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.

I Can See Clearly Now the Rain is Gone

The other night I saw When the Rain Stops Falling by Andrew Bovell, directed by David Cromer, at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre in Lincoln Center. Having seen Cromer’s Adding Machine: A Musical and Our Town, I’ve decided Mr. Cromer is a flawed genius. (The flaw was apparently shown in his choices for the Neil Simon plays that abruptly closed, but I didn’t witness them so cannot provide elucidation. Perhaps he works better in the smaller houses in which I’ve experienced his productions.)

I like the Newhouse. It’s a nice size; one cannot be too far from the stage to see or hear. Its rounded stage is three quarters surrounded by an audience on a steep rake up to Row H (where I sat). It’s tough to find a bad seat (unless the scenic design creates one – more on that later).

The playwright Andrew Bovell is no newcomer – he is a quite well known in Australia, having written many plays and several films – “Lantana” and “Strictly Ballroom” among them, and this year’s “Edge of Darkness.”

“When the Rain Stops Falling” weaves and tangles lifelines through the space/time continuum. The play opens in the dark. The quiet is softly broken with creepy sounds. The noises increase in tempo and volume and clarify to a torrential rainstorm. The sound builds to a crescendo that explodes into light on a round playing space that revolves slowly. One man is in the center, a tall thin man in a worn suit, his white hair spiked in disarray, not fashion. He is terrified. Other people huddle under their umbrellas running across the playing area from different directions until finally the white-haired man screams, a woman falls, and a fish drops down from the sky.

Now that’s an opening.

Michael Siberry is Gabriel York in 2039. Fish is no longer available for the consumption of your standard human, so this gift from the skies is miraculous. The rain is ever present, most people live in poverty, and he ran out on his wife and son a good two decades before. The large fish that fell from the sky sits on the large table that will serve every character in every time period throughout the play. The suggested room also includes a coat rack and a small stove with a smaller cabinet attached to it, which contains soup bowls and spoons enough to serve the nine people who wander through time and space during the play. And no, the play is not science fiction. The future time in which the play starts and ends allows us to see the whole story and how these people’s lifelines connect and diverge and connect again.

Gabriel York tells us that fish is supposed to be quite good for you, and should be eaten two or three times a week. This is the first of many lines and phrases that will be echoed by linked characters throughout the play. He tells us of his mother and his stepfather Joe, the father he never knew (also named Gabriel), and his son, Andrew, who called just today to visit the father who deserted him many years ago. In preparation for his son’s visit, Gabriel scrubs and cleans his tiny apartment, but it appears to him just the same. So he paints it. Now it looks the same but white. Or off white. We’ll hear this again, too. In the past.

This story-telling is multilayered over different time periods in which we meet the same people, some played by different actors, at different parts of their lives. And sometimes they’re all onstage together, doing the same things, ordinary things, like eating soup. Fish soup, of course. The play runs a little under two hours (without an intermission, which probably would have been a confusing time), and is interesting throughout although it gets a bit bogged down in the middle. Perhaps when we have finally met everyone and just aren’t sure what to make of them.

We first see all the characters coming onto the stage in raincoats, shaking out their umbrellas. Each raincoat is hung on a rack, followed by each umbrella. Each character goes to the stove, ladles soup into a bowl, then sits at the table. Eventually all the characters are eating their soup in synch. Some of the characters are not dressed as the others – the Sixties characters are more formally dressed than those whose lives are in later times, but we otherwise didn’t know who these people were, or how, or if they were related. Each character rises after the Spartan meal, gathering raincoats and umbrellas, and departs. Scene changes are accomplished economically by the stage revolving to a different point, and different characters entering the space.

Throughout the play, in its various times and places, lightning flashes, thunder rumbles and roars. The atmosphere is reminiscent of a black-and-white filmed ghost story, but it’s not that. Or is it?

The two female characters are played by four actors depending upon in which year a particular part of the story takes place. Sometimes they’re onstage at the same time. This is an intriguing method, and the women were interesting creatures. Each actor had to believably be the younger or older version of another actor. In the 1960s we have Henry and Elizabeth Law in London, parents of Gabriel Law. By the end of the 20th century baby Gabriel has grown up without his dad, he and his mother still in London. His father left them years before, and disappeared in Australia. In Australia during the last quarter of the century lives Gabrielle York, whom Gabriel meets while searching for some trace of his father.

The two women who play Elizabeth don’t look alike but manage to resemble one another appropriately. Kate Blumberg is the younger, hopeful, energetic, and literary Elizabeth Law in the 1960s; Mary Beth Hurt’s Elizabeth is older, tired, fuzzy (is that her mind or the alcohol her son is sure she’s drinking), angry, and fully out of hope. These two performances make sense, one stems from the other, and both actors are marvelous.

