Dry Bones Waiting

U2 at Cowboys Stadium, Part 2

2009-10-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

After more than sixteen hours of getting up early and waiting in a long line, one that promised and delivered a coveted spot in a hard-to-get-to circle, U2 was still not on stage. But another band was, and I listened through earplugs—all of us did, hoping to preserve our ears for the main event. What, after all, was the point of coming to a U2 concert and having my eardrums blown by the opening act?

Muse was not bad, even through sound barriers, but the venue was stunning. Throughout the show I could not get over this place and this stage. Before this I had only seen Cowboys Stadium from the outside, a Noah's ark designed for outer space. Inside, however, the sheer amount of space contained within its walls made me seem a microscopic speck. And the stage brought a mass to match its host. A giant spider over multitudes of people, the concert stage for the 360 Tour covered more than half of the stadium floor. We found out from stagehands that transporting it requires 99 eighteen-wheelers and setting it up takes four days. It was certainly the guest of honor, a platform to fit the stature of its creators.

But this event was about a band, not a building, and U2 soon took the stage. As long as the wait had been—nearly 17 hours from the time I woke up—seeing them still felt surreal. This band that I had listened to for so long and seen on TV so often was only yards away. At one point, Bono was right above me on a bridge, at another he was five feet away. Clearly, everyone else felt the same way. The band's appearance turned the pit into a photo shoot. Whenever a band-member came near the outer part of the stage, hundreds of camera-phones sprang up like weeds. If the inner circle was a garden, Bono was definitely its rain.

The music began, and the earplugs came out. Now, deafness was worth the risk. At least my eardrums would die happily. The band opened with three songs off the new album, No Line on the Horizon. They would go on to play three more No Line songs, and almost all of them sounded underwhelming to me: they lacked the focus needed to command such a vast sound-space

But they did not linger there for long. "Mysterious Ways" came fourth and brought a bonus with it. To end the song, Bono sang the chorus of the Beatles' "Blackbird." This adding-on occurred multiple times throughout the night, and produced my favorite moments of the concert. Not only was "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" the clearest song of the night, and my favorite, but also Bono ended it with "Stand By Me" by the Righteous Brothers. As he sang the chorus, he held out his microphone to the crowd, and over 70,000 voices sang in unison. Later in the night, another surprise would top this one. Bono sang "Amazing Grace" as an intro to "Where the Streets Have No Name." For a moment, a football stadium felt like a cathedral.

Two hours and two encores later, our evening would come to a close. To be fair, there were some things I disliked about the show. The two videos that played while we waited for encores were irritating. Then there was the steering wheel microphone that Bono used as a rope swing. As impressive as his physical abilities were, the concert had reached its climax, and this device was a distraction. In addition, songs that I love were passed up. I greatly missed not hearing "Bad" and "Pride," and would love to have heard their thundering rendition of the Beatles' "Helter Skelter," but that one will probably never happen. When set lists come from three decades of music, some disappointment is inevitable.

Regardless of this nitpicking, I will never forget this concert. By the time I made it to bed, I had been awake for 21 and a half hours, had spent most of the day in a long line, and had to struggle in order to stay where I had spent all day trying to get. Though I can't say I would turn around and do it all over again, I know that I sensed something larger than myself. Calling it sacred would not be the right word, but I can still hear tens of thousands singing in unison. I can still hear the sound of "Amazing Grace." Grace has a way of speaking through common things, like music.

Set List: Cowboys Stadium (10/12)

Breathe 
Get on Your Boots 
Magnificent  
Mysterious Ways 
Beautiful Day 
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For 
Stuck In A Moment 
No Line on the Horizon 
Elevation 
Until The End of the World 
Unforgettable Fire 
City of Blinding Lights 
Vertigo 
I'll Go Crazy - Remix 
Sunday Bloody Sunday 
MLK 
Walk On 

One 
Where The Streets Have No Name  

Ultraviolet 
With or Without You 
Moment of Surrender

U2 at Cowboys Stadium, Part I

2009-10-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

It's last Friday night; I'm sitting on my couch, reading a book turning more and more bizarre; and a friend calls with an out-of-the-blue: two extra tickets to the U2 concert at Cowboys Stadium. Now it's Monday morning, and my alarm's making a proclamation: 4:30 a.m. In spite of the hour, I am prepared—well, as prepared as one can be with a 4 a.m. frame of mind. See, this ungodly gong has gone off because my friends with the extra tickets have invited my wife and I along on their mad-mission: getting into the "inner circle" of the U2 stage by getting in line while it's still dark out. Now, it's just after 6 a.m., and in spite of my sleep-deprived stupor, I am in line for a U2 concert. A weekend that had originally held all the promise of a book and some drizzle has now evolved into a four-day holiday, culminating in a date on a "Space Ship" with one of the world's most famous musical acts.

We arrive in line and discover an officially unofficial, fan-initiated tracking system that is in place to manage the day ahead of us. This plan consists of a sharpie pen and some scratch paper. I am the 110th fan in line. In spite of such rudimentary materials, the system works wonders. For the simple fact that a plan is in place, everyone feels at ease. We no longer have to live in the uncertainty of whether our early arrival is going to be rewarded or not. We have a spot. Of course there will be people who try to cut, but we have been instructed to get to know the people around us. This way we can identify the invaders when they arrive. Even better, as soon as we assume our spot, we can feel an atmosphere of solidarity around us. We're in this together. Carry each other.

