good quotes from reviews of "The Iron Claw"

I never did see "The Iron Claw," the 2023 biographical sports drama about the Von Erich professional wrestling family out of Dallas, but I had read these contemporary reviews in The New Yorker.

In short, Fritz creates a spotlight too big for his sons to escape and too bright for them to endure, and tragedy ensues—and ensues and ensues—and Kevin, as the oldest living son and a paragon of responsibility, takes it very hard when he can't prevent it.

And,

The work of a sports drama is, in some sense, to transcend the easy marvel of athletes' physiques in favor of other, deeper stuff, like inner strife and sentiment. But in "Iron Claw" the body is relevant for how it testifies to the hard life of the family's chosen sport. The three oldest Von Erich sons gain renown wrestling as a team, and for a time they triumph. Traveling across the country to compete, they are Texas fabulous: beef-fed boys in velour and lamé, carousing in tight tanks and tighter denim. Durkin, working with the cinematographer Mátyás Erdély and the costume designer Jennifer Starzyk, wants us to see the body as a hewn product: a vascular, clenching, clothes-busting display. Erdély's handheld camera chases Kevin's nimble, ultra-tan form around the ring, catching flashes of heaving muscle and theatrical grimaces framed by He-Man hair.

 

Notes: (1) The spotlight quote is from "'The Iron Claw' Is a Combustible Family Drama of Love, Loss, and Pro Wrestling," Richard Brody, December 20, 2023. The second quote is from "The Poignant Physicality of Zac Efron," Lauren Michele Jackson, December 22, 2023. (2) I still hope to see the movie. (3) I recently cancelled my subscription.

 

more about Novak Djokovic, a tennis champion

 

On Sunday, July 16, 20-year-old Carlos "Carlito" Alcaraz defeated the dominant Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon men's final.

 

Seven of Djokovic's all-time record 23 Grand Slam tournament wins are at Wimbledon. This was Alcaraz's first time winning the tournament.

 

Tennis has buzzed about Alcaraz for almost two years now. He is the latest young talent believed capable of ending Djokovic's reign.

 

Nevertheless, I, like most tennis fans, believed Djokovic was still too great too consistently to lose this match. But he did, and Alcaraz is the top-ranked player in men's tennis now.

 

The fans cheered on Alcaraz, celebrating not only every winner he smashed across court, but also every Djokovic error. It could have been Alcaraz playing, it could have been Kim Jong Un—the crowd always roots against Djokovic. I wrote a little about this before.

 

Why do people root against him? 

 

I think the first reason is timing: Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal came first, and fans fell in love. Djokovic emerged after fans built relationships with them, and then he was beating tennis fans' heroes.

 

Second, people are shallow. Federer and Nadal are handsome and look like heroes. Djokovic does not look like a hero. He looks like the villain. Maybe part of that is because, in Western culture, villains are often Eastern Europeans.

 

Third—my armchair psychologist's opinion—Djokovic, 36, leans into conflict because he grew up in Serbia in the 1990s. Maybe that plays into the complicated Djokovic-crowd dynamic.

 

Finally, Djokovic really cares whether the crowd likes him, and that is unforgivable. Roger Federer never had to worry about it. Rafael Nadal never seemed to worry. And neither does Alcaraz.

 

Alcaraz's win was the big. Tennis does feel different now. How will fans respond to Djokovic if he falls?

 

From The New Yorker:

Whether this outcome represented a changing of the guard—the vanquishing, finally, of a generation that has ruled men’s tennis since Alcaraz was a toddler—remains to be seen. Djokovic appeared far from finished. What the final showed for sure is that, when it is all on the line, Alcaraz will decide to play his game and be himself, and that what he can bring in those moments is the stuff of greatness.

Notes:

• When the match began, most people, including commentators John and Patrick McEnroe, believed Djokovic would win. But an IBM modeler—supposed AI—predicted Alcaraz, 55-45.
  
