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nikkalia · 5 years ago

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Storytime with Auntie Dragon: Betrayal edition

Gather round, children, it’s time once again for “Storytime with Auntie Dragon.” Today’s episode: NYC & Betrayal, a tale of adventure, excitement, and how a certain actor is seemingly easily impressed with modern technology. Hey, it’s pretty snazzy stuff…

We begin our tale at the dawn of November. Your dear Auntie D had just purchased a house, and because closing fell in such a way that I had no housing payment in November, there was some spare cash to be had. A friend of mine who lives in the UK (@mrshiddleston-uk) had been talking about her upcoming trip to the states to see our beloved Mr. Hiddleston in his Broadway debut, and after careful scouring of countless calendars, I decided that the Boychild could miss a day of school to make the trip and decided to go. Another friend ( @silverink-goldenlies) came along for the ride and the trip was set.

THE TRIP: Bloody hell, why is it every time I drive north, roads are torn up? I mean seriously. I spent more time on the brakes because of construction than I did with the cruise control engaged. For 698 miles! I did not, for those who may be curious, drive up I-95. Oh, the hells to the NO. I have driven that stretch of disaster quite enough to know that it’s a toss-up as to whether you get Hell on earth or a multi-lane, multi-hour parking lot. And that’s just around Richmond. D.C. is worse. Much. Worse. But I digress…

I-78 is (mostly) a beautiful drive. Lots of mountains, rolling hills, farmland, all that. From southern Virginia up through parts of New Jersey, there are lots of farms. LOTS of farms. With cows. And steers. And horses. And even an alpaca - dude had a long neck. Somewhere along the way, every time we passed a farm with cows, @silverink-goldenlies would just blurt out “cows.” In the middle of a conversation, “cows”. Passing silence for miles and suddenly, “cows.”

And occasionally, “cows. And horses.” The boy child would even chime in now and again.

THE ARRIVAL: We made it to NYC around sunset. When we were 25 miles or so out, I spied the city skyline and told @silverink-goldenlies to look out the window. Poor thing was so excited I think she almost cried. We took the Lincoln Tunnel into the city because I missed an exit. Which reminds me, Google Maps, get your turn-by-turn shit together. I spent more time on the road than necessary due to a lack of “in 500 feet, turn here.” Waze doesn’t treat me like that. It just crashes. And Waze has Cookie Monster voice. Anyway…Lincoln Tunnel. That was fun, kinda. I kept having flashbacks of Independence Day with the fireball coming up the tunnel following the alien attack. Not cute.

We emerged in the city and I very quickly learned that upstate NY driving is totally different than NYC driving. I lived in Albany for a couple of years, and in upstate, you can use your signal and mostly expect someone to let you in, or at least get out of the way. Not NYC. Nope nope nope. You signal, insert the front fender of your car and hope the person you’re essentially cutting off is paying attention. It only took one missed turn (thanks Google) for me to learn the ways of the natives and navigate correctly through the city. Which I did successfully. At rush hour. Praise Asphaltia, Goddess of the Road.

Cows.

NYC: After a night of bullshit sleep thanks to the rock-solid beds of the LaQuinta - Queens, our party was up and in the city by 9:30 am. I’ve always had this mental image of NYC being small because of how tightly packed everything is. My friends, that is absolutely not the case. The city is M A S S I V E in both size and scope. I was totally a tourist, videoing everything in Times Square and looking up like I expected the sky to fall. I learned something I never knew, and never really thought about: they leave the big crystal ball on top of the building after New Year’s. It’s sitting up there, pretty as you please, changing colors all year long. Who knew?

We hit the highlights of Manhattan like my son speed runs through Dark Souls. Times Square, Hard Rock New York, the M&Ms store (3 floors…3 FLOORS of chocolatey goodness), one of two Lego stores, and Rockefeller Plaza. The tree is up, but not on display. I need them to slow down on the trimming it back. There won’t be any tree left, and it’s looking a little scrawny, to begin with. Ice skating was in full effect, but we didn’t go. I knew I had a show and another 10-hour drive back to NC to get through, and doing it on a seriously bruised ass would not have been a good look.

Noon hits and we head back towards the Jacobs theatre. By the time we got there, the box office was open and there was already a line. Thank the gods for online purchases. Easy in, easy out. Around 1 pm, we met up with the lovely @mrshiddleston-uk and attempted to get lunch at some Irish pub. @mrshiddleston-uk briefed us on all things stage door and helped to craft a plan of attack to get the best spots for meeting the cast. The line to get into the theatre was already formed and growing by the time we decided to bail on the never appearing food.

THE JACOBS THEATRE: This is a gorgeous space. The theatre is on the small side, but I genuinely believe that there isn’t a bad seat in the house. We were in the balcony house left and could see every bit of the stage. Beautiful architecture, comfy seats - if not a little (LOT) short on the legroom - and a pretty chandelier made the place feel cozy and warm. The staff was wonderful as well. I’d totally see another show in this space.

BETRAYAL: So here’s the part you all came for, right? Right. Cows. To be honest, I’d never heard of Harold Pinter before Tom Hiddleston took the role in the London production, much less read any of his work. I didn’t know what to expect except for what I’d heard from @mrshiddleston-uk after her viewings of the London show. The concept of the show is intriguing enough - following a love triangle in reverse order with a minimalist set and lighting design. I’m a tech nerd anyway, so I was excited to see how well this would work.

Oh. My. Goddess. This show was AMAZING. It’s been a very long time since I’ve been to a show that totally sucked me in to the point that I was actually invested in the story. Betrayal did just that. From the moment the curtain rose (more on that in a sec) until the stage went black, I was sucked into the world of Robert and Emma and Jerry and how the affair went from disintegration to conception. I have absolutely no sympathy for any of these characters at the end of the day. They are all seriously flawed and have caused themselves the pain that they experience in this story. But, that’s what makes good drama, right?

The sheer lack of set made it easier to pay attention to the actors and the script, which is a huge perk in this game of verbal tennis. The characters go from normal speech patterns to the famed Pinter pauses to this back and forth without missing a beat (or a syllable) that will make your head spin. The boychild told me later he found it a little hard to follow, which is understandable if you’re not used to hearing it in an English accent.

