looking at what i've been seeing

Without Anesthesia (1978) Dir. Andrzej Wajda

Incredibly shot portrait of a journalist's life slowly dissolving in Soviet Bloc Poland. Jerzy is a respected intellectual with decades of journalism under his belt when things begin to fall apart. While his divorce and family life are central to the story, there are so many subtly paranoid happenings: his loss of a professorship, his journalistic travel being cancelled, his boss quietly getting transferred.

The natural lighting of many scenes in interior spaces is so well done and close camera work makes it much more of a subject/character study than many of the other festival pieces. Jerzy lives darkly in these bright spaces and goes through stages of grief about his divorce, even questions his own assuredness that made him a successful journalist. The viewer is made to feel sympathy even as he tips deeper into alcoholism and philandering. Really enjoyed this one.

A Well for the Thirsty (1965) Dir. Yurii Illienko

This is what you might picture when you think of the Ukrainian version of a cliche art film: minimal plot, brilliantly composed shots and stills packed with metaphorical meaning. Playful absurdity and painful reality. Life, death, Christianity.

The titular well is a timeless thing in the middle of a desert wilderness tended by a single old man whose face is as weathered as stone. In an early scene he is seen turning framed photographs over to face the wall. Some shots only contain compositions of window frames shown in a series that becomes hyptonic.

Children use clay pots for percussion, the unveiling of an enormous Soviet state takes place. The old man repurposes the planks packed around the statue to build himself a coffin which he sleeps in. At one point, he is seen gently tossing kittens out of the coffin. I was surprisingly moved by this, a visual poem.

Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1953) Dir. Roy Del Ruth

The final screening Mom and I caught at this festival. It is a film retelling of an Edgar Allan Poe story set in Paris with perfect horror/mystery elements. This screening was in 3D, which definitely enhanced the experience! A series of murders is taking place and a police inspector is desperate to solve it. The main character is a scientist (played by Karl Malden channeling Vincent Price) who is obsessed with psychology and is conducting classical conditioning experiments on mice. Spoilers: he classically conditioned a gorilla who is committing murders against women who don't want to be with him. There are lots of absurd pseudoscience tropes -- including the police inspector citing the ear lobe shape of a criminal suspect. Some amazing stunts, vaudeville and circus routines.

Epilogue

Making our way down to the theater this morning it was already in the upper 80s. By the time we exited the theater it had reached the upper 90s. Even if the Italians don't really worship at the altar movie theater AC, being in a dark room with a magical story is a very good way to spend this time.

Edward Scissorhands (1990) Dir. Tim Burton

I haven't seen this movie in probably almost ten years and barely remembered most of the details outside of the general plot. A modern Frankenstein story as told through a very uniquely beautiful lens. The fact that this is a rehashing of that story doesn't at all detract from the originality of the character design, comedic moments and the power of modern reframing. Tim Burton really packs in the contrasts between pastel suburbia and the jagged features of Edward.

Vincent Price doing one of his final roles playing a mad scientist is glorious and perfect. Winona Ryder has the doe-eyes to convince the viewer of basically anything. This was Mom's first viewing even though, when I was 13 (and had not seen this movie) I convinced her I wanted to be Edward Scissorhands for Halloween and she helped me dress as him (??)

The French Way (1940) Dir. Jacques de Baroncelli

This screening came after a series of two minute Josephine Baker shorts some of which were being shown digitally for the first time. She was a pioneering Black actress of the silver screen, and a triple threat! The clips and the feature film showed off her presence as a performer, her brilliant singing, her comedic acting.

The French Way was a self-aware comedic romance set in WWII era Paris. The parents of two young lovers are feuding landlords with bad blood between their families dating back a century. Zazu, a famous performer played by Baker, seeks to help get the feud settled so their children can marry each other. There were great set-pieces in the cabaret club and the lavish apartments. Plenty of comic relief from a bum character who ends up entangled in the situation. Cool opportunity to see some rare pieces and a quite enjoyable feature!

Beyond Zero: 1914-1918 (2014) Dir. Bill Henderson

This one left me completely dumbstruck. Gorgeous, impressionistic images restored from nitrate prints over 100 years old. The way that spots, marks, decay, and distortion appear on the nitrate was incredible, the visualization would be considered very beautiful if it wasn't for the subject. The intro featured an archival audio clip from 1914 of Belá Bartok playing piano as reels showing pre-war parades and legions marching started on the screen. As the war escalates, so does the footage. The combination of harrowing scenes from the first World War and Kronos Quartet soundtrack was very unnerving, visceral. So many disturbing scenes: medics, soldiers loading artillery guns, mustard gas clouds hovering, fiery plane crashes. At the end, after another airplane goes down we see a distance shot of a lone parachute lofting the pilot slowly through the air for at least a minute. Some soft, sublime gong sounds played by the composer on mortar shells that were repurposed after the Vietnam war. The shot slowly faded out into reverent silence.

The Leopard (1963) Dir. Luchino Visconti

La Dérive (1964) Dir. Paula Delsol

This felt like a story idea that must have been in the artistic consciousness (one with many threads in common with Varda's Vagabond): Jacquie, a young French woman, decides to reject the norms of village life, mediocrity, the pipeline to motherhood in favor of exploration and freedom. Her desire to be free chafes with the world around her which is full of entitled men who want to buy her, rape her, or assert some other type of ownership over her.

