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Precipice

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Photo by Juan Davila on Unsplash




“Meanwhile the fog of deception was spreading… (The country) completely abandoned to lies that the Nationalists disseminated through millions of loudspeakers and printed pages… Lies and violence went hand in hand… (Political violence) was glorified as a sublime deed. Misery and lies also went hand in hand. They spoke of “Freedom and Bread” but they meant only freedom for their followers; they meant to destroy their adversaries… Lies, profiteering, and selfish indulgence prevailed… There were very many who took no interest in public affairs. They put their faith in the apparent peace of everyday life. The country groaned, but peace and order were preserved. The pillars of that order were six hundred thousand stormtroopers.” — Lion Feuchtwanger, THE OPPERMANNS (1934), Chapter Fifty Nine

Writing these words will make no material difference in the world.

Reading them, even less so.

I knew this before I sat down to write them. But I sat down to write anyway, I’m compelled, because people who are living through the grave danger of physical violence, —violence fomented by lies, by cynical disinformation attacks against already marginalized communities of Jewish people, Trans people, immigrants— our families, friends, colleagues, and neighbors are asking us all to stand up and speak out. To stand against violence springing up from bigotry and hatred that is supported by judicial action, legislation, and unilateral acts of political power seeking to unravel our shared progress. 

Our words and refusals provide support, but they are not enough. Voting is required, but alone, it is inadequate in the face of gerrymandering, voter suppression, election denialism, systemic and structural bias. In the face of this ongoing parade of nightmares, those elected and given power have refused to wield it, unwilling to act with proportionate speed, relying on institutions to hold the line, not doing too much of anything to fight back.

Just beneath the framework of political power sits an overwhelming, unrestrained architecture of propaganda, shamelessly creating an indistinguishable relationship between so-called journalism and carefully coordinated political messaging, using deception and disinformation to not only destabilize the country, but to do so in service of an international authoritarian movement. Because news organizations continue to fail to acknowledge this disinformation campaign for what it is, and instead present its framing as a legitimate political “side” in a “two-sided” discourse, propaganda continues to find safe harbor in the mainstream of American life, dominating the media landscape nationally by refusing the constraints of journalism and truth while continuing to use the visual and linguistic tropes of news gathering to deceive the public. It has been an enormous success. It is literally everywhere.

Of course, this success feeds on and is in turn fed by the public distraction of rich, entitled know-it-alls whose ignorance is only matched by their self-regard, working overtime to spread anti-semitism, election denialism, and other bigoted conspiracies once unimaginable in serious public discourse, which have now found legitimacy within these newly drawn boundaries. People using their economic power and personal notoriety to make things objectively worse for the victims of bigotry while refusing to consider their own intellectual failures. The fact that, reading this, you can think of multiple people about whom I could be talking only highlights the asymmetry of access to the public square, where money grants amplification that the rest of us will never experience, regardless of the quality of our ideas or how we articulate them. Instead, by engaging with the sideshow they provide, hatred gets amplified, perhaps negatively reinforced, but reinforced nonetheless. In this way, the architecture of lies is strengthened and propaganda is further legitimized, which enables the powerful to continue to push the boundaries of what they are willing to do or say in order to be a part of the rising tide they have, without shame, created.

If I told you just a handful of years ago that today, the attempted assassination of the Speaker of The House and the serious injury to her husband would be treated with mocking laughter and, simultaneously, promoted as a conspiracy by sitting members of Congress, what would you have made of me? But we are here. And so, the chorus of bigotry is amplified, violence is justified or laughed away, random acts of terror become more frequent. The expectation that we will somehow emerge from this cycle through accommodation, common sense, conversation, acceptance, understanding, voting, and decency is the same expectation that foreshadowed the horrors of the past— mass murder, pogroms, wars. Surely, we think, this can’t be happening now?

Look at the lies to see the truth.

The truth is this: there is an organized, activist, right-wing political movement in this country that has a hand at every lever of power— government, law enforcement, business, and churches— driven by the sole goal of preserving white, Christian dominance of the public sphere. The foundation of the nation’s propaganda problem, its violence problem, its disinformation problem, its collaboration with foreign rightwing governments, its antisemitism, its racism, and its hard turn into authoritarian minority rule, begins here. This group is incredibly disciplined in its political action because it is otherwise apolitical— there is no issue, no goal, no need, no analysis, essentially, no politics at all. It is simply this: we want control by any means, we will do whatever it takes, and we will destroy those who don’t agree with us.

Donald Trump is perfect for this anti-ideology, despite not believing any of it. He is the ideal vessel for this apolitical movement because he will act on their nihilism in the name of power, which is all he craves; power to funnel money from the state into the pockets of himself, his family, and loyalists, power to use the vast resources of the state to act criminally and then manipulate the judicial system through loyalists to shut down investigations into his crimes, the power of control in the public sphere to scapegoat immigrants, Trans and queer people, threaten Jewish people, all while flaunting his own immunity. Actual scandals are equivocated with manufactured ones (a coup vs a laptop, campaign coordination with a hostile foreign power vs an email server), all intended to make governance and justice meaningless. You must debase power in order to create an environment where it is willingly ceded to you; when it means nothing, why bother fighting for it?

And yet, power still brings the thrill of standing in front of thousands of admirers, all over the country, recounting his criminality, scapegoating anyone who would bring him, and them, to account. He is so blind to his own narcissism that the white supremacist movement can easily align itself with him by piggybacking his work, feeding his ego, showing up for his rallies, and through alliance and his own apolitical, non-ideological, nihilistic, sociopathic vision of governance— which is simply a sole executive, him, winging it— get what it wants. Just give him the love he craves, tell him what you want, and he’s all yours. Look at his face as right-wing religious leaders from around the country come to “lay hands” on him; he can’t believe this con is all it takes to have everything. But you will put up with all of that, justify it all, to get the one thing you want— social and cultural control over the lives of others.

Compare this nihilistic void with the vision of government on the left, a collection of people seeking progress and support from a government and society with a troubled history of racist, antisemitic, and anti-immigrant action. People who not only want roads and safe communities and clean energy, but an accounting of the past and then, justice. And not just justice for the past, but for a worsening social and political climate built on that troubled history. Then, after years of battles, a doubling down; judicial decrees, activist state legislatures, voter suppression and sowing distrust in elections, unaccountable police violence, all designed to take away what little power you have. Who is left to fight? A group cobbled together by a wide range of interests that are sometimes in sympathy and sometimes in conflict, each person an individual required to analyze what they want (jobs, housing, choice, criminal justice reform, Trans rights, freedom of religious expression, climate justice, fair taxation policies, etc) and to then bring that list of wants and needs and ideas to a voting booth, where often, they are faced with a binary where the only reasonable choice is a centrist corporate politician who espouses a few ideals, has no interest in acknowledging the necessary fight, and responds primarily to those who finance their campaign.

It will not be enough.

Historically, it has never been enough, and we know it and have to admit it.

These are two completely different universes— one driven solely by the desire for the power to use the state for social and cultural control, and one a loose majority of interests that cannot see itself fully reflected in the system it must uphold. One willing to use state power to dominate through violence, legal control, propaganda, corruption, and lies, and one that seeks the status quo with maybe a few touch ups here and there and isn’t that nice? 

But soon, institutions are bent, purged, and converted from organizations serving our once shared values into powerful weapons of the state, which becomes not representative of the people, but a personal tool of corrupt individuals who utilize it ensure their own immunity, criminalize their opponents, scapegoat social groups, and persecute their victims, all while telling lie after lie after lie. The lies, simple inversions of the truth, are not intended to cover up these acts, but to broadcast them through projection, to flaunt immunity, to disempower rational analysis and create a new framework that erases democracy in the name of an authoritarian state.

And so, when I see calls from my friends and neighbors and family and allies saying “we need you to speak up” against antisemitism, against the criminalization of Trans people, against the criminalization of women’s reproductive choice, against state violence wielded against communities of color, please know that I understand what is happening and I stand with you against all of this bigotry. But also, we need, each and every one of us, to see this fight for what it really is.

There is nothing. They simply want power. Power to establish, consolidate, and mandate their dominance, using social control as a cover for getting away with whatever they want.

And you and I are left here, together, staring into the literal void.

My 10 Greatest Films Of All Time

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Every ten years, Sight And Sound magazine polls film critics, asking them to each create a list of the ten greatest films of all-time. Then, the editors take these individual lists and create a ranked list of the 100 Greatest Films of All Time. The last poll was taken in 2012, which made news when perennial #1 CITIZEN KANE was replaced atop the list by VERTIGO. It’s 2022, and so, critics are busy making their lists again for this incredibly thoughtful, once-in-a-decade exercise in futility. I love it.

UPDATE: The 2022 Poll has been announced with a new (and deserving) #1 Film of All Time, JEANNE DIELMAN 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES directed by Chantal Akerman.

