Molly Ivins Raises Hell

Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins (2019)

Directed by Januce Engel

Magnolia Pictures, 93 minutes, Not-rated (some coarse language)

★★★★

Lordy, how we could use Molly Ivins right now. If you’ve ever read or heard her, you know what I mean. If you’ve not, by all means check out Raise Hell. Alas, Ivins died of breast cancer in 2007, when she was just 62. One of the many talking heads in this documentary is Rachel Maddow, who acknowledges Ivins as an inspiration. Maddow has Ivins’ sharp political instincts, but if she ever unleashed Ivins-like one-liners on MSNBC, she’d be out on her ear.

Molly Ivins was big in all ways a person can be big. She was 6’ tall but seemed even larger, as she was husky as well. She wore a size-12 shoe, had flaming red hair, a big heart, and an even bigger laugh. She graduated from Smith, where she didn’t–by her own admission–fit in. That didn’t bother her; as she often quipped, she never fit in anywhere. That was close to being true. She had a tyrannical alcoholic father with whom she battled, and she locked horns with editors of publications such as the Minneapolis Tribune, the New York Times, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegraph. As a syndicated columnist, some of her op-ed pieces failed to run because they were deemed too controversial. This was especially so when she told Americans that they were falling prey to fear and foolishness in the wake of 9/11. The public eventually caught up with Ivins, but it a lot longer.

I was lucky enough to meet Ivins in 1993 when she came back to Smith to give a talk. At the time, I had a very large class at Smith of about 125 students to whom I assigned Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She? Ivins was surprised by the number of students asking her to inscribe their book and roared out, “Who’s the summabitch responsible for all these books?” When I admitted that I was that “summabitch,” she laughed and said, “God bless your pointed heart,” and gave me a huge bear hug. All 5’5” of me disappeared! There’s a hysterical photo of the two of us somewhere in the Smith archives, one whose scale is roughly that of Gandalf towering over Bilbo Baggins.

The answer to whether or not Molly Ivins could “say that” is yes. As she put it in an early clip in the film, “I’m a Texan. I drink. I cuss. I drive a pickup truck. I fuck. I’m a liberal. Get over it.” She had an odd relationship with George W. Bush, whom she called “Shrub.” She mercilessly lampooned him, yet the two liked each other. (When she learned he was studying Spanish she quipped, “Oh good; he’ll be bi-ignorant.”) In another candid moment she said Bush was “shaped by three intertwining strands of Texas culture… religiosity, anti-intellectualism, and machismo.” But no one ever suffered deeper cuts from her rapier wit than Texas lawmakers: “As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can’t drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against ‘em anyway, you don’t belong in office.”

Ivins never apologized for being liberal. She had the moxie to say that in journalism, “there is no such thing as objectivity…. So my solution has been to let my readers know where I stand. They can take that with a grain of salt or a pound of salt, depending upon their preference.”

Behind the humor lay the soul of a political warrior. Ivins had no patience with bullies, liars, or hucksters. She held special ire for powerful people who took advantage of the poor. Back in the 1980s she warned about how the powerful used fear of immigrants to divert attention from their own misdeeds. In one of her more trenchant observations Ivins spoke of how words like “socialist” and “communist” were mere diversions. In her mind, the political spectrum in the United States was “top to bottom, not left to right.”

Director Janice Engel admires Ivins, but she doesn’t sugarcoat her. She tells of Ivins’ gawky childhood, of her domineering father, of Molly’s contrarian orneriness, and her struggles with alcoholism. She also takes us through her ultimately unsuccessful battle against breast cancer. Among Ivins’ most poignant pearls was when she told women not to send her get-well cards; instead she advised, “Go. Get. The. Damn. Mammogram. Done.”  

