The Goldfinch (2013)

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For years, I adored Donna Tartt and considered her one of my favorite authors, despite having only read one of her books.  The Secret History is just a gorgeous book filled with startlingly-detailed characters and pitch-perfect prose.  Problematic though its final act may be, there aren’t many books that hit me like that one did.  I love it so much, in fact, that I resisted the idea of reading The Little Friend, her follow-up novel, for fearing of breaking the spell.

 

Well, I still haven’t read The Little Friend, but I’m no longer a one-Tartt woman (doesn’t that sound suggestive?)  The Goldfinch came out last fall, and I was sort of gobsmacked.  I’m not sure if it ever quite reaches the highs of The Secret History (though that could be the first-time factor talking,) but I think it’s ultimately a stronger book, put together more thoughtfully with greater maturity and a more satisfying resolution.

 

Our guide through The Goldfinch is Theo Decker, a clever, under-achieving middle schooler from New York City.  A school suspension, an art gallery, and a senseless act of terrorism conspire to upend Theo’s life.  In a sickeningly-disorienting blink of an eye, he’s lost the only family he’s ever claimed, and his home and city are quick to retreat as well.  The narrative spans decades, leaping from Manhattan to the desert to the Netherlands as Theo dizzingly comes of age.  He spirals out of control, he forges unlikely friendships, he makes colossal mistakes, and he touches world-shifting beauty.  A small, exquisite painting from a Dutch master is the thread that binds the fragments of his life together, no matter where he goes.

 

As with The Secret History, Tartt’s talent for characterization is front and center.  Her unique or eccentric characters really feel like people, not like “unique/eccentric” archetypes.  They’re painted stroke by stroke, made from hundreds of tiny, incidental observations that blend to create a complete individual.  Theo is an excellent narrator, funny and intelligent, sometimes maddening, often heartbreaking.  He’s surrounded by a wealth of rich supporting characters, from furniture dealers to cocktail waitresses.  My favorite is probably Boris, an impulsive, affectionate, poly-lingual wildcard who befriends Theo.

 

The prose is another highlight (once again, no surprise.)  The initial description of the attack captures the stomach-churning noise, blood, and confusion of a sudden disaster, and Tartt deftly shows how its aftershocks echo into Theo’s adult life.  Much attention is paid to beauty, in art and antique furniture, and Tartt’s exploration of the subject is stunning in its own right.  Theo is a great lover of beauty, someone who sees, and his insights dazzle.  There are points where this book rivals Sunday in the Park with George as a rumination on the nature of art, and that’s saying something.

 

Don’t let the length (nearly 800 pages) put you off – The Goldfinch is sublime.

 

Warnings

 

Swearing, sexual content, violence, criminal activity, and tons of substance abuse, including alcohol, smoking, and drug use.  That might make it sound tawdry, but it’s really, really not.

Relationship Spotlight: Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth (Game of Thrones)

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My favorite parts of any story are generally the characters and the relationships between them.  Over the years, I’ve acquired tons of favorite characters in stories of every medium, along with a lot of favorite fictional relationships.  Here’s a duo I’ve loved almost from the moment they met.

 

Jaime and Brienne first come face-to-face in Game of Thrones’s second season (I haven’t read the books, so this is gonna be strictly TV.)  Jaime has spent most of the year held prisoner by the Stark family’s Northern army, and Mama Stark gives Brienne the task of escorting him on a cross-country trek to exchange him for the captive Stark daughters.  Brienne is to return Jaime to his family, the unscrupulous Lannisters, and bring the girls back to their mother.  Since Mama Stark doesn’t have the go-ahead to actually do this, the North is filled with soldiers thirsty for Lannister blood, and Jaime is contrary by nature, Brienne’s work is cut out from her.

