Calabrian Quest In Cosenza

This post is a recounting of my attempt to retrieve the birth certificate of my maternal grandfather, Serafino Porcaro, from the government archives in Cosenza, Italy.  Although the story does not have a happy ending in the conventional sense, I would like to memorialize my appreciation and admiration for the Italian civil servants who gave it all they had.

The thought of attempting to obtain a copy of Serafino's birth certificate never crossed my mind until last December when I wrote to my cousin Louie's widow, Carole, to ask if she had any touristy recommendations for Calabria, the "toe" of Italy's "boot."  I knew she and Louie had once belonged to the Calabrian Club in Chicago, and went with that group to southern Italy at least twice.  Carole replied that on one of their trips Louie tried unsuccessfully to obtain the birth certificate of our grandfather.  She apprised me of Serafino's birthday, August 28, 1878, and his place of birth, Cosenza, a city of about 70,000 people located in north central Calabria.  I should note here that Louie was the oldest of Serafino's nineteen grandchildren -- I was the eighth -- so I felt confident that the information he'd passed on to Carole was accurate.
 

Fodor's travel guide describes Calabria as "poor" and the "least trodden of [Italy's] regions."  Maybe so, but the lack of tourism is one of the factors that appealed to our party of four: traveling buddies Admiral Bob and Madame Cipolle, Momma Cuandito and me.  Our theory was that there could be an inverse correlation between tourism and authenticity; this was an opportunity to experience the real Italy.  Rather than head directly from the Amalfi Coast to Sicily, where we would spend the majority of our sixteen day vacation, we decided to make Cosenza a one night layover.
 

The first clue that we were in a city not accustomed to hosting tourists was that the receptionist at our hotel, the Royal, did not speak English.  It was quite entertaining to watch Madame, fluent in French, converse with the friendly lady behind the desk.  Facial expressions and gesticulations came in handy -- no pun intended -- and enough was gleaned from the combination of French and Italian to figure out where to park our rental car and how to find the nearby pedestrian mall.
 

The open air mall extended for over half a mile, with stores on each side.  A grooved rubber track about eight inches wide ran along each edge, presumably to use if the pavement became slippery.  Detailed sculptures, some resembling mythological characters, others too bizarre to label, decorated each block. The two most notable establishments on the walkway were the Bulldog Bar, the mall's only tavern, and Magazzini Rossella.  Who would have guessed that my mother-in-law owned a business here in Cosenza?
 

We arrived around 5:00 at the end of the mall, where we noticed what appeared to be a government building of some sort across the street.  The three story structure was at the back end of an unadorned pavement plaza.  The windows on the top two floors were narrow slits.  The flags of Italy, the European Union and Calabria flew above the recessed front doors.  The employees were gone for the day and the building was locked, but we determined this would be our starting point the next morning.

***

After breakfast we made the fifteen minute walk to the government building.  Inside we encountered a small group of office workers.  Once again language differences presented a temporary inconvenience.  We learned that birth records were not kept in that building.  We would have to try our luck at a different place, about four or five blocks away.  Rather than just point us in the right direction, one of the workers accompanied us to the second destination, crossing a couple of busy streets to do so.  Naturally this was way beyond the call of duty, but we got the sense that he was disappointed he could not better assist us.
 

The second building, metallic with green trim, was an even more non-descript edifice than the first.  I did not see any identifying signage on the exterior.  If not for our helpful new friend who escorted us from the first office building, we may never have landed at the second.  We climbed a staircase to the second floor to find a stale working environment which looked like it hadn't been changed since the day it was opened for business decades ago.  Institutional green and beige were the predominant colors.  The office was supposedly the repository for official records of all kinds, such as birth, marriage and death certificates.  After a short wait, a male clerk took the card on which I'd written my grandfather's name and birthday, looked at it carefully and disappeared into a back file room.  He did not seem phased at all by my request for a certificate from the nineteenth century, giving no hint of the prospective impossibility of the task. This is going to be easy, I thought to myself.  My optimism was short-lived.

