The New Catacomb

A famous film, whose anonymity I will maintain at least until the arrival of the Google hounds, is often mined for the observation that the tragic thing in life is that everyone has his reasons.  Well, everyone does have his reasons.  But these reasons need not be obscure or contrary or even very different than anyone else's; the reasoner simply needs to think they are his and his alone and exert that greatest of rights, free will.  The selfsame observation has been used to buttress a notion of relativity that some soft-minded charlatans rely upon to inject chaos into our existence, which they then deem an accurate reflection of the cosmos, our souls (mere illusions, they note), and ultimately the patchwork nonsense they pass off as philosophy.  We all know such folk, and theirs is silly, shallow talk.  They have nothing of any originality to express and so claim that everyone has his own expressions, intelligible or not.  Some people, on the other hand, really have their reasons, reasons as astonishingly powerful as any in our tragic fiction, and the boldest among them resolve to act accordingly.  Which brings us to this miniature masterpiece.

Our protagonists are two, both Europeans and leading archaeologists despite their youth, and both enamored with the treasures of ancient Rome.  We begin in Kennedy's rooms in the Eternal City, where the young Englishman, "though little more than thirty," is enjoying the fruits of his "European reputation":

[He] was provided with that long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap to the student's energies, or, if his mind is still true to his purpose, gives him an enormous advantage in the race for fame.  Kennedy had often been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in sharp reactions of sensuous languor.  His handsome face, with its high, white forehead, its aggressive nose and its somewhat loose and sensual mouth, was a fair index of the compromise between strength and weakness in his nature.

The description above could be of any lout or playboy; it so happens to caption one of the world's greatest experts on Roman ruins.  His companion this cold night is Julius Burger, a young man "of a very different type":

He came of a curious blend, a German father and an Italian mother, with the robust qualities of the north mingling strangely with the softer graces of the south.  Blue Teutonic eyes lightened his sun-browned face, and above them rose a square, massive forehead, with a fringe of close yellow curls lying round it.  His strong, firm jaw was clean-shaven, and his companion had frequently remarked how much it suggested those old Roman busts which peered out from the shadows in the corners of his chamber.  Under its bluff German strength there lay always a suggestion of Italian subtlety, but the smile was so honest, and the eyes so frank, that one understood that this was only an indication of his ancestry, with no actual bearing upon his character.

One cannot help but notice the lengthier profile, the juxtaposition in name of that most common German word for citizen and the most renowned Roman citizen of all time.  Yes, Kennedy's companion is a curious cross-breed, and a man on the cusp of being "promoted to the chair of the greatest of German universities."  And as much as Kennedy has little trouble finding willing females as respites between mountainous projects, so does Burger singularly lack the social graces to make use of his imminent glory.  If being appointed to a prestigious university chair at a young age would, in any case, change the minds of most young women.

There are other differences, of course, and these are fleshed out in the heated discussions these academic rivals have that freezing night.  It seems that while Kennedy has just finished another torrid affair that threatened to erupt into full-fledged scandal, Burger has been particularly diligent and unearthed a find of immense magnitude.  In fact, despite his calm tone, his discovery would probably become an event like no other in the field of Roman Christian archeology:

Its date is different from that of any known catacomb, and it was reserved for the burial of the highest Christians, so that the remains and the relics are quite different from anything which has ever been seen before.  If I was not aware of your knowledge and of your energy, my friend, I would not hesitate, under the pledge of secrecy, to tell you everything about it.  But as it is I think that I must certainly prepare my own report of the matter before I expose myself to such formidable competition.

Sadly perhaps, the competition of yesteryear has been overcome by information technology that makes the hiding of such a crypt in our days well-nigh impossible; Burger has, however, succeeded so far. So after jabbing Kennedy for a little more information on the latest flavor of the month – vicarious living forever being the refuge of the superior mind – he offers his colleague a chance to experience the tombs themselves.  This necessitates a long and clandestine midnight route and a few appurtenances that Burger presciently brings along, but with which he does not bother to furnish the eager Englishman – and maybe that is enough from my side. 

