Dylan Two

The second part of the Dylan documentary directed by Scorsese just finished up.

Scorsese is talking now to Charlie Rose on a post doc interview; nothing much is being said. Scorsese is a scholar of film, but at root, he is a visceral, a wordless director — a man of gut rhythms and canny taste, not insight.

Dylan's confidence in his work, in what he wanted to do, and his helplessness, in not being able to do anything else, is the real drama of his life as a performer. In this second part of the documentary Scorsese shows the journey from acoustic to electric, from personal to public, from tradition to growth. The second part of this film is really a portrait of the audience as fame maker. The audience couldn't accept Dylan's need to go electric; Dylan's colleagues couldn't accept it because they felt threatened, left behind.

They manufactured reasons: he was fake; you “can't hear the lyrics”. Unwilling to go along for the ride, the audience was telling Dylan: “we made you famous, and now you do what we made you famous for.” Dylan at once seemed indifferent, he claimed not to hear the boos, and tacitly acquiescent — the first part of his concerts was a concession: Dylan played acoustic.

The prefiguring of much in contemporary culture is all there. Dylan complained and ultimately was verbally beaten mute in a press conference by the desire of the public to have performers provide answers. It was like witnessing an assault of the uncomprehending on a guy who didn't know where his lyrics or ideas came from — he didn't know what to say so he was nervous and embarrassed and underneath, contemptuous. You think of Charles Barkley saying, “I'm not a role model.” The desire of the audience was to make the loosely knit creative Dylan into a slick tightly woven ideologue of protest; now performers lead the charge, they don't fight for individuality, but want to be spokesmen for politically correct agenda, an easy route to approval while affecting “courageousness”.

Scorsese and Dylan

I was looking forward to Dylan meeting Scorsese in a documentary. The first part aired tonight on PBS — it was worth it — I practically watched the whole thing even though it ran a little flat in places.

Scorsese is such a good director — famous as he is, he can immerse himself in a performer and let the performer speak. He didn't sugar coat, although he tread lightly in parts: the mention of Dylan's changing his name from Zimmerman because of the anti-Semitism in Minnesota at the time was glancing recognition of deeper travails than performing.

Dylan is a magnetic performer. His impassive, Buster Keaton mask of a face, with his eyes seeming to focus inside himself, as though he is listening for some internal echo, imbues his performances with the spell of the ancient minstrel.

The great characters of the time were perfectly interviewed — you felt their strength and personality as people. Liam Clancy with his riotous wonderful Irish presence, a storyteller and man of the street poet, generous of heart and word. Clancy hadn't lost an ounce of sputter from his present day interview to his appearances as a youth. Dave Van Ronk, a wonderful bearish derelict of a man — you could see why Dylan admired him so — nothing showbiz about that guy.

Scorsese performed a hat trick that no one else has been able to accomplish. He somehow was able to draw Dylan out from the distracted strangeness that is Dylan's version of old age; Dylan seemed coherent, he really looked at the interviewer — you sensed an underlying humor under the gruffness of manner.

Seeing the dramatic Odetta and the magical John Jacob Niles was like traveling to some other planet, where music mattered and eccentricity was genuine.

Looking forward to the second part of this documentary — even though, as I say, it already feels a little long.

The Ninth Gate

We just saw via Netflix The Ninth Gate, Polanski's 1999 movie. If you haven't seen it and plan to — I would recommend it myself — don't read on, I'll be talking a little about plot.

The movie is about a bookseller who gets involved in the pursuit of a book that will call the Devil. The focus on the puzzle presented by the woodcut illustrations in these old books was satisfying for anyone involved in the visual arts (17th Century books would more likely have etchings). Johnny Depp as usual was very good; the way Polanski directed, with his trademark unease percolating just below the surface, was perfect for the genre. What made it better than the usual horror flick was the stately pace and the sumptuous set production. It was just beautifully designed by the team that did the Godfather movies. You felt you were watching a Caravaggio in motion, but with a gothic comic book tilt.

Polanski has said that he was reacting to the fast cut default of modern movies in the long loping pace he established. It worked. The story had a Borgesian sheen: outside of time, indeterminate of place, a book obsessed atmosphere.

In the commentary Polanski said that American and English actors are more disciplined than European actors. He also said that his crews in Europe want to knock off after four hours while in the States they work 14 hours straight. Polanski tried to turn it into a positive: the crews were so “enthusiastic”. Big surprise that Euro-French film crews would be slackers.

Today in the NYT A.O. Scott reviewed the new Polanski movie Oliver Twist. Another perfect vehicle for his talents and life — Polanski was running from the terror of human depravity through his entire childhood. Of course, percolating still deeper, under all this, was yet another unease — Polanski's fleeing the US to avoid prosecution for alleged misdeeds with a minor — that's why he makes his movies in Europe.

New TV

Whell, the new wad of phlegmin shot out from the TV networks at us, the unsuspecting public, has prodded me to dip into the new TV shows and new season openers and dip out as quick as possible because it might be catching.

