Dark City an Overlooked Sci-fi Noir Film

 

DARK CITY (1998)

Directed by Alex Proyas

New Line Cinema, 111 minutes (director’s cut), R (nudity, language)

★★★★

 

 

 

Dark City dovetails with my recent interest in film noir, though it’s a newer sci-fi movie. It tanked in North American theaters, but has come in for reevaluation. Subsequently, elements of it made their way into works such as The Matrix and Inception. The latter copied Dark City’s trippy f/x effect of a city building itself in front of our eyes, an afflatus also borrowed by Amazon Studios.

 

Dark City has inspired comic books and spin-off novels, plus director and screenwriter Alex Proyas went on to direct I, Robot, which was a huge hit. It didn’t hurt that the late Roger Ebert declared Dark City the best film of 1998, or that it won major non-Oscar awards.

 

Is Dark City a noir film? Absolutely! There’s not a speck of light in it until the end and cinematographer Darius Adam Wolski manipulates shadows, incidental light, and nighttime with the skill of 1940s masters. It's a good thing, as the entire movie is set in darkness and external settings look like a moving version of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. Dark City also shares film noir’s penchant for murder mystery, though it might be more accurate to call the murders more of a subplot.

 

In brief, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) is an amnesiac who has no idea why he’s being pursued. As he attempts to piece together his identity, he learns that Inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) has marked him the prime suspect in a series of Jack the Ripper-like murders of prostitutes. John’s wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) hasn’t seen John in weeks, as he stormed out after learning that she had an affair.

 

So far, so normal, but it won’t stay that way. As a line in the movie puts it, “First there was darkness; then came the Strangers.” The latter are aliens manipulating humankind through a reluctant human intermediary, research scientist Dr. Daniel Scheher (Kiefer Sutherland). As we learn, it’s always dark because each midnight the aliens hold a “tuning.” As fast as you can “Shut it down!” everyone falls asleep, all transportation freezes to a halt, and the bald, black-cloaked aliens float from place-to-place exchanging memories and rearranging much of the city. For instance, one unkempt couple in a decrepit hovel awake to find themselves seated at a fancy table in a luxury apartment and have no recollection of having lived any other way. Injections to the front of the brain provide complete backstories.

 

Why? That’s what John wants to know. He literally doesn’t sleep, but unlike everyone else except Detective Eddie Walenski (Colin Friels), he remembers everything that happened since he last awoke. Whereas Walenski has gone ‘round the twist and is painting concentric circles everywhere, John is determined to find out if he’s actually a serial killer, why things grind to a halt a midnight, why the city shapeshifts, and why it’s always dark. He even escorts a hooker named May (Melissa George) and watches her undress to test whether he’s a murderer. He will learn about the Strangers from Scherer. Why are they doing all of this? It has something to do with wanting to unlock the secret of the soul, but I’ll leave it at that. Needless to say, John will be tasked with avoiding Bumstead and saving the city. If only he can find Shell Beach, he thinks he can do it.

 

That is, if reality is “real.” Dark City mixes enough speculative science with fiction to inspire interesting mind games. There is a reference to “Last Thursdayism,” a geek’s take on Creationist theory that postulates there is no objective way to prove that anything existed prior to what can be immediately perceived. And maybe there is no city at all; perhaps everyone is inside a Dyson sphere.

 

Dark City has been compared to Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis. I can see that, but it also borrows from Blade Runner (1982), Delicatessen (1991), The City of Lost Children (1995), and Star Trek’s Borg episodes. The Strangers are a lot like the Borg in that they exist as a hive mind, though Mr. Book (Ian Richardson) seems to be a male equivalent of a queen bee. Anticipate caper-like flights and f/x-infused showdowns.

 

If you don’t like science-fiction, you should avoid this movie. I found it stylish. gripping, and a really interesting non-conventional appropriation of film noir. Ebert was right; most Americans missed an outstanding movie.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Fransec Sans: December 2021 Artist of the Month

 

 

FRANSEC SANS

L’Infiniti (The Infinite)

 

 

December’s Artist of the Month Fransec Sans brings something different to your playlist. He’s a Catalan sac de gemecs player. In English, that’s the Catalan bagpipes, a three-drone kit that looks a lot like a set of Highland pipes, but has a slightly more melodic and brighter sound. On his debut album L’Infiniti, Sans uses old tunes as his inspiration and arranges them for the 21^st century. Call it nouveau medieval court and village material. The bagpipes are front and center, but the album also includes guitar, bass, piano, lute, flute, harp, violin, squeeze boxes, vocals, and percussion.

 

The entire album can be sampled online, but here are a few I think are typical. “Tres Tocs, un Cant” has a big production opening that soars, swells, and sounds positively anthemic.  Abruptly, it transforms into something akin to a community celebration. You can almost paint the picture in your head, but just as swiftly it revives the formal structure of the opening, before doubling back to the gala. Background vocalizations help drive the alternating moods.