There was a lot of play with light and shadow in this show. It’s no secret that all three actors are on stage for the duration of the play, with the “odd man out” lurking somewhere in the shadows. It was thrilling to see, to be honest, because you catch yourself looking around to see what the odd man is doing while the two in focus characters are speaking. Robert standing against the back wall facing the wings; Emma curled up on the floor eating an apple; Jerry sitting off the side with his back against the back wall. All making little gestures or motions that hint at what that character is experiencing in that moment in time.

Even the shadows themselves told a part of the story. The sharper focused shadows cast by Robert and Emma when she confesses the affair created a tension that doesn’t exist when Robert is lurking in the background of scenes involving Jerry and Emma or Emma hiding almost when Robert and Jerry are in the forefront. I found myself watching the shadows in this scene more than the actors themselves. It’s that intense.

One other tech geek note: the back wall moved. Now, I’ve seen plenty of moving sets. Hells, I’ve moved a few in my time. But this simple change had a tremendous impact. When the wall moved forward, it cuts the surface area of the stage down to 1/8th of what it was at the beginning. It puts the confession right in your face. You can’t get away from it, just as the characters can’t. There’s nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. They, and you, just have to deal with it. Absolutely brilliant on the part of the designers. Enough about the sets, or lack thereof. Cows. I could go on all day.

THE CAST: We’ll start with Zawe Ashton. She’s a perfectly lovely woman, all smiles and bubbly at the stage door, very sweet. I don’t know that I like her as an actress. Or maybe I don’t like her character, Emma. I haven’t really decided yet. But, if there was a downside to this show, she was it. Her laughter was fake to the point of cringy, and there was something noticeably self-absorbed about her on stage. The other thing I noticed is that she was never standing or sitting straight. She was always twisted, curled up, or otherwise contorted in some fashion, and that gave me a twitch. An acting choice? Maybe. It would stand to reason that this was some subconscious outward expression of Emma’s mental/emotional state. She struck me as whiny, and maybe a little “woe is me” to boot. My thought throughout the play was, bitch, you got yourself into this. Suck it up.

Charlie Cox as Jerry. Great guy at stage door, seemed to be enjoying the fans. Again, I haven’t read the play so I’m not 100% on what Jerry is supposed to be, but Charlie was giving some serious lovesick puppy vibes for this show. And that’s all I got from him. Maybe bits of remorse here and there, but not much. Some great comedic moments, but otherwise, he really didn’t stand out for me.

Tom Hiddleston as Robert. We’ll discuss stage door in a minute. I’ve worked in the arts and journalism long enough to know that you often hear about how someone “is” but that’s not really who they really are. They pretend to have a presence that doesn’t exist, or they’re not as talented as they, or their agent, would have you believe. And sometimes that “wonderful” actor is really just a prick in real life. Children, I am here to tell you that Thomas William Hiddleston is EVERYTHING he’d cracked up to be.

When the curtain goes up at the show open, Robert is sitting in a chair, and all you see of him is legs. The man has legs for days…digressing again. Cows. Tom has such a presence that you know exactly where he is. When Charlie and Zawe are sharing their scenes, your eyes can dart straight to Tom. I remember actively looking for Charlie and Emma in scenes they weren’t involved in, just to see what they were doing. Never, ever had to do that with Tom. He was always there, always on the edge of the shadows.

His performance as Robert is an emotional roller coaster. I watched him run the gamut and back again several times over the course of 90 minutes, and really wonder how the hells he does it every day (and has been since June). No wonder he looks exhausted. He was giving that trademarked smile in some scenes, growling with anger in others (your Loki is showing), and on the verge of tears in still others. I looked down at him during the confession scene and his eyes were brimming, reflecting the bright white light that was shining on him. That one hurt my heart. Dude can do anything, and I need someone to give him more meaty roles on film. And for the love of the Gods, cast him in a romcom, comedy, something! He’s proven time and again he can act - let him have something besides Loki.

Disclaimer: I love Loki, don’t get me wrong, but I hate to see talented performers pigeonholed into one role. Tom is so much better than that, as most of them are.

STAGE DOOR: The show ends, the lights come up, and I can’t get the damn Hard Rock Cafe bag out from between the seats. So this is how it’s gonna go down, eh? WRONG. ANSWER. I get downstairs in record time only to be blocked by old people who can’t decide if they need to pee or not, then distracted by Tom speaking on stage about the fundraiser the theatre is doing. That voice, those long assed legs, and holy hells is the end of the stage right fucking there???

FOCUS WOMAN! Cows. Eldery folks having determined that yes, in fact, a stop by the loo is in order, I’m out the door, still struggling with the bag and my coat and not being run over by those who are sprinting to the barricades set up to queue for stage door. Sprinting. Really? It’s like, 300, 400 feet maybe, from the entrance to the stage door. I wanna have 0.5 seconds in front of Tom too, but damn y’all. It ain’t that serious.

Secure in our spot upfront and personal by the lovely @mrshiddleston-uk, I got myself squared away and place the Facebook group chat video call. We all agreed that since @firithariel, @igotloki, and @mischeviousbellarina couldn’t be there in person, we’d bring them along digitally. For once, my phone behaved. Did I remember to put them on speaker? That would be a no.

So, Zawe comes out first, signs programs and chats with fans. She really is adorable. Charlie comes out next and follows the same route, and then the man of the hour (and really the whole point of this trip) emerges in the “uniform”, looking a little frazzled. But, he makes the rounds of autographs, even going so far as to sign a Thanos Funko.

Really? REALLY? Thanos? How you gonna do my boy wrong like that? Grrrr….. Amusing thing was that Tom really didn’t even acknowledge it, but he looked annoyed by it.