Susan Pourfar is excellent as moody Gabrielle York at age 24, the girl Gabriel Law meets on his Australian quest. She is already rather broken, orphaned, with a brother whose early and mysterious death is a dark cloud that will never break away. She speaks of the area in Southern Australia where her brother died, the Coorong, as if it were that dreaded fairy tale place outside the castle walls where bogeymen roam. The Coorong. The word doubtless resonated deeply the several times this play was produced in Australia. Here, it makes me want to look it up and find out if it’s as spooky and frightening as Gabrielle makes it out to be.

In later scenes, I only realized Victoria Clark was an older Gabrielle because the Gabriel York (Siberry, remember) we met in the opening of the play talked about his stepfather Joe, who appears to be married to the second Gabrielle. Well, OK, that’s confusing. Ms. Clark’s Gabrielle bothered me, but I think the question goes to the playwright. She reached across the boundary of time and shouted at her younger self when we were watching Pourfar’s younger Gabrielle in a moment of indecision. This made a sort of sense, considering the older Gabrielle’s mental deterioration, but she was the only character to do so. Does the playwright imply that madness is not bounded by space or time?

The play began previews last week and has several weeks to opening, so I’m going to assume that my few quibbles with the cast will be resolved. That is, the two younger men in the cast: Gabriel Law, in England and Australia in the latter half of the 20th century, was played by Will Rogers. Mr. Rogers is unpolished, uncertain, and most certainly unBritish. This becomes pointed when he’s said to be speaking with an English accent. Whatever he’s speaking with, it’s not an English accent. This is quite forgivable if this major character was a three-dimensional human being instead of a tool for women to play off of – Mary Beth Hurt as his mother in England, and Susan Pourfar in Australia. I’m as uncertain as he – is this the playwright underwriting? The scenes are, after all, really about the women. That the play’s been produced multiple times in Australia over the past two years doesn’t altogether deny the possibility that Gabriel is not fully developed. Or is it Mr. Rogers?

Note about that uneven quality in the production – the allegedly English do not speak as if they’re English, but most of the Australians speak like Australians toning it down a bit for the American audience (at least to my untutored ear – an Australian will be required to make a determination). Accents are not the most important thing to me, but why have the Australians speaking Australian if the English aren’t particularly English?

The other younger man appears in only one scene, which we (or at least I) have anticipated since the first scene – Henry Vick as Andrew, the son of Gabriel York, was disappointingly weak. I do not expect Mr. Bovell to explicitly write what Andrew feels when he meets his father after several decades, but I do expect Mr.Vick to live it enough for me to sense it.

The other gentlemen, though, were excellent:
-- Richard Topol as Henry Law, father of Gabriel Law, the mysteriously missing father depending on what time period we’re in, is just marvelous. Quietly loving, repressed, hiding behind his fascination with weather and its effect on history. Perhaps because he’s not sure how to live in his present. Mr. Topol gives this troubled character shading and depth.
-- Rod McLachlan as Joe, the husband of Gabrielle and stepfather of her son Gabriel York, was hearty and soulful, sweet and loving, just as he is remembered by stepson Gabriel. Interestingly, although the London scenes were certainly not in chronological order, the distorted chronology of the Australian scenes with Joe did confuse me.
-- Michael Siberry as Gabriel York opens and closes the play. He’s so good I wondered from the beginning when I would see him again. In terms of story, particularly in the construction used here, the reappearance of Gabriel York must wait until the end. I just wished to have seen more of Mr. Siberry’s character because he is interesting as the point of convergence of all the characters we meet in the past, reflecting their choices, their actions, and inactions. And because Siberry is mesmerizing in an ordinary Joe kind of way.

This is not elementary storytelling. Backwards and forwards, forward and back, this play takes concentration and some openness on the part of the audience. The audience is rewarded by the end of the evening, when the play’s tangled strands came together and it all seemed perfectly clear. (To me, at least -- based on lobby conversations afterward, not to everyone.) What we learn by the end of the play is exactly why there’s a family tree in the program.

The setting by David Korins is almost perfect. A smaller circle revolved within (but well off center of) the revolving stage, rather like the revolution of planets and moons. The floor was, I believe, as multi-layered as the play in that the weather shone off of it. After the rain diminishes in the opening, puddles on the stage reflect a second view of Michael Siberry’s Gabriel Law. Later in the play, when it snowed in the Australian desert, we could see the frost and snow again in that floor. Wondrous.

My one quibble about the set: Although my view was fine, people in the first row (possibly the second as well) would occasionally have a moving coat rack obstructing their view as the slowly revolving stage changed its position.

