Joanne Engelhardt

Renoir

Directed by Gilles Bourdos

 

 

This is an outstanding dramatization of the French painter Pierre-August Renoir (1841-1919) (Michel Bouquet) in his later years.  (In French with subtitles.)  It takes place in 1915 during the First World War.  At the time Renoir lived on a farm in Cagnes near the Mediterranean coast above Nice.  He seems to have had an entourage of women around him who took care of the household and attended to him.  The film never explained exactly who they were or what their relationships were to him.  Some of them seem to have been former models.  His wife of 25 years, Aline, died prior to the time of the film, which would have been recently.  He had three sons with Aline, two of whom figure prominently in the film, Jean (Vincent Rottiers), the older, and Claude (Thomas Doret), the younger.

The film begins with the arrival of Andree Heuschling (Christa Theret), a.k.a. Catherine Hessling, who becomes his last model and the future wife of his son, Jean.  Born in 1900, she would have been fifteen at the time of this film, although in the film she appears to be somewhat older, probably in her early 20s.   Renoir’s son, Claude, whom she encounters at the outset, in actuality was only a year younger, although in the film he appears to be at least ten years her junior.

Theret is gorgeous and she spends a good part of her time in this film naked or nearly so, which is a huge plus.  Her naked body helps a great deal to maintain interest in this somewhat slow moving domestic film.  There isn’t a lot of action in this film.  It is domestic drama, but it is interesting and has substance.  The characters are intriguing and their circumstance dealing with the aging patriarch against the backdrop of the horrendous First World War give the film a strong engagement.

The center of gravity of the film is not really Renoir, who mostly sits and paints throughout the film, and sometimes talks — and what he has to say is always interesting — but rather, the romance that develops between the older son, Jean, and Andree.   I’ll let you watch the film to see how that goes, but it is very well done and both characters are strong and captivating, particularly Andree.

What I want to talk about are some of the comments Renoir made on painting and art.  Renoir’s paintings, particularly in his later years, are warm, colorful, and his subject matter tends to be benign:  domestic scenes, landscapes, portraits, and nude women.  His colors are strong, but tend to be pastel, softening contrast and shapes.  He didn’t use black very much.  He felt that viewing a painting should be an enjoyable encounter, reflecting positive, uplifting themes.  It wasn’t that he was unfamiliar with the darker side of life, but he did not wish to portray it.  And this is the point.  A painting, or a work of art more generally, reflects the inner reality, and especially the values, of the artist who created it.  The choice of subject matter and the way it is portrayed say a lot about who the artist is as a person and what he finds most important and valuable in life.  It takes considerable time, sustained attention, and skill to create a work of art.  What you choose as a subject matter upon which to spend that time, attention, and skill is not arbitrary.  An artist chooses to depict what he feels is interesting and important to share with others.  When you view a work of art, you are immersing yourself in the mindset and world view of another person.  You are allowing your attention to be guided by the interest and outlook of another person.  He may be a good person or a bad person.   His outlook may be positive and constructive, or negative, hostile, and biased.  But it is highly personal, individualized, and idiosyncratic.  This is the reason why art and artists often run afoul of prevailing morays and attitudes of their societies.  If they make political statements, they may get into trouble with the authorities.

Art, at least in our western tradition of individual creators, is a forum that lifts up the inner world of particular persons for public view.  In contrast to say, commercial art, which does not do this, or does it to a greatly circumscribed extent.  The operating values in commercial art are to sell a product, promote a name, or create an image associated with a brand or company.  The artist who is commissioned to do such work has limited, if any, choice over the subject matter or how it is to be portrayed.  The artist becomes something of a technician, executing work with a predefined object.  If he is skilled and imaginative, he may have some influence over the final depiction, but the work does not come from his own initiative, his inner need to share of himself.  He is doing the work in the service of an agenda that has been brought to him by someone else.  In the Middle Ages, when life and art was dominated by the church, religious themes were the norm in art.  Individual artists found ways to express themselves within that context, but radical departures from this prevailing mindset were not tolerated and simply had no venue.  The names of artists who created artworks in ancient times were not recorded.  The individual was not important and the individual’s perspective was not to be emphasized in the public forum of art.  Art’s role was to reflect the values of society as a whole, or at least the dominant class within it.

Modern art that you see in museums and galleries today, celebrates highly individualized, idiosyncratic perspectives.  If you contrast the paintings of women by Renoir, and say, Picasso, you see very different attitudes toward women and how they are portrayed.  Renoir saw women as beautiful and sensual, somewhat idealized, perhaps, but women are exalted in his paintings.  They are set in congenial circumstances in warm, vibrant colors.  You see their faces with expressions reflecting the mood and personality of the woman.  Picasso’s women, by contrast, are distorted, grotesque, their faces blank, cold, expressionless.  There is nothing beautiful or inviting about them.  Many of them are frankly hideous.  Certainly there is no idealization.  Neither is more “real” than the other.  The point is that artists depict the world, not as it is, but as they need to see it.  These needs are largely unconscious and are shaped by early experiences going back to the beginnings of their lives.  What you see in art is an interpretation, not “reality”.  When you look at a work of art, you are seeing a selective view of the world the way the artist needs to see it and chooses to share it.  So it is very personal.  Art is a way of connecting with other people on the level of the inner self through selective symbolic communication.  It is inherently limited, but on the other hand, it exposes one to aspects of another person not readily available, and can thus expand one’s awareness of the external world, the inner world of another, and awaken unexplored aspects of oneself.

