Never trust anyone under thirty

Viewer and screen in Bergman's Wild Strawberries.

Perhaps the only thing more depressing than the concurrent deaths of Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni has been the critical reaction to their passing. Of course by-rote praises were published for their achievements; but there was also a wheedling insistence that they were no longer relevant. In a rambling, unfocused essay in the New York Times, A.O. Scott opined that "the cultural climate that made it possible to hail filmmakers as supreme artists has vanished for good," but he didn't seem to think that was such a bad thing, musing that "The institutions that keep art alive do so at the risk of embalming it." (And I suppose the institutions that embalm art also do so at the risk of keeping it alive!) More tellingly, in an unguarded moment of self-revelation, Scott admitted, "For generations that were not part of the great cinephile vanguard of the ’50s and ’60s, for those of us who grew up in the drab age in between the flourishing of the art houses and the rise of the Criterion Collection, the masterworks of modern cinema had lost their novelty." Ah. So it was novelty that drove Bergman's and Antonioni's reputations - a novelty which inevitably wore off. Even Lionel Trilling, apparently, would concur: "“Time has the effect of seeming to quiet the work of art,” Mr. Trilling observed, “domesticating it and making it into a classic, which is often another way of saying that it is an object of merely habitual regard."

Ugh. Why, oh why, does every middlebrow hack trying to elevate his discourse quote Trilling (at left)?? Perhaps it's because criticism is much, much more likely than art to be 'domesticated' by habitual regard into a cultural commodity. (Still, the poor guy must have spun in his grave so many times by now that he feels like an unassimilated dreidl!)

No doubt Lionel - and Tony - got bored by the classics in the classroom; how could they not? The dimming of their power at the lectern, however, has no connection to their longterm purchase on the soul (as long as it exists, that is). In short, classic status is only a liability to the critic/academic, not to the work itself (as the steady sales of so many classics attest). Of course Tony does hint at this problem, although he can't quite say it aloud: "More than that, the idea that a difficult work had special value — that being challenged was a distinct form of pleasure — enjoyed a prestige, at the time, that is almost unimaginable today. We would rather be teased than troubled, and the measure of artistic sophistication is cleverness rather than seriousness." This is a bit like being sung to sleep by someone who thinks you're already dead, isn't it? But never mind.

In the Boston Globe, (reprinted here) meanwhile, Ty Burr was crooning a similiar tune, if a bit more bluntly: "[After their deaths]The two filmmakers almost seemed relevant again. In truth, they're anything but." At first it's hard to imagine what Burr might mean: they're still relevant to me, for example - but then perhaps the point is that I'm not relevant, because (and I admit it's true) I'm old:

. . . as I put together the Globe obituary . . . one of our department interns — a 20-year-old student who knows her pop history better than most — admitted she had never actually seen any of his movies. After a pause, she confessed she had always confused Ingmar Bergman with Ingrid Bergman, and what did he actually do? The next day was worse: She hadn't heard of Antonioni at all.

Ingrid, Ingmar . . . let's call the whole thing off! And as for Michelangelo Antonispumoni, didn't he paint the Sixteenth Chapel? Gosh, you'd think maybe an arts department intern who'd never heard of either might be fired on the spot, but you'd have thought wrong! Of course not - as Burr assures us, "her only crime is youth" (umm, and ignorance, right?) - and after all, "today's artistic rebel is tomorrow's old fart."


Image as object in Blow-up.

Uh-huh. Never mind about young farts, I suppose. The trouble is, though, that it's hard to see either Bergman or Antonioni as "rebels" - indeed, parsing them in that way already does obeisance to a pop mindset they were generally opposed to (even in Blow-Up and Zabriskie Point, Antonioni deploys his pop soundtrack with a deadpan distance) - and robs them of their true significance. (And needless to say, once you've set up their reputations this way, it's oh so much easier to knock them down.) Essentially, they operated outside the boomer/Woodstock consensus that spawned A.O. Scott and Ty Burr. They had their social concerns, true, and both offered withering critiques of modern life, but what was essential to them was their internality; without a sensitivity to this, their movies can, indeed, seem at times like so much meandering pretentiousness. Of course perhaps that very internality has vanished in the audience - Burr gets closer to saying this outright than Scott does when he ventures that "The ironic detachment that the great post-war directors saw as a symptom of malaise has become the primary way of doing business." Indeed it has, Ty: what Bergman and Antoinioni were warning us we were becoming, our children have indeed become. But saying so might ruffle a few feathers out in Wellesley and Cohasset, mightn't it?