 

“JNavarro” has a more distinct Catalan rural pulse that’s enhanced with offbeat percussion that’s sometimes deliberately and literally the case. The middle section is a chase-the-tail-around-the-circle structure that could be the soundtrack for a caper film. Listen carefully for the short, but effective lute passages. Sans often opens formal and slips into patterns freer and informal. He does this again on “El Meu Sud,” whose opening is mysterious, moody, and flute-driven. For lack of a better descriptor I call it enigmatic pastoralism. Again, though, the piece is instantly enlivened when air blows through the chanter and drones. Josep Aparicio’s call-and-response vocals add further color. The opening half of “Dolors Gegante” is atmospheric and wintery in feel when Albert Carbonell puts bow to violin strings, but the pipes usher in a fast-paced piece evocative of a springtime dance fest, complete with clicking castanets. Catalan dances are often ¾ time jotas or rumbas that occasionally drift into 6/8 tempo. That’s because latter not analogs to Cuban rumbas, rather faster-paced Spanish tunes called guarachas.  

 

Catalan dance is so ebullient that participants hurl themselves airborne. They also frequently feature vocals. More on this in a moment, but let me first note another unique feature of this album, its percussive mix of the tombril, a skin drum that’s a bit like a bodhran. Sans and his collaborators engage in some global beats when they blend it with bongos. “Amoretes” is a bit of a switcheroo in that it’s a lively dance tune from the start, courtesy of accordion from Carlos Belda and then goes briefly darker before surrendering to spirited abandon. Just before the end, they switch again for a few seconds of a quiet, slower pace before taking us out with a flourish. 

 

“Desperta'm” isn’t on the album, but you might enjoy the video of this short piece. It’s set in the woods during and after a thunderstorm and the piping sounds as if it could be a requiem for the trees, though it suggests hope for renewal at the end. It’s fun to see a mud-covered Sans maintain his composure, which is a neat trick for a guy whose favored sartorial getup is to dress in white!

 

For my taste, the only downside of the record occurs when Mariona Escoda sings. She is talented, but the quality of her voice simply doesn’t connect with me. On “Les Quintes” she warbles a jazzy tune whose high register sounds like a Japanese bird. This, I hasten, is a reflection of personal preference, so you should listen and feel free to disagree. Loving those bagpipes, though!

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Surf’s Down: Under the Wave at Waimea and Malibu Rising

 

UNDER THE WAVE AT WAIMEA (2021)

By Paul Theroux

Mariner Books, 416 pages.

 

MALIBU RISING (2021)

By Taylor Jenkins Reid

Ballantine, 371 pages

 

 

 In winter, Northern clime readers often seek novels that feature warm beaches. If they have hunky surfers, all the better. Oddly, two novels by major authors featuring surfer life came out in 2021. Now for the mixed message: They aren’t bad, but neither are they stellar.

 

 
 

Under the Wave at Waimea features Joe Sharkey who, as a young man, was Adonis on a board–perhaps the greatest on any ocean. Women fell at his feet and then into his bed. In Section I of Paul Theroux’s new novel, we meet Joe at 62 and in still another relationship, this time with Olive, a 38-year-old English emigree nurse. “Shark” remains well-enough known to get free drinks and other minor perks, but for the new wave-riding hotshots, he’s either ancient history or someone they’ve only heard of. Such is the fate of every star athlete, but Joe has never done anything but surf and there’s not much call for a guy who can’t ride the big waves anymore. What do you do when the sponsorships run their course? Shark has simple needs, but still…. He is depressed, drinks too much, a tragic car accident leaves him afraid of the water, and he might be suffering from dementia. 

 

Section II takes us back to Joe’s troubled childhood–how he got to Hawaii, his relationship with his father, family tragedy, being bullied, the challenges of being a haole among native Hawaiians, and smoking dope. Solace comes in the ocean and from his Yoda-like mentor Uncle Sunshine.

 

It’s back to the present in Section III in which Joe is metaphorically drowning and Olive is about ready to bail. The interjection of a new character, Max Mulgrave, alters a lot of lives. He’s a Vietnam vet and tech guru/mogul who came to Hawaii and altered his life completely. Some think he’s literally a saint. He and Joe will collide, but Joe has a lot of demons to exorcise before he can hope to collect his AWOL marbles. 

 

The most intriguing part of the novel only tangentially involves Shark. Theroux does a superb job casting light at the resentment indigenous Hawaiians hold toward non-natives, especially white ones. I could have done without Theroux’s shallow psychologizing, but he really falls off the wave with a trite and cliched climax. This is a readable novel, but a middling effort from a writer we know to be better.

★★★

 

 

 

Taylor Jenkins Reid has penned a better surf novel, but not by much. Theroux’s book suffers from a one-dimensional central character; Malibu Rising from too much going on. It’s about watery Malibu life, but it’s also a multigenerational family saga into which Reid plops references from her previous novel. Toss in loads of background characters, surf heroes, dropped names of celebrities, and alternating main characters, and it’s very easy for readers to lose focus.

 

Reid likes glamor with or without bling and there’s plenty of both in Malibu Rising. Some comes slathered in cheese and is named Mick Riva. Reid tells us that family stories “are myths we create about the people who came before us, in order to make sense of ourselves.” Such tales have creation myths and this one begins in 1956, when head-in-the-clouds Mick meets, impregnates, and weds down-to-earth June Costas whose family runs a rustic fry shop. Fried fish is not a good match for a guy who fancies himself the next Bobby Darin. Trouble starts when Mick actually is good enough to go pro. He’s also good at fathering children–but by different women.

