Category Archives: Film Commentary

Film Commentary

Film Review of Edward Norton’s “Motherless Brooklyn”: Rain Man Meets Bogart

by HelenHighly

Imagine Rain Man meets Humphrey Bogart and you’ve got the eccentric gumshoe character that Edward Norton plays in Motherless Brooklyn, a film he starred in as well as wrote, directed and produced and which has the prestigious Closing Night slot of the 2019 New York Film Festival. Norton adapted his film from Jonathan Letham’s 1999 novel of the same name, changing the book’s gritty 1999 New York setting to a painterly 1950’s New York setting – an impressively ambitious if dubious decision (on an indie budget). “What is it like to be actor, director and producer?” asks someone at the Q&A session following the press screening. “It’s efficient,” Norton says, adding “My conversations with myself go very smoothly.” He goes on to explain that he wanted his film to be less like Reservoir Dogs and more like Citizen Kane, while managing not to claim himself comparable to nor give insult to either Quentin Tarantino or Orson Wells. Norton’s intelligence, sense of humor and earnest humility are also what define his character, Lionel Essrog, and make viewers willing to follow both Edward and Lionel on their odyssey through a mysterious, sometimes-confounding maze of murder, blackmail, deception and corruption. And they and you might even come out the other side.

“This is a sprawling movie with large-scale ambitions and a design team doing a high-wire act…This is real cinema.”

Edward Norton directing "Motherless Brooklyn" — Edward Norton directing and acting in “Motherless Brooklyn”

In the first scene, we are immediately confronted with the fact that Lionel suffers from Tourette’s syndrome, as we see Norton’s carefully studied depiction of the symptoms and hear Lionel tell us in voice-over, “I got threads in my head” – a metaphor that instantly connects Lionel’s mind to the complex weave of the story itself, which will unravel and tangle throughout the next 144 minutes. In defense of my opening conflation of the syndrome with the autism that afflicted Dustin Hoffman’s iconic character, I will note that according to professionals, “Tourette syndrome (TS) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) share clinical features and possibly an overlapping etiology” and each is sometimes misdiagnosed as the other. Tourette is a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary tics and vocalizations and often the compulsive utterance of obscenities or strange phrases. Not that this medical definition matters to the story.

Edward Norton has Tourette Syndrome in "Motherless Brooklyn" — Edward Norton has Tourette Syndrome in “Motherless Brooklyn”

What matters is that Norton has convincingly turned his neurologically impaired character into a smart, crime-solving, romantically-appealing leading man, rather than an oddball sidekick shuffling along next to handsome Tom Cruise. Lionel’s mental challenges are reminiscent of Christopher Nolan’s Memento, although this character’s problem is more grounded in reality, which makes the story more than just a thrilling conundrum; the realism of both Lionel’s ailment and the historical details of the tale create genuine gravitas. This is one of many reasons to admire this film and Edward Norton in particular, despite the movie not entirely earning a designation as “masterful.”

Edward North and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in "Motherless Brooklyn" — Edward North and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in “Motherless Brooklyn”

But Helen Highly Prefers to watch an ambitious and admirable project not completely succeed than watch a clichéd, obvious, emotionally safe film that is as meaningless as it is overly lauded by the popular press (such as the Centerpiece film in this year’s NYFF). In his interview, Norton says he took inspiration from films such as Reds and Unforgiven, which “treat people [the audience] like adults.” Amen brother.

Lionel explains his condition in the film, saying “It makes me say funny things but I’m not trying to be funny” – as if speaking for Norton, who craftily scripts Lionel’s outbursts as clever commentary on the action as it unfolds, but without entering into the realm of comedy. Lionel also has super skills, such as the ability to precisely memorize information and conversations, even if he doesn’t fully comprehend their meaning at the time. And his obsessive tendencies send him on a relentless quest to solve the intricate puzzle of the story – a dedication greater than his fellow detectives (and realistically, most viewers).

My two cents regarding the team of private dicks employed at Lionel’s agency would be to cut out those largely superfluous mugs. After all, Bogart’s detective was a one-man operation, and that might have helped consolidate the complexity here. It is important, however, that the agency was initially owned and run by Lionel’s mentor and life-long friend, Frank Minna (played persuasively by Bruce Willis), who is murdered within the first few minutes of the film. The movie is essentially Lionel trying to track down Frank’s killers and understand how all the clues add up to something larger than anyone expects. The rest of the office team is expendable, as far as I’m concerned. But the “larger than anyone expects” story is part of the film’s larger problem.

Bruce Willis in "Motherless Brooklyn" — Bruce Willis in “Motherless Brooklyn”

This is where most of the film’s criticism is based – its long run time and unnecessary plot twists that are difficult to follow and at times seem to be telling different stories — too many unraveling threads. My initial argument against this sort of complaint is to remind viewers that two of this genre’s greatest classics, The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon, had plotlines nearly impossible to follow and stories that didn’t seem to entirely add up. It’s all part of the nothing-makes-sense fatalism of this type of movie.

“One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.” — Vincent Scully

But the issue is larger than that defense – for both better and worse. Norton’s “mash-up,” as he calls it, seems to rely as much on Robert Caro’s non-fiction, Pulitzer-prize-winning book The Power Broker as it does on Letham’s fictional thriller. Norton is interweaving two very-different books and stretching the boundaries of a classic genre; it’s a lot to handle.

In Norton’s film, Alec Baldwin (with his typical smarmy aplomb) plays Moses Randolph, a thinly veiled portrayal of Robert Moses, the “master builder” of mid-20^th century New York. Moses was one of the most polarizing figures in the history of urban development in the United States. Caro’s book sealed his fate to be remembered forever as a ruthless scoundrel with a lust for power and a racist agenda rather than admired for his visionary achievements as a builder of bridges, highways and parks. (Moses also helped Frank Lloyd Wright get the NYC building permits to construct the long-delayed now-iconic Guggenheim Museum — a story detailed in a recent New York Times article as the museum turns 60 this month.)

Moses combined extreme corruption with enormous competence; at one point he simultaneously held twelve political titles, including NYC Parks Commissioner and Chairman of the Long Island State Park Commission, but as Norton tells us, Robert Moses (that is, Moses Randolph) was never elected to any public office. His power was based on brutality and elitism. In pursuit of planning for a better future, Moses ripped out entire neighborhoods – mostly minority communities. He was also responsible for the demolition of the once-magnificent Penn Station, in which a scene in Norton’s movie remarkably takes place, using genius-level special effects.

How the Lost Penn Station Was Recreated in “Motherless Brooklyn”

Norton even manages to work in the famous quote about the ruin of Penn Station: “One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.” There are many films that can be said to be love letters to New York City, but this one is nostalgic for its distress as much as its nobility. Norton wants us to know about all this dark and dazzling history, and that well-meaning ambition to scale up both his set design and his message are part of the film’s unfortunate downfall. He’s trying to make an epic morality tale, and he comes close to getting there, but… back to the history lesson:

Supposedly, Moses ordered his engineers to build bridges too low for buses from the city to pass underneath and reach Jones Beach – intentionally restricting the poor blacks and Puerto Ricans that Moses despised. Norton includes this incriminating detail from Caro’s book in his film and increasingly shapes his sleuth story around this tale of real-life Gotham conspiracy and corruption, which starts to feel enticingly like an east-coast Chinatown, full of sociopolitical implications. It’s all fascinating and compelling, until it gets too bogged down in historically-accurate detail.

“For better or worse, this character experiences change, and even if it is sad change, there is a refreshing optimism in that twist. The time-loop stops here.”

Painterly Hopper-esque urban scenes in "Motherless Brooklyn" — Painterly Hopper-esque urban scenes in “Motherless Brooklyn”

But then… a classic gumshoe clue of a discovered matchbook (!) found in Frank’s overcoat pocket leads Lionel to a Harlem jazz club named The King Rooster, where Lionel identifies a central figure in the fictional mystery – Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), an attractive “colored-girl” community organizer who is daughter of the club’s owner. We get to spend a disproportionate but entertaining amount of time in this jazz club, where the music is wonderful, especially as played by a scarred-but-sexy trumpeter (with music actually played by New York’s own Wynton Marsalis). He confides in Lionel that his talent is actually the result of his own “brain affliction.” We’re back in the world of shadowy, sensual film noir. It’s terrific stuff.

"Motherless Brooklyn" — “Motherless Brooklyn”

The best scene in the film is when Lionel is with Laura at the club and we see that the erratic rhythms in his brain match the syncopation of the jazz music. Finally he is in his zone! Then, despite his awkward shyness, Lionel is forced to dance with Laura in order to protect her, and she quiets his Tourette symptoms by rubbing the back of his neck with her fingers (like his mother used to do, before he became an orphan and acquired the name “Motherless Brooklyn”). Aaw. It’s a rare, emotionally touching moment in a movie that wants to be full of heart but ends up being kinda talky and educational.

William Dafoe in "Motherless Brooklyn" — William Dafoe in “Motherless Brooklyn”

And I haven’t even gotten to the addition of William Dafoe, who is excellent as always. How can you not like a movie that includes William Dafoe? He plays a perfect noir-ish character — a surprise wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a moral dilemma, but his arrival in the story comes late and his full impact is obscured a bit by the whirlwind of so many other swirling questions.

The whirlwind becomes a tornado of complexity, picking up pieces of history, chunks of classic genre, hunks of New York architecture, broken branches of dramatic fiction, bent blue notes of jazz, drenched greens of Edward Hopper, a few gratuitous camera shots, at least one completely irrelevant scene, lots of bravado acting, fragments of politics, suggestions of social commentary, all mixing into an imperfect storm. But it’s a doozy.

If you’re an east-coast intellectual liberal, this film is for you. If you’re out for an easy Friday-night date movie… you might walk away with a bit of a headache. This is a sprawling movie with large-scale ambitions and a design team doing a high-wire act, which leaves plenty of room to trip and fall, alas. Still, there is more that deserves to be written about this film.

Here’s part of the beauty that Norton achieves: Like Bogart in all his film noir detective flicks, we see Lionel get beat up by strangers in the dark, wake up in places unknown, wrongly accused by the cops, and double-crossed on a regular basis. But this confused character, who is nicknamed “Freak Show,” starts with none of the tough-guy swagger of Bogart, and Norton’s development of his confidence and consciousness is wisely timed and skillfully paced, so that when Lionel finally tosses his hat and coat into the arms of the gun-toting henchmen of his dangerous adversary and says “Hold this for me, will ya sweetheart,” it’s a grand little moment; he’s gone full Bogart. But the movie doesn’t stop there.

In his combined roles of actor, writer, director and producer, Edward Norton has taken the well-worn, film-noir detective genre and elevated it. This is not a bleak, fatalistic tale. Norton’s freak-show character has blown past Bogart. Lionel will not be back to make another dead-end detective thriller; for better or worse, his character experiences change, even if it is sad change, and there is a refreshing optimism in that twist. The time-loop stops here.*

This is a story about a man who learns for himself the relevance of morality and the definition of heroism. This is a movie that challenges us to rethink our apathetic habits and aim higher than self-preservation. It’s a traditional tale restyled for our times right now. (And yes, Alec Baldwin is playing Donald Trump. Alec Baldwin will never be able to stop playing Trump, and that’s okay too. This is another way for him to dig deeper into that archetypal persona, and it’s worth watching. He’s got a brilliant speech at the end of the movie that might be worth the price of admission in itself.)

Is the movie too long? Yes. Is it too complicated? Maybe. Is it too messy? Probably. Is it too grandiose? I refuse to say yes to that. I am inspired by Norton’s aspirations. What he achieved in 45 days of shooting, on a small budget, as an actor-turned-director, is impressive. Is this a masterpiece? No. But must everything be a masterpiece?

Here’s what this is: This is real cinema. Like the movies in the old days that were a special event, an adventurous outing – this movie is gorgeous to look at and has a reason to be. It’s not an insult to your intelligence or a waste of your time, like far too many movies are these days. Helen Highly Recommends you give this movie a chance. Root for Edward Norton. Root for William Dafoe. Root for Gugu Mbatha-Raw. You have every reason to feel good about rooting for this movie.

* Might I humbly suggest that I’d love to see Lionel come back and do a sequel where he’s a journalist and more closely involved with William Dafoe’s character? Dafoe deserves more screen time.

Motherless Brooklyn opens in theaters Nov. 1st.

Watch the trailer below:

NYFF Review: “Marriage Story” Directed by Noah Baumbach

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Including Top Ten Broken-Marriage / Divorce Movies

by HelenHighly

So: Marriage Story, a stylish romantic dramedy written and directed by Noah Baumbach with an all-star cast led by Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver and featuring top-notch talent such as Laura Dern, Alan Alda and Wallace Shawn, opened as the centerpiece of the 2019 New York Film Festival. Helen Highly Loathes this movie. I think perhaps I wouldn’t loathe it so much if everyone else wasn’t loving and lauding it so much. Sigh. Something about the gushing acceptance of this film into the “canon” of broken-marriage and/or divorce-themed movies creates a feeling of outrage in me – a feeling much deeper than any inspired by the self-consciously sentimental moments in the film.

Loving family in "Marriage Story" — Loving family in “Marriage Story”

But, to be fair (to my disdain), I did immediately feel insulted by what my directly-after-watching-the-film tweets expressed as “infuriating banality – worse than regular banality.” I didn’t expect to see so many credible and respected critics lavish praise on this film, which makes me feel déjà vu all over again – reminding me of when I stood alone in aggressively disliking Carol, directed by Todd Hanes. (Prediction: everyone believed that film would win an Academy Award for Best Picture and despite all the gushing, it didn’t, and I predict the same here.)