The film is not so preoccupied with this philosophical topic of the nature of art — which might be a relief to you.  It emphasizes, rather, the romance between the young lovers, which is intriguing and spirited.  It is well crafted and well acted.  Not an action packed film.  You have to wear your thinking cap for this one, if you have one.  It does offer a convincing picture of Renoir in his later years, and particularly the inspiration he derived from attractive young women.  Renoir seems to have used his wealth to isolate himself from the world in an idyllic landscape surrounded by beautiful, attentive women.  (I would do the same thing, if I had the money.)  This was a cause for some tension between himself and his older son, Jean, who had been a soldier at the front.  Wounded in battle, he felt the pull of responsibility to his comrades and the nation, choosing to reenlist and go back to the war, against the strong opposition of Andree and his father.  Renoir senior sat out the war painting naked girls.  His warm, sensual, inviting paintings didn’t seem to sit so well with Jean, who had seen action at the front, which gave him a very different perspective on life from what his father portrayed.  Renoir painted until the very end of his life in 1919.  He was still painting on the day he died.  The film is an excellent introduction to his life and work.

Program 7 — San Francisco Ballet Performance

April 13, 2013

 

 

There were three separate ballets on Program 7.  The first was called Criss-Cross, choreographed by Helgi Thomasson.  This is a celebration of beauty and grace, superbly performed by the San Francisco Ballet dancers.  It is lively and energetic.  The first section is done against the music of Domenico Scarlatti, arranged by Charles Avison, and the latter part is done to the music of Arnold Schoenberg, taking off on George Frederic Handel.  You don’t have to think too much for this one.  It is visually interesting and the mood is upbeat.  The highlight for me were the two male-female duets.  The first was beautifully romantic and elegantly performed.  The second one in the latter half of the performance was more somber, almost languid.  The choreographer seemed to be listening to the music when he composed this.  The dance was well suited to the musical score, which is something I like to see.  It is a solid, enjoyable, well-executed performance that does not challenge too much.

The second ballet was Francesca da Rimini, choreographed by Yuri Possokhov.  This was my favorite of the three.  The set, lighting, special effects, costumes and choreography are interesting and imaginative.  The dancing fits well with the music, which gives a feeling of solidity and stability.  This one is supposed to have a minimal story line, although this staging is not concerned over much with telling a story.  It is actually dominated by a duet which is done to powerful effect.  It contrasts with the duets in the previous ballet in that this duet is much less romantic.  It is sensual, even lurid.  One does not get any sense of an illicit affair in this performance, which is the original story line.  Supposedly Francesca falls in love with Paolo, the younger brother of her husband, Gianciotto, who is supposed to be ugly and crippled.  The tall, robust dancer who plays Gianciotto, Vito Mazzeo, doesn’t exactly fit that description.  He does discover the lovers and murders them, true to the original script, but then Possokhov gives it a twist, which I think is a great improvement.  Instead of the adulterous couple being consigned to Hell, as in Dante’s Inferno, Gianciotto, the jealous murderer is dragged off to Hell.  I like Possokhov’s conception better and congratulate him on his modification of the story.

The Symphony in Three Movements by Igor Stravinsky rounds out the program.  It is choreographed by George Balanchine.  It is imaginatively done, with lots of visual activity and interesting configurations that blend and morph in interesting ways.  This is one where the dance does not well reflect the mood and temper of the underlying music.  There is a lot of distress in this music, but the choreography seems oblivious to it.  The choreographer seemed to have his own agenda and he wasn’t going to let the music get in the way of it.   The dancing is generally more positive and energetic than the music.  This one is interesting to watch.  It has complexity and many different elements that work together smoothly.  It is well thought out from the point of view of the choreography, but it was clearly not conceived from the music as the starting point.  I had the sense that the dancers like doing this one.  I could feel a vigor and enthusiasm from them that seemed inspired by the work itself.  This seems to be one they would choose to do themselves.

Generally an enjoyable, stimulating performance with lots of visual interest, imaginative staging, good positive energy and first rate dancing by the San Francisco Ballet dancers.

Stevie Nicks: In Your Dreams

Directed by Dave Stewart and Stevie Nicks

This is a self-indulgent infomercial for Stevie Nicks recent CD, In Your Dreams.  If I had known what it was going to be, I wouldn’t have gone.  Ninety percent of it is Stevie Nicks.  Most of the other ten percent is people telling how much they love Stevie Nicks, thanking her for everything she has done, and rhapsodizing about how great she is.  She is a great song writer and a great singer.  That still works.  The music in this is good.  There should have been more music and less talk.  You do learn a lot about her character.  However, I didn’t like a lot of what I saw.  I think she is a very needy woman in the depths of her heart with an insatiable need for attention and adulation.  She has to be the center of attention at all times and completely dominates everyone around her.  She is very self absorbed and preoccupied with herself.  I found her oppressive after a while.  This kind of extreme neediness taxes me beyond my limits.  I don’t think I could stand being around her for very long.  But I would go see her in a concert.  Her voice still has that sultry, smoky, mesmerizing power that it always did, and her songs are still thoughtful and poignant.  The people who filled the theater where I saw this film applauded enthusiastically.  They seemed to be exactly the kind of adoring fans she needs.  Parts of the film mimic those video pieces for MTV, where an imaginative, theatrical video depicts the song being featured.  But the film also casts some light on her sources of inspiration and the creative process in writing a song and putting a recording together.  For example, Cheaper than Free started from a remark of Reese Witherspoon offering to let her use a condo she owns.  Dave Stewart is her guitarist and lead partner in the songwriting.  Mick Fleetwood appears and plays drums on a number of the songs.  Lindsay Buckingham also participates on a few of the numbers — but says little or nothing.  The recording took place in her Southern California home.  It presents each of the songs on In Your Dreams, informatively and sympathetically.  I would rather have seen a documentary about her life and career, preferably not directed by her.  If you are a dedicated fan of Stevie Nicks, you’ll probably enjoy this, but I would suggest instead just skipping this film and buying the CD.