Most know the story's author as the creator of arguably the greatest character in the history of fiction, but Conan Doyle had many interests and a concinnity of style that belied his Victorian origins.   While I cannot claim to have ventured far into his spiritual writings, all Conan Doyle's works of suspense are clever, brilliantly polished, and, regardless of the necessary contrivances of plot, often startling in their fundamental truths.  He may take a blissful field on a cloudy afternoon, a northern ship adrift among glaciers, an old pilot, or a South American temperament, and craft around it the vilest of fates.   A South American temperament?  Can one really construct a tale on the tendencies and impulses of an abstract stereotype?  Why not?  After all, we have whole modern novels based on the incessant flow of its narrator's consciousness, even if that narrator is an animal or dead or otherwise indisposed.  A bit gimmicky, I would guess, but then again all plot can be considered gimmicky if it ends with a trick or two.  So you might want to consider what could possibly be made out of Italian subtlety.    

La finestra di fronte

The plainness of bourgeois existence should not frighten us away from the simpler joys of life.  Family, dinner parties, strolls in the park, the anxieties and fatigue of making a small group of people get along at all times – all these we should not be so hasty to dismiss in place of the liberties of an artist's solitary path.  It is perhaps good to have walked both roads before commenting on the shortcomings of the one not chosen; it is imperative to have done so before addressing its benefits.  For better or worse, the option of commitment will be the most palpable among the world's citizens because family remains our basic unit, our basic means of reconnoitring the vast terrains of unknown futures.  An old quandary, surely, but one that can be broached in a multitude of fashions, as in this film.

We shall return to our first scene, which is granted a date but not a place; the second scene, however, is set in contemporary Rome.  Here a young couple, Filippo (Filippo Nigro) and Giovanna (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) are found walking in dissatisfied silence after, we learn, another public outburst of her anger.  A quick analysis of their subsequent conversation will reveal all the necessary parts of their relationship: Giovanna cannot tolerate a discourtesy while waiting in line, nor the fact that the cashier made an example of her; at the same time, she finds that an embarrassing number of her fellow Italians instinctively treat foreigners like criminals.  Filippo, on the other hand, has little truck with such profundities and simply wants his wife to behave like a civilized human being.  On the last bridge before reaching their car Filippo vanishes from our screen – the cinematic point-of-view is almost exclusively Giovanna's – only to turn up by the side of a dapper elderly gentleman (Massimo Girotti) looking more than a bit confused.  Rightly convinced that the man is an amnesiac, Filippo proposes taking him home until he recovers.  Or, at least, until he can be escorted to the local police presidium for a report.  We are hardly surprised when Giovanna tries to extricate herself from the situation, but less stunned when we arrive at the couple's apartment and behold her two children and snooping neighbors.  Children, of course, are often much more open-minded about bringing a stranger to dinner, if only because they have yet to become mistrustful of good Samaritanship and the warped societal regulations that oblige us to protect ourselves from every outsider regardless of his intentions.  The old man eats but still cannot recall data as fundamental as his name or house address, and so to Giovanna's great chagrin his registration is postponed until the next morning.  In fact, Giovanna shows herself to be so irascible, petulant, and completely unlikeable that we wonder where on earth she derived such self-loathing.  And it is precisely at that point that her and our eyes stray to the open window across the street.

