December 16, 2006

Mirren's First Elizabeth

If you liked The Queen, then don't miss this brilliant HBO series. in which she plays the first Queen Elizabeth ...

Step aside, Nicholas Hilliard. Your many official portraits of Queen Elizabeth I -- motionless body in gowns encrusted with embroidery, lace, and gems; expressionless face framed by pearl-spangled red wigs and delicate stiff ruffs -- have now been surpassed. Not only that, but the job has been accomplished not in oil paint but in a medium despised by highbrows: television. Elizabeth I, co-produced by BBC-4 and HBO and now available on DVD, is the finest portrait ever made of this endlessly fascinating figure.

Elizabeth I was no one's puppet. Unlike the impetuous princess played by Cate Blanchett in the 1998 film Elizabeth, the real woman did not renounce spontaneity, life, and love in order to assume the throne. Those imposing gowns and wigs were of her own choosing, because she understood all too well that real power combines outward display and inward discipline. This understanding pervades every detail of this marvelous film.

I won't rave about the gorgeous costumes, for fear of making Elizabeth I sound like Masterpiece Theater. It's pure HBO, with graphic scenes of torture, beheading, and (more shocking to the average couch potato) passionate kissing between a woman in her fifties (Helen Mirren, giving the performance of a lifetime) and a man half her age (Hugh Darcy as the second Earl of Essex). But neither is this a Tudor Sopranos. The violence, romance, and intrigue are all historically accurate. And so is the setting, perhaps the most brilliant and innovative part of a brilliant and innovative production.

Rather than pay the exorbitant fees to film in England, the producers went to Lithuania and, with a reedy lake standing in for the Thames, erected a partial replica of Whitehall, the sprawling palace built by Henry VIII and destroyed by fire in 1698. Never mind that the computer-generated vistas of 1580s London look ... well, computer generated. What matters is the interior, because as director Tom Holland explains, the layout of Elizabeth's living quarters was also the layout of her life: "I turned up through research some great old maps of Whitehall, and ... I began to ask myself why don't we just build exactly what we see here? ... Wouldn't it unlock secrets and truths about Elizabeth if we get it absolutely right?"

One truth unlocked is that Elizabeth managed the outward and inward dimensions of her power by moving through a distinct "hierarchy of space." In long, fluid tracking shots (made possible by the mobile Steadicam) we see her float, stride, and occasionally gallop from the "presence chamber," where she receives dignitaries, to the "privy gallery," a corridor lined with small rooms where she relaxes with her ladies in waiting and consults with her grey-bearded Privy Council. Surpisingly, the "privy chamber" of the all-male council is adjacent to the royal bedchambers, where no male is permitted -- unless, like the Earl of Leicester (beautifully played by Jeremy Irons) and later on, his stepson, the Earl of Essex, he happens to be "Bess's" lover.

If you're wondering how the Virgin Queen (a title generally regarded as accurate) could have had lovers, here are two pieces of advice: 1) use your imagination; and 2) don't obsess on the details. Wisely, this film does not feign knowledge of Elizabeth's hymen. The gynecological exam depicted in the first episode is not to verify her virginity but to determine her fitness, at age 40-something, to marry and produce an heir. Contrary to what some feminist scholars say, Elizabeth's sex was not perceived as an impediment to rule; she was hardly the first female crowned head in Europe. The impediment was her childlessness, in an era when royal succession in Protestant England was plagued by religious war and the ambitions of two powerful Catholic nations, France and Spain.

This is not to say that Elizabeth's sex was irrelevant. Unlike Henry VIII, she could not run through six spouses trying to beget a suitable heir. If she were to become pregnant, the odds were that she would die in childbirth. Also, it is possible that Elizabeth took a dim view of family happiness, having grown up with a father who repeatedly executed his wives and a half-sister ("Bloody Mary") who burned Protestants at the stake and imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower. The real reason, though, was expressed by the Sir James Melville, the Scottish ambassador: "Madame, I know you will never marry. For if you marry you will be but queen of England; now you are king and queen both."That Elizabeth did not wish to share power does not mean that it was easy for her, so divided was her nature between a cool, calculating head and a hot, passionate heart. As she wrote:

I grieve and dare not show my discontent
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.

