Roubaix, Northern France (2008)
“I enjoyed the hard black Frosts of last week very much, & one day while they lasted walked to Deane by myself.” — Jane Austen, Christmas, 1798 (for other simple accurate perceptions)
For my part, since when I was very young, in my earliest years (before 6 or so) encouraged to believe, or not discouraged from believing in, a magical being who brought presents, and a little later had the reinforcement of the Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and the idea of a special day of good will towards all (until say 11 or so), I have never been able to drive out of my head the sense of something special about this day somehow, a time, desire for, acts and words of good will and hope. Decorate somehow or other, eat together if possible, drink, maybe exchange gifts (?). Before Covid and my loss of my ability to drive at night, go to the theater. What else can a fervent atheist do? …
Dear friends,
First, reassurance: we didn’t do too badly … but the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglay …
Morning we were very pleasant — what we as a pair always are on Christmas morning. Wished one another happy Christmas, I hugged her thoroughly. Had solemn and older folk celtic Christmas music on radios and/or panora ipad. Our plan was out to peking duck (for me eggplant dish on side) and then maybe to Cinema art, but already we were weakening, as we agreed the reviews said this iteration of West Side Story was tedious (see my retraction). I had yet more personal mail from sending cards and my own Christmas letters to others; then I was reading Henry James’s Spoils of Poynton – a work of genius, yes, and about possessions, Possessions, with brilliant depths of varieties of painful feeling circulating in those byzantine sentences, not actually obscure as in a novella.
We finally agreed to set forth by car (PriusC) at 1:15 lest the restaurant be socially distanced and w/o reservations not be able to get in. It’s a small not-glamorous place but does serve peking duck, is real and good Chinese food insofar as you can get it in N.Va. Well, traffic rather light. We get there and place closed, Owner Himself standing in front with a table with white cloth and flowers, a line of people who has ordered fine meals the last 3 days. Hmmn. I had made one worrying mistake driving even though in the light — drove over curb. I did not see it.
So we went back home and look on computer. Most Asian restaurants doing take-out, or delivery, the very few open demand reservations. Our usual take-out locally, Ho’s, declared open and serving early, take-out and delivery.
Classical pastoral in Fantasia (1940s)
We ate usual lunches, and sat down together to watch Fantasia. Very creative and beautifully played, but somehow obsolete a bit. Disney’s conductor worried lest we not be comprehending. The imagery too innocent, too limited. Especially little Cupids overdone. Best parts the unicorns and centaurs, flowers, abstractions. Famous: Mickey Mouse as Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Very curious antepenultimate ballet of hypopotamuses, tigers, and elephants: somehow a gay aesthetic running through this queasy comedy. I understand this film (like It’s a Wonderful Life) a commercial flop at first. Maybe still?
Well, worried lest Ho’s super-busy, we order by 5 — I’d had enough of Spoils and began one of my favorite re-watches, Huston’s The Dead. Seen many times. Read, taught to several classes
But by 6 he’s not here; suddenly a phone call, he’s phoning us, and are we 303? no, 308. We go outside and see man wandering about our block, having knocked on 310 — he was getting close. That’s our gay neighbors. He was hired just for the day.
So we do have a jolly meal, and I opened a wine bottle. We talked and ate for nearly an hour. Then said Merry Christmas and she went to nap.
Huston’s The Dead — one of three dancing sequences; we get poetry, piano, the feast …. & aging & vexation
I turned back to Donal McCann’s great peroration at the close of The Dead.
A few light raps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right. Snow was general over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead — James Joyce
In A Christmas Tale, the two young children put on a play, parents help, grandfather watches ….
Then, what the hell, I put on Arnaud’s Desplechin’s nearly 3 hour A Christmas Tale — it’s a wonderful ever so complicated movie of a large in name and reality of culture contemporary Catholic family. Autobiographical. I still haven’t gotten all that happened — my third time through at least. Cats settle down too. I enjoyed it very much — you are intended to enter into it fully — four or five phases of ritual activity held together by family traumas acted out, get togethers. Several moving and believable stories, including hard estrangement in which you see both siblings are to blame. I was utterly immersed, involved. Characters take time out to go walking in snow, and there are flashbacks. Camera takes us to all sorts of places in the real Roubaix — beautiful photographs of center of Northern French once industrial town with decorated lit tree.
Chief story the mother (Catherine de Neuve) has terrible leukemia, fatal, and needs bone marrow transplants, a grandson (had been put in a child’s special school but will not go back by the end — breakdown) and the wayward son are compatible (the one rejected from the family for 6 years because of the older sister’s dislike of him); and he takes on the dangerous painful position.
