City Island/ The Kids Are All Right

I saw The Kids Are All Right awhile back and never wrote about it, but was inspired to return to it because in a way, it belongs in the same category as City Island - both are basically mainstream, fairly standard "wacky family" movies, except they're not, because mainstream movies these days are such crap. So both of them mostly played at "artsy" theatres, despite the fact that they're not particularly challenging or highbrow. They're just a little more candid and open about certain things that "mainstream" America is prudish about. Of the two, I actually liked City Island a lot more - it's a clever, sweet movie, and well constructed. The Kids Are all Right was a little harder for me to love, because of the politics involved. But we'll return to that.

City Island is a movie about secrets. It stars Andy Garcia as a correctional officer who's covertly enrolled in an acting class (predictably leading his wife to suspect that he's having an affair). At the opening of the film, he's just discovered his son is in jail, but can be freed on the responsibility of a family member - so he brings him home, but of course, without revealing their connection. Everyone in the movie has a secret, be it big or small, and of course, the work of the movie is to ultimately bring them out into the open or somehow resolve them. It's pretty predictable, but nonetheless quite enjoyable. It's also pleasantly restrained in its drama, resisting the impulse to veer into catastrophe, ultimately espousing a kind of live-and-let-live mentality. This includes the seemingly "devious" proclivities of its cast, and in that, it comes to seem like a progressive or liberatory work, though it's a sad state of affairs that one would even think of it that way. It's not great, but it's fun and has plenty of laughs, a very pleasant way to spend an evening.

The Kids Are All Right is a little touchier, because there's the baggage of being an indie movie about a lesbian couple and their kids that's clamouring for mainstream attention in a moment when gay marriage is such a fraught issue. So of course, you can't help but be disappointed that one of the women has a fling with a guy - I respect the reviews that celebrate the film's fluid depiction of sexuality, and I agree with them to a great extent, but that doesn't stop me from rolling my eyes and kind of wishing it didn't go down that way. More than that though, I was annoyed by the fact that the lesbian sex scenes in the movie were SO unappealing, and the hetero ones were so hot. I understand that it's also a married/illicit sex difference, and that given how hypersexualized girl-on-girl action is anyhow, it's arguably a smart move to make it seem mundane and downright sterile, but still. I also would've liked Annette Bening's character to be a little more likeable - she was by the end of the movie, but man, she's an uptight, hypercontrolling jerk for most of the film.

I don't, however, begrudge the movie it's strictly normative ideology when it comes to the family unit. In a way, I like that the movie kind of writes off any possibility for a healthy alternative family structure, and thereby slyly smuggles lesbian couples into the normative family category (where they belong). Politically speaking, I can understand the utility of a seemingly extreme group professing its conservative impulses. But I wouldn't have minded if the movie made it a little more clear that the ultimate resolution it came to was a concrete, individual one, not a template. I dunno.

In any case, in terms of all the buzz about the movie - overrated. It's not bad, it definitely had its charm and there were a lot of things I liked about it. It's unfortunate that my opinion of it was so strongly tinted by the political context, because there are a lot of aspects of general family dynamics that were well captured.

Still, of the two, I'd rather watch City Island again.

Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

I was going on vacation to Belize with my family, ie was about to spend a lot of time on airplanes, so I decided it was time to tackle the monster. To my surprise, it was a quick, light read - I made it through all 817 pages in 4 days. And for the first 600 pages or so, I thought it was one of the most fantastic books I'd ever read. But as it started to wind down, I found myself a little less taken with it, and started thinking over the whole thing and being a little more dubious. My friend Ruchama put it very well - she said that in general, reading the great Russians, she finds that the agony and angst are very compelling and well described, but the resolutions are invariably unsatisfying. I think I agree, kind of, but that's not really what my problem was. It was more that, thinking back on it, the changes in the characters are actually pretty extreme, and not sufficiently motivated, or rather, kind of skimmed over. I know it seems strange to want more development in an 800+ page novel, but seriously, what happened to Karenin? You know?

What's odd about this feeling is that it's exactly the opposite of my initial sense of the work, where I was enthralled by the way the characters were drawn. It's absolutely incredible, the way Tolstoy seems to know exactly what it's like to be all these different people, and how skillfully he manages to convey it, sometimes with just a few small details. The plot sort of progresses through vignettes, and each of them is worthy of being a short story of its own; they're so vivid, and seem to index so much more than what they concretely describe.