 

The clerk returned empty handed, but just as was the case in the first building, another employee came by and suggested yet another, third government archival office where we might find what we sought.  He took us out on the balcony and pointed to an old church on a hill almost a kilometer away.  It was there, he declared, where the city's oldest, and therefore least requested, records were kept.

 

At that point we'd been at it for well over an hour with nothing tangible to show for it.  I wasn't even sure what I would do with my grandfather's birth certificate had one been produced.  I also kept reminding myself that my cousin had already tried (and failed) to accomplish what we hoped to attain.  Therefore, I offered to call off the search at that point, before walking to and hiking up the distant hill, possibly to no avail.  My three companions would not accept my offer, reasoning that we'd gone this far in our search; we'd probably never return to Cosenza again, so now was the time.  Besides, this was an adventure!

 

We did not start out on the right foot, or should I say the correct route.  We ended up at a dead end, blocked by a fenced-in set of railroad tracks.  How do we go from there to the hillside church?  Once again Madame, the linguist, obtained directions from one of the locals who happened to be passing by.  We would have to do an "end around," first backtracking a little, then crossing a bridge over the tracks and the scenic Crati River, then ascending the hill on which the old church was perched.

 

After guessing incorrectly once or twice on which of the church doors to enter, our tired but intrepid quartet gained admission.  The final and most humorous part of our morning was about to begin.

 

Let me preface this "chapter" by stating that, up until then, the highest degree of security to which I'd ever been subjected were the two or three times my job required me to enter the Wells Fargo Operations Center, located in an unmarked building on the corner of 4th Street & Second Avenue in downtown Minneapolis.  If you did not know the name of your great uncle's pet goldfish, and answers to questions of similar ilk, you'd be denied access.  It turned out Wells had nothing on the Cosenza archivists.

 

Immediately inside the church door we were welcomed by cautionary signs, ropes and small barricades.  Behind a glass wall to our left were four women whose main job appeared to be scrutinizing aspiring entrants and, if said newcomers passed muster, granting admission to the second floor records storage area.  Each of us had to present identification and submit to inquiries such as place of birth, home address, occupation, and relationship to the person whose records we sought.  One of the women actually transcribed some of the information from our drivers' licenses onto a pad of paper.  No word if she filed that paper under "A" for Americano, "V" for visitatore (visitor), or some other category.  The whole procedure reminded me of an incident I'd read about in David Greene's non-fiction story Midnight In Siberia, where he described the triplicate forms required to be completed by customers dropping off and picking up their laundry at the dry cleaners.  I learned then that the Russians, and now learned that the Italians, absolutely love their paper trails.

 

Two or three of the women came out from behind the glass walled office.  Thankfully one of them, whose name I recall was Maria, spoke very good English, thereby advancing the whole process as expeditiously as their rules would allow.  She was adept at the art of small talk, so our fifteen minute wait for her co-workers to do their thing -- whatever that was -- did not seem such a grind.  In fact, it was rather pleasant.  Maria asked me if I knew my grandfather's name was a reference to angels, the seraphim.  Sure, I'd heard of seraphim, but had never connected the dots.

 

As I related above, Cosenza is not exactly a tourist mecca, so having four Americans at their office doorstep may have been a rarity for the employees, or at least something to tell their families about when they went home that evening.   Finally, they issued each of us keys, engraved with a number which no doubt matched a number somewhere in a row or a column on one of their office forms.  We inferred an important message: Woe to the person who loses his key!  All of us figured the keys would be used to open a file drawer or a container similar to what one would find inside a safety deposit vault. Wrong!

 

Maria led us to a lift  which creaked upward to the second floor at hospital elevator speed.  A twist here, a turn there, and we found ourselves in an anteroom occupied by three or four more workers, a different group from those on the first floor.  I'm not sure what they were doing to pass the time before we showed up, as the people in our foursome were the only non-employees there.  We presented the keys we'd been safeguarding which we then found out opened little square wooden cabinets for our jackets.  I really wasn't going to shed my jacket, but the Italians had gone through so much work to issue the keys I did not want to disappoint them by leaving my assigned cabinet empty.  However, Momma Cuan had no choice but to keep her coat, as her cabinet was at least six feet off the ground!

