Jojo Rabbit: A Black Comedy that Lampoons the Third Reich

Jojo Rabbit (2019)

Directed by Taika Waititi

Fox Searchlight, 108 minutes, PG-13 (mild language)

★★★★

It’s been 76 years since the end of World War Two but in some circles, Adolf Hitler remains the third rail of comedy. Numerous reviewers have frothed themselves into a moral lather over Jojo Rabbit and have accused New Zealand director Taika Waititi of glorifying Nazism. That’s absolute rubbish. Waititi’s father is Maori and his mother, Robin Cohen, is of English/Russian/Jewish descent. Waititi embraces both parts of his heritage and his film is a black comedy/drama that explores both the absurdities of anti-Semitism and how easily the flames of fanaticism can be flamed.

It is hard to find humor in the horrors of Nazi Germany, but Waititi is up to something more subversive than kneejerk revulsion: he delegitimizes fascists by painting them as destructive clowns. He is hardly the first to do so. Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) made Hitler into a buffoon, as did Mel Brooks in The Producers (1967). Others had their crack at throwing a cream pie in the Fuhrer’s face: Donald Duck, The Three Stooges, TV’s Hogan’s Heroes, Marvel Comics, and movies such as The Boys from Brazil (1978), Life is Beautiful (1997), and Inglorious Basterds (2009).

Jojo Rabbit centers on 10-year-old Johannes “Jojo” Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis). It is late 1944 and Jojo is enrolled in a Hitler Youth (HY) group. He dresses the part and tries to be a good little Nazi; he even has an imaginary friend: Hitler (Waititi), who appears from time to time to give Jojo advice, though he is an absurd fool who gets caught in his own contradictions. Jojo goes off to a HY camp and mouths all the right slogans, but he and his real friend, the pudgy Yorki (Archie Yates), are inept at being fascist badasses. When one-eyed Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell) and his second-in-command Finkel (Alfie Allen) try to whip the boys into a sanguinary froth, Jojo cannot bring himself to slaughter a bunny and thus acquires his unflattering handle, “Jojo Rabbit.” The HY camp foibles immediately put me in mind of Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom done up in Nazi drag. Waititi is often compared to Anderson, though earlier Waititi offerings such Eagle vs Shark, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and Boy are quirkier.

The first quarter of Jojo Rabbit might distress overly sensitive viewers. Despite his clumsiness, Jojo continues to spout fascist ideals, including making hateful remarks about Jews. Stay with it. Jojo’s mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), a lighthearted optimist, tempers Jojo by paying scant attention to the war and deflects politics and queries about Jojo’s absent father. Much to Jojo’s shock, she is also secretly harboring a Jewish teenager, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie). As is often the case, hatred is easier in the abstract than in the flesh. Jojo must face two major dilemmas. If the Gestapo finds out, his mother will be arrested. Plus, Jojo is strangely drawn to Elsa, even though he’s scared of her. Some of the film’s darkest humor comes when Elsa deliberately sabotages Jojo’s efforts to find out what Jews are “really” like so he can compile his discoveries into an illustrated book.

Jojo Rabbit takes touching and poignant turns, though there’s no sentimentality wasted on the Nazis. Klendendorf is a sloppy drunk, Finkle a bumbling tag along, and Gestapo agents like something from a Monty Python sketch. Jojo Rabbit also evokes Armando Iannucci’s comedy The Death of Stalin (2017). Isn’t it odd how few critics said it was wrong to satirize Stalin, who was also a mass murderer? In my view, Waititi gets right what Anderson and Iannucci failed to achieve. Anderson is often so droll that he valorizes detached hipsterism, and Iannucci stumbled when trying to redo Soviet politics as a comedic 1984. By contrast, Waititi imbues Jojo, Elsa, Rosie, Yorki, and a few surprise others with humanity.

The film is also crisply acted from top to bottom. Roman Griffin Davis is quite a find. At times his intensity is such that we can see how propaganda can warp even a child, yet Davis turns on a dime to make us understand that a child parroting bad things is still just a child–one who can cry over a bunny, live in a fantasy world, and learn how to differentiate good from evil. McKenzie–last seen in Leave No Trace, my favorite film of 2018–also shows great range; she is, at turns, furtive, fierce, frightened, and tender. Both Rockwell and Johansson chow down on their roles–in good ways–by turning on and off the humor/drama spigots as needed. Yates is like a bespectacled Teddy bear; Allen–Theon in Game of Thrones–and Rebel Wilson as Fraulein Rahm have bit roles that they make seem much bigger.