 

Right away, these two brimmed with storytelling potential.  While handsome, charismatic Jaime is the Lannisters’ closest thing to a golden boy, he’s a “man without honor.”  Years ago, he killed “mad” King Aerys, toppling the dynasty and acquiring the name Kingslayer.  By contrast, Brienne is sullen, homely, and, as a female knight, considered an utter freak.  She’s one of the most genuinely good characters on the show; she holds honor and the ideals of knighthood above all.  Watching Brienne brusquely manhandle Jaime as he tries to get under her skin is a riot.

 

But that’s not the end of the story.  Jaime’s infamy comes with his eyes wide open, while Brienne’s principles root in naivety.  On their journey, both characters reveal new complexities.  Brienne’s derision Jaime wanes as he defies her assumptions of him.  Her black-and-white notions jar with the grayness of the world, and that’s strikingly apparent in Jaime.  It’s easy for her to look down on the Kingslayer, but when she hears the story of what really happened that day, she’s forced to reassess her rigid ideas of honor.  Jaime, for his part, has spent years embracing his black reputation, being the treacherous rouge he’s believed to be.  Brienne’s integrity, I think, reminds him of the knight he once was.  His own convictions were eroded long ago, but looking at Brienne, he sees a glint of hope that he could again be more than a villain.

 

It’s an intricate relationship that’s evolved at every step.  Both characters’ view of the other has grown far beyond their initial impression, but the change is slow enough that there’s still lots of drama to be had.  Each challenges the other, and each is most interesting in the other’s company.  I loved Brienne as soon as I clapped eyes on her, but I had almost no interest in Jaime until his storyline intersected with Brienne’s.  Now, he’s one of my favorites, and, not including the Giant! Shocking! Moment! scenes, his scenes with Brienne are my favorites of any episode.

 

I’m not sure if I want the relationship to end up romantic.  For the positives, it’d be nice for Brienne to get some lovin’, I’d appreciate seeing the Hot Guy fall for the Ugly Girl, and of course it’d be way healthier than Jaime’s current romantic entanglement.  Still, their relationship is excellent as is, and I’m not sure they need to change it (like I said, no book knowledge, so I have no spoilers on that front.)  Great friend/ally dynamics have been ruined by romance, and female characters have a tendency to wind up becoming more generic “girlfriend types” instead of the rich characters they were to start with.  I’d hate to see that with Brienne.  I dunno – for now, I’ll just adore them and hope the showrunners keep giving these two nothing but the best.

Miss Austen Regrets (2008)

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Back in 2007-2008, Masterpiece had an Austen extravaganza with re-airings of the Ehle-Firth Pride and Prejudice and the Kate Beckinsale Emma, as well as brand spanking new versions of Persuasion, Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility (courtesy of ITV.)  I, an Austen virgin at the time, caught Northanger Abbey on a Liam Cunningham-related whim, and my fate was sealed.  Six TV movies/miniseries later, I was all in.

 

But this glorious season of Austen had more to offer than adaptations.  We were also treated to a fantastically lovely biopic-of-sorts, Miss Austen Regrets.  To give a frame of reference, Miss Austen Regrets is to the Austen extravaganza as An Adventure in Space and Time is to Doctor Who’s 50^th anniversary.  Sold yet?

 

As a biopic, it’s unconventional in that we only get a fragment of the author’s life.  Save for a brief opening scene from Jane’s past, the rest of the film focuses on just a few years – her last, in fact.  We follow her career; she’s working on Persuasion and Emma is awaiting publication.  Her family has a very upper-class attitude of, “Oh, Jane dear, you mustn’t be so concerned with money, it’s absolutely vulgar,” when her pen is providing for herself, her widowed mother, and her unmarried sister.  Even faced with a near-constant stream of admirers at social occasions, she is plagued by worries, haunted by the looming shadow of Pride and Prejudice and afraid that her best writing is behind her.

