Movie Reviewed: No Maps on My Taps
Director: George Nierenberg
Date: 19 November 2017
jamesintexas rating: ***
No Maps on My Taps is an exhilarating social document, a chronicling of a disappearing art form by its denizens in the late 1970's, while also an exciting look at the lurching forward of culture from vaudeville until now, with its eye keenly focused on the controlled mayhem of the feet and bodies of legends Howard "Sandman" Sims, Bunny Briggs, and Chuck Green. And, as a chronicle of these men and their art, Nierenberg has preserved them, has shared them, has allowed them to live on as I sat with 130 eleventh graders from my high school in Houston, watching this documentary at the 2017 Houston Cinema Arts Festival. We know their names because of his film, which he watched with us and poignantly reminded us that he is the only person left from this film. He tells their story.
Watching the film unfold, I was struck by its elegiac quality; these powerful performers lament their art's diminishment, especially in the face of rock and roll and other mediums. They look backwards to the world of the 1930's with its films and shows focused on tap. They enjoy being onstage with each other so much, each pushing the other to do better and better. The footage from the 1930's is spellbinding, and the dancing, stupendous. I wondered lots about Harlem in the 1970's which peeks in and around the edges, especially as Sandman walks the streets with his son. His son must be nearly fifty years old now, and he has this document of his time with his dad. I wondered about what art forms loved and embraced now will diminish in the next forty years. Some of my students learned tap dancing when they were young; my conversations with the dancers among them made me think that hip hop has replaced tap in a way. The Cross Country coach in me just marveled at their muscular control, their calves and ankles, their indefatigable rhythm and power.
Chuck Green holds the heart and soul of the film, with his distant quality (the director revealed that he was struggling with much during the filming), yet his soulful uttering of the titular phrase is both sweet and hopeful. No Maps on My Taps means, essentially, "No limits, Jonathan?" the philosophical underpinning of the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull, another artifact from the 1970's, this one shared with me by my Cross Country coach Mr. Joe Newton. To dance, to run, to create art is freedom: freedom from your constraints, your illness, your struggles. Chuck, Bunny, and Sandman are all gone now, but this film holds them firmly in its heart, showing the beauty in these men and their love of tap and how it enriched their lives. Thank you, George Nierenberg.
Sunday, November 19, 2017
Call it the Best Film of the Year.
Movie Reviewed: Call Me by Your Name
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Date: 13 November 2017
jamesintexas rating: ****
Mr. Perlman, Michael Stuhlbarg's character, has a monologue at the end of this marvelous new film that detonated with an unexpected emotionality in me and resulted in a richer appreciation for all that came before. Without revealing the contents of his epiphany, Perlman's naked honesty and perceptiveness expose the raw nerves of the film. I cannot remember being caught off-guard by such a transcendent and riveting moment in cinema in recent years.
Call Me by Your Name is a burgeoning love story, a collision of cultures between a seventeen year old Elio Perlman (Timothee Chalamet) who is staying with his academic parents in a remote Italian paradise for the summer, the land of apricots and peaches and swimming, and "the usurper," Oliver (Armie Hammer), a graduate assistant of sorts who lives with them for six weeks and helps his father catalogue his work. It is 1983, Elio has lots of time on his hands, to play piano and read, to meander the Italian countryside, to spend with possible love Marzia (Esther Garrel), but he is magnetically drawn to Oliver, with his towering frame, his clipped way of speaking, and his marvelous intellect (watching him correct Mr. Perlman is one of the film's many delights; them mocking his speech habits, another). Hammer's work here is sublime, making Oliver both overtly powerful and hypnotic while also private and secretive. And his cutting loose on the dance floor to the Psychedelic Furs' "Love My Way" at two crucial moments in the film is both mesmerizing and cathartic. As the summer drips away, the two circle around each other, tentatively negotiating their growing feelings all set amidst a backdrop of beautiful lagoons and cisterns, gorgeous bicycle rides through the countryside, and meals around parents and neighbors. Where the film goes is both beautiful and heartbreaking, and the telling of the story was compelling in the way love works its way to and through Elio. It reminded me of falling in love and all that entails. The film imposes no artificial plotting or conflict other than time and its devastating ephemerality.
