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Maudie – Validation of a Life

July 24, 2017 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

“The whole of life, already framed, right there.”

It’s hard to assign Maudie to any one genre. Certainly it qualifies as biography. But it is also a bit of art history. It’s an inspirational story of finding success and happiness against terrible odds. And at its heart it is a love story—but not the kind of love story that usually is made into movies.

This is the story of Canadian primitivist artist Maud Dowley Lewis (Sally Hawkins). Suffering from severe arthritis since childhood, she is cared for by her overprotective and judgmental aunt. When mercurial fish peddler Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke) seeks to hire a woman to clean his house and cook his meals, Maud sees it as a chance to escape. Everett lives an almost hermit-like existence. He had learned to be self-reliant to a fault. He lives in a 10’x12’ house without water or electricity. When Maude moves in to such close quarters, it is hard for both of them to adjust. Everett is demanding and at times violent. He is taciturn, while Maud is opinionated and talkative.  Early on he treats her as a lower life form (even the chickens outrank her), but she soon finds an important place in his life.

As an outlet, Maud begins painting pictures of birds and flowers on the walls—and soon the door and the windows. She paints on scraps of wood and paper. A woman from New York wants to buy some pictures, and soon Maud has a roadside business. While this enhances their finances, in many ways it rubs Everett the wrong way. It is a constant struggle to balance these two very independent souls whose lives have become intertwined and who find a love that many may find a bit cold, but there is a passion there.

The film’s greatest strength is the pair of performances by the lead actors. Even when there is little dialogue, their screen presence carries us through the story and the moods that are such a part of the film.

The film often makes use of windows—looking in or out through windows, conversations through windows, windows that might be so dirty we can barely see. For Maud, her art was the window through which she viewed the world. Her paintings are vibrant and happy—far happier than we might expect from someone who suffered so much both physically and emotionally. It is through the window of her art that Maud found happiness and validation.

The concept of validation is a key. How frequently we use the word invalid for someone with a physical or emotional problem. And how close we may come to thinking of such a person as not valid because of their affliction. That is certainly how Maud’s family treated her. She was deemed unimportant and a burden. Early in her relationship with Everett, he thought her incapable of doing what needed to be done. Yet when others began to see beauty in the pictures that she created, it was obvious that she mattered. It was not just that she was earning money. It was that she did something that brought joy to herself and others.

Maudie reminds us of the intrinsic value each person has. To treat them otherwise means we could well miss the gifts they offer to us.

Photos courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

 

Filed Under: Film, Reviews Tagged With: Aisling Walsh, art, arthritis, biography, Canada, Ethan Hawke, Maud Lewis, Nova Scotia, Sally Hawkins

Cézanne et Moi – 19th Century Artistic Bromance

April 8, 2017 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

“I can’t remember why I love you so much.”

Two boys meet in a small town in France, they have different backgrounds, but become great friends. They dream of life in Paris. When they grow up they head off to seek fame and fortune. They become the post-impressionist painter Paul Cézanne and novelist/journalist Émile Zola. Cézanne et Moi is a fictionalized account of the lifelong—and often troubled—friendship of these two paragons of the arts in 19th Century France.

It should be noted that from an American perspective, Cézanne is far better known. Many Americans only know Zola because of his part in the Dreyfus Affair. Yet in their time, Zola was an important novelist whose fame far outshone that of his boyhood friend.

 

This film, though is not about their literary or artistic accomplishments, but about the friendship that goes back to their childhoods in Aix-en-Provence. Zola (Guillaume Canet) was an Italian immigrant whose father had died. He grows up without wealth or advantage. Cézanne (Guillaume Gallienau) is from a well-to-do family. Both disdain the bourgeois ethic of the day. As adults they set off to Paris. Their lives continue in parallel even though they are in different fields. Zola finds success and quickly takes on the middle class trappings. Cézanne, although his family has wealth, chooses to live the life of a struggling artist. He never really finds acceptance in the art world. Even the outcast Impressionists don’t accept him.

The two men at times cross paths and renew their friendship, but often Cézanne behaves boorishly, or Zola says something that upsets his friend. There is a certain bromance angle to the film. The two men have a genuine affection for each other, but they often seem to be at odds. The real break comes when Zola publishes a novel with a character that Cézanne believes is based on him. He finds it insulting. Later in the film, when there is a chance at reconciliation, Cézanne hears Zola telling others that his friend is a genius, but “a stillborn genius”.

