Word: standings
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...funeral directors are expected to be lank, lugubrious, waxen creatures like their customers, Mickey Milam, a smiling cherub of a man, provides the perfect antistereotype. In the Chapel of the Chimes, flanked by potted palms and backed by taped music, Mickey delivers his stand-up speech on the history, evolution, and utter necessity of the funeral home professional. Who else knows just how to suture the lips shut? Who else knows just where to make the incision so "you're gonna get your best drainage...
What makes Kramer stand out, even in this often heady company, is its lack of cant or trendy attitudes of any stripe. Rather than tailor his characters to represent the various party lines of present-day sexual politics, Benton allows the issues to develop freely and inferentially from the unruly passions of his story. Kramer avoids explicit feminist debates, and it does not provide heroes or villains of either sex. By such omissions, it departs dramatically from films like An Unmarried Woman and Alice, which feature warm, wholly sympathetic heroines and men who are usually either bastards or saints. Kramer...
...most readily with the film's principal supporting character, Margaret, a divorced neighbor, played superbly by Jane Alexander. Margaret begins by encouraging Joanna's decision to walk out, later becomes a confidante of Ted's and ends up emotionally drained, torn by both on the witness stand. After the judge has delivered his verdict, it is still difficult for the audience, as well as Joanna, Ted and Margaret, to decide who has really won. The ambiguity lingers to the final frame of the film. Like the first shot, the last one is a close-up of Streep...
...with amazement: "We must have shot that scene from seven in the morning until six at night, over and over again. First in closeup, then a medium shot, finally a long one. Later in the day, we shot only Dustin reacting to her on the stand. During this last take, all 30 people in the room were facing Dustin. I happened to be watching Meryl, as well. She had the same intensity as she had when she first did the scene...
...MORE THAN 500 pages, the collection could stand some selective paring. First on the list to go would be several columns where Strout simply tries to do too much. An emotional protest against the use of the atom bomb somehow winds up as a plea to pay American diplomats salaries commensurate with what foreign envoys in the U.S. receive. Especially when he treats several topics in one column, Strout tends either to make bold assumptions with no justification at all, or to give only sketchy proof. For example, he dismisses Eisenhower's refusal to grant clemency to the Rosenbergs...