The Personal Librarian a Remarkable Tale

 

THE PERSONAL LIBRARIAN (2021)

By Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

Berkley/Random House, 324 pages.

★★★★

 

 

 

At most, race in America is a cultural construct. If you need further proof that we see what we wish to believe, read The Personal Librarian. Although this is a work of collaborative fiction between a white novelist and an African American writer, it is based upon the true story of Belle da Costa Greene, the assumed name of Belle Marion Greener (1879 or 1883-1950).

 

Even her birthdate is speculative but her accomplishments were not; she is the woman who built one of the most remarkable collections of manuscripts and incunabula (books published before 1500) anywhere in the world: the J. P. Morgan Library in New York City. As such, she was indeed his “personal librarian” and, some speculate, briefly one of the married Morgan’s many mistresses. The kicker is that she was born a black woman in Washington DC. She was sired by Richard Greener (1844-1922), the first African American graduate of Harvard, later dean of the Howard University School of Law and a prominent civil rights lawyer. Add egoist to that list; after fathering six children with his wife Genevieve, he went Russia on a diplomatic mission, lived in Vladivostok, and entered into a common law marriage to a Japanese women who bore him two more children. Eventually he returned to the United States, but by then Genevieve was done with him and had made a fateful decision: She and her light-skinned children would live as “white” at a time of legal segregation in the South and was customary in the North. In most places, interracial marriage was banned and, even in New York City, cross-race sexual relations invited sanctions and possible violent reprisal from self-appointed guardians of racial “purity.” 

 

 

If you look at surviving pictures of Belle, she has African American physical features, so how to explain those away? The key lay in the assumed surname; Genevieve and her children invented a Portuguese ancestor to explain darker complexions and dropped the “r,” which might have connected them to Richard. Today, their identities would be easy to expose but not in 1905, when Morgan tapped Belle to develop his collection based upon her skill with incunabula at Princeton University. Morgan was in the habit of getting what he wanted and certain rare works from William Caxton were among them. It took Belle years to obtain them, by which time she had traveled to Europe on numerous occasions to build the Morgan Library, became a fixture in the art world, and learned how to become a society belle.

 

Heidi Ardizzone, subtitled her biography of da Costa “Journey from Prejudice to Privilege;” that pretty much nails it. Benedict and Murray invent dialogue and elide dates to make them work better as fiction, but the gist of what you read is true; from 1905-48, Belle was the Morgan Library, first for J.P. and then his son “Jack” (Junius Pierpont Jr.). She was even left $50,000 in Pierpont’s will when he died in 1923–an enormous sum for the day. Was she ever one of Pierpont’s conquests? That’s an unknown, but she was indeed courted and bedded by famed art historian and conniver Bernard Berenson. Did Belle blackmail Pierpont’s daughter Anne, who disliked Belle, by threatening to expose her as a lesbian if she gave away her relationship with Bernard or expressed her suspicion that Belle was African American? Possibly, though there’s little doubt that Belle became a powerful person. My only brief lies with imagined seduction scenes between Belle and Bernard in which she assumes a passive role out of keeping with the strong (even headstrong) character they created.

 

Benedict and Murray run with rumors and suspicions to create fictional tension, invented dialogue, and presented her as a woman torn between white and black identities. Most of these ring true, though we can’t be sure how historical they might be. Normally I’d say that fact is greater than fiction, but do we even know the facts within a life of subterfuge? Perhaps it scarcely matters if you are like I was and have never heard for da Costa. This is an utterly fascinating novel that you will rip through to discover if she was ever exposed. I’m not telling!

 

Rob Weir

C'mon C'mon a Small Masterpiece

 

C’MON C’MON (2021)

Directed by Mike Mills

A24, 108 minutes, R (language)

★★★★★

 

 

 

C’mon C’mon won a host independent film festival awards, yet few have seen it. Too bad; it is a masterful piece of work. I’m not one for forced sentimentality, especially the mainstream habit of using cute kids as cheap ploys to gain audience sympathy. C’mon C’mon features nine-year-old Jesse (Woody Norman), but the efforts of director/writer Mike Mills ring true because Mills based the script on his relationship with his own son.