Part of my criticism in my Carol review was my argument against critics who were erroneously declaring the film to be “Hitchcockian,” and I wrote a detailed break-down of how and why that was untrue, which I will skip here, because in this case the person comparing the director to the Master of thrillers and warped love stories is director Noah Baumbach himself. In the post-film Q&A, Baumbach declared that Marriage Story had “hidden genres baked into it,” naming thrillers, horror, screwball comedy and absurdism (wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong) and then adding “it’s also like a Hitchcock movie.” That is where my head exploded, although is a love story at the beginning and they spend a lot of time together and intimacy even using toys like wonderful rabbit vibrators. Really, there should be a law requiring at least a five-year waiting period before anyone can compare anyone to Hitchcock, kind of like declaring someone a saint. And it ought to be a crime for directors to compare themselves to Hitchcock. But that’s not the basis for my distaste for this film – just the cherry on top.

Scarlett Johannsson and Adam Driver in "Marriage Story" — Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver in “Marriage Story”

Baumbach’s movie gives us an intimate view of an end-of-marriage agony-of-divorce story wrapped in a privileged-NYC-life vs privileged-LA-life scenario. His script manages to be a star-vehicle for some of America’s best acting talent; it’s a very-showy showcase for Adam Driver’s raw energy and Scarlett Johansson’s tour-de-force heartbreak, but as I said of Cate Blanchett after Carol, they don’t need this self-important display; they are better than this over-wrought cliché of a movie.

And that’s even true for Baumbach, who has an impressive talent for putting words together. But alas, he needs some fresh ideas. I appreciate that it’s not easy trying to be the voice of your generation, and there is always a hunger in audiences to crown the next king, but sorry, I don’t think Baumbach has even earned knighthood at this point. Clever is not the same as genius. It’s ironic that the lead character wins a “genius grant” in the film at such a young age – perhaps Baumbach projecting his wishes for himself. But it’s pure fiction.

As for Alan Alda and Wallace Shawn, they are only reprising the same old personas we have relished watching them play over the years; nothing new to see here folks. I can only assume that they both agreed to be in this film as a late-career last-chance to remind America what beloved characters they are, and again… there is no need; they’ve already done it in films better than this one, and this story has already been told too many times in films far greater than this non-“masterwork” (as some have called it).

Alan Alda and Wallace Shawn at NYFF with "Marriage Story" — Alan Alda and Wallace Shawn at NYFF with “Marriage Story”

The world already has Kramer vs Kramer, the quintessential divorce-with-a-kid story; we don’t need another one. And we already have Annie Hall, the quintessential lovers-in-trouble torn between New York and LA story; no one is going to do it better. Throw in the couples-with-competing-careers theme and Marriage Story becomes a full-on trope fest. For the record, let me list all the now-classic films that have mined these territories – as either drama or comedy or both (and a few others not-so-classic that are far more deserving of extravagant praise than Marriage Story).

**The Ten Best Movies to See Instead of Marriage Story:**

Kramer vs Kramer
Annie Hall
La La Land (Best Picture close but no cigar – like Marriage Story will be)
One True Thing (After Kramer vs Kramer, Meryl Streep makes the list twice and do we really need to keep trying to top her? In this film, the child-torn-between-alienated-parents is older, with stronger impact.)
The Way We Were (NY vs LA, check; competitive careers and ethical standards, check; more of a love story than a divorce story, check; they don’t have a child but wait… they throw one in at the end, so check. But let’s get real; this movie has So. Much. More. going on to make it worth watching — even worth watching again and again. Honestly, how many times can one bear to sit through Marriage Story?)
Note: A case could be made to add Funny Girl to the list, which would make Barbara Streisand another two-time end-of-marriage classic-film winner.

“The Way We Were” with Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand
Scenes From a Marriage (a Bergman genre-defining classic truly deserving of the much-overused word “masterful”)
Note: Scarlett Johansson is lovely and compelling but she is not in the same league as Streep and Ullman.

“Scenes From a Marriage” by Ingmar Bergman
The Wife (a Bergman-influenced film that earns its inheritance, with ten times the intelligence and profundity of Marriage Story. Glenn Close’s performance in this film is stunning and perhaps the final authentic word in broken-marriage career-challenged wives.)
Le Mepris (Contempt — a gorgeous and magnificent film by Jean-Luc Godard, with a storyline similar to Marriage Story – down to the opening breakup around a revised production of a Greek tragedy in which the husband is auteur and the wife stars)
“Le Mepris” (Contempt) by Jean-Luc Godard
L.A. Story (example of what a true screwball-comedy meets romantic-heartbreak movie looks like and a treatise on L.A.-lifestyle jokes that pack a serious punch) and/or War of the Roses, which has become the ultimate depiction of the pain and dark-comedy of divorce. Note to Baumbach: This is absurdist comedy; your movie is absurd only in its pretension.
It’s Complicated (again with Meryl Streep. Sorry Scarlett, find your own genre.)
One more for good luck: The End of the Affair, which isn’t a super-close story match, but in terms of depicting marital love that transcends divorce, with devastating effect, it merits a mention. And Ralph Fiennes with Julianne Moore – that’s the definition of on-screen chemistry, which btw seems to me completely lacking in Marriage Story.)
“Annie Hall” by Woody Allen

The other thing that all the films in the list above have going for them (with exception of La La Land) is that they have the historic timeframe with the associated literary conventions of their day to justify their lily-whiteness. Marriage Story points out its own fatal flaw in a domestic courtroom scene; after listening to the opposing $950-per-hour lawyers bicker endlessly, the judge finally interrupts and says, “There are people waiting to have their cases heard who do not have the ‘means’ you do.” duh. Hashtag: White People’s Problems.

Scarlett Johannson and Laura Dern in "Marriage Story" — Scarlett Johannson and Laura Dern in “Marriage Story”

And outside of the lack of on-screen chemistry, the banal clichés and tired lawyer jokes, this was a major factor in preventing me from caring about these characters; they are the embodiment of white privilege, and in today’s day, especially when casting the racially conflicted cities of L.A. and New York as characters in the story, to ignore any issue of class or race or fail to provide any realistic backdrop of social/political context… it’s both ridiculous and offensive and ultimately invalidates any effort at credibility. I would say this makes this story comparable to an animated Disney fairytale more than an authentic emotional account, except now even Disney has finally integrated and presented a black princess.

White People's Problems in "Marriage Story" — White People’s Problems in “Marriage Story”

To watch these two feuding spouses argue over whose Halloween costume for the kid is better (and more expensive) and who is taking the kid to a better neighborhood for the best Halloween treats is a disgusting display, in my opinion. Spoiler alert: The father loses that battle and is seen schlepping the kid through an inappropriately grownup Times-Square-ish neighborhood (albeit somewhere in L.A.), where a liquor store sales clerk gives the child a free lighter as a treat. Hilarious! Not. Touching? Not. Stupid and insensitive to the very-real and very-dangerous and humiliating class issues surrounding Halloween trick-or-treating for today’s children? Yes, that’s what it is.

Is Noah Baumbach obliged to depict racial inequity in his romance movie? No of course he’s not – not unless he goes on and on about its contemporary authenticity and selects real-life troubled cities as its location. And other critics should also be ashamed of not noticing that even on the streets of New York City there seems to be not one person of color within facial-recognition distance – certainly none with a talking role. Just saying.

Following through on its all-too-adorable entertainment industry setting, the film ends with not one but two Stephen Sondheim songs from the 1970’s musical Company – one sung by divorced mom and the other by divorced dad. Variety called those back-to-back scenes “haunting,” and I suggest that might be true from a white-as-a-ghost perspective.

As for emotional power: There is a scene with the little boy reading aloud his mother’s handwritten list of hipster-sweet “Things I Love About Charlie” (his father), which is nausea-inducing. Then father Charlie overhears and listens to his son read the list of reasons his mother loves his father, which is full-blown puke-worthy, and then the father enters the scene and helps the boy pronounce the big words in the list of reasons for his father’s lovability — which the father had never read before and is now hearing for the first time from the mouth of his young son, which is choke-on-your-vomit-and-die worthy. (Just think for a moment of the revelatory and climactic scenes in last year’s The Wife, and recall how few words, how carefully scripted, how elegantly performed to such breath-taking effect, how non-cloying and unobvious and deeply stirring. Marriage Story fails at all of that.)

Have I gone back in time and am I watching an After School Special? Do they still exist? I think not. I imagine I am showing my age with that reference. But if this movie makes sense anywhere it would be on TV as an After School Special that a parent would force a kid to watch instead of his preferred cowboy series. It’s a reductive lesson in why you should love your parents despite their being self-centered dipshits.

"End of the Affaire," with Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes — “End of the Affaire,” with Julianne Moore and Ralph Fiennes

But seriously: What is at stake in this movie?! It seems that the worst possible outcome for anybody involved would still entail their living better, more beautiful, more satisfying and comfortable lives than anyone I know. Everyone is young and attractive and talented and well-positioned for a full, wonderful life ahead of them. The marriage was terrific while it lasted, both exes have already found their rebound romances, they both already have new and impressive career opportunities, they have plenty of emotional and financial resources to soothe the blow of the breakup, and the big divorce antagonism is revealed to be gratuitous game-playing that doesn’t seriously injure anyone. The deepest dramatic point seems to be that people change and grow, especially when they’re young adults.

The harshest effect on the kid seems to be inconsistent bowel movements, a problem fixed by special reward-gifts from mom (of which dad disapproves — ooh, conflict!) and his confusion over why they suddenly have so many plants around the apartment (to impress the divorce social worker). Truth is, this kid will likely win by growing up a little bit less of a spoiled brat than he would have been without the divorce, although without suffering any real, character-building challenges.

It’s all a lot of meaningless nothing, and my sense is that the harshest consequences will be to the careers of Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver, who I believe have both taken a step backward in their development as serious actors. I know that romantic dramedy is not intended to be heavy, thought-provoking fare, but this film is more pretentious and empty than most of its ilk, and I anticipate that five years from now it will not be found on anyone’s list of Best Broken-Marriage Movies.

Laura Dern is the best part of "Marriage Story" — Laura Dern is the best part of “Marriage Story”

So, my diatribe aside, it’s fair to mention a few good points in this movie. The best part is Laura Dern as a feminist divorce attorney. She’s got some of the funniest lines in the film, including a rant using the Virgin Mary and God as the origin of sexual bias in parenting, saying that God is the typical father who doesn’t show up. Ha. That’s a good one. She even manages to make the line “What you’re doing is an act of courage” a treasure-trove of comic and emotional nuance. Kudos to Laura Dern for milking every moment she is on the screen.

What else? Hmm… Laura Dern is awesome and what else? Adam Driver is always awesome and this movie does not deserve him. But I will say that when he breaks down and cries, it’s the only time I felt anything in this film, and that was quite an achievement. Oh, if you are a classic-theater lover like me, the opening bit about the revised theater production of Electra is pretty cool, and thankfully given more than a few seconds on screen; we get to hear enough dialogue to make a vague thematic tie-in to issues of female fury and women’s pursuit of justice.

"Marriage Story" press conference at NYFF — “Marriage Story” press conference at NYFF

But in the end, the most encouraging thing I can say about this movie is that as a filmgoer you will be spared listening to Noah Baumbach’s self-congratulatory pontificating afterward in a live Q&A session. But you can find plenty of that blabbery by reading all the other film reviews. However, if majority consensus means anything, it’s safe to assume that they are all correct and I completely misunderstand, Helen being the Highly crass heartless heathen that she is. So be it. Go see this movie at your own brain-rotting peril.

Marriage Story premieres in theaters on Nov. 6, 2019. The film premieres on Netflix on Dec. 6, 2019. (Whatever you do, don’t pay $15 to see this movie in a theater.)

Sorry to sound so sour. Want to read about a movie released to theaters around the same time as Marriage Story that I liked a lot (despite criticism from others)? Helen Highly Recommends Motherless Brooklyn.

AT&T Presents Untold Stories: “Lucky Grandma” and “Nigerian Prince” Film Reviews + AT&T’s Own Untold Story

by HelenHighly

We have a special program to thank for two excellent indie films in the past two years – Lucky Grandma, by Chinese-American filmmakers Sasie Sealy and Angela Cheng, and Nigerian Prince, by Nigerian-American filmmaker Faraday Okoro. Both films were winners of AT&T Presents: Untold Stories, which is an alliance between AT&T and the Tribeca Film Institute. Now in its third year, the program awards a $1 million cash prize, mentorship and distribution to under-represented filmmakers with a story to tell. Okoro and Nigerian Prince was the first winner, in 2017, and the result debuted at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. I was impressed by the film and included it in my “TFF2018: What to Watch” article but unfortunately never got around to writing a full review of it, which I will try to remedy now.

Faraday Okoro gets his $1 million prize grant from the AT&T Untold Stories program

Lucky Grandma was the second winner, and the film debuted at TFF2019. I adored that unusual comedy and my research into it is what brought the Untold Stories program to my attention. It’s easy (and valid) to bemoan corporate greed and domination, but sometimes they do something worthwhile, and I believe we should acknowledge the good as well as the bad. So, Helen is Highly Grateful to AT&T for Lucky Grandma and Nigerian Prince, and Helen Highly Recommends both films. I will provide a slightly different perspective at the end of this essay.

“Lucky Grandma” filmmakers get $1 million from AT&T Untold Stories

Would I accept money from AT&T to make my movie? I probably would. Would I let AT&T put their float in my Pride Parade? I probably wouldn’t.

Lucky Grandma

First impression: What a delight! And what a relief from all the heavy, depressing documentaries that tend to dominate Tribeca Film Festival. I found myself laughing out loud for the first time in weeks – weeks of watching dozens of movies. To be accurate, there are actually quite a few comedies at TFF, and I typically don’t seek them out because my biased expectation is that they try awfully hard to be funny and usually annoy me.

Tsai Chin as Lucky Grandma

Why did I go see Lucky Grandma? I was drawn in by the poster – the weathered, tired face of an elderly Chinese woman, staring straight at the camera with a defiant scowl as she smokes a cigarette. It’s not often that you see a feature-film comedy with a woman as the lead character, much less an elderly woman, much less a Chinese woman, much less a grumpy, cigarette-smoking woman. And comedies from foreign countries, made outside the Hollywood system, tend to be more subtle, quirkier, or otherwise more appealing to me. My instincts were right; this film is fresh, funny, and fierce.

