Other Stuff

Purple State

The thing that happens when you write about Paris, people will think you are being snooty or compensating for some shortcoming. Both have been suggested of me. So, now that we have that covered...

The Parisian subway, Le Metro, is a collection of tunnels lined with tile. Acoustically, it raises interest. Sound seems to twist and turn and fold back over upon itself. It would be easy to believe that there are echoes of history still bouncing around the ceramic squares of those walls under this city with a colourful past. Sound in there possesses an eerie quality that grabs you by the earlobe and drags you under its spell. Imagine musical notes emanating from the strings and wood of a violin into those caverns. They become points of sound with gossamer trials behind them. As in any city, after a while the rhythm of a place will seep into you. You know where the turnstile is, you know where to buy your metro cards, you know where you can get a coffee without the "Oh, you are American" dismissal instead of a "Merci." You move with this, your body knowing where these things are and taking you there so your mind can let go and get down to the business of being on vacation.

Then there is a note. I'm too musically ignorant to be able to tell what note or why it was so piercing without being shrill. Other notes followed and preceded it, but it was that one note that took my mind away from minutiae and brought it back to a place made magical by music so ubiquitous, there was no way to tell what tunnel it was coming from.

It has also happens to me with the music played by Yo-Yo Ma. The joy he expresses through his cello takes a while to penetrate me, but when it does, it pins down the hands of time. There is a transition in a song he plays that makes my day vanish. The song's name is on the crawler in my computer, but something keeps me from looking; when something is known, the mystery is gone.

January 20th, 2009. 4:30 am. The coffee maker screeched, letting it be known that the coffee was hot and fresh, not that anyone in their right mind would give a damn at 4:30 in the morning. In a little over two hours the doors of the Darkside were going to swing open and there would be a flow of people dressed not unlike the people in Washington D.C.--winter coats, hats, and gloves--and bouncing with anticipation.

Zombie-like, I staggered into the Darkside. 5:15 am. After a final check of the OPB program schedule, the tuners and projectors came alive. OPB must have figured that no one up at that hour would want to see the news. So, I found myself setting up sound and picture to the musical offerings of a big dancing purple dinosaur--really. There are few things that create as much annoyance as Barney, before the second cup of coffee. Do kids really need an HD picture of this damn thing first thing in the morning? Since I was pretty sure none of the people coming in wanted to see Barney either, I looked for another channel. Oddly, the only one I could get was more kid's stuff. So I took out the laptop and checked the usual streams. Nothing was working too well-it seemed the rest of the world was using the same streams, too. Since I had had a lot of luck with one particular streaming TV site, I hit their icon. It was a great feed and didn't look terrible on the big screen. Too bad it was Fox News! Between the purple dinosaur and perhaps the most ironic newscast for this day, I gave up and decided to flow with the chaos.

There was supposed to be some order to the running of the bulls...I mean the opening of the doors to the Darkside. That fantasy dissolved quickly as the masses made their way into the rooms. Coffee brewed (Thank GOD), bagels were slathered with cream cheese, and people milled about, way too cheerful too early.

The usual technical difficulties ensued. Signals dropped and sound crackled. Some rooms had to put up with Bert and Ernie while others got the NPR news audio feed with pictures from the recent snow in Oregon. By the time all the rooms had the same picture and sound, the projection booth looked like a giant macramé plant hanger made of wires. But, at 8:00 am sharp, the HD signal of the inaugural event came up on the monitor and went out to all the screens.

Things went pretty well after that. The floors above and below the Darkside heard the thunderous applause, feet stomping, and yahooing that was all part of this event. I even found a corner of the booth and holed up with a bagel and half a cup of coffee for some "me" time to consider what was happening. Between my technical duties and putting out other fires, I didn't get to sit in the auditoriums, but I kept the Fox feed going in the lobby so I could catch some of the action in passing. Then, as the Star Spangled Banner was being belted out in D.C., I heard the sound drop out--in every one of the auditoriums.

Well, shit.

The "Searching for Signal" text came up on the screen where the image of the million-plus crowd was supposed to be. I gave in to the reality that there really was nothing I could do about a satellite signal getting interrupted by who-knows-what. Then I heard the voices in the auditoriums get louder. They were belting it out louder than it had been coming from the screen. And it kept getting louder. And that's when I thought of Paris. The sound of the violin coming down a tiled walkway. The memory resonated with the look on Yo-Yo Ma's face as he performed for the new guy earlier--expressing the joy musically felt by almost everyone in the auditoriums, in this town, in this world.

An era has ended and a new one has begun. For a second, sitting in the fluorescently lit projection booth, I felt the history of a country that had gotten more right than wrong in its very short time in this planet's history. And for a few minutes in my auditoriums, everyone remembered that, as their voices rang out. Everyone stood together, willing to take on the task of continuing to do more right than wrong, bringing that hope with them into the outside world.

