Mary Poppins Returns

20 Dec

‘Mary Poppins Returns’: Grown-up Banks tots need their nanny back, and really we did also

 

By Tom Meek 
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It’s been almost 55 years since Julie Andrews and her magic umbrella descended on Cherry Tree Lane in “Mary Poppins” back in 1964. Given that jubilee-plus swath of time, it’s amazing no one attempted a sequel, but perhaps the real snag was trying to find an actress with the right blend of creamy, wholesome strictness Andrews so imbued into that beloved nanny role. The wait, however, proves worthwhile, and the casting of Emily Blunt in “Mary Poppins Returns” is something of an inspired choice. She mixes in a dash of sass and sauce to make the role her own while paying respectful homage to Andrews.

The story, penned by David Magee from P. L. Travers’s 1935 novel, “Mary Poppins Comes Back,” revolves around the now grown-up wee ones from the original, Jane (Emily Mortimer) and Michael (Ben Whishaw), with Michael widowed and living in his parents’ old home with his own charges to care for. It’s a busy house, fraught with near chaos but full of love and integrity – and the bank Michael works for (a barbed twist) wants to repossess it. The time is the economic downturn in London known as the Great Slump, and while the cruel circumstance feels like something from the pages of Dickens, it also suggests something executed with cold military precision by the current administration.

You could imagine Magee and director Rob Marshall wrestling with the idea of trying to update the tale for contemporary times, but smartly the pair hold fast. Remember, this is the Marshall who made the Jazz Age sing in the raucous Oscar-winning “Chicago” (2002); and it’s also still Disney, which built an empire off wholesome family fare before the blockbuster wham-bam of Star Wars and the Marvel Universe. For folks who know primarily about the derrière lifts of Kardashians and the assorted dealings of former presidential attorneys, “Mary Poppins Returns” is destined to be a pure wintergreen breeze of prim revelation. In short, it’s transportive, with apt dashes of magical digression. Buttoned-up fantasia, if you will, lush and infectious.

Marshall knows musicals and gets the sets, staging and numbers down to a science, but it’s Blunt – who’s partaken in such diverse works (and with mixed results) as “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006), “A Quiet Place” (2018) and “Sicario” (2015) – who powers it all with her indelible Poppins’ resolve, finding a whole new gear here the way Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta Jones did in “Chicago.” Her nanny’s aloof affect and strong nature endears from the get-go, and she slips into into the musical numbers seamlessly. If there was any question she could sing or dance, they’re put to rest.

There’s also the funny, silly magical excursions – remember Dick Van Dyke and those penguins back in ’64? – such as a bath time under-the-sea adventure that add to the film’s frothy, innocent lather. The cast has many little charms as well. “Prada” co-star Meryl Streep shows up in gypsy garb as Poppins’ Cousin Topsy, who can fix anything and lives in an upside-down emporium. There are also cameo turns from a spry Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury, who sells balloons with an uplifting sense of justice; Colin Firth rounds out the cast with suavity as a stately banker who may have a foot in some devious subprime doings.

The wonderful thing about this “Poppins” is its innate infectiousness. It’ll win over the cynical and charm the faithful. Dour and bleak times call for a nanny with a stiff upper lip and take-charge can-do fixes for everything from untidy bedrooms to dicey doings in the boardroom. She’s a marvel we could use now. 

Post-review note: I attended the “Mary Poppins Returns” press screening with my 9-year-old daughter, Jane, who reported that Emily Blunt was fine, but no Julie Andrews. She also observed that this Poppins seemed less “responsible” than the 1964 nanny.

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

15 Dec

‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’: Bite later, heroes abound and with so much in common

 

By Tom Meek 
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“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’’ is a wild spin with a web of plots that not only passes the torch but also reinvents the Marvel comic on screen for a new generation and set of eyes. For starters, it’s animated, a cool blend by directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman that’s a bit of the old TV cartoon, a bit of the blurry three-color printed comic and a lot of the creamy rich CGI we’ve come to know since Pixar punted out “Toy Story.” Also, there’s more than one Spider-Man – in fact, there’s a posse of spider-people, but more on that later – and this “Spider-Verse” includes a coming-of-age tale about a Brooklyn kid name Miles (voiced by Shameik Moore) who, like Starr in “The Hate U Give,” is an African-American kid attending a private school outside the neighborhood. Dad’s an overly cautious cop (Brian Tyree Henry, so good in “If Beale Street Could Talk”) and uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali, “Green Book” and “Moonlight’’) strikes a hip big-brother figure, though pa considers him something of a black sheep.

