Ida (2013) D: Pawel Pawlikowski. Agata Kulesza, Agata Trzebuchowska, Dawid Ogrodnik. A noviate (Trzebuchowska) comes to grips with her Jewish past and Catholic future in post-War Poland with the help of a disillusioned aunt (Kulesza) and a Coltrane-loving musician (Ogrodnik). The subtext of this somber but inescapably compelling movie is about the immense capacity of moviemaking to convey truths in a highly personal manner. Many of the square-framed shots begin as still photographs that stir to life with almost imperceptible movements. This one will stay with you.
The following comment appeared in the New York Times in response to a Paul Krugman column criticizing Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's budget proposal:
Congressman Ryan is from one of the wealthiest Wisconsin districts, just across border from Illinois and a favored bedroom area for wealthy commuters from Chicago. He's representing the wealthy voters to whom everyone not one of them is invisible.
Congressman Ryan proposed earlier budgets in which he would have eliminated the health care for children (CHIPS.) His constituents didn't protest. As far as they're concerned, Americans working for a living are lucky to be employed and should have worked harder and studied harder.
His constituents pay to keep him in office because he'll carry their water: make it possible for the strong to prey on those who lack their wealth and connections. It's something the working people in this nation fiercely fought to overcome in the 1930s, 1940s, and even into the 1950s.
I still recall when my father was a petroleum company executive during a refinery strike during my younger years and him telling how he had to low-crawl to his car after his month of working to keep the refinery operating. I remember the wives of the workers in that strike coming to our rural home with their children, and asking for food and toilet paper. I recall my mother answering the door with a revolver in one hand hidden behind her back. I recall us setting up a a pantry in the garage and my mother telling them she couldn't feed them all but would help in emergencies. I recall my father expressing amazement that after low-crawling to the car, the union workers opened the gate and waved him out. I remember his consternation when my mother showed him the garage pantry and explained why they'd waved him out. She said the strike was between the men, and union or not, she'd always share her food with mothers and children. I remember our house being shot at and seeing the bullet holes in the living room window.
I recall one of my father's friends over one evening talking to him about a railroad strike. He told of how union workers had been found along the rail bed beaten black and blue. About that moment he looked up and remarked to my father that "little ears were nearby" and he'd better stop or there'd be nightmares. I was sent to bed.
I recall the news stories on WGN radio about acid being thrown into truckers' faces during trucking strikes.
I recall the death threats sent to my parents about kidnapping and killing me. I recall at age 7 people in Halloween masks attacking the windows on my bedroom and I then recall being taken to St. Louis where a large black German Shepherd named Windy and I were trained together for my protection. I recall the annual re-training through my eleventh year. That probably had a lot to do with my father regularly took me overseas with him.
That is the era back to which Congressman Ryan and his bought, phony, grass-root supporters want to take us: the era of real class warfare. It's sick. They're morally corrupt.
From President Truman forward, every Democratic President has reduced the national debt as a percentage of the nation's GDP. Since Truman forward, ONLY TWO Republican Presidents have reduced the nation's debt as a percentage of GDP: President Eisenhower in both terms and President Nixon in his first term. That's it. Since then, Republican Presidents have always increased the national debt as a percentage of GDP.
Congressman Ryan's budget isn't the least bit serious. It's not a budget to build a great nation. It's a delusion concocted by his vanity egged on by the thought of accolades and personal riches from this nation's wealthiest. Congressman Ryan's budget has all the scope, insight, and foresight one might find in the Christmas wish list of a sheltered, spoiled child.
Juan Cole was an early, articulate, and prescient opponent of the Iraq War. His blog, Informed Comment, became the go-to place for those of us seeking to construct a knowledgeable case against the war. Professor Cole supports the intervention in Libya, and explains why here.
Cole analyzes differences in the left over the intervention as a matter of cognitive dissonance: On the one, the left supports the efforts of ordinary people to free themselves from tyranny; on the other, it opposes as imperialism military intervention in their lives. In the case of Libya, Cole believes that the opportunity to rid the Libyan people (and the world, for that matter) of the sociopathic predations of Muammar Qaddafi is paramount and must be exploited.
The responses opposing Cole's position are depressingly predictable, illustrating a doctrinaire intellectual vacuity that substitutes sloganeering for critical thinking. To be fair, the left is hardly alone on that score...
Where Citizen K. rants, the New York Times' Timothy Egan -- who lives here in Seattle's Seward Park neighborhood -- offers a cool defense of President Obama's style. I have wondered that the same "progressives" who rightly despised President Bush's strutting and preening continuously gripe that Obama doesn't act in the same way. (The Nation doesn't publish an issue without someone blasting the president for not rearing up on his hind legs and blaring like a rogue elephant.) Apparently, bluster and certitude are just fine so long as it is the bluster and certitude of the left.
The New York Times calls her "the last movie star," and they're probably right. Born in 1932 in London to American parents, Elizabeth Taylor became an international star at age 12 with her winning turn in 1944's, National Velvet. As seemed to happen often, Taylor's presence inspired her leading man -- in this case, Mickey Rooney -- to do some of his best work. Rock Hudson was never better than as Bick Benedict in Giant, and Montgomery Clift was at his considerable best in A Place in the Sun.
The tabloid headlines and legendary marital brawls obscured Taylor's impressive range: She played and played well characters created by Tennessee Williams, John O'Hara, Edward Albee, Dylan Thomas, and William Shakespeare. She made her mark in family movies and smoldered in sprawling epics and soap operas. She played it for laughs in Father of the Bride as naturally as she evoked pity and disgust in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
To me, though, Elizabeth Taylor is first and foremost Leslie Benedict, the brash Maryland debutante who over the course of 201 minutes becomes the seasoned partner of a Texas rancher. (I grew up a mile from the main gate of the King Ranch, upon which Giant is based.) Over the course of the movie, the outsider becomes an insider while her principles and wit remain intact, a combination that causes her husband Bick Benedict (Hudson) to conclude that he won't understand her if he lives to be 90 (or a 100 or 150, one suspects). Taylor takes advantage of Giant's to show her character as arch, sardonic, wondering, overwhelmed, determined, warm, sympathetic, feminine, and maternal. She shifts moods as easily and naturally as you or I might change shirts. It's a bravura performance, all the more so as their isn't a trace forced or self-conscious.
Whatever the misfortunes of your personal life, Liz, you were not only one of the greats, you just may be the last of them...
Don't miss this 1949 Times profile of 16-year old "soft-spoken, rather quiet, almost shy" Elizabeth Taylor...
The savage fight scene from Giant, followed by the closing:
Posts