Despite the film’s outward content, it is indeed a comedy, but of the variety in which we laugh at horrible things lest we sink into despair. Waititi ultimately flashes his middle digits at fascists past and present by exposing them for what they are: fanatics and fools who ultimately fall. Even a 10-year-old can understand that! For what it’s worth, there is little that drives the grandson of German immigrant and Mussolini act-alike Donald Trump(f) to cold fury as those who refuse to take him seriously.

Rob Weir

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Classic Films: Bringing Up Baby

Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Directed by Howard Hawks

RKO Radio Studios, 102 minutes, Not rated.

★★★★

This classic film is #88 on the American Film Institute’s Top 100 American films and it ranks high of my favorite list of screwball comedies. If you don’t know the genre, it was one that messed with traditional gender roles back in the 1930s and 1940s–long before today’s gender-benders were born. Screwball comedies often subverted traditional romances by immersing them in farcical situations in which the scripted gender roles of the day were flipped and further assaulted by barrages of witty repartee. Screwball comedies were the template for battle of the sexes movies; smart money was usually on the woman.

One of the delights of Bringing Up Baby is the demasculinization of Cary Grant. In this movie he is a nerdy paleontologist busily assembling a brontosaurus skeleton that lacks but one bone for completion. We see Grant as David Huxley puttering about in his lab coat and heavy-rimmed black glasses, and being led like a bull by a nose ring by his fiancée Alice Swallow (Virginia Swallow). The two plan to marry later that evening, but a chance golf course encounter with Susan Vance (Katherine Hepburn) will change all of that. Susan is a ditsy, fast-talking, accident-prone socialite who decides on the spot that she is in love with David. We don’t really know why, but screwball comedies are all about situations, not logic.

You want situations? This film has them in spades: a cheetah named Baby, a bone-loving dog named George, a wealthy aunt (May Robson), an alleged big-game hunter (Charles Ruggles), a befuddled constable (Walter Catlett), a pair of inept circus roustabouts, and Grant cavorting about in a frilly dressing gown. You are not meant to take any of this seriously. Bringing Up Baby is essentially a drawing room comedy that opens its doors so that the loonies can cavort both inside and out. Like said drawing room comedies, the humor is broad and ridiculous, as is the very notion of a conventional romance. Bringing Up Baby is goofy and charming–a film I watch every few years simply because it makes me giggle and smile.

Bringing Up Baby also reminds me of Marx Brothers films in that it takes the air out of a wide assortment of stuffy people and authority figures. The jailhouse scenes are kind of dumb if you think about them, but don’t! Law enforcement figures, attorneys, scientists, the monied classes, and psychiatrists take it on the chin in Bringing Up Baby and everything comes at you with machine gun pacing that’s designed to keep you off your stride. Director Howard Hawks is usually considered the second greatest of the screwball comedy directors (after Frank Capra). Watch enough screwballs and you’ll recognize that Hawk is playing to certain formulae, one aspect of which is that he aims for the funny bone, not your intellect. After all, David begins this film as a very serious man and it’s Susan’s zaniness that saves him from that burden–not to mention what would have been a dull, listless marriage to Alice.

A caution: This is a 1938 film, so there are a few references that might trouble the overly PC individual. Early on Grant utters the phrase, “That’s awfully white of you,” a now-inappropriate way of saying you’re a standup person. Just cringe and let it go. You may have a harder time with Barry Fitzgerald’s send-up of a stereotypical Irish gardener with a fondness for drink, but in screwball comedies pretty much everyone is lampooned.

Be wary of reading anything into this film other than playing for laughs. Grant galivanting about in a dressing gown is sometimes extrapolated by those who claim he was actually a closeted gay man. This was a charge raised by Scotty Bowman in The Secret Life of Hollywood and builds off of rumors that Grant and Randolph Scott were lovers. Grant’s daughter doubts said stories and Grant had five wives in his lifetime—a lot of trouble and alimony to pay if these were just beards. But, really, who cares? The best route is to let Baby, George, Susan, and David expose the absurdity of worrying too much about propriety.

Rob Weir

Madness of Sunshine a Page-Turner for Winter

A Madness of Sunshine (December 3, 2019)

By Nalini Singh

Berkley/Penguin, 352 pages.

