Stimulating cinema: Down to the Bone

Director: Debra Granik
Year released: 2004

This one made me squirm, because as someone who battles every single day with addiction (food), I saw a lot of myself in the character of Irene. The lying, the sneaking, the selfishness, it's all there. And it hurts me to my heart to know that I have treated people I love like Irene does her loved ones. Regardless of the addiction, it's hard as hell to try to undo years and years of destructive behavior. And this film does a superb job of matching a face to that struggle. Here's a good review from Emanuel Levy at emanualLevy.com.

Winner of two awards at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, for director Debra Granik and a Special Jury Prize for actress Vera Farmiga, “Down to the Bone” is a low-budget, digital-video feature about the arduous process of drug rehab as experienced by a working class mother.

Vera Farmiga gives a solid performance as Irene, the lower-class mom who struggles to keep her marriage together and raise two young sons, while keeping her cocaine addiction a secret. After a series of nearly fatal mishaps, and finally hoping to make a change in her life, Irene decides to check herself into a rehab center. She knows that kicking the habit would be tough, but the experience proves even more difficult than she could have anticipated.

At the center, Irene meets and falls in love with a fellow reformed addict, Bob (Hugh Dillon), who works as a male nurse. Since she is married, Irene makes all efforts to keep the illicit affair clandestine, until she's caught off guard by one of her kids. What makes the movie interesting is that Irene and Bob's stories are complicated and full of paradoxes.

The narrative follows with extreme restraint as Irene goes through drug busts, counseling sessions, group therapy, and honest and dishonest conversations with her husband. And director Granik shows humor too. Reproached by her supermarket boss for a slower pace and less than graceful attitude toward her customers, Irene fires back, “When I was high, I was fast, and now that I'm clean, I'm slow.”

The tale is excellent at conveying how frail and vulnerable people who go through rehab are. Indeed, when one of the couple falls into a relapse with the addiction, their commitment to staying clean and to each other is completely shattered.

Both characters hit bottom and do things, consciously and subconsciously, that they know they would regret and would also hurt those around them. Highly aware of her predicament, Irene in particular knows that she must fight her way to a better place at a price. The characters' epiphanies are not tidy, and there's no happy or sweeping resolution. While there's movement toward redemption, it's not neat or pat; the film just ends.

Aptly titled, “Down to the Bone” is based on Granik's 1997 short film, “Snake Feed,” which won the Sundance Film Festival Short Award in 1998. In its current shape, the film is not only ultra-modest but also under-populated. In addition to Irene's husband, Steve (Clint Jordan), there's only one other character, Lucy (Caridad De La Luz), Irene's co-worker in cleaning houses.

Granick uses her central performers and working class locale of Upstate New York to good effect. Downbeat and realistic, the script is remarkable for avoiding clichs about drug-addiction and rehabilitation and for maintaining a matter-of-fact, non-melodramatic approach. Neither the characters nor the actors who plays them ask for sympathy from the audience, just greater sensitivity to a subject that so far has received mostly sensationalistic Movie-of-the-Week treatment.

Adopting a semi-documentary style, this beautifully wrought film accurately and authentically explores the wrenching road to recovery, without ever resorting to histrionics. It's hard to tell whether the flags shown at the beginning of the film are meant to reflect the post 9/11 mood of run-down working class-America, or whether they are used as an ironic backdrop for a truly downbeat story.

The origins of the film go back to Granik's meeting with Corinne Stralka, a woman who worked as housekeeper at an inn in Upstate New York, where Granik was shooting a documentary. After this chance meeting, Granik began videotaping Corinne and her family, thinking her work would result in a cinema verite documentary.

In “Snake Feed,” the short that preceded the feature-length movie, Corinne, her kids, and her partner, Rich Lieske, played themselves. After making the short, Granik continued to videotape and interview her subjects for several years before deciding to try her hand at a feature.

Stimulating cinema: Bigger Than Life

Director: Nicholas Ray
Year: 1956

In its own way, this slice of the darker side of 1950s suburban American life is scarier than 50 slasher flicks. And perhaps it resonates more for me because I can relate to the central premise of the film--watching someone you love become a changed person thanks to misuse of prescription drugs. Been there, done that. So while things never quite got to the point that they did for the characters in this movie, I've been awful close. Like Walter Matthau's kindhearted best friend Wally, I've had to literally have to wrestle someone back from the brink. It's hard to fight with tears in your eyes and it's even harder to watch a movie, but that's what "Bigger Than Life" was for me. A snapshot, a memory and ultimately, a nightmare.

Ed Avery (James Mason) is a fine upstanding man. He has an adoring wife named Lou (Barbara Rush) and a happy little boy named Richie (Christopher Olsen). Ed is a schoolteacher, well-respected by colleagues and superiors alike. He has two secrets though, a fairly benign one and a more serious. Two or three times a week, he works as a dispatcher for a cab company in order to make ends meet. Money is tight in the Avery household and that's one of the threads that runs through the film. Ed is also in great and almost constant pain, and apparently has been trying to keep this hidden for the last six months.

Following a dinner party for Ed's friends, the pain becomes too great and Ed passes out--not once but twice. He is taken to the hospital where a battery of tests are run. Lou comes to visit and--after one of his co-workers from the cab company drops in--Ed confesses to his "double life." There's much relieved laughter--Lou of course thought he was having an affair but it turns out that Ed was only trying to make things better for her and Richie. It's a real puzzler as to what's wrong with Ed's health, but eventually the doctors decide on a diagnosis. And the prognosis is grim, Ed could very well soon be dead. However, there is some hope; the (then) new drug cortisone has been known to help. Ed is given a prescription with strict instructions on how and when to take the pills.

Very soon, Ed's behavior begins to change. Despite the family's financial hardship, he insists on taking Lou to the finest store in town to buy some clothes. Throwing the football around with Richie now has an intense, hard edge. And in one memorable scene, Ed manages to offend practically every parent of his students as he delivers a speech about the limitations of children at a PTA meeting. Things grow even worse--a now paranoid Ed, who is taking far more than the daily dosage, accuses Wally and Lou of having and affair and in due time he announces his plan to leave her and devote his time to a nebulous research project that he feels will change the course of education.

It's riveting to watch, and Ed's descent is made more poignant by his family. Lou is the classic enabler, refusing to see the obvious even when Wally implores her to do something. Richie, who eventually becomes the focal point of Ed's psychotic rantings, is a poor confused kid. At one point, when things are at their worst, Richie exclaims that he'd rather have his father stop taking the cortisone and die than continue on his downward spiral. The movie reaches its frightening crescendo when Ed turns into a Bible-quoting madman bent on the destruction of his family.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this movie was not a financial success upon its release. It's not the typical happy nuclear family, "Father Knows Best" fare. But it earned enormous respect among critics--writing in the influential French journal "Cahiers du Cinema," Jean-Luc Godard proclaimed it one of his 10 favorites. But looking back, we see that Ray and Mason, who also co-wrote and produced the film, were remarkably forward thinking in their portrayal of the insidious things that can happen when prescription drugs are misused. Ray is simply wonderful in his role, spanning the entire range of human emotion in the course of 95 minutes. Matthau is also strong in his role as the best buddy, offering humor, logic and empathy throughout the proceedings.

Stimulating cinema: Greenberg

Director: Noah Baumbach
Year released: 2010

It's kind of a hackneyed cliche at this point but I'm going to trot it out there because it fits; I wanted to like this one more than I did. I just found myself being overwhelmed by my dislike for the title character, to the point where there was little else that I could even remember after it was over. And there's certainly a whole lot to like, as A.O. Scott points out in his review that was originally published in the March 24, 2010 edition of the New York Times. Still in all, a good little movie and certainly not a waste of time watching it.

“Hurt people hurt people.” This nugget of therapy talk is passed from one character to another in Noah Baumbach's "Greenberg," offered as an explanation, an excuse and a sort-of apology. While those four words don’t quite sum up the whole of the human condition, they might stand as a concise summary of Mr. Baumbach’s recent movies. The battling pair of married (and then divorced) writers in "The Squid and the Whale," the warring sisters in "Margot at the Wedding"--they and their loved ones walk through life nursing psychic wounds and brandishing metaphorical knives.

