newyorker--2020-12-25--“Dear Comrades!” Is Andrei Konchalovsky’s Masterpiece

Now Konchalovsky has confounded us yet again , damn him , by coming up with his masterpiece .
It ’ s called “ Dear Comrades !
, ” and the artistry is calm , controlled , persuasively detailed , and utterly Stallone-free .
The only excessive thing about it is the exclamation mark in the title .
Like “ Paradise , ” Konchalovsky ’ s Holocaust drama of 2017 , the new work is in black-and-white , and stars his wife , Julia Vysotskaya , in the leading role .
“ Dear Comrades !
, ” however , has a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the earlier film , all the more so for being contained within a near-squarish frame , as if to fend off the blandishments of a grand saga .
At one point , the plot depends on a hole in the toe of a sock .
The movie is being streamed , starting on Christmas Day , as part of Film Forum ’ s enterprising Virtual Cinema program .
Catch it if you can .
If the opportunity arises , in the coming months or years , to see it on the big screen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vysotskaya has a face that can harden in resolve or blench in shock , and such doubleness serves her well in “ Dear Comrades !
, ” where she barely has the time , let alone good cause , to crack a smile .
She plays Lyuda Syomina , who heads the production sector on the City Committee of Novocherkassk—a solid industrial base in southern Russia , cradled in a wide loop of the Don River , and housing an electric-locomotive plant .
Lyuda , who was a nurse on the front line @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who still reveres the memory of Stalin , lives with her elderly father ( Sergei Erlish ) and her eighteen-year-old daughter , Svetka ( Yulia Burova ) .
As the story begins , in the summer of 1962 , we find Lyuda in bed with her boss , the unlovely Loginov ( Vladislav Komarov ) .
They speak not of sweet nothings but of unobtainable somethings ; food prices have been raised , meat and milk are scarce , and there are rumors of unrest .
Loginov is unperturbed .
“ The Central @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will result in higher living standards in the nearest future , ” he says .
Your initial reaction is : “ Nobody talks like that.
” But Loginov does , as does Lyuda ( she dismisses the shortages as “ temporary hardship ” ) , and you soon realize that both of them are true believers .
In reciting the necessary rhetoric , like a rosary , they are not so much describing a situation as willing the reality to match up to their creed .
What interests Konchalovsky is the sundering of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with which that split becomes a gulf .
Thus , during a committee meeting , a siren goes off , indicating that the unthinkable has happened : factory workers , offered lower pay and less to eat , have gone on strike .
“ This is a crime , ” Lyuda says .
“ People are ignorant.
” Yet she is the one who doesn ’ t want to know .
A regional superior named Basov ( Dmitry Kostyaev ) arrives from out of town to handle the crisis .
Fat chance .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a balcony to address the crowd below .
“ Comrades , we live in a wonderful time , ” he declares .
A rock is thrown in reply .
As the tension mounts , and as we follow the chain of command , we sense the rising fear , with apparatchiks hurrying to offload blame .
Even a general , heralded as “ a beast , ” looks nervous in the presence of two brooding honchos from the Central Committee , dispatched on Khrushchev ’ s orders .
Their fear is that information @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elsewhere ; the city is to be sealed off .
Boldly , if unwisely , Lyuda stands up and recommends an “ extreme penalty ” for those who incited the trouble .
She will have her wish .
“ Dear Comrades !
” is not the place to go if you want a clear and exhaustive grasp of the historical incident .
Indeed , one of the film ’ s assets—a very Tolstoyan virtue—is that it shows how unclear such an episode feels to those caught up in the chaos .
Lyuda , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government building , along with her colleagues ; they sit idly on benches , in the sunshine .
Leaves stir in the breeze .
Shots are heard , and Lyuda hastens back to the square where the protesters have gathered , because she knows that Svetka , her daughter , may be among them .
We see people lurch and fall , under gunfire , but where it ’ s coming from is hard to gauge .
Lyuda helps one woman , who has been shot in the leg , to the haven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then zips through the window , with a tinkling click , and hits the woman in the throat .
Her blood looks black .
We stay inside , witnessing the slaughter through the glass , while a radio plays an entertaining song .
For some viewers , all this will seem too composed .
The camera scarcely moves , surveying the tumult but never joining in ; of handheld reelings and shakings , there is no trace .
Yet you can not mistake the movie ’ s onward force .
This is partly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which we are propelled from one image to the next .
( Is there an echo of Eisenstein ’ s “ Strike , ” a model of classical montage , from 1925 ?
And , if so , how much irony resounds in that echo , since the strikers , back then , were heroes rather than enemies of the state ? )
But something else is driving “ Dear Comrades !
” It quickens into a quest , as Lyuda hunts in vain for her law-breaking child .
Ideology smacks head on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is equal to the impact .
Watch Lyuda having to ask the doctor at the local morgue ( one of the movie ’ s few good guys , who has nipped outside for a smoke ) if he has come across the corpse of a girl .
More awful still is her unblinking horror when she ’ s told that she must write down her earlier demands—that is , retrospectively propose the very measures that may have killed her own daughter .
Then , there ’ s the scene in which a K.G.B @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) , looking for Svetka , knocks on Lyuda ’ s door with a search warrant ; instead of complaining , she slumps listlessly onto a chair .
Despair can wring us dry .
Viktor is an odd case .
He ’ s handsome , taciturn , and inclined , for some reason , to assist Lyuda rather than harass her .
On the other hand , how can she trust him , since it ’ s the K.G.B .
that—according to “ Dear Comrades !
” —was responsible for opening fire ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ was the guilty party , although one general , who refused to attack civilians , was stripped of his rank and dismissed . )
Nevertheless , against regulations , Lyuda and Viktor team up and make their way out of town , on Svetka ’ s trail .
Given that both adults are compliant cogs in the Communist machine , and that there ’ s not a flicker of romance between them , you wonder why they should risk their livelihoods , and maybe their necks , in pursuit of such a course @ @ @ @ @ @ @ once you start to suspect that your entire world may be founded on a quicksand of deceit , then nothing seems more urgent or more weighted with meaning than the need to do one true thing .
The shade of Antigone would gaze upon Lyuda in approval .
If Konchalovsky ’ s heroine had been one of the factory workers , underfed and underpaid , her passion and indignation would have come as no surprise ; it ’ s precisely because Lyuda is an enabler of the system , who , thanks to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sausage , fish , and candies , that her private crusade is so moving to observe .
By the end , it becomes a kind of madness , and all she can do is stutter questions .
“ Why ?
How is it ?
Why ?
” she asks .
“ How am I supposed to forget this ?
” Beautiful and damning , “ Dear Comrades !
” is also an act of remembrance .
♦

