Category Archives: film

The Monuments Men

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Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, George Patton, looted Nazi art

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, accompanied by Gen. Omar N. Bradley, and Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., inspects art treasures stolen by Germans and hidden in German salt mine in Germany. April 12, 1945. (photo: U.S. Army)

OK, reviews of The Monuments Men (trailer) have been tepid, George Clooney did give himself all the high-minded speeches, and it was hard to suspend disbelief with the star-power cast (who did a great job but are monuments themselves). Still, despite all those quibbles—and the spate of belated “the real story” websites and compelling personal stories emerging—this was an entertaining and satisfying movie, based on the book by Robert Edsel. For an exciting fictional treatment of this episode, see my review of Sara Houghteling’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

The characterizations of the architects, archivists, and artists that formed the film’s Monuments Men team are strong, and a surprising amount of humor is inherent in their personalities and the interactions between them, despite their desperate mission. Its purpose, as George keeps telling us, was not just to preserve “stuff,” but our way of life, our history, patrimony. The movie spares us conflicted opinions about its characters. They’re pure black or white, good or bad, people who want to save art or those who want to burn it. This oversimplification is a source of some of the criticism.

That is to say, there’s something comfortably old-fashioned about this film. If you’ve seen enough WWII films, you can guess the directions the plot will take, but really, the stakes are so high, does it matter?

Clooney’s character is right. This was a vitally important mission. It was hard. It was dangerous. And these heroes—seven actors representing around 350 real-life “monuments men” from many countries—accomplished it. Together they recovered more than five million paintings, sculptures, church bells, tapestries, and other works looted by the Nazis.

Edsel knew his material and made it real. Previously, he co-produced a documentary of historian Lynn Nicholas’s award-winning book, The Rape of Europa.

Jewess with Oranges, looted art, Aleksander Gierymski

“Jewess with Oranges” by Aleksander Gierymski, looted, and found at an art auction near Hamburg in 2010

Hungary, Budapest, St. Stephen's CrownThe Monuments Men is especially fun viewing for those of us here in Princeton, because more than a dozen of the real Monuments Men had ties to Princeton, two of whom directed the Princeton University Art Museum from 1947 to 1972.

One of the directors, Dr. Patrick Kelleher, wrote his doctoral dissertation in 1947 about St. Stephen’s crown, a Hungarian national treasure he helped recover from the Nazis . I saw it in Budapest, after it was restored to the Hungarians by former President Jimmy Carter.

Not everything the Nazis looted was saved; and not everything has been found—“The Amber Room” is a premier example. Many stolen works may today be stored in basements and attics or even hanging on the walls of the children and grandchildren of ordinary soldiers who carried them home. And they still make news, as recently as last week. (And again, on April 8 and on April 12) As author Robert Edsel says, “They can be found,” as “Jewess with Oranges” was in 2010. His Monuments Men Foundation is intended to accomplish exactly that.

Queen Nefertiti, EgyptAt the opening of the movie in Princeton, current and retired Princeton University Art Museum leaders spoke with the audience and related this anecdote: On Christmas Eve, 1945, some Monuments Men were celebrating in a room full of unopened cartons. Someone said, “Hey, it’s Christmas, shouldn’t we open a package?” He found a crowbar and pried open a wooden crate, reached in, and pulled out the bust of Nefertiti. Was it worth it. Oh, yes.

Alas, the lessons of this extraordinary collaboration between the military and the world of art and archaeology were neglected in the 2003 assault on Baghdad, when U.S. troops failed to secure the high-priority National Museum of Iraq (below; photo: wikimedia.org) Although museum officials already had quietly hidden most of the collection, some 15,000 items looted items have still not been recovered.

National Museum of Iraq, BaghdadRelated Articles:

 

Academy Awards Preview – Live Action Shorts

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Oscar, Academy AwardsGetting ready for Oscar, the Trenton Film Society continued its “shorts weekend” yesterday with the live action shorts (see 3-1-14 post for the documentary shorts). Again, there were five nominees—all  foreign.  Between films were excerpts of interviews with a number of directors, including Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) and Sean and Andrea Nix Fine who grabbed the documentary Oscar last year for Inocente and Shawn Christensen who won the live action prize with Curfew—both of them extraordinary.