★★★★

Nalini Singh is well known for her fantasy and paranormal romance novels, but she surprises with A Madness of Sunshine, a crime/mystery offering.

It is set in the fictional hamlet of Golden Cove on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island. Golden Cove is a suburb of Greymouth–if a place of fewer than 10,000 souls can have ‘burbs. It’s such a small place that Greymouth seems large and Christchurch (381,500) three hours to the east is a veritable metropolis. New Zealand’s West Coast is remote—its southern access cut off by myriad fjords and inlets and access from the east made difficult by the Southern Alps, which form the spine of the South Island. Remote towns are, however, often more socially cohesive than larger places. In Golden Cove, most people know and look out for each other. It’s also a place where Maori–New Zealand’s first human settlers–and Pakeha (whites) enjoy mutual tolerance, even when it’s not genuine affection. Her hometown is a perfect place for native daughter and world-renowned pianist Anahera (Rawiri) Spencer-Ashby to recover from the triple shocks of burnout, her husband’s death, and the discovery of his philandering.

Not even her oldest friend Josie (“Jo”), who runs the local café, can believe that “Ana” has returned after more than a decade of living in London, though she and her resourceful husband Tom do all they can to prepare her mother’s old cabin for Ana’s occupancy. Other than summertime hikers, Golden Cove isn’t the kind of place that outsiders seek. One of the few new residents since Ana last visited is Will Gallagher, who has been the local law enforcement officer for just three months. Mostly, Ana finds that Golden Cove is much as she left it, ­except that her former cohort is now in their 30s and 40s and those she knew as children are now young adults. The latter includes Miriama “Miri” Hinewai Tutaia, who at 21 is both locally beloved and jaw-dropping gorgeous.

Ana is hardly settled in before Miri goes jogging and disappears. Is she lying at the foot of a trailside cliff? Was she swept to sea while running too close to a dangerous tide? Was she abducted? After several pass, Will is forced to investigate Miri’s disappearance as a possible crime. He learns quickly that 15 years earlier three female hikers disappeared near Golden Cove and all that was ever discovered of any of them was a water bottle, a backpack, and a bracelet. It was never clear if any crime actually occurred back then, but Will’s conclusion is distressing: If Miri’s disappearance and those of 15 years ago are linked, it’s highly probable that someone in Golden Cove is a serial killer.   

Another thing about small towns is that there are often skeletons residing in seldom-discussed closets. Miri’s Aunt Matilda, who raised her, has a history of inappropriate boyfriends, one of whom molested Miri when she was young. No one knows his current whereabouts, but Matilda’s current live-in Steve is pretty much low-life scum. Will’s closet friend in town, Nikau Martin, also has a rap sheet from his younger days and he’s very angry that his ex-wife Keira threw him over for Daniel May, a rich boy with lots of toys but little love for the locals. The deeper Will and Ana dig, the more Golden Cove’s luster fades. The Baker family is also rich. Vincent seems beyond reproach, a politician many assume will be a future Prime Minister of New Zealand. Ana, though, picks up on the fact that his spouse, Jemima, seems more of a trophy wife than a love match. More suspicious is Vincent’s younger brother Kyle, a spoiled brat who harbors a grudge that Miri beat him out for a prestigious Christchurch photography internship that she planned to begin in weeks. And what does one wish to make of Shane Hennessey, an Irish ex-pat writer who, for years, has been more prolific at attracting a cult-like harem of barely legal young women than of producing noteworthy poetry or prose. The other wildcard is Dr. Dominic de Souza, Miri’s straight arrow boyfriend. No one can quite figure out what the high-spirited Miri sees in him. Did he find out she was seeing someone else?

Everyone seems to have a shadowy past, including Ana, whose traumatic family life was such that one wonders why she would want to be in the same time zone as the South Island. And there’s Will himself, once cast as a cop hero. What did he do to earn banishment to a backwater like Golden Cove? A Madness of Sunshine is a page-turner mystery. I should say that I figured out the mystery before it was revealed, which generally tells me the story could have been more complex. I also found the title clichéd and histrionic. There is a sense that Ms. Singh ran out of steam toward the end and wrapped up things too quickly and neatly. Still, her novel is in the best everyone-has-scars tradition and I enjoyed remembering my time in the greater Greymouth area. (Okay, I loved nearby Hokitika but Greymouth is forgettable!)

