Marcus' World

At the Movies: "Boyhood"

Richard Linklater's just released film, Boyhood, has received well-deserved universal acclaim. Here's one more post to add to the laurels.

And here's a pointer to the extensive Bob Edwards interview with Linklater last weekend.

Filmed between 2002 and 2013, Boyhood depicts the childhood of Samantha (Lorelei Linklater, the director's daughter) and Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane). We literally watch the children grow up before our eyes. They are the children of college professor Olivia (Patricia Arquette) and musician-turned-rambling-man Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke). The film is 166 minutes long; Hawke calls it Tolstoy-esque.

And so it is. Any successful epic must have a grasp of both the big themes and the everyday details. Linklater succeeds magnificently at both. I'll mention just one everyday detail of hundreds: On one of his visits Mason Sr. is driving his kids to see a Houston Astros game (the film takes place in various Texas cities). Both Samantha and Mason Jr. are providing one-word answers to his conversational gambits. Mason Sr. expresses frustration, claiming he wants real conversation. The kids chide him gently that his questions are contrived. Mason Sr. says ok, he'll be more natural from now on. Starting right now! We've all been there, I think; perceiving a necessary change, and trying to force the new behavior immediately.

Big themes: The strength of women, even (especially) when they have married the wrong man. Olivia and Mason Sr were never married, owing to their youth. (Perhaps they would have married if they'd met later or waited for parenthood.) Olivia marries two other men, both of whom are too fond of the bottle. Through it all she earns advanced degrees and becomes a popular college professor. She is tougher on Samantha than on Mason Jr, which made me feel bad for Samantha but not upset at Olivia. In the end her kids come out fine, due to her efforts more than anyone else's.

Due to Olivia's strength the film could have easily been called Motherhood. It was going to be 12 Years, except that the film 12 Years a Slave came out recently and Linklater wanted to avoid confusion.

So Boyhood is not quite right but it's not wrong either. We learn more about Mason Jr's interior life than Samantha's, perhaps because Linklater found this easier to convery as he was once a boy himself.

Case in point: by the time he enters college Mason Jr. wants to delete his Facebook page because he's tired of living life via a screen. There's deep wisdom there, except that Mason Jr. muddles his message with excessive broodiness. Then again, he's only 18. One suspects that he'll figure out how to make his point more confidently and gracefully once he ventures forth into adulthood.

At the Movies: "Her"

Jeremy is visiting. This afternoon we found ourselves at the Piedmont Theater, Oakland's oldest movie house.  While there we watched Her, Spike Jonze's 2013 film set in not-too-distant-future Los Angeles. Her won for Best Original Screenplay at this year's Oscars, and this was well deserved.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Theodore Twombly (an awesome name), who has the fascinating job of crafting heartfelt handwritten letters on behalf of other people.  As that job reveals, Twombly has a sensitive side.  He is currently wrestling with the emotions conjured up by his divorce to his wife Catherine (Rooney Mara). For months he has refused to sign the divorce papers, even though they have not lived together for almost a year.

In this vulnerable state he downloads "OS 1," the world's first ever operating system powered by artificial intelligence.  Theodore's OS 1 is personified by a friendly and fiercely intelligent woman named Samantha (Scarlett Johansson).   Their conversations quickly move away from the transactional (clearing email) to the deeply personal (hopes, fears, regrets.)  Yes, it is true--Samantha and Theodore become boyfriend and girlfriend.

Ridiculous, in many ways.  Samantha is not a physical person, but rather a disembodied voice that transmits through a computer.  Their sex life is...um....simulated.  And late in the film we discover that Samantha actually has many such lovers, that Theodore is not her only catch. 

Turns out that polyamory is not restricted to physical beings.

And yet, and yet. Theodore and Samantha's relationship is authentic, genuine, and vulnerable.  Artificial intelligence leads to genuine emotion.  In many ways their relationship is more mature and honest than human-to-human connections. They argue, they make up, they laugh, and they cry.  The one obvious difference they can't surmount clears the way for Theodore and Samantha to be their most authentic selves.