 

Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) is a radio journalist/soundscape artist whose current project sends him around the country to record kids talking about the future, their hopes, fears, and what adults don’t get. Johnny is in Detroit where, as you might imagine, kids are more savvy about their expectations, but he’s about to be removed from his detached observer role. Johnny gets a phone call from his sister Viv (Gaby Hoffmann) in Los Angeles. She needs her aloof bachelor brother to watch Jesse, because she must go to Oakland to place her husband Paul (Scoot McNairy) in a facility. (Paul has long suffered from mental illness.)  She’s at her wits end and isn’t sympathetic to Johnny’s pleas that his work and travel schedule are too heavy.

 

Johnny’s guilt trip is the first leg of a journey that will take him and Jesse to New York, back to Los Angeles, on to New Orleans, and into new levels of awareness. He and Viv are also trying to recover from their mother’s death from dementia, plus Johnny has effectively shut down his emotions in an attempt to get over a breakup with his longtime girlfriend. None of this is a good foundation from which to build a relationship with a nephew he barely knows. Nor does it help that he lives in New York, nearly 2800 miles from his sister and her family. In all, he must also face the fact that he listens to kids talk, but often fails to hear what they are saying.

 

In (too) many movies, adults and children come to like each other through contrivances that are as phony as a sincere-sounding politician. This film takes its time to move from distrust to dislike to reluctant acceptance before any deeper bonding occurs. What would be a good way to start this venture? How about letting the kid mess with the recording equipment? Or take him on the road with you? Johnny is also able to draw on the interpersonal skills of his sound team, Fernando (Jaboukie Young-White) and Roxanne (Molly Webster)* to fill in his considerable emotional and attention gaps.

 

This is a beautiful film. The word “empathy” repeatedly appears in reviews and deservedly so. You probably don’t need me to tell you that Joaquin Phoenix is a terrific actor, but if you know him best for his role as the demented genius villain in Joker (2019), he will stagger you in C’mon C’mon. Physically he looks like Steve Bannon at his disheveled worst. He admittedly has better intentions than Bannon (who doesn’t?), but he’s not much more in touch with reality. Phoenix is so convincing when he drifts out of his depth and comfort zone that we shiver as if we are inside his skin. Ditto when we watch him literally get down to Jesse’s level while fossicking for connections or a way out an unsettling moment.

 

Watch for Woody Norman; this kid has chops. He’s 12 now, but plays nine-year-old Jesse as an enigmatic mix of precociousness and vulnerability. Kids can turn on a dime between engaged and enraged. When Jesse wants attention, he wants it now, not “in a minute.” Such situations don’t go down well in Midtown Manhattan. When Johnny doesn’t respond to him right away and an angry Jesse wanders off, their mutual panic is so palpable that once again we too feel it.

 

C’mon C’mon is in black and white, which adds to its verisimilitude. People live in color, but black and white provides the proper contrasting frame for Johnny, Jesse, Viv, and Paul. Each is in limbo between being and becoming with black-and-white hard edges defining their present, but the future remains foggy. Cinematographer Robbie Ryan and Mills know exactly when to zoom in to depict understanding and when to shake the camera for tension or pull it back for missed communications.

 

This small film is lovingly rendered at each critical moment. It is a statement of creative and artistic vision that leaves you feeling good, but not in a mawkish way. Nor is it a what-adults-learn-from-kids film, rather one in which they shape each other.

 

Rob Weir   

 

* Molly Webster is actually a radio journalist in real life.

 

 

The Locket is Dated and Dumb

 

THE LOCKET (1946)

Directed by John Brahm

RKO Pictures, 85 minutes, Not Rated.

★★

 

 

 

I’m such a film noir fan that some of my friends tell me I like them all. Not so! Here is one you should avoid like a case of Lyme Disease. I’d be tempted to give it a single star except this might have high camp value among psychiatrists.

