Listen to Me Marlon -- Film Review Best of Enemies -- Film Review Earthquake Storms -- Book Review
Listen to Me Marlon
Directed
by Steven Riley
This is a superb rendering of the varied, complex, and
deeply tragic life of Marlon Brando. It
is very moving. I don't know what could
be done to improve this film. I think
it is as good a presentation of this subject as can be done within the time
constraint of under two hours. Obviously
when you try to condense a life as rich and complicated as Marlon Brando's into
less than two hours some things have to be left out. I am curious to know more about Marlon
Brando's life as a result of watching this film, but the film had both breadth
and depth. It covered everything that I
would have wanted it to cover and it was a penetrating, thought provoking
study. This was made possible by the
many hours of audio diaries that Marlon Brando recorded himself that were
searching, thoughtful, and introspective, and formed the soundtrack for the
film. There was no narrator or
commentator other than Brando himself. There
were photographs, documentary footage, and newscasts to illustrate events.
The film explored his difficult childhood growing up in
Omaha, Nebraska, with alcoholic parents, and an especially cold, violent
father. The mother seems to have been
somewhat better and he had a nanny that he felt close to, but who left him at
age seven to get married. He had a
bitter divorce, his son was kidnapped and recovered. The son later killed his half sister's
boyfriend in Brando's house. The half
sister later committed suicide. He suffered
more than his share of horrendous tragedies. He did not like the spotlight. Like John Lennon, he realized what a world of
illusion and misunderstanding it is, how isolating it can be, and how it makes
authentic relationships with people difficult or impossible. He was interested in the civil rights
struggle. He was a companion and
supporter of Martin Luther King. He
refused an Oscar as a protest on behalf of American Indians and their treatment
by Hollywood. He was more than an
actor. He thought about social issues
and the impact of films upon society.
The film does a good job of connecting Brando's inner demons
with his work as an actor on stage and in the movies. His work as an actor grew out of his inner torment. "When you are unwanted, you try on
different identities in hope that you will find something that is
acceptable. Acting is survival." He was blessed with stunning good looks and
natural charisma. Many of his films are among the best films
ever made. There are reflections on the
nature of acting and footage of his acting teacher, Stella Adler, at the New
School in New York City. He had been in
psychoanalysis, which I think helped him focus on his inner self and use his own
inner turmoil in his acting. It probably
motivated him to make the many tapes of his thoughts and comments, which are a
fortunate treasure trove of information and insight.
I have never made a list of my ten best documentary films of
all time, but if I ever did, this would likely be on it. It is very hard to get any better than
this. Go see it.
Best of Enemies
Directed
by Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville
This is a rehash of the 1968 political conventions and the
debates between William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal that were aired as part
of ABC's alleged news coverage. I
vaguely remember watching some of these when I was about fourteen years
old. These debates varied in length
between about 8 and 22 minutes. They
were not very long. I am quite sure I
did not watch all of them, but I did watch the famous ninth debate when Buckley
lost his temper and threatened to sock Gore Vidal in the face. I don't remember too much else about this and
at the time I was ignorant and had a very limited perspective on the country
and what was happening to us as a nation.
I remember checking Buckley's book, Up
From Liberalism, out of the library and carrying it around for some
time. I didn't read the whole
thing. I started it, but Buckley is
pompous and rather boring. I didn't warm
to Gore Vidal either. Vidal represented
an iconoclasm and counterculture to which I had no exposure growing up in a
small, backward, conservative town in Ohio.
I like him much better now that I have become an iconoclast and
counterculture figure myself. What I say
here is not what I recall or influenced in any way by my own very vague
memories of these events. It is based
strictly on what was presented in the film.
This film is interesting and presents a clash of two strong
intellectual personalities. They were
both members of the east coast elite.
Buckley was well-to-do and educated in his early years in England. Vidal's family was military and
political. I wish the film was a little
better than it was. These two men had a
deep visceral hatred for one another that lasted their entire lives. They represented polar opposites in values,
lifestyle, and vision for the country. I
didn't really grasp the source of this rancorous hatred. I understand they are different, they have
different points of view, etc. But
difference does not entail that they must hate each other with such implacable
animosity. They seemed to need each
other as enemies. There was a peculiar
bond of rivalry that they seemed to revel in.
I think there was some mutual jealousy as well as morbid
fascination. There was no foundation of
good will or mutual respect.
Buckley was a grandiose, well defended person who hid behind
this pose of intellectual superiority.
Vidal detested this. He could see
Buckley for what he was, namely, an authoritarian, narcissistic bigot, and he
knew how to needle him. He knew how to
get under his skin and expose that ugly, violent, spite and disdain for those
he considered beneath himself, which was almost everybody. Vidal was not intimidated by Buckley's
intellect. In fact, he mocked it. Buckley wasn't used to being challenged on
his own turf, especially by someone for whom he had little more than
contempt. The fact that Vidal was able
to bring Buckley to the point where he completely lost it in a public forum was
deeply wounding to him and he never recovered from it. But Vidal had been wounded long before, and
throughout his life, by the narrow minded prejudices and righteous exclusion
that Buckley embodied. However, Vidal
was accustomed to being insulted and disdained for what he was and was much
better prepared for the attacks from Buckley.