Miles is a kid at the crossroads of figuring out who he is and who he wants to be. Uncle’s tips on how to woo the other new kid at boarding school, a cute, sassy girl named Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld) doesn’t work out so well. But by now you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with Spider-Man? Well, one night Aaron and Miles break out to tag a wall in a subterranean annex and Miles, after laying down his final aerosol flourish, is bitten by a radioactive spider. Paper, a girl’s hair and even some pigeons stick to his palms – talk about adolescent confusion – and he can walk on walls. In a return to the site, Miles encounters Peter Parker/Spider-Man (Chris Pine) fighting a giant demon goblin and a someone known as the Prowler. Spidey wants to shut down a collider set up by a mad mastermind with the self-aggrandizing tag of Kingpin (Liev Schrei­ber), but needs Miles’ help, while Miles needs Spidey’s help to make sense of his new powers.

Long and short, the collider goes off and uni-“verses” (Marvel’s, something Looney Tunes adjacent and slivers from the past and future) blend and merge. Now we’ve got a new Peter Parker/Spider-man (Jake Johnson), a paunchier, saucier version. The quest to shut down the collider remains, though this gruffer Spidey has ill-timed glitches the way Venelope does in the “Wreck it Ralph” films. Also now there’s spider folk from the pulpy noir past (Nic Cage, voicing an incarnation that seems right out of “Sin City”) a Japanese anime lass (Kimiko Glenn) and her trusty spider-bot and a wise-cracking spider-pig-toon (John Mulaney) who carries a massive mallet in his pocket. Lily Tomlin’s also in there as Peter’s take-no-shit aunt; Katherine Hahn is naughty and nice as a dour lab director with a deviously far-reaching grasp; and Stan Lee’s voice and countenance make a perfect last appearance in perhaps his best cameo ever. 

The directing trio and writer Phil Lord (“The Lego Move”) do a deft job deconstructing both the film franchise and the comic series with wit and verve. If you’re a Spider-Man fan, there’s lots packed in here for you as insider nuggets while it all shoots off in a new direction. It’s packaged to cut smartly across cultural and generational lines, with animation that’s also something new and something old. “Verse” takes the web-head series to a new level that looks bound to catch on.

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Vox Lux

15 Dec

‘Vox Lux’: A little more comfortably numb, please, for traumatized girl turned pop diva

By Tom Meek 

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Bradley Cooper’s not the only Hollywood A-lister this year to challenge his acting chops by playing rock ’n’ roll (well, country) royalty on screen. Here comes Oscar winner Natalie Portman as some kind of a Lady Gaga-esque incarnation in Brady Corbet’s rise and rebirth pic “Vox Lux.” The film’s a curio, unconventionally told in two stark chapters the way Stanley Kubrick’s great Vietnam dissection “Full Metal Jacket” did in 1987 – though it must be stated that similarities between the two disparate films begin and end there.

In the first chapter, a lithe and angular teenager by the name of Celeste (Raffey Cassidy, nothing short of amazing) survives a school shooting – she’s shot in the neck but is pretty much the only one who makes it out of the room – and composes a song with her older sister Eleanor (Stacy Martin) to get her heart around the ordeal and come to terms with the pain and trauma. They perform the tearjerker before their small-town crowd gathered for healing in the local church; since this is clearly modeled after Newtown (and Columbine, for that matter), cameras and the national eye are there. Not long afterward, Celeste’s got a hunky manager (Jude Law) and a European tour. Her music – hip, alternative pop songs like a haunting blend of Britney Spears and Fiona Apple – soars critically and commercially, but the violence of the day that gave her lift still lingers in traumatizing wafts. The tatted rocker she beds down with one night plays the kind of music the shooter liked.