Another thing I appreciated was how un-melodramatic it was, in contrast to what I was expecting. While it's ultimately a novel about passions, it allows the characters some margin of self-awareness, such that they're never on a complete tailspin - even when their actions are. I really, really valued that - the moments when they questioned their thoughts and feelings, even though their behavior was totally hostage to them. Thus, for instance, Levin finds himself jealous, and knows that he's being unreasonable, but just can't really help himself - which is EXACTLY what it's like to be jealous, unlike the usual portrayals where the person seems completely irrational and unaware of it.

The historico-political aspect of the novel was also fascinating, and really well drawn. It was the spiritual side I found rather less compelling, and it's kind of hard to say why. Unfortunately, that's what the culmination of the novel really hitched its wagon to, so the book ended on more of a whimper than I would have liked.

Still though, it's a great, great book.

An Experiment in Love, by Hilary Mantel

I guess I never wrote a review for Hilary Mantel's A Place of Greater Safety, which I read in the late-winter/early-spring. A friend of mine had absolutely loved Mantel's Wolf Hall (many people did) and when I bought it from amazon, I discovered Greater Safety, a novel about the French Revolution. I was trying to learn more about the French Revolution at the time, and the novel seemed like a good way to do it. It was not a revelatory book, but it was quite good. Amazingly dense with historical information - I can't imagine how much research went into it - but also wonderful, lively prose and well-drawn characters. It was, however, quite long. It needed to be, but still, I was reading it for weeks, and it kind of wore me out.

So I was happy to see An Experiment in Love at Costco, a nice short Mantel novel about British women in the 60s. The back implied that it would be all about the struggles of feminism and femininity and academia, which sounded just great to me. There was also some kind of suspense and/or gradual buildup to an explosive climax promised, which seemed iffy but ok.

But you know what? It wasn't very good. There was a climax. It was not very explosive or exciting. And there wasn't much of a build-up to it. In a way, I suppose, one could appreciate the subtlety of the book; the way it allows most of its characters their privacy. Unfortunately, they have so much privacy that they're basically shrouded in mystery - you have no idea what's going on with them, and you never really find out. Couple this with the main character's lack of self-awareness, and you get a novel where everything is kind of chaotic and unclear, but not in a particularly compelling way. Thinking back on it - and I only finished reading it a few hours ago - it's hard to say what even happens in the book, what occupies the pages and keeps the story moving. There's a lot about food (the main character, rather annoyingly, gradually becomes anorexic, except that she doesn't seem to do it consciously - at first she's just broke, then she seems to want to be thin, but the transition happens in a single paragraph). The whole reflection on feminism in the 60s part that I was so looking forward to was more like an afterthought, a bland generalizing sentence here and there.

Overall, a great disappointment - I like Mantel's prose style, but I barely kept reading this book, and if it wasn't so short, I would never have carried on.

What's Your Rashee?

Bollywood is kind of like a guilty pleasure for me, but this movie seemed worth writing about because a few days later, I find myself still thinking of it and what it says about love. The movie is in many ways fairly standard bollywood - long, with a somewhat bizarre, convoluted plot, some pleasing song and dance routines (more song than dance), etc, but there was something intriguing about it, namely, the way it took on the question of tensions between models of arranged marriage and romantic love.

The main character, because of plot machinations we don't really need to go into, needs to get married, quick. For somewhat random reasons, he decides to meet one girl of every astrological sign and pick one as a wife. This is explained by him saying that he had always thought he would marry for love, so he wants to at least make some attempt to find it - if each astrological sign represents one type of woman, he can at least take a sampling of the lot. Curiously, all the girls are played by the same actress (the beautiful and charismatic Priyanka Chopra), a perhaps unnecessary bit of randomness that seems to be done just for fun, and is half-heartedly justified when someone tells the protagonist that they all look the same because they all have the face of the true love he seeks. Why not.