The Elizabethans were not romantics, Shakespeare in Love notwithstanding. They did not fool themselves that the heart was more trustworthy than the head. Needless to say, Elizabeth was an Elizabethan. She understood that if a ruler cannot govern herself, she will not be able to govern others, and the result will be tyranny.

But movies mean romance, and it is rare to find one, set in any century, that does not succumb to either erotic or political romanticism. Since Elizabeth I is about both the erotic and political sides of Elizabeth's life, it seems almost miraculous that it refrains from romanticism. Much of the credit belongs to Nigel Williams, whose graceful script pulls off the trick of sounding both natural and Shakespearian, while also using many of Elizabeth's words, from the poem quoted above to her speeches before the army and Parliament.

In a recent interview, Ms. Mirren said that when she heard that Mr. Williams was writing the script, she said yes without bothering to read it. Obviously, she knew what she was doing. This writing and acting alone, performed on a bare stage, would make an excellent play. Add those fabulous costumes and that imaginatively truthful setting, and this poor reviewer runs out of superlatives!

(This review appeared first in the New York Sun.)

Posted by mbayles at 11:58 AM

May 4, 2006

Helen Mirren's First Elizabeth

Step aside, Nicholas Hilliard. Your many official portraits of Queen Elizabeth I -- motionless body in gowns encrusted with embroidery, lace, and gems; expressionless face framed by pearl-spangled red wigs and delicate stiff ruffs -- have now been surpassed. Not only that, but the job has been accomplished not in oil paint but in a medium despised by highbrows: television. Elizabeth I (co-produced by BBC Channel Four and HBO) is the finest portrait ever made of this endlessly fascinating figure.

Elizabeth I was no one's puppet. Unlike the impetuous princess played by Cate Blanchett in the 1998 film Elizabeth, the real woman did not renounce spontaneity, life, and love in order to assume the throne. Those imposing gowns and wigs were of her own choosing, because she understood all too well that real power combines outward display and inward discipline. This understanding pervades every detail of this marvelous film.

I won't rave about the gorgeous costumes, for fear of making Elizabeth I sound like Masterpiece Theater. It's pure HBO, with graphic scenes of torture, beheading, and (more shocking to the average couch potato) passionate kissing between a woman in her fifties (Helen Mirren, giving the performance of a lifetime) and a man half her age (Hugh Darcy as the second Earl of Essex). But neither is this a Tudor Sopranos. The violence, romance, and intrigue are all historically accurate. And so is the setting, perhaps the most brilliant and innovative part of a brilliant and innovative production.

Rather than pay the exorbitant fees to film in England, the producers went to Lithuania and, with a reedy lake standing in for the Thames, erected a partial replica of Whitehall, the sprawling palace built by Henry VIII and destroyed by fire in 1698. Never mind that the computer-generated vistas of 1580s London look ... well, computer generated. What matters is the interior, because as director Tom Holland explains, the layout of Elizabeth's living quarters was also the layout of her life: "I turned up through research some great old maps of Whitehall, and ... I began to ask myself why don't we just build exactly what we see here? ... Wouldn't it unlock secrets and truths about Elizabeth if we get it absolutely right?"

One truth unlocked is that Elizabeth managed the outward and inward dimensions of her power by moving through a distinct "hierarchy of space." In long, fluid tracking shots (made possible by the mobile Steadicam) we see her float, stride, and occasionally gallop from the "presence chamber," where she receives dignitaries, to the "privy gallery," a corridor lined with small rooms where she relaxes with her ladies in waiting and consults with her grey-bearded Privy Council. Surpisingly, the "privy chamber" of the all-male council is adjacent to the royal bedchambers, where no male is permitted -- unless, like the Earl of Leicester (beautifully played by Jeremy Irons) and later on, his stepson, the Earl of Essex, he happens to be "Bess's" lover.