I love the supernatural genre but I wasn't able to get Lost, as it were, in the last season; yesterday's opener once again left me feeling that these are a group of people I don't care about, in a world they never made, and is so arbitrary in its story that it is insulting to the audience. This show, which could be called Desperately Seeking A Plot Line continually sabotages itself with flashbacks — a dagger stuck in its own small beating heart.

The Martha Stewart burp of a show doesn't work because it is operating at cross purposes. They, that is the team that is Martha, wants you to like her, so she is being infused with a personality where there was none before by people who really care — about profits — but the producers of her wannabe Apprentice want her to be mean, which is what that the show is all about. Did it work? Not.

The only thing that has so far come down the pike that has interest is Invasion, from Shaun Cassidy, of all people, you say. This guy has whatever it takes to produce and write TV shows; he knows how to assemble a team, get some movement on the screen, and engage you.

There are some new ones still to come — can hardly wait.

The Whole Wide World

After seeing all of the Sopranos and just finishing Curb Your Enthusiasm I was groping for something to add to the Netflix Queue. So I chose the 1996 movie The Whole Wide World — I don't even remember why.

Vincent D'Onofrio and Renée Zellweger play a pulp writer and his near-girlfriend in Texas in the 1930's. He has too much imagination, she has too little; he is over the top and she is contracted, sensible, strong. It is a set piece, except it really happened, down to the emotionally wrenching conclusion.

The movie is an actor's vehicle. This usually doesn't work, and even if it does, the exhibitionism implied by “vehicle” often limits the results. Somehow, this chick-flick movie manages to be more by not trying to be anything other than itself.

D'Onofrio is indeed just great. He looks like a young Orson Welles — he has tremendous range. Zellweger was wonderful, a match and perfect balance for D'Onofrio. There wasn't a moment, a blink, where they didn't fully inhabit their characters.

The questions the movie elicits are good questions because they speak to human relationships and the reaching out for connection and love that is part of our nature; the effort to cross the no-man's-land of personal idiosyncrasy, of built in limitation and understand and relate to another difficult human being, which, last time I checked, are pretty much the only types available.

Whether pulp writer Robert E. Howard was bipolar, or teacher Novalyne Price was too withheld and conventional; whether it was the wrong time for them to have met, or a too heavy burden for a son with a mother dying of tuberculosis to form a significant relationship; whether Howard wanted to be or could be more than a pulp writer, or Novalyne couldn't overcome the strictures of her nature — these are all questions you want a movie to elicit — they speak to the ambiguities of our lives.

Golden Boy

Andrew “Dr. Natural” Weil has said that if you want to keep your health don't read the newspaper. Roberts' confirmation hearings could be the exception; the hearings are interesting without being irritating.

If there has ever been a public figure who has received better press than John Roberts, across the board, I can't remember it. This man who always has the modifier “very bright” attached to his name, seems in the hearings prior to his sure confirmation, to live up to the glowing publicity. A quiet spoken, decent, reasonable, and yes, very bright individual — boy oh boy, do we as a country need someone like that to run the Supreme Court. If Roberts delivers as a reasonable gradualist, the benevolent glow of these hearings will aid this country — even if Roberts is more conservative than I would like. I mean he is being nominated by Bush, and it could have been much much worse.

Here is Jan Crawford Greenburg speaking about Roberts @ Lehrer:

[Roberts]…solidified his reputation as one of the finest lawyers to appear of his generation before the Supreme Court. People would say that it was just a joy to watch him stand there before the Justices and make his presentation [to] the Justices. And I've seen him argue many times… [The Justices are] clearly so engaged in his argument, so respectful of his views and insight, really pressing him on the legal issues to see his analysis and explanation of the law.

Good From Bad

One of those shining stories that arises out of despair — one family helps another:

''He said, 'I would like to help you,' ” Efrem Fields, 31, said in a phone interview from his hotel yesterday…He just said, 'You have a big family, and it's hard to take care of a big family in hard times.' He's right about that — it is.”

A van showed up at the hotel to take the family to the airport on Saturday afternoon. Fields and his wife, Shelita, 28, were frightened to fly, but they managed. They arrived in Boston that evening…Fields said, ''it was a beautiful experience.” The children instantly hit it off and have been playing together most days since, both families say.

[They] have pledged to provide housing for the family for a year, and are trying to arrange for the children to attend school. The Fieldses plan to attend their first-ever Major League baseball game, tonight at Fenway Park.

Why did the Fields family attend a baseball game? The family in question was that of Curt and Shonda Schilling.

''They are beautiful people, God-loving people,” Fields said. ''I am very grateful for what he's done for me.”

Bush and the Flood

Every president has their group of “issues” — human weaknesses. What you hope, for the country's sake, is that a critical mass doesn't accumulate to real trouble. Bush's weaknesses have long been evident and are now hitting the fan.

