twi-ny recommended events

BRESSON: AU HASARD BALTHAZAR

The tender love between a young girl (Anne Wiazemsky) and a donkey lies at the heart of Robert Bresson’s AU HASARD BALTHAZAR

AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (Robert Bresson, 1966)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
November 23-29
Series runs November 23 – December 2
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

Robert Bresson’s heartbreaking 1966 masterpiece, Au hasard Balthazar, is an unforgettable tale of the life and times of a most unusual yet completely ordinary donkey. As the opening credits roll, we hear writer and pianist Jean-Joël Barbier performing Franz Schubert’s Sonata No. 20, interrupted by the braying of a donkey and concluding with the sound of bells ringing. In a small rural community in France, a donkey has been born. Young Jacques and his sister baptize him and name him Balthazar, after one of the three Magi who presented the infant Jesus with gifts. Jacques and his neighbor, Marie, adore the donkey, treating him not only as their friend but their surrogate child, believing they are destined to marry. But they are torn apart by a land dispute between their fathers, and when they become teenagers, although the upstanding Jacques (Walter Green) still desires Marie (Anne Wiazemsky), she shamefully gives herself to Gérard (François Lafarge), the sinister leader of a local gang of bike-riding juvenile delinquents. Gérard abuses Marie as well as Balthazar, who soon sets off on a journey inspired by Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot and the Stations of the Cross, going from owner to owner in a series of vignettes that also represent the seven deadly sins. His big, dark eyes appearing to understand what is happening to him, Balthazar encounters lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride but soldiers on, loved by Marie, who becomes ever-more helpless, unable and unwilling to take control of her destiny, much to the disappointment of her parents (Philippe Asselin and Nathalie Joyaut). Her sad fate seems predetermined, as does that of her beloved Balthazar, who literally and figuratively bears the heavy weight of the sins of all around him.

“Everyone who sees this film will be absolutely astonished because this film is really the world in an hour and a half,” Jean-Luc Godard famously said about Au hasard Balthazar, and that gets right to the heart of the film. (Godard went on to cast Wiazemsky in several of his movies; the two were married from 1967 to 1979.) Written and directed by Bresson (Pickpocket, Diary of a Country Priest), beautifully edited by Raymond Lamy, stunningly photographed in black-and-white by Ghislain Cloquet, and featuring primarily nonprofessional actors, Au hasard Balthazar is about young love, sacrifice, honor, family, life and death — and the very essence of humanity, most evidently seen in the form of an amazing animal. The film is rife with biblical overtones, but it is not merely citing dogma, nor is it a direct parable, instead exploring the contradictions inherent in religion. Marie is part Mother Mary, part Mary Magdalene, but mostly just a deeply troubled girl. One night Gérard and his gang beat Balthazar as Marie watches, saying nothing; the next morning, she looks up in church as he sings a Latin hymn that is bookended by the ringing of Balthazar’s bells and the chiming of the church bells.

Metrograph will host week-long fiftieth-anniversary presentation of extraordinary AU HASARD BALTHAZAR

The Book of Proverbs explains that “idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” and Bresson expands on this concept by continually focusing on hands. Sitting on a bench in the dark, Marie puts her left hand over her heart, then slowly moves it onto the bench, where another hand emerges from the shadows to gently touch hers. She runs away, but Bresson’s camera still follows her hand as it closes and then opens a door. Later, as Gérard prepares to set Balthazar’s tail on fire, a car passes by, and the camera centers on Gérard’s hands, fidgeting nervously as he worries about being caught. When the drunkard Arnold (Jean-Claude Guilbert) is questioned by the police about a murder, Bresson zooms in on three men’s hands as Arnold gives his papers to the captain (Jacques Sorbets), who gives them to an associate, who then asks for Arnold’s hands so he can take his fingerprints, as if the hands themselves are guilty, stained with sin. “Holding on to me, too?” Arnold says. And when Balthazar performs a trick at a circus, his front hooves become the primary objects of attention. Screening November 23-29 at Metrograph in celebration of its fiftieth anniversary and kicking off a ten-day, seven-film Bresson festival, Au hasard Balthazar is filled with such glorious moments, layers of meaning attached to every sound and image, a staggering cinematic achievement that amply deserves its status as one of the greatest films ever made. The Metrograph series continues through December 2 with Lancelot du Lac, Les anges du péché, Pickpocket, Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, A Man Escaped, and The Devil, Probably; Bresson died in 1999 at the age of ninety-eight, having directed a mere thirteen films (and one short) in a legendary forty-year career.

