The New Yorker - July 25, 2022

80 Pages·2022·36 MB·English

PRICE $8.99 JULY 25, 2022
October 7-9
JULY 25, 2022
4 GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
11 THE TALK OF THE TOWN
Jelani Cobb on Herschel Walker’s mendacious ascent;
wind-powered wine; growing the perfect berry;
Blaxploitation buffs unite; remembering John Bennet.
THE SPORTING SCENE
Sarah Larson 16 One More Game
Pickleball goes pro.
SHOUTS & MURMURS
Robert Carlock 23 Letter of Resignation
DEPT. OF TRANSPORTATION
Jill Lepore 24 Moving Right Along
The electric return of the Volkswagen bus.
A REPORTER AT LARGE
Evan Osnos 30 The Floating World
Plutocratic politics aboard the world’s superyachts.
LETTER FROM LUSANGA
Alice Gregory 42 Fertile Ground
A Congolese collective takes on the art world.
FICTION
Han Ong 52 “Elmhurst”
THE CRITICS
BOOKS
Philip Deloria 60 Tribal nations’ racial purges.
65 Briefly Noted
Jerome Groopman 66 The literary power of medical narratives.
THE ART WORLD
Peter Schjeldahl 70 Robert Colescott and “Women at War.”
DANCING
Jennifer Homans 72 Pam Tanowitz choreographs the Song of Songs.
POEMS
David Lehman 34 “Resistance”
Kate Baer 49 “Mixup”
COVER
Christoph Niemann “Time for Reflection”
DRAWINGS Victoria Roberts, Asher Perlman, Frank Cotham, Charlie Hankin, Christopher Weyant,
Liana Finck, Maggie Larson, Dan Rosen, Roz Chast, P. C. Vey, Lisa Rothstein and Hal Ackerman, Emily Bernstein,
William Haefeli, Justin Sheen, Jon Adams SPOTS Janik Söllner
CONTRIBUTORS
Evan Osnos (“The Floating World,” Alice Gregory (“Fertile Ground,” p. 42)
p. 30) writes about politics and foreign is at work on a book about the artist
affairs for the magazine. His latest Robert Indiana.
book is “Wildland: The Making of
America’s Fury.” Christoph Niemann (Cover) most re-
cently published “Zoo.” An exhibition
Sarah Larson (“One More Game,” p. 16), of his work, “Illustrissimo,” is on display
a staff writer, has been contributing to at the Gallerie d’Italia, in Vicenza, Italy,
The New Yorker since 2007. through August 28th.
Han Ong (Fiction, p. 52) has received Jill Lepore (“Moving Right Along,”
a MacArthur Fellowship and a Gug- p. 24), a staff writer, is the author of
genheim Fellowship. His novels are “These Truths.” She teaches at Harvard.
“Fixer Chao” and “The Disinherited.”
David Lehman (Poem, p. 34) began
Jennifer Homans (Dancing, p. 72) is the contributing poems to The New Yorker
magazine’s dance critic. Her new book, in 1990. His books include “The Mys-
“Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th terious Romance of Murder” and “The
Century,” is due out in November. Morning Line: Poems.”
Philip Deloria (Books, p. 60), a professor Natalie Meade (The Talk of the Town,
of history at Harvard, published “Be- p. 14) is a member of the magazine’s
coming Mary Sully” in 2019. editorial staff.
Kate Baer (Poem, p. 49) is the author Robert Carlock (Shouts & Murmurs,
of “I Hope This Finds You Well” and p. 23), the co-creator of “Unbreakable
“What Kind of Woman.” Her new Kimmy Schmidt,” was the co-show-
poetry collection, “And Yet,” will be runner and an executive producer of
out in November. “30 Rock.”
