The Odyssey - A Triumph

  

Thanks to my friend Bob Liss, a Columbia alum, I got to watch the Odyssey Friday night on his dime at a private showing for Columbia grads at the San Francisco IMax. Man, what luxury -- reclining leather seats, and what sight and sounds! We have come a long way, a far cry from my youth at the Nixon theatre at 52^nd and Market in West Philadelphia, where pea shooters launched barrages of peas at the silver screen during the cartoons and ushers hustled down the aisles to find the miscreants.

This is clearly another major achievement for Christopher Nolan. His great career has earned him as much investment as he wants in his ever more monumental movies, locations, actors, production values up the wazoo. He loves to make movies, apparently, and we are the better for it. Movies are a triumph of capitalism, in the sense that because they are made once and then distributed, the cost/reward ratio is terrific, if a lot of people see it. Let's not forget economics....

Anyway, here's my mini-review.

 

I enjoyed it a lot.  It is totally made for the Imax - huge scenes, great evocation of time and place, the bronze age in the Greek islands and the Aegean. Not much technology back then, compared to now, but the ships were their magnificent technology, and their military organization as well.  I've never before been transported this convincingly.

This interpretation of the Odyssey is very American, but I didn't mind that, I liked it. I did enjoy American English being used, none of that very formal English English sometimes used for “classical” films. The setting is ancient and foreign, but the people and the language modern. OK, I'll take it.

It's a monumental movie, but at the same time approachable - I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t get best movie Oscar. The women of the cast that I enjoyed most were Anne Hathaway (43 years old) and Charlize Theron (50 years old.) The wonders of makeup made Hathaway believable as someone who had aged 20 years by the end of the film. Everything about this movie is first class. There is a lot of action movie in it, and the usual hero with godlike powers, clearing away a palace full of suitors.  For some reason it reminded me of The Count of Monte Cristo, who basically was an early Superman.   Nolan always uses music prominently – it sets the mood so insistently that it is a character in itself.  It was OK this time (as it wasn't in Dunkirk, for example), and I liked using old Greek instruments, which I understand is what they did.  I thought I caught a whiff of Interstellar music here and there.

I paid special attention to Jon Bernthal, the son of my friend Rick Bernthal, who was impressive as Menelaus - bringing his street-action attitude chops to ancient Greece.  He really played his role terrifically - he relates great to other male characters, clearly.  I haven't seen him enough to know how he does with females, but here he is great in an avuncular relationship.  Clearly a top-flight actor.  Vicariously proud of him!!  Go, Rick!

Richard Brody in the New Yorker laments that there was not more action with gods - they hardly appear, but are referred to a lot.  He also laments that the cruelty of the age was not featured, and there wasn't near enough gore, which there could have been.  Ancient people were a bloodthirsty lot. This catered to the audience, I think, made the movie more relatable.  So did the lack of magic, and the irreality that actual gods bring to a film I know what Brody means, but it was still OK for me.

I hadn't realized that using the Trojan horse as a ruse broke the accepted norms of behavior - like not treating a guest well.  This recalls the Iliad, where the treatment of Patroclus by Agamemnon breaks the established rules of the game, and sets off Achilles - I wish I remembered those details more clearly.  Damon relates later in the film that this breaking of the rules will lead to the overall breakdown of their civilization.  (I did appreciate the very modern and American explanation of the war by Damon to Penelope that Agamemnon was using the case of Helen to mount an attack that would break Troy's monopoly on the trade routes.  I can't recall that from the Homeric text.) 

Anyway, the historical fact is that after the Trojan War, there was a shifting of the center of civilized power to the Greek mainland after a couple hundred years, and then after 400 or so years the Iliad and the Odyssey are written, and then the city-states coalesce more, law and the courts are reformed, and finally, maybe 800 years after the war, the great plays are written. * That's a lot of time!  Does Damon as Odysseus foresee this?  It's intimated that he does.  We might as well sail into the sunset he says to Penelope.  BTW, the opening scene with him and Penelope, where he tells her what he's going to do, is as tender a non-sexual love scene as I remember seeing - although it does end with sex.  Man, who doesn't want a marriage like that?  They're both terrific, but while I give Damon an A+, I'd give Hathaway an A++.