 

A thread of irony runs throughout the story. By the end of their lives, Zola had gained the world that Cézanne‘s family had always had, while Cézanne lives as though he were impoverished. Zola was by far more successful in their lifetime, but today Cézanne is far better known. But the highest irony is that these two men wanted the friendship they had when they were younger, but could never seem to reconnect with it.

The film demonstrates how fragile friendship can be. It also shows the value of friendship and what is lost when those bonds are not maintained. These two men could have added a great deal to each other’s lives, but their failure to stay connected meant that each was diminished.

Photos courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Filed Under: Film, Reviews Tagged With: art, bromance, Danièle Thompson, Émile Zola, France, Guillaume Canet, Guillaume Gallienau, literature, Paul Cézanne

Conversation with Danièle Thompson, Cézanne et Moi Writer/Director

April 5, 2017 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

I recently had the chance to talk by phone with Danièle Thompson, the writer/director of Cézanne et Moi, a film about the lifelong—but troubled—friendship between post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne and novelist /journalist Émile Zola.

Cézanne is a fairly familiar name to American audiences, Zola less so (and then mostly because of the Dreyfus Affair). What should we know to more fully appreciate the film?

Maybe what I found out years ago—the first thing that I was surprised that I didn’t know, because obviously, we are more knowledgeable about these two characters in France because they’re both huge figures of the 19th Century of our culture. What I found out was that these two people were friends—two little boys in a very far away little town in the South of France in the 19th Century in a religious school. There were no other schools then in France. It’s very surprising that these two little boys will become, each in their own trade, would become among the most famous French people in the world. So I was intrigued by the fact that they had met so young and I’d never heard of that relationship.

I’d never heard about the letters they wrote to each other, which have been published and which are absolutely amazing and incredibly touching and passionate. There’s a huge book of those letters, which really reflects a very very intense relationship. Then the fact that life actually separated them all the time, but they managed to save their friendship for such a long time before the breakup. I also was very intrigued that the breakup was because of a book, because of the way that Cézanne felt, as he said in the film he felt literally raped by his best friend.

Then also I was very surprised by what I discovered about Cézanne. As you pointed out, Zola is quite well known because of the Dreyfus Affair, also because of his literature which is quite extraordinary. From the writing you discover a lot of the personality of the writer. A painter is much more hidden behind his work. I knew very little about Cézanne, I discovered a character that is described by many people, and the fact that he was unhappy and difficult and did not know actually how to be someone who was friendly or who was playing the game of the Paris art world. All the Impressionist had a hard time, but he was not even liked his fellow artists. He was not liked, of course, by the establishment. He actually really left the Impressionist movement quite early to try to find something else.

And we now today know that he did. We know that the paintings of the last 15 years are totally amazing and have changed the vision of all the artist that followed. All this made me think there was story to tell not about painting or not about literature, but about that very very particular relationship, which contained all these elements of how free an artist can be, or how the competition can also separate people and destroy a friendship. There are many, many different things that I thought could be interesting for an audience who just knew on a very superficial level these two men., which was my case.

I find it a bit ironic perhaps that in their life time, Zola was the one who was successful and known, but as you said many of Cézanne’s was never really accepted in the art world of the time. Now (at least for Americans) that is reversed.

Yes, well this isn’t fair. That’s something terribly painful for me to imagine. The different paths that these two men who were so close when they were adolescents, the fact that what you just said really separated them then and now it’s separating them exactly in the opposite way. I think one of the things that literally makes me want to cry is that not only was Cézanne ignored by his contemporaries, but Zola his best friend never really realized what a genius he was. That sentence he says at the end which was quoted by Vollard, the art dealer, which Zola really said, “What a pity, he was a genius, but he was an aborted genius.” It’s something that apparently people told Cézanne that Zola had said, so I used it and decided to write the scene so Cézanne would actually hear it live. But he said that.

Also, he died four years before Cézanne and never saw the last paintings. And the last paintings were the most revolutionary and the most amazing. They’re not only the beginning of Cubism, the inspiration for Cubism, but even for Abstraction. Even if Zola had seen these paintings I don’t think he would have understood, because by the end of his life he had become much more conservative. He actually renounced the enthusiasm he had when he was in his twenties and defended the Impressionists. He was a very young and brilliant journalist and art critic. Then he wrote some things at the end of his life which were also were used for one of the last scenes when they’re together in the dark room when he became a photographer. He really denied everything he said about the Impressionists. He said he couldn’t stand them anymore and they were all doing the same thing and it looked like laundry on canvasses. I don’t think he would have understood the revolution that Cézanne was beginning. That breaks my heart.

