Movie review: Refusnik

Reader #83 wrote: This is the saga of the Refuseniks, Jews in the Soviet Union who requested to leave knowing they would be treated as enemies of the state and given harsh and at times barbaric treatment. A new documentary written and directed by Laura Bialis tells the story of the nearly thirty years of courage in the face of repression in the Soviet Union. This is polished and evocative filmmaking.

It is spring. This is time of Easter and Passover and the time of year
that it is traditional for television to run the film THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. This year there is another and somewhat parallel story being released, though this one is a documentary of recent history. The film is REFUSENIK, and it tells the story of Jews again held against their will in a country that will not let them go. The country was Russia in the last decades of the Soviet Union. Russia's tradition was to suppress and abuse the Jews with discrimination building to pogroms back in Tsarist times. The coming of communism to Russia brought only a short respite before the new rulers of the country continued with their repressive policies. Under Stalin the repression began again and it specifically targeted the Refuseniks--Jews who had requested to leave the country--for almost three decades. With American and the newly founded Israel ready and anxious to provide a haven for these Jews they needed only the permission of the government to exit. As a policy permission was never granted. Being refused the people came to be called Refuseniks, but their punishment went beyond merely being refused. Jews who requested to leave were treated with barbaric hatred. They typically lost their employment and frequently were imprisoned and even tortured. Many were exiled to the frozen Gulag. Others were treated as mentally ill for wanting to leave the "ideal workers' state" and were committed to mental institutions. With the fall of the Soviet Union and with pressure from the West and worldwide eventually the Jews of the Russia were allowed to leave. 1,500,000 of them did leave, most settling in Israel and the United States.

While in the 1970s and 1980s the Refusenik movement got some public
attention, little has been said about it since. So as not to forget what happened Laura Bialis writes and directs this documentary about the story of the Refusenik movement. The style is mostly eyewitness accounts by participants, many of whom were activists in and out of the Soviet Union in the events of the movement. Their stories are illustrated with archival and newsreel footage. Best known among the activists is Natan Sharansky, who had requested and been denied an exit visa. In 1977 Sharansky was arrested and tried for invented charges of treason and spying for the United States. These charges have since been shown to be false. Sharansky was incarcerated in Leftorovo Prison were he remained under barbaric conditions for 16 months. He was then sent to a prison camp in the Siberian Gulag where he remained for nine more years as his wife desperately worked for his release. By 1986 the USSR was foundering and was anxious for Glasnost. Then President Ronald Reagan made clear that the treatment of Soviet Jews would be a strong consideration in the negotiations. Sharansky was released in 1986. His story and the stories of Kirov Ballet star Valery Panov and of physicist Andrei Sakharov, all Refuseniks, are part of the story.

Where the documentary falls down a bit is in not discussing the motives of the Soviets in repressing the Refuseniks. Michael Gorbachov is quoted as saying that these people were considered to be people of value to the Soviet Union, but they could make little contribution as laborers in the Gulag. It is more likely that he did not want to set a precedent of letting one group go when so many other groups might have wanted the same privilege. And eventually they as well as the Refuseniks got it.

REFUSENIK bears witness to the struggle of the Refuseniks and of the
changes that their courage and that of the international community brought about. This film makes a good pairing with THE SINGING REVOLUTION (2007), which was released earlier this year and tell the story of Estonia's campaign to free themselves from the yoke of the Soviet's. Both have messages that we need just now. REFUSENIK scheduled to be released in New York City May 9 and in Los Angeles on May 23. Grade A.

Book Review: Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Reader #62 wrote: Watchmen is far from your average "superhero" comic. The year is 1985, and US relations with Russia are, predictably, cold. The action starts with the investigation of the murder of a "costumed crimefighter" called The Comedian (no relation to The Joker). In fact, all of the main characters in Watchmen are costumed crimefighters, mostly retired and estranged, though, after the government outlawed "vigilante justice". These "superheroes" are all too human, with broken marriages, histories of violence, and lots of old grudges against one another. Even Doc Manhattan, who as the result of a lab accident is transformed into a physics-wielding demigod, has the tragic flaw of losing his capacity to understand emotions. Despite their broken and long-past-prime condition, however, this reluctant team must solve the puzzle of who would want them out of the way. Time is running out for America, too, because Russian tanks are moving into Afghanistan, and Russian fingers are tickling the red button...

Watchmen is dark, creepy, and violent, as one would expect from the creator of V for Vendetta . It's also thoroughly engrossing; I read the entire novel, a rather hefty thing, in one day. Besides the excellent character development, I particularly enjoyed the fact that the line between right and wrong was rather blurry, something that's not often done in the superhero genre. By fighting crime without the consent of the government, the "good guys" are inherently lawbreakers (not to mention their acts of arson, sexual assault, and murder), while the "bad guy" has, arguably, the well-being of the entire world at heart. Grade: A.

Book review: Dark Prince by Christine Feehan

Reader #8 wrote: The first in this series, it was hard to put down. It was a love story about about a vampire and just great! Grade: A.

