Wakanda Forever Doesn't Know What It Wants To Be

 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

Directed by Ryan Coogler

Marvel/Walt Disney Studios, 161 minutes, PG-13

★★

 

 

 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever made gobs of money, which guarantees there will be a third installment. Speaking from a critical perspective, that’s not a good thing. Wakanda Forever is a desultory effort stained by big-budget summer film clichés.

 

As most know, Chadwick Boseman was the original Black Panther. He tragically died of colon cancer, which certainly threw a monkey wrench into sequel plans. He appears in Wakanda Forever via stock footage that advances what one imagines was a rather hasty reimagining of the franchise. We see Shuri (Leticia Wright)  failing to recreate a heart-shaped herb to save her brother T'Challa (Boseman). This comes from the first film but as we know, the Black Panther died. The opening scenes of Wakanda Forever involve ritual mourning and Queen Ramonda’s (Angela Bassett) attempts to restore stability in her grieving homeland.

 

Fans know that Wakanda is a world power because it monopolizes a metal called vibranium, which allows scientific discoveries in advance of other nations. Queen Ramonda acts swiftly when she discovers that Western powers located vibranium on the ocean floor and are about to mine it. She also tongue lashes the United States and France who tried to condemn her actions at the United Nations. A greater challenge appears when an aquatic man with wings on his feet penetrates Wakanda’s defenses. He is Namor (Tenoch Huerta Mejia), the leader of the underwater Mayan kingdom of Talokan that he formed centuries ago after killing a group of Spanish enslavers. He is a demigod born of a mortal woman and the god K’uk’ulkan. Namor offers an alliance with Talokan against the rest of the world, but Ramonda curtly dismisses him.

 

Alas, Wakanda Forever takes an unfortunate turn. A mad scramble ensues in which the Wakandans learn that another vibranium-locating machine is in prototype. Okoye and Shuri lead a team to find its creator, Riri Williams (Dominique Thern), an MIT student whose advanced engineering project was taken over by the CIA and the US military. This allows the scriptwriters to reintroduce Everett Ross (Martin Freeman), a CIA agent friendly to Wakanda, whom we met in the first film. You name it and paint-by-the-numbers tropes enter the film. The CIA, the Navy, and Namor’s agents pursue the Wakandans and Riri around Cambridge and Boston. We get car chases with crashing police cars in a film in which Wakandans use sci-fi spaceships to move from one place to the other! Did someone accidentally splice Wakanda Forever into the classically bad 1968 film Bullitt?

 

Namor captures Shuri and tries to curry her support by showing her the splendors and power of his Atlantis-like underwater empire. She is impressed, but like Ramonda, senses that he might be an expansionist demagogue. She is allowed to leave but when Namor shows up again in Wakanda he delivers an ultimatum: join an alliance with Talokan or face destruction. Ramonda stands firm and the ensuing war leaves Wakanda ruined and on the verge of collapse. This section is more like Star Wars than the ridiculous car chase in Greater Boston. Queen Ramonda dismisses Okoye (Danai Gurira), her head of the military, but is killed by Namor.  Another ritual and then Wakanda must address its leadership void and rebuild its compromised defenses.

 

Spy reports from Nakia buy some time. The former War Dog  has been living in Haiti where she fled after her lover T’Challa’s death. She is a teacher who is also hiding the son T’Challa fathered. This serves to reintroduce her from the first film, but it seems more like padding than instrumental to the plot. This is decidedly the case of a side story involving Ross and his ex-wife Valentina (Julia Louise-Dreyfus), the head of the CIA, who is either coming on to her ex-husband or seeking to entrap him.

 

All of the above simply stalls Shuri’s attempts to manufacture a heart-shaped herb as Riri marvels (get it?) over Wakanda. Queue more clichés: a near-annihilation oceanic clash between the Mayans and the Wakandans followed by a mano e mano rock-smashing clash between Namor and the new Black Panther. I’ll bet you know who that it is! Wright is fierce, but she’s also thin as a rail and I don’t for a nano second buy her instant herb-induced strength.