It seems to me that the ideal of the middle class is part of what creates turmoil between Zola and Cézanne. Perhaps even from childhood. Cézanne was born into it but doesn’t seem to care; Zola achieved it through his work. Do you see that same kind of conflict about bourgeoisie values today?

The bourgeoisie values today are much more diluted. This was very much, at the time, it was a clear contrast. Today I guess the values are much more mixed. There is now an opening with everything that has changes so much since the 19th Century that the bourgeoisie is not sure of their taste anymore. They’re very open I think to the other cultures. Then people were really locked in their traditions. And also, the bourgeoisie was very pretentious, very sure of itself. It’s not true anymore I don’t think.

What also fascinated me in the lives of these two young men as children is that one of them was really very poor and was very very eager not to become rich—because that was not Zola’s aim in life. But at least he wanted very much to afford a nice house and a lot of food and some nice dresses for his wife and his mother. It was for him a goal. He actually in his way of life became a bourgeois, never in his work, but in his way of life he became a bourgeois.

The other one, who was brought up by this rich father and had a very comfortable life, slowly really became a bum. He had very little money because he did not dare tell his father that he was actually living with a woman and having a son, so his father gave him just a little bit of money to survive as a painter alone. This is all true of course, something that is very well known. It is true also, I’ve spoken to Pizarro’s great-grandchildren and there’s some testimony he’d literally not smell very good. He would smell of garlic. He would not eat, not wash. He was also always covered with paint spots. He became more and more locked into his obsession with painting, not caring about anything else and not being really interested in the rest of the world. Where Zola was a humanist and someone who actually risked his life for the Dreyfus Affair.

Actually the family thinks, and a lot of people think, that he was killed because of it. The way he died is a very very strange accident—having the fumes of a chimney that actually suffocated him at night. There’s been testimony around the 1940s, an old man confessed that he was paid to block the chimney. There was never an inquiry because there was such a huge cataclysm in France and it divided the country in two and there were people who had duels about it. And Zola had to leave and go to England thinking he could never come back because he was going to be put in jail because of the positions he took to defend Dreyfus when Dreyfus was on Devil’s Island.

I know it is a fictionalized story of the relationship, but how much was based on fact and how did you weave the facts to create the fictionalized story?

This was the main interest and the biggest challenge to really spend a lot of time on research so that I would feel totally comfortable as if I were writing a contemporary film—to be totally familiar with their entourage, with their family, with their way of life, with the letters they wrote to each other. Then decide that I would stop my research—you can drown in research. You can go on and on forever because one thing always leads to another, and you become like obsessed.

So, at one point I decided to stop, and I decided that I was going to be free to tell the story the way I figured out—a little bit like Zola did in his book that was so painful for Cézanne. The weekend they spend together, which is the frame of the film, is completely an invention. I don’t think it ever happened. But what they talk about during that dreadful last rendezvous is based very much on the things I read about both of them and about their relationship This is exactly where my work as a writer was fascinating for me—to really imagine what these two men would have said to each other if they had that meeting, which they probably never did.

What I also loved imagining is, for instance, when you have the scene where Zola goes up the stairs and listens to that dreadful scene between Cézanne and his wife. It isn’t a violent scene, but it is sort of everyday life scene between a couple. And what I loved is writing that dialogue—in a way a banal dialogue—a sort of desperate exchange, but a banal dialogue. Then when Zola reads the part of the book that he stole from that scene, it becomes beautiful, what he does with it. That’s not my dialogue, that’s Zola’s dialogue. The way he makes them talk is so much more beautiful than the way they really did talk. That was to me exactly the key to what I was trying to do.

Photos courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

Filed Under: Film, Interviews Tagged With: art, Danièle Thompson, Émile Zola, France, Paul Cézanne

Nocturnal Animals – Unhappy Perfect Life

February 21, 2017 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

“What right do I have to not be happy? I have everything.”

