Movie Review: "The German Doctor"

"The German Doctor": B-.  In the decade following the end of World War II, Argentina was one of the main South American countries which served as a safe haven for German military officers, SS police and their assorted leaders and sympathizers.  Spain had colonized the country in the sixteenth century, and by the twentieth century a large segment of Argentina's citizenry had ancestral origins not only from Spain but from Italy and Germany as well.  Thus, it was not shocking that one would find German enclaves in Argentina, including its beautifully desolate Patagonia.  That is the setting for The German Doctor.

For the average American moviegoer, it is unfortunate that the film does not provide the background cited in the above paragraph, probably because this film was made in Argentina and directed by Lucia Puenzo, a young Argentinian.  No doubt the audience she had in mind for this project was her fellow countrymen, who presumably would already know of their country's nexus with the Nazis.  A short introductory narrative would have been nice for us Yanks, but no such luck.

The title character is based on Josef Mengele, a notorious Nazi physician who gained infamy for his detestable experiments on human beings in the Auschwitz concentration camp.  The German Doctor takes place in 1960, and Mengele (Alex Brendemuhl) has long ago avoided the Nuremberg war crimes trials by fleeing to South America and assuming a new identity, Dr. Helmut Gregor.  He innocuously meets the family of Enzo (Diego Peretti) and Eva (Natalia Oreiro) on a Patagonian dirt highway, and with their permission follows them in his car to Bariloche, where Eva has inherited a vacant hotel.  The doctor has a curious interest in the family's twelve year old daughter, Lilith (Florencia Bado), because she is noticeably smaller in stature than her peers.  Is this interest in Lilith creepy and subversive, or are we letting our imaginations get the better of us?

When Eva tells "Gregor" that she is fifteen weeks pregnant, he correctly surmises, due to the size of Eva's stomach, that she is carrying twins.  Thus the mysterious doctor's fascination with this family elevates even more.  Eva trusts him, and lets him give Lilith experimental hormonal drugs, even after Enzo tells his wife he doesn't want Gregor going anywhere near their daughter.  When complications with Eva's pregnancy arise, Gregor is at the ready.  Is he there to help, or is this going to be another one of his terrible experiments?

The only person other than Enzo who thinks something is amiss regarding the doctor is Nora Eldoc (Elena Roger), an employee at the nearby German school who surreptitiously takes photographs of Gregor.  She suspects Gregor is really Mengele, and alerts the Mossad, the Israeli spy and security agency which is scouring the continent looking for alleged war criminals.

 

What harm, if any, will come of the German doctor's treatment of Lilith and Eva?  Will the Mossad get their man, or will Gregor escape from their clutches just like he escaped from Europe after the war?

 

Prior to attending the movie I had seen the trailer for The German Doctor several times, and was impressed enough to put the film on my must see list.  The trailer staged the plot as a nail biting thriller.  Instead, the story kind of plods along.  Even though we know that Mengele did despicable deeds under Hitler's regime, Brendemuhl does not convey the sense that his character could do something similarly terrible in Bariloche.  His creepiness quotient is too low.  The fact that the story is narrated by Lilith -- an ill-advised choice by director Puenzo -- also takes some of the edge off.  Furthermore, the Mossad's quest, with the help of Eldoc, is terribly underplayed.  Still, The German Doctor is interesting as a history lesson.  It also makes one aware of an additional reason why the United States so quickly took England's side in its 1982 battle with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. 

Daniel Martin Thwarts A Score Of Lawyers

The first third of the calendar year ended on April 30, and in that period I managed to read four books. Yep, four whole books!  Man, I was so proud of myself, I was struttin' around here like a peacock.  As Hubert Horatio Humphrey used to say, "pleased as punch."  Then recently I overheard Momma Cuandito tell someone that while we were in Mexico for a week, she read three books.  Three books in one week?  That seems physically impossible to me, until I stop and think about it.  Momma Cuan can read anything at any time, even with music, the TV or the radio on in the same room.  She has the ability to tune things out and focus.  I, on the other hand, need almost total quiet.  I can't concentrate on what I'm attempting to read if I'm in close proximity to any noise-emitting device whatsoever.  The one exception is random white noise, which I have used on occasion off my phone app in our living room to block out the television audio coming from the family room.