Though we would not hear a note of live music until 14 hours later, in this line there was never a dull moment. Fourth in line was "Tattoo Dan," a category manager at a Nike store in New York, who has been attending U2 concerts regularly since 1987 and has been invited on stage multiple times. Just behind us in line was a husband and wife from Australia, who referred to lining up before the show as "cue-ing"; on the current tour, they have already seen shows in California and Arizona, and eagerly anticipate the next leg of the tour, when U2 comes to the outback.

These fans were not only interesting but also affable. In my 27 years of life, in which I have now attended a meager 17 pop music concerts, I have never encountered such a civil set of fans. Few attempted to sneak a closer spot (though a few early-risers held spots for their spouses, who showed up after sleeping in). Few late-arrivers expressed discontent over their spot. When we began to receive wristbands to confirm our status—literally, the last minute before admittance—I saw no one trying to move up in the line. Even as we began our endless descent to the floor of the stadium, few ran to get ahead. A spirit of common grace seemed to have descended upon us all. As Bono would surely have put it, love had come to town. On the floor in the moments that follow, this spirit will prove concert-saving.

Now it's nearly 5 p.m., and we're finally in. Minutes later, after my friends and I have found the floor, made our way into the long-awaited inner circle, and located a spot on the back rail, just right of center-stage, Event Staffers begin telling us, all 200 of us, to leave the inner ring. Organizers are admitting groups of 200, one at a time. We are the first, and now they want us to exit the area. This is no joke. You must leave. This area is not for those with blue bracelets. You must return to the general standing area. To make matters worse, approximately six police officers are at hand, ready to enforce whatever The White Shirts say. But here's the clincher: even though many of our fellow fans have occupied the enclosed part of the stage at previous shows on this very tour, Event Staff is neither listening nor explaining why.

Tempers explode. With personnel refusing to listen, what started as reasonable pleading devolves into legal threats. So, as policemen prepare to escort some off the premises, the rest of us begin to consider our options. A few run for the best remaining spots. Others begin to drift in that direction. Most of these fans, however, are die-hards. They stay put, because they know better.

After about five furious minutes, three consecutive events occur that will save the day. First, as soon as the party poopers show up, our more experienced friends all move into sitting position, making it clear that they will have to be dragged away. Second, to support those of us still standing, the fans that have chosen a spot outside the inner circle begin urging us to stay: Don't leave. Don't leave. Finally, a second set of 200 fans comes crashing into the inner area, doubling our numbers. The policemen decide to leave and Event Staff follows close behind. Their retreat means our survival, and the cheers of 400 fans cry victory. When a day in line was about to be lost, fan solidarity rallied to win the day. Now with our spot secured, all that remained was an upright wait of three hours and the concert experience of a lifetime.

American Pastoral: Philip Roth rages against the machine

2009-06-10T12:36:00.000-07:00

In American Pastoral (1997), Philip Roth uses three major sections to tell the remembrance, the fall and the loss of the paradise-like life of Seymour "The Swede" Levov. I say paradise-like because the ultimate concern of this novel is to reveal that what its protagonist once enjoyed was never really a paradise, only a delusion of one. And Roth channels all his creative powers towards achieving this "eye-opening" end.

All that really lies at the bottom of this book, however are the embittered beliefs of its author—that man is an irrational animal, determined by social forces, whose defining trait is selfishness. Pretending things can be otherwise will can only lead to a bomb exploding in your backyard or a fork landing in your eyeball. This is how Roth envisions domestic America.

Roth's announcement comes as nothing new. Almost a century ago, Joseph Wood Krutch said that because society no longer believes in noble men, nobility no longer exists. Writing in The Modern Temper (1929), Krutch says, "We can no longer tell tales of the fall of noble men because we do not believe that noble men exist. The best that we can achieve is pathos and the most that we can do is to feel sorry for ourselves. Man has put off his royal robes and it is only in sceptered pomp that tragedy can come sweeping by." Though he was trying to identify new territory for modern tragic drama, Krutch offers some insight into the fiction of Roth.

As Krutch admits, literature loses its grandeur under this new outlook. If man has nothing greater in him than an animal, all his loss can achieve is pathos. American Pastoral adheres to this theory. In spite of all of Roth's thundering, which at times can be quite resounding, all one can feel for Levov is pathos. In other words, Sorry Swede. You were dealt this. So you can't help it. Good luck to you. Roth finds nothing more to admire in his hero than the best cultural conditioning of a dried out day. The novel awakens Swede to this fact and leaves him there, broken and boiling.

All this would be just fine, if such psychological critics did not insist that their assumptions be taken as absolute and universal. Mr. Krutch betrays such a perspective in his use of the first person plural voice. Simply put, he thinks he speaks for all. In spite of his claims, another view, albeit an unpopular one, still survives in literary criticism and among aspiring authors.

Writing more than a decade after Krutch, the great literary critic F.O. Matthiessen hints at it. Though his immediate topic concerns the history of allegory, Matthiessen concludes this long passage from American Renaissance (1941) by suggesting that literature occupies more territory than what many of its practitioners are currently treading:

Today we have felt an even greater necessity to be on guard against the abstractions of allegory. For after the ruminations of Tennyson, which allowed poetry to escape into mere idealization, it was imperative to get back to the poetry of sensation, of dramatic immediacy. This need called into being Eliot's work, as well as our revival of Donne and our increasing taste for Baudelaire. But in our satisfaction with the dramatic lyrics of these poets, there is the danger, as Eliot has already realized in his own later work, that in exalting the poetry of sensation, we may overlook that we are also prolonging the circumspection of poetry's scope which came in with Coleridge and Keats. With the romantic movement, poetry tended, in spite of Wordsworth's prefaces, to become divorced from "knowledge," which, with the drift of the nineteenth century, became more and more the special province of science. As a result we have lost living touch with the great poetry of contemplation; we have almost forgotten in our own practice that poetry can deal with epistemology, as Dante showed in his exposition of the soul in Purgatorio.

