The Visitor (2007)

What is it about The Visitor that hangs around in your head for so long? I found myself thinking about the movie on and off for weeks after I watched it. I was much taken by how the two illegal immigrants would take the boat to Staten Island just to be able to view the Statute of Liberty. It is such a powerful symbol of democracy and freedom and yet very few people actually get to experience that; it has become seriously corroded.

In some ways this was a brave film to make because it looks at the face of young illegal immigrants to this country a topic for which there seems to be no middle ground. You are either for or against. But the movie manages very skillfully to humanize the issue and we root for the two young protagonists in the hope that they reach their quest for freedom and democracy. To bad that it is not to be!

It is also a wonderful film of opposites; Family versus single occupancy living; communal music versus singular music, and love and friendship versus just existing. Richard Jenkins was terrific as a middle aged, washed-up professor, as was Haaz Sleiman the optimistic, young Syrian musician hoping for a better life in America.

For me it leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Injured Chicken

This story was posted in the Christian Science Monitor on November 28 2005 by Victoria Bartlett. Why do I print it so late? Because the story still resonates with me, perhaps because I too as a child had to collect eggs and I too was afraid of chickens. Perhaps too, it was also because I always thought of chickens as dumb and how they were treated was nothing to be concerned about. That was until my friend who keeps chickens introduced me to hers. They all have their own personalities, know your voice, and are living breathing creatures to be cared for just like any other animal. Since there is no link on the CSM web site to the story, I have reprinted it here for you all to enjoy. Thank you Victoria for sharing the story with us. This a timeless story of compassion.

This story is about a chicken coup. There is also a coop in the story. There’s even a coupe. But “coup” is the right word because this is the story of conquest. It all began when I started on my daily walk past the strewn parts of the 1936 Ford coupe my husband was restoring. At the end of the driveway, in the ditch, lay the body of a chicken – a Rhode Island Red hen. I started to walk by on the other side, and then was hit hard by my conscience. So I went back. A staring eye blinked at me! She was alive.

Now I was in a struggle with myself. I hadn’t like chickens since I was a child. It had been my duty to gather eggs from about 200 chickens daily, some of whom were very aggressive in refusing to give them up. But any creature in distress deserved all the love she could get. So I gingerly gathered up her limp body and went back to the carport, installing her in a cardboard box full of hay for a nest – a sort of minicoop.

I had nothing that would seem to be chicken feed, except some dried soup mix containing some barley. So I poured some of that in a container, took a glass of water, and went back outside. The chicken lay as I had left her.

Putting the soup mix by her head, I tried to encourage her to eat. She wasn’t interested. Then I dipped a little water on her beak and she opened it. So I let drop by drop fall into her mouth until she sighed and shut her eyes. I felt relieved that I had helped, even a bit.
The next few days she lay unmoving, interested only in water. However, by the fourth or fifth day, she began to move about, and one day we found her outside her box. She was dragging a wing and a foot, but was bright-eyed and hunting for something to eat. She still wasn’t interested in soup mix, however.

The chicken tried – without success – to reach a cobweb in a corner above her, so I took a stick and gathered the web with its dangling spider. She gobbled up that spider. Recruited for KP duty, my three sons entered into this new game with delight, and the chicken now dubbed Henrietta, was plied with an abundance of fat black spiders. Even my daughters got into the action, albeit preferring the longer handle of the broom for delivering the spider meals.

About this time Henrietta decided – to my husband’s annoyance – that she liked to sleep in the shell of the Ford, and abandoned her box. “I’m not putting all my money and effort into a chicken coupe,” he muttered. However, in return for the accommodation, Henrietta began to give warning whenever anyone came up the driveway. We had a watchbird.

All the family admired the spunk of this bird, her unfailing cheerfulness in the face of disaster, and her bravery in struggling around in spite of her injuries. I even began to lose my dislike of chickens. Finally the day came when her feathers began to sprout again, and she carried her wing in the proper place. One foot, however, remained curled under and swollen. It seemed that an examination of the foot was in order, so I got my husband to hold while I looked. There, buried in her flesh, was a crushed metal band.

It had to be removed, so I got pliers and tinsnips and carefully cut away the metal. That amazing bird never struggled, uttering only one small whimper when I finally peeled it away. Both my husband and I were in awe of her bravery. It was at that moment that I realized the cheerfulness, courage, friendliness and gumption that we all had been admiring were her real being. How could I have not seen that before? I loved that bird.

There’ not much else in this story, except that the last day we saw Henrietta. A neighbor had come to admire my husband’s work on the old Ford and noticed the chicken. “What’re you doing with her?” he asked, “That’s our chicken.”

When my husband explained the situation, the neighbor was incredulous. “That’s impossible!” he said. “She’s too old. All the others in her clutch died of old age long ago.” Under the circumstances that was funny since there Henrietta stood, impossible or not, triumphant even over old age.

After promising to give her a place of her now, separate from their younger hens and the rooster, and to love her our neighbor took her back. That’s the last we saw of our watchbird, but I’ll never forget Henrietta. I try to live up to her example.

