Enron: What Went Wrong?

What Went Wrong? Not with the company, we know that: A couple of smartass guys thought lying and fabricating because they were ‘smarter’ than everyone else was OK, their riches their due, and consequently they totally screwed employees and shareholders numbering in the tens of thousands out of billions of dollars. Hubris abounded.

The play “Enron,” though. What went wrong with the play? I read the script before I saw the production, and though I wondered how some bits might be effectively staged, it held together for me on the page. But last night at the Broadhurst Theatre, it fell apart like Skilling and Fastow’s black box of nothing.

Some of this is probably due to razzmatazz -- initially the musical numbers were fun, then they dragged on and kept the action of the story from moving forward. Lucy Prebble’s script does dictate some physical actions to illustrate the fast-moving rise of Skilling’s Enron, but the director and choreographer seemed to be camouflaging some missing scenes.

The actors do well by the script – Norbert Leo Butz as Jeff Skilling was skeevy and pathetic, journeying from the dumpy to the buff, the resentful whiz kid to the mean victor of the spoils and the despoiler of the victims of his fraud. Terrific, funny, snappy, with a bounding energy, Butz did his damnedest to carry us along. Stephen Kunken, last seen as the Stage Manager in David Cromer’s “Our Town,”was Andy Fastow, even nerdier than Skilling, utterly inept socially, the butt of ridicule from childhood into his thirties. Finally as CFO he gets his turn, and he is crass and arrogant and mean. Lots of mean in this play – presumably Enron’s corporate culture was rude and crude. Gregory Itzin is charming, false, lazy, slimy as Ken Lay. Marin Mazzie as Claudia Roe initially struck me as a young for the role – as did Itzin for Ken Lay. Both handled the roles well, however, although Mazzie was a tad loud in the first act.

“Enron” the play has an array of animals – three blind mice that look like rats, several raptors, and traders. That’s the good part. The primary characters are well done. The scenes of the excess testosterone leading to choreographed violence are terrific. Not only did the four main characters do excellent work, the entire cast did.

In general the visuals are stunning, evocative of the chaos, the stress, the glaring madness and the highs of the ‘90s, with excellent contributions by Mark Henderson (lighting), Anthony Ward (set and costume design), and Jon Driscoll (videos and projections).

But an extremely important scene regarding the Enron Traders devastating the state of California was lost. Couldn’t hear a thing -- therefore a thumbs down to sound design by Adam Cork -- because the stage was cluttered with shouting choreography and laser swords. Please. That’s another thumbs down to Scott Ambler’s choreography. Ultimately, of course, the responsibility lies with director Rupert Goold. Reading Lucy Prebble’s script, it works quite well in these vital scenes – they’re damning to Enron and its traders, but only if we can hear it. Bare on the page, the words were powerful and left me breathless in shock. On the stage --yes, we all get the symbolism of the darkened stage and the use of the lasers, but the words were obfuscated and that was a shame.

This production made me think of “Chess” in that all the leading actors in its NY production were 10-15 years too young for the roles, so the story made no sense at all. Maybe “Enron,” too, worked better in Britain, where they didn’t slice up the script as was done here. Perhaps the actors didn’t leap around the stage with unnecessary choreography and jump frog over plot points. Somehow this play ran 2.5 hours without finding a theatrical end to the story.

As it stands on Broadway, the loud packaging is drowning out the content of the play I read. The jaw-dropping war fought against the state of California by Enron is devastating on the page and meaningless on the stage. Cut the laser-saber dance please. It seems to me that Rupert Goold , who also directed in London, couldn’t decide 1) what the play’s about and 2) what style/genre it is. Is this a drama or is it a satire? What’s showing up is an unbalanced mix and a bit of a mess, and right now “Enron” is not rising to the occasion.

Is this the right time for this play? You betcha. Is this the right play? Not quite.

Ms. Prebble may be too busy manipulating the audience’s emotions, the anger that already exists, pushing buttons, to pay attention to the basic requirements of a play: conflict and resolution.

• Conflict existed in the first half of the play, clear and dynamic conflict between Roe and Skilling -- but it left at intermission.
• Resolution as it stands is that Skilling goes to prison, but that’s not theatrical resolution. Theatrical resolution was absent.
  

Skilling’s journey is Enron’s journey. His transformation from a nerd with no social skills to trim glad-hander is impressive in Butz’s performance and in his excellent costume design -- from a sloppy back office suit to a well-tailored suit to an orange jumpsuit. Besides the clothes and the rags to riches, did Skilling learn anything on his journey? Nothing.

While that may be reflective of reality, it’s not Theatre.

~ Molly Matera, disappointed and signing off.

Red Runs Through It

About a month ago, I saw two plays in one week. I very much enjoyed the first, despite its flaws. But the second eclipsed it utterly. So, what to say?

In the first play, Martin McDonagh’s A Behanding in Spokane, the characters are sketched, then shaded, filled in, developed. Unfortunately Mr. McDonagh did not take the time to do the same for the story. This reminded me of … well, me.

Whether sketching or writing, I have trouble with composition, structure. I must revise, rewrite, reconsider. Redo, redo, redo. Cut my darling lines and phrases for the sake of the story, and redraw an entire piece because I started in the wrong place on the page. As you might imagine, this hurts even more in drawing than in writing.

In A Behanding in Spokane, McDonagh wrote enticing characters, funny, flawed people. This Irish-English playwright -- who swore off playwriting four years ago -- nonetheless created distinctly American people in a decidedly American place, as well as a lot of funny dialogue and monologues. However, all its parts do not sum to a complete play.

John Logan’s Red, on the other hand, achieves fascinating, colored, shaded, multi-dimensional character development and a coherent and cohesive story. It is a play with a beginning, a middle, and an end. This play is GORGEOUS.

McDonagh achieves Aristotle’s tenet of Unity of Time and Place. So, of course, do many sitcoms. Clearly Aristotle was limited in his expectations, since what McDonagh absolutely did not achieve was The Lieutenant of Inishmore.

Logan achieves Unity of Place. Time does not seem to exist, although two years go by in the telling of Red’s tale.

Scenic Design:
Scott Pask created a cheesy hotel room from the walls to the floor to the furnishings. The set, washed out but not clean, tells the story of the people. The ceiling is cracked and peeling, the wallpaper faded and tattered, and the house curtain that hid the set at the beginning, middle, and end of the play was the same -- faded and tattered and torn. A brilliant design by Pask.