A Madness of Sunshine releases on December 3. That’s early summer in New Zealand. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, A Madness of Sunshine makes for diverting reading as the days grow shorter.

Rob Weir

Note on Maori pronunciation: Maori words often appear daunting, but they are fairly easy to approximate if you remember that Maori seldom contains stressed syllables. The usual rule is to sound out every two letters unless vowels appear adjacent to each other, in which case you elide them. Hokitika is (roughly) Ho-ke-te-ka. Nikau is a bit like Nik-ow.

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November 2019 Artists of the Month: Villalobos Brothers

Villalobos Brothers

Somos

If you’ve not already gotten the word, let me be the first to deliver it. The Villalobos Brothers are indeed three brothers (Alberto, Luis, Ernesto), each a violin virtuoso from Vera Cruz state in Mexico. They are joined by their childhood friend Humberto Flores on guitar, plus assorted percussionists who join them in the studio and on stage. The siblings were each childhood prodigies who left Mexico to study classical music abroad, but reassembled to enormous public acclaim. They have accompanied numerous Latin jazz ensembles and have collaborated with everyone from The Chieftains, Ry Cooder, Dolly Parton, Leni Stern, and Dan Zanes. They have also shared the stage with the Cuban and Peruvian national symphonies and have headlined at both Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. In other words, they are the real deal.

Their new release Somos features both their considerable musical mastery and their commitment to social justice. For the Spanish-challenged–like me–the album title translates “We Are.” It is a simple and direct assertion of presence and the title track addresses the U.S. immigration crisis and backlash. You need not understand the lyrics to admire the passion and craftsmanship of the Villalobos Brothers. This song has the scope of a pop anthem. It is lively, upbeat, hopeful, and has tongue-twisting staccato interludes.

The Villalobos Brothers are polished to a slick veneer and don’t shy away from a bit of showmanship. For example, “Xalapa Bang!” is a mélange of classical, funk, jazz, and Latin music built around frenetic fiddling. If you watch the YouTube video, Luis explains that the song is about police brutality, and the brothers do a bit of pantomime to drive home the point. It might seem a bit hokey on the surface. That is, until you do a bit of research on the subject and start to tally the number of lives lost in both the U.S. and Mexico at the hands of those who are supposed to serve and protect.

Once again, though, you can admire the musicianship with or without the politics (though I recommend you add it). The ensemble has a wonderful ability to mix styles and emotions. “Hombres de Arcilla” translates “Men of Clay” and just happens to be the name of a show of Alberto’s ceramic masks. which he fashioned in honor of 43 students who were abducted from an Iguala, Guerrero teachers’ college in 2014, 40 of whom were never found.* Alberto explains that his ceramics–inspired by pre-Aztec death masks–and musical composition are also intended to call attention to the fragility of life. The composition opens with discordant and melancholy strains that skirt the edge of experimental music. The vocals, though slow and soulful, are reminiscent of 1930s Spanish Civil War laments.

On the lighter side, “Veracruzana” is imbued with joyful and playful sounds that evoke a Zócalo party. “Hermano Mio” is a delicate melody that’s simultaneously jaunty and sweet. It has the feel of a folk song. And again, on the musical boundaries, there is “Wind Song.” It’s decidedly a slice of jazz, but jazz as filtered through classical music and salsa. Perhaps all three also have a political message but, as noted, my Spanish is limited.

What’s not in short supply insofar as the Villalobos Brothers are concerned is talent. They bring to bear all of their classical training, but they place ardor and intensity at the fore rather than devotion to technical prowess or individual huzzahs. You will, however, be tempted to dole out plenty of the latter.

Rob Weir

** The 2014 kidnappings have yet to be resolved fully, though they have been linked to local police, politicians, and organized crime figures. Allegations remain that the federal police, military, and government were also involved.