 

If you’re looking ahead to installment three, Nakia’s son Toussaint has a Wakandan name: T’Challa. I’m done after the overly long Wakanda Forever, which felt like an eternity.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Yesterday a Charming Delight

 

YESTERDAY (2019)

Directed by Danny Boyle

Universal Pictures, 116 minutes, PG-13

★★★★★

 

 

 

I have friends who can't stand fantasy films. If that’s you but you’ve never seen Yesterday, set aside your bias and give it a try. It is a fantasy film, but one directed by the talented Danny Boyle who gave us such films as Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting. If you’ve seen either film, you know that Boyle has a soft spot for underdogs.

 

Jack Malik (Himesh Patel) decidedly falls into that category. He is a British-Indian folk musician in Suffolk who writes pleasant songs. No one notices him except starry-eyed Ellie Appleton (Lily James), his manager by night and a math teacher by day. Jack is relegated to gigs in cafes with hissing coffee machines and festival side tents attended by a handful of people who wandered in and children playing amidst hay bales. Ellie is secretly in love with Jack, but their relationship is more that of brother and sister.

                                             

Jack knows he's never going to make it, but the unexpected happens. As he is riding his bike home from his announced last concert, the lights go out for 12 seconds and he is hit by a bus. It leaves him with a smashed guitar, two missing teeth, and quite a few abrasions and bruises. Although he didn’t know it at the time, the 12-second blackout was worldwide. When Jack gets out of the hospital, friends throw a party for him and Ellie surprises him with a new guitar. He is badgered to perform a song and he reluctantly sings “Yesterday.” Everyone is gobsmacked that he wrote such a fantastic song. He thinks they are joking, but they have never heard of The Beatles, nor has anyone else. All Beatles records are missing from his collection and music stores. There are a lot of other things of which no one has heard, an amusing detail I will let you discover for yourselves.

 

What would you do if your favorite musical act disappeared, and you remembered the lyrics to their songs? Before Jack can say, “I believe in yesterday,” his friend Gavin (Alexander Arnold) has distributed a demo of Jack channeling Beatles songs as if he wrote them. Jack becomes an overnight sensation. Even more improbably, Ed Sheeran shows up at his door and asks him to open his tour that begins in Moscow. Although most of the audience is too young to remember communism, they go wild when Jack sings “Back in the USSR.” He and his stoner roadie Rocky (Joel Fry) are swept up in a popular culture maelstrom. Los Angeles promoter Debra Hammer (Kate McKinnon) pursues Jack like a shark that has spotted a seal. Ed and Jack become buddies who challenge each other to a songwriting contest; Jack wins with “The Long and Winding Road!” Soon, Jack is headlining at venues like Wembley in London and Principality in LA, as Debra vigorously and cynically packages Jack as an idol. (Revel in the hysterical putdown of marketers.)

 

But what of Jack’s old friends in Suffolk? What of Ellie? Jack lives in constant fear that his ruse will be exposed. Actually, two people do remember The Beatles, one of whom is played by the actress Sarah Lancashire (TV imports “Coronation Street” and “Last Tango in Halifax.”) Their reaction is surprising, as is the result of a tip Jack is given. The fame rocket continues to burn, complete with a rooftop concert analogous to The Beatles’ swan song. In a wry twist (that’s also poignant), Jack’s show is atop a closed hotel in the fading English resort town Gorleston-on-Sea.

 

Jack is awash in madness similar to the height of Beatlemania. He’s not even sure who he is anymore, a sentiment shared by his old friends, especially Ellie who is ready to move on. Once again, the question arises: What would you do? Embrace fame and fortune or be true to yourself?

 

“Yesterday” is a truly delightful film. It is indeed a fairy tale, though it was billed as a romantic comedy. It raises questions like those above, but is also a back door slam at the lure of commodified culture and how easily manufactured fads degenerate into mass hysteria. When you listen closely you realize that Jack is a mediocre singer, but director Boyle and Patel excel at casting illusions. Great credit goes to Ed Sheeran, the true musical talent, who is admirably self-effacing. Lily James is cuddly cute in a good way. Best of all, the movie leaves you humming tunes written by four of the greatest songwriters in Western history.

 

Rob Weir

Stella Maris: A Sad Farewell

 

STELLA MARIS (2022)

By Cormac McCarthy

Alfred A. Knopf, 198 pages

★

 

 

 I’m doing something I have never done before: dictate a stream of consciousness review.* I'm not a fan of stream of consciousness. It’s often idiosyncratic rambling attempting to hide that fact via nice turns of phrases. For instance, if your idea of reading is a good yarn, James Joyce is practically unreadable. That’s also the case of Cormac McCarthy's last novel Stella Maris. (McCarthy died on June 13, 2023.) I hoped for a masterpiece. As the saying goes, it just ain't so.

