Dogville (2003)

Netherlands / Denmark / UK / France / Finland / Sweden / Germany / Italy / Norway, 178 minutes
Director/writer: Lars von Trier
Photography: Anthony Dod Mantle
Editor: Molly Marlene Stensgaard
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Harriet Andersson, Lauren Bacall, Jean-Marc Barr, Paul Bettany, Blair Brown, James Caan, Patricia Clarkson, Jeremy Davies, Ben Gazzara, Philip Baker Hall, Udo Kier, Chloe Sevigny, Stellan Skarsgard, John Hurt

Dogville actually represents the first installment in a "USA—Land of Opportunities" trilogy by the infamous bad boy director and screenwriter Lars von Trier, who by reputation so hates the US he has never even visited. The second episode, Manderlay, came two years later but flopped commercially and the third has yet to be made. For what it's worth, the funding for this movie came from no fewer than nine countries, not one of them the US. So perhaps inevitably I was mindful of that hatred while revisiting this lengthy and often annoying picture. Among other things it made me a little defensive about my homeland, even in this day and age when we are sliding into the abyss. At three hours, with heavy-handed aesthetic pretensions and an all-star cast representing many different phases of cinema history—Lauren Bacall! James Caan! Harriet Andersson! Chloe Sevigny! Ben Gazzara!—Dogville is self-evidently a Very Big Movie.

At its core, the premise is more or less an illustrative enactment of some social psychology experiment where people are given the opportunity to make moral choices and fail miserably—the Milgram Experiment, maybe, or the Stanford Prison Experiment. We're talking about human issues here more than American. At the same time, the signifiers make it hard to miss the point. It takes place in a semi-abandoned mining town in Colorado (called Dogville, the implication being that it's barely fit even for dogs), with not one but two characters named Thomas Edison, and placing gangsters, gun violence, and corrupt law enforcement in prominent positions of impregnable power. There's even an elaborate 4th of July celebration. The only thing missing is apple pie and ice cream.

"Hunting the Deceitful Turkey" (1906)

Read story by Mark Twain online.

This Mark Twain piece is probably too short and yet discursive to be properly considered a narrative, but those are also the qualities that make it fun to read. At three pages (seven paragraphs) it's more like a quick snapshot reminiscence, or perhaps a tirade. What's best about it I think is how funny it is, as intended. The narrator has a grudge against turkeys. He's not shy about it. He seethes and is unrelenting in his condemnation, out of all proportion. One of Twain's best tricks is exactly this, adopting the tone and telling the little stories, while slipping in obvious but unexpected exaggerations. So the turkey hunt lasts from dawn until after dark, with the bird cleverly playing him, forever eluding him by inches. At one point the narrator tries to explain why he doesn't just shoot it, but it makes no sense, again out of all proportion with everything else: "I never did it, although it was my right, for I did not believe I could hit her; and besides, she always stopped and posed, when I raised the gun, and this made me suspicious that she knew about me and my marksmanship, and so I did not care to expose myself to her remarks." Twain was 71 when he wrote this piece and it has the easy-rolling tenor of a natural storyteller. Knowing Twain's fiction and travel writing I'm already predisposed to like anything by him that comes my way, though it's hard to guess what someone would make of him if this were the first they read by him. It's so short, and really silly—something that can be read in 15 minutes or less. But it made me laugh. Figuring out the trick the turkey was playing and how it worked. Then that the whole thing goes on so long. And all of his conclusions and suppositions about guns, food, hunters and hunting, and turkeys, enlarging upon them with an air of moral certainty, yet never quite seeming connected to reality. Somehow it comes out funny. I think it's the aggrieved voice, created from certain American characters that are still not hard to recognize today. I hear one of my uncles in this.

