The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is Uplifting

 

 

 

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (2023)

Directed by Hettie Macdonald

Entertainment One/Lionsgate, 108 minutes, Not-rated

★★★★

 

This is the time of the year in which many viewers want something heartwarming and wholesome to watch. You could watch something for the umpteenth time like Charlie Brown’s Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, or Miracle on 34^th Street. (I’ve been told that A Christmas Carol is too scary for kids and Elf rots brain tissue.) But why not stretch for a tale that will restore your faith in humankind. Who doesn’t need that in advance of swearing in Godzilla on January 20?

 

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is based on Rachel Joyce’s bestselling novel of the same name and is another of those rare-but-happy coincidences in which the book and movie are equally satisfying. Harold Fry (Jim Broadbent) and his wife Maureen (Penelope Wilton) are in a rut in which each day is just like another. Theirs is a comfortable middle-class Devonshire co-existence, but not exactly a thrill a minute. Harold listens to the radio, reads the paper, and eats his breakfast; Maureen cleans, nags, and complains. When Harold finds out that Queenie Hennessy, an old work friend, is dying of cancer, he quickly scribbles a platitude, sets out to the news agent to buy a stamp, and just keeps walking. At first he has no goal, but when he shares his helpless feelings about Queenie to a heavily tattooed woman at a garage (Nina Singh), she tells him how she saved an aunt via personal caring, Harold pivots.  Armed only with a rucksack, the clothes on his back, and a pair of slip-ons, he decides to walk to Berwick upon Tweed on the Scottish border to see Queenie. He scribbles a message to Queenie to hang on and begins a 500-mile walking trek. An unlikely journey, but one that transforms him into an impromptu pilgrim.

 

Harold is about as meek, old-fashioned, and as blissfully unaware of social media as they come, but he encounters a young man who has heard of Harold’s walk and asks if he can take a souvenir shot of Harold. As you might expect, Maureen is frantic after Harold is gone for several days with no word. She shares with her neighbor Rex (Joseph Mydell) her fear that Harold has left her. Imagine her surprise when she sees Harold’s picture and learns about his unusual journey from the news.

 

Harold’s story resonates and he is treated kindly by those he meets. Marina, an immigrant who works as cleaner was a doctor in Slovakia and treats his painful blisters. When Harold finally calls Maureen, she is livid and dismissive, but Harold keeps on walking. Ordinary (and not) Brits are drawn to him. He collects an 18 year-old junkie, Wilf, who reminds Harold of his own son’s drug problems, and acts as if Harold can keep him straight. Soon, Harold is a phenomenon with a veritable camp city trailing him. Harold, though, is a reluctant celebrity who eventually sneaks off to escape the noise and hype. He calls Maureen when he can, slowly casts off material things, and simply trusts that he will find whatever he needs. He’s no religious ascetic but he is elderly and worries about making it to Berwick on time. Will he make it? Will Queenie hang on?  

 

Ultimately The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry takes on issues much bigger than a wicked long tramp across Britain, including grief, hope, payback, letting go, and pushing the reset button on life. It comes down to questions of what can be forgiven, what cannot, and who is being saved from what.

 

Director Hattie Macdonald is to be commended for not trying to make mountains of mole hills via forced universalizing. When you have veteran actors such as Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton, a light touch works better than an imperious one. Harold Fry has been labeled a drama, but it’s actually a “small film” that is heavy on character and light on action. Harold is just an ordinary bloke trying to sort out what his life has been about. Where some directors might advise Broadbent or Wilton to deliver what I call the “Big Speech” that is part confessional, part fill-in explanation, and chocked full of life-altering thunder. Instead, Macdonald allows Harold and Maureen to wade tentatively into shallow water. Somehow this feels more human and optimistic.

 

Rob Weir

Shelburne Museum Art Quiz

 

I know, I know; some of you are just now finishing taking or correcting finals, so who in their right mind wants to take a quiz? No grades are involved, so think of it as a game instead and post your comments on either the blog or on Facebook. (Under FB's new format you might have to drag the images onto your desktop to view them in a larger size.)

