Letter to a friend

Letter to a friend,
I watched “In the Electric Mist” tonight with Sue. I should have known better but I didn’t realize how brutal the violence in it was. I had not read the novel by James Lee Burke, as it is an earlier novel I haven’t yet caught up to. I had no idea that they would turn Dave Robicheaux into another ‘Dirty Harry.’ I have read a dozen of Burke’s novels and I don’t think of him as such a ruthless PI, someone who will ignore the law in so many instances. Not surprisingly, Sue ragged on me for all the “gratuitous violence.” I didn’t see the same way: most men would have reacted as Dave did if their daughter had been kidnapped by a scumbag killer. One would do what had to be done to get her back safely. It has to be kept in mind also that Dave was responding to two vicious murders of young girls who did not deserve what they got. He can be rough with suspects, but he has a tender-hearted side too, which comes from his home life. But there is no doubt that the director made the murders justification for Dave’s violent reactions. I think Burke developed another strategy in the later novels; he invented Clete Purcell, who takes on the role of a loose cannon and psychologically challenged individual. In short, he divides Robicheaux into two, and I think that tactic worked well. One of Dave’s jobs is to rein in his pal Clete, so he can be of service to his investigations.
Tommy Lee Jones made a more satisfying Dave Robicheaux than Alex Baldwin in the 1986 film “Heaven’s Prisoners.” Jones’ face, with its hangdog look and multiple creases and wrinkles, expresses Dave’s boozing and the emotional load he carries from what he does as a detective. He looks capable physically as well—strong, resilient, and durable. John Goodman, who hails from Louisiana, was a good choice for Balboni, who’s a typical lowlife villain for Burke, sleazy, loudmouthed, and who has others do his dirty work. And like Al Capone, he’s done in, not by the local police, but by the IRS.
Sue and I also watched “Elegy,” with Ben Kingsley, Penelope Cruz and Dennis Hopper. It was based on the Phillip Roth novel, THE DYING ANIMAL, which I haven’t read. I burned out on Roth 10 years ago. He was getting too sexually obsessed, murky, and solipsistic for my tastes. The movie is drenched in atmosphere, has good music (Eric Satie, Madeleine Peyrdux) and a kind of elegant cinematography. But the script is dreadful. Kingsley and Hopper are predatory professors who repeatedly have affairs with students in order to deny the fact they are growing old. They spout what is supposed to pass for learned wisdom, but it no more than the chatter of frustration and a poverty of emotional satisfaction—rather pathetic. They express arrested development more than any real insight. When Kingsley falls for Consuelo (Penelope Cruz), a voluptuous dark haired beauty from Cuba, he reacts like a gloomy teenager, quite smitten and jealous as a first-time lover. I lost patience halfway through the film. We finished watching it but it had lost all credibility. Have you seen “The Visitor” yet? Make sure you do. It has become my yardstick to measure bullshit films against something genuine. It was the most honest film I have seen in quite a while, and it deals with real issues. The lead character was another professor, but he was miles apart from the two in “Elegy.”
Another film we saw this week and that I’d recommend to you was “Far North,” with Michelle Yeoh and Sean Bean in the leads. Yeoh is the Chinese actress from ‘‘Crouching Tiger” fame and many other worthy films. The film is based on a 4 page short story called True North by a Canadian author, Sara Maitland. It is a English production with a Pakistani director, who also wrote the screenplay. Yeoh is Saiva an Eskimo woman whose mother was told by a shaman that it would have been better for her not to have been born, for if she did live a heavy curse would be upon her. Saiva and a younger woman, Anja, presumably her daughter, roam the Arctic landscape, always on the move, with getting enough food always a challenge to survival. They inevitably have encounters with others, some good, some bad, and in one instance they take in a hurt stranger (Sean Bean) and tensions build as sexual temperatures rise. The fact Saiva believes what the shaman said about her leads to her undoing. The film has a fantastic ending that strains credulity, but it is a powerful ending nonetheless. There is no way to anticipate what it will be.
Jerry P