A Complete Unknown (2024/25)

Directed by James Mangold

Searchlight Pictures, 141 minutes, R (language, smoking, adult situations)

★★★

 

Your hair is probably standing up from the buzz surrounding A Complete Unknown, the new biopic about Bob Dylan’s meteoric rise to fame. In 1961, he was indeed a complete unknown. He hit New York City after dropping out of college, dumping his birthname (Robert Zimmerman), and leaving Minnesota behind. In legend, he chose Dylan as his surname because his favorite poet was Dylan Thomas. The film implies this happened when he first hit the Big Apple, but records say it occurred in 1962.

 

At 19, though, Dylan’s real muse was Woody Guthrie. The film depicts Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) meeting Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) in a New York City hospital–Woody suffered from Huntington’s chorea, a horrifying neurological disorder*–but  director James Mangold fudged timelines a bit. He showed Dylan meeting Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) at Guthrie’s bedside, which wasn’t so. These are among several small changes Mangold and screenplay writer Jay Cocks made when adapting Elijah Wald’s superb Dylan Goes Electric for the screen. Nonetheless, the story you see is mostly accurate.

 

Dylan burned through the Greenwich Village folk scene like a forest fire. Seeger saw Dylan as the savior of the fading folk revival movement who would make acoustic songs the voice of bohemians and the American working class. Dylan did transform American music, but not the way Pete and his wife Toshi (Erika Hatsune) had hoped. His album of traditional songs tanked, but Dylan’s next three releases and protest singles established him as the icon of a new generation. Much of Dylan’s political education came via his romance with Suze Rotolo, the redhead on the cover of The Freewheelin’  Bob Dylan. At Dylan’s request, she is called Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning) in the film. I’m not sure why, given that just about everyone who follows Dylan knows that Sylvie is Suze in all but name. She was a Red Diaper Baby–her parents were communists in the 1930s–who awakened Dylan’s conscience to issues such as racial injustice, poverty, and repression; in essence, Rotolo was Dylan’s personal Port Huron Statement.

 

There is no question, though, that words and rhymes flew out of Dylan’s head at lightening speed. As we watch him pull nicotine-fueled all-nighters, those scenes reminded me of how director Milos Foreman presented Mozart’s feverish production in Amadeus. To continue that thought, Mangold’s Salieri was Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) with whom Dylan had an affair while living with Rotolo. Baez seldom wrote her own songs when she, not Dylan, was the brightest star on the stage. Their affair was both tempestuous and a clash of two egos.**

 

The movie has several dominant subthemes, the first being that young Dylan was a jerk who used people. He especially treated Sylvie/Suze shabbily, as he did Pete and Toshi–two elders who could have helped him grow up. Instead, if we believe the film, he fell in with bad boy Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) and into deep brooding. The denouement occurs at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where Dylan famously/infamously plugged in. That year he released Bringing It All Back Home, his shift away from folk music. Some of this is exaggerated. Not everyone was appalled by Dylan’s performance and, to this day, there are conflicting tales about Seeger attempting to cut Dylan’s sound cable. Another tale of a harmonica is pure Hollywood imagination. So is the film’s R rating.

 

Movies routinely resort to fantasy, elision, and simplification. You get only the barest glimpse of Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, hence you won’t learn much about key players like Barbara Bane, Theo Bikel, Mike Bloomfield, Joe Boyd, John Hammond,  Al Kooper, Maria Muldaur, or Dave Van Ronk.  Albert Grossman and Harold Leventhal are more caricatures than characters. Luckily there’s nothing hokey about the four principals. Chalamet, Norton, and Barbaro do their own singing and playing and they are amazingly good. The film and actors have already picked up awards and I suspect many more are in the offing. My vote for Best Supporting Actor goes to Norton. He knew Seeger and captures his essence to the point of inhabiting the role. I’ll leave it to you to determine if the enigmatic Dylan remains a complete unknown.

 

Rob Weir

 

*Huntington’s is a vicious disease. Like dementia it’s progressive but inconsistent. Guthrie was sometimes coherent, unlike the grunting figure shown in the film.  

 

**Baez got revenge in her composition “Diamonds and Rust.”

 

Original Sisters at the Rockwell is a Jewell

 

Anita Kunz as Fairy Tale Portrait

 

 

Original Sisters: Portraits of Tenacity and Courage

Anita Kunz

Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, MA

Through May 26, 2025

 

Illustrations of Light

Through January 4, 2026.

