Lobster Art? Ayup!

 

 

Lobster by Donald Oakes. Photo by Rob Weir

 

 

Lobster Art

Wells National Estuarine Research Preserve

342 Laudholm Farms Road

Wells, Maine

Through November 4, 2024

 

Wait! Did I say, “lobster art?” Yes I did. Each summer hordes of people travel north to hit Maine beaches such as York, Ogunquit, Kennebunkport, and Old Orchard. Route 1 is the connective tissue, but most view it as something to endure whilst loading up on fast food, impulse retail purchases, and Congdon’s donuts. Too few venture off to find the Wells Estuarine Research Preserve. I’d be the first to say the name doesn’t sound inviting, but the last to say that it’s not worth visiting.

 

It truly is a research, educational, and training center for all things environmental, but it’s so filled with wonder that you don’t need to be bookish to enjoy it. It’s 2,250 acres that feature a cluster of buttermilk yellow buildings, barns, a water tower, a graceful home perched upon a hill with amazing views, and seven miles of trails that wend through a salt farm, orchards, woodlands, and the rocky beach of Drake’s Island (which is actually a small peninsula. Being that this is coastal Maine, there’s a lot of emphasis on all things oceanic and not much screams “Maine!” like its official crustacean, the lobster.

 

It might sound daft, but a small gallery on the compound features Lobster Art. Okay, don’t expect a Van Gogh of bib-wearing diners or a Rembrandt of a Dutch burgher pulling up his traps. Chances are good you’ve never heard of the artists featured in the exhibit, but take my whimsical remarks in the spirit in which most of the pieces were intended. Some are more serious and there’s a baby lobster on view (or not, it’s shy) but hey, it’s lobster art, so let’s have fun shall we?

 

As for you, next time you’re grabbing a box of donuts, Google the above address. You’ll be sad you ate so many sinkers, but you’ll be happy to walk them off at the preserve. If you get up that way before November, you can think of me and chuckle at the art.

 

Here are a few photos from famed photographer Rob Moi to introduce the preserve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below are some of my favorite pieces from the exhibit.

 

Catch of the Day, Sue Rioux

Launching, Wade Zaheres

Photo of lobster filled with eggs

 

    

 

 

 

The Creation of Lobster by Peter Shepperd

Altar to lobster creation

The Women is (only) Half of a Great Book

 

 

The Women (2024)

By Kristin Hannah

St. Martin’s Publishing, 480 pages

★★★

 

U.S. troops left Vietnam 51 years ago, yet what the war meant continues to haunt. The debates are so intense I am reminded of what has been said of the Confederacy after Civil War. To paraphrase, if the South had fought with the vigor with which it erected monuments to its “heroes” after the war, it might have won. Like the Civil War, the Vietnam conflict is shrouded in anger, politics, myth, lies, and half-truths.

 

It takes courage to write about Vietnam and no-win foolishness to review such a book. Kristin Hannah has such a devoted following (me too!) that unexamined praise is a given. Now to jump into the fire. The Women is half of a great book; it’s also half of a mess. I was shocked, though, that many reviewers tagged it “one woman’s struggle to….” It’s nothing if not a paean to intense female friendships.

 

The Women opens in 1965, when Frances “Frankie” McGrath, a naïve nurse trainee from San Diego, shocks her parents by copying her beloved brother and enlisting to serve in the Vietnam War. As she repeatedly hears–even from military recruiters–women simply don’t go to war; heroism is for men! Frankie’s day one baptism of fire reveals the Army’s desperation, not her qualifications. She’s not ready for anything and no one cares. Hers is on-the-job training in life-and-death scenarios. Hootch mates Ethel and Barbara see her as new “meat” and couldn’t be more different from her. Ethel is a Virginia farm girl with a salty tongue and Barb an often-angry African American with no time for prissiness. That the three will later bond and become Frankie’s support group in numerous crises ought to put to rest any “one woman’s” story nonsense.

 

Vietnam forced men and women alike to grow up fast. This part of Hannah’s book is stunning. Think M*A*S*H with all the drinking, chauvinism, dark humor, and adrenaline, but with more drugs and little concern with who is winning the war. Doctors, helicopter pilots, grunts, and nurses hold a life-on-fast-forward mindset because death is all around. Hannah vividly answers the question of whether women can be heroes.  You need to read this section of Hannah’s novel to appreciate just how precarious and wrongheaded life and the military mission were in Vietnam. Even a good girl like Frankie ponders whether it’s worthwhile to hang onto her virginity or believe anything officials say after visits to Vietnamese villages, witnessing the Tet Offensive, and withholding treatment from soldiers certain to die.

