Category Archives: film

Testament

By Posted in books, film, philosophy 3 Comments

More than forty years ago, my college mentor recommended Testament (1983) in one or another of the several classes and seminars I took with him. When I was home a couple of weekends later, my mother channel-surfed in lieu of conversation, and William Devane’s face flickered across the screen. “Can we watch this for a bit?”

It wasn’t a long movie, over in a quiet horror and a sob.

I remember it as my first genuine glimpse into the lives of adults, of families. (And this is, of course, the gift of good books, films, artworks, music, etc. — that they help us understand what is real and true in ways in which what is real and true has not yet done, perhaps cannot do.)

The film, which was brilliantly cast with gifted actors (Jane Alexander, Devane, a young Luke Haas) who actually look like a typical nuclear family in a California hamlet, opens twenty-four hours before a nuclear attack. In Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Emily cries out in Act III, “I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes too fast. We don’t have time to look at one another. I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed.” This not-looking, not-noticing is, of course, the essence of Testament‘s extended first act: that the father challenges the son to make the hill but pedals ahead, that the youngest would prefer to be a rat in the school production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin (a wish denied that serves as heartbreaking foreshadow), that the mother fails to awaken in time to exercise, that the husband and wife make love rather than continue a painful discussion, and so on. Piano practice. Breakfast. Clutter. School. Work. Answering machines. Unfinished projects. Unspoken fears. Unmet expectations. Pain and beauty, the extraordinary and the commonplace. Life. And no one really notices. The rhythms and grace notes that underscore everyday life grow too subtle, pass unmarked, end uncelebrated.

And then the world winks out, a few lights at a time. We can wish that we remember everything, and how we survived, the mother tells her son as the movie concludes.

But is being the last woman standing on the cusp of the end of the world what a little girl conjures when she dreams about growing up?

Watching Testament decades later, with my oldest child, later with his sisters, perceptive and sensitive filmgoers all, I was challenged — again — to examine the course and content of my life. If it were all over tomorrow, would today have been enough?

Literature or art or music or conversation that makes. us. think. (like Testament, for example) hurts, doesn’t it? It forces us to re-examine ourselves and our lives in ways that may… that will disappoint us. Reconciling who we are with who we thought we might be is hard, painful work.

Thinking about Testament nearly always reminds me of Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Last Night of the World.”

“We haven’t been too bad, have we?”

“No, nor enormously good. I suppose that’s the trouble — we haven’t been very much of anything except us, while a big part of the world was being lots of quite awful things.”

Rereading the story as if it were in conversation with Testament makes me wonder if Bradbury misstepped. While we must be something more than not too bad, I’m not certain that being ourselves is such an unworthy goal — being our best selves, that is, and by doing so inspiring in those we love and those we meet the desire to be, in turn, their best selves. So that even if a big part of the world is being lots of quite awful things, we are not allowing the everyday to pass unnoticed and uncelebrated.

Speaking of works in conversation, Testament is on my mind because I am about to reread The Road as part of a deep-dive into Cormac McCarthy’s work. When I watched the film adapted from McCarthy’s dystopian novel, I concluded that Testament is far and away the more emotionally wrenching film, perhaps because quiet horror is more insidious and thought-provoking than graphic depictions of man’s inhumanity to man, and because the beginning of the end of all things is infinitely sadder and more painful than the near-end of all things.

Don’t you agree?

The above was adapted from a post that first appeared on my previous site more than twenty years ago.

”Don’t make me use my stuff on you, baby.”

By Posted in family, film 4 Comments

Note: This entry is adapted from a piece that first appeared on my old site in November 2013.

One of my son’s favorite movies was Bubba Ho-Tep, a 2002 movie starring Bruce Campbell as an aging Elvis Presley. The film’s central conceit is that Presley, weary of soul-sucking celebrity, swaps identities with Elvis impersonator Sebastian Haff, who dies in 1977. An explosion erases the evidence of their arrangement before Elvis can reclaim his life, however, and an unfortunate accident sends him to a nursing home, where his claims that he is the King sound like the mutterings of, well, a crazy old man.

