Category Archives: The Morgue

The Coup Against Public Opinion

Posted on by

constitutional_conventionBet you think this will be about politics. It is, but not how you think. The Framer’s Coup: The Making of the US Constitution is Michael J. Klarman’s book about the formation and adoption of the U.S. Constitution. Politicians who wave the Constitution about should perhaps read his book first. As he described in a recent lecture at the David Library of the American Revolution, the Founding Fathers tore up what they were supposed to do in Philadelphia and rewrote our founding document quite differently than what the people expected.

Klarman, a Harvard Law School professor, believes the Constitution was a conservative response to the egalitarian impulses that produced the Revolutionary War. In the War, the founding fathers were frustrated at how slow the states were to provide support, deeming them “as obstructionist as the British.” And, they wanted government in the hands of “the right sort” of people—what today we would call “the elites.”

Contrary to what was expected, the framers of the Constitution produced a document that is more nationalizing, with certain explicit and implied powers reserved to the federal government, unlimited taxing and military authority, and the ability to regulate foreign and interstate commerce. It also has the ability to create laws “necessary and proper” to implement these provisions.

The federal government has a mechanism to enforce its supremacy, too, including the federal court system and rules that limit the powers of the states, forbidding them, for example, to print their own paper currency as they did in colonial times.

The Constitution’s anti-populist provisions include relatively long terms in office (for which we can be grateful; constant political campaigning sounds totally unbearable at the moment). Essentially, the men who framed the Constitution did not trust the people’s choice—“you might as well ask a blind man to pick a color,” they believed—and favored a system of indirect elections. Although members of the House of Representatives were to be elected directly, the number of these legislators was at first small, and they were elected from a state at large, not from specific districts, as now. This diluted an individual’s vote. Another of these anti-populist provisions was, of course, the Electoral College.

These friction points of more than 200 years ago are not irrelevant today. Texas governor Greg Abbott has agitated for a new Constitutional Convention aimed at restricting federal power. Article V of the Constitution allows for a new Constitutional Convention if two-thirds of state legislatures request it.

Klarman says, “there’s a reason there hasn’t been another one.” There are no rules in the Constitution about how such a body should proceed, making Article V “the black hole of constitutional law,” according to one legal scholar. Nor are their limits on what such a body can do, which means it could tear the whole thing up and start over, exactly as the Founding Fathers did.

Frida Kahlo: Her Casa Is Our Casa

Posted on by
Kahlo, desert

photo: Jodi Goalstone

After setting all-time attendance records with 500,000 visitors at New York’s Botanical Garden (NYBG), Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life is firmly planted in Tucson through next May.

Tucson Botanical Gardens is the only other American institution to display the inspiring homage to Kahlo’s Casa Azul, her childhood home in Mexico City. That distinction is fitting because Sonoran Desert plant species are quite similar to the ones at Casa Azul. Kahlo described her beloved home this way: “Mi casa no es tan cómoda, pero tiene un color muy bonito. My house is not so comfortable, but it is nice of color.”

According to an article in the Desert Leaf, a Tucson magazine, the idea for the exhibition germinated when the NYBG’s vice president for exhibitions interviewed a job candidate who had worked and studied in Latin America. Discussing their joint botanical passions led them to the idea of showcasing Kahlo’s gardens.

NYBG engaged hundreds of scientists along with Broadway scenic designer Scott Pask (a part-time Tucson resident and graduate of the University of Arizona) to recreate the key structural elements.

Kahlo, Rivera

photo: Jodi Goalstone

Renowned for her unsmiling, direct gaze and iconic unibrow as much as her artistic acumen, Kahlo found refuge and inspiration in her gardens. After her marriage (not to mention separation, divorce and remarriage) to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, they purchased property adjacent to Casa Azul and tripled the size of the gardens. They lived there from 1929 until 1954.

According to exhibit materials, Rivera, at Kahlo’s suggestion, designed a four-tier pyramid structure to house his large collection of pre-Hispanic artifacts. Agave and cacti crowned the palapa (woven grass) roof to reflect the blend of indigenous culture and history. This representation is what the visitor sees as a centerpiece of the exhibition. Other plantings around Casa Azul included yucca, organ pipe cactus, bougainvillea, and jacaranda.

