Reading Diogenes Laertius through for the 1st time. Before I’d only read specific bios, like his account of Diogenes the Cynic.
DL seems to be agnostic regarding philosophic schools, interested in philosophy more from a historical and literary point of view, which mostly matches my interests.
I particularly enjoyed this wisecrack attributed to Thales:
“And so, when Pisistratos wounded himself, Solon said, ‘These things happen because of that stuff’ ” <i.e. tragedy>.
Which reminds me of our current tyrant, and how he owed his first term to a kind of lying story (reality TV) & probably owes his second term to a dramatically faked injury.
I’m not ready to burn my books yet, though. It’s people who understand fiction and myth who saw through Trump from the beginning.
As so often, when I turn to the ancient world for escape I see the modern world, like the face of Caliban, grinning back at me.
When I heard about G20 (directed by Patricia Riggen), an action movie set at the titular summit in which Viola Davis plays an American president in action-hero mode, I knew I would have to watch it. I figured it would be dumb fun. And I was right, and I was wrong. It was mostly fun, but mostly not dumb.
Spoilers follow.
If you are looking for a movie where serious problems are addressed without violence, this is not that movie. But it’s not as empty of significance as action movies generally are.
The worst part is the opening, which features an unlikely McGuffin carried by a woman (Angela Sarafyan) who’s being chased by sinister agents, while elsewhere the president of the United States is aroused from well-earned slumber by an aide telling her that a code-named subject has been retrieved.
What’s wrong with that? The McGuffin is an electronic wallet for some kind of cryptocoin. I figured I was going to have to sit through a commercial for the blockchain. Blecch.
Plus: the scenes in the White House had nothing to do with the suspense plot. The code-named target was the president’s teen-aged daughter (Marsai Martin) who had evaded surveillance and snuck off to a bar. She’s mad that she was dragged back by the Secret Service and she’s mad at her mom. This is great, because surly teenage daughters are so rare on screen these days that—no, just kidding, they are apparentlyessential to modernstorytelling.
I’m sure there are surly teenage daughters in this world, just as I am sure that most friction between teenagers and parents comes from the parents being various kinds of jerk. Don’t bother to argue with me about this. I’m old and I never change my mind about something unless I’m wrong, which I’m not in this instance. In any case, it’s an incredibly trite narrative move. Blecch again.
“Is this movie going to bore me?” I asked Dr. Reuben Sandwich, my sole companion on this adventure (since D was off rehearsing a play). He did not immediately answer.
Dr. Sandwich carefully considers his reply.
Anyway, I figured three blecchs and they’re out: I’d turn the movie off.
But, in fact, the movie did not turn out to be some credulous puff-piece for crypto, and although the teenage daughter is introduced in the most stupidly cliche way possible, her escape from surveillance turns out to be a plot-relevant skill, and when the plot gets underway she acts in a commendably reasonable manner.
In fact, that’s true of most of the characters in the movie, and is one of the best things about it. Everyone in it acts with reasonable intelligence in pursuit of what they see as their own interests. This is not an idiot plot. That might seem like faint praise but it’s not. Useful idiots abound in storytelling (and politics, too, but let’s try to avoid thinking about that).
The suspense plot involves a group of criminals, deeply embedded into U.S. security services, taking over the G20 summit. The goal is to crash the world economy, causing cryptocoin prices to soar, enriching the criminals. They’re not exactly terrorists but their leader (capably played by Antony Starr) has a political axe to grind which sounds a lot like Brexit/MAGA gibberish. But the money is the main thing for them, like the gang inDie Hard, the illustrious ancestor of this type of movie.
When the criminals attack, the ex-military US President escapes, taking with her the doltish, yammering UK Prime Minister (Douglas Hodge), the head of the IMF (Sabrina Impacciatore) and the First Lady of Korea (MeeWha Alana Lee), all of whom are watched over by the president’s principal Secret Service guard (Ramón Rodríguez)—until he takes a disabling bullet. At that point the president herself has to take the lead, risking life and limb to save her accidental companions, her family, and indeed the world.
