Black Mass

I don't know why I did not expect to like Black Mass. I guess I figured it would be a fairly stock gangster film, with a lot of really awful, brutal violence, and a bunch of stock cliches and braggadocio. And there is definitely some intense violence in it (though honestly, by today's standards a few strangulations and some blood splats might seem tame), and in many ways a lot of familiar tropes and ideas -- but somehow, they don't come across as cliche. This is doubtless in part because of the superlative acting, but I think cinematography also has a lot to do with it. The stunningly gorgeous shots are very intelligently framed and carefully chosen in way that creates a powerful sense of intimacy, creating a tremendous sense of emotional depth. To me, the movie was an impressive meditation on the emotional effects of the gangster lifestyle.

Johnny Depp is predictably mesmerizing as Whitey Bulger -- but he functions as a kind of simulacra that the films circles around. He is aloof, mysterious, and terrifying: everything, it seems, will happen exactly as he decides. He seems to have an iron control over his emotions: all of his words, actions, motions and mannerisms appear deliberate and considered, even when they are deeply felt. Part of what makes him so menacing is an unpredictable quality -- one has the sense of a profoundly violent and utterly ruthless rage that is constantly just beneath the surface, and can emerge at any moment. And yet, he also seems fundamentally unknowable -- perhaps because he is hardly human. Thus, the emotional work of the narrative is dispersed across the supporting cast, all of whom struggle to manage the emotions that arise from their contact with him -- fear, horror, anger, sadness, guilt. No one, this movie suggests, is innocent, though no one is entirely villainous either. The brilliance of the cinematography is that you regularly feel that you are witnessing a private moment where a given character struggles with his/her feelings about what is happening in the immediate vicinity. It is these quiet battles that make this film so impressive, and very much worth seeing.

Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg, by Kate Evans

It's always nice to see female intellectuals get some recognition, and I am a sucker for graphic novels about Marxists. I found this one especially pleasant, and found the artwork especially lovely.

Although the book feels unbalanced in various ways -- the pacing is odd; occasional narratorial intrusions are not unwelcome but seem arbitrarily scattered throughout; the tone is sometimes uneven -- at its best moments, you get this wonderfully human sense of Luxemburg's (feisty) personality. I especially loved the various nude scenes, hairy legs and all -- a really excellent example of how graphic novels can portray a woman's body in a way that feels intimate without being objectifying or prurient.


As a biography, it is in many ways a conventional, step-by-step account of the woman's life: the author clearly has no compunctions about zooming past the eventful bits. Although there is a nice moment where Evans steps in to say that she will depart from the convention of defining women's lives through their relationships to men, this doesn't seem like a radically new form of lifewriting . As an intellectual biography, it's slightly disappointing, in that you don't really get a sense of a meaningful connection between biography and thought: you don't really see where her ideas are coming from, or how her life experiences influence them. Indeed, it might not be the most effective introduction to Luxemburg's work -- it's a little hard to get a grasp on her ideas, or more specifically, what her particular innovations or disagreements with others were. But the book does give you a clear sense of her overall beliefs, and -- what is especially nice -- quotes extensively from the woman's own writings.

Overall, a very pleasant, and often quite beautiful (in various ways) book.