Isabelle Stillman, Manon Ward, Jason Hawk Harris, Olivia Francis, Aaron Jaxon Band, Daniel Johnston

 
 

Denver-based Isabelle Stillman has just released her debut LP Middle Sister. Her themes include love of family, growing pains, and being a woman in American society. I think you’re going to hear from this young high school teacher. “Take Care of You” doles out just enough darkness to add some husk to her voice and lend an air of mystery to the song. There’s an open feel to Stillman’s compositions. “That Salinger Novel” is mostly resonant woods with percussion that evokes a clip-clop slow ride across the plains, though the song has nothing to do with riding horses–or being in control for that matter. Though she’s a new artist in the indie folk tradition, Stillman is not starry-eyed. “Nashville” has a cheerful wrapper, but hers is more of a what if/I hope song than just a matter of time swagger. It’s also woke in recognizing the differences between externals and substance. In some ways it’s a bookend to “Driving Alone,” a museful on-the-road piece with memorable melodic hooks. She’s pushing this one as a single, but somehow, I think that honor might go to “Kid.” Like Joni Mitchell’s famed “Circle Game” it’s about the swift passage of time that goes from the “You’re fragile and unbreakable” days of toddlerdom to being to one who dispenses “grown-up words and tips.” If you’re still not impressed, check out her cover of “Beast of Burden.” ★★★★

Manon Ward is a Wyoming native who has also relocated to Nashville. That’s where dreams are crushed or come true these days, and Ward has a legitimate shot at falling into the second camp. Her self-titled debut EP is billed as country, but from where I sit the only country (ish) song on her EP is “Honey on Me,” a blues rock arrangement that has stylistic echoes of Dusty Springfield and Bobbi Jo Gentry. The rest is a mélange of rock and pop. Ward’s idols included Hank Williams and Shania Twain, but also AC/DC, Queen, and John Mayer, and her producer and lead guitarist is Johnny Garcia (Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood). This is to say that Ward might not be the typical Nashville product and that could stand her in good stead. If you listen to “I’ve Never Felt SoMe,” a song in which she celebrates herself, you can hear the pop influences in her voice, but her phrasing suggests that she has enormous potential. Also impressive is “Do Over,” which has a hint of funk. The lyrics come in the rapid-fire delivery of sung rap. “Unlike Love” is a clever and optimistic little number in which she catalogues the things she can take or leave and turn on or off–unlike love. The flip side to “I’ve Never Felt So Me” is “Don’t Need a Map,” and if it’s country, I’ll eat my cowboy hat. The cadences and rhymes are decidedly pop/rap/indie rock in nature. Ward drops the names of her sheroes, but it’ a personal declaration of strength: Everybody seems to be somebody’s something/I don’t want to be nobody’s nothing…At the end of the day I’ll find my way/And I don’t need a map. I think we may be hearing more from Manon Ward as well. ★★★★

If you want to sample someone who is country (plus rock, folk, and a touch of punk), try Jason Hawk Harris, a Houstonian transplanted to LA. You don’t get much more country than “Cussing At the Light,” which is country rock with a honkytonk feel. What’s more country than a song about a guy whose broken heart leads him to drink? How about a lyric like: I’ve been cussing at the light and waiting for the night/ To medicate this heart of mine? It’s one of several gems on Introducing Jason Hawk Harris. “I’m Afraid” comes across as a sort of redneck version of the trials of Job, and Harris does it with such tongue in cheek that it’s hard to tell if the song is kick-ass gospel or a parody. Hawks can also shift to wistful mode, as he does on “The Smoke and the Stars,” in which he expresses his desire to get lost in the “green eyes” of the woman waiting at the end of the road. The song’s format is quiet to loud to quiet to loud–and repeat. He goes mostly acoustic on “The Risk That You Take,” a supplication to be taken as he is: Honey let me be the risk that you take. ★★★★

Olivia Frances counts Taylor Swift, Kacey Musgraves, and Fleetwood Mac among her inspirations. Call her album Orchid songs in the key of sunshine–even when the content isn’t upbeat. If that makes no sense to you, listen to “Porcelain,” which is about the lonely and forgotten. Frances gives the song a pop treatment that somehow makes us think that connections will be made and clouds will lift. If this is too ambiguous, try “Moon to My Sun,” which won an Indie Music Award for best love song. She’s also written another love song titled “Once in a Blue Moon” that should not be confused with the similarly named classic falling out of love song from Nanci Griffith, though this one has a little edge to it as well. This Worcester-based singer fronts a quintet and you can hear both youth and optimism in her voice. Her current repertoire could use more diversity, but she is a talent worth watching. ★★★ 