On the other hand, Christopher Oram created an artist’s working studio. It seems so simple – canvases leaning on raw walls, a workbench, a working sink. But by using the actors to affect the change of scenes and times -- the actors moving huge canvases from back to front to over there, around the space – Oram and director Michael Grandage showed time passing, seasons turning. This use of the set pieces showed a relationship building, proving theatre a truly collaborative art form. The scenic design was not merely visual, it was an active participant in the telling the story of Rothko and “Art” in his time.

Actors:
A Behanding in Spokane
The curtain rises on Christopher Walken as Carmichael. Unfortunately the audience applauds. Mr. Walken is not in need of applause just for showing up. He does a good job, although he does spend too much time facing away from the other characters and out to the audience – even occasionally facing the back wall.
Sam Rockwell is Mervyn, the hotel “receptionist” (he objects to the term), a speed freak, joe schmoe without much working in the brain pan. He’s remarkably funny. He has a monologue that actually stays in tune with the timing of the play, in front of that curtain that looks just like the hotel room, and it’s riveting. (Would it be riveting with a lesser actor? Only time in regional theatre will tell.)
Zoe Kazan plays Marilyn, tiny, dumb and clever. Kazan plays her alternately breathlessly and shrilly.
Marilyn’s gangly boyfriend Toby is ably played by Anthony Mackie. The pair are sad sack con artists and very funny. Unfortunately as I watched Mackie, whom I quite like, I thought of at least two other actors I’d be just as happy to see in the role.

Red
Just two – Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko, and Eddie Redmayne as his assistant. I’ll see Molina in anything. He commands the stage effortlessly and he brings Rothko to life. You’ve probably never heard of Redmayne before, but that slight young man is Molina’s equal on the stage, which is saying quite a lot.
It’s a shorter list, but neither simpler nor lesser. These two actors blow away all the clouds in your mind, the roof of the theatre, anything that interferes with the audience’s total involvement in these men’s lives, thoughts, breaths, every moment.

Direction:
Both plays are very well executed.

John Crowley directs McDonagh’s play as if he were the playwright’s soul mate, a twin. Nothing is off-key. The issue, in my mind, is the play itself. Could Crowley have directed “A Behanding in Spokane” so that I wouldn’t have noticed or cared about the drawbacks of the script? Possibly, yet… I doubt it. Crowley and McDonagh are in tune. It’s the play.

Michael Grandage directed “Red” seamlessly. Living in this play as much as seeing it, one might fairly wonder, “Was there a director?” Or did this magic just spring to life like Athena from the head of Zeus? Did the set (see above), the sound and words and actors and lights and everything just come to be without a guiding hand? Not to go Creationist on anyone, I doubt it. The script is fabulous, but even brilliant plays may not live up to their potential in lesser hands than Michael Grandage’s. His vision of this play clarifies and focuses it, he brings it forward, makes it three-dimensional. When I read a play that works, it “stands up” in my mind’s eye. Grandage makes this happen on stage at the Golden Theatre. The Donmar Warehouse gave Grandage two extraordinarily alive actors, a courageously imaginative script, a scenic design with total comprehension of Rothko’s physical reality, and “Red” appeared. Art, craft, skill, heart, passion, guts – these live in the production of “Red” on Broadway right now at the Golden Theatre, but only until June – don’t wait.

Both plays are about 90 minutes long without intermission. West 45th Street is very crowded between 9:30 and ten o’clock of late. I like 90-minute evenings. It’s not that I have a short attention span; I just find most secondnd acts to be padded with blather.

A Behanding in Spokane is not quite a play, although it is entertaining.

RED is riveting, wrenching, relentless, revelatory (I say this because no person or thing has ever made me want to sit in a museum to stare at a two-dimensional painting for hours on end – until “Red.”) And, the performances of those two men are truly astonishing.

~ Molly Matera, signing off. Thanks for stopping by.

Polanski Meets Hitchcock

The Ghost Writer is a gray film, its colors cold, washed out, even tired. Its people tend that way as well. As the film begins, we see cars driving around another car abandoned on a ferry. This is accomplished calmly, without rancor, establishing that we are nowhere near an urban center like New York City. Next we see a body, fully clothed, lapped by cold gray waves on a shoreline.

We soon learn that the car and the body pertain to the ‘suicide’ of one Michael McAra, the last and now late ghost writer for the voluminous memoirs of Adam Lang, former Prime Minister of Britain.

In directing The Ghost Writer, Roman Polanski channels Alfred Hitchcock as well as his composer Alexandre Desplat’s delicious score channels Bernard Hermann. Result: A terrific thriller reminiscent of Hitchcock’s black-and-white era. The screenplay is by Polanski and Robert Harris based on the latter’s novel. Whether a political thriller or a suspense tale with “Politics” as the MacGuffin, The Ghost Writer is engrossing and stunning, taut and suspenseful. The actors are quiet, intense, naturalistic without slowing the pace. Rages have meaning from controlled people. Violence -- even talk of violence -- is as shocking here as in real life. The Ghost Writer leaves questions in the mind and chilly images in the mind’s eye.

Pierce Brosnan plays Adam Lang, the Tony Blairish ex-Prime Minister of Britain, and a man in dire need of a ghost writer for his memoirs. Brosnan ages like fine single malt whiskey; he’s much more interesting now than in the days of "Remington Steele" and his 007, which he clearly demonstrated in The Matador. His true mettle has developed as have those fine lines empowering this mature actor. He’s fun, he’s sleazy, he’s broken. Brosnan has distilled himself into my “see him in anything except Mama Mia” category. Here his drearily familiar ex-Prime Minister of a drearily familiar U.K. is sliding into the terribly dreary and depressing here and now as he tries to enter the private phase of his life, once those dratted memoirs are written. The world politics that made it to the papers in the last decade are in this story, and the players are very tired.

Olivia Williams as Ruth Lang, wife of the ex-Prime Minister, is the mystery she ought to be. She’s cold, she’s passionate, she’s angry, strong, brittle – everything but passive. Williams, too, improves with age – although not in a mellow manner. Williams’ Ruth is not a traditional political wife – she is assuredly an equal to her screen husband. She drives and advises him. If Adam Lang is in any part guilty of anything of which he’s accused in this story, Ruth Lang is his equal partner in that as well.

An initially unrecognizable Kim Cattrall plays Amelia Bly, right-hand to the ex-PM and whatever else he needs, adding to the tension of an unhappy household. Cattrall is the cool to cold prim one – what Olivia Williams usually plays. I enjoyed the change.

