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.