Sight And Sound didn’t ask me, but I want to play along anyway. So, here are my personal 10 Greatest Films of all-time.

Before we get there, please know, I did not make this list under the pretext of “objectivity” (which, what does that even mean?) but rather, these are the films that I think are “The Best” which, for me, means films that have had a profound impact on the history of cinema AND mean the world to me personally.

That said, the history of cinema is also the history of misrepresentation, underrepresentation, racism, sexism— all of it. My own life and experience with cinema has also been shaped by these forces, as has everyone’s. Representation remains a fundamental problem in film, in society, in life.

There are an endless number of films that should be on my list that are not. There is a version of this list seeks to address the injustice of cinema’s history by offering a corrective, that seeks to elevate the many films that have had a profound impact on the history of cinema through acts of struggle, resistance, new forms of representation, artistic innovation, fully realized humanity. Not finding a place for films from a list of filmmakers that better represent the full range of human experience is a choice.  Isn’t the ability to better know the full experience of being human the ultimate artistic purpose of cinema?

I do think it is.

Which is why, in the end, I decided to be true to my own life, my own experience, and all of my own limitations. Since I was going to make a subjective list of the greatest films of all-time, I made the choice to not only acknowledge these limitations and examine the films through the inevitability of my own subjectivity, but to do so honestly.

There is an absolutely fair way to look at this list and see what it represents as being exclusionary, but I have decided to use this list not to build a portrait of cinema, but a flawed portrait of a small piece of myself, the films that, in the full light of truth, are the ones that have asked the biggest questions of me, that have shaped my love of film, that have connected me, through time, to the ideas that I feel have shaped who I am.

Am I uneasy with this self-portrait? I truly am.

Does the creation of this list force me into new questions about why I value these films more highly than others? Yes.

Is the assignment to pick the 10 Films That Shaped You, Personally? No.

But in the end, any list *is* inherently subjective. This entire project is about asking a certain group of people to each, subjectively, weigh what they believe are the “greatest films”. There are no set of criteria for what makes a film one of the “Greatest.” I assume everyone who is polled is asking themselves these questions, and everyone is arriving at their own answer. And I arrived, troublingly, at my own.

So, take this all for what it is worth, which is objectively zero and subjectively, only a small fraction of the whole truth.

Note: this list is unranked and is presented in chronological order of production.

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928)

The story of cinema is the story of the human face. Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC is the pinnacle of the face as drama, a story of corruption and sacrifice that builds an unforgettable, unbreakable empathetic bond between its star, Maria Falconetti, and the audience. No words can explain the power of this film, it requires seeing, the experience of that searing, visceral wave of feeling that remains unrivaled.


THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939)

How to define cinematic humanism? Jean Renoir’s THE RULES OF THE GAME is the greatest example; a story of the easy corruption and incurious self-regard of the upper classes, Renoir nevertheless refuses to deny the complex humanity of his characters. The director’s unwavering generosity, toward his audience and his characters, is remarkable, the film’s satire balanced by its seriocomic handling of its story. And yet, at the margins, existence itself, summarized perfectly by the director himself in the role of Octave— “You see, in this world, the awful thing about life is this; everyone has their reasons.” Oh, yes they do.

PINOCCHIO (1940)

The power of film to capture the imagination of children and introduce them to a fuller understanding of life is one of its greatest powers, and Walt Disney’s PINOCCHIO takes the formative experience of childhood as its subject. This confrontation between innocence and knowledge, the core of the human dilemma, allows the film to transcend the newly carved boundaries of what we today call the “family film” and take an unflinching look at the realities of life, a journey through their dangers and joys. PINOCCHIO never recoils or panders or talks down to children, it looks them in the eye holds their hands, and shows them, directly, life itself. An absolute masterpiece and Disney’s greatest film. 

VERTIGO (1958)

The relationship between the gaze and the subject, the psychological core of filmmaking and cinephilia, finds its apex in Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO, widely considered to be the greatest film of all time. But for me? It is a dynamic experience without boundaries— there is no discernible line between the film’s plot, performances, direction, and its obsessive, relentlessly beautiful, deeply unsettling images. They are all one thing, unified, refusing to be pulled apart or segmented or dissected, an overwhelming flood, which is why anyone who is obsessed by cinema immediately knows and understands all that is VERTIGO and can find endless fascination in it. 

AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (1966)

How can cinema capture our inscrutable, unknowable inner lives? Or perhaps, if you believe in them, our souls? Novels can place us directly inside the mind, but cinema remains outside, externalized, built on a surface of images and sound and dialogue and story and performance, but forever, it was believed, at a remove from our inner lives. Robert Bresson’s AU HASARD BALTHAZAR takes this problem, accepts it, and transcends it anyway. The story of a donkey as he moves, wordlessly, through the burdens, pains, pleasures, and violence of life, Bresson’s Balthazar becomes the perfect vehicle for us to explore ourselves, our own feelings, our own interiority, our complexity. In doing this, AU HASARD BALTHAZAR uses the limits of cinema to show us, deeply and powerfully, who we are. Which is how, in its final, devastating moments, it brings us closer than any other film to knowing the true meaning of life’s inescapable conclusion.

ANDREI RUBLEV (1966)

ANDREI RUBLEV is an unsurpassed statement about creation— the making of art and the making of the artist. Tarkovsky uses the violence, oppression, and ignorance that plagued 15th Century Russia as the perfect framework to explore how the artist, through compassionate observation, can transcend his time to make images that live forever. At its heart, ANDREI RUBLEV is a statement of belief, made manifest in the film’s incredible bell casting sequence, which unifies the artistic process with the limitless inspiration of human creativity. The painful parallels between Rublev’s time, Tarkovsky’s, and our own only continue to deepen the film’s power; like Rublev’s paintings, Tarkovsky’s film will outlive us all. 

A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1974)

If Falconetti’s performance in Dreyer’s THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC represents the pinnacle of the cinematic power of the human face, Gena Rowlands’ all-time great performance in John Cassavetes’ A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE is everything else, all at once. Rowlands and Cassavetes reject the formalism of every other film on this list, of everything that has come before, in order to show something else entirely— a radical and fully realized understanding of the uncertainty of human behavior, experience, and emotion. Cassavetes’ greatest film, A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE is the towering achievement of American independent cinema, and all of it– all of it— is because of Rowlands. It is a movie that makes your heart race and break, that allows Rowlands to use the cage of misogynist reality to press against the limits of cinema and forge a fully realized woman— it is absolutely unforgettable and grows in my esteem year after year. If you know, you know, y’know?

NETWORK (1976)

Can prescience make a film great? No film from the 20th Century predicted the disasters of the 21st with a greater accuracy than Sidney Lumet’s NETWORK, a scathing piece of grim cynicism that taps directly into the power of media, images and, crucially, the way in which ideas move through the world to determine stasis or progress. NETWORK is not a perfect film— it cuts and jitters when it should sit still, reflecting the medium it is examining—but it is still a shocking bolt of electric power, a warning from the past, a mirror reflecting our abject failure to heed its truths. The 70s were among the greatest years in American film history, and while masterpieces like THE GODFATHER and APOCALYPSE NOW drew upon the legacy of Hollywood’s grand tradition to define the era, NETWORK saw something else, the writing on the wall, that images and media were being manipulated to tear us apart for profit, and demanded that we wake up before it was too late. And now? Can we find the line between cinema and television? Truth and lies? Opinion and fact? The film showed us all of it. And so, here we are.

SHOAH (1985)


Claude Lanzmann’s SHOAH is, for me, the greatest film ever made. A non-fiction recounting of the terror of the Holocaust, filmed in the 1970’s, looking backward to the 1940’s through the veil of modern, physical context, the film uses the greatest strength of cinema— capturing a moment in time— to show its deep limitations. There are no recreations, no dramatizations, and crucially, there is no archival footage– only the act of bearing witness through time itself to the details of a once-secret horror, tucked away in hidden, unscrutinized spaces, a horror whose full reality the decades have begun to erode. Cinema cannot replace the reality of life, the momentary nature of time, the decay of inexperience, and so Lanzmann uses his camera and his justified rage to draw a line in time, before forgetting and lies erase whatever remains of the truth. We are another 37 years removed from SHOAH’s 1985 premiere, and the world, in all of its physical and sociological manifestations, continues to bend away from the fullness of historical reality. In so many ways, as life continues to recede further from the urgency that SHOAH was able to capture, the industrial mass murder it seeks to remember retreats backward in time. But as long as cinema remains, SHOAH will endure as a towering act of defiance, its greatest attempt to stop time and acknowledge the unknowable totality of the truth. 