Ewan McGregor is the Ghost Writer. That’s it. He doesn’t have a name. He is the slate on which everyone else writes. His new employers treat him as a lesser being, there to serve – as indeed he is. The bits of manuscript we hear as he reads the assignment are quite dreadful. They need him, yet only to polish, slicken. Writer as housekeeper. Ghost writing appears to be the least appealing job a writer can have. He introduces himself to Adam Lang as “your ghost.” He’s already given up. Of course, the choice of this Ghost Writer is suspect in itself – apparently this Englishman is apolitical and barely cognizant of his own country’s involvement in recent world events. Perfect fodder for politicians and publicists to use and mold. It would seem an obvious way to impart information to the audience, but it’s done well.

Those are the primary characters. Time: Now. Place: An isolated island along the New England coast, requiring a ferry for access. On said island an equally isolated beach house with fantastic windows. The house is on loan from the ex-PM’s American publisher. Adam Lang, ex-PM of the U.K. (an island nation), has a wife as British as he is, an American lawyer, an American publisher, an American chief of staff, and an American hideout from the Press and the World on an American island. These facts barely give us pause as we are directed to focus on the setting.

This setting provides the opportunity for glorious cinematography. Blacks, whites, and all the grays in between dominate this film despite the fact that it is in color. It also gives us the opportunity to see the other view of this spectacular vacation home: Through the windows we see the caretaker (husband of the cook, of course) attempting to sweep the deck clean of the beach detritus, which the wind promptly re-deposits. These delightful scenes within scenes can bear more than one interpretation, but my favorite is that even where there is no upstairs, there will always be a downstairs. A masterly touch.

As pieces of the ex-PM’s personal hell unfold and ramifications of his political acts and choices reveal a tarnished legacy, his Ghost Writer is less and less a clean slate. He discovers a writer’s drive for truth, investigating almost against his will. The anonymous Ghost Writer is the point-of-view character, and although we know next to nothing about him, we are on his side.

The story's build is lovely. Step by step, it is as unforced as the lowering skies of this overcast northern coast, casting shadows over everyone and everything.

A nameless Englishman accosts the Ghost Writer in his hotel bar. Reporters appear the next morning, forcing the Ghost Writer to move into the ultramodern vacation house – into the room of Mike McAra, the last Ghost Writer. Of course some of that writer’s research is hidden in the room and found by the new Ghost Writer. The past will always bite the present players in the ass.

David Rintoul is excellent as that nameless Englishman we first met in the Ghost Writer’s quaint but tomblike hotel. He is revealed as an ex-army man with a bone to pick with Lang’s government. Each of Rintoul’s appearances builds tension in us and the Ghost Writer as we learn more. Sheltering from a not-at-all sudden storm, the Ghost Writer meets an old man who’d lived on the island for half a century. This device was the most blatant in the film. The information imparted by said old man was vital to the Ghost Writer’s collection of facts and suspicions regarding the last ghost writer. Nonetheless, the manner of providing the information was surprisingly clumsy. We forgive it largely because of the surprise appearance of Eli Wallach as the old man

I assume I did not read much about this film, because I didn’t expect the additional pleasure of seeing Tom Wilkinson as an American professor both Ruth and Adam knew in their university days. Timothy Hutton is a subdued yet crass American attorney to the British ex-PM, and Jim Belushi is the brash and bald American publisher. The ghost writer’s agent is smarmily played by Jon Bernthal.

When it comes to political sophistication, Roman Polanski is to Alfred Hitchcock as the Marx Brothers are to the Three Stooges. The Ghost Writer’s political MacGuffin brought to mind Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent as well as The Secret Agent. The politics in each are topical, emotional, yet broad enough to allow the films to work just fine in the decades following their original release dates. After all, there’s really nothing new under the sun or clouds. In Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent and even more so in The Secret Agent, news travels very slowly. In our times and in The Ghost Writer, too much information spreads too quickly, like a jumbled game of “telephone.” No truth will ever be culled from voluminous manuscripts or 12-second sound bytes.

The film is executed excellently by its cast, filmed beautifully by cinematographer Pawel Edelman, scored to perfection by Alexandre Deplat, and succinctly edited by Hervé de Luze.

This film kept me tense despite the occasional dark chuckle, gasping where appropriate (and maneuvered), and actually surprised me a few times. I like intelligent films that respect their audiences, and The Ghost Writer is one. For fear of lessening a single moment of suspense, that’s all I’m going to say on the matter to those who have yet to see it. As Horvendile said in his blog -- http://matthewslikelystory.blogspot.com/2010/03/ghost-writer-or-finally-something.html -- let’s talk for a few hours after you see this movie. Followed by a marathon of 1930s Hitchcock films.

~ Molly Matera, turning off the computer, but not the light. Need to read Harris' novel....

The Red Bull Theatre’s production of John Webster's “The Duchess of Malfi,” in terms of blood-letting and blood-spraying, is comparable to “Evil Dead: The Musical” and “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.”

The verse is edited and tasty, the story dark with treachery, illicit love, incestuous longings, and madness. It’s all about blood.

St. Clements Theatre boasts a raked audience offering clear views of its proscenium stage. For this production, the stage is draped in a garish red. There are levels to play, and places to hide galore. (The photo below is from St. Clement’s web site and shows a piano that was not onstage for the production. Imagine the left and right sides, and the back, are draped in red, and that an upper level affords a window, if you will, into the private lodgings of the Duchess and her family.)

Lots of hot blooded people in this play. The hot blood of the first half of the play leads to messy blood letting in the second half. Blood spraying, splattering, by guns and knives. There’s also strangling in full view of the audience, and smothering, and a bashing. Yes, everything’s sexual in this play. Knives, guns, and 3 buckets of blood. And a lot of great quotable lines. The dramaturg has cut quite a lot to get this play to run in approximately two hours, and since it’s been decades since I read the script I couldn’t tell you what was cut, except that the first half speeds along very quickly.

The play opens in the dark. Almost dark. For her entrance to downstage center, the Duchess wears widow’s black, which she drops to the floor. She steps into the white dress she wears for her widowhood and remarriage as the lights rise.

Christina Rouner is elegant and tall. This Duchess is in no way subservient to her brothers – she exudes confidence. As a widow, she is still the Duchess, a powerful woman. And, we are soon to learn, she’s in love.

The widowed Duchess’ brothers do not want her to remarry because they want to retain her power. Gareth Saxe plays her twin brother Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria. Ferdinand has more reasons than policy to keep his sister from remarrying; that would be naughty lusting which makes it unbearable to him for her to be with anyone else. Her other brother, the Cardinal of Aragon, deliciously played by Patrick Page, is all about power. He has his own mistress – who, of course, is married to a loyal subject, Castruccio, one of two roles slickly played by Eric Hoffmann. Castruccio’s wife Julia is unsubtly played by Heidi Armbruster.

