"Noon, summer, the street is full of tomatoes,
the light splits into two tomato halves, the
juice flows through the streets ... It radiates
a clear light, a benign majesty. Tragically, we
must assassinate it: the knife plunges into the
living pulp it is a blood red organ, a new sun,
deep and inexhaustable."

_Jonah who will be 25 in the year 2000_

Regardless of one's politics, Armond White's review of _The
Season in Quincy: Four portraits of John Berger_ is a stinging,
powerful critique of our times, impossible to ignore. I haven't
seen the Berger documentary; that film will probably never come
to my local theaters. But I certainly fondly remember the piece's
main point of reference, _Jonah Who Will be 25 in the Year 2000_,
cowritten by Berger and director Alain Tanner, reportedly omitted
forgotten that documentary. It is true, as White wrote, that Tanner,
his utopian vision, and his gentle, idiosyncratic humanism have
been marginalized; the English-subtitled _Jonah_ DVD is out of
print, available only on amazon.fr as a collector's item.
Fortunately I have the screenplay. It isn't the film itself,
but does capture the sparkling wit and even describes the camera
movement. (The black-and-white film stills are nice too.)
Tanner's film reminds me of _The Last Days of Disco_, done in
a more political and rural hue. Berger and Tanner's characters
warn about the coming Fascism; they must have been prescient
about Donald Trump and Marie Le Pen.

Regarding the "academic elite" that Armond White rails against.
I deal more with the technical (science/engineering) side of
the campus. As there is no Hippocratic Oath in these
disciplines, solipsism is the order of the day. You know your
are in deep trouble when young faculties from universities
take to prefacing their technical colloquiums with discussions
of their favorite comic book superheroes.

The older generation may all be fervent Obama voters, but
they increasingly worshop at the crass altar of capitalism
and chase "intellectual property." Many pay lip service to
climate, use the subject to window-dress their own private
research obsession. Of the last two department chairs I
had lunch with (thankfully I seldom have to do that),
one seemed to think the main problem facing humanity is the
surplus of leisure after robots take over manual labor; the
other berated Angela Merkel for letting in Syrian refugees.

Movies tend to portray scientists as out-of-touch obsessives
insulated from the needs of the world and oblivious to the
chaos their "advances" may unleash; these are regretfully
90% correct. Where are the films that showcase the humanistic
side of technology? A survey of recent films gives dismal
results. _Interstellar_ misses a chance to highlight the
role of energy research in our progress/survival; instead
it overflow with the usual mumbo-jumbo about relativity
and wormholes. (It is astounding that so many Americans
deny climate change, the evidence of which is before their
eyes, but embrace the big bang theory, black holes, and
sundry astrophysics fairy tales they neither see nor
understand.) The much-praised _Ex-Machina_ deals with an
urgent topic -- A.I. -- but is about 50 years behind both
the Spielberg film and _Blade Runner_'s sophistication
(never mind the recent _Battlestar Galactica_ series).
Alicia Vikander is the flavor of the month, this year's
Felicity Jones. She is a decent actress but nothing
special, barely measuring up to Darryl Hannah or Sean
Young so many decades ago. _Transcendence_ tries to
have it both ways; having an innovator as both visionary
savior of manknid and overbearing tyrant. It is one of
the few films to buy into the U.S. Department of Energy's
"nanoscience" hype; specialists in that field no doubt had
heart attacks seeing the nanoparticles self-assemble
into Old Testament angels of vengence. But the film
stars Rebecca Hall (Johnny Depp is barely on screen),
and she is very, very special indeed. Hopefully this
will be her breakthrough year.

Let me hasten to add that I know some very good people
in science. I even spent a month with college graduates
in West Africa screening for the Ebola virus in
Biohazard level 4 labs (I was a glorified clerk but they
were laboring in protective gear many hours a day).
I wish the movies would show more of decent scientists
and engineers just doing their jobs. I suddenly remember
taking a tram from Geneva to Annemasse when I was visiting
a few years ago. If the tram existed during the time
of the _Jonah_ film, the Miou-Miou character (who lives
there and works in Geneva) would have had a much easier
life. Public transportation -- such an engineering and
humanistic marvel. If only more Americans understand that.

--------------------------------------------------------

I have always resisted watching _Villa des Roses_ because
it is supposed to be so sad. It turned out to be a
sparkling yarn, brimming with visual and verbal wit.
It stars Julie Delpy as a chambermaid in a magnificent
ruin of a Paris hotel, failing for a German artist staying
there and ruining her life. But until the very sad ending,
the film is full of life and energy. This is the best Delpy
performance I remember outside the Volker Schlondorff
adapation of _Homo Faber_. Shirley Henderson and Harriet
Walter trade verbal barbs all movie long; the acrobatic
camera zooms remind me of Jean-Pierre Jeunet (in fact this
film precedes Jeunet's _A Very Long Engagement_). The
set also reminds me of _2046_, and _Byzantium_. I much prefer
this film to _The Grand Budapest Hotel_ or even Renoir's
_Diary of a Chambermaid_. The Belgian director Frank
van Passel has done almost nothing since then. A shame.

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