Perhaps I am overextending his meaning, but Matthiessen seems to believe that literature still possesses an untapped power, one that believes in a human soul—hence, one that can recover the lost nobility of the human race. What I would call its Image of God. It is a view that underlies the Western Literary Tradition, and contemporary novelists such as Cormac McCarthy, Marilynne Robinson, and Mark Helprin seem—in their different ways—to be at least reconsidering, if not practicing it.

I wouldn't avoid Roth altogether; he is certainly one force to be reckoned with. But if you're looking for something more than 400+ pages of repressed anger, I'd recommend that you start somewhere else.

#1: The Rat

2009-05-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

"The rat of course I rate first. He lives in your house without helping you to buy it or build it or repair it or keep the taxes paid; he eats what you eat without helping you raise it or buy it or even haul it into the house; you cannot get rid of him; were he not a cannibal, he would long since have inherited the earth."
—William Faulkner, The Reivers

#2: The Mule

2009-05-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

"The mule I rate second. But second only because you can make him work for you. But that too only within his own rigid self-set regulations. He will not permit himself to eat too much. He will draw a wagon or a plow, but he will not run a race. He will not try to jump anything he does not indubitably know beforehand he can jump; he will not enter any place unless he knows of his own knowledge what is on the other side; he will work for you patiently for ten years for the chance to kick you once. In a word, free of the obligations of ancestry and the responsibilities of posterity, he has conquered not only life but death too and hence is immortal; were he to vanish from the earth today, the same chanceful biological combination which produced him yesterday would produce him a thousand years hence, unaltered, unchanged, incorrigible still within the limitations which he himself had proved and tested; still free, still coping."
—William Faulkner, The Reivers

#3: The Cat

2009-05-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

"The cat is third, with some of the same qualities but a weaker, punier creature; he neither toils nor spins, he is a parasite on you but he does not love you; he would die, cease to exist, vanish from the earth (in his so-called domestic form) but so far he has not had to."
—William Faulkner, The Reivers

#4: The Dog

2009-04-30T07:30:00.001-07:00

"The dog I rate fourth. He is courageous, faithful, monogamous in his devotion; he is your parasite too: his failure (as compared to the cat) is that he will work for you—I mean, willingly, gladly, ape any trick, no matter how silly, just to please you, for a pat on the head; as sound and first-rate a parasite as any, his failure is that he is a sycophant, believing that he has to show gratitude also; he will debase and violate his own dignity for your amusement; he fawns in return for a kick, he will give his life for you in battle and grieve himself to starvation over your bones."
—William Faulkner, The Reivers

Faulkner's Top Five. #5: The Horse

2009-04-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

"The horse I rate last. A creature capable of but one idea at a time, his strongest quality is timidity and fear. He can be tricked and cajoled by a child into breaking his limbs, or his heart too, in running too far too fast or jumping things too wide or hard or high; he will eat himself to death if not guarded like a baby; if he had only one gram of the intelligence of the most backward rat, he would be the rider."
—William Faulkner, The Reivers

The wisdom of a preacher-man:

2009-04-22T12:39:00.000-07:00

"The Bible says the hairs on a man's head is numbered, but listen, brother, where does that leave the baldheaded man? Is he shut out? Is he not even kept up with? Is he cut loose adrift without his name put down in the great book of records? The good book says His eye is on the sparrow, is a hairless man not as deserving of His eye as the fowls of the air?"
—William Gay, Provinces of Night

Glengarry Glenross: The Death of More Salesmen

2009-01-23T12:23:00.000-08:00

Glengarry Glenross—a film based on a play by David Mamet, one that won the Pulitzer Prize—tells the story of real estate salesmen and the boss who supervises them at Premiere Properties. Times have grown hard; properties are not selling. Employers blame their salesclerks; the clerks blame their leads.

To fix the problem, management has introduced two new business initiatives. First, they have purchased a new set of leads from Glengarry Glenross properties. However, before they put these "good leads" into the hands of their sales team, they want some signs of assurance. For this reason, their second step is to launch a sales contest: the winner will get a Cadillac, the runner-up will get a set of cheap steak knives, and the others will get the axe. The problem for these salesmen, aside from the prospect of placing third, is that the contest requires them to use the old Rancho Rio leads. The duress that follows turns them into cornered rats.

This film portrays men who feel no need to, as Wendell Berry advises, "stand by words." In their world, everything is permitted in the name of closing a sale, and these creatures take full advantage of such leniency. They lie to customers, and in ways that sound familiar. "Our computer has chosen you of all the customers who have requested information about our properties." Or: "I'm here overnight and have to go home tomorrow. But Danny, I know you're serious, and because of that I'm going to shove my appointments around." Trying to pressure customers into quick decisions on bad products, they also cheat their clients. Indeed, there is no hero to admire here.

In spite of this lack, Glengarry still has many serious virtues. For one thing, its cast amounts to one of the best ever assembled; it includes Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Kevin Spacey, Alan Arkin, Jonathan Price, and Alec Baldwin. Their performances, and in particular their ability to handle dialogue—especially dialogue at this level, where a single sentences demands a range of emotions—confirm, and in some cases even further, the legendary talents of these actors. By furthering I am thinking specifically of Jack Lemmon, who plays Shelley "The Machine" Levene. Roger Ebert has called his character as memorable as Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman, and rightly so. While each salesman in Glengarry has the capacity to shift from "chatting with the guys" to "working a client," no one executes this switch with more ease and sliminess than Lemmon. His voice alone has been museumed in my ear.

