Sunday, March 17, 2013

Searching for Sugarman



A singer named Rodriguez, whose first album was called Cold Fact, is the subject of this documentary. Yet cold facts are in short supply in this movie, and once I stopped asking questions to myself like a probing journalist, and just went along with the living portrait that was laid out before me, my mind began to rest and accept the movie for what it is.

Rodriguez is a singer whose talent and songwriting were described in the early 1970s on a par with Dylan. However, he had a Latin name, and his records did not sell well. He stopped recording and vanished from the scene. Stories were told of his suicide. Years later, the albums resurfaced in South Africa at the height of the anti-apartheid movement. Rodriguez's lyrics about liberation and freedom became a rallying cry for whites fed up with the apartheid regime's repression. Many South Africans bought Rodriguez music which was described as the soundtrack to their lives. A generation of protesters loved Rodriguez. In the late 1990s, a record seller decided to explore whatever happened to him.

Here is where the movie begins to deepen the legend of the singer. A resurrection of sorts takes place in the movie during several crowded concerts in South Africa. At this point, we become acquainted with Rodriguez's three lovely daughters who have taken after their father in saintliness and humility and grace.

Rodriguez accepted his bad luck, and continued to work manual jobs (There is no shame in hard work he says humbly). He earned his degree in philosophy, while running for mayor of Detroit. All the while he has been living in the same rundown house in Detroit, his heat provided by a wood stove. The filmmaker is fond of shooting the musician as he walks on the cracked sidewalks of Detroit caked with unshoveled snow.

There are stylized cartoon images of the singer and his daughters as they arrived triumphantly in South Africa. The filmmaker's-- Malik Bendjelloul-- approach reminded me of the line from the John Ford film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "When fact becomes legend, print the legend." It doesn't mean that Malik has deliberately obscured a harder truth, but after a while the questions keep coming. Why didn't the artist get paid for his work? Who is managing his career now? Who were the mothers of his children? Why did he not pursue his career after the comeback concerts in 1998?

The movie provides a short focused account to satisfy the two South Africans who set out to discover what happened to Rodriguez. In the process of watching the movie, many more people, (I assume not just me) would like to know what happened after the concerts in South Africa.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

The feeling we have as children, because we don't know any better, is that we have power over other people.  When I was in sixth grade, I hated my teacher and wished that she was dead.  Then she died.  I felt bad at first, then relieved.  Later, when I grew up and graduated from college, I realized that her double pneumonia had nothing to do with me, just her bad lungs in the drafty convent where she lived. In the meantime, though, I thought I might have been responsible.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower tells the story of a boy who thinks that he had power over an adult in his life and that as a result something bad happened.   But that is not really what the movie is about.  The boy named Charlie has a bit of baggage besides that, and has just started high school.  He is vulnerable.  He is alone.  Then he meets some older people who lead him to a better place.

Logan Lerman is very good as Charlie.  Paul Rudd looks great as the sympathetic teacher.  Why can't he play the responsible adult more often?  He is capable of subtlety and is so often used in throwaway buddy pictures.  Emma Watson speaks with not a trace of a British accent in this Pennsylvania based movie.  But the breakthrough part goes to Patrick played by Ezra Miller.  Homophobia is alive and well in this movie, and Patrick is a hero.

Besides the fact that I liked this movie because it reminded me of my guilty pleasure of killing my teacher, I liked this movie because my friend Peter Agliata did the camera work, and it is a well shot movie, especially the scenes in the tunnels, and the feeling we get of the Catholics in church -- all that guilt! There is also a scene where Charlie goes to the cafeteria and tries to sit down with an acquaintance of his who informs him that he can't sit with her. He is forced to get up and relocate to a different table like a leper. He is photographed awkwardly trying to balance his tray and his backpack, then sitting at a big table by himself. The camera moves away to show how isolated and alone he is. This is a classic sequence of high school life.


Saturday, March 16, 2013

Kings Point (documentary)

Produced and directed by Sari Gilman
2012.  31 minutes.  HBO

Kings Point, a short documentary on HBO, introduces us to several residents of a retirement community in Florida.  We hear them describe their wishes for companionship, their reasons for leaving NYC in the 1970s for the better climate, the attractions of the location, the common desire for a better life.

Now thirty years later, those who were just beginning their retirement in the 1970s are in the last stage of life, and some wonder what they gave up by leaving their families behind up north.  By family, they mean their children, their grandchildren, their great grandchildren.  In this community it does not seem that there is a wing for those whose health declines and need nursing care.  There is little discussion of this among the old people, just a wish not to have to listen to bad news (which inevitably means the decline of someone's health).

There are so many more women than men here, a single man creates conflicts and bitchy behavior.  The one man we get to know who looks much younger is blunt.  "I already buried my wife.  I want someone to bury me."

The idea of survival is temporary as we witness the quick decline and death of most of the subjects of this sobering film.

There are so many stages that lead us to our final demise, it is hard to prepare for all of them.  The movie made me question what is the most dignified way to grow old.

I am still thinking of it days later.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

On February 21, to celebrate the publication of the Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, a tribute reading took place in the Graduate Center on Fifth Avenue. Tonya Foster began the evening by describing Clifton as a writer of intellect and intuition. Sidney Glaser went on to say how there was no canon of Clifton. Alicia Hall Moran, a classical singer of beauty and dramatic effect, began and ended the reading with sung versions of the poems, beginning with "Blessing the Boats" and ending with "The Lesson of the Falling Leaves."

I always sketch during poetry readings. It focuses my mind. The readers were excellent, the selections fitting for each individual voice. The hall was full of fans of Clifton. It was a glorious occasion.









Alicia Hall Moran

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Jiro, an 85 year old sushi master, has two sons. Each will manage his own restaurant one day. Until Jiro retires, which will take him either being too senile or too strange to look at (his idea of when it is time to stay home), he will continue to work in his ten-seat sushi bar in the Tokyo subway station.

This movie is memorable because it shows how passion for your profession transcends everything. The director, David Gelb, interviewed at length food critic Masuhiro Yamamoto. Yamamoto explains what it takes to achieve greatness as a chef. First is consistency in quality. Second is cleanliness. Third is constantly looking for ways to improve or perfect what you are doing. You also need to be a better leader than a collaborator, and finally you need to have passion for what you do.

I thought, (except for the cleanliness perhaps) how similar to teaching, to writing, to any great endeavor. So the movie starts out documenting the life and ways of a great sushi chef, and goes on to be about something more.





Side Effects (dir. Soderburgh)



It was only a matter of time before antidepressants and their side effects would be held responsible for a patient murdering someone. So many people take ssris (selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors) a common form of antidepressant, that we are familiar with the jargon associated with them. Side effects may include drowsiness, nausea, reduced sex drive, dizziness, etc. The name Ablixa is so close to some of the real names (Effexor, Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft) that it is convincing when we see it in an ad. The actors, Mara Rooney, who plays a depressed young woman, and Jude Law, who plays her psychiatrist, are very good in their roles. There are lesser characters equally well played: lawyers, policemen, mother in law.

Soderberg is a knowing cynic. He tackles the economy, insider trading, overuse of drugs, complicit deals between psychiatrists and drug companies. I was willing to follow him when the plot took a sharp turn and then continued to twist itself into knots. I worry that Catherine Zeta Jones is a heavy for the wrong reason since we are still a puritanical country. But the movie is expertly cast, shot, and acted. If only the plot were a little bit less like a pretzel.