A Soldier's Story

Yesterday I finally watched Norman Jewison's film A Soldier's Story (1984), which is based on Charles Fuller's play A Soldier's Play. This is a really interesting film for many reasons. First off, I had forgotten all about Howard E. Rollins, Jr. He is the lead in this film and the guy on the poster.

Recognize him? He got an Oscar nomination for his role in Miloš Forman's Ragtime as Coalhouse Walker. He also played Virgil Tibbs in the long-running television series "In the Heat of the Night." That show was on when I was a kid and I don't really remember it, but evidently Rollins got kicked off the show after a couple of DUI incidents and other various disorderly conduct that got him in trouble with the law. As I was watching A Soldier's Story I kept wondering why I never see Rollins in films anymore. He was the iconic black actor of the early 1980s, starring as Medgar Evars in For Us, the Living on tv and in dozens of other tv movies, a presence on daytime soap "All My Children" and the star of two films nominated for Best Picture. Rollins obviously had many personal problems and his trouble with the law was a manifestation of that. He died in 1996 at the age of 46 (!) of complications from AIDS. I can't find anything out about his sexuality on the web, but that shouldn't come as a surprise.

A Soldier's Story was nominated for Best Picture, and it deserves its nomination. It's a total genre picture: military mystery film, but it's superbly directed by Norman Jewison. (Think In the Valley of Elah without the boredom.) It also boasts a great cast with some wonderful performances. Rollins wasn't nominated for an Oscar for this performance, but the mystery's dead man (Adolph Caesar) was. He's a scary, hateful old man, and it's an intriguing role. David Alan Grier, David Harris, William Allen Young and Denzel Washington (in one of his first films) are also in the cast. And Patti LaBelle stars as the owner of the local juke joint. And she sings. Twice! The music is by Herbie Hancock. My favorite performance is by Robert Townsend, who plays Rollins's driver throughout the movie. His excitement when he realizes the captain they sent down to investigate the murder is a black man is palpable and a lovely thing to watch. Townsend was the dad on the tv show "The Parent 'Hood" in the late 1990s. He's fantastic in this movie.

The film itself is a lot like Jewison's earlier In the Heat of the Night (1967) with Sidney Poitier and can't really escape comparison, but A Soldier's Story is further advanced than that movie, coming twenty years later. A Soldier's Story is about being black and how best to be black in the Army. The characters debate real issues of racism within the black community and systems of power that help some black people while keeping others down. It's fascinating and nuanced and makes for compelling drama. Recommended.

Another Novel Without a Hero or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Barry Lyndon

I am in love with Barry Lyndon. I have been waiting on watching this 1975 film from the great auteur Stanley Kubrick for years (I believe I even have it on videotape somewhere, recorded one night off of Turner Classic Movies.) Mostly, I've been held back by its length and the warnings I'd received about its slow pace, but this morning I answered the call and promise of its costumes and cinematography and succumbed to the charm of the work of Kubrick, Ryan O'Neal (the film's star) and William Makepeace Thackeray who wrote the novel. The story is powerful and resonant, with as much of an understanding of human nature and the consequences of greed as Thackeray's other very-famous novel, Vanity Fair, and its course follows a similar trajectory to that book. Redmond Barry (O'Neal) is a young Irishman deeply in love with his cousin, who is engaged to be married to an officer in the British army. Barry, a most headstrong young man, challenges the officer to a duel (there are several in the film, of many varieties), kills him, and must run, immediately, from the law. This first fifteen minutes of the film, sets Barry on a course of wandering all over Europe. Through an endless series of coincidences and mistakes, he joins the British army and then the Prussian army, becomes an agent and spy in the service of the Prussian military police, and subsequently finds himself a valet to a very wealthy cosmopolitan Irish gambler, eventually marrying into wealth and an English title.
The film is unquestionably long (185 minutes), but I found it extremely rewarding, emotionally sincere and politically astute. Add to this that Barry Lyndon is, I think, the most beautiful film I have ever seen. The costumes, by Milena Canonero and Ulla-Britt Søderlund are stunningly gorgeous, covering the military forces of England, Sweden and Prussia and dressing all of the nobility of England and France. It's really something to behold. But the true find of Barry Lyndon, for me, is John Alcott's cinematography. I really don't think I've ever seen anything so beautiful put on celluloid. Barry Lyndon had me from its very first shot: a wide view of a duel that never zooms in and gives us all the backstory we need on Barry's father in the first 45 seconds of the film. From then on, the film is absolutely filled with breathtaking vistas and lush panoramas of the European countryside, never venturing once into the interior of a dirt-ridden city. At one point early in the film, when Barry heads off to Dublin, I thought for sure I had seen the last of Alcott's beautiful compositions, but luck stepped in and (thankfully) sent Barry and me in a different direction than the city. The infinite variations of sky that Alcott is able to capture with his camera boggle the mind. His interiors, while less breathtaking, still contain an other-worldly feel to them. They are all lit by the candlelight of the period and the photography is warm and inviting. The photography is so powerful that at times my heart ached at its beauty.
Kubrick lost the Academy awards for directing and writing that year to Miloš Forman's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, but Bary Lyndon's costume designers, art directors, cinematographer and composer were all rewarded on Oscar night with little gold men for their work and any other result would have been unthinkable. The story and acting in the film are wonderful, but it is the look of the film that makes Barry Lyndon an absolute masterpiece.

