Movie Review: "The Big Short"

The Big Short (2015); Best Movie Oscar nominee

R

4 Stars out of 5

Director                                Adam McKay (Oscar nominee)
Writer                                   Charles Randolph, Adam McKay, (Oscar Winner, Best Adapted Screenplay)
Book                                      Michael Lewis – “The Big Short – Inside the Doomsday Machine” (2010)
Editor                                    Hank Corwin (Oscar nominee)
Music                                    Nicholas Britell 

Ryan Gosling                       Jared Vennett
Christian Bale                      Michael Burry, M.D. (Oscar nominee for Supporting Actor)
Steve Carrell                       Mark Baum
John Magaro                       Charlie Geller
Finn Wittrock                      Jamie Shipley
Cameos                                Anthony Bourdain, Selena Gomez, Margot Robbie

 

What would be the proper tone for a movie that explored the 2007/2008 market collapse in the United States? Would it be comical, fast paced, satirical, and salted with celebrities explaining the various arcane terms of credit default swap or collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)? I would not have made these choices, but in fact this was exactly the tone intentionally chosen by writer Charles Randolph and writer/director Adam McKay in 2015’s “The Big Short”. This movie is particularly fast-paced and filled with people speaking a language that sounds like English as they attempt to explore the fraud and incompetence displayed by a variety of large banking institutions in the first decade of the new millennium. The writing, editing and acting are superb though some of the choices in music and the use of cameos quite frankly detract rather than add to this film. And, I wonder how many viewers will walk away from this movie with a better understanding of what was done by the bankers vs. simply an uneasy feeling that the crooks involved got away with it, and have virtually nothing in their way from doing it all over again.

“The Big Short” focuses on three story lines that somewhat, kind a reach the same end point – and it’s not really the end point any of the three groups thought or hoped it would be. The story begins with Dr. Michael Burry (Christiane Bale) , a former neurologist now Hedge Fund manager that seems to suffer from Asperger-like symptoms. His social skills may be problematic but not his intellect. By dint of his intuition and hard work he finds evidence that the real estate bond market, thought to be extremely safe is anything but. Evidently, it is necessary to fill these bonds with a large number of mortgages. If said mortgages are 30 year mortgages made out to fully-employed workers that have been properly vetted for their loans, no problem. If on the other hand the bond is filled with people not vetted properly or perhaps not at all, and if they hold multiple loans, variable rate loans, then Burry rightly deduces a disaster is on the way. He makes the decision to persuade several banks to create a financial instrument that from one point of view is a form of insurance on the bonds, and from Burry’s point view allows him to “short” the real estate bonds in question. That is to say, he pays a monthly premium that allows him to “bet” the value of those bonds will drop once a certain percentage of the mortgage holders default on their home loans. And Burry’s data says this will happened in the 2Q07; that is about two quarters away in time from his decision to short the bond market.

One of the amazing aspects of Burry’s plan is that his contact with the banks to set up the short is overheard by another banker, Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling). Vennett’s own research and experience at his bank tell him quite quickly that Burry is right. Vennett then goes about trying to sell the short financial tool to other investors; all turn him down except for another Hedge Fund manager, Mark Baum (Steve Carrell). Baum is a man beset with anxiety at the greed and disregard of Wall Street – even though he works there, too. Baum’s team starts to buy up as much of Vennett’s product as they can afford. And lastly, a pair of naïfs, Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) find out about Vennett’s plan and decide with the help of an experienced and connected trader, Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) to start their own run at shorting the real estate bond market.

Where this movie sets itself apart from other tales from Wall Street (e.g. “Wolf of Wall Street”, 2013) is that there is no glorification of these traders, there are no heroes in this tale, and no drunken or drug-induced frenzies. Instead, we have a cast of capable people, each with at least a residue of conscience left that are faced with the apparent fact that Wall Street is run by extremely venal and in some cases, completely clueless parasites. Some of the members of the three groups that short the banks are shown to be concerned from the beginning (Baum and Rickert) with the awful system they work in or they get there by the movie’s end (Baum is even more discouraged, Burry closes his fund, and young Charlie moves to a farm). Yes there is comedy and satire in this movie, but mostly there is just a sense of disgust and a feeling that the wealth Wall Street commands, and their reach into congress as a result of that wealth will prevent any meaningful legislation ever being passed, let alone enforced. Consider the movie’s closing comments: only one banker was imprisoned, and Wall Street has since introduced a clone of the CDOs that got the country (indeed the whole world) into the problems of the Great Recession of 2008 in the first place. History will surely repeat itself.

As a movie, this one excels primarily with the acting, directing and editing. The director and his editor do an incredible job of creating a tone and pace that propels this movie forward at a pace that is at times frantic, but not to the degree that the viewer is totally lost. The Oscar award notwithstanding, the writing upon which this movie is anchored has problems in my opinion: the inclusion of the celebrity cameos is pointless and detracts from the narrative flow. There seems little purpose in having a soap opera star (Margot Robbie) sit in a bubble-filled bath tub defining financial terms to the masses. I get it is intended to create an atmosphere of arrogance and superiority, but it really feels more like a derailment from the story-line. It is true that telling this story without a careful explanation of the financial terms in play would also detract from the film, but the Robbie cameo was a mistake in my opinion. The use of Selena Gomez placing a bet in a casino as she explains what CDOs are, worked much better – her explanation about the CDO style of gambling placed in the context of her losing at Blackjack was a great metaphor and did not deviate much from the tone or pace of the overall movie.

