1. I didn't have much pep in my step this morning, but, finally, in the early afternoon, I crowbarred myself out of my chair and the comfort of the living room and made a trip to Yoke's to buy groceries, mostly for the birthday dinner Christy and I are making for Carol on Wednesday, and to purchase some sugary treats to help me stay cool. I try to lay off pop, but I didn't resist buying some 12 oz bottles of 7Up and its crisp lemon lime sugary flavor worked and brought back a stream of memories of refreshing 7Ups I drank as a kid on hot Kellogg days. I also bought a half gallon of Tillamook Mudslide ice cream -- yes, I also try to lay off eating much ice cream, but I didn't resist the promise of cooling down by stirring this ice cream and milk in a glass to make myself small hand stirred milk shakes.
2. Late in the afternoon, I retreated into the Vizio room. I haven't watched anything on television here at home for weeks. Earlier in the day, an ad from Acorn TV came across my Titter feed and one of the shows featured was The Hour, a two season program from ten years ago about the launch of a new BBC feature news program -- a program similar to CBS's 60 Minutes. The Hour takes place in the mid-fifties and features Romola Garai (who is new to me [alarmingly -- she's done a ton of great work], Ben Whishaw (always fascinating), and Dominic West (a smooth operator) and, not only is it a show about the BBC in the fifties, it's a murder mystery. I watched episode 1 and I'm intrigued to find how the portrayal of early television journalism, things behind the scenes at the BBC, and the investigation of two murders (so far) are all going to connect with each other. This first episode also featured the remarkable Vanessa Kirby. In both her brief role in this show and in The Crown, to me, she plays unpredictable, upsetting and upset, and somewhat bitter characters superbly and I'm always nervous when her characters enter the story -- I'm never quite sure what upsetting thing might happen next. She's brilliant.
3. After watching this episode of The Hour, I flipped over to the Criterion Channel and decided to watch the 1984 documentary, The Times of Harvey Milk. I wish I could remember when I saw this movie before. Did I see it at Cinema 7 in Eugene? That would make sense. I might have seen it at the Bijou. That, too, would fit. It's also possible that I rented it years ago and watched it at home.
What did I experience watching this movie this evening? Seeing it underscored my sense that the past is always in the present, that history is not a way of looking at what happened, and is over, but is a way of understanding what's happening now. The discussions in this movie of the place in our world of people who are not straight continue. Laws have changed. Certain aspects of life for people who aren't straight have legally opened up, but those laws didn't change the hearts and minds of those among us who see people who aren't straight as abnormal, deviant, perverted, and sinful. As the people featured in this documentary are interviewed, nearly forty years ago, their comments are contemporary. I knew they would be. Likewise, when violence broke out in San Francisco after Dan White, the man who murdered Harvey Milk and George Moscone in their City Hall offices in 1977, was found guilty not of murder but of manslaughter, those scenes also looked, not only contemporary, but like street scenes that followed the death of Martin Luther King, Jr, the acquittal of the officers who clubbed Rodney King, and any number of other events that triggered anger at how justice is carried out, or not, in the USA.
When The Times of Harvey Milk concluded, I was mulling it over, almost absentmindedly looking at the Criterion Channel catalog and suddenly I saw that the stunning 1979/80 movie, The Long Good Friday is an offering of the Criterion Channel.
I didn't resist watching it for the umpteenth time.
I started watching The Long Good Friday about thirty years ago. Back then, the movie excited me in the ways Shakespeare's tragedies excited me. The story is expertly structured to show how Bob Hoskins' character, Harold Shands, appears to be at the top of his life as a kingpin of organized crime in London, but is undone by his inability and unwillingness to adapt to ways the world around him is changing and, as tragic character do, meets his demise as much because of what is inside of him as because of external forces. He perfectly embodies the old saw, character is fate (or character is destiny). Harold Shands is who he has been and in a time of crisis, he cannot be other than the gangster he's always been and in a world undergoing seismic shifts (in large part because of the Irish Republic Army), his inability to listen or adapt eventually topples him.
If you think I've spoiled the movie by revealing that Harold Shands' life and career meet a tragic end, I haven't. The vitality of this movie is not in how it ends -- it's in how that end is reached and in how this movie is structured, shot, and performed. It features Helen Mirren and she's superb and the supporting cast of syndicate members, corrupt public officials, and others in Harold Shands' world is also stellar.
I used to highly recommend this movie to anyone who would listen to me.
I feel much less eager to recommend it these days, not because I don't think it's brilliant -- it is brilliant --, but because it's such a violent movie. I realized this evening that when I was younger, I was able to downplay, in my mind, the violence in a movie like The Long Good Friday because it worked so well as a expression of dramatic tragedy.
As I watched it tonight, I knew what scenes of sadism were coming, I knew when other forms of violence were going to happen, and I dreaded them. Intellectually, the movie gives me the same rush of pleasure in 2021 that it gave me in, say 1991, but now it's much harder on my feelings, on my sensibilities, on my soul.
In service to the genre of tragedy, I understand the necessity of the violence. That's my intellect speaking.
But, the way this violence affects me inwardly, the way it sickens me, upsets me, and violates my sense of decency, makes it, now, difficult for me to recommend.
Will I watch this movie again?
Most likely, I will, and I'll put myself through the horror and disgust it rouses in me. It's a cinematic, dramatic masterpiece and I don't think I can deny myself the pleasure Bob Hoskins' and Helen Mirren's performances give me nor can I deny myself the enjoyment the movie's artistry gives me.
I return to repeated viewings of The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II for the same reasons.
Here's the limerick by Stu:
We know things can happen in "threes"!
And first was that COVID Disease.
Then came riots, quarantine,
Murder Hornets are seen.
Now HEAT triple digit degrees.
06/29/2021
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