Meanwhile, as soon as she is free (that is, the official mourning period is over), the Duchess makes woo to the man of her choice for husband: her steward Antonio, sweetly played by Matthew Greer. This of course will not do, since she’s royal and he’s not. Nevertheless, they marry, albeit secretly, witnessed by the Duchess’ loyal gentlewoman, Cariola, a strong Carol Halstead.

The Cardinal of Aragon is instantly revealed as a swine by his treatment of a loyal soldier named Bosola. No fool, brother Ferdinand enlists the aid of the disaffected soldier, promoting him in his sister’s household, and making Bosola his personal “intelligencer” in his sister’s court. Over time, Bosola will have a great deal to report. Such as three children born to the widowed Duchess.

Children -- the Puppets by Jessica Scott are just wonderful, as is the way the actors deal with them. The first time I saw the eldest son -- probably 3 or 4 years old -- carried on the upper level at the back of the stage, I thought, good god, what kind of people would use a real child to hear this story? And then I understood. Really, he was that good, and the people carried him as if he were quite real, needing to be sheltered from some sights, and comforted into sleep. Sound effects by Nathan Leigh of the baby’s cries were remarkably realistic as well. “Seeing” the children had a powerful effect.

Bosola was especially compelling as played by Matthew Rauch. In his first entrance, I found him sympathetic. Soon, though, since we have met and come to care for the victims of his “intelligencing,” he grows more and more vile until his ultimate acts of depravity put him beyond the pale. No matter how despicable he is, though, Bosola addresses the audience, talking to us as if we should agree with him. Which, of course, is just what he should do. Bosola is very well written and even better acted.

The brothers learn of the Duchess’ children – initially believing she’s a fallen woman. The Duchess reassures her twin Ferdinand that she’s married to the father of her children, and somehow that makes it worse. The family flees, the Duchess is captured, and all hell breaks loose.

In the second half, with the Duchess imprisoned, all the trappings of grandeur (that is, those gaudy red curtains) are stripped away showing the bare stage and scaffolding, stair cases, all the entrances and exits that were hidden before. Now we see all. And I do mean all.

The second act opens with the Duchess imprisoned in darkness. Her crazy brother Ferdinand tortures her mentally. He surrounds her with lunatics, and little by little, believing her husband and eldest child dead (they’re actually safe in Milan), she’s losing it. Here comes the major anachronistic oddity of the play. This is my first Duchess, but I’d guess what was done for the poor Duchess going mad was rather outside the norm. Tired of traditional theatrical mad scenes, the director had the Duchess go completely bonkers – and who could blame her. While the lunatic men were molesting her and her gentlewoman, the Duchess is lifted into the air by four or five men, reminding me of a childhood viewing of the beginning of the rape of Aldonza in "Man of La Mancha." While the Duchess writhes above the men, a cable descends from on high. At its end is a microphone, which the Duchess takes. She then sings a sweet romantic Rodgers & Hart song (“Love You More Than Yesterday”) and has a whole fantasy with husband and brothers reconciling. It was amazing and fantastical. I sat with my mouth hanging open, I could hear my friend chuckling. Very, very odd. Interesting. But odd.

I cannot say why, but I quite enjoyed it.

Your typical Elizabethan or Jacobean tragedy traditionally ends with a lot of dead bodies on the stage. The Red Bull’s Duchess does not disappoint. The Duchess is murdered by Bosola and his mercenaries, strangled onstage, in full view. Slowly. Horrifying. Then Cariola is smothered, onstage, in full view, with plastic no less. Finally the third woman in the cast, the mistress of the Cardinal, foolishly taunts him with her knowledge, so he has her “kiss the book.” Which I thought meant “drink.” Apparently here, though, the book was poisoned. Heidi Arbruster’s Julia died downstage, in full view, like the other women in this play.

Crikey.

The Duchess reappears in her original white dress as a spirit (or a hallucination?), echoing words of warning to her naïve husband. Very effective. Of course, warning sweet Antonio does no good. He is one of the dead guys onstage at the end.

And the blood. What a lot of blood, spurting from all angles.

Don’t worry, though – there’s a happy ending. With everyone else dead, the eldest child of the Duchess and her true love Antonio will live to become Duke (of what is unclear), protected by Antonio’s good friend Delio. I was not particularly pleased with Haynes Thigden’s Delio – he is this play’s Horatio, but Thigden was weak, not in the same play as everyone else; he did not speak the speech as effortlessly as most of the others.

Well, what a play. All the leads die. Very violently – the program credits “Violence: J. David Brimmer.” That’s how it’s listed. How Jacobean.

Jesse Berger directed and adapted, along with dramaturg Laura Brown. In my opinion, directed very well. The cast was made up of pros, skilled, and largely very good classical performers.

Patrick Page’s Cardinal was slimy and smarmy; Gareth Saxe’s Ferdinand neurotic, psychotic -- he was a bit much, actually, but in a really fun way. Carol Halstead’s Cariola was simple and clear. Christina Rouner’s Duchess was witty, smooth, regal, loving, gutsy, lusty, and I was rooting for her all the way despite knowing she hadn’t a chance in manmade hell.

This was a fast moving sharp and clear production, eliciting emotional responses from audience as required.

Guns and knives. Knives and guns. The ways they’re used in this wild production, it’s hard to know which is worse. Finally, the exit music was an unusual rendition of “Que Sera Sera” which just had us laughing. I like the Red Bull Theatre!

I’m no expert in Webster, so the presumed cuts didn’t bother me, nor did the anachronisms. I enjoyed the evening. “The Duchess of Malfi” is running at St. Clement’s until the end of March, it’s rarely done, and worth your time.

~ Molly Matera, signing off, looking for an old tattered copy of John Webster's plays.

James Cameron is not king of the world

Just to see what all the fuss is about, I saw ‘Avatar’ in 3D. I enjoyed it. I do have issues with it; it can be discussed and demolished politically, theoretically, artistically, but I enjoyed it. I can live without this 3D stuff inducing nausea with swooping creatures heading downhill from a mountaintop, and really dislike people saying it’s here to stay as if it’s needed. Just tell me a story.

Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I’m operating under the belief that applying scientific advances to one set of goals will lead to accidental discoveries unlooked for, unhoped for in another area entirely. Otherwise the billions of dollars spent on this film cannot be justified.

The film starts as science fiction: That is, scientific advances and societal developments set up the premise of the story. The ‘avatars’ we set for ourselves on the Wii live merely in the virtual world; “Avatar” believes in comingling biology and information technology so as to allow avatars to be grown in reality and then inhabited by a transferred consciousness. Terrans, a.k.a. Americans, can actually grow a new being who is like the big blue people (elongated humanoid forms with waists so tiny their rib cages could not hold requisite organs. You know, like models, only more so. And blue.) living in this world that the military industrial complex wishes to conquer. The manufactured beings, avatars, do not have brains or souls. They require a wireless computer system transmitting instructions to the bodies from a human being (who presumably has a brain and a soul) within a scanner container that resembles a coffin.