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989)


How would it be possible for cinema to survive as an art form if we only venerated the distant past? Lists can be used to build monuments, but I am here to show myself and it is incredibly important to me that works that forged me and my generation, Generation X, be given a place on this list. Yes, Spike Lee is a Boomer, but DO THE RIGHT THING is the definitive movie of my time, a masterpiece that continues to build new meaning and relevance. A searing and often hilarious meditation on the pernicious, day to day social complexities of the racist systems and state violence that continue to plague America, DO THE RIGHT THING has shaped an entire generation of filmmakers by showing us the truth about ourselves. It is also profoundly beautiful, using the visual language of cinema to explore community in a way that is at once expansive and troubled, generous and filled with rage. The physical textures of city life, the inescapable heat, humidity, and proximity of other people, only serve to ratchet up the tension, propelling the film toward its inevitable, devastating conclusion, one that continues to challenge the nation’s illusory self-image some thirty three years later. 

That’s my list. What’s yours? And, perhaps more importantly, why?

Notebook: NOPE by Jordan Peele

NOPE by Jordan Peele

Caveat Emptor: It is impossible to talk about a movie without TALKING ABOUT THE MOVIE, so there are spoilers here. My apologies.

Over the course of several years in the mid-1870’s, the photographer Eadweard Muybridge set out to use still images to prove that a horse in motion was, at one point in its gait, airborne, with all four of its legs in the air at once. His revolutionary process, assembled from multiple still images that used electromagnetic tripwires to trigger cameras that captured the horse’s stride in sequence, took years to perfect. The end result that has endured, a series of still photos called THE HORSE IN MOTION that, when put in sequence, animate the horse Sallie Gardner ridden by a black jockey known only as G. Dobbs, uses the power of the moving image to harness nature, capture it, explain it, understand it. By looking at these images in motion, a new understanding was created. It changed everything, a proto-cinema that will live forever in history.

Muybridge’s THE HORSE IN MOTION

This foundational cinematic impulse, the need to capture images to prove, validate, observe, and control our relationship to the natural world, is the illuminating idea at the heart of Jordan Peele’s thrilling new film NOPE, which draws a direct line from Muybridge’s images to a fictional, supernatural present. But it also centers black experience and black people in not only the history of film production, but in the spectacle of American cinematic myth making.

Like the American western (and Muybridge’s famous images), the backbone of Peele’s fictional Haywood Family Ranch is the relationship between man and horse. Situated in an expansive California valley, not far down the road from a modest theme park called Jupiter’s Claim, dedicated to the cinematic tropes of the American western, OJ Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya) carries on his late father’s business of keeping and training horses for the film industry, a business founded by the family’s early patriarch who, they claim, was the rider astride Sallie Gardner in Muybridge’s famous images.

Early on in NOPE, OJ and his horse Lucky stand in front of a green screen on a film set, a set populated and run by white workers, ready to film an aging white actress on horseback. But OJ is repeatedly silenced while trying to articulate the required safety parameters for the workers as they interact with the horse, until his partner and sister Emerald (Keke Palmer) shows up and takes over, explaining the family’s history and setting out a cursory list of animal safety requirements. When a technician ignores OJ’s objections and places a mirror in front of Lucky’s face, the horse rebels at the twisted reflection of its self-image and kicks out violently, narrowly missing the actors and forcing his and OJ’s exile from the set, with Lucky replaced by a green screen model of a horse.

NOPE by Jordan Peele

The moment is crucial, not only as a plot device, but as the continuation of the theme established in the film’s seemingly unrelated first moments, when we glimpse the aftermath of a chimpanzee attack on the set of a TV show. As the animal slowly calms down, now covered in the blood of a fallen actress, it turns and looks at the camera (and thus, the audience). This scene is repeated and expanded later in the film when we discover that the chimpanzee was the star of the beloved TV series GORDY’S HOME and that one of his co-stars survived his attack; Ricky ‘Jupe’ Park (Steven Yeun), the man who runs the Jupiter’s Claim theme park. Despite the trauma of witnessing the chimp attack, Jupe doesn’t learn his lesson— his attempt to turn nature into a controlled spectacle backfires just as violently as the chimp who killed his cast mates. 

These animals— the kicking horse, the murderous chimpanzee— provide the film’s thematic through line, one made explicit in the character of cinematographer Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott), who the Haywood siblings recruit to help them film an unexplained phenomenon in their valley. Holst is found in his editing room, watching footage of animals embroiled in a life and death battle (a tiger and a giant snake), filmed in black and white, creatures at war with one another, an unbelievable spectacle of violence. It’s no wonder, then, that he decides to join the Haywoods to try to capture the first images of alien life on Earth.

The relationship between the natural world — here embodied by animals, the foundational subject of film itself in Muybridge’s images— and cinema becomes violent; cinema, Peele implies, is incapable of taming the natural world, but the attempt to tame, to recreate nature, has lead the cinema to a new, artificial place, one that only deepens our desire to capture reality itself. And nature, confronted with the reflection of itself through the lens of filmmaking, must rebel.

And so, the valley becomes a sort of contemporary re-staging of Muybridge’s foundational project— cameras strategically deployed to capture an image of the alien “ship”, the alien’s powerful energy suppressing magnetism delineated in the landscape by hilarious arm waving promotional inflatables as a sort of inversion of the photographic mechanism used to capture THE HORSE IN MOTION, an analog, hand cranked IMAX camera to both bypass the alien’s ability to suppress electrical power and also wink back to earlier motion picture cameras— all in service of proving what no human has ever seen before, of creating an image that will live forever, that will explicitly tie the Haywoods back to the jockey astride Sallie Gardner in Muybridge’s images. But here, instead of being anonymously captured in service of the subject, the black siblings are the creators of the image, the white technicians working in service of their vision; they will not be unknown names, lost to time like G. Dobbs. The Haywoods are the masterminds of the footage that will change everything.

Except, things are not what they first appear. In a brilliant twist, the alien ship is discovered to be not a ship at all, but an actual predatory, alien animal. And, like the movie cowboys who have come to define the western valley that the alien covets, this animal is seeking territorial conquest, destroying all of the life it discovers in order to dominate the land it seeks to control. And so, as the film has made explicit throughout, the power of cinema to tame the untamable, to capture the reality of the unknowable nature of the alien, is useless— the alien’s animal power overwhelms the crew and forces them to retreat to Jupiter’s Claim, the symbol of the cinematic Western, to finish the standoff. 

NOPE by Jordan Peele

There, Emerald releases a giant inflatable cowboy, the dominant symbol of American territorial expansion, which floats up to the sky and which the alien immediately stalks. And then, as the balloon and monster hover high above the theme park, they settle directly over a well that serves as a coin operated photo booth with its lens pointed to the sky. Emerald, seizing on the opportunity, begins to take a series of still photos using the well’s camera, hoping to finally capture an image of the alien. As she manually cranks out photos, the alien finally attacks, and she gets the image; like Muybridge’s airborne horse, she has captured proof of the animal, an image that will live forever.

But this is neither the film’s final reclamation nor its final shot— that honor belongs to OJ and Lucky, the black rider atop his black horse. The moment is an inversion of Muybridge’s attempt to capture motion, a man and his animal now standing still in the aftermath of the alien’s defeat, anchored to the ground they have re-claimed. This moment brings us full circle, back to the foundational image of cinema, of America, and shifts its power to OJ, to Peele, to us, to make something new again from what was.

A Living History of Violence

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1995.

Our collective history:

Remember in 1993 when an OB-GYN was murdered by an antichoice terrorist who shot him in the back three times outside of his reproductive healthcare clinic in Pensacola, Florida?

And nothing really changed because—

Remember the next year, in 1994, when a women’s healthcare provider, again in Pensacola, Florida, was walking into work at the very same clinic and he and his bodyguard were murdered with a 12 gauge shotgun at close range by an antichoice terrorist?

And nothing really changed because—

Remember that same year, in Brookline, Massachusetts, when two women’s healthcare clinic workers were murdered by an antichoice terrorist who shot them at work in two separate attacks on women’s reproductive healthcare clinics on the same day, and then the terrorist drove to Virginia to kill more people but got caught after shooting into yet another women’s reproductive healthcare clinic?

And nothing really changed because—

Remember in 1995 when that white supremacist terrorist filled a truck with fertilizer and diesel fuel and drove it up to a Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, lit two fuses, fled the scene, and the truck exploded and killed 168 people, including 19 kids in a daycare?

And nothing really changed because—

Remember in 1998 when a women’s healthcare clinic was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama, killing an off-duty police officer providing security and it turned out the white supremacist antichoice terrorist bomber had also bombed other clinics, a lesbian bar, and the Olympics in Atlanta which injured over 100 people combined?

And nothing really changed because—



That same year, a women’s healthcare provider in Buffalo, New York was murdered at home when he was shot in the throat with a high-powered rifle through a window in his kitchen by an antichoice terrorist?

And nothing really changed because—

There was that one day in 2009 when a women’s healthcare provider was ushering at his church in Wichita, Kansas and an antichoice terrorist walked up to him and assassinated him by shooting him in the head with a handgun?


And no one did anything because—

Remember in 2014 when a white supremacist misogynist drove around Isla Vista, California and killed six people and injured fourteen more, because he had been radicalized to hate women in online misogynist forums?


