Exhibitions at the Eric Carle Museum and at Mt. Holyoke

Western Mass Art: Catch it Now!

It's Me Eloise: The Voice of Kay Thompson and the Art of Hilary Knight

Eric Carle Museum (Amherst)

Through June 4, 2017

140 Unlimited

Mount Holyoke College Museum of Art (South Hadley)

Through May 28, 2018 (and beyond) 

 

I did not grow up with Eloise, the slightly naughty, slightly precocious, and the exceedingly privileged little girl who lived in the Plaza Hotel with rich parents that mostly fobbed her off on her nanny. I intend no sexism when I say that Eloise books weren't exactly normal fare for little boys back in the days when I was one. All of what I know about the franchise is secondhand via my wife and it was of the variety that nearly made me opt out of a visit to the Eric Carle Museum. I'm glad I didn't.

The current exhibit is a totally charming display of book graphics, story mockups, magazine covers, and spinoffs covering the years 1947 to the present. The first date surprised me, as the first Eloise book didn't appear until 1954. I was unaware that Thompson was already a radio star before she began authoring children's books devoted to her diminutive heroine. Nor did I know that the Eloise books evolved from a radio persona she assumed in 1947. Think something akin to Lily Tomlin's Edith Ann character. The Eric Carle Museum has several headphones stations where we can hear Thompson portraying Eloise on the air, as well as a middle-of-the-room section devoted to Eloise on radio, records, and stage.

The outside walls of the gallery are devoted to photos, text panels, and artwork. We learn first about Thompson, who lived in the Plaza for much of starlet days and had a stubborn streak of her own. I simply had no idea of her days as a singer on Bing Crosby radio shows in the 1930s, or of her Broadway and movie work. We also learn of Hilary Knight to whom I had previously paid so little attention that I failed to note the single L in the first name and assumed to be a woman. But Eloise is the star of the exhibit—in all of her various franchise turns—books, recordings, TV shows, musicals, toys, games, and assorted paraphernalia—that outlived her creators. Yes, she is a snooty little toff, but her spunk and insouciance are enough to melt the class barriers of a Maoist. So too are the hilarious predicaments in which she embroils herself. It's easy to understand her appeal to spirited little girls. Take one with you if you can but if not, go anyhow. All you need is a young attitude; It's Me Eloise is for kids young and old. 

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Addario, Two Burqas

The Mount Holyoke College Museum of Art (MHCMA) recently celebrated its 140^th birthday. Years before that event, college curators had the inspired idea to collect 140 new objects to display during the birthday bash. The MHCMA, though not a pauper, lacks the sizable endowments that periodically refresh the galleries of Smith, Yale, Harvard, or Amherst. In practical terms this meant the MHCMA had to collect smart, cultivate donors, and work closely with faculty to discuss topics such as inclusiveness, worthiness, and usefulness of items as future teaching tools. Try doing all of that on a limited budget. The result is quite impressive.

One way to keep costs in line is to buy photographs. I'm not wild about the minor Joel Meyerowitz offerings, but there are stunning shots by others, especially work done by shutterbugs such as Lynsey Addario and Pieter Hugo in Africa, and by Livia Corona in Mexico. Check out the story behind Addario's shot titled "Two Burqas;" it's too good for a spoiler.    

Andy Warhol

The rest of the objects are a delicious Mulligan stew that includes works from Chuck Close, Andy Warhol, a mesmerizing Mannerist painting of Judith and Holofernes by Benton Spurance, and known and lesser-known Old Masters. There also objects ranging from Classical antiquities and African masks to an Asian Buddha and Pueblo ceramics. The overall effect is more like sorting through the backroom of an art auction house than the stiff formalism of a museum.

As an integrated group this exhibit closes in a few short weeks, but the MHCMA now owns these items and many are sure to become longtime favorites.

Rob Weir

Benton Spurance

Chuck Close

Pueblo Ceramic

Kent State : A Survivor's Insightful Analysis

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Kent State: Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties. By Thomas M. Grace. University of Massachusetts Press, 2016. 273 pages + appendices, notes, index.

