What to Look for in French Films

For the most part, foreign films are like classic novels: the ones we hear about are the really good ones. But in recent years, I've noticed that foreign language films featuring big-name stars (Gael Garcia Bernal, Penelope Cruz, Audrey Tatou) might simply be trying to bank off American audiences. As such, a good rule of thumb is to follow is that foreign films that make it to US theaters with actors you've never heard of are going to be good, while those with a star-studded cast should be approached with more caution. Three French movies I recently viewed a la Netflix are a case in point.

The first, Summer Hours (L'Heure d'Ete) exemplifies good contemporary French film. Directed by Olivier Assayas, it's an intimate portrayal of three siblings who must divide up their mother's estate after her death. The estate is a rambling house in the French countryside filled with valuable turn of the century French art. Like 2008's The Class, it addresses the tensions in modern France between tradition and modernity; between the foreign and the native; between young and old. For instance, the oldest brother wants to keep the house and split the time there with his younger brother and sister. But the siblings, both of whom live abroad, want to sell the estate and divide the earnings. While the symbolism of the mother's house is quite obvious, Assayas doesn't beat you over and over with the themes.

The story is told through restrained dialogue; we see just enough of each character interacting with their spouses and their children to see where they are coming from. The sister, Adrienne (played by Juliette Binoche) is briefly seen with her American boyfriend at breakfast. She reads a French paper and then summarizes an article for the boyfriend. This quick exchange reveals how comfortable she is living with someone of a different background. Later, we aren't surprised when Adrienne announces her engagement to the American.

In contrast, the movie Paris is filled with as many cliches as the creators could fit. Romain Duris, a French actor who's made many appearances in American theaters over the past five years, plays an ailing young man in need of a heart condition. So as he stays indoors, he looks out the window and reflects on how lucky everyone else is to be alive and enjoying the city. How you don't realize the beauty until it's about to be snatched away. A series of loosely connected stories, Paris also tells of an architect who tries to find more meaning in his life after having a nightmare about being “too normal,” and a young Cameroonian who illegally immigrates to France. Yes, we get it: Paris is a changing city, and a city of hopes and dreams.

Finally, Coco Before Chanel is more of an Audrey Tatou vehicle than a biopic. Telling the tale of Coco Chanel before she became a famous designer, the movie typecasts Tatou as an inconspicuous, yet sharp-witted young woman. According to the film, Chanel’s practicality and disregard for others’ opinions lead her to design loose-fitting, comfortable clothing for women. Luckily, Chanel also has two affairs at key times to get the right people to invest in her fashion operations. Finally, a well timed death gives Coco the steely resolve to become Chanel. While the costumes provide a visual feast, the rest of a film merely provides a lesson on why not to watch biopics.

Not Preaching to the Choir

While flying to Arizona a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of finishing a brilliant novel on the plane. 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Novel by Rebecca Goldstein was so good that I deigned to carry the hardcover on board with me even though I only had 30 pages left to read. This self-proclaimed academic satire makes fun of the recent phenomenon of best-selling atheist books (think, God is Not Great, The God Delusion, Letter to a Christian Nation, etc). Cass Seltzer, a religion professor, suddenly finds himself in the spotlight having written a tract entitled 36 Arguments Against the Existence of God. Included is an appendix that outlines the 36 most prevalent arguments, and the logical refutations to each of these.

In addition to Cass, the cast of characters includes a raving, red-haired feminist anthropologist (Roz), a menschy university president who cannot quell student protests, a self-absorbed brilliant female mathematician (also Cass's girlfriend), and Cass's rambling, incoherent yet highly regarded Ph.D adviser (Dr. Jonas Klapper). Of course, these characters all engage in witty bantering on philosophy, mathematics, science, and religion. These asides that allude to everything from William James to game theory make each chapter fun, challenging, and nostalgic to read. They recall the pretentious conversations that are unavoidable in academia.

But the biggest joke that runs throughout is that Cass has no idea how he became a bestselling author; he was basically writing about something he'd mulled over his entire life at the right time. It was nearly an act of divine intervention. Cass's reaction is appropriately transcendent. 36 Arguments begins with Cass standing on a bridge, overlooking the Charles River, feeling closer to something spiritual than he ever had before, as he reflects on his newly acquired fame.

