Remember Boom Town? And I mean the “Pablo” sidekick years, not Captain Billy. How about Uncle Gus? Big Brother Bob Emery? Okay, how about Bozo the Clown? Major Mudd? Salty’s Shack? If you remember any of them you’re baby boomer. And you know what that makes you…Special.
Baby Boomers had to have new schools, different music, different politics, different wars and Boomers invented (or at the very least re-invented) sex. All for the betterment of mankind, of course. Well that’s the way Boomers have seen themselves generally.
Naturally I see things a little differently. I think baby boomers are the one big failing we can attribute to the Greatest Generation. Record numbers of babies were born after World War II in what may have been the greatest stimulus package in American history. The trouble is all those kids grew up. That’s not exactly it, they all got older. Can we agree on that?
Nope. The problem is we can’t all agree even on that. You see the one thing the Baby Boomers haven’t ever done well is face reality, particularly the reality of aging. We Boomers (there, I confessed) were all young together and we’ve been loathe to admit that we might not be young forever.
Rock, originally known as rock ‘n’ roll, was youth music. From “At the Hop” to “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” from Elvis to the Stones boomers celebrated themselves as young and sexy. It was never going to end. And even as we entered our 50s and 60s we fought it every inch of the way.
Some of that was good. Eating healthier, exercising, and generally taking care of ourselves. Some of it was just silly. Singing along with “Be True to Your School” and not thinking of it as at least a little bit odd, maybe even satirical, is silly. Thinking Mick Jagger is sexy…well that has always been silly.
So why do I bring all this up now? The Boston Globe recently did an article on Baby Boomers rejecting the terms “grandma” and “grandpa” because it sounds too…well…old. The article referred to a book called, "You Can Call Me Hoppa! The Grandparents' Guide to Choosing a Name That Fits." More proof that denial is not a river in Egypt.
Look kids, if you’re old enough to have grandchildren having them call you “Grand Dude” or “G-Ma Smooth” isn’t going to make you seem hip to your grandchildren. If you have grandchildren you have to face one basic fact. YOU ARE OLD ENOUGH TO HAVE GRANDCHILDREN. The mere fact that they exist proves that you are old enough.
What you need to remember is that there’s a huge difference between being old and acting old. You can pick the number that works for you but at some point we got old. Once you’re gotten your head around that remember my motto, “You can only be young once, but you can always be immature.”
I used to tease a friend of mine at school that he went right from high school to being 40 without any of the fun in between. He just acted older than the rest of us. Like most other things age is all in your state of mind.
But it’s also in the mind of your grandchild. And if you remember your own grandparents you remember that they were old. They were to you anyway. Because the difference between 4 and 54 is more than 50.
It doesn’t matter whether your grandchildren call you “Grandma” or “The Grandster” they’ll still think of you the same way. They don’t need somebody 60 years older than they are to teach them how to be hip.
They need you to be concerned about them and they don’t need a junior grade Norma Desmond arguing that “I am big, it’s the pictures that got small.” Be a grandparent not a superannuated peer. There’s nothing wrong with silly, but be silly with them not to them.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Atonement (R)
There are people who find it odd that I usually don’t read novels. Oh sure, I’ve read A Tale of Two Cities, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, but contemporary fiction I mostly give a miss. The film “Atonement” is a perfect example of why I’ve made that choice.
If I watch a crappy, pretentious movie I’m out two hours of my life that I’ll never get back. If I read a crappy, pretentious novel, I’m out many more hours that I’ll never get back. That said, my guess is that “Atonement” is a better book than it is a movie. But that’s still not saying much.
The story is more or less told from the point of view of Briony (Saoirse Ronan), an imaginative, wealthy, somewhat spoiled child of an English Country Manor. She misinterprets an innocent encounter she sees in a garden between her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) the favored son of one of the kitchen staff. Briony builds that, a mistakenly presented draft of an apology, and another incident into a charge that sends Robbie away from the house and off to prison.
