His Excellency: George Washington, by Joseph Ellis

Joseph Ellis in His Excellency: George Washington (2004) sets out to replace a mythic American hero with the flesh and blood of the actual man. He succeeds in doing so, but in the process finds another hero in the original’s place. Washington was not, unlike Jefferson and Adams, a formally educated individual. He was educated here and there, but was largely self- taught, and often in the course of his life relied on others to tell him what he needed to learn, to teach him the knowledge and skills he needed. Despite whatever insecurities Washington might have felt about his upbringing and education, he was willing to take the necessary steps to compensate for them. Pragmatism was one of his essential traits. He had many others, including ambition, sensitivity to criticism, sensitivity to his own awareness of the mistakes he made, overestimation on occasion of his own abilities, a willingness to cover up or “spin” the truth of a story or event so that his own role in the matter would be better served. But he was also a man who, once decided on a course of action, stuck to his decision. He believed in honor and in principle. Once he committed himself to the cause of Revolution against Britain, he did not waver. His steadfast command of the Continental Army in a war that lasted seven years and that involved numerous defeats and setbacks, incredible difficulties, and a few strategic victories, not to mention an American public largely indifferent to the cause of Revolution after the first year of war, was largely responsible for the final victory and American independence.

Ellis believes that whatever failings Washington might have had, his virtues were ultimately more important. The name Ellis more than once summons up to describe Washington is that of Cincinnatus, the Roman citizen-soldier who returns to farming after success in battle, only to answer the call to serve his nation when it came. Washington’s willingness to serve, his civic mindedness, his patriotism, these were among his defining traits.

Washington assumed this role at least twice in his public career. After the French-Indian Wars, he returned in 1759 to supervise his farms in Virginia and build his holdings as a plantation owner. When Revolutionary fervor began to stir in the late 1760s and early 1760s, he at first ignored or seemed indifferent to them but gradually was caught up in the momentum of resistance to Britain. At first his motives were private—he was irritated by the prices charges to colonials for British goods, and found himself in considerable debt, though his own careless spending was also to blame. (Many plantation owners faced similar debt.) Gradually he began to express solidarity with other like-minded colonials and committed himself to the cause of independence. He accepted election as a Virginia delegate to the first Continental Congress. When he was called to command the Continental Army, he agreed to do so and to accept no payment for his services, though he had been preparing to lead the army for months. Later, after the war against Britain was won, he returned to Mount Vernon again to farm in retirement, only to answer the call to chair the constitutional convention in 1787 and then to become the first president of the United States in 1789. Ellis even suggests that as crisis loomed in the late 1790s, Washington would have come out of retirement a third time had he been called on.

Ellis’s ability to distill a convincing image of the man Washington from the voluminous archive of papers surrounding him--private correspondence and statements as well as military and presidential letters--is a major key to the success of this book. It is one of the few biographies I have read that projects a convincing and human portrait of its subject. He evokes Washington as a real being, a man who walked and talked on the earth. Washington had a forceful but untrained writing style. He was capable of pandering to his superiors, those whom he wanted to impress, but for the most part his letters are free of florid rhetoric. They are written in a straightforward prose style that effectively expresses his personality and thinking. Through his own words we are exposed to Washington’s mind in a way far more direct than second-hand accounts could achieve. Ellis does not hesitate to interpret, second-guess, and analyze Washington, and by doing so he teases out the inner contradictions and motives of the man.

Ellis pays particular attention to Washington’s interest in his own public image. Even in his first two major military battles, one ending in the ignominious slaughter at Ft. Duquesne of a French emissary by one of Washington’s native American allies, and the other an outright defeat and surrender at Ft. Necessity, he was careful to present his own role so as to present himself in a favorable light. Washington lacked skill as a military strategist in his younger years, and even in the Revolutionary War his battle plans were often too complex and over-scripted. He never seemed to acknowledge his lack of experience or skill as a military strategist. Luck and circumstance and persistence served him well. He won the battles he needed to win, or that others won for him, as at Saratoga; he seized opportunity where he found it. He was unwilling to give up, both because of his commitment to winning the war, and also because he knew that defeat would bring dishonor to his name. Gradually the British were worn down.

Washington as an older man, especially after the Revolutionary War, began to think about his own mortality at what to modern readers may seem too early a point in his life. He began thinking about the eventuality of his own death a decade before it actually occurred. Ellis emphasizes that while others (such as Jefferson) wanted to think of Washington in the 1890s as a doddering old man he in fact remained intellectually sharp to the end. (He died while taking his pulse). As part of this concern with mortality and posterity, Washington thought much about slavery and about the slaves he owned. Ultimately, after years of inclining one way and another, he came to oppose slavery, but for various reasons, some altruistic and others self-serving, he could not or at least did not free them during his lifetime, choosing instead to liberate them in his will. But at least he did liberate them, an act which came as the result of years of thinking and worrying over slavery. Ellis suggests that Washington believed that if he did not free his slaves his reputation after death would suffer. At the same time Ellis makes clear that Washington freed his slaves because he really had come to believe that slavery was unjust. Unfortunately, many of his peers, including Jefferson, did not take the point.

Although Ellis does show Washington with all his warts and human imperfections, he makes clear the virtues and character traits that made him the great leader he became, the most venerated and respected leader in all of American history, excepting perhaps Lincoln. Washington was not just a figurehead. His service as general in the Revolutionary War did more or less automatically predestine him for election as the first president. But he was an instrumental force in chairing the Constitutional Convention and in forging the concept of a true federal government rather than a loose assemblage of states. This belief came directly from his experience as general of the continental army—in that role he had to beg a weak Continental Congress and an often unresponsive confederation of states for supplies, money, and soldiers. A confederation of states that would cooperate fitfully and undependably with one another would never work in the long run. Washington led the Continental Army to victory not because of the Continental Congress and the states it represented but despite them. Strength, he realized, comes from unity, not disunity. (Lincoln makes the same point in the Gettysburg Address.) As President he helped determine the future shape of the United States government. The decisions he made, and of which he was a part, set a course the nation would follow for decades if not centuries. Whatever he might not have been, Ellis’ well written, eminently readable biography ultimately demonstrates why (without explicitly saying so) Washington genuinely deserves the title of “father of our country.”

Art School Confidential

In Art School Confidential (2006) an ambitious, naive young man enrolls in an art institute planning to become the great artist of his century. His name is Jerome Platz. Picasso is his hero. He draws graphic and detailed portraits of his friends. Art school for him is a relentless series of disillusionments. Even though this film doesn’t quite know what it wants to be and isn’t really willing to decide, it is often humorous and entertaining. It is first of all a satire of college and art schools. Many of the teachers at the school are burned out and care about nothing. Others are too caught up in their own careers, or what pass for careers. One teacher tells his students that he doesn’t care whether they come to class. Another gives universal praise to whatever his students do, whether they are painting refrigerators, inchoate shapes, or human forms. Everyone gets an A. Another artist explains that the only way to succeed in the art world is to be good at fellatio. The students themselves are a motley assemblage of poseurs, pretenders, dunderheads, divorcees, and so on. The rare talented student such as Jerome is lost in the melee. The film implies that there are no standards in art school or the art world, that the students are exploited by their teachers who themselves are exploited by the school they work for, threatening them periodically with budget cuts and layoffs. (The teachers in the one school of art I am familiar with are not like the ones in this film).

Directed by Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World, 2001, and Bad Santa, 2003) Art School Confidential wanders among three or four separate but tenuously related plots. One focuses on Jerome’s experience and disillusionment in art school. Another involves his love for a model he meets in drawing class. Still another is a plot involving confused identities. And a fourth is a murder mystery--art school students are being strangled by a serial killer.

The film seems most interesting when it follows Jerome. Passionate about his work, he soon discovers that no one in art school cares about his art. He is attracted to a beautiful young woman, Audrey (Sophia Myles), who models for his drawing class. She has a full and beautiful, luminous face of the sort one sees in Vermeer and later in the pre-Raphaelites. She is impressed by his drawings of her but initially does not return his love. A scene late in the film shows her frantically digging through a dumpster full of discarded student art, looking for one of his paintings of her.