In these interviews, a number of producer/directors talked about the constraints of the short film, which are parallel to the challenges of the short story. The author/creator must be economical, focused, and, if the creative process is working well, can say something more piercingly memorable than in a novel or full-length film. They also spoke about how early short films presage the themes and approaches of full-length features later in the creator’s career.

Possibly, the beauty of short films will become more recognized as people become accustomed to consuming media in shorter and shorter formats. (Thank you, YouTube!)

The live action nominees were:

  • Helium (Denmark) – a sweet film, in which a new hospital worker befriends a dying child and helps him prepare for death by envisioning the imaginary land of “Helium”
  • Avant Que de Tout Perdre (Just Before Losing Everything)(France) – A woman and her children flee her abusive husband—tremendous tension, nicely paced
  • Pitaako Mun Kaikki Hoitaa? (Do I have to Take Care of Everything?)(Finland)—Hilarious doings as a couple and their two young daughters get themselves ready for a wedding—the shortest, at 13 minutes
  • The Voorman Problem (U.K.)—starring Martin Freeman (Dr. John Watson in Sherlock) as a prison psychiatric consultant who confronts an inmate prisoner who believes he is a god, possibly God. Based on a bit of David Mitchell’s interesting novel No. 9 Dream (though I didn’t remember this bit)
  • Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn’t Me)(Spain)—Spanish aid workers encounter xxx child soldiers, and it isn’t pretty.

Watch them online or through Netflix and know what Ellen DeGeneris is talking about tonight!

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Hot Ticket

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Ra Paulette, Academy Award, documentary, Cave DiggerImpossible to view and practically ignored a few years ago, the Oscar-nominated short films have become one of the hottest tickets around. Last night I saw the documentary shorts and later today will see the live action shorts. These viewings are courtesy of the Trenton Film Society, which shows the films at the intimate Mill Hill Playhouse in Trenton. (The festival also offers the nominees in the animation category.)

In recent years the short films have become available through Netflix and other resources, but I like the Big Screen—well, the Bigger Screen—at the Playhouse.

Only one overworked word describes the five documentary shorts: Awesome.

  • A 109-year-old Holocaust survivor, Alice Herz-Sommer (obituary, 2/27/14), who played the piano in Theresienstadt and was still playing at the time of filming, who says, “I love people” (The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life).
  • A gay man, nearly beaten to death as a teenager, becomes acquainted with the former skinhead who was one of his attackers (Facing Fear)
  • The Yemeni protests that turned violent and led to the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, seen through the eyes of youthful cameramen (Karama Has No Walls)
  • Unlikely artist, Ra Paulette, working alone and by hand carves magical caves out of soft New Mexico sandstone (Cave Digger)
  • The last days and death of convicted murderer Jack Hall in the loving care of inmate volunteers in an Iowa prison hospice (Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall)

Real people doing amazing things. Truly awesome.

A Painful Memorial

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Philip Seymour Hoffman, playwright, American Playwriting FoundationYesterday’s New York Times included a front page story and full-page announcement of the establishment of “The American Playwriting Foundation,” to make annual $45,000 grants for creators of new American plays, one of the largest awards available for this purpose today. The Foundation was established in honor of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, “who relentlessly sought out truth in his work and demanded the same from his collaborators.”

Initial funding for the Foundation came from the National Enquirer, which published an interview with someone falsely claiming to be Hoffman’s friend David Bar Katz. In its haste to print this information, the newspaper “made a good faith error” by inadequately checking its source. Katz’s subsequent lawsuit led to an apology, and “instead of seeking a purely personal reward for the harm done to him, Mr. Katz brought the lawsuit as a vehicle to . . .create something positive out of this unfortunate turn of events.”

Out of one man’s tragedy, another’s unselfishness, and the foolishness of an entity with more money than sense, miraculously, something good may rise.

My 7/28/14 review of Hoffman’s last major role, in what is both movie title and obituary, “A Most Wanted Man.”

 

Incendies

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film, Incendies

“Incendies” (image: nymag.com)

The New Year is off to a great Netflix start with the 2010 Canadian drama Incendies (trailer), adapted from a play by Wajdi Mouawad, and directed by Denis Villeneuve. In it, a twin brother and sister are directed by their mother’s will with finding their father and previously unknown half-brother, both presumably lost in the human fallout from a Middle East conflict.

