usatoday_20170111_USA_Today

(ff) #1

4DLIFE
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 2017


“In the great green room /
There was a telephone / And a
red balloon / And a picture of — ”
Few parents are unable to fin-
ish the first line from the 1947
children’s classic Goodnight
Moon , which has sold 27 million
copies. With illustrations by
Clement Hurd, the picture book
was written by the prolific Marga-
ret Wise Brown, whose life and
work are explored in Amy Gary’s
new biography, titled (of course),
In the Great Green Room (Flat-
iron, 279 pp., eeeEout of four).
Although Goodnight Moon ’s
lulling style is familiar in to-
day’s many go-to-sleep
books for children, at the
time it was unusual, so
much so that for more
than 20 years the New
York Public Library de-
clined to include the book
in its stacks — just one of
many anecdotes Gary in-
cludes about the beloved story’s
history.
Calm though her works may be
(they include The Runaway Bun-
ny , The Little Island and dozens
more), Margaret Wise Brown’s
life was anything but.
Born into a wealthy but chilly
New York family, Brown spent
her early years roaming estate
grounds on Long Island and at
boarding school in Wellesley. In
college she discovered a love for
horse riding, poetry and the
hunting event known as

“beagling.”
A first job at noted pro-
gressive school Bank Street
let Brown create stories for
children that merged her natu-
ralist eye with her love for Ger-
trude Stein’s avant-garde style.
Yet often her writing took a back
seat to an impressive love drama
in her personal life: casting off a
wealthy fiancé, falling for an older
family man in Maine, and — most
significant — devoting herself to
one woman who would shape her
artistic and erotic path for the
rest of her life.
Brown’s decade-long relation-
ship with poet and theater artist
Michael Strange (originally
Blanche Oelrichs) nearly merits

its own book, as the women chal-
lenge 1940s conventions with
gusto: dressing androgynously,
cultivating lives of art and, of
course, being in love.
Unfortunately, it was a lopsid-
ed love, with Brown’s needs never
quite fulfilled by the older
Strange — a “vainglorious semi-
celebrity” — whose cruelty to
Brown dismayed many of her
friends. After nursing Strange
through her final weeks of leuke-
mia, Brown was bereft.
Despite her phenomenal suc-
cess with multiple children’s
books, as well as songs, poems
and essays, Margaret Wise Brown
never stopped trying — and fail-
ing — to write for adults. This

painful disappointment needs
more exploration, as we don’t
learn much about these works or
their problems. Gary also short-
changes the life-long effects of
Brown’s troubled connection to
her family, especially problematic
since it was the discovery of a
trove of works kept by Brown’s
sister that prompted this
biography.
Though her life was cut short
by illness (she died in 1952 at age
42), Margaret Wise Brown’s story
reads as a stirring evocation of a
woman who insisted on freedom
in her art and in her love life.

Emily Gray Tedrowe is the author
of Blue Stars.

The complicated woman


behind ‘Goodnight Moon’


Margaret Wise Brown’s classic Goodnight Moon was intended to lull children to
sleep, yet her private life was anything but sedate.

MICHELE GAY
Author
Amy Gary

Emily Gray Tedrowe
Special for USA TODAY

BOOK
REVIEW

The duo of director Peter Berg
and star Mark Wahlberg are be-
coming as all-American as hot
dogs and Mom’s apple pie.
Their newest col-
laboration, the dra-
ma Patriots Day
(eeeEout of four;
rated R; now showing
in New York, Boston
and Los Angeles, expands nation-
wide Friday), is their best yet, ef-
fectively capturing the tragedy of
the 2013 Boston Marathon
bombings while showcasing the
fortitude of the human spirit sans
any sense of rah-rah corniness.
The main narrative follows au-
thority figures, ordinary citizens
and the terrorists themselves
from the night before the violent
April 15 attacks to the suburban
manhunt that ends in the capture
of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (Alex
Wolff ) in nearby Watertown,
Mass. Chief among them is Tom-
my Saunders (Wahlberg), a Bos-
ton cop nursing a knee injury — a
composite of true-life officers —
who’s at ground zero when the
makeshift explosives go off at the
finish line and wreak havoc on
runners and spectators alike.
In Berg ’s signature handheld
camerawork, the director intro-
duces each player in the context
of the fateful day and weaves
their stories in the aftermath.
Tommy’s loving wife (Michelle
Monaghan) visits him at the race
just before the nightmarish chaos
erupts, young couple Patrick
(Christopher O’Shea) and Jessica
(Rachel Brosnahan) are injured
and split up in the confusion, and
Chinese student Dun Meng (Jim-
my O. Yang) survives being car-
jacked by Tsarnaev and brother
Tamerlan (Themo Melikidze)
when the bad guys are on the run.
As he did in last year’s disaster