 

Over the years, much has been made of the unwed creator of some of the 19^th century’s finest love stories, and Miss Austen Regrets is no exception.  Through Jane’s niece Fanny, an ardent fan and a young woman desperate to be in love, we catch hints about Jane’s romantic history.  Her advice to Fanny about marriage is equal parts pragmatic and satirical, with dashes of wistfulness thrown in perhaps to her own surprise.  

 

Olivia Williams (who I know best as Adele DeWitt in Dollhouse) is just phenomenal as Jane, arch and clever and fierce and vulnerable.  Even seeing it for the first time back in 2008, knowing very little about Austen, I was absolutely gripped by her performance.  Whether she is teasing an adoring but clueless fanboy or mutedly reflecting on the wisdom of past choices, she’s Jane through and through.  She’s surrounded by an able cast, including Imogen Poots from Christopher and His Kind as Fanny, and fine supporting performances by Hugh Bonneville, Greta Scacchi, and Tom Hiddleston.

 

Warnings

 

Thematic elements, a little drinking, and a few veiled sexual references.

Blue Jasmine (2013, PG-13)

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*Disclaimer: More Woody Allen. Seriously, eff this guy.*

This Woody Allen film is, by all appearances, the love child of A Streetcar Named Desire and Bernie Madoff.  As is just a teeny bit within his wheelhouse, the movie is a close-up character study of a Fascinating Woman, filled with great performances and you-could-just-die scenery.

 

Jasmine (formerly Jeanette) has arrived at San Francisco in disgrace.  Her late husband was a cheat, crook, and all around snake-in-the-grass, and the government has seized Jasmine’s Park Avenue way of life along with her husband’s assets.  Gone are the cocktail parties and European sailing excursions; they’ve been replaced by vodka in disposable cups and remedial computer classes.  Despite her assertions that she’s determined to “make it work” and get her life on track, Jasmine is a boozing, pill-popping mess who never stops reminiscing to no one in particular about the good old days.  The film flits dizzyingly in and out of flashback alongside its leading lady.

 

Jasmine’s new life brings her into the world of her sister Ginger, a divorced grocery-bagger with two kids and rose-tinted taste in men.  Though Jasmine wanted nothing to do with her sister when she was on top, Ginger graciously takes the newly-impoverished basket case in.  The criticisms – of her apartment, her job, and her boyfriend – begin almost immediately, and matters between the two women are clearly primed for detonation.

 

Obviously, Cate Blanchett’s award-winning performance as Jasmine is the main force to be reckoned with.  She is alternately grotesquely self-absorbed and heartbreakingly vulnerable, a definite can’t-take-your-eyes-off-her star turn.  Sally Hawkins, who I know best as Anne Elliot from the ITV version of Persuasion a few years back, is also terrific.  Her Ginger has a big but complicated heart, and the scenes between the sisters positively crackle.  On the gentlemen’s side, Alec Baldwin is suitably wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing-ish as Jasmine’s former husband, and Bobby Cannavale (I’m his fan forever after The Station Agent and his stupendous Joe) does a great job as Ginger’s boyfriend.

 

While I can’t claim huge swathes of Woody Allen knowledge, I’ve enjoyed everything of his I’ve seen.  Blue Jasmine hasn’t unseated Midnight in Paris as my personal favorite, but I think it’s probably a better film overall:  a better story told with stronger focus.  It knows precisely what its tale is, and it tells it very well.

 

Warnings

 

Some swearing and sexual content.  Copious amounts of drinking and prescription-drug abuse.

Hawking (2004)

 

*Disclaimer: While I make a nod in this review to the discomfort of an ablebodied actor playing a character with a disability, I don’t say it forcefully enough. I have a bad habit of going easier on actors I like when they make problematic choices, and as great as Benedict Cumberbatch is, this wasn’t really an appropriate role for him.*

 

Films about someone with a disability can be dicey, especially if they’re about real people and especially if they star able-bodied actors.  The plots can grow overly maudlin, and the performances risk self-indulgence.  For the most part, though, Hawking avoids these pitfalls.