Orientalism: A British View - Tate Gallery

The Tate Gallery's new exhibit on Orientalism is ruffling a few feahters. Go to their website for an excellent over view of the exhibit.

www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/exh_gfx_en/ART57918.html

Up the Yangtze (2007)

A documentary by Yung Chang a Chinese-Canadian filmmaker currently based in Montreal.

This documentary has been receiving rave reviews. As to be expected the documentary opens with some splendid, haze shrouded pictures of the Yangtze. The film focuses on: The tourist trade, the two million people being relocated from the countryside, the modern cities and what ultimately does the Chinese dream mean?

The film begins at Chongqing, a 13 hour flight from Beijing, and the largest municipality in the world of almost 32 million people. You see coolies (peasants from the area being dammed) carrying loads of luggage onto the cruise boats for primarily western tourists who are coming to view history in the making. The documentary follows one particular peasant farmer family, the Yus’ who live in Fengdu one of the areas to be dammed.

The parents live in a dilapidated building with a tin roof and no electricity. They are unable to read and have no basic education. They are farmers and they know how to grow vegetables the way nature intended. They eat by candlelight. All the animals (chickens, a baby kitten, and dogs) lived in or around the house. This family had three children, two boys and one girl. It was not stated in the documentary but farmers in the countryside are allowed to have two children if the first born is a girl as was Yu Shui. In the past at least, extra children were not registered with the government for fear of fines or worse. Not being registered meant you could not receive schooling.

At the beginning we see the family discussing their concerns on how to pay for their kids to go to school. Yu Shui is 14 years old and has completed middle school (representative of 80% of the population). The decide to send her to work on one of the many tourist boats going up and down the River. We do not learn about the length of her work day but I think we can assume that they work from breakfast to dinner (a long day). I would really have liked to know if it was better than working in manufacturing in the big cities as we saw in the wonderful documentary China Blue www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue

The difference between the two types of jobs is that I believe skills picked up on the ship were more transferable. They were taught English and many housekeeping and waiting skills. The luxury cruise only applies to the clientele not to the workers who toil long hours below and above deck and Yu wants to go home. The managers in the documentary seemed to be very caring for their young staff and also your work group watched over you and helped where needed.

To see the tourists on the boat viewing the river and towns running along it reminded me of Stephanie Black’s documentary Life and Debt
www.lifeanddebt
The tourists were not interested in the social aspects of what they were seeing. This was just a dream holiday for them. They were taken off the boat to view one of the villages set up for the dislocated people. The selling point was that each house had a refrigerator, air conditioning and a color TV. I could not help but think this was propaganda and not all the houses would be like this.

Perhaps the biggest shocks was how the under 30 educated urban Chinese from middle class backgrounds were so demanding. It was though they thought that they deserved everything in life right now. Making money was a top priority; their passion indeed to be accomplished by whatever means available. During the documentary one of the training managers who fires one of them says that they were over-confident, arrogant, conceited and full of a sense of entitlement. Pretty damming words!

Occasionally we see pictures of the cities and the first thing that comes to my mind is how much electricity is being gobbled up and wasted as neon lights were all over many buildings all night.

At the end of the documentary we see Yu Shui’s family loading up their humble possessions and sadly moving. As food becomes scarcer around the world I wonder if China will lament the flooding of so much farm land.

Find out more about the documentary by visiting the web site
www.uptheyangtze.com

El Greco to Velazquez Exhbit

Yesterday it was over 90 degrees in Boston; a month ahead of schedule. So it was a time to go either to the beach or to a Museum. I decided on the museum to see a documentary on China’s Three Gorges Dam and since it was so cool inside, I then went to see the above exhibit even though I didn't think I would much like the art works.

It was a very large exhibit of which I skipped about half which was all religious paintings. But there were some paintings that I really liked and I loved El Greco's Fray Hortensio Felix Paravicino. In fact I liked many of his portrait paintings. The detail in the man’s face was wonderful; such intelligent eyes and a strong sense of self. I felt that the man was there with me in the room. Perhaps it was the way the paint was applied to the picture. Somehow the paint strokes made the hands and the garment “alive.” And this was all achieved in black, brown, and white paints.

Another favorite was Pedro Orrente’s Jacob Conjuring Laban’s Sheep. I was a very realistic painting right down to the crimp of the wool on the sheep’s back and their confusion when separated wondering which way to go. Having researched whether i got the name right or not i see many referenes to the Genesis 29:10 and 30:33-43 as well as the Merchant of Venice which in turns goes back to Genesis so now I am thinking there is some religious meaning behind the picture. Cannot find a picture to put up on my blog though. Another interesting aspect to me that was while I had never heard of him he was born in Murcia, Spain which I had visited a couple of years ago. His mother was also born in the same city although his father was from the South of France.

Some books that I found in relation to Spain and its history that were really good was Ghosts of Spain by Giles Tremlett
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/01/books/review/wildman.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
The Saragossa Manuscript by Count Jan Potocki (1761-1815)
The Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving
and Pereira Declares by Antonio Tabucchi