Clybourne Park

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clybourne_Park

Melanie and I saw "Clybourne Park" tonight, the 2012 Tony winning and 2011 Pulitzer Prize winning play. We loved it. Engaging and "thought-provoking" in the true sense. It gives you believable situations, real characters and dialogue, without supplying answers to the questions raised.

The show is surprisingly funny with amazing and brilliant conversations that wander off into non-sequiturs which circle back into poignantly still moments. It uses silence well, it's Miles Davis, the pauses are pregnant.

It's almost brilliant, but it's not perfect.

There are devices introduced which are never resolved. Are they MacGuffins? No. They don't detract from the main storyline to enhance it, and they have no satisfying conclusions themselves. (The trunk. The son's letter.) So why are they there?

On the surface "Clybourne Park" is about race relations, the awkward misunderstandings between races, the embarrassing attempts and failures to find common ground. Cleverly it shows how, for all our enlightened modern progress, we're still stuck.

What elevates the play is it's really about the human impasse, how all people, even couples, vibrant and dynamic, know each other and communicate but don't connect. We see lots of communicating but not so much communication. It's about the inability of people to understand each other.

Alain and Kacie saw it a couple of months ago and I asked them recently what they thought. I think their reactions were like ours, that it was good but not great. At the time I was surprised they said that, from the reviews I thought it would be astonishing

Now that I've seen it, I agree with them. The play has so much, yet it somehow misses the mark. It's ALMOST there, but falls just short. On a scale of ten, I give it a nine. I think Alain might give it an eight, Kacie about the same.

"Clybourne Park" is a fantastic play - and it's so great to have a modern Broadway play worth talking about - and I recommend seeing it. But it's just short of a classic.


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Shane

I finally got around to watching “Shane” over the weekend, I’d never seen it before, this classic of the genre. It’s one of Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” and I’ve had it on my Netflix streaming queue for a few months and finally played it.

I should say I’m not much of a Westerns fan, never was, even as a kid. They always seemed dull and hokey to me. I remember liking “Rooster Cogburn” (though I don’t remember it now) and I think I liked “The Shootist,” but I don’t remember liking any other John Wayne movies. I never got into the John Ford Westerns or the more popular Westerns with people like Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper.

Westerns always struck me as hypocritical in the same way organized religion is hypocritical, preaching a morality that's unattainable. Westerns and The Church had their peak in America at around the same time; coincidence? Or are they cut from the same rawhide? (Ouch.)

The Westerns I’d see as a kid (mostly on TV) seemed to be from another era, one I couldn’t relate to; not because they were set in the 1800s, but because their morality and their codes didn’t resonate with me. I was more attracted to the counter-culture, even before I knew what the counter-culture was, and Westerns of the 40s, 50s and early 60s were The Culture. (I have photographs of myself at 11 or 12 wearing headbands, bleached bell-bottoms, and love beads. I was very cute. My favorite Halloween costume was a Hippie. My parents, New-England Catholics, used to stare at me with uncomfortable smiles and shake their heads. They never really stopped, come to think of it.) I picked up a DVD of “The Wild Bunch” maybe ten or fifteen years ago because it seemed like the kind of deconstructionist Western I’d get into, but I never got past the half-way point. (I need to give that one another shot, I think I'd like it if I saw all of it.)

I rarely watched Western TV shows either. I hated “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza.” I did like “F Troop,” but does that count? I love “Blazing Saddles” but can you call that a Western? (Can you call “Young Frankenstein” a horror flick?)

On the other hand, I LOVED (still do) “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” I also liked the TV show it inspired, “Alias Smith and Jones,” both the first season with Pete Duel, and the second season after Duel's suicide featuring the less-charismatic Roger Davis. As a tot I liked “The Rifleman” starring Chuck Connors. I’m not sure why that one appealed to me when none of the others did. Maybe it was the co-star, the Winchester rifle, so perfect, graceful and iconic, still my favorite rifle of all time. (You mean you don’t have a favorite rifle?)

