The Rake Magazine

Year: 2007

  • Good Intentions Do Not A Great War Film Make

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    Letters From Iwo Jima, 2006. Directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Iris Yamashita. Starring Kazunari Ninomiya, Ken Watanabe, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase, Shido Nakamura, and Hiroshi Watanabe.

    Now showing at the Uptown Theater.

    During World War II, the Marines used to tell their recruits that they were being trained so hard so that they might be able to survive the worst that the enemy would throw at them. “You live for your country,” they preached. “Let the other guy die for his.”

    The Japanese soldiers in Letters From Iwo Jima were undoubtedly trained to be tough as well, but were they told to live for their country? According to my shallow understanding of history, and this film, they pretty much knew they were going to die. They dug trenches and then tunnels in Iwo Jima, scraping and clawing past the loose black volcanic dirt and into the hard rock, burrowing deep down into the island whose tactical promise seemed dubious at best. Like the Americans, many of these were citizen soldiers, bakers and horsemen, destined, we know, to die in this rotten battle.

    There is one moment of crazy brilliance in Letters From Iwo Jima, when an officer abandons a unit he considers to be cowardly. The man wants to have an honorable death, so he straps some mines on his body, storms away from a group of baffled and terrified soldiers, and lays down amongst some American corpses in the hopes that a tank will plow over him, detonating the mines. Amongst the dead, in the wicked heat and stench, he waits and waits and waits, staring up at the bleak sky as buzzards circle overhead. Unbelievably, he will survive. Is he unlucky? Or, in his survival, has he found redemption?

    Letters From Iwo Jima is the second of Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima saga, and, unfortunately, it is by far the weakest of the two. Letters is a profoundly noble effort, and the saga is notable if only for the fact that, just a few years ago, it probably couldn’t even have been made. Who would think that one of America’s premiere directors would make a motion picture celebrating a former–and, in many cases, still loathed–enemy? Unfortunately, Letters is a rather dull film, and worst of all, it lacks insight into its characters. The Japanese in this film are a purely American invention, a people who do not, in any way, seem to embrace their country’s philosophy. The hero doesn’t want to be there, the soldiers are not brutal, and if you go by this movie, Americans and Japanese would all just get along if only there weren’t this damn war. And its final revelation–that surviving, and finding redemption as a POW–doesn’t give us any glimpse at the still mysterious (to me, and I imagine many Americans) belief that it was more noble to die.

    There is virtually no plot in Letters From Iwo Jima. What story there is concerns the arrival of General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (played by the great Ken Watanabe) who is trying to instill some intelligence to the defense of this island. Contrasting this is the struggle of Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a young private, a former baker whose wife and child wait for him to return from the war–a war that we know very few returned from.

    Saigo is a young man who truly does not want to be there. This kid has a fresh and friendly face, a young fellow who could be described as happy-go-lucky. Ninomiya is an odd choice for a lead actor on which the moral gravity of the film is laid upon. This guy doesn’t care about Japan’s reasons for war, wants to live, but doesn’t even possess the desperate need to survive. Mostly he’s lucky, pulled out of this jam or that by the General. He is also not a noble idiot, in the Candide sense… really, Saigo is a cipher, and Letters becomes more and more frustrating as men who do have strong beliefs–like the colonel who seeks to blow himself up under a tank–are shuffled away for us to focus on Saigo and his memories of home.

    What do the Japanese think of this film? Certainly, it’s a great idea for Eastwood to show our former enemy in new light. The problem, as I see it, is that the Japanese are not at all real. Virtually all of our heroes have decent reasons for defending the island to the death–to save children, etc. The Japanese here are altogether too noble, barely getting their dander up in the face of this defeat. When an American soldier is captured, he’s not tortured (as one was in Flags of Our Fathers), but treated with the little medicine the Japanese have even for themselves, and the men come to realize that they’re very similar to this strange American. That’s well and fine, but if you’re going to show these men as being a people who would rather commit suicide than surrender, they remain enigmatic.

    Great war films are intense, and in my mind great war films are also insane, and come to grips with that madness. Paths of Glory, Apocalypse Now, even moments of the overrated Saving Private Ryan showed how utterly demented war can be. People went berserk during the Battle of Iwo Jima, they went mad, and when they did it was not pretty. Both Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima don’t spare us blood and guts, but they do spare us the insanity of combat. Which is why Letters falls so short of being great.

    Someday, perhaps, someone will make a great film from the Japanese perspective. There are great movies about the Germans–Das Boot is one. Until then, Letters From Iwo Jima serves, perhaps, as a necessary, though clumsy, first step.