Jerome’s struggle to find an aesthetic style that will impress his teachers and fellow students, and his love for Audrey, brings about an identity crisis that dominates the second half of the film and loosely ties the various plot strands together. No need for spoilers here. The dark tone of despair that pervades Jerome and the film as a whole in its latter half I have seen in other films aimed mainly at the adolescent crowd—films like Brick and Donny Darko—films suggesting that life offers only entrapment, anonymity, doom.

The film offers an interesting assortment of characters. Max Minghella is effective as Jerome. John Malcovich plays Jerome’s drawing teacher, Professor Sandiford, an over developed egotist who enthusiastically explains to his students that only one in a hundred art students will ever make a living as an artist. He invites Jerome over to his house, shows him his paintings of triangles and other geometric shapes and explains that he was the first to begin painting triangles and that he has been doing so for twenty years. He offers to do anything he can to help Jerome and implies that they should have a sexual relationship. Anjelica Huston appears briefly as an art history teacher who talks to her indifferent students about the great works of art and literature. Joel Moore appears as a long-term student who changes his major once a semester. Jim Broadbent (the master of ceremonies in Moulin Rouge) is an alcoholic artist obsessed with the serial killings. Ethan Suplee (My Name is Earl) is great as a bumbling film student. Steve Buscemi appears in an uncredited role as a coffee shop/art gallery owner. I especially liked the undercover cop posing as an art student who begins to wonder whether his crude efforts at drawing might have some value.

The second movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 provides especially effective background music for the film, especially as a musical theme for Jerome and his love for Audrey.

Ultimately, Art School Confidential is not successful. It feels incomplete, like a rough draft rather than a finished product. It moves from comic satire to tragic melodrama. It is alternately romantic and dark, and these oppositions are not organically justified by what happens to the characters. It resorts to a thin and glib nihilism. And ultimately the resolution simply isn’t convincing—especially the notion that an art dealer would want to keep an innocent man in prison so that his work will continue to sell--though this idea supports the film’s contention that the art world is based on fraud, entrapment, money, and cynicism.

A Scanner Darkly

In A Waking Life (2001) Richard Linklater laid animation on top of scenes that he had filmed using live actors. Animation allowed him to control ambiance and tone and perception in unconventional and sometimes uncanny ways. The animation in A Waking Life caused the characters and the world of the film as a whole always to be shimmering, shifting slightly from one frame to another, as if to signify the shifting lives and attitudes of the characters and some barely glimpsed higher state of being.

Linklater uses the same basic technique in A Scanner Darkly, though in this film the world as depicted through animation is more fixed and does not shift and shimmer. Instead, it is what happens to the characters that alters and subverts any sense of reality we may have. The film is based on a Philip K. Dick novel, and thus not surprisingly it pits individuals against an authoritative law enforcement agency, representative of an even larger impersonal and authoritative government, waging war against illegal drugs, in particular the drug called substance D, to which 20% of the population is addicted. The film is set seven or so years in the future.

Keanu Reeves plays an undercover agent for the agency that is waging war against substance D. In the course of the film he loses his family (which he may not have ever had to begin with), his friends, and his grip on reality. Close friends and loved ones betray him, or seem to. He makes terrible mistakes, or maybe he simply thinks he makes them. At first the film suggests that this loose grip on reality is the result of the drug to which Reeves is addicted, but ultimately it seems that other explanations may better apply. Through what happens to him, the film argues that to governments the individual doesn’t matter and is merely a pawn, to be used in whatever expedient way the government finds necessary.

I slept through portions of this film, and so I must admit that perhaps I slept through the portions that would have allowed me to make sense of the portions I did not sleep through. I should watch the film again. But it was difficult to make sense of, even though the basic outlines of the plot ultimately come murkily apparent.

I reacted with ambiguity to the animation techniques in A Waking Life and have a similar reaction to the technique in A Scanner Darkly. The technique aims for animated realism. It’s usually easy to recognize the actors who are portraying the animated characters. There is no attempt to camouflage them, most of the time. The overall effect is one of unsettlement, estrangement from the plot and characters, irritation. In P. T. Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love (2002) I was irritated for the first few scenes by the disjunctive soundtrack, but finally it took hold and made sense and worked in a way that I have to say A Scanner Darkly never quite achieved. What does the technique achieve? Could a conventionally filmed version of this story have worked better than this animated version? If the point of the technique is to subvert one’s sense of reality, to suggest that what we think is real may be only an illusion or a supposition imposed on us by someone or something else, this does not come out from the animation. The characters themselves, their lives and what happens to them, brings the idea out.

The characters in this film are portrayed as aging members of the Generation X—aimless, hopeless, lost. I prefer the Linklater of Before Sunset (2004) and Before Sunrise (1995).

The Devil Wears Prada

The story here is familiar: an idealistic college graduate goes to the big city with dreams of becoming a writer or artist or designer or public servant or whatever and is waylaid, diverted, by ambition, power, wealth, sex. The graduate turns away from loved ones and friends, is caught up in the turmoil of ambition and greed, compromises personal standards, only to suffer some reversal or enlightenment that suddenly reveals the folly and error of the course taken. Just before it is too late, the errant traveler gives up errant ways and returns to the folds of friendship, family, and personal ideals.

This is the story in The Devil Wears Prada. The problem is that none of it seems to mean much. The figure of the prodigal wayfarer is really just an excuse for a film about the fashion industry, with beautiful models, swank clothing, and runaway egos. Ann Hathaway plays the errant idealist, Andy Sachs. Meryl Streep plays the arrogant, monomaniacal fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly, who with one upturned lip can make or break an entire line of clothing and its designer. She makes and destroys careers and treats everyone around her like serfs.

Streep is one of those rare actresses who can so fully and totally inhabit a role that her real self, her personality as Meryl Streep the human being—if she really has a personality—wholly fades away. When she appears on talk shows, or when she is interviewed, she comes across as unremarkable, somewhat awkward and goofy, articulate and intelligent, but untouched by genius or celebrity or ego or the star-studded atmosphere of Hollywood and the American film industry (this could well be an illusion, of course). I’ve often wondered whether her lack of effect is a consequence of how she inhabits her roles—she reserves her force of personality for those roles, not for herself, her own life.

In The Devil Wears Prada Streep is not challenged by a demanding role. She merely has to underplay the part, with contempt and sarcasm and Machiavellian ruthlessness. Sachs is sent by a talent agency to interview for the position of personal assistant to Miranda Priestly. Everyone at the magazine sneers at her—she dresses like a college student, wears the wrong sort of shoes, and is a size 6 rather than a size 3 or 2. When Priestly actually hires her, everyone is astonished and horrified. The focus of the film is on whether Sachs will succeed as Priestly’s assistant, and whether Priestly will ever show any vestiges of humanity.

There comes a moment of transformation in the film when Andy Sachs suddenly realizes what it will take for her to succeed in her job. The moment is sudden and inexplicable, really, and is mainly manifest in how she begins to dress fashionably. The fact that this transformation really didn’t make sense doesn’t matter because the film as a whole doesn’t matter.

The film works on the assumption that all of us will recognize the hollow egotism and shallowness of the fashion industry. It also works on the assumption that we’ll be fascinated by that industry and its beautiful emaciated models and their expensive clothing and lifestyle. Because that is, after all, what this film is all about. When Andy tells Priestly that she does not believe she wants the life of wealth and beauty and glamor that is associated with the fashion industry, Priestly scornfully admonishes her, “Oh, don't be silly - EVERYONE wants this. Everyone wants to be us.” The point of the film is Andy Sach’s realization that, after all, she doesn’t want that life. Once again, this moment of transformation, like the earlier one, is not quite credible. The notion that this film is about Andy Sach’s redemption as a human being is just not convincing.

I admired Streep’s acting in this film but really did not like the character she played (how could anyone like that character?). There are two brief moments—one a moment of personal distress for Miranda Priestly, another a moment when she glimpses and recognizes Andy Sachs across the street — where Streep though brief facial expression gives humanity and depth to her character. These moments, compelling as they are, don’t really make sense because they are basically inconsistent with the character established in the film. But thank God they are there!

Hathaway in her small role in Brokeback Mountain gave promise of becoming much more of an actress than the two-dimensional princess roles she played in such films as The Princess Diaries. Here she returns to that juvenile superficiality.

