We don’t go to the movies much. My main reason for watching the Academy Awards every year is not to root for films I have not seen but rather to watch glamorous women in bright outfits in late February – just as restorative as baseball spring training, if you ask me.
However, my wife and I did pro-actively go to the movies the other day, and were touched by “The Lady in the Van” with Maggie Smith. The movie works out the question, “Am I my mother’s keeper?” And how far outward that responsibility goes. The movie is a “mostly true” telling of the woman who parked herself and her foul painted van in the driveway of Alan Bennett in Camden Town, London – for nearly 15 years. Maggie Smith plays the mysterious homeless woman with a phobia against music. Dame Maggie was not nominated for the Academy Awards on Feb. 28 – a pity, because she commands the screen, without ever camping it up. No winks at the audience as if to say, “Just slumming from Downton Abbey.” Her every facial gesture captures the rage and mystery of the unbalanced. In the movie, two Alan Bennetts fuss and fidget about her from inside an old town house. The Bennett who goes out in the world occasionally does kind deeds for his pungent guest, against his innate squeamishness. He has already ducked his mum, now ensconced in a quite nice nursing home – private room! view of the sea! – and his guilt is as evident as the forelock that flops over his fertile brow. As it happens, Bennett and Smith are twinned in our London experience: -- My friend Sam rides his bike from Islington toward central London and sometimes sees Bennett pedaling along the same route. -- My wife and I once had tickets for two Bennett one-act plays, one starring Maggie Smith, in a tiny theatre near Haymarket. Just before curtain, it was announced that Miss Smith was ill, and we could have a refund, but that Bennett himself would discuss the play, on stage. Of course, we stayed. Forelock flopping, he sat in a straight-back chair and charmed the audience for nearly an hour. So we felt we already knew Bennett before we saw the film, which cuts deep for anybody who has faced the reality of somebody who needed care. Let me add: some of us are less good than others. The neighbors generally recoil and patronize. Frances de la Tour, with her marvelous plummy contralto, does a turn as Ursula Vaughn Williams, the widow of the composer, who lives up the block. When one neighbor delivers a Christmas-morning gift – crème brulée –the resident of the van silently snatches the dish. Near the end, Bennett (Alex Jennings) observes as social workers and ambulance and hospital workers get up close and personal with this difficult person. (The unspoken message for a couple of Yanks is: oh, yes, observe that awful socialism at work.) The mysteries unravel near the end as Bennett acknowledges his guilt. (The movie also serves as a coming out of sorts by the film character and the real Bennett.) Two aged hands play the piano, quite skillfully. Not giving anything away, but there is a cathartic scene, inducing cheers and applause, right near the end. While reviews were respectful, particularly toward Smith, my wife and I both felt the movie cut deeper than we had expected. When I watch the Blanchetts and Maras and Lawrences on Feb. 28, I will miss Dame Maggie. She should be there.
Roy Edelsack
2/22/2016 11:46:02 am
I had the pleasure of seeing Maggie Smith on stage in London in 1988 in "Lettice and Lovage," costarring with the wonderful Margaret Tyzack (Soames Forsyte's sister Winifred in the "Forsyte Saga"). Truly unforgettable. 2/22/2016 02:02:12 pm
I would go to see Maggie Smith read or perform anything any where.
bruce
2/22/2016 02:07:53 pm
george,
Altenir Silva
2/22/2016 05:31:12 pm
Dear George, Comments are closed.
|
QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
All
|