Lingual Tremors

Whimsy at the Whitney

We went to the Whitney Biennial the first weekend it opened in New York and I've thought about it all spring.  The biennial has become an annual tradition in the Lingual household.  It's something that we talk about for the intervening years between shows and often sets the standard by which we experience other shows. 

This year's biennial has already been panned (NYTimes, The New Yorker), and I'm surprised.  The first two biennials I saw (2004 and 2006) were distinctly political--taking on large themes.  I thought they were great (and they were my introduction to New York art).  This year's biennial was distinctly different; it was whimsical and apolitical.  Now, I'm a big fan of political art (see my Sex and the City post from earlier this week), but the Whitney Biennial left me wondering:  do we need a little whimsy?

Where past shows have been dominated by overtly political themes, this year's show was not.  My three favorite pieces were:

• Mika Rottenberg's Cheese (2007)
  • A video installation with multiple monitors that retold the Rapunzel story, based on sisters with long hair who milk goats to make cheese.
• Javier Tellez's Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those of Us Who See (2007)
  • An amazing film that captures several blind people describing an elephant as they touch it.
• Olaf Breuning's Home 2 (2007)
  • A bizarre film about the world's most culturally insensitive tourist.

Usually, I skip the videos.  Lingual Y and I disagree about this.  He often watches all of the videos, where I am more interested in the photographs and sculptures.  This time, however, the videos, more than the other pieces, really captured my imagination.  Put together, this series of three films really challenges everyday reality.  In Cheese, the sisters use their hair to make the cheese (a complex series of milking and straining the milk through their long hair).  In Letter on the Blind... we "see" an elephant as if for the first time through strikingly intimate camera angles as the blind touch and describe the elephant.  Unsettlingly, the film is shot in an empty swimming pool in urban & angsty Brooklyn.  The gritty urban background, coupled with the detailed shots of the elephant and the blind people's hands, was amazing.  And, Home 2 was disturbing, funny, and weird as a "tourist" made his way through several different exotic locations, poking fun at "bad tourists" as he made every faux pas possible.

Each of these pieces was unexpected.  The thing about political art is that too often, it doesn't lead to larger truths.  It often preaches to the already converted, offering some wryly intellectual or painfully explicit commentary on the present.  Instead, these three pieces were whimsical in their approach and they made you see the world in new and unexpected ways.  Yet, in their whimsy, they were not devoid of thought.  I have carried these pieces with me in my imagination and memory for months since seeing them.  The description "blind people in an empty pool with an elephant" sounds like the precursor to a bad joke;  instead, Letter on the Blind... was one of the most haunting pieces I've seen recently.  The depth and texture of the film was almost 3D as you tried to imagine what they were feeling.

I think people are tired.  I think they are tired of the war, tired of a bad presidency, tired of politics, tired of the economy, tired of all of the ways our society seems to be falling apart at the seams.  And, instead of capturing that ennui and melancholy, the Whitney Biennial challenged us to see the world a little differently, a little more whimsically, and to be open to the unexpected.   

More!

Forget the art, what were they wearing?
Who goes to the museum?
Cerebral Challenge
Ramshackle Riddle

In Defense of Fluff: Sex and the City--A Little Bit O' What You Need

**Spoiler Alert** Do not read this post if you intend to see the film **Spoiler Alert**

Grab a martini glass and put your feet up for a little girl talk. 

Here it is people:  I loved the Sex and the City movie.  LOVED. IT.  Are you shocked?  Can't quite see me as part of the cosmo sippin' Manhattan girl gone wild crowd?  Well, here's the thing.  I'm not, but the movie is a great big ball of fluffy wrapping around the complexities of everyday life.  Call it a nice prescription for what ails you.  A big pink martini for a bad day. 

Margot at the Wedding: The Cracked Mirror!

Noah Baumbach has a knack for dysfunction, something I first discovered in the Squid and the Whale.  Margot at the Wedding (2007) continues this theme, focusing this time on the relationship between two sisters.  Since I first read the review in Entertainment Weekly's "Fall Movie Preview," I've been dying to see this film.  I wasn't disappointed.  Truth in advertising:  this is a 5 star movie.  Go and see it.  It's sad and quirky and disconcerting and a profound meditation on human flaws and the fragile nature of relationships.