 

In the end there are four in the immediate Riva circle, three of whom are essentially mothered by Nina, the eldest, when Mick dallies, and June dies. Nina drops out of school, runs the fry shop, and at 18, becomes legal guardian of her sibs and half-sibs. Forget road-warrior Mick, who marries five times! Jay and Hud(son) are surfers as was Nina, but she discovers she can make a lot more money modeling swimsuits. She will also lose her tennis pro husband, who deals with losing his # 1 ranking by going full-Mick on Nina. The youngest of the Riva line is Kit who, not surprisingly, grows up confused and petulant.

 

All of these crazy dynamics come to a head at one of the Riva clan’s legendary beach house parties. Everyone comes: celebrities, wannabes, surfers, exes, current dalliances, total jerks, and nobodies. Metaphorically speaking, the gathering is a mix of petrol and matches, conducive for new family secrets to leach out, hysterics, drinking, drugs, arrests, literal home-wrecking, and Nina’s discovery of the end of her tether.

 

Malibu Rising has a lot of characters, but the more problematic aspect is that many are so thoroughly phony and unlikable that it’s hard to imagine them as anything other than the architects of their own misery. At 371 pages, Malibu Rising isn’t a massive tome, but with all those characters and a span of a half century of time, it feels like a draft of an epic. Reid is always worth reading, but this one left me wondering if a modicum of common sense exists anywhere along the Ventura Highway.  ★★★ ½  

 

Rob Weir

The Lincoln Highway Another Fine Amor Towles Novel

 

 

THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY (2021)

By Amor Towles

Viking, 576 pages.

★★★★

 

 

The Lincoln Highway traverses through the town in which I grew up. Plus, Amor Towles’ last book A Gentlemen in Moscow is my favorite novel of the 21^st century. You0214 could say I was psyched to read this one.

 

At first, I was mildly disappointed, but The Lincoln Highway grew on me with every page. If you don’t know, the Lincoln Highway runs from Times Square to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, and is generally regarded as the nation’s first transcontinental auto route. Towles’ tale isn’t about the highway per se, but it is about a helter-skelter road trip. Its principal character is Emmett Watson, who was sent to reform school for accidentally killing a bully in a fight. We meet him in 1954, the year he turned 18 and maxed out. Though he is person of few words, he can’t wait to get home to Nebraska to see his kid brother Billy, though he knows he’ll probably have to leave the Cornhusker State because of the bad blood he left behind. Leaving isn’t really a problem as his mother ran away, his father is dead, the farm has just been foreclosed, and Billy is being raised by friends.

 

He is surprised to find that his father left him several thousand dollars in cash and his old Studebaker. Surprise # 2 comes when Billy insists that he and Emmett should set off to find their mother in San Francisco, it being the last place from which she sent a postcard—8 years earlier.  Billy is a precocious kid with a love of maps and a head full of arcane/dubious information from a book he thinks will help them: Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid Travelers by Professor Abacus Abernathy. As far as Billy’s concerned, that book might as well be the Bible.

 

But the biggest surprise of all is that two of Emmett’s friends from the reform school—Wallace Wolcott “Woolly” Martin and Daniel “Dutchess” Hewett—stowed away in the trunk of the warden’s car that deposited Emmett back home. What a pair of characters they are! Woolly comes from a lot of money, but he is 18 going on 10, if you discount his drinking and carousing. Dutchess was sent up for a theft he didn’t commit and he’s on the opposite end of the SES scale; it was his no-account actor father who framed him! Neither is exactly goal-oriented or has a very good sense of what belongs to them. Toss in maternal Sally Ransom, who is sweet on Emmett, down on her banker father, and possesses a mind of her own.

 

What transpires is a zigzag road trip to California by way of the Dakotas, New York City, and several stops east and west in between. Towles’ story is a mix of Huckleberry Finn, Bound for Glory, Travels with Charley, O’ Brother Where Art Thou? and The Odyssey­—all of which takes place over 10 days and is told in count-down form. You name it and it happens:  impulsive “borrowing” of Emmett’s car, a visit to a Catholic orphanage, hopping freight trains, danger on the rails, a black hobo camp, conmen, revenge, the discovery of exotic foods (like artichokes and fettuccini), cops looking for AWOL Woolly and Dutchess, a visit to the Empire State Building, a sad black man who—courtesy of Billy—identifies with Ulysses, double-crosses, and a morality play about greed.

 

As you probably surmised, this is a sprawling novel. It is often humorous, yet it’s also poignant, moving, and tragic. Amor Towles is simply an amazing author. He writes, “Wouldn’t it have been wonderful… if everybody’s life was like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Then no one person’s life would ever be an inconvenience to anyone else’s. It would just fit snuggly in its very own, specially designed spot, and in so doing, would enable the whole intricate picture to become complete.” Yeah, if only. But some pieces are simply the wrong shape.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Cinema Paradiso a Perfect Film for Holiday Season

 

 

CINEMA PARADISO (1988)

Directed and written by Giuseppe Tornatore

Titanus, 124 minutes, R (dumbest rating ever!)

In Italian with subtitles

★★★★★

 

 

The holiday season brings out the sentimental softy in all of us, but how many times can you watch It’s a Wonderful Life and A Charlie Brown Christmas? How about something different? It’s not a holiday film, but you could do worse than crank up the Wayback Machine and watch/re-watch Cinema Paradiso, which rightly won the 1989 Best Foreign Language Oscar, the Cannes Grand Prix, and numerous other prizes. Among other things, it will remind you that people who watch movies on their smart phones are without a cinematic bone in their bodies.