Many times Bush had an admirable resolve, a clear sense of what was right, but it was vitiated by his inability to speak to the public with resonance — it made him look stubborn rather than infused with a character that believed in an issue he had studied and could articulate convincingly. Bush's other flaw was laziness which always lingered on the periphery— Bush appeared less the executive delegating authority, more a leader who wanted to relax at home. He is the rich boy who expects others to cover for him — to make it easy and stress free — but the job is too difficult, the complexities too great, for others to deflect and assume his responsibilities and provide the scrutiny of the actual results of his policies that a leader must have to keep on course. The list goes on. I've been supportive of Bush's policies in many arenas, but he hasn't been able to execute.

The default Republican hit on Democrats is that Democrats are filled with ideas and theories, but aren't pragmatic — they can't manage or bear the weight of difficult decisions, so wrapped in ideology and victimology are they. But it appears it was the Republicans who had all sorts of ideas, dramatic and ruthlessly implemented in many cases, but who had no managerial skills, no planning abilities, no concept of cost benefit ratios. Using Madison Avenue Orwellian twists of language — privatizing became “ownership society” — it was as though Bush thought he could change reality with slogans and Rove's political skills, instead of generating considered policies.

The discussion @Lehrer has a surprising degree of unanimity across the political spectrum — a remarkably forthright anger at Bush.

DAVID BROOKS: …I think it is a huge reaction we are about to see. I mean, first of all, they violated the social fabric, which is in the moments of crisis you take care of the poor first. That didn't happen; it's like leaving wounded on the battlefield.

So there is just — in 9/11 you had a great surge of public confidence. Now I think we are going to see a great decline in public confidence in our institutions. And so I just think this is sort of the anti-9/11 as one of the bloggers wrote.

TOM OLIPHANT: …the anger that is going to come from the realization that virtually all public policy — state, local, federal… has been against the public interests for decades…

DAVID BROOKS: …first of all it is a national humiliation to see bodies floating in a river for five days in a major American city. But second, you have to remember, this was really a de-legitimization of institutions.

Our institutions completely failed us and it is not as if it is the first in the past three years — this follows Abu Ghraib, the failure of planning in Iraq, the intelligence failures, the corporate scandals, the media scandals.

We have had over the past four or five years a whole series of scandals that soured the public mood. You've seen a rise in feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.

And I think this is the biggest one and the bursting one, and I must say personally it is the one that really says hey, it feels like the 70s now where you really have a loss of faith in institutions. Let's get out of this mess. And I really think this is so important as a cultural moment, like the blackouts of 1977, just people are sick of it.

Brooks is eloquent: “…you save the poor first…it's like leaving wounded on the battlefield”.

Our Time

In some ways movies are the detritus that washes up on the beach of our technological society, bearing the cleverness and vested values of our time. There are a few good movies, and you are grateful for them, but mostly, for me anyway, who cares about movies except as a slightly better quality shallow diversion, and somewhat useful quick check of what is floating about in the mass mind?

Sometimes though, movies give rise, in commentaries, to true sociological insight, as they should, because movies are by their nature more sociological documents than esthetic ones. It would be easy to miss, mid-article, this rousing section of a review, which considers the relation of documentaries to reality TV on its way to reviewing a bunch of recent documentaries.

Here then is an extended and brilliant excerpt from Stephen Holden's piece in Friday's NYT.

These movies challenge audiences to examine reality at a moment when the very term has been warped beyond recognition by reality television. This has been the summer in which mass culture, in its search for new commercial distractions, reached a dangerous tipping point. There is a sense of exhaustion in the air, as though the accumulation of cultural debris, celebrity worship and meaningless competitions had reached a critical mass.

How much longer can we continue to live inside a bubble where Jennifer Aniston's broken heart and Tom Cruise's public meltdown compete with the war in Iraq, famine in Sudan and the catastrophe in New Orleans as headline news stories?

Are the fame-seeking narcissists who swarm through reality television shows an accurate mirror of who we have become as a people? Or are they an illusion marketed by hucksters who cleverly play on a creeping self-disgust, then devise fresh new camouflage to mask that deepening sense of revulsion?

The relationship of reality television to the rise of the documentary is another question to ponder. Did reality television prepare the way for the new popularity of the documentary? Or is the increasing popularity of documentaries a response to the Orwellian political climate.

Seventy years ago T. S. Eliot observed in his poem “Burnt Norton,” “Humankind cannot bear very much reality”…

Simple Honor

I don't read much art criticism. When I do I prefer it be written by poets or people outside the highly ideological clime of the artworld. That is, people who can see what is in front of them, bring hard won insight to the work, and have the skills to communicate what is often outside the range of simple prose. A book by a NYT art critic is reviewed here.

If chief art critic for The New York Times, Michael Kimmelman does what the book reviewer says he does, more power to him:

[Kimmelman's] point here…is…the whole idea of taking time - over art…And that dogma - in art criticism, and not only in art criticism - is a form of impatience….he has found a way of writing about artists that doesn't turn them into celebrities. What Mr. Kimmelman finds alluring about artists is the quality of their attention.

The reviewer says about Kimmelman's approach, “The risk of writing plain-style enthusiastic art criticism…”

When a reviewer needs to indicate an honorable approach to writing art criticism is a risk it tells you something about the present state of the field.