The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Yeah, but this one still might be my favorite.

*

Clothes.  Have I talked about clothes in Wes Anderson's films?  In this one, for example, above and beyond their typical role in expressing Wes Anderson's timeless/mid-to-late-20th-century aesthetic by kaleidoscoping four or five decades into one, the clothes are meaningful.

They're obviously meaningful in one way.  The clothes the younger Tenenbaums-and-fellow-travelers wear are obvious indices to their warped characters.  Chas's gauche track suit indicates how thoroughly the death of his wife has thrown his life off track;  he's traded in the business suit he's worn since, virtually, birth for garb that expresses a perpetual state of alarm, of expecting the worst.  That it's the same uniform he dresses his kids in underscores his own forgone childhood, come back to bite him now.  Meanwhile Margot's ensembles, it's made clear, are the same ones (or unreasonably close facsimiles thereof) she was wearing at age 12, indicating that she's never grown up (the opposite of Chas, who never had a childhood - and therefore, in his own way, never grew out of one).  Richie's attire is the most absurd, wearing his tennis clothes under a horrible beige suit (the exact color all the boys in my church were wearing in 1980), unmistakeably indicating that he's stuck between life as a tennis player and life as an ordinary guy.  Eli's outfits are the funniest and most pathetic, of course;  he's the foppish urban cowboy tout court.

So, yeah, the clothes reflect character that way.  But let's not forget the other thing about them:  they're hideous.  The younger Tenenbaums, uniformly, have awful taste in clothes.  And this, I believe, isn't just an expression of directorial quirkiness.  Because look at how well Royal dresses.  He favors Lawrence Welk hues, but he rocks them.  He always looks fabulous.  And so does Etheline, in her Jackie O suits. 

So it's not just that the younger TAFTs lack clothes sense.  It's that, I think, they've intentionally abandoned clothes sense, or refused to acquire it, as a form of rebellion.  Their costumes individually reflect their individual damage, but also collectively reflect their collective damage.

Afro-Cuban All Stars at the Shedd, February 16

We're trying to see more live music this year.  So we saw the Afro-Cuban All Stars a couple of weeks ago.  If you know your Buena Vista Social Club (I don't, beyond the one record), you know (I didn't, until now) they're an ongoing project by Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, who seems to have done more to organize the BV project than Ry Cooder, while getting less international cred for it.  So it goes.

Anyway, we went knowing nothing about the cluster of records (beyond the one) that came out in that late-'90s moment of international credulity.  Which is just as well, because the current ACAS lineup has only one person in common with the earlier lineup, and that's de Marcos Gonzalez himself.  That lineup seems to have been Cuban musicians based in Cuba, unheard-of outside for decades;  the current lineup is mostly a lot younger, and seems to be Cuban emigré entirely.

We went with no knowledge, in other words, but high expectations.  And they were exceeded.  It's a magnificent group.  Praise especially for pianist Gabriel Hernandez, who played everything from the funkiest riffs to the most complicated classical fantasias, effortlessly and with great aplomb (not to mention a stage presence that combined Einstein and George Costanza).  And for singers Evelio Galan and Emilio Suárez, each of whom alternately seduced and testified in very different, yet equally irresistible ways.

But more than the individual soloists (and there were lots of satisfying solos all around), what got me was the tightness and intricacy of the band's ensemble playing.  It was a dance-music set, and a crowd ready for dancing, and de Marcos Gonzalez didn't have much trouble getting people up out of their seats.  But me - and I'll note right now that despite being very white and old and built for comfort not speed, I actually kinda don't hate to dance - I couldn't move.  I was so enthralled by watching the band that I went beyond feeling the rhythm.

I don't mean something too mystical by that.  Or maybe I do, but not like that.  I mean that I've always been more interested in music than lyrics, and more interested in music that's played than music that's assembled.  And especially as an adult, in middle age, as I settle into a career that's essentially all about solo production, that actually discourages too much collaboration, I'm more and more in awe of what it takes to play music in a band.  The unison, the interplay, the wordless communication.  When a line of three or four Latin percussionists locks in together, each playing a different pattern but all of it synching up perfectly, when a bassist and a pianist jump in and do things that are completely different yet completely complementary, when a four-horn section plays a series of riffs, each a variation on the last, each coming at just the right spot.  And when all this happens on a stage, with everybody facing a different direction, with mike stands and cords and spotlights obstructing every player's line of sight...

It's not magic.  It's a very real, very human achievement.  And that's the great mystery of it.  How is that done?  I'll never understand it.  But more and more, I'm in awe of it.

Oscar Shorts Animated 2013

One of the most enjoyable movie experiences Mrs. Sgt. T and I have ever had was catching the Oscar-nominated animated shorts for 2008 in an omnibus showing in Boston in early 2009, on a big screen.  So I don't know why we didn't get around to trying to do the same thing again until this year.  Probably just got busy.  Life, work.