Now that’s all well and good for the good guy scientists who only wish to expand their knowledge and understanding of this world, "Pandora." The bad guys in this movie are the military. This is all very easy to spot right off the bat.

The MacGuffin is a rock that floats, and the highest concentration of this rock is, of course, deep in the planet under the “Hometree” – the center of the Pandorans (called Na’vi) culture. Until, of course, the last quarter of the film when suddenly there are a lot more of the “People” from different places, nowhere near the “Hometree.” Hmmm. Sort of like Cain’s wife, apparently created in another county by another god. Unless, of course, it was an incestuous marriage. But that’s quite beside the point. Back to the MacGuffin, the floating rock much prized by corporate America as represented by a humorless Giovanni Ribisi. Much could be done with the floating rock. It isn't.

Think back to when James Cameron still cared about story, and some bells will ring. The military industrial complex of “Aliens” (sometimes known as Alien2) in which the vested interest of “The Company” was represented by the wonderful weasley Paul Reiser. If you're going to write a script with practically the same character performing the same function in the film, at least give Giovanni some fun stuff to do. Speaking of “Aliens,” remember Al Matthews as Sergeant Apone. Somebody was channeling him, his voice, and his dialogue in parts of “Avatar,” too.

So, Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully, this poor Marine with a spinal injury and atrophying legs, who also loses his scientist brother. Sharing enough DNA, the Marine brother takes his scientist brother’s place and avatar in this very expensive project off-world. All this is fine and fun. Big Blue (that is, Jake Sully) learning to control his Avatar with his semi-conscious mind, leads us to the beautiful new world envisioned by Cameron and his many, many colleagues in production design and art direction. Great stuff. In this world, the people, the animals, the plants are all connected, sharing borrowed energy and eventually giving it back to the planet in death. Sounds like native Americans, doesn’t it. This is all lovely and could, if Cameron still cared about story, have provided a tool, a weapon, for the Na’vi people against the U.S. military. But fantasy is more expedient and provided more opportunity for explosions and ever more killing machines. Taking the more interesting route would have required thought and time directed toward issues having nothing to do with special effects, so “Avatar” departs the realm of science fiction and becomes fantasy. And that’s a shame.

The technology is quite amazing. From Peter Max painting over photography back in the Sixties, all the way to wiring actors so the computer can recreate them, their movements, their expressions, all of them, as a new species -- it’s marvelous really. Great stuff, without a doubt.

Zoe Saldana is clearly Zoe Saldana and terrific as Neytiri, who is essentially the Princess of the people, with a mother as spiritual leader and father the chief. Sigourney Weaver’s avatar would not pass for one of the Na’vi, but was witty, as was the fact of Weaver being cast as a scientist in the film – Ellen Ripley would probably not have liked her.

Stephen Lang is brilliantly over the top as the head honcho of the base who of course overrides the scientists and the corporate types. Back in 1951, the film “The Thing From Another World” showed us those scientists and military types clashing, and weren’t we all glad the military types led by Kenneth Tobey overrode the naïve scientists. Well, scientists had recently split the atom, and the military joes commented, “And didn’t that make the world happy.” Times change. “Avatar” takes place in 2154, and the good guys and bad guys are tougher to tell apart each generation.

A major problem with this story is that despite setting up certain scientific elements (biology and geology both), Cameron doesn’t follow up on these. He doesn’t think about the ways in which the natural world might believably (in science fiction mode) fight back against the technology of the invaders. Instead, those blue people that the U.S. military intends to conquer somehow, with bows and arrows and spears and just plain heart, somehow the Na’vi beat the machine and banish the interlopers from their world.

Please.

So it’s fun. It is not the best picture of the year, the script has too many breakdowns. When James Cameron puts as much thought into the story as the technology, when he stops rehashing his own stories and reversing even older stories that we watched as children, maybe then he’ll make a movie that stands on its own without 3D, without new technology. Just good old fashioned story telling. I look forward to that.

~ Molly Matera, signing off. It's time to watch the Oscars.

A Tempest Lacking Spirit

Stephen Dillane enters the stage while the audience wanders in; they ignore him. He sits near the musician stage left, reading what looks like a script. Dillane’s Prospero is dressed in a raggedy suit and messy shirt, no shoes. Well, it’s a desert island. What fools wear shoes in the sand?

Yes, there is sand. At stage center is a large ring filled with sand. Shades of Ingmar Bergman – the central playing area is a circle. No matter – think of Prospero’s magic as producing a circus, and you’re set. Also on stage left, heading off behind the musician, are rows of bookshelves leading to Prospero’s “cell” on his magical island. Prospero’s library survived the sea quite well.

The balancing act is on stage right -- another musician sits amongst instruments, beyond which are stacks of kindling.

There’s some Beckett going on here. In an interview, Dillane confirmed that Beckett informed his performance as Jaques in the “As You Like It” (hereinafter AYLI) we saw last month – Dillane had been looking for the Beckett aspect of Jaques (who knows why), and I believe he found it.

The scenic design was the Beckett aspect of “The Tempest” at the BAM Harvey last week. It’s spare. Suggestive. To me, hopeful.

Although the program says the play runs 2 ¾ hours with intermission, clearly a different choice has been made since the program was printed – the play is now running without an intermission for 2 ¼ hours.

Dillane’s Prospero starts the show. He stands and pulls on a tattered thick robe and a fabulous if molting feathered belt. The audience quiets down. Prospero picks up an ordinary galvanized bucket and walks the circumference of the central disk, flicking water onto the sand. This action raises Spirits, and the action of the play begins.