What's perhaps most horrifying about Burr's article is his quick sketch of what "an attuned young moviegoer should attend to": "a new Wes Anderson coming out in the fall and bleeding-edge videos to watch on YouTube, and that Irish rock musical you still haven't seen, not to mention the Korean horror flick — and wait, they've re-edited "Grindhouse" as two separate films for DVD."


Existential questions doggy style in Grindhouse.

Trust me, little intern - you can skip ALL that shit - Grindhouse, The Darjeeling Limited, The Host/D-Games, Once - none of them are really worth your time. In the same 12 hours or so (depending on how much sludge they've packed into Grindhouse 1 & 2), you can see The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Persona, Shame, and L'eclisse, Blow-up, and The Passenger. OR, you can check out the later work of Bergman and Antonioni's true heirs - perhaps Blue or Red, or part of The Decalogue by Kieslowski (whose grave is at left - note the hands framing a shot at the top of the headstone); then you could move on to The Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami); Cure (Kyoshi Kurosawa); and Funny Games (Michael Haneke), or even Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón). You may not have a soul now, but even today, with a little time and effort, you can still get one at the movies.

What to do with the Wang?

Surely the Wang (above) is the least aptly named of Boston's theatres - indeed, to quote Jon Stewart, it most closely resembles "the inside of Marie Antoinette's vagina" - as in it's plushly, vulgarly fabulous; not only gi-normous, but brimful of biomorphic French curves and recesses, encrusted with gilt, and garishly painted with tacky Max Parrish rip-offs. But it's also waaay too big (3600 seats) for most arts events, and its acoustics leave oh-so-much to be desired. In short, it's a beloved red-velvet elephant that folks just don't want to admit is of little practical use.

Said pachyderm, of course, is not only the centerpiece of the newly-named CitiCenter, but also the centerpiece these days of a tasty scandal: even as CitiCenter cut back its summer Shakespeare (which had become, once the Wang had kicked out "The Nutcracker," its major contribution to the city's cultural life), it was revealed by the Boston Globe that its President, Josiah Spaulding, Jr., had pocketed a $1.265 million retention bonus on top of his $409,000 salary. Spaulding had already come under the Globe's scrutiny for a compensation package that was out-of-whack with the scope of his arts programming, but Board members had explained that quality, not size, was what mattered at the Wang (sorry, I just had to).

Now, perhaps Spaulding's pay day was not "obscene" (as some bloggers would have it) - at least not by the standards of a Republican scion - but still, it's hilariously out of line with the organization's $6.3 million budget and shrinking level of activity (recently the Wang has only been open 1/3 of the year). The Globe's attendant revelations - that Spaulding hired his wife to do website work, and that two Trustees were likewise on the payroll - only re-inforced the sense of a crew of insiders with their hands in the till as the Center's arts programming collapsed around them.

Now the Globe has called for Spaulding's dismissal - which is probably a good idea (although there's not much that can be done about that Board); but this alone is hardly a solution to Boston's "Wang problem": nobody still has much of any idea to do with that oversized piece of Marie Antoinette (below).

And neither do I, really, although as I ponder the problem, a few thoughts keep recurring:

- The Wang is generally inappropriate to dramatic theatre; its future probably lies with dance (Boston Ballet remains a tenant, despite the indignity of having to stage "The Nutcracker" elsewhere), touring musical extravaganzas, and such pop attractions as Michael Bublé. Said attractions will probably require upgrades such as (removable?) video screens for the upper balconies, and an improved sound system (better ideas, I think, than the recently-mentioned video screens on Boston Common).

- Cutbacks at Celebrity Series have endangered their tradition of bringing in major dance companies other than Alvin Ailey; isn't there some way these two organizations can pool or drum up resources to bring more world-class dance to the Hub?

- The brief appearance of North Shore Music Theatre at the Schubert after the fire in their pit seemed to be a big success; is there a possibility of an on-going partnership there, too?

- Why, exactly, is Boston's summer Shakespeare tied to the Wang's budget? Can't this be funded (and organized) separately?

- How does the Cutler Majestic do it? Sure, the house is smaller, and sometimes the offerings are a bit tatty (Teatro Lirico, or Steve Connolly, anyone?), but at the same time, the joint is always jumpin.'

Clearly, it seems, not just the firing of Spaulding, but a thorough re-organization of the "city center" is in order. But whatever happens, certain new realities of the Boston arts scene have to penetrate the thick skulls of local Board members:

- Boston's Theatre District is now the South End, and city dwellers either go there for theatre, or to the Huntington or the ART;

- The touring-Broadway-show business model is no longer viable for the Wang (it can hardly sustain the Colonial and the Opera House);

And finally:

- Not only greater transparency, but greater integration with, and support of, other arts organizations is required for the Wang to survive.