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THE MAIL
CONSIDERING PINOCCHIO
by the Parco di Pinocchio. Although
the park has recently undergone some
I enjoyed Joan Acocella’s piece on the transformations, it retains a bamboo
many lives of Carlo Collodi’s charac- grove, intense and enveloping, with a
ter Pinocchio (Books, June 13th). Yet meandering pathway punctuated by
I must quibble with the notion, per- sinister bronze figures which leads vis-
haps suggested by comparisons made itors along the wooden puppet’s jour-
in the introduction to the new trans- ney. In the nineteen-eighties, my fam-
lation of “The Adventures of Pinoc- ily took two trips to the park with our
chio,” that both Collodi’s book and young sons, so that they could wander
Miguel de Cervantes’s “Don Quixote” the grove. It’s a mysterious and wild
are picaresques. As Acocella notes, place that any admirer of Pinocchio
these two books are often slotted to- would appreciate.
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gether because they go “from episode Richard Wertime
to episode.” But the picaresque novel, Merion Station, Pa.
as Cervantes would have understood
LISTENING TO ANIMALS
it, is characterized by the first-person
narration of a poor individual—the
picaro—who relates his own misad- I appreciated Elizabeth Kolbert’s piece
ventures and misdeeds. Picaresque about animal consciousness, and her
works have a retrospective episodic discussion of Roger Payne’s pioneering
structure that justifies the protagonist’s work, in the sixties, on humpback-whale
dishonorable actions. Though “Don vocalizations (“Contact,” June 13th). Al-
Quixote” possesses some of these ele- though Payne became the most well-
ments, it’s an oversimplification—un- known scientist to publish on the whale’s
fortunately common in the Anglo- “song”—a term used to describe the
phone academy—to categorize it as a patterns of sounds visualized on sono-
picaresque. In fact, the book is Cer- grams—the discovery of the musical
vantes’s satire of literary tropes (in- qualities of whale vocalizations was the
cluding the novel of chivalry, epic po- fruit of Payne’s collaboration with Katy
etry, the pastoral novel, and, to a lesser Payne, an acoustic biologist, and also
degree, the picaresque). His careful his former spouse. Katy interpreted the
plotting and his self-conscious reflec- plots of frequencies and the distribu-
tions on the authorial enterprise are tions of sound events over time as
what make “Don Quixote” a classic of pitches, phrases, melodies, rhythmic
Western literature. patterns, and formal musical structures.
Samuel Amago For years, she was not credited in col-
Professor of Spanish laborative publications, but her contri-
University of Virginia butions are now widely acknowledged—
Charlottesville, Va. including at a joint presentation at
Cornell University in 2021. This was a
Acocella’s enchanting essay about Pi- necessary corrective to history’s habit-
nocchio brought back memories of my ual neglect of the groundbreaking work
visit to the puppet’s “birthplace”—Col- of women, particularly male research-
lodi, the town in which Carlo Collodi ers’ spouses.
spent part of his childhood and from Bob Gluck
which he took his pen name. The dra- Mount Kisco, N.Y.
matically situated medieval Tuscan
•
hamlet has much to engage tourists,
including an ancient fortress and the Letters should be sent with the writer’s name,
address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to
impressive Villa Garzoni. Pinocchio
[email protected]. Letters may be edited
lovers will be delighted by the town’s
for length and clarity, and may be published in
souvenir shops (which sell Pinocchios any medium. We regret that owing to the volume
in every imaginable size) and especially of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
JULY 20 – 26, 2022
GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN
Barbara Kruger
Since the late eighties—long before the invention of Twitter—the American artist has
been using mass media’s aphoristic language and provocative tone to address such charged subjects as
abortion rights (“Your Body Is a Battleground,” 1989) and craven consumerism (“I Shop Therefore I
Am,” 1987). Through Jan. 2, Kruger fills moma’s soaring atrium with her latest trenchant critique, pic-
tured above during its installation process: the site-specific “Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIC HELGAS
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As ever, it’s advisable to check in advance Duke Robillard and the key actors in the style’s development.
to confirm engagements. Alongside his frequent d.j. partner Groove-
Scott Hamilton
rider, he helmed the decks at the pivotal
Few tenor saxophonists can make a horn early-nineties party Rage, where the genre
JAZZ
purr like Scott Hamilton, an old-soul stylist began germinating, and the two still play a
MUSIC who has upheld the verities of traditional monthly show on Rinse FM, as good a place
swing since bursting onto the scene in the as any to keep up with the form’s ongoing
late seventies. Shortly before he gained developments. This week, Fabio headlines a
Berkshire Opera Festival
wider attention, Hamilton was hooting it daytime party in Brooklyn.—Michaelangelo
In 2021, Berkshire Opera Festival sup- up with Duke Robillard, a stellar guitarist Matos (Sovereign; July 24.)