This is a great film, but a sad one.  The film opens on Margot, the highly unstable New York City writer, who uses everyone around her for fodder for her stories, as she leaves her husband, traveling to her estranged sister's wedding.  Margot arrives, and spends the entire visit picking her sister's life apart.  Margot spends the entire film making everyone feel inferior to her. 

And that part of Margot I sadly get.  As the eldest of 4 siblings, I've often thought that it must be hard to be my sibling and live up to my expectations.  I can be harsh and judgmental, even when I don't mean to be.  I think it comes from truly wanting the best for my loved ones.  It doesn't excuse my behavior;  I'm just pointing out to my loyal readers, some of whom are the aforementioned Tremor siblings who make periodic appearances on this blog, that I'm aware of my behavior.   "I know better than you do" siblings (that would be me) suck, on some level.  They really do.

But Margot is an even more difficult character.  She isn't motivated by love, she's motivated by power and a superiority complex.  I actually think, on some level, she wants to hurt other people because that's the only thing she can feel.  The film explores her  slightly incestuous relationship with her youngest son;  even in her most affectionate moments with Claude, she is cruel.  And, on some level, she is setting him up to fail in the world as she wraps him in a cloak of her own fears and insecurities.  But all this is couched with venom and a damned good vocabulary.

Margot is clearly brilliant, but crazy.  There's one scene in which she tells her son not to wear anti-perspirant because it causes cancer.  A few scenes later, as they are stuck together in a car, she tells him that he stinks.  These flip flops keep everyone around Margot walking on as if on shards of glass.  They never know what's coming next.

The central metaphor for the film, the family's old tree (which Margot can, and does--even in her adulthood--climb to the top) in which Margot first gets stuck and has to be rescued, and later, has to be cut down because of the tension it causes with the neighbors, is a powerful testament to good film-making.  Meaning, if you desire it, is everywhere, crafted into the drafty old family home, the dialogue, the way Malcolm drives a car, the Amtrak train trip from New York City.

Ultimately, Margot is again estranged from her sister, even as her long-suffering husband takes her back.  We are left in an existential funk, considering the gifts of friends and family and the ways in which we are all terribly damaged goods.  This is a movie where it's easy to judge Margot, but then that's just beating her at her own sad game.

Margot and her sad, pink hat.  Margot, lost and befuddled at the bus stop.  Margot, terribly unable to connect with her sister.  Margot, unable to truly connect with anyone around her.  Margot, climbing on board, following her next whim. 

IMD Review

In the Valley of Elah

This weekend finally brought me some much needed down time (you know, squeezed in among everything else...).  I actually accomplished getting groceries AND getting the house cleaned.  I'm like Mrs. Cleaver here!  Anyway, I also got a change to see In the Valley of Elah.  It's the first in a spate of Hollywood films that are taking on the war right now, critiquing it in sync with the war actually happening.

Tommy Lee Jones is probably in the running for an Oscar for his performance of an emotionally restrained former army sargeant whose son goes AWOL upon returning from Iraq.  What the film does rather well is to hone in on the ways in which soldiers have to divorce themselves from the violence they see (and commit) everyday as part of their "work" so that they can continue living "normal" lives.  The film ominously portrays what happens when those two worlds come together and the violence cannot be compartmentalized (think echoes of the Vietnam-era film Jacob's Ladder).  It's an awful and tragic film that questions what happens to soldiers when they are asked to perform horrendous acts of violence in a morally ambiguous war. 

There are a lot of problems with the film (like, for instance, the contrived "on base" vs. "off base" action and the annoying tangential story of Charlize Theron's character who faces gender discrimination at work.  Ho hum.).  That said, the film is really about Jones' journey from the past to the present.  His character is so baldly from another generation.  He truly believes what he's been told about the war and the need to send his son into harm's way.  His life is dictated to by the conventions of life he learned early on and the discipline of the military.  In short, he is very recognizable--in all the good ways--as a "good American".  Hard-working, loyal, patriotic, and frugal.  To watch him unravel as he realizes the ways in which the country has changed and the ways in which the concept of "fighting for democracy" has been bastardized, is painful.  I'm certain that some viewers will see the last scene as over the top, but it has a certain poignancy for me that resonates with the character's changing understanding of our contemporary society.  His final move in the film is the ultimate patriotic act, the meshing together of past and present, and a call for new times and new thinking.  The movie takes a hard, moral stand on the moral ambiguities of our current administration. 

