Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 71
February 20, 2022
Inventing Anna: Truth and Consequences
The wife and I binged Inventing Anna the past few nights, the nine-episode Shonda Rhimes series detailing the real-life rise and fall of Anna Delvey aka Anna Sorokin. It's superb television, for a bunch a reasons. Julia Garner in the title role was perfect, peerless, and Emmy-worthy. Pretty much the same for Anna Chlumsky who plays Vivian Kent, the fictitious name for the real reporter Jessica Pressler whose New York magazine story "How Anna Delvey Tricked New York's Party People" is the basis of the Netflix series. I haven't read the story, but the story in the movie is an incredible, powerful tale of a con artist, Anna, so charismatic that her lawyer and Vivian in their own ways practically fell in some kind of love with her.
But the question arises, as it always does with docu-dramas in any case, but especially those that tell us that what we see on the screen is true except when it isn't, about how much that we see on the screen is true? My wife did a little research, for example, and found that Jessica was pregnant while she was researching and reporting Anna's story, but didn't actually give birth at the crucial time that Vivien did in the series. Does that matter?
Well, no and yes. No, because, if the story on the screen is as riveting as Inventing Anna, what does it matter how much truth it conveys? But, yes, because part of the very reason that we find this narrative so riveting is our assumption that most of it is indeed truth, or closely based upon it.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in his Biographia Literaria back in 1817 about the "willing suspension of disbelief" that is the essential foundation for the enjoyment of poetry. We may know that the words are in whatever degree fictitious, i.e., not completely truthful. But our mind puts that aside and we laugh, cry, and everything in between about what we see on the page and now screen as if they were indeed 100% real.
So, by that standard, Inventing Anna gets the highest grade. Still, one cannot suspend one's disbelief forever. Fortunately in this case, the real world is still very much with us, and it will be fun and instructive, more than fun, to see what happens with Anna in the years ahead.
In the meantime, in addition to Garner and Chlumsky, I thought Katie Lowes as Rachel, Arian Moayed as Todd, and Anthony Edwards as Alan put in especially memorable performances in this unique memorable series.
February 19, 2022
Podcast Review of Suspicion 1.4
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 248, in which I review Suspicion episode 1.4 on Apple TV+.
Written blog post review of Suspicion 1.4
Podcast review of Suspicion 1.1-1.3
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
Podcast Review of Raised by Wolves 2.4
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 247, in which I review Raised by Wolves episode 2.4 on HBO Max.
written blog post review of this episode
Further listening:
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 2.3
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 2.1-2.2
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 1-3
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 4-5
podcast review of Raised by Wolves 6-10
Further reading:
Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Interaction of Space and Religion
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
February 18, 2022
Raised by Wolves 2.4: Kinds of Sentience and Conflicts
[Spoilers follow ... ]
Mother is the victor in every contest. She triumphs over Marcus, whose superhuman powers come from Mother's eyes. Mother easily repossesses them, and reclaims the awesome power that lets her then triumph over the Trust. It will be instructive to see how Mother's devotion to care for her children compares with the Trust's professed devotion to serve humanity.
But Mother may have a rival. The Frankenstein-like android brought back to life by Father may well have powers comparable to Mother's. How will Father's "creation" use them? Which side will she choose, or will she comprise her own side, and how will she then fare in implementing her choice?
Meanwhile. there's a beautiful and instructive more minor android vs human story with Vrille, though it's not really minor. The mentality of even a child android is impossible to predict and therefore effectively program.
I'll miss her character and I'll be back here next week with more.
See also Raised by Wolves 2.1-2: A Viking Out in Space, with Androids ... Raised by Wolves 2.3: Marcus and the Android Skeleton
And see also Raised by Wolves 1.1: Fast Action and Deep Philosophy ... Raised by Wolves 1.2-3: More than Meets the Eye ... Raised by Wolves 1.4-5: Halfway to Dune ...Raised by Wolves 1.6-7: The Look on Mother's Face ... Raised by Wolves 1.8-1.9: Frankenstein and Motherhood ... Raised by Wolves Season One Finale: The Serpent
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
Suspicion 1.4: Surprises and Invincibility
First, let me say that I'm really liking Suspicion on Apple TV+. It has great ambience, including the music, fine acting (including now Tom Rhys Harries as Eddie Walker), and a plot that keeps slapping you in the face with unexpected developments, often lethal. Episode 1.4 was the best so far, excelling in all of those pulsing qualities.
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
Sean nearly kills Tara, who's saved not by the UK police, but a bullet-proof vest. Sean is not invulnerable, but pretty close to it. He's stabbed but gets the better of his stabber, and after killing his stabber, Sean dresses his own wound with crazy glue. Later, the episode ends with Sean rescuing our four other, often hapless, suspects, and killing all of their attackers in the bargain. These, by the way, have American accents, and sound like Scott on a bad day -- which indeed he had -- but I'm guessing/hoping he wasn't among them.
