Independents and Independence

Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia 1787

[NOTE: This is a revised version of the original post from 07/04/2007.]

The Washington Post published a front-page article last Sunday entitled "A Political Force With Many Philosophies," which summarized the results of an extensive survey on Independent voters conducted by the Post, Harvard University, and the Kaiser Family Foundation. According to the survey, 29% of voters now identify themselves as Independents, more than Republicans (27%) but still less than Democrats (36%). I've considered myself an Independent for a while now, and I've been thinking lately about what that means, so I found the article and survey interesting.

Here's part of the article:

Strategists and the media variously describe independents as "swing voters," "moderates" or "centrists" who populate a sometimes-undefined middle of the political spectrum. That is true for some independents, but the survey revealed a significant range in the attitudes and the behavior of Americans who adopt the label.

The Post-Kaiser-Harvard study was designed to probe more deeply into this increasingly influential portion of the electorate: who these voters are, why they remain independent, what they think about major issues and, of particular importance, how they differ from one another.

The survey data established five categories of independents: closet partisans on the left and right; ticket-splitters in the middle; those disillusioned with the system but still active politically; ideological straddlers whose positions on issues draw from both left and right; and a final group whose members are mostly disengaged from politics.

Here's the percentage breakdown of the five categories: Disengaged (24%), Disguised Partisans (24%), Disillusioned (18%), Deliberators (18%) and Dislocated (16%). You can read through their descriptions be clicking on the links for each one.

Not surprisingly, I fall (mostly) into the category of Disillusioned Independent:

These independents are deeply dissatisfied with politics today and antagonistic to both parties and the two-party system itself. Nearly seven in 10 are angry.

Only 14 percent are satisfied with the political system; eight in 10 express little or no confidence in government. Nine in 10 say the two-party system does not work for them, and most think Democrats and Republicans are pretty much the same.

Many say “neither party” better represents their views on key issues, including more than seven in 10 who say so about their positions on Iraq.

Bush and the war are crucial components of the disillusionment.

Three-quarters say the war in Iraq was not worth fighting and just two in 10 think it is still possible to stabilize the country. Fifty-seven percent call Bush the worst modern president.

For 2008, this group leans Democratic, but high levels of disenchantment could keep them home. They would also welcome an independent candidacy.

"Nearly seven in 10 are angry." Buddy, you don't even know the half of it. Bush and the war may have been "components" of my disillusionment, but it's been going on a long time. I will not stay home in 2008, however. And I will not support an Independent candidate this time. I want the Republicans to be severely punished in the next election. I want to see their cowardly, pseudo-macho, chicken-hawk selves on their knees in tears. This administration has wrought hell upon our country, not to mention upon Iraq and other parts of the world. I'll work with the Democratic Party - because I feel like I have no choice.

Some other interesting results from the study:

• Fifty years ago, independents accounted for about a quarter of all adults. Today, that proportion is between three in 10 and four in 10, depending on the survey. In most states that have party registration, independents or those who decline to state a party preference are the fastest-growing segment of voters, according to Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate.
• Independents mirror the population in terms of age, income and education. But they are disproportionately male.
  
• Independents also are more secular than the overall electorate. Four in 10 in the new study would like to see religion have less influence on politics and public life than it does now. Almost a fifth say they have no religion.
  
• Three-quarters said voting on the issues, not a party line, is a "major reason" they claim the label, while seven in 10 said a prime factor is that they vote for individual candidates, not parties.
  
• About half said a major reason for their independence is that they agree with Democrats on some issues and Republicans on others, and that they are not comfortable with either party.
  
• Four in 10 said not wanting to put a label on their political views is a principal reason for calling themselves independents.
  
• One pig-headed SOB from Texas with an obvious chip on his shoulder, talked nonsensically about a party platform that incoporated the likes of jazz, Yves Montand, Tex-Mex food, a touch of anarchism, Monty Python, John Lennon, Guillaume Apollinaire, Zapatistas, the New York Jets, Tom Waits, and a radical redistribution of wealth, Coltrane CDs and Spanish vino tinto.

Okay, maybe that last part wasn't in the article.

We have 323 kinds of breakfast cereal, 473 kinds of beverages, 500 channels of television, millions of websites . . . and two political parties.

How, I wonder, can over 300 million people from nearly every cultural, ethnic, and religious background in the world be represented in such a dualistic system? I look at the Senate, and I don't see representation of the people of the United State of America. I see rich white men. And while the House is a little better, I still don't think it comes anywhere close to true democratic representation. I don't know if having other parties would change that, but I don't think it's working the way things stand now.

If my spiritual journey, environmentalism, and life in general have taught me anything, it's that all things are interconnected. I am a part of my community and my actions affect all. In that regard, I ask myself why I don't participate more fully in the existing political system in this country by joining a party. On the other hand, I've also come to believe that life doesn't have to be so dualistic. Why should I be forced into an Either/Or situation between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to making decisions that have major consequences on our society and on the world? What about multiplicities? We're creative beings. Is it really impossible to create other alternatives?

Still waiting for a party that represents me

What I really resent is that these two monolithic parties have helped create a system in which there is no other choice. Unless some kind of change occurs, you will never again see the likes of Ross Perot getting 19% of the vote, as he did in 1992. After that experience, the parties have rigged things even more. One example is that they took over the debates from the League of Women Voters after 1992 and changed the rules, so that it's nearly impossible now for an independent candidate to participate. Also, big-money Independents like Perot, and now possibly Bloomberg, don't really care about establishing a viable, long-term alternative. It's an ego thing for them, it seems, more than a real concern about how the system works. They think that they as individuals can run things better than the two parties. And, sadly, Ralph Nader didn't seem to care about establishing a long-term alternative in the end either.

We as a country fought a revolutionary war in order to free ourselves from a corrupt political system that didn't correspond to our genuine needs. It was an inflexible system run by the wealthy mostly for themselves. As long as the Democratic and Republican parties maintain their stranglehold on our political system, I'm not sure how much real independence and fair representation we're going to feel. Disillusioned as I might be, I still yearn idealistically for a party that acts out of true vision and strength, one that shows genuine concern for creating a just society for all. On a grey, dreary Independence Day (what a drag!), I guess I'll have to settle for being an Independent.

Happy Fourth of July.

The Golden Orchard

Combinatorial Wheel of Ramón Llull, 13th century

Liam has an interesting post right now on Ramón Llull, the 13th-century Spanish mystic, poet and philosopher. While reading about Llull's Ars, his system of mystic contemplation, and looking at the fascinating images of his combinatorial wheels, I was instantly struck by similarities to other systems developed by Jewish and Islamic mystics on the Iberian Peninsula around the same time period. I started digging around for information and, suddenly, Liam's post had revived my own interest in the history of mysticism in medieval Spain, which I began investigating about 10 years ago while living in Madrid.