 

Stella Maris is not a person, rather the name of a mental institution in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. Its lack of action is set in 1972, but I don't believe that Black River Falls ever had a mental institution. I've been there and it's a blow away town with not much to recommend it other than being a small county seat. Stella Morris was designed to be a prequel to McCarthy's The Passenger, which was bloody enigmatic in its own right. I was hoping that the prequel would clear up some of its more arcane parts, but it doesn't.

 

If you ask me what Stella Maris is about, I'd have to say not much of anything. The Passenger follows the travails of Bobby Western who has enormous difficulty finding his way in the world. We find out that he was the son of a famous scientist who helped develop the atomic bomb. Bobby is also troubled by the absence of his younger sister, so much so that we wonder if the two were lovers. Incest, of course, is taboo, but that would have been more interesting than what’s not revealed in Stella Maris.

 

Stella Maris is about Alicia Western, Bobby’s sister. She is a patient in Stella Maris, and we easily conclude that she’s seriously mentally ill, although she’s genius- level intelligent. Other than Bobby, the only identifiable love of her life is mathematics. She might have been world famous if only she were not batshit crazy. The entire book is a dialogue between Alicia and Doctor Cohen, a psychiatrist. What do they talk about? Well, that's a pretty good question and not one easy to pin down. If you have ever seen movies like My Dinner with Andre or Diner, you might remember that the conversations went in every direction except straight. It's one thing to watch that on a movie screen where we can pick up subtle expressions on the characters’ faces or see them smirk, laugh, or act confused; it's quite another to read dialogue that’s sometimes linear but mostly isn’t.

 

That's not to say that the dialogue is stupid. It’s erudite but goes off onto so many tangents that we lose any implied threads. You would really have to love mathematics to enjoy this book and I’m not talking just numbers. You would need great familiarity with the history of mathematics and detailed knowledge of its theorists to immerse yourself in this work. I do not know what McCarthy intended in his discourse and it is way more of a discourse than a novel. It really reads as if McCarthy was grandstanding. I certainly believe mathematicians and scientists should have their day on the pages of fiction, but I can't help but wonder who the intended audience was for Stella Maris. It's as if McCarthy wanted to be remembered for his intellect, but he didn’t need to prove to me that he was intelligent. We read him mainly for his probes of the human psyche, including its dark side.

 

Alicia is certainly plagued by a dark psyche. She yearns for death and Cohen correctly infers she is suicidal. Do we really want to read nearly 200 pages of what is essentially a two-person play masquerading as popular fiction? What topics do the two discuss besides mathematics? If by discussion we mean a two-way street, almost none because Alicia toys with Cohen like a cat with a mouse. He is infinitely patient, and she is resolutely buttoned down. Every topic, from love and music to electromagnetic shock treatment and medication finds Alicia dismissive if not condescending. In the end, we or left with high falutin’ banter that weaves like a punch-drunk boxer. It is not the way I wanted Cormac McCarthy to exit the world of publishing.

 

Rob Weir

 

* Full disclosure: I corrected punctuation. If this seems too smooth for dictation it’s because I often compose in my head.

Can the Yankees Be Fixed?

Tell it like it is!

 The New York Yankees haven't won a World Series since 2009. The All-Star game is upon us and the Yankees are so far behind Tampa Bay they’d need a telescope to locate them. New York might be good enough to stumble upon a wild card, but as I have insisted for several years, the Yankees are a poorly constructed team unlikely to win a World Series. Management has said that the Yankees don’t rebuild, they reload. Sorry, but can’t spend their way out of a mess that they spent their way into. They need to rebuild and here are a few starters.

 

1.    Hire a Manager not a Cheerleader.

 

Aaron Boone was once an October hero. Does that qualify him to manage? He had several 100-win seasons when he had stacked lineups. Now he has a lousy roster that he makes worse. He has already exhausted the bullpen, and he loyally puts guys in the lineup who shouldn’t even be on the roster. We never hear of him chewing out guys who make boneheaded mistakes and he remains loyal to hitting coach Dillon Lawson whose theory of batting is to swing for the fences on every pitch. He is also supportive of pitching coach Matt Blake who is more impressed by mph than where the pitches are located. Blake has ruined Domingo German who was never flashy but won games. (He recently threw a perfect game and promptly got bombed in his next outing.)

