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This is Fresh Air.I'm David Bianculli.Some people don't know Randy Newman's name, but they do know his celebrated movie songs, like You've Got a Friend in Me from Toy Story.
Some people also know him as the guy who wrote a big novelty hit about short people.
and a smaller number are aware of a large body of work, including dark songs about relationships, racism, geopolitics, pollution, and religion, that ranks among the finest pop music to emerge from Los Angeles in the latter part of the 20th century.
A new biography of Newman, by Robert Hilburn, takes its title from one of Newman's songs.It's called, A Few Words in Defense of Our Country.And rock critic Ken Tucker says it presents all these facets of Newman's life.
Three of Randy Newman's uncles were Hollywood film composers, and their skill and success was apparently, according to this new biography, a huge burden for a young Randy Newman, who knew he, too, wanted to be a musician, but doubted his talent.
He took refuge in music his uncles ignored, rock and roll, especially the tumbling piano hits of Fats Domino.Rock music gave Newman an escape route into both fantasy and social commentary, and soon he was making up characters and inhabiting them.
You looked like a princess the night we met.With your hair piled up high, I will never forget I'm drunk right now, baby But I've got to be I never could tell you What you mean to me I loved you the first time
I saw you And I always will love you, Marie
That's the achingly beautiful Marie from the 1974 album Good Old Boys.In Robert Hilburn's telling, Newman is torn between two impulses as an artist.He wants to have hits.Writing pop music, after all, means it should be popular.
And he wants to say something, to express opinions on racism, sexism, and the always fraught grandeur of the American dream.
I don't love the mountain, I don't love the sea I don't love Jesus, he never done a thing for me I ain't pretty like my sister, small like my dad, but good like my mama
That's the thrillingly sour It's Money That I Love from 1979.This biography spends its nearly 500 pages trying to get at the sources of Newman's range and ambition.Along the way, the book describes a recording industry that no longer exists.
When Newman's childhood pal Lenny Warrenker became a Warner Brothers executive, he was able to sign Newman and nurture his friends' lovely but eccentric, oblique but abrasive music for the near decade it took to yield a hit, Short People, in 1977.
No record company would do that nowadays, but what Warners ended up getting was far more than a novelty smash. They got rich film scores, character sketches of the exploited and the creepy, and much prickly historical observation.
Just a few words.Defense of our country.It's time at the top.
Could be coming to an end.We don't want your love. That's the song that gives this book its title, 2008's A Few Words in Defense of Our Country.
What I was struck by over and over as I prepared this review was how much Newman's work ever since his debut in 1968 anticipates the times we're living through today. The writing in this biography isn't really worthy of its subject.
Hilburn was a workman-like newspaper writer, pop critic for the Los Angeles Times for 35 years, who rarely manufactures gleaming prose.
But here, he's performed the heroic, brute labor of interviewing seemingly everybody in Newman's life and organizes it into a narrative that will convince any relative newcomer to Newman's work that this guy is some kind of genius.
♪ I have nothing left to say ♪ ♪ But I'm gonna say it anyway ♪ ♪ 30 years upon the stage ♪ ♪ And I hear the people say, why won't he go away?
♪ ♪ I pass the houses of the dead ♪ ♪ They're calling me to join their group ♪ ♪ But I stagger on instead ♪ I'm dead, but I don't know it.He's dead, he's dead.
Of course, defining Newman's genius has always been the difficult part, if only because it's so wide-ranging.He's composed some of the prettiest melodies and cleverest lyrics of the modern era.
He's sung in the voice of a slave trader in the song Sail Away, and in the character of an unabashed racist in the song Rednecks.Newman essentially introduced the unreliable narrator to singer-songwriter pop,
And for that, he has been misunderstood as agreeing with the redneck or actually hating short people.Now more than ever, he's not a pop star for the mawkish, literal-minded strain in our current culture.Randy Newman is now 80 years old.
One of his masterpieces, Good Old Boys, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.It remains so alive, so vital.I urge you to go and listen to it.
Ken Tucker reviewed the new biography of Randy Newman written by Robert Hilburn called A Few Words in Defense of Our Country.
When your nights are troubled and you're all alone When you're feeling down and need some sympathy There's no one else around to keep you Remember baby, you can always count on me
With the release of this new biography of Randy Newman, we thought it would be good to hear from the man himself.In 1998, Terry Gross spoke with him.At the time, he had a new four-CD box set called Guilty, 30 Years of Randy Newman.