Director Luca Guadagnino is a new name to me, and I have never seen a film by him before, but now I want to more than anything. Guadagnino surprised me multiple times in multiple ways in this film: with his abrupt editing choices, mid-scene and mid-song sometimes that shift the chapters of the film forward; with his showing of the film frames at key moments, making the film more about memory and the past in its very tactile nature; in its final shot which lingers, painfully and truthfully after an epiphany of sorts is made. I am grateful to have seen this film as part of the 2017 Houston Cinema Arts Festival, and the introduction to the film gave us a tantalizing morsel to chew on about a future film by this director. I do not think the indicators of genre (drama, romance) or plot key words (gay relationship, teenage boy, lgbt, first love) do this powerful film justice. I think about the role the parents play in the film, hungering for more from Mrs. Perlman (Amira Cassar), especially in a car ride scene fraught with raw emotion. Her character, for whatever reason, seems confined to glances and looks and movements behind the scene, while Mr. Perlman gets the weighty, prescient, and elegiac monologue at the end of the film that still haunts me.
I want to immediately return to the world of Call Me by Your Name now, read the book the film is based upon by author Andre Aciman, and in a second viewing, I want to appreciate even more the quiet, understated work of Chalamet and even the actors playing his parents, as there is simply more to consider (as there always is) when love shakes you to your core. As the Psychedelic Furs sing, "Love my way, it's a new road / I follow where my mind goes," and dance like Armie Hammer in 1983.
It is the best film of the year.
Director: Luca Guadagnino
Date: 13 November 2017
jamesintexas rating: ****
Mr. Perlman, Michael Stuhlbarg's character, has a monologue at the end of this marvelous new film that detonated with an unexpected emotionality in me and resulted in a richer appreciation for all that came before. Without revealing the contents of his epiphany, Perlman's naked honesty and perceptiveness expose the raw nerves of the film. I cannot remember being caught off-guard by such a transcendent and riveting moment in cinema in recent years.
Call Me by Your Name is a burgeoning love story, a collision of cultures between a seventeen year old Elio Perlman (Timothee Chalamet) who is staying with his academic parents in a remote Italian paradise for the summer, the land of apricots and peaches and swimming, and "the usurper," Oliver (Armie Hammer), a graduate assistant of sorts who lives with them for six weeks and helps his father catalogue his work. It is 1983, Elio has lots of time on his hands, to play piano and read, to meander the Italian countryside, to spend with possible love Marzia (Esther Garrel), but he is magnetically drawn to Oliver, with his towering frame, his clipped way of speaking, and his marvelous intellect (watching him correct Mr. Perlman is one of the film's many delights; them mocking his speech habits, another). Hammer's work here is sublime, making Oliver both overtly powerful and hypnotic while also private and secretive. And his cutting loose on the dance floor to the Psychedelic Furs' "Love My Way" at two crucial moments in the film is both mesmerizing and cathartic. As the summer drips away, the two circle around each other, tentatively negotiating their growing feelings all set amidst a backdrop of beautiful lagoons and cisterns, gorgeous bicycle rides through the countryside, and meals around parents and neighbors. Where the film goes is both beautiful and heartbreaking, and the telling of the story was compelling in the way love works its way to and through Elio. It reminded me of falling in love and all that entails. The film imposes no artificial plotting or conflict other than time and its devastating ephemerality.
Director Luca Guadagnino is a new name to me, and I have never seen a film by him before, but now I want to more than anything. Guadagnino surprised me multiple times in multiple ways in this film: with his abrupt editing choices, mid-scene and mid-song sometimes that shift the chapters of the film forward; with his showing of the film frames at key moments, making the film more about memory and the past in its very tactile nature; in its final shot which lingers, painfully and truthfully after an epiphany of sorts is made. I am grateful to have seen this film as part of the 2017 Houston Cinema Arts Festival, and the introduction to the film gave us a tantalizing morsel to chew on about a future film by this director. I do not think the indicators of genre (drama, romance) or plot key words (gay relationship, teenage boy, lgbt, first love) do this powerful film justice. I think about the role the parents play in the film, hungering for more from Mrs. Perlman (Amira Cassar), especially in a car ride scene fraught with raw emotion. Her character, for whatever reason, seems confined to glances and looks and movements behind the scene, while Mr. Perlman gets the weighty, prescient, and elegiac monologue at the end of the film that still haunts me.
I want to immediately return to the world of Call Me by Your Name now, read the book the film is based upon by author Andre Aciman, and in a second viewing, I want to appreciate even more the quiet, understated work of Chalamet and even the actors playing his parents, as there is simply more to consider (as there always is) when love shakes you to your core. As the Psychedelic Furs sing, "Love my way, it's a new road / I follow where my mind goes," and dance like Armie Hammer in 1983.
It is the best film of the year.
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