Category: Film

Tidy Tidbits: Movies & Medical Mystery

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This week we got to two new films and I finished a long and totally absorbing historical novel, The Gilded Hour, set in NYC in 1883.

MOVIE TIME

Florence Foster Jenkins

I will go see Meryl Streep in almost anything and this is a good, not great, movie.  Florence was a real person and Streep is wonderful while Hugh Grant is debonair and perfect in the role of St. Clair, Jenkins’ husband.  The first 10-15 minutes of the film are a bit flat (it looked like someone nearby was snoozing), but it gained life after that and tells an engaging story.

You wonder how someone could sing so poorly and screechily and not know it and be so eager to perform for her friends.  But Madam Florence did and, with the artful persuasion of her husband, convinced a young pianist to accompany her in practice and for her performances.  There is an intriguing back story here, but since I don’t like to be a spoiler, you won’t get it from me!

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Sully

I was hesitant about seeing this film as I thought it might dwell on scenes of the terrifying water landing.  But there’s much more to it.  I found Tom Hanks very believable as Capt. Sully Sullenberger of the seemingly doomed flight 1549 and liked that the film portrays his emotions and reactions in the hours and days immediately following the landing.  The NTSB hearings with him and his co-pilot were eye-opening about the panelists’ skepticism regarding Sully’s cockpit decisions.    I should note, however, that several recent articles have cast doubt and even aspersions on the way the NTSB panel is portrayed, particularly the head of the panel.  The film is directed by  Clint Eastwood with Laura Linney as Sully’s wife.  Whether this is a faithful accounting of events or not,  it’s a film you won’t easily forget;  images from it haunted my mind before sleep.

img_0517MEDICAL MYSTERY

The Gilded Hour by Sara Donati

In the past I’ve noticed novels by Sara Donati on bookstore shelves, but had never read any of her work.  She’s a former academic (with a PhD in linguistics) turned historical writer.   This novel, The Gilded Hour, appealed to me for several reasons.  First, it was set in New York City in 1883, a city I know and a time period (19th century) I find fascinating, and, second, it concerns two female physicians, one white and the other mixed race.  Running to more than 700 pages, it is a tome, an old-fashioned linear story of characters both fictional and historical.

Anna and Sophie Savard, the physicians, deal with women’s medical problems when not only abortion, but also the use of contraceptive devices, is illegal.   Anthony Comstock, who appears here, is the U.S. postal inspector who doesn’t shy away from using devious methods to entrap those he considers offenders of the law.  Add to this the search for the missing brothers of two orphaned Italian girls, the mystery of why well-off women are dying from botched abortions, and two parallel love stories.  Donati did an impressive amount of research and her depiction of life in the 1880’s, of the streets in the West Village, the practice of medicine, and the treatment of the poor is comprehensive and precise.  I found it all totally absorbing.  And everything isn’t resolved—a sequel is in the works!

 

Header photo:  Bad hair day for the ferns cJWFarrington

Tidy Tidbits: Latest Viewing & Reading

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We have returned to hot and humid Florida and that means late afternoon trips to the pool, an occasional film, catching up on our favorite TV series, and more reading.  It’s too hot to linger outdoors!

CINEMA

We went to see Indignation on Labor Day afternoon and the audience was all seniors with a few exceptions.  Perhaps because the film is set in the early 1950’s or this audience is familiar with Philip Roth’s work.  In any case, this story of Marcus, a young Jewish guy who leaves New Jersey and his father’s butcher shop for a small college in Ohio, has some surprising twists and turns.  At first, I thought it would be just a classic young love story—unsophisticated boy meets beautiful, worldly girl, becomes enamored of her, and then she dumps him.  Instead, you have a much more complex situation involving sex that Marcus finds confusing and somewhat troubling and encounters with a dean who invents issues where there are none.  The pace is measured and almost deliberate until the final coup de grace.

TV

We’re working through our backlog of recorded programs.  We plowed through several Midsomer Murders 2-parters (some really weird), finished the last (really the end, sigh) of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, and have started Dancing on the Edge.  This series is set in early 1930’s London and concerns a group of rich sophisticates, some of whom actually work, and their jazz band leader friend, Louis Lester, who is black.  A murder in the fancy Imperial Hotel sets the press abuzz and unsettles Music Magazine co-editor Stanley and his friends.

We missed the first episode, but got engaged quite easily with the second one.  Viewers will recognize Stanley, played by Matthew Goode, as Mr. Talbot from Downton Abbey.

