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Classics & Contemporary Music With the New York Philharmonic

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Friday, 29 April 2022 14:11; Written by Jack Angstreich

Jaap van Zweden conducting the New York Philharmonic. Photo by Chris Lee

At Carnegie Hall, on the evening of Wednesday, April 27th, I was fortunate to attend a wonderful concert presented by the accomplished musicians of the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Jaap van Zweden.

The program opened gloriously with a confident reading of Claude Debussy’s magnificent tone-poem, Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun. The celebrated soloists, Katia and Marielle Labèque, then took the stage for an engaging performance of contemporary composer Nico Muhly’s interesting In Certain Circles: Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, here receiving its US premiere. The first movement, titled L’Enharmonique, is moody and ends abruptly. Muhly’s program note states:

In Certain Circles is in three movements. The first contains a little fragment of a piece by Rameau, L’Enharmonique. The movement is about uncovering it through various disguises and lifting those disguises. From time to time, the tune from the Rameau appears and quickly vanishes; while it’s not always meant to be fully audible, there should be a sense of “hauntology” here, in which the simple intervals of the Rameau permeate the texture in oblique and sometimes obscure, ghostly ways. A very simple gesture permeates all three movements: a rising second, forcefully declared by the brass in the very first bar; the brass often insists on these intervals even when they antagonize the pianos.

About the second movement, Sarabande & Gigue, he writes: “The second movement is a pair of dance-suite movements,” but it is nonetheless strangely impressionistic with passages strongly influenced by minimalism. He adds:

I tried to call on my knowledge of French Baroque music to make something I’ve never done before—which is to say, music that more or less obeys the rhythmic rules of a received form. Here, the pianos go in and out of rhythmic unison with one another—a little mechanical, a little expressive. While the sarabande is quite supple, the gigue is explicitly mechanical and a bit unstable. The normal sets of six and 12 beats are often interrupted with unwelcome little hiccoughs of four or five beats, creating a sense of anxiety despite the explicitly diatonic harmonies.

The third movement, Details Emerged, could perhaps be described as more dramatic and more impassioned. Muhly comments:

The third movement begins with the pianos in completely different rhythmic worlds from one another. “Disconnection” is the guiding musical principle here; the music shifts quickly from very dark to very bright, from jagged rhythms to simple ones, and from delicate to quite violent. Every playful moment is offset by something severe and mechanical. After a relatively joyful, pulse-based episode, we perceive a final specter of L’Enharmonique, and the movement ends abruptly.

The second half of the event was also impressive, beginning with an effective account of Richard Wagner’s sublime Prelude and Liebestod from his opera Tristan und Isolde. The evening concluded memorably with a convincing realization of Debussy’s subsequent programmatic masterwork, La Mer. The opening movement, From Dawn till Noon on the Sea, was lively, although with moments of stillness, and finished grandly. The ensuing movement, The Play of the Waves, was more ebullient and more volatile. The turbulent closing movement, Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea, was often suspenseful, punctuated by brief, mysterious episodes, with passages of intense excitement as well as majesty. The artists were rewarded with appreciative applause.

Through Actor Alexander Skarsgård’s Eyes, Director Robert Eggers’ “The Northman” Explores A Violent Period in Early European History

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 28 April 2022 13:58; Written by Brad Balfour

Alexander Skarsgård in "The Northman." He just wants to talk, he swears.

"The Northman"
Director: Robert Eggers
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Björk, Willem Dafoe

While Iceland might have inspired “The Northman,” Ireland provided much of the actual landscape pictured in director Robert Eggers' decidedly eccentric third release. There was a further connection to Eire, as well. Nearly a thousand years ago, Vikings had invaded the island so their brutal culture had an impact on the inhabitants back then who were brutal enough on their own. Nonetheless, Iceland’s dramatic atmospherics of volcanoes and a dark, brooding environment became a unique character in this film.

Co-written by Eggers and Icelandic author/poet Sjón, this epic historical drama — based on the legend of Amleth — provided source material for Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” It stars Alexander Skarsgård (who also co-produced). Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ethan Hawke, Björk and Willem Dafoe rounded out the veteran cast.

