Category Archives: The Morgue

See These Inspiring Documentary Biopics: RBG and Mr. Rogers

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Ruth Bader GinsburgOverwhelmed by the tsunami of pettiness and downright meanness in the news this summer? These biopics make a refreshing change. RBG and Won’t You Be My Neighbor? properly celebrate two talented individuals who single-mindedly dedicated themselves to making better the lives of others.

RBG

The story of how Ruth Bader Ginsburg became an icon for women’s rights began when, as a newly minted law school graduate (Harvard and Columbia), she had trouble getting a job (trailer). Filmmakers Julie Cohen and Betsy Ward are obvious admirers, but then, there’s lots to admire. The film includes plenty of archival footage of Ginsburg as a quite beautiful young woman, as well as audio of her earliest arguments before the Supreme Court supporting “gender blindness.”

This historical footage is supplemented by present-day interviews with legal scholars, journalists, politicians, Ginsburg’s children, and RBG herself. Although she fought fiercely for women’s rights, as a person, she’s shy and unassuming. Her parents taught her that angry displays were “self-defeating,” and she kept her calm demeanor in her court battles, even though she says she felt like a kindergarten teacher, helping judges and even members of earlier Supreme Courts to an understanding of the systematic discrimination women faced and its costs. Of course, the battle isn’t over yet and has opened on a new front with #metoo.

If she never shows anger, she shows plenty of love for her husband Marty, who died in 2010. His support enabled her to achieve much of what she has, which every woman in America benefits from today, whether she knows it or not.

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 93%; audiences: 80%.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Fred Rogers 2When I saw previews of this Morgan Neville documentary about children’s television personality Fred Rogers, I was afraid it might be overly saccharine (trailer). But Rogers himself puts that issue to rest by his absolute sincerity and persuasiveness. Himself a child development expert, convinced by research showing the value of young children knowing they are loved for who they are, he used television to carry that message.

Over the years his slow delivery and habits (putting on his sweater, changing his shoes) have been mocked by numerous comedians—clips of these skits are included. OK, but the relevance of those critiques is completely undermined when the film juxtaposes scenes from his program with the usual pie-in-the-face comedy, the frantic action, the fights and violence more typical of children’s programming. There can be no question which is healthier for small children. Yet his show didn’t duck difficult issues. It took on divorce, death, 9/11, assassination—issues kids hear about, but may not get much help in understanding and processing.

Under Rogers’s gentle exterior beat the heart of a “true radical,” said Odie Henderson for RogerEbert.com. The opening song with which he greeted his audience every day said, “I have always wanted to have a neighbor just like you,” and that “you” included children of all races, abilities, and religions, wherever they lived, recent immigrants or the scions of old Boston families. He loved them, each and every one, just as they were. And they knew it.

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 99%; audiences: 98%.

Austin’s Plant-Based Attractions

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Not counting an early morning trip to my cousin’s impressive community garden in Austin, Texas, where we picked tomatoes, tomatoes, and more tomatoes, as well as peppers, onions, and eggplant, most of our touristy activities in the capital of the Lone Star State involved plants.

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

It was hot, yeah, but the walkways through this lovely 284-acre facility are abundantly shaded. The center is the botanic garden for the University of Texas at Austin, and its educational mission is evident, but it’s not just for students. Homeowners go there to learn about the conservation of native plants and creating back yard environments compatible with local conditions. It was great to see little kids enjoying the water features, a sandy play area, and the animal sculptures. The grounds are planted with more than 800 native Texas species that, over the seasons, display successive waves of color. Naturally, the one plant that didn’t have a label was the one that fascinated us (woolly ironweed, above, which looked like fireworks), but the volunteers and staff were quick to sort us out! A lovely facility and nice gift shop too.

Zilker Park, Austin, waterfall

photo (cropped): Glen Pope, creative commons license

Zilker Botanical Garden

Located on 26 hilly acres in the heart of Austin, this is another shady retreat, with a lovely waterlily pond out front. Its Japanese garden has a small pavilion and a meandering stream stocked with koi that runs under a classically arched wooden bridge.

We walked the Woodland Faerie Trail, where organizations and families have constructed tiny scenes in which fairies might live. Those that used natural materials were the most charming. Minimal gift shop with excellent air conditioning! The facility includes many specialty and seasonal gardens, including a vigorously blooming rose garden. Alluring, but in full sun, no.

