Defending Jacob: Confronting the Unthinkable

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Defending Jacob (2012)

William Landay

Random House 978040246138

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As a parent, what could you imagine of your child? Or, more to the point, what could you not imagine? That’s the unsettling question at the heart of William Landay’s gripping page-turner Defending Jacob. It’s one part thriller, one part mystery, one part courtroom drama, and one part family nightmare. It adds up to a book that intrigues, terrifies, and can’t be put down.

Andy and Laurie Barber are living the dream. They reside in the tony Boston suburb of Newton, are considered pillars of the community, and are surrounded by people they consider friends. Andy is the first assistant to the District Attorney—a guy everyone trusts. Until they don’t. The Barber dream world begins to fall apart when a 14-yeard-old kid, Ben Rifkin, is brutally slain in the sort of suburban park where things like that aren’t supposed to happen. As first assistant, Andy and his buddy, State Police Detective Paul Duffy, roll up their sleeves and search for Ben’s killer. Until they can’t. Neal Logiudice, Andy’s ambitious but overly zealous former protégé, is now in charge and has removed them from the case. That’s because the prime suspect is no longer a local pedophile; it’s the Barbers’ 14-year-old son, Jacob. The Barbers cannot imagine that their son could do such a thing, but their neighbors can, and when Jacob is charged, the Barbers go from golden couple to community pariahs in the flash of a Rolodex-waving hand. They also quickly learn how little they know about the 14-year-old mind, Facebook, or the shadowy edges of online subcultures.  

Disturbing stuff—but just what 14-year-old boys dabble in, right? Jacob can’t be a killer. Right? Could your kid? And once you “know” that your kid has been wrongly accused, to what lengths would you go to protect him? What if you were convinced that the real killer is still on the loose and that a prosecutor like Logiudice is using you and your child as a stepping stone to further his own career? How would you behave? What would you do when he concocts a story that there is a “murder gene” plaguing your blood line? Especially when you’ve not been forthcoming with your spouse about your birth family tree? Do you ever, even for a moment, wonder if what is being said might be true?

You’ll find yourself ripping through Defending Jacob if, for no other reason, the above questions are so disturbing you can’t rest until you know how they’re answered. You’ll also find yourself drawn in because you can imagine the very things you say that you can’t. And you’ll be rewarded, though not necessarily satisfied, by the many twists and turns this well-crafted, skillfully penned novel takes. No spoilers here except to say that the resolutions are seldom formulaic or predictable. This is creepy nail- biter will leave you shattered no matter whose side you take.­ 

Rob Weir

Black Art on Exhibit at Williams College

72 Degrees: Los Angeles Art from the Collection

Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980

Williams College Museum of Art

Until December 1, 2013.

Betye Saar

Most visitors venturing to the Berkshires hamlet of Williamstown, Massachusetts, head straight for the Clark Art Institute. There’s nothing wrong with that, as the Clark is an American treasure, but it’s stunning how few people ever set foot in the Williams College Art Museum. T’is a shame, as it’s free, easy to find (on Route 2, just past the village’s only commercial street), and does exactly what a small museum should do–borrow freely, mount non-blockbuster shows, curate intelligently, and present the works in easily accessible ways. If there were a prize for art labels written in plain English, Williams would win hands down.

With many of the Clark’s galleries closed until renovations are finished next June, you’ve no excuse for not hitting the WCMA. Another good reason to go is to take in the sort of “small” shows that have become its signature. Through the end of November, Williams has two shows that spotlight Los Angeles artists, most of whom are African American. The two, 72 Degrees: Los Angeles Art from the Collection and Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980, run together seamlessly on the second floor and the only real difference is that Williams owns most of the works in the first show, but not the second. Both feature assemblages, graphics, sculptures, paintings, lithographs, and mixed media works and, as the title alerts, most of it comes from 1960 to 1980. This is, of course, a crucial period in both LA and national history. Think civil rights movement, Watts, Vietnam, Black Panthers, urban tension, police brutality…. Above all, think full personhood–a moment in which black identity is asserted boldly and without apology. The works presented in these shows could be viewed as a sort of visual rap and, if you don’t always get it, so be it–it’s not about you!