 

Alas, the weighty gut-churning sections of life in-country give way to cliches, flag waving, stereotyping the counterculture, and catastrophizing of life outside of ‘Nam. Could we please bury the rant about no parade for Vietnam vets? How could there be? America: (a) left before the war was over, (b) sent new GIs to fight long after others were discharged, (c) lost the war. If Afghanistan vets get a parade it will be a case of more guilt than celebration. There’s no need to celebrate military branches (or politicians) who wasted and/or traumatized young lives with impunity. 

 

Hannah falls prey to dubious facts and makes curious character choices. She shows little love for the counterculture, yet several of her characters jumped on board. War critics included Vietnam Veterans Against the War whom I echoed in the last sentence of the previous paragraph. It’s also time to lay to rest several other Vietnam myths. Few on the homefront were blissfully unaware of the war, though very few vets (if any) were spat upon by antiwar protestors. It might have happened somewhere, but Jerry Lembcke couldn’t confirm any incidents when he wrote The Spitting Image. Other writers remind us that vets did not come back to the States on civilian aircraft and were not required to wear uniforms when not on base. As Lembcke noted, these myths came from movies; most protestors sided with vets and demanded, “Bring the boys [sic] home.”

 

Hannah dazzles highlighting the horrors of war and the ineptitude of the VA, but her throw-in-the-kitchen sink approach in part two weakens the connective bonds of her novel. There’s entirely too much one-sided patriotism at play. How about less flag waving and more attention to avoiding needless flag-draped coffins? Like legions of others, Frankie was a foul-mouthed, substance abusing, lovesick, PTSD puddle when she returned home. Luckily she had close female friends to guide her.

 

Rob Weir

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone Messes with Mystery Genre

 

 

 

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone (2023) 

By Benjamin Stevenson 

Penguin: Mariner Books, 366 pages. 

★★★★

 

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone is the ultimate meta mystery. In 1930, several prominent British mystery writers–including  G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie–created a dinner group called the Detection Club. Author Benjamin Stevenson draws upon a lesser-remembered member, Ronald Knox, who developed a 10 Commandments for mystery writers. These are detailed in Stevenson’s foreword and include:  Murder mysteries cannot involve supernatural or preternatural agency or have more than one secret room, and the detective’s clueless sidekick–think Dr. Watson–can only be very slightly less intelligent than the average reader. 

 

Stevenson has written a very clever and snarky mystery involving the Cunningham family. He complies with Knox’s commandments and frequently breaks the fourth wall by telling us what he will do and what he won't. In other words, he messes with the entire mystery genre. There are no guns on the mantle–and certainly none of Chekhov's. Stevenson is the dominant voice and point of view of the novel, but you can forget about the unreliable narrator convention. Stevenson is so reliable that he seems unreliable! He tosses unexpected curves, but none are unforeseeable or illogical.

 

The title should be taken both broadly and literally. Stevenson doesn't mean that every Cunningham is a murderer–though some might be–merely that everyone in the family has committed acts in which someone dies. That alone makes them toxic, but they are especially so because paterfamilias Robert killed a policeman. A dead brother haunts the family, but the book's main character is Ernest. He is a candidate for the only “good” Cunningham, though–meta alert­–he does write books about how to write detective books. His mother Audrey doesn’t think he’s good; she blames Ernest for betraying his brother Michael. But everyone in the family seems to have a screw or two loose. Audrey is now married to Marcelo, a snobbish money-obsessed attorney. Sofia, his daughter from a previous marriage, is a surgeon with a lawsuit hanging over her. Katherine, Ernest's aunt, is married to Andy and both are up to something. Maybe. Michael’s ex-wife Lucy has her own agenda, as does Erin, Ernest’s about-to-be ex-wife. 