If you're wondering how the Virgin Queen (a title generally regarded as accurate) could have had lovers, here are two pieces of advice: 1) use your imagination; and 2) don't obsess on the details. Wisely, this film does not feign knowledge of Elizabeth's hymen. The gynecological exam depicted in the first episode is not to verify her virginity but to determine her fitness, at age 40-something, to marry and produce an heir. Contrary to what some feminist scholars say, Elizabeth's sex was not perceived as an impediment to rule; she was hardly the first female crowned head in Europe. The impediment was her childlessness, in an era when royal succession in Protestant England was plagued by religious war and the ambitions of two powerful Catholic nations, France and Spain.

This is not to say that Elizabeth's sex was irrelevant. Unlike Henry VIII, she could not run through six spouses trying to beget a suitable heir. If she were to become pregnant, the odds were that she would die in childbirth. Also, it is possible that Elizabeth took a dim view of family happiness, having grown up with a father who repeatedly executed his wives and a half-sister ("Bloody Mary") who burned Protestants at the stake and imprisoned Elizabeth in the Tower. The real reason, though, was expressed by the Sir James Melville, the Scottish ambassador: "Madame, I know you will never marry. For if you marry you will be but queen of England; now you are king and queen both."That Elizabeth did not wish to share power does not mean that it was easy for her, so divided was her nature between a cool, calculating head and a hot, passionate heart. As she wrote:

I grieve and dare not show my discontent
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.

The Elizabethans were not romantics, Shakespeare in Love notwithstanding. They did not fool themselves that the heart was more trustworthy than the head. Needless to say, Elizabeth was an Elizabethan. She understood that if a ruler cannot govern herself, she will not be able to govern others, and the result will be tyranny.

But movies mean romance, and it is rare to find one, set in any century, that does not succumb to either erotic or political romanticism. Since Elizabeth I is about both the erotic and political sides of Elizabeth's life, it seems almost miraculous that it refrains from romanticism. Much of the credit belongs to Nigel Williams, whose graceful script pulls off the trick of sounding both natural and Shakespearian, while also using many of Elizabeth's words, from the poem quoted above to her speeches before the army and Parliament.

In a recent interview, Ms. Mirren said that when she heard that Mr. Williams was writing the script, she said yes without bothering to read it. Obviously, she knew what she was doing. This writing and acting alone, performed on a bare stage, would make an excellent play. Add those fabulous costumes and that imaginatively truthful setting, and this poor reviewer runs out of superlatives!

Elizabeth I was nominated for several Emmys, and should be available soon on DVD.

(This review appeared first in the New York Sun.)

Posted by mbayles at 8:54 AM

February 7, 2006

Yes, Prime Minister

One of the best comedies ever made about politics ...

If you liked Yes, Minister, the brilliant BBC series about a newly elected Member of Parliament wandering Alice-like in the Wonderland of a government run by Her Majesty's civil service, then Virgil says rush out and rent the sequel: Yes, Prime Minister. It is even funnier.

The first series depicts the antagonistic relationship between Jim Hacker, M.P. (Paul Eddington) and his slithery civil service handler, Sir Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne in his prime). Also present is Sir Humphrey's apprentice, the overeducated Bernard Woolley (Derek Fowlds, master of the slow burn).

By the end of the first series, Hacker still doesn't know how to get the better of Sir Humphrey, although he's learning. You get the feeling that no politician in this system is any match for the careerists whose whole purpose in life is to keep the pols from doing anything that would upset their bureaucratic apple-cart.

In the second series, Hacker is chosen as Prime Minister because the Party cannot decide between two powerful men and sees Hacker as ineffectual and therefore safe. But such is the satisfying comedy of the thing: Hacker rises to the occasion, and relishing his new power starts giving it back to Sir Humphrey in ways that will make you laugh out loud.

Again, who would have thought so much comedy could be wrested from the spectacle of close associates vying for power? My political friends tell me that this is what Tip O'Neill really meant by his famous remark, "All politics is local." The question is, why are we Americans so incapable of seeing the humor of it?