Texas native Aaron Jackson is now ensconced in Johnson City, Tennessee. He fronts a five-piece band called the Aaron Jaxon Band that throws a bit of everything at you on Light on the Inside. Jackson’s heroes include the Allman Brothers, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, so that ought to tell you something. His songs, as he puts it, seek to be deeper and darker than boy-meets-girl. Check out “Dreamers,” which is where quiet country morphs into rock n’ roll. He offers a bit of gospel-tinged Americana folk on “Grace AmongHoly Gifts,” and the title track of his new project opens with a splash of organ as prelude to a catchy melody with solid guitar riffs. Some have praised Jackson’s lyrics. You’re on your own with that one as his voice doesn’t mesh well with compressed MP3 files. He can fire it up on the guitar, though. ★★★

Let’s round this off with a dud. Daniel Johnston played a Paste Studio Session last summer. He’s a lo-fi cult figure and old-style rock n’ roller whose guitar has grit and grab. That’s what he has: good licks. But he’s no songwriter, as you can hear is offering such as “I Had Lost My Mind,” “Take the Records of Rock and Roll,” and “Speeding Motorcycle.” It’s this simple: He.Can’t.Sing! His voice is filled with breaks and he’s off-key more often than he’s on. This session feels like a basement band that should have stayed there. ★

Update: Johnston died at the age of 58 on September 11. I am sorry he has passed, but my critique stands as written.

Rob Weir

Classic Films: The Caine Mutiny

The Caine Mutiny (1954)

Directed by Edward Dmytryk

Columbia Pictures, Technicolor, 122 minutes, Not rated.

★★★★

Add this one to your bucket list of Hollywood classics you should see. It is the morally ambiguous tale of a U.S. Navy minesweeper crew’s rebellion against its commander–a sort of World War Two era Mutiny of the Bounty, if you will. The Caine uprising is fictional, though, and is based on a 1951 Herman Wouk novel of the same name. The Caine Mutiny was critically praised and was nominated for numerous Oscars. In most years it would have been a big winner, but it came out the same year as On the Waterfront and settled for a few lesser awards.

A modern viewer needs to know a few things to best appreciate this film. First, the psychology of the day was a bit different. Freudianism was all the rage, though most people’s understanding of it was a bit like that of Caine communications officer Thomas Keefer (Fred MacMurray, who later starred in TV’s My Three Sons). In other words, it was much discussed, but little understood–sometimes even by psychologists themselves. There are a few now-embarrassing sequences of mother-fixation/girlfriend conflict that only make sense within the pop culture reading of Freud en vogue in the early 1950s. PTSD fell into the same category, an unfortunate consequence of which was that battle fatigue and mental illness were often misdiagnosed as cowardice.

To introduce still another matter, director Edward Dmytryk was one of the original Hollywood Ten indicted in 1947. He was accused of being a communist at a time in which the Second Red Scare had broken out and early Cold War paranoia and swept across the land. Dmytryk served time in jail for Contempt of Congress for refusing to testify. In 1951, however, he changed course, fingered several alleged communists, and resurrected his directorial career. Dmytryk’s life and times make it hard to escape the parallel levels of suspicion in the film script and those raised by Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose reign of error reached its apex at the same time as The Caine Mutiny was being filmed.

The film is a character study and drama. Ensign Willie Keith (Robert Francis), a child of privilege, has just be assigned to the U.S.S. Caine, a motley rust bucket with a lax crew under the command of William DeVriess (Tom Tully). The timeframe isn’t pinned down, but we can tell it’s the waning days of the War in the Pacific. Willie is shocked by the lack of proper military discipline and initially welcomes the change in command that brings Lt. Commander Phillip Francis Queeg (Humphrey Bogart) to the helm to crack the whip on sloppy sailors such as “Meatball” (Lee Marvin) and “Horrible” (Claude Atkins). Queeg’s behavior, however, becomes increasingly erratic and Keefer begins to plant the seed–based on having read Freud in college–that maybe those ball bearings he twirls in his hand when he’s nervous are his missing marbles, if you catch my drift. He also goads Lt. Steve Maryk (Van Johnson), an ill-educated but fine officer, to consider he might have to take over if Captain Queeg cracks.

The ball bearings, an incident with a towed target, an investigation into missing strawberries, an escort duty, and a raging typhoon factor into the story, and are famed scenes within the film. When Queeg is finally removed from command, the film cuts to the court-martial trial of Maryk, Keith, and Keefer to determine whether they are heroes or if they illegally mutinied. Ironically, the prosecutor is E. G. Marshall, who three years later would co-star in another famed courtroom saga: 12 Angry Men. But The Caine Mutiny trial’s star is José Ferrer as Lt. Barney Greenwald, who defends the Caine crew–though not as you might imagine.

