Each month, our arts critics — music, book, theater, dance, television, film, and visual arts — fire off a few brief reviews.

Books

Of the three books about women filmmakers recently published (Carrie Courogen’s Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius and Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Something: A Memoir About Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls are the other two) Carrie Rickey’s study of Agnès Varda, A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda (W. W. Norton & Company, 288 pages) may be the most conventional but it is also the most insightful and comprehensive.

Rickey first became aware of Varda in 1971 when a screening of Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) moved her to tears – in part because it was the first film by a woman director that she had ever seen. In fact, it was Varda’s second feature: As Rickey points out, with her debut La Pointe Courte in 1955 Varda was the first of the French New Wave directors to make a feature film but was edged out of prominence by pushier male auteur colleagues such as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Alain Resnais, and Jacques Demy (whom she would marry in 1962). She would only start receiving proper recognition after generations of feminist film critics espoused her cause.

But to regard Varda simply as a woman director, or even as just a filmmaker, is shortsighted. Rickey cogently demonstrates how Varda (who died in 2019 at 90), evolved over a 60+ year career from still photographer, to feature film maker, to documentarian, and to installation artist, always making the most of the means available to express her profound humanism, vitality, imagination, wit, and curiosity. To do so she took to heart the Levi-Straus method of bricolage, epitomized in her 2001 masterpiece The Gleaners and I, by which discarded or otherwise overlooked resources (or people, as in her brilliant 1985 film Vagabond) are resurrected and repurposed to a nobler, redemptive purpose.

— Peter Keough

Irving Berlin’s song “Say It with Music” (1921) recommends that a man woo a woman by having “Chopin or Liszt” playing in the background. Its final line is now the main title of an immensely insightful book, Say It with a Beautiful Song: The Art and Craft of the Great American Songbook. The phrase “Great American Songbook” refers to the hundreds of long-lived popular songs from 1920 or so to the 1960s that singers keep wanting to sing and listeners keep wanting to hear. Many of them are so well known that we can hum along as we read. For me, they evoke my parents’ kitchen radio, and the voices of Peggy Lee or Nat “King” Cole.

The book was crafted with elegance and loving care by Michael Lasser and Harmon Greenblatt and is available, at quite a reasonable price, from Rowman & Littlefield. Lasser, longtime host of the syndicated public-radio show Fascinatin’ Rhythm, is author of three previous books on American popular song, including City Songs and American Life, 1900-1950. Here he and Greenblatt highlight the artistry with which lyricists and composers hook a listener into following their thoughts and obsessions. I wrote a brief praise quote for the back of Say It, and I’m pleased to draw attention to the book here as well at slightly greater length.

I particularly enjoyed the chapter on songs dealing with memory, how time feels as it passes. Regret, for example: “Once upon a time / A girl with moonlight in her eyes…” (a song by Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, from the now-forgotten 1962 show All-American).

The two connoisseurs end each chapter with a tempting list of suggested recordings that one can easily find on Spotify and other streaming channels. For “Once Upon a Time,” they sagely recommend the original performer, the wistful Ray Bolger.

— Ralph P. Locke

---

Jazz

The first thing this listener noted about trumpeter Darren Barrett’s new disc The Get Down 4 Real: Step Step Steppin’ is the unusual instrumentation. Along with lead trumpet (with added effects), there are a pair of keyboards, a guitar and a trio of basses with a drummer (on “Flow Within the Flow” there’s a second percussionist). The album offers a brand of electronic funk that reminds me of animated conversations: everyone is free to contribute. The music’s intent is stated in the opening number, “The Get Down 4 Real.” That ‘get down’ is built on a simple riff stated at first by the modified trumpet — in the right channel the guitarist emits terse comments. Then the band comes in and the rhythm, a steady 4/4, is complicated by overlapping individual phrases improvised by the others. In other words, the funk is spread across the sound stage.

There are plenty of small surprises; at one point, a keyboard plays long tones over the hyperactive rhythm section.  “The Clav is in Order” is the next track, named, I assume because the simple theme is first stated in the right channel by a keyboard player. This theme is repeated obsessively in the first moments, over laid by Barrett’s counter-rhythms on trumpet. After three and a half minutes, we are back to a single instrument restating the theme, perhaps unnecessarily. The other instruments dart in and out: playing cross-rhythms, reinforcing the basic funk rhythm, adding improvised melodic bits. Later, a long, loosely discursive solo by one of the keyboards comes along.

