The smugness with which Trump and his goon squad have gone about breaking up families, dismantling government institutions, wallowing in corruption, and passing vicious anti-abortion laws is breathtaking in its scope, stupidity, selfishness, and evil.
- In his recent article for The Daily Beast, David Rothkopf asks "Can Wharton Revoke Trump’s Economics Degree Now?"
- Following their work with a coalition of progressive groups, Texas Representative Al Green and Michigan's newly-elected Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (who ignited a firestorm when she proclaimed "We're going to impeach the motherfucker!") delivered a petition signed by more than 10 million people urging Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump.
- As more and more Democrats have announced their intentions to run for President, people are noticing the imbalance in media attention focused on male versus female candidates.
Whether people pin their hopes for the future on the children they raise or the culture they create, the thought of one's legacy raises a question that spans any and all generations: "What do I want to leave behind when I'm gone?" As our media has progressed from cave paintings to new technologies capable of storing unbelievable quantities of data (and with the current world population surpassing 750 billion people), the hopes and dreams of so many parents and children depend on the sustainability of life on earth.
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Accompanied by pianist Guenter Buchwald and percussionist Frank Bockius (with intertitles narrated by Paul McGann), the 2019 San Francisco Silent Film Festival's screening of L'Homme du Large started out on a bizarre premise. Now nearly 100 years old, Marcel L'Herbier's film introduces viewers to a hermit named Nolff (Roger Karl) who lives on the coast of Brittany. Having taken a vow of silence, Nolff's only human contact is with a religious novice who brings his food to him every day. |
| Roger Karl (Nolff) and Marcelle Pradot (Djenna) in a scene from 1920's L'Homme du Large |
While it may seem natural for a silent film to focus on someone who has taken a vow of silence, Nolff's backstory is filled with high hopes and grave disappointments. Having grown up by the sea, he has learned to respect the power of the ocean and be grateful for the fish it provides that earn him money and feed his family. When his children are born, he insists that his wife (Claire Prélia) raise their daughter, Djenna (Marcelle Pradot), while he raises their son, Michel (Jaque Catelain).
Nolff's biggest hope is for Michel to fall as deeply in love with the sea as his father. But instead, Michel develops into a sullen teenager who hates his father, hates fishing, hates the sea, and would rather hang out in town where he can drink with his friend, Guenn-la-Taupe (Charles Boyer) and watch a sexy dancer named Lia (Suzanne Doris). Despite Djenna's attempts to help her brother, the deteriorating family dynamic makes Nolff and his wife miserable.
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| Jaque Catalain (Michel) and Roger Karl (Nolff) in an Easter Sunday scene from 1920's L'Homme du Large |
When Nolff's wife becomes ill during the town's Easter celebration and must be taken home to their cabin, Michel disappears into the crowd looking for more excitement. Later that evening, Djenna returns to town in an effort to bring her brother back home. After she finds him in a bar and explains the urgency of the situation, he promises to return home in a little while. Instead, he goes back into the bar, where he gets into a fight and fatally stabs another man.
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| Jaque Catelain (Michel) and Suzanne Doris (Lia) in a scene from 1920's L'Homme du Large |
The next morning, Nolff heads into town looking for Michel and learns that his son is in jail. After paying the money needed to set Michel free, the two men return to the family cottage only to discover that Nolff's wife has died. True to form, Michel does something despicable with the money his mother left to Djenna. Seeing no future for Michel, the bitter, angry Nolff gets into a fight with his son. When Michel falls, hits his head on a rock, and passes out, Nolff wraps the young man's body in a fishing net, puts him in a skiff, and sets him adrift in the ocean.
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| Poster art for 1920's L'Homme du Large |
After several months have passed, Djenna receives a letter from her (presumed dead) brother informing her that he has turned his life around and is earning his living as a sailor. The news comes as a shock to Djenna and her reclusive father (who, as Michel heads their way, must decide whether or not to break his vow of silence).
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| Jaque Catelain (Michel) in 1920's L'Homme du Large |
Although L'Herbier does a fine job of capturing the intensity of the family tragedy in L'Homme du Large, with the exception of Charles Boyer, most of the roles in this film were performed by nonprofessional actors (which helps to give the movie a rough authenticity). The color tinting is highly effective, but L'Herbier's most impressive novelty is the strikingly elaborate design for the film's intertitles. Nevertheless, L'Homme du Large leaves audiences thinking about faith, forgiveness, and classic concerns about whether or not one's children will grow up to become responsible adults.
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| Roger Karl stars in 1920's L'homme du Large |
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While some works of theatre (farce, musical comedy) can seem pretty lightweight, what keeps them afloat is the underlying craft of their playwrights, the appeal of the performers, and the skill of each production's stage director and design team. Basing a work of solid intellectual heft on a cornerstone of one of the world's major religions while molding it into an entertaining and educational experience requires exceptional levels of research, storytelling, and a keen understanding of how to use the mechanics of theatre to create magic out of mystery, challenge doubt with suspension of disbelief, create hope from heresy, and find inner peace through effective problem solving.The Berkeley Repertory Theatre is currently presenting The Good Book, a powerful piece of theatre written by Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson (and directed by Ms. Peterson) with scenic design by Rachel Hauck, costumes by Lydia Tanji, lighting and projections designed by Alexander V. Nichols, and sound design by Mark Bennett and Charles Coes. While it might seem easy to shower superlatives on their achievement like sprinkles on a birthday cake, I found The Good Book to be every bit as thrilling, challenging, probative, and provocative as Tony Kushner's groundbreaking Angels in America.