It Hurts to Change

I feel like I ought to post since it feels like it's been twenty years since I did. So hello out there.

Work has been getting me down so far this week. I think it's because there isn't that much to do at work (which is just weird). We're always so busy, so I'm not sure why we're not busy now. I know I have job security and everything, but it's times like these when I feel like I could be getting fired any minute. Hm.

I have been so very busy with the "Holidays," as they have come to be known. Saturday I went to see Madison in A Christmas Carol down at SCR. She was very cute and the show was quite charming... and I saw James Ray, who looks the same as he did in University... at least to me. The show was nice and it's always nice to see Maddie, but this took up my whole day. I got home at 8:00p, went grocery shopping and headed out to see Mar Adentro (The Sea Inside) which is the first movie with positive buzz this season that has really connected with me. The Sea Inside is awesome. Really. It's great. It's an incredibly beautiful, life-affirming movie about a quadraplegic who wants to end his life. It's quite powerful and I connected with it very emotionally. Hooray for good cinema.

Sunday I went to lunch with my mother and then to Nancy's house to visit for a while and then to the girls' for friends Christmas night. It was lovely... everybody but Derek was there from the circle of friends and we had a great time. I should post about Scott and the disappointing blow he dealt me on Sunday, but I'll let it wait until another time.

Yesterday I finished all of my Christmas shopping and watched Miloš Forman's The Firemen's Ball which is a hilarious Sixties movie from the golden era of Czech cinema.

Tonight, Wahima and I saw Caroline or Change at the Ahmanson Theatre and it was spectacular. I loved it so much and I'm so glad we went and didn't miss it. I don't think I would have forgiven myself if we had.

But now it's really late for me. I need to get up in six hours to go to work... something I very much do not want to do. I want to take off work and go downtown and see Million Dollar Baby.

Soon.

Conquering

I don't like doing so many things alone. I need to figure out what I need to do to apply for these grad schools and I just don't feel like doing it all by myself. I have no motivation. I must learn to be more self-motivated.

Last night I went to sleep with a sheet, a comforter, and a throw blanket on top of me in that order. When I woke up, the sheet was on top, and underneath was the comforter. Underneath that was the throw blanket. I have no idea how this happened.

Wahima's birthday party last night was a lot of fun. There was good music, good food, and fun people. Many of Wahima's friends from Starbucks were there. All seemed cool. Also in attendance: Elizabeth, Aaron, Ashley, Danny, Kim, and Justin.

This morning I watched Pelle the Conqueror, the Danish film from 1987. It was pretty bleak, but it felt more sentimental and less important than films like, say, Andrzej Wajda's Promised Land and Miloš Forman's Loves of a Blonde.

Loves of a Blonde

Last night Sarah and D and I went to AMPAS to see Loves of a Blonde and hear director Miloš Forman speak.  Trés cool.  I swear this "Academy Gold Standard Series" is the greatest thing.  I've been to the first two, and I guess this goes on like every 2 or 3 weeks.  A rare film every single time, and usually a cool guest... all for $5 and free parking (unheard of in Beverly Hills).

The film was great, and Forman is obviously a pretty brilliant guy.  The interviewer was asking dumb ass questions though.  It was okay, because Forman was giving great answers to the pedantic questions he was being asked.  (He says he consciously made Nurse Ratched a less obvious villain not only to psyche the audience out, but also because he says he knew nurses like this... women who were actually very nice to you if you played by their rules and obeyed them completely... "It's a whole other kind of evil," he said.)  But the interviewer failed to ask about Forman's own cinematic influences and Czech contemporaries not to mention his opinions on contemporary cinema.  Ah well.

After the film, we went to the original Toi on Sunset.  Yum.  Good curry and then green tea ice cream for dessert.

I'm damn tired today, and, I think, a little irritable.  Hmmm.