THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2013 OUR TOWN www.nypresss.com PAGE 11

Edited by Armond White CityArtsNYC.comNew York’s Review of Culture .cityArts

The Taviani’s Illuminate Reality through Theater

By Armond White 

Compartive Literature classes were never as exhilarating as the best parts of Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’s Caesar Must Die. Th is ingenious

adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, combines documentary and drama as the Tavianis follow theater director Fabio Cavalli guiding a couple dozen convicts through a production of the play staged in Italy’s Rebibbia Prison.

As always, the Taviani’s, (best known for the modernist neo-realism fi lms Padre Padrone and Night of the Shooting Stars), combine artifi ce and naturalism. Th is prismatic approach illuminates Shakespeare, cinema and life. Th e concept shows convicts utilizing the amount of existential acting that comprises their street and prison yard lives, their behavior as men, sons, pals and citizens. Th e Taviani’s interpret Julius Caesar’s political confl ict, (a tyrannical leader assassinated by fellow politicians), for more than facile contemporary allegory; they reveal its insight into basic human interaction and masculine aggression.

Th is thesis is made endlessly fascinating by the prisoners’ real-life spectacle. Brutus’s recitation hesitates at reality’s contrast; its vulgarity and absurdity trouble him freshly—as it does a viewer. Th e Tavianis’ moral clarity provides fl eet, astonishingly refl ection. Two convicts, Gianni and Juan, get so caught up in their personal rivalries while acting that we respond to their confl ict as to HBO’s prison series Oz, (especially those memorable episodes about putting a play). Th ese faces suggest hardened versions of actorly visages. Th ere’s a tough Derek Jacobi, a corpulent Louis Calhern, while others suggest the same Italo

ethnic types made cartoonishness by Th e Sopranos and GoodFellas. It’s abstract yet it gives soulfulness to a political and social perspective that transcends being Brechtian. Sometimes the humor resembles the prison scenes in Big Deal on Madonna Street, that authentic Italian comedy about petty crooks.

Because the Taviani brothers use dialectical methods, their visual and conceptual ideas alternate, (color/b&w, theater/reality), without always merging comprehensively. Yet, their ambiguous whole

avoids the banality predictability of some of the Dardennes brothers fi lms. Th is is an intellectual modernization of Shakespeare that West Side Story sold out in favor of popular appeal. Th e men’s discovery of theater is moving. As the movie slips past the obvious strictures of incarceration and gets caught up in the emotional space of rehearsal and the individual inmates’ personal transformations, a sense of illusion comes from temporary suspension of disbelief—very much like Louis Malle achieved in Vanya on 42nd Street, but richer.

Many of the actors are surprisingly good—passionate and credible. Cavelli encourages their naturalism: “It’s not a vulgar dialect, it’s a dialect in the mouth of noble characters.” Th ey discover the cultural heritage that they had squandered—and you can feel it. Th e Tavianis’ spartan, mostly black and white visual style contrasts “performance” with reality, a complex move in the era of Reality TV where all notions of truth, fi ction and cinema verite have been corrupted if not destroyed.

Th e Taviani’s are admirably minimalist, but sometimes cinema calls for theater, some all around phenomenological fascination with the reality of prison as a place of confi nement. Th e most conventional cinematic excitement comes when the

Taviani’s zoom in and begin introducing information about the men’s crimes and sentences. Th e amount of Taviani’s control is perplexing but it beats Reality TV fakery by admitting the harsh truth beneath the overall artifi ce—and the potential beauty. When the men ponder, “How many centuries to come will see actors play this great scene of ours?” Or muse about “Kingdoms and languages yet to be invented,” the terms may not exactly express the thoughts of convicts but it’s poetry nonetheless and nothing in Dustin Hoff man’s self-satisfi ed opera diva fi lm Quartet or Malle’s Chekhov caprice can touch it.