With the coming of World War II Robbie winds up in the army at Dunkirk. Cecilia is a nurse caring for wounded soldiers and Briony (now 18 and played by Romola Garai) eventually in nurses’ training. Oh, and Briony is played by a third actress, Vanessa Redgrave, much later in her life. You wouldn’t think it would take three women to play one character but without the latter two we wouldn’t understand that Briony came to understand the need to make an atonement.
If you like the same scene being played more than once to get the perspective of different characters, non-linear time shifting and half spoken sentences weighty with unspoken emotion, this movie is your cup of English Tea served to you in a country garden. If you’re really into non-linear time shifting and a scene being played more than once, rent Christopher Nolan’s 2000 film “Memento” and you’ll see all you need to of that.
There’s a five minute tracking shot of Robbie when he and two army pals arrive at Dunkirk. Robbie walks through the tumult and turmoil in the time of the British evacuation. Director (Joe Wright) is extremely proud of the scene. It may be very cinematic but it’s pretty pointless in the context of the film. All that matters to the audience is that Robbie is at Dunkirk… and I’m not sure that couldn’t have been covered adequately in a line or two of expository dialog by another character.
So what’s to like? The actors all do a good job. Dario Marianelli blends the frequent presence of typewriters into a basis for a rhythm riff that cues the score in an interesting way. There were also a couple of occasions where a character does something on screen that becomes the last note in a score cue that I liked.
All in all what we have here is someone way too conscious that he is making a film rather than someone who is trying to tell a story well on film.
This is the director who made a version of “Pride and Prejudice” and was very proud of having done so without reading Jane Austen’s book. He claims that he read Ian McEwan’s book Atonement. I’m not sure which, if either, author got the greater benefit from Mr. Wright’s talent.
If I watch a crappy, pretentious movie I’m out two hours of my life that I’ll never get back. If I read a crappy, pretentious novel, I’m out many more hours that I’ll never get back. That said, my guess is that “Atonement” is a better book than it is a movie. But that’s still not saying much.
The story is more or less told from the point of view of Briony (Saoirse Ronan), an imaginative, wealthy, somewhat spoiled child of an English Country Manor. She misinterprets an innocent encounter she sees in a garden between her older sister Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy) the favored son of one of the kitchen staff. Briony builds that, a mistakenly presented draft of an apology, and another incident into a charge that sends Robbie away from the house and off to prison.
With the coming of World War II Robbie winds up in the army at Dunkirk. Cecilia is a nurse caring for wounded soldiers and Briony (now 18 and played by Romola Garai) eventually in nurses’ training. Oh, and Briony is played by a third actress, Vanessa Redgrave, much later in her life. You wouldn’t think it would take three women to play one character but without the latter two we wouldn’t understand that Briony came to understand the need to make an atonement.
If you like the same scene being played more than once to get the perspective of different characters, non-linear time shifting and half spoken sentences weighty with unspoken emotion, this movie is your cup of English Tea served to you in a country garden. If you’re really into non-linear time shifting and a scene being played more than once, rent Christopher Nolan’s 2000 film “Memento” and you’ll see all you need to of that.
There’s a five minute tracking shot of Robbie when he and two army pals arrive at Dunkirk. Robbie walks through the tumult and turmoil in the time of the British evacuation. Director (Joe Wright) is extremely proud of the scene. It may be very cinematic but it’s pretty pointless in the context of the film. All that matters to the audience is that Robbie is at Dunkirk… and I’m not sure that couldn’t have been covered adequately in a line or two of expository dialog by another character.
So what’s to like? The actors all do a good job. Dario Marianelli blends the frequent presence of typewriters into a basis for a rhythm riff that cues the score in an interesting way. There were also a couple of occasions where a character does something on screen that becomes the last note in a score cue that I liked.
All in all what we have here is someone way too conscious that he is making a film rather than someone who is trying to tell a story well on film.