 

2.    Past Laurels Wilt

 

General manager Brian Cashman bears responsibility for the roster. Yes, he built teams that won the World Series but that last happened in 2009. The game has changed, and he hasn’t. The payroll is too high for too little sizzle, and he has made bad decisions such not getting a left fielder, holding on to Gleyber Torres to the point where he has minimal trade value, and to Estevan Florial and Deivi Garcia until they have none whatsoever. He is not the person to rebuild the roster.

 

3.     Buy New Toys, not Used Ones

 

I don’t fault Cashman for signing Giancarlo Stanton who was 29 when the Yankees got him. I do put it on Cashman for acquiring washed up players such as Josh Donaldson, Jay Bruce, J. A. Happ, Corey Kluber, Andrew Heaney, and the never-immortal Aaron Hicks. Some of those players were once decent, but all were in decline when Cashman got them. New York needs a new leader who build or acquire new toys.

 

4.    Do Your Homework!

 

I like Anthony Rizzo, but is there anyone in MLB who doesn’t know he has a bad back? Did the Yankees even discuss whether Joey Gallo would hit above .200? Who was the genius who decided to trade for Frankie Montas, who actually flunked his physical? Cashman has also signed others such as James Paxton and Carlos Rodon who have spent more time on the injured list than on the mound. He gave a contract to Tommy Kahnle who was recovering from surgery and let two better relievers walk away.

 

5.    Not All Injuries are Bad Luck

 

Of all of management’s blather, the most tiresome is that the Yankees have had bad luck with injuries. They blame their current woes on losing Aaron Judge. He’s a huge loss, but last I looked, a MLB roster has 26 members, not one. Don’t all of the injuries suggest that New York needs to have better minor league development and trainers? Lock the weight room and break out the yoga mats; flexibility is a prerequisite for staying healthy during an 8-month season

 

6.    Subtraction by Division.

 

The current roster is loaded with players who shouldn’t be there. This includes Anthony Volpe, a potential star if they don’t ruin his confidence first. (He seems to be adjusting, but don't wait if he slumps!) At least Volpe is a serious player, which is more than I can say for retreads such as Donaldson, Greg Allen, Jake Bowers, Willy Calhoun, or Franchy Cordero.

 

There are others who need to be moved so that younger players can take their places. Stanton tops the list. He was once good but now can’t buy a base hit and is making an enormous amount of money. The Dodgers are a possible trade partner because they need more power and Stanton can swat homers. Take what you can get and dump his contract.

 

In March, some analysts who haven’t been paying attention predicted that Clarke Schmidt would make the All-star team. Nope! If a pitcher hasn’t developed by 27, he’s not likely to, so package him and say goodbye.

 

Jose Trevino had a very nice year in 2022, but that was probably his career year. They have Ben Rortveldt in the minor leagues whom they traded to get, so I would move Trevino before he reverts to normal. I’m sad to see the decline of D. J. LeMahieu, but he would be a nice fit on a true contender. I would also be tempted to trade Harrison Bader, a fine player, but can opt out of his contract after the World Series. Why on earth would he not do that, given the state of the Yankees?

 

7.    Reward Performance, not Projections

 

Face it, analytics have failed the Yankees miserably. It’s time to listen to real baseball people like scouts. It took analysts three years to admit what field scouts told them: Gary Sanchez can’t catch. Projections are like IQ scores, of no practical use unless results follow potential. Sanchez was a disaster and they had to trade the reliable Gio Urshella just to get rid of Sanchez. The analytics people didn’t like Urshella and they were foolishly wrong. They’re not very fond of Billy McKinney either, but he is their leading hitter.

 

Numbers geeks encourage the Yankees to sign players as tall as Judge without considering he could be one of a kind. Thus far, minor league results on copycat hitters have been underwhelming. I am not a fan of MLB innovations such as ghost runners or the pitch clock, but that’s the way the game is played today. It is also how New York should draft and develop players. They need speed, considerably more contact hitters, and those who put up high on-base percentages. The current Yankees only score when they hit homers and that doesn’t cut it anymore.

