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      ‘Notturno’ Review: The Heart of the Middle East

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘Notturno’ Review: The Heart of the Middle EastGianfranco Rosi’s latest, beautifully shot documentary movingly observes people and places across Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Kurdistan in the aftermath of war.A scene from Gianfranco Rosi’s documentary “Notturno.”Credit…Super LtdJan. 21, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETNotturnoNYT Critic’s PickDirected by Gianfranco RosiDocumentary1h 40mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.The sound of distant gunfire crops up in the background in Gianfranco Rosi’s “Notturno,” one of many reminders of how war has shaped the inhabitants of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Kurdistan who appear onscreen. Rosi has a way of sitting with people, sometimes close-up, more often from afar, and soaking in their lived experience and the pulse of landscapes shaped by brutal external forces (from Western incursions to ISIS). His melancholic documentary moves beyond a sense of perpetual aftermath by picking up threads of continuity in people’s resilience.Rosi, who directed the migrant-focused “Fire at Sea,” excels at uncovering scenes of drama and emotion without leveraging them for sentimental impact. The opening sequences of “Notturno” offer a kind of overture for the whole film: soldiers march past the camera in relentless hut-hut-hut succession; an old woman mourns her son, touching the walls in what looks like an abandoned prison; and a man rows off into the night, seemingly to hunt for food. We’ll see more of people getting through their days — a couple smoking hookah on a rooftop is one sweet sight — but shots of soldiers are never very far, standing guard, waiting. Half an hour in, a boy also starts to appear, working multiple jobs, and in his youth, he’s like a glimpse of a hopeful horizon.[embedded content]But the boy also has noticeable sleep circles under his eyes, and Rosi’s moody photography moves between this kind of sympathetic portraiture and vistas of countrysides with yawning skies, or crepuscular city streets. (Some desolate backdrops recall his underappreciated 2008 film, “Below Sea Level,” which visited with the squatters of Slab City, California, years before “Nomadland.”) Lest the film sound like a kind of travelogue, it can also knock the wind out of you, as in a wrenching look at children and their drawings about violent traumas inflicted by ISIS.Eschewing interviews and captions, Rosi puts his faith in a steady tripod camera and an evident ability to build up trust. He’s able to join troops on what looks like a nighttime reconnaissance mission, to watch rehearsals of a play about Iraqi history at a Baghdad psychiatric hospital, and to observe ISIS soldiers milling about in a prison yard. The past two decades of documentary film have produced many anatomies of history that attempt to summarize several millenniums, but Rosi’s borderless tableaus bring out another kind of truth in faces, places and pure feeling.NotturnoNot rated. In Arabic and Kurdish, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas. Starting Jan. 29, watch on Hulu and rent or buy on pay TV operators.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Acasa, My Home’ Review: Civilization and Its Malcontents

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s pick‘Acasa, My Home’ Review: Civilization and Its MalcontentsA family’s dispossession to make way for a nature park is the subject of this Romanian documentary.A marshy field of dreams: A scene from Radu Ciorniciuc’s documentary, “Acasa, My Home.”Credit…Mircea Topoleanu/Zeitgeist FilmsJan. 14, 2021, 2:33 p.m. ETAcasa, My HomeNYT Critic’s PickDirected by Radu CiorniciucDocumentary1h 26mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.The home in “Acasa, My Home” is a wild, marshy expanse on the outskirts of Bucharest, an abandoned reservoir populated mainly by birds, fish and insects. At the beginning of this documentary, directed by Radu Ciorniciuc, the only human residents are Gica Enache, his wife, Niculina, and their nine children. Surrounded by chickens, hogs, pigeons and dogs, they live in proud, occasionally belligerent defiance of “civilization,” a word Gica utters with disdain.The children run through the reeds, catch fish with their bare hands, wrestle with swans and perform household chores. The scene isn’t entirely pastoral, though, and Gica isn’t exactly Henry David Thoreau. He’s a moody patriarch, part anarchist and part autocrat, shielding his family from the power of the state with his own sometimes tyrannical authority. When he’s confronted by social workers, the police and other officials, he’s not always diplomatic. At one point, he threatens to set himself on fire. “These are my children, and I can kill them if I want” might not be the best thing to say to child welfare officers.