Category: reviews

The Reassuring Hand Gestures of Big Men, Small Men, All Men

‘Berlin-based Pakistani artist Bani Abidi’s photographic work, The Reassuring Hand Gestures of Big Men, Small Men, All Men (2021), is one that gently chips away at longstanding mythologies of male power. And like those myths, it works by endless repetition, in this case, and as the title suggests, of the hand gestures that have, for millennia, been an essential component of the performance of politics.’
Some of the individuals featured in this work: Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, Ronald Reagan, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Alexander Lukashenko, Jair Bolsonaro, Tony Blair, Imran Khan, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Joseph Stalin, Hun Sen, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-un, Idi Amin, Benjamin Netanyahu, John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Omar Al-Bashir, Fidel Castro, Boris Johnson, Bill Clinton, Saddam Hussein, Haile Selassie, Jorge Rafael Videla, Pervez Musharraf, Muhammad Ayub Khan, Augusto Pinochet, Than Shwe, Kim Jong-un, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Muammar Gaddafi, Jean-Bédel Bokassa, etc

seagull at the steppenwolf theatre

tuesday night (may 10th) my sister and i went to see ‘seagull’ at the steppenwolf’s new in-the-round theater. sadly, yasen peyankov’s adaptation of the chekhov classic didn’t quite work for us.

the brisk pacing, economy of language, and non-stop humor created a disconnect between some of the messed up relationships in the play (that can evoke heartbreak) and the constant, almost canned, laughter coming from the audience. to me ‘the seagull’ is not exactly seinfeld. it’s dark humor no doubt, but it’s delivered thru sarcasm and innuendo. making the dialogue clipped and direct removes some of the layers needed to make the play work as a tragicomedy.

the actors were good but they were stuck with a less than stellar adaptation. an experience nonetheless.

#seagull #theseagull #chekhov #play #steppenwolf #steppenwolftheatre #chicago #intheroundtheatre #antonchekhov #theatreisback #theatreislife

The Man Who Talked Until He Disappeared

The exhibit at MCA takes its name from Bani Abidi’s watercolor series “The Man Who Talked Until He Disappeared” which depicts writers, political leaders and bloggers from Pakistan who have been disappeared on account of their activism over the past decade. In this minimalist delicate series, we see them disappear gradually on paper with the last watercolor portraying threadbare, eyeless, bodiless specters that continue to haunt us.

#baniabidi #mca #museumofcontemporaryart #chicago #pakistan #pakistaniartist #disappearances #politicaldisappeared #politicalviolence #stateviolence #militaryviolence #thedisappeared #themanwhotalkeduntilhedisappeared

Memorial to Lost Words

This sound installation by Pakistani artist Bani Abidi at MCA brought me to tears. A powerful memorial to the one million South Asian/Indian soldiers who fought in WW1 but have been completely erased. My own great grandfather fought in France, under British colonial rule.

Bani Abidi’s Memorial to Lost Words is a song installation based on letters and songs from the First World War. They are not the well archived memoirs of European and British soldiers, but the words of Indian Soldiers and their womenfolk back home in India. Even a hundred years after the fact, it is a little known fact of WWI history that more than a million Indian soldiers fought in this war. So, clearly, official accounts and memorials are very rarely truthful transmitters of history. This memorial draws from letters that were written home by Indian Soldiers and folk songs that were sung by their wives, mothers and sisters at the time but were censored or forgotten because of their candid condemnation of the war.

#baniabidi #pakistaniartist #mca #museumofcontemporaryart #chicago #worldwar1 #indiansoldiersinww1 #southasiansoldiers #soundinstallation #memorial

my review: everything everywhere all at once

saw ‘everything everywhere all at once’ in a movie theater (with a mask on) last night. it’s insane. the craziest film i’ve ever seen. also hilarious (was shaking with laughter) and full of emotion in places. not sure i loved it but michelle yeoh is a boss. just incredible. want to see her as a lead in all hollywood films. more michelle yeoh, less nicole kidman pls.

my review: winter sleep

i watched a wonderful film last night: ‘winter sleep’ by nuri bilge ceylan, one of my favorite directors. it’s 3 hours long but one doesn’t get bored for a second. there are so many unforgettable scenes with uncontrived yet constantly engaging talk, their intimacy and small, fleshed-out details contrasted with the vastness and breathtaking beauty of snow-covered cappadocia, a region where houses are carved into rock.

the cinematography is gorgeous, as always (watch ‘once upon a time in anatolia’), the acting seamless. as justin chang said in his excellent review: ‘the supreme visual achievement of “winter sleep” may well be the beauty it finds in the crags and contours of its actors’ marvelously expressive faces.’

ceylan is a genius. the subtlety with which he paints places and people, the way he lights a room, the easy exchange between characters where the difference in their social status or the years of conflict and bitterness between them begin to surface ever so gently.

