Dialogue of power

There are many great films which are largely based on a dialogue contained in a single space. I've written about one of them very recently but the tradition goes back to the origins of Western literature, in the writings of Socrates and Plato and Xenophon. Those, of course, are about a protagonist (usually Socrates himself) leading a discussion about morals and ethics with other men. Women Talking abandons the sole protagonist and instead leads the discussion in a more democratic fashion, mostly among women. Like Lysistrata, a later drama in the Greek tradition, it is about women asserting their power in a society that largely oppresses them until they take a stand for their own well-being which is also for that society's well-being, above and beyond themselves. But it sticks to that original approach, and occasionally abandons drama for the sake of engaging the rhythm and intent of the dialogue and the discussion about rights, beliefs, identities, power and, overall, justice.

The story is rooted in the actual events that took place at the Manitoba Colony of Mennonites in Bolivia which inspired the novel by Miriam Toews upon which the film is based. Cow tranquilizer, serial rapists (of girls as young as three, as well as women), and the ultra-conservative religious and societal traditions of the Mennonites are all ingredients in the mix that creates a discussion of human rights that supersedes all of that and leaves the women questioning the basic human reactions to most crises: fight or flight. Or lay down and take it, which is the option that the majority rejects, leading to the dialogue about the upsides and downsides to the two realistic options. The ensuing discussion is intelligent, interesting, genuine, lively, and doesn't spare the emotion attached to words that bring doubt upon faith, confusion upon certainty, and determination amidst despair. It's an excellent example of a hard-fought argument that doesn't degenerate into a refusal to accept an opposing point of view or the violence that often follows that roadblock. Indeed, it's a great reminder of both the ability to agree to disagree on the basis of reason and intelligence, rather than ignorant refusal, and to change the minds of the most fervent believers into a recognition that the world is perhaps different than what they have always thought it to be. It is, of course, also a premier example of the most insidious and deprecating aspects of religion, which consigns people to being treated as if they had less value than property and to inhabiting a world of darkness even when they imagine they're surrounded by light. On the other hand, it's also an example of the higher aspects of deep belief in a moral code that shows how problems can be resolved without bloodshed and where peaceful refusal to accept the wrongs against you can be just as effective, if not moreso, than throwing down in the streets.

Among a host of great performances, Rooney Mara's stands above them. As the eminently reasonable Ona, she is one of the most intelligent voices in the room, but also one that demonstrates the ability to change one's outlook once enough of that reasonable discussion has passed. Accompanied by Claire Foy (Salome) and Jessie Buckley (Mariche), the two sides of raging anger who don't allow that emotion to overwhelm the solid basis for their perspectives, it creates a trio of analysts who propel what could have been a dry discussion of basic human rights into a story about the essential humanity of the people involved in this problem. Writer/director Sarah Polley developed these characters into roles that Mara, Foy, and Buckley had to climb into in order to present themselves as Mennonite women, confined by their culture and their determination to ascend to the kingdom of heaven, but whom also knew that they had to live as actual human beings in order to get there in the first place. As Salome points out: "Isn't there something worth living for in this life, not always the next?" Judith Ivey (Agata), Sheila McCarthy (Greta), and Kate Hallett (Autje) also give excellent support to that trio. I have to single out Hallett, who does an excellent job in her acting debut, to present a younger viewpoint on the whole situation, ranging from boredom and distraction, to righteous anger and stubbornness, to mature recognition that she's acting not only for her own interests and safety, but for the women who've been suffering this abuse for years before she was even born. It was also interesting to see Frances McDormand in a very tiny role which had me questioning why she was willing to do it, until I discovered in the end credits that she was the producer of the film. It seemed like she was willing to put her muscle behind it and then step back to let these other stars carry the show.