Susan Morrow (Amy Adams) seems to have a perfect life in Nocturnal Animals. She has a top job in the art world, a beautiful home complete with its own works of art, her clothes and makeup are flawless. Yet we learn very soon that this is a world of artifice and pretension. Even from the opening credits that happen as we watch several naked, grossly obese women dancing as part of a performance art piece, there is a juxtaposition of what we might think of as beautiful and the ugliness of reality.

Academy Award nominee Amy Adams stars as Susan Morrow in writer/director Tom Ford’s romantic thriller NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Merrick Morton/Focus Features

We soon discover that her marriage and financial life are on very shaky ground. When her husband leaves on one of his too frequent business trips, she receives a package from her ex-husband Edward Sheffield (Jake Gyllenhaal) whom she hasn’t heard from for many years. Inside is a novel he’s written entitled Nocturnal Animals (a term he had used to describe her late night habits). She begins reading the manuscript and is immediately caught up both in the story and in memories of her marriage to Edward. The film is an intricate structure of Susan’s present day life, flashback, and the story-within-a-story of the novel.

The novel tells the story of Tony Hastings (also portrayed by Gyllenhaal) and an ill-fated vacation with his family through West Texas. They have a run in with a carload of coarse young men who end up taking Tony’s wife and daughter in one car and him in another. Tony is left stranded in the middle of nowhere. When he makes his way to the police, the story becomes even darker. Police detective Bobby Andes (Michael Shannon) is determined to have justice done—even if it has to happen outside the law. He and Tony set out to find the men who were involved.

4100_D002_00311_R3 (l-r.) Academy Award nominees Michael Shannon and Jake Gyllenhaal star as Bobby Andes and Tony Hastings in writer/director Tom Ford’s romantic thriller NOCTURNAL ANIMALS, a Focus Features release. Credit: Merrick Morton/Focus Features

The interrelatedness of that novel with events in Edward and Susan’s past sheds light on the depression that lurks behind the seemingly perfect life that Susan is leading. In the novel, Tony loses everything he holds dear, and is encouraged by Bobby to get revenge for the pain he has suffered through. For Edward, there is a sense that Susan has taken away everything that gave him happiness when they were married. But now, Susan is discovering that the life she has chosen is empty and meaningless, even though it seems to be filled with life and beauty.

Director Tom Ford makes great use of visual comparisons as the stories unfold. The art world that Susan inhabits is filled with beautiful things, but also seems very sterile. The West Texas countryside seems bleak and desolate, yet it is there that matters of life and death play out. There are also times that Ford connects the stories with shots that seem to echo each other. As we watch the various stories evolve and weave together, we begin to understand what Susan has lost on the way to the apparent success she enjoys, but now finds unfulfilling.

Susan is discovering that the world around her is full of illusion. Not just artistically, but emotionally and spiritually. Happiness is not found in success or possessions, both of which she has in abundance. It is through looking back that she begins to see that she has lost the very things that could have given her happiness.

Photos courtesy of Focus Features

Special features on the Universal Blu-ray Combo pack include “Building the Story” (the trifold manner of the narrative), “The Look of Nocturnal Animals,” and “The Filmmaker’s Eye: Tom Ford.”

Filed Under: DVD, Film, Reviews Tagged With: Amy Adams, art, Jake Gyllenhaal, Nocturnal Animals, Oscars, story within a story, Tom Ford

See La La Land & Take Everybody Else With You

January 26, 2017 by Matt Hill Leave a Comment

a while back
(on another site),
i wrote about how
art begets art –
in that case how
love for the game Bloodborne
led to a renewed
dip into
Lovecraft

several whiles back
(on a currently dead blog),
i wrote about how
faves lead to proselytizing –
how when we love something
(in that case, Bloodborne’s 
forebear, Dark Souls),
we naturally want
to tell everyone,
so they may love it too

(i also,
in each case,
related what i was saying
re: art, proselytizing, etc.
to God
(surprise))

now, here, i want to
say (and do) something similar –
interrelated/interconnected –
re: current Oscar top dog
and Hollywood darling
La La Land

by way of micro-review
(micro since so many
words have been spilt
already along these lines),
lemme just say:
La La Land was great;
like, really great;
like, to me, it deserves
how ever many Oscar nods
it’s been nodded

i mean, somehow,
like a filmic magic trick,
La La Land managed to be
classic without seeming formulaic,
nostalgic without seeming disingenuous,
an homage without seeming cute,
timeless without seeming stale

was it the great casting?
music?
acting?
writing?
cinematography?
music?
choreography?
music?
its situatedness in place/time?
just something about it
that makes you want to
give in and go along with it,
right from the start?