A handful of the artists–Betye Saar, Mel Edwards, David Hammons–have made a splash in the art world. Others, including John Outterbridge, combined art with social activism and is perhaps better known for the latter activity. But if neither these names, nor ones such as Alonzo Davis or Noah Purifoy ring a bell, two thoughts come to mind. The first is that it’s time to educate yourself; the second is that you can do so at the WCMA without being overwhelmed.

John Riddle--Gradual Troop Withdrawal

You probably won’t like all of the art, whether you get it or not. I was mesmerized by John T. Riddle’s Gradual Troop Withdrawal, as powerful an anti-Vietnam War work as I’ve ever encountered. His solider is rendered as a metal ribbon who is literally coming unwound before our eyes. (And check out its similarity’s to Robert Capa’s 1936 photo Death of a Loyalist Soldier.) By contrast, I have to say that I read Senga Nengudi’s artistic statement and found it interesting conceptually but, for me, her works fashioned from ripped panty hose didn’t link idea to object in interesting ways. But what do I know? I overheard several people raving over her work. And therein lies still another tale. With 140 works representing 33 artists, there’s food for lots of thought, but in doses everyone can digest. --Rob Weir

The Fallen Angel a Page-Turner Detective Novel

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The Fallen Angel  (2013)

Daniel Silva

Harper ISBN 9780062073129

* * * *

Gumshoes used to be fairly uncomplicated. They were guys down on their luck and just a cut above the thugs they stalked. To the degree that they had back stories, they involved bouts with the bottle, letting down their partners, and dames that jilted them. Not these days. Modern detectives have complicated biographies and they spend less time getting info from street rats than in using computers and having adventures more akin to James Bond than to Sam Spade. Even by today’s standard, though, Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon stands out. He also happens to be an art restorer and a longtime Mossad agent who first came into view for helping track down and assassinate the Black September scum that murdered 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Islamists, in turn, murdered his own son and brutally disfigured and disabled his first wife. Gabriel, like his archangel namesake, has delivered some messages, though few receivers are likely to confuse them as having come from a deity of choice.

Flash forward to sometime in the very near future, albeit a dystopian one recently marred by a major Islamist terror attack that, among many others, killed the pope. Gabriel finds himself living in Rome with his second wife, the younger and seriously sexy Chiara, and he’s weary of Israel and Mossad’s blood-soaked crusades of vengeance. He wants to retire and devote all his time finishing the restoration of a Caravaggio painting, which he finds transcendent. His daily trips to the Vatican also allow him to spend time with an old friend, Luigi Donati–now Cardinal Donati, a key advisor to Pope Paul VII. All goes according to plan until a Vatican Museum employee, Claudia Andreatti, is found splattered upon the marble floor of the Vatican sanctuary, after hurling herself off a catwalk just below Michelangelo’s famed dome. Donati doesn’t think it’s a suicide and asks Gabriel to investigate, though he tells him not to expect much cooperation. “Rule number one at the Vatican. Don’t ask too many questions.”

Such a statement in a detective mystery is, of course, Chekov’s gun. Naturally, Gabriel is going to ask questions, and the answers he seeks will take him from Michelangelo’s dome to Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock by way of Berlin, Denmark, and Vienna. It will also take him inside the shady finances of the papal curia, the dangerous world of antiquities smuggling, the raw wounds of unrequited love, the sanguinary lusts of both terrorists and the Mafia, and the labyrinthine folds of paranoid minds. And it’s all bigger––much bigger––than the death of Claudia Andreatti.

I have not read Silva’s previous Gabriel Allon novels, of which this is number twelve. Luckily, that’s not a prerequisite, though past readers will be more familiar than I with secondary characters such as Allon’s mentor Ari Shamron, or his archaeologist friend Uzi Navot. The Fallen Angel is a true page-turner that’s about art, archaeology, religion, and history–all set against the simmering backdrop of hatred that is the Middle East. Several reviews have compared the book to The Da Vinci Code, though it should be noted that Silva introduced Gabriel Allon before Dan Brown dusted off Robert Langdon. It is fair, though, to note that Silva, like Brown, often relies upon unlikely leaps of last-second logic and even less likely escapes from certain doom in order to advance the plot and resolve problems. I wonder, though, if such criticisms have much validity. Do we read detective novels for accuracy, or for an adrenaline rush?