Christian Camargo as Ariel enters from a doorway set 6 or 8 or 10 feet high in the back wall; he comes down a ramp through a newly formed pond that has appeared across the back third of the stage. Simultaneously two minion sprites (the Audrey and Celia of AYLI) cross the pond, and the threesome create The Tempest tossing about the ship of the King of Naples and his entourage –

• Alonso, King of Naples (Jonathan Lincoln Fried – he was enjoyable on occasion, but too often a cipher)
• Alonso’s son and heir Ferdinand (Edward Bennett – the excellent Oliver of AYLI, destined lover of Miranda, he does all he can here)
• the “honest old counselor” Gonzalo (a once again unrecognizable Alvin Epstein – he’s a magician, he’s Sherlock Holmes),
• Sebastian, sleazy brother of the King of Naples (Richard Hansell). I liked his work; his moments of hesitation in the plot against his brother were a welcome nuance, and the witless banter between Sebastian and Antonio worked well, although there were times I didn’t hear them –sound design issue.
• Antonio, sleazier brother of Prospero, is the usurping Duke of this play (Michael Thomas, who played usurping and usurped Dukes in AYLI), is quite amusing in the funny bits, but not powerful in his evil intentions. I never believed he’d succeed. And
• Adrian, a lord in priestly garb (Aaron Krohn, who did such a fine job as Silvius in AYLI). Krohn does as good a job here, simple, clear, sincere. I can’t wait to see him in larger roles, bringing the clarity and honesty to us for longer periods of time.
• Let us not forget the sole representative of the solid, hard-working, competent persons of the ship: the Boatswain, well played by Ross Waiton. He mutters, he growls at his aristocratic passengers as Ariel manipulates each character in turn while stage managing the storm.

Problem: The dialogue in the storm scene is largely indiscernible. (The problem being the sound design. Ever been to a rock concert where the singer’s mike is just not that level above the guitars that it needs to be? Like that.)

No problem: The emotions read strong. Everybody’s going to die.

Meanwhile, back on the island, Prospero’s daughter Miranda is quite upset, having seen the pitching ship and fearing all hands are lost. She cannot help but question her father if his magics are the cause.

Even at a distance, she appears much older than the 15 years the script sums for us. Generally I don’t care about this sort of thing. Shakespeare’s no walk in the park, and no one in his/her right mind expects very young actors to play his characters convincingly. And again, the woman is competent at scansion, if lacking in believable feeling. However, in this production, the age problem adds insult to injury. While not as annoying as she was as Rosalind in AYLI (to be mathematically fair, Miranda has far less to say than Rosalind), Juliet Rylance is so wrong for Miranda I cannot understand what’s what here. In a repertory company, my understanding has always been that the person who had the lead in one play cannot expect to get the lead in the next. Why isn’t Michelle Beck (AYLI’s underused Celia) playing Miranda? I’d be even happier to see Jenni Barber in this role (AYLI’s delightful Audrey). Both women are more than capable of doing a much better Miranda than Rylance. As usual, no one confers with me first in these casting decisions, so there she was again.

Note: Whoever is writing program notes for this series of Bridge Project productions is not selling these shows at all. Sam Mendes’ “Director’s Note” is mostly Ted Hughes, and Mr. Hughes is not a theatrical. He is a poet and as such not qualified to produce a play. Yes, I know, some of my best friends (not a euphemism!) are poets and theatricals (writers, directors, actors, producers); nevertheless, these are different forms. In college I recall totally dismissing an alleged theatre teacher because he called Shakespeare a poet. (You remember college: Zero tolerance.) Sure he’s a poet. In the Sonnets. But Shakespeare put the “W” in “PlayWright,” not the “P” in “Poet.” This is not poetry. This is Theatre. Plays are wrought. Not to mention (what an odd, contradictory phrase), the provided synopses of both AYLI and The Tempest belong in Cliff Notes, not BAM programs. Yes, I’m done.

“Shake it off.” I am shaking it off, and that reminds me: Does Prospero actually say “Shake it off” in this play?? The wonder of this modern-feeling phrase coming from Dillane’s Prospero rippled through the audience. But sure enough, it’s not Dillane. It’s Prospero: There it is: Iii, line 307 in my Pelican paperback.

As a rule, I think Stephen Dillane is swell (and I loved his unusual Beckettian Jaques). However, when his Prospero spoke, he started off shouting. I don’t like shouters. I can never forget Herbert Berghof’s dictum: “If you shout you’d better have a damned good reason.” Then Dillane’s tone -- and volume -- modulated. OK. Although perhaps a bit too much in the softer direction. He was certainly fascinating, and what he did certainly coincided with Mendes’ presumed vision. I think that he was playing too much of Prospero’s final realizations too early in the play. It’s a choice. Apparently not mine. Still, I would watch and listen to Dillane do anything.

Alvin Epstein as the good Gonzalo – three quarters of the time I either could not hear or understand him. This has become a continuing problem – while his behavior tells all, I do want to hear the words. So, all students of theatre, watch him to understand what your body, its movement, its stillness, its stance, can communicate. But put those marbles in your mouths and practice so I can hear the words with which Shakespeare gifted us.

Christian Camargo as Ariel. I had concern when I saw that casting – although I liked Camargo in The Hurt Locker and Dexter, I disliked his Orlando in AYLI. As far as I’m concerned, no romantic leads for Camargo. As Ariel, he was interesting. He sings very well. Physically an odd choice; he does not move as one might imagine a sprite does. When he is very still, however, particularly when gazing lovingly on Prospero, I felt the character came through more clearly. However, were I to cast a male in the role of Ariel, he’d be…Baryshnikov. Who may not be available these days for a world tour, but it’s a guideline. Baryshnikov-like.

This is the second time I’ve seen Aaron Krohn, and although he’s not “pulling focus,” he’s more interesting than many of his colleagues on the stage. He just gives us …more heart, and this while he’s giving clean readings and a clear character. Ariel is a spirit not a human but that doesn’t mean s/he doesn’t have heart. Yes, that means I might well have enjoyed Krohn’s interpretation of Ariel over Camargo’s.

Ron Cephas Jones as Caliban won me over. I’m not entirely sure what I expected – Caliban’s role can certainly be political. His entrance was marvelous, bursting out of the sand through a hole that was not there before, from the depths of the earth. A terrific bit o’ theatre, as my friend Stef would have said. His speech is harsh and poetic, and he gets it. Jones’s Caliban works. Jones’s body is not monstrous, but his Caliban is a distorted, growling, groveling, lascivious boot licker, the dregs of humanity -- but human he most certainly is.

When describing the passengers on the doomed ship tossed about in the tempest, I left out some people. We didn’t see them for a while, but happily we meet the shipwrecked Trinculo and Stephano. Not the upper echelons of society, but much more fun than the more illustrious characters.

Anthony O’Donnell, the very same delightful actor who played Corin in AYLI, plays the plaid-clad clown Trinculo. Hilarious. Dare I say “perfect.” Thomas Sadoski (AYLI’s appealing Touchstone) is a fine drunken Stephano. The comic scenes in this production were truly funny, unforced. Laughter abounded. Not relying on some miraculously different interpretation, these pros just gave us damn funny scenes, timing right on every mark. Absolutely not as easy as it looked. Gems.

Visuals: Pleasing. Clever staging, in the scene in which Ariel sets Sebastian and Antonio up to show their evil against the King of Naples. A lot more clever staging with Ariel in the comic scenes between Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo.