 

As shrinks like to say, it all started in childhood. Ten-year-old Nancy Monks (Sharyn Moffett) was a happy child, even though her mother (Helen Thimig) had to clean apartments to make ends meet. Nancy is given a locket by her playmate, the daughter of New York socialite Mrs. Willis (Katherine Emery). It turns out it’s an heirloom that Nancy must return, but she throws a wobbly when Willis accuses her of stealing it.

 

Nancy (Laraine Day) grows up to become a sultry seductress and kleptomaniac who winds men around her neck like a locket on a chain. Her first victim is Norman Clyde (Robert Mitchum), a struggling artist for whom Nancy solicits clients. When she steals and he no longer makes excuses for her lies, including framing a man for a murder she committed, she has him committed to an asylum.

 

Nancy divorces Norman, who shows up five years later in the office of Dr. Harry Blair (Brian Aherne), a Park Avenue psychiatrist, on the eve of the execution of the man Nancy framed. He spills the beans, but Blair, Nancy’s new fiancée, thinks Norman is still delusional and recommends pills and counseling. Instead, Norman smashes through a window and leaps to his death. The timeframe is unclear, but Nancy eventually divorces Harry as well.

 

After another uncertain period of time, we find Nancy about to marry John Willis (Gene Raymond), the very son of the woman who accused young Nancy of theft. (Was this intentional? The movie never tells us!) Blair arrives to warn Willis of Nancy’s treachery. Willis doesn’t believe him and goes ahead with the wedding. However, when Mrs. Willis gives her a post-wedding gift that just happens to be the very locket from decades ago, Nancy falls into a catatonic state and is institutionalized.

 

Oh dear!!! Can you say histrionic? The story is told in flashbacks and, to be fair, that was way cooler in 1946. Today, we’d call it a “device,” but not in a good way. Everything else about The Locket makes you wonder if script writer Sheridan Gibney was in need is some of Dr. Blair’s little white pills. About all that rings true is that we still like to pretend that when well-to-do people steal, we call it kleptomania, but it’s “theft” if it’s associated with the underclasses, aka/ the 99 percent.  

 

Where to begin? Do you buy the beefy Robert Mitchum as an avantgarde painter? He’s the kind of guy you expected to pick up a gun for a war movie or a cowboy picture. Maybe even the sort who would do a deodorant commercial about how a guy like he needs all the protection he can get. But with a sable paintbrush in hand? Nah! And he’s certainly not the kind who can be driven insane by a dame.

 

Continuing on the psychology side of the ledger, if Sigmund Freud hadn’t already been dead for seven years, this would have killed him. But given an era in which figures of authority were treated with utmost deference, wouldn’t a guy like Willis take Blair’s words seriously enough to at least pause his wedding plans? Or maybe this happens to you all the time. A psychiatrist shows up at your house and is the ex-spouse of your intended you never knew she had–let alone one before him–and you casually dismiss his words. I kind of get it; I might have been a more convincing physiatrist than Brian Aherne.   

 

I do give credit to Laraine Day for staying in character. She’s a forgotten figure, but was a respected actress during her heyday. What’s particularly compelling about her in The Locket is that she successfully plays against type. By this I mean she was more cut out for wholesome parts and comedic roles, not a sexy vamp.

 

Vamp and camp. That’s about it. The rest of The Locket has enough ham to make you order lumber to build a pigsty.

 

Rob Weir

Drive My Car is a Remarkable Film

 

DRIVE MY CAR (2021)

Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi

Bitters End, 179 minutes, R (sex, nudity, language)

In Japanese, Korean, sign language, English, German, Tagalog, etc. (subtitles)

★★★★ 1/2

 

 

 

If you don’t like slow films, steer clear of Drive My Car. If, though, you fancy the artful and provocative, this one’s for you. Before you watch, brush up on your Chekhov as Uncle Vanya is central to the plot and mood.

 

Chekhov reveled in the inner turmoil of lives that silently go off the rail, often tragically so.

We meet Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a rising Japanese playwright, enjoying the carnal pleasures of his libidinous wife, Oto (Reika Kirishima), a TV writer who composes stories during sex. The two clearly love each other deeply, but we detect a pall of sadness before we learn why. Yusuke uses his work and red Saab 900 Turbo to fill an inner vacuum and Oto seeks human contract wherever she can find it. Yusuke knows to vacate the apartment when she’s in the sheets with a lover.