That’s when Tom got to our merry little band. @silverink-goldenlies showed him the tattoo done by her husband of a Loki helmet with runes surrounded by flowers. He seemed thoroughly impressed with it. I’m next, with our video chat going strong. I asked him to say hi to the girls, and he got a weird look on his face until he saw the phone. He did a double-take, “There are four people on the screen! How did you do that?” We told him about Facebook group chat and where the girls were located. There’s a video floating around Instagram/Twitter of his reaction. It’s entirely too cute. He leaned in and smiled, said hi to them, showed them an autographed program, and handed them to me. He looked me right in the eye for about a second and a half then moved on. I can still see it in my mind, and it makes me smile every time.

Tom finished the autographs and came back around for selfies. Mine is blurry AF, because of course, it is. It’s the only one I have of him. Maybe I’ll try to fix it in Photoshop. A fucking photographer can’t take a damned selfie. SMH Oh well, you can tell it’s him. @mrshiddleston-uk got some great shots, and I’ll always know I was there, that we spoke, however briefly.

I’ll spare you the details of the trip home because, well…traffic. And cows.

And so ends the tale of the very long too short awesome weekend in NYC where I got to meet Tom Hiddleston.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

#betrayal #tom hiddleston #nyc #road trip

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dillomedia · 7 years ago

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STATELESS MOSES SUMNEY

The LA-Based Musician on the Importance of Not Dictating Meaning and the Complexity of Coachella

by Mira Silvers

Published Jan 15, 2018

When Moses Sumney enters a room, all available light rushes over to greet him, joining the light he seems to bring in with him from outside. Six feet and many inches tall, with the posture of an acrobat and huge, clear, energetic eyes, there’s a volume to his spirit—as in resonance and density, but also like a gown has volume, a weightless and pronounced grace.

Sitting in a chair without arms, his casual carriage is that of a Rodin statue. He speaks quietly, but you hear every word. Writing it out longhand it would look a lot like his music: eyes flickering in sixteenth notes over measured conversation, rests for emphasis, lines of thought looping back on themselves, consideration towards every gesture and what happens in between.

Sumney’s late-2017 debut album Aromanticism was an argument for the opposite of love not being hate, but indifference—and what results when that indifference is for love itself as a commodity or institution. Moses confesses he may be “trying to define something that feels undefinable” with this endeavor, but the ghost of undefinable has hovered around Sumney since 2014’s Mid-City Island kicked off a career that seems to require a word perpetually out of reach. “Baroque-pop” and “eccentric-soul” come close to describing Sumney’s layered, airy vocals and sweeping string arrangements, but he crackles on a radio station found somewhere in the air between. Sometimes it sounds private and sleepy like Jeff Buckley and Helado Negro; sometimes it sounds like Björk wrote a song for Grace Jones, with whom Sumney shares a birthday.

So, he is difficult to pin down. But the very human desire to define things is its own kind of aromantic love—and here, comfortably in the grey area between known and unknown, between albums, and between weekends performing at Coachella, we find Moses Sumney.

I’ve read past interviews where you talked about how being picked on as a child for singing in front of your classmates made you insecure about performing, even though you always knew you’d be a musician. Are you feeling more secure now?

It definitely feels better now. It feels like I’m a real person. It feels like I’m doing a thing that I was placed on this Earth to do. I find myself connecting more with my own kind of idiosyncratic nature. And that’s what I love about people like Grace Jones and Nina Simone. Or Björk, you know. People who are just weirdos. I see what they’re doing and it feels like both beyond the boundaries of what we know of human nature to be able to produce, but also honest, and natural, and innate at the same time. Which feels undefinable.

I’ve seen you refer to that in your own writing as statelessness.

Yeah, statelessness, definitely. Just kind of being in the state of constantly moving or traveling, whether that’s physical or emotional. But not having a center.

It seems like, once you realized that people were paying attention to your music and were going to pick and choose how they narrativized you, you began to practice non-engagement as a policy. Things like saying, “I don’t know how old I am”—your answers on your Tumblr are brilliant. What made you decide to be so private, to de-center yourself?

It’s really hard in this day and age to get people to focus on your music. There are so many distractions, and so many things to talk about, especially when it comes to presenting an image of yourself. Obviously with social media and the internet, I felt from early on really pushed to be a character, or just to think of my image. It’s ironic I’m telling you this at a photoshoot, which matters to me, but the most important thing to me is the music.

I want people to connect to the music, and take from it whatever meaning stands out to them. I want people to listen to the songs and say, “This is what it means to me.” I think if people have too much context on my personal life or being, it becomes all about that. It becomes about the cult of personality as opposed to the meaning of the music.

Interviews don’t really help with the whole cult of personality thing, either.

They don’t, I know. But you’re constantly kinda, like, riding the wave. You’re always walking that tightrope—and you can fall either way at any moment.

Fall off and crash.

Fall off and break your neck.

One way you’ve defined your identity in the media is by presenting your own personality via the ideas of others. You prefaced your last record with an examination of Aristophanes, and then on the record itself, you have a song called “Stoicism.” Where does your interest in Greek mythology and philosophy come from?

It’s so funny, because I think the record makes it seem like it’s been a deep interest of mine, but it only really emerged towards the end of making the record. I wanted to contextualize it in a way that reached beyond modern times.

We’re in such a place where people are [self-]identifying more than ever before, and that feels so modern to people, especially to the old guard. I wanted to contextualize identification as something that has always happened. We’ve always been looking for ways to define and describe ourselves, or ways to give cultural significance to our personal feelings. And so I needed to reach beyond when any of us were born to say, like, these concepts I’m thinking about have been around forever.

In terms of self-identification, Aristophanes himself was a comedic playwright. As serious as your music can sound, do you think there’s anything about Aromanticism—the concept or the record itself—that’s funny?

I do, I think it’s hilaaaarious. The first song on the album is called “Don’t Bother Calling,” and it’s basically being really over-dramatic, and just saying, “Oh, don’t call me, I’ll call you,” and, “I’d love to be in love with you but I’m too busy thinking of the sun, the moon, and the stars, and the alignment of our galaxy.” It’s just so over the top and over-dramatic that in a lot of ways, I feel like I was playing a character while I was writing it, and trying to be as dramatic as possible—which is inherently funny.