 

8.    Skills Wanted Here

 

The Yankees have poor baseball IQ. They commit too many errors, outfielders miss cut off men with idiotic hero heaves, the hit-and-run is rare as a dodo, and no one knows how to bunt. If the 10^th inning begins with a ghost runner on 2^nd, shouldn’t you bunt him to 3^rd so he can score against a drawn-in infield or fly ball? Choke up when you need to make contact. No excuses for striking out when a runner is in scoring position. None.

 

9.    Rebuild

 

The Yankees must understand that a high payroll is no guarantee of success in the postseason. Rebuild the farm system, scout better, and develop young talent. Face it; owner Hal Steinbrenner isn’t going to throw more money after bad. Why should he? He will make a profit whether or not the Yankees stink. Rebuild. At the very least the Yankees will have a more entertaining team.

 

 

Fellowship Point: Quakers, Conflict, and Friendship

 

FELLOWSHIP POINT (2023)

By Alice Elliott Dark

Simon and Schuster, 578 pages

★★★★ ½ 

 

 

It has been said that Quakers came to do good and did well. In a roundabout way, that’s the crux of Fellowship Point, a superb new novel by Alice Elliott Dark.

 

Its central character is Agnes Lee who did well indeed in her inheritance and as author of a series of children’s books about 9-year-old Nan, whose adventures are reminiscent of a better-behaved Eloise. Agnes has remained mum about the inspiration for Nan. Her lifelong friend Polly Wister always imagined it was her daughter Lydia, who died at nine.

 

Much of the novel is about the friendship between Agnes and Polly, though it’s not easy being Agnes’s friend. Agnes is an opinionated crank with secrets, is a confirmed spinster, and unbeknown even to Polly also writes under the pseudonym of Pauline Schultz. Those books are arch takedowns of Rittenhouse Square elites, though the Lees could be counted among them. As is often the case, those who lampoon miss the irony that they “have met the enemy and they is us,” as Pogo would have put it.

 

Agnes is also the fulcrum of another irony in that old Quaker money is behind the novel’s namesake dilemma: what to do with Fellowship Point. Several generations ago, five families bought 35 acres of coastal land in Maine, where they summered amidst locals. The latter are a mix of those who provide services joyfully, those who do so grudgingly, and those who want no part of outsiders.

 

Themes of native Mainers versus summer people are commonplace in literature, but Dark twists an old meme via a plot device that blurs who’s right and who’s wrong. Agnes and Polly, both in their 80s, want the Point and the wild “Sank” to become a public trust. That’s tricky as the original charter stipulates that three of the five families that own the land must vote to dissolve their association before anything else can be done with it. Agnes never married, so no problem there, but obstacles loom.

 

Polly likes the idea, but she’s passive in more than the Quaker opposition to war. She kowtows to her husband Dick, an embittered retired UPenn philosophy professor denied emeritus status. Agnes thinks he’s a pompous lightweight but tries to hold her tongue for Polly’s sake. His legacy will complicate matters and strain old friendships. Various cousins also have a say, including Archie, who is married to the unspeakably vain and manipulative Seela. There is also a development team that envisions an upscale resort, and Polly’s three sons, especially James, a smug (and greedy?) version of his father. It's difficult for locals to stay clear of this brewing tempest, including  Robert Circumstance who has tended the grounds for years and is a skilled landscape designer who has made Fellowship Point elegant.

 

As if Agnes doesn't have enough to navigate, she has a medical crisis and is being badgered by Maud Silver, an editorial assistant who hopes to advance her flagging career by convincing Agnes to write her memoir. That's about the last thing she wants to do! Maud also has baggage. Few know that she’s a single mom to a nine-year-old, or that her mother Heidi is in a catatonic state. Colleagues observe that Maud goes home earlier than anyone else, which is blood to sharks in New York publishing.

 

The novel spans the years 1961 to 2008 and is infused with many of the crises and highlights of those years, including Kennedy’s assassination, 9/11, and Barack Obama’s election. The past and present similarly collide, clash, and sometimes resolve among Dark’s characters. There's a lot going on in the book including the often-conflicting bonds between biological and intentional families and how one defines ownership, friendship, and love. Intertwined are a few mysteries and a wild card scenario in the Mainers versus summer people dilemma that redefines public and private spaces.

