theater, natural history and conservation, the utterly mundane, and Etruscan 8-tracks
From the very start of his career, [Michael] Haneke’s films have been calculated to shatter the viewer’s complacency to a degree rarely seen since the early work of Mike Leigh or perhaps since the politicized days of the French New Wave.
John Wray profiles the Austrian director, who made The Piano Teacher and Caché. He is remaking his Funny Games in English with Tim Roth and Naomi Watts.
I’m enjoying reading Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Newby, perhaps the last of the rank amateur explorers, has perhaps seen a small bump in sales of his books as a result of his recent demise. Newby and his friend Hugh Carless set off to explore the remotest bits of north-east Afghanistan in 1956, and the book is the record of the trip.
The whole ill-prepared Newby-Carless expedition reminds me of my friends Chuck and Mike during the Three Mile Island disaster in the 1970s. Chuck and Mike were living in New York, downwind of the crippled reactor in Harrisburg, Pa. (Anne and I were living in Philadelphia then). At the height of the crisis, when we all thought the dang thing might blow, in the middle of the night, Chuck and Mike said, “let’s get outta here,” and jumped in their car. They were on the road for several hours before they realized they were driving west, into Pennsylvania.
Anyway. Having honorably failed in their attempt to get to the top of Mir Samir, a 19,880-foot mountain, Carless and Newby wanted to push on to the province of Nuristan, but met with resistance from their local horse drivers, who feared its Wild West-style reputation. Nuristan was converted to Islam only recently, and by the sword. After arguing with the porters for several hours,
…Hugh lost his temper.
‘Go back then!’ he said. ‘Go back to Jangalak and tell your people that Newby Seb and I have gone to Nuristan alone—and that you let us go alone! They will call you women.’
As soon as he had said this is was abundantly clear that both Abdul Ghiyas and Badar Khan were prepared to let us do this very thing. Hugh was forced to try a more subtle approach….
‘When I return from Nuristan… I shall demand audience of General Ubaidullah Khan and tell him what you said about “idolatrous unbelievers.” General Ubaidullah Khan is a man of importance and …he is also a Nuristani.’
The effect of this was remarkable. At once all opposition ceased. Before we finally fell asleep long after midnight I asked Hugh who General Ubaidullah Khan was.
‘So far as I know,’ he said, ‘he doesn’t exist. I just invented him; but I think he’s going to be a very useful man to know.’
I got some good information at the public meeting on September 21 on the planned wetland restoration project at Huntley Meadows Park. We heard from Park Manager Kevin Munroe, FCPA staff naturalist Charles Smith, and Park Resource Manager Dave Lawlor.
The central wetland at the Park constitutes the only large, non-tidal wetland in Fairfax County. (Tidal wetlands can be found along the Potomac in places like Dyke Marsh.) A number of factors—siltation from runoff from housing construction in the 80s and 90s, drought, and the migration of the beavers once they had consumed the desirable trees—has meant that the wetland is going through its natural succession to wet meadow on its way to becoming woods. Along the way, the ecology of the wetland has simplified, with the near-disappearance of crayfish (a foundation species in the food web); the dominance of native but aggressive cattails and rice cutgrass; and the loss of standing dead trees (whose presence supports a variety of species). A consultant’s report in 1993 indicated that, to preserve the freshwater marsh more or less as it was then, as an island of diversity in burgeoning suburbia, water level management would be needed, eventually. Eventually is now.
The new dam across Barnyard Run and its accompanying water control structures will raise water levels as much as two feet. The high-water mark will be 33 feet above sea level. In addition, plans (as yet unfunded) call for four pools to be excavated to a depth of three feet (which means a maximum water depth of five feet), which will enhance habitat diversity. Munroe and staff made it clear that water levels on the wetland will follow the healthy natural cycles within the year (drawdowns in summer, recharging in winter) and across years.
There will be downsides, both short- and long-term. Munroe stressed that the racket of chainsaws and bulldozers will be part of the park experience when construction begins after the 2008 breeding season, next July (per plan). There may be some preliminary work and tree removal as early as November. The expectation is that excavated trees and soil remain inside the park, to be used as habitat. Long-term, the state-mandated access road to the dam will link up the trails leading in from the two entrances of the park (South Kings Highway and Lockheed Boulevard). This historical gap was by design, in order to discourage mischief-makers and joy-riders. Munroe has mitigation plans; I rather like his idea of a fence and stile as a barrier to bikes.
It’s a big, disruptive project, and I suppose that it has to be done. $2 million isn’t a lot of money to preserve a really special place in the county. Munroe seems to be on the ball and he’s doing a great job of citizen outreach.