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming/We’re finally on our own/This summer I hear the drumming/Four dead in Ohio.

 

Those lines from Neil Young’s “Ohio” were inescapable by the summer of 1970, with Young’s pained voice and blistering guitar presaging those of punk and grunge. Anger was already in the air, but the May 4, 1970 shooting of thirteen Kent State University students brought home that rage for multitudes of Americans. By summer’s end, Kent State had become the symbol of divisiveness that roils American society to the present day. Those on the left seized upon Kent as further confirmation that the American Establishment was controlled by duplicitous liars with murderous intent—those willing to expand an immoral war (Vietnam) into neighboring Cambodia and also ready to mow down anyone, including college students, with the audacity to challenge their authority. To those on the right, Kent State was a long overdue crackdown on lawless degenerates who sought to rent the very fabric of American society.

If the two camps shared anything in common, it was their surprise that matters came to a head at Kent State. Until May 4, most Americans had no idea where Kent State was even located. Those such as this reviewer who are old enough to remember the 1970 shootings at Kent (and also Jackson State, Mississippi) recall that most coverage presented Kent State as something of a backwater—the term “small second-tier state school” was often used. Why there? Kent, the media asserted, had not been an epicenter of campus dissent like UCal Berkeley, the University of Michigan, Columbia, San Francisco State, or the University of Wisconsin. 

This was because too few were paying attention. So says Thomas Grace and he would know—he was at Kent and was among the nine students wounded on May 4.  Kent, Ohio was a small city of just over 28,000 in 1970, but it was no backwater—it was/is an outlying section of Akron and part of the Greater Cleveland metropolitan region. In one of the book’s many remarkable features, Grace has meticulously researched the backgrounds of Kent students and can definitively say that though the university had grown like Topsy—from 6,000 students in 1955 to over 21,000 at the time of the shootings—its undergraduates were not the sons and daughters of farmers; they were the children of blue-collar workers. Many were first-generation college attendees and some were students of color whose entrance into higher education was uneasy. 

Grace deftly employs the concept of the Long Sixties to prove that the events of 1970 were neither unique nor unpredictable. Ohio—as election observers know—has long been a divided state. In 1970, conservative Republican James Rhodes was governor, but Kent’s students hailed mostly from parts of the state where labor unions had fought and won hard battles. In 1966, the largely black Hough section of Cleveland exploded into six days of rioting that destroyed millions of dollars worth of property. Four (ahem!) people died and fifty were wounded. Those who landed on the Kent campus during the 1960s were neither naïve nor quiescent. The campus saw its first major protest in 1961 and by the mid-Sixties Kent was a spider web of Old and New Left organizations: socialists, Trotskyites, civil rights advocates, SDS members, black nationalists, antiwar activists…. Moreover, ten percent of Kent students were Vietnam veterans, many of whom were outraged by Nixon’s decision to invade Cambodia. Though several of those shot at Kent were not actively protesting, most of those chanting for the National Guard’s exit from their campus knew why they were protesting and were experienced at doing so. As Grace says of himself, “I was not a victim; I was a casualty.”

Grace’s book is so filled with individual stories that one is sometimes lost in the welter of unfamiliar names, but some clear villains emerge: Governor Rhodes, parts of the KSU administration, Ohioans applauding the suppression of civil liberties, the Ohio National Guard, and court systems that literally allowed the Guard to get away with murder. But Grace leaves us with some of his namesake vibes. In a final sweep, his appendix traces the post-May 4 lives of protestors. They did not slink away, as those hoping to teach them a lesson had hoped. Most were activists before 1970 and remained so afterward. Grace, who hails from Buffalo, returned to campus after a long rehab to show he belonged. Until retirement, he was a social worker, union organizer, and part of the May 4 Memorial task force. Then he got a Ph.D. and is now a history instructor at Erie Community College. He insists there is nothing special about his story—his prerogative, but his book is extraordinary.

What if you knew her/And found her dead on the ground/How could you run when you know?

Rob Weir  

Note: This review originally appeared on" http://nepca.wordpress.com 
 

Has the U.S. Reckoned with Vietnam?

