WHIPLASH

 

The most disturbing film I have seen in some time

It is the story of a nineteen-year-old with a compelling ambition to become a top jazz drummer.  Definitely talented, young Neiman (played sensitively by Miles Teller) is admitted into the prestigious Shaffer conservatory in New York, a huge step up in his dreams.  But then he is noticed by an abusive teacher -- the conductor, Terence Fletcher, played brilliantly and terrifyingly by J.K. Simmons.

Foul-mouthed in the extreme, and driven by his own unspoken forces, Fletcher hammers the boy into trying for the impossible, reducing him to humiliating tears with psychological and physical abuse.  It is dreadful to watch someone so vulnerable being subject to such extreme domination, a reminder of the huge responsibility that teachers have for their students -- a responsibility that the character of Fletcher does not recognize. For him, wrecking a young spirit is just one step in reaching for some ultimate prize -- the kind of musician that the teacher aims for, but never really describes.

It reminded me of films featuring abusive sergeants with the job of turning ordinary humans into robotic soldiers. There were the same extreme demands, the same cruelty, and the same impossible goal.  As in those films, the young man tries his hardest, but finds that his hardest is not enough.

Andrew Neiman's reaction to the abuse is an unexpected plot twist.  One of the students hanged himself after suffering a breakdown because of the mistreatment, and Andrew agrees to testify against Fletcher.  This is easier because he has been personally defeated, and has given up drumming.  But then, months later, Neiman and Fletcher meet again, and Fletcher invites the boy to perform at an upcoming jazz festival. The lad consents - to walk into a trap.  Fletcher knows that he was the one to testify, and has planned a public revenge. The piece the band plays is not the one that Andrew expects.  Totally unfamiliar to him, it is impossible to follow.  Humiliated again, he storms off the stage - but then, finally, he rebels, leading to a dramatic conclusion.

As a film, Whiplash met great success, winning prizes at the 2014 Sundance Festival, and gaining several Academy awards, with a special mention of Simmons' acting. It has since been acclaimed as one of the best films of the 21st century.

But what about the music?  This is what is really clever about the film.  Teller, the young actor who played Neiman, did much of the drumming himself (assisted by professional drummer Kyle Crane), while many of the actors were real musicians. Superbly directed, they revealed real fear and anxiety when Simmons, as Fletcher, strode into the room. So it is little surprise that while the music is technically brilliant (featuring in a successful album), visually it is dead.  There is no sparkle, no fun. 

The drummer that the teacher was aiming for was never going to be a Gene Krupa. 

By contrast, see the total joy in this clip -- and turn up the volume, too

IN THE WAKE OF THE ENDEAVOUR AND HOKULE'A

 

This charmingly chapter-noted memoir begins "It was Bob's dream to sail across the ocean." 

It was a crazy dream. This was couple who had never sailed across an ocean, who were approaching middle age, where at least one of them was terrified of drowning, and who were living in a dream house on Hawaii. But, as Linda Collison writes, "One day I woke up and found myself onboard."

The boat was Topaz, 36 feet long, a fiberglass sloop that was not as roomy as a single-wide trailer, and which needed work.  A lot of work. And while they were working, the couple embarked on a different adventure, grabbing an opportunity to crew on the replica of Captain Cook's Endeavour.

It took courage.  This whole book, in fact, is a testament to courage.  That a couple should actually pay to sleep in an 18th century-style hammock, and climb the ratlines at night, then throw themselves over futtock shrouds to clamber onto a greasy maintop and then climb and climb an almost invisible topmast, gripping almost unsubstantial lines to sidle out on a greasy yard to work on a heavy, wet sail, is courage of the maddest kind. Yet they loved it.  They learned a lot.  And it was supremely poetic.

This was because they planned to sail from Hawaii to Tahiti - in the wake of Cook. It was a reverse, in a way, of the great Captain James Cook's final voyage in the Resolution.

It was also to be a voyage in the wake of Hokule'a.

Launched in March 1975 by the Polynesian Voyaging Society, this double-hulled replica of a wa'a kaulua (pahi; waka hourua) still sails today, but is probably best known for its 1976 pioneering voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti, using traditional navigation techniques.

Well, Linda and Bob did not venture into the wide blue Pacific without such aids as radio and GPS, but Linda's reminiscences are redolent with her deep knowledge of what went before - that in their time Polynesian navigators were the greatest the world had ever known. 

The tupuna - ancestors - were skilled sailors who burst from Southeast Asia into the Pacific well over 3000 years ago, to explore as far east as South America, and as far south as the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands, to colonize a myriad host of islands, carrying their animals and plants with them to establish tropical paradises on what had been barren volcanic uprises, and creating a vast trading network that was the Old Silk Road of its time. 

Their navigation methods were remarkable.  At a time when Europeans were just start to experiment with fore and aft sails, pahi powered with lateens were criss-crossing the mighty Pacific, for days and weeks out of sight of land. The navigators did it with intense observation -- by watching currents and swells, the movement of star patterns, the flights of birds, the formation of clouds, the colors of the water, and the drift patterns of seaweed.

And also by knowledge of islands unseen -- the backsight of the departure point, the position of the destination island, and the compass point of a reference island.  

The stars were reliable beacons.  Linda grasped this, writing, "At night, the stars were like neighbors' porchlights.  Familiar. Observing their path over several hours I could grasp how the traditional Polynesian seafarers used them as moving signposts."