Indeed, this transcendent feeling crops up several times throughout the novel, suggesting that a spiritual connection can be felt regardless of one's religious belief. Goldstein makes this theme most clear by interjecting a somewhat forced storyline of Azyra, a Hassidic boy whom Cass meets first as a grad student, and mentors for the next twenty years. Azyra is more or less a child math prodigy. While his family and neighbors recognize that he's special, they think he's been touched by God and should become the next Rabbi. As Azyra becomes a teenager, he needs to decide if he should leave his town and go to college to reach his mathematical potential, or stay and become the next Rabbi. Ultimately, Azyra does choose to become a rabbi, demonstrating that the knowledge of some things, like family, may be the best knowledge of all.

That's the Way We Get By: Notes from Spoon

Went to a sold out Spoon concert last night and can hardly remember when I've had so much fun on a Monday night. My friend Maria and I got there an hour after doors opened, but it wasn't late enough to miss the unfortunate first opener, The Strange Boys. The lead singer sounded like a failed yodeler whenever he sang, but their musical instrument chops were ok.

Next was one of my recent iPod acquisitions, Deerhunter. Despite a high-looking bassist, they managed to pull off the musical excellence that I came to expect from their album, Microcastle. They replicated their ambient sound on stage, but at the cost of completely muffling the lyrics.

Finally, Spoon came on at 10:15, three hours after doors opened (photo courtesy of Dcist). Britt Daniel looked sharp and sounded crystal clear as he opened with an acoustic version of The Underdog. Soon, Daniel was joined by the rest of the band, leaving soft acoustics behind. Spoon played nearly every song from its latest album, Transference. This made for much dancing along, but also got redundant after a while since most of their songs from their last two albums sound the same. At least the interesting lighting changes between each song helped distinguish them.

Despite this, it was still incredibly fun to see Spoon replicate live the sounds that I thought were pure production on their albums. Spoon's albums have this interesting echo that I thought was done by recording multiple layers. In fact, it seems like an echo setting on the amp can do this for you, which sounded great live.

I was a bit disappointed that Spoon only played two tracks from my favorite album Kill the Moonlight (Someone Something and Jonathon Fisk), but the concert definitely inspired me to listen to Transference a few more times.

Journeys to the American South and Contemporary China

I can’t stop recommending two recent non-fiction books that I read in the past month: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and Country Driving: A Journey from City to Country by Peter Hessler. Both works are ostensibly journalistic endeavors, the first about the woman whose cancerous cells became the famous HeLa cells used for cancer research today, and the second about development and life in contemporary China. While these are seemingly disparate topics, Skloot and Hessler share a similar strategy in their reporting. They both inject themselves into their stories so that their narratives are more memoir-esque than typical journalism. But they do this extremely well to uncover new insights into their subjects.

Henrietta Lacks was a thirty year old black woman with cervical cancer who checked herself into Johns Hopkins hospital in 1950. When her physician discovered that her cancer was rapidly spreading, he took a sample without her knowledge. His lab soon discovered that these cells could easily replicate in culture. They became the first immortal line of human cells. Soon, these cells found themselves in labs all around the world, influencing polio research, cancer research, and even HIV research. Skloot remains silent in the narrative about Lacks’ life and the scientific community’s use of her cells. But Skloot injects herself in the narrative to introduce another theme to the story: that of race. Skloot, a white student of science and aspiring journalist decided after college to track down the story of Henrietta Lacks. She read up on all previous journalistic reports of Henrietta Lacks and tracked down Lacks’ doctors. This research is evident throughout the book. But the final thing for Skloot to do was track down Lacks’ family; her husband and children were still living, and Skloot knew that they were the missing piece in telling the complete story of Henrietta Lacks.

So Skloot drove down to Lacks Town in rural Virginia to find Deborah, Henrietta’s daughter. Here, the book becomes more of a memoir. Skloot chronicles the difficulties of getting Lacks’ relatives to speak to her, but along the way, learns of just why they were so secretive. Once word got out in the late 1970’s that Henrietta was the provider of HeLa cells, everyone wanted a piece of the Lacks family. By the time Skloot came around in the early 2000’s, the family had become jaded. Skloot weaves the family’s mistreatment into Henrietta Lack’s story as an illustration of racial disparities in the US. Skloot’s close relationship to the family, however, also shows that she is not merely using them, but recording a version of the Lacks’ family history, as they would like.

Similarly, Country Driving tells the personal stories of the many people Peter Hessler encounters on the road as he drove around China in the past eight years. These aren’t people with many tangible records or documents, but regular migrants, village politicians, and museum guides who have all been affected by China’s incredible change over the past fifteen years. The book is divided into three sections: first, Hessler takes weekend trips from Beijing to Inner Mongolia, following the Great Wall; second, he purchases a second home in the rural suburbs of Beijing to write and finds himself involved in village politics and development; third, Hessler travels to southern China to witness the growth of factories and emergence of cities in formerly sparsely inhabited mountains.