OPERA
plemented its usual choice of a work from the who co-founded the spirited Rhode Island
canon with a contemporary chamber opera. combo Roomful of Blues and later went
Freddie De Tommaso: “Il Tenore”
The 2022 lineup follows that structure, open- on to play with the Fabulous Thunder-
ing with Jake Heggie’s “Three Decembers,” a birds and Bob Dylan. For this welcome Last year, Freddie De Tommaso won
OPERA
three-hander, from 2008, in which the AIDS stint, Hamilton reunites with Robillard glowing notices from the British press when
epidemic and the often fraught holiday season in a romping outfit that also includes the he stepped in, mid-show, for an indisposed
act as accelerants for a combustible family trumpeter Jon Erik-Kellso. The joint, as colleague in “Tosca,” at Covent Garden. He
drama. Adriana Zabala stars as Madeline, a they say, will jump.—Steve Futterman (Bird- devotes much of his new album, “Il Tenore,”
self-regarding Broadway actress and an ab- land; July 20-23.) to Puccini’s red-hot melodrama, singing two
sent mother, in a production directed by Beth arias and a love scene with Lise Davidsen’s
Greenberg and conducted by Christopher lusciously voiced heroine. The performers
Fabio
James Ray. Mozart’s “Don Giovanni,” this make sure you hear just how wonderful his
season’s main-stage show, follows, in August, Drum and bass has been spiking voice is: Paolo Arrivabeni conducts the open-
ELECTRONIC
at Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, in Great in visibility in America during the past year, ing of “Recondita armonia” slowly, drawing
Barrington, Mass.—Oussama Zahr (PS21, in as pent-up young dancers have craved faster translucent textures from the Philharmonia
Chatham, N.Y.; July 21 and July 23.) tempos and heavier bass lines—two things Orchestra, as De Tommaso unleashes his
the music has in abundance. The London molten tone and a few glottal stops (tenor
d.j. Fabio, born Fitzroy Haslip, was one of shorthand for uncontainable ardor). Excerpts
Camp Cope
The Australian trio Camp Cope
INDIE ROCK
made its name as nothing short of a revolu- AFRO-POP
tionary force. If emo has traditionally been
the domain of embittered young men, then
this explicitly feminist band arrived in 2015
to burn that script. The group’s new album,
“Running with the Hurricane,” is twangier
and poppier than previous releases, yet just
as bold. Empowerment emerges in rumina-
tive conviction and glints of humor, even as
Camp Cope asserts ever more agency and
vulnerability. The front woman Georgia Maq,
whose fevered, folk-tinged singing can reach
toward a scream, has said that the record’s
gentler instrumentation, inspired by Taylor
Swift and the Chicks, reflects a band that
“refused to let the world harden us.” With a
modified lineup—Lou Hanman is filling in
for the bassist Kelly-Dawn Helmrich, who
is expecting her first child—Camp Cope re-
turns to the U.S. on its own terms.—Jenn Pelly
(Webster Hall; July 20.)
Claire Rousay and Matchess
The fast-blooming sound art-
EXPERIMENTAL
ist Claire Rousay has unleashed a torrent
of recordings that employ samples ripped
from the workaday realm to uncanny effect,
setting captured conversations and ephemeral
The Nigerian pop sensation Burna Boy has been one of African music’s
noise against scratchy ambient instrumentals.