• Relevant posts from me: something about Novak Djokovic and his 2022 Australian Open quest and about tennis and a new piece in The New Yorker.

about tennis and a new piece in The New Yorker

The Australian Open men's final this year was awesome. The Russki, Daniil Medvedev, is a funny, quasi-villain and impending champion, and Rafa Nadal, in his mid-30s now, is the sport's older statesman—older even beyond his tennis years because his unrelenting hustle and highly physical style of play has worn down his body. But Medvedev had the harder journey to this final, and Nadal is still a champion. Here is how a piece from The New Yorker summarizes Nadal's winning tactics:

Nadal’s topspin forehand gets a ball to not only bounce up but penetrate deeper wherever it’s headed, and he sent Medvedev chasing angled shots that bounded beyond the sidelines. He moved Medvedev forward and back with short slices, followed by deep, out-of-reach groundstrokes.

And then here is the column denouement:

Nadal spoke before the tournament began about how majors are bigger than any one player, and how generations of players come and go but the game remains. He also talked about how tennis is, as he put it, “zero important” compared with the pandemic that has swept the world. This was his way of talking about Djokovic, whose arrival, unvaccinated, in Melbourne, and subsequent deportation dominated coverage of the sport in the week before the Australian Open began, and threatened to cloud it afterward. That it didn’t—that the tennis was just too good not to become what mattered—was due in great part to Nadal and to Barty. That’s what the greatest champions can do.

 

Note: The final was played on January 30, 2022.

 

something about great tennis

The New Yorker published "Without Fans, the Drama of the US Open Came from Within," a great piece, right after the 2020 US Open; the commentary includes this passage:

There were moments when I asked myself what this was all for. So much effort, and such high stakes, for what? The tournament was taking place against the backdrop of tremendous unrest in the United States—the unfathomable spread of a lethal disease, continuing protests against racial injustice, profound civic distrust, and soaring unemployment. What is the U.S. Open when it is sealed off from New York? What does a championship signify, if some of the top contenders don’t come? What does it mean if fans aren’t there to ratify it? What’s the value of sport right now?

Some of those questions are unanswerable, but not all. In most respects, the U.S. Open was a success. It happened safely. Two deserving champions were crowned. The quality of the play was, for the most part, remarkably good. And, by the end, something strange was happening, at least for me: the event seemed to become more meaningful, not less, for being so stripped away.

The New Yorker piece details the men's championship match—the final match of the tournament, the match perspective played the net and won.

I remember agreeing that this match became more meaningful for me than most previous US Open championships.

I had wondered, when the tournament decided to carry on without fans, whether the 2020 results would have an asterisk in people’s memory. Because of how it played out, it doesn't.

Tennis players are not supposed to get coaching or have any communication with the people in their player’s box; the player is out there alone, fighting himself and his opponent, often buoyed or rejected—especially in big matches on big stages—by the crowd. In this match, the isolation, the loneliness, was heightened to an extreme, and I really felt for them, felt the struggle, felt empathy.

Note: The Australian Open concluded today with an instant-classic match between Rafa Nadal and Daniil Medvedev.

 

something about "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil," by Hannah Arendt

Adolf Eichmann played a leading role in the deportation of Jews from Germany and a significant role in the logistical implementation of the Nazis' "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." After Israel's Mossad captured Eichmann in 1960 in Buenos Aires, the state of Israel tried him in Jerusalem for collaborating in the persecution of the Jewish civilian population. He was found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962.

Hannah Arendt, a political theorist, reported on Adolf Eichmann's trial for The New Yorker. Her writing was revised and enlarged for a book published in 1964. In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Arendt draws out insights big and small as she dissects the trial and shares historical research. It is a fascinating blend of reporting, insightful meditation, and history.

The book's title captures the theme that emerged from the trial, according to Arendt. Eichmann came off as fairly average: an obedient, law-abiding, rule-following joiner, with no trace of mental illness and no real hatred for Jews. But he could not think for himself. Furthermore, he had no career plan and came to his position in the regime almost by accident; and, there, he found he had a knack for logistical planning. And when the regime's plan to expel the Jews changed into a plan to exterminate them, Eichmann accepted the change and the given rationale that doing so was the most humane option.

Arendt closes the last chapter by describing how Eichmann, after walking readily to his execution, offered a clichéd string of last words. This was wholly in character for him. "It was as though in those last moments he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil."

Arendt is reluctant to call the whole episode a show trial, but aspects seem to beg the description in Arendt's telling. Eichmann, who played an important role in the most horrific event of the century, stood in for the whole German Reich, and the execution was largely an act of vengeance.

