Chekhov and the Mall of America

I am back from Minneapolis. The weekend was really fun. My sisters celebrated their entrance into the last year of their teens. We went shopping. A lot of shopping. Like a shopping spree. In the Mall of America. I almost fainted, but miraculously, I made it through. We attended a wonderful play, The Seagull, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Afterwards, we went to Fridays. We didn't want to overdose on high culture, after all. There is nothing like a plate of potato skins from Fridays at midnight to bring down those levels of pretension.

Seriously, though the play was one of the best I've seen. I was lucky enough to see the Royal Shakespeare Company perform in Ann Arbor, but it was great to see them perform Chekhov. Those of you in L.A., I believe there are still available for The Seagull and I highly recommend it. L.A. is the only other U.S. city where it will be performed, at Royce Hall. The Guthrie Theater is a sight in itself. It is a really cool theater, as you can sort of tell from the photos above. I took quite a few photos in Minneapolis. I may have to make an album.

In other news, I finished my second pillow (part of my present to my sisters) and I finally received my pair of Clarks Wallabees that I've been pining for for years. They are beautiful (photo to come).

In pop cultural news, I finally saw After the Wedding (on dvd) and loved it. It's such a great movie. The performances were really amazing and the writing and directing is phenomenal. It is a fairly dramatic story, and even though emotions are strong and tempers flare, the film always feels honest and real. I wanted to see Brothers, and never did, so I'm making that a priority now. I now plan to see Things We Lost in the Fire, which actually looked quite good from the trailer...now it makes sense why. Major drama and feelings are in this realm that often goes untouched in most contemporary films - it reminds me of an interesing David Foster Wallace essay about how modern novels rarely try to tackle the large moral and psychological issues in a grand sense. He mourns the absence of a writer like Dostoevsky, who could write about human psychology and emotional experience in a way that was meaningful and felt real. So much contemporary art is about the intimately personal, the small moments in life, irony, distance, wit and cleverness. It's hard to really try, be sincere, be emotional, and try for something grand and deep -- the consequences of failing or not getting it just right or just so huge. If you fail but you're just trying to be ironic, it's not as bad as something that seems melodramatic or cheesy -- which is often the result of failing when trying to be sincere in an emotional way.

My point is that Bier is obviously not afraid of drama or emotion. She doesn't flinch from situations that are inherently very dramatic with a capital D and from eliciting emotional and dramatic performances. To me that shows courage, and best of all, it works. Or at least I thought it did in After the Wedding. We'll see about Things We Lost in the Fire.

In a tangential note, Things We Lost in the Fire is a pretty good album by Low.