It collected his studio recordings, including classics like Sail Away, Lonely at the Top, Rednecks, and Political Science.
It also featured demos and other previously unreleased tracks, and scores from such films as Ragtime, The Natural, Parenthood, and Toy Story.Let's hear Terry's 1998 interview with Randy Newman.
Randy Newman, welcome back to Fresh Air.
I want to focus on that third CD, the CD of mostly demos and previously unreleased material.The first song on that CD is called Golden Gridiron Boy, and this is a song about not getting the girls and not being a football hero.
How did you write this song?
I don't know.It sounds like I wrote it with my foot now, but I was 18.Actually, I got it wrong.It should have been Gridiron Golden Boy.I mean, that's the way I wrote it, but I must have got flustered at the recording session.
And I think Lenny Warnker called me.He says, oh, why don't you write a song?I started writing songs when I was like 16, and it was football season, and he was a giant football fan.I was a football fan. you know, why don't you write a football song?"
As if it were a completely archaic form in the first place.Besides, you know, the nerd doesn't end up getting the girl or anything.It's a very strange effort.
Speaking of strange, this record was produced by Pat Boone.How did you get hooked up with Pat Boone?
My father was a doctor and Pat Boone was a patient and he heard me sing and was one of the first people actually to like the way I sung, you know, so I'm forever grateful to him.
Glenn Campbell was featured on guitar on this track.
Yeah, he did a lot of demos.He's probably on a lot of these other things, too.He was doing demos then.
When I started, the first people I worked with were Leon Russell and David Gates, who later went on to perform Brad, and Jimmy Gordon, who was in Blind Faith.And a lot of those people played demos, early demos with me.
Well, let's hear Golden Gridiron Boy.Do you want to say anything else about it before we spin it?
No, I'll say what I said in the liner notes of the box set.Love means never having to say you're sorry.
OK.This is Randy Newman, recorded in 1962.
In his football uniform, he looks 10 feet tall.All the girls run after him, and my girl's in front She's in love with him.In every game, it's still the same.She talks nothing but him.Oh, when he makes a touchdown, she goes wild with joy.
With every score, I learn. I'm too small to make the team.I can only play in the big hands.But I'm big enough to have a dream that one day she'll understand that I'm the one who loves her.He loves the cheers of the crowd.
So one day she'll see what she means to me, and I know that. Yeah, I'm too small to make the team.I can only play in the band.But I'm big enough to have a dream that one day she'll understand that he just loves the glory.That's all he'll ever enjoy.
And that's the inside story. Yeah, that's the inside story of her golden red iron boy.
Randy Newman, did you expect that to be a hit?
No, I didn't, I didn't, I don't think I did.And you were right.
I must never, never, never have all it's been is like a skeleton in the closet.But you know, it's a very sad song when I really listen to it, you know.The guy, I'm too small to make the team, wow.
I can only play in the band.
Quieted admission, yeah.Didn't exactly have my finger on the pulse of the American public's desire for heroes, you know.
So you weren't expecting to be a singer, but you were hoping to be a songwriter.You were a songwriter.I was.You were writing for a publishing company.
What was your image of a songwriter back then?This was a kind of transitional period in the early 60s.You know, you're past Tin Pan Alley.You're kind of in the end of the Lieber & Stoller era.
And right at the kind of dawn of the period where bands were going to be writing their own songs.
The image that I cherish and love is the image of, I don't know whether you... would remember was like, I remember Donald O'Connor and Sid Fields, I think they used to play this song right here, and they'd, listen to this, listen to this.
Jimmy Cagney had a movie like that once, except he was a writer, I can't think it was, with Pat O'Brien.I loved the idea of these two guys getting all excited about some, you know, Korean War song or something.
The image I had was that ancient motion picture image of Tin Pan Alley and, you know, two guys hammering it out.
And it was also of Carole King and Jerry Goffin and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil and the people who were very successful contemporaneously with my attempts to write songs for people.
I want to get to another trap.This is a song called Love is Blind, which is, you know, just as the first song that we heard, Golden Gridiron Boy, is very out of character for you, this kind of cheerful
Well, not cheerful, but it would not be a football song.
It's a generic lyric.Yeah, exactly.That's what it is.
Right.You say in the notes that you wrote it when you were 18.Yeah.So you were 18 and already writing that love is bitter, love is hopeless, love is blind.
It leads me to think that you already had a sense of yourself as writing more dark and cynical songs than your average songwriter.