American Reckoning: The Vietnam War and Our National Identity. By Christian G. Appy, Penguin, 2016, 335 pp. plus notes, bibliography, index. 

Note: Saigon fell to advancing South Vietnamese troops 42 years ago yesterday. This review originally appeared at: https://nepca.blog/ 

Nations seldom exit wars as they entered them. In an important new book, University of Massachusetts Amherst professor Chris Appy argues that, though the Vietnam War ended thirty-two years ago, the United States continues to struggle with its results. He even asserts that with "the possible exception of the Civil War, no event in U.S. history has demanded more soul-searching than the war in Vietnam," a conflict that "provoked a profound national identity crisis, an American reckoning" (x). A short list of its impact includes the shattering of "the central tenet of American national identity–the broad faith that the United States is a unique force for good in the world, superior not only in its military and economic power, but in the quality of its government and institutions, the character and morality of its people, and its way of life" (xi-xii).  

Few scholars have a better grasp of Vietnam and the workings of the military-industrial complex than Appy. He mines an array of primary sources in this study, but he also understands that popular culture frequently embodies a better understanding of how Americans see their past. Hence, Appy also draws upon movies, advertisements, novels, music, and other such sources in a book that begins with the question, "Who Are We?" and ends with observations of "Who We Are." The book is divided into three sections: "Why Are We In Vietnam?", "America at War," and "What Have We Become?".  An example of Appy's unorthodox but deeply enlightening approach comes in a chapter titled "Saving Vietnam." It builds upon Deliver Us From Evil, a 1956 best-selling book from Thomas A. Dooley, which Appy uses to show the deep roots of U.S. misunderstanding of Vietnam, and to place under the microscope Americans' self-deceptions. This journey takes Apply into the geopolitics of post-World War II, as well as into the sermons of Fulton Sheen, Cecil B. DeMille's rants on "godless communism," the exceptionalist pronouncements of Henry Luce, and the naïveté of films like South Pacific.

Students of the war won't find much new in what Appy relates about the illogic of American reasons for entering Vietnam or the inappropriateness of how the war was conducted. His revelations lie in his innovative narrative and in the depth of how various missteps continue to impact society. For example, in his look at American soldiers ("Our Boys") he sets the stage for understanding the gap between admiration for U.S. warriors and rejection of their cause. It's hard to find common ground between —on one hand, the film The Green Berets, Barry Sadler's hyper-patriotic ballad of that title, and Merle Haggard's middle finger to the counterculture and — on the other hand —revelations of My Lai, the rise of the antiwar movement, former Green Beret Donald Duncan's excoriation of the American way of war, and the spate of songs and movies critical of the conflict and those who conducted it.

In his final section, Appy turns his capacious mind to Vietnam's impact. Among its effects is the "Victim Nation" (221-49), a simultaneous sense that American ideals have always been under attack, "willful amnesia" (224) concerning Vietnam, a loss of faith in American institutions, a reconfiguration of GIs as "the primary victims" of the war (241), and a contradictory go-it-alone attitude as seen in films such as Rambo.

Conservatives from Ronald Reagan on have fanned post-Vietnam disillusionment and disunity to argue for a reinvigoration of American supremacy. Indeed, though Appy's book went to press before the 2016 election, it's easy to cast Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan in this light. But Appy incisively captures the problem facing the sloganeering of both right and left in his chapter "No More Vietnams." As he captures it in vignettes, such bromides can justify both the 1983 mass force invasion of Grenada and the antiwar activism of Brian Willson four years later.  

Appy ends his book with bleak notes and a clarion call. He sees Vietnam in the war in Iraq, noting that it took President Obama three years "to find an exit" for a "war that began in March 2003 with 'shock and awe' [and] ended almost nine years later in head-shaking silence" (305). 9/11 brought back American exceptionalism, even support for the idea of empire. These took their place aside new contradictions: the national security state and attempts to manage the news versus leaked revelations of misconduct such as that of David Petraeus and troops at Abu Ghraib; the valorization of Pat Tillman versus a lack of public support for the mission in Iraq; and belief in "global hegemony" versus critiques on the right and left that see it as "expensive, destructive, and antithetical to republican institutions" (319). By 2009, a scant 24% of Americans saw any value in the Iraqi conflict. Shades of Vietnam indeed! But how does one reconcile this with a 2010 poll in which 80% affirmed that the USA has a responsibility to lead the world? You don't. In Appy's words, "As long as we continue to be seduced by the myth of American exceptionalism, we will too easily acquiesce to the misuse of power…." Our best hope is to "seek a fuller reckoning of our role in the world that the Vietnam War so powerfully awakened…. It is our record; it is who we are" (335).

