The Washington Post - 21.10.2019

C4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, OCTOBER 21 , 2019

Inevitably, Alberto is drawn into the imaginary world created by his grandfather. But, like many of the stories in the collection, the ulti- mate reveal is less important than the discoveries made along the way. In Alberto’s case, it’s the process of understanding the strange gift that has been be- stowed upon him by his grandfather. Another cog in the corporate wheel occupies the central role in the short story titled “Snow Globe.” Also named Alberto, he is an encyclopedia salesman who lives in a fugue-like state, fretting that he will “fritter away the future” while lost in feelings of apathy. He yearns for change but goes to bed each night “terrified at the prospect that this world was immutable.” This Alberto yearns for human contact. He wants to connect deeply with another person, and he finds little of that in the company of his lover Cristina, his emotionally distant father and his workplace colleagues. Bur- dened by malaise, he finds himself gazing one night into the idealized universe of a snow globe that contains a quaint little village. By chance he stumbles into an elderly woman who mistakes him for her dead son. The affection she shows him satisfies his deep need for connection, and his presence sates her need to erase her greatest loss. He plays along, marveling that she has “constructed a world where everything is exactly as it was.” Inside the old woman’s apartment, we see a kind man in the act of perpetrating an expansive kindness, albeit one built on a foundation of untruths. They found comfort in “a world of lies, a world within a world where they could be hap- py,” Palma writes. Once outside, Alberto gazes up at the sky. It’s snowing. It was as if someone had shaken a snow globe — and he was inside it. [email protected]

affection and the strange elusive- ness we can sometimes encoun- ter, even in the arms of the ones we love. “It could have been paradise,” Marcelo’s lover muses, “but for the fact that I was unable to forget that I was embracing a man who was constantly fleeing, a man determined to dismantle himself.” Palma may be best known to American readers for his 2011 bestseller, the first of a trilogy of novels, “The Map of Time,” which has now been translated into 30 languages. What elevates Pal- ma’s storytelling is that he plumbs the most mundane as- pects of everyday life and the most invisible of human beings, the sort of people we pass on the street without noticing, and uses them as launchpads for phantas- magoric flights of the imagina- tion. In the collection’s finest piece, “Roses Against the Wind,” a des- ultory office worker named Al- berto suddenly sees himself in “the tiny figure of a gray-suited man carrying a leather briefcase” standing along the tracks of the elaborate model railway that his grandfather has been building for half a century in a crumbling, once-grand apartment. The track runs through an “impossible world” where the Palace of Versailles sits next to the pyramids of Machu Picchu and the Eiffel Tower casts a shadow over the Taj Mahal. Alberto visits his grandfather almost daily, usually finding him “sleeping with his eyes gently closed and a complicit smile on his lips, as if he knew a secret that was forbidden to the rest of us.” Alberto is puzzled by his grandfather’s apparent content- ment until he realizes that the old man is transporting himself into the railway, “every last detail of his creation engraved in his mind.” His grandfather is enjoy- ing a thrilling, though imaginary, life of globe-trotting adventure while Alberto’s own life couldn’t be any more dull. “My days had been uneventful, tranquil, and monotonous,” he laments. “Mornings in the office like an insipid overture that led into lazy evenings of crosswords and coffees.”

BOOK WORLD FROM C1

instinct is to go as dark as possible. But when another actor comes in, it feels like a really abstract energy you’re playing against. It’s always a little bit funnier and lighter. “If somebody else played Wil- lem’s part in ‘The Lighthouse,’ it could be the most brutal, horrible drama. But there’s something about the anarchic energy Willem brings. No matter how dark he is, there’s always something pretty entertaining about him.” Critics have praised Dafoe and Pattinson, who seem perfectly suited to their roles in a film that is equal parts melodramatic and ab- surd — a casting success story Eggers said he cannot explain beyond calling it a hunch. “They’re both actors who like to take risks, who like to do strange, challenging work, who like to seek out auteurs and wannabe auteurs like myself and really stretch themselves,” he said. “Certainly, they both have noses and cheek- bones and teeth, and they almost look related sometimes, which is nice. On the cover of Esquire UK, they’re like a long-lost sexy vam- pire father and son.” [email protected]

also includes him chugging kero- sene and masturbating to a mermaid figurine.) “I couldn’t really see anything,” he said. “Being blind, naked and having various people artistically arrange s--- all over your naked body, that was an unusual thing to do. Sort of a strange spa treat- ment.” Pattinson initially noticed the film’s “strikingly strange script,” which spends a good amount of time in an even-paced, dour zone and switches to a “turbocharged surrealist thing” in its final act. Winslow opens up as the film progresses (or spills his beans, as Wake puts it) and reveals himself to be a man on the run from his tragic past — not unlike other characters Pattinson has played in his recent indie films, including the space-traveling death row in- mate from Claire Denis’s “High Life.” “I find it’s much more fun to play characters who don’t know who they are,” he explained. “It opens you up in how you play individual scenes, because you don’t know how you’re going to play it until you’re there.... My

