A Separation a Masterful Work in Any Language

Things are seldom as they seem!

A SEPARATION (2011)

Directed by Asghar Farhadi

PG-13, 123 mins. In Farsi with English subtitles.

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The winner of the 2011 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture is the only film from Iran ever to do so, A Separation. I’ve not seen all of the foreign language entries, but I can report that the winner is certainly worthy of being honored. It is a complex and taut human drama about how easily things can spiral out of control.

The first thing that strikes you about this film is wonderment about how it got past Iran’s strict censors. There’s nothing racy or salacious in the film, but it is not a flattering portrait of modern-day Iran. It opens with an informal hearing in which Simin (Leila Hatami) has been given preliminary denial to her divorce petition from Nader (Peyman Moadi). She admits that he is a good man, but he refuses to leave the country with her. It’s never explained why Simin wants to leave, but you see it her eyes every time she tightens her head scarf: Simin doesn’t want to live under the rule of the mullahs, nor does she wish her 11-year-old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi) to do so. Nader ostensibly refuses to leave for just one reason: he is the caregiver to his father, who has Alzheimer’s.

The judge refuses the divorce, but he cannot force Simin to stay with Nader; she moves in with her equally feminist-minded birth family and leaves Nader to fend for himself. Termeh stays with her father with whom she bonds, but also as a bargaining chip to keep her mother from emigrating. Domestic unhappiness leads to tragedy when Nader hires a caregiver, the devout chador-wearing Razieh (Sarina Bayat), to care for his father when he’s at work. Nader is so desperate that he hires her before consulting with her husband, Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini), as is customary of patriarchal Iran under the mullahs. Nor does he pay the slightest attention to her concerns about low pay, her long commute, or being asked to perform duties that could conflict with her religious principles. She is also five months pregnant, which Nader may or may not realize. This fragile situation unravels when Razieh needs to leave the apartment, ties the old man into his bed for safety, and Nader returns home early. He blows his stack and pushes Razieh out of the apartment.

What ensues is a series of court cases that are as labyrinthine and continuous as Bleak House. Those who think the US courts are screwy will feel better after checking out the twists and turns of Iranian justice. I will reveal no more than to say that simultaneous hearings take place for a murder charge, contempt of court, elder abuse, and Semin’s marital status. This is far more than a he said/she said case; it also involves social class, sexist presumptions that male rights supersede those of women, Koranic versus civil law, blood money customs, child custody, and a cultural ethos that encourages public brawls between hot-tempered males such as Nader and Hodyat. No one’s motives are quite what they seem. Is Nader being setup, or is he a liar? Is his father really the reason he won’t leave Iran with Semin? Is Razieh a victim, or a false accuser? Is Hodyat a wronged husband, or an extortionist? Termeh loves her parents, but does she trust either of them?

It takes considerable skill to make comprehensible a movie with this many loose threads. Luckily director Farhadi and his talented cast are up to the task. This film is subtitled, but it’s as gripping as anything you’ll see in English. Call it tragedy becomes Farsi, laugh at my bad pun (please!) swallow your reservations, and revel in a gripping story and superb filmmaking.

Breitbart Passing No Tragedy

Since when is cruelty a political principle?

I’ve had several people ask me why I haven’t written about the death of conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart. “What do you think,” they ask? Actually, Nicholas Kamm of Rolling Stone already said what I think: that Breitbart was a “douche” whose passing no one should mourn. I wouldn’t have used that word, but the sentiment is in the right (and Breitbart would have had it in no other direction) quadrant. I mourn his death with exactly the same level of sadness I felt when Lee Atwater (1991), Richard Nixon (1994), and Jerry Falwell (2007) died: none. I will preemptively say that I will collectively shed zero tears when the following shuffle off this mortal coil: Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and Bill O’Reilly. (That’s just the short list.)

I don’t loathe these individuals because of their politics, but because they have none. Each, like Breitbart, uses ideology and faux principles as an excuse to be mean-spirited, vicious, and selfish. Since when did creepiness become a synonym for credo? Prevarication for politics? These self-appointed guardians of “truth” worship no god but themselves, care about no one’s economic health but their own, hold few civic ideals, and love the United States only insofar as it pads their bank accounts and assuages their oversized egos. I get the fact that none of these folks invented sensationalism; they are not responsible for a culture in which cathartic anger is easier than contemplative reasoning, nostrums masquerade as policy, and cheap thrills have supplanted compassion. They didn’t invent it, but the Nuremberg defense can’t save them from the damage they’ve done.