Umlauf Sculpture Garden

Umlauf Sculpture Garden

photo: Lanie, creative commons license

Charles Umlauf (1911-1994) was a widely-collected American sculptor, born in Michigan, and a long-time art professor at the Austin campus of the University of Texas. He donated his home, studio, and the surrounding lands to the city of Austin, along with some 168 sculptures. The grounds are now an outdoor sculpture garden displaying mostly his works, and an indoor pavilion houses temporary or more weather-susceptible exhibitions. Many of his bronze and stone sculptures on display here have classical or biblical themes, and he went for stylized facial features. Although his artistic style is not my favorite, it’s a pleasure to see his work in such a beautiful setting.

Books to toss in your suitcase

Paper Ghosts – by Julia Heaberlin, a young woman’s Texas road trip with a possible serial killer in her passenger seat

Fonda San Miguel: Forty Years of Food and Art – we ate at this beautiful restaurant. You can drool over the cookbook while you’re there, and recreate awesome Mexican food on your return home

Texas Two-Step – new crime novel by Michael Pool. Two Colorado stoners plan to sell their last marijuana crop in rural east Texas and become embroiled in bigger problems, with a Texas Ranger and Austin police detective on their tails.

American Animals

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American AnimalsIn writer-director Bart Layton’s entertaining new film (trailer), four bored college students plot to steal priceless works from the library of Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky. Is this a daydream, or will they go through with it? Should they do more than watch old heist films to prepare?

A vivid demonstration of Murphy’s Law, their wildly inadequate scheme is both hilarious and tension-filled. Yet, as far-fetched as it may seem, the film is based on a real episode from 2004 and includes fourth-wall breaking interviews and current-day reflections of the actual would-be thieves and their parents. Using his skills a documentary filmmaker, Layton cleverly meshes their different perspectives on events (who decided what when), and his energetic recreation of their misbegotten enterprise is “singularly fascinating” says Cary Darling in the Houston Chronicle.

The four criminal masterminds are played by Barry Keoghan, Evan Peters, Jared Abrahamson, and Blake Jenner. The librarian they must disable is played by Ann Dowd (if you’ve watched The Handmaid’s Tale, you’ll recognize her voice before you even see her).

Drifty art student Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan) wants something to happen in his life. The idea of the theft comes to him as a kind of vague “what if?”, but when he shares it with Warren Lipka (Evan Peters), he’s found someone with the single-minded enthusiasm to turn it into a sort-of reality.

Have you ever pursued an idea long past the moment when it makes any sense? Then you can understand how the four students got carried away, trapped by their own momentum. What starts out as an especially brazen prank by privileged college students has a long tail of consequences, and at times the former students’ articulate silences express their belated second thoughts. A visual theme based on the paintings of John James Audubon—one of the works they plan to steal is his Birds of America—recurs throughout, adding grace notes to a tawdry episode.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 85% ; audiences: 91%.

The Rider

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The RiderThe movie The Rider isn’t really about rodeo. It’s a character study and an exploration of what it means to lose your dreams, and how to be a man in a culture that glorifies danger. Writer-Director Chloé Zhao may have been born in Beijing, but she has made one of the most authentic films about the West in recent years (trailer) and one of the best films of the year so far. Don’t miss it!

She’s drawn on the real-life story of a young man’s recovery from a rodeo injury that nearly killed him and probably will if he falls again. Brady Blackburn (played by Brady Jandreau) had a solid career on the rodeo circuit in front of him. As the film opens, his skull looks like Frankenstein’s monster, a metal plate rides underneath, and he has an occasional immobililty in his right hand—his rope hand. The doctor tells him no more riding, no more rodeo. She might as well tell him not to breathe.

He’s “recuperating,” but determined to get back in the saddle. He lives in a trailer with his father (Tim Jandreau), who puts on a gruff front, and feisty 15-year-old sister, Lilly (Lilly Jandreau), who has some degree of Asperger’s. The disappointment his fans feel when they find him working at a supermarket is visible to the taciturn Brady and to us.

In his spare time—and this is where the movie comes spectacularly to life—he trains horses. Watching him work with them, you know for sure that he’s no actor. This is his real-life job, and Zhao has captured those delicate moments of growing trust.

Not that interested in rodeo? You don’t see much of it. And most of the rodeo scenes are in the video clips Brady and his best friend Lane watch. Watching them watching is the bittersweet point. Lane was a star bull-rider now unable to walk or speak. The way Brady interacts with him is full of true generosity and mutual affection.