A few years ago I watched “The Magnificent Seven” during a Movie Night and I enjoyed that. And I’m watching the Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns for the first time, those are good. I like “Unforgiven” and “Silverado” and “True Grit” (not sure if I saw the original though) and “Dances With Wolves” and “Maverick,” so you can’t say I’m against the genre. I like “Westworld,” but I guess that doesn’t count, it's more sci-fi. Even “Maverick” might not be a “true” Western, more of an action-comedy.

The point is, even though I’m not against the genre, I’m not a Westerns fan, I don’t identify with them the way other people do. So take what I say about “Shane” with a grain of salt.

I hate “Shane,” just hate it.

This is a classic? Really?! Why?!

This was a popular movie when it was released. That means a lot of people liked it and recommended it. Why?! Granted it’s outdated today, but it’s also corny and boring. There’s nothing “real” about it. It’s just another tired retelling of the same fantasy, overripe – no, rotting - with the Western Code.

I read Ebert’s review afterwards and even his interest seems to be more about what was happening underneath the movie rather than what was going on in it. He likes it for the things hinted at but not addressed: the unconsummated attraction between Shane and the wife, the idea that Shane is doomed to go from town-to-town getting into the same conflict because he’s ultimately damaged, and the way Shane seems unable to engage with people in a healthy, intimate way. Ebert’s interest seems more about what the movie says of attitude of the 1950s than what the movie is itself. That kind of social critiquing is valid and often interesting, but it doesn’t help me appreciate this movie any more.

Shane reminds me of Joe DiMaggio. People used to idolize DiMaggio because he never showed emotion on the field, he kept it to himself with the grace of a real man, never exploded in anger or frustration. I look at that behavior and I think, repressed repressed repressed. It’s unhealthy to be so self-contained, it’s unrealistic, phony, and insincere. Here’s Shane, a bigger-than-life movie personification of the same values, and it pisses me off because the movie tries to sell that as the way a real man should be. It’s unnatural and unattainable. I’m NOT saying you shouldn’t help people or be selfless; I’m saying the total qualities that make up the Shane character are laughably inhuman.

Lenny Bruce talked about the lie we were told (in his opinion) about Jacqueline Kennedy’s reaction when John Kennedy was shot beside her. We’re told she tried to gather up the fragments of his brain from the back of the car in a selfless effort to help him. Bruce had a different interpretation. He said she was trying to get away, a perfectly normal and healthy human response to danger. The Secret Service pushed her back into the car for her own safety and it sped off. What made Bruce angry was the lie we were told, that we are supposed to be selfless and saint-like in the midst of horrible circumstances. It bothered him because he didn’t want his daughter to ever be criticized for acting in a human, healthy, normal way. He didn’t want her to be vilified for saving herself. He didn’t want her to feel unworthy because she couldn’t live up to the lie.

“Shane” preaches that lie.

I had a hard time finishing the movie. Melanie saw a few minutes and left the room. It didn’t just not engage me, it disturbed me, made me uncomfortable. You mean people really bought into this Western-code morality bullshit? The goofy cutaways to the treacly, hero-worshiping kid are bizarre and unnatural (though in a typically 1950s actor-y Hollywood way). The rest of the acting is equally stilted. The story line is predictable. I hated it, all the laughable goodness in the townsfolk and the laughable badness in the villains.

Yes, a few things were interesting. I liked the flaws in that one farmer who gets gunned down in the mud. It was great seeing Jack Palance in an early role (his first? He's billed as Walter Jack Palance). He doesn’t say much but he’s an impressively imposing bad guy even if he is very stock, black-hat and all. I guess I like how the main villain tries to convince Joe Starrett several times to move on or sell his land, and even ends up offering the guy a job. I don’t remember seeing a bad guy act with that kind of logic in a Western before.

It’s not the fantasy element of the movie I object to necessarily, I don’t want all movies to be gritty and realistic. I love movie musicals of the same period, and you can’t get further from reality than people breaking into song and dance to an invisible orchestra. But I guess the difference is, musicals aren’t intended to be about life or to teach us, and Westerns like “Shane” espouse a moral code for people to aspire to, and that’s just wrong.

I hate “Shane.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_(film)

(I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to comment.)