People, Places, Things

 

MALNI: TOWARDS THE OCEAN, TOWARDS THE SHORE (B) - This ode to the Pacific Northwest is grounded in the culture of the American Indian. It is a coy, ruminative pastiche of conversations and images, offering a gravitas that is mostly hinted at. The images of nature are captivating and are wasted on anything other than a big movie screen. 

Washington State product Sky Hopinka is behind this valentine to his heritage and homeland. He picks two subjects around Portland, Ore. -- Jordan a married father of young children, including a newborn, and Sweetwater Sahme, a pregnant woman setting her life on course after a wild youth. Both connect their beliefs to their ancestors and to the generations to come, embracing the circle of life. 

Hopinka's camera likes to wander away from his subjects, creating disjointed visuals, often involving water, whether it is Jordan or other unrelated people canoeing across a lake, or Sweetwater Sahme longing for the cleansing powers of the waterfalls she gazes on. Hopinka also weaves in a narrative connected to the Origin of Death myth, not always making clean connections but creating more of a atmospheric tone poem. He makes his point in 82 minutes, offering snippets of cultural touchstones but not overstaying his welcome or staking any claims to creating a comprehensive document on his subject.

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES (B+) - Immersive documentary filmmaker Hanna Jayanti spent three years cultivating a relationship with five residents of Truth or Consequences, N.M., and she presents their stories in the form of a tone poem that ponders both the past and the future, using the nearby Spaceport (and its infinite possibilities) as a framing device for how we deal with space and time. Jayanti creates a narrative (science) fiction, set in the near future, of these five souls having been left behind on planet Earth after space travel has begun.

Jayanti is obviously going for a mood here, though she does not ignore her subjects or reduce them to props. The biggest gimmick is a camera trick, in which she does something with focus or lighting to atomize a scene -- a room or a landscape -- to make it look like the granular detail of an iced-over distant planet, only to eventually morph the image back to reality. I guess that's the futuristic space-travel theme at work. It makes for some fascinating visuals amid the bleak desert backdrop.

The characters here are quirky but real. They skew older, though there is a 30-year-old native who has boomeranged back to town to work at the Bullocks general store only to feel trapped and seriously depressed. She copes by joining a crystals club with a bunch of old folks. Then there is an 80-year-old chain-smoking woman who lives in a trailer with her two dogs and reminisces about her days running a circus. We meet a hoarder and a painter, too, each one with a unique philosophical take on life in southern New Mexico. 

It's not that the people here are incidental, but they are bit players in Jayanti's creation, and the sum of their parts, combined with the visual elements, add up to a provocative whole.

Bob Dylan turns 80

 

Today's daily New Yorker cartoon features an elderly couple, with the woman telling the man, "Dylan turns eighty today -- don't you think it's finally time you forgave him for going electric?"

I'm too young to remember Robert Zimmerman's "Judas!" moment or his audacity to expand beyond the folk movement to the point of inspiring Pete Seeger to take an axe to the band's power lines in Newport. I found Dylan when I was in high school, after I discovered the Beatles when I was in junior high. 

For me over the decades, the greatest appeal of Bob Dylan has been "discovering" him -- the different modes of him throughout his career. For decades now, the 1966 release "Blonde on Blonde" has remained in my Top 5 albums of all time, while others have come and gone. (Haunted to this day by "Visions of Johanna," I still mutter to myself a play on those lyrics, during a senior moment, "Jeez, I can't my my keys."

 

I had to forage my way toward "Blonde on Blonde." Early, rudimentary memories, though, evoke snippets of sonic recollections: of being in my parents' black Buick Electra 225 and thinking how "Lay Lady Lay" stood out from anything else I'd ever heard on the radio; in Jerry Woods' basement circa 1978 hearing "Positively 4th Street" and thinking it was Dire Straits, who were the hot new hipsters, not realizing Mark Knopfler was simply Dylanesque and that the real thing was so much more expansive; with a driver's license of my own, tooling down 26th Street in my forest-green '74 Chevy Nova, hearing "Buckets of Rain," being blown away, and thinking, "OK, now which iteration of Dylan is that one from?"

 

It was from "Blood on the Tracks," of course, and -- aha! -- a copy of that record was in my brother's collection. Maybe Dylan's second best release. That album actually led me backward, to start to fill in the back catalog, those legendary recordings from the '60s at the height of his creativity. As I was starting to delve into Dylan, though, it was by now the late '70s, and he had fallen out of fashion during the punk and disco era. Imagine my shock when I bought the new release "Live at Budokan" (1979) and couldn't believe how horrifically he'd butchered his own songs. ("Is that a goddamn flute?! What the ....?")

