Samurai Trilogy, films by Hiroshi Inagaki

Before the Marvel Universe of superheroes, there were noble warriors in film. And the samurai of medieval Japan lend themselves particularly to the combination of physical skill, mental alertness, and spiritual centeredness that make an ordinary man heroic. The finest of these is the great actor Toshiro Mifune, who loves to embody penniless and slovenly characters who possess animal alertness, easily underestimated. 

Director Akira Kurosawa, who made Seven Samurai in 1954, also featured Mifune in later samurai epics: Yojimbo in 1961, Sanjuro in 1962. Between these, Inagaki made Samurai Trilogy, released in 1955. They’re all great for aficionados of the posturing, extended setup, and lightning fight scenes of swordsmen in action. 

Subplots aside, Part I broadly follows the development of a man (Mifune) who rejects his humble beginnings as a farmer and runs away to war, to win renown and to escape his extended family who despise him because he is savage, untamed and unrepentant. His physical prowess brings him to a certain point on his road to becoming a samurai, but as a Buddhist priest tells him, this strength is an obstacle to true development. 

Part II finds him, after three years locked in an attic with books, emerging as a more centered and learned man. He is now a respected and feared warrior, meeting the head of a famed samurai school in a duel. But he still has not learned to calm his spirit. 

In Part III, returning to his farming roots brings contentment – but his reputation has inspired a great young swordsman, played by Koji Tsuruta, to challenge him to a duel. They put off the fight while each develops his skills and fame, then at last they meet, in a memorable confrontation on the shore of an island. 

That’s the main story line, but this film is also shot beautifully: magnificent huge old pine trees, rolling fields, waterfalls, lush mountainsides, beautiful houses and castles, and hovels and inns full of flies and thieves, all form a compelling visual tapestry. When the plot bogs down in unrequited love, there’s still plenty to look at – your time is not wasted here despite melodramatic interludes. 

One might find oneself longing for a time when honor, courage, and dignity were cardinal virtues, and one needn’t resort to bullying to make one’s power felt. Those of us who love these films are grateful for the presence of Toshiro Mifune, playing the consummate outsider whose sword is, purportedly, for hire, but ultimately wielded in the service of justice.

The Zone of Interest, a film by Jonathan Glazer

The first thing that stood out to me about this movie is the Nazi officers’ haircuts. They are so very ugly, I have to wonder whether that was historically accurate, or a deliberate choice to make the Germans loathsome. I know tastes change, but even Moe, of The Three Stooges, has a better hairdo. Floppy on top, head close-shaved from above the ears down, and with a weird little wanna-be-ducktail point in the back, they’re too broadly hideous to be ignored. Not as hideous as the contrast between the little Eden of the Hoss family, and the back wall of their lovely garden, the razor-wire-topped boundary of Auschwitz death camp. 

This film is hard to write about – what can one say? The Obersturmfuhrer, Rudolph Hoss, played by Christian Friedel, occupies a lovely home (though his wife Hedwig, Sandra Huller, complains it’s not as big as it looks). This idyll is starkly opposed to the adjacent chimneys, barracks, the smoke the servants sometimes close the windows to keep out, the ashes that mulch the soil, the flames, the trains arriving at all hours. 

Hoss hosts the efficiency expert who proposes a design for the crematorium that will make possible continuous operation of the ovens – bodies (except they don’t call them bodies – “units”) go in, the 1000 plus degree heat does its work, then the load is moved to the next room where it cools, and the ashes are soon at 40 degrees, ready to be shoveled out. All that ingeniousness, turned to such a purpose. 

Occasionally the camp next door intrudes – Hoss goes fishing, and two of his children play in the river. He hooks a human jawbone, and suddenly barks at the kids to get out of the water. He hustles them home where they’re subjected to a sanitation treatment – a scrubbing with bleach perhaps, which has them screaming in pain – to expunge the contamination from those people, whose remains have the temerity to end up in the river where he loves to fish. 

Glazer makes clear that it’s possible to ignore something so horrific, so close by – just don’t think about what’s going on, or whether it’s right, or what it means to be on this side of such a wall not that side. It is a willed blindness humans suffer from, and perpetuate suffering through. The veil between what’s behind that wall, and places where we torment each other now, is almost nonexistent.

Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

My disintegrating paperback copy of this deceptively small novel was printed in 1970, though the copyright is 1963. It is Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s fifth published work. And it’s dynamite. Or, should I say, ice-nine, the substance that destroys life on earth. I like to give copies to friends and family as high school graduation gifts, because the book contains so many fundamental truths about life, all in one place. 

