Book Review: "Beloved" by Toni Morrison

Beloved (1987)

Four and Half Stars out of Five

Toni Morrison

The question of whether or not of whether America is “post-racial” is one that has come up many times since the presidential election of Barak Obama in 2008. And in one sense it is one of several themes that run through Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel “Beloved”. This tragic story of the direct and indirect effects of slavery on African-Americans has rarely if ever been told in a more trenchant and disturbing manner than in this novel. How could a young mother be so pushed to the edges of fear and desperation as to feel that her children’s best hope was to die by her hand rather than to be returned to slavery? How can America so badly remember, so badly misunderstand the effects of slavery and the 150 years of ongoing bias and persecution of a people?

Morrison employs her form of magical realism coupled with a non-linear technique of story-telling in “Beloved”. The non-linearity and the multiple-narrative prose that she uses is such that many readers will find this book a daunting challenge just from a structural perspective alone. “Beloved” is based on the true story of Margaret Garner. She was an escaped slave from Kentucky that was returned from Ohio courtesy of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. In Morrison’s story, Sethe the mother of two boys (Howard and Buglar) and one 2 year girl (“already crawling baby”/Beloved), and pregnant with her second daughter, Denver escapes from the Sweet Home plantation in Kentucky. Following her horrific rape and whipping at the hands of a local known as School Teacher, she reaches Cincinnati and the home of her husband’s mother, Baby Suggs. Following 28 days of freedom, a search team has found her and aims to return her and the children to Kentucky. Sethe intends to kill all of her children to prevent such a life being once more forced on them. She kills only the two year old girl, "already crawling baby". Since all are considered property she is not sentenced for murder but only for the destruction of property. She exits jail after a few years to the widespread rejection of the Black community in Cincinnati. Baby Suggs takes her back in and provides her shelter at 124 Bluestone Road.

The home at 124 Bluestone Road becomes haunted with a spirit; “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom”. (The home at 124 Bluestone Road is such a singular literary invention that in “Beloved” it assumes the role of another character in the book; it is clearly one manifestation of the Beloved character and all she stands for.) In time, Paul D, a brother of Sethe’s lost husband and father to her children (Halle) arrives at the house on 124 Bluestone Road. He drives off the spirit, but in her place shortly thereafter appears a young Black woman who claims with halting speech the name of Beloved. The now grown second daughter of Sethe, Denver recognizes almost immediately that this is the lost baby, but in an adult's body. Neither Paul D nor Sethe draw the same conclusion initially, though Paul D is compelled to the leave the house by seemingly supernatural means. In time, Sethe recognizes Beloved as her lost child, the child she killed with a hand saw’s slice across the throat. Following Paul D’s departure, life and the narrative style at 124 Bluestone Road become chaotic, almost hallucinogenic. Eventually, Beloved departs and a sense of normality returns.

Of the themes that run through “Beloved”, the racial divide between Black and White people is the one that I cannot but think is the most dominant message to be grasped at by a white man such as myself. In contemporary events, one sees almost daily news reports of the trials young Black men in America face: pointlessly being stopped in traffic by the police, being asked for receipts for bicycles that they are riding when stopped, being shot to death (or strangled or having their necks broken) when unarmed and being guilty in many cases of being black and little else. As damaging as this situation is in early 21^st century America, one still does not get even a glimpse the depth of the divide between the races as seen from the Black perspective in “Beloved”. Reading the descriptions of the surrounding “whitepeople” and their communities on the Black community, one could easily be forgiven for drawing the conclusion that the two races in question were neither of the same species or even the same planet. The slaves and former slaves in “Beloved” speak with unerring consistency of the craziness of the “whitepeople”; not their lack of morality, but their craziness. The behavior of the oppressive race on the oppressed is so far from the latter’s understanding, they don’t even try to explain it in terms of a lack of morality. It simply makes so little sense, the “whitepeople” can only be thought of as deranged.

The concept of an isolated and self-sufficient Black community is another theme that runs through “Beloved” as well. There is a sense of morality, of acceptance for some acts and not for others that stand alone from any judgement from the outside White community. If Sethe’s actions were to be best understood by any people, then surely the former slaves of Cincinnati would be that people. But they reject Sethe’s murder of her infant daughter by isolating her for over 10 years, the entire youth of Denver, Sethe’s youngest daughter.  Yet when Denver does leave her home at 124 Bluestone Road due to starvation, she is readily supported by that same surrounding Black community. They won’t let her pay for the food she needs, but they will give it to her. And finally during the climatic closing scenes, a group of Black women that had tolerated the malevolent spirit within the house will not tolerate the danger that same spirit made manifest in the adult Beloved poses for Denver, for Sethe, for the community and its sense of right and wrong.

