Movie Review: "Moonlight"

"Moonlight": A-.  It is rare to view a film so clearly divided into three acts without coming away with a firm opinion of which section was the strongest and which was the weakest.  One of the admirable qualities of Moonlight, a film obviously structured in that triptych style, is that it defies the odds by being superb at all three stages.

The story takes place in Liberty City, a drug riddled impoverished section of Miami where dealers conduct their business in broad daylight with impunity.  The king of cocaine there is Juan (Mahershala Ali), a cool cat who drives around in a big ol' sedan with a crown mounted on the dashboard.  Unexpectedly, Juan rescues quivering nine year old Chiron (Alex Hibbert) from a hideout in which the youngster was taking shelter from older kids who were going to beat him up.  Juan brings him to his own house which he shares with Teresa (Janelle Monae).  They show Chiron the kindness that has been missing from his life.  Chiron barely speaks, but is relieved to be able to spend the night there.

Chiron's mother is Paula (Naomi Harris), a crack addict too high to be concerned about where her son has been all night.  She offers no thanks to Juan for taking care of Chiron, instead slamming the door in Juan's face.  Chiron's father is not in the picture, but that gap is filled by Juan taking the boy under his wing, doing activities and having conversations together like father-son.  Parts of those conversations reveal Chiron's uncertainty over his sexual identity.  It's an uncertainty exacerbated by the teasing and taunting of his schoolmates.  Juan and Teresa attempt to assuage his anxiety.  Thus we have a kind-hearted drug dealer, a unique type of character in cinema history.

An extra layer of complexity and drama is added when Juan spots Paula smoking crack in a car with one of his customers.  For a moment Juan seems to look at himself as Chiron's surrogate father, possibly forgetting he, himself, is largely responsible for putting narcotics on the Liberty City streets.  Juan confronts Paula in a futile attempt to shame her into putting her motherhood responsibility first.  The irony of that argument is thick.  Paula is not embarrassed in the least.

 

The second act finds Chiron's friend Kevin (Jharrel Jerome) supplanting the late Juan as the central person in Chiron's life.  They are both teenagers and have known each other for years.  Chiron (Ashton Sanders) is now a tall lanky teenager, still painfully shy and victimized by his mother's worsening addiction.  One night a serious conversation between the two boys turns into a brief romantic tryst.

 

Although Chiron keeps his feelings to himself, his classmates have caught on that there is something a little "off" about his mannerisms.  Chiron is tormented by a punk group led by Terrel (Patrick Decile).  Trouble begins in the school cafeteria when Terrel challenges Chiron to a fight outside.  A heartbreaking scene occurs when Kevin is pressured by Terrel to slug the defenseless Chiron, who is then kicked and pummeled by the others as he lie prone.  The second act closes with a horrible finish.

 

To comment much about the third act would violate my self-imposed rule to keep to a movie's first half action in my posts.  In an attempt to bend but not break that rule, I will simply write that the movie's final chapter finds Chiron (Trevante Rhodes) as an independent adult with a remade body.  There are obvious clues -- his removable shiny silver braces, his bling, the BLACK personalized license plate, and Juan's old crown on his dash -- that he has followed in the footsteps of his childhood savior, Juan.  Before the movie ends Chiron reunites with key people from his Liberty City childhood.

 

There are a number of elements which make this a superior film, starting with the actors who play Chiron.  Rhodes is a former athlete who could pass for a bouncer but who, instead, has a meekness and calmness about him.  Ali, on the screen only for the first act, has a presence which he uses both in the scenes where Juan is jive talkin' with customers or offering advice to little Chiron.  Ali, who played the Marine boyfriend of Taraji P. Henson in Hidden Figures (reviewed here January 29; B+) won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for Moonlight, as predicted by most of the Hollywood media.  Equally deserving was Harris, who took home the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.  The scene where she pleads with her teenage son for money so she can buy a fix displays her exceptional talent.  The "cherry on top" was the Best Picture Oscar which Moonlight won after a famously historic snafu in which Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway erroneously announced La La Land (reviewed here January 23; A) as the Best Picture winner at the awards ceremony.