yes.

anyway, it’s legit great;
greatly legit;
but that’s not really
the main thing i want to say
now, here

really, i mainly want to
say (now, here) five things

1.

you should go see
La La Land

2.

and you should
take everybody else with you

3.

cuz art that’s exemplary,
and amazing, and wonderful,
memorable and high quality,
carefully crafted and
expertly done –
art that’s truly artful;
art that speaks;
art that’s just plain good –
it deserves to be seen,
to be understood and appreciated
(not alone because
doing so also cultivates us)

4.

and cuz people collectively
need to know that kind of art
when they see it;
and cuz the best way
to help that happen
is to show them bunches of it

(i know my initial instinct,
upon realizing i was in the
presence of something special
with La La Land,
was to see it again
and take my kids;
to help them see:
this is how it’s done,
this is something
beautiful that means something;
understand,
appreciate,
be cultivated by it)

5.

and all this previous stuff –
about art,
about appreciating it,
about sharing it with others –
cuz God

cuz God made
and digs
and wants us to dig
great art,
not alone because
doing so also cultivates us
(Paul says in Philippians: “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.”)

cuz God made
it so that
learning comes by example –
speaking a writer’s
words after her,
following a
choreographer’s footsteps,
tracing a pianist’s keystrokes,
so that we may also
artfully write, dance, make music
(Paul says in 1 Corinthians: “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”

and,
therefore,
the world –
this world –
will always, always,
need more writers,
dancers,
music makers;
will always need more
artists;
will always need more
great art;
will always need more
things like La La Land,
and people to see them,
and people to tell others
to see them too

Filed Under: Editorial, Film, Reviews Tagged With: art, children, Christian, Emma Stone, example, God, Jesus, La La Land, modeling, movie, Oscar, Paul, quality, review, Ryan Gosling, spiritual

Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang

October 14, 2016 by Darrel Manson Leave a Comment

Fire and gunpowder may seem like strange media for an artist, but Cai Guo-Qiang has mastered making art out of such ephemeral and temporary material. The new Netflix documentary Sky Ladder: The Art of Cai Guo-Qiang offers us a chance to see some of the beautiful and unusual installations he has done and get some insight into his creative process.

Perhaps you saw his work in the fireworks of the Opening Ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Fireworks have always been an important part of Chinese culture. (They were, after all, invented in China.) Cai finds incredible ways to use these materials. He has done art works in many places around the world—often one-off installations. However, that means that his art works are here and gone in a very short time. That makes this film all the more important because it is the only chance many people will have to see his art.

Sky Ladder

Much of the film deals with his efforts to create a “sky ladder”, a five hundred meter long ladder of fire going into the heavens. Part of his vision is that this is a way of joining the earth to the cosmos. He has been trying to do this for many years. His first attempt was planned for late 2001 in Shanghai, but was cancelled after 9/11 over concerns around terrorism. He later tried in Los Angeles, but that was aborted because of worries about wildfires. Finally he wants to do it near his hometown of Quangzhou, where is 100 year old grandmother lived. A work of this scale is challenging in many ways.

Much of his work happens in nature. As a result it has a certain environmental sensibility. He strives to connect his work with the natural world he sets the work in. He often uses biodegradable powders to make the smoky clouds that are a key part of his works. That connection he tries to make with the world also carries a spiritual aspect. That is especially true in his sky ladder. This is not designed to be a way of getting to heaven, but to serve as a visual image that this world is connected to a much wider existence.

As a Chinese artist, there is also the difficulty of using art to challenge the establishment and how that is different than the entertainment that he is often called on to create for the Chinese government (such as at the Olympics). There is even a brief appearance in the film by filmmaker Zhang Yimou (who was also a key artistic player in the 2008 Olympics) discussing the struggle for Chinese artists to balance what they want to do and what they can do.

Art is always a subjective experience. No doubt some will see the momentary creations that Cai makes and consider it just an amusement. Others will have a much deeper experience that will fuel their imaginations and help them see the world in a new way.

Photos courtesy of Cai Studios/Netflix

 

Filed Under: Film, Reviews Tagged With: art, China, documentary, fireworks, gunpowder, Kevin MacDonald

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