Celeste gets pregnant, 9/11 happens and we jump to 2017, with Celeste now played by Portman and, as a neat parlor trick, her teen daughter Albertine played by Cassidy. Through it all, the hops in time, there are eruptions of senseless violence (though far less graphic and viscerally felt) and the ebbs and flows within Celeste are put into context by an unseen narrator voiced with cagey wisdom by the increasingly ubiquitous Willem Dafoe. In this chapter, Celeste is far less likable or empathetic; she’s become something of an entitled diva, dropping thoughtless bombs like those Lena Dunham has become notorious for. Sure, she’s taxed and fearful of failure on her comeback attempt – and wants so desperately to connect with her daughter – but you ask yourself what happened to that precocious, reflective lass from chapter one. Is this what fame and fortune does? The backstage ramp-up to the big concert event is a kickass trip, even if the actual show pales by comparison, Portman is game and the direction by Corbet, along with intimate camerawork by Lol Crowley, is tight and well focused. The film manages to get its finger on the pulse of the music world and the egos involved as well as the toll it can take, but somehow in its angling for something more, something else, it lose sight of the 14-year-old survivor that gave it birth.

There’s a lot to drink in. “Vox Lux” is a haunting mashup you can’t avert your eyes from, except maybe when Celeste is having a diva meltdown on her daughter, sister or manager. One of the film’s key undercurrents – that it’s important to remember where you came from – seems to get lost along the way. Corbet, relatively new to the director’s seat, becomes obsessed with the power and pomp of pop. There’s plenty of kinetically catchy tunes (by Sia) belted out as Celeste triumphs, but many families from many sad days no longer have daughters to take a shot at “American Idol.”

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Ben is Back

14 Dec

‘Ben Is Back’: This addict son’s homecoming takes bad turns from family drama to thriller

By Tom Meek

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It’s a family affair as dad Peter Hedges directs son Lucas Hedges in “Ben Is Back,” an edgy if overwrought melodrama about a family caught in the crosshairs of addiction. Similar material was explored this year in “Beautiful Boy,” a based-on-real-life yarn that worked inner sentiments with solid fervor but somehow failed to kick it over the moon.

The result’s about the same here, but the film moves in very different strokes. For one, “Ben Is Back” is much grittier and edgier in texture and context. The addicted son, Ben (Lucas Hedges, nominated for an Oscar for a “Manchester by the Sea”) makes a surprise return home from rehab as Christmas nears and becomes an immediate source of tension between his mother (Julia Roberts) and stepfather (Courtney B. Vance). His presence is a clear code red. Sure, they’re fearful Ben will use again – but there seems to be something more. Holly (Roberts) puts down some hard rules and Neal (Vance) agrees reluctantly. There are other kids in the house whose welfare is at stake: Ben’s sister Ivy (Kathryn Newton) and Neal’s two children from a prior union. It’s something of a “Brady Bunch,” but there’s no laugh track and nothing funny in what’s to come.

Holly and Neal’s concerns seem a bit over the top initially. Holly won’t let Ben go to the bathroom or try on a shirt in a retail store without her constant supervision. After a group meeting you realize why: Ben’s not only at risk to use again (“all addicts lie,” he forewarns Holly), but was an active dealer in the upstate New York hamlet that’s a harried mix of sugar plum nice and badass vice – the tentacles of which threaten to drag him back in. Neal and Holly’s quaint homestead is soon burglarized, the dog’s gone missing and unsavory sorts start to lurk out from the dark shadows of Main Street. A wonderful life this is not.

By the third act the film shifts into thriller mode – something of a tough-love saga by way of “Breaking Bad.” It’s too bad, too, because the homestead dynamic between the father who bought into this little shop of horrors and the protective mother caught in conflict gets lost. The film comes out of the gate wobbly, and just when it find its feet and we begin to get invested, Hedges the writer and director takes one mean street turn after the next. Only the first few might be plausible.

The fraught chemistry between Roberts, Hedges and Vance sells much of it for a while – the whole ensemble is quite convincing – but what they’re given to work with is palpable, unbridled anger without ownership or remorse. As Holly sees it, her family’s troubles are tied to one person, and when she gets her moment of confrontation, it’s ugly, with little upside. Addiction’s no doubt nasty and impactful beyond the veins of the person using, but bleak tales close to the edge don’t necessarily need to go over it. Sometimes family affairs need to just be more intimate.

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Chilly Bike Lanes

9 Dec

Pack of end-of-year actions on street safety anticipates bike, pedestrian work in 2019

 

By Tom Meek 
Saturday, December 8, 2018
Ground was boken Wednesday for a Watertown-Cambridge bike path expected to be complete in early summer of 2020. (Photos and video: Tom Meek)

The city will have a more comprehensive schedule of bike infrastructure rollouts early next year, Community Development spokeswoman Bridget Martin said, and the state is joining in with a Dec. 18 meeting to discuss options for bike safety improvements on some of its own roadway in Cambridge.