For various reasons, including her descriptions of how some Jews helped implement Nazi policies against fellow Jews, Arendt came under heavy criticism after the book's publication. She addressed the criticism in a postscript added in a subsequent edition. She ends the postscript by stating that the trial did fulfill "the demands of justice."

Notes:

• Hannah Arendt is a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power.
• Favorite sentence: "So Eichmann's opportunities for feeling like Pontius Pilate were many, and as the months and the years went by, he lost the need to feel anything at all." 
• I suspect Arendt cleverly sought to satisfy her most vicious critic with the cliché about "the demands of justice." 

 

something about the film, “Joker”

In the movie "Joker," Arthur Fleck ekes out a miserable living as a party clown in Gotham City, 1981. Crime is up, unemployment is up, and poverty is up. Violent events lead Arthur to become a folk hero in a rapidly intensifying class struggle. The movie is an unofficial imagining of the origin story for the Batman villain, the Joker.

The New Yorker published a piece titled “'Joker' Is a Viewing Experience of Rare, Numbing Emptiness,” which says the following:

“Joker” is an intensely racialized movie, a drama awash in racial iconography that is so prevalent in the film, so provocative, and so unexamined as to be bewildering. What it seems to be saying is utterly incoherent, beyond the suggestion that Arthur, who is mentally ill, becomes violent after being assaulted by a group of people of color—and he suffers callous behavior from one black woman, and believes that he’s being ignored by another, and reacts with jubilation at the idea of being a glamorous white star amid a supporting cast of cheerful black laborers. But, unlike the public discourse around the Central Park Five, and unlike the case of Bernhard Goetz, and unlike the world, the discourse in “Joker” and the thought processes of Arthur Fleck are utterly devoid of any racial or social specificity.

I do not know what this means or how the film would be different if the racial iconography were more examined or if the movie had more racial or social specificity. I agree that “Joker” does not reinforce a politically left-leaning perspective on race, but I do not see how that makes the movie bad. I think the movie is good.

“Joker” is a sick person’s fantasy about meeting real-world conditions that allow the fantasy to become reality. Arthur thought he was a victim.

I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realize, it's a fucking comedy.

He was nice to people, but they responded with indifference or cruelty. He discovered the power of revenge and began leading a class war.

What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash? You get what you fuckin' deserve!

Arthur's story and dialog gradually allude to a populist and class-oriented politics, which can be manipulated by demagogues and made dangerous. But this movie dwells in the origins of the discontent that allows a populace to accept demagoguery and then turn dangerous and to fascism. Arthur, during a serendipitous turn as a guest on a late-night talk show, asks his celebrity host, Murray:

Have you seen what it's like out there, Murray? Do you ever actually leave the studio? Everybody just yells and screams at each other. Nobody's civil anymore. Nobody thinks what it's like to be the other guy. You think men like Thomas Wayne ever think what it's like to be someone like me? To be somebody but themselves? They don't. They think that we'll just sit there and take it, like good little boys! That we won't werewolf and go wild!

Notes:

• "Joker" was released in 2019, was directed and produced by Todd Phillips, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scott Silver. The film stars Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker.
• I do not know if the concept started out as such, but I drew lines to Trump’s political rise leading into the 2016 election.
• The New Yorker also published a formal review of “Joker,” which was also critical. That review is fine.
• "All I Have Are Negative Thoughts."

something about "The Years with Ross" by James Thurber

James Thurber worked as a writer, editor, and cartoonist at high-brow American magazine The New Yorker. Harold Ross was the publication's founder and served as its managing editor from 1925 to 1951. In the role of managing editor, Ross let loose his perfectionist's drive, relentlessly scrutinizing each cartoon and bit of text (sometimes to the point of over-editing).

The Years with Ross was published in 1957. James Thurber wrote the book as an affectionate remembrance of the profane, temperamental, eccentric, anti-intellectual prude whose fickleness and editing genius wrought frustration on the staff and contributors. Despite the hair-pulling Ross caused, he had many devotees. Thurber, who was in his 60s when he wrote this, was chief among them.

James Thurber was an accomplished writer and cartoonist. This portrait of Ross is charming, and the prose chuckles and rolls off the page. I highly recommend The Years with Ross (especially if you know a good editor).