by Richard Subber | Dec 3, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections, Theater and play reviews
unforgettable…
Movie review and book review:
Atonement
Atonement is a story of lives of irredeemable sadness. Ian McEwan wrote the book that is faithfully portrayed in this 2007 film (rated R, 123 minutes)—it got seven Oscar nominations—starring Keira Knightly (Cecilia), James McAvoy (Robbie), Romola Garai (child Briony), Saoirse Ronan (18-year-old Briony), and Vanessa Redgrave (mature Briony).
In brief: Briony, a child, tells a dreadful lie about her sister’s lover, forcing Cecilia and Robbie to live separate, desperately tormented lives during World War II.
This poem is my “Thumbs Up” review of the movie and the book.
Unforgettable
This memory is lava hot,
it mingles, lava slow,
in all my thoughts,
in all my mind.
It is a crumble, peat, dark,
peat rich, no single whole,
but bits of all.
I cannot grasp it entire.
It fills me,
it is full of me,
full with my dread imaginings,
full with my discarded dreams,
so full…
It burns, it sears,
a red haze in my every gaze,
a scarlet shackle on each heartbeat.
I accept the impotence of atonement.
My long-ago childish deed cannot be undone,
that indulgence in excitement
and attention and novelty
and vengeance and purest love.
Unbidden, I saw an act I didn’t understand,
two lovers, I cherished them,
their coupling had no inner meaning for me,
yet showed they had more love for each other
than each for me…
Later, a twisted crime he did not—could not—commit,
yet I accused—“I saw him”—I lied,
to hurt him and to keep her, apart, for me.
That lie broke them.
At that moment, the words tasted brave
and older than my years.
The taste became gall.
Later, I was to know that I killed them.
My life has been my penance.
Now I understand what I could not see
and could not then feel.
Now I feel their horror that I invented
in place of their happiness.
Now I endure the unhappiness
they could not escape,
the terror born of a child’s simple plan
in a child’s heart.
…I keep those false words—“I saw him”—
spoken in righteous innocence,
in unknowable ignorance,
in unremembered pleasure…
I did not know I was trading my portion of happiness
for a memory that I keep
in a hole in my heart.
* * * * * *
Movie review. Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Good Will Hunting, a movie about love (review)
Robin Williams nails it…
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Nov 5, 2024 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
children have real lives…
Movie review:
The Breakfast Club
Which one of the kids in The Breakfast Club (1985, rated R, 97 minutes) is most like you?
Claire (Molly Ringwald), John (Judd Nelson), Andrew (Emilio Estevez), Allison (Ally Sheedy), or Brian (Anthony Hall)?
These are children whose lives you wouldn’t wish on your grandchildren.
Their Saturday detention for various student wrongdoings is a hell-fired playground for growing up and facing truths and learning about the wonderful unknowns of human kindness.
In one brief day they grow and change and assert their special personalities.
They become better people.
The Breakfast Club is funny, it’s sad, and only the kids think there are mysteries.
It becomes a feel good movie.
There’s something more: I imagine that you can’t watch the movie and avoid thinking, even once, “yeah, I was a little bit like that when I was younger.”
I imagine that you’ll take a minute or two,
like I did,
to think about how you’re different now.
* * * * * *
Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Grace Notes
Is it prose or poetry?
by Brian Doyle
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 31, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
slow-moving lava love…
Book review:
The Bridges of Madison County
Robert James Waller (1939-2017)
New York: Warner Books Inc., 1992
171 pages
The Bridges of Madison County was a notably popular new book. However, I’m aware that not everyone is a fan.
If you’re looking for highly stoked eroticism and high-rolling lives that throw off sparks when they touch, look elsewhere.
Frankly, for lots of tastes, good advice is: look elsewhere no matter what you’re looking for.
For me, Bridges documents the chance intersection of the putatively unremarkable lives of Francesca and Robert with all the heat and dazzle of slow-moving lava, without its destructive power. They come together, they permit each other to nourish their beautiful personae and they generate a passion that consumes without burning.
Francesca and Robert come together too late in their lives, after unbreakable commitments have been made to other cherished persons who, regrettably, are not like themselves.