Rob Weir

Elvis and Nixon A Stinker Supreme

ELVIS and NIXON (2106)

Directed by Liza Johnson

Amazon Studios, 86 minutes, R (for language and insipidness)

Zero stars

Have you ever done something so stupid that you were aware of your own idiocy as you were doing it? That was my experience in watching Elvis and Nixon. I'm embarrassed that I actually viewed the entire thing. It is simply one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It is miscast, misdirected, and as broad as a mid-70s Elvis double-knit jump suit.

It depicts an event so inherently bizarre that it beggars the imagination that it actually took place. On December 21, 1970, Elvis showed up at White House gate and requested a meeting with President Nixon. He told startled guards to call him Jon Burrows because he was "working undercover," and that his reason for wanting to see the president was so he could obtain a Bureau of Narcotics badge to give him "credibility" in fighting the war on drugs. If that strikes you as weird, what does it say about the Nixon administration that his request was granted? Picture it—Elvis enters the White House in sunglasses, a purple cape, a gold belt the WWF would have deemed too garish, and bearing a gift of a commemorative Colt-45 for the president. You read it right: Elvis brought a gun to the White House. Yet he got to spend QT with Nixon, hugged the president, and got his badge. That makes Nixon nuttier than a Payday.

Elvis probably had some big holes in his own marbles bag by then. He possessed an arsenal of guns, a growing collection of badges he cadged from various local law enforcement agencies, and harbored the delusion that he personally could wean Woodstock Nation from its use of controlled substances. His marriage to Priscilla was strained and was about to go on the rocks, and let's not forget the Jon Burrows thing. Did Elvis actually imagine that he could simply change his name and that he'd be able to go undercover? As if.

He was also incredibly vain by then. Elvis was insanely jealous of the popularity of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones because they were more popular with young people. Those same teens and young adults increasingly viewed Elvis as a nostalgia act. Worse still, this meant that Elvis' audience was increasingly double wide middle aged women seeking to relive the 1950s. Despite recent comeback tours, Elvis wasn't growing as an artist, which is the slippery slope to Gabor-Kardashian Syndrome—being famous for being famous. Elvis was just a few years removed from being a cheesy, bloated Vegas spectacle. In a tragically ironic twist, Special Agent Burrows would also spiral downward from drug use.

You've probably noticed I've not said much about the film. It doesn't warrant saying much, but here goes. When you have material as juicy as this, you could do one of two things: direct a searing psychological drama or go for camp. Director Liza Johnson veers toward the latter but doesn't have the skill to make a film bad enough to become a cult classic. The end result is directorial slop that makes Ed Wood look like an auteur.

Michael Shannon as Elvis is the worst case of miscasting since Marlon Brando played a Mexican in Viva Zapata! I sat in jaw-dropping stupor from Shannon's embarrassing ineptitude. He sported, for starters, the most obvious bad toupee I've ever seen. Second, Shannon neither looks nor sounds like Elvis and his affected mannerisms were so forced that were you to see such a clod at a bar lounge you'd exclaim, "Worst Elvis impersonator ever!" I'm surprised Shannon got work after this misadventure. Kevin Spacey doesn't look much like Nixon either, but he's such a pro that he inhabits his character. He's the only thing worth watching. The rest of the cast manages to make it through without drooling, but they're just playing 1970s dress-up.

In Neil Simon's The Goodbye Girl, the character Elliot Garfield described his acting effort as "Capital P, capital U, capital TRID." I can think of no better way to describe Elvis and Nixon. What was I thinking?

