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An Education
Of the much admired British film AN EDUCATION I am become one of the admirers. Carey Mulligan is a charismatic new talent (winsome, witty, smart), and the movie, directed by Lone Scherfig with a script by Nick Hornby, really has something to say about education and of what it ought to consist. In tandem with her formal…
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The White Ribbon
Michael Haneke‘s THE WHITE RIBBON is beautifully shot in black-and-white, ambiguous, enigmatic, sometimes a little awkward and even a bit stiff. Although the familiar Haneke mix of Hitchcockian suspense and Highsmithian amorality permeates every frame, the feel is of an historical fable. But, while gripping in the moment, it is strangely less memorable afterwards than…
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Last Tango in Berlin
LAST TANGO IN BERLIN is the current show by the sort of legendary Ute Lemper (even though I have never warmed to her recordings), tango themed, in an intimate venue, around the block from my office. Of course I was going to go: she is a consummate performer, technically flawless, with a good band, deft,…
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Where the Wild Things Are • Antichrist
If you want to see a film in which a child goes into the snow because his mother gives a higher priority to pleasing the man in her life, in which psychological and spiritual insight is attained through encounters in the wilderness with talking animals and acts of symbolic violence and dismemberment, followed by a…
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After Miss Julie
It would be nice to see a production of Miss Julie in which Strindberg’s instructions for a naturalistic setting which exists largely in the wings, and that we see only a corner of, were actually followed. There are too many boxed-in containment units that improbably and without deviation follow the exact dimensions of the stage.…
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Lincoln Center Festival
Two from this year’s LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL: I saw Les Éphémères in two parts on Saturday and Sunday at Park Avenue Armory. There’s a lot I could write about it (of the French genius for extracting poetry from the quotidian, of the remarkable way in which the production cinematizes the stage, of the festival atmosphere…
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Exit the King
The Broadway revival of EXIT THE KING is an opportunity to revisit Ionesco‘s absurdist critique of the logical fallacies of political power and entitlement, even if, in this adapted version, the topical references are strained and overly obvious. Of the two leads, Geoffrey Rush comes off best. His mannerisms have always struck me as a…