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Phillip Lopate and Geoffrey O'Brien

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from: Phillip Lopate

A Woman's Cinema?

Posted Wednesday, March 21, 2001, at 11:46 AM ET

Dear Geoffrey,

Up all night with a sick child (she came home from school with a bad cough), head still bleary, I see in the morning paper that Bush is rolling back the tougher arsenic-in-water standards Clinton had instituted, and Gov. Pataki is preparing us for diesel-generated fuel this summer. Tough times for the environment--although Maine has set aside a million acres for undeveloped forest. As you know, I'm writing a book about the New York waterfront, and yesterday I heard that global warming would raise the oceans along the coast by a foot in 15 years, then more after that. I need to finish my book before Manhattan goes underwater.

But on to the Oscars: This morning's Times says only Julia Roberts is a shoo-in for Best Actress; all the other races are up for grabs. I preferred Laura Linney in You Can Count On Me, a nice little movie with some beautifully written scenes (I especially liked the one where the heroine tries to get the priest to stop being so therapistlike and condemn her to hell) and some dynamite acting by Mark Ruffalo and Matthew Broderick. Broderick is one of those actors who cheers me up; I start smiling as soon as he comes on screen. In a way, Julia Roberts deserves the award because it's such an old-fashioned Joan Crawford star turn. (Although Joan would have given us some darker hues.) And I thought Linney was even better in House of Mirth than in You Can Count on Me. Molly Haskell had a nice piece in the "Arts and Leisure" section about how there used to be a much clearer, stricter sense of what a supporting actor or actress did: like Thelma Ritter, Jack Carson, Eve Arden. Now, very often a lead actor gets a supporting nomination: Marcia Gay Harden in Pollock, Benicio del Toro in Traffic.

I want to put in a good word for The Taste of Others in the foreign film category. This is a French comedy by Agnes Jaoui, a wry, wise ensemble piece in which, as Jean Renoir said, "everyone has his reasons." Jaoui makes splendid comedy out of the cruelty and cross-purposes of people's self-absorption (the same premise as Seinfeld), and yet you end up liking all her characters. Nothing flashy in the camerawork, just the judicious restraint and craft of a well-made boulevard play brought to the screen. She also did the script for Resnais' The Same Old Song and seems to have caught the Zeitgeist of depressed Parisians bouncing up against driven, ambitious ones and exchanging energies.

Last night I saw a preview of a little gem soon to open, The Day I Became a Woman, by an Iranian woman director named Marzieh Meshkini, who is the wife of one of Iran's most important directors, Mohsen Makhmalbaf. A few years ago, Makhmalbaf started a film school for his family, and so far his daughter (who made The Apple) and his wife have done brilliantly. It's an interesting artistic dynasty, like the Bach family. Anyway, The Day I Became a Woman is composed of three stories about women at various stages of life: childhood, young marriage, old age. It was made that way because you don't need to get the censor's permission in advance for a short film in Iran. It has a crystalline, heartbreaking purity, that "ontological beauty," to use a pretentious phase, of each object resonating in its beingness, like early Italian neorealism, only in color.

I'm struck by the fact--coincidence?--that three of my favorite recent films were all directed by women: The Taste of Others, The Day I Became a Woman, and Chantal Akerman's magnificent La Captive, which I mentioned in my first message to you. Don't know what it means exactly or whether it makes any sense to speak of a woman's cinema, but the good thing is that it's no longer seen as such a novelty when a woman makes a strong film.

I'm glad you said you liked Sidney Lumet's The Prince of the City. Yes, it's far better and more complex than Traffic; it makes you go through the dilemma and nobody comes off clean--a noble piece of filmmaking. I think Lumet is one of the most underrated directors we have. When you add up his body of work, it's amazing. Plus he has a terrific feel for and knowledge of New York and puts the whole city on the screen: You never come away thinking it's an overedited, narrow band of privilege, like Woody Allen's Manhattan.

My daughter's coughing in the next room, and I have to get back to her. I saw your guest-edited fiction issue of Bookforum. Good job.

As ever,
Phillip

the breakfast table
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from: Phillip Lopate

A Woman's Cinema?

