The beauty of armchair travel

While a number of my friends are happily planning trips now that pandemic restrictions are eased, I'm not one of them. The exceptions are my upcoming summer sojourns on Linda Lane's land near Guffey, a beautiful place where my tiny house sits; the other, a trip to Chicago, where until last year I travelled every year to visit family and friends. What I'm talking about here are the other kinds of trips, the ones to new places or adventure opportunities. 

Despite my love of travel--I've had so many opportunities, especially during my Japan years--I find that the relative solitude of the past year jumpstarted a new appreciation for travel via a screen. In January I decided to do an informal project--look for international films that would give me the sense of having visited places. I looked for films from countries I never had the chance to visit, and given the narrowing window of opportunity brought about by getting older, I probably never will. Consequently, I avoided historical dramas or fantasy in favor of more current offerings, preferably those including a road trip or characters using a lot of shoe leather on city streets. The project is still ongoing and is still very limited in scope, but I'd like to share a few of my favorites from the past 5 months. If you're in the "I've seen everything already" doldrums, here are a few you might have missed:

1. Cuba and The Cameraman. This 2017 Netflix original documentary by Jon Alpert covers 45 years of this journalist's visits to post-revolutionary Cuba. The film got a rather stunning 100% rating from Rotten Tomatoes, and  I think it's deserved. Alpert, who gained the trust of Fidel Castro early on, had unprecedented access to the late leader. Brief interviews are sprinkled throughout the film, but what really makes it outstanding is its focus on stories of ordinary Cubans over time. On each visit Alpert looks up the same people, and if you're like me, their stories, told with humor and heart in the face of suffering and resilience, stay long after the film is over. (113 minutes in English and Spanish)

2. One Man and His Cow (La Vache). This French language 2016 film directed by Mohamed Hamidi takes viewers on a road trip from Algeria to Paris. It's a"charming and feel-good" production which will take you to Paris, mostly on foot, from a small Algerian town  where our protagonist devotedly cares for his cow, Jacqueline. After years of unsuccessful tries, he finally gets an invitation to enter Jacqueline in a Paris agricultural fair. Along the way he meets a variety of kind and eccentric people, gets embroiled in a social media scandal, and in the end transforms just about everyone's life or viewpoint in both countries. Yes, I'm betting you'll cry and laugh, as I did, wishing it were a whole lot longer. And, of yes, you'll see a lot of scenery along the way. (91 minutes.Available for rent on Amazon Prime, Vudu or Apple TV)

3. Atlantics. This 2019 drama from Senegal is a genre-bender, blending social commentary with the paranormal--generally not my favorite genre. A group of desperate construction workers, unpaid for months, set off by boat for Europe, but their boat capsizes and they are lost. How they "return" is the mystery of the film which is beautifully photographed and directed by Mati Diop, a woman making her debut as a director. The protagonists of the film are the women left behind and the lost men who are "with" them. It took me awhile to figure out just what was going on, but when I did it drew me in through its beauty and message. (105 minutes, original language Wolof, subtitled in English. On Netflix)

4. The Mole Agent. This 2020 documentary from Chile got a 95% rating from Rotten Tomatoes for its portrayal of the residents of a home for the elderly. Our protagonist, an 80-something widower, is hired to infiltrate the home and check to see that a client's mother is being treated properly. You'll quickly see that this is less an investigation of possible abuse and more a look at the varied stories of residents and workers there. Our investigator knows how to listen with an open heart and he is valued for that. The film ends with a message for the client and a feeling among viewers like me that we've gotten a view of Chilean society that would be impossible to get on any tour. (90 minutes, on Hulu. In Spanish with English subtitles)

5. The Disciple. This 2020 music-filled drama comes from India, a recent addition to Netflix that has a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It's the story of a vocalist who has devoted his life to the spiritual practice of Indian classical music. However, he struggles with his ability to achieve his goal of mastery amid challenges both internal and external. This is no standard drama of success after beating all odds. Rather it's a very nuanced look at talent, perfection, a media-saturated music environment, and the necessity of choice in an imperfect world. (127 minutes) As a traveler-viewer, you'll ride with our protagonist on the streets of Mumbai and attend a number of concerts. It's too good to be depressing, but feel-good is not the first word that comes to mind.