From the community’s sense of self the story also delves deeply into the individual’s sense of self. Each of the Black characters in “Beloved” is a slave or a former slave at some point in the book’s narrative. Each of these individuals carries acutely awful memories of the treatment while slaves: Sethe’s whipping and loss of her baby’s milk, Halle’s silent witness of those events, Paul D’s multiple attempts at escape and the metal chain around his neck once re-captured, Baby Suggs’ poorly mended broken hip; the list goes on and on for each. Each of these former slaves carries memories that are so painful, they must suppress them with “re-memories”. This is an attempt to create a reality they can live with, but one that prevents them from being truly who they are. Each of these people has their own brand of “craziness”; it is the only way they believe they can survive.

For Sethe, Beloved and Denver the problem is most acute. The early parts of the book describe with astonishing pain the loss that Sethe feels when her milk for the infant Beloved is stolen from her. She has just been raped and whipped nearly to death, but she is heard only lamenting the loss of the milk. She has had a vitally important connection to her daughter taken from her. It is perhaps a metaphor for all the family disruptions that took place for slaves when their owners would sell their children to another plantation. Again this sense that the owing race was in fact acting as if they were two species instead of one, but for Sethe and her contemporaries, it was far more personal. The connection between a mother and her child has few parallels in human life, and it has just been cavalierly destroyed with as little compassion as if the owner had sold some livestock.

So, is the adult Beloved the physical manifestation of the spirit that once haunted 124 Bluestone Road or is she another lost child looking for her mother? A case can be made for either explanation. There is little doubt by the views of the household members of 124 Bluestone Road (or of the surrounding community) that the house was haunted. There is the apparent cut on the adult Beloved’s neck and her initial halting speech and walk that would suggest she is still learning how to talk and walk (just as a baby). And there is Morrison’s persistent use of Magical Realism as her genre of choice. A ghost story with deeper layers is not at all beyond her reach. At yet, consider the novel's inclusion of story from a youth having seen a naked woman running from 124 Bluestone Road on the day Beloved disappears. And also consider the wider implications of multiple mothers and daughters looking for lost daughters and mothers following the civil war. The story is compelling from either point view, as an allegory or as a description of a wide spread horror with few parallels in history; certainly few in American history.

“Beloved” ends with an epigraph from Romans 9:25: As indeed he says in Hosea, “Those who were not my people, I will call my people, and her who was not beloved, I will call ‘beloved’”. Could there be a more compelling, more human plea for compassion and recognition of a people to be treated and considered human by all that surround them? Not just say that they are equal and regarded as so, but also to love and accept them as so. “Beloved” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction 1988 and has been voted the best American novel for the period of 1981-2006. It is indeed a difficult book to work through, but like James Joyce’s Ullysses (with whom it shares some structural similarities) this is a book well worth making the effort to do so.

Book Review: All the Light We Cannot See

All the Light We Cannot See (2014)

Four Stars out of Five

Anthony Doerr

Anthony Doerr has written two full length novels of fiction and two more of short stories. “All the Light We Cannot See” is his second novel; written ten years after his first novel “About Grace”. It was worth the wait for Doerr and readers alike. “All the Light We Cannot See” was listed number one on the NY Times Best 10 Books of 2014, was runner-up for the National Book Award, and did win the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It is told for the most part in two first person story arcs in the era leading up to and through WWII: the adolescent and blind Marie-Laure in France, and the slightly older Werner Pfennig in Germany. The novel seems to suggest the oft-told tale of young love, but there is in fact much more to this story.

Marie-Laure lives in Paris with her locksmith papa, M. LeBlanc. He works at the National Museum where he often brings Marie-Laure. She went blind at the age of six. While at the Museum, she learns to love sea shells through the influence of a kindly researcher. She learns from her father an enduring love and patience. He spends much of his spare time helping her learn to cope with her new state of blindness. His techniques include making for her a scale model of their Parisian neighborhood and to sharpen her mind, he makes small wooden puzzle boxes. At the same time, in Zollverein Germany, Werner and his younger sister Jutta are adjusting to life as orphans. They live in the Children’s Home; a home run by a kindly, French- and German-speaking matron. During these early years, it is revealed that Werner has an unnaturally high aptitude for fixing radios, and that his sister has one for empathy.

Marie-Laure flees Paris with her father in 1940 as the Germans approach. Unknown to Marie-Laure, her father carries a precious diamond called the Sea of Flames. The museum’s intent is to get the diamond out of Paris and away from the onrushing German army. Marie-Laure and her father end up in the coastal town of Saint Malo, where he builds for her another scale model of their new home town. Werner has joined a school for the gifted or well-connected. He again demonstrates his abilities, this time to the local engineering professor. He also makes a friend with the far too compassionate Frederick, an avid birder. Werner has a first-hand observation of how a movement of bullies (i.e. the Nazis) disposes of such people as Frederick. Werner eventually joins a small detachment within the Wehrmacht that is tasked with using his radio skills to track down illegal radio broadcasts. His assignments eventually bring him to Saint Malo and into contact with Marie-Laure, and into contact with Sergeant-Major Von Rumpel. Von Rumpel is on a personal quest to track down the Sea of Flames.

