Our personal 24^th Festival began early on Friday as we walked from our condominium to the gondola for our first film at the Chuck Jones cinema up in Mountain Village. Crossing the San Miguel River, we are once again struck by Telluride’s beauty.

In the past few years the Festival has begun late on Friday morning with a showing of an especially long documentary film that fills the day until the evening’s Colorado Avenue “feed” and the first major film screenings. Last year it was WATERGATE. This year featured WOMEN MAKE FILM, a 273-minute documentary directed by Mark Cousins that visits the work of more than 180 women filmmakers from the era of the Lumières to today. Among those included are Chantal Akerman, Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Kira Muratova, Malvina Ursianu, Moufida Tlatli and Maria Plyta. As an organizing principle, Cousins chose an introduction to film techniques such as framing, tracking, editing, close-ups and many more. Although the informative clips and wonderful voice over by Tilda Swinton fascinated me, I soon felt a bit overwhelmed. More troubling, the introduction to film techniques eclipsed any reference as to whether or why the films we were seeing were in any way women’s films. Perhaps these questions are answered in the second half, but exhausted from travel and information overload, we left halfway through at intermission. I hope we can some day view the rest online.

RON’S GRADE: WITHHELD, PENDING.

The highlight of the day was an evening tribute to Renée Zellweger starting with clips of her films from BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY to JERRY MAGUIRE and CHICAGO, and moving on to an interview for which, as you can see, we had front row seats:

A premier screening of Zellweger’s latest film, JUDY, followed the interview. Directed by Robert Goold, JUDY is a moving portrait of the great screen actress Judy Garland, in the last years of her short life (she died at age 47). The Dorothy of Oz has become an inebriated and aging chanteuse seeking to carve out a living as a performer in London where she is still fondly remembered. But if the storyline of this biopic is familiar, Zellweger’s stunning performance is anything but. Movements of her eyes and lips not only convey the inner torment resulting from Garland’s harsh studio upbringing as a teen, but also the generosity of spirit that she learned from it. It’s no coincidence that late in her life Garland became a favorite of gay culture. Was this because gay men—represented in the film by two adoring gay partners and fans—identified with Garland’s suffering and her struggle to overcome it through her music? Look for an Oscar nomination for Zellweger.

RON’S GRADE: A-

SATURDAY, AUGUST 31

FORD v FERRARI

It’s the mid-1960 and the Ford Motor Company is hemorrhaging market share. Henry Ford II (well played by Tracy Letts) demands new ideas. Marketeer Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) suggests turning the company’s staid image toward performance by mounting a racing team that can capture Ferrari’s years long ownership of first place at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Enter Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and Ken Miles (Christian Bale) as respectively car designer and driver whose challenges include not just Enzo Ferrari’s skilled racers and a grueling endurance circuit, but also Ford’s corporate executives. Unused to the fast, innovative pace of Formula One racing, the Ford “suits” obstruct the new, independent Ford team right down to the finish line. James Mangold’s direction is crisp. The racing scenes are outstanding, exceeded only by Lett’s, Damon’s, and Bale’s performances. Look for a trunk load of Oscar nominations here.

RON’S GRADE: A

PAIN AND GLORY

Salvador Mallo (wonderfully played by Antonio Banderas) is an aging film director whose bodily pains and worries have forced him into retirement. A brief reunion with the star of Mallo’s landmark first film introduces the director to heroin, and we prepare for a slow if cinematically familiar descent into degradation. But 69-year-old director Pedro Almodóvar has deeper explorations in mind, as we watch Mallo rediscover a youthful gay relationship and also recall his first experience of sexual desire. At one point in the film, a character (is it Mallo’s mother played beautifully by Penelope Cruz?) says, “I hate auto-fiction.” But PAIN AND GLORY is autobiographical in the best sense, knowledgeably depicting the struggles and emotions of advancing age. Don’t miss the camera boom near the end.

RON’S GRADE: A

A HIDDEN LIFE

“Time moves slowly when you live it under stress,” says Franz Jäggerstätte the Austrian farmer whose real life encounter with Nazi persecution is portrayed in Terrence Malick’s magnificent new film. Malick himself seems to take this approach to time seriously, slowly following Jäggärstätte’s story over almost three hours. But the time is well spent, offering intimate glimpses into the familial and common life of a small community deep in the Austrian Alps during the period from the Anschluss to the middle of World War II. It’s a hard life. The film begins with scenes of the farmers and their wives arduously scything grain. Jäggerstätte’s wife (Valerie Pachner) scrapes potatoes from the earth with her fingernails. But the beauty of this bucolic setting renders it a paradise of sorts until Jäggerstätte is called up for service in Hitler’s army for which he must swear an oath of allegiance to the Führer, a leader whom the devoutly Catholic Jäggerstätte rightly believes incarnates evil. Thus begins Jäggerstätte’s predictable journey to the guillotine. His quiet stoicism and religious commitment are superbly conveyed by August Diehl. The family, including, his three young daughters, are reviled as traitors to their nation and race. In police or judicial hearings, Jäggerstätte is repeatedly told that his gesture is futile, that it will accomplish nothing, and that it will only bring harm to his loved ones. As we watch his wife and sister struggle to survive in his absence, we see how true this is.

A kiss from a fellow prisoner near the film’s end tells us that this is more than a story about one courageous resistant. It is the Gospel narrative in which Jäggerstätte and his family live out the biblical scenes painted on the walls and ceiling of the town’s simple chapel—scenes often viewed but misunderstood by their neighbors.

RON’S GRADE: A

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1

We rose early today to get seats in the sure-to-be-crowded special tribute to Adam Driver. At the base of the gondola I ran into the morning’s star.

When I texted this picture to my family, my daughter-in-law, Melissa, quickly texted back: “Your grandson, Harrison, would be so jealous. His granddad got to meet Kylo Ren.”

The tribute included clips from several of Driver’s best performances—including STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (where Driver appears as Kylo Ren), PATERSON, and BLACKkKLANSMAN.

A screening of Driver’s latest film, THE REPORT, followed. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the CIA embarked on a program of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques amounting to the outright application of torture to terrorist captives. Director Scott Z. Burns’s riveting drama follows Senate investigator Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) as he tries to wrest information from the secretive and self-protective agency. His sole supporter is Senator Diane Feinstein (beautifully played more like DiFi than DiFi herself by Annette Bening), and even she wavers as political pressures mount to bury the whole ugly mess. Driver’s lucid descriptions of his horrific findings (recreated in vivid flashbacks) guide us through the investigation’s complexities. His eyes and facial gestures convey the depth of his commitment to uncovering the truth about one of the worst episodes in US history. THE REPORT offers ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN up to a new generation of viewers. Its depiction of leadership-directed lies and cover-ups makes it relevant to today’s political environment.

RON’S GRADE: A

LYREBIRD

World War II has just ended and the streets of Amsterdam, littered with debris, are swarming with mobs bent on executing collaborators. A crate is found in a freight car in a railway tunnel. It contains a priceless Vermeer destined for its buyer, Hermann Göring. Joseph Piller (Claes Bang), a Dutch Jew and resistance fighter now working for the Allied occupation authority sets out to find which collaborators have assisted the Nazis in looting the nation’s treasures. He soon arrests Han van Meegeren (Guy Pearce), a witty, debonair aesthete and failed painter. We follow the twists and turns as van Meegeren amply demonstrates and then evades his guilt. Director Dan Friedkin’s beautifully filmed recreation of a true story sometimes loses us in its many plot turns. Not until the end do we understand who or what van Meegeren was and in what ways he represents Holland’s own moral doubts about its response to occupation.

RON’S GRADE: B+

BEANPOLE

Over a million citizens of Leningrad froze or starved to death during the Nazi siege of the city. Director Kantemir Balagov’s second feature (after TESNOTA) takes us to the city in the fall of 1945, just months after the end of the war. Nurse Iya (Ksenia Kuteova), the tall blond beanpole of the title, and Masha (Vasilisa Perelygina), an orderly, are both injured veterans whose work with badly wounded soldiers provides further evidence of the terrible toll the war has taken. Together, the two explore sex, love, and procreation in failed efforts to raise life from death. The sets are wonderful, but at times it seems we have detoured from a fascinating historical recreation into a soap opera. I wish that the young, 28-year old director had paid more attention to the real stories of those who lived through this unique historical tragedy.

RON’S GRADE: B

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

PARASITE

Writer/director Bong Joon-ho’s clever but heartless Cannes Palme d’Or winner, imaginatively portrays the consequences of drastic income inequality both in South Korea and the world today. The slum dwelling and apparently work-shy Kim family survive by snatching Wi-Fi signals from neighbors until a tutoring opportunity with a rich family opens up for their college-reject son. The Park’s drip wealth and live in a stunning, architect-designed home that constitutes the film’s main set. Soon the Kim’s daughter signs on as an “art therapist” for the Parks’ doted-upon young son. When she cleverly ousts the chauffeur, the Kim family patriarch (well played by Song Kang-ho) gets the job. Mom is last to enlist—as a replacement housekeeper. The Parks remain oblivious as this whole grifter family is installed beneath them like the stinkbugs in the Kims’ slum. However, this humorous and somewhat preposterous beginning soon reveals a darker side, one that replaces our anxieties about the family’s inevitable discovery with horror. Overall, the emotions and relationships in the film seem contrived to move forward a clever narrative and a sharp criticism of the class divide.

RON’S GRADE: B+

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE

It’s the late 1700s and a young artist Marianne (Noémie Merlant) arrives on the tormented coast of Brittany to secretly paint a portrait of Héloïse so that a prospective husband back in Milan can decide whether he wants to marry her. Héloïse is clearly not keen on the union, but her mother, the owner of their faded chateau, imposes it on her in the realization that there are no economic alternatives. Marianne, in contrast, lives by her fees and knows that the portrait must be good. What starts as a painter’s professional regard soon turns to mutual passion. Like Eurydice’s husband Orpheus, Marianne finally realizes that a glance backward to her beloved in the form of the completed painting also seals the death of their relationship. In an era of Marvel movies, writer-director Céline Sciamma’s wonderful period drama reminds us that the French can still make great films about human beings, gay or straight.

RON’S GRADE: A

TWO POPES

It is 2012 and Cardinal Bergoglio of Argentina (Jonathan Pryce) visits Pope Benedict XVI (Anthony Hopkins) at the pope’s summer residence at Castel Gondolfo. Bergoglio, distressed by the conservatism of the Church, carries a letter of resignation, but the elderly pontiff, fearful that the letter will be taken as a protest against his scandal-ridden papacy, won’t accept it. However, what begins as a tense encounter between utterly opposing personalities becomes a deep personal relationship as the two men continue a series of conversation over the next few years until Benedict retires and Bergoglio becomes Pope Francis. Although Benedict can’t accept Bergoglio’s liberal vision of the Church, he comes to perceive in the Cardinal the integrity his successor must have. We watch as the two men are brought together by their mutual love for the Church and their acknowledgment of their own and others frailty and flaws. Director Fernando Meirelles (CITY OF GOD), writer Anthony McCarten (DARKEST HOUR) and Pryce and Hopkins have given us a masterful film with an important lesson for today: that individuals of sharply different ideologies can come together when there is communication, affection, and humility.

P.S. Watch the candle smoke at the very end.

RON’S GRADE: A+

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS:

The 46th Telluride Festival was one of the best we’ve experienced in our 24 years of attendance. My award of so many A’s reflects not grade inflation but the overwhelming quality of the US and foreign films we viewed. One down note was the crowding. In the past we allowed an hour’s wait before any film, but this year two hours were needed to assure a seat in even the largest venues. Why was this so? Was it because more passes were issued than ever? The answer remains a mystery. Despite this problem, the films made it all worthwhile. We’ll be back next year—toting fold-up seats and our iPhones and Kindles.