In the end, I walked away from it thinking that every choice that Polley had made was smart and that makes for a great film. Not least among those choices was getting Hildur Guðnadóttir to do the score, as she's been a favorite since Chernobyl and her music, while quite restrained, still conveyed exactly the level of intensity that was needed. The quiet piano as Mariche entered her house for one last night in the same space as her abusive husband, Klaus, was chilling, just as it should've been. There are some who might think that a bit more action and less talking might have led to a more effective bit of storytelling, rather than hitting the audience over the head with the points the script was making. But I found the discussion to be so smart(!) and fascinating that there were more than enough action and emotion to deliver exactly the story that needed to be told. Highly recommended, especially for the men who tend to sustain the kind of culture that the story is exposing and questioning in true Socratic fashion.

The Tár eventually melts

There's a moment in all stories, visual, aural, or textual, where each viewer, listener, or reader decides that it's something worth staying with and reaching the end. For me, Tár hit that point about a third of the way into it. It's a film that begins with a very slow pace and with a great deal of assumed knowledge and technical jargon in its dialogue. Put simply, if the viewer doesn't already have that knowledge, they're likely to be both confused and frustrated by this story for quite some time before it begins to sink in as a character study, rather than an exploration of the inner politics of the orchestra world. It's a device that many storytellers use and one which I'm inordinately fond of, most of the time. One of my favorite comic writers, Howard Chaykin, begins almost all of his stories in this fashion. He doesn't give you a primer on who people are or where they are or what they're doing. He just drops you in the middle of the action and essentially says: "Catch up." His characters don't identify each other or their life roles in their daily conversations because, of course, no one does that in the regular communication they have with each other. We just talk in the same way that the characters in this film talk. Once I realized that no one was going to stop and explain this jargon that they were using, I let most of it just flow over me as I tried to get a handle on who these people were and how they related to each other. That, of course, becomes the main focus of the film and the stuff that you should actually be paying attention to and why Tár is being lionized as one of the best films of the year and quite possibly deservedly so. I probably would have stuck with it even if it continued being oblique and circuitous because I'm all experimental like that, but it eventually becomes a much more conventional character study and one that crosses a lot of modern boundaries in a fashion that has clearly encouraged a number of professional critics to miss the point in the same way that The Whale has.

That character is Lydia Tár, played by Cate Blanchett in what most will consider a tour de force performance. This, more than anything I've seen her in before, is her "leading woman" moment, where she's definitely this character, but she never departs from being "Cate Blanchett", either. It's an extremely powerful and abrasive and complex role, at the same time that it is also a vulnerable and simple and suffering one. The story takes pains to point out the assumed incongruity of being a woman in the man's world of orchestral conducting, but also never shies away from the fact that Lydia is in charge and not just because she's borderline abusive to everyone who interacts with her except her daughter, Petra (Mila Bogojevic), but including her partner, Sharon (Nina Hoss.) Everyone shies away from the intensity of her approach; man, woman, and child. But we also learn about the passion that drives people in that profession, and music in general, and that the armor she's built up over the years, hides a person that is semi-tortured by every sound she hears, most of which are keeping her from composing the music that her profession (publish or perish!) and her soul demands. That armor is what she uses to prevent anyone from getting too close to her inner self and, of course, also ends up being the source of many of her troubles as the story progresses. One can only be that prickly as a public figure for so long, especially in the world of easy communication, before it comes back to sting you.

One of the running background themes of the story is how she's treated students and colleagues in her industry and the abuse of power that said treatment embodies. When it's turned against her by some of the targets of her aggression, some critics like Richard Brody of The New Yorker accused the film of being aimed at "cancel culture" and dismissing the cultural mindset of "identity politics", mostly because Lydia objects to classical composers like J. S. Bach being dismissed by students for his personal foibles, rather than his music. But that seems to be a spectacular job of missing the point. Just because the protagonist objects to a modern mindset doesn't mean that the inherent message of the film is promoting that idea. Indeed, this is a character study of a person who puts off many of those around her and is someone that most of the audience would probably not be interested in knowing. This isn't promotion of the idea, but rather demonstrating how questioning figures and actions of the past is often more complex than any black-or-white presentation. In the same way that Richard Wagner is rejected by many for his anti-Semitism and appeal to the Nazis, it's also difficult to refute the fact that his music is the stylistic foundation of modern soundtracks for film, games, and other creations. The point that Lydia makes is that there's reason to appreciate classics of the past for reasons beyond their creators. The counterpoint is that no one has to like Bach or others like him and if personal actions are enough to dissuade you, then that's a valid point of view. That, indeed, is the essential premise of the film: Lydia is a brilliant conductor and creator, but personally she's also often quite repellent to those around her, if not outright vicious. It is possible to hold more than one point of view on a concept, in the same way it is about a person.

