Jiro Dreams of Sushi (David Gelb 2011)

Jiro Dreams of Sushi is highly regarded so completely out of proportion to its actual very limited accomplishments that it's tempting to review the reviewers.  But let's put that off until later.  The film itself, in case you don't know, is about the elderly but still working sushi chef of what is regarded as one of the top sushi restaurants in the world.  Of course that's a substantial topic but the film only sometimes touches on that.  Instead it's a puff piece, filled with raves and shot in glossy ad style.  There are shots of sushi (complete with identifying labels) that are aesthetically identical to any McDonalds or Hardees commercial.  Come to Jiro's Place!  We'll have a grand time!

A bigger problem is that director Gelb doesn't seem to have started with any solid idea about what to do.  There's behind-the-scenes sequences, historical recaps of Jiro's life, on-the-streets atmosphere shots, a more verite-styled bit where Jiro visits his home town and so forth.  It doesn't blend well and none of it is followed through.  It's almost like Gelb kept thinking "Oh let's put this in as well".  Never mentioned (unless I completely missed it) is such important information as how much a meal costs (about US$380 according to other sources), that these often last about 20 or so minutes, or other details.  Instead we're treated to stories of how hard Jiro still works and how demanding he can be.  One assistant made egg sushi 200 times before Jiro deemed it acceptable.  Even assuming the story is true and not some off-hand number it falls very clearly, as do the similar stories, into a familiar Orientalism of hard, repetitious training under a master.  None of this, of course, has any bearing on whether the sushi is in fact "good" - countless cooks and artists work very hard for many years and still produce mediocre work.

It's also unclear who Gelb thought might be the viewer.  At first he seemed to assume basic information about sushi so that I thought the film was more for connoisseurs, even if they're wannabes.  But as it became clear that the film is really just a promotional piece for something almost none of us will experience it also became clear that Gelb wasn't very interested in much that would make this a documentary.  What's the point of one of those TV-ad shots of sushi labelled "O-toro"?  There's no explanation, it just looks nice.  Why show only bits of the sushi process?  Why treat Jiro's claim that the rice should be body temperature as any kind of insight?  There's a sequence towards the end where Jiro explains that for women he makes the sushi a bit smaller or that for left-handed customers he puts it on the other side.  I guess we're supposed to think this is an insight into his world-class wisdom but the thing is that this is exactly what any decent sushi chef does, just as they often pack the rice differently for somebody eating with fingers rather than chopsticks.  It's like watching a documentary on Thomas Keller where he explains that when cooking a steak he will season it.  Yep, just that pointless.  There's also a bit where an on-camera critic compares Jiro's meals to music and then we're treated to a sequence where he explains this while we hear a classical piece and watch parts of the meal.  Only problem is that it's complete nonsense.  There's nothing resembling musical structure about the meal's progression and since Gelb's father was manager of the Met surely he knows this.

Oh, but let's get to the reviewers.  On Rotten Tomatoes Jiro Dreams of Sushi rates a remarkable 99% which should be a red flag that they're not really watching the film.  Just taking comments from the site (in other words there's a possibility some are out of context but I'll just live with that) how about starting with Stanely Kauffmann who claims Gelb "wouldn't need filmic embellishments to keep his viewers alert".  Guess he slept through the slow and fast motion parts, ignored the glossy shots, skipped the posed portraits of the restaurant staff staring at the camera.  Rich Cline says Gelb takes "a minimalist approach that matches his subject matter" so he also apparently missed the variety of styles and extravagant shots.  This isn't a Wiseman film after all.  Perry Seibert states it's "a movie worthy of Jiro himself" which doesn't quite make sense but then many of the reviews seem to be aiming for such hazy praise.

German Book 2

WG Sebald is another of the seemingly countless writers I've always intended to read but with a good chance that I never actually would.  His books have been described as using an idiosyncratic almost-collage approach complete with cryptic photographs that may or may not have anything to do with the text.  Then again his work is also described something to do with memory (the almost laughable blurb on the cover calls him "memory’s Einstein") and that sounds quite unappealing.

As it happens Vertigo (1990, English 1999) fits both descriptions though fortunately not in such a bland way as that might sound.  It’s so effective that I’ll likely read all his other books as long as they’re somewhat similar to this one.

Might as well look at the not-quite-collage technique.  The book opens with a biographical (or is it fictional?) account of a soldier during Napoleon’s march through the Alps who then embarks on a series of romantic adventures.  Turns out his name is Beyle and nowhere (at least that I remember) does Sebald remind readers that this was Stendhal's real name.  As far as I know this story is true - at least it sounds like the little I remember from Stendhal's life. 