Roger Greenberg--a former musician who works as a carpenter and whose vocation is writing eloquent letters of complaint about apparently minor inconveniences — is both heavily scarred and heavily armed. Played by Ben Stiller as a wiry, gray-haired ball of raw nerves and well-oiled defense mechanisms, Roger returns to Los Angeles after 15 years in New York and a short stay in a mental hospital after a breakdown. He roosts in the large hillside house of his brother (Chris Messina), who has gone with his wife and children to Vietnam for a long vacation.

“I’m trying to do nothing right now,” Roger explains to everyone who doesn’t ask. Whether he succeeds is an open question. He looks up some old friends, worries about the neighbors and his brother’s dog, and pursues an awkward stop-and-start romance with his brother’s personal assistant, Florence Marr (Greta Gerwig). Roger, at 40, seems uncomfortably stuck in his own receding youth, but Florence, who hangs out in art galleries with her friends and sometimes sings at a half-empty hipster bar, really is 25.
Although Roger Greenberg is a world-class narcissist, “Greenberg” is not all about him. It is the funniest and saddest movie Mr. Baumbach has made so far, and also the riskiest. Mr. Stiller, suppressing his well-honed sketch comedian’s urge to wink at the audience, turns Roger into a walking challenge to the Hollywood axiom that a movie’s protagonist must be likable. But Mr. Baumbach, relishing his antihero’s obstinate difficulty--which is less an inability to connect with other people than a stubborn refusal, on hazy grounds of principle, to try--treats Roger with compassion, even tenderness.

And in finding others who are willing, sometimes against their best interests, to venture that kind of generosity, he turns what might have been a case study of neurosis into an exploration of loneliness, friendship and the sense of emotional deprivation that can fester in a landscape of comfort and privilege.

This landscape is an important part of the film, as is the city of Los Angeles, captured in its shaggy, smoggy, unglamorous beauty by the exceptionally talented cinematographer Harris Savides. The easiest rebuke to aim at Mr. Baumbach, the child of East Coast literary intellectuals and the husband of a much-admired actress (Jennifer Jason Leigh, who appears in “Greenberg” and shares a story credit with her husband), is that he occupies himself with a narrow and (to him) familiar swath of social reality. Fair enough, but so did Henry James. And like James — I swear I won’t push this analogy too far, lest I start sounding like the dad in “The Squid and the Whale” — Mr. Baumbach is highly sensitive to nuances of behavior and tiny distinctions of status.

To some extent, “Greenberg,” like nearly all of Mr. Baumbach’s work going back to "Kicking and Screaming" is a comedy of manners. West Coast versions of the hyper-articulate recent college graduates of that movie, his 1995 directing debut, have grown up and been supplanted by a strange new generation. Some of the humor in “Greenberg” comes from the various collisions between youth and middle age. Kids these days! They don’t know what you’re talking about when you quote "Wall Street" and they don’t appreciate Duran Duran. Damned Internet!

Roger drifts partly back into a circle of old friends and band mates, and seeks out Beth (Ms. Leigh), a former girlfriend who has been married and divorced since he saw her last. She, like Roger’s still loyal best friend, Ivan (Rhys Ifans), has been attempting to live an adult life, and several scenes capture the awkwardness of people trying to hold on to their youth and trying to find a comfortable way to be grown-ups. (By drinking beer, for example, at their children’s birthday parties.)

You don’t have the feeling that Ivan or Beth has changed much since the mid-’90s, but each has accepted the necessity of compromise. This is a basic element of maturity that Roger refuses. Beth and Ivan are trying to swim, or at least are managing to tread water, while Roger can barely dog paddle his way out of the shallow end of his brother’s pool.

It is partly arrested development--the refusal to act his age--that draws Roger to Florence, who functions less as a standard love interest than as his mirror image and moral counterweight. Like Roger, she is lonely and adrift, but her identity crisis is different from his. While he is aggressive even at times of indecision, Florence, at her most decisive, still seems tentative and hesitant.

“You need to stand up for yourself,” Florence’s employer tells her, and Roger, who takes repeated advantage of her passivity, mistakes it for low self-esteem. “You have value,” he tells her at one point, repeating another therapeutic nostrum he picked up from Beth.

“I already knew that,” Florence shouts back, in a rare display of anger. “You didn’t have to say that.”

Her problem is that she is not sure what or who else should have value to her. Florence is in the early stages of the battle for love and success, having taken her marching orders along with her college degree. But she has only a vague sense of the mission.

Roger, meanwhile, fancies himself a conscientious objector, courageously refusing to follow the rules of engagement and showering contempt on anyone who does. This gives him license to be thoughtless and mean whenever he wants, and his repeated, unprovoked cruelty to Florence may be, for some viewers, impossible to forgive.

But “Greenberg” is not easily forgotten, and the misery of Roger’s company provides its own special kind of pleasure. Mr. Baumbach’s sense of character and place is so precise — the film seems so transparent, so real — that his formal audacity almost passes unnoticed. Rather than push Roger and Florence through the grinding machinery of an overdetermined plot, he allows them to wander and sometimes to stall, to inhabit their lives fully and uneasily. They are more like characters in a French movie than the people you usually meet under the Hollywood sign.

Only at the end, in the wake of a brilliantly executed party sequence--in which Roger, the solitary Gen-Xer, finds his world of defensive ironies and carefully preserved pop cultural references overrun and trashed by a swarm of Millennials--does his arc, as residents of Hollywood might call it, become apparent. Mr. Baumbach abruptly, and with a subtle display of self-conscious wit, reveals “Greenberg” to have been a romantic comedy all along. Here we are in a car speeding toward the airport and what might be the prospect of a happy ending. And suddenly a movie about a man who is defiantly difficult to like becomes very hard not to love.

Stimulating speech: Henry Kissinger's greatest hits

Some wit and wisdom from Dr. Kissinger.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

A leader who confines his role to his people's experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people's experience runs the risk of not being understood.

Accept everything about yourself--I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end--no apologies, no regrets.

Any fact that needs to be disclosed should be put out now or as quickly as possible, because otherwise the bleeding will not end.

Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

Diplomacy: the art of restraining power.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

Even a paranoid can have enemies.

For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on page 850.

I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.

If eighty percent of your sales come from twenty percent of all of your items, just carry those twenty percent.

If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation - and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sign of duress.

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

If you don't know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere.

In crises the most daring course is often safest.

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.

Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.

Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.

Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

No foreign policy--no matter how ingenious--has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.

No one will ever win the battle of the sexes; there's too much fraternizing with the enemy.

People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any form that would require me to stop talking for three hours.

Power is the great aphrodisiac.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

The American foreign policy trauma of the sixties and seventies was caused by applying valid principles to unsuitable conditions.

The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it's their fault.

The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples.

The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision.

The task of a leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that's why we didn't make it.

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.

We are all the President's men.

We cannot always assure the future of our friends; we have a better chance of assuring our future if we remember who our friends are.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

You can't make war in the middle East without Egypt and you can't make peace in the middle East without Syria.

Curling up with a good book: On China

Complete title: On China
Author: Henry Kissinger
Year published: 2011

Henry Kissinger is one of my all-time favorite statesmen. And not only because--like me--he loves soccer! Kissinger has been in the forefront of seismic world shifts over the last few decades, often times playing a vital role in creating and shaping a better future. In this book, he draws upon his extensive experience in diplomacy with the Chinese and offers his perspective on how this once sleepy, backwater country has grown into a world superpower--if not THE superpower. Interesting ready and lots to think about. The following review was written by Max Frankel, who covered Kissinger's historic trip to China in 1972 with president Richard Nixon, and was originally published in the New York Times on May 13.