Do-gooder programs that bring hip hop into prisons cannot possibly be this eff ective. Marc Antony delivering his famous speech in a concrete basketball court tells us the classical arts are not dead but can elevate contemporary self-esteem. Th is helps illuminate the most mundane aspects of taken-for-granted life. When Cassius (Cosimo Rega) walks back into his quarters, he admits “Since I got to know art, this cell has become a prison.” Rehabilitation? Th e Taviani’s turn insight into a powerful act of compassion.

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Dramatic Personae

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PAGE 12 OUR TOWN www.nypress.com THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2013

Gun Reform/Safety PanelWednesday, February 27th 2013

7PM to 9PMAt Church of the Holy Trinity

316 East 88th Street (between 1st and 2nd ave)

Guest Speakers:

Barbara HohltStates United to Prevent Gun Violence

New Yorkers Against Gun Violence

Brina MilikowskySenior Policy Advisor and Counsel

NYC Office of the Mayor/ Mayors Against Illegal Guns

Jason C. LippmanSenior Associate for Policy and Advocacy

The Coalition of Behavioral Health Agencies, Inc.

Bring a neighbor and be informed on gun control issues and legislation.

To be informed of upcoming events visit the Lenox Hill Democratic Club web site and sign up for our email list:

www.lenoxhilldems.org

David MenegonPresident

Lenox Hill Democratic Club lenoxhilldc@gmail.com

Lenox Hill Democratic ClubPresents a

MUSEUM CITYARTS

Artists’ Sacred Visions at Tibet House

By Renfreu Neff

The gallery at Tibet House is hosting “Sacred Vision, Separate Views: Contemporary Buddhist Perspectives In Art,” which is an exhibition of works by six artists

whose study and practice of Buddhism have informed their work in distinctly diff erent ways not readily identifi able as “Buddhist art”. Here is an exhibition that is vibrant and dynamic in its larger than usual dimensions, such as Japanese artist Shigeru Oyatani’s fi ery red Party Line and the blizzard white No, each a 72-inch square, right- angled to each other in one corner of the gallery. Th ere is mystery hidden in Oyatani’s great squares, as there is in two works by poet-painter James Walton Fox, who oft en incorporates script, including Arabic, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Farsi, as a visual device. Proof embodies vowels and consonants of the “Ali Kali” alphabet as well as Euclidian Proof, while his more ephemeral seeming Sky Burial contains a poem of his own that follows the metrics as the Buddhist Seven-Line Prayer.

Valley Fox’s Venus In Furs Feast Off ering #11 is a bold departure from her exuberantly erotic fl ower “portraits”; also here one sees the untamed, cascading fl uidity of Pale Fire. Th e eye rests a moment on one of two smaller ink and pencil renderings of Study for a Line In Space, a collaboration between Fox and Wesley Simon on a sand mandala. But it is Simon’s stark ink and charcoal Mountain of Burnt Off erings, a

large rectangle with its burned off lower edge and burnt remains in a pile on the fl oor, that resonates with current events, a reminder of the one-hundred Tibetans reported to have self-immolated in response to Chinese oppression, (as well as the Tunisian fruit vendor and wave of sympathizers who ignited the Arab Spring). Sculptor E. Elizabeth Peters displays Bounty of Burnt Off erings, a collection of hand- molded, skeletal objects cast of ceramic porcelain bisque then smoke fi red—a foreboding human skull, dark ashen bones, goblets and pitcher—all appearing to have been unearthed from an archeological dig. Standing thigh-high on four sensuously shaped “legs,” is a plexiglas box containing unfi red clay ru: What Remains? Korean video artist Jayoung Yoon presents a series of elegantly still pieces refl ective of her Butoh infl uences.

Tibet House does not promote its gallery as aggressively as it ought to, perhaps in keeping with the Buddhist tenet of non-ego or non-attachment. Th is can be self-defeating when it comes to exhibitions as notable as this one, which some, summoned by mailing list or word of mouth, have deemed the best they’ve attended. Perhaps what’s required is a gallerist, as gallery owners have come to be called, a veteran seasoned in the art market’s ways and (considerable) means.

“Sacred Vision, Separate Views: Contemproary Buddhist Perspectives In Art” at Tibet House, 22 West 15th Street, through Feb. 1.

The Accidental Buddhists

“Watching the Mind” by Jayoung Yoon

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2013 OUR TOWN www.nypresss.com PAGE 13

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FILM CITYARTS

Coppola and Sheen promote Hollywood solidarity

By Armond White

It can’t be easy for children of famous fi lmmakers to escape their parents’ shadows. Th at’s the problem facing Francis Ford Coppola’s off spring, daughter Sofi a and son Roman, the

most talented of the two. Neither can seem to get out from under their father’s eminence but at least Roman gazes beyond his own navel as in the new fi lm A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III.

Charles Swan III looks at a Hollywood brat, (a free-wheeling advertising wiz and immature bachelor), who has hit crisis point. Since it stars Charlie Sheen, director-writer Roman Coppola places his personal concern at pixilated, fantasy remove. Th is works nicely because both Sheen and Coppola are yoked under the same privileged-Hollywood-scion onus without burdening the audience with too much enviable and undeserved celebrity identifi cation. Whatever one’s initial reaction to the fi lm’s conceit, it is always complicated by realization that the fi lm’s subject is broader and more humane than judgmental gossip.

Sheen’s recent public behavior, the hard-partying stuff of tabloid fodder, (and tabloid income), is shown in a cooler light—a light made resplendent by videographer Nick Beal who also knows to lend surrealist exaggeration to Swan‘s paranoid extremes. Th is story of privilege run amok, (Swan can’t understand why his girlfriend deserts him, why business associates are dissatisfi ed with his selfi sh preoccupation), is also a tale of fond sensitivity that Roman Coppola understands and vouchsafes to the world. (Roman co-wrote Wes Anderson’s most profoundly emotional and deeply charming fi lm, Th e Darling Limited.)

Perhaps the only reason Charles Swan III wasn’t greeted with the rapturous reviews Sofi a Coppola always receives is that it doesn’t rely on the poor-little-rich-girl petulance that our celebrity-worshipping mainstream media adores. Candidly masculine, it risks the tyrannically p.c. media elite’s hypocritical disapproval. Yet Roman Coppola empathizes with the more complicated bad boy tradition exemplifi ed by Sheen, (a childhood friend since the fi lming of Apocalypse Now which was directed by Coppola’s father and starred Sheen’s dad).

Unlike the cosseted worlds on view in Sofi a Coppola’s Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette and Somewhere, Charles Swan III off ers a satirical view of narcissistic privilege as a young man’s dubious choice, not as social entitlement. Swan’s custom-designed bacon-and-eggs car, the fancy-dressed cowboy-and-squaw fantasy, the erotic vision of an out-of-reach love object poignantly, hilariously mock self-indulgence.

Th is rare feat of satirical candor recalls the Steely Dan song “Show Biz Kids” that predicted “Show biz kids/Making movies of themselves/You know they don’t give a fuck about/ Anybody else.” While that remains an insuff erable truth about Sofi a’s movies, it is exactly what distinguishes this fi lm as a charming display of camaraderie. (Note the lovely, reckless revenge Swan III exacts in defense of his stressed-out sister, played with sweet complexity by Patricia Arquette.) Above all, Roman helps Sheen achieve succor and Sheen returns the favor with a forceful performance—as in an ambidextrous telephone scene that shows impressive actorly skill far beyond his coasting as the oblivious roue in that TV fi lth Two and a Half Men.

It’s been over a decade since Roman Coppola’s last directorial eff ort (CQ). Th is new fi lm isn’t any more major but it’s of equal esoteric charm. Charles Swan III’s missteps appeal to our humanity in an era of rabid celebrity envy. No less a misanthrope than Paul Schrader recently complained to Deadline.com “It’s that Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston, Chris Grown thing. Th e [media] can’t stop themselves from unloading and judging. It’s a terrible fi sh bowl existence.” Roman Coppola’s fi shbowl satire makes an uncommon objet d’art. Asking for sympathy is more complex than a disingenuous apology.

Follow Armond White on Twitter at 3xchair

Show Biz Kids