When Brady throws his saddle into the truck to go to another rodeo, in vain his father tells him not to. The father accuses him of never listening to him, and Brady says, “I do listen to you. I’ve always listened to you. It’s you who said, ‘Cowboy up,’ ‘Grit your teeth,’ ‘Be a man,’” the kinds of messages men give their sons that sometimes boomerang back to break their hearts.

Cinematographer James Joshua Richards’s deft close-in camerawork captures the personalities of the horses, and his wide views put the windswept grasslands of South Dakota’s Badlands and Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The film is shot partly on the Lakota reservation, but not much is made of the cast’s Native American heritage. By grounding the script in Brady’s real-life recovery and by surrounding him with his real-life family and friends, Zhao creates a wholly natural feel for the film, which has been nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards.

And what was it like for Brady to work with the filmmaker? “She was able to step into our world: riding horses, moving cows, stuff like that. Why should we be scared to step foot into her world?” he said in a Vanity Fair story by Nicole Sperling. “She would do things like get on a 1,700-pound animal for us. And trust us. So we did the same. We got on her 1,700-pound animal.”

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 97%; audiences 80%.

Tartuffe

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Tartuffe

photo: JerryDalia

A theatrical work maintains its ability to delight audiences for more than 350 years for one reason: continued relevance. Such is the case with Molière’s comic masterpiece Tartuffe, on stage at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. This sparkling production, directed by STNJ’s artistic director, Bonnie J. Monte, opened May 19 and runs through June 10.

In 1664, Tartuffe so scandalized the powers-that-be with its take-down of religious hypocrisy and false piety that the right wing clergy banned it. After a few text changes and with French King Louis XIV’s strong support, the ban was lifted five years later. In the current era, with #MeToo, families rent by political divisions, and the difference between truth and lies increasingly contentious, Tartuffe hits home once again.

A 2018 audience responds with fresh outrage to a situation in which a woman is threatened with rape, but the man accusing her attacker is disbelieved—“Now you know what it’s like not to be believed,” says a female character. Today’s audience likewise has a robust appreciation for the wiles of con man and dissembler Tartuffe (played by Brent Harris), his credulous and all-too-willing victim, Orgon (Patrick Toon), and the frustrated household members who cannot convince him of the deception.

That household includes Orgon’s wife Elmire (Caroline Kinsolving), daughter (Sarah Nicole Deaver), son (Aaron McDaniel), Elmire’s brother (William Sturdivant), and the saucy maid Dorine (Victoria Mack). Only Orgon and his mother (Vivian Reed) side with Tartuffe against the family.

Orgon took the pious Tartuffe in when he was a beggar, installed him in his home, and moves him closer and closer to the center of family life. His next plan is to rescind permission for his daughter to marry her love and instead wed her to the odious Tartuffe. Several scenes take place in which Tartuffe’s unwelcome intrusions are thoroughly discussed before we see the man himself. When he does appear, Brent Harris does not disappoint. He is so-o-o-oo smarmy, wearing a long white-blonde wig as pallid as his pieties.

The entire cast is strong, especially Toon and Kinsolving, the delectable Deaver (she has a great scene with her fiancé, played by Mark Hawkins), and Mack and McDaniel’s lively physical comedy. Reed lends an unexpected, preacherly African-American cadence that works admirably with the verse. (The translation is by Pulitzer Prize-winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate, the late Richard Wilbur).While some of the speeches tend to be long, the production is so full of movement and wit that it never flags.

Brittany Vasta’s elegant set is perfect for quick entrances, dramatic exits, and closet-hiding, and the mouth-watering costumes are by Nikki Delhomme.

Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey productions are hosted at Drew University in Madison, N.J. (easily reachable from NYC by train). For tickets, call the box office at 973-408-5600 or visit http://www.shakespearenj.org. Note that STNJ offers special ticket pricing of $30 for theatergoers under age 30!

Travel Tips: Columbus, Indiana

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Columbus, Indiana

National Historic Landmark by Myron Goldsmith

Enticed by seeing the small movie Columbus last year, we put this mecca of modernist architecture on our post-Derby travel itinerary. It had long lurked in the back of my mind as a place to visit one day, but the movie crystallized that wish. In it, an architect’s son, played by John Cho, stays at an elegant bed and breakfast (The Inn at Irwin Gardens, where we stayed too!) and helps a young Columbus resident (Haley Lu Richardson), understand what’s so great about the buildings she’s been surrounded by her whole life.

It started during World War II with a church. First Christian Church member J. Irwin Miller, the head of the area’s largest employer, Cummins Engine Company, persuaded the congregation not to build another faux-gothic pile, but a modern church. Eliel Saarinen’s design became the country’s first “modern” church. It was followed by the first modern bank building.