Her work suggests varied predecessors—a preëminent experimentalists since the release of his colorful break-
potent one being the sound-installation star through album, “Outside,” in 2018. He emerged as an international
Janet Cardiff—while nestling into a strange
star in the years after, with his statement record, “African Giant,” and
corner of its own. The musician’s mushroom-
ing catalogue pulls from different emotional the more personal “Twice as Tall,” which won him a Grammy. His new
poles; it’s united by the sensation of stum- release, “Love, Damini,” is looser and less conceptual than the previous
bling onto a secret radio wave in the gap be-
two, but just as wide-ranging and vibrant, seeking an intersection of
tween frequencies. At Public Records, Rou-
say shares a bill with Matchess, the sneakily global pop. He comes close to finding one. Throughout the album, he
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NN captivating musical designation of Chicago’s marshals a sublime array of dance sounds alongside a cosmopolitan
DHU Whitney Johnson. Matchess’s recent album group of performers—the reggaetón idol J Balvin, the dancehall phenom
J “Sonescent” was dreamt up at a California
RA meditation retreat, a background that surely Popcaan, the R. & B. sage Kehlani, and even the English singer-song-
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B qualifies as its own genre. Her drones sound writer Ed Sheeran. Sampling everything from Toni Braxton to the
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O like nothing—until, suddenly, they become
ATI handsome and imposing, gifting listeners a Netflix smash “Squid Game,” he keeps reimagining the limits of his
TR shortcut to enlightenment.—Jay Ruttenberg songs. But, no matter how far out he pushes, the music never loses its
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LU (Public Records; July 22.) distinctly Nigerian groove.—Sheldon Pearce
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THE NEW YORKER, JULY 25, 2022 5
and the rhythms of nature, as reflected in the
OFF BROADWAY
Tamil literary tradition. The show’s projec-
tions are of indigenous Warli paintings, from
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western India.—M.H. (Prospect Park’s Lena
Fathers, as Prince Hamlet learned, are Horne Bandshell; July 22.)
hard to shake, even after they’re gone. Aya
Ogawa, a nonbinary writer-performer
born in Japan and based in Brooklyn, lost THE THEATRE
their father around fifteen years ago, but
didn’t honor his death in any formal way. Between the Lines
The two were distant, for reasons both Delilah (Arielle Jacobs), neglected by her
emotional (the father was withdrawn) and divorced, overworked mother and a social
outcast at her new school, crushes on Prince
cultural (Ogawa, brought up in California,
Oliver (Jake David Smith), the hero of a
“The
became an assimilated American). children’s fairy-tale book. Based on a young-
Nosebleed,” which Ogawa wrote, directs, adult novel by Jodi Picoult and her daughter,
Samantha van Leer, this musical, directed
and acts in, is a belated mourning rite of
by Jeff Calhoun (“Newsies”), paints Delilah
an inventive sort, involving reënactments as a wide-eyed innocent, so much so that
from the reality show “The Bachelorette” she comes across as being seventeen going
on twelve—making her flirtation with Ol-
and uncomfortable questions posed to the
iver occasionally awkward. An unwieldy
audience (“Who here hates their father?”). mashup of “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Mean
After warmly received runs at the Public’s Girls,” and a defanged “Jagged Little Pill,”
the production is held together by a solid
Under the Radar festival and the Japan
cast (with Vicki Lewis, in multiple roles, as
Society, the play (in previews, opening on the M.V.P.) and an inventive use of Caite
Aug. 1) comes to Lincoln Center The- Hevner’s projections. Oddly, the supporting
—Michael Schulman characters tend to land the best tunes in
atre’s Claire Tow.
Elyssa Samsel and Kate Anderson’s score,
such as the pounding, techno-esque “Inner
Thoughts,” while the leads are saddled with
from “Turandot,” “Madama Butterfly,” and like Sandoval, collaborated with Michelle Dor- bland ballads.—Elisabeth Vincentelli (Tony
“Carmen,” also featuring guest artists, like- rance), they present “I Didn’t Come to Stay,” Kiser Theatre at Second Stage; through Oct. 2.)