And then there is this dialogue, which is a virtue in itself. There is a repetitiveness to it, one that reinforces the catch-22 in which these men find themselves. Dave Moss, for example, who is played by Ed Harris, cannot break free from the leads. He simply goes on and on like this: "He's got the leads, he's got the good leads…We've got to go to them to get the leads…It's the leads, the whole thing is the leads."

At the end of the movie, topics discussed at the beginning return to conversation, turning this repetition into circularity. The effect brings hell to earth, an effect Mamet aims to achieve. As each character cusses the other into isolation, the irony is that all of them are just as deceived as their customers. The elusive promise of prosperity—it's in the titles given to their properties. Glengarry Glenross. Rancho Rio. Exoticness: tucked within the alliteration of these labels, it's the very vapor for which salesman and customer give away their lives.

Given the cause of the current economic crisis, this movie-play from the early '90s still has a pertinent warning to offer. We may think we're different than these money-grubbing salesmen, but we're just as vulnerable to the deceptive allure of prosperity.

An Author with a Soul: Marilynne Robinson and Home

2009-01-08T10:31:00.000-08:00

"Weary or bitter or bewildered as we may be, God is faithful. He lets us wander so we will know what it means to come home."

For those of you who have sampled the field of contemporary literature, only to discover mouthful after mouthful of postmodern insincerity, or for those of you in search of a rewarding new read, permit me a moment to introduce you to Marilynne Robinson—particularly, to her latest novel, Home.

Home marks her third novel in a span of 27 years, a detail that could lead one to mistakenly describe her career as long on duration and short on return. The quality of that return, however, suggests something different. Her first novel, Housekeeping, which considers the relationships between mothers and daughters, appeared in 1980 and won the Pen/Hemingway award. Gilead, her second novel, arrived in 2004, over two decades later, but it soon proved worthy of the wait. For this novel, a meditation on the relationships between fathers and sons, Robinson earned the Pulitzer prize. Robinson may not publish often—her everyday occupation as a creative writing professor at the University of Iowa no doubt impedes her ability to—but when she does, it counts.

As her previous novels attest, Robinson has a preoccupation with the family, and her newest novel renews it. Home returns to terrain set forth in Gilead—as in Gilead, Iowa—which tells the story of John Ames, the town's Congregationalist minister, and his family line; in her newest tale, which is set in the same place and time, the 1950s, she presents an account about the family of Robert Boughton, the former Presbyterian minister and Ames' best friend.

Incidentally, her portrayal of these clergymen is anything but cynical. Robinson is a professing Christian, with a respect for mystery and theology uncommon to her profession. In The Death of Adam, an exceptional collection of essays she published in 1998, Robinson dares to unpack Darwin, defend Bonhoeffer, dignify Calvin, and extol the eighth Psalm. In Gilead and Home, she performs a similar act of ennoblement: she invests the man of God with a depth of dignity he has not received in serious literature for nearly a century and a half. Father Mapple, in an early chapter of Moby Dick, which was published in 1851, is a minister who comes to mind as one given a mostly serious representation. But as early as Middlemarch, which was published between 1871 and 1872, and which is far from, but not unaffected by, the pessimism that was about to follow in the wake of Darwin, a new kind of religious figure begins to emerge in the character of Mr. Farebrother. In contrast, with Ames and Boughton, Robinson has introduced men gifted with both a substantial doctrine and a gracious disposition. In light of these virtues, Farebrother comes up short; he is void the former principle, while Mr. Tyke, his antithesis, lacks the latter. And in spite of Robinson's admiration for them, she is not blind to their faults; by bringing them to light, she manages to show that a pastor may still be faithful in his fallenness.

Home, then, tells the story of Boughton's lone reprobate son who, after an absence of 20 years, comes home. That man is Jack Boughton, the proverbial "black sheep" of his family. Jack spent his childhood getting into trouble, trouble that grew in severity as he grew in age. His private misdemeanors have grown into public ones: stealing a beloved baseball glove from Ames turned into stealing the hunting rifle of the mayor's son. And his personal foibles have spawned civic affronts: his propensity for alcohol led to the impregnation of a local high-schooler; on top of that, the baby girl that follows died during his 20-year disappearance.

The life he has lived prior to his return has exhausted, but not quite defeated, the ability of his family to forgive. Glory, the youngest Boughton, who has come home to care for their father, describes its effect on him: "She had heard her father say, in the depths of his grief, 'Some things are indefensible.' And it was as if he thought a great gulf had opened, Jack on the far side of it, beyond rescue or comfort. She felt that she could not allow that to be true, especially since it was her father who seemed to be in hell. He had come to the last inch of his power to forgive, and there was Jack, still far beyond his reach. So he stood at the verge of despair ... despite every prayer and text old Ames could muster." Loving Jack bears a resemblance to loving the Israel of the Old Testament: little but pain ever comes in return. And, unlike Israel's Father, Old Boughton is only human.