This is the director who made a version of “Pride and Prejudice” and was very proud of having done so without reading Jane Austen’s book. He claims that he read Ian McEwan’s book Atonement. I’m not sure which, if either, author got the greater benefit from Mr. Wright’s talent.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Leatherheads (PG-13)
What I know about pro football circa 1925 you could fit on the back of the “Press” card stuck in the band of your snap-brim fedora. In other words, not much. But you don’t have to know much to go along for the pleasant ride that is “Leatherheads.”
George Clooney is “Dodge” Connelly, a dodgy character of an aging pro who just loves to play football even as a pro. You see, in 1925 pro-football was a joke to real fans, the press and, to some extent, the players. The teams were constantly running out of money and folding, the schedule was adjusted almost daily because the team you were supposed to play went out of business and you may not have had the money for railroad tickets to get to the next game anyway. College football was the thing and Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) was THE star of college football. And not just a football star, a hero of the recently concluded “Great War.”
Dodge finds a way to entice Rutherford’s agent C.C. Frazier (Jonathan Pryce) to agree to have Rutherford turn pro. That way, of course, is money. Dodge pretty much gives away the store to get the War Hero/Star into the pros but he sees that Rutherford can give his league instant credibility. There is one problem: Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger).
She’s the best writer on the Tribune and she’s out the find out what really happened in the Argonne Forest when Carter Rutherford became a war hero. Suffice it to say there is a story behind the story and the hero is not quite what he’s billed as, but there’s no real chicanery afoot. Lexie winds up being the center of the attentions of both Dodge and Carter.
This is the kind of movie where Carter and Dodge fight over the girl for quite a while and when they’re done neither man has a mark on him. But logic has little place here and you just stipulate to certain facts that may only sort of make sense. Like Lexie getting the chance to write this kind of sports story in Chicago of the 1920s. It’s far more likely that a woman, no matter how good a writer, would be spinning her wheels writing recipes or society pieces for the Trib, not revelatory stories about sports heroes.
There’s also the question of Renee Zellweger as Lexie. Never a conventionally pretty girl, Renee is 40 now and it’s tough for her to pass for the age of 31 that Lexie admits to. As an actress she always seems to be trying a little too hard to me. But that may just be my problem; it needn’t be yours.
Some terrific character actors back up the main cast and they do a great job of filling out the background. Peter Gerety does a nice turn as the man who becomes commissioner of the league and while it’s never stated that this is the early N-F-L, it’s obvious that the commissioner is going to start the enterprise down the road to being the No Fun League we know today.
There’s some snappy screwball comedy dialog and another jazz-age evoking score by Randy Newman who also gets a cameo as (what else?) the piano player in a speakeasy. At two hours it could have been a bit shorter although there are a couple of the deletes scenes on the dvd that I thought should have made the cut.
“Leatherheads” is certainly worth the rental and if you buy dvd’s or blue ray discs this would be a fun addition to your library.
George Clooney is “Dodge” Connelly, a dodgy character of an aging pro who just loves to play football even as a pro. You see, in 1925 pro-football was a joke to real fans, the press and, to some extent, the players. The teams were constantly running out of money and folding, the schedule was adjusted almost daily because the team you were supposed to play went out of business and you may not have had the money for railroad tickets to get to the next game anyway. College football was the thing and Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) was THE star of college football. And not just a football star, a hero of the recently concluded “Great War.”
Dodge finds a way to entice Rutherford’s agent C.C. Frazier (Jonathan Pryce) to agree to have Rutherford turn pro. That way, of course, is money. Dodge pretty much gives away the store to get the War Hero/Star into the pros but he sees that Rutherford can give his league instant credibility. There is one problem: Lexie Littleton (Renee Zellweger).
She’s the best writer on the Tribune and she’s out the find out what really happened in the Argonne Forest when Carter Rutherford became a war hero. Suffice it to say there is a story behind the story and the hero is not quite what he’s billed as, but there’s no real chicanery afoot. Lexie winds up being the center of the attentions of both Dodge and Carter.