 

Move the clock ahead two years and Oto is dead, the victim of an aneurysm for which Yusuke feels guilty. In addition, he has glaucoma in one eye and must use drops to prevent losing his sight. It’s not the safest thing, but he drives to Hiroshima to become director-in-residence of a multilingual theatre company. (That’s why there are so many languages in the film; all the actors perform in their native tongues.) Yusuke intends to direct a production of Uncle Vanya, a project for which he is more confident than the actors ultimately chosen. He surprisingly casts Koji Takatsuki (Masaki Okada) for the part of Vanya, though he is too young for the part and we can tell he’s a slacker who is but half of what he should/could be. Is it a coincidence that he was one of Oto’s lovers?

 

Yusuke is withdrawn and, we surmise, not finished mourning. One condition of taking the residency is that he will stay on an island an hour from Hiroshima, presumably because he’s in no mood to fraternize any more than necessary. Nor is he happy that the theatre company’s insurance requires that he be given a driver. Yusuke can use his Saab if he wishes, but he must be chauffeured by the company’s chosen driver, a young woman named Misaki Watari (Toko Miura). She’s skillful, but also wears her attitude, troubled background, and sorrows on her sleeve. She and Yusuke will become acquainted–when he’s not endlessly rehearsing to his lines–during their daily commutes, but if you anticipate a love story, slow down!

 

Yusuke’s relationship with Misaki and the cast is reminiscent of Bob Fosse’s A Chorus Line in that everybody has a backstory that explains their personalities and behaviors. It is at this juncture that Drive My Car becomes a play within a play within a film. Some are as damaged as Yusuke or as kicked about as Misaki, but there’s also the charming and uplifting story of Lee Yoon-a (Park Yoo-rim), who is deaf and communicates via Korean sign language. Again, don’t skirt this film because it has subtitles; everyone is reliant upon them.

 

Circumstances will send Yusuke and Misaki on a marathon road trip to Hokkaido, where he must decide within 48 hours whether to play Vanya or cancel the production. Yusuke must also come to terms with grief that has mutated into selfishness and a misanthropic belief there is something unique about his pain.

 

If it sounds as if not much happens in Drive My Car, that is correct if by that you mean action or high drama. Victor Hugo observed, though, that “The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, and the drama upon the real.” This is to say that action films and scripted dramas can but offer vicarious thrills; the drama of everyday life seems like universal truth for the simple reason that it is.

 

Drive My Car won the best foreign film Oscar and three Palme d’Or prizes at Cannes. Watch this remarkable film to appreciate subtle acting that rings true and to revel in the superb cinematography of Hidetoshi Shinomiya. There are shots of both picturesque and bleak landscapes and you may be hard-pressed to decide which is the most affecting. Does Drive My Car need to be 179 minutes long? Probably not, but everything else about it is masterful.

 

Rob Weir

 

James Keelaghan: October 2022 Artist of the Month

 

JAMES KEELAGHAN

Second Hand

Borealis # 276

 

 

 

Like most artists, the Covid lock-down kept Canadian troubadour James Keelaghan closer to home. He used his time to connect more deeply with his kids and managed to make his way into Montreal to record Second-Hand. The title does triple duty. James poses on the cover with an instrument that you might think is “used,” as it has enough wear to be a Willie Nelson upgrade. It’s a sort of visual pun, though, as it’s really a Larkin he has played since 1984. “Second Hand” is also the ironic title track, and evocative of “My Skies” from an eponymous 1993 album. I call it ironic because–as in “My Skies”–Keelaghan actually wants listeners to experience the world first-hand. “Second-Hand,” though, is shot through with deeper, more personal yearnings.  