formances in ways they couldn’t predict. (A portion of the 35-day shoot also took place on sound- stages in Halifax, a city about a three-hour drive away.) “We chose that location because it was punishing and had terrible weather and would give us what we needed for the story, and it delivered on that,” Eggers said of the high winds, pouring rain and slightly-above-freezing tempera- tures. Most of the film’s weather events were real — a few milder days required rain machines — but “obviously, when you have waves crashing and it’s Robert Pattinson trying to launch a ship, that’s done in a controlled way so we don’t lose Rob to a riptide.” Dafoe found the scenes where a shirtless Wake basks in the light at the top of the tower to be his most physically challenging, as “high- velocity winds aren’t too good, particularly when you’re naked and it’s raining.” Pattinson, asked about obstacles he faced, instead recalled his amusement while filming a scene in which Winslow is covered in all sorts of debris. (This is a tamer stop on the character’s journey to insanity, which

ter (with the exception of brief
appearances by Valeriia Kara-
man’s shrieking mermaid and a
very aggressive seagull). Their
path to doom is hinted at from the
start, when Thomas Wake (Da-
foe), a brutish man who has been
on the rock for so long that he
describes himself as “damn near
married to this here light,” in-
forms his new apprentice,
Ephraim Winslow (Pattinson),
that the latter’s predecessor died
after raving about sirens and some
sort of “enchantment” in the tow-
er’s light.
Both actors said they were cast
in the two-hander after, beguiled
by “The Witch,” they reached out
to Eggers and pledged to work
with the rising indie director
sometime in the near future.
Dafoe was especially drawn to
the specificity of Eggers’s vision,
he said, as “one of the strongest
things a director can do is make
the world detailed and articulate
and deep... so when you enter it,
it’s much more easy to pretend.”
His character, Wake, delivers the
bulk of the film’s dialogue in long-
winded speeches to Winslow, who
conversely declares that he “ain’t
much for talkin’. ”
Eggers, whom Dafoe considers
an “obsessive researcher,” provid-
ed the actors with recordings and
videos of lighthouse keepers to
help them nail the accent Dafoe
described as a mix of West Coun-
try English and “the Robert New-
ton kind of classic pirate.” He likes
to rehearse — a trait Eggers attrib-
uted to his background in theater
— and in his spare time often
invited Eggers over to the fisher-
man’s shack he stayed in so he
could run lines in the accent. (Egg-
ers said he and his brother got so
carried away writing dialogue like
Wake’s “faux-Shakespearean sea
curse” that Dafoe asked them to
cut it down.)
“It was mostly studying, read-
ing, getting fake teeth made,
growing a beard... learning how
to keep a clay pipe lit while I’m
doing these big speeches,” Dafoe
said of his preparation for the role.
“It’s a swirl of experience that
helps you enter the world, but you
can’t do it fully until you’re really
there.”
“There,” in this case, was Cape
Forchu, a small fishing communi-
ty along the southern coast of
Nova Scotia with rough condi-
tions that shaped the actors’ per-

LIGHTHOUSE FROM C1

BY ANNE MIDGETTE

In the mid-20th century, Gustav Mahler, after a period of semi-neglect, started to become one of the canonical composers of our time. It makes perfect sense. Mahler foreshadowed 20th-century angst; he can write a lyrical melody and then jab it full of anxiety and neuroses, like a voo- doo doll. On Friday night, the Ger- man baritone Christian Gerhaher and pianist Gerold Huber gave a Mahler song recital in the Terrace Theater, courtesy of Vocal Arts DC, that was laced with stabs of sound, like raw and jangling nerves. Indeed, Gerhaher took the neu- rosis far beyond the measure of Mahler business as usual, from the very first song. “Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht” (When my sweetheart gets married), the start of the cycle “Songs of a Way- farer,” is a melancholy outburst on the sorrow of losing your beloved, but it’s also a pretty tune and can be sung beautifully. Gerhaher, however, found everything that was jagged in the vocal leaps and verbal repetitions, half-barking out abrupt high notes, and slow- ing the whole thing down so much that the sense of it as a small lyrical entity was almost lost. Make no mistake: This was a

deliberate approach. Indeed, there’s little that Gerhaher does onstage that isn’t deliberate, apart perhaps from the fluttering of his left hand where it hung by his side, like a repressed plea for even more expression. Around the same time that Mahler began to become pop- ular, so did the German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who left a strong mark on the art of German song through the way he gave nuance and attention to every note, every syllable and every shade of a text’s meaning. Gerha- her, who is accounted one of the greatest lieder singers of the pre- sent day, takes this approach even further, if possible, offering each word in this first song as a sharp little shard of realization, scarcely cohering beyond their ability to give or convey pain. At the piano, Huber took the same approach, playing with more fluidity of sound than Ger- haher’s sandy bark but with even more of a spasmodic quality, so that the edge of the musical line became as sharp and steely and bending as a bowed saw. The two artists have been collaborating for more than 30 years, and there is something intimate and personal about such a partnership; in this case, it was expressed in their pushing songs to their limits, car-