That word "moving" is very significant. Linda herself noticed a strange phenomenon, where it feels as if the world is moving, and the boat is standing still.  As she writes, "Sometimes I have the illusion we are standing still, that everything above and below and all around is moving but we are not."  It took the GPS and the chart to convince her otherwise.

Yet, or so modern Polynesian voyagers tell me, this is how the ancients envisaged the voyage.  Anchored by the compass point of the unseen, yet vital, reference island, the sea and attendant stars and islands moved in a great arc around the canoe, until the destination island was raised and reached.  And, until that moment, the pahi lay still.

Knowing this magic, it is no wonder the tupuna and their marae are still revered. 

Something else Linda discovered was "the vast wealth of time" of Tahiti.  It leads to a kind of "happy indifference," where there is no ambition to do anything at all.  In Tahiti, it is called fiu (pronounced, rather appropriately, phew): as the locals say, "'Je suis Fiu' est une expression souvent entendue en Polynésie Française, difficile à traduire simplement, il exprime une sorte de lassitude."

Difficult to translate?  No, when you think of the tupuna and what their navigators and seafarers accomplished.  Their era, for some unknown reason, was drifting to an end by the time of the intrusion of Captains Wallis and Cook, which is why the invasion by Europeans was so successful.  It was as if the ancestors were resting on their laurels.  They had done their work, and it was time for fiu. 

It was a lassitude that gripped Linda and Bob as well -- but they wrenched themselves out of it, and voyaged back to Hawaii.  

And so their adventure came to an end -- to be memorialized in this book, and their photographs. 

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN revamped

 

I had fond memories of the 1960 film - mostly because of the magnificent music.

The theme was an earworm, that lived in the brain for days, and was never forgotten.

So I decided to watch the remake, mainly to hear that theme again, but also to see what might have happened in the meantime.

The original was set in Mexico.  A small village is attacked by a local bandit and his gang, and the villagers hire seven men to defend them and put the thug and his comrades into the ground.  

It had an all-star cast, led by Yul Byrnner, the man who made baldness sexy.

There was Steve McQueen, and Horst Buchholz, and Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, and James Coburn.  And, indeed, they were magnificent, in a rough kind of way. It was the horse opera that was to be the model and guide for a whole raft of horse operas after that....

... including the remake, made in 2016

That was the one I watched, out of pure curiosity.  Quite apart, of course, from the music, which I found strangely lacking.

This one also has an all-star cast.

• Denzel Washington as Sam Chisholm, a bounty hunter from Kansas.
• Chris Pratt as Joshua Faraday, a drifter and trick-shooter.
• Ethan Hawke as Goodnight Robicheaux, a Cajun former Confederate sharpshooter.
• Vincent D'Onofrio as Jack Horne, a deeply religious mountain man and hunter.
• Byung-hun Lee as Billy Rocks, a knife-wielding Chinaman.
• Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Vasquez, a Mexican outlaw and gunslinger.
• Martin Sensmeier as Red Harvest, a Comanche warrior.

Please note there is only one Mexican character in it.  It is also set in the frontier United States, not Mexico.  In fact, the influence of modern politics was quite fascinating.

There was the overriding image of the typical American cowboy -- who was, in fact, Mexican, not United States American.  That is why cowboy words -- lassoo, rodeo, honcho -- are Spanish. However, it is this rough kind of frontier hero, hard on the outside, tough on the inside, and yet with a tender heart somewhere in the middle, that is the stereotype lauded by a certain MAGA crowd. 

This was not something I remembered from the original film.

The characters were different, too -- though one, played by Ethan Hawke, did suffer from same nightmares of past killings that Robert Vaughn did in the first version.  The Comanche warrier was a novelty, particularly as he was on the side of the cowboys, in a contrast to those many, many cowboy vs. Indian films. And a Chinese fellow, too.  Another novelty (actually played by a Korean).  Were the writers and producers trying to make a point?

The plot has a much more complicated message than simple good vs. evil.  It is rabid capitalism vs. hardworking ordinary folks.

These folks are trying to establish a community of godfearing villagers on land that is unfortunately supposed to be goldbearing, when the capitalist arrives.

The capitalist, played with enthusiasm by Peter Sarsgaard, is Bartholmew Bogue. Naturally, he wants the land, and is happy to slaughter all the villagers to get it.  In his estimation, it is only natural.  As he says, 'If God did not want them sheared, why did he create sheep?'  And, being rich already, he has an army at his command, the so-called Blackstone Rangers.

Well, the magnificent seven kill off the first 22 rangers they find in the village (the bodycount is really impressive), and the message is sent to Bogue, who gives them seven days to give up and give in, before his full army arrives to wipe all opposition off the ore-bearing earth that he wants  so much.

It's classic stuff, in the mode of 'High Noon.'  Preparations are made, and the magnificent seven, plus willing (though largely incapable) villagers, take their positions.

The climax is much as one would expect, with the interesting addition of a Gatling gun, which threatens for a while to put the whole story out of balance.  But Chris Pratt, as Joshua Faraday, destroys the gun and restores the balance, in what are the best few minutes of the movie, by far.  Indeed, Chris Pratt was the stand-out actor.  He really jumped off the screen.  The others seemed less enthusiastic.  

All in all, I was not surprised this remake got mixed reviews.  "Mildly diverting," ran one, according to Rotten Tomatoes.  

But the horses did really well.