Veteran actress Tsai Chin (Casino Royale, The Joy Luck Club), delivers a bitingly honest, moody and hilarious performance as an ornery, 80-year old, chain-smoking grandma living in New York’s Chinatown. Recently widowed and angry at being left with little money to live on, despite working dutifully alongside her husband for many years, she nonetheless insists on maintaining her independence, which worries her modern, Chinese-American family. When a local fortune-teller predicts an auspicious day in her near future, Grandma heads straight to the bank, withdraws all her money, then takes a bus trip to the nearest casino, where she goes “all in,” loses her life’s savings and lands herself on the wrong side of luck, albeit with a huge bag of cash that belonged to a dead man and literally fell into her lap.

She soon becomes entrenched in the middle of a Chinatown gang war. Refusing to relinquish her “lucky” gains, Grandma employs the services of a bodyguard from a rival gang – out-haggling the brutes with her streetwise practicality. She turns out to be as bad-ass as any of the young thugs who chase her, all while cooking dumpling soup for her grandson and watching her soap operas on TV. It’s worth mentioning that Grandma’s toughest rival is the secret ringleader of the gang that’s chasing her, who also just happens to be a woman – young and beautiful, ruthless and smart, another commanding female role in this movie.

Does anyone ever consider calling the cops for assistance? Hell no; what happens in Chinatown stays in Chinatown. As wacky as the action sequences are, that I believe – the intensely insular nature of this community (which makes our access via this film all the more compelling). Grandma is simply the coolest curmudgeon you’ll find in any film; the fact that her exploits are wildly absurd does not put a dent in her immense authenticity and likeability.

With amazing dexterity for a first full-length film, director Sealy brings to life a dark comedy about immigrant life, the vulnerabilities of aging, and the primacy of family. Shot on location in bustling streets, a web of alleyways, casino buses and underground mahjong parlors, with a cast of richly drawn characters, including Taiwanese breakout-talent Corey Ha as the bodyguard, Lucky Grandma is a love letter to Chinatown and a tribute to tough old broads everywhere.

Lucky Grandma and her bodyguard

If Clint Eastwood were an old Chinese lady, he could maybe play Grandma in this film. But actually, he doesn’t have the emotional range. Nonetheless, I’ll go ahead and say this film is like A Fistful of Dollars meets Get Shorty meets The Joy Luck Club. It’s not easy to put together a lineage for this film – a gangland comedy with a good-bad-ugly protagonist who is also a nurturing Chinese grandma. And that’s no-doubt what made it special enough to win the Untold Stories prize at Tribeca (and exemplifies how female filmmakers do add unique value).

Lucky Grandma is currently still on the film festival circuit and has not yet had a theatrical release. I’ll try my best to keep you posted with updates.

Nigerian Prince

“Nigerian Prince” poster

Also a bit of a genre-bender, I initially included Nigerian Prince in my Pick List for Tribeca Film Festival 2018, without noticing that it was the first film to come out of the new “AT&T Presents: Untold Stories” program. In terms of choosing a category for it, I faltered; it feels like a documentary but isn’t, and I finally listed it as a foreign film, even though it really isn’t that either.

But it’s made by a Nigerian-American, Faraday Okoro, and takes place in Nigeria and was shot on location, vividly capturing a very foreign place. Nigerian Prince offers a snapshot of a world not often seen on film, introducing the reality behind the all-too-familiar junk-email scams that target Westerners and are surprisingly persuasive pleas from a supposed member of a royal family, urgently requesting financial assistance with the false promise of a generous return of funds with profit. These scams are so prevalent (and oddly successful) that they’ve touched all of us, in one way or another, and we can’t really fathom what it is on the other side of the world that produces them and brings them into our American lives. This debut feature from writer-director Faraday Okoro gives cinematic life to characters who have previously only lurked in the shadows of the American imagination.

“Nigerian Prince,” an AT&T Untold Story

When troubled American teenager Eze (Antonio J. Bell) is sent away to his mother’s native Nigeria against his will, to live with his aunt Grace (Tina Mba), he quickly finds himself entangled in a dangerous web of scams and corruption, with his desperate con-artist cousin Pius as his guide. Despite his Nigerian heritage, Eze is a stranger in a strange land where no one can be trusted. This film, built upon a framework of strong performances, seamlessly blends thrilling sequences of elaborate deception and dramatic tension with surprising moments of humor, making it much more than a fish-out-of-water tale. Newcomer Chinaza Uche is particularly brilliant as Pius, his magnetism and cunning matched only by the sadness underlying his performance.

“Nigerian Prince”

The film itself is a remarkable feat, shot on location in Lagos and finished in just under 12 months. It’s a feature film that often feels like a documentary. The intensity feels real, and you will sincerely worry how these dramatic circumstances will end. All the exciting con jobs make this movie part crime-thriller, and the good laughs make it part comedy, but its social conscience is what defines this as an important film. This is a movie to care about and think about and talk about.

For this film, I’m gonna say it’s The Asphalt Jungle meets Midnight Express meets District 9, except a little more light-hearted – not totally tragic. I am not especially good at this game of naming theoretical film lineages, but I think these Untold Stories films are particularly difficult to pigeon-hole. This is a uniquely original film experience.

Nigerian Prince was a promising start to the Untold Stories program. It was sold to Vertical Entertainment and somewhere along the way acquired Spike Lee as an Executive Producer. It got a theatrical run in October 2018 and is now available for streaming from Amazon Prime, among others.

AT&T’s Untold Story

AT&T has done a lot of good with their Untold Stories program. I cannot end this article, however, before I give fair complaint to AT&T on two counts. (Skip this section if you prefer to keep your ethical outlook simple.) First, I am being relentlessly hounded by a collection company that erroneously believes I owe money to AT&T. As many people have experienced, I am sure, AT&T internet/TV/phone service is one of many companies that – in addition to providing a valuable service – use their powerful position to employ unfair business practices and make it virtually impossible for the consumer to fight back. So even though my credit card investigated my complaint and determined that I was right and AT&T was wrong in auto-withdrawing money from my account that was not due to them, and my credit card refunded me the money, AT&T has now handed over my “case” to one of those ruthless collection agencies, and I will no-doubt pay a price in a decline of my credit rating. So, I am no fan of AT&T. But if my stolen money went to fund these two films, maybe it was worth it. These are the times we live in.

This is not my larger issue with AT&T in this article but nonetheless, it seems an ideal opportunity to include a clip from John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight, which always has its finger on the pulse of what is going on (or going wrong). FYI, AT&T owns HBO, which owns John Oliver, so this contradiction is somewhat relevant. Enjoy:

AT&T logo

More importantly, right now in New York, we are hearing a dispute about the popular LGBTQ Pride Parade; some critics say it has become overrun by corporate sponsors, so they have organized an alternative Queer Liberation March for the same day. (Click here for the New York Times article.) It’s a worthy debate – the role of corporations and whether they serve to enable or restrict the advancement of minority-group agendas and their fights for rights and freedom. In its article, The New York Times explains, “The group calls the Pride March an advertising showcase for floats sponsored by major corporations…that distract from the message of Stonewall.” [This is the 50^th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which are widely considered to be the start of the modern gay-rights movement.]

AT&T Pride Month logo

During Pride Month, many corporations unveil rainbow versions of their logos in a show of solidarity to the LGBTQ community, including AT&T, but their actions don’t always match the image they try to convey. According to a new report from Popular Information, AT&T donated $2.7 million to 193 aggressively anti-gay politicians from 2017 to 2018 while receiving a perfect score from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), which declared them among the “Best Places to Work for LGBTQ Equality.” These politicians include Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who opposed the Violence Against Women Act because it included protections for LGBTQ people. Blackburn is also against marriage equality. Click here to see John Oliver call out his new parent company, AT&T, for supporting Steve King, a well-known “white nationalist.” Or, click here to read about AT&T giving $200,000 to politicians leading abortion-bans in six states. Thus, corporations have the power to lift people up, or to crush them, or to co-opt and commercialize their interests, and they frequently contradict themselves and do all three at once. Life is so darned complicated; the line between right and wrong zigs and zags. And the two films featured in this article – made possible by AT&T, understand that dilemma better than most.

Watch the trailer for Nigerian Prince, below:

Sealy and Cheng talk about the process of getting Lucky Grandma made, below:

“Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes” Documentary Review

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by guest contributor, Ian D.

This is a good movie to watch when you’re stoned. (And being stoned for this review helps too.)

"Blue Note Records" film poster — “Blue Note Records” film poster

Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes, a film by Sophie Huber, tosses you straight into a stylish mood poem. It’s medium-raucous to medium-mellow jazz with low-toned shots of “cool cats” opinionating on a range of topics – improvised jazz-chat. Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Robert Glasper, Norah Jones, Don Was, and more, these jazz musicians cross a discourse-portal to play in dimensions of possibility beyond the dilemmas of yes or no. Consequently, they have a points of view more engaging than your Average Joe. It’s conversation composition – hard and soft, tales of tribulation trumpets and triumph, high and low, cool and hot as jazz.

Alfred Lion heard American jazz as a wee kid in 1920’s Germany. Little Alfred was blown out of his lederhosen by the “good time Jesus” music of King Oliver. Cosmic connection was made – imaginings of N’awlins and self-expression; wow. The Nazis came, with their diabolical directives. No jazz. No decadent other-world music. No Jews. The Lion family fled. They landed in New York City, in the land of the free.

"Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes" documentary — “Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes” documentary

Alfred worked in the music biz for a couple years and managed to open a studio in 1939, with Max Margulis, and later Francis Wolff. Blue Note Records was born. He loved the music and cared about the music-makers. A safe-haven for creativity arose. Legendary happenings were pressed into vinyl. Alfred had the sensitivity of an artist and enough steely resolve to navigate the stormy oceans of predatory Capitalism. Bravo! Lion had a brilliant ear. Wolff had an impossibly cool eye.

“For influence, it’s right up there with Democracy and Rule of Law.”

A pictorial history is presented with Wolff’s vintage photos and arty album covers, plus archival footage, giving a no-punches-pulled timeline from 1940s to present, featuring the heavy hitters from La Monde de Jazz, delineating the politics and protests, the fusion of high and low culture and influences of gospel, blues, soul, bebop, hard-bop, avant-garde and beyond, bringing it in, breaking it up, blowing it out, handing it down, and the fight to keep it free, the fight to keep it open.

They take us up to the present, with young musicians embracing jazz and transforming to hip-hop – a newly defiant legacy-culture. We get their worldview, too. Hey, this reviewer wouldn’t mind spending an evening getting stoned with these guys. Perhaps some bread and butter and jam. Would be cool to jam with these hot cats.

This movie left this Brit wondering why a homegrown art form like jazz has such a limited support system in its country of origin. How does a jazz musician get a million dollars? Well, you start with two million… and chuckle at an old, sad joke. First line of the movie: “Why would someone start a record company not to make money?” And yet, with its smooth diplomacy, jazz has spread American culture all over the world. For influence, it’s right up there with Democracy and Rule of Law. Where is the justice? Go ask Jazz; it’s at Blue Note Records – still there, still smokin’.

I give this movie a two-toke rating.

I remain your humble, east-coast-elite servant.

Watch the trailer for the Blue Note Records film below:

News: This film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018 and has since been shown at more than 50 international film festivals. It will screen in New York at the Metrograph beginning June 14 and in Santa Monica at the Laemmle Monica Film Center beginning June 28. The film will then roll out to cinemas across the nation this summer followed by television broadcasts and a DVD release later in the year.

Review: “The Spy Behind Home Plate” by Aviva Kempner

by HelenHighly

"The Spy Behind Home Plate" poster — “The Spy Behind Home Plate” poster

A common criticism often heard in reviewing documentaries is “it’s more a Dateline segment than a movie;” even good investigative journalism does not in itself make a movie. It might be worth a twenty-minute watch on T.V. as an extended news story, but a real movie, especially one that we go to see in a theater, has a different set of qualifications. Sometimes “advocacy documentaries” can be forgiven their school-bookishness because the subject is so urgently relevant; their social or political importance overrides their artistic mediocrity. But how do you justify The Spy Behind Home Plate, written and directed by Aviva Kempner? This documentary, in theaters now, is more of an answer to a Jeopardy question than it is a movie. Or maybe it’s an entire Jeopardy episode – as chock full of rapid-fire bits of quirky trivia as it is. But Helen is Highly Reluctant to recommend this as a movie or even a Dateline news story.

Archival material from "The Spy Behind Home Plate" — Archival material from “The Spy Behind Home Plate”

I can give you the blurb from the press release: Morris Moe Berg was an enigmatic and brilliant Jewish baseball player turned spy. Berg caught and fielded in the major leagues during baseball’s Golden Age in the 1920s and 1930s, but very few people know* that Berg also worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), spying in Europe and playing a prominent role in America’s efforts to undermine the German atomic bomb program during WWII.

* Well, very few people beyond all those who read the New York Times best-selling book on the subject, or saw the feature film.

As intriguing as that description might seem, Kempner does not even begin to deliver a compelling story. Beyond sensationalizing the overt oddity of the facts, this film feels like Kempner had a thick stack of research material that she handed off to an editor and figured people would be too overwhelmed by the flood of detail to notice that she forgot to direct the movie. It really does remind me of Jeopardy in that it’s all answers and it seems the audience is expected to supply the questions or the relevance or the reason why we should care.

And in fact, there is already a much-better biographical film, starring Paul Rudd, that tells this story — The Catcher Was a Spy, based on a best-selling book of the same name. So what exactly does Kempner think she is adding to this part of history, other than her own name?

Oddly, this is Kempner’s second documentary about a Jewish baseball player. Her previous film was The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg, about a Detroit Tigers slugger who combated bigotry by becoming baseball’s first Jewish star. Variety called the film, “good-natured” and “a natural for broadcast outlets.” Not exactly a ticket-seller. The New York Times called it “valuable as history,” despite its “flaws.” I did also see one of Kempner’s earlier efforts – Rosenwald (2015); it was well-researched and dry and rather pointless. I mean, it seemed like it was a thin but worthy chapter that had fallen out of an old history book and gotten lost. So, kudos to Kempner for retrieving it and putting it back on the shelf. But that doesn’t make it a movie.

