Tidy Tidbits: Screens & Pages

LIGHT FARE

With hurricane Irma on our minds and the strange anticipation of not knowing what its track will be—will we just get rain or will we be wiped out—it’s time for some diversion.  Here are two recommended films, one fun, the other sobering, and two books, both easy on the brain.

BIG SCREEN

Dunkirk

Watching this film is an emotionally battering experience.  It’s excellent, but challenging.  Told mostly from the perspective of an individual unnamed soldier, it lacks a traditional narrative arc.  Instead, the film focuses on three fields of battle, the beach or mole where 300,000 British troops are hemmed in and trapped, the air following three fighter pilots, and the sea with endless scenes of watery graves, fires, and a desperate struggle to survive.  There is one story line that epitomizes what made Dunkirk especially memorable and that is the father and son, ordinary citizens, who were among the volunteers who took their personal boats and bravely rescued soldiers from the sea.

The Big Sick

The title of this film was almost enough to put me off seeing it, but it got such rave reviews, we did go.  It’s a very good film.  Kumail, an aspiring stand-up comedian, who happens to be Pakistani, meets and falls in love with an American woman.  Meanwhile his mother keeps inviting potential Muslim wife candidates to drop by at family dinners.  When Emily ends up in the hospital, Kumail must interact with her skeptical parents. I don’t care for stand-up comedy and found the first fifteen minutes of the film not to my liking, but then got into it.  It’s funny, believable, and complex all at the same time.

 

ON THE PAGE

The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis

This is a fast-paced coming of age story set in Manhattan at the famed Barbizon Hotel for Women.  Darby arrives there in 1952 from small town Ohio while in 1916 Rose lives there in a refurbished condo with her successful and rich boyfriend.  Darby is a Katie Gibbs “girl”, but through a strange twist of events ends up never marrying and is still living there. A journalist, Rose has had career issues.  When boyfriend Griff decamps back to his ex-wife and kids, she is stuck and becomes obsessed with the mystery surrounding Darby McLaughlin.  The period detail is great, the story fanciful with attributes of a fairy tale, but overall, it’s great escapism! (~JW Farrington)

 Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler

Thanks to my friend Bonnie who reads a different Anne Tyler novel every summer, I purchased this new one.  It’s a contemporary re-telling of The Taming of the Shrew and is humorous and fun.  The writing sparkles and you can’t help but be caught up in this eccentric family and its detailed rules for living.  Scientist father Louis Battista routinely forgets his lunch and expects it to be delivered to his lab, younger sister Bunny is light on brains, but attracted to Edward, her supposed Spanish tutor, while prickly, blunt-spoken Kate makes a week’s supply of meat mash for their nightly dinners.  When her father cooks up the idea that Kate should marry his foreign lab colleague, Pyotr, so he can stay in the U.S., their joint campaign tests her mettle.   This book is one in the Hogarth Shakespeare series of his plays retold by noted novelists of today.  (~JW Farrington)

Cover photo:  Sunrise over the bay ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

On Screen & On the Page

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.

Women of Note: Film & Theater

WOMEN OF NOTE.  By happenstance, not by planning, we’ve seen and heard about some notable women in our recent film and theater-going adventures.   Founder Thomas Sung’s legacy to his children, all daughters, was his bank, Abacus Bank. Three of them work there; one, Jill, as the CEO, which is both significant and important.  Jane Jacobs was an activist back in the day when women were housewives and not supposed to be involved in politics. Not to mention that she was a working journalist.

Lastly, Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, real women, not just names of cosmetics, were founders and heads of their own very successful companies. This was in the 1930’s. Their story is told in the delightful musical, War Paint.

FILM FARE

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail.   We missed seeing this at the Sarasota Film Festival so were pleased it was playing here at the IFC Center. I had high expectations, based on what I knew about it and some overheard comments, and was not disappointed. A documentary about the banking industry, fallout from the crisis of 2008, and the fate of one small bank in Chinatown, New York, it’s also a portrayal of a strong and loving Chinese family. Thomas Sung, a lawyer, founded and ran Abacus Federal Savings Bank for many years until two of his daughters, Jill and Vera, succeeded him as CEO and director. What Cyrus Vance wrought when he brought charges against the bank unfolds over a five-year legal battle and a nine week trial. Simply excellent!

Personal note: I learned, after I’d seen the film and told him about it, that our son’s father-in-law knows the Sung family. They were friends of his aunt and he first visited them when he was a student.

      Citizen Jane: Battle for the City. Author of the groundbreaking work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, writer Jane Jacobs became an activist who fought against urban development that threatened communities at their core. This documentary is a wonderful depiction of the rise of Postwar modernism (think Le Corbusier) and the building of large scale low income high rises meant to solve the problems of slum neighborhoods. In fact, this form of urban renewal was a failure; decades later these buildings in cities across the country were all leveled.

Jacobs looked at cities from the perspective of the people and what happens on the street. A New Yorker and a resident of Greenwich Village, she mobilized neighbors to oppose extending 5th Avenue through Washington Square Park. They won against the powerful Robert Moses, the “villain” in this piece. Later they successfully fought a proposed expressway through lower Manhattan, another project Moses was attempting to ram through. This is a superb film, especially for city lovers.