The structure of the novel is very current in its frequent use of fragmentary sentence structure and parallel story lines. It is a little unusual in the brevity of the various chapters. Until the later parts of the novel are reached, the chapters are almost always less than two pages long. This allows the reader a sense of rapid movement through the lives of the various actors in the drama. It also gives a sense of the simultaneity of the events. What is Werner doing as Marie-Laure taps with her cane down some boulevard in Paris; this quick chapter structure helps give that understanding. I cannot personally understand the use of fragmentary sentences to tell a story, but again it seems like it is the intent of Doerr to use this style to help propel the book rapidly forward. The story telling is also told with a number of flashbacks. There are sequences in August of 1944 where Von Rumpel is closing in on Marie-Laure while Werner and his colleague Volkheimer are trapped in a basement that are intercut with scenes earlier in the war. The interleaving of these story lines helps to build dramatic tension and to increase interest in Marie-Laure’s and Werner’s backstories.

Another note on the structure of this novel requires mentioning, and that is the apparent deep understanding Doerr has of certain areas of knowledge. Werner’s story allows the reader a sense of how radios function, while Marie-Laure’s story gives the same reader a sense of Mollusca and the wide variety of snails that a blind girl might find so interesting. Doerr also employs passages from Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” to create a fictional world within Marie-Laure’s world. These passages help to build understanding for the life of a young blind girl caught up in the throes of war.

But what about the deeper meanings that might lie beneath the story of Werner and Marie-Laure; her story seems fairly straightforward: a young girl, dependent on the kindness and love of those that know her. Her personal development does not contain any surprises or psychological barriers. She simply must survive the war, find her father, and get back to Paris. Werner on the other hand does have some psychological hurdles to leap. Early in his life, he destroys a radio that meant everything to his sister (a sister that is held up in the novel as one who does care about the welfare of others – be they German or not); he did this to protect her from the authorities, but also because Werner always finds it easier to go with the flow than to fight for what he believes in. Time and again, Werner makes similar choices: when Frederick is beaten or when the various partisans he is hunting prove to be merely people trying to live their lives and not the desperate and vicious enemies he expected. Werner slowly does come to the conclusion that he has been making wrong choices, and finally does something for someone else to demonstrate the point. He also finally does something for himself near end of the war to atone for his errors.

“All the Light We Cannot See” has an elegiac ending that suggests an explanation for the title. That is to say, the lives, the souls lost to the air, are like light that cannot be seen. It suggests also in the actions of Werner an explanation why decent, intelligent Germans became caught up in the one of the worst horrors ever perpetuated by Man. Perhaps poor blind and reactive Marie-Laure is a stand-in for the situation France found herself in during WWII. But for me, the best parts and aspects of this book are that it gives a fairly unvarnished view of life during wartime: the starvation, disease, helplessness of most people, the blind loyalty of the various armies involved. There is no sense of the flag-waving enthusiasm often seen in war stories. Instead, there is just a quiet desperation felt by almost everyone in this story coupled with a desire to get back to a normal, non-war time life. And of course, there is also that sense of all those lives lost during this awful war, those children, young adults, and families torn apart forever. The book is not written in a highly emotional tone, but after reading it, it is unlikely the typical reader could walk away from it without feeling an intense emotional pain at all that loss.

Movie Review: Another Earth

Another Earth (2011)

Four Stars out of Five

PG13

John Burroughs: William Mapother

Rhoda/Writer: Brit Marling

Director/Writer/Cinematograghy/Editing: Mike Cahill

I have long thought and often written about the unique role science fiction can play in innovative movies that still work to explain the human condition. It doesn’t have to be science fiction but the genre should be one that allows a kind of flexibility in the rules that govern the universe the story is staged in. Magical Realism as practiced by Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Toni Morrison is another premier example of how bending the rules can allow the author or screenplay writer to use elements that reasonably expand and show what it means to be a human. In Another Earth, writers Brit Marling and Mike Cahill have used science fiction to explore the tantalizing concept of the “path not taken”. However, the story is so compelling; it would have been a magical movie even without the use of the fantastic elements brought in with the science fiction story line.

High School student Rhoda (Brit Marling) has just been accepted into MIT. She goes out on the town to celebrate with her friends. As she drives home (presumably somewhat inebriated), she hears on the radio a report of another habitable planet being discovered. She looks out her car window for the new planet, and in that moment and its attendant distraction she drives head on into a second car. She has just killed a pregnant woman, her young son and sent that family’s father into a prolonged coma. Four years later she is released from prison. Wracked with guilt she tries to rebuild her life, to find some meaning in her life, and to come to grips with the consequences of her actions. She goes to the now recovered father of that family (William Mapother), John Burroughs to somehow apologize. But her will fails her, and she instead tries to find a way to bring some joy into his life. In a very clever way, the dramatic tension in the movie, is whether or not Rhoda will or won’t tell John Burroughs who she is as she works to help him recover from his personal tragedy.

