Word: moderners
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...writing - the Nobel citation lists 43 works in French - and rarely stopped traveling: in addition to France and Africa, he has spent years living in Mexico and Central America. Now 68, he and his wife, who is Moroccan, divide their time among Mauritius, Nice and Albuquerque, N.M. He is modern literature's consummate expatriate: the constant in his work is a sense of displacement and alienation, of humanity from the natural world, of adulthood from the idealized homeland of childhood and of Western civilization from its own emotional and spiritual vitality. "We no longer have the presumptuousness to believe...
...farming village in south China for the distant capital at the age of 17. Her youth, she tells us in the novel's first lines, began several years and odd jobs after that, when she finally succeeded in parting from her "peasant" mentality and realizing that some of the modern, shiny things in life "might possibly...
That's the danger of a teeming cast of malefacting characters: they get jumbled in the viewer's mind, and slack-jawed apathy ensues. Novels can afford a rich banquet of personalities; it's what readers sign up for. But ratiocination isn't welcome in modern movies, which prefer visceral impact over intellect. Not that the film should kowtow to ignorance--only that it might have streamlined the dramatis personae, the better to concentrate on the plot...
Another nod to antique and modern movie tradition is The Girl: the lovely flower in an arid ethical landscape who wins the hero's heart and puts him in jeopardy. Here Ferris falls for a Jordanian nurse, Aisha (Golshifteh Farahani). In a movie like this, a love interest has two functions: eye candy for contrast and sympathy, hostage bait for the plot. (Yes, Mr. Ferris, you may kill many and risk your own life for your mission. But what if I told you we were going to, heh heh, rough up your girlfriend...
...democracy" conceived by our Founding Fathers was limited; they only included white males and landowners. J.L., however, was the founding father of modern "King" democracy. It gives hope that no one--be they people of color, women or 18-year-olds--be limited by race, gender, age or religion...