The career of the Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky is a zigzag affair. There can’t be many people who have made a faithful adaptation of Turgenev’s “A Nest of Gentlefolk” and a buddy-cop thriller with Kurt Russell and Sylvester Stallone—“Tango & Cash” (1989). That was one of the films resulting from Konchalovsky’s move from the Soviet Union to the United States, in 1980. The least gentle of them was “Runaway Train” (1985), which was like Dostoyevsky’s “House of the Dead” pumped up into an action ride, and which ended with an escaped murderer standing atop a locomotive as it sped toward a snowy and certain destruction. Other Konchalovsky projects include a long Soviet epic called “Siberiade”; a heroically cheesy version of Homer’s Odyssey, for NBC; “The Nutcracker,” in 3-D; a bio-pic of Michelangelo; and a wild tale set in a psychiatric ward during the First Chechen War, and featuring Bryan Adams. Of course.
Now Konchalovsky has confounded us yet again, damn him, by coming up with his masterpiece. It’s called “Dear Comrades!,” and the artistry is calm, controlled, persuasively detailed, and utterly Stallone-free. The only excessive thing about it is the exclamation mark in the title. Like “Paradise,” Konchalovsky’s Holocaust drama of 2017, the new work is in black-and-white, and stars his wife, Julia Vysotskaya, in the leading role. “Dear Comrades!,” however, has a moral and emotional momentum that far outstrips the earlier film, all the more so for being contained within a near-squarish frame, as if to fend off the blandishments of a grand saga. At one point, the plot depends on a hole in the toe of a sock. The movie is being streamed, starting on Christmas Day, as part of Film Forum’s enterprising Virtual Cinema program. Catch it if you can. If the opportunity arises, in the coming months or years, to see it on the big screen, you know what to do.
Vysotskaya has a face that can harden in resolve or blench in shock, and such doubleness serves her well in “Dear Comrades!,” where she barely has the time, let alone good cause, to crack a smile. She plays Lyuda Syomina, who heads the production sector on the City Committee of Novocherkassk—a solid industrial base in southern Russia, cradled in a wide loop of the Don River, and housing an electric-locomotive plant. Lyuda, who was a nurse on the front line in the Second World War, and who still reveres the memory of Stalin, lives with her elderly father (Sergei Erlish) and her eighteen-year-old daughter, Svetka (Yulia Burova). As the story begins, in the summer of 1962, we find Lyuda in bed with her boss, the unlovely Loginov (Vladislav Komarov). They speak not of sweet nothings but of unobtainable somethings; food prices have been raised, meat and milk are scarce, and there are rumors of unrest. Loginov is unperturbed. “The Central Committee instructions clearly say that the change will result in higher living standards in the nearest future,” he says.
Your initial reaction is: “Nobody talks like that.” But Loginov does, as does Lyuda (she dismisses the shortages as “temporary hardship”), and you soon realize that both of them are true believers. In reciting the necessary rhetoric, like a rosary, they are not so much describing a situation as willing the reality to match up to their creed. What interests Konchalovsky is the sundering of words from facts, and the speed with which that split becomes a gulf. Thus, during a committee meeting, a siren goes off, indicating that the unthinkable has happened: factory workers, offered lower pay and less to eat, have gone on strike. “This is a crime,” Lyuda says. “People are ignorant.” Yet she is the one who doesn’t want to know.
A regional superior named Basov (Dmitry Kostyaev) arrives from out of town to handle the crisis. Fat chance. Portly and perspiring, he steps onto a balcony to address the crowd below. “Comrades, we live in a wonderful time,” he declares. A rock is thrown in reply. As the tension mounts, and as we follow the chain of command, we sense the rising fear, with apparatchiks hurrying to offload blame. Even a general, heralded as “a beast,” looks nervous in the presence of two brooding honchos from the Central Committee, dispatched on Khrushchev’s orders. Their fear is that information might leak out and foment further dissidence elsewhere; the city is to be sealed off. Boldly, if unwisely, Lyuda stands up and recommends an “extreme penalty” for those who incited the trouble. She will have her wish.
More than twenty-five people died in the demonstrations of June 2, 1962, in Novocherkassk, and more than eighty-five were wounded. And yet, for a long while, what happened there was expunged from the records. It unhappened. Then, in 1975, in the final volume of “The Gulag Archipelago,” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn published reports of an uprising in the town—“a cry from the soul of a people who could no longer live as they had lived”—and of an ensuing massacre, every trace of which had been “licked clean and hidden.” Not until 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, did the Chief Military Prosecutor undertake a review of the fatal events in Novocherkassk. Two years later, the bodies of the murdered, finally exhumed, were accorded a proper burial, though some have never been found.
“Dear Comrades!” is not the place to go if you want a clear and exhaustive grasp of the historical incident. Indeed, one of the film’s assets—a very Tolstoyan virtue—is that it shows how unclear such an episode feels to those caught up in the chaos. Lyuda, for example, is hustled from a government building, along with her colleagues; they sit idly on benches, in the sunshine. Leaves stir in the breeze. Shots are heard, and Lyuda hastens back to the square where the protesters have gathered, because she knows that Svetka, her daughter, may be among them. We see people lurch and fall, under gunfire, but where it’s coming from is hard to gauge. Lyuda helps one woman, who has been shot in the leg, to the haven of a hairdressing salon; a bullet then zips through the window, with a tinkling click, and hits the woman in the throat. Her blood looks black. We stay inside, witnessing the slaughter through the glass, while a radio plays an entertaining song.
For some viewers, all this will seem too composed. The camera scarcely moves, surveying the tumult but never joining in; of handheld reelings and shakings, there is no trace. Yet you cannot mistake the movie’s onward force. This is partly a matter of editing—the meticulous energy with which we are propelled from one image to the next. (Is there an echo of Eisenstein’s “Strike,” a model of classical montage, from 1925? And, if so, how much irony resounds in that echo, since the strikers, back then, were heroes rather than enemies of the state?) But something else is driving “Dear Comrades!” It quickens into a quest, as Lyuda hunts in vain for her law-breaking child. Ideology smacks head on into love.
Vysotskaya’s performance is equal to the impact. Watch Lyuda having to ask the doctor at the local morgue (one of the movie’s few good guys, who has nipped outside for a smoke) if he has come across the corpse of a girl. More awful still is her unblinking horror when she’s told that she must write down her earlier demands—that is, retrospectively propose the very measures that may have killed her own daughter. Then, there’s the scene in which a K.G.B. agent, Viktor (Andrei Gusev), looking for Svetka, knocks on Lyuda’s door with a search warrant; instead of complaining, she slumps listlessly onto a chair. Despair can wring us dry.
Viktor is an odd case. He’s handsome, taciturn, and inclined, for some reason, to assist Lyuda rather than harass her. On the other hand, how can she trust him, since it’s the K.G.B. that—according to “Dear Comrades!”—was responsible for opening fire? (In other accounts, the Army was the guilty party, although one general, who refused to attack civilians, was stripped of his rank and dismissed.) Nevertheless, against regulations, Lyuda and Viktor team up and make their way out of town, on Svetka’s trail. Given that both adults are compliant cogs in the Communist machine, and that there’s not a flicker of romance between them, you wonder why they should risk their livelihoods, and maybe their necks, in pursuit of such a course.
One answer would be this: once you start to suspect that your entire world may be founded on a quicksand of deceit, then nothing seems more urgent or more weighted with meaning than the need to do one true thing. The shade of Antigone would gaze upon Lyuda in approval. If Konchalovsky’s heroine had been one of the factory workers, underfed and underpaid, her passion and indignation would have come as no surprise; it’s precisely because Lyuda is an enabler of the system, who, thanks to her status, receives ample supplies of sausage, fish, and candies, that her private crusade is so moving to observe. By the end, it becomes a kind of madness, and all she can do is stutter questions. “Why? How is it? Why?” she asks. “How am I supposed to forget this?” Beautiful and damning, “Dear Comrades!” is also an act of remembrance. ♦


newyorker--2020-12-25--The Movies That Mattered in 2020

The Movies That Mattered in 2020

The irony is that it made such a promising start , with a little help from the French .
If you cast your mind all the way back to the belle époque , otherwise known as January , you may remember Ladj Ly ’ s “ Les Misérables , ” which follows a trio of cops through a combustible suburb of Paris .
The police are neither heroes nor outright villains .
They know their patch , with its wealth of problems , all too well , and not for a second do you mistake their job for an easy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overbearing actions that light the fuse .
For any idealists out there who still believe in cinema as an international language , here is rousing proof : it fell to a French director to foretell the rage and the unrest that would define the American summer .
An equal grip is exerted by Céline Sciamma ’ s “ Portrait of a Lady on Fire , ” although its setting—remotest Brittany , in the late eighteenth century—is a world away from the burbs .
The movie , having had a brief outing at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and more appropriate release on Valentine ’ s Day .
As a demonstration of Cupid ’ s aim , it is unerring : the tale of a painter who falls in love with her sitter , a well-bred woman named Héloïse .
( For a French audience , no name carries a greater amatory charge . )
So lovestruck are the two of them that they have neither the will nor the ability to remove the barbs , and , as a viewer , you are similarly transfixed .
And that , pretty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be many months before a film—any film , of any size or school—left such a mark .
As early spring arrived , so did COVID-19 , an affliction that , like a notable Burgundy , will forever bear the date of its vintage .
The majority of cinemas went dark ; the larger and more densely packed your city , the less inclined you were to sally forth in search of films .
Any historian of the medium can reel off the various forces that have threatened its existence over the past century @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Second World War , the monstrous march of television , the VCR , the DVD , and “ Police Academy 5 : Assignment Miami Beach.
” ( You know , the one that even Steve Guttenberg didn ’ t show up for . )
This year , however , saw a cunning and unprecedented pincer movement , as moviegoers found themselves beset not by one menace but by two separate foes .
On the left flank was the coronavirus , whose spike proteins would be delighted to hitch a ride on your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ streaming revolution , which had been gathering strength for some time .
Now came its moment to attack .
This turn of events is a flat-out catastrophe , though not for everybody .
I happen to love being a groundling , stuck in the pit of an auditorium and staring stupidly upward .
Millions of people , though , will exercise the sane and risk-free option—staying home , staying safe , and deciding what to watch and when to watch it , at an hour of their delicious choosing .
Or , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ night of their choosing , from suppertime till dawn .
Across the land , up goes the plaintive cry : “ Just one more episode !
” What matters here is not what we watched in 2020 but how we watched it , and whether our new methods and mores of watching are here to stay .
A change of dimensions , countless viewers will say , is no big deal , nor is the switch to the domestic arena : a film is a film is a film , wheresoe ’ er @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a rose .
Not so .
A wild film and a hothouse film are very different things .
One is tangled up in the public gaze , out of our control ; we can not stop it or curtail it as it runs .
The other is transplanted to TV , as if grown under glass , and , humongous though our screen may be , much of the fragrance is gone .
What ’ s more , we can lop the story off at any time .
Take a movie like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” It ’ s a drama , grounded in real events , about a school superintendent on Long Island , who is congenial , handsome , highly respected , and even more highly fraudulent , embezzling millions as he strolls the path to success .
He is played by Hugh Jackman , and , when I caught the movie at a film festival , in late 2019 , I reckoned that it was the best work that Jackman had ever done , as if he were testing the resilience of his own blessings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the cracking point .
“ Bad Education ” never made it into American cinemas ; it had to settle for homeschooling , with a slot on HBO , in April .
Jackman wound up with an Emmy nomination instead of an Oscar nod , but that ’ s not the issue .
Seen again on the small screen , the film looks a little seedier , and the precise balance that the actor found between fraudulence and bonhomie—truth or dare , so to speak—is lost .
The other performances that stayed with me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no particular order : Cristin Milioti , in “ Palm Springs , ” remaining upbeat even when she hit the downside ; Kate Winslet , in “ Ammonite ” ; Diane Lane , in “ Let Him Go ” ; Amanda Seyfried , glittering amid the gloom of “ Mank ” ; and someone named Meryl Streep , for whom , on the basis of her efforts in “ Let Them All Talk , ” I predict a bright future .
The last and the youngest on the list is Helena Zengel , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against Tom Hanks in “ News of the World , ” Paul Greengrass ’ s new Western , which comes out on Christmas Day .
Zengel is now twelve years old , and what ’ s remarkable is that , though armed with blond hair , blue eyes , and , God help us , freckles , she is formidably uncute throughout the film .
At times , indeed , she nears the brink of the feral ; we see her roped by the ankle to a stake , like an untamable dog @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and scream .
In each instance , those performances are more forceful than the films in which they occur .
( Such an imbalance can come in handy , when awards are being dished out . )
Only in Chloé Zhao ’ s “ Nomadland , ” I think , is the glow of the star—Frances McDormand , who appears in almost every scene—matched by the sky of the whole movie .
It tells of a widow who quits a dead town in Nevada and travels around , living in her van , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pays O.K.
, as does the pre-Christmas spell at an Amazon warehouse .
The pull of the narrative , like McDormand ’ s presence among her fellow-wanderers , seems neither willed nor forced , and the heroine ’ s plight , though particular to the economics of now , has the timeless texture of a fable .
Some folks are made to drift .
I was lucky enough to see “ Nomadland ” at the Venice Film Festival , which , by some miracle , went ahead as planned , at the start @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the plans were tweaked , in line with precautions .
The standard red-carpet hoopla , outside premières , was cooled to a minimum .
( Scarcely the most painful of sacrifices . )
Viewers were spaced apart at screenings ; unoccupied seats were taped off ; and , as you entered the movie theatre , your temperature was taken with a thermometer held to your forehead .
If this made you feel like a cow lining up for the stun gun , so what ?
The opportunity to see films emblazoned upon wide @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enthusiasts , was a gift to be grateful for—as , heaven knows , was the chance to be in Venice , a paradise with a lengthy record of plague .
I felt like a criminal , freed on parole .
Nearly two weeks of visual feasting , and then it was back to the slammer .
The city was not empty , by any means , but neither was it swamped by the human flood .
Now , if ever , was the time to pay tribute to the obvious .
In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ took solace in a visit to the Ducal Palace : a couple of hours , alone but for the guards , in a succession of vast halls , which are usually so thronged that you can ’ t spot your own toes , still less the Tintorettos on the far wall .
( Mind you , that artist does present a constant challenge to the Film Festival .
Not only are his paintings better than almost every movie you will see , but some of them , dense with dramatic gesture , are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If this was the state of the city in the fall , what on earth was it like in March , during the initial lockdown , when there were no tourists whatsoever , and when the residents , too , had all but vanished from the streets ?
The answer was provided in style by the Festival ’ s pre-opening film , Andrea Segre ’ s “ Molecole.
” It ’ s a documentary , shot in Venice during that compulsory suspension of regular life—an interlude of mournful and mirrorlike tranquillity , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ along the Grand Canal without being rocked by the wake of passing boats .
His film is also a diary , soaked in personal reminiscence .
If it ever shows in New York , take the plunge .