But the acting, this is where I think the movie has its best moments. Christian Bale’s performance of the one-eyed and smartest man in the room, who is also a likely Asperger’s patient, is a brilliant idea. Here is a man who has lived his life minus an eye, has struggled with his social interactions, and yet is the only one in the room that truly sees the problem that the CDOs were. He plays his character as a man living on the edge of main stream society pounding on his drums as he listens to some heavy metal music that only he can hear. Again, the metaphors are as clear as possible. My big objection to the musical choice though is that Music Director Nicholas Britell would have benefitted the movie immensely had he decided to use Led Zepplin throughout the movie rather than just as a closing number. The raucous, heart-pounding effect would have been the same, but the music far better written, performed, and recognizable to the audience. Lastly, the acting of Steve Carrell just gets better and better. His performance of the guilt-wracked Mark Baum as he works through the suicide of his brother and the same time tries to fix every wrong in the world (no doubt as he tries to salve his sense of guilt over the loss of his brother) is in fact better than his Oscar nominated performance in 2014 of John DuPont in “Foxcatcher”. He is able to capture with great subtlety a range of emotions a Mark Baum, most notably his closing sense of futility – surely the best emotion for anyone watching this movie and thinking about how Wall Street (and the corporations) run things from behind the curtains.

In any event, this is a good movie. I do not think I would have nominated it for Best Picture, but I strongly agree with the director, editing and acting nominations – they are well deserved.  This movie tells a complicated tale about greed and financial control that I think every thinking American needs to ponder. It uses a comedic tone that I find more annoying than entertaining; certainly it detracts from the message in my view. But then how does one tell a story about the dismal science (i.e. economics) without putting the audience to sleep. Maybe this was the perfect tone; it was a perfect pace and some near perfect acting. I recommend this movie, but I think with some reservations.

Book Review: "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson

Steve Jobs (2011)

5 Stars out of 5

Walter Isaacson

630 pages

The term “genius” is such an overused word to describe people of any notoriety: from basketball players good at sinking free throws to politicians that are capable of manipulating the press to celebrities famous for little more than being on a reality television program. In the case of Steve Jobs as described by Walter Isaacson in his 2011 authorized biography, “Steve Jobs” the term seems inadequate; and not just inadequate because the word has become trite through over-use, but quite frankly inadequate because if ever there was a person that simply cannot be summed up in a single word, then Steve Jobs is certainly that person. Here was an "orphaned" child growing up in the Silicon Valley-to-be (specifically, Palo Alto) with his adoptive blue collar parents (Paul and Clara Jobs) that was destined to play the pivotal role in shaping many of the consumer products to come out of the realized Silicon Valley. Here too was a man so filled with his vision of what was “great” that anyone that slowed his progress towards that perfect design for the objet de jour that this man could and would completely disregard any vestige of respect for his fellow as he vehemently castigated the problem co-worker; this B-team purveyor of “s**t”.

Walter Isaacson was the CEO of CNN, managing editor of Time magazine, and the biographer of Henry Kissinger (1992), Benjamin Franklin (2003), and Albert Einstein (2007) prior to being asked by Steve Jobs to write a biography of him. Knowing Jobs as well as he did, Isaacson initially refused Jobs’ request, fearing presumably a loss of control over the book. However, refusing Jobs is not a task easily accomplished and in 2009 Isaacson started a two year project on Steve Jobs that concluded with the biography being published a mere 19 days after Jobs’ death from cancer in October of 2011. Besides Jobs, Isaacson interviewed over 100 other people: friends and family, colleagues and enemies; all in order to get the authoritative biography of a man that wanted to leave a record for his son and two daughters that he had by Laurene Powell Jobs (well and maybe one more daughter – more on that below). Isaacson was given freedom to write as he would (except for the cover photo which was chosen by Jobs and was reported to be Jobs’ favorite photo of himself) – this one sentence alone is one of the most amazing facts of the biography; for if there was one thing that Jobs did not share, it was control.

There is a recurrent theme than runs through Isaacson’s book and Jobs’ life: dualism – there are few to no greys in the Steve Jobs’ story. It begins with Jobs being given up for adoption by his too young birth mother. Jobs would grow to despise his birth parents; “… sperm and egg banks”, Abdulfattah Jandali and Joanne Schieble Simpson (respectively and according to Jobs) and love to the very end his adoptive parents. The list of people that Jobs loved was a short one. But he greatly admired and was influenced by his mechanic father, Paul Jobs. While Jobs would grow to be rebellious to his infinitely patient adoptive parents, he would comment of Paul: “He loves doing things right. He cared about the look of things you couldn’t see.” It is very tempting to ponder how the role of "orphan" in the care of such loving parents, as well as the focus by Paul on “perfection” in the design and execution of projects would shape the growing Steve Jobs. Isaacson lists these influences but leaves it to the reader to draw his own conclusions. That the issue of what were the forces that shaped Steve Jobs is so important is partly due to the extremes of his personality and the accomplishments he would make, almost surely as a direct result of that personality.

