Thursday, November 22, 2012

Anna Karenina

Steve Sailer reviews Anna Karenina:
Third and most remarkably, Wright’s film may be the first of the numerous Anna Karenina adaptations whose sympathies lie firmly with her cuckolded husband, the unsexy bureaucrat Karenin. ...

Today it’s universally assumed that an unfaithful wife should get custody of the children. Yet Wright and Stoppard don’t seem terribly interested in pointing fingers at 19th-century Russians for their lack of enlightenment about family law.

When Anna laments that she can’t possess both her lover and her son because “The laws are made by husbands and fathers,” it’s hard not to respond, “As well they should be.”
Yes, they should be. Anna runs off with another man, but it is a disaster.

This is filmed as a stage play based on the Russian novel that famously starts, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

I watched the new movie Flight, thinking that it would be less boring. Nobody told me that it is a 2 hour commercial for Alcoholics Anonymous. Denzel Washington is an alcoholic pilot who is cruelly rejected by his wife and son, even after becoming a national hero. I don't want to post any spoilers, except to say that you are unlikely to enjoy the movie unless you are sold on the AA philosophy.

To some people, alcoholism is an addiction, or a medical disease, or a psychological disorder, or a character weakness, or a genetic susceptibility, or a bad habit. The AA philosophy is something quite different from all of these ideas, and is an odd cross between religion and group psychotherapy. It is like a cult with a vast network of secret believers.

The plane crash doesn't take very long, and most of the movie concerns the pilots alcoholism. I assumed that he would eventually get a fair hearing, and we would learn whether the alcohol contributed to lives being save or lost. Nope.

Happy Thanksgiving. Eat and drink well. Just don't fly drunk.

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