he co-wrote the script with his wife ebru ceylan. it’s a character study inspired by chekhov’s short story, “the wife’” and one of the subplots in dostoyevsky’s “the brothers karamazov”. justin chang: ‘what’s remarkable is the manner in which the script steers away from run-of-the-mill plot mechanics in favor of a more revealing and no less absorbing immersion in the conversations — long, glorious, generously overflowing, superbly sculpted and acted conversations’.

and then there’s schubert’s piano sonata no. 20, the only music played in the film, just a few times. perfection. it fills one with muted sadness and seemed to connect back to something. so i researched. one of the reviews mentioned it was a nod to bresson’s ‘au hasard balthazar,’ one of the saddest and most beautiful films i’ve ever seen.

a masterclass in filmmaking.

my review: the tragedy of macbeth

joel coen’s ‘the tragedy of macbeth’ is stunning. i will take a risk and say that i love how americans do shakespeare, at least on film. there is something earthy and unpretentious, something instinctually physical and meaty in how it’s performed and collated. the mise en scene, art direction, and cinematography usually fit like a glove. i am thinking of two films in particular: julie taymor’s ‘titus’ and now this new take on macbeth.

part horror film, part psychological thriller beset with political intrigue, macbeth straddles many dimensions. it’s a topsy turvy world where ‘fair is foul, and foul is fair.’ coen creates this backdrop in black and white, with the distorted perspective, enclosed spaces and illusory beauty of an MC escher print.

the audio visual construction of the film is spot on. as isaac butler describes: ‘the circling crows. the fog out of which characters emerge. the ominous strings of carter burwell’s score. the dripping and knocking and pounding. these fragments remain, like the shards of a dream, one you’re happy to have awakened from but also long to return to, so you can discover what profundities lie within.’

the acting is top-notch throughout the film, but i want to write about denzel washington, one of the most effortless AND sophisticated, subtle AND volcanic actors in the world. he plays macbeth as an older, world-weary man such that lines like ‘it is a tale/ told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ signifying nothing’ make a lot of sense. his voice smooth and placid like velvet contrasts vividly with his descent into tyranny, madness, and then despair. a wonderfully dialed down, textured performance.

this is what i love about shakespeare in an american accent. there is an ease to it, a visceral understanding and physicality. and absolutely no need for telegraphing too much.

#thetragedyofmacbeth #thetragedyofmacbethmovie #filmreview #joelcoen #macbeth #denzelwashington #denzel #shakespeare #film

my review: south of the border, west of the sun

finished reading ‘south of the border, west of the sun’ last night, my second book by haruki murakami. i’ve also read ‘norwegian wood’ which my daughter and i agreed was uncomfortably cringy on account of the graphic, borderline pushy sex the male narrator has with women who are mentally and emotionally fragile, depressed or broken. it reads like abuse.

‘south of the border’ follows the same pattern in that the female characters are poorly drawn. they are tragic victims of hormone-driven male misadventures and blend inelegantly into background noise, or they’re mysterious sex goddesses dedicated to male pleasure in its oddest configurations (they disappear soon after the male narrator has climaxed), or they are the good girlfriends and wives who endure unimaginable pain and humiliation but remain devoted to whatever relationship the male narrator can manage.

according to katarina kio, murakami’s work is ‘incredibly gendered’:
‘The perniciousness of… women as “mediums” becomes evident in Murakami’s novels. Women in his work are often constructed as solely vessels for the self-actualisation of men. One-dimensional female characters orbit around existentially challenged male leads, experiencing relatively little character development of their own.’

murakami is not alone. sex, its depiction and language, and the power dynamics it inscribes are equally unsettling in other universally admired writers such as gabriel garcia marquez, v. s. naipaul, philip roth and michel houellebecq.

they make me feel like i’ve stepped into an outdated, highly misogynistic male fantasy. it’s alienating and unpleasant. makes me realize how grateful i am for writers like elena ferrante whose work i devoured as soon as it became known to the english-speaking world. it was like stepping into another dimension. a place were women were central and in focus, where their thoughts, desires and relationships could begin to be articulated and made real, where they were flesh and blood rather than hollow specters subservient to the quirks of male psychology and anatomy.

to women writers and an alternative literary canon.

#harukimurakami #southoftheborder #elenaferrante #alternativeliterature #womenwriters

my review: la peste

recently i finished reading ‘the plague’ by albert camus, a meticulously crafted, philosophical novel, written with scientific clarity as well as breathtaking lyricism.

one of my favorite conversations, towards the end of the book, is between tarrou and the book’s protagonist, dr rieux. it’s a masterpiece.

first the convo itself. it’s a personal side of tarrou we’ve never seen before. there is an unsentimental, uncomplicated common decency/sense of justice to him that i find beautiful. here’s tarrou:

..So that is why I resolved to have no truck with anything which, directly or indirectly, for good reasons or for bad, brings death to anyone or justifies others’ putting him to death.

