Reviews

I just finished Season two and wait for more. It's a well thought-out plot that seeks to camouflage its intentions: while the four women in it (others are added as we go) are innovators in the new technology--telephone--at the time, the story it's about women in the their continuous (diachronic would be a heavier term) struggle to get their genius shown and rewarded. Lidia, aka Alba, is messed up in her youth, has been jailed, abandoned, abused, is still a genius when it comes to showing leadership and female camaraderie. She supports the other women, bonds with them, and starts in a "Brave New World"--which is yet to come--for female rights/brilliance, acknowledgment. The story has the usual soap opera ingredients, a panoply of villains, confused people, desperate lovers, jealousies, and so forth. But if you want a story with some substance--Netflix provides it. Of course, I'm waiting for season 3, like many of us.

I have viewed and written on Lawrence of Arabia since it came out in 1962. I taught to my classes then and later. I did see it on the big screen when it came out twice, and many times after on laser disc, DVD, and the Blu-ray package that came out recently. I am wring this review to remind viewers the LOA has more relevance now than it did then. The concern then, 1962, was the Cold War. Today, it is the disastrous conditions on the locations where David Lean discovered the tracks of trains T.E. Lawrence blew up during his campaign, exactly 100 years ago. Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson authored the script, but is was Lean's direction that created one of the greatest films of all time. The film should be honored now for its prescience. Lawrence wanted to united the Arab tribes. There is no need to remind the current viewer who might take a look at the film and make the appropriate and illuminating comparisons.

I was not preparing for something serious after the first 10-15 minutes of the film; after which my wife left the room, offended by the nudity. We are both Greek-born and were used to the old ways, though we were quite aware of what modernism has brought to Greek beaches. But the movie was not about nudity. It was the drama of a middle-aged man who had not tasted the joys of life, being glum and relatively ordinary. But a young Aphrodite partying with her friends caught his attention. The movie relentlessly follows his obsession, and if Nabokov invented Lolita, this story gets more intense. I would say the Greeks have learned something about tragedy. I was dazzled by the excellent photography and the gorgeous Greek island. Not an absolute masterpiece but close to one.