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  • Someone's Shining Hour

    Skipping all the way to Sunday, not because I want to wish away my weekend but because there’s a concert I’ve long looked forward to: Vocalist Christine Rosholt, a woman of excellent taste who was once a featured reader in our magazine (sorry, no link; it’s not online), is leading a tribute to Harold Arlen, the fellow most famous for writing Dorothy’s showstopper, Somewhere Over The Rainbow. I read this fascinating profile of Arlen in the New Yorker a while back, and I’ve been awfully curious about him ever since. How helpful it will be to have his life’s work sang out before me.

  • Put Down Your Guns Before I Tell You This

    Unlike Demi Moore, Emperor George has no clothes.

    I’ve just corresponded with my friend, the mother of two sons with the Minnesota National Guard brigade in Iraq. She chatted online with them both yesterday, after they’d received the news that their tour would be extended by our fearless leader.

    Nothing funny about that really. The Minnesota Guard contingent is the only Guard combat unit in Iraq right now. News in the paper today was that another of their number had been killed. Ironically, the headline said Sgt. James M. Wosika had been killed just two months short of the end of his tour. Sergeant Wosika never got to hear the news that his tour had been extended.

    What is funny, though, is that according to my friend’s sons, the Minnesota troops were called into formation, then ordered to put down their weapons and ammunition. Only then were they given the news that they’d be carrying those weapons and ammo for an undetermined, extended time.

    There was an editor’s note in this month’s Vanity Fair (the editor’s note is not online–you’ll have to spring for a paper copy) in which Graydon Carter comments on a previous story the mag had done on George Bush. It contained anecdotes of how Bush, even when he played tennis, was a spoiled brat who refused to allow a game to end until he’d won. If the opponent won, it was best two out of three. If the opponent won the second game, it was best three of five, etc.

    Seems like Georgie’s bratty obsession will carry on until we all lose.

  • Sending a Message on a Lone Twin

    Tonight: The second week of my second-favorite theater festival begins. This Lone Twin show doesn’t scream of being a sure-thing, at least not in the way Cynthia Hopkins’s show did. (And I can’t be alone in saying that Hopkins put on the hippest night of theater I’ve seen in a long while.) But we here at Rake Headquarters had the luxury of interviewing these Lone Twin fellows for a certain section of our magazine, and they turned out to be downright decent guys, blessed with both humility and terrific senses of humor. Plus, the content of their show is travel-related, so that’s promising to those of us suffering cabin fever. I’ve got my tickets. Do you?

  • Dumb and Dumber

    Idiocracy, 2006. Directed by Mike Judge, written by Judge and Etan Cohen. Starring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepherd, Terry Crews, and the narration of Earl Mann.

    A film so fundamentally lame that I’m not even going to provide you with a blurry still. This travesty is available anywhere you can rent lousy DVDs.

    Everybody has good story ideas. Everybody. Writing good screenplays and making decent movies isn’t simply a matter of having great concepts, but of crafting a compelling plot, casting interesting actors, and pulling it all together under the watchful eye of editor and director. Talk to anyone who enjoys movies, and they’ll tell you of some story idea that they think is interesting. Chances are you’ll find the nugget of a decent story in the imagination of every single person you know.

    Much has been made of the great concept of Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, and even more has been made of 20th Century Fox’s decision to bury the film. Clearly, many critics have surmised, Fox is embarrassed by the film, whose central conceit–that in the future, an America weaned on Fox-style television has become so stupid that it can barely even feed itself–is so brilliant and scathing that Fox believed it must be hidden from the public. Watching Idiocracy, however, belies this: instead, one is struck even more by the sheer genius of the Fox Studios, for in allowing this film to get buried, releasing it in a handful of theaters without fanfare, and stoking the flames of conspiracy, they have, instead, guaranteed that critics will spend at least half their review complaining, the other half noting the great idea, and only a brief mention of how Idiocracy is one of the most ungodly stupid films ever made.

    The idea is hardly original. A lazy soldier of average intelligence, Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson), is plucked from his easy job and put into a top-secret experiment. Apparently, the Army is interested in placing a man into year-long hibernation. The idea is that, if successful, we will be able to place our best people in deep sleep to use in the future (why this is considered a good idea is never explained). In a typically lame twist, the Army seeks out a prostitute, Rita (Maya Rudolph), to join Joe, obviously since Judge apparently thinks the Army remains all-male. Due to yet another mind-numbing turn involving the head of the program and whoring, they are forgotten, only to wake up 500 years later in a land that has become monumentally stupid. It gets worse: Bowers is jailed and is discovered to be the smartest person on the planet. He has to try to escape this crazy world, attempting to flee to a time machine buried in the bowels of a giant Cosco.