As a team, O'Hare and Peterson have crafted a dramatic experience that does not emanate from the contemporary Christianist propaganda machine, but from people who are less interested in disputing or reinterpreting stories contained in the Bible than they are in tracing how the Bible came to us in its current form. Peterson stresses that:
“We immediately knew that we didn’t want to adapt the Bible. We were more interested in tracking how it got here. We decided that we wanted to begin way back before there was anything written down at all. We were going to start with the initial need for a book like this -- in any culture -- and also think about the impulses that would have started it well back before there was even the idea of one God. We also wanted to look at how the Bible gets transferred."
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| Lance Gardner in a scene from The Good Book (Photo by: Alessandra Mello) |
"Our first point was how it got from pre-language to the Fertile Crescent (the part of the world where the Old Testament was born). And then, how it got from the desert to the hotel nightstand. We’re tracking it like a river, how it turns in little streams that ultimately turn into the Christian Bible and the 19th century movement in America where Bibles were being mass produced and sold.”
Two deeply conflicted characters drive the narrative in The Good Book. Connor (Keith Nobbs) starts out as an adolescent "biblehead" who is infatuated with Christianity and the stories he has read in the Bible. Bullied as a teenager, he eventually comes out as a gay man and, years later, learns that the classmate who bullied him has been forced out of the closet by his ex-wife.
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| Keith Nobbs co-stars as Connor in The Good Book (Photo by: Alessandra Mello) |
As Connor matures, his faith is challenged to a point where he becomes a bitter and angry lapsed Catholic who fantasizes about what it might have been like to be one of the Irish monks who worked on the Book of Kells. In some ways, Connor's backstory bears a striking resemblance to that of The Good Book's co-author, Denis O'Hare.
“I came to this play pretty ferociously hating the Bible and assuming that the Bible was worthless. That has changed radically. I greatly appreciate now the human achievement that is the Bible. I greatly value large portions of it. I still think a lot of the Bible is really boring and repetitive. A lot of it is unintelligible to modern culture and a lot of it is misinterpreted (the idea that it is the word of God is ridiculous). I’m especially alarmed at the American inability to obey our own Constitution, which says that there should be no state religion and that freedom of religion also means freedom from religion.”
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| Denmo Ibrahim in a scene from The Good Book (Photo by: Alessandra Mello) |
“As an atheist, I’m often in the minority. I’m at the blunt end of the religious stick. Part of what we intend to do with this play is let people understand that this thing is flawed. I don’t think it should be accorded the weight of law. I think our law is based on many things, specifically Judeo-Christian tradition, but also many other traditions. So in terms of faith, this has not budged me. I’m a very comfortable atheist. I came to it slowly and from a belief system. I don’t have a great need to convince anybody else what I believe. However, I am alarmed at the uses that religion can be put to.”
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| Keith Nobbs as Connor in a scene from The Good Book (Photo by: Alessandra Mello) |
The play's other driving force is Miriam (Annette O’Toole), a middle-aged woman whose husband (played by Elijah Alexander) spends much of the year in the Middle East and has to be guilted into returning to America for Thanksgiving. A long-time atheist who is a professional biblical scholar, Miriam has been struggling for years to find meaning in her deeply conflicted life.
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| Annette O'Toole co-stars as Miriam in The Good Book (Photo by: Alessandra Mello) |
When an argument with Hugh before she drops him off at the airport results in a near-fatal accident during a heavy snowfall, the dazed and delusional Miriam experiences what some might describe as a 'come-to-Jesus moment" as she awaits emergency help. An especially painful life-or-death moment presents a fierce challenge to her life's research and intense passion for atheism.
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| Elijah Alexander in a scene from The Good Book (Photo by: Alessandra Mello) |
While Keith Nobbs and Annette O'Toole fiercely dominate the production, they receive solid support from several talented actors appearing in multiple cameo roles. Lance Gardner is especially strong as the apostle Paul, with Shannon Tyo (as the host of a religious talk show) providing a tough challenge to Miriam's beliefs. Denmo Ibrahim is softly riveting as a number of women (ranging from Biblical characters to Miriam's mother), with Elijah Alexander providing a poignant portrayal of Miriam's husband. Wayne Wilcox has some wonderfully funny moments as King James as well as a sobering turn as Connor's former high school bully who has grown into a more sympathetic gay man.
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| Wayne Wilcox, Elijah Alexander, Shannon Tyo, and Denmo Ibrahim in a scene from The Good Book (Photo by: Alessandra Mello) |
In an era when Christians (and especially Evangelicals) are consistently attempting to weaponize the Bible for political purposes, The Good Book offers audiences a breathtaking exercise in creativity, logic, and testing one's faith. As a life-long atheist, I found it incredibly refreshing to hear the Bible approached from a more rational perspective than usual and witness the pain inflicted by religious brainwashing depicted onstage in clearly understandable terms. Perhaps the most dramatically rewarding moment for me came when Miriam firmly rejected a stranger's offer to facilitate a deathbed conversion.
Whether one is a devout proponent of the Bible or an avowed atheist, I cannot recommend The Good Book strongly enough for an evening of historical, intelligent, consciousness raising that rests on a remarkable foundation of top-level theatricality. Performances of The Good Book continue through June 1 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (click here for tickets). Here's the trailer:
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