If it were only a matter of bad behavior, one could dismiss the Breitbarts of the world for what they were/are: boorish, despicable, and sleazy. Alas, there is too often an actively malevolent side to them. Take the moment that made Breitbart famous: his “exposé” of ACORN. That, as in his video of USDA employee Shirley Sherrod’s alleged anti-white speech, turned out to be a lie. Breitbart faked the data; his video revelations were the equivalent of doctored photographs. Most of what passed for evidence was actually either invented, or was a publicity-seeking selective reading of out-of-context factoids. It was, in short, the sort of hack job that would get a graduate student unceremoniously booted from a university. Alas, there were no professors double-checking Breitbart’s blog and the story, though false, was so juicy that salivating ideologues rushed to the table to slice ACORN to ribbons. As a result, one of the nation’s finest community-empowerment organizations was driven to extinction. Breitbart and his followers did their jobs so well that much of the public believes the lie, not ACORN's 30-year-record of providing needed social services. The sad reality is that thousands of low-income citizens have been deprived of ACORN advocacy for everything from housing advice to voter registration.

Some of Breitbart’s supporters in Congress­–a group no one should confuse with a distinguished college faculty–bemoaned his death, had words of comfort for his family, and called him a “crusader” against fraud. Poppycock! He was the biggest fraud of all. Few shed tears for Nazis condemned at Nuremberg, and I have none for latter-day enemies of justice. Breitbart’s passing won’t improve the world–there are plenty of demagogues (on both the right and the left) remaining–but at least it may slow the damage.

Who Knew? John E. Sununu is Right (Sort Of)

Gar Price Crazy Talk in America!

Four words I never thought I would type: John Sununu is right. Well… sort of. In a March 5 op-ed to the Boston Globe titled “Dripping demagoguery at the pimp,” Sununu blasted President Obama’s energy policy as rhetoric without substance. Sununu, of course, is not an impartial observer; he’s the son of John H. Sununu, a former Republican governor of New Hampshire who was hard right before it was fashionable. Sununu fils served the Granite State in the House of Representatives from 1997-2003 and in the U.S. Senate from 2003-2009, when he lost to the much more sensible Jeanne Shaheen.

Sununu noted that Obama’s faith in alternative energy sources such as making gasoline from algae is a pipe dream that may never happen and will certainly have no impact on rising fuel process any time in the near future. He was also highly skeptical of other panaceas such as hydrogen cells, synfuel, and ethanol, and dismissed talk of releasing supplies from Strategic Oil Reserve as little more than a dog-and-pony show. To his credit, Sununu admits that Obama “didn’t invent Gas Price Crazy Talk.” He knows that petroleum prices involve global markets and that both parties have been guilty of telling Americans what they want to hear. He ended his piece with the remark, “It would be nice if someone treated Americans as though they were adult enough to understand.”

Amen! But this is where Mr. Sununu and I part company. I’d applaud his every word were it not for the fact that he engaged in quite a lot of demagoguery of his own. Someone did treat Americans “as though they were adult enough to understand,” and the children beat him up for it. I refer to President Jimmy Carter, who told Americans back in 1979 that the energy crisis was real, and that rising prices and periodic crises would be permanent unless aggressive steps were taken to break America’s dependence upon petroleum. This is where Sununu is being disingenuous. The Republican Party’s solution can be summed in a three-word slogan used by GOP National Chair Michael Steele: “Drill, baby, drill.” Drilling, in fact, is the only policy at which Sununu even hinted in his op-ed; he blasted Obama for the six-month moratorium on drilling imposed after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The drilling option is the ultimate infantilization of the public. It replaces basic science with the child-like fantasy that natural resources can be magically replenished. Fact: petroleum is a finite resource. We may find a new pool here and there, but oil fields are just like your backyard swimming pool: if you pump out the liquid, it will go dry. Sununu finds pond algae fanciful–and I agree–but isn’t it just as much “Crazy Talk” to act as if there are endless supplies of oil just lying about waiting to be discovered? The phrase “there is no energy crisis” came from another energy demagogue: Ronald Reagan, the master that the Sununu family served and continues to revere.