 

Cinema Paradiso is an Italian love letter to movies, especially American ones. It’s set in a small Sicilian village in the years immediately after World War II and extends into the 1980s. Rome-based film director Salvatore Di Vita (Jacques Perrin) learns that back in his Sicilian hometown, a man named Alfredo has died. That triggers flashbacks and the movie magic begins. Di Vita’s village, Bagheria, is not the same place as the square where the namesake cinema was allegedly situated–it’s in Palazzo Adriana–but it scarcely matters. We meet Di Vita’s 8-year-old self–played by the sly and winsome Salvatore Cascio–the son of a soldier who hasn’t returned from the war and Maria (Antonella Attili), who is struggling to keep her household together. There’s no money and Salvatore, nicknamed Toto, spends days and nights sneaking or ingratiating his way into the Cinema Paradiso. Toto has never met a film he doesn’t like, though the movies are the only game in town and everyone else loves them as well.

 

Toto has something the others don’t have, a developing friendship with the middle-aged (and illiterate) projectionist Alfredo (the great French actor Philippe Noiret). Alfredo does his best to chase Toto away, but to no avail and he too falls prey to Toto’s impish charm. Soon, Toto is watching films from the booth and is being schooled in how to operate the projector. It’s a good thing, as an accident sends the cinema up in flames and blinds Alfredo. A local businessman Spaccafino (Vincento Cannavale) helps rebuild the Nuovo Cinema Paradiso and I’ll bet you know who the new projectionist will be.

 

The film centers on the relationship between Alfredo and Toto, but the village backdrop is precious in its own right. If you think Frank Capra’s Bedford Falls has personality, it’s bland compared to Bagheria. The latter is populated by characters who redefine the world colorful: a mildly demented man who thinks he owns the square, a prudish priest (Leopoldo Trieste), a snooty bourgeois who spits from the balcony upon those he thinks are communists, scores of street kids, and villagers who aren’t afraid to cry their eyes out when what’s on the screen moves them. I’ll bet every director wishes he or she had made this movie and several of the actors–Perrin, Cannavale, Trieste–were directors.

 

We watch as Toto becomes a young man (Marco Leonardi) and falls in love with Elena (Agnese Nano), but circumstance has other ideas. Through it all, it’s Toto and Alfredo, who one day makes Toto promise he will leave the village and never come back. In Rome, Di Vita becomes a famed film director in his own right and keeps his promise for 30 years, returning only for Alfredo’s funeral. You can imagine how much has changed in that period of time. You’ll have to watch to see what decision Di Vita made. I’ll say only that the film has a multilayered denouement that is moving, funny, and deeply satisfying.

 

I should also note that the film carries an R rating, which may be the dumbest single designation of the past quarter century. I give away nothing when I say that it derives from just two moments: a gross (but hysterical) comeuppance in which a snob is on the losing end, and naked breasts on filmstrips that are integral to the story and wouldn’t be considered salacious by a fundamentalist weaned on a pickle.

 

Cinema Paradiso is a life-affirming tale that reminds you of what movies can do that television programs cannot. If you’re looking for holiday cheer after too much of that ice pick to the brain known as soulless mall with piped-in cheesy carols, you’ll find it here. You might even wish to freeze the credits so you too can see the magical celluloid creations that thrilled young Toto.

 

Rob Weir

 

    

 

Ammonite Should Have Been Better

 

AMMONITE (20200

Directed by Francis Lee

Lionsgate, 120 minutes, R (graphic nudity)

★★ ½

 

 

These days you might anticipate that a hot lesbian love story would do well at the box office and among streaming audiences. After all, it's a topic most mainstream filmmakers are only comfortable discussing, not showing. If only Ammonite had been made a year earlier, it might have fared better. Good vibes were not forthcoming in part because in 2019, the French movie Portrait of a Lady on Fire, whose subject was two 18th century female lovers, was the best film of the year – in any language.  A lot of Ammonite viewers found it boring, not offensive. You might agree, if you like a lot of dialogue.

 

Ammonite has its moments, but it’s certainly no Portrait of a Lady on Fire. For those who don't know, an ammonite is the fossil of a prehistoric mollusk. When you start with that, you’d better have something better to hold your audience. How about two star actresses? Kate Winslet is Mary Anning, a a stellar paleontologist, who found the first nearly complete ichthyosaur skeleton. Yet in 19^th century England, she was not even allowed to present to her own work. To stave off hunger and pay the rent, she sold the skeleton to a man who put his name to it.

 

We come in upon Mary and her mother Molly (Gemma Jones) dressed in shabby clothing and washing white animal figurines whose significance is later explained. That's good, because a lot of things are not explained in this film. We also watch Mary scraping dirt from daily finds fossicked from the beach cliffs of Lyme Regis. Recently she has specialized in small ammonites, as the tourist trade is her steadiest form of income.

 

Mary’s life takes a turn when Roderick Murchison pops into her shop to ask her to teach him what she knows about fossil hunting. Mary is a woman of few words – grunts, gestures, and glares work – and likes to keep her own company, but she needs the money. Roddy is enthusiastic, but his wife Charlotte (Saoirse Ronan) is bored and, we are told, sickly. Perhaps Lyme Regis salt bathing will help. (Good grief, those waters could make you sick!)