[embedded content]Filmed over four years, “Acasa” tells the complicated, bittersweet story of Gica’s defeat. When the Romanian government designates the area as a protected nature park — reportedly the largest in a major European city — the Enaches are forced out. They dismantle their house, a sprawling structure made of blankets and plastic sheeting draped over a makeshift wooden frame, and move into an apartment. The children, provided with haircuts, shoes and new clothes, attend school regularly for the first time. The oldest son, Vali, finds a girlfriend and asserts a measure of independence from his father.Does this represent progress or catastrophe? For Gica, the answer is clear: Everything he values has been taken away. But while Ciorniciuc views him with evident sympathy and respect, “Acasa” isn’t an uncritical or romantic tale of paradise lost. You can see the park administrators, government ministers and municipal bureaucrats through Gica’s eyes — as smiling, condescending agents of a force that disturbs his peace and threatens his identity. You can also see him from their perspective, as a man subjecting his family to dangerous and unsanitary conditions who needs to be protected from his own impulses.The film is not static. It’s dialectical — constructing its narrative as an argument between two opposed positions, neither of which is fully embraced. There is a nobility to Niculina and Gica as they try to resist the power of a state convinced of its own benevolence. And the actions of the state are not entirely unreasonable. It’s not as simple as taking the side of individualism against government, or for that matter of being in favor of parks, schools and a decent social order.That’s all fairly abstract, but “Acasa” is full of ideas because it contains so much life. It’s both intimate and analytical, a sensitive portrait of real people undergoing enormous change and a meditation on what that change might mean. It taps into something primal in the human condition, a basic conflict between the desire for freedom and the tendency toward organization — an argument, finally, about the meaning of home.Acasa, My HomeNot rated. In Romanian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters and on Kino Marquee. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      What Happens Now to Michael Apted’s Lifelong Project ‘Up’?

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat Happens Now to Michael Apted’s Lifelong Project ‘Up’?His documentary series chronicled the lives of its subjects every seven years since 1964. Now the participants ponder whether it can carry on without him.Michael Apted in 2012. His death last week left the fate of his decades-long project up in the air.Credit…Robert Yager for The New York TimesJan. 14, 2021Every seven years or so for more than half a century, the filmmaker Michael Apted returned to what he referred to as his life’s work: documenting the same ordinary people he’d known since they were 7 years old.Throughout nine installments of the “Up” series — which has been called the noblest, most remarkable and profound documentary project in history — Apted turned a restrained lens on class, family, work and dreams, both dashed and achieved, in his native England. The programs, beginning with “Seven Up!” in 1964, went on to inspire international copycats and even an episode of “The Simpsons.”So when Apted died last week at 79, he left behind not only his enormous artistic undertaking, but a nontraditional family unit that was at once uncomfortable, transactional and as intimate as could be.“It’s a bit surreal,” said Jackie Bassett, one of 20 schoolchildren originally featured in the series, who went on to become part of the core group that appeared every subsequent time. “He knew us so well,” she said in an interview, and yet she’d had no idea that the director was seriously ill.Jackie Bassett, Lynn Johnson and Sue Sullivan in 1964 in the original film.Credit…BritBoxBassett, left, and Sullivan flanking Apted and the producer Claire Lewis together for the most recent installment, released in 2019.Credit…BritBoxIn “63 Up,” from 2019, she processed on camera some of her decades-long frustrations with Apted’s handling of gender.