All My Stars (7)

By: Joanne McNeil
February 18, 2016

One in a weekly series in which Joanne McNeil recommends books, films, exhibitions, and more. You can also subscribe to the All My Stars newsletter here.

It’s freezing in New York so I’m drinking tea and listening to my idea of beach holiday music: Antena’s Camino del Sol. Electronic dreams of Florida through French lenses, space age synth bossa nova. It comes from Les Disques du Crepuscule, the Belgian answer to Factory Records:

Speaking of Florida, I read Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy this week. The first book, Annihilation, was astonishing. I read it in one sitting. It’s got a ’70s eco sf setup and Picnic at Hanging Rock eerie mood. But the feverish vitality of the first book gave way to a second book with a belabored workmanlike inelegance of the sort that is why so much contemporary sf is not to my taste, and by the third I had enough and gave up midway. It read like its own recap, and I wasn’t invested enough in getting answers to plow through.

I was in Boston last week and stopped by the very fun exhibition of Ann Hirsch’s work at the List Gallery at MIT. She’s best known for crashing a VH1 reality show but a piece with an emulation of ’90s teen AOL chat room cybering is a real standout.

Back in Brooklyn, I went to see Michael Mann speak at BAM, which is now hosting a retrospective of his films. I watched Thief, his first film, for the first time earlier this week. It’s been a while since a film has knocked me off my feet. It hit me right where I am soft for films like Paris, Texas and Five Easy Pieces. I’ll need some time for perspective, but it might be better than both of those two? There is something about the universality of the story of a worker exploited — a character who wants to care but is trapped in hopeless circumstances. As Mann said at the talk, it didn’t have to be about a jewel thief. It could take place in ad agency, or anywhere. There is just enough shading of a character to give the audience something to pin their experiences on.

I love how Chicago looks in the film. Normally the city appears in movies only to demonstrate that characters aren’t rich enough to live in New York or aren’t superficial enough for LA. But Chicago has particular darkness and character. This is the only film that I’ve seen to capture it. Mann said the neon and the framing in the film was to create the illusion that Frank, the protagonist, is in a maze. The scenes in the Green Mill made me wish for a moment that I were someplace likely even colder than Brooklyn right now.

One of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever seen captured in film appears in the middle. It’s just five seconds on the screen so if you blink you will miss it. It follows an excruciating scene where the couple — played to perfection by James Caan and Tuesday Weld — go to an adoption agency to apply to be parents. They are outside in front of a fire at night. He’s holding a cup of coffee and she is curled up under a blanket, with her head against his chest. They didn’t need dialogue. It is enough just to see them together to know how they feel in that moment.

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