In light of the foregoing, I am wondering if I should start a Slow Readers Book Club.  It would be for people like me who, you know, take a whole month to read a 350 page book.  Other potential members would have to promise to be tolerant of the slow pokes. I do, however, have reservations about my initiating such an undertaking, because my extremely limited experience with book clubs has been hit and miss.

Throughout the sixty-one years of my reading life, I have only been in two book clubs.  One of them didn't end well; the other never quite got off the ground.  The first was the Norwest Law Department Book Club. I know that's kind of a long and clumsy name, but we were a group of attorneys.  What did you expect?  In retrospect, maybe a name like The Barristers' Book Club would have been flashier or cooler, but we weren't big on style points.

The NLDBC actually got off to a fairly promising start.  There were a number of voracious readers who had favorite authors and great recommendations.  We met in Conference Room E on the seventeenth floor of the Norwest Center (nka, the Wells Fargo Tower).  Twenty-four people could sit around the mammoth marble table, plus there were a dozen or so extra chairs ("bleacher seats") along two of the walls.  We hardly ever had to make use of the bleachers, but at least they were there if we needed them.  The picture windows looked out on the northeast section of downtown Minneapolis, with the  Mississippi River beyond.  That view came in handy if you got tired of someone prattling about all that was wrong with the book selection. The view out the window was a ready-made distraction.

Most of the books we read were worthy selections.  Some of them were Independence Day by Richard Ford, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, and Death Comes For The Archbishop by Willa Cather.  The honor of selecting each book was passed around, mostly randomly, among the ten sections of the Law Department (Litigation, Trusts, Commercial, Depository, etc.), and the individual selector would send around an e-mail to promote her pick.  Some of those missives were more intriguing than others.  For example, one that I thought sounded particularly interesting was from Bob Lee, a lawyer in the Corporate Section who picked The History Of The Siege Of Lisbon by Jose Saramago.  Bob wrote, "It is the story of a lowly proof-reader for a large publishing house who, in a fit of whimsey, deletes the word 'not' in a new text book on the history of Portugal, and, as a result, causes political upheaval in Europe."

The NLDBC had a nice run -- albeit off and on -- for about two and a half years.  You might think nothing could be worse than a group of attorneys discussing the finer points of an obscure novel, but by and large the meetings were fun.  (Maybe because we carried on these sessions over lunch.)  Of course, not everything was ideal.   One of the regular attendees was my colleague "Leslie," who surely must have set a record for disliking every single selected book.  (Note: I am using quotation marks around some of the first names to protect the identity of the culprits.)  She even found fault with her own selection.  Then there was "Vicky," who regularly asked the selector/moderator for a meeting date postponement so she could finish, but then skipped the rescheduled confab anyway.  And finally we had the "Cynthia and Sherri Show," in which two litigation attorneys, who happened to be best friends, would enter into long dialogues with each other while the rest of us ingested our box lunches and contemplated the Mississippi.  Sometimes it was like eavesdropping on My Dinner With Andre.

Admittedly, those were minor quibbles.  We had a dandy time while it lasted, but you know the old adage about "all good things."  Toward the end of our run, attendance at each gathering started to drop.  People "forgot" to put it on their calendars.  Maybe some of the book offerings didn't sound all that appealing.  One could say that work got in the way; folks simply too busy with their jobs and off-the-clock family responsibilities to make room for leisure reading.  But what really killed the NLDBC was Daniel Martin, or more precisely, Daniel Martin.

After the NLDBC had been in existence past its second year anniversary, Daniel Martin, a novel I'd never heard of, was selected for the club's "enjoyment" by the General Counsel of Norwest (and subsequently Wells Fargo), Stan Stroup.  Upon hearing of Stan's selection, there were two main reasons I had high hopes for his choice, thinking maybe the club's rejuvenation was at hand.  First, I learned that the author of Daniel Martin was John Fowles, who also wrote The French Lieutenant's Woman, a novel I had enjoyed reading in the early seventies.  (The story was turned into a fairly successful film in 1981.)  Secondly, Stan was the most brilliant lawyer I have ever known, and I figured this would translate into making a smart book selection for our group.  We needed a good pick because, as alluded to in the immediately preceding paragraph, attendance was down and some members felt we were on life support.  Was Daniel Martin the novel that would turn things around?

