Penguins,
Widows, Forgiveness
Who doesn’t love penguins? I certainly do, all 17 species. It’s been 18 years since I had some memorable
encounters with these remarkable seabirds at the other end of the earth. This wonderful documentary helmed by Peter
Getzels, Harriet Gordon Getzels and Erik Osterholm, was produced in 2014 but
appears to have had a theatrical release only in 2017. (It’s available on iTunes. I saw it via the Sundance Now streaming
service.) The film follows the voyage of
a research team led by Ron Naveen to document penguin numbers in order to
understand what is happening to these populations and their adaptability in the
face of climate change. (Read more about
his decades-long Antarctic Site inventory project on the film’s website above.)
What
made the movie extra special for me was that it was on the same Russian ship,
the Akademik Ioffe, following a similar route to the one I did in December
2000—from Buenos Aries to the Falkland Islands, to South Georgia, to Deception
Island at the tip of the Antarctic peninsula. South Georgia, home to millions
of King penguins, is also central to the legendary feats of explorer Sir Ernest
Shackleton. The abandoned whaling station at Grytviken is where he is buried.
Naveen’s crew got there on an expedition that included a granddaughter of Frank
Wild, Shackleton’s second-in-command whose ashes were laid to rest there beside
Shackleton’s grave.
South Georgia is the most extraordinary
place I have ever experienced on this planet. My best prize-winning photo was
taken there (the World Wildlife Fund members international grand prize).
From
there to the desolate landscape of Deception island, a still active volcano,
where Naveen’s scientific crew transfer to a smaller vessel and begin the
counting of the island’s chinstrap penguin colonies, braving difficult terrain
and challenging weather conditions. It’s efforts like these to study changes in
the natural world that give us a deeper appreciation of the future of life on
earth. A
King penguin to penguin, Fortuna Bay, South Georgia island
Several
more Toronto film festival selections are now in theatres:
Widows (UK/U.S.
https://www.facebook.com/WidowsMovie/)
British director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) takes on the crime
action-thriller genre in this bleak affair.
The setting is the mean streets and corrupt politics of South Side
Chicago in which a crooked African American named Jamal Manning who employs a
lethal sidekick (played by Daniel Kaluuya of the 2017 hit Get Out) is challenging an established white machine politician
Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell) the son of irascible patriarch Tom Mulligan
(Robert Duvall). But the key figure is not
these bad guys but Veronica (Viola Davis), the wife of crime boss Harry
Rawlings (Liam Neeson) and his gang who have stolen a couple $million from
Jamal and seemingly been blown up with it.
So Jamal goes after Veronica for the lost loot and she enlists the three
other desperate widows Alice (Elizabeth Debicki), Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and
Belle (Cynthia Erivo), and one other, to pull off a heist using Harry’s
playbook. These women go from being supposed innocents living off the avails of
to becoming badass gun-wielding robbers.
Except
that Veronica isn’t actually a widow, not yet anyway, since her dirty Harry has
set up his crew, is secretly consorting with another widow, and is in cahoots
with the junior Mulligan. It’s more sleazy than plausible, though there’s some
satisfaction that Veronica gets Harry back in the end. Time’s up indeed! But if one is going full action-thriller
mode, I confess that, for all its fast and furious excess, I enjoyed more the Tom
Cruise global war-on-terror fantasy Mission
Impossible – Fallout that had a quartet of strong female roles. B
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (U.S. https://www.facebook.com/CanYouEverForgiveMeMovie/)
Melissa McCarthy has made a name for
riotous behavior in a string of raunchy dumb comedies. She admirably extends her range and proves
her acting chops in this drama, directed by Marielle Heller, about the
real-life travails of Lee Israel, a penurious author of biographies who,
forsaken by her agent, turns to forging witty letters under the names of famous
authors and personalities. The chatty and catty screenplay by Nicole Holofcener
and Jeff Witty is based on Israel’s memoir; its eponymous title taken from an
alleged Dorothy Parker line.
Lee, a
depressive dumpy lesbian, lives alone with an aging sick cat. Her sole social
contact seems to be a drinking buddy, a gay gadabout Jack Hock (Richard E.
Grant hamming it up) who gets in on the act but whom she is unwise to
trust. Eventually duped collectors get
wise and the FBI come calling. The jig is up. Lee is charged and convicted but
avoids prison time and the scheme makes for a great confessional story. Watching
how well McCarthy and Grant play off each other on screen makes it easier to
forgive too. A-
Comments
Post a Comment