Sununu’s own words haunt him. Yes, President Obama stopped drilling for six months after the Deepwater spill. This means there has been drilling for nearly a year and a half. In fact, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA), domestic production has increased by nearly 12% since Obama took office-–that’s more than a half million barrels per day! Notice the difference at the pump? Of course you don’t. The EIA estimates that given global demand, if we increase production by a whopping 25%, you won’t see the difference until 2030, when the price might drop by 3 cents per gallon. Why? You don’t simply drill a hole in the ground, find a nice cache of high-test, and pump it right into your gas-guzzling SUV. First, two of every three test bores are “dry holes,” each of which nonetheless costs a king’s ransom to drill. Oil companies don’t just extract profits for active production; the pump price includes exploration and capital costs. Second, even when a strike occurs, it must be cost-effective; shale oil, for example, is often more expensive to produce than what it will fetch at the pump. It generally takes many years before crude can be safely and efficiently extracted, refined, and sold.

America’s quest for cheap energy is akin to its search for a diet that will allow us to eat like hogs and be as lithe as gazelles: a fantasy. Cheap gas is over, folks. John Sununu is right to call fix-it-fast rhetoric demagoguery. I just wish the source had more credibility. Alas, Mr. Sununu and his ilk have been part of “Gas Price Crazy Talk.”

Smith College Show on Debussy's Paris Delights on Many Levels

Going to the Smith bulb show? Make sure you stop by the art museum.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s poster image of Aristide Bruant is one of the most recognizable graphics in the Western world. But who was he? Ten

points if you know he was a famed cabaret singer. Give yourself twenty more if you have the foggiest idea what he sounded like.

Hearing Bruant while gazing upon his poster is among the many delights in a newly opened show at the Smith College Museum of Art (SCMA) in Northampton, MA (now through June 10), and the exhibit isn’t even about him or Toulouse-Lautrec. It’s just a small part of a show in honor of the 150^th anniversary of the birth of classical composer Claude Debussy. Those who have seen other shows at the SCMA will be pleasantly surprised by Debussy’s Paris: Art, Music and Sounds of the City. Smith has one of the finest private collections of art of any college in America and has launched many superb shows, but it seldom generates buzz for creative displays. Let us hope that guest curator Laura Kalba, a Smith professor of art, has just raised the bar; Debussy’s Paris is a visual, aural, and intellectual delight.

I admit that I the thought of the exhibit did not initially thrill me; Debussy’s music is too mannered for my taste. What the exhibit does, though, is play off the myriad contrasts of fin-de-siècle Paris. It was a world in which Debussy’s music--often labeled impressionistic--coincided with the artistic movement called impressionism, as well as symbolism, the first rumblings of surrealism, plebeian culture, and emerging commercial popular culture. One of the many joys of the SCMA show is its embrace of popular culture. Long before we get to the computer station where Debussy’s music can be heard, we stop at listening posts to hear the singsong patter of street peddlers and sampl

e recordings of the kinds of Parisian street sounds Debussy would have heard. Even better, we learn to appreciate the manner in which popular and fine art collided in the late 19^th century. The spectacular theatrical modern dance of Loie Fuller, for instance, would not have been possible without the perfection of electricity. In like fashion, her flowing sensual movements owed more to can-can dancers than the buttoned-down world of bourgeois Paris. And let us not forget that painters such as Manet, Monet, Pissaro, Bonnard, and Seurat–all on display–were only slightly less scandalous to bourgeois critic

s than the cabaret stars, prostitutes, and absinthe-drinkers painted by Toulouse-Lautrec.

Debussy–whose private life was a shamble–sampled all these worlds, with much of his music evoking the symbolism of painters such as Odilon Redon, the chaotic pulses of the street, and developing modernist impulses. In the most direct example, Debussy wrote his famed “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun” in response to a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, and sought to replicate the sound cadences of that work. And speaking of cadences, you could hear piston-like staccato in the cabaret, especially in the songs of Yvette Guilbert, who sang as if the jackhammer was making way for structures she intended to compromise with irony and humor.