 

 

 

What did you do during COVID lockdown? Canadian-born illustrator Anita Kunz (b. 1956) mused over the women who have inspired her. Then she decided to paint a portrait each day of women past and present. An exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum displays 154 of Kunz’s sheroes, plus selected other work.

 

If her name seems familiar, you’ve probably seen her work in publications such as The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and numerous others. As an illustrator, Kunz works mostly with water colors on paper. This helped her work faster–you try doing a complete portrait a day–but what stands out in Kunz’s portraits is the uniqueness in how she captures the essence of her subjects. It helps to have a great sense of humor. In the introductory gallery we see Kunz’s puckishness on display in her art and pop culture parodies: a pieta of Olive Oyl and Popeye, John Belushi in his samurai garb, Van Gogh as Goofy, herself as Renée (not René) Magritte, and send ups of Taylor Swift, Aretha Franklin, and Reese Witherspoon.

 

Ancient Egyptian hailing a cab

Kunz as Renee Magritte

John Belushi

Spoof on Van Gogh

 

 

Her portraits are more serious, but there is a lightness to her style that illuminates each subject, even those whose lives didn’t work out as planned. Hers is an A-Y look at indomitable women from 9^th century Saint Æbbe the Younger through Malala Yousafzai. The last name is probably familiar; she’s the 15-yeard-old Afghani girl the Taliban shot in the head yet survived. Each portrait comes with a short identifying paragraph, statement of how Kunz was inspired by that individual, and the fate of the individual. Saint Æbbe, for instance, made a decision that got her and other nuns killed. She headed a Benedictine abbey in Scotland. When she heard Viking raiders were on the way, she and other nuns cut off her noses to make themselves look unattractive and avoid rape. That part worked, but the Norsemen were so appalled that they killed everyone in the abbey and burned it. It is said to be the origin of the phrase “cut off one’s nose to spite the face.” It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to infer what this says about women asserting agency over their own bodies, albeit in an extreme manner.

 

Most stories are not that gruesome. One of the joys is Kunz’s mix of names you probably know–Rachel Carson, Anne Frank, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Sojourner Truth–with those you might not: Alice Ball, Buffalo Calf, Lizzie Magee, Betty Soiskin…. And there are quite a few historical and international women: Boudicca, Jeanne de Clisson, Tomoe Gozen, Juliane Koepcke, Irena Sendler, Valentina Tereshkova….

 

oldest park ranger

Camille Claudel probably sculpted some Rodin masterpieces

Dora Maar, Picasso mistress and more?

Jeanne de Clisson, 14th c Breton pirate

Discovered a treatment for leprosy

inventor of Monopoly game stolen by a man

art patron, artist, bohemian

plugged in long before most men, precursor of rock

 

probably the one who killed Gen. Custer

 

 

Full confession: When the discussion came up about whether or not to head to the Berkshires to see this show, I was unenthused. I’ve been to many portrait galleries and, aside from playing the “Do you know who that is?” game, straight portraiture isn’t my favorite style of art. I guess I must have overdosed on famous people and Dutch burghers at some point. I was, however, so completely won over by Kunz’s work that I came home with the exhibition catalogue. Her portraits come alive, though not in  any sort of photographic way. Sorry if this sounds mysterious, but it felt as if Kunz captured a spark in each of her subjects that, in turn, illumined both spirit and historical significance.

 A small critique. The final gallery features an end-to-end multi-tiered vertical display of paintings. It was as if they were hung by a Renaissance curator. That made for clear viewing of portraits at eye level, but it was an uncomfortable way to take in those closer to the floor and a neck-craning peek at those higher up. The catalogue showed me numerous images I missed.

 

Also on display is a small exhibition titled Illustrations of Light (through January 4, 2026). Some of the world’s finest artists–Lautrec springs to mind–found that commercial art pays the bills. In the early 20^th century electric light was new and companies such as the Edison Mazda Electric Light Company had to convince a large section of the skeptical public that electric illumination was a good idea. When persuasion fails, switch to advertising. Unlike today’s trademarks and identifying logos, Edison enlisted the help of artists such as Maxfield Parrish, Norman Rockwell, and N. C. Wyeth to spruce up their profiles. Some ads put light bulbs front and center, but as this exhibit shows, quite a few created (for lack of a better word) a psychological vibe that associated electric light with modernity, a calming glow, and homespun values. I love the old Edison Mazda ads, several of which are displayed alongside the canvases from which they were extracted. I wanted this exhibit to be more extensive, but I was happy to see what I did. 

