0 Sarah McLachlan, "Angel" (1998)

Nov. 14, 1998, #4
(listen)

It's true I have never been much of one for opiates—the War on Drugs propaganda of a lifetime worked all too well and I diligently avoided them. That's surely to the good, though it pains me some to learn, all this time later, how much relatively safer they are than stimulants such as amphetamine and cocaine varieties (not to mention legal alcohol). As usual, it's the laws causing most of the harm. The romance of opiates returned briefly in the '90s—McLachlan was specifically moved to write this by the death of Smashing Pumpkins' keyboard player Jonathan Melvoin. Other specters hang over it too, of course. That romance was itself surely less to the good. But among other things it did produce this tender and amazing song, routinely capable of filling me to overflowing with a delicious sadness and no taint of self-pity. It's the human condition—solace washed up depressed in a dark cold hotel room, under a naked bulb—made into music pure. The song was later (and unfortunately) used as the theme for an in-your-face campaign against animal abuse, and has been interpreted more benignly as being about everything from disappointment to God. Fair enough. You can't blame anyone who can't stand it for the associations (and/or ubiquity). If that weren't enough, its piano chords have also become a cliché of poignant scenes in TV and movies. But I think it transcends all these problems and makes them puny. For me, it finds its greatest power in the simple expedient of kindness, toward someone with a hard life, who seeks to blot away the inescapable pains, even if fleetingly. The song does not judge and thus feels like one of the kindest acts ever committed. It's pure love, "this glorious sadness that brings me to my knees."

Detail: Sarah McLachlan, "Angel" (1998)

0 The Savage Detectives (1998)

It's hard not to feel a little intimidated by the formidable reputation this bore on arrival in 2007, when an English translation was finally published. By then the massive 1998 tome was spoken of by some as the greatest Latin American novel since One Hundred Years of Solitude. Knowing little more than that the experience of reading it was at once anticlimactic and exhilarating. On the one hand it is little more than an autobiographical hagiography of an arguably failed poet. On the other it is somehow compulsively readable all the way through and utterly engrossing, even if, as I made my way, I was hard put to explain to myself what was the attraction. Roberto Bolano once compared writing poems and novels to building houses and skyscrapers, and there is indeed a quality to this of an imposing edifice. What's fun is how he shuttles so easily from the penthouse view to the scenes in the bar in the basement, all with an earthy undeniable authority. He makes Mexican poets of the '70s sound like New York punk-rock bands in the same period, or the Beats two decades before that: deeply felt, profoundly committed to art and literature, willing to make all the sacrifices and live according to the terms. Bolano offers himself up in not one but two characters based on himself, the first the 17-year-old Juan Garcia Madero in the first full flower of embracing life and poetry (not necessarily in that order), whose diary entries bookend the much larger middle section that tracks the elusive and mysterious Arturo Belano (Bolano's second surrogate) and his best friend Ulises Lima, based on Bolano's best friend Mario Santiago. The long middle section is a stunning cacophony of transcriptions of characters telling their stories and what they know of Belano and Lima, hundreds of details that slowly fill out the portraits. Their stories are endlessly weird and fascinating, all of them rooted in a world where poetry is the most important thing and poverty just doesn't matter very much.

In case it's not at the library.

Detail: The Savage Detectives (1998)

0 The Gingerbread Man (1998)

USA, 114 minutes
Director: Robert Altman
Writers: John Grisham, Clyde Hayes
Photography: Changwei Gu
Music: Mark Isham
Editor: Geraldine Peroni
Cast: Kenneth Branagh, Embeth Davidtz, Robert Downey Jr., Daryl Hannah, Robert Duvall, Tom Berenger, Famke Janssen, Clyde Hayes, May Whitman

The last few years I've been making a project of going through Robert Altman's considerable body of movies and TV episodes. No surprise, they are wildly uneven. I have even formulated a Paul Dooley axiom, though he is an actor I enjoy: Any Robert Altman movie with Paul Dooley may safely be avoided—with the possible exceptions of A Perfect Couple, Popeye, and A Wedding (and if they are best in class, I hope you can see what I'm talking about).

Paul Dooley is not in The Gingerbread Man, which I saw when it was new. Not much had stayed with me beyond a vague sense that I liked it. Most of the reviews I looked at beforehand were mostly unimpressed. "Routine thriller, in which the director's usual quirkiness has been reined in by the script," says Halliwell's 2008, which was typical. Add to that, The Gingerbread Man has many earmarks of Oscar-bait—big names in juxtaposition all over the place, John Grisham, Altman himself, Kenneth Branagh, Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, etc.—but the January release date suggests it was considered a dog by the studio, which lowered my expectations further. Last (and least), in one of those Hollywood coincidences that seem to happen all the time, it was second to the market (though it was shot first) with a movie set in the surprisingly exotic location of Savannah, Georgia, after Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, released two months earlier.