Mary Jean, I, and my sister Roberta pause during a stroll on the Champs-Élysées.

Paris is an addiction. Once in your system, it’s hard to get it out.

Over many research trips and Dartmouth overseas language programs led by my wife, Mary Jean, we have collectively spent more than a year of our lives living in Paris. But it’s five years since our last visit, and the yearning to revisit was becoming irresistible.

We also wished to show Europe to my sister Roberta. Bunny, as everyone calls her, lost her husband Matthew Lawrence almost two years ago. Matt served as a combat engineer in World War II, was captured in December 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge, and spent the last months of the war as a POW in a German Stalag. Matt’s experiences of near starvation led him to vow never to return to Europe, so during their long marriage, Bunny never traveled there. To remedy this, we committed to taking her on an annual trip. Last year it was Madrid and Spain. This year, Paris beckoned.

If many elements of this post are familiar, that is because our goal was to revisit and share with Bunny some of our favorite sites.

GETTING SETTLED; FIRST WALKS

An overnight flight called for a quiet first day familiarizing us with the neighborhood. Our Airbnb apartment was on the broad but largely residential Rue Gay-Lussac. Here’s a view toward our apartment.

Our street is appropriately named. Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (1778-1850) was a physicist-chemist mostly known for his discovery that water is made of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. Rue Gay-Lussac forms the western border of a major scientific and intellectual district that includes the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie, the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique, and the home once occupied by Marie Curie, now a museum honoring the three-time Nobelist. During our stroll, we encountered this sketch of Madam Curie on a building wall:

I was especially pleased to find just behind our apartment the École Normale Supérieure.

Nominally a teacher’s college, the École has served over the years as the training ground for many of France’s leading intellectuals. Both Jean Paul Sartre and his lifelong companion Simone de Beauvoir attended, with Sartre receiving first place in his teaching degree agrégation exam and de Beauvoir receiving second place. Curie, Sartre, and de Beauvoir. The neighborhood resonates to their presence.

At its northern end, Gay-Lussac points to the entrance to the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris’s diminutive but beautifully manicured Central Park. During our many stays in Paris, I always looked forward to visits to the Jardin’s basin, where you can rent and launch small sailboats. Though the cool weather made me less inclined to join the fun, I enjoyed watching children scamper from edge to edge as their boats traversed the pond.

Touristically-oriented activities continued on the next full day. After a morning at the Musée Maillol (see below) we boarded a bateau-mouche near the Eiffel Tower and cruised the Seine up to Notre Dame and back. Here are Mary Jean and Bunny enjoying this quintessence of Parisian tourism.

Here’s a glimpse from the boat of the famous Tower, whose blocklong lines and heights we chose to forego:

The most poignant moment on the cruise was our passage around Notre Dame. Several days later on, when we tried to walk past the cathedral, we found our way blocked by police cordons, so this river view was about as close as one can get to the fire-ravaged structure. The front looks relatively undamaged, though the fire may have either melted the front rose window or caused its panes to be removed protectively:

Here’s a side view. You can discern a pale blue tarpaulin that has been spread over the burned out roof. The scaffold for previous repair work, where the fire may have started, is still in place.

This fire was a great tragedy. Hopefully, the five-year recovery announced by President Macron will result in a stronger cathedral.

Several days later we bypassed the Îsle de la Cité, on which Notre Dame stands, and crossed the river further up at the Îsle Saint-Louis. Our destination was the Marais district, where we had spent three months many years ago when Mary Jean was doing research in the old Bibliothèque Nationale. Our daughter Julie attended a local primary school, and I helped out by taking responsibility for our two-year-old son, Matthew. Each afternoon, weather permitting, I would take Matt across the river to a small playground that has now become an elegant riverside park, the Quai Saint Bernard. Matthew tells me that walking on the top of a low wall of logs in the playground is one of his first memories. Here’s a glimpse across the bridge to the Quai:

The Marais was once a major Jewish quarter of the city.  Most Jews were deported during the war, and it later became a location for gay life. When we lived there, it was still pretty dilapidated, but all that has changed as gentrification has seized the quarter. Our residence was a small fifth floor walkup on the Quai de Célestins in a building facing the river. I’ll never forget reading a passage from a Tale of Two Cities to our daughter Julie. As I was describing the dim stairway leading up to Dr. Manette’s small eighteenth century garret, Julie remarked, “That sounds just like our apartment.”

How things change. Here’s our old building now. You can see the handsome renovation:

A thin Jewish presence persists in the Marais, and the Mémorial de la Shoah (Holocaust museum) is located here. En route to the museum, we passed a Jewish bakery:

The museum itself was unimpressive. On the wall of the names of the 76,000 French Jews who were deported and murdered by the Nazis, we hoped to see the family name of a surviving French friend, but that part of the museum was closed for repairs. A room containing files of cards (fichiers) used by the French police to identify and round up Jews was chilling:

Named on the cards are the several camps to which Jews were shipped before their final deportation to Auschwitz.

ART IN PARIS

Not all our museum visits were so lugubrious. Quite the contrary, since this visit was a return to our Paris favorites and an introduction to my sister to some of the city’s treasures, we had several art collections on our must-see list. Below, I offer some of my photos. I took these because crowds and lighting often deprived us of the opportunity to study the paintings. Thanks to the current museum permissions for picture taking (without flash), you can see your favorites later, and share them with others.

This began for me with the Musée Maillol, a jewel box of museum at which I have previously seen several outstanding exhibitions. This visit didn’t disappoint. As you can see from the online website, the current exhibition features the private collection of Emil Bührle on loan from the Zürich Kunsthaus:

Bührlewas a wealthy German-born Swiss industrialist. From 1936-1956 he gathered an impressive array of 600 pre-impressionist, impressionist, and post-impressionist works. Fifty of these are in the exhibit.

Here are just a few of the highlights of the exhibition.

Alfred Sisley, “Chalands à Saint-Mammès” (“Barges at Saint-Mammès”) (1885):

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, “Portrait de Mademoiselle Irène Cahen d’Anvers” (“La Petite Irène”):

Raoul Dufy, “La Fête Foraine” (“The Fun Fair.” 1906):

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, “Messaline” (1900-01). Toulouse-Lautrec was fascinated by the underworld of Paris, its nightspots and brothels. This canvas depicts the third wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius and suggests the intensity of her lust and debauchery:

Van Gogh, “Le Semeur, Soleil Couchant” (“The Sower, Setting Sun”), 1888. This is the signature painting for the entire exhibition.

Our next museum to visit was the Louvre. I’m convinced that a large portion of hell models this museum with its thronging masses of selfie-taking visitors. So why would we put it on our list? Bunny, of course, had to see the Mona Lisa (“La Joconde”). How can you fail to do so on a visit to Paris? And for Mary Jean and me, it’s probably been forty years. Time for a revisit.

But it was even worse than we imagined. Milling crowds and poor signage made seeing anything on our short list difficult. Nevertheless, we persisted. Here I am taking my own selfie before the Mona Lisa. What this photo does not show are the hundreds of iPhone bearing tourists in front of me pressing forward against security guards and trying to do what I finally managed to do.

Here’s a hard won image of La Joconde herself:

[Parenthetically, as I wrote this, Mary Jean brought to my attention this article in today’s local paper. So my impression of the intolerable conditions in the Louvre, and especially around the Mona Lisa, was even more accurate than I thought.]

Other renowned Louvre paintings were somewhat less besieged. Here is Géricault’s stirring “The Raft of the Medusa” (1818-19), an icon of French Romanticism that depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse:

And here is Delacroix’s “La Liberté Guiding the People” (1831).

Finally, Delacroix’s erotic orientalist fantasy, “Women of Algiers in Their Apartment” (1834):

The last museum on our list was the far less crowded and beautifully arranged Musée d’Orsay. The architectural genius of this museum, housed in the shell of the old Orsay railway station, is itself a reason to visit.  Here’s the lovely main gallery:

Here’s the impressive station clock:

The museum’s collection of impressionist paintings far exceeds the Maillol exhibition’s. I had especially hoped to see Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” but learned that it was away, on loan to New York. Nevertheless, much remained.

Here is Renoir’s beautiful “Dance at the Moulin de la Galette” (1876). It epitomizes Renoir’s celebration of the joys of life in fin de siècle Paris:

From almost the same date, Edward Degas’ “Répétition d’un Ballet sur la Scene” (1874):

And a stunning Van Gogh self-portrait (1889):

At the end of a tiring morning of museum going, while my sister had her hair done, Mary Jean and I stopped for a drink in a local café:

CHENONCEAU

To balance this busy schedule of urban sites, our plans included one day out of Paris to revisit the Loire Valley where we had spent altogether perhaps another year of our lives on foreign study programs based in the small city of Blois. Our principal destination was a site that I confess to be my favorite place in the whole world: the Château of Chenonceau. Once the possession of Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566), the mistress of King Henri II, and subsequently of Henri’s wife, Catherine de Medici (1510-1589), Chenonceau was acquired in 1913 by the Menier family, famous for their chocolates, who own it to this day. And thankfully so, for unlike so many government owned monuments, Chenonceau is exquisitely furnished and maintained.

Even the entrance charms. This poster says, “Attention, Dogs. I am a guard cat.” How can you not love that?

Walking the long, tree lined entryway is always a delight:

Here is the chateau in all its splendor spanning the River Cher:

Inside is the gallery over the river that was added by Catherine to an arched bridge commissioned by Diane. During the First World War this gallery, once the site of elegant balls, was used as a hospital for wounded soldiers.

The same gallery seen from a side window:

The interiors have been lovingly restored. Here, a beautiful fireplace with the salamander insignia of King Francis I.

An Aubuchon tapestry, whose vibrant greens have aged into blue:

In the kitchen located below in the spaces between bridge arches, a striking display of copper cookware:

Across from the chateau, the manicured gardens designed by Diane de Poitier:

And always, the gentle River Cher:

Following our visit to the chateau, we had lunch at the Auberge du Bon Laboureur in Chenonceau village. More on this in our next section, DINING. After driving back in the direction of Paris through the beautiful spring countryside of the Loire, we made a brief stop at another magnificent site, the royal chateau of Chambord. Fatigued from much driving, walking, and good food, we then returned to Paris but not before asking another tourist to snap our picture:

DINING:

I am of the opinion that French cuisine, when it is good, is the best in the world. Chinese, Japanese, Thai and other national cuisines can be excellent, and I have enjoyed each of them in their respective nations, but no other cuisine approximates the French at their best. Indeed, one of Mary Jean’s and my ambitions for future travel is to buy the latest Guide Michelin and then spend a week or two using it to select our driving destinations from one Michelin one-star restaurant or hotel to the next.

Chenonceau offered an example. The Auberge du Bon Laboureur exemplified the attentive preparations and presentation of restaurants awarded one star. (With two or three stars, service and presentation ascend, but I’m not convinced that the food is proportionately better.) Here are a few shots of our €33 menu luncheon:

A lamb dish:

A sorbet desert:

The remains of an already nibbled chocolate tart:

Paris, of course, has endless culinary attractions. One of our favorite places is L’Escargot Montorgueil, an almost two hundred year old restaurant whose specialty is escargot (snails) in all sorts of sauces. A national holiday on the Rue Montorgueil is the subject of a famous 1878 impressionist painting by Claude Monet. You can find it here: https://www.tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com/2012/08/claude-monet-1840-1926-french-painter.html

Here’s this restaurant today:

And here an appetizer of their namesake food:

We took advantage of our visit to meet up with old friends. On our first night, we dined with Lynn Higgins, Mary Jean’s French Department colleague who was leading the spring Paris program. A few days later, we dined at the Les Papilles Bistro. I think “papilles” are taste buds, and if so, the name is well chosen. The restaurant has no menu. Everyone is served the same appetizer and main dish based on the freshest market fare. Our carrot velouté starter and lamb stew main dish were both memorable.