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BOOKS

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave

I thought Cleave’s first novel, Little Bee, was superb and I found Incendiary compelling.  Gold, about two Olympic competitors, was good, but not outstanding, and seemed to be geared toward a more commercial market.  His latest, Everyone Brave is Forgiven, is set during the Second World War, and concerns the evolving relationships between four protagonists:  Mary, who signs up for the war and is assigned to an elementary school and later works with problem children not evacuated; Hilda, her best friend; Tom, superintendent of schools and Mary’s boss and later fiancé; and Alistair, an art conservator who enlists as a regular soldier and experiences the brutality of life on the front.

Mary and Hilda ultimately become ambulance drivers rescuing people whose streets have been bombed during the Blitz.  All four are privileged individuals.  Their initial view of the war as something of a short-lived lark is challenged and molded by the carnage they witness.  The tone of the novel is both ironic and off-putting (probably deliberately so) and while the seeds of the novel came from real events in the author’s family, I didn’t feel it totally came together.  Nonetheless, for those of you who are wondering, I did finish it!

La Rose by Louise Erdrich

I’ve had mixed success with Erdrich’s novels.  Some I’ve admired and enjoyed like The Round House; others have left me indifferent.  I was prepared to like her newest novel, La Rose, and the opening chapters were intriguing.  In a hunting accident, a man shoots and kills his neighbor’s young son so he and his wife give their son to be raised by the bereaved parents.  I read 120 pages or about a third of the book, but eventually realized I didn’t care much for most of the characters and was tired of being bogged down in the minutiae of their daily lives.  Ergo, I abandoned the book.  I take some comfort in the fact that blogger Deb of The Book Stop  included it in a short list of books she also didn’t finish.

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 BOOKS ON PAPER

As someone who appreciates the tactile quality of paperbacks and hardbacks, I was pleased to learn that paper books are read more often than e-books. This from an article in the New York Times print edition (get that emphasis) of Sept. 5 entitled, “The Internet Hasn’t Won…”

 

 

Cover photo © JWFarrington;  other images colored by her (some rights reserved)

Manhattan: Culture Notes

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They say good things come in threes, so here you have a play, a film, and a novel.  All deserving of attention, and at least two, of kudos.

BRILLIANT THEATER

Last week we saw Hamilton and it lived up to all the hype. We were seated in the 3rd row of the mezzanine (best seats I could get last September without taking out a loan!)  which actually gave us a good view of the entire stage and the ability to see the dance routines from above. Lin-Manuel Miranda is one very creative guy and how he makes history come live! Even allowing for dramatic license, one will never think of these Founding Fathers quite the same way.

Mairanda is marvelous as the ambitious, verbose, self-centered, self-righteous Hamilton. Thomas Jefferson is foppishly funny in “What Did I Miss?” George Washington is appropriately reasonable and statesmanlike, King George is childishly amusing (got a lot of laughs from the audience), and Aaron Burr is smooth, sometimes slick, and oh, so envious of Hamilton’s rapid rise. The few females, the two Schuyler sisters and Maria, the object of Hamilton’s adulterous affair, have secondary roles although Hamilton’s wife Eliza Schuyler delivers several poignant songs.

My only criticism is that it was not possible to understand all the words, especially in some of the early numbers, and it was not always clear then what event precipitated that dialogue. We were part of an extremely enthusiastic audience, lots of families with kids and at least one school class, and the cast received many cheers and an immediate standing ovation at the conclusion. Definitely see it!!!

Postscript: I am now reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton on which the play is loosely based.

ENTERTAINING TRUTH

I would never ever vote for Anthony Weiner, but the new documentary, Weiner, which tracks his primary campaign for mayor of New York, is intense, funny at points, and vastly entertaining. Presenting the sexting scandal of 2011 with clips of press conferences and TV interviews, the film then goes deep into his daily life in 2013 as he mounts his campaign to return to public office and faces chapter two of the sex scandal. It is amazing to me that Weiner gave the filmmakers such unfettered access to his wife and son as well as to his campaign team. Call it hubris, craziness, or what you will, the man has charisma and determination despite being, literally, his own worst enemy.