Library of America Story of the Week (Library of America)

Black Panther (2018)

This was the second year in a row we've seen a breakout African-American movie released in the dead of winter and I've been surprised both times. I thought Get Out was pretty good, but it's not already in the top 20 highest-grossing movies of all time. After Black Panther became a certifiable megahit practically on its opening weekend, I felt somewhat duty bound to hie myself off to see it. (Not, full disclosure, that I've done so for any of the following movies ahead of Black Panther's current #13 place on the all-time list: Jurassic World, Furious 7, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Beauty and the Beast, and The Fate of the Furious.) I'm duty bound to report that Black Panther is indeed a superhero movie, with stunts, boffo special effects, a Stan Lee cameo, baffling costumery, the sense you're already a little behind, etc. But it's directed by Ryan Coogler, whose Fruitvale Station and especially Creed really impressed me. It also has wonderful complexities, some rousing moments, an African setting, and an all-star majority black cast and good performances all over the place (Chadwick Boseman, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Winston Duke ... I was sorry to see them shoehorn in a white guy, Martin Freeman, as perfectly likable as he is). Black Panther first came to life in the comics in 1966, the same year that the Black Panther Party did, though I'm not sure of any connection. Wikipedia describes his superhero essentials: "... relies on his proficiency in science, rigorous physical training, hand-to-hand combat skills, and access to wealth and advanced technology to combat his enemies." Which sounds like Batman actually. Things are more mystical now, at least in this movie, what with a magical scientifical purple herbal brew, a powerful metallic element called vibranium, and generous helpings of we-can-do-anything technology. I like conceiving of a superhero as the king of an African nation—the mysterious Wakanda—and even better I like the central conflict in this story: whether Wakanda should continue to stay out of sight of the rest of the world or share its powerful technology, notably with Africans everywhere who are less fortunate. Michael B. Jordan, who is shaping up to be Coogler's Robert De Niro, is stellar as the villain who isn't really a villain if you think about it. He's not even that misguided. He usually has a point. On the other hand, times being what they are, he also reminded me of Donald Trump in his grab for power and the ways he uses it, not to mention the deep-seated psychological wounding. We're supposed to be going to the movies to get away from this stuff!!! Worth seeing even if you don't like superhero movies that much (though it is a superhero movie). P.S. In the contest to give an imaginary metallic element the silliest name, this movie's "vibranium" still lags behind the gold standard, Avatar's "unobtanium."

Narrative of William W. Brown (1847)

This is another of the shorter slave narratives, just over 50 pages with all the hoopla of prefaces, acknowledgments, and introductions. As always, the stamp of some white person or organization is necessary to see the thing into print and generally stand up for its veracity. As the publication dates of these narratives move deeper into the century the sponsoring white is more and more often formally Abolitionist. What a terrible portrait of 19th-century America these narratives give us. In fact, both William Brown, and Frederick Douglass in his narrative, express nothing but contempt for Christianity, at least in its American version. Brown is more willing to toss away the whole thing as evil, quoting Bible passages that are approving of slavery. The Christian hypocrisy is still one of the greatest shames of slavery, after the corruption into sadism. Brown's narrative often focuses on how families were separated and torn apart, sometimes deliberately to control behavior. He reports on how many owners with limited resources would invest in a young woman to breed them for additional property. It's often, though not always, the master providing the seed, of course. So we also come down to this horrific language of slavery: breeding, training, striping. "Striping" is a term I'd never heard before, for whipping and scarring, and now I also know it's in the Bible. One more reason I'm comfortable with the wholesale rejection of American Christianity by these later narratives. Obviously Brown and Douglass are aware of the Christian roots in the Abolitionist movement itself and temper their tones somewhat to accommodate that. But their feelings are unmistakable. William Brown's story is another one of escape—two attempts, actually, as the first one fails when he is incautious in the North. He suffers terribly for this attempt, as it leads to the final break-up of his family when his mother and sister are sold separately into the Deep South, a certain doom. This narrative is set in Missouri, a more recent slavery state than the rest of the South. Brown shows how the geographical position of Missouri enabled it to be a staging area for kidnapping African-Americans from the North into slavery. Brown had good experiences and bad with whites. He took the name of one who was kind to him in Ohio. Before that he was only William, and even that was taken from him by an owner whose nephew of that name came to live with the family who owned him. Of all his indignities and suffering, this is the one that most seems to rankle Brown. It's strange to us only because most of us have never had to face that treatment in such cut-and-dried fashion—the total obliteration of identity at will.