Henry Kissinger was not only the first official American emissary to Communist China, he persisted in his brokerage with more than 50 trips over four decades, spanning the careers of seven leaders on each side. Diplomatically speaking, he owns the franchise; and with “On China,” as he approaches 88, he reflects on his remarkable run.

To the degree that Washington and Beijing now understand each other, it is in good measure because Kissinger has been assiduously translating for both sides, discerning meaning in everything from elliptical jokes to temper tantrums. At every juncture, he has been striving to find “strategic concepts” that could be made to prevail over a history of conflict, mutual grievance and fear. As President Nixon’s national security adviser, then secretary of state for Nixon and Gerald Ford, and since 1977 as a private interlocutor extraordinaire, Kissinger has been unwaveringly committed to surmounting what he considers the legitimate Chinese resentment of American interference in their internal affairs and Americans’ distaste for China’s brutal suppression of ethnic, religious and political dissent.

The surprise buried in his lumbering review of Sino-American relations is that the much ballyhooed Nixon-Kissinger journeys to China in 1971-72 turned out to have been the easy part. “That China and the United States would find a way to come together was inevitable given the necessities of the time,” he writes. “It would have happened sooner or later whatever the leadership in either country.” Both nations were exhausted from war (Vietnam, clashes on the Soviet border) and domestic strife (antiwar protests in Nixon’s case, the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s). Both were determined to resist Soviet advances and so could quickly agree to make common cause. The menace of Moscow took the leaders’ minds off confrontations in Vietnam and Taiwan and quelled their ritual denunciations, whether of international imperialism or Communism. They decided that the adversary of my adversary was my pal, and for more than a decade that was fruitfully that.

But that was a different time. China finally escaped from Mao Zedong’s mad doctrine of perpetual revolution and from the enfeebling nostrums of central planning; it became an industrial powerhouse. The Soviet Union and its empire collapsed. And the United States, feeling supreme, began promoting democracy with missionary zeal even as it grew dangerously addicted to foreign oil, goods and credit. The radical shift in the balance of power turned China and the United States into mutually dependent economic giants, but it left them without an overarching strategic design of partnership.

It is to demonstrate the need for such a design that Kissinger reviews the ups and downs of Sino-American relations, reaching even into ancient Chinese history to define national characteristics. (He finds it apt that the Chinese like to play “wei qi,” or “go,” a protracted game of encirclement while we play chess, looking for control of the center and total victory.) Kissinger draws heavily on much recent scholarship and on notes of his trips to Beijing to celebrate the pragmatism of Mao’s successors. He says they are content to remain within their restored historic frontiers, willing to await a peaceful reunion with Taiwan, and most determined to continue their remarkable economic growth and to eradicate China’s still widespread poverty. He is less confident about America’s capacity to sustain a steady foreign policy, noting that “the perpetual psychodrama of democratic transitions” is a constant invitation to other nations to “hedge their bets” on us.

As students of Kissinger well know, he has long considered democracy to be a burden on statecraft — both the clamor of democracy within the United States and our agitations for democracy in other lands.

He recalls yet again his agonies in office in the 1970s, when he thought that American demonstrations during the Vietnam War could have misled Mao into believing that a “genuine world revolution” was at hand. He argues that the “destruction” of Nixon in the Watergate crisis, the withdrawal of Congressional support for Vietnam, new curbs on presidential war powers and the “hemorrhaging” of intelligence secrets all combined to undermine the quasi alliance with China, making America appear ineffectual against the Soviets. He is glad that Jimmy Carter did not let his human rights concerns upset relations with China and that Ronald Reagan’s cheerful personality overcame the “almost incomprehensible contradictions” of his dealings with Beijing even as he promoted the idea of an independent Taiwan.

The severest test of the quasi alliance, of course, was the brutal suppression of democratic strivings in Tiananmen Square in 1989. That violent crackdown also tested Kissinger’s tolerance for the assertion of American values in foreign relations.

Looking back, he believes everything depends on circumstances: “There are instances of violations of human rights so egregious,” he writes, “that it is impossible to conceive of benefit in a continuing relationship; for example, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the genocide in Rwanda. Since public pressure shades either into regime change or a kind of abdication, it is difficult to apply to countries with which a continuous relationship is important for American security. This is especially the case with China, so imbued with the memory of humiliating intervention by Western societies.”

And so Kissinger admires the way President George H. W. Bush, “with skill and elegance,” walked the “tightrope” of punishing China with sanctions after Tiananmen while simultaneously apologizing with private letters and special emissaries. President Bill Clinton tried applying pressure for a time, Kissinger notes, but was shown no gratitude when he wisely relented; the Chinese “did not view the removal of a unilateral threat as a concession, and they were extraordinarily touchy regarding any hint of intervention in their domestic affairs.” And President George W. Bush, despite his “freedom agenda,” earns Kissinger’s praise for overcoming “the historic ambivalence between America’s missionary and pragmatic approaches,” by means of “a sensible balance of strategic priorities.”

If America’s preference for democratic governance is made the main condition for progress on other issues with China, Kissinger concludes, “deadlock is inevitable.” Those who battle to spread American values deserve respect. “But foreign policy must define means as well as objectives, and if the means employed grow beyond the tolerance of the international framework or of a relationship considered essential for national security, a choice must be made.” That choice “cannot be fudged,” he insists, even as he attempts to protect his flanks with a fudge of his own: “The best outcome in the American debate would be to combine the two approaches: for the idealists to recognize that principles need to be implemented over time and hence must be occasionally adjusted to circumstance; and for the ‘realists’ to accept that values have their own reality and must be built into operational policies.”

Still, in the end, Kissinger votes for national security über alles. Scattered through his history are tributes to American values and commitments to human dignity, which may indeed sometimes drive our policies beyond calculations of the national interest. Exactly that happened, in fact, after “On China” went to press, when President Obama ventured into Libya. Kissinger was perhaps surprised when that humanitarian intervention and bid for regime change failed to evoke a Chinese veto at the United Nations. But in Asia now more than Europe, he argues, “sovereignty is considered paramount,” and any attempt “from the outside” to alter China’s domestic structure “is likely to involve vast unintended consequences.” Besides, as he used to insist while practicing realpolitik in Washington, the cause of peace is also a moral pursuit.

This central theme of Kissinger’s experience and counsel must be distilled from the sometimes ­meandering and largely familiar history he tells in “On China.” Only in its last pages does he discuss the essential question of future Sino-American relations: With no common enemy to bind them, what will keep the peace and promote collaboration and trust between the world’s major ­powers?

Kissinger addresses this question by looking to the past, a memorandum written by a senior official of the British Foreign Office, Eyre Crowe, in 1907. Crowe argued that it was in Germany’s interest to “build as powerful a navy as she can afford” and that this would itself lead to “objective” conflict with the British Empire, no matter what German diplomats said or did. There is today a “Crowe school of thought” in the United States, Kissinger observes, which sees China’s rise “as incompatible with America’s position in the Pacific” and therefore best met with pre-emptively hostile policies. He perceives growing anxieties in both societies and fears they are exacerbated by Americans who claim that democracy in China is a prerequisite for a trusting relationship. He warns that the implied next cold war would arrest progress in both nations and cause them to “analyze themselves into self-fulfilling prophecies” when in reality their main competition is more likely to be economic than military.

Indulging his habitual preference for diplomatic architecture, Kissinger insists that the common interests the two powers share should make possible a “co-evolution” to “a more comprehensive ­framework.” He envisions wise leaders creating a “Pacific community” comparable to the Atlantic community that America has achieved with Europe. All Asian nations would then participate in a system perceived as a joint endeavor rather than a contest of rival Chinese and American blocs. And leaders on both Pacific coasts would be obliged to “establish a tradition of consultation and mutual respect,” making a shared world order “an expression of parallel national aspirations.”

That was indeed the mission of the very first Kissinger journey to Beijing. And while he does not quite say so, he invests his hopes in a concert of nations represented, of course, by multiple Kissingers.