I was also confident the Daniel Martin gathering, several weeks hence, would be well attended and the discussion robust, for the simple reason that "The Boss," Stan, was in charge -- "large and in charge," to coin a phrase.  People would not dare to blow off this meeting, even if they hadn't bothered to read the last several club selections.  Plus, this would be a chance for the worker bees to impress the General Counsel with their astute observations and literary acumen!

Despite my initial optimism, my hopes plunged immediately when I picked up the novel off the B. Dalton shelf.  Seven hundred and four pages.  Bummer.  I was now faced with a dilemma.  Do I break my own longstanding 400 Page Rule, or do I stick to my principles?

[Note: In case you are not familiar with my 400 Page Rule, that means you are probably not familiar with my 100 Page Rule either.  Here is how I described them on May 12, 2009 in a post on ND Nation under my nom de plume, East of Midnight:

100 Page Rule: I never give up on a book before page 100. Once I get to that page, I decide whether to finish it. If I decide yes, then I read it to the end, no matter what. By the way, I regretted having to follow this rule when I decided to finish "Underworld" by Don DeLillo (the first chapter was the best part of the book), but most of the time I feel I have made the correct choice.

 

400 Page Rule: Perhaps this sounds nuts, but I never start a book which is over 400 pages unless (i) it has been strongly recommended to me by people I trust, or (ii) the author is one of my faves. There are just too many books less than 400 pages which I want to read but haven't started, so those get my attention first.] 

I reluctantly decided to plunge into Daniel Martin.  If anyone other than Stan had chosen that particular novel, I would have gladly sat out.  In hindsight, that would have been a wise choice.

Daniel Martin was a tedious, dreary and sleep-inducing story, replete with flashbacks, about a man who married the sister of his true love, and then finds himself in awkward situations partly as a result of that decision.  Maybe Fowles only had three good novels in him, The Collector and The Magus being the other two alongside The French Lieutenant's Woman.  (Even some great authors stop short of four; Harper Lee, whose To Kill A Mockingbird was her solo effort, readily comes to mind.)  There's a reason why Fowles' three earlier books were deemed worthy of a film interpretation, whereas Daniel Martin was not.

The book club members who, like me, were brave enough to read Stan's selection could not fire up during our meeting.  We felt like we'd just submitted a term paper, and dreaded the oral defense of our thesis.  The short gathering ended with a whimper.  For the first time I actually looked forward to getting back to my desk.  Stan might have been an outstanding attorney, but his salesmanship fell short.  Few, if any, of us left the room convinced by Stan that trudging through Daniel Martin was worth the effort.  The demise of the NLDBC followed shortly thereafter.  I have rarely strayed from my 400 Page Rule since.

I'm sure you are wondering about my adventures with the second book club to which I referred above, and those four books I read earlier this year.  Those exciting recollections will have to wait for another day.   

Rose Marie & Winnie Jo

DISCLAIMER

I'm afraid that a poet I'm not,

Strained rhymes, broken meter I've got,

But today Rose turns one,

So I thought it'd be fun,

To try and give it a shot.

 

***

 

ROSE MARIE & WINNIE JO

 

Springtime brings the blooming flowers,

Gentle rain that lasts for hours,

Baseball, Easter, pontoons, biking,

Outdoor dining, lakeside hiking.

 

But there are two even better reasons

Why spring's become the best of seasons.

May then April, an eleven month span,

The Dynamic Duo's birthdays, I'm a lucky man.

 

Two petite angels, Rose Marie and Winnie Jo,

Have made their grand entry, I love them so.

Winnie's eyes are crystal blue, Rosie's cocoa brown,

They're the coolest cuddly chicks in any Minnesota town.

 

The Petal lives up on The Hill, The Princess in The Park,

Those precious little babies have a big piece of my heart.

I love to watch them sleeping as they're swaddled nice and snug,

Even better when they're wide awake, I can't resist a hug.

 

They have the cutest toes, the softest skin and pretty smiles,

They might be tiny munchkins but they've created their own styles.

I hope when they grow up they form a friendship and a bond,

That sister act would bring such joy to me and Momma Cuan.

 

I'm sure the time will come when they will have a lot to say,

When they call me "Grandpa Johnny" that will be my favorite day.

