot stop saying, "My name a Borat," with that intonation the comedian has. If you haven't seen the movie but are interested in language, I almost recommend the flick just to absorb Mr. Cohen's voice modulations.

Yet there are other reasons to pay (New York's) $11 and watch the film now. You don't go to the theater because this show *demands* a big screen. No. You go because you want to be talking about this when everyone else is. And Borat is worth talking about.

For those who have been under a rock, the nominal plot is this: Borat Sagdiyev, Cohen's character, is a Kazakh journalist who travels to America to learn from the country; but, when he sees Pamela Anderson on TV, he ditches his assignment and travels by ice cream truck to Malibu to woo her. Along the way, Cohen exposes feminists, southerners, racists, anti-Semites, rodeo cowboys, and Pentecostals to their own follies.

Did I say "expose"? I meant, "ripped from their hearts until the blood gushed out." Cohen is relentless. True, his targets are soft--who doesn't think southern frat boys are a menace--but the results are no less excruciating. Borat meets the frat boys when he is hitch-hiking and they pick him up in their Winnebago. Already in a miasmic state of drunkenness, one of the boys immediately asks the foreigner how the "bitches" are in Kazakhstan, and if Borat has his way with them (he uses grosser language) and then never calls them. The frat boy is horrible, but Borat's response is, "And why you not call--because the women don't have telephones, right?" To which the frat guy insists, "Nah! Because you don't respect them." Cohen is miraculous at not only getting suckers to dig themselves into a hole, but then, at his suggestion they haven't dug deep enough, to get them to dig in the mud for ten more feet.

One of the other boys in this scene complains how "minorities" in the U.S. have "all the power, especially the Jews." It chills me to hear this, because it's essentially what all Jews secretly fear; that when we're not around (or when we are, or when people don't *think* we're around), our fellow Americans excoriate us.

Cohen portrays Borat as a vicious anti-Semite who thinks Jews have horns, shape-shift, and, when he ends up at a Bed and Breakfast run by an old Jewish couple, that Jews are out to poison him. Cohen makes Borat adopt this role so that he may expose the vicious anti-Semitism apparently lurking beneath every genteel American face. Cohen occupies himself with this task presumably because he his Jewish, and in fact grew up Orthodox in an England where, I'm sure, especially in the upper echelons--Cambridge, and the like--of which Mr. Cohen was a part, long-standing anti-Semitism was quite out in the open.

Cohen is angry. He is hostile. He is a terrible bully. Terrible. The kind I would not want to run into in a schoolyard. And yet, his aggressiveness is precisely what makes him so remarkable. In American culture, there are certain stereotypes about Jews: we are bookish, we are effeminate, we read, we ingratiate ourselves in order to assimilate as well as possible. If members of another minority group do something reprehensible--certain Columbia professors' inhibiting of pro-Israeli opinions from entering their classroom, for example--Jews are sometimes the last to respond, as the fear is this: next time it will be us. At least among my immigrant ancestors, there was a sense, "don't rock the boat."

Sacha Baron Cohen sinks the Titanic. He is in-your-face, he is mean and cruel and sadistic. He is loud and obtrusive. Even physically he has attributes we don't associate with Jews: he is incredibly tall and imposing. Bookish--NOT! Just as Borat exposes the folly of stereotypes, the very person of Sacha Cohen is a subversion.

I did not stop laughing for the first 45 minutes of the movie. As the story got more serious, I stopped holding my side, and in the climax when Borat tries to kidnap Pam Anderson at a book-signing she gives in a California Virgin megastore, I felt incredibly badly for the Baywatch star, who seemed tragically shocked. Despite this and a few other gaffes, I laud Mr. Cohen's pranks.

In Kubrick we trust

Leave it to the Kafka of filmmakers to submit this stunning image as an anti-war icon: a man in a gurney, unconscious and near death, propped up to be assassinated by firing squad. Do the French have no mercy? In "Paths of Glory," Kubrick's 1957 investigation of the folly of WWI, the filmmaker succeeds in communicating the severe issues involved with commanding combat. Basically, the idealist/pessimist Kubrick decides that the aristocratic generals are Machiavellian with only their own reputations in mind.

There's a brilliant court martial scene in which Kubrick zeroes in on the men’s faces in a way right out of "Clockwork Orange." The "trial" takes place in this magnificent chateau whose gleaming white and black tiles made me think of Dylan's line about the “geometry of innocent flesh on the bone.” Bascially, an officious general sends his men on an impossible mission only to enhance his credentials. I won't say more, but let's just say all that stands between evil and justice is Kirk Douglas' chin. That guy has a great demeanor and a fantastically flinty voice that still conveys integrity. Also, with his cleft chin and slick hair and small stature, he embodies the French soldier he’s supposed to portray.