 

Does this sound like a group of people game for a family reunion at an Australian ski lodge? There's plenty that could go wrong and does. It begins when Ernest is about to drive up the mountain; policeman Darius Crawford issues him a traffic ticket. Ernest wends his way to a resort operated by Juliet to greet the other Cunninghams, though he’d rather be anywhere else. Crawford also shows up at the mountaintop just in time for a big storm to strand everyone whilst an unknown serial killer with a unique way of dispatching victims might or might not be practicing his art. There’s a competing resort on the other side of the mountain and several Cunninghams take a trail grooming machine to meet the McAuleys, whose  daughter Rebecca was a murder victim. They are being continually extorted to be told of the location of her body, yet they seem content to pay for bad info.

 

Let's throw in a bag filled with lots of cash, no cell phone reception, false identities, unusual motives, lust, and enough Cunningham family drama to make the Corleone clan seem like Rotarians. Although little is quite what it seems to be, Stevenson guides us through the muck without violating any of Knox’s commandments. But he doesn’t make it easy. For example, when it seems obvious that a killer has been fingered, Stevenson breaks the fourth wall to  direct attention to how much of the book remains, thus it’s way too early for such a revelation. After all, would Agatha Christie reveal a killer before the end of the book?

 

This is both a compelling mystery and a very funny book­. It retains thrills and tension, despite the humor and in-your-face conventions. The effect of reading Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone is reminiscent of trying to solve a Rubik's Cube the first time you were handed one. Ironically, though Stevenson does a deep take-down of mysteries, he breathes new life into said genre. I can imagine that both readers and other writers will be equally enthralled by this book.

 

Rob Weir

 

Bernie Sanders Warns: Capitalism Doesn't Play Fair

 

 

 

It’s Ok to Be Angry About Capitalism (2023)

By Bernie Sanders (with John Nichols)

Crown Books, 293 pages.

★★★★ ½

 

With the election nearly upon us, I’m tempted to do what I’m always tempted do: write in Bernie Sanders for president of the United States. I’d do so again except Sanders reminds us that it’s game, set, match if Donald Trump returns to office. Even if Trump loses there are few reasons to like where the nation is heading. Sanders lays it out in It’s Okay to Angry About Capitalism.

 

This is the part where those weaned on cliches scream that Sanders is a “socialist,” a word they equate with communist. That’s nonsense on par with equating a waffle with a Belgian citizen. Sanders is a democratic socialist, the likes of which we see in Scandinavia and parts of Canada, not Putin’s Russia. Unless you have billions in assets, who’d not want to live in the America Sanders envisions: free health care, rebuilt infrastructure, workers making a living wage, housing rights, and affordable education!

 

Sanders has spoken of such things in the past, but have you heard him? He does not say that everyone should be forced to share a toothbrush. His “revolution" flips the logic of rapacious trickle-down capitalists who argue that the superrich funnel wealth to the lower ranks of society. That didn’t work under Reagan, George W. Bush, or Trump. That’s because an economic system is a we, not a me. Bernie takes aim at the top 1% of the wealthy. In his chapter “Billionaires Should Not Exist,” Sanders advocates a redistribution of obscene wealth. Anyone reading this want to defend the predatory practices of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, the Koch family, or Mark Zuckerberg? Even Warren Buffett, himself a billionaire, agrees that the American social system is askew. But don’t stereotype; Sanders does not say that Americans should abrogate the right to get ahead–he admits that he has done well–he simply doesn’t think wealth and exploitation should go hand in hand. His is a doctrine of fairness. Why, for example, should the minimum wage be capped, but there is no cap at the top?

 

Sanders doesn’t hate capitalism per se, but he is angry about it. He asserts that health care should be a right, not a condition of golden care for the rich and catch as catch can for the poor. Need I tell you that you don’t even need to be poor to feel the pinch? How many middle-class families with lousy private health care plans are one misfortune away from insolvency? We live in a land in which 29% of Americans have no emergency savings, 100 million workers have no pension assets, and 18% say they rely on winning the lottery to retire! These numbers project to get worse as AI, robots, and outsourcing displace still more workers. 

 

Sanders’ commonsense approach is the reinstitute something that the uber rich abhor: government regulations. He sees no logic in laws that protect investors, but not the working class, nor can he defend unbridled freedom for the management class but not the right of workers to unionize. He calls this sort of system “class warfare” waged by the haves against the have-nots.