Posted by mbayles at 1:13 PM

August 1, 2005

Remember The Sopranos?

Here's what I had to say about the first great HBO series...

We Are All Sopranos
By MARTHA BAYLES

After a one-year hiatus during which loyal fans had to content themselves with reruns, HBO's hit series, The Sopranos, returned to the airwaves this fall amid worries that it might have lost its resonance. One danger was that the producers would start believing the cliche that the show's amazing popularity stems from cable TV's ability to push the envelope on the depiction of sex, drugs, profanity, and violence. It's easy to speculate that 13.4 million people tuned in to the season premiere of The Sopranos because they relish hearing curses, ogling silicone-enhanced breasts on the Bada Bing dance floor, and watching wiseguys get offed. And it's just as easy to condemn The Sopranos on the same grounds, as William F. Buckley Jr. did when he cited its "arrant exploitation of sex, exhibitionism, murder, sadism, cynicism, and hypocrisy."

But such judgments are obtuse. Most people do not love The Sopranos because it pumps vulgarity and venality into their homes any more than they love it because it stereotypes Italian-Americans (pace groups like the American Italian Defense Association). People love The Sopranos because it takes something tried and true -- the Mafia drama -- and uses it to explore social class, the ordeal of immigrant assimilation, the ethical compromises of the workplace, and other aspects of contemporary American life barely touched on in film and television, except in the most pious and didactic fashion.

It beckons us, first, with its humor. The show's premise -- the well-heeled, well-educated psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi treating the boss of the northern Jersey syndicate -- is comic on its face. Back in the 1970s, Saturday Night Live's John Belushi played the Godfather attending group therapy. More recently, a feature film along the same lines, Analyze This, has spawned a sequel, Analyze That. The Sopranos is not above milking the spectacle of rough, burly Tony working with mild, bookish Dr. Melfi on issues like impulse control and depression resulting from his own mother trying to have him whacked.

Yet as every fan knows, there's a lot more going on in The Sopranos than gags about waste management meeting anger management. (If you're catching up with past episodes, you might want to hold off on reading more.) For starters, Dr. Melfi and Tony (Lorraine Bracco and James Gandolfini) are antagonists, in the fullest sense of the word: two people involved in a contest of wills that, while leavened by wry humor, can feel, at times, like a struggle unto death.

In that respect, The Sopranos draws directly on its gangster setting. Like the Western, the gangster drama dwells less on a particular place and time than on the clash between certain modern virtues (reason, order, process) and certain ancient ones (honor, loyalty, vengeance). When one code fails, as the former did when Dr. Melfi was brutally raped and the rapist went free on a legal technicality, the alternative -- Tony's ability to carry out swift retribution -- can look pretty damn good.

Hence the emotional intensity of the scene when Dr. Melfi, back at work bruised and limping from what she says was a car accident, aches to tell Tony what really happened. Battling with herself, she bursts into tears. Tony's response is to get up from his chair and walk over to hers. Every other time he has done this, it has been in anger. Now the gesture is one of comfort, and the moment is powerful precisely because the small distance between the two chairs is so laden thematically. When Tony asks, "Do you wanna say something?" and she says, "No," we understand that she is going to abide by her own code, even though right now it is making her the victim of an unpunished crime. I dare say this was the only time most viewers actually wished Tony would order a hit.

At the same time, Tony's ancient code seems to be unraveling before our eyes. A constant refrain is the loss of old-school mobsters, the kind who would do time rather than rat, and the decay of organized crime into disorganized crime. The mob characters are like many other Americans, deploring what they perceive as a breakdown in the values of older generations.

Which brings us to the real secret of the show's success. While some of the conflicts it depicts are rooted in the specifics of the Mafia code, most of the show's funniest and finest moments have nothing to do with a clash between the mainstream and the Mafia, but with the ways in which the mainstream irritates various traditional sensibilities. If the crude appeal of the Mafia theme were the crucial ingredient, then there would be a dozen successful clones of The Sopranos out there, and there are none. What makes the show unclonable is the skill with which it uses the gangster genre as a device for bringing undercurrents of shared emotion to the surface. Indeed, the very familiarity of the Mafia genre allows viewers to distance themselves from certain painful feelings while at the same time identifying with them.

