2020 - It's a Wrap

 

2020 was such an unusual year, unlike any other in most of our lives.  So unusual that it was hard to tell fact from fiction, reality from illusion.   It was a year in which the tinfoil hat conspiracy theory guys like Alex Jones often turned out to be more credible than CBS.  We were locked down, our cities were ravaged by riots, and our civil liberties kicked to the curb.  Our children were locked out of school.  Our friendships and relationships got reshuffled.  We were barred from movie theaters, sporting events and live music.   Many of us have developed serious questions about the sustainability of our Republic and Western Civilization generally.

Nonetheless, I’m putting together my annual “Best Of” lists, which will have a particular flavor and perspective because of the time that we find ourselves in.  Here are my recommendations and my favorites from 2020- A Year Gone Mad.

Film
Despite the lockdown and paucity of mainstream films, some outlets like siskelfilmcenter.org were able to pivot quickly to streaming and fill the gap.  It is certainly not the same as the theater (just as Zoom is not the same as an in person meeting), but there were still some high quality films that were (and are available).   Here are the top three that I liked:

Mr. Jones
If you see only one film this year, this should be it.  Thirty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.   Many of the people that escaped Stalin’s terrors have passed on, too.   An entire generation is removed from the gulags, the killings, and the starvation.  As time has passed, the stories of the horrors have faded.  In this time of worries over a tyrannical government and an obsequious press,  this film by Polish director Agnieszka Holland brings it all back.   It is the story of Garth Jones, a Welsh journalist, that sneaks out to the countryside and uncovers the truth about the intentional starvation of the Ukrainians, while other colleagues are plied with alcohol and prostitutes to keep them from reporting on this man-made humanitarian disaster.   Not only does this film resonate because of current events, it struck a chord with me personally as some of the parents of friends of mine actually lived through this.   Do not miss this film.  It will make you see things differently as current events unfold and remind you that the corruption of the media is not new.

The Cuban
The Cuban is heartwarming story of a dementia afflicted musician whose humanity is brought back to him by a daring young caretaker that discards the institutional food and brings him authentic Cuban cuisine and brings him Afro-Cuban music.  The soundtrack is wonderful as is the story of rebellion against the nursing home.   The film was criticized for being a bit maudlin.  Fair enough.  But if ever there was a time that we needed a film about restoring a person’s life and humanity, it’s now. 

Sweat
Sweat is a Polish film that won best film at the Chicago International Film Festival.  It is a Polish-Swedish film about a social media fitness star that picks up a stalker.  Like The Cuban, it explores the humanity of Sylvia (Magdalena Kolesnik) and the depth of the loneliness under her celebrity status—a kind of up to date, healthy drug-free Janis Joplin.   I loved the depiction of her extended Polish family, which I thought to be authentic.   Kolesnik has a great screen presence and is one of two young Polish actresses (Zofia Wichlacz- World on Fire below) that had outstanding performances.

Books

Nonfiction

My favorite book of the year was Erik Larsen’s The Splendid and the Vile, a detailed and well-written account of Winston Churchill’s first year in office.   The book provided lots of interesting nuggets about the Churchill family, Churchill himself and his numerous quirks and what day to day life was like during the Blitz.   Reading this book during lockdown was most meaningful because, like the Battle of Britain, you know that some people are going to die, the resolution is uncertain and you don’t know how long it will last. 

Given the political turbulence, riots, lockdown and a stolen election, along with the press of Wokeism, I turned to other writers to make sense of it all.  My favorite in this regard was Live Not By Lies: A Manuel for Christian Dissidents by Rod Dreher, but I also liked The Virtue of Nationalism by Yoram Hazony, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity,  by Douglas Murray and Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender and Identity and How this Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.  These books offer strong defenses of Western Civilization and Enlightenment thought generally and critique globalism, Critical Theory and the poison of Postmodernism. 

One of my favorite quotes is from Rod Dreher, who sums up postmodernism quite well:

Christians today must understand that, fundamentally,  they are not resisting a different politics, but rather what is effectively a rival religion.

Fiction

In fiction, I try to tackle a “project” every year.  Last year, I successfully did Moby-Dick for the Newberry Library 26 hour Moby-Dick read-a-thon.  Brimming with confidence over that achievement, I tried Middlemarch and got bogged down like Napoleon in the Russian winter about 2/3 of the way through.

Nonetheless, there were some winning novels this year.  The translation of Abigail by Hungarian writer Magda Szabo came out this year and this coming of age story of an adolescent girl during WWII was outstanding.   I liked it even better than her other acclaimed novel, The Door.   Lionel Shriver’s The Motion of the Body Through Space came in at number 2.  This novel about the complexities of a long term marriage, and the fight against aging was yet another excellent work by Shriver.  Finally, My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell was an uncomfortable, yet interesting novel about an affair between a boarding school teacher and a 15 year old student.  I reviewed this novel last spring (https://commonsense-mark.blogspot.com/2020/04/my-dark-vanessa.html)  and I think Russell is an interesting young writer and I expect good things from her in the future.   It's probably no accident that two of my three top novels involve adolescent girls struggling through very trying and confusing circumstances.  I think they resonated with me because I am deeply concerned about the effect that lockdown and pandemic and resulting isolation and interruption in their educational and social development that is being inflicted upon them.   These two novels remind us that adolescents are complex people too, and whatever insecurities we, as adults, are feeling about all this is magnified in them.

Television

World on Fire

I confess that I do not have much to evaluate on television.  I did not see the acclaimed miniseries Queen’s Gambit (which I plan to binge watch soon).  Like the book, The Splendid and the Vile, I ended up being riveted to stories about WWII, another time that lives were upended in a chaotic, unpredictable way.   World on Fire by PBS captivated me.   I thought Helen Hunt’s performance was spectacular and I was taken by the performance of young actress Zofia Wichlacz.   More generally, Season 1 focused a lot on the invasion of Poland and Polish resistance.  I liked the fact that Masterpiece used Polish actors and it added to its authenticity.  I highly recommend World on Fire if you haven’t yet caught up.

In a most unusual year, there were some sparkling gems in film, books and TV.   While we were locked out of theaters and music venues, there were still some artistic productions that salvaged a pretty awful year and made some of lockdown a bit more tolerable.