 

 

 

Emperor

Directed by Peter Webber

This is two films in one.  The main story is a narrative about the aftermath of the Japanese surrender to the Americans at the end of World War II and General Douglas MacArthur’s deliberations over what to do with Japanese Emperor Hirohito.  The issue was whether he should he be tried and executed as one of the architects of the war, or allowed to continue as titular ruler of Japan?  The film is misnamed.  It is not about the Emperor.  The Emperor is only a minor figure in the film.  It is about General Bonner Fellers on MacArthur’s staff, who is charged by MacArthur with investigating Hirohito’s guilt in war crimes.  His report will provide a justification for a decision that MacArthur had already made to allow Hirohito to continue on as Emperor of Japan.  The secondary story is a love story between Fellers and a Japanese woman Fellers met in the United States, who is related to a senior officer in the Japanese military.  The love story is much more interesting and better presented than the political narrative.  The girl is gorgeous (Eriko Hatsune) and she plays the role perfectly.  I think if this film had been recast to present the love story as the center weight of the film with the political drama as a backdrop, it might have worked better.

I am not steeped in the history of this period or in the biographies of any of the individuals portrayed.  So I am taking the film at face value.  I won’t make any judgment about whether the portrayals and the facts and the interpretations are historically accurate.  I will say that I did not find the performance of Tommy Lee Jones as Douglas MacArthur convincing at all.  In general, none of the portrayals of the American military officers came across as genuine.  On the other hand, the Japanese actors who played the roles of the Japanese officials were very effective.

The film attempts to teach some lessons on the nature of Japanese culture or the essence of the Japanese soul.  These discussions between Japanese and American officials take place mostly in the context of the military investigation into the role of Hirohito during the war.  This also has a superficial quality about it that I found myself resisting.  What actually taught more about the Japanese mentality and the culture was the romance.  It did it through the action and characterizations rather than through analytical discussion.

The film also tries to raise the issue of responsibility for the war and the nature of war crimes by comparing the war time behavior of the Japanese military and the American.  Again, this is a lightweight treatment that is completely unimpressive.  The romance (and Eriko Hatsune) is the best part of this film.

The film is engaging and tells an interesting story — actually two interesting stories that are intertwined.  The things it tries hardest to do probably don’t succeed all that well.  The subplot that simply told itself and didn’t think too much worked a lot better.

FBI Moneypak Computer Virus

 

Last week I had a computer virus that locked down my computer and rendered it unusable for five days. I don’t really understand what happened, but I will recount my experience. My computer skills and sophistication are only middling to moderate. Undoubtedly, many of you will understand this much better than I do.

I don’t really know how I got this virus. I haven’t been able to figure it out. The way it got started, I think, is that perhaps a month ago upon startup of the computer, the scanner software would open and the scanner would start to scan, even though there was nothing on the scanner to scan and I hadn’t been using the scanner recently. I am using Windows 7 operating system, by the way. So every time I started the computer up I would have to manually close about four windows related to the scanner. This process began spontaneously for no obvious reason that I can discern. It was a nuisance and a week ago on a Saturday morning I got up and decided to see if I could fix this.

If you click the Start button, you get the command line, and you type msconfig and a window opens with a menu. If you click the Startup tab there is a list of programs that open when you start the computer with check boxes. You can uncheck the ones you don’t want to open when the computer starts up. So I did this, unchecking the scanner software and a number of others. When I restarted the computer, however, the scanner software still started up, as it had been doing, even though it was unchecked in msconfig. So I thought, OK, I’ll uninstall the scanner software. So I did that uninstalling the scanner software in Control Panel. Then I restarted the computer, and some parts of the scanner software still started up, although not all of it, even though it had been uninstalled from the computer. So I said, OK, I’m going to completely uninstall the scanner, the driver, anything having to do with the scanner, uninstall. So I did that and when I restarted the computer, Windows loaded and was immediately superceded by a black screen with FBI and Justice Department logos on it and a message that I had been illegally downloading copyrighted material, looking at child pornography, and various other offenses, and my computer would be locked down until I clicked on the button indicated and paid a fine. If I didn’t do this within 72 hours, the FBI would prosecute me for a host of felonies, or something to that effect. There was a green button labeled ‘Greendot,’ that I was asked to click on it for the instructions on how to make this payment. I did not click on it. Don’t be intimidated. This is not from the FBI or the government. This is heavy handed extortion by criminals. However, you cannot get out of this screen by any means. It completely takes over the computer and immobilizes it. You can’t even shut the computer down. I had to shut it down and turn it back on with the power button. Every time I turned the computer on Windows loaded, but then this threatening screen took over. There was nothing that could be done. The computer was completely locked up.

