twi-ny recommended events

CREATIVE ENCOUNTERS: IS THE MAN WHO IS TALL HAPPY?

Michel Gondry details a series of animated conversations with Noam Chomsky in brilliant documentary

CinéSalon: IS THE MAN WHO IS TALL HAPPY? AN ANIMATED CONVERSATION WITH NOAM CHOMSKY (Michel Gondry, 2013)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, May 17, $14, 4:00 & 7:30
Series continues Tuesdays through May 31
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

As it turns out, Michel Gondry’s exciting documentary, Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky, is animated in more ways than one. The fifty-year-old French director initially set out to go toe-to-toe with the controversial octogenarian linguist and philosopher, but he realized early on that the battle was lost. So when editing the series of interviews he had with Chomsky over the course of several months in 2010, he decided to illustrate the film with animated cartoon drawings, only occasionally showing the live-action Chomsky, often in a small box or circle within a colorfully rendered scene. After an attempt to impress Chomsky — the author of such books as Syntactic Structures; Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought; Studies on Semantics in Generative Grammar; and The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory — with his own views on image and representation, Gondry becomes embarrassed. “As you can see,” he says while the handwritten words appear on the screen, “I felt a bit stupid here. Let me explain: I think I couldn’t get my point through to Noam. Misuse of words and heavy accent aggravated my attempt.” Chomsky and Gondry go on to explore such concepts as generative grammar, language acquisition, and psychic continuity as Gondry, the director of such offbeat films as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep, Human Nature, and Be Kind, Rewind, makes his endearing, often childlike drawings, a genius counterpoint to Chomsky’s cool and calm super-intellectualism.

Michel Gondry comes up with a unique way to depict Noam Chomsky in IS THE MAN WHO IS TALL HAPPY?

Gondry does get Chomsky to open up a little about his personal life, especially his relationship with his late wife, and they wisely avoid politics. The film eventually takes a hysterical turn when Gondry realizes that he better finish it soon, since it’s been three years since he conducted the talks with Chomsky and he wants to make sure he finishes it before Chomsky dies. In the end, Gondry manages to level the playing field as the two men diagram the title question. Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? is an absolute treat, a fun and fascinating examination of human intelligence, the creative process, the manipulative relationship between director and viewer, and the essence of film and storytelling itself. Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? is screening May 17 at 4:00 and 7:30 in FIAF’s “Creative Encounters” CinéSalon series, with the later show introduced by film journalist and professor Anne-Katrin Titze. The festival continues every Tuesday in May with Claire Denis’s Jacques Rivette, the Night Watchman and Chantal Akerman’s One Day Pina Asked…

“HOLLYWOOD’S HAPPIEST COUPLE”: BILLY WILDER AND CHARLES BRACKETT

Film Forum will celebrate the collaboration between Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett at two-day academy tribute

SPOTLIGHT ON SCREENWRITING
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Sunday, May 15, 5:20 & 7:40, and Monday, May 16, 8:20
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
www.oscars.org

“Profile writers and Hollywood historians — the legitimate few, and a multitude of the mongrels of the species — have, without benefit of [Charles Brackett’s] diaries, created a gray-hued collage of Charlie carelessly pinned and pasted on an indistinct canvas, forever framed by the Billy Wilder legend,” Jim Moore, the grandson and biographer of screenwriter extraordinaire Charlie Brackett, writes in the foreword to Anthony Slide’s “It’s the Pictures That Got Small”: Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood’s Golden Age. Calling Brackett and Wilder’s collaboration an “odd-couple partnership,” Moore adds, “Two more different men you would be hard-pressed to find; two more talented ones, almost impossible to replicate; two more mercurial ones, in one place in time, have not been seen since. . . . Neither man served at the will of the other — Brackett was not Wilder’s secretary, Wilder was not the sole source of their success.” Film Forum is paying tribute to that success on May 15 and 16 with “Hollywood’s Happiest Couple,” showing three inestimable classics written by Brackett and Wilder and directed by Wilder, 1945’s The Lost Weekend and 1950’s Sunset Blvd., both of which won Oscars for screenwriting, and 1939’s Ninotchka, which was nominated for the award but lost out to Gone with the Wind. Moore will give an illustrated talk before all three screenings, which are part of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences series “Spotlight on Screenwriting”; in addition, he will present an academy compilation reel of Wilder and Brackett’s films following The Lost Weekend on Sunday night and Sunset Blvd. on Monday night. The dynamic duo also wrote Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, Ball of Fire, Five Graves to Cairo, Midnight, What a Life, Hold Back the Dawn, The Major and the Minor, A Foreign Affair, The Emperor Waltz, and Arise My Love. “Worked with Billy Wilder, who paces constantly, has over-extravagant ideas, but is stimulating. He has a kind of humor that sparks with mine,” Brackett wrote in a 1936 diary entry. Together they created quite a stimulating legacy as evidenced by this brief homage.

