The Wife of Willesden (2022)

 

Zadie's Smith dramatic retelling of Chaucer's The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale worked much better than I had anticipated after reading the play and reading reviews. My main concern had been the "energy arc" of the play. Like its fourteenth-century predecessor, the play starts with a bang and it doesn't have much in the way of quiet or reflective moments. I worried that the play would burn itself out. 

My fears were misplaced. 

I'd also worried the the relentlessly rhyming iambic pentameter couplets would become tedious. They did not. Smith's use of enjambment and off-rhymes buried the rhyming so well that I had to look for them.

We had a jolly group--two students, Mike, Ardis, and I--and the production was worth all the effort. 

Very much worth seeing.

A Thousand and One (2023)

This first full-length film from A. V. Rockwell is a gorgeous film about damaged characters whose selflessness is not revealed until almost the end of the film. Everything about the film is meticulous.

Inez (Teyana Taylor) claims Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola; Aven Courtney; Josiah Cross) from the foster care system when she returns to the neighborhood after a stint in prison. She finds a steady job and keeps them at the same address (Apt #10-01) for over decade. Meanwhile, things change. Inez marries a long-time beau (who is not Terry's birth father and dies before the end of the film). Terry (using the alias Inez procurred to keep the foster system from finding him) stays out of trouble and prepares for college. Things unravel when Terry applies for an internship and provides (fake, unbeknownst to him) documentation. 

Teyana Taylor is fabulous. The three actors playing Terry share the same empty-stare emotion-free affect associated with traumatized children.  

Highly recommended

We will be watching for more films from A. V. Rockwell.

 

Good Friday Service at Trinity Church on the Green

 

The Gentlemen of the Men's and Boy's Choir did not disappoint. A lovely, peaceful service that concluded with 33 tolls of the church tower bells.

Enys Men (2022)

Another astonishing film well worth a late night after a long Thursday. Billed as folk horror, Mark Jenkin's film feels more like a psychological horror based on personal and community trauma. What happens to when a community and its individuals have been brutalized by a system and then abandoned when they and their services are deemed no longer necessary?

The cinematography--18mm film with disorienting, unfocused, and claustrophobic closeups--evokes the 1970s. The repetitive narrative (reminds me of a Phillip Glass composition) collapses time and events and figures.

For a good interview with the director, see Tara Judah's https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2023/interviews/enys-men-an-interview-with-mark-jenkin/ .

Well worth seeing once. Even more worth seeing twice to piece together the shattered pieces.