Across the street in terrifying proximity lives a very handsome young banker, Lorenzo (Raoul Bova).  That Giovanna's eyes locate him out of habit rather than sudden interest is supported by a comment from her closest friend and neighbor, Eminè.  The longing that Giovanna's looks betray is combated by her pastry creations which she sells to a pub to supplement her meager income as an accountant and Filippo's "continuous firings" – and here is where her old houseguest begins to come alive.  He has told the children his name is Simone, and without remembering any other particulars he has managed to cook the family crepes.  With these facts in hand, the perspicacious viewer will return to our opening scene in a Rome bakery many decades ago.  It is a scene of inexplicable violence, but one made rational by the time and place, a suspension of all good acts in favor of endless evils and mass perdition.  Simone's vivacity is matched only by his expertise and he counsels Giovanna on tap water, her smoking, and her unfortunate choice not to pursue her dream of opening a pastry shop.  These solemn pieces of advice Giovanna accepts – a stark contrast to her prior rantings to Filippo about Simone's endangering the children – and that same night she and Simone go to the pub.  From afar, as if wondering whether he could ever come any closer, she espies Lorenzo alone on a barstool and, at the same time, completely loses track of the old man.  As she turns to leave, her banker is standing before her very eyes.  They talk in awkward, unfinished thoughts as if in a dream, and we learn that he is very different from her husband – well-dressed, subdued, sensitive to detail.  But when he mentions "her grandfather," they begin a modest search for Simone that reveals aspects of his past all too obvious to readers of fiction (the hallucinatory conversations and collapse in front of a shuttered store being the least subtle) – and we will stop our game of handy-dandy right about here.

Though these developments will hardly shock or amaze, small notes resound that are less predictable, including Eminè's advice about Lorenzo, Simone's real ability, and a few scenes interspersed that augment, for lack of a better term, the film's historical flavor.  However you may feel about such melodrama, and there persist well-worn aspects to this approach, the story moves slowly and truly as if we were assured of each detail's proper category.  When Lorenzo calls Giovanna well out of eyeshot, she still instinctively undoes and fusses with her ponytail; when Giovanna finds a letter by Simone on her kitchen table she does the natural thing and thinks little of its privacy; and when she decides to indulge in the luxury of quitting her job, Filippo, who barely makes ends meet at a gas station and has lost numerous work opportunities, feels like an even greater failure.  As it were, the most cumbrous component of the whole equation turns out to be Lorenzo, whom Giovanna can visit to her heart's and body's content thanks to Filippo's night shift and general obliviousness as if he were indeed the man of her dreams.  Lorenzo doesn't make sense the way our ideals, material or emotional, never quite correspond to what we really need – which is what is so nice about such a movie.  The husband of the bored wife is never painted as a bad man; he is, in fact, a good father, a kind person, and although somewhat of an underachiever, his heart lies very much in the right place.  The ending then seems quite correct in keeping with the tone of the film, which is neither one of hope, nor of self-betterment, nor of passion.  It is one of responsibility – of distinguishing right from wrong, overcoming personal injustices to fight greater evils, and abiding by the choices one makes, even if those choices are fatiguing and dull.  And it does not give away too much by including Simone's mournful words, "it must be wonderful to watch love grow, love that started only as passion, to protect it from time."  After all, time does not need to conquer us wholly and completely.

Atonement

Literary reviews as a rule do not behoove the person to know anything about the work he is reviewing.  He may revel in some of the trendier devices and philosophy, but in time first-rate novels end up branded with the same nonsense that tattoos the maudlin vulgarities of bestseller kiosks.  Why is this?  Perhaps because there is only so much we can say without context; perhaps because publishers are wise enough to know what type of citation makes a reader feel good about himself (there is no small psychology in such measures); perhaps because, for all our differences, each one of us desires a basket of similar goods – peace, prosperity, love, remembrance, fidelity, hope, and redemption.  The commonality of our themes bespeaks an undercurrent of basic human values all too often downplayed by those who like relativism, which eschews societal responsibilities for a desert bungalow where anything can and will happen (you may have heard such drivel before).  So when we read the decorous praise embedded in the usual display of the reviewer's past readings we discover nothing about its mechanisms.  A literary review has its destination, that of literary context, broadly bent across its brow and nothing more.  The careful reader knows better than to wallow in bibliographies, however luminous they may seem, as in this famous novel.