We invited my old friend Franck Daniel to join us for lunch. I got to know Franck many years ago when he responded to an ad I had placed on the bulletin board at Reed Hall, Dartmouth’s program center, seeking a conversation partner. Franck and I then spent many late afternoons alternating between French and English and discussing politics in both nations. We’ve seen each other several times over the years, but it was a pleasure catching up with him again in this setting over a fine French meal and gathering an informed citizen’s view of current French politics. Here we are à table.

PARIS FAREWELL

Ten days permitted us to revisit some of our favorite Paris and Loire Valley sites. For the moment, our French yearning was calmed, though we know with certainty that it will return in just a short while, perhaps when that Michelin Guide idea resurfaces.

I want to conclude with a relatively ordinary image of people using their smartphones while waiting at a bus stop near our apartment.

This image captures many of my impressions of Paris on this visit.  Above all, it is a city made for people. Restaurants and cafés abound and are populated. Public transport is excellent, including the endless stream of comfortable buses that visit this stop. Above all, I was struck by the quality of the city’s diverse population. From our many Tunisian- or Mauritanian-born Uber drivers to shopkeepers and museum staffers, people were alert, friendly, and helpful. The myth of hostile Parisians is just that, a myth—at least if you speak French. I personally believe that the French social system, especially guaranteed healthcare and retirement, contributes to the quality and self-assurance of the population.

I’m not overlooking the evident problems. The yellow vests (gilets jaunes) still close down the Champs-Elysées every Saturday. On a weekday, their chaotic demonstrations impeded our access to Boulevard Montparnasse. Integrating the inhabitants of the banlieues (suburbs) remains a major challenge. On our day of departure, taxi drivers staged a major slowdown on the main highway to Charles de Gaulle airport in an effort to block legislation that would give Uber drivers access to privileged taxi and bus driving lanes. The French have a keen sense of social justice that sometimes causes turmoil, and in one historic case that has never been ignored by political leaders, led to public beheadings.

But the exercise of that sense of justice helps makes France livable for the great majority of its citizens. If Paris works it is because its citizens are alert and care.  We can learn from them.

The 45th annual Telluride Film Festival (our personal 23^rd) began for us under cloudy skies and on a less-than-ideal note. A few days into March have been our accustomed time for buying our Festival passes. But on visiting the website I learned to my dismay that all these passes had sold out on the first day of sales (March 1). Thus began a five months-long residence on a wait list, which we were only able leave on receiving the offer of three CINEPHILE passes. These half-price ($390) passes largely confine one’s entry to a list of world cinema and retrospective offerings and limit access to many of the Oscar-bound films that have recently come to define the Festival. Since we love classic, world cinema, and documentaries, and we can wait until the Oscar contenders arrive at the Cineplex later in the year, this seemed a satisfactory solution to our problem.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 31

Unfortunately, our Festival’s start was marred by our limited passes. We were shut out from the Festival’s customary opening tribute event, this year to Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón. In its place, we chose GREAT EXPECTATIONS, a triad of shorter films by promising student filmmakers. The first, CE MAGNIFIQUE GÂTEAU!, is an imaginative if sometimes perplexing animated film offering different takes on Belgium’s terrible history of African colonization. The second was a very brief (six minute) short, DARK CAMERA that begins as a camera obscura view of a roadside scene but turns into something even darker. The third film, BRAGUINO, follows dwellers in a small community in remote Siberia who find themselves in bitter conflict with a neighboring group. Although the ethnographic interest of the film as a glimpse into our own more primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyle was high, the film was repetitive. One scene—a close up struggle involving the baiting, shooting, and butchering of a colossal bear—is the stuff of continuing nightmares. Tired from the drive up, we left before this final film ran its 50 minutes length. RON’S GRADES FOR THE THREE: B+, B+, B-

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1

Unfortunately, our bad start continued into the next morning with the premier screening of Orson Welles’ THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND. Welles began the film 48 years ago but died in 1985 leaving its completion to Frank Marshall, Peter Bogdanovich, Joe McBride, and others. Bogdanovich also stars in the film, which centers on the seventieth birthday party of an idolized but fading director, probably representing Welles himself, as played by John Huston. The ethos seems to be late 60s, with women in the film (and the film within the film) presented through Hugh Hefner-like lenses. The jumpy, handheld cinematography, poor lighting, and utterly confusing narrative make it hard to discern the film’s point, beyond its aging star’s own alcohol-fueled despair. In this viewer’s opinion, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND was best left unfinished. RON’S GRADE: C

Mary Jean, my sister Roberta, who was accompanying us, and I were in near despair ourselves, when our luck (and the day’s rainy weather) changed. In keeping with our passes’ focus, our next film was a riveting documentary, MEETING GORBACHEV, directed by Werner Herzog and André Singers, with Herzog serving as an informed and penetrating interviewer of the Russian premier, now 87 and battling illness. Archival footage takes us back to the terrible days of the cold war when Russia was led by a succession of geriatric ideologues and nuclear warheads were poised to obliterate the human race. Into this world, steps Gorbachev as a deeply human being, whose arms reduction efforts make the world at least momentarily much safer and whose failed reformist domestic policies provide a glimpse of what Putin’s kleptocratic Russia might have been. Gorbachev is shown during a visit to his childhood home, where he warmly embraces an aged aunt and, while walking in the garden, turns to reach out to a wandering cat. MEETING GORBACHEV is the story of our lives and also the surprising portrait of a decent man. RON’S GRADE: A

One excellent documentary was followed by another. REVERSING ROE, directed by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, takes us from the pre-Roe v. Wade days of coat hanger abortions to the imminent reversal of Roe as a result of Trump’s Supreme Court appointments. What is most remarkable about this film is its ability to maintain balance while also signaling the importance of women’s reproductive autonomy. Pro-life protesters and politicians are respectfully allowed to voice their concerns about abortion but we also follow a courageous Midwestern abortion provider, a women physician, who must travel greater distances as more and more clinics are shut down by imposed restrictions having nothing to do with women’s health. The camera is also present as Texas state senator Wendy Davis undertakes a physically grueling, hours-long filibuster to halt passage of a harshly repressive bill that would close most Texas abortion clinics. The halt Davis achieved was only temporary, and the law that ultimately passed is a harbinger of what may lie ahead for over thirty states if the new Supreme Court upholds other enactments like it. The film was followed by a moderated discussion with Ricki Stern, Annie Sundberg, producer Eva Longoria, and Senator Davis.

Although there is much to worry about at the present moment, the response of the hundreds of young people in the audience, a majority of them women, to the panel’s remarks offers hope that the national commitment to women’s reproductive autonomy that Roe established will not be lost. REVERSING ROE will be available in mid-September on NETFLIX. Not to be missed. RON’S GRADE: A

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

Our good luck and documentary focus continued with this morning’s showing of BE NATURAL: THE UNTOLD STORY ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ. Although Edison, the Lumières, and Méliès are often credited as the creators of cinema, their efforts were largely pictorial. It was Alice Guy-Blaché, who began her career as a secretary at Gaumont (then a camera distributor), that introduced narrative and story-telling to the movies, producing and directing hundreds of films, first at Gaumont and later at her own New Jersey-based Solax company. Many of these works, filmed on perishable nitrate, are lost, and Alice’s career has been almost entirely erased from male-authored film histories, with her own most creative works often wrongly attributed to male filmmakers or male subordinates. Documentary, filmmaker Pamela B. Green spent almost two-decades tracking down Guy-Blaché’s life and movies. BE NATURAL not only traces Guy-Blaché’s accomplisments, but also presents Green’s research in the form of a detective story, putting clues together that recover this almost lost pioneer of cinema. RON’S GRADE: A

Midday offered our first fictional movie, although one consistent with the world-cinema theme of our pass. Written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski (Oscar winner for IDA), COLD WAR traces the intimate side of the years whose outer passage MEETING GORBACHEV presents. It is 1949 and Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), a talented musician, is tasked with forming a dance company to celebrate Polish rural culture. In the course of recruiting he meets Zula (Joanna Kulig), a lovely young singer and dancer. For both, it is love at first sight. When the troupe, with its growing success is asked to add homages to Stalin to its repertoire, Wiktor has had enough and during their performances in Berlin he arranges his and Zula’s rendezvous to defect. But Zula is a no-show, and Wiktor leaves without her, embarking on a modestly successful career as a jazz musician in Paris. In a much later meeting when the troupe comes to Paris, Zula explains why she missed their rendezvous: “I was not good enough.” Zula realized that she could only star as one member of a company, a socialist talent, while Wiktor could survive artistically in the individualism of the West. Despite the real and legal walls that separate them and the existence of other relationships, Wiktor and Zula’s continue to harbor a burning love for one another, and this leads them to tragic decisions. As in IDA, Pawlikowsksi uses brilliant black and white cinematography to etch a post-war world as chilling as its politics. I predict that COLD WAR will receive an Oscar nomination for best foreign film. RON’s GRADE: A

Over the years, I have come to believe that the French love three things: Intellectual debate, good food, and marital infidelity. NON FICTION, the latest work by Olivier Assayas (CARLOS, IRMA VEP), our final film of the day, both celebrates and subverts all three of these French favorites. Publisher Alain (Guillaume Canet), is in a funk: his industry is being assaulted by competition from digitized works, including such horrors as books that are nothing more than a collection of tweets. His marriage is not in much better shape. Both he and wife Selena (wonderfully played by Juliette Binoche) are engaged in complicated affairs, and Serena, too, suffers career blues, playing a cop in a second-rate TV policier, although she insists, “I am not a cop. I’m a crisis manager.” Enter Léonard (Vincent Macaigne), a moderately successful novelist that Alain has published over the years, but whose latest novel, a thinly disguised work of “auto-fiction,” Alain has painfully decided to turn down. Léonard’s characters’ real identities are apparently obvious to everyone, except perhaps Alain. The only character not involved in an extra-marital affair is Valérie (Nora Hamzawi), Leonard’s wife, but her job as chief-of-staff for a socialist politician is as insecure as her boss’s future in a rapidly changing political environment. Amidst all this change and threatened loss, the characters debate and debate. Do E-books make sense? Is texting “literature”? Does the Socialist Party any longer appeal to millennials? And on and on and on. If this sounds dull, it’s definitely not. NON FICTION depicts a group of intelligent people living and thinking their way through—and even surmounting—some of the changes that affect us all. The food, too, has changed, as the standard elegant dinners that epitomize so many French films are replaced by self-served takeout that’s more convenient for the working women. NON FICTION is a delightful visit with France’s intellectual middle-class at its best. RON’S GRADE A

Following the showing, Olivier Assayas (right) took questions.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3

The last day of this year’s festival began with our fourth and final documentary, ELDORADO by Swiss filmmaker Markus Imhoof. Beginning in the trackless wastes of the Mediterranean, with the bodies of refugees bobbing in the water, ELDORADO follows the efforts of thousands of these people to reach the “golden land” of Northern Europe. We’re awed by the humanitarian performance of the Italian navy, rescuing desperate people from the sea or from small boats, and treating them with respect. But this respect does not continue: because of stringent European regulations most end up being imprisoned in camps for months on end before being deported back to their country of origin, or, worse, before falling into the hands of Mafia capos that exploit their labor. Throughout, ELDORADO interleaves this modern tragedy with the story of a young Italian girl, Giovanna, who was taken in by director Imhoff’s family during the Second World War after her Italian city was bombed. The Swiss response to war refugees like Giovanna contrasts brutally with the treatment of their modern counterparts. True, most of these are economic immigrants who fail to qualify as refugees from persecution. But the film points out that many Swiss also had to leave their country for the United States during the nineteenth century to escape rural poverty and famine. ELDORADO is thus a moving call to rethink our immigration policies globally. RON’S GRADE A

The next film on our list was SHOPLIFTERS, director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s well-received-in-Japan depiction of a family of petty thieves who exploit their children by using them to steal. When we received Q’s (line positions) numbering 115-117 for the 230 seat Sheridan Opera House, our long wait in the rain seemed worthwhile. But at the last moment over 150 Patrons (bearing $4,900 passes) and other privileged Festival donors showed up, and we and many other Q-holder were sent packing. This was a Festival low-point which, with the bad weather, stirred thoughts of whether this might be our last Festival.