Lots of people appear on screen to speak of Ivins, including Anne Lamott, Dan Rather, Jim Hightower, Paul Krugman, Victor Navaski, Molly’s sister Sara, and the late Ann Richards, who was Molly’s friend long before she was governor of Texas. The view they give us of Ivins can best be summed by the phrase, “It’s complicated.” Engel deserves credit for shying away from hagiography. She also deserves our gratitude for hiring a musical team that cobbled together a rich soundtrack that draws upon Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt, honky-tonk, jazz, and period music rather than the bland and neutral score that we encounter in far too many documentaries.

Objectively speaking, my four-star rating may be a tad too high. In places the tone is flatter than it should be, and overall the documentary lacks the zing of the 2011 play Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins,” which relies far more on her sparkling words. (Kathleen Turner once played Ivins in Ret Hot Patriot.) But I shall pull a page from Ivins, admit my subjectivity, and give the film four stars. After all, Ivins once said, “There’s nothing you can do about being born liberal–fish gotta swim and hearts gotta bleed.”

Rob Weir

    

-->

Art in the Orchard 2019

Art in the Orchard 2019

Various Artists

Park Hill Orchard, 82 Park Hill Road, Easthampton, MA

Through November 24, 2019.

Farmers do what they can to stay in business these days. Some open breweries or wineries, some draw visitors to elaborate cornstalk mazes, and others venture into niche markets such as alpaca wool, lavender products, or farm stay tourism. Park Hill Orchard has one of the better angles; each fall it holds a juried competition for sculptors and environmental artists who wish to display their talents en plein air.

Not everything appeals to all and a few selections might seem puzzling, but it has become a rite of autumn to check it. It’s hard to beat the site: a vast swath of fruit trees, pumpkin patches, and greenspace in the shadow of Mt. Tom. One of the permanent installations, in fact, is a giant frame where one can compose Mt. Tom in the distance, gather friends against a fiery fall backdrop, or (if you must) take a selfie. Kids will enjoy chasing the free-range chickens and their own ability to roam off-leash, as it were. But let’s talk about the art.

Enjoying art is often a subjective experience that has little to do with what “experts” or critics think of it. I’m in the second category, which means you might not agree with my assessment that this year’s displays are not up the standards of previous years. But with 30 new installations there is bound to be something for all tastes. 

 

My own art doesn’t extend beyond my shutterbug prowess, but I will say that a few of the pieces left me perplexed and/or underwhelmed. “Field of Hearts,” for example, is a series of lollipop-like valentines covered in mosaic. They are cheerful, but do they tell us anything a parade of Mylar couldn’t? “D’Arbus the Radiolarian” baffles me. I got it that Mark Fenwick named after Diane Arbus, but his “dawn animal” (radiolarian) based on microscopic mineral skeletons is disconnected from the famed photographer and his explanation for the assemblage is idiosyncratic to a fault. Plus, the thing reminded me of vintage pineapple advertising cartoons. In all honesty, I found it creepy. Pamela Matsuda-Dunn covered boulders with glass beads and called it “Abundance.” It looks exactly like boulders covered with glass beads!

But, like I said, who can explain why one thing attracts and others do not? I am a huge fan of Michael Tiller’s wood and metal sculptures. To the band that has graced the field in previous years, Tillyer has added “Maureen,” who appropriately holds an apple in her outstretched hand.

I was also drawn to metalworks this year. I also enjoyed Elizabeth Denny’s “Junkyard Dogs.” It’s meta in that the pooches are fashioned from castoff junk. Chris Woodman’s “Chronos” is an airplane weathervane whose propeller is actually a rotating clock face. If you’re rusty on your Greek mythology, Chronos/Cronos is the pre-Olympian Titan who was the god of time (hence chronology). Staying with the ebb and flow of things, Ted Hinman’s “Tree of Life” harkens to Biblical traditions, but both this work and Woodman’s also evoke the climate change crisis and beg consideration over whether the end of the history is upon us.