 

It would be a shame if people only remember Moonlight as the movie which was the Best Picture recipient after a Pricewaterhouse Cooper accountant handed Bonnie and Clyde the wrong envelope.  Director Barry Jenkins assembled a great cast for the rendering of this unforgettable story based on an unpublished play by Tarell Alvin McCraney.  What I most appreciated about the script was that we hear the actual dialogue comprising key moments in the film, such as the conversations during Chiron's third act reunions.  Unlike Manchester By The Sea (reviewed here last December 8; B), Moonlight does not fall prey to the Anatomy Of A Murder Syndrome.

 

Spring just arrived last week, but I am sure Moonlight will end up being one of the best films I will have seen during the current twelve month period.              

Artist Provides Inspiration For Authors

Because it's like walking into an Edward Hopper painting.

- Historic Saint Paul's preservation consultant Aaron Rubinstein, describing why people should patronize the Original Coney Island Restaurant & Bar on St. Peter Street (Feb. 2017).

 

 

Does it make sense for someone like me, who reads maybe six to eight novels a year, to post about books?  If Momma Cuandito, a prodigious reader of many genres, had a blog, she would probably write more about books than I do about films.

 

After I posted my February 17 story about trudging through Moby-Dick, I should have considered my quota of book posts fulfilled for 2017.  But, I read a review recently about a short story anthology which was curated with such an original theme that I had to checkadoo for myself.  While in Arizona last month for two weeks without the print edition of a newspaper to read, I filled the gap with In Sunlight Or In Shadow.  It is a compilation of seventeen stories, ranging from eight to thirty-five pages, commissioned by Lawrence Block.  What makes the anthology remarkable isn't necessarily the quality of the stories themselves or the bona fides of the authors he selected, but the procedure Block used to arrive at the finished product.

 

We begin with the famous American artist, Edward Hopper.  Smithsonian Magazine, in a 2007 article by Avis Berman, called Hopper "the supreme American realist of the twentieth century."  Although internationally famous, the enigmatic Hopper spent almost all of his life in New York.  The period of his greatest accomplishments was roughly from the end of World War I to the early 1950's.  He was skilled in many different disciplines, with oil painting being his forte.  His focus was on color and light.  Many of Hopper's works showed landscapes, urban architecture and seascapes, but what attracted Block for purposes of the anthology he curated was the collection of Hopper's pictures conveying people in seemingly unremarkable circumstances, e.g., a woman sitting on a bed in a drab hotel room, a few city dwellers gathered around the counter of a late night diner, or a young couple conversing on the front porch of an old house.  In his foreward, Block states that Hopper's paintings don't tell a story as much as they suggest a story to the imaginations of the viewers.

 

With that in mind, Block invited eighteen of his favorite writers --"A-listers," he calls them -- to contribute to the anthology project.  Each writer selected a Hopper painting, then created a story inspired by that writer's contemplation of the picture.  In some cases, the connection between the painting and the story is obvious, such as Rooms By The Sea by Nicholas Christopher, a mysterious story about the happenings inside a house which overlooks the ocean, based on Hopper's 1951 painting of the same title.  But the more fascinating stories are those for which the author was inspired, but not directed, by what she saw on the canvas.

 

Each of the seventeen stories is immediately preceded by a full page color plate of the related Hopper work, and by an introduction, most of which are presumably written by Block, describing the credentials of the author.  Every author has had her works published numerous times in various media, and is the recipient of many awards, such as the Edgar Award (for mystery writers), the Bram Stoker Award (dark fantasy and horror), the O. Henry Award (short stories), and the Spur Award (westerns).  I must admit that the only three with whom I am very familiar are Stephen King, whose story, The Music Room, has the kind of edginess and creepiness one might expect from a writer with his reputation, Lee Child, mostly famous for creating the Jack Reacher series --two of the twenty-one Reacher novels have been made into movies -- and Joyce Carol Oates, a prolific popular author who, it is often said, is impossible to pigeon hole into a particular style.  Block, himself, contributes a story, as does Gail Levin, who authored the seminal biography of Hopper titled Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography.  Ironically, it is Levin's contribution, The Preacher Collects, which I found to be the only clunker in the seventeen story collection.

