Call Me By Your Name. Who knew it was so good?

 (Originally published 21 June 2022)

 Last night . . . and five years late, I watched a movie I'd never intended to see.  But, being something of a completist, I've been a fan of the (now very) controversial actor, Armie Hammer, and with only a few titles missing, decided it was time for Call Me By Your Name. Was I surprised?  Yes, and far more than I could have possibly imagined. There is no word I would attach to Luca Guadagnino's film other than masterpiece, and, of the few films I've seen of his, it is far and away the finest. 

His treatment of André Aciman's 2007 novel is one of the best transfers from book to screen I've seen . . . maybe ever.  That's a strong statement, and I may walk it back eventually, but I doubt it.  Seriously.  Absolutely everything about Guadagnino's interpretation of this tale feels right and faithful, beginning with the uncomfortable nature of the story which he makes to feel, of all things . . . feel perfectly natural. So many elements come together to achieve this cinematic Gesamtkunstwerk, that, it's impossible to think of and comment on them all.  This includes the amazing soundtrack with its use of John Adams, Mozart, Bach, (and more) which makes the images they accompany fairly pop in their details. The use of music here blends like a sort of light, illuminating the story without ever intruding upon it.  Then there are the characters with each role perfectly cast, and executed brilliantly by a troupe of actors who bring nuance, depth, and more than just a touch of mystery to their roles. Indeed, there is mystery in each of these characters and they become as real as you or I.  While all are superb, I'll leave it that the film really is beautifully carried by its two principals, Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet.  

But wait, there's more! Take for instance the amazing, breathtaking lighting design used throughout, and Guadagnino's almost preternatural use of space . . .  water . . . ancient architecture . . . all of it blending in with new world emotions that, as they casually bubble to the surface, we realize, are not so new after all. No. Not new at all.  It's fucking brilliant.

Anyway, I was knocked out by every moment, scene, line and can think of no more beautiful ending to a film than the closing, shot - which continues during and extends to the final credits. Guadagnino has created something he does not want to end - and we don't want him to.  At least I didn't.   

So, after falling on my swort (not literally, relax) I followed this experience with my usual trick: finally reading the reviews.  Not surprisingly (or perhaps so, given my track record of loving things critics seem to hate) almost every one of them was a rave.  

And then there was, of course, Richard Brody's hatchet job for the New Yorker.  In by far the longest, prosiest, rant against everything about Guadagnino's movie.  Everything.  Seriously this exhausting review seemed to take longer to read than the film it was tearing apart.  For brevity's sake (your welcome), here's my distillation of his hatred:

Empty, sanitized intimacy . . .if Guadagnino had any interest in his characters . . . .the story is inconceivable without the conversation that they’d have had as their relationship developed ... yet, ... what they actually say to each other is hardly seen or heard.  Guadagnino can’t be bothered to imagine (or to urge Ivory to imagine) what they might actually talk about while sitting together alone. (he) displays no interest in the characters, (All) of the characters are reduced to animated ciphers . . . “Call Me by Your Name” (is) thin and empty, ... sluggish; the languid pace of physical action is matched by the languid pace of ideas, and the result is an enervating emptiness.

Boo.  Hiss.  Brody complains the Guadagnino does not establish either Elio or Oliver's sexual or romantic histories before they meet; expressing how knowledge of their respective pasts is a necessity for character development and our ability (or inability) to read them. How sad to be a critic for a well regarded publication and be incapable of seeinig things, or have any ability to interpret characters without having all the details explained to you.  He went on to complain about camera angles, shadows, lighting, pan shots, quite literally every detail of the film.  Brody's review reads like a diatribe constructed by a jilted lover on a vendetta, right down to hinting at "and another thing!"  Not only could I not possibly disagree with him more, I also couldn't stop laughing.

Anyway. . . I'm glad I finally broke down and gave Call Me By Your Name a go.  It was a truly beautiful experience  . . . one of my favorites of the year, and I can't wait to revisit it again. 

Met Soars with Grounded

I'm in a minority amongst my opera friends. I like and love a lot of works, especially newer operas, that routinely get bad press in the opera groups, criticized by the press.   I often call my own t aste into question, but the older I get the more I realize, I really don't care what anybody else thinks.  It's fun to read their opinions, their criticisms, and (less frequently) their praise, but the bottom line always has to be: what did the piece do for me? Did it touch and move me?  I never - well hardly ever - approach anything with any expectation. Of course I WANT it to be a successful evening, but other than that hope, I go in blind. It's why I'm rarely disappointed and probably why I have more fun at the opera than anyone I know, even if, owing to my present circumstances, the bulk of that enjoyment comes from experiencing those things online, a practice many find abhorrent, but you take what you can get. 