If you care about 100% accuracy, there has as yet been no Pope Paul VII, nor have all the Black September operatives been assassinated. Silva is right, though, to associate Black September with Fatah, though the latter vigorously deny it. If you really want to critique Silva, it’s not that he’s a Dan Brown wannabe or that he plays too loose with historical facts, it’s that he clearly thinks most of what is coming out of the Muslim world is dangerous and anti-Western to the core. He may not be wrong about that either––I happen to agree that Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Fateh are all peas from the same poisonous pod––but there are definite earmarks of bias in that he always sees Israel as the aggrieved party and colors passages with a convert’s zeal. (Silva was born and raised Catholic, but converted to Judaism.)  

The book’s faults notwithstanding, The Fallen Angel is such a good yarn that it’s easy to understand why it spent such a long time on the New York Times’ bestseller list. I have come late to the Gabriel Allon series, but this one has inspired me to play catch up.

––Rob Weir

In a World: Flawed Fun

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IN A WORLD (2013)

Written and directed by Lake Bell

Team G, 97 minutes, R (language and sexual references)

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In A World takes its title from three signature words uttered by famed Hollywood voice-over artist Don LaFontaine (1940-2008). His were the sepulcher tones that reverberated over some 5,000 movie trailers, many of them B-pictures on the theme of apocalyptic doom. Actress Lake Bell, who wrote, directed, and starred in this film, takes us inside a specialized world that few of us consider–the part of the sound industry devoted specifically to voice. Did you ever wonder what Alan Kalter of The David Letterman Show or Don Pardo of Saturday Night Live do when they are not announcing the Top Ten list or intoning, “Live––from New York…?” Answer: Something else like it. This is how they make their living.

Bell won a Best Screenwriting award at Sundance for In a World, a classic “small” film and one that’s equal parts clever and derivative, funny and lame, bold and predictable. She plays Carol Solomon, a 31-year-old slacker voice coach who still lives with her father in Los Angeles. We meet Carol in a studio where she’s working with Eva Longoria, who can’t seem to enunciate a single intelligible syllable. (Yep­–that’s about right!)  Carol's old man is a Hollywood legend widely regarded as second only to LaFontaine in the voiceover pantheon, though not everyone knows this as he uses the stage name of Sam Soto (get it?). Sam (Fred Melamel) wants Carol to move out so his new girlfriend, Jamie (Alexandra Holden), can move in. It would indeed be awkward as, in good movie industry tradition, the bubbly and bubble-headed Jamie’s a year younger than Carol.

No problem–Carol is such a drifter that it takes all of thirty seconds to stuff her scruffy wardrobe into a laundry bag. She begs her way onto the sofa of a small flat occupied by her sister Dani  (Michaela Watkins) and her husband, Moe (Rob Corddry). Carol uses this base to sustain her so-called career, much of it pursued in a studio where sound engineer Louis (Demetri Martin) toils. He and his ditzy receptionist Nancy (Stephanie Allyne) are maybe the only two people in all of LA who are more awkward, clueless, and bumbling than Carol. Can you predict that Louis and Carol will do a flamingo dance around each other?

Of course you can! You can probably also figure out in advance that Sam’s protégé, the egotistical but dumb-as-a-rock Gustav (Ken Marino), will play the role of Chekov’s gun, and you may well be able to predict who will be “the voice” for a “quadrilogy” directed by Katherine Huling (Geena Davis) that involves a post-male society of female warriors. The latter is a not-so-subtle but funny slap at The Hunger Games and is used as a didactic blunt instrument to explore themes of what modern feminism means (and doesn’t).