And inherently Grecian. It’s the origins of drama. Drama for the ancient Greeks broke down to tragedy and comedy. And without both—

They have to coexist. Exactly. Anything that is inherently tragic is inherent comedic. That’s one thing I really like about this generation: we’ve got dark humor on lock.

Let’s talk about Coachella. As an LA native, what does it mean to you to be playing a festival that is so important but that also comes under fire every year? On the one hand, you’re looking to see how many lines down you have to go to see a female headlining, but then there’s the fact of the dude who runs it… [Ed.: Coachella owner Philip Anschutz donated nearly $200,000 to various anti-LGBT, pro-gun politicians in 2017.]

That sucks, whatever he donates to. And it also feels bigger than him. For me to be there as an artist of color, looking at all the artists of color on the line-up, looking at the female and non-binary artists that end up playing, that’s also money going into their pockets, you know what I mean? And I feel like the biggest marker of oppression is money, right? So, the biggest way to combat that is to put money in the pockets of minorities. To me, still playing it was really important. I needed to stake my claim, and be like, “Yo, I’m here. You can do this, too, if you look like me, if you’re a left-of-center, weird black kid.”

But also, I think that that conversation in liberal circles is really unfortunate, because when an artist is playing a festival that is in proximity to something oppressive, the first people we question are the minorities. Like, I got the question, “Why are you playing this?”

“THAT’S ONE THING I REALLY LIKE ABOUT THIS GENERATION: WE’VE GOT DARK HUMOR ON LOCK.”

It’s, like, how can anyone play this?

Exactly. It’s like, honestly: this is not my fault. And I’m gonna try to help solve it in any way I can, because a lot of my resources—emotional, physical, and financial—go to trying to fix those problems. But I think the first people that we need to turn to are the white dudebros on the line-up. Which is not to say don’t ask me—it’s to say that accountability needs to go to the people with privilege. Accountability needs to also extend to the people who are enjoying the fruits of oppression. Not to the people who are getting a little cut and trying to shine a light on the others. I’m always like, “That’s cool, but, why don’t y’all ask Eminem?” He seems to be woke now.

I tend to get really concerned whenever anyone asks the artist themselves about anything. It’s like, you want us to get rid of the paycheque we would receive from playing this festival, but then you wanna stream all of our music for free.

Exactly. I have to work, you know what I mean? And, also, I’m not making any money from playing Coachella, to be honest. It costs so much money to put a show together on that level. Let’s not assume that we are lining our pockets. Cardi B didn’t make any money from Coachella, which I’m sure you’ve heard.

And I’m guessing Beyoncé gave her whole paycheque to her second line. Like, marching band, huge production!

Huge production. Putting money in those people’s pockets. Let’s talk about that, you know? It’s complicated.

#music #FORT Agency #interview #moses sumney

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ratherhavetheblues · 5 years ago

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INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘SUMMER INTERLUDE’ “Get the lead out, little lady!”

Way back, when Ingmar Bergman was a hack by necessity, he found himself (being an acute student of Hollywood flutter) ready at last (around 1950) to speak his piece. The vehicle he chose for this debut, namely, Summer Interlude (1951), involves all the treachery and emotional violence mowing us down for the next forty years. Although his portfolio would include marvelous instances transcending destruction, those marvels would be hedged in a way that protracted evil would seem to triumph on planet Earth. But what is planet Earth but a sick puppy in face of the infinite potential of the cosmos? In the days of Summer Interlude, however, we should not neglect the singularity of heartiness putting in a dynamic (perhaps) never to be seen from him again. This singularity is the special gift and the special task of our film today.

Whereas, at the outset of a saga like Bergman’s Cries and Whispers (1972), there is a piercingly beautiful rendition of the grounds of a large estate in early morning light, only to become promptly swallowed up by vicious interaction and horrific physical decline and death, the tyro matter goes to sheep-dog persistence to show us that an agency of uncanny love is very much in the mix. Not being able to deploy (as with the film of 1972) remarkable chromatic effects, our preamble reveals an estate of some opulence, rich foliage including daisies in bright sunlight and gentle breezes, benign white clouds and, particularly, a body of dancing water with a rocky shore to be displaced with the sea looking back toward the now distant structure, touched by a carefree flute motif. (The last detail to note here, is three chevron-form windows at the mansion’s upper floor. That they resemble jaws as well as a formation of dialectics indicates how early Bergman’s instincts for synthesis were in play.)

Plunging right through that whimsy, only to engage more whimsy, there is the harbor of Stockholm and its flotilla of tour boats and ferries to be supplanted by a bicycle parked at a curb while leaves dance along the sidewalk. Promptly we enter a ballet theatre and its hubbub, which could have shattered the intuitive dance. That it doesn’t, has to do with the two ancient, long-term office functionaries, first seen receiving a package for the prima ballerina, Marie, and shooing off a reporter claiming, “She’s [Marie’s] expecting me.” With this mundane buzz, there emerges, by way of the courier/ messenger, a surprise: “What’s that smell?” Though the more assertive sentry claims that there is no smell, there is the delivery boy pressing the case, “You’ve lost your sense of smell, friend.” (With that, the discoverer pushes his hat into a rakish angle. This action tends to confirm that the reporter—his tabloid called, “The Year Round,” being about the usual—is dressed to resemble a whimsical and eccentric Hollywood detective with his trench coat and rakish fedora.) The smaller of the two sentries comes to life with, “Something does smell funny!”—something in the air we should take seriously. The rotund top-cop loses his temper about that volatility and yells out, “That may well be, but no outside brat’s gonna be telling me that! I’ve worked at this theatre for 40 years…” An in-crowd shaping up, disinclined for change. The delivery to “Miss Marie,” by the second-in-command, becomes another rakish motion, this time not so tacky as the poses of American tough guys. The boss-sentry rips open the curtain behind which he directs traffic and instantly there is the little old flunkey ripping open Marie’s dressing room and presenting her with the package. The shock of that gusto links to the mysterious “smell,” invading the ordinary with a type of acrobatics. (Here we have the comedic outset of what will become, in The Seventh Seal [1957], a blue-chip uprising against arrogant insiders.) In support of noticing that a dance is in force, somewhat supplanting the rigid activity of the ballet, we have a number of dancers in tutu costumes, seen from below on a rather precipitous catwalk down flights of narrow stairs. Almost simultaneously with that rush to a dress rehearsal, we hear a loud, grinding noise filling the hall. This also coincides with Marie’s opening her package to be jolted by the diary of a former lover who died while she watched him carelessly dive into a rocky seaside, along a trajectory of compromising distraction and superficiality which he—not she—could have averted. This unexpected arrival eclipses the work in progress. With everyone in place except her, many of the bemused run to the sense that Marie is losing her grip. We hear, “Something’s going on with Marie. Everyone says so!” (A cut to the stage curtain, and it strikes us as dark and fussy with frills.) Marie is induced to return to be a team artist, but her escort, one of the many support staff needed to satisfy a pedantic culture, worries, “There’s something strange in the air today! I told the missus so when I woke up. The weather and all, and I had a strange dream… Something’s going to happen, I feel it coming…” After a short passage with the premiere (the dancers performing the ballet, Swan Lake) and during an expectant musical thrust, the lights go out.

