The Experimenter

Our Winona is back on her game in this film about the infamous obedience studies conducted by Dr. Stanley Milgram in the early 1960s. I first learned about these studies the same way so many have - in my introductory psychology class in college. Milgram found that the majority of his subjects (65%) would continue to inflict pain on another person if a person in authority told them to do so, even as the "victim" (a confederate in the experiment) screamed in pain.

My Psychology 101 class is also where I also first learned about Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) and was told that it would be unlikely that any IRB today would approve such a study. I was, therefore, surprised to discover that a study conducted as recently as 2009 Jerry Burger's "Obedience Lite" showed similar results to Milgram's. I sit on the IRB at the university where I work and wonder how Burger's study was written that he able to get approval. Our Board is pretty aggressive about our role in protecting human subjects. A few of our colleagues have expressed their disapproval with us when faced with our denial of their applications, but for most of us our concern is foremost on the human subjects, and not on what the experimenter wants. It is a tricky space. There are often risks associated with studies. Any risk must be outweighed by the importance of what might be discovered.

Our Winona plays Milgram's wife Sasha. She is fascinated by the studies and watches both transfixed and horrified as she sees participants struggle with their consciences, believing they are inflicting severe shocks to an innocent person. These scenes are uncomfortable to watch, even though the audience, like Sasha, knows that it was all a deception. Milgram and his cronies appeared to show no signs that they were bothered by this. All seemed academic to them, and in fact, they laughed at many of their subjects and how easily they were fooled. Were the experimenters torturing their subjects by insisting they continue with the study? Milgram and his co-researchers apparently never saw themselves that way. How far should we go in the name of science? Where do we draw the line? What role should deception play in the pursuit to scholarship? This is an excellent and thought-provoking film.

Final Verdict: Four Croquet Balls

Drunk History (2 episodes: "Boston" and "Philadelphia")

I suppose I can't say I was disappointed in this absolutely sophomoric series. It was exactly what it purported to be - drunk people describing historical events while actors portray them. The actors actually lip sync to drunk narrator, so the only voice the audience ever hears is that of the soused storyteller. We only watched the two episodes that featured Our Winona. There was nothing to recommend watching the rest of them.

In "Boston" Ryder plays Mary Dyer a Quaker who was hanged for, well, being Quaker. In "Philadelphia" she is Peggy Shippen, wife of traitor Benedict Arnold.

We did not enjoy these and mostly just wanted them to end, but I will say these two positive things about them

1. I did learn some new historical facts by watching them
2. The actors did a smashing job of synchronizing their mouths to the slurred speech of the pickled raconteurs

Final Verdict: Two Croquet Balls

The Crucible - Noni, You Devil!

Pam writes:

It is always a good thing when two of our interests come together. In this case it is Winona Ryder and Rebecca Nurse  - one of the first victims of the Salem witch trials, and Pam's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother.

In this movie, based on Arthur Miller's play of the same name, Our Winona plays Abigail Williams, the instigator of the witch hunt. Abigail is the ring leader of a group of several young women and girls who accuse their neighbors of dancing with the devil. Daniel Day-Lewis plays John Proctor, a former (married) lover of Abigail. Abigail accuses John's wife Elizabeth of witchcraft in the hopes of getting her out of the way. Elizabeth Lawrence plays Pam's ancestor.

Ryder is wonderful in this film. She shows a range of emotion, (some of which is pretense on Abigail's part). There are some historical inaccuracies in the film, but overall one gets the idea of how superstitious folks were, and how those superstitions played into their fears. We also get a pretty strong sense of the conditions of the jails, and the injustice of the the "justice system".

James adds:

A third interest in this film, of course, is geography, though the family connection and Winona involvement that Pam mentions are also crucial. The film was shot in at least six locations, though IMDb (as of this writing) lists only five. The one missing from IMDb is the most important, and is also the only one that is historically accurate.

GoogleMaps has changed, so the embedded version does not work well. Please explore this map in more detail, noting that the yellow markers are for memorial sites that are neither in the film nor in the original events. 

As with a lot of films -- especially those representing an earlier period in time -- a far-flung set of locations was needed to take advantage of places that have the appearance of a single location in an earlier age. Plimoth Plantation, for example, was carefully constructed in the 20th century to resemble a 17th-century settlement. And from what I can discern from online images, the harbor area of Shelburne, Nova Scotia resembles the harbor area of Salem, but perhaps without overhead wires.

The interesting geography here is that these great efforts are undertaken to maintain a geographic misconception about the events described. The trials were in Salem, but as with Bridgewater and many other Massachusetts towns, Salem was a much bigger town at the time. The entire witch-trial story took place in the part of the town where Rebecca Nurse resided, and which is now in Danvers.

See note above regarding this map.

Rebecca Nurse was among the more prosperous members of the community, and amazingly, her house and grounds remain intact, though all of the historic and commercial remembrances of the trial itself are in the harbor area that remains part of Salem. What IMDb fails to note is that much of The Crucible was actually filmed on her homestead, both in and around her house and in a meeting house built on the homestead specifically for the production.

All films require a great deal of planning, of course, but the planning for this one must have been extraordinary, creating an illusion that would work well for viewers who have not been to the various filming locations. Often we see characters moving almost seamlessly from Danvers to Plymouth to Ipswich, as if they were walking across a single lawn.

