Despite the cornucopia of various streaming sites, what really makes me happy these days is a local Dutch channel npodoc dedicated to documentaries and every time I am not in the mood for anything commercial or violent, I simply turn to these documentaries as my preffered comfort watch. I watched almost everything about the local history here and last night I saw something really interesting, this was a story about Amsterdam in WW2 and even though I have previously heard about the 1943 bombing of the civil registry office (where all the registered identity cards were stored) I was not aware of the identity of people involved in it.
The documentary is presented by Stephen Fry who walks trough the streets of Amsterdam, tracing the footsteps of Willem Arondeus and Frieda Belinfante who were both involved in the resistance - Aroundeus was impoverished, shy artist who joined resistance from the sheer conviction (not Jew himself), while Belifante was Jewish and one of the first female conductors in Europe. Both were involved in forging of identity cards for Jews and organisation of 1943 bombing of the civil registry office (I had to look it up, where it was - nowadays its a building next to entrance to Artis Zoo).The destruction of civil registry office was important in order to stop Nazi attempts to compare forged documents with documents in registry. Arondeus was arrested, tried and executed, while Belifante went into hiding and dressed up as a man, later emigrated to United States where she continued her music carer as a conductor.
It was an excellent documentary - Stephen Fry was a perfect choice for a presenter and the story itself was hugely interesting, pointing again how dangerous was to live trough WW2 (for example, it was not enough to be a Jew, simply being gay person could result into arrest and imprisonment in concentration camp). What is specially interesting is that after the war, the names of both Arondeus and Belifante were quietly erased from the history books, even though they were both clearly heroes of the resistance - something about them being gay, did not sit well with than current atmosphere and they were not often mentioned. This has now being corrected and I am so glad that people now more about them, I specially loved 1995 TV interview with elderly Belifante who comes across as the most wonderful, warm and likeable person.
What a wonderful surprise and completely out of the blue! I was not aware of the best-selling novel that inspired this movie and it caught me completely by surprise, as a random suggestion by Netflix algorithm. I recognised Sally Field in a trailer and decided to give it a go, why not since Field was always lovely and dependable actress, even though Hollywood ageism means she was not given much opportunities recently. In fact, the last movie I saw her in was some silly comedy where she played frumpy office worker, infatuated with a new co-worker ("Hello, My Name Is Doris")and that was a decade ago. Guess what, this time she plays a frumpy, elderly widow who mops the floors of the local small town aquarium place. Poor Sally, she just can't get a break. Than again, it is refreshing to see someone playing their age and not going plastic surgery route.
As the movie started, me and my friend looked at each other - this feels good - in fact, he mentioned something like "this is like Christmas movie" - and that is exactly how it felt like. The story is set in a small town where Sally Field mops the floors of the local aquarium and in her solitude talks to a giant octopus, who actually listens to her (we hear his inner monologue and he is a very witty octopus, elderly just like her and perhaps at the end of his days). When a new person arrives in town, he ends up working along Sally Field and octopus notices they both have same pain in their eyes. This is enough to spur octopus in the action and he does some movie magic to connect these two, but along the way we are also introduced to other characters in this sleepy little town. Everything is super peaceful and comforting here, not to mention Sally Field's house that just looks like something out of the dream with a most beautiful view on a lake - honestly, it makes you want to move in there, right here and right now.
What was so unexpected and lovely was the fact that this movie totally ignored everything current directors and producers force down our throats: there were no explosions, big fires, special effects, aliens, zombies, car crashes, eye pokings and violence of any kind. It was simply an good old fashioned family movie, a kind that we almost forgot, something everybody can watch together. It was a heart warming story about real people (and their octopus friend) that could perhaps in some other hands became maudlin but thanks to subtle direction and excellent Sally Field never crossed the line into too sentimental. In a way, it was lucky that I was watching this at home because if I was in cinema, I would probably crying my eyes out. Beautiful movie!
Last night I left the opera house a little bit perplexed and confused. (And relieved that is over) How is it possible that the magnificent and intoxicating music can at the same time be completely sabotaged by annoying staging and over-the-top direction? This is how both me and a friend felt as we left the building - and to be honest, the running time of three and a half hours was simply too much, the last 30 minutes was a pure agony. We had such a nice time not so long ago with "Semele" by Handel that this time we were absolutely sure that we will enjoy "The Marriage of Figaro". I mean, its Mozart, you can'y go wrong with him, its one lovely aria after another, right? Wrong.
OK, let's mention some positive things first.
The music itself is beautiful and no one can take this away. No matter what ridiculous staging or costumes you throw at the audience, the magic of Mozart is indestructible and would work anytime, under any circumstances. I was actually surprised a few times when the voices of two female leads (Susanna and Countess) joined in the most beautiful harmony - and this happened just for a few seconds, just a few lines of lyrics - really dream-like and I would have never appreciated this on record, but hearing it live was thrilling. Most of the performers were excellent - specially earlier mentioned ladies, Björn Bürger as Count Almaviva and I loved the excellent bass singer Anthony Robin Schneider in a small supporting role. Strangely enough, I did not care much for the title role of Figaro (whom I found annoying) and much much more space was given to his girlfriend, a servant Susanna (Emily Pogorelc) so much in fact that the piece could easily be called "The Marriage of Susanna" instead. So, the performers and music were ok but ....
