8 THENEWYORKER,MARCH8, 2021
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For more reviews, visit
newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town COURTESY THE CRITERION COLLECTIONIn 1974, two years after making “Super Fly,” the director Gordon Parks,
Jr., infused the picaresque Western “Thomasine & Bushrod” (streaming on
the Criterion Channel and Amazon) with a similar blend of cool swagger
and social acuity. The action starts in 1911, in Texas, where Thomasine
(Vonetta McGee), a sharpshooting bounty hunter, and H. P. Bushrod (Max
Julien), a most-wanted outlaw, team up to rob banks. Distributing their pelf
to the poor and disposing of murderous racists, they become living legends
throughout the South—fictional Black forerunners of Bonnie and Clyde.
Much of the movie (written by Julien) involves the lovers’ gruff romance
and practical difficulties on the run. Bushrod, an expert horseman, switches
to early-model autos, giving rise to semi-comedic low-speed chases; the
proud and temperamental Thomasine drolly schemes to join her partner
on wanted posters—and to get top billing. But the horrific landscape of
lynchings and summary executions puts their impulsive energy and taut
composure into fatal focus. When, during a shoot-out, Bushrod—in a
majestic closeup—reloads his revolver, the whispered click of metal on
metal resounds like righteous thunder.—Richard BrodyWHATTO STREAM
and Larry (Clive Owen), a doctor who marries
a photographer named Anna (Julia Roberts).
The transactions are quick and brutal: Dan has
anonymous online sex with Larry and a yearlong
affair with Anna, Alice leaves Dan and starts
working at a night club, Larry finds her there and
tells her precisely what he wants, and nobody is
happy. The film is more civilized than the play,
the acid slightly diluted, and Law, for one, looks
eaten away by the bitter pace of it all. Roberts,
too, is haunted and pained, whereas Portman
and Owen drink and spit their lines with undi-
minished relish, often at speeds that Nichols can
barely handle. Released in 2004.—Anthony Lane
(Reviewed in our issue of 12/13/04.) (Streaming on
Amazon, Vudu, and other services.)A New Leaf
Elaine May’s antic and macabre 1971 comedy
reveals the essence of marital love more bru-
tally than many melodramas. Walter Matthau
plays Henry Graham, an effete and idle Man-
hattan heir; the film opens with a loopy view
of Henry’s caprices, notably his red Ferrari.
But he’s stopped cold by the news—deliveredin riotous euphemisms by his lawyer (William
Redfield)—that he’s broke. After a terrify-
ing vision of having to buy ready-to-wear,
he accepts a usurious loan from his sneering
uncle (James Coco) and must marry rich, fast.
Henry impresses his chosen prey, Henrietta
Lowell (May), an awkward, lonely heiress and
a botanist, with his displays of chivalry. In
anticipation of the big day, Henry also studies
botany—and, most unchivalrously, studies
toxicology, too. Having started out with the
hatred, dependency, and surrender that it takes
most couples years to achieve, Henry and
Henrietta are no less suited than regular folks
for marriage until death do them part—one
way or another.—R.B. (Streaming on Amazon,
the Criterion Channel, and other services.)Perfumed Nightmare
This uproariously confrontational comedy
by the Filipino director Kidlat Tahimik, from
1977, is an audacious classic of independent
filmmaking. Tahimik also stars, as a puck-
ish character of the same name—a jeepney
driver in the village of Balian who is obsessed
with American culture. He listens devotedly
to Voice of America and, dreaming of space
travel, is the president of the local Wernher
von Braun fan club. But when he gets his
long-awaited chance to travel abroad—to
Paris, with an American businessman who
runs that city’s gumball-machine empire—his
observations dispel his illusions. With his
copious and whimsical voice-over, Tahimik
freely fuses personal and political cinema,
documentary and fantasy; he depicts his vil-
lage with a sharp anthropological attention to
ritual and religion along with a sardonic view
of economic inequality, and unfolds family
stories marked by war and imperialism. The
wandering hero’s idiosyncratic encounters and
discoveries are capped with a dazzling touch
of the supernatural that represents what he
calls his “declaration of independence.”—R.B.
(Streaming on Kanopy and MUBI.)Shoah
From the time of its release, in 1985, Claude
Lanzmann’s film has transcended the cinema
to become a primary record of the extermina-
tion of the Jews of Europe during the Second
World War. The two-part, nine-hour film
consists mainly of interviews about the death
camps with Jews who survived them, Poles
who lived in their vicinity, and Germans who
helped run them. (The surreptitious filming
of a former Treblinka guard is the apotheosis
of investigative journalism.) But Lanzmann
didn’t make a film about or an evocation of
the Holocaust; joining these interviews to
scenes of the vestiges of the camps, he filmed,
in effect, the Holocaust itself, with the faith
that the bearing of witness is the ultimate
representation. He conveys the sense of a
supremely moral mission as he presses his
subjects to speak despite their anguish, fear,
or shame. With his camera, he bears witness
to the bearing of witness and, at the sites of
the unfathomable horror, depicts, to the limits
of consciousness, the experience of life in the
presence of death.—R.B. (Streaming on Am-
azon, IFC Center at Home, and other services.)service—which he’s still hoping to avoid when
he goes home. As the men explore the French
countryside, they chat about Iran and France,
tradition and freedom, memories and aspira-
tions. They also meet people along the way—
notably, two musicians, Charlotte and Michèle,
whose presence prompts Ashkan’s dreams of
romance. But the idyll is soon shattered by new
political circumstances. Goormaghtigh made
the film with a few thousand dollars and one
assistant, but her poised, ample images and
her wryly tender regard for her characters give
the film dramatic grandeur to match its global
embrace. In Farsi and French.—Richard Brody
(Streaming on Amazon and Kanopy.)
Closer
Patrick Marber adapted his own hit play of the
same name, and gave a lucky director, Mike
Nichols, a script that he could chew on. Peel
away the carnal talk and what’s left—the bone
structure of the piece—resembles Noël Cow-
ard’s “Private Lives.” We get two interlocking
couples: Dan (Jude Law), a writer who falls in
love with Alice (Natalie Portman), a stripper,