Whoa! The latter theme sounds serious, and so it is–sort of. This is ultimately the problem with In a World. Like so many films these days, it tries to do too much and ends up shortchanging a few of its plots. Other storylines emerge, such as sisterly bonding, family scars, professional rivalry, mushy family values, and whether or not Carol is actually Cinderella or just a sloppy gal with a bad wardrobe. Luckily the script has a few gems hidden amidst the bubblegum. It also has a goofy charm. Is it a good film? Probably not. Is it worth seeing? Sure–why not? It takes us inside a world we’d otherwise not glimpse, and there are a few laugh-out-loud moments. The rest is a bit like the Fanta flogged in one of the more ham-handed product placements of recent memory–sweet, but with artificial after notes.  Rob Weir

Wyeth Vertico at Shelburne Museum

WYETH VERTIGO

Shelburne Museum (Shelburne, Vermont)

Through October 31, 2013

Andrew Wyeth--Soaring: The painting that inspired the exhibit

The Wyeth clan continues to spark debate in the art world. To their fans, they are at the fore of 20^th century American realism. To critics, N.C. Wyeth (1882-1945) was little more than an imaginative book illustrator; his son Andrew (1917-2007) a superb draftsman, but lousy painter; and Andrew’s son, Jamie (1946-), an undistinguished dabbler derivative of father and grandfather. Of these charges, I am sympathetic only to the last–I have never been a fan of Jamie Wyeth’s work or his use of (to my eyes) garish coloring. I do, however, admire his sense of whimsy.

No matter what the critics say, though, the Wyeths have proved popular with the larger public. Kudos go to Vermont’s Shelburne Museum–a treasure in its own right–for mounting a show that’s not a Wyeth “greatest hits” overview. It’s titled Wyeth Vertigo and contains three dozen works chosen to put viewers off balance, either because of their dizzying perspectives, or because of unsettling of enigmatic themes. In addition to works from N.C., Andrew, and Jamie, there is also one canvas each from N.C.’s assistant, Peter Hurd, and his daughter, Carolyn. Just a few of the works are widely known, which adds to the allure for veteran museum-goers.

Those familiar with the Shelburne Museum know instantly where the “vertigo” idea came from. The museum owns a certifiable Andrew Wyeth masterpiece, Soaring. Andrew worked on it over an eight-year period (1942-50) and when you get see it, you understand why it took so long. First of all, it’s enormous (48” by 87”). Look closely. What you see is constructed of countless dry brush flecks, dots, and squiggles, almost none of which are longer than a fraction of an inch. Think a cross between pointillism and anticipation of dot matrix imagery. It certainly fits the myriad ways one can think of vertigo. Three enormous vultures circle so high above an isolated farm house that their wings dwarf the structure below. Are they hungrily anticipating feasting on a corpse? Is this commentary on the smallness of man in nature and his transitory existence? Or is it just a happenstance event painted from a unique perspective?

The Islander--Jamie Wyeth

There are several ambiguous canvases such as this. What are we to make of dead crows, eerie moonlight, or empty boats? One of the latter, by N. C. Wyeth, is rendered in (for him) rather lurid colors–pinks, purples, red undercoating–and depicts an intact boat just yards from shore. It’s title? The Drowning (1936). Mostly, though, the works on display just challenge us to look at things from skewed angles–from cliffs high above, at sea level, from a bird’s eye view, foreshortening…. We see, for instance, a windswept peninsula from a rocky hilltop as a goat might experience it in The Islander (1976), one of the few Jamie Wyeth paintings that grab me.

N.C. Wyeth--Dark Harbor

A personal favorite was N.C.’s Dark Harbor Fishermen (1943), with its centered-weighted lighting, strong geometric shapes, and shimmery ovals (fish). He did several versions of this scene and this one dazzles. If you muse over it for a moment you realize that the “realist” painter has pulled a visual fast one. He wants you to believe that the night is so dark that the waters are pitch black and we cannot determine where it begins and the sky ends. The seagulls our eyes see as swimming and those we think are flying occupy the same plane. And if’s it’s that dark, where’s the light coming from that manages to spotlight just what we need to see? There’s not a torch or lantern in sight, nor is one reflecting upon a surface. How can we see the bow of the rowboat in the distance, but not the water upon which it floats? Now that’s vertigo for you–a magician’s illusion in which we never notice the manner in which we’ve been tricked!  

