My Lolita Rant

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Kathy

Vladimir Nabokov

This week’s Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque offerings give me the opportunity to rant about Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita, and, while I’m at it, movies made from books in general.

Here’s the thing. Lolita is, in my opinion, a great novel by a great writer, which is, in part, about pedophilia. In the book, Lolita is not a nymphet, she’s not a sexy fourteen-year-old, and she’s not a temptress. The popular understanding of the book, derived largely from Kubrick’s misbegotten movie, incorrectly portrays Lolita as a sexy seductress. She is, instead, a twelve-year-old child.

Lolita’s first-person narrator Humbert Humbert, a delusional pedophile, sometimes deliberately obscures the truth. That’s one of the things that makes the novel so masterful: you’re inside the head of a crazy, evil bastard. . . who’s sometimes also funny (you laugh against your will) and, by the end, even sympathetic.

But there’s no question in my mind that Lolita herself–a name imposed on her by the fawning, obsessed nutcase Humbert–is a victim. She’s kidnapped and forced to have sex with an old lecher, a la Jaycee Dugard.

Kubrick’s film, deliberately obscuring the whole idea, helped foster the wrong-headed and sickening view of a “Lolita” as a pubescent siren luring vulnerable males. Don’t be fooled by Nabokov’s credit as screenwriter. Kubrick rejected almost all of Nabokov’s contributions.

As to adapting books into movies, I agree with the conventional wisdom that books are better than the movies based on them, with some exceptions. As films, To Kill a Mockingbird is just about as good as the novel, Gone with the Wind is certainly creditable, and, to me, Sophie’s Choice improves on William Styron’s original. Similarly, a lot of classic books, such as Jane Austen’s, have turned into enjoyable and pretty respectable movies.

As a devoted reader, however, I often object to screen adaptations, wondering why arrogant screenwriters and directors tamper with great works. The recent film version of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, for example, drove me nuts. Heathcliff is supposed to be uncouth, sure, but does he have to say the “f–” word all the time? Do we have to see Hindley and Frances having crude, grunting sex outside in the mud?

Throughout the movie, I was wishing I was curled up at home rereading the book. Here’s what I say to filmmakers: Write your own damn stories.

This weekend I’m planning to see Samsara–no plot, no characters, pure cinema (Friday at 9:40 or Saturday at 7:25).

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Recommending John Ford, as Opposed to Sex with a Tentacled Monster

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Kathy

Wayne and Stewart

The sure thing at the Cinematheque this weekend is probably, once again, the classic film: 1962’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance by legendary director John Ford, starring John Wayne, James Stewart and Lee Marvin. It treats serious themes about law and morality and truth and mythology. It’s the last project that Wayne and Ford did together. If you’ve never seen a John Ford Western, you should definitely come on Friday at 7:00 pm to hear an introduction by Grafton Nunes (Cleveland Institute of Art President), or come on Saturday at 5:00. See reviews here.

Teddy Bear, a new Danish film, has had a positive critical response. It promises to be a sweet story about a bodybuilder (played by Kim Kold, a real bodybuilder) looking for love (Friday at 9:40; Saturday 7:25). Twenty Days without War, a much darker film (Thursday, 6:45; Sunday, 8:55), follows a Soviet Army veteran on leave in his hometown in 1942 and highlights the effects of war at home. It was banned in the Soviet Union for a decade. Both of these sound good, don’t they?

From the poster advertising “Possession”

The Cinematheque’s description of our other choice, Possession, includes the words bloody, traumatic, self-mutilation, killings, hysterical, head-banging, derangement,  and, last but not least, sex with a tentacled monster. Forewarned is forearmed. Thursday at 8:45 and Saturday at 9:20.

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Better Than Science

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Kathy

In my Latin class today, I shared a reading about Proserpina and Ceres (Persephone and Demeter, in Greek). I find it necessary to debunk all that the scientific mumbo-jumbo about the seasons, relating to planets and stars and orbits. Forget, I tell my students, what you may have heard about the tilt of the earth on its axis. The seasons change because of a mother’s cyclical happiness and sadness. It’s getting cold and grey outside because Ceres is not doing her job.