This is the kind of movie where Carter and Dodge fight over the girl for quite a while and when they’re done neither man has a mark on him. But logic has little place here and you just stipulate to certain facts that may only sort of make sense. Like Lexie getting the chance to write this kind of sports story in Chicago of the 1920s. It’s far more likely that a woman, no matter how good a writer, would be spinning her wheels writing recipes or society pieces for the Trib, not revelatory stories about sports heroes.
There’s also the question of Renee Zellweger as Lexie. Never a conventionally pretty girl, Renee is 40 now and it’s tough for her to pass for the age of 31 that Lexie admits to. As an actress she always seems to be trying a little too hard to me. But that may just be my problem; it needn’t be yours.
Some terrific character actors back up the main cast and they do a great job of filling out the background. Peter Gerety does a nice turn as the man who becomes commissioner of the league and while it’s never stated that this is the early N-F-L, it’s obvious that the commissioner is going to start the enterprise down the road to being the No Fun League we know today.
There’s some snappy screwball comedy dialog and another jazz-age evoking score by Randy Newman who also gets a cameo as (what else?) the piano player in a speakeasy. At two hours it could have been a bit shorter although there are a couple of the deletes scenes on the dvd that I thought should have made the cut.
“Leatherheads” is certainly worth the rental and if you buy dvd’s or blue ray discs this would be a fun addition to your library.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Take a Message, stop
We learned in driver’s ed class with the teacher who wound up looking like Don Knotts after 30 minutes on the road with us that we have a lot to do when we’re driving. Remember your first time on the road? You were sweating bullets by the time you were done, weren’t you?
There was so much to do, so much to watch for, so many others who might do…God knows what. We’ve probably all had one of those momentary lapses in concentration while driving. Unscrewing the cap on a soda and the little ring down the bottom that’s supposed to separate gets itself out of alignment, or the freedom fries (just thought I’d see if you’re paying attention) are hotter than you expected, the cell phone rings as you’re making a turn. Here in New Hampshire you can actually get a ticket for any of those under the heading of “distracted driving.”
Most of the time there’s no damage, nobody’s hurt. We may feel a little stupid or react in kind to a startled driver who honks and flips us off when we’ve nearly run him off the road but there’s no real harm done.
But how tough can it be to drive a trolley? It’s on tracks so you don’t have to steer, right? There’s no oncoming traffic, no pedestrians to watch for, at least not underground. Yet somehow the operator of an MBTA trolley managed to rear-end another trolley the other day. Somewhere near 50 people were hurt, none seriously.
Okay I’m grateful for that but let tell you something, a broken leg may not be a “serious” injury to you but if it’s MY leg I’m taking that pretty freakin’ seriously. Oh yeah, I know that’s not a big deal in the grand scheme of things but if I’m going to be in some sort of cast for a while and on crutches for a few weeks and maybe I’m going to be able to forecast the weather by my leg for the rest of my life I take that seriously. From my point of view, the closer the proximity to me the more serious the injury.
But back to the point. Really, how tough can it be to drive a trolley? They’ve even got traffic lights down there so you know when to slow down and when to stop before you rear end the train of cars in front of you. How can you screw that up?
Technology has come up with the answer! Texting.
Yup, we’ve got a job that’s pretty easy here, although it carries a fair amount of responsibility with it, so what do we do? We act irresponsibly. We add the challenge of trying to type while operating a trolley in the dark. Oh sure we can all say the trolley operator is stuck on stupid for texting on the job but is he really that different from the rest of us?
We live in an age when multi-tasking is expected of almost everyone nearly the whole time we’re at work. We multi-task when we’re driving, why shouldn’t the T operator expect to be able to successfully multi-task while driving a trolley, underground (talk about limited access highways), on a track. Of course he thought he could do it.