rying waking emotion over into a neurotic dream state, with the subconscious bobbing up in ghastly nightmare vignettes such as “Das irdische Leben” (earthly life), in which a child starves to death while waiting for its mother to bake bread. The program arced over three Mahler cycles. The Wayfarer

songs were followed by 10 songs from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” (the boy’s magic horn), settings from a collection of folk-inspired poetry that echoes “Grimms’ Fairy Tales” in their otherworldliness. And the night concluded with

“Kindertotenlieder” (songs on the death of children), one of the most powerful and wrenching pieces of music in the repertory, a setting of five texts by Friedrich Rückert written after his children had died of scarlet fever, minutely evoking the anguish of the loss. Searing and keening and surging, the music mirrors and expands the texts’ turbulence and beauty. Gerhaher’s voice is not beauti- ful these days — not at all. The singer is 50 this year — still in his vocal prime — and has excellent technical command, but he’s so resolutely focused on meaning rather than aesthetics that beauty of sound is not among his priori- ties. Sometimes a bleaty quality crept in, sometimes a dry high note was rasped or snarled, sometimes an ornament emerged with the bite of a buzz saw. This wasn’t a performance about nonessentials, certainly not about prettiness when deeper meaning was there to be probed. I found the relent- less hammering and emotional intensity a little wearing; others were powerfully moved. Certainly one could argue that the recital was as raw and stark and jarring as the music of Mahler originally was, before it was swathed in a mantle of familiarity. [email protected]

MUSIC REVIEW

German duo delivers a raw, emotional Mahler recital

Actors take on ‘strikingly strange script’

Tales from the worlds we

create inside our heads

A24 PICTURES Robert Pattinson, above, and Willem Dafoe are lighthouse keepers in a film set in 1890s New England.

Félix J. Palma

she crooned the meditative slow jam “I Don’t Wanna Know,” and sprinting as she feverishly sang “Unlock It.” “I just really hope that tonight is a safe space where we can all be ourselves, be free to be free, feel good, be weirdos, love each other and also party hard,” she told the crowd. And for that night, Charli XCX’s exuberant, expansive pop music held that space. [email protected]

ness by 2016’s “Vroom Vroom” EP,
her vision becoming even clearer
by 2017’s “Pop 2.”
Onstage, Charli’s energy
seemed never-ending; she was a
human defibrillator, and whenev-
er the crowd started to fade even a
little, she would jump up and re-
vive them. And despite her chaotic
movements, Charli’s breath con-
trol stayed strong, ringing out as

CHARLI XCX FROM C1

An artist who can bring

the audience back to life

KYLE GUSTAFSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

Charli XCX brought her exuberant pop sound to the 9:30 Club.

Christian Gerhaher

offers each word in this

first song as a sharp

little shard of

realization, scarcely

cohering beyond their

ability to give or convey

pain.

MUSIC - CHORAL

Waynepres.org/ music

Free No Tickets Required

Washington National Cathedral 3101 Wisconsin Ave. NW Washington, DC 20016 Waynepres.org/music

The Wayne Oratorio Society from Wayne, PA presents Felix Mendelssohn’s “Elijah.” Featuring a 200 member choir, professional soloists and orchestra.

Saturday October 26, 2019 7:30pm

Wayne Oratorio Society Elijah Felix Mendelssohn

3GD&THCDSNSGD+HUDKX QSR@OOD@QRr2TMC@XHM QSR2SXKD CD@CKHMD3TDR MNNMr,NMC@XHM2SXKD CD@CKHMD%QHC@XMNNM r3TDRC@XHM2SXKD CD@CKHMD,NM MNNMr6DCMDRC@XHM2SXKD CD@CKHMD3TDR MNNMr3GTQRC@XHM2SXKD CD@CKHMD6DC MNNM r3GTQRC@XHM$WOQDRR CD@CKHMD6DC MNNMr%QHC@XHM6DDJDMC CD@CKHMD3TDR MNNMr2@STQC@XHM2SXKD CD@CKHMD%QHC@XMNNM %NQHMENQL@SHNM@ANTS@CUDQSHRHMFB@KK1@XLNMC!NXDQNQ-HBNKD&HCCDMR 3NQD@BG@QDOQDRDMS@SHUDB@KK|FTHCDSN@QSRV@RGONRS BNL 16-2898

The Washington Post - 21.10.2019

Get our desktop app

Company

Features

Documentation

Resources