What I like about the film even more is the way it is raising issues that we don't often talk about.  Hollywood is doing a full court press on the war and the administration as it tries to provoke conversation and thought about our times.  With all of its virulent consumption and materialism and rampant excess, when Hollywood becomes the moral compass for the United States, you know we're in trouble. 

If You're Looking for Me, Come September, I'll Be At The Movies...

On Friday night, we saw the Bourne Ultimatum (good summer flick;  good action;  "good" violence, good trilogy culmination).  As I sat through the previews (one of my FAVORITE things about going to the movies--planning future movies!), I was struck by how political the upcoming fall season of films seems.  Taking on Iraq, Afghanistan, the U.S. war on terrorism, and other timely topics, Hollywood seems to be indulging in some real content!  I thought I was crazy. Then, the Guardian published this guide to fall films...

Waitress: "Diabetic Coma Pie"

**Spoiler Alert**

Think:  Como Agua Para Chocolate meets The Nanny.  I just got around to seeing the well-reviewed film, Waitress, and I'm not entirely sure it holds up to the hype.  An uber-cool sociology student in my knitting class recommended that I see the film because of its counter-cultural presentation of motherhood.  So, I headed off to the Quad cinema. 

The first 3/4 of the film is a combination of sweet Southern suffering as Jenna, the protagonist, is crushed under the weight of an oppressive marriage and the knowledge that she is pregnant.  Her husband is infantile, controlling, and at times, abusive.  In retaliation, Jenna bakes pies for the pie diner she works at.  Jenna's power comes both from her love of baking and the names she gives her pies.  The creamy (and sometimes mildly disgusting confections) have names like "Leave My Husband Pie" and "Bad Baby Pie", all inspired by what Jenna is thinking or feeling.  Her great plan, to win a pie bake-off and leave her husband for good, is spoiled by the fact that she is pregnant.

The film features many shots of Jenna watching other mothers, horrified by the children and their behavior.  She tells her Ob-gyn that she is not happy about having the baby and does not want to be congratulated.  Each ensuing month of the pregnancy, Jenna becomes more and more miserable as she moves closer to being stuck in her life forever.  The children she observes are bratty and wildly out of control. The mothers are long suffering.  In short, the only real happiness in the film comes from baking pies, the friendships Jenna finds at the restaurant, and "love" as all three waitresses embark on new relationships.  For Jenna, that includes a fling with her doctor.

And here we arrive at the two parts of the movie that serve, ultimately, as its demise.  The affair with Dr. Pomatter is destined for failure and serves as nothing more than a creamy and dangerous confection (think:  diabetics eating "Falling in Love Chocolate Pie").  The class and education differences, along with the fact that Pomatter is "happily" married (that is, not facing any of the
challenges Jenna faces in her own marriage), are early clues that the relationship will end badly.  In a none-too-hidden inspiration from Como Agua Para Chocolate, Jenna's pies make her wildly attractive to Dr. Pomatter. 

And then the movie ends with Jenna giving birth and falling, instantly, in love with her baby.  A deus ex machina ending arrives and she is given a  financial gift from one of her regulars at the diner that allows her to leave her husband.  She buys the old pie diner, spruces it up, and lives the matriarchal fantasy of loving baby and making pie.  It's some kind of Lesbos (without the sex) paradise with pie. 

I can't help but compare it to Sherrybaby, the heart-achingly real portrayal of poverty, abuse, and motherhood.  Waitress is too unrealistic, and too over-the-top sweet to really deliver any compelling commentary about motherhood and the ways in which women continue to struggle with social roles and expectations.  Waitress suggests that in the end, all mothers really do want to be mothers, really will love mothering, and will be somehow naturally fantastic at it.  Some mothers love their roles.  Some mothers are fantastic at mothering.  Some women really, really do want to be mothers.  And others?  Call it "Big Liar Pie". 