Vonnegut creates a scientist and his family, a destructive form of water, and a nihilist religion. In his deadpan way he describes the Hoenikker family – Dr. Felix, the father, genius with no moral compass whatever; his daughter Angela, a tall gawky woman with a gift for playing clarinet; his son Franklin who shuns nearly everyone, spending his time building a model railroad world; and young son Newt, a midget born at their mother’s death, cared for by Angela. Dr. Felix invents a substance the US Marines can use so they don’t have to slog through mud in their forays into battle. But that’s not all the substance does. 

Vonnegut introduces such ideas as one’s karass, the people with whom one is connected; granfalloons, people who imagine they are connected; wampeter, the purpose for which a karass exists; boko-maru, the ecstatic kneading of one another's feet; and foma – lies. He invents other terms too, but these are the most important. They’re delineated in the religion Bokononism, which is outlawed on the island where it is practiced. No one may be a Bokononist – lest they suffer a hideous death – and yet, they are all Bokononists. 

I’ve told too much – if you’ve never read this, you ought to find a copy – preferably a crumbling artifact on a used book store shelf – and collect some fundamental truths you might have overlooked thus far.

Maestro, a film by Bradley Cooper

This 2023 Oscar contender deals well for a while with the curse of biopics: life tends not to fit the narrative arc of a satisfying story. Leonard Bernstein was a colossus in music as in spirit, and as channeled by Bradley Cooper, he fills the screen. The first half is brilliant – one imaginative sequence, an exuberant dance by a trio of sailors, Leonard, and Felicia Montealegre, in a number from “On the Town” perfectly illustrates the attractions Bernstein has to his wife-to-be and to young men. They all dance together and apart, in this scene and in the rest of the movie. 

Bernstein is a man who leans into his appetites, at one point lamenting that his love of people prevents him from the level of composing he would otherwise achieve. The effervescent banter between Felicia (Carey Mulligan) and Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) is marvelous – we feel we are in a time when parties were populated by sophisticates who traded witticisms and opinions with confidence and a light touch. But the second half drags – not just the cigs (I hoped the credits would include Cigarette Wrangler, an essential crewmember for this pic – I looked in vain for a scene in which they weren’t smoking). We already know Bernstein swings both ways, and that despite being a loving husband and father, he is also unbridled in his appetite for men. But the music – the compositions, the conducting – the reason anyone would make or watch this movie – plays second fiddle (sorry!) to his fast living – booze, coke, young guys. 

And it’s here that Cooper and his co-writer Josh Singer fall into the biography trap: they feel compelled to tell more than we need to know (“Because it happened!”) to appreciate Bernstein’s prodigious talents. I would have cut twenty minutes. The fizz of the first half has gone flat, the story dutifully plods on. Between concerts and bouts at the keyboard, we have a lot of slack time filled with pickup scenes and parties. Cut! At Felicia’s command he lies to their oldest, their daughter Jamie (Maya Hawke) about rumors of his behavior at Tanglewood. Later, it’s clear she knows what is going on. Cut! 

Much has been made of Cooper’s prosthetic nose, created by the makeup artist Kazu Hiro. I don’t know what they are complaining about – I used to watch Bernstein’s Concerts for Young People, and Cooper channeled Bernstein brilliantly – I thought I was watching the man not the actor portraying him. If you’ve seen Frank Langella as Richard Nixon, or Liev Schreiber as Henry Kissinger, or, god forbid, John Wayne as Genghis Khan (in “The Conqueror,” best watched in an altered state), you would give Cooper very high marks. 

For me the actor who stole the show was Carey Mulligan, who deserves an Oscar. Understated vs. Cooper’s flamboyance, she holds her own without being pitiful.

They Shot the Piano Player, a film by Javier Mariscal and Fernando Trueba

I love the Denver Film Festival, now in its 46th year! Depending on their reception, some of these offerings go on to wider distribution, but most you'll probably never have another chance to see on a big screen. If you love film and there's a festival in your area, you should go!

They Shot the Piano Player, a 2022 animated film, is the story of a Bossa Nova pianist with a tragically short career. Tenorio Jr. was a gifted young pianist who pioneered some of the great new syncopated jazz sounds in the early 1960s that captivated Brazil then the jazz world. He played with some of the greats: Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Gilberto, and many others, but only recorded one album before he simply disappeared. A New York writer working on a book in 2010 about Latin jazz listens to that album then wants to know more. 

His curiosity, and love of Tenorio Jr.’s music, take him to Rio, to Buenos Aires, to the homes and haunts of many musicians who played with him and admired him; gradually he disentangles the story of Tenorio Jr.’s disappearance in 1976 while visiting Buenos Aires. At that time, all over Central and South America, military coups, funded by the CIA as a means of “stabilizing” their political landscape, were rounding up not only dissidents and Communists, but artists, students, musicians, anyone whether overtly political or not, whom they deemed threats. 

