The Rare Review - Movies, books, music and TV

Poor Desperate Hero: “A Hero”

On June 22, 2022

Henrik Ibsen was keenly aware that most people are not noble—or heroic. They’re simply ordinary, which is the case with Rahim (Amir Jadidi), the “hero” in the Asghar Farhadi film A Hero (2019, on Prime Video), for Farhadi knows it too. Rahim is the Krogstad, the Hjalmar, etc. of the narrative and is conscientious but heavily in debt to a man with a low opinion of him. The creditor, Bahram, sees Rahim as a ingrate, refusing to honor him, as others honor him, for returning a bag of gold coins to a stranger who lost it. He was merely doing his duty, says Bahram.

A sympathetic figure, Rahim is on a precipice. His mind fiercely resists the idea of going back to debtors’ prison. A socioeconomic reality, this, but of course it is part of the broad canvas of human misery that emerges in Farhadi’s oeuvre. Iran, where the movie is set, produces defeat because life produces defeat. Yet we happen to believe—I do, anyway—that Rahim will endure. Even social media, an important element in this superb film, will not sink him.

(In Farsi with English subtitles)

Dumb “Blondie”? No

By EarlD

On June 17, 2022

In Movies

I can’t remember whether Chic Young’s comic strip Blondie was funny, but it arose at a time of high originality for comic strips—Dick Tracy and Li’l Abner were there too—and managed to be popular. Blondie (1938), the first in a series of movies adapted from the strip, is funny—a curio strictly out for laughs. Everything from the purchase, despite money problems, of furniture to Dagwood’s alleged unfaithfulness to Blondie brings about zany contretemps.

Dagwood (Arthur Lake) is too dumb to be very likable. Blondie (Penny Singleton) can be a nag, but is good-natured. Singleton has more charm than Lake, although neither overplays the assigned character. Not that every joke works, but congrats to screenwriter Richard Flournoy; and, yes, director Frank Strayer.

I saw this lark on Tubi.

I Get The Point: “Zabriskie Point” (The 1970 Film)

By EarlD

On June 15, 2022

In General

The critics in 1970 were right to adamantly reject Zabriskie Point, the American-made Michaelangelo Antonioni film. It is dumb, anemic and ill-structured.

Cover of "Zabriskie Point" — Cover of Zabriskie Point

Signore Director believed the alienation of young people in the 1960s, and of the New Left, was as significant an alienation as that in such earlier Antonioni films as L’Avventura and La Notte. But ZP fails to convince us of that. It has no sophistication whatsoever. Indeed, the straightforward lovemaking between hippies in the desert (presented in a dream sequence) goes on for so long—and ends with a long shot that makes the hippies look like insects on sand banks—that it turns distasteful. Yes, visually the film is often impressive, but junk is junk.

Zabriskie Point is a free-love, essentially anti-cop movie, and so we can hardly help realizing just how right it seems for our shoddy times.

No Wedlock To See Here: “The Ring Cycle”

By EarlD

On June 12, 2022

In Movies

Few, I believe, will disagree that there is histrionic talent in England’s Natalie Dormer. She gets the chance to do a lot in a 13-minute short by one Erin Cramer—“The Ring Cycle” (2014, available on YouTube)—with its successful blend of mild comedy and melancholy drama. Versatile Dormer is moving, suggesting a wave of emotion cresting in her but never breaking. Her character is Millie, who happily receives a wedding ring from Richard (Emun Elliott, also good) who soon discontentedly renounces the marriage. But Millie cannot discard the ring. There is economical art here—the movie is almost too short—with Cramer and Dormer making a fine team.

Surveying The Mamet Movie, “Oleanna”

By EarlD

On June 9, 2022

In General

I have never seen the David Mamet play, Oleanna, on stage, but surely the next best thing is watching Mamet’s 1994 film of it. William H. Macy is true and affecting as a college professor accused of sexual harassment, and Debra Eisenstadt is mesmerizing as the girl who has accused him. Mamet’s directing is satisfyingly competent.

Carol, the girl, understands nothing but believes she understands everything—except the lessons presented in John’s—Macy’s—class. She is academically sinking there, almost frantic about it. But she starts to think she can read her professor, and to discern oppression. John’s easy cynicism about higher education only makes matters worse. Carol resents that John possesses power of a sort, and goes so far as to deem him a rapist (!)

Mamet’s achievement is disturbing as it concentrates on the utter failure of human communion and on Carol’s use of radical sentiment, or political correctness, to defeat John. (But is she really a radical?) Near pleadingly at one point she tells him, “I’m bad!” The utopia that Oleanna‘s title refers to is not exactly beckoning in the university. This is a sadly dark opus.