I plan to go to all their games, concerts and school plays,

(Just don't ask for Science Fair help, I think we'll be okay.)

 

You can have all the celebrities in People Magazine,

Models, singers, movie stars, and all the beauty queens,

Angelina, Scarlett, Gwyneth, Halle and J Lo,

I'd rather spend my time with Rose Marie and Winnie Jo.

Movie Review: "The Monuments Men"

"The Monuments Men": B-.  Adolph Hitler's war plan did not stop with invasion and occupation .  He also had designs on eradicating all vestiges of the culture from the Fatherland's enemies.  Thus, when the Nazis occupied France and Belgium, the German army made off with billions of dollars of art treasures from churches, museums, galleries and even private collections.  The Allies, under the direction of the US Army, organized a small group of art professors, curators, architects and other experts in the field to identify, locate and retrieve the irreplaceable stolen property.  This small platoon of mostly middle aged men was led by Frank Stokes, played by George Clooney in his usual cool-as-a-cucumber style.  The team was dubbed "the Monuments Men."

The story takes a long time to get out of first gear, yet with such a long setup one would expect that we'd get to know the six individuals better than we do.  Clooney and Matt Damon get the most face time, with Bill Murray and John Goodman, two of the most unlikely soldiers, playing secondary characters.  Damon's character, James Granger, spends more time with a French curator, Claire Simone (Cate Blanchett), than he does with his comrades.  Simone has been retained by the Germans as a Girl Friday because she is an expert regarding the works of art in the Parisian museum called the Palme, where the Nazis have set up shop.  Despite her disdain for the Germans, at least she gets to work among the art work she loves.  When the Germans abscond with those pieces, she is outraged.  One of her illogical decisions is that she originally refuses to help Granger in his effort to find and repatriate the stolen art.  This makes no sense, as the Monuments Men are the only hope she has to get the goods back to the Palme.  Some girls just play hard to get, I guess.

The seven Monuments Men individually look upon their mission as a chance to "get into the war," and wear their uniforms proudly.  Due to their ages, they surely would not otherwise find themselves anywhere near the battle fields. There is some humorous banter going back and forth.  Granger is constantly ridiculed, both by his colleagues and by Simone, for his terrible French language skills. Also, when the French soldier points out to the Englishman that the reason the Luftwaffe bombed London but not Paris is because London's museums did not contain any masterpieces worth protecting, that drew a laugh from the audience.

Once the mission's foundation is finally established and the platoon has a detailed strategy, the story does pick up a little, although it plateaus at the level of "interesting," never reaching what I'd call "excitement."  That is not a good thing for a war movie.

The script throws logistical challenges to the wind.  Once the men figure out that the confiscated art is spread all over western Germany, they manage to get from point to point so quickly one would think they used helicopters instead of jeeps and trucks.  They always seem to have an empty fleet of trucks at their disposal in case they run across some paintings they need to transport.  Time is of the essence, because even though the Germans are aware of the fact that their surrender to the Allied Forces is imminent, they still might destroy the art before the Monuments Men can save it. As if that weren't enough pressure put upon the platoon, the Russians are heading their way from the eastern front, and those bad boys surely have designs on the art treasures too.

I remember George Clooney making the rounds of the late night talk shows before New Years, promoting this movie. Here it is five months later and The Monuments Men is still hanging around in the theaters.  One theory of mine is that there are a lot of moviegoers who are more attracted by sheer star power than the story.  It is a decent movie but with too many holes.  One example is the scene in which Granger finds himself inside a cave standing on top of a land mine.  It could be a dud, but then again he could blow himself up by stepping off if it's not a dud.  His buddies come in to investigate.  After attempting to stack some bricks as a counterweight, they decide to stand nearby to watch Granger make his move.  Does anyone actually think the mine will explode, killing them all?   

The Slow White Guy Gets Drafted

Unless you have not opened a sports page or tuned in jock talk radio this spring, you certainly know that today is NFL Draft Day, the year's biggest off-field single day in the sports world.  I have written about it on April 25, 2012 ("The NFL Sells Hope") and recently with my April 17, 2014 movie review of the Kevin Costner flick, "Draft Day" (A-).  This year marks the fifth in which the league has conducted the draft over a three day period.  Only the first round takes place tonight.  It's also the only round of the seven in which the college players drafted have national name recognition.  The remaining six rounds, held tomorrow and Saturday, is mostly for players whom only the most ardent college fan would know.  Hence, the term "Draft Day" usually refers only to the first of the three consecutive days. 