Why do I feel so annoyed by this pallid little film that has found its way into actual movie theaters? It’s the smugness of calling yourself a writer/director when you are not especially talented at either — the pretense of being an auteur. And it’s taking up space of something better. There are so many excellent and powerful documentaries these days; it’s the heyday of documentaries, and many are truly works of art. It’s time for the hacks to step aside. There is too much great stuff to see to waste our energies on films like this one.

"OJ: Made in America" documentary — “OJ: Made in America” documentary

Remember OJ: Made in America, the five-part ESPN documentary? How much did we all not care to see that movie? Didn’t we all think we had already seen way too much of that drama when it played out in real time not that many years ago on national TV? But all you had to do (or should do now, if you didn’t see it in 2016) was watch fifteen minutes of the first part before you were hooked and knew that this was something much bigger and much more meaningful than you could have imagined. That’s what a talented filmmaker does — carves out a story from the mound of facts and reveals some deeper truth, rather than just throw information at you. Made in America (not to be confused with the other OJ films) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, also screened at the Tribeca Film Festival and was theatrically released in NYC and Los Angeles, then debuted on ABC in 2016 and aired on ESPN. It received critical acclaim and won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The Washington Post called it “a towering achievement.” I bring that up here because that’s the perfect example of a sports-related story about a complicated man that ultimately became a historically significant and socially and politically relevant story that had soul-shaking impact when it aired. That’s what a great documentary does. Just saying.

Kempner’s bio states that she is an American filmmaker, born in Germany, whose documentaries investigate non-stereotypical images of Jews in history. Her mother was a Holocaust survivor and her father a US army officer. Aviva is an activist for voting rights in D.C. In an online interview I read that she got her love of baseball from her father. Well… maybe PBS would want to run a biographical miniseries on Jewish baseball players? Aviva, do you have one more? Otherwise, maybe you should get a new gig. I would suggest that your own life story might make a good autobiographical film, complex and unusual as it seems, but you don’t quite have a knack for finding the heart in your characters or the pulse in their stories. You seem to enjoy historical research. Have you given the people at Jeopardy a call?

For three recommendations of recent, high-quality historical/social/political documentaries, check out my “Freedom Films” article. It includes one film that offers truly under-appreciated information about German Jewish refugees Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, who founded Blue Note Records in New York in 1939 — the most important record label in the history of jazz and also a major contribution to civil rights in this country.

For a review of a documentary that is a true work of art and is SO much more worthy of space in a theater, read about Our Time Machine.

Freedom Films: “A Night at Switch n’ Play” “Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes” and “Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation”

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It’s Pride Month, and we’re coming up to July 4th and Independence Day, so HelenHighly discusses three new documentaries whose hearts beat the drums of freedom, passion and change, and how in each film, art is the impetus that brings those concepts to life. Helen Highly Recommends A Night at Switch n’ Play, Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes, and Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation.

Dear Beloved Readers: Helen Highly Encourages you to read this article in full, rather than skim to find my critique about any one film. I wrote this to be a commentary essay more than a set of film reviews, and it is not structured as three separate reviews, so it disappoints me when I learn that people are missing my larger point (and the larger message in each of these films) and deciding, in advance of reading, which film interests them and which does not. One of my key messages is that each film is about something more than its central subject. And I happen to think that “something more” is worth at least reading about, even if you don’t watch all three films. Feel free to leave a comment if you have a response.

"A Night at Switch n' Play" poster — “A Night at Switch n’ Play” poster

The live Switch n’ Play show has got underway – a neo-burlesque alt-drag “happening” at a small saloon in Brooklyn. After the weirdly sexy and comical introductions and instructions, there is the first act by Pearl Harbor (pronouns: they/them), to which…. truly, words cannot do justice, although I will merely mention that the act includes pulling a string of pearls from inside the body of a cooked chicken, and no nudity whatsoever, but soulful lip-syncing to an aching love song by Radiohead, after which I – viewing this via the documentary film, A Night at Switch n’ Play, feel the impulse to cry and laugh and cheer at the same time but am too awestruck to make a sound. And then “Femmecee” Miss Malice returns to the stage and asks the audience:

“Have you said goodbye to your former selves yet? Have you come to accept that you will be changed by this show?”

Pearl Harbor at Switch n' Play — Pearl Harbor at Switch n’ Play

She’s not kidding. This show and this film are all about transformation – for the performers and for the audience. And that’s art, y’all. In case anyone has forgotten, these young switch-n-players are here to remind us: Art Is Transformation. Art began with taking a stick to a prehistoric cave wall and transforming it into an imagined world of people and animals. And today art continues to transform materials into new objects and people into new personas that in turn stimulate transformation in their viewers. That’s what it’s all about.

“I don’t care if it hurts; I want to have control; I want a perfect body; I want a perfect soul… I wish I was special.” – lyrics from “Creep” by Radiohead
Click to listen.

In this show, we see men dressing as women, women dressing as men, people bending gender roles to the point where we are not sure who is dressing as what, someone dressing as a Twinkie, someone doing striptease, someone doing horror, all body types, all ethnicities.* It’s wildly entertaining, and it’s much more than just weird. These performers are keenly aware of who they are and what they are doing. Whether they are on stage twirling tassels or tossing raw meat, this is some heady frivolity going on.

* The correct terminology, btw, is “trans, non-binary, and femme performers doing drag and burlesque.” My apologies for misstating, but I am leaving my error as evidence of Helen’s Highly Clueless “outsider” amazement. My point is that even if you are as clueless and straight as I am, this movie is for you. (And yeah, it’s time for all of us to get it right, me included, which I will, from here on out.)

A Night at Switch n’ Play is seductive and invigorating. The show manages to connect with our vital organs and the film takes the audience beyond the “play,” as we join its revelatory, thrilling, and emotional journey. At this seemingly ordinary neighborhood bar, the natural interaction between performer and audience is taken to the highest level; it’s a psychic collaboration, and even as the distant film audience, you will feel profoundly engaged.

In fact, the film audience has an advantage over the live audience because in addition to watching generous sections of the show, we are also privy to backstage interviews. These recorded chats are candid and personal as well as knowledgeable and thoughtful.

Q: Do you feel sexy when you perform?

A: (thinks) I feel powerful. I feel a bit dangerous. I feel that I deserve and am demanding attention. That’s a good feeling. Is that sexy?

Q: How would you define what you are doing?

A: It’s maybe burlesque, maybe drag; it’s something in between. I always try to land in a grey area (laughs) on stage and in life.

One performer marvels that at Switch n’ Play, they were able to express their non-binary feelings and contemplate the possibility that there could be “a drag persona that isn’t gendered.” It’s not impersonation; it isn’t about how you look. It’s about feeling good about who you are and expressing yourself as vividly as possible.

K. James at the milkman at Switch n' Play — K. James at the milkman at Switch n’ Play

In the interviews it is repeatedly reinforced that the unusual freedom and support at the Switch n’ Play Collective is what has enabled all these performers to develop as artists. One performer speaks about her South American Muslim background and how this experience has empowered her to accept her body and take ownership her sexual and individual identity. But this is not self-indulgence or group therapy; what we are watching could not occur without a disciplined process of creative exploration. These are some ambitious artists and some highly skilled performances. This is performance art.

It makes me feel old to say it, but these are kids – still talking about graduating from Sarah Lawrence college and such. And it’s inspiring to see these youngsters doing such great work: it’s innovative; it’s radical; it’s subversive; it’s delightful; it’s horrifying; it’s fantastically fun; it’s courageous; it’s freeing and it’s life-affirming. If you think we have lost our humanity in America, watch this movie.

And though the artists don’t say it directly, I will add that it is apparent they are all speaking as part of an oppressed community – the “queer” community (as they call it in the film), which has suffered and continues to suffer from social and political abuse and injustice. It is worth remembering that 2019 is the 50-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which saw members of the LGBTQ community clash with police in New York’s Greenwich Village in what is widely seen as the start of the modern gay rights movement. What is happening nearby at Switch n’ Play, and at other venues around the country, is art born of adversity; it is the soulful song of struggle – with some strong similarities to jazz and to hip-hop, which brings me to the next part of this combo film review.

Side Note: Do you know origin of the term “drag”? It dates back to Shakespearean times, when the actors were all male because it was considered improper for women to take part in public spectacle or religious ritual. When the men had to wear the long skirts of female characters, which dragged on the floor, they referred to it is as playing drag. Drag was not associated with homosexuality until much later.

Cross-dressing was a pervasive part of American vaudeville acts from the turn of the century until the late 1930s and considered an innocuous comic routine. It is there that it became entwined with burlesque and striptease. The modern iteration of drag queens developed at underground clubs during Prohibition (when all bars had to go underground), and they were “supported” by the Mafia, who agreed to sell bootleg booze to gay clubs and provide protection from police raids. Jump forward to Stonewall, and Tim Curry in Rocky Horror Picture Show, then Boy George, consider the stylings of David Bowie, and then leap ahead to RuPaul and that still leaves you in the dust of the ferocious freshness that is happening now in Brooklyn.

Hey, just for fun, I am adding in this recent event. Click for Variety news story: Taylor Swift Gives Surprise Performance at LGBT Landmark Stonewall Inn (GLAAD I Could Make it.) See the end of this article for video of the performance. AND also, for fair perspective, I am linking to the Esquire criticism of Taylor Swift’s new, pro-GLAAD song, “You Need to Calm Down,” which she released just 24 hours before her Stonewall appearance: “No Shade, But There’s a Wrong Way to Make a Gay Anthem.” If nothing else, that article, plus another at Esquire about Swift’s new activism, illustrates how raw and uneasy this social issue remains, and how history very much informs our understanding of current events (which makes the next two movies in this article all the more important).

A Night at Switch n’ Play, directed by Cody Stickels, premiered recently at Toronto’s Inside Out Film Festival. It’s film festival season, so I happen to have just recently seen two other documentaries that Switch n’ Play brings to mind, and it’s not due to subject as much as spirit – the spirit of change and of freedom.

Speaking of spirit, if you were to research the etymology of the word “jazz,” you would find that it’s based on an obsolete slang term from the 1800s – “jasm,” which meant spirit, energy and vigor. Jasm is derived from an earlier term – “jism,” which was defined as spirit, energy, or spunk, and “spunk” could also be interpreted to mean semen or sperm, making jism a taboo word. So, Helen Highly Suggests that calling the queer things happening at Switch n’ Play “jazz drag” might be worth considering.

"Blue Notes Records" film poster — “Blue Notes Records” film poster

Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes is a documentary by Sophie Huber about the history of the most important record label in the history of jazz – and by extension, that of American music. (See film trailer below.) Founded in New York in 1939 by German Jewish refugees Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, the story of Blue Note Records (Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, etc.) goes beyond the landmark recordings and encompasses the pursuit of musical freedom and the idea of music as a revolutionary and transformative force for African Americans and their audiences. The themes of this film are almost shockingly consistent with the themes in A Night at Switch n’ Play.

And it’s also worth noting that the term “blue note” is another connection. In jazz or blues music, a blue note is one that, for expressive purposes, is sung or played at a slightly different pitch than standard. This practice is also commonly referred to as “bending” a note. Again, Helen Highly Suggests that the gender-bending expressiveness in A Night at Switch n’ Play might also be aptly called “blue drag.” And the Switch n’ Play idea of performing in “the grey area” is also a key element of jazz. This documentary emphasizes that jazz thrives on musical diversity, experimentation, improvisation and emotional passion, and it requires a high level of skill. Plus, the music is always layered with life experience; it’s personal. And so that makes the Blue Note film an ideal companion piece for the Switch n’ Play film.

The focus of the Blue Note documentary is conversations with jazz icons as well as today’s groundbreaking Blue Note musicians. It is through this testimony that the film reveals the vital and enduring mission of the Blue Note company and directly connects jazz to hip-hop. The notion of handing the torch to a younger generation of artists who are addressing a modernized version of the same-old racial struggle, using newly inventive and resourceful methods while building on their heritage, is what makes this documentary more than just a tribute film.

Never has it been made clearer to this viewer that the music and culture of hip-hop is an act of reverence for the pioneers and heroes who came before them and a solemn acceptance of the burden that is being handed down. Of course, jazz expresses a wide range of human emotions, including supreme joy. It is delicate and it is boisterous. It manages to push the conventional boundaries at every angle. And this film captures that broadness of spirit and the powerful pleasure of free expression.

There is not a lot of music in this film, however. It is more of a think-piece. But jazz-lovers will feast on it, I imagine. And even I, who am not a jazz aficionado, found Blue Note to be fascinating and emotionally compelling. It is an insightful and at times startling history lesson and also an intimate window into the creative process. It is full of gorgeous black and white photos and artfully designed album covers, but be prepared for lots of still shots and not much movement. Nonetheless, especially if you think jazz is dead, you should watch this film; it is aggressively political and relevant. And even though I wrote that this is more than a tribute film, it is in large part a tribute, and it’s a loving, satisfying, and thoughtful tribute to the one true form of American music and to the daring people who made it possible. If you think American democracy and freedom are dead (or dying), then you should watch both these films.

"Woodstock Three Days That Defined a Generation" poster — “Woodstock Three Days That Defined a Generation” poster

Speaking of art as it relates to freedom (and 50^th anniversaries): There is Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation, directed by Barak Goodman, which premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. It celebrates the 50^th anniversary of the iconic music festival that has become a symbol for the power of youthful passion and vision when it comes together in the pursuit of freedom. More than 400,000 young people gathered on a farm in upstate New York, where there was not adequate space or supplies to accommodate them all. They came from far and wide with the unyielding determination of a crusade, and instead of creating an enormous disaster/riot that the press was predicting with near hysteria, they showed the world that the power of love and the spirit of peace, with the addition of music (art), can make glorious and unexpected history.

Repeatedly throughout this film, via archival footage, we hear those young folks remark on how inspiring it is to find so many others who share their values and hopes and their sense of misfit-identity that in many cases had not been defined beyond a feeling, but that would be defined and empowered by the time that weekend was over. It was a transformative experience, by all accounts.