The science fiction elements of the story are brought into play by showing that this new planet, the one that existed at the fork in young Rhoda’s life is an exact duplicate of the Earth she lives on. Not just geographically but in every way; each person on each of the two planets having lived exactly the same lives up to the point that each of the two Earths becomes aware of one another. It is largely an idea more based in fantasy than science fiction, but in this movie that is not even close to the point. There is some nonsense pedaled in the TV background noise of the movie that tries to give a modicum of explanation for the existence of two Earths; but truly it is not really the point to explain it. The point is only to set up a visually stunning image of Rhoda as she walks out on a pier and stares into the night sky of the second Earth. And even more to the point, to give Rhoda (and the viewing audience) the opportunity to wonder at the consequences of their own lives, their own decisions, and their own paths not taken. In Rhoda’s case, it is a heartfelt examination of the three lives her moment of distraction extinguished. And to the spiraling effects on her life, on John Burrough’s life, even on the lives of her immediate family. Had she only not looked out the window; if only …

The story is at times painful to watch. But it is so easy to relate to. Such an accident could befall any driver. The story is so grounded in reality; this movie could easily have stood on its own without the second earth and “path not taken” themes. But by using them, Marling and Cahill have expanded the message in a provocative and meaningful way. A way that makes this movie a movie I would recommend to almost anyone.

Movie Review: Lucy

Lucy (2014)

Two and half Stars out of Five

R

Lucy: Scarlett Johansson

Professor Norman: Morgan Freeman

Mr. Chang: Min-Sik Choi

Pierre Del Rio: Amr Waked

Director/Writer: Luc Besson

Lucy is a disappointing amalgam of film genre: science fiction, comedy, kung-fu, mobster, revenge, and even philosophical/science. It will come as little surprise that trying to achieve so much, the movie largely fails to deliver on any of the various channels. The movie does not even really provide much in the way of eye candy with respect to the various special effects either. This movie can easily be skipped, but if you really want to know what it is about, read on.

The film begins with a scene from early in the history of the hominids, presumably Lucy herself. She sits in a stream and while looking fearfully about drinks from it. Moving forward in time, we meet a modern Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) being accosted by her disreputable boyfriend outside a swanky Taipei hotel. Against her better wishes, at the behest of her boyfriend she enters the hotel to deliver a package to a Mr. Chang (Mik-Sik Choi). He turns out to be a gangster and drug king pin. Lucy quickly finds herself a drug-mule for Mr. Chang. However, the drug bag sewn into abdomen ruptures, and like every B sci-fi movie from the 50’s, rather than dying from the effects of the drug, she becomes enhanced. Wielding her new, God-like powers she begins a campaign of revenge aimed at Mr. Chang. Along the way, she hooks up with Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman). While she was enjoying Taiwan, he had been lecturing an adoring audience of how little humans used their minds, and if only they could use more, life would be so sweet. Lucy having now proven his thesis wants to explain to him all she now knows. Meanwhile, having disrupted his drug empire, Mr. Chang wants to pay her back. And it is just so hard to predict what will happen in Paris when they all get there: guns, explosions, cars driving the wrong way, and creepy visual effects for the new Miss Lucy.

To its credit, the movie has two fine scenes with Ms. Johansson showing her skills as an actor, and also indicating what this movie might have been had M. Besson stuck to a single movie genre. In the first, as Lucy realizes the danger she is in with Mr. Chang, she acts out just how pitiful a situation she quickly realizes she has fallen into. Johansson displays a believable role as a helpless young woman, one that seems likely to die very soon. Later after having escaped and as she perceives her changing status from that as a young woman into something far different, she makes a tearful call to her mother. Using the opportunity that science fiction offers her in this situation she tells her mom she remembers everything: from being held and nursed by her mother to a lifetime’s thousands of kisses from her mom. It was moving and compassionate, and could only happen in the otherwise unbelievable situation the fantasy elements of this story permit her character to experience.

Luc Besson has made a number of movies that span a variety of genre. He has been perhaps the most commercially successful with his Taken and Transporter franchises: kinetic, fight scene/car chase drivel that make large amounts of money and have little to say beyond the idea of righteous revenge. Due to his earlier movies such as Subway, The Big Blue, or even Nikita, he has been classed as a member of the “Cinema du Look”, a film school that favors style over substance. One could easily perceive such influences within Lucy.  During the opening scenes of Lucy being cornered by her boyfriend and then by Mr. Chang, wildlife scenes of a gazelle being hunted by a cheetah are intercut with the human scenes of her deteriorating situation with Mr. Chang. Is this a stylistic touch or an attempt at humor; it seems more the latter to me than the former. And that is the fundamental problem with the movie. Besson’s intent with the movie is so watered down by the various genre shifts and/or stylistic flourishes; the movie just degenerates to the level of the pointless car chase that occurs near the end of the movie. What does the car chase mean; oh yeah, just like the movie: nothing.

Had Besson really wanted to explore what it is that makes Man the creature he is; to explore the limits and opportunities of the mind, he had the framework of a movie that could have made a film worth experiencing. The concept of how much of the human mind is actually used and what might happen to the human that had her mind expanded, what happens to her humanness is a subject worth exploring. But explore it sans gangsters with machine guns, TOW anti-tank weapons and pseudo-science lectures. Lucy is not that movie and should be skipped by anyone not solely interested in car chases that end with police cars flying through the air.