The Illusionist

The slow pace of The Illusionist is actually a strong point. The moody, hypnotic music by Philip Glass works well with the pacing of the film. In every way the film is muted and low key. Ed Norton as the illusionist Emmerich underplays his role with a lack of expression that enhances the inscrutability of his character. The Illusionist is an interesting, well made romantic melodrama. Its title is the key to its plot, and if at some point you figure out how events are going to develop there is still interest in how they work themselves out.

There is an otherworldly ambiance to this film. It is a kind of “once upon a time” fairy tale. It begins with flashbacks to the early lives of the two principal characters, Sophie, the daughter of an aristocratic family, and Emmerich, the son of a cabinet maker. As children they remind us of Hansel and Gretel. These scenes are filmed in a hazy, unfocused and indistinct way that contributes to the slightly unreal and subtly stylized nature of the film as a whole. The boy has become fascinated with magic and is teaching himself tricks that he performs around town. The girl is entranced with him. Not surprisingly, they fall in love but are forced apart by her parents, who don’t want her consorting with peasants.

We move forward fifteen years, to the film’s present time. Emmerich has become a magician, or, in concert with the film’s title, an illusionist who performs incredible illusions before audiences. His reputation has attracted the interest of the Crown Prince, who one evening attends one of Emmerich’s performances with the woman he plans to marry. The Crown Prince sends her up to the stage to take part in one of Emmerich’s illusions. Not surprisingly (again), she turns out to be the girl from his youth. They still love each other. The problem which the film must therefore solve is how Emmerich and Sophie can find a way to be together and avoid being harassed and killed by the Crown Prince, who has a reputation for violence towards women and others, and who plans to overthrow his father and take the throne.

The Illusionist is set in Venice, Austria, at the turn of the 19^th century, when Europe was overrun with fascination about the occult and spirit visitations, a historical circumstance that Emmerich exploits in his acts. When he begins to summon up apparitions—ghosts and images of the departed—he begins attracting large audiences who do not doubt that he has supernatural powers. The film only hints at how he might perform his feats, but to its credit we never receive an explanation of his abilities. His stage illusions are impressive, but they are a means to an end in the film rather than its point.

Paul Giamatti is the most impressive element in the film. I associate him with films and characters that allowed him to play a version of himself—Harvey Pekar in American Splendor or Miles in Sideways or even Joe Gould in Cinderella Man. In this film he plays the Chief Inspector, Uhl, a corrupt detective who does the bidding of the Crown Prince in hopes of being made chief of police or even mayor of Venice when the Prince becomes Emperor. Giamatti plays this role in a wholly convincing manner that bears no trace of what I have come to think of as the Giamatti persona. In spite of himself, the Chief Inspector becomes fascinated with Emmerich’s abilities. Though he is the Crown Prince’s agent, supposed to report the names of those who are subversives, he also explains to Emmerich in one scene that he does not want to arrest him, that he respects him too much.

In a sense, Uhl is the narrative focus of the film, regarding events from the same viewpoint as the audience. His interest in Emmerich leads him gradually to view the Crown Prince in a different light, and his ultimate realization about the film’s great illusion proves redemptive, after a fashion. Giamatti is excellent in this role.

The production values of The Illusionist are high. It is well directed by Neil Burger, who also wrote the screenplay. Ed Norton is effective as Emmerich, though his role doesn’t require much of him. Jessica Biel is beautiful, and that is the most that the film requires of her. Giamatti is outstanding.

The Illusionist is all surface. It is entertaining in the best sense of the word, but there is not much substance to it. The illusions Emmerich performs, the beauty of Biel, the excellent performance by Giamatti, and the ultimate illusion itself—perhaps predictable, but enjoyable nonetheless—make this a satisfying film.

Grandma’s Boy

My main concern about Grandma’s Boy (2006) is why my son wanted me to watch it. At first he said he would not enjoy the film if he watched it with me, though later he relented. It was apparently produced by a company associated with Adam Sandler--the company is called “Happy Madison.” In certain ways Grandma’s Boy reminds me of Billy Madison and National Lampoon’s Van Wilder. More to the point, it seems in the same category as Clerks, Office Space, and the television series The Office, though Clerks is a much better and more interesting film. The plot involves a 35-year old man, Alex, forced to move out of his apartment after he fails to pay the rent for 6 months. He moves in with his grandmother and her two roommates but tells his coworkers that he is living with three hot women who enjoy group sex. His colleagues believe him—see following paragraph—though the deception is revealed when his grandmother and her roommates visit him at the office.

Alex works for a video game design company. His colleagues are a motley assemblage of geeks, freaks, and demented dorks, plus their beautiful blonde manager. As one character explains to her, there are a lot of virgins in the office. There are jokes about sex with old women, jokes about masturbation, jokes about zoo animals, jokes about yoga. There is a prolonged party scene in which Alex’s grandmother and her friends mistake his bag of pot for tea, and the resulting drink they brew offers numerous opportunities for drug jokes. There is an unusual amount of farting. Shirley Jones is funny as the lusty roommate of Alex’s grandmother, played by Doris Roberts from Everyone Loves Raymond.

This film is aimed at a teenage audience that loves the kind of humor summarized in the foregoing paragraph. In particular, this is an audience that believes that unemployment and video games after 30 are a higher state of nirvanic euphoria.

Will Alex prove his mettle? Will he prove that the video game his colleague stole from him is really one he designed? Will he sleep with the beautiful blonde?

I don’t know. The film isn’t over yet. Well, actually, it just ended. The answer to these questions: yes, yes, and eventually. Even compared to films like Billy Madison, this one is not very good.

Among the cameos are Kevin Nealon as the New Age owner of the video game company, Rob Schneider as Alex’s landlord, and David Spade as the waiter at a vegan restaurant.

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

Director Kevin Willmott’s faux documentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) considers what might have happened had the South won the Civil War. A parody in ways of the Ken Burns Civil War documentary, complete with a wise, avuncular Shelby Foote-type commentator, the film uses actual and fabricated film clips, interviews, photographs, and narratives to tell its story. Historical figures such as Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Harriet Tubman, Walt Whitman are interspersed with figures invented for the documentary. (The actual footage is taken out of context, understandably). The film is presented as a BBC documentary about Confederate history, suppressed in America until the public demands to see it. It is periodically interrupted by commercials that make the effect of a documentary shown on American television more convincing.

According to the documentary, the tide turned for the South in the Civil War when Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin successfully negotiates with the British and French governments to bring their armies into the war on the Confederate side. As a result, the South wins the Battle of Gettysburg, takes Washington, sacks and burns Northern cities such as Boston and New York, and wins the war. Lincoln flees for his life with the assistance of Harriet Tubman, but they are captured before they can enter Canada. Lincoln is imprisoned and later exiled to Canada while Tubman is hanged. Jefferson Davis becomes the revered senior leader and conscience of the nation.

In this film, the Confederate victory leads the new government to mandate the institution of slavery throughout the United States. Northerners who do not purchase slaves are required to pay high taxes. Anyone who has black blood is legislatively declared a slave. Chinese workers in the West are enslaved by their employers, with government approval. Congress declares that America is a Christian nation, and non-Christians are expelled, except for a small number of Jewish Americans allowed to live on a “reservation” in Long Island. The Confederate America becomes a nation built on racial purity and white supremacy, and the notion many Southerners held before the Civil War that slavery was a benign and civilizing institution becomes widely accepted.

According to Willmott, American history would have developed in ways that are both different from and parallel to actual history. The Confederate States seek to expand into the South American continent. They win the war against Native Americans, who are essentially wiped out. American leaders and Adolf Hitler become allies, and the American nation does not enter the Second World War against Germany as a result. There is a war with Japan. Instead of a Cold War with the Soviet Union (hardly mentioned in the film), hostilities develop with Canada, where many former slaves and abolitionists settle. The C.S.A. erects a “cotton curtain” to prevent border crossing between Canada and the Confederacy, and abolitionist terrorist groups in Canada carry out attacks on the C.S.A. states.

In the 1950s and 1960s, sentiment arises in favor of emancipation, and when John F. Kennedy is elected as a Republican President in 1961, he seems likely to emancipate slaves, but he is assassinated. After a period of unrest and upheaval, most advocates for emancipation and for social change are imprisoned or exiled, and the Confederate nation settles back into stability and complacency.