I am drawn to the unsounded depths of their love and their absolute, cascading, undeniable recognition of each other as the unforgettable objects of their burgeoning desire.
They understand that they must be content with the short lifetime of their dalliance. They honor their love by deeply understanding its nature, and by accepting the permanent separation that their unyielding integrity requires.
Robert whispers to Francesca: “…this kind of certainty comes only once…”
The Bridges of Madison County is a love song, a courtship, a delicate primer on yearning, a too brief opportunity to know how it feels to be in love like that.
Give it a try.
p.s. Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep made the movie version with the same title in 1995 (rated PG-13, 135 minutes). You’ll love it if you like the book.
Waller’s book and the movie equally reveal the ethereal bond between Robert and Francesca. There is frank eroticism, with different physical and philosophical elements in the film and book, and a shared electric vitality.
The film and the book offer stylistically divergent life dramas that converge to a singular powerful love, and a perpetual loneliness that Robert and Francesca cannot minimize.
Give the film a try.
* * * * * *
Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: A Cold Welcome
The culprit was global cooling,
500 years ago…
by Sam White
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Oct 8, 2024 | Theater and play reviews
Versailles is what it used to be, mostly…
Movie review:
A Little Chaos
A Little Chaos (2014, rated R, 117 minutes) didn’t win any prizes but it’s a modest prize of a movie.
It’s a fictional story about the very real gardens at Versailles, the almost unimaginable residence for French kings that first existed in 1623 as a hunting lodge.
Kate Winslet, as Madame Sabine de Barra, rather stoically portrays a talented woman (garden designer) who cannot be ignored in an undeniably man’s world.
Alan Rickman adds some comic touches to his character as King Louis XIV, and he learns from Madame de Barra and encourages her to design the spectacular Ballroom Grove (a tourist destination today).
There is an almost incidental love interest that frames the final, almost frivolous moments of the movie.
The drama is in the intrigues and the blunderings and the jealousies of the men who surround Madame de Barra and make her life difficult.
(Rated R for two seconds of inoffensive nudity)
* * * * * *
Movie Review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Old Friends (book review)
Tracy Kidder tells truth about old age…
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Oct 3, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
bergin makes it worse…
Play review:
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
A 1962 play by Edward Albee
New York: Scribner Classics, 1962, 2003
243 pages
It’s not a feel-good play.
After you start to move again after you finish reading it, probably you’ll end up thinking that your life is better than you thought it was. George and Martha do a pretty good job of proving that hell on earth is possible.
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is almost a non-stop exaltation of how to be mean, sad, vicious, heartbroken, desperate, delirious, murderous, inhibited, ignorant, ambitious, empty, and longing, more or less all at the same time.
George and Martha, an aging couple on a rundown college campus, stage their terrible show for the benefit of a young professor, Nick, and his young wife, Honey, in the wee hours of a morning when each of them has something better to do, but isn’t doing it.
None of them make you think of the Cleaver family.
Arthur Hill was George and Uta Hagen was Martha in the first stage presentation in October 1962.
In the 1966 film version, Richard Burton was George and Elizabeth Taylor was Martha.
Both productions are slam bang downers, just like the play.
No production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? will make you think of the Cleavers.
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Play review. Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
* * * * * *
by Richard Subber | Sep 10, 2024 | Theater and play reviews
good people and bad people…
Movie review:
Three Days of the Condor
1975
Rated R
117 minutes
Starring Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Robertson
Three Days of the Condor is transparently a 1970s spy flick, and Robert Redford, as the bookish CIA spy code-named “Condor,” is the center of attention—sort of a two-hour cameo performance.
Condor is credibly shocked by the vicious murders of his coworkers, and then he begins a determined quest to identify the dark forces responsible for their deaths.
Kathy (an ingénue, solidly portrayed by Faye Dunaway) helps him but they don’t quite fall in love.
Condor embraces the David role against the Goliath CIA. He learns the truth, and does his best to make it public.
It’s not Mission: Impossible stuff, but there’s enough believable tension to make it worthwhile.
The final scene in Three Days of the Condor is a dramatic reminder of the enduring capabilities of good people and bad people.
* * * * * *
Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: American Colonies
So many and so much
came before the Pilgrims
by Alan Taylor
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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