 

Parrish

Rockwell

Rockwell shows why electric is "safer"

Rockwell channels Vermeer

Dean Cromwell, science showing how elec light works

 

 

 

 

Rob Weir

Colm Toibin, Kate Atkinson, Michael Connelly, Ethan Hawke

From the Stacks I

 

I once foolishly believed that the emergence of digitization meant I could stop building skyscrapers of novels in my office and dams upon every flat-bottomed piece of furniture in the house. I love books assembled from pulped-wood, it’s just that: (a) There are only a handful of novels I’m likely to re-read and (b) I’m getting older dagnabbit and I can make the print bigger on my iPad!

 

Then two things happened. First, I started going to League of Women Voters book sales in both Amherst and Northampton: hardcovers for a buck and 50 cents for a paperback. Then, a book buyer friend offloaded cartons of preview books. Once again I suffer from piles of the non-proctological variety. Here’s a few capsules of old and new books whose reading order was determined by gravity, not gravitas.

 

 

 

I’m a Colm Tóibín fan. I wasn’t disappointed by Long Island  (2024, 296 pages) but I wasn’t blown away by it either. It’s a sequel to Brooklyn (2009) and picks up the story of Irish lass Eilis Lacey. Brooklyn is often reckoned as one of top 100 novels of the 21^st  century. If you read it or have seen the Saoirse Ronan film adaptation you might remember that Eilis was in love with barkeep Jim Farrell but the village machinations of tightknit village Enniscorthy, family tragedy, and a lack of employment opportunity sent her packing to Brooklyn with choice # 2, Italian-American plumber Tony  Fiorello. Long Island moves the clock forward 20 years. Eilis has been successful economically–as evidenced by living in the ‘burbs of Long Island–and she has two children, but the whole modern kitchen, extended Italian family, accounting job, middle-class, unfaithful husband, thing has worn thin. Especially the latter. Most of her Irish kin in America are in Birmingham, for Pete’s sake, and if truth be told, she misses her youthful free-spirited self. She opts for a reverse journey, a trip of indeterminate length to Ireland. Uh oh; you know what Thomas Wolfe said about you can’t go home again. There are lots of rels, a few old friends, and Jim is still around. Like Brooklyn, Long Island is steeped in what might be called quiet tragedy and has a delicious ending, but as is often the case of sequels Long Island sparkles, but didn’t quite catch fire. ★★★

 

 

 

That last line sums up how I felt about a new book from Kate Atkinson, another author I generally admire. I felt that her new mystery Death at the Sign of the Rook (2004, 302 pages) was more of a genteel wren than an aggressive corvid. It’s another Jackson Brodie novel and I find him too mannered. I get it that Atkinson is trying to channel Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie, but if you’re going to give me another declining manor house, more upper-class toffs, stolen art work, antique guns, and people with names like Sir Lancelot Hardwick, Countess Voranskaya, Dorothy Padgett, Reggie, and Simon, at least give me some impolite murders and truly dastardly characters. This is a literary mystery and though I am impressed by that, I grew bored it. I’m sure hardcore Atkinson devotees will disagree, but I struggled to finish it. ★★

 

 

 

Now for something old. Michael Connelly is among the best mystery writers of recent memory and The Black Box (2012, 464 pages) is a gripping example of his prowess. Back in 1992, the beating of black motorist Rodney King by Los Angeles police touched off riots and protests that presaged contemporary responses to police brutality. Back then, Harry Bosch was part of an LAPD Watch team that investigated the slaying of Danish journalist Anneke Jesperson,. It was never solved, and the very investigation caem under fire for its presumed white focus. Flash to 2012 and Harry now investigates “cold cases” when new evidence arises. Jesperson was slain using a very specific gun with an unusual signature. Twenty years later a new murder occurs using the same weapon. New questions arise, including why Jesperson was even in LA in 1992 given her previsit to Stuttgart, Atlanta, and San Francisco beforehand. Did LAPD ask the wrong questions in 1992? Was something non-racial occurring alongside the King riots? Harry (with assists from his daughter) seeks to build a network the stretches from Denmark to Germany to Vietnam to various U.S. cities, but that’s a widespread set of dots to connect. It also involves retired cops, corporate heavyweights (of a sort), and several very unexpected suspects. Harry needs the namesake black box that’s key to explaining what went wrong. The Black Box is complex, fast-paced, and unafraid to tackle uncomfortable realities. Loved it! ★★★★★