In case it's not at the library. (Library of America)

The Future (1992)

Leonard Cohen was back once and for all (more or less) with The Future, which followed 1988's I'm Your Man and a revival of interest in him. Now he was a fixture of popular culture, the crusty croaker and natty dresser in the suit and fedora hat. The poet from Canada. The '60s survivor. The man of Montreal, New York, and Los Angeles. It was a living. The movies were continuing to absorb and disseminate him, which is when you can start to feel like you've made it. Three songs here (the title song, "Waiting for the Miracle," and "Anthem") can be heard in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (a movie, full disclosure, I have never had much affection for). "Waiting for the Miracle" got a return engagement in Wonder Boys (a better movie, packed full of Cohen, Neil Young, Tim Hardin, and other usual suspects, with more Bob Dylan than anything). It's evident on The Future that Cohen has grown wise to the utility of surrounding himself with first-rate studio hands—the song lengths alone speak to the easy-rolling groove-making going on here, with four of the nine songs running over seven minutes and, for the first time, an instrumental (the sweet and stately album closer, "Tacoma Trailer"). Yes, the grooves lean toward adult contemporary, but they are grooves. And the best are full of irresistible little hooks too, often in the arrangements. The album has a number of undifferentiated producer credits—six names, including Rebecca de Mornay, Cohen's girlfriend at the time—so it's hard to know who to credit for the lovely clean and inviting sound, which can get busy with orchestral and choral accompaniments but never seems cluttered. Maybe Cohen himself—he's the first producer named. It's hard to believe he knew his way around a soundboard, but certainly he would get final approval, so OK. Sharon Robinson is here again, but only collaborating on "Waiting for the Miracle." As the title implies, The Future is probably most famous for contemplating the future in that particular present. Cohen was publicly absorbing the history going down around him, notably, in 1989, Tiananmen Square and the fall of the Berlin Wall. "Democracy" ("is coming to the USA") jeers at the US's ability to cope with these world changes—that's been an easy position to take all my life, and has the benefit of making you look prescient later (at least in these particular terrible times). "Anthem" looks in another direction entirely, much beloved for its lines "There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in." If that seems trite or saccharine, at least there's something weirdly satisfying about seeing Cohen as the pollyanna for once. I don't like the Irving Berlin cover, "Always," and it's the longest song here, so it's not like The Future can't be a bit of a bumpy road, especially if, like me, you are slightly skeptical about the Cohen project. But it never sounds bad either.

"Master and Man" (1895)

Read story by Leo Tolstoy online.

We've encountered a few severe snowstorms in the stories for this project so far, but Leo Tolstoy's could well be the best, or worst. Again, perhaps the biggest surprise in this project has been discovering how much I enjoy these harsh nature stories. In this one, the master Vasili Andreevich is eager to close a business deal and insists on traveling through a snowstorm that day to do so. He takes along one of his servants, Nikita, who sets up the horse and sledge, and away they go. Goodbye. The horse, of course, soon becomes equal partner among the three, in terms of personality and affect. For better or worse, my heart always goes out to these animals. It's obvious Tolstoy has lived with harsh winter conditions because his descriptions are detailed and telling. For example, the squeaking of the sledge's runners against the snow is a sure indication of extreme cold. The storm is fierce with extremely poor visibility. Even so, Master wants to take a shortcut. Before long they lose the road, and not long after that they are completely lost. The more that the horse and the servant are left to make decisions, the better off they are. They travel in circles and finally arrive at a village, where they are amazed by how far off the track they have traveled. They stop for directions, and to warm up. At that house they are invited to stay for the night, and Nikita is in favor of it, but Master is impatient to conclude his business. Again they lose their way, and then they lose the light. Caught by darkness, they must shelter in place for the night, knowing they are lost. When morning comes it turns out they are not far from shelter, but this story is more about the night, in which two of them die. Only Nikita survives, because of the noble actions of Master, although when it comes to that they are all three deranged by the conditions and hypothermia and it's hard to say with complete confidence that his actions were truly selfless. But the results are, and what counts most in this story are the characters, who are rich and complex. Well, the horse is a horse, but that's all he has to be. Andreevich and Nikita and their relationship turns out to be intricate, beautiful, and not at all predictable, though entirely believable. Great story.

