Word: dreaming
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...surface realism notwithstanding, this movie must be read symbolically, especially since it is presented as a dream that overtakes Eriksson years later, when he encounters a young Oriental woman on a train who reminds him of the long-ago victim. In the dream, Meserve -- arrogant, competent, headlong (in short, a born American leader) -- is an archetype of the worst in the national character. Eriksson -- frail-looking but articulate and morally alert -- is the beleaguered best. The remainder of the unit is, of course, the hulking, muddled majority, all too willing to be conned by anyone who seems to be sure...
Bush's rhetoric and his actions have proven to be far apart. For the good of our country, we should hope that the idea of an Education President is not a dream. But if Williams is any indication, we should all wake...
What, then, one wonders on an idle summer evening, would the Shakespeare of Midsummer Night's Dream make of us, and what can we make of him? The first thing we notice when we see his play today is how little love has changed, with all its harsh geometry of triangles and unrequited passions; nor do we have any difficulty recognizing its evergreen cast of characters: the impatient suitor trying to persuade his girl to let him share her bed, the fair-weather swain shifting in an instant from rhapsody to rancor, the lovers plotting to escape a tyrannical father...
...that concludes with a vision of unity, of natural harmony. So, after all the lunacies and bumps of Shakespeare's starlit night are over, the spirits come down to put everything to right, and the lovers awaken with the morning lark only to suspect that it was all a dream. Love is blind, and its victims are mad, the poet suggests, but only for a night, a brief, forgetful spell. Perhaps even in 1600 that might have seemed an escapist thought; in 1989, however, a midsummer night's dream may be our best hope of a happy ending...
...content to go with the flow, be it the Mississippi River's wanton meanderings, the angry surge of molten rock from an Icelandic volcano, or the periodic slide of real estate in California's San Gabriel Mountains, where waterborne debris can roar down hillsides and turn million- dollar dream houses into nightmares for owners and insurance companies. McPhee's strength is the odd detail of natural disaster: "The house became buried to the eaves. Boulders sat on the roof. Thirteen automobiles were packed around the building, including five in the pool . . . The stuck horn of a buried car was blaring...