6. Magical Andes. This two-season series of short half-hour episodes was my favorite pre-bedtime viewing for several weeks. It is an incredible photographic journey along the Andean mountain range which extends through various countries along the western edge of South America. Each episode focuses on a different area and introduces you to locals whose livelihoods or passions are connected to this amazing 7000-km long mountain range. It makes no attempt at social commentary in favor of letting viewers tag along for the ride. I've mentioned this series most often when people ask what I've been watching. May well watch again for the sheer beauty of the photography and the joy of visiting 7 different countries--Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia. (On Netflix)

7. If you're in the mood to stay awhile longer in South America, consider El Pepe: A Supreme Life in Uruguay. It's a 2018 documentary about Jose Pepe Mujica, known as El Pepe, a 1970s revolutionary who later became president of the country and then a farmer devoted to teaching kids about sustainable agriculture. Based on interviews conducted by Serbian director Emir Kusturica. I watched this film in January and it still echoes with me. "My youth belongs to the world of illusion", El Pepe tells the camera. The real revolution is in our minds and cultural values. 

Happy viewing and traveling, reader.

"Casablanca" and "Allied": different fundamentals apply

I was thinking about the movie Casablanca the other day, wondering how many times I've seen this iconic film. Surely at least a dozen times, probably beginning in my early adolescence. Undoubtedly, I saw it on TV, as I was part of the first generation able to see outside of a movie theater. It's been on TV and in theaters for more than half a century now. I associate it with New Year's Eve, that special time of year full of excitement and longing and nostalgia for times past. One Dec. 31 comes to mind, when I watched it as my partner slept, unable to stay up until midnight. Nothing like a wartime film to remind me how petty my discontent was.

Released in November, 1942, Casablanca stars Humphrey Bogart as Rick, a disillusioned cafe owner in wartime Morocco, who meets his lost love, Ilsa, played by Ingrid Bergman. They were lovers in Paris, but she left abruptly after learning that the husband she believed had died was in fact alive.

"As Time Goes By" was their song. Take a moment to enjoy one of the most memorable scenes from this film. Yes, you must remember this.... Watch below or click on this link.

Now Ilsa is in Casablanca with her husband, Victor, an important fighter in the Resistance to the Nazis. I try to remember what my teenage self might have absorbed from this movie. Less about the war and more about gender roles and adult life, perhaps. Actresses were beautiful,  actors not necessarily; that somewhere there is or was an adult world where important things happened, where people were complex beings who could change over time, where love was public but sex private, where sometimes people had to make sacrifices for the greater good of their country and the world. In later viewings,  I could see other things, such as the dynamics of race relations in the 1940s.

(Spoiler Alert for the film Allied.) I was thinking about Casablanca last Saturday when I saw a new movie that has been compared with it: Allied. This film, which also opens in wartime Casablanca, stars Brad Pitt as Max, a Canadian intelligence agent whose first task is to meet the woman who will pose as his wife, Marianne, a French Resistance fighter played by Marion Cotillard. This film also invokes more of another Pitt film, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, leaving just a superficial resemblance to Casablanca, which was filmed well before the feminist revolution of the late 20th century. Pitt is a trained assassin, sent to kill a German official, and Cotillard is every bit his equal handling a machine gun. This film also has explicit sex, and a sudden change in location mid-film. Pitt and Cotillard escape Morocco and marry in London, where we suddenly see Cotillard giving birth to a daughter in the middle of the Blitz. Then the plot turns: Is Cotillard who everyone thinks she is? Evidence has been found that she is really German, a woman who took over a French woman's identity and is now funneling secrets to the Nazis. A test is set, and if failed, Pitt will be ordered to kill her.  