In poignant voice-overs, Elvis describes the wasteland that is old age in our society:

Where’d my youth go? Why didn’t fame hold off old age and death? Why the hell did I leave the fame in the first place and do I want it back, and could I have it back? And if I could, would it make any damned difference?

My son had pressed Shaun of the Dead on us before he began his one-man Bubba Ho-Tep publicity campaign. At the time, his father and I dismissed the zombie-comedy as “two hours we’ll never get back,” so my son’s recommendation currency was a little, shall we say, weak.

We held him off for many months.

But one summer night when his father was away on business and his sisters were in bed, my son and I decided to stay up late watching movies. I can’t remember what I picked, but I remember… “Will you watch Bubba Ho-Tep with me? Please? I know you’ll love it.” I didn’t think so. I didn’t want to. But I said, “Sure.”

With a dramatically resigned sigh.

Which he ignored.

We watched the film. Actually, I watched the film, and I also watched my son. Why was this was so important to him? Why he had invited me to — no, had all but insisted that I watch it with him?

It’s actually an interesting movie. Because it never settles on precisely what it is — drama? horror? comedy? social commentary? — it engaged me. Yes, it made me think. But not so much that I didn’t pay attention to my son.

It was 2007. Maybe 2008? So he was either seventeen or eighteen. A man.

And when the film ended, he was crying.

Just a bit. But I knew. And he knew I knew.

“What did you think? Wasn’t that great?” he asked, full of emotion.

I didn’t think it was great. But I did know that I had been given a great privilege. I had been admitted into my son’s heart. I had been permitted to see what moved him — two old men, dismissed as “worthless or sadly amusing,” dying to save their friends.

“I thought it was very touching. I think I understand why you love it so much.”

We were lucky, my son and I. We didn’t have much awkwardness between us. Because our family spent so much time together, each of us had time enough to make him- or herself clear. To say what needed to be said. To leave unsaid what was already understood. To sit in companionable silence.

That night, we sat in companionable silence, and then my son offered to make pretzels and cheese to snack on while we watched the movie I had chosen.

I don’t remember what movie that was, but I do remember how engrossed my son was in his selection. Bubba Ho-Tep meant something to him. And it meant something to him that I know it.

And I do.

Saturday morning

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Image captured on June 14 walk.

News of Alan Arkin’s death prompted me to set aside Patrick Radden Keefe’s excellent Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty yesterday and watch Glengarry Glen Ross (appreciation here) and Little Miss Sunshine. It had been a long time since I had last seen GGR, but LMS is one I have revisited; both, as they say, hold up. A friend recommended Arkin’s books for younger readers, so I read The Lemming Condition earlier this year (review here); I may pull the sequel from the shelf today.

It’s a gloomy, gray, humid morning here, the sort of morning during which one thinks about the many things one could do, then actually accomplishes little. I’d like to buck that trend. (Is anyone else chuckling?)

New books redux

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My book-buying binge has abated, now that I’ve exhausted my accumulated points, discounts, and account credits, etc., and only three or four titles remain on my wishlist (for now). 

Other news: After a day of nearly fifty degrees and abundant sunshine, we have returned to below-twenty on our walks. This is an observation, not a complaint, as I much prefer to run cold than run hot.

And yesterday I squandered nearly two hours on a film in which the leads had no chemistry, and the plot had more holes than the mesh bags in which I wash my favorite sweaters. It was a romantic comedy sans love and humor. But, gosh, isn’t Jennifer Lopez something? Still, the time could have been better spent watching any of the items on my watch list (e.g., Flee, The House, Season 4 of Ozark) — or, perhaps better still, practicing my music or reading.

In which another week passes

By Posted in books, commonplace book, family, film 3 Comments

Musicians at the Bristol Renaissance Faire.

We were able to tuck a ten-mile bike ride into each weekend morning, which is such a refreshing way to open a day. With neither plays nor museums on our calendar, we decided to visit the Bristol Renaissance Faire after yesterday’s ride. Because I skipped last year’s trip, I relished stops at favorite vendors like Seventh Sojourn, where I stocked up on scented soaps.