 

I really liked this novel, though it would be fair commentary to say that Dark is sometimes too ambitious for her own good. This causes her to trade in a few too many “coincidences.” Though Dark leavens her tale with humor, these sometimes stretch credulity. Still, Agnes is very memorable, even though she is fusty and obdurate. She put me in mind of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge: hard on the outside with soft spots hidden inside. Ultimately, Fellowship Point is a bit like the Quakers in that goodwill and right intentions prevail.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Edvard Munch at the Clark Will Surprise you

 

Edvard Munch–Trembling Earth

Clark Art Institute

Williamstown, MA

Through October 15, 2023

[Click for full-sized images]

 

 

Do you recognize the above image? Of course you do; The Scream is one of the most famous images in Western art history. Perhaps you’re wondering why it’s not in color like the one you used to hang in your college dorm room around finals time. Contrary to popular myth, artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944) made several versions of this 1893 work, including woodcuts and drawings. The one you see is part of a new exhibition of 75 Munch works at the Clark.

 

 

How about this next painting? It’s also Munch and it doesn’t really fit with perceptions that the Norwegian Munch was a painter whose acid greens and subdued colors reflected the gloomy nature of the artist. You’re not wrong to think Munch was often wracked by anxiety, but that was not the full measure of the man. As an adult, he admitted that his formative years were marked by “sickness, insanity, and death.” He also studied nihilism, lived in a climate that could be foreboding, and battled depression. Yet he also found great beauty and inspiration in nature. That’s the central concept of Trembling Earth and, if you want to see it, you have to go to Williamstown, Massachusetts, as the Clark is the only place it will be on view.

 

 

The exhibit is arranged in six rooms themed by things that inspired Munch, including the forest, cultivated land, and seascapes. As such, the only other iconic work you’ll see is a version of Ashes (above). What will surprise most attendees, though, is that, though many Munch efforts are suffused with the weaker light of Scandinavia, his overall palette was frequently brighter and more vivid than you might have thought. 

 

 

 Munch spent much of his time in Oslo–called Kristiana in his day–but he also had a country home 100 kilometers south of the city. His home was surrounded by flowers and orchards were filled with fruits. In short, Munch had a deep appreciation for the natural world. 

 

Starry Night 

 

Two Horses

 

 To be sure, his world was rocked by the death of a beloved sister and the postmortem revelation that his father left behind crippling debt but there were also stimulating experiences. He traveled to Berlin on occasion, but a key moment came when he went to Paris in 1889, the year the world’s fair showcased the then-new Eiffel Tower. That didn’t inspire Munch nearly as much as Impressionism and paintings he saw from a failed Dutch expatriate: Vincent Van Gogh. Bet you didn’t know that Munch also painted a canvas titled Starry Night. You can also see Impressionism’s impact on Munch in the thickness of the paint he knifed onto some of his paintings.

 

Note continuation of hair into beach and sky

 

Munch was not really an Impressionist (nor was Van Gogh.) His work is generally lumped with Expressionism–especially German art and late Van Gogh–and Symbolists like Paul Gauguin. A quick primer: Impressionism focuses on light, Expressionism on inner feelings, and Symbolism on the mystical. And, yes, they often overlap. Munch often painted human figures from behind or as stylized. I’ve often wondered if that’s because he wasn’t particularly good with realistic faces, but that’s pure speculation on my part.  

 

Melancholy

 

Two Women

 

As for the tortured Munch, he obtained fame and money around 1902, but it didn’t serve him well. He drank too much, brawled, and had a nervous breakdown in 1908. Anxiety and melancholy make frequent appearances in his art and even benign titles such as Two Women evokes Egon Schiele’s Death and the Maiden. Munch lived through the 1918 flu epidemic and worried that the Nazis would confiscate his art during World War II. When the latter did not happen and fascist collaborators held a political funeral for Munch who died just before the war ended, rumors circulated that Munch was a sympathizer. That view is soaked in more doubt than evidence. 

 

 

 

 

We do know, though, that Munch struggled to maintain mental stability. The above painting  might give tongue-in-cheek confirmation of his imbalance in that he painted nude bathers at the seaside. Swimming naked in Norway? It was considered healthful. And you thought diving into the waters of Maine was crazy! Some of these works are actually Expressionist in character; others a nod to precocious Post-Impressionists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, another artist Munch admired.