Clearly, Allied is a plot-driven movie. The suspense had me on the edge of my seat, and only later did I question whether any of the characters made sense. They didn't, I concluded. Character development was definitely sacrificed to action, and secondary characters are stereotyped. What went on in the Cotillard character's mind, other than seeing what a good-looking hunk the Pitt character was? Was she ever a committed Nazi? What changed her mind? How did she learn to speak French so flawlessly? How did this trained assassin fail to find a solution to the intimidation of German agents in England? I wondered what my adolescent self would have made of this movie, had I seen it then. The gender roles would not have been inspiring. It was discouraging enough to realize that I would never look as beautiful as Ingrid Bergman; knowing that I had neither Cotillard's looks or bravado with a gun would have probably done me in. I would have also learned that sacrifice has more to do with saving someone you love than anything about patriotism or the common good.

What the first viewers of Casablanca had that we don't is a context: World War II. The movie was rushed into release to coincide with the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942. In the US, the war was less than a year old, and people knew that sacrifices had been made and would be required for some time. It resonated with audiences of the time in ways that Allied cannot, and would not, even if set in present-day Syria, for example. There may be national unity about defeating ISIS, but no consensus on what role, if any, we should have in that.

Casablanca opened to good reviews, Wikipedia reports, but it did not get best picture at the 1942 Academy Awards, losing out to In Which We Serve. Its real success came later, thanks to new generations finding their own meanings in it. More than 70 years later, it's considered one of the greatest films of all time. The late movie critic Roger Ebert believed it is so well loved because the "people in it are all so good" and "it's a wonderful gem".  Umberto Eco said it was really a mediocre film, but because it touches on so many archetypes, including the theme of sacrifice, it reaches "Homeric depths."  In 2006 the Writer's Guild of America selected it as "best ever" in its  list of 100 great screenplays. 

Allied has gotten decent reviews (61% on rotten tomatoes). Its computer graphics are light years from what was available in 1942. Costumes, music and strong performances by the actors all contribute to a film that's well worth seeing. Still, I don't expect to watch it again, certainly not on New Year's Eve. I wouldn't mind another viewing of Casablanca. As time goes by, it seems, the fundamental things really do apply.

Loving: marriage equality circa 1965

I went to see the film "Loving" last night, and I was reminded once again of the many historical events that were once current events for me. "Loving" is the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, the couple who challenged the slavery-era laws that made their interracial marriage a crime in Virginia and many other states--until 1967. Today that seems almost unbelievable! I was 20 years old then, on the verge of adulthood, and I had grown up on a country with laws such as these.

1967. That year the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the ACLU, which had taken the Lovings' case to the high court. The process took years. Marriage equality--no one yet thought in terms of LBGT--became the law of the land when anti-miscegenation laws were declared unconstitutional in a unanimous decision. The film follows the historical record quite accurately, a narrative for younger generations of a time when America had its own version of Apartheid. To read Ann Hornaday's excellent review of "Loving" in The Washington Post and to see photos and video, click here.

The topic of interracial marriage came up in my family, possibly in the spring of 1965, when LIFE Magazine ran a story on the Loving family and their case. This was one of the photos taken by Grey Villet, reproduced by the actors in the film.

Villet snapped this one of the couple's three children, along with numerous others showing their warm family life. 

Like millions of other families who subscribed to this magazine, my parents very likely read this story. I may have missed it, though, as I was in my first year at Mundelein College and right around the time the story ran, I was boarding a bus along with other students to join Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic march as it entered Selma, Alabama. I have no photos of myself from this time, but here is one of our Mundelein group which later appeared in the student newspaper, The Skyscraper.

There were many discussions and arguments at home before and after the march, as my parents struggled to understand this sea change in American politics and culture, and I struggled to unlearn the racism I absorbed growing up in  1950s white America. I had no doubts about the rightness of the Civil Rights Movement in the South, but I was struggling to apply it beyond voting rights and the right to sit at a lunch counter. I think I remember my parents talking about interracial marriage as being a personal matter, but those couples ought to pause before having children and condemning them to a difficult life. I'm not sure I had an effective answer to that yet, as I was still trying to work out "morality" and social change in that tumultuous, life-changing decade. My father always argued that "you can't legislate morality", but I was starting to learn in my political science classes that you certainly can. I lived in Chicago, a very segregated city, but I got a job on campus with the Upward Bound program--part of the War on Poverty--and met African-American students for the first time. I learned and thought and tried to act. Today I feel grateful to have come of age during that time. 