Playing this kind of game, you can probably guess what happened. I thought The Gingerbread Man was terrific.



In his commentary on the DVD, Altman continually comes back to the fact that he considers The Gingerbread Man a thriller, an evident important distinction. He even discusses Hitchcock, specifically Rear Window. He has a point to the extent that both The Gingerbread Man and Rear Window operate a lot like some kind of inside-out noir. We see only events as they unfold—we see little of the scheming, which so often is such a big part (and arguably the point) of classic noirs such as The Big Heat, Double Indemnity, and Scarlet Street.

The Gingerbread Man is not as good as Rear Window but it's pretty good. The screenplay is sharp and relentless, setting hooks and traps for us as surely as for anyone in the movie. Rick Magruder (Kenneth Branagh) is a swaggering criminal defense attorney whose focus of attention shifts between manipulating the system to do his job, manipulating women to get laid, and manipulating anyone in sight for attention, in approximately that order, which makes him hard to like. Still, his heart might be in the right place, as when he takes Mallory Doss (Embeth Davidtz) under his wing, a struggling waitress presently being victimized by her father Dixon (Robert Duvall), a degenerate Georgia backwoodsman who is mentally ill. Soon enough, Magruder is locked in mortal combat with Dixon Doss, who among other things appears to be sending Magruder photos of his children with their eyes burned out by cigarettes.

Altman assembles all the elements that make this work like a clockwork. It's actually a meticulously constructed picture, with a great cast (Downey as a private investigator working for Magruder is particularly good), a production design emphasizing the dark and the red, an intricate sound strategy (with layers of ambient noise, musical sound effects, and a subdued score), and a methodically worked out ever-twisting plot that keeps the developments coming fast. To Altman's point, my basic expectation of a thriller is that it should be something of an amusement park ride, and that is adequately satisfied by The Gingerbread Man, which is what surprised me most on getting another look at it. It's completely engaging start to finish even if it lacks points in the feel-good division, which as much as anything I think is likely responsible for the January release.

The best part of the whole thing is the hurricane—not just because it's the usual effective enough unifying device that Altman turns to for endings in his movies (the snowstorm in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the earthquake in Short Cuts, the tornado in Dr. T and the Women, even the assassination in Nashville), but because, really, I'm not sure he ever did it better than here, on the level of pure sensation. The weather, the approaching storm, often punctuated by weather reports on TVs playing in the backgrounds, as well as everything we see of wind and rain in the exteriors (and this movie has a lot of exteriors), contributes as a continuing source of tension continually worrying the action. It explodes at the climax almost perfectly, two brute forces of nature at once, with a context of vicious howling wind and dumping rains. It's remarkable start to finish.

One of the most interesting things Altman says on the DVD commentary is when he points out, in an almost disconsolate tone, perhaps even defensive, that first viewings of The Gingerbread Man are unlike any other. After that, it becomes a different movie. That's true enough, in terms of the secrets and reveals of the story. But it ties together so many extraordinary pieces that go into making a movie, compacting them expertly into the shape of a thriller. And it's not exactly true to say he's never made another movie like this, because evidently he liked working with such a narrative strategy enough that he was at it again a few years later with Gosford Park, his amalgam of Upstairs, Downstairs and The Rules of the Game. Gosford Park is not a thriller but it also has a secret and a reveal that also make the first viewing different from any other. I've actually seen The Gingerbread Man a few times now, and  have to say that, even for some of its cartoony aspects (notably the graveyard-swarming army of hillbillies led by Dixon Doss), it stands up to multiple viewings like a sturdy little town battened down and pummeled by high winds and rain.

Detail: The Gingerbread Man (1998)

0 The Truman Show (1998)

USA, 103 minutes
Director: Peter Weir
Writer: Andrew Niccol
Photography: Peter Biziou
Music: Burkhard von Dallwitz
Editors: William M. Anderson, Lee Smith
Cast: Jim Carrey, Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich, Natascha McElhone, Holland Taylor, Ed Harris, Peter Krause, Paul Giamatti, Harry Shearer, Philip Baker Hall

It's surely going too far to call The Truman Show a horror movie—it's not exactly ever scary, for one thing. But the affinities to Twilight Zone in its near-future science fiction premise are evident enough even as it slyly obverts the cinema of paranoia over to the point of view of the voyeurs. The deception it lays out in broad strokes and then methodically details is scandalous nearly beyond belief. It's hard not to be stirred at least a little—disturbed, even horrified. Which is not exactly the intent here, but not exactly not the intent either.