So, what's intriguing about it is that the protagonist is committed to getting married - he WILL pick one of these women. He also wants to find love, but he's ready to marry even if he doesn't. So with every meeting, he seems to be sort of juggling two questions: how do you go about picking a wife (in the practical sense) and how do you go about figuring out if you're in love with someone whom you've just met? The women seem to be wrestling with a similar set of questions, and while it isn't really something explicitly discussed in the movie (though you get moments where they say to each other "Jeeze, what should we talk about?" and one great scene where the girl basically makes him act out various scenarios playing the role of someone who is in love with her - especially interesting because she tells him exactly what to do, and then seems to fall for him when he deviates from the script), the film nonetheless provides plenty of occasions to contemplate it. What's so interesting to me about it is that in some ways these questions overlap, and in some ways they don't. I mean, on a basic level, there's a kind of tension between romantic love and practicality. But at the same time, in a sense we identify "true" love by its ability to survive and overcome (practical) obstacles. But we're also aware that it's easily confused with plain old lust, or some kind of delusion, and we suspect that maybe the best relationships are ones with a more practical foundation. Then, of course, there are the more mythical dimensions of love, the sense of fate or a cosmic connection between two people who are "meant" to be together. Our protagonist pretty straightforwardly seems to reject those. Lust he wrestles with a bit more. But he's also a bit put off by the sheerly practical side as well. The neat thing about the movie is that by having 12 girls, it gets to model a bunch of different aspects of the issue. It's really cool. And you genuinely don't know who he will (or should) pick. And while the ending is satisfying (or was to me), it doesn't foreclose the possibility of alternatives, or try to insist that this is the best possible ending, thus guaranteeing for itself that this is REAL true love of the one and only variety.

On a more idiosyncratic level, I also enjoyed all the Chicago in the movie. Although it's set in India, the protagonist lives in Chicago, so there are some lovely shots of the city (including one of the new Trump Tower - I believe it's the first time I've seen it on film, and testifies to the incredible speed at which Bollywood films are made. Obama gets mentioned too. And the University of Chicago makes an appearance - they have some gorgeous footage of the Business School building). Incidentally, there is an understated reflection on immigration as well. There's a great rant from one character about Indians who leave home, come back, and suddenly develop stomachs "too sensitive" for the local water, which is kind of fascinating. Also, a subtle critique of people who leave purely to make money - as one character suggests, perhaps there are more important things?

Overall, it's also just an entertaining movie to watch. It's not perfect, and a lot of plot points don't really work. But what makes it really worthwhile is all this stuff going on just below the surface, in really fascinating ways.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Ok. There are gonna be some spoilers here, I'm telling you now. Sorry. I am going to talk about the ending of the movie, so if you haven't seen it, you should probably stop reading.

So, for the most part, I found Scott Pilgrim vs. the World to be a highly entertaining, delightful film. It's a lovely homage to old school video games, and a lot of fun. I was amused. All was well. But as it progressed, I felt a growing sense of impatience. Then, at the end, there was a brief moment where it looked like salvation was on the way... only to be cruelly disappointed.

Here's the thing. The movie is about Scott fighting off his love interest's exes. That's all well and good, but the problem is - you're not really sold on why he's so interested in this girl Ramona in the first place. And the more you get to know her, the less you like her. And you start to think about who these people are, and what their deal is, and you start to feel a little... uncomfortable.

(What follows is basically a plot summary with running commentary. I realize I said at the outset of this post that you shouldn't be reading it if you haven't seen the movie, which means that if you're reading this, you've probably seen it and have no need of plot summary, and in fact, this kind of summarizing with commentary is exactly what I'm constantly telling my students not to do, but you know what? It's an easy way to work out what you think about something. That's why they do it. If I were turning this into a paper that I'd be handing in to myself, I'd use what follows as fodder and distill it into an argument about the film. In fact, if I were writing a professional review, that's what I'd do. But I'm writing a blog post, and I have less than 10 minutes to finish this before going to play poker, so if it's gonna be posted today, this is what it's gonna be. Sorry.)

So, at the opening of the movie, we meet Scott, played by the wonderful Micheal Cera in typical fashion. He's been brutally dumped by a girl named Envy, and has just started dating a girl named Knives. This is suspect to his friends, because Scott is 22, and Knives is 18. We also find out that Scott might have left a trail of wounded women in his wake. But we don't really think about this too much, we just sort of enjoy the humor of his interactions with Knives and wonder, albeit slightly uneasily, what's coming next. Then, he has a dream about a girl he's never met. And the next day, bam, he meets her. Ramona. She is literally the girl of his dreams. He starts pursuing her like mad. We're kind of sympathetic, because he's so pathetic, and also because Knives has always seemed like kind of a joke anyhow. Besides, Ramona seems so cool.