 

Later, Roderick offers to pay Mary to take Charlotte on daily walks while he is away for six weeks and once again, Mary needs the shillings and swallows her disinterest. She hadn't planned on being a nurse any more than Charlotte planned to fall for her nurturer. By the time Mary commits oral sex upon her, she's head over heels­– her own; Mary wears sturdy boots. If a woman can't get credit for her labors, you can imagine how badly an open sexual relationship would play in the day. That's just not an option and Charlotte toddles off back to London when Roddy comes to collect her.

 

It might have been better to have ended the film there. Just cue some melancholy music, zoom in on contorted faces stifling tears, and roll the credits. Instead, a contrivance sends Mary to London and we were treated to a rather preposterous final act.

 

There are contrivances and absences shot throughout the film and that's before I tell you that the Mary/Charlotte love affair was invented. The Murchisons already knew Mary; all three were known in the small world of paleontology. Elizabeth Philpott (Fiona Shaw) was also a fossil hunter. We are not told why she is in the film. It's intimated that maybe Mary and she had a May-October romance. Nope, though she did invent a healing salve.  

 

Let's talk about sex, shall we? Because we cannot explicitly see tongues upon body parts, this film escaped with an R rating. It's pretty steamy stuff though, and when you see a naked Ronan crawl upon a naked Winslet's face, I'm good enough at anatomy to figure out what's happening in the shadows of the cleft. It raises a question: Why not just make a celebrity lesbian film? Here’s another: When you consider that the director is a man, is the male gaze at play?

 

I will give Francis Lee a pass. It's only his second feature and so far, I'd say he's not the next coming of Fellini. But I won't completely smash the fossil case. There are reasons to give Ammonite a try.  First, the countryside around Lyme Regis is glorious in its greyness and mist. Credit goes to choreographer Stéphane Fontaine. Second, Winslet and Ronan get boldness points. At this point of their respective careers, they can choose their projects. As two straight women, they took risks to frolic graphically in lesbian guise. Finally, the film did make me seek factual information about the real principals. Education is never wasted!

 

But not much credit goes to Lee. His is another example of the bad judgment that comes from thinking you can invent a better story than the already fascinating one at your fingertips.

 

Rob Weir

Subdivision: An Enigma or a Mess?

 

SUBDIVISION (2021)

By J. Robert Lennon

Gray Wolf Press, 230 pages.

★★★ 

 

It’s not that often that I sputter when someone asks me what a book is about, but Subdivision is such a work. All I can say for certain is that it’s either one of the most creative novels of the year or an absolute mess.

 

An unnamed woman finds herself in the “Subdivision” of “The City,” which looms in the distance but can’t be accessed because of recurrent wind storms and floods. When it is accessible, one goes there via Bus Negative One, which suggests that our main character is either in something akin to a matrix or is recently dead. I might go with the latter, as there are references to the Buddhist concept of bardo, a liminal state between death and rebirth. For me, the novel it most evoked is Kevin Brockmeier’s 2006 The Brief History of the Dead, which toyed with the ideas of sasha (limbo) and zamani (the afterlife) that are aspects of some traditional African religions.

 

I hasten to add, though, that I’m speculating. Others have labeled it a book about trauma-induced amnesia, a Kafkaesque dream, life as a video game, the immediate aftermath of a suicide, damaged memory, or pure science fiction. It might be one, all, or none of those. I could add a slow trip down the River Styx as another possibility. Depending upon your tastes, this will make J. Robert Lennon’s work either an ambiguous pleasure or a journey into WTF frustration.

 

The woman at the novel’s center is also our narrator. She finds herself at guest house hosted by two women, The Judge and Clara, though both women have the first name Clara and both were once judges. The rooms therein are labeled Virtue, Justice, Mercy, Duty, and Glory. In the parlor is a perplexing gadzillion-piece puzzle that the guest is encouraged to assemble. She can’t make heads or tails of it, yet it changes every day and she is commended for her progress. She is also given a hand-drawn map to find her way around the Subdivision and to say that it takes her unusual places doesn’t begin to get it. She meets a woman of indeterminate age who gardens a lot, enters several strange houses, and has encounters with a shapeshifting bakemono, a shapeshifting creature from Japanese folklore whose level of existence is up for grabs but who nonetheless stirs her libido.  

 

And the bakemono isn’t even the oddest character in the book. There is a child that may or may not belong to the narrator; a nearly wordless truck driver who buys bunches of roses for his wife, who never appears; and Forby, a man engaged in quantum tunneling by hurling tennis balls at a wall all day to test the probability that one of them will pass through. The weirdest of all isn’t a living thing, or is it? The narrator purchases Cylvia, a digital assistant whose form also changes. Cylvia offers warnings and advice that’s so weird it might make you want to get rid of your Alexa!

 

Massive wind storms occur from time to time and the narrator secures a job as a “phenomenon analyst,” whatever that might mean. Both Cylvia and her hosts advise her to make sure she works in the Dead Tower rather than the Living Tower, the latter of which is allegedly too dangerous. About all we know for certain about the Subdivision is that its principal products include cheese, bookcases, ice, hymnals, and narratives. A muffin plays a role in the novel, as do unusual sounds, bizarre stories, a blackbird, and reports that that are straight out of 1984.

 

Does any of this make sense? Probably not, but maybe I nailed it. It is true, though, that you are unlikely to read anything else like Subdivision. It’s short. Give it a whirl. If it seems too surreal and confusing, it won’t get any better or worse. In Lennon’s defense I will say that I haven’t stopped thinking about Subdivision since I finished it. It is chocked full of ideas; now all I have to do is figure out what they are!