Just like you thought you could handle that hot cup of Starbucks and converse on a cell phone, while you negotiated rush-hour traffic on Route 128 (it will never be I-95 to me) on the way to work.
And what, exactly, are we accomplishing by all this multi-tasking?
The trolley driver was sending a text-message to his girl friend. How much do you want to bet that conversation could have been delayed for a millennium or two without doing any harm to the human race? How many conversations that you’ve had while driving began with the phrase, “what’s going on?”, because neither you or the person on the other end of the phone had anything to say. You’re just talking because you can.
The “Sunday Globe Magazine” a few weeks ago had an interview with novelist Anne LeClair about her practice of having two silent days a month. Years ago Larry Hagman revealed he had a silent day a month, or once a week or some other such nonsense. Turns out that they wind up developing other ways of communicating on those days because sometimes you really do have to talk to other people. Sometimes there really is something to say.
But most of the time there isn’t anything or certainly not anything that can’t wait. So here’s my suggestion and you can credit me as a self-help guru when you pass it along to others. Ready? Shut the Hell up! Stop talking.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Flu? You Swine!
Well I haven’t gotten the H1N1-A virus yet have you? I didn’t think so. I don’t mean to diminish the actual danger posed by the identification of a new strain of influenza virus but didn’t you think the media went a little bit nuts over the last couple of weeks?
It was top story on every newscast for about 10-days. All of them network, local, cable, they all jumped on the bandwagon. The only thing that got in the way was Arlen Spector jumping parties. I’m not sure which was a greater threat to the public at large.
Okay, I’m just kidding about Spector. I did love the reaction from some of the pundits and all of the Republican Party leadership (how’s that for an oxymoron for our times?). Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader John Boehner were shocked, Shocked! to find there was politics being played by a member of the United States Senate! Republican Party Chair Michael Steele accused Spector of leaving the GOP to “further his political interests.”
Looks like I missed the memo that if a politician engages in politics there’s some kind of foul. Of course I always find it amusing when one politician calls another politician a “politician,” or, worse yet, a Washington Politician! This is most frequently done by someone seeking, but not yet elected to, a seat in one of the houses of the congress…in Washington. All this nonsense does make it easier to understand why they decided to stop calling the H1N1-A virus the “Swine Flu.” No doubt it hit too close to home for many politicians.
We’re told that they stopped calling the virus the “Swine Flu” because people were afraid to eat pork. Yup, people really are that stupid. Thank God we didn’t have an outbreak of German Measles or some nut job would have taken out half of Western Europe.
There hasn’t been a single case of the H1N1-A virus in Egypt so far but as I write this the Egyptian government has begun liquidating the entire inventory of pigs there because…umm…it’s the Swine Flu. If you’ve ever wondered what happened to Egypt after the pyramids, now you know. Me, I’m looking forward to eating pork chops at reduced prices.
So as frenzied as things have been in the media here, it must be even worse there. But I’m not in Egypt. I’m in Manchester, New Hampshire, and it seems like they’re trying to scare the bejeezis out of me for no particular reason but that it’s an easy story. Last time I checked (Monday, May 04, 2009) the Granite State had exactly one (1) confirmed case of the H1N1-A virus. That’s out of a population of somewhere around 1-point-3 million people.
As I write this there has been exactly one (yes that’s -1-) fatality in these United States. That out of about 304-million people. I’m not planning on kissing any pigs in the near future, in part because I don’t drink any more, so with a reasonable amount of caution I’m probably pretty safe.
I’m sure there is a possible threat to public health from this virus. Virus’s don’t live very long so they can evolve through several generations in a short period and come back to take another crack at us. But once the media got around to telling us to wash our hands often and to stay home when we’re feeling ill there wasn’t much else we needed to know.
Oh sure it’s nice to have the information that the appropriate government agencies are taking the appropriate steps to monitor the progress of the spread of the virus, quarantine those who appear to have contracted it and they are working on a vaccine for it. But that didn’t really change the true nature of the story. The important thing is that the medical people and public health officials stay on it. They will.