 

 

 

I had heard that actor Ethan Hawke was a decent writer, so I paid the end-of-the-day LoWV $5 a bag price and threw in Hawke’s Ash Wednesday (2002, 221 pages). I wouldn’t call Hawke a great stylist, but like many actors he does his homework. In 2022, he was a young whelp of 32 and something of a Generation X icon. Ash Wednesday could be seen as a dressed-down version of the role he played in the 1995 film, Before Sunrise, though no one would necessarily confuse the novel’s Christy with Julie Delpy. Both Before Sunrise and Ash Wednesday, though, are about the heat of romantic passion and the desperation felt by the realization that the respective relationships are inherently doomed. Jimmy is a working class kid who falls hard for Christy, messes things up, gets her pregnant, and gets her back by going AWOL from the Army. Theirs is a high-speed road trip romance in a souped-up Chevy Nova that begins in Albany and ends up in  Texas via New Orleans. Jimmy’s inexperienced and perhaps not all that bright and Christy is a wild child who might be bipolar. Neither is ready for adulthood. The language is rough in places, but Hawke had an ear for Gen X ‘Tude-speak. Not fine literature but a breeze of a read. ★★★ ½

 

 

 

 

Call Northside 777: Intriguing Noir/Quasi-Documentary

 

 

 

Call Northside 777 (1948)

Directed by Henry Hathaway

20^th Century Fox, 112 minutes, Not-rated.

★★★★

 

You might immediately notice that Call Northside 777 doesn’t sound like a movie. That’s because it has almost no musical soundtrack. This gives an appropriate documentary effect to a film noir classic that is a documentary of sorts. Yet, it stars James Stewart and other Hollywood heavyweights.

 

It tells a forgotten story from the 1920s and 30s when Prohibition was in effect and Chicago was the gangland capital of the United States. In 1932, a cop was killed inside a speakeasy. Frank Wiecek (wee-check) and Tomek Zaleska, another Polish laborer, were arrested, convicted, and sent to the slammer. Eleven years later,  Brian Kelly (Lee J. Cobb), the editor of the Chicago Times, and reporter P. J. McNeal (Stewart) find a classified ad in their paper offering $5,000 to anyone who can clear Frank’s name. McNeal is assigned to call Northside 777 and interview the person who placed the notice. McNeal finds Tillie Wiecek, Frank’s aged mother, who has washed steps in a public building for 11 years to raise a reward to clear her son.

 

As far as McNeal is concerned, Frank is a cop killer and tells Tillie so. Kelly, though, sees no harm in doing a little bit of digging and McNeal agrees to look into it. Tillie’s plea to talk with Frank rattles in his head. McNeal is pretty sure Frank is guilty, but maybe he can squeeze a week’s worth of human interest stories out of it. To his surprise, McNeal finds discrepancies in news reports and has to resort to subterfuge to get police reports.  After talking with Frank a few times he entertains the possibility that Frank and Tomek were railroaded. Even the warden thinks Frank is innocent, and McNeal is shocked to discover Wiecek’s ex-wife also thinks Frank so. When Frank agrees to submit himself to a new invention, the polygraph, and passes the test, McNeal shifts to advocating for Frank and Tomek.

 

McNeal and the Times build public support, but there are flies in the ointment. Polygraphs were (and remain) inadmissible, thus the only foreseeable way to clear the two men is to convince eyewitness Wanda Skutnik to change her testimony. Is she even alive? Early 20^th century Chicago was a collection of ethnic enclaves; McNeal doesn’t speak Polish and most of Chicago’s Poles had little or no English. Without Skutnik,  there is little chance of reversal. Even worse, as Times attorney Martin Burns (Paul Harvey) advises, bringing mere assertions before a parole board could actually hurt Frank and Tomek when they come before the board in the future.