No year that sees the deaths of Sean Connery, Olivia de Havilland, and Chadwick Boseman can be hailed as a time of unbroken happiness. Private viewings of “Goldfinger,” “The Heiress,” and “Get On Up” could do only so much to attenuate our grief. But shadows even murkier and more prolonged fell across the landscape of 2020; in many countries, the making, releasing, and watching of films either stopped dead or slowed to a dismal crawl. It would be ludicrous to claim that this unnerving standstill was the worst aspect of the coronavirus pandemic; nobody has perished from a chronic lack of James Bond. But the resulting loss of livelihoods is no small matter, as Tom Cruise has pointed out, in a voice of thunder; and the loss of liveliness, in the souls and the social schedules of ordinary moviegoers, has added to the burden of a terrible year.
2020 in Review New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
The irony is that it made such a promising start, with a little help from the French. If you cast your mind all the way back to the belle époque, otherwise known as January, you may remember Ladj Ly’s “Les Misérables,” which follows a trio of cops through a combustible suburb of Paris. The police are neither heroes nor outright villains. They know their patch, with its wealth of problems, all too well, and not for a second do you mistake their job for an easy ride; nonetheless, it is their overbearing actions that light the fuse. For any idealists out there who still believe in cinema as an international language, here is rousing proof: it fell to a French director to foretell the rage and the unrest that would define the American summer.
An equal grip is exerted by Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” although its setting—remotest Brittany, in the late eighteenth century—is a world away from the burbs. The movie, having had a brief outing at the end of 2019, enjoyed a wider and more appropriate release on Valentine’s Day. As a demonstration of Cupid’s aim, it is unerring: the tale of a painter who falls in love with her sitter, a well-bred woman named Héloïse. (For a French audience, no name carries a greater amatory charge.) So lovestruck are the two of them that they have neither the will nor the ability to remove the barbs, and, as a viewer, you are similarly transfixed.
As a demonstration of Cupid’s aim, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” is unerring. Photograph courtesy Lilies Films
And that, pretty much, was that. It would be many months before a film—any film, of any size or school—left such a mark. As early spring arrived, so did COVID-19, an affliction that, like a notable Burgundy, will forever bear the date of its vintage. The majority of cinemas went dark; the larger and more densely packed your city, the less inclined you were to sally forth in search of films. Any historian of the medium can reel off the various forces that have threatened its existence over the past century, including the advent of sound, the Second World War, the monstrous march of television, the VCR, the DVD, and “Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach.” (You know, the one that even Steve Guttenberg didn’t show up for.) This year, however, saw a cunning and unprecedented pincer movement, as moviegoers found themselves beset not by one menace but by two separate foes. On the left flank was the coronavirus, whose spike proteins would be delighted to hitch a ride on your popcorn. On the right lay the streaming revolution, which had been gathering strength for some time. Now came its moment to attack.
This turn of events is a flat-out catastrophe, though not for everybody. I happen to love being a groundling, stuck in the pit of an auditorium and staring stupidly upward. Millions of people, though, will exercise the sane and risk-free option—staying home, staying safe, and deciding what to watch and when to watch it, at an hour of their delicious choosing. Or, in the case of Netflix, a complete night of their choosing, from suppertime till dawn. Across the land, up goes the plaintive cry: “Just one more episode!”
What matters here is not what we watched in 2020 but how we watched it, and whether our new methods and mores of watching are here to stay. A change of dimensions, countless viewers will say, is no big deal, nor is the switch to the domestic arena: a film is a film is a film, wheresoe’er it blooms, just as a rose is a rose. Not so. A wild film and a hothouse film are very different things. One is tangled up in the public gaze, out of our control; we cannot stop it or curtail it as it runs. The other is transplanted to TV, as if grown under glass, and, humongous though our screen may be, much of the fragrance is gone. What’s more, we can lop the story off at any time.
Take a movie like Cory Finley’s “Bad Education.” It’s a drama, grounded in real events, about a school superintendent on Long Island, who is congenial, handsome, highly respected, and even more highly fraudulent, embezzling millions as he strolls the path to success. He is played by Hugh Jackman, and, when I caught the movie at a film festival, in late 2019, I reckoned that it was the best work that Jackman had ever done, as if he were testing the resilience of his own blessings; that famous smile was stretched to the cracking point. “Bad Education” never made it into American cinemas; it had to settle for homeschooling, with a slot on HBO, in April. Jackman wound up with an Emmy nomination instead of an Oscar nod, but that’s not the issue. Seen again on the small screen, the film looks a little seedier, and the precise balance that the actor found between fraudulence and bonhomie—truth or dare, so to speak—is lost.
Hugh Jackman was nominated for an Emmy for his role in “Bad Education,” which never made it to the big screen in the U.S., owing to the pandemic. Photograph courtesy HBO
The other performances that stayed with me this year were all female. In no particular order: Cristin Milioti, in “Palm Springs,” remaining upbeat even when she hit the downside; Kate Winslet, in “Ammonite”; Diane Lane, in “Let Him Go”; Amanda Seyfried, glittering amid the gloom of “Mank”; and someone named Meryl Streep, for whom, on the basis of her efforts in “Let Them All Talk,” I predict a bright future. The last and the youngest on the list is Helena Zengel, the German actress who holds her own against Tom Hanks in “News of the World,” Paul Greengrass’s new Western, which comes out on Christmas Day. Zengel is now twelve years old, and what’s remarkable is that, though armed with blond hair, blue eyes, and, God help us, freckles, she is formidably uncute throughout the film. At times, indeed, she nears the brink of the feral; we see her roped by the ankle to a stake, like an untamable dog. Shirley Temple would take one look and scream.
In each instance, those performances are more forceful than the films in which they occur. (Such an imbalance can come in handy, when awards are being dished out.) Only in Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland,” I think, is the glow of the star—Frances McDormand, who appears in almost every scene—matched by the sky of the whole movie. It tells of a widow who quits a dead town in Nevada and travels around, living in her van, in search of seasonal employment. Beet-picking pays O.K., as does the pre-Christmas spell at an Amazon warehouse. The pull of the narrative, like McDormand’s presence among her fellow-wanderers, seems neither willed nor forced, and the heroine’s plight, though particular to the economics of now, has the timeless texture of a fable. Some folks are made to drift.


newyorker--2020-12-25--Barbecued Ribs from a Michelin-Starred Chef

If you ’ ve ever wondered what it ’ s like to live with a Michelin-starred chef , you might try ordering from the delivery pop-up Ribs n Reds , available most weekends in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn .
During the first few months of the pandemic , the chef Bryce Shuman , whose midtown restaurant , Betony , closed in 2016 , found himself cooking at home , for his wife , Jennifer—the special-events director at the NoMad Hotel , who was on furlough—and their six-year-old daughter , Emilia , a lot more than usual .
Before March @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a consultant and a private chef .
Family dinners were something of a rarity , and suddenly having time for them felt like a silver lining .
But , Jennifer told me recently , “ we did miss being in restaurants , and , doing what we do , we wondered , How could we still serve our community during lockdown ?
What ’ s something that would travel well and something that we ourselves enjoyed that we could share with other people ?
” Emilia was especially fond of her father ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ boxes .
So Bryce , who grew up in North Carolina , built a heat-and-serve menu around them : half and full racks , delivered with a choice of sauce—smoked-honey barbecue , hot pepper , or sweet molasses—to glaze them in before warming them in the oven .
In the summer , when the Shumans launched what was at first called Ribs n Rosé , they layered juicy greenmarket tomatoes and peaches in a salad with fragrant basil ; as temperatures dropped , it was replaced by a composition of tart pickled beets @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with tahini .
Half of an eggplant , crosshatched before being charred until lusciously pliant , was benched in favor of a frothy butternut-squash soup ( made with a variety grown on Jennifer ’ s uncle ’ s farm , in Maryland ) , served with crème fraîche and brioche croutons and packaged , sweetly , in a Mason jar .
And cans of Vinny sparkling rosé were switched out for bottles of Terrassen Cabernet Franc , both made with grapes grown in the Finger Lakes by the NoMad ’ s wine director @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a special menu for Thanksgiving , and there ’ s another for New Year ’ s Eve , including beef tenderloin , brown-butter carrots , and maple-roasted Brussels sprouts ( plus optional caviar ) .
A wonderfully coarse , crunchy coleslaw , featuring tightly ruffled wedges of cabbage , sliced green apple , carrot , and parsley in a honey-mustard dressing , has transcended seasonal shifts .
So have the jarred dilly beans ; the light , crumbly corn bread with honey butter ; the bubbly baked mac and cheese , dense with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ excellent fried chicken , which comes with green-pepper ranch and is much better than it has to be , given the obvious emphasis on “ the other white meat.
” Speaking of which : the ribs .
Each rack—St .
Louis cut , meaning that it comes from the belly side of the pig and gets trimmed into a neat rectangle—is slow-cooked and then finished under a salamander , a high-powered stovetop broiler found in commercial kitchens , resulting in fatty , crisp-edged meat that shreds easily off the bone , plus connective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can eat it , too .
( For those who avoid animal products , there ’ s also a whole roasted , molasses-glazed Koginut squash , its caramelized surface coated in toasted nuts and seeds . )
“ It ’ s not exactly like what I do at home , ” Bryce admitted the other day .
“ It ’ s kind of a step up.
” Still , as exquisitely rendered as the dishes are , they all retain a humble , familiar , unpretentious quality .
Before the pandemic , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , something in the vein of Betony , which was a place I loved in spite of itself : the atmosphere was almost comically stuffy , the menu rife with luxury clichés , but the food was undeniably fantastic .
I hope that Ribs n Reds—a portion of whose proceeds are donated to the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund—lives on indefinitely , and that whatever Bryce does next leans even further into its spirit .
( Dishes $ 7- $ 45 . )
♦

