The Boston Globe - 13.09.2019

THE BOSTON GLOBE FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2019 | BOSTONGLOBE.COM/ARTS

Weekend

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By James Sullivan

GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

A

s you saddle up for the latest Ken Burns epic — an eight-

part, 16-hour series on the history of country music and its

meaning to American life — you’ll be greeted by a few pithy

words from some of the program’s key contributors. There’s

Holly Williams, granddaughter of Hank, the “Hillbilly

Shakespeare,” and Charley Pride, one of the few African-

American stars in the genre, both talking about the emo-

tions of the music. There’s the irrepressible Dolly Parton and the gazil-

lion-seller Garth Brooks.

But it’s the late Merle Haggard, filmed not long before his death on

his 79th birthday in 2016, who gets to the heart of the matter. Country

music, he says with a twinkle in his eye, is “about those things that we

believe in but that we can’t see, like dreams and songs and souls.”

In true Burns fashion, the filmmaker and his team — led by writer,

co-producer, and longtime Burns associate Dayton Duncan — make

those shadowy ideas materialize before our eyes in “Country Music.”

COUNTRYMUSIC,PageG6

By Don Aucoin

GLOBE STAFF

That jubilant sound you hear ema-

nating from the Calderwood Pavilion

is Boston’s fall theater season kicking

into a higher gear, courtesy of Billy

Porter’s outstanding world-premiere

production of Dan McCabe’s “The Pur-

ists.’’

It seems like yesterday (it was

2011) that McCabe was introduced to

Boston theatergoers as an actor, not a

playwright, portraying the younger

brother in the Huntington Theatre

Company’s production of Stephen

Karam’s “Sons of the Prophet.’’ It also

seems like yesterday (it was 2015) that

Porter, primarily known as the Tony-

winning star of “Kinky Boots,’’ took the

helm as director of George C. Wolfe’s

“The Colored Museum’’ at the Hun-

tington (and later of Suzan-Lori Parks’s

‘‘THEPURISTS,’’PageG6

‘The Purists’

an unalloyed

delight

T. CHARLES ERICKSON

Morocco Omari in “The Purists.”

THEATER

By Ty Burr

GLOBE STAFF

A

book like “The Gold-

finch” is something to

wallow in. Dickensian in

heft, length, characters,

and readability, Donna

Tartt’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning

novel is the kind of experience that

eats up a month or three of your life. A

movie, by contrast, builds a world and

guides us through it in two hours; it

needs entirely different bones. “The

Goldfinch,” John Crowley’s film adap-

tation of Tartt’s novel, lands unsatisfy-

ingly in the middle.

It’s prestige work, elegantly shot by

the great Roger Deakins and sumptu-

ously scored by Trevor Gureckis, much

of it unfolding in richly appointed Park

Avenue surroundings and along the

canals of Amsterdam. It’s well acted,

absolutely watchable, and instantly

forgettable. If you haven’t read the

book it will remain a distant affair, and

if you have read the book it will be a

souvenir.

One stumbling block is that the

movie seems to have two heroes,

where the book has one. The life and

times of Theodore Decker is narrated

by the older Theo, looking back on his

younger self. Crowley obviously has to

cast separate actors: Ansel Elgort (“Ba-

‘‘THEGOLDFINCH,’’PageG7

By the

book

WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Ansel Elgort in “The Goldfinch.”

MOVIES

Inside

MOVIES

APERSONALITY

LARGERTHANLIFE

Documentary‘RaiseHell’

celebrateslatenewspaper

columnistMollyIvins

G7

GALLERIES

FARFROMTHE

FULLSTORY

In‘Fringe,’ClintBaclawski

rethinkstherelationship

betweendistanceanddesire

G2

MUSIC

SHININGWITHOUT

DIAMONDS

WelshpopstarMarinagets

intouchwithherownnature

on‘Love+Fear’

G5

LES LEVERETT COLLECTION PHOTOS

A grand ole epic

from Ken Burns

‘Country Music’ ranges across an American century

SONY MUSIC ARCHIVES

Scenes from “Country Music”
include (from top) Merle Haggard
on “The Johnny Cash Show” in
1970, Dolly Parton on “The
Porter Wagoner Show” in 1967,
Patsy Cline performing in 1961,
and Cash at home in California
in 1960.

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