That was right before "Slow Train Coming," which reaffirmed his popularity but put off a lot of fans who were worried by the launch of that multi-album Christian phase -- which was a concern but which also produced some of his greatest individual album tracks. He would emerge from that phase in 1983 with "Infidels" -- Knopfler, by now producing; Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare the dynamic rhythm section; Dylan's songs again epic in nature. I started going to see him live, maybe four times in the '80s, once with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers backing him, often with the Grateful Dead either preceding him or following him into town but either way cluttering the parking lot each time. 

It was hit and miss for the rest of the '80s -- I had finally caught up with Dylan's recordings in real time -- until his next masterpiece, 1989's "Oh Mercy," recorded with Daniel Lanois. I can't imagine anyone else creating the perfect song "Most of the Time." (Check out Bettye LaVette's version on the wonderful compilation album "Chimes of Freedom." For another fine collection of Dylan covers, go to the soundtrack to Todd Haynes' film "I'm Not There.")

 

I stuck with him in the '90s when he stopped recording his own material and instead put out albums of traditional folks songs, each album powerful in its own right. He picked up his pen again in 1997 and reunited with Lanois for what is probably his third-best release, "Time Out of Mind," just a haunting howl from a spurned lover now in his 50s and realizing the depth of musical history that came before him. That album was released on September 30, 1997, and it was just a few days later that I found myself in Sacramento for my good friend's wedding, and I was prepared with my Discman and mini earphones, so that after I went down to Tower Records (the original store?), I could go back to the hotel and play the CD right away. Try putting on headphones, closing your eyes, and launching the opening track -- the plaintive, spine-tingling opening notes of "Love Sick," altered here from the original:

That was my heyday (in a lot of ways), and it's been a slow slide toward estrangement for Dylan and me. The last release of his I bought was "Love and Theft."  During this review of the documentary about Tower Records, I told the story of tracking down "Love and Theft" on its date of release -- September 11, 2001 -- despite the inconvenience of a terrorist attack that sunny day. That album was half disappointing, and it was then that I realized that Dylan is at his best when he has the right producer and at his worst -- like in the past two decades -- when his alter-ego Jack Frost is at the controls. Some writers need a good editor; some rock stars need a good producer. I've sampled his recent releases -- giving him the benefit of the doubt, even the horrific Sinatra stuff -- and have concluded that the man's lyrical muse has mostly abandoned him and that he has simply given up on writing melodies. He has essentially retired but keeps going.

I haven't seen him live since the '90s, the last time at a fairly intimate club in Chicago as he was launching that roadhouse version of his band, the sound he essentially still tours with, 25 years on. I've heard horror stories from fans who have gone to see the croaking-frog version of the elderly Dylan, sometimes genuinely baffled at which song he is singing, that's how recognizable the renderings can be. I've delved into his finely curated Bootleg series -- Rolling Thunder is simply the best live tour I have ever heard recorded, and I regret that I'm just young enough to have been too young to have caught that version of his band. It's a shame the recent movie about it is such a disappointment. If I had to pick one recording to leave you with, on Bob Dylan's 80th birthday, that I could take with me to that proverbial desert island, it would be, from "Bootleg: Vol. 5," the live version of "Isis."

Idle Chatter

 

KICKING AND SCREAMING (1995) (A-minus) - Going back to the beginning, here is the debut feature from Noah Baumbach, which establishes his ease with banter and fragile male egos surrounded by manic pixie dream girls. It revolves around Grover (Josh Hamilton), who leads a cadre of smart alecks as they are cast adrift after college graduation.

These prepsters can't quit each other as they stumble out of the career gate, preferring to cling to their alma mater, where life remains simple and familiar. Standing out here is the understated Chris Eigeman (who a few years earlier helped launch Whit Stillman's career in "Metropolitan" and "Barcelona") as the sullen Max. We also get the drolly funny Carlos Jacott as Otis (routinely clad in a pajama top) and Jason Wiles as dippy Skippy. These goofballs hang out in the vicinity of perennial student/bartender Chet (Eric Stoltz), the wise Yoda among these rascals.