SO, after that preamble, I spent World Opera Day doing something I love best of all: experiencing a new opera:  Jeanine Tesori and George Brant's Grounded.  I listened on radio to the prima, but there were distractions (lots of them) and while I very much liked what I heard and praised the broadcast, I had no idea of the full impact the work would make by seeing it and listening to the score with a dedicated pair of ears.  I was simply blown away by the thing.  Dramatically, musically, theatrically, from the opening moment to the final, chilling silence (destroyed, as usual, by an over enthusiastic Met audience who can't wait to break a  half second of silence with their screaming), I was riveted.

The staging, which I'd read was "bland" . . . "safe" . . . "uninspired," etc.  I found to be none of those things. Kind of electrifying and cinematic actually.  The flow of scenes from one to the next, the use of a multi-tiered set, the projections, the lighting, the excellent  choreographed chorus . . . all of it worked for me.

None of that, however, guarantees a good show, so Tesori's and Brant's work, while given an excellent production - had to show it was worthy of it.  It was.  Tesori's theatrical background shows, and while "too Broadway" was leveled at it by more than one critic, I found very little "Broadway" about it - in the same sense Menotti, Gershwin or Weill wrote music dramas for the non-traditional operatic venues.  Tesori is a gifted composer and her melodies worm their way into the heart, perhaps none so much as the character of Eric's little wordless hum that repeats itself through the opera. Brant's powerful text in the word settings given them by Tesori were better than one often encounters in English language operas. Everything was weighted properly, naturally generally, yet she is unafraid (fearless really) in also allowing words to be elongated for dramatic effect.

As the title character, Jess - we were treated to a never less than stunning achievement from a voice I was mostly unfamiliar with, but who turned me into an instant fanboy: mezzo soprano, Emily D'Angelo. D'Angelo combines a lean almost muscular sound with a gorgeous warmth and refulgence that is unusual.  At times I felt the ghosts of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Tatiana Troyanos - and I can't pay a higher compliment than that to any young singer.  D'Angelo, as it happens to turn out, is a formidable, strong actor as well, which the role of Jess not only requires - it demands. The beauty of HD is that we see the faces so well, and every emotion, even the thoughts of Jess, registered on the mezzo's face in a performance that, was Tony Award calibre.

As husband and father of Sam, Ben Bliss turned in one of his best performances to date .  Quite simply Bliss went from being the greatest Don Ottavio I've heard or seen into a loving  practical cowboy card dealer, and one of the sweetest, nicest characters to be written into an opera in . . . . I can't remember when. His aforementioned "tune" and his aria, as well as his scenes with Jess and Sam, the lovely Lucy LoBue, were a tonic, and the perfect counterpoint to the intensity of the war games at hand.

Another discovery for me was the young baritone, Kyle Miller, who, as the Sensor quite frankly, startled the life out of me. A gorgeous baritone sound and terrific comedic timing and acting chops poured out of what Jess described as a "12 year old," added punch to their scenes together.

I've always loved Greer Grimsley, and 30 years since his Met debut (what?) the voice seems to get growlier by the season, and sometimes I must admit I wish I could be hearing someone else in some of his roles, but  his Commander here seemed tailor made for his current voice and, while not a large role, it's an important one and it worked.  Perfectly.

Ellie Dehn as Jess' conscience, Also Jess, worked, brilliantly, even if at first I thought it was just a device to give notes to the central character that were too high for a mezzo.  My bad. This was not overused and actually intensified the "real" Jess' emotions, freeing her up even for other dramatic purposes.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin (who I thought, for a moment was Roberto Alagna when he entered the pit) really did marvelous things with Tesori's score, keeping everything flowing and tightly reigned in, never letting a moment sag. Tesori's orchestration is a huge, gleaming, lyrical thing of beauty, and her sense of groupings for effect was as masterful as any of the greats.  

I loved the dramatic structure of Grounded . . . it felt real at every turn, and it was,a beautiful thing to see something as ugly as war, drone attacks measured out with reason and emotion. Some of the criticisms I read had to do with making it a "gender" thing, how if the role were written for a man it would've been a different and probably less sensitive opera. Why? Stereotype much?  

Throughout the FB Opera groups I've read: "It was horrible"  . . . "An atrocity" ".Death of opera" . . . "what a disgrace" . . . "All the talents of singers, directors, staging crew, lighting. . .wasted on dreary, ugly, silly stuff . . . tragic. . . . laughable . . . Somebody needs to take a giant step back and consider what opera is supposed to do and be" . . . "they opened the season with this crap?" " How the mighty have fallen" . . .