TAKESHI “BEAT” KITANO: DOLLS / ZATOICHI: THE BLIND SWORDSMAN

Matsumoto (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and Sawako (Miho Kanno) are literally tied to each other in Takeshi Kitano’s DOLLS

DOLLS (DORUZU) (Takeshi Kitano, 2002) / ZATOICHI: THE BLIND SWORDSMAN
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Dolls: Thursday, November 24, 4:30 & 9:00
Zatoichi: Friday, November 25, 4:00 & 9:00
Series runs through November 25
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

Hardboiled action director and comic Takeshi Kitano, who is best known for such violent films as Violent Cop, Sonatine, and Boiling Point, has also made family dramas and romances as well (Kikujiro, A Scene at the Sea), and Dolls might be his most emotional, introspective picture. Dolls opens with a Bunraku puppet theater excerpt from Monzaemon Chikamatsu’s The Courier for Hell before delving into the dark story of Matsumoto (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and Sawako (Miho Kanno). Matsumoto dumps Sawako so he can marry the boss’s daughter, but when Sawako tries to kill herself and ends up in a mental hospital, Mastumoto decides to take care of the speechless, frightened shell of a woman she has become. He leads her through the seasons, tied to her by a red cord, a pair of bound beggars. Two subplots, which we’re not sure were absolutely necessary, also deal with love and loss, obsession and desire. Joe Hisaishi’s music is gorgeous, as is Katsumi Yanagijima’s cinematography. Kitano, who wrote, directed, and edited Dolls, mixes in sensational colors to balance out black-and-white tuxedos or long patches of snow: You’ll be mesmerized by the red rope, a purple-and-black butterfly, Sawako’s pink child’s toy, a glowing blue bridge, Matsumoto’s bright yellow car, a green public phone, a blue drink, twirling pinwheels, a shockingly blue umbrella, a park filled with cherry blossoms, and Yohji Yamamoto’s sparkling costumes. The film is bleak, slow-paced, and heart-tuggingly pure, a rewarding experience that will stay with you for a long time.

Takeshi Kitano wrote, coedited, directed, and stars in update of Zatoichi legend

Meanwhile, in the following year’s Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman, Kitano took on the Zatoichi legend that was a Japanese favorite from 1962 to 1989 (starring Shintaro Katsu), updating the story of the blind swordsman, gambler, and masseuse magnificently, adding a lot of blood while staying true to the heart of this classic tale. (Zatoichi is also referenced in Kitano’s 1995 Getting Any?) Beat Takeshi, the name Kitano uses as an actor, stars as the unlikely platinum blonde superhero who shuffles across the countryside battling the bad guys and rescuing damsels in distress. The film also features Tadanobu Asano as Hattori Gennosuke, Michiyo Okusu as O-ume, and Yui Natsukawa as O-shino. This was the first period film of Kitano’s career, and one in which he combined all the elements of his previous work to create an unforgettable masterpiece, a thrilling, beautifully shot (by Katsumi Yanagishima), and wonderfully realized cinematic achievement that suffers only at the very end with a silly coda that is just way too out of place. Dolls is screening on Thanksgiving Day and Zatoichi on November 25 in the Metrograph series “Takeshi ‘Beat’ Kitano,” which continues through Friday with Hana-Bi, Sonatine, Boiling Point, and Kikujiro.