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Holiday Album That's Not Same Old

 

 

 

JOE NEWBERRY and APRIL VERCH

On This Christmas Day

 

I am the Grinch of Christmas Music. I usually decline offers to review holiday albums of any sort, a habit reinforced when I heard Bob Dylan’s 2009 abomination Christmas in the Heart, which might be the single-worst record through which I’ve ever suffered. I’ve even avoided going to live shows in December for fear that some well-intentioned performer might think it fun to have the audience sing “Jingle Bells” or “White Christmas.” In other words, if you want me to listen to a holiday album, you’d better offer something I’ve not heard 9²⁵ times before.

 

A project from Joe Newberry and April Verch mostly falls into that category. On This Christmas Day is a thoughtful collaboration between veteran Ozarks singer/songwriter Newberry and Verch, a self-described country girl from Canada’s Ottawa Valley. I call it “thoughtful” because it aims for the less familiar which, if you think about it, is what Christmas is supposed to be about: renewal. For most listeners, the only one of the 11 songs that might be familiar is a cover of John McCutcheon’s “Christmas in the Trenches.” If you don’t know it, give it a listen as the event it details­–a Christmas Day truce and mutual celebration between German and Allied troops during World War I–actually happened. At this time of the year especially, a reminder of the insanity of war seems appropriate. In a spirit akin to the reset-your-values of “Christmas in the Trenches,” Newbery and Verch offer “Della and Jim,” a musical retelling of O. Henry’s famed short story “The Gift of the Magi,” which tells of how a poor couple sacrificed to buy each other Christmas gifts that can’t be used. Again, if you’re unfamiliar with it, take in the story, a reminder that it truly is the thought that matters most.

 

The title track will put you into a warm Frank Capra-like mood. Much of the rest is a bluegrass-influenced collection and reinterpretation of originals and lesser known compositions. Who can resist “A Yodel for Christmas?” “Round the Christmas Tree” is a lively song that invites a sashay around the fragrant pine (or ye olde plastic tree in my household). The banjo/fiddle combo of “Christmas Eve” is done as an old-time tune that’s decidedly more down home than down at the mall. The same features, plus Newberry’s unpretentious vocals, help us celebrate the coming of 2022 on “First Day of the Year.” Overall, this record works because it dispense with tinsel and gets us back to basics. To nitpick just a little, I’d prefer to hear Verch play the fiddle more and sing less; she’s world-class on her instrument, but her nasal high voice takes some getting used to. That said, I won’t be lining up at the exchange aisle to return this one. Okay, it was sent to me free for review purposes, but you get the point!

 

Rob Weir    

Guest List, Foregone, Lost Apothecary, The Magician: Book Reviews

 

 

THE GUEST LIST; FOREGONE; THE LOST APOTHECARY; THE MAGICIAN

By Lucy Foley; Russell Banks; Sarah Penner; Colm Tóibín

All four published in 2021.

 

It’s time to clean out some book review backlog. Maybe one of the these will land on someone’s holiday wish list.

 

The Guest List (William Morrow Publishing, 314 pages) is about a celebrity wedding gone terribly wrong. Jules runs an online women’s magazine and her intended, Will, is a handsome dude who won fame on a TV survival show that made him into a “hot” actor. The two make the proverbial “golden” couple. Like many with more money than common sense, they decide upon destination nuptials on an island off of Connemara (Ireland) at a folly and estate owned by wedding planners Aoife and Freddy.

 

Will is essentially a frat boy who hasn’t grown up and the same goes for his buddies. Best man Jonathan is a sloppy loser, but other attendants–Duncan, Pete, Angus, Femi, and Charlie–have at least made a stab at adult life. Everyone, except the island proprietors, Jules’ half-sister Olivia, and their womanizing father from whom Jules is estranged, are in their early 30s. Assorted spouses have varying opinions about Jules, Will, and all the dosh they had to spend for an event they had little interest in attending. Plus, old friends have a lot of history from their university days, including who slept with whom. What could go wrong?

 

The Guest List is constructed from chapters with alternating points-of-view, which intrigues because everyone is essentially an unreliable narrator. I’m not a fan of wedding novels (or movies)–they are often unimaginative and trite–but Foley’s novel has its moments.  ★★★

 

Russell Banks specializes in damaged people and his works sparkle in a literary sense. Foregone (Ecco, 305 pages) is the antithesis of Foley’s in that its central character, Leonard “Fifi” Fife, is a dying Baby Boomer. Fife won renown as a lefty documentary filmmaker whose terminal cancer is probably traceable to a film he did on Agent Orange, the infamous chemical sprayed during the Vietnam War. He once taught at Vermont’s Goddard College–a progressive and experimental school during the 1960s/70s–and one of his students, Malcolm MacLeod, has journeyed to Canada–Fifi’s longtime home–to spotlight his mentor in a documentary film of his own. Good luck with that plan.

 

Most of Fifi’s films exposed “hypocrisy, greed, and political corruption,” and he literally has no time for hero adulation. The project makes him feel like he’s Pinocchio with carrion-eating scavengers pulling his strings. Is it jealousy, anger over of his impending demise, the realization that he’s no hero, or all three? Try as he will, Malcolm cannot deter Fifi from ignoring questions about his films and launching into a rambling confessional. Fifi imagines he is setting the record straight, acknowledging his sins, and telling the truth “to himself–and to the one person who still loves him,” his wife Emma.