I came away with new appreciation for Claude Debussy, though Bruant and Guilbert remain more my cup of tea. (Or should I say absinthe?) Years ago I read UMass professor emeritus Charles Rearick’s superb Pleasures of the Belle Epoch: Entertainment and Festivity in Turn-of-the-Century France and imagined what that world must have been like. Thanks to Debussy’s Paris: Art, Music and Sounds of the City, I have a better idea.

Those venturing to Smith for its annual spring bulb show (March 3-19) should definitely set aside time to see this exhibit.

Moneyball a Great way to Welcome Spring Training

Moneyball (2011)

Directed by Bennett Miller

Sony Pictures, 133 mins. PG-13

* * * *

It shouldn’t be rare but it is: a film about sports in which the activity in question actually resembles the way real athletes play it. Moneyball is one of the best baseball movies of recent memory; it adds to its cachet by being a five-tools film: good acting, solid direction, an engaging story, a crisp script, and a surprising amount of tension for a story whose ending we already know.

Five tools is what Moneyball’s principal, Billy Beane, was supposed to possess when the New York Mets threw a $125,000 bonus contract at him in 1980. As it turned out, Beane couldn’t hit for average or power, wasn’t much of a fielder, had a mediocre throwing arm, and didn’t get aboard enough for anyone to assess his base-running prowess. He was, in short, a bust. He kicked around Major League Baseball from 1984 to 1989 and compiled this line: 301 at-bats, an anemic .219 average, and .246 OBP. He struck out 80 times and had just 29 RBIs and three homeruns. (One wonders which stiffs surrendered those!)

Moneyball shows Beane’s futility in flashbacks, but the film really centers on 2002, by which time Beane–played by Brad Pitt–had been a successful general manager of the Oakland As for five years. Each year from 1999 on, Beane built a winning team and each year it was gutted by parsimonious owners claiming that as a “small-market” team the A’s simply couldn’t afford to keep players poised to make big bucks on the free agent market. We meet GM Beane after the 2001 season has just ended with Oakland’s loss in the opening round of the playoffs. More disappointment looms; the team is about to lose its biggest stars: slugger Jason Giambi, slick outfielder Jermaine Dye, and closer Jason Isringhausen. No easy help is on the way; owner Steve Schott has told Beane that payroll must be trimmed.

What transpired was one of MLB’s weirdest stories. Beane hired a sabermetrics whiz Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) and the two of them built a roster based on statistical probability rather than scouting reports. It was a team of retreads and non-stars that every expert in the game said would lose 100 games; it won 103 and set an American League record by winning 20 games in a row. We see the season unfold in dramatic and convincing fashion, the action made real by the strategic use of archival footage and the fact that the actors look as if they have actually used a bat for something other than breaking and entering. When Stephen Bishop as David Justice takes rips in the batting cage, his swing actually looks like that Justice. Baseball fans know how the 2002 season ended, but it’s a lot of fun watching Beane’s misfits get there.

Brad Pitt continues to demonstrate his transformation from a pretty face into a competent actor. A Best Actor Oscar nomination would be deserved and a victory would not be upsetting. He portrays Beane as a man torn between duty, desperation, and disappointment, the latter in the form of a broken marriage and infrequent contact with a daughter whom he loves deeply. He’s fed good lines from a script cowritten by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin and delivers them with charm and just the right touch of smarm, edginess, and baseball superstition.

The film is about baseball, but it’s also about the American obsession with winning, its emphasis on work over personal satisfaction, and the cult of experts. We revel in seeing Beane defy expectations in the same way we’d root for John Henry to best the steam-powered drilling machine.