And that applies to this film, as well. As much as I enjoyed it the story and Blanchett's excellent performance (a nod has to go to Noémie Merlant, as Francesca, Lydia's assistant, too), I'm not sure that I'd list this one as among the best films of the year. I appreciate the real depth that writer-director-producer, Todd Field, invested both character and story with, but I wonder if it's almost too cornered in it's own niche. This is kind of like when albums were produced in the late 60s and 70s that critics would wave away as "self-indulgent", because they felt artists were only producing long strings of studio experimentations that were interesting only to themselves. That, of course, is up for debate like any creative work, but the amount of effort and patience required to get to the real meat of the story in Tár makes me wonder if there couldn't have been some editing applied that would have produced a leaner final product and one which had more immediate appeal. I'm sure that many people have bailed out somewhere in that first third if they don't have deeper knowledge of the music industry and I can't say that I blame them. It makes me feel like the film, like the protagonist, is really good what it does, but can't hide an essential flaw that perhaps makes it less than the brilliant production it's being promoted as. I'd certainly recommend it for anyone able to be patient.

Strait-laced

There's a certain category of film that can't be considered anything but "Oscar bait", which means something that fits all the categories of the usual Best Picture candidate: drama, grandiose, historical, usually European. They usually appear around this time of year because it's the best time to make impact with audiences after they've already been fed to the critics and/or the festivals. Corsage is one of those. It was one of the favorites at Cannes back in May and will doubtlessly be up for a slew of awards that also always includes Best Costume Design and Best Production Design. There's nothing wrong with those films and I've enjoyed many of them, but this one seems to be so targeted at that approach that it left behind anything that resembled an interesting plot somewhere between concept and (Best) screenplay.

The story is nominally about Elisabeth of Austria, the wife of Franz Joseph I of Austria and then Austria-Hungary; last of the Hapsburg emperors. It's a known historical fact that the Bavarian duchess was unhappy with the stodgy atmosphere at court in Vienna after marrying Franz at the age of 16 and that she was unhappy with her treatment by her relatives, especially the mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophie, because she had only given birth to two daughters in the first couple years of her reign and not a male heir. On top of that, Elisabeth was deeply wounded by the loss of her first daughter, Sophie (named by the domineering Archduchess, without consulting Elisabeth) likely to typhus. She found life much more pleasant in the associated kingdom of Hungary, embracing Hungarian culture and learning the language. Many of the Hapsburgs blamed her for encouraging the emperor to accept the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, in which the latter was nominally independent, although still subservient to the Viennese throne. Now, all of that sounds like an interesting premise for a film, doesn't it? Unfortunately, Corsage engages almost none of that, with only occasional references to the empress' attachment to Hungary and the loss of Sophie as the cardinal points of her existence that show a very depressed, bored, and melancholy woman.