But a break with several glasses of wine and our eventual admission to the last film of the day at the Nugget Theater dramatically shifted our mood. THE WHITE CROW, directed by Ralph Fiennes (who also plays a supporting role as a Kirov Ballet mentor speaking wonderfully expressive Russian) moves back and forth in time as it recounts the life of ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev from his birth on a train in 1938, through his years of training that lead to his role as a principal dancer in the Kirov company, and, finally, to his 1961 defection from the Soviet Union during the company’s visit to Paris. Oleg Ivenko plays the adult Nureyev in all his sexual ambiguity and artistic genius. Brief but stunning dance scenes make clear why Nureyev is proudly confident that he can successfully escape the deadening confines of privileged Soviet society and flourish in the West. From childhood to defection Nureyev is the “white crow,” the exception who stands out from the mass. In the film’s final scenes Nureyev’s defection is treated in thriller fashion, and one feels affirmed in the belief that France has often been at the center of what we think of as the free world. RON’s GRADE: A

On balance, this was for us an excellent Telluride Festival. True, there were dark moments, some caused by our Cinephile pass, such as our exclusion from the customary opening night tribute. But that same pass steered us into some of the best documentaries and foreign films we’ve ever seen. Telluride remains as vibrant as ever. True, too, there has been a turn to Oscar-destined, Hollywood films’ premiers, which can easily beguile Festival attendees. Among them are Melissa McCarthy in CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?, Hugh Jackman in THE FRONT RUNNER and Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone in THE FAVOURITE. I regret not being able to report on many of these films. To amplify our choices next year, we’ll probably seek Festival passes. But our experience with our modest Cinephile passes this year taught us not to lose sight of why we first came to Telluride twenty-three years ago—the opportunity to see movies that show cinema at its best and that rarely come to commercial theaters.

Farewell Telluride:

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1

Following our drive into Telluride through the literally and figuratively breathtaking mountains of the San Juan National Forest . . .

. . . . we faced our first difficult choice: whether or not to attend the Colorado Avenue opening “feed”? This event is hard to skip, but DARKEST HOUR was being screened in the large Palm Theater just one hour after the start of the food event. Realizing that the line for this film would be long, we headed straight to the Palm, and are still thanking ourselves ourselves for doing so.

Directed by Joe Wright, whose work includes the wonderful ATONEMENT, and with a screenplay by Anthony McCarten, DARKEST HOUR depicts the 20 days in May 1940, when France fell and England’s government, led by the new Prime Minister Winston Churchill, had to decide whether or not to seek peace with Hitler. The Churchill so brilliantly played by Gary Oldman is unlike any you’ve ever seen. I’ve read much about this great man and even published a chapter of a book about leadership on him. Watching Oldman’s Churchill, I felt as though I was privileged to be taken back in time and led to witness the real Churchill in action. Jowly, grouchy, with flares of anger, but sometimes also astonishingly compassionate and reflective, Oldman has given us a Churchill for the ages. His delivery of Churchill’s great speeches gives them new life. Above all, what shines through is Churchill’s uncertainty and doubt about the proper course of action and his resolve and courage in championing his course of resistance in spite of that doubt. The supporting cast of Ben Mendelsohn as King George VI, Ronald Pickup as the continuingly weak Neville Chamberlain, Stephen Dillane as the menacing Lord Halifax, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Churchill’s supportive wife Clementine, all give outstanding performances that serve to illuminate Churchill at the center.

Having made the decision to foreground this film in our Festival, we had the good fortune of an opening night Q&A after the film with the producer, director, and most of the lead actors, including Oldman. All were greeted with a standing ovation from the hundreds in the audience. The contrast between the younger, slender Oldman seated before us . . .

. . . and the Oldman we had just witnessed as Churchill was striking. Screenwriter McCarten also helped dispel a concern I had about whether several of the important scenes in the film, most notably one that takes place in the British Underground, have any historical basis. McCarten explained that these historically uncertain scenes were introduced to convey deeper truths about the events, in this case Churchill’s strong connection with the feelings of the English people themselves in contrast to the remoteness of the cowardly leaders of the previous government.

On the way out of the Palm, there was talk among our little knot of theatergoers about how striking it is that DUNKIRK and DARKEST HOUR are both appearing at this time. I offered the thought that both in England and the US, democracy itself is in peril. More than ever, we need reminders that we are here today because of the courage and integrity of previous leaders. I was greeted with “Amens.” Another observation: on the way back to our condo in Mountain Village we shared seats on the gondola with a young family from Arkansas. Their eight-year-old girl and ten-year-old boy both raved about the film. Isn’t it important that in the dark times in which we are now living cinema can give young people familiarity with leaders and followers worthy of respect?

DARKEST HOUR is one of the finest films we’ve seen in twenty-plus years of Telluride attendance. Don’t miss it at the multiplex. RON’S GRADE: A+

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 2

As Mary Jean went off to a film at the nearby Mountain Village Chuck Jones Theater (a Chilean film, A FANTASTIC WOMAN by writer-director Sebastián Lelio), I took the gondola down the mountain to the town’s library, converted for the Festival into a small theater, to see HITLER’S HOLLYWOOD. Director Rüdiger Suchsland’s documentary traces the rise and fall of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 through the Third Reich’s cinema. Under the control of propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazis used film as weapon to marshal followers’ allegiance and also as a dream factory to divert their attention from the regime’s brutal repression and the devastation caused by the war that Hitler started. My oral German is not very strong, so I found it challenging to watch these fascinating films while following Suchsland’s fast-paced narrative in subtitles. Furthermore the drift of that narrative and the ordering of films was not always clear, but the films themselves were fascinating, from an early (1933) black and white propaganda narrative of a working class boy who turns against his “corrupt” Communist family and friends to join the Hitler Youth, to the two extravagant Agfa color films made by director Veit Harlan during the last two years of the war. I had seen one of these (OPFERGANG, “The Great Sacrifice”) some years ago at Telluride. Using the romantic plot of a tragic love triangle, it subtly prepares Germans for the personal sacrifices looming in the wake of the growing losses on the battlefield. The second Harlan film, KOLBERG, is an epic war story employing 10,000 extras that was Goebbels’ call to suicidal resistance in the face of certain defeat. In different ways, these films expose the presence of the regime-long Nazi death cult. RON’S GRADE: A-

Postscript. Somewhat shocking is the appearance of Ingrid Bergman in DIE VIER GESELLEN (“The Four Companions,” 1938) where she plays a young career woman who in good Fascist style gives it all up for marriage: a glimpse into the darker past of our leading anti-Fascist heroine.

Because of long lines and scheduling we were able to get to only one more film today. DOWNSIZING, director Alexander Payne latest film, is a considerable departure from his famous romantic comedy, SIDEWAYS. But it, too, is a love story. In a very near future, a team of Scandinavian scientists announces a technique that allows them to shrink human beings down to three inches in size, a miraculous solution to the problems of overpopulation and environmental damage. Soon, tens of thousands of people, moved less by eco-concerns than the attraction of retirement to luxury after selling their larger assets, are joining “small” communities around the world. Among them are Paul and Audrey Safranek. (Matthew Damon and Kristen Wiig). Paul, a medical-school dropout working as an occupational therapist for Omaha Steaks, dreams of a better life, but his journey into the small world initially proves far less satisfying than he had hoped. Disappointment follows disappointment. Paul’s life is eventually turned around by another small person, Gong Jiang, a Vietnamese immigrant beautifully and often hilariously played by Hong Chau. DOWNSIZING has one clear message: science and technology won’t help us escape our personal and social problems. On the positive side, the film’s images of small people and their small worlds are terrific. On a critical note, I wish that the editors had taken a good pair of scissors to the work. An entire concluding section based in Norway could have gone to the cutting room floor. RON’S GRADE: B+

The film was followed by Q&A with Alexander Payne and Hong Chau present:

  

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 3

Our day began with a tribute to Christian Bale. An excellent retrospective prepared by our Dartmouth friend Chris Robinson revealed the extraordinary range of Bale’s acting. As he explained during the Q&A that followed the clips, Bale has avoided publicity throughout his career, fearful that a celebrity identity would replace the characters he plays. And what a range of characters they are, from Trevor Reznik in THE MACHINIST, a role for which Bale lost 60 pounds, to the pudgy, balding Irving Rosenfeld in AMERICAN HUSTLE. No wonder we don’t know Christian Bale: all we recognize are the extraordinarily diverse and unforgettable characters he has played.

The retrospective and Q&A were followed by the premier of Bale’s latest film, HOSTILES. Tautly directed by Scott Cooper, this wonderful film is an answer to the question, “How do you make a Western today that isn’t racist?” It tracks the long journey in 1892 from New Mexico to Montana of a small contingent of army soldiers led by Captain Joseph Cooper (Christian Bale) who have been ordered to deliver the long imprisoned and dying Chief Yellow Hawk (well played by Wes Studi) to his home territory in Montana. There’s a new spirit about Native Americans in Washington, and Cooper is tasked, against his will, with helping an enemy he has fought against his entire career. The troop soon encounters Rosalie Quaid (very well played by Rosamund Pike), the sole survivor of a ghastly and shocking episode of Indian violence with which the film begins. The contingent traverses breathtaking wildernesses, assaulted at almost every turn by surviving Indian bandits and wrathful white people who cannot comprehend the team’s mission. Both Mrs. Quaid and the chief and his family become deeply affected by Cooper’s stoic integrity as he strives to fulfill his orders. During the preceding Q&A with Leonard Maltin, Bale remarked that as an actor he finds his silences often the most important part of conveying the depth of his character. This was evident in HOSTILES, one of the finest films we’ve seen this Festival. RON’S GRADE: A

Our next film, in mid-afternoon down at the Sheridan Opera House was FOXTROT, directed by writer-director Samuel Maoz (LEBANON). Michael (played by Lior Ashkenazi, last seen as the Israeli premier in NORMAN), is a successful architect whose son, Jonathan, is standing guard at a remote military outpost. After a dramatic opening scene announces the family’s impending struggle with grief, we watch the devastating events unwind. FOXTROT moves about as slowly as the lone camel for which Jonathan’s unit must daily open their crossing gate. But it is this pace that renders FOXTROT an honest portrayal of the human toll taken by fifty years of war and occupation. A neck-wrenching conclusion punctuates the narrative of suffering and guilt experienced by this one family, by Israelis, and by their Arab neighbors. In its implied criticisms of the Israeli army, this film is a striking example of the political independence of Israeli film today. GRADE: A-

Our day concluded with THE INSULT by the American-Lebanese director Ziad Doueiri (THE ATTACK), co-written by Doueiri and Joelle Touma. In the course of an altercation over an out-of-code drainpipe, a Palestinian construction foreman, Yasser (Kamel El Basha), calls Toni (Adel Karam), a Lebanese Christian garage mechanic, a prick. Despite the pleadings of his boss, Yasser refuses to apologize for this grave insult, and is soon provoked to a physical assault after an unappeased Toni hurls racist anti-Palestinian slogans at him. The dispute soon goes to court, where we see a drama unfold that evokes the terrible history of Lebanon’s 1970s civil war. Behind the two men’s curses, blows, and stubbornness lie decades of hatred on both sides spawned in a genocidal conflict and never really resolved. Soon, as partisans on each side pour into the courtroom and the streets, the trial threatens to unleash a new civil war. In the Q&A following the film, Doueiri explained its enigmatic and powerful conclusion. I observed that THE INSULT is a warning to America. Will we allow our emerging tribalisms to grow? Will sparks of verbal assault lead to more violence, as in Charlottesville, and will that violence somehow lead to a second civil war? THE INSULT is a remarkable film for our time. RON’S GRADE: A

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4

The last day of the Festival began for us with a tribute to cinematographer Ed Lachman, whose credits include everything from DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN (1985) to the beautiful recreation of the 1950s in CAROL (2015). In the Q&A Lachman said that the cinematographer is like “another actor” with whom the director must work. He also offered a contrast between the novel with its interiority and cinema with its largely external images. The challenge before the cinematographer, he said, is to evoke interiority through such images.