Should we trust the message? Well… the jury’s out on that one. Manager Art Howe (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) was furious about the film and claims credit for the remarkable 2002 season. (And what’s he done since 2002--oh yeah, led the Mets to ruin.) The film does leave us with a bit of baseball BS, though. A different John Henry, the owner of the Red Sox, offered Billy Beane a job after the 2002 season, the Sox team owner. Beane turned it down and we’re left with a coda that says the 2004 Boston Red Sox won their first World Series in over eight decades after using roster-building methods developed by Beane and Brand. Nonsense and poppycock! The Red Sox had the second highest payroll in MLB that year--double that of Oakland and 5.5 times higher than that of the cheapest team, Milwaukee. In truth, MLB continues to debate sabermetrics and Beane’s alleged genius. From 2007 on Oakland has not finished above .500 and whether one likes it or not, cheap teams seldom win the Big Enchilada. Stats tell me a different story–that Oakland’s 2002 season was a fluke. In the long run, the law of averages smiles on the deep pocketed.

Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer Make the Ukulele Sizzle

CATHY FINK & MARCY MARXER

Rockin’ the Uke

Community Music 205

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Who says Americans don’t like to recycle? There have been periodic outbreaks of ukulele madness ever since the first haole hit the Hawaiian beaches in the 19^th century. It seems like every twenty years or so we rediscover the ukulele. It was a staple of Tin Pan Alley composers in the openings of the 20^th century and beloved of string bands before going out of fashion. Then it resurfaced after World War II for a few years and made its way onto early TV. Tiny Tim used one to find his way through the tulips.

One again the humble uke is hotter than a Phoenix sidewalk on July Fourth. Everyone (including me!) is messing around with them, but mastery is a different matter. Enter folk vets (and past Grammy winners) Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, who really know how to make those four strings sing. Rockin’ the Uke is a delightful mix of swing standards, country, surf music, public domain chestnuts, and originals that are, in turn, bubbly, bluesy, whimsical, and torchy. Django Reinhardt inspired their arrangement of “Dark Eyes,” and when you print such a claim and proceed to do justice, you know you’ve got serious chops. Call this one Django jams with the Delmore Brothers, Ernest Ka’ai, and Arthur Godfrey.

Check them out on the old banjo tune “Snowdrop.”

Rob Weir

It Behooves the NBA to Listen to Iceman's Critique

Kwame Brown--the sort of NBA 'body' that teams like Charlotte don't need.

The National Basketball Association was in trouble even before the strike sliced a quarter of the games from the schedule. The league puts on its game face and pretends that everything is kiss-kiss make-up, but it can’t do much to disguise the fact that the product on the court simply isn’t very good. (How about the defense in that 152-149 All-Star game?) But don’t take my word for it; listen to Hall-of-Famer George “Iceman” Gervin, who graced the courts from 1972-1986 and dumped in 25,595 points. (That’s an astounding 25.1 ppg.)

Hurray for the Iceman; he has the court cred to make a point I’ve been making for years: that today’s NBA players have athleticism, but very little basketball IQ. He faults NBA management and marketers for being enamored of highlight reels. Says Gervin, “The game went away from the fundamentals and skills aspect and more (players who are) just athletes dominate the game. Dunking doesn’t necessarily show a skill. If you are athletic enough and strong enough, you can dunk. But can you make a left-hand layup or a right-hand layup or shoot an in-between jumper?” His assessment of most of today’s players is a resounding “no.” TV, he notes, reinforces the emphasis on alley-oops and dunks, and this has watered down the game.

Amen to that. The Iceman also shot over 84% from the free-throw line–another lost art. Yes, I know that some Hall of Fame players were bad at the stripe–Wilt Chamberlain comes to mind–but last year’s league average was a gentleman’s C: just 73%. Or, to put into different perspective, it’s just a tad higher than what one sees in the WNBA. The WNBA’s average height is 5’11”; in the NBA it’s 6’7’’ so why aren’t the men pouring it in at a much higher percentage than the women? Could it be exactly what Gervin said? Too much flash and not enough fundamentals? Yep. What does it tell you when only four current players rank among the league’s top 50 in assists per game?

The emphasis on drafting players with an “NBA body” over those with game savvy gives one pause. Would Larry Bird have been a top pick in today’s NBA? John Havlicek? Nate Archibald? Lenny Wilkins? Bob Cousy? Hal Greer? They are among the players in the Hall of Fame who didn’t have NBA bodies, but knew enough about the game to blow guys with better physiques out of their high-tech sneakers. I wonder what would happen if a NBA bottom-feeder such as Charlotte decided to revamp its lineup with smart players instead of athletic ones. Think it could do better than 4-28? So do I.