The dualism theme continues in Jobs’ young adult years. He was not content to attend college, get a job and work his way up the corporate ladder. Instead, after working at Atari for a short while, he headed for India to live out some quasi-hippie dream of self-discovery. In time he returns to America and eventually reaches Reed College, a liberal arts school in the Portland OR area. He does not really learn much at school but he does continue his exploration of drugs and paradoxically various extreme vegan diets. I say paradoxically because he was convinced that good health was best achieved via diet, a theory that stands in stark contrast to his extensive experimentation with LSD and other hallucinogens.  And ironically may have contributed to his death from cancer as he tried to initially treat it with diet rather than medicine and surgery. Why Jobs felt food could damage his body but not the various drugs with which he experimented is one more of the mysteries of his life’s philosophy. Having finished his experiments in Portland, he returns to Palo Alto and begins the journey that was to demonstrate his “genius”.

It begins when he meets Steve Wozniak, the brilliant hardware engineer who would with Jobs and Ronald Wayne found Apple in 1976. Their first successful product would be the Apple II desk top computer. Jobs’ insistence of doing things his way would quickly become apparent. (Jobs would state in an interview with Isaacson that “he was usually right”; so despite the downside of verbally running over people, the ends clearly justified the means in Jobs’ view.) Whether or not Jobs was right about the Apple II design and that of its immediate successor or not, his behavior would open a breach between him and Wozniak that would essentially part them as co-workers forever. As would be his life-long pattern of “no greys”, Jobs would establish very early in his tenure at Apple that there were two ways: his way and the wrong way. This ethic would very well prove to be the driving force behind Jobs’ drive to force Apple into making the devices he fathered exactly as he wanted them. And the way he wanted them would include everything from the big picture of overall design to the shape of screw heads to the color of the factory machines that would build Apples’ products – even, as in this last case if it created formidable costs, delayed release dates, and even quality problems with the end product being manufactured.

One of the issues that would haunt Jobs from the time of the Apple II release was his illegitimate daughter Lisa. Jobs would father her with Chrisann Brennan, a woman from his hippie era at Reed College. Fearing (perhaps) that acknowledging Lisa at the time the Apple II was being released would tarnish it in the marketplace or perhaps simply because he was so focused on its release, Jobs refused to acknowledge Lisa or his relationship with Chrisann. Forced into court over his paternity, he eventually accepted his responsibility but he failed repeatedly in his role as father to Lisa. This created a decades-long tension between the two of them, and perhaps helped Jobs be a better father to the three children he had by Laurene; though even with the two girls (Erin and Eve), there was distance between father and daughter. Only with his son Reed, did Jobs pour himself into the role of father. Again, one is tempted to go back to Jobs’ own childhood and apparent sense of rejection by his birth parents to explain some aspects of Jobs’ failure as a father.

One family member that Jobs did adore and respect outside of this immediate family was the writer Mona Simpson. She was parented and raised by the same two that bore Jobs; though in her case and unlike Jobs, she was born after they were married. Like Jobs she is a brilliant and creative force, even writing a fictionalized novel about a Silicon Valley tycoon that would not acknowledge his daughter, “A Regular Guy” (1992). Interestingly enough, Jobs worked with Simpson to find their father, Jandali, but then having found him, Simpson alone would go to see him; and per a request from Jobs, she would not reveal to Jandali that she and jobs had found one another.

Besides his father Paul, other major influences on Jobs would be Bob Dylan’s music, Zen mysticism and the Bauhaus art movement. A major key to understanding Jobs can be found in these latter two disparate areas of study – both to some degree emphasize a return to simplicity. To Jobs, simplicity in design was where the true beauty in design could be found. This point of view from Jobs and from his later collaborator on design, Sir Jonathan Paul Ive (currently Apple's Chief Design Officer) would play a central role in all the devices Jobs would father: Apple II, Mac, Apple Stores, iPhone, iPad, and iPod. So thoroughly would this design philosophy shape Jobs, that it would even play a role in the layout of the Apple stores and the windows and floorplan in Apple’s headquarters building. And while it is not hard to argue that Zen helped bring Jobs to these design insights, it is hard to avoid noticing that the calm that Zen meditation normally brings its adherents clearly failed to help Jobs find his own inner peace. His drive to being an innovator, of being a perfectionist, of someone that would only bring a truly new piece of hardware or software to the market after it was as good as it could be made, was what likely made Steve Jobs the genius that he was at design, but also quite frankly the failure he was at human relations. This latter point would drive many highly competent employees away from Jobs, and like Wozniak, co-workers never to return.

Anyone that has worked in the various industries to be found in Silicon Valley or to be serving those industries will enjoy this book, if only for the superb history of that valley Isaacson has assembled. Anyone interested in how companies are birthed in the tech industry, how they are managed, and maybe driven into the ground will also find this book of considerable value. But in fact, anyone with any curiosity about human nature (admittedly human nature at one the extreme ends of its range) will find reading about Steve Jobs an informative and at times vexing experience. He was one that earned the title of genius, if only for his insistence on his way in design and for his inexorable willfulness in seeing his vision to fruition. It may well be, he is also an exemplar of how human nature can go astray. It really leaves the question though: did Jobs achieve his career long record of brilliance despite his personality defects, or because of them? This is a biography really worth reading in an attempt to answer that question.