 

Soon we were escorted into the larger back room.  I was impressed by the wood paneling, the glass casings and the computer equipment.  This area was appointed like a small research library, which in fact it was.  Another handful of researchers were at desks. Maria got one or two of them started on looking for Serafino's birth record.  I could see them flipping the pages of long thick ledgers crammed with handwritten entries.  The workers meticulously combed through page after page to no avail.  Naturally, they performed some of the investigation on computers.  They found 531 Porcaro birth records, but none with a matching correct first name and birthdate.  Maria approached with more questions.  Was I sure I had the correct spelling?  The correct birth date?  Was Serafino known by any other name?  Was he born within the city limits of Cosenza or, instead, in the surrounding rural region?  Did I know if he had siblings, or what the names of his parents were?  Did I know when he emigrated to the United States?  I was not much help.  All I had to go on was the minuscule information which Carole had relayed to me.

 

A few more employees joined in the project.  They were absolutely giving it their all, working at different stations and eager to try different approaches.  They even invited Admiral Bob and me to try our luck at one of the computers.  We were all in that back room close to a half hour.  Finally we agreed to throw up the white flag.  It certainly was not from lack of effort.  In fact, I felt bad for the Italians that they felt bad for me!

 

***

 

We were in Cosenza for only twenty-one hours, yet I have several memories that are going to stick with me for awhile.  The crowded church where the archbishop presided over a solemn Wednesday evening ceremony to bless the holy oils which would be used for the coming liturgical year; the Admiral, approaching a pub called J. Joyce Irish Pub, only to discover it was closed (I have a funny picture which captures that disappointment); shortly thereafter, enjoying a beer while sitting on wicker chairs outside the Caffe Telesio, watching the regular old timers, including a nattily dressed older gent in a fedora, tell animated stories to each other; the nuns who appeared behind the cafe after the church ceremony, seeking a ride to their vehicle; the superb dinner we enjoyed at a corner table at Calabria Bella Ristorante; the cars zooming up and down the old city's narrow alleys on which people were walking for lack of a sidewalk; and the nightcaps we drank at the Bulldog before heading back to the Royal.  The topper, however, was the mission we did not quite accomplish looking for Serafino's birth certificate.  I will always remember the Italian civil servants who took on the task of aiding our search with the same degree of seriousness, vigor and concern as if he had been their own ancestor.

Movie Review: "The Lost City Of Z"

"The Lost City Of Z": B.  Before oil was king there was rubber.  And just as discord over oil fields has been the root cause of many wars over the last several decades, ownership of land bearing rubber plants was a bone of contention at the beginning of the twentieth century.  In The Lost City Of Z, the South American territory referred to as "Amazonia" had abundant rubber plants, an invaluable cash crop.  But the land was claimed by both Brazil and Bolivia which were at the brink of war with each other.  In an intelligent effort to avoid bloodshed, the two neighboring countries looked to the world's most powerful government, the British Empire, to survey the contested territory and draw a boundary.

This is where Major Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) comes in.  Charged with the responsibility of fulfilling the Empire's responsibilities, the Royal Geographic Society pegs Fawcett to lead the transatlantic expedition.  Fawcett has the moxie and derring-do air which suit him for the dangerous assignment.  Furthermore, he has established himself as an expert rifleman, a skill which may come in handy in the South American jungles.  Fawcett is eager to do something extraordinary to compensate for his father, who ruined his own military career by losing his battle with the bottle.  Fawcett has been "unfortunate in his choice of ancestors" is how a RGS big wig describes the major.
 

The RGS assigns Corporal Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson) to be Fawcett's right hand man.  Fawcett is unaware of this arrangement until he senses someone is stalking him on the westbound ocean liner.  The major hides behind a door and almost kills the man abruptly.  That man turns out to be Costin.  Despite the presence of Costin in one scene after another as the men later make their way up river, one of the film's shortcomings is its failure to develop the corporal's character.
 