Well, there are some pretty lugubrious love songs, you know what I mean?A lot of them are pretty bleak, you know?He Stopped Loving Her Today and a lot of country things.But I was a pretty down cat, I guess.I don't know.
Well, let's hear this song, Love is Blind, written in about 1962.The recording we'll hear is 1968.And this is from Randy Newman's box set, Guilty, 30 Years of Randy Newman.
They say that love's a sweet thing And for lovers the sun will always shine But in spite of what they say I think of love this way Love is bitter, love is hopeless, love is blind
I learned a hard and lonely way Love can't last through the year I spent a thousand empty years today Hidin' behind a veil of tears
Now poets may write about love, and wise men may sing his praise, but I'll always remember, as I go through the empty day, love is bitter, love is hopeless, love is blind.
Love is Blind, one of the demos on Randy Newman's box set, Guilty.What were you saying there?
I was laughing at the ending.I was just sort of aimless wandering in the motion picture movie business.We call it grazing.I was waiting to end it.I know where I should have gone, but I didn't go there.It made me laugh.
Well, that was a demo.Did you ever record it other than that for yourself?
No, I never thought enough of it.
Well, I like it a lot.Why don't you like it?Yeah, I do too.
Oh, Veil of Tears, little things like that.Yeah, sure, but I mean, I grew to not be able to stand that stuff coming from myself.I mean, I'll listen to records and love them, and they'll have lyrics like that in them. But I can't do it.
You know, it's like, if you know better, don't do it.
Randy Newman speaking to Terry Gross in 1998.After a break, we'll hear more of their conversation.And film critic Justin Chang reviews the new thriller, Conclave, set in the Vatican.I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air.
Hate New York City.It's cold and it's damp. Got all the people dressed like monkeys Let's leave Chicago to the Eskimos That town's a little bit too rugged for you and me
Rollin' down Imperial Highway The big nasty lady to my side Santa in the winds blowin' hot trucks and all We were born to ride Roll down the window Put down the top Crank up the beats, boys, baby Don't let the music stop us We're gonna ride it till we just can't ride it no more
From the south face to the valley From the west side to the east side Everybody's very happy Cause the sun is shining all the time It's like another perfect day
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This is Fresh Air.I'm David Bianculli, professor of television studies at Rowan University.
We're listening to Terry's 1998 interview with singer, songwriter, and composer Randy Newman, whose ironic popular songs include Short People, I Love L.A., and Lonely at the Top.
He's also written scores for the films Ragtime, The Natural, Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and more.When Terry spoke with him, he had just released a four-CD box set compiling 30 years of his work.
You were telling us before that when you started writing songs, you didn't think of yourself as a singer.When did you actually start performing your own songs and thinking of yourself as a performer?
Well, it would be two separate answers, probably.I mean, I think the first time I was on stage was in 1970. And I remember the first time I played, it was in some place in San Anselmo, the Lion's something, Lion's Share.
My back was to the audience, and I think I took a dexedrine or something, which made me go inward a bit.And my back was facing them, and there was a little upright piano, and I just played.And it was the last time I ever took anything on stage.
And it was just kind of uncomfortable, but I sort of liked it.The next time I performed, I did like it, and I still do, which is the reason for doing it. And so I thought of myself as a performer.
Yeah, right, you know, sometime in 1970, 1971, not in the traditional sense, but I could make an audience laugh and they'd get quiet for the songs they're supposed to be quiet for.And I liked it.It's a good deal easier than writing, for me.
I think that you're becoming a singer opened up your songs in terms of subject matter, too.
I mean, how many other singers would be willing to sing songs in the persona of a racist or of someone who's very insecure and unsure of themselves in the way that a lot of the characters in your songs are?
True.Actually, you know, there's more of it lately than there ever has been.
you know, a lot of these great girl writers are willing to admit to insecurities and bad behavior and with knowledge, you know, people write songs where they behave badly, you know, she's having my baby and things like that and don't realize it, you know?
But if it's a conscious, artistic, you know, some of the rap too is that way.It's a very unusual, you're right, it's an unusual to take on a persona that's less than heroic or admirable.
But I'd started doing it in 65, and I still didn't think of myself as necessarily having a recording career.I'm so precise about this date because of this box that I can hear that Simon Smith was like the first song that I wrote.
That was a little, I believe, a little off-center.Maybe there's an earlier one, I don't know.
I want to get to another song from the third CD of the box set.And again, this is the CD with the previously unreleased sessions and the demos.
And a couple of the tracks from the CD are from a live album that was released, though I think it might not have been terrifically distributed.And the song I want to play is called Maybe I'm Doing It Wrong.
