Love Triangles

An American Marriage (2018)

by Tayari Jones

South: love triangle.

Shackles of home - power to

Draw two asunder.

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Rapture, Blister, Burn (2012)

by Gina Gionfriddo

Academic love 

Triangle. Oxymoron: 

Married feminist?

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The Lion in Winter

(1968, dir. Anthony Harvey)

Exiled Eleanor

Uses sons to fight Henry.

War begins at home.

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Betrayal (1978)

by Harold Pinter

Love triangle in

Reverse, from fizzle to spark.

Sadder when rewound.

Monster Moms

Belated Mother's Day.
I slipped in Yerma in the list. Extrapolating that if she had a baby, she would still have issues.

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Three Tall Women

(seen 2/2018, Golden Theatre, dir. Joe Mantello)

Albee mom in three

Ages. How does one get from

A to B to C?

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Crisis

(1946, dir. Ingmar Bergman)

Nelly learns city

Souls corrupt. True mother less

So than adoptive.

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Rachel, Rachel

(1968, dir. Paul Newman)

Rachel withers from

Mother. Sex awakens her,

Actualizes self.

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Yerma

(seen 3/2018, Park Avenue Armory, by Federico Garcia Lorca / Simon Stone, dir. Simon Stone) 

Apres Lorca, "Her"

Blogs of childlessness - failure

Of female nature?

Railroad Mysteries

Like road movies, train movies are about the journey and not the destination. The air of mystery permeates the train compartments. The closed quarters make for a perfect locked room mystery setting.  The passengers are never who they appear to be.

The mystery in "The Darjeeling Limited" is Francis' undisclosed real purpose for the trip with his brothers. Mysterious identities abound in "Shanghai Express." Yasmina Reza creates suspense as the soliloquies roll on between two passengers sitting across from each other. The mystery is whether they will eventually speak to each other. Soliloquies stall the remake of the ne plus ultra of mystery trains, "Murder on the Orient Express." 

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The Darjeeling Limited

(2007, dir. Wes Anderson)

Brothers travel through

India to shed baggages -

Amid blues, yellows.

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Shanghai Express

(1932, dir. Josef von Sternberg)

"Grand Hotel" on wheels.

Dietrich, butterfly-lit, with

Wong holding her own.

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The Unexpected Man (1995)

by Yasmina Reza

Soliloquies soon

Before connection between

Strangers on a train.

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Murder on the Orient Express

(2017, dir. Kenneth Branagh)

Promising journey

Derailed by Branagh's Poirot

Monologues on screen

Water Creatures

May I begin with "Part of Your World," sung by Ariel from "The Little Mermaid"?

Because of Ariel (and Dyesebel) I pretended to swim and lay on the sand at the beach like a mermaid. I did not realize that this was a song about coming out until my college professor pointed it out to me. I listened to Howard Ashman's lyrics with new ears. My professor was right. 

The characters in the works below have a desire to be part of another world. The water creatures in "Rusalka" and "The Lure" want to be on land. In "The Shape of Water" and "SpongeBob Squarepants: The Broadway Musical," the land creatures want to be in the water world.
Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" endures in "Rusalka" and "The Lure." They are not cruelty-free. "The Lure" has savage mermaids that eat human hearts. The otherness of the water creatures create ideal vehicles for themes of intolerance. "The Shape of Water" and "SpongeBob Squarepants: The Broadway Musical" feature struggles against intolerance. There's a price to pay when joining another world. Typically one loses her voice - literally and figuratively. In all four works, music bridges the separate worlds. 

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Rusalka

(1901, composed by Antonin Dvorak, libretto by Jaroslav Kvapil)(2016-2017 Season, The Met: Live in HD, dir. Mary Zimmerman)

Nymph walks on land for
Lover, then betrayed. Water,
 Moon music pervade.

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The Shape of Water

(2017, dir. Guillermo del Toro)

Del Toro makes an

Adult fairy tale, monster

Musical movie.

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The Lure

(2015, dir. Agnieszka Smoczynska)

Killer mermaids sing

And dance in Polish. Surf and

Turf cannot unite.

