In certain moments, even the best of men, if I may say so, is nothing more or less than a blockhead. The heart of a woman, her compassion, her interest, her infinite goodness of which we do not have an idea, and often, through stupidity, we do not even notice, is irreplaceable. —Feodor Dostoevsky, letter to Marya Dimitrievna Isaeva, his first great love
Greetings from the far left coast where 4.500 Portland teachers are out on strike and eighty-one schools are closed indefinitely. "Gov. Tina Kotek recently weighed in, saying the district should put more money on the table, but it would be 'irresponsible' for PPS [Portland Public Schools] 'to commit to an agreement that will create a gigantic fiscal cliff at the end of the biennium.'"
Not the best of days for our fair city.
Memo from the cinema desk. Actor, writer, director Louis Garrel (b. 1983) is the son of French actress Brigette Sy and writer and director Philippe Garrel and the godson of actor Jean-Pierre Léaud (The 400 Blows). Philippe Garrel directed thirty-eight films, his first in 1964 at age sixteen, influenced by Farnçois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard.
Louis Garrel's film debut came at the age of five when he acted in Philippe's film Les Baisers de Secours along with his father, mother, and grandfather. In his first scene he walked in on his mother in bed with another man.
“I hadn’t chosen to be in the film,” he says now. “Suddenly, they became like real memories, and I even forgot about the cameras. It was like a strange game with reality, one that determined my relationship with cinema. As a cinemagoer, when I watched films that weren’t autobiographically tied to the life of the director, I had the impression they were fake.” (Phil Hoad, ‘It became like a real memory’: Louis Garrel on making a film aged five in which he found a man in bed with his mother, The Guardian, May 18, 2022)
In the tradition of Gérard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert, Garrel is one of those actors who appear to work all the time. IMBD lists fifty-four credits. Among the ones I have seen: Godard mon amour (orig. title Le redoubtable) where he plays Godard; La jealousie, L'ombre des femmes, and Un été brûlant, all directed by his father; Les fausses confiances with Huppert; and L'homme fidèle (A Faithful Man) as writer, director, actor in a film that also features his wife Laetitia Casta.
L'innocent (2022) is the fourth film he has written, directed, and acted in. It features Noémie Merlant (Tár) in a bravura performance as Abel's best friend Clémence, Anouk Grinberg as his mother Sylvie, and Roschdy Zem as Michel, who marries Sylvie in the opening scenes. Garrel is of course Abel, the name for his character, but not the same character, in each of the films he wrote and directed.
Sylvie is an actress who conducts acting workshops in a prison, where she meets Michel, a thief with whom she falls in love, a recurrent phenomenon. It seems he is the third prisoner Sylvie has married in the past ten years.
Abel is a young widower still mourning his wife, Maud, who died some time back in a car accident where he was the driver. He is at ease in his job leading school group tours at an acquarium. Otherwise he is intense, quarrelsome, brooding. His relationship with Sylvie, who raised him alone, is contentious, with much bickering. She is flighty, impulsive, wacky, he by contrast an improbable voice of maturity.
Abel and Clémence hang out together, their relationship also often argumentative. He is solitary. She is into serial Tinder dating and shares details with Abel. The specter of Maud, a loss mourned deeply by Clémence, hovers over their interactions.
Upon his early release from prison Michel sets Sylvie up in a florist shop. Abel is instantly on edge. Where did Michel did money? He claims it was from a friend who gave him a good deal in exchange for a share of the profits. Abel suspects chicanery and does some inept sleuthing where he is soon spotted tailing Michel to meetings with his partner.
It turns out Abel's suspicions were justified. Michel's particiption in the heist of a truckload of high-end Iranian cavier is a condtion for the florist shop deal. Abel is coerced into participation and Clémence enthusiastically joins him as they distract the truck driver by posing as a bickering couple in a roadstop diner while Michel and his partner break into the truck and grab the cavier. In the course of their act real feelings and insecurities burble up from the depths.
A ridiculous and highly entertaining chase scene ensues when Michel is doublecrossed by his erstwhile partner and shot in the leg, with Clémence maniacally driving away in a van loaded with stolen cavier, the bad guys in hot pursuit, and Abel following behind, torn between trying to rescue Clémence and taking the wounded and badly bleeding Michel to the emergency room.
An ending predictable in its broad strokes comes with several ridiculous and unanticpated twists that had me smiling when the credits flashed across the screen.
If there were justice in this miserable world, Netanyahu would stand shoulder to shoulder with leaders of Hamas in shackles in the dock at the international criminal court.