The lightning and lighting were excellently designed by Tyler Micoleau, the sound and fury by Fitz Patton. The costumes for all time periods were on the mark as designed by Clint Ramos.

Earlier I said this is not science fiction, and it’s not. Science is required for science fiction, and no one’s deliberately traveling through time other than in the way each of us does in our own lives. The time crossing is more philosophical. By the end of the play, I wonder if this play is not, after all, a ghost story.

~ Molly Matera signing off. Gone are the dark clouds that made me blind. Gonna be a bright bright bright sun shiney day.

Noir in the Jutlands

Terribly Happy is a Danish film by Henrik Ruben Genz, based on a novel by Danish writer Erling Jepsen. It’s a noir western mystery of the Hitchcock school via the Coen Brothers.

The film has cows, odd children, sullenly uncommunicative townspeople, a bully in a cowboy hat, a nightly poker game, a bar fight fought with beer and shots instead of fists, and a scene in a men’s room with a trough urinal as the center of the action. It is present day, but this town, these people are so cut off that it could be half a century, even a century in the past.

The countryside is unpleasant: It has no depth, no heights, no trees, mountains or even hills. It is reminiscent ­-- in a wet way -- of the endless fields and right-angled junctions of North By Northwest. Wetly because of the bog. Anything can sink into the oblivion of the bog. Can’t it.

Back to the beginning. The film is in such unsaturated color it could easily have been shot in black and white. It ends as it begins, quietly, in a town you not only don’t want to live in, you don’t want to visit, or even pass through. It is in the Jutlands, the Danish end of nowhere, a place that inspires depression.

The new ‘Marshall’ is Robert, played by Jakob Cedergren (when this film is redone in the U.S., by Genz, I’m hoping for Damien Lewis in this role, despite how well Cedergren played it), is driven into town by a higher ranking officer from a larger town nearby. The new Marshall has been banished from Copenhagen where he apparently did something so awful his wife won’t let him speak to their daughter. If he does well here, though, it is implied that he could, someday, go home again, at least to Copenhagen.

There’s no one on the puddle-filled streets when he arrives. The first thing he does is step into the mud. He does that a lot. There is an interesting focus on boots here. Boots forgotten, boots borrowed, boots returned. Boots sucked into the muck. Boots cursed.

The first person Robert meets tells him that the fellow who should be running the empty bicycle repair shop has disappeared, as people do around here. This is Ingerlise, the blonde therefore bad girl of the piece. Her daughter is Dorthe, who walks the empty streets of the town with her baby carriage. Ingerlise is married to the town bully in a cowboy hat, Jorgen. Then there’s the town doctor (Lars Brygmann), who came for a few months and has stayed for years. He’s been the caretaker for the last marshall’s cat (billed as “Katten”) and delivers it to the new marshall. This man is creepy, clearly bad news the moment he walks in the door. Bad news as he plays cards, sweating, with the shopkeeper (Anders Hove)and the preacher (Henrik Lykkegaard). It’s a 3-handed game since the old marshall left. Robert does not play cards. Shame, card players say.

A fuss is made over a juvenile shoplifter but not the blatantly abusive husband Jorgen (Kim Bodnia). Jorgen cheats on his wife, his presence in the bar frightens people, he sneers, if he had a moustache he would twirl it. The whole town knows he beats up Ingerlise (Lene Maria Christensen), and no one intervenes or contradicts him.

Ingerlise, of course, insinuates herself into Robert’s life, wants him to take her away from all this. This is, after all, noir. Yet when a not untypically drunken Jorgen comes to the Marshall’s house to demand her return, after shouting at Robert to keep him away, Ingerlise goes to the door herself, and asks her husband tenderly, “How are you?” She leaves with him, continuing the cycle. She pushes and pulls and manipulates, a typical woman of the noir tradition.

The predictability of this film is merely because it’s noir. Danish noir with the tone of a Western. I can find no particular flaw in the film. I laughed (however inappropriately, as one does at a Coen Brothers film). And I found it absurdly interesting that the word “two” sounds the same in English and Danish. There is something lacking in the film, but I’ve yet to figure out just what. It asks all the right questions --

• What was the deep dark secret that exiled Robert to this muddy town?
• Why does Dorthe push her baby doll carriage around the town at odd hours?
• What does everyone in the town bar know that Robert doesn’t?
• What is it about those abused indecisive women that gets men like Robert into trouble every time?

The more I think about it, the more the film resonates with me, the more the scenes flash before my mind’s eye. The resolution is highly satisfying. There’s sex, there’s death, guns, fists, a blonde, and mud. Still there’s something worrying me.