While each section could stand by itself, they together tell a story of change. The Inner Mongolia chapter sets up China’s rich history well by discussing the Great Wall and China’s long history of keeping foreigners out. This tradition contrasts nicely with Hessler’s experience of traveling in Inner Mongolia where people were friendly towards his foreign face and mostly couldn’t care less about the history the Great Wall represented. The second section shows how China’s economic growth affects one family. After moving to Sancha, the rural village near Beijing, Hessler befriends the Wei family. Though their annual income starts at 150 dollars a year when Peter first meets them, it grows to 800 a year by the end of their acquaintance five years later. In that time, the government built a paved road to Sancha, which helped the Weis launch a food business. But as the family’s wealth grows, their unease does as well. The father of the family smokes and becomes more controlling of the wife, while the son gets overweight and watches more television. But Hessler doesn’t mock them, only describing how rational decisions got the Weis to where they were. Finally, the last section shows an entire region’s growth and the individual spirit that forms its base. In Zhejiang province, Hessler meets Boss Wang who starts a factory that produces bra parts. Hessler describes the migrant workers who come to seek jobs with compassion and humor, likening the booming factory industry in China to the booming factory industry during the American industrial revolution. It’s an era where people are still playing by the ear and ingenuity is rewarded.

While Hessler’s descriptions of Inner Mongolia and his attempts to navigate Chinese highways occasionally carry a comedic travelogue tone, his book accomplishes a serious task. He tells individual stories that reveal China’s heterogeneity while painting an overall image of a country still making up its mind about what it wants to be.

Classical Take on Henry V at Shakespeare National Theatre

The first thing Mike and I saw when we arrived at Henry V at the Shakespeare Theatre Company fifteen minutes late last night was a giant papier-mache head with white balls coming out of it. This was a joke that the Dauphin of France sent to King Henry V, sealing the latter's decision to war against France. While this piece of modern know-how detracted from the drama of Henry V, the overall production uses a traditional approach that illuminates the power of Shakespeare's language.

The Shakespeare Theatre is producing Henry V concurrently with Richard II. These histories with overlapping themes share the same exact cast, featuring Michael Hayden as both King Richard and King Henry. This production makes good use of a spare set and three chorus members to paint a picture of the battles and transition from scene to scene, as the players in Elizabethan times needed to do.

Of course, the production is also aided by excellent sound effects during scene changes to mimic the sounds of battle. In addition, elaborate costumes helps the audience clearly distinguish between the French (ostentatious) and English (modest).

Similarly, the acting struck a good balance between flashy and subdued, with each style being used at the right time. Tom Story plays the Dauphin for laughs, injecting a bit of haughty French nasality into every line. He appears as a helpless, flabby sap as opposed to an evil enemy. Story provides good comic relief, though at the cost of credibility.

In contrast, Michael Hayden's Henry is more subtle and convincing. Hayden's Henry evolves over time. While he initially bursts into anger at seeing the Dauphin's tennis gag, by the end of the play, Henry has become a man who is incapable of such a quick, knee-jerk reaction. By communicating with his soldiers and embarking on war together, Henry becomes more reflective. In contrast to the Kenneth Branagh's rousing Saint Crispen's Day Speech, Hayden delivers his version as a fireside chat. He looks each soldier in the eye, recruiting each man personally, as if to say "You, indeed are my brother." It's a solemn, unvictorious tone, that ultimately succeeds.

Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court

Two weeks ago, Amy Bach spoke at Busboys and Poets, DC's famed progressive cafe-bookstore, about ordinary injustice. Such banal injustice is the brand of American justice that goes in county and local courtrooms that chooses expediency over justice when it comes to most minor crimes. Bach outlined her theory that the adversarial system lacks checks and balances on attorneys and judges. The incentives are misplaced so that it's not worth it for defense lawyers to fight for their clients, or for prosecutors to prosecute unwinnable cases. Although defense lawyers and prosecutors are supposed to oppose each other in court, it is generally easier to cooperate at the expense of defendants and victims. Bach was promoting her book, Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court. In it, she builds her case against ordinary injustice by profiling a public defender who didn't defend, a judge who didn't judge, and a prosecutor who didn't prosecute.