And no one did anything because—

Remember in 2015 when a white supremacist terrorist walked into a prayer meeting at a primarily black Charleston, South Carolina church and shot and murdered nine people because they were black?

And no one did anything because—


Remember in that same year when an antichoice terrorist attacked a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, Colorado and killed three people, including an Iraq war veteran, a police officer, and a woman accompanying her friend to a reproductive healthcare appointment?

But no one did anything? And then—

In 2017, remember when a white supremacist terrorist got on public transportation in Portland, Oregon and started shouting racist slurs at a pair of Muslim women and some men stood up for them and he slashed and killed them with a knife?

But no one did anything? And then—

Later that summer, remember when a white supremacist terrorist used his car to drive into a crowd protesting for racial justice in Charlottesville, Virginia and murdered a woman, the day after a radical white supremacist march where Nazis chanted about replacement theory and the President of the United States said there were “very fine people on both sides?”

But no one did anything? And then—

Remember in 2018 when a white supremacist terrorist walked into a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and murdered eleven people and wounded six during morning services because he believed the work of the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society “Liked to bring in invaders and kill our people”?

But no one did anything? And then—

Remember in 2019, when a white supremacist terrorist who had been radicalized online on 8chan, the birthplace of QAn*n, walked into a Wal-Mart in El Paso, Texas and murdered 23 people and injured 23 more, and he was targeting Latinos because of his anti-immigrant belief in replacement theory?

But no one did anything? And then—

Remember in 2020 when white supremacist terrorists started showing up in large numbers at state houses and COVID-19 protests and then to Black Lives Matter protests, heavily armed with assault rifles and body armor, and then, seeing that they could walk into the State Capitol building in Michigan, showed up in the gallery fully armed in an attempt to intimidate lawmakers?

But no one did anything? And then local law enforcement treated them as allies? And then—

Later that summer, when a white conservative drove across state lines from Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin with an AR-15 to intervene in a local Black Lives Matter protest and decided he wasn’t safe, so he murdered someone with his gun and when people tried to chase him down and stop him from killing more people, he murdered another person, injured another, and then walked past the police who were continuing to ally themselves with extrajudicial white supremacist groups and assumed he was innocent? And then a jury found him not guilty of murder? And then he continued to be treated like a celebrity by now-mainstream white supremacist conservatives and began to profit off of his celebrity status?

And then no one did anything? And then—

In December of that same year, a right wing terrorist drove an RV into downtown Nashville and detonated a massive truck bomb, demolishing a city block in a major American city because he believed in “long-held individualized beliefs adopted from several eccentric conspiracy theories” and then the FBI said “his actions were determined to not be related to terrorism?“

And then no one even blinked because it happened on Christmas morning? And then—

Remember when, only two weeks later, thousands of radicalized conspiracy theorists who had been swayed by the political mainstreaming of QAn*n, stormed the United States Capitol at the behest of the sitting President of The United States and other political leaders, who were using them as a tool to stage a coup by murdering the Vice President in order to stop the ceremonial counting of electoral votes in order to overthrow the results of a legitimate Federal election? And they ransacked the offices of elected officials and beat and injured Capitiol police officers and set up a gallows and took zip ties into the building searching for specific Democratic legislators to abduct and “try”?

And no one did a fucking thing?

And just yesterday, back in Buffalo, New York, an 18 year old white supremacist terrorist posted an online manifesto extolling his now-relatively mainstream white supremacist political beliefs, and then, motivated by his belief in “replacement theory”, which has become a relatively mainstream idea on the #1 rated “news” channel on American television, pulled up to a grocery store with a Bushmaster XM15 with Nazi slogans and racist language written on it and murdered 10 people because they were black, live streamed it on Twitch, and was arrested without injury?

I was trying to remember where I had heard about that gun and it came to me—

Remember in 2012 when a man shot his way into an elementary school Newtown, Connecticut with a Bushmaster XM15 and murdered 20 kids aged 6-7 and six educators?

And then no one did anything?

People seem eager to speak about what peaceful protest should look like, about which political appointees should be protected from hearing from the people and where, about which freedoms are “deeply rooted in our history”, about who should have power and control over women’s bodies, over trans bodies, over LGBTQIA+ lives, over people of color’s lives and prosperity, over what is appropriate history, or gender expression, or love, or a family.

This post has barely scratched the surface of merely the last 30 years of the evolution and mainstreaming of white, right wing terror in this country. It stretches back for centuries.

So– who and what “deeply rooted tradition” does the Supreme Court continue to bolster while tut-tutting us about the credibility of their institution?

And when you open your mouth, when you act, are you standing with that history of violence, murder, and terror, or against it?

You Are The Next Domino

Aside from heartbreak and rage, what more can be said about Vladimir Putin’s criminal attack on a sovereign Ukraine, a blatant attempt to annex a free, democratic nation under a demonstrably false set of manufactured pretexts? I watched translated versions of the nauseating farce of Putin’s “cabinet debate” and his rambling speech establishing his “rationale” for invasion, a pitiful reminder of the pathetic theater that authoritarians undertake to mimic the democratic process as they desperately seek credibility for their criminality.

In the wake of that performance, what to make of the hard work of the American political right to sow a domestic rationale for consent, to continually launder Russian propaganda in an effort to bolster their place in an international authoritarian movement? Or the deliberate attempts by the Republican Party and Trump and their propagandists on right wing media to undermine and weaken NATO, to refuse to lift a finger to support democratic movements for the people of Belarus, or their slavering love for Orban’s control of Hungary, or bringing literal authoritarians into the White House and sending them around the world on missions to undermine democratic institutions? Or Trump’s attempt to withhold military support for Ukraine unless Zelenskyy manufactured lies in order to interfere in our domestic Presidential election? Or, in the wake of Russia’s unilateral annexation of Crimea, modifying the Republican party platform in order to remove military aid to Ukraine because the annexation and Russia backing Ukrainian rebels was “really a problem that affects Europe a lot more than it affects us”? Or taking the stage in recent days to praise Putin’s strength and a 24 hour propaganda TV channel brainwashing generations into believing democracy may not be such a great idea after all?

And what to make of the media making every effort to ensure the “politics” of this movement are seen as legitimate, normal discourse, just one of an equal pair of political ideas that deserves credible engagement, a platform, the benefit of the doubt? Or the leaders on the so-called left and the middle, who refuse to use the power of their institutions to expose the obvious, to give us justice, a counter narrative, or to fight back, despite the fact that, once those institutions are forfeited, they will be leveraged to dismantle the left and middle in favor of authoritarian minority rule?

We are in the midst of a war against democracy, not just in Ukraine, but globally, here, now, and it seems that everyone is under the delusion that Ukraine is someone else’s problem and politics at home is business as usual. But it most certainly is NOT and unless there is real action to stop the authoritarian right, we’ll all find out what the true stakes are soon enough, just as the people of Ukraine are finding out tonight. I cannot stop thinking about them, about how we all failed them. And for that, I am truly sorry. 💙🇺🇦💛

Review: THE BEATLES: GET BACK by Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson’s THE BEATLES: GET BACK

Since a lot of people are doing it, I wanted to get down my own thoughts on Peter Jackson’s masterpiece THE BEATLES: GET BACK, which I had the wonderful privilege of watching with friends this weekend. I wanted to start by noting that I was born in November of 1970*, a few months after Paul McCartney announced that The Beatles had broken up, after the subsequent release of LET IT BE, to a pair of parents who were not really fans of The Beatles— my dad and The Beatles shared a passion for the earliest rock and roll of the 1950’s and both my dad and mom sat out the countercultural revolutions of the 1960s, and especially the music it produced. I don’t know when I first heard The Beatles, but it was certainly as a little boy; I do remember hearing GOT TO GET YOU INTO MY LIFE for sure— probably in 1976 when the ROCK AND ROLL MUSIC compilation was released (I likely heard it on the radio)– but my first recollection is not even The Beatles, it is Wings’ BAND ON THE RUN album which, again, I probably heard on the radio in the summer of 1974 when I was three years old. The only copy of an album by The Beatles in my mom’s house was and remains MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR, which I listened to sometimes.

I also came of age at a time- the early 1980’s- when the music of my parents generation (old time rock and roll on my dad’s side, adult contemporary on my mom’s side) was not something I cared very much about. I can remember all of it, mostly fondly, but my personal musical exploration began, as it always should, when I began making my own choices— metal, then jazz (and prog), then college rock, and then outward from there. As part of that outward expansion, I came back around to The Beatles, who remained ubiquitous on radio throughout the 70’s and 80’s, especially in Michigan, influenced by Detroit’s radio, which was heavily marketing “classic rock” and Motown/ soul to different audiences. In Flint, where I grew up, you had the contemporary rock station WWCK 105.5, the contemporary R&B station WDZZ 92.7, the adult contemporary station CARS 108 (107.9), and then you maybe could pull in WLLZ or WRIF from Detroit. In the early 1980’s, Flint’s local independent station WFBE 95.1 began airing Ben Hamper’s TAKE NO PRISONERS show on Saturday nights, which focused on punk and local bands, and that became the definitive show of the 1980’s for me— I would hide under my blankets and put the radio next to my ear so my parents wouldn’t hear me staying up super late, listening to the radio. On a clear night, you could grab BRAVE NEW WAVES drifting over the border on CBC radio in Canada, another big touchstone for me. 

