FILMS AND BOOKS. From a daring adventurer (Gertrude Bell) and a fictional newly minted doctor, Ally Moberley, to a grief stricken father and son and devastated parents to murder and Belgian emigres, I’ve covered a lot of ground in my recent filmgoing and reading. Much of it has been in international settings too: Persia and the Middle East, England and Japan and also Paris. A lot of heavy stuff, but some of it (the latest Maisie Dobbs mystery) just enjoyable. A real potpourri!
FILM FARE
Letters from Baghdad
Gertrude Bell was a most remarkable woman. She, more than anyone else including T.E. Lawrence, was responsible for carving out the borders of what became Iraq and for establishing the Iraq Museum to house its antiquities. She traveled on her own to then Persia and other countries in the Middle East becoming knowledgeable about the lands and the native peoples. And she wrote several books.
After WWI, the British government hired her to work with them, the lone woman among powerful senior officials. Many of them had little regard for her initially, but she worked closely with Sir Percy Cox, High Commissioner for Mesopotamia, who was both mentor and protector. Brusque, arrogant and strong-willed, hers was a challenging personality. Thwarted in love, she maintained her close ties with her parents and wrote them wonderful letters.
What is amazing about this film is not only what it reveals about this accomplished, but less well known woman, but the fact that it makes use of very early archival films and is based on her letters and diaries and a biography by Janet Wallach. The film is in black and white and Tilda Swinton is the voice of Gertrude Bell. Besides portraying a fascinating woman, it’s an absorbing history lesson.
Dean
This is a sweet film written by and starring Demetri Martin. It’s a portrait of male grief as a father and his adult son mourn the loss of their wife and mother. Both are somewhat lost souls, the son more so than the father. The father, affectingly played by Kevin Kline, decides to sell the family home, a decision upsetting to son Dean. Dean is an illustrator, formerly engaged to Michelle, who escapes NY for a job interview in Los Angeles. It’s not really his scene, but he stays with a friend, parties, and is attracted to Nicky, a charming young woman.
The film could have been tighter and shorter, but is worth seeing for how this father and son communicate or don’t. It’s different than how women do it. One final note, the drawings are clever and funny or morbid and all done by Martin.
RECENT READING
Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss
This historical novel from Britain is best read slowly. Set in 1878, it concerns the intertwined lives and separate careers of architect Tom Cavendish and newly minted medical doctor, Ally Moberley. They marry just before he goes on assignment to Japan to oversee building a lighthouse. She, fascinated by diseases of the mind, starts work in an insane asylum in the English countryside. In alternating chapters, Moss presents what each of them is doing. They write letters, but their time apart is long and their young marriage fragile.
Moss’s writing is sensitive and nuanced and she is skilled at capturing the vagaries of weather and scenery and how they echo or inform Ally and Tom’s perceptions of themselves. I found the novel both moving and poignant.
The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal
Set in Paris and translated from the French, this is a beautifully written short novel about the death of a young man and all the steps from his accident to the transplantation of his heart. Covering the details of the accident and all of the people (doctors, nurses, technicians) whose lives and actions touch him afterward, it is intense, graphic, and matter-of-fact all at once. The sentences are long and almost unending as they unfurl, and the paragraphs few.
You, the reader, become acquainted with Simon’s parents in their moment of extreme distress and are privy to the medical policies and procedures that lead from them agreeing to donate his organs to the steps involved in making a match, to how the eventual heart transplant is carried out and to whom. I found this a hard novel to read despite its evocative writing.
In This Grave Hour by Jacqueline Winspear
The latest installment in Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series is set in London just at the start of WWII as England declares war on Germany. Private investigator Maisie is recruited to investigate the death of a railway worker who also happens to be an immigrant from Belgium. He came over as a youth during the previous war and stayed to make his life in Britain. Other deaths, presumably also murders, occur and the search for answers widens.
The slate of characters, Maisie’s office staff Billy and Sandra, her friends Priscilla and Lady Rowan, and the detectives and inspectors, McFarlane and Stratton, are familiar from earlier books, but Winspear is good at providing a bit of backstory for new readers. These are mysteries that unfold slowly and precisely, made enjoyable by the force of Maisie’s personality and her fond adherence to the precepts she learned from her mentor Maurice. Good choice to take to the beach.
Note: Header image at Brooklyn Botanic Garden ©JWFarrington; all other images are from the web, courtesy of PBS Learning Media, French Embassy, and Moss and Winspear’s own websites.
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Back in Manhattan we walked past City Hall, stopped in that park, and then walked past the new Lower Manhattan transit center, past Ground Zero, and then went left toward the Hudson River. Ultimately, we walked the entire way back from Chambers Street to our apartment near Pier 45. Very good exercise!