In his own homecoming, Jack is no "prodigal." Though financial and emotional destitution have led him home, like they do the young man in the gospel parable, Jack has yet to experience a bankruptcy of intellect. As Old Boughton puts it, Jack has never "felt at home in the house where he was born," an alienation which includes the faith of his father. Making this outsiderness more specific, Jack says, "It is possible to know the great truths without feeling the truth of them. That's where the problem lies. In my case." But his problem grows out of soil far deeper than the emotions. Though when he speaks with Ames and his father he tends to toy with the idea, making his seriousness about it seem flippant, Jack seems to believe himself "an instance of predestination." As he describes it in one of his more serious moments, "Somehow I have never felt that grace was intended for me, particularly" (271). Jack believes himself consigned to his carnal nature. In Home, and especially in the character of Jack Boughton, Robinson seems to be asking one of the fundamental questions about human nature—namely, can people change?

Her answer—which I will not spoil for you—is both complex and hopeful. Home is a quiet novel, one that proceeds through an abundance of conversation. It is full of thoughtful meditations, on the home, on the family, on prayer, on the soul. I recommend all the books mentioned previously, but this one in particular, because it shows a family trying to love its own, when loving them is anything but easy. I leave you with one of my favorite reflections in it, one on prayer: "Prayer is a discipline in truthfulness, in honesty … you open up your thoughts, and then you can get a clear look at them. No point trying to hide anything."

Being the Best and Being a Team

2008-06-13T10:59:00.000-07:00

Last night, something happened on the court of the NBA Finals that defied my expectations: the Celtics won. Not only did they win, the Celtics beat the Lakers after trailing by 21 after the first quarter and by 18 at halftime. More astonishing than what, however, is the question of why. With a lead that exceeded 20 points and the MVP of the NBA on their side, why did the Lakers lose? As great as the Celtic defense proved to be, the Lakers lost because of Kobe Bryant.

Though Bryant is the best player in the NBA, when games enter crunch time and victory hangs in uncertainty, his downside manifests in his teammates. In such moments, the Lakers enter Kobe Mode, where Bryant assumes the role of the classic hero and bends the fate of the game to his will. When Kobe takes over, he resembles the closest thing to Jordan since Jordan. But as dominant as these moments can make Bryant look, they also reveal his great flaw: the rest of the Lakers fear their leader.

Kobe Mode destroys the Lakers' confidence and camaraderie for these two reasons: victory must occur through him, and he seems unwilling to trust his teammates. In the first instance, Kobe treats each game as if it is his to win, which makes his supporting cast passive; in the second, when Kobe must rely on his teammates, they fear to fail him.

This truth about Bryant only comes out in defeat of course. When Sasha Vujacic received Bryant's pass and nailed a three to seal game three, Kobe patted him on the head. But in game four, after Vujacic let Ray Allen slip past him to score a game-clinching basket, Kobe shirked his teammate. Vujacic slammed his despairing first into a bench chair, and Kobe let him suffer the blame. Jordan would have rescued his teammate. Consequently, the Lakers lack the sense of shared identity and shared fate that defines a team, and Kobe prevents them from becoming one.

Notice how the Celtics displayed the opposite in game four. In the first half, Eddie House missed all of his wide-open jump shots, but Paul Pierce—who is becoming their own leader—continued to give him looks in the second half, and House produced 11 points. The Celtics put the same exact faith in James Posey, who produced 18 points off the bench.

More importantly, these were not bench performances that brought random victory; rather, the Celtics clinched a win through the leadership of their stars. In the third quarter, Pierce confronted the impossible with defense—he blocked a jump shot by Kobe Bryant. The play led to the Celtics rally that won the game. Then on the most important possession of the game—the one that would put the Lakers away or give them a new opening—Pierce did not demand the ball. Instead, he trusted it to Ray Allen, who also displayed fearlessness.

An important victory requires two things: a leader who can confront the impossible and a team who believes in itself. Pierce displayed both traits last night, and the Celtics overcame a deficit of over 20 points to earn a commanding 3-1 lead in the series.

Kobe may be the best player on the Finals court, but he has yet to learn what six seasons of mediocrity taught Jordan: a superstar cannot win a championship single-handedly. Unfortunately for the rest of the Lakers, this last component will only come if their leader is willing to change, to listen. As simple as such a demand sounds, it could keep Kobe from ever winning another title.

An Oscar-Winner about Fathers and Sons

2008-06-03T16:32:00.000-07:00

Character, winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1997, tells the story of a boy who grows up without his father, discovers him in his juvenile years, and wants to kill him by the time he becomes a man. In spite of the misery that father and son manufacture, their mutual will to win produces something greater than a soap opera scuffle—it shows the human spirit capable of honor in the midst of desperate searching and profound suffering.

The story transpires through the framework of a murder investigation. Witnesses see a bloodied young man emerge from a building where police find a dead man. Moments later, police arrest the young man, and two officers begin his cross-examination: the victim is Dreverhaven, the powerful town bailiff, and the suspect is Katadreuffe, his son.

As Katadreuffe reports his story, the film jumps to flashbacks. His mother Joba worked as housekeeper for Dreverhaven. She performed her tasks efficiently and inconspicuously, without ever speaking to the man. One day he notices her, however, and they mate off screen. Weeks later she announces her pregnancy and resignation in the same sentence. After she leaves him, he bombards her new residence with marriage proposals, but she refuses each one. Throughout his life, Dreverhaven continues to desire Joba, but she always remains outside his reach.