STAGING.
I knew that Amsterdam's opera house loves to play around with a new modern productions and most of the time learned to accept it; even grew to enjoy it, since this is a classy stage and the magic of music is usually enough to convince me. This time the staging, direction and costumes were work by a certain Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov and I have to remember this name in order to avoid anything he does in the future. He sought some far stretched social criticism in the Mozart's delightful comedy - making it thrice pretentious, like this is some call for revolution and pseudo-philosophy. ("Capitalism kills love" was written on a wall at some point) He divided the stage in some sort of upstairs/downstairs Downtown Abbey world where upper floor is reserved for aristocrats and lower for the servants - but everything is happening upstairs, so what exactly was the point of downstairs, except for cramming it with washing machines and all sorts of ugly scenery (to explain this is servant's area) AND stage was constantly full of silent, non-singing actors moving around aimlessly and confusingly. We just had to assume they were servants. Costumes were modern day and ugly: instead of revealing social status of the characters, they were mostly ill-fitting and clumsy, particularly the annoying title character Figaro who was played by some overweight person running around in tight jeans and was irritating to look at. The director also decided to "refresh" Mozart's original libretto and divided the role of Cherubino into two different people for no apparent reason: so we had a deaf/mute Cherubino (male, mostly pantomime and more or less in a state of permanent nudity) and Cherubina (female singer interpreting his sign language). This Cherubino is here really just to show off his buttocks and at one point he even jumps out of the balcony - stripping naked first. Oh well. The worst of all was another mute character invented by this director, some sort of silent personal secretary of Count Almaviva - it was a completely irritating pantomime character constantly mugging, grinning, making faces and jumping around - if this was supposed to be funny, well it wasn't and I was even a bit angry with the way this particular director assumes the audience will lap it up, as everybody here is so infantile that we will laugh at this. Towards the end the whole concept of staging otherwise beautiful piece of music became so chaotic that I gave up trying to figure it out why are people suddenly walking around with peaces of mirrors, who is this person killing everybody with a knife and why the victims later all got up and sang again like nothing happened. Was it just imagination? Servant's revenge in a dream?
I always suspected that for all its supposed free lifestyle, Amsterdam is actually a city of well-oiled bourgeoisie and not so progressive after all - it shows last night when at the end everybody gave standing ovation to this mess, I assume because audience is simply starving for operas by famous composers. There is no Mozart, Verdi or any popular composer on the repertoire, as opera house nowadays prefers either modern works or someone from inner Mongolia. But for me and my friend it was a very long performance indeed and we just couldn't wait to get out and shake off the bad taste.Apparently we are not the only ones feeling this way because this article explains everything I wrote much better:
Because this is the year of "first time authors" and because I had enjoyed both Zane Grey and Owen Wister, I decided to go back to Westerns - a genre in which previously I had absolutely no interest - typically for me, I have to do things in some kind of order so I continued with reading Westerns by chronology and since both "Betty Zane" and "The Virginian" were published at the beginning of the century, I selected first novel about a extremely popular fictional character called Hopalong Cassidy : "Bar-20" was where he was first introduced to a wide audience and apparently this was a beginning of a phenomenon that later grew out into films and TV.
Here I must admit that this time I doubted my own decision, since 1906 novel was a bit of challenge, mostly because of the language: Mulford uses a lot of Western vernacular speech that gets tiresome and off-putting after a while. This is a perfect example:
"“Yu wants to keep yore busted-down cows on yore own side. They was all over us day afore yisterday. I'm goin' to salt any more what comes over, and don't yu fergit it, neither.”
It goes like this the whole time and it really depends on a reader, do you continue or leave the book completely. I persisted and eventually started to enjoy myself despite initial reservations (somehow I turned my brain inside out to understand what is going on) but I can understand this is not for everybody. That is why it took me three extremely long weeks to finish what is actually not a big volume - I had to be in the right mood to approach wrestling with strange words.
Not really a novel, more a short story collection, "Bar-20" is about cowboys working around ranch of the same name and their adventures - one of the characters is Hopalong Cassidy who eventually becomes the main character, but here is not just yet so. Guys ride their horses, drink, curse, sing dirty songs and alltogether behave like what now we expect cowboys to have been - as contrary to later, sanitised version created by Hollywood. The fact that there is almost no women at all in the book actually explains the lonely lives and camaraderie of the guys who are always ready to protect each other. Mind you, they are all very young guys and each time Hopalong Cassidy actually meets any woman, he behaves like a lovestruck teenager.
"Bar-20" was the beginning of saga that produced more than 20 books, 66 movies and 6 seasons of TV show - Hopalong Cassidy became a hugely beloved character but it all started here, in this eccentric little book from 1906. It was not the best Western I read this year and to be honest, it deserves a solid 3 out of 5 stars - however, I did find myself enjoying the cowboys adventures, once I got over the strange language. The best of all was the description of cowboy's lives that totally lack any glamour - author lived with real life cowboys for a while and he knew what he was writing about.