    Mike Judge has been acclaimed for the way his movies and television shows tap right into the inanity of world, but like Beavis and Butthead and Office Space, he is really a writer who seems to have a dozen great ideas but no wit or ability to create decent work from these notions. Office Space has a spot-on opening but, like Idiocracy, devolves into a routine revenge/romance without a lick of intelligence. Aside from the fact that Idiocracy is marred with inconsistencies–the idiots of the future apparently have the technological smarts to keep electricity and television going, and someone had the knowledge to manufacture and maintain the dumbed-down machines–Judge seems to find his own jokes so damned funny that he has to repeat them over and over. Fuddruckers becomes Buttfuckers, a sports drink has replaced water, and work has become nothing more than simply pushing buttons with pictures on them. Language has retreated into grunting and yelling “Shut up!” or “Fuck you”, but that’s about it–a narrator has to remind us, over and over, that Bowers sounds “like a fag” for his intellectual way of speaking. What a decent writer couldn’t do with this future! Ebonics, grunting, text-messaging… the possibilities are endless, unmined, and therefore endlessly frustrating. And Judge seems utterly incapable to basic exposition, as he relies on a bland narrator to point out a number of simple things we should witness ourselves. His dystopia goes nowhere, and eventually the plot becomes yet another chase, yet another romance and redemption, and has a sweet ending that should make everyone smile. In the end, it’s perfectly OK to be as sharp as a bag of wet mice.

    Ultimately, Idiocracy, like Office Space before it, seeks not to challenge us, but rather to cater to our base instincts–just like the people the film supposedly mocks. The idiots of Judge’s world–people who find Jackass a masterpiece (which is itself lampooned repeatedly with “Ow, My Balls!”, a futuristic TV show whose main character gets smacked in the testicles, over and over, throughout the film)–will find Idiocracy hilarious, and aren’t going to walk away thinking they ought to read. Of course, Judge has a moment where Joe Bowers, now the president, implores people to read and be smart. Just in case we didn’t get that point.

    If Idiocracy does anything, it makes one hunger for wit and intelligence–I found myself plucking P. G. Wodehouse off the shelf and wishing I’d seen something like Monty Python’s Life of Brian, with its sex and political jokes, its attacks on religion and lampooning the fine art of Latin declensions. But then, maybe, in Mike Judge’s world, that just makes me a “fag”–and since there really aren’t any smart people in the film, Judge seems to share his characters’ beliefs. Watch Idiocracy if all you seek is a night of stoner laughs, but avoid it at all costs if you think it has anything to say about this world.

  • Dust Bowl Opera: Part Two

    At last night’s Raking Through Books event, Michael Korie and Ricky Ian Gordon had me completely convinced that they had done the right thing in adapting Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath to the operatic form. “This is an opera in the way that Porgy and Bess is an opera,” said Korie. And I became giddy just as soon as he said that, for I had feared a sparse, minimalist score would represent the Dust Bowl. But instead we’ll get a little stride piano, a little banjo, and a lot of Americana and persevering spirit. In fact, the opera is set to open on a positive note: The blue-green memory of the last rainfall. From thereon in, it follows the Joad family’s narrative arc with a bit of Steinbeck’s set pieces (i.e., entire chapters dedicated to explaining what was happening throughout the Dust Bowl) tossed in via a large chorus.

    Another thing that impressed me: Korie acknowledged the awkwardness of doing an opera on this subject–“$100 a ticket to see an opera about poor people.” But when he explained that Steinbeck’s book had rocked America, and he wanted audiences to be similarly rocked, my internal alarm went off and I wondered whether this is going to a heavy-handed opera.

    But Gordon’s playing, and his all-around dynamic spirit and attitude toward music, is another of those blue-green’s on the horizon. My hunch is that this will be a good’un.

    Finally, when I read Grapes of Wrath, back in high school, I remember being absolutely revolted by the disgusting way it ended. (SPOILER ALERT: Here, I refer to the breast-feeding scene.) But now that I’m grownup, and have heard Korie and Gordon’s take on this being the ultimate act of generosity, a gift given by someone who literally had nothing left to give (not even hope), I’m eager to read the book again (which I vow to do before seeing the opera) to experience the story anew. In any case, my roundabout point here is that since there’s not much happening today, I suggest focusing some energy on ticket-procurement. It would make very little sense to blurb about the opera on the day of a show–they’ve had record sales and sold-out performances for many years now, and last-minute tickets can be hard to come by–so this is likely to be the last time you’ll hear about it from the likes of me.