So, I never had a childhood steeped in The Beatles and their songs were, for me, from another time. I also have never had a sort of Road To Damascus moment with The Beatles music where I became an obsessive convert or did a deep dive into every single aspect of their music and production history (which gauge of strings did George use on his guitar for AND YOUR BIRD CAN SING? I literally could not care less). 

All of that said, I completely get it. Having been a listener to pop since 1970, the dominance of The Beatles’ songs in shaping contemporary music is beyond staggering to even consider— people who love and make music look at that unfathomably great body of work as sacred, a sort of contemporary Sistine Chapel which is to be poured over, examined, a set of problems to solve to figure out how it was done because, in the end, as music, it is breathtaking. Anyone who can’t appreciate what The Beatles created is likely either resentful of their ubiquity or annoyed by the giant shadow they cast over the work of so many others, and I also understand that. But I don’t blame The Beatles for that— they have come to mean so many things to so many people, but what we are left to grapple with are the songs and records which stand both as a towering achievement in contemporary pop music, but also, a narrative, a story, an artistic path from LOVE ME DO to THE END in just eight years, almost impossible to comprehend. Yet there it is, that body of work, and it remains an object of deep fascination and scrutiny because, as music, it means so much and only a very few people have ever achieved anything that comes close**.

The collaborative, interpersonal creative process that allowed The Beatles to happen is essentially the subject of THE BEATLES: GET BACK, which captures just a single month in the life of the band as they record the LET IT BE album, first as a concept for a TV show/documentary/ live concert event which is eventually abandoned, then as the documentation of the recording of the album itself, culminating in the band’s justifiably (and more on this in a minute) legendary final performance on the rooftop of Apple Studios. 

There are some very big choices made here by Peter Jackson, and they were all fine by me: The voluminous footage, which was used to create the sour documentary LET IT BE (which sensationalized the sessions as rife with turmoil, a clear sign of the end, of the band’s impending demise), has been not only restored but “contemporized”, creating images and audio that were impossible with the film technology of the time. This has the effect of creating a sense of immediacy and intimacy for modern audiences that is unlike anything I have ever experienced with footage from this era. Look at Pennebaker’s work on films like DON’T LOOK BACK and ZIGGY STARDUST (both amazing) to see the typical visual and audio limitations of most shoots of the era. While those films achieve intimacy with smaller cameras and crews, THE BEATLES: GET BACK uses the scale of its production to an unprecedented advantage. Say what you want about the film’s cigar-smoking, Libya-obsessed director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, but the man made some massively important choices that allowed this film to happen, and at the top of the list is his decision to go all in on coverage; there were cameras and invasive microphones everywhere, and while that may have been a huge pain the ass for everyone involved, THE BEATLES: GET BACK would not have been remotely possible without the hours and hours and hours of coverage Lindsay-Hogg’s footage provided to Jackson and his superstar editor Jabez Olssen. 

Olssen’s work here is by far the most crucial in reframing this footage and, frankly, re-writing the history of The Beatles. First, by taking footage out of its original linear, temporal context and cutting it into scenes where the audio was from another moment, THE BEATLES: GET BACK leans into the emotional content and heavy interpersonal subtext of the band’s decisive, creative moments. A glance, a smile, the image of a restless hand— these images supply meaning that has been historically unavailable. What this allows, more than anything else, is for Jackson to find the real story here, which is about the love between these artists who, at the apex of their fame and creative flowering, reached an understanding they could not yet articulate that their time together was coming to an end. This is the moment when, just over the horizon, The Beatles will become an impossibility for them, with three incredible songwriters, all of them bursting out in different creative directions that were only made available to them by the fact of their collaboration, unable to articulate the full meaning of what they understood about what was next.

The deep humanity of this specific choice by Jackson puts the film in a class by itself for me— it is a movie that at once shows the jaw-dropping brilliance of what The Beatles were able to create together and makes their dissolution as a band both heartbreaking and comprehensible. One of the most interesting things about experiencing the film for me was orienting myself in the narrative— while I have seen many people reporting that they were deeply moved by watching unbelievable moments in the film’s early episodes, especially intimate moments of creation of songs that are now part of the contemporary music canon (Paul working out LET IT BE in the background while the group chats around him, Paul strumming his bass and just pulling GET BACK seemingly out of thin air, George sharing amazing songs from his masterpiece ALL THINGS MUST PASS to general indifference)— for me it was the interpersonal moments that kept me deeply engaged; the band navigating Paul’s notes to George and Ringo about their playing, John and Paul on secret microphone (hello again, coverage!) discussing how to piece them all back together again, Paul constantly chewing his nails and going slack jawed when things aren’t going his way, John’s use of humor and his emotional intelligence in seeing multiple perspectives, Ringo’s easygoing professionalism, George’s kindness and diligence covering up his wounds. 

For me, all of these moments culminate in the rooftop performance sequence, when the band, unshackled, free from the studio after years of not playing live, finally get to cut loose and everything we’ve seen boiling beneath the surface is cast aside for an all too brief moment of joyous connection between four artists, young men, lifelong friends, who put away the all of the choices that lead them there— the film, the business plans, the recording process — and just let it all go, together. This is the moment that brought tears to my eyes— the storytelling that got us all to that rooftop, knowing what had come before, what it meant to them, the love between them, and the knowledge that, as a simple title note tell us, it would never, ever happen again. A final experience of joyous connection when you see and hear everything, all at once. Like a great, fleeting romantic moment that will never exist again, you look back on it and you understand, you forgive. And then? The end.  

——

*I know some people say Altamont was the official end of the 1960’s, but I always like to outline this chronology of 1970 as a way to frame my birth year:

April 1970- The Beatles announce their break up

May 1970- The Kent State shooting

September 1970- Jimi Hendrix dies

October 1970- Janis Joplin dies

November 1970- I was born

**For me personally, the nine year run Prince had from PRINCE in 1979 to SIGN O’ THE TIMES in 1987 is as close as anyone has ever come. 

Cannes 2021 Journal: Au revoir, Cannes

Le 2021 Palais des festivals (📸 by me)

I was incredibly anxious in making plans to go to Cannes; with the global response to COVID-19 in a constant state of flux, travel requirements changing from week to week, and a great deal of work required at my own Montclair Film Festival, I wasn’t sure I how the trip would go. As the festival grew closer to launching on July 6th, things remained up in the air; the screening schedule hadn’t been announced, the status of vaccinated Americans like me and our access to the festival was undecided but optimistic, and the process for how we would all get tickets to films remained a mystery. Because of my travel requirements, I had to book a flight through London, which I was assured would be fine, but which ended up adding a layer of complexity, COVID testing (despite my vaccinated status), and even more anxiety. There is something powerless about air travel, especially on an international level, where every customs officer has the power to make things difficult, enforce an unforeseen rule, end any plans on the spot. The more people and portals with which I had to interact, the more I feared an insurmountable problem. This much uncertainty? Not my forté.

But from the moment I left JFK on the 4th of July, until the moment I started writing this from a café in the Nice airport in France, everything went perfectly. My planning for COVID requirements was not only correct, but allowed me to move quickly through the system; checking in and customs were a breeze, and my bag was waiting for me on the other side. I grabbed it, hopped the train that runs along the Gold Coast of France, past mansions, beaches, and massive condos, to Cannes, standing against the Mediterranean Sea, hot and steamy under the relentless sun. I walked to my condo, unpacked and settled in, before walking out the door to get reacquainted with the Cannes Film Festival.

I had been to Cannes before, in 1999 and 2000 which, in my estimation, was one of the greatest Cannes programs of all time. Since that time, my festival work, which for decades had been situated in the April-May timeframe, made a trip to Cannes irrelevant and impossible. But those early trips were formative for me, creating a version of the festival that lived on in my memory; jet lag, packed screenings, familiar faces in the crowd, but mostly, the premieres of great films, a program bursting at the seams with the most important and interesting international titles of the year. 

It is funny to think about, but I am almost certain that everyone who programs films looks at the Cannes program with extreme scrutiny and, if they’re honest, a sense of jealousy; with 74 years of institutional work put into creating an event that provides a global launching pad and sales platform for films while elevating the work of film directors into the highest levels of the contemporary arts, this unique blend of glitz, raw business, and extreme artistic seriousness provides Cannes Director Thierry Fremaux with the ability to, for the most part, have his pick of films and talent to attend the festival. It is hard to think of any film or film company that wouldn’t deeply desire the imprimatur of the iconic gold palm imposed over the words Official Selection Festival Des Cannes.