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live with a Michelin-starred chef, you might try ordering from the delivery pop-up Ribs n Reds, available most weekends in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. During the first few months of the pandemic, the chef Bryce Shuman, whose midtown restaurant, Betony, closed in 2016, found himself cooking at home, for his wife, Jennifer—the special-events director at the NoMad Hotel, who was on furlough—and their six-year-old daughter, Emilia, a lot more than usual. Before March, he’d been working as a consultant and a private chef. Family dinners were something of a rarity, and suddenly having time for them felt like a silver lining.
The light, crumbly corn bread is packaged with a knob of honey butter. Photograph by Maria Be for The New Yorker
But, Jennifer told me recently, “we did miss being in restaurants, and, doing what we do, we wondered, How could we still serve our community during lockdown? What’s something that would travel well and something that we ourselves enjoyed that we could share with other people?” Emilia was especially fond of her father’s spareribs. Those checked all the boxes. So Bryce, who grew up in North Carolina, built a heat-and-serve menu around them: half and full racks, delivered with a choice of sauce—smoked-honey barbecue, hot pepper, or sweet molasses—to glaze them in before warming them in the oven.
Each order of ribs comes with a choice of sauce, to glaze the ribs before warming them in the oven. Photograph by Maria Be for The New Yorker
In the summer, when the Shumans launched what was at first called Ribs n Rosé, they layered juicy greenmarket tomatoes and peaches in a salad with fragrant basil; as temperatures dropped, it was replaced by a composition of tart pickled beets, watercress, and turmeric yogurt mixed with tahini. Half of an eggplant, crosshatched before being charred until lusciously pliant, was benched in favor of a frothy butternut-squash soup (made with a variety grown on Jennifer’s uncle’s farm, in Maryland), served with crème fraîche and brioche croutons and packaged, sweetly, in a Mason jar. And cans of Vinny sparkling rosé were switched out for bottles of Terrassen Cabernet Franc, both made with grapes grown in the Finger Lakes by the NoMad’s wine director, Thomas Pastuszak. The Shumans offered a special menu for Thanksgiving, and there’s another for New Year’s Eve, including beef tenderloin, brown-butter carrots, and maple-roasted Brussels sprouts (plus optional caviar).
The ribs are slow-cooked and then finished under a commercial stovetop broiler called a salamander. Photograph by Maria Be for The New Yorker
A wonderfully coarse, crunchy coleslaw, featuring tightly ruffled wedges of cabbage, sliced green apple, carrot, and parsley in a honey-mustard dressing, has transcended seasonal shifts. So have the jarred dilly beans; the light, crumbly corn bread with honey butter; the bubbly baked mac and cheese, dense with Cheddar and paccheri noodles; and the excellent fried chicken, which comes with green-pepper ranch and is much better than it has to be, given the obvious emphasis on “the other white meat.”
Speaking of which: the ribs. Each rack—St. Louis cut, meaning that it comes from the belly side of the pig and gets trimmed into a neat rectangle—is slow-cooked and then finished under a salamander, a high-powered stovetop broiler found in commercial kitchens, resulting in fatty, crisp-edged meat that shreds easily off the bone, plus connective cartilage so soft and rich that you can eat it, too. (For those who avoid animal products, there’s also a whole roasted, molasses-glazed Koginut squash, its caramelized surface coated in toasted nuts and seeds.)
The fried chicken comes with green-pepper ranch. Photograph by Maria Be for The New Yorker
“It’s not exactly like what I do at home,” Bryce admitted the other day. “It’s kind of a step up.” Still, as exquisitely rendered as the dishes are, they all retain a humble, familiar, unpretentious quality. Before the pandemic, he had been looking toward opening another restaurant, something in the vein of Betony, which was a place I loved in spite of itself: the atmosphere was almost comically stuffy, the menu rife with luxury clichés, but the food was undeniably fantastic. I hope that Ribs n Reds—a portion of whose proceeds are donated to the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund—lives on indefinitely, and that whatever Bryce does next leans even further into its spirit. (Dishes $7-$45.) ♦


newyorker--2020-12-25--Does “Wonder Woman 1984” Hide Its Hero’s True Superpowers?