Some of those feelings are about social class. As many critics have observed, Tony and Carmela Soprano (Edie Falco) are rich enough to live in an upscale suburb, where they mix with professionals and corporate executives. But they don't feel entirely comfortable there, and most of their discomfort stems not from being Mafiosi but from trying to learn the peculiar folkways of upper-class America. For instance, after their son, Anthony Jr., or AJ, helped some other boys in his elite private school to vandalize the swim coach's office, how many viewers shared Tony and Carmela's chagrin when the headmaster refused to mete out punishment?

Beyond class, The Sopranos takes an indirect but refreshingly unorthodox approach to immigration and assimilation, themes rarely touched on because identity politics have made them fragile almost to the point of taboo. Italian-Americans are hardly recent arrivals in America, and despite the occasional Russian, African, or Middle Eastern character, The Sopranos is not about any other group. But the Sopranos' experience -- their relatively rapid movement into the affluent suburbs -- is shared by millions of other first- and second-generation immigrants today. And while only a tiny minority of those other newcomers have any connection with crime, the vast majority have much in common with the Sopranos.

It is, for instance, laughingly hypocritical of a crime boss to want a school to discipline his son. That hypocrisy resonates with assimilating groups, however, because as children pick up new ways of thinking and acting, their elders reflexively want to reassert authority. Yet because wielding that authority would work against their offspring's social mobility, the elders just as often retreat. Either way, both generations are prone to feelings of shame, of imagining that just because they are who they are, they have something to hide, even if that something is usually not a thick file with the FBI.

The Mafia connection is also essential to another immigrant-related theme, which is the disdain many people feel toward their jobs. Cynicism inevitably creeps in when we encounter the hypocrisy, ambiguity, and ethical compromise involved in every work environment -- blue, pink, or white collar. We persevere in spite of that, abiding with our bad consciences by telling ourselves that it's all for the sake of our families. But as we see with Tony, that rationalization can be hard to sustain when the family is less than holiday-greeting-card perfect.

In The Sopranos, such ambivalence balances delicately on the characters' criminal dimension. When Tony discovers that his lifelong friend and associate Big Pussy has been "flipped" by the Feds and made to wear a wire, together with his (more or less) loyal associates Silvio and Paulie, Tony takes Pussy out on a yacht, shoots him, and dumps his garbage-bagged corpse overboard. Because the scene delicately parodies the classic tableau of the Mafiosi executing a traitor to uphold the code, it is too stylized and predictable to do great damage to our identification with Tony, although I for one was glad to see him haunted by a nightmare in which Pussy appears in the form of a reproachful talking fish.

In sharp contrast is the earlier episode in which two aspiring goodfellas, Sean Gismonte and Matt Bevilaqua, try to impress Tony's rival, Richie Aprile, by ambushing Christopher, Tony's nephew and designated heir. Christopher is gravely hurt but survives, and in retaliation Tony and Pussy execute Matt in an especially gleeful and cold-blooded way, only to follow up the deed with a hearty steak dinner, during which they reminisce about their good old days as young mobsters. The grotesque sequence belongs in a Quentin Tarantino movie, not The Sopranos.

Some critics cheer every time the series takes such a "dark" turn. But for the majority of fans, too many adventures like that on Tony's part and the whole carefully balanced edifice would start to topple. The show's writers apparently felt the same, because right after Matt's killing they created a foil in the person of an eyewitness: a snooty, self-righteous type who plays the good citizen until he discovers that the perpetrators were Mafiosi. At that point he rushes from his library to call his lawyer, while his wife panics. Pegging the guy for an upper-middle-class coward, we revert to our usual fondness for Tony as the opposite of all such phoniness. For good measure, a later episode shows Tony haunted by the memory of Matt crying "Mama!"

