Agnès Varda’s Extraordinary Cinematic Accomplishment |
Agnès Varda’s film “Varda by Agnès,” which is being released posthumously, on Friday, (she died in March, at the age of ninety) is her retrospective of her own career, punctuated by deep dives into...
Should the Parthenon Marbles Be Returned to Greece? |
Two of my major obsessions—punctuation and Greek—came together recently, when President Xi Jinping, of China, voiced his support for the return to Greece of the Parthenon Marbles (also known as the Elgin Marbles) in...
The Wondrous Heroism of Mr. Rogers in “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” |
The vision of Fred Rogers—as played by Tom Hanks—that emerges in Marielle Heller’s new film, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” is lyrical, strange, and melancholy. The movie is suffused with an air of...
Maisie Cousins’s Visceral Images of Desire and Decay |
The photographer Maisie Cousins has always wanted to make a mess. As a child, she played intently in the bath and the sink, spraying water everywhere; as a young woman, she dumped liquid in...
The Mysteries of “Baby Shark” |
My first question before attending a “Baby Shark” concert, on a recent Friday night, was: What, exactly, is a “Baby Shark” concert? I know “Baby Shark” has a lot going for it. The song,...
How George Eliot’s “Middlemarch” Resonates in the England of 2019 |
“We must lay upon her grave whatever we have it in our power to bestow of laurel and rose,” Virginia Woolf wrote of George Eliot, in 1919, appraising the author’s work on the centenary...