Barrett’s “Flow Against the Flow” has a remarkably different sound.  His trumpet initially dominates as he plays wah-wah sounds as well as an occasional fast riff. He then withdraws in favor of the electronic sounds of his keyboard players. Fans looking for alignment with Clifford Brown’s later bebop, or even Miles Davis’s electric style, will be disappointed. Still, The Get Down 4 Real: Step Step Steppin’ presents a wide palette of interesting sounds — with their own lurking intensity — over funky beats.

— Michael Ullman

---

Visual Art

Bronze — superbly shaped, delicately inlaid, polished to a brilliant finish —  was the preferred material for ancient Greek sculptors. Unfortunately the valuable alloy was also easy to recycle into more practical objects, including arms and armor. Of the thousands of life-sized or larger bronze figures that once decorated public places, sanctuaries, private villas, palaces, and gardens in Greek and Roman cities and towns, only dozens survive, some recovered from ancient shipwrecks.

Financier and Hartford native J. Pierpont Morgan, fascinated by the classical world for all sorts of reasons, turned to smaller bronzes for his collection: miniature figures, a few inches tall, designed for domestic use in household shrines and decoration or as offerings in temples or tombs. Nineteen examples in Figures from the Fire, J. Pierpont Morgan’s Ancient Bronzes (at the Wadsworth Atheneum through November 3) show that small bronzes could be as magnificent as monumental works. The Draped Warrior (Greek, late 6th century BC) has a moody presence and intricate detail that can be best appreciated at close range. The precise modeling and heroic proportions of Nude Male Warrior (5th century BC) are an easy match for life-sized monumentality.

Separate cases hold everyday objects— a wine jug, mirror, ladle, handles— and Roman ornaments that once decorated luxurious furniture. They show the high quality bronze castings made by Greek workshops and, at least for a time, under the Roman Empire. The single large-scale piece is a fragment of a bare foot, once part of a larger-than-life statue perhaps eight feel tall and mounted in a high, prominent place. The intense care devoted to a lowly body part most people would never actually see up close is a reminder of the excellence of what has been lost.

— Peter Walsh

Everything Is Political in America (Yale Art Gallery, through mid-November) begins with an ominous message: “Few words are used as frequently to describe the current American political landscape as ‘divisive.’” Prints and drawings in the show, “created from the nineteen to the twenty-first century” address “highly politicized subjects, such as the environment, gender, guns, monuments and symbols, sex, and even freedom itself.”

The works in the show, many by prominent American cultural figures like Claes Oldenburg, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Robert Rauschenberg, are, however, first and foremost, works of art: polished and accomplished and not far, in style and even in content, from other works by these artists. There is little of the rough-edged, agitprop amateurism and improvisation that makes up the paraphernalia of most actual American political movements. This is probably partly because the artists on view lean into political comment anyhow and, apart from one or two pieces that question government in general, their contributions take a mostly harmonious, left wing stance.

Many of them are also quite beautiful. There is, for example, O’Keeffe’s famous, Save Our Planet, Save Our Air (1971) with its carpet of fluffy white clouds, seen from above against a deep blue sky. Or Christo’s Surrounded Islands (1981) or Winslow Homer’s Adirondack Lake (1889).

Other examples are much darker. Zoe Leonard’s prose poem/conceptual piece I want a president (1991), composed for a 1992 presidential campaign, also speaks to our own political moment in its last lines: “I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always a clown: always a john and never a hooker. Always a boss and never a worker, always a liar, always a thief, and never caught.”

— Peter Walsh

Today, the best murals are not only visually compelling but also assert an environmental or social justice concern. A recent mural at a mixed-use technological complex in Somerville, Massachusetts is a wonderful addition to this narrative.

Located at the Somernova innovation and technology complex outside of Union Square, a stunning 190’ long mural was unveiled along the exterior of the Rafi Properties building leased to Form Energy, a firm involved in research and development of cutting-edge clean battery technology. The name of the richly colored mural is “Forming a Better Future” and it was created by British-born and Rhode Island School of Design educated Sophy Tuttle, a Boston-based muralist and installation artist. Her extensive international and regional artwork is widely known for integrating themes of nature and climate resilience while celebrating the interconnections of science and art.

