Yesterday I posted a cartoon I had drawn of two men, one saying to the other: “I’m giving up Trump for Lent.”
Then in the evening (it was still Fat Tuesday) I watched his address to Congress. As he walked into the chamber, I thought he looked quite presidential. At least he wasn’t wearing a cap. Then he started to speak and all sense of him as a statesman, a leader, even a normal human being, immediately vanished.
Over 30 former political dissidents in Poland, including Lech Wałęsa, have written a letter to President Trump expressing their “horror and disgust” at his treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky last week at the White House. In it, they note President Ronald Reagan’s support of Solidarity and his role in bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I was in Warsaw in December, 1981, when martial law was declared – on orders, everyone believed, sent from Moscow – and most of the signers of that letter were rounded up and interned. That Christmas, Reagan asked Americans to put candles in their windows in solidarity with Poland, a gesture that touched Poles deeply. Schools had been closed, to prevent people from congregating, but we still had our annual Christmas party at the English Language College where I taught. “President Reagan says he supports the Polish people and the Polish nation,” one of the teachers said to me, “but not the present government. Isn’t that beautiful?”
I had not voted for Reagan, and yet I had never felt so proud to be an American.
We got home last night at 9:30, just in time to see my three favorite parts of the Academy Awards: Best Live Action Short, In Memoriam, and Best Foreign Film.
This meant that my surprise and outrage at an undeserving winner came before most people’s. I Am Not a Robot was, in my opinion, the weakest of this year’s shorts, a slight story that starts out with promise – a woman unsuccessfully clicking the “I am not a robot” box on her computer screen – and then fizzles into pointless absurdity.
I have not yet seen any of the foreign films that were nominated, though, because I love Iranian cinema, and know that The Seed of the Sacred Fig was filmed in secret in Tehran, with great risk to the cast and crew (many of whom now live abroad), I was pulling for it. But I was happy for the Brazilians.
I love seeing the dead remembered – CBS Sunday Morning now pays homage to the recently departed every week – and there’s something about seeing actors, pictured in their celebrated roles, that’s beautifully uplifting: the realization that, through their movies, they will live on. It is the evening's greatest demonstration of the magic of cinema.
I still go to the movies, and I always sit through the closing credits – unless I need to use the men's room (I’m looking at you, Oppenheimer). I like sitting there as the room slowly – or these days, quickly – empties and letting the power of the movie sink in. Roger Rosenblatt, back when he reviewed movies (I think for The New Republic) stated that one should never talk about the movie, or even express an opinion on it, until one gets outside the theater.
Last night I was rewarded watching the credits roll for A Complete Unknown, not just because they were accompanied by Timothée Chalamet singing “Blowing in the Wind,” but because, in a beautiful voice, the woman in front of me sang along with him.
Saturday afternoon we drove to Savor Cinema (about a five-minute trip) to watch the live action shorts nominated for an Academy Award. We see them every year; some years they’re better than others; but we’re always grateful for the opportunity to watch them, as well as other movies mainstream theaters ignore. Next month, at Cinema Paradiso in Hollywood, we will see Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which was shot in secret in Tehran, and is also up for an Oscar. These two little theaters, run by the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, have hung on while other art movie houses, like the Tower Theater in Miami and The Living Room in Boca Raton, have closed. Movie lovers in Broward are lucky to have them
Today is Fat Thursday (Tłusty Czwartek) in Poland – a day when the population eats the holeless doughnuts called pączki. Why the Poles celebrate the Thursday before Lent, and not the Tuesday, has never been explained to me.
When I taught at the English Language College in Warsaw I would often stop at the little bakery on Mokotowska Street so to have something for the 6 o'clock tea. Pączki were not always in stock, but when they were I’d want a few. Three is one of the most difficult Polish words for me to say – trzy – so I would ask for two (dwa) and then quickly add, “Maybe one more.”