 

As Block describes in his short but entertaining foreward, "the stories are in various genres, or in no genre at all."  Many stories center on women, sometimes in peril, sometimes with revenge as a motive for their decisions.  A couple of stories have surprise endings, a few leave us dangling without closure.  At least two border on the supernatural, such as the narration coming from a dead person, or a house which geometrically expands annually without construction work.  It would be hard to come up with three favorites, or even one, but if you are the kind of book browser who spends time reading a passage or a chapter before laying down your purchase money, I would suggest The Projectionist by Joe E. Lansdale, and Autumn At The Automat by the curator himself, Mr. Block.   The inspiration for The Projectionist was a 1939 painting by Hopper titled New York Movie, which also functions as the dust jacket's cover picture.  The title character is the narrator, an uneducated male film buff in his twenties.  He's learned his trade from the former retired projectionist, Bert.  The theater is owned by an elderly couple who are approached and threatened for protection money by gangsters.  The narrator witnesses the shakedown and goes to Bert for help.  Secrets are revealed and surprises ensue.

 

In Autumn At The Automat, the story concocted by Block having admired Hopper's 1927 Autumn, the lesson to be learned is that things are not always as they seem.  To reveal too much here would be a disservice to the author and you.  This is the kind of story you might have seen in the old television series The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

 

A side benefit of reading In Sunlight Or In Shadow is that I added at least one new word to my vocabulary: frontispiece.  Perhaps I am telling you something you already know, but a frontispiece is a picture that is inserted between the front cover of a book and the first chapter (or in this case, the first story).  The frontispiece to Block's collection is the 1950 Hopper painting Cape Cod Morning.  According to my North Dakota high school math, I calculated that as a result of that picture's inclusion, we have eighteen Hopper paintings but only seventeen stories.  Block explains the discrepancy in his foreward.  His original plan was to have eighteen writers (including himself) write stories based on a Hopper work which they chose.  Block and his publisher, Pegasus Books, secured all the required permissions to reprint those paintings.  But the best laid plans go asunder, or so we are told, and the writer who chose Cape Cod Morning could not deliver -- for undisclosed reasons.  Block, tongue in cheek, invites us to create our own story to go with that painting.  "But," he cautions, "don't tell it to me.  I'm outta here."

 

Two footnotes, if you will...  The introductory quote from Aaron Rubinstein was pulled from an article written by Star Tribune food critic Rick Nelson on February 4, 2017.  Nelson was covering the re-opening of the Original Coney Island Restaurant in conjunction with the St. Paul Winter Carnival.  Located at 444 St. Peter Street, the Coney Island had not been open to the public since 1994.  Nelson describes the place as "meticulously preserved in a dipped-in-amber-like state."  It is housed in two adjacent buildings, one of which was built in 1858.  Besides functioning as a restaurant, over the decades the space has served as a saloon, a hotel, an arsenal and an armory.  Here is the kicker: Although the Coney Island has been rented occasionally since 2011 for private parties, the restaurant's opening was for one day only, February 4.

 

Second, scholars have identified over eight hundred paintings as being the work of Edward Hopper.  A retrospective of his art, including, inter alia, one hundred of those paintings, can be viewed next year at the Art Institute Of Chicago from February 16 to May 11, following stops in Boston and Washington, D.C. 

Gridiron Influences Hoop Rooting Interests

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

- John 8:7

 

The Big 10 Conference Tournament for men's basketball starts tomorrow in Washington, DC.  Every one of the thirty-two Division 1 conferences holds such a tournament.  The winner of each conference tournament receives an automatic invitation to the NCAA Tournament, aka the "Big Dance," regardless of where they finished in the conference standings during the regular season.  Any team not winning its conference tournament is at the mercy of the Selection Committee for inclusion in the NCAA tournament.  The Committee will choose thirty-six "at large" teams to fill in the sixty-eight team bracket.

 

With the Gophers expected to make some noise in this year's conference tournament, many Minnesota fans including me will pay more attention to the entire tournament, not just the games featuring our lovable rodents.  Usually I will simply root for the underdog.  But human nature being what it is, other factors come into play, including a school's head basketball coach -- thank goodness Jim Boeheim, Coach K, Coach Cal and Rick Pitino are not Big 10 coaches -- their football program and their fan base.  It may seem strange that I would include a football program as an element, but like it or not, college football is the make it or break it revenue creator for any college athletic program which hosts both football and basketball.  It is hard for me to wish a basketball team well if I have a problem with its school's football team.  My like or dislike of a school's basketball team sometimes has less to do with roundball than it does with the pigskin.  In other instances, football is a non-factor.

