Word: soldierly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...late 18th-century Napoleonic wars in Africa, but soon reveals more central concerns as a meditation on the ties between man and beast. The central conceit of the picture is a love affair, not as platonic or intellectual as you might think, that springs up between a soldier and a leopard. Yes, that is what I said, and it's a lot of ground for one picture to cover conventions of visual storytelling cannot easily accommodate such philosophical ambitions. It's hard enough to stage this cross-species romance, much less unpack what it could possibly mean...
...story, adapted from a short novel by the Honore de Balzac, follows a soldier named Augustin Robert (Ben Daniels) who is sent to Egypt in 1798 as the guide and protector of Jean-Michel (Michel Piccoli) an important artist/historiographer. Jean-Michel is on an official mission to draw, measure and document the cultural landmarks of the Egyptian dunes. Of course, the military party with whom he travels are little concerned with monuments or cave-drawings. They have been yanked from their homes and families to conduct a miserable campaign against the Mameluke Dynasty, marching around the desert with their camels...
...this central chapter of Passion in the Desert is tense and engaging, Augustin must fight the leopard for water, food and freedom to move, all of which the leopard jealously guards, though it otherwise remains far more docile and generous than Augustin has any reason to expect. When the soldier discovers a gigantic facade of columns and stairs within the mountain (an identical twin to the Grail-house in Indiana Jones and the last Crusade), we expect the film's early fascination with archaeology to return; Augustin, however, only has eyes for the cat, all the more beautiful and fascinating...
...Faculty makes a major decision to aid the student strikers by allowing them to skip final exams and be graded solely on the basis of coursework handed in to date, or on a pass-fail basis. On May 8, 35,000 demonstrators rally on Soldier's Field. The same day, police peacefully disperse 650 demonstrators who begin to damage Shannon Hall, the headquarters of Harvard's ROTC program on Francis...
Women were affected by the changes as well, as The Radcliffe News told the tale of Mrs. Daniel Cheever, a typical "Radcliffe wife," who balanced motherhood and economics homework--having married a Harvard soldier-turned-professor of government her sophomore year...