At the Movies: "Dallas Buyers Club"

Last night I saw Dallas Buyers Club .  Inspired by the life of an HIV-positive Texas electrician named Ron Woodroof, the film depicts Woodroof's mid-1980s efforts to sell alternative HIV treatments to patients who wanted them.  At the time AZT was the only FDA approved treatment, and Woodroof was one of many people who believed this was a toxic option that benefited pharmaceutical companies more than patients.

But few people went to Mexico to obtain alternate treatments, and then illegally smuggled them back into the US.  And few people flew to Japan to obtain interferon, also an illegal activity.  In a career-making role, as many critics have noted, Matthew McConaughey portrays Woodroof doing all of these things.

The film is a timeless depiction of the age-old tension between following the law and following your conscience. Woodroof has done his homework about the validity of these alternative treatments, and is engaging in a protracted and defiant campaign of civil disobedience.  Whether his means are justified depends on how much you value his ends.  But there is no doubt that he is in a long line of US dissidents that includes people like Henry David Thoreau and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In other ways, though, Woodroof is the exact opposite of Thoreau and King.  He curses like the most foul-mouthed of sailors, and says horribly homophobic and racist things.  He treats women as sexual objects. At first he denies having AIDS because it's a "faggot disease."  But once he accepts this harsh truth, and once he encounters gay people as he establishes the buyers club, his attitude changes.  In fact, Woodroof becomes very close to a transgendered individual named Rayon, played brilliantly by Jared Leto.

One consequence of this change is Woodroof's estrangement from his old buddies, who are just as homophobic as he ever was.  When he touches them they want to wash their hands with soap...a reminder of just how brutal that period was (and sometimes still is) for people with HIV or AIDS.

Woodroof was given 30 days to live upon receiving his AIDS diagnosis in 1985, and ended up living for seven more years.  Twenty one years after his death in 1992, his story has finally made it to the big screen to inspire future generations of activists.  Slow in coming but worth the wait.  As Dr. King, among others, reminded us, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

 

At the Movies: "A Castle in Italy"

The annual French film festival is on.  A friend from work and I went to San Francisco to watch A Castle in Italy, a poorly reviewed film that premiered earlier this year at Cannes.  I'm glad we did not read the reviews prior to attending, as this would have colored my view of the film.

Nutshell summary: Valeria Bruni Tedeschi plays a 43 year old daughter of an extremely wealthy family that has fallen on hard times.  She enjoys her singlehood but starts dating a younger and impulsive actor.  Their relationship courses up and down, while meanwhile her elder brother is dying of AIDS.  The family eventually has to sell some valuable property, a sign of their reduced circumstances even though they remain very affluent by almost every known standard.

One strain of criticism, at least in the Hollywood Reporter review, is of the acting: it "almost without exception goes for either overwrought intensity or studied charm." That may be so, but I am more interested in the other main critique--that it is hard to muster sympathy for the plight of this very wealthy family.  "Cry me a river, you had to sell a painting!"  This comes through in several of the reviews.

This is far too harsh--prejudice against the rich is every bit as pernicious as prejudice against the poor. While reading the reviews I recalled this 2007 New York Times article about Silicon Valley millionaires who feel poor. These are people whose net worth exceeds $1 million, and so by all the usual measures they have "made it."  But when your neighbor makes $100 million or more you still feel poor.

Five years after reading this article I read Daniel Kahneman's powerful book Thinking, Fast and Slow.  Kahneman, among many others, notes the power of "anchoring"; depending on your frame of reference, the same thing can appear very different.  $20 is an amazing sum to the homeless man, a miserly amount to the "working class millionaire."  Before ridiculing that millionaire--an act often engaged in by people who generally preach "compassion" and "tolerance"--it would be wise to heed this truth. Compassion for everyone should be our goal, wherever they fall on life's ladder.

At the Movies: "The Trials of Muhammad Ali"

This week I saw Bill Siegel's documentary The Trials of Muhammad Ali, which was playing in a limited run at the California Theater in Berkeley.  I used to live within walking distance of the California, one of the five movie theaters I could walk to from my Berkeley apartment.  This time I traveled there in my good ol' Prius, which still has a Berkeley parking sticker that is now years out of date.