Even before that, the Cambridge Bicycle Safety group is calling for city staff to report back by the end of January on how common speed limit violations are in Cambridge and how the city can better engineer traffic calming; a policy order written with Mayor Marc McGovern, vice mayor Jan Devereux and city councillor Quinton Zondervan will make the request official Monday.

“For example, we know that changing paving surfaces and raising crosswalks helps slow traffic in busy areas,” the group said Thursday, explaining the urgency behind the order: “Over the past 10 years, 16 vulnerable road users – either walking or biking – have been killed in our city. This is a public health crisis.”

The mayor and City Manager Louis A. DePasquale are also set to attend a community meeting next week on pedestrian safety and safer streets, planned for 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Amigos School, 15 Upton St., Cambridgeport.

There have already been several steps taken to separate cyclists from motor vehicles and connect major destinations by bike lane since an October rallyby the bicycle safety group, including a priority bus and bike lane on Mount Auburn Street; separated lanes on Massachusetts Avenue from Central Square through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the Charles River, opened late last month; and Wednesday’s groundbreaking for a Watertown-Cambridge bike path.

The Watertown-Cambridge path, expected to be complete in early summer of 2020, leverages an old railway running parallel to Huron Avenue to better connect cyclists coming from Watertown and West Cambridge to Fresh Pond destinations including the pond, mall and Danehy Park, as well as the Alewife T station and Minuteman Bike Path – good for families and other cyclists unwilling to tangle with vehicles on Huron Avenue and the Fresh Pond Parkway.

The separated bike lanes (alongside a dedicated Boston-bound bus lane) south of Central Square provide more safety in a congested area notorious for its perilous intersections. The project is still undergoing tweaks, said Joseph Barr, director of the city’s Traffic, Parking & Transportation Department, though the bulk of the project was completed and opened for use just after Thanksgiving.

Data from the installations will show whether they increase public safety and get more people out of their cars, traffic officials have said.

The bicycle safety group and other advocacy groups, including Livable Streets and the Boston Cyclists Union, have been loud advocates for safer streets since the Cambridge deaths of cyclists Amanda Phillips and Joseph Lavins in 2016. In November, another cyclist was struck and killed by a dump truck at Museum Way and Monsignor O’Brien Highway, across from the Museum of Science, and state Rep. Mike Connolly called on the state to make changes.

A public hearing at 6:30 p.m. Dec. 18 at the Museum of Science – the location may change as the expected size of the audience grows – will discuss the details of Meng Jin’s death and safety improvements from infrastructure and vehicle safeguard perspectives, Connolly said.

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Roma

8 Dec

‘Roma’: Calling on the maid to be a mother when chaos strikes a family and ’70s Mexico

 

By Tom Meek
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Alfonso Cuarón, the Mexican-born director who’s made a reputation of tackling a wide variety of subjects and milieus, hopping from the depths of outer space (“Gravity”) to barren, post-apocalyptic futures (“Children of Men”) and even Harry Potter and Dickens (“Prisoner of Azkaban” and “Great Expectations”), returns to his homeland – where be crafted his signature tale of taboo sex and betrayal, “Y Tu Mamá También” – to forge the semi-autobiographical contemplation “Roma,” something of a nostalgic dream cut with historical incident and unhappy reality. Folks who could never bite into the floaty neorealism of Fellini’s “8½” or “Amarcord” will struggle with the director’s languid sense of place and time, hoping for more of the disruptive chaos of the earthquake, wildfire and class revolt that punctuate the film. The central dilemma of a pregnant housemaid abused and abandoned by her lover and trapped by her unenviable station in life might not jump off the page, but for those who give it time, there are rewards.

The time is the early ’70s (aptly Fellini-esque) in Mexico City, as the camera swirls around the doings of an upper-middle-class family. Dad (Fernando Grediaga), a doctor, works long hours at the hospital while mom (Marina de Tavira) and the housemaid, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) maintain the homestead and look after a brood of corrigible youth. Mom and Cleo care, but are not the most effective homemakers. Mom dings up the car every time she takes it out and Cleo allows mounds of canine fecal matter to amass in the driveway – cars skid and people slip on poo, it’s a running thing. The film’s driving factors are the father’s sudden and prolonged absence as well as Cleo’s pregnancy: How she gets pregnant, the father’s reaction and the end result of which provide for surprising turns.