 

Book Review: "Flight Behavior" by Barbara Kingsolver

Flight Behavior (2012)

4.5 Stars out of 5

Barbara Kingsolver

436 pages

Barbara Kingsolver is the rare writer that combines her training and experience in science (biology in her case) with an ability to write emotionally compelling stories about people; stories that are highly relatable to wide parts of American culture. To be sure, she leans to the left politically and did managed to offend some with her comments on the war in Afghanistan by comparing it to schoolboys fighting on the playground. She will probably offend many of the same people with her 2012 book (her seventh novel), “Flight Behavior” wherein she relates the worsening situation our planet faces as regards climate change. This book lacks the inspiring philosophical footing on which her best book, 1998’s “Poisonwood Bible”, once stood so ably. But what “Flight Behavior” does do well is discuss how our changing weather is affecting the poor and she does it in a reasonably even-handed manner by giving voice to that same group of people about why they discard the whole concept of climate change. This latter point bothers me the most about the effects of climate change: why should one of the groups that should be screaming the loudest as droughts devastate their farms or tornados shred their homes, won’t even listen to the evidence of climate change, but instead cling to the idea that climate change is a “liberal” idea and thus by definition, wrong. How did science become so politicized – to the point where rational discourse has become impossible?

The absolute best part of Kingsolver’s book is her opening prolog. In it we meet Dellarobia Turnbow as she struggles to climb the mountain behind her two-bedroom home in eastern Tennessee. Dellarobia is trying to hike a hill in clothing ill-suited to the effort. As the reader listens into her internal dialog during her hike, it quickly becomes apparent that Dellarobia is equally ill-suited to the venture. She smokes and is short of breath. Worse, she is marching to a liaison with a younger man. In keeping with her character’s unhappiness and indecision, she has never consummated her imagined infidelities and one wonders based on her thoughts whether or not this hike will conclude in a similar failure to act. Her thoughts though are a magnificent introduction to the style and skill of Barbara Kingsolver in terms of her ability to create and describe her characters. And in keeping with the abilities of a skilled writer such as Kingsolver, the hike’s purpose is not to simply introduce us to Dellarobia and her problems, but is instead to lead the reader into the book’s main premise. That premise, or an example derived from the premise lies in a high mountain valley directly in Dellarobia’s path.

As she hikes and pants her way up the mountain, arguing with herself every step of way, she starts to see things that ought not to be there. Too late, she realizes that in order to impress her boyfriend she left her glasses behind in the cabin. The consequences of this to the near-sighted Dellarobia is that as stares into the distance, she cannot make out what she is looking at, but despite all reason, she thinks it is a lake of fire. Beautiful, billowing but silent clouds of orange flames rise into the air and swirl about the trees, Dellarobia is dumfounded. Shocked to the point of nearly falling, she abandons her assignation and flees back down the hill to her six year old son and two year old daughter; now in the care of her “poisoned” and poisonous mother-in-law, Hester. In time, Dellarobia learns that the “flames” were enormous clouds of Monarch butterflies (or King Billies in the local parlance). What are they doing in southern Appalachia when they should be far to the south in Mexico? This is the question Kingsolver uses to open up the issue of a warming planet. She will bring in a thoughtful and kind scientist, Professor Ovid Bryon from New Mexico to provide the scientific point of views expressed in this book. But it is Dellarobia that will play the pivotal role by acting as the “translator” between the rural life of Tennessee and the outside world; an outside world that could be defined by the citizens of the hollow where Dellarobia lives as anything further than the next town over; you know, the one with the community college.

Kingsolver has done her usual clever job of creating characters that are quite three dimensional. Dellarobia is for the most part intelligent and thoughtful, and yet at times she can be as egocentric as anyone else as she decries anyone not from her part of Tennessee and their presumed disdain for her people – this aspect of hers gets really tiring at several points in the story. Hester is yet another remarkable example of how Kingsolver creates real, highly believable people in her novels. When we first meet Hester she truly seems a poisonous character, the person in the book the least likely to prove to be any kind of ally to Dellarobia. But as with real life, there is a reason for Hester’s hatefulness – some of it is self-pity, sure, and some of it parallels a few of the same travails that Dellarobia has tried to negotiate as she grew up. These various areas where the two women have something in common, something all too common in rural America, allow Hester to finally unbend and provide some badly needed incentive to Dellarobia. Dellarobia will stop listening only to herself, will listen to Hester in a way, and will as a consequence stop being miserable with her bighearted but dim husband Cub. Cub will cease to be solely a goad to Dellarobia’s misery and indecision, and will instead provide a second kind of incentive to Dellarobia. By the book’s ending, Dellarobia will have come to a conclusion as to who she is and what she must do.