The documentary offers an overview of Ali's career from his beginnings as a medal winning Olympian in 1960, up to present day discussions with his adult children.  Born Cassius Clay, he became Muhammad Ali after becoming a convert of the Nation of Islam and refusing to call himself by a "white man's name."  The movie features extensive interviews with members of the Nation of Islam who brought Ali into the fold, reminding me of the schism between Malcolm X and Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad that likely led to Malcolm's murder.  One Nation member denies that the Nation murdered Malcolm but indicates this would have been fine if Elijah Muhammad had ordered it. Scary.

But the heart of the film focuses on Ali's declaration that he will not fight in Viet Nam.  Why should he travel 10,000 miles to kill another poor people, at the behest of a white man who still thinks he's a nigger?  Ali is eloquent, defiant, and enduring...and all of this when he is in his mid 20's.  The government prosecutes him for draft evasion and his case winds up at the Supremew Court.

I vaguely knew all of this history, but not how it ended. In Ali's case Justice Thurgood Marshall, the only African-American justice, recused himself.  Ali's defense included the NAACP, and Marshall had once headed its legal defense fund.  This meant only 8 justices were on the case, leading to the possibility of a split 4-4 decision.  In that event Ali's lower court conviction for draft evasion would be upheld, and he would go to jail.

A 4-4 decision came down, at least at first.  But while drafting the opinion Justice John Marshall Harlan learned from his law clerk that the government had granted conscientious objector status to Jehovah's Witnesses and therefore had no legal right to refuse the same to members of the Nation of Islam. Harlan changed his vote, and now Ali had 5 votes in favor.

With that change, Justice Potter Stewart looked more closely at the full legal history of Ali's case.  When charges were first brought against Ali, prosecutors alleged he was insincere in his moral objections to war. At the Supreme Court, though, prosecutors had no doubt regarding Ali's sincerity.  This was a double standard, a denial of due process.  With that fact established, the justices ultimately voted 8-0 in Ali's favor.

I'm not a person who believes that just because something is the law it is just; often the exact opposite is true.  (See the Supreme Court's 2000 ruling in Bush v. Gore, for example.)  This is where civil disobedience comes in, of the Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King variety.  But that makes it especially gratifying when a legal ruling does actually reinforce the underlying moral claims.  Hats off to Muhammad Ali, who did indeed float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.

Blue Jasmine--Bay Area Snubbed on Opening Weekend

Ever since college, maybe before, I've enjoyed Woody Allen's movies.  Neuroses love company.

Woody releases films relentlessly, some better than others. Of his recent work, Midnight in Paris was charming while To Rome with Love was execrable. When I was a kid, wacky "Fritz the Night Owl" showed Allen's movies during the wee hours one particular week.  That's how I saw Interiors and Love and Death.

After a long jaunt around Europe Woody is back in the United States with Blue Jasmine. Not just anywhere in the United States, but in San Francisco--the tech-addled yet counter-cultural heart of our Bay Area.

The critics have been kind, at least in the Times and especially the New Republic.  Slate not so much. But I won't get to make up my mind until next weekend.  Blue Jasmine opens tomorrow...but only in New York and Los Angeles. 

There should have been an exception to that needlessly sacred law for this film.  Obviously Blue Jasmine should be showing in SF at the Clay and the Roxie and the Balboa and the Bridge this weekend (the Red Vic too, alas.) And of course at Oakland's own Piedmont Theater while we're at it.  I like Woody a lot, especially when I can walk to see the film and enjoy delicious gelato afterwards. 

At the Movies: "No"

Last Thursday afternoon, still quite jetlagged, I watched a matinee screening of No.

It's a fictionalized account of the 1988 election in Chile that ousted Augusto Pinochet after 15 years of autocratic rule.  Pinochet only called the election due to international pressure, without believing he would lose.  Thanks to a clever advertising campaign that gave Chileans a sense of optimism again--or so the story goes in the film--Pinochet loses the election, shocking Chile and the world. 