Stimulating (well, not really) cinema: The Hole Story

Directory: Alex Karpovsky
Year: 2005

After thoroughly enjoying Alex Karpovsky's "Woodpecker" (and raving about it in a previous post), I thought I would give his first feature a try. And if compared by the standards of "Woodpecker," I'd have to say it falls short. But it is a first feature after all, and there are some good ideas here and lots of funny moments. I really wanted to like this film more than I did--again, having loved "Woodpecker" so much I thought this one would be on a similar level. Well, it really wasn't, although the last one-third or so really redeemed the movie for me. So, it's definitely worth a watch or even two, despite some flaws.

Karpovsky is the star of this mockumentary. He plays himself, who (for the purposes of the movie) is a karaoke-video editor with big dreams. Karpovsky is trying to film a pilot for a show called "Provincial Puzzlers," which centers on small-town unsolved mysteries. Karpovsky and crew journey to bone-chilling Brainerd, Minn. (in the middle of January no less!). While all the other lakes in the area are frozen over completely, one, North Long Lake, has a large opening which refuses to freeze over. The mysteries of this phenomenon are what drive Karpovsky to Brainerd but when he arrives, he finds that the once-open hole has indeed frozen over, leaving North Long Lake just another solid white wasteland.

It's Karpvosky's reaction to this development and his fierce determination to change it--even if it means trying to alter the forces of nature--that provide the comedic moments in the movie. And for better or worse, it's Karpovsky's character that dominates each scene of the movie. We see him townspeople about the hole, and we also see brief interactions with with a girlfriend back in Boston and his lone cameraman. But it's Karpovsky's show--we are privy to all of his thoughts and his existential musings. Sometimes these bits click and sometimes they don't, and for a first movie that's to be expected (as a side note, you really appreciate "Woodpecker" all the more after watching this, not because this is really bad--it's not--but that "Woodpecker" is so good).

With the days stretching into weeks and months and no sign of the hole opening back up, Karpovsky's descent into mental instability accelerates. It's here where the movie really starts to hit it's stride. After an insane dive into a frozen lake, Karpovsky checks himself into a local mental health facility. The director is a remarkably understanding and compassionate man and he allows Karpovsky to be filmed while he is treated. The reasoning being that it will help speed his growth because it's so important for Karpovsky to be the center of attention. Karpovsky hatches one last scheme to try and get his hole open once again leading to a gorgeously shot (and strangely affecting) conclusion.

For me, the actual biggest drawback was the Karpovsky character itself. I didn't find him likable at all--in fact, I found him self-centered and manipulative. And while that hasn't bothered me when watching past movie, it just didn't work for me here for whatever reasons. On the occasions when Karpovsky addressed the camera directly in his soul-baring moments, I didn't laugh (as was his intention) but felt uneasy. In "Woodpecker," we knew the Johnny character was a goof and we were able to goof on his Zen-like pronouncements. But there was just a different vibe in this one--for whatever reason--that was offputting and ultimately not always funny.

Stimulating cinema: Woodpecker

Director: Alex Karpovsky
Year: 2008

"Whose story do you believe?"

That message, which is emblazoned on a Christmas float shown toward the end of this excellent movie, also doubles as the film's central theme. Working in a documentary style--yet mixing actual people with actors--Karpovsky has created a really interesting and thought-provoking piece of filmmaking which obscures the lines between fact and fiction. Are we watching something or someone that's "real" or not? Karpovsky is certainly playing with the viewer but in the best possible way. And he's playing with the "real" people in the film too, although not maliciously. I'm convinced that Karpovsky didn't set to mock the subjects in the movie and I don't think they felt like they were. It's a fine line though--mixing people's genuine passions and emotions and introducing fictional characters that kind of play up (or play down) those same feelings for laughs. The laughs are subtle and there are also scenes of genuine sadness, regret and longing. I waited a long time to get to see this--having read about it online somewhere--and I devoured it on back-to-back nights, enjoying every second. I am convinced that this movie is a small masterpiece--you really can't praise Karpovsky and the movie's star, Jon Hyrns, quite enough.

The movie takes place in the tiny town of Brinkley, Ark. Located on I-40 between my hometown of Memphis (which also makes a fun appearance in the film) and Little Rock, Brinkley becomes the center of the bird-watching universe when reports start coming in about sightings of the ivory-billed woodpecker. Once thought to be extinct, this "Lord God bird" sparks remarkable interest, attaining an almost mythical quality. Of course, there are believers and non-believers and everyone has an opinion. Karpovsky starts in straight-documentary fashion, setting the stage by talking with civic leaders--who comments on the impact tourists make on the town after word gets out--and bird experts--who debate whether or not the ivory-bill actually exists. These early scenes are some of the best in the movie, as the residents of Brinkley speak about their town and the interest in the ivory-bill with pride and stubborn determination. The area is really depressed (someone comments that the population of the country has dropped from 17,000 to 9,000 in a relatively short time), but maybe, just maybe, news of the ivory-bill will bring in enough traffic from birders and tourists to get things going again.

One of those looking to spot the ivory-bill is Johnny Neander (Hyrns), a house painter/poet from Portland, Ore. Johnny writes poetry, simple odes to birds that are unintentionally hilarious. Imagine going to a fourth-grade recital and some poor kid is on the stage pouring out his soul though a poem. You want to laugh, but you really have to bite your lip. That's what Johnny's poems are like and you just can't help but laugh, even though he is so sincere in what he's writing about. Neander is a bit off, but earnest in his desire to spot the ivory-bill. He craves the attention and adulation that he would get if he did spot it and years to move up the ranks in the birding fraternity. Also in tow is Wes (Wesley Yang), Johnny's Asian sidekick who tagged along. The Wes character really steals the show. He never talks (except just a little at the very end) and we rarely know what he's thinking because he keeps a placid poker face. We don't know if he really likes Johnny and wants to help him find the bird or if he's just goofing on him like we are. But even though he's silent, Wes conveys a lot of comedy and his interactions with Johnny are priceless. It's also surreal watching Johnny and Wes mix with the "real" people of Brinkley. The townsfolk are never quite sure what to make of them and the tension that is generated is real (and really funny). Although somewhat of a nut, Johnny arouses our empathy when he tries to articulate to us exactly why finding this bird is so important to him.

In the final scenes, it starts to become more and more obvious what's real and what's not, but by then you've developed such affection for Johnny and Wes that you are really rooting for them. It's also interesting to go back after watching and listening to the director's comments on what he found in Brinkley when he went back after the filmmaking. When reading about this, I learned that Karpovsky had made an earlier movie in the same vein, called "The Hole Story." I'm looking forward to checking this one out one day and comparing the two.

Stimulating cinema: Reviewing "Harlan County USA"

For your reading pleasure (and mine), the original review of "Harlan County USA" that was published in the New York Times on Oct. 15, 1976. The writer is Richard Eder.

Coal miners are a permanent underground in more than the literal sense. They trouble any society they support: like feet, the more they are weighed down by their owners the more pain they give.

In East Germany and Poland the authorities treat them with a special deference. Even in its harsher times the Franco regime was never able to stop them from striking. Laws against assembly were useless. A hammer would stop a mile below ground; the man in the next chamber would go to see what the matter was; the silence would spread and a line of stubborn, blackened men came to the surface and stayed until the Government could figure out some way of getting them back down.

Miners' strength, their assertiveness and solidarity are based largely on their economic power; and where coal-mining becomes marginal to the economy of a region, they lose much of their ability to fight. There is another factor, though. Miners in their tunnels, vulnerable to explosions, cave-ins and destroyed lungs, weigh on a society's conscience as well as its economy. Their grievances command an instinctive respect.

One of the reasons for the defeat of Prime Minister Edward Heath in Britain two years ago was a widespread feeling that in choosing the miners as the target for his austerity fight he had picked just the wrong target.

"Harlan County, U.S.A.," to be shown tonight and tomorrow at the New York Film Festival in Alice Tully Hall, is a full-length documentary of the year-long strike carried on by the miners at the Brookside works in eastern Kentucky. It has flaws, some of them considerable, but it is a fascinating and moving work. Its strength lies chiefly in its ability to illuminate the peculiar frightfulness and valor of coal-mining, and made it clear just why coal-miners can never be rightly treated as a less than a very special case.