 

Those indoctrinated to the worst logic of capitalism too easily buy into nostrums used by the elites to keep unfair structures in place. They raise fears of rising taxes without saying it’s their taxes that’s in question. The T-word is made into an American swear that can only be countered by regulating media moguls. Sanders also asks us to consider what we pay that are de facto taxes: outrageous premiums for a broken health care system, high cable and internet bills, lost wages dues to climate change, high grocery prices, money siphoned into expensive election campaigns, expensive (and wasteful) decision-makers who don’t listen to workers who know better, output lost from illicit drug use, etc. In other words, American capitalism becomes a “race to the bottom,” not one that empowers or enriches ordinary Americans.

 

Can it be fixed? Not without taking down the “oligarchs” that hold all the power. Sanders has lots of numbers in his book that bespeak how unevenly the deck is stacked and what a fair future would look like. For the record, though Sanders caucuses with the Democrats, he isn’t one and is plenty critical of their blindness. Would his America work? Does this one?

 

Rob Weir

Current Exhibits at Brattleboro Museum

 

Brattleboro Museum & Art Center

Current Exhibitions Summer/Fall 2024

Closing October 19, 2024

 

Leave it to the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) to launch exhibits that allow you to explore your politically correct soul without feeling like you’re being beaten over the head. I’ve recently criticized a few (overly) sanctimonious exhibits that merely draw attention to how obvious and dull the art is. That’s not in play at BMAC.

 

The In Between spotlights the work of Susan Brearey and Duane Slick some of it realistic and some abstract. Aspects of their work could be interpreted as echoes of the end of the Anthropocene ideology. Yet, one could just as easily see it as a celebration of the wild accentuated by placing woodland critters in places you wouldn’t anticipate. This is especially the case for animals that some cultures revere as totemic. Anybody who saw Peter Irvine and Tim Eriksen’s Pumpkintown musical/magic lantern show have seen some of Brearey’s paintings as backdrops for mythic town reminiscent of a New England version of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology. 

 

 

 

Let’s turn to smaller exhibits. Ilana Manolson’s The River Between fills a cozy space with large landscape paintings that celebrate water. As she put it,  “it holds the power to heal and destroy.” Thus Manolson poignantly reminds us that water is necessary for life, yet can wash it away. I was mesmerized by her works on Yupo, an artificial paper. 

 

 

Jessica Straus makes a different watery statement with Stemming the Tide. Eastern Massachusetts has been whimsically dubbed “the home of the bean and the cod.” These days there are more beans than cod. Straus places a curling giant map behind a handtied net to spotlight the sprawling Gulf of Maine. Smaller watercolors behind nets adorn the sidewalls, but it’s the floor feature that most catches the eye: carved swimming cod. Instead of speckled brown and white, her cod are ghostly white. If that metaphor eludes you, let’s just say that there’s a reason why the United States, Canada, and Greenland (owned by Denmark) quarrel over where the oceanic boundaries lie. No one cares much when fish are plentiful, but sadly they are not.  

 

 

Lee Williams has larger pieces of The Wounding in the outdoor lawn, but his smaller pieces in a narrow inside space make the point much better. Williams takes pieces of wood–usually scavenged broken branches–drives colored pegs into them, and uses media such as wire to hold the assemblages together. At a glance they seem like a madcap Tinker toy, but The Wounding suggests something else. Let’s see, decaying or cut natural wood with human-made colored dowels piercing them… Gee, what could he be suggesting? 

 

 

 

Mishel Valenton and Benedict Scheuer’s Personal Nature is aptly named. It explores themes such as desire, frozen moments in time, gardens, and nature through gouache paperwork, silk panels, and paintings. I found it a mixed bag that was perhaps too personal at times. I confess being drawn to the brightly colored works far more than minimalist washes and abstractions. 

 

 

 

 

SpaceMosque by Saks Afridi grabs attention in the way that most things that turn familiar beliefs upside down can do. In the Western world we are inundated with Christian evangelists who speak of the Second Coming of Jesus and the Rapture, and religious Jews who await the coming of a savior. What if a message from on high did come, but it was Sufi/Islamic? SpaceMosque is part sculpture, part futuristic science fiction, part graphic novel freed from the page, and part Meow Wolf. Heavenly objects appear in the sky above Karachi, Pakistan, and prayer–not money–becomes the “ultimate currency,” one that can even power vessels. But Afridi likes to mess with our heads. There are strange past artifacts but, more puzzling, when the objects appear, not everyone sees the same thing! “News” stories report that the sightings cause many to become pious, but are also denounced as frauds (usually by those with money and/or power). Messages of peace, or of chaos? A lot to consider.