Most of Tony's violent deeds are carried out either with cold calculation as a necessary cost of doing business, or in the heat of passion, as in the current season's vengeance killing of the despicable new capo, Ralphie. In Tony's universe, familiar but alien to us, he's fighting himself and fighting to make it in America. When he does something patently evil, the tenuous threads connecting him to us fray and break. But don't expect Sopranos creator David Chase and his smart, talented colleagues to break too many. For if they did, we would no longer recognize ourselves in these striving, conflicted compatriots.

Copyright 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

Posted by mbayles at 6:30 PM

July 5, 2005

Hotel Rwanda

A youngish married couple sit on the roof of a luxury hotel, ... ... palm trees swaying in the tropical breeze. By candlelight, over a beer, the husband reveals that shortly after meeting his wife he had bribed her boss to transfer her to a job near him: "So I could marry you." Joking about the amount of the bribe, they kiss. The only jarring note is the chatter of machine guns in the background. This is Kigali, Rwanda, in May or June of 1994. And outside the hotel gates, Hutu militias armed with guns and machetes have started the genocide that because of the world's inaction left between 800,000 and one million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutu dead. But this scene is not a mistake. It's been carefully staged by the husband, Paul Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle), the elegant manager of the hotel, so he can tell his wife Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo) how he wants her and their four children to die. Paul is Hutu, his wife Tutsi. And seeking refuge in the hotel are 1,200 more Tutsis. Paul is trying to keep the militias at bay, but if he fails, he wants his family to jump off the roof rather than watch each other be raped and hacked to pieces. This strange doubleness - candlelight, mass murder - reflects the startling depth of "Hotel Rwanda," which you will miss if you look for the usual ingredients. The world knows that Mr. Rusesabagina succeeded, so there isn't much suspense. None of the killing occurs on camera (except for some grainy news footage), so there isn't much violence. And while director Terry George makes clear the moral failure of the US, the UN, and the West in general, there isn't much politics, either. Instead, "Hotel Rwanda" achieves something almost never seen in the movies: a serious portrait of a good man. Paul loves his family and is brave - in Hollywood this would be more than enough to make him the good guy. But this film does more. It emphasizes Paul's mental qualities. He is no intellectual. just a hotel manager. But he is alert, attentive, self-controlled, swift to read people and manipulate them (through cunning if necessary), and above all, cool in the face of danger. He is what the ancient Greeks called sophron. In the same vein, it is no accident that Paul in the hospitality business. Hospitality meant far more to the ancient Greeks than it does to us. In Homer, it means not just being nice to people but showing them how rich and powerful you are, placing them in your debt through good treatment and fine gifts, and finally being in a position to call in your chips. This is precisely what happens in the escalating scenes between Paul and the Hutu general Augustin Bizimungo (Fana Mokoena), which alone are worth the price of admission. Smoothly and convincingly, Cheadle's Paul goes from being the kind of host who knows what everybody is drinking to being the kind of hero who knows what every fearful moment requires. Against such a backdrop of evil, this is a beautiful thing to watch.

Posted by mclennan at 8:00 PM | Comments (0)