Skarsgård had been wanting to make a Viking film for a while. Born in Stockholm on August 25th, 1976, the Swedish actor began at seven but quit at 13. After serving in the Swedish military, Skarsgård landed in the American comedy “Zoolander.” In 2008, he joined the miniseries “Generation Kill” but his real breakthrough came when he portrayed vampire Eric Northman in the television series “True Blood” (2008–2014). After appearing in such films as 2011's "Melancholia," "Battleship" and "The Legend of Tarzan," Skarsgård starred in the drama series "Big Little Lies" (2017–2019). That earned him a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Critics' Choice Television Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. From 2019 to 2022, he appeared in the films "Long Shot" and "Godzilla vs. Kong." He also played Randall Flagg in the miniseries "The Stand" (2020–2021) and guest-starred in the series "Succession."

After the two met to discuss possible collaborations, the pair decided to make the film Eggers' third project. Eggers began his career as a New York theatre designer and director before transitioning into film work. Born July 7, 1983, the film director, screenwriter, and production designer became known for his acclaimed supernatural horror films, 2015’s “The Witch” (which starred Anya Taylor-Joy) and 2019’s “The Lighthouse.”

Much of the cast joined in 2019 and filming took place throughout Ireland between August and December 2020 on a $70–90 million budget. Its world premiere was in Stockholm’s Rigoletto Cinema on March 28, 2022 and began a global theatrical release schedule throughout April culminating in the United States on April 22. Having already grossed over $23 million worldwide, it received critical acclaim, with praise aimed at its direction, production values, and the performances.

Nonetheless, for all the vaunted visual eccentricities found in Egger's earlier two films, this taut feature provides a mixed bag of hyper-dramatic moments, with almost parodic touches of a Marvel Superhero film and some weird mystical flourishes. While Egger’s visual intensity drives the movie, it lacks the richer character development and plot elements that would have made it much more than just an artistic Conan the Barbarian-like savage tale.

north poster Set in A.D. 895, "The Northman" follows Viking prince Amleth on a quest to avenge his murdered father, King Aurvandill War-Raven (Hawke). After having returned from his overseas conquests, the king reunites with Queen Gudrún (Kidman) and the prince -- his son and heir -- upon return to his kingdom on the island of Hrafnsey. The two participate in a spiritual ceremony overseen by Aurvandill's jester, Heimir (Dafoe). The next morning, Aurvandill's brother Fjölnir (Bang) and his masked warriors ambush and assassinate the king. After seeing his village massacred and his mother taken away screaming by his uncle, the young Amleth flees by boat swearing revenge for his slaughtered parent, to save his mother and kill Fjölnir.

Life is hard, cold and unembellished by much art or pleasantries except for orgiastic rituals and torturous tests of strength and endurance amidst the sheer force of 10th century Iceland. Like “The Last Samurai” or “Dances With Wolves,” this film offers a unique look into the native life of a Viking. Unfortunately, that cultural exploration is underplayed in exchange for mystical machinations and intensely bloody battles.

After the assassination, 10 years pass and Amleth has been raised as an old Norse “berserker,” attacking settlements throughout Europe -- even as far away as the land of Rus. The now-biff battler sneaks aboard a slave ship heading to Iceland. Posing as a slave, he encounters Slavic Olga (Taylor-Joy), who claims to be a sorceress now enslaved. Upon arrival, everyone is taken to the farm that's now Fjölnir's, having lost his kingdom years ago. There it is revealed that beautiful Gudrún, now Fjölnir's wife, has borne him a son, Gunnar (Elliot Rose).

Through various plot twists (Amleth learns that his mother hated her first husband since she was a captured slave whom he raped), Amleth and Olga (now pregnant with his twins) keep working towards Fjölnir's demise, killing off his tribe and bloodline. Ultimately, Amleth frees the slaves, who kill most of Fjölnir's men, while Gudrún and then, Gunnar, are stabbed to death. Fjölnir discovers the bodies and schedules a final battle with Amleth at the Gates of Hel — the volcano Hekla. At the lava-spewing peak, they thrash at each other in a fierce sword fight. Fjölnir is decapitated, but Amleth is fatally stabbed through the heart at the same time. As he dies, Amleth has a future vision of Olga embracing their twin children. He seemingly ascends to Valhalla while shedding his first tear since his father's murder.

All is well and good, passionate and powerful. But so much of what might have been an insightful exploration of Viking life -- especially while the young prince was growing up under their tutelage -- is sacrificed for battle, blood and gore. I’m glad to have gone off to the North but I was left a bit cold from the arduous experience.

