Movies in 2026 55

 

Sex, (Dag Johan Haugerud, 2024)

Today I finished the final film in Dag Johan Haugerud's Oslo trilogy, Sex. I still can't believe that the three films (including Love and Dreams) all came out in 2024. Sex and desire play a big role in all three films, but it is definitely foregrounded in this one. Jan Gunner Roise and Thorbjorn Harr are two chimney sweeps who begin to question/expand their understanding of gender and sexuality, in response to different experiences. Feier (Roise), a heterosexual married man has a sexual experience with a man. After sharing the experience with his wife, in an oddly open and assured fashion, is forced to deal with the meaning of that event and the pain he has caused her. His friend and boss (Harr), only attributed as Avdelingsleder (essentially, department manager), supports his friend, but also is troubled by his own issues, having a series of dreams where David Bowie enters and looks at him as a woman. This causes him to question the nature of masculinity. It's also interesting that he's a Christian, and Feier tells him how brave it is for him to almost "come out" as Christian in a largely secular country. Like the other two films in the trilogy, Sex is thoughtful and thought-provoking.. It's so wonderful to watch intelligent films dealing with complex issues in a calm and inspired fashion. Very highly recommended.

18

 And another week has passed. It's been a good semester so far. Last spring was the most miserable semester of my entire decades-long teaching career, and as I entered this one I had this bad feeling that it might repeat itself - which would be a pretty dreadful way to finish out my career. Maybe the random makeup of my classes has been favorable this semester, or maybe the coming ending is close enough that it's giving me energy and some perspective, and maybe the students actually understand that it's the end and either they have some appreciation for all these years or are just afraid that I could flunk them all and by the time I'd have to answer for my crimes I'd already be overseas (that's not my serious theory). Anyway, it's been a good start to the semester. Of course, I'm teaching a couple classes on Journey to the West, which is a prefect fit for their interests, and two classes on Fascism, which is obviously a perfect if grim fit for this particular moment in time, so that may also play in my favor.

Thanks to Dejon Brissett for loaning me the number of eighteen for today. Brissett, a native of Mississauga, Ontario, graduated from Virginia, before returning north to play for the Toronto Argonauts (essentially, his hometown team). He's a wide receiver, and won two Grey Cups with the Argos (2022 and 2024). Last year was his best year, and he's newly signed with the Calgary Stampeders.

Movies in 2026 54

 

I Am a Fugitives from a Chain Gang, (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932)

I'm continuing to work through the Mervyn LeRoy collection from the Criterion Channel. I've enjoyed them so far, and they've all been new treats. The other day I actually watched one of his films that I had seen before, and I had been saving it because it's a really good film - and a film that features one of the great endings: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Paul Muni plays James Allen, a man who, through some terrible luck, ends up on a southern chain gang. He eventually escapes, rises to prominence, but he's captured and, willingly, agrees to head back to finish out his sentence. Instead of the ceremonial slap on the wrist, which he was promised, he finds himself facing years more on the chain gang, before once again escaping again. The final image, Muni disappearing back into the darkness because he knows he'll never find peace, is a classic. Muni was, as always, great in the role. It's a great and important film because it shed a national light on the inhumanity of the southern chain gang system, and led to reform. It's sad to think that there was actually a time when we, as a nation, could feel moral outrage at something and push for a better world. Obviously, highly recommended.

Movies in 2026 53

 

Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, (Lili Horvat, 2020)

And, once again, the Criterion Channel came through with another director that I didn't know about - but that I clearly needed to know about. Last night I watched the Hungarian director Lili Horvat's Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time. It tells the story of two successful doctors who meet at a conference in New Jersey (or maybe the don't) and agree to meet up on the Pest side of the Liberty Bridge in Budapest a month later (or maybe they don't). Natasa Stork plays Doctor Marta Vizy (or, more appropriately in Hungarian, Stork Natasa and Vizy Marta - I always had to try and keep this in mind back in the days of my GM program because we had partners in Hungary) who had left Hungary twenty years earlier for an impressive career in the US, before meeting (almost certainly) Doctor Janos Drexler (Viktor Bodo) at the conference. In her mind, they agree to meet, romantically, a month later at 5:00 p.m. Not only does Janos not show up, when she tracks him down he claims to not know her. In the meantime, she has quit her job and moved back to Hungary. As she tries to unravel this mystery - and begins to doubt her sanity - we follow their love affair (or maybe not). I liked it quite a bit, and both the leads were very good - and mysterious - in roles that could have turned out to be tropes, but, thankfully, were not. Definitely recommended. It made me want to go back to Budapest.