Brody also complains that we don't see enough of Odysseus's wiliness.  Well, yes, he's not so tricky, but he's so much more intelligent than anyone else, so much deeper, that I'll take it.  Yes, he's "an American soldier," as Brody says, but he's more than that, so I guess I don't really agree with him on that.  And we do see him figuring out situations really fast, and judging the motives of others, and figuring out how to come home.  Man - I guess others have noticed that it's quite a story.**

Something I also appreciated was the commentary on the House of Atreus, Jon Bernthal's disgust at the assassination of Agamemnon, briefly but vividly depicted, and the sacrifice of Iphegenia, as the most powerful sacrifice is when the object is the most dear, and how Clytemnestra could not forgive that one. That belonged right there, and I thought it was place just right in this non-chronological recounting – which is the only choice of how to recount it, to my mind.

And I really loved the scenes with Calypso (Charlize Theron is 50 in real life, and so beautiful and alluring here), so moving, the knowledge of temporary nature of things so clear in her, the ambiguity of the situation, her ambivalence, but her love, her own need, and her judgement of a man so telling - time spent on these scenes must have given Nolan pause, wondering if it's too much interruption of action, but for me, this is he real action.  The "action scenes," kind of the original Adventures of Robin Hood movie amped up 100 times, or any number of action movies since, even say the great Jason Bourne movies, are fine and intense with it's being hard to discern who is who, they're OK, like the great panels of maybe Breugel -- don't know why that comes to mind, but all the details of the fighting. But as competently as they are done, well, meh, for me.

Also, finally (maybe finally), I think they did the classic monsters really great - Cyclops is terrific, that one eye, the huge body, picking up men and eating them, kind of like King Kong when he's angry, or better, Godzilla.  And the sirens are really well done, Scylla and Charybdis -- but I couldn't help thinking of our pacific passage of the Straits of Messina last year on our August cruise -- I had a good time, but didn't need to be tied to the mast, although I was friendly enough.  The depiction of the whirlpool was great.  And then I didn't know what that encounter with the huge, armed men of war that routes the Greek men was all about - was that in the book?  It must have been.  

We should also mention Circe, depicted as a man-hater, a strange depiction by Samantha Morton, who is English, but comes across to me as a bitter woman from Brooklyn, or somewhere.  That's probably just me.  Still, not the entrancing type - but what an indelible scene as she literally turns the men into the pigs she knew they were inside.  Memorable, man, memorable.  And then Damon outwits her - that's the wiliness, Richard. He sees through everything. He's wily, man.

What was really good was the sense of sailing into the unknown, which Odysseus chooses to do freely, instead of taking the classical route home as Agamemnon and Meneleus do -- he's a risk taker.  He slides over his responsibility to get home to Ithaca and Penelope and Telemachus by saying "I bet we beat the others home," while they have an adventure.  Some adventure, it turns out to be -- 10 years.  7 of which, apparently, is spent with Calypso, the beautiful and alluring Calypso, eating lotus leaves.  The dream of life, life on a desert island with Calypso, dreams with lotus leaves, can't even remember the life before - as the rest of life has just been stripped away, even all the comrades in arms, and yet he remembers Penelope in the end and Calypso honors that.  Wow. Tears you apart.

So, OK.  See in in IMax format -- the evocation of place is really magnificent.  The way Lawrence of Arabia evoked the desert.  The Greek islands, all that water, all that sea, the mysterious islands and visiting the places they had only heard rumors about.  And then the movie-making of it all -- this is state of the art 2026, all the money you might want, the best actors and artists of make up and everything else I can only guess at, and I'm guessing a nomination for cinematography, without doubt.  How many total nominations will there be?  20?