Sounds reasonable, except this is a Banks novel and he doesn’t do cheap sentimentality. Does Fifi even know “truth” anymore? Did he ever? What parts of his memory have been recovered, what makes no sense outside of its context, and is the whole thing confabulation, false or idealized memories associated with dementia?  Foregone is a smart novel that manages to be provocative though there’s not much action in any conventional sense. You might even find yourself sympathetic to Fifi, though he is and was a cantankerous figure. ★★★★

 

When does one realize that a relationship isn’t working? Once you know that, can it be salvaged? Does it take a bit of mudlarking to make to make things clear? This is the essence of The Lost Apothecary (Park Row Books, 269 pages), the debut novel from Sarah Penner.

 

Mudlarking is a phenomenon still very much associated with Greater London and the River Thames. The flow and silty banks of the river tends to preserve relics old and new. Thames artifact hunters are analogous to those who don rubber boots and dig for clams at low tide. Caroline (“Caro”) Parcewell is in London, where she and hubby James are supposed to be celebrating her 10^th anniversary and perhaps reopening her desire to have a child. James, a workaholic, doesn’t want kids, is still in the States, and plans to join her later. Happy anniversary!

 

Caro is depressed, angry, and not at all enjoying herself. On a whim, she is talked into a bit of mudlarking and unearths a mysterious bottle. This is Penner’s setup to toggle between the present, the 1790s, and a tale of an herbalist, Nella, with a secrect sideline in abortifacients and a few other things as well.

 

How can Caro reassemble any story based on a single bottle? She has no names or records to guide her, but what the heck else can you do when you’re partnerless in London except revive past dreams of getting an MA in English literature and mucking about with tools used by professional historians? She unearths (puns intended) a past that involves a 12-year-old servant girl, her rich mistress, lawbreakers past and present, a splash of the supernatural, an old bookstore, James’ attempt to save his marriage, and Caro’s investigation of finishing her MA at Cambridge.

 

If you suspect there are too many coincidences and illogical plotlines, you’re right. (I mean, seriously, just any Yank wanting to restart an abandoned thesis can enter Cambridge University, right?) Penner has wonderful material, but it’s not a good thing when a reader pokes holes in a fabric made of cheesecloth. ★★ ½

 

I bailed on it a third of the way through The Magician (Scribner’s, 512 pages). Colm Tóibín intends a fictionalized biography of German writer Thomas Mann. It is the sort of book that thrills literary scholars, as its ultimate goal is to give insight into the title. (The Magician is Mann’s unfinished novel.) I suspect Tóibín was also trying his hand at writing in the style of German novelists such as Herman Hesse. I so wish he hadn’t. I’ve read exactly one of Mann’s novels, Death in Venice, and it made a better movie than book.

 

Mann led a life of adventure and misadventure, but Tóibín takes too long to unspool salient highlights. There is the added problem that Mann was a despicable human being who married and had children, though he was gay. I’ve no problems with that, but I draw the line at pedophilia and I really draw it when an object of Mann’s desire was one of his own sons. I suppose one can wax rhapsodic about Mann’s literary merits, but blast if I have any desire to read a wordy retelling of a debauched personal life, especially when Mann’s Wikipedia entry is more interesting than Tóibín’s account. ★

 

 

  Rob Weir

A Sci-Fi Noir? Rediscover Dark City

 

DARK CITY (1998)

Directed by Alex Proyas

New Line Cinema, 111 minutes (director’s cut), R (nudity, language)

★★★★

 

 

Dark City dovetails with my recent interest in film noir, though it’s a sci-fi movie. Though it tanked in North American theaters, it has come in for reevaluation. Subsequently, elements of it made their way into works such as The Matrix and Inception. The latter copied Dark City’s trippy f/x effect of a city building itself in front of our eyes, an afflatus also borrowed by Amazon Studios.

 

Dark City has inspired comic books and spin-off novels, plus director Alex Proyas, who also cowrote the screenplay, went on to direct I, Robot, which was a huge hit. It didn’t hurt that the late Roger Ebert declared Dark City the best film of 1998, or that it won major non-Oscar awards.

 

Is Dark City a noir film? Absolutely! There’s not a speck of light in it until the end and cinematographer Darius Adam Wolski manipulates shadows, incidental light, and nighttime with the skill of 1940s masters. It's a good thing, as the entire movie is set in darkness and external settings look like a moving version of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. Dark City also shares film noir’s penchant for murder mystery, though it might be more accurate to call the murders more of a subplot.

 

In brief, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) is an amnesiac who has no idea why he’s being pursued. As he attempts to piece together his identity, he learns that Inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) has marked him the prime suspect in a series of Jack the Ripper-like murders of prostitutes. As John’s wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly) explains to Bumstead, she hasn’t seen John in weeks, as he stormed out after learning that she had an affair.

 

So far, so normal, but it won’t stay that way. As a line in the movie puts it, “First there was darkness; then came the Strangers.” The latter are aliens manipulating humankind through a reluctant human intermediary, research scientist Dr. Daniel Scheher (Kiefer Sutherland). As we learn, it’s always dark because each midnight the aliens hold a “tuning.” As fast as you can “Shut it down!” everyone falls asleep, all transportation freezes to a halt, and the bald, black-cloaked aliens float from place-to-place exchanging memories and rearranging much of the city. For instance, one unkempt couple in a decrepit hovel awake to find themselves seated at a fancy table in a luxury apartment and have no recollection of having lived any other way. Injections to the front of the brain provide complete backstories.