“Roma” moves in subtle, wispy ebbs fueled by undercurrents of class and gender oppression. There’s a poignant yin and yang in every frame. Fate and circumstance factor large too as the action moves from the cloistered streets of the city to the bourgeois countryside, even a muddy hillside slum and ultimately a riot (the Corpus Christi Massacre of 1970). Throughout it all Cleo and Sofia rally frantically to keep the children safe, despite considerable setbacks. “Roma” is clearly a love letter to the women who made Cuarón the person he is today.

The film, shot by Cuarón himself in black and white – an artistic high-dive against the grain but in good company (think “Schindler’s List,” “The White Ribbon” and “The Artist”) – is a scrumptious wonderment to behold. If there’s any subversion, it’s that “Cold War,” another foreign language film in a similar format yet radically different style, could give Cuarón a run in the best-cinematography category.

Artistic merits aside, the key to “Roma” is the patiently quiet and soulful performance by Aparicio. Clea’s fleeting optimism amid repressed pain amid continual reminders of her subservient role are heartwarming and heartbreaking. You want her to break out and do something bold, but in her quiet resolve there’s a deeper dignity that transcends.“Roma” is not about good or bad, but about connecting and persevering.

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Prospect

30 Nov

‘Prospect’: Dad, daughter aim to make killing, but there are far deadlier competing interests

Movie Review - Prospect (2018)

By Tom Meek

A deep space mission to harvest something called Aurelacs – a highly valued gem that grows in slimy organic sacs that would make David Cronenberg proud – goes horribly wrong in “Prospect,” stranding a father-daughter team in a future where space travel across galaxies is relatively common. Made arty and moody by rising filmmaking duo Christopher Caldwell and Zeek Earl, expanding on their 2014 short of the same name, the themes and atmosphere echo that of “The Martian” (2016), “Interstellar” (2014) and even “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) – if not for the retro space suits, then at least all the heavy breathing.

Pulling from familiar tropes, the landing party (descending in a neat little capsule that looks something like a lunar module or whatever it was Matt Damon cruised in on in “The Martian”) hope to make one big “prospecting” score and move on to a better, less perilous lifestyle. Dad (Jay Duplass, co-director of the 2006 indie surprise, “The Puffy Chair”) and his teenage daughter, Cee (Sophie Thatcher, the film’s revelation) descend on a bucolic planet that’s as verdant, dank and lush as the Pacific Northwest forests were in Debra Granik’s “Leave No Trace” this year – still, as gorgeous and inviting as it is, you need to be suited and with a full tank of oxygen. 

Funny, as far out as they are and in the middle of nowhere, they barely get started on their quest when they bump into two malcontents who prove none too welcoming. Shortly enough, Cee and the one named Ezra (“Game of Thrones” actor Pedro Pascal) set out to find the the Aurelacs  mother lode (aka the “Queen’s Lair”), despite the nagging matter that Cee’s lander has malfunctioned and Ezra and his cohort have no means off the planet either. For all the riches to be had, folk seem too intently focused on it despite the looming dilemma that there’s no way to realize the spoils. 

You could think of “Prospect” as something akin to this year’s unheralded “The Sisters Brothers,” in which the gold at the center of the quest is little more than a MacGuffin and the characters sail through a lawless terrain with nothing but themselves to rely on for salvation or justice. There’s other beings, mostly human we assume, that Cee and Ezra encounter along the way, including a dominatrix who gets her charges on their knees by blasting distorted disco rhythms into their helmets. It’s a weird world to wind up not-so alone in, and given greater impact by tight, intimate camera work. 

Beyond Thatcher, who pulls the film along the way Anya Taylor-Joy did “The Witch” in 2015, the best part of Caldwell and Earl’s collaboration becomes the hellbent “Godot”-esque mission to nowhere. If you caught “Annihilation” earlier this year, you’d have a pretty good idea of the psychological fabric as the normal plunges headlong into chaos. “Prospect” also moves in bends and inflections that are largely – and pleasantly – unpredictable. Sure, it’s odd that folks amid an evergreen paradise can’t breath the air except in unseemly yurts, but “Prospect” rises on character, mood and a derivative tang that glances just off the penumbra of homage and avoids shameless lifting.