And in Switch n’ Play, we also hear again and again, in the performer interviews, that sense of wonder and relief at discovering a community of others who made them feel understood and accepted. One artist says specifically that in this collective group, whoever you are or want to be, “there is space for it.”

In contrast to previous Woodstock films, Director Barak Goodman specifically focuses his documentary on the audience and organizers and their process of discovering and then embracing their part in democracy – how the Woodstock music festival and the phenomenon it became intersected with national politics at the time and to some extent how it suggests possibilities for present-day politics. In his review, Ron Simon writes, “Goodman sees the sixties era ‘forged in crisis,’ much like today’s generation, with different threats, notably climate change and disillusionment with institutions. He wants his version of the festival to inspire, emphasizing how Woodstock tried to be ‘a new city.’” Goodman sees his film and that event as a testament to the power of young people to use their passion to achieve great things. (But again, the film includes more commentary than music.)

We learn in this documentary that Richie Havens’ famous song “Freedom” was created spontaneously on stage at Woodstock; he improvised based on an old spiritual, “Motherless Child” (not unlike jazz), and that song became an anthem for a generation. Later, Havens explained, “I think the word ‘freedom’ came out of my mouth because I saw it in front of me. I saw the freedom that we were looking for. And every person sharing it, and so that word came out…The establishment was foolish enough to give us all this freedom and we used it in every way we could.”

These three films seem to speak in concert, with the same underlying melody — young people wanting to claim their power, exercise their freedom, advocate for love and harmony. All three films celebrate the ways that youthful passion has reshaped the world. All three films depict despair transformed into optimism, isolation into solidarity, with art as the catalyst. All three stories come from a substantial heritage and yet are relevant right now. Happy Birthday America, and Happy Pride Month. Let’s all try to come together and make the most of it. #FreedomOf Expression

Watch the trailer for the Blue Note Records documentary below:

Click: For a full review of Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes.

News: Blue Note opens 6/14 at Metrograph NYC and on 6/28 at Laemmle Monica Film Center in LA. The film will then roll out to cinemas across the nation this summer followed by television broadcasts and a DVD release later in the year.

News: Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation is now available online FOR FREE! Click here to watch.

Watch that iconic Richie Havens performance of “Freedom,” below:

Interested in a music documentary that is just plain full of great American music, some rare footage, and not too much talking? Try Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives.

News: Less than 24 hours after she dropped her new single “You Need to Calm Down,” which includes shout-outs to GLAAD and the LGBT community, she made a surprise appearance before about 100 people at the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village, helping to commemorate the 50th year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Watch Taylor Swift sing “Shake it Off” at the Stonewall Inn, below. (Is something wrong with this picture? Esquire can explain what seems off. Although… Stonewall Inn thought it was worth having Swift perform. What’s the point in putting limits on who is allowed to care? But that’s just Helen Highly Clueless speaking.)

“17 Blocks” Documentary Review

May 28, 2019Film Commentary!7 Blocks 2019 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, 17 Blocks Best Editing Award, 17 Blocks documentary review, 17 Blocks film review, 17 blocks from the Capitol, 17 blocks from the White House, 17 Blocks HelenHighly review, 17 Blocks home video, 17 Blocks review, 17 Blocks Tribeca Film Festival, 17 Blocks Washington D.C., 17 Blocks Washington to Washington, 2019 AFI Docs 17 Blocks, 2019 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, 2019 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 17 Blocks, AFI Docs 17 Blocks, Davy Rothbart 17 Blocks, Emmanuel Sanford 17 Blocks, Emmanuel Sanford documentary, gun violence documentary, HelenHighly 17 Blocks, HelenHighly 17 Blocks review, KVIFFest 17 Blocks, WashingtontoWashington.org 17 Blockshelenhighly

by HelenHighly

17 Blocks, a documentary by Davy Rothbart, was included in my initial Tribeca Film Festival 2019 Pick-List because of the compelling and devastating use of a home-video archive. I was interested in archival-themed films, and I probably would not have watched this film otherwise. But once you see this, it’s tough to forget; it’s a family memoir that grabs on tight. The film was created due to a chance meeting, in 1999, of two kids at a Washington D.C. public basketball court and director-producer Davy Rothbart (a frequent contributor to This American Life).

Fifteen-year-old Smurf Sanford and his nine-year-old brother Emmanuel lived in the neighborhood, which is only 17 blocks from the U.S. Capitol building but is a dangerous and decrepit part of the city that outsiders go to great lengths to avoid. Rothbart lived nearby and over time became friends with these boys and then their mother Cheryl and sister Denice. When Emmanuel expressed interest in becoming a filmmaker, Rothbart lent him a video camera.

17 Blocks, documentary at Tribeca Film Festival

The little boy began shooting home movies, a project that continued on and off among the family members for the next 20 years. The resulting footage, disjointed in its storytelling and often rough in its sound and light-quality, is earnestly pieced together by Rothbart and forms an intense portrait of a loving family dealing with life in a neighborhood defined by poverty, drug addiction and gun violence. Its authentic “cinema verite” approach includes filming of a brutal, real-life street beating and other harrowing scenes where the viewing audience will want to intervene, but we cannot. The pain of helplessly observing all the havoc and destruction in this film is part of its point, and its power. It is not surprising that this film won the Tribeca Film Festival Award for Best Editing of a Feature Documentary.

“This documentary sticks to its guns, so to speak; it shows what was recorded.”

One of the most memorable scenes in 17 Blocks is shot in a small, local store. The shop specializes in personalized T-shirts — the type that suburban-youth sports teams might wear. But this store’s most frequent order is for shirts honoring people who have recently died, their photos surrounded by messages of remembrance. The span between the printed birth and death dates is almost always terribly short. Watching mourners ordering these cotton tombstones is stunning in its ordinary, everyday nature. We get glimpses of how one person’s death affects others — the siblings, parents, friends, and how it ripples through the community. We watch in awe as broken people rise to take care of those around them.

The film insists on being entirely observational and objective and does not exclude scenes that are grotesque or offensive. Some critics are questioning the rightness of what seems at times like an invasion of privacy or superfluous sensationalism. But this documentary sticks to its guns, so to speak; it shows what was recorded. We do get some interviews and voice-over narration to soften and explain, but the film never looks away. It is a true document, for better or worse.

“Perhaps the most hopeful aspect of this film is that it exists.”

Not all moments are bleak; the film shows us gratifying scenes of family dinners, dancing, celebrations, also Emmanuel’s high school graduation. We see moments of triumph and reasons for optimism — a second chance, a new job, people growing stronger through adversity, a younger generation with a brighter vision, all very personal and very real. The most powerful force in this family is love.

I imagine the filmmaker wanted an uplifting conclusion to his decidedly humanistic movie. But late in the story, when the lightening bolt of tragedy strikes directly into this family that we have come to know so intimately, it’s hard for the film to recover. We are reminded how this decades-long documentary is entirely unscripted, unpredictable and raw. Perhaps the most hopeful aspect of this film is that it exists — that this family, even in their darkest moments, had the wisdom to understand the value in telling their story; they opened up their lives to the rest of us in an unusually courageous way. Viewers are left to draw their own conclusions.

However, before the credits roll, we are presented with a screen graphic that dedicates the film to Washington D.C. homicide victims and then lists all their names from the last decade. It requires very tiny text to fit them all in.

///

From the Director’s Notes of 17 Blocks, we learn this:

“In honor of their slain family member, in 2010 the Sanfords and I started an organization called Washington To Washington (WashingtonToWashington.org), bringing groups of kids from their D.C. neighborhood on a week-long camping trip each summer to visit some of America’s most beautiful National Parks and Forests. We hike, swim, canoe, ride horses, play games, build campfires, make S’mores, and trade ghost stories. These trips can’t cure all of the challenges many of these kids face, but offer a chance for them to broaden their perspectives, experience the joys of nature, and discover worlds beyond the block they live on. In recent years, we’ve added groups from Detroit and New Orleans, and over the past 9 years we’ve brought over 500 kids to explore the Great Outdoors; this summer, we’ll celebrate our 10th Annual Trip. The idea of something positive coming out of tragedy has been heartening to us all.”

News: 17 Blocks will go back to where it all started, taking part in AFI Docs Impact Lab in Washington D.C., June 19-23.

News: 17 Blocks will be part of the 2019 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, starting June 28. This is the largest film festival in the Czech Republic and the most prestigious such festival in Central and Eastern Europe.

News: As of late 2019, 17 Blocks continues to play to broad acclaim on the film festival circuit but has not yet received theatrical release. The film’s website stays up to date, listing all upcoming screenings.

Christo Film: “Walking on Water” Review, Directed by Andrey Paounov

May 19, 2019Film CommentaryAlbert David Maysles Christo, Andrey Paounov Bulgarian, Andrey Paounov Christo, Andrey Paounov director, Andrey Paounov film review, Andrey Paounov Floating Piers documentary, Andrey Paounov interview, art documentary review, Christo Albert Maysles, Christo art documentary, Christo beauty and death, Christo box set documentaries, Christo box set DVDs, Christo envornmental art documentary, Christo film documentary review, Christo film Walking on Water, Christo film Walking on Water review, Christo Floating Piers docuementary, Christo Floating Piers film, Christo Floating Piers movie, Christo installation art documentary, Christo installation artist documentary, Christo installation artist transforms environments into experiential artwork, Christo interview, Christo Jeanne Claude artists, Christo Jeanne Claude documentary, Christo Maysles brothers, Christo The Gates New York, Christo Walking on Water review, HelenHighly Christo documentary, HelenHighly The Gates, HelenHighly Walking on Water review, Kino Lorber Walking on Water, Maysles cinema verite, Maysles cinema verite Christo, Maysles direct cinema Christo, Walking in Water premiere, Walking on Water Andrey Paounov, Walking on Water documentary review, Walking on Water Film Forum, Walking on Water film review, Walking on Water HelenHighly, Walking on Water review, Walking on Water Toronto Film Festivalhelenhighly

by HelenHighly

Walking on Water, directed by Andrey Paounov, is a new documentary about the latest exhibit / production by Christo, the renowned installation artist who transforms environments into experiential artwork, on an epic scale. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, was acquired by Kino Lorber and is getting a theatrical run in the U.S. this spring (beginning this weekend at Film Forum in NYC). Helen Highly Recommends you see it – in a theater, ideally, on as large a screen as possible. Walking on Water chronicles Christo’s magnificent 2016 project, “Floating Piers,” in which he laid out a three-kilometer-long. buoyant, fabric-wrapped path across Lake Iseo in northern Italy, designed to let people stroll across the gently undulating orange surface. (It is orange, or golden yellow, or “saffron,” as Christo insists.) In the film, we see the artist’s sometimes-cantankerous sometimes-charming personality do battle with technology, bureaucracy, corruption and the elements, resulting in an installation that is spectacularly beautiful and a documentary that captures the chaos of creation.

It’s important to note that, despite what has been reported elsewhere, the film’s title, Walking on Water, does not refer to the floating piers in the project. Director Paounov is the one who named the film, independently from Christo, and he says that it refers to what he learned from his “experience of working with Christo” – Christo’s way of being an artist and handling the work. It’s about the creative endeavor – “the journey.” Paounov says:

“In the film, I tried to translate this experience and invite the audience to walk on water with Christo.”

The Enigma of Christo

I am a Christo fan. I was thrilled to be in New York in February 2005 to see “The Gates” – 7,503 saffron-colored free-hanging-fabric panels installed along 23 miles of pathways in Central Park, which seemed “like a golden river appearing and disappearing through the bare branches of the trees,” if you listen to Christo describe it. Some New Yorkers complained that the flowing drapes of the installation, which bragged of using 2/3 of the amount of steel used to build the Eiffel Tower, was an irritation to bikers. Others said it looked like a Halloween parade and decried the “claptrap” of Christo’s doggedness in describing the fabric as “saffron” when it appeared to the casual observer as clearly orange.

"The Gates," by Christo, 2005 — “The Gates,” by Christo, 2005

On the Subject of Saffron: The controversy of Christo naming his often-used orange as saffron has been an ongoing topic of ridicule and point of debate, which came up once again with the installation depicted in this new film. I feel compelled to defend Christo’s use of the word “saffron,” which is both a color and a spice. Appropriately, it is the most precious and most expensive spice in the world. Saffron filaments, or threads, are actually the dried stigmas of the saffron flower, Crocus Sativus Linnaeus. Each flower contains only three stigmas. These threads must be picked from each flower by hand, and more than 75,000 of these flowers are needed to produce just one pound of saffron filaments. But because of the intensity of its aroma and bright orange-yellow color, saffron is typically used sparingly in food. Paradoxically, the flavor of saffron is subtle and difficult to describe; it’s a taste that is hard to pin down, sort of an enigma, similar to Christo himself.

Maybe I’m too easy, but I liked it – “The Gates,” when I saw it in person. And in the back of my head, I can still hear my old MFA directing teacher whining, “I don’t care if you l-i-i-i-ke it or don’t l-i-i-ke it; I want to know what you think about it!” Well, Christo prefers you don’t think; he wants you to only experience. Christo defiantly spurns critics, reveling in his art’s “uselessness.” His accessible approach means you don’t need to read a museum’s explanatory wall panel full of intellectual terminology to understand what you are experiencing (arguments about saffron vs orange aside). It brings people together to engage with their environment, it delights and uplifts and creates a shared emotional bond between observers. One man’s frivolous is another man’s breathtaking.

"The Gates," by Christo, in NYC — “The Gates,” by Christo, in NYC

Personally, I found the experience to be the very definition of the word phenomenal – sensational in the sense of wonderful. The almost unfathomable enormity of it all, and the seeming impossibility of its logistical existence, in addition to its outrageously temporal nature – only two weeks in New York for all that tonnage of steel, is part of the dramatic appeal.