film Deepwater Horizon (also
with Wahlberg), Berg crafts an in-
tense blast sequence on the mar-
athon route that gets up-close
and personal with its horror: A
street-level angle shows the emo-
tional effects of the carnage while
never being gratuitous.
The filmmaker weaves in real
footage where possible to add to
the overall authenticity while
dramatically rendering many of
the key sequences that captured
America’s attention — J.K. Sim-
mons, who plays a local Water-
town sheriff, figures into a
tension-filled nighttime shootout
that pits the terrorist siblings
against law enforcement.
Wahlberg exudes a watchable,
good-hearted machismo as Tom-
my, especially in a poignant
speech on love vs. hate. John
Goodman and Kevin Bacon en-
gage in scenery-chewing conflict
as a headstrong Boston police
commissioner and an embattled
FBI agent respectively, and TV’s
Supergirl Melissa Benoist breaks
from goody two-shoes type as Ta-
merlan’s American wife, a woman
determined to not break when in-
terrogated by feds.
Co-written by Berg, the screen-
play gets a little busy trying to in-
troduce its large cast in the first
20 minutes, though its timeline
settles into a tick-tock groove as
the action turns procedural in
tracking down its antagonists.
In other hands, Patriots Day
could have been a paint-by-num-
bers action thriller, but strong
performances and well-paced
momentum make it an engross-
ing watch.
Even more impressive is the
way Berg maintains an emphasis
on the heroes in those fateful
hours where a city came together,
refusing to be torn asunder.

Gripping ‘Patriots Day’


captures Boston’s heroism


KAREN BALLARD
Kevin Bacon, Mark Wahlberg and John Goodman anchor an interwoven cast.

MOVIE
REVIEW
BRIAN
TRUITT

Crowded
cast gets
woven
into a
tapestry
of
strength,
with
realism
and grit

Ben Affleck’s Live by Night
plays as a greatest-hits mash-up
of gangster epics, though the re-
sult is a haphazard,
albeit mostly enter-
taining tale of tom-
my gunners and rum
runners.
Wearing a variety
of fedoras in the Prohibition-era
piece (eegEout of four; rated
R; in theaters nationwide Friday),
the square-jawed actor stars in,
directs and adapts from the Den-
nis Lehane novel of the same
name. Small-time crook Joe
Coughlin (Affleck) finds success
in the underworlds of bloody
1920s Boston and sunny 1930s
Florida, yet is continually re-
minded of his dad’s fateful words:
“What you put out into the world
will always come back to you.”
There’s no shortage of style,
and the shoot-’em-up narrative
appeals to devotees of crime
flicks — but an inspired Affleck
tries to do too much.
Joe returns home from World
War I with an itch to rage against
the machine. Running with a
bunch of Beantown robbers, Joe
gets in the middle of a war be-
tween Irish Mob boss Albert
White (Robert Glenister) and
Italian crime lord Maso Pescatore
(Remo Girone). “I don’t truck
with gangsters,” Joe says, though
much to the chagrin of his cop fa-
ther Thomas (Brendan Gleeson),
bad decisions put him in inten-
sive care — and ultimately jail —
after he’s betrayed by his girl-
friend, Emma (Sienna Miller).
When Joe gets out, seeking re-
venge, the Italians install him in
Tampa to head up their busy rum
business. He’s the king of the
speak-easies, but beset by obsta-


cles including the Ku Klux Klan
and the preaching of anti-vice ho-
ly roller Loretta Figgis (Elle Fan-
ning) — all of which get in the
way of Joe’s grand plans to get out
of the racket and one day go legit.
The first act is an old-school
gangster’s paradise, sprinkled
with odes to classic crime cinema
and a killer car chase in vintage
vehicles. Once he gets down
South, though, Affleck creates al-
most another movie entirely, one
that explores prejudice of the
time as it leads to a bloody con-
clusion. Unfortunately, the two
parts don’t jibe seamlessly,
though Harry Gregson-Williams’
sumptuous score sets the right
mood throughout.
As the movie’s star, Affleck
gives his onscreen personality an
intriguing depth: The ne’er-do-
well Joe says that he wants to be a
good man, though his own hubris
undermines any karmic points he
hopes to earn.
Affleck has surrounded himself
with a talented cast that includes
Zoe Saldana (as Joe’s Cuban lov-
er, Graciela), Chris Messina (play-
ing Joe’s No. 2, Dion Bartolo) and
Chris Cooper (as the police chief
and Loretta’s devout father), but
those interesting characters are
mostly side players to Joe’s
journey.
Live by Night never reaches the
heights of Affleck’s best movies —
the Oscar-winning Argo and ex-
cellent The Town — but it’s defi-
nitely his most ambitious, both
thematically and in production
value. Although the filmmaker
conjures beautiful imagery and a
subtle exploration of fathers and
their children, the good stuff is
too often caught up in a muddle
of well-tread crime clichés.

Riddled with clichés,


‘Live by Night’ is less


than sum of its parts


PHOTOS BY CLAIRE FOLGER

Ben Affleck,
with Sienna
Miller, cre-
ates an old-
school gang-
ster’s tableau.

MOVIE
REVIEW
BRIAN
TRUITT

Affleck wears
many hats in
the movie:
writer, direc-
tor and star.
Free download pdf