As this summary suggests, C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America offers a detailed and imaginative series of speculations as to what might have happened had the South won the Civil War. Some of the speculations seem likely and reasonable; others do not. One of Wilmott’s major objectives is to argue that although there would have been major differences in American history, many of the same developments would have occurred as well. A brief set of messages shown at the end of the film make clear that many of the products featured in the commercials that occur throughout the film—products with racist brand names like “Sambo”—are in fact the actual brand names of products sold in the United States until well into the 20^th century. Some names still in use, Willmott notes—Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemimah—are camouflaged slave names. His point is that racism, concepts of racial supremacy and racial difference, are engrained in American culture.

In an interview included on the DVD of this film, Willmott states that one of his purposes in the film was to show how history would not have changed. He says that the South was “allowed not to change” after the end of the war—that the rest of the nation changed around it. Such a notion is at the least debatable and in fact is perversely wrongheaded.

Virtually all the actors in the film are unknown. This enhances the authenticity. The film employs a number of well done commercials and interviews—one is an interview with an elderly Lincoln in 1905 (it stretches one’s credulity to believe that Lincoln would have lived to the age of 96 and still been able to speak coherently). Another is a recreation of a D. W. Griffith short feature about the hunt for Lincoln following his flight from Washington. A parody of the Fox television show “Cops” is called “Runaway” and follows Confederate police as they seek to capture escaped slaves.

The low-budget nature of the film also imposes limitations. Many of the episodes or scenes in the film come across as Saturday Night Live sketches, played for laughs (largely based on racist jokes), and the film becomes repetitious and redundant in its continued insistence on the pervasive role of slavery and racism in American society under the C.S.A.

In fact, the film’s emphasis on slavery and racism—as crucial as these issues are in any version of American history—is myopic. According to Willmott, had the C.S.A. won the war and replaced the United States government, it would have devoted all its energies and resources in subsequent years to defending slavery, much as the American South did prior to the Civil War. In Willmott’s version of history, slavery becomes the main product that America markets to the rest of the world. This speculative view is plausible, but it has its flaws. It does not allow for the possibility of progress, change, evolution. Would the C.S.A. never have abolished slavery, especially after the advent of industrial farming equipment made the functions of field slaves unnecessary? The film actually denies the economic context of slavery, insisting instead that in the C.S.A. slavery was an institution necessary to the concept of racial purity. Slavery was a complex phenomenon. It can’t be oversimplified or reduced down to a few platitudes. Would social movements that succeeded in abolishing slavery never have arisen?

One point Willmott seems to be making is that although the Civil War in real American history did abolish slavery, race and issues of racial purity continued to play a crucial role in the national culture. In the DVD interview, he notes that Hurricane Katrina revealed the fact that poverty-stricken people are “invisible” in our culture. He suggests, with good reason, that the nation depends on the invisibility of the poor and on economic disparities that empower some and not others. But his film does not reflect these nuances.

To a certain extent, Willmott’s film also assumes that world history would have developed only in response to the power of the C.S.A. Communism does not arise in the film, and the C.S.A. has no apparent adversarial relationship with the Soviet Union.

Ultimately, Wilmott’s documentary comes across as a one-note effort. It makes some good and undeniably valid points. But it is also frequently shallow and superficial. Willmott receives plaudits for the originality of his efforts in this film, but not for the accuracy or acuity of his cultural and historical commentaries, though some of them do hit the mark.

Philip Roth’s The Plot against America gives a far more credible (up to a point) alternative history of America based on the idea that Charles Lindbergh runs for president, defeats Roosevelt, and institutes changes that take America to the far right—the nation does not enter WWII and adopts measures that seem aimed towards interning Jews and other minorities. Finally, even Roth cannot carry this speculative scenario through to a conclusion and instead has Lindberg disappear while flying his plane, so that sanity and order are restored to the American nation through what amounts to a deus ex machina device.

Early in the 1960s, the Saturday Evening Post featured a story entitled “If the South Had Won the Civil War,” by MacKinlay Cantor. C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America reminded me of Cantor's story, though Willmott’s film is more inventive and creative in its portrayal of alternative history. It also has a sense of humor and wit, though as suggested above these extend only so far before they become repetitive. My recollection is that in the Saturday Evening Post alternative history the Confederate nation does finally abolish slavery.

Scoop

Scoop is the comic obverse of Match Point (2005). It is a slight and ephemeral comedy that starts with the unlikely appearance of a ghost during the middle of a magician’s act and ends with the solution to a murder. Woody Allen must have conceived of these two films as a pair.

Everyone jokes about how Allen always places himself in his films in close proximity to beautiful young women. The accusation is not entirely fair, though it is not inaccurate either. He is hardly the only filmmaker or writer to imagine his aging self in the arms of youth. In Scoop, the young woman in question is the most fetching Scarlett Johansson, playing a student journalist named Sondra Pransky on holiday in England. Allen plays a whacked and eccentric aging magician named the Great Splendini, aka Sid Waterman. They first meet when she attends his magic show, and he chooses her from the audience to play a part in a disappearing trick. During the middle of the trick, while Sondra is hiding in a closet from which she is supposed to disappear, the ghost of a recently dead journalist appears and tells her that a rich aristocrat is a notorious serial killer. Sid sees the ghost as well, and as a result he and Sondra team up to investigate the ghost’s story. They make the kind of kooky detective team we saw played by Allen and Diane Keaton in Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993).

Scoop makes a great joke out of the age difference between Sondra and Sid, and though he may feel her attractions, she has no interest in him and instead masquerades for much of the film as his daughter.

As the foregoing summary suggests, just about everything in the film is silly and improbable, and every scene in which he appears gives Allen a chance to do his shtick as the doddering, semi-competent Splendini, who has memorized a limited set of lines which he repeats throughout the film as he performs bad magic tricks in one setting after another: “I love you, really. With all due respect, you're a beautiful person. You're a credit to your race.” Allen makes fun of himself throughout the film and has a great time doing it.

The film feels a lot like a stage play, and the action moves around from one physical setting to another in an arbitrary way, as if the intention is to provide the characters a varying backdrop as they read their lines. There is a certain claustrophobia to the film as a result—many of the scenes could take place anywhere. There is not much reason for the characters to move or travel around—the story comes out as they speak to each other. Most of the humor and interest in the film comes from the dialogue between Allen and Johansson.

Allen and Johansson don’t take their characters very seriously. Both characters are fairly dimwitted. They stumble around throughout the film, bumbling into each other and ultimately into the actual truth of the mystery they’re investigating. At one point Johansson jokes that “If we put our heads together, it would make a hollow sound.”

Match Point is one of the grimmest character studies imaginable, a noir study of ambition and greed and class privilege. In Scoop Hugh Jackman plays a wealthy, aristocratic character named Peter Lyman, who is similar in ways to the lead character Chris Wilton in Match Point, but the difference this time is that Lyman underestimates his intended victim. This is the comic outcome of Scoop, while Match Point offers the most tragic of denouements. In the penultimate scene of Match Point ghosts appear to confront the main character with his crimes. In Scoop the deceased journalist’s ghost appears early to assist in outing a murderer.

An atmosphere of improvisation pervades Scoop, as if scenes have been written just before they are performed. This is not the way Woody Allen writes and makes films but instead is probably a result of his directing style and how he works with his actors. Splendini in particularly seems a fully improvisational creation, and we can imagine Allen winging it with this character, whom he inhabits and seems to understand fairly well. The Great Splendini is, after all, another version of Woody Allen the director and actor and stand-up comedian, who has been doing this sort of thing for nearly fifty years now.

Allen relishes the small kind of drama he gives us in Scoop. The stakes are not large, but they are fully and engagingly illuminated. If Scoop is simply another vehicle that allows Woody Allen to do his thing, so be it. Though many of his recent films have been lackluster, Scoop is full of energy and vitality, the result not only of chemistry between Allen and Johansson but also of the fact that Allen still loves and enjoys what he does.

There is an interesting link connecting this film with Allen’s 1975 comedy Love and Death and, thereby, with Allen’s idol Ingmar Bergman. Anyone who recognizes the connection between Love and Death and The Seventh Seal will recognize the link in Scoop.