Movie Review: The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life (2011)

Four and half Stars out of Five

PG13

Mr. O’Brien (Father): Brad Pitt

Mrs. O’Brien (Mother): Jessica Chastain

Adult Jack: Sean Penn

Young Jack: Hunter McCracken

Director/Writer: Terrence Malick

Cinematography Director:  Emmanuel  Lubezki

Music: Alexandre Desplat

Film Editing: Hank Corwin et. al.

Terrence Malik has directed six movies with “The Tree of Life” being his fifth. His topics have ranged from John Smith and Pocahontas (“The New World”), to WWII (“The Thin Red Line”), to romance (“Days of Heaven”), to a romantic art film (“To The Wonder”). “The Tree of Life” has its own genre, one not usually seen in Hollywood: religious/philosophical/nostalgic.  “The Tree of Life” has been widely praised (it is on many Top 100 lists, won the Palme D’Or in Cannes, and is listed as the best picture ever by several critics), and widely panned. It is one of the most ambitious movies I have ever seen, but perhaps in a final analysis, it is a little too ambitious with its message.

The movie is told in four parts: the death of the O’Brien family’s second son, RL; the birth of the universe and of life on Earth; the birth and early life of Jack O’Brien (the first born child of the O’Brien’s) in Waco Texas, and a slice of time in the middle-aged years of Jack. The seemingly unrelated segments are linked by the philosophical and religious underpinnings to this story. The underpinnings at first glance seem to reduce to the eternal question: what is God’s intent with respect to Man. But then it has a second philosophical question to address: what is Man’s intent and his means with respect to Life.

The first question is strongly alluded to with a quote from the Bible’s Book of Job: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for Joy?” Throughout this movie, various players within the movie are overheard asking questions, apparently to God the Father, but conceivably in some cases to their own father or mother. There is within the story’s overall structure a frequent sense of being disconnected from a powerful, perhaps loving parental figure. There is a near constant questing for answers, for a sense of understanding to the question of why we are here, and where are we going. The second part of the story, the part that depicts the formation of solar systems and then of life, provides a literal answer on the “how” of why-we-are-here, but of course leaves the “why” question unanswered. Near the end of the film as the adult Jack has a vision, we see the expansion of our sun into a Red Giant and the end of the Earth; thus, we see the physical answer to the where-are-we-going question. We see this even further defined in the last parts of Jack’s vision as he walks amongst the dead on a beach.

In the third part of the story, we are told the explanation to a topic first brought up by Mrs. O’Brien (Jessica Chastain) in the opening scenes of the movie: there are two paths in life for Man to follow, the path of grace or the path of nature. These paths of nature versus grace are first suggested in the second part of the movie, the part that illustrates the origin of life. We observe a dinosaur that “compassionately” does not kill a second dinosaur that is at the mercy of the first. Instead, it would seem this dinosaur chooses the path of grace. The metaphor is greatly expanded in the third part of the movie wherein the early life of Jack, his two brothers and his parents are depicted in Waco. That his mother is clearly the human icon for the path of Grace, while his father is the icon for the path of nature is made abundantly clear. Mr. O’Brien (Brad Pitt) made a choice early in his life to turn away from music for engineering. He has not become successful in this field and as a result carries a heavy burden of shame. After having been a stern father to Jack and his brothers and having lost his engineering job, Mr. O’Brien questions his own worth to Jack; Jack (having chosen the same path in life) rushes to reassure his father. Mrs. O’Brien has in the meanwhile been shown to be a person captivated by the joy of life as it surrounds her, and specifically in the joy of her three children.

Besides the philosophical aspects of the story, Malick himself grew up in 1950’s Waco Texas. For those of us that also grew up in this era, it is entertaining to watch the third part of the movie for the little details of life in the 50’s: the physical details like the beaded belts worn by little boys, or the bigger picture such as the sense of safety that permits people to leave their front doors unlocked or their children to walk home alone from school. The family life of the O’Brien family struck me as one not too atypical for life in the 50’s and early 60’s. The father works during the day, the mother stays at home to wash, clean, and cook. The father is a stern disciplinarian that walks a fine line between loving his children and guiding his children; the mother is there to pick up the pieces when the father crosses too far over the line into discipline. The movie makes much of the father’s delicate dance between his two desires towards the children, while the mother universally keeps to her single –minded path of love, of grace.