Director Todd Haynes’ WONDERSTRUCK, which followed, illustrated Lachman’s second point. A tale of two deaf youngsters separated by half a century in time, it’s up to Lachman to convey the inner life of both children by means of what they (and we) are seeing. Images also carry the narrative, with the 1920s Manhattan scenes all shot in black and white and the 1970s ones in brilliant disco colors. WONDERSTUCK’s greatest strength (like CAROL) is the evocation of the tone and values of an era. But a complex and at times wildly improbable plot (based on the novel by Brian Selznick) makes this a less than completely successful cinematic experiment. RON’S GRADE: B

Our afternoon began with THE SHAPE OF WATER, the latest film by director Guillermo del Toro (PAN’S LABYRINTH). It stars Sally Hawkins who carries the film as a very plain Jane whose inner beauty emerges through her deeds (as was true of Hawkins in last year’s outstanding MAUDY, which is just now circulating in US art cinemas). Hawkins plays Elisa Esposito, a mute cleaning lady working in a threatening 1960s federal research laboratory where she’s called on to clean up the mess after the brutal treatment of a creature captured in the remote waters of South America. This mute creature has been tormented as a “Godless animal” by an obsessive federal agent (menacingly played by Michael Shannon), and his usefulness (and thus his life) is nearing its end. Del Toro brings a Latin American cynicism about American military and political institutions, as Elisa’s championing of the creature becomes a conflict of human compassion against pure, speciesist evil. The creature itself is a remarkable feat of costuming. He wins our hearts —and Elisa’s. THE SHAPE OF WATER is THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON meeting ET, with an added, charming and sexualized romance. Both the film and Hawkins are deservedly heading toward Oscar nominations. RON’S GRADE: A.

Our day—and Festival—ended with FILM STARS DON’T DIE IN LIVERPOOL. Directed by Matthew Greenhalgh, the film is based on Peter Turner’s memoir of his torrid youthful romance with the Oscar award-winning actress Gloria Grahame. Grahame is movingly played by an Annette Bening, whose beauty and sexual ardor shine through despite her aging skin and the pain from the cancer that will soon kill her. While touring in Liverpool, Grahame’s illness forces her to seek refuge with Turner (well played by Jamie Bell) and his supportive family who reside in a lower middle class Liverpool neighborhood. Flashbacks take us through the couple’s previous torrid romance and their breakup, sacrificially forced by Grahame without telling Turner when she learns of her illness. As the pair is reunited near the end of her life, we see that an intense love can endure despite dramatic differences in age and health. Presenting an unusual take on a May-December relationship, FILM STARS DON’T DIE IN LIVERPOOL upsets our gender stereotypes in new ways. RON’S GRADE: A-

This year continued the mix of world-cinema and possible Oscar contenders that marks the recent Telluride Film Festival. Though there were many foreign films we had to miss (LOVELESS, TESNOTA and HOSTAGES from RUSSIA, and A MAN OF INTEGRITY from Iran), we saw nine films of undiminished quality. As we walked back to the gondola from the theater, we caught this final view of moonrise over Colorado Avenue.

 

— FIN—

 

Thanks to Mary Jean’s career as a professor of French and leader on many Dartmouth foreign study programs, we’ve lived over the years almost everywhere in France: Paris, Lyon, Toulouse, Brittany, and the Loire Valley region. But we never lived in Provence, so following our alumni cruise to the French and Italian rivieras last October (https://ronaldmgreen.com/2016/10/17/mediterranean-cruise-and-provence-september-28-to-october-10-2016/), we briefly visited this region to find a house we could occupy for several weeks this summer. Our plan: to rent a house large enough to permit our two children to visit with their children.

We quickly settled on a modest villa near the center of the town of Lourmarin, a village we selected for its beauty and its ties to Albert Camus. Camus spent the last few years of his life here, writing his final, and never entirely finished novel, The First Man (Le Premier Homme). Since Mary Jean and I once taught a course together on “Existentialist Ethics” with a focus on Camus, this was a chance to know the town he loved. We subsequently learned that Lourmarin is recognized as one of “les plus beaux villages de France,” an honor it shares with about one hundred and fifty other designated “beautiful towns” in France.

JUNE 20

Arriving in Lourmarin from Marseilles airport, we rounded a bend on the D943 and there was the village, shimmering in the early summer heat. During our stay temperatures often rose to the nineties, but the low humidity, just 30-40%, made it bearable. Camus suffered from TB throughout his life. Raised in Algiers, he treasured the Mediterranean sunlight, but his illness made him vulnerable to seaside humidity, so sunny, dry Lourmarin was an understandable choice.

In this photo, the house with the single window and arbored terrace just below and to the right of the left-most tower belonged to Camus. It is a repurposed old silk factory, and is still occupied by his daughter. In the distance you can see the lavender-tinged mountains that run east to west and divide our level southern portion of the Luberon region of Provence from the north. This central range of mountains on whose southern plain Lourmarin sits defines the Luberon

 

We arrived at the moment of the equinox celebration. A local band entertains diners at cafes in Lourmarin’s central Place de Fontaine.

Just to the left off the Place de la Fontaine, behind the band, is the Rue du Grand Pré. About halfway up, and off to the left is the Cantonade du Grand Pré, a little cul de sac on which our villa is located.

Below, our Cantonade. The left hand grey-blue door opens to our garage. This is an incredibly tiny space in which to maneuver and back a car, even our tiny rented VW Polo. Nor was our getting in and out aided by the many locals who felt they could just pull into the Cantonade to run an errand!

The villa itself is an odd assembly of different rooms (some gathered from adjacent houses) around a central courtyard. Despite the heat, the arbored terrace was a pleasant place to gather. The many serviceable bedrooms and baths were able to accommodate both of our kids and their families. We delighted in the quiet of our garden retreat just 50 meters from the center of town. Our courtyard:

Here’s our terrace table spread for a luncheon of bread and cheese:

 

JUNE 21

 We spent the days before the arrival of our son Matthew and his family getting to know the town. The following is a walking tour that makes a complete circuit of the town. I hope it reveals Lourmarin’s character,

La Place de La Fontaine on a quiet evening and the fountain itself:

 

Across from the fountain, an employee of our favorite café (spécialité: jambon de Corse) grandstands:

Turning left and further down the street, we see more café culture

A menu features hanger steak in pepper sauce and Dauphinoise potatoes.

Our excellent boulangerie, and the charming boulangère with whom I chatted during my daily visits:

 

Galleries line the streets:

 

And shopping is a Lourmarin given:

 

Just behind the shopping streets, we find a quiet impasse:

Back to the main street and aways on, we come across another fountain:

A cat quenches her thirst at the fountain’s other side:

Just above this corner, we turn onto the Rue Albert Camus:

We struggled to identify the entry to Camus’ house on this street. The townspeople go out of their way to protect Camus’ daughter from tourists, so no one could tell us which house was his, though the web helped. In that spirit, I have effaced the address:

Not far up this street there is a charming plaza with a small gothic church. I couldn’t find anything on the web about the church, but here are several images, including a painting above the altar depicting the visit of the Magi.

 

 

 

 

Beginning to circle back to the center, we enter La Rue Juiverie. We’re left to our imaginations. No placards or history on the web informs us about the Jews who may once have lived here:

But there is ample information about another persecuted minority: the French Protestants (Huguenots). At the far edge of town stands a “temple” that is a vestige of a thriving Protestant community that once constituted the great majority of the residents of Lourmarin (eleven hundred out of thirteen hundred residents). Protestants lived here peacefully before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685. Most of the Huguenots then fled, while others returned following the French revolution to reestablish their community and build this temple. A placard near the entrance traces the difficult history of Protestants in the Luberon:

 

Just beyond the temple on a low hill is the Chateau of Lourmarin, a part-medieval, part-renaissance structure that now houses art exhibitions and other cultural events.

Here it is by day:

And here, in picture taken later on, are both it and the temple at dusk:

Almost completing the circuit we had begun, we come across the town’s verdant soccer field:

Running along its side is one of the more gracious streets in town, the site, too, of parts of the weekly Friday market.

Behind us in the picture above, and just above the street leading back down to the Place de la Fontaine is a large modern square lined with cafes and often filled with small stalls of vendors selling clothing or jewelry.

Finally we circle back to the Place de la Fontaine. Looking back, the shoppers and tourists reveal that Lourmarin is a favorite tourist destination.

JUNE 22-23

Up early with music and noise from the center of town. As part of the equinox festival, a procession of medieval and renaissance actors from the chateau fills Lourmarin’s streets.

Lourmarin is regionally famous for its Friday market that fills several streets near the edge of town. Stands featuring handcrafted products alternate with those offering foodstuffs:

At the other end of town, just off the D943 from which we entered, is the cemetery where Camus is buried. This an old and venerated burial place, cherished by the townspeople and generally off-limits for burials of newcomers. We understand that an exception was made in Camus’ case, not only because he was a world-famous writer, but because he had so integrated himself in Lourmarin’s daily life, relaxing and chatting with locals at the cafes and, as an avid soccer fan, cheering on the teams. Camus once wrote, “Everything I ever knew about ethics, I learned from soccer.” The Lourmainois must have found him a kindred spirit.

 

Beside his grave is that of his wife, Francine.

JUNE 24-25:

By the weekend, our son, Matthew and his wife Melissa, had arrived, driving in with their two children from Paris, the Loire, and Lyon (the last two being places where Matt had lived with us and attended school as a child, so this was a rediscovery voyage for him).

We are staunch believers in the Guide Michelin: above all in the quality of its recommendations and evaluations. To anyone traveling by car in France, I urge crafting one’s itinerary with an eye to the one- and two-star restaurants (there’s also a lesser category of “Bib Gourmand,” indicated in the guide by the icon of the Michelin man, which identifies restaurants of good quality and value). For the more pricey starred restaurants, prix fix luncheon menus are your best bet. On the second evening of Matthew’s visit, we went to the one-starred La Fenière, specializing in gluten-free preparations. Here’s its beautiful garden:

 

And here’s the whole family (except for me, the photographer):

JUNE 26-JULY 3

Our daughter Julie’s flight from Boston was delayed, so the overlap we had planned with both families didn’t work out. Matt’s family was off on the TGV from Marseilles to Paris before Julie’s family arrived.