I won’t go into the gory details, except that it does get a little gory. No more than the average James Bond movie, but that would include a pretty high body count. If you like this kind of movie, this is the kind of movie that you’ll like.
There is a significant political message here, which probably won’t bother you if you’re not crazy. The reviewer at RogerEbert.com found some of this stuff “too on-the -nose”. Personally, as a guy watching a lot of old WWII movies because the news is so frustratingly deranged, I didn’t have a problem with the messagey parts. There is a time and place for that kind of stuff; the time is now and the place is here, until things get considerably better than they are.
The political philosophy isn’t just a candy-coating. It’s woven through the work. There is considerable personal heroism in this movie, but it’s given meaning and effectiveness by intelligent cooperation with other people. And whenever anyone in the plot gets so full of themselves that they’re not prepared to take a clue, one is forcibly delivered.
A good example is when the president and her guard are standing around arguing about how they’re going to go through a door with some armed bad guys on the other side. The head of the IMF and the UK Prime Minister are bickering about something else. Meanwhile the SK First Lady has an idea for an alternate route: down the laundry chute. No one will listen to her (because no one listens to old ladies, even when they notice they’re there) so she shrugs and dives down the laundry chute. At that point, every realizes that there is a way out that doesn’t involve getting shot at and they follow her down.
Listen to old ladies; you might learn something.
By the time we get to the scenes where the president is kicking and shooting her way through villain-rich environments like one of the badass heroes from Person of Interest, it’s almost believable, since Viola Davis (and the script) have done so much good work humanizing the character. Anyway, by that time you’re rooting for her. (When I say you I mean me, really; de gustibus, and all that.) But it’s her shrewdness and observational skills that let her figure out Who Is Really Behind It All.
Watching this movie was a painfully melancholy, almost nostalgic experience in a way almost certainly not intended by its makers. It’s set in an alternate timeline where the US has a capable leader and the nation itself is still a respected leader in world affairs. But that was long ago—five or six months, at least. It’s amazing how far and how fast a nation can fall when it falls from a height.
Anyway.
In summary: the movie might be a half hour too long, as almost every movie is these days, and some of the more obviously CGIed scenery looks a little thin. But in general this is a fast-paced, intelligent action movie with a solid soundtrack and fine performances from a diverse cast.
P.S.
Re the soundtrack: this was my favorite track, by Miriam Makeba.
I’m reading the minor declamations of pseudo-Quintilian in Shackleton-Bailey’s great Loeb edition. The idea is to briefly escape the current political nightmare by immersing myself in the weird little stories of these controversiae.
It’s not going that well.
For example: take Decl. 272. The law in question is Qui publica consilia enuntiaverit, capite puniatur (“Someone who revealed the state’s plans should be punished by loss of citizenship or life”).
The messaging app Signal isn’t actually mentioned in the text, but it might as well be.
Then there’s Decl. 274. It’s a scenario where a tyrant is killed by a lightning bolt. Certainly a beautiful thought. One law says that a tyrant’s body should be tossed out of the city unburied. Another law says that people killed by lightning should be buried where they died. Which law prevails?
I figure I’m safe from the modern world here.
Then the anonymous lawyer starts saying stuff like this:
Exuit se tyrannus et erigit supra leges; ponendo extra illas se posuit. Hominem occidere non licet, tyrannum licet.
—Decl. 274.5
“The tyrant has stripped himself of and put himself above the laws; by putting them off, he has put himself beyond their protection. It’s unlawful to kill a person, but lawful to kill a tyrant.”
Hard to disagree with this.
But the argument raises a concern I’ve long had that the failure of a political system leads to unchecked civil violence. These guys who think they’re being so cunning in abrogating laws, ignoring courts, erasing the Constitution: they’re just setting themselves up for a lightning bolt.
If they were the only ones likely to get hurt, one might try to laugh it off. But failed states are usually a precondition for mass murder. In any case, civil violence tends to spread like a wildfire.
Maybe I should start reading horror fiction for escape. It’s bound to be more cheerful.
Here and there, though, the pseudonymous lawyer(s) come up with some really great lines.
From a case where a crime (attempted parricide) hinges on the intent of the accused:
Numquam mens exitu aestimanda est.