Rob Weir

Mass MoCA: all utopias fell and Phoenix

all utopias fell, 2010

Phoenix

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art

Through October 27, 2013

 

Humanity's last gasp?

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) is often a challenging place. Housed in a sprawling repurposed factory complex in North Adams that from was headquarters to Sprague Electric 1942 to 1985 and a paycheck for some 4,100 workers, Mass MoCA presents the kind of art a lot of people don’t “get” and provides open space for installations that are too large for traditional art museums to touch.

One of the best ways to enjoy Mass MoCA is to follow filmmaker Jonathan Demme’s advice: stop making sense. It’s a place in which the visual is often its own reward. Suspend your narrative dreams. Give up the need for the representational. Don’t ask, “What is it?” Just enjoy what it is. Go ahead and read the artists’ statements if you must, but don’t be surprised if you’re no more enlightened than if you hadn’t bothered. Two current exhibits that demonstrate the fascination possible if you don’t insist on objective reality are Michael Oatman’s all utopias fell, 2010 and Xu Bing’s Phoenix. Hit Mass MoCA before the end of October to catch each exhibit–Oatman’s fantasy is in the courtyard and closes for the season sometime around Halloween; Xu Bing’s assemblage comes down after October 27.

Oatman’s project began with a fascination for the ruins of the Sprague buildings and the pragmatic and artistic possibilities a postindustrial canvass provides. You enter all utopias fell, 2010 through the remnants of the Sprague boiler room. (See “Sprague in Black and White” in the photo albums section of my Facebook site.) It’s like walking through a geometric graveyard constructed from iron and rust, and is the perfect welcome mat to part one of Oatman’s construction, The Shining. Oatman imagines a post apocalyptic world in which humankind has been conquered by an unseen alien force. He takes an old Airstream trailer and rigs it to look like a makeshift spacecraft that force landed by the Mass MoCA boiler room. Taking his cue from everything from the work of Giotto to Buck Rogers and Jules Verne, Oatman leaves resolution to the eye of the beholder. Are we seeing humanity’s final outpost, or the possible seeds of a new society?

What's going on in here?

The inside of the “ship” won’t enlighten you. It’s called The Library of the Sun and it’s a cross between living quarters, an ongoing chronicle, and an improvised laboratory. We don’t know where its occupant might be–hidden, taken by aliens, long dead…. There are cryptic references to the sun and other symbols that defy logic. Equally baffling is the stained glass window in the back of the trailer. Salvaged materials? A nostalgic attempt at simulating banal domesticity? 

A touch of home, or something else?

And from the trailer we also see part three, Codex Solis, an array of solar panels that is visually interesting and quite practical–they work and generate about 3% of Mass MoCA’s power needs. So maybe a slice of utopia after all?

In the belly of the beast

If this isn’t enough eye candy for you, check out Xu Bing’s Phoenix in about the only building that could house such gigantisms. Xu Bing is Chinese, but lived in the United States for two decades. He returned to Beijing in 2007 and, as anyone who has been there knows, he returned to a city obsessed with obliterating the past and building anew. For an artist working with found materials, it’s a trove akin to living inside a junkyard. Xu Bing’s vision was to marry the past with the future, which he has done by fashioning two massive dragons from materials salvaged from demolition and construction sites. Each of his two “dragons”–wires, machine parts, LED lights, steel rods, and broken tools–is nearly one hundred feet long. They are, at once, familiar looking and so alien that we might imagine them as Oatman’s bringers of the apocalypse. And like Oatman’s assemblage, Phoenix is so breathtaking that it’s best if you merely experience it, not try to comprehend it. 

Scales of the Dragon

Mass MoCA road trip? You bet! And while you’re there, check out what Tom Phillips and Johnny Carrera did with the written word (Life’s Work) and Mark Dion’s eccentric musing on preservation shelters (The Octagon Room). Rob Weir

Lee Daniels' The Butler Offers Lousy Service

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Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013)

Directed by Lee Butler

Follow Through Productions, 132 minutes, PG-13

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It’s seldom a good sign when a director slaps his name in front of a well-worn title. Consider that a metaphor for this half-realized film that could have used a strict editor in the green room and a team of historians on the set.