 

Does McNeal pull a rabbit out of his fedora? I shall say only that what passed for “high-tech” back then came into play. As for the film’s documentary style, the old TV show Dragnet used to begin episodes with these words: “The story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.” That’s pretty much the case in Call Northside 777. It was based on the real life cases of Joseph Majczek and Theodore Marcinckiewicz, and a Chicago Times investigation led by James McGuire. To add gritty verisimilitude, director Henry Hathaway got permission to film inside Illinois’ Slaterville Prison, a truly creepy place of tiered cellblocks built in the allegedly more secure panopticon style. Its security is debatable, but it’s noteworthy that the idea came from 18^th century utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. There’s little doubt of its dehumanization factor.  

 

To strike a critical note, Northside 777 often plays like what we’d today call an infomercial for the Chicago Times. To temper that, the Times was indeed once a powerhouse newspaper quite unlike the anemic merged paper of today.* We might say that Northside 777 is a reminder of what is lost when investigative newspapers are gutted or lost altogether. If young’uns wonder about the title, in 1940 the U.S. population was just over 132 million and not everyone had a phone. (That remained true in the 1950s as well.) A name was given to the operator switchboard exchange and no one needed more than two or three numbers to be connected.** Northside 777 is the number at which Tillie Wiecek  could be reached.

 

Rob Weir

 

*  Today’s merged Chicago Sun-Times has a circulation of around 57,000, a shadow of the 200,000 the Times once had on its own.

 

** My parents had a party line (look it up). I don’t recall the numbers, but the operator exchange was Colony.

 

 

How to Make Sex Boring: All Fours and How to Sleep at Night

 

All Fours (2024)

By Miranda July

Riverhead Books, 326 pages.

★

 

How to Sleep at Night (2025)

By Elizabeth Harris

William Morrow Books, 290 pages.

★★

 

Did I get your attention with the headline? Good. Be sure to tread lightly around these  two books. 

 

 

 

All Fours has gotten a lot of attention for being transgressive and bold. It is both of those things, but too bad few have asked if it has anything to say. Not really.

 

An unnamed multi-media artist who conducts interviews with women about sex gets caught in her own anthropological web. After many years of libertine hook-ups–more with women than men–she married Harris, a music producer, and, they have a  “they” child, Sam, because mom doesn’t want to force Sam into any category. (One wonders, though, about her insistence upon having baths with Sam.) The crisis point is that she is now 45 and fears she’s on the downward curve of being attractive or libidinous. She has just gotten an unexpected royalty check from a whiskey company, though it was something she wrote about hand jobs. She plans to drive from Los Angeles to New York and perhaps interview a pop star. This surprises Harris who says there are “Parkers” and “Drivers” and she is definitely a Parker who might not be up to a cross country journey.

 

Turns out he’s right (on several levels). She gets no further than Monrovia, California, checks into a motel and stays there for nearly a month, all the while pretending to be driving to or being in the Big Apple. At a petrol stop she meets Davey and falls in lust with him, though he’s much younger. Luckily his wife Claire is a designer whom she pays scads of money to transform her shabby motel room into a luxury suite. It will be the site of her frantic bouts of masturbation. She fantasizes sex every which way and manages to lure Davey to her suite. No intercourse occurs, but there is a degrading lap dance and a cringe-worthy insertion of her tampon. Davey seems more fixated on becoming a dancer. Nonetheless, she develops a deep fixation on Davey that takes a toll on her marriage. Harris agrees to live in an open relationship, she meets Davey’s mother and a friend who was once Davey’s sexual partner and coach. A perimenopause diagnosis exacerbates her midlife crisis and I reckon we are supposed to applaud her return to her premarital lesbianism.

 

This polarizing book has been reviewed by some a “funny,” and by me as pathetic. If you want a middle position, numerous reviewers took Miranda July to task for trying too hard to be offbeat and outrageous. I can live with that, but I can’t live with the novel’s illogical scenarios or soporific writing. 

 

 

 

How to Sleep at Night has more depth, though its four central characters would be boring were not three gay and the fourth conflicted. Ethan, a junior high history teacher, and Ethan, a lawyer, have been married for nine years and are parents to young Chloe. Ethan’s sister Kate is a lesbian and a well-known TV journalist in New York City who has lost her mojo and joie de vivre. Nicole is married to Austin, has recently moved from Atlanta to New Jersey,  and is playing the roles of upper middle class housewife and mother to Sarah. In college, she dated Kate. Think they’ll get together?