Ironically, very little attention is paid to the original reason for the Brits' willingness to risk life and limb in the uncharted South American jungle, viz., the establishment of a bi-national border.  We see the men with surveying equipment for only a few moments, and there does not appear to be a rubber plant in sight.  One reason for this change in focus is the legend of a lost city inhabited by an unknown civilization, where a trove of gold and other exotic treasures supposedly can be found.  This news fascinates Fawcett, whose disbelieve evaporates when he finds various artifacts in the forest.  These discoveries turn him and his men from surveyors to explorers.
 

The British team, which includes indigenous guides, encounters the expected gamut of obstacles such as oppressive heat, hostile tribes, disease and hunger.  Some of the related scenes are intense.  Unfortunately a few border on incredulity, such as an attack by spear-hurling native warriors who, for no apparent reason, stop shooting after the targeted Brits leap into the water and then climb back on to their raft a few moments later.
 

Fawcett makes more than one trip to Amazonia.  He is itching to lead a second expedition to follow up on his quest for the reputed lost city.  Desperate for financing, Fawcett agrees to take on RGS member James Murray (Angus Macfadyen), a rotund biologist whose claim to fame is his previous association with famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.  Without Murray on board, the RGS will not risk an investment.   The inclusion of Murray leads to life-and-death issues which make for an interesting subplot.

The talents of Sienna Miller are wasted in the roll of Fawcett's dutiful wife, Nina.  Most of her lines are predictably cliched, such as when she pleads with her husband to allow her to accompany him to South America.  When her husband is wounded in the first world war -- an unnecessary deviation which only serves to lengthen the run time -- she is at his hospital bed with a soothing washcloth. It would have been nice to see Nina stand up to her vain husband once or twice instead of conceding to his every selfish wish.  She is even complicit in sending their eldest child, a teenage boy, into the hostile jungle.

The film is based on a 2009 book bearing the same title and written by David Gann.  Film director James Gray has taken the risk of having the story become too episodic by including each of Fawcett's expeditions as separate acts, thus remaining faithful to Gann's work.  It may have been a more dramatic film had he condensed some of those trips into one or two.

Movie Review: "Lion"

"Lion": B.  British actor Dev Patel made his silver screen debut for US audiences in the surprise hit Slumdog Millionaire (pre-blog rating of B+).  Released here in 2009, the film won the Academy Award Oscar for Best Picture.  Patel, who was only seventeen when that movie was shot, portrayed the title character, a product of the slums of Mumbai.  In Lion, which was one of nine films nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award three months ago, Patel's character again plays an adult whose history has been shaped by a previous life in Indian slums, this time Calcutta's.  Although Lion fell short in the latest Oscar competition, it was a worthy entry whose chances for the ultimate prize were probably hurt by a downshifting in tempo at approximately the two-thirds point in the story.

The film covers a twenty-five year span, beginning in 1986, when five year old Saroo (Sunny Pawar) and his older brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate) are being raised by their illiterate mother in a hut off a dirt road in Khandwa.  Guddu teaches Saroo the risky practice of hopping freight trains and stealing coal from the gondola cars, then trading their booty for food staples.  Their mother, who also has an infant daughter, instructs her young sons to look after the baby, but the adventure-seeking boys can't resist the thrills of running into the city.  One of those adventures turns into a misadventure when the brothers get separated and a panicked Saroo finds himself trapped alone on a train bound for Calcutta, sixteen hundred kilometers from home.

Saroo quickly learns that his native Hindi is not understood by the Bengali-speaking populace of Calcutta, thus making his plight even more dire.  He has a few narrow escapes from those who would do him grave harm, eventually ending up in an orphanage.  There he learns English, thus setting himself up for adoption by an Australian couple, Susan (Nicole Kidman) and John (David Wenham) Brierly, who live in Tasmania.
 

Screen writer Luke Davies and director Garth Davis quickly leapfrog twenty years, which is when Patel makes his appearance as the young adult Saroo.  The pathetic life Saroo led in India is far behind him.  In Tasmania, the loving Brierlys have raised him like their own offspring, along with another Indian boy, the troubled Mantosh (Divian Ladwa), whom they adopted a few years after Saroo.  Saroo is now a college student in Melbourne, taking up hotel management.  He and his American girlfriend, Lucy (Rooney Mara), hang out with a diverse group of other college kids, some of whom are Indian.  Saroo misses the Brierlys, but it isn't until he spots jalebi in the kitchen at a house party that recollections of his biological family tug at his heart.  Jalebi is an Indian pastry loved by Saroo and Guddu when they were boys.