The black and white photography is quite beautiful and sympathetically watching Jacquie live by the seat of her pants made me as a viewer feel liberated. The film flows with an effortlessness that mirrors the character herself. The ending was quite beautiful.

Ball of Fire (1941) Dir. Howard Hawks

Yet another full of quips from Wilder's screenwriting treasure chest. Cooper's grammarian stiff is incapable of handling the slur-slinging and seductive Barbara Stanwyck character. The voices of the group of academics with little-to-no life experience is so goddamn funny. Innuendos on top of innuendos, slang that is both dated and immortal (one scene caused me to LOL at how relevant the resurgence of 'corny' is!)

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) Dir. Martin Scorsese

This was the final Scorsese film of the festival and another first time watch for me, featuring an Oscar-winning performance for Ellen Burstyn. A genuinely funny and heartbreaking story of a mother-son relationship hits different when you're a son at the cinema with Mom. Many moments of silliness on screen that seem too good to be scripted. Trademark needle drops all over the place. Toxic men are the common thread in all these damn movies unfortunately.

Wednesday, we took a brief break from the movies. Mom and I took a train from Bologna to Como for the day. No built in itinerary other than our train ticket which afforded us an eight hour day around town. We walked to the edge of the lake, dipped our feet and felt the cool breeze. Afterwards we made our way along the shoreline to take a funicular up to Brunate, the mountaintop town overlooking Como. There was not a lot up there to see, but looking out over Como was a treat. A shuttle ride brought us to a marble lighthouse at the center of town with more great views. We had a delicious pasta lunch at a restaurant with a glorious overlook. After descending back to town we were sweating copiously and ate gelato in the shade to cool off. Twenty minutes later, we went back for seconds. I started to feel the unbridled joy of vacation, of no obligation and tasty indulgence. Mom and I went into the center of town, jacked to the max on coffee gelato and sat by the Duomo, an ornate church, for a drawing session. We spent probably two hours sketching in an adjacent park. I had bitten off more than I could chew with the detailed carvings of the facade of the building but I was completely locked in and delighted in the opportunity to make some art.

We wandered the alleyways as the sun started to get low in the sky and found a delicious seafood restaurant. Salmon crudo, clam pasta, prosecco. What’s better than Italy, I ask you?? Though we faced some delays, on the train ride home I continued to feel the day's bliss and beat my Mom in four out of five Scrabble games 🙂

Now back to the movies!!! 📽️🍿

Day 5

Clash By Night (1952) Dir. Fritz Lang

The first screening of the day, introduced by another legendary German director, Wim Wenders! He spoke about how the absence of father figures growing up impacted his life and how he learned his craft, Fritz Lang being such a figure. He admired the stylistic elements of the film and the lines that stuck with him -- Barbara Stanwyck letting out words that drip with regret, "Home is where you go when there is nowhere else left."

The movie itself showcased some very unique elements of filmmaking, including montages with impressionistic time lapse photography of clouds, engrossing establishing shots of a fishing town, the natural world continuing to exist around the central, human drama. The flair of the direction is very noticeable in these moments and makes this movie stand out from other rote stage dramas. Features some stellar acting by Stanwyck and the first introduction of Marilyn Monroe to the silver screen.

The story is a melodrama focusing on people with a deep ennui and dissatisfaction with their lives, contrasted by others who are content with their lot. There are cases to be made for both, but when it comes to people living by whim in order to pursue their happiness, everyone in this story ends up seeming fairly miserable. Wild At Heart flashback when one of the drunkest and most lecherous characters, Earl, smokes two cigarettes at once.

Summer In The City (1970) Dir. Wim Wenders

Introduced by the man himself and followed up with a conversation about his life in art and film. This was a treat also because this movie has only been screened publicly one other time, over 40 years ago. Wenders made this as his senior project in film school and confessed that he had been massively unprepared to deal with things like post-production, music licensing and sound mixing. Parts of it feel like a student film, but primarily we see the world slowly and patiently through a well-developed lens. The juxtaposition of bright music by The Kinks and following the paranoid protagonist through fraught winter cityscapes is very effective. Letting the music speak when the movie is a mostly quiet and slow affair really works. Plenty of directors have since taken this cue. The shooting style he apparently emerged from film school with is one I noticed in Paris, Texas: deliberately composed landscapes that unfold with small details over time, engrossing tracking shots, contrasts done beautifully (even in B&W).

I always feel lucky to hear an artist speak about process, inspiration, and vision -- luckier still when this particular artist uses 8+ songs by The Kinks and proclaims repeatedly how he loves rock and roll, while making maybe the least rock and roll movie ever.

New York, New York (1977) Dir. Martin Scorsese

Although it is somewhat considered to be a commercial failure, Marty's big musical homage to old Hollywood was magnificent. A massively ambitious film with his trademark precise execution. The musical numbers are just stunning, including the obvious performance highlight, Liza Minnelli's "And the World Goes 'Round" captured live. The way the scene is shot is so intimate, everything else melts away. An audience of thousands in Piazza Maggiore was reverently silent and erupted into applause when she finished. The title number is iconic as well, but nothing can compare to Liza's solo performance.

