Information overload

[“Photograph shows a postal worker carrying a bag of mail and a bundle of the magazine The Literary Digest dated May 22, 1920.” From the George Grantham Bain Collection of the Library of Congress. Click for a slightly larger view.]

Related reading
All OCA mail posts (Pinboard)

Meddling

A column in The Washington Post says, “Stop calling it ‘meddling.’” I’m there. Or was there and am there. Here’s a post from February 2018: Needed: a word other than meddle.

A mystery of the deep

[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

Do you know what you’re seeing here?

“Thus the world was lost”

A chemical engineer, working in a “defense plant” (“a war plant, of course”), tells Milton Mayer that the world was lost on a day in 1935. The engineer was required to take an “oath of fidelity,” refused, and was given twenty-four hours to reconsider. The next day, he took the oath:

“There I was, in 1935, a perfect example of the kind of person who, with all his advantages in birth, in education, and in position, rules (or might easily rule) in any country. If I had refused to take the oath in 1935, it would have meant that thousands and thousands like me, all over Germany, were refusing to take it. Their refusal would have heartened millions. Thus the regime would have been overthrown, or, indeed, would never have come to power in the first place. The fact that I was not prepared to resist, in 1935, meant that all the thousands, hundreds of thousands, like me in Germany were also unprepared, and each one of these hundreds of thousands was, like me, a man of great influence or of great potential influence. Thus the world was lost.”

Quoted in Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–1945 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955).

Also from this book
Principiis obsta and finem respice

Kubrick–Zweig

Found: a nearly complete screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Calder Willingham for an adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s novella Burning Secret.

Related reading
All OCA Zweig posts (Pinboard)

“Wake up”

Representative Adam Schiff (D, California-28), characterizing Donald Trump’s performance in Helsinki:

President Trump’s performance today was the most damaging and shameful surrender of American values and interests in modern history.

I say again to my Republican colleagues: Wake up.

“Afloat”

“Love is what keeps us together and afloat”: Fred Rogers, in Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (dir. Morgan Neville, 2018).

Related reading
All OCA Fred Rogers posts (Pinboard)

Twelve movies

[Three sentences each. No spoilers.]

Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie (dir. Andrea Blaugrund Nevins, 2018). The story of Mattel’s Barbie, from origins and early success to Project Dawn, the 2016 transformation of the original doll into a gang of four: curvy, tall, petite, and original. What I found most interesting: the seriousness with which Mattel’s designers treat the evolution of this plastic signifier. Barbie is big, unironic business.

*

Un pequeño festival de Pedro Almodóvar

Matador (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 1986). A melodrama, played straight, that approaches John Waters territory in its sheer lunacy. Bullfighting, sex, death, and psychic visions, in a black and red color scheme. Not nearly as good as The Skin I Live In, but stranger.

Law of Desire (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 1987). A high-flying writer and director, his tangled relationships with two younger men, a transgender sister, and further tangles. The ancient Greeks and Romans would have understood this movie at once: the law of desire is to know no law. Desire destroys everything, even a beautiful Olympia manual typewriter.

*

Richard III (dir. Richard Loncraine, 1995). A condensed version of Shakespeare’s play, set in a 1930s fascist England, all red and black and brown. Ian McKellen is brilliant as Richard Gloucester, chatting with the camera as he schemes and murders his way to the top. Especially fun to watch this adaptation after the madness of two Almodóvar films.

*

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (dir. Morgan Neville, 2018). A documentary about Fred Rogers that skirts some matters (among them, a deeply difficult childhood) but offers many surprises, including Rogers’s political affiliation, the meaning of “143,” and a 1968 Neighborhood storyline about King Friday’s wall. What comes as no surprise: Fred Rogers’s deep love and respect for children, with scene after scene that will reduce many viewers to tears. I wish that the PBS overlords would wake up and put Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood back on the air.

*

The Phone Call (dir. Mat Kirkby, 2013). A short film with Sally Hawkins as a crisis hotline worker and Jim Broadbent as the voice on the other end of the line. Great performances on and off camera — it’s easy to forget that the voice on the telephone is that of an actor. The ending — well, no, just watch.

*

Madame Bovary (dir. Sophie Barthes, 2014). Mia Wasikowska as Emma Bovary, married to a clueless husband, seeking solace in louche men and fancy drapes. There must be more than this provincial life! A painterly film (Vermeer, pretty obviously), but beautifully composed scenes give way to more erratic camerawork as Emma’s life spins out of control.

*

Walls of Sound: A Look Inside The House of Records (dir. David Gracon, 2012). A record store in Eugene, Oregon, its owner, its employees, and its customers, all of whom speak of it with affection (even if those employees have no health insurance). Established in 1972, The House of Records — and it’s really a house, with a former resident making an appearance — is still going strong in 2018. Word: if you have a local treasure to support, bookstore or record store, support it now, so that it will be there to enjoy your support tomorrow.

*

Dying to Know: Ram Dass & Timothy Leary (dir. Gay Dillingham, 2014). Ram Dass (formerly Richard Alpert) and Timothy Leary, ex-Harvard promulgators of psychedelics, meet not long before Leary’s death for one last conversation about life and death — or as Leary calls death, “the last taboo.” As if no one ever spoke of death before? Too much glibness and self-congratulation for my taste.

*

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (dir. Paul McGuigan, 2017). Annette Bening as the fading star Gloria Grahame, in love with a young Liverpudlian, actor Peter Tuner (Jamie Bell). The story arc is predictable, but Bening gives a great performance. Best watched with subtitles.

*

In the Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger (dir. Jessica Yu, 2004). An excellent introduction to the life and work of Henry Darger, menial worker and outsider artist, with reminiscences from his landlord and neighbors. A particular strength of the film: the use of excerpts from Darger’s fiction to illuminate his life. A strange touch: ten-year-old Dakota Fanning as the film’s narrator.

*

Come Sunday (dir. Joshua Marston, 2018). Based on a This American Life episode about Carlton Pearson (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a charismatic African-American Pentecostal minister who begins to preach a doctrine of universal salvation, salvation even for backsliders, even for people who have never accepted Christ — at which point, all hell breaks loose. I would have appreciated more attention to the biblical texts at issue in Pearson’s challenge to his tradition’s accepted theology. With Martin Sheen as a disturbingly plausible Oral Roberts.

Related reading
All OCA film posts (Pinboard)

Asset and handler

Jonathan Chait, writing in New York, presents a compelling argument that Trump–Russia has been going on for a very long time: “it would be dangerous not to consider the possibility that the summit is less a negotiation between two heads of state than a meeting between a Russian-intelligence asset and his handler.” The year of wonders: 1987.

A message for Donnie

“Yer jaiket’s oana shoogly peg, Donnie”: the message on a sign held by Helen Broussard, a retired schoolteacher protesting at the Trump golf resort in Turnberry, Scotland. That is, “Your jacket’s on a wobbly peg,” which The Washington Post paraphrases as “You are on your way out.”

For more on Trump and golf courses in Scotland, you might seek out the film You’ve Been Trumped. Too long, but revealing.