Bogart was nominated for Best Actor, but looking at the film now, we see it’s actually MacMurray’s film more than Bogart’s–even though Bogie left us with an enduring portrait of a man who cracked under too much pressure. The Caine Mutiny certainly shows its age in its stereotypical sequences, mannered acting, and telescoped narrative arc, but it remains one of the American Film Institute’s Top 100 films because it is such a timepiece, not to mention that it was something of a template for a what-you-see-isn’t-necessarily-what-you-get movie. In The Caine Mutiny, lots of questions are open for interpretation: cowardice, loyalty, and even insanity. Plus, it’s filmed in Technicolor and I’ve yet to see digital color that can match it.

Rob Weir

   

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French Exit is Nasty Fun

French Exit: A Novel (2018)

By Patrick de Witt

Ecco, 244 pages.

★★★★

It’s not easy to write a book with no likable characters, yet Patrick de Witt has managed to do so. French Exit is a black comedy that is nasty, satisfying, and funny.

Upper East Side widow Frances Prince is at the center of French Exit. She once turned heads, but is now a fading socialite whose deceased litigator husband would have made Roy Cohn seem warm and fuzzy. But at least Franklin Price made a lot of money. We’re talking a lot of money Frances was more than his match; her vanity ran deeper than his. She returned home one day and found Franklin had died. Damned if that was going to ruin her plans for a weekend ski trip. She went and reported his death when she got home! The tabloids trashed her and some of the upper crust ostracized her, but she simply didn’t care. She’s just sentimental enough to have an aged cat named Small Frank whom she insists is her late husband reincarnated. Don’t presume she treats him well.

Frances and her no-account so Malcolm live the life of the 1%: luxurious hotels, scattered secondary properties, lunches that cost a small fortune, fine furnishings, and enough expensive personal items to outfit a small museum. They are the sort who tell others–waiters, salespeople, hotel staff, lawyers–what to do in the belief that doing their bidding is what the little people were placed on earth to do. The only things Frances and Malcolm don’t have is an ounce of commonsense or an inkling of how to manage their resources.

The glam wagon’s wheels fall off when the family lawyer tells Frances that she has run out of money and, no, he can’t magically conjure any more. In fact, Frances needs to sell her assets just to survive. You would think this would be devastating news, but Frances isn’t one to let reality get in her way. She commissions a shady man named Ralph Rudy to sell everything and plots her next move.

Malcolm is less than useless in all of this, as he is a clueless man-child. He reminded me of Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces, even though Malcolm is neither as crude nor as sloppy as Ignatius. Both, though, are mama’s boys, neither has any discernible life skills, and each is essentially unemployable. Frances treats Malcolm as she would a servant and he scarcely notices. Even his long-term girlfriend Susan has grown tired of his perpetual boyhood, but his too is lost on Malcolm; he has an uncanny ability–inherited from his mother–simply to ignore things he does not wish to hear. I don’t wish to reveal too much, so I will only say that Frances’ ‘solution’ to her dilemma is unique, involves traveling to Paris, and has nothing to do with things one would usually associate with the City of Lights.  

As earlier noted, there aren’t any characters in this book with whom you’d ever wish to meet. Frances is cruel, imperious, and implacable; Malcolm is an upper-class twit; Rudy is a sleazebag; and the entire Manhattan social circle that gads about Frances is insufferable. De Witt’s metaphorical sleight of hand trick is to immerse readers so deeply into the muck of Frances’ world that we keep turning the pages. To paraphrase an old adage, if you’re going to be outrageous, go whole hog. Frances is as exasperating as any human being can possibly be, but because she has no shame or filters and no one knows what she’ll do next, she’s also funny–in a dark way. Everyone else in her orbit is essentially along for the ride, including we readers. Before you know it, we start to care about Frances, even though you know that she wouldn’t give a damn whether anyone did or did not.

French Exit is odd to the very end. I would caution you to turn off your own discernment filters. There’s really no need to like anyone in the book, nor do you have to imagine how to bring them to their just desserts. They are perfectly capable of screwing up without your help.

Rob Weir  

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