 

Hinman also asks us to think of how elephants depend upon tree bark and high-hanging fruit during the dry season. Elephants are an endangered species. Last year, a wonderful twisted branch and steel elephant appeared in the orchard. This year, Lindsey Molyneux graces that one with “The Elephant’s Child.” It is both charming and poignant. 

As for traditional sculptures, I was moved by Valerie Gilman’s bronze “Persephone’s Dream: A Prayer for Peace.” Persephone takes us back to Greek mythology; she’s both the queen of the underworld and the goddess of spring. Gilman uses her as a plea “to listen deeply to the complex and paradoxical truths of our lives and our culture.” In a similar philosophical fashion, Tim De Christopher’s limestone “Bird Bird” is a fragile creature who represents “the primal nature of man, the beast, brute force and the more gentle nature of the human soul.” I can get behind both of these sentiments.

If you visit, don’t forget to buy some fruit!

Artist: R. Weir!

Rob Weir  

-->

Karen Russell's Orange World is So-So

Orange World and Other Stories (2019)

By Karen Russell

Alfred A. Knopf, 271 pages

★★ ½  

Karen Russell’s creepy collection of short stories comes to us in time for Halloween. Or maybe not. I loved her 2011 novel Swamplandia, but I’m stuck in neutral on Orange World.

In the Depression era yarn “The Prospectors,” two spirited young women take the wrong chairlift to the mountaintop in search of a party at a posh lounge. Instead they find themselves among a group of male workers who are dead, but aren’t aware of it. Can the two escape before they too are trapped in limbo?

For those who think the 2007 movie Lars and the Real Girl wasn’t icky enough, Russell offers “Bog Girl: A Romance.” Its main character is a not-so-good-around-women young man who unearths a peatbog corpse and treats her as his girlfriend. His family and community enable him. Call it a macabre coming of age tale.

“The Tornado Auction” asks us to imagine that big storms can be purchased at auction and reared as one might a stallion. When does one set it run? And what if the owner is a person who no longer cares about his fate or that of others?

“Black Corfu” takes us to the namesake Greek isle as Venetian rule was challenged by the Turks. It’s not for certain when our action takes place–probably the 16^th century–but this story centers on a dark-skinned man who dreamed of being a surgeon. Instead, his skin color confines him to the strange practice of posthumous surgery in which the hamstrings of the deceased are severed to prevent them from becoming vampires. He is highly skilled, but his world crumbles when rumors circulate that he botched an operation and one of the dead is loose on Corfu.

“The Gondoliers” is set in a near-future post-flood Florida wherein vast parts of it are underwater. Three sisters dwell in the polluted and flooded canal region known as New Florida. They eke out a living as gondoliers who use singing as echolocation to prevent underwater obstacles. The youngest, Blister, picks up a passenger with the strange request to be taken to Bahia Rosa, the failed seawall and levy system that swamped the region. Blister learns he wishes to go there to die. Should she refuse or take the money and run?

The title tale is about a woman who has miscarried before and worries that the child she is carrying will meet the same fate. She cuts a deal with a demon; in exchange for her baby’s health, she will breastfeed the hairy clawed imp nightly. How can she stop what she’s started?

Each of these is a perfectly fine story that one could freight with deeper significance if so desired. Are those in a rut functionally dead? Who can define love? Is “Black Corfu” a meditation on race, or “The Gondoliers” on climate change? The title story, of course, is one of many about the foolishness of making deals with powers of darkness. Most of Russell’s stories link to classifications in Stith Thompson’s famed index of universal tales. (If you’re keeping score, go to M211 of the Folk-Motif Index to find more information about why it’s not a good idea to bargain with the Devil.) 

If I had to pick an adjective to describe Orange World it would be “competent.” If that sounds as if I’m damning it with faint praise, you’re right. Although there is a repellent quality to the set ups, the tales tend to be more strange than hair-raising. The good news is that it’s a breezy read, but mine is not among the starstruck voices who find this a work of genius. It’s more than meh, but considerably less than wow.