“We had our moments,” said Bassett, a working-class grandmother from East London who now lives in Scotland. “But it’s a bit like having a favorite uncle that you fall out with occasionally, yet it doesn’t alter the relationship. He introduced me to a life that I otherwise wouldn’t know anything about.”Tony Walker, once a voluble boy who hoped to become a star jockey and instead became a taxi driver, said Apted was like a brother to him. “He’s always been there,” Walker said, choking up. “We never, ever thought it would come to an end.”Now, in addition to the 11 remaining participants — one regular, Suzy Lusk, opted out last time and another, Lynn Johnson, died — Apted’s longtime collaborators are also pondering the fate of a project that has spanned their professional lives.Claire Lewis, who started as a researcher on “28 Up” and later became a lead producer, said that Apted had always been “very proprietorial” about the series. But she recalled that on the press tour for “63 Up,” as it became clear that the director was becoming more frail and forgetful, he told a Q. and A. audience, “I suppose she could do it,” gesturing to Lewis.Tony Walker at age 35. He is interested in continuing to film the series.Credit…BritBox“I could carry it on,” Lewis said, adding that it would come down to the subjects’ assent and the health of the crew. The cameraman, George Jesse Turner, and sound engineer, Nick Steer, have been with the program since “21 Up,” from 1977; the editor, Kim Horton, joined for “28 Up.”“None of us are spring chickens — we’re all geriatric, honestly,” Lewis said, citing her own age as “70-ish.” “We’re going to need an ambulance, if we ever did it again, to take us all around. I think we’ll just have to say we’ll wait and see.”Asked if she would participate without Apted, Bassett began to cry. She agreed that Lewis, who’d long had the job of keeping in touch with the cast between shoots, was the logical successor. (Walker concurred and was more enthusiastic about continuing.)“70 and 7 do have a good symmetry,” Bassett said. “It would definitely have to be the last one for everybody.”Mortality had already hung over the most recent installment. Another subject, the engineering professor Nick Hitchon, who started as a bashful farmer’s son from the Yorkshire Dales, learned he had throat cancer and struggled through his portion of filming.Apted was “a fixture in my life,” Hitchon said in an interview from Wisconsin, where he moved to teach in the early 1980s. “Despite the fact that we’re not good at communicating as Englishmen, I did feel some closeness to Michael,” relating to him more and more with age, he said.It was important for the “Up” series to see life through, from retirement to death, Hitchon said. But he preferred not to contemplate his own future participation. “To be honest, if I’m alive at 70, I will be very, very glad,” he said.The “Up” series began as a one-off program for the current affairs show “World in Action,” on Granada Television. Apted was at first a young researcher, tasked with helping pick the children, and a casual suggestion from an executive to check in on them seven years later gave the project new life.At work on “63 Up”: Lewis, left, Apted, the cameraman George Jesse Turner, Paul Kligerman, Naomi Mendoza, Susan Kligerman, Terry Chadwick, Mikhaela Gregory and David Rose.Credit…BritBoxAlong the way, Apted became a Hollywood director, helming projects as varied as “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and entries in the James Bond and “Narnia” franchises. He was also “begrudgingly referred to as the godfather of reality television, something he clearly objected to over the years,” said Cort Kristensen, Apted’s assistant-turned-producing partner.“He cut his teeth making news programs and then got into scripted drama after that,” Kristensen said, “and he loved using the skills of both to enhance the other.”“Up” was also a document of technological progress. Horton, the editor, recalled going “from splicing tape all the way now to pressing buttons,” with hours of footage kept on a hard drive the size of “a pack of cigarettes in my pocket.”Yet the series has remained stubbornly straightforward, with spare narration and no music or modern techniques. It is optimized for watching every seven years, not bingeing, with plentiful catch-up footage repeated each time.“Every seven years we’d get a new commissioner and a new executive producer, and they all come into the program thinking they’re going to make some change,” Horton said. “Michael saw them all off,” at first politely and then with a colorful two-word phrase.His collaborators said that should they continue without him, this essence would carry through. “Michael felt very, very, very strongly that it must remain as it is,” Lewis said, noting that the director hated “tricksy, artsy-fartsy” documentaries.“His preference was simplicity, elegance,” she said. “It was about people and what they say and who they are. It was all about the stories.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Film About a Father Who’ Review: Family Secrets by Omission