wise display the muscular heft and handsome a program of Brazilian-inspired dance, on the
finish of De Tommaso’s spinto tenor, but the Pillow’s outdoor stage, July 20-24. At the Ted
Mister Miss America
album lacks specificity—Cavaradossi sounds Shawn Theatre, the venerable modern-dance
indistinguishable from Calàf, Pinkerton, troupe Limón Dance Company performs a sev- In spite of its title, this play is, in fact, about
and Don José. Still, if the intention behind enty-fifth-anniversary program that combines Mister Miss Smithsville, a.k.a. Derek Tyler
presenting scenes was to whet listeners’ ap- classic modern-dance works by José Limón Taylor, a contestant in the Miss Southwestern
petites for a live opera performance, then and Doris Humphrey with a new work by the Virginia Pageant. Derek, the event’s first
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mission accomplished.—O.Z. (Streaming on Burkina Faso-born choreographer Olivier Tar- male participant, dazzlingly played by Neil
select platforms.) paga.—Marina Harss (Becket, Mass.; July 20-24.) D’Astolfo, refuses to let hecklers or a com-
petitor’s God-mongering deter him from
pursuing the crown that he’s fantasized about
Little Island Music and since he was nine. This solo show could easily
DANCE lapse into caricatures of Southern or gay
Dance Festival
culture, but D’Astolfo, who also wrote the
This festival—curated by the producer Torya script, roots his humor in humanity. Derek
Ailey Moves NYC!
Beard, the actor Michael McElroy, and New may swear “hand to Gaga,” but he speaks to
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre heads York’s unofficial ambassador of tap-dance joy, the dreaming child in all of us. He speaks
out into the city for a series of free, outdoor Ayodele Casel—saves its Friday- and Satur- to us as adults, too, elucidating the differ-
events. On July 23, at the Coney Island Am- day-evening slots for a solid lineup of percus- ence between “winnin’ and beatin’ someone.”
phitheatre, as part of City Parks Founda- sive dance. A few tap adepts—the uninhibited Opening up the narrative’s meta-theatrical
tion’s SummerStage, the company presents Brinae Ali, the super-skilled Luke Hickey, and dimension are Travis McHale’s lighting and
a knockout show, combining Rennie Harris’s Max Pollak, a veteran expert in Afro-Cuban Sun Hee Kil’s sound design, which sometimes
searching “Lazarus” with the evergreen “Rev- rhythms—join the kathak dancer Barkha Patel turn the play’s audience into the pageant’s
elations.” On July 28, Ailey II, the always and the appealing multiform trio Soles of audience. The sequin-encrusted costumes,
impressive junior troupe, graces Bryant Park Duende, July 22-23. The following weekend, by Hunter Kaczorowski, sparkle as brightly
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Picnic Performances with a program that in- July 29-30, Maurice Chestnut, a serious hoofer, as Derek’s wit.—Dan Stahl (Rattlestick Play-
cludes Yannick Lebrun’s touching duet “Saa shows his love for A Tribe Called Quest.—B.S. wrights Theatre; through Aug. 7.)
Magni.”—Brian Seibert (alvinailey.org) (Little Island; July 20-31.)