Without overstating the case, I would argue that the world has rarely seen a more spiritually charged atmosphere than the one on the Iberian Peninsula in the 13th century. The most important work in Jewish mysticism, the Sefer Ha-Zohar [Book of Splendor], also known as the Zohar, was composed by Moses de Leon in Castile around 1280. Abraham Abulafia, creator of "ecstatic kabbalah," and one of the key figures in Jewish mysticism [Gershom Scholem dedicates an entire chapter to him in his landmark study Major Trends in Jewish Msyticsm], was born in Zaragoza in 1240. Abulafia had his first visions and started studying the kabbalah around 1270 in Barcelona, which was one of the major centers of kabbalah, along with Girona, just to the north. Other important kabbalists were scattered throughout Catalunya and Castile. Meanwhile, in Al-Andalus, the Moorish kingdom in the south of the peninsula, Ibn Arabi was born (Murcia, 1165) and spent the first part of his life. Arabi is one of the principle figures in the history of Islamic mysticism, and his magnum opus Futuhat is considered by some to be the major text of Sufism. Other important Sufis also thrived in Al-Andalus during that time, as Ibn Arabi discusses in his Sufis of Andalusia. Thus, some of the most important mystics in the history of Christianity, Judaism and Islam were composing some of the most important mystical texts of all time during a one-hundred year period in an area roughly the size of California.

Title page of the Zohar, Mantua edition, 1558.

(Just for good measure, this was also the time when the Knights Templar were active in Spain, and when St. Francis was walking across the country on his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella. Both the Templars and Francis had their own interesting interactions with Jews and Muslims of the time.)

But how did this Golden Age of Mysticism blossom in Spain? What brought about the Golden Orchard?

Christians probably arrived in Spain not long after the time of Christ, but there doesn't seem to have developed a tradition of mystical writing until after the conquest of the Moors. Saint Isidore did write a treatise on the allegorical meaning of numbers (Allegorise scripturae sacrae et liber numerorum), but he seems to have been an exception. Perhaps the dearth of Christian mysticism before the conquest was due to what Miguel Asín Palacios, an important scholar of Moorish Spain, called the "philosophical poverty of the Visigoths in the midst of their material plenty. Their culture, basically Biblical, had as its sources the works of some of the Holy Fathers, and did not include metaphysics." [The Mystical Philosophy of Ibn Masarra and His Followers. (E.J. Brill, 1978). A translation of the original Spanish work published in Madrid in 1914.] Early Moorish writers also commented on the apparent lack of science and philosophy in the peninsula before the conquest in 711. This is an interesting observation, as medieval mysticism was so interrelated with science, philosophy and poetry.

There are legends of Jews arriving in Spain during Biblical times (Tarshish is thought by some to have been in southern Spain), and some Jews probably came after Rome defeated Carthage in the Second Punic War, around 250 BC, but a large-scale immigration of the Jewish community to the peninsula didn't begin until after Titus' destruction of Judea in 135 AD, what we know as the Diaspora. Again, though, there seems to have been no real flowering of mysticism before the arrival of the Moors, probably for the same reasons that Christian mysticism didn't develop - the intellectual culture of the Visigoths. In addition, the Jews were often persecuted by the Visigoths and were probably just trying to survive. This persecution reached such a pitch that the Jews welcomed the Moors upon their arrival in 711.

The seeds of what I call the Golden Orchard, this time-space realm of tremendous mystical activity within the Iberian Peninsula, seem to have been planted in the 800s, with the arrival of Sufi mystics in Al-Andalus from the eastern parts of the Islamic empire. As the Moors consolidated their power on the peninsula and began to thrive economically, the fields of science, philosophy and especially poetry began to flourish throughout the kingdom.

The Jewish community, no longer persecuted as they were under the Visigoths, experienced an intellectual and cultural revival as well. A key factor was their learning of Arabic. The Moors placed great value on poetry and philosophy, and a great number of high-quality works were published, including most Greek classics which were translated into Arabic as part of an official program after the conquest. According to Jane Gerber in The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience (Free Press 1994), "[F]or the first time, Jews were exposed fully to the conceptual world of classical antiquity. . . . In this way, Arabization introduced them to an entire philosophical literature, originally written in Greek and Syriac, and to a new theological language capable of expressing new concepts. . . . Muslims and Jews both began to contemplate religious questions in a new way, thanks to the Arabic translations of Greek thought."

In addition to this Greek influence by way of translation, the Jews were also influenced by the Arabic language itself. As they wrote more and more in Arabic, it was only natural to incorporate terminology and phrasing from the Arabic culture around them. Religious terms and concepts from Sufism began to find their way into Jewish mystical works. Diana Lobel discusses this religious cross-fertilization in A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue: Philosophy and Mysticism in Bahya Ibn Paquda's Duties of the Heart (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). "Muslim Spain of the tenth through twelfth century, known as the 'Golden Age' of Hispano-Jewish poetry and letters, is a time of great convergence and cutltural creativity. Jewish courtiers such as Samuel Hanagrid are writing wine poetry; erotic Arabic poetry finds its way into the synagogue liturgy, even on the holiest days. Jewish philosophers are reading and writing philosophy in Arabic; Jews are studying with Sufi masters, integrating aesthetic practices and mystical thought into their own spiritual creativity."

Unfortunately, this "Golden Age" in Al-Andalus came to a close with the conquest of the kingdom in 1147 by the religiously intolerant Almohads, who once again began persecuting the Jews. This led to a Jewish migration to the northern Christian kingdoms. The tremendous sprouting of philosophical and mystical thought that began in the south not only survived the transition but began to blossom even more as kabbalistic centers sprang up in Barcelona, Girona and across Castile. Meanwhile, in Al-Andalus, Sufis such as Ibn Arabi continued to explore and write about their mystical paths.

Ramón Llull

These two threads, the Sufi and Kabbalistic, come together in the work of the Christian mystic Ramón Llull. Hebrew and Arabic both have numeric values for each letter of the alphabet, and Kabbalah and Sufism both have very developed mathematical-mystical systems. Gematria is the Jewish version. Abraham Abulafia, who I mentioned earlier, was the principle exponent of Gematria, and his system seems to have influenced Llull, particularly in the combinatorial wheels. Abulafia was active in the Kabbalistic circles of Gerona and Barcelona, where his system made its first appearance in 1270, not long before Llull's work. Moshe Idel, in his article "Ramon Lull and Ecstatic Kabbalah: A Preliminary Observation" (Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 51. (1988), pp. 170-174.), says that "Lull was in contact with important Jewish figures living in Barcelona, as the incipit of a lost work of his demonstrates." Llull scholars Pring-Mill and Hillgarth encouraged Idel to "pursue the line" on the "probability of the historical relationship between [Lull's theory of ars combinatoria] and the ecstatic Kabbalah," particularly the work of Abulafia.