One lady in Met Opera in HD's page was so angered by my opening night positive remarks, she BANNED me from seeing not only her remarks but ANY remarks in her thread (I didn't know that kind of censorship was possible on FB).

I didn't mean to end negatively - but wanted to relate my entire experience with this new work, so that included the bad with the good. 

I disagree with all of the naysayers, and while new works don't often get revived - or even second performances - I hope with some of the operas we've seen lately, and particularly Grounded- that trend comes to an end. If not, there's always La Boheme.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DMITRI!

It's been a pretty awful day overall, but the last few hours have been repaired, rejuvenated in the rejoicing in the celebration of one the composers whose work has influenced, changed, and bettered my existence into something far more than merely that.

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich lived a good bit longer than Mozart, but it was by no means a long life. Living to only 68 (as I approach those years myself, it seems frightfully young) and enduring Soviet era horrors, defamation, hardship, censorship and having his creativity stifled, what emerged as his catalog is nothing but triumph - even when we see it and hear it at its most intimate and harrowing moments, of which there is no shortage of.

Upon Stalin's death one can hear something of a shift in his style, as Clemency Burton-Hill wrote: 

. . . you can almost feel in his music, the gigantic breath of relief as he could start to publish not just the 'desk drawer' works he’d kept under wraps for years, including the Fourth Symphony, but also works in which he could openly give musical expression to the brutalities he and his contemporaries had endured under Stalin’s purges.

Shostakovich himself wrote:

Without party guidance I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage.

Even so, what he was able to do with that camouflage revealed genius on a level we rarely see. The brain of this man . . . the heart of this man . . . the courage of this man was remarkable. Even more so when one learns he suffered from an almost crippling shyness, was a bundle of nerves, cautious to a fault and it's no bloody wonder considering all he endured. Watching family and his closest friends rounded up, sent off to the gulag or executed. Shostakovich himself barely escaped this fate and only because the officer assigned to interrogate him was arrested and Dmitri somehow slipped through.

Shostakovich had all kinds of ticks - obsessed with neatness and order, cleanliness,his daughter wrote of his synchronizing every clock, writing letters to himself to test the reliability of the postal service, and such.

Given his brief time on the planet, Shostakovich was able to crank out an astonishing amount of music . . . BIG music. 15 symphonies, six concerti, ballets, operas, a musical, endless chamber and solo music, film scores, theatre music, song cycles - his output is dizzying, and brilliant. He was known to sit at his table and write out a complete score without stopping, which seems . . . well, frankly impossible. For normal humans, it is. But, if you're a genius and gifted with a photographic memory . . . if you've worked every detail out in your head, maybe not. Shostakovich described his compositional method as "think long,, write fast."

I always found it fascinating that Shostakovich was such a football fan, and was shocked when I first learned his ballet, The Golden Age was . . . a ballet about football. That tidbit of information was, to this then young musician, about as cool as cool gets.

As a young pianist and already obsessive collector, I grew up with an oddball collection of favorite composers at my side whose music has been part of the soundtrack of my life - at the top of that list are two names: Bach. And Shostakovich.

Tonight I've enjoyed, laughed, cried, and gotten the shivers from a few personal favorites : Nadja Salerno Sonnenberg and Dmitri's boy Maxim, in the First Violin Concerto; a slew of Preludes and Fugues, Symphony No. 4 (Alain Altinoglu and the Frankfurt Radio Symphony) 10 and 11 (Mstislav Rostropovich and the National Symphony).

The night has just ended with a live (recorded earlier today) Birthday Concert from Moscow with the Tatarstan Symphony Orchestra led by Alexander Sladkovsky performing the Second Cello Concerto with Cellist, Alexander Knyazev (and who played an encore from the 3rd Bach Cello Suite, which seemed fitting), and Symphony No. 8. The Tartarstan is not one of the world's great orchestras, but nobody seems to have told them, and so they play as if they are. There were a few moments that could have been better, but overall the playing was inspired, solid, and offered a beautifully hushed ending more famous ensembles might want to look at and listen to.

I couldn't help but smile REALLY BIG when after an extended ovation, Maestro Sladkovsky turned his back to the house, raised his baton, and launched his musicians into the most appropriate of encores: Waltz No. 2 from the The Suite for Variety Orchestra No. 1, Perfect.

[Poscript:  This is the original photo collage I used for this birthday tribute.  To my utter horror . . . the upper right hand photo is something I did not catch. It IS Dmitri's head, but superimposed onto the body of Harry Potter (a series of films I've never watched, but whose hero apparently looked very similar to Shostakovich). Here is the photo collage I was going to replace it with - but now just adding because - how cool is it that pop culture is trying to steal Dmitri Shostakovich for its own purposes?]