These so-called debates reflected a cultural and political
divide in the United States that existed at the time, but which has deepened and
intensified ever since. The election of
1968, and particularly the Democratic Convention in Chicago of that year, can
be seen as the beginning of a long downward spiral in the United States,
politically, culturally, economically, philosophically, and in terms of the
media's role in informing and educating the public. We are now living in the shadow of that long
process of cultural and political degeneration.
We have gone from William F. Buckley to Donald Trump. Gore Vidal is all but forgotten.
The subject of this film, I think, is rather difficult,
because these two men were primarily writers,
who expressed their ideas in books and long essays and arguments. A film does not and cannot capture all that
has been laid down in pages and pages of print.
So the portrait of these two men and their rivalry is somewhat
truncated. Buckley, however, also had a
presence in television and for that reason is probably better known. It takes a lot more effort to read a book,
and I think Vidal's reputation and legacy has been hampered by that, in
contrast to Buckley.
The film is a good, intriguing introduction. I come away from it feeling more curious than
informed. I think I might read Myra Breckenridge. It might give me better insight into Gore
Vidal, who for me is the more remote of these two characters. Buckley is a much better known quantity,
although the film gave me some curiosity about his later years, particularly
the despair and depression he expressed in his late interview with Charlie
Rose.
I wish the film had shown more of the debates
themselves. The early debates were shown
and the ninth debate, where the uproar occurred. But the tenth debate was skirted with only
scant mention. It would have been
interesting to see how they rebounded after that inglorious spectacle. I think this film will be of special interest
to those who are preoccupied with politics or who are interested in journalism
and the information media. Personally, I
never watch television, except when I visit my dad. And I am always shocked at the degradation that
has occurred both in news coverage and in the popular culture. This film is a measuring stick of that
process of decline, like returning to the wilderness and seeing how much the
glaciers have melted after many years. It
does what it does about as well as it could, but I think it is necessary to
read in order to understand who these two men were and what this confrontation
of personalities was really all about.
Earthquake Storms: The Fascinating History and Volatile Future
of the San Andreas Fault. By John Dvorak. New York:
Pegasus Books. 2014.
Earthquake
Storms is indeed a fascinating history, not only of the San Andreas
Fault that runs along the western edge of California, but also of the State of
California itself, the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, the building of
the Golden Gate Bridge, the California Gold Rush, the development of the oil
industry in California, the growth of the science of geology, the increasing
understanding of earthquakes, the development of the Richter scale, the Trojan
War, paleoseismology, as well as the future of the San Andreas Fault and the
prospects of predicting earthquakes, in addition to many other interesting side
roads. The book is well written, well
researched and has depth as well as breadth.
It is a stimulating panorama that includes colorful depictions of the personalities
whose curiosity and dogged persistence made the breakthroughs that moved our
understanding of earthquakes forward. Dvorak
makes interesting connections between personal peculiarities and psychological needs
of individuals and the influence it had on their work as a researchers and
scientists.
Until the latter half of the twentieth century earthquakes
were mysterious, apparently random events, that could be enormously
destructive. But people had no clue why
they occurred when and where they did and what caused them. The destructive potential of earthquakes has
grown with the growth of civilization and the construction of large cities on
or near the faults in the earth where earthquakes occur, and this in turn has
stimulated the study of earthquakes and their causes. Earthquake Storms documents this growing
interest and understanding of earthquakes beginning in the nineteenth century
with dramatic strides forward in the twentieth.
However, this understanding has not reached a point where earthquakes
can be foreseen with the kind of accuracy that has come to forecasting the weather. Dvorak cites a 2008 report by the Working
Group on California Earthquake Probabilities that asserts a 31% probability of
a magnitude 6.8 or stronger quake along the Hayward Fault, which runs along the
eastern side of San Francisco Bay from Richmond, through Berkeley, Oakland,
Hayward and Fremont, within the next thirty years. (p. 235) Not exactly something you can make plans
around, but it does emphasize the need to strengthen buildings and
infrastructure for the inevitable traumas that will be visited upon them.
While this book is well thought out, well organized, and
coherently written, it does have one major drawback, and that is a dearth of
maps, drawings, diagrams, and illustrations that would make some of these
concepts and descriptions a lot easier to grasp. Dvorak does include eight pages of black and
white photographs that are very interesting and helpful, but the book needs a
lot more. I would recommend another
fifty pages of maps and illustrations.
I'll give you an example.
When the North American plate
began to drift over the Farallon-Pacific's spreading central region, a
transform fault formed, and then a peculiar feature developed at either end of
that fault. The feature, known as a
triple junction, is a place where the boundaries of three tectonic plates
meet. In this case, two of the plates
are the North American and Pacific plates; the third, which is actually what
remains of the Farallon plate, has been given a different name depending on
whether it is north or south of the transform fault. At the north end, the surviving part of the
Farallon plate is now known as the Gorda plate and the point where the three
plates meet is the Mendocino triple junction, because the point is currently
located near Cape Mendocino. At the
south end is the Cocos plate -- a remnant of the Farallon plate -- and the
Rivera triple junction. What is
important here is that, because of the directions in which the various plates
are moving, neither the Mendocino nor the Rivera triple junction is stationary;
both migrate. And they migrate in opposite
directions, the Mendocino triple junction to the north and the Rivera to the
south. As time progresses, the transform
boundary between the Pacific and North American plates lengthens. And that brings us back to the San
Francisquito-Fenner-Clemens Well Fault.