Master and Man and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy

Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man (1995)

When you think about it, it's not surprising that, if Norman Mailer were going to write a book about art, it would be about Picasso. He always preferred his giants to be 20th-century egomaniacs—perhaps something about the reflection in the mirror. To some degree I'm on board with that myself, at least a little. There was a lot I didn't know about Picasso, so among other things I have to count Mailer's "interpretive biography" as informative. "Interpretive biography" means very little original research (even Marilyn had some), but rather a survey of select existing literature, major biographies and some criticism, along with his own take on Picasso and his work. Mailer's main idea here is that all of Picasso's innovations were done by the time he was 35, in 1916, effectively discounting one of the most prolific careers in art history. Mailer sees an incident involving the Louvre and stolen pieces of art (including da Vinci's Mona Lisa) as the point where something in Picasso broke. It's a tumultuous time in his life—a breakup of a long-term relationship, the death by cancer a few years later of his next girlfriend, and the coming of World War I are all equal contributors, along with plain old aging. I'm not even sure there was such a drop-off. A few samples of Picasso's art after 1916 in this book are pretty impressive. In fact, all the pictures, including color plates, are among the best reasons to dawdle along with Mailer through the Picasso story. I hadn't known what a prodigy Picasso was as a child. I didn't know how the Blue Period, Rose Period, and Cubism fit, exactly. I suspect someone with more background might get more out of this, but I'm not sure how much they'd like it—that's the pugnacious Mailer problem. Mailer notes early that Picasso was a project he'd been giving thought to since 1962, when he was close to a book deal. He has an interesting eye and his discussions of the art are often lucid. It didn't entirely surprise me, given his versatility as a writer, but I hadn't expected him to be so good in the realm of art, a pleasant surprise. He is dismissive of Gertrude Stein but I enjoyed the discussion of her, and again, this was my first exposure to so many details and so much context about Picasso's life, work, and art. Weirdly, perhaps, Picasso in this telling reminded me a lot of Andy Warhol—maybe it's the combination of celebrity and work ethic. Picasso's art speaks for itself, and if I have any complaint here it's that there's not more art. Mailer generally stays out of his own way.

In case it's not at the library.

Un Chien Andalou (1929)

France, 16 minutes
Director/editor: Luis Buñuel
Writers: Salvador Dali, Luis Buñuel
Photography: Albert Duverger, Jimmy Berliet
Cast: Simone Mareuil, Pierre Batcheff, Jaume Miravitlles, Salvador Dali, Luis Buñuel

This landmark of Surrealist art, a collaboration between Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali on the precipice of worldwide economic collapse, is short but it stays with you. Director Buñuel and cowriter Dali famously worked to extrude anything of particular meaning that could be taken from it. "No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted," Buñuel wrote. "Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything." Quite right, and nothing adds up except, intuitively and in flashes, on certain Freudian levels. But some things can be rationally laid at its doorstep. It packs a punch because it saves its best for first—a brief scene in which, through the magic of montage (or editing, or cutting), a woman's eyeball appears to be sliced through by a razor. Among other things it prefigured a common strategy of action and horror pictures, which is to insert a spectacular set piece right up front (Saving Private Ryan, say). In psychological terms, you are thus softened. Shock and numbness soon have hold. In Un Chien Andalou, why a man (it's Buñuel, by the way) would be slicing a woman's eyeball at all is not even a question that occurs to anyone after witnessing it. For many first-time viewers, the remaining minutes of the picture pass in a kind of desperate muddled delirium. What did I just see what? In fact, the eyeball scene, just a matter of seconds, still has the power to make me want to look away and to flinch if I don't. It's the very idea, of course, so naturalistically rendered, that does the work. But the image, however brief, is also viscerally detailed. Even in the few seconds it's onscreen it's readily apparent that it's the eyeball of a dead animal, not the woman, but you do have to be looking at the screen to see it. There are more shocking images that follow, though they tend to pale by comparison: ants crawling in and out of a hole in the palm of a hand, two dead donkeys on a couple of grand pianos, a groping scene that now can seem the most disturbing element in it if you're past the initial shock (this also applies to most of the stuff with animals, for that matter, who were evidently harmed in the making of this picture). These strange images wheel in front of our numbed sensibility and unsliced eyeballs, filling our heads with what? Men dressed in nun's habits (oh that again, Luis), a severed hand making the rounds in a striped box, a butterfly with a marking that might look like a human skull, a mouth wiped right off the face of a man and turned into a woman's armpit hair. "Dream logic"—I suppose that's one way to conceive it. Within the year the world was more worried about things like fascism and a cratered economy, but Un Chien Andalou lives on fresh as ever—fresh, and exceedingly weird.