SUNSET SONG

Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn) and Ewan Tavendale (Kevin Guthrie) find love in Scottish farm country in Terence Davies’s SUNSET SONG

SUNSET SONG (Terence Davies, 2014)
Film Forum, 209 West Houston St., 212-727-8110
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, May 13
www.magpictures.com/sunsetsong

A golden glow hovers over Sunset Song, Terence Davies’s lush adaptation of Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s seminal 1932 novel about family, land, war, and one young woman’s coming-of-age. Although it has the epic feel of a sweeping historical tale, the film takes place over just a few years in the second decade of the twentieth century, seen through the eyes of Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn). Her father, John (Peter Mullan), is a brutish farmer who runs his household with an iron fist. He lashes out, literally and figuratively, at his strapping son, Will (Jack Greenlees), who stands and takes it, choosing not to fight back, and treats his wife, Jean (Daniela Nardini), like a housekeeper and baby-making machine. In one of the most wrenching scenes of the film, John drags Jean, who doesn’t want to have any more children, upstairs to rape her in order to increase the size of their family; Jean’s terrifying screams from the bedroom evolve into shrill cries as she gives birth to twins. Following a horrific tragedy, Chris is forced to give up her education — she was studying to become a teacher — and work on the family farm. Upon meeting fellow farmer Ewan Tavendale (Kevin Guthrie), friendship turns into something more as Scotland gets involved in World War I.

Sunset Song is a slow-paced melodrama with moments of poetic beauty alternating with clichéd scenes and disjointed plot twists that come out of nowhere. It’s as if Davies, who has previously adapted John Kennedy Toole’s The Neon Bible, Terence Ratigan’s The Deep Blue Sea, and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth in addition to making the award-winning Distant Voices, Still Lives, sliced and diced too much out of Gibbon’s story, the first book in the A Scots Quair trilogy. Supermodel Deyn (Clash of the Titans, Pusher) is gentle and touching as Chris, and she has a sweet chemistry with Guthrie (Sunshine on Leith, Restless) until things go awry. Cinematographer Michael McDonough evokes Nestor Almendros’s Oscar-winning work on Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven but never quite reaches the breathtaking level the film aspires to, much like Davies’s screenplay leaves us somewhat confused and wanting. But there’s still much to admire in this intimate feminist tale in which the land is a character unto itself, even if it’s not one of Davies’s finest, most magical hours. Sunset Song opens May 13 at Lincoln Plaza and Film Forum; Davies will be at Film Forum for a Q&A following the 6:45 show on opening night.

