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The Ministry of Joyce McDonald’s Sculptures
Terence Davies, who died in 2023, at the age of seventy-seven, is the most original modern British director. He was in his forties when he made his first feature, “Distant Voices, Still Lives,” an autobiographical drama about his harsh childhood in nineteen-fifties Liverpool, which is filled with spontaneous singing—and with the looming menace of an abusive father. Davies’s films reflect his experiences as a gay man troubled by longings and inhibitions; he made only nine features, including a passionate adaptation of Edith Wharton’s “The House of Mirth” and an Emily Dickinson bio-pic, “A Quiet Passion,” that’s essentially a screwball tragedy. Davies has rarely received the attention he deserves; a retrospective at Museum of the Moving Image (Sept. 12-21) should help.—Richard Brody
Pick Three
Richard Brody dives into the works of Chantal Akerman.
The Belgian director Chantal Akerman is best known for her masterwork “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.” With its observational method, its choreographic style, and its monumental vision of a woman’s private life, it set the tone for her dozens of movies, which are screening, in a complete retrospective, at MOMA (Sept. 11-Oct. 16). Here are a few highlights.
“Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.”Photograph courtesy Collections CINEMATEK / © Fondation Chantal Akerman
1. “Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s in Brussels”: This lyrical, tough-minded coming-of-age drama, from 1994, is centered on the teen-age Michèle (Circé Lethem), an intellectual cinephile. Encountering a Frenchman in a movie theatre and joining a female friend at a rollicking party, Michèle reaches romantic epiphanies.
2. “Family Business”: Akerman appears in many of her own movies, including her first (“Saute Ma Ville,” from 1968) and her last (“No Home Movie,” from 2015), but nowhere as comically as in this 1984 short film. While visiting Los Angeles to seek financing for a movie, she meets a French actress (Aurore Clément), who recruits her as an English-language dialogue coach, with outrageous results.
3. “South”: Akerman filmed this documentary, from 1999, in Jasper, Texas, where, the previous year, James Byrd, Jr., who was Black, was tortured and murdered by three white men. She interviews Black residents and white officials about racial tensions in the town; with sternly insistent images of public spaces, she evokes horrors that defy depiction.
This Week With: Naomi Fry
Our writers on their current obsessions.
This week, I’m stuck on the 2004 documentary “Camp Hollywood,” which was recommended to me by my friend Heather Jewett (whose podcast “Planet Heather” is one of my favorites). This low-budget doc, directed by Steve Markle and available to view on YouTube, follows a bunch of aspiring actors—along with some has-beens—living in a rundown hotel in the heart of Hollywood. The late writer Gary Indiana makes a surprise cameo as one of the hotel’s guests, and I spotted a young Malin Akerman in a couple of scenes, which made me feel a little better. At least some people make it in show biz, if very rarely.
Christy Turlington, in 1992.Photograph © Pamela Hanson / Courtesy Rizzoli
This week, I loved looking through Pamela Hanson’s new photography book, “The ’90s,” which is out from Rizzoli. Hanson has always been a great fashion photographer, especially good at capturing feminine exuberance, but the span of time that has passed since these pictures were taken now establishes them as bona-fide historical artifacts to boot. Leafing through this album was like poring over beloved relics from my fashion-magazine-loving youth.
This week, I cringed at “Love Thy Nader,” a new-to-Hulu reality show featuring four drama-prone influencer-model sisters from Baton Rouge who, led by the eldest, Brooks Nader, are looking to “chase their dreams in New York.” I’ve only watched two episodes so far, but, already, Brooks has accused her “Dancing with the Stars” partner, the oily Gleb Savchenko, of having cheated on her, and Sarah Jane has had both nipples pierced on camera. “Cringe” is probably too strong a word for what I felt toward this show. It was more like fascination plus distaste, which is my reaction to most reality television, of which I’ve surely seen worse. . . . So, let’s face it, I’ll likely be tuning in for more.
This week, I’m consuming Jerry Hopkins’s “Elvis: The Final Years,” from 1981, which I got at a used bookstore for a dollar. The book, as suggested by its title, charts Elvis’s decline, including his emotional reliance on overeating. One passage in particular, in which Hopkins quotes the words of an associate of Elvis’s, impressed me with its neatness: “It was as if he were trying to comfort the spirit within by stroking it with food.”
This weekend, I’m looking forward to travelling to Los Angeles to see Oasis play live! The last (and only) time I saw a Gallagher brother in person was back in 1997. I was extremely excited to be seated at a sidewalk table right next to Noel and his entourage (including his then wife, Meg Mathews, wearing a fringed suède skirt-and-bustier set) at Time Café on Lafayette (R.I.P.), where the only thing that stood between us was a large potted plant. I hope to recapture the thrill of that first encounter, but this time with more music, less suède, and a lot more people.
P.S. Good stuff on the internet:
