Got a clean bill of health today at the doctor's, I think. That is, if the blood work comes back negative on Monday and this damn sty in my left eye goes away soon.
Gabriel's been a barrel of fun today, a jumping jackal. Julia is finishing up a book she started a few days ago. Tonight, we'll watch Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, with Katie Holmes.
Yesterday, as was implied from yesterday's post, I watched The Debt, a stirring, well-made action drama with parallel storylines taking place in 19997 and 1966. In the past, three Mossad agents (Jessica Chastain, Martin Csokas, Sam Worthington) go undercover in Soviet Union-controlled East Germany. Their task is to find a Nazi war criminal, a concentration camp "Dr. of Death," (inspired by Josef Mengele), and bring him back to Israel. In the present day, the three agents (Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and, briefly, Ciaran Hinds, respectively), all celebrated for the capture and killing of the doctor, grapple with the truth of what really happened three decades ago.
It's an exciting movie, although there are some plot holes. I thought the final scene, set in an mental hospital, was too easy, too farfetched, and I wasn't sure how Mirren's character put two and two together. (This is one of those movies where the main character breaks into an office to search for a piece of information, only to be forced to hide when a security guard, drunk and horny, comes in and proceeds to fool around inches away from the tense, quietly waiting protagonist.) There were other stretches in logic, but the moral force of the story, the sadness at its center, really hits home, and the casting, which could have been problematical, works. Sam Worthington was kind of bland, and I wanted more of Hinds. Chastain and Mirren are an ideal pair, however. Chastain's performance is probably more physical than anything she has ever done, but, like Mirren, she can display an entire palette of competing emotions with seeming little effort.
The Debt is a remake of a 2007 Israeli film, and, while I haven't seen the original, the remake probably does its predecessor justice. The filmmaking certainly isn't showy, and the film's big twist is indeed surprising. Director John Madden has certainly carved out an interesting career. 1997's Mrs. Brown and 1998's Shakespeare in Love seemed to hem in in for a path of prestige-y, highbrow, Oscar-mongering (and while 2005's Proof was a solid outing, no one should mention Captain Corelli's Mandolin), this film, along with 2008's not-bad Killshot, demonstrates an ability to get gritty - although The Debt has a movieish sheen to it; the action scenes are exciting. Check it out.
Stewart O'Nan's new novella The Odds details, with great, inspiring specificity, the last days of a marriage. Art and Marion's thirty-year union is on its final legs, and as a last resort, the two decide (well, it's Art's decision, really, one that Marion obliges, self-consciously gives in to) to go to Niagara Falls, site of their honeymoon, live it up for a few days and, on the final night, gamble everything they have, at the roulette wheel.
Rather than describing more of the book, it may be best to highlight a passage:
Marion stayed his hand, covering it with her own, and kept reading. With nowhere to focus his attention, he was always needy on vacation, just as he'd been following her around the house all fall since he'd lost his job. He was eager - too eager, really - and normally she could divert him with a list of chores. She put him in charge of the leaves, checking on him surreptitiously from the bathroom window as she would Emma and Jeremy when they were teenagers, glad to have a hour to herself. One of her worries about this weekend was how much time they would spend together. At home she could busy herself running errands and making supper, messing around on Facebook and watching TV, and hide behind her mystery in bed. Here he would want more of more of her... (pg. 6)
The novella is a series of emotional and physical details, seemingly stored away by O'Nan during a lifetime of clear-eyed, sympathetic observation. On every page, there are three or four thoughts or bits of dialogue we can relate to. O'Nan has a great time with the tourist trappings of the Falls. Anybody who has ever been there, let alone stayed there, can smile and nod along as Art and Marion make their way through the hotel and along the street, past tourist shops, waiting in long lines, over to Goat Island, inside Ripley's-Believe-It-Or-Not museum. And yet there is something very magisterial, truly immaculate about the Falls, too. Though there is a satirical element to the story (something almost all-seeing and Updike-ian in the factual, middle-aged sadness, and the lack of fancy in its unfolding, especially in a knockout scene at a Heart concert), the novel is a devastating portrait of the concessions made over the course of a marriage. Let it be said, though: It's warm book too. O'Nan doesn't take sides; there's no ugliness here, just empathy. The reader is never quite sure if Art and Marion will be okay, but O'Nan certainly believes in the sodden, if all-mighty endurance of the human race, a working class perpetuity.
Discovering Stewart O'Nan a few years ago was certainly a treat. Here are 10 other authors I'm going to try and discover (for better or worse) over the next year:
- Anne Holt (1222)
- Adam Johnson (The Orphan Master's Son)
- Jan Costin Wagner (Silence)
- Christine Schutt (All Souls)
- Daniel Muennuddin (In Other Rooms, Other Wonders)
- George Pelecanos (The Night Gardener)
- Lori Roy (Bent Road)
- Adam Haslett (You Are Not a Stranger Here)
- David Downing (Zoo Station)
- Thomas Berger (Little Big Man)
Finally, on the eve of Oscar eve, I have a dread in the pit of my stomach. I love Viola Davis, and even though I haven't seen Streep's turn as Margaret Thatcher, I will feel nothing but rue for the eternal bridesmaid Streep, arguably our greatest living actress, who is destined to lose. That said, can you tell me what the following performances have in common?
- Maggie Smith, California Suite
- Katharine Hepburn, On Golden Pond
- Shirley Maclaine, Terms of Endearment
- Geraldine Page, The Trip to Bountiful
- Cher, Moonstruck
- Jodie Foster, The Accused
- Kathy Bates, Misery
- Susan Sarandon, Dead Man Walking
- Gwyneth Paltrow, Shakespeare in Love
- Hilary Swank, Boys Don't Cry
- Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago
- Helen Mirren, The Queen
- Kate Winslet, The Reader
- Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Figure it out?
Yep, that's right...
No one loses or has lost more than Meryl.
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