Edward Copeland has released his collaborative 100-best list of foreign films. I’ve no real quibbles with anything in the top 25, but I find the high ranking of Wings of Desire at #41 inexplicable. This movie is perhaps the art-house version of The Princess Bride or The Gods Must Be Crazy in its overratedness.
I agree with many of Copeland’s committee that the Kieslowski Three Colors trilogy should be considered as one movie, not three: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Here’s an edited version of the note that I sent Copeland, with my picks:
I think that I have seen about 40% of the films on the list, albeit some of them not since college. Many of them are perfectly good, but I’m not sure that I would give them a 1-25 ranking. So here are my top 12…, including a few write-ins:
#1 M, Fritz Lang [#3 on the Copeland list]
#2 The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Demy [#65]
#3 Three Colors: Red, Kieslowski [#39]
#4 Three Colors: Blue, Kieslowski [#62]
#5 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Almodovar — write-in
#6 Ran, Kurosawa [#16]
#7 Repulsion, Roman Polanski — write-in
#8 The Conformist, Bertolucci [#18]
#9 Three Colors: White, Kieslowski [did not make the Copeland cut]
#10 The Vanishing, Sluizer [did not make the Copeland cut]
#11 Open Hearts, Susanne Bier — write-in
#12 Fantastic Planet, Rene Laloux — write-inSpring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring, Ki-duk Kim, should also be on the list, but I don’t think it meets your release-year criterion.
The voting has served as a prod to get Das Boot and Jules and Jim onto my Netflix queue.
Having recently chided a local reviewer, I think it’s appropriate to give some props to another local critic who does a damn fine job: Bob Mondello, who reviews for NPR’s All Things Considered and the Washington City Paper. Consider his recent write-up of two shows that I also viewed, 33 Variations and The Unmentionables.
Compared to my sketches, Mondello sees in sharper, more vivid colors; he chooses his words more precisely (prig, amanuensis, decency) without losing a conversational tone. Writing for both radio and print, he knows how to put a button on the end of a piece. He is one of the writers that I have to avoid reading before I see a show in hopes that I will appreciate a work and express myself without undue influence.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he and I agree on the merits of a lot of shows—these two, for instance. Granted, he has his formulas, but he makes them work (“Original? Well, not entirely.”) for him. His compact yet avuncular style works just as well on the air as on the page.
Virginia Governor Tim Kaine headed up a bipartisan group to announce $300 million in cuts to Phase I of the proposed Metro expansion to Dulles Airport and beyond in order to meet Federal Transit Administration cost-effectiveness guidelines, as reported by Leah M. Kosin (for the Reston Observer) and Amy Gardner (for the Washington Post).
- $45 million in management savings by completing more work in-house instead of using outside contractors.
- $86 million in design savings by eliminating a planned maintenance yard at the West Falls Church Station and using half-canopies instead of full canopies and pressed concrete platforms instead of tile pavers, which are expensive to install and maintain.
- $7 million in upgrades to technology such as electric power systems. Going digital is less expensive than using existing Metro technology.
- $122 million in alternative financing, including the removal of $77 million designated for improvements to Route 7 at Spring Hill Road. This would be paid through the state’s six-year transportation plan instead. And $40 million would be saved by building a planned parking garage at the Wiehle Avenue Station in Reston with a private partner.
- $46 million in contingency reductions.
Avoiding the tile pavers will make Leta happy. The cut that I see as perhaps worrisome is the item for the maintenance yard at West Falls Church (there is already such a facility, so perhaps what is being cut is an expansion). Dulles is a long way from the rest of the network: where are the cars going to be serviced?
Bruce Norris sets his bitter comedy of post-colonial race and economic relations in the villa of Nancy (newly blond company favorite Naomi Jacobson) and Don (Charles H. Hyman), somewhere in West Africa. It’s a comfortable, attractive place, but we can just see—at extreme stage right—the strands of razor wire that surround the compound.
Don is an industrialist with a mutualistic relationship to “Aunty” Mimi (the versatile Dawn Ursula), representative of the current government and member of the native aristocracy. When Don opens his house to Dave (Tim Getman) and Jane (Marni Penning), missionaries in matching sunburst tee-shirts, after their school and dwelling burn down under mysterious circumstances, the principals square off in a hard-edged geometry of vexed entitlement. Each character clings to the right to expropriate or civilize, as he or she sees fit, the grindingly-poor people of this equatorial backwater.