 

What follows, then, is my rooting interest ranking, in ascending order, of the fourteen Big 10 basketball teams in their conference tournament.  I have conveniently sorted them into two categories, creatively labeled "Teams I Would Like To See Lose" and "Teams I Would Like To See Win."  When two teams within the same category oppose each other, I root for the team closer to # 1.

 

I can be very judgmental, but in the universe of sports-related blogging, such behavior often comes with the territory.  I am not without sin, but I'm fine casting stones here.  As the great philosopher Popeye used to say, "I yam what I yam."

 

TEAMS I WOULD LIKE TO SEE LOSE:

 

14. Penn State: Penn State should have received the death penalty in football for the 2011 Joe Paterno/Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal.  The Nittany Lions' fans feel no shame.  The chances that Paterno knew nothing about what his assistant coach was up to in the locker room showers hover around 0%.  Yet the fans want to bring back a statue of the late Joe Pa which the school removed, under immense public pressure, from grounds outside the stadium.  (I wonder, how is the view from the fiery furnace?)  Hard to cheer for a hoops team whose fan base is likely comprised of the school's football fans.  Saving grace: None.

 

13. Ohio State:  The Buckeyes are having a horrible basketball season, an anomaly for them.  The Buckeyes' football fans have a reputation of being the most hostile hosts to visiting teams' fans of any major program in the country.  The head football coach, Urban Meyer, is known in some circles as "The Poacher."  Most coaches -- although certainly not new Minnesota head coach P.J. Fleck, another poacher -- will stop recruiting a high school prospect once that kid has given a verbal commitment to another school.  It's only if that committed kid later initiates contact with another school, thus indicating that perhaps his commitment is not on solid footing, that a coach will resume going after the high schooler.  Not so Urbie.  A kid's verbal means nothing to him.  It is only after the kid has signed a national letter of intent that Meyer will call off the dogs, and only then because to do otherwise would invite an NCAA reprimand.  I have nothing against the Buckeyes' basketball coach, Thad Motta, except that he is willing to use "one and done" athletes, the standard practice of John Calipari at Kentucky.  Saving grace: Throughout the season, Motta has suffered from severe back pain.  I've had my share of back pain too, so maybe I should cut him a break.

 

12. Michigan:  For many years the Big 10 was known as "The Big 2 & The Little 8" in football.  The Big 2 were Michigan and Ohio State, especially in the days when Bo Schembechler and Woody Hayes were, respectively, their head football coaches. The old Domers of my era never had a bone to pick with Michigan when we were students.  The Irish and the Wolverines did not play each other in football from 1944 until 1978, nine years after I graduated.  However, the younger generation of Irish alums and subway alums dislike Michigan even more than they do our arch rival, Southern Cal. The Michigan football team has a kind of gangsta thugginess about them, and many of their (especially younger) fans follow suit.  They are an easy team to mock.  Certainly the "team up north" leads the league in kinesiology majors.  Since they have hired the rules-bending Jim Harbaugh as their coach, Michigan's football fortunes will probably rise.  Similar to what I wrote about Penn State fans, how can I cheer for their basketball team when I know Michigan's hoops fans are also their football fans?  Saving grace: I do like the Wolverines' head basketball coach, John Beilein.

 

11. Maryland:  Notre Dame fans refer to Boston College as "Fredo," the Corleone brother in The Godfather who betrayed his family.  ["Fredo, you are nothing to me now," scolded younger brother Michael, who waited for their mother's passing before ordering a henchman to give Fredo his just desserts.]  BC, which was a charter member of the Big East, deserted that conference to join the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2005, at a time when the Big East was highly successful.  Maryland is the ACC's Fredo, opting in 2014 to abandon its ACC charter membership for what it considered to be the greener pastures of the Big Ten.  Maryland is not a midwestern school, rarely having midwestern kids on its roster.  I would rather cheer for schools that do.  Saving grace: Unlike their football team, which exemplifies gridiron mediocrity, the Terrapins have represented their new conference well on the hardwood.