Llull was also influenced by the work of Ibn Arabi. As Liam points out in his Llull post, the Ars was "a vast systemization of the world that had as an aim the demonstration of the relationship of all of reality to a certain number of God’s attributes or “dignities:” goodness, greatness, power, wisdom, etc. Llull's dignities are very similar to the Sufi concept of Hadras, or the one hundred names of Allah. I mentioned earlier Miguel Asín Palacios and his book The Mystical Philosophy of Ibn Masarra and His Followers (Brill 1978). Appendix VI is entitled “The Theory of the Hadras of Ibn Arabi and of the Dignities of Raymond Lull and other Analogies of the Two Systems.” Palacios says: “The terminology of the divine Dignities (Dignitates) is one of the indisputable keys of the relationship of Lull to Sufism. . . . This became completely confirmed when later the theory of Ibn Arabi about the divine names was compared with the development by Lull in his book Els cent noms de Deus and in the rest of his works. . . . Thus a comparative study of these one hundred Hadras with the Dignities of Lull leads to the full conviction that they are intimately related. First of all, one must note that Lull in his Els cent noms de Deus confesses to have written it in imitation of those [works] of the Muslims that revolve about the identical theme. . . . And if by chance there still should be a shade of doubt, Lull himself dissipates it in his Disputatio Raymundi christiani et Hamar sarraceni by putting in the mouth of the latter an enumeration of the ‘dignitates,’ almost identical in number and names with his. . . . The evidence of this imitation of the Hadras by the Dignities of Lull is reinforced when it is considered not singly but as one more case of the many which the system of Lull offers when compared with that of Ibn Arabi.”

The principle of the universe is movement... If it stops moving, it will return to non-existence. Ibn 'Arabi.

(The calligraphy is a property of Marsam Gallery Rabat - Editions Marsam, 15 avenue des Nations Unies, Rabat, Maroc)

It's not that Llull's work was not his own. As Palacios goes on to say, "Lull did not wish to be a Muslim but a sincere and very fervent Christian. For that reason the number and designation of hadras and Dignities cannot coincide. Lull chose those that do not conflict with the Christian and Catholic concept of God." Nor did Llull want to be a Jew. He simply incorporated aspects of other systems into his work, as the Jewish mystics had done in Al-Andalus. Going back even further, one can point to the influence of Christian monasticism and Gnosticism on the Sufis before they even arrived in Spain. Abraham Abulafia incoporated breathing exercises from Yoga into his own mystical technique. So the influences come and go like pollen carried by the honeybee from one field to another.

There are different kinds of trees in the Golden Orchard. But they all sway and are moved by the same wind, all watered by the same rain, and, in the end, they all reach up their branches to the same magnificent sun.

UPDATE: Liam has pointed out that today, June 26, is the Feast Day of Ramón Llull. (Some give the date as June 30.) He has, therefore, declared this Ramón Llull Week. Glad to participate. While I appreciate this sudden Llull-mania, however, I fear what will happen when the excitement passes. We will then be faced with the dreaded Llull lull.

Recent Screenings

I've been trying to catch up on some of last year's movies that I missed. No grand reviews here - just a quick run-through. Overall, looking back at 2006, I think it was one of the better years for film that we've had in a long time.

Children of Men (2006) - Directed by Alfonso Cuarón. Starring Clive Owen, Julianne Moore and Michael Caine.

This may have been my favorite film from 2006, edging out The Illusionist. Though it was nominated for three Oscars (Editing, Cinematography and Adapted Screenplay), I'm still puzzled that Children of Men didn't receive more recognition. It's just excellent filmmaking down the line: great directing, acting, cinematography, editing, and choice of material. Alfonso Cuarón is one of the best directors around for creating "atmosphere" in a film, and, more importantly, wedding it to the story. He doesn't rely on it too much, which makes the result all the more powerful. Children of Men is a fascinating and haunting science fiction set in England a few decades from now. Women, as it turns out, are no longer able to conceive. Human beings are literally dying out. Meanwhile terrorism abounds. Illegal immigrants are herded into pens. It's an apocalyptic setting that terrifies because it doesn't seem too far removed from our present-day reality. Cuarón maintains an effective balance throughout the film, however, never overstating the connections to our own situation. In tone and feel, it reminds me of those brooding, more literary sci-fi films from the late 60s / early 70s, such as Andromeda Strain, Soylent Green, and especially Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451, back before George Lucas turned the genre into a multi-billion-dollar special effects industry. The ever-watchable Clive Owen does well as a cynical former political activist who winds up getting involved in trying to help a mysteriously pregnant woman reach safe haven, navigating between terrorist groups and a prying government. Michael Caine excels as a kooky, old hippie. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.


Babel (2006) - Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Starring Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Gael García Bernal, Rinko Kikuchi.

This was an excruciating film to watch at times. It seems that González Iñárritu wants you to share in the emotional or physical pain his characters are going through. He also creates suspense so thick in some scenes [oh G-d, Cate, please move away from the window], that you want to flinch. By the time we finished watching Babel, I was exhausted. But it was also something of an exhilarating experience. The film felt new and powerful in ways that most Hollywood movies don't.

The next morning, however, after a good sleep, I started wondering about a number of plot holes. Why would she have done that? Why didn't they just do such and such? If you analyze the narrative very closely, it starts to unravel here and there with startling frequency. The emotional power I had felt the night before started to feel a little manipulative. If a writer and director don't care enough to catch glaring problems with the storyline, how much do they really care about the story itself? And, thus, the people in the story? But was Babel any less manipulative then Scorsese's The Departed? At least Babel felt like it was trying to do something innovative.

The narrative involves four different stories, three of which are directly connected: 1) A Moroccan man sells a rifle to a neighbor, which leads to disaster, because any fool knows that you can't introduce a gun into a film and not have it go off; 2) An American couple has recently lost a child and now their marriage is struggling, so, of course, like most Americans in the same situation, they head off into the middle of the Moroccan desert; 3) Upset over losing their child, the couple naturally decides to leave their two surviving children behind in California with a Mexican housekeeper. The housekeeper can't find anyone to take care of the kids so she can attend her son's wedding across the border, because Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, despite being such beautiful people, evidently have no friends or family anywhere in the Western United States. When the well-intentioned, but not necessarily judicious, housekeeper gets her crazy, gun-toting nephew to take her and the two blonde-headed offspring of Pitt-Blanchett into Mexico, trouble ensues (Imagine that!); 4) A young, deaf Japanese girl really, really wants to get laid. This is, evidently, emotionally powerful. And, believe it or not, connected to the other parts of the story. Really.

González Iñárritu may turn out to be one of this generation's great directors. Whatever the problems of Babel, it was a powerful film at times, and it felt like he was stretching what cinema can do, exploring more than most current Hollywood filmmakers. But, hey, Alejandro, pay more attention to your script next time, eh? RECOMMENDED.


The Departed (2006) - Directed by Martin Scorsese. Starring Jack Nicholson, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin.

Out of the five nominees for Best Picture last year, The Departed seemed to generate the least exciting word-of-mouth, so I was a bit surprised when it won the Oscar. (Though still being surprised by the Academy at this point in my life only shows my lack of intelligence.) I don't care for Scorsese much to begin with, so I never rushed out to see this, and I wasn't expecting much when I finally did. Lo and behold, I found it quite entertaining. At least until the last section, which goes on too long and seems to lose focus, the film sputtering to an odd close.