 

Here are a bunch of photos I took in visits to Vermont’s Shelburne Museum from various trips. Each one will appear under the questions. Have some seasonal fun, fa la la.

 

The first comes from a little known illustrator/painter named  Arthur Burdett Frost. It’s called “Country Store” and was painted sometime between 1880-1920. What does he want us to think of Vermont and is it accurate?

 

 

 

I’ve shown this one before, but this one is fun. It’s from Enoch Wood  in 1899 and is called “The Pemigewasset Coach.” How many things can you see that are wrong with this picture?  

 

 

 

Grandma Moses is a beloved artist among many; others can’t stand her “primitive art.” Here’s her “The Mailman Has Gone” from 1949. What’s your take on her?

 

 

 

 

Andrew Wyeth is another iconic painter, though in his lifetime he was often dismissed as a “mere illustrator.” He is a gigantic painting called “Soaring” (1942-50) of circling turkey buzzards and a detail of it. If you are judging it today, is this the work of a mere illustrator?

 

 

 

 

Jay Connaway (1893-1970) isn’t very well known, but here’s one for Vermonters. Here’s his undated “Winter’s Blast Pawlett, Vermont.” In what ways does he capture the dead of winter?  

 

 

 

 

Here’s a conundrum. Martin Heyde did this birds-eye view of Burlington, VT in 1860. Airplanes hadn’t been invented yet and there were no hot-air balloons in Burlington or a vantage point where he could have seen all that he painted. How did he do it? 

 

 

 

Here’s one from Thomas Chambers done in 1850. Who knows where this was painted? 

 

 

 

Finally, here are two items from the museum’s outstanding collection of American folk art. What’s the folkloric purpose of the giant tooth trade sign and is it true? Why would the Indian carving be problematic today? 

 

 

The Hunter: Slow, but for Good Reasons

 

 

The Hunter ( 2024) 

By  Tana  French 

Penguin Press, 469 pages.

★★★★★

 

The Hunter is the sequel to The Searcher (2020) and returns us to Ardnakelty, a village in western Ireland. The Hunter could be a standalone novel, but it would be wiser to first read The Searcher for deeper backgrounds of Cal Hooper, Trey Reddy, Lena Dunne, and their neighbors.    

 

As a refresher, Cal is a retired police detective who, for various reasons, wanted to get away from the madness of Chicago. He has been slowly refurbishing a cottage and is self-employed as a furniture restorer. That’s how he met Trey, a ragged boyish-looking urchin filled with attitude, who slowly responded to Cal's tough love, his cooking, and his lessons in woodworking. Lena is Cal’s girlfriend, but shies away from long-term commitment. If there is such a thing as a major minor character, it would be Cal’s neighbor Mart Levin who is, depending on your interpretation, either a sly fox or a slippery eel. 

 

The Hunter takes place two years after The Searcher. The Reddy family lives up the mountain from Cal and has a poor reputation. They are, in fact, literally poor, a sort of Irish version of hillbillies. Cal has been more like a father to Trey than her absentee biological father, but Johnny Reddy’s return from four years in London is the novel’s pivot. Trey hoped it her brother Brendan would return, but discovers that he was killed by a Dublin drug gang. Johnny is a local, a happy-go-lucky guy the villagers like but don’t trust. But the “new” Johnny is a smooth talker.

 

He tells the villagers of a man he befriended in London with roots in the region via his grandmother who informed him of gold in the mountains above Ardnakelty. All that’s needed is a bit of seed money to begin extracting the ore. Johnny is sent ahead to offer investment opportunities in the enterprise. He charms the locals, but Cal smells a con. When Cillian Rushborough, Johnny’s London friend, shows up he spins tales of his grandmother, the Irish food that he enjoyed as a child, and of sure-fire wealth. Soon the local pub chatter is abuzz with what villagers will do once they are filthy rich. 