The on-again, off-again lighting is “some king of glitch,” necessitating an evening dress rehearsal. But the “glitches” we’ve just experienced speak to an agency—always there but seldom noticed. Surely the arrogant ballet master alerting Marie that there is to be a lull in the workplace that day and going on to be viciously rude toward an elderly woman helper of the dressing room, would be missing in action regarding that agency. (He tells the ballerina, “I’m cool.” But no one’s fooled about that, since cool is the medium of disinterestedness, also known as acrobatics.)

We’ll follow how Marie spends that rest, and whether she amounts to anything better than the laughable wannabe. She goes out, but before that she stops at the phone booth at the doorway, to connect with the man from “The Year Round” [the everyday, the common]. She can’t reach him. But can she reach the pattern of meteor-passes on the phone booth glass? On hearing from the decades-long bouncer that he had bounced her date, she spits out, “They should send you packing!” That being exactly the register of the “cool” one. The hapless doorman remarks, “There’s something hard about her.” Marie bumps into the person of interest while yawning, and meandering along a sidewalk. She complains to him, “I’m tired because you won’t let me sleep at night.” Thus, ensues a bitter row about preoccupation with career, culminating with him telling her, “I can’t stand old sourpusses!” She has carried along the diary, and when, at the docks, passing a tour boat ready for an excursion, she is rallied by a crewman calling, “Get the lead out, little lady! Are you coming or not?” She can’t resist a bid to shake things up, to recapture what she imagines to have been the heights of love. A sprightly harp motif joins her windfall along with the sunny sky and lovely seas, in addition to a white wake and white smoke from the chimney, conspiring with the white clouds. She enters a precinct of thrilling space, serenity and its brave instincts. Pensive, while the boat skirts a forest, she could be seen to be an artist of vast promise.

On reaching her destination, she finds the key to a small and decrepit cabin, where she sits on a dusty cot. She closes her eyes and recalls a summer day 13 years before, when she graduated into the corps de ballet, by way of a celebratory performance. “A day like no other day of the year!” But she had to include, within this treasure of skill, the complaint, to one of the trainers, “That was awful! The orchestra played too slow…” Her listener replies, “Don’t try that one…” [to cover errors by blaming others, resorting to place others at a disadvantage]. She then shifts the advantage game to the form of, “It didn’t go well…” [I’m a perfectionist without peers]. The more mature correspondent here covers the cut-throat’s vanity with, “No, but you were brilliant…” All he gets in reply is, “I’m going home to have a good cry.” Frustrated, his retort is, “You do that.”

Marie may have been in the spotlight here. But her account includes another male backstage, smitten by her sensuous presence and early authority. He’s quickly disposed of by the larger sentry, before being introduced. But we should know right now (before succumbing to overkill from the measure of wholesomeness this movie packs) that Marie, for all her impressive resolve, is locked, as is most of the population, into life-long superficiality, with occasional faint hope being to no avail. And yet, this Bergman standby will in fact be tempered—not simply, as with the usual drama over the years, a demolished gem—by a perpetual vector of efficacy (a glitch), notwithstanding having been virtually never taken out on the road. Whereas the young admirer, far more capable of real artistry and power than she, will die in the course of taking her too seriously, he will have deposited, in his diary, the wherewithal (and he is not alone in this challenge) to shut down a gigantic farce. We do need to notice and celebrate the many upbeat moments, because their sunniness is quite unique in the works of Bergman. And thereby we are enmeshed in a critique: on the order of loosening up (somewhat) the good stuff.

Out she goes (in her reverie), on the same boat she would use after the quarrel with the reporter, for her summer holiday, and who should be seated next to her but Henrik, the finder of celestial apparitions. She remarks (not exactly a calling card), “It’s cold.” His shy and awkward reply is, “Are your legs cold, miss? I mean, since you’re a dancer…” He goes on to declare, “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” After sorting out each of their positions on the Stockholm Archipelago, the impressiveness of Marie’s home takes precedence. He jokes, “Yeah, the Manor. Gruffman [his large poodle] and I used to raid the orchard there.” This brings out more coldness in the ballerina: “Perhaps our paths will cross, if only if you come to raid the orchard,” she stakes out a far from equitable intercourse.

