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
Category: self-authored
roc art and artists
lunch with the brilliant karen faris whose incredibly creative, multilayered, textured work speaks to me personally. and then at roco to see erica bryant’s whimsical collages that capture the free association and complex patchwork nature of dreams. arseniy and i were lucky to get a private tour. a must-see, rochester peeps!
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
after the snowstorm
at frank melville memorial park with ammi, to check out the aftereffects of the snowstorm. the sun is shining with abandon today and the sky this glorious, uninterrupted, intense blue. no filter. birds are making merry and lending a melodious dimension to sun and sky. life is beautiful.
#frankmelvillememorialpark #frankmelvillepark #bombogenesis #snowstorm #sunandsky #bluestsky #sunshine #snowphotography #snowinstagram
chai and methai at the beach
this evening we made some chai and got some methai from bengali sweets, in hicksville, and then went and watched the sunset at west meadow beach, right next to our house. a delicious mix of cold wind, hot tea, and radiant sky and water. sister, ammi, abbu, and the husband – what could be better?
#chaiislove #methai #bengalisweets #hicksville #sunsets #sunsetsofinstagram #sunsetphotography #sunsetlover #coldwind #hotchai #sweetmethai #westmeadowbeach #setauket #setauketny #familyiseverything
happy birthday saba
happy birthday to one of my closest friends in college. saba could always be counted on to do the right thing, right by her family and friends. everything done seamlessly and with grace. she and her family were central to my years at IBA and later when i worked in karachi. they anchored me. i have learned so much from them. happy birthday dear saba. u are one of a kind <3
hostage situation at a synagogue
so relieved that the hostage situation at the colleyville synagogue ended without any hostages being hurt. the captor was killed, not sure how, but the hostages escaped or were let go and are safe. thank god.
bringing violence and terror into a house of worship is a special kind of horror, whether in texas, pittsburgh, christchurch, quebec city, charleston or birmingham, whether within the purview of what we mourn and condemn officially or further away in the darkest recesses of empire and settler colonialism (remember the house to house killings in fallujah including shootings inside a mosque during the US siege, or more recently, the brutal raid on al-aqsa mosque).
a special kind of horror.
don’t know if we will ever learn the truth about the texas hostage-taker (msm will agitate, jumble together and churn out its own political fantasies), but i wish he hadn’t dragged aafia siddiqui into his delusions.
aafia siddiqui is living her own horror, the kind where one is reduced to sub-human chaff, a by-product of the war on terror’s systems of annihilation – bleeding, screaming, squashed waste stowed away in guantanamo or miscellaneous black sites and prisons. she was disappeared in 2003, near islamabad, along with her 3 children (the youngest was 6 months old at the time and is still missing, presumed dead). she has been detained, tortured, kept in solitary confinement for almost 20 years. it’s beyond comprehension, perhaps beyond human empathy or compassion. a lot of what was ‘churned out’ to justify her destruction, reads like lurid accusations of witchcraft back in the 1600s. her family has nothing to do with what happened. her brutalization started a long time ago. her nightmare needs to end.
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.
rest in power sidney poitier
one of the most defining, unforgettable, stunning moments in cinema. and history. sidney poitier. a life of firsts. one of the most beautiful and elegant actors to grace the screen. proud. masterful. charming. electric. with a spine of steel. a giant. no one can ever fill his shoes. a staggering loss. may he rest in power.
#sidneypoitier #cinema #history #definingmoments #giantofcinema #changedcinema #icon #sidneypoitierfilm #sidneypoitiermovies #hugeloss #thereisnoonelikehim
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
Rest in Power Desmond Tutu
Palestine and Kashmir are the moral litmus test of our times. It’s not just that these occupations have lasted more than 70 years, or that generations of indigenous peoples have been exposed to extreme oppression and violence, it’s also the systemic censorship imposed on any call for justice and human rights. Those who speak up are ruthlessly silenced and punished.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke up and compared the apartheid in Palestine/Israel to the structural racial segregation that existed in South Africa.
He wrote:
“Those who continue to do business with Israel, who contribute to a sense of ‘normalcy’ in Israeli society, are doing the people of Israel and Palestine a disservice. They are contributing to the perpetuation of a profoundly unjust status quo.”
Rest in power Desmond Tutu.
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 land with a people: palestinians and jews confront zionism
at the people’s forum in manhattan, for the first time ever, to attend the book launch of ‘a land with a people: palestinians and jews confront zionism.’ brilliant space (look at the books and posters) and brilliant event. congrats sarah sills, esther farmer and ros petchesky.
i am reading the book right now and i recommend it strongly. it uses personal stories to deconstruct racist myths and make visible the violence of zionism. as one of the contributors said: it’s not about ethnicity or religion, it’s about supporting colonial regimes or decolonization.
pls read the book and share with others. name and confront zionism just like we name and confront racism, settler colonialism, and white supremacy. imagine a just and hopeful future for all.
#peoplesforumnyc #peoplesforum #booklaunch #jvp #alandwithapeople #zionismisracism #zionsimisapartheid #notocolonialism #notoracism #bds #palestinewillbefree #fromtherivertothesea #fromtherivertotheseapalestinewillbefree
walking in nyc late at night
love walking in ny. walked from time square to lincoln center and back again. the trees were doing something beautiful, their fluorescent yellow leaves illuminating a dense smoky sky. met these beauties along 9th avenue, close to fordham. and then there was the metropolitan opera, mammoth, richly chandeliered, grand. filled with matthew au coin’s muscular music and eurydice’s tragic story. i wished for more tender, delicate music at times. i was most moved by her relationship with her father (rather than w orpheus). her father, her shade, her tree, the one who made a room for her out of string in the coldness of the underworld, the one who taught her how to speak again with endless love and patience after she forgot the language and memories of the living. i want to write a story about eurydice too.
#treesarelife #treesarebeautiful #nyc #newyorksky #nightsky #eurydice #metopera #metropolitanopera #lincolncenter #longwalks #music #magic
mourning beauty
we had to cut down this silver maple today. it broke my heart. some of its branches were already dead and the trunk was highly compromised, so i was told it was a safety issue. still, when the tree climber began to cut it down this morning, i had the strong urge to run outside and stop him. i wish i knew of some ceremony, to thank the tree for 100s of years of beauty and shade. it feels momentous. so much history disappeared in a few hours. what a huge, gaping loss. for us but also for its companion silver maples.
“nothing does it justice. at approximately 60 feet high and 222 inches in circumference, measured at 4.5 feet off the ground, the enormous silver maple in setauket is one of the few of its kind that remembers a time potentially up to the revolutionary period or even further back.”
[see the white car in the bottom corner for some perspective on the tremendous height of this beautiful tree]
#silvermaple #setauket #setauketny #treesarelife #treesarebeautiful #treesaresacred #mourningloss #mourningbeauty