And it's a waltz about sex not quite measuring up to what it's supposed to be.
Or the individual not measuring. Yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right.
Well, both.Insecure about his performance and about the response that he's getting in himself.So many pop songs are supposed to be sung in the voice of the seducer who's bragging about how good a lover he is.
Did you intend this to subvert that kind of song?
Yeah. It's really a great idea because it's a widespread thing.You know, people don't necessarily talk about it.I mean, you have no idea from knowing a person, my experience is at least, what they're like sexually.You can't even guess at that.
That and money.You know, you can try and borrow $5 from someone you've known for 30 years and they won't give it to you. And it's a complete unknown.And I really liked, this song is short, but I always thought it was a great idea for a song.
And I wished I'd done more, but I couldn't think of what more to do.
Well, let's hear it.This is Maybe I'm Doing It Wrong.
Maybe I'm doing it wrong.Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Just don't move me the way that it should.Maybe I'm doing it wrong.There ain't no book you can read.There ain't nobody to tell you.But I don't think I'm getting what everyone's getting.
Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Sometimes I throw off a good one At least I think it is No, I know it is I shouldn't be thinking at all I shouldn't be thinking at all Maybe I'm doing it wrong Maybe I'm doing it wrong
Why did you write that song as a waltz?
I don't know, it just came out that way.Almost every song I've written has had words and music sort of come at the same time, but No, usually the music comes a little first, so I probably was just clumping along like that.
I didn't do it for any artistic reason, though I'd be happy to take credit for any sort of Viennese reason that you'd like to give me.
Well, thanks for the invitation.I have a reason I'd like to give you.This song is about a kind of frustration in sexuality, but the waltz has such a nice lilt, such an easy lilt, that it's a nice contrast.
It does.You know, it's sort of in one.Yeah, it could be. It might be also, I loved a record called, if you got to make a fool of somebody.I don't know which came first, but I mean, I wanted, maybe I wanted to write something like that.
This is an instance I hear to listen to the audience. where sometimes, Harry Nilsson once told me, I asked him, you know, it was a constant thing with him not performing, why he didn't perform.
And one time, it was mainly, I think, because he was frightened of it.I think, but I don't know.
But he said once it was because he was worried it would hurt his work, that the audience reaction would be like, throw him off, because he wouldn't know his good stuff. It's a very small thing, that thing.You can isolate it as a writer.
I mean, the audience will react to some things, like sometimes I'll throw off a good one.Like I probably could have done better there, you know?But they laughed at it.I knew they liked it.So I left it alone.
Now could you ever imagine writing or singing a song in the opposite persona, the song in the voice of the great seducer, the great lover, baby, I'm so good?
Only as a joke.I mean, why talk if that's the case?Only as a joke.I've probably done that.I mean, almost certainly I've done it in some of my songs.You know, bragging.
I can't think of one now, but it's an emotional girl to some slight strange degree.But I know there's better.You can leave your hat on.That guy's sort of lame, you know. and yet they take it and treat it as straight sex.
I'm glad you mentioned you can leave your hat on.That song was used in... What's the movie called?I'm just blanking out on the title.Full Monty.
Full Monty and Nine and a Half Weeks.
Full Monty was such a big arthouse hit.Did that revive the song and bring you in surprising royalties?
The other thing was even a bigger hit.Nine and a Half Weeks was such a big hit in Europe that it was a hit in... almost worldwide.So I guess that it was revived both times, yeah.
So you never know which old songs are gonna come back at you.
Yeah, and I did a TV show with Joe Cocker, and I did the thing, and let's see, what did I do it in?Yeah, key of E. And I said, what key do you do it in?And I figured maybe do it higher.I figured G, maybe minor third.
And he said, no, you did it in C. And I said, C?And up there, I could sing it in C. I could have sung it in C, and the band could have really rocked, you know, and you could have heard it.
And he had a hit with it up there, where I was mumbling around, baby take off your coat.You know, I was trying to get the character right.I just didn't have any sense of, I mean, I wish I'd done it in C, to tell you the truth.
So the song sounded different when he did it?
Oh, yeah.I mean, being a sixth higher made it you know, took you way up there and you really belted it out.Whereas, mine was more furtive, furtivo.
Right, yours was more the heavy breather.
Yeah, but in a, in a sort of harmless, you know, I mean, I think some women's group were offended, but I meant the guy to be kind of laughed at.Though, as I get older, I take it more seriously, you know.
