Mid-December marks 18 months of personal fitness for me, the longest streak since my late teens. Had I been stranded in New Mexico for the pandemic, I would have hiked virtually any mountain I desired. There are still a lot of them, plus a few I would love to reclimb. Treadmill walking is somewhat different from real walking, however. This past September, when I did a short trail hike and climb with my niece in Sudbury, I found I had to be quite careful walking on uneven surfaces, and that my balance was easily thrown off. Before undertaking any mountain hiking I would, of course, have to get used to walking on rocky and uneven surfaces again. But I figure that I am permanently about 4-5 weeks away from what I call "mountain fitness." So there would be time to get on trails here before heading back into the mountains. I fervently hope we can travel by Spring to NM, possibly by car. I know I said the same thing last year at this time.
Turning now to Beethoven, the anniversary of his naming day was Dec. 16th. We began our massive biographical and listening program just over a year ago. While I knew that we wouldn't be finished in one year, I didn't realize how long it might take. We do some listening every evening, and Beethoven comes up every third evening. So it probably will take a year, as in 365 nights, to complete the project. We have probably completed 125 by now. And where are we? We are still in the early 1800s, around 1802. His hearing is going, his health is bad, and he has yet to write his 2nd symphony. But the Op 18 quartets are done, and many fine piano sonatas, along with two piano concerti. His early works are still trying to please his mainly aristocratic audiences, though he has been poking quite outside the Haydn/Mozart classical tradition many times, too. We are following the Biamonti numbering system, which goes as close to chronological as possible, and we have just passed the 300 mark (out of about 900). I am reading ahead in the biography, and penciling in paragraphs for us to read together as we go along. Sometimes we stop on a certain piece and hear it in multiple versions. For example we listened to the 1st Symphony four times, all with different orchestras and conductors. The one we liked best was directed by John Eliot Gardner, using an orchestra much like Beethoven would have had access to.
In movie news, we briefly turned to Prime for a feature film. Called The Electric Life of Louis Wain, it stars Benedict Cumberbatch as an eccentric and psychologically fragile artist (Britain seems to have been blessed with an ungodly amount of them). Most famous in his day for his illustrations of cats, the story of his life is told with great sensitivity and detail. The only son among a family of girls, it is his responsibility to bring home a paycheck, and though he does his best, he is not much of a success. Cumberbatch is totally brilliant as the increasingly mad artist, and the make up department did a superb job of aging him as the film proceeds. You do not have to love cats to love this movie. It is a beautiful film from start to finish.
Deb's "going away this month" choice from Criterion was Out of the Past, Robert Mitchum starring as a private eye who crosses his hoodlum customer. This is a great and classic film noir, fun to watch from beginning to end. If anyone trusts a dame in a film noir, you know there is going to be trouble ahead. Mitchum gets into plenty of it here. Lots of cigarette smoking, too. It becomes quite obvious watching these old adult movies, especially the b & w ones, that Hollywood was vastly responsible for encouraging smoking. With he-men like Mitchum, and beauties like Jane Greer smoking up a storm, how could their fans resist doing the same?
My pick of the week was a very strange film, one of the restored ones from the World Cinema Project. Called Revenge, it was made by a Kazakhstan director working with a writer from Korea. If that isn't strange enough, then try the film sometime. A teacher, in a fit of anger, kills a young girl, then flees the village. The parents are devastated. When a son is born, he is brought up to get revenge. While the story sounds simple, it is anything but. We travel to many different places, and time passes. At times we almost forget the revenge element, but it eventually comes back, in a haunting way. The film comes with an 18' interview with the director, who speaks English well and describes his huge respect and fascination with the writer. He tries to follow the book as closely as he can, but had to make some concessions at the end. While certainly worth watching, there are some scenes of animal cruelty that are very disturbing.
Turning briefly back to art, and staying on the theme of eccentric artists, here's one from the DIA that comes with no biographical info whatsoever. And so I will present the image with no words from me.
Mapman Mike
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