 

Ethan is the problem figure. He wants to run for Congress as the “future” of the Republican Party; Gabe is to the left of Bernie Sanders. There are some amusing James Carville/Mary Matalin moments, but if you’ve been paying attention to politics, you know that Ethan's “makeover” to suit party bigwigs will be fraught and that both Gabe and Ethan will be driven to a breaking point.

 

Author Elizabeth Harris is a far better writer than Miranda July, as one might hope of a New York Times reporter, yet as noted, the major thing that distinguishes the dilemmas of her central characters from run of the mill malaise is that each is gay, lesbian, or bisexual. (To be fair, Harris does has an intriguing subplot on journalistic ethics.) Harris, has a wife and child, which I mention solely because there is a lot of passionate lesbian sex in her novel, but Ethan and Gabe are confined to pecks on the lips and hugs. For me, the characters lacked maturity. It’s as if they are recent graduates rather than adults in their late 30s. 

 

Rob Weir

Fire Exit: Morgan Talty's Identity Dilemma

 

 

Fire Exit (2024)

By Morgan Talty

Tin House, 235 pages.

★★★★★

 

Morgan Talty is a rising name in Native American fiction. He authored Night of the Living Rez, a short story collection. This makes Fire Exit his debut novel. Talty is a member of the Penobscot Nation in Maine.

 

Fire Exit concerns itself with questions of blood and percentages. How Penobscot must one be to be an Indian? That’s not an academic question. Unlike the antebellum South where a single drop of African blood made one “black,” Talty tells of “The Book,” a literal counting of percentages; to be in The Book, one must be at least 25 percent Native. It matters for federal recognition and, in Maine, to determine who is included in the Indian Claims Settlement Act. Talty invites us to “laugh” in his preface, though his protagonist Charles Lamosway is obsessed by the question:

 

There is nothing strange about a white person wishing to be Indian. It’s comical, if anything. And white  people saying they’re Indian happens all the time, and it’s laughed at by Native people…. I get it. I do. I’m not skeejin–not Native… . But I feel that I am…. No place makes a Native a Native. It strengthens it… but it’s not the deciding factor.

 

Or is it? Charles flunks the 25% rule. His mother, Louise, married a white man, but her second husband, Fredrick, was Native, hence Louise and Charles could live on the Penobscot reservation. It was Charles’ step-father “whose love… made me feel Native.” Fredrick taught him about Penobscot ways and customs. Louise continues to live on the reservation because she married an Indian, but Charles is officially “white” and had to move away after Fredrick’s death. Now he stares across a river that separates him from Native friends and culture. To paraphrase, Charles knew what it was like to belong and not to belong.

 

Fredrick died in a hunting accident in 1996, which deprived Charles of his chosen identity, teacher, protector, and provider of love that his cranky mother withheld. In 1967, Fredrick and Charles built a 500 square foot house on the other side of the river when Fredrick sold his camp to pay bills. He and Charles lived there, but it’s all Charles’ now and it could use some TLC that he has neither the time nor inclination to give it.   

 

It would fair to say Charles is adrift. In the greater Bangor area, the closing of pulp mills left the region with a per capita income that remains 40 percent lower than the average for Maine. Lately Charles has spent a lot of  time crossing the Penobscot River in his battered truck; Louise has dementia and sprints between lucidity and living in the past at the speed of light. She needs various treatments (including electroconvulsive therapy), so Charles spends a lot of time taking her to the hospital. He also looks out for Bobby, who is a cross between a friend, a hanger-on, and a problem. Bobby’s an alcoholic prone to creating havoc–not exactly the best company for Charles who has been sober for 22 years. Bobby is helpful, though, when Louise needs care and Charles is busy trying to make a living.

 

An even bigger burden rests on Charles’ mind. When he was younger he fell for a lass named Mary whom he impregnated. That ended their relationship because of the ostracism associated with giving birth to a partially white child. Mary subsequently married Roger, a Penobscot. As fate would have it, his house is directly across the river  from Charles’. Charles hasn’t had contact with his biological daughter (Elizabeth) since she was a toddler, but he watches her from afar. She’s now a young woman who assumes she is Native. Charles, however, wonders if she has a right to know who she really is.

