1211

 Sunday,  December 11, 2022

In bed at 11:10, waiting for Geri's return from The Nutcracker, up at 7:10, filled the niger feeder and the 2 tube feeders, the suet holder has 'bit the dust,' gone, carried, emptied, and dropped somewhere by a felonious squirrel.  First to arrive a chickadee, then goldfinches, then our red-bellied woodpecker, a mourning dove and, what else, a squirrel on the ground.

Our Ballerina  The Nutcracker Last night was 8-year-old Ellis' debut onstage as a member of the corps in the Milwaukee Ballet's annual moneymaker. When told that she would be obligated to attend 4 practice sessions before the performances began, she protested about not being paid.  A born union organizer.  Tonight she is "on call" in case another Angel is sick or otherwise can't make the performance.  It seems she has walked about en pointe almost from the time she started walking, always ready to dance.  We wait to learn her reaction to her first engagement on stage, whether it reinforces her love of dance.

Chantal Akerman, No Home Movie is unmistakably a Chantal Akerman film - long, long tracking shots and static shots, lots of silence, the passage of time, ordinary things, ordinary people engaged in ordinary activities, eating cereal from a bowl, stabbing a small pickle in a large jar, and suchlike.  It starts with a very long static shot of a tree being battered by strong winds which I suppose is a warning of what is to come or perhaps a symbol of the protagonist of the film; the 'star' of the movie is her mother, Natalia, a survivor of Auschwitz.  Her mother who seems like a most likable, gentle human being and loving mother, with whom daughter Chantal was very bonded.  The first part of the film is an intimate portrayal of the everyday life of a Jewish Auschwitz survivor, a survivor whose own parents both were murdered at Auschwitz.  Akerman shot the footage over several months, filming about 40 hours worth which she edited down to less than 2 hours.  In the last part of the film, Natalia, 86 years old, is dying, cared for at home by Akerman's younger sister Sylviane and a part-time house cleaner, and Akerman herself when she is there in Brussels.  It appears that all Natalia wants to do is sleep and the daughters, at least Sylviane, persist in trying to keep her from sleeping.  At the dinner table, Sylviane talks to Natalia as if she were a child, which has to be a nightmarish fear for elderly parents who haven't lost 'all of their marbles.'  In the second part of the film, Natalia is dying and she died shortly after the filming stopped.  Chantal died a suicide several months later.  In the second half of the film, Akerman interspersed tracking and static footage of a desert and then a grassland with a distant city on the horizon, presumably to reflect her own thoughts and emotions as she made the final edits on the film, not unrelated to her subsequent suicide.

Down There is another Akerman film I watched while Geri was at the PAC.  I'm not sure exactly what it was about though it is certainly about Israel, the conditions there, her fears of danger there, and wondering how life would be different if her parents had moved there after the War instead of Belgium.  I didn't feel I had gained anything watching the film which is incredibly tedious, even for Akerman.

Barney's Version was our Sunday Night Movie.  Terrible choice.  We had never heard of it but it starred Paul Giamatti and Rosamund Pike with supporting actors Dustin Hoffman and Minnie Driver.  If this movie had been written and filmed with the express purpose of painting an ugly picture of Jews it couldn't have been more offensive.  The only saving grace in the movie was Rosamund Pike.  I understand why I never heard of the movie. IMDB's blurb describes it as "The picaresque and touching story of the politically incorrect, fully lived life of the impulsive, irascible and fearlessly blunt Barney Panofsky."  I don't think so.  Apparently neither did the theater audiences.  Its estimated budget was $30,000,000, its US and Canada gross was $4,5000,000, world gross was another $12M.