THE ENCOUNTER

Simon McBurney leads audiences deep into the Amazon in THE ENCOUNTER (photo © Joan Marcus 2016)

Golden Theatre
252 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 8, $49 – $132
theencounterbroadway.com

Innovative British theater director and actor Simon McBurney spent nearly twenty years trying to figure out how best to adapt the story of photojournalist Loren McIntyre’s adventures in the Amazon for the stage; what he ultimately came up with is absolutely genius. In the solo show The Encounter, playing at the Golden Theatre through January 8, McBurney uses the art of storytelling itself to dramatize McIntyre’s treacherous 1969 solo trip into Amazon’s Javari Valley, where he made contact with the indigenous Mayoruna tribe. Without any physical evidence, including photographs or notebooks, McIntyre shared his tale with Romanian-American writer Petru Popescu, whose book about the journey, Amazon Beaming, came out in 1991. And McBurney, whose 1999 production of Mnemonic by his Complicite company is considered a landmark in contemporary experimental theater, also uses the barest of evidence in The Encounter, which explores time, consciousness, memory, acculturation, and humanity’s connection with nature in spectacular ways. As the audience takes their seats, McBurney is wandering around the stage, which is littered with water bottles, a box of VHS tape, a desk with several microphones and a laptop, and a central figure — an Easter Island–like binaural head that turns out to be a speaker. McBurney addresses the crowd directly, toying with the notion of whether the show has actually started yet. “My children will always be able to look back over all of these photographs and videos and see their entire lives. But of course it’s not their life, it’s a story,” McBurney says about his smartphone. “So I’m worried about them mistaking it for reality, like we all mistake stories for reality. So I feel really responsible, because as I’m capturing moments on this [phone], I’m essentially deciding what story I’m going to tell them about their past . . . and about the world. But it’s not a reality. It’s a story. Stories are how we understand life. . . . You might say that stories are what have allowed the human race to thrive.”

Simon McBurney uses innovative technology to tell a fascinating story in one-man Broadway show (photo © Robbie Jack)

McBurney, who has appeared in such films as The Golden Compass, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and Mission Impossible — Rogue Nation and has adapted such other literary works as Haruki Murakami’s The Elephant Vanishes, Bruno Schulz’s The Street of Crocodiles, and John Berger’s To the Wedding, tells his story through headphones that each audience member must wear, with different sound effects and dialogue coming out of the right and left earpieces. There are also sounds that reverberate through the theater, outside of the headphones, that immerse the audience into this created world, from doors slamming shut to random muttering voices. He calls it a “technological trick,” but it’s actually a shrewd artistic device that is no mere gimmick. McBurney plays multiple roles by using microphones that change the pitch, tone, and even accent of his voice while combining live text with prerecorded snippets; among the real-life characters he portrays are McIntyre, McIntyre’s pilot, and Popescu heard alongside dialogue from such psychiatrists, scientists, and other experts as Iain McGilchrist, Steven Rose, Marcus du Sautoy, George Marshall, and Rebecca Spooner, who lend authenticity to the proceedings. Meanwhile, McIntyre claims to communicate with members of the Mayoruna, including Beam, Barnacle, Tuti, and Red Cheeks, via some kind of telepathy that echoes McBurney’s use of the headphones for the audience. Meanwhile, he is sharing the story with his seven-year-old daughter, Noma. “Dadda, who are you talking to?” she asks early on. “I’m not talking to anybody, sweetie,” he replies. “Yes, you are!” she demands. “No, I’m not. Well, I am in a way,” he answers. “But there’s nobody there!” she claims. “That’s true, there’s nobody there,” he agrees. Of course, McBurney is talking about the show itself; the only person there is him, yet, as time goes on, we feel as if we are deep in the Amazon rainforest, meeting all of these characters, trudging through the muck, and seeing the monkeys that threaten McIntyre.