Superhero movies , mostly bloated and aimless barges , tend to run aground on the shoals of time .
In a film made in 1978 , Superman turned back the hands of the clock by flying around the earth backward , to save Lois Lane , but Clark Kent never really escaped the time-stopping moment of his creation , fighting Fascism , in 1938 .
Marvel ’ s Tony Stark , Iron Man ’ s arms-manufacturing alter ego , created in 1963 , made most sense during the Vietnam War .
Captain America , who débuted in 1940 , got @ @ @ @ @ @ @ World War and woke up , in a film released during Obama ’ s second term , worried about data privacy .
Black Panther , created in 1966 , succeeded onscreen in 2018 partly because of the lack of progress in racial justice : in certain respects , time seems to stand still .
Then , too , what with all the unhinged nationalism and creeping fascism in these movies , life , lately , imitates art .
“ Endgame Again : Proud Boys vs. Antifa ” is not coming soon to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have come from one .
That , in part , is the indictment made by the 2019 Amazon original series “ The Boys , ” about an alternative America besieged by corporate-owned celebrity superheroes , including Stormfront , who was created by Nazi doctors in the nineteen-thirties and who inspires twenty-first-century white supremacists .
That being said , a lot of superheroes created decades ago never made it to Hollywood , or even to Amazon Prime Video , because they were too super-freaky even for their own time—like Miss Fury , from 1941 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year , made the leap only in 2017 , in a film directed by Patty Jenkins , who directs the new film , too .
“ Wonder Woman 1984 ” features the stunning Israeli actress Gal Gadot as the Amazonian princess , glamorous and grief stricken , and as her alter ego , Diana Prince , inexplicably dressed like Katharine Hepburn .
Jenkins , explaining why she set the new film in 1984 , has said that the eighties represent “ mankind at their most extreme and at their best.
” ( Jenkins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Woman , endowed by Aphrodite with eternal life , never ages , so Jenkins had a lot of choices for her antagonist .
But Max Lord is distinctly a creature of the decade : he made his DC Comics début in 1987 ( the same year Michael Douglas played Gordon Gekko in “ Wall Street ” ) , a heyday of corporate raiders , leveraged buyouts , and deregulation .
“ You can have it all , ” Pascal ’ s Max Lord cries , watching greed ruin the world , after he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the President of the United States .
“ You just have to want it !
” Warner Bros. calls Wonder Woman ’ s other adversary in the new film an “ all-new ” foe for her , but the Cheetah is one of the character ’ s oldest enemies , dating to the nineteen-forties .
Yanked by her hair into the eighties , and played by the brilliant Wiig , she could have been funny , in the manner of Dolly Parton in the 1981 film “ 9 to 5 ” or Melanie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Girl.
” But this Cheetah isn ’ t .
She isn ’ t even devious .
She ’ s just jealous .
Before turning into the Cheetah , she ’ s a frumpy , lonely gemologist named Dr. Barbara Minerva , a colleague of Diana Prince , who is now working at the Smithsonian as an archaeologist .
She ’ s eaten away with envy .
“ You ’ ve always had everything , while people like me have had nothing , ” she tells Diana .
“ I want to be No @ @ @ @ @ @ @ predator , ” she says .
The same is true of the original Cheetah , who hates “ that arrogant Amazon ” and is keen to become “ a treacherous , relentless huntress.
” Does this she-cat plotline , ending in the inevitable catfight , really stand the test of time ?
Marston created the Cheetah during a dispute with his editors .
He was forever binding Wonder Woman in chains ; he said that this was because her inevitable escape served as a metaphor for women ’ s emancipation .
But he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ Women enjoy submission , being bound , ” he wrote to his editor , M. C. Gaines .
Gaines more or less accepted this explanation , but All-American ’ s sole female editor , Dorothy Roubicek , found it pretty troubling .
( It also may have been Roubicek who wrote a regular feature in every issue called “ Wonder Women of History ” : biographies of women , including Sojourner Truth , Susan B. Anthony , and Helen Keller . )
Roubicek had noticed that the kinkiest stuff seemed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proposed that Wonder Woman cancel all her trips there .
“ By taking her off Paradise Island ( except in rare cases ) , ” Roubicek advised , “ the chained women angle is removed.
” Marston ignored that .
When Roubicek offered Marston a list of plot devices , suggestions for other challenges Wonder Woman might confront instead of chains and ropes , Marston wrote Gaines , “ Please thank Miss Roubicek for the list of menaces.
” As vengeance on Roubicek , Marston introduced the Cheetah , in 1943 .
Her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Priscilla Rich , binds Wonder Woman with not ten , not a hundred , but more than a thousand links of chain .
( “ Miss Rich collected them from prisons and dungeons all over the world , ” Marston wrote .
“ Priscilla ’ s hobby is collecting chains.
” ) Rich also puts Wonder Woman into a brank : a leather mask that covers her head , attached to an iron collar .
Next , Rich opens a beauty salon where she keeps girls in shackles as zebra-skin-wearing slaves ( because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ favorite prey ” ) .
An army sergeant sent a letter to DC Comics , eager to see more : “ I am one of those odd , perhaps unfortunate men who derive an extreme erotic pleasure from the mere thought of a beautiful girl , chained or bound , or masks , or wearing extreme high-heels or high-laced boots.
” He ’ d been particularly excited to see the brank in “ Wonder Woman and the Cheetah.
” Roubicek apparently found the letter unsettling .
Gaines wrote to Marston .
Marston wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sergeant ’ s letter in which he expresses his enthusiasm over chains for women—so what ?
” Eventually , Wonder Woman ties up the Cheetah with her magic lasso .
Priscilla Rich says gratefully , “ These bonds will feel wonderful !
” This stuff is straight out of a psychology textbook : Dr. Marston ’ s psychology textbook .
In “ Emotions of Normal People ” ( 1929 ) , Marston had alluded to the inferiority complex , a psychological phenomenon identified by Alfred Adler around the time that Marston was completing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a chapter called “ Dominance , ” Marston reports the results of research he conducted , with the assistance of Holloway and Byrne , including interviews with two hundred and fifty children with “ delinquent behavior ” ( supervised by an expert on “ psychopathic female delinquents ” ) in New York , more than thirty-four hundred prisoners in Texas , and a smaller set of undergraduates at Tufts University , where Marston taught from 1925 to 1926 , and where he mostly studied bondage among sorority girls .
Arguing that dominance is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Marston explained the relationship between dominance and submission by comparing humans to cats chasing mice .
“ There is nothing so dangerous in the whole world as the vicious hatred of a personal enemy and there is no enemy so eager to inflict pain as a man or woman who feels himself your inferior !
” he wrote in “ Wonder Woman and the Cheetah.
” By the time the Cheetah leaped into action , Wonder Woman had already faced plenty of villains , all of whom came out of the lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Holloway and Byrne , who went to graduate school but never earned doctorates , some of the villains had Ph.D.s.
, including Dr. Psycho , who was based on Marston ’ s adviser , the German-born experimental psychologist Hugo Münsterberg .
Dr. Barbara Minerva , gemologist , is an update to the original Priscilla Rich story line—a gemologist , rather than a débutante , but still a jealous , submissive , psychopathic female who needs to be dominated .
Patty Jenkins seems to be interested in history .
She set her first Wonder @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And she set this new film in the Orwellian year of 1984 .
But she ’ s apparently not at all interested in the history of women : it ’ s got no place in either of her two “ Wonder Woman ” films , even though they both take place during major inflection points in that history , and even though the history of Wonder Woman , the comic book and the character , is inextricably bound up with the long , miserable , and unfinished struggle for women ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ island of women , was inspired by the feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman ’ s utopian novel , “ Herland ” ( 1915 ) .
The women there are Amazons because , in the nineteen-teens , reporters routinely used the name to describe suffragists .
So did suffragists themselves , in both the U.K. and the U.S. , including Elizabeth Holloway , who , as an undergraduate at Mount Holyoke College , a hotbed of suffrage , happened also to be an avid reader of the Greek poet Sappho , from the island of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ skills learned from suffragists .
In 1903 , Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women ’ s Social and Political Union , which championed militant resistance to official suppression of political action , urging women to defend themselves against the police by training in the arts of self-defense , especially jujitsu .
In 1909 , British suffragists , arrested for disorderly behavior , began going on hunger strikes , which led , four years later , to what became known as the Cat and Mouse Act , under which women near death would be released @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had gained enough strength to survive more days in detention .
Like Holloway , Marston was influenced by both English and American suffragists ; during his freshman year at Harvard , Emmeline Pankhurst came to speak .
In 1914 , Margaret Sanger , who was Olive Byrne ’ s aunt , began publishing one of the first feminist magazine in the United States , The Woman Rebel , in which Sanger coined the phrase “ birth control.
” There ’ s some evidence that Olive Byrne ’ s mother , Ethel Byrne , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the W.S.P.U .
In 1917 , after Margaret Sanger and Ethel Byrne opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States—together , the two women founded what would become Planned Parenthood—Byrne was convicted of the crime of teaching a woman how to use a diaphragm and undertook the first reported hunger strike by a woman in the U.S. Three years later , the United States finally ratified the Nineteenth Amendment , guaranteeing women the right to vote .
Wonder Woman , notwithstanding her kinky red boots , is descended from women rebels who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police , and resisted arrest—feminists , suffragists , birth-control activists .
But Jenkins , so far from integrating even the tiniest piece of that history into the plots of her films , has erased it .
She set her first Wonder Woman film in the nineteen-teens , during the First World War , but told the story as if these political movements never existed .
Her new film treats the nineteen-eighties as if it were a decade without either feminism or anti-feminism .
In 1984 , Geraldine Ferraro , as Walter Mondale ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ woman on a major-party ticket .
Meanwhile , the Equal Rights Amendment had just failed , as the result of a conservative backlash and the rise of the religious right .
It was a time so hostile to women ’ s rights that , in 1985 , Margaret Atwood published “ The Handmaid ’ s Tale.
” In “ Wonder Woman 1984 , ” the historical backdrop consists solely of Ronald Reagan , in the Oval Office , wishing that the U.S. had more nuclear weapons , the Middle East descending into a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as a young Trump , wanting the world .
What do the women of “ Wonder Woman 1984 ” want ?
Wonder Woman wants her dead boyfriend , Steve Trevor .
Barbara Minerva wants a boyfriend , too .
She wants to not need glasses and to wear high heels , furs , makeup , and sexy dresses .
She wants men to want her , and she wants the power to dominate them .
The girl plot of “ Wonder Woman 1984 ” doesn ’ t come from the nineteen-eighties .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the psychotic , violently jealous female was a mainstay of American popular culture , in films like “ Rebecca ” ( 1940 ) and “ Leave Her to Heaven ” ( 1945 ) .
Marston ’ s Cheetah was a comic-book caricature of her .
Here ’ s an excerpt from one of his scripts :