Barbara Kopple and her photographers have got right inside the life of the miners and their families in their long struggle against the operators of the Brookside mine and its parent company, the Duke Power Company. It is a brilliantly detailed report from one side of a battle that caused one death, several shootings and a flood of violent bitterness; and that brought back to Harlan County memories of the much-bloodier coal strikes of the early 1930's.

The strike began after the miners voted to join the United Mine Workers of America—which had lost its hold in eastern Kentucky—and the owners refused to sign a standard U.M.W. contract. It was not until more than a yaer later—after the violence had claimed the life of one striker — that Duke Power, under strong pressure from Federal mediators, agreed to sign.

The film shows the picketing, the use of state troopers to keep the road open for nonstrikers, the confrontations, a shooting, the efforts of the strikers and their families to remain organized and united through the long year. It intercuts old footage from the 1931 strike, where five miners were killed. It also details the successful battle of reformers to oust the old national leadership of the U.M.W.; and the support given to the Harlen County strike by the new leadership under Arnold R. Miller.

Some of the thematic interweaving is awkward, but this is more than made up for by the extraordinary intimacy Miss Kopple has achieved with the strikers and with the bitter life of the strike. There is an old miner, lungs torn by coal dust, who makes our chests hurt as he talks. There are frightening scenes of tight-lipped strike-breakers, guns openly displayed rushing through the pickets. There is a terrifying night scene where shots are fired and we see the leader of the strike-breakers brandishing a pistol in the cab of his pick-up truck. There is a heartbreaking scene where the mother of the slain miner collapses at his wake. There is much more, equally good.

The film is entirely partisan. Considering that the company's refusal to sign a contract was condemned by the National Labor Relations Board as a pretext not to recognize the union and considering that the film itself is forthrightly an effort to see the struggle through the miners' own eyes, this is no real drawback. Perhaps there is some skimping: it is something of a cinematic trick to film the President of Duke Power in such tight closeup that his face completely fills the screen.

More serious are the sometimes questionable ways in which the film advances its message: that the Harlan strike is only part of a struggle, and that the miners must go on struggling and striking. The instance I am thinking of comes in its suggestion that the reformist leadership of the U.M.W. may ave sold out in 1974—after the Harlan County strike was over—by recommending acceptance of a national mine contract that curtails local strikes.

The film does not call this a sell-out—it uses no narration at all and conveys its message by its editing—but all reactions of individual miners that it shows before the vote are negative. Yet the membership ratified the contract by 44,000 to 34,000. The film states this, to be sure; yet somehow all the faces we have learned to admire during the long Harlan County struggle seem to push us to feel toward Mr. Miller the same way we felt toward the recalcitrant mine owners.

Stimulating cinema: A documentary double feature

Movie: The Thin Blue Line
Year: 1988
Director: Errol Morris

and

Movie: Harlan County, USA
Year: 1976
Director: Barbara Kopple

There is nothing that gets me thinking, wondering and questioning the world around me quite like a good documentary. And both of these fit the bill (in fact, "Harlan County, USA" might be the best documentary I've ever seen). Often times in reviews of a documentary, you will see the reviewer raise questions regarding the filmmaker's objectivity. Or, more specifically, there are often charges of manipulation. I don't mind being "manipulated" in this way--not at all. For me, the trade-off of being exposed in great detail to something new is worth it. I don't pretend that documentary filmmakers should play it right down the middle--everyone has his biases and to expect otherwise is kind of naive.

In "The Thin Blue Line," Morris (who is regarded as one of the finest documentarians out there) is clearly on the side of Randall Dale Adams and after watching the movie, I am too. But Morris' film didn't hit me over the head so much as allow me to make up my own mind.

A plot summary, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The film concerns the November 28, 1976 murder of Dallas police officer, Robert W. Wood, during a traffic stop. The Dallas Police Department was unable to make an arrest until they learned of information given by a 16-year-old resident of Vidor, Texas who had told friends that he was responsible for the crime. The juvenile, David Ray Harris, led police to the car driven from the scene of the crime, as well as a .22 caliber revolver he identified as the murder weapon. He subsequently identified 28-year-old Ohio resident Randall Dale Adams as the murderer. Adams had been living in a motel in Dallas with his brother. The film presents a series of interviews about the investigation and reenactments of the shooting, based on the testimony and recollections of Adams, Harris, and various witnesses and detectives. Two attorneys who represented Adams at the trial where he was convicted of capital murder also appear: they suggest that Adams was charged with the crime despite the better evidence against Harris because, as Harris was a juvenile, Adams alone of the two could be sentenced to death under Texas law.

Maybe I am naive, or perhaps I am not the most sophisticated movie watcher, but I really wasn't sure where I stood on the question of Adams' guilt/innocence for a long time. He seemed fundamentally an honest, if not a little scuzzy, and pretty much always looked directly into the camera when he spoke. He had specific answers (for example, remembering that he watched the "Carol Burnett Show" and then about 15 minutes of the 10 o'clock news before hitting the sack on the night in question. Harris, meanwhile, was more shifty from the get-go and peppered his answers with "whatevers" and "I thinks." ("We went to the store or whatever." "I think it was Tuesday or whatever.") But still, I just wasn't sure.

But what turned me towards Adams' side was the revelation of the witnesses the prosecution banked much of its case on. The main one, a woman named Emily Miller, was quite obviously a money-grubbing opportunist willing to say anything for a price (at best) or completely crazy (at worst). And a man's fate was pretty much sealed because of her. It's shameful and if I was manipulated by Morris, so be it. It's what happened and the sad thing is that it was completely preventable.

I think the one criticism of the movie is its use of re-enactments to illustrated particular scenes. Many reviewers thought it distracting and I agree, but the overall power of the film, the palpable sense of frustration and the outrage really comes through. See this one if you can.

And then see "Harlan County USA" about five times because it is truly a treasure. Kopple's chronicle of striking coal miners in Kentucky takes you into a world for two hours and never lets up. The most amazing thing is the access that Kopple was able to get during the filming. She was there for funerals, meetings, pretty much everything that went down. And like a Kentucky native pointed out to me, those are not the type of people who easily or willingly open up to strangers.

Kopple's work here is darn-near perfect. The use of old labor songs throughout is haunting and the images she catches are mesmerizing (in particular the fog-shrouded shots of early morning picketers and the squalid conditions the miners have to live in). It's sometimes hard to believe that this is "real life," because something presented so perfectly would almost have to be scripted. This is a just a "wow" movie. See it, see it, see it!

Stimulating street: Canton Avenue in Pittsburgh

And just now, a new contender emerges. Canton Avenue, located in the Beechview neighborhood in Pittsburgh is the steepest officially recorded street in the United States. Pittsburghers claim Canton has a two percent higher grade than Baldwin Street, which is officially the world's steepest, according to "The Guinness Book of World Records."

Canton has an official grade of 37 percent, but Baldwin's angle of trajectory is much longer. Traveling 10 feet along Canton (three meters), the elevation changes an astounding 3.7 feet. And oh yeah, Canton is cobblestoned. Imagine trying to get around on this bad boy during an icy Pittsburgh winter!

Analysing "A Serious Man"

A film as interesting and multi-layered as "A Serious Man" deserves a good thorough analysis, and this one originally written by Juliet Lapidos and published in Slate in 2o1o serves the purpose.

"Avatar" is a model best-picture candidate: it's brassy and has a discernible point to make. You hardly need a Ph.D. in political science to get that James Cameron worries about military imperialism and the squandering of our natural resources. A Serious Man, also in contention this year, is a more unusual choice—even allowing for the fact that its creators, the Coen brothers, have slipped difficult fare difficult fare into the proceedings before. Enigmatic to the point of inscrutability, A Serious Man leaves audiences in a state of interpretive uncertainty, popcorn uneaten, wondering what the Coens are getting at. The Times' A.O. Scott summed up the critical consensus when the film came out in theaters last fall: "The story is at once hilarious and horrific, its significance both self-evident and opaque." Horrific and opaque? The academy usually quarantines those qualities in the screenwriting category.