Unfortunately, the hallucination of a spritely wedding was entirely earthbound, not in the slightest bit ethereal (despite the lovely singing led by Jenni Barber). It was not particularly amusing, not jolly, not beautiful. Prospero’s abrupt ending of it was a relief.

Let me be clear: I enjoyed myself. I enjoyed Stephen Dillane’s Prospero much but not all of the time. I enjoyed Camargo’s Ariel some but not all of the time. I enjoyed Anthony O’Donnell’s Trinculo every moment he was on and waited for his return. Also Sadoski’s Stephano and Jones’ Caliban: all the time.

The royals from Naples didn’t do much for me, although they were certainly clear and serviceable. And I do like Aaron Krohn -- his turn as Adrian (here combined with Francisco) was sincere and alive.

Miranda gets a thumbs down as stated earlier. I would have liked to see her understudy. Say no more.

This production is intelligent. Its intellectual choices are clear, as is most of the language, lots of which is heavily edited (I think everyone knows I don’t like long plays, but 2 ¼ hours? Shakespeare? Really?). The funny scenes are very funny. If you think “The Tempest” should tug at your heartstrings, you may be disappointed. However, put it all together: I enjoyed the production. Without strong feelings about this play, it’s hardly fair for me to analyze it any further so as to disagree with this, that and the other choice. Others will or have done that: e.g., http://matthewslikelystory.blogspot.com/2010/03/rarer-action-is-in-virtue-than-in.html

My advice is to have fun, watch the light reflecting off the shallow pools onto the stage walls, and dream of summer.

~ Molly Matera, signing off. Feeling young enough to not identify with Prospero....

"Das weisse Band" or "The White Ribbon"

Written and directed by Michael Haneke, with gorgeous s cinematography by Christian Berger, “The White Ribbon” takes place in the 15 months prior to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in June 1914. In that moment when World War I became inevitable, the odd events in this little village in northern Germany were pushed to the back of the residents’ minds, but they resurface in the memory of the village Schoolteacher years later.

This film begins in silence. Opening credits are in stark white against black. The narration starts over the black screen that lightened so gradually I was uncertain it was really happening. When the light finally takes over the screen, the picture is in black and white and oh so many shades in between. The cinematography is crisp and clear, the whites so bright they hurt, the blacks deep and dense. Night scenes are lit by lanterns and torches. The mood of this place is somber and the light and its lack reflect that.

From the narrator’s worn voice we know he survived this time in the fictitious village of Eichwald and even the war that followed. He tells us that somehow what happened in the village that year may have been a portent of what was to come in Germany. Maybe.

The first scene shows what is referred to as the Doctor’s ‘accident’; but a wire strung between two trees to trip a horse and kill or cripple its rider is no accident. The Doctor’s daughter Anna (Roxane Duran) runs out of the house to him. He is not dead, but will be carted off to hospital quite a long ways away from his home and children. Anna looks at the horse lying on its side, kicking and screaming. The next time we see it, men with torches, including a uniformed policeman, talk over the still form. At the inconclusive close of their conversation, they walk away from the horse, leaving it in the dark.

That’s the first mysterious incident. Those that follow will not make a pattern inclusive of this, but there are connections. That evening, Anna tries to comfort her five-year-old brother Rudi (remarkably well played by Miljan Chatelain), but is interrupted by pebbles rattling against the window. The village children are there – those who are the oldest in their class, 10 to 14 year olds. The only one who speaks will be the one who speaks throughout the story when adults question the group of children: Klara (precisely and chillingly played by Maria-Victoria Dragus), daughter of the Pastor. She asks after Anna – are you all right? The children are stiff, odd, and this visit offers Anna no comfort.

The Schoolteacher (Christian Friedel on the screen as a young man; the Schoolteacher’s older self narrating the story is voiced by Ernst Jacobi) presides over a dozen children in a one-room schoolhouse, from 6 or 7 through 13 or 14 years of age. He also teaches choir, and gives special care to Karli, the retarded son of Mrs Wagner, the Midwife. No husband is ever mentioned (at least not in the subtitles), but we presume she was widowed at some point. Since the Doctor’s wife died in childbirth five years before the film starts, the Midwife has been the Doctor’s nurse, housekeeper, nanny, and mistress. Susanne Lothar is always disturbing and sometimes heartbreaking in this role.

Klara and her brother Martin (Leonard Proxauf) are preteens, the eldest of many, many children in the Pastor’s household. One night, the brother and sister got home quite late, after dark, causing distress to their mother, their father, their young siblings. So they were informed while standing at attention in the dining room. The whole family is present, but all bowls on the dining table are empty. The lecture is in process, and this Pastor believes in punishments to all for the infractions of the few. The entire family would go to bed hungry, and the following evening Klara and Martin would each receive ten strokes of the cane in front of their siblings. Additionally, once ‘purified’ by their punishment, the two would wear White Ribbons, as symbols of purity, until their father could trust them again.

These are not healthy children despite the idyllic surroundings. They are cold and unsmiling, respectful to their elders in the manner of Eddie Haskell – no, Eddie talked too much. These children do not speak until spoken to. Their appearance on a scene is alarming.

Throughout the film, Martin looks sickly, dark shadows under his eyes, and he is much too quiet. While fishing one day, the Schoolteacher sees Martin climbing along the handrail of a ramshackle bridge over a river. It’s not a long distance to walk, but it would be a long fall down. The Schoolteacher berates him: Don’t you know you could have been killed? Martin answers: Yes. That’s why he did it. If God had such an opportunity to let him die, that He allowed the boy to live showed that God must love him.

Standard adult responses – that is, frightening children whose actions frighten the adults – are repeated by the Pastor. He talks to Martin sincerely and sternly, asking why he looks and acts as he does, as if he gets no sleep and doesn’t eat. The Pastor tells a tall tale of another boy who’d looked like that and got sicker and sicker, with pustules all over his body, and languished into death because of what he was Doing. The Pastor asked Martin if he understood, and was he Doing it too. Martin, crying, says yes. Thereafter Martin’s hands are tied to opposite sides of his bed so he won’t masturbate in the night.

Scenes cut away quickly in this film. Night to day, town to country, idyllic to chilling. In a daylit scene, we hear that a tenant farmer’s wife died in an accident at the Baron’s sawmill. We see a woman bathing another woman’s feet and legs, the upper body blocked by the room’s wall. A figure appears in the doorway through which we see the scene, and he tells the woman to leave. She covers the body with a blanket and goes. The man walks to the bed and around it. He pulls the edge of the blanket slightly, covering a part of the body we cannot see. He moves to the head of the bed and sits so that we only see the curve of his back, and eventually hear quiet sobbing. Branko Samarovski plays this Farmer, whose life becomes too impossible as the film goes on.