Jack Nicholson, who portrays a Boston mob boss named Costello, actually "acts" again rather than just hamming his way through a role, and he delivers one of his best performances in years. Matt Damon (yawn) plays Colin, who as a boy was taken under Costello's wing and now, as a grown man, has joined the police force and uses his position to tip off his boss/father figure at important moments. Leonardo DiCaprio, an actor I've never really clicked with, does an excellent job as Billy, who grew up in the same tough environment as Colin and has also wound up as a cop. Only he takes his lower-class angst and uses it to infiltrate Costello's mob. It's an elegant construction for a film, as Colin tries to figure out who the mole is in Costello's gang, while Billy tries to discover who the mole is within the police force. The tension builds up accordingly, helped along the way by a solid script that explores father-son relationships, internal boundaries of good and evil, and class differences, while serving up a good dose of action and suspense. Mark Wahlberg, who can go from dead-on delightful (I Heart Huckabees) to stiff and awkward (Planet of the Apes), offers one his better efforts and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin (my, hasn't he been busy lately) round out an excellent cast.

Scorsese can't seem to help himself with the overblown violence. Plot keywords on IMDB include: Bleeding To Death, Gash In The Face, Severed Hand, Shot In The Chest, Shot In The Head, Shot In The Face, Shot In The Forehead, Shot In The Knee, Shot To Death . . . and, well, you get the picture.

And though I enjoyed the film, I don't think The Departed deserved an Oscar for Best Picture. (But how few of them do.) It doesn't feel particularly important or new in any way, and, in fact, was a remake of a Hong Kong trilogy known in the U.S. as Internal Affairs. Babel and Children of Men were much more innovative films, and The Queen was better made. RECOMMENDED, unless you're un-American and don't like seeing people get SHOT IN THE FACE.


The Queen (2006) - Directed by Stephen Frears. Starring Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen and James Cromwell.

This may have been the most finely executed film of 2006. Well-written, well-directed, and wonderfully acted, not just by Helen Mirren but also by Michael Sheen, who does a better job as Tony Blair than Tony Blair. Despite all the accolades and great word-of-mouth, I initially ignored The Queen, because I just didn’t think I’d be interested in a film about . . . well . . . the Queen. The lives of modern-day monarchs usually lead me to either yawn or say something nasty. But I was wrong. The film has a great pace, a good sense of humor, and well-timed suspense that makes it feel almost like a political thriller. The action centers around Diana’s fatal car accident in 1997, and how the Royals deal, or don’t deal, with what happened. Meanwhile, Labour’s new Boy Wonder, only a few months after becoming Prime Minister, tries to navigate between seeming indifference on the part of the monarchy and tremendous mourning on the part of the British people. Blair senses a real crisis as public anger at the Royal Family mounts to the point where some begin to question their very reason for being. What’s the role of a monarchy in a supposedly democratic society in the 21st century? It’s an excellent question, and Frears explores it to a degree, though not as much as he could have. I thought he chickened out in the end. We’re left feeling like Her Majesty’s a pretty nice gal, though she doesn’t have a lot to say. To quote the Beatles on the same topic, circa 40 years ago. Ah, the Brits and their Queen It’s a relationship I don’t understand. Luckily, one doesn’t have to. It’s just a very good film.RECOMMENDED.


The Good Shepherd (2006) - Directed by Robert De Niro. Starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, William Hurt, Alec Baldwin (again!), Michael Gambon, Robert De Niro, Timothy Hutton, etc.

I like a good spy story, and this tale of the origins of the CIA and what a life of espionage can do to a person was pretty good. Some people may find the movie slow, but I really appreciated De Niro taking the time to develop his characters and the plot. It's a stellar cast, though the two main leads, Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie, were probably the least interesting of the whole bunch, particularly Jolie, who seems miscast or uninterested. Eric Roth, who wrote the screenplay, seems to have done his homework on the CIA, as I recognized from my own reading several actual episodes from the history of the agency, and the overall atmosphere seems close to reality. The ending's a little disappointing, but I enjoyed the well-executed and thoughtful ride to get there. RECOMMENDED.


The Good German (2006) - Directed by Steven Soderbergh. Starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, Tobey Maguire.

This is what you call a "Failed Experiment." It has so much going for it: a star cast, good acting, tremendous cinematography, an interesting story, moody atmosphere, intelligence, humor, etc. But it's just not a very good film. Everything feels stiff and out of rhythm. It's hard to connect with the characters. We always seem to be on the outside, looking in. Basically, Soderbergh couldn't convert his IDEAS into an actual MOVIE.

But they were good ideas. Unlike the 95% of critics who savaged The Good German (and some of them really, really hated it), I think the film has a lot to offer. I've found myself talking and thinking about it much more than other more successful films. First of all, nobody's ever come closer to capturing 1940s cinema - except, of course, 1940s directors. Soderbergh pays homage to noirish classics such as Casablanca, The Third Man, and A Foreign Affair, combining amazingly accurate 40's style black and white photography (actually color film with the color drained out) with real footage of post-war Berlin. But he's not just content with homage; he also subverts various myths about World War II and turns filmmaking conventions of the time on their head. (A couple of ignorant critics assumed he was making fun of 40s films, but this is so obviously a work of love by someone incredibly knowledgeable about cinema of that era.) Clooney, for example, is no tough Humphrey Bogart, but is always getting his ass kicked by the bad guys. At any given moment, everything can look and feel like we're deep in an old black and white movie, then, suddenly, there's a brutal sex scene or language that would never have come out of the mouth of Bogart or Bacall. He uses our nostalgia for and expectations of old movies to slap us across the face with a sandal. We're jolted, at times, into thinking in new ways about history and cultural memory.

Tobey Maguire delivers a particularly inspired turn as your All-American GI who loves Mom's homemade pies but who turns out to be, uh, not quite what he seems. Another interesting and daring aspect of The Good German, and one that wasn't mentioned in any of the many reviews I read, is its take on the Holocaust narrative. What would a Jew do in order to survive in Nazi Germany? What would a Nazi-hunting Jewish D.A. from New York do to track down some of the bad guys in post-war Berlin? What would the U.S. Government do to acquire Nazi technology and expertise? These kinds of questions, and others like them, are at the heart of the film. The Good German may be shot in black and white, but it's moral universe is as far from black and white as possible.

In the end, as I said, the film just doesn't work. Or, it works in the mind, but not necessarily on the screen. But, hey, it's got secret Nazi rocket bases built into mountains, espionage, murder, blackmail, and the exotic and bizarre milieu of Berlin in 1945. And I give Soderbergh kudos for experimenting. NOT REALLY RECOMMENDED, per se, but film buffs might want to take a look.


Casino Royale (2006) - Directed by Martin Campbell. Starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Judi Dench.

I'm a Sean Connery Bond man. But I'd join others in saying that this is probably one of the best Bond efforts since those glory days of the series. Didn't like the overblown opening chase sequence, but I know others loved it. Daniel Craig makes a good Bond - tougher, definitely, than the last few playboys, and yet also more human. What may have surprised me most was that the writing - for a Bond film - was much better than it has been in a long time. It allowed Craig to really do some acting. I look forward to the next installment - which hasn't been the case for a long, long time. RECOMMENDED.

