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Notes from Below Sea Level
To Say, “This is Life” is to Realize a Hard Truth
So, this begins in my local family-owned grocery store in that weird aisle where they keep the charcoal and kitty litter and that assortment of over-priced, cheaply-made kitchen utensils. Over the intercom thingy came that old Ace of Base song, “The Sign.” And if you know that Swedish band and their hit song, you’re dating yourself and will certainly understand what played out over the next few minutes. Anyway, without thinking I started singing along with the lyrics and sort of moving my head to the beat. My poor son, his tight grip on the grocery cart may have been the only thing that kept him from melting into the floor on Aisle 9 between the bags of hickory wood chips and the sacks of Kingsford Match Light. Later that day—after the obligatory barbeque and familial round of patriotic ideations—my son and I went home for an afternoon nap. At least he took a nap. I wound up putting away my book after a distracted half hour in favor of doom scrolling for movies, eventually watching (back-to-back) The Beekeeper and A Family Affair.
The former is the story of Adam Clay (Jason Statham) and FBI Agent Verona Parker (Emmy Raver-Lampman), the daughter of Clay’s landlady, Mrs. Parker (Phylicia Rashad). The kindly landlord takes her own life after being swindled by members of a call center ostensibly assisting her with a computer virus. Adam Clay—who rents a space in Mrs. Parker’s barn so he can tend his bee hives, is initially suspected of murder but quickly cleared. He then very calmly proceeds to take down every last person involved in the on-line scheme, working his way up the East Coast through corporate ownership.
Slightly complicated, I know, but it’s a straightforward action/adventure flick with a great supporting role by Jeremy Irons as an ex-CIA Director and a thoroughly bought tool. Essentially Adam Clay is a retired “Beekeeper”—a former member of a clandestine group of highly-skilled operatives that are beyond governmental control, tasked with safekeeping our system of democracy. Turns out the President’s son is wrapped up in loads of shady businesses, most dealing with stealing the life savings of older people through phishing scams and bogus on-line computer service centers. Suffice it to say after dozens and dozens of bodies strewn across the East Coast, Adam saves the day and even manages to slip away into obscurity at the end of the day. At its core, the film’s meta-struggle is about right and wrong, justice versus the law, truth surviving lies.
A Family Affair is a rom-com. Light, embarrassingly trite in so many ways, and a proper distraction if sparkles of good acting and stellar moments of script can keep you interested. The Netflix thumbnail will tell you that Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron “are ‘absurdly sexy together’ (Daily Beast) in this rom-com about a vain movie star who falls for his assistant’s widowed mom.” The assistant, Zara, is played by Joey King; and Kathy Bates has a wonderful supporting role as Zara’s grandmother and Kidman’s one time mother-in-law.
Well written in places—I certainly give it that—the unifying theme here is something along the lines of truth and love and moving on from the past. But it’s also about knowing oneself and the very ignored subject of older women finding love and having sex (something most movies aren’t going to handle in an overt, much less facile, way). A minor, but driving, theme is a child’s coming to terms with a parent’s sexuality—something people of my generation rarely had to confront. And though the denouement happens in a grocery store (so clearly meant to imply “Whole Foods”), you’ll be relieved to hear there was no singing and head bopping (though a kiss happens next to the display of horned melons).
Personally, I’m just coming out of a deep and extended melancholy. One that has prevented me from writing much, from enjoying the beautiful sunrises we’re blessed with here on the coast this time of year, from reading for extended periods of time—caught, somehow, between rarefied ruminations buried in the footnotes of Supreme Court opinions and the basest questions of one’s own self-worth. As a former constitutional lawyer, I’ve been deeply offended by what is going on in our courts; as a simple human being, I’ve been almost overwhelmed by the incomprehensible insanity that is our body politic these days. I seem perpetually caught between the lofty aspirations of a clandestine group whose brief is to protect the free world and the triteness of love bubbling over in a grocery store.
“The Sign” has this line—“Life is demanding/without understanding”—that rings true this morning. My patio feels close, like a patch of tropical forest, but comforting somehow. One ingredient to making it out of depression, for me at least, is understanding and accepting the limited control I have over almost every single thing that goes on outside my immediate sphere of control. I have to do what I can to be an additive force, but then I have to trust in the goodness of people and that those with wider spheres of influence do the right thing. Damned scary, if you ask me. But we aren’t either clandestine heroes posing as mild-mannered beekeepers or conspicuously-wealthy and oddly successful writers and actors whose crisis of faith is as weighty as veneer. We are almost all just people sitting on patios in the early morning hours hoping to do the right thing.
Cheers all.
(July 2024)
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My hope for the day is that each of you celebrates life in one way or another and finds peace in these turbulent times. Be well, be kind, and appreciate the love you have in your life.
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