The final part of the movie is surely a complicated part. We see the adult Jack dealing with the passing of his younger brother and also with the upbringing he had at the hands of his father. To be sure, Jack was raised by both of his parents, but as he states in the movie, he is just like his father; he has chosen the path of nature. On the anniversary of the passing of RL, the adult Jack (Sean Penn) is filled with remorse; remorse for the lost little brother that “trusted him” (even when he shouldn’t have), remorse over a sterile marriage, and remorse over an unhappy life; a life buried in the stainless steel and glass canyons of Dallas – very far from his bucolic childhood in Waco. With his little brother dead and seemingly his loving mother, too, Jack is searching again for the answer to the big question raised by this movie; that is the meaning of life. Fortunately for Jack, he has a vision of walking through a portal in the desert. He meets his mother and his little brother once again. He sees many people on a beach, apparently happy and satisfied. Jack returns from his vision with a smile on his face.

This movie is gorgeous in both visual and musical imagery. Apparently, Malik chose to minimize the use of CGI and to use older techniques in order to create his vision of the origin of the universe and life (presumably this did not extend to the various dinosaurs depicted). That Malik had a vision for this movie and that he exercised his considerable skills to bring it to life cannot be doubted by anyone that has seen this movie. The only failure in the story from my point of view is that the viewer can sense Malik’s desire to send a profound message of hope and joy found by one path through life versus the despair and self-doubt to be found by the other path. I believe I can see and understand his message, but I was strangely unmoved by it. At a time in my life where I can be brought to tears by animated movies such as “Up”, I was simply not feeling the emotion I am sure Malik himself felt in writing and directing this movie. In the final analysis though, and despite being a scientist that has also largely chosen the path of nature, I concede his point. The path chosen and symbolized by the mother figure, Mrs. O’Brien, and so beautifully shown in the scene of her smilingly holding a butterfly is surely a wonderful and happy path to take in life. Is it the only way to understand and be content with the universe is a question I am not certain is so clearly true. I believe there are several ways to shout with joy for the universe.

Movie Review: Cinderella

Cinderella (2015)

Four Stars out of Five

PG

Cate Blanchet: Lady Tremaine, Step-mother

Lily James: Cinderella

Richard Madden: The Prince

Helena Bonham Carter: Fairy Godmother

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Writer: Chris Weitz

Cinematography Director:  Haris Zambarloukos

Art Direction: Gary Freeman and Leslie Tomkins

Costume: Sandy Powell

For most Americans and perhaps for most of the contemporary world, the story of Cinderella is likely best known by Disney’s 1950 animated classic, “Cinderella”. Cinderella’s story is however actually a mythic archetype with hundreds of films, plays and ballets that depict the theme of unjust persecution and/or someone suddenly achieving recognition. The earliest known version of this story goes back to the 7^th century BC and the tale of a Greek slave girl (Rhodopsis) who eventually marries an Egyptian pharaoh. Her story first appeared as a written version in 1634 as told by the Italian folklorist Giambattista Bastile. Charles Perrault wrote the French version in 1697 and the Brothers Grim wrote a characteristically grim version in German in 1812. In 2015 Disney has released a marvelous new live action movie based to a great extent on the Perrault version. Director Kenneth Branagh has worked with writer Chris Weitz to craft a story that abandons the simplistic romantic and cartoon elements of barnyard creatures and anthropomorphic mice of the 1950’s Disney movie for a story that leans heavily on many of the mythic elements of a persecuted heroine, and to do it in a style that emphasizes steadfastness and grace in contrast to the more typical early 21^st century archetype of female heroines as warrior maidens.

Disney’s new Cinderella begins with the ten year old Ella (Eloise Webb) living an idyllic life with her loving mother (Hayley Atwell) and endlessly travelling, merchant father (Ben Chaplin). Making use of the time-hallowed Disney trope of parental death, the now grown and newly orphaned Ella (Lily James) falls under the control of her malevolent step-mother, Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett). These early sequences were with few exceptions the weakest part of the movie. The story seems to rush to the inevitable situation where Ella, formerly middle classed-wealthy and loved, is now forced into her scullion role as Cinderella by Lady Tremaine and her two vacuous daughters, Drisella (Sophie McShera – like Lily James, a Downton Abbey alumnus) and Anastasia (Holiday Grainger). The movie’s deepest flaw shows up in this first reel. It isn’t the weak acting during Ella’s mother’s death scene, or the endlessly used (by Disney) parental deaths, but instead it is the mother’s dying advice to Ella: “Have courage, and be kind”. That such advice goes far to explain Cinderella’s later tolerance for her step-family’s evil and that it may be easily digested and not necessarily bad advice to a six year old (Disney’s target audience?), it is a missed opportunity for the movie to get to the heart of the Cinderella story: courage, yes; but more to the point than kindness, tolerance and reconciliation as a form of grace – harder concepts to explain, but worthy of the effort.