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘Film About a Father Who’ Review: Family Secrets by OmissionIn her new documentary, Lynne Sachs assesses her relationship with her father, Ira Sachs Sr., who fathered children with multiple women.Ira Sachs Sr., as seen in Lynne Sachs’s documentary “Film About a Father Who.”Credit…Cinema GuildJan. 14, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETLynne Sachs shot the footage that became “Film About a Father Who” from 1984 to 2019, and her ideas about what form the movie might take — along with her impressions of her father — must have changed during that time. (Even movies themselves evolved. “Film About a Father Who” mixes 8- and 16-millimeter film, home videotapes and, from the near present, digital material.)This brisk, prismatic and richly psychodramatic family portrait finds Sachs assessing her relationship with her father, Ira Sachs Sr., described at one point as the “Hugh Hefner of Park City,” the Utah skiing enclave where the Sundance Film Festival is held. The filmmaker Ira Sachs Jr., Lynne’s brother, says their father can’t “be self-consciously sad or self-consciously joyful” — he always seems simply content. In his contemporary incarnation, their dad, with a bushy white mustache and shoulder-length hair, resembles an older version of The Dude from “The Big Lebowski.”[embedded content]He comes across as genuinely warm — but also as having a huge blind spot. Sachs Sr. fathered children with multiple women, taking what the movie implies has been a casual approach to paternity. In 2016, Lynne and the others learned that they had two half-siblings in addition to the ones they already knew about.It’s suggested that the elder Ira’s mother couldn’t take the “constant flow” of new relatives. The children’s economic circumstances also varied. A younger member of the Sachs brood says it’s difficult to be around siblings who grew up better-off than she did.But Lynne, intriguingly, doesn’t render an uncomplicated verdict on her father. He’s a blank, filled in differently in each circumstance. As the title (inspired by Yvonne Rainer’s “Film About a Woman Who”) indicates, he defies being reduced to one word.Film About a Father WhoNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 14 minutes. Watch through virtual cinemas.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Some Kind of Heaven’ Review: Hardly an Idle Retirement

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘Some Kind of Heaven’ Review: Hardly an Idle RetirementThis documentary co-produced by The New York Times visits a retirement community the size of a small city.Barbara Lochiatto, a resident of The Villages, in the documentary “Some Kind of Heaven.”Credit…Magnolia PicturesJan. 14, 2021, 7:00 a.m. ETSome Kind of HeavenNYT Critic’s PickDirected by Lance OppenheimDocumentary1h 21mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.“Some Kind of Heaven,” a documentary co-produced by The New York Times, pierces the bubble of The Villages, a Florida retirement community northwest of Orlando that has grown to the size of a small city. The architecture and even the local lore foster an illusion of history.Rather than present a cross-section of this 30-square-mile golf-opolis, the director, Lance Oppenheim, making his first feature, focuses on three sets of characters.Reggie and Anne, married for nearly five decades, have hit a rough patch. While Reggie embraces tai chi and says he likes using drugs that get him “to a spiritual place,” Anne laments that his “sense of reality has become even more out-there.” On their anniversary, he informs her that he has died and been reincarnated.[embedded content]For Barbara, newly widowed, life in The Villages is difficult without a partner. Dennis technically doesn’t live there at all. He sleeps in a van and hopes to meet a “nice-looking lady with some money.” (A guard who explains that The Villages isn’t functionally a gated compound cheerily greets drivers at an entrance without checking names.)Oppenheim finds no shortage of visual and situational comedy, whether it’s in a slow zoom on Dennis making a poolside move or courtroom video of Reggie ineptly defending himself before a judge. (There’s little mention of politics; “Some Kind of Heaven” had its premiere a year ago, before much of the coverage of The Villages’ significance in the 2020 presidential campaign.)But Oppenheim resists easy misanthropy, showing unexpected empathy for people who have cocooned themselves from the outside world, only to confront its headaches anyway.Some Kind of HeavenNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 21 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy’ Review: A Brisk Look Back at a Crisis