Inside Man (2006) - Directed by Spike Lee. Starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe.

A solid bank-heist thriller with enough Spike Lee touches here and there to remind you that he’s at the helm of this otherwise typical Hollywood affair. It’s a good cast, though Clive Owen seems a bit of a throwaway. Foster has some pretty delicious lines as a fixer for the elites of New York City. If you’re in the mood for a fairly intelligent heist film, this is pretty good stuff. RECOMMENDED.


Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) - Directed by Chuck E. Cheese. Starring Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Bill Nighy.

A veritable roller-coaster ride. But who in the hell wants to be stuck on a damn roller-coaster for two and half hours!?!? The kids are upchucking chili dogs and cotton candy; grown men are in hysterics; teenage girls are fainting or going into epileptic fits; you’re dizzy, hot, and nauseated; your head hurts and your arms are bruised from being slammed around endlessly; and the damn noise and excessive motion JUST WON’T STOP!!! For the life of me, I can’t figure out the appeal of this series. It’s brutally violent, not just in the action on screen but even down to its baseball-bat-to-the-side-of-the-head editing. But its Disney and it’s all in good fun and parents let their children watch this crap and buy all the tie-ins at McDonalds and then wonder why kids are stupid, fat and gunning each other down at school. By G-d, it’s the bloody END OF CIVILIZATION!

But very, very profitable, so expect it to NEVER END.

Bob Dylan - Masters Of War

I'm a day late (and always a dollar short), but yesterday was Bob Dylan's birthday. He's 66 years old.

Though I haven't listened to him as much in the last decade, I can't think of another literary/musical/artisitc figure who's had more impact on my life. And one of the first songs that made an impression on me was this one. I remember thinking, "Wow, I didn't know you could sing about things like that!"

The video is over the top and predictably anti-Bush. Not much nuance. No exploration of others who might be involved in promoting war. But hey, I'll take what YouTube offers.

I'd like to dedicate this to the Democratic National Party. Thanks for nothing.

Masters of War

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Reading the Candidates

La pluma es la lengua del alma.

[The pen is the tongue of the soul.]

Miguel de Cervantes

I don't know what got into me, but I just read four books in a row by some of our current presidential candidates. That's not something I've ever done before, or even considered doing. But I'd heard that Barack Obama was a good writer, and I was curious about his candidacy, so I decided to try out The Audacity of Hope. It was interesting enough that when I finished, I thought I'd check out Bill Richardson's book, Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life, because I wanted to know more about him, and the media certainly wasn't going to tell me anything. They seem incapable of dealing with more than three candidates in each party, and Obama and Hillary have sucked up the vast majority of the coverage anyway. [I did some research on that several weeks ago and discovered that they were getting about 50% of all media coverage of the 19 presidential candidates from both parties.] So, two books down. I was on a roll. Hell, I thought, I might as well read John Edwards' book, Four Trials, since I was also considering him as a possibility. Finally, I went for broke and decided to try Hillary Clinton's Living History. I'm still not sure if that was out of fairness or self-flagellation. I'm not a Hillary fan. But I realized that I might have to consider her in a general election, so I thought I should give her a chance. Who knows, maybe I'd really grow to like her.

It was an interesting process, and I would recommend picking up a book by one or two of the people you're considering. They don't always answer the questions you may have about them. Richardson, for example, says next to nothing about immigration, and I was curious to see what he of all people had to offer, because he's part Mexican, and because he's had to deal with the issue head-on as Governor of New Mexico. Hillary ends her book with her election to the Senate, so there was nothing about her support (her continued and irritating support) for the war in Iraq. Edwards' book only deals with politics obliquely through the four court cases he talks about, which was both a relief and a disappointment. Whatever. I can continue to read about their policies and ideas in the press, watch debates, etc. But now I feel like I have a better sense of where they're coming from.

All four write about their backgrounds growing up, which I found illuminating. Hillary turns out to have been a Goldwater Girl and President of the Young Republicans at Wellesley her freshman year. Obama and his idealistic white mother move to Indonesia only months after Suharto begins his brutal 30-year dictatorship. Richardson was born in the U.S. but lived in Mexico City until he was 13, when he is shipped off to an exclusive prep school in Massachusetts. It was the 1950s and he was half-Mexican, but he survives and actually thrives in such an environment because he turned out to be an excellent baseball player. In fact, he had a chance to play professionally but was ultimately persuaded to attend college instead.

Most importantly, perhaps, I felt like each candidate had a very distinctive voice. Obama and Richardson don't strike me as being far apart in terms of policy, but there was a profound difference between the two in terms of tone and style. And I think the difference is important. As Cervantes said, "The pen is the tongue of the soul." You can tell a lot by a person's writing, even when they don't do all the writing, as in the case of Richardson and Edwards, who both had co-authors. The figures I only knew about from media soundbites and scattered articles seem much more fleshed out to me now, more human.

So, I offer a few thoughts on these four books, and then I include a series of reviews from Publisher's Weekly as a sort of counter-balance to my own opinions.

Barack Obama: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream - Crown (2006) 384 pages.

I started reading these books because of a single question: Is Barack Obama really that good of a writer? The answer is yes. At least for the most part. He does best when talking about his own personal story, and when giving history about something - the Senate or about the African-American experience, etc. He's got a good eye for detail. I particularly liked when he describes his first day in the Senate chambers. When it comes to policies and ideas for the future, however, his writing becomes less interesting. Which also sums up many of the ideas themselves. Publisher's Weekly describes his policies as "tepid Clintonism," which I thought was spot on. His style of politics may be fresh, but I don't think you're going to find much difference, in the end, between Barack and Hillary. Actually, that holds true for Richardson as well. They're all three Clintonites - one is married to Bill, the other worked for and strongly supported Bill, and the new kid on the block ain't gonna rock the boat. Edwards may be a little different, though it's hard to tell from his book, since he doesn't focus on policy at all. I get a sense here and there that he might be a little more Left on globalization and economic issues, for example, and he seems to be positioning himself that way right now, but you can't really judge by his book.

Ultimately, I had mixed feelings about Barack's book. I liked aspects of it very much, but I also found it uneven and somewhat disappointing. In the chapter called Race, for example, he writes a long, eloquent section on the hardships faced by African-Americans. But then he follows it up with a shallow (and questionable) throw-away piece on immigration. He also seems overly cautious, so concerned about his image as a fresh, new face willing to reach out to everybody that he can't stake out any territory. His desire to find "common ground" with others sounds real nice, and, yeah, like most Americans I'm tired of the bitter partisanship of the last 20 years, but I left his book feeling like he could slide around politically and not take stands when stands are needed. Only when he shifts on his politics, it won't be a calculated ploy to get elected - like Hillary gets tarred with - he'll portray it as something noble, a decision reached after searching his conscience in order to find that mystical place where all Americans love one another and want to work together to make the Republic strong. In other words, he'll paint it prettier, but it may still be an old rusted car he's trying to sell you.

Bill Richardson: Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life - Putnam Adult (2005) 384 pages.