But the Bijou was doing the current batch this weekend, and we happened to find out about it, so we went.  And again it was a great evening.  But this time around the crop of nominees seemed really dominated by a big-studio aesthetic.  Two were actually from big studios:  "The Longest Daycare" is a Simpsons thing, of course, and "Paperman" is the Mouse.  But even beyond that, "Adam and Dog" has a very Disney aesthetic, and "Head Over Heels," while not quite as mainstream in its look, is still pretty straightforward in its storytelling.  Only "Fresh Guacamole" has any of the wild visual experimentation that this genre is capable of fostering.

The best two were among the also-rans tacked on to make you feel like you'd gotten your money's worth.  "Abiogenesis" was a little anachronistically tech-y - Mrs. Sgt. T said it felt like the early days of CG when animators would make lots of robots because they could - but it also had the most imaginative visuals of any of the films;  it felt anachronistic in that way, too, like it had a sense of wonder that maybe we don't do much anymore.  And "Dripped" was brilliant:  a snappy little fantasy explanation for an enigma that shall remain nameless, lest the effect be spoiled.  Be surprised.

Dee Dee Bridgewater: Love And Peace A Tribute To Horace Silver (1995)

A totally different bag than the Billie Holiday album, although this one too is a tribute.  For one thing, this is from Bridgewater's French period, and is recorded with mostly French musicians, in France, for a French label (but sold in the States by Verve).  It's not at all acid jazz, but it has a bit of that delirious European mid-'90s hipness that United Future Organization, US3, and others had around that time.  Dig her blowing kisses on the cover:  it's a very flirtatious record.

For another, Bridgewater has different relationship with Silver than with Holiday.  Acc. to the wikipedia, her husband sang with Silver.  And Silver turns around and guests on two tracks on this record (Jimmy Smith does the same).  It's a much less reverent record, much less of a recital and much more of a jam.

It's also different that in this case she's not celebrating a vocalist, and therefore seeing what she can do differently, but singing songs written by an instrumentalist and primarily (exclusively?) known as instrumentals.  This gives her a lot more room to play, and in some ways maybe a little less impetus to present songs;  here she usually sounds like one of the band, and scats so much that you might even think her a horn.  And in spite of Silver's presence, she pretty much owns these songs, for the duration of this record at least.

Dig "Song For My Father," which she steals not only from Silver himself (that's him on piano) but from Messrs. Becker and Fagen.  Or "Filthy McNasty."  Her solo here is just pure champagne.

Rushmore (1998)

I once conceived the thesis that Wes Anderson's films were all secret adaptations of Salinger books.  I was thinking mainly of the Glass stories, but then again I always expected that when I finally got around to seeing Rushmore it would be Catcher in the Rye, in all but name. 

Late to the party again, I finally saw it, and of course it's not that.  Or at least, not just that.  There is a definite awareness, I think, of Holden Caulfield in Anderson's creation, but the divergences are as instructive as the convergences.

Like, the way the film begins, with Max yes-indeeding Herman's denunciation of the rich:  there's some Caulfield in there.  Until we realize that, unlike Holden, Max isn't a rich kid rebelling against the stultifying pressure of his own privilege, but a working-class kid who really has a right to feel that way.

I hesitate to proclaim that anything is something new;  I'm enough of a premodernist to know how rarely that claim is true.  But the particular dynamic that Anderson is delineating here feels fresh to me, feels like something unique.  That dynamic, as I see it, is this:  Max has had a lifelong fixation on the life of the private-school elite.  But not in any Talented Mr. Ripley sense - not because he's obsessed with wealth or privilege.  Not in so many words.  Rather, it's because all the absurdities of it fit him, spiritually, perfectly.  And he comes to feel he has a right to it simply because he can appreciate it, enjoy it, all so much more deeply than those who come by it naturally. 

It's not an exposé of a poseur.  It's not an excoriation of a climber.  What else is striking about it is how benign it is - for the most part.  The film has a satisfying undercurrent of unease, because we see that Max is capable of going too far in his obsession with Miss Cross, and we're always afraid he'll go far too far.  But in the end he's capable of self-reflection;  and more than that, he's capable of adjusting to being cast out of his own particular private-school Eden.  At the end we realize he'll probably be okay in public school.  The kid's alright.

Django Unchained (2012)

Finally saw this.  Before I say more about it, I should probably do what I didn't with Inglourious Basterds and make my (as they used to say in Academiaville) subject position clear.  Middle-aged straight Gentile white guy.  Born in the Southwest;  have some Southern roots, some non-Southern.  Not particularly close to any of them.

All of which means, for example, that I want to be a little circumspect as to what I say about certain aspects of this movie.  I'll own that I loved it, enjoyed every minute of it, and think it an important work by Mr. Tarantino.  But I'll recognize that, as with most of his work, it's not in every particular strictly defensible;  that he's the master of the guilty pleasure, the problematically aestheticized, and a craftsman to beat all, only goes so far in excusing whatever there is of the indefensible about him.  And (I'll recognize that) what's what will vary viewer to viewer.