 

Keelaghan has long been a quintessential folk artist who keeps audiences spellbound with story songs, alluring melodies, and a baritone voice that is, at once, sweet and robust. He generally prefers to keep things simple and doesn’t resort to sonic trickery, but he took full advantage of the Borealis studio on Second-Hand, not to mention the talents of his longtime pal, David Woodhead. Woodhead wields his bass like a lead guitar on “GatheringStorm.” It’s a song that will resonate with all of us who long ago left our hometowns and experience decidedly mixed feelings when we pay visits to changed landscapes. Instead of a sugarcoated nostalgia trip, Keelaghan offers a ledger of benefits, losses, and values that endure. That’s quite a feat in three minutes and twenty seconds.

 

There are other unexpected treats. He kicks off the record with the hopeful “Walk On,” but serves it as if it’s a cousin of the famed jazz/blues standard “St. James Infirmary.” Later there is a fine cover of Jesse Winchester’s “Eulalie.” Keelaghan croons his way through the “Gave It All Away,” a wistful song of loss with a lovely melody. You might detect some stylings evocative of Old Blue Eyes, which is probably not coincidental from a guy who once gave his dog the name Sinatra. Still another surprise is “La Cattiva Strada–The Road to Ruin,” his translation from the Italian of a 1975 song of those who made bad choices and seek redemption.

 

Longtime fans–and I’ve been one since his Larkin was shiny and new–will find plenty of “classic” Keelaghan. He personifies his native province on “Alberta” to the degree that one could easily wonder if his is a mash note to Western Canada or a lover. And what would a Keelaghan album be without a bit of righteous anger? “Just a Letter” has a waltzing wrapper, but the song takes up the cause of a friend who was sexually assaulted when she was younger and now suffers the yearly indignity of a request for her feelings on his parole request. There is no parole for the doomed man in “Before the Morning Sun,” a powerful tale of a man who takes his view of justice into his own hands and offers no apologies for it.

 

In all, there are ten splendid offerings and the album ends with the gorgeous “The Benefits of Surrender.” After an opening riff evocative of that of his famed weepie “Jenny Bryce,” he settles into a confessional of his need to let go of self-constructed exteriors: I’ve been building walls instead of hanging windows/Hunkered down and hidden, I’ve been living in limbo.

 

By my reckoning this is the first Keelaghan collection of new material in 13 years. I sincerely hope he was working on still more songs during the lockdown. I don’t want to wait so long for the next installment.

 

Rob Weir

Chalk and Other Ephemeral Art

 

I was walking downtown last week when I spied the ghost image of a piece of chalk art from a late summer display. I had forgotten that I took some pictures of this year’s chalk art fest, perhaps because most of the work wasn’t as striking as that of previous years.

 

Below are some shots I took, but first let’s consider ephemeral art. It has been in the news the past few years because of a stunt the street artist Banksy pulled. He produced a work titled “Girl with a Balloon” that fetched a million pounds sterling at a London auction in 2016. It had a shredder built into the frame that sliced the art work to ribbons. Amazingly, the buyer did not demand a refund. Now, we know why. It went back on the auction block in 2021 and Sotheby’s got a stunning $25.4 million for it, proving that being rich doesn’t necessarily come with ten cents’ worth of intelligence.

 

On another level, though, it’s not like Banksy invented ephemeral art, that which is made for its own sake and not built to last. Environmental artists like the amazing Andy Goldsworthy use organic materials such as vines, leaves, and other vegetation that have a short lifespan. Or perhaps you’ve been to the beach during one of those jaw-dropping sand sculpting contests; or just ogled the sand castles and forts built by kids.

 

There are other forms of ephemeral art, including carving fruits and vegetables. October, of course, is the month for creative pumpkin carving–just like early fall agricultural fairs where people get creative in making figures out of butter. Or the winter in which chainsaws will fashion magic from blocks of ice.

 

You name it and someone has made art from it. Corn stalk mazes have become a thing and I’ve also seen people coax patterns and figures from mowing their grass or raking their leaves. Some barbers do the same with hair. Flower arranging is ephemeral, and even shorter-lived materials such as ice cream and chocolate are creatively arranged.

 

Perhaps the two most creative of all have spiritual roots. Karesansui is associated with Japanese Zen Buddhism. It involves raking small pebbles into patterns and has to be tended constantly as weather alters it, but the raking itself is a form of meditation. So too is the making of mandala art, the use of colored sand among Hindus and Buddhists. These elaborate geometric figures are meant to be destroyed shortly after they are completed.