Rob Weir

Rachid Taha: October 2019 Artist of the Month (Posthumously)

Rachid Taha

Je Suis Africain

Believe Records

Trust me. The stripe is bluer on the CD!

Je Suis Africain is the 11th album by Franco-Algerian musician Rachid Taha. It completes his oeuvre; Taha passed away on September 11, 2018–just days before his 60^th birthday. Taha, who had long suffered from a brain/balance disorder called Arnold Chairi Disease, labored hard with Balkan punk artist Toma Feterman to complete a record that released posthumously.

The cover of Taha’s CD is a full-face portrait swathed in dark orange with a grey-blue stripe crossing his eyes and the bridge of his nose as if he were a tussled haired Lone Ranger. It’s an apt way of looking at Taha’s life and musical career. He was born in Oran, Algeria, the birthplace of raï music, a form of folk music favored by the poor–especially those we might dub Muslim modernizers–that often addressed social justice issues. His family moved to France when Taha was ten, and it was from Lyons and Paris that his musical career was launched. He had a day job when he was in his teens, but his nighttime DJ gigs was of far greater interest. He later ran a nightclub that featured Arabic remakes and reinterpretations of rock classics. Soon, he too was caught up in making music. Eclectic is almost too tame to describe his interests. Taha was the ultimate mashup musician, one who dabbled in rock, R & B, punk, raï, country, Sufi music, and chaabi, the last of these traditional Northern Africa music once associated with hash bars that mutated into popular-for-all-occasions songs. His exuberance (and maybe a demo tape) were said to be the inspiration for “Rock the Casbah,” a hit for The Clash.

You’ll hear bits and pieces of Taha’s multiple influences on Je Suis Africain. Its very title is cheeky. Taha spent 50 of his 60 years outside of Algeria, but France’s complicated (and often tragic) colonial relations in Africa has long relegated Algerians to a perpetual outsider status–much as Latinos are often viewed in the United States. He sings the title track in French, but it doesn’t exactly wave Le Tricolore. “I am African,” he proclaims. “God has the same skin.” In this song (and several others) he drops names of those he admires: Malcom X, Mandela, Angela Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Jacques Derrida…. Strong beats frame vocals, casbah-like strings, and desert blues guitar. “Andy Waloo” is another name dropper. The title invokes Andy Warhol, which is repeated as a chant, but everyone from Picasso and Gibran to Johnny Cash and Patti Smith gets a mention. Taha mostly sang in Arabic and French, with the occasional foray into Spanish, but this album features “Like a Dervish,” his only song in English. You can hear hip hop and rave influences in this one, as well as chaabi as it might have been redone for a wedding party. “Minouche” is another identity song; in it Taha sings of his love for a black woman in a tune that approximates a North African take on a French torch song.  

Songs such as “Ansit” and “Aïta” are rock/chaabi blends, the first sporting more growl in Taha’s voice, the second with more bite in the bass and a faster pace. “Wahdi,” borrows Gnawa rhythms–Sufi trance music–for Taha’s duet with Swiss-Algerian singer Flèche Love. Her naturally beautiful and octave-spanning voice serves as contrast to Taha’s earthier approach. Taha gets swampy on “Striptease.” Listen for some unusual violin in this one, as well as in “Insomnia.” Both will, if I might, rock the casbah. The Grim Reaper took Rachid Taha too soon, but Je Suis Africain is a pretty good way to exit.

Rob Weir  

Lisa Bell, 3 Pairs of Boots, and More: Sounds Like Who?

Sometimes the music business reminds me of trying to find a teaching job in the humanities. Even if you’ve already done noteworthy things, how does one attract attention in a crowded field? In music, one way is to invite comparisons to someone who has already made it. Joy Williams and Brandi Carlile are common comparisons.  