Gorgeously dressed in her signature green, her face in shadows, Blanchett first appears as Lady Tremaine. She gracefully enters Ella’s home in a scene that is a highlight of the movie's first reel. However, the movie really starts to come alive when Ella now Cinderella meets the Prince (Richard Madden) for the first time. She is riding in the forest while he is hunting with his men. They circle one another, talking, learning about each other. She tries to convince him to drop the hunt; he tries to find out who she is. The scene is charming and works very well due to the actors’ acting and Branagh’s staging. It is a classic “meet cute”, but it works so well, I found it to be the best scene in the movie. During the remainder of the second and third reels, the movie follows roughly the Perrault version of the story. The King (Derek Jacobi) wants his son to marry, and so the son agrees to a ball wherein he will find a princess to marry. The Tremaine’s seek to prevent Cinderella’s attendance, but via the intervention of her fairy god-mother (Helena Bonham Carter), Cinderella obtains a beautiful blue dress, a comically-created pumpkin coach and various animal-cum-coachman/footmen assistants. She arrives at the ball, does a little dancing and falling in love, escapes with one shoe, and is ultimately found again and married to the Prince. Several key dramatic elements during this montage include Cinderella’s confrontation with Lady Tremaine, where she learns source of Lady Tremaine’s pain and thus, her evil. And even more significantly, we see at the end of the movie, Ella’s embrace of her new name of Cinderella and her “pardon” of the two step-sisters.

There are technical elements to the movie that make seeing the movie worth the effort all on their own: scenery, art and costume design, sound and direction. They are all Oscar-worthy efforts. Consider Blanchett’s and Cinderella’s dress design. Lady Tremaine’s are so beautiful, she could be mistaken as a heroine herself, except for that pesky envious color of green. James’ blue gown for the ball and her white one for the wedding really have to be seen to be believed. (Odd topics for a guy like me to comment on, but they really are spectacular costumes.) The art design for the exterior shots of the castle and the cinematography of the interior shots during the ball are profoundly good. All of these non-dramatic, artistic elements are significant additions to the movie.

With respect to the thrust of the myth and that of the movie there is a delicate balance for any writer and director. The mythic elements, those parts that make this story timeless and accessible across the world must be in the movie and easily accessed by the viewer. Yet, the movie must be current in order to be a commercial success. This movie largely does both. This Cinderella does accept her reduced condition under Lady Tremaine, she maintains her tolerance of Lady Tremaine’s ruined heart, and she does demand an explanation from Lady Tremaine. But significantly she also keeps to her dreams, breaking down only when all seems lost. That she loves the Prince, and he loves her cannot be in question, and as such, this telling of the Cinderella story stays true to the ideals of a heroine who is unjustly persecuted, achieves her unforeseen success and who has a heart big enough, one kind enough to reconcile with her tormentors.

A good story, one for the ages; and still in the words of Perrault: “beauty is a treasure, but graciousness is priceless”. And to paraphrase his final comments on the moral of the story: “It’s pretty convenient to have a magical, fairy godmother, too.”

Book Review: Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

Under the Banner of Heaven, a Study of Violent Faith (2003)

Three Stars out of Five

Jon Krakauer

Jon Krakauer started his professional writing career in the early 1980’s by writing about his passion: mountain climbing. Following his work as a journalist/writer for Outside magazine in 1983 and his collection of essays in book form in 1990, he began writing full length non-fiction books with “Into the Wild” in 1996 (made into a magnificent movie in 2007) and “Into Thin Air” in 1997. Both of these books were on the NY Times Best Seller list for months; in fact “Into Thin Air” was on the short list for the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. His third book is “Under the Banner of Heaven” (2003), a recounting of a violent crime that is told in the context of the history of the Mormons (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints – LDS) and contrasted to various modern polygamous sects that trace some of their philosophical roots to the LDS church. One can see Krakauer’s evolution as a writer through these three books, and in the case of the first two, one can see a connection of subject matter; but consider the leap from mountaineering and the outdoor life in the early writing to placing a double murder by two evidently deranged religious zealots in the context of the history for a major religious movement. This is a risky leap in direction; it begs controversy from non-Mormons and the Mormon faithful alike.

 Krakauer begins the book with a re-telling of the brutal murder of a young mother and her toddler daughter. She was Brenda Lafferty, married to the youngest of the Lafferty brothers, a self-contained group of anti-tax/polygamous worshiping (if not practicing) lapsed Mormons. The elder two brothers Ron and Dan entered Allen and Brenda’s home in 1984 while Allen was away at work. Dan murdered Brenda, while Ron killed Erica, the eighteen month-old baby (though Dan asserts he killed the child too, there is contrary court testimony given on this point). The older Laffertys blamed Brenda for disrupting their plans for a polygamous lifestyle via her influence over Allen and Ron’s estranged wife. How Ron a former pillar of the mainstream LDS community in the Provo region got to the point of murder and how he explained his behavior via the established Mormon practice of revelation (talking to God) is the purpose of Krakauer’s book.