For both McIntyre and McBurney, the concept of time is a critical element, photographer and performer each trying to capture and share a moment in time. “What lay behind this frenzy, Loren thought, was fear. Fear of the future. Fear of losing the past,” McBurney relates. “So unlike these people, he thought. They never think of the future, they don’t hoard or store up belongings. Time for them was an invisible companion, something comfortable and unseen like the air. For us, the civilizados, time was a possession. An increasingly more efficient machine.” Time for the Mayoruna is changeable, while the West’s obsession with time is limiting and controlling. As McBurney writes in a new foreword to Popescu’s book, “Our adamantine vision of time as an arrow, moving in a pitiless irreversible horizontal motion towards oblivion, is called into doubt. Could it be that this version of time is a fiction, a story that only exists in our common imagination? Our idea of distance, crucially the distance between one person and another, is also challenged. The notion of a ‘separate self,’ so precious to our contemporary notion of identity, is undermined to the point that it becomes, for McIntyre, utterly illusory. One self, one so-called individual consciousness, he discovers, is not necessarily separated from another by language, time, or distance. We are possibly interconnected in ways to which we are, mostly, blind in the modern world — a world in which, paradoxically, we are more connected by technology that at any time in history.”

Simon McBurney makes remarkable use of unusual props in THE ENCOUNTER (photo by Joan Marcus)

The play, which runs approximately one hundred minutes without intermission, is also very much about contact, from McIntyre meeting the Mayoruna to how each audience member experiences it individually, a solitary yet communal experience. “There were so many things here in their elemental state, why not thought, too?” McBurney asks in the show. “Why not the simplest form of human contact — mind to mind. No, for goodness sake. But then something had been ratified, because he had been given this most beautiful gift.” We have also been given a most beautiful gift, The Encounter, which is essentially transmitted mind to mind in a mesmerizing tour de force by McBurney; also deserving of major kudos are set designer Michael Levine, sound designers Gareth Fry and Pete Malkin, lighting designer Paul Anderson, and projection designer Will Duke, who all participate in this amazing feat. At the end of the show, I fully believed that I had traveled through the Amazon with McBurney and McIntyre, had seen the Mayoruna, had felt the heat and fought off the mosquitoes, had experienced the fear and loneliness McIntyre had experienced, even though it was essentially all just McBurney getting inside my head and manipulating, and freeing, my mind. “To accept that our ability to hear, to listen to each other, is perhaps essential for our collective survival,” McBurney also writes in his foreword to Amazon Beaming. “These thoughts are urgent because, in order to survive, we need to acknowledge that there is another way of seeing the world and our place in it.” That could not be more true, today more than ever.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON: STRIVER, STATESMAN, SCOUNDREL

After Alonzo Chappel, “Hamilton at Yorktown in 1781,” steel engraving (New York: Johnson, Fry, and Co., 1858. NYPL, Picture Collection)

New York Public Library
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Gallery
476 Fifth Ave. at 41st St.
Daily through December 31, free
917-275-6975
www.nypl.org

So what would Alexander Hamilton himself have thought about the controversy surrounding the cast of Hamilton confronting incoming vice president Mike Pence during the curtain call at a recent performance of the hit musical at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway? It’s hard to know, as the current New York Public Library exhibit “Alexander Hamilton: Striver, Statesman, Scoundrel” reveals. Consisting of a densely packed amount of materials gathered from the library’s holdings, the exhibition focuses on the unpredictability of the Founding Father and his ever-evolving views as the new nation set its course. “Hamilton was at best a complicated hero and, at worst, an admirable scourge,” the wall text explains, pointing out several of Hamilton’s seemingly inconsistent beliefs involving states’ rights, finance, slavery, support of France, and the Constitution itself. “Alexander Hamilton: Striver, Statesman, Scoundrel” features letters, books, illustrations, and official documents from throughout Hamilton’s life and career, following him from Nevis-born orphaned immigrant to secretary of the Treasury to his death in a duel against political rival Aaron Burr. Among the books and papers on view are Hamilton’s “Plan of a Constitution for America,” his original draft of President George Washington’s Farewell Address alongside the final version, various pamphlets he published, newspaper articles he cowrote under pseudonyms, and a copy of The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution, by Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. There are also engravings of Hamilton Grange, a look at his relationship with his wife, Eliza Schuyler, and her powerful family, and a wall mural of Hamilton and Burr dueling. There’s a lot to read and the room is very dark, so bring reading glasses if you have them. “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a / Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten / Spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor / Grow up to be a hero and a scholar?” Burr asks at the beginning of the Broadway musical. “Alexander Hamilton: Striver, Statesman, Scoundrel” provides a fascinating, if brief, investigation into that very question.