Olivia D'Abo (transitioning from TV's "The Wonder Years") rocks a retainer as Grover's ingenue who got away (off to Prague, which is treated like a cliche getaway in the mid-'90s), while indie heavyweight Parker Posey (totally in her milieu) and Cara Buono show more of an edge and less patience with these grown boys. The writing is sharp, and the simmering ennui is wonderfully underplayed. This was the emergence of Gen X, and much of the characterizations ring true.

CABARET (1972) (B) - This seems more like a curiosity than a foundational piece of '70s cinema, but it has its moments. Being of the era, this dances around some sensitive issues as it goes back in time 40 years to Berlin on the brink of Nazi rule to filter everything through the lens of a nihilistic nightclub, though it does dare to address (to a degree) free love, homosexuality and abortion.

Bob Fosse recovered from his debut flop (1969's "Sweet Charity") and emerged with his signature visual flair as he mixes in cabaret numbers with the dramatic vignettes revolving around American Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli) and her gay British pal Brian (a confident, nuanced Michael York). Joel Grey steals the show as the club's emcee.

The biggest issue here is the refusal to take on the Nazi problem with any depth or sophistication. The brown shirts are a looming menace, but they are treated more conceptually than head-on, depicted more as annoying pamphleteers than bullies. The original source material is to be respected, but the tension between musical decadence and the building political storm results in more affectation than piercing provocation.

Still, Fosse's vision here (his use of distorted images and misdirection are impressive) and the songs of Kander & Ebb (among others) are truly compelling at times, and just try to get some of these tunes out of your head a week later. Minnelli comes across as a lightweight in the first half of the film, but either she grows on you or she simply learned how to act by the end of the production, because she can be affecting down the stretch, leading to the belting out of the title tune and the haunting final visual.

BONUS TRACKS

Let's put together our list, now that we've seen 10, of Noah Baumbach films (as director), in order of preference and with links to reviews:

1. The Squid and the Whale
2. Frances Ha
3. Marriage Story
4. Margot at the Wedding
5. Kicking and Screaming
6. Greenberg
7. The Meyerowitz Stories
8. DePalma (documentary with Jake Paltrow)
9. While We're Young
10. Mistress America

Not seen: Mr. Jealousy

"Kicking's" soundtrack thrums with indie cred of the era, including Pixies, Grant Hart and Freedy Johnston, plus this pivotal number from Jimmie Dale Gilmore, "Braver Newer World." 

R.I.P, Monte Hellman

 

It's been nearly five years since I re-watched "Two-Lane Blacktop," the iconic (there, I said it) American New Wave road film from 1971. As that film turns 50, its director, Monte Hellman (below right) has died -- last month; he was 91. 

I first saw "Two-Lane Blacktop" when it was only about 30 years old at the old location of the Gene Siskel Film Center near downtown Chicago. It immediately captivated me, and it haunts me to this day. It is the obvious pinnacle of Hellman's spotty career as one of the many descendants of Roger Corman on the pulpy side of the '60-'70s New Wave.

In tribute, I ordered up Hellman's preceding movie release:

THE SHOOTING (1966) (C-minus) - Meh. This one is a laconic would-be Spaghetti Western, but it mostly sits flat on the screen. If you want to see Jack Nicholson on a horse, this a good opportunity to do that.

But if you want an Old World revenge morality play, you have plenty of options (such as "McCabe and Mrs. Miller"). Here, we are treated to Warren Oates, the only truly compelling part of the film. (He would go on to star in Hellman's next two films, including 1974's "Cockfighter.") He is joined by the arresting Millie Perkins as a woman who hires Oates' character to join her on a journey to track a mysterious rider (Nicholson). 

Like "Blacktop," the dialogue is spare. (It was written by Carole Eastman (as Adrien Joyce), who would go on to pen her masterpiece, "Five Easy Pieces" starring Nicholson.) It might help if you are a fan of westerns, especially of the more modern variety, but this one just dragged too often.

Life Is Short: We'll Always Have Paris

 

We went into "Paris Calligrammes" with perhaps misguided expectations. We were expecting a romp with artists through the French capital during the heady '60s culminating in the May 1968 protests and some thoughts on how that shaped the era. We never made it past 1966.

This is a memoir from German artist Ulrike Ottinger, who parachuted into the Paris literary and art scene in the early '60s, joining a circle of artistes, writers and poets who orbited around the Calligrammes bookstore. However, the production here is leaden, the pace is slow, her narration is dull, and the names she drops fly by quickly, few of them recognizable. At least to me. Here's a good litmus test. At one point, Ottinger references the staging of a Jean Genet play and notes that it featured three "famous" actors, and then she names Madeleine Renaud, Maria Casares and Jean-Pierre Granval. If none of those names ring a bell, then the rest of this won't resonate, I'm afraid. 