Today after our ride and a little yard work, my daughters headed out for lunch and a hike with a university friend, my husband settled in for a long study session, and I attended to some paperwork, banking, and writing. We still hope to wring a game or two and a family film out of the weekend before it concludes. We’ll see; we’ll see.

Speaking of seeing, I have finally shared the Lord of the Rings movies with my daughters. One thing and then another always kept us from getting around to the films, which may not have been such a bad thing. Apart from Andy Serkis’ brilliant portrayal of Gollum, the trilogy doesn’t really hold up for me, and they weren’t particularly impressed, either. This is heresy, I know, but it all felt so… abrupt and amateurish. In short, the books were better. (But not much.) And speaking of not holding up, while in the dentist’s chair (again!) mid-week, I heard Steve Perry earnestly crooning, “And here, I stand, with o, pen arms…” and thought, not for the first time, Oh, dear! This just does not hold up. So I texted my boyfriend of thirty-five years, husband of thirty-one:

They’re playing “Open Arms” at the dentist.
Our song doesn’t hold up.
LOL.
But I love you anyway.
So eighties. So la, la la, la la, la laaaa.
Guess you can’t dance to NPR, though. [“Open Arms” was our first dance at our wedding reception.]

To which he sagely replied:

Can’t dance to anything.

In reading news… Today begins Week 5 in my quest to read War and Peace in seventeen weeks. Here are my Week Four commonplace book entries:

p. 448
There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer was: ‘You’ll die and all will end. You’ll die and know all, or cease asking.’ But dying was also dreadful.

p. 451
Your view of life is a regrettable delusion.

I continue to progress in the “Shakespeare in a Year” project, too, making adjustments that suit my interests and scheduling needs. For example, I have read one hundred of the Sonnets and Don Patterson’s related commentary, which is a bit ahead of the plan, but I will read As You Like It this week, which is a tiny bit behind schedule.

In other reading, I finished Chang-Rae Lee’s On Such a Full Sea last night. As others have pointed out, the first-person plural viewpoint contributes to the mythic quality of the narrative, but it also obscures the protagonist a bit, which may frustrate some readers. That said, I think others who share my enthusiasm for Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel) will appreciate this beautifully written novel.

p. 215
It’s our common character on display, which is why we invest so much of ourselves — often totally beyond reason — in particular figures and performers, both fictive and of flesh. And when that display is unsettling or notorious, we can collectively wring our hands and wail and then try to assuage the disquiet in our hearts by more coolly interrogating its antecedents, the conditions and causes of its expression, and debate about how we might curb a future recurrence, none of this cynically posed but subtly servicing the final hopeful notion that This Is Not We.

p. 219
But if we calm ourselves and open our eyes and step back far enough, we have to admit that our society, if not fundamentally unwell, has been profoundly wounded.

Joyce Carol Oates’ recent short fiction collection, Dis Mem Ber, was on the porch when I returned from the Faire last night. I couldn’t help myself: I read four of the seven stories before setting it down to finish On Such a Full Sea. Quick, quintessential JCO, particularly the title story. I plan to finish tonight.

Ebertfest

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The Virginia Theatre, as seen from our hotel room.

Filmgoers began lining up before 9 a.m. on Friday. We planned to join our daughters for a late breakfast before heading to the festival, but for a tiny moment, I wondered if I should make camp outside the Virginia Theatre. In the end, we joined the line at 11:40 a.m. and had located terrific seats by 12:10 p.m. No camping required!

Anecdote: On March 30, I followed a link from the University’s site to the official Ebertfest site and scrolled through the films. The documentary immediately attracted my interest, but then… I couldn’t believe my eyes! Sheila O’Malley’s short film July and Half of August was scheduled to be screened just before They Call Us Monsters. What synchronicity, eh? (I recently republished my post about seeing the reading of her play in Chicago.) With her powerful short still on my mind, I send prayers to the film gods that it has attracted the sort of attention that will result in feature-length treatment. More people need to meet Neve. Two enthusiastic thumbs up!

Ben Lear’s documentary weaves the debate surrounding a California State bill concerning whether juveniles should be tried as adults with the story of three juvenile offenders enrolled in a script-writing class while awaiting their sentences. Thumbs up!