 

Johnny states his intent to become a true head of his large family, including Trey. This presents a dilemma for Cal, who has labored to fit into the ways of the village. Does he have any right to hinder Johnny's right to raise Trey as he wishes? Trey is left to ponder why he is suddenly cool to her. Those who have spent any time in a village know that locals are slow to accept outsiders, especially those who puncture their dreams. Even Mart seems enamored of finding gold, though it's hard to know what he really believes and when he’s playing mind games. The few who see Cillian as a “plastic Paddy,” are outnumbered by those with visions of golden nuggets dancing in their heads. Not Trey; she wants revenge on her brother’s killers, whoever they may be. 

 

To say more risks spoilers, but I would like to address the novel’s mixed reviews. There are those like me who found it masterful; others deemed it boring and yearn for French’s Dublin Murder Mystery series, which was heavier on action. I think critics are missing something, not the least of which is that French brilliantly captures the slower rhythms of village life, a layered mix of colorfulness, insularity, gossip, and humdrum masking complexity.

 

The Hunter is a suspense and crime novel—there’s even a homicide or two–but it’s also a slice-of-life portrait. In Ardnakelty, everyone knows each other, but they don’t necessarily know about each other. Tana French is a brilliant writer; her sentences sparkle and her dialog is spot on. I would challenge those who think the book is too long to ponder whether their attention spans are too short. The Hunter has been aptly called a slow burn because it is character not action-driven.

 

French has worked on treatment for a third book, but hasn't committed herself to it yet.( Maybe she's like Lena in that regard!) I hope she writes it; I want to know if Cal can be accepted for himself, whether he and Lena get together rather than just getting it on, and what becomes of Trey, a damaged teenager of enormous promise and large obstacles to overcome.

 

Rob Weir

 

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: Novel and Lessons from the Past

 

 

 

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store (2023)

By James McBride

Penguin Random House, 400 pages.

★★★★★

 

A funny thing happened on the way to a potential Pulitzer Prize: James McBride was riding high on the bestseller list with The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.  It won the  Kirkus Prize, the National Jewish Book Award, was shortlisted for other prizes, and got an endorsement from Barack Obama. Then, in 2024, Percival Everett released the magnificent novel James, which seems destined for greater things.

 

Nonetheless, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store is a wonderful and imaginative work. Anyone who can make Pottstown, Pennsylvania seem exotic is one heck of a writer. It is a future-back-to-the-past novel that opens in 1972, when a skeleton and mezuzah are unearthed at a construction project. Hurricane Agnes washes the site clean of CSI material, so local police ask an old Jewish woman living in an abandoned synagogue in the former Chicken Hill district if she can help. She, Malachi, is our window to the past.

 

Pennsylvania boroughs like Pottstown were once vibrant steel and iron manufacturers. McBride takes us back to the 1920s and 30s when its Chicken Hill neighborhood was a lively mix of Jewish and African-American citizens. A bit of history helps explain. Sadly, new immigrants to America are often viewed as outcasts. The early 20^th century was marred by anti-immigrant xenophobia to such a degree that many white Americans questioned if Jews (especially those from Eastern Europe) were white. Jews were cofounders of the NAACP and allied with African Americans at a time in which the Ku Klux Klan was in resurgence and was anti-Semitic as well as racist.

 

Chicken Hill parallels James McBride’s family history. His father was African American, and his mother a Romanian Jewish immigrant. The novel’s titular grocery store was run by Moshe and Chona Ludlow. It was losing money, but Moshe kept it open so that Chona, who was stricken by polio, had something to do. She was assisted by employee/friend Nate Timlin, but it was Moshe’s dance hall that brought the money in. They put on big shows for Jews and blacks alike.  