Carlile is hot right now, so let’s kick off with notes from a paste project of hers. NoiseTrade/Paste Magazine has released four tracks from an August 30, 2012 performance. It’s the voice and energy that dazzle more than instrumental trickery. Listen to “100” and you’ll hear Carlile’s poppy sense of phrasing. “Hard Way Home” uses plinky keys to set the table for a mix of pop, sass, and cowgirl. She’s more introspective in thinking about work and the PR machine on “That Wasn’t Me.” Even 7 years ago it wasn’t hard to tell that Carlile was special.

Lisa Bell gets the Carlile treatment, as well as mentions of Bonnie Raitt and Norah Jones. Huh? How’s that work? Better than you might think. It helps that Bell is no kid; she’s a Boulder, Colorado mom whose brood has grown and flown the coop. Like Lori McKenna, she brings maturity and real-life experience to bear on her new release Back Seat. In the title song Bell directly addresses her life’s new direction: I’m not willing to take a back seat/While my dreams pass me by. Bell sings with burnished maturity while a rolling organ and electric piano play in the background. And, yes, it’s the sort of jazz/pop amalgam that Norah Jones might do. You’ll hear loads of diverse instrumentation on this record–everything from keys and guitars to ukes and saxophone. “Meet Me in the Space in Between” is cool jazz, the kind of song one might expect from a performer who has covered the old chestnut “Skylark.” “I Can’t Stand the Rain” is another from the same mold, though as a featured single from the LP it’s catchier than “Space in Between.” There’s a nice soulful hop to the way she scans the lines: But I can’t stand the rain/Clouding my vision/It takes it all away/Can’t make a decision. There’s also a dramatic electric guitar bridge. “Get in the Flow” has more of a folk vibe; “India” is ambient; and “Always Chasing Darkness” has a memorable repeating refrain that pops out of the moody wrapper of the rest of the song. “The Road is Always Longer” has blues rock colorings that makes me see the Bonnie Raitt evocations, but damned if I hear any Brandi Carlile. Lisa Bell doesn’t need to be compared to anyone. Call her a better-late-than-never revelation in her own right. ★★★★★

The band name 3 Pairs of Boots intrigues in that it’s actually a country duo, so one wonders where the third pair of boots factors in. Laura Arias and Andrew Stern are based in the Bay Area, but their hearts are more Austin than Oakland. They cite The Byrds, The Smiths, Buffalo Springfield, and Tom Petty among their influences, but because Arias handles lead vocals there are inevitable evocations of The Civil Wars’ Joy Williams. Ignore them if you run across them. 3 Pairs of Boots is definitely more country. “Hey I’m On My Way” is a honky-tonk styled road trip across Route 66 and is populated with hard drinkers, fighters, “star-crossed lovers,” and a (partly apocryphal) explanation of how Tucumcari, New Mexico got its name. “It Ain’tEasy”jordan whitmore has a moral; in this case, that one should always do the right thing, not the easy one. “He Lost My Number” feels like country folk grafted to an early 60s pop song and a Laurel Canyon-style chorus. Remember Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game?” Give it some twang and “Slipping Away” evokes its child moving through life sentiment. And it doesn’t get more country than songs like “Always Loved Cowboys,” the can’t-catch-a-break “Gone South,” or the girl who loves a poor boy “Dollar Store.” And, no, I don’t hear any Joy Williams in Arias’s voice. This band is exactly as it bills itself: country music crooned by Arias and solid guitar work from Stern. ★★★

Jordan Whitmore draws Carlile and Williams analogies. Also Sheryl Crow and Shawn Colvin. Strange given that Good Things is her 5^th record. I can only think that’s because her repertoire is hard to describe. “Something Different” is a country/rock blend that puts her desire for change upfront. I really like the slight catch in her voice on this one. “All My Might” is a spacey love song and there’s hint of Hawaiian guitar in “Changing Your Mind.” “Good Things” invokes a spare blues rock feel. Similarly, both “What If” and “I Wish You Would” feel like power ballads that stop short of crossing the line. Frankly, I don’t hear much of Crow, Williams, Colvin, or Carlile on Good Things. Whitmore has a nice voice, but it sometimes lacks clarity. Her songwriting, though sincere, veers too close to pop phrasing to stand out. It might be time to consider a shift in direction. ★★ ½