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy’ Review: A Brisk Look Back at a CrisisVeteran documentarian Stanley Nelson crafts a somewhat cursory primer on the 1980s crack epidemic.A scene from the documentary “Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy.”Credit…NetflixJan. 12, 2021, 5:18 p.m. ETCrack: Cocaine, Corruption & ConspiracyDirected by Stanley NelsonDocumentary, Crime, History1h 29mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.As its alliterative mouthful of a title suggests, the new Netflix documentary “Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy” takes on a many-headed beast. Racial injustice, economic inequities, police corruption, media ethics and foreign-policy scandals are all crammed — a bit too cursorily — into Stanley Nelson’s brisk primer on the 1980s crack epidemic.[embedded content]Told in eight chapters, the film begins with some scene-setting bits of archival footage. Speeches by President Ronald Reagan and clips from the 1987 drama “Wall Street” capture the era’s free-market capitalism, while its underside is illustrated by images of impoverished inner cities and the hip-hop that emerged from there. Former dealers explain that crack, a cheaper and more potent variant of cocaine, offered destitute youth a get-rich-quick scheme. The drug suddenly became more available than ever in the United States in the ’80s, which the movie links to shady C.I.A. dealings during the Iran-contra affair.In the film’s strongest moments, former peddlers, users, journalists and scholars unravel the narratives, often propelled by the media, that led to a disproportionate targeting of people of color during the war on drugs. A dealer recalls with horror how D.E.A. agents persuaded him to lure a teenager into buying crack in front of the White House just so President George H.W. Bush could have a cautionary tale to use in a televised speech.But Nelson tries to cover too much ground too fast, leading to some tonal fuzziness: In a too-brief segment on Black women’s exploitation during the crack era, a dealer’s seemingly amused recollection of how women would trade sexual favors for a hit goes oddly uncontextualized. A narrower focus might have allowed the film to better tease out such knotty material.Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & ConspiracyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch on Netflix.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Michael Apted, Versatile Director Known for ‘Up’ Series, Dies at 79

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMichael Apted, Versatile Director Known for ‘Up’ Series, Dies at 79His output included “Coal Miner’s Daughter” and a James Bond film. But he was best known for his long-running documentary series about life in Britain.The director Michael Apted with, from left, Jackie Bassett, Lynn Johnson and Susan Davis, three of the subjects of his documentary “28 Up” (1984), the fourth in a series that began with “Seven Up!” in 1964 and followed the lives of a group of British people in roughly seven-year intervals. (Ms. Johnson died in 2013.)Credit…Granada TelevisionJan. 8, 2021, 7:01 p.m. ETMichael Apted, a versatile director whose films were as varied as the James Bond picture “The World Is Not Enough” and the biographical dramas “Gorillas in the Mist” and “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” and who made his most lasting mark with the “Up” documentary series, which followed the lives of a group of British people in seven-year intervals for more than a half century, died on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 79.His agent in the United States, Roy Ashton, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause.Mr. Apted, who was British, was a researcher at Granada Television in England when he helped pick the 14 children, all of them 7, who became the subjects of “Seven Up!,” the initial documentary in the “Up” series, which was directed by Paul Almond and shown on British television in 1964.The film was intended as a one-off, but Mr. Apted picked up the ball seven years (more or less) later, acting as director of “7 Plus Seven,” broadcast in England in late 1970, in which he interviewed the same children, now at a more developed stage of life.Then came “21 Up” in 1977, “28 Up” in 1984 and so on, with new installments arriving every seven years, all directed by Mr. Apted. “63 Up” was released in 2019.Collectively, the films became a serial portrait of a group of ordinary people advancing through life, from childhood through adulthood, charting their different paths, changing perspectives and various fates (one participant, Lynn Johnson, died in 2013). The New York Times in 2019 called it “the most profound documentary series in the history of cinema.”The intent of the original program in 1964 was to look at different segments of Britain’s class system. Thanks to Mr. Apted’s persistence, “Up” became something more.