Rome: Philippi
HBO

Since high school, I've been a big fan of I, Claudius.

It seemed like there was this stuff they were teaching us in civics and history which was probably mostly technically true, but it seemed more like an official story than the real thing.

But then, in Latin class, history seemed much more alive. I took Latin for four years and while I never really got good with the language, I fell in love with the stories the teachers would tell about the Punic Wars and the fall of the Republic. It was like Star Wars only good and, you know, real.

While all my friends in Spanish and French only got to read about how Carlos went down to the supermarket and...

...bought milk
...bought eggs
...bought cheese

I was learning how Caesar stormed through Helvetia into Gaul and
...slaughtered the men
...slaughtered the women
...slaughtered the children
...burned the fields

There were three great events in the life of Gaius Octavian, later Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Three events surrounded by civil war that brought down the greatest Republic the world had ever known and created the greatest Empire.

The first was the death of Julius Caesar, who had made the young Octavian his heir. The first season of Rome covers this event.

The second was the battle of Philippi, wherein Mark Antony, Lepidus and Octavian defeated Brutus, Cassius and Cicero. They showed this battle last night, and it's utterly heartbreaking.

Brutus was a man of honor, and his loyalty was torn between is country and his friend (Caesar.) Caesar tends to be depicted either as the victim of a conspiracy or as a tyrrant whose murder was justified. This show doesn't give us either of those convenient caricatures. Caesar was a man of ambition, will and intelligence whose rise to power was feared and resented by men who had much reason to fear and to resent. But the principles on which they stood appealed to Brutus' patriotism.

At Philippi, Brutus sees his country crumbling under his feet. His advice to his men is unforgettable: "save your skins." He then marches right up to Octavian's advancing forces, strips off his armor and attacks them so he might die a soldier's death.

Rome has not been renewed for a third season, so I was afraid they wouldn't get to the third event in Octavian's life, the decisive event which makes him emperor: the Battle of Actium.

Actium was naval battle between Octavian and Marcus Agrippa on one side and Mark Antony and Cleopatra on the other. Truthfully, it wasn't much of a battle...Antony and Cleopatra were hemmed in and vulnerable...but it was one of the most important political military victories in Western history.

Six episodes left. I hope they get there.

Notes on a Scandal
dir. Richard Eyre
2006


"What is the first and principle thing he does? What need does he serve by killing? He covets."
-Hannibal Lecter

"Youth is wasted on the young."
-George Bernard Shaw


Like Play Misty For Me, Fatal Attraction and Single White Female, Notes on a Scandal is ostensibly about the havoc a desperate, unstable person can wreak on an otherwise happy, ordinary life.

Judi Dench plays Barbara Covett, a hard-edged spinstress schoolmarm who keeps extensive diaries into which she pours her hatred, malice and will to dominate all life.

Cate Blanchette plays Sheba Hart, a latter day Emma Bovary trapped in a humdrum middle class existence.

Covett and Hart strike up a friendship which takes a sour turn when Covett witnesses Hart's daliance with a 15-year old male student. She confronts Hart, intending at first to turn her in, but deciding instead to keep Hart's secret as a means of cementing the bond between them.

Covett uses the scandal as leverage in a game of emotional blackmail. But the years of lonely bitterness left in their wake a pit of yearning so bottomless, that no harried mother of two could hope to fill it.

Disappointment festers into desperation for Covett who ups the ante to a pitch-perfect crecendo.

The story elements in Notes on a Scandal are familiar. It's your basic blackmail psychodrama. There's even a scene where Judi Dench signals to Cate Blanchette that she has a spot of cream cheese on her nose, a conscious homage to the early flirtation in Fatal Attraction.

But the fresh perspective and beautiful, lyrical prose of Judi Dench's narration set this film apart from its forebears.

The usual pattern for these movies is for a morally flawed or emotionally vulnerable protagonist to fall under the (initially) friendly spell of a character who slowly becomes more and more desperately dependent. In the second act, this character usually crosses the line into caricature, becoming violent, ranting and unstable.

Ostensibly a warning about bad behavior (infidelity, taking your friends for granted, sexual opportunism), these pieces end up being more about untreated borderline personalities. Glenn Close was just as likely to have become obsessed with Michael Douglas if they hadn't slept together. She was simply mentally ill.

