Author: allen0997

The Shape of Water ~ A Capsule Movie Review

The Shape of Water ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

A middle-aged woman named Elisa (played by Sally Hawkins) works in a government research facility where she cleans toilets and floors. She is lonely and alone, partly because she doesn’t speak; she is mute and communicates using sign language. She is not without friends, though. Her co-worker and friend of ten years is a funny and straight-talking woman named Zelda (Octavia Spencer). Another friend, and apparently her best friend, is a man named Giles (Richard Jenkins), an obviously gay, past-middle age, depressed, alcoholic commercial artist who was recently fired from his job for drinking too much. Elisa and Giles are next-door neighbors in a seedy apartment building over an old movie theatre, from which they hear perpetual movie dialogue. The place is Baltimore and the time is the early 1960s, when there existed an intense competition between the United States and Russia for domination of space.

The research facility where Elisa works has recently acquired from South America an amphibian man-beast that looks something like the creature from the 1954 movie Creature from the Black Lagoon, only more human-like and not as scary. The man-beast, of course, is lonely and sad because he has been taken away from his natural habitat to a faraway country and placed in a confining tank, awaiting…what? Elisa makes surreptitious visits to the tank where the man-beast is held, and she recognizes in him a fellow being in pain in a cruel, callous world. She gives him hard-boiled eggs and plays sentimental retro music for him, and the two of them develop a friendly rapport.

Most of the management of the research facility, with one notable exception, view the man-beast as a “thing” instead of a thinking, feeling being. The idea is to experiment with him to get a better understanding of how men might fare in space and thereby gain an advantage over the Russians in the space race. (I don’t see how this is possible, but never mind.) The one member of management who views the man-beast as a miracle, “a beautiful creature who can reason and who understands language,” is Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg, who played a dapper gangster in Boardwalk Empire and the understanding father in Call Me by Your Name). Dr. Hoffstetler is, in reality, a secret Soviet agent. He is working behind the scenes to get the man-beast to the Russians. Or is he? Wouldn’t the Russians be just as cruel as the Americans, and maybe more so?

When Elisa hears that the cruel, uncaring men plan to vivisect the man-beast (i.e., cut him into pieces to study him), she knows she must save him, any way she can. Dr. Hoffstetler, Zelda and Giles assist Elisa in stealing the man-beast from the research facility and hiding him in her apartment. The idea is to keep him hidden there until a rainy period in October when the water in the canal that connects to the sea (remember, this is Baltimore) is high enough to release him so he’ll be safe. It’s while the man-beast is in Elisa’s apartment that the two of them “fall in love.”

The Shape of Water is about two opposing forces in the world: the force for good (compassion, empathy, sensitivity, understanding) against the force for—if not exactly evil—then hard-assed reality, practicality, and insensitivity (the failure to recognize beauty and uniqueness). It’s a whimsical fantasy that requires a suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer. An isolated, unattractive, human woman with a physical defect falls in love with a man-beast from South America who may be a kind of god and tries to save him from the world. If reality is what you crave, then The Shape of Water is probably not for you.

Copyright © 2018 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Handmaid’s Tale ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Handmaid’s Tale ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, is set in a nightmarish dystopian America where the government has been usurped, its leaders murdered and the Constitution discarded. People no longer have individual rights, except for the right to serve. If people are not exactly slaves, they are chattel. Everybody must live in fear because any perceived infraction can result in exile to the Colonies (cleaning up dangerous hazard waste, resulting in death) or hanging in a ritual execution called a “Salvaging.” Dead bodies appear overnight hanging from hooks on a wall for everybody to see, and it’s not always certain what the people hanging there did to deserve such a fate.

The Handmaid’s Tale is not, however, about revolution or the overthrow of a government. It’s a personal story about one “Handmaid” whom we know as “Offred.” (We never learn her real name.) She’s thirty-three years old and had a husband and young daughter in times before. Offred is narrating the story in her own voice. We are privy to her private thoughts and inner feelings, which she must keep secret to go on living.

Childbirth is in decline. The country needs babies to replenish its dwindling population. Since Offred is known to have reproduced before, she is chosen as a “Handmaid.” She lives with an older couple and her job is to provide them with a baby. (She must wear a red habit-like dress and a stiff white headdress with wings, rather like an old-time movie nun.) The man is known as the Commander and his old lady is the Wife. Offred and the Commander copulate mechanically, fully clothed, and with the Wife present, of course. Offred is supposed to bring forth a baby from these couplings. She has three chances and if she fails she will end up in a much worse place, being forced to do very unpleasant work that could easily end in her death. It’s better to be a Handmaid than not.

The Commander has a young chauffeur named Nick. He flirts with Offred surreptitiously when he has the chance. Offred knows that any association she has with Nick could be dangerous. When she fails to conceive a child by the Commander, the Wife arranges a clandestine session for Offred with Nick in his room over the garage after everybody has gone to bed. Nick is happy to oblige—it’s part of his job—but he makes sure Offred knows there is to be no romance involved. Offred develops “feelings” for Nick anyway. He represents for her what her life was like before her world was turned upside down. Where exactly do his loyalties lay? Will he help Offred to escape to another country, or will he betray her in the worst way by turning her over to the authorities?

The obvious comparison of The Handmaid’s Tale is with George Orwell’s novel, 1984. Both novels are about the individual in a world where individuals don’t matter and survival is never certain. It’s a harrowing world and one that most of us, thank goodness, will never have to experience firsthand. You experience it, without any danger to yourself, by reading the book.

Copyright © 2018 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Ghosts on a Tree ~ A Painting by Franz Sedlacek

Ghosts on a Tree (1933) by Franz Sedlacek

Franz Sedlacek was an Austrian painter who lived from 1891 to 1945. He belonged to a tradition known as New Objectivity, an artistic movement similar to Magic Realism. He died in World War II, a soldier in the German army. He painted Ghosts on a Tree in 1933. In the painting, the figures that appear to be vultures are actually souls in torment.

by allen0997