The Rebecca Nurse Homestead is both beautiful and profoundly moving, as it includes a memorial build by some of her other descendants. When we visited, our guide was a very young man who was very well versed and clearly conscientious about his role as an interpreter of the site. It is well worth a visit, or at least a Facebook "like" -- yes the Homestead has well over a thousand Facebook followers ...

Final Verdict: Four Croquet Balls

Girl, Interrupted

Based on Susanna Kaysen's memoir of her time spent as a patient in a mental institution, this film stars Our Winona in the title role. She plays well with co-stars Angelina Jolie (as fellow patient Lisa Rowe); Whoopi Goldberg (as-to-good-to-be-true nurse Valerie Owens); and a very young Elizabeth Moss - of Mad Men Fame - as Polly "Torch" Clark.

After combining a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka Kasen reluctantly commits herself to Claymoore Hospital. Questions about her medications go unanswered, and the patients begin their own black market for trading drugs they want for those they don't. Each of the patients on the women's ward battles her own demons, and they can sometimes be cruel to each other. However, their fierce protection of each other is also evident. In one sadly funny scene the patients all go in to town for ice cream as a good-bye send off to one of their own. There they encounter Barbara Gilcrest (Mary Kay Place) the wife of a professor Susanna slept with. When Gilcrest confronts Kasen her cohorts go all out in playing up their mental illnesses in order to scare Gilcrest off.

The tumult inside of Claymoore Hospital parallels what is going on historically during the late 1960s as Susanna's boyfriend, Toby, flees to Canada after getting his draft notice and news of Civil Rights  struggles continue. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll are all part of the backdrop.

Final Verdict: Four Croquet Balls

Mermaids: Noni Makes a Splash

The lemon meringue at
Bayside is
sensuous!

Yesterday was a perfect day to stream  Mermaids, which had been in our queue for re-viewing for some while. We had been to the Bayside Restaurant in Westport. It is one of our favorite restaurants, not only for the great food, the seaside location, and the connections to local sustainable agriculture, but also because of the prevalence of nautical beauties in its graphics and decor. (The related matter of mermaid connections to coffee is covered on James' Environmental Geography blog.)

Set in the early 1960s, this movie is a true gem from Our Winona's golden age of teen angst. Jewish Charlotte Flax (Ryder) is a wanna-be self-flagellating Catholic who must figure out how to live with her eccentric, single mother (Cher), to whom she affectionately refers as Mrs. Flax. A young Christina Ricci plays her precocious little sister, Kate. Pam used the word "precocious" for Ricci's character; James found that her IMDb biography starts with the same word. This was Ricci's first film, and nearly her last as a "little" girl.

Mrs. Flax has a habit of uprooting her family every time she breaks up with a boyfriend. As the film begins she is leaving the boyfriend/boss/creep de jure, and she puts the old random-finger-on-a-map trick to dramatic use in finding the family's next refuge. It is from this scene that we learn Charlotte and Kate will find themselves starting over in the fictitious town of Eastport, Massachusetts, and that this town seems to be near our adopted hometown of Bridgewater. See our Bridgewaters Project blog post for more on the geography of this film.

It is in this little town that Charlotte falls in love for the first time, finds out that she can't get pregnant from kissing, and learns an important lesson in what it means to be a grown up. In many ways this is a predictable coming-of-age film, but the three mermaids of the home -- one a woman, one a girl, and one caught in between -- are played with unusual depth. Their many foibles -- and even the tension between mother and eldest daughter -- make them both sympathetic characters and a joy to spend time with. The viewer can really get the feeling of sitting on the edge of the kitchen, hoping that this small family will find its way.

A note about the fourth-wheel character: Just as Christian Slater was channeling Jack Nicholson as he played opposite Our Noni in the Greatest Film of All Time, so did Bob Hoskins tend to have studied Danny DeVito a little too closely for his role as Mrs. Flax's first non-cretin beau. In Hoskin's case, though, he did not overdo it, and his performance serves to round out the film.

This was a fun film with a great sound track of some of the period's most enjoyable music. Listen through the credits to hear Cher herself cover a Betty Everett track played during the film itself.

Final verdict: four croquet balls.
And yes: 15,000 IMDb users can be wrong. Their equivalent of a three-ball rating, but they just do not understand what Our Noni has done here.

Little Women - A film for the holidays

While looking for something to watch to kick-off the holiday season, I remembered that we owned a copy of this on VHS, still in the shrink wrap - a gift from a family member many years ago. We'd seen the movie before, and remembered loving it, so we held on to the tape in case we ever wanted to watch it again. In addition to being a heart-warming Christmas movie, it is a a perfect first entry for this blog. Our Winona earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Jo March in this wonderful adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic story. While their father is away fighting in the Civil war four sisters and their mother live full and enriching lives, even as they endure financial hardship and heartache.  Jo's character is a wonderful venue for Ryder to display her talent. She demonstrates a range of emotions from elation, to grief, to love, as well as anger, humility, and empathy. Ryder moves effortlessly between rough and tumble tomboy, and thoughtful, independent, young woman with dreams of becoming a writer.

Great performances all around from Susan Sarandon (Marmee); a young Kirsten Dunst (Amy); Claire Danes (Beth); and Trini Alvardo (Meg).

Final verdict: 5 croquet balls