April '22 Digital Week IV

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 27 April 2022 18:32; Written by Kevin Filipski

Streaming/In-Theater Releases of the Week

Petite Maman

(Neon)

The best film at last fall’s 2021 New York Film Festival was, unsurprisingly, French director Celine Sciamma’s emotionally precise and ingenious followup to her brilliant Portrait of a Lady on Fire, the best film of the 2019 NYFF. In this understated but shattering chamber piece, an eight-year-old girl whose beloved grandmother has just died meets and befriends a familiar-looking young girl while accompanying her parents to clean out the grandmother’s house.

Sciamma, probably the most accomplished and confident filmmaker working today, has created a movie that’s almost impossible to describe: The Twilight Zone meets Ponette gives a broad outline, but Sciamma works on such a fragile, delicate canvas that the effect is of a master miniaturist working at the very height of her powers, like a Vermeer or a Fauré, one with insights into the thinking of children of all ages—as well as their parents.

Anaïs in Love

(Magnolia)

In a lesser actress’ hands, the character of Anaïs—a fluttery millenial who is perpetually late, perpetually self-centered, and perpetually on her own wavelength—would be pretty much unwatchable, but Anaïs Demoustier’s charming, winning onscreen presence compels the viewer to root for her even as she does the most insensitive, selfish, immature things like start sleeping with an older, married man, then make a beeline for his wife, a famous novelist, and begin an affair with her.

Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet has written and directed a self-aware romantic comedy that follows its heroine with alternating amusement and bemusement, but thanks to Demoustier’s magnetism, it remains buoyant throughout.

The Duke

(Sony Pictures Classics)

Don’t let the dullish title put you off: this beguiling film by director Roger Michell—who died last year at age 65—tells one of those “stranger than fiction” true stories that only needs a guiding directorial hand to put it through its immensely entertaining paces. In 1961, 60-year-old British retiree Kempton Bunton said that he stole Francisco Goya’s Duke of Wellington portrait from the National Gallery in London, keeping it hostage in exchange for the government ended the TV license fee to elderly pensioners.

Michell’s light touch, Richard Bean and Clive Coleman’s witty script, and the enormously appealing and sympathetic performances by Jim Broadbent as Bunton and Helen Mirren as his put-upon wife add up to a splendidly diverting tale.

The Earth Is Blue as an Orange

(Film Movement)

The members of the Trofymchuk-Gladky family in Krasnohorivka, a town in the war-torn Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, decided to record themselves—they all love cinema—to show their everyday existence during frequent periods of bombing by Putin’s Russia.

Iryna Tsilyk won the best director award at the 2020 Sundance Festival for this moving portrait of survival and creativity, focusing on a single mother and her four children, who have made their home a safe haven from the outside mayhem that has defined their lives for several years.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

Singin’ in the Rain

(Warner Bros)

Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s 1952 musical is a joy from start to finish: no one’s been able to equal Kelly’s extraordinarily cinematic choreography—with the possible exception of Bob Fosse—and Kelly’s co-stars Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds are unmatched, even by their directors’ exacting standards.

This all-time classic looks quite luminous in its new UHD transfer; extras comprise a 50-minute documentary ported over from the 60th anniversary Blu-ray edition (too bad nothing else from that stacked release was included) and an audio commentary by Reynolds, Donen, Donald O’Connor, Cyd Charisse, Betty Comden, Adolph Green and others.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Cosi fan tutte

(Naxos)

Mozart’s delectably comic chamber opera for six characters, which follows two couples that after many trials and tribulations are finally reunited, is distinguished by Mozart’s masterly music and Lorenzo Da Ponte’s witty libretto, both of which remain front and center in director Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s impressive staging last year in Florence, Italy.

Of course, a terrific cast helps immeasurably, particularly the trio of delightful women, Valentina Nafornita, Vasilisa Berzhanskaya and Bendetta Torre; the agless American Thomas Hampson holds it all together as the regal Don Alfonso. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

Dementia

Jigsaw

(Cohen Film Collection)

These low-budget shockers are as different as can be. 1953’s Dementia, by director John J. Parker, is a 56-minute stream-of-consciousness piece of avant-garde juvenilia about a woman who, beset by memories of a damaged childhood, may or may not have committed a murder. It’s scored to Georges Anthieul’s moody music, and its jittery images make an impression, although not what Parker would have wanted.

Val Guest directed 1962’s Jigsaw, a minor mystery about detectives looking for the perpetrator in a particularly gruesome killing, which succeeds more atmospherically than as an edge-of-your-seat whodunit. Both B&W films have fine hi-def transfers; the lone Dementia extra is Daughter of Horror, the same film but with added explanatory narration.

DVD Release of the Week

Writing with Fire

(Music Box Films)

This bracing if at times tense documentary by writer-directors Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas follows the intrepid journalists in India who run its only women-run newspaper, Khabar Lahariya, which is moving from print to online. These women unflinchingly go into every possible difficult situation, smartphones at the ready, to uncover and report news to an increasingly skeptical public.

Seeing the private lives of the women and how their careers affect them beyond the newsroom is eye-opening, especially in times of extreme uncertainty for journalists, even in supposed bastions of free speech. Extras include a making-of featurette and interview with both directors.

Broadway Play Review—Tracy Letts’ “The Minutes”

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 27 April 2022 02:28; Written by Kevin Filipski

The Minutes

Written by Tracy Letts; directed by Anna D. Shapiro

Opened on April 17, 2022

Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street, New York, NY

theminutesbroadway.com

The cast of Tracy Letts' The Minutes (photo: Jeremy Daniel)

Tracy Letts, our most adventurous playwright, has written everything from his early, creepily incisive character studies Bug and Killer Joe and his Tony-winning dysfunctional family epic August: Osage County to his most recent Broadway play, the lacerating midlife crisis comedy Linda Vista. Through his plays, Letts demonstrates his facility for a wide range of subject matter as well as a cutting sense of humor and a sympathy for all of his characters, however flawed.

And now there is, also on Broadway, The Minutes, Letts’ most political play yet. Although it doesn’t start out that way—at first, members of a small city council engage in amiable pre-meeting chit-chat and their meeting begins fairly innocuously—soon it devolves into in-fighting, backbiting, conspiracy theorizing and closeminded speechifying. In other words, it’s a microcosm of the sad state of democracy in America today.

When Big Cherry council newcomer Mr. Peel (Noah Reid) asks about the mysterious absence of fellow council member Mr. Carp (Ian Barford) from the evening’s meeting—Peel, away the previous week for his mother’s funeral, missed what happened to precipitate Carp’s leaving—the battle lines are drawn and, as Peel further complicates matters by requesting that the minutes from the last meeting be read to the council, the corruption, the graft and the whitewashing of the town’s history move front and center. With every succeeding comment by one of the council members, the meeting goes further off the rails, especially for those hoping to remain in power.

That summary might make The Minutes sound pretentious, but Letts’ playwriting strength is that he doesn’t telegraph anything, instead letting events occur organically from the council’s discussions to the crucial history he’s given the town of Big Cherry (whose very name, we learn, comes from a racial slur). Only at the play’s climax—when The Minutes goes from nasty but necessary political satire to an overobvious metaphor—does Letts make a slight misstep, but even in its overblown ickiness, the unsettling finale perfectly encapsulates the cultification of America in 2022 (and even 2017, when the play premiered).

As always, Letts’ writing perceptively differentiates among his characters: the nine council members and the town clerk are all individualized as much from his sharp dialogue as from the exceptional acting, which director Anna D. Shapiro astutely shepherds on David Zinn’s impressively detailed set. The production also boasts marvelous lighting by Brian MacDevitt, purposeful sound design by Andre Pluess and on-target costumes by Ana Kuzmanić.

Letts himself plays the haughty mayor, Superba, with gusto, but he allows the other cast members to shine as well. (Letts has given each character either a blatantly descriptive name or a dull, ordinary one.) The best in the polished veteran cast are the amusingly bemused Austin Pendleton as Mr. Oldfield, the much too senior member of the council; the hilariously deadpan Jessie Mueller as Ms. Johnson, the ultra-efficient town clerk; and the intense Ian Harford, who was also terrific in Linda Vista, and who as Carp makes the most of his short onstage time to thoughtfully focus the themes of the play, which brilliantly paves the way for Letts and Shapiro’s final, disturbing coup de théâtre.

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