"The Gates," people sharing the experience — “The Gates,” people sharing the experience

Hey, in the old days, before formal theater became popular in America, people used to pack a picnic basket and bring the family to gather with their neighbors and watch public hangings – of people, not fabric. There’s nothing like watching real death to make you feel alive. And people have died due to their participation in Christo’s events, not that it was at all intentional (although perhaps inevitable). His installations are not designed to be dangerous, but his dare-devil personality does lean in that direction. For example, his most recent artistic endeavor had a more-than-mile-long walkway-on-water, which floated atop a lake with an average depth of 400 ft, and it had absolutely no handrails or guardrails whatsoever.

"Umbrellas," by Christo — “Umbrellas,” by Christo

During “Umbrellas” (1991), staged in both California and Japan, in which 3.100 yellow umbrellas, each more than 19-ft high, were erected across many miles of land in both countries, a storm caused one of the 448-lb aluminum-framed parasols to topple, and one woman was crushed to death by an umbrella in California. After the event turned fatal, the artist and his wife announced that the project would be closed, which led to a second death, the accidental electrocution of a worker in Japan as he helped take down an umbrella.

But before those tragedies occurred, one woman, whose mobile home overlooked a cluster of the giant umbrellas in CA, declared “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen besides the birth of my daughter.” As beautiful as birth and as horrific as death – these are two of the reasons why Christo’s projects have consistently drawn enormous attention whenever they occur, all over the world.

Christo's "Umbrellas," in California — Christo’s “Umbrellas,” in California

For “Floating Piers,” 1.2 million people showed up in this tiny town in Italy, over 16 days. In 1995, when Christo wrapped the Reichstag, five million people came to see the historic, German parliament building turned into a public art object. And part of this draw is the short-term nature of all Christo’s works; despite years of planning, the installations usually stand for about two or three weeks only.

The ephemeral quality of the projects is an aesthetic decision. Christo has gone on record as saying, “Our works are temporary in order to endow the works of art with a feeling of urgency to be seen, and the love and tenderness brought by the fact that they will not last. Those feelings are usually reserved for other temporary things, such as childhood and our own life. These are valued because we know that they will not last. We want to offer this feeling of love and tenderness to our works, as an added dimension and as an additional aesthetic quality.”

"Wrapped," by Christo — “Wrapped,” by Christo

A Study of Documentary Style

I was a Christo fan long before I saw “The Gates” in New York. Why did I consider myself a fan? How did I even know about his work? I certainly never learned about it in school. The answer is: Film. I had seen several documentaries that had managed to capture and communicate the splendor and grandeur and triumphant nature of the work of this eccentric, Bulgarian-born artist and his partner-wife Jeanne-Claude.

What I didn’t realize at the time is that while I was experiencing the work of Christo through those films, and learning about his process, I was also experiencing the talent and very specific insight of the films’ directors – the Maysles brothers. Their documentarian process and philosophy were as much a part of my appreciation as was Christo’s art itself. What has become their box-set of five documentaries about Christo projects is like a history lesson of documentary form by cinema verité pioneers David and Albert Maysles (Gimme Shelter, Salesman, Grey Gardens).

Note: Grey Gardens was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” largely due to the direction by the Maysles brothers.

Albert and David Maysles. documentarians

In fact, the Christo films might be as much about the enduring relationship between Christo and the Maysles brothers as they are about the relationship between Christo and his wife, who was both his personal provocateur and argumentative agitator. The films are certainly a collaboration, and Christo has often spoken about the essential part those filmmakers played in bearing witness to and recording the creative impulse, the technical challenges, the political drama, the emotional investment, and the transforming effect of the finished works – all massive-scale temporary installations that illustrate the intersection of art and everyday life. But as brash and bold as Christo’s art is, the Maysles brothers were equally restrained in their unscripted, observing-not-directing style of “direct cinema,” which became their defining legacy. Let it be noted, though, that this style as employed by the Maysles brothers is not any sort of critical analysis; it is more of an affectionate, stand-back-in-awe portrayal, although they never pretend otherwise.

Albert Maysles, Jeanne-Claude, and Christo

Christo and Jeanne-Claude met the Maysles brother in Paris in 1961, and a deeply personal, decades-long friendship was born. For a while, the brothers actually lived with Christo and his wife, following them everywhere and recording everything. The result of this devotion was an academy award nomination for their first collaboration, Christo’s Valley Curtain (1974), which watched as Christo, Jeanne-Claude and their team strung a quarter-mile curtain of nine tons of vibrant orange nylon across a gigantic cleft in a Colorado mountain range. The movie is a permanent record of a project that rocked the artistic community and turned skeptical iron workers into astonished fans.

Christo's "Valley Curtain" — Christo’s “Valley Curtain”

Following that were four more films that have collectively become historic for their observational approach to filmmaking, in addition to their testament that what matters most in art is the process. That belief is never more true than in the case of Christo.

“Surrounded Islands” (1983) was a three-years-in-the-making project in which eleven islands in Biscayne Bay, Miami were each surrounded by a skirt of pink. The finished project produced one of the most iconic images of 1980s art. At the time, however, the prospect of thousands of hot-pink polypropylene sheets swimming in Miami waters left environment groups aghast. A lengthy and costly legal battle with local wildlife groups was resolved in federal court, after “endless and nerve-racking negotiations.” You can watch it all happen in Islands (1986).

At Amazon.com, where the box-set of DVDs is available for purchase, Jeff Shannon writes, “The Christos are both deliriously self-indulgent and open-heartedly generous about their work and the impressive engineering that goes into creating it. For these and other time-consuming but fleetingly visible endowments of beauty on an epic scale, the Maysles were there with camera and microphone, capturing the impact, controversy, humor, and ultimate glory of Christo’s wondrous vision.” That’s a tough act to follow, but this new documentary is a worthy tribute to all that came before it.

"Surrounded Islands," by Christo, in Florida — “Surrounded Islands,” by Christo, in Florida

The New Documentary

Walking on Water offers another look at Christo’s process and its staggeringly complicated engineering and political manipulations. More importantly, it’s the first project he’s done without his wife and partner, Jeanne-Claude, who died in 2009. Christo is now collaborating with his nephew, Vladimir Yavachev. And it’s Christo’s first film without the Maysles brothers, who have also died since his last project, David in 2007 and Albert in 2015. In this documentary, Christo returns to his Bulgarian roots to bring in fellow compatriot, director Andrey Paounov (The Boy Who Was a King). If nothing else, those facts alone make this film inherently interesting; how will these new relationships compare to and comment on what came before them?

Once again, we get to watch the artist’s bull-headed personality as he, now 83 years old, pushes to complete an audacious project that was conceived decades previously but rejected in both Argentina and Japan. It is finally in Italy that Christo’s floating pathway enables visitors to explore their environment from new perspectives as they meander across the water on foot. But technology has changed over the years, and thanks to digital photography, cameras have never been quite as privileged to such immersive and up-close views of Christo’s craft as they are here.

Walking on Water draws from over 700 hours of footage, a daunting amount of material to sort. Yet Paounov succeeds in delivering a compelling portrait of the fine madness entailed in the pursuit of art – the passion, the devotion, the headaches, the screaming matches, the boredom, the flashes of inspiration.

Interview with Christo and Andry Paounov

I almost was able to interview Christo and director Andrey Paounov (AP, below) for this film’s release in New York City, but that fell through at the last minute, as I imagine is often the case with much of what they do. So, I am going to liberally quote from previous interviews they have done, primary with POV Magazine and live at Toronto International Film Festival, because I do think their own words are significant in appreciating the value of the new documentary. Note that these are selected snippets only and taken out of context, but they speak to the issues I have discussed so far in this article. I have bolded key statements:

AP: Christo always documents his projects. Documentation is always part of the art.

Ch: Yes, since the ’60s when we met Albert and David Maysles… When Albert and David came to Paris in 1961 to show their films, we became very close friends. I had photographers following me at the time, taking pictures of the project for books, and we [the Maysles and Jeanne-Claude and I] became like a family. It was an incredible chance that they could film my work. I had no films before that. That is how everything started. David died and Albert passed away after The Gates project [2005]. Then I was alone. With my nephew and friends working together, we were very conscious that we had to film this project, and have it covered by many cinematographers.

Christo at night, w/ "Floating Piers" — Christo, working on “Floating Piers”

AP: I got into the project at the end of “The Floating Piers. They had about 10 crews that were following Christo at different moments of the project. There were many crews: some were just doing aerial shots, some just following Christo, underwater cameras—there’s a lot that isn’t in the film… That was the challenge of making the film. There was so much footage that it took me three months just watching it 10 hours a day, every day.

There was no pre-concept or general direction in what the crews shot. We had no idea what was there. I had assistants and we were watching together, exchanging files, and finding out what was there. At one point, I started finding some tracks in the footage and what I was interested in finding — a character piece from all this chaos. Luckily, we live in the digital age, so there were days of cameras rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling. In between all this stuff, there were brilliant little pieces where you could see him and all the relationships with the family behind the Christo project. That’s how we started putting this puzzle together.

We also continued documenting his adventures. The end of the film [which sees Christo embark on a new project, The Mastaba] is something that we shot, but The Floating Piers was the other way around. It was like finding a suitcase of footage on the street.

Ch: You will see that I am not very technologically inclined. Of course, anyone can film, but the important part of all the films, especially this film, is that we were very conscious of filming a distinct period and the hard work. It’s very important when the physical project no longer exists. We never do the same things again. There will be no more Floating Piers, no more Valley Curtain. We do not know ourselves how the things will look. But we do know something: we know how to do it. All that work is so private and invisible for many people. We were very eager to show people what often isn’t seen by the public: the conflicts, the drama, the soul of the work. It is the reason I do not do commissions. All our projects over fifty years translate this energy when they are realized, not because some mayor of the city or corporate executive gives us some money to make a sculpture.

AP: But with the digital age, what has changed, especially since the previous films were made, is that the films were made in order to experience the project. Nowadays, it’s the opposite. We’re drowning in images. The Floating Piers destroyed Instagram there were so many images. I knew while making the film that I couldn’t just show the project as people had already seen it on TV, the news, and social media. I was also not interested in doing that because I’ve always felt that you have to make films about people and not things.

It [Walking on Water] was the first film I made outside of Eastern Europe. It meant coming to NY and working w Christo. The most fantastic thing about making documentaries is you get to live other people’s lives and dreams, and his world is incredible…

I thought, how can I come after the Maysles? In a way this is an homage to the Maysles brothers and also to direct cinema. [I got to utilize] everything I loved about American cinema from the 60s and cinema verité.

Christo, at opening of "Floating Piers" — Christo, at opening of “Floating Piers”

HelenHighly: Well, Paounov does indeed offer a sort of homage to the award-winning style that preceded him, but he definitely also leaves his own mark. Starting with creating his own title, rather than taking the same name for the film as Christo used for the art project, Paounov has made a contemporary film that speaks to history and originality and the process of creation. I think it’s time for art-theaters around the country to roll out the orange carpet for Walking on Water.

Watch the Walking on Water trailer, below:

“The Quiet One” Documentary Film Review: Bill Wyman Does Beckett

May 11, 2019Film CommentaryBeckett Krapp's Last Tape review, Bill Wyman archive, Bill Wyman cinematic memoir, Bill Wyman collection, Bill Wyman documentary, Bill Wyman documentary review, Bill Wyman film review, Bill Wyman life retrospective, Bill Wyman Mandy Smith, Bill Wyman Mandy Smith marraige, Bill Wyman Marion Stokes, Bill Wyman memoir movie, Bill Wyman memorabilia, Bill Wyman memorabilia movie, Bill Wyman movie, Bill Wyman movie review, Bill Wyman Rarities 1971-2003., Bill Wyman Ray Charles, Bill Wyman Rolling Stone documentary, Bill Wyman Rolling Stones movie, Bill Wyman Rolling Stones movie review, Bill Wyman The Quiet One, Bill Wyman unseen tapes, Bill Wyman's Last Tape, Helen Highly Quiet One, Helen Highly The Quiet One, HelenHighly archival movie The Quiet One, HelenHighly Bill Wyman movie, HelenHighly The Quiet One, HelenHighly The Quiet One review, Krapp's Last Tape analysis, Krapp's Last Tape commentary, Nill Wyman personal photos, Oliver Murray director, Oliver Murray The Quiet One, Quiet One documentary film review, Quiet One film review, Quiet One Krapp's Last Tape, Quiet One Recorder, Quiet One Tribeca Film Festival review, Rarities 1971-2003 album cover, Rolling Stones Rarities album cover, Samuel Beckett Krapp's Last Tape, stone-faced Rolling Stone, The Quiet One documentary, The Quiet One IFC, The Quiet One movie review, The Quiet One review, The Quiet One Sundance Selects, The Quiet One Tribeca, Wyman archive documentary, Wyman archive movie, Wyman documentary review Related posts Tribeca Film Festival 2019 Curtain Raiser: What to See / Archival Movies Popular Comment January 19helenhighly

by HelenHighly

The Quiet One, a cinematic memoir about bassist Bill Wyman, founding member of The Rolling Stones, directed by Oliver Murray, played at Tribeca Film Festival and is set to start a theatrical run in June. It’s far from the typical music documentary. Based on Wyman’s immense, personal archive of film, photographs and audio, including new voice-over commentary by Wyman himself, Murray (previously a music video director) had the unenviable task of making a documentary that would offer something fresh to fans or insightful to music historians, while working under the employ of the notoriously private man-of-few-words. The film is oddly fascinating for all the reasons it aims not to be – for the things it doesn’t say, for the ways in which it is not penetrating or thoughtful, and how it skims over controversy. It depicts a rather sad and unsatisfying culmination to a long career and mysterious life. It portrays a man searching through the rubble of his memorabilia, still unable to make sense of the emptiness and alienation that defined him as the famously “stone-faced” member of The Stones.

Bill Wyman at his desk, in "The Quiet One" movie — We watch Bill Wyman watch his younger self in “The Quiet One.”

Nonetheless, there is reason to watch, if you are someone who can appreciate the philosophical absurdity and existential pathos of Samuel Beckett-style stories. Watching Wyman watch his younger self and listening to him to comment on his former comments, this documentary becomes a story about the nature of reminiscence and a man struggling with his legacy as much as it is a guided, behind-the-scenes tour of the life of a rock star. Come for the music, stay for the irony.

