Nathalie Chazeaux (Isabelle Huppert) is a philosophy professor married to another philosophy professor (Andre Marcon), and this is yet another film about a husband who blandly leaves his wife for another woman.  Nathalie takes it . . . philosophically, which does not mean she never weeps.  She does, but she also moves on and encounters life’s common problems, challenges, and comforts.  This is what happens in the Mia Hansen-Love picture, Things to Come (L’avenir, 2016), a French opus even more imaginative and subtle than Hansen-Love’s Goodbye, First Love.

It is useful to mention Peter Rainer’s comment that “Huppert never loses sight of the fact that Nathalie’s wounded heart often overrules her steel-trap mind.”  It is also true, however, that Nathalie is not much of a creature of desire, or so it seems, which may be moving her away from the “will” that the philosopher Schopenhauer (referenced in the film) said is the cause of our suffering.  How much suffering does the woman go through?  On the other hand, critic Ella Taylor has a point when she writes that “[Nathalie’s] moving on, but to what?”

Let me indicate one more thing:  Hansen-Love does a meaningful job of capturing Natalie’s state of mind when she is alone and having to endure a relative’s sudden death.  It’s a strong scene.  The solitude makes all the difference.

(In French with English subtitles)

In June, unemployment in the U.S. rose from 3.8 percent to 4 percent.  Did it have anything to do with President Trump’s tariffs on aluminum and steel?  The economy is strong.  It could be stronger, and might have to be—through the removal of tariffs.

Conservative writer Jonah Goldberg is right:  Why are our trade deals so bad if, as Trump says, America is making impressive foreign investments?

I wish our progress against the federal deficit was impressive.  Medicare administrators want you to know that Medicare will be insolvent by 2026.  Social Security?  2034.  Better generate that revenue (and then some).  The more jobs, the better.  America, pay your bills!

Jane Fonda is magnetically terrific in the 1969 They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, losing herself in the role of Gloria, a bitter would-be actress.  She and the other characters are desperate, first of all, to survive during the Great Depression and, second, to have their dreams come true.  Because they must acquire money, they participate in a grueling dance marathon, but in addition they want natural relief through love and intimacy, even loveless sex.  Monstrously cynical, Gloria is also a “loser” who wants to die; and, really, we pity and even respect her when she does die.

Sydney Pollack‘s film, based on a novel by Horace McCoy, is bleak.  And it’s more honest than most movies today (e.g., it doesn’t see its female protagonist as more virtuous than any man you could ever meet).  Granted, the last few minutes of the film are rather flimsy, flowing less than smoothly from the previous material; but we can be very grateful for the set design, costumes, and general ambitiousness.  Pollack, indeed, tried to make a work of art.

Well, I think Gyorgy Ligeti’s Atmospheres is very accessible, despite its lack of melody and, according to Ligeti, “dense canonic structure.”  A short piece, it is frighteningly stratospheric before deliquescing.

Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G is snappy and limpid in its first movement and  incalculably beautiful in its second.  Its third is pleasantly bouncy.  A masterpiece.  Even greater is Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, evoking the terrors of the twentieth century.  It is somber, eerie and adventurous.

Also, it never gets sentimental, and neither does the String Quartet No. 1 (“The Kreutzer Sonata”) of Leos Janacek, an opus as controlled as it is capricious.  It’s dark too, though not as dark as Symphony No. 2 by Arvo Part. Menace is everywhere in this not-great but good modern composition, and so is a lovely conclusive quote from Tchaikovsky.

To be continued

U.S. astronauts reach the moon, in the 1950 Destination Moon, only because they choose to defy the government, which has ordered them to stay on the earth.  The public fears radioactivity after liftoff, but the determined astronauts slip away and take their historic flight regardless.  After they land on the moon, they are distressed to discover that getting home just might be a nonstarter.

Adapting one of his novels, Robert Heinlein co-wrote the movie’s script, so the frequently spot-on technical information is no surprise.  And for 1950 the sets are admirable, even though the outside rescue of an astronaut adrift is hopelessly stagy (and with plenty of silliness).  To be honest, DM is marred by much, but it is Hollywood earnestness at its most entertaining.  Too, I found it nigh spellbinding, and not only in the outer space scenes.  Watching it, I got a hankering to read Heinlein’s Have Space Suit, Will Travel, which will at least spare me, as this movie does not, the presence of Woody Woodpecker.

Directed by Irving Pichel.