Well, since you've mentioned You Can Leave Your Hat On, you have your own recording of that on the new 4CD box set, so why don't we listen to that?
Sure. Take off your dress Yes, yes, yes You can leave your hat on You can leave your hat on You can leave your hat on
That's Randy Newman, recorded in 1972.He spoke with Terry Gross in 1998 on the occasion of the release of a four-CD box set of his music.More after a break.This is Fresh Air.
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This is fresh air.Let's get back to Terry's 1998 interview with Randy Newman, who spoke to her after releasing a four CD box set of his music. Another overview of his long and impressive career, a new biography has just been published.
Alfred Newman was head of music for 20th Century Fox.Film scores include Grapes of Wrath, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Captain from Castile, All About Eve, Wuthering Heights.
Did having them in the family prevent you from being willing to sell your soul in order to make it in Hollywood?
I never had a romantic view of Hollywood.And I never had, because You know, the actors weren't around by the time they were working on the picture.
And I would see that, you know, I'd hear them talk about this director, that actor, actress, and there was never any glamour to it for me particularly.I don't know.
Maybe you sell your soul a little when you do a movie anyway, a movie music, but I don't feel that way.I think I've done some of my best work
writing stuff that I never would have gotten to had not the movie dictated that I write something like that, like the natural.I mean, I'm not going to write heroic music like that, I don't think.
Or at least if I did, it would be very dissonant, I think.And I'm glad I got to it.
Well, I thought we could hear some of your new orchestral movie music.And this is not from the box set.This is from the CD of A Bug's Life, and you did the score for the movie. And I thought we'd play Victory.This is a really interesting piece.
I don't know if you remember them by name or not.Is that a no?
No, I don't remember them by name.
Well, why don't I play some of this, and then you can tell us a little bit about writing it and about how it's used in the actual movie.Sure. Music Randy Newman composed for the film A Bug's Life.
Some of that really harkens back to classic adventure film scores.
Yeah, but it's 20th century.I might not have known I could do that had it not called for it. It's a grasshopper chasing a... flying through the air chasing an ant.But to me it's... Ow!
And that's exactly what... But it brought forth in me some sort of, you know, like Bartok on a bad day.At least, you know, it's sort of decent 20th century music.And technically difficult.And unbelievably well played by... You know, there's one...
crummy horn entrance kind of, but I mean, that's all right.But those musicians had that music.Maybe we did it in an hour and a half, that one thing.And that is really difficult for everybody.
Must be pretty exciting for you to hear played what you've only heard in your head before.
Yep.It's about the best thing I do.I like it so much that I'm willing to put up with a lot of downside to that job to do that.Like, I really liked hearing that just now.
Like, you know, listening to me sing, it's more important, you know, songs, I guess, and songwriting.But, you know, I don't know how loud this is in the movie, but it's not the main thing going on.I mean, whether the ant gets away is the main thing.
It sounds really good to me.
Randy Newman, thank you very much for talking with us.
Great pleasure, as always.
Randy Newman, speaking to Terry Gross in 1998. In addition to his solo albums and film scores, Randy Newman also has written a musical, Randy Newman's Faust.
In 1993, he recorded a concept album of its music with an all-star cast, including Don Henley as Faust, James Taylor as God, Bonnie Raitt as the devil's unfaithful girlfriend, and Newman himself as the devil.
In the opening song, Glory Train, Randy Newman's Satan, singing to God, provides his personal perspective on it all.
All of the faith and prayer in the world All of your dumb show and circuses You know it's a lie, it'll always be a lie The invention of an animal who knows he's going to die Some fools in the desert with nothing else to do
So scared of the dark they didn't know if they were coming or going So they invented me and they invented you And other fools will keep it all going and growing Everybody, we're a figment of their imagination
That's Randy Newman singing as the Devil in a song from his musical Faust.
Robert Hilburn's new biography of Randy Newman, called A Few Words in Defense of Our Country, has just been published.Coming up, Justin Chang reviews Conclave, a new movie thriller set in the Vatican.This is Fresh Air.
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This is Fresh Air.In the new thriller Conclave, now playing in theaters, Ralph Fiennes plays a cardinal in the Vatican who is tasked with overseeing the election of a new pope.
The movie also features Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini, and was directed by Edward Berger of the Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review of Conclave.
In describing Conclave, I can't improve on the words of a friend, the variety critic Guy Lodge, who suggested that this twisty piece of Pope fiction should have been titled Corpus Agatha Christie.