 

I’m rather glad I forgot about my snapshots until now. So maybe this year’s chalk art was not as uniformly remarkable as that of past years, but does it matter? It was never made to last. Both Ralph Waldo Emerson or TS Eliot have been credited with variants of the quote, “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey that counts.” It’s likely neither of them came up with it; it’s an ancient practice. Not all art has to hang on walls.

 

 

 

    

Tin Men a Capsule of a Changing America

 

 

TIN MEN (1987)

Directed by Barry Levinson

Touchstone/Buena Vista, 112 minutes, R (language, booze, drugs, infidelity)

★★★★

 

 

 

I recently gave a talk at the Three Sisters Sanctuary, whose roadside entrance features a giant tin figure. So, naturally, I viewed the 1980s comedy Tin Men. In this case, the term tin men references a long-gone practice of door-to-door salesmen (almost always men) trying to entice homeowners to re-side their dwellings in aluminum. I recall two tin men hit my childhood neighborhood in the 1960s, which was weird given that we and everyone else in the neighborhood lived in down-market rented concrete block duplexes. No sales there!

 

Tin Men was the second film in director Barry Levinson’s Baltimore quadrilogy; the first, Diner (1982) is considered his masterpiece, but Tin Men is also funny and a slice of 1980s social history. Bill Babowsky (Richard Dreyfuss) drives his brand-new Cadillac off the lot ­and straight into a Caddy owned by a rival, Ernest Tilly (Danny DeVito). This touches off an escalating vendetta between the two at a time in which older it’s-a-man’s-world norms are crumbling in ways paralleling aluminum siding sales. Yet, Levinson’s Baltimore is a place where second wave feminism has just begun to send ripples across the Chesapeake Bay and there’s no sign of the tidal wave on its way. After exhausting bar confrontations and innovative ways to antagonize each other Babowsky, a confirmed playboy, ups the ante by seducing Tilly’s wife (Barbara Hershey). There’s a layered story about how this develops, though I will say that it was supposed to be settled by a pool match, but very little is settled between two guys so hardheaded we suspect their noggins are made of granite.

 

The domestic part of the movie now seems dated, but this is the part where I say that history is what it was, not how the squeamish would reinvent it. Levinson’s take on Baltimore’s delayed embrace of change was especially true of working-class families of the 1970s/early 80s, many of whom saw feminism as middle-class nonsense. That too was about to change; comedy aside, Levison’s film is about what is fading and emerging.

 

That was true of salesmanship as well. Door-to-door sales practices were rife with high-pressure tactics, dishonesty, and outright fraud. In part this was because many of those pounding the sidewalks were paid entirely or mostly on commission. You don’t have to be an economist to know that no sales = no paycheck, a condition Tilly knew firsthand. It’s no wonder that regulatory agencies investigated unfair labor practices on the part of both sales staff and the companies for which they toiled. Tin Men is, thus, the story of a “sunset industry,” the term given to work in the process of disappearing.

 

The history lessons aside, Tin Men is an amusing movie. Few actors play the short guy with a sharp tongue, swagger, and irreverence with the verve of Danny DeVito. In Tin Men, though, Richard Dreyfuss is a worthy adversary. He’s oily, arrogant, and stubborn, though not quite as emotionally bullet-proof as he believes. Barbara Hershey is also quite good in a tough role. On one level she has to play pawn to male games, but she deftly shows how stupid male tricks left the door open for subtle and clever manipulation. In other words, the battle of the sexes wasn't as one-sided as advertised.

 

If you can cruise past bad 1980s clothing, shopworn values, and the very idea that a big Cadillac once conferred status, Tin Men will both edify and make you chuckle.  For what it’s worth, the soundtrack is from Fine Young Cannibals. They too were all the rage in the early- to mid-1980s.

 

Pay attention to what Babowski and Tilly consider next when their tin men careers come to an inglorious end. Stagflation loomed on the horizon, Caddies were out, and adjustments were necessary. 

 

Rob Weir