What to watch when it's Hump Day... and you're under quarantine.
Mike mike mike mike mike—Remember when that was huge back in 2012?
A few years back, on a hot August afternoon down the Jersey shore, I looked down to find an enflamed bite on my arm. It kept growing, and by day two on Long Beach Island, I decided I needed to know what was going on. My mind was wracked with fear. A few days before coming down to the beach, I’d killed a spider nest in my room in Brooklyn—our apartment was owned by slum lords and to say that it occasionally had vermin would be an understatement—and so I was convinced that I had been bitten by a black widow and would soon succumb without medical intervention. So I toddled down the boulevard to the one medical clinic on the island and sat in the waiting room for two hours before the one doctor on duty could see me. This was it. I expected to hear that I should begin preparations for shuffling off my mortal coil.
Turns out I was fine—no treatment necessary—although the doctor did say that it was a “traumatic spider bite,” which at least sounds serious. All I lost was sunny afternoon on the beach.
The hot new thing this season is getting out of town. So great is the surge of New Yorkers decamping for anywhere else—particularly wealthy people booking it to their summer homes—that the Commissioner of Long Beach Township had to make a special announcement discouraging people from moving to their summer houses because of COVID-19. He’s got a point. If my experience with a “traumatic spider bite” is any indication, vacation communities and rural towns simply don’t have the medical capacity to take on a global pandemic. (This is not to say that some people aren’t leaving their homes for legitimate reasons—they may be high risk or in need of childcare or many other resources.)
The government of Greene County in Upstate New York noted succinctly that it “is a large rural county with NO hospital! ….This limits our ability to serve a large number of people requiring higher levels of care for COVID-19 patients and other illnesses. These facts mean any additional needs presented at our surrounding hospitals will tax our medical care system beyond its capacity.”
On our block in Brooklyn, there are several conspicuously empty homes, and more and more people are reporting in that they have decamped for family homes or AirBnBs in rural environs. With distance from the miasma of the city comes mental respite and fresh air. On this morning’s walk, I saw a single shoe—a men’s leather wingtip, the left one, I believe—sitting in the middle of the sidewalk as if someone had been in such a hurry to blow the joint that they decided to make a go of it hopping on one foot.
Indeed, I would be lying if I hadn’t wistfully thought about the possibility of decamping to a valley deep in the Rockies or a holler in the Catskills for a few days. At the same time, cities need people to be cities. Our apartment is our home and we now have a lovely landlord. And as the stores have closed and the streets have emptied, it’s as if the City That Never Sleeps is taking a deep and calming breath, a meditative moment, in anticipation of the hurly-burly yet to come. Even during lockdown, there’s a sense that New York is just tensing up for a big sprint once it’s free again. There’s still a feeling of excitement and of people just behind closed doors waiting to leap out into the spring air.
I suppose I’m feeling a bit like the mice in the story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse. The Roman poet Horace tells it a bit like this: There are two mice, and one lives in the country and the other lives in the city. The country mouse feels like he needs more excitement, and the city mouse feels like he needs to escape to somewhere more peaceful. So they swap houses. It doesn’t last, of course. The country mouse misses the verdure of the fields, and the city mouse can’t handle the isolation of the woods. So they trade back. The moral of the story is to look around you, appreciate the bad and the good things about where you are, but know your place in the world.
TODAY’S RECOMMENDATION: Reuben Brandt, Collector (2018)
Today’s recommendation comes from Brooklyn-based Caroline Kessler, a digital storyteller, documentarian, film editor, photographer and former actor. She focuses on stories about the “Deep Human Stuff” and can be reached by email at caroline.kessler@gmail.com or on Instagram at @caroline_kessler.
Reuben Brandt, Collector is an action-packed, animated jewel heist flick with more art history and pop culture references than a doctorate seminar could cram in to the same amount of time. In writer-director-animator Milorad Krstic’s first feature, the main characters are a crew of suave burglars who find themselves in art therapy. Their therapist is haunted by nightmares of masterworks, and in order to cure him, they decide to steal all 13 pieces from the famous museums and private collections in which they’re housed. Meanwhile, organized crime and a gruff play-by-the-rules detective (and doppelgänger to our therapist) try to intercept the “Collectors” at every turn.
Highly influenced by Picasso's cubism in style, Kristic was devoted to each character being completely unique: a chanteuse crying down five eyes as her shadow on the wall sings, a baby screaming a dragon out of its mouth, characters with multiple faces and coiffure that’s more than just a nod to Modigliani. There’s even a 2-dimensional safe-cracker, the progeny of a 3-dimensional mum, and a father who “Was a one dimensional kinda guy.”
The phrase "visual feast” doesn’t quite do Ruben Brandt, Collector justice. To see famous works of art recreated in the visual style of the film—sometimes as the main event of the scene, but more often as throw-away homage—is a remarkable experience. The world of the film is just as interesting as the main action, and each frame is packed with art, film and psychology references playing out on the walls, adjacent tables, TVs, street graffiti, etc. A YouTube reviewer went through the film frame by frame to locate each of the pieces listed in the end credits, and still can’t find a handful of them. Watch it once for the story. Watch it again to Where’s-Waldo the art and cinema references.
And for those filmmakers reading this, remember that Milorad Krstic wrote, directed, designed, and produced the film. And he spent eight years on it and was 66 when it was released. There’s hope for us all.
Ruben Brandt, College is available to stream on Hulu.
READING LIST:
For something completely different, there’s a great piece over at The Los Angeles Review of Books about translating the Marquis de Sade into English and what it says about the cultural trajectory of the 21st century.
Texas Monthly has the goods on how the internet is coming to the rescue of thousands of youths in Future Farmers of American and 4-H who were unable to show their livestock at rodeos cancelled due to coronavirus.
Benjamin Reeves is an award-winning screenwriter, journalist and media consultant based in Brooklyn, New York. Follow him on Twitter @bpreeves or write to him at breeves.writer@gmail.com.