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Ragamala Dance Company ART
Tap and Brazilian music may not be synony- Ranee Ramaswamy and her daughter, Aparna,
mous in people’s minds, but they are natural are the artistic directors of this excellent
Geles Cabrera G
companions. Both have roots in the African Minneapolis ensemble, which specializes in N
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diaspora and are built on complex rhythms, and dance theatre based in the language of the In the nineteen-sixties, this modernist sculptor D
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both exude cool and ease with an exuberance classical Indian dance form bharata natyam. opened a museum near her home in Coyocán, L
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of expression. The Brazilian-born tap artist In their evening-length works, they explore Mexico City, to exhibit and preserve her own S
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Leonardo Sandoval and his musical partner large philosophical themes: life, death, our work—a bold move for a woman sidelined in B
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Gregory Richardson (a wizard of the bass) place in the universe. “Sacred Earth,” part of a male-dominated medium (and world). The O
bring these two worlds together in their ensem- BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn!, performed to live first solo presentation of Cabrera’s art in New ATI
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ble, Music from the Sole. Along with a group musical accompaniment in the South Indian York, “Museo Escultórico,” is named for her T
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of excellent tap dancers (many of whom have, Carnatic style, is a meditation on the rituals self-founded institution, evoking its back-yard L
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6 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 25, 2022
garden space with the inclusion of leafy pot- ing, building, and wrestling with the earth tive, intimately collaborative curators David
ted plants. Cabrera, now ninety-five, worked in various ways. Miya Ando’s indigo-and- Breslin and Adrienne Edwards ignore rather
primarily with terra-cotta, volcanic rock, and micronized-silver works on paper are more than oppose pressures of the ever-romping art
bronze to carve and mold the sculptures on topical than they might appear; based on the market, which can see to itself. Delayed for
view in this Edenic atmosphere. Abstracted artist’s observation of the moon, a hundred a year by COVID-19, the show consolidates
bodies—usually female, often maternal—are and sixty-nine days into the pandemic, they a trend that many of us hadn’t suspected: a
seen seated and supine, in casual but never are velvety meditations on fugitive beauty. sort of fortuitously shared conceptual sensi-
languid poses. Their sloped and simplified Justine Fisher’s enigmatic oil painting, simply bility that suggests an in-group but is open
forms have the fluid strength of dancers, ap- titled “space,” offers a twinkling view of a gar- to all who care about art’s relations to the
pearing alert and engaged. The modestly sized den path leading to a door that beckons with wide world. My favorite work in the show
figures seem to be gathered in friendly conver- an Henri Rousseau-like promise of fantastic is the indelibly disturbing and enthralling
sation in groups scattered throughout the gal- escape.—J.F. (Alexander Gray; through Aug. 6.) “Your Eyes Will Be an Empty Word” (2021),
lery, arranged on platforms of various heights by the veteran Cuban American artist and
or on concrete-brick plinths. Hanging on the singularly plainspoken social activist Coco
surrounding walls are archival photographs “Whitney Biennial 2022: Fusco—a gorgeous twelve-minute video ex-
of both the artist’s museum and her public ploration of Hart Island, New York’s potter’s
Quiet as It’s Kept”
projects. A digitized scrapbook of Cabrera’s field for unidentified or unclaimed corpses.
press clippings adds historical and personal This startlingly coherent and bold exhibition Shots of the artist laboring in a rowboat along
detail to this lovely portrait of a remarkable is a material manifesto of late-pandemic in- its shores alternate with drone overviews of a
life and œuvre.—Johanna Fateman (Americas stitutional culture. Long on installations and really quite lovely place, where rows of small
Society; through July 30.) videos and short on painting, conventional stone markers perfunctorily memorialize in-
sculpture, and straight photography, it is numerable lost lives. Beauty stands in for
exciting without being especially pleasur- unconsummated mourning.—P.S. (Whitney
“Dakota Modern: able—geared toward thought. The innova- Museum; through Sept. 5.)
The Art of Oscar Howe”
This overdue retrospective of the remarkable
IN THE MUSEUMS
Yanktonai Dakota painter Oscar Howe, who
died in 1983, at the age of sixty-eight, graces
the always enthralling New York branch of
the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the
American Indian. (Housed in the Alexander
Hamilton U.S. Custom House, a prodigy of
Beaux-Arts architecture designed by Cass Gil-
bert in 1907, the exhibition is admission-free.)
Howe is a frequently misunderstood American
master who bridged ethnic authenticity and
internationalist derring-do, although con-
descension from establishment institutions
and proprietary tribute from some sectarian
advocates have hindered his recognition as
a straight-up canonical modernist. Crisply
curated by Kathleen Ash-Milby, the show con-
sists almost exclusively of works in tempera,
watercolor, gouache, or casein on paper. The
execution is phlegmatically deliberate. The
upshot is a channelling of sheer, visionary
imagination, as if the artist were taking dicta-
tion from an unseen demiurge. Do some of the
effects seem cartoonish, with figuration that
anticipated popular styles of graphic fiction
which took hold in the nineteen-seventies?