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Haunts

30 Nov

Andy’s Diner, home of the Cambridge Classic, has become one itself after 60 years in Porter

By Tom Meek 
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Andy’s Diner has been serving food in Cambridge since 1958. (Photo: Tom Meek)

Hard to believe Andy’s Diner, the old-school breakfast and lunch spot just north of Porter Square at 2030 Massachusetts Ave., has been slinging eggs and serving coffee since 1958. Over those 60 years there’s barely been a change in process, service or menu. Sure, there was a switch in owners (current owner and chef Jimmy Dres bought it from Andy Sbordone in 1989) and the diner moved locations by a few doors about a decade in, but when you walk through the door, you feel like you’ve stepped back in time: There’s a soda fountain-style counter with fixed barstools that swivel, and the walls are decorated with Boston sports heroes from before the Sox reversed the curse or Tom Brady stepped into the GOAT conversation – you know, guys like Larry Bird, Dennis Johnson and Steve Grogan.

With exposed brick walls and ’70s-style booths, Andy’s, open 6 a.m. to 3 p.m., serves breakfast all day and boasts a basic but vast griddle and deli menu – including homemade soups. Dres describes most of his clientele as loyal, blue-collar workers and regular local families with a peppering of curious collegians seeking a hearty hangover cure or in need of a cozy study session spot-cum-comfort food. 

Andy’s owner and chef Jimmy Dres and server Kelly Butler Pinksen. (Photo: Tom Meek)

If there’s a specialty, it’s the omelettes. Dres has a process adopted carefully from Sbordine. “They’re never burned, and perfectly even, kind of like an egg burrito,” Dres says. Indeed: They are neatly folded, long golden crepes of egg with a perfect distribution of fillings.

Dres, who has an affable, low-key persona, reflects on the joy of serving families with parents who’d been the kids in that booth decades earlier. He’s also appreciative of the people he works with, including Tina Ravanis, one of Sbordine’s granddaughters. During a recent visit, hardworking server Kelly Butler Pinksen – with Dres for more than 15 years – greeted customers by first name and asked if they wanted “the usual.” You really don’t see that in Cambridge so much these days. 

The building Andy’s is in sold recently, and while the rent may have gone up, you can still get a dollar-stretching deal there. The menu, with its “Cambridge Classic” – French toast with two eggs, sausage, bacon and coffee – also has daily specials and rotational items, such as a fish dinner on Fridays. “Everything is fresh and made here,” Pinksen says.

An Andy’s omelette – ““They’re never burned, and perfectly even, kind of like an egg burrito.” (Photo: Tom Meek)

Outside there’s the continual reminders of transformation in the neighborhood, if not the new hotel and Target store in Porter Square then the gaping construction site across the street where the Lechmere Car Wash used to be. Dres shows no signs of slowing amid all the change. Asked if there’ll be a new generation to run the place, he smiles and says only, “It’s a lot of work.”

If a perfectly cooked omelette, low cost and friendly service isn’t enough to draw you in, know that Andy’s also has its own free parking lot – something else that’s not so common in Cambridge this days.

Much around Andy’s has changed, but it remains one of the few true Cambridge classics.

 

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Cambridge Delves Inward on Racism

27 Nov

Many reasons for Cambridge Digs Deep series in a place thought to be a ‘progressive utopia’

 

By Tom Meek 
Monday, November 26, 2018
A rally at City Hall held Aug. 14, 2017, responded to a violent white supremacist gathering in Charlottesville, Virginia, but only hinted at some of the racial animosity to come in America and Cambridge. (Photo: Marc Levy)

The city launches its Cambridge Digs Deep sessions Wednesday, a program initiated by Mayor Marc McGovern and city councillor Sumbul Siddiqui to spur a citywide conversation about race, diversity and equity. The program partners with the Disruptive Equity Education Project – a professional development organization that specializes in building community and breaking down barriers based on stereotypes and preconceptions. Deep will lend its services to help facilitate and shape the conversation.

Part of the impetus for the series were ongoing concerns raised by the Black Student Union at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, which also get a hearing at Tuesday’s meeting of the School Committee, and recent viral flares of racism including a July confrontation between a Harvard employee and the mother of a biracial child who was playing “noisily” and a public schools employee who used the N-word with a student. Siddiqui also cited a divisive climate created by the administration of President Donald Trump and national events such as last year’s white supremacist gathering in Charlottesville,Virginia, and the migrant caravan seeking asylum at the southern border.