Deeply affected by memories of his difficult childhood, thoughts of returning to India fill Saroo's mind.  He tells Lucy that he's sure his family is still searching for him all these years later.  He feels guilty for having lived a privileged life in Australia while the family he left behind barely survives in squalor.

Saroo is faced with one major obstacle: Ever since that fateful long train ride as a five year old, he has never been able to recall the name of his family's town.  Will he return to India, and if so, will he ever reconnect with his Indian family?  How will Lucy and the Brierlys take this new development?

Although Patel gets top billing as the adult protagonist, a performance which earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination, it is little Sunny Pawar who steals the show as the adorable youngster Saroo.  Pawar is on the screen for about half the film.  I just wanted to give him a big hug and buy him a juicy steak with a jumbo platter of jalebi for dessert.
 

There was an article recently in the Star Tribune which explained how the local authorities were forming a task force to be on the alert for signs of human trafficking in the Twin Cities during the Super Bowl festivities early next year.  Many of the minors who are victims of that repulsive crime originate from India and other countries of southeastern Asia.  In Lion, some of the scenes of young, homeless Saroo, sleeping with other kids on cardboard mats in dirty Calcutta subway stations, are scary.  The difference between narrow escape and ending up in a kidnapper's clutches can be only a matter of inches.  I will be thinking of those scenes as the Super Bowl approaches.

Quarterly Cinema Scan - Volume XXVII

Although I have been going to movies for over sixty years, there have only been three films which I once labeled my favorite movie of all time.  I saw two of them again on television during the last quarter.  The third one, which I haven't re-watched in a while, I'll save for a future post.

The Man Who Knew Too Much is a 1956 Alfred Hitchcock thriller which begins in Morocco.  Jimmy Stewart plays an American doctor who is on vacation with his wife, an internationally famous singer (Doris Day), and their young son.  In Marrakesh they meet an English speaking man on a crowded bus and an English speaking couple in a restaurant, all of whom come into play.  Doris suspects that their new acquaintance from the bus is hiding secrets, but Jimmy practically tells her she's being paranoid.  A marketplace murder in broad daylight followed by a kidnapping confirms Doris' suspicions and leads them back to where they had started their vacation, London.

 

When I first saw the film in the mid-fifties, I immediately announced (not that anybody cared) that it was the best film I'd ever seen.  Even after watching more critically acclaimed subsequent Hitchcock films such as 1958's Vertigo and 1959's North By Northwest, I still thought The Man Who Knew Too Much was superior.  Now I must recant.  The movie has not aged as well as I might have hoped.  Although Doris may have been a very good singer back in the day, the same can't be said about her acting.  The decisions Jimmy makes seem stupid for a guy smart enough to be a physician.  You can tell how the story will end well ahead of time.  It is still decent entertainment; after all, it is Hitch.  The film has memorable scenes -- the Marrakesh market, Ambrose Chapel and Albert Hall -- but the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

 

I kept The Man Who Knew Too Much on my First Place pedestal for about four or five years until I saw the biblical epic Ben-Hur, released in late 1959.  It is the story of a wealthy Jewish prince, Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston), whose homeland, Judea, has been taken over by the great Roman army.  There is quiet resentment among the natives but they are powerless against the mighty Boys From The Boot.  Who should be leading the invading army but Judah's childhood friend, Messala (Stephen Boyd).  Messala expects Judah to renounce his beliefs and face the reality that the Romans are in charge.  Messala can't believe Judah's obstinate refusal to do so.
 

Within a few scenes, Judah takes the blame for an accident caused by his sister.  She inadvertently causes a loose tile to fall off the roof of their balcony, almost striking Messala's commanding officer on horseback.  Messala finds proof that the near catastrophe was accidental, but his standing and reputation in the eyes of Caesar is more important to him.  He levels a charge tantamount to attempted assassination, and condemns Judah to slavery in the rowing galley of a Roman war ship.  The prisoners there are chained to their posts.  If their ship sinks they'll go down with it.