“It’s what he doesn’t play, what he leaves out..”. — Eric Clapton

Bill Wyman in "The Quiet One" at Tribeca — Bill Wyman: The stone-faced Rolling Stone

The setting of this movie is bizarrely similar to the setting of Samuel Beckett’s famous play, Krapp’s Last Tape, and the thematic parallels are hard to ignore. In Beckett’s play, the set consists of a desk and a chair with an overhead light, and on the desk is a reel-to-reel tape recorder, microphone and ledger. Around the desk are boxes filled with an archive of recorded tapes. Seated at the desk is an old man with grey hair. Now, take a look at the opening shot of The Quiet One:

Bill Wyman in The Quiet One — Bill Wyman in “The Quiet One” documentary

In the play, the ensuing action discloses that Krapp is a man who has chronicled every aspect of his life since he was 24 years old. He has created annual audio tapes to record his impressions of the previous year’s important events, and then cataloged each tape’s number and contents in a ledger, which he keeps locked in his desk. Each year on his birthday, he listens to one of his former tapes before recording his new one.

Stage production of Beckett's "Krapp's Last Tape" — Stage production of Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape”

The play depicts Krapp listening to a tape from 30 years ago, which references and derisively comments on a previous tape, and the elderly Krapp replays and comments on them both, in real time, before recording this year’s tape. He is essentially in discussion with his former selves and trying to come to terms with his past.

Krapp's Last Tape" with Michael Gambon — Krapp’s Last Tape” with Michael Gambon

At the conclusion of the play, the older Krapp sits listening as his younger self ponders the loss of his best years, saying “but I wouldn’t want them back.” And then the tape runs out. The plays ends in silence with Krapp staring blankly into space.

"Krapp's Last Tape" with John Hurt — “Krapp’s Last Tape” with John Hurt

The Quiet One opens with Bill Wyman in his basement, present day, sitting at a desk with his back to the camera, light shining down from above him. He speaks to the sound technician beside him, who is holding a mic as Wyman records his backward-looking commentary on his life. There is a computer on his desk, and later a reel-to-reel tape recorder. There is a detailed diary and ledger that he often references. He is surrounded by stacks of old tapes and archival materials from the enormous collection he created over his lifetime. Except for the computer, it’s almost the identical setting to Krapp’s Last Tape (written in 1958).

To help make the point that this is a film about a man and his recorded memories, a montage of old black-and white film footage is intercut with images of stacked film cases, cameras and audio equipment, all played against the dark Stones song, “Paint it Black” (written by Wyman). Cut to silence and a long slow scan of the rows and rows of archival material and memorabilia that fill Bill’s basement. If not such a capacious space, it would look like a hoarder’s house. Finally, we hear Wyman say, “People always ask me why I collected things.”

This is an odd reminder of a similar moment in another TFF2019 archival-themed documentary, Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, when Marion’s son says, “People always ask me why she did it. To understand that, you need to know my mother.” And that leads us into the strange story of that hoarder/archivist – an African American ex-librarian who started her compulsive collecting in 1979, amassing over 70,000 VHS tapes over 30 years, and is even more a mystery than Wyman. But the two are perhaps not as different from each other as they might seem.

Both were born poor, had bitter childhoods strongly influenced by World War II, which left them suspicious of the world, with a strong need for privacy. Both felt compelled to keep a record of “the truth.” During the course of this movie, we hear one of Wyman’s bandmates recall that “We argued about what exactly happened, but Bill was probably right because he has all the fuckin’ records.”

Wyman says “I always thought it was important to keep a record of what was going on. It started when I was a little boy, during the war. Whenever I came in contact with something that I could call mine, I wanted to save it – collect it.” His recollections of his childhood during WWII, his combative relationship with his father and his being mostly raised by his grandmother are portrayed through a series of old family photos and provide the most interesting and insightful moments in the film. We learn that Wyman grew up feeling “pushed aside all the time,” lonely and unloved. We hear Wyman tell how he switched from playing guitar to bass because no one else would do it and it was his way into a band, and that he was too poor to buy a new bass, so he made his own. But it’s the older Wyman who tells these childhood stories, and his resentment seems to have festered over the years, rather than subsided.

Wyman then looks back at himself a bit older, now in his late twenties and trying to perfect his technique on the bass. As if Samuel Beckett had scripted his words, Wyman expresses a disturbing contempt for himself. “Leave space! Don’t be busy! Don’t overdo it! You’re not the fuckin’ lead guitarist!” he barks at himself. Later in the film, Eric Clapton will praise Wyman, saying “something about Bill’s bass… it was so contained and so precise. It’s what he doesn’t play – what he leaves out that marks his brilliance.” I doubt that either Wyman or Murray intended that praise to sound as sad as it felt, but it sure seemed to me like brilliance born of self-loathing – the kind of personal pain that Krapp would be forced to relive on one of his tapes.

“There is one shot in the movie of a pinned butterfly in a frame…”

Wyman says playing with The Rolling Stones was the most exciting time of his life. He also talks about resisting the cult-like mania over The Beatles – how he wanted to be taken seriously and truly appreciated. He says he avoided the press because it was “too show-biz,” and minutes later we see a memorabilia montage that includes a series of newspaper clippings that he’s saved. We hear him talk about the hundreds of women he had – more than Mick Jagger. We hear him talk about the thrill of playing live for half a million people. We see him living a lavish rock-star lifestyle. Later he says he plays for himself and doesn’t like to think of himself as famous. At another point, he speaks of an emptiness he feels that terrifies him.

Clearly, each of these moments are on different “tapes” from his life – experienced at different times. The tapes and multiple selves show us vividly how our identities and self-understanding are constructed through language and narrative, and that those narratives are always changing, which points to the paradox that we are both one person and many persons as we develop across time. The challenge, in terms of modern psychology, is to integrate those multiple selves, those differing attitudes and feelings, as we grow and change. But in this movie, we and Wyman are confronted by his different voices that often feel disconnected from each other.

Wyman playing with the Stones — Wyman playing with The Stones

Yet Murray’s movie seems completely unaware of any sense that the audience is viewing past events through multiple sets of Wyman’s eyes. Murray’s story is strictly chronological and plods ahead with old footage and bland, mostly non-reflective narration by Wyman. Still, it’s hard for viewers not to see the layers of memory and changing perspectives stacking up on each other, whether Wyman or Murray are conscious of it or not. Certainly, the Wyman we see touring the United States for the first time, and reveling in the band’s new-found stardom – the young man who is still insisting that they are a blues band, not a rock band, is a different man than the one who sees his bandmate and close friend, Brian Jones, die from a drug overdose or four fans die at a Stones concert at Altamont. And then there is an entirely different Wyman who left The Stones and went solo with a semi-hit Euro-pop song, “(Si Si) Je Suis un Rock Star.” No mention of any problems between Wyman and the rest of The Stones exists in this film.

Here’s just an odd tidbit that is not at all included in the movie:

Bill Wyman removed from "Rarities" album cover — Bill Wyman removed from “Rarities” album cover

In 2005, The Rolling Stones released Rarities 1971-2003. The album features a selection of rare and obscure material recorded between 1971 and 2003. The album cover shows Mick Jagger, Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards and Charlie Watts. But the original photo was taken during The Stones’ 1978 music video for the song “Respectable.” And remember that Bill Wyman was part of The Rolling Stones until 1992. Yet, Wyman is missing from the album cover. His image was digitally removed, but you can still see his bass cable hanging between Mick Jagger’s microphone stand and guitar. What’s up with that? And how did or does Wyman feel about that? No telling.

At one point, Wyman admits he “probably had a sex addiction,” but seems to justify it by reminding us that he avoided drugs, unlike his bandmates, reporting that “I felt lonely and the girls offered affection.” Wyman gives small mention to his controversial marriage to Mandy Smith when he was 52 and she was 18 – a scandal so dramatic that it almost prevented this film from being released, due to public outrage. But his nonchalance seems less an evasion and more a genuine lack of appreciation for the significance of the subject. The documentary never does mention that Smith was only 13 years old when the relationship began, and Wyman casually remarks that “it was stupid to think it could work,” because “she was too young.” Stupid.

If you want to hear raw, self-searching of Wyman’s psyche, you won’t find it here. And you have to wait till later to learn of his next marriage. For the audience, this movie sometimes feels like we’re trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle from all blank pieces.

Once we get deeper into the story of Krapp’s Last Tape, we learn that our solo character had intended to surprise himself with memories kept “fresh” on tape, but there are few surprises to be found. Krapp worked as a professional writer, so he created carefully phrased speeches on his tapes, recorded solely for his own benefit, and they ring hollow across the gulf of time. Much the same can be said of Wyman’s tapes. He basically shot his own fan footage; there is nothing probing or incisive in his archives, and nothing much exciting or truly new either. Wyman was not just the quiet one; he seemed to be the boring one, too. His archive is simply not special. There is one shot in the movie of a pinned butterfly in a frame, from which the camera slowly pulls out to reveal the broader expanse of Wyman’s archives, and that unintentionally eerie moment may be one of the most telling.

So, if not the imagery itself, then this movie needs some excellent narration to make it work, and Wyman is not the guy for that. In fact, it may be most interesting how excessively detached he is from his past experiences. His lack of expression of joy or exhilaration or shock or regret about almost everything is notable. The boy who felt pushed aside as a child seems to still feel disassociated from most of his memories. The main emotion we get from Wyman is weariness.

My favorite part of the film was the Super-8 personal movies that Wyman took during their early concert tours in the U.S. – road trip and highway footage taken from the tour bus. It’s America-on-the-road through the eyes of young Englishmen seeing the landscape for the first time. I mention that because despite my general disappointment, there are actually several bits of nifty unseen footage or photos, especially from the early days of The Stones’ stardom.

Between the archival show-and-tell segments, the documentary repeatedly returns to the Krapp’s Last Tape scene, with Wyman at his desk, personally handling the photos or cassette tapes or film reels. We see him listening to or watching tapes from his earlier life, while he also records a new tape, commenting from his place in time now, as an old man. These breaks in the story continually remind us that there is no consistent narrative tale being told; it’s a scrapbook. And that adds to the self-consciousness of time as it intersects with memory, which when taken together are key elements of absurdism; there is a feeling of futility in Wyman’s efforts to neatly wrap up his life story. He even speaks directly about his need to “sort out my personal life” by going through these archival materials – trying to make sense of it all. He says he wants to “relive what I have experienced and put it in some sort of order.”

Bill Wyman play bass — Bill Wyman plays brilliant bass.

But here’s the problem, for Krapp and for Wyman: Our sense of identity is our comprehension of our own story, but as time goes by and as personality develops, our self-interpretation of our identity not only expands, but alters in unexpected and, at times, self-contradictory or self-erasing ways. What was once of utmost importance now is forgotten. Who we are now serves as ironic, or comic, or tragic comment on our previous selves. Meanings we have staked our worth on can crumble, and experiences we once dismissed as either irrelevant or alien can come back, against our will, to permeate our consciousness and show how deeply they have defined us. This seems to have happened to Wyman with regard to the love-of-his-life child bride, for starters. But there’s also a lot more that he needs to flesh out and/or dig into from his dim and distant memories – for the sake of a compelling movie and also for his own sake.

From the very first shot, we always see Wyman from the back, in that Beckett-like pose alone at his desk. It’s not till near the end that we see Wyman’s face and he speaks directly to camera, along with his latest wife. We see an 82-year old, grey-haired, pot-bellied man whose face is puffy and has almost no resemblance to the music icon he once was.

He’s looking for a happy ending. And Murray obliges by portraying Wyman as all comfy in his quiet retirement, with his 3^rd wife and his country estate, now taking photos of butterflies and birds. But there’s a disconnect.

Here is Wyman still embedded in his assorted collection of memories from his past, lost in his separation of selves, his tapes more confusing than clarifying, while he’s concurrently making what will likely be Wyman’s Last Tape which so far is no better than a glossy music video (sorry, Oliver Murray), and that makes the film feel inherently sad.

"Krapp's Last Tape" with Chad Jones — “Krapp’s Last Tape” with Chad Jones

The final scene we see Wyman tape is his standing with his wife, telling an old story of his dramatic encounter with his idol, Ray Charles, and how it shook him to his core to hear him play “Georgia,” live. Then we see Wyman actually shed tears as he recalls that Ray Charles said he was a fan of Wyman and invited him to play with him on an album he was recording. But Wyman turned him down – said no to recording music with his hero. “I’m not good enough,” he said, as he choked up.
(Yup, that’s the end of that story. It doesn’t get better. Wyman never did record with his hero. And no further commentary is provided.)

I didn’t make notes about exactly how The Quiet One ended. But here is how I will remember the ending: Younger Wyman questions whether it’s worth it to make any effort in life. He wonders if his best years are behind him, but he decides he would not want them back. And then the tape runs out. The movie ends with elderly Wyman staring at nothing while the tape plays only silence.

Click for more comparison: Want to read about a rock ‘n roll memoir film done the RIGHT way? Check out Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band.

Click for News: The Quiet One Opens in Theaters and On Demand via Sundance Selects and IFC

Click for a review of another documentary about a rock star — Little Girl Blue, about Janis Joplin (as compared to Art Addict, about Peggy Guggenheim.)

Click for another review by Helen Highly Literate (otherwise known as Helen Highly Irrelevant): I compare the new horror movie Us to an adaptation of an old play by Chekhov.