 

Fire Exit is ultimately about blood, identity, family, culture, and the damage that can be done by making an “incorrect” choice between truth and fiction. We go deeply inside Charles’ mind, one so conflicted that there is no need for Talty to resolve or sermonize. Instead he present us with universal puzzles: Who am I? What makes me, me? What duty do I owe to truth? You will notice that most of the Penobscot have Anglicized names. Nobody ever said there were easy answers to moral dilemmas. If you’re wondering, there is a fire in the book, but is there an exit?

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

Hundres of Beavers is Just.Plain.Camp!

 

 

Hundreds of Beavers (2022/2024)

Directed by Mike Cheslik

Cineverse, 108 minutes, PG-13.

★★★

 

 Rabbits, and wolves, and raccoons, oh my! And hundreds of beavers. Sort of. Hundreds of Beavers is one of the sappiest movies I’ve ever seen. Yet … it’s so camp that you can’t look away. Like an old Henny Youngman comedy routine, you tell yourself that you’re not going to laugh, but you do until your face hurts!

 

Hundreds of Beavers was cowritten and directed by Mike Cheslik and could be called his Covid project, as he filmed it in the dead of a Wisconsin/Michigan winter during 2019-20. It unexpectedly grabbed people’s attention at a few film festivals in 2022, and gained wider release in 2024. It’s so unusual that it almost defies description. It’s what you might get if you crossed a Buster Keaton silent film with Looney Tunes, some Charlie Chaplin slapstick, a snowy Road Runner episode, Rube Goldberg, W. C. Fields’ 1933 short The Fatal Glass of Beer, and cosplay. Wait! Did I say cosplay? I’ll get to that. It’s also possible it has a hidden serious message that has eluded most reviewers.

 

It opens with a cartoon that spared no expense in the making because it was probably drawn in a morning, with the afternoon devoted to writing a song that tells the sad tale of Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews). Jean is a maker of hard cider who likes his own product too much. When his orchard and cabin burn down, Jean is left with nothing. That’s not a good thing at any time, but it’s especially perilous in the north woods during the early 19^th century–long before any social services. This gets us to the cosplay part. Jean tries to make a go of it as a fur trader; all of the animals, including sled dogs and a pantomime horse are humans in bargain-basement costumes ordered from a Chinese mascot Internet site. Thus we have 6-foot tall beavers, rabbits, and other beasties. All Jean can see is food in the form of wily rabbits that elude him. The snow blows furiously, always in a direction that threatens to extinguish the fire he makes by rubbing sticks together. The snow “effects” reminded me of Fields declaring, “It ain’t a fit night for man nor beast,” except that after the opening song there are silent-film title cards and the film is devoid of sound except for chirps, grunts, ummms, and ahhhs.

 

Jean’s only chance of survival is to become a trapper, a pursuit at which he is hopelessly inept. He falls in with Master Trapper (Wes Tank) and also encounters Indian Trapper (Luis Rio), but Master Trapper and his dogs meet an unfortunate end, so Jean must secure enough hides to take to The Merchant (Doug Mancheski). He’s a rifle-toting skinflint with set prices for everything and a singular talent for missing the spittoon as he chews tobacco. Jean is also attracted to The Furrier (Olivia Graves), but he has no chance with her unless he can provide “hundreds of beavers.” Watching Graves eviscerate the animals is hysterical, as she is clearly pulling plush innards from them.

 

As the movie come-on puts it, Jean must go from “zero to hero,” which he does by developing fiendishly silly ways to trap animals. (with X’s in their eyes of course!) And what are the beavers up to as they construct a dam that rises like a skyscraper of wood? Two beavers dressed like Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes are roaming the woods as well, but are they any match for the increasingly adroit Jean? His furry superhero suit alone must be seen to be believed.

 

If this sounds as if it’s like the dumbest idea ever for a movie, it just might be. It could also be one of the smartest! Hundreds of Beavers was made for $150,000 and has paid off many times over. You could also see the film as a warning; nature was decimated by the real fur trade. Or maybe it’s just fluff. Hundreds of Beavers has cultists called–what else?–“the beaverati.” I again emphasize that the special effects are more surreal than real, assuming you could teach elementary school-aged designers about surrealism. How to rate it? If you’re serious, a 1 is in order; if you simply surrender, it’s a 5, so I split the difference.

 

Rob Weir