Our first full day together with Julie, Jarek, Julian and Agniezka included a visit to Aix-en-Provence, the lovely Provençal city we had seen on our autumnal rivieras cruise. I won’t repeat pictures here other than one of Nicolas Froment’s magnificent triptych of Mary in the Burning Bush in Aix’s Saint Sauveur cathedral. Here is Mary, holding baby Jesus, atop the “buissson ardent” revealed to Moses, who looks on, below right.

One website describes the many symbolic motifs in this painting (http://www.theartofpainting.be/AOT-Moses_Bush.htm). Another description sees the thorny bush as a symbol of Mary’s unassailable virginity. I love this painting, but in viewing it, I’m reminded of a remark by my Dartmouth Judaica colleague Susannah Heschel who observed that the Christian church “colonized” the culture of the Jewish people, appropriating the Jews’ symbols and reducing the Jews themselves to the status of serfs in their own cultural “land.” How else can we explain a painting that celebrates the Marianizing of one of the key narratives of the Hebrew Bible?

My surgeon son-in-law Jarek, is also an avid hiker and bicyclist, so the following day was devoted to nature, a hike—a very long 10-kilometer hike—through the hills above the nearby town of Puget. Here is some of the rugged countryside we traversed, with narrow limestone graveled paths to the summits.

A cluster of early grapes at the lovely Château La Verrerie vineyard, whose terrains we transited.

Fortunately, our walk ended back at La Verrerie, and a very welcome tasting of several of their chilled wines. The domaine is owned by the Descours family, which also owns Piper Heidsieck Champagne.

The following day we journeyed westward in two cars about 50 kilometers to the village of Fontaine-de-Vaucluse. It sits at the source of La Sorgue river, which arises mysteriously and in a great flood from a grotto at the foot of nearby mountains. Numerous small businesses offer the opportunity to canoe and kayak in the river, and the town’s parkings were filled to the bursting point. The river’s flow was used for centuries to power local paper mills. All of these have been rendered obsolescent by modern technologies (like so much French industry), but Fontaine, with an eye to tourism, has converted an old mill into a fascinating paper museum.

Here is La Sorgue, just above the museum-mill. Its source lies in a grotto at the front of the mountain. In 1985, a robot submarine found the bottom of the grotto at a depth of more than 1000 feet.

A wheel powers the old mill:

Here are the large hammers that beat rags to make paper. A camshaft visible just above the hammerheads and powered by the water wheel raises and lowers each hammer for hours on end until the rags turn into a creamy pulp. This is poured on wire frames, pressed and dried to make paper. We learned that in the middle ages, old clothing—collected by rag pickers—was of high value for papermaking.

 On the way back from Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, I stopped to take this picture of a beautiful field of lavender (actually, probably a cheaper, machine-cultivable variant, known as lanvendin, as we learned a few days later):

While Julie and family spent the next few days exploring Provence on their own, Mary Jean and I visited some of our adjacent villages. Here’s a view of the “étang” (pond) that occupies the center of nearby Cucuron. Following that is a photo of a magnificent large home on the edge of that village. All of this attests to the special beauty of Provence.

With Julie’s family’s trip drawing to a close, we decided to spend the afternoon on a visit in the mountains to the Les Agnels lavender distillery. Lavender is a major source of economic activity in Provence, witness the industrial-sized fields shown above. But historically the plant grew on sunny remote hillsides and was harvested by scythe in backbreaking labor by residents of the mountains. Today, the Agnels Distillerie serves as a cooperative. It grows no lavender of its own but processes for a fee all sorts of aromatic plants brought to it by local growers. Batches of plants can run from a few pounds to tons.

Here’s the side of the distillery’s building. Trucks carrying harvested plants arrive above and to the right on the higher side:

Those plants are placed in giant steel casks through which steam passes to extract the aromatic oils (lesser batches are handled by smaller machinery on the ground floor). Each cask can handle up to 6,000 liters (around 1500 gallons) of material:

 

A dried out batch of lavender awaits processing. Our guide explained that the plant comes in three forms: lavender (a smaller plant that thrives above 800 meters altitude), spiked lavender (with a longer stalk and that does well in lower fields), and lavandin (a hybrid of the first two). Lavender is the rarer variety, yielding more subtly scented aromatic oil, but lavandin, as in the cultivated field above, is easier to grow, is used in industrial applications like detergents, and has become a more prevalent crop. It takes approximately 130 kilograms of lavender flowers to distill 1 liter of essential oil.

Inside the distillery stands a working model of the distillation process. In this photo, you can see on the right a glass chamber filled with lavender plants. Beneath it, water boils and steam rises through the plants. The resulting vapor then passes through the condenser coil on the left (surrounded by chilled circulating water), and the condensate containing floral water (bottom) and aromatic oils (top) collects in the beaker at the bottom far left. These oils are the base for perfumes, soaps and other lavender products. The same process we see in this model is what occurs in the 6,000-liter casks above.

In the old days, when there were no trucks to carry the harvested plants to a distillery, distillation was often done fieldside, with a portable cooper still. Here is one in the distillery’s small museum:

Here, its coil:

A scythe used in the old days for harvesting:

And here, the insect-like snout of a modern tractor harvester:

As we emerged from the tour carrying small packages of oil and soap (don’t ask me why), we passed a lavender plant being visited by a butterfly. Lavender (as opposed to lavandin) is grown from seed, so by pollinating the hillside fields, these little insects help keep the industry alive.

JULY 4

With the children gone, we had a last few days to ourselves. Our first foray was five kilometers from Lourmarin to the small town of Ansouis, the second of “le plus beaux villages de France” in our region. Our destination was the restaurant La Closerie. The pictures below evidence the charm of such one-star Michelin restaurants and the quality of their dejeuner (luncheon) offerings.

Their outdoor dining terrace:

Inside:

And here a photogenic starter of cold tomato bisque:

During our meal, an English couple arrived with a graceful whippet dog, which spent the meal on cushion brought by his owners. I was reminded of the wonderful wall sign we saw years ago in a restaurant near Lyon. “S’il vouz plaît. Ne permetez les animaux de manger sur la matériels de la maison.” Not a prohibition on a pet in the restaurant. Just a request to not let Babette eat off the house china. An expression of French humanism.

JULY 5-6:

Our next adventure was a long (210 kilometer each way) trip to Vence to see Matisse’s Chapelle du Rosaire. Earlier this summer, we visited the Matisse exhibit at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, which included several objets from the chapel project, so we were interested in seeing the real thing.

Before getting to the chapel, we had lunch in old Vence, and on the way out stopped in the Vence cathedral to see Marc Chagall’s mosaic of Moses being drawn from the water. This Jewish artist, whose Christian (Crucifixion) work is striking, finds no place here for Mary.

The Chapelle du Rosaire is perched on a hillside above Vence. Matisse did its every design detail, from its blue and while tiled roof to the priests’ vestments. Built from 1949-1951, the chapel was meant to serve the students and nuns of the adjacent convent and Catholic school. Matisse undertook the project at the urging of Sister Jacques-Marie, who years before as a nurse had aided the artist during his recovery from an illness and who subsequently became a nun. Here’s a photo in the chapel’s museum of Matisse and Sister Jacques-Marie:

The chapel’s tiled roof and wrought iron crucifix, both designed by Matisse:

A view out to Vence below:

Here are two beautiful examples of chasubles designed by Matisse and displayed in the chapel’s museum:

Although permitted in the museum, photographs are forbidden in the chapel itself. I include here two views of the interior downloaded from the web:

The altar (in the soft brown tones of the Eucharistic host), behind which is a stained glass window and a tiled representation of Saint Dominic, the patron saint of Sister Jacques-Marie’s Dominican order:

Here, with Matisse at its center, is the seating area with its stained glass windows. Half-shown to the rear is a tiled depiction of the ten stations of the cross.

These stained-glass images representing the “tree of life” are in the Mediterranean colors that Matisse loved: blue for the sea and sky, green for vegetation, and yellow for the ever-present Provençal sun. Matisse considered the chapel his supreme life’s work, and he said of it, “Je n’ai pas cherché la beauté, j’ai cherché la vérité,” “I didn’t search for beauty; I searched for truth.” Certainly the chapel’s colors reveal the truth of the light of Provence.

JULY 7

With just a few days remaining to us, with the days growing very warm (mid-nineties), and Michelin stars still twinkling in our eyes, we decided to undertake a “break the bank” luncheon meal at the only two-star Michelin restaurant in our region, Edouard Loubet’s La Bastide de la Compagne. Restaurateur and hotelier Loubet has considerable local notoriety. We learned from a waiter at another of his properties that after a wild boar (sanglier) had ravaged one of Loubet’s vineyards, against the urgings of his family and staff he camped out for five days in the field until the boar reappeared. Shooting it dead, Loubet then made a meal of the unwise and unlucky beast.

La Bastide’s restaurant and guest rooms stand on a hill above the town of Bonnieux, about 10 kilometers up into the mountains from Lourmarin. Here’s the entry:

 

 

 

 

 

Here the garden, replete with lavender:

The dining terrace:

And here, one of the signature dishes, a preparation of rouget (red mullet) with a crisp of beet:

Here a morsel of guinea foul (pintade). Surrounding it are tiny balloons made of fried potato flour:

 

As you can see the portions are small. Rather than quantity, the best French cooking relies on several small courses of outstanding flavor and appearance. Is that why the French remain so (relatively) thin?

Finally, there’s the cheese cart. I hope this photo suggests the abundance of La Bastide’s offerings.

What’s the old joke? “England’s a country with one cheese and five hundred religions, while France is a country with one religion and five hundred cheeses.” I’ll take the French option any day, especially since France’s one religion today is hardly too annoying.

Summing up. Our-three week stay in Provence didn’t permit us the degree of insight into the region—or humor about it—that one finds in writings like Peter Mayle’s wonderful A Year in Provence. But it did persuade us that this is one of the very most beautiful regions of the country: the perfect blend of French landscape and Mediterranean light and culture. We’re grateful that we could round out our geographic knowledge of France with this visit. And at a good moment, too, as the country celebrates the victory of its democratic spirit in the recent elections. In all respects right now, this nation shows itself to be “la belle France.”

 _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Near the top of Mary Jean’s and my “bucket list” of travel destinations are Southern India and Sri Lanka. We had both previously traveled to northern and central India, but spice-rich Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka still beckoned.

No such trip was on our agenda. We were planning a month in Provence in June (the one part of France in which we never lived), the kids and grandkids were planning to visit us in the village of Lourmarin where we had rented a house, and this was not the time to get sick traveling in India (as has almost always happened on our previous trips).

Then, in mid-January, an email arrived from Dartmouth’s Alumni Travel Office. “Was I free to serve as the Dartmouth Guest lecturer on a two week cruise around South India and Sri Lanka?” The prospect of shipboard dining free of the risks of Indian food (and a ship’s doctor just in case) made our answer easy. “Delighted,” I replied.

Since I had lectured on Indian religions for years in our introductory course, preparing three lectures was a welcome task. In short order I had one illustrated lecture on “Indian Sacred Geography” (Indian cosmology and its manifestation in sacred spaces, such as temples); a second lecture on “Suffering and Salvation” (time, karma, caste and liberation); and a third in progress illustrating The Ramayana. Here’s a map of the voyage from our cruise brochure):

 

(Reprinted with permission of Criterion Travel. Image By Alexis Vilay © Criterion Travel, Inc.)

A word here about the title of our cruise, “South to Serendib.” Serendib is an early name for Sri Lanka. It derives from a combination of the name of one of the island’s dynasties (the Cheras) and a second term for “island” (dheeb); hence “Cheradeep,” or Serendip. The term “serendipity” was introduced in the 18th century by Horace Walpole (1717-1797) who was inspired to invent it by a Persian fairy tale “The Three Princes of Serendip,” whose heroes were always making surprising discoveries by accident and sagacity. An appropriate title, I thought, for a surprising trip that we had not planned on.