Fortunately, I also have an Android tablet, which I never use, and regard as a waste of money, but it does have a working internet connection, and I was able to research the problem with it.  So maybe I should hold it in slightly higher esteem. I found that there are a number of different versions of this virus and the one I had was called ‘FBI Moneypak Greendot.’ The most common way people defeated the FBI Moneypak virus was by starting the computer in Safe Mode. In Safe Mode you can operate the computer, connect to the internet, download an antivirus program called “Malwarebytes,” and run it and remove the virus. To get into Safe Mode, you press the ‘Delete’ key when the computer first starts up, before Windows starts to load. It’s good to keep hitting it. You get a black screen with white lettering inviting you to choose how you want Windows to load. Choose Safe Mode with Internet Connection. I did this and Windows loaded, but immediately the black FBI screen took over and shut everything down. So Safe Mode did not work. The Greendot version of this virus disables Safe Mode. Now what?

I got a friend to make a Windows 7 startup disc for me. You can download to a CD the minimal files necessary to operate the computer and boot the computer from the CD. I did this and it worked. I could boot the computer from the CD and get a command prompt. However, I was not able to run anything from the command prompt. I could see into the computer, the file directories were there, but I wasn’t able to do anything. I tried ‘regedit’ to edit the registry — a risky move, for someone who doesn’t know what they are doing. I was able to find the files in the WinLogon section which were attributed to the virus and deleted them, but when I restarted the computer, the virus was still present and the computer was still completely locked down. Deleting the files in the registry that were said to operate the virus did not have any effect. I went back into Regedit and looked again. The two files I had deleted were back just as they had been before. They seem to have self repaired. So I realized that there was more to this virus that those two files. I decided I would not be able to get rid of it by manually deleting it. I tried to run an antivirus software program from a CD, but that didn’t work either. I thought I was stuck.

Then the same friend who made the CD for me told me about a Windows Recovery Manager that is built into the computer, which I did not know about. You access it by pressing F11 upon startup, just as pressing ‘Delete’ gave you the Safe Mode options. Pressing F11 gets you a Recovery Manager screen with three options on it: Microsoft System Repair Tool, Microsoft Startup Recovery Tool, and System Restore. I tried the Microsoft System Repair Tool and restarted the computer, but it did not work. The virus was still stubbornly in charge. I tried again with the Microsoft Startup Recovery Tool. This worked. After running the Startup Recovery Tool, Windows loaded normally and everything was fine. Like magic, after five days, the problem had been solved. So easy, if you know exactly what to do. That’s why I am posting this. It might save you five days of distress.

I immediately ran Malwarebytes with a full scan of the computer. It took about an hour and a half and it located one Trojan file on the computer. I had it deleted and there was a link that said ‘show location of the file.’ I clicked this and the internet browser opened and it went to Yahoo.com. What do you make of that? I reinstalled the scanner and its related software. The computer has worked normally since, except that the scanner software started to open spontaneously again after a day or so. I immediately ran Malwarebytes again, but it did not find any suspicious files. However, after running a full scan with Malwarebytes, the scanner stopped opening upon Startup, and the computer has run perfectly since.

I’m still puzzled about how I acquired this malware and what its relationship is to the scanner. I remember some time ago having a brief power failure in my apartment with the computer on. So the computer did not shut down properly at that time. Could that have had something to do with it? I really don’t know. Those are the facts. I have no explanations.

Harvest of Empire

Directed by Peter Getzels & Eduardo López

 

This is an informative, well-presented story of the Latino migration to the United States throughout the twentieth century and continuing into the present. It makes clear the relationship between the Latin migration to the United States and the economic and political policies of the United States government, examining numerous specific cases in great detail: Puerto Rico, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Each case is somewhat different, but the basic pattern is consistent: the United States destabilizes popular governments, engineers coups, promotes civil wars, and supports repressive dictatorial regimes that promote the economic interests of large U.S. corporations who exploit the citizenry of these countries, extract their resources, pervert the local economy, and corrupt the government and the judicial system. The citizenry then flee poverty, repression, war, hopelessness, and despair, and where do they come? The United States. People do not leave their homes, their cultures, their languages, and their national identity easily. They do so reluctantly and often at great risk. In a great many cases they are not coming to seek work or to make money, but to flee terror and genocide. The United States trains, arms, and supports the repressive governments that brutalize the civilian population and create the intolerable conditions that promote large scale migration. This film documents this pattern with many vivid examples. It is based on the book Harvest of Empire, by Juan Gonzalez, who is featured as a commentator throughout the film. Anyone who is Latino should see it. Anyone who isn’t Latino should also see it, because it might help to discredit some of the paranoid nonsense being promoted in politics and the media — which is also portrayed in the film — about securing the borders with fences and drones and armed patrols and criminalizing undocumented immigrants and deporting them by the thousands and millions, which is not feasible and not in our interest in any case. It is a powerful and important story that will have lasting implications for the future of our nation. There are about 51 million Latin immigrants in the United States right now, with about two thirds of them from Mexico. According to the Pew Research Center, by 2050 the Latino population in the United States will triple in size and make up 29% of the population compared to 14% in 2005. Nearly one in five Americans will be an immigrant in 2050, compared to one in eight in 2005. It is a major long term demographic and cultural shift underway in the United States: an inadvertent, unforeseen consequence of short-sighted, misguided economic and political policies carried out by our government over many years. This film provides a clearheaded, historically informed, constructive look at the issue that is interesting and rich in examples of the many varied impacts it has on individual human lives.

