Fuel for the soul.

In a world where the news is, at best, depressing, and at worst, frightening, one can always take refuge in the arts. That is why I love film so much, a good film is fuel for the soul; it revives one’s spirit.

Noticing that Laissez Faire was selling copies of Franco Zeffirelli’s film Tea with Mussolini, I dug out a copy of it and refreshed my fuel supply. It is a lovely film, with a great message, subtly but eloquently stated.

The film follows the journey of a group of women—mainly English—in Florence, from just prior to the outbreak of the Second World War until the end of the war.

The stellar cast is a collection of some of the most fascinating females in modern film—at least by my standards. We are first introduced to Joan Plowright, playing Mary Wallace. Mary works for an Italian businessman who has fathered a child with his mistress, who is deceased. The son from that relationship is basically abandoned by his father and Mary, with the help of her circle of English friends, known as the Scorpioni, take him in.

The boy Luca, learns to appreciate art from the women but his father intervenes and sends him off to Austria. Smelling the shift in Italian politics he has fired Mary and sent his boy to a German school in Austria. As he tells Mary at her dismissal, the future of Italy is now with Germany, not with England.

Among the Scorpioni we met Maggie Smith as Lady Hester Random, the widow of a former British Ambassador to Italy. There is also Judi Dench, a failed artist who has a passion for preserving the great art of Italy. Rounding out the circle of main characters is Cher as the flamboyant, brash American art collector, Elsa Morganthal Strauss-Almerson, and Lily Tomlin, as the lesbian archeologist Georgie Rockwell.

The film shows the rising power of the Fascists. Ominous black shirts become increasingly violent. The Scorpioni are horrified but Lady Hester assures them that Mussolini is a gentleman. She arranges to meet Il Duce who assures them that they are under his personal protection—a lie that Lady Hester wishes to believe. But when war breaks out the Englishwomen are placed under custody.

Luca, now a young man, played charmingly by Baird Wallace, (who is now in IT work), returns to find Mary just as she and the Scorpioni are being moved. As Arabella (Dench) is being pushed into the bus for relocation the Fascist guards take her faithful dog from her. Mary yells to Luca “Take the dog please, look after her”. Luca snatches the dog up yelling, “Of course I will, we were puppies together.” He and a friend then follow the bus to find that the women are being put in custody in the Tuscan town of San Gimignano, famed for its ancient towers.

Elsa and Georgie, as Americans, are still free. Elsa gives Luca some money to make sure the women are housed at a small hotel, instead of in the barracks where the government had sent them. Lady Hester is convinced that it is her political pull with Mussolini that is responsible for this good fortune.

But it isn’t long before America enters the war and Elsa and Georgie are sent to join the women. Elsa, however, is at great risk since she is a Jew. Luca, who has begun to understand the nature of the conflict, and who had become bitter at Elsa because of a misunderstanding, joins the underground movement. Elsa had given Mary some money as a trust fund when Luca was just a boy. Luca takes his trust money and uses it instead to help fund the underground cell that he joins.

Betrayed by a lover who had conned her out of all her belongings Elsa becomes despondent. But the Gestapo has already begun arresting some Jews, precisely what Elsa’s ex-lover was counting on. Mary and Luca are unable to convince Elsa to escape, even though the underground has made passage for her to Switzerland. Lady Hester, who had always hated the brash American, learns the truth and goes to Elsa, convincing her to leave. She says they were a lot more alike than they cared to admit, they were both betrayed by bastards: Elsa by her ex-lover, and Lady Hester by Mussolini.

As the war draws to a close the Germans, in a hasty retreat, plan to blow up the towers of San Gimignano. The Scorpioni, led by Arabella, stand up to the retreating Nazis to save the towers. Outside the town, Luca finds a battalion of Scots ready to enter the town and joins them as an interpreter. As they are entering the town the commander turns to Luca and says: “I won’t be needing an interpreter for this job.” Luca asks about the job. The commander says he was told that a whole group of English ladies were kept in custody in town and that he has “orders to move them to a place of safety.” Luca, knowing what the Scots will be dealing with, says: “Actually, you might be needing an interpreter, sir.”

The commander responds: “Do you know the ladies.”
“Yes, very well, sir.”
“Don’t they understand plain English?”
“Yes, but they don’t understand orders.”

The underlying message of this film is not one that hits you over the head, but it is impossible to ignore. It is about tyranny and liberty, told through the lives of a small group of women caught up in a fascist dictatorship. The cast alone makes this film one worth watching repeatedly. And the script is witty and wonderful.

Tea with Mussolini is a charming film with a message. Often films on the dangers of authoritarianism rely upon the stark, dramatic violence and cruelty that one sees in these systems. That is easy to do. But the Scorpioni were isolated from such large dramatic events. Yet still the film portrays the darkness of the times in the lives of these women who “don’t understand orders.”