But the area wasn’t meant only for solitary contemplation, according to Mexican artist Humberto Spindola. NYBG commissioned him to recreate The Two Fridas, a Kahlo double self-portrait using amate (bark paper) typical of Aztec and traditional Mexican folk art, which Kahlo often used in her work.

photo: Jodi Goalstone

photo: Jodi Goalstone

Spindola told the Desert Leaf: “(They) held many fiestas and gatherings at the house and gardens, entertaining their many artist, poet, writer, and communist friends” with platters of Kahlo’s wonderful food, lots of tequila, and live mariachi music. They surely made an unusual couple; Rivera was about a foot taller than the 5’3” Kahlo and was 20 years her senior.

If you are planning a Southwest sojourn, Tucson is a diverse and distinctive destination. It now is a UNESCO World City of Gastronomy, and has a host of notable attractions including the Desert Museum, Mission San Xavier del Bac, and walking, hiking, and horseback riding in Sabino Canyon in the surrounding Santa Catalina Mountains. Additionally, there now is daily non-stop air service from JFK to Tucson on American Airlines.

For more information on the Kahlo exhibition, go to www.tucsonbotanical.org.

This guest post is by Tucson-based Jodi Goalstone, author of the entertaining blog Going Yard, Offbeat Baseball Musings, celebrating her 20th year living in the Old Pueblo.

Certain Women

Posted on by
certain-women, Lily Gladstone

Lily Gladstone in Certain Women

You know from the movie previews and the rumblings from the multiplex’s adjacent theater that today’s movies are heavily weighted toward “action films.” Writer-director-editor Kelly Reichardt could singlehandedly reverse that trend with Certain Women (trailer), which can most succinctly be described as an “inaction film.”

It’s kind of hard to get used to Reichardt’s pace, so you might watch this and think “Wha—?” Here, the drama is at the deep inside the characters, hidden from all views except the closest. And that’s what it gets from Reichardt—“a poet of silences and open spaces,” says A.O. Scott in the New York Times. Based on short stories by Maile Meloy, the film is set in and around Livingston, Montana, and the views of the lonely snowswept plains are breathtaking.

The story is presented in three separate vignettes that barely intersect. In the first, Laura Dern plays Laura Wells, a lawyer trying to convince her persistent client (Jared Harris) that he can’t sue his former employer for on-the-job injuries because he already accepted a settlement. The client doesn’t believe it until a male lawyer tells him the same thing. She’s disappointed at many levels—with her clients, her career, her love life.

The middle vignette involves Gina (Michelle Williams), a married woman with a disaffected teenage daughter. She and her husband are building a new house, and she hopes to convince a slightly addled, elderly neighbor (Rene Auberjonois) to sell them a pile of unused sandstone blocks in his front yard. Behind Gina’s bright smile, you can feel her irritation that the neighbor focuses his attention not on her request but on her husband, eliding the decision, and finally the husband sells her out. Even within the bosom of her family, it’s clear, she’s alone.

The dreamiest and most poignant sequence follows the young woman Jamie—beautifully underplayed by Lily Gladstone—on her daily routine, feeding and caring for a group of horses on a remote ranch. The repetitiveness of her tasks in the snowy, mountains in the distance, is mesmerizing. Her routine and her equilibrium are disturbed by a chance acquaintance with Beth, a harried young lawyer played by Kristen Stewart, overwhelmed by her own, very different grind. The extent of Jamie’s disturbance is painfully revealed in her quiet face, upon which “silent passion surges like an underground stream,” Scott says.

The acting is subtle and true, and Reichardt closely follows the dictum, “show, don’t tell.” Her characters don’t scream and rail and tell you what their issues are. You see it laid bare in front of you.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 91%; audiences 51%, a discrepancy that’s no surprise.

Mama’s Boy

Posted on by
Mama's Boy, Michael Goldsmith, Betsy Aidem

Michael Goldsmith & Betsy Aidem, photo: T. Charles Erickson

First up in the George Street Playhouse (New Brunswick, N.J.) 2016-17 season is Mama’s Boy, by Rob Urbinati. It’s a family drama about a very particular family—that of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in the period leading up to and after the events of November 1963. Directed by David Saint, the play runs from October 18 through November 6.

The assassination of President Kennedy continues its dark fascination. Already this year I’ve read two thrillers that riff on the case, and Hulu televised a terrific 11.22.63 (starring James Franco, Chris Cooper, and Sarah Gadon), based on the even-better Stephen King time-travel book, 11/22/63.