For example, his use of the N-word.  I will say that anyone who's surprised by it probably hasn't familiarized themselves with Tarantino's work, which may (or may not) speak to their credibility in assessing that work.  I'll also suggest that Tarantino's deployment of the word in this film is not careless, even if it is perhaps reckless.  Note, for example, how he has Django deploy the language of racial oppression to and about white men:  Django understands that the master-slave relationship is well-nigh universal, and that inasmuch as the N-word and its cronies mean what they do because of their implication in that relationship, they may (under certain circumstances, and in the right light) accurately describe certain white men.  Coming from this character, that usage doesn't seem to me to devalue or belittle the specific horrors of African enslavement in America;  but they do connect those horrors to the human condition in general, and suggest that Django has learned some hard truths about human nature.  But I'll also note that it's possible for this aspect of the movie to be all that and still be offensive.  Sure.

Allow me now a couple of moments of fanboy appreciation of Tarantino's crafty art and artistic craftsmanship.  Every Tarantino joint plays with the trappings of old movie genres:  the fonts of the intertitles, the credits styles, theme music, all that.  Sometimes this stuff is just candy for us babies, but in this film it makes for one of the deepest moments in the whole movie.  When we cut to Mississippi he gives us a caption that tells us "Mississippi."  It's in all caps, tall narrow letters almost the whole height of the screen, scrolling across from right to left, and of course that's funny because it reminds you of what you discovered in first grade, which is that spelling "Mississippi" is fun and silly - you're remembering the old joke, "I know how to spell Mississippi, I just don't know how to stop spelling it."  You can't help but smile.  But this caption is superimposed over a shot of slaves for sale being paraded through the muddy streets of a town - in chains, walking in a futile circle, and we're looking down on them from above, and they're arranged in an oval that perfectly fills the screen.  It's a bravura composition, and then the horror hits you of how the endless circular trek of slavery is being mirrored to the endless repetitive spelling of the word.  It's funny and ingenious and horrifying and meaningful all at once.

And how about the fact that we're never shown the moment of Django's freeing - his titular unchaining - ?  That is, Dr. Schultz unchains him in the first scene, but makes it clear that he's going to keep Django in slavery until Django fulfills his end of a bargain - and of course what bargain can a slave make that a master must keep?  But we see that bargain fulfilled, and later we know Django has been freed, so we know that Schultz must have kept the bargain.  But we don't see the moment, the signing and exchange of papers, even though we spend a lot of time, and ink, and blood on the moment when Broomhilda is freed.  This can't be an oversight.  It forces us to ask the question:  when was Django unchained?  When did he become free?  When Schultz first unchains him - i.e., does Schultz's honorable intention to keep up his end of the bargain mean that Django is already free, because he's being treated like a man?  Does he become free once he accepts the bargain - note that Schultz calls him a freedman before the bargain is technically fulfilled - ?  Does he only really become free much later, after Schultz's death, when he outwits his Aussie jailers and engineers his own unchaining?  Or has he been free from the start, before the film ever found him, because he's free in his mind?

Like its predecessor, and the one before that (Death Proof, remember?), this film is the cinematic revenge of an oppressed people on their oppressors.  It's an act of transcendence through art.  But, like its predecessors, it was made by a filmmaker who has no right to that revenge himself.  So what does it mean that he made it? 

I don't know.

To Kill A Mockingbird (film, 1962)

Took a weekend sabbatical in Portland and caught To Kill A Mockingbird at the Northwest Film Center.  Actually at the Portland Art Museum, but organized by the NWFC.  And can I just say, one of the things I miss about living in a big city is repertory cinema?  We have art cinema in the 'Gene, but it's first-run, and I'm a premodernist in just about everything. 

I'm not sure I've ever quite understood what Boo Radley means.  The main part of the story, the Robinson case, is a perfectly economical and rational piece of social realism, neatly dissecting the class and race divisions in this small Alabama town.  We understand why Mayella does what she does, why her father does what he does, and more than that we know what they represent:  the grinding misery of poverty, ignorance, and self-delusion.  They're everything that's holding the South back, in the movie's analysis. 

What about Boo?  I've always thought he was an elaboration of the persecuted-outsider theme - the Finch kids needed to learn to be human not only toward people ostracized because of their race, but toward people ostracized because of mental difference.  And there is that.  In fact I was seeing that more clearly this time.  There's an interesting parallel suggested between Mayella, beaten, and beaten down, by exploitative and vindictive family, and Boo, who seems to be treated pretty much the same.  And so perhaps the fact that, against all evidence of rumor, Boo turns out to be good at heart, not like Mayella, represents the movie's hope for the South.  Maybe violence and hatred won't always beget violence and hatred;  maybe some of us can rise above. 

But it also strikes me that there's something less realistic, less rational, about the character of Boo Radley.  Partly that's because he's a deus ex machina, of course.  But note also how we first see him:  hiding behind the door in Jem's room, shrunk into a corner.  That's spooky enough, but also in the frame, very obviously, is a photo of Scout and Jem's late mother, on the mantelpiece.  We've never seen this or any photo of her yet in the film, but there she is, right next to Boo.  And it is Halloween.  Is Boo Radley the ghost of the kids' mother, hanging around to protect them?  Is this a Southern Gothic strain - well, of course it is, but is it a more Gothic strain of Southern Gothic than I knew?  If so, it's an interesting and effective balance for the slight heavyhandedness of the social realism in the rest of the movie.