The structure of Atonement derives its power from its immediate surroundings.  An interbellum British country home; the attendant snobbery and trivial worries; a looming war with a surging and malignant juggernaut – all these are simple tools of fiction from the autoclave of longtime practitioners.  What makes them lovely is the patience with which they are rendered familiar.  Our family are the Tallises, father Jack (conspicuously absent), mother Emily (conspicuously valetudinarian), son Leon (conspicuously unambitious), and, the real stars of the show, two sisters a full decade apart, Cecilia and Briony.  The summer is 1935, a whole generation after Europe was massacred yet sufficiently ahead of fascist hellfire to have us believe that happiness is not only possible, it is also enduring.  For a short visit anyway, the Tallises have been beset by Emily's niece Lola and twin nephews Jackson and Pierrot, names so hideously cacophonous as to shed great doubt on their mother's concern for the well-being of their owners.  Briony's best method for coping with these interlopers is to focus on the visit of the very un-prodigal son, Leon.  In his honor she, an intellectually precocious thirteen, writes a play that she intends to have her cousins act out (the plan ends in non-performance and humiliation).  The other distraction is the tall, handsome, and intelligent creation called Robbie Turner.  A Cambridge graduate just like Cecilia, whom he has known all his life, yet least of all when they attended the same university, Robbie plays an unlikely role in the Tallises' existence in that he is the sole offspring of their beloved charwoman Grace.  The two have heard nothing of his father for seventeen years now, so it has been the self-imposed task of Jack Tallis to see to Robbie's education.  He smartly studied literature at Cambridge; he then also smartly determined that he had little literary talent and has now become greatly interested in a medical degree, again to be subsidized by Jack.  But the figure of particular interest is a coeval of Leon's, another tall man by the name of Paul Marshall.

Marshall smells war – the rotting flesh, the smoke, the taste of dirt in every orifice – but he also smells the spoils.  He knows what will happen because it has already happened (one of the advantages of writing about the past), yet at the same time senses that what his father's generation suffered was not conclusive.  With the confidence of someone who knows that he has enough money never to appear boring, he speaks at length of his wartime plans to fabricate fake chocolate energy bars for every British soldier.  That this foodstuff bears the name "Amo bar" might recall what is stroked into each rifle and machine gun, as well as a certain Latin conjugation (Lola suggests the latter).  Yet for all his millions and "cruel good looks," Paul is ultimately a typical part of Leon's world:     

In Leon's life, or rather, in his account of his life, no one was mean-spirited, no one schemed or lied or betrayed.  Everyone was celebrated at least in some degree, as though it was a cause for wonder that anyone existed at all.  He remembered all his friends' best lines.  The effect of one of Leon's anecdotes was to make his listener warm to humankind and its failings.  Everyone was, at a minimal estimate, a "good egg" or "a decent sort," and motivation was never judged to be at variance with outward show.  If there was mystery or contradiction in a friend, Leon took the long view and found a benign explanation.  Literature and politics, science and religion did not bore him – they simply had no place in his world, and nor did any matter about which people seriously disagreed.  He had taken a degree in law and was happy to have forgotten the whole experience.  It was hard to imagine him ever lonely, or bored or despondent; his equanimity was bottomless, as was his lack of ambition, and he assumed that everyone else was much like him.  Despite all this, his blandness was perfectly tolerable, even soothing.

One may complain that the rich violence of genius is generally lacking in McEwan; that his subjects are bereft of any spirituality and for that reason sink more deeply into oblivion; that his abuse of the comma borders on the egregious; but this passage is perfect.  It gives us every nuance of those lads we all know that joke, backslap, and carouse their way into middle age without tasting anything akin to structure or system.   And what becomes of these merry men is little different in fiction than in reality – but here I digress.

I have said nothing of the plot because the plot is patently ridiculous.  This is, however, to McEwan's credit.  Robbie and Cecilia share a few scenes that while appropriate for an equally admirable film, have little initial effect since they are based on nothing but supposition.  That two people who grew up near one another in different social strata could fall in love remains one of art's most tested clichés, but we see little run-up to this great affair whose passion will suffuse Atonement with lyricism and regret.  Despite this early blunder, the rest of the novel is magnificent in its pacing: half of it is allotted to two nights in the summer of 1935, because these will be the greatest and the most horrible nights in Cecilia and Robbie's young lives; a fifth – perhaps a symbolic bottle of liquor – advances us into the Second World War and wisely relents before we are overwhelmed by its stench and banalities; and a final thirty percent are devoted to Briony and a series of morally repulsive decisions.  By dint of repetition, by blooding its characters to the wickedness of the world within and without their own private spheres, by ensuring the reader that what lies before him could very well be a fairy tale, McEwan leads us to believe in the vision of a thirteen-year-old girl, in her machinations, her fears, her wonderlands.  Seeing the film might corrupt some details in the reader's mind (including the physical appearance of one of the characters which plays better on-screen but yields yet another problem of plausibility), but we are never engaged in mystification.  What is told to us actually occurs, in the way it is described, and then is set aside to be reexamined when we remember an incongruity.  Briony does write a play, she does see what she saw at the fountain, in the library, under the cover of night, except that everything to which she bears witness cannot be readily understood by the adolescent mind.  I suppose that expiates her actions to a certain extent, although two characters will spend their entire lives promoting the contrary, even when Briony has decided that sacrifice and kindness are not alien to the artistic mind.  And, as we know, literature has never been kind to chocolate manufacturers.

Eastern Promises

This film's casting of a German, a Frenchman, and a Danish-American who grew up in Latin America as Russian mobsters is indeed a unique circumstance (considering my language interests, I could not have found a better combination) – a circumstance, mind you, that cloaks a basic premise not to be revealed on these pages.  The secret of Eastern Promises can easily be determined from the intergalactic weapon known as Google albeit tempered by the caveat that, without such subterfuge, this film would function in ostensibly the same manner.  Surely some of the characters' actions and words would be viewed in a different light; but the story is one of immersion in a subculture that does not really permit coming up for air.  For that reason throughout the film, mysterious glances are exchanged that suggest other secrets, other lives, other motives.  Somehow we are fascinated by this disgusting lot, if only because they seem to exist in a world very much apart, and the whole story is governed, I readily believe, by two distinct notions of historical truth.  The first concerns the criminal world as it is privately depicted; the second involves the private world as it is discussed in the context of organized crime.  The intersection of these two perceptions – however wrong or right they may be – is a bold step that requires little plot or schematics.  All such a project needs, in fact, is for the audience to identify two broad themes in the film, much like a painting in two wholly different colors, that at the same time are smelted into one distinct hue.  And once smelted, the themes become even more transparent.

Our introduction to this hellish realm warns us that we are not dealing with the Romanticized modern westerns made most famous by this film.  The opening scene takes place in a barber shop in London called Azim's where a young, well-heeled Russian is having, unbeknownst to him, his very last shave.  The next scene in a Muslim-owned convenience store features a very pregnant teenage girl, also Russian, dripping blood and barefoot.  As she is rushed to the emergency room and the care of midwife Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), viewers who have read nothing about the film may suspect that we are headed towards another tale of Muslim-Russian animosity (this suggestion is, however, only the film's first red herring and it boasts a whole tinful).  The pregnant girl Tatiana dies in childbirth, but her baby girl survives and is unofficially adopted by Anna who also unofficially adopts the teenager's conveniently explicit diary; the problem, of course, is that the entire diary is in Russian.  Despite being of Russian provenance and living with her mother (Sinéad Cusack) and very volatile uncle Stepan (Jerzy Skolimowski), Anna has a paltry command of her forefathers' native tongue.  Her uncle would gladly translate it for her if he didn't think that it should be placed unread in Tatiana's coffin ("bury her secrets with her body," he bellows).  That leaves her with the diary's one English-language segment, a business card to a Russian restaurant owned by an older gentleman by the name of Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl).    