The Butler is the story of Cecil Gaines, whose improbable tale is based on the biography of Eugene Allen, whose story is much more interesting than the fictionalized account we see on the screen. The film follows Gaines from a Georgia boyhood on a cotton plantation in the 1920s, where he witnesses a white overseer murder his father for daring to protest his wife’s rape. In what passes for pity, the family matriarch, Annabeth Westfall (Vanessa Redgrave), takes Cecil into the house and teaches him to become a servant.

Cecil is very good at his job–so good that by the 1950s he’s part of the White House servants’ staff. The Butler chronicles Gaines’ time in the White House from the Eisenhower administration through that of Ronald Reagan. The film also follows Gaines into retirement. Much of the script appears to have been cribbed from another Gaines– novelist Ernest Gaines and his magnificent Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. In the latter work, Jane Pittman, a former slave, lives to see the salad days of the civil rights movement. The Butler takes us from sharecropping, Jim Crow, and the KKK to Rosa Parks, MLK, and the election of Barack Obama. Right away we have a problem. Instead telling part of the drama in poignant detail, Daniels seeks to tell it all through snapshots and vignettes that have the weight of butterfly wings and the depth of a sheet of paper.

Forest Whitaker is very good as the adult Cecil Gaines, but he really can’t do more than skate across Daniels’ thin surfaces. The biographical timeframe alone is daunting, but Daniels also wants to play out the entire civil rights drama, take us inside Cecil’s family life, make a point about the dignity of black servants, and take detours involving the Vietnam War, the Black Panthers, black politics in the 1980s, and South Africa. Each of these is a valid topic, but each also deserves more than a wink, a nod, and a grainy film clip or two. The lesson that black men in service quietly undermine racism through their very competence–allegedly delivered to Cecil’s eldest son by none other than Dr. King himself–is certainly an important one. It has been made, for instance, by numerous academics studying the dynamics of the Pullman Brotherhood. The Butler might have been a better film had moral witness been its sole center. Daniels doesn’t trust his audience enough to assume they have any knowledge of the civil rights movement; hence he tries to make sure he mentions everything. He may be right about American historical amnesia, but his cram-it-in filmmaking can’t even be called painting with broad strokes–it’s more like using a spray gun.

Still, Daniels’s truncated civil rights overview seems positively obese compared to the skeletal coverage given to presidential politics. I wish he would have asked Saturday Night Live to supply the presidents as Daniels’ take on presidents is every bit the caricature for which SNL is noted, but without capturing the essence of any of them. Robin Williams as Eisenhower? James Marsden as a rail-thin JFK? Ouch! Okay, so Liev Schreiber does a credible LBJ cameo and Alan Rickman is pretty good as Reagan, but nothing–and I mean nothing–redeems John Cusak’s embarrassing Nixon. He sports such a horrendous prosthetic nose that it looks as if he just rushed over from a production of Pinocchio. (One inspired casting choice: Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan!)

You’ve probably heard buzz that Oprah Winfrey will get a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her boozy, bossy, bored role as Gloria Gaines. She probably will because, well, she’s Oprah, but she doesn’t deserve one. David Oyelowo would be a better choice for his supporting role as eldest son Louis Gaines, but really, there’s just nothing here that warrants thinking of this film as more than an afterschool special for the Lifetime channel. Sloppy filmmaking aside, any point Daniels might have made about African-American struggle is lost in an unforgivably schmaltzy ending involving Barack Obama’s election. It’s as if all of the horrors of the past dissipated when Obama assumed the White House. We know better, don’t we? And I sure as hell recognize American triumphalism when I see it–that teleological pipe dream that deceptively casts the past as an unfortunate prelude to a redeemed present. It’s bad enough when we see this from Stephen Spielberg or Ron Howard; it’s doubly sad when it comes from a black director. --Rob Weir