SATURDAY, MARCH 25

Following a long flight from Boston to Chennai via Frankfurt, we arrived at our hotel, the Taj Coromandel, around three on Saturday morning, giving us a late start the next morning on this pre-program day.

Chennai (formerly named Madras) did not impress. Lacking the grace of Mumbai (Bombay) or the British colonial monuments of Delhi, it appeared by night and day as a jumble of unremarkable buildings on busy, crowded streets. (In fairness, we really got to see little of the city on our brief half-day stay.) We made one foray out of the hotel to pick up nail polish for Mary Jean (forbidden on the plane), but it was a death-defying effort. Crossing the street in front of our hotel involved dodging an endless stream of fast moving autos, buses, and motorized rickshaws. We were lucky to survive the back and forth crossing.

The afternoon ended as the group of guest lecturers met for the first time to finalize our schedule of talks. Michael Golay of MIT would speak on energy issues and sustainability in the global and Asian context. Martha Crenshaw of Stanford would address the issue of terrorism, particularly relevant to Sri Lanka, which was just emerging from its decades-long Tamil Tiger insurgency. Annapurna Garimella, an Indian scholar, would treat artistic and cultural matters in contemporary India from urban design to fashion (at the end of one lecture, Annapurna would show us how to don a sari). Not present for our planning meeting, but arriving in time for our cruise departure was Peter Galbraith, former ambassador to Croatia and the son of John F. Kennedy’s ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith. Particularly fascinating to me were Galbraith’s reminiscences of watching as his father ably negotiated conflicts that roiled Indian-Pakistani relations.

SUNDAY, MARCH 26

As our luggage was loaded on busses, our tour formally began this Sunday morning with the two-hour trip south to the Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram. I’d wanted to see this ever since my late and respected Indologist colleague Hans Penner had lectured on it during our years of co-teaching Religion One. The site, a series of impressive stone-carved monuments, and a stone-built temple on the shore of the Bay of Bengal, didn’t disappoint.

Here’s a collection of sculptural experiments: large granitic boulders carved to create animal forms such as Lord Siva’s mount, the bull Nandi, and others hollowed out, reproducing the cave-like forms of some of the earliest Hindu temples.

The Shore Temple itself is a jewel-like edifice dedicated to Siva whose park features an assemblage of many sculptures of Nandi. Note the water in the distance.

 

As we approached the temple I experienced a brief moment of confusion. My impending first lecture on Hindu cosmogony and cosmology would argue that the entrance to a Hindu temple, reflecting Hindu cosmology, ordinarily faces east, the location of dawn, light, and the gods. Yet according to my iPhone compass, the observable opening in the small out-building in the photo above faced due west. But I knew that that outbuilding was a separate structure. Rounding the far side of the building, the side facing east to the Bay of Bengal, I looked up to a blocked portal, the main entrance.

Our day ended as we traveled back to the port just north of Chennai, where our ship, the Island Sky, awaited. Its multinational crew stood by with chilled towels and cold drinks, a welcome refreshment from the warm and humid Tamil Nadu climate. These greetings from an excellent crew after a day’s excursion, and wonderful meals onboard, were always high points of the trip.

MONDAY, MARCH 27

This day was spent at sea, with a plethora of lectures. When planning this schedule, we were all a bit daunted. “Too much?” we asked. But it turned out that the four talks nicely filled an otherwise lazy day at sea. I was particularly fascinated to hear Martha Crenshaw’s brief history and analysis of the Tamil Tiger insurgency, as well as Michael Golay’s contrast of Chinese and Indian energy futures, with his prediction that because of its commitment and technology, China, despite its enormous current pollution problems, may become the world leader in addressing global climate change.

TUESDAY, MARCH 28

We awoke this morning in the northwestern Sri Lankan port of Trincomalee. After breakfast, buses took us inland to the ruins of Polunnarua, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The two and half hour bus ride to the north-central interior of the island took us through a region that had been torn for almost three decades by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil Tigers, who fought to create an independent Tamil state. The conflict, which began in 1983 and lasted over 25 years, resulted in the death of an estimated 80,000–100,000 people. In the course of the conflict, the insurgents’ indiscriminate violence led to their being labeled as a terrorist organization, while the government side was accused of conducting a campaign of human rights violations. In 2009, with its top leadership captured or slain, the LTTE surrendered. Since then, tourism, which had virtually come to a halt during the conflict, has slowly begun to recover. Our tour was a small a part of that recovery.

Outside the windows of our bus, there was no sign of the conflict. We drove past modest villages sparsely located along the highway and separated by broad expanses of partially flooded rice fields:

Despite its grievous recent history, what first impresses one about Sri Lanka is the greenness of the landscape. Situated just above the equator (between 6 and 9 degrees north latitude) and reasonably well watered by monsoon rains, the island is intensely verdant. Equally impressive is the cleanliness of the landscape. Although Lanka is a poor nation, (Its per capita GDP at $3,900, which, although twice as large as India’s, is dwarfed by the U.S.’s at $57,000.) it’s amazingly orderly and clean. Roadsides are free of debris, and villages are tidy, a striking contrast with India, whose roadsides are littered with paper, plastic, and garbage (see photo below at April 2). When I asked our guide Latif how he could explain the difference between the two neighboring countries, he replied simply, “Buddhism” and added, “Buddhism teaches cleanliness.” Frankly, I’d never heard that before, but it’s a hypothesis worth pursuing.

Polunnarua is the remains of what was once a major political and religious complex, the capital of the ruling dynasty from the eleventh through thirteenth century. In some cases, brick interior structures are all that remain of what were once magnificent stone-clad temples and stupas. The famed relic of the Buddha’s tooth (his left canine), which, now resides in the Temple of the Tooth in Kandy, spent one of its stays here as local monarchs sought legitimation through religious symbolism. Here are some images from our visit.

Remains of the Royal Palace:

A beautifully carved entrance stairway to the temple compound:

The remains of one of the temples at the site:

The exterior wall of the stupa (reliquary) that is said to have once contained the Buddha’s tooth:

And the stupa itself:

 

As we prepared to board our bus for the journey to another part of the compound, a local monkey family looked on.

 

A few minutes drive away was the gargantuan stupa of Ronkoth Vehera:

 

And here a series of Buddha sculptures at Gal Vihara . . . .

 

. . . . with the Buddha in his reclining position:

 

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29

Evening was spent in a fine shipboard meal and then sleep, as the eastern coast of Sri Lanka slipped by. We awoke with the ship docked in Hanbantota, an expansive, well equipped but still almost unused port on the island’s southern coast. The port and nearby international airport were built in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that devastated Hanbantota and killed more than 4500 people in the area and thousands more in Sri Lanka. To build the port and airport, the government drew somewhat controversially on substantial Chinese investment, but its dreams of a major, tax-free transfer zone for east-west commerce have not yet materialized, and our diminutive ship was alone among the largely empty piers.

But Hanbantota is a jumping off place for the remarkable Bundala National Park nature reserve, a 25-square-mile wildlife sanctuary that in 2005 was declared a Man and Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO. Following a short, 15-kilometer bus ride, we transferred to four-wheel drive vehicles and began a bumpy tour of this vast and pristine marsh with its many species of birds, reptiles, and large mammals. Here, briefly, is a selection of images:

One of the safari vehicles:

A stretch of marsh:

Water buffalo grazing:

A termite mound:

A tiny dragon:

A handsome peacock:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, as dusk fell, we witnessed the sudden appearance of an elephant:

One of the wonderful things about Sri Lanka is that elephants range free throughout the island. But they face many risks, whether from collisions with motor vehicles or from the wrath of farmers whose crops they threaten. Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) is a major cause of elephant mortality. In two days, as a stop on our way to Kandy, we would visit the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, where a herd of seventy elephants whose mothers were killed or lost is maintained.

THURSDAY, MARCH 30

The short overnight sail took us to Galle on the island’s southwestern tip. Occupied over the centuries in succession by the Portuguese, Dutch and British, Galle bears the marks of each culture. Here, for example, is a scene that could come right out of a small British village:

Here, a Dutch reformed church:

The fort, built by the Portuguese and now a UNESCO World Heritage site, dominates the seafront:

On a promontory a young entrepreneur sells his skill at diving from the high rocks below into the sea:

 

As our day ended, we crossed paths with a group of schoolchildren visiting the fort. Note the boys’ neat white shirts.

Is this another token of Sri Lankans’ commitment to cleanliness (keeping whites clean is hard work in this steamy environment)? More to be noted is Sri Lanka’s adult literacy rate of 93 percent and 90+ percent secondary school attendance. The government furnishes education free for all children. Here, again, the contrast with India is striking. Adult literacy there, although making significant gains in recent years, stands at only 75%. School attendance in India is also dependent on family income, with the result that only about half of boys attend secondary school and even fewer girls do so. So Sri Lanka, despite its recently tortured history, shows that culture and values play a larger role in a nation’s advancement than GDP alone.

FRIDAY, MARCH 31

Morning found us docked in the picturesque harbor of Colombo, the island’s west coast port and largest city. Note the large stupa at the center styled on the casket that holds the Buddha’s tooth:

Our group split in two, one group heading by train to Kandy and the nearby Royal Botanical Garden, the other, which included us, taking busses to Kandy with a stop mid-way at the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage. There are critics of this facility who believe that too much time is spent showcasing the herd to tourists and too little seeking to return the animals to the wild. But given the dangers posed to Sri Lanka’s elephants by Human-Elephant Conflict, I wonder whether the public education afforded by this facility doesn’t justify its existence. During our visit, a school holiday, scores of schoolchildren were enchanted by their contact with these amazing creatures. These children will shape the future of the island’s free ranging pachyderms (again note the girls’ white outfits):

Here are some photos from our visit.

Feeding time:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An elephant stroll:

Down to the river for a daily bath and shower:

 

After leaving the orphanage, we continued on to Kandy and the Temple of the Tooth. I’ve wanted to see this since Hans Penner described his visit to me many years ago. Following Hans’s visit, however, the temple experienced a terrible episode in 1998 when Tamil insurgents detonated a massive truck bomb at the entrance. The bomb killed sixteen people, including the three attackers and a two-year old infant. Twenty-five people were injured and the temple itself was badly damaged.

Although visitors must pass through a security check at the entrance, none of this history is evident today. A walkway lined with flowering trees leads up to the temple:

Approaching the golden casket that houses the tooth, one can buy flowers to honor the Buddha:

Here worshippers venerate the sage:

The tooth itself is contained in a stupa-like gold casket about six feet high. The casket is kept in a chamber behind this protective tapestry and is displayed only during an annual festival. You can see a depiction of the casket on the tapestry:

Here’s some detail of the temple itself:

At 1600 feet altitude, Kandy is a bit cooler than coastal Sri Lanka, but a day spent in Sri Lankan heat and humidity can be enervating. So we were pleased to end the day with a return to port on board an air-conditioned (but vintage) train. Some images:

 

SATURDAY APRIL 1

Farewell lovely Sri Lanka. We awoke this morning in the Indian harbor of Trivandrum surrounded by colorful fishing boats. The large statue of Jesus was a first sign of the strong Christian presence on this southwestern Indian coast:

Our visit to this city of seven hills would include three sites, the Napier Museum with its extensive collection of Indian religious statuary and artifacts; the Kuthira Malika palace, a maharaja’s edifice fantasy and testimony to the unbridled wealth of indigenous potentates in the pre-colonial era; and an outside glimpse at the Padmanabha Swami Temple, with its mammoth Dravidian-style gopura entrance gate.