Arguably, the point of A Serious Man is to create confusion. But after watching the film a second time—it's just been released on DVD—it seems worthwhile to revisit some of the questions it raises.

Why Larry?

Larry Gopnik, the film's sad-sack protagonist, asks "What's going on?" no fewer than seven times, by my count. The viewer knows how he feels. Why are such terrible things happening to a nice, Midwestern physics professor raising two kids in the Jewish faith? Within a two-week period: A disgruntled student tries to bribe and then blackmail him, an anonymous rival sends nasty notes to his university's tenure committee, his wife asks for a divorce, and his lawyer drops dead right in front of him. Each ordeal is fairly banal on its own. But Larry (and the audience) can't help but wonder whether, taken together, they might indicate a cosmic source.

As just about every reviewer noted, the sudden disintegration of Larry's life is meant to evoke Job, whom God punishes—killing his family, destroying his livestock—just to see if he'll remain upright and holy. (Satan bets he won't; God bets he will.) As the saying goes, Job's patience is difficult to try; but the biblical character is actually quick to air his grievances. And when God makes an appearance at the end, it's to belittle Job for complaining. He delivers one of the more sarcastic lectures in Scripture: "I am going to ask the questions, and you are going to inform me! Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations? Tell me, since you are so well-informed!" The standard interpretation is that Job can't possibly understand the complexity of God's decision-making, and that it's presumptuous for us mortals to even try.

Unable to question God directly, Larry takes his problems to a series of rabbis, who push a Job-ish moral. The first rabbi, Scott, suggests, "You have to see these things as expressions of God's will. You don't have to like it, of course." When Gopnik complains to the second rabbi, Nachtner, that he just wants "an answer," Nachtner reprimands: "The answer! Sure! We all want the answer! But Hashem doesn't owe us the answer, Larry. Hashem doesn't owe us anything. The obligation runs the other way." It's the modern equivalent of, "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations?"

Sudden hardships aside, however, Gopnik isn't much like Job—an aggressive, willful character who rants until God grants him an audience. As The New Yorker's David Denby observed, Gopnik "won't take a shot at anyone, or try to control anyone, verbally or any other way. … [He's] a schlep and a weeper." That's exactly right and gets at a more earthbound explanation for Gopnik's misfortunes. Another of Gopnik's constant refrains is, "I haven't done anything." After his wife announces that she wants a divorce: "What have I done? I haven't done anything." On the phone with a representative from the Columbia Record Club, who's hounding him for payment: "I didn't ask for Santana "Abraxas." I didn't listen to Santana Abraxas. I didn't do anything." During a conversation about his tenure prospects: "I haven't done anything. I haven't published." If at first Gopnik sounds wrongly maligned, eventually he seems weak. His insistence on inaction makes the viewer wonder if that very inaction is why so much trouble comes his way. Perhaps his are sins of omission. He is not a bad husband; he provides for his family; he's faithful—one could do worse. But there's no indication that he's particularly engaged. He may not be a bad professor, but neither is he an especially good one: As he says, he hasn't done anything, hasn't published anything.

Gopnik's irritating meekness is most obvious in his parenting. He launches the majority of his "What's going on?" queries at his kids, who never bother to answer. He has no idea that Danny's a stoner, or that Sarah's trying to finance a nose job by stealing money from his wallet. They're brats, but whose fault is that? When Danny complains that F Troop looks fuzzy, Gopnik climbs up to the roof and twists the aerial, but he never manages to fix the reception. So Danny calls his dad to whine, and Gopnik looks put-upon. Which is worse, Danny's shamelessness or Gopnik's spinelessness?

A physics professor, Gopnik knows that "actions have consequences," as he puts it to Clive, the student who's trying to bribe him. He adds, "Not just physics. Morally." It seems more difficult for Gopnik to grasp that inaction may have consequences, too. But, intellectually at least, he knows that's the case. When his brother, Arthur, complains that "Hashem hasn't given me shit," Gopnik replies, "It's not fair to blame Hashem. Arthur, please. Please calm down. Sometimes you have to help yourself." It's his truest line.

Why the Yiddish prologue?

The movie opens with a Yiddish-language set-piece. Somewhere in the Old Country, a husband announces to his wife that Traitle Groshkover is coming over for soup. "God has cursed us," she says. Her friend sat shiva for Groshkover when he died three years earlier, so whoever's visiting is surely a dybbuk—a malicious spirit. When he arrives, Groshkover laughs off the accusation, as does the husband: "I, of course, do not believe such things. I am a rational man." But the wife's not having it: She stabs Groshkover with an ice pick.

One interpretation of this scene holds that the husband and wife are Larry's ancestors, and that Larry is being punished for their sin. "The troubles surrounding Larry Gopnik in suburban Minnesota many generations later can only be seen as the revenge of 'Hashem,' " writes Denby. "If that Old Country dybbuk was not God himself, he must have been in God's employ." Salon's Andrew O'Hehir advances the same theory: Maybe "the people in the 1960s story are still paying off the debt incurred by that couple in the Yiddish tale."

But perhaps it's not right to interpret the set piece so genealogically or even to assume that the couple did something wrong. What if the wife were actually a positive foil? Instead of sheepishly appealing to the logical impossibility of ghosts, as her husband does, or passively waiting to see what comes next, as Gopnik would, she takes matters into her own hands. "Good riddance to evil," she says when Groshkover walks out the door, bleeding. Maybe Gopnik would fare better if he had half of that gumption.

What does the ending mean?

None of this is to suggest that A Serious Man isn't primarily about questions and unknowability. It's tempting to see Larry's inaction as the root of his problems, but the Coens ultimately confound that interpretation, too. As soon as Gopnik finally does something—he accepts the student's bribe—his doctor calls with what is clearly bad news (though we're not privy to its precise nature). At the very same moment, a tornado moves in the direction of Danny's Hebrew school. There are two basic ways of interpreting the ending. Either God is punishing Gopnik for taking the bribe, or God will punish Gopnik no matter what he does for reasons beyond our comprehension. Larry can take the bribe or not take the bribe; it doesn't matter. He can no more control the decay of his body than control nature; the universe is too complex to hinge on petty decisions.

Or maybe the ending functions as a comment on Job. In the biblical story, God delivers his lecture "out of the whirlwind," then softens up and gives Job "double what he had before." It's a Hollywood ending. The Coens, indie filmmakers, seem to think a bleak story deserves an equally bleak ending.

Stimulating cinema: A Serious Man

Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Year: 2009

Talk about being blind-sided.

Larry Gopnik is really up against it. A college professor who teaches the complexities of theoretical physics, Gopnik (played by Michael Stuhlbarg in an awesome performance) is dealing with problems not entirely of his own making. He is being harassed by a Korean student named Clive (David Kang) who is perplexed as to why he received an "F" and resorts to bribing Larry in an effort to make things good. His daughter (Jessica McManus) seems to have little interest in anything beyond washing her hair and his son (Aaron Wolff) is dividing his time between preparations for his upcoming Bar Mitzvah and sneaking money to buy pot.

As if that weren't enough, Larry is putting up his deadbeat brother Arthur (Richard Kind), who uses his free time to obsessively work on bizarre formulations and calculations of his own device while also finding time for less wholesome pursuits. And the kicker--his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) wants a "get," a formal religious decree of divorce that will allow her to re-marry again in the faith. Her new object of desire is Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), a smug and mellifluous widower who has all the answers. What exactly Larry has done to set these events in motion isn't clear--he is fundamentally a decent man who is working to achieve tenure at school while trying to keep the antenna on his roof functioning properly so that his son can watch "F Troop." But as these crises congeal into a big gathering storm, Larry finds himself searching for answers and turns to the local rabbis for help.