As I wrote to my kids in the April 26, 2008 e-mail shown below, I was drafted too way back when, and I think about it every year on NFL Draft Day.  No, it's not what you're thinking.  Read on.

                                        THE SLOW WHITE GUY GETS DRAFTED

 

Hello Boys & Girls,

 

Today is draft day in the NFL, when the pro teams get to pick college football players to join their teams.  I watch a chunk of it every year, although this year I won't waste as much time because the Vikings traded away their first round pick to the Chiefs.  Believe it or not, your father was drafted to a football team (no, not an NFL team), and it remains one of my favorite memories from my illustrious (not!) athletic career.

 

The Libertyville Boys Club offered tackle football for fifth through eighth graders.  There were four teams: the Demons, the Yanks, the Eagles and the Hornets.  Their uniforms and helmets were red, blue, yellow and green, respectively.   There was a varsity unit for the seventh and eighth graders, and a junior varsity unit for the fifth and sixth graders.  The draft was for the fifth graders, and once a kid was drafted, he stayed on that team for his entire four-year Boys Club career.  The games were held on Sunday afternoons on the Libertyville High School football field, so needless to say, this was Big Time in our eyes.  First two varsity teams would play each other for two quarters.  Then, at half time of that varsity game, the junior varsity game involving those two teams would take place in its entirety.  When the JV game ended, the third and fourth quarters of varsity would be played.  Even though the varsity and JV games were separate contests, there was a real comraderie within the entire team; the JV kids watched, cheered for and learned from the varsity players, and the varsity guys cheered on their younger teammates when the "little guys" were playing.  Of course, the seventh graders were particularly interested in the JV contest, because they knew the sixth graders would be on the field with them the next season.  In retrospect, it was a great, and unique, arrangement.  It was particularly cool for those of us fifth graders who did not have an older brother... now we had about eighteen of them!

 

Boys Club draft day itself was a huge moment in our lives, and I will try to explain why.  First of all, unbeknownst to the kids, the coaches must have privately met after a few fifth grade/JV tryouts and conducted a secret draft.  Then, on a sunny Saturday afternoon in early September, when the LHS team was not using their field, the four varsity Boys Club teams would have simultaneous practices in their game day uniforms on that field.  Quite a colorful sight.  Toward the end of that practice, the BC President would gather the four varsity teams to sit around in a square at midfield, each of the four teams occupying a side of the square.  The fifth graders were brought in, and sat in the center of the square, anxiously awaiting the announcement of which team drafted them.  I was so excited to actually be drafted by ANY team that I really didn't care who took me.  The Eagles, for some reason, usually had the best team, and the Yanks usually had the weakest.  The Demons, dressed in bright red, had the coolest unies.  The Hornets were the one team I was the most ambivalent about. The President called out each fifth grader's name, and revealed the identity of that player's new team.  Each time, the relevant varsity players would stand, clap, and congratulate their new team member, slapping him on the back and patting the top of his head.  One cool aspect of this process was that I don't believe they did this in anything other than random order.  In other words, the best kids were not necessarily the first names announced, and the worst kids were not necessarily the last ones.  And as I recall, the order of teams was not always the same for each round.

 

My name was called somewhere in the middle.  "John Periolat, congratulations... You are now a HORNET!!"  All the Hornets got up and cheered, happy and excited, shaking my hand and literally welcoming me to the team with open arms.  (They must have been very good actors!)  You would think I was Bronco Nagurski joining their ranks, instead of a slow dude who hated to run.  I had the proverbial ear-to-ear smile on my face, and even now, fifty-one years later, I still smile when I think about that glorious day.

 

Postscript:  It was ironic that I ended up on the Hornets, the one team I knew the least about.  This is hard to believe, but I played right end on both offense and defense.  (They did not call offensive ends "wide receivers" in those days.)  Three of our four coaches played D-1 college football; our head coach played quarterback at the University of Iowa, and two of the assistants were linemen at Syracuse and Arizona State.  Coach Martin, the ASU alum, used to have a Sun Devil decal on his car's back window, and since I thought that both Coach Martin and the decal were totally cool, ASU became my favorite college team other than Notre Dame.  None of those coaches had sons on our team.  They coached because they loved football and hoped to impart that love and an understanding of the game to the youngsters.  How lucky we were!