The critics have been kind. On the other hand, many people who were involved in the campaign against Pinochet have objected strongly that the film is riddled with errors and simplifications.

I don't know, wasn't there.  In 1988 I thought chili was something you ate.

Times have changed.  In 2013, as the person responsible for library and instructional technology at Samuel Merritt University, watching this film was fascinating.  The activists opposed to Pinochet debate fiercely about means vs. ends, and I've been part of many formulations of this age-old debate. 

The debate in No runs thusly: "Sure, catchy ad jingles are cute and everything.  But people are dying on the streets of Santiago, this is no laughing matter."  "Do you want to win this thing or not? You have to make people happy to get them to pay attention."  And so on, and so forth.  Insert whatever specifics you know about the unresolved tensions in your workplace, and No will resonate. 

Had I seen this in 1988, while eating my chili, I would have sided wholely with the idealists.  Back then (at the ripe old age of 11) fashion was shallow and advertising was evil.  In college, I was already much more pragmatic...taking the advertising man's point of view during a similar debate in a social justice course. 

When I became a librarian, my zeal for open access was initially idealistic all the way--who cares about tenure and rewards?? Information should be free!! I still think that's true, but have accepted that tenure/rewards are here to stay. The name of the game is to change the reward system rather than shouting from the soapbox. I still like my line from that college debate: "Do you want to make noise or do want to make change?"

So yes. Go see No.

At the Movies: "Lincoln" and Leadership

We enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving with family near Phoenix last week, as well as a visit with more family in Las Vegas just before that.  This was our third drive to the great Southwest in a little more than two years, prompting our newfound resolve to fly next time.  That said, I'm always intrigued by the water war signage along I-5 and the stark beauty of large stretches of I-10.

Last Saturday, after Ohio State had beaten Michigan and Northwestern had bested Illinois, we were at the movies to watch Lincoln. As advertised, Daniel Day-Lewis is amazing in his characterization of our 16th President. Go see it as soon as you can.

The film focuses on Lincoln's fierce effort to pass the 13th Amendment, banning slavery, at the beginning of 1865. The bloody Civil War is concluding and the Union is winning.  But if it concludes with slavery still allowed in the South, though, Lincoln knows that slavery will not end for a long time to come.  So he moves quickly to bring the 13th Amendment, which had already passed the Senate the year before, to the House floor. Whereas the Emancipation Proclamation was actually a military ploy to get freed slaves in border states into the Union army, this is the real deal.

To get there Lincoln cajoles his reluctant Cabinet to support him. He allows skullduggery and horse-trading in exchange for Congressional votes, and even visits the rapscallions who are lining up those votes. Apropos of nothing he tells charming stories. He argues fiercely with Mrs. Lincoln about whether their son Robert should be allowed to fight for the Union.  He retreats into himself repeatedly, only to emerge with great lucidity when a decisive moment is at hand.

He wins passage of the 13th Amendment on Jan. 31, 1865 and secures peace at Appomattox a few months later. He is killed in April of that same year.

Many commentators, such as an anoymous scribe in The Economist, have noted the parallels between Lincoln (here at the start of his second term) and our own President Obama (who is about to begin his own new term.) President Obama needs to master the cold arts of presidential leadership just as well as Lincoln did, if he wants to secure a commensurate legacy. Our idealists must accept and even embrace their Machavellian selves. It's never easy, as Lincoln attests.  But then and now the ends justify the means.

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NB: Obama has a Secret Service to prevent assassination, unlike Lincoln. The Secret Service was created months after Lincoln's death. 

At the Movies: "The Master"

Last night we went to Oakland's magnificent Grand Lake Theater for a screening of Paul Thomas Anderson's film The Master.  Anderson's previous work includes There Will Be Blood, and David Thomson panned this effort under the awesome headline "There Will be Dud."  But Thomson's is a rare voice of critical dissent; with a Metacritic score of 85%, The Master is riding high.