 

After all of that, you can cool down with a gallery of puppets from Putney’s creative Sandglass Theater. Many of them are small agitprop pieces, but others lampoon Vermont’s agricultural tradition and those who engage in ice fishing, an activity for the hardy, the foolhardy, and both.

 

 

 

Rob Weir

The Frozen River an Imaginative Look at Martha Ballard

 

 The Frozen River (2023)

By Ariel Lawhon

Doubleday, 433 pages

★★★★★

 

What do we really know about the everyday lives of 18^th century settlers in remote areas New England? Most recorded history is about the high and the mighty. We know a bit more about everyday life in Hallowell, Maine because Martha Ballard, a midwife and healer, was taught to write by her husband Ephraim. She kept a journal that remained obscure until historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich uncovered that journal and wrote the Bancroft- and Pulitzer Prize-wining A Midwife’s Tale in 1990.

 

Novelist Ariel Lawhon draws upon Ulrich, but only as the springboard for an imaginative novel that takes us inside 18^th- century Hallowell, a close-to-the-margins village of sawyers, shopkeepers, farmers, mill workers, and tradespeople. The Frozen River of her book's title is the Kennebec, which does indeed freeze in the winter. If you know anything about northern New England you know that winters are long and deep. Lawhon parses parts of Ballard’s journal, including a rape accusation against high officials. Lawhon’s intent is not to dramatize actual history, though she's amazingly accurate and  illustrates the subordinate role of women before and just after the American Revolution. Martha Ballard, her heroine, is opinionated, assertive, and outspoken to a fault.

 

If you wonder how that’s possible, remember that Martha Ballard lived many decades after the Salem witch trials, hence midwives such as she and a mysterious free woman of color called Doctor (for her healing powers) were no longer in danger of being prosecuted as witches. Still, they remained part of a deeply gendered social system.

 

Martha and Ephraim have a rare companionate marriage that produced nine children, five of whom survived to adulthood. Big trouble begins in 1789, when the body of Joshua Burgess is pulled from the icy Kennebec. Judge Joshua North is quick to rule it an accidental drowning. How convenient for him who, along with Burgess stood accused of ravishing Rebecca Foster. Martha notes that wounds to the head and rope burns around Burgess’ neck indicate that he was murdered before being dumped into the river.

 

The Frozen River takes a hard look at those of standing versus plebeian society. North calls upon Doctor Benjamin Page, an arrogant young Harvard grad whose opinions exceed his skill. He sides with North, as do other men of substance. Does it matter if they are autocrats or liars? Will they prevail, or will they pay for their iniquities?

 

The Frozen River becomes a cat-and-mouse drama in the dead of winter. Lawhon immerses us so deeply that we come to know the personalities and sentiments of everyone in Hallowell. We quaff an ale at the local tavern, listen to gossip, buy luxuries such as cakes of ink, chop ice from the mill wheel, form alliances, weigh the economic dangers of said alliances, and learn quite a bit about the often gruesome yet heroic practice of midwifery. Martha's journal plays an important part in the story, but not always in the ways that you might expect. Through strategic departures from Ulrich’s scholarly work Lawhon fashions a drama that feels like a dress rehearsal for Peyton Place.

 

We are also cognizant of how religion and morality are woven into the social fabric. For example, when Lydia North begs Martha for a tonic to relieve her debilitating headaches, should Martha practice Christian charity, or allow the wife of a crooked judge to suffer the fate her husband inflicts upon others? Should men who impregnate their conquests wed them even if they have no interest in doing so?

 

Lawhon uses a lot of very clever metaphors throughout the book to focus her themes. Knowledge and gender versus male meddling is symbolized via Martha and Dr. Page.  Reminders that the world her characters inhabit remains (at best) half wild shines through sightings of a rare silver fox, a disobedient horse, and a "pet" falcon. Even comeuppances–as satisfying as they might or might not be–are as unforgiving as the weather and river that encircles Hallowell. 