She gives birth to Katadreuffe, who as a schoolboy receives notes that say the same single word: bastard. The film occurs in the Rotterdam of the post-WWI 1900s, when communism carried underground popularity and single-mother families carried public disgrace. Despite this written ridicule, which also comes in physical and verbal forms, Katadreuffe hears nothing of his father. His relationship with his mother exists in silence. Despite her efforts, a nagging, almost instinctive curiosity leads the boy to discover the father he has never seen. Once they meet, the film attends to the story of their peculiar relationship, which becomes one of constant obsession, despite their infrequent interaction. Katadreuffe attempts to defeat his father by overcoming poverty; Dreverhaven opposes his son by making his every endeavor more difficult.

Though he seems to lack mercy, Dreverhaven is not a heartless man. When he enters a city battle zone to perform an eviction, a young boy fires a pistol at him, and one of the bullets grazes his face. Dreverhaven responds by trying to prevent officers from gunning down the boy. However infrequent it emerges, goodwill lies buried deep within him.

Normally Dreverhaven acts with harshness. In a latter episode, he tells the tenants of an apartment building he owns that they have three days to evacuate the premises. In a dream that anticipates making this announcement, he appears naked before his tenants, and they beat him to death. When the actual moment comes, even with the premonition of this dream, he still passes through the audience and mounts the podium to proclaim the three-day notice. For Dreverhaven, moments of peril amount to tests of his will: something inside him must confront its every obstacle in order to assert its nature—whether it's a war zone or the stage of his death. Though this sense of conduct overrules his sense of compassion, he bears his tenants no malice. His occupation makes him an instrument of the law, and his personal code resembles a virtuous legality. This is the very code that he aims to impart to his son, whether it kills him or not.

Consequently, when Dreverhaven's name comes up at the law firm where Katadreuffe works, employees debate whether his modus operandi is a virtue or vice, courage or recklessness. Even with these aforementioned traits, much mystery shrouds Dreverhaven. The film never enters his past to explain who he really is. In addition, it's never clear to Katadreuffe why his father treats him so: is he being punished because he represents the fruit of his father's one failure, or is he being taught a way of overcoming the world?

Though these lawyers remain divided on Dreverhaven, the ending addresses the remaining uncertainty. After the interrogation, there is no marriage to save the day—and there could have been a happy one. Instead, the end depicts a moment of recognition that amounts to so much more, to the very thing that Katadreuffe has been striving for, the thing that only a father can provide: identity.

Introduction to New Post

2008-05-21T12:55:00.000-07:00

In honoring of school ending and summer beginning, I have written a new post, one that considers a subject other than Kurosawa—something recent, even. Confounded? Just read on, brave reader…

(By the way, I apologize in advance for using the offensive phrase, but it's the most accurate one. Now I bet you're curious...)

Michael Clayton, An Above-Average Legal Thriller

2008-05-21T12:47:00.000-07:00

Among the five films nominated for best picture this past year—Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, and There Will Be Blood—I had only one left to see when I began my Netflicks trial account last week: that one being the man in the middle, Michael Clayton. Though the film lost in this category, and rightly so, I believe that the film contains significant merit that both justifies its nomination and warrants our attention.

Michael Clayton (George Clooney) works as a fixer for the law firm Kenner, Bach, and Dean; with money and personal contacts, Clayton rescues his clients from the consequences of the law. Presently, his firm prepares to settle a six-year, three-billion-dollar lawsuit filed against its defendant, U-North, a corporation accused of poisoning people by polluting the environment. The lawyer in charge of the case, Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), feels nauseated about defending another corrupt company. He erupts during a deposition, and the firm sends Clayton to placate the problem. When U-North grows impatient, Clayton excuses his friend—Edens is bipolar and has forgotten to take his pills. But this only touches the surface. Underneath it, Edens can no longer help companies that expend the weak in the name of capitalistic endeavor: he escapes into hiding, and begins to build a case against U-North. The rest considers how two characters, one from each organization, react to this threat of exposure.

Thematically, Michael Clayton considers what actions a man will take in order to preserve his empire of dirt, and how much of his soul he will squander in order to pay the cost. In the high society this film portrays, success means that one must maintain a spotless surface, even if it covers a collection of deceit, debt, bribery, murder, family neglect, and failure. Under such pressure, man either retaliates like Arthur Edens or breaks like Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton), general counsel
for U-North who also turns to mess-fixing.

Technically, the demands this theme places upon the actors actually caters to Clooney: it dictates a surface restraint that keeps him from having to explore a broader emotional range, one he often seems to leave unexplored in his dramatic roles. Clooney is a skilled actor, and he has demonstrated that he can succeed at comedy, as well as directing: together, these instances confirm that he possesses a level of diversity. In dramas, however, he plays the wise guy: the inner depths of his characters always remain internal, and his occasional outbursts inevitably have this wise-ass tone to them. Hence, the job of delivering the movie's brilliant opening monologue passes to Tom Wilkinson. Regardless of his range, Clooney excels as Michael Clayton: except for a few here and theres, we forget we are watching George Clooney.

Topically, the film visits gain-the-world-and-forfeit-the-soul territory. The corrupting influence of money—a theme that can collapse into a cliché quite easily—appears in three of the above nominees. In each one, it's a pursuit that costs the family. In There Will Be Blood, oilman Daniel Plainview disowns his son when he decides to begin his own oil company: outside the family business, H.W. only amounts to a competitor. In No Country for Old Men, Llewellyn Moss risks his life and the life of his wife to retain an abandoned bag of cash he finds at a shootout; his find-keepers, losers-weepers scheme ends in utter disaster. In Michael Clayton, the title character has a son, but no time for him. With failed restaurant debt, a broken family, and a gambling weakness upon his head, Clayton offers his son this consolation: he believes that his son is different and will achieve the success he himself has failed to reach. Sounds like a virtue the film treats as vice, right?