Kingsolver takes us on this journey of self-discovery via an exploration of the Monarch butterfly’s unique life cycle. Their history features a multi-thousand mile migration from Mexico to Canada, and back again over the course of three Monarch generations – no generation making the migration having any kind of living guide that had previously made the trip. Someone not interested in science may find some of Kingsolver’s explanation of the Monarch life difficult or at the very least a little tedious. That being said, no one is likely to find Professor Byron’s anger at the inactivity of the world’s people as their homelands catch fire or drowned as a consequence of global warming. And yet as passionate as his speech is near the book’s end, it is what he thinks about his speech that I find the most intriguing. Byron is embarrassed at his anger; he fears the reaction of his peers. I cannot find fault with Kingsolver writing Byron in this manner, but it fills me with dismay. It fills me with dismay because Byron’s oft-stated decision to stick to the numbers, to describe the situation and to somehow distance his emotions from what he is measuring and the long term impact of changes that he feels may be irreversible and not to talk to the press or anyone else that will listen – this is to me, almost as tragic as the science deniers in the world. The deniers are a problem; why they deny is discussed in the book to some extent. Their motivation to deny is aggravating in the extreme. But the scientists who know what is going on and yet for professional reasons keep their passions and largely their voices in check are for me a bigger problem. If there is one message in this book it is this: it is time to start screaming “bloody murder”; well, long past time actually. Because “bloody murder” is what it is going to be happening to our grandchildren.

“Flight Behavior” is an excellent and well written book. I keep waiting for a follow up to “Poisonwood Bible” in terms of its profundity coupled to Kingsolver’s excellent character development. “Flight Behavior” is not that high quality follow-up (2009’s “The Lacuna” was even less so – though the subject material of HUAC was interesting). However, Kingsolver has perhaps decided to take on the role I refer to above. She is with her writing attacking social and scientific issues that need to be thought about by the average American; and since Kingsolver weaves her social agenda into her stories of the little people (a secretary in “The Lacuna”, a young mother in “Flight Behavior”, or American missionaries in the Congo in “Poisonwood Bible”) she can work through a discussion on these social issues while at the same time exploring the loves and hates of those same “little people”. It is an interesting approach to some big issues. I greatly admire her writing and subject matter choices. I strongly recommend “Flight Behavior”.

Book Review: "A House for Mr Biswas" by V.S. Naipaul

A House for Mr Biswas (1961)

4 Stars out of 5

V.S. Naipaul

623 pages

V.S. Naipaul and his family could be poster children for the positive role the immigrant can play in their new country. His Brahmin Indian grandparents moved from India to Trinidad in the late 19^th century to work as indentured laborers in the local sugarcane fields. Naipaul’s father became an English-language journalist for the Trinidad Guardian newspaper. V.S. Naipaul continued this upward mobility by graduating from Oxford and becoming the writer his father always extoled, winning both the Booker prize in 1971 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. Naipaul’s novels also describe a kind of arc, but one quite dissimilar to his family’s’ upward movement. In the beginning, Naipaul created a series of travelogues and comic novels (such as the book reviewed here, “A House for Mr Biswas”). He then made a transition over the course of 15 novels to a modern version of Voltaire – or perhaps more accurately, he represents Voltaire’s disillusioned Candide as Naipaul’s novels begin to take a darker, more cynical view of the world with his Booker Prize winning “In a Free State” or the subsequent “Guerillas” (1975).

“A House for Mr Biswas” was published in 1961, Naipaul’s fourth novel. It comes from a time in his life when his writing was very focused on his Caribbean memories, and in the case of this book, those memories specific to his father and the diasporic Indian community he lived with in Trinidad just prior to and during WWII. The novel is for the most part told in a traditional linear manner (the prolog being the exception to this rule) and describes the life of the central character, Mohun Biswas. This is a character that is always referred to by the narrator as “Mr. Biswas”, even as a baby. The constant use of referring to Mr. Biswas as “Mr. Biswas” helps foster a sense that this character is either someone that has never been a youth in terms of his self-image or one that takes his needs to be paramount. Naipaul goes to great pains to demonstrate the latter. In the prolog, Naipaul describes the passing of Mr. Biswas’ life as he is surrounded by his family in the titular house. The prolog provides closure right at the beginning of the novel to the overall story arc and does so by describing the (let’s say) less than perfect condition of the house, Mr. Biswas’ failing health, and his largely dysfunctional family. It is a clever way of clearly for-shadowing the frustrated life of Mr. Biswas that the novel is dedicated to relating.

Mr. Biswas begins his life inauspiciously according to a local pandit; a Hindu religious figure brought in to name him at his birth. This introduction of rural Indian culture is also an introduction to much of the cultural life of East Indians living in Trinidad during the early 20^th century. And of course, it is only the beginning of Mr. Biswas’ travails. His father will die while Mr. Biswas is very young; this forces Mr. Biswas and his now impoverished mother to share a single room on a back alley. Young Mr. Biswas learns at this tender age of six or seven to feel passionate about his privacy. This need remains un-met over the course of the novel up to and including the time of his acquisition of his house near the end of the novel. By the time he does finally acquire the house in question, by the time he realizes the house is in very poor condition, and by the time he realizes he has paid a price for the house far in excess of its true value, he finally begins to take stock of what he has as opposed to what he does not have. This has been a long journey for Mr. Biswas, but he did finally reach its conclusion, and then in proper comic ironic form, he dies.

Mr. Biswas’ life after leaving the one room hovel he shared with his mother early in his life is one of constant frustrations for him. His “careers” include training as a pandit, sign painter, grocery store owner, and finally journalist. Like the book’s overall arc, each of these steps were exercises in frustration, humiliation, and ultimately, some form of failure - though in the sign painting era, Mr. Biswas will reach a major turning point in the course of his life. While painting signs at the Tulsi Family store, he eyes an attractive young woman, Shama. She is one of several daughters within the Tulsi family. He writes her a note, she ignores him, but the note falls into the hands of the Tulsi family matriarch, Mrs. Tulsi. Referred to in the novel like Mr. Biswas solely by her married name, she like Mr. Biswas expects her every need to be met, but unlike Mr. Biswas, hers are met.