Next thing we know, Scott is dueling Ramona's exes. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but whatever, it's entertaining. Things are going pretty well, overall. But this is when the movie starts to imperceptibly shift. First off, Scott starts getting annoyed at having to fight these exes. Why in the hell was she dating these jerks anyhow? Hey, good point, we think. What's the deal? Then Ramona starts getting kind of... angsty. Oh, woe is me, my past that hangs over me. Meanwhile, Knives is still in the scene, which is initially milked for awkward humor, etc, and then an apparently absurd revenge quest that you start to realize, isn't that absurd after all. He jilted her. The movie initially tries to play this off as amusing, like how on Earth could Knives presume to challenge Ramona? But you start thinking, gosh, you know, Knives is pretty cool. And Ramona is kind of a flake. Huh.

Then we get to the denouement, which happens twice, and seems to involve a kind of epiphany where both Ramona and Scott realize that when it comes to relationships, they've both been selfish jerks in some ways. This is sort of interesting, but ultimately not all that compelling, not least because it seems so hollow. But then, when the dust settles, Ramona does this whole self-sacrificing, you can do better than me, and besides Knives loves you act, and walks away. And Scott does actually turn to Knives, who he's been seeming a big more snuggly with. And you think, hey! YES! This is awesome! This is totally how this movie should end! And then Knives unloads the SAME self-sacrificing bullshit and tells him to go with Ramona, and he DOES! GODDAMNIT!!! I was SO pissed. And you know what? I honestly do feel like there is a subtle racism to it, of him picking the goth white girl over the badass Asian chick. And then I started thinking about how throughout the whole film, Knives was basically a caricature, more so than any of the other characters. And I found myself liking the movie less and less. And realizing how closely it adheres to basic stock plots of hollywood cinema, albeit dressed up in a cute way.

So yes, I was entertained, for the most part. But still, ultimately, I'm disappointed. In other words, I'm not saying don't see it - it's a fun movie, worth checking out. But I invite you to share my disappointment. SHARE IT. Join me in bemoaning the stupid cliche of the stupid mainstream, and in yearning for something more interesting. I want to say more true to life, but the thing is, I have this suspicion that movies like this ultimately serve to reinforce the mainstream, and to keep guys believing that they're right in picking Ramonas instead of Knives. And I guess that's a step forward from the days when they were supposed to pick the cheerleaders who had no ostensible personality whatsoever, but still, lame. So I guess, I want movies that are more true to life as it should be (what can I say, I read Marcuse's Aesthetic Dimension a few years ago and it changed my life.).

I will say though, that Kieran Culkin was absolutely fabulous as the deadpan gay roommate. A real treat. His career has been following an interesting path. While I wasn't really a huge fan of Igby Goes Down or The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, they're certainly interesting choices of roles. It'll be interesting to see what he does next - I bet this performance will get him some positive attention.

Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I had heard of this novel quite awhile ago, and then someone posted this video on facebook, which I thought was riveting, and I connected the dots and went out and bought the book the next day. It took another week or two for me to actually start reading it, but once I started, I could hardly put it down - I flew through the book in just a few days. To be simplistic, one could say this is the Nigerian Kite-Runner - ie, a gripping novel about politics and war that reels you in with its characters and imparts a bit of a history lesson along the way. But ultimately, the thing about this book is that the writing style is just... readable. It's not the most amazing piece of literature you've ever read, but it is absorbing and heart-wrenching. Definitely recommended.

Tokyo!

Of all the city movies (Paris Je T'aime, New York I Love You), this one seemed to have the least to do with the city itself. But it was by far the best. It's 3 short films, one by Michel Gondry (who I have very mixed feelings about), one by Leos Carax, and one by Joon-ho Bong. And all of them are just great.

The first, the Gondry movie, follows a young couple who has just moved to Tokyo. It's a well done portrayal of a relationship slowly falling apart under pressure, but then (I don't want to say too much) it takes a turn for the wonderful. The second, the Carax movie, is about a swamp monster who terrorizes the city and his subsequent court case - not as good as the other two, I think, but interesting, in that it made me think about what it means to be a prophet. The final film is about a hikikomori, a recluse, and it's just kind of beautiful. It also though, makes you think about the whole hikikomori phenomenon, which is absolutely fascinating (and terrifying).

Overall, the movies were lovely and strange and I was totally charmed. Much recommended.