As we approached the Napier Museum, we passed a colorful kiosk:

Some flower vendors:

And a striking topiary at the entrance to the museum:

The Napier Museum is a nineteenth confection of British and Asian architecture. No photographs are permitted in the interior, but the outside is itself an objet d’art.

I couldn’t resist this photo of an Indian dog near the entrance to the museum. All such dogs in both Sri Lanka and India seem roughly of the same indistinct breed (though of different colors), and all think nothing of bedding down on the floor of a bus depot, or otherwise busy thoroughfare:

Taking pictures was also forbidden inside the Kuthira Malika Palace, the seat for generations of the Travancore Royal Family. Its wooden construction is famous for multiple horse sculptures reflecting a passion of the monarchs. I confess, too, that the confined spaces and daunting heat and humidity made this a difficult visit. What was impressive was the evidence of the vast wealth of these local rulers and their strong relationships with the British aristocracy. This was a reminder that caste and hierarchy were ideas that didn’t divide but united the British of the Raj and their Indian subjects.

Wealth was on our minds as we emerged from the palace into the short street leading to the Padmanabha Swami Temple. As Westerners, we couldn’t enter its interior precincts, just as lower caste Hindus were once forbidden from doing so. Even today, qualified Hindu visitors like these must don temple garb to enter this sacred site:

The temple entry is guarded, and intruders warded off, by this impressive demon figure, and, as we’ll see, for good reason.

Recently, five of six sealed underground chambers in the temple were broken open by the Indian government and were found to contain an enormous treasure in gold and jewelry: the fruits of centuries of temple donations by dynasties seeking favor from Vishnu, the lord of the temple, and from the rulers that controlled it. Here is a website offering stunning pictures of the treasure found so far. http://www.storypick.com/padmanabhaswamy-temple/

Based on of what has been found to date, the treasure is said to be worth around $18 billion, not counting its antiquity and cultural value. Some believe that when the sixth chamber is opened—it is currently “guarded” by a serpent bas-relief threatening death to trespassers—the total value of the treasure could reach one trillion dollars, making Padmanabha Swami the richest religious edifice in the world. The central Indian government and Kerala government are currently disputing control of this wealth.

Here is the single large gopura (gate) of the temple itself.

 

SUNDAY APRIL 2:

With a close friend whose family emigrated from Kerala, and having read many accounts over the years of this unique state of India, I had long wanted to visit.

Kerala is known for its religious diversity (about twenty percent of its citizens are Christians, who date their community from a founding visit in the first century by the apostle Thomas). For over fifty years, it was ruled by a local version of the Communist party (which lost power to the Congress Party in 2011), and the state’s social progressiveness is reflected in its 94% adult literacy rate. Our brief visit to the state’s largest city, Kochi (previous name “Cochin”) and its environs did not disappoint. Arriving overnight, we docked at a mammoth port facility, and in the morning bussed into the Jewish sector of the city. “The Jews of Cochin” are also an ancient community, claiming a presence in India since the time of King Solomon. Others date their presence from the twelfth century, and in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries following the expulsion from Spain, there was also an infusion into Cochin of Ladino-speaking Jews.

Sadly, little of this remains. “Jewtown,” as it is unashamedly called, features shops selling Jewish-themed trinkets. But with most of the Cochin Jews having emigrated to Israel, only a handful of Jews remain. These must join with the small number of others in the city and suburbs for occasional religious services in the Pardesi (“foreigners”) Synagogue. We were able to purchase a yarmulke and challah cover (for my sister and brother-in-law) that were handmade by a ninety year old Jewish woman whom we glimpsed through a window reading a religious text—one of the last of the Cochin Jews.

Some images of Jewtown:

Afternoon was an adventure to which I had long looked forward, a houseboat cruise through Kerala’s many interconnecting waterways and lakes. A one-and-half hour bus ride 55 kilometers south of Kochi took us past the usual array of colorful Indian sites. Here are some images from the bus of a temple festival underway:

A temple cart:

Arriving near the city of Alappuzha, we boarded our houseboat. Steered by a wiry helmsman, we joined the many other boats plying the waterways

 

The streams, canals, and lakes of Kerala are major centers of residential and commercial activity. Some of the commerce has waned but is being partly replaced by this large houseboat industry. Here are some images of our tour:

Boys bathing in the canal beside their home:

At one point, our houseboat (and the others in our party) pulled up along the side of a canal to give us a closer look at the village culture that lines the waterways.

It’s for good reason that India in general (and its south in particular) is regarded as the land of spices, since almost every savory plant flourishes here. As we walked, we could see spices drying:

Pepper growing (during the middle ages, this valuable Indian export cost more than salt and was sometimes used in food preservation):

A canalside house:

Maybe this is the moment to mention the dirt of India. Passing by this dwelling, I noted this open sewer. It’s estimated that 50 percent of Indians (mostly rural people) lack indoor toilets and just use fields, lots, or shorelines to do their business. Prime Minister Modi has initiated a “clean India” drive to spur the installation of indoor toilets, but according to one of our guides, this effort has been slowed by underfunding and corruption.

Contrast this with the beauty of India. On a nearby footpath, a group of friendly ladies in saris wave hello:

Further along, at the dock where we were picked up, a Communist flag waves proudly.

 

Having mentioned dirt above, here’s a photo snapped from the bus on our return. It’s a typical roadside in Kerala. The contrast with clean Sri Lanka couldn’t be more evident:

MONDAY, APRIL 3

We remained in Kochi this morning, visiting sites we had missed the day before, including these fisherman who utilize cantilevered nets to pull fish out of the sea:

Large stones provide counterbalance and permit the men to pull the catch-laden nets from the water:

Here’s the result of a morning’s work:

Following a visit to the interior of the Pardesi Synagogue (photography forbidden) we returned to the ship and departed for the start of a long run up India’s western coast that would eventually take us to Mumbai (which apparently everyone still prefers to call “Bombay”).

TUESDAY APRIL 4

Morning found us in Mangalore, where a bus tour took us inland first to Moodabidri and the thousand-pillared 15th-century Jain Saavira Kambada temple. . . .

. . . . and following that to nearby Karkala and the mammoth statue of Bahubali, a Jain adept and liberated soul (siddha) who escaped the stream of karmicly determined death and rebirth (samsara). Standing high on a hill overlooking the surrounding landscape, this tenth century monolith, 57 feet high and carved from a single block, is one of the largest freestanding statues in the world. Legend has it that Bahubali stood erect and unmoving in meditation for one year before attaining liberation, during which time vines grew his legs, as you can see on the statue:

Before returning to the ship, we had a buffet lunch at Soans Farm, an innovative agricultural plantation that has successfully introduced new varieties of pineapples and other tropical plants into the region.

WEDNESDAY APRIL 5

We awoke this morning docked in the harbor at Goa, a former Portuguese possession for hundreds of years that remained an overseas province of Portugal as late as 1974. Since we had a good stretch of Indian ocean to transit before reaching Mumbai, this stop was short: a 7AM departure for a three-hour visit that included a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Basilica of Bom Jesus, containing the casket of St. Francis Xavier, and then a visit to the State Archaeological Museum. But awakening somewhat tired and with a lecture to complete, I decided to skip this tour. That afternoon, I enjoyed delivering my illustrated lecture on the Ramayana. As Diana Eck argues in her India: A Sacred Geography, Rama’s travels mark off many of the sacred sites of the Indian subcontinent, recapitulating in reverse some of our trip. So it was a treat to be able to introduce the travelers to this wonderful story of Rama’s loss of his beloved wife Sita and his struggle to recover her with the help of his brother Lakshmana and the wily trickster Hanuman.

THURSDAY, APRIL 6

Today, we’ve arrived at Mumbai and the end of our journey (though some travelers would go on to a post-trip excursion to Ajanta-Ellora, which I had visited years ago with my then teenage son, Matthew). Travelers would depart our bus tour in waves throughout the day, but we had much of the morning together to visit sites around the city.

Here we are aboard the bus, proceeding along the city’s attractive shoreline.

En route, we paused briefly beside the Taj Hotel. Here’s the old part of the hotel:

And here its modern tower:

The Taj first opened in 1903. Popular accounts (not entirely reliable) have it that Jamsetji Tata, founder of the great Tata industrial empire, decided to build the hotel after he was refused entry to one of the city’s grand hotels that was restricted to “whites only.” Tragically, in 2008 terrorists arriving in small boats staged a bloody attack and occupation of the hotel. Indian authorities, our guide opined, were slow in responding, and the attack ended with the deaths of 164 victims.

Our next stop was the Crawford Market, a rambling assemblage of food vendors in a series of buildings, some of which are now undergoing renovation.

Here’s a newer part of the market:

No need for a shopping cart. On entering the market, you can hire one of these fellows to carry your purchases:

A beautiful basket of acid limes, a variety I had never seen before:

Equally unusual and attractive melons:

A pluck of chickens:

A merchant amidst his wares:

India’s (and much of Southeast Asia’s) favorite mood-enhancing drug is betel. Here in a corner of the market a vendor prepares the stimulant by wrapping ground Areca palm nut in a betel vine leaf that has been coated with lime. Chewing this turns the user’s mouth and teeth a red color, as it does the floor or sidewalk when the used-up mixture is spit out.

 

Leaving the market, our next stop was a modest museum-library dedicated to the life and thought of Mahatma Gandhi. A nicely done bas-relief adorned the entrance:

The interior walls were lined with framed quotations from the Mahatma. This one struck me as particularly wise:

 

A room on the top floor of the museum offered a re-creation of Gandhi’s quarters in his ashram near Ahmedabad. Spinning wheels symbolizing his call for a return to Indian economic self-reliance and indigenous craftsmanship line the wall:

Our next stop took us to the rail station to watch dabbawalas perform their miracles. This core of workers distributes over 130,000 lunchboxes every working day throughout Mumbai. The insulated boxes are filled in the morning by the worker’s wife, delivered by suburban rail, picked up by the dabbawalas, delivered to the worker’s office, re-collected after lunch, and returned home by rail. These feats of organization and near perfect efficiency on the part of semi-literate workers have drawn the attention of the Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2012/11/mumbais-models-of-service-excellence) and were celebrated in the 2013 film THE LUNCHBOX.

A collection of lunchboxes just arrived by train:

A dabbawala carrying lunchboxes to the waiting bicycle-mounted deliverymen:

Our own lunch was at an excellent Indian restaurant. After that, busses dropped us at an elegant near-airport hotel, where the travelers could spend the latter part of the day awaiting the evening departure of most of our flights.

To conclude, I must say that this trip was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. There was no way, traveling on our own, that we could have seen all the destinations that we did. The local guides throughout and the excursions were terrific. With our two bus tours to the interior and circumnavigation of Sri Lanka, I feel we had an extraordinary introduction to this beautiful island nation. I’d like to go back. And in our stops in Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, in particular, we deepened our understanding of the Indian subcontinent. Our fellow travelers, including alumni of Harvard, Stanford, MIT and Dartmouth, were wonderful conversation partners and responders to our lectures.

While traveling I had a chance to read Jene Drèze and Amartya Sen’s 2013 book, An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions. Drèze and Sen note India’s astonishing recent economic growth (7% per year), but its lingering problems of illiteracy, inequality, and sexism. They contrast India with Bangladesh, which, with half the GDP, has made better progress in education and the inclusion of women in society. For me, this trip confirmed their general finding. India is an emerging giant on the world stage and still one of the most remarkable cultures in the world. It is always worth the visit. But to advance further, India will have to follow the lead of its tiny neighbor Sri Lanka in creating a clean and sustainable environment, educating its citizens, and affording all of them, regardless of sex, caste, or income, greater equality of opportunity.