This Covered Wagon Needs a Tow Truck

How does the old-fashioned pioneer spirit handle modern problems? What does it do about bankruptcy, wrecked cars, obstinate offspring? The character of Mom in Marin Theatre Company’s “The Way West,” manages them by denying everything, telling stories or singing. These strategies have always worked for her, but Mom may have come to the end of the trail this time.

“The Way West” forecasts its journey with a wonderful set by Geoffrey M. Curley, a tilted construction of disordered tables and overstuffed furniture, ribbed over with arches that evoke the interior of a covered wagon. In it, Mom quarrels with her two daughters, Manda, the high achiever from Chicago, and Meesh, the loser who stayed home. Both of them often agree that they don’t know what Mom’s talking about.

Still, Manda’s going to help Mom complete the paperwork for bankruptcy, a procedure this lady sees as her last chance, and Manda’s  old boyfriend, Luis, is available to help with the legalities.

There will be a lot of them. Has Mom really charged $3500 to an Elizabeth Arden account? Is it possible she’s paid $500 for a tiny bottle of “magic water” that her friend Tress is selling to her spa customers?  Did Mom actually crash Meesh’s car in the garage? She doesn’t think so. “Prairie wisdom,” she says, “is not to talk about it.” And then Manda is downsized. The wheels have, as the title card says, come off this covered wagon.

Playwright Mona Mansour sees her own American mother as the inspiration for Mom and for the “theatrical moments” in the play. These are the stories Mom tells — real whoppers — that are supposed to illustrate to the girls how fortunate they are not to be dying along the route, starving and confronting ravening coyotes. She also tosses musical instruments at them like a cheerleader, rallying songs that urge “Roll, roll, roll!” or “Fight! Fight! Fight!”  And even though this family has come to a dead stop somewhere around Stockton or Modesto, Mom’s core belief is, “The next place will be better.”

The songs are not old campfire favorites, like “Home on the Range.” They’re originals, composed by Megan Pearl Smith and Sam Misner. During the singing, Director Hayley Finn has the cast members sing not to each other, but to the audience; the same occurs with Mom’s stories. It’s unusual direction and seems to freeze any forward action.

Anne Darragh presents a warm-hearted, gullible Mom, the object of equal parts affection and exasperation. Marin Theatre Company newcomer Rosie Hallett plays daughter Meesh, who’s stayed at home much too long. Kathryn Zdan — as good a musician as she is an actress — has the part of Manda, the one who almost got away by going east.

Stacy Ross, MTC regular, here has a small, but effective role as Tress, the spa owner who has come to believe her own sales pitches. And Hugo E. Carbajal, another newcomer, carries two entirely different parts as boyfriend/legal advisor Luis and as the no-pay-no pizza delivery guy.

“The Way West” has a short run of only twenty-nine shows. It will close on Mother’s Day, May 10. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday performances are at 8p.m., Wednesdays are at 7:30 and Sundays are at 7p.m. Matinees are every Sunday at 2p.m., also Thursday, April 30 at 1p.m. and May 9 at 2p.m.

Ticket prices range from $20 to $53, and discounts are available for teens, seniors, military personnel and their families. (Bring ID.)

For reservations or more information, call the Box Office, (415) 388-5208 or see boxoffice@marintheatre.org.

Deep Web

Directed by Alex Winter

This is a partisan, advocacy film that champions the legal cause of Ross Ulbricht, who was convicted of heading the website Silk Road, which was the E-bay or Amazon of every imaginable illegal drug on the internet.  I was rather dissatisfied with the film from beginning to end.  The film is naive and hypocritical and its audience is basically Silicon Valley tech nerds and people who want to buy and sell illegal drugs on the internet.

I have been cynical about the so-called “War on Drugs” since it was declared by Nixon in 1971 and amplified by Reagan in the 1980s.  The film is not about the longstanding folly of the misguided Drug War.  It is narrowly focused on the case of Ross Ulbricht, who in my view is simply another casualty of this poorly conceived governmental policy.  Ulbricht and his collaborators tried to set up a website that could be used anonymously to traffic in illegal drugs.  Well, the government found out about it, hatched an undercover operation, and brought it down and arrested Ulbricht.  It is probably true that the government used illegal means in its assault on the Silk Road.  It is probably true that Ross Ulbricht’s trial was not fair, that the government fabricated evidence, trumped up false charges, tried to smear him in the media and so bias the trial against him.  But this is standard procedure in these drug cases.  The filmmakers are shocked and appalled that the government would behave this way.  But this has been going on for decades in this country and there are thousands, perhaps more than a million people in jail in this country who were put there the same way.  Why do they think there have been riots recently in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore?  What do they think of all the unrest all across the country about police heavy handedness and brutality?