There's an audience for this, certainly. But you'd have to appreciate the extreme inside baseball to devote more than two hours to Ottinger's valentine to her youth.

Title: PARIS CALLIGRAMMES

Running Time: 130 MIN

Elapsed Time at Plug Pull:  50 MIN

Portion Watched: 38%

My Age at Time of Viewing: 58 YRS, 5 MOS.

Average Male American Lifespan: 78.5 YRS.

Watched/Did Instead: Went to bed to read myself to sleep.

Odds of Re-viewing This Title: 88-1

Noir Chronicles: Femmes Fatales

 A pair of barn-burners with two strong female leads in undercooked roles:

KEEPER OF THE FLAME (1942) (B-minus) - Celebrated war correspondent Steve O'Malley (Spencer Tracy) returns stateside during the middle of the war to pursue a biography of a beloved national hero who died in a car crash, and that means finding access to his widow, Christine Forrest (Katharine Hepburn). Yes, it's Hepburn and Tracy, but there is no flame between them.

Competing with his fellow news hounds and verbally sparring with the locals, O'Malley lands his prey and soon has access to the great man's archives, though you can tell off the bat that something's not adding up here. Ol' Steve surely will dig up the truth. Tracy is likeable but Hepburn is cold and melodramatic, a little out of touch with the loose cast around her. The supporting cast includes a wonderful turn by Audrie Christie as Jane Harding, a journalistic colleague of O'Malley's who is sharp and sassy and the life of the party here. She and Percy Kilbride as a wisecracking cabdriver leaven this with some sideways screwball comedy amid the gloom and glory.

This one from George Cuckor ("Gaslight," "The Philadelphia Story"), which landed in theaters a year after Pearl Harbor, lays the patriotism on awfully thick. And it's one of those old-fashioned creaky scripts in which a character uses most of the final 10 minutes to reveal everything in one long monologue just to wrap it all up. 

Spotted: A trio of familiar faces: Forrest Tucker (TV's "F Troop") as the widow's surly cousin; future blacklist victim Howard Da Silva as the widow's grumpy gatekeeper; and Pa Kettle himself, Percy Kilbride, as the cranky cabbie full of practical advice and putdowns.

THE FURIES (1950) (C+) - Barbara Stanwyck is constantly forced to be lady-like as a frustrated heiress in this western about a vain rancher who is just begging for a comeuppance. This has just too much bellowing by Walter Huston as T.C. Jeffords, the father of Stanwyck's Vance Jeffords, who is appalled by her father jeopardizing his empire by passing out IOUs all over the New Mexico territory and beyond, not to mention the gold-digging bride he brings home one day.

Vance is sympathetic to the Mexican homesteaders who camp out on the vast property, and she has a more business affinity than romantic interest in rival Rip Darrow (Wendell Corey), who not only asserts a claim to part of the property but is too much of a cad for her to take seriously. This would-be epic from Anthony Mann meanders too much in the first half and struggles in the second half to make the intrigue jell. It doesn't help that Mann's reins on Stanwyck (the Parker Posey of her time) are way too tight. The movie finally does come through with a pretty clever payoff -- and some redemption for Vance -- but it takes nearly two hours to get there. And if you're not a regular fan of westerns, that can be an awfully dusty trail to wander down.

Spotted: Prolific TV character actor Frank Ferguson ("Lassie," "My Friend Flicka") in the familiar role of a doctor.

By Any Means Necessary

 

SLALOM (B) - This French production avoids the trap of presenting another repulsive take on the stale narrative of an older man exploiting a younger woman, or in this case, a skiing coach abusing his 15-year-old student. It's a scenario we don't need to seek out.

However, this debut feature from writer-director Charlene Favier pulses with dread and sadness, as young doe-eyed Lyz (Noee Abita) has been cast adrift by distracted divorced parents, and coach Fred (Jeremie Renier from Francois Ozon's "Double Lover") fills the void. A nuanced character, he comes across as someone with more of an uncontrollable compulsion than just some evil predator. Still, a rape scene two-thirds of the way through is shocking and disturbing; yet, Favier trains her camera on Lyz's face, those frightened eyes searching not so much for rescue but for a way to instantly process the attack and find a drawer in her mind to instantly shelve it away in her psyche.