Decl. 281.2
“The intent of an action must never be reckoned from the outcome of the action.”
Later in the same case, the speaker is talking about something conceded under the threat of force:
non sunt enim preces ubi negandi libertas non est.
—Decl. 281.4
“Those aren’t ‘requests’ when there is no freedom to refuse.”
The best line I’ve come across yet is this beautiful but obscure phrase:
obicio tibi munus lucis.
—Decl. 282.2
“I offer you the gift of sunlight.”
Spoken by a father disowning his son, it seems to mean “Get out of my house.”
The subject matter is often depressing, e.g. a long series of cases about sexual assault, where the injured woman routinely gets to choose between the death of her rapist and marriage to her rapist. I guess, because Roman law didn’t always distinguish carefully between sexual seduction and sexual assault, this makes a certain amount of sense. A couple who were screwing around consensually could get married, and (since divorce by notification was the norm in the Roman world), it wouldn’t have to be forever. But this provision also summons nightmare scenarios where a woman is being chivvied by her relatives to marry that nice Mr. Moneybags Rapist for the good of the family. The legal cases in the declamations are always fictitious and frequently ridiculous; it’s impossible to say how many cases like this actually occurred. But one would be too many.
Whether the speeches are good or bad, depressing or uplifting, they’re soon over. The effect resembles what it used to be like to channel-surf through daytime television: glimpses of family dramas (cf soap operas), chunks of made-up history (cf the History Channel), stories of crime (cf the true crime broadcasts on Headline News), stories of unlikely awards (cf game shows), stories of wild adventure (cf movie channels).
The only thing missing are commercials, a loss which is definitely a net gain.
D and I watched Lured(1947). It was watchable, maybe even rewatchable. With a script by Leo Rosten (of Joys of Yiddish fame), I expected it to be wittier than it was. But, given that it’s about the hunt for a serial killer, maybe it’s too light-hearted as it is. The mystery was pretty transparent, even though the red herrings in the story kept getting larger and neon-luminous. But the story moved pretty quickly, took some interesting turns, and made sense more often than not.
Screenshot
A very strong cast: Lucille Ball as the lead (as much as a woman is usually allowed to be the lead in a mid-century crime movie) was likable and convincing. George Sanders did his George-Sanders thing which works equally well if he’s a suave hero, a shifty spy, or a man-eating tiger. Borith Karloff chewed holes in the scenery in a wonderfully weird if small role. The secondary cast was full of character actors who appeared as murderers, crooks and third bananas in Universal’s Sherlock Holmes series (e.g. George Zucco, Alan Mowbray, Gerald Hamer).
Ball plays Sandra Carpenter, a taxi-dancer who becomes involved in the hunt for the serial killer after her friend becomes his latest victim. She clues the police into the fact that the killer is contacting his victims via the personals. She’s hired by the police to answer suspicious personal ads and keep the police informed. (I know this would never happen. Please direct all inquiries and comments to Messrs. Sirk & Rosten, who are dead and won’t mind so much.)
The joke, if it’s a joke, is that she’s constantly running into schemes to exploit young women in various ways. Only one of them is a serial killer, but they’re all creeps, and the movie implies that their name is legion. It’s the most realistic note in this not-very-realistic movie.
The murderer turns out to be the guy you knew the producers didn’t hire just to say two lines in three scenes. In the end, he’s caught red-handed. And true love triumphs over all, which is a weird feature of these softer-edged midcentury crime stories.
A painless 100 minutes for me, and a decent nap for D. Not quite up to the level of Sirk’s Thunder on the Hill(1951), which I saw for the first time recently and was deeply impressed by. But good enough to keep working my way through his filmography.
I’m always a little bemused that Lucille Ball didn’t have a bigger career in film. She was beautiful, had an expressive face and voice, projected intelligence, and (I’ll go out on a limb here) she was a gifted comic actress. But maybe that was the problem: comedy was the kids’ table in the studio system, and most of the seats were reserved for men.
Also: #EverythingIsStarTrek. In case you thought I’d forgotten that.
Artist unknown, but I’m pretty sure this image predates generative-AI boom. Anyway, she has the right number of fingers.
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