Taking about a month to complete, the mural skillfully depicts rare regional species of flora and fauna threatened by energy extraction. The lineup includes bees, puffins, and the Ram’s Head Lady’s Slipper orchid. Using a hexagonal pattern as a structural basis, Tuttle has installed an elegant color gradient that moves from dark to light across the facade of the building.The pictorial symbolizes how climate tech innovators are creatively initiating a way forward for a brighter and more resilient future.

Unfortunately, only the very top of the “Forming a Better Future” mural can be seen from the adjacent sidewalk or by passing cars on Dane Street. Set back from the street, at the top of an incline, the location makes it a more or less private image — perhaps even disqualifying the mural as public art. The entrance to the R&D building is guarded by an electronically gated parking lot: it is only open to the firm’s employees, vendors, and customers. And that is a shame, because Tuttle’s mural deserves greater exposure, the kind that leads to appreciation and reflection.

— Mark Favermann

If you’re looking for a cool arts fix for yourself and your out-of-town visitors during the summer heat, the ICA, particularly its water shuttle to its summer Watershed, is your perfect destination.

Admission to the ICA’s current Firelei Baez exhibition (Arts Fuse review) includes the 10-minute ferry ride across the harbor to East Boston, where an off-beat, air-conditioned, and roomy exhibition space welcomes visitors.

The ride to the Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina in East Boston is a perfect introduction to the architectural wonders of Boston’s ever-more-happening Seaport (the ride is just long enough for the sea-sickness-prone). The Shed itself is not only a marvel of architectural restoration — of a 15,000-square-foot derelict former copper pipe facility (Anmahian Winton Architects designed the renovation) – but a terrific jumping off point for an exploration of East Boston.

Up in the Shed until September 2 is the North American debut of The Procession, an ambitious installation by Anglo-Guyanan artist Hew Locke, first commissioned by Tate Britain, UK.

Born in Edinburgh in 1959, Locke left Scotland at age five for Guyana but returned to London as an adult. His installation is infused with the joy of childhood memories as well as adult reflections on power and cultural memory.

Locke’s spin on a universal ritual so favored by Federico Fellini is a parade of 140 approximately life-size masked figures; the lineup includes Caribbean child drummers, carnival queens, dancers, refugees, military figures on horseback, fishers, laborers, pregnant women, children, drummers, and flag bearers. The spectacle draws you into admiring how intricately detailed each figure is. The result is an artwork that is inventive, intellectually provocative, full of Caribbean color, and great fun. Locke’s materials include wood, fabric, cardboard, and costume jewelry and his subject matter draws on objects and themes from Guyana’s native and British colonial culture.

— Helen Epstein

---

Film

Normally I’m not really a huge Guy Ritchie fan. I find his films, gangster capers set mostly in England, to be entertaining enough, offering plenty of suspense, sharp humor, and intense action scenes. But they all seem somewhat formulaic; eventually, I lose interest. But The Gentlemen, Ritchie’s new series for Netflix, based on his 2019 film of the same name (and set in the same general “universe”) is highly enjoyable, beautifully designed and produced, well-directed, and features an excellent cast of white-hot actors at the top of their game.

Starring Theo James (seen recently in Season 2 of The White Lotus) as the reluctant heir to a marijuana empire situated on an English country estate, the series is both a brilliant send-up of the remnants of English feudal culture, and a rollicking contemporary crime thriller. James plays Eddie Halstead, who works with an elite military team, and is suddenly pulled from his high-powered job to manage his deceased father’s estate. His older brother Freddy (the brilliant Daniel Ings of I Hate Suzie, Lovesick, and Sex Education) is devastated that his younger brother has inherited everything: lock, stock, and let’s say, two smoking barrels. Still, despite being denied what he thought was his birthright, Freddy eventually works past his disappointment and resentment to help Eddie manage the secret drug cartel that is managed by the estate’s employees. Unfortunately, Freddy’s way of helping is often fraught with chaos and ill-considered schemes (a consistent source of laughs in the series). Their mother, Lady Sabrina (a classy Joