Song of a Reformed Headhunter

The beauty of Akhil Sharma's novel Family Life lies in its understated style. The sentences are simple but delicately weighted. The metaphors and similes, born of close observation of ordinary life, are highly original. Throughout, the hopes and fears of migrating from India to America, and then the effects of a tragedy on the family in the new land, are evoked with painful honesty. This is not an easy book to read, for it deals with the devastation of happiness, but the style holds up the devastation to the light with wit and grace. * WL recommended that I watch Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) when Kristen Stewart came up in our conversation.  I'm so glad I did. It's one of the best movies I've watched in the past few years. Directed by Olivier Assayas, the movie stars Juliette Binoche as an aging actress (Maria Enders) who returns to act in the play that launched her career but this time as the older woman, not the younger one. Stewart plays the personal assistant ...

Watched “Summer Hours” with WL at the Quad yesterday. The Times’s A. O. Scott thinks it is a masterpiece despite its apparently modest ambition. I think the film, written and directed by Olivier Assayas, is rather more modest in its success. Three siblings, Frédéric (Charles Berling), Jérémie (Jérémie Renier) and Adrienne (Juliette Binoche), have to decide what to do with their inheritance—a charming country house holding a valuable art collection—after their mother’s death. While Frédéric wants to keep the house and art together for their children, Jérémie and Adrienne want to sell and, to minimize taxes, donate the art to a museum. The film sees things mainly through Frédéric’s eyes, though, to its credit, sympathizes with the other two globetrotting siblings as well. The family house is not a new symbol for national patrimony. Here it is divided not just by the old power of death, but also by the newer forces of globalization. Jérémie, who works for a sneakers company, sees his ...