"Dunkirk"

After reading rave reviews, I went to see "Dunkirk". What struck me immediately was the soundtrack.  It's loud... as Dolby can be. Cover-your-ears loud.  Dunno maybe it's more the sudden contrast than the intensity. But sometimes it's like a firecracker going off next to you.

Dolby is sound's version of 3-D. But old-timey 3-D with those special glasses was fun. Seeing Dr. Evil's hypodermic needle leaping out of the screen was definitely both scary and cool. Best of all the needle didn't hurt.

An excess of sound on the other hand  can leave you battered and dazed. Fans may worship the high-decibel beat of a rock concert. But it can easily overwhelm and diminish  a more visual medium. You strain to hear dialogue for instance. Especially  British soldiers speaking the King's English hurriedly or amid background noise.

Aside from being sound-shocked, I really liked Dunkirk. It's an immersive film even without the Dolby enhancement. The film captures the panorama of this epic historical retreat without relying on sensory overload. A single silent image often speaks volumes. Eloquence without thunder. 

The images of war are there of course  - unsettling but not horrific. Aerial dogfights, strafing fire, bombs, dead and dying laying on the beach but no close-up's of blood or dismembered bodies. Edge-of-your-seat stuff  but never devolving into turn-your-eyes-away overload.

Nolan creates suspense by focusing on the terror and weariness of a retreating, beaten army. Yet woven into this grim tableau are small glimmers of courage and humanity and hope. Subtle and powerful.

One scene that particularly resonates is the rescue of a downed Brit pilot by one of the small evacuation boats racing to Dunkirk. On board,  the  pilot demands that they turn back and return to England.  Out of earshot of him, the boat owner's son is perplexed by this seeming cowardice. His father explains "He's shell-shocked, son. He may never be the same."
  
Later the pilot's bizarre behavior forces them to lock the door behind him below deck. At some point, he turns violent and causes an accident which seriously injures the boat owner's other son. On the return trip to England,  the pilot, unaware that the son has just died of the injury, asks "Will the lad be ok?". The surviving son hesitates a moment, then simply answers "Yes".  The father  gives his son a poignant glance of approval.

These are the kinds of scenes that stick with me and make the film so memorable. It's well worth seeing. But, if you're at all sound sensitive, you might want to wait and watch it online sans Dolby.  Otherwise, you may need to cover your ears a few times.

Confessions of a reformed "Burner"

Recently I read a blogger talking about the joys of being able to burn debris on his ten-acre property in a rural area.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief that I'm no longer subjected to such "joys".  Hosanna to Cape George  and its no-burn zone.

Ah, I must confess to being a "burner" though when I lived in Clallam county.  It was then I begin to learn there was  a "pyro" lurking in the recesses of every rural psyche.  It starts innocently. You start to enjoy, slowly begin to  relish, then can't live without the addictive satisfaction of watching  yard waste and various other debris go bye-bye without a dump fee.

Seeing flames lick higher and higher grips you too.  It stirs something primitive -  the joy that comes of warmth; or maybe it's buried memories of group hunts and cooking wild boar; or  sleeping well knowing  beasties won't jump you in the night.  Or  yule logs and pagan rites.  Or de-cluttering. Or vanquishing darkness.... 

Back then, I watched it work on a neighbor across from me who started burning occasionally.  Then regularly, once a week. Shifting winds choked me with smoke... even though it was acres away.  Sometimes pleasant odors but increasingly acrid... the smell of something industrial.  I could never catch what it was... even with powerful binoculars.  She/he had an advanced case.

Now, I admit almost succumbing to the devilish ways of this incipient "pyromania"  for a few seasons. Then angst over global warming and flying embers and a possible runaway fire started to poison my joy. The final straw: a neighbor came each time to ask if he could add his own debris "since you already have a fire going".  How could I really enjoy guilty pleasures if I was enabling others to go down this dark path...

Then, it came to me.. I had three acres... and  several groves of trees. Branches, trimmings,  the odd piece of furniture, a bit of construction debris could all be broken down. Mostly just composted under the trees. It blends in nicely, nearly invisibly, in three treed acres.  Above ground it becomes "yard art".
 
Once in a while it needed to be broken down and  buried  like my old porcelain toilet that needed a good "dirt nap".  Yep, I admit that too - gradually there were "buried bodies" all over my property. Out of sight but that's the natural order of things after all. And no global warming..