Post-war, the city experienced the baby boom and the need for new schools. The first were pre-fab structures, truly awful. Miller gave the school board a list of five U.S. architects and promised that, if they chose one of them for the next school, his foundation would pay the design fee. The result was so successful that many more architect-designed schools, followed by fire houses and libraries, as well as other churches, banks, and factories followed.

Flamenco

Flamenco by Ruth Aizuss Migdal; photo: Vicki Weisfeld

Buildings by such architectural luminaries as the Saarinens (Eliel and Eero), Robert A.M. Stern, Harry Weese, Cesar Pelli, Robert Venturi, Richard Meier, and I.M. Pei. Landscape architects and significant sculptural pieces followed, with installations by Henry Moore, Dessa Kirk, Dale Chihuly, and Ruth Aizuss Migdal (Her “Flamenco” was a favorite).

Miller and his  wife (a woman from a modest background, whom he met over the bargaining table. He was Management, she was Labor) built a home designed by Eero Saarinen, with interiors by noted graphic artist and architect Alexander Girard, that is both modest and magnificent. One of seven Columbus buildings deemed a National Historic Landmark, its most appealing feature for me was Saarinen’s ingenious tic-tac-toe lines of skylights that deliver bright outdoor light to almost every room of the house.

The Visitor’s Center provides maps, tours of the Miller House, and a lovely gift shop.

So near?

From Louisville: 72 miles
From Columbus, Ohio: 189 miles
From Chicago: 227 miles
From St. Louis: 284 miles

Books to toss in your suitcase

Columbus, Indiana – photographic essay by Thomas R. Schiff
The Cathedral Builder –  Biography of J. Irwin Miller by Charles E. Mitchell Rentschler
Alexander Girard: Popular Edition – by Kiera Coffee and Todd Oldham

Turning Off the Morning News

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Turning Off the Morning News

photo: T. Charles Erickson

For the subject of his latest play, Christopher Durang has reached into the stewpot of Americans’ current malaise and plucked out one of the most difficult of all: gun violence. This challenging, yet comic new 90-minute production had its world premiere at McCarter Theatre Center May 12 and runs through June 3. McCarter also premiered Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, 2013 winner of  the Tony Award for Best Play.

The new play features Kristine Nielsen as Polly, endlessly talkative, whose dialog is pure stream-of-consciousness. John Pankow plays her underachieving husband Jimmy. He announces at the outset that he’s depressed and considering killing himself, his family, or perhaps strangers at the mall. Nicholas Podany is their 13-year-old son. These bizarre parents have never told him he’s adopted, and when he inadvertently learns it, he’s relieved.

Rachel Nicks (Salena) and Robert Sella (Clifford) play the couple’s new neighbors. They’re meant to be the sane ones, but they have secrets too. And Jean Harris plays Rosalind, a new friend of Salena’s, in a role right out of the theater of the absurd catalog: to avoid skin cancer, she wears a pillowcase over her head and does a manic dance when tension becomes too much.

The underlying story—Jimmy’s threats to kill people—will make this play difficult for some audiences. It was for me. Still, I could appreciate much of the excruciatingly dark humor, and the cast puts it over well. It may be funny, but it isn’t fluff. The play’s director, Emily Mann, says the play not only exposes today’s personal and societal anxieties, “it also gently reveals the antidote—reaching out beyond ourselves to find connection with others.”

Important in the play are what is seen and not seen. Polly introduces this idea when she misplaces a potted plant that is in full audience view. Subsequently, several characters see Jimmy leaving the house in disguise, they don’t see the semi-automatic weapons protruding from the duffel he carries. Polly sees the guns but dismisses their importance. For me, this device directly echoes the typical speculations after a mass shooting: “Why did the shooter even have a gun? Didn’t they (whoever ‘they’ are) see he was unhinged/angry/writing in his diary he wanted to kill people?”

All the performances are solid, but the cast standout is Kristine Nielsen, who keeps her knees slightly bent, ready to move in any direction—physically, mentally, emotionally—and brilliantly captures the play’s lightning-fast changes in mood and tone. Jean Harris is also a gifted physical actor, filling her portrayal with well-realized gestures.

Beowulf Boritt’s set conveys a suburban community of overwhelming—and totally  misleading—sameness. On the outside, the houses are all such a buttery yellow you could spread them on toast. Mark Bennett (sound design) has created jaunty sit-com music to introduce scenes in Polly and Jimmy’s house, which differs sharply from the classical music and cool grey of Salena and Clifford’s residence. In different ways, both households have turned off the morning news and Durang suggests that hasn’t worked well for either of them.