From Krakauer’s point of view, he needs to detail the history of Mormons from their origins in New York to their establishment in the Utah Territory. Their story begins in 1823 with revelations from God to Joseph Smith via the angel Moroni and a set of golden tablets. These tablets told the story of an ancient people that left Palestine for the New World. Smith published the book in 1830 and named it for the original historian that wrote the book, Mormon. With his holy book, Smith formed a new church, the Church of Christ. Smith grew his church via missionaries and ultimately left New York for Jackson County MO. Smith’s new church experienced repeated problems in Missouri, and eventually moved to Illinois where they founded Nauvoo. By 1844 Nauvoo was a prosperous community but it had due to several reasons (the Mormon tendency towards economic insularity, their different interpretation of the Bible’s primacy  vis-a-via the Book of Mormon,  plus the new revelation by Smith as regards polygamy) created a renewed level of anger and resentment by the surrounding non-Mormon community. The issue of polygamy had also started a major split within the LDS church: not all were in favor of it, and some were in fact strenuously opposed to it. One such opponent began printing an opposing newspaper. When Smith ordered the press to be destroyed, he was arrested and jailed in Carthage IL by the non-LDS community. While he was incarcerated, he was with the willing participation of his jailers, murdered on 27Jun1844. This brought to a head who would lead the LDS church following Smith, the polygamous group led by Brigam Young or an opposing, anti-polygamous group led by Smith’s younger brother.

Young won that battle, though the church did split into two groups: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the Community of Christ. Young’s much larger group came to the conclusion that they needed to move out of the control of the US government, who they felt was at best indifferent to the safety of the Saints (as they self-identified), or at worst, actively persecuting them.  Thus they chose to move to the Utah Territory, then-governed by Mexico. They named their new land, Deseret after a self-named desert bee, which Young felt to always be busy like his fellow Saints. Following the conclusion of the Mexican-American War on 2Feb1848, Utah Territory and the Mormons living there came under the governance of the US. Following years of contention between Young (and two of his successors) and the US government, the LDS Church leaders under Wilford Woodruff renounced polygamy on 23Sep1890. While this benefited the Utahns by allowing them to become a state six years later, it also precipitated another polygamy-based schism within the LDS church. The new schismatics often refer to themselves as Fundamental Latter Day Saints.

Krakauer includes within the book extensive sections describing various polygamous groups living in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Some of these groups are small like the Lafferty brothers, while some are quite large and well organized like the Arizona Strip group recently led by Warren Jeffs (now serving a 20 year prison sentence for child sexual assault). Krakauer does not have the organized and documented history of the LDS church to draw on when describing the various polygamous groups he investigates and as such uses various first-hand accounts from current and former members of these various “FLDS” groups. What he describes is little short of a reign of terror in many cases. These groups tend to be led by zealous true believers who far too often drift across the line from church leader into the realm of dictator. There really cannot be a softer term for men (and they are always men) that run their church and communities as their personal fiefdoms: dispensing wives and removing wives and their children from favored and recalcitrant members; or even worse, forcing fourteen old (if not younger) girls into such “marital” relationships. To find any trace of a democratic institution in these communities where all individuals have equal rights is a hopeless task.

It is my belief that Krakauer hoped with this book to show several things: the history of the Mormon Church, the origin and death of polygamy within that church, the birth of polygamy-based sects that broke away from the mother church, and the genesis of criminal and quite frankly psychotic behavior within these break-away groups. He does not suggest that the modern LDS church fosters or is complacent with these polygamous groups. He does take the church fathers to task for obscuring various contentious elements of Mormon history (e.g. Smith’s polygamy, the church’s endorsement of polygamy in the early days of the church, or the Mountain Meadow Massacre where 120 non-Mormon immigrants from Arkansas passing through Utah were murdered by a band of Mormons and Paiute Indians). He is very critical of the various polygamous groups that call themselves members of the Fundamentalist LDS Church, or even of the various groups that practice polygamy via the forced compliance these groups apply to young girls. The problem with the book is that by tackling the Lafferty murders, looking for a link to their religious zealotry to LDS fundamentalism (this term is offensive to mainstream members of the LDS church as they feel the FLDS members have no claim to the LDS part of their name), describing the history of the mainstream LDS church and then trying to create a link between these parts by asserting one can find a general basis for religiously based homicidal behavior is too ambitious for a single book; Krakauer fails to make the argument in this case. Further, by conflating the LDS history with a modern murder, he diverts attention from the Lafferty’s psychoses or indeed from a more general argument for such psychoses within the various polygamous groups, let alone within fundamentalist groups in general.

That the LDS church finds this book offensive is not a surprise. I cannot imagine any religion finding any pleasure in having their history linked to the murders committed by the two Lafferty brothers (and abetted by other members of the family – including the grandmother and husband/father of the deceased). That Krakauer argues for more openness from the LDS church about their history does not seem germane to his study of “violent faith”; that is to say the various extant polygamous groups. The biggest problem for me is that while I can see the outline of an argument that polygamous groups have the potential for violence and autocracy, this book does not make a good case for it except by using anecdotal evidence. To be sure, the anecdotes are revolting and disturbing, but they do not provide much more than a suggestion that there is an incontrovertible linkage between polygamy and violence. I greatly enjoyed Krakauer’s first two books, but feel he chose a subject he is not sufficiently versed in (psycho-social forces within religions and the psychology of homicide) to make a strong case for his point of view. This book has value in terms of its parts, but the sum of those parts is in this case is less, rather than more than the total.