Rob Weir

Quiles and Cloud: April 2017 Album of the Month

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April 2017 Album of the Month

Cajuns use the word lagniappe (LAN-yap) to describe a small gift thrown in as a bonus. Compass Records recently did this for me. I requested a review copy of another Compass artist, which is very good. But they also threw in a download for Quiles and Cloud and it's safe to say that I adored Shake Me Now. If you're wondering about the band's agnomen, it's a combo of the last names of Maria Quiles (vocals/guitar) and Rory Cloud (guitar/vocals). The band also includes bass player Oscar Westesson.

The title track is indicative of how the trio approaches its material. The appellation suggests a song that rocks, but this is not that sort of record. The group has won a few bluegrass awards, but genre wise, Shake Me Now rests in the seam where folk, bluegrass, jazz, and Americana overlap. The group doesn't try to shake anyone— the effect is more like being swaddled in velvet. If I had to classify this record I'd say it's like Appalachian music without the twang and with its raw edges smoothed and soothed. Quiles and Cloud can ratchet the excitement when need be, as on "Black Sky Lightning," the opening track that hooked me, but it's the soft side that really highlights how special they are. As Alasdair Fraser often observes, most reasonably talented musicians can play fast, but you have to be really good to play slowly. And sometimes that's the best route for bringing home a song's essence. Check out the tender "Mississippi River," which makes you want to join the vocalists as they drift away from dull care. Think you know the Dylan song "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere?" Check out what Quiles and Cloud do with it and you might conclude you've never really heard it before. Maria Quiles has a voice that bathes you in gentleness, even when she comes at you strong, and her close harmonies with Cloud are a thing to behold. "Faded Flowers" is a particularly fine example of this, plus it's another beautiful heart-tugger.

The warmth of the vocals is skillfully contrasted with and integrated into Rory Cloud's robust flat-picking, Quiles' rhythm guitar, and Westesson's standup bass, which he sometimes bows to provide resonant bottom and atmospheric ambience. This winning formula is used on the trio's thoughtful mix of originals, covers, and traditional songs. Of the last, there is a delightfully restrained version of "Worried Man Blues," a jazzy, finger-popping take on "Feelin' Good," and a version of "Deep Ellum Blues" that's simultaneously countrified, soulful, and haunting. My only complaint is that this San Francisco-based trio won't be anywhere near me in 2017. But I'm eternally grateful to Compass for the best lagniappe I've received in quite some time.

Rob Weir

     

   

Reliving the Oscars on Video

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If you didn't get to see the films that won Best Picture at the Oscars, don't despair—unlike big-screen cotton candy like La La Land, both Moonlight and The Salesman will work well on your television set.

As you probably know, Oscar presenters mistakenly announced that La La Land had won as Best Picture. Glad that error was caught, because Moonlight (A24 Pictures, 111 minutes, R) is by far the superior picture. It's a Hollywood rarity as a prizewinner: an all-black cast with a black director, Barry Jenkins. Is it a "black" film? Yes and no. It certainly deals with the poverty, addiction, and diminished life circumstances within inner-city ghettos populated by people of color, but it's also about role models, father figures, LGBT issues, and—to paraphrase Langston Hughes—what happens to deferred dreams. Jenkins centers his film on Chiron and unveils his life in three parts: "Little," "Chiron," and "Black." Within this structure we move from idealism to harsh reality to hedonism and (perhaps) a search for redemption.

We first meet Chiron (Alex Hibbert) as a skinny boy in Miami's Liberty City. He is picked upon by bigger kids for his bookish ways and shyness so severe that he is literally tongue-tied when he flees a gang seeking to beat him up and is found wandering by Juan (Mahershala Ali). Director Jenkins cleverly twists white morality tales in which a character with a rough exterior turns out to have a heart of gold. Juan really is a bad dude—a drug dealer who packs heat and commands deference in the 'hood. But Juan is also the father that "Little" lacks. Chiron lives with single mom Paula (Naomi Harris), who works hard but also does crack and has a string of boyfriends, each less appropriate than the predecessor. By contrast, Juan is partnered with Teresa (Janelle Monáe), a true ghetto angel whose home is one of linen, clean sheets, and home-cooked meals. Through Juan and Teresa, Little dares to dream; he even cultivates a friendship with Kevin (Jaden Pinder).