The Grand Master (1948) Dir. Daisuke Ito

This story, set in the early 20th century, centers around a Japanese traditional game called Shogi which is very similar to chess: two players, square board, ranked pieces, scripted strategic movements, established champions. The main character Sakata who is a hopelessly devoted amateur Shogi player absolutely does not have his shit together. He has an eye affliction that he is constantly ignoring. Like many people who are addicted to precisely one thing, he has an awful family life, money problems, and is barely employable. He hand-weaves sandals that we find out his boss only buys from him out of pity. His raw talent at Shogi is his only saving grace: it earns him a meager income, helps him reclaim pawned items and wins him a measure of respect from his peers. He pawns his own clothing, his daughter's kimono, his furniture. At one point his wife comes home to find he has pawned their ancestral altar. She is fuming and packing to leave him when he returns from a successful tournament with it strapped to his back. He claims he didn't really sell it since he was able to buy it back the same day. She agrees to stay.

Other men at the Shogi club in Osaka where he plays notice his talent but also how raw his playing is compared to the measured game of a master. They decide to throw their weight behind him and nurture him as a champion. Osaka has never had a Grand Master, always playing second fiddle to Tokyo. The investment in him shows and he can finally afford eye surgery to fix his vision, a proper home for his family, and not to pawn precious items. Ultimately he wins the games against his rival necessary for consideration as Grand Master but there are politics. When he is away from home awaiting deliberations from a committee, he is pulled out of the room by a call from his daughter. He learns that his ailing wife is in her final moments and concedes the argument over the title.

The oscillation between his obsession with the game and his deadbeat presence in his family makes for a compelling story of obsession and extremes. His choice in the end reflects a devotion that is probably supposed to feel honorable but is really too little too late. His long-suffering wife deserved better for letting him live all over her.

Hold Back The Dawn (1941) Dir. Mitchell Leisen

Double feature at the same theater as The Grand Master was nice. Had time to grab an espresso and a cornetto next door before jumping into the second film, a restored edition of Hold Back The Dawn. The setup is a tale within a tale framed by the protagonist barging onto a movie set to sell his tragic story to a director he met a decade ago in Europe. The chemistry between Charles Boyer and Olivia DeHavilland crackles and the effortlessly clever script co-written by Billy Wilder really sings! This film shows us a flawed Green Card con romance that ends up being a thing of beauty. Aggressively courting an American schoolteacher in a Mexican border town leads to some real tenderness. Immigration and American dream stories definitely hit different these days, but in the 40s there was still a sense of idealism (especially for white people). Moments in this story are filled with intrigue, comedy, suspense, and a naturally romantic element. A brilliantly rendered and engrossing film!

Accident (1967) Dir. Joseph Losey

This story, written by Nobel Prize winning playwright Harold Pinter, is a forerunner of some modern dramatic tropes we have come to love, the unraveling and slow revealing of a love triangle (rhombus?), the countless infidelities committed by the aristocracy. The cast features a number of wealthy and high-minded people studying philosophy at Oxford who are so bored and self involved that they get smashed every day and try to fuck everyone they can. Each professor has his list of students (gross) and the professors' wives have an awareness as well as their own roster. The scenes shot on verdant lawns, a canal and other natural environments contrasted well with the putrid behavior of the people in those spaces. Liking the characters in a story isn't necessarily a prerequisite to liking the story itself but I kind of did not like either. Messy as hell and not really as satisfying in execution as it thinks it is.

An English StudioCanal representative introducing the film brought up his first viewing in his university days and how at that time he found the movie confounding. Thirty+ years on he had a different impression but did not elaborate. Walking out, I heard a man in his late 20s say "So...what the fuck was that? I hated that!" Maybe the weakest entry for me so far.

Tres Colores: Rouge (1994) Dir. Krzysztof Kieślowski

This one completely blew me away. I had no idea what to expect from the plot, though the film's lead actress, Irene Jacob, who introduced the screening gave a window into the director's deeply considered approach (he cut together 15 different versions of one of his films!!). The influence of a film like RED on generations of artful and romantic movies is obvious. Unfortunately, it likely also inspired countless manic pixie dream girl indie films. What those films lack, and what Jacob's performance as Valentine provides, is a deeply tender and open-hearted understanding of pain, romance, and the random forking paths of our lives. The amount of loneliness each character experiences is profound but also realistic. We accept the love we think we deserve. The scenes and character arcs intertwine with such grace and care, all while bathed in incredible color. No, not everything in this movie is tinged with red. But the things that show up in red are seem to naturally embody the theme rather than serve as a stale reminder. The 4k restoration looked stunning.

The Life of Brian (1979) Dir. Terry Jones

I first watched this movie when I was 11 or 12 in my friend Carter's basement with his parents -- two Quakers who are significantly more straight-laced and normative than my own mother and father. It was only a little uncomfortable to watch the 'Biggus Dickus' scene in their presence. The film was as crude, silly, and satirical as I had come to expect from repeated viewings of The Holy Grail. In the cinema at 10 a.m., my memory of it translated accurately. I realized just how many of these lines are still lodged in my head, and how many of them went clean over it.

So many joyful moments and belly laughs. The stoning sketch is a Monty Python classic, as is the Latin grammar lesson the centurion gives to Brian while he paints protest graffiti on the Roman wall. Surprisingly, there was even an unintentional callback to my viewing of Wild At Heart the previous night: a colosseum custodian picking up and pocketing a disembodied arm after a gladiator fight (see previous post referencing a man’s shot-off hand). Also funny was seeing George Harrison cameo as a bearded Jerusalem resident (looking a lot like Jesus) and his executive producer credit.