  • Paradisus Bestiarum: A Note From The Registrar

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    Many people are understandably concerned about the status of their beloved companion animals in the afterlife. We receive queries on the subject all the time. Before I address that issue, however, I’d like to clear up a few semantic misunderstandings regarding Paradise.

    We’re decidedly old school up here, as you might imagine, and so far as we’re officially concerned you’re all animals –find a Latin dictionary and look up animus or anima sometime; while you’re at it you might find it curious, if not instructive, to note that animus, a word that originally connoted mind and spirit, is now commonly defined by humans as a feeling of hostility. Something to think about, I suppose.

    At any rate, what you tend to think of as animals are here regarded as beasts, and the admission criteria for beasts is a complicated business. The rules and regulations have evolved slowly over many centuries. I can, however, tell you that no beast, not even the most ill-tempered, poorly behaved, and ferocious, goes to hell. We don’t hold these creatures responsible for their behavior, and when they die or are killed, they are simply dead.

    There is, though, a place for beasts in Paradise; there are, in fact, a number of places. Some of them are what you might think of as sanctuaries or refuges, where the majority of the beasts are segregated from the population of human animals.

    Most of the bestial sanctuaries are actually, in fact, offshore, a couple islands just off the coast which have been set aside for cats, primates, and horses. As with humans, however, not all cats, primates, and horses are admitted to Paradise, although virtue is not the determining criteria for these beasts. To enter Paradise –or rather, to be granted eternal refuge on these Paradisiacal adjuncts– a cat, horse, or monkey has to have had the sort of relationship with a human whereby it was perceived by its human companion to have been in possession of a soul. Such relationships constitute what is officially called “Empathic Baptism.”

    This is admittedly a rule that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it’s been in place since the last major ammendments and revisions to the admissions criteria were signed into the Book of Law at the end of the 19th century.

    Some of the more intelligent beasts have traditionally been granted special exemptions in Paradise. An ocean was created to accomodate certain aquatic creatures, a decision that was not without controversy, particularly after dolphins rather quickly found eternity boring and petitioned for removal, a request that was, following much deliberation, reluctantly granted. There are no watercraft in Paradise, and very few of the human animals partake in swimming, even though the activity is permitted under certain circumstances.

    Dolphins, we were led to understand, are naturally curious and social beings, and they compared the ocean in Paradise to an aquarium with few visitors and even fewer diversions. God, they also complained, showed insufficient interest in them.

    Dogs are the only beasts given a blanket pass to Paradise proper –good dogs, I should say, but there have been very few remembered examples of dogs having been denied admission. I have to admit that, being a dog person, I find this arrangement more than satisfactory. There are, though, plenty of people –activists, mainly– who carp about the issue all the time, but it’s the way things are in Paradise. This is essentially a very conservative place, where proposals for even minor changes are frowned upon and met with stiff resistance from the governing council. There are also, I should say, a lot of people here who have no apparent love for beasts of any kind, and this is a constituency that is constantly complaining about the absence of meat from our diets. If we had a democratic system in place here and the matter of admitting beasts was put to a vote I have no doubt that the creature lovers among us would be soundly defeated.

    Certainly people recognize that if you open the gates to cattle and chickens and rats and the like you’re going to have a big problem on your hands in a hurry. The mortality rate and life expectancy of most beasts makes any sort of concessions or compromises on this point problematic, to say the least. We’re already packed in so tight that social interaction is all but impossible. The streets are always so crowded that, with the exception of my daily trips to the office (my job, like all jobs here, is a volunteer position) I virtually never leave my dormitory any more, and I’m forced to share my bed with the six dogs who spent most of their earthly lives with me. It’s admittedly not the most comfortable of arrangements, but I guess that’s the price you pay for attaching yourself to other living creatures, and I wouldn’t think of making a fuss.

    I had a neighbor for a time –a woman from Portland– who bitched so loudly and for so long over the refusal to grant an exception for her ferret that she was eventually shipped back to Purgatory until she learned to keep her yap shut.

    I can’t say I was sorry to see her go.

  • The Mighty, Mighty Catfight

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    Notes on a Scandal, 2006. Directed by Richard Eyre, written by Patrick Marber. Starring Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, and Andrew Simpson.

    Now showing at the Uptown Theatre.

