Category Archives: film

Curious Cases

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” ‘He seems to grow younger every year,’ they would remark. And if old Roger Button, now sixty-five years old, had failed at first to give a proper welcome to his son he atoned at last by bestowing on him what amounted to adulation.

And here we come to an unpleasant subject which it will be well to pass over as quickly as possible. There was only one thing that worried Benjamin Button; his wife had ceased to attract him. At that time Hildegarde was a woman of thirty-five, with a son, Roscoe, fourteen years old. In the early days of their marriage Benjamin had worshipped her. But, as the years passed, her honey-coloured hair became an unexciting brown, the blue enamel of her eyes assumed the aspect of cheap crockery-moreover, and, most of all, she had become too settled in her ways, too placid, too content, too anaemic in her excitements, and too sober in her taste. As a bride it been she who had “dragged” Benjamin to dances and dinners–now conditions were reversed.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald is, as a rule, charming, and the short story from which this excerpt is taken is only a slight exception. There’s something intriguing and yet tedious about following a character whose life runs backward both in story and new movie. Perhaps it’s because of the inevitability of the premise?

The movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is based off of Fitzgerald’s 1921 short story that follows Benjamin through his life from birth as an old man as he lives, falls in love, and dies as a child. The movie differs in mostly every other respect. The acting of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett is, of course, accomplshed, and the aging process is a testament to the marvels of technological advancement. It was well made, but nearly 3 hours with no plot development is slow going.The short story is worthwhile; it’s up to you to decide if the movie is worth 3 hours of your time. An hour and a half, certainly. For 3 hours, I require action.

It’s a great premise for a story, and a great fantasy to play in your head, but it doesn’t make for intriguing cinema. What is the crux of the plot? Benjamin grows young. And what happens? Benjamin grows young. There is no great struggle, just the unnatural process of unaging.

Both short story and movie are curious cases in themselves. A great premise for both, and on one hand a great writer, and the other excellent actors. Yet they fall short, at least in my estimation. We will see if the film becomes curiously popular. Stranger things have happened.

Coco Chanel and Edith Piaf: French Icons with Panache

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Beware the women of Paris. They will chew you like a baguette, and down you with a sip of wine.

Formed by a hard childhood in poverty and wartime France, these two self-made women Coco Chanel, legendary house founder of Chanel, and Edith Piaf, “the little songbird” (at 4 feet 10 inches) exercised a severe dedication to their arts that led to international success and renown. Despite personal problems and society’s moral approbation, the designer and the singer fashioned themselves into the top people in their profession, in a style that was wholly their own.

I watched La Vie En Rose last night, a 2007 movie telling the tempestuous life of French singer Edith Piaf starring the excellent Marion Cotillard. The movie switches poetically between scenes of her childhood and her early death from liver cancer at 48 years of age, and I recommend seeing it. Born in 1915 to a mother who sang on the streets and later deserted her and a circus performer father who left her in a brothel where prostitutes cared for her until he took her to sing on the streets at 14, Edith had small prospects and no education. A club owner recognized the talent in the starving street urchin at age 20, and her fortunes begin to change. Along with success came tragic love affairs and morphine and alcohol addiction. The movie paints her as the ‘artiste’ throwing temper tantrums, and she retains a coarseness throughout her life. Edith was not always a pleasant person, but then neither was Coco when something blocked her shrewd plans (albeit Coco exhibited great self-control).

Perhaps this temperamental street brat doesn’t seem similar to Coco Chanel, educated in a convent and now the epitome of elegance? Yet the two aren’t linked merely by coming into the height of their power around the WWII, worldwide success and a close identification with that French je ne sais quoi.

As women, they overcame the social stigma of their origins, had affairs with rich and successful men and were left brokenhearted, and surpassed who they were as individuals by creating something bigger than themselves, seen today in their fascinating legends. In an age where women weren’t praised for grit or business acumen or unfailing dedication to art over home and family, these were women to be reckoned with. They weathered changing fortune not with happiness so much as triumph.

WWII found Paris overrun with Nazis. Coco had closed her shops in 1939 and took up residence in the Hôtel Ritz Paris, where she stayed through the Nazi occupation of Paris. During that time she was criticized for having an affair with a German officer/Nazi spy who arranged for her to remain in the hotel. The French despised her after that liaison. What did she do? Come out with a collection after the war the was a sensational hit in America.

Edith was a frequent performer at German Forces social gatherings in occupied France, and many people considered her a traitor. Following the war she claimed to have been working for the French resistance, but then she, and Coco, often lied about themselves. Despite the negative stigma, she remained a national and international favorite.

Small women of bad family and little education, they became enigmatic French icons. They became such with panache. It makes me want to stroll the banks of the Seine in Chanel humming Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien and nursing heartbreak with cigarettes and wine.

Review: theanyspacewhatever at the Guggenhiem

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I groaned along with a few other people when the black and white film we were watching on beanbag chairs stopped in the middle, apparently on a continuous loop that never finishes. Since I had finished my free espresso, I got up and someone else jetted into my seat. The espresso bar’s line had died down, and people mingled up and down the white ramp. Where was I?

–the not-so-stuffy Guggenheim. The Guggenheim in New York has taken on a playful approach this fall, with an “invitation to a core group of these artists—Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, and Rirkrit Tiravanija—to collectively formulate a scenario for an exhibition,” according to its press release for theanyspacewhatever.

‘Relational aesthetics’ makes an intimidating phrase. However, these artists, who take the exhibition as a medium, have turned the Guggenheim into a humanized and fun space where suddenly everything starts to look like art. The museum has been transformed into one sprawling art playground, where the whole experience becomes a user-friendly and interrelated series of experiences as one ascends the circular ramp. It starts with the marquee of flashing lights at the entrance, but this theatrical experience is one where the viewer is the star. The bare white spiral of the interior is punctuated with a plethora of details that humanize the space. On walking in, one looks up to see a glittering starry sky and down to see a Pinocchio submerged face down in the museum’s small pool. What’s the connection between these works? Only that they share the space with each other, created to work together to draw the viewer into the space, and make them more aware of their surroundings.

It works on you subtly at first, but becomes more and more interesting. I took my shoes off to watch part of a documentary on some cushions next to one of the TVs on the first level, thereby making myself part of the exhibition as I discovered when girls took photos of the scene, and me, from the balcony above. Associative chains of black words seemed randomly typed both in placement and meaning at first. They never take a structured narrative, but one becomes more in tune with a generalized significance. The sound of falling water immerses the viewer as he walks through a bare white tunnel, then he is lost in a brown cardboard maze with holes that you can peep through and art embedded where you are least likely to look. After a set of hotel bedroom furniture on a round glass platform, you arrive at my favorite part, the Illy espresso bar next to the beanbag movie theatre. Eventually, you reach a sign at the top telling you you have reached the end, and it really feels like a you have completed a journey.
This process-oriented way of experiencing the exhibit made me feel like a child, uninhibited. This is the kind of space where you can touch the art, drink the art, and walking through it makes you a part of the art. These ordinary objects, beds or words like half-formed thoughts, could be found outside the Guggenheim’s walls. The New York Times reported that, “For a price and with a reservation, up to two people can spend the night. (Like so many must-dos in New York, it is sold out.)” Does it get more interactive than that?

It will be up until January 7, 2009, and in conjunction with the Catherine Opie retrospective also being exhibited, makes for a fun day at the museum. Instead of being boxed into to rectangular room and seeing things in gilt frames, you see Frank Gehry’s design fully exploited in this spiral-patterned fun house. Instead of being told where to look and how, you are let loose to participate and peek where you like. How refreshing.