Richardson is kind of the anti-Obama. His style is rough and tumble, straight-ahead action. "I went to Iraq. I met Sadaam. I negotiated the release of the prisoners. And then I got the hell out of there. Then I went to North Korea. A helicopter went down with two of our soldiers. I negotiated the release of the prisoners. Then I got the hell out of there. I ran for Congress. One day, the President called and said he had an emergency. So, I went to Afghanistan. I met with the Taliban. I negotiated the release of the prisoners. Then I got the hell out of there." To be honest, after Barack's cautious prose and ideas, I found Richardson's book to be a bit of a relief. And it was in the light of all this action that I realized how precious Obama can sound. So reading the two books helped me understand both men a bit better. Barack's a thinker, Bill's a man of action. He's not going to paint the rusted car all pretty for you. You're going to buy the damn car, and you might as well get used to the rust, because that's all you're gonna get. It just has to be that way in order to get things done. What these things are that need to get done, well, who knows. Probably to get some of our prisoners released.

The problem is that Richardson's book can get a little tiring after a while. Confidence, shall we say, is not his problem. And while I might like his James Bond schtick, I did start to miss Obama's thoughtfulness. What are you going to do? On the other hand, I prefer Richardson's take on finding that elusive common ground. Like Obama, he talks about the importance of working towards agreement, but his vast experience in negotiating with dictators points in another direction. You have to know exactly what you want and be willing to fight for it. Then, you establish a dialog and a bond of trust. And somehow, despite his bluster, people trust Bill Richardson. That's why he keeps going into these hot spots to negotiate with some pretty hardcore people. He's been described as charismatic, and he must be to some degree to sit down with Fidel Castro and smoke cigars and talk baseball in Spanish and then work out a deal to get some prisoners released. He made me think of Lyndon Johnson at times. He's a politician. He knows he's a politician. He likes being a politician. While he thinks it's a noble calling in the end, he sure does love the game. And I can actually appreciate that. It's the ones who want me to think they're all noble and caring who I don't trust.

Richardson's resume is very impressive - important early committee work on Human Rights, 14 years as U.S. Representative, Secretary of Energy, Ambassador to the U.N., two terms as Governor of New Mexico, etc. But I was disappointed in the end by some of his policies. He writes at length on how as Minority Whip he helped get NAFTA pushed through, and he considers it one of his great successes. I was hoping that by 2005, he might look back and talk about the mixed blessing NAFTA has been. Is it just coincidence, for example, that the massive immigration of Mexicans to the U.S. started right after NAFTA was implemented? Personally, I don't think so. The Mexican economy collapsed, especially the longstanding and vital rural agricultural economy, driving millions of people into the big cities and across the border. NAFTA played a role in this. To what degree? But Richardson simply counts it as another notch on his belt and moves on.

My sense after reading the book was that Richardson would be a strong president, but not one I would be happy with at times. But then, when have I ever been happy with a president? At least, I think, he would be somewhat entertaining - I found myself really enjoying writing about his book and had to go back and cut a lot out of this section. That says something.

John Edwards: Four Trials - Simon & Schuster (2003) 256 pages.

Edwards' book is quite different from the others. It definitely affected me the most emotionally, as the four court cases he writes about all involved pretty horrific situations. In one story, a little girl gets caught on the faulty drain of a public wading pool, and literally has her guts sucked out through her rectum. She survives, but has major medical complications, as you can imagine. The company who manufactured the drain disclaims any responsibility for what happened, even though it's eventually brought to light that several other children across the U.S. have died and been seriously injured by the company's product. Edwards is painting himself as the guy fighting on behalf of the little people against the big corporations. And though it's obvious what he's doing, I found the book compelling, especially as he talks about each case in relation to the challenges he's faced in his own life, from growing up poor to losing his son. At one time, I had an idea of Edwards as just some pretty boy trial lawyer, and I think the book definitely challenges that assumption. Of course, Edwards' book may only be the equivalent of one of his well-constructed closing statements that helped him become a millionaire lawyer, but it worked on me. As a juror of sorts, I wound up believing him.

Four Trials reads pretty well. I like books and movies about court cases (though I've never been able to read more than a single page of a John Grisham novel), and I found each of the four trials Edwards talks about to be fascinating. He does a good job of portraying the real people going through incredibly difficult times and how these kinds of court cases affect individuals, communities and big companies. He takes you through the ups and down of each trial and weaves in some good little observations here and there. The downside of all this, is that you don't get much about Edwards' political views. How would he handle the crisis in our educational system? Well, he'd fight on behalf of the little guy. What about Health Care? Well, he'd fight on behalf of the little guy. You get the picture. On the other hand, having just read two books in a row by politicians talking a lot about themselves, I found Four Trials to be a welcome break. I didn't expect it to be so haunting, however. Even now, a month later, thinking of that little girl trapped in the wading pool really upsets me. In the end, the book is really about Edwards' character. It's up to you to decide whether or not he's done a good job of making his case.

Hillary Clinton: Living History - Simon & Schuster (2003) 592 pages

More than anything, Hillary's book needed some serious editing. At 592 pages, it's much longer than the other three, and I don't think the added length means added value in this case. It was a tough slog, and, to be honest, I wound up skimming through a couple of the later chapters when they started sounding like previous ones - mainly detailed accounts of overseas trips she made as First Lady. One gets the feeling that she had copies of her itineraries by her side while writing the book and just included everything she could think of for each stop along the way. The length might not have been such a factor if she didn't spend 90% of the book talking about her eight years in the White House and so little about everything else. Many of the most interesting aspects of the book - her childhood, her time at Wellesley, her meeting Bill, etc. - are given short shrift, while these damn trips she made to Asia take up a zillion pages.

I enjoyed reading about her childhood and her time in college - I thought these gave me some slight glimpse into who she is - but she just doesn't stay with them very long. And I walk away from the book feeling like she barely cracked open the window on her life, despite all those pages. Living History struck me, in the end, as a reserved book, cool in tone. It also feels pretty scripted at times. There were three or four occasions when she mentioned something that didn't quite feel right, kind of a product placement moment. The most genuine and emotional parts of the book are, interestingly, about her meeting Bill Clinton in graduate school and what she went through after he admitted the Monica Lewinsky affair to her. The writing in these sections seemed much more alive and real. I wasn't, admittedly, a big fan of the Clintons, but I did gain a better appreciation for their complex relationship as husband and wife after reading this book. She also has a good collection of photos, including this fun one of her and bearded, hippie Bill in 1970.

In addition to spending too much time on her White House years, though I guess that was the point of the book, Hillary also goes off way too much on the vast right-wing conspiracy. This is her chance to get back at all of the bad guys, and she hammers away at them over and over. It's not that I disbelieve what she has to say, but after a while I found myself thinking, "Christ, let go of it, why don't you? We get the point." She seems pretty seriously bitter about the whole thing. Who can blame her? But the combination of this palpable bitterness and the emotional coolness of the book didn't exactly turn me into a Hillary supporter. She's intelligent. She cares about children. She's concerned about women around the world. She loves Bill. She loves Chelsea. She hates certain conspiring, right-wing Republicans. These things become clear in the book. She would probably make a fine president. But after about 600 pages, I'm not sure I really know much more about her. I found myself thinking of Gertrude Stein's famous quip about Oakland: "The trouble is that when you get there, there isn't any there there."