Ah - how I do love generic suggestions! The devil, of course, is always in the details. And I, for one, hardly minded seeing the Commonwealth Shakespeare season reduced - I actually thought of it as kind of a blessing in disguise. Still, it seems obvious now that the Wang is in serious decline (if only because these unsavory details have begun to slip out); reversing that trend should certainly be a civic priority.

Jesus camp

Some have taken issue with my roasting of the Globe's hapless reviewer, Katie Johnston Chase, for her gormless review of "Jesus: The Guantanamo Years," (starring Abie Philbin Bowman, at left) when I hadn't even seen the show. My points in that article, however, were essentially independent of the show's particulars; they were, instead, a pointed critique of the Globe arts pages' spineless pop mindset.

Now, however, I've seen Bowman for myself - and needless to say, Chase looks worse than ever. Not only does she come off as an apolitical wuss, she even gets the performance wrong. Of course, Chase wasn't alone - one of the few Boston reviewers (so far) to take on the show, she was pretty much in line with this vapid (and unsigned) Metro take:

The problem . . . is that once Jesus enters Guantanamo Bay he gets lost and a preachy 26-year-old Dubliner filled with political idealism and a hefty dose of anti-American sentiment takes over . . . Seasoned comics have only recently begun to broach the subject of 9/11 and even then it’s done very carefully. But a still-wet-behind-the-ears idealist dressed as Jesus Christ preaching that Christians should just “turn the other cheek” might still be a bit much to handle, especially if it’s being billed as comedy . . .

Sigh. As with Chase, the Metro reviewer simply abandons Bowman's performance and themes - indeed distorts them - to obediently whip up the propaganda he/she believes some imaginary audience/editor wants to hear. It's too bad these two weren't around to do PR for Leni Riefenstahl - they would have rocked!

For believe it or not, the actual problem with Jesus: The Guantanamo Years is that (wait for it) - it's actually not enough of a lecture. We deserve a severe drubbing for tolerating the ongoing horror of not just Guantanamo but a whole Gulag of "black sites" in which we've been relentlessly torturing innocent people for years. Yes, before you say it, I know there are probably some real life terrrists in thar, too! But does that justify our torture of the innocent? Uh - no, "patriots," it does not. Grow a pair, would you, all you "Amurrican" cowards - we should not be shredding our Constitution, or playing the Ralph Fiennes role in Schindler's List, because we're afraid somebody might blow up a mall. Remember that part about dying to protect our liberty and the American way? Well that means sticking to our principles even after 9/11.

So given the grim low to which America has sunk, the sweet-but-feckless Abie Philbin Bowman's Jesus seems pretty lacking in the moral authority needed to get us back on track. This Jesus never would have attacked the money-changers in the temple, much less managed any coolly ironic dialogue with Pontius Pilate (or Dick Cheney); no, this Jesus is a sheepish, collegiate singer/songwriter, complete with guitar and encyclopedic knowledge of Monty Python and The Life of Brian. He is, certainly, quite funny; and his sense of the insanity of the American "War on Terror" (and indeed the ridiculousness of "Christian" political positions in general) is witty and targeted more tightly than a heat-seeking missile.

Still, once Jesus is incarcerated in Guantanamo (after all, he's a religious martyr who came out of a cave in Palestine - what did he expect?), Bowman does lose his way - but he doesn't wander off into a lecture. Instead, he treads water, trying not to alienate us as he attempts to cajole us into facing our collective evil. He still gets his laughs, but the performance meanders - it feels as if it's still in development, not in its second coming - and Jesus himself goes through no inner transformation. After all, there should be a motherlode of material here, as Jesus senses that, unlike the Romans, we have no interest in actually finishing him off. Likewise, you'd think that at this juncture - after being waterboarded, say, or being led around on a leash - Jesus might begin pondering the problem of evil, and whether his unassuming reasonableness has a chance against the vicious incompetence of the Bush administration, which is determined to not give him a chance at resurrection, but instead is bent on making him simply disappear (which, of course, is being done in his own name, a rather neat irony). Bowman likewise never delves into the nature of the other evil in Guantanamo - the real terrorists who no doubt are actually there (or are being created by our actions - does Jesus have no ministry to them?); but come to think of it, the original Jesus didn't really look into that, either.