Now that we’ve floated the crisis (a much lower key than that of, say, The Passion of Anna (1969), we’re treated to Marie’s susceptibility to cogency when alone and heeding “glitches.” She wakes up on the cot to be welcomed by a foursome of intense squares of light upon the wall. (The makings of a twosome without attitude?) She hums a happy tune while putting on her bathing suit, and then she opens wide her arms to the sun. She carries a long fishing pole to her rowboat at the dock, and we regard her smoothly rowing from a seagull’s perspective, which is also the perspective of disinterestedness. Who knew? We’re treated here to a play of rallies, the likes of which are very rare in the Bergman catchment. She drops anchor, puts a worm on her hook and falls asleep in the molten sun. A cuckoo sings. (No matter that her endeavor here comes to naught. This film has opened up a very long-term payoff.) The splash of Henrik’s diving into the waters nearby wakens her to a divided result. She is amused by his whimsy; but also displeased to feel exposed that she can’t handle the rigors. “Hello, again,” she takes up a form of pecking order. “Swim, miss?” he invites, perhaps having taken umbrage with her seeing him as a thief. “Too cold,” she maintains. “Try,” he argues, all smiles. And therewith Marie finds a way to put him at a disadvantage. “Think we could drop the formalities?” the modernist tweaks the old-fashioned. She takes further control by asking, “Do you like wild strawberries?” And away they go, with a harp fanfare, to her place. “No one knows about it.” While they are enjoying the treats, a bird calls so furiously that she becomes confused. He shrugs it off with, “I usually call it the summer vacation bird.” (One other aspect of the wild things in this skirmish is Gruffman, the dog, in the process of losing his special fluency with the boy.)

As the summer goes very wrong, Marie makes a point of having nothing to do with Gruffman’s equilibrium. On hearing from the college boy of his having been shunted off by his divorced father to a rich and hateful aunt, Marie tries to bring to bear her vision of soaring virtue. “I love blind kittens, don’t you? And babies… And people that other people think are ugly. And mice, of course.” (How close to Anna, the martinet of “Security,” in the film, The Passion of Anna, is Marie?) As an afterthought formality, she adds, “and poodles.” How much did she care about Gruffman? After Henrik’s death, she demands having the deep creature put done, with the slimy concern, “The poor thing shouldn’t have to live” [in malaise].

Henrick’s not feeling that his concerns are getting across to her—“It’s just that people don’t take me seriously…”/ “Oh dear,” she chuckles, “is it really as tragic as that?”—prompts him to declare, “No one cares about me but Gruffman…”/ “Really,” she mocks./ “No,” he insists, “only Gruffman!” The conversation continues to fall short of serious connection. “What about me? Do you care about me? Would I have brought you here if I didn’t?” is her infantile rationale./ Even a freshman could smell that glitch. He politely replies, “I’ll have to give that some serious thought.” Serious thought, about a gulf, crashes into him immediately, by her happy face, “I’m never going to die.” Not content with pushing around the population, Marie has no qualms about pushing around the cosmos. And before leaping to the conclusion that she’s a dancer, period, we should be alert to the possibility that her moments of vision at the beginning of the morning might just touch upon an agency—far from about forever alive—which could move a headstrong dancer-laborer to recognize that powers do surpass and sustain mere human physiology right up to a right death. “I may get really, really old, but I’ll never die.” Henrik, after fielding this matter of incredible self-concern, shares his very different sense of “serious thought.” “While, I’m scared… Scared that I, Henrik, will suddenly fall over the edge into something dark and unknown.”/ “Why do you talk like that?” she complains. He explains, “The feeling just comes over me [a glitch], clear as can be…” He smiles, having in fact reached the same territory of Marie’s gratitude; but from another, more visceral angle. “But it’s interesting, don’t you think?” Henrik looks for a link. She smiles uncommittedly. But she does manage to maintain, “Hey, Henrik, I think we’re going to be friends.”/ “I think so too,” he hopes. (Here, we should delight in the helmsman’s great craft in theatrical dialogue, casting light where darkness has prevailed.)

This high ground proves to lack traction. Here she is, back to her default zone at the estate, receiving, from a rich uncle who hopes to bed her one day, an expensive bracelet. This Uncle Erland, an amateur classical pianist of some finesse, grows his hair patrician-long; and, in the midst of it, he installs two strands of white curls which set the table for the kind of synthesis Marie and Henrik struggle to master. Erland, teased by Marie that he lusted for her now-deceased mother, trains his rationale toward a supposed supernal gift which Marie’s actress-mother possessed. Marie, in her most sustained register, teases and triumphs, “And is the bracelet a token of my artistry?” Her uncle, frequently drunk, advises, “We’d run away, you and I… and live life to the fullest… seize the moment and hold it tight…” In reply, she maintains, “I already seize the moment and hold it tight.” Her patron dismisses that arrogance, telling her, and laughing, “You think so, poor dear? Lucky the man who will teach you. There’s so much to life…” The lunch dissolves with her coquetry, seen often, no doubt, at many affairs. But rushing to the traction involving Henrik, , she finds that he had been once again trespassing and overhearing the minor cynicism. (Erland’s wife, regarding with him her racing off, states, “She’s run off, dear Erland, and you can’t catch her.” Sometime after the death of Henrik, he will reel her in, for a while.) A frosty new friend greets her, and Gruffman doesn’t even look her flighty way. She uses the dog as a ventriloquist’s doll: “Gruffman, why’s he mad?” Clearing the air, she refers to the gift-giver as merely “an old codger,” and adds, once again, “Is it as tragic as all that?” She cuddles up, and then pushes him into the nearby waters. “I got you!” she adds. A cut reveals the three returning in his canoe. Her voice-over, covering the scene as Henrik wrote in his diary, emphasizes, “One night, after a scorching summer day of blazing sunlight, there was an immense silence that reached all the way up to the starless vault of heaven… The silence between us was immense as a well…” Hopping gracefully from one small purchase of the treacherous surface to another, she induces Henrik to follow suit, which he does. (Two forms of poetry.) The friends lie on their bellies upon the flat rocks. She adds, “The rocks are still warm. His contribution—“Everything seems unreal tonight, don’t you think?”—elicits from her, “It’s beautiful” [beautiful as a bracelet?]. A small “glitch” having come to concentration for her, brings to her: “We’re inside the same bubble… It’s so beautiful I could burst, break into pieces and disappear without a trace [“I’ll never die” a poor fit for this understanding]… You know, kissing must be fun…” His response, “Must be, since everybody’s doing it” [in sexy Sweden], once again doesn’t find them on the same page. He thinks out loud, “Everything’s so difficult, and all connected somehow… Marie, I like you. I’m in love with you, and all that… I mean… You must think I’m stupid. I’m just a damned fool. A damned coward!” And once again she drops the ball. “How does it feel?” she asks. (Not the big picture; but, “How am I doing to brighten your melancholy?”) “What?” he wonders, is she talking about. She clarifies, “You said you’re in love with me.” He, wanting to drop the subject going nowhere that could work for him in her context, puts out a slap-dash cliché, “You feel it in your chest and stomach.” This brings her to the failing of poetry, and she laughs at him. Having a miserable time expressing the subject by duress, he struggles with a quicksand of language. “You’re knees feel like they’re full of applesauce, and your toes curl up. But it’s mostly in the chest.” (Bergman’s ironic bite here involving a possibility to make amends, given long enough time to live. She, facile most of the time, amends, “In the heart.”) “I don’t know what,” he puts an end to the revealing farce. But he politely asks, “What about you?” She, having been accorded all her life the license to duck out of conundrums, rudely shoots back, “Who said I was in love with you?”/ “You’re right,” he acknowledges—and this would have been his cue to do something else during his vacation. But from her perspective there was nothing more interesting here than toying with reflection. She comes up and puts his arm around her shoulders. “I think it’s in my skin,” she gets around to replying to his asking about the subject. “I want you to touch me and stroke my skin with your hands…” As he moves to kiss her, she rushes away, whips out a cigarette, hands it to him and they proceed to toss flat stones into the inlet. Far from the creative acrobatics stalking this film, the rippling of the waters doesn’t catch fire. Then they canoe, and their return is bemusing. She marches straight on to the dock, leaving the more evolved two to bring the awkward craft to steadiness. Their land route passes cherry blossoms and a peacock, but they meet the beauty with less than incisiveness. (Traction missing.)