“I realized for the first time, after 20 years on the project, that I really hadn’t made a political film at all,” he wrote in 2000. “What I had seen as a significant statement about the English class system was in fact a humanistic document about the real issues of life.”Mr. Apted in Los Angeles in 2012. His “Up” series, The New York Times said in 2019, was “the most profound documentary series in the history of cinema.”Credit…Robert Yager for The New York TimesManohla Dargis, summarizing “63 Up” in The Times, wrote, “There’s great pleasure in revisiting this series, seeing who turned out just fine and sometimes better than you might have expected or hoped.”While revisiting “Up” periodically across six decades, Mr. Apted worked in television and commercial film.“Agatha” (1979), a fictional drama about the novelist Agatha Christie, starred Vanessa Redgrave in the title role. Mr. Apted had particular success in the 1980s, beginning in 1980 with “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” about the country singer Loretta Lynn, played by Sissy Spacek, who won the best-actress Oscar.Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn in Mr. Apted’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (1980). She won an Oscar for her performance.Credit…Universal StudiosThe next year he directed the John Belushi-Blair Brown comedy “Continental Divide”; two years later came the crime drama “Gorky Park,” based on the Martin Cruz Smith novel, starring William Hurt. In 1988 there was “Gorillas in the Mist,” the story of the naturalist Dian Fossey; its five Oscar nominations included one for Sigourney Weaver, who played Ms. Fossey.Mr. Apted’s 1990s films included “Thunderheart” (1992), a thriller with Val Kilmer, and the drama “Nell” (1994), a vehicle for Jodie Foster. Then came his entry in the James Bond franchise — “The World Is Not Enough” (1999), with Pierce Brosnan as agent 007.In a 2010 interview with The Times, Mr. Apted reflected on his one regret about the “Up” series — that his initial choice of children was unbalanced, 10 boys but only 4 girls — and how his choices of mainstream films might have been a way to compensate for that.“The biggest social revolution in my life, growing up in England, has been the change in the role of women in society,” he said. “We didn’t have civil rights and Vietnam in England, but I think that particular social revolution is the biggest thing, and I missed it by not having enough women. And because I didn’t have enough women, I didn’t have enough choice of what options were in front of women who were building careers and having families and all this sort of stuff.”He continued: “Looking at everything from ‘Agatha’ through ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter,’ from ‘Nell’ and “Continental Divide,’ they’re all to do with women’s role in society and what women have to do to have a role in society, or the choices women have to make to stay in society or have a voice in society, in both straightforward and eccentric ways. That’s always interested me. And that, I think, stems from the feeling that I slightly missed out.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.A complete obituary will appear shortly.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Fran Lebowitz and Martin Scorsese Seek a Missing New York in ‘Pretend It’s a City’

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyFran Lebowitz and Martin Scorsese Seek a Missing New York in ‘Pretend It’s a City’The Netflix series, featuring Lebowitz and directed by Scorsese, offers acerbic commentary and a sense of yearning for a pre-pandemic metropolis.Martin Scorsese and Fran Lebowitz, as seen in the new Netflix documentary series, “Pretend It’s a City,” are longtime friends. “It’s about being around Fran,” said Scorsese, who directed the series.Credit…NetflixJan. 7, 2021Updated 2:24 p.m. ETHad this past New Year’s Eve been a normal one, Fran Lebowitz and Martin Scorsese would have spent it as they usually do: with each other and a few close friends, in the screening room in Scorsese’s office, watching a classic movie like “Vertigo” or “A Matter of Life and Death.”The year they got together to see “Barry Lyndon,” they watched a rare, high-quality print made from the director Stanley Kubrick’s original camera negative.