Ceres in Search of Her Daughter, Johann Blaschke, 1786

As you probably remember, Pluto, the god of the underworld, took a liking to a mortal girl and snatched her into his realm. Proserpina’s poor mother, whose charge was keeping earthly things green and growing, was distracted from her work, mad with worry over her lost daughter. People began to starve for lack of grain and complained bitterly about the gods’ injustices.

Jupiter at last brokered a deal: Ceres could have her daughter back for half the year. Because she’d eaten of the underworld’s fruit, pomegranate seeds, Proserpina must return to Hades (with Hades, in the Greek) for the season we are just entering. The leafless trees and graying lawns outside my window betoken poor Ceres’s grief. She can’t be bothered right now with taking care of plants.

The earth revolving around the sun, leaning toward or away from that majestic body, is, I admit, a pretty magnificent story. But I relate more personally to the classical explanation. My daughter comes home for the Thanksgiving holiday. I look forward and clean and cook. Then, all too soon, she leaves on a jet plane, and I let the dishes and the dust bunnies pile up, sullenly occupying myself with games on my phone and YouTube videos.

I can’t be bothered with completing my appointed tasks right now. I’ll perk up during that December “spring,” beginning in a couple of weeks, when my own Prosperina is returning home.

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Richard Russo’s Difficult Mom

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Kathy

Jean and Richard Russo

How could Richard Russo’s memoir Elsewhere not intrigue me? I’m already a fan. His novels Nobody’s Fool and Empire Falls, for example, tell heartfelt and funny stories about flawed, even infuriating, but ultimately sympathetic characters. Russo has mastered an assured, sincere tone that doesn’t get sentimental.

A glance at reviews of the new book told me that it’s about his mother. His mother who had a mental illness. My kind of book, in other words. Tricia Springstubb, who reviewed it in the Plain Dealer, lent me her copy, and I just finished it.

Russo’s mom was infuriating. Her emotions were volatile, and her preferences wildly changeable. She was impossible to please. She passionately loved places and people, and then hated them just as passionately. She said things, and then swore she never said them. Richard tried to please her, and though she always relied on him, her “Rock,” he always failed. She never stayed pleased.

At the end of the book, he diagnoses his mom with obsessive compulsive disorder, but I (prone, admittedly, to find borderline personality disorder wherever I look) think there was more to the picture. Her sense of emptiness, her black-and-white thinking, her fear of abandonment and emotional volatility betoken the BPD symptoms with which I am quite familiar.

Also familiar to me is Russo’s desperate, co-dependent desire to make his mother happy. He did what she wanted. He reasoned with her. Nothing worked. In the end, after her death, learning about OCD arrived as a revelation to him. That epiphany is also familiar to me.

Because she had a mental illness, his mom didn’t change and, at least without treatment, couldn’t change. That understanding doesn’t come in a moment, but its gradual dawning certainly helps. You were the kid, and, however much you wanted to, you couldn’t fix what was wrong.

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A Film Trio

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Kathy

The Imposter

If you haven’t seen The Imposter  yet, I suggest you catch it at the Cinematheque this weekend (Saturday at 9:45; Sunday at 6:30). This crazy documentary tells the story of a lost child who reappears in his Texas family’s life after three years–with different colored eyes and a French accent. The family takes him in, and most of the authorities accept the young man’s story of kidnapping and torture. Then, I guess you could say the story becomes complicated!

People often used to find documentaries boring, and maybe some still do. Contemporary docs, though, often pick up and pursue these stranger-than-fiction stories and present them in concise, exciting style. The Imposter fits this bill.  

Dalton Trumbo

I want to see Lonely Are the Brave (1962) this weekend,  because Of Kirk Douglas’s performance and Dalton Trumbo’s script, based on a novel by Edward Abbey. Trumbo, who also wrote Spartacus, was blacklisted after refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. He wrote several movies sub rosa, including Roman Holiday. Around 1960, he was finally able to write books and movies under his own name. He’s also known for the novel Johnny Got His Gun. This film may be a touch arty and ponderous, but I’m curious about it. See it Saturday at 5:15 pm or Sunday at 8:30 pm.

Fianlly, the actor Geoffrey Rush (remember Shine?) is always worth seeing, and in The Eye of the Storm, an Australian movie based on a Patrick White novel, he’s starring with the estimable Charlotte Rampling and Judy Davis. This family drama looks funny, in an acerbic way. It shows Saturday at 7:25 pm and Sunday at 3:45 pm.