This small, insignificant sign painting job at the Tulsi store is Naipaul’s version of Alice falling down the rabbit hole. It is certain that poor Mr. Biswas has done exactly that, at least in his mind. He has come into the clutches of the Tulsi family. He will spend almost his entire adult life trying to extract himself. He will take jobs, food, and places of residence from the Tulsi’s, but he will only see himself trapped, never supported. He views himself as a free agent, never as a pawn. Mrs. Tulsi has in the meanwhile surrounded herself with pawns – all of them married to her daughters. There is some value to Mr. Biswas' worldview on this topic, but there are considerable problems with it as well. His sense of entitlement will grow as will his sense of frustration as he struggles constantly to be his own man. His original desire for more room that germinated in the one room shack he shared with his mother will grow into a real and metaphorical desire for more “room” in the world of the Tulsi’s. He and his new bride Shama will feel physically constrained in the Tulsi manse that they share with her numerous sisters and their families; and he will feel further constrained as the Tulsi’s coerce him into various jobs and living choices he would not have otherwise made had he remained single. That his family obligations play a significant role in the power of the Tulsi’s does not seem to mitigate their decisions in any way to Mr. Biswas – he simply is not getting his way. He will be free and live in his own large home.

This book is easily read and enjoyed by just about anyone with some curiosity about other cultures, especially expatriate Indian cultures. Naipaul takes great care in describing the social hierarchy and interactions of Trinidadian Indians. One aspect of special note is how Naipaul details the manner in which the women in the Tulsi family vie for favor from their matriarch, Mrs. Tulsi and by extension how they try to exert control over their sisters. Each of them employs what seems to me to be one of the most extreme forms of passive-aggressive behavior I have been exposed to. For example, should one sister have the temerity to purchase a new piece of furniture for her portion of the Tulsi estate, at least one other sister will begin audibly remonstrating to her own children to make way for the incoming piece of furniture. She will further comment to the effect that “such finery” must be cared for by all even those not able to afford such extravagances. These kinds of comments will be made constantly no matter the achievements of their in-laws: be they a new piece of furniture, a child that excels at school, a new car or job, etc. It simply does not matter. It is a perfect example of a zero-sum world. If my sister has received something good, then by definition, I am diminished. Another way of looking at it is, anything that one member of the family (herd?) does that sets them apart is a kind of internal threat to the family as a whole. Standing apart is allowed only to those at the very top of the family pyramid of power; all others are expected to be equal in their low rank and powerlessness. This is a concept that is a complete anathema to Mr. Biswas; a character wedded to the idea of his uniqueness and special status, despite all evidence to the contrary.

From a negative point of view, you will at times be slogging your way through the novel. It is too long, repetitive and it can be tedious – not a lot happens, and it never happens quickly. But then this is Mr. Biswas’ life: slow, tedious and filled with multiple failures of a similar nature. Does Naipaul have a hidden meaning in his characters beyond this message of frustration? Are the Tulsi’s a metaphor for Trinidad’s colonial masters, the British? Or is Naipaul simply trying to sum up his father’s life in a comic manner with no deeper context? Naipaul will certainly employ hidden levels of meaning in his later novels, but in “A House for Mr Biswas” I feel that Naipaul is refining his abilities to define his characters, even as he searches for meaning in his and his father's histories. There is no real growth in any of the characters (with the possible exception of Mr. Biswas’ son, Anand; presumably V.S. Naipaul himself), but they are clearly described to the reader. Mr. Biswas really seems stuck in terms of his own growth. He may glimpse near the end some happiness as he recognizes what he has in his family and his long-sought though modest house. In truth though, he is a model of frustration and stasis. Even the world on sleepy Trinidad has moved on following WWII, but not Mr. Biswas, not in any significant manner. He is what he is, what he has always been.

It is worth reading Naipaul’s novels just to enjoy how he manipulates his use of tone, rhythm and language as well as to learn from his themes. “A House for Mr. Biswas” is a good way to start your way through his works. He employs language in telling his tale that is at the highest level of achievement. Like Joseph Conrad (someone the Nobel committee compared him to) or J.M. Coetzee, V.S. Naipaul is an English language writer that comes from a social background very far afield from most American literature. All of these men are brilliant authors and if you are interested in expanding your own exploration of non-American writers that are working at the very peak of their art, then do start or continue your own journey with “A House for Mr. Biswas”. You will likely learn some new things about life beyond America’s shores, but you will also be entertained by a brilliant writer near the beginning of his career, and I am sure you will be pleased with the effort you expend it reading this novel.

