Short Reviews of Three Books

Gustav Klimt: Art Nouveau Visionary by Eva di Stefano

I had never heard of Klimt or seen any of his work, until I randomly picked up this book while perusing through Barnes and Noble's art section one day. I was immediately struck by the cover, and the few other paintings I saw as I flipped through the book, and ended up purchasing it on a whim. Needless to say, I'm extremely glad I picked it up, discovering one of my new favoriate artists in the process. Kudos to Stefano for laying out all of Klimt's major works, and some choice selections from those of his contemporaries, in an attractive manner. She also expertly explains Klimt's process, his general thoughts about art, and the social background of turn-of-the-century Vienna. Klimt's style is a beauty to behold. His mix of decorative arts, geometric patterns, and semi-flat perspective create twisty, spiraling phantom-like figures that seem to spring out of nowhere and never end. As you study them and try to discern their different parts, they invoke a feeling of optical illusion. His work with female faces and figures is sensuous, erotic, and scandalous even now. I don't know if you could appropriately call his artwork feminist, but it presents female pleasure and authority in such an upfront, positive way (completely free of judgement or misogyny) that it's quite shocking and revelatory to look at. Even more so, considering he lived 100+ years ago. Dune by Frank Herbert  Reading Dune is like panning for gold. The gold in this case being Herbert's detailed, poetic descriptions of the ecology and environment of Arrakis, and the structure and functioning of the Fremen. Mainly because these aspects seem the most most thought-out. Unfortunately much sifting is required when slogging the rest of the novel. The aforementioned elements are only one part of the story and don't fully bloom until halfway through a 400 page book. The rest is given over to a standard chosen one narrative with a warring feudal families background that will be familiar to anyone who has existed for a few years on this Earth. The problems with the book are compounded by the terms and mythology Herbert invented. Much of the created vocab sounds and usually has a real-life analog that could've been easily slotted into a sci-fi setting. The philosophical and religious elements that are not part of the Fremen add little. It's rote new-age, semi-eastern stuff that again will not surprise anyone reading today. Also troubling is Herbert's refusal to develop any kind of critique of the obviously brutal, oppressive society that Paul and his family inhabit. The closest he gets is contrasting the decadence of the Imperium with the asceticism of the Fremen. But this comparison does not involve any kind of difference in how authoritarian each society is or ends up being. One could easily imagine an alternative, streamlined Dune that ditches much of the extraneous bits that drag the story down and instead focuses on the Fremen in an anti-colonial resistance to the empire. This would keep what is interesting and original in the novel without the garbled prose and unsettling politics. Confronting Fascism by Don Hamerquist, J. Sakai, and Others Confronting Fascism has some important insights into the nature of the most deadly of isms. Mainly that it is possible for fascism to develop into a popular, mass movement rooted in the lower and middle classes that is entirely autonomous from the ruling class. This point is echoed in two other books I recently finished: David Renton's Fascism: Theory and Practiceand Robert Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism. Renton describes fascism as a form of reactionary mass politics and Paxton does a deep dive into the early stages of the development of fascist parties. Paxton's book is the most useful as it gives a blow-by-blow account of how fascism began as a vaguely revolutionary movement started by an eclectic mix of artists, intellectuals, ex-leftists, and decommissioned soldiers; took root by physically confronting working class organizations; and ultimately came to power by a combination of incompetence, inertia, and cynical plotting among the traditional elite. Paxton's account is extraordinarily rigorous and also provides a brief overview of the conditions that made fascism attractive to people (world war, depression, the beginnings of mass democracy, a strong left). This separates it from the other two books. Confronting does not provide nearly enough evidence for its claims and twice dips into conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, Theory and Practice is too heavy on the former and too light on the latter. It's more accurately a collection of how different thinkers have defined fascism. But all three reach the same, important conclusion: that fascism is a specific danger outside the normal functioning of society that has to be stopped before it can take power.

Review: Mad Max Fury Road

Directed by George Miller

Written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, and Nick Lathouris

Starring Tom Hardy (Max Rockatansky), Charlize Theron (Imperator Furiosa), and Nicholas Hoult (Nux)

Cinematography by John Seale

Edited by Margaret Sixel

Music by Junkie XL

In a pleasant surprise, George Miller's heavy-metal extravaganza, Mad Max: Fury Road, was nominated for ten Oscars. I say surprising because the Academy Awards rarely recognizes artistry and brilliance when they are contained in genre works (action, horror, thriller). Six of these nods were part of the technical categories, which sometime serve as the space to honor more off-beat choices, but four were in the major groupings. These included Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing. Fury Road ended up winning five, and Margaret Sixel took home the most notable, receiving a gold statuette for her editing work. In a truly just world the movie would have won everything it had been put up for, and decorated Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron for their duo of committed, over-the-edge performances. Alas, gearheads aren't in control in of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (at least not yet), so we'll have to make do with what is hopefully an initial salvo directed against the stuffiness of the Oscars.

Onto the meat of thing, the third sequel featuring our titular car cowboy, this one opens with a should-be-by-now iconic opening shot of Max, newly enveloped by an unruly mass of hair, standing over a bleach-out desert,V8 interceptor by his side. Shaking off encroaching madness, he is soon chased down and captured by a gang of vehicular bandits. From there, the creative team quickly establishes the vast chasm that separates the world of this entry to the others in the series. If the original Mad Max depicted an Australia that was just starting to fray due to over-dependence on fossil fuels, and The Road Warrior showed the immediate aftermath of societal collapse, then Fury Road leaps forward to a time where normality, security, cooperation, and abundance are hazy, near-forgotten memories or legends. There's little that's recognizable to us, and whatever detritus can be traced back to the current era is totally re-contextualized.

However, unlike 99% of blockbusters, the full details of this frightening new world are revealed in an organic way, mainly through character interactions, small-talk, and the robust, fully-realized production design. The audience is trusted to use their imagination to stitch the hints and suggestions together into a coherent whole. The first act feels like being suddenly (and violently) dumped into an ice bath as we watch Max get "processed" by his captors and are treated to a grand tour of the guts and bolts of Immortan Joe's medieval wasteland kingdom. His army of war boys, the hybrid norse-metalhead-biker religion he's built around himself, and the half-understandable slang that's arisen from the ashes of the English language are all introduced in short order. Again, all of these components are introduced through methods that make sense within the universe of the film. I never got the impression that the actors were speaking for the benefit of the audience. The way we are allowed to just sit back and absorb the novel aspects of Miller's vision is supremely refreshing in an age where most other movies of this kind are choked by garbled, expository dialogue.

After the overview of Joe's rule, the real action starts up as one of his high-ranking warriors, Imperator Furiosa, sets off in the War Rig on an errand run to pick up more "guzzoline". Secretly however, she has absconded with Immortan's four wives and is attempting to escape his grasp once-and-for-all. Upon uncovering Furiosa's back-stab, Joe summons the war-boys and a fleet of pursuit vehicles. Max is in tow as the "blood bag" for Nux. From there on, the ground work is laid for the expertly-choreographed chase that will take up the rest of the runtime and the basic ideas that will be explored. Using that scenario the crew behind and in front of the cameras masterfully shames all other filmmaking currently being done in this mold. All the problems associated with modern big-budget pictures (incomprehensible action, regressive gender roles, muddled or right-leaning politics) are avoided, and in their place is exhilarating combat, eye-popping backgrounds, and one of the finest female performances of the decade.