The CultureMap Review

Precise, powerful Planets is an earful — and an eyeful

Anybody who enjoys looking at National Geographic’s legendarily dramatic photos will relish this multimedia exercise, which the Houston Symphony is taking to New York’s Carnegie Hall. Shown here, Venus

IMAX and Avatar probably have nothing to worry about, but even without 3D technology The Planets—An HD Odysseyis quite an eyeful.

The Houston Symphony gave the piece its world premiere Thursday night in Jones Hall. Casually clad in his customary Nehru-style jacket rather than the formal tail coat that is the uniform for the male orchestra members, music director Hans Graf led a precise, powerful performance of Gustav Holst’s “The Planets.” But despite the rousing music-making, the accompanying visuals—stunning high-definition outer-space images provided by NASA and projected on a giant screen behind the orchestra—were the star.

The video is the brainchild of Dr. Duncan Copp, a British space scientist and maker of several science-oriented documentaries. It features images taken from explorations of the solar system over the past 35 years. Anybody who enjoys looking at National Geographic’s legendarily dramatic photos will relish this multimedia exercise, which the Houston Symphony is taking to New York’s Carnegie Hall and (doubtless because it’s the home of the Kennedy Space Center) Florida.

In The Planets—An HD Odyssey, each of the planets in Holst’s evocative 1916 suite—Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—is introduced floating serenely in the black vastness of space. (Movie buffs will be reminded of the wheel-shaped space station slowly spinning in waltz time in Stanley Kubrick’s trippy 2001: A Space Odyssey.) But all kinds of other images, both almost blindingly colorful and simple black-and-white, quickly appear, sometimes several at once on a split-screen basis.

There are high-altitude pictures of crater-pocked plains. There are close-ups of mysterious things that look like microscope slides. There are images that look like mold or virus cultures in a petri dish. And sometimes we seem to be zooming over the valleys and mountains of a planet on a low-flying magic carpet, in the enjoyably stomach-churning manner of Imax films. But fancy cinematography is often totally unnecessary because things like the rings of Saturn and just the sight of eerie planets zillions of miles from ours are plenty impressive all on their own.

In keeping with the concert’s space theme, the program also included Henri Dutilleux’s atmospheric “Timbres, espace, mouvement, ou La nuit étoilée” (Timbres, Space, Movement, or The Starry Night). With a brooding interlude highlighting the cellos and double basses slipped between the dreamy movements called (in English) “Nebula” and “Constellations” in 1990, the 1978 work was inspired by “The Starry Night,” Vincent van Gogh’s classic painting of a dark sky full of blazing stars and swirling comet tails.

The opening work, Igor Stravinsky’s fizzy “Scherzo fantastique,” seemed much less apt. His second composition, it dates from 1908 but is far from (eek!) “modern”-sounding. But his Opus 4, “Feu d’artifice” (Fireworks), had at least some connection with the sky and made a spirited encore.

Despite the rousing music-making, the accompanying visuals—stunning high-definition outer-space images provided by NASA and projected on a giant screen behind the orchestra—were the star. Shown here, an image of Saturn.

unspecified

Movie Review

Daniel Craig shines in Queer, an unapologetic tale of love and loss

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

---

Queer is now playing in theaters.

movies film