HAIR

Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle

The Encinal Drama Department courageously explores the radical sixties via the American Tribal Lock-Rock Musical HAIR.

The musical visits the incubator of many cultural and political elements that we take for granted today: the anti-war and anti-draft movement, environmental protection, women’s rights, mysticism, broad based humanism, sexual liberation, tolerance and cultural pluralism.

These features of the American landscape were brought to you by the Hippies; a utopian subculture that looked beyond materialism for a vision of what we could become.

Diane Keaton was part of the 1968 Broadway cast of HAIR; strangely, to this day she reminds us that although she played a Hippy on stage, she was not a Hippy.

Remarkably, the Encinal production seems to capture the very essence of the Hippy movement; to the credit of Director Robert Moorhead, the show—despite the enormous cast—achieves an intimate cohesive feel, a harmonic convergence of creative spirit and enlightened hope; the unifying tribal force is palpable.

The rousing opening song, Aquarius, boldly led by Brazjea Willard-Johnson with an exuberant Tribal chorus, asserts that planet Earth is governed by a celestial clock—the precession of the equinoxes—and humanity is getting its wake-up call; peace, love and understanding are about to usurp the old evil gods of greed, war and hate.

Just as the Christian era is believed to have been ushered in by a Virgin, the Aquarian Age too has its Madonna only in HAIR it is simply Donna and Berger—played marvelously by Darryl Williams—is desperately singing and searching for “my Donna.”

While drugs have been a part of the American experience since the Jamestown Colonists discovered the hallucinogenic properties of Jimson Weed, it was the sixties that brought on a proliferation of every “mind expanding” toxicant known to the recreational pharmacist and sorcerer; the song Hashish, performed by the Tribe in an eerie and trippy haunting howl, signals the audience that mystic revelation can spring from psychedelics much easier and quicker than yoga, asceticism and rigorous self-denial.

While the United States was busily bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail and trumped-up body counts filled the evening news, the nation remained priggish about S E X; the song Sodomy drags words before the Klieg Lights that were hitherto only uttered in locker rooms, pajama parties, frat houses and confession booths; words like … like … well you know.

Woof—superbly played by the unassuming leading man of Encinal Theater, and Encinal’s West Point selectee, Raymond Cole-Machuca—lyrically runs through the entire Scortatory Dictionary trying to find the basis of its shock value.

Whether intentional or not, Raymond’s Woof is the oak tree about which the Tribe seems to hang its Teepee; he is both the Oberon and Puck of this musical.

Relentlessly threaded through the musical, submerging and reemerging repeatedly, is the problem of the Draft: compulsory military service; most likely in Vietnam.

The lead character, Claude, is inexorably ratcheted closer and closer to boot camp and the nightmare that lies beyond.

Claude—as played by Ryan Borashan is brilliant casting.

Ryan is an amazing young gentleman actor not to be under-estimated; he is so capable and expansive on stage that his own teachers have difficulty recognizing him.

Claude does his best to dismiss reality; he dives into a false identity in the song Manchester England as if to momentarily escape the Selective Service who has issued him a draft card.

Ryan’s rendering of the song betrays the desperation of a draft eligible teenager trying to suspend his sense of disbelief to buy one more day in protracted adolescence; neither his parents nor the Tribe fully comprehend the enormity of his crisis.

Later as reality begins to infiltrate Claude’s denial mechanism, Ryan wonderfully sings what is arguably the finest song of the show: Where Do I Go.

One of the most startling voices in HAIR is Kalyn Evans; when she chimes into the number Ain’t Got No, the song leaps a full octave qualitatively; this reviewer spent the rest of the evening anxiously waiting for an encore from Kalyn.

As previously stated, the environment was moved to the front burner by the Hippy Movement and the environmentalist in HAIR is the amply Pregnant Jeanie—played by very talented Miss Ruby Wagner.

Miss Wagner—one of the bright beacons in this show—perhaps acceding that there were vagaries in the sound system, not only sang mellifluously, but she communicated her song, Air, to the audience with expression, articulation and earnestness while never compromising on melody.

In a subjective debate over the virtues of Black Boys versus White Boys and in a nod to Motown and Phil Spector, Emani Pollard, Kalyn Evans and Jayla Velasquez delightfully shimmied in shimmering minis.

Costuming and make-up deserve major kudos.

Initially one might think this is a parody of the sixties until one realizes that this is how it really was, equally audacious and outrageous in the sixties as it is on the Encinal Stage.

To connect or reconnect to a time when expectation and hope trumped the status quo and the military-industrial complex, get thee to HAIR.

The show runs through Saturday March 23 and should not be missed.

Period dressing is encouraged.

Call Encinal High at 748-4023 for more details.