The Natural

In The Natural (1984) Robert Redford’s usual woodenness works remarkably well. He plays Roy Hobbs, whose only ambition is to be the best baseball player who ever lived. Hobbs is not a complicated person. He has natural athletic talent and seems fated for greatness—we know this because of Hobbs’ own certainty that he will be great, and because of the lightning bolt that splits a tree in half and thereby provides the wood from which Hobbs carves his bat, “Wonderboy.” Failure never seems an option for Hobbs. He is on the verge of a great career. But a beautiful woman invites him to her room, shoots him in the gut with a silver bullet, and throws herself out the window. Hobbs disappears for sixteen years. He begins as a mid-American innocent, talented, handsome, and loved by an equally handsome and innocent young woman. Then sin and corruption seize him.

The point here seems to be that even the greatest natural talent can be corrupted or ruined by temptation—Hobbs at one time or the other is tempted by fame, money, and sex. These temptations lead him astray. He is like all of us in this respect—an Everyman. We all start out in youth eager and idealistic and convinced of our own inevitability. And we all fall victim to temptation, we all fall short, in some way. Like Hobbs, we all want and believe we deserve a Last Chance.

After sixteen years away from the game, Hobbs returns for a last chance with the New York Knights. In a movie such as this, a movie that bends over backwards to associate itself with the Great American Dream of fame and success and glory, when the hero faces impossible odds, the outcome is usually not in doubt. That is certainly the case in this film, though there was a different story in Malamud’s novel.

The Natural is not a great film because of its revolutionary cinematic techniques. It has a fine cast—Redford, Robert Duvall, Wilford Brimley, Kim Basinger, Glenn Close, Richard Farnsworth—but acting hardly makes the film. This movie works to the extent that it does work because of the generic American and human themes that it embodies and that are inscribed on Redford’s handsome but inexpressive all-American face. Baseball itself is a great symbolic and allegorical emblem of the American experience, and the film pays homage and careful attention to the usual details—the tying down of the bases before the game, the quirky idiosyncrasies of the coaches and players, the way Roy Hobbs squares himself at home plate before he turns to face the pitcher, and so on. Innocence corrupted and redeemed is another theme—Hobbs’ struggle to redeem his own disillusionment. At one point Hobbs talks about a mistake he made years ago in the past that he never stops paying for. This is the great question of The Natural—can Roy Hobbs redeem himself? Can he play out his destiny?

The movie sets up an allegorical context of good and evil representing all the sins and temptations Hobbs faces: the newspaper cartoonist (Robert Duvall) who can make or break his career, the bookie who bets that Hobbs can’t throw three straight strikes (Darren McGavin), the baseball team owner (who is either Satan or God or both—it’s not clear—but he presides from a redly glowing office and watches the game through shuttered windows—he bets against his own team and tries to bribe Hobbs not to play in the championship game), the beautiful woman (Basinger) who seduces Hobbs, diverting his attention from the game, because she is paid to do so. Hobbs says he loves baseball. Will he sell it out? Will goodness and virtue prevail? Will he betray his teammates and the coach who gave him a chance? Will the silver bullet that has lain in his gut for sixteen years and eaten away at the lining of his stomach finally bring him down, or will he play in the final game even though he might die from the strain? Will he fail the woman who never abandoned him and who still believes in him? Will the note she passes to him before his last time at bat—a note telling him something he doesn’t know, but that will matter a great deal to him—make the difference? You can see where this is headed.

This is allegory and corn and schmaltz but it works because the film borrows and mines the themes from Malamud’s novel—themes Malamud did not invent but that he borrowed from American literature and culture and experience. They’re seared into us—dreams of redemption and glory and personal heroism—part of how we respond to and understand the world. It’s difficult not to respond to them. You can’t help yourself.

Afterwards, perhaps, you feel cheap and used. You want to smoke a cigarette. You want to take a shower. You want to get up and leave.

Walking into the Night, by Olaf Olafsson

I found this 2003 novel so dreary and self-absorbed that each time I picked it up again to continue reading I did so as the result of a painful act of will. I continued reading out of interest in how the story would resolve itself, out of inertia, no force intruding to prevent me. The narrator Christian Benediktsson is a man who deserted his family in Iceland some fifteen years before the present time of the novel and who, through a series of errors and misfortunes, improbably ends up working as the personal butler of William Randolph Hearst at San Simeon. Much of the novel is narrated as a series of unmailed letters to Christian’s wife. In them he attempts to explain himself and for a time it seems as if he is seeking her forgiveness. There are also chunks of narrative focused on Christian, and on those around him. The movement in time is between the present and the past as he traces the events that led him to where he is at the time of the novel. We begin with his first meetings with the girl who would become his wife, their marriage and the births of their children, the minor deceptions in which he engages, his affair with a close business associate’s fiancé--deceptions that grow and multiply, until finally he loses control and falls totally.

Christian is full of self-pity and remorse, but more self-pity than remorse. He presents his story as a tragic series of events that he wishes he could undo, and initially he elicits sorrow and pity. Gradually, my attitude towards him changed. He seems to accept that he is responsible for the events that ruined his life, and at points guilt almost maddens him, but more often he seems able to regard himself and his errors from a distance. His first deceptions seem unimportant. Early in his relationship with his wife, he tells her that he graduated from a business school in Copenhagen. He feels inferior to her because he is working class and she is of a higher class, so he lies about business school to bolster his own sense of self. Later he lies to her about her father’s business dealings, then about his reasons for traveling to New York. Ultimately he seems almost to blame her for his lies, as if to suggest that she forced him to tell them. Finally I found him weak and repellent. The point of the story is not to pay homage to the wife he deceived and deserted, not to memorialize the idyllic past and the marriage and the family he betrayed, but instead is to attempt to justify himself.

At the end he has a chance to meet again with his son Einar, whom he hasn’t seen in more than fifteen years, since he was a young boy. Instead of seizing the opportunity, he flees, leaving everything behind once again, explaining to Hearst that it is “too late.” He comes to this conclusion after learning that his wife has been dead for five years, so maybe he believes that since she is dead he doesn’t deserve to be reunited with his family, doesn’t deserve an attempt to reconciliation. But instead I think he uses her death as a convenient excuse. He merely thinks about sending the letters he has written to his wife before he knows she has died—he never really means to send them.

The great problem with the novel is deciding how to read it, how to understand it, what perspective to take towards the narrator and main character Christian Benediktsson. Are we supposed to see him as a weak coward, or as a sensitive, suffering, pathetic soul?

How also are we to view his job with William Randolph Hearst? This is no kind of penance. It affords Christian anonymous security, free from the eyes of those who might recognize him and remind him of his past. He has a secure job of responsibility and authority, one that allows him a significant amount of free time. He is able to hide from the world without suffering, though he is constantly remembering, constantly finding new ways to summon up his own misery.

The novel does not offer a new perspective on Hearst or on his relationship with his mistress Marion Davies, who appears frequently. We see Hearst in his decline at San Simeon, as his empire and fortunes suffer from reversals brought on by the Depression and years of bad decisions and reckless spending. Hearst himself comes across as imperious, silly, and self-absorbed, a larger-than-life version of the narrator. Davies is a neurotic and modestly talented actress who is miserable when Hearst forces her to watch the bad films she has made, trying to convince her that they are good despite the negative reviews. She is trapped and miserable but not sympathetic.

The novel is well written to a fault. The prose is pristine, calculated, poetic, almost flawless. The first sentence: “The cypress rested in its shadow.” The last sentence: “When the horse had disappeared into a hollow, the bird began to sing.” The novel’s prose strains to reflect the tenor of its narrator’s sensitive, suffering, emotional soul. It is cold, pitiless, pointless.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Not a great film, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) was at least entertaining and fun. The excitement and the plot were naturally intertwined, and the film built a certain pace and momentum. You knew where it was headed, roughly, but you enjoyed the ride. And there was the novelty of some state of the arts special effects. Above all, there was Johnny Depp with his dead-on impersonation of Keith Richards as Jack Sparrow, captain of the Black Pearl. He was worth everything else the film had to offer.