HAPPY ENDING MUSIC & READING SERIES WITH CHARLES BOCK, ANI DiFRANCO, AMBER TAMBLYN & MORE

Who: Charles Bock, Ani DiFranco, Amber Tamblyn, Belinda McKeon, Kate Neckel, Lady Parts Justice, Amanda Stern
What: Happy Ending Music & Reading Series
Where: Symphony Space, Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, 2537 Broadway at 95th St., 212-864-5400
When: Wednesday, May 18, $15-$30, 7:30
Why: Symphony Space’s Happy Ending Music & Reading Series presents artists performing risky feats while musicians collaborate on a sing-along of cover tunes. Past participants have included Lena Dunham, John Cameron Mitchell, Zadie Smith, Vampire Weekend, Jennifer Egan, and Moby. On May 18, host and curator Amanda Stern, who founded the series in 2003, brings together author Charles Bock (Alice & Oliver, Beautiful Children), musician, activist, and Righteous Babe Ani DiFranco (Up Up Up Up Up Up, Allergic to Water), author Belinda McKeon (Tender, Solace), artist and designer Kate Neckel (Start Now! The Creativity Journal), author, actress, and director Amber Tamblyn (Dark Sparkler, Joan of Arcadia), and special guests Lady Parts Justice for another unpredictable evening of art, music, literature, and mayhem.

WANDERLUST: SLEEPWALKER BY TONY MATELLI

A group of women pose with Tony Matelli’s “Sleepwalker” on the High Line (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The High Line
Eleventh Ave. from 34th St. to Gansevoort St.
“Wanderlust” through March 17, 2017
Open daily, free, 7:00 am – 11:00 pm
www.thehighline.org
sleepwalker high line slide show

It’s all about context. In June 2014, there was a furor at Wellesley when students at the all-woman college protested against the installation of Tony Matelli’s “Sleepwalker” sculpture, a lifelike rendering of a bald white man in nothing but his tighty-whities, eyes closed and arms outstretched. While he is meant to be in the midst of harmless somnambulation, hundreds of women signed an online petition that claimed that the work “has become a source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault for some members of our campus community”; others playfully mocked the work, creating virtual images of it dressed in school T-shirts and the like. Matelli responded by telling CBS Boston, “I think that these people are misconstruing this work. I think they’re seeing something in this work that isn’t there. But who am I to say how people should react to this?” Ultimately, the statue had to be removed after being spray-painted and subsequently broken in protest. A few months later, I encountered a different casting of “Sleepwalker” on the rooftop deck of the Marlborough Chelsea, where it was just him and me; at the time, I wrote that I found it to be “intriguing and humorous, not threatening at all, perhaps even symbolic of an America that often seems to be half asleep.” Of course, I’m not a college-age woman, and the sculpture is not by the side of the road in some woods.

Tony Matelli’s “Sleepwalker” gets a hug from a happy stranger on the High Line (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“Sleepwalker” has now made its way to the High Line, where it awaits visitors by the Fourteenth St. entrance as part of the group show “Wanderlust.” On a recent Saturday afternoon, I watched as people huddled around it, many wondering if it were an actual real person, waiting for him to make a sudden movement. Kids reached out to touch a hand, a young man sniffed its head, and tourists posed in silly positions with the work. There were hugs, funny faces, selfies, and an abundance of smiles after initial hesitation. At Wellesley, “Sleepwalker” was steeped in controversy. At the Marlborough Chelsea, it was somewhat of a lonely, pathetic creature. And now, on the High Line, one of the city’s most attractive destinations, it has become a novelty; there was even an official photo contest on April 23 “inviting visitors to the park to post their most creative photo inspired by Tony Matelli’s sculpture ‘Sleepwalker.’” It’s a far cry from the spray-painted version surrounded by police tape on the Wellesley campus. Art affects people in different ways, and “Sleepwalker” is a stunning example of that. It also says a lot about where we are as a culture in the twenty-first century.

IDIOT

Prince Myshkin (Daniel Kublick) looks at the world with wide-eyed innocence in creative Dostoevsky adaptation (photo by Carl Skutsch)

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 21, $25, 8:30
212-352-3101
www.here.org