I have never regarded anything that is done or communicated over the internet as private:  e-mail, “chat,” business transactions, anything bought or sold, anything looked at, shopped for, searched for, read, photographs, pornography, anything.  My attitude is that there is no such thing as anonymity or privacy on the internet.  So my expectations are extremely low.  Everything can be recorded, everything can be saved, everything can be traced.  Nothing is secret.  Don’t even think about it.

The people who invented the Silk Road and other similar sites, as well as the filmmakers, don’t believe this.  They think that secrecy on the internet is possible, that anonymity is possible, that it can be mechanically constructed and preserved indefinitely.  But the case of Ross Ulbricht demonstrates that a determined adversary can thwart such illusions.  It is a chess game that can probably go on forever.  But it does not really interest me.  If you really want secrecy and privacy, keep it off your computer and pay in cash.  It is very easy, and very old fashioned.

Ross Ulbricht, the filmmakers, and the intended audience are mostly white, upper middle class younger people who grew up in a comfortable bubble playing video games and never really knew what was going on around them.  Suddenly they are waking up to find that they can’t freely buy marijuana and other drugs that they want.  But the United States has been moving toward a fascistic, authoritarian governmental system for at least fifty years.  It is a very steady progression that can be seen and measured by anyone who cares to look carefully.  Nixon was forced to resign from the presidency for ordering a burglary into the offices of his political rivals.  At the time that was considered a great vindication of the justice and righteousness of the American system.  Today Obama orders extrajudicial murders all around the world, even of American citizens, and no one bats an eye.  It’s just another day in the news.

In 1970 there were less than 200,000 people in prison in the United States.¹   Now (2007), according to the Pew Research Center, there are 2.3 million incarcerated, and if you count all the people on parole and probation it comes to 7.3 million.²  Do the filmmakers care about all of those people?  No.  They care about Ross Ulbricht because he is one of their own.  He is white, upper middle class, and a techie.  But the film is also naive about Ross Ulbricht.  They paint him as a kind of libertarian idealist, who set up this website where people could buy and sell illegal drugs for the good of humanity.  They give an inordinate amount of time to Ross Ulbricht’s mother and father, who are squarely in his camp.  What they did not do was follow the money.  How much money did Ross Ulbricht make running the Silk Road, and where is it?  They never bothered to ask themselves that question.

I wish the film had been a more comprehensive exposition of the so called “Deep Web,” websites that are not readily accessible with the usual browsers and require special anonymizing software to gain access.  I have no knowledge of this aspect of the internet and would be curious to see how it works and see a broad overview of the kinds of communications and transactions that are carried on within it and who uses it.  But this film was not educational, although it did lament that the vast majority of computer and internet users have no understanding of the deep web and how to use and access it.  But the film did nothing to dispel that ignorance and incapacity.  It actually made it seem all the more remote and inaccessible for the average computer user.

This film is very insular.  It is for tech insiders, not a general audience.  It champions the cause of a rather dubious individual engaged in flagrantly illegal activities.  It is mostly oblivious to social and political trends that have been going on in the United States for a very long time.  It represents a kind of awakening for people who have been asleep and who are suddenly realizing to their shock and horror that the world they live in is nothing like the world of their dreams.  I was not impressed with it at all.

We have a government that has kept people in Guantanamo prison for over a decade without charges, without a judicial hearing of any kind, contrary to the Geneva conventions to which it is a signatory, and contrary to our own constitution, and legal tradition going back to the Magna Carta.  It kidnaps people off the street, renditions them to foreign countries where they are held anonymously in secret prisons and tortured.  And you expect this government to respect your privacy?  Who do you think you are kidding?  Our government wants secrecy for itself, but not for you.  They would love to get their talons into Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, just like they did to Chelsea Manning.  They can come after you any time they want for any reason or no reason.  All citizens and non citizens are vulnerable in a society where the government does not abide by its own laws, does not respect its own constitution, and allows the executive and the police to rule by decree.  This is the consistent trend in the United States over a very long period of time.  I have watched this progression over the course of my life time.  Things are not getting better.  They are getting worse.  And I don’t think this small group of bold, tech savvy hackers is going to change that long term trend.  The forces behind it are powerful and deeply entrenched. The monster is more likely to do itself in before they will.  Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival, May 4, 2015.

Notes

1.  Unlocking America:  Why and How to Reduce American’s Prison Population.  JFA Associates, November 2007.

2.   Pew Center on the States, One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections. Washington, DC: The Pew Charitable Trusts, March 2009

Love and Mercy

Directed by Bill Pohlad

This is a superb rendering of the life and music of Brian Wilson, the creative force behind the Beach Boys of the 1960s and 70s.  It is a fascinating, complex story — and distinctly incomplete.  When they introduced the film at the San Francisco International Film Festival, they mentioned that Brian Wilson had seen the film and pronounced it an accurate depiction of his life.