An Excellent FEMINIST Critique of Knocked Up.

Thank you very much, egalitarian bookworm, for this review of the uber-shallow Knocked Up and all of the ways in which it contributes to the on-going attack on women's equality.   It's the first review I actually agree with.

FFF: Funniest Film of the Fall

Okay, at this point in the semester, any film that has the following one-liner:

I'm teaching 5 classes this term, advising 2 doctoral students, and I'm the faculty lifeguard. ~Dr. Jules Hilbert

gets my vote for funniest film of the fall!  How can film get any better than wet literary critics?

The Quixotic Tremor and I took in Stranger Than Fiction over the weekend.  In the vein of Adaptation, The Truman Show, and Being John Malkovich, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Stranger Than Fiction delights with its hilarious take on "reality."  Emma Thompson is fabulous as a histrionic, chain-smoking, novelist with writer's block.  That woman looks horrible fabulously.  And, she excels at the art of getting over writer's block, complete with staking out an emergency room to find "the really sick patients."  That is, the ones who are dying.  Will Ferrell is less annoying than you'd think, given his usual comic shtick.  But Dustin Hoffman steals the show as Dr. Jules Hilbert, the literary critic and contemporary fiction specialist who tries to assist Harold Crick, the narratively-disabled protagonist (Emma Thompson's Kay Eiffel narrates IRS agent Crick's dismal life and predicts his early demise).  From reading his books in plastic bags while in the lifeguard chair to trying to determine the plot of the novel Crick is in, Dr. Hilbert is a hilarious anecdote to the end-of-term blues!

The Gringo is Back

In May of 2005, I briefly mentioned indie director Gregory Berger, of "Gringothon" fame in a longer post on the war in Iraq ('cause aren't we always writing about Iraq?).

Good news!  Berger has a new teaser up on youtube for his film on Bolivia.  It looks GREAT!  Called The Gringomobile Diaries (click to view the video), the humorous proposition is that North Americans have to voluntarily become slaves of the Bolivian people because of the impact of transnational capitalism.  You have to watch the clip to fully appreciate the "Gringo's" attempts to solve the disparities between the Bolivian people and the United States.

On a more serious note, Berger's work is some of the most innovative stuff dealing with the effects of globalism in Latin America.  As I've said many times before, what I believe we need right now are fresh, innovative voices taking on the tought issues.  Berger is definitely one of those voices. 

He has done a series of award-winning documentaries on everything from abortion to cocaine use in Bolivia among miners to gay life in Morelos, Mexico to the water wars.

And his two newer projects, the Gringothon\Gringotón and Gringomobile Diaries are experimental narratives that play with the concepts of what it means to be a global citizen.  As you see in the Gringomobile Diaries, the "Gringo" takes on personal responsibility for U.S. policies that affect other countries.

Berger's work is definitely worth a look.  If you're a teacher, please consider ordering some (or all!) of his work for your media library.  If you're a film-buff, consider hosting a showing of Berger's work, or bug your local theater to do a showing. 

More Reading:

About Berger (filmography appears on the side)

You can view "Gringothon" and "Chew on This" here at Salón Chingón.

Sherrybaby: Predictible Story or Sad Society?

I saw Laurie Collyer's Sherrybaby last night and it was just fantastic.  Maggie Gyllenhaal gives a wrenching performance as a heroine addict who "returns" to her life after three years in jail.  Released to a Christian halfway house in Newark, Sherry navigates a beleaguered parole system that doesn't have the resources to help her, a patriarchal society where every man she meets just wants to fuck her (including her father), and where her well-intentioned brother & sister-in-law try to keep her demons away from her little girl who they have been caring for since Sherry's incarceration.

Some of the reviews of the film have focused on the predictability of the plot.  You don't have to be a genius to know, from the opening scene when Sherry heads into Newark (seriously--is there a better metaphor for the depression of American urban life than this sad and gritty town?  Newark is to U.S. filmmakers what the squalor of London was to Dickens) on a slow and jerky public bus, stopping and stuttering through the malaise of rainy day traffic, to know that Sherry isn't going to make it.  And that's the power of the film.