The first two rabbis aren't particularly helpful, though the respective scenes are very strong and hilarious. Eventually, Larry becomes convinced the only person who can help him is the wise, learned but now virtually unapproachable and untouchable senior rabbi. But with his wife spiraling out of control, debts piling up and his grip on things gradually loosening, it is clear that even if Larry can meet with this rabbi, even that might not be enough.

This is a simple description of the plot, but "A Serious Man" is a complex film that requires a lot from the viewer. For starters, it helps if you have a working knowledge of the Old Testament. On one level, this movie is a re-telling of the Biblical Book of Job. God asks Satan his opinion of Job. Satan felt like Job was a pious man simply because he had acquired a lot of wealth (like Larry, who while not rich by any means is certainly comfortable and won't have to worry about his next paycheck). So as a way to test Job's faith, God allows Satan to try and tempt him. Job loses his possessions (like Larry, who is forced to move out of his house and into a motel after Judith reveals her plans) and undergoes other trials that parallel Larry's struggles in the movie. Job, like Larry then, is a symbol of suffering. Through God, we learn that above any material thing, faith is what matters the most.

Another fascinating element to the movie is a proposition from quantum mechanics called "Schrodinger's Cat paradox." I won't even pretend to understand how this works so the following explanation has been lifted from the Guardian newspaper of London's review of the film. To wit, the paradox involves "the incarceration of a cat in a box with a flask emitting radioactive poison, which, as time passes, may or may not have killed the cat. Until the box is opened and its contents verified, the cat is to all intents and purposes both alive and dead: a quantum system that is a mixture of states." Heady stuff for a movie but it all somehow works. Unlike other films which are weird for the sake of just being weird, "A Serious Man" operates on a few different levels at the same time, forcing us to keep pace with the nimble minds of the directors.

Much also has been written about the "Jewishness" of this particular film. The Coen brothers of course are themselves Jewish, and undoubtedly a lot of this material is pretty familiar turf for them thanks to their upbringings. The non-Jews in the film are extremely limited--Larry's world is one of community and familiarity. And when he mixes with the "goy," such as the Asian student or a whitebread neighbor who is pretty likely a racist, the results are simultaneously awkward and funny. The cast overall is strong--there are numerous good performances, even from bit players--but Stuhlbarg really makes the whole thing work. A Broadway actor who is getting his big-screen break with this role, Stuhlbarg's Larry is many things--naive, endearing, pathetic, heroic, thoughtful, sad and ultimately vindicated. At times, there was a Robin Williams-like quality in Stuhlbarg's Larry; at other times, I couldn't help think of Larry "Bud" Melman from the "David Letterman Show." Like the movie itself, Larry draws you in and makes you care about what happens to him. It's easy to root for him as he undertakes his quest for meaning, dragging the disintegrating pieces of his life behind him like a ball and chain.

Stimulating cinema: Ace in the Hole

Director: Billy Wilder
Year: 1951

It wasn't planned this way but it is fitting that the first time I ever saw this startlingly prescient movie during the week last year that Tiger Woods returned to The Masters following a self-imposed sabbatical in the wake of revelations about his marital infidelity and kinky sex life. Woods has been welcomed back by the fans with open arms--even though he has never gone out of his way to be particularly fan friendly. It is a huge problem that I have with modern day American culture--we are so desperate to be part of the scene--part of the story--that we will do almost anything to get involved, whether it's cheering for someone whose behavior is reprehensible or laying a teddy bear in the front yard of a kidnapped child we don't know.

Where does this need to be part of the story come from? Is it because most of our lives are so mundane? Are people hoping they'll be somehow magically discovered and their life will be transformed? Why do we make signs and run to the hospital when Michael Jackson is taken ill? Why does cable news go wall-to-wall with coverage of the Balloon Boy? Are we that pathetic? I've raised the questions but I have no answers. You see it all the time in sports but in real life too, where some family's tragedy becomes someone else's chance to shine. It's sad and it's a poor reflection on our national character. We are not all stars--there are stars and then there are us. They operate in their world and we operate in ours. They go to parties, date beautiful people and make zillions; we go get our oil changed and take our kids to the park if the weather is warm. Why can't we be happy with what we have? And why do we find someone else's tragedy a chance for us to get our 15 minutes?

Wilder once called the film "the runt of the litter," and apparently it was a big flop upon its initail release. But it is brilliant in the fact that it foreshadows so much of what today's media has become--covering the sizzle and not the story. For that alone, it deserves considerable praise and attention. It's not perfect--my main criticism was Kirk Douglas' hammy, almost cartoonish acting--but the supporting cast was tremendous and the story was gripping.

The scene: Albuquerque, N.M. Newspaper reporter Charles Tatum arrives in town with a broken down career and a career that is equally in trouble. By his own account, he's been fired from 11 newspapers with a combined circulation of over seven million. He's worn down his welcome in the big leagues so now he's in Albuquerque where the scrupulously honest and decent boss Mr. Boot (Porter Hall) agrees to take him on. After a year of covering the banal goings on in New Mexico, Tatum is going a little stir crazy and is dying to get back into the big time. But duty calls, and Boot sends him and impressionable young reporter Herbie (Robert Arthur) to cover a rattlesnake roundup a couple of hours down the road.

The two soon discover a much bigger story when they arrive--shopkeeper Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) is trapped in an abandoned mine. Tatum goes down to see Leo, finds that he's in pretty good shape all things considered and promises they'll start to work on getting him out. But in reality, Leo is Tatum's meal ticket back to New York--he is good copy. As he tells Herbie, 84 people trapped in a mine really doesn't register but one person is human interest. Tatum files his initial story and it's the sensational hit he hoped. But it would be bad for business if Leo was rescued too soon--he needs to keep things going for a few days. Leo's wife Lorraine (Jan Sterling) is on board with this plan--their general store and souvenir business is practically dead and the inevitable attention would be good for business. Plus, she doesn't really care about Leo anyway and pretty much takes him for a sucker.

Tatum's plan unspools perfectly for all concerned--except of course Leo. Tatum convinces contractor Sam Smollett (Frank Jaquet) to drill straight down in an effort to reach Leo. This of course will drag a process that could have been done in 16 hours out several more days. He also buddies up to slimy sheriff Gus Kretzer (Ray Teal) who can protect his exclusivity on the story by making sure that other journalists can't get access to the trapped man. Kretzer is as dirty as the day is long, but he wants to get re-elected and playing ball with Tatum will help that become a reality.

Soon tourists are flocking to the site (admission to see the Indian ruins jumps from free to $1.00 in the course of the movie). Songs are written about Leo and carnival is even set up. Business is booming and Lorraine is making money hand over fist (she justifies her behavior by convincing herself that it's all for Leo's behalf). It's all great fun with everyone eagerly tuning into to live radio broadcasts in the hopes of receiving the latest word on Leo's condition or some precious nuggets of wisdom from star reporter Tatum. Meanwhile the only two people who truly care for the stricken man, his kind father (John Berkes) and grief-stricken prayerful mother (Frances Dominguez) are shamefully being manipulated along with everyone else.

I'll stop there because any more will probably jeopardize the ending. This movie was a real revelation for me, one that I had never heard of until recently. The best thing about this one is the supporting cast--characters like Boot, Leo, Smollett, Leo's dad and Kretzer conjure up genuine emotion and feelings. We admire Boot and Smollett for taking (or trying to) the high road; our heart breaks for Leo's dad, who only wants his boy back and we are reviled by the cynical machinations of Kretzer. And the New Mexico landscape provides a gorgeous setting for the spectacle that unfolds.

As I mentioned above, the film was not a huge hit. Bosley Crowther, writing in the New York Times called it a "a masterly film," but added. "Mr. Wilder has let imagination so fully take command of his yarn that it presents not only a distortion of journalistic practice but something of a dramatic grotesque ... (it) is badly weakened by a poorly constructed plot, which depends for its strength upon assumptions that are not only naïve but absurd. There isn't any denying that there are vicious newspaper men and that one might conceivably take advantage of a disaster for his own private gain. But to reckon that one could so tie up and maneuver a story of any size, while other reporters chew their fingers, is simply incredible." The Hollywood Reporter called it "ruthless and cynical ... a distorted study of corruption and mob psychology that ... is nothing more than a brazen, uncalled-for slap in the face of two respected and frequently effective American institutions--democratic government and the free press."