 

What a neighborhood it was! To call it colorful, is to undersell the cast of characters in the McBride's novel. Anytime someone wanted to hear gossip or news they went to an African American woman nicknamed “Paper,” and local residents bonded over their distrust of authority figures. So many Jews flowed in and out of the Hill that when Malachi, a dancer, appeared Moshe wracked his brain to recall meeting her 12 years earlier. Alas, given the tenor of the times, the Klan and other racists constantly brought grief to Chicken Hill. The local doctor, Roberts, was a Klansman that Chicken Hill residents tried to avoid. Like most “whites,” Roberts had his office downtown, which was literally down from Chicken Hill. When Nate asked Chona to hide  Dodo, a 12-year-old orphan, from Roberts and state officials, she tried to do so. Everyone knew that Dodo, a deaf and dumb black child, would be shipped to Pennhurst, an asylum for “imbeciles.”

 

The view of Pennhurst from the inside is a Dickensian nightmare, and the story of a young inmate called “Monkey Pants” will break your heart. Perhaps, however, you will be cheered by a cockamamie plot to liberate one of the inmates. McBride has a gift for leavening terrible things with humor. Likewise, he uses unusual props such a marbles and a water pipe to bring into close focus the dynamics of social class in 1920s and ‘30s.

 

Of course, the 1930s was also the decade of the Great Depression. Those Jews with resources slowly began to move downtown until Moshe and Chona were one of the last Jewish families on decaying Chicken Hill. In a moment reminiscent of the film Big Night, Moshe dared hope a big show could change their fortunes. Eventually the dance hall closed, Moshe and Chona grew old, and Chicken Hill (now gone) declined. Those who have studied sociology recognize this as a classic pattern of how ghettos emerge.

 

Full confession: I visited Pottstown numerous times in the 1970s on my way to Philadelphia. I knew nothing of Chicken Hill before reading this novel. It is another thing that makes this such a fine book; it’s a work of fiction, but also one of remembrance and  history.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

Ivory Vikings: Mystery of the Lewis Chessmen

 

 

 

 

 Ivory Vikings (2015)

By Nancy Marie Brown

St. Martin’s Press, 236 pages +  back matter

★★★

 

The first thing to know is encapsulated in this book’s long subtitle: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them. Those game pieces would be the Lewis Chessmen discovered on Scotland’s Isle of Lewis in1831, but were probably carved in the 12^th century. In all, 78 pieces were found; 67 reside in the British Museum and 11 in the Scottish National Museum in Edinburgh. There are enough for two complete sets, with the extras indicating missing pieces. For those who’ve never played chess, there are 32 pieces in a set; the designs on the Lewis Chessmen suggest as many as four sets once existed. 

 

Two bishops, Edinburgh

King and queen, Edinburgh

Rook and knight, London

 

 

The second thing to know is that when I commented on Facebook I had seen the pieces in both London and Edinburgh, three different people told me I should read Ivory Vikings by Nancy Marie Brown. When I made the further confession that I took an MA in medieval history and once read a lot of Norse mythology and sagas, several more friends said I had to read it. I can now say without fear of contradiction that it has been a long, long time between what I once studied and now! 

 

Brown’s book is well-researched and comes at the chess pieces from four major vantage points: her command of Norse and Icelandic languages, archaeological and art history perspectives, feminism, and playing chess. My three-star rating is partly a warning that this is undoubtedly an academic book, albeit an impressive one. I once read translated sagas from famed Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241) and even visited his home in Reykholt, but Icelandic is allegedly one of the world’s most difficult languages to learn. Brown knows it so well she can cite ways in which it has been mistranslated. In other words, I take Brown’s word on such matters.

 

Ivory Vikings shook a few cobwebs of names of Scandinavian heroes, scoundrels, explorers, holy men, and usurpers whose very names once thrilled me: Canute, Eirik Bloodaxe, Haakon the Old, Ethelred the Unready, Saint Thorlak, Harald Hardrada…. Brown reminds readers that Vikings were from the mythologized figures of Wagner operas. To be sure, Norsemen raided coastal towns and often took no quarter doing so. Yet, by 1100 most were so thoroughly Christianized that they could be bought off instead of looting, Iceland had a bishop, and one Svein Asleisfarson was considered the “last” Viking when he died in 1171. 