Bowman has one great moment, when he echoes Matthew 27:46: "My God, my God - why have you forsaken me - again?" - and he devotes a few powerful minutes to explaining that "turning the other cheek" is no wimpy cop-out but rather a powerful form of engagement. But these moments soon pass, and we're back to the friendly shrugs and the pleading, fuzzy-wuzzy tone. True, "pushing the envelope" would no doubt lead to walk-outs - but then it might also have led to some genuine soul-searching, and perhaps even political transformation on the part of some (if not Katie Johnston Chase). And isn't that would Jesus would do?

What lies beneath

Believe it or not, a new van Gogh has just come to light (or at least to x-rays) - "Wild Vegetation." Trouble is, it's beneath an already-existing van Gogh, "The Ravine," at Boston's MFA - Vincent just painted right over "Wild" to produce the new work. Curators can make out the painting from an x-ray of the canvas, however (at left, "The Ravine," top, and "Wild Vegetation," via x-ray, below). The painting was identified when similaritiesn were noticed between the x-ray and an extant drawing at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum. But will we ever be able to enjoy "Wild Vegetation" in all its glory? Probably not - but its existence will no doubt continue to haunt the acid blues of "The Ravine" forever.

It came from where the sun don't shine

Cillian Murphy and Chris Evans in Danny Boyle's Sunshine.

Now I've never see The Beach, Danny Boyle's notorious career-killer which shot down Leonardo DiCaprio's star for a few years - but I always wondered, really, given this director's career highs (Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, 28 Days Later), how low could he go? Sitting through (most of) Sunshine, however, gave me some idea - particularly given this jitterily turgid piece of sci-fi tripe still rates 72% fresh on rottentomatoes.com - while The Beach scores a Bush-level 19%.

The mind boggles - could any movie be that much worse than Sunshine, a kind of Frankenstein's monster cynically stitched together from picturesque bits of SF classics? I have to give Boyle high marks, at least, for the speed with which he baits and switches - we get the space-garden from Silent Running, the airlock stunt from 2001, the monster-picking-off-the-crew gambit from Alien, the ghost ship of Event Horizon (the one movie in this bunch that Sunshine is better than), and the dreamy, going-mental-metaphysics of Solaris all in quick succession, with little attempt at any hook to the film's putative plot, which has something to do with honey-dipping the sun with a nu-cu-lar bomb. There are recurring nods to Boyle's recurring mood of doomy, smack-addict hunger/dread; the sun seems to represent the ultimate junkie orgasm, toward which everything must converge - a burning, squirming eye-of-God with looks that literally kill (see above).

Still, the plagiarism of Sunshine has at least dug up some interesting factoids about one of its sources - the famous airlock sequence in 2001, in which Dave faces a vacuum sans space helmet to defeat the nefarious HAL. Kubrick geeks - and geeks in general - have long debated the actual odds of Dave's survival (in the movie, of course, he makes it, and HAL is soon a memory board sans memory). They've also debated how, exactly, one might die from exposure to a vacuum - would the sudden drop in external pressure make your body fluids boil right out of you? Would you explode? Or would you freeze? Or would you suffocate before freezing or exploding?


Keir Dullea in the airlock sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Well, it turns out we do have a little data on this particular burning-vs.-freezing schoolyard debate. During a 1965 accident at NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center, a test subject's space suit tore open while in a vacuum chamber, and he was exposed to pressures lower than 1 psi (not quiiiite a vacuum, but close enough for government work). The subject did not, thank God, explode, but lost consciousness after 14 seconds - the chamber began re-pressurizing one second later, and he shortly revived. The subject did not sustain any long-term injury - although he reported that his last memory was of saliva sizzling off his tongue (the beginning of that bodily-fluid boil due to low pressure).

So, you wouldn't explode (at least not right away) - but then that test subject wasn't exposed to the bottom-of-the-barrel Kelvin temperatures Dave would have encountered in space. But interestingly, that kind of cold won't kill you for at least a minute or two (your skin is actually that good an insulator). So 2001 basically gets it right - especially since Dave repressurizes the airlock after just 12 seconds (yes, I timed it). The one flaw in the movie is that Dave seems to hold his breath just before blowing open the hatch (which then, conveniently, seems to disappear). That's a no-no; remember this next time you're facing a vacuum - the sudden expansion of "held breath" would rupture your lung tissue. Given that you're not holding your breath, how long could you hope to survive in space? Experts guess at least half a minute. Of course, if you're a character in Sunshine, and you've just torn your gold lamé, Liberace-as-samurai space suit (above left), you may hope the end is quicker.

Ah, gay Pareee . . .

Maybe I'm just still in the mood to celebrate the male body beautiful, but I've also been meaning for a long time to post this image from C'est So Paris, a French tourism site that's promoting several World Cup rugby matches, including the final at the Stade de France.