Short Cuts:

Joseph is a three-sisters band­–Allison, Meegan, and Natalie Closner (Schepman)–from Oregon. Their handle is that of the town in which they grew up. Good Luck Kid is their second full-length album–they also have an EP­–and it’s decidedly in the pop vein. The Closners attracted quite bit of buzz with their previous release and are actively promoting their new single “Fighter.” The title track is a bit grittier, but most of the tracks I sampled follow the same basic formula: basic electric guitar with lots of reverb and perhaps some percussion backing, but the songs are rooted in three-part harmonies. I liked their energy but their vocals are too chipmunk-like for my taste. ★★

Aviva Chernik sings songs from the Sephardic tradition and once fronted the band Jaffa. La Serena is her first post-Jaffa solo project, though Chernik is hardly alone on her debut. Justin Gray adds splashes of jazz and Indian music, and world music artists Maryem and Ernie Tollar also appear. The album also pays homage to 92-year-old Balkan Ladino artist Flory Jagoda. Chernik is like the album’s namesake siren, except she leads us to good places. Check out the meditative grooves of the title track; you will hear the jazz influences in that one. “Adon Olam” is a poem set to a Yemeni melody that starts slowly, begins to sway, and then settles into a liturgical space. “Kol Dodi” takes its lyrics from the Bible’s Song of Songs, which celebrates carnality. And, of course, there are songs from Ms. Jagoda. ★★★★    

Rob Weir

The Blackhouse: A Great Mystery from a Great Writer

The Blackhouse (2009 in UK/2012 in North America)

By Peter May

Quercus Books, 430 pages.

★★★★

Do you read mysteries for the thrill, or for their elegant prose? Why not have both? I have recently discovered/devoured the works of Scottish writer Peter May. The Blackhouse is the first book in his Isle of Lewis trilogy and it’s a juicy one. It should also be read first so that you get to know its main character Fin Macleod.

Sea stack off the coast of Orkney

Fin is a conflicted man. He is approaching the middle of middle age and is still haunted by a combination of tragedy and bad decisions the befell him: the early death of his parents; driving away the love of his life, Marsaili (“Marshally”); failing to prevent a sea stack catastrophe during a guga* roundup; and hastily marrying Mona, a dead relationship in more ways than one. Three of these events occurred on his native Lewis, which Fin fled to put distance between himself and his past.

Gray clouds followed Fin to the University of Glasgow, where he failed to matriculate, and on to Edinburgh, where his young man’s dreams mutated into a career with the polis—as Scots spell police–where he has risen in the detective ranks. Fin’s pretty good at his job, though he finds little joy in it. He’s one of those people who is more clear about what he doesn’t want than what he does. He sure as hell doesn’t want anything to do with Lewis.

This means that, of course, he will end up there. Fin worked on a grisly unsolved case in Edinburgh and now there’s one with the same MO (modus operandi) on Lewis–in his wee village of Crobost no less. His superior is having none of Fin’s excuses not to go; after all, how many native Gaelic speakers are there in a police force? Just 1.1% of Scots still speak it and–just Fin’s luck–many of them are on Lewis.

Fin isn’t exactly welcomed with open arms upon return. The local polis–with the exception of Detective Sergeant George Gunn–look upon him as a city slicker, their supervisors are offended that he’s there in the first place, and his old pals on the island regard him through lenses of suspicion, detachment, resentment, and barely disguised envy. To make matters worse, Fin once knew the murder victim, Angus Macritchie. He and just about every other male at the island school was once bullied by Angus. Adulthood did not improve Angus. Pretty much everyone on the island is a suspect. Can it get any worse? Yes. Marsaili is married to his old school mate, Artair, and they are living a quasi-bohemian life that feels “off” to Fin.