McCarter Theatre is easily reached from New York by car or train (New Jersey Transit to the Princeton Junction station, then the shuttle train into Princeton. The shuttle ends a short walk from the theater and the university’s new arts district, as well as two innovative new restaurants.

For tickets, call the box office at 609-258-2787 or visit the ticket office online.

Kentucky Travel: “Not Barry Manilow and a Glass of Wine”

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Derby HatThe first question everyone asked when they learned we were going to the Kentucky Derby this year was—“Do you have a hat?!” Yes, I did, and here’s the photo to prove it! It was like wearing a dinner plate on the side of my head.

Unlike the unlucky folks who didn’t spring for under-cover seating, we were nice and dry, even though the May 5 race was the wettest Derby on record, by far. Our seats were great—right across from the winner’s circle and in full view of the finish line.

Given the television coverage, which we watch year after year, mint julep in hand, we were prepared for the elegant hats, the snazzy men’s suits, even Johnny Weir. But we were surprised Churchill Downs’s food options aren’t any better than those at our local AAA baseball team. Our Derby package came with a tent buffet (only so-so), and I pitied the patrons who had to depend on the track’s concession stands. Though we’d been warned off the premade mint juleps readily available, the one the bartender in the tent made from scratch was delicious.

The Derby itself—“the most exciting two minutes in sports”—was of course the pinnacle of the Louisville portion of our trip, but we saw lots of other sights in town, notably:

  • 21C Hotel Art

    Art at the 21C Museum Hotel; photo: Vicki Weisfeld

    The Louisville Slugger museum and a tour of the factory, which makes millions of baseball bats every year. Down Louisville’s Main Street are plaques in the sidewalk commemorating key ball players, along with life-sized replicas of the bats they used. And here I thought if you’ve seen one baseball bat, you’ve seen them all.

  • A guided tour of the modern art collection at our downtown hotel, the 21C Museum Hotel (If you’re interested in modern art and don’t know about this small but growing boutique hotel chain, you’re really missing something!).
  • The Zachary Taylor National Cemetery. The 12th president’s tomb was of peculiar interest to me, because recent genealogical research unearthed a photo of the gravestone of my three-greats grandmother, which says she was a descendant of President Taylor. A modicum of digging proved this to be more fake news.
Lexington horse farm

Lexington horse farm; photo: Vicki Weisfeld

  • The nearly 300-acre Cave Hill Cemetery, with its graves of Louisville founder George Rogers Clark, Muhammad Ali, Col. Sanders, Confederate and Union dead, and more than 100,000 other Louisville residents, famous and not-so.
  • A bus tour that took us to Lexington and two horse farms, where we “met” the sire and grandsire of Derby winner “Justified” and saw lots of new foals. Also were briefed on racehorse breeding. “It’s not Barry Manilow and a glass of wine,” our guide said. No indeedy.
  • A pleasant self-guided walking tour of Old Louisville, one of the country’s largest remaining Victorian neighborhoods.

Where we fell short was on the Urban Bourbon Trail. We visited only three of the 40 or so bourbontastic watering holes included in our passport, and even forgot have it stamped in one of them. On a five-day visit, that performance would have to be judged weak.

Reading on the Go

When you travel to Kentucky, here are some books you might take along.

Churchill Downs

Churchill Downs’s iconic twin spires; photo: Vicki Weisfeld

The King’s Choice

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The King's ChoiceLet me guess. You know as few of the details as I did about how neutral Norway reacted to the invasion by German forces during three tension-packed days in April 1940. Well, now there’s Erik Poppe’s remarkable 2017 movie (Neflix!), based on true events, in which you’ll see a fine and memorable demonstration of courage and leadership (trailer).

As the Nazis hunt them, Norway’s King Haakon VII (elected as head of the constitutional monarchy in 1905) and his family, along with his weak-kneed cabinet, must flee Oslo. The cabinet had ignored the king’s warnings of possible German aggression and is in disarray. In any case, the king is the only person Hitler wants his envoy to negotiate with. The monarch faces agonizing decisions for himself, his family, his country. We are repeatedly reminded of how difficult it is to see issues clearly in a crisis, where imminent action is needed and no options are without substantial risk.

Back in Oslo, a Norwegian fascist plots to take over the government and negotiate with the Germans. His name was Quisling. And, instead of becoming the national hero he must have envisioned, his name became synonymous around the world with “traitor.”