 

 

 

If you try wading through Ivory Vikings it’s helpful to acknowledge that your geography skills have been skewed by looking at flat Mercator projection maps. Despite what a few loonies might tell you, our planet is a 3D sphere, not a flat map. Not to lessen the scale of Viking voyages, but if a crew sailed from Norway, Scotland was closer than England, Iceland was closer than Ireland, and from Iceland was a hop to Greenland, and a skip to Newfoundland where the 11^th century settlement of L’Anse aux meadows once stood. Who thinks of Greenland? Answer: Norsemen, Icelanders, Scots, and Picts. The Lewis chess pieces were carved from walrus ivory and Greenland was a good place get it.

 

Celts, Norwegians, and Icelanders all claim to have carved the Lewis chessmen. Brown comes down on the side of Iceland and a skilled carver known as Margaret the Adroit, around 1200 AD. She was married to Thorir, a priest who assisted Bishop Páll Jónsson in Skálholt, the center of Icelandic Christianity. Wait! Did I say married priest? Yes, Icelandic Catholic priests married until 1139, and thereafter the practice continued on the sly. The relative power of Scandinavian women explains how Margaret acquired artisanal skills and renown. Her work on bishop’s croziers and other religious objects makes her the prime candidate for chess pieces, some of which might have been intended as a gift to an archbishop. It remains a mystery how they ended up on Lewis, who put them there, or why.  

 

 

Not every scholar agrees the pieces were made in Iceland or that Margaret carved them. Maybe that’s ex post facto sexism. You’ll learn a lot about the game of chess in Brown’s book, including the fact that the queen was once the weakest piece on the board and could only move slantwise.* The strongest? Bishops! The coolest? My vote goes to the shield-biting rooks who were surely berserkers.

 

Rob Weir

 

* Queens gained chess power courtesy of Isabella of Castille.

 

Wild Houses: Not Sure What Oprah Was Thinking

 

 

 

Wild Houses (2024)

By Colin Barrett

Grove Press, 272 pages.

★

 

 By now you’ve probably heard that Samantha Harvey won this year’s Booker Prize for her superb novel Orbital. It was a good choice, though I might have given the nod to Percival Everett’s National Book Award-winning James. Wild Houses, the debut novel from Colin Barrett was longlisted for the Booker, but I’ll be hanged if I know why. It was praised for its beautiful sentences–by Oprah no less–and that too is baffling. It’s really just a caper novel and not a very interesting one.

 

Wild Houses takes place in Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland, a real place of about 11,000 people. You might see the phrase “proleptic” used to describe Barrett’s novel. It’s a fancy way of saying that he writes as if his action is happening in real time, though it will actually occur in the future. That’s not as hard to do as Barrett’s story unfolds over a single weekend with occasional deeper background material from the past. Cillian English is adrift, but gets by as a small fry drug dealer until a stroke of very bad luck occurs. He is holding about £30,000 worth of coke that belongs to a big dealer named Mulrooney. Cillian buried it in a field with some of his own stash, but what the Irish call a turlough occurs—a seasonal flood that creates an instant lake. The coke dissolves. There is no such thing as an accident insofar as Mulrooney is concerned, so he sends the strong-armed, weak-brained brothers Gabe and Sketch Ferdia to get his cash back. Of course, Cillian can’t pay.

 

Cillian has a younger brother Donal, nicknamed “Doll,” a slight young man with a foul mouth, which seems to be the norm in Ballina. Doll English has pretty much raised himself, but not all that well. (His ‘da Martin has worked in the shale oil fields near Calgary, Canada, for the past 5 years and his salty-tongued mother Sheila is nobody’s idea of a role model.) Doll idolizes Cillian, but the best thing he has going for him is his (somewhat) more mature girlfriend Nicky, who was raised by her older brother. Nicky, in turn, looks out for Doll to the degree a 17-year-old can. As you have no doubt surmised, Barrett’s Ballina is an epicenter of rootless people rooted in place, if such a contradictory statement can be the case.