MACY’S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE: A NEW YORK CITY HOLIDAY TRADITION

thanksgiving-day-parade-tradition

77th St. & Central Park West to 34th St. & Seventh Ave.
Thursday, November 24, free, 9:00 am – 12 noon
212-494-4495
www.rizzolibookstore.com
social.macys.com

In 1924, a bunch of Macy’s employees joined forces and held the first Macy’s Christmas Parade, as it was then known. This year Macy’s celebrates the ninetieth edition of this beloved American event — for those of you going crazy trying to figure out how 1924 to 2016 makes 90, the parade was canceled from 1942 through 1944 because of World War II — with the publication of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade: A New York City Holiday Tradition (Rizzoli, August 2016, $29.95). “This iconic and truly American event started on the streets of New York City in 1924 as a way for New York’s largely immigrant workforce employed at Macy’s department store to celebrate our national day of Thanksgiving in a manner befitting the customs of their native lands,” Governor Andrew Cuomo writes in the foreword. “Today, no other holiday event can match its large-scale pageantry, diversity, and place in pop culture. It could only have been created in New York.” The oversized hardcover features nearly two hundred photographs by Matt Harnick and the Macy’s Archives that reveal the before, during, and after of the parade through the decades, in color and black-and-white, from shots of the balloon creation in New Jersey to pictures of beloved characters marching down Fifth Ave. “Actual preparation for each year’s parade takes approximately eighteen months, with the construction of an individual float requiring anywhere from four to six months,” Stephen H. Silverman notes in his behind-the-scenes essay that introduces readers to many of the people responsible for making things happen, from sketching and designing balloons to arranging the celebrity list to dismantling floats once the parade is over.

“Most often the parade adequately reflects what is going on in American mass culture, news, and entertainment at the time,” parade executive producer Amy Kule tells Silverman. “We try to be nimble. What we can’t be is too cool or fashion-forward.” The 2016 lineup, which cannot be accused of being too cool or fashion-forward, features such giant balloons as Hello Kitty, Pillsbury Doughboy, and Charlie Brown, such floats as 1-2-3 Sesame Street, Mount Rushmore’s American Pride, and Cracker Jack’s At the Ball Game, and such performers as De la Soul, Fitz and the Tantrums, Regina Spektor, Tony Bennett, and Sara McLachlan. To get a start on the parade, head on over to Central Park West and Columbus Ave. between 77th & 81st Sts. the day before, November 23, from approximately 3:00 to 10:00 to check out the Big Balloon Blow-up.

NITEHAWK MIDNITE SCREENINGS: BLOOD FEAST

Herschell Gordon Lewis’s hunger-inducing BLOOD FEAST is considered first splatter film

BLOOD FEAST (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1963)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Friday, November 25, and Saturday, November 26, 12:20 am
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com

