Your Weekly Dose (2/7/22)
No common themes among this week’s prescriptions…just a good film, tv series, and book to entertain and edify you this week. Thanks for subscribing and, if you can, sharing. Take care!
FILM
Columbus
Columbus (2017), the first feature film from Kogonada, a video essayist and artist, reveals a filmmaker who understands the ways in which the aesthetics and narrative of cinema can compliment one another. Few writers/directors execute this at such a high level.
In Columbus, an architecture professor collapses and falls into a coma in Columbus, Indiana, which, if you don’t know (I didn’t), is something of a Mecca of modern architecture. His son, Jin (John Cho), flies in from Korea to care for him. Meanwhile, Casey (Haley Lu Richardson), a recent high school graduate, has decided to forego college to stay home and care for her emotionally unstable mother (Michelle Forbes). She and John randomly meet and develop a fast friendship, bonding over their love of (or, at least in Jin’s case, understanding of) architecture and their fractured relationships with their parents.
There’s a bit of dialogue that perfectly sums up Columbus. When Casey asks Jin if his father believes in anything, Jin says, “Modernism. Modernism with soul.” As we (and the characters) contemplate the beauty of their surroundings, we are keenly aware of the ways in which the architecture of Columbus’ setting speaks to and embodies the characters’ frustrations, sorrows, joys, and journeys. At the same time, Kogonada’s construction of the film (his blocking, direction, and so forth) enhances our connection to and appreciation for these characters and their experiences.
In any other film, some of the dialogue might prompt collective eye rolling, but it works here. At the local library, Casey and her friend/co-worker (played by Rory Culkin) talk about an article that he recently read. It’s a lengthy conversation, but the subject is vital to both the film and our experience of it…not to mention the wider world of arts and entertainment. Kogonada invites us to consider what we value, what interests us, and what consumes our attention. Is it art, literature, architecture, religion, family? And how do we determine what one thing is more valuable or important than the next? In his journal, Jin’s father writes about the effort and economy needed to make the invisible visible…or to make what was always there visible. Where do we as audiences and artists…as parents and children and spouses and friends…put our effort and economy? What are we working to make visible in our communities?
Columbus is available for rental or purchase on iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play. It’s worth every penny. You can also check out Kogonada’s beautiful and insightful video essays here.
TV
Pushing Daisies
The proliferation of streaming platforms has drastically impacted the way I (and so many others in the film industry) work. It is difficult to watch a film like Columbus in theaters anymore, and it might be virtually impossible in the future. This IndieWire article from the recent Sundance Film Festival illustrates some of these changes that are are influencing every aspect of the relationship between filmmaker, distributor, marketer, exhibitor, and audience. But if these platforms have been something of a blessing and a curse for independent filmmakers, they’re an absolute gift for television fans, who can now find virtually any series ever made on one of these many platforms.
Perhaps one of my favorite series of the last 20 years, and one that was ahead of its time, Pushing Daisies is currently streaming on HBOMax and is worth every second of your time if you haven’t seen it already and absolutely worth a re-watch if you have. The series originally aired on ABC, running for two seasons from 2007 to 2009. Created by Bryan Fuller (who also created the equally marvelous but radically different series, Hannibal), Pushing Daisies follows Ned (Lee Pace) an eccentric pie maker that has a special gift. He has the ability to reanimate the dead by touching them, but they can only be revived for one minute…any longer and another “life form” in the vicinity will die to compensate for this resurrection. If he touches the revived person or thing a second time, they die permanently. Ned partners with private investigator Emerson (Chi McBride), co-worker Olive (Kristin Chenoweth), and his formerly-deceased childhood crush Chuck (Anna Friel) to solve a new murder case in each episode. It’s kind of like Waitress meets Law & Order, but sweeter, especially with the ill-fated love interest at the center of the story. Ned and Chuck must navigate a tricky relationship given that Ned revived Chuck but couldn’t bring himself to “kill” her again. So if the two ever touch, Chuck will die.
The series oozes charm, both from its production design to the chemistry between Ned and Chuck. If you only know Lee Pace from the recent Apple TV+ series, Foundation, you’re in for a pleasant surprise. This is a truly feel-good series that also invites us to consider deeper questions about our relationships and what we’re willing to sacrifice for those we love. Fans have been clamoring for a reboot, which seems unlikely, given the few articles I’ve managed to find. That’s particularly frustrating given the appetite for content that fuels all those previously-mentioned platforms.
All episodes of Pushing Daisies are streaming on HBOMax.
A Children’s Bible
I love long form fiction, inhabiting an author’s world for hundreds of pages. C.S. Lewis once quipped, “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” But there’s also something special about a writer who can make you feel as if you’ve spent forever in their world in only a couple hundred pages or less. Such is the case with Lydia Millet’s A Children’s Bible.
The recent Netflix comedy, Don’t Look Up, used two astronomers’ discovery of an impending asteroid collision with earth and the American public’s refusal to believe them as an allegory for our unwillingness to do anything meaningful about climate change. Millet’s A Children’s Bible charts a similar course. In it, a group of families gather at a vacation home on the northeast coast in the face of a gathering apocalyptic storm. The parents spend most of their days getting drunk, leaving their children to fend for themselves. When the children spend the night out on the beach with a group of wealthy teenagers, they return the following day to find the house destroyed by the storm. The parents’ response: they get high and swap partners. When the children manage to escape this nightmare scenario, they find shelter at a local farm, but are quickly besieged by the types of roaming villains that populate so much of apocalyptic literature. I don’t want to spoil much more of the plot, so I’ll leave it there.
Like Don’t Look Up, there is a current of righteous anger (or even rage) in A Children’s Bible, along with a (smaller) dose of humor. The children are mortified by their parents’ behavior (like most of us were I guess) and spend the summer trying to hide from one another who their parents actually are. There are parallels to stories from the Bible including a birth in a barn, a flood, a Moses figure, and more. Jack, the narrator’s younger brother, finds a Bible, with which he becomes obsessed, and uses it to make sense of the events taking place around him. Much like Jack and his Bible, Lillet and A Children’s Bible can help us make sense of what’s happening around us…or at least provide us avenues through which to work out our anger and disappointment with those in power who aren’t doing anything to adequately address what’s happening around us.
A Children’s Bible is available wherever books are sold, but consider purchasing your copy from an independent bookseller like Mostly Books in Tucson, AZ.