Robert Lyons and HERE artistic director Kristin Marting have previously collaborated on experimental theatrical adaptations of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons, called The Possessed, and three short stories by the nineteenth-century Russian writer in The Fever. Now Lyons (text) and Marting (direction and choreography) have turned their attention to Dostoevsky’s 1869 novel, The Idiot, streamlining it to its central love quadrangle. Prince Myshkin (Daniel Kublick) is a wide-eyed Christ-like figure who suffers from epileptic seizures, has an almost blind devotion to the good in life, and is not nearly the simpleton many assume he is. “For some reason, people think of me as an idiot,” he says early on. “At one time I was so ill that I must have seemed like an idiot; but what kind of idiot can I be now, if I am aware that people consider me an idiot?” He is besotted with Nastasya Filipovna (Purva Bedi), a former sex slave and self-proclaimed “student of the apocalypse” who is considering marrying the wealthy Rogozhin (Merlin Whitehawk), a hardy bear of a man with a large appetite for women and drink. Meanwhile, the socialite Aglaya (Lauren Cipoletti) appears to be a much better match for the prince. “The prince fell in love with you the first time you met. He called you: ‘the light,’” Nastasya tells Aglaya. “I also know that you love him. I like to think of you two together as one.” Over the course of seventy-five minutes, the four engage in discussions of love and jealousy, innocence and experience, social position and honor, and the very meaning of existence. “Surely a single moment of such boundless happiness is worth an entire life,” the prince declares.

Prince Myshkin (Daniel Kublick) is torn between two lovers in IDIOT (photo by Carl Skutsch)

Expanded from its original presentation at HERE’s 2014 CULTUREMART festival, Idiot takes place in Nick Benacerraf’s immersive cabaret-style environment, arranged as an X that crosses at the center in a carpeted circle with four tilted mirror/monitors above that show the audience, close-ups of the characters, and the maelstrom that goes on inside the prince’s head when he suffers from his seizures. (The video design is by Ray Sun Ruey-Horng.) The audience, referred to as “guests,” sit in four triangles consisting of chairs arranged relatively randomly. The four paths lead to a stage where Aglaya and Natasya perform Russian karaoke, including a song about escape; a photo-booth room where characters make reality-show-style confessions; a table in a bar where they can down vodka and champagne; and a curtained exit. There is also a DJ playing music by Blue Man Group founding member Larry Heinemann; the period costumes are by Kate Fry. Kublick (Trade Practices, Health Insurance) is adorable as Prince Lev Myshkin, his doe-eyed positivity infectious, beginning when he leads ticket holders to their seats and continuing as he makes direct eye contact with the audience throughout the show; you just want to get up and hug him. Bedi (Assembled Identity, East Is East) has an innate sex appeal as Natasya, imbuing her with a lurking danger, while Cipoletti (Heathers: The Musical, How Alfo Learned to Love) and Whitehawk (Privatopia, Red Wednesday) provide solid support. Of course, Idiot lacks the epic scope of its source material, eschewing social commentary and Russian politics in favor of exploring the nature of love, and it does so with an adroit sense of humor and a playful freshness leading up to its poignant finale.

AN INTIMATE EVENING OF MUSIC AND POETRY WITH PHILIP GLASS AND THE DAYS AND NIGHTS FESTIVAL PLAYERS

Philip Glass and friends will share music and poetry at City Winery at benefit for Days and Nights Festival

Who: Philip Glass, the Days and Nights Festival Players
What: Benefit for Days and Nights Festival
Where: City Winery, 155 Varick St. between Spring & Vandam Sts., 212-608-0555
When: Sunday, May 15, $70-$115, 2:00 & 8:00
Why: New Yorkers can get a taste of the sixth annual Days and Nights Festival, held in Big Sur every September, at this benefit for the Central Coast arts festival, a program of the nonprofit Philip Glass Center for the Arts, Science and the Environment. On May 15, Glass, who founded the center “to gather the world’s leaders in the fields of art, science, and the environment for a broad array of interdisciplinary activities including performances, seminars, and education programs that inspire and motivate the public to become engaged with matters vital to the future of the natural environment and the quality of human existence,” will be at City Winery with the Days and Nights Festival Players for two shows of music and poetry, at 2:00 and 8:00. In between, at 6:00, you can join the seventy-nine-year-old Glass and friends for a pre-evening-show dinner ($325).