 

This British TV film follows Stephen Hawking’s graduate work at Cambridge, from just before his diagnosis of motor neuron disease to just after his revelatory thesis.  I’ll cop to not knowing much about Hawking – rather embarrassingly, I hadn’t even known he was British – but the film is an interesting and engaging story of a man eager to leave his mark before his time runs out.

 

Stephen’s disease is felt throughout the film, of course; at just 21, about to start grad school, he’s told he may have only two years left to live.  The knowledge sometimes defeats him, sometimes drives him, but it’s never far from his mind.  As he contemplates his mortality and endures losing control of his body, his chief respite is knowing that his brain will remain unharmed. 

 

This is the window into Stephen.  He’s a young man with a degenerative disease, yes, but he’s also a brilliant student who sees what others don’t.  He can be shy, dejected, self-impressed, desperate, afraid, raging, arrogant, and elated.  His curious mind yearns for answers, glittering flashes of insight.  He’ll cheerfully spend an entire night on an equation, use the theory of relativity as a pickup line, or scribble in chalk on the pavement when his ideas flow too quickly to reach a blackboard.  There are times when the camera lingers a bit too tragically on Stephen’s clumsy fingers or his shuffling feet, but Hawking is always the story of a man, not an illness.

 

Maybe this is an odd note but, given the film’s frequent references to the theory of relativity, I kept expecting a metaphoric line about how Stephen was trying to go (i.e., work) incredibly fast in the hopes of slowing down time (the progression of his illness.)  I was genuinely surprised that we never got it.  I don’t know if it’s a brilliant parallel the screenwriter missed or a cheesy comparison he wisely avoided, but I thought I’d mention it all the same.  For better or worse, it’s probably what I would have done.

 

Benedict Cumberbatch is stellar in this early performance.  He really sells Stephen’s intellect, anguish, and fervor; his expressions are map to Stephen’s mind.  Though it’s a different sort of performance, the physicality he uses for Stephen’s failing body reminds me of his Creature in Frankenstein.  I’m not sure the film would do so well without his earnest, unflinching portrayal.

 

I’m showing my ignorance again, but the film’s debate between the Big Bang and Steady-State Theories interests me.  Fascinating that believers in Steady-State (the theory of the time, that the universe has Always Been) dismissed the Big Bang as fanciful because a universal beginning left room for a Creator.  I had no idea that the Big Bang Theory was ever deemed too religious!

 

Warnings

 

Some drinking, a few sexual references, and thematic elements.

MIKA: Life in Cartoon Motion (2007)

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Like many of the things I like liking, I came to MIKA unexpectedly.  I first heard “Grace Kelly,” his best-known single, on a Community fanvid of all things (a humorous little video about the Dean, in fact.)  I got a kick out of the video, and the song itself was a delightful earwig.  Important youtube research naturally followed, and I spent a lovely bit of time enjoying a nice assortment of MIKA music videos.

 

MIKA, I should tell you, is a British/Lebanese singer-songwriter.  From what I can tell, he’s far more famous in Europe than he is in the U.S., but that’s a shame, because he’s tons of fun.  His infectiously upbeat pop-rock, not normally my style, makes me all kinds of happy, and I like his quirky sensibility as an artist – his music videos are creative and colorful, and his CD liners are amusingly illustrated.

 

Life in Cartoon Motion is his debut album.  It’s where “Grace Kelly” hails from, a ridiculously catchy number that playfully explores the nature of fame.  In it, the tongue-in-cheek MIKA begs to be told how to improve his marketability, offering to be wholesome or loathsome, hurtful or purple.  He toys with imitation, from Grace Kelly to Freddie Mercury, and forever asks why we don’t like him.