Maybe it’s that bog.

~ Molly Matera, signing off, wondering what else may be down there.

Meyers Uncomplicated

Several years ago, Nancy Meyers brought us the delightful “Something’s Gotta Give” in which Jack Nicholson, after a lifetime of chasing younger women, chases Diane Keaton. Younger than he is, certainly, but not by so much. In this delightful romantic comedy, we got to cry with Diane, to laugh with everybody, and totally accept that the wicked old Nicholson was courting the no-longer-a-spring chicken Keaton (mind you, if I looked like she does at her age, or at my age, or even a decade ago, I’d happily and unabashedly shed my clothing onscreen too). Meyers also asked us to keep our minds open to accept that the handsome, available, heterosexual young doctor also wants Keaton and not her daughter played by Amanda Peet. Now if you believe that, you’ll believe anything, including all aspects of Meyers’ newest offering, “It’s Complicated.”

Don’t get me wrong; I adored “Something’s Gotta Give” and “It’s Complicated.” Some films are made in hopes of making the audience think. Generally if the filmmakers want anyone to show up at the theatre, this request to think is made subliminally in between explosions, car chases, and tits-and-ass. Nancy Meyers’ films are not asking you to think at all; quite the contrary. Do not think about, ‘who could afford that house in that location by running a bakery,’ do not think about ‘how does she have time to create that lush garden,’ do not think at all. Just sit back, relax, and for the better part of two hours, laugh at the humanity before you.

Which I did.

Meryl Streep is delicious and devilishly funny as Jane Adler, 10 years divorced, finding her way on her own as she becomes an empty-nester. The onscreen rapport between Streep and Alec Baldwin as her ex is wise, witty, and wicked. Baldwin’s Jake, six years married to a much younger woman, is also a lawyer, so the sleaze aspect is to be expected. Any family with three children and parents no longer married to each other is complicated, and Jake’s new marriage is also complicated.

Jane wants to put an addition on her perfect house. I’d take it as is, thank you very much. This desire, however, provides the next complication: Her architect Adam, played by Steve Martin, has interpreted all of Jane’s e-mails on the subject. His perspicacity shows him to be the perfect match, having drawn the perfect plans. Adam, too, is divorced.

So here’s your threesome, again the … oh let’s just say 50-something successful beloved woman who finds herself wanted by two men, and wanting both for different reasons.

If you want to know who else was in this movie and were they good, just look up the list on imdb [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1230414/], read those names, and you'll know who did a terrific job. Yes, everybody. I did particularly like John Krasinski as the almost son-in-law, Harley.

What matters here is that the characters are all funny, the actors all perform them very well, the timing is as quick as the wit. It was not only a pleasure laughing at this film myself, it was a pleasure sitting in a darkened auditorium where everyone was laughing throughout the film. Mind you, I doubt there was anyone under 40 there either, but that just means that only one person didn’t turn her cell phone off.

I’m not going to run through the plot – you know the plot if you’ve seen the television ads and the trailer. Don’t know the resolution from those? Good. I’m not going to tell you. All I want to say is, if you want to think, go see Kathryn Bigelow’s devastingly brilliant “The Hurt Locker.” If you want to laugh a lot with your fellow movie-goers, go see “It’s Complicated.”

Don’t analyze this. Just laugh.


~ Molly Matera, logging off the computer to play left-handed tennis on the Wii.

Shannon Rocks - Lez Zeppelin at the Gramercy

Last night I saw Shannon Conley strut her stuff on the stage of the Gramercy. Lez Zeppelin played to an enthralled crowd for over two hours. Gone are the Bic flicks, but the joint was jumping, and the packed house was in love with this band. Little did I know when I’ve attended the theatre with her over the past year that Shannon was born to play Robert Plant.

Shannon leaps and flies and bounces, then takes a stance and with beautiful gestures does fab vocals fronting Steph Paynes on guitar – her solos are amazing; very fine Megan Thomas on bass and keyboards; and terrific Leesa Harrington-Squyres on percussion. The band is remarkably good and I found myself chuckling with pleasure all the while.

The only downer of the evening was entrance into the Gramercy – I don’t mind some guys looking in my bag for contraband or weapons (I saw guys being frisked in front of Irving Plaza the other week, what the hell is that!), but I do mind them making me pour out the water I carried in a metal bottle. The staff replaced my bottle with a plastic bottle of water, which I sipped through the evening. But. Not green and not cool.

As advised by Shannon, I wore my earplugs, but the whole place buzzed and vibrated so that my head is still heavy and throbbing the morning after. Small price to pay for an exciting show.

Rock On!

~ Molly Matera, signing off.