Now both of them needing a new outlook on life, they visit the salon of the estate of Erland. “He’s probably a bit drunk, but don’t worry about,” are the opening notes by her aunt. They sit on a polar bear rug, and listen to Erland tell of, “Your mother, Marie, used to dance for me on evenings like this… when it was quiet and still, and moonlight filled the room …” (Less than celestial? Or once celestial?) He moves on to, “Now all the clocks in the house have stopped… We were alive in those days…” Marie escorts Henrik to the garret room where she is supposed to work out every day, during the closure of the ballet. Here Marie, in voice-over, reads Henrik’s read of the moment. “It was the ship’s horn tooting in the distance, and other things echoing too. The silence and the anticipation… The blood whispering in our ears. A strange mood set in… almost like a melody [a musical progression]. A new room opened up in our minds…” Then she resumes the jist of her leaden factuality. “Two crows talk in the trees every day at 4 a.m. They’re quite sweet… Then your “summer vacation bird” appears…” Henrik is recalled as responding to this introduction, “You sound like a museum guide…” She responds with, “I think we should kiss each other…” The choreography of her gleaming eyes, his soldiering forth, and his ending on top of her on the carpet is indelible, not requiring any additions. Henrik gently touches her cheek. Then a deep kiss and a pan to Gruffman with his own saga of alienation. A cut to the morning, discloses only their arms and hands reaching upward and touching, as if a primer were found to be a better bet. Marie, as if to disarm any notion of her being not so bad, becomes a radio soap opera ingénue. “Now you have a lover… How does it feel? Exciting? I’m sure you’ll tell your friends. Will you boast about us?” Properly miffed by this violence, he says, “I can’t give any guarantees. But we will get married.” She commands, “But now! How do you feel right now? Haven’t you longed for this?” He once again admits having had fears. “And you’re not now,” she probes, being almost a selfie about making a splash. On hearing that he’s no longer afraid, she has to brag, “I’m never afraid of anything!”

That gross overestimation becomes the mantra of her dark solution to form a happy ending (for her) within their deadly reconnaissance. She covers his mouth as he adds, “I am” [afraid]. That cover will launch her woodland theatrical regime, going lickety-split to shed an unsupportable endeavor. (Gruffman’s being a steady source of love becomes almost totally lost in the shuffle.) And they race to the shore—Hollywood-intensity-style—early rebels without a (viable) cause. A piccolo motif applying a whip, we see them on the lake, she in her stolid rowboat, they in their lyrical canoe. Then to the vicinity of their cabin-castle, where he lifts her over his head as if on the ballet stage, the Romantic-era fantasy so wrong in this world of very hard acrobatics, and only then deploying juggling which might catch fire. A rain shower leads to them hunkering down on the cabin cot. Marie reads the unwelcome passage, “Days like pears, round and lustrous, threaded on a golden string [onscreen, a stormy sky… a church]. Days filled with fun and caresses, nights of waking dreams. When did we sleep? We had no time for sleep…”

Pan to Marie in real time. She finds Erland in his kitchen. He tells her, “Nothing’s ever surprised me in my life.” Boarding the boat back to the rehearsal, the sway of a lamp lights up more reverie, the reverie of her putting her foot down. It begins with her on pointe, working out in the garret. The arrival of Henrik and Gruffman is nothing but an annoyance. “So, it’s you two…” The two visitors sit on the floor feeling hated. After a while, Henrik says, “You don’t care about me. I’m always waiting for you.”/ “I’ve got a job to do… Fine… Just say the word…” She reasons, “We’ve been together night and day for two months… Good lord, you’re a pain today! Here I am groveling and apologizing… Just go. I’m fed up with your moods…” [moods being their real “job to do”]. She does engineer a truce upon this shaken basis, telling us, “I spent the whole day looking for him…” She finds him at his hostel/ mansion, where an influential aunt and a clergyman with a big hat, remind us of the trials of Alice in Wonderland. (This being another instance of lazy mood headed for LA.) Their being addicted to chess opens the door to Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. As if a marvel of paradox, the grandee claims, “I like living. That’s why I’ll outlive the bunch of you! Nevertheless, I still feel like a ghost.” Marie passes on the invitation to enjoy the “port.” Also, part of the awkward standoff, the divine states, “This may seem ridiculous, but I have the strange feeling I’m rubbing elbows with Death himself” [a reprise of the frissons at the outset].