Instead, the film is largely about following said depressed, bored, and melancholy woman around her domain waiting for her to do something other than pretend to faint under the pressure of her corsage (corset) so that she can get away and play with her dogs under the half-bemused and half-annoyed gaze of her ladies-in-waiting. It's not a poor portrayal of a woman in emotional anguish, who functions in a life that is wholly colored by that angst while still demonstrating just how much pain she's in. I think Vicky Krieps did really well in that role to demonstrate just how much Elisabeth was trying to free herself from the constraints of a role that she really didn't want. Of course, the contrast is that the role that she really didn't want was one that offered her literally anything she wanted at any time, as Franz was not only the doting husband but also looked the other way past her dalliance with her cousin, King Ludwig of Bavaria, and basically anything else she wanted that wouldn't have been accepted in the painfully straight-laced Hapsburg demesne. She had three servants who not only wore dresses every day to match their blond, brunette, and auburn hair but had also pledged themselves to do basically anything she asked. But depression sometimes washes all of that in shades of gray (Been there. Not with the servants, though.) You can live the absolute life of luxury and still feel like you're in a prison. That prison was also a social one, as the film suggests that Elisabeth's known obsession with her weight and physical appearance was something driven by snide comments from court and the newspapers. The film spends much time on this as both social commentary on the modern age and an additional explanation for her state of mind.

And that stuff can be interesting. Films about human emotion and the lengths that they drive us to have appeal and merit all their own. I was just writing about something like that a couple weeks ago. But this one doesn't really have any of those emotional peaks or crevasses that let the audience inside of the trauma that's occurring. Instead, we just kind of drift along with the main character, wondering why we're still here. At one point, Elisabeth tries to entice Franz into bed with her, but when he responds, still obviously concerned about her mental health when they'd been physically distant for so long, she encourages him only long enough to finally stop him when he thinks he's getting to home base, suggesting that she can no longer take the impact of potentially having another child. We, as the audience, kind of ended up in the same situation, where moments that looked like they might be developing into something of real interest instead became more of the same, as we returned to the ritual of the corsage, not only being tied into one, but also the modern English meaning, which is something that's supposed to always be pretty, even if it's only used for one, rather superfluous event. Similarly, Corsage isn't a bad film, but it's a very particular one that seems to be designed more to turn the heads of Academy members than to really tell an interesting story.

Sending children to do the adults' job

By now, everyone has become aware of the farce that Republicans are making of the national legislature. In truth, if you've been conscious since 1994, you can't have missed it. This is what happens when you take a philosophy based on a joke- Ronald Reagan's famous line: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." -and turn it into an ideology that is a joke, in a much more deprecating fashion. This is what happens when that ideology becomes an end unto itself, in which you elect people not to govern, but to destroy the means of government. This is what happens when you send children to do the job of adults.

The Republican party is a hollow shell at this point. The fabled "party of Lincoln" no longer exists as any kind of functioning political apparatus. Most political parties want to run the government in a manner befitting their outlook on the world. The GOP is incapable of governing because they have no outlook that makes sense. Their motivating philosophy is some combination of the farcical Libertarian concept that society would be better without laws (or, at least without laws that affect wealthy White people) and whatever idiotic whim currently drives their conspiracy-obsessed base; be it a disdain for science, immigration, education, women, LGBTQ+ people, the environment, or any and all combinations thereof. Most political parties have a plan for how to run the public apparatus so that, at the very least, it serves some group of people and some purpose other than putting themselves in front of a camera to receive the adulation of the fools who keep voting for them. Instead, the GOP is currently built upon the idea that sending the least-qualified people to the largest and most complex institution in the world that affects the life of every living being on the planet is the correct path to an end which is unknown even to themselves. In short, they have no plan and they have no ideas, but that seems to be the reason for some people to keep electing them. The party has gone from Reaganism as a religion to the ultimate expression of George W. Bush's campaign that you should vote for him because he'd be a great guy to have a beer with. He wasn't capable of doing the job, either, but he at least surrounded himself with apparatchiks and Cold Warriors who would, much to the chagrin of the rest of the civilized world. The current Republican party isn't even that competent.

