Some great performances from Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams, and an interesting situation: the daughter of a beloved orthodox rabbi, broken away from the community after a youthful lesbian affair, returns for her father's funeral. I found it interesting, though not completely satisfying in the end. I did like that the portrayal of the orthodox characters wasn't completely monochromatic heavies. But I wasn't sure what the principal characters really wanted, or why they made some of the choices they made, or what really happened in the end. The film began and ended with a rabbi pondering man's unique gift and responsibility of freedom, suggesting that the film had a point to make about that, but if it did, I left unsure what the point was. And perhaps in keeping with Jewish tradition, it's more about the questions than the answers.
There’s a trove of things going on at LACMA. The Hockney show “82 Portraits and 1 Still Life” is fascinating and distinctively colorful. The artist did this series of portraits over a couple of years, inviting a variety of people to sit for him, ranging from big names in the art world to the artist’s dentist, his housekeeper, and her daughter, subjects ranging in age from 8 to 80s. Each subject sat in the same chair in the same setting for three days for Hockey to capture what he playfully called a “20-hour exposure”. The result makes you really appreciate the portraits, what is unique about each, and how personality is expressed in the face, the hands, the way each one sits in the chair. The colors are all Hockney’s signature vibrant colors.
Then walk across from BCAM to the Resnick Pavilion and step back 500 years to see a palatial Persian carpet from the early 1500s when Persian carpets really started to become a national industry. This particular carpet features a central medallion in red, a field of cream richly decorated with trees, vine, and animals, corner scenes on red, and an ornate deep blue border. This particular carpet is called the Coronation Carpet, as it was used in front of the throne at the coronation of King Edward VII of Britain.
Then step into the next series of rooms and back another 100 years or more to see “City and Cosmos: The Arts of Teotihuacan”. This fascinating exhibition presents a large collection of artifacts from the ancient Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan, which flourished in the first few centuries CE, a thriving cosmopolitan city of 125,000 people at its height. The city was divided into districts dedicated to different gods and with different types of crafts. The exhibit is similarly arranged, to show the different artifacts in proximity which part of the city they were found in. I was quite taken with the expressive statues and masks, ceramics and stoneware, and the murals, many of which are surprisingly vivid even today. Their colors were mixed into plaster in way that allowed the colors to endure, and apparently the city was brightly colored with a lot of murals.
Over in the Hammer Building, I flashed back to the present time, with a showing of Korean-American abstract artist Young Il Ahn. His “Water” series plays on a theme of “unexpected light”, with a very large panels of what appear to be monochrome colors from a distance, but on approaching, appear to crack, and an underlying color of unexpected light breaks through. The hidden colors have such a luminous quality that the paintings almost appear to be backlit, and it is surprising to see the previously unseen colors emerge as you get closer. It reminded me of being on Hawaii and seeing a lava flow at dusk, dark volcanic rock with an eerie orange light glowing through the cracks from below.
And of course I had to visit all my perennial favorites: Chris Burden’s “Metropolis” (the most amazing track for Matchbox cars ever) and “Urban Light” (the most Instagramable collection of lampposts) , Tony Smith’s “Smoke”, Michael Heizer’s “Levitated Mass” (the giant boulder suspended overhead), and the Cantor Sculpture Garden full of Rodin and Bourdelle sculptures.
Wes Anderson is always so creative and this latest film was no exception. Wonderfully original and completely off-the-wall story, gorgeous animation, great voice characterizations from the troupe of talented actors who follow Anderson wherever his inventive mind leads. Thoroughly enjoyed every minute.
South Africa, both under apartheid and after it, is such a different place to anything I have experienced, making Trevor Noah’s autobiographical “Born A Crime” such a fascinating book. Even for South Africans, Noah’s perspective is rather unique. His title “Born A Crime” comes from the fact he was born of a white father and a black mother, which violated anti-miscegenation laws still active on the books at the time he was born. My eyes were opened to so much about South African society. I hadn’t understood and appreciated how blacks are so divided by tribes with distinct languages (a situation ingeniously and insidiously exploited by the apartheid system to discourage blacks coming together), nor how people were divided not only black and white, but also an intermediate category called “colored”, which included people of mixed ancestry, Indians, and other arbitrary distinctions (for example, Japanese people were officially “white” while Chinese people were officially “colored”). Noah was raised by his mother, an extraordinarily strong and independent woman who was pushing boundaries even before apartheid was abolished. She taught him English and Afrikaans as well as several tribal languages, sent him to private schools, and gave him a window on many parts of society, living at times in a black township or middle-class neighborhoods, attending white churches. His mixed-race status, many languages, and varied experiences made him someone who could fit in anywhere but belong nowhere. He thus grew up developing keen insight into the complex society around him as can only be gained by someone who is “insider” enough to understand and sympathize but also “outsider” enough to make objective appraisals. His stories are packed with humor, understanding, insight, and at times a challenge to see the world a different way. In one story, he thoughtfully unpacks why among South African blacks the name “Hitler” doesn’t have anything like the infinitely negative charge we assume should be universal, and how that lead to a colossal misunderstanding with a black dance troupe performing at a Jewish school hosting a multicultural diversity festival. Through other stories, he explains life in the township and life in what we would call “the ‘hood”, and why they may think about crime a bit differently than you do. Other stories are just generally human, experiences growing up in various schools trying to fit in, getting a date for the prom, and so on, all told with great charm and humor. And his keen insight is also brought to bear on abuse and alcoholism, in stories of how his step-father abused his mother. This is a fantastic book, and it is even better as an audiobook, since it is read by the author. He has the gift of writing the way he talks, which since he is a comedian (and now the host of the Daily Show) is quite engaging. Hearing him do all the voices, the dialects, and even occasionally the languages (including those Xhosa clicks) as he tells his stories brings them even more to life in vivid color.
Yes, it's fun. Go in expecting nothing more than simple enjoyment, don't examine it too closely, and let these superb actors enlivening a work-the-stops script play you like a violin, and you'll leave happy.