Abita is fascinating to watch. She just turned 22, but she looks like an awkward teenager, with small hands but full lips, as if she's still growing into her body, which gets inspected and measured regularly to assess her progress as an athlete. But it is her eyes that constantly scan her surroundings (mostly teen social and competitive dynamics at the remote school in the mountains) and assess situations for survival options, whether Fred is stalking her or her best friend in the group, Justine (Maira Schmitt), gets a little too chummy.

Favier hints at the idea that Fred is just working every angle he can in order to motivate this future champion to maximize her talents. (He often uses "we" to describe Lyz's athletic accomplishments.) The filmmaker refuses to outright demonize Fred but rather provides just a few shades of grey to keep the viewer off balance.

Favier shows a strong visual flair in this resort setting (she is particularly adept at capturing the flurry of snowflakes, whether natural or machine-produced), but she lapses into conventional choices; there must be at least a dozen establishing shots of the snow-covered mountains, a technique intended to perhaps suggest emotional impediments involved here, but which eventually comes off as repetitive, if not nearly Pythonesque ("forbidding, aloof, terrifying ..."). And Lyz's ascent -- from budding phenom to world's greatest skier -- is a little too shorthand to be fully believable.

But this is Abita's movie, and Favier, like Celine Sciamma ("Girlhood"), has a distinctive connection with the adolescent experience, which allows her young actress to add layers and subtlety to what otherwise could have been a shallow, exploitive movie.

Renegades

 From the archives ...

THE FUGITIVE KIND (1960) (B+) - Marlon Brando ends his first decade as a movie star by mixing "A Streetcar Named Desire" with "The Wild One" to flex his chops as a lone-wolf drifter named Valentine Xavier trying to stay out of trouble with the women of the Deep South and their feral male protectors. 

Tennessee Williams, adapting some of his earlier work, lays the groundwork for the beautiful Brando to smolder his way through this dark story of longing and regret. Anna Magnani plays Lady Torrance, the wife of a miserable cur (Victor Jory) who lies in bed dying in a room above the mercantile store she runs and where Brando's Valentine comes to work after giving up his life as a guitar player. Joanne Woodward is on hand as Carol Cutrere, the town floozy who is frustrated that her come-ons to Valentine don't work. He is drawn more to the older woman. 

Sidney Lumet, behind the camera, doesn't seem to connect much with the southern culture (he's prone to depicting the men as parts of snarling racist mobs), but, like Williams, he seems to have a natural connection to Brando, who carries the story along in the trail of his animal musk. Valentine and Lady Torrance form a genuine bond, and when it all comes to a head, there's real heartbreak and tragedy involved. This feels like adult storytelling despite the period melodrama.

WOMAN IN THE DUNES (1964) (B) - This philosophical psychological horror film from Japan has style to burn, not to mention grains of sand in every crack and crevice you can imagine. A Tokyo teacher indulging his love of entomology while on vacation near a small sea village is tricked into staying overnight with a woman who lives in a sand it accessible only by a rope ladder. He soon finds that he can't escape and is trapped in this sandy purgatory, perhaps indefinitely.

The dread and drudgery of shoveling sand for the villagers above is sharply rendered -- though the depiction of mind-numbing servitude might weigh on viewers over the course of two and a half hours. (We admit to some strategic fast-forwarding in a few spots, but not enough to qualify this for Fast Forward Theater.) The man (Eiji Okada from "Hiroshima Mon Amour") eventually falls into the arms of the coquettish but practical woman (Kyoko Kishida).

Director Hiroshi Teshigahara develops a captivating visual palette, offsetting the suffocating amounts of sand with geometric patterns and extreme close-ups, including of the couple's bodies. At times the artistic flourishes are mesmerizing. The story itself soon devolves into a slow-burn tale of survival, one of Sisyphean proportions, suggesting that the repetitive days in a sand pit are a metaphor for the daily rat race in the big city. Your mileage may vary.

Where in the World Have We Gone?

 

QUO VADIS, AIDA? (A) - In 1998, in the raw days following the rough truce that ended the war in the former Yugoslavia, I visited Croatia, the land of my maternal ancestors. I found the hillside town overlooking the Adriatic, Hreljin, where my grandfather John (nee Ivan) grew up, and I found relatives there who spoke English and had a direct connection to the kin who had once visited the Chicago area of my family after World War II. I would return in 2000 with my mother in tow to visit those same relatives.  I took her inside her father's boyhood home, where she claimed some artwork left behind from an aunt who had died many years earlier around age 21. I grabbed a crystal shot glass.