 

The albums features other bouncy, lighthearted fare, like “Big Girl (You are Beautiful),” MIKA’s answer to “Fat-Bottomed Girls.”  As with so many musicians, relationship woes loom large in his work.  Some maintain the same peppy pop beats (I just love the driving piano line on “Stuck in the Middle,”) while others, like the gorgeous “Happy Ending,” are a bit slower and more thoughtful.  MIKA himself has an engaging singing style that flits in and out of falsetto like a game of keep-away.  Again, it’s not something I’d ordinarily go for, but he just works for me.

 

I like the way that even the sadder songs aren’t entirely devoid of the joy that pulses through MIKA’s work.  “Happy Ending,” with its understated verses and its mournful chorus of “I feel as if I’m wasting, / And I’m wasting everyday,” gains an exuberant gospel choir in the second half.  The introspective “Any Other World” is soft and gentle whenever MIKA is singing, but an almost triumphant string section floods the instrumental segments.

 

The album’s not perfect by any means.  There’s an unfortunate tendency towards repetition in both the music and the lyrics (“Lollipop” is especially thin,) and a few numbers veer a little too close to The Bee Gees for my taste.  Inevitable, I suppose, when you favor falsetto and danceable beats.  Still, I really adore Life in Cartoon Motion, and putting it on is a great way to infuse my day with a little melodic whimsy.

Her (2013, R)

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When I first heard about Her, I gave it a bit of an eye-roll.  I knew the concept but hadn’t seen any clips, and I assumed it would be a one-joke film trying to keep itself propelled by the steam of a guy in love with his phone.  It sounded like the episode of The Big Bang Theory where Raj develops a crush on Siri, and so I was pretty surprised when it wracked up an impressive number of Oscar nominations.

 

I hadn’t taken Spike Jonze into account.  I first became acquainted with Jonze through his work with Charlie Kaufman, where I saw his adept direction and eye for detail.  He directs and writes Her, and he creates a compelling, emotional sci-fi-ish story about connecting in the information age and what it means to be human.

 

Theo (Joaquin Phoenix, in an affecting performance) is shy, sensitive, and single – a perfect cocktail for loneliness.  He’s had his heart broken, and he walk solitarily through his world (the Not-Too-Distant Future.)  Like many around him, his life is lived plugged in.  He’s all about his 3-D motion-controlled video games, Lonely Hearts Clubs phone chats with strangers, and keeping the world contained within his smartphone.

 

Everything he knows changes, of course, with the introduction of a new artificially-intelligent operating system.  From the moment he meets Sam, the self-named amiable voice inside his phone and computer, Theo is struck by her.  She’s quick and funny, and their working relationship soon moves into and beyond friendship.  A romance in which only one of the participants is corporeal presents a challenge, and Theo and Sam navigate the ups and downs of their relationship.  It’s sometimes messy, sometimes painful, sometimes exquisite, and in Jonze’s careful hands, it’s always riveting.

 

Right from the start, he does things right by giving Sam a perspective of her own.  The idea of an artificially-intelligent woman dating the man she’s literally been created to serve is sketchy at best, and the power imbalance could’ve easily rendered the whole thing uniformly awful.  However, Sam proves herself an equal partner in the relationship.  She has feelings of her own that she wants addressed, and when she and Theo argue, there are moments when you can forget she doesn’t have a body.  Furthermore, she has a journey of self-discovery apart from her connection to Theo.  Throughout the film, Sam tries to figure out who she is, what she is and isn’t capable of, and what that means for her.  Scarlett Johansson does a great job building the character from her warm, engaging vocal performance.

 

The film also examines what happens to society when such a huge technological leap is made.  Theo isn’t the only person connecting with an OS, and the world is shifting to take the resulting issues into account.  It’s smart, thoughtful writing.  In a way, the film reminds me of Gattaca, another stylish movie that uses science fiction to ruminate on a contemporary subject in an intelligent way – in this case, the subject is technology and its effect on the human community.

 

Warnings

 

Language and sexual content, including graphic sexual talk and a little nudity.