Movie Review: "Room"

Room (2015)

R

4.5 Stars out of 5

Director                             Lenny Abrahamson
Writer                                Emma Donoghue (book and screenplay)
Cinematography              Danny Cohen

Bree Larson                       Ma (Joy Newsom)
Jacob Tremblay                 Jack
Sean Bridgers                    Old Nick
Joan Allen                          Nancy (Grandma)
William H. Macy               Robert (Grandpa)
Tom McCamus                  Leo

 

In the spring of 2008, a case of abduction and incestuous rape was reported in Austria. Middle-aged Elisabeth Fritzl has been held captive for 24 years by her father in the basement of the house he shared with his wife, Rosemarie. The details of this case were as unbelievable as they were a terrible example of the depths to which a human can descend. Not only had Josef Fritzl repeatedly raped his daughter and imprisoned her in his basement, he had also imprisoned four of the seven children Elisabeth bore as a result of his twice weekly rapes of her; the other three he raised upstairs as foundlings with his oblivious wife. This horrible story and possibly the individual case of the five year old child, Felix (the youngest child) inspired Emma Donoghue to write “Room” (2008). In 2015, she wrote the screenplay for the movie made from her book, “Room”.

“Room” the movie seems to be a prime example of a movie script that has been written with a premise that serves little more purpose than to set up a final climatic scene (see 2015’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings” with the apparently required CGI’d parting of the waves). And yet as the Fritzl case shows there is no particular element of the set-up for “Room” that could not occur. It could occur and has occurred several times in several guises in recent history (see also the Elizabeth Smart story in 2002 right here in Salt Lake City). However, this emotionally-wrenching story of a young mother, Joy Newsom (Bree Larson) and her five year old child, Jack (Jacob Tremblay) has so many topics worth thinking about besides their situation and how they deal with it.

Best Actress Oscar-winning Larson plays Joy so expertly it is hard to believe that Larson’s film acting resume is as short as it is. Joy known as Ma to young Jack weaves from loving and thoughtful motherhood to fierce protector of Jack from his rapist father, Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) to the inevitable down days when she sinks beneath the covers on her bed to somehow sleep away the awful situation she is trapped in. As good as Larson is, nine year old Tremblay as Jack cannot really be said to perform at a lower level; especially when one considers his age. Jack is the ultimate innocent living with his mother in a 12’X12’ room equipped with little more than a bed, bath, toilet and wardrobe. He knows no other world and unlike his mother is filled with the joy he finds in his tiny kingdom. They both look to the skylight on any given day: Joy with thoughts of things lost, Jack only to the wonder of the sky.

Joy is a remarkable creature: kidnapped when she was but 17 by Old Nick (his true name is unknown to her) during an act of kindness by her to him, she raises her son with incomparable compassion and a sense of hope for him – hope she no longer feels is certain for herself. When events appear to be rushing towards ruin with Old Nick, she formulates a plan to escape. That the escape must be made is frighteningly clear based on Old Nick’s comments, but also the plan of escape requires that in order to save Jack, she must risk his life. The cinematic tension as the plan unfoldss is enervating and to any parent, overwhelmingly emotional. The reunion of Jack and Ma following the escape is one of the most emotional I have ever seen.

But Jack and Ma’s issues are far from resolved. The second part of this two part story details how recovery from abduction, rape and confinement has badly damaged Joy; far more so than Jack. One of the more compelling aspects of Joy’s new state is ironically her new relationship to Jack. In Room, she was his stars and moon, and he hers; but now as newly freed captives, they are surrounded by well-wishing family and health professionals. Joy has lost her  sense of purpose; Jack has lost his Ma. He loses her as she sinks deeper and deeper into depression. In time and through an act of kindness by Jack, he is able to save her a second time: the first by his risky escape from the room and eventual explanation to the police, and the second time by his enduring love for his mother. The picture of the two of them on a modern equivalent to a hammock from Joy’s childhood sums up their adventure from Room to their new life of freed mother and son.

There is little to criticize about writer Emma Donoghue and director Lenny Abrahamson’s excellent movie “Room”. I fidgeted a little over how quickly the police broke down an armored door, one that had held Joy and Jack prisoners for years. A bigger criticism is the inclusion of Grandpa Newsom as played by the always excellent William H. Macy. He enters the movie as the overwrought father embracing a daughter he thought lost and dead for seven years. He leaves as a man unable to speak further with his now recovered daughter or even to look at his grandson, Jack. To be sure, the death of a child often causes the break-up of marriages as it does in this tale. And it is believable that the child of rape might be a reminder of that rape, just as the face of that innocent child reminds one of the rapist. Yes, it might happen, but in the case of this fictional story it seems too much. The multiple scenes (again amazingly played by Tremblay) as he can only look at his mother or speak to her in a whisper in the early days following his escape are fully believable. The intelligent aspect of this goes further to point out how those around Jack struggle to expand the ambit of their understanding to give him the space and time he needs. His Grandpa cannot do it; lucky for Jack, his Grandma (Joan Allen) and her new husband Leo (Tom McCamus) can. Lucky for the fictional Jack, but the Grandpa/Leo side story is an unnecessary literary flourish that only detracts from the movie.

That being said, the acting and story are really of the highest caliber. I also greatly enjoyed the direction of Lenny Abrahamson and cinematography of Danny Cohen in act 1 of “Room”. Consider the set is said to be roughly a 12’X12’ shed within which are crammed the actors and their implements of life. The camera moves from left to right and back again throughout the confinement parts of the movie. The book’s version of the story is told from Jack’s point of view, and the camera work seems designed to stay with that POV. Room rarely seems confining to this young boy who knows no other world. There’s nothing small about Room to this five year old; it is the World. Another technique used to image the mindsets of Joy and Jack are the several scenes where they are pictured looking upward toward the skylight with its light streaming onto their faces – again, there is nothing but hope here for Jack. He is not confined, he is elated.