Get ready to internalize images that won't be easily erased.

This one will stick.

Budd Shenkin

*

The Minoan Age (c. 2700–1450 BCE) was succeeded by the Mycenaean Age (c. 1600–1100 BCE). Following the collapse of the Mycenaeans, the region entered the Greek Dark Ages (c. 1100–800 BCE), which eventually transitioned into the Archaic Period (c. 800–480 BCE). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Here is how these successive periods defined the Aegean world:

• The Mycenaean Age (c. 1600–1100 BCE): After the explosion of Thera weakened Crete around 1450 BCE, the mainland Mycenaean Greeks took cultural and administrative control of the island. They were the first Greek-speaking civilization and are famous for their fortified palace

A Fine Day Of Shopping

   

Yesterday was a fine day.

The fog didn't come in so much, but it was overcast, and strangely warm and very strangely humid, for the Bay Area. Pleasant. I had my usual Monday on tap – do some computering, physical therapy Monday morning 10 o'clock, top that off with a visit to the gym until around noon, find stuff to do the afternoon and evening – there's always stuff to do.

The girl of my dreams is in town, leaving later this week on orders from immigration. Her trip curtailed from three and a half months to two weeks, mindlessly and gratuitously cruel, after about 24 hours of mourning and confusion and planning for an immigration lawyer, she staged the most resilient performance I've ever seen. She planned like a madwoman. She had planned to see her 25+ friends – she says she has more friends here in California currently than she has ever had, total, back in Germany. I think she becomes a different woman here, which is why she wants to be here.

So what she did was plan to see every one of those friends that she had planned to spend time with over three and a half months in just two weeks. I told her it seemed like when she packs her suitcase, and she agreed. And amazingly, in these two weeks, there has still been enough time for me. It helps that we live four houses away, and that she uses my washing machine and dryer, and that she borrows my spare car. But we also eat and shop and do things. All I really need is one hit a day and I'm happy. I'm transformed, too.

So, yesterday I got her text – we text pretty much every day. We leave each other saying “Let's keep in touch,” ironically and humorously, mocking closeness with words of distance. I knew this was the day her friend from San Diego – she had planned to go down there for maybe a week before she got screwed by immigration – was coming up. I knew I'd be seeing her for a fancy dinner in the city on Tuesday, so that was my current milestone, so I thought maybe a text on Monday, or maybe not. But it seems that she had a 3 o'clock meeting planned, and she had stuff to do in the morning, but there was a hiatus just after noon. That worked fine for me.

She has been in search of missing Birkenstocks – where have they gotten to? We don't know. She searched the suitcase and other stuff stored in my closet – where are they? Not just any Birkenstock – she shops with precision, she dresses with style and precision. We had searched for replacements down at REI – no go. But we got her some very nice other stuff there, she loves REI, she tries it all on, she is so beautiful. But, Monday after noon, we could search for those Birenstocks elsewhere – I had looked on the internet and identified the Walk Shop over in North Berkeley on Vine as a possibility. And she wanted to go to Saphora down on Fourth Street to get just the right blush. She is precise and very effective. We could go together or she could borrow the car. Guess what our choice was.

So we head out to Fourth Street first. It's usually a hassle to park there, and it looks like the old parking lot is unavailable from construction. No matter, just turn down Fourth and see what pops up. Is that a spot? Yes it is! Right on the street! I'll take it! There are a couple of others, she says, that one is easier to park in, up ahead. Well, maybe, but then two cars come up and pass me as I'm poised to back into spot number one, and the first car keeps going but the second one takes the sport we were contemplating. Rule number one when parking, I say, take the first spot. Unaccountably, I do a masterful job of parallel parking. I have admitted to her that I'm not that great a driver, knowing that she is ready to highlight my driving deficiencies as I scrape the car's wheels as I pull in forwards to the curb in front of my house. But then she has said back to me, you should be more confident of your driving, that's all that's wrong. I could just eat her up.