“And I said, ‘What’s a camera negative?’” Lebowitz recalled in a group video call with Scorsese on Tuesday. “And then all of the movie lunatics glared at me, like I admitted to being illiterate.”In previous years, when they were feeling especially energetic, Scorsese said with some audible melancholy, “We used to have one screening before midnight and then have another screening after.”But this time, their annual custom had to be put on hold. Instead, Lebowitz explained: “I talked to Marty on the phone. We commiserated about how horrible we felt, how awful it was not to be doing that.”Lebowitz, the author, humorist and raconteur, and Scorsese, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker, were speaking from their individual New York homes to discuss their latest collaboration, the documentary series “Pretend It’s a City.” They are longtime friends who, as they continue to wait out the coronavirus pandemic, have lately been unable to see much of each other or the city with which they are irrevocably associated.A similar, bittersweet air hangs over the seven-part series, which Netflix will release on Friday. A follow-up to Scorsese’s 2010 nonfiction film “Public Speaking,” “Pretend It’s a City” (which Scorsese also directed) chronicles the acerbic Lebowitz in interviews, live appearances and strolls through New York as she shares stories about her life and insights about the city’s constant evolution in recent decades.Of course, the Netflix series was initiated before the pandemic, and Lebowitz and Scorsese are supremely aware that it depicts a bustling, energized New York that now feels just out of reach — and which they both hope will return soon.In the meantime, “Pretend It’s a City” offers a tantalizing snapshot of New York in full bloom, along with Lebowitz’s lively and unapologetic commentary on what it means to live there.As she explained: “I don’t care whether people agree with me or not. My feeling if someone doesn’t agree with me is, OK, you’re wrong. That is one thing that I’ve never worried about.”Scorsese gently replied, “I had that impression.”Lebowitz and Scorsese spoke further about the making of “Pretend It’s a City” and the impact that the pandemic has had on them. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.”I have lived in New York long enough to know that it will not stay the way it is now,” said Lebowitz, who moved to the city in 1970.Credit…NetflixI was surprised to learn from “Pretend It’s a City” that neither of you recall when you first met.FRAN LEBOWITZ That’s because we’re old and we have many friendships. I don’t mean old in the sense that we don’t remember things, because I believe we both have perfect memories. But because there’s so many years and so many people. I guess we met at a party, because where else would I have met him? Obviously, I go to a lot more parties than Marty. That’s why Marty made so many movies and Fran wrote so few books.MARTIN SCORSESE I really recall us talking the most at John Waters’s 50th birthday party. It was after “Casino” came out.LEBOWITZ Of course, you were not averse to hearing how much I loved it.SCORSESE No, I was not at all.LEBOWITZ Even though I’m not as Italian as you might imagine [laughs], Marty’s parents and a lot of my father’s relatives — all of whom were working-class Jews — have a lot of parallels that are very well-known. The big difference is, the food is better in Italians’ houses.SCORSESE We liked the Jewish food better.LEBOWITZ No, no, no, there’s no comparison.After working together on “Public Speaking,” what made you want to collaborate on another documentary project?SCORSESE I enjoyed making “Public Speaking.” I found it freeing, in terms of narrative. But primarily, it’s about being around Fran. I really would like to know what she thinks, pretty much every day, as it’s happening. I’d like a running commentary — not all the time, but one that I can dip in and out of during the day.Do either of you worry that Fran is a finite resource and you will eventually exhaust her supply of wit?LEBOWITZ You mean, am I worried about running out of things to say? No. I am worried about running out of money. But it never even occurred to me that I would not have something to say. It’s just there. It’s like having a trick thumb.The series is divided into fanciful chapters like “Cultural Affairs” and “Department of Sports & Health.” How did you settle on these subjects?SCORSESE We always felt we should have topics. She’ll start on a topic, and then it’ll go off like a jazz riff into a thousand other places. Eventually, we might be able to pull it back. In a lot of the films I make, the types of actors I work with, the dialogue is like music — it’s the timing and the emphasis. She has that.LEBOWITZ Of course I am the world’s most digressive speaker, but what you’re really seeing at work is editing. I don’t remember how many days we shot this but I’m confident that it was an infinitesimal amount compared to how much time it took him to edit.SCORSESE I try to get that kind of freedom in my narrative films, but I very often am stuck to a plot.LEBOWITZ I am plot-free, so no problem. [Laughter.]Among the locations where you filmed Fran is at the Queens Museum, where we see her standing amid the Panorama of the City of New York, a highly detailed scale model that Robert Moses had built for the 1964 World’s Fair. What was it like to shoot