 

Final Postscript:  In my four year Boys Club career, my mother missed only one game.  It was the one game in which I was injured.  The guy who creamed me was a St. Joe classmate and friend of mine, Ronnie Mauer, the biggest bruiser on the Demons.

 

I love you all. 

 

The Old Boy     

Movie Review: "Finding Vivian Maier"

"Finding Vivian Maier": A-.  One man's trash is another man's treasure.  Seldom has there been a better example of that platitude than Finding Vivian Maier, a documentary created by John Maloof and Charlie Siskel.  In 2007 Maloof was in his twenties when he decided that he needed some old pictures to supplement a history book he was writing.  He went to an auction house across the street from his Chicago apartment and offered $380 for a big box of negatives, packaged in paper, sight unseen.  All he found out from the auctioneer was that the images were captured on film by a woman named Vivian Maier.

As he looked over the negatives back in his apartment, Maloof was stuck by what he considered to be astonishing craftsmanship of the photographer.  The composition, the framing, the lighting, the facial expressions and emotions portrayed, all appeared to be extraordinary.  The subjects covered a wide spectrum: the glamorous, the destitute, the lonely, the big shots, the posers, the unaware.  There was also a wide variety of backgrounds: dark alleys, shadowy bridges, crowded sidewalks, dimly lit doorways, stockyards, skid row.  Who was this Vivian Maier?  Maloof had never heard of her before.  Was he looking at the work of a world class photographer?  Maloof thought he might be, but didn't trust his own impressions -- after all, he was a historian, not an artist of any kind -- so he posted several images on the internet without revealing the identity of the photographer, and then invited comments.  The responders confirmed what Maloof suspected. These were, indeed, exceptional pictures.

Maloof's next step was to quickly buy up the boxes of negatives which had been purchased by others from the auctionereer.  The space required to organize and categorize the hundreds of thousands of negatives was immense. The history book would have to wait; he was on the verge of discovering something much bigger and more important.

Maloof also set out to learn more about the mysterious photographer.  How could someone with this gift be so anonymous?  He interviewed over a dozen people on camera, including women who had once hired Maier to nanny their children, and several of the now-adult children themselves.  A common theme materializes.  Maier was enigmatic, and in many ways weird. She kept to herself in her off-duty hours, and made sure to keep her bedroom door locked at all times, regardless of whether she was inside or not.  She was a newspaper hoarder, and even went so far as to rig her stacks when she left her employer's house so that, when she returned, she could tell if anyone had been looking at her collection.

She told someone who had asked about her occupation that she was "kind of a spy."  She was able to get closer than most photographers into her subjects' "space" because the old-style box camera she used, a Rollieflex, enabled her to shoot pictures without having to bring the viewfinder up to her eyes.  Instead, she held the camera belt-high and looked down while she sprang the shutter.  Thus, her subjects were often unaware she was photographing or filming them.

Even those closest to Maier never knew she had such a talent.  The big question which Maloof is unable to find the answer for is this: Why did Vivian keep secret her magnificent gift?  Most artists, whether painters, writers, singers or photographers, want to display their talents to the widest possible audience.  Maier was exactly the opposite.

Maier's extraordinary talent has at last been exposed by Maloof.  He successfully staged exhibitions of Vivian's work in some of the most prestigious art galleries in big cities across the globe, drawing huge crowds to all of those venues. The consensus is that Vivian would have been a legend in her own time had she chosen to unveil her covert hobby. Instead, having died in 2009,  she is honored posthumously.  Regarding the worldwide exhibitions of her art, as one of her former employers told Maloof, Vivian would not have wanted that.

Ordinarily I would not be interested in watching a documentary about a person I know absolutely nothing about.  But since I dragged Momma Cuandito to attend Draft Day with me (reviewed here on April 17, 2014, A-), I thought it was only fair that I go with her to one of her selections.  As indicated above by my A- rating, I'm glad I did.  Good call, Momma Cuan!