That sums up the movie's paperback thriller appeal and its dramatic limitations.Adapted from Robert Harris's 2016 novel, Conclave isn't a whodunit exactly, although it does begin with the discovery of a body.
The Pope has died unexpectedly in his quarters, and the Sacred College of Cardinals will now hold a conclave to determine his successor. The conclave will be overseen by Cardinal Lawrence, played by an excellent Ralph Fiennes.
Lawrence has his work cut out for him.He's having serious doubts about both his future in the church and his personal faith, and his contentious and spiteful colleagues are not doing much to restore it.
Before long, the college will devolve into a cesspool of backbiting, infighting, and ruthless smear campaigning, perfectly timed for this nail-biting election season, in other words.
Things start off civilly enough, as cardinals from all over the world descend on Rome for the conclave. In this scene, Lawrence greets his longtime friend and ally, Cardinal Bellini, who's favored to do well in the election.
He's played by Stanley Tucci, expertly cast as a man who can be by turns catty and serious-minded.Father Bellini.
Aldo. Am I the last one?Not quite.How are you?Oh, well, you know, fairly dreadful.Have you seen the papers?Apparently it's already decided it's to be me.And I happen to agree with them.What if I don't want it?No sane man would want the papers seen.
Some of our colleagues seem to want it. What if I know in my heart that I am not worthy?You are more worthy than any of us.Well, then tell your supporters not to vote for you, to pass the chalice.And let it go to him?I could never live with myself.
The hymn that Bellini can't stand is Cardinal Tedesco, played with delectable comic menace by the Italian actor Sergio Castellitto.Tedesco is the kind of staunch traditionalist who still complains that the Church got rid of the Latin Mass.
The more liberal-minded Bellini and Lawrence fear that he will take the church backward if he's elected.They want to see the church make progress on gay rights, multi-faith unity, and women in leadership.
Issues that, of course, bedevil Pope Francis's reign in the present day. But for all these high-minded gestures at topicality, Conclave isn't really about the challenges facing Catholicism today.
Nor is it about the clergy sexual abuse scandals that continue to make headlines and which the movie acknowledges in passing.The director, Edward Berger, is in it mainly for the intricate puzzle box plotting and the relentless political backstabbing.
Berger previously directed All Quiet on the Western Front, and he stages Conclave as another kind of war movie, where words become weapons, and even the cardinal's seating arrangements begin to resemble battle formations.
One of these men will be the next head of the church, and the options aren't terribly inspiring.John Lithgow gives a wily performance as one of the college's more popular and opportunistic members.
Lucian M. Sammati oozes ambition as a cardinal who's vying to become the first African pope in many centuries.Conclave is a noisy movie. The actors chew and chew the Vatican scenery, and Volker Bertelsmann's score is as bombastic as an exorcism.
I was grateful for the understated yet commanding presence of the divine Isabella Rossellini, making the most of a thin role as a nun who says little but sees everything.
Equally welcome is the Mexican actor Carlos Diaz as a humble cardinal who's led a dangerous ministry in Afghanistan.His motivations are among the movie's more intriguing mysteries.
Berger is clearly having fun ushering us into the shadowy, cloistered world of the Vatican, complete with detailed recreation of the Sistine Chapel.
And Conclave is undeniably engrossing to watch, as it shuffles and reshuffles the narrative deck, and serves up one juicy, cardinal red herring after another.
While the story may be a parlor trick, there's nothing phony about Ralph Fiennes' performance as the movie's troubled conscience, a thoughtful man of God experiencing a genuine crisis of faith.
Fiennes makes Lawrence's psychology intensely compelling, whether he's stepping in to reprimand a wayward colleague or reluctantly considering the papacy himself.Lawrence claims he doesn't have the spiritual fortitude to be Pope.
His attitude is basically, let this chalice pass from me. But Bellini calls him out.Every cardinal harbors the ambition to be Pope, he says, and has even secretly chosen the papal name by which he would like to be known.
Speaking of names, Lawrence's first name, we learn early on, is Thomas, which means that he is literally a doubting Thomas.Like everything in Conclave, it's clever, and a little too on the nose.
Justin Chang is a film critic at The New Yorker.On Monday's show, an evangelical church that grew in reaction against the religious right.They shared an egalitarian vision but became divided over some of the same issues dividing the country.
We talk with Eliza Griswold about her new book.Her late father, Episcopal Bishop Frank Griswold, presided over the consecration of the first openly gay bishop.I hope you can join us. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller.
Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Adam Staniszewski.For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Bianculli.
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