Today it takes my breath away that the Lovings endured the harassment and fear that they experienced for nearly 10 years before the Supreme Court's landmark decision. The film recounts their arrest 5 weeks after their 1958 wedding, when the sheriff and his deputies burst into their bedroom. They avoided prison only by pleading guilty to violating the Racial Integrity Act and agreeing to leave the state for 25 years. They moved to Washington D.C. and raised their growing family there for the next 5 years before returning home to Virginia--with the possibility of re-arrest always hanging over them. 

While still in the city, Mildred drew courage from The Civil Rights Movement, which offered promise of an end to their exile. She wrote to Sen. Robert Kennedy, seeking help, and he sent her request on to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The novice volunteer ACLU attorney joined forces with another lawyer who knew how to handle the case, and they took it all the way past two losing appeals to the Supreme Court. The film acknowledges the Lovings' reluctance to be in the spotlight during this process; they did not attend the high court hearing. In a 1966 interview in LIFE, they insisted they were not going forward because they wanted to be the ones to overturn discrimination.  "We're doing it for us--because we want to live here."

Seven years after the ruling, Richard Loving was killed by a drunk driver. Mildred, who passed away from pneumonia in 2008, publicly showed her support for the right of everyone to marry--black or white, gay or straight.

  

Dr. King's words about the moral arc of the universe being long, but bending toward justice, resonates with many, but especially with the Lovings' one surviving child. Peggy Loving Fortune said in a People Magazine article after the movie came out, that she is "overwhelmed with emotion" and "so grateful" that her parents' story is finally being told. This film touched me deeply as well. Don't miss it.

Journeying through time with the film characters in Brooklyn

Spoiler alert: Reading this blog entry will give you plot of this film. 

Brooklyn is a beautiful and powerful movie. It’s the story of Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), a young Irish woman who arrives in mid-20th century Brooklyn to begin a new life. She’s left behind a mother, a devoted older sister, and a small town in County Wexford that feels too small for the life she wants to create. After an initial bout of homesickness, she has a remarkably good first year in Brooklyn, where she rents a room in a boarding house and starts a job at an upscale department store. Thanks to a kindly priest, she has the tuition for a bookkeeping course in night school. Then one day, at a parish dance, she meets Tony, a sweet Italian charmer with an eye for Irish girls. They fall in love—and then the plot turns. The sudden death of her sister brings Eilis back to Ireland, where she faces a dilemma that forms the crux of the film. Should she stay in her beloved Ireland—where her mother is now aging alone—or should she return to her life in America, the life she has begun to love.

Brooklyn, based on Colm Toibin’s novel, touched me deeply. It goes back to a time half a century ago or more when a labor-needy US welcomed a huge number of immigrants—no background checks required. The film’s protagonist embodies one of thousands of young Irish who emigrated during a spike in unemployment at home. Most went to the London or other places in the UK, but a good number came here, passing through the same Ellis Island where my own maternal grandparents arrived more than 100 years ago.

The art, more than the history of the film, shaped my response. Brooklyn has top-notch acting, a well-adapted screenplay, beautiful photography, and excellent direction.  A friend  of mine who follows the Oscars, bets this one will get it’s share of Academy Award nominations; it’s already a film festival favorite. It’s the subject matter, though, that made the film so powerful for me. Brooklyn is an immigration story that is relevant to all of us who leave our hometowns to make lives in other places. What is the nature of the life left unchosen? What is the cost of leaving it behind? 