So who sent the attackers? Likely Katherine, Leo's mother, but we can't be sure of that. We do get to see a lot more of Uma Thurman in this episode, but the true intentions of Katherine in this narrative remain a mystery. It's too easy to believe that she's behind the kidnapping, though I suppose that can't be discounted.
Meanwhile, the relationship between Sean and the other four is still not clear. Why try to kill Tara and then rescue her? Did he know she was wearing a bullet-proof vest? And I have to say that Sean does seem a little too invincible to be completely believable. His escape from the UK police was a little too impressive, unless the UK are just not that good at catching a killer like Sean, which I'd also find hard to believe.
But these kinds of flaws in the story don't distract from its power in any way, and I'll see you back here next week with my review of the next episode.
See also Suspicion 1.1-2: Excellent Start, But Is It Four or Five? ... Suspicion 1.3: The Fifth
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
February 11, 2022
Podcast Review of Suspicion 1-3
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 246, in which I review Suspicion episodes 1-3 on Apple TV+.
Written blog post reviews of Suspicion 1-2 and Suspicion 3
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
Podcast Review of Kimi
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 245, in which I review Kimi on HBO Max.
Written blog post review of Kimi
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
Kimi: Digital Staple Gun
Just saw Steven Soderbergh's Kimi on HBO Max starring Zoë Kravitz, not in the title role, but as Angela, the highly intelligent, resourceful, ethical worker for Amygdala, the company that sells and runs Kimi, an updated Alexa, which serves its customers better by recording all their interactions and making them available to human listeners if there's a problem. Angela's job is to listen to recordings in which there may indeed have been some kind of problem. The problem that sets her in motion is a rape murder.
As such, Kimi is a current hi-tech viscerally violent update of Hitchcock's 1954 Rear Window, considered by some to be his best movie, and an undeniable masterpiece. I don't know if Kimi is Soderbergh's best, but it's a top-notch combination of surprises, setbacks, narrow escapes, topped off with some breathtaking action.
[Spoilers ahead ... ]
Other than Angela. my favorite character -- and unlikely hero -- is Kevin. We see him looking at Angela through a window across the way, a surely malapted guy who's going to be trouble for Angela. Instead, he proves to be her savior. An excellent, unexpected development in the story.
Likewise, Terry's trajectory as Angela's boyfriend develops in an unexpected way. Angela has problems with people. She sleeps with him, ignores him and practically glares him out of her apartment afterward, only to invite him back the next day. But we and Angela expect him not Kevin to come to Angela's rescue. Instead, he shows up at the end to celebrate after Kevin has made it possible for Angela to kill three of her would-be assassins with a staple gun. Yep, she's one resourceful woman, especially when she's fighting for her life.
The bad guys, corporate and hitmen, are the most obvious. But that's ok. All in all, we get a fast-paced, digitally accurate movie, with a happy ending that's good to see in these troubled times. Kudos not only to Soderbergh, but David Koepp for the writing.
February 10, 2022
Suspicion 1.3: The Fifth
You may recall in my review of the excellent two-episode debut of Suspicion last week, I wondered why, though there were only four masked kidnappers of Leo Newman at the beginning, and only three suspects taken in by London police plus one murdering suspect on the loose (3 + 1 = 4), the description of the series on IMDb, Wikipedia, etc., as well the above publicity photo, say or show five kidnappers not four. Tonight, at the very end of episode 1.3, we find out why: there is indeed a 5th suspect, Eddie Walker, who helped with the getaway but was not in the original hall of the kidnapping. And he's a student at Oxford, where Tara (one of the three London suspects now under surveillance) happily teaches,
Ok, that's a neat development in the plot. But it was spoiled, to some extent, by the telegraphing in the publicity photo and the description of the series that there were five suspects, when all we saw in the first two episodes were four. This is not the fault of the creators of the series. It's the fault of the publicity people, who were really out to lunch on this one.
Anyway, the connection between Natalie and still the only palpable bad guy Sean was interesting, and lays bare one of the best dynamics of this narrative: the three other suspects (Tara, Natalie, and Aadesh) all seem to be so nice, in comparison to Sean, who certainly isn't. (Too soon to tell about Eddie, who was only on the screen the last minute of the episode.) This suggests that at least one of the connective tissues between Sean and the other kidnappers is that the other three were taken advantage of in some way, pulled into something that they had no idea was a kidnapping. But still a little too soon to know how many of the three that happened to, if it happened at all.
And I'll round off this review with a mea culpa: last week I said that Katherine Newman, mother of Leo, was a media mogul. I somehow missed that she's a powerful PR executive -- so powerful that she's being nominated for US Ambassador to the UK.
I'll see you back here next week with my review of 1.4.
See also Suspicion: Excellent Start, But Is It Four or Five?
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
Levinson at Large
- Paul Levinson's profile
- 341 followers
