Appalachian Journey features the string trio of Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O’Connor with guest singers Alison Krauss and James Taylor.  The music is varied and only loosely to be identified as Appalachian (although we are certainly happy to take credit for it!)..  But it has the typical Appalachian music blend of melancholy and exuberant, with melancholy being predominant.  Some music is arranged from traditional tunes and other was composed by Meyer or O’Connor.  Alison Krauss sang “Slumber My Darling” and James Taylor joined the group for “Hard Times Come Again No More.”  The balance of the 90 minute program consisted of pure instrumentals featuring the trio and occasionally a duet.

A host of adjectives would apply to this musical experience: beautiful, haunting, rousing, complex, discordant, uplifting, sobering, magical.  It was sometimes hard to decide which was more powerful, the music itself or the musicianship of the artists. I’m sure that the performers would have remembered notes that were a little flat or an entrance made a little slowly, but to the mortal listener it comes across as pure perfection.  You feel you are watching and listening to something that no one else could match.

This craftsmanship also extends to the filming and production.  You never see a camera but they seem to be everywhere and by the dozens.  You watch the hands, the fingers, the faces, the glances, the thrill of the wild applause.  The hands were amazing to watch, and so different.  Yo-Yo Ma’s hands are delicate and womanly.  Edgar Meyer’s look like those of a carpenter or longshoreman.  But each works like magic and so fast the eye can barely follow.

Another remarkable part of this experience is the fullness of the sound this 3-person group achieves.  I wager that if you played this music for 10 people (without a view of the group on the stage) and asked them to guess the number of musicians, everyone would guess many more than three.  Of course the Canadian Brass has only five and the King’s Singers only six, and the same holds true for them.

Musical tastes vary greatly, we know, and this music might not appeal to you.  But I suggest you give it a try, especially if it sounds like something a little out of your usual realm.  I loved it and will watch and listen again.

Andrew is shy, a virgin, and mostly a loner except for his best friend, Carlos.  Andrew’s mother, a widow, likes younger men and brings them home for the night on a regular basis.  Andrew’s night time refuge is to turn up the radio and listen to a late night radio talk show.  His glimmer of hope is an unanticipated romance, his first, with a local waitress from the restaurant where his mother also works.  Andrew’s final dilemma is that he cannot stay in Barstow with his mother and first love and still fulfill the dreams his teacher inspired.

The moving speech in which his teacher/mentor described in great detail his risk of settling for a life of mediocrity in Barstow must have weighed heavily upon Andrew.  To the end you keep wondering if he will or if he won’t leave Barstow.

As storytelling, this film is both moving and insightful.  The acting is believable and quite adequate to carry the quite ingenious plot.  Although the ending is a little sudden and forced (a common fault), it is easily forgiven.  Leaving Barstow is well worth the 89 minute investment.

Watch the trailer for Leaving Barstow.

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I recommend this film to anyone who may someday suffer Alzheimer’s disease, or to anyone who may care for a loved one who does.  That would include most of us.

Martin (Sven Wollter) and Barbara (Viveka Seldahl) meet as he guest-conducts the orchestra where she is the lead violinist.  They fall madly in love, although both are unhappily married.  In a short time they are divorced respectively and beginning a life that celebrates their passion for each other and their shared passion for music.  Barbara becomes an active participant in Martin’s composing.  She is proud of him and he of her–both with good reason.  Perhaps a third of the film is devoted to this euphoric life.  Is it too good to be true?  Too good to last?

It must be difficult for an actor to suggest the subtle beginnings of this disease.  Hints, but only that.  Something wrong, or?  No, just a little stress and fatigue, perhaps.  And it must be difficult for Viveka’s character to portray all the shades of concern and denial, the back and forth between patient understanding and frustrated anger, and the dilemma of wanting to “do something” but finding no reasonable choices available.  To watch the film with suspended disbelief is to participate in a nightmare ride of emotions.

This is heightened by the very public persona of Martin.  He is the splendid hero of adoring audiences.  And when the signs of his disease begin to appear as embarrassing public lapses, you hold your breath and fear what may happen next.  The scene where Martin uninates in a flower pot in a public restaurant is heart rending.  You know it will get worse, not better.  But Barbara holds on to her hope, then despairs, then hopes again. Until finally the charming man she had loved is gone.  He no longer knows her.  Her sense of loss and grief is unrelieved.

In a perfect world, this would not happen, but it does every day.  This story is beautifully portrayed, heartrendingly and unflinchingly.

It may sound as if this movie is nothing but a “downer” after the initial love story.  It is hard to explain why that isn’t so.  Although you are watching two brilliant people in the days of their terrible darkness, you still observe a stubborness of the human spirit.  It models the strength to meet the worst that life can throw at us.  None of us will come away wishing to be in either of these places, but we will admire the struggle and wish that we might have the same fortitude.

The acting in this film is superb.  Martin and Barbara’s characters are completely believable.  The early Martin is brilliant, commanding, and charming, much in contrast to his lapse into the disease.  His wife and his adoring audiences–including us–find it incredible that such a person could ever decline as he did.  But in reality we have only to consider the similar journeys of Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston, Barry Goldwater, and Winston Churchill–to name a few.

Sven and Viveka were married to each other in real life, and she, not he, died shortly after A Song for Martin was completed.