There’s more than a whiff of Tennessee Williams in Norris’s play, what with the Big Daddy-like Don nursing a secret heart ailment; the tropical setting; and the comic foil of The Doctor (the very enjoyable John Livingston Rolle), a local who has escaped into smoking pot but who is wise enough to know when to prescribe only a placebo.
It’s the passive-aggressive churchman Dave who provides the tautness to the story in the first act. Dave, when asked whether he objects to another’s smoking, says only “It’s not a problem for me,” with a lightly-veiled supercilious smirk. And yet it’s Dave who seems to have the most realistic grasp of the situation, and who cautions against do-gooders who want only “easy Jesus.” So when Dave goes missing at the end of the first act, the narrative comes unglued, as the remainder bicker over the severity of the response needed to ensure his return.
The play is framed by the fourth wall-breaking monlogues of Etienne (Kofi Owusu), a punk who may be involved in the arson. He tells us that the play is no good, that we’d be better off watching something entertaining on television. Though we can’t agree with him completely, he’s a good reminder that we haven’t fixed any problems by sitting in a theater box for two hours.
Via ArtsJournal: John Barry nurses his grudge [corrected the link] about being stuck in Baltimore covering theater at $55 a pop. He focuses on a college production of Tom Stoppard’s Hapgood that he showed up for in the middle of the first act—no wonder he didn’t understand it.
He makes the good point that the people who do community theater (both as watchers and performers) aren’t looking for Frank Rich-level criticism. They do it in
the shoebox theatres trying to squeeze out a little applause from people willing to watch. That population — people who like to watch plays just for the hell of it — is admittedly getting older and smaller.
All that I expect from a review of a community theater production is the name of the show, a paragraph that tells me whether it’s suitable for my mother or my nephews, the run dates, and the phone number for reservations. A word of praise that singles out good work is gravy. Many of my colleagues are more thin-skinned than I am, and take criticism too seriously. So it doesn’t surprise me that many of the local papers (what we used to call “suburban shoppers”) hake taken to running previews rather than reviews in order to avoid offending anyone.
But by conflating amateur, semi-pro, and college theater, Barry does himself and his readers a disservice. The point of a college production (like the one is his piece) is learning how to do theater. One month you’re playing a 75-year-old Russian and the next month you’re designing lights. Of course only your boyfriend comes to the performances.
Maybe it’s time for Barry to find a new beat to cover.
Plans are firming up for a $2 million project to restore the main wetland at Huntley Meadows Park, reports Frederick Kunkle. The scheme calls for a 300-foot wide earthen dam across Barnyard Run, 3 feet high and somewhat downstream of the main observation tower—about where the most prominent beaver dam has been the past few seasons. Revegetating with native species to fight invasives and non-natives like cattails and rice cutgrass is also planned. The site plan will be presented at a public meeting on September 21 (details here).
I think it’s the gravel access road that will be built to the dam that concerns me the most: it could be the most disruptive change. Also, that section of Barnyard Run has seen the most nesting activity for both Wood Ducks and mergansers; I suspect that they and the beavers will move elsewhere. My colleague Paul points out that this patch of land has been under human alteration for hundreds of years (it’s been farmland, it’s been a test bed for ashpalt pavement), so restoring the wetland is the right thing to do. I just hope he’s correct.
Paul Graham realizes some things about stuff:
Another way to resist acquiring stuff is to think of the overall cost of owning it. The purchase price is just the beginning. You’re going to have to think about that thing for years—perhaps for the rest of your life. Every thing you own takes energy away from you. Some give more than they take. Those are the only things worth having.
Big Sit! birding events are scheduled for October 7 at Huntley Meadows Park, sponsored by the Northern Virginia Bird Club (see the August edition of the newsletter for details), and for October 14 at the National Wildlife Visitor Center at Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel, Md (more info at the Refuge’s events page). In contrast to more active birding events,
Some people have called it a “tailgate party for birders….” The simplicity of the concept makes The Big Sit! so appealing. Find a good spot for bird watching—preferably one with good views of a variety of habitats and lots of birds. Next you create a real or imaginary circle 17 feet in diameter and sit inside the circle for 24 hours, counting all the bird species you see or hear. That’s it. Find a spot, sit in it, have fun.
THE BIG SIT! is like a Big Day, or a bird-a-thon in that the object is to tally as many bird species as can be seen or heard within 24 hours. The difference lies in the area limitation from which you can observe. THIS FREE EVENT is OPEN to every person and club in any country!
