The Road to Character
Hogarth's Character Caricatures
(By David Brooks) (2015) SBS Australia used to broadcast the Friday editions of Newshour on PBS (the American public broadcaster). That edition has a weekly political wrap-up, usually with Mark Shields and David Brooks. Whilst syndicated columnist Shields is the old-fashioned Big Democrat, Brooks takes on the aura of a Progressive Republican, less comfortable at the country club than, say, at a kaffeeklatsch. What makes their discussions valuable in particular to us (The Varnished Culture are hardly political scientists or well versed in the ins-and-outs of American politics and policy) is the refreshing and rare civility in their discourse; their mutual willingness to actually…
Continue Reading →Death in Venice
A template of death
(by Thomas Mann) (1912) (Dir. Luchino Visconti) (1971) Gustave von Aschenbach, an artist questing intensely after spiritual perfection, arrives, exhausted, unhappy, at the end of his tether, at the Lido and is entranced by a family staying at the same hotel, including handsome Tadzio in his little sailor suit. Shaken by his depth of feeling, Aschenbach attempts to skip town but upon a hitch in his arrangements, he decides to return to where he was smitten, and to embrace his doom with a light heart. Mann’s novella is a polished gem, a short and sweet epitome of a bitter quest to…
Continue Reading →Affliction
'I'm surrounded by Jesus Freaks and Candy Asses!"
(Dir. Paul Schrader) (1998) Wade Whitehouse, the local sheriff, gets increasingly out of his depth, paranoid and lethal. On a downward spiral, in full view of the whole town, he realizes that when one is “nothing any more”, there’s not much to lose. We all beware the pointless violent denouement in American films (e.g. the otherwise morbidly compelling Taxi Driver), but this bleak masterpiece contains nothing gratuitous (including its finale) and it features superb performances, particularly from Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek, and a devastating turn by James Coburn as Wade’s monstrous Dad.
Continue Reading →The Servant
"I'm afraid it's not very encouraging Miss..."
(1963) (Dir. Joseph Losey) From a slight 1948 novella by Robin Maugham, a script worked on by Harold Pinter, and with director Joseph Losey, racked with pneumonia during a brutal winter, phoning instructions to stand-in director Dirk Bogarde (who was the only real name in the cast), this remarkable film, bleak, grim, black with snowy dashes of white, was odds-on to fail. Tony, a delusional, well-heeled young wastrel (James Fox) has moved in to new digs and needs a manservant for…”well everything! You know.” Gentleman’s gentleman Barrett (Bogarde) fits the bill, despite a venal, visceral, almost innate hatred between him and Tony’s…
Continue Reading →Saved Cats
Top Cat
Out of the caged room wandered a tiny ginger kitten and nuzzled P’s leg. “He has made his choice.” The inside of his bat ears were green from microchip dye. He howled in his box on the passenger seat all the way home. He reprises this Allen Ginsburg-sized howl, learnt from early on, when he wants to eat or go outside. We called him ‘Miron’ after Sean Micallef’s accident-prone, French plasticine figure, a terrific parody of the old ‘Red and Blue’ euro-trash TV show. We were then living in a rented, rambling pile on the side of a hill and Miron often disappeared…
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