War Paint. This new musical, staring Patti Lupone and Christine Ebersole, profiles roughly 30 years in the careers of Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden from the 1930’s to the 1960’s. Strong women both, they were vicious competitors and probably kept each other on their toes. Lupone and Ebersole are stellar stars in their own right and each gets her due in alternating scenes and songs showcasing their triumphs and woes and their somewhat lonely personal lives.

They came from poor backgrounds and each reinvented herself and then offered women the opportunity, found in a jar, to become beautiful, to “Put Your Best Face Forward.” The two male leads also have substantial parts, one as a husband and the other a gay devotee.  Each takes on marketing and sales responsibilities for his female boss. They have some juicy lines and are paired in a couple of rollicking songs.

Arden’s and Rubinstein’s clientele was primarily wealthy women of a certain age. Eschewing early television advertising, they are soon eclipsed by upstart Charles Revson with Revlon’s Fire & Ice lipstick. This musical was a lot of fun and I’d love to see it a second time!     

Personal note: We first saw Patti Lupone as a young actor in The Acting Company (founded by John Houseman) in Saratoga Springs in the 1970’s. More recently, we saw Christine Ebersole in performance twice in San Francisco as part of the Bay Area Cabaret series.

Note:  Images of Jane Jacobs, Helena Rubinstein (Daily Mail), and Elizabeth Arden (Lifestyle Lounge) are all from the web.  Header photo is the curtain for War Paint at the Nederlander Theatre.

Manhattan Musings

MANHATTAN MUSINGS. It’s been a week for rainy weather, TV, a fine film, and re-visiting some favorite West Village restaurants.  

After what seems like months of no rain in Florida, we are getting re-acquainted with the wet. Toting umbrellas and slogging through the puddles, we endured or enjoyed, depending on your perspective, two solid days of serious rain, gray skies, and temperatures scraping sixty. The day in between the soggy ones was cloudy with a brief showing of sun and somewhat warmer. It’s perfect for quiet hours reading or catching the latest film—that’s when we are not with the bundles of energy known as our granddaughters!

COMPASSIONATE CONFLICTED VICAR

We’ve been watching some recent episodes of Grantchester, and I’m continually impressed by the depth and complexity of this series. Yes, Sidney inserts himself into police business with his friend Geordie, the detective, and is seen as helpful by the crime victims’ families and as a hindrance by the local constabulary. He seems to have an inordinate amount of free time to devote to solving murders and to dancing attendance on one woman or another, be it his current love interest Hildegarde, or his longtime friend, wish-she-was-my-flame, Amanda.

Cosseted, cared for, and fussed over by his junior curate, Leonard, and by the bossy, but soft-hearted, Mrs. M., Sidney’s strongest relationship is really his deep friendship with Geordie. Older than Sidney, Geordie also served in the war, and, like Sidney, has memories of it he’d rather not recall. Although their approaches to daily life are quite different, the two men spar and josh, but when it matters most are each other’s staunchest supporter. First rate viewing!

FILM FARE

Their Finest is both a film about war and a love story. I found it moving and witty. Making a film that includes the making of a film is a challenge often not successfully met. Their Finest (with a title that is hard to remember and seems to ask “finest what?”) is a delightful exception. Here you have the Ministry of Information in 1940 London trying to bolster the morale of its citizens and simultaneously encourage the Americans to join the war. Their documentary assignment must be accurate and yet lively and thus you have the making of a film about the supposed actions of twin sisters helping evacuate soldiers at Dunkirk. The two male writers are joined by Mrs. Cole, a former secretary, who gets to write “slop” (dialogue for the women characters). As a backdrop to the levity of film production is the ongoing destruction and death wrought by the Blitz.

The cast is excellent: Bill Nighy as the consummately egocentric aging actor, Ambrose Hilliard; Gemma Arterton as Mrs. Cole, a quiet young woman with backbone and determination; and Sam Clafin as Buckley, her co-writer and an ordinary looking guy with a steadfast presence. Jeremy Irons has a cameo appearance as the Secretary of War. These are hard times and emotions are mostly kept in check. Besides Mrs. Cole, other women show up in the work place in expanded roles and one person questions what will happen when the war is over. Definitely worth seeing!

FAVORITE DISHES

We have been returning to some of our West Village favorite restaurants and ordering both new and old dishes from the menu. Last evening we got the last table at Meme Mediterranean (pronounced “may, may”), a cozy Middle Eastern eatery on Hudson Street. It had rained all day long and was still drizzling so the outside seating was not available. Midst a general din, we were squeezed in between two tables each with a pair of boisterous young women.

Despite the cacophony, our palates perked up at the tasty offerings. The Chief Penguin ordered the fried artichokes, always a pleaser, which come with two dipping sauces. My new favorite dish was four large spiced (not spicy) shrimp each one atop a cool cube of watermelon served on a narrow rectangular plate. It was the perfect marriage of piquant and cooling and, in its pinkness, oh, so pretty!

Credits:  Header photo and wet sidewalk JWFarrington (some rights reserved); Grantchester characters copyright ITV, Meme interior from their website.