“Wonder Woman 1984,” out in theatres and on HBO Max, is kitted out with all manner of nineteen-eighties knick-knackery: fanny packs, break dancing, aerobics class, leg warmers, video arcades, speed walking, and J. C. Penney. It also has two anguished arch-villains. The first is a celebrity oil tycoon, Max Lord (Pedro Pascal), a sort of younger, Reagan-era Donald Trump in a baby-blue pin-striped suit. “I am not a con man,” Lord insists. “I’m a television personality. And a respected businessman.” The second is the Cheetah (Kristen Wiig), looking like Judi Dench in “Cats,” except slinkier, angrier, and with blacker eyeliner. Also, Wonder Woman has a new outfit: head-to-toe gold metal, with angel wings. She looks like a hood ornament from a nineteen-thirties Buick.
Superhero movies, mostly bloated and aimless barges, tend to run aground on the shoals of time. In a film made in 1978, Superman turned back the hands of the clock by flying around the earth backward, to save Lois Lane, but Clark Kent never really escaped the time-stopping moment of his creation, fighting Fascism, in 1938. Marvel’s Tony Stark, Iron Man’s arms-manufacturing alter ego, created in 1963, made most sense during the Vietnam War. Captain America, who débuted in 1940, got frozen in Arctic ice during the Second World War and woke up, in a film released during Obama’s second term, worried about data privacy. Black Panther, created in 1966, succeeded onscreen in 2018 partly because of the lack of progress in racial justice: in certain respects, time seems to stand still. Then, too, what with all the unhinged nationalism and creeping fascism in these movies, life, lately, imitates art. “Endgame Again: Proud Boys vs. Antifa” is not coming soon to a theatre near you, but it may have come from one. That, in part, is the indictment made by the 2019 Amazon original series “The Boys,” about an alternative America besieged by corporate-owned celebrity superheroes, including Stormfront, who was created by Nazi doctors in the nineteen-thirties and who inspires twenty-first-century white supremacists. That being said, a lot of superheroes created decades ago never made it to Hollywood, or even to Amazon Prime Video, because they were too super-freaky even for their own time—like Miss Fury, from 1941. Wonder Woman, created that same year, made the leap only in 2017, in a film directed by Patty Jenkins, who directs the new film, too. “Wonder Woman 1984” features the stunning Israeli actress Gal Gadot as the Amazonian princess, glamorous and grief stricken, and as her alter ego, Diana Prince, inexplicably dressed like Katharine Hepburn.
2020 in Review New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.
Jenkins, explaining why she set the new film in 1984, has said that the eighties represent “mankind at their most extreme and at their best.” (Jenkins also co-wrote the screenplay.) Wonder Woman, endowed by Aphrodite with eternal life, never ages, so Jenkins had a lot of choices for her antagonist. But Max Lord is distinctly a creature of the decade: he made his DC Comics début in 1987 (the same year Michael Douglas played Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street”), a heyday of corporate raiders, leveraged buyouts, and deregulation. “You can have it all,” Pascal’s Max Lord cries, watching greed ruin the world, after he’s taken on the powers of the President of the United States. “You just have to want it!”
Warner Bros. calls Wonder Woman’s other adversary in the new film an “all-new” foe for her, but the Cheetah is one of the character’s oldest enemies, dating to the nineteen-forties. Yanked by her hair into the eighties, and played by the brilliant Wiig, she could have been funny, in the manner of Dolly Parton in the 1981 film “9 to 5” or Melanie Griffith in the 1988 film “Working Girl.” But this Cheetah isn’t. She isn’t even devious. She’s just jealous. Before turning into the Cheetah, she’s a frumpy, lonely gemologist named Dr. Barbara Minerva, a colleague of Diana Prince, who is now working at the Smithsonian as an archaeologist. She’s eaten away with envy. “You’ve always had everything, while people like me have had nothing,” she tells Diana. “I want to be No. 1 . . . an apex predator,” she says. The same is true of the original Cheetah, who hates “that arrogant Amazon” and is keen to become “a treacherous, relentless huntress.” Does this she-cat plotline, ending in the inevitable catfight, really stand the test of time?
Wonder Woman was created by the Harvard-trained lawyer and psychologist William Moulton Marston; his wife, the lawyer and editor Elizabeth Holloway; and the psychologist and Family Circle staff writer Olive Byrne. It’s a story I chronicled in my 2014 book, “The Secret History of Wonder Woman.” The three lived together as a family and raised four children. In 1940, All-American Comics, unaware of Marston’s family life, hired him as a member of its editorial advisory board. To answer critics who had attacked comic books as dangerous to children, because of their glorification of violence, Marston proposed a female superhero, loving and tender. She made her début the month that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. With her bullet-proof bracelets and her lasso of truth, Wonder Woman comes to the United States from the Amazons’ homeland, Paradise Island, to fight for democracy and women’s rights.
Marston created the Cheetah during a dispute with his editors. He was forever binding Wonder Woman in chains; he said that this was because her inevitable escape served as a metaphor for women’s emancipation. But he also defended the chains on psychological grounds: “Women enjoy submission, being bound,” he wrote to his editor, M. C. Gaines. Gaines more or less accepted this explanation, but All-American’s sole female editor, Dorothy Roubicek, found it pretty troubling. (It also may have been Roubicek who wrote a regular feature in every issue called “Wonder Women of History”: biographies of women, including Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, and Helen Keller.) Roubicek had noticed that the kinkiest stuff seemed to happen on Paradise Island, and she proposed that Wonder Woman cancel all her trips there. “By taking her off Paradise Island (except in rare cases),” Roubicek advised, “the chained women angle is removed.” Marston ignored that. When Roubicek offered Marston a list of plot devices, suggestions for other challenges Wonder Woman might confront instead of chains and ropes, Marston wrote Gaines, “Please thank Miss Roubicek for the list of menaces.”
As vengeance on Roubicek, Marston introduced the Cheetah, in 1943. Her alter ego, a blond-haired débutante named Priscilla Rich, binds Wonder Woman with not ten, not a hundred, but more than a thousand links of chain. (“Miss Rich collected them from prisons and dungeons all over the world,” Marston wrote. “Priscilla’s hobby is collecting chains.”) Rich also puts Wonder Woman into a brank: a leather mask that covers her head, attached to an iron collar. Next, Rich opens a beauty salon where she keeps girls in shackles as zebra-skin-wearing slaves (because “zebras are the cheetah’s favorite prey”). An army sergeant sent a letter to DC Comics, eager to see more: “I am one of those odd, perhaps unfortunate men who derive an extreme erotic pleasure from the mere thought of a beautiful girl, chained or bound, or masks, or wearing extreme high-heels or high-laced boots.” He’d been particularly excited to see the brank in “Wonder Woman and the Cheetah.” Roubicek apparently found the letter unsettling. Gaines wrote to Marston. Marston wrote back, “I have the good Sergeant’s letter in which he expresses his enthusiasm over chains for women—so what?” Eventually, Wonder Woman ties up the Cheetah with her magic lasso. Priscilla Rich says gratefully, “These bonds will feel wonderful!”
William Moulton Marston’s “Wonder Woman and the Cheetah,” from 1943, invents a comic-book caricature of a psychotic, violent woman, a mainstay of American pop culture in the forties. Source: DC Comics
This stuff is straight out of a psychology textbook: Dr. Marston’s psychology textbook. In “Emotions of Normal People” (1929), Marston had alluded to the inferiority complex, a psychological phenomenon identified by Alfred Adler around the time that Marston was completing his dissertation in experimental psychology. In a chapter called “Dominance,” Marston reports the results of research he conducted, with the assistance of Holloway and Byrne, including interviews with two hundred and fifty children with “delinquent behavior” (supervised by an expert on “psychopathic female delinquents”) in New York, more than thirty-four hundred prisoners in Texas, and a smaller set of undergraduates at Tufts University, where Marston taught from 1925 to 1926, and where he mostly studied bondage among sorority girls. Arguing that dominance is based on a “hunting instinct,” Marston explained the relationship between dominance and submission by comparing humans to cats chasing mice.
“There is nothing so dangerous in the whole world as the vicious hatred of a personal enemy and there is no enemy so eager to inflict pain as a man or woman who feels himself your inferior!” he wrote in “Wonder Woman and the Cheetah.” By the time the Cheetah leaped into action, Wonder Woman had already faced plenty of villains, all of whom came out of the lives and experiences of their creators. Unlike Holloway and Byrne, who went to graduate school but never earned doctorates, some of the villains had Ph.D.s., including Dr. Psycho, who was based on Marston’s adviser, the German-born experimental psychologist Hugo Münsterberg. Dr. Barbara Minerva, gemologist, is an update to the original Priscilla Rich story line—a gemologist, rather than a débutante, but still a jealous, submissive, psychopathic female who needs to be dominated.
There’s a lot at stake in putting Wonder Woman on film, partly because there are so few big-budget Hollywood movies with female leads (not to mention female directors) and partly because Wonder Woman is the most recognizable feminist icon in the world. Women and their daughters left the 2017 “Wonder Woman” movie giddy with gratitude; it means a lot to little girls, especially, to see a female character fighting back, rescuing the vulnerable, and defeating villains. It’d mean more if she wasn’t alone, and was part of a bigger fight—a fight for justice.
Patty Jenkins seems to be interested in history. She set her first Wonder Woman film during the First World War. And she set this new film in the Orwellian year of 1984. But she’s apparently not at all interested in the history of women: it’s got no place in either of her two “Wonder Woman” films, even though they both take place during major inflection points in that history, and even though the history of Wonder Woman, the comic book and the character, is inextricably bound up with the long, miserable, and unfinished struggle for women’s political equality.
Paradise Island, an island of women, was inspired by the feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s utopian novel, “Herland” (1915). The women there are Amazons because, in the nineteen-teens, reporters routinely used the name to describe suffragists. So did suffragists themselves, in both the U.K. and the U.S., including Elizabeth Holloway, who, as an undergraduate at Mount Holyoke College, a hotbed of suffrage, happened also to be an avid reader of the Greek poet Sappho, from the island of Lesbos. Wonder Woman fights men with skills learned from suffragists. In 1903, Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union, which championed militant resistance to official suppression of political action, urging women to defend themselves against the police by training in the arts of self-defense, especially jujitsu. In 1909, British suffragists, arrested for disorderly behavior, began going on hunger strikes, which led, four years later, to what became known as the Cat and Mouse Act, under which women near death would be released, only to be rearrested after they had gained enough strength to survive more days in detention. Like Holloway, Marston was influenced by both English and American suffragists; during his freshman year at Harvard, Emmeline Pankhurst came to speak. In 1914, Margaret Sanger, who was Olive Byrne’s aunt, began publishing one of the first feminist magazine in the United States, The Woman Rebel, in which Sanger coined the phrase “birth control.” There’s some evidence that Olive Byrne’s mother, Ethel Byrne, went to London for political training with the W.S.P.U. In 1917, after Margaret Sanger and Ethel Byrne opened the first birth-control clinic in the United States—together, the two women founded what would become Planned Parenthood—Byrne was convicted of the crime of teaching a woman how to use a diaphragm and undertook the first reported hunger strike by a woman in the U.S. Three years later, the United States finally ratified the Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing women the right to vote.


newyorker--2020-12-25--Looking Back at an Impossible Year, Plus Music from Andrew Bird

To close the year , we ’ ll hear four short reflections on the unimaginable events of 2020 .
Dhruv @ @ @ @ @ of the pandemic from inside a COVID-19 ward , Anna Wiener visits a California forest @ @ @ @ @ Parkin waxes nostalgic for the pandemic ’ s most-loved video game , and the poetry @ @ @ @ @ by Terrance Hayes and Ada Limón that stand as monuments to what we have lived @ @ @ @ @ celebrated indie musician Andrew Bird talks with a fan—the surgeon and New Yorker staff writer @ @ @

Illustration by Golden Cosmos
To close the year, we’ll hear four short reflections on the unimaginable events of 2020. Dhruv Khullar recalls the early days of the pandemic from inside a COVID-19 ward, Anna Wiener visits a California forest of burned redwoods, Simon Parkin waxes nostalgic for the pandemic’s most-loved video game, and the poetry editor Kevin Young selects poems by Terrance Hayes and Ada Limón that stand as monuments to what we have lived through. Plus, the celebrated indie musician Andrew Bird talks with a fan—the surgeon and New Yorker staff writer Atul Gawande.
Looking Back at an Unimaginable Year
Dhruv Kullar, Anna Weiner, Simon Parkin, and Kevin Young reflect on the events of 2020.
Atul Gawande and Andrew Bird Discuss the Art and Science of Cancer
The surgeon and writer—now a member of the incoming Biden Administration’s COVID-19 task force—talks with one of his favorite indie musicians.