Brian Wilson struggled with severe mental illness.  He was certainly psychotic at times in his life, although his psychologist’s (Eugene Landy) diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia was later repudiated by doctors at UCLA.  It is not so important for our purposes to try to pin down an accurate psychiatric diagnosis, but Brian Wilson has presented a number of psychotic symptoms in his adult  life.  He heard voices, had delusions, extreme anxieties, he has been extremely withdrawn for long periods of time, at one point spending up to three years in bed.  He drank a lot, abused many drugs, overate, became obese, engaged in many forms of self destructive behavior.  Nearly died.  But he was lucky.  At crucial points in his life he was able to find people who pulled him back from the brink.  One of them was Eugene Landy, a psychologist who was nearly as crazy as he was.  Landy was controlling, manipulative, and corrupt, but his overbearing style might have been just what a man who was completely out of control needed, at least for a while.  However, Landy’s “treatment” — which amounted to taking over Brian Wilson’s life and overdoping him with a plethora of drugs — might have killed him if he hadn’t been rescued by the woman who became his second wife, Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks).

The film is divided into two parallel stories.  One of them is this saga of Melinda liberating Brian from Eugene Landy.  The other is the struggles and tensions of the Beach Boys at the height of their fame and Brian’s creative output, concentrating on the character of Brian Wilson.  The film is skillfully put together and these two parallel narratives work well without getting in each other’s way.  Elizabeth Banks, is beautiful, sensitive, and perfectly suited to her portrayal of Melinda Ledbetter.  Her beauty and personal magnetism give this film much of its strength.  I wouldn’t say that she takes over the film, but she is a very strong, dominating presence.  You can’t help but be captivated by her.  The film does what it does expertly and effectively, but at the same time it awakens further interest in this extraordinarily complex individual, the incredible struggles of his life, and the fabulous music he was able to produce in the midst of it all.  Seen at the San Francisco International Film Festival May 4, 2015.

Salt of the Earth

Directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado

This documents the life and work of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado.  Salgado was one of my own photography teacher’s favorites and I went to see an early exhibit of his in San Francisco, probably around 1990, of South American Indians.  I remember being impressed by the quality of his prints and his compositions.  This film confirmed the correctness of that early impression and showed how much Salgado has developed in the intervening years to the point where I would call him one of the greatest photographers of all time.  He belongs in the company of Adams, Weston, Steichen, Steiglitz, Cartier-Bresson, Evans, Frank, Strand, Maier, and Mapplethorpe — although Mapplethorpe was mostly a studio photographer, he had the same eye for quality, composition, and human sensitivity.  Salgado is the very top level of photography.  Whether he is photographing landscapes, portraits, refugee camps, dead bodies, burning oil wells, portraits, or his wife, he is always an artist.  He is always aware of composing the image for the maximum aesthetic power and emotive effect.  His mastery of light and how to use light in a photographic composition is equal to or beyond anyone’s.  The film did not say whether he makes his own prints, but I was able to find out from an excellent interview by photographer Anthony Friedkin with Salgado’s gallery dealer Peter Fetterman, that Salgado works with several printers, at least in his later years, and he is very hands on in supervising them, going over contact sheets himself with a loupe, and directing the darkroom work in creating the prints.  The interview with Peter Fetterman is lengthy and excellent and I highly recommend it.¹

Salgado went through an interesting evolution in his work and within himself that the film presents to great effect.  In his early years he documented the plight of the poor and the downtrodden.  He photographed native peoples, workers, refugees.  He traveled to war zones, famines, refugee camps, burning oil wells in Kuwait, Africa, Rwanda.  He was interested in destruction, genocide, starvation, human brutality, indifference, and suffering.  After decades of immersing himself in the abyss of human cruelty and suffering he came to the conclusion that “we are a terrible species.”  The most destructive and pathological that evolution has produced.  The darkness within human capability is unfathomable and horrifying.

And then there was a change, a turnaround.  Since about 2004 he has been documenting the beauty and renewal of the earth.  He discovered that there is as much going on in the world that is good as there is evil.  And so his recent work, called Genesis, is a compendium of magnificent landscapes from around the world, especially Siberia, Antarctica, the Galapagos Islands, and Africa, coupled with the human interest photos of which he is a master.  This inner transformation, from being preoccupied with destruction and brutality to growth and renewal, expressed outwardly in his photographic work, is one of the most interesting aspects of the film and of Salgado’s life.

In a world where everyone is a photographer and more pictures are being taken of everything than can ever be imagined or ingested, Salgado stands out as one at the very pinnacle of quality and substance.  This film is a beautifully made presentation of his life and work and I wholeheartedly recommended it with high accolades.

1.  Interview with Peter Fetterman by Anthony Friedkin.  September 13, 2013.  http://www.samys.com/blog?action=viewBlog&blogID=-103189848642139966&dest=/pg/jsp/community/printblog.jsp