Perhaps. Still, generic characters in melo-
dramatic poses strategically depersonalize
RT subjects to the benefit of thematic punch and The Lakota expression mní wičóni—“water is life”—was heard around
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F decorative finesse. The results exalt audacity
O the world during the Standing Rock protests. Now it echoes through
M and breathe beauty. Howe seldom repeated
U himself. Each work can feel one-off, fulfilling the American Wing of the Met, thanks to a small but momentous ex-
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US a special mission to a fare-thee-well. If any “Water Memories,”
M hibition on view through April 2. Titled the show
N quality is consistent, it’s suddenness.—Peter
TA Schjeldahl (National Museum of the American was organized by Patricia Marroquin Norby, the museum’s first curator
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O Indian; through Sept. 11.) of Native American art; as a woman of Purépecha heritage, Norby is also
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R its first full-time Indigenous curator. The show traverses six centuries
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M “To Name a Place” in a scant forty art works and artifacts by both Native and non-Native
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ST In this eight-artist exhibition, the curator creators. An exquisite oil of a foamy wave by the American modernist
ARTI Anna Stothart invigorates the perennial sum- Arthur Dove, from 1929, assumes a mournful edge in the company
E mer-show subject of landscape. The most im-
H of a shimmering sculptural installation by the Shinnecock ceramicist
T posing work on view is Mel Chin’s “Safe,”
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ES from 2005: a lush painting of the Congo River Courtney M. Leonard, from 2021, that eulogizes the decimation of the
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R on Belgian linen, in a gaudy gilt frame, is
U sperm-whale population off Long Island’s East End, where Dove made
O nearly obscured by battered wooden planks
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/ leaning against it, through which the artist has his painting. Poetry and protest are inseparable in all of the contemporary
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R driven thousands of rusty nails, an allusion to pieces here, including the Chemehuevi photographer Cara Romero’s
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M both the brutal treatment of the Kongo people
O oneiric 2015 scene (pictured above) of Pueblo corn dancers reckoning
R by King Leopold II and to their nkisi nkondi
A with a collective water memory: the flooding of thousands of acres of
R power figures. Arnie Zimmerman’s tabletop
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© C tableau in clay teems with laborers—min- tribal land by the construction of the Parker Dam.—Andrea K. Scott
THE NEW YORKER, JULY 25, 2022 7
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feels forced; it steals up and wins you. A true flect—including racial prejudice, police bru-
MOVIES romance.—Anthony Lane (Reviewed in our issue tality, real-estate depredations, and economic
of 1/30/95.) (Streaming on Prime Video, the Cri- inequities—spotlighting their insidious en-
terion Channel, and other services.) dorsement of such political perversions. He
Before Sunrise
concludes with a grand tribute to the leg-
The hip ennui that Richard Linklater conjured acy of great local independent filmmakers
Los Angeles Plays Itself
up in “Slacker” and “Dazed and Confused” who discovered truth by way of fiction, in
seemed rooted in Texas, but it transplants Thom Andersen’s nearly three-hour essay- such movies as “The Exiles” and “Killer of
beautifully to Vienna, where his fourth fea- film, from 2003, joins his trenchant and Sheep.”—Richard Brody (Playing through July
ture, from 1995, is set. The movie is provoc- polemical voice-over commentary to a rich 27 at IFC Center and streaming on MUBI, Prime
atively plotless: Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and and alluring selection of clips from movies Video, and other services.)
Céline (Julie Delpy) meet on a train, decide shot on location in Los Angeles, ranging
to get off together, and have themselves a from “The Big Sleep” and “Rebel Without
Meet Marlon Brando
fine, sleepless time before parting the next a Cause” to “Chinatown” and “Clueless.”