We have already seen Semyon and he is not always a gentleman, but no matter.  We have also already seen two ruffians who have intimate dealings with Semyon, his son Kirill (Vincent Cassel) and Semyon's "chauffeur" Nikolai Luzhin (a fabulous Viggo Mortensen).  Anna notices Nikolai when he, leaning ever so casually against a street lamp, attempts a pickup line about why she would maintain such an antiquated Russian scooter ("Sentimental value?" he says, "I've heard of that").  To her credit as a woman of good instinct, she wants nothing to do with such a lowlife; but to her severe discredit she interprets Semyon as somehow unattached to the odd form of commerce trafficked off restaurant property – which makes this a fine time for an aside.  I mentioned earlier that Eastern Promises runs on two principles that both intersect and solidify into distinct entities, and the first has to do with Russia's most notorious criminal network.  I cannot possibly pretend to know details of the true inner workings of vory v zakone, and the Slavist who claims otherwise is either a fraud or not quite what he appears to be.  Some say that the thieves do not observe any code except profit and pleasure; others deem the whole structure the inflated hype of legend; still others admit to the group's significance from the Brezhnev through the Yeltsin era, influence and power that have now waned.  Whatever the case, bandits, killers, and crooks share the very consistent habit of promulgating a strict set of rules then violating them whenever emotion or advantage dictates that they do so.  Kirill in particular evinces a form of paranoid psychopathy that almost compromises the serene confidence with which Nikolai handles all his tasks – most of which, it should be said, have nothing to do with driving.  So when Semyon explains his haggard appearance to Anna by confessing that, “last night I broke my rules and had some vodka,” we sense that the rules exist more as a challenge than a restriction – and in this respect Semyon is certainly a gambling man.

But it is the second and more controversial principle that distinguishes Eastern Promises from all other gangster movies ever made.  The premise, divulged in interviews by the director, addresses the question of sexuality with a frankness that would have been impossible even thirty years ago in mainstream cinema.  Evidence of this approach will be visible on your screen for seven steamy minutes in what will likely become one of the most mentioned fight scenes in film history, but there is much more to the homoerotic underpinnings than what meets our jaded eyes.  Kirill wonders about Nikolai's sexuality, which Nikolai proves to him in a grunting display of indifference with one of the lovelier goods being trafficked, and Nikolai reports Kirill's sexual preference directly to his father.  Tatiana's diary also has a few choice words about an ordeal that again implies we are watching somewhat of a pantomime – appropriately, I suppose, given the multiple games afoot.  And how does Anna figure into this nasty web of lies?  The diary and baby Anna saves become the things she never had – a Russian childhood and, as a few lines of dialogue betray, a successful pregnancy; the journal and infant also conspire to steer our plot to its logical conclusion.  Anna was not metaphorically "buried in a coal mining town" like all of Tatiana's family, but has enjoyed all the privileges of legal immigration, which probably ignites in her good heart more than a little guilt.  Not that guilt really gets you anywhere in London.   

Goethe, "Scharade"

A work ("Charade") by this German man of letters.  You can read the original here.

Two words, so comfortable are they, so brief,  
Which we oft utter with becharm'd delight, 
Without real knowledge of these things in sight,  
Things which indeed convey the stamp's relief. 

It does us good in morn and sunset's light, 
To sear them brashly on each other's grief;
And if they can conjoin then as one sheaf,
This we express by single blessing bright.

Yet now I seek to please these two in kind,
And so content myself with my own breath; 
And still in hopes of gaining this I might: 

Then garble them as lovers' names entwined, 
Beholding both within a single sketch, 
Subsuming both within a single wight.