newyorker--2020-12-26--Mom and Baby Are Both Doing Fine

Mom and Baby Are Both Doing Fine

Mary and I are overjoyed to officially announce the birth of our healthy baby boy last night , at 9:58 P.M. , on the tenth day of Tishrei , 3758 !
Mom and baby are both doing fine .
I , on the other hand , am exhausted .
Happier than I ’ ve ever been , but exhausted .
Seriously , haven ’ t been this tired since I created grass .
( That ’ s the last time I do an entire plant species by hand .
What was I , high ?
Gabriel , don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said , everybody ’ s doing fine and resting comfortably .
Well , as comfortably as you can rest in a stable .
I hate to name names , but this is what you get when you let Selaphiel book your travel .
Seriously , guys , please don ’ t make me waste my time micromanaging you .
I say three stars and up for a reason .
I can sense some of you rolling your eyes , but it ’ s bullshit like this that keeps me from finishing my novel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in at seven pounds , six ounces , and twenty and a half inches long .
And I say “ guy , ” but who knows how this little critter will end up identifying ?
Male , female , trans , nonbinary—we ’ ll love this kid just the same .
As long as he doesn ’ t eat shellfish .
Then he ’ s fucking dead to me .
Now , I probably shouldn ’ t mention this before the bris , but screw it—I ’ m almost positive we ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right ?
It ’ s either that or Jesse .
Although after seeing what Mary went through , I should probably just let her name him whatever she wants .
It was a rough birth , guys .
Two words : uterine shearing .
Yeah .
Not sure what I was thinking when I came up with childbirth .
Must have been when I was watching those “ Saw ” movies .
You haven ’ t seen those yet , but they ’ re amazing .
Heads up , the franchise drops off @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there till VI—trust Me .
So , as some of you might already have heard , we had been working with a birthing center in Nazareth and planned on having a water birth attended by our doula .
Well , you know what they say about the best-laid plans .
Mary ended up going into labor while we were on our babymoon in Bethlehem .
All we wanted was a quiet weekend to relax , reconnect , and binge-watch this new tile mosaic we ’ re obsessed with that depicts a Roman emperor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We were right in the middle of the second wall when her water broke .
But even though the birth didn ’ t go as planned , it all turned out O.K.
, and I want to highlight the incredible work of our support staff at the stable—a pair of donkeys named Rafa and Olive .
You guys went above and beyond .
This is exactly why I chose your species to survive the meteor and repopulate the Earth in 2021 .
Now , I don ’ t want to go any further @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , who has been a rock star throughout this entire process .
We didn ’ t pack enough snacks in the baby bag , and when I started getting peckish , this hero went out and raided a date grove .
Brought back a bushel and kept us going all night .
Seriously , pray to this guy , not me .
Mary is recovering well .
I think .
Right now she ’ s doing this skin-on-skin thing with the baby , and I wish you could see it .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s heartbreakingly sweet .
She ’ s just holding him against her chest .
She ’ s also crying softly .
She hasn ’ t really stopped crying since I met her , actually .
Ah , well , that ’ s all gon na change .
She ’ s got a birthday coming up and I planned this big day out .
We ’ re going to drive to Galilee to see this flutist she ’ s crazy about , and then stay overnight at an inn .
What can I say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Many of you have already been so generous and continue to reach out to see if there are items we need to outfit our place for Skylar/Jesse .
We took the liberty of putting together a registry—but , of course , no pressure whatsoever .
We ’ re just happy to have you sharing in this moment of joy .
Speaking of sharing in it , we ’ re thrilled that so many of you are excited .
But please , no more unannounced visitors .
It ’ s not that we don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but really—it ’ s not so “ wise ” to drop in on new parents and their baby twenty-five minutes after a birth .
I don ’ t want to get too graphic here , but just to paint a quick picture : placenta , feces ( human and donkey ) , mucus plug .
Our visitors from last night did come bearing gifts , though .
Thanks for that , gentlemen .
Really useful .
Because that ’ s just what two overwhelmed , first-time parents need : myrrh .
Not to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ three hours to make that registry .
So for any future gifts , refer to that .
I know it ’ s not the most fun thing to buy , but we could really use some baby-safe corner guards .
Stay tuned for details on the bris .
We ’ re going to have “ bagels.
” I just invented them—you ’ re gon na shit yourselves .
God , Mary , and little baby Stormi ( getting warmer ?
I don ’ t know—I ’ m wingin ’ this ! )

Date: December 26th
From: God
To: Angels
CC: Apostles, Shepherds
Subject: Introducing . . .
Mary and I are overjoyed to officially announce the birth of our healthy baby boy last night, at 9:58 P.M., on the tenth day of Tishrei, 3758!
Mom and baby are both doing fine. I, on the other hand, am exhausted. Happier than I’ve ever been, but exhausted. Seriously, haven’t been this tired since I created grass. (That’s the last time I do an entire plant species by hand. What was I, high? Gabriel, don’t answer that.)
But like I said, everybody’s doing fine and resting comfortably. Well, as comfortably as you can rest in a stable. I hate to name names, but this is what you get when you let Selaphiel book your travel. Seriously, guys, please don’t make me waste my time micromanaging you. I say three stars and up for a reason. I can sense some of you rolling your eyes, but it’s bullshit like this that keeps me from finishing my novel!
Anyway. Our little guy clocked in at seven pounds, six ounces, and twenty and a half inches long. And I say “guy,” but who knows how this little critter will end up identifying? Male, female, trans, nonbinary—we’ll love this kid just the same. As long as he doesn’t eat shellfish. Then he’s fucking dead to me.
Now, I probably shouldn’t mention this before the bris, but screw it—I’m almost positive we’re naming him Skylar. Pretty cool, right? It’s either that or Jesse. Although after seeing what Mary went through, I should probably just let her name him whatever she wants. It was a rough birth, guys. Two words: uterine shearing. Yeah. Not sure what I was thinking when I came up with childbirth. Must have been when I was watching those “Saw” movies. You haven’t seen those yet, but they’re amazing. Heads up, the franchise drops off after II, but just hang in there till VI—trust Me.
So, as some of you might already have heard, we had been working with a birthing center in Nazareth and planned on having a water birth attended by our doula. Well, you know what they say about the best-laid plans. Mary ended up going into labor while we were on our babymoon in Bethlehem. All we wanted was a quiet weekend to relax, reconnect, and binge-watch this new tile mosaic we’re obsessed with that depicts a Roman emperor falling in love with a bull. We were right in the middle of the second wall when her water broke.
But even though the birth didn’t go as planned, it all turned out O.K., and I want to highlight the incredible work of our support staff at the stable—a pair of donkeys named Rafa and Olive. You guys went above and beyond. This is exactly why I chose your species to survive the meteor and repopulate the Earth in 2021.
Now, I don’t want to go any further without giving a special shout-out to Joseph, who has been a rock star throughout this entire process. We didn’t pack enough snacks in the baby bag, and when I started getting peckish, this hero went out and raided a date grove. Brought back a bushel and kept us going all night. Seriously, pray to this guy, not me.
Mary is recovering well. I think. Right now she’s doing this skin-on-skin thing with the baby, and I wish you could see it. It’s a bonding ritual and it’s heartbreakingly sweet. She’s just holding him against her chest. She’s also crying softly. She hasn’t really stopped crying since I met her, actually. Ah, well, that’s all gonna change. She’s got a birthday coming up and I planned this big day out. We’re going to drive to Galilee to see this flutist she’s crazy about, and then stay overnight at an inn. What can I say, you only turn fifteen once.
Many of you have already been so generous and continue to reach out to see if there are items we need to outfit our place for Skylar/Jesse. We took the liberty of putting together a registry—but, of course, no pressure whatsoever. We’re just happy to have you sharing in this moment of joy.
Speaking of sharing in it, we’re thrilled that so many of you are excited. But please, no more unannounced visitors. It’s not that we don’t want to see you, but really—it’s not so “wise” to drop in on new parents and their baby twenty-five minutes after a birth. I don’t want to get too graphic here, but just to paint a quick picture: placenta, feces (human and donkey), mucus plug.
Our visitors from last night did come bearing gifts, though. Thanks for that, gentlemen. Really useful. Because that’s just what two overwhelmed, first-time parents need: myrrh. Not to be a bitch, but it took three hours to make that registry. So for any future gifts, refer to that. I know it’s not the most fun thing to buy, but we could really use some baby-safe corner guards.
Stay tuned for details on the bris. We’re going to have “bagels.” I just invented them—you’re gonna shit yourselves.
Love,
God, Mary, and little baby Stormi (getting warmer? I don’t know—I’m wingin’ this!)


newyorker--2020-12-26--“Moonstruck” Knows That the Best Things in Life Aren’t Chosen

Although “ Moonstruck ” is no underdog—it won three Oscars , was one of the most financially successful movies of 1987 , and is now a member of the Criterion Collection—its selling point has always been a problem .
To see the movie is to love it , but you have to get people in front of it first .
When the script—by John Patrick Shanley , an up-and-coming playwright whose first film , “ Five Corners , ” featured Jodie Foster and a very unlucky penguin—landed on the director Norman Jewison ’ s desk , it was called “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ One of the worst titles I have ever seen , ” Jewison would write in his memoir . )
Jewison asked Shanley ’ s agent , Jeannine Edmunds , who else had had a chance at the “ dog-eared , coffee-stained , well-thumbed ” script .
“ Everybody , ” she told him .
The plot goes something like this : Loretta Castorini ( Cher ) , a Brooklyn widow in her late thirties , has agreed to marry her casual beau , Johnny Cammareri .
She doesn ’ t love him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sweet man.
” A tortured interaction near the beginning of the film , in which Loretta instructs Johnny on how to properly propose to her , indicates that Johnny may not be much in love with Loretta either .
But his mother ’ s dying , and somebody has to take care of him .
In fact , he must fly out that night to Sicily , to sit by his mother ’ s deathbed , an event Loretta takes lightly .
( “ She ’ s dying , ” she comments to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ call .
“ But I could still hear her big mouth.
” ) Johnny also leaves Loretta with a job : persuade his estranged brother , Ronny ( Cage ) , who works in a bakery , to come to the wedding .
When Loretta gets around to phoning Ronny , he snarls , “ What ’ s wrong can never be made right , ” and hangs up .
A few scenes and a flipped table later , the two of them go to bed together .
This creates , as you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Meanwhile , Loretta ’ s father is having an affair .
Her mother is asking pointed questions about why men might need more than one woman .
Her grandfather frets about his household and goes everywhere with a pack of five dogs .
At a local restaurant , there ’ s a professor who ’ s always getting a drink thrown in his face by a series of women undergraduates .
And some combination of these people will , in time , all end up going to the same opera—another big mess .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ things are not quite so simple .
When Ronny lost his hand , he also lost his fiancée .
But perhaps he wanted to lose her , whether he admitted it or not ; he had , in Loretta ’ s understanding , chewed off his own foot , like a wolf caught in a trap .
What Ronny can ’ t live with is not his accident but his discovery of his own ruthlessness .
What Loretta can ’ t admit is that she ’ s a wolf , too—not , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who will do anything to become a bride .
Like Ronny , she is torn between who she is and who she believes herself to be .
It is from this gap that “ Moonstruck ” mines its most precious material .
There ’ s nothing wrong with being a wolf ; most of us are at least a little lupine .
( “ I seen a wolf in everybody I ever met and I see a wolf in you , ” we hear one woman remark to her husband . )
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s a wolf is dangerous : it ’ s then that people , and maybe even the wolf , can get hurt .
If you ’ re in pain , you can howl at the moon .
But to cover up your pain with cheap distraction—a halfhearted engagement , a silly grudge—is only to inflame the wound .
For much of the movie , Loretta denies this ; to her , the coverup is a form of agency , a way of making right what ’ s wrong .
After a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Ronny that she ’ s drawn to him , but that she doesn ’ t want to pursue the feeling .
“ I can take hold of myself , ” she says .
“ I can say yes to some things , and no to other things that are going to ruin everything .
.
.
.
Otherwise , what good is this stupid life ?
” Nothing is pushing Loretta away from Ronny but her own wish to feel in control , just as nothing is driving her father ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his wife that he fears death .
But you can ’ t choose to banish your feelings , even if you are not quite a slave to them .
And death isn ’ t going to yield to even the canniest control .
You can ’ t fix the fear of death—as Philip Larkin wrote , “ Most things may never happen : this one will ” —but you can admit that you think your life “ is built on nothing , ” as Loretta ’ s father eventually does .
As for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for his brother , things will be awkward .
But nobody is going to die .
There ’ s nothing here that years of family dinners and the occasional fight can not ameliorate , if given the time and space to do so .
One reason that “ Moonstruck ” celebrates the family over the romantic couple—it ends not with a wedding but with a toast “ to family ” —is because family relationships are fixed in this way .
Marriage is a relationship of choice ; family is not .
Your brother @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you hate him .
You can renounce your family , often for good reasons , but you can ’ t change the fact of the relationship , or how , in being a member of a family , you assume a kind of doubleness among people who have known you for a long time , which is part of what makes trying to be somebody else appealing .
Sometimes these games can even teach you something .
To her family , her employers , and Johnny , Loretta positions herself as everybody ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ronny she drops the pose ; she ’ s lost , she ’ s upset , she ’ s dying inside , and , after the bad luck of her first marriage , she thinks that she ’ s cursed to be unhappy .
She doesn ’ t dress up or dye the gray in her hair , because she feels resigned to be “ who she is ” —a widow living a quiet life .
But even being doomed is a comforting fiction , a substitute of a false self for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possibility of a life that ’ s painful but really lived , not simply endured .
When Loretta insists that she can choose what she wants , Ronny replies , “ Love don ’ t make things nice—it ruins everything , it breaks your heart .
.
.
.
We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die !
” Loretta is right that she can choose , but she ’ s wrong that choosing Ronny would mean ruining everything .
Ruining everything would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to will yourself into the life you think appropriate .
You can tell yourself that you won ’ t crack .
But you could also flip over the table and see what happens .
If I look for companions to “ Moonstruck , ” I find myself thinking mostly of Shakespeare ’ s romantic comedies , particularly “ As You Like It , ” with its elaborate and exaggerated role-play , complex familial relationships , and absolutely ridiculous ending , in which the barely glimpsed villain of the story , hot in pursuit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a hermit , then immediately converts to religious life , dropping all worldly concerns .
The charm of this ending is its suggestion that , for any work of fiction to feel like life , it must admit that some things simply happen .
“ Love , ” as one character reminds another , “ is merely a madness.
” “ Moonstruck ” shares that spirit .
It ’ s a comedy , but it ’ s deeply obsessed with death , to the point that it opens in a funeral parlor .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , instead of trying to build up its central couple , it takes their sudden and total attraction to one another as an act of God .
Nobody in the movie acts reasonably , or even normally .
And yet it feels completely true to people as they are : ridiculous and passionate , in search of answers and solutions , and taking what they can get , which is usually better than what they thought they wanted .
As the film knows , most of the things in life that matter aren @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at least get to love the wrong people , who might just be the right people after all .