 

The story spans many years, following Judah as he struggles to survive, is the beneficiary of some good luck, and seeks to find answers regarding the fate of his mother and sister.  All this time, he never lets the thought of revenge against Messala stray from his consciousness for too long.

 

Charlton Heston was known for taking on larger than life roles in epic films.  Here is a sampler: Moses in The Ten Commandments (1956); the title character in El Cid (1961); John The Baptist in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965); and Michelangelo in The Agony And The Ecstasy (1965).  Other than possibly Richard Burton or Burt Lancaster, Heston was the only actor of that era who possessed the stature, physique and charisma to play Judah.  His bravura performance is one for the ages.

 

The film lasts over three and a half hours, but my most recent viewing confirms that there are very few wasted moments; that is, if you don't count the ten minute opening overture.  This is a huge epic story, written by a retired Union general from the Civil War, Lew Wallace, therefore requiring a long run time to tell.  (There is an intermission.)

 

As a teenager, I loved the film so much that I read the book.  One thing I remember about the book which is not included in the movie is a strange request Judah makes to the guard inside the galley.  He asks for permission to row from the starboard and port sides of the warship on alternating days, so that his musculature will be evenly developed.  The Roman guards grant this favor, even though it seems strange coming from a condemned man.

 

The most famous scene in the movie is, of course, the chariot race in the Roman Circus.  The race lasts eleven minutes of real time, but took five weeks to shoot.  Director William Wyler, in an interesting act of delegation, decided to have the race sequence directed by his second unit director, Andrew Marton.  In a movie with so many unforgettable gems, the chariot race is a standout.  A trivia tidbit:  The coordinator of the many stunts, Yakima Kanutt, used his son, Joe, to stand-in for Heston in most of the dangerous moments.

 

Ben-Hur won eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Heston).  In the eighty-eight year history of the Oscars, only two other films (1997's Titanic and The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King from 2003) have also won eleven Oscars, but none has won more.  It remained my favorite film of all time for roughly fifteen years.

 

After watching Ben-Hur last month, I was thankful that it had not slipped, as had The Man Who Knew Too Much, in my estimation.  Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz called Ben-Hur "a master work of filmmaking technique and execution."  Ben is more eloquent than I, so I'll just add, "Ditto."

 

Here are the movies I've seen in the comfort of the Quentin Estates during the first three months of 2017.

 

1. The Accountant (2016 drama; Ben Affleck, a forensic accountant who includes mafia families among his clients, is pursued by US Treasury Department analyst Cynthia Addai-Robinson and its director, J.K. Simmons.) B

2. Ben-Hur (1959 biblical drama; Charlton Heston is a wealthy Judean Jew whose life is changed for the worse when his former friend Stephen Boyd, a power hungry Roman tribune, knowingly condemns him for a crime he didn't commit.) A

3. 8-1/2 (1963 comedy; Marcello Mastrianni is a famous film director who, while dealing with marital discord with wife Anouk Aimee, tries the patience of his producers and actors with his inability to settle on a final theme or script for his movie.) B-

4. Jackie (2016 biopic; Natalie Portman is Jackie Kennedy, recounting for a Life Magazine reporter the events immediately following the assassination of her husband.)  C+

5. A Little Romance (1979 rom-com; Laurence Olivier suggests that young teens Diane Lane and Thelonious Bernard head to the Bridge Of Sighs in Venice at sunset, then helps them get there from Paris.) A-

6. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 drama; Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day unwittingly get involved as witnesses in a plot to assassinate a foreign minister inside the Royal Albert Hall.) B

7. Rebel Without A Cause (1955 drama; James Dean is a high schooler who can't stand his wimpy father, is targeted by his hoodlum classmates, befriends loner Sal Mineo, and is loved by bad girl Natalie Wood.) C

8. Saturday Night Fever (1977 musical; John Travolta prances, dances, knife fights and romances, all to the disco tunes of the Bee Gees and other music artists.)  B

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.