The send-up of Christianity absolutely is the most impressive part of this. The fact of such an ordinary, arbitrary man born in Nazareth who is lost and entirely unremarkable, living parallel to a famously sage humanist (JC) is hammered hard throughout the movie in the best way. Perfectly satirized infighting of religious and political groups, the cruel dullness of the Roman military, the blind worship imposed after Brian finds himself on a podium with people listening to him spew nonsense. The closing musical number is one for the ages, made perfect by the shot zooming out on Golgotha with swelling modulation of “Always Look On The Bright Side of Life”, crucified people doing the can-can with just their feet.

The Devils: Director’s Cut (1971) Dir. Ken Russell

I knew almost nothing going into this movie, besides the fact that it is praised as a stylistic, political, and cinematic triumph. I had only seen one film by Ken Russell, the trippy and goofy film production of The Who’s Tommy. A disclaimer at the opening of The Devils informs the audience that all of these events really happened. The first scene opens in the 17th century, at a gaudy and colorful celebration staged by new French royalty, flanked by the power-hungry Cardinal Richelieu. The tonal shift following this is slow but powerful. A white brick-walled sovereign town in France, Loudon, is resisting nationalist control and homogenization by the new French government. Its spiritual and social leader, a handsome and beloved priest, Father Grandier is conducting himself lustfully, plying women all over the town with his charm. Nuns, daughters of aristocrats and basically everyone else is extremely horny for him, and reasonably so: Oliver Reed is a smoke-show, even in clergyman’s garb. The town centers around contrasting groups: a deeply rooted Catholic Church/convent, crude and disgusting townspeople, and maniacal plague doctors — the latter at one point are shown using a cupping technique with bees on a bedridden woman dying of the plague…while concurrently giving her a ‘cold-blood’ treatment by placing an alligator in her bed. The insanity ratchets up from here as political power plays and jealousy drive other clergy and the Mother Superior to seek to punish Grandier, basically for being a sexpot. The behavior of the nuns begins to escalate, under supposed demonic possession Grandier is blamed for. While Grandier is away attempting to a civil audience with governors, a literal witch-hunt is launched in his church to remove him from power. An exorcist is called in as the nuns completely lose control: stripping naked, smearing blood everywhere, doing lewd things to an enormous statue of crucified Christ. Through pseudoscience and lies, the government makes their case against Grandier, and mob rule agrees with his fate: to be burned at the stake.

Grandier refuses to admit that he is possessed by the devil or that he influenced the madness of the nuns and he pays dearly for it. The explicit torture scenes are so intense and harrowing I don’t feel the need to describe them.

The juxtaposition of this highly serious film showing insane cruelty being perpetrated in the name of religious piety with my earlier viewing of Life of Brian was so jarring. As my brain tried to soothe me in this film, another pair of Monty Python memories kicked loose: the plague scenes feature a wooden cart accompanied by chants of “Bring out your dead” and Protestant corpses that are left rotting high in the air on racks as a warning, both featured in The Holy Grail.

The production design was so captivating, duality shown in the walled town of Loudon, townspeople masked in black and the habits of the nuns. Beautiful architecture and church flourishes contrasted the utter brutality.

Ken Russell made this powerfully stylized historical film with such grandiosity that its truth feels undeniable. It is a completely uncensored look at the horrors perpetrated through religious power. Faith is weaponized in every scene. Purity is a myth. Demonic possession is a human act.

I went for a much needed palette cleanse after this movie and had apertivo at Impro, a café run by a former circus performer which I had passed earlier on my way to Life of Brian. Americano cocktails over ice and talking about Les Claypool and Afroman helped me forget some of the torturous imagery of The Devils.

Vagabond (1985) Dir. Agnès Varda

The Piazza Maggiore was not nearly as crowded for this film as it was for Lynch, but a decent audience showed for the screening of Agnès Varda’s Vagabond, also released under the French title ‘Without Roof or Law’. The introduction involved a male cinema board member saying very tone deaf things about women in film, but more notably, Agnès’ daughter took the stage and shared adoring anecdotes and deep appreciation for having inherited her mother’s gift for curiosity. The film itself is the most commercially successful and possibly most linear film by Varda who is more well known as a one-of-a-kind political documentarian defined by humor flourishes of pure artistry.

The story follows a young and filthy misanthropic woman named Mona as she hitchhikes around the wintry French countryside. The film’s pastoral settings are brilliantly captured and her exploits are alternately very liberated and reflective of deep pain. She meets a dozen people along the way —lovers, thieves, mother-figures, farmers, other drifters. The stories intersect delicately throughout, bringing the world of the film a real sense of fullness. The individual interactions of Mona show how adrift she truly is, although she claims to value freedom over comfort even as misfortunes befall her and each relationship she encounters sours. She meets many versions of people she could easily be, yet she rejects every attachment. She is content to listen to the radio, drink a beer, smoke some grass and sleep in a pasture. Throughout the film we watch as she steadily frays at the edges until her freedom finally gives way.