Publisher's Weekly Reviews of the Books

Obama's Audacity of Truth

Illinois's Democratic senator illuminates the constraints of mainstream politics all too well in this sonorous manifesto. Obama (Dreams from My Father) castigates divisive partisanship (especially the Republican brand) and calls for a centrist politics based on broad American values. His own cautious liberalism is a model: he's skeptical of big government and of Republican tax cuts for the rich and Social Security privatization; he's prochoice, but respectful of prolifers; supportive of religion, but not of imposing it. The policy result is a tepid Clintonism, featuring tax credits for the poor, a host of small-bore programs to address everything from worker retraining to teen pregnancy, and a health-care program that resembles Clinton's Hillary-care proposals. On Iraq, he floats a phased but open-ended troop withdrawal. His triangulated positions can seem conflicted: he supports free trade, while deploring its effects on American workers (he opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement), in the end hoping halfheartedly that more support for education, science and renewable energy will see the economy through the dilemmas of globalization. Obama writes insightfully, with vivid firsthand observations, about politics and the compromises forced on politicians by fund-raising, interest groups, the media and legislative horse-trading. Alas, his muddled, uninspiring proposals bear the stamp of those compromises.

Richardson's Between Worlds

A charismatic politician with a standout résumé, in 2008 Governor Richardson may become the first Hispanic-American on a presidential ticket—at least if he has anything to say about it. In this campaign pamphlet, er, autobiography, Richardson lays out the highlights of his professional career, documenting how, after gaining a taste for politics in college and finaglinghis way into the international affairs program at the Fletcher School, he worked his way up from Capitol Hill staffer to U.S. congressman, United Nations ambassador, head of the Department of Energy and now governor of New Mexico. Along the way, he developed a knack for negotiating the release of prisoners from some of the world's most notorious dictators, among them Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro, work that led him to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times. Richardson prefaces his account of these triumphs with a short chapter on his life in Mexico City, where he lived with his father, a prominent American businessman, and his mother, a Mexican secretary, until he was 12, but the focus of this book is his life in America. Though the autobiography is clearly designed as part of Richardson's long-term campaign for re-election in New Mexico and for national consideration by the DNC, it manages to provide a sense of his most famous characteristics: his blunt, disarming humor; his glad-handing chumminess; and his dogged ambition. "Some politicians say they feel uncomfortable talking about power, as if it's the nasty relation a family wants to keep hidden from public view," he writes. Richardson isn't one of those politicians, and it's his straight talk about how he got the power he has, and how he likes to flex it, that saves this book from being one long commercial.

Edwards' Four Trials

In his campaigns for the U.S. Senate (successful) and the Democratic presidential nomination (struggling), Edwards has defiantly celebrated his earlier career as a trial lawyer. Following that instinct, Edwards has chosen to cast his campaign memoir as an account of four of his courtroom experiences. Four Trials is brimming with Clintonian empathy for regular folks, and Edwards is at his best in his endearing portraits of the victims he represented in medical malpractice and personal injury lawsuits. He also displays a keen understanding of the psychology of a jury, which he calls "a microcosm of democracy." Edwards weaves in recollections of his youth as the son of a mill worker, his rise to prominence as a lawyer, his dedicated family life and the death of his son in a car accident. But he mostly sticks to the details of the cases; he omits almost entirely his years in the Senate and his plans for the presidency. Edwards can tell a good yarn, and at times this book works as a courtroom drama. But it suffers from shoddy, platitudinous prose. The book is chiefly of interest for the way it manifests Edwards's strategy to present himself as an advocate for the downtrodden to his new jury, the American electorate.

Clinton's Living History

Whether or not you believe that the Clintons were victims of what Hillary calls a "vast right-wing conspiracy," this memoir has enough information and personality to appeal to people on both sides of the political fence. Most will not be surprised by Clinton's reading style, as it is similar (though not nearly as formal) to the manner in which she has delivered many television addresses. Her Midwestern accent is evenly pitched and pleasant. She easily laughs at herself, and fluctuations in her delivery render her emotions nearly palpable. Indeed, the casual straightforwardness of her delivery will engender a sense of trust and respect in listeners. Though she does not offer much new material, she is adept at disclosing many "backstage" details-from the personal, like her inner feelings about the Lewinsky scandal ("the most devastating, shocking and hurtful experience of my life"), to the humorous, like the time a mischievous Boris Yeltsin tried to coax her into sampling moose-lip soup. Her devotion to Chelsea, Bill and to her country feels genuine, as do her hopes for future. All in all, her infectious sense of optimism and unwavering energy shine through in her delivery and will leave listeners with a new respect for the former First Lady.

The Bill Richardson Comedy Hour (or Minute)

Posting these ads is not meant as an endorsement. I just thought it was refreshing to see a presidential candidate doing positive campaign ads that highlight his credentials in a humorous way. Nothing nasty aimed at his opponents. No fake-sounding promises. No vomit-inducing sentimentality. Simple, slightly weird, and effective.

Crazy About You, Baby

"When I think of the glory days of American film, at its speediest and most velvety, I think of Barbara Stanwyck." Anthony Lane

Barbara Stanwyck was born in Brooklyn, New York, 100 years ago this July, and Anthony Lane has penned a substantial homage to her in the April 30,2007 issue of The New Yorker: "Lady Be Good: A centenary season of Barbara Stanwyck." I highly recommend the article.

Back in 2001, La Reina and I started an ongoing movie marathon; we've watched over 1,000 films since then, many of them classics from the 1930s to 1950s . The two biggest discoveries for us among the great Hollywood actors have been William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck. They were names we knew, but at the beginning of the 21st century, they just didn't have the same reputation as Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn, etc. I hope Lane's major article, and the retrospective of Stanwyck's career currently taking place at the Brooklyn Academy of Music cinema, will help return her to the Hollywood Pantheon, because I believe she was something special.

Here's Lane: "To addicts of old Hollywood, as to pining critics, no actress delivered a more accomplished body of work; to the general public, however, her name is fading into the past. All we have of Stanwyck is a collection of films—but what a collection. . . . Was there any other actress who had appeared both in a silent movie—Broadway Nights — and in “Dynasty”? To raise the stakes a little, was there any other actress who encompassed so many chapters of what we take to be the history of Hollywood?"

Lane's central theme of the article deals with Stanwyck's toughness, both on screen and in real life. Here's a bit of biography from the article:

[Stanwyck's] real name was Ruby Katherine Stevens. The last of five children, she was two years old when her mother, Catherine, died after stepping off a streetcar, falling, and cracking her head on the curb. Her father, a bricklayer named Byron, waited a couple of weeks, long enough to see his wife interred, then took off to work on the Panama Canal. With that, he vanished from history.