Collyer gets a riveting performance from Gyllenhaal as Sherry tries to make a new start--and fails--again and again.  Her ultimate return to jail (or to inpatient rehab--it's not quite clear which) is a story about public services bent on continuing to punish those who've been in jail instead of supporting their return to society and giving them the resources they need to be successful.  This is a story about the taxed resources of inner cities and the way that economic disparity leads to a catalog of injustices too great to enumerate.  It's a story about how women often think that their bodies are their only avenue for exercising some small control over their fate.  And we all know the mirage of sex as power.  It's a story about misunderstanding addiction and the all too casual assignation of blame to those who get caught up in a life of drugs and alcohol.  It's not a far stretch to argue that if you had Sherry's life, you'd probably want to shoot up too.

This is a dirty movie.  Everywhere Sherry goes needs a good cleaning.  From the filthy halfway house with its bad 1970s paneling to the depressing church basement for the NA/AA meeting to the pathetic daycare center where Sherry gets a job, the grit and dirt serve as a metaphor for what we don't seem to see everyday--the way much of America is living in run down, dusty, squalor where hope can't seem to take hold.  Looking at that scenery against the suburban decadence of McMansions that are shiny and new, one can't help but invoke Orwell's 1984 where Winston describes a woman with dust in the cracks of her face.  We can't deal with the "dirt" of society, so we move on to newer, literally greener, pastures and allow the inner cities to fester and falter.  So, Sherry fails.  And it is inevitable.  And that's not the fault of Laurie Collyer's writing.  It's the fault of an ungenerous society unable to meet the great and overwhelming needs of its citizens who need, perhaps, the most help.

My Oscar Nomination for the Year: Rent

AIDS is greatly on my mind these days;  over the holidays, I had the chance to see Rent.  As with any interpretation of a beloved original, I was hesitant about the film, but there was no way I would miss it.  The tag line on the promo was "the musical that defined a generation."  While I generally shun age-related stereotypes, I have to admit that Rent is among the works of art and literature that greatly formed who I am today.  The first time I saw Rent, I knew that was the kind of piece I wanted to write.  And, I'm glad to say, the film was no different. 

Several magazines have chronicled how this year's Oscar race is a race to the political.  With films from The Constant Gardner to Syriana to Munich to Capote to Brokeback Mountain, the race will be tight with lots of "political texts" highlighting issues from big pharma to terrorism to homosexuality.  But a film like Rent was political from the beginning;  it didn't enter this year's Oscar race with a newly discovered political agenda.  Larson's vision was to translate the desperate times before antiretroviral drugs onto the stage, making the everyday political more apparent to the larger public.  Rent is both a great story and a wonderful witness to an important time in American history.   The song, "Will I Lose My Dignity" is as heart-breaking today as it was when Rent first opened on stage.  The translation of life and death issues onto the screen exposes many people's most primal fear:  what is it like to witness your own slow and withering death?  And, in the age of HIV/AIDS, to do so during the prime years of your life.

With the bonus of a set, the film did a beautiful job of situating the story in a beleaguered New York City of the mid-1990s, something the musical only hints at.  The music was great and the story line poignant.   A must see.

Born Into Brothels

I saw Born into Brothels last weekend about photographer Zana Briski's Calcutta project teaching the children of Indian sex workers how to use cameras to capture images of the world around them.  The documentary is set in the desparate world of Calcutta's red light district.  Devoid of social support structures, the children are doomed to repeat their mothers' lives and choices (if, indeed, they are choices at all rather than acts of survival) until, the documentary posits, Briski begins to teach camera workshops to the children.

Meme: Films and Tears

Via Feministe, Bitch PhD, Shakespeare’s Sister, Lawyers, Guns and Money, and Pandagon , it's a Friday night meme:  What movie scene makes you cry?

My answer?  The very obscure 1986 Cary Elwes & Helena Bonham Carter vehice, Lady Jane, about the brief reign of Lady Jane Grey as the monarch of England between  Edward and Mary.  The execution scene brings me to tears every time. I anticipate that this November's Rent, will bring on similar hysterics.