The projectors went dark with cooling fans humming. The amps popped as they were turned off. The HD light on the tuner slowly stopped glowing and Lainie and I were left with trying to figure out what to do with a mountain of leftover bagels. Everyone had left, even the volunteers. In the silence, I could still hear the cello's final notes, the voices of the crowd, and feet stomping with glee on the auditorium floors. And a small violin note.

God bless America. God bless all peoples, no exceptions.

Review of THE SECRETS

THE SECRETS--R
(Subtitled Hebrew, French)
Review by Paul Turner

Often it is the religious among us who can touch the soul of another person, without the weight of worldly distractions. THE SECRETS immerses the viewer into a different world, perhaps uncomfortably alien to the western viewer--a world whose laws have survived the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and the 1970s. This world is a tradition of belief that began thousands of years before the genesis of Christianity. The less spiritually inclined find it easy to disregard the strength of conviction it takes for a culture to survive the ages. These same people might see such faith as anything from quaint to dangerous. Perpetuating such judgments is made so easy by today's onslaught of information, which renders classical religious learning "irrelevant." With a mouse click we can support any belief we hold and effortlessly tarnish the beliefs of others. It is all very easy to snuggle ourselves into cozy self-righteousness because we do not have to work for our beliefs. Today there is hot and cold running information in almost all of our homes. This makes it painless to filter out uncomfortable data and find a place to dwell that does not challenge. As our intellect is overpowered with a kaleidoscope of sensationalized information, we are exposed to the extremists of all religions and fail to note the other 99%. The majority of Christians, Moslems, Jews, etc. are not blowing up each other. But, that is not what makes the headlines. How many people listen to Pat Robertson? How many study the works of St. Francis? We apply our own filters. We have to.

With THE SECRETS, we enter the all-female seminary of Daat Emet, a simple mountain village, in today's Safed, Israel. The streets are narrow and old and the teachings have changed very little from ancient times. What has changed is that women are asking to study the sacred texts--the same texts that men study to become religious scholars. Any culture that survives millennia needs to change with the times without changing the depth of belief. However, a lawyer-like examination of the texts can bring new ideas and previously unthinkable allowances. The same frighteningly surgical picking and choosing of scripture has led to the deaths of innocents. In this case it leads to two women finding out who they are--within and beyond their faith.

Naomi, a young woman of serious bent, is engaged to the kind of man her Rabbi father would be proud to have as a son-in-law. However, before she settles into the life chosen, her intelligence drives her to learn more about her faith. Needless to say, this doesn't make the old guard tingle with appreciation. Naomi convinces her father to send her to seminary. As with all good people, and good parents, her father sees this as something other than heresy. He holds no small hope that Naomi's getting away from her present life will help her deal with the passing of her mother. It is easy for him to believe it is grief that is impeding her growing into the life he wants for her.

Naomi's life in the seminary starts as expected. Her room is shared with other girls, characters written well enough to not blend into the stone walls. Michelle, looking uncomfortably like a young Linda Fiorentino, is the square peg. Those know Ms. Fiorentino's work will appreciate the casting, as Michelle is irascible and seems better fitted to the streets of Lyon than a seminary library. These young women of differing levels of conviction are confined to seminarian life. Tension ensues.

Enter Fanny Ardant as Anouk, a woman inhabiting an apartment near the seminary where she watches the young women carry on with their lives--lives not even close to the one she had to leave behind. Anouk is dying and is the same age as Naomi's mom was when she died. Michelle and Naomi are assigned to be of help to the dying Anouk. What unfolds laminates the power of faith over the tenets that hold the minds, but not the hearts, of some of the "faithful." Ardant brings to this film a grace and presence that neither drowns in or drowns out the story and the other players. The story is written well enough not to bludgeon the viewer with the obvious connections between Naomi's late mother and Anouk.

The story arc of THE SECRETS is not entirely unpredictable. This is not a problem, though, since the story is merely the corral that keeps the characters in our hearts. There is a restraint and warmth that cuts loose emotion and lust done well, differentiating it from most movies that have tried to bring such dynamics to the screen. And this is a story, not a sermon. Though many issues are addressed, they all fade into the old walls of the seminary behind the luminance of the characters and the people who play them. This is not an "issue" film unless you want it to be. Either side of the aisle will enjoy this work since it speaks to those things deeper than whatever it is that creates the space between us.

This is an Israeli film, although it looks like the western marketing machine has done the promotion. The poster eroticizes the love story rather than focusing on the journey, of which the love story is only a part.

Instead of dealing with a projector lamp that snapped and died in auditorium one, I'm writing this review of THE SECRETS. Sometimes it is better to love a film than to tend to the machinery that will bring it to the screen. The projection lamp will be fixed and the show will go on. But today, at this moment, THE SECRETS reminds me why the movies we play at the Darkside often transcend the nuts and bolts and relays and igniters that combine to toss an image up onto the screen. Since I have no idea if I'm going to get the lamp fixed before the doors open, I'm risking the chance I'll be facing some very annoyed customers. But, if you make the effort to see this film you might understand what is making me step outside my near neurotic need to never lose a show.

THE SECRETS is rated R and is in subtitled French and Hebrew.