Kinsey: All Bonobos and No Chimps

Behold the bonobo, Dr. Kinsey tells his enraptured students ... ... They're our closest relatives, and they have sex all the time, with as many partners as possible, while living together in peace and harmony! Way cool, we say. But depending on our knowledge of primate evolution, we might also ask why the kindly prof doesn't mention chimpanzees, those larger cousins of bonobos who really ARE our closest relatives (just a few chromosomes away from Uncle Fred). Is it because recent field research suggests that chimps in the wild take giddy delight in such activities as rape, mate-battering, and murder? Personally, I don't put much stock in sociobiology. It's fascinating to compare ourselves with animals, but for a couple of millennia, human beings have understood that, like it or not, we are different. For one thing, animals don't conduct scientific studies of their own sexual behavior, publish them in best-selling volumes that contribute to significant changes in social organization (if not behavior), then make movies celebrating only one side of the story. To be fair, "Kinsey" tells its one-sided story gracefully. Bill Condon is a deft director with a flair for sexual themes (see his excellent 1998 "Gods and Monsters"). And Liam Neeson is a vast improvement on the original Alfred Kinsey - not only is he better looking, with a better sense of humor, he is also better behaved. Oops. This is science, folks. We're not supposed to judge behavior as better or worse. That belongs to the dark ages B.K. (Before Kinsey), when ten-year-old boys were forced to wear cruel contraptions to keep them from masturbating. Huh? Where did I get that idea? From a gripping scene in which it is revealed that the suffering flesh of Kinsey pèère (John Lithgow) had been mortified in this bizarre way. As it happens, there's no evidence that such a thing ever occurred. Why then add it to the movie? The answer is simple: to make the dark ages look even darker than they were. America had no lack of sexual hangups in the 1950s: anti-gay prejudice, racist myths, and gross disinformation about female sexuality (thanks a lot, Sigmund). A more measured film would not feel the need to add sexual morality to the list. I say this because the last I checked, sex was a pretty strong passion that sometimes needs channelling, if not curbing. (I assure you, my acceptance of this hard fact does not compel me to strap chastity belts on ten-year-old boys.) One one level, "Kinsey" accepts this hard fact. There aren't many erotic practices out there that most people agree are wrong, but raping children is one. So "Kinsey" includes a moment of moral indignation at it, as though trying to reassure the audience that this is a movie about noble scientists, not nasty libertines. The trouble is, Kinsey and some of his associates WERE libertines, and like all libertines they ended up hurting and violating one another. There are some hints of this: a scene where two researchers who've been sleeping with each other's wives succumb to jealous anger; and one great line: "When it comes to love, we are all in the dark." But these are only hints, which is too bad, because underlying this story is a compelling set of questions about what science can and cannot tell us about ourselves. For example, love is not the only thing science cannot illuminate. Morality is another. Can it be proven scientifically that raping children is wrong? Of course not. That is a truth of another kind, no less true for not being subject to the experimental method. If "Kinsey" went a little further in addressing such questions, instead of pulling back from them (for fear of appearing prudish?), then it would be a great movie instead of merely a good one. * My source is the work of anthropologist Richard Wrangham, whose 1997 book, "Demonic Males," uses solid research to buttress a less-than-solid brief for what might be described as the bonobo lifestyle.

Posted by mclennan at 8:00 PM | Comments (0)

March 31, 2005

A Test of Reprise...

write something more here....

and here too for longer writing...

Posted by mclennan at 6:14 PM | Comments (0)

September 8, 2004

Video Virgil: "Yes, PRIME Minister"

If you liked "Yes, Minister," the brilliant BBC series about a newly elected Member of Parliament wandering Alice-like in the Wonderland of a government run by Her Majesty's civil service, then Virgil says rush out and rent the sequel: "Yes, Prime Minister."  It is even funnier.

The first series depicts the antagonistic relationship between Jim Hacker, M.P. (Paul Eddington) and his slithery civil service handler, Sir Humphrey Appleby (Nigel Hawthorne in his prime). Also present is Sir Humphrey's apprentice, the overeducated Bernard Woolley (Derek Fowlds, master of the slow burn).

By the end of the first series, Hacker still doesn't know how to get the better of Sir Humphrey, although he's learning.  You get the feeling that no politician in this system is any match for the careerists whose whole purpose in life is to keep the pols from doing anything that would upset their bureaucratic apple-cart.

In the second series, Hacker is chosen as Prime Minister because the Party cannot decide between two powerful men and sees Hacker as ineffectual and therefore safe.  But such is the satisfying comedy of the thing: Hacker rises to the occasion, and relishing his new power starts giving it back to Sir Humphrey in ways that will make you laugh out loud.

Again, who would have thought so much comedy could be wrested from the spectacle of close associates vying for power?  My political friends tell me that this is what Tip O'Neill really meant by his famous remark, "All politics is local."  The question is, why are we Americans so incapable of seeing the humor of it?

Posted by at 8:45 AM