The eldest son of the dead woman investigates the sawmill where his mother died, sees that the accident was clearly caused by the rotted condition of the floors, and considers the Baron (coolly played by Ulrich Tukur, alternately fair and insensitive) and his Steward (a jocular, lecherous, and casually violent man as played by Josef Bierbichler). There is no recourse; only revenge. At the harvest festival, that eldest son beheads the Baroness’ neat garden of cabbages. In the days that follow, the Baron’s young son, Sigi (who does not go to school in town with the other children, but rather has a tutor at home on the Estate), disappears. All the men are called out to search for him, and he is found, bound and hung upside down, inside the sawmill, the victim of a vicious whipping on his bare buttocks. The adults of the village are buzzing about this fresh atrocity, when that band of clean and pressed repressed ‘children’ appears again, with Klara speaking for the group – they just want to know how Sigi is.

When the Doctor’s little son Rudi disappears, the village is out in force to find him, fearing he too is the victim of an attack. He’s not – he misses his father, and was found walking on the main road toward the distant hospital. This induced his father to leave the hospital and return home for the rest of his recuperation. The Doctor (played in a quiet, matter-of-fact manner by Rainer Bock, cool and civil even when he is remarkably cruel) is disturbing the moment he steps out of the carriage. Daughter Anna awaits him. She is unsmiling, as usual, except when she motions to where her little brother is hiding shyly from his returned father. A chill runs through the viewers when the Doctor turns to his young daughter and asks her age. “Fourteen, sir,” she says. “You look so much like your mother.” If anyone wondered why the Doctor was targeted for attack, that moment was explanation enough. His housekeeper/mistress will point out his abuse of his daughter later, and finally Rudi comes upon father and daughter in the Doctor’s examining room in the middle of the night. The Doctor is, of course, a beloved pillar of his community.

The only bright spot in this film is the sweet romance between the Schoolteacher and the nanny to the Baron’s twin infants. Eva is from another village, almost a child herself. The Schoolteacher is immediately besotted. Leonie Benesch plays Eva sweetly; she is shy and reserved, yet her feelings and behavior are straightforward. The couple is affected by the incidents in Eichwald, when, after Sigi is attacked, Eva is fired from her nanny position when the Baroness leaves the country house with her children.

In a short period of time, then, we have experienced the attack on the Doctor, the death of the tenant Farmer’s wife, the beheading of the Baroness’ cabbages, the attack on Sigi. And a seemingly unrelated late night visit by the Doctor, his arm still in a sling, to the Steward’s house to treat a sick infant whose window was opened in the middle of the winter night. One of the estate Steward’s children, Erna, tells the Schoolteacher she has bad dreams, that she had one about her brother opening the window in the baby’s room. Now her 'dreams' are of the Midwife’s son Karli being abducted and tortured. Unlike the other adults, the Schoolteacher listens.

When Karli is indeed attacked, the Schoolteacher calls in Police, who interrogate the girl. The Schoolteacher realizes the weeping Erna is paying as much attention to the back door as to the Police, and flings it open to find the children gathered, listening. As ever, when he demands to know what they’re doing there, Klara speaks for the group – we only wonder how Karli is.

The group of children is more and more reminiscent of Salem, without the accusations of witchcraft. Or maybe Village of the Damned.

A clue to the reason behind the attacks is left with Karli when he’s found in the woods, beaten so severely he may be blinded. A note quoting a psalm, one of those psalms justifying violence against children as payment for the sins of their fathers, grandfathers, and whole generations. Surely the villagers recognized it, surely the Pastor recognized it, but no one tries to understand its meaning.

Since this story takes place on the eve of World War I, the question must arise: Is Haneke saying that the children will die in the war that generations of sinful adults have been building up to for years? Or does he expect these children to live through the war and create the Germany of the 1930s?

The men of power and position in the town -- the Pastor, the Baron, the Doctor -- have lost control of the situation. Finally the Schoolteacher goes to the Pastor’s house and confronts Klara and Martin, then speaks to the Pastor himself.

As the Pastor, Burghart Klaussner is quietly splendid throughout. He is chilly, cold, certain in his faith. We do see his heart – his concern for his son Martin is not feigned nor merely righteous. He is a softy to his younger children. As the Schoolteacher tells the Pastor his suspicions, the Pastor’s face is still, noncommittal, but for momentary lapses in his thin-lipped mouth. His eyes don’t quite well up, but it is there in his face: a glimmer of pain, of knowing, of decision. An utterly brilliant performance. The decision, of course, is to deny all, call the Schoolteacher perverse for having such ideas, and threatening his position.

The saddest storyline in the film had nothing to do with the village mysteries, but of a family ruined by a series of events over which they had no control. From the death of the tenant farmer’s wife to her eldest son’s act of revenge on the Baroness’ cabbages, to the loss of jobs by the rest of the family and the blacklisting by the Baron, the Farmer’s life spiraled downward too fast for him to handle. The scenes of this family’s life, meals, work, hardship, and deaths are beautifully acted and filmed.

The village structure is falling apart, the Baron’s marriage is falling apart, and the world is falling apart, exemplified by the assassination of the Archduke far, far away in Sarajevo. The Midwife tells the Schoolteacher she knows who the culprit is, leaves for “town,” and is never seen again. Nor is her son. Nor are the Doctor and his children. Gossip runs faster than horses. The Midwife and the Doctor, how long were they lovers, did they kill the Doctor’s wife, why did they disappear?

At the onset of war, the people gather in the church – the center of village life, where announcements are made to the populace by the Pastor and sometimes by the Baron, where births are celebrated and deaths mourned. The Pastor does not march in as the leader of his flock. He walks in head down and sits quietly, his flame doused. The narrator tells us that these events faded, explained away by gossip, speculation without facts – human beings’ usual practice of making up stories to make sense of it all. The scarcer food gets, the more delicious scandal tastes.

Childhood in the early twentieth century in Eichwald was strictly guided, and errant behavior harshly punished. While we do not see the beatings with sticks, we hear the first four strikes and a child’s cry. Fathers cuff, even punch their sons. It is no terribly surprising the Pastor’s eldest child is a little devil, reminiscent of Abigail Williams in The Crucible – although younger with better manners. Manners enough to hide psychoses. We can certainly see Klara growing up to run a concentration camp.

“The White Ribbon” is not a mystery story. It is a cautionary tale – told to adults, instead of children.

Fade, so very slowly, to black.

~ Molly Matera, signing off. But leaving the lights on.