 

Doll will become a pawn in Cillian’s troubles and is kidnapped, another terms that’s fraught with ambiguity as he knows the Ferdia brothers and the further up-the-scale Dev Hendrick to whose home he is taken. Were not drugs and thugs involved and Doll’s health imperiled, the entire tale could be something out of a Buster Keaton comedy. (It also put me in mind of the satirical 1969 Jimmy Breslin novel The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.)

 

Nicky and Sheila echo the Ferdia brothers in telling Cillian he has to pay for the mess into which he’s gotten Doll, but there’s no getting past the fact that Cillian doesn’t have £30,000. Will Gabe, Sketch, and Dev do in Doll? Will a magical solution occur? Ha! Ballina is miracle-impoverished. No matter how the issue resolves of fails to do so will certainly involve something underhanded. That is, if you stick around that long. I wouldn’t recommend that you do so. I have no idea why this novel was praised for its sentence structure unless someone really admires correct punctuation. There’s certainly nothing elegant about sentences that rely upon a string of curses followed by touches of florid filler. A reviewer in The Guardian complained that Wild Houses felt “airless” and “clinical.” I can but add, “To be sure, to be sure.”

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Afire is a Misfire

 

 

 

Afire

Directed by Christian Petzold

The Match Factory/Criterion, 103 mins. R (language, mild nudity, adult situations)

In German with subtitles

★★

 

Director Christian Petzold has announced his intention to make films on the elemental themes of water, fire, and earth. The first was Undine (2020); Afire is the second film. But what is it, exactly? A gay love film? A comedy? A drama? Call it all three, though one could say relationships of all manner are doomed. Plus, though I hate to be ethnically insensitive, Germans just don’t seem to do comedy very well. So much of it turns out sardonic rather than funny. (One can only hope detached irony is on its way out of fashion.)

 

Leon (Thomas Schubert) and Felix (Langston Uibel) are on their way to holiday home on the Baltic Sea, but gets a bad start when their car breaks down and delays their arrival. Leon, an author, is an egotistical bore who obsesses over his second novel, and Felix is working on his photography portfolio, though he’s lackadaisical and gives little indication of facility with a camera. They arrive just as Nadja (Paula Beer) is about to ride off on her bicyclical. Both are smitten, though they initially think she’s a caretaker rather than one of their housemates. Leon immediately falls into a workaholic routine that seems to consist mainly of fretting and pretending to be busier than he is. He is crestfallen to learn Nadja has a lifeguard boyfriend named Devid (Enno Trebs) and refuses every offer to engage in anything that reeks of jollity. He is so insular that he is initially fails to recognize the shifting terrain of sexual attractions. The unlikely quartet will later be joined by Helmut (Matthias Brandt), Leon’s older publisher, who will deliver the verdict we’ve long suspected: Leon’s manuscript stinks and is unpublishable.

 

If all this sounds too laconic to be dramatic and too petulant to be funny, you’re right. Paul Beer is the best thing in the film by far. Her Nadja is actually a brilliant doctoral candidate in literature capable of holding in-depth intellectual discussions with Helmut instead of worrying about her chops as a writer or researcher. A medical emergency and a dangerous forest fire provide a spark of dramatic tension and tragedy. Leon is shocked back to reality, but can he admit he’s in love with Nadja or change his ways? What do you think?

 

Aside from the talented Ms. Beer, the most interesting thing about Afire is trying to figure out how it got rated R in the United States. Given that F-bombs are more common than Disney characters these days, plus the fact that everyone is speaking German, it seems the real problem is shirtless men and a quick flash of bare buttocks. In other words, backdoor homophobia has reared its head. I could make more out of this, but it hardly matters. Though Afire won a Golden Bear—Germany’s equivalent of an Oscar—it went nowhere at anyone’s box office. I don’t think that had much to do with gay themes; I simply think Afire should be renamed Misfire.

 

Rob Weir