So your smiling local newsie pretty much beat the same drum all week until they realized it wasn’t much of a problem and it wasn’t killing gazillions of people around the globe and now they’re starting to drift away from the story. Tonight it was the number three story on the CBS evening news. It’s not much but it’s progress.
Back when telephone had wires that were connected to more wires on poles along the side of the road Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota once observed, “The media are like birds on a telephone wire. When one flies off, they all fly off. When one flies back, they all fly back.”
Be on the lookout, they could come back.
It was top story on every newscast for about 10-days. All of them network, local, cable, they all jumped on the bandwagon. The only thing that got in the way was Arlen Spector jumping parties. I’m not sure which was a greater threat to the public at large.
Okay, I’m just kidding about Spector. I did love the reaction from some of the pundits and all of the Republican Party leadership (how’s that for an oxymoron for our times?). Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader John Boehner were shocked, Shocked! to find there was politics being played by a member of the United States Senate! Republican Party Chair Michael Steele accused Spector of leaving the GOP to “further his political interests.”
Looks like I missed the memo that if a politician engages in politics there’s some kind of foul. Of course I always find it amusing when one politician calls another politician a “politician,” or, worse yet, a Washington Politician! This is most frequently done by someone seeking, but not yet elected to, a seat in one of the houses of the congress…in Washington. All this nonsense does make it easier to understand why they decided to stop calling the H1N1-A virus the “Swine Flu.” No doubt it hit too close to home for many politicians.
We’re told that they stopped calling the virus the “Swine Flu” because people were afraid to eat pork. Yup, people really are that stupid. Thank God we didn’t have an outbreak of German Measles or some nut job would have taken out half of Western Europe.
There hasn’t been a single case of the H1N1-A virus in Egypt so far but as I write this the Egyptian government has begun liquidating the entire inventory of pigs there because…umm…it’s the Swine Flu. If you’ve ever wondered what happened to Egypt after the pyramids, now you know. Me, I’m looking forward to eating pork chops at reduced prices.
So as frenzied as things have been in the media here, it must be even worse there. But I’m not in Egypt. I’m in Manchester, New Hampshire, and it seems like they’re trying to scare the bejeezis out of me for no particular reason but that it’s an easy story. Last time I checked (Monday, May 04, 2009) the Granite State had exactly one (1) confirmed case of the H1N1-A virus. That’s out of a population of somewhere around 1-point-3 million people.
As I write this there has been exactly one (yes that’s -1-) fatality in these United States. That out of about 304-million people. I’m not planning on kissing any pigs in the near future, in part because I don’t drink any more, so with a reasonable amount of caution I’m probably pretty safe.
I’m sure there is a possible threat to public health from this virus. Virus’s don’t live very long so they can evolve through several generations in a short period and come back to take another crack at us. But once the media got around to telling us to wash our hands often and to stay home when we’re feeling ill there wasn’t much else we needed to know.
Oh sure it’s nice to have the information that the appropriate government agencies are taking the appropriate steps to monitor the progress of the spread of the virus, quarantine those who appear to have contracted it and they are working on a vaccine for it. But that didn’t really change the true nature of the story. The important thing is that the medical people and public health officials stay on it. They will.
So your smiling local newsie pretty much beat the same drum all week until they realized it wasn’t much of a problem and it wasn’t killing gazillions of people around the globe and now they’re starting to drift away from the story. Tonight it was the number three story on the CBS evening news. It’s not much but it’s progress.
Back when telephone had wires that were connected to more wires on poles along the side of the road Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota once observed, “The media are like birds on a telephone wire. When one flies off, they all fly off. When one flies back, they all fly back.”