In Part Two, Chiron's dreams soar and are shattered. As a youth, Chiron (Ashton Sanders) is still skinny and his aspirations have taken psychological and physical beatings. His is a world of unexpected intimacies, betrayals, and violence. By the time we meet Chiron (Trevante Rhodes) again in "Black," he is a ripped physical dynamo living a perverse American Dream and filled with self-loathing. Can Teresa, his mother, and/or Kevin (André Holland) help him find redemption?

If you think recent movies are lame, Moonlight will restore your faith. You would have to search long and hard to find a negative review of this gem. Jenkins should have won Best Director—no one else had the chutzpah to build a trilogy in less than two hours, construct distinct narratives, and direct three sets of actors—all for $1.5 million. Ali won a deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but his was just one of uniformly brilliant performances. It's just a matter of time before we start thinking of Ms. Monáe as an actress first and a singer second. All three Chirons are superb, James Laxton's cinematography is stunning (check out what he does with cool color and mixed film stock), stereotypes tumble, and somehow—in the midst of varying levels of despair—we brush elbows with a deeper humanity.

The Best Foreign Film Oscar went to The Salesman (Memento Films, 124 minutes, PG-13). I still think Iceland's Rams was better picture, but it's hard to begrudge anything done by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation, The Past). I constantly marvel over how he gets work past mullah censors. This film is in Persian with English subtitles, but you'll recognize parts of this play-within-a-film as it concerns a husband/wife team rehearsing Death of a Salesman while a real-life domestic tragedy/drama unfolds outside the theater.

Emad (Shahab Hosseini) is a modern, magnetic, and commanding teacher and director set to play the role of Willy Loman. Problems emerge when he and his wife, Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti) must vacate their apartment when a nearby construction project destabilizes the building. Luck is with them when fellow cast member Babak (Babak Karimi) offers an apartment whose previous occupant suddenly left. Strangely, though, Babak is vague about who she was or why she left her things behind. Matters take an ominous twist when Rana is accosted while bathing. The assault on Rana reveals Emad to be less progressive than we first supposed. He becomes obsessed with finding the man who did this— not because Rana was terrified and bloodied, but because of the stain on his honor.

This is a film about humiliation, obsession, patriarchy, revenge, assumptions, and masculinity. Farhadi deftly interweaves themes from Death of a Salesman and we begin to see Emad as akin to Willy in being stuck on the wrong side of social change. Emad's descent into revenge fantasies soon wearies his theater colleagues, especially Babak—whom Emad goes off script to insult— and Kati, a single mother whose sympathies are with Rana. Is Emad a symbol for Iran's theocratic rulers—cruel, self-righteous, and mired in out-of-date values? One wonders if Farhadi has pulled the wool over mullah eyes by cleverly immersing such implications within a mystery and its bathetic resolution. Has Emad become Willy—a man in pursuit of illusions and living in a bygone world? Does his definition of morality parallel Willy's antiquated values?

Farhadi likes to personalize clashing worldviews, often placing them within domestic settings. His is also a masterful microcosmic look at the pull of tradition versus the push of secularization. Is it also a veiled critique of Islamic fundamentalism? You don't have to imagine the film in this light, as it's dramatic in its own right. Part of the puzzle centers on the identity of the mysterious previous apartment tenant. Pay attention to who is drawing on the walls early on, as I think it's a clue. But Farhadi's forte—and maybe the reason he gets to take surprising liberty—is that he only reveals part of what he's thinking and leaves the rest for viewers to contemplate.

Rob Weir    

Terence Davis' Human Emily Dickinson

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A QUIET PASSION

Directed by Terence DAVIES

MUSIC BOX FILMS, 126 MINUTES, PG-13

★★★★

Fame is a fickle food

Upon a shifting plate

Whose table once a

Guest but not

The second time is set. —Emily Dickinson

If, like me, you live anywhere near Amherst, Massachusetts, you're likely to have one of two very strong opinions about native daughter Emily Dickinson—you either worship the grass upon which she trod, or you're sick of hearing her very name. I am a card-carrying member of the second camp. I feel about Dickinson much as I feel about characters from the Brontes and Jane Austen—enough with the tormented passivity and internalized repression. Director Terence Davies and actress Cynthia Nixon have not only made me reconsider Ms. Dickinson, they've sent me scurrying back to her poems.

