The Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

Tango, jazz, and Hollywood musicals have emerged to distract the working class from its daily suffering. By late 1950s, the suffering had receded; the better-off working class had matured for instruction; the Production Code had begun to fade. "The Anatomy of a Murder" is a glimpse into the cinema that was to follow, with compromised ideals and inconclusive endings.

Whenever censorship is imposed on art, someone in the audience gains from the ingenuity of the artist outwitting the censor. Others suffer from having missed the innuendo, or the artwork of the artists who are bad at innuendos. The "speaking-of-horses" dialogue in the "Big Sleep" (1946) hardly could have been improved if the Code had been absent. With the code, sometimes even a villain had to speak like a gentleman, which amplified his evil.

Once the Code retreated, poetry retired---for a while. One could go to more places, but would meet fewer people. Films clustered into ratings with the advent of the rating system, as homes clustered into suburban communities with the advent of the motorcar. The dream disintegrated as did American cities---inexplicably, unintentionally, temporarily. "The Anatomy a Murder" is explicit in its treatment of a certain undergarment of a lady, but is delicate at hinting the cultural changes of the forthcoming decades.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

The district attorney and the defence lawyer are on the same side, the side of justice. Each is motivated by the adversarial system, but neither values his private victory above truth. Both sentence the guilty by ascertaining that he is such and by making sure that he knows that they know it.

Hume Cronyn's eccentric character, the defence lawyer, is the most substantial one. The others are victims of selfishness (narrowly construed), which blinds them to the consequences of their blunders. The circumstances do not force the protagonists to display the qualities that are not apparent from the outset. With the characters doomed, the narrative lacking suspense, and the direction lacking poetry, the story is didactic.

Julie and Julia (2009)

This picture's graphic cooking and devouring compete for the audience who normally gorge on gratuitous violence and bathroom humour, the staples of the purple screen. Meryl Streep's mannerisms are overdone; her character is hollow---even though based on a true story. One of the film's theses---that it does not matter who people are, it only matters who one thinks they are---accentuates the positive, but exposes one to the risk of drawing fallacious lessons from others' behaviour.

South Pacific

(Lincoln Center Theater, 4 August 2009)

The South Pacific island is the America of the past, a country of competing prejudices and of detachment by force (of irreversible immigration), which morphs into the America of the future, a country of competing ideas and of detachment by choice. Laura Osnes (as Nellie Forbush) is beautiful and understatedly sincere. Loretta Ables Sayre's character (Bloody Mary) says that she will master English in no time, and one believes, convinced by her skilful singing, a hobby practised when not selling straw skirts and dried human heads. The actors' shared skill is in endowing their characters with more traits than are necessitated by their lines and with lives extending beyond the play.

Vince Giordano and Nighthawks

(3 August 2009, Club Cache)

Neither an imitation nor a tribute, but a snapshot of one of the many epochs that develop in parallel in the city. The band and the patrons live their parts with flair.

Take Dance

(Dance Theatre Workshop, 2 August 2009)

The first sequence resembled a warm-up. The players' movements were loose without being spontaneous; the movements lacked purpose. Subsequent sequences improved. Still, a dance often exhibited physique, instead of conveying a thought. The dancers moved the way they had been instructed to, not the way they thought they looked best or felt they communicated most. In solo dances, Amy Young had the vitality that others lacked.

The dancers were at their best---the movements were pointed and pauses were held---when conversing in couples. The conversations of Nana Tsuda and Kile Hotchkiss shone in their fallen elegance, the sometimes formulaic narrative notwithstanding. And it is hard to surpass the eloquence of the red dress against the background of the black-and-white suit.

Kunstmuseum Bonn

(25 July 2009)

Before photography, committing an image to canvas was the only way to guard it against the erosive effects of repeated recall. The invention of photography has raised the bar for the painter by requiring that the painting be not only well-executed, but also false in a manner appreciated by many. Modern failures are exhibited at the Kunstmuseum because they encourage art today for the sake of breakthroughs tomorrow at the price of rewarding mediocrity today, and because they contain a lesson.

The paintings' ugliness calls one's attention to the fortuitous nature of the man-made beauty, displayed and often taken for granted elsewhere. By regressing several steps in their artistic development, the artists question the path that the beauty has taken towards its contemporary form. Even when the finishing touches are grazed just a little, the works incite creativity in the viewer.

The displayed works aim to baffle, not please or enlighten. The bafflement shifts the burden of creativity on the viewer, thereby betraying an artist who has nothing to say.