A highlight for me was a scene where she is spending time with a nearly blind old woman who is very wealthy. The woman’s nephew is hungry for money and her caretaker has a predatory boyfriend who we see aims to rob her. Mona ends up in her home after hitchhiking with the caretaker and is left to watch her. Though the old woman is guarded at first, Mona spends time with her, they get drunk on brandy and share in raucous laughter like two kindred spirits.

Day 1

Arriving at 4 p.m. local time in Bologna, full of coffee, jet lagged, and coated 12+ hours of travel sweat was disorienting to say the least. But the thrill of getting to be here surpassed how bodily tired I was. I dropped the bags, changed my clothes and raced out with Mom into 95 degree weather to go our first events. Inconveniently, the eSIM Mom purchased was not connecting to local data networks and our programs were in two areas about 20 minutes’ walk from each other in an unfamiliar city. On our sweaty outing towards those points I gave her hasty orientation instructions and our emergency meetup coordinates. We split ways on the broad pedestrian street through the center of town and I crossed the Piazza Maggiore to cinema Modernissimo.

Alice Rohrwacher

The first event was a conversation between an Italian film critic and Italian writer-director Alice (ah-lee-che) Rohrwacher. She showed a few clips from her past movies in between questions about her creative approach, inspirations and intentions in filmmaking. None of her work is screening at the festival this year, however I was interested enough to witness her sharing some thoughts having only watched one of her films: the beautiful and enchanting La Chimera. Her careful capturing of rural Italy’s timeless and ragged style was undeniable. She spoke about how the actual landscapes of regions like Emilia Romagna (where Bologna is situated) shaped her perception. The places outside of Italy’s major cities are mostly poorer agriculture economies filled with multigenerational family households. She sees their struggles intersecting with that of disillusioned youth in her politically tenuous country. From hearing her speak it became clear how she achieved more richness in her films by using an anthropological lens behind the physical one. La Chimera follows a young man with a gift for archaeological dowsing as he struggles to make money hawking artifacts he and his companions uncover. A clip was shown from her film The Wonders where a beekeeper attempts to keep his children interested in family agricultural pursuits, cultivating stewardship amidst a chaotic modernizing world. The director described a scene where one of her characters burns a plastic food container, but in her committed approach, she mentioned that the “plastic” prop for the scene was made from biodegradable corn material. Needless to say, I was enthralled listening to her and I will race to see her next feature.

Ten Seconds to Hell(l (1959)

Mom caught this one while I was at the talk at Modernissimo but her description of it was compelling: POWs still imprisoned after WWII are forced to act as a bomb squad despite not getting along very well. The main character played by Jack Palance was once an architect and is forced to watch the bombs that cannot be defused as they explode, hobbling structures that he designed. His character has a heated feud with another squad member, a somehow prideful disgraced Nazi. It sounded like a homoerotic combination of The Great Escape, The Hurt Locker and Wages of Fear.

The Color of Money (1986) Dir. Martin Scorsese

Marty and the movies have been synonymous with each other for 50 years. He is one of the most renowned figures and pioneers in American cinema, with good reason. Dynamic filming techniques and his ability to elicit compelling performances are two of his trademarks that were on display for our first big watch of Saturday.

I have seen the Color of Money before, but I think it slipped my mind that of all the iconic roles Newman played — an over 40 year career resulting in ten Academynominations— this is the one for which he won the Best Actor Oscar. His role of Eddie (reprised from The Hustler) stars alongside young pool player Vincent (20 year-old, vivacious Tom Cruise) and shows his full assumption of the role with bravado, incredible one-liners and a dynamic of crooked fatherliness. The way Scorsese shoots the pool scenes is so captivating — clever POV shots, time lapse table views, and sound design bring you into every scene. Style wise, this may be an introduction to Marty’s use of needle drops that charge the energy of the film even further. Delightful hustling montage scenes feature cameos from young Forest Whitaker and Iggy Pop. Even if Marty does better than most of his era, it is still a film of its time in terms of misogyny and objectification — Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio’s Oscar-nominated performance as Carmen is sharp, but she is the mirror for Vincent, our focus. Ultimately, Marty pulls the viewer through this world effortlessly. The fast-paced storytelling of Vincent’s rise from innocence to hustlerdom conceals intent in a way that feels like a hustle itself.

Day 2

Getting to bed around midnight after Color of Money with a 915 a.m. screening lined up at a cinema further across town was a choice. I made that choice in order to catch queer director Todd Haynes’ debut film, Poison, since I very much loved his films May December, Safe, and Carol.

Poison (1991) Dir. Todd Haynes

The vignettes in this film consist of three disparate stories filmed separately, but layered together as arcs of the same tale. Each one is fully imagined and stylistically very different, but the ultimate effect is an emotional climax united by the allegory of queer alienation during the AIDS crisis: The Horror segment shot in black and white reveals a handsome and successful microbiologist who accidentally inoculates himself with a disfiguring potion (supposedly a distillation of human sexuality) that then infects others and makes him a pariah. The Hero, which is brilliantly stylized as a tabloid TV documentary, focuses in on an oddball child who is hated by his community, including neighbors and schoolteachers but ends up rescuing his mother from brutal physical abuse at the hands of his father. The Homo is the final uniting segment wherein we meet inmates of a men’s prison, two of whom once attended juvenile boarding school together. Flashbacks show us abuse visited from different directions by young men. In the prison, homophobic slurs are hurled. Rape and tender longing take on an alternating role between prisoners. In the most memorable flashback scene, a group of boarding school boys spit on the face of a bullied child. Meanwhile flower petals fall gently from the trees above and stick to his face. Walking out of the movie theater into daylight afterwards was jarring. The often disturbing imagery contrasting with the beauty and artfulness of this film rang in my head for hours.

The Last Days of Pompeii (1926) Dir. C Gallone + A Palermo

This is easily a record-breaker for the oldest film I’ve ever seen — 100 years old! This black and white, silent film with live accompaniment from a classic pianist far exceeded my expectations. The styled restoration screening featured broad frame coloring that added a sense of changing light and mood. The story arcs largely involved stage tropes such as unrequited love, betrayal, murder, and follies of the justice system but all playing out within gorgeously rendered sets, featuring impressive practical effects and later interspersed with real footage of a Vesuvian eruption. The set piece recreations of Pompeiian fora and markets were astounding. Also impressive were the costume design and use of real spaces such as the famously intact amphitheater (which hosted a production from Pink Floyd years later). Having been to Pompeii in archeology class touring the ruins intimately three different times, I was pulled all the way in. The other thing that stood out to me was the accurate historical representation of a wealthy multicultural city housing retired soldiers, Egyptian, Greek and Christian religious followers, and aristocrats. This was not a throwaway film, only impressive only for its age, but a well-rendered piece of art that has survived for a reason.

Double Indemnity (1944) Dir. Billy Wilder

I was giddy with excitement to take in a noir classic I had never seen! After watching two of Billy Wilder’s films in the past year I had this one near the top of my list. His snappy writing of dialogue and storytelling approach were so instantly intoxicating. Barbara Stanwyck, the lead actress, is one of the honorees of the festival and they are screening almost her total filmography. The subtleties of this film are outstanding. Lots of showing without telling, paranoia and twists that are totally captivating. The banter is extra witty and feels pretty risqué for the time. The Neff character, played brilliantly by Fred McMurray, is an insurance man who falls for Stanwyck’s Phyllis. His use of “baby” is one for ages — a living, breathing noir trope. Neff’s colleague Keyes is an insurance investigator with “a little man” in his stomach (his personified agita at losing money) and brings the quips to a new level. The sheer number of twists and turns in the story bear a withholding of spoilers (even if it was made 80 years ago). The way this movie is shot shows off still more subtle brilliance. An amazing theatrical experience!

Wild At Heart (1990) Dir. David Lynch

I became enamored with John Green's writing when I recently blew through his heart-warming, funny, and emotionally poignant essay collection, The Anthropocene Reviewed. Although he is not specifically a medical writer, he approaches all of his subjects with an emphasis on fact balanced well with thoughtful compassion. He was once a hospital chaplain -- a group I have worked with and respect deeply -- and has great perspective on what it is like caring for sick people. When I noticed he had a new book about a towering healthcare subject like TB, I knew I had to read it. It's a slim volume, but within its pages, Green explores the historical and sociopolitical relevance of TB as well as its microbiology and its impact on individuals, communities, and countries across the globe. His subject is a boy from Sierra Leone named Henry (a name shared by Green's own son) who has been undergoing treatment for TB for over half of his life. The intense peaks and valleys of his illness along with its stigmatizing loneliness are explored deeply. Henry writes poetry in isolation at a bare-bones Sierra-Leonian hospital where the community believes people only go to die. There is plenty of pain in the arc of Henry's story but there is also heroism and advocacy.  

The conclusion Green reaches in his exploration of TB is an important one (and maybe the root cause of just about every problem human beings face): greed, inequality and social determinants drive the suffering that humans face in every country on earth. Wealth is hoarded, the rich only exist on the backs on a poorer class of people while they live in abundance. Scarcity is not necessary -- it is engineered. The capitalist worship of profit and expense has made it so that drugs that are known to cure drug-resistant TB are unavailable to people who are most vulnerable to it. The companies that manufacture these TB drugs fight legal battles to retain patents so they can continue to be highly profitable. I have seen first-hand some of the ways these profits get squandered. The catered meals, swank suits, cars, iPads and sleek presentations that accompany pharma representatives in every setting: family medicine, hospitals, conferences, etc are designed to impress and drive sales. Ignore for a moment that these companies manufacture medicines that genuinely help people with chronic disease, and consider that they do this while enjoying an inexplicably large profit margin and are largely unchecked by regulation. This is of course a symptom of the greater disease of wealth inequality in the world, but is still driven by the same $entiments.  But I digress. 

This book was very good with its moral stance, uplifting core story, a tour of history and cast of many famous people, some of whom died of TB (Camus, Poe, Keats, Kafka, Orwell, Chopin, Whitman, Eleanor Roosevelt). It packed a wallop of strong feelings and left me feeling hopeful while also enraged.

I couldn't have been older than 5 or 6 the first time I needed to get my forehead sutured. I was prone to jumping in and out of the sturdy wooden chairs that lined the dining room table in our house. Mom would often warn me to slow down, but the humming motor inside doesn't obey easily. At dinner one night, I was finished eating and ready to move. With one motion, I rose up gripping the chair's arms, leapt up and brought the center of my left eyebrow down hard on the solid wooden table. I felt the impact, heard it through my own skull, and immediately howled in pain. Mom rushed over to inspect me and hold a towel against my forehead. She recounted that there was shockingly little blood from the wound but could see how I was split wide open and needed medical attention. Probably crying and definitely scared, I was driven to Seventh Day Adventist Hospital, a local community hospital with a small emergency department. In a cramped curtained treatment area, they managed to console me, numb my face (somehow) and gave me a handsome multitude of sutures -- 12 if I remember correctly. Mom later recounted that she hadn't felt overwhelmed until she saw the provider bring out a lidocaine-filled syringe to inject me, at which point she thought she might faint. This was one of my earliest memories of being injured, but I had sutures placed around my hairline 2 years later from hitting my head on the corner of a filing cabinet. I physically hurt myself (and was hurt by others) in many other minor ways throughout my childhood but these little injuries were followed by more significant ones: a broken right elbow at age 17, a broken left wrist at age 20, an occult fracture of my left radial head at age 29, and a broken right wrist at age 32. All of these accidents occurred as a result of me falling from bicycles. It is worth noting that people who have ADHD have a well-documented reduced life expectancy due to accidents and injury.

As luck would have it, a March evening last year brought me a very similar case, but with roles reversed. A 4 year-old boy had brained his forehead on a table and was brought in by his father for sutures. The wound was deep but not wide and would close easily with 5 or 6 sutures. One of my attendings frequently coaches me about "the box", an area where scarring related to poor wound healing can make a sensitive difference to factors such as job prospects and social success. She often argues that we should refer patients who have lacerations in this area so that people who are more highly skilled can do the repair. In this instance, I had over a half dozen of these procedures in my first two months of clinical practice and thought I would be as good a candidate to complete the task as a Saint Christophers ED resident.

Degree of success in this procedure doesn't rest as much on competency as it depends on the demeanor of the pediatric patient and that of their parent. If the parent is calm and not a helicopter, it makes things easier, but if the child is (very reasonably) afraid of the procedure and unable to hold still it is never going to happen. After rinsing the wound and ensuring that no other underlying head injury complications were present, I described the repair procedure to the little boy's father and obtained his consent. I gave the boy a run-down of what would happen to see how he would react. I counted my blessings as it became apparent that this was the most wan and peaceful child with a bleeding forehead laceration I had ever met. He laid perfectly still and barely flinched as I numbed with lidocaine which is the most uncomfortable part of the procedure for most people. He was wearing a Spider Man shirt, so naturally I misdirected him by talking to him about Marvel superhero things and describing reasons why Spider Man was probably the coolest of them all. He tolerated all 5 sutures without needing a break or fidgeting. I was sweating a little bit out of pure hyperfocus during the procedure, but when it ended I told him he had been very brave and requested a high five, which he was happy to provide.

January 2026 Mixed media (collage, cork, copper wire) Exhibited: Jinxed heART show, February 7th, 2026

Chief complaint is a standardized phrase in medicine that is helpful to focus care. What brought you in today? In the outpatient episodic care setting, we like to keep it narrow, make it easy. There are of course some big considerations -- are you too sick to be cared for in my outpatient clinic? -- but barring that, most of the recommendations we make will be temporary prescriptions, follow-up instructions or endorsements of OTC cold/flu medicines. There's almost a running joke among our staff that when people present to Urgent Care with multiple complaints they are in the wrong place. Sometimes the many complaints are symptoms that can be centralized/explained by a disease process, but the ones that produce some jibes or mild irritation are usually very disparate.

Example: 32 y/o male presents to have staples removed from posterior scalp placed 7 days ago at outside hospital ED. For context, the staples were placed after he had a poly-substance related syncopal fall and cut his head open. Oh, and also notably he has been having persistent intermittent chest pain for the better part of the week. These problems require very different investigation. Throwing more variables at the wall seems to cut into how seriously we can take the complaints (there is basically no healthcare environment that willingly will see these two things in the same visit).

This man had a lot of advantages: young, educated, stable vital signs, physically fit, generally healthy, accompanied by a recent, detailed medical record surrounding his syncope workup that provided plenty of reassuring information.

My more recent patient with "multiple complaints" had far less of those advantages going for her.

62 y/o female presenting with pain to bilateral knees and left hip after a slip/fall on icy sidewalk yesterday. No head strike, bearing weight with her cane and walking normally. History of osteoarthritis, obesity, high blood pressure. Initial vital signs show BP 211/115, HR 88, RR 18, SpO2 98%, afebrile. Additionally, she had three days of upper respiratory symptoms including cough, congestion, sore throat, fatigue, chills, decreased appetite. She states her son has had similar symptoms this week. She had recently been in the hospital caring for her elderly mother for whom she was previously providing home care. She began to tear up as she was describing how exhausted she was from worrying about and caring for her mother. To make matters worse, she was having weeks of pelvic floor dysfunction that resulted in her having urinary incontinence that she discovered upon waking in her bed several mornings a week. These things are no doubt unconnected but that certainly doesn't make the burden of them any less heavy. To take the cake, she has been out of her two daily anti-hypertensive medicines for almost two months. She and her son have been rationing/sharing his medicine which she says is the same in name, if not dose. She has been unable to see her PCP as she has devoted her time to caring for her mother who is now hospitalized. She notes that she has swelling in her lower legs that is worse over the past several weeks, likely due to being out of her medicine which is a diuretic.

I was able to meaningfully address all of these complaints within an hours just as we were closing up. This was a person came to the clinic humbly hoping that someone would consider her needs. She wasn't considering them for various reasons (being a full-time caregiver), and sometimes when you're under the weight of enough things, you may feel defeated, unable to help yourself. Where to begin?

I x-rayed her knees due to findings of bony tenderness and localized swelling after her fall. I provided some acetaminophen as she had not taken anything for pain since the morning. I tested her for COVID to see if I could give her antivirals and to make sure her viral respiratory infection wasn't Big Bad enough to make her ailing mother more ill. As I listened to her lungs, I noticed that she was moving air perfectly well, but the sweater she was wearing was moth-eaten and ragged at the edges. I tested her urine to make sure she wasn't suffering from hematuria or urinary infection. All of these tests came up negative. I provided her prescription refills for two months' supply of antihypertensives so that she could get back on track. She thanked me, felt reassured, and managed to clock a BP 40 mmHg lower than the one measured when she arrived.

When I see a patient check in with a laundry list of things they need help with, I instinctively grumble because it can be hard to provide meaningful support for this many things. People are complex and their problems certainly can be, even in urgent care. The grumbling represents a mild calloused response that I am becoming more aware of and trying to defuse because it is unhelpful. It subtly tips my bias against the patient getting good care. It also wears me out to dwell in this rather than acting to reasonably meet people's needs by assessing the problem and giving them the tools to help themselves.

"OH, REVEAL SOME ENTRY (OR HEART ON MY SLEEVE)"

Mixed media (cardboard, acrylic paint, oil pastel, ink pen, linocut)

Lol, I made an edit of 2025 skateboarding clips and put an electronic music backing track that I produced over top.

A 69 y/o male wearing an ankle monitor presenting for laceration repair of the left pinna after he fell in his bathroom two hours prior to arrival. Initially the note next to his name read "in a hurry, wearing ankle monitor". These type of things make me a little crazy, because it presumes I don't already have a sense of urgency, and braces me for the impatience of whomever I am treating. He wears hearing aids that wrap behind his ear and when he fell, he struck his left ear on the countertop, the force of which caused the hearing aid to burst a deep partial thickness laceration in the lobe. Not all the way through, but close. He was speaking loudly throughout his visit as a result. He was gregarious and talked with his whole body (gesturing, moving his head) even while we were irrigating his deep laceration. I inspected his wound, built some rapport and ran back to throw in orders for his tetanus vaccine (last dose unknown), I could hear him from up the hall with several walls and a door between us. My co-workers asked me immediately after I evaluated him if I had found out why he had the ankle monitor. I told them that I planned to find out once I started suturing him.

I thought about my own experience with needing a left ear lobe laceration repaired in May, but knew dermabond would not cut it in this instance. The cartilage of his pinna was exposed an cracked itself, beneath a good sized flap of skin. I talked him through the procedure consent, auricular nerve block, and complex laceration repair. As much as he could understand, he did. I had never attempted this type of nerve block before, but given that he was shaking my hand and calling my doctor after 5 minutes, I figured he'd be able to tolerate it even if I wasn't actually an expert yet. Despite my inexperience with some things, I felt confident in visualizing what I would do to repair his ear.

I prepared my materials, laid him flat, aimed my light and got to work. The anesthetic part was smooth, and as I went I used the old misdirection technique to get him talking. I started with "if it's not too invasive, why are you wearing an ankle bracelet?" and away we went. It was a convoluted story which started with him meeting a woman some 16 years ago who was half his age. They had a daughter together but never married and stopped living together after 5 years. He continued to be present in her life and raise her. He professed love for his daughter and showed me a headshot of her at probably 12 or 13, in a catholic school sweater. He told me how this innocent version of her was gone, which was the segue into what really happened re: the bracelet. He told me that she became disaffected in her teens and at one point, called in a terroristic threat to the school. She was suspected and when he brought to school the following week, there was a whole district worth of police lined up outside. They said they were looking for someone with her last name (and his) and knowing it would be very bad for her to be booked by the authorities, he confessed to the threat himself to protect her. At this point, I had put in 3 dissolvable gut sutures, bringing together the cartilage. While I moved on to the prolene suture layer, he moved on to the next part of the story. His confession resulted in him getting booked and the authorities scouring his life for other charges they could find. Needless to say, he had not considered this. He had two unregistered firearms and ended up going to jail for 15 months. He eventually got out of jail and ended up in a bitter dispute with his daughter's mother, who had since heard about some of his past parenting tactics. His daughter had mentioned spanking as well as beatings with a belt, which was relayed to the authorities. For this guy, I'm sure that was all normalized and like most traumatized people, he could justify this as normal because it happened to him. He was then booked for aggravated assault, and qualified for house arrest. He wasn't allowed to see his daughter, who he said would soon be graduating high school. He continued to rail against his ex, who he explained was a welfare-queen, disability check cash-cow and was bent on collecting as much assistance as possible. I found this to be a pretty disgusting description, both of his own behavior and his attitude/relationships with these people. I threw in my sixth and final suture, cleaned him up and reviewed his discharge instructions. He shook my hand, said "thank you, doctor". He told me he was impressed that I treated him in under an hour and that he would be able to make it in time to check in with his PO. I provided him a note for proof and he left.