By the end, Clayton seems to realize that life means more than money, but what exactly does it mean? What ground enables Clayton to stand beside his final decision? The decision could be motivated by love of his son, it could be motivated by loyalty to his friend, or it could be motivated by a desire to outdo his enemies. Ultimately, the source of a higher significance remains ambiguous; the realm of ideals marks unfamiliar territory to Clayton. He knows his final act is a good one, and that he must perform it whatever its consequences; Edens at least showed him that much. But from there, who knows?

Still, something great lives in this film. In an environment without noble ideals, the human spirit exhibits its need for them; and, even if it knows not where to find them, it will still begin to search. This testament—combined a brilliant opening dialogue and a scene with horses full of awesome mystery—turn an average subject in a routine genre into a worthy endeavor.

Shakespeare, Kurosawa and the Spider Webs of the Heart

2008-04-26T14:47:00.000-07:00

A military leader and his friend withstand the invasion of a rival kingdom. Their king summons the heroes to his castle to reward them. En route, the warriors meet an ominous spirit who predicts their twofold fates: advancement and eventual kingship for both families. Shortly thereafter, each receives the first slice of his prophesied fruits, so the two begin to consider the promised second portions. If the spirit spoke truly, do I to wait for my fate to arrive or do I pursue it myself? With these thoughts, the leader returns to his wife, who pressures him to kill for the crown. His choices lead to blood and disaster.

This summary outlines the plot of Throne of Blood, by Akira Kurosawa, and if it sounds familiar, it's because the film depicts an adaptation of Macbeth by William Shakespeare. While the majority of adaptations flounder in relationship to their source, Throne of Blood prospers: the film maintains the spirit of Macbeth and at the same time achieves its own distinct form. Most of the changes to the play result necessarily, from the decision to transfer Shakespeare to a Japanese setting. Instead of eleventh century Scotland, the film occurs in medieval Japan of the late 1400s. Obviously, the names of people and places have to change; Washizu is the Macbeth figure and Asaji is his diabolic lady (who seems to move like an upright snake when she goes to retrieve a sleeping potion). Also, Kurosawa reduces the three witches to a single spirit. And instead of a specific country, the kingdom Washizu overtakes seems to be known as the Spider's Web.

One of the deliberate changes—which Stephen Prince points out in his helpful essay, "Shakespeare Transposed"—is the use of Noh Theater traditions. The Noh style originated in Japan, first appearing on its stages in the fourteenth century; three of its essential elements are music, masks, and stylized performances. About the last feature, its peculiar acting style, he says more: "Noh performance is a striking blend of stillness and agitation." This explains why characters in a Kurosawa film often behave wildly, exaggerating gestures and facial expressions. (Watch, for example, how the messenger knocks on the castle gate.) The style values physicality above language. Whereas Shakespeare reveals internal states through poetic language, Kurosawa conveys them through physical expression. Instead of realism, he aims at expressionism; instead of memorable individuals, he pursues universal types.

Aside from context, the lack of Shakespeare's language marks the greatest difference between Macbeth and Throne of Blood. Kurosawa replaces it with the poetry of his camera, and cinematic metaphor appears in the various representations of circles. Round shapes often hang on helmets: the great lord carries a nearly full circle, and Washizu wears a half moon—and these sizes seem consistent with rank. Another example occurs before Washizu and Miki engaged the spirit in the forest; it sits in a hovel and spins a wheel while it sings of the violence men circulate. Then before the final passage of the movie begins, guards outside the city gates exchange conversation in two circular rounds: each speaks in turn as the discussion rotates counter-clockwise, and each speaks again as their dialogue reverses into a full clockwise revolution.

The circles imply a cyclicality of rising and falling, a visual theme that compliments the content of Throne of Blood. Two odd-seeming scenes clarify its meaning. After Washizu receives his first promotion, peasant workers outside his new home remark, "Life can always be improved." A similar scene, and the same line, occurs in a lookout tower, after Washizu advances to the Spider's Web Castle. The line implies that even the lowest in society look for their opportunity to profit. Asaji tells her husband: "Did not the great lord secure his own position murdering his predecessor?" Washizu chooses to follow this example, to sustain the violent circle. Unlike Macbeth, Throne of Blood needs no hero to duel its villain, there is no Macduff to challenge the usurper and right his wrongs. Everyone has a death arrow to offer Washizu—every heart contains the capacity to murder. Perhaps the tragedy of Throne of Blood is that "humans are terrified to look into their own hearts." Watching Washizu choose the evil over the good of his heart discourages the audience from indulging its own.

A Quick Thought on Kurosawa's Ran

2008-04-17T13:48:00.001-07:00

I saw Ran, recently, a film in which Kurosawa adapts Shakespeare's King Lear. The movie proved too immense to review after just one viewing, but one episode struck me particularly: the way Kurosawa startles us when one of the main characters is shot.

To accomplish this effect, Kurosawa places a castle in flames in the center of the shot, so that even though it occupies the background, we give our attention to the burning building. To the configuration he then adds two characters, each on a side of the frame, and positions them in the foreground. The frame presents a perfectly structured triangle. What amazes me is that all Kurosawa uses to pull off the effect is depth. By leading our eyes to the back of the shot, he surprises us in the front. No special effects, just masterful directing. This shot achieves the status of a composition—by that word I mean an arrangement of the frame that contributes meaning to the story—and nearly every sustained shot in Ran carries this kind of significant organization. Because his frames are this good consistently, I think you'll struggle to find a better composer of images in the movies.