 

Why? That’s what John wants to know. He literally doesn’t sleep, but unlike everyone else except Detective Eddie Walenski (Colin Friels), he remembers everything that happened since he last slept. Whereas Walenski has gone ‘round the twist and is painting concentric circles everywhere, John is determined to find out if he’s actually a serial killer, why things grind to a halt a midnight, why the city shapeshifts, and why it’s always dark. He even escorts a hooker named May (Melissa George), watches her undress, and leaves her apartment, satisfied that he’s not a murderer. He will also learn about the Strangers from Scherer. Why are they doing all of this? It has something to do with wanting to unlock the secret of the soul, but I’ll leave it at that. Needless to say, John will be tasked with avoiding Bumstead and saving the city. If only he can find Shell Beach, he thinks he can do it.

 

That is, if reality is “real.” Dark City mixes enough speculative science with fiction to inspire interesting mind games. There is a reference to “Last Thursdayism,” a geek’s take on Creationist theory that postulates there is no objective way to prove that anything existed prior to what can be perceived now. And maybe there is no city at all; perhaps everyone is inside a Dyson sphere.

 

Dark City has been compared to Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece Metropolis. I can see that, but it also borrows from Blade Runner (1982), Delicatessen (1991), The City of Lost Children (1995), and Star Trek’s Borg episodes. The Strangers are a lot like the Borg in that they exist as a hive mind, though Mr. Book (Ian Richardson) seems to be a male equivalent of a queen bee. Anticipate caper-like flights and an f/x-infused showdown.

 

If you don’t like science-fiction, you should avoid this movie. I found it stylish. gripping, and a really interesting non-conventional appropriation of film noir. Ebert was right; most Americans missed a really outstanding movie.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

The Rose Tattoo Fades Badly

 

The Rose Tattoo (1955)

Directed by Daniel Mann

Paramount, 117 minutes, Not-rated

★★

 

 

Once upon a time, a handsome man who played the field was called Lothario, Don Juan, or Casanova. That morphed into lady-killer, then skirt-chaser. These days such behavior invites even less savory labels like lecher or predator. Why the vocabulary lesson? Call it a reminder that how we describe the world changes over time. Shifting values are also why a once-heralded movie such as The Rose Tattoo (1955) seems problematic when viewed today. It was nominated for three Academy Awards and won three, including a Best Actress trophy for Italian icon Anna Magnani.

 

The movie is based upon a play written by Tennessee Williams, who wrote the film’s screenplay. He too has undergone reconsideration. His works often featured family trauma that skirted or crossed the borders of domestic violence. Women tended to be frightened rabbits or sultry temptresses, but even damaged male characters oozed animalistic masculinity. Williams died in 1983, but you could probably draw conclusions from the fact that only one of his plays has been made into a film since then. It bombed and drew slams such as stodgy and old-fashioned. I’d use both to describe The Rose Tattoo.

 

The setting is an Italian immigrant community largely populated by Sicilians and Neapolitans. Williams didn’t imagine that; only New York City had a larger Italian population than New Orleans. Much of The Rose Tattoo hinges on hyper-masculine machismo. Magnani’s performance remains Oscar-worthy, though it sometimes looks as if she’s acting in a Fellini film rather than one based in the steamy shack-strewn U.S. South. She is Serafina Delle Rose, with the play/movie title performing double duty. An actual rose-colored tattoo—okay a black and white one per the film stock used–is a major prop, as is a silk shirt.

 

Serafina, a seamstress, is married to Rosario, a truck driver and contraband runner, though his major occupation is that of a skirt-chaser. Serafina is pregnant with their second child and refuses to believe that Rosario (rhymes with Lothario!) is unfaithful. Not even when Estelle (Virginia Grey), a current conquest, describes his tattoo and shows off her matching ink. Gossipy neighbors, though, taunt Serafina for being such a tart that she can’t hold onto her man. Alas, Serafina! She’s poor as a church mouse, prone to hysterics, and wedded to old ways in a new land. What she seems to do best is embarrass her daughter Rosa (Marisa Pavan) and undermine a burgeoning romance with a decidedly non-Sicilian sailor.

 

When Rosario falls out of the picture, Serafina sulks, throws temper tantrums, and screams like a banshee. She’s a strong-willed (or is it pigheaded?) woman who scares away men, until Alvaro Mangiacavallo (Burt Lancaster) comes along. He’s also a truck driver, and an unwashed one with the brains of a woodchuck to boot. Neither Serafina nor viewers are entirely sure if he’s a gigolo, a conman, or just a big-hearted doofus. 

 

Leaving aside the fact that an Irish-American such as Lancaster probably wouldn’t get to play an Italian these days, The Rose Tattoo is a broad drama leavened with comedic touches that pull laughter from a hamper full of stereotypes. Lancaster and others are clearly giving method acting their best shot. They do okay, but for me, way too much dissolves into histrionics.

 

At is best, The Rose Tattoo touches upon issues of social class, traditionalism versus emergent norms, and Protestant/Catholic tensions. It also makes us ponder what it would be like to be a Sicilian in the 1950s Deep South. It’s not enough. The Rose Tattoo feels like a hipster’s weathered ink: drained of color, murky, and so, so yesterday.

 

Rob Weir