Written and directed by Richard LaGravenese, from the novel by Kami Garcia, starring Alden Ehrenreich, Alice Englert, Jeremy Irons, and Viola Davis.

 

A MODERN FAIRY TALE

After reviewing “The Gatekeepers” for this web site, I wanted to see some fantasy, something light, so I checked out “Beautiful Creatures.”    Another reason is that one reviewer said that Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson make a meal of the scenery.  I love both and enjoy them in anything, and listening to Jeremy Irons’ voice with its oily, James Mason-smooth, rich delivery.   If anything, maybe this film will get teens to read.

It is a modern fairy tale in which the sought after young girl is not a princess but a witch who comes from a long line of witches and warlocks.   Except they’re not called “witches” but “casters” as in casting spells.  Not casters like wheels for moving furniture around.  “Creatures” stars two unknown (to me, anyway) actors, Alice Englert as Lena Duchannes, the caster, and her teen-age suitor, Ethan Wate played by Alden Ehrenreich, who has the endearing vocal inflections and mannerisms of a young Leonardo diCaprio.  Alice Englert is the daughter of filmmaker Jane Campion; Alden Ehrenreich is said to have been discovered by Stephen Spielberg at a friend’s barmitzvah.  If he’s never acted before, you wouldn’t know it by his portrayal of Ethan.  He’s a natural.

Ethan lives in a small, moss-covered town in North Carolina. He wants to get out, and sees college as a way.  His only escape is books- good ones- literature.  Real books- paper backs.  He reads Vonnegut, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Salinger, Bukowski, and more.  His mother is allegedly dead; his father non-compos-mentis with Alzheimer’s and never appears.  Ethan has been cared for since infancy by Amma, played by Viola Davis in a familiar role as a wise, spiritual, all-knowing woman, who lives in a spooky house in the swamps.  She is the town librarian, dresses in the latest African chic: prints, bangles, etc, and has a key to a hidden vault of secrets reminiscent of Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code.”  Part of the town’s history goes back to the Civil War and each year the townsfolk take part in a Civil War re-enactment of the Battle of Honey Hill.  There are flashbacks to that era shown in dreamy, surreal scenes in which a young woman a la Scarlett O’Hara, loses her young Confederate soldier to Union fire- but spookily brings him back to life.  (Could it be? . . .)

One of the things I loved about “Creatures” is that it shies away from stereotypes as much as possible in a fairy tale:  Lena, as a caster, is not a pale, anorexic, willowy girl who dresses in long, clinging, black dresses.  Though Ethan has been seeing her this way in recurring dreams, with long, black tendrils hiding her face.  In real life, Lena is the picture of rosy-cheeked health and dresses like a typical teen.   Anyway, seems she has been kicked out of every high school from here to Hades and ends up a senior at Ethan’s.  She’s the newby, and is taunted and bullied by her bland, blond classmates. (They suffer the consequences.)

Lena lives with her Uncle Macon Ravenswood (Jeremy Irons).  From the exterior, the house looks like the Munster mansion- all ropey vines, a squeaky, baroque, wrought-iron gate, a long, winding road o’er shadowed with cypresses festooned with Spanish Moss.  Ethan pays an uninvited visit hoping to talk to her.  He is the only one willing to befriend her, having, like I said, seen her in his dreams.  The heavily carved door is, of course, somehow ajar.  He pushes his way in.  We expect to see a dark room, dimly lit with wall sconces and candelabras; overstuffed, 17^th century furniture, including a mahogany dining table with scrolled legs, ending in dragon claws, clutching amber balls. But what a delightful surprise!  It is nothing you’d expect.  When Uncle Macon appears, he is elegant- suavely dressed in cream silks, his grey mane swept back in deep waves.  He speaks in well-modulated, orotund tones.

Naturally, there is a curse that has to be broken if Ethan is to get the girl before she goes over to the dark side when she turns 16 in a few weeks, epitomized by her cousin Sidney Duchannes (Emmy Rossum), who wears slinky, red dresses, shades, and speeds around in a sporty red convertible.  You know she’s evil when she causes a squad car to suddenly career off the road and burst into flames.  Another hint is that her eyes became supra-naturally luminescent immediately before she executes an evil deed.  The introduction of Sidney was, I thought, an unnecessary element, except she was a device to influence Ethan’s best friend and get Lena to come over to the dark side.  But the family relationships got confusing.  What with shape-shifting Emma Thomson as Mrs. Lincoln, the town radical fundamentalist Christian AND Serafine, Macon’s dark, caster of a sister, and Lena’s mother, as well as a bunch of other ageless relatives:  Gramma (Eileen Atkins), Aunt Del (Margo Martindale), a little-seen brother, etc.

One of the high-lights of the film takes place at a banquet at Macon’s.  Everyone’s been called together to convince the young lovers to break it off.  Ethan finds himself seated at the sumptuous table headed by Macon, with Lena and all the relatives.  Everything’s quiet.  In the background we hear the theme from the 1959 movie, “A Summer Place.”  Broke me up.  Then the room starts spinning around.  I expected everyone to end up as butter when it stopped.