Now my evolution is complete. My pyromania is a distant memory. Here, in Cape George, I don't burn... ever. Wouldn't if I could. But I still sweep a few small branches under a "green carpet" of existing bushes.  Makes a good mulch. Avoids a dump fee. What's more viscerally satisfying than that...

"The Zookeeper's Wife"

I drove to Seattle a couple of weeks ago to see
"The Zookeeper's Wife" in its first run. After watching the addictive trailer at least a dozen times,  I needed to up my hit. Ferries and Seattle traffic seemed inconsequential.

It's a fascinating tale with a haunting music score that hooked me from the start. The trailer scenes deliver an emotional wallop of their own. For me, the most moving of them was a young Jewish boy innocently raising his arms to be lifted into a German transport train. As protagonist zookeeper Jan looks on at the train station, the camera captures his shock, sadness, and look of foreboding. It's a powerful, cinematic moment...as if he flashed on the horror about to unfold but couldn't yet grasp the enormity of what he had seen.

This film is based on the same named book by Diane Ackerman. It's the true story of Dr. Jan Zabinska, a zoologist, his wife Antonina, and their young son Rhys. They owned the Warsaw Zoo and lived in a villa on the zoo grounds. The film's opening scenes depict their idyllic seeming life just before the German invasion in 1939.

Almost too idyllic.  Antonina looks sweetly at her sleeping son with baby lions sleeping beside him in the bed; opens the zoo's gates to visitors; rides her bike with a young camel tagging along; plays with an elephant; and greets Jan on his rounds. Their love and special rapport with animals are evident and touching. She refers to the zoo's animals as "her treasured guests".


But the movie doesn't stoop to sentimentality.  And early scenes may only be jarring if you're expecting another kind of movie -- perhaps a darker, quicker plunge into the horrors of the Holocaust. In the case of "The Zookeeper's Wife", this brush with sweetness ends quickly enough anyway.

Germany invades Poland and bombs nearly destroy the zoo.  The occupation  begins and the outlook for the zoo deteriorates. Ominously,  Jews are segregated and forced into the ghetto. Mass transports to concentration camps accelerate until the ghetto's emptied and burned by the Germans.

Miraculously, German zookeeper  Lutz Heck, Hitler's chief zoologist, has offered to take some of their surviving animals to a zoo in Germany and return them post-war.  Jan and Antonina quickly agree.

However Lutz,  returning in officer's uniform with German troops, assumes control of the zoo, and, with food scarce, shoots many of the animals not selected for relocation. The young camel that follows Antonina each morning is a heartbreaking casualty.

To save what's left of the zoo, Antonina and Jan re-purpose it to raise hogs for German troops and make daily runs to the ghetto for food scraps to feed them. Risking their lives, Antonina and Jan start smuggling Jews out of the ghetto. Jan alludes to the danger: "you can be shot for giving them a glass of water". Antonina brushes aside the risk: "We have room. Bring as many as you can".
 
On their daily runs to the ghetto, they ingeniously hide  Jews under food scraps in the truck's hold. Once out of the ghetto, they keep them safely out of sight in the zoo's emptied underground cages. Most will be smuggled out of the country with forged papers.
 
They manage to enable their guests --almost 300 during the course of the war-- to live undetected until they reach safety. All under the nose of Lutz and his troops. Antonina even feigns affection for him at a critical moment to evade danger. He's infatuated with her and she uses it to their advantage even as his familiarity becomes a source of unrest for Jan.

Each night after German patrols leave for their barracks. Antonina signals an all-clear on the piano and then serves dinner to her "Jewish guests". It's a moving tableau of kindness in the midst of terror. 

She also cares for a young girl raped by two soldiers.  Slowly Antonina gains her trust. Sharing a love of animals and a cautionary reflection that "you can never know who your enemies are or who to trust", she gently initiates healing.
 
There may be a tendency to pigeonhole this as just another Holocaust movie with formulaic tropes of good vs. evil. It's not. No bullet-proof heroes. No comically simplistic villains.  It's as much about healing and affirming life as overcoming evil.  It's not a documentary of  Holocaust horrors or a one-note war thriller.
 
Lutz, for example, was a well known zoologist. He's painted as more of an opportunist than anything, not one who descended into madness and pure evil. In the end, although he threatens to, he won't allow rage over Antonina's betrayal to push him into murdering Rhys.
 