One side or the other began singing Christmas carols.  The other side listened, wondering, then began to sing as well.  Soldiers sang like the children they used to be.  Some were moved to tears.  Then they came out of their trenches and met in no-man’s-land among the bodies of the dead  They exchanged candies and cigarettes and worked together to bury their dead.

The fact is that such activity was strictly forbidden by both armies.  It is called “fraternization with the enemy” and it can be punished as treason.  Once begun, the urge toward peace escalated and got totally out of hand from the military perspective.  At the end of the day, having seen the human faces of their enemies, neither side wanted to go back to killing the other.

The role of religion in this story is especially thought provoking.  Both armies shared the same Judeo-Christian heritage.  Many on both sides were of the same Catholic persuasion.  War had divided them but underneath it their faith united them.  This was despite the fact that priests were divided as to God’s position with regard to the killing.  Clerics on both sides urged soldiers to kill the enemy for the glory of God who was certainly on their side.  It seems to be true that no matter how governments train young men to become inhuman killers, the risk of their apostasy remains.  Allegiance to a god of war can turn instead to a god of peace, especially on Christmas eve.

If you do watch this film, be sure to watch the special features and interview with writer/director Christian Carion (of the excellent The Girl from Paris).  It appears that he did a considerable amount of historical research and attempted to be faithful to documented events.

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I thought the film did a good job of presenting and exploring loneliness and the courage and stamina needed to cope with the emensity of the sea in a small boat.  The wide shots of the vast and empty ocean are powerful.  I was reminded of a trip I made across the country alone and on a motorcycle.  There was a road I traveled in Colorado and into Utah where I felt a powerful feeling of vastness and emptiness and aloneness.  There were no cars, no towns, no human sounds, no radio signals.  I can still recall that feeling, and it returned while watching Deep Water.

I will not go into story of Donald Crowhurst and the manner in which he became the only contestant to lose his life.  If you are not aware, you should watch the film and let the story unfold.

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Nick is the main character who has just learned about his cancer.  He is a newspaper photographer.  He sees things in images.  When his thoughts wander you see those images rolling past as in a slide show.  Meryl is woman he meets by chance and she is an artist.  She sees things in painted animations.  It’s about the thoughts that “cross our minds” and are usually unexpressed if not surpressed.  We all have these flashbacks, these forecasts, these conversations with ourselves and with imagined others.  It isn’t often that we see them illustrated so honestly and realistically.

It would be wrong to brand this as a morbid film.  Nor is it a sentimental one.  It is really an excellent study of life and there is a sense of community in all of its character studies.  People are trying to find their ways, and often they are trying to help each other in doing so.

If you decide to see the film, I’d love to know what you think.

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Jennifer’s journey of self discovery and healing is believable and instructive.  I like films that do this well, my favorite being Paul Newman’s role in The Verdict, with the closing scene that shows him sipping coffee instead of downing booze.  My favorite line in the film: Jennifer’s litany of “F words” at the dinner table near the end.  Don’t miss it.

There are sad film endings that are totally so, and there are happy film endings that are totally so.  This one is a hybrid.  The outcome is sad and happy both.  I’ll not give it away.  See for yourself.  (But do have kleenex handy, just in case.)

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Bill Nighy plays a British government official (Lawenrce) preparing for a G8 Summit.  The girl he meets in the cafe is played by Kelly Macdonald (Gina).  They become chance friends and later lovers, but this is not the point of the story.  Lawrence is a good man and has a conscience, but bureaucracy has dulled and discouraged it.  Gina’s is another matter.  Invited to the Summit meeting in Iceland and given the opportunity to meet political leaders she has only read about, she becomes outspoken in her social advocacy.  Her confrontations are embarrassing and confounding because they are dogged and yet articulate.  Lawrence is forced to offer his resignation and Gina is escourted from the meeting room.

At this point in the film, you are conflicted.  There is suspicion that Gina is a planted activist who had duped Lawrence to gain this entry.  There is even more suspicion when Lawrence learns that she has been recently released from prison.  You are in belief that her fervent attempts to influence the leaders of her government have been an exercise in futility.  I will leave it to your viewing of the film to discover if this is so or not.

After watching any movie, I always ask myself if I would ever want to watch it again.  This one I only watched last evening, and I could gladly take the journey again tonight.

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The village that seduced Dr. Lewis had once been a hard-working place where fishing was good and the living was good.  But fishing had declined and no one could make a living at it any more.  So the people did the only thing they could–they signed up for public assistance.  And now these folk who once were proud of themselves and their work became ashamed, and their village declined and began to look run-down.  People sadly lined up at the post office to get their welfare checks, then lined up at the bank to cash them.  They illustrate the fact that most welfare recipients do it out of necessity, not out of choice.

Then there was a glimmer of hope.  A factory was looking to locate in the region and they could try to get it to come to their village.  The catch, the mayor found,  was that they must have a doctor.

The film shows their clumsy and often ridiculous efforts to transform themselves, or the appearance, at least, so that Dr. Lewis would agree to live with them and be their doctor.  This included, for example, evesdropping on his phone conversations to gain intelligence about this likes and dislikes.  In the end their pretensions and hypocricies were exposed, and they became ashamed about them.  Then the welcome truth comes out.   Dr. Lewis has fallen in love with this place and these people for what they really were, not for what they had pretended to be.

For those who need a happy ending, this one will do.

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The storytelling in this film is superb.  You sit on the edge of your seat waiting for the next clue to emerge.  I certainly won’t give it away here.

View the film trailer:

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