Mama’s Boy probes the assassination from the viewpoint of Oswald’s monomaniacal mother, Marguerite. In real life, she did try to put herself at the center of the story, and Urbinati capitalizes on her obsession to great dramatic effect. Marguerite (played beautifully by Betsy Aidem) is convinced—or claims to be—that Lee’s defection to Russia, his U.S. return 32 months later, and the plot to kill Kennedy, were orchestrated by the State Department or FBI, for whom he was working as an agent.

Oswald himself (Michael Goldsmith) doesn’t give her theories the time of day. He is preoccupied with finding a “clean” job to support his baby daughter June and wife Marina (Laurel Casillo) and, subsequently, getting to Cuba. He refuses help from his mother—not an easy job, that—but older brother Robert (Miles G. Jackson) provides some support.

Marguerite says Lee is the only one of her boys who ever loved her. (They shared a bed until he was 12.) She is manipulative and distrusting, overbearing and intrusive, wildly jealous of Marina, and believes the “little people” will never receive any help or support from the government, the media, or other social institution. She rails at the fact that Jackie Kennedy is escorted to and from Parkland Hospital, where the President died, whereas she—equally deserving, she thinks—gets nothing. Her domestic drama plays out as tragedy writ both small and large, at the level of the living room and on the world stage.

Urbinati’s vision of warped mother-love is as powerful as that of Gypsy’s Mama Rose, and Aidem has called Marguerite “the role of a lifetime,” and the skewed vision thrust upon Oswald (who was barely 24 at the time of the assassination) may make you think somewhat differently about him.

Mama’s Boy premiered in Portland, Maine, in October 2015, with Aidem and Casillo in their current roles. It’s clear they inhabit these characters totally. The men, newcomers to the play, are fine. Also in the cast is multiple Tony-award-winner Boyd Gaines, who plays one of Marguerite’s interviewers in voiceover.

Saint and the production staff have made the most of George Street’s capacity, using projections in combination with the revolving stage platform. Admirable use of technology!

For tickets, call the box office at 732-246-7717 or visit the box office online. The theater is an easy 10-minute walk from New Jersey Transit’s New Brunswick station.

Disgraced

Posted on by
disgraced, Caroline Kaplan & Maboud Ebrahimzadeh

Caroline Kaplan & Maboud Ebrahimzadeh, photo: T. Charles Erickson

McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton, N.J., is presenting Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Disgraced, through October 30. The production, directed by Marcela Lorca, tells the story of four Manhattan friends with diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds. They are a successful, congenial group until a dinner party devolves into a series of confrontations that painfully reveal the schisms beneath the surface. It is a blistering commentary on identity politics and the nation’s most-produced play in the 2015-2016 season.

The characters are lawyer Amir (played by Maboud Ebrahimzadeh), who has masked his Pakistani and Muslim heritage, “passing” as Indian. Amir is pressured by his wife and nephew, Hussein (Adit Dileep)—who has changed his name to the more American Abe Jensen—to look in on legal proceedings against a controversial imam accused of terrorism. Amir initially resists, fearing his act may be misinterpreted by his firm’s Jewish senior partners.

His beautiful wife Emily (Caroline Kaplan), Caucasian and apparently Christian, is a painter and in her own work is entranced with the artistic language of Islam. In turn, she entrances their Jewish friend and Whitney curator Isaac (Kevin Isola), who wants to include her paintings in a high-profile exhibit. Isaac met Emily through Jory (Austene Van), his African-American wife and another associate in Amir’s law firm.

These convoluted relationships could go wrong in many ways, and do at the ill-fated dinner party. The social landscape under their feet crumbles. By the play’s end, all of them are disgraced, one way or another, publicly or not.

It is director Lorca’s aim that the audience empathize with each of the characters. She says, “A play like Disgraced has the power to hold mirrors to us, invite us to embrace complexities, ponder our contradictions, widen our view of others, and invite us to practice empathy, one character at a time.” Her success in achieving this is evidenced by the dead silence in the theater for many seconds after the play ended and the standing ovation the cast received.

The play raises important questions about identity and self-identity, passive observer and activist, and religious and secular choices in a fragmented American society, as well as the persistent and entangling prejudices (in the original, pre-judging sense, emphasis on “judging”) that lurk inside each of us. “Who is an American?” it asks, and “Who gets to decide?” It’s a 90-minute production that rapidly moves into the quicksand of what the playwright calls our “degraded social discourse.”