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SpongeBob Squarepants: The Broadway Musical

(seen 2/2018, Palace Theatre, Music & Lyrics by Various, Book by Kyle Jarrow, dir. Tina Landau)

Bikini Bottom

On Broadway. Pastiche songs preach

Optimistic views.

Conchita, Bertha, and Charlotte

Women are objects of obsession for the men in the works below. In two out of three, the men die ... without consummating their "love."

None of them feel romantic. 

Luis Bunuel's film is intentionally absurd. Two actresses play the same character. Or two actresses portray different sides of the character. Or the man has prosopagnosia. On second viewing, I paid more attention to the presence of political terrorism in its story world.

"Torment" was Ingmar Bergman's first produced screenplay and stars Mai Zetterling as Bertha, a schoolboy's first love and an older man's torture toy. Bertha is a template for female Bergman protagonists to come - a complicated female role that could either be a product of his genius or misogyny (maybe both?).        

Jules Massenet's "Werther" is overwrought and mercifully short. Is it the way Jonas Kaufmann plays him or is it the way the role is written? Kaufmann goes from gloomy to desperate to dead. It's dull to sing in the same "key" for four acts. 

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That Obscure Object of Desire

(1977, dir. Luis Bunuel)

Conchita times two;

No matter who plays her, man

Only wants one thing.

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Torment

(1944, dir. Alf Sjoberg)

Life lessons valued

More than schoolwork for expelled 

Man in Bergman script.

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Werther

(1892, composed by Jules Massenet, libretto by Edouard Blau, Paul Milliet, and Georges Hartmann)

(2013-2014 Season, The Met: Live in HD, dir. Richard Eyre) 

Poet loves, pines for

Charlotte. Long drawn out death ends

Our miseries.

WWII: Camera Moves

In playwriting class, Professor Levy taught us that if we were to set a play in the middle of the 20th century, then we need to ask what our characters did during the war, especially if we had male characters. "Saving Private Ryan" (two years after the class) impressed in me a better understanding of those war years. A visit to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans a few years later made me understand my grandfather more.  

WWII is arguably the first war when the film medium played an important part: in propaganda and in processing its aftermath. The body of work is also immense because the war affected many countries. If I were a film curator, I would program films across the globe and group them into pre-war, the war years, and post-war.

The three films below stand out because of their technical peaks. The camera movements feel more agile. I wonder how much of that is due to how documentarians shot the war.

The racing scenes that open "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" pump adrenaline and the levitating camera in the duel scene embodies a God's-eye view of a world at war.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

(1943, dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

Candy through three wars.

Kerr ageless in all. Walbrook

Goes for hearts and mind.

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A Matter of Life and Death

(1946, dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

Pilot appeals to

Stay on earth. Down: vivid hues.

Up: clerical drab.

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One of my favorite scenes from "The Cranes are Flying":

The Crane are Flying

(1957, dir. Mikhail Kalatozov)

Lovers torn by war;

Camera flies and dives as

We wait for Boris.

Road Trips

Never about the destination, road trips are all about the journey. The three works below feature characters that journey within, despite the scenery that surrounds them.  

The theme song for this threaded works is Charlene's "I've Never Been to Me."

"The Trip to Spain"

• Destination: From UK to Spain
• Journey: What fatherhood means
• Other Notes: In some ways, they succeeded in making a Don Quixote movie, to Terry Gilliam's envy I wager. 

"Sing, Unburied, Sing"

• Destination: From Bois Savage to Parchman Farm Penitentiary in Mississippi
• Journey: Meeting ghosts of family's past
• Other Notes: Borrows from Toni Morrison's "Beloved" and paints a vivid canvas of the modern South.

"Wild Strawberries"

• Destination: From Stockholm to Lund
• Journey: A man's life
• Other Notes: In honor of the Bergman centennial, I began an informal retrospective with this masterpiece. Watching it led me to a journey down memory lane: It is the inspiration for Woody Allen's "Deconstructing Harry" - a movie I watched with my youngest brother as part of his homework when he read "The Catcher in the Rye."