Peter May is a fine writer with a gift for evocative language that makes you imagine gunmetal gray clouds, the smell of peat smoke, and the starkness of the landscape. Years ago, when my wife and I were on the joined islands of Harris and Lewis, she remarked that much of the scenery looked as if the glaciers had just left the week before. It put us in mind of how Leon Uris once described Ireland: “a terrible beauty.” May’s Lewis is one whose very austerity makes it an uncomfortable mix of creeping modernity and lingering traditionalism, parochialism, and shopworn values. Fin is haunted by ghosts, but he’s not a godly man. May describes island religion thusly:

The Church of Scotland. The United Free Church of Scotland. The Free Church of Scotland (Continuing)–the wee Frees, as the free churches were universally known. Each one was a division of the one before. Each one a testimony to the inability of man to agree with man. Each one a rallying point for hatred and distrust of the other.

Blackhouse with grass now growing on roof

As you can infer from such a passage, Peter May murder mysteries are not just–or even primarily–about crime-solving. He uses the blackhouse as a metaphor for the tug of war between the present and the past. Some islanders still reside in (updated) crofter** cottages that were dubbed blackhouses because they had no chimneys–a section of the thatched roof was pushed aside so that smoke from the open-pit fireplace could escape. Much didn’t, hence the ceilings were covered in soot. Fin’s life is certainly stained with dark patches, but his is not the only one. The Blackhouse is about the things that never rub off, things that can be repaired, things that maybe can be repaired, and things that are irreparably broken.

May tells his tale in alternating chapters set in the present and the past. He paints a vivid picture of Fin’s childhood and youth and we get the message that, his protests notwithstanding, Fin is Lewis and Lewis is Fin. He professes a desire to leave, but also finds it a joy to converse in Gaelic, can’t shake his abiding attraction to Marsaili, and is coming to grips with how Lewis has deep hooks in him.

The Blackhouse is one of the best mysteries I’ve read in some time. I admired Fin as a flawed central character. The messiness of his private life and his inner doubts feel much more real than what one gets in detective novels in which the investigator possesses special insights that stagger his lessers. Fin often gets things wrong and on occasion he’s slow to add 2 + 2.

I also admired that May makes the Isle of Lewis a character in its own right, not through some hokey veiled personification tactic, but by putting hard people in the midst of a harsh landscape. I recommend that you read the book before you go to Google Images to see what Lewis looks like. My guess is that you’ll be surprised at how well your mental picture matches the real Macleod (as it were). 

The Blackhouse made me hunger to read the remaining books in the trilogy, so stay tuned. But, again, read this one first. The next two are continuations of what could cheekily be subtitled The Reeducation of Mr. Macleod.

Rob Weir

 

* Guga is the chick of a species of gannet. They are a delicacy for Western Isles peoples and are hunted on dangerous sea stacks that are often located miles out to sea. The guga hunt is likely a remnant from days when protein was scarce.

** A crofter is a small farmer (5-12 acres) engaging in subsistence mixed agriculture. In Scotland, many of the crofters were renters and thousands were evicted during the 18^th and 19^th century Highland Clearances when their lairds (lords) decided to graze sheep on croft lands.  

Dawson City Resurrects Silent Hollywood

Dawson City: Frozen Time  (2017)

Directed by Bill Morrison

Kino Lorber, 120 minutes, Not-rated.

★★★

What happens to a movie when its theater run is over? In our time it lives on in various other media and places: TV, Netflix, DVDs, YouTube, Redbox, film archives, libraries…. Movies are endlessly replicated, which is why the same film can open on a thousand screens the same weekend.

It was not always this way. In the early days of movies–especially the silent era–only a limited number of prints were made. Theaters had to wait their turn and hope that the print wasn’t damaged when it finally arrived. Or worse. Until the 1950s most movies were printed on highly flammable nitrate stock. Hundreds of early films disappeared because they went up in smoke. “Lucky” was defined as a nitrate fire that didn’t also take the projector and the theater with it. Hundreds (if not thousands) of films met an even less glorious end: They were simply tossed away.