Amma shows the pair the secret vault in the library where the history of the Duchannes and Ravenswood families are kept in leather-bound tomes that only Lena is privy to.  Spells are cast, Ethan loses his memory, Lena stays in her room and pouts.  It’s as though they’d never met.  Soon they all gear up for the re-enactment.  There’s some shape-shifting going on, someone is accidentally shot dead with a real bullet and is brought back to life in another body.  Serafina?  Next time you’re in the woods and see a tangle of thick vines choking a tree, think of her.  Yes, it did get a little hard to follow.  Ethan drives down the road, off to college.  Lena is in her room studying.  She looks up.  Her eyes reveal her new state of being.  The movie ends with nothing resolved, but you come away feeling that somehow, the young lovers will end up together.

 

 

The Gatekeepers, directed by Dror Moreh who also conducted the interviews.

 

AN ENDLESS PROBLEM OF INSURMOUNTABLE PROPORTIONS.

By Gaetana Caldwell-Smith

“The Gatekeepers” is a riveting documentary film that reveals the behind the scenes actions of one of Israel’s key tools for maintaining its repressive rule over the Palestinian community—Israel’s secret intelligence operations: the Shin Bet (appellation for Israel Security Agency or ISA, formerly Mossad) through candid interviews with ex-leaders, including archival, black and white film clips.   The film opens with a clip of Israel’s six day war with Egypt (UAR at the time), Syria and Jorden in June 5th-10^th, 1967.  One result was that one million Palestinians were put under Israeli rule.  Shin Bet had focussed on internal affairs, but now expanded into combating foreign terrorists. A former member, Avi Dichter, shown being interviewed, was only eleven years old during the war.  He had to ask, “What is war?”

Dror Moreh was inspired by Errol Morris’s documentary, “The Fog of War,” where Morris interviewed Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War.  Moreh’s interviewees either retired or resigned from Shin Bet having gained a conscience regarding their actions. The film contains many memorable yet unsettling images, some  seem right out of a Bond or Bourne film, such as a successful bomb in a cell phone triggered to explode in the user’s ear; and the inhumane conditions of prisons where Palestinian suspects are tortured and held without trial.

Acting under Shin Bet orders, Israeli soldiers’ actions were not unlike those of the US military in Afghanistan.  Taught simple Arabic commands, they went to Palestinian homes to count how many lived in each.  Those who didn’t comply got their doors kicked down.  Soldiers grabbed men, bound and corralled them into trucks and hauled them off, leaving wailing women and children behind.  Unfortunately, one of the commands was mistranslated by one vowel so that “We want to ‘count’ you” came out as “castrate.”

Moreh interviewed one ex-leader who spoke of the beauty of the Palestinian olive groves.  Here, he included grainy black and white shots of soldiers driving through them.  Yet soon the land was confiscated and people were sent to refugee camps.   A Shin Bet leader, curious about the camps, paid a visit and was sickened by the conditions.   Illustrated by archival film clips, we saw people who once lived freely on their land relegated to rows and rows of one room concrete blocks.  Demeaned, Palestinians protested with rudimentary acts of terrorism against Israelis they now saw as” occupiers.”  As these acts increased, a curfew was instigated and as many as a hundred people a night were arrested and tortured.  One Shin Bet member laughingly bragged that some of the methods were such that a victim would confess to killing Jesus.  Shin Bet also relied on human intelligence (HUMINT).  We witnessed films of warehouses filled with rows of file cabinets containing dossiers on hundreds of thousands of alleged suspects.  Clerks sat at Microfiche machines running countless records from which Shin Bet recruited people to betray friends and family.  I imagined that their record-keeping rivaled those of the Nazis.  Villagers, fearing for their safety, ratted on each other.

One of the most unsettling interviewees was Avram Shalom.  In 1982, after the Israeli war with Lebanon, the organization recruited him to head it.  He’d been an officer.   He told Moreh that he felt he could do whatever he wanted and if you didn’t go along, heads would roll.  Sitting for the camera with his glasses and argyle sweater, Shalom, looked more like someone’s grandfather than a leader of a ruthless killing machine.   One incident was the blowing up of a bus transporting suspected terrorists, killing most.  Moreh asked him about it; Shalom couldn’t remember.   When asked if he thought the attack was illegal, Shalom replied that there was no such thing as an illegal action.  Moreh pressed on, “Not even shooting people with their hands behind their backs?”  He said he ordered killings instead of trials because he didn’t want the chance of an armed terrorist in court.  (Ironically, this sounds like a sound-bite from today’s US administration speaking about the “war on terror,” especially how it dealt with Osama bin Laden.)  Impassively and coldly, he answered Moreh’s questions:, “In a war against terrorists, there is no morality.” Anyone who argues with an Israeli soldier is shot in cold blood.  When questioned about their intelligence, he snickered, “All the intelligence in the world could not have predicted the worst terrorist acts,” which made me think of 9-11- there was plenty of intelligence, but no one acted..  He actually chuckled when he said that Shin Bet reminded him of the Nazi’s handling of Jews during the Second World War.   Palestinians see Israelis as terrorists.  Another interviewee said that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.   One of their mottos is: “Victory is to see you suffer.”  Yet in n November 2003, four former heads of Shin Bet ( Shalom, Yaakov Peri, Gillon and Ami Ayalon) called upon the Government of Israel to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Retaliation for the bombing of the bus resulted in a suicide bus bomb in Tel Aviv.  It was hard to watch the news coverage of mangled, dismembered bodies among twisted, blackened metal.   Talks about the peace process between Shimon Perez, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat angered radical, right-wing Jews.  Rabin said, “We who have fought against you, the Palestinians, we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice, enough of blood and tears … enough!”  Meanwhile, Israel soldiers were fighting Jews building illegal settlements in the West Bank.  Radical Jews were organizing to bomb buses carrying Palestinians.  They also plotted to destroy the Dome of the Rock, clips illustrated how they would do it.  This would bring on Armageddon and the long-awaited Messiah would appear, was their thinking.   Shin Bet infiltrated the Jewish underground to make arrests and succeeded in preventing further attacks.  Shin Bet did double-duty: investigating both Palestinians and their own people.   Yet they could not prevent the 1995 assassination of Rabin by Yigal Amir, a radical right-wing Orthodox Jew, for his signing of the Oslo Accords.

