Coronavirus and cinema
I got COVID and watched many movies
We’re back!
Housekeeping notes: This Monday, paid subscribers got this month’s (and this year’s first!) ET Ask Home, featuring journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed. The Monday after next, paid subscribers will get the first ET Watch Home, a new series this year in which I give you a monthly essay on a different Czech New Wave film and its director, that I might do something with the knowledge I gained on the Czech New Wave last year.
With that! It’s 2024! Onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
I read Shaul Magid’s new book, The Necessity of Exile, and found it provocative and challenging and worth reading and kept bringing it up in conversation, so I interviewed him and wrote about it for the Forward.
UN humanitarians warn “everyone is hungry in Gaza.”
The New York Times has a very effective visualization and article on how the Russian government silences wartime dissent.
South Korea’s opposition leader is recovering after being stabbed in the neck.
Japanese officials have confirmed at least 62 deaths after a powerful earthquake hit the country. Rescue crews, at time of writing, are in a race against time to find and save survivors.
New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez was charged with exploiting his Senate office to help Qatar. Yes, he’d already been accused of doing the same for Egypt.
MY VIEWS ON…
…every movie I watched while recovering from the novel coronavirus!
Last year, a paid subscriber unsubscribed and left a note that he was doing so because the content wasn’t intellectual enough. I will be honest: This hurt my feelings. This newsletter? Shallow??? A part of me vowed to give you headier content this year, that you would not also consider this newsletter vapid.
And I will still try to do that, but, in this edition, I am going to instead confess that I was infected with the novel coronavirus for the first time in four years at Christmas and so spent the second half of my little holiday break isolating in my own home through the new year. I have since recovered, but during this period of time I 1) realized that rather than being mad at my body for a host of reasons, as I can sometimes be at the end of the year, I was grateful to it for keeping me healthy most of the time and also because mine was a mild case and 2) watched too many movies.
And here they are!
The Interpreter (2018) - I watched this on Amazon Prime. It’s about a Slovak man who goes to confront the Nazi who killed his parents when he was a small child but meets his grown son instead. The two then travel around to the sites of the father’s crimes, with the Slovak man (serious, intellectual, gentle) acting as interpreter for the son (boorish jokester). I watched this because the Slovak man is played by my beloved Jiri Menzel, who is genuinely great in this, but the whole movie is very good. It had so much to say on complicity, guilt, innocence, and what we do with the choices we have. Very beautifully shot, too.
The Return of the Prodigal Son (1967) - I watched this on Criterion. I know this is a staple of the Czech New Wave, and I appreciated it, but I did not enjoy it.
Whisper of the Heart (1995) - I watched this on Amazon because a friend said I would love it and I did! It’s a Studio Ghibli movie about a young, bookish girl who realizes all the books she’s reading have already been checked out by a boy. One day, on her way to drop off lunch for her father, she follows a cat to “a place where stories start.” I loved it. (One thing, though: Make sure you rent the Japanese version in subtitles! There is a translation subplot that won’t make sense in English.)
The Joke (1969) - I watched this on Criterion and loved it but I’m going to write about it later this year for ET Watch home so I’m not saying more here.
Prefabricated Houses (1960) - This is a roughly 7 minute film Jiri Menzel made as a student. You can find it on YouTube. I shouldn’t even be telling you people that I watched this while I was sick.
Maestro (2023) - This is on Netflix and it is not for me, sorry! The first 45 minutes felt like watching a caricature. It gets better once the movie switches from black and white to color. I thought Carey Mulligan was excellent and Bradley Cooper wanted very badly to be. Still, worth watching. Maybe you’ll love it!
Howl’s Moving Castle (2000) - I rented this on Amazon, too. It’s not my favorite Miyazaki, but it was very charming.
Between the Lines (1977) - I rented this movie about the zany crew at a Boston-based underground newspaper on Amazon and think it’s the best movie about journalists and journalism I’ve ever seen.
When Harry Met Sally (1989) - Neil and I masked up and watched this together, as we do every New Year’s Eve. It’s just the best.
Crossing Delancey (1988) - I watched this free but with ads on YouTube because I liked Between the Lines so much and Crossing Delancey is director Joan Micklin Silver’s more famous work. I loved the thing that got it dinged—namely, how “ethnic” (i.e. New York Jewish) it is and how fully fleshed out all the characters, even the bit parts, feel. But I’m not sure why the only person in this movie who shows none of the humor of the world she’s from is…our protagonist?
Charulata (1964) - I watched this on Criterion because I read that Joan Micklin Silver said that she felt an affinity with Satyajit Ray and because I love Ray’s Big City and because Neil told me to take a break from Czech movies for a night. I’m so glad I did. It’s one of the most amazing films I’ve ever seen, I think. Every scene is beautifully shot, but all that beauty is in service of character and story and the world in which they live. Basically it’s late 19th century Calcutta, and a wealthy newspaper editor is obsessed with politics. His wife is more literary; she is also beautiful and bored. His creative, goofy, friendly cousin comes to live with them, and is encouraged by the husband to spend time with his wife. Her unfortunate brother and sister-in-law come to live with them and the brother is entrusted with the newspaper’s financial affairs. You know what’s going to happen next. You want to see exactly how it’s going to happen—how all that beauty will hurt you—all the same.
And that was it! May my holiday novel coronavirus infection bring you happy movie viewing.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
I don’t normally share college newspapers’ writings here, but will make an exception for this piece, written by Harvard’s former Hillel director, against the weaponization of antisemitism.
From the Guardian: “A group of prominent Israelis has accused the country’s judicial authorities of ignoring ‘extensive and blatant’ incitement to genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza by influential public figures.”
From Haaretz: “Israel's High Court ruled on Monday to nullify a law passed by the Knesset in July eliminating the reasonableness clause - a key bill advanced by Benjamin Netanyahu's government as part of its judicial overhaul.”
Also from Haaretz: “The disciplinary committee of the University of Haifa has suspended for the duration of the proceedings eight Arab students who are facing disciplinary action over social media posts the panel claims expressed support for Hamas in connection to the October 7 attack.”
A New York Times investigation “uncovered new details showing a pattern of rape, mutilation and extreme brutality against women in the attacks on Israel” on Oct. 7. Relatedly, Laura E. Adkins at the Forward has an op-Ed unpacking the denial, despite documentation, that widespread gender-based violence happened that day.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the “resettlement,” and permanent Israeli control, of Gaza.
Alanis Morissette discovered and shared that her mother was born in Hungary to Jewish Holocaust survivors.
-ET