 

I adored this book, but I again emphasize that much of what we read is fictional. Among other things, that’s why Paul Revere gets a cameo. This is, however, a rare novel in which both the fictional re-imagination of Martha Ballard and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s prize-winning non-fictional take on her are equally magnificent.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

The Verdict Reconsidered: A Classic Film

 

 

The Verdict (1982)

Directed by Sidney Lumet

20^th Century Fox, 129 minutes, R (language, brief nudity, violence)

★★★★★

 

In 1983, The Verdict was nominated for five Academy Awards, including most of the big ones. It was its misfortune to be swept aside by Gandhi and audience responses that were less sterling than its reviews. It is, however, a great courtroom drama. It was directed by the legendary Sidney Lumet with a screenplay from David Mamet, a guarantee that it had enough salty language to give it an R rating. (Its nudity and violence are mild by today’s standards.)

 

Paul Newman is Frank Galvin, once a mainstay among Boston lawyers but now a regular in its Irish bars. Frank has descended so low that he’s an ambulance chaser whose TV ads you might see after 11 pm. That doesn’t begin to describe Frank’s desperation. He has pretty much worn out his welcome everywhere, though an old friend Mickey Morrissey (Jack Warden) tosses him a potential life saver and a warning not to screw it up. Deborah Ann Kay lies in a comma. There are enough questions about what went wrong that her brother-in-law Kevin Doneghy and her sister Sally (Roxanne Hart) have filed a medical malpractice suit in hope of recovering money to pay for Deborah’s care.

 

All Frank has to do is what is often done in civil suits, settle out of court. The diocese of Boston admits no wrong but offers $210,000 dressed up as an act of compassion. Frank could simply meet with the Doneghys, get them to sign off, collect a big fee, and begin to get his life and practice in order. That’s what would have happened had Frank not gone to the hospital to see what’s left of Deborah Ann. Without telling the  Doneghys of the proposal, Frank rejects the settlement and plans to take the case to court.

 

You name it and the card is against Frank. Suing the Catholic Church in Boston is akin to me challenging a heavyweight boxing champion to a fistfight. The two doctors in the suit–Toller and Gruber­–are acclaimed obstetrics physicians. Bishop Brophy (Edward Binns) is as oily as the Caspian Sea, but he’s smooth as silk and as canny as a fox.  He hires a law firm headed by the courtly Ed Concanon (James Mason). Concanon  looks suave and sophisticated but it would be safe to say his access to dirty tricks is more sophisticated than his moral compass. The physician who was gung ho to help Frank absents himself on the eve of the trial. Frank quickly pivots to a doctor in New York he has never met. He is Dr. Thompson (Joe Seneca), an African American without a direct connection to the events. A black man? In Boston? In 1983? My odds against the aforementioned boxer are better.

 

Could it get any worse? Yes. Hoyle, the trial judge has it out for Frank and makes no secret of his admiration for Toller, Gruber, the Bishop, and Attorney Concanon. Frank’s hatred of Judge Hoyle is equally palpable and the two go at each other like hyenas at a roadkill. Plus, the Doneghys learn that Frank turned down the settlement offer and has risked losing everything. Frank needs a miracle.

 

He's probably not going to find one in Boston dive bars or with the pinball machines he tilts in frustration. Frank seems to be slipping deeper into his cups, though he does acquire a lover who can match him drink for drink: Laura Fischer (Charlotte Rampling). She professes faith in Frank–enough that he breaks out of his funk, but he’s still no match for Concanon or Boston’s religio-political machine.

 

The Verdict features it all: double crosses, browbeating witnesses (check out Lindsay Crouse as Kaitlin Costello), favoritism, a shocking breakup, a bittersweet verdict, and a post-trial letdown. Newman and Warden are wonderful as grizzled hard-nosed Boston lawyers. Newman is especially convincing as a world weary nothing-left-to-lose hangdog drunk. Even the accents are mostly right. The cinematography of Andrzej Bartkowiak captures the cigar smoke, the darkness, the spilled booze, and the shabby courtrooms of the 1980s. (Warning: 1980s clothing and hair appear!)

 

It's a terrific film that is now rightly considered a classic. Ignore audience scores in the 70s; too many viewers want cheap endings with protagonists who overcome all flaws. The Verdict shines for its verisimilitude, even it does get a few court procedures wrong. Call it grit over rainbows and flowers.

 

Rob Weir