So we get our history lesson, but alongside it we enjoy some great music and captivating images courtesy of the film’s animation team. This movie is well worth seeing on a large screen in a theater with a good sound system, where you can enjoy it at its best.

The Catherine Wheel, by Jean Stafford

This 1951 novel recalls sharply Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, which I read about a year ago. The Catherine Wheel spans a summer not a day, but moves back along the remembrances and regrets of its characters as fully and poignantly as Woolf’s. 

Cousin Katherine, unmarried, and fortyish though with hair turned white by a bout of typhus, summers in a grand house outside a small town near the Maine coast. Though the book is set in the late 1930s – early 1940s, Katherine’s life is anachronistic, as if by resisting modernity she can keep time itself from intruding. Instead of a car she has a carriage and team of horses and coachman, as well as a gardener, a cook, a couple of maids, and a tenant on her land. She is the grande dame of the region, respected and appreciated and gossiped-over by the townsfolk. 

Every summer Katherine hosts her twin nieces and nephew, who under her indulgent intellectual eye are free to do as they will. Andrew, now twelve, has been best friends with the tenant’s son Victor, a rough character a couple years older than himself, with whom he would otherwise never cross paths. In summers past they have been inseparable, performing mischief, fishing and clam-digging, swimming and boating, and spying on the townsfolk of the nearby village. This year, however, Victor’s older brother Charles, a sailor, is home with some nonspecific ailment; Victor appoints himself nursemaid and confidante. Andrew is inflamed with jealousy – he has lost his companion, and the hours weigh on him. He longs for Charles’s death, or recuperation and return to seafaring – either would give Victor back to him. 

But this is not to be – Charles’s health waxes and wanes, Victor is under his sway, and Andrew wishes ever more fervently that Charles will meet some terrible fate. Katherine has her own secret, but while she and Andrew suffer and sense each other’s misery, they cannot confide. Yet, their dual distresses unbalance the household, so that instead of Katherine’s firm grip on her emotions and Andrew’s youthful nature steadying them, they only grow worse in tandem. 

Woolf’s visitations into the pasts of her characters are no less perceptive and pointed than those Stafford brings to bear, and we have to ask ourselves: which turning was the one that changed our trajectory from a steady and hopeful one, to disaster? Which thwarted relationship warped our future, crippling our capacity to live our ideal lives? It is too late for remedy – one can only plan for a fitting end.

Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer

This book, published in 1995, grew out of an article Krakauer wrote for Outside magazine in January, 1993, five months after its subject, Christopher McCandless (who called himself Alex, and Alexander Supertramp) died of starvation in the Alaska wilderness. Krakauer, an adventurer in the same mold as McCandless, dug deeper after the article was published – who was Chris/ Alex McCandless? Why did he end up alone in an abandoned bus, missing a couple of key opportunities to trek out? Was it hubris, ignorance, or the courage of his convictions, that compelled him away from the practical resources that would have saved him? 

Krakauer asks these questions and more as he retraces McCandless’s footsteps from his college days in Atlanta, to wandering across the south, the desert, nearly drowning in the Gulf of California, living on the edge of the Mojave Desert in the sort of rag-tag community that can only exist in such marginal places. Along the way, McCandless, with his combination of intellectual curiosity, adventurous spirit, and candor, made deep impressions on those he encountered. 

Perhaps because he was young, idealistic, and fixated on his quest for an adventure that would challenge him to the marrow, he evoked protectiveness and generosity from those who gave him rides, offered him jobs and shelter, and tried to temper his singlemindedness. They saw in him a roving son, grandson, brother, or in Krakauer’s case, a kindred spirit, and wanted to help him on his quest, advise him, or lay bare the folly of his pursuit. 

McCandless left enough of a record – in journal scraps, letters and postcards to those he met, and in the margins of books – to provide insight into his convictions. Here’s a quote from a letter he sent to a grandfather living in the Mojave Desert, who had provided him shelter for some weeks: 

“Don’t settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience. 

“You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.” 

If you have only the haziest memory of your own youthful follies, read this book. You may tell yourself, “I’d never do anything that dumb,” but if you’re honest, you might admit that you did your own foolish things – from curiosity, from a yen for what lies over the horizon, from an itch daily life could not scratch. We remember Chris/Alex McCandless because he was an extreme manifestation of the questing spirit that takes so many of us on our own adventures, away from our comfort zones to an edge where we can see further, and imagine more, and return (if we do) greater in spirit.