 

10. Michigan State:  When I attended ND in the sixties, two chants which we yelled the most were "Hate State!" and "Screw Purdue."  Michigan State (158 miles from The Bend) and Purdue (109 miles) were practically neighbors of ours.  We played them every year in football, and those games were always no holes barred.  The most famous game in the ND-State series was the classic 10-10 tie which I attended in East Lansing my sophomore year, when we won the 1966 National Championship.   Throughout the years I have never considered the Spartans to be lacking class, but one ignominious incident which occurred on September 17, 2005 is still talked about every time the two schools meet.  After beating the Irish in overtime 44-41 at Notre Dame Stadium, several jubilant Spartan players planted a Michigan State flag at the fifty yard line.  That addition of insult to injury was a sportsmanship no no and remains the lowlight of the two schools' rivalry.  As for hoops, Michigan State has been the most successful Big 10 team since 1995 when current head coach Tom Izzo was hired to fill that position.  It's always gratifying for opposing fans to see a perennial favorite stumble.  Saving grace: Although he can be a court side crybaby, Izzo runs a clean program and is highly regarded.

 

9. Indiana:  Of all the Big 10 schools, the one having the biggest gap between glorious basketball success and football ineptitude is Indiana.  Minnesota has christened itself the State Of Hockey.  In Indiana they have Hoosier Hysteria, which technically refers to the high school scene but describes nicely the state's basketball atmosphere at every level.  This is the state of John "The Wizard Of Westwood" Wooden, Bobby Knight and of course the 1986 film classic, Hoosiers.  Indiana's 1976 National Championship team is the only team in NCAA Division 1 history to achieve a perfect season.  Like Izzo's Michigan State, Indiana can usually be counted on to have a very good season, so a bump in the road for them would be a pleasing change of circumstances for many of their conference rivals' fans.  Saving grace: Indiana has suffered more injuries to key players this season than any other team in the league.  The result has been a dismal season.  Cheering against them might be piling on.

 

8. Rutgers:  Rutgers does not belong in the Big 10.  It adds nothing to the conference's football or basketball standing as a Power 6 Conference.  Big 10 Commissioner Jim Delaney, a self-serving empire builder, sold the notion that Rutgers would bring the New York television market into the Big 10 Network.  Guess what, Jimbo?  New York is a pro sports town which pays scant attention to the Big 10.  No sports fans are more provincial than New Yorkers.  They could not give two hoots what Rutgers is doing, much less Iowa, Nebraska and their hinterland brethren. Saving grace:  Unlike Maryland, which came into the Big 10 at the same time as Rutgers, the Scarlet Knights have not represented their new conference well, but they are so weak as to be irrelevant.  I would feel like a bully rooting against them.

 

7. Purdue:  Purdue has always been a huge rival of Notre Dame.  See the chant cited above.  The following short story reflects how I feel about the Boilermakers.  In the fall of 1996, Momma Cuandito and I were on our way home from Oxford, Ohio where we had dropped off our daughter, Gina, at Miami University for her freshman year.  As a diversion from the long drive, we stopped in West Lafayette, Indiana to walk around the Purdue campus.  The temperature was around twenty-five, and we were too lightly dressed.  Our first stop was the bookstore, where I bought MC a heavy Purdue sweatshirt.  She offered to buy me one in return.  My response was, "I would rather freeze my badoodskies off than wear a Purdue sweatshirt."  The main reason to root against the Boilers in the upcoming tourney:  They are the # 1 seed; upsets make for engrossing, dramatic theater.  Saving grace: The best player in the Big 10 this year is Boiler big guy Caleb Swanigan.  He has a most interesting bio, including overcoming homelessness and obesity as a youth.  I wish him well.  I also like head coach Matt Painter, a former Purdue hoopster.

 

6. Nebraska:  The main reason I have the Cornhuskers in this "Lose" category is that I can't think of a reason why I should root for them (unless, of course, they were playing one of the seven teams listed above them).  Maybe I am simply envious of their historic football success, although since joining the Big 10 in 2011, they are not the powerhouse they once were in the old Big 8 Conference.  My observation is that Big Red Country is all about football; basketball is just something to watch in the offseason.  I would rather see a team with a more vested interest from its fan base achieve basketball success.  Saving grace: I have heard from many sources that the Nebraska football fans are among the most gracious and hospitable sports enthusiasts in the nation, showing a lot of class whether in Lincoln or on the road, i.e., the opposite of Buckeye fans.