In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006), we have the dreaded sequel. Jack Sparrow is back, and at least in the scenes in which he appears there is some interest, though the charm and novelty have worn off, somewhat. For the most part, this second installment is a muddy, sodden, plotless preparation for part three. In fact, the whole point becomes evident in the last thirty seconds. It wouldn’t have mattered what events preceded those final seconds, as long as the film brought us to them.

There is more action here than in the first film, but much of it doesn’t make any sense, and there is not much logic to the sequence of events either. They involve a much dreaded sea pirate with an octopus head named Davy Jones and his extremely unlikely crew—unlikely even by the logic of the first film. There are sword fights, stunts, sea battles, giant kraken, a mysterious key, a beating heart in a buried chest, evil British sailors, runaway waterwheels, and on and on. You don’t really need to understand what is going on in the film. All that it demands is that you watch it. The only guiding logic is the insistent, irresistible urge to arrive at the last thirty seconds. But it takes a long time getting there, and a lot of it hardly matters.

Al Gore: The Inconvenient Truth

It is difficult to imagine a more persuasive, lucid, and well constructed presentation than is found in An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary featuring Al Gore’s campaign to alert the public to the dangers of global warming. It has been released on DVD, and I recently took the opportunity to see it. Using well chosen scientific data presented in a highly accessible and visually appealing set of graphics, Gore builds the case for the reality of global warming (does anyone truly continue to doubt that it’s happening?) and the necessity of taking steps to address it. Rarely have I seen graphs and statistics used so effectively. Much has been made of Gore’s stiff, stentorian manner, his tendency to lecture, but in this film, though he does lecture, his style is relaxed, personal, and informal. He makes an engaging teacher, with a sincere and humorously self-deprecating manner.

Although most of the film focuses on the subject of the title, we never lose sight of the narrator Al Gore. He jokes about his defeat in the 2000 elections and discusses how he first learned of global warming from a college teacher. He explains that a life-threatening injury suffered by his son at the age of six convinced him that he needed to do something to change and improve the world. He gets in a few jabs at the Bush administration. Clearly the subject has personal meaning for him. But for the most part he keeps us focused on the science of global warming, the causes and potential effects. The message is compelling and disturbing, but the film never allows us to forget the messenger.

It is difficult not to see An Inconvenient Truth as a kind of campaign film in sheep’s clothing. That it may be such does not invalidate its message. But the film does return Gore to the public eye. It’s been tempting to forget Al Gore. After 9/11 and the Afghani and Iraqi wars, the 2000 campaign became a distant and in ways irrelevant event. Although many persist in believing that the Presidency was stolen from Gore, the facts suggest that he lost Florida by a small margin. He won the popular vote nationally, but lost the electoral vote, and though the logic of the Electoral College has never been fully clear to me, it’s in the Constitution. The bungled embarrassment of the Kerry/Edwards campaign of 2004 moved us even further away from the Gore candidacy. He was an awkward memory from a lost century, the lead participant in a series of baffling and irrefutable events. And he was too easily lampooned--the Saturday Night Live "lock box" sketches were hilarious and accurate. Gore himself participated in one of them. What could he possibly contribute to the current mess we’re in? Banish him to the past. At least so that line of thought runs.

(We should stop to consider why, given the reality of George W. Bush, Al Gore should seem “awkward.” Our current President endows the term with new and unexplored meanings. It’s also difficult to conceive that Al Gore couldn’t have offered better leadership in domestic and foreign affairs than George Bush, who has created profound problems for our nation and left it considerably weakened as a result.)

An Inconvenient Truth reminds us of the great intelligence and imagination Gore could bring to the Presidency. Obviously, the ability to talk well about global warming is hardly the only talent we should look for in our next president. But Al Gore, stiff and uncomfortable as he may sometimes seem, is a person of substance with considerable experience in national leadership. As various Democratic candidates for the office emerge—John Edwards, Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others—the inconvenient truth is that we should not rule Al Gore out.

Little Big Man

Little Big Man (1970) was director Arthur Penn’s adaptation of the 1964 novel of the same name by Thomas Berger. Georgia writer Calder Willingham wrote the screenplay—he also wrote the script for The Graduate (1967) and for Rambling Rose (1991—he also wrote the novel on which he based the script). It has been thirty years since I read Berger’s novel, and probably thirty-six years since I first saw the film, though I watched it again today for the first time. When it was released a friend of mine was contemptuous of it and felt that it did not do justice to Berger’s novel. I cannot say myself, without rereading the novel, which I remember as somewhat more complex and rich than the film. I also remember that Walt Whitman appeared as a minor character in the novel, as a suitor to Jack Crabbe’s sister. It’s an ill-fated match, since in the novel she is a lesbian and Walt, of course, is homosexual. In the film, her sexual preference is mildly implied but not stated, and Whitman is nowhere to be seen.

The film is the picaresque tale of Jack Crabbe’s life, told by Crabbe at the age of 121. In the nursing home where he lives he speaks into a historian’s tape recorder, telling how his family was slaughtered by Pawnee Indians when he was a boy, how only he and his sister surviving. They are adopted by Cheyenne Indians. Jack in the early course of his life lives as an Indian, is adopted by a missionary, misidentified as a muleskinner by General George R. Custer, runs a store and marries a Swedish woman, marries an Indian woman, serves as a tracker for Custer, is a drunk, a flimflam artist, and so on. He’s also present for the Battle of the Little Big Horn, which he helps cause, and which he survives. The film really covers only the first 30 years or so of his life—the last 90 years it doesn’t deal with at all. Crabbe’s narration is a wonderful exercise in self-invention, confabulation, embellishment, and fictional autobiography. The film is loosely narrated. It does not take on much energy or momentum until mid-way through, though it is always interesting. Its characters are its center—Crabbe himself, along with many others, including his adoptive grandfather Old Lodge Skins, his falsely pious adoptive mother Louise Pendrake, Wild Bill Hickock, General Custer, and a snake oil salesman played by Martin Balsam. Although most of these characters appear prominently in individual episodes, they drift in and out of other episodes and compose the shape-shifting, dreamlike nature of Crabbe’s life story. My recollection is that the film far more explicitly than the novel concerns itself with the attacks of the white American settlers against the Native Americans, and the gradual loss of their culture, but I cannot be sure.

What the film possesses that the novel lacks is the Dustin Hoffman persona. He is a fine actor and is in top form in the film, in which he appeared only three years after The Graduate. As you watch Little Big Man you can’t help thinking that Jack Crabbe is really Benjamin Braddock of the earlier film, and vice versa. You view Jack through the lens of Ben, and through the Jewish New York persona and accent of Hoffman. This gives the film a satiric edge that even the novel lacks, though the novel offers ample satire of its own. Yet this is a dimension of satire that the film doesn’t really need—it’s false satire that doesn’t contribute to the story—Hoffman as Ben as Crabbe. The narration of the story—Crabbe’s narrative voice as interpreted by Hoffman both as an old man and as a much younger one—comes to us through this voice and for me it was disconcerting, though you accept it as one of the conventions of the film.

Chief Dan George as Old Lodge Skins, the adoptive Cheyenne grandfather of Jack Crabbe, is an outstanding feature of the film. Nearly every scene in which he appears is a gem, and his death scene is a classic moment. Yet he is, after all, a stereotype. One can easily see how the film might be criticized for its stereotyping of Native Americans, even at the same time that it romanticizes them. Yet the film also portrays the Indians with respect and shows them as victims of American expansionism. It might not accurately portray them, but at least it does not demonize them nor does it pretend that the westward expansion was some sort of heroic epic process.

Little Big Man was one of a number of revisionist films from the 1960s and 70s that sought to reinvent and reinterpret American history, especially the 19^th century westward expansion and the relationship of the white settlers to the Indians. The revisionist account itself is as far off the mark as the account it replaces, but at least it restores balance.

When I first saw this film in 1970 it absolutely bowled me over. Crabbe’s narration of his early life from his distant vantage point as an old man—isolated from the time and place and people who had once given his life meaning—along with the character of Old Lodge Skins, whom I failed to recognize as a stereotype and instead saw as an embattled and endangered fount of authentic humor and natural wisdom—these were the heart of the film for me. My reaction today was less intense, but the film is still affecting, and with all its faults and contrivances, Hoffman’s narration and his portrayal of Jack Crabbe remain an impressive achievement.