It turns out that this section is related by the novel’s narrator who then tells us about his uneventful visit to Vienna and his unmotivated travels afterwards.  Throughout the book we get a distanced account from the narrator (little direct dialogue, not much in the usual detailed description of actions) and then more disconnected hstorical or literary pieces (there’s a “Dr. K” for instance).  Most collages rely on the disjunction created by the elements rubbing against each other but Sebald works more towards an integrated flow - actually "collage" may not be the right term.

The narrator is eventually heading to his hometown but it’s unclear exactly why.  None of his memories build to a great revelation (unless of course I completely misunderstood some subtle aspect of the book) and he doesn’t meet many people from his past.  It’s not a dramatic homecoming. 

I didn’t get a sense of vertigo from the book but Sebald does create a hazy, unsettled mood, almost as if this is a very long prose poem.  The bits from other people’s pasts and the famous photographs work into or against the main narrative don’t fit together like the near mathematical formulas many how-to-write-a-plot (or worse screenwriting) instructors would tell you.  Vertigo is actually a book I wanted to read again after finishing it and that’s pretty uncommon.

Assorted viewing

Big Fan (Robert D. Siegel 2009) - This is one of a few recent comedies that appear to have been made as comedies only because there was production money doing that as opposed to the more sober films they actually are - think of Observe and Report, Due Date or even Bridesmaids.  Still, Big Fan is probably the least comic, in fact about the only thing that would have even caused it to be labelled a comedy is the presence of Patton Oswalt.  Instead it's a stark, even blunt look at fan thinking and disillusionment though more complex than merely a fall from celebrity grace.  Oswalt effectively negotiates a tricky role while director Siegel favors an almost distanced style that avoids melodrama.  Like the films mentioned earlier something of a minor classic and deserves much more attention than it received.

The Adventures of Gerard (Jerzy Skolimowski 1970) - I had no idea that anybody made a film of Conan Doyle's Gerard stories and Skolimowski seemed like a nice choice.  The result, though, is something of a wreck with a confusing story, strained comedy and an overall feel of a home movie.  I have a feeling that there were production troubles or possibly just another attempt at quick multi-national money and nobody was too invested in the film.  For curious Conan Doyle fans only.

Rare Exports: From the Land of the Original Santa Claus (Jalmari Helander 2010) - The IMDB lists a different subtitle but mine is what's actually on the print.  This Finnish effort has an unusual idea about the origin of Santa Claus but takes quite a while to get around to using it.  It's not padded exactly but does meander more than necessary.  Perhaps it's needless to point out that the original short included on the DVD is much more effective.  Perhaps worth a look if you're looking for a darker Christmas story (that really doesn't have much to do with Christmas) but I wouldn't suggest making much of an effort.

Cop Hater (William Berke 1958) - An adaptation of the first of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels made shortly after the book's appearance.  It's actually fairly close to the original though it almost inevitably feels a bit tidied up.  Some of the less pleasant human motivations are toned down and the procedural aspects reduced to brief bits - probably more in the interests of telling a quick story than in any deliberate lightening of the book.  Mostly b-movie bluntness and certainly no lost gem though at least not boring.

Hot Cars (Don McDougall 1956) - I have a feeling that this was either intended for TV or was a low-budget shot at easy money (sort of how Hitchcock shot Psycho with a TV crew).  In any case it appears to be the only theatrical release for prolific TV director McDougall and the entire thing feels like TV.  It has the same even lighting, sets that look like they would push over and actors who run through dialogue with little inflection or variation.  The story about a man who gets pulled into a car theft ring is handled with few distractions.  It does have some nice location shooting, a somewhat imaginative finale in an amusement park and the presence of Joi Lansing (who has little talent but a cult following due to a couple of wild Scopiotones).

Library book sale

The last thing I need is more books but it's hard to resist the library book sales when they appear.  You never know what will show up and it's all a buck or two.  There were a few things I skipped.  Didn't know Pirandello wrote a novel about the film business (Shoot) but the copy was poor condition.  There was a Freya Stark book also with the cover coming off.  And a nice collection of "great essays" (mainly 18th and 19th century) but it was one of those tiny 60s paperbacks that the type was too small to be easily read.

But I did pick up:

Kogan - Shutterbabe
Ellis - His Excellency George Washington
Tannahill - Food in History
Swafford - Charles Ives
Moaveni - Lipstick Jihad
Elliott - An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan
Zhukov - Marshall Zhukov's Greatest Battles
Henderson - Pushcart Prize 2008
Halpern - Our Private Lives
Auster - The New York Trilogy
Cooper - The German Army 1933-1945

German Book 1

Nicholas Boyle - German Literature: A Very Short Introduction (2008)

It would have been nice if my first post about a German book had been about, well, a German book.  This one is by a British author, from a British press, with British spelling, using British pagination - it's turtles all the way down.  But when starting my project I had forgotten about this book and it seems appropriate.  The library also had another not-very-short introduction (well they're calling it a "companion") to German lit so that will be included too unless it gets too dull.