The Constant Gardener: Drug Trials on the Down Low

I saw The Constant Gardener yesterday and was blown away by the film.  While it's not quite the same two hour punch in the face that Hotel Rwanda was, it's a close second in recent popular film.  The now familiar plot is that activist Tessa follows her husband, a UK diplomat to Kenya where she becomes embroiled in work to expose drug companies who use Kenyans (and other Africans) as guinea pigs.

It's a corporate government/Big Pharma vs. the little people plot where agencies like Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, and the UN are powerless in the face of backroom deals and money that flows invisibly, like a great imaginary river, into secure (and anonymous) depositories.  The well of tainted money runs deep in this film.

Sith: Doesn't Suck

Just home from Sith and the good news is:  it's worth seeing.  For everyone who suffered through Epis 1 & 2, Revenge of the Sith delivers a good dose of what you've been waiting for.  All of the iconic moments:  the destruction of the Jedi Knights and the dissolution of the democratic republic; Anakin and Obi Wan locked in battle;  Yoda's powerful screen presence; Palpatine's all consuming evility; Darth Vader rising to claim his place beside the Emperor; John Williams offers a redux of his original themes twisted slightly for the new film and its dark undercurrent.  It's all there and it's visually stunning.  The fights in particular, from starship battles to lightsaber duels are fantastic.  And the planet Mustafar is something of sheer visual brilliance--there is no place more appropriate for Anakin's turn to the dark side.  Lucas couldn't have gotten the visual effects more right.

What's also there are the cheesy moments Star Wars fans have come to love;  what's Star Wars without lines like "If you're not with me, then you're my enemy."  And if you can't sit through lines like that, you were never really a Star Wars fan to begin with.  (Of course, the group I saw Sith with wondered if Palpatine is what Dick Cheney looks like without make up...)

On View Askew, Kevin Smith writes,

"Revenge of the Sith" is, quite simply, fucking awesome. This is the "Star Wars" prequel the haters have been bitching for since "Menace" came out, and if they don't cop to that when they finally see it, they're lying. As dark as "Empire" was, this movie goes a thousand times darker - from the triggering of Order 66 (which has all the Shock Troopers turning on the Jedi Knights they've been fighting beside throughout the Clone Wars and gunning them down), to the jaw-dropping Anakin/Obi Wan fight on Mustafar (where - after cutting his legs and arm off, Ben leaves Skywalker burning alive on the shores of a lava river, with Anakin spitting venomous sentiments at his departing mentor), this flick is so satisfyingly tragic, you'll think you're watching "Othello" or "Hamlet".

Of course, there were some uncomfortably bad moments.  For this, only The Movie Blog offers a complete picture:

Padmé Sucks

This one really surprised me. The worst part of this film... and that part that I'm sure will ruin Revenge of the Sith for many people is Padmé's character. Every single scene (withouth exception) that she is in is a total waste of film. The lines she had were worse than the previous two films put together and made her sound far more annoying than Jar Jar ever was. As a matter of fact, this is the first thing I said walking out of the theater: " Wow, Padmé is the new Jar Jar". I'm not exaggerating here folks... she is just terrible. It's so bad that about half way through the film you visibly cringe when you see her come on screen... because you know it's going to be bad.

It's true that Padmé is a terrible, weeping, weak woman legacy for Leia to inherit later;  she's really awful.  And Anakin remains a sniveling, whiny kid that Lucas set up in Phantom.  It's still hard to believe he becomes Vader. 

Despite Padmé's awfulness and Anakin's penchant for sulking, however, the film still satisfies.  It is the closure you are looking for;  it is the movie that sets up A New Hope, Empire and Jedi by bringing things to a close;  Luke & Leia are no longer mysteries.  Instead, their fate--and the fates of those whose lives are intertwined with theirs--makes good narrative sense.  Unlike Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, the shift-in-your-seat awkward moments are all too familiar and all too forgiveable because the larger picture is more important.  At the end of the day, Yoda and Obi Wan are our heros as well as the heros they will become later and the distinction between good and evil is comfortably blurred at times--Lucas is finally getting postmodern in bleeding the boundaries of absolutes. 

And, as a side note for fellow West Wingers:  It's not Jed's lightsaber...it's Matt Santos' lightsaber...  Cool!

