Dispatch From MacGuffins - November Culture Diary
The most fun I've had in a theater all year, Queer premiere, Gladia2or...
Welcome to Dispatch From MacGuffins, Never Cursed’s monthly culture diary.
When I’m stressed I can go one of two ways: 1. numbing myself via heaps of mediocre TV and frictionless movies, or 2. desperate for art that moves me. In a month dominated by pre- and post-election anxiety, I was consumed by the latter approach, craving films and books that would help me feel more human. I took long walks with little books and spent as much time at the movie theater as possible, looking for emotional connection and a way out of my head. In November 2016 I saw an Almodóvar movie every day for almost 2 weeks at Cinefamily. November 2024 thankfully delivered one of the best communal filmgoing experiences I’ve ever had, and a shockingly heart-wrenching, knotty, emotionally honest film from one of my favorite filmmakers.
November Movie Diary:
Sense and Sensibility - Kate, Hanna, and I went to see Ang Lee & Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility at Vidiots, and within 10 minutes of the movie starting I was crying because I was having so much fun. The theater was packed with people of all ages, clapping and giggling and screaming together the entire film. It was amazing to see on a big screen for the first time, noticing new details in the incredible cast’s performances and feeling an audience completely swept up in every comedic and romantic beat. I wish there was a mandatory viewing for every studio exec of this kind of mid budget, excellently-executed period piece so that they could see how ravenous audiences are for smart, emotional, beautiful filmmaking. Truly the most fun I’ve had in a theater in the last decade, if not longer. Thank you Vidiots 💕!
Queer - The longer I sit with it, the more I think Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of Queer is a bit of a miracle, grabbing the raw, lonely heart of Burrough’s novella and articulating a kind of desperation that I’ve never seen on screen before. The level of craft from all of the department heads is stunning, reason alone to see the movie in a theater. Daniel Craig’s performance is beautiful, daring, all-in. It’s not ‘perfect,’ but I think a ‘perfect’ adaptation of the text would be missing the spirit of it. It’s questing, experimental, indulgent, yearning, and unresolvable in a way that feels more honest and more important the longer I spend with the movie. In a month where I was teetering on the edge of numbed misanthropy, Luca gave me a profoundly human experience, frustrating and liberating in equal measure, for which I’m very grateful.
Gladiator II - On the complete opposite end of the emotional spectrum, I finally saw Gladiator II, a long-awaited friend outing that somehow ballooned into a 17 person crew that took up two whole rows in our section of the IMAX theater. Denzel and Paul both gave amazing performances considering how fractured the film felt at times, but generally speaking the whole spectacle left me a little cold. (That said, Hail Dondas. It’s also always a treat to see Derek Jacobi.)
Le Notti Bianche - By coincidence I watched this Visconti adaptation of White Nights in the week leading up to seeing Queer, and found so many parallels in the look and feel of the two films’ immersive, Cinecittà-built neighborhood sets. Jean Marais and Marcello Mastroianni are both totally dialed in, exploring love in a similarly lonely, desperate register to Queer’s. Gorgeous cinematography from Giuseppe “Peppino” Rotunno, famous for collaborating with Visconti, Fellini, and my beloved Lina Wertmuller.
Vanya (National Theatre at Home) - My favorite subscription of 2024 has definitely been the National Theatre’s streaming service. I don’t get to see a ton of theater in LA, so it’s a treat to be able to watch their archive of amazing productions. Andrew Scott’s one man performance of Uncle Vanya is stunning, and fascinatingly blocked to cue the audience to understand which character he’s inhabiting.
Simon Callow Comfort Rewatches: A Room With A View, Four Weddings & A Funeral - Two beautiful, funny, humanist movies to help beat the daylight savings blues. Simon Callow is one of my favorite British character actors & for me the real star of both movies, whether he’s having a nude romp through the English countryside in A Room With A View or jigging through a stuffy wedding dance floor in Four Weddings. I may do a full watch of his filmography in December…
Reading List:
The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk - One of my favorite novels (& dream adaptations) is Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, which was the inspiration for Olga Tokarczuk’s new novel. I love anything set at a sanatorium so I bought this as soon as its English translation was released. Thus far the The Empusium is very unsettling, becoming increasingly muddled as its main character begins to lose his grip on reality. Tokarczuk won the 2018 Nobel & Booker for her novel Flights, which is next on my list…
The Burial At Thebes by Seamus Heaney - My daily routine has recently involved a morning walk with a small book tucked in my pocket to read at the halfway point, and I’ve been swapping between plays and poetry. I’m currently immersed in Seamus Heaney’s reworking of Antigone, one of my favorite Greek plays. A friend and I were talking about why Irish writing, music, and filmmaking is having such a moment, and I think it’s in part because of the way that Irish artists understand how to hold the personal and the political in the same work. Whether it’s Sally Rooney’s exploration of capital via interpersonal relationships or Fontaines DC’s bleak romanticism, Irish work feels especially, unflinchingly of our time.
Devotions by Mary Oliver - Whenever I’m feeling like my attention is wandering or I’m spending too much time glued to my screen, I pick up this collection of Mary Oliver’s poems. She has such a finely tuned antennae for the details of the natural world, a reminder of the present-mindedness necessary for good writing.
Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda (trans. WS Merwin) - WS Merwin’s one of my favorite American poets, so I was really excited to find his Neruda translations at Vroman’s this week. Here’s a fave from the collection.
Collected Poems 1945-1975 by Robert Creeley - I haven’t read much Creeley since college, but this month I’ve fallen in love with his writing all over again. Here’s a little excerpt of his poem “For Love” that resonated after seeing Queer:
Can I eat
what you give me. I
have not earned it. Must
I think of everything
as earned. Now love also
becomes a reward so
remote from me I have
only made it with my mind.
…
Let me stumble into
not the confession but
the obsession I begin with
now. For you
also (also)
some time beyond place, or
place beyond time, no
mind left to
say anything at all,
that face gone, now.
Into the company of love
it all returns.
xoH