And so, year after year, Cannes reclaims its position at the center of the film world, with its program defining the state-of-the-art in the same way the autumn festivals herald the launch of awards season in the United States. Cannes is far more global than the Oscars, and features its own, highly coveted awards, given by small juries of acclaimed artists, serving as an international counterweight to the Academy. In this way, the festival best serves a certain type of film and film lover; it is driven by and the exemplar of global cinephilia, where the artistic ambitions of the form are placed above (and yet alongside) the business of box office. Typically, Hollywood and Cannes are not aligned , but sometimes, these two worlds come together; Bong Joon-ho’s PARASITE won the Palme D’Or and the Best Picture Oscar in 2019, but that overlap is incredibly rare.

This year, in the midst of planning for the 10th Annual Montclair Film Festival and working to launch our very own six screen cinema in the fall, our own changes in planning and schedule made me believe that a trip to Cannes would be worthwhile again; in the wake of the pandemic, Montclair Film moved our festival to October in 2020 and provided a huge transformation in terms of the films we were able to access, with Best Picture winner NOMADLAND serving as our Opening Night Film, and multiple award winners and nominees participating in the festival. In the wake of the success of that program, which we had worked carefully to position on the calendar in a way that would give us impact without competing with other, more established fall festivals, we decided that October was the right spot for us, and as we began planning for October 2021, Cannes seemed like a good opportunity; I wouldn’t be able to attend my traditional fall festivals (Toronto, the New York Film Festival) because their proximity to our new dates, and with the announcement of our new cinemas, the time was right to go scout films, meet with distributors, and see what a trip to Cannes would mean.

So I went.

From the moment I walked into the small tent where my badge would be printed via a touch screen kiosk in a matter of seconds, to the COVID testing tent I was required to use to gain access to the Marché and certain theaters, to the line of badge holders all eagerly awaiting our first film (Mark Cousins’ delightful retrospective of contemporary cinema THE STORY OF FILM: A NEW GENERATION), Cannes felt relatively effortless. I never waited more than one minute to get a COVID test and after an early hiccup, my results arrived in time for me to use them (I was negative. Get vaccinated everyone.). No one ever dismissed my clothes or my ticket or did anything more than smile, say a polite word of greeting, and send me on my way. Cannes is known for being finicky, building procedures and processes for attendees— lines, hoops through which to jump, arbiters of what is and is not “acceptable” attire, etc— but the radical change this year that switched off so much frustration was the online ticketing system, which eliminated waiting in line for tickets and allowed everyone to apply for a seat at films by going online.

With attendance down (huge swaths of the world who typically attend were unable to participate this year because of COVID, others chose not to attend because of the overwhelming uncertainty and COVID concerns, all of which is completely understandable), the doors to the cinemas were more accessible than ever before. This was part of my strategy in going; hopeful I could find tickets to screenings because attendance would be more manageable, I found myself granted a ticket to literally every film I could schedule. It was unbelievable. The only struggle I had was making sure my phone had enough power at the end of the day, so I could make my final screening and show my digital ticket to get into the theater.  

As each new morning arrived and I applied online for future screenings, as each e-mail confirmation rolled in after that, as each COVID test retuned a negative result, as I washed and pressed my tuxedo shirt over and over again, I settled into the rhythm of the festival. I took a few meetings, attended a party (outdoors and unmasked, and regretted it immediately), had a lunch here, a coffee there, a dinner with colleagues, but mostly, I dove into film screenings, surrounded by appreciative audiences who, as far as I could see, politely followed the mask mandate and acted with overall courtesy toward the staff and one another.

Once the lights went down in the Grand Lumiere or Salle Debussy (the festival’s largest theaters, where I spent most of my time), everything else- the uncertainty, the anxiety- melted away and I found myself completely absorbed in the films, my long relationship with theatrical viewing instantly re-established. As the program began to reveal itself, right away, an overall mood became clear; the films began addressing human connection and the need for kindness, from romantic and familial relationships to institutional interactions, a cinema urgently advocating for compassion and understanding. The humanist power of movies was on full display right away; maybe it was having been away for so long, maybe I was really tired, but sometimes, the films seem to be in dialogue with one another, pulling me in and framing my thinking as they go.

For me? It was the love affairs that broke the screen wide open again.

Joanna Hogg’s THE SOUVENIR PART II was the best film I saw in Cannes, and it played in the Director’s Fortnight section (which was typically outstanding), and I have to say, it is a huge shock to me that this film was not in competition in the main program. The film picks up immediately after Hogg’s achingly beautiful THE SOUVENIR, in the aftermath of a disastrous relationship, as the film’s protagonist Julie (played brilliantly again by Honor Swinton Byrne) shifts her focus from her loss to discovering her voice as a filmmaker. It was a powerful statement of becoming, a self-portrait of a young artist by her masterful later self, and one that reflexively examined that tension within the structure of the film itself. THE SOUVENIR, as a single film project made up of both parts, is a triumph, and I am eager to watch both parts again, together, in one sitting. Straight onto my personal favorites list.

THE SOUVENIR PART II, by Joanna Hogg

Right behind Hogg’s film on my list was Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s VERDENS VERSTE MENNESKE (THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD), starring a Norwegian actress previously unknown to me, Renate Reinsve who took to the Cannes red carpet (which is broadcast on the screen inside the Palais and provides a ton of pre-show joy to the awaiting audience) as a whirling, twirling burst of bright energy and carried that obvious charisma straight through the film itself. She is a movie star, arriving seemingly fully formed on screen, a modern European actress who seems to be filled with optimism and feeling. The film capitalizes on her performance with a melancomic story of a young woman named Julie who can’t settle into her romantic relationships, but one who clearly imagines herself as the type of person who does. Funnily, I am seeing reviews calling the character “unformed” or “childish” or comparing her to Frances Ha, but for me, that’s very wrong. She’s alive and justifiably uncertain about who and what she wants to be and be with, and just goes about the business of trying things out, like we all do. This movie felt very much like real life to me; real, wonderful characters alive to the continuing possibilities of life. It is judgement-free, compassionate, and a joy. I didn’t see every eligible movie, but if Reinsve doesn’t win the Best Actress award, it would be a crime.

Joachim Trier’s THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD

Trier’s co-writer on THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD, Eskil Vogt, wrote and directed a film at Cannes as well, and it was one of the few genre films I was able to see. THE INNOCENTS, playing in Un Certain Regard (the festival’s section for official selections not selected for the main competition), is the story of a group fo small children, living in the same apartment complex, who come to learn of a supernatural connection they share, one which gives them extraordinary powers of communication and destructive force. It also features some heavy duty staged violence against animals and children, which had the audience gasping in surprise, and draws on the relationship between adult power and the way in which kids misunderstand that power when they interact with one another and the world, often turning the tyranny of the adult world into acts of cruelty that Vogt captures with prowling, long lens shots that call to mind recent horror classics like IT FOLLOWS or LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, reminding me that I need to watch more contemporary horror.

THE INNOCENTS by Eskil Vogt

Also in Un Certain Regard and also grappling with childhood cruelty, Laura Wandel’s UN MONDE (aka PLAYGROUND) is the story of a pair of siblings enduring the daily degradations of life in a Belgian elementary school. Shot in a social realist style (think the Dardenne Brothers making SON OF SAUL) that never diverges from the point of view of Nora, a kindergartener whose older brother suffers constant abuse and humiliation at the hands of his classmates. It is very rare to see a film perfectly grasp the emotional life of young kids, but PLAYGROUND absolutely nails it, tracking the mistakes, the attempts at kindness, the meanness and exclusion, and all of the emotions that follow through the beautiful, powerhouse performance of young Maya Vanderbeque, who carries the entire movie on her shoulders and never delivers a single false beat. 

Maya Vanderbeque as Nora in Laura Wandel’s UN MONDE (PLAYGROUND)

Another film about the emotional isolation of systemic abuse, and also in Un Certain Regard, was Sebastian Meise’s GREAT FREEDOM, the story of Hans Hoffmann, a gay man in Germany repeatedly imprisoned over violations to the nation’s infamous Paragraph 175 law, which made homosexual activity a crime (and was utilized by the Nazis to send LGBTQIA+ people to the concentration camps). Franz Rogowsky is an actor who never fails to fascinate with his ability to seemingly haunt the frame, and his work here is yet another in a recent string of outstanding performances, here showing the complex relationship between freedom and the past, and how trauma informs the experience of persecution. 