 

5. Iowa:  I am conflicted whether to put the Hawkeyes in the Win or Lose category.  I lived in Iowa for three years, yet have never claimed to be from that state.  When asked the question, I have always responded, with pride, that I hail from Illinois or North Dakota.  I have attended many football and basketball games pitting Minnesota against either Iowa or Wisconsin.  Here is my observed comparison. When the Badgers win their fans celebrate and  have a party, right there in the stadium or arena.  Their band is excellent.  "When you've said 'Wis-con-sin,' you've said it all!"  When the Hawkeyes win their fans feel a need to brag and ridicule their vanquished opponent.  They have failed to learn the wise advice learned from a coach in my youth: When you lose say little, when you win say less.  Saving grace:  As I wrote in my December 28, 2016 post, I enjoy Iowa's fiery head basketball coach, Fran McCaffrey, and not just because he is married to former Notre Dame basketball star Margaret Nowlin.     

 

TEAMS I WOULD LIKE TO SEE WIN:

 

4. Wisconsin.  The number of reasons to cheer on the Badgers is marginally greater than the number on the opposite side of the ledger.  It starts with my favorable impression of the Wisconsin fans; see my comparison to Iowa's above.  Our family cabin is in the great Wisconsin North Woods, which makes me a land owner and a tax payer.  My daughter-in-law, Lindsey, is a Badger alum, as are several of my kids' friends.  And what better place to spend a fun weekend than Mad City?  I also appreciate the tradition of the Badgers' players staying in school for the duration of their eligibility, a practice which one might cynically attribute to a dearth of NBA caliber talent.  The Badgers' roster is not stocked with McDonald's All Americans, but they've been to the Sweet 16 each of the last three years.  On the other hand:  The Badgers are the Gophers' arch rival, which causes some pangs of betrayal for those of us on the west side of the St. Croix to pull for them when they're not facing Minnesota.  (Note: Although Wisconsin has had the upper hand lately in football -- twelve straight wins over the Gophs -- the football series is tied 59-59 plus 8 ties.  The Maroon & Gold hold a razor thin victory margin in the basketball series, 102-99.)  There is also the matter of recruiting wars, with both schools going after some of the same high school phenoms.

 

3. Northwestern.  Northwestern,the highest ranked school academically in the Big 10, has never participated in the NCAA tournament.  Although the term "Mildcats" originally was meant as a slur on the football team, the Wildcats basketball team historically has also proved deserving of the label, having almost always finished in the bottom half, if not the bottom fourth, of the Big 10 standings.  Not so this year; seeded sixth in the Big 10 Tournament, they are a lock to be invited to the Big Dance as an at-large team.  Northwestern is this year's Cinderella of Power 6 teams.  The icing on the cake for rooting interest purposes is that one of their starting forwards is Sanjay Lumpkin, the pride of Benilde-St. Margaret's High School.  On the other hand: When I was a high school senior, I applied to three colleges, Notre Dame, Marquette and Loyola.  When I was a college senior, I applied to three law schools, Minnesota, Northwestern and DePaul.  Of those six schools, Northwestern was the only one to respond thumbs down.  Should I be rooting for them anyway?

 

2. Illinois.  Illinois is my native state.  (The rumors you've heard are true; Hillary Clinton and I were born four days apart in Chicago.)  In grade school I developed a love of geography -- thank you Mrs. Foley, my fifth grade teacher -- and studied the Prairie State quite thoroughly.  Ever since then I've held a fondness for the Land Of Lincoln.  It is hard for me to cheer against the Fighting Illini, even though I haven't lived there since I was thirteen.  No one can accuse me of being a front running band wagon rider.  Illinois finished ninth in the Big 10 and would probably have to win the conference tournament to reach the Big Dance.  On the other hand: No basketball team wastes its location in fertile recruiting grounds like Illinois.  Illinois high school basketball is among the best in the nation.  If only Illini could recruit two or three of the top players from the Chicago area each year, they would have a leg up on their conference brethren.          
 