Simon Sebag Montefiore provides crucial context missing from the simplistic deconalization narrative put out by groups usually described as pro-Hamas or, in a slightly more neutral vein, anti-anti-Hamas.
Caveat from the editorial desk: There are some details and points of emphasis that I am not so sure about. The history is complicated and I do not pretend to fully grasp it. Montefiore is a useful introduction for those of us aware of how much we do not know.
Mike Johnson announced a standalone GOP aid package for Israel to be paid for by cuts to the IRS budget that are justified by the spurious claim that they are necessary to offset the cost and avoid adding to the federal debt. As an add-on the proposal sets the stage for the abandonment of Ukraine favored by the Putinist faction of his party.
The IRS budget is a favorite target of Republicans. The twin aim is to give a free pass to wealthy tax scofflaws by defunding tax enforcement and to deprive the IRS of resources for staffing and overdue IT upgrades that will enable it to provide better customer service for taxpayers.
This is disingenous and cynical. "The IRS funding offset would wind up adding to the deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office, because enforcement funding results in revenue many times the amount spent" (Jay Kuo, MAGA Mike Johnson’s Poison Pill, The Status Kuo, November 1, 2023).
The blow against customer service is standard Republican strategy: Underfund agencies so they cannot function adequately, which tends to agitate voters who interact with them, then campaign on government inefficiency, call for privatization, and turn government administration over to free-market buccaneers or, in the case of education, far-right blockheads.
I take the liberty of quoting Tom Nichols at length for perspective on foreign aid and the budget:
[F]oreign aid is about 1 percent of the U.S. budget, roughly $60 billion. Special appropriations to Ukraine have, over the course of 18 months, added up to about $75 billion, including both humanitarian aid and weapons. Israel—a far smaller country that has, over the past 70 years, cumulatively received more foreign aid from the United States than from any other country—usually gets about $3 billion, but Joe Biden now wants to add about $14 billion to that.
That's a lot of money…
We pay taxes so that the federal government can do things that no other level of government can achieve, and national security is one of them. Right now, the Russian army—the greatest threat to NATO in Europe—is taking immense losses on a foreign battlefield for a total investment that (as of this moment) is less than one-tenth of the amount we spend on defense in a single year. This is the spending Mike Johnson is so worried about?
Of course, we might repeat one more time that much of the food and weapons and other goods America sends to places like Israel and Ukraine are actually made by Americans. And yet many Republican leaders (and their propaganda arm at Fox and other outlets) continue to talk about aid as if some State Department phantom in a trench coat meets the president of Ukraine or the prime minister of Israel in an alley and hands over a metal briefcase filled with neatly wrapped stacks of bills. (Stop Asking Americans in Diners About Foreign Aid, The Atlantic, October 30, 2023)
Sarah Ferris, Jennifer Scholtes, et al., Israel aid drives wedge within Congress, Politico, October 30, 2023
Andrew Solender, Israel aid maneuver fuels Democratic fears about new GOP speaker, Axios, October 30, 2023
Inquiring minds want to know. Why do many voters think Joe Biden is a radical progressive? Here is a sample from Jonathan V. Last's lengthy list of policies and achievements that you might think those who fancy themselves moderate would applaud (Voters Don't Get Based Joe Biden, The Bulwark, October 30, 2023):
Building a portion of Trump’s border wall
Adding $37 billion in federal money to support local law enforcement
Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel
Killed Ayman al-Zawahri
Blew up a bunch of Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops in Syria
Spent a bunch of money to kickstart semiconductor manufacturing as a way to (a) bring jobs back to the United States and (b) create a hedge against Chinese aggression
Passed Joe Manchin’s bipartisan infrastructure law with tons of spending for red states and rural areas
Passed gun reform so moderate that he got 14 Republicans in the House and 15 in the Senate to vote for it
Two Last points:
If Biden has been governing for the left then he’s done a bad job of it…The progressive left seems to view Biden as something between a disappointment and a traitor.
Biden himself and the Democratic caucus in the House and Senate have not—for the very large part—governed in ways which are out of step with mainstream opinion, on economic, social, or cultural issues.
New at Portable Bohemia Substack:
• Netanyahu, Hamas, Gaza, West Bank: Two Weeks In, October 22, 2023. Israel wasted no time squandering the outpouring of good will in the immediate aftermath of October 7. Only someone operating with Lindsey Graham’s moral compass could fail to be deeply disturbed…read more>>
• View from the Deck September 2023 (a poem), October 27, 2023. My poem "View from the Deck September 2023" was first published in the October 2023 issue of Quill & Parchment. This is how it goes when I read it…read more>>
Keep the faith
Stand with Ukraine.
yr obdt svt