Be on the lookout, they could come back.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Doubt (Rated PG-13)
Once we get past the opening credits we have Father Brendan Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) delivering a sermon. He starts by saying, “What do you do when you’re not sure?” And that, for most of us, is the central question of the film. The exception is Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) a woman who sees no grey in the world, only black and white.
“Doubt” is set in 1964 and, in terms of the narrative, the question is: did Father Flynn abuse the only black student in a Roman Catholic school? If you’re the kind of person who likes everything in a movie divided up into neat little piles at the end you’ll want to give this one a miss.
If, like me, you’re interested in the discussion of moral questions, trying to understand the grey areas and how best to determine when we’ve moved from white to black on the ethical scale, then you’ll find this film a very interesting dialog.
The way it plays out is a lot like getting an eye exam. When the ophthalmologist starts adjusting the lenses and asks, “which is clearer, A or B?” The story (written originally as a play then adapted for the screen – all done by the film’s director John Patrick Shanley) lays out facts and says, “Okay, what do you think?” Then it tells you something else and says, “Now what do you think?”
There were only four characters in the play, the film has more but the four central characters, Father Flynn, Sister Aloysius, Sister James (Amy Adams) and the mother of the child in question Mrs. Miller (Viola Davis). All the actors give excellent performances. Adams’ Sister James is charming and totally innocent, but it is she who notices what might be an inappropriate relationship. Davis’ character is strangely disinterested in taking action when the question of the relationship is brought before her.
Sister Aloysius is pursuing the matter, but is it because she dislikes the priest for his informal and warm approach to his job? She’s a woman so strict, so severe, that she finds “Frosty the Snowman” to be heretical. No, she’s not kidding. Severe? You could keep meat fresh in the ventricles of this woman’s heart.
Father Flynn is engaging and charming. Is that part of the con that an abuser would perpetrate to get away with what he does?
The film probably functions as a Rorschach test for the audience. Most of us will probably determine the question by falling back on the biases we walked in with. Me? My job is to tell you what the movie is about and whether I think it’s worth seeing. I think I’ve done the first and the second, so I’ll leave you to watch the movie and decide for yourself, “What DO you do when you’re not sure?”
“Doubt” is set in 1964 and, in terms of the narrative, the question is: did Father Flynn abuse the only black student in a Roman Catholic school? If you’re the kind of person who likes everything in a movie divided up into neat little piles at the end you’ll want to give this one a miss.
If, like me, you’re interested in the discussion of moral questions, trying to understand the grey areas and how best to determine when we’ve moved from white to black on the ethical scale, then you’ll find this film a very interesting dialog.
The way it plays out is a lot like getting an eye exam. When the ophthalmologist starts adjusting the lenses and asks, “which is clearer, A or B?” The story (written originally as a play then adapted for the screen – all done by the film’s director John Patrick Shanley) lays out facts and says, “Okay, what do you think?” Then it tells you something else and says, “Now what do you think?”
There were only four characters in the play, the film has more but the four central characters, Father Flynn, Sister Aloysius, Sister James (Amy Adams) and the mother of the child in question Mrs. Miller (Viola Davis). All the actors give excellent performances. Adams’ Sister James is charming and totally innocent, but it is she who notices what might be an inappropriate relationship. Davis’ character is strangely disinterested in taking action when the question of the relationship is brought before her.
Sister Aloysius is pursuing the matter, but is it because she dislikes the priest for his informal and warm approach to his job? She’s a woman so strict, so severe, that she finds “Frosty the Snowman” to be heretical. No, she’s not kidding. Severe? You could keep meat fresh in the ventricles of this woman’s heart.
Father Flynn is engaging and charming. Is that part of the con that an abuser would perpetrate to get away with what he does?
The film probably functions as a Rorschach test for the audience. Most of us will probably determine the question by falling back on the biases we walked in with. Me? My job is to tell you what the movie is about and whether I think it’s worth seeing. I think I’ve done the first and the second, so I’ll leave you to watch the movie and decide for yourself, “What DO you do when you’re not sure?”
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