Avengers: Infinity War

Each of the Avengers films seems to up the ante.  Always a worse villain.  Always a more apocalyptic impending disaster.  Avengers: Infinity War (2018; dirs. Anthony Russo, Joe Russo) does up the ante.  Not only are the stakes higher (the survival of all life in the universe), but also the film ties together characters and plot lines from previous films in the Marvel series: Antman, the Black Panther, Thor, the Hulk, Guardians of the Galaxy, Spiderman, and others. In a lot of films like this one, these characters who have their own personalities in their own films lose their distinctiveness and blend into the mélange of rampaging and crusading super heroes.  Here, surprisingly, the screenwriter and director allow them all to retain much of their distinctive personalities.  Rivalries and minor plotlines in their films briefly emerge.  Of course, the length of this film, two and a half hours, allows sufficient space for this all to happen. 

The evil villain in this film (Xandar) is searching for seven “Power Stones,” created during the Big Bang.  If he succeeds, he will have total power over everything.  He intends for reasons never quite clearly explained to eliminate at least half the life in the universe.  (He says he wants to give life room to expand—that the universe is too crowded).  Various plot twists ensue.  The villain feels obliged to carry out his plan.  He convinces himself that he’s doing good.  In fact, he wants ultimate power.  Isn’t that what most super villains want?

At any rate, the film is entertaining, with seemingly endless battle scenes.

A lot of actors appear in the film who might know better.  But these days what options do they have?  These Avenger films (and the DC-based comics films that compete with them) remind me of the biblical epics of the 1950s and 1960s.  They too brimmed over with famous actors of the day.  Had they not appeared in those films, audience members would have wondered where they were.  Maybe the same applies here. This is what films are today.  Massive overblown DGI epics.  Is there any room left for something different?

Fear: Trump in the White House, by Bob Woodward

Fear: Trump in the White House (2018), by Bob Woodward, is a relatively balanced attempt to describe events in the White House since Trump’s inauguration early in 2017 up almost to the present day.  Much in the book has already been reported in the press, either as fact or as rumor.  Woodward’s sources extend from various journalistic sources as well as interviews with people on or close to the White House staff.  The latter are unattributed.  That is, Woodward protects the anonymity of his sources and by doing so feels he gains deeper access to information about the inner workings of the Trump administration.  Woodward knows the names of his sources.  His reputation as a highly respected reporter for the Washington Post since the earl 1970s gives him a high level of credibility.

While the broad outlines of the first eighteen months of Trump’s presidency may be known, Woodward fills in with many details about rivalries and arguments and subversion by the staff.  His book precisely illustrates what the still anonymous writer of the infamous New York Times memo of September 2 claimed: that the White House staff often struggled to prevent the president from carrying out his worst intentions.  While the anonymous memo suggests a White House staff working together to subvert the president’s intentions, Woodward’s book reveals a deep and profound dysfunctionality, especially during Trump’s first year.  Staff members continually competed with one another to persuade the president about how he should handle economic, political, and foreign policy matters.  Chiefs of Staff Reince Priebus and James Mattis struggled to impose order, to conform the operations of the White House staff to existing standards and practices.  But many of the players, including Trump himself, didn’t care for procedure. His daughter Ivanka, when told by Mattis that she had to follow staff protocols, announced she wasn’t a staff member--she was the president’s daughter.  She could have access whenever she wanted. That’s a small example.

The profound disorder which penetrated the White House at almost every level following his accession to the office is the most disturbing revelation in this book. But descriptions of Trump’s temper and irrationality, his inconsistent thinking, his desire to be served only by people who told him what he wanted to hear, his lack of attention to basic issues, his willingness to have people appointed to various positions in government for which they had no experience or qualifications, his cavalier way of thinking and talking about important treaties and foreign relationships, his unwillingness to admit his mistakes, his reliance on an economic advisor (Peter Navarro)  whose views were at odds with virtually every other American economist, and his behavior during the periods immediately following the march of white racists in Charlottesville are equally bad. Not to mention Trump’s systematic efforts to undo and dismantle every forward-thinking program or law or policy adapted by the American government in the last sixty years.

Woodward’s book is simply one more argument for the unfitness of Donald Trump for the Presidency.

From the Corner of the Oval: A Memoir, by Beck Dorey-Stein

Almost by chance, Beck Dorey-Stein was offered a position as stenographer in the Obama White House in 2012.  Stenographers have a basic assignment: record every word spoken by the president and type up transcripts of the recordings.  One or more stenographers travel everywhere the President goes, whether across town or the other side of the world.  In the White House staff hierarchy, they are close to the bottom.  But because their basic job is to observe, they are present during the most important, and unimportant, events of the presidency.

Beck’s memoir From the Corner of the Oval: A Memoir (2018) recounts her experiences as a White House stenographer.  She is hardly objective.  She is dazzled by the position she holds, by the people she works for and with.  Obama is a heroic figure to her.  She considers herself an observer to history in the making.

We don’t learn that much about the Obama administration.  We do learn a great deal about Dorey-Stein: her relationships, her hopes to be a writer, her family, her nervous anxiety, her susceptibility to histrionics.  To show respect and admiration for people she works with, she gives them copies of what she has written about them. She often seems barely able to keep going, and she frequently loses her composure, especially when her personal life falters.  She has a prolonged relationship with a senior staff member (she changes his name), an incontrovertible jerk, but her love for him (if love it is) causes her repeatedly to overlook his flaws and shortcomings and the sorry ways he treats her.  That on-and-off relationship is really what this memoir is about.

The writer is twenty-six when she takes the job, and past thirty when she leaves it (she works for a few months into the Trump administration, and she doesn’t reveal the circumstances under which she resigned or was fired).  Her memoir is narcissistic, self-infatuated, and shallow.  She writes well enough, but has little of substance to say.  I would be surprised by the fact that this memoir was published, but maybe her casual friendship with New Yorker editor David Remnick, who encouraged her to write, and other connections she made in the White House, had something to do with it. I don’t recommend the memoir.