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You Always Hurt the One You Love

Posted on November 17, 2012 by Kathy

I’ve struck up an email correspondence with a reader named Mary, whose elderly mother has borderline personality disorder, and a psychiatrist named David Allen. In recent correspondence, Dr. Allen suggests that people with BPD show their love for family members in a distorted way. Their criticism and evident disdain are really demonstrations of love, albeit unrecognizable to those on the receiving end.

A few years ago, he wrote this on his blog: “When parents act in an obnoxious manner . . . that pushes their adult children away, this is referred to as distancing behavior. Parents who know they were abusive, even if they do not admit it, may secretly believe that their children are better off without them. Hence, they engage in distancing to push their children away, thereby protecting their children from themselves.”

Such parents feel they are so deeply flawed they have to shield their children from these flaws. I told him I found this interpretation of BPD behavior counter-intutitive, and he understood. Most family members do. It sure doesn’t feel like love to be called names, and to be undermined, criticized, and judged. Dr. Allen suggested continuing to consider the possibility.

I broached this confounding topic to my friend Nancy, who has had, in the past, a BPD diagnosis (among others). She appears in my book Missing as a kind of guide. (Let’s say she’s Vergil to my Dante. Comparing BPD to The Inferno is not too far off the mark.)

She immediately identified with Dr. Allen’s thesis, but phrased it a little differently. She focused on perfectionism and reminded me of the black-and-white thinking characteristic of BPD. Nancy generally feels, she told me, that if someone else has a problem, she is unable to fix it. Helping, offering some comfort, doing a little bit–these gestures just don’t come to mind when one is hemmed in by perfectionism.

She can’t make it all right. Therefore, she may as well do nothing, or may even say something dismissive in order to ensure that the other person doesn’t rely on her, because relying on her would be a mistake! Why rely on her when she can’t solve the problem?

I’m contemplating these ideas, trying them on, attempting to see my mother’s hurtful behavior as perverse manifestations of love. Let me know if any of this rings a bell with you.

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Ozu Once Again

Posted on November 13, 2012 by Kathy

My Cinematheque choice this week is An Inn at Tokyo (Friday, November 16, 7:30 pm). Okay, this event might be off-putting at first glance. It’s silent. It’s Japanese. It’s in black and white. But it’s made by the great Yasujiro Ozu, who directed Late Spring and Tokyo Story, among others, and it features a benshi. Chances are pretty good we’ll never get another chance to see, or hear, one of these.

A benshi is a silent film narrator. In Japan, silent films extended longer into the ‘30’s than here in the U.S., not because the Japanese lacked sound technology, but because the benshi were so popular. They would tell the story as it unfolded, and their skill made them popular in their own right. People would flock to see benshi stars. At this screening, Ichiro Kataoka will do the honors. He’s an actor traveling in this country demonstrating this almost-lost art. He narrates in Japanese, but the film retains the English titles and also a music score.

If this sounds intimidating, consider that the benshi were highly popular among ordinary people, not the cultural elite. Consider also that this film is only 80 minutes long. Most important, it’s a unique opportunity.

Note, by the way, a new feature. You can subscribe to my blog, receiving email notifications when I post. See the home page by clicking on “Missing” on the menu.

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See Scout and Pina

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Kathy

Scout and Atticus

A couple weeks ago, before the rains came, I opened the windows one last time on a warm night. When I heard the dry leaves skittering on the sidewalk outside, my mind went to To Kill a Mockingbird. This movie, as you’ll recall, ends on Halloween, evoking the nostalgia and the scariness of childhood.

Seeing To Kill a Mockingbird in a theater is a no-brainer (Friday, November 9, at 7:00 pm). You can relish the understated black-and-white cinematography, the indelible performances, and the beautiful music and sound. This week’s screening at the Cinematheque also offers, of course, the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet and greet Mary Badham, Oscar-nominated for the role of Scout (beaten by Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker), who will be on hand to answer questions. When will you get another chance in your life to see this movie on a big screen and also meet Scout? (Here’s Ms. Badham’s website.)