The Very Short Introduction series sounds awful, like little compressed textbooks mainly useful as cribs, though in fact they're usually quite imaginative and worth reading even for topics you might know.  There are a few that take the quick overview approach but more commonly the books really are introductions (or even essays) that don't attempt to touch on every key point.  The one on classics for instance takes a Greek temple and uses that to bring up various approaches to classics; similarly the one on Russian literature uses Pushkin for its different topics.  

Boyle's book on German literature is more of an overview though a somewhat odd one.  It opens with a chapter that runs quickly through German history though this version is one of large abstract forces and barely mentions dates, people or even political events.  It's a kind of hazy tussle among towns, universities and churches that for all I know may be the best way to approach the literature - for the rest I suppose the quick overview is on Wikipedia.  This chapter does underline that "German" is an even more amorphous designation that I had realized so even though Boyle more or less excludes Austrian and Swiss writers I won't, as long as they wrote in German.

Then the chapters on literature proper, going chronologically for the most part.  As fits the opening these writers are either working out hidden tectonic frictions or pursuing grand themes.  There's not much formal exploration or technical issues in Boyle's approach (then again this is a very short intro).  At times it's not entirely clear what Boyle thinks these writers are trying to resolve but for the most part his approach is direct and readable, at least given what he's trying to do.  One result is that he doesn't give much of the "flavor" of particular writes so they tend to blur together but as far as I can tell he touches on the main names and movements.  Missing of course are any popular writers such as Patrick Suskind or Edgar Wallace who were great successes in the English-speaking world, though not having read either I have no idea if they're even worth inclusion.  He's also not just relaying received wisdom - for instance dismissing Brecht's theoretical writings in an abrupt sneering aside.  In the end, even though I know little about German literature I'm not sure I learned much from the book.  Decades of travelling around the book world means I can locate the mountains, rivers and landmarks - it's actually climbing or swimming that's the point.

2013: My Year of German Literature

One of my favorite professors at work was Max Aue who taught German.  I didn’t see him often but it was always interesting when he stopped by, usually for business but we often ended up chatting.  He even invited me to sit in on a class once because, in his phrase, it would be good to have another adult in the room.  Frequently what we talked about was how little Americans knew about German literature.  I told him to not worry too much because most Americans don’t really know anything about American literature either.  But his basic point was true enough and I’m an example.  Even though I've seen a bunch of German films, I’ve read only a few German books and most of those actually by Austrian writers or in one obvious case Czech (or Austrian-Czech or Austro-Hungarian-Czech or whatever is the appropriate pigeonhole).

Last August Max died in a traffic accident.  As a way of paying tribute I decided to read more German books in 2013 and came up with the idea of one a month.  Twelve isn’t very many and I already decided to go with twelve for the entire year because there’s no way I can follow a schedule.  At one point I considered doing one fiction book and one history because after reading Simon Winder’s Germania last Spring I realized I have a very spotty knowledge of German history between the Roman empire (or at least Arminius and Teutoburg Forest) and the 20th century.  But I’m going to be more lax about the history or I’d likely end up just reading war books all year.

I already have a list of about 40 titles but won’t post it because certainly I won’t read most of them.  After all Novalis may sound worth checking out (Borges seems to have liked him) but really how far am I likely to get past an introduction?  I'm not completely trying to fill in cultural blank spots but to find worthwhile books and writers so no survey approach.  And to continue overthinking what is basically a pretty modest project I’m going to mainly focus on Germany proper however confusing or improper or vague that might be but won’t worry much if something is from an Austrian or Swiss writer (if only because I’ve always planned to read Joseph Roth and this is as good a time as any). I'm still looking for travel narratives about Germany (Theroux seems to have skipped it) or from Germans (is there a German Toqueville or Custine?) as well as some less academic (ie narrowly focused) histories or biographies.

With any luck a post about the first book will appear in a few days.

Writers No One Reads • Dalkey Archive Press, or How to Publish Writers No One Reads
I always find it odd when people complain about things that are, when you get down to it, not really their concern. In this case somebody upset with how a publisher chooses to market their books. Sure maybe that choice is a bad one but still they get to make it. As a critic I often use the idea of what a creator "should have done" but that's mainly a tactic to expose flaws (or at least expose decisions I don't agree with). Not exactly the same thing because not only is reconceiving art an ancient practice but such commentary is actually an essential part of the process even of usually internalized.

This post was done on my tablet as an experiment. Not sure it will be repeated often because it's so much slower than a desktop.