Instead, they've gone from trying to pretend that they have a reasonable agenda to loudly proclaiming that they don't have one because they know that anything resembling one is anathema to their Trumpanzee base. Any agenda that would satisfy that base would be rejected by the majority of reasonable people in this country (and the world.) So they stand around and recruit shysters like George Santos whose entire existence is built on lies (and, at least in Brazil, other crimes.) That doesn't make him inordinately distinct from people like Kevin McCarthy, whose only purpose for the past decade has also been to lie to people to make it seem like he's capable of governing, when he really isn't, just like the rest of his party. If he were to gain the post of Speaker of the House, he knows that the only agenda that will satisfy the Fox-crazed idiots will be one that will be utterly discarded by the Senate and ultimately vetoed by Joe Biden. As the original trigger man of the Republican transformation, Barry Goldwater, once said: "Politics and governing demand compromise." But you can't compromise if you have no functional ideas or a governing philosophy. The only philosophy that Republicans now carry is that government is broken and so their only role is to continue to prove that it's broken by not governing. It's as if a display of incompetence is a measure of competence in the eyes of their supporters.

There is no more obvious example of this than their current standard-bearer, Donald J. Trump. His career is built upon scams (Trump University, Trump Steaks, etc.) and an image of success completely belied by reality. But to his supporters, it doesn't matter because he's rich. That end justifies the means, even when said means were largely about screwing people just like themselves. Those people were "suckers" who didn't make the right choices, just like anyone who currently votes for a Republican who doesn't stand to directly benefit. That would typically be the 1%, but since the GOP is incapable of  governing, even that's not a sure thing anymore. No, it's more like the pair of lawyers so unnerved by the idea of Black people being near their house that their only response was to wave guns at them. Or the father whose first and most urgent response to the news that his son had killed five people (with guns like the two lawyers were waving) was that he'd been in a gay bar and, therefore, might be gay. Or Steve Scalise, the current front-runner to replace McCarthy, who has described himself as "David Duke without the baggage." Duke, you may recall, was an outspoken supporter of Trump's campaign, since they're both racist buffoons and, thus, would probably enjoy having a beer together. Or at least a Diet Coke.

There's no way to "both sides" this. There's no way to postulate that this could easily be the Democrats imploding in the same fashion because the Democrats haven't spent the last 30+ years trying to destroy the very institution that they're ostensibly managing. The Democrats, for all their faults (and there are many), are at least a functioning political party with an agenda to do something constructive for large segments of society, even if many of them would like to do more for that fabled 1% that pays them to be in office in the first place (and pays them even more when they get out.) The two "sides" aren't even in the same universe, since the Democrats function in one where science is accepted, history is realistic, and government is a tool to be utilized, not tossed away as if it was too complicated to be understood. Just like a child. The Republicans are the party of ignorant children that remains a relevant force because of the large number of ignorant children in the US that walk around masquerading as functioning adults and because of the careful manipulation of the system (aka gerrymandering) that prevents a more reasonable and acceptable government from being put in place by the majority of the population. There's no greater example of this than the November election in Michigan, where the new districting system may have removed Republicans from power for decades to come, unless the locals choose to begin recruiting people who have an interest in actually governing, rather than screeching at whatever new thing they don't understand like a Kari Lake.

Democracy is difficult. Democracy requires communication. Democracy requires intelligence. And debate. And consideration. And so many other things that Republicans and their supporters either lack or are unwilling to engage in. Even worse, most of them act like suggesting any of that is a personal affront. That's why I've long said that the only real solution to the current problem is civil war and it seems like most Republicans will only be satisfied with that outcome. The first choice of the person who is unwilling to think is often violence. The inability to govern is the sign of a group that is unwilling to think. Instead, they'd rather just throw a tantrum...

Oh, look. A fable.