Much as I love both the book and the movie, I have some quibbles with each of them. I’ll write about that later in the week. For right now, I urge everyone to get your tickets ($20 for non-members) via www.brownpapertickets.com. The 600-seat Cinematheque probably won’t sell out, but one never knows.

I also enthusiastically recommend Pina, a documentary about the choreographer Pina Bausch by her friend, the great German director Wim Wenders, showing Saturday at 9:40 and Sunday at 6:30. I’ve heard from some people who claim they don’t even like dance who liked this film. Bausch’s pieces are odd, memorable, beautiful, and sometimes funny. The poignant commentary from Wenders and others who knew her (she died before the film was completed) round out the movie.

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Never Sorry Folly?

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Kathy

I’m recommending Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry and Almayer’s Folly, both showing at the Cinematheque this weekend. Unlike past weeks, I haven’t seen either one.

Ai Weiwei

The documentary about Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has earned a 97% at the website Rotten Tomatoes, which aggregates critics’ reviews. Weiwei is an iconoclast who’s fought Chinese government censorship of his work and courageously protested human rights abuses. For this, he’s been beaten and imprisoned, but remains unbowed. This film should be interesting and inspiring. It shows Thursday, November 1, at 8:40 pm, and Friday, November 2, at 7:45 pm.

Among the five fiction films this weekend, I pick Almayer’s Folly (Sunday, November 4, at 3:45). I’m intrigued by the 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes and the high rating at John’s website of choice, Metacritic.com. I’m also interested in trying to read the Joseph Conrad novel it’s based on before the weekend, but who knows if that will happen? Chantal Ackerman is a 60ish pioneering Belgian feminist director. Be forewarned that this film is supposed to be moody and atmospheric–not so much character or plot-driven–with a heart-of-darkness theme.

Speaking of darkness, I usually pass on the violent films, and Killer Joe certainly fits that criterion. I’m slightly intrigued by Matthew McConaughy’s well-reviewed performance, and the other actors are supposed to be great as well. I just don’t enjoy seeing people get killed that much, so I’m skipping the spaghetti Western The Great Silence, too.               

I might be tempted, though, by Alps (Thursday at 6:45, and Sunday at 8:40), should I have the urge to feel disturbed and unsettled.

(Heads up on the following weekend: Mary Badham, who played Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird [1962] appears in person at the Cinematheque and answers questions after the screening.)

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Ozu’s “Tokyo Story”

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Kathy

Hara and Ryu

Yasujiro Ozu’s 1953 Tokyo Story is a quiet, moving film about an essential theme of life: change. It’s not to be missed.

Chishu Ryu, Ozu’s iconic actor, plays an elderly father who travels from the countryside to Tokyo with his wife to visit their grown children. Chishu Ryu should serve as an example in acting classes–he conveys benevolence and humanity with mere nods, with grunted assents, with barely perceptible smiles. The beautiful and gracious Setsuko Hara plays his daughter. Ozu’s actors subtly express a range of human emotion without the crude mugging we often see in American acting.

Often the emotions are sad. The Roman poet Vergil used an expression I like: lacrimae rerum, or the tears of things. The phrase expresses the melancholy of life, the grief of loss, the disappointment we encounter in small things. Ozu is a master at conveying lacrimae rerum. Because we can identify so closely with these sorrows, and they are conveyed in such a humane and compassionate way, and the film itself is so gentle and beautiful, it’s not depressing, but poignant and real.

As John keeps pointing out, filmmakers in a recent poll chose Tokyo Story as Number One, the best film ever made. You don’t want to miss the best film ever made, showing at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque at 6:55 pm on Saturday, October 27, and 3:30 pm on Sunday, the 28th.

In addition, the AIDS documentary We Were Here looks powerful. This film, shown in conjunction with Ensemble Theater’s production of Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart, chronicles the beginning of the epidemic as seen through the eyes of gay men in San Francisco. (Shows Thursday, October 25, at 6:45 pm, and Friday, October 26, at 7:30 pm.)

As in weeks past, I recommend the Miyazaki film, the last of this series. If you’ve never seen a film by this director, you’re missing out. Princess Mononoke deals with ecological themes within a mythological story. (Saturday at 9:30 pm, and Sunday at 6:30 pm.)

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