Franz Rogowsky as Hans in Sebastian Meise’s GREAT FREEDOM

Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation of Philip Roth’s DECEPTION is a film I have been discussing with Desplechin for many years, one that he had long been seeking to make, and once it began playing, it was clear why; Desplechin has returned to the themes of his best films with this story of Roth’s extra-marital affairs, here presented with such tenderness that I was shocked; Roth’s reputation as an irredeemable misogynist was here transformed through the lens of his equal, a lover played by Lea Séydoux, who understands his desire for her and meets it with her own understanding and power. Of course, the film also proposes that maybe the entire proposition is a fiction invented by Roth to help him understand and invent women as fictions, but that doesn’t distract from the film’s power for me. As always with Desplechin, the spiritual side of his work is boiling beneath the surface of his images and characters, here represented by Roth’s outsider status as a Jewish American abroad. I can’t wait to see this again, a top-tier Desplechin film for me (and I love them all for my own, selfish reasons).

Arnaud Desplechin’s DECEPTION

Wes Anderson’s THE FRENCH DISPATCH arrived with expectations that can only be compared to a new album by a well-established rock star; Anderson’s visual and storytelling style is so consistent, so unique, and so wonderful, there is a fear that any major changes to the director’s signature approach might be alienating or somehow dishonest. Anderson is who he is, a visual stylist unlike any other who relies on the bespoke details of his image making to create a symbiotic relationship with his writing, together creating films that serve both as cinematic homage and something truly unique. THE FRENCH DISPATCH is no exception, a love-letter to the long form journalistic essay writing that shaped the mid-20th century glory days of THE NEW YORKER and other prestigious literary magazines. But the film is also filled with cinematic nods to the French New Wave, films noir, 1930’s comedies, and more. It is an absolute joy to watch, twinned to THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS for me, both films adapting a certain era of the written word that captures the spirit of the times and subverts nostalgia by creating something new.

THE FRENCH DISPATCH by Wes Anderson

And finally, speaking of new, Julia Ducournau’s TITANE was my final film of the festival before heading home. The story of a young woman named Alexia (played with unbelievable power by Agathe Rousselle) who suffers a traumatic head injury and develops into a sociopathic murderer before passing herself off as a young man who had disappeared years ago, TITANE is also the story of radical, physical transformation of the female body into whatever the fuck it wants to be. And it is radical; did I mention the car that impregnates Alexia, in the form of mechanical parthenogenesis that drives (see what I did there?) the story to its almost unbearably moving conclusion? Ducournau’s control of the film’s escalating tensions, purposeful gender confusion, male vanity, and found family is flawless, making TITANE a film that deserves multiple viewings in order to unpack its narrative and visual strategies. 

Julia Ducournau’s TITANE

I could go on and on, and already have; I watched 28 films and for the most part, found something compelling and thought-provoking about each. And there were so many more I didn’t see but wanted to see; festivals are always filled with regrets. As I sit here, having departed Nice, passed through Heathrow in London, and now flying home over the Atlantic Ocean, I’m thinking about how much this festival means to me in the ongoing world of COVID. I know I am landing back in the reality of family life, work, and responsibility, and I can’t wait to replug into my real life. But there is something about Cannes that will continue to frame my inner-life, the interior version of myself that adores sitting in the dark with strangers and giving myself permission and room to think seriously and passionately about cinema, a word I use without reservation. For me, that is the ideal of Cannes, which has once again replenished me and lead me to try to continue to find ways to honor that part of myself in the other areas of my life. I hope to be back soon. 

(Click here For a full list of my Cannes screenings)

Cannes 2021 Review: ANNETTE by Leos Carax

ANNETTE, directed by Leos Carax

Sparks, the endearingly enduring pop duo of brothers Ron and Russell Mael, have created a monumental body of work together for over 50 years, a sort of parallel history of contemporary pop music that exists both within and outside of the structures of genre, style, and stardom. Leos Carax has been operating in a parallel world as well, explicitly so, a master of creating tangible, physical images that are driven by his profoundly visual imagination. ANNETTE, their collaboration in the form of a cinematic opera, is an expression of these synonymous outsider visions, and the tension between the desire for acceptance and the embrace of rejection.

ANNETTE operates as a sort of narrative history of what I can only imagine is the tension at the heart of Sparks as an artistic project; the serious musical ambition and mastery of form that is embodied by Marion Cotillard’s Ann Defrasnoux, a beloved soprano whose work in the opera brings her global renown, and the dark, confrontational comedy of Adam Driver’s Henry McHenry, who prowls the stage as a form of self-analysis and truth-telling that calls to mind Bo Burnham’s confessional storytelling mixed with Andrew Dice Clay’s intentional, absurdist bomb of a masterpiece THE DAY THE LAUGHTER DIED. The couple, united in love for one another, embody the paradox of mastery and humor, the embrace of the serious and the lowbrow that has both limited Sparks as a commercial project and has given them a profound and sustainable creative career.

Carax, whose films have consistently addressed the complex dance between love, personal integrity, and creativity, seems to be in familiar territory, having created wonderful musical sequences like the classic moment built around David Bowie’s MODERN LOVE in Carax’s 1986 MAUVAIS SANG, the incredible fireworks sequence from 1991’s THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE, or the thrilling, accordion mob cover version of LET MY BABY RIDE from 2012’s HOLY MOTORS.

With ANNETTE, however, Carax takes a different approach, seeming to transform the Mael’s ideas into a set of creative constraints. Carax’s touches are still there, primarily in Adam Driver’s performance, which seems to have taken on the physical requirements in Carax’s films that usually fall upon Denis Lavant, one of the most gifted physical actors of our generation. Here, though, Driver’s physicality is intentionally hemmed in by Carax, who frames the film far more theatrically than the anarchic naturalism we are used to, taking his cues from melodrama and classic cinema to create a more controlled world for his musical fairy tale.

The Maels seem to have also taken the film, which brilliantly lampoons the musical formalism of opera and modern musical theater, as a way to try something different. One of the great things about Sparks is that they use the conventions of pop music- form, length, instrumentation, style, genre- as a playground, infusing their music with humor (both lyrically and musically), repetition (think of BALLS or DICK AROUND), and stylistic wanderlust. But here too, outside of the film’s opening song SO MAY WE START, the Maels put aside expectations, instead sticking to the project, delivering music that relies on full orchestration and lyrical repetition, character themes and reprises; there is hardly a pop song in earshot, and barely a hint of the propulsive electronic instrumentation that shapes much of their best work. 

Here, a quick * SPOILER ALERT* for those interested in seeing the film with fresh eyes (as I always say, it is impossible to talk about a film without talking about it):

But transformation through constraint seems to be precisely the point, and ANNETTE absolutely sticks the landing.  In the film’s final sequence, Annette (to this point played by an intentionally artificial puppet) is transformed into real girl (played and sung beautifully by Devyn McDowell) and Driver’s Henry is also transformed into a stand-in for Leos Carax. In an inversion of the finale of PINOCCHIO, Annette becomes a real girl, not because she finally tells the truth, but because her creator does; Henry stops lying to himself at last through his rejection by his daughter. Long in denial of Annette’s full humanity, and seeing her now as a person and no longer as an extension of himself or Ann, he understands that he has created his own isolation all along. Here, the film’s slow moving evolution of Henry into a simulacrum of Carax himself— first the sunglasses, then the hat, and finally the hair, mustache, and world-weary eyes—arrives both visually and in the form of a song (which, for me, was the highlight of the film), a lament between the newly human child and the director’s Geppetto, who at last gets what he always wanted through the act of creation, only to remain in the prison of his own making, watching the only true thing he ever made carried away from him forever. 

Cannes 2021 Review: THE STORY OF FILM: A NEW GENERATION by Mark Cousins

THE STORY OF FILM: A NEW GENERATION by Mark Cousins

The Cannes Film Festival, and its main screening rooms, are housed in the Palais des Festivals, but ask anyone who loves movies— well, anyone who loves a certain idea of what the movies are— and they will likely agree that the Palais is less a palace and something more akin to a temple for true believers, a place for cinephiles to congregate and engage in a complicated relationship with not only contemporary cinema, but with the history of film. No film festival embodies that history quite like Cannes, which has shaped the international conversation around filmmakers and filmmaking for decades; from its elevation of the art of film to a black-tie event to its veneration of a long list of boundary-pushing filmmakers from around the world, Cannes is a festival that not only has the power to enshrine an artist in the history of film, but one that is fully aware of that power, which brings with it the ability to program almost anything it wants, which has come with its own problems; it is incredibly selective and loyal to its past, and when you lean so heavily on your history, problems of inclusion become a whole different part of the story. 

The festival was born in a different social, economic, and historical moment, but so was almost every other institution of power, and so, as it continues to see curation as a part of a continuum, Cannes continues to navigate how to contextualize its relationship to the past in a contemporary moment of long-needed, seismic change, be it access for people who have too-long been excluded from the production and celebration of cinema, to the new battlefronts that are reshaping the future of theatrical moviegoing. This is not a festival about democratic social participation in the movies; it is more akin to evangelism than conversation.