"You Could Look It Up" (1941)

Read story by James Thurber online.

The overwhelming point of this amusing baseball anecdote by James Thurber is the dialect, which is almost as charming as it is thick. Some of my favorite locutions here include "the iron eye," "finely," and "all Bethlehem broke loose." I got used to it ("finely") but it was slow going at first. This story was published in 1941 and 10 years later was acted out in reality by St. Louis Browns owner Bill Veeck, who signed small person Eddie Gaedel (3 feet 7 inches) for a one-time appearance as a pinch hitter. You could look it up. Not surprisingly, Gaedel—and the wonderfully named Pearl du Monville in this story—are walked on four consecutive pitches. Well, that's not exactly the way it goes down in this story, but I'll let you get to the details on your own. Veeck claims he was unaware of the story, or at least he said, in conversation with New York Giants manager John McGraw, that he'd had the idea before 1941. This suggests to me that the premise was already part of the oral lore of baseball. Thurber turned it into this story. Veeck made it a one-time stunt in a ballgame. In both instances it was hilariously cited as making a mockery of the game, which is rich. Me, I like baseball anecdotes quite a bit. This is a little more formal, even with the dialect, but still has an appealing air of yarn spinning. It might even be fun to hear it read aloud by someone who can do it justice, although as always the risks for flopping would be great. Oral storytelling necessarily requires some theatrical skill, especially when dialect is involved, which can lead to wincing. If anything, this story might be too long for just an anecdote. The best ones are quick. Joaquin Andujar on how he would pitch to himself: "Fastball down the middle. What do you think, I'd try to get myself out?" Or Don Drysdale's view that an intentional walk was a waste of three pitches. The anecdote of the small pinch hitter here is easily told just by stating the premise, so the story feels a little bloated, and might be annoying if you are not a baseball fan or don't enjoy reading dialect. I have my problems in the latter area, but Thurber's pretty good at it and also at telling a story. Plus it's a classic, you know.

Short Story Masterpieces, ed. Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine

Top 40

1. Treponem Pal, "Planet Claire"
2. Kesha, "Praying"
3. Wolf Alice, "Don't Delete the Kisses"
4. Kesha, "Woman"
5. St. Vincent, "New York"
6. JAY-Z, "The Story of O.J."
7. Suicide Commandos, "Try Again"
8. Calvin Harris, "Feels"
9. Sevyn Streeter, "Before I Do"
10. Te Vaka, "Lakalaka"
11. Post Malone feat. 21 Savage, "Rockstar"
12. Big Sean, "Bounce Back"
13. Paloma Faith, "Crybaby"
14. Christian Nodal, "Probablemente"
15. Toni Braxton, "Deadwood"
16. GoldLink, "Crew REMIX"
17. Playboi Carti, "Wokeuplikethis*"
18. Ed Sheeran, "Perfect"
19. Nadia Rose, "Big Woman"
20. Spoon, "Do I Have to Talk You Into It"
21. SZA, "Normal Girl"
22. Slowdive, "Star Roving"
23. Brockhampton, "Gummy"
24. War on Drugs, "Thinking of a Place"
25. LCD Soundsystem, "Tonite"
26. Perfume Genius, "Slip Away"
27. Lil Uzi Vert, "XO TOUR Llif3"
28. The xx, "I Dare You"
29. Sheer Mag, "Expect the Bayonet"
30. Killers, "Run for Cover"
31. Johnny Jewel, "Windswept (Reprise)"
32. Jens Lekman, "What's That Perfume You Wear?"
33. Billie Eilish, "Bellyache"
34. Vince Staples, "BagBak"
35. Ibeyi, "Deathless"
36. Algiers, "The Underside of Power"
37. Yaeji, "Raingurl"
38. Kali Uchis feat. Jorja Smith, "Tyrant"
39. Dua Lipa feat. Miguel, "Lost in Your Light"
40. Sir Rosevelt, "Robert Baker"