 

 

This movie is a gem and a perfect counterpoint to the big picture of 2015, "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" (evidently a big favorite of young Tremblay). Both are excellent films. However, they use the diametrically opposed elements of story-telling: the immensity of outer space versus the 500 square feet of a back yard shed. But they both also use very effectively the power of the human imagination. Go see “Room”, but do bring an expectation to see the human spirit alive in the mind of a glorious five year old. Then go to bed that evening dreaming that the five year and not his father is the true icon of humanity.

Movie Review: "Amy"

Amy (2015)

Documentary
R

5 Stars out of 5

Director:                                              Asif Kapadia
Film Editing                                         Chris King
Music                                                   Antonio Pinto

Amy Winehouse                                Herself
Lauren Gilbert                                   Friend
Juliette Ashby                                    Friend
Nick Shymanski                                 Friend and Manager
Tyler James                                        Himself
Mitch Winehouse                             Father
Salaam Remi                                      Himself
Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def)                 Himself
Tony Bennett                                     Himself
Blake Fiedler                                      Husband

 

What forces combine to enable a young person to grow into a musical prodigy, and what other forces collude to destroy that same life through a combination of alcohol, drugs and bulimia? These questions kept burning through my mind as I watched the 2015 winner for Best Documentary, “Amy”. Even though, I didn’t really get answers to these questions or perhaps even to the more basic one of who Amy Winehouse was by the time of her death from a heart attack in July, 2011, I still came away from this film with a sense that her story as seen from without, if not from within, was as well told as it could be. Whether you are a fan of Amy Winehouse’s music (and I must say prior to watching this movie, I was not), you will be moved by this very sympathetic exploration of her rise and fall.

The movie starts off non-promisingly via the use of several home movies from the late 90’s. The endless bouncy movement of the camera could induce sea sickness in any one. And yet, and yet how lucky we as a member of the audience are that her friends Nick Shymanksy or Juliette Ashby took the time to take these home movies and then to share them with director Asif Kapadia. We are further lucky that Kapadia had Chris King as his film editor. Between the two of them, they weave together a narrative of Ms. Winehouse’s life. The opening scene of her singing “Happy Birthday” to her friend Lauren Gilbert might for any other fourteen year old be but a minor moment, but by the time the film closes, you may think back as I did to this scene and wonder how did this young woman go so far off the tracks of her life.

Kapadia has gathered a massive collection of archival and filmed videos of Ms. Winehouse as she begins her career as a Jazz singer. He casts the story in the mode of the singer telling her own story via the various interviews she gave as well as over 100 interviews that Kapadia conducted with those around her. That she was a musical genius seems to be in no doubt as Kapadia has such musical luminaries as Mos Def and Tony Bennett (and many others between them on the musical and social spectrum) comment on her. They universally admire her work, and it would seem from the film universally worried about her.

Ms. Winehouse evidently began her “special diet” while still an adolescent; of course, as a teenager, she likely had no idea that bulimia was also a form of addictive behavior and was certainly not special in any positive manner. Why she chose to lose so much weight or why her mother took no action to intervene is not in the least made clear. She was clearly loved by her mother and friends. Her father and mother split up while she was still quite young, and while her father did not play a large role in her younger years, she seemed to love him up to the day she died. The movie implies she was willing to do many things she really did not want to do (for example the aborted concert in Bulgaria three months before her death) in an effort to please him. Her father and certainly her husband Blake Fiedler played a role in her later substance abuse. Her father did not seem to be the cause of why she turned to alcohol and drugs, but he most certainly played no role in encouraging her to seek treatment. And the role Fiedler played in getting her on cocaine and heroin is not only, not denied by Fiedler, but in fact appears to be a complete non-issue to him. Like her father, he also played absolutely no role in helping her get healthy. Her childhood and later friends try repeatedly to help her, but they simply did not have the suasion of her father or husband.

Her story is heart wrenching, but it is also enlightening to a great degree. Most people in America in the early 21^st century fully recognize that alcoholism is a kind of disease; they may not understand it to be a disease in the sense of a communicable disease, but they understand that the patient is ill and not morally bankrupt. I wonder though how thoroughly this concept is understood by the average person not intimate on a first hand basis with an addict. I may have for example an intellectual understanding of how certain drugs like alcohol, the opiates, or methamphetamine literally re-wire the human brain. But what do I really think when I see an alcoholic passed out in the park? Do I look at them with pity for their situation or perhaps with pity for their lack of will power? Watching this movie took me back to Jack Lemmon’s and Lee Remick’s characters in 1962’s “Days of Wine and Roses”. This excellent but fictional tale is as sad as any you are likely to see come out of Hollywood on the subject of alcoholism. However, “Amy” is about a real person, one with a problem that she could not fight against and win. The pain in her eyes near the end is more painful than almost anything I have seen. I think again back to those same eyes when she was fourteen and wonder again at how she fell.

This film is not perfect. I really wished I could via the film puzzle out why Ms. Winehouse turned to bulimia and alcohol. I can guess why she took the path to drugs as the pressure of her growing fame grew too great, or the criminal influence of her husband. I still don’t really understand how she or anyone in a safe and loving home turns in such directions. Despite these unmet wishes, I still strongly recommend this movie to any adult with any interest in Jazz or the human condition.