Why, and how, did the French - or at least French rugby players - get so cool with their sexuality? God knows, but thank heaven for rugby players - or at least Sean Lamont (who's Scottish), at right.

The most fun you'll ever have at the A.R.T.

Will Lebow, Karen MacDonald, Tommy Derrah and Remo Airaldi in A Marvelous Party.

I went to "A Marvelous Party"
with Remo, Tom, Karen and Will
It was at Zero Ar
And they were all there
Only this time they weren't
in Hell.

At times they would be singing solo,
At others, together, all four;
And if now and then a note got a bit thin
It just didn't matter amid all the laughter -

I couldn't have liked it more!

Ah, I wish I could go on and on and like that - certainly Noël Coward made it look easy in the tunes he turned out like clockwork over the course of his life's work. A Marvelous Party essentially skims la crème of said career, and reminds us of Coward's consummate ability as a posh vaudevillian. He didn't just have "a talent to amuse," which he ruefully admitted was his one claim to fame; he had an obsession to amuse: the list of Coward "entertainments" is a very long one, most of them coasting not on his melodic gift (which was modest) but instead on his wit (which was promethean). And the A.R.T. production, helmed by the smoothly competent Scott Edmiston, captures this wit superbly, and with neither apology nor condescension (much less any hidden attempts at deconstruction).

It's also nice that (unlike in the Huntington's Present Laughter), Coward is allowed to peek out of the closet; Edmiston gives "If Love Were All," Coward's most poignant paean to his frustrated love life, to Tommy Derrah, who turns it into a painfully straightforward gay lament:

I believe
the more you love a man -
the more you give your trust -
the more you're bound to lose . . .

So much for gay pride! True, Edmiston also gives "Mad About the Boy" to Karen MacDonald - when it, too, would be more compelling from a man - but MacDonald's smoldering neurosis makes you almost believe a heterosexual can match a homosexual in passion (well, almost). Alas, MacDonald can't match the level of cabaret singing we've come to expect from Boston's smaller theatres (imagine what Leigh Barrett could do with that song), but her occasional vocal wobbles - like those of most of the cast - are less due to limits in range than a gap in practiced control. In short, this crew can carry a tune at least as far as Coward requires (Derrah, the most accomplished vocalist, also handles Coward's most memorable melody, the conventionally sentimental "Matelot").

Key to these non-singers' success, however, is Coward's lyrical signature: a kind of free-form limerick, which he could stretch or shrink to his requirements with a rippling flourish - and these A.R.T. vets are more than crack at snapping that tongue-tripping whip in such hilarious trifles as "Why Do the Wrong People Travel?," (Don't Put Your Daughter on the Stage,) Mrs. Worthington," ""Mad Dogs and Englishmen," and my particular favorite, “A Bar on the Piccola Marina.” Special mention must also be made of Remo Airaldi's hilarious take on "Nina (from Argentina)" while possessed by the ghost of - or at least the fruity headgear of - Carmen Miranda (at left). The evening reaches a giddy high with Coward's bitchy update of Porter's "Let's Do It" (lifted from his famous Vegas act), which the performers hilariously extend to the present day, and our current First Family.

The giddiness fades, of course, as we shuffle out and ponder that this is probably the last good time we'll have at the A.R.T. for months, if not years. But does it really have to be that way? The show definitely has a "second-tier" feel - it's riding a wave of local Coward productions, the set is re-purposed (from "The Onion Cellar" - it works about as well for Vegas as it did for Weimar), and Scott Edmiston is neither from Eastern Europe nor New York. And let's not forget that it's utterly, sublimely conventional, and reminds us in no uncertain terms that Coward was a cockney who through talent and hard work transformed himself into a sleek, closeted Tory. But will it penetrate management's postmodern skulls that it's nevertheless a huge hit, and that their subscribers, relieved of the responsibility to revolt, are relaxing instead, and enjoying themselves in a way they never have before - as in ever? Probably not. And more's the pity. It reminds me of an odd conversation I once had with Robert Woodruff, who wondered aloud why it was that gays and minorities didn't flock to the A.R.T. "Because your shows are no fun," I told him simply. And they still aren't - except this one time (and you've only got one weekend left to take advantage of the opportunity!). So, in celebration of the appearance at the A.R.T. of the one thing that money can't buy, here's my final attempt - I promise - at a Noël Coward lyric:

I went to a marvelous party
held by the post-modern A.R.T.;
With no platform shoes or onstage lagoons
and no gravel at all on the floor!
No jocks or kimonos? Quick, call Yoko Ono!
They're not avant-garde anymore!
(And I couldn't have liked it more!)