The evil general intones, “There’s nothing like watching someone die to inspire a soldier to do his duty.” Trust Kubrick for this over-the-top language that uses absurdity to communicate a very sober point.

War is hell. So thought most of the audience, who seemed very stirred up. Mr. Right and I saw the film at the National Arts Club. The screening was thrown by the film committee, the head of which took a mike after the screening and asked people their thoughts. She saw parallels with "our current situation." She's a pacifist who's against war for any reason. Others didn't agree and when things turned heated, she backed out, "I don't want to get into this." But she already had.

I admire people who get stirred up by movies.

Le film, c'est moi.

Hot Orthodox Sex

Last night I went to the NY premiere of the new French film, "La Petite Jerusalem," at the 15th Annual NY Jewish Film Festival at the Walter Reade. The film suffered from the classic pitfalls of French film-making: too much flesh, too many endless (and pointless) stares between characters, too much self-seriousness.

Now don't get me wrong. I love French film. I love the language, I love the themes. Rohmer's a favorite, but Truffaut is too; I could take or leave Godard. This latest, from filmmaker Karin Albou, had no traction. Even after it got going, it mostly offered stills of breasts, necks, and eyebrows. And all the carnality boiled down to the auteur's desire to convince a lay audience that: Religious People Have Sex Too. A lot of it. Constantly. Isn't that controversial, not to say titillating?

Problem is, when their religion--or Kant's philosophy, as in the protagonist's case--restricts their desires to the point when the bursting affection is likely to shower upon the most proximate target, even if that bulls-eye is creepy, older, downright homely, and with a mustache that would have made Tom Selleck in the '70s blush.

So I didn't have the most favorable opinion of the movie. But a woman in the audience in the Q&A after the screening did. The director subjected herself to the audience's response. First though, she told us that she wanted to leave some crucial questions unanswered so that the audience could find its own interpretation, its own moral. A wide-eyed fan raised her hand and began: "I love this film. What a treat to be here with you. Let me ask you one thing: what's your message to us."

Groans, even laughter from other theater-goers. A grandmotherly type with a Long-Island accent feels impelled to intervene: "She just said, she _doesn't_ _have_ _a_ _message_."

I love it when an audience question is so obtuse even the other audience members get indignant. That means the question has reach a new height of banality--or was that the film that provoked the question?

Seasons of Love

I loved the earnestness in the new movie version of the 1996 Broadway musical Rent. These musicals demand suspension of disbelief. You have to accept that when someone wants to pick up a girl, he'll break into song, that when someone wants to bemoan losing a friend, she'll break into song. Once you accept this phenomenon, songs begin to seem like remarkably economical ways to express your feelings. Through song, I got to know each of the seven main characters, to a degree that dialog never would have given me access. Songs, like poems, are concise and pointed. Maybe next time I need to get something across I'll give it a melody.

Rent takes place in the bad olds days of AIDS and squatters in Alphabet City. When I saw the play, I thought, now here's _not_ Miss Saigon. Here's a play I can relate to, about _my_ city. My mother drilled the fear of AIDS into me constantly, so to see a play on the disease and undergo the play's catharsis offered me relief. Certainly some of the pleasure I derived from seeing the movie was in remembering my own "bohemian" period in NY.

It's true that many of the ditties are too slight, but the full ones rise to the level of greatness. My three favorites are "Seasons of Love," "Another Day," and "Light My Candle." Mr. Right thinks some of the rock-driven songs are Spinal Tap-bad, and I agree. But I don't fault the musical for being sentimental. I resent A.O. Scott's review, in the sense he keeps establishing his hipster credentials with hedges such as "I thought I was too cynical for this, but" or "usually I hate this kind of stuff, but." Is it so wrong to like this kind of stuff? Does it mean I'm not smart?

One time I was at a party and the host asked if I had any musical requests. "Billy Joel," I said. I was sort of half-joking, but sort of not. (Partly because 9/11 had just happened and I was playing "New York State of Mind" over and over.) Needless to say the host recoiled in horror. Lighten up.

In the Mood for Love

Main reason to see Wong Kar Wai's latest atmospheric epiphany?

Home Movie

Could you get your mother to ask your father to have sex with her--on screen? That's what Andrew Wagner achieved in a scene from his latest quasi-documentary, The Talent Given Us. He made me get closer to actors than is often possible; I began to feel I was watching my own parents onscreen.

How much was scripted and how much improvised? My sense was the essence of the characters was true, and their specific lines embellished for dramatic effect. For example, not so sure his sister really has fantasies about sweaty cheerleaders.

Fun cameo by Collegiate head of school, Bruce Breimer.