In 1998, taking a detour on our way to see the World Cup tournament in France, my ex and I traveled the Dalmatian coast. She had always wanted to see Dubrovnik, and she was relieved to find that it had survived the Serbian siege, albeit with a marble plaza of the old city pockmarked from shelling. Fledgling restaurateurs lured us into side alleys to sample their fare. It was an entrepreneurship we had noticed on the drive down, including the determined rebuilding of the ivory-colored homes with their refurbished terra-cotta roofs -- those earth-tone hues framed by the backdrop of the marble-blue Adriatic.  

This was a mere three years after the massacre of Bosnian Muslims in the neighboring republic to the east, perhaps the darkest, most chilling moment of the horrific war that marked the breakup of Yugoslavia. We were modestly surprised to run across few hallmarks of that genocidal bloodbath across the region. If there was enmity being harbored, we didn't detect it.

During the war, in the early '90s, I had taken a marked interest in the day-to-day dispatches from the homeland's front lines, from my safe perch at a privileged remove on the wire desk of the Chicago Sun-Times. Now, breathing in the warm seaside air of mid-June 1998, I was on a mission connecting with both branches of my family tree. Having spent a week in Italy, we had ferried from Ancona to Split and now were traveling down Croatia's version of Highway 1, soaking up the history, both recent and ancient. 

The Croatians seemed like a practical and resilient people. Life was going on. 

"Quo Vadis, Aida?" is a harsh reminder of the centuries-long ethnic hostilities that had reignited violently and the evil that descended on Srebrenica in July 1995. It chronicles the terrifying hours that led to the massacre of about 8,000 men and boys at the hands of the Bosnian Serbs under the banner of Republika Srpska

Aida (Jasna Djuricic) is a local translator at a United Nations base. On this day, the UN camp is overwhelmed by Srebrenican refugees fleeing after the takeover of the city by the Bosnian Serb army. Most of the residents, with only the clothes on their backs, are trapped both inside and just outside the compound, which is staffed by a skeleton crew of blue helmets who have no rational hope of evacuating everyone safely or repelling the Serbs or defusing the volatile situation.

Aida's husband and two young-adult sons are among the mass of people, and her maternal instincts compel her to try to pull strings to get her family out safely. Her husband participates in some sham negotiations in which the Serbs vow the safe transfer of the thousands of residents to a nearby haven. It is obvious that the Serbs are lying. And it only makes her husband more of a target. As the drama builds the tension never relents.

When some Bosnian Serb soldiers arrive at the camp and start separating out the boys and men, Aida's sense of urgency multiplies. The UN military personnel are essentially useless or clueless or both. The swagger of the Bosnian Serbs is terrifying (especially the quiet menace of a commander named Joka, played by Emir Hadzihafizbegovic, from "Fuse"). The film, written and directed by Jasmila Zbanic ("Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams"), is 100 minutes of nonstop suspense masquerading under the banality of evil. The ending and coda are alternatively shocking and bittersweet. 

The final scene is a reminder that life went on, and factions melted back together side by side. 

The seeds of Yugoslavia's collapse into battle and genocide were planted in a divisive speech by Serbian nationalist Slobodan Milosevic in June 1989 intended to mark the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, which gives you an idea of how long the people of the region have been feuding and have been susceptible to nationalist imprecations. One point of "Quo Vadis" is that it is virtually impossible to casually distinguish between Serbs and Croatians, or Orthodox and Muslims. The people of Srebrenica went to school together, lived among each other, looked alike.

I glimpsed a lot of familiar faces among the strangers during our trip up and down the Dalmatian coast. They were the faces I saw as a kid at cousins' birthday parties and as an adult at family reunions or at the funerals for great-aunts and -uncles. They had bright blue eyes and tender smiles. So do the characters, on both sides, in "Quo Vadis." When I went to the cemetery in Hreljin, half the names on the tombstones were the same as my mother's maiden name. They were the Kucans and Blazinas that would intermarry and settle in the Chicago suburb of Lyons in the 20th century, far away from the troubled homeland, that coiled mousetrap of a country.

A few years after our trip to Croatia, my ex and I broke up, and I would move away from the Chicago suburbs and my family. Before I left, I saw an entry in my ex's diary from that trip to Dubrovnik. She had been heartened to see me connect with my roots. It provided her an insight into a dimension of me that perhaps even I was still in the process of realizing. She ended the entry with this observation: "Now I know where those blue eyes of his come from. That is the color I see when I gaze out into the Adriatic."