Moisés Kaufman interweaves the musical mystery of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations for solo piano with the story of Katherine Brandt, current-day musicologist entranced by the enigma of how the piece came to be: why did Beethoven, solicited in 1819 by music publisher Anton Diabelli to contribute a variation on a 32-bar waltz of Diabelli’s for an omnibus publication, initially reject the commission, and then, over the course of four years, write not one but 33 variations on the inconsequential theme?
The play lies in the sweet spot of Kaufman’s writing: short, episodic scenes and monologues shifting back and forth in time (pace The Laramie Project), under a pall of sickness. For just as Beethoven (the maestoso Graeme Malcolm) completes his slide into deafness in the 1820’s, the crusty Dr. Brandt succumbs to ALS, otherwise known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease.” In the course of the play, she achieves a rapprochement with her daughter Clara (Laura Odeh), a costume designer (with some lovely dresses by Janice Pytel to prove it) who is still finding her way in life. And yet, Kaufman cannot quite make good on his promise that “this play is not a reconstruction of a historical event; rather, it’s a series of variations on a moment in a life.” Whose life? Beethoven’s or Brandt’s? And which moment?
Mary Beth Piel manages the slow debilitation of Dr. Brandt, but in the early passages her playing seems strained and unfocussed. Greg Keller does better as “just Mike” Clark, Dr. Brandt’s nurse (not doctor), as well as eventual love interest for Clara. Mike is a nerdy but sensitive caregiver, more adept in the examining room than in the dating scene.
There are some magical moments in the show, especially Dr. Brandt’s initial descent into the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, where many of his manuscripts are housed. The archive is represented as enormous walls of shelving, each holding a stack of storage cases lit with individual pinlights focussed downward, and the effect is celestial. And there is a point late in the second act where the “Kyrie” from Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis (another work from this late period of his career) is sung movingly by four characters from the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries (Kaufman works the intercentury territory staked out by Tom Stoppard in Arcadia). Most important is the multi-media impact of projected images from the Beethoven MSS, explained by Dr. Gertie Ladenborger (the equally crusty Susan Kellermann)—if perhaps explained at excessive length—and played live by the masterful Diane Walsh. The play succeeds in leaving us wanting to hear all 55 minutes of the complete composition, one that is not as widely available as other works by the maestro. It’s a “big, craggy thing,” in the words of Walsh, “kind of forbidding, but at the same time there’s playfulness and joy and eccentricity and satire.”
In the end, we’re no more knowledgeable about the reason for Beethoven’s change of mind that seemed to lead to obsessive deconstruction and reassembly of Diabelli’s ditty, and perhaps that’s Kaufman’s point. Dr. Brandt, in extremis, is reminded that the waltz is something to be danced, and the play closes on this tender note.
Jeff Bagato visits the room-sized construction by local folk artist James Hampton, The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly, with Metro Connection.
As a sort of chaser to Thursday’s post, I want to applaud the ecumenical convocation of world-wide religious leaders at the foot of a melting glacier in Greenland, as reported by ABC News and Reuters. Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Christians of several stripes, and indigenous people united in a silent “prayer for the planet” as part of an effort to withstand global climate change. The event was part of a weeklong symposium sponsored by Religion, Science, and the Environment, an NGO based in Greece.
Via kottke.org: the question of whether eating locally is better for the environment isn’t quite settled, argues Sarah Murray, writing for the Financial Times (a publication, admittedly, with its own slant on things), in support of her recent book. She points to recent studies that indicate that shipped food performs as well as local food in terms of environmental impact.
Keep in mind that Murray is writing for a British publication, and food shipped into the U.K. needs must travel over water (often by efficient container ship) while food that travels within the U.S. and North America more likely came by truck. And her quoting a study by New Zealand’s Lincoln University that New Zealand lamb is more efficiently produced than its British equivalent, even after accounting for shipping, is disingenuous.
Nevertheless, Murray makes the good point that transportation may not be the most important environmental factor in the production of a lamb and boiled potato dinner. And
the environmental trade-offs can be perplexing. While water conservationists point out that pressurised sprayers and drip irrigation systems distribute water to crops more efficiently than traditional gravity-based methods, they require mechanical pumping and therefore consume more energy.
Along with the carbon dioxide emissions generated by agriculture come other, more potent, greenhouse gases. Animal manure, soil management and heavy use of synthetic nitrogen fertilisers in crop production all contribute to an increase in nitrous oxide emissions, which are up to 300 times more effective at heating the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
On the other hand, whether a locally-produced piece of fruit, picked and carried a short distance to a farmers market, just plain tastes better than one engineered for long-distance travel, harvested green, wrapped in plastic, and shipped thousands of miles is a question that Murray doesn’t pick up in this article.