Next, by Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton’s latest novel Next visits the dangers of genetic engineering. Genetic engineering and cloning are subjects he examined previously in the Jurassic Park novels. Crichton’s typical approach in a novel is to take a group of unrelated characters and to trace, chapter by chapter, their gradual involvement in whatever subject it is he happens to be investigating. That is his approach in Next, though it is not until close to the end of the novel that the plotlines of various characters finally conjoin.

There is not really a plot in Next. Rather there are a number of inter-related subplots—some more prominent than others. They involve a cursing orangutan in Borneo, a human-chimpanzee hybrid named Dave, a talking parrot named Gerard, a woman and her son pursued by a bounty hunter who wants to take a sample of her organs, a pederast, corporate sabotage, several ruthless CEOs, and so on. Some of these subplots never amount to anything. Some are present merely to afford Crichton the opportunity to sermonize about the dangerous course that genetic engineering has taken. Others come together, finally.

The interest of Crichton’s novels has always lain in his fairly deep knowledge of science and his ability to write about it in a convincing way. He knows enough science to convince his readers that he knows what he is talking about, though scientists whom I know are quick to point out his shortcomings. He offers intriguing topics—space-borne plagues, cloned dinosaurs, time travel, nanotechnology, international conspiracy, sexual harassment, and so on. He footnotes his novels and includes a list of sources at the end. All of this gives him and his work a certain gravitas. He writes from an assumed position of knowing authority which most of his readers lack. They therefore do not recognize the flaws in his use of science, his frequent manipulation of information and theories and data in support of his particular attitude towards a topic. Of course, Michael Crichton is writing fiction, after all--not science--and is free to invent, distort, and manipulate at will. As a fiction writer he falls short. His characters are shallow and formulaic stick figures, his plots (stripped of the trappings of science) conventional.

This is certainly the case in Next, the least satisfying book by Crichton that I have read. The subject of genetic engineering is interesting. The examples Crichton cites of how it has gone wrong—some of which he seems to have based on actual cases—are compelling. He has clearly thought through and identified many of the ethical, moral, and political issues that surround genetic research. His knowledge of corporate and legal issues that complicate and influence scientific research is impressive—at least, his ability to write persuasively about the issues, whether or not he is inventing or writing fact. But there is no real tension or energy in the narrative. It plods and meanders on and seems to be going nowhere.

In a sense, what we really have here is a prolonged editorial criticizing how genetic engineering is being handled. In his “Author’s Note” at the end of the book, he sums up his attitudes in a series of conclusions. He doesn’t for instance, believe that it should be possible to patent genes, he doesn’t believe that research of any kind should be banned, he believes there should be careful laws passed governing genetic research, and he believes that information about genetic research should be widely shared, and so on. In effect, the various plot lines in the novel illustrate and embody these conclusions.

What we also have here is what may be Crichton’s attempt at a satiric comedy of errors. The talking parrot, an African grey parrot who possesses human speech genes, is easily the best character in the book—a multi-lingual creature who sings and talks and torments whoever happens to be in his presence, and who has a key role in the working out of the plot once the plot actually does become apparent. He is truly comic. The talking parrot reminded me of some of the talking animals in Thomas Pynchon’s novels, such as the talking dog in Mason & Dixon. The human-chimp hybrid Dave is also an effective character through which Crichton illustrates the ethical dilemmas inherent in the creation of such a creature.

Crichton is especially concerned (with good reason) over the involvement of corporations in scientific research and seems to believe that this more than anything else has led to a dangerous situation where perspective has been lost. His low opinion of the media, politicians, federal agencies, corporate moguls, and the higher education science establishment is frequently evident in Next. The book is full of cynicism, skepticism, and attacks on the various elements of our culture that irritate him. Next is an especially curmudgeonly and cranky book.

Crichton’s career-long concern has been with the place of the sciences in the human world—how they affect and determine the nature and quality of the lives we lead. He raises crucial and central questions about ethics, morality, the scientific process, and the involvement of government and business in research. These are questions that need asking. But the right-wing slant that has become increasingly evident in Crichton's work, especially in the 2004 novel State of Fear, which sought to discount the reality of global warming, detracts from his credibility.

Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote

Letter reading is a form of voyeurism, at least when the letters are intended for an audience other than oneself. Yet there are times when the historical interest of the letters may raise them beyond the level of personal intrusion. The reading of another person’s letters may also be a way of bringing the letter writer to life. Such is the case in the letters of Truman Capote, edited by Gerald Clarke under the title Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote (New York: Random House, 2004). As literary documents, his letters are not particularly significant. He doesn’t use letter writing as an opportunity to express his attitudes towards his writing or towards the writing of others (although he does pass much judgment on the work of others). Reading them, you don’t learn much about Truman Capote the writer, the novelist, but you do come directly in contact with Capote the human being, and understanding the human being is means of understanding the writer.

These letters range from the 1940s through 1982. Most of them are from the 1950s and 1960s. The early letters quickly give expression to Capote’s brilliant and eccentric personality. Many of them are written to his close intimate friends whom he addresses flirtatiously and with much tenderness. These are his gay friends, and he had a wide circle of friends in this category, many of them leading names in the arts and letters of the day. Letters written to straight friends and associates are more formal but still often quite friendly and intimate. Capote loved the people he considered his friends, whether they were gay or straight, but he was quick to take offense at personal slights, and he did not hesitate to take up his pen with vengeful motives if the opportunity presented itself. The most notable example is a letter he wrote to the wife of William Goyen.

From a literary standpoint, the most interesting of these letters, written mainly during the 1960s, chronicle his interest in the Clutter murders in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas and his work on the book that became his masterpiece. Many of his letters from this period are written to Alvin and Marie Dewey. Alvin Dewey was a detective whose family Capote became friends with and who provided him with much information about the murders. The film Capote portrays the writer as impatient that the murderers Hickok and Smith are not speedily executed. Capote felt he could not finish the book without being able to write the final chapter, and that chapter covered the executions. These letters bear out the accuracy of the film in that aspect. For Capote, the Clutter murders were important for the chance they gave him to write his greatest book—the human tragedy involved was secondary, though the book itself does confirm his ability to recognize and convey it. A friend of mine has suggested that Capote was a “prime piece of human shit who could write really, really well, and then stopped doing even that.” It is possible to come away from these letters with that opinion.

After In Cold Blood the letters diminish in number and interest. He writes about work on his unfinished novel Answered Prayers and describes what he is doing and who he is seeing. But they lack the excitement of the earlier letters, whether he was writing members of his wide social set or talking about his works in progress. After In Cold Blood, he was expended.

These letters would lead to the conclusion that Capote was more a person of surfaces than of substance. Only by reading his fiction and nonfiction, especially In Cold Blood, do you discover otherwise.

Ice Age: The Meltdown

In Ice Age (2002) prehistoric animals—a saber-tooth tiger, mastodon, and several unidentifiable rodents—band together to protect a lost child and return it to its own kind. What poignancy there is in the film derives from the fact that all the animals—save the child—are headed for ultimate extinction as the ice age comes to an end and the human race takes hold. Ice Age is mainly a slapstick film, played for laughs and excitement, and there is not much of an underlying message.

In the sequel, Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006), any pretense of poignancy is abandoned. All the characters from the first film reappear (save the child), and they struggle to escape the floodwaters released from the melting of the ice caps. This film was louder and more active than the first one, more intensely full of slapstick and one-liners, right on the level of a lesser Three Stooges episode. Digital animation is amazing, but if it is to work it needs a story and imagination.

La Dolce Vita

Writing to film costume designer Cecil Beaton in 1961, Truman Capote reported that he had seen La Dolce Vita and could not understand how Beaton could have liked it: “So pretentious, fake arty and BORING!” Capote saw many films and commented on them in letters to friends and associates. He tried his hand at screenwriting, most notably in an adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw entitled The Innocents, which he cowrote with William Archibald in 1960. An attempt at a screenplay for The Great Gatsby was rejected by Paramount Pictures in 1971. This is an aspect of Capote’s writing career of which I was unaware.

It was interesting to read Capote’s brief comment on Fellini’s breakthrough film from 1960 and compare it to my own reaction when I saw it for the first time in 2006. In some ways the film seems dated and possessed of a self-willed passion and frenzy that sometimes seems self-indulgent. In other ways the film seems prescient, predicting, setting the scene for, the revolutionary spirit and self-destructiveness of the decade of the 1960s.