This was especially true of the silent era. The Library of Congress reckons that as many as 90% of all silent films disappeared–more than 3,500 in all. It makes some sense. Movies were originally a novelty, technology was rudimentary, and filmmaking was not considered an art. This is to say that very few people were thinking about “film history.” When a “program” of silent movies–many were just a few minutes long–reached the end of the distribution line, very few studios cared what happened to them. For a time, Dawson City in the Canadian Yukon was a film’s last stop. Dawson City: Frozen Time tells the improbable story of how 533 previously lost films were unearthed from the permafrost in 1978, when the foundations of an old indoor swimming pool/hockey rink were excavated.

Have you heard of the Klondike Gold Rush? It’s the reason so many films were shipped to Dawson. Today Dawson has just 1,375 residents and there are fewer than 36,000 in the entire of the Yukon Territory. In 1896, gold was discovered in Bonanza Creek, near where it dumps into the Yukon River. Only a smattering of whites and members of the Tr’ocdëk Hwëch’in First Nations* people lived in the area at the time, but gold caused the town of Dawson to spring up overnight. Some 100,000 prospectors lit out for the Yukon, which was not easy to do in those days. (One took a boat to Skagway, Alaska, and then trudged the next 440 miles to Dawson. It would be decades before Dawson had air service.) By 1897, Dawson was temporarily home to more than 40,000 residents–mostly men and prostitutes.

Eric Hegg

Director Bill Morrison makes liberal use of Eric Hegg’s photos of the gold rush era and it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to conclude that most of those with gold fever were going to meet with disappointment (or worse). As the film puts it–in a text panel–several entrepreneurs figured out it was more profitable to “mine the miners.” Among them was one Fred Trump, whose gambling hall and house of ill repute was the basis of the family fortune. More respectably, movie houses also separated miners from their gold dust. 

As you might surmise, films had to travel the same rugged route to Dawson as the miners. Studios wanted rental fees wired to them, but they had no use for movies that played out their circuit. Hundreds of cannisters of film piled up in Dawson theater basements and wherever else storage could be secured: the library basement, for instance, or underneath the recreation hall. When there were too many films, some were ceremoniously burned for a cheap thrill and others were unceremoniously tossed into the Yukon River. None at all would have seen the light were it not for the few souls that set aside the cache discovered in 1978. That trove is a bonanza in its own right. We see snippets of various films, some of which are in bad shape and need painstaking restoration. It remains, though, a miracle that anything survived. These 533 films have written new chapters of the film history that few considered important in film’s infancy. 

In 1899, the Klondike gold fever subsided. Dawson shrunk as quickly as it grew–instant boom, instant backwater. Dawson City: Frozen Time has a great tale to tell, but its rewards demand patience. Morrison opts for a near-silent method of revelation: stills, silent movie clips, stock footage, and intertitles. On one level this echoes and honors the silent movies that are one of the film’s two major themes–Dawson City’s history is the other–but on the other, parts of the film are akin to opening random boxes found in an old attic. That is to say, the documentary is, at turns, exhilarating and prosaic. I admired Morrison’s moxie of making a (mostly) silent film about silent films, but I wondered if a more conventional documentary would have been more effective.

Still, if you are a film buff, Dawson City is a must-see. The flickering fragments of long-forgotten actors on the screen is a form of resurrection. These grainy, time-damaged images are both a window on the past and a lament for what remains lost. Who could have imagined that Hollywood’s past would be scavenged from the Yukon permafrost?

Rob Weir    

* Canada uses the term First Nations people as those in the US might use Native Americans. The Canadian term avoids many 'authenticity' debates and acknowledges the cultural multiplicity of pre-European contact peoples.

  

-->