So we get out of the car and I take maybe four steps in the direction of Sephora, but she doesn't get even that far. The store we have parked in front of is one we weren't aware of, it's called Buck Mason. We walk in and Lauren, our young saleslady from Fremont, pretty girl, says to Jenny – I like the cut of your shirt! Yup, Jenny is stylish, linen shirts with a different cut, and oh so attractive when worn by Jenny. So she looks over the merchandise. It's a small store, with space to walk around, not that large a stock, but really nice. And there is music. On a turntable, with vintage vinyls on the shelf underneath. And they are playing Buddy Holly. Buddy Holly! They're playing Buddy Holly! This is my music, I say. Lauren has introduced herself to Jenny, Jenny has some stuff to try on – shirts; she doesn't need more jeans, and she got some nice pants when we were at REI – and I talk with Lauren and ask if she knows how Buddy Holly died. It's vague to her, of course, and she tells me I would probably like some of the other vinyls there, although she assures me that many of them are from before my time. Well, I look younger than my years, and I'm with Jenny, so yeah – but no, of course not. Sam Cook. It's true, there's some Nat King Cole, but I remember him on TV, and he was there on a movie the other night on TCM – I'm having trouble remembering just which one. Before my time? Not so much.

Jenny comes out of the dressing room a couple of times. She's like a model, everything looks great on her. We consult with each other – we are very practiced co-shoppers, it always goes well. Lauren has shown me their limited selection of men's T-shirts, which are nice. She tells us that their stuff is manufactured in Pennsylvania, and I ask where, telling Lauren that I'm from Pennsylvania, so exactly where matters to me. She's hazy on Pennsylvania geography, but Google isn't, and yes, Mohnton, where the mill is, is just outside Reading. Reading! That's where my first girlfriend came from! I know Reading well – the home of beer, pretzels, vice, and Albright College. Vice – Carol King, my first girlfriend, told me how their girls' service club delivered goodies of some sort to houses in the poorer area of Reading around Christmas time, and a woman at the door took the donations to the poor gratefully from the high school do-gooding girls and said, “Thank you! The girls will love it!” Reading. Vice in Reading.

Anyway, domestic goods. Nice T-shirts, I'm looking to refresh my collection. Lauren suggests a mauve and a brown, I tell her I need Jenny to help, Jenny comes over and says, no brown for him, he doesn't like brown, well, he always wants blue, and we go through a couple of possibilities and I take two to try on and she says – the blue one will look best on you. We're a couple out shopping. Lauren sizes us up and thinks that, since I said I was from Pennsylvania, we are on a trip together as travelers, and treats us as such. She says, what else are you going to do today? I smile a little and say, well, at three, she has to be in the city to meet another guy. Jenny says, yes, that's true. Lauren now doesn't know what to make of us at all. Who does?

We buy our stuff, put it in the trunk of the car, since we parked directly in front of the store by chance, although you have to wonder if it really was by chance, so much that we do together winds up like this, you really have to wonder if it's chance, and head off to Sephora, which was our destination. She gets something close to the blush she wanted, I ask her what foundation she uses, she shows me – not so clueless, me! A guy asking about foundation! She says, why do you want to know? I say, well, just because. We get back in the car and take off for the Walk Store. We find it and park – good parking spots just come up for us, all the fucking time, I swear. Like our first shopping trip together, to Dog Patch in SF, where we parked across the street from our target, a single parking space in an ocean of parked cars with no open spaces, and – this is true – as I'm trying to pay for a spot a parking meter guy comes around and asks us how much time we would like him to put on our meter for free! I'm not lying. That was such an amazing shopping trip where we got some leather goods from the distribution center of this company that doesn't have stores, and doesn't ship to stores, it's only on-line, except for us.