We counted ourselves among the fans. Set in the early 1950s, The Master tells the story of Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a troubled WWII veteran who finds himself under the spell of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman).  Dodd heads The Cause, a cult that practices analysis of past lives as a means of bringing forth the "future perfect." This is all charlatanism, as Dodd reveals by his boorish and profane behavior whenever challenged.  Freddie serves as his enforcer and goon, the muscle-man who squelches any resistance.  He does this despite Dodd's humiliating engagement of Freddie in numerous "experiments," or Dodd's money-laundering that leads to an arrest by the Philadelphia police. 

Dodd's wife Peggy (Amy Adams) argues that Freddie--a helpless alcoholic--is a blight on The Cause, and asks Dodd to push him away.  But Dodd is magnetically drawn to Freddie, even tracking him down from England after Freddie escapes Dodd's clutches and returns to his hometown. Pi Wen noted the co-dependency; Freddie needs Dodd, but Dodd--the ostensible Master--needs Freddie just as much. Freddie becomes the son who likes his father, unlike Dodd's biological son Val (Jesse Plemons).  Val knows his father is a fraud, making it up as he goes along.

Dodd's charlatanism is obvious, but not always to himself.  He is trapped within the myths of his own devising, far less a master than he claims to be.  As Dodd tells Freddie at the end, "If you ever figure out how to be your own master tell us will you? That will be the first time in human history."  This is a rare and piercing moment of self-awareness, offered just before Dodd slips back inside his self-created jail.

At the Movies: "Midnight in Paris"

Woody Allen--whom I knew in my New York days as a clarinetist who performed concerts at prices too rich for my blood--is in fine fettle with his latest film Midnight in Paris.  Pi Wen and I like it so much we saw it twice! Although, to be honest, the second time was because we had to use a 2-for-1 movie ticket from LivingSocial before it expired. Online daily deals are growing like kudzu, and they bring their own headaches.

Then again, we could have used the 2-for-1 ticket on other movies, since we'd already seen Midnight.  But no Source Code or Thor for us! Give us Woody, especially when he offers a love letter to Paris. 

Owen Wilson plays Gil Pender, an aspiring novelist/current screenwriter on a vacation in Paris with his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams).  Their relationship is weak and flat, which is obvious to everyone but Gil.  On a walk one night Gil slips through a wrinkle in time and finds himself transported to 1920s Paris, at a dinner party where Cole Porter sings his own songs and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald keep him company.

Now that's cool. Gil attempts to transport Inez to this paradise the next night, but it turns out the time wrinkle only unravels at the stroke of midnight; Inez had already gone home.  Eventually Gil is making excuses to leave around midnight every night, ostensibly to gather his thoughts for his novel.  Really it's in order to have his manuscript critiqued by Gertrude Stein and to fall in love with Picasso's fetching mistress Adriana. But it doesn't hurt that 1920s Paris is Gil's favorite historical era.

Midnight reminded me of Zelig, Allen's 1983 film about a man who could change his appearance to resemble whomever he was near.  (I saw Zelig growing up in Columbus, Ohio, on the late night movie series hosted by Fritz the Night Owl on Channel 10.) In Zelig F. Scott Fitzgerald also appears, and the ability to change one's appearance on a moment's notice is as fantastical as the opportunity to slide through time. In both cases Allen is playing to our desire to change our given circumstances, with the belief that just one little tweak will bring happiness.

Of course, it doesn't.  Towards the end of Midnight Gil and Adriana slip through time again, back to the 1890s and the Belle Epoque.  Turns out that this is Adriana's favorite period; for her, the present-day 1920s are boring although they are fantastic from Gil's 2010 perspective.  And so it goes. In theory, everyone could keep hopskotching through time forever, always seeking the era that's just so. But eventually the cares of the world would intervene whenever you live.  So you might as well make the best with whatever time you're born into.

And that's just what Gil does.  SPOILER ALERT!!:  At the end of the film Gil finally accepts that he and Inez are not right for each other, and decides to make his home in Paris.  And in present day Paris to boot.