Posted Wednesday, March 21, 2001, at 11:46 AM ET
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Phillip Lopate is an essayist, novelist, and film buff whose last book was a collection of movie criticism, Totally, Tenderly, Tragically. Geoffrey O'Brien is the editor in chief of the Library of America and the author of numerous books, including The Phantom Empire: Movies in the Mind of the Twentieth Century.
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[Thursday Notes from the Fray Editor: So Phillip Lopate came into the Fray too, to answer the A.O.Scott post below, and Mr Scott answered him, and then David Edelstein thought it was all getting too friendly, and really we recommend you read the whole thread (starts here), no actually we are imploring you to read it, because it is one of the great Fray feuding threads, with posts titled "A.O. Wimps Out" and "By God Mr Edelstein" and a mention of effete drivel. There are special extra insults from star posters and others, plus this unmissable summary of the action from Fray favorite Joseph Britt ("What are these people arguing about? [Is it]... that anyway House of Mirth was supposed to be grim, a bummer and/or a downer but is nonetheless worthy for other reasons, so the Times' critics' criticism is wrong. Have I got it?"). Neill Hamilton--a trouble-maker if ever we saw one--tried to help Mr Britt out, below.]


While the posts appear to be trading blows about the movie The House of Mirth, it appears that they are arguing about certain hidden issues. A.O.Scott is arguing that the New York Times is not as fun as a frat party, and never will be if he can help it. Edelstein is arguing that he prefers Gillian Anderson in the X-Files, altho' he misses Mulder. Zeit for some reason wanted to talk about the only Art movie he has ever seen, and Lopate's point is only known to him. I hope this helps.

--Neill Hamilton

(To reply, click here.)



[Wednesday Notes from the Fray Editor: Some rumbling in the film critics' ranks here. Did the New York Times diss House of Mirth like frat boys? A.O.Scott says no, below. And Slate's movie critic David Edelstein is in The Fray arguing too. There are comments on individual films throughout. To take random examples, a defense of Manhattan, and the excellent question "Where was Wonder Boys?". (If there was a post agreeing that The Leopard is one of the best films ever made, we would feature it too.) Microcinemas are discussed here. And (we are filing under the heading "good to know if true") how posting on The Fray can protect you from Alzheimer's, here.]


Mr. Lopate writes:

House of Mirth got lambasted by the New York Times critics for being a downer, as if they were reviewing for their college frat paper.

What is his source for this ridiculous contention? There are three film critics at the Times: Elvis Mitchell, Stephen Holden, and me. To my knowledge (and his), Mitchell has never written about House of Mirth, and my only published remarks about the film came in a Slate "Movie Club," in which I said that while I admired Davies's visual technique, I found the movie emotionally inert. So perhaps Mr. Lopate is referring to Stephen Holden's review, which ran when House of Mirth was shown at the New York Film Festival. But while Holden did describe the movie's depiction of New York society as "grim" and "bleak," he did not fault (much less "lambaste" or "despise") House of Mirth for its somber mood. Rather, he thought Gillian Anderson was miscast as Lily Bart, and found most of the secondary characters one-dimensional.

The implication that "the Times critics" favor shallow, feel-good pictures will be laughable to anyone who bothers to read the paper, and will certainly come as news to the makers of Erin Brockovitch, Gladiator, Finding Forrester and Chocolat, all of which we treated pretty roughly. Perhaps the only articles in the Times Mr. Lopate reads are the ones he writes himself, or perhaps he fell asleep over the paper and dreamed up a team of shallow critics to serve as "Breakfast Table" straw men. In any case it's too bad that, in his desperate need to preserve a sense of intellectual superiority, he has so egregiously smeared and misrepresented the work of other critics. I guess I'd rather be middlebrow and literary than highbrow and illiterate.

--A.O.Scott

(To reply, click here.)


Timesaver: Oscar night in a nutshell.

Armey Archer, Joan Rivers and Spawn, scores of "stars", 30% ridiculously over-dressed, 30% under-dressed in designer slobbery, 30% appropriately dressed but ill-coiffed, indoctrination through a summary of historical significance, popular clips from this year's movies, witty, left-leaning banter from an officious host, audience shots of actors (22% of all shots include Jack Nicholson), more witty banter including rolling blackout jokes, irrelevant awards for tech-geeks, makeup people and unknown music industry wonks, more witty banter including Dubya jokes, slow tease with clips from best movie nominees, slightly more "important" awards, tacky musical and dance numbers, more witty banter probably including J-Lo dress references, more shots of Jack, building suspense, complete overuse of the words "vision, brilliance and genius," sappy "thank yous", lifetime achievement award to somebody who's more talented than all the nominees put together but just never had the right PR people, annoying, hand-wringing, impassioned political statements by "stars" with furrowed brows, salutes to the independents (who are the only people doing anything new, anymore), building suspense, more witty banter about events that occurred earlier in the night, best film award, a little more irrelevant bullshit and two weeks worth of water cooler talk

--Johnny Hotpants

(To reply, click here.)



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