1. Minnesota.  The reasons for placing the Gophers # 1 are obvious.  The four biggest are (i) Momma Cuandito is an alum, (ii) I have lived here since 1966, (iii) my kids and grandkids were born here and live here, and (iv) to do otherwise would incur the wrath of Gina, the Hot Italian Tomato and the Gophers' # 1 fan.  On the other hand: I am not a fan of the new Gophers' football coach, PJ Fleck. (Here we go again, looking to football in a basketball post.)  It is my (old fashioned?) belief that when a new head coach accepts the position, he should not recruit or accept transfers from the program he is leaving.  Such practice is probably unethical, and if that's too harsh an accusation, let's just say it does not pass the Smell Test.  This coming season's football roster will be stocked with former Western Michigan recruits and at least one or two transfers.  If you think he won't pull the same stunt when he leaves Minny for greener pastures some day, you must also believe in the Tooth Fairy.

Movie Review: "The Salesman"

"The Salesman": B+.  I have already sung the praises of Iranian director Asghar Farhadi.  (See my February 25, 2012 and July 28, 2015 reviews of A Separation and About Ellie; both A-.)  He has the deft ability to center an interesting story around a singular, but not always remarkable, occurrence, which sets off a chain of dramatic events.  Simple everyman type characters face challenges which require uncommon action.  Farhadi's movies present dilemmas which prove difficult for his characters to solve.  In the end, some things are left for the viewer to resolve.  And watch out for those red herrings!

Emad (Shahab Hosseini) is a well liked high school teacher who has good rapport with his students while still managing to keep discipline in the classroom.  He and his wife, Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), are currently performing as the leads in the Arthur Miller play, Death Of A Salesman.   They live in a multi-story apartment building in the city.  Due to an excavation project in the adjacent lot, the building's tenants have to evacuate hurriedly before their structure collapses.  With warning signals blaring, windows breaking and the plaster walls crumbling, Emad sends Rana ahead to safety while he heroically carries an incapacitated neighbor down the stairwell.  Thus it is established that Emad, highly regarded teacher and good neighbor extraordinaire, is an admirable man, above reproach.

The Miller play's director and fellow actor Babak (Babak Karimi) offers to let the now-homeless couple stay in an apartment he owns which has just been vacated by the previous tenant.  The only "rule" is that they are forbidden to open the locked closet in which that previous tenant has temporarily stored personal belongings.  Shades of the Garden Of Eden's forbidden fruit?  Emad and Rana soon learn that previous tenant was a prostitute, a fact which may come into play in an unfortunate way for them.

 

One evening when Rana is alone in their new quarters, she is attacked in her bathroom.  The perpetrator, after cutting his feet on shattered mirror glass, runs away quickly, leaving bloody prints on the outdoor staircase.  Not long afterwards, Emad comes home to find his wife beaten and unconscious.  She is taken by ambulance to a hospital.  Although she recovers she is traumatized, afraid to be alone.  The couple decides not to get the police involved, possibly because Rana can't recall what her attacker looked like and because she doesn't want to relive the ordeal via testimony.

 

Emad and Rana begin to discover clues: a stash of money in a cabinet, a cell phone and a set of keys, all of which have been left -- the last two unintentionally -- by the assailant.  Emad tries to use the keys to enter and start several vehicles parked in their neighborhood.  When he finds the match, he covertly parks the vehicle out of sight in his building's underground garage.

 

Farhadi is a master at building suspense.  Are things deteriorating between the married couple?  Why won't Babak tell Emad how to reach the previous tenant?  Maybe the attacker, who had approached Rana from behind on that awful night, thought she was that prostitute.  In classroom scenes, why does the camera concentrate on a particular boy with black-framed glasses?

 

There are several scenes where Farhadi films the play starring Emad and Rana.  Showing a play (or a movie) within the "main" film is usually tricky, but Farhadi manages to do so smoothly.  There is never any question as to whether we are watching Death Of A Salesman or The Salesman.  This leads us to another train of thought.  In Miller's tragic play the salesman, Willy Loman, expires in the final act.  Are we, the viewers, to expect the same fate for Emad, who has the role of Loman in the play?

 

The final act, which includes themes of shame, humiliation, morality and forgiveness, begins when we don't realize it's beginning.  Similarly, the story doesn't stop at the moment we think is the end.  There is more than one surprise in store, which accounts for the final stages being a little too drawn out.  That criticism arguably falls into the category of a "nit."  The Salesman may not be quite up to the level of the two previous Farhadi films cited above, but it is nevertheless worthy of your time and money.  Last week it won the Academy Award Oscar for Best Foreign Film.