 

It may be a stretch to force fit Munch into a framework of 21^st century environmentalism, but the skinny is that Trembling Earth challenges us to reconsider what we think of Munch. You would do well to make travel plans that include a trip to the Clark.   

 

Rob Weir

Women Talking is Powerful and Brilliant

WOMEN TALKING (2022)

Directed by Sarah Polley

United Artists Releasing, 104 minutes, PG-13 (themes of rape and violence)

★★★★★

 

 

Women Talking was a highly acclaimed but little seen Oscar Best Picture nominee. Make no mistake; it certainly deserved more consideration for Best Picture than the video game tripe that actually won. (Director Sarah Polley did win for Best Adapted Screenplay.)

 

Polley has largely forsaken acting for the director’s chair (Away From Her; Alias Grace). Although it might not seem immediately apparent, Women Talking is a deeply feminist and political film that confirms the buzz that Polley is one of the brightest and boldest of her generation. It is what one might get by mashing together The Handmaid’s Tale, The Trojan Women, and a Mennonite community from hell. It really is about Mennonites, a good starting point for discussing Polley’s brash and brilliant film. You might think it a cheap shot to attack a group of communal Anabaptists, but what you see on the screen is based on a lightly fictionalized account from ex-Mennonite Miriam Toews whose community in Bolivia saw male members secretly administer animal tranquilizers to rape females aged 3 to 65. (Another in Manitoba also had such cases.) In Women Talking, the women aver pacifism, but many of the men fall short of that lofty goal.

 

The camera pans a young woman who awakes to injuries and an STD from a sexual assault. This time, though, her mother Salome (Claire Foy) storms a holding area where several men await transfer to jail, scythe in hand. She is subdued by female elders, but readily admits her willingness to kill. While most of the remaining men journey to an unnamed city to arrange bail, 11 leading women—many of whom have no idea of who fathered their children–gather to decide whether to practice Christian forgiveness, stay and fight back, or leave and create a new community. Women are not taught to read and write, but they vote by making an X on a large sheet of paper. Scarface Janz (Frances McDormand, one of the film’s co-producers) and Mariche (Jessie Buckley) lead the status quo but are vastly outnumbered. The problem, though, is a dead tie between stay-and-fight led by Salome and Mejal (Michele McLeod) and those who feel they must leave to retain their pacifism, including Agata (Judith Ivey) and Greta (Sheila McCarthy). Ona (Rooney Mara) also leans in that direction, though she harbors idealistic notions of building a community of love either within or outside the community. 

 

The women do as the title suggests: talk. They appoint sweet-tempered August (Ben Whishaw) as their chronicler as they weigh the options. He is the community teacher (boys only) who comes from an ex-communicated family and failed as a farmer. He is also deeply in love with Ona and she with him, though she carries a child via her own rape. There is also a transgender character in the film: Melvin (August Winter, who is non-binary), who presents as a man and has spoken only to children after being sexually assaulted.

 

If you think that debate is a blood sport, you’ve never had one with women wrestling with how best to express their faith. Heated, yes, but enveloped within beliefs based upon how to attain the Kingdom of God. Like Ona, they must decide whether that is best accomplished by staying or leaving. Two events will tip the scales.

 

Polley takes us inside a world most of us will never experience. Her direction, supplemented by a superb original score from Icelandic cellist and composer Hilda Guðandóttir (and an assist from The Monkees’ “Daydream Believer”) that adds to the otherworldly ambience. Polley’s greatest achievement though, was what she wrung from her cast. If you only know Claire Foy from her role as a young Queen Elizabeth, her fiery anger and grit will surprise, but Jessie Buckley is her equal–though initially they hold opposing views. Sheila McCarthy is better known in Canada, but she’s an absolute delight as a thoughtful grandmotherly type who likes to expound upon what she has learned from her horses and isn’t afraid to screw on a wry smile and admit when she has misjudged. She is the balm to Ivey’s reason and impatience. None, though, surprise like Rooney Mara. You might not initially recognize her in her dimpled-face innocence and the depth she exudes in a soft-spoken almost ethereal role.

 

Brava to Sarah Polley. Women Talking is a triumph.

 

Rob Weir