McCarter has prepared a show website rich with information, including an essay on Islamic art and a Velázquez painting that provide an important symbolic backdrop in the story. Call the box office at 609-258-2787 or visit http://www.mccarter.org.

Richard III – at STNJ

Posted on by
richard-iii, Gretchen Hall, Derek Wilson

Gretchen Hall & Derek Wilson; photo: Jerry Dalia

Shakespeare’s quintessential villain erupts into being in this Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey production directed by Paul Mullins (on view through November 6). The cast is huge—16 actors playing 22 parts—but all depends on the sly malice and believability of the title character, a role Derek Wilson fulfills admirably.

Shakespeare’s Richard is more duplicitous than history supports, since in the Elizabethan era, theater was required to explain and justify the monarchy, but the play’s machinations seem perfectly plausible in Wilson’s hands. Fawning here, back-stabbing there, and slyly engaging the audience in his treachery.

The story describes the culmination of the War of the Roses, and it’s a familiar one, as most theater goers have seen one or more productions of this classic. In (very) short, Richard murders his way to the throne of England, but getting the crown isn’t keeping it. The play’s most famous lines come at the beginning  and end, but like all Shakespeare’s plays, it is filled with juicy bits. Here’s one for this political season: “And thus I clothe my naked villainy with old odd ends stolen out of holy writ; and seem a saint, when most I play the devil.”

STNJ has provided a helpful Plantagenet family tree in the program, which, abbreviated though it is, is at first glance a stumper. I studied it before the show and had a few relationships sorted out, and at the intermission I gave it another go, putting everyone in place.

In addition to Wilson’s Richard, the many fine performances include those of the three principal women: Gretchen Hall (Queen Elizabeth, wife of Richard’s brother, King Edward IV), Carol Halstead (Margaret of Anjou, Henry VI’s “warrior queen,” who lives up to her sobriquet), and Amaia Arana (Lady Anne, widow of Margaret and Henry’s son, Edward, and later wife of Richard). In Shakespeare’s story, Richard instigated the murder of both Henry VI and Edward. For these crimes, Margaret and Anne hate him. The widowed Queen Elizabeth has reasons to both hate and fear him when her two sons “the little princes in the tower” are believed murdered at Richard’s behest.

Though lots of murder is talked about, most of it occurs off-stage. In keeping with the production’s modern dress, there is gunfire as well as swordplay. Richard III is a long play, but the energy of the cast and the direction (as well as some judicious trimming) make the story move apace.

Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey productions are hosted at Drew University in Madison, N.J. (easily reachable from NYC by train), and until October 30 you can also see there an exhibit of Shakespeare’s First Folio, on tour from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

STNJ has prepared an excellent “Know the Show Guide.” For tickets, call the box office at 973-408-5600 or visit http://www.shakespearenj.org.

The Girl on the Train

Posted on by

girl-on-the-trainThis movie thriller (trailer) written by Erin Cressida Wilson and directed by Tate Taylor is based on Paula Hawkins’s runaway best-selling novel. Cognoscenti in the crime fiction world consider the book distinctly overrated, so an investment of two hours in the movie theater may be preferable to a dozen hours of reading. Maybe this was a bad choice. As Christy Lemire at RogerEbert.com says, “The Girl on the Train is good trash. At least as a novel, it is. As a film, however, it’s not even that.”

The story is initially engaging, thanks primarily to excellent acting by Emily Blount as Rachel, the alcoholic protagonist. She knows her husband Tom had an affair and left their childless marriage primarily because of her drinking but seems to be spinning ever-further out of control, a vodka-in-the-water-bottle kind of drinker.

I’m not persuaded by critics who say the film withholds pertinent information, because it is mostly told from Rachel’s point of view. We see the world as she does—none too clearly—with a few scenes from the also-limited perspectives of the other two principal women.

Rachel commutes into the city every day from Westchester (London in the novel), and her train passes behind their former house. She can see him (played by Justin Theroux), his new wife (Rebecca Ferguson), and their baby. She also sees the devoted neighbor couple (Luke Evans and Haley Bennett), whose love seems perfect in these tantalizing glimpses. If her city job were real, exposing herself to hurt with this voyeurism might be torture. Since her job is imaginary, it’s pathological.