The main character is the reporter Marcello, superbly played by Marcello Mastroianni. In a sense the film is about Marcello’s struggle to find his course in life, to sort out his relationships with various women, to decide on a vocation. Although he seems to want to be a writer, to grapple with subjects of significance, he is drawn to a life of libertine self-indulgence—drinking, carousing, partying with the rich and famous, doing nothing of importance at all. Ultimately this life seems to seize hold of him permanently.

There are a number of interesting set pieces in the film, several of them focused on Bacchanalian parties, one on the frenzy that surrounds two children who have supposedly had a vision of the Virgin Mary. The later surreal Fellini is becoming evident in this film, especially in some of the party scenes, where excess energy and chaos and celebration of decadence for its own sake has become the film’s center.

There is no standard plot structure in this film. It simply follows the wanderings of Marcello over a period of several days. We see him carousing with his friends, reassuring his jealous (and apparently pregnant) lover, played by Anouk Aimee, romancing another lover played by Anita Ekberg, driving here and there. The pace and plotting of the film reminded me of Robert Altman films, and it may be that Fellini was an influence on Altman.

For me the most moving part of the film concerned a visit from Marcello’s father, played by Annibale Ninchi. The older man comes down from the country town where he lives ostensibly for business reasons, but in fact to visit his son and to carouse. For a time he seems capable of keeping pace with, even outpacing his son, but ultimately exhaustion overtakes him and he becomes ill, leaving to return to the country. There is a strange and poignant distance between father and son. Both strain to overcome it, and when the older man leaves, Marcello is sorrowful that he is leaving. One senses his desire for a more solid connection.

The serious life that for a time Marcello flirts with is embodied in the film by his older friend and mentor Steiner, a writer and philosopher whose success inspires Marcello. Steiner encourages Marcello to pursue the higher life, but when the older man kills his children and then himself (apparently out of despair over the world in which he lives) Marcello’s pursuit of a life of meaning and significance founders.

Ultimately superficiality, love of excess and hedonism, overcome Marcello.

The film itself is nearly three hours long. The black and white cinematography is excellent. A strong American jazz-based soundtrack accompanies the sometimes frenetic pace and action.

I should have seen this film decades ago, when I might have felt and participated in the subversive passion that made La Dolce Vita important to so many. Today it seems an important monument from Fellini’s career, an artifact that is impressive and compelling in ways but that in others seems contrived and too insistent on the decadence and carefree rejection of traditional ways and mores that it seeks to celebrate.

The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers

In The Echo Maker Richard Powers interweaves the migratory habits of cranes, neuroscience, and science writing in the story of a man’s struggle to regain his identity set against the struggle of others around him to avoid losing theirs. It is also a mystery story in which a man who has literally lost his mind must struggle to recover it along with the facts surrounding the incident that caused him to lose his mind to begin with. Powers is an intelligent and passionate writer. I don’t know of a more intelligent writer, and intelligence is the driving force in his two best novels, Galatea 2.2 and The Goldbug Variations, the latter of which mixes genetics, Bach, Glenn Gould, Poe, and parallel love stories separated by three decades.

Powers is a novelist who tells and explains rather than dramatizes. He is D. H. Lawrence rather than Henry James, although he explores the social and cultural matrices of science in the same detailed way that James explored the social networks of the American upper crust. He typically narrates in a third-person fashion through his main characters, sometimes relying on internal monologues. Some of his earlier novels used first person. For me, the way in which Powers narrated The Echo Maker was at times problematic and a source of obscurity.

I believe but cannot be certain that the title of The Echo Maker alludes to one of the ways in which human beings learn to speak—by imitating the sounds they hear around them-- and perhaps also some of the social and mating habits of cranes.

Mark is a 26 year old man who is in a terrible accident that leaves him severely brain damaged. His sister Karin comes to be with him during his recovery. Powers has carefully studied neuroscience and uses his knowledge of the subject to illuminate Mark’s recovery. When he does regain his ability to speak and ultimately his physical abilities, he discovers, or believes that he discovers, that Karin is not really his sister but someone who is pretending to be his sister. This is the result of his brain injury. It is called Capgras Syndrome, where the patient is unable to recognize those closest to him, members of the family. He also does not recognize his dog or house—he believes that replicas of his sister, dog, and house were created to deceive him by a sinister government conspiracy. Karin writer Dr. Weber, a renowned psychologist whose books about the human brain and about brain injured individuals have brought him considerable popularity and success, for help. Because of the rare nature of Mark’s injury and the resulting Capgras syndrome, Weber comes to visit Mark. Karin finds her own mental stability wavering when her brother fails to recognize her. Dr. Weber suffers a similar instability when negative reviews of his most recent book convince him that everything he has written is without worth.

One of the real subjects is the relationship of the mind and the brain, the nature of human consciousness, of identity, how the people and the world around us define who we are, how we define them.

Powers is very effective at characterization. Karin is fully developed in The Echo Maker. Other characters are also well drawn but not always well convincing. Mark and his friends Dwayne and Rupp work at a meat processing plant. Mark repairs machinery used n the slaughtering process, while Dwayne and Rupp do the actual slaughtering. These are supposed to be hard-living guys, and I’m not sure that Powers quite pulls off their characters. But he still takes them seriously. Powers’ characters are three-dimensional. They live and think and are not stereotypes. They’re also biological creatures. Powers pays much attention to the physiology, the biology of his characters. He keeps us aware both of Mark as a character struggling to recover his identity as well as a biological organism recovering from a serious injury. In The Gold Bug Variations he parallels the love story of two geneticists with accounts of evolutionary theory in which human love, the reproductive urge, is explained as a process necessary to the transmission of genetic codes from one generation to the next. Strangely, this does not subvert the romance of the love story. If anything, it makes the romance more poignant since the woman has had herself sterilized and can’t transmit the genetic codes.

In The Echo Maker human consciousness is reduced to a series of neural transmissions. Powers does not consistently succeed in explaining the complex ideas he is exploring in the novel. There is a level of abstraction than never quite resolves itself. I often found myself, especially in the latter half of the novel, struggling to understand what was going on, as Powers explained the feelings and mental states and motivations and thoughts of his characters, rarely allowing them to speak outright, except to each other.

I enjoyed, admired, and was moved by this novel. For Powers, the science of the human mind, of genetics, of human life, is as mysterious and wonderful as any religions moment of transfiguration could be. Yet there are moments in the novel where Powers fails in some basic way to be clear about the science that underlies his book. I reread the last fifty pages of the book to be clear on what was happening. I was especially interested in how the cranes were involved in the conclusion of the novel. On rereading, the details were much clearer, but the conclusion of the book seems worked out in a way that is more evident in the emotional progress of the characters than in an intellectual one.

The cranes migrate in huge flocks and in most ways are unlike humans. They are creatures of instinct. They lack in any conventional meaning a personal identity or consciousness. They are organisms rather than individuals. Individuality for cranes means nothing. Yet like human beings they are the product of evolution and are this novel’s confirmation of the miracle of life, which for Richard Powers is not a matter of the spirit but of the chemical and biological processes that produce life. They also play a significant role in the struggle of various characters surrounding Mark to recover their mental stability. Mark himself in one of his more paranoiac delusions wonders whether scientists transplanted a portion of the brain of a crane into his head to replace an injured portion of his own brain. Powers uses this delusion as one basis for demonstrating the evolutionary relationship of cranes and human beings.

One unifying thread in the novel concerns the details of Mark’s accident, which he cannot remember except for a vague image of something vertical and white standing in the road at the scene of his accident. Mark’s desire to know the circumstances of the accident grows more intense as his recovery progresses. Soon after the accident, someone visits him in the hospital, and he discovers a cryptically worded note sitting on his bedside table. Mark wonders whether he has a guardian angel, whether his friends Dwayne and Rupp were involved in the accident, whether the accident was the result of his suicide attempt. The facts are revealed at the end of the novel in a way that seems contrived and artificial, more Spielbergian than literary. I’m not certain this novel really ends in a conventional way, but it is a satisfying and impressive achievement.

The Echo Maker won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction.