Thumbs Up for Williams and Duval in a Movie Mess

 

 

 

Popeye (1980)

Directed by Robert Altman

Paramount, 114 minutes, PG

★★

 

Have you ever viewed an awful film that you continued to watch simply because a few of the actors are so good that you didn’t want to abandon them to their fate? Few American directors have blown so hot and cold in their role as Robert Altman; in Popeye he was so cold that all the remaining copies of the film could be sent into orbit to cure global warming. And yet…

 

…it's as if Robin Williams was born to play squint-eyed, pronucskiation-challenged Popeye, and no actress on earth could have played Olive Oyl with the knock-kneed, permanently flustered, clumsiness aplomb as Shelley Duvall. Ray Walston was also brilliant as Poopdeck Pappy and a few others such as Paul Dooley (Wimpy), Paul L. Smith (Bluto)  and Linda Hunt (Mrs. Oxheart) turned in solid performances.

 

That’s the good news. The bad? Pretty much everything else. Popeye was excoriated when it came out in 1980 and there’s no reason to assert that it was misunderstood. Granted it’s hard to make a cartoon into a flesh-and-blood musical comedy, though it is fair to ask who thought it was a good idea to try. The job was handed to Harry Nilsson, who was highly respected in his day. Alas, Harry made a hash of it with numbers too terrible to be music, and too fluffy to be camp. Even more baffling, the talented Jules Feiffer wrote the script. I’d like to believe that he was mortally ill at the time, but he didn’t pass away until January of 2025, so that won’t work. Maybe they made him live in the set of Sweethaven while writing it and Jules rushed the assignment as he could only take so much living in a landfill. Actually, Sweethaven is kind of interesting in a grungy sort of way. It reminded me somewhat of Esgaroth/Lake-view in The Hobbit. So maybe the wicked bad score put me in too surly a mood to appreciate Sweethaven in the moment.

 

The narrative, such as it is, finds Popeye rowing his dinghy in high seas and tying up in Sweethaven. He’s in search of his Pappy, but no sooner comes ashore than he is hit up by the local Taxman who collects all manner of tariffs on behalf of the mysterious Commodore. (Take a guess who he is.) If the Commodore needs muscle to collect his graft, he sends his flunky Captain Bluto, who is allegedly affianced to Olive Oyl. Her justification for an impending wedding to the bully is, “he’s large.”(Take that however you wish!)  Paul Smith's Bluto is indeed a large guy. He is also, as Popeye would say, muskully. Popeye, being a stranger, finds all doors closed to him and only finds lodging at the Oyls because of a misunderstanding. Popeye does get to show off the power of his muskully rotating forearms by punching out a gaggle of local jerks who make fun of him and push him around.

 

If you’ve ever read a Popeye comic book by his creator E. C. Segar, you know that Olive will soon find Popeye preferable to Bluto. Popeye and Olive are also enamored of Swee’Pea who is left in a basket by his “mudder” who can’t afford to keep him. Bluto takes a temper tantrum when Olive is a no-show for their “engagement” party and destroys much of the Oyl’s house. Later he beats the snot out of Popeye when he sees Olive and Popeye with Swee’Pea. Apparently Bluto believes in both immaculate conception and instantaneous birth. Hey, it’s a no sex in comic books, please, situation.

 

Spinach is central to the plot­ –such as it is– but in about the only twist there is, Popeye initially hates spinach. From there it degenerates into a fanciful promise of treasure, Popeye’s discovery of his Pappy, a Swee'Pea kidnapping, a boat race rescue attempt around Scab Island, an octopus that looks like one of those blowup advertising come-ons, and a spinach-fueled resolution.

 

Full confession: I devoured more Popeye comics in my wasted youth than Joey Chestnut has eaten hotdogs. That said, Popeye the movie is capital D Dumb. Were it not for Williams and Duvall, there would be no reason to see it. But if you’re really bored some night,  get a free stream from Kanopy to see how perfect casting raises a terrible movie from bilge water to watchable lower case putrid.

 

Rob Weir

Le Vent du Nord a Mighty Force

 

 

 

Le Vent du Nord

Têtu

Borealis 236

 

There may not be a more joyful music anywhere in the world than that from Québec, even if you don’t understand a word of French. Le Vent du Nord translates as The North Wind, but I’ve felt it should Puissant Vent du Nord (Mighty North Wind*). I’ve seen Le Vent du Nord numerous times and I can attest that they leave it all on the stage. Têtu translates as stubborn, but in the case of this album it means something to the effect of defiant or persevering. Most of the 15 tracks on the album deal with precarious, tragic, or sad situations that might make non-Francophones glad they don’t know the words.  

 

The album opens with one such tragic song, “Noce tragique,” a sad tale of a newly married couple facing death. This live clip was filmed in Glasgow; Le Vent du Nord is actually a male ensemble and the woman playing penny whistle and singing is Scotland’s Julie Fowlis, ana amazing Gaelic vocalist. The male singer/bouzouki player is Simon Beaudry and if you don’t recognize the cranked instrument played by Nicholas Boulerice, it’s a hurdy-gurdy.

 

If you know that “Loup-garou” is a werewolf (seeking revenge on the Catholic Church), you can imagine it isn’t exactly a stroll in the park either. You will also no doubt notice that there is a lot of call-and-response singing in Quebecois music and that fiddles fly rather than sticking around for polite applause.  You’ll also hear percussive sounds from a type of clogging that developed in Quebec. You can see bits of it in the promo video for “La Marche des Iroquois.”

 

The other songs on Têtu deal with everything from a French take on Canadian Confederation, an orphan lad recalling his mother, and a man awaiting execution to  political events and a song about Louis-Joseph Papineau, an inspirational 19^th century defender of French heritage during the Patriots War against British domination thirty years before Canadian Confederation (1867). But surely the most unusual song is “Chaise ardente” in which a curious man decides to go to hell to check on his lover!

 

The greatest joy of all comes when the band decides to let loose on their instruments. The stage becomes a springboard for all manner of musical mayhem. Here’s a short clip of the band live with quality sound, and another from Glasgow of “Cardeuse-Riopel” (Leave it run and you’ll hear “Confédération.”) The man with the accordion is Réjean Brunet. His brother André, a fiddler, has recently rejoined to make Le Vent du Nord a quintet and trade licks with the fiery strings of Olivier Demers. My friends from Milton and the Champlain Islands might remember a small Québec town just across the border from Alburg, Vermont, called Lacolle. The Brunet brothers are from there and yours truly once interviewed them when they were starting out as a duo. Likewise, a music co-op to which I belonged used to book them at the Welcome Table in Burlington. If you can believe it, Réjean used to be a squirt!

 

Rob Weir

 

 

* For grammarians, puissant is one of many French adjectives that goes before the noun.

The Fisherman's Gift: Tragedy and Missed Connections in Early 20th C. Scotland

 

 

 

The Fisherman’s Gift (Coming March 2025)

By Julia R. Kelly

Simon & Schuster, 324 pages

★★★★

 

Scotland, 1900: A small fishing village in a land where strict Calvinist morals prevail, though they have eroded in cities like Edinburgh. That’s where Dorothy, a young teacher, was raised. Now she stands on the rocky, windswept shores of Skerry, where she is about to become the new school mistress in a wee fishing village far from “Auld Reekie.” From the start she is viewed with suspicion because she’s a city gal who knows nothing of the customs and rhythms of her new home. The fact that she is terrified is viewed by locals as being aloof and uppity.

 

The Fisherman’s Gift is the debut novel from Julia R. Kelly and it’s a good one, though she admits she was inspired in part by the 2016 film The Light Between Oceans and perhaps borrows too much from it. Nonetheless, Kelly gives us a portrait of an isolated Scottish village and a tale that is by turns hopeful, sad, and inspiring. Kelly uses a then/now structure that becomes a puzzle for readers to piece together. She also employs multiple points of view.

 

When Dorothy arrives her only true allies are the minister and Joseph, a fisherman, handyman, and handsome bachelor. In good Victorian style, though, Kelly veers away from any straightforward romance. Hers is a series of doomed romances and missed cues. Dorothy casts aside her hopes when she discovers that Joseph is a regular visitor to the family of two young sisters, Jeanie and Agnes, and that it seems to be a given that Agnes will marry Joseph. He, however, is either not the marrying kind or has placed his hopes elsewhere.  

 

In the “then” sections we learn that Dorothy marries William Gray, an unexciting but steady man, much to the chagrin of his sister Jane, who dislikes Dorothy. Agnes ends up with a very unreliable man. The novel’s crux is that Dorothy gives birth to Moses, who becomes her heart’s delight. Joseph always seems to be about to show Moses how to do things and even makes him toys, which infuriates Dorothy as she thinks it's inappropriate. ( I shan’t spoil why!) Alas, when he’s still a lad, Moses ventures out one night, makes his way to the beach, and drowns. Dorothy blames herself for the tragedy and disappears into herself to the point where she is estranged from William.

 

The ”gift” of the book’s title occurs in the “now” sections. A young boy washes ashore and is near death when Joseph carries him from the beach to the minister’s home. He is nursed back to health and is the spitting image of Moses. Could it be a miracle? He is sent into Dorothy’s care and she is torn between reason and faith, as well as intellectual and emotional truth. The child speaks what seems to be gibberish, but a bonding unfolds with Dorothy.

 

The boy’s origin is one of several mysteries embedded within The Fisherman’s Gift. On a more prosaic level, Kelly’s novel is a close look at village relationships in a place where the sleet blows sideways from the ocean and snowy winters are long. Imagine the loneliness in a hamlet in which outsiders tends to remain so in the minds of locals long after they’ve lived there. In Dorothy’s case, she wins over some of her neighbors, whilst others keep her at arm’s length. Norah Barclay, the village gossip, is always ready to dispense news, even if much of it skirts the line between reality and nonsense. Dorothy does gain an ally in Mrs. Brown, the widow who runs the store in Skerry, but her shop is also where women gather to dispense and hear gossip. (For men, it’s the local pub.)

 

The Fisherman’s Gift keeps you guessing until near the end. Even then, your book group can bat around exactly what the “gift” is. It’s too bad the book won’t release until March. Though there’s nothing particularly Christmas-themed in it, it feels like a novel for the holiday season. Perhaps late winter/early spring will have to do.

 

Rob Weir

 

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