Tea with Mussolini is a film that I never tire of watching. I always leave it with a small tear in my eyes and with recharged batteries for my spirit. Get a copy and see for yourself.

A film review about seven decades late.

I was going through some old video tapes from the library of a deceased friend. Among them was an unopened copy of George Cukor’s 1939 film, The Women by Clare Booth Luce.

Previously I had seen the last bits of it on television but this was my first chance to watch it from beginning to end. I can’t say how much I really disliked this film. I can’t tell you how true it was to the script of the play written by Luce but if it even vaguely resembles her original work I’m surprised she wasn’t lynched by women.

This had to be the most anti-woman film that I’ve seen. I’m sure there are others that are worse, I just haven’t seen them. I thought Luce’s characterization of her own sex was rather vicious and catty -- much like the women she portrays.

My first inkling of the direction the film would take was the way the characters are portrayed as they are introduced in the opening credits of the film. Each of them is presented first as some sort of barnyard animal which morphs into a woman. The names of the women are “Mrs Stephen Haines” or “Mrs. Howard Fowler” for instance. Their forenames are presented below that.

I don’t have any problems with “Mrs. Mary Haines” reflecting her married surname and her forename but, when the woman's forename disappears and she becomes merely an appendage of her husband, it is rather demeaning. I first assumed this was merely some oddity from the era in which it was filmed. After watching it, I wasn’t so sure.

Almost all the women in the film are cruel, vicious, and deceitful. There are no male characters shown in the entire film, they are only referred to by the women.

The men are apparently all cads as well, so perhaps Luce just despises people and not just women. But it was women that she portrayed so cruelly here.

Basically you have a story revolving around Mary Haines who discovers her husband is cheating on her. The women in the film are all horrible gossips who add their own lies to what they hear. The women never, never, never shut up and much of what they say is insulting to one another. If one leaves the room they get even worse than when she is with them.

Of course, none of the women have anything except their marriages around which to build an identity. They literally are appendages of their husbands here. The only one who has a job is the one stealing husbands and she is the only one who is introduced by her own name.

Mary loses her husband and much of it is the fault of her dear friends and their gossip. She eventually connives and plots and lies to get hm back. The one working woman has succeeded in marrying Stephen after Mary’s friends pushed circumstances so that a divorce was inevitable. But the new Mrs. Haines is unhappy and cheating already. When Mary reveals the dirty laundry in a manner that made it public Stephen calls for him to come to him. We see her rush toward the camera rubbing her hands in glee that she got her man back.

It isn’t that the film was just antiquated but that it was vicious. The plot was mediocre at best and the dialoge often was boring, silly, or stilted. It was rarely amusing though it was supposed to be a comedy. It was a film worthy of dislike on many levels.

What I found interesting is that conservatives seem to love the film. Yet the “family values” in this film was pretty atrocious. Everyone was dishonest, cheating was rampant, marriages were frivolous and the level of ethics was rather low.

But Luce converted to Catholicism and was obsessed with communism. She was an active Republican. Apparently that makes the film all right. Perhaps it is the vicious way that women are treated in the film that appeals to these conservatives. But I can’t see how the moral values of this film can be appealing to them.

But then much of the conservative agenda is purely driven by reactionary thinking. They assume that if the film insults women, that means it is not politically correct, therefore it must be good. I’m no fan of politically correct thinking but the excesses of the PC crowd are no excuse to support bigotry. And many conservatives seem to think that because the Left is pushing for excessive legislation on “hate crimes” that insulting minorities ,or various groups, is therefore a good thing.

As I see it, these conservatives are not capable of thinking for themselves. They are really letting the Left think for them. What the Left hates they love. What the Left loves they hate. They react, they don’t act. They merely do the opposite of the Left. Some on the Left are similar.

One of the virtues of libertarianism, when properly understood, is that the libertarian is as far from the conservate and he is from the socialist. We can’t simply see what the Left and Right do and take the opposite position on many issues. While Left and Right are more alike than they like to admit, there are just too many issues where they are polar opposites. We can’t “react” against both of them. We have to think through the issue and see how it relates to our first principles.

Libertarians are not reactionaries, nor can they be. Of course, I don’t simply mean people who label them self as libertarian since many of them are really conservatives in political drag.

My dislike of The Women is not simply some knee-jerk feminism on my part. For instance, I enjoyed Mona Lisa Smile (2003) with Julia Roberts. Yet many feminists hated it. Roberts was a professor at a woman’s college and was trying to encourage the women to be all they could be. One decides to drop a career opportunity in order to marry and the Roberts character berates her for it. But the woman gives a powerful defense of her right to choose to be a wife and housewife and mother. I thought it was great because it reaffirmed the right of individuals to make their own choices.

But The Women doesn’t do that. It doesn’t affirm the right of women to choose. It implies they have no ability to choose. In one dialogue there is some discussion about how men pursue women for sex and women allow men to catch them. And one character’s reply says it all: “What else do we have to offer them?” Indeed, in this film, they have nothing else to offer them.