Jesper Christensen is superb as King Haakon VII, Anders Baasmo Christiansen plays the untried but decent son, Kronprins Olav, and Karl Markovics is the frustrated German envoy, Kurt Bräuer, who truly wants to negotiate with the king, but who has very little time or sway with the fast-moving military machine.

The Norwegian countryside in late winter is as grim as the situation, snow on the ground, grey skies, almost as if the film were shot in black-and-white. It was Norway’s entry for Best Foreign Language film last year. Godfrey Cheshire on RogerEbert.com says it “deserves recognition for the excellence of every aspect of its making.” Subtitles.

Rotten Tomatoes Critics’ Rating: 84%; audiences 81%.

What Happened Next . . .

This is not part of the movie, but historian Lynne Olson praises King Haakon’s courage in her book, Last Hope Island, a fascinating–and previously unexamined–chronicle of what happened when King Haakon and six other European monarchs made their way to England and worked with the British government to aid the Allied cause.

King Haakon’s specific contribution to the war effort was that Norway’s Navy and Air Force and some army units followed him to Britain. Perhaps most important, he made available to the Allies the loyal 1,300-ship merchant marine fleet, the world’s largest and most modern, a prize the Germans dearly wanted.

On the Big Screen: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime

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The Death of Stalin

Death of Stalin

Steve Buscemi & Jeffrey Tambor

The Death of Stalin, from director Armando Iannucci (trailer) satirizes the cynical, self-absorbed group of leaders surrounding the Communist dictator and their desperate jockeying for position both before and after his death in 1953.

Banned in Russia, the film is based on a graphic novel by French writers Fabien Nury and Thierry Robin (Amazon link), full of one-liners and sight gags. Undoubtedly, some of the humor arises out of a characters’ sense of release—having lived under such extreme repression, day in and day out, guarding every word and eyebrow twitch, a giddy humanity bubbles up once the leader dies.

Late one evening, Stalin decides he wants to hear an orchestra concert that was broadcast on the radio. No one thought to record it, and the anxious scramble to recreate the concert illustrates the high-pitched fear of displeasing him. (Bringing in baffled street people to pad the audience was a nice touch.) Stalin murdered the pianist’s family, and she slips a vitriolic message into the recording jacket that causes the dictator have a stroke. His comrades can’t find a doctor for him because, they readily acknowledge, all the “good doctors” have been purged.

Stalin’s potential heirs include Nikita Kruschev (played brilliantly by Steve Buscemi), who is put in charge of a lavish state funeral where things, inevitably, go awry. Due to his position on the Central Committee, Georgy Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) is “in charge,” with terror and venality at war behind his eyes. Vyacheslov Molotov (Michael Palin) is the only inner circle member unaware that Stalin’s unexpected death has spared him a grim fate in Lubyanka prison. The head of state security, Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale) oils his way into nearly every scene, always plotting and loathed by everyone.

As Anthony Lane says in The New Yorker, it’s a comedy, “grossly neglectful of the basic decencies, cavalier toward historical facts, and toxically tasteless” and “ten times funnier . . . than it has any right to be.”

Rotten Tomatoes Critics Rating: 95%; audiences: 79%.

Cezanne: Portraits of a Life

Cezanne

Paul Cézanne, “Self Portrait in a Bowler Hat,” (1885-86)

This beautiful documentary, directed by Phil Grabsky (trailer), was created to accompany a joint exhibition of some 60 of Paul Cézanne’s portraits being mounted by London’s National Portrait Gallery, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

Better known for his still lifes and landscapes, the portraits, which New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl says were “the genre most resistant to Cézanne’s struggle” are nevertheless worthy of careful attention. Certainly the museum staff who provide commentary for the film have been captivated by them. Yet the artist’s struggle is evident in his letters to his friends, read in voice-over.

What I found most thrilling were the extreme closeups of the painted surface that seeing the works on a big screen provided. In a postcard (!) or print in a book, or even glanced at in a gallery, the paintings may look rather flat, but the huge enlargement allows you to see the many layers of color used to create that surface and to appreciate these works in a completely new way. Some of the landscapes and a few still lifes also receive this close-in treatment.

Although Cézanne masterfully depicted the faces and the hands of his subjects, he said that these were not what constituted the “portrait” of a person, but indeed the whole canvas—the clothing, the chair, the background, all together, were the true portrait. See it if you can.

The exhibit has had its Paris and London runs and will be in Washington March 25-July 1, 2018.