day. That’s it: various threats loom up and This kaleidoscopic portrait of the city is During the New York press junket for the film
fade away, and the only suspense comes from both a powerful work of film criticism and “Morituri,” in 1965, its star, Marlon Brando,
wondering whether the two characters (who a personal story of living in Los Angeles. received a series of journalists for brief in-
are pretty much the only characters) will Andersen traces the falsification of the city’s terviews at a table in the Hampshire House
stop talking long enough to have sex. The geography and history in Hollywood mov- hotel and toyed with them gleefully and mer-
extended takes and lazy conversations bring ies to the shoddy narrative and ideological cilessly. Albert and David Maysles’s 1966 doc-
the movie within inches of boring, but there is conventions in run-of-the-mill productions; umentary of that commercial event captures
real audacity in the casual bookishness of the even the habitual display of architectural Brando’s transformation of it, through the
script (by Linklater and Kim Krizan) and in landmarks and styles comes in for scathing sheer force of his personality, into a grandly
the shrugging rhythms of the direction. The analysis. He gets beneath the surfaces of ironic variety of performance art. Brando
charm—the midsummer enchantment—never dramas to reveal the realities that they re- brazenly flirts with several female journalists,
complimenting them on their appearance,
and aggressively questions male interviewers
about their looks, too (with particular atten-
WHAT TO STREAM
tion to their fingernails and their clothing).
Challenging the interviewers’ willingness
to work as “hucksters,” Brando mocks the
blatantly promotional conversations with
sly or flamboyant sarcasm and disarmingly
sincere reflections. In a street-side interview,
he responds to a political question about the
circumstances of Black people in the United
States by beckoning to a Black woman who’s
passing by and posing the question to her. The
resulting portrait of Brando—sexual, intellec-
tual, aggressive, vulnerable, seductive, rebel-
lious—shows him creating a greater character
than any ever written for him: himself.—R.B.
(Playing at BAM July 22.)
Thor: Love and Thunder
The playful spirit of Saturday-morning car-
toons inspires this puckish yet sentimental
Marvel concoction, directed by Taika Waititi,
but the whimsy is inhibited, and the humor
rarely lands. An intergalactic villain called
Gorr the God Butcher (Christian Bale) tar-
gets Thor (Chris Hemsworth) by kidnap-
ping children from the hammer-wielder’s
reconstructed home town, New Asgard, and
luring him into a trap. Just then Thor’s ex,
Humphrey Bogart, who died in 1957, at the age of fifty-seven, was the astrophysicist Dr. Jane Foster (Natalie
already enduring the effects of cancer when he appeared in his last film, Portman), who has terminal cancer, arrives
“The Harder They Fall,” in New Asgard in the hope that the magical
the boxing melodrama from 1956 (streaming
hammer can heal her, and she joins Thor, the
on the Criterion Channel and other services). His role in it, as the bereaved heroine Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson),
down-and-out sportswriter Eddie Willis, is one of his toughest. Yet and Korg (Waititi), a quippy giant made of
rocks, in the battle to defeat Gorr and save
Eddie never brandishes a gun or raises a fist. Rather, he uses his words
the children. The blandly functional plot
and his wiles to shill for a shady boxing promoter (Rod Steiger) who gives rise to a colossal yet sluggish set piece
is trying to sell American audiences on a lumbering Argentinean car- in which the quartet penetrates the vast gilded N
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palace of Zeus (Russell Crowe) in quest of
nival strongman named Toro Moreno (Mike Lane) as a contender for TI
his help. In the movie’s one inspired scene, C
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the heavyweight championship. Brokering fixed fights and using his New Asgard is portrayed as a tourist attrac- LL
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press connections to legitimize them, Eddie is complicit in the death tion where the legend of Thor is staged for C
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visitors as a threadbare skit; it comes off as O
of a fighter and in the scamming of Toro himself; then the former a1 knowing nod at the bare-bones histrionics ERI
newspaperman’s crusading conscience kicks in. The movie, directed underlying this C.G.I. extravaganza.—R.B. RIT
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by Mark Robson and based on a novel by Budd Schulberg, packs the (In theatrical release.) E
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ambient violence of a sports world and a media scene that are infested Y
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with gangsters; it’s an exposé not just of boxing but of the American T
For more reviews, visit R
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way of business.—Richard Brody newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town O
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8 THE NEW YORKER, JULY 25, 2022