Buddhist bad boy Chögyam Trungpa is focus of colorful new documentary playing at the Rubin Museum (photo by Bob Morehouse)
CRAZY WISDOM: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE (Johanna Demetrakas, 2011)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
November 25 – December 3, $12
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org
www.crazywisdomthemovie.com
Born in February 1939 and recognized as an enlightened reincarnation of the Trungpa tülkus when he was just thirteen months old, Chögyam Trungpa escaped his native Tibet during the 1959 Chinese invasion, eventually becoming a central figure in the spread of Tibetan Buddhism throughout the West. Filmmaker Johanna Demetrakas (Right Out of History: The Making of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party), a former student and friend of Chögyam Trungpa’s, recounts his unusual story in the adulatory Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. “From the first seminar, called ‘The Battle of Ego” in Los Angeles, to filming his cremation on a cloudless but rainbow-filled day in Vermont, Chögyam Trungpa literally blew my mind,” Demetrakas explains on the film’s official website. His fascinating tale is liable to blow your mind too. Chögyam Trungpa invited Demetrakas into his inner circle from 1983 to 1987, allowing her intimate access to his wild life, which included exchanging his monk’s robes for a business suit and later a pseudo-military uniform, confusing his followers and angering his critics. A proponent of what he called “crazy wisdom,” Chögyam Trungpa studied at Oxford, suffered partial paralysis in a car accident, married a sixteen-year-old westerner, smoked cigarettes, was a heavy drinker, and carried on dalliances with many of his female students while teaching about fear, self-deception, the ego, spiritual materialism, and the importance of meditation. “You can survive by doing nothing,” he preached, but he alienated some with his nontraditional actions, leading him to be known as the “Bad Boy of Buddhism.” Trying to get to the bottom of the complicated man who founded such learning centers as the Naropa Institute and Shambhala, Demetrakas speaks with Chögyam Trungpa’s wife, Diana Mukpo, his lover Agness Au, and his eldest son, Sakyong Mipham; such fellow teachers as Pema Chodron and Ram Dass; poets Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman; and various other scholars, journalists, and former students, supplemented by archival footage and clips from his teachings, which together paint a compelling portrait of a most colorful and singular individual. Crazy Wisdom is scheduled for a one-week limited engagement at the Rubin Museum beginning November 25, with all screenings (several of which are beginning to sell out) followed by Q&As with such special guests as Demetrakas, Waldman, Au, Meredith Monk, Tulku Jamyang Rinpoche, and others.
Celebrating the release of Alexander Payne’s The Descendants, the Museum of the Moving Image’s “The Films of Alexander Payne” series concludes November 25 with Sideways, the eclectic director’s fourth film, following the underseen Citizen Ruth, the excellent Election, and the overrated About Schmidt. Sideways is fabulously entertaining from start to finish, a smart, inventive, very funny dark comedy about friendship and love set in California wine country. Paul Giamatti stars as Miles, a schlumpy wine connoisseur who is having trouble getting over his divorce and the failure of his massive novel to get published. His best friend, Jack (Thomas Haden Church), is getting married, so the two head off on a road trip, with Miles looking forward to sampling fine wine, and Jack anticipating sampling fine women. While Jack finds what he is looking for in Stephanie (Sandra Oh, who was married to Payne at the time), Miles seems hell-bent on not allowing himself to enjoy life, even as a beautiful woman with a deep appreciation of the grape (the excellent Virginia Madsen in what should have been a career-redefining performance) shows an interest in him. You definitely do not have to be a wine drinker to fall in love with this marvelous movie, one of the best of 2004; it was nominated for Best Director, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Madsen), and Best Supporting Actor (Haden Church), and screenwriters Jim Taylor and Payne won for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Iconoclastic writer-director Terrence Malick has made only five feature films in his forty-plus-year career, but his latest is his very best. Following Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), and The New World (2005), The Tree of Life is an epic masterpiece of massive proportions, a stirring visual journey into the beginning of the universe, the end of the world, and beyond. The unconventional nonlinear narrative essentially tells the story of a middle-class Texas family having a difficult time coming to grips with the death of one of their sons in the military. Malick cuts between long flashbacks of Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien (Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain) in the 1950s and 1960s, as they meet, marry, and raise their three boys, to the present, when Jack (Sean Penn), their eldest, now a successful architect, is still searching for answers. The sets by production designer Jack Fisk transport viewers from midcentury suburbia to the modern-day big city and a heavenly beach, all gorgeously shot by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. Every frame is so beautiful, it’s as if they filmed the movie only at sunrise and sunset, the Golden Hour, when the light is at its most pure. The Tree of Life is about God and not God, about faith and belief, about evolution and creationism, about religion and the scientific world. The film opens with a quote from the Book of Job: “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation . . . while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” Early on Mrs. O’Brien says in voice-over, “The nuns taught us there are two ways through life: The way of nature, and the way of grace. You have to choose which one to follow.” Malick doesn’t get caught up in those questions, instead focusing on the miracles of life and death and everything in between.
First and foremost, don’t link Bridesmaids in with all those lousy Saturday Night Live one-note movies and the string of overrated and overhyped lowbrow trash streaming out of the Judd Apatow factory. And don’t assume it’s a silly chick flick either. As it turns out, Bridesmaids is one of the most consistently funny laugh-out-loud romps of this young century. Directed by Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig, Bridesmaids is an endlessly clever and insightful examination of love, loneliness, and friendship starring SNL’s Kristen Wiig, who cowrote the smart script with Groundlings member Annie Mumolo (who makes a cameo as a nervous flyer). Wiig shows surprising depth and range as Annie, a perennial screw-up whose closest childhood friend, Lillian (Maya Rudolph), is marrying into a very snooty upper-crust family. After agreeing to be Lillian’s maid of honor, Annie gets involved in a battle of wits with Lillian’s future sister-in-law, the elegant Helen (a radiant Rose Byrne), who is determined to outshine Annie in every way possible and steal Lillian away from her. Already a mess — she had to close her bakery, she shares an apartment with a bizarre pair of British siblings, she works in a jewelry store where she drives away potential customers with her sorry tales of woe, and she allows herself to be treated miserably as a late-night booty call for a self-centered businessman (Jon Lamm) — Annie experiences a series of hysterical, pathetic setbacks as she attempts to organize the bridal shower and bachelorette party, including a riotous potty-humor scene in a high-end boutique that is likely to go down in comedy history for its sheer relentlessness. The rest of the bridesmaids are quite a hoot — Becca (Ellie Kemper), the Disney-loving kewpie doll; Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey), a foul-mouthed married mother who can’t wait to go crazy away from her family; and the groom’s burly sister, Megan (the hugely entertaining Melissa McCarthy), who lives life without a filter. Annie is so caught up in her own failures that she doesn’t recognize when something potentially good enters her life, in the form of state trooper Nathan Rhodes (Chris O’Dowd). Wiig gives the finest performance of her career as Annie, clearly a role that is very close to her heart. Despite the slapstick nature of many of the jokes, Bridesmaids is filled with heart and soul, making it one of the best comedies in years.