As if now the Red Queen must rule, they encounter a fizzling fireworks display, move on to the cabin and play dubious razzmatazz vinyl discs, which bleed over to early Disney animation (by her) drawn on a paper sleeve. The show (while they drink their diminished milk) features them: Gruffman, made to sit down, while the lovers flirt; Gruffman becoming the fat sentry; and the old lady’s chest of money coming their way. The last vignette has the chest of money, the preacher and a wedding not happening. The chest changes to the big sentry, the ballerina becomes morose, and all that is left is Henrik’s sailor hat and a ballerina being the dying swan of the ballet, Swan Lake. From there, she declares, melodramatically, “Listen, it’s so quiet. Suddenly, everything went quiet.”/ “Maybe we’ve landed on another planet,” is how Henrik now unhappily reveals his capitulating to Disney. “An alien planet,” Marie piles on [about to claim a victim]. They crawl out of the little doorway, bathed in moonlight (doing its best). The one never afraid of anything becomes uneasy about a crying wind. His attempt to calm her, while having bought into her bathos, slides along to, “Such fine breasts you have, miss!” That jag of witlessness culminates with her, “As for me, I’ll be faithful as long as I feel like it. And since I always feel like it, I’ll be faithful till doomsday.” (The register here is just to the left of pre-Code-Hollywood.) There is a loud bird call. “What an ominous sound!” she shudders. (One person’s shudder being another person’s glitch. Both of them miles from their personal best, while personal becomes a disease.) He, dragged along by her cripplement, says, at this point of worn-down traction, “Don’t you recognize the eagle owl?” Oblivious to the puerility they have contracted, there she is, “I don’t know. I just feel like crying tonight. It’s like a toothache in my soul.” Hollywood forever, she emotes, “Hold me so I don’t break into pieces!” He, never realizing embracing a crash, replies, “My little darling. My love. My dearest darling and beloved friend. Hold me tight. Tighter. Let’s stay up all night until the sun rises, and the trolls burst…”

It’s the morning of the supposed Olympian love cake, and he’s ready to keep the so-called magic alive. He scampers to the top of a picturesque ridge overlooking the pretty waters, and takes flight. The rock face he rocks leaves him close to death. Gruffman comes to his struggle to right the ship that might have resolved to something she’d never become. By the time she arrives at the hard facts, he tells her—all poetry lost—“My back!” (His “back,” his second front of deadly and ravishing truth, if only he could have steadied it, becomes a fitting epitaph to a young adventurer.

The conclusion of Henrik’s life is not quite the conclusion of Henrik’s being a player in Marie’s life. The saga’s last moments comprise the lovers, in a Stockholm hospital room, where he regains consciousness for a few seconds before dying. Her strongest emotion is horror, not love. She had arrived wearing a chic, shiny black leather coat, giving her continuity with the American melodramas she had burrowed into at the end of the summer. (Similarly, she suggests here an oil slick.) Her retreat from the hospital, with no further concern toward any sequel, is as stagey as it is incipiently uncanny. Piling on the pushy “mystery,” she and Erland (he having secured the diary) create a film noire parade along a corridor while exiting the mishap. First there is Marie, enclosed by shadows resembling prison bars. Following her, like a gumshoe, there is the silhouette of Erland pulling on his European habit like a cape. From out of that delirium, she condemns Gruffman to death and allows Erland to confirm her sense of being cheated by life, resentful nihilism. “I’d spit in his [God’s] face!” The uncle/ paramour, holds forth with, “Protect yourself, build a wall around yourself, so the misery can’t get to you.” She tells us—the diary segueing to the career of a prima ballerina of questionable quality—“That’s how I forgot Henrik… In the end, I wasn’t just protected but locked inside…”

That trace of self-criticism needs thirteen years to yield a pitiful “recovery,” as problematic-heavy as noir is problematic-light. The evening rehearsal proceeds nicely; but Marie’s concentration remains divided. The sentry informs her that the “hack” with the trench coat had been at the door again, “but he left.” She assures those ancients that she saw him. This surprises them inasmuch as, “it didn’t make her happy either…” In her inner sanctum she’s visited with eerie features of décor; but “it didn’t make her happy, either.” A visit from one of the leaders of the company, trying out his disguise for the figure of Dr. Coppelius—wherein the latter attempts to bring to life a puppet—has the same haplessness, concerning lightening up, as the décor did. “You don’t dare leave, yet you don’t dare stay… You see your life clearly just once… when all your protective walls come tumbling down. You stand there naked and cold… seeing yourself as you really are… I can see it in your eyes” [that you have had such a brush]… Then the hack obtrudes; and a hack interplay, from both “lovers,” ensues. She asks, “What do you think of the two of us, really? We’re nothing to write home about.” She comes to a point of veering. She blurts out, “So now, Henrik…” The voice of the street pounces on this, “Is my name Henrik?” She replies by handing him the diary and telling him to read it overnight. (What would come of it, she has no idea; but she would be forming some possibilities trailing out to others.) In a voice-over, this time not manufactured by Henrik, she tells us, “I feel like crying all this week and next… Crying away all my shabbiness… and all this wasted time… [But] Do I want to cry at all? If I really look deep inside, I’m actually happy!” (She puts out her tongue to the mirror she has been subjecting herself to. The Hollywood soundtrack only approximates her mood.)

All we pretty much see of the next day is a bit of the performance of Swan Lake. One twist shows the noire lover backstage during the bittersweet saga. Did he read the diary carefully? Probably not. Marie, in a lull where she’s not onstage, brings him to a place of rendezvous and she touches his cheek. Then she’s back onstage where her steps bring her to a rather awkward pyramid of less than sublime acrobatics.

Does the oracle in the Dr. Coppelius disguise speak truth about, “You see your life clearly just once?” How about three or four times? Would that be a life? How far could Henrik (a very early version of the Dr. Borg, in Wild Strawberries [1957]) have gone, were he never foolishly became in awe of Marie? From here on in, we must ponder the vast subtleties of this neglected open door of a film by Bergman, having slammed perhaps a bit too forcefully his clowns. It is well and good to measure the horrors of “virtuousness.” But interludes of magic there bring to bear a second front, and its acrobatics and juggling.

#ingmar bergman

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