Indeed, it's not easy to know what The Truman Show thinks it is about beyond an overweening sense of its own prescience—at which, in fairness, even 15 years later, it seems very good indeed in the hurly-burly of seeing it. Easy shots proceed like automatic weapon fire at creeping corporatism, media/celebrity culture, TV and the displaced and alienated lives of people living vicariously through it. There's even, arguably, an attempt to illuminate the Situationist spectacle. It is almost dazzling in the way it picks up on and flies down the rabbit holes of media criticism then in play, gleefully embracing and inflating practical marketing savvy tactics like product placement and embedded marketing. Most importantly, I think, it's very sharp tracking the diminishing levels of public discourse. It doesn't know who or what to blame it on, but it knows there is a problem. Likely spoilers ahead.



The Truman Show misses the office politics side of reality TV that Survivor and its innovation of competition brought along just a year or two later, and it has no evident inkling of how fungible that competitive element would become, vastly widening the opportunities for exploitation to the worlds of fashion, cooking, big business, even golf, and beyond. But it definitely understands the Jerry Springer/Housewives of levels of lust for attention from TV that has pervaded media culture since then, and only worsened.

It is, in fact, astonishingly clear-sighted about the textures and fabric of amorality as it dances and slinks across media surfaces, testing to see how far it can push its own credibility. I think the picture may have been even more cynical then than I am now, because I still can't believe a crime like the one perpetrated on Truman Burbank could ever be pulled off. Though I'm closer to thinking it might. The intervening years have only brought more examples of how often we seem to sit and watch as great crimes are committed in front of our (media) eyes. Consider the developments in the national security state.

In many ways, on another level, The Truman Show is more riffing by director Peter Weir on one of his favorite themes—insiders and outsiders sorting things out, binary commingling of oneself and an other at societal level. Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is the unwitting star of a smash hit reality TV show. He doesn't know he's on TV, he just thinks he's living his life as an insurance man in some generic Happytown, USA. Everyone around him, even his wife Meryl (played by "Hannah Gill," played by Laura Linney), is a television professional. He is the only one who does not know. He is also "the first child to have ever been legally adopted by a corporation." Under contract with an anonymous single mother, his birth was broadcast and every moment of his petri-dish life since, which has been confined to a soundstage dome stocked with props, costars, extras, and fabulous skyscapes. At 30, Truman is a lot like George Bailey slowly giving up his dream to flee Bedford Falls—it's never quite going to happen.

As such, Truman is at once the ultimate insider and outsider. No one else can live his life, a fate we all share, but because of the deception he has no one to share that with him. As a concept, it's grotesquely huge, making too great an enormity of a broadcast corporation (although, to be fair, there is Fox News today). It's just too monstrous a crime, and there's no real good way to mitigate that except go ahead and play it straight. It helps that Jim Carrey seems uniquely qualified for the unusual role—his tendency to overplay the awkward bathos is made to order here, as is his phony happy-guy shtick. Is there anyone else who could have so convincingly delivered this line: "Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!" No, not even Fred Rogers or Jerry Lewis themselves.

Weir is so good at making movies that one tends to overlook these unharmonious notes and questions as things keep sweeping forward. The Truman Show always looks great, there's a wonderful blend of shots culled from all manner of cameras and lenses, in a version of the documentary verite style. And there's ingenious foolery for those who like such (I'm one in this case) with self-conscious quotation and mashup, recycled classic movie moments such as a lively dalmation named Pluto, scenes and images pilfered in from Persona, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, various Brian De Palma thrillers, and above all Frank Capra at large. The mockumentary of television journalism is rich and dead-on and constant, capturing notes of video sales pitches, overnight cable-TV marketing infotainment, and the self-serving complacence of the whole Entertainment Tonight industry.

The ending tends toward the boffo, and has always seemed to me strained and oversweet. But I guess if the crime is so enormous the redemption would have to be quasi-heavenly. And there is the implicit Capra connection, Truman Burbank as a more or less explicit John Doe figure. So make popcorn and gather everyone around for an evening of first-class entertainment.

