It's the dog days of the summer, which means that I can do lots of things I find hard to do during term time. One of them is spending evenings doing something other than preparing classes and getting ready for committee meetings. But sometimes I inadvertently let myself in for cognitive overload, and that is what I did this past weekend.
On Thursday evening (well, the weekend starts early in the summertime), Adria and I watched a superb DVD, Frozen River. This is an independent film about two women who live on or near the Mohawk Reservation on the New York-Canadian board struggling to make it financially, and in other ways. The plot revolves around their unlikely and unwilling collaboration. What they have in common is that they are poor and desperate to care for their children. It is a bleak, beautifully-filmed, story, with magnificent performances by Melissa Leo and Misty Upham. It shows what talented filmmakers can do on a small budget. But I found it a pretty upsetting story.
Friday evening we needed to do our duty to our grandson, Sam, who recently turned 14 years of age. Like his peers, Sam is hooked on the Harry Potter saga, and had gone to see the new film on its first evening, Thursday. We arrived forty-five minutes early at the local movie house, trying to beat the crowds. But, in Princeton at any rate, there were no crowds, and we had no trouble finding the perfect seats. The film turned out to be a great example of how little Hollywood can do with a huge budget. The film is overly plot-driven, hard to follow, overblown, pretentious and genuinely tedious. We have enjoyed some of the earlier Harry Potter films, but this one was a great disappointment. And to top things off, one of everyone’s favorite characters is killed by one of everyone’s least favorite characters (I’ll not tell, perhaps someone has not read the book!). We called Sam when we got home, since he lives in California and was just starting dinner. He announced that it was a really bad film. Right on, Sam!
Last night we went to the local summer opera festival to see Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. The company is just in its sixth year, and getting better as it goes. They have now moved into the large house at the University’s McCarter Theater, and collaborate with the New Jersey Symphony Chamber Orchestra. It’s real opera, and the genius of the Artistic Director, Scott Altman, is to identify brilliant young singers on the way up professionally. Scott knocked one for six in Lucia with Lisette Oropesa, a soprano from Louisiana who gave a truly wonderful rendition of the lead role. Oropesa was good throughout, and just superb in the Mad Scene. If one takes the story seriously (I know, you’ve seen it, and it is a knock-off on Romeo and Juliet), it is pretty depressing, since everyone you care about dies. But it is great to see young artists doing so well and a bright young company developing so quickly.
To sum up, nobody died on Thursday night, one major figure died Friday night, and Saturday night was (as my father would have said) a Russian comedy – everybody dies. But Adria and I enjoyed ourselves. And tonight I barbecue. Life is (sometimes) very good.
