|
NO
STARS FOR THE ECLIPSE
by Robert Levin
One
weathercaster called it a "must-see light
and shadow show by the Old Master Himself."
But I can't say the recent solar eclipse was
worthy of the recommendation.
Not even total, and staged (in my location
anyway) behind a thick cloud cover that served
only to diffuse the vivid contrasts essential to
any dramatic effect, the "Old Master"
might have been faxing it in from deep space
somewhere for all the incandescence it could
claim. Quite frankly, as light shows go, I
thought more interesting work was being done at
the Electric Circus back in the sixties.
Now let's please not have any misunderstandings.
I'm aware that I'm criticizing the performance
of a venerable figure who, over the eons and in
every conceivable form and category, has
compiled an impressive oeuvre. If I have to
confess that a lot of His stuff is not to my
taste, that I find much of it heavy-handed or
impenetrable (when, indeed, it is not distracted
and slack), this doesn't mean I've failed to
recognize the enormous contribution He's made.
I'm thinking, of course, of the models some of
His stunning manipulations of the more volatile
natural elements provided for the Irwin Allen
disaster films. And, to be sure, there's His
introduction of death itself which, brilliantly
counterbalancing His earlier inventions of
genders and sex, forestalled the unwieldy
prospect of twenty-thousand expansion teams in
just the American League East (and, say, the
2001 playoffs extending well into the 2019
season).
But that's hardly been the limit of this
remarkable innovation's reach and impact. In its
absence, "Scream 2," which everyone
agrees was even better than "Scream,"
would doubtless have languished in perpetual
turnaround since filmgoers would have found the
emotions of fear and panic depicted in the
original much too weird and elusive for a sequel
to ever be greenlighted.
What's more, we can be reasonably certain that
the popular denouement of the "happy
ending"--the product of an inevitable
backlash--would never have been developed.
So while it's often, for me, like feeling
obliged to respect whatever that was that Marcel
Marceau used to do, even as you knew that one
more minute of it and your lungs were going to
erupt with blood, I'm more than prepared to
honor the "Old Master's" achievements.
It's just that I'm not what you'd call a huge
fan.
What puts me off most is...well...it's His
LORDLY attitude. I could forgive Him a lot--yes,
even those tedious revivals of His
wind-and-water specials that take out half a
state--were He less disdainful of his audience,
less willfully opaque and ambiguous. I know this
"mysterious ways" thing is a
cornerstone of His persona and I can understand
His reluctance to give it up. But, bordering on
the pathological, His aversion to making His
meanings known is wearing a little thin, don't
you think?
I'll allow that, however disappointing it may
be, it's ultimately of small consequence when He
mounts a shoddy eclipse. But it's something else
again when, for one especially egregious
example, He leaves you to blow out all your
circuits trying to figure just where Alan Keyes
fits into the notion that if you're on the
planet it's for a reason. |