LA CHIMERA - ITALIAN CINEMA'S LATEST GEM

I have now twice viewed the latest film from Alice Rohrwacher - the Italian director with the most German of names, and am in absolute awe. Throughout the first viewing I sensed something magical at work in the movie and in myself. While I frequently laugh and/or cry, or yell at the screen watching movies, it takes a special film for me to notice that I'm smiling so much my face almost hurts.  La Chimera is that movie.  

I remember admiring and even loving Rohrwacher's earlier work - The Wonders (2014) and Happy As Lazzaro (2018), but this, for me, is her best work so far. 

Visually arresting Rohrwacher has given La Chimera it's own universe - one that moves effortlessly between stark (but never dull) reality, fantasy, magical realism, and even absurdist comedy more accepted in literature and opera than cinema. As an avid opera lover - and particularly a lover of the works of Monteverdi, La Chimera jumped out at me in a way that I've not yet read in any review.  It happens within the first few moments of the opening scene, when the first music we hear is the fanfare from Monteverdi's Orfeo - the earliest known still regularly performed opera today, and it instantly served as a clue, this was going to have some ties to the Orpheus legend. Indeed, in its way, it is a sort of retelling of it, or at least heavily influenced by it.  

La Chimera also reminded me of Wim Wender's American film Paris, Texas in several ways, which, unlike my Orfeo discovery, I've now read in several other reviews. There are similarities, yes, but they seem more coincidental than influenced, and plenty of other directors pre-and-post Wenders have this in common.

The story elements in a nutshell: A British archeologist, Arthur, recently released from prison for tomb raiding, returns to Italy, and is on a train in search of his missing girlfriend, Beniamina. There is some trouble and the first bit of magical realism prepares us for what's to come - or may come.  Arthur arrives at the home of Flora, Beniamina's mother, (an absolutely magical performance from Isabella Rossellini), and her brood of loud, selfish daughters, who made me instantly think of harpies. We are also introduced to Italia, Flora's sadsack, talentless maid and voice student. Italia is an incredibly written character and Carol Duarte - who reminded me of a young Hildegard Behrens - infuses it with a lifeforce that is gently electrifying - which sounds like an odd combination, but there it is.

Rohrwacher has a brilliant eye for visual texture and its layers are imprinted throughout the entirety of La Chimera. Whether within the confines of a narrow train, the rundown ramshackle slum Arturo lives in surrounded by ragpickers and junkies, Flora's crumbling mansion, the sea and landscape, an abandoned train station turned into a home, or the chill and darkness of the caves that feel like hell, the visual richness of every scene adds immeasurably to this director's magnificent storytelling. 

At the center of all of this is the performance of Josh O'Connor as Arthur. With a minimum of dialogue, O'Connor's Arthur conveys the anger, angst, the bitterness of one having taken the fall for his wild associates, his aching longing for Euridice - I mean Beniamina - the headstrong confidence and determination - even in despair that he will find her and bring her back, like Orfeo.  For almost the entirety of La Chimera Arthur is clad in a plain white suit becoming, like his character, more soiled, dirty, and frayed, as he wends his way through the story. This costume decision feels more operatic than cinematic, and further ties together these two arts. 

I can't write more without destroying the incredible elements that make up this wondrous story of love, loss and redemption, but want to comment further on the use of music in La Chimera.  Along with the Monteverdi excerpts, there is a parade through the village with an "oom-pah" Italian band playing Noi siamo zingarelle from Flora's party in Verdi's La Traviata - as it accompanies a flatbed truck filled with drag queens and revelers. There are also several points where the villagers break into song, dance, and one particularly brilliant, magical moment, where soprano Edita Gruberova's beautiful recording of Mozart's Vorrei spiegarvi, oh Dio!  morphs from being part of the soundtrack into an actual element of the movie - more on that I will not say.  

La Chimera is easily one of the most beautiful films I've seen this year - or in many years.  Audience reactions have been mixed because - well, it IS a strange movie when compared with so-called "standard" Hollywood fare. Critics on the other hand, have been going over the top in extolling the virtues of this glorious celebration of cinema.  Sadly, box office in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico totalled only $950k, so . . . clearly American audiences aren't interested. Fortunately La Chimera is streaming on a number of services, and Hulu offers it gratis on its subscription service. 

Rohrwacher has made an absolute dream of a movie - and even though the year isn't out yet, it goes towards the top of what will be my favorites of 2024.