This is not the case with Notes on a Scandal. Judi Dench's seething resentments were born of years of repression. She does not lash out violently. We have no boiled bunnies, no long speeches about friendship from the roof of a building as Cate Blanchette hangs from a flag pole, no one gets duct taped to a wheelchair. Her destructive influence is much more subtle, basic and realistic.

As for Cate Blanchette, her moral weakness is not depicted as a simple, understandable bad choice (like a one night stand or taking on a roommate without references.) Her daliance with the young student is a reflection of flaws woven deep into her character: an adolescent longing for a life less ordinary, a vague, difficult to articulate dissatisfaction with the status quo.

Her life is not a miserable one. Her husband is older, but he is a present, energetic and enthusiastic father. Her son is developmentally disabled, but capable, positive and well-mannered. Her daughter is moody and reclusive, but no more so than the average teenager. Her home is rumpled and cluttered, but warm and inviting. Her creative aspirations are supported.

The sexual politics here also play nicely. Had Blanchette been a vaguely dissatisfied husband who has an affair with a 15-year old girl, well, then we'd be getting into Humbert Humbert territory. But this film plays right up to the cliche that characterizes female victims of child sexual abuse as "exploited" and male victims as "lucky bastards" and doesn't give us any convenient outs. All moral speechifying in the film is self-serving and we are left to decide for ourselves what to make of her affair.

As with Covett, who describes the (from all appearances) well-behaved children of her school as knife-wielding crack addicts, Hart's problem is more one of perception than reality. And as with the two protagonists in In Cold Blood, their mutual delusions feed off of one another less than constructively.

Hart is like an old photo of Covett, before the years of loneliness have had their full toll. Each longs for intimacy. Each is drawn to youth. Each is willing to compromise the lives of the people they supposedly care about to fill the void in their hearts. Each is a vampire.

My one quibble with the film is that Phillip Glass' soundtrack (reminicent of Howard Shore) at times overwhelms the subtlety of the performances. It's easy to miss a wry turn of phrase or perceptive squint when you have a full orchestra blarring "THIS IS DRAMATIC!" in your ear.

Three stars. Dame Jason sez, if you understood ANYTHING about friendship, you'd check it out.

The Pillowman
wri. Martin McDonagh
Berkeley Rep

"Morgan Freeman once said that Ernest Hemmingway once wrote that the world is a fine place and worth fighting for. Morgan agreed with the second part. I think it's all a crock of shit."
-Warren Demontague, alcoholic ape

"Suffer the little children to come unto me."
-Josua bar-Joseph, carpenter & roustabout

Once upon a time, there was a writer named Katurian. Katurian K. Katurian. As his name indicates, Katurian's parents had been a bit...peculiar.

One day, Katurian is arrested and interrogated by two policemen: Tupolski and Ariel. Now, Tupolski would describe himself as the "good cop" with Ariel taking the role of "bad cop," but as is usually the case, it would be more apt to describe them as "bad cop" and "worse cop."

Living as he did in an unspecified "totalitarian state," Katurian was at a loss to understand why he had been singled out for this extraordinary attention. He was a writer and an intellectual, it was true, but he had assiduously avoided any political or subversive topics in his work, preferring instead to focus on the lives of unfortunate children who were often subjected in his work to violent or otherwise horrible mistreatment.

Which was not to say that he approved of that sort of thing or meant to encourage the mistreatment of children. Rather, having been scarred himself by some of his parents non-alliterative "peculiarities," though not moreso than his poor, poor brother, Michal...no certainly not more than Michal...it was not surprising that this theme, though he hated themes, would find its way eventually into his work.

Not that he believed a storyteller was essentially an autobiographist. That was just lazy storytelling. Autobiographical elements were sure to seep in to any good story, but to fall willingly into that decadence was, well...anyway, he didn't mean anything by it.

It was only when Tupolski showed him the pictures of the dead children...children killed in manners similar to those described in his stories...that Katurian came to understand that this was no mere political persecution, no intimidation for intimidation's sake.

He was being accused of...

Well...

It was hard to say, exactly. They made it sound, oh, yes, it SOUNDED, as if they thought that HE'D...but, surely, no, he hadn't. Maybe if someone had read his stories and been inspired to...