Ruby and her brother Byron were taken up by an older sister, Mildred, who shunted them from one foster family to the next. So tough was that upbringing, and such was Stanwyck’s determination not to milk it for sympathy, that, of all the major actresses, she is the hardest to imagine as a child. By the time she arrived in movies, she seemed to know more of the world than anyone around her, enough to make audiences take her on trust.

Mildred was a showgirl, and Ruby liked to follow in her slipstream, picking up the moves. She left school at thirteen, and two years later she was earning her keep in the chorus at the Strand Roof, high above Times Square, shifting soon to a production of “Ziegfeld Follies” at the New Amsterdam.

Stanwyck as a Ziegfeld Girl, early 1920s.

My only criticism of Lane's thoughtful homage is that he goes on too much about her toughness and misses something essential about her screen presence. It's not vulnerability, but something else. Her Brooklyn street smarts mixed with a kind of animal warmth. It flares up in her eyes. Unlike a typical Hollywood "goddess," with ethereal good looks and an unreachable star quality, Stanwyck managed to stay real and human on the screen. She was more three-dimensional: A tough - and in her comedies, fun - Irish girl from Brooklyn. No small feat in the Hollywood star machine.

I also can't think of any other actress who had Stanwyck's range. Katherine Hepburn comes to mind, because they both moved easily between comedy and drama, but it's hard to imagine Connecticut girl Hepburn in film noir classics like Double Indemnity and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. And she certainly couldn't compare with Stanwyck in westerns. In fact, the Brooklyn showgirl was so good at them, that she was inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1973 for "Outstanding Contribution to the West Through Motion Pictures."

Lane talks at length about her variety of roles, and suggests that it may be, ironically, one reason her star has faded: "Stanwyck’s greatest strength, in other words—her range—was also the reason that she is impossible to tie down and tame. No genre was beyond her, and no one movie sums her up."

No, there isn't one movie to sum her up. But I'll offer a few that showcase the special screen presence of one of Hollywood's greatest actresses.

The Essential Stanwyck

The Lady Eve (1941) - Written and Directed by Preston Sturges. With Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn, William Demarest and Eric Blore.

Roger Ebert chose this as one of his 100 Great Movies. I suggest reading his entire review, but here's a taste:

If I were asked to name the single scene in all of romantic comedy that was sexiest and funniest at the same time, I would advise beginning at six seconds past the 20-minute mark in Preston Sturges' "The Lady Eve," and watching as Barbara Stanwyck toys with Henry Fonda's hair in an unbroken shot that lasts three minutes and 51 seconds.

Stanwyck plays an adventuress who has lured a rich but unworldly young bachelor to her cabin on an ocean liner, and is skillfully tantalizing him. She reclines on a chaise. He has landed on the floor next to her. "Hold me tight!'' she says, holding him tight -- allegedly because she has been frightened by a snake. Now begins the unbroken shot. Her right arm cradles his head, and as she talks she toys with his earlobe and runs her fingers through his hair. She teases, kids and flirts with him, and he remains almost paralyzed with shyness and self-consciousness. And at some point during this process, she falls for him. . . .

Although the movie would be inconceivable without Fonda, "The Lady Eve'' is all Stanwyck's; the love, the hurt and the anger of her character provide the motivation for nearly every scene, and what is surprising is how much genuine feeling she finds in the comedy. Watch her eyes as she regards Fonda, in all of their quiet scenes together, and you will see a woman who is amused by a man's boyish shyness and yet aroused by his physical presence. At first she loves the game of seduction, and you can sense her enjoyment of her own powers. Then she is somehow caught up in her own seduction. There has rarely been a woman in a movie who more convincingly desired a man.

Brilliantly written and directed by Sturges, this is one of the greatest comedies of all time. Coburn and Stanwyck as father & daughter card sharks. Henry Fonda as the easy mark - a wealthy but nerdy young man sailing back home after studying snakes in the Amazon. Wickedly funny. And the scene that Ebert describes between Stanwyck and Fonda may be one of my all-time favorites.

Double Indemnity (1944) - Directed by Billy Wilder. Written by Wilder and Raymond Chandler. Starring Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and E.G. Robinson.

"I'm crazy about you, baby." Fred MacMurray to Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity.

One of the first and best examples of film noir. Also chosen by Ebert for his 100 Great Movies. Read his review. Even in a horrid blonde wig, Stanwyck is the ultimate femme fatale. Her ankle alone is enough to drive insurance salesman Fred MacMurray to murder for her, and, hell, I probably would've done the same. The two come up with a great plan, but E.G. Robinson, as MacMurray's boss at the insurance firm, smells a rat. Superb filmmaking and a great ride.

Ball of Fire (1941) - Directed by Howard Hawks. Written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. Starring Stanwyck, Gary Cooper and S.Z. Sakall.

Sugarpuss O'Shea and the studious professors

Okay, this one's not on Ebert's list of 100 Great Movies, but it is on mine. It's also one of American Film Institutes 100 Greatest Comedies, and Anthony Lane talks about it a lot in his article. Several professors have been living a mostly secluded life in a New York townhouse for the past nine years, working on a major encyclopedia. Professor Bertram Potts, played by Gary Cooper, is in charge of language and grammar, and he's discovered that his section on slang has already gone out of date since the project began. He decides to venture out into the city to copy down the new slang he hears, eventually winding up in a nightclub, where he encounters Sugarpuss O'Shea (Barbara Stanwyck). She happens to be engaged to a mobster who's just been arrested. The police are looking for her, so the mob guys need to hide her away. What better place than among a bunch of nerdy old bookworms?! Except, of course, that one of them happens to be Gary Cooper. Especially fun and funny film for people who take their encyclopedias and word usage seriously. This was Billy Wilder's last screenplay before he began directing his own films, and he and Charles Brackett crafted a gem. Howard Hawks also directed Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940), an amazing hat trick of screwball comedy that has never been equaled.

Here's a great clip from the movie, the scene that Anthony Lane talks about at the opening of his article.

Some Other Great Stanwycks

Meet John Doe (1941) - The second movie Stanywck and Cooper made in 1941, this one a classic directed by Frank Capra. An excellent film about politics and the media.
Christmas in Connecticut (1945) - You don't have to wait until Christmas to watch this delightful comedy. Stanwyck at her most charming. I wrote about it in my Christmas Meme a few months ago.
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) - A brooding and underrated film noir. Kirk Douglas makes his film debut, playing an alcoholic D.A. married to the scheming Stanwyck. Van Helfin and Lizabeth Scott round out the cast.
To Please a Lady (1950) - Clark Gable was the King, the He-Man of He-Men. He's plays a struggling race car driver in this one. Stanwyck plays a journalist. Whatever the King dishes out, Stanwyck gives right back. Not a great film, but it's a lot of fun watching these two work together.
Executive Suite (1954) - William Holden and Barbara Stanwyck are reunited in this excellent big business thriller. The all-star cast also includes Fredric March, June Allyson, Walter Pidgeon, Shelly Winter and Paul Douglas. Directed by Robert Wise, written by Ernest Lehman and produced by John Houseman. An unheralded gem.

Stanwyck in 1937.
In her films, she faced down the schemings of weak men, got a laugh, and vented no pity.
The New Yorker