In fact, the women had nothing to offer each other. Their support was all feigned while they were doing their level best to hurt each other. It was a film where the overwhelming feeling from the characters was hatred for each other. I don’t want to call the film sexist, I don’t care for the word since it implies “sexism” can only be directed against women. It was anti-woman. But I suspect that had the men been portrayed, we’d see that Luce didn’t like them very much either. So perhaps it is simply antihuman. I just know that I shan’t be watching again.

Film review: La Misma Luna (Under the Same Moon)

I rarely get out to the theater these days though I watch more films per week than the average person -- I just do so from home. So it was a treat to go out with friends last night. That they took me to see La Misma Luna, or Under the Same Moon, made it a double treat.

I was attracted to this film for several reasons. First, it was a serious film tackling a serious issue. Second, the story line was compelling and interesting. Third, the story itself is informative. Fourth, it portrays the lengths to which people will go to be with those they love. Fifth, it shows the role that government plays in stifling the happiness of individuals. Sixth, the cast for the film was perfect, the acting was superb, the dialogue was believable, the plot was compelling. You get my drift. For me this film was as near to perfection as I could reasonable expect.

Filmed in Mexico and the United States La Misma Luna tells the story of a family split by the American border and circumstances. The back story is that Rosario Reyes, who is played superbly by Kate del Castillo, has a young son, Carlitos, played by Adrian Alonso. Rosario’s husband left her and she is left to provide for Carlitos by herself. She makes the difficult decision to leave the boy with her mother, Benita, while she seeks work in the United States.

Every Sunday morning at 10 am Rosario calls a pay phone where Carlitos is waiting to speak to her. Her absence of four years is breaking both their hearts. But the money Rosario earns by cleaning people’s home provides the cash which she sends to Mexico to keep her son fed, clothed and educated.

Benita’s health is obviously an issue. She is the only one who can really care for the boy, other than his mother. But her death forces the boy’s hand. He takes the money he has saved from what his mother sent him and begins a journey across the border to be with his mother.

Throughout the process the United Government stands ready to prevent the boy from being with his mother. His first obstacle is crossing the border but with the funds he has saved he finds a way. He faces the dangers of crossing illegally because he must.

But once in Texas he faces the difficulty of getting to Los Angeles while avoiding La Migra (immigration authorities) and other scoundrels. Along the way Carlitos learns the difficult plight of the immigrant worker and realizes just how much his mother must love him to endure that life.

Carlitos is forced to team up with others in order to survive. Unfortunately for him his first “friend” is a junkie who is only helping because the boy has money that he wants. But when the money is lost the junkie, in desperation for cash, decides to trade Carlitos to some unsavory individuals for the money the boy had promised him. Only the intervention of a local woman prevents the transaction and she takes it upon herself to help Carlitos get to Los Angeles to be with his mother.

Through various circumstances, again involving the hated La Migra, Carlitos finds himself in the company of Enrique. Enrique is played by Eugenio Derbez. But Derbez clearly didn’t learn the lesson about never starring in a film with dogs or children. Derbez may be one of Mexico’s most popular actors but tis Alonso who steals scene after scene.

The juxtaposition of Carlitos and Enrique is fascinating. Enrique is the fish out of water, the adult who doesn’t how to be an adult. He lacks the self confidence that Carltio exudes. Carlitos walks into any situation and masters it through a combination of charm, intelligence and hard work. At one point it becomes unclear as to exactly who is protecting whom. Alonso never flubs his role for a moment. He is a child who plays an adult trapped in a child’s body.

Along the way Carlitos sees the plight of illegal immigrant workers. He realizes that their illegal status means they are easy victims for the unscrupulous types who prey on the vulnerability of others. As the film moves back and forth between the parallel stories of mother and son we also see what Rosario must do in order to survive. She cleans the homes of wealthy Americans for a low salary. When one employer decides to fire her Rosario asks for her back pay only to be told she can’t have it. The employer taunts her with a telephone challenging her to call the police and then saying: “Oh, that’s right. You can’t. You’re an illegal.”

This sort of exploitation, of course, is the plight of anyone who is a legal outsider. That is, someone who is not violating the rights of anyone else, but who is considered a criminal by the law. Such situations always subjects the outsider to exploitation by the unscrupulous. (Another film that portrays this reality, though in a different context, is Victim with Dirk Bogarde, 1961.)

La Misma Luna is a winner. It not only tackles a controversial topic but does so without sermonizing. The plot is believable and the dialogue avoids being cheesy or melodramatic. Each of the roles seems perfectly cast, including an appearance by America Ferrara of Ugly Betty fame. This is more than a film with a good libertarian message, it is a film that works as a film. I recommend it highly to anyone who loves good films or who cares about individual freedom. If you are passionate about both then run to theater now. See the trailer below.