A Man I'd Like You to Meet

2008-04-10T15:42:00.000-07:00

Near the end of February, a friend asked me to borrow his Net-flicks account. Asked. I gave the request about two seconds of deliberation. How could I deny a favor to a friend?

Anyway, for the past six weeks, I have been using it to watch the films of Akira Kurosawa. I don't know how deep your awareness of movies goes, but critics count this Japanese director among the all-time greats. Many Kurosawa films influenced American ones. Yojimbo inspired A Fistful of Dollars, one of the movies that made Clint Eastwood famous. And you may not believe this but Hidden Fortress inspired Star Wars. These facts come from Roger Ebert, not myself, and can be found in his review of Seven Samurai in the first volume of The Great Movies.

Consequently, if ever a director was indebted to another, George Lucas owes Kurosawa. Consider the difference in quality between the earlier Star Wars films, the ones that borrowed from Kurosawa, and the newer films, the Star Wars prequels that Lucas wrote himself. The difference is not that Lucas dropped in quality; the difference is Kurosawa. (If any Star Wars die-hards are reading this, I'm probably moments from being blaster-shot, light-sabered, and Force-choked.)

To be fair to Lucas, Kurosawa also borrowed from the greats, especially Shakespeare. His Throne of Blood adapts Macbeth, and in Ran he uses the storyline of King Lear. (Both are the best adaptations of any Shakespeare Tragedies I have seen put to film.) And since I am getting most of this information from Ebert, I guess it is hypocritical of me to criticize Lucas. I just know the power of a Kurosawa film and want you to experience it.

Unfortunately, I think two factors deter the average movie fan from his films. First, all of his movies require subtitles. And second, most of them are about Samurais. Though the subtitles are unavoidable, the social practices, despite their unfamiliar eastern-ness, actually strengthen his movies. The culture of Japan and the code of the Samurai provide Kurosawa with a particular myth, by which I mean a shared set of ways a society establishes. (Unfortunately, our society has lost such a shared understanding about the most important things.)

Though his films most often occur in an eastern nation of the past, they view honor, social etiquette, the place of men and women, and religious ceremony specifically. This grounding in detail enables his films to achieve the universal. An American may know nothing about a Samurai, but seeing the specific way his society define integrity allows a Westerner to relate to such a figure, to recognize an honorable as well as a dishonorable Samurai.

If then these are issues keeping you from Kurosawa, I encourage you to overlook them. I don't have a Netflicks account to offer you, but I do have a recommendation. Try Ikiru, which to me seems to be based on The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a novella by Leo Tolstoy. It's about a middle-aged, city official who discovers that he has cancer in his stomach and only a few months to live. Mortality confronts him with the vanity of his life, and he responds with a search for something meaningful. What he discovers is real hope, a reward greatly worth the effort.

Away From Her: How far does "in sickness and in health" go?

2008-03-31T13:07:00.000-07:00

Overlooked by most Best of 2007 lists is Away From Her, a film directed by Sarah Polley who only turned 29 in January. The oversight is unfortunate. Her film reveals astounding insight for a young director, especially considering that Polley focuses on characters twice her age. Those figures are Grant (Gordon Pinsent) and Fiona (Julie Christie) Anderson, a retired couple whose marriage is challenged by the Alzheimer's disease slowly overtaking Fiona. Filming such a subject so often leads to a Hallmark-Hall-of-Fame-like feature, those knickknacks in which the disease always heals and everyone hugs at the end. That Polley succeeds at making her protagonists fully dynamic—fallen, yet laboring to love; fixed, and by decades of routine, but trying to change—is a victory for young directors, but especially for viewers looking for a thoughtful film.

The film asks questions about a side of love often unconsidered in movies. At the outset, the couple believes they can manage the disease. They label the drawers; they walk the same routes; they rehearse their memories. But Fiona has begun to wander, aimlessly, and Grant worries as he drives the night to find her. As disease infects her mind, Fiona realizes she needs constant care, and resolves to admit herself to a nursing home. Grant resists; he wants to keep his wife at home. The conflict then becomes whether he can change, whether his love can grow to meet the distance that disease brings. Amazingly, Away From Her depicts love as letting go.

Can a man, one who has loved a woman up close for nearly 50 years, learn to love from afar? After being the participant, can one play the spectator? Grant finds a way, and while I wish he could have found another, I empathize with his need. Wanting to be known, which is different than having someone around to combat loneliness, is a human desire, one which we feel naturally and achieve rarely, often only if our relationships contain the greatest humility and, as Fiona says, the touch of grace. To me, Grant seems willing to sacrifice being known—which Fiona can offer, though not willfully, and only now and then, as the ending implies—for the chance to avoid living alone. He chooses the easier, less heroic path, but it is still not an easy one and he does not choose it lightly. And, quite possibly, if we judge him we condemn ourselves.

Polley captures her story with thoughtful and beautiful images, using bright lighting and snow covered Canadian landscapes to create visual metaphors for a memory going blank. In an early shot, the camera looks directly down at Fiona as she wanders among the tall, identical trees of a perplexing forest: as her memory fades Fiona grows as anonymous as the trees, and the work of navigating the forest parallels the difficulty of remembering.

Away From Her is a meaningful picture of profound love and perseverant humanity. Rated PG-13, it contains little profanity, no violence, and no nudity. It may move slower than an action movie, but has so much more to offer the patient viewer.

What Better Way to Start

2008-02-28T08:22:00.000-08:00

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

- W.H. Auden, from "In Memory of W.B. Yeats"