End of movie, operation is as far as can be told success. In some form or other all are united variously and separately and all together too. Each person has behaved naturally in and enjoyed what he or she could. (See my blog and wikipedia linked into comments.)
Abel (benign and intellectual paternal presence) and Junon (Mother of all)
Then I watched PBS’s Dec 24th half show, back to bed and books, fell asleep. By that time Izzy up for a number of hours and watching her favorites.
Today Laura comes at 11:30 and we do this again with her. She does have tickets in hand for the Macbeth — Rob will drive us to DC and pick us, we eat chicken at their house and they don’t want to risk inside a restaurant. They are back to being careful; she tells me she now has a stash of tests in her house. Big pile.
12/26, around 9 pm I also watched “In the Bleak Mid-Winter, a Foyle’s War episode taking place over Christmas 1943 — for another blog. I’m noticing how the sets are marking time and this one is 1943: the kinds of murders that take place are involved in what were the criminal and anguished activities emerging from the phases of the war.
As you can see, gentle reader, this year I have let go and simply done what is available to me to immerse myself.
Ellen
Under the Sign of Sylvia II 
I’ve written a full blog on A Christmas Tale, best Christmas movie I know for today’s world:
Find out more on wikipedia (prizes, more views, more links):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Christmas_Tale
Rory: “Fantasia was groundbreaking in its day, and has to be seen as that. More modern “cartoons” – perhaps we should say “graphic” films – are only possible because of high powered computers. Remember that Fantasia, Snow White, Cinderella, Dumbo, Bambi were mostly hand drawn and coloured. They came a long way from the initial Mickey Mouse prototype cartoon , was it “Steam-Boat Willie?” As I remember, Fantasia mixed the drawn scenes with real-life, a world first, I think. Disney was a great innovator – in “The Parent Trap” they perfected split screen work, allowing Hayley Mills appear alongside herself as her twin sister.”
Yes. I am aware. Also the version Izzy and I saw came with a sort of warning: the Disney company apologizes for anything offensive, but have decided not to try to remove those things which today we would not make a cartoon of (much better words than that) because it would change or disturb the cartoon too much. Izzy said this warning is on most of the old cartoons and some of the older movies — think of “What made the red man red?” or “We are Siamese if we please” — and many movies which have but one African-American or present African-Americans only as comical.
At the end of this Fantasia you are told they have added a couple of sequences. They have no “live-action” or people in the stories accompanying music but of course the orchestra and conductor are all people.
Disney is still doing firsts. An 8 hour “Get Back:” it consists of 8 hours of the Beatles practicing together. It’s gotten rave reviews. They pay their artists well.
But they do not pay the working employees well and the draconian controls to force everyone to be cheerful all the time and behave in strictly controlled ways is very hard. Disney is now in court fighting people suing them for not paying them fees from copyright: when Disney buys out Fox, it claims it does not equally have to obey the artists’ contract: if that were true, copyright would quickly die. Disney’s money has long gone to support very reactionary politicians.
This is so interesting to me. I had just magical Christmases as a child. My father dressed up as Santa for the church and school pageants, and I never knew it was him, but he was the spirit of Christmas, and my mother was the one who made it all happen, the special cookies, the gifts no matter how little money there was. My four siblings and I were nearly delirious the day before and usually awoke so very early. I came home for Christmas even after I was married, even when I lived 13 hours away, only one year when I was a Fulbright in Latin America did I not come, as did two of my three siblings. (The third was in the theater and often on the road then.)
So then ten years ago, when my sister died after a two year struggle, the family just fell apart. And it got worse when my mother died five years later.
And all of this is to say that my husband and I have been trying hard to make new customs, new rituals, new ways to go about this holiday, very alone, though together. We’ve decided not to celebrate Christmas per se but Solstice and Three Kings Day, though we sometimes celebrate the Solstice on the 24th and exchange gifts then rather than waiting till Jan. 6th.
I am so amused by our local newspaper raging about how everyone is trying to take this holiday away from them, the Christians, when of course, they stole it from the pagans to begin with.
Thanks for sharing your customs. We may look for a movie on the 25th.
Diane
Thank you for this beautiful reply. I’ve just seen it — 1/1/2022. I wish more of us would publish somehow how we commemorate Christmas because the continuing insistence everyone gets together with a large family or friends makes people feel bad. We should all begin to make it public that the 19th century family Christmas does not work for even most people in modern countries any more. Ellen
I don’t even long for it any more, though my own childhood was a very 19th c. Christmas, a father who WAS Santa Claus, a big house of visitors Christmas Eve. But my remaining siblings and their families have been so awful that being alone with my husband is just fine– though I do recognize how fortunate I am to still have him, but I have no children, so we are it. I still put up decorations, plan food, try to send gifts to friends most shut-in, alone– not the same very year so it doesn’t become a yearly exCHANGE. Happy New Year, Ellen, though reading my diary entried for the past four, it’s never looked good, even before the pandemic. And still, we persist. Diane.