The public defender's story stands out the most. Bach focuses on Robert Surrency, the public defender of Greene County, Georgia. On the first day that Bach arrived in this courtroom, she saw a throng of people waving papers at their state appointed attorney, Surrency. It was clear that Surrency had no idea who his clients were. This was because Surrency had a huge caseload. Since most counties are left to decide how to fund indigent defense, there is no nationally used system. Greene County happened to use a system where a public defense contract goes out to the lowest bidder. That year, Surrency bid the lowers for all public defense cases. This means he had his case load on top of his regular full time job. Needless to say, he did not have time to carefully examine each case. Instead, it made sense for him to plea bargain his clients as quickly as possible, whether or not that gave them the best outcome.

The prosecutor's story in Quitman County Mississippi struck a similar chord. Bach found that over the past two decades, nearly all domestic violence cases had been dropped because the prosecutor's investigator deemed these to be the least winnable cases. Juries notoriously feel unsympathetic towards domestic violence victims. In addition, the victims themselves often refused to testify against their abusers. Again, it made sense for the prosecutor -- an elected official-- to simply shove these cases away in a drawer and focus his attention on the big media cases.

Bach's chief insight is that both of these above examples could be mitigated with oversight. The current system doesn't provide incentives for lawyers to check each others work, but the average citizen could check lawyers' work with the right public data. Bach suggests for people to demand information on the number of guilty pleas without an attorney present, the public defender's typical caseload, the numbers and types of cases that go unprosecuted, and the bails and number of days spent in jail for those charged with crimes. With these data, Bach bets that patterns would emerge, holding key players accountable.

Which is more voyeuristic: In Treatment or Dexter?

Netflix is a wonderful thing. Thanks to its no late-fee policy and streaming video, I've been able to watch two shows this year that had been hidden behind the HBO/Showtime wall for me in the past: In Treatment and Dexter. In Treatment is an HBO show that follows a psychiatrist, Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) and four of his patients. When in season, it airs Monday through Friday, with each patient visiting Paul on each day, followed by Paul visiting his own therapist (Dianne Wiest) on Friday. Ninety-nine percent of the action takes place inside Paul's office; the show is entirely dialogue. In contrast, Showtime's Dexter is about a blood spatter specialist who's also a serial killer. Except he only kills other murderers. The action takes place at bloody crime scene and the streets of Miami. In other words, you'd expect In Treatment to appeal to middle age academic types, and Dexter to appeal to gore-loving teenagers. More in the first category than the second, I expected to enjoy In Treatment for its psychological revelations. But after nearly finishing the first season of In Treatment, and the first three seasons of Dexter, I must confess that both satisfies one's voyeuristic interest in others' psychological failings.

In Treatment starts off slowly, with characters contextualizing their existence to Paul. But after the first couple of weeks, Paul starts to unravel their lies and hidden pasts. We come to understand why a gorgeous young doctor has a thing for older men, why a married woman wants to be treated badly by her husband, why an Airforce pilot leaves his wife. Along the way, we also see Paul's marriage disintegrate as he learns of his wife's affair, and confronts his own feelings for one of his patients. Sometimes when a patient misses an appointment, we are treated to an epic fight between Paul and his wife instead. The show is driven by dialogue, but you gradually see how powerful this dialogue is. The verbal abuse that the couple who sees Paul for marriage counseling heap on each other is akin to Antichrist-like physical abuse. Paul's cringe-worthy fights with his wife recall your last epic battle just like how an actor's on screen wound reminds you of that time you needed stitches. In this way, In Treatment exposes raw psychological wounds that make you feel almost shameful for intruding.

Beyond its body count and Michael Hall's astounding acts of killing, Dexter is at its heart a psychological show. In contrast to In Treatment, however, Dexter invites the viewer to explore Dexter Morgan's persona through his thoughtful voiceovers. Dexter tells us he's a "monster," someone who has no feelings. He "needs" to kill. Luckily, his adopted father recognized this need early on and taught him a code to only kill other serial killers. This concept, which could expose Dexter to many plot holes, is remarkably believable due to Dexter's rich psychological development. In the first season, he grapples with his true identity; in the second, he grapples with his adopted father's shadow; in the third, he grapples with sharing himself with others. Even though the other characters are blind to Dexter's true self, the audience feels like Dexter's true confidante. Despite the many dead bodies and other gruesome shenanigans, Dexter does not seek to provide gratuitous grossness.

Separately, both In Treatment and Dexter provide artful depictions of people. Together, they show that this can be done artfully with two very different concepts.