On the other hand, we live in a moment when films need a champion more than ever, and it is hard to come to Cannes as a true believer in cinema and not be moved by the experience. In that sense, the festival’s first official screening— Mark Cousin’s new documentary THE STORY OF FILM: A NEW GENERATION— was the perfect start, a heartfelt benediction for the global community of contemporary cinephiles. As an extension of his multi-part THE STORY OF FILM, the latest A NEW GENERATION follows Cousin’s generosity, curiosity, and passion for the medium in the 21st century, from images and sounds to performances and genres, to create a sort of “state of the art” for modern filmmaking, placing recent films in the context of the past, but also, as a way forward, as a vital and living form.

As a film programmer and someone who has watched and thought about films for decades, no illusions about my own objectivity; there is none. Cinema’s history remains dear to me not only from the perspective of the films themselves— which, I am sure we could all assemble a list of exclusions from this chapter of THE STORY OF FILM that we would have loved to see Cousins address (while retaining admiration for the images, ideas, and interpretations he brings to A NEW GENERATION)— but also on the level of personal and political identity, which Cousins rightly identifies as a sort of “borderless, stateless” globalism, tied together by filmmaking, that unites cinephiles as being, in a sense, a community of people who seek to understand one another through filmgoing and dialogue. Of which, I am 100% guilty as charged. 

In the wake of the pandemic and attending my first in-person film screening in over a year and a half, I was not prepared to be so moved by the experience. I felt fractured; on the one hand, I couldn’t quite believe I was back in a theater, that I was at Cannes again after twenty one years, that I was sitting in the dark next to a stranger from another part of the world, watching a film together, and on the other hand, here was the past twenty years of my filmgoing life, unfolding before me as a sort of acknowledgement of that experience as meaningful, relevant, to be celebrated. I was quietly on the verge of tears and, as the images, rhymes, and Cousins’ soothing narration and love of cinematic ideas unfolded before me, I felt as if we had collectively arrived at a moment of truth not only for the impact of the pandemic on that sacred thing we love, but for cinema culture as a whole. 

Throughout the film, I kept thinking about what was to come at the festival this week, about how A NEW GENERATION was screening in dialogue with Cannes and its legacy and its evangelism, about how this moment would be framing everything I had yet to see, and how those films would also be in dialogue with an unseen future, with the past, an eternal reframing not only movies, but of myself. That anticipation, delivered here in the form of a retrospective from our often cruel and difficult times, felt to me like a real gift, a signpost on the never-ending search to be connected in the dark, to find one another. To breathe together again. And so, maybe, this is just my own way of coming to terms with all of these complications, with my conflicted feelings about all of it, which feels like coming home again. 

Loving & Loathing The NFL Draft

Photo by Adrian Curiel on Unsplash

Despite myself, despite it all, I love the NFL Draft.

The NFL as an entity has a million problems and reasons I cannot stand it, all of it having to do with the League, ownership, management, and especially the culture and narrative that they put out into the world. Sports are a story, tied to geography and family and childhood and team history and players, and the NFL is the biggest league of all in this country; they should be doing a much better job with all of these factors. The reason it is, and remains, hugely popular, aside from these ties that bind people to their teams and rivalries, is, I think, three-fold: 

1. The Game. Football is brutal, but it is incredibly compelling as a game in and of itself because there is so much nuance involved. The more you watch and learn, the more the game comes alive through the ways in which these nuances are illuminated for you as a viewer. Have you ever tried to explain football to a little kid? It has so many weird rules (good luck explaining Illegal Shift or covering up tackles at the line of scrimmage) and while I can no longer imagine a time when I didn’t understand football, I also think the nuances and rules are what keep people away at first, because you watch a snap, giant men smash into each other, maybe you get three yards, or an incomplete pass, or seven yards, and this makes up literally 90% of the game– there is so much to understand. But it is pretty amazing as a game in that way. So good, in fact, that the in addition to the NFL, college football– essentially the league’s farm system– is a multi-billion dollar industry of its own.  

2. The Money. Much like American capitalism, that subsidizes and protects wealth (hello, Job Creators!) while pretending to be a “free market,” the NFL is actually a socialist system masquerading as an elite capitalist system. On the one hand, the sport venerates owners, the billionaires who literally own teams and make upper management decisions within the teams, as being somehow related to the success or failure on the field to the point that they hand the Super Bowl trophy to the owner of the team. Not the team captain, the owner. On the other hand, NFL teams are franchises and so owners have all of their downside protected by the League via the salary cap (the playing field is essentially level for all teams in terms of player salaries), revenue sharing from TV, licensing, merchandise, they receive public subsidies for stadiums from which they get to personally profit, etc. There is NO risk in owning an NFL team– all you have to do is have enough money to own one and then hire good managers and acquire good players and win (not nothing, obviously), but you can also NOT do that: you can stink at the minimum expectations of ownership for generations and still make a ton of money- JUST ASK MY FELLOW LIONS FANS.

Additionally, players can make millions, participate in commercial promotions, licensing deals, etc but their downside is 100% exposed- they are one knee injury away from being out of the league for good, and while contracts have guaranteed money, that is about all a player can really plan for and count on. Still, becoming a millionaire athlete is not the worst thing for players, especially since they, unlike the owners, often come from working class backgrounds and were, in that space, the NFL remains a dream. Have I mentioned the multi-billion dollar business of gambling among fans? Or the way in which the business of football– contracts, free agency, salary caps, trades– are the story of the sport for 75% of the year? The Draft is a part of that, too, of course. Fans at once love and resent this structure- they covet successful ownership and franchises, they hate players making money when they don’t perform, they love when they get a player on a relatively cheap contract and they over perform, etc. Fans *relate* to the business of the NFL and its veneration of ownership because the the NFL, wisely, makes the transactional nature of the day to day business of football transparent as a way of distracting from the obvious truth that it is enriching owners who carry little to no risk. #Merica

3. The Storytelling. This is, for me, the lowest common denominator factor of the NFL– it is a bunch of management in suits deciding to make the story of millionaire players and billionaire owners accessible by turning the league’s “brand” and “culture” into a constant dive into simple, conservative narratives via performative patriotism. It is no wonder that a sport where the business of the game perfectly reflects the economic system of the country that loves it needs to find a way to keep the masses happy and engaged outside of the 60 minutes on the field. And full credit to them: it was successful for a long, long time. But times are shifting and changing and the NFL continues to double down on its old world values, much to my massive personal disappointment. I don’t think the NFL brass wanted the game to become politically polarized, but they have been fostering a narrative that reenforces the inequities of the American system for so long, I don’t think they even realized they were doing it until it was too late (or perhaps the word is “inconvenient”) for them– the system they reenforce is literally the one that they perpetuate in their daily cultural and business practices. The NFL has done such a good job, like America itself, of driving perception away from its true moneymaking nature (subsidizing owners, no downside protection for players, all paid for by the fans to whom they try to pander) that they can prioritize the narrative theater of performative patriotism, crucial to the brand’s storytelling and identity, instead of acknowledging the concerns of their own players and many of their fans. 

Which of course leads me to The Draft. Even though I have a very hard time watching NFL games because all of the conditions above make me very, very disappointed, the one event that really connects all three phases of the NFL’s success is the Draft- it is where the dreams of the players come true, where the work of college football to introduce us to players becomes a story merged with the hopes and dreams of the team’s fans, who see a renewal and possibility in young, talented players. It ties in the very specific, nuanced aspects of the game- why is one player better than another? What “system” does an individual team run and what available players best fit that system? And it is the perfect platform for fan empowerment in the system: we all have our ideas of who is the best “fit” for our teams, if only these jerk owners and the dumb managers they hire would just see it and draft players OUR WAY! Bad drafts define management, as do good ones- it is a referendum on our perception of our team, on the future pain or success on the field that we will endure or enjoy as fans. And for many people, there is nothing more hopeful in America than watching primarily working class kids put on a suit and become rich on live TV. Throw in interest in your college program of choice and tracking where you favorite players land, and it is really another terrific event that enhances the fan relationship to their team, and thus the game, the league, the system. The Draft has become a huge event for these reasons- if it was boring to everyone, it wouldn’t be so popular. 

For me it has one huge flaw, but not a fatal one: Sports media (and thus the League’s) fixation on “human interest” stories among the players, which unfortunately, they tie to personal hardship which, once again, reenforces the idea that players are people just like you and me who have “worked hard” and now get to be “rich” and isn’t the NFL great for making that dream come true? On the one hand, I think that is great for the players. On the other hand, the constant reminder of a kid’s dead relative or how terrible the conditions of poverty are in which they grew up or how their father is incarcerated isn’t quite telling the story they think it is; it is mirroring a broken social system the NFL’s own narrative and fiscal model perpetuate.

Still gonna watch the Draft, tho.

Hoping my #DetroitLions get:

An Offensive Tackle at Pick 7 (Sewell or Slater in that order) or trade down (looking possible).

A Wide Receiver or LB in Round 2

A Saftey or Wide Receiver in Round 3

But let’s see what happens.