Well, anyway. We get out of our car around the corner from the Walk Store and a guy sitting in front of Peet's says to me, how much does it cost to change oil for a Mercedes at Jiffy Lube? Strange question, I think, and I say, what, $85? I don't know. We walk off and Jenny says, you should really have been nicer to him, if you're nice to people you … something or other. It's true, I was a little annoyed – I think it was being identified as a Mercedes owner – it was Ann's car originally, I drive it now without loving it much, but it's a good car. You're probably right, I tell Jenny, which I generally do say, and I think about everything she says, and I treasure her criticism, I take it for love, of a sort, and I wonder if there's anything wrong with my doing that, but then I think I don't care, maybe. If she pays close attention to me, I'm going to complain?

The Walk Store doesn't have exactly what she wants. Close. She needs narrow shoes, and the style that she wants doesn't have that in stock. She's been frustrated by this for over a week! Where are those shoes? OK, Budd says replace them, but that's proving hard. If only she had more time. Why is it she needs to find Birkenstocks in Berkeley, not back in Germany, anyway? She has some explanation....

We go back to the car empty-handed, and we engage in gentle conversation with they guy who wondered about the oil replacement. Jenny shows me how it's done. She really doesn't know how good I am at talking to people, I think. Maybe. Anyway, I love seeing her talk to people. She's proud about how she does it. She claims that she used to be an introvert. Something happened to her in Germany. I remember we did that getting coffee and pastry down at Baker & Commons, down on College Avenue, and the lady next to us agreed with all our opinions, a teacher in Berkeley, loved talking with us, maybe newly retired, and Jenny said, see?! Her new best friend. Which we also did when we got pizza at Rose Pizza over on University, and the couple next to us were a new couple, his wife had died, but they were very close with each other, clearly, and we talked for maybe an hour and then the next week we had extra tickets for the Giants and we invited them and had a great time. Doug and somebody, from down the Peninsula. They were nice. I wonder if they got married – I'm betting they're still together.

Can we go to REI and check out the shoes again, she asks. No, I say, you don't have time. It would take 15 or 20 minutes to get there, and you have to be in the City by 3. It could have been earlier, she says, but his plane was late getting in so he missed his Walnut Creek meeting and texted me that we could get together earlier but I had already made plans. We go back home and she takes about half an hour getting ready and comes back wearing a new outfit to pick up the car and it's already 3 o'clock when she take off. I ask her what they will do and she says he rides a motorcycle and they will motorcycle around the city and she loves that. I caution her about motorcycles and she says they wear helmets. She drives off and I stop myself from thinking about the rest of her day and I count myself so lucky to have had this couple of hours.

She gets back about 11:30 at night and I hear her lock the car in the driveway and I step outside and call to her – I'm up because I took a nap and when I do that I stay up late, working on the paper I said I would. She had asked me what I was going to do and I told her I had some writing projects and she made sure I was going to do them. I lazed around, actually, watched Slaughterhouse 5 which I had seen some of a couple of days ago and had saved, and I really liked it, Vonnegut is a very favorite author, I don't know if Jenny reads him, I think she read one of his books a while ago, I did buy her a copy of The Years by Annie Ernaux and I hope she read that because both she and Annie view their lives as adventures. So Jenny said she had had a good time and was tired and will text me tomorrow.

Budd Shenkin

PS – Then, two days later, the day after our fancy dinner at Acquerello in San Francisco, she actually located the Birkenstocks she was seeking down at REI, I called and they reserved them, and we managed to pick them up at REI without buying anything more. Mission accomplished.

 

Podcast - Idealism in Medicine

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/md67/id1896943610
"Without idealism, medicine is lost."
Dr. Budd Shenkin graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1967 and spent over thirty years building and running a successful pediatric practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. Dr. Shenkin believes, from his experience as both a patient and a physician, that medicine grounded in a humanistic approach is essential in the face of corporatization. And, he says, when it comes to profit-driven plans like Medicare Advantage, "insiders say no."