(p. 211)
Can you visualize that all right? Maybe you don't really need a map. It should be no problem to anyone who is
steeped in the geology and geography of California. But how many people would that be? This book is written, supposedly, for a wide
audience. But doesn't Dvorak know that Americans are
among the most geographically illiterate people in the developed world? According to National Geographic and Roper
surveys:
About 11 percent of young
citizens of the U.S. couldn't even locate the U.S. on a map. The Pacific Ocean's location was a mystery to
29 percent; Japan, to 58 percent; France, to 65 percent; and the United
Kingdom, to 69 percent.1
If people cannot even find the Pacific Ocean on a map, how
are they going to visualize the Mendocino and Rivera triple junctions that are
moving in opposite directions? Dvorak
does this all through the book. He is
very good at verbal descriptions, but he expects his reader to have
encyclopedic knowledge of geography and a vivid imagination for the movements
of large objects, how they interact, the stresses they create, and the outcome
of these colliding forces that would be worthy of an experienced civil
engineer. It may be bad news to the
publisher, but his book needs illustrations and photographs on nearly every
other page, perhaps another hundred.
There are so many things that Dvorak describes very well in words, but
they cry out for a picture that would simplify the cumbersome description.
Another example would be his descriptions of rocks and
mineral specimens.
I draw attention to this
particular component of the conglomerate because it is easy to identify. About one out of every ten boulders, cobbles,
or pebbles in the conglomerate is this purple rock peppered with pink flecks of
feldspar crystals, which adds to its attractiveness and ease of
identification. (p. 205)
A picture would do a much better job of fixing the image of
this mineral in the mind, and I think it would also make the point he is trying
to get across more accessible as well. In
this subject material, which is very visual to begin with, descriptions of the movements
of land masses and geographical features almost require pictures and
illustrations. He really needs to do a
second edition, updated and improved with lots of visual imagery.
One lesson that you can't help but take away from this book
is that earthquakes are inevitable and the San Andreas fault, as well as many other
faults all throughout California, are ticking time bombs that will certainly go
off as major seismic events in the foreseeable future, with powerful and
terrible effect. The title of the book, Earthquake Storms, refers to another
realization, first argued for by Amos Nur in the 1990s, that earthquakes tend
to occur in clusters, or as Dvorak calls them, storms. Once you have a major earthquake, the chance
of having another one of equal or stronger magnitude is actually greater than it was before the first event. He likened a fault's slippage to the opening
of a zipper that catches on successive teeth as it slides down the chain. Amos Nur has suggested that such a series of
successive earthquakes over a period of decades may have contributed to the end
of the Bronze Age 3300 years ago. (pp. 226-28)
Dvorak points out several examples of successive major quakes along
fault lines within relatively short spans of time, including along the San
Andreas.
It is also worth mentioning, Kathryn Schulz's recent,
excellent article in the New Yorker that describes a much more monumental disaster
waiting to happen on the Cascadia fault off the Pacific Northwest. The Cascadia Fault, has been quiet for over
three hundred years, in contrast to the San Andreas, which has been quite
active in recent times. In other words,
the Cascadia Fault, while not considered overdue in a statistical sense, has
been ominously quiet for a very long time, and when it does give way, could
prove cataclysmic for the Pacific Northwest.
Schulz points out that faults have a maximum magnitude in the strength
of earthquake they can produce that is based on the length and width of the
fault and the amount that the fault can slip.
She does not discuss the science of this in any detail and Dvorak does
not mention the earthquake magnitude potential of faults at all. But for the San Andreas Fault, Schulz claims
that 8.2 is the maximum magnitude it can generate -- which is a pretty good
shake that will wreak a lot of havoc.
But it pales in comparison to the potential awaiting in the Cascadia
Fault off the Pacific Northwest coast.
If the Cascadia gives way in a really big way the result could be
anywhere from 8.0 to 9.2, which would leave much of the Pacific Northwest,
which is profoundly unprepared for such an event, in rubble.
Generally, I would heartily recommend this book, especially
to well educated people who live in California.
But it could be equally relevant and illuminating for people all around
the world who live in earthquake zones were it to be revised and expanded to
include illustrations that would make the text much easier to follow and the
conceptual arguments easier to visualize.
Notes
1. National Geographic News, October 28,
2010.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/11/1120_021120_GeoRoperSurvey.html
See also the National Geographic/ Roper study from 2006 on
Geographic Literacy.
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2006GeogLitsurvey.pdf
2. The Really Big
One. By Kathryn Schulz. The New
Yorker, July 20, 2015, pp. 52-59.