A contrasting movie is the recent award winning "Son of Saul". Set in the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp,  its horrific scenes were integral to the story of Saul. The violence and imagery weren't gratuitous.

But  "The Zookeeper's Wife",  in  war-ravaged Warsaw, is a much different and arguably an equally powerful movie. Here the starkest imagery wouldn't have been the most cinematic and would have overwhelmed the poignancy of its other themes. Yet "The Zookeeper's Wife", with well-written affecting scenes of courage, resilience, and love, will linger just as memorably.

Food Coop - Got Juice?

Ah, our beloved Food Coop. It's one of the holiest of shrines in Port Townsend.  I've been a member for many years. So, with great reluctance, I'm about to complain.  On the scale of world problems, not a major complaint of course. Call it nostalgia for the good 'ole days.

Frankly,  however, I'm disenchanted.  One of the hallmarks of the independent food coops has been the availability of fresh juice. Nope, not any more, at least, not in the Coop's case.  They began curtailing hours, finding various excuses to pull the juicer offline, and finally with no further engagement of the membership pulled the plug altogether. The suggestion was made to simplify the juice offerings, even to pre-package them early in the day to avoid busy hours as other markets do.  The Coop hasn't responded.

They've also been aggressively "red-dotting" products which aren't hot sellers and pulling them from the shelves. Those left bereft must then run the gauntlet of a "special order". And that is an exercise in total frustration from the arcane  "user unfriendly" online lookup/ ordering to the "in a hurry, gotta be somewhere else" look of those special order employees when a customer with a lost look appears. By the way, their antiquated online ordering means  in-store only. Try squinting at a computer screen from a noisy perch in the aisle.

Nearby, their vitamin section requires a contortionist  to first find items but also frequently to retrieve them from a kneeling/ sitting yogic stance. The Coop offers various, timeworn excuses - not enough space for example - but relatively simple fixes leap to mind. Slightly elevated shelves for instance. Again no action.

Still, the employees are friendly and helpful. It's a pleasant shopping environment generally. But so is the QFC supermarket down the street, Sadly, the Coop appears to be  slipping and its privileged position as the only "Whole Foods" style grocer in P.T. is starting to show. Its drift is toward more of a "supermarket" feel, with its relentless march toward expansion and profit at the expense of customer service.

Political Correctness and "Redskins"

Not too long ago members of the S'Klallam tribe mounted a relentless campaign to dump a local school's  Redskins mascot. They attended public hearings, harangued, and blogged,  and bulldozed until the mascot and logo were expunged.  A wider jihad against the Washington Redskins NFL football team has gone on for years.

Good grief. I have to wonder what’s next. Perhaps, even names such as Braves and Indians will  be caught in the roundup of shamed usage.  They'll become demeaning stereotypes no longer fit for politically correct company.

Could pacifists one day find Fighting Irish too reminiscent of saloon brawling in which the Irish often figured prominently.  Or Vikings get the boot at some point... the horned Viking helmet logo scrapped. Just another too painful reminder of a darker era when marauding Vikings brought terror to neighbors' shores.

Studies show that Redskin is not used in a racist or disparaging way in today’s world and hasn’t been for generations. Search recent memory banks... can anyone point to a disparaging racist usage of the term in modern times... in media or film, on racist signs seen at marches, overheard in beer joints, written in police reports of hate crimes... anyone?  Even many tribes do not share the concern and haven't jumped on this rickety, bullying bandwagon. 

There's a funny scene In the movie 'The Outlaw Josey Wales' which depicts an era in which the words redskins and palefaces were likely used as racist insults. Both words are spoken  and the speaker quickly follows with “no offense” And, in each case, the one hearing responds “none taken”. Of course, in the movie, both speakers were on the same side fighting real villains. But the point is we can laugh because any racist subtext is long gone.

There are of course words that do have a pernicious linkage to racism and  are no longer used. But, just as Fighting Irish or the Vikings don’t evoke  opprobrium today,  Redskins should be given a pass. 

Certainly, it's absurd to think sports team monikers were designed with racist undertones. They're not even used by the garden variety racist today for heaven's sake.  Any lingering racist use of the term should just be seen as the weakness it is.

Political correctness has become a game of empowering the private rage of a few, no matter what the cost. In this case it's bullying under the guise of exorcising  ghosts long since vanished.  Maybe, the world’s real issues and problems are so daunting there’s a need to invent new ones out of pain or frustration. But that effort is misguided.