I’ve never hit on a way of describing “Moonstruck” as a film that’s genuinely good. Usually, I choose as its selling point its strangeness: It stars Cher and Nicolas Cage! It’s a romantic comedy in which people run around talking about wolves and death! What more could you want? Once, during an especially fevered pitch, I ended up acting out the scene where Cage bellows to a lovestruck assistant, “Bring me the big knife! I’m gonna cut my throat!” It’s better when he does it.
Although “Moonstruck” is no underdog—it won three Oscars, was one of the most financially successful movies of 1987, and is now a member of the Criterion Collection—its selling point has always been a problem. To see the movie is to love it, but you have to get people in front of it first. When the script—by John Patrick Shanley, an up-and-coming playwright whose first film, “Five Corners,” featured Jodie Foster and a very unlucky penguin—landed on the director Norman Jewison’s desk, it was called “The Bride and the Wolf.” (“One of the worst titles I have ever seen,” Jewison would write in his memoir.) Jewison asked Shanley’s agent, Jeannine Edmunds, who else had had a chance at the “dog-eared, coffee-stained, well-thumbed” script. “Everybody,” she told him.
The plot goes something like this: Loretta Castorini (Cher), a Brooklyn widow in her late thirties, has agreed to marry her casual beau, Johnny Cammareri. She doesn’t love him, but he’s “a sweet man.” A tortured interaction near the beginning of the film, in which Loretta instructs Johnny on how to properly propose to her, indicates that Johnny may not be much in love with Loretta either. But his mother’s dying, and somebody has to take care of him. In fact, he must fly out that night to Sicily, to sit by his mother’s deathbed, an event Loretta takes lightly. (“She’s dying,” she comments to her mother, after Johnny places a call. “But I could still hear her big mouth.”)
Johnny also leaves Loretta with a job: persuade his estranged brother, Ronny (Cage), who works in a bakery, to come to the wedding. When Loretta gets around to phoning Ronny, he snarls, “What’s wrong can never be made right,” and hangs up. A few scenes and a flipped table later, the two of them go to bed together. This creates, as you might imagine, a big mess. Meanwhile, Loretta’s father is having an affair. Her mother is asking pointed questions about why men might need more than one woman. Her grandfather frets about his household and goes everywhere with a pack of five dogs. At a local restaurant, there’s a professor who’s always getting a drink thrown in his face by a series of women undergraduates. And some combination of these people will, in time, all end up going to the same opera—another big mess.
If “Moonstruck” has a clear through line, it is about things that are wrong getting made right, a winding process that often involves committing some new wrongs along the way. The bad blood between the Cammareri brothers concerns an accident that took place five years prior. Johnny caused Ronny to look the wrong way while slicing some bread; Ronny cut off his own hand. Subsequently, his fiancée left him. Ronny has brooded on this, basically without ceasing, since it happened. One of Cage’s most famous lines in the movie comes when Ronny recites the story of his wound to an unimpressed Loretta. Exasperated by her response, he screams, “I ain’t no freakin’ monument to justice!” Part of the joke is that a monument is exactly what he’s become, a constant tribute to his own pain.
Loretta, however, correctly intuits that things are not quite so simple. When Ronny lost his hand, he also lost his fiancée. But perhaps he wanted to lose her, whether he admitted it or not; he had, in Loretta’s understanding, chewed off his own foot, like a wolf caught in a trap. What Ronny can’t live with is not his accident but his discovery of his own ruthlessness. What Loretta can’t admit is that she’s a wolf, too—not, as she seems to think, a woman who will do anything to become a bride. Like Ronny, she is torn between who she is and who she believes herself to be.
It is from this gap that “Moonstruck” mines its most precious material. There’s nothing wrong with being a wolf; most of us are at least a little lupine. (“I seen a wolf in everybody I ever met and I see a wolf in you,” we hear one woman remark to her husband.) But a wolf that doesn’t know it’s a wolf is dangerous: it’s then that people, and maybe even the wolf, can get hurt. If you’re in pain, you can howl at the moon. But to cover up your pain with cheap distraction—a halfhearted engagement, a silly grudge—is only to inflame the wound. For much of the movie, Loretta denies this; to her, the coverup is a form of agency, a way of making right what’s wrong. After a night at the opera, she admits to Ronny that she’s drawn to him, but that she doesn’t want to pursue the feeling. “I can take hold of myself,” she says. “I can say yes to some things, and no to other things that are going to ruin everything. . . . Otherwise, what good is this stupid life?”
Nothing is pushing Loretta away from Ronny but her own wish to feel in control, just as nothing is driving her father’s affair but his refusal to admit to his wife that he fears death. But you can’t choose to banish your feelings, even if you are not quite a slave to them. And death isn’t going to yield to even the canniest control. You can’t fix the fear of death—as Philip Larkin wrote, “Most things may never happen: this one will”—but you can admit that you think your life “is built on nothing,” as Loretta’s father eventually does. As for Loretta, if she ditches her fiancé for his brother, things will be awkward. But nobody is going to die. There’s nothing here that years of family dinners and the occasional fight cannot ameliorate, if given the time and space to do so.
One reason that “Moonstruck” celebrates the family over the romantic couple—it ends not with a wedding but with a toast “to family”—is because family relationships are fixed in this way. Marriage is a relationship of choice; family is not. Your brother is always your brother, even if you hate him. You can renounce your family, often for good reasons, but you can’t change the fact of the relationship, or how, in being a member of a family, you assume a kind of doubleness among people who have known you for a long time, which is part of what makes trying to be somebody else appealing. Sometimes these games can even teach you something. To her family, her employers, and Johnny, Loretta positions herself as everybody’s mother, but when she meets Ronny she drops the pose; she’s lost, she’s upset, she’s dying inside, and, after the bad luck of her first marriage, she thinks that she’s cursed to be unhappy. She doesn’t dress up or dye the gray in her hair, because she feels resigned to be “who she is”—a widow living a quiet life.
But even being doomed is a comforting fiction, a substitute of a false self for a real one. Ronny offers Loretta the possibility of a life that’s painful but really lived, not simply endured. When Loretta insists that she can choose what she wants, Ronny replies, “Love don’t make things nice—it ruins everything, it breaks your heart. . . . We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die!” Loretta is right that she can choose, but she’s wrong that choosing Ronny would mean ruining everything. Ruining everything would be marrying Johnny. You can try to will yourself into the life you think appropriate. You can tell yourself that you won’t crack. But you could also flip over the table and see what happens.
If I look for companions to “Moonstruck,” I find myself thinking mostly of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies, particularly “As You Like It,” with its elaborate and exaggerated role-play, complex familial relationships, and absolutely ridiculous ending, in which the barely glimpsed villain of the story, hot in pursuit of our heroes, has a conversation—offstage—with a hermit, then immediately converts to religious life, dropping all worldly concerns. The charm of this ending is its suggestion that, for any work of fiction to feel like life, it must admit that some things simply happen. “Love,” as one character reminds another, “is merely a madness.”
“Moonstruck” shares that spirit. It’s a comedy, but it’s deeply obsessed with death, to the point that it opens in a funeral parlor. It’s a romance, but, instead of trying to build up its central couple, it takes their sudden and total attraction to one another as an act of God. Nobody in the movie acts reasonably, or even normally. And yet it feels completely true to people as they are: ridiculous and passionate, in search of answers and solutions, and taking what they can get, which is usually better than what they thought they wanted. As the film knows, most of the things in life that matter aren’t chosen. But sometimes we at least get to love the wrong people, who might just be the right people after all.