RUTHFULLY YOURS

For the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor PBS provides a powerhouse of a film about the USS Oklahoma, one of the U.S. ships and their crews caught off guard in Battleship Row as the Japanese launched their surprise attack of Dec. 7, 1941. It was, as the American president memorably told the nation the next day, a date that would live in infamy. He did not predict, though it would turn out to be the case, that no Dec. 7 would, after Pearl Harbor, ever again feel quite like an ordinary day for countless Americans. It had brought the attack that ignited a towering rage in a people still largely disposed to neutrality in 1941, and had made it a nation ready heart and soul to go to war.

The attack on the Oklahoma, which quickly capsized, is told in part by survivors whose eyewitness accounts come with a haunting clarity. Sailors had to decide whether to jump 50 feet into waters ablaze with burning fuel, after the order came to abandon ship. Many who jumped burned to death, or were killed by Japanese strafing them as they struggled in the water. The Oklahoma lost 429 men, among them those left trapped in the ship.

The Japanese had come well armed for success with their strike force of carriers, battleships, destroyers, tankers and 400 planes, not to mention ingeniously devised special torpedoes that could function, devastatingly, in waters as shallow as those surrounding Battleship Row—a possibility the U.S. Navy had not imagined.

The Japanese planners believed, one of the historians interviewed for the film notes, that destroying these ships, each named after an American state and symbolizing American prestige, would deal a blow from which the U.S. would not soon recover. The documentary captures, tellingly, the thinking of the Japanese command, the jubilation of the attackers. In this story of one American ship, of men who had joined the Navy in Depression-era America and landed in a paradise-like Hawaii filled with sun and hyacinths until it all ended in smoke and flames, there is history of a rare kind—raw, immediate, and perfectly reflective of the day it commemorates.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-place-called-home-review-red-scare-down-under-1479422897

The many devotees of “A Place Called Home,” a series set in the early ’50s about the upper-class Bligh family—Australian royalty of sorts—can look forward to Thanksgiving, which brings the two-episode premiere of Season 4. The brilliantly inventive drama now takes up the politics of the period—Australia is having its own Red Scare, and it figures strongly in the Bligh family’s conflicts, as do most of the world’s hot-button issues.
Family head George Bligh (Brett Climo) is now running for political office. His malignantly vengeful wife, Regina (Jenni Baird), whom he married for reasons of political convenience, is devising vicious plots against the show’s heroine, Sarah (Marta Dusseldorp), the woman George actually loves—among other ways by spreading whispers that Sarah is a Communist. Meanwhile, James (David Berry), George’s son and the family’s most exquisite-looking male, is now free to pursue his gay love interest, though not so free that he feels comfortable being very gay in public, something he refuses to do at the beach party his lover insisted on dragging him to. It’s one of the more interesting developments, a kind characteristic of the writing.

It’s rare that a series increasingly packed, as this one is, with intricate new plot twists and themes, succeeds in sustaining its tension and polish. “A Place Called Home” nonetheless manages to do just that, as its Season Four—possibly the best so far—is about to demonstrate.

I confess that I am a devout fan of writer/director Kenneth Lonergan who makes a brief Hitchcokian appearance in this outstanding film. Seldom do we see a movie that summons such enormous and emotional empathy without devolving into a tearjerker, though you will not only cry but feel your heart stop beating during certain scenes. Having said this, I will add that there is also the requisite amount of humor, anger and unsettled family matters that characterize Lonergan’s work.

Casey Affleck plays Lee, a divorced man at odds with himself and his world, who is summoned to assume guardianship of his teenage nephew after his brother’s sudden death. Through flashbacks we learn Lee’s backstory as well as that of the other principal characters – his ex-wife, his brother, his sister-in-law (the boy’s mother) and a close family friend. We also learn of a tragedy so immense that it has the effect of tilting the balance of the film after its revelation. This is unquestionably a dilemma for the viewer who will have as difficult a time moving on from the impact of this as Lee, a lonely and isolated man paralyzed by guilt and memory. It skews our ability to consider any of the other more current problems he is asked to face that pale in comparison. Structurally, the movie would have worked better without as shattering an event in the recent past but this movie is redeemed by its restrained acting, its wonderful inter-acting within the family and community and above all, Casey Affleck’s performance which allows you to feel what’s going on in his head without his batting an eye or uttering a word.

At a time when too many people are indulging in hysteria over an orderly election – not a coup d’etat or assassination – it’s particularly moving to see Affleck’s stoical determination to live up to his responsibilities as best he can. I recommend that grief-stricken students and disappointed voters leave their safe spaces and therapy dogs and see this movie instead. It will surely restore their perspective concerning life’s very real tragedies and help them to appreciate the essential things that make or break our private lives.