Detail: The Truman Show (1998)

0 Saint Etienne, "Lose That Girl" (1998)

(listen)

I'm pretty sure Saint Etienne's fourth album, Good Humor, is better than most people seem to think, and "Lose That Girl" highlights a lot of the reasons why ("Mr. Donut" and "Erica America" were further candidates, eliminated late): pop confections sweet enough to make your jaw hurt, with aching undertows of tender pain and regrets, melodies that stick, and grooves. Also Sarah Cracknell's vocals, breathy epitome of a European pop sensibility that connects easily back to the '60s and Henry Mancini, Claudine Longet, Margo Guryan, Astrid Gilberto, Audrey Hepburn. I like "Lose That Girl" because it reminds me of another '60s artifact: "You're Gonna Lose That Girl" and the way the Beatles wrote their puppy love songs, focused on one specific aspect at a time of the churn of love and infatuation, ending up across several albums with something close to an exhaustive catalog. Here we have a concerned friend of the opposite sex, a girl attempting to talk sense to a boy blinded by the swoon. It sounds serious, from the details. But is the singer, who views herself as more sophisticated, really disinterested? Does she have designs on the boy herself? Is there more we need to know? Hard to say, hard to say, and yes of course. Part of the delight is the gaps left to ponder. The urgency is set in motion by the tempo, and the clanking band smoothly keeping up. All indications point to "that girl" being the bad news the singer asserts she is: "walked out on you last Saturday," "dropped out of school," "on her radio she turned the disco down," etc. As the song sails out of sight, nothing is resolved, and no, playing it again won't clarify anything, except the pure frothing magnetism of the pop music magic. There's a long version of this too, but I don't think it's nearly as good.

Detail: Saint Etienne, "Lose That Girl" (1998)

0 Elliott Smith, "Baby Britain" (1998)

(listen)

I love the way this slips into its '60s garb so determinedly and yet manages not to be particularly heavy-handed about it, at least not so to me. It's a lovely, spirited melody delivered up in a breathy Alex Chilton hush, weaving its way around a lovely acoustic piano, jangly band, smoky organ chords at the bridge, like it's sauntering in a park on a lovely warm spring day, playing stop-motion on a hazy black and white French New Wave morning in America. The words are a bit hard to pick out, going by rather quickly, but it's hard to resist attempting to at least hum along, it's such a pretty little thing. Smith's music still tends to make me sad before anything else because of the way he went—not sure when I'm going to get past it either, because obviously there are huge depressive strains all through his work. But here, where the music seems notably cheerful, it creates a tension that can about break my heart, heard in the right circumstances. That's the main pleasure of it for me. And, given that it was the single from the XO album, I'm pretty sure they had some idea what they had too. Then again, actually paying close attention to the words (for the first time) discloses somewhat less tension on that score: "The light was on but it was dim / Revolver's been turned over / And now it's ready once again / The radio is playing 'Crimson and Clover' / London Bridge is safe and sound / No matter what you keep repeating / Nothing's gonna drag me down / To a death that's not worth cheating." Hm. Well, but anyway it sounds happy!

Detail: Elliott Smith, "Baby Britain" (1998)

0 Hell Among the Yearlings (1998)

There's an ever so slightly stuffy air of the self-conscious about Gillian Welch and her old-time folk music project, at least here on her second album, which is the one by her I know best (directed to it via a MOJO list). Welch was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles, going to college at Santa Cruz, where it is said the Stanley Brothers reached out and touched her. She hooked up with her musical partner David Rawlings at Berklee. It's a funny background, but she's obviously a natural at this. It doesn't hurt any, of course, to have T-Bone Burnett twiddling the knobs and playing keyboards. The sound is loose and sparkling tight at once, clarified so every string and vocal croak practically can be heard vibrating—beautifully recorded, no surprise of course. Welch's singing holds the center of attention with a reedy commanding confidence, an ability to slip and slide around the notes and words and push against them in convincingly achy ways. And all the playing is fine as can be, shaped and textured and felt. A scan of the titles fleshes out the themes: "The Devil Had a Hold on Me," "Miner's Refrain," "Rock of Ages," "My Morphine." They are all originals, which vexingly then raises questions of what she has to tell us about the devil, miners, morphine, etc., or even yearlings for that matter. It's vexing because they are good questions. "Miner's Refrain," for example, puts me in mind of Harlan County U.S.A., a very fine movie. It sounds like it could play there, dropped in with any of the other musical sequences. But suddenly I realize I am hearing it more convincingly in terms of a shared experience over an acclaimed documentary than some bulletin from elsewhere, "down in a hole," let alone with urgency of narrative. It is as if Welch imagines herself into these dust bowl scenarios and then riffs off that, which is fine I suppose, especially for an early album, testing and trying things. I'm approximately at the point where I start to understand some of the generalized carping one hears about a presumed lack of authenticity, but I'm not sure it's fair, or even necessarily right. But I will say I appreciate Hell Among the Yearlings most when I take it on admittedly superficial terms, as tracks thrown up very occasionally into the shuffle stream or the album whole played through start to finish in track order a few days in a row to get the feel for it. Otherwise I don't pull it out.

Detail: Hell Among the Yearlings (1998)