Book review: Lost Duke of Wyndam by Julia Quinn

Reader #8 wrote: I love Julia Quinn's books. They make the past come alive for me and the stories hold me and I wish they want on and on. Grade: B.

Book review: What She Wants Lynsay Sands

Reader # 8 wrote: Going back to 1199 and finding living so different, but life so much the same. Willa has hidden her whole life and those around her try to keep her alive. But in the end, the killer is not who you think it is. Grade: B.

Book review: Safe House by Andrew Vachss

Librarian Tim wrote: When ex-con, con-man and unlicensed private investigator Burke is contacted by a former jailhouse buddy about his need to disappear, he gets pulled into a secret underground of women who are protecting battered and abused women and children from harm. This is one of the wildest Burke stories, involving neo-nazis, undercover government agents and the witness protection program. When Burke gets in deep, he calls in his "family": reclusive tech genius The Mole, con-man and former strong-arm bandit The Prof and weapons expert Clarance. Together they must save Burke's friend, outwit the feds and the neo-nazis and thwart a terrorist attack. This was a very interesting book, not your typical noir crime novel. Vachss pushes a the envelope a lot, particularly in his descriptions of "warrior women" who run shelters and protect others from harm. Grade: B.

Book review: Knight's Honour by Roberta Gellis

Reader #8 wrote: I love books about the dark ages and how different life was then from now. Elizabeth is a strong woman in a world where women have no power. Roger has great power and is quick in all he does. Both are proud and driven to each other. Grade A.

Book review:The Eternal Highlander by Hannah Howell & Lynsay Sands

Reader # 8 wrote: Great stories set in 1474 about a family trying to blend in to different styles. I'd like to read more to see how they live on, I love vampire stories. Grade: B.

Book review:Single White Vampire by Lynsay Sands

Reader #8 wrote: A 600 year old man gets the rug pulled out from under him. I laughed out loud through most of the book. This is the second in the series about this family of vampires and I just love it. Grade: B.

Book Review: The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Edward Dolnick

Reader #82 wrote: THE FORGER'S SPELL: A TRUE STORY OF VERMEER, NAZIS, AND THE GREATEST ART HOAX OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY by Edward Dolnick
(ISBN-13 978-0-06-082541-6, ISBN-10 0-06-082541-3) is primarily about Han van Meegeren, a painter who forged several Vermeers which fooled even the leading art critics of the day. Dolnick goes into a lot of technical detail of how van Meegeren did this, and even more on the psychology of convincing people that forgeries are real. He also explains how critics in the 1930s were fooled but we can tell immediately these are fakes. One reason, he says, is that van Meegeren's women have features that were considered beautiful in the 1930s when he painted them, but not now. So while his audience saw beauty, we do not. He actually makes a science fiction connection, saying, "science fiction always tells as much about the era when it was created as about the era it tries to imagine. In the future as it was
portrayed in the fifties, for instance, husbands commuted to work in personal rockets and wives stayed home and cooked up meals in a pill. For a decade or two, readers found it all quite plausible." (page 221)

One might compare this to films. We can look at a film made about Troy for example, and be able to tell whether it was made in the 1930s, the 1950s, the 1980s, or the 2000s. Even if someone tries to make a film now that looks old, there are often things that give it away. Some are technical, but others are harder to define. The Timothy Hines version of WAR OF THE WORLDS was made to look Edwardian--though obviously no one was making color sound films then--but it is clearly a product of the 2000s rather than, say, the 1950s.

I have two quibbles with THE FORGER'S SPELL. One is that the book is told in a strange order. For the first hundred pages Dolnick talks about Nazi art looting and thefts, then he jumps back to the creation and selling of forged Vermeers in the 1920s and 1930s. As each major character is introduced Dolnick has to jump back in time again to give the background of that character, which gives the narrative a "stop-and-start" quality. Then he finishes with the discovery of the forgeries, after the war. So Dolnick tells the middle chapter of the story, then the beginning, and then the end.

It is not until the epilogue that Dolnick addresses why a painting thought to be by painter X is worth millions, but whenit turns out to be by painter Y, it is worth $1.98. (Actually, good forgeries are worth more than that, but as curiosities rather than as art.) We have this idea that art should be valued as art, but it seems that much of it is valued as relic. Van Meegeren asked, "Yesterday this picture was worth millions of guilders, and experts and art lovers would come from all over the world and pay money to see it. Today, it is worth nothing, and nobody would cross the street to see it from free. But the picture has not changed. What has?"

Dolnick's answer is three-fold. First, "the world was full of people who thought of themselves as art lovers but were in fact merely snobs." Second, he quotes Alfred Lessing, who said that Vermeer was great because "he painted certain pictures in a certain manner at a certain time in the history and development of art." And lastly, Dolnick says, "When we praise a work of art, we have in mind not only the finished product but the way that product was made. ... [The] forger has the unfair advantage of working from someone else's model." (page 291) Grade: B.