19

 And we've passed onto the teens, which means that by the end of the week I'll only have eighteen active teaching days left. Thanks to Bo Levi Mitchell for his help in commemorating another passage.

I've had the pleasure of seeing Bo Levi Mitchell play in person a couple times, and will again one more time this year. He grew up in Katy, Texas and played at SMU and Eastern Washington. He's an all-time great in the CFL (and doubtless a future Hall of Famer). He played most of his career with the Calgary Stampeders, winning two Grey Cups along the way and winning two Most Outstanding Player awards. He owns some pretty amazing individual passing records, including some more team-based records such as most consecutive wins by a starting QB (14), fastest QB to 60 wins (72 starts) and 100 wins (144 starts). He's played the last couple years with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and the hope was that he'd help them break their Grey Cup jinx (they have the longest current drought in the CFL), but they lost in heart-breaking fashion in the Eastern Finals to the Alouettes last year. I think he's now top ten in most passing categories. 

What It Means

 This morning I got up early (which isn't particularly surprising) so that I could head down the hill to the Calais Town Hall by 6:45 to volunteer for the special election on the future of the Calais Elementary School. I've volunteered at several elections over the years, and it's something that I like to do - and to give back to this amazing community. It really hit home with me this morning, however, for a couple reasons. First off, obviously, is that the clock is ticking on our time here, and it's already filling me with these bittersweet emotions. Secondly, I didn't get home last until 8:30 because I was up late teaching my Monday Images of Fascism class. That's a jarring clash of ideologies and emotions. It also struck me that things like this are the present administration's nightmare, not because I'm important (because it would be difficult to imagine someone less important than me), but because that combination - people learning about Fascism and also actively supporting democratic institutions (and community) - is not what the authoritarians want. They would prefer an ignorant and disengaged citizenship, not folks who are paying attention and fighting back, even in quietly by getting up early to spread the de-icer and check people into the system.

Obviously, there's no vetting process here.

This is also the building where we hold the Calais Historic Preservation Society meetings, so it just screams community to me.

Movies in 2026 52

 

Shoah, (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)

I can remember the first time I saw Claude Lanzmann's brilliant documentary on the Holocaust, Shoah, back in the 1980s. The entire nine and a half hours had played over four nights on Cincinnati public television. Shortly thereafter I was sitting in the history graduate school TA room and trying to express how profound an experience it was to watch it, and one of the other graduate students said that I guess the watching it over four nights was OK, but that it couldn't compare to sitting in a movie theater watching all nine and a half hours straight through. I remember thinking that this is exactly why so many people hate academics. It's odd, and sad, that that memory always pops up, as compared to simply jumping right into what makes this such an extraordinary and essential film. If you've never seen Shoah, it's not like Alain Resnais's 1956 documentary Night and Fog; that is, there are no scenes of  Jewish bodies being bulldozed into mass graves (a necessary, although painful, vision that, unfortunately, keeps too many people from watching it - and we desperately need to be watching it at this moment in American history). Instead, Lanzmann's film focuses on interviews filmed in the 1980s, which are often played over scenes of Auschwitz or Treblinka in fog or snow, which makes it all more ghostly and somehow eternal. One of the things that makes it work is that he interviews folks who remember the Jews being taken away with almost casual indifference or even humor, which helps to express the fact that anti-Semitism was/is not a simple unfortunate moment in time. Some of the most powerful moments center around secret recordings of a former prison camp guard as he discusses life in the camp, including his boisterous singing of the death camp song that they made the Jews sing. I'm showing part of it this week in my Images of Fascism class, which required me finding a way to reduce nine and a half hours down to no more than an hour and forty minutes to show in class. It's powerful and sobering and hopefully illuminating material. I invested in buying a beautiful Criterion Collection six-DVD edition a couple years ago, and this is the first (and, well, the last) time I'll ever get to show it in class. Highly recommended.