The key question is, how can they find their father when they did not really know their mother? Who and what she was is the first mystery they must solve. Incendies was nominated for an Academy Award (Best Foreign Language Film), won numerous other awards, and was picked by the New York Times (review) as one of the 10 best films of 2011. It covers a wartime history, so there’s violence, but mostly it’s a moving mystery that captivates until the end. Rotten Tomatoes rating: 92.

A Labyrinthine Read

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IMG_0204“Prometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book.”–MZD

Title of this blog post might better be, “What Happens When You Follow the Reading Suggestions of a 17-year old Boy?”  Short answer: “A lot.” And not just any 17-year-old, one of Those Boys. Smart and intense and eager to become an Intellectual. We fell into a long conversation about reading at a cocktail party (he was with his parents), and I made some suggestions, and he hazarded one back.

Now I’ve read his book. I’m tempted to say, “or it read me,” not in the sense that the book bore any relationship to my life, inner or otherwise, but in being so outside my life experience in both form and content, it filled out a place I didn’t know was vacant.

The book is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, copyright 2000, but for many years before that, pieces of it had a samizdat-like distribution, were the subject of whispered Internet rumors, and finally attained a cult following. I bought the full-color edition, in which the word “house” appears in blue. (It’s not to be confused with John Guare’s 1966 play, House of Blue Leaves, which I have seen but, alas, do not remember.  Considering the multiple games the author plays, he might have had Guare’s title lurking around a corner of his maze-like mind.)

The book is the story of a house—one that is measurably bigger on the inside than the outside. An exterior wall contains a closet that stretches many feet into cold darkness (and eventually descends deeper than the diameter of the earth), but the closet cannot be detected from outside the house. The effects of the house on the family that lives there and the people who attempt (futilely) to understand the phenomenon is one story.

The young man who finds a trunkful of notes about the house, especially the films made of the explorations of it, and the histories of its inhabitants (and so much more) tells his own story in a series of rambly footnotes. Trying to cobble together the narrative of the house—that is, to create the book you are holding—apparently drives him mad.

There are photos, art objects, quotes, letters from the compiler’s institutionalized mother, an enormous index, and, throughout, academic-sounding footnotes from researchers into the house’s arcana.

Called, by turns, a horror story (the house), a love story (its residents), and a satire on academic criticism (the footnotes), it is an effortful read.  Danielewski received much praise upon its publication (4 stars from Amazon and Goodreads; 4.5 from B&N). Intriguing and mesmerizing in its content and bizarre—but perfectly apt—typographical presentation, smitten New York Times reviewer Robert Kelly, said, “I love the difficult, since it makes the easy seem finally possible.”

I’m not the first person to notice some at-least-superficial similarities between this book and last year’s Night Film, by Marisha Pessl. Both books give readers a collection of parts from which they can almost make their own construction. Perhaps it isn’t a coincidence that both deal with works of film, and in their construction variously bend time and use jump-cuts, split-screen, and the scene-setting of a movie.

You already knew all about this one, right? I’m just late to the party??

Nebraska

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Bad work karma has kept me away from this website, and I miss reaching out to my invisible friends.Just had to write to tell you, urge you, implore you to see Alexander Payne’s movie Nebraska (trailer here), with Bruce Dern and Will Forte. Dern is the aging dad who thinks he’s won a million dollars in a bogus sweepstakes and won’t be talked out of it.

The script spot-on captures the relations between parents and children and old married couples. Heartwarming, without being sappy. Moments of hilarity when we recognize ourselves. Reviewers who say Payne doesn’t like Nebraskans (he is one, after all) miss the whole point. People like the characters in the movie can be found everywhere, which is what gives the film its appeal.

Excellent performances from the large cast of the old man’s relatives and long-ago friends whose “congratulations!” come with a predatory gleam in the eye. (Rated 91 on the Tomatometer.)

Christopher Wallenberg interviewed Dern for the Boston Globe, and the actor—a top contender for an Academy Award Best Actor nomination and Best Actor winner at Cannes—says what he tried to do was find “real moments.” And find them he did. You can never be sure how much his character really hears or knows. More than he lets on, you may suspect. His son has the insight to look past the apocryphal sweepstakes win to see that what his father really wants is “something to live for.”

Forte plays a supporting role in both the film and the story, attuned to the possibilities of an impossible quest. Familiar to Saturday Night Live audiences, Forte nails this difficult role, making not only his character feel real, but also, by the self-effacing negative space he creates, enabling his cranky dad to become a fully realized, sympathetic person, too.  