If you've known me for any length of time, you've probably heard one (or several) of my rants about directors who were at one time brilliant, before losing their way for one reason or another. You may have heard about John Carpenter's innovation descending to schlock or Ridley's Scott's grasp of subtlety diminishing to a wave at spectacle. Steven Spielberg is of that same fashion in that much of what he'd done before Schindler's List was somewhere between competent (E. T., Poltergeist), underappreciated excellence (The Sugarland Express), and genuine brilliance (The Color Purple, Jaws); sometimes, in that latter case, because people didn't really understand the story that was actually being played out, in favor of the spectacle (giant shark!) that was distracting them. The story was always there. Sometimes you just had to look past the fireworks to see what he was really saying. You didn't have to, if that isn't your thing. Sometimes the fireworks were enough fun to get by on (see: Raiders of the Lost Ark. But then, see it again, in a different fashion.) But after List, a lot of that storytelling kind of fell by the wayside in favor of formula. Yes, there was a plot but, dammit, he was going to beat you over the head with THE STORY that would inevitably come to a far, far happier conclusion than anything that might have preceded it. Bridge of Spies is perhaps the most notorious example of this, in which a tale that displayed enormous tragic depth and which had the potential to come to a far more interesting ending, instead ended, quite literally, with a sunrise over a picket fence in middle America. This is the modus operandi that suffuses The Fabelmans and turns what might have been a really interesting tale about Spielberg's youth and lifelong passions into a bog standard Hollywoodism with obvious characters and a completely predictable three acts and ending.

That's not to suggest after all of that (Was I ranting? Of course I was ranting. Mellowly.) that The Fabelmans is a bad film. It's not bad. It's just not that great, despite all the hand-fluttering and gushing emerging from Hollywood that, as always, likes nothing better than a film that's largely about itself. And, of course, since nothing about Hollywood can be bad, nothing is really bad in this film, either. All of the characters are in their perfectly-defined roles and never deviate from them. Michelle Williams, as Mitzi, is slated to be the "over-the-top" character, in contast to Paul Dano's Burt, the straight-laced computer engineer who likes to explain precisely how electricity propels his five-year-old's new train set. Williams takes that OTT bit between those gleaming, white teeth and she runs with it. Everything she does is dramatic, in the same way that everything Dano does is completely wooden. As I often protest about certain TV series, these roles become less characters and more archetypes. In that way, they also become completely obvious and predictable and kinda boring. Yes, sometimes you do need to hit some of your audience over the head to get them to realize that Mitzi is the "creative" type. But you probably only need to do that for the first of three acts before it risks becoming tiresome, which is what happened here. Similarly, Dano does well in his role of being completely impervious to his wife's needs and his son's passions, but at some point with an actual person, reality would have set in with either him realizing what's happening to his marriage or acknowledging that his son has real talent and a career path (Being a filmmaker in the 1960s was far from an outlandish goal), if not both. Maybe a lot of Dano's scenes of implicit realization of his situation were cut, which is a loss of tremendous dramatic potential that was never given a moment to shine. But that doesn't suit the conditions of Spielberg's fable because characters can never be complex in fables, right? They're just there to deliver a simple story that everyone knows the end of before it happens, which is exactly what we get here.

Gabriel LaBelle does really well as Sammy, the Spielberg stand-in. His comic timing in some of the absurd situations he ends up in was great. Likewise, Judd Hirsch as Uncle Boris and Chloe East as brief girlfriend, Monica, are excellent additions, as they provide some surprising and humorous moments to the story that will only be going from point A to point B. Bringing in David Lynch to play John Ford was also a great inside joke for the cinephiles among us. But in the end, we're still on that linear path that doesn't really give us a whole lot of depth to explore and takes way too long (two-and-a-half hours) to tell us what we already know and knew was coming before the lights went down. At no point does anyone confront a question on the order of Raiders of the Lost Ark (What do we really believe?) or come to a realization that there may be more to life than what's right in front of us, as in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Spielberg doesn't do those stories anymore because he seems to not be interested in unanswered questions at the end of his films. Everything is straightforward. Everything is completely deterministic. Even the anti-Semites in The Fabelmans are blatantly obvious; so much so that even the other bullies can't entirely put up with it. There's nothing in this examination of family dynamics and the story of growing up with an artistic passion that says that any of these people are real people, with real complexities and motivations that drive them except what is explicitly stated by the script. And that's unfortunate, because I feel like someone who's been in the business as long as Spielberg would have a lot of far more interesting stories to tell about his life and how it's shaped him. Some of them might even have non-happy endings. But if all you're interested in doing is leaving your audience with a sense of wonder, you really have to give them something to wonder about, and not just because whatever was on the screen was a train crash. Meh.