SUPERB FICTION

Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett

Thoroughly enveloping. Madness, music, siblings and suicide. It sounds like a depressing combination, but rather than being depressing, Imagine Me Gone is a fully imagined portrayal of family dynamics told in the voices of the five family members. In this case, a father who is mentally ill, his wife, and their three children, all of whom bear the scars, be they scratches or full-blown cuts, of his affliction. The eldest son, Michael, is 36 and still single and suffers from his own mental issues. Sister Celia is wary of trusting in her own long-term relationship, and brother Alex is gay and seeking a stable place in the world. Initially each one invests time and mental effort in trying to assuage Michael’s anguish and in managing his anxiety and his ineptitude for daily life. Their mother Margaret goes into debt in her efforts to support her eldest son. Haslett’s writing is tender and exquisite, beautifully nuanced in his depiction of family relationships. You, the reader, feel for each member of this damaged family. But it is ultimately a story with hope. One of the best novels I’ve read thus far this year!

John, the father, about Alec as a kid:

The beast isn’t in Alec.  I have no way of knowing this for certain.  He’s too young.  Maybe I just don’t see it and don’t want to. But in his eagerness to please there is such squiriming energy and a kind of literalness.  He’s up on the surface of himself opening outward, even when he’s embarrassed, perhaps particularly so then, because he finds embarrassment so painful, he’ll do anything to get off the spot.”

Margaret reflecting on her work colleague, Suzanne:

She’s an unlikely librarian, her flair wasted, if not resented, by everyone but the high school boys and their fathers.   Early on, she decided that I was to be her ally against the forces of boredom and small-mindedness. I was too tired to resist.

 

 Header photo: Richard Rodgers Theater before all the seats were filled (JWFarrington)

Round-up: Books & Film

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Books

My recent reading has ranged from the very serious to the quite serious to the more frivolous.

Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor. Sound depressing, but it wasn’t. Yes, Ms. Fechtor did suffer a brain aneurysm at the tender age of 28, but her optimistic spirit and determination along with time in the kitchen saw her through a 2-year recovery period. There are medical details here, but also wonderful passages about the role of food and the emotional as well as physical sustenance good cooking can provide. She is a PhD candidate at Harvard as well as author of the Sweet Amandine food blog.

Consequence by Eric Fair. This is a memoir by a former soldier and contractor who was posted to Iraq and served as an interrogator. It is a disturbing, unsettling read, but one I couldn’t abandon. Mr. Fair grew up in Bethlehem, Pa., was active in the First Presbyterian Church there, and after college became a police officer before serving in the Iraq War.

With its spare, unemotional style, it’s almost as if Mr. Fair is writing about someone other than himself. He made a series of poor choices from high school onward and while stating that he made them and acknowledging that some of them were unwise, he doesn’t seem to own them. And he did things at Abu Graib that he feels guilty about and that haunt him, but he has not reached any closure. It probably took some courage to write this book (neither the military nor his contractor company come off very well), but I found it hard to applaud him for doing so.

Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George. Hard to believe, but this is the 19th Inspector Lynley mystery. Inspector Barbara Havers is the primary mover with Lynley in a more supporting role as she and Nkata delve into the murder of a noted feminist author and the convoluted relationships she had with her personal assistant and her publisher. Not her best, but still entertaining.

The Restaurant Critic’s Wife by Elizabeth LaBan. This is a novel about food and restaurants, but even more so about the trials of being a stay-at-home mother of two young children constrained by a husband’s demands that she remain inconspicuous and invisible. Craig LaBan is the longtime restaurant critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer and originally from New Orleans like Sam Soto in the book. For my Philly foodie friends, this lighthearted fare will have you guessing which restaurants are being reviewed!

Film Fare

Eye in the Sky. There are several female actors whose films I would see no matter what and they include Maggie Smith, Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren. In this film, Helen Mirren is the British colonel in charge of a missile strike on some key terrorist leaders who are holed up in a house in a residential area outside Nairobi. She, working with the general played by Alan Rickman, must evaluate how great are the odds of injury or death to nearby civilians (including a young girl) and get all the stakeholders to agree to the timing of the strike. The stakeholders are scattered from England to Nevada and both British and U.S. leaders and politicians are involved or need to be consulted. A sobering and suspenseful look at how warfare by drone is carried out.

Love & Friendship. This one’s for Jane Austen fans of which I’m one. Based on her short novel, Lady Susan, it’s not a great film, but an enjoyable one. There are lots of characters, the principal ones introduced with name, title and relationship in the opening scenes, which makes for a somewhat slow beginning. The pace picks up once Lady Susan, schemer extraordinaire, is installed at her sister-in-law’s country estate, and begins to weave her web to ensnare Sir James Martin for her daughter Frederica and Sir Reginald deCourcy for herself. But, complications ensue, her true colors start to emerge, and what ultimately results is a complete turnabout.