…The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention. And it needs tremendous will-power, a never ending tension of the mind, to avoid such lapses.

…I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clean-cut language. So I resolved always to speak, and to act, quite clearly, as this was the only way of setting myself on the right track.

…After a short silence the doctor raised himself a little in his chair and asked if Tarrou had an idea of the path to follow for attaining peace. “Yes,” he replied. “The path of sympathy.”

then rieux says:

…I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don’t really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.

a brilliant exchange after which they go for a swim, to get away from the pestilence and its ravages, and camus describes the vast, velvety, moonlit expanse of the sea heaving gently.

a must read.

The Magic Flute at the Met Opera

Life has been a lot of work since September this year (it’s been overwhelming frankly) and I have no time to do the creative work that sustains me, but I escape to NYC once in a while and get my fill of art. Saw ‘The Magic Flute’ at the Metropolitan Opera last night. Directed by Julie Taymor, it’s a feast for the eyes and ears. The Masonic symbolism and black/white dynamics are uncomfortable and the three boy-spirits downright creepy, but the music is brilliant and the Queen of the Night stole the show.

From the NYT’s review:
“when the soprano Kathryn Lewek, as the Queen of the Night, sang her character’s dazzling and demonic aria, many people started clapping halfway through, right after she dispatched the famous music’s bursts of coloratura passagework with eerie ease and enormous sound. Yes, she was quite a sight in her fantastical costume, a mothlike figure with multiple flapping wings.”

#themagicflute #mozart #metropolitanopera #opera #nyc #metopera #queenifthenight

vasily kandinsky: around the circle

went to see ‘vasily kandinsky: around the circle’ at the guggenheim museum in ny. the curators of the exhibit had suggested people start at the bottom of the circle (with his newest, most abstract work) and then find their way to the top of the goog (where his earliest paintings were shown). it’s a lovely idea because one starts with the most complex, symbolic, abstracted work, almost mathematical in its precision – he developed his own pictorial language, using shapes and colors with immense refinement. but then, as one steps back in time and climbs up the goog spiral, one comes across such unexpected gems. beautiful, expressive, simple paintings that charm and delight. reminded me of the voluptuousness and heart i find in marc chagall’s work. a breathtaking, deeply satisfying experience.

#vasilykandinsky #kandinsky #guggenheimmuseum #guggenheim #circle #painting #art #abstraction #color #line #shape #pictoriallanguage #symbolism #russia

a juror for the south asian film festival of montreal

this fall, i was honored to be one of the jurors for the south asian film festival of montreal, and i got to see some powerful documentaries. one of them is called ‘the ice cream sellers’ by bangladeshi filmmaker sohel rahman. it follows two children in a rohingya refugee camp in bangladesh, and tells the stories of many of its uprooted residents. the opening shots create this sharp contrast between the stunning beauty of the fields and hills in bangladesh and the destitution of people who have witnessed hideous violence. the film’s cinematography is beautiful. its quiet, long shots allow us to take in the immensity of the situation. it’s not manipulative, with no music or fancy editing. rather it’s a sobering ethnographic portrait of royingya refugees. the film is raw, truthful, moving.

the little boy, ayas, at the center of the film (the ice cream seller), seems much older than his years. there is a sadness and anger in him. he and asia, his sister, are deeply traumatized by what they have experienced and by the absence of their father. genocide does not just affect those who are exterminated, it produces ongoing generational trauma.

the festival ends on november 28th so there are still a few days left to watch a large number of new films, many of them for free. google south asian film festival of montreal.

the long goodbye

‘the long goodbye’ with riz ahmed is a short film but so incredibly hard to watch. as he says: “it feels clear to me that this does very much feel grounded in reality, the reality of people’s fears, the reality of where we’re at…” the sequence of events shown in the film is already a reality in palestine, kashmir, india, china, burma and many other parts of the world. this is where we’re at.

google the long goodbye short film riz ahmed. it’s free to watch online including on youtube and vimeo.

rifqa by muhammed el kurd

cannot wait to read ‘rifqa,’ muhammed el kurd’s book of poetry, named after his grandmother rifqa. this is how susan abulhawa reviewed it:

“The words that Mohammed assembles in his poems aren’t pulled from books or dictionaries. They are snatched from clouds, excised from his bones, excavated from Jerusalem’s fabled tales and the inscriptions on her storied stones, plucked from the creases in tank treads and history’s smoke. There is rage in this book—piercing, defiant, inspiring rage that ebbs and returns, and settles in blank spaces that push words far apart on the page.

Unlike the lightness of the word rifqa, this book is heavy, weighed with 103 years of Rifqa’s life as a refugee warrior, a woman of infinite final words—which Mohammed calls punchlines—of a matriarch’s expansive love, a colonized indigenous people’s anguished longing to breathe, and a globalizing irreverence rising from what is muted, buried, razed, and painted over.”