My feeling is a growing group of educated people are learning to tell truths about their lives and relationships and live accordingly. But there is a still a large minority who refuse; at the same time they are badly exploited by powerful people because of their refusal to see, and they are very angry, hitting out against those escaping from older patterns and exploitative relationships (not that we at all necessarily doing well economically). Yes we persist because there is only or wonderfully life to be lived with integrity and joy. Ellen
The new West Side Story: The new West Side Story. I retract my comments in my blog, based on what other people said and reviews, — to Michele Cusack.
To be sure the New Yorker critic hated it:
https://tinyurl.com/mpd8k2t3
The Egbert critic liked it very much:
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/west-side-story-movie-review-2021
This is to take back the dubiety I expressed over this movie, partly the result of reading reviews, which I now find obscured and did not give accurate detail, and memories of the previous movie, which I thought poor in all sorts of ways. People were saying not much had been changed.
Izzy and I went this afternoon – her eyes were shining and she was thoroughly engrossed as soon as Maria and Tony had met at the dance..
So I beg to differ with the New Yorker and find the Egbert critic not adequate. . A lot is different, and especially the last third which is not wholly original as the Spielberg and associates went back to Shakespeare. Instead of a quickly truncated ending after the rumble, we have our Romeo (Tony) making his way back to Juliet (Maria’s) bedroom and a night of love-making after he confesses he murdered Bernard. The murder was his rage at Bernard murdering Riff. All with knives. Anita returns after a hard night identifying Bernard’s body and we get the duet of the two women about how can anyone love such a murderer? This song was hypothetical in the original. “I feel pretty” is replaced to after the rumble and the murders.
Rita Moreno’s (Valentina) role improves and makes more Shakespearean the story. She is Tony’s mentor, owner of a drug store who has given Tony a job after a year in prison. Then he comes to her after murdering Bernard. She comforts him; he believes he and Maria can take a bus far away. If only she will fork out the money. Then she stops a rape of Anita come to deliver a message from Maria, with my favorite lines of this movie: these white men are all shits, they have grown up to be rapists. But Anita enraged, lies and says her message is Maria is dead. Valentina is driven to tell the frantic waiting Toni, he rushes out only to see Maria coming with her suitcase, but Chino behind kills him with the gun.
There is a deep anti-gun visual theme of this movie. Bats, razors, even knives do not do as much immediate quick damage.
Finally both Hispanic (Puerto Rican) and white men lift Tony’s body to take it to the hospital
Moreno as an old woman sings. There is a place for us. -the last song of this movie. Pitch perfect not over taxing her voice at this point.
The whole thing is more upsetting than the original play or movie. The setting of slum removal to replace with luxury apts and Lincoln Center is meaningful. They have made too pretty, too symmetrical their 1950s sets but I recognize these places — I grew up in the Bronx in the 1950s.
I did see In the Heights. I lived there for 7 years in the 1970s. It was truer to a spirit of the people sympathetic to them. The original West Side Story is the product of elite Jewish men who mean well — and it’s the 1950s with immigration from Puerto Rico at a height. The Puerto Ricans were portrayed in a less stereotypical way in this than the first 1950s stage musical. They had a community of caring — a village . “In the Heights” was better — Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, Cubans, and many more — all living in harmony.
The harsh reviews are from people disappointed in the continuation of these stereotypes for hispanic men and women. They are hurt.
But this is the story and it seems to me the film-makers have done what they could to change these. They cannot altogether: it is Shakespeare’s story too. They even added an incident which corresponds to the place in Shakespeare’s play where R&J speak a sonnet together.
So see this iteration. The actress playing Maria can sing and looks right – so young, the actor doing Tony not a thrilling tenor but he looks right and plays it poignantly; he is so well meaning – as does the actress playing Anita (she is a genetically Black Puerto Rican woman – they have updated it for our era.
The new york Times liked the modern ambiance:
https://www.nytimes.com/…/west-side-story-review.html
Washington Post critic loved it:
.https://www.washingtonpost.com/goingoutguide/movies/west-side-story-movie-review/2021/12/07/fa8badc0-56df-11ec-a808-3197a22b19fa_story.html
I agree it is a rethink:
https://tinyurl.com/2p8mx745
Compared to Lin