We have a bone to pick with Nitehawk Cinema. One of the Brooklyn movie house’s signature series is “Film Feast,” in which they invite chefs to serve specially created meals for specific films, inspired by what’s happening onscreen; for example, on December 13, Richard Donner’s Scrooged, starring Bill Murray, will be shown with a gourmet menu that includes courses named “The Night the Reindeer Died” and “Buy Me a Goose.” So what is Blood Feast, chopped liver? How could this cult classic, widely considered the first splatter horror movie ever made, not make it into the “Film Feast” series? On November 25 and 26 just past midnight, Nitehawk is presenting a 35mm print of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s low-budget, somewhat tongue-in-cheek (or, as you’ll see, tongue-out-of-cheek) gorefest, which stars Lewis regular Mal Arnold (Scum of the Earth!, the nudie musical Goldilocks and the Three Bares) as Fuad Ramses, the limping owner of an “exotic” food store and catering business. Oh, he’s also a homicidal maniac. When the high-falutin’ Mrs. Dorothy Fremont (Lyn Bolton) asks him to cater a party she is throwing for her daughter, Suzette (Connie Mason of Lewis’s 2000 Maniacs), Ramses, who has been killing and cutting up women, sees it as the opportunity he’s been waiting for, to serve an Egyptian feast for the first time in five thousand years in order to bring the goddess Ishtar, Mother of the Veiled Darkness, back to life. (Yes, Ishtar; we’re not kidding.) Meanwhile, Miami detective Pete Thornton (longtime character actor and writer William Kerwin) and the dimwitted police captain (Scott H. Hall) are on the case — well, sort of, as they’re not exactly the brightest bulbs when it comes to putting two and two together. Nor is Suzette, who offers up this lulu: “I was reading about all those murders, and it sort of takes all the joy out of everything.”

blood-feast-poster

Blood Feast might have historical significance in the slasher genre, but it’s a terrible movie, with embarrassingly bad acting, wooden dialogue by screenwriter (Allison) Louise Downe (Lewis’s She-Devils on Wheels, The Gruesome Twosome, and others), convoluted plot twists, and dense-headed camerawork by Lewis (who also composed the creepy score and is the voice on the radio), who died this past September at the age of ninety after having made approximately three dozen films, including The Gore Gore Girls, Color Me Blood Red, and, in 2002 after a thirty-year hiatus, Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat, with J. P. Delahoussaye as Fuad Ramses III and John Waters as a reverend. Which brings us back to Nitehawk’s “Film Feast” series and its monstrous decision not to have Blood Feast be an obvious part of it. Hey, so what’s a little cannibalism among friends? “Nitehawk Midnite Screenings” continues in December with such other thrillers as Bob Clark’s Black Christmas, Nicolas Pesce’s The Eyes of My Mother, and Freddie Francis’s 1972 Tales from the Crypt.

FAYE DRISCOLL — THANK YOU FOR COMING: PLAY

Faye Driscoll (center) makes her BAM debut with THANK YOU FOR COMING: PLAY (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

BAM NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
November 16-19, $25, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
fayedriscoll.com

Over the summer, we saw a work-in-progress LMCC Open Studios presentation of Guggenheim Fellow and Bessie Award winner Faye Driscoll’s latest piece, Thank You for Coming: Play, followed by an open and honest discussion about the project. Seeing the resulting production last night at the BAM Fishman, I am once again in awe of the Brooklyn-based choreographer’s creative ingenuity and absolute unpredictability. The second part of a trilogy that began with Thank You for Coming: Attendance, which had its New York premiere at Danspace Project in March 2014, Play also contains participatory, immersive elements at the beginning before evolving into a (possibly?) semiautobiographical narrative about a human being named Barbone searching for personal identity in a radically changing world. The fantastic cast, consisting of the bold and courageous Paul Singh, Laurel Snyder, Sean Donovan, Alicia Ohs, and Brandon Washington, make faces, constantly change wardrobe, repeat abstract dialogue, and call out declarations; there are also unexpected appearances by composer-musician Bobby McElver and Driscoll. What they all say and what they do are not always in sync as they grab one another, dress and undress in plain view, and disappear behind white boards on a set designed by Nick Vaughan and Jake Margolin that Driscoll deconstructs and reconstructs. (The absurdly funny props and garments are by Jamie Boyle.) At one point Driscoll breaks out into a fierce song about rage that evokes Young Jean Lee, whom she has collaborated with in the past. Thank You for Coming: Play works best when it’s far from obvious; references to Donald Trump felt out of place in a show that otherwise is empowered by a tremendously infectious energy and a controlled chaos that is both passionate and intimate. Play marks Driscoll’s BAM debut; here’s hoping that we’ll soon be seeing her endless inventiveness at the Harvey or the Howard Gilman Opera House.