The rejoinder to my impatience with Dickinson is, of course, that women of her era (1830-1886) had few options. Davies subtlety shows us the stultifying effects of being female in the 19^th century. His is a very European film in style, filled with pan shots and moments in which silence speaks louder than dialogue. Though it might be hard for those weaned on action films to watch, there are several scenes of domestic non-bliss in which the camera slowly surveys a silent room in which men are contentedly reading and women look at if they might devolve into boredom-induced madness or melt into the patterned wallpaper upon which the lens lingers. Indeed, it's hard not to think of Charlotte Perkins-Gilman in moments such as these. Where are the cultural cracks through which non-conformists can escape? That's exactly the slant Davies employs in his look at Emily Dickinson—one whose interstices, jumps, and cuts are filled with snippets of her verse.

We see Emily as a rebel from the start—a woman fiercely guarding her own soul and willing to stand up to the indomitable Mary Lyons to do so—perhaps one of the reasons Dickinson only lasted ten months at Mt Holyoke Female Seminary. Davies doesn't give us an eternally gloomy Dickinson. Young Emily (Emma Bell) is light, clever, carefree, and saucy enough to bait her pious, drear Aunt Elizabeth. This carries over as she enters maturity. If you only know Cynthia Nixon from Sex in the City, be prepared to be astonished; it would not surprise me if hers supplants Julie Harris' as the definitive portrayal of Dickinson. Nixon gives us a Dickinson who takes joy in other insouciant women, especially her sunny sister Vinnie (Jennifer Ehle), her good-hearted sister-in-law Susan Gilbert (Jodhi May), and the tart-tongued Vryling Buffam (Catherine Bailey), the principal of a local school for girls. Bailey is a special delight. In the film, she drops witticisms, snide comments, and wicked remarks like a female Oscar Wilde. In fact, Dickinson's mid-life inner circle of female friends stands in contrast to the Stygian outlook of elders such as her sad-sack mother (Joanna Bacon) and of men drowning in their own impossible standards of honor and piety: her brother Austin (Duncan Duff), a procession of stodgy ministers, and her father Edward—expertly played by Keith Carradine, who finds it hard always to play the stern paterfamilias and breaks expectations when least expected.

This is far more than Life with the Dickinsons. There is plenty of heavy stuff: Emily's obsession with mortality and immortality, her desire for artistic acceptance, and her fury over being better known for her gardening skills than for her verse, a frustration she uses to batter editor Samuel Bowles (Trevor Cooper). And, of course, there is Dickinson's storied descent into isolation, misanthropy, and despair. What precipitated this? Well… that's the stuff of scores of dissertations and no one knows for certain.

Dickinson scholars, I'm sure, will bemoan liberties in the film. such as the conjecture that she was in love with a married minister, or a scene in which she is the interruptus to her brother's coitus with Mabel Loomis Todd. Austin indeed had an affair with Todd, but Emily never met the woman who later edited her poems. Non-Dickinson junkies might be baffled at moments in which Davies telescopes time in ways that require some pre-knowledge. It's certainly ambitious to tackle so much biography in one film and, perhaps, inevitable that gaps will emerge. I can forgive these, as Davies hands us a human Emily Dickinson whose sadness and resignation are balanced by flights into humor, hope, and independence. Are these readings too feminist? Too modern? Again, who knows? I want Davies' take to be true, and it's to his credit that he moved a Dickinson Abstainer such as I. There's a closing morphing sequence in which the (to-date) only authenticated picture of Emily Dickinson slowly becomes the image of Cynthia Nixon. And so I shall henceforth think of her.

Rob Weir

Postscript: The exteriors of this movie were filmed in Amherst; the interiors on a set in Belgium modeled on the Dickinson homestead.