Read the Rolling Stone review

Just One More Reason to Get to Revenge of the Sith Early & Often!

6 days to go & you know what I mean...

Okay.  Despite what my geek quotient suggested, I did not stand in line at the fabled Ziegfeld Theater for 19 days to get Star Wars tickets (no, I got mine on-line weeks ago!). 

All pop-culturdom has been buzzing with early reviews, spoilers (people--we already KNOW the ending and have since 1983), but here's one more great reason to get to the movie, thanks to Ed Gonzalez at Slant:

Though every Star Wars film until now has existed in an insular comic-book world, a lot has happened since 1999 and 2002 in the real world and Lucas dares, for the first time, to address how the hollow political conflict in his franchise correlates with the reality outside its panels. (It would have been stupid not to strike a parallel.) Revenge of the Sith's two greatest moments tap into the uncertainty of our own political climate: the dazzling battle between Yoda and Darth Sidious (an outstanding Ian McDiarmid) inside the beautifully spiraling Senate hall evokes Democrats and Republicans scrambling for power and, during an obscenely over-the-top duel in Mustafar, Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) declares, "Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes," after Anakin says, "If you're not with me, you're my enemy."

Woo hoo!  A Bush commentary embedded in my Star Wars?  Why, make me West Wing happy!  What color do you think Jed's lightsaber is?

Philadelphia, Bollywood Style

Thursday night, I went to the South Asian Human Rights Film Festival at the Asia Society.  This outstanding series offers several new films looking at sexuality, gender, identity construction, religion, and war, among other topics, all under the umbrella of human rights.  I saw Phir Milenge (We'll Meet Again), a 2004 Hindi film by Revathy Menon. 

The story line is essentially a feminist Philadelphia.  Tamanna, a 26 year old advertising executive, loses her job when she tests positive for HIV after a one-night reunion with an old flame.  The story follows Tamanna's fight to have her employer re-establish her credibility as one of the best and brightest in the field.  She hires a lawyer, Tarun, who takes her case to the highest Indian courts.  Interestingly, India has yet to protect those living with HIV/AIDS against discrimination.  So, much like the film Philadelphia in the United States, Phir Milenge takes on both the social & cultural stigmas along with a critique of the legal system that precludes the infected from protection by the  judicial system. 

The film breaks several Bollywood conventions, including public intimacy and a more traditional narrative (there is, however, a fantastic villainess in the form of the defense attorney for the employer).  The penultimate scene, in which Tarun argues before the high court, is nothing less than a beautiful speech worthy of Vito Russo and ACT UP. 

Like any major "industry" film, Phir Milenge still follows many conventions.  However, I find the film fascinating for its strong and magnetic main character.  Tamanna is focused on her career and her success.  She defines her world by her professional success;  she is very, very good at what she does and she is unwilling to allow herself to be characterized as anything other than competent.  Tamanna also becomes the face of Indian AIDS in the same way Tom Hanks' Andrew Beckett became the face of U.S. AIDS for many years.  This increased attention to the role of women within the epidemic is an important and crucial move. 

Of course, the film has its problems.  It embodies a middle-class presentation of HIV/AIDS;  as such, it didn't comment on one of the biggest issues in global AIDS:  access to affordable drugs.  As the virus spreads, particularly within poor communities with a lack of access to information, health care and drugs, the situation is even more dire than the earliest years of the epidemic in the U.S.  It also deals with HIV/AIDS from an almost xenophobic perspective.  The man who infects Tamanna has been living in the United States.  In an almost reverse global role, the U.S. becomes associated with infection--the site of origin.  It's interesting that HIV had to come from beyond the borders of India--superpower=super virus.  Despite some of the drawbacks to the film, it is very well done and adds considerable commentary to the world of HIV/AIDS texts. 

Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS said "When Bollywood, one of the world's largest film industries with massive audiences, produces a film about AIDS, everyone has to sit up and take notice. It is extremely significant that Bollywood is joining the struggle against the epidemic and helping to break the silence that surrounds HIV and AIDS.  We applaud the making of this film."

This is an important and ground-breaking film.  See it! 

Link to the Phir Milenge site
For more about HIV/AIDS in India, see this UNAIDS link