“Cambridge is not truly the progressive utopia that everyone sees it as,” which makes constant examination and reevaluation necessary, McGovern said.

One of the tools Deep and chief executive Darnisa Amante will bring to the table is the exploration of microaggressions versus macroaggressions, as well as the understanding of intent and impact. As illustration, McGovern cited a scenario in which a teacher on the first day of a high school honors English class asked the lone black student if he was “in the right class.”

“The teacher might not think they are racist,” McGovern said, “but there’s an impact.”

Siddiqui, a Pakistani-born, Muslim woman raised in Cambridge affordable housing, added, “It’s also simply how people mispronounce different names or dismiss them as ‘too difficult.’”

McGovern and Siddiqui believe their deep roots in Cambridge will help give the workshops a historical perspective, and said they hope for a dialogue that will “get people outside their comfort zones and begin to see the ways in which identities – such as race, class, gender, religion – impact our lives.” Expected outcomes are a “bit of a work in progress,” McGovern admitted. “We’re going to be learning as we go.”

“We don’t expect a prescribed list of policies,” Siddiqui echoed, “but we’ll be listening.”

Also on the agenda will be issues of class and inclusion made newly prominent by an affordable housing overlay zoning proposal raised by the Envision Cambridge master plan process. 

“Our goal is to ensure that people can talk about race and inequity – and know the differences between diversity, equity, and inclusion, race, racism and oppression – in a way that does not ostracize others and/or make anyone feel unwelcome,” Amante said. “We will, however, push with love.”

The initial Cambridge Digs Deep session takes place at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the gymnasium of the Fletcher Maynard Academy, 225 Windsor St. Four more are scheduled for the early part of 2019. The sessions are set up to build on each other, but there is no requirement to have attended previous sessions to be part of the conversation. McGovern and Siddiqui said they hope for a strong turnout and a constructive dialogue.

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Green Book

22 Nov

‘Green Book’: Tour through segregated South drives a buddy movie that follows a true tale

 

By Tom Meek 
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Peter Farrelly, best known as half of the brother tandem who made “Dumb and Dumber” (1994) and the chaotically uproarious “There’s Something About Mary” (1998), pulls something of an unexpected about face with “Green Book,” real-life saga about a white man chauffeuring a black man through the Deep South during the early 1960s.

The boss is Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali, a deserving Oscar winner for his work in “Moonlight”), a renowned jazz pianist tired of playing the Upper East Side who decides to take his talents south – in part to see the world, and also to make the world see him. His driver, a Bronx-bred Italian-American name Frank Anthony Vallelonga, aka Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen). Tony is something akin to Robert De Niro’s fat Jake LaMotta – boy can he eat, he’s not one to take too much shit and he’s got a mouth. It’s “Driving Miss Daisy” (1989) in reverse in so many ways, with its racist backdrop still far too similar to what pervades our country now. Once difference is that the current “green book” is an app with historical insights; from 1936 to 1966, it was a vital guide to safe spots in the segregated South.

For the most part, the film’s a buddy bonding road movie, as the aloof intellectual and motor-mouthed lout with a heart of gold break down cultural and personal barriers. At its best, Tony doesn’t judge Don Shirley after bailing him out of several compromising and potentially explosive situations where the jazz pianist dips into the bottle too much and wanders outside the lines. At its worst, Tony lectures Shirley about “his people,” Motown stars the classical musician hasn’t heard (Little Richard and Aretha) and the virtues of fried chicken – a cringeworthy scene, if just for the risky proximity of grease to a neatly pressed white shirt. 

Farrelly lays it on a bit at times where films such as “Hidden Figures” (2016) “Miss Daisy” and “The Butler” (2013) respectfully observe and allow character and history to make points on their own terms. His actors, though, do a great job selling it, and forge a genuine chemistry, despite such overwrought handling – Ali welling with dignified resolve and Mortensen adding a ton of weight and tackling new emotional territory with a screwball sense of humor. Shirley has to stay in seedier hotels and can’t use the same restroom as white people, even though he’s the allegedly well-respected main attraction. Ultimately there’s the big end-of-tour performance in Birmingham at a white-glove country club (where Nat King Cole was once assaulted). The maitre’d, trying to appeal to Tony, explains that when the world champion Boston Celtics came to town, “even the big one didn’t get to eat in the club” after polite use of such phrases as “it’s a tradition” and “that’s how we do things down here.” Sign of the times, and one not to be forgotten.

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