...but...

Then again, only one of his stories had ever been published. How would the killer have known about the others?

How, indeed, Katurian.

"The Pillowman" is not an easy ride by any stretch of the imagination.

Long, clocking in at over 2 1/2 hours, it never drags. Every moment is tight, every line of dialogue rich and shaded with meaning. And each character complex. Katurian is at once cowardly and equivocal yet moral and courageous. The police are fascistic yet well-motivated to remove a child killer from the streets. Michal's innocence is matched only by his casual brutality.

Comparisons can be made to Ariel Dorfman's "Death and the Maiden," where justice hangs in the thin margin between truth and recollection. Small wonder that the "worse cop" shares Dorfman's name.

Yet, while that play centered around adults, this play is about children, making it all the more difficult to watch. The brutality of the interrogation and the killings surrounding it is always in plain view.

Four stars. Jason J. Jason sez, this is what theater is for.

The Last King of Scotland
dir. Kevin MacDonald
2006



"I rode a tank, had a general's rank, when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank."
- Mick Jagger

"First, do no harm."
- Hippocrates

"You're a funny guy Sully. I like you. That's why I'm going to kill you last."
- Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor



What do you believe in? What are you faithful to? What would you kill for? What would you die for? If others are dying a suffering around you, would you speak out? Or be silent? And how far would you compromise any of these principles in the name of personal
loyalty?

The Last King of Scotland is told like the history of an unhappy love affair. Cocky, brash, arrogant and dissatisfied with his middle class life, Dr. Nicholas Carrigan travels to Uganda in 1970 to do missionary work. Not long into his stay, he meets the newly ascendent ruler of Uganda, Gen. Idi Amin, who offers him the post of personal physician to the president.

Amin seems like a nice, jovial guy, at first. A patriot, a man of the people and a prankster who enjoys teasing those around him with good-natured menace. The kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with, as they say.

As the situation in Uganda goes from not that bad to pretty bad to worse to unlivable, leading up to the Entebbe incident, Amin becomes increasingly erratic, prone to magical thinking, paranoid and ever more vicious.

For his part, Carrigan is no hero. He hides behind doctor-patient confidentiality and the Hippocratic oath to rationalize his treatment and protection of Amin, knowing full well (or at least having strong reason to suspect) that Amin is killing his own people by the truckload. He flirts with married women and, in an act that can only be described as suicidal, even beds one of Idi Amin's wives. He sides with Amin not so much out of principle, but out of an almost sexual attraction coupled with a desire to rub Britain's nose in their colonial failure.

When the two men are on screen together, it is almost as if they are looking at each other through a funhouse mirror. The smaller, weaker Carrigan represents the tiny, fearful boy within Amin's oversized frame. The monstrous, towering, Amin respresents the inflated ego and disengenous, self-serving bravado within Carrigan.

By the time Carrigan wakes up and realizes what he has been ignoring, nay, been complicit in, it is too late. He is trapped, without a passport, ever but one step away from becoming Amin's next victim. We feel for him, but we also can see that he carved his own path. The more we accomodate necessary evils, the easier it becomes to lose sight of essential good.

The film is a tour-de-force of editing. Shot on simple digital video in what often looks like natural light conditions, the film has a docu-drama "Discovery Channel" feel in its early chapters. As the story winds out, the cuts become quicker, offering glimpses instead of lingering views of action that seems at times to take place just outside the frame, caught by the corner of your eye. Nearly the entire third act is high suspense, reminicent of Hitchcock or Spielberg's Munich.

My only quibble, and it's a quibble, would be with the general lack of background information and context. The film kind of assumes you know the basic history of Uganda in the 70s. But these specifics are not really important to the story and, besides, that's why the Good Lord invented Wikipedia.

On balance, it's better that this film spared us the tedious pontificating of The Constant Gardener. When Gillian Anderson was introduced as the likely romantic lead, I felt my stomach sink. "Okay, here comes a 20 minute primer on East African politics and history delivered by the only two Mzungu in a 20 mile radius."

Thankfully, it doesn't play out that way. For all it's historical gravity, this is an essentially personal story.


Three stars. General Jason says he appreciates a man who is not afraid to SAY what is on his MIND!