Interesting that the film is shot in black and white, in Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska. The scenes of that lovely country—plus one long shot of Mt. Rushmore—“OK, we’ve seen it, let’s go,” says the cantankerous old coot—lose nothing in the cinematographer’s soft greys and charcoals. I once worked with a brilliant photographer who only shot in black and white. When I asked why, she said, “My black and white looks like color.” So does Nebraska’s! See these inspired photos.

Telling an Award-Winning Story

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Live-action shorts are to feature films as short stories are to novels. You have to get in fast, establish the scene and your characters, make a limited number of points—and out you go. I wrote about the short documentaries nominated for the Oscar last week. Now that we know Curfew won the live-action category—it got my vote!—here’s why.

The other four nominees (and all the documentaries) were pretty depressing. True, Curfew opens with a young man (filmmaker Shawn Christensen) sitting in a bathtub full of bloodied water, and he’s holding a razor blade. Damage has been done. Still somehow there’s a sense of incipient redemption, because when his sister phones in desperation (“you’re last on my list”) and asks him to babysit her nine-year-old daughter for a few hours, you know he’ll say “OK.” After he cleans himself up.

The unlikely relationship between the uncle and niece develops engagingly. A true story is unfolding there. Curfew benefited from the charming, cool, and always on-point performance by Fátima Ptacek (with Christensen at left).

 

Two other films were about children–young boys living in impoverished circumstances (Afghanistan and Somalia) whose big dreams are hard to hold onto. In Oscar handicapping, these two cancelled each other out. Today’s U.S. child actors are vastly better trained and directed than they used to be. These boys hadn’t had that support and retained some awkwardness.

The fourth movie was about an aging gentleman, a concert pianist, facing a confusing mélange of past and present, real and unreal, as he searches for his wife. Well done, if a little too predictable and a lot too like Amour, so a no-go for this year in such a strong field, the critics agree. And the last, Death of a Shadow (right), too slow-moving and surreal, short on action and long on atmosphere and outright weirdness. Steampunk clocks, silhouettes of corpses, endless corridors, creepy teeth.

While all the short documentaries were right around 40 minutes, making for a squirmy evening in only semi-comfortable chairs, all but one of the live action shorts were half that length. Curfew packed in so much feeling and character that it was a rich experience, deep if not long. And, BTW, it was edited on Christensen’s MacBook Pro!

  • Curfew (USA, 19 minutes) trailer
  • Asad (South Africa, 18 minutes) trailer
  • Buzkashi Boys (Afghanistan, 28 minutes) trailer
  • Death of a Shadow (Belgium/France, 20 minutes) trailer
  • Henry (Canada, 21 minutes) trailer

Oscar’s Documentary Faves

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A real treat this weekend, viewing all the Oscar-nominated short films in the documentary and live action categories! The treat part was seeing such remarkable filmmaking, though the subject matter of the documentaries, described here, was, well, let’s just say, “tears were shed.”

♦ King’s Point will be grimly familiar to those who know South Florida’s senior communities. The residents’ acerbic observations drew knowing laughs, but the jury remains out as to whether this type of congregate living is really a good thing or a concession to society’s lack of better choices for the elderly.

♦ Most moving for me was Mondays at Racine, about two sisters who once a month provide free services in their hair salon for women with cancer. Having their heads shaved exquisitely focuses and concentrates the women’s sense of loss and despair; the powerful emotional counterweight is the support of the sisters and their “been there” clients.

♦ Have you noticed the growing number of NYC homeless collecting bottles and cans by the hundreds (5¢ each)? Redemption exposes the way of life—and the diversity—of Americans whose survival now depends on others’ trash.

♦ Open Heart is the story of eight Rwandan children who must leave their families to travel 2,500 miles for surgery at Africa’s only hospital providing high-risk cardiac care for free. Meanwhile, the Italian medical organization running the hospital must fight the Sudanese president for promised financial support.

♦ Last, and probably the cinematically strongest of the lot, with a nice story arc, is Inocente, a talented San Diego teen (pictured above) who dreams of becoming an artist—a goal made even harder to achieve because she also is undocumented and homeless. All five films introduce viewers to some remarkable people, well worth knowing.

2-25 Update: And, yes, Inocente won, and it was great to see Inocente herself on stage with the winning team, as they called for more support for the arts and young artists.