“Slay the Dragon” Documentary Review / Interview with Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance

May 8, 2019Film CommentaryBarak Goodman Chris Durrance, Barak Goodman interview, Barak Goodman Slay the Dragon, Barak Goodman Tribeca Film Festival, Barak Goodman Woodstock, best political movie, call to action documentary, call to action movie, Chris Durrance Katie Fahey Barak Goodman Slay the Dragon, Chris Durrance Slay the Dragon, David Daley Barak Goodman, David Daley Rat F**ked, David Daley Slay the Dragon, Game of Thrones dragon, Game of Thrones ending, Game of Thrones Starbucks, gerrymandered dragon, gerrymandering democracy, gerrymandering documentary, gerrymandering dragon, gerrymandering film, gerrymandering movie, Helen Highly Slay the Dragon, Helen Highly Slay the Dragon review, HelenHighlky Barak Goodman, HelenHighly Barak Goodman, HelenHighly gerrymandering movie, HelenHighly Slay the Dragon, HelenHighly Slay the Dragon review, In More Ways Than One: Game of Thrones Premiere vs Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, John Oliver gerrymandering, Jon Snow dragon, Katie Fahey documentary, Katie Fahey interview, Katie Fahey Slay the Dragon, Katie Fahey Voters Not Politicians, lame-duck legislation, Last Week Tonight gerrymandering, Michigan gerrymandering status, Michigan gerrymandering update, Michigan Prop 2, most significiant political film, Participant Media gerrymandering, Participant Media Slay the Dragon, political dragon movie, Proposition 2 documentary, Rat F**ked Slay the Dragon, redistricting documentary, redistricting movie, Slay the Dragon Barak Goodman, Slay the Dragon documentary, Slay the Dragon film review, Slay the Dragon gerrymandering, Slay the Dragon HelenHighly, Slay the Dragon interview, Slay the Dragon movie review, Slay the Dragon political film, Slay the Dragon review, Slay the Dragon Tribeca, Slay the Dragon Tribeca Film Festival, Starbucks cup in Game of Thrones, Starbucks Westeros, Tribeca political filmhelenhighly

by HelenHighly

Game of Thrones is ending, and now where will we hide from our disillusionment and despair? Hell, even that doesn’t provide the escapism it promised; we are confronted with a Starbucks cup in the Land of Westeros. It’s not just the crass contemporary brand in our escapist fantasy television that offends. Don’t forget that Starbucks owner Howard Schultz was campaigning for president just a few weeks ago, and the prospect of our upcoming presidential race only reminds us of our collective disgust. That Starbucks cup was like a cruel joke wrapped in a bad dream plopped in some dragon dung. What are we supposed to do with all our alienation and desolation? Well, if watching Jon Snow learn to ride a dragon in Game of Thrones didn’t give you quite the lift you wanted, Helen Highly Suggests you try watching Slay the Dragon, directed by Barak Goodman and Chris Durrance – an earth-shaking documentary that follows a brutal civil war for the prize of Democracy in the land of the United States of America. It’s a movie about gerrymandering, and it doesn’t matter how unappealing the word sounds or how nerdy it seems, it’s THE most important thing to watch right now on any screen. (And really, if you can handle a name like Hizdahr zo Loraq, then you can handle the complexities of gerrymandering.)

If you feel you have been abandoned by your belief in democracy, your sense of justice, your morality, then this is the movie for you. If you feel hopeless and helpless in the face of political power that seems beyond your control, this movie is for you. If the dragon you have is not the dragon you want — whether you aim to slay it or to ride it, this movie might make your fire-breathing wishes come true. But it’s not just big-wing-span enthusiasm on film; it’s a highly timely Call to Action. Strained dragon metaphors aside, and regardless of your party affiliation, this movie is the most significant and vital political film of the year, and perhaps the most empowering. Produced by Participant Media and premiering at Tribeca Film Festival 2019, Slay the Dragon tells the story of a fight for the soul of our country that is real and urgently relevant.

About this Dragon:
Gerrymandering, the practice of redrawing electoral maps to serve the party in power, has been around for centuries. It often results in districts that are bizarrely shaped, and this film points to one famous case in which critics said the redrawn district resembled a mythical dragon. So, that’s how we got this gerrymandered dragon. Going further, the film looks at how gerrymandering has been used in the past and what’s so different and dangerous about it now, in our hyper-partisan times. It shows how a secret gerrymandering initiative launched 10 years ago used newly unregulated Dark Money and newly available high-tech analytics that produced Big Data demographics to enact “the most audacious political heist in modern times” – an unprecedented extreme in gerrymandering that effectively negated the will of the majority of voters across the country.

Now we have this beast of a dragon that is threatening American democratic principles by overpowering the will of the people. Late-night comedian Seth Meyers pointed to a recently gerrymandered district in North Carolina and asked, “What do you see in this shape? I don’t know, it’s either a dragon or 300 years of institutional racism.” The real problem, however, is that the “old gerrymandering” was bad, but starting in 2010, the “new gerrymandering” has jumped into the steroid era.

“Voters should choose politicians, not the other way around.” — Katie Fahey

Goodman and Durrance offer a staggeringly thorough investigation into the entrenched and increasingly perilous problem of “dirty redistricting,” which enables politicians to ignore the decisions of the people they govern. Slay the Dragon gives some harrowing examples of what happens when legislators are no longer accountable to the people. It explains how gerrymandering is directly connected to real-life issues such as: the much-publicized and still unresolved water crisis in Flint, Michigan; Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s removal of collective bargaining for public employees; newly extreme voter-ID laws intended to disenfranchise targeted groups; and North Carolina’s bathroom bill.

Goodman says, “I felt very strongly about connecting the dots and showing not that gerrymandering in some abstract way dilutes your vote but how the policies that are passed in these states are so out of step with the people in these states. If you’re a voter, it’s not just a sense that your vote doesn’t count. It’s actual things that affect your everyday life, whether it’s environmental stuff or a union issue or whatever. It’s real-life stuff. It’s not abstract.”

Gerrymandering cartoon from the Florida Sentinel

The film explains why, to so many of us, our democratic representation doesn’t feel representative, at both the state and federal level. Interwoven into those bleak realities, the film also follows ordinary people as they speak up and organize and fight to make their votes matter in a system that has been rigged against them by what can fairly be called one of the greatest political manipulations in American history.

We can pretty reliably count on John Oliver at HBO’s Last Week Tonight to address our nation’s most serious and most complicated issues with wonderfully instructive and hilarious style. See his treatment of gerrymandering, below, where he says, among other things, “Everything about gerrymandering is stupid and wrong.”

Although not as comedic as John Oliver, this documentary wastes no time with unconstructive outrage. While it efficiently functions as a lesson about the recent history of American politics and its dark underbelly, the film is most crucially about activism — why it matters and how it works. It speaks about what is happening in our country right now, last week, next month – who is doing what, and where, and why, and how it’s all affecting you, whether you realize it or not (and how you can participate in ways that will make you less helpless and hopeless). But its aim is not to proselytize; its aim is to educate and motivate – now, before 2020.

The filmmakers have faith that once regular people understand the terrible truths that lie behind the boring word “gerrymander,” those disturbing realities will galvanize them to join with their neighbors and take back the reigns of democracy that has run amok. In fact, the film shows us some daring individuals and grassroots organizations who have already done just that, with amazing results.

With 2020 bringing both elections and another census that will further shape how voting districts are drawn, Goodman and Durance are hoping their film will make people aware of the urgency of the current gerrymandering problem and embolden them to take action.

Chris Durrance. Katie Farhey and Barak Goodman from Slay the Dragon, at TFF — Chris Durrance. Katie Fahey and Barak Goodman from Slay the Dragon, at TFF

It is worth mentioning that one of the film’s directors, Barak Goodman, also had another film premiere at TFF this year – Woodstock: Three Days That Defined a Generation. (Click here to read IndieNYC’s review of that film.) When I interviewed the filmmakers of Slay the Dragon, Goodman made an interesting point about his relationship to the two films:

“I feel there’s a lot in common between the two. In both cases, the story is about ordinary people, especially young people who have a different vision of the world, and how they’re taking that into their own hands and making change. In that respect, I find both films totally inspiring, and I’ve immensely enjoyed working on both of them. For old fogies like me, to see that kind of thing – to see how young people can do so much just with passion and vision… it’s inspiring. Working on these films has renewed my faith in America. I see that democracy is still very much alive. And that’s what I wanted to communicate in both documentaries.”

Shaken by the book Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count, written by veteran journalist David Daley, Barak Goodman initially set out to make a film that would shine a spotlight on the enormous dangers of this little-understood problem.

“It was a complete revelation,” says Goodman of Daley’s book. “I had heard of gerrymandering, of course, but like a lot of us, I didn’t completely understand it. And I certainly didn’t understand the extent to which it had been used as a partisan political weapon in the last eight years, and the threat it posed to some of the bedrock principles of democracy.”

Goodman adds, “I think most Americans – Republicans and Democrats – however much we might disagree with each other on other issues, feel that every person’s vote should count equally and that everyone should have the opportunity to vote.”

Goodman called Daley to ask if the film rights were available for the book and if the author would be interested in participating as a consultant on the project. Happily, the answer to both questions was yes. Goodman then approached frequent collaborator Chris Durrance about co-directing the film.

Durrance was equally shocked by the revelations in the book. It reminded him of his – and many other observers’ – confusion after the 2012 national elections. That year, President Barak Obama won reelection comfortably and Democratic House candidates received 1.4 million more votes than their Republican opponents nationwide, yet Republicans came out of the election with a 234-201 majority in the House. “I remember seeing the gulf between the number of votes and the number of seats they won,” he says. “Some people said it was a matter of geography. I bought that for a long time. But after reading David Haley’s book, it was brought home to me that no, this was orchestrated. What happened was by design.”

Goofy and Donald Duck gerrymandered in PA

As they started trying to explain the complexities of the situation in ways that would translate dramatically to the screen, Durrance says he quickly realized that the film would be far more compelling and relevant if it moved beyond the historical perspective of the book and focused on the people who are leading the fight against gerrymandering today.

“The film really clicked into gear when we came across Katie Fahey, who was running what was then a fledgling online group of political neophytes who had decided to take on gerrymandering in Michigan,” says Durrance. “That’s when we realized this was a film that could live in the present, but a present informed by what had happened in the recent past.”

Fahey, a 20-something with no political experience, is the founder of Voters Not Politicians, a grassroots organization dedicated to wresting redistricting control in Michigan away from political parties and putting it into the hands of a citizens’ commission comprised of people from across the ideological spectrum. The group’s argument that voters should choose politicians, not the other way around, struck a chord with Michigan voters, and with an extraordinary door-to-door effort, despite all the big-money opposing forces, the group managed to get the gerrymandering Initiative Proposal 2 on the 2018 midterm ballot. The film also focuses on similar initiatives in Wisconsin and North Carolina.

The story of the Proposal 2 campaign was so gripping that the filmmakers decided to hold off on completing the film until the fate of the initiative was decided in the November 2018 elections. The proposal passed. But the story didn’t end there.

There is a new term for political neophytes to learn: “weaponized lame-duck legislation.” The Powers That Be do not release their power easily, even after losing an election.

It gets more complicated from here, but I will say that the story continues in ongoing court battles and in different states across the country. (In early May, the Supreme Court ruled on Ohio’s Congressional map, and new actions are being taken almost weekly on cases around the country.) In fact, after the documentary’s final scene of Fahey’s group celebrating their win and drinking champagne, the filmmakers felt the need to place a screen graphic at the end of the film to update viewers. It reads:

WITH A ‘BLUE WAVE,’ DEMOCRATS
RECAPTURED CONGRESS IN 2018.
BUT IN NORTH CAROLINA, MICHIGAN,
AND WISCONSIN THE GERRYMANDERS HELD.

IN ALL THREE STATES, LEGISLATURES QUICKLY
MOVED TO PASS NEW VOTER SUPPRESSION LAWS AND
STRIP INCOMING DEMOCRATIC GOVERNORS OF POWER.

Honestly, when I saw that final graphic, my heart fell. It put me back into the defeatist “even when you win, you lose,” mindset that has felt so overwhelming in recent years. After Goodman spoke so enthusiastically about how both his new documentaries shared a spirit of optimism about democracy, I asked him a hard question. I asked, “Do you say you believe that democracy is alive and well because it’s the thing you want to believe and that you hope can and will be true, if people keep trying despite the setbacks, or do you honestly believe that democracy is alive and well in America – based on your real experiences and what you have seen happen over the past few years? Is functional democracy a wish or reality?”

He did not pause before he answered, emphatically, “The latter. I believe it. I’ve seen it.” He is here to testify. But he adds, “People have to fight for their democracy. They have to get upset and they have to get mad and really make it clear to politicians that they will not stand for it. That’s what happened in Michigan. It’s what is going to happen everywhere.” And Fahey stepped in to add to that answer:

“I spent two years of my life, every single day, seeing what democracy can be, seeing strangers join together and decide to stand up for doing what was right over what was easy – take democracy into their own hands and talk to their neighbors about how to make a better future. And what we did… we changed the course of history. There may be setbacks but there is no turning back. The tide is turning. Change is happening.

“And what we’re doing now is… we had so many people reach out to us after hearing about our story on the national news and say that they want to challenge gerrymandering in their states, so now I’m working on creating lessons based on what we did and organizing to help other people do it for themselves too.”

Okay then. This is testimony from people on the front lines of the fight. Helen Highly Persuaded: I will give hope a chance.

This is not an ordinary archive-on-film documentary; it’s not just a history lesson, a story about ideas, or something you put on your to-watch list; it’s a breathing thing, with a life force and a will for justice and hope to offer, but it needs daylight and care to stay alive. The fight is happening right now. The hope the film holds is not just an offer; it’s a plea. I am pleading with you; let’s not give up on everything quite yet. Watch this movie first.

(Slay the Dragon is set to be released later this year, but keep an eye out for updates.)

///

News Updates:

It’s hard to keep up with all the latest gerrymandering court rulings and legal battles around the country, but I will post one here from May 13th, regarding the Michigan case. Click to read: “Republican lawmakers ask the U.S. Supreme Court to block a U.S. District Court order to redraw Michigan districts, to prevent ‘legislative gridlock’.” Despite Katie’s Prop 2 legislative win, the battle rages on. See twitter comments below that provide a detailed account of how this case came to this place and what the expected outcome is.

Re Michigan court case mentioned above: Tweets re status of the case, running from top to bottom, with most recent at the bottom.

HelenHighly

I'm a little bit high. …highly suspect …highly sensitive …highly enthusiastic …highly educated …highly intoxicated? …highly likely

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