There is no real doubt about the choice Eilis will finally make, but the film does present a choice. It’s the choice every immigrant faces—at least those with the option to return home: to continue making a life in a new and promising though unfamiliar world or to remain in a world where one is known and loved. Things looks different when Eilis returns home for her sister’s funeral. The limited life she had foreseen in Ireland before she emigrated seems different now. She has been offered her sister’s old job, the landscape seems open and uncrowded, and most crucially, she connects with Jim, a shy young man who wants to see more of the world and of her. She comes to like him a great deal. Jim also has prospects—the large house and family business (a pub) his parents are leaving behind, and he is clearly getting ready to propose. Her mother wants her to stay. It looks like she might. But then an encounter with a mean-spirited former employer reminds her of why she left in the first place: the petty cruelties of gossip and social control in this small town, the future life that could be finer than the one she once envisioned, but limited all the same.

As a 3rd-generation descendant of immigrants (from Poland and Ireland), I should have had no issues with the choice the protagonist makes in this film. On feminist grounds if nothing else. A look at Irish history circa 1950 almost no job opportunities for women. And a powerful and restrictive Catholic Church made life there much worse for women who transgressed social norms. The films Philomena (2013) and The Magdalene Sisters (2002) come to mind here. Watching Brooklyn, I should have been cheering for the protagonist’s return to the possibilities of freedom. Yet, I wasn’t. I sat there during Eilis’ stay in Ireland, silently willing her to stay there—until it was clear she could not. 

A few thoughts of Eilis’ future started flitting through my mind. Success, we know, won’t depend on the choice of place alone. The key involves the very specific people and experiences that populate it. In New York, Eilis could well be part of a fun-loving Italian family, the wife of a man who loved the Brooklyn Dodgers and had big plans to start a construction business on undeveloped Long Island. We can imagine a happy life filled with family and financial security. Or not. It was the 1950s after all. Would she disappear into the kitchen, while Tony and his brothers watched baseball and ran the show? Would the sweet young man who adored her stay true? As the decades passed, would she see Ireland grow and prosper while America’s problems seemed to multiply? Would she bring her mother to live with her—or would her mother insist on finishing her life in Ireland? Would Eilis ever see her mother again and would that matter to her when she became old? Conversely, would life necessarily be so limited if this spirited girl married Jim? Perhaps they’d travel together or move to London or do something else that neither could envision at the time. Her mum would likely become a grandmother who knew her grandkids. Or not. Pub work could lead to alcoholism, and life in Wexford could become lonely or bitter. The future remains remains hidden, not yet created. No doubt this uncertainty is why choices can be so wrenching, especially when we’re young. We don’t know how they’ll turn out. We can only guess and hope. The screenplay leads us to see that Eilis was making the best guess possible.

It took me awhile to realize that in watching Eilis in Ireland,  I was reviewing and mourning the places I had left behind. The character of Eilis in Brooklyn was taking me back into my own un-lived life choices. Good movies can do that—draw us in and make us a part of a parallel story.

I left Chicago for Colorado when I was 27. Somewhat like Eilis, I had lost sight of how to build a life in my hometown. Moving to Colorado brought a new set of freedoms for me—a chance to live outside of Chicago for the first time, to test my mettle in a new place—a beautiful place, where I quickly took to hiking and backpacking and exploring The West. Though I missed my family and friends, I made new ones over time. I got a job in Denver, a city that was starting to develop from cowtown to metropolis. Then a year after I moved, my father died. I returned for the funeral but did not stay. No one expected that I would. Years passed. I was part of a vibrant feminist community, I had a partner, a job, and then after 4 years of night classes at the University of Colorado at Denver, a master’s degree in education with a specialty in teaching English as a second language. After struggling with the job market and a changing relationship with my partner, I went to Japan for a year or two to live and work. It was exhilarating to live in such a very different culture, working in a field I had trained for. That year stretched into many more—20, and during that time my mother passed away. I came back for the funeral and then returned to Japan. Paula, my former partner, died a year before I left Japan and returned to Colorado.

I can imagine the fictional Eilis looking back on her life in America when she was an old woman, content that she had made the right choice by following her heart and instincts. But I’m guessing she would also mourn the loss of her unlived life in Ireland, her separation from her mother and the relationships that might have been nurtured there. As do I, though the feelings are never quite in balance. On some days the mourning washes over the contentment. On others, it’s the reverse. And on still others, I just accept the past and wade into the future—wondering and hoping.

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