Their matter-of-fact attitude, calmness, and lack of emotion (except for Shalom’s giggles), made them appear as pathological killers.  Still, they verbalized their remorse.  Whether or not they meant it, only they would know.  With decades of stale-mated peace talks, the dismantling and building of settlements; the separation wall; promises, and on-going devastating attacks on both sides; two deadly intifadas; and the division between Hamas and Fatah, between radical, orthodox and moderate Jews; with Palestinians continuing to lob missiles into Jerusalem and Israelis retaliating with air wars and successful missile intercepts; the disagreement on the possibility of a two-state or one-state solution appear to be an endless problem of insurmountable proportions.  Shin Bet has its work cut out for them.

In 2007, the organization started a public recruitment drive with a blog where current members would answer questions; a Web site, and an international ad campaign aimed at computer savvy people.   Shin Bet’s heads stated that all this is geared towards “promoting a more accessible and positive public image for the secret service, long associated with ‘dark, undercover and even violent activity’.”

Nijinsky

Hamburg Ballet Performance at the San Francisco Ballet

February 19, 2013

 

 

This is a huge, sprawling production done with imaginative, elaborate staging and lighting and superb technical skill from the dancers.  It is inspired by the troubled life of Vaslav Nijinsky the famous Russian/Polish ballet dancer from the early 20th century.  It is not an easy ballet to follow or immediately grasp.  Some aspects of the ballet seem to refer to events and relationships in Nijinsky’s life and some aspects seem to represent states of his inner life or fantasies, and some seem to be blends of the two.  There are ambiguities that seem to working on several different levels at the same time.  I came to the performance completely unprepared.  I didn’t know anything about Nijinsky except that he was a famous dancer and I didn’t know anything about the events of his life.  The result was I found the performance rather confusing and obscure.

When I attend a theatrical performance, I am always most interested in the concept of the piece, it’s psychological import and meaning, it’s cultural and historical significance.  I think about who wrote this and why.  What were they trying to get across.

In this performance those aspects are not easy to grasp.  Unless you are an expert on the history of ballet and know a lot about the life of Nijinsky, you are not likely to get all the references and allusions in this performance.  I went with a friend who happens to hold a doctoral degree in musicology and she did not get it either, although she got a lot more of it than I did.  She at least knew who he was and his significance, and was able to make connections to some of the other ballets he had been in and she knew a most of the music that was used.  But she did not know the biographical details of Nijinsky’s life and was thus unable to understand much of what was going on.

I was able to discern that it was a kind of retrospective, that many of the sequences represented the contents of the lead dancer’s mind, reminiscences of things that had happened in the past.  There was at least one and probably multiple triangles involving two men and a woman.  I’m not sure if it was the same woman in all of them.  There was a wedding, that was clear, but the character of the marriage was not clear.  The second act seemed to be a descent into psychosis with references to the war (World War 1) and many deaths.  The second act had a surreal quality that was less accessible to being grasped intellectually, but in my eyes it had a more powerful emotional and psychological impact.

This ballet should be very popular among experts on the ballet.  The general public will have a harder time with it unless a special effort is made to prepare in advance.  I studied for several months before attending the Ring of the Nibelung cycle in 2011, and that preparation paid off.   However, I don’t really want to have to do that with every performance, but this is one of that sort where significant early preparation would make a big difference.  Art should be challenging and it should push us beyond our natural boundaries of understanding and perception.  My feeling, in this case, is that the authors did not think enough about who the audience was going to be and the impact that it would have on a naive viewer, which is what most of them are going to be, at least in the United States.  Since this is a large scale production aimed at an audience made up of people who are mostly not experts on ballet and certainly not steeped in the details of Vaslav Nijinsky’s life, it could have been done in a way that would have made it more immediately accessible.  This production might have worked well as an opera.  It does seem to lend itself to that kind of grand conceptual enactment.  The verbal aspect available in opera would have helped a lot in terms of making it intelligible to a viewer not steeped in the life of Nijinsky.

Having said all of that, I still like this.  I liked that it was a big concept, that they were trying to do something with substance and powerful emotional significance, as opposed to gentle entertainment.  This was a performance with real import, although the character of it was not immediately evident.  It had narrative elements, it had subjective explorations of the inner life, it had allusions to historical events that were of relevant to the story line as well as the psychological development of the characters.  It was imaginatively staged, flawlessly executed, and superbly performed.  It is the kind of performance I like to attend.  I came to it unprepared, which was my own fault.  But even unprepared this ballet wins the audience over on the strength of its imaginative conception and first rate execution.