    Rare is the occasion when the movie houses have a good movie in them, much less two that open on one weekend. Children of Men opened around town Friday, and so did the luscious Notes on a Scandal (Little Children did, too, but it’s horrible, despite what the other reviewers are saying). And where Children of Men is a mind-boggling, futuristic movie that manages to wow you with its story and technological thrill, Notes on a Scandal is a decidedly more old-fashioned thriller. A simple movie, with a fairly simple plot, well directed, brilliantly acted, and a great entertainment. It’s naughty, sexy, reveling in its wickedness, at times heartbreaking (but never too much so) and a thriller-diller. You’d be hard pressed to find a better time at the show.

    Notes on a Scandal is the story of an aging spinster who teaches at a London school for troubled, lower-class urchins. Barbara Covett is jaded beyond belief, and Judi Dench plays her brilliantly–a combination of power-hungry schoolmarm and desperate loner who hungers for a companion. Dench’s Barbara is almost sexless, though she is clearly pursuing another woman. The other woman is Sheba Hart, a young, pretty mother of two, one an attractive teenage daughter and the other a boy with Down’s Syndrome. Cate Blanchett is Sheba, married to an older man, living the perfect bohemian lifestyle, dissatisfied and looking for something different. Obviously hoping to satisfy this desire and do some good for the world, she begins the virtually thankless job of teaching pottery to these ungrateful high-school bollocks.

    Barbara wants Sheba, as a friend and as something more. Sheba, looking to fit into a difficult situation that might be more than she bargained for, aligns with the seemingly kindly Barbara. That is, until Sheba gets it into her head to have an affair with the cheeky Steven Connolly, one of her fifteen year-old students.

    This is a disturbing turn that Notes on a Scandal takes, and it is to director Richard Eyre’s credit that he takes this on without flinching. The whole show is narrated with an acid pen by Dench, but the film takes a viewpoint all its own–and Dench isn’t spared anything either. The interplay between Dench and Blanchett runs the gamut, from seemingly innocent teacher seeking help, to predatory witch trying to suck the life force from this younger woman–who is, of course, hardly innocent. Bill Nighy is solid as the cuckolded husband of Sheba, and Andrew Simpson, as Steven, Sheba’s love interest, is a marvel–confident, arrogant, brooding, the epitome of a young man’s attitude in the headlights of a bizarre situation.

    Notes on a Scandal succeeds because all parties have worked in conjunction with one another, not overreacting to a plot that begs overreaction, and filling their roles with verve. Dench and Blanchett are a great match, their showdown a match made in cinema heaven. Only Philip Glass’ ponderous soundtrack get in the way of this saucy film. Otherwise, Notes on a Scandal is a crack film that remains consistently entertaining and thought provoking from start to finish.

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  • Dust Bowl O' Opera

    For the few (probably very few?) of you sharing my obsession with modern American opera: tonight’s Raking Through Books event features composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Michael Korie, the folks responsible for adapting the Minnesota Opera‘s world premiere of the Grapes of Wrath opera, opening early next month. At first, I thought this seemed like a strange choice for an opera. But then again, when I surveyed the latest in modern American opera–historic ones like Nixon in China and Dr. Atomic as well as literary adaptations like The Handmaid’s Tale, I could sort of imagine the Dust Bowl opera. Now, let’s see if Gordon and Korie can further explain themselves. Did I mention there’s free nosh at this event?

  • Fairy Tales Can Come True, It Can Happen To You

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    A man went out to his car one night, started the ignition, inserted a Chuck Berry disc in the CD player, and drove off into the darkness in search of space.

    He wanted to get out from under the street lights and the general overglow of the city, out beyond the tangle of freeways and the noise of rising and falling jets. It was an old habit of his, to just pack his bag and go off in search of the unfamiliar.

    He’d been running from things most of his life, and had become expert in the art of retreat. By this time he could find the dead spots all around the country without an atlas. He knew how to follow rivers and find large bodies of water. He could feel the darkness drawing him like a magnet, and knew that where there was darkness there would be silence and space. There would be little towns thrown down in the middle of nowhere, towns where every home and business turned out the lights, drew the shades, and retired at a reasonable hour.

    He’d roll down his car windows and any music at all –Hank Williams, the Four Tops, Jimmy Reed– would sound like the most abrasive punk rock drifting out into those empty streets.

    There were reliably forlorn motels in such places, motels where he’d have to rouse the owner from bed and could back his car right up to the door of his room.

    On such nights and in such places he could still be anyone or anything, and that was a feeling he’d been trying to hold onto his entire life.