there?LEBOWITZ I did knock over the Queensboro Bridge. The guy who’s in charge of that, the day we shot there, was in a panic the entire time. And I proved him right.SCORSESE That was the only time that I ever yelled “Action!” I don’t know what possessed me. It must have thrown you off or something.LEBOWITZ I did not destroy it, I just knocked it over.SCORSESE By the way, it is magnificent, that model.LEBOWITZ I’m not sure it makes up for Robert Moses. [Laughter.] It made you realize that if only Robert Moses had done everything in miniature, we wouldn’t hate Robert Moses.How did the pandemic affect the making of this series?LEBOWITZ We shot it way before there was a virus. When the virus happened, Marty said, “What should we do? What can we do?” At the height of the shutdown, I went out walking around the city, and Marty sent Ellen Kuras [the director of photography on “Pretend It’s a City”], and what she filmed was incredibly beautiful. But I said to Marty, “I think we should ignore it.”SCORSESE We tried it. We edited sequences. It was OK, and then a week later, the city changed again. All these stores were closed and they had boards up. A week later, something else changed. So I said, “Let’s just stop it.”LEBOWITZ We’re not journalists. We don’t have to be on top of the news.The series was filmed before the pandemic shut down much of New York. Looking back, what Lebowitz and Scorsese seem to miss most, aside from maybe hanging in person, is dining out. Credit…NetflixDoes the series feel different to you because of the pandemic?LEBOWITZ There’s a difference for sure. I thought of the title, “Pretend It’s a City,” when New York was packed with morons who would stand in the middle of the sidewalk. And I would yell at them: “Move! Pretend it’s a city!” The people who have seen it since then — an agent of mine said, “Oh, it’s a love letter to New York.” Before the virus, it was me complaining about New York. Now people think it has some more lyrical, metaphorical meaning.Do you worry that New York won’t fully return to what it was before the pandemic?LEBOWITZ I have lived in New York long enough to know that it will not stay the way it is now. There is not a square foot of New York City, a square foot, that’s the same as it was when I came here in 1970. That’s what a city is, even without a plague. But I’d like to point out, there were many things wrong with it before. After the big protests in SoHo, I saw a reporter interviewing a woman who was a manager of one of the fancy stores there. The reporter said to her, “What are you going to do?” And she said, “There’s nothing we can do until the tourists come back.” I yelled at the TV and I said, “Really? You can’t think what to do with SoHo without tourists? I can! Let me give you some ideas.” Because I remember it without tourists. How about, artists could live there? How about, let’s not have rent that’s $190,000 a month? How about that? Let’s try that.Has the pandemic ever made you feel more vulnerable or aware of your own fragility?LEBOWITZ It makes me feel angrier. Luckily, I have managed to distill all human emotion into anger. It doesn’t matter what the initial emotion is: It could be despair, sadness, fear — basically I experience it as anger. It makes me feel angry because this didn’t have to happen at all.SCORSESE I actually don’t know where I belong on the island. I grew up downtown when it was pretty tough in that area. Now it’s very chic. It’s no longer home for me, certainly. I’ve grown old, and out, in a way. I have been locked in and working on FaceTime. I have been trying to make this movie [“Killers of the Flower Moon”] since March. Every two days, they say we’re going. And then they say, no we’re not. It’s a state of anxiety and tension. But in any event, I really haven’t gone out that much. I can’t take a chance, either.The day the pandemic is over — there’s no longer any risk of the coronavirus and we can all return to our usual lives — what’s the first thing you do?SCORSESE First thing I would say is, please, to go to a restaurant. There’s a few that I’m missing a great deal. I’ll never eat outside. I don’t understand how you can sit there and the fumes from the buses come in. I don’t get it. It’s not Paris.LEBOWITZ I’ve been eating outside. There is no greater testament to how much I hate to cook than the fact I will sit outside in 28-degree weather, trying to eat with gloves on. I would like to eat at a restaurant. Also, I would like to crawl around underneath the tables in the rare book room at the Strand and when I bring the things to the register and the guy goes, “Where did you find this?” It was under the table. “We haven’t priced it yet! You’re not supposed to take it out from under there.” Well, I did, so how much is it?AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More