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The Trip to Spain

(2017, dir. Michael Winterbottom)

Rob and Steve go to

Spain. Quixotic, fatherhood

Themes along the way.

Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017)

by Jesmyn Ward

Ghosts travel with clan.

Past is prison. Violence

Can be merciful.

Wild Strawberries

(1957, dir. Ingmar Bergman)

Borg journeys to get

Honor. Choose what to carry

On the road of life.

Pussy Power

The electric power that the women find in Naomi Alderman's "The Power" is within them all along. The young women can ignite it in the old women. The other women in the first three works also find the power within them. That power is often used for revenge, a theme that can also serve to thread the works below. In the process, they portray the women as vindictive. If the simple-minded were only exposed to these four works, they will equate feminism with killing men. It is up to the viewer to deem the female characters' actions as forgivable. Societal forces reduced these women's powers no matter the location and time period. In each, religious forces prop up the patriarchy. Sex ruins the women, but sex is a power tool they learn to use.

"Lady Macbeth"

• Time: 1865
• Locale: Rural England
• Revenge: Having an affair with her husband's land worker.
• Other Notes: Based on Nikolai Leskov's "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District." At what point did I begin to not like her? When she kills the horse or the boy?

"Insiang"

• Time: 1976
• Locale: Manila
• Revenge: Stealing her mother's lover
• Other Notes: A time for resistance yielded the second golden age of Filipino cinema. Imelda Marcos did not want the world to see "Insiang." I am looking forward to the works that will come out of these times.

"Cavalleria Rusticana"

• Time: 19th century
• Locale: Sicilian village
• Revenge: Telling the husband of the wife whom her ex left her for
• Other Notes: The brevity of this work makes it a masterpiece. The staging made me realize I escaped theatre school without reading Brecht. Santuzza disclosing Alfio's wife's affair made me think of Yvonne Elliman's "If I Can't Have You."

"The Power"

• Time: The near future
• Locale: Various countries
• Revenge: Electrocuting men
• Other Notes: Speaking of golden ages, this will be the next great TV series. Alderman's frame for the story - the reader is perusing a manuscript written by a man - yields one of the most satisfying last lines I've read in a long time.

Lady Macbeth

(2016, dir. William Oldroyd)

Corraled wife takes sex

From patriarchy. Pugh makes

One root, maybe hate?

Insiang

(1976, dir. Lino Brocka)

Mom's lover moves in,

Puts moves on daughter. #Metoo

In Marcos era.

Cavalleria Rusticana

(1890, composed by Pietro Mascagni, libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci)

(2017-2018 Season, Metropolitan Opera House, dir. David McVicar)

Outcast outs ex-love's

Affair. Brechtian McVicar

Lets score be the star.

The Power (2016)

 by Naomi Alderman

Women gain power

To shock. Will they wield it like

Men? Captures zeitgeist.

Pall Care

Palliative care may have been a new terrain for me as a student nurse, but it was a place I felt comfortable navigating. Hence, I gravitated towards oncology. My interest in works about death and dying is a busman's holiday. It's a peek at the other side, the patient's side.

In the three works below, terminal illness is characterized as new terrain. With the diagnosis appears new shades that contour the characters' physical worlds. Light is perceived anew, so is breath, and so are priorities. In terms of diagnoses: Nina Riggs writes about her breast cancer journey, Molly Shannon's Joanne has leiomyosarcoma, and the patients in "Extremis" represent the typical medical ICU population.

I appreciate "The Bright Hour" and "Other People" most for their honest humor. They appealed to my morbid sense of humor. Part of what draws me to these works is that it is a terrain (barring a swift death) that I will likely enter. Protracted illness is a product of modern medicine. The works provide an aerial view of the terrain, not street directions. In all three, what one can clearly see is that autonomy in how one chooses to die is a value to be upheld. 

The Bright Hour (2017)

by Nina Riggs

Memoir: terminal

Diagnosis seen as new

Terrain and new light.

Other People

(2016, dir. Chris Kelly)

Year with dying mom.

Home turns to new terrain for

Caregivers, patient.

Extremis

(2016, dir. Dan Krauss)

Too brief exam on

Palliative challenges in

Modern medicine