But the movie has gained renewed critical appreciation in recent times in light of the way our mass media now functions. Writing for Slant Magazine, Ed Gonzalez summed it up the best: "(It) allowed Wilder to question the very nature of human interest stories and the twisted relationship between the American media and its public. More than 50 years after the film's release, when magazines compete to come up with the cattiest buzz terms and giddily celebrate the demise of celebrity relationships for boffo bucks, "Ace in the Hole" feels more relevant than ever." The only question that now remains is, how low can we go?

Stiumlating cinema: Chan is Missing

Director: Wayne Wang
Year: 1982

I'm long overdue on writing up my thoughts on this one; I have seen it several times and I enjoy it more and more with each viewing. Movies like "Chan" are the kind of movies I like the best. It is independent in spirit and doesn't set out to do too much. It's pretty rough around the edges--if you are worried about things like cohesion and technical excellence, this might not be the movie for you. It was made on a low budget (according to the New York Times, it cost $20,000 to produce) and it shows--although the black-and-white cinematography works perfectly in capturing the foggy mood of San Francisco. I just think it's great and after several viewings I am not bored and still manage to pick up various nuances or insights with each viewing.

The plot boils down to this: Two cabdrivers in Chinatown, amiable, goodhearted everyman Jo (Wood Moy) and his outgoing, glib nephew Steve (Marc Hayashi) want to go into business for themselves. They pool together $4,000 for a license and give the money to a fellow named Chan, who is going to broker the deal. However, Chan mysteriously goes missing, leaving Jo and Steve to go the gumshoe route and try and track down his whereabouts. That's basically it, but there is a larger subtext too--the plight of immigrants living in the United States.

The focus here is on Chinese in San Francisco and I think its important to note that a similar film would not have worked as well by focusing on another immigrant group. Specifically because, many Chinese who immigrated to the United States saw their lives take a dramatic downturn in terms of their station. Jo mentions for instance, that his friend Chan was the brains behind the creation of the first word processor in Chinese but has had trouble finding a decent job in the States. Jo himself is something of an electronics wiz--he uses his oven not for cooking but for storing gadgets--but instead is driving a cab. And even though Jo is an "ABC" (American Born Chinese), you still get the sense that his race his somehow played a part in his career path not being everything it might be. As one character says to Jo, "We've been here for 100 years. If they don't notice us now, they don't want to notice us."

Jo and Steve try and track down Chan by searching the neighborhood, following up leads and clues like a couple of PIs. They talk to anyone who might be able to help and the more information they get about Chan and his life, the more fuzzy the picture becomes. Everyone has a different take on Chan: His haughty ex-wife thinks he's a failure because he is not as successful as the family's sponsor while a young man who works at a senior center where Chan was known to hang out recalls his fondness for cookies and mariachi music. One theory is that Chan has possibly returned to Taiwan to settle a property dispute with his brother. More fantastically, it also emerges that Chan may have played a part in a New Year's Day parade scuffle between those loyal to Communist China and those in favor of Taiwanese independence that resulted in the shooting death of an elderly man by another, even more elderly man . Could Chan himself have pulled the trigger and the accused is merely taking the rap for him? It's all as clear as mud to Jo and Steve.

Frustrations and paranoia begin to mount. Steve wants to turn the matter over to the cops, while Jo keeps preaching patience. Jo, meanwhile, begins to feel like he's being followed as he finds himself being drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery. Tensions boil over in a scene where Jo and Steve argue; Jo says that he feels bad for Chan and can empathize with his struggle to cope, while Steve counters with the argument that everyone has their own identity regardless of where they are and what they do and wonders why Jo is "tripping so hard on this one dude." The mystery is never really resolved but the ending works well within the context of the movie. The lives of the immigrant communities are mysteries--because we don't take the time to see.

The best thing about this movie is the repartee between Jo and Steve. The dialogue is improvised and Jo and Steve have a natural affinity to pull this off. You really root for them and the scene where they argue almost hurts to watch, simply because they are so close and such good friends despite their age difference. The movie is very funny too. Steve acts like a goof a lot of the time and the other characters have their moments too. The best scene in the movie comes early, when an earnest young lawyer meets with Jo and Steve. She too is looking for Chan because he has missed his court date after a fender-bender. She goes into this long spiel about "cross-cultural misunderstandings" that have Jo and Steve rolling their eyes almost audibly. It's great fun. The characters are not stereotypes and that's another thing that makes the humor so effective. We are not laughing at them (except the lawyer, who is just too much). They're just everyday people trying to make it as best they can in a strange world.

Edit: Here is Rogert Ebert's review of "Chan is Missing," originally published in 1982.

"Chan is Missing" is a small, whimsical treasure of a film that gives us a real feeling for the people of San Francisco's Chinatown. And at some point while we're watching this film, we may realize that we have very little idea of Chinatowns, in San Francisco or elsewhere, that haven't been shaped by mass-produced Hollywood cliches like the Charlie Chan movies.

The title "Chan is Missing" is almost a pun, because Charlie Chan is missing from this film, and what replaces him is a warm, low-key, affectionate and funny look at some real Chinese-Americans.

The movie's plot is simplicity itself. The heroes of the film, two taxi drivers, go looking for Chan because he owes them some money and he has disappeared. They search for him more out of curiosity than vengeance; they don't really think he intended to steal the money, but they can't figure out why he would have disappeared without paying it. Familiar with the ways of Chinatown, they knock on doors and talk to people and, almost without realizing it, we are taken beyond the plot into the everyday lives of these people.

The movie has an unforced, affectionate sense of humor about its characters. There's a cheerfully cynical analysis of how the annual Chinese New Year's parade has been turned into a competition between factions loyal to Taiwan and to mainland China. There's a philosophical cook, whose resignation in the face of the inevitable sounds anything but resigned. There's a political activist who dissects the politics of Chinatown with a fine-tooth comb.

And there's a fascinating discussion involving linguistics, as a young sociology student tries to explain why Chan recently said "no" to a cop when he meant "yes." We can almost follow her logic: Chan was replying to the truth of his action rather than to the meaning of the question, you see, and so although his taxi did indeed go through the red light, he did not drive it through the red light but was, in a sense, a bystander in the driver's seat as the taxi autonomously violated the law. I'm making it sound complicated; the linguist makes it funny.

"Chan is Missing" has already become something of a legend because of the way it was filmed. The movie's director, producer, editor and co-author is a young filmmaker named Wayne Wang, a 33-year-old San Franciscan who made the movie on a $22,000 budget, with a little help from his friends. He wanted to examine the ways in which Chinatown was both Chinese and American and who would be better qualified to do that than a director whose last name is Chinese and whose first name was inspired by John Wayne?

Wang's plot owes a little to "The Third Man," I suppose, as his heroes question people about a man who is presumed missing and whose life turns out to be more complicated than anyone would have thought. But "Chan is Missing" isn't really a thriller or a whodunit and doesn't pretend to be. It's an excursion. It takes us through a part of America we haven't been able to see before in the movies. It takes us into the kitchens of Chinese restaurants, and into the offices of Chinese-American social workers. It takes us into hotels for transients, sleazy bars and politician's offices.

By the time we've finished the odyssey, we realize a curious thing: There may not be a Chan, and it doesn't matter if he's missing. What's important is that everyone has a different idea of Chan, filtered through his own consciousness. And we realize (for ourselves, because the film is never obvious about this point) that Chinese-Americans, more than many other ethnic groups in this country, are seen by the rest of us through a whole series of filters and fictions. We "know" them from movies and walk-ons in TV cop shows, from the romanticized images of fiction and from ubiquitous Chinese restaurants, but we don't really know them at all.

This movie knows them. In sharing its characters with us, it opens up a part of America.