You will have guessed that the neighbor couple’s relationship is more complicated than Rachel apprehends, and when the woman turns up missing, Rachel’s obsessions and her hazy perceptions create havoc. It’s always fun to see Allison Janney, here as a police detective investigating the disappearance and trying to make sense of Rachel’s “evidence.”

Ultimately, the motivations that drive what turns out to be a six-sided story of love and lust, deceit and dangerous truth-telling are deeply clichéd, and there are a few too many close-ups of a befuddled Rachel. The Girl on the Train is a ride to nowhere terribly interesting.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating 44%; audiences 56%.

“Mandir – A Place of Paramount Peace”

Posted on by
Mandir

BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Robbinsville, N.J.

A 5/2021 update on the labor scandal that has rocked this place is here.

You don’t expect to find one of the nation’s most astonishingly beautiful spiritual centers in tiny Robbinsville, New Jersey. However, on 247 acres a few miles from my home, a major center for Hindu religion, study, and celebration is quietly growing up. Only two parts of this multi-building complex are complete, and construction continues on the others—construction reportedly involving the largest building crane in North America.

This past week, with a group of friends I visited this complex, establish for the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan sect of Hinduism. Other major North America BAPS Swaminarayan centers are in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Toronto. Bhagwan Swaminarayan, who died in 1830, worked to assure the education of women and aid the poor. (Mahatma Gandhi criticized some of his teachings for doctrinal reasons I am not qualified to explain.) Differences of opinion about succession after Swaminarayan’s death led to several divisions among his followers, with BAPS one of those.

One of the first buildings to be completed was the Mandir, and I suspect I will never forget the profound awe this structure inspires (video tour here). The word Mandir means “a place where the mind becomes still and experiences inner peace.” It is a space for worship, constructed according to certain ancient rules and specifications, the Vastu Shastra. Much of this Mandir’s iconography is intended to convey a strong spirit of welcome and recognition of the divine spark within each person (the meaning of the word namaste).

Unusually, the Robbinsville Mandir has two equally sized domes—most have just one principal one—each thirty or thirty-five feet in diameter. Under these domes are floors of vari-colored stone beautifully inlaid in geometric patterns incorporating peacocks and elephants. The many carvings of the pillars, ceiling, and walls of course have religious significance, and it contains shrines to significant Hindu deities. If I understood the guide correctly, these deities’ garments are changed throughout the day to accord with various ceremonies.

Blocks of Italian marble—11.5 tons in all—traveled to India for initial carving, then to tiny Robbinsville for final carving and polishing by artisans and volunteers. Outside the Mandir proper, the builders have created a large box, made of more durable materials (Bulgarian limestone), to protect the sacred space within—making it a building within a building. The artistic photo at top doesn’t show this outer “box,” which also is decorated with elaborate carvings, including 236 stone peacocks on the entrance gate.

The mesmerizing video is great, but cannot convey how overwhelming it is to be inside! If Robbinsville is not on your travel itinerary, consider visiting one of the other major sites, each of which I suspect is spectacular in its own way. (Robbinsville is about 60 miles from New York and 45 miles from Philadelphia.) Visitors are encouraged, and check the website for visiting hours. At the bottom of the home page for the BAPS organization are links to its major centers around the world.

Namaste.

mandir-3

Bathing in Moonlight

Posted on by
Bathing in Moonlight

Hannia Guillen & Raúl Méndez, photo by T. Charles Erickson

Thirteen years ago, McCarter Theatre’s artistic director Emily Mann and playwright Nilo Cruz teamed up to present the premiere of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Anna in the Tropics, and their new collaboration—the world premiere of Bathing in Moonlight—is terrific! On stage 9/16-10/9.

In today’s Miami, three generations of a Cuban family are exiled. The widowed grandmother Martina (Priscilla Lopez) has early dementia and feels she’s never found her place in America; daughter Marcela (Hannia Guillen) is desperate to hold the family together in tough economic circumstances; and granddaughter Trini (Katty Velasquez) is an assimilated American teen, bent on a career in marine biology. Two men disturb the stability of this affectionate home.

Marcela’s brother Taviano (Frankie J. Alvarez) is away, studying to become a doctor, which may finally solve the family’s precarious finances. Her beloved piano was sold to help pay for his education, but he’s been out of touch for two years. When he returns, his resemblance to his father discomposes the already confused Martina. Worse is the news he gives Marcela—he’s failed his medical exams.

The other man in their lives is Father Monroe (Raúl Méndez), a dedicated and sympathetic parish priest. He lets Marcela play the piano at the church and, attuned to the family’s poverty, lends her money to cover their rent. Marcela finds him attractive in an unattainable way. However, the attraction is mutual, and difficult choices loom.

Director Mann considers Cruz “one of the great poets of the American theater, akin to Tennessee Williams,” and certainly in this play, the poetry, humor, and humanity in these simple situations shines through. Cruz thinks of his works as musical compositions, with each character an instrument contributing to the whole. Their speech contains Spanish rhythms, and even the three levels of Cuban accent create a chord, with the abuela’s accent the strongest, Marcela’s medium-strength, and the granddaughter’s almost disappeared.

The role of Father Monroe is the U.S. stage debut for Mexican actor Raúl Méndez, and he is powerful in it. From the opening when he charms the audience with a sermon about inclusion, his every gesture and expression is pitch-perfect. He’s a stand-out in a strong cast. Lopez and Velasquez imbue the aging grandmother and sprightly granddaughter with personality and verve. Cuban Alvarez in the dual-role of father and son expertly plays two generations. The most opaque character is Marcela, oddly, and I think that’s the play, not Guillen’s performance. Marcela is surrounded by people with so many needs, and so accustomed to putting those needs first, it’s hard for her to come into her own.

Charles Isherwood in the New York Times was ungenerous in his review, saying, “the Catholic Church’s strictures on the priesthood (no women, no marriage), . . . which even many Catholics consider ludicrously out of step with today’s world — have been fodder for debate in the popular media for years,” but this is a narrow interpretation. The play unfolded against the backdrop of Father Monroe’s opening sermon about including “the other,” about how we shouldn’t construct walls to keep people out, but to bring them in. To me, that was (alas!) as relevant to 2016 as to 1716 or to 1139, particularly for our Latino brethren.

The play, which received an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, raises interesting high-level questions about faith, orthodoxy, exile, and love across generations, beautifully staged and acted—well worth the trip to Princeton!

McCarter has prepared a show website rich with information. Call the box office at 609-258-2787 or visit http://www.mccarter.org.

Hell or High Water

Posted on by
Ben Foster & Chris Pine in Hell or High Water

Ben Foster & Chris Pine in Hell or High Water

This modern outlaw Western directed by David Mackenzie (trailer) is receiving high praise from critics. Like the faceless cattle barons and railroad tycoons memorialized in 1950s celluloid, today it’s the bankers who are handy villains bent on destroying the little guy. That’s true even if the modern cowboy rides a drilling rig.

Brothers Tanner and Toby Howard (Ben Foster and Chris Pine, respectively) team up to rob branches of the Texas Midland Bank, an institution that has drained the value from their late mother’s ranch and now (since corporations are officially people, I can anthropormorphize) sits rubbing its hands, waiting to foreclose. That would be a double catastrophe, because oil has been found on the land, and Toby is desperate to hang onto it so he can pass this valuable parcel to his kids. But he lacks the cash to save it. Thus, the robber scheme is hatched.

Jeff Bridges & Gil Birmingham, Hell or High Water

Jeff Bridges & Gil Birmingham, Hell or High Water

On the hunt for the robbers are two Texas Rangers—Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) and Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham). Hamilton is just weeks from retirement, and figures out the broad outlines of the plot. He just can’t quite put the pieces together. He rides his American/Indian/Mexican partner mercilessly, and you understand Parker’s stoicism in the face of these insults is part of the joke. He gets his own barbs in too. Early on, he asks Hamilton: “Are you going to do anything about these robberies, or just sit there and let Alzheimer’s take its course?”

Watching Hamilton and Parker is fun; watching the brothers is fun. They are real characters and they have real relationships here. For me, a big part of the fun is not knowing exactly what to expect, because the movie falls both within and outside the usual formulas. As Philadelphia Inquirer reviewer Stephen Rea says, it’s “at once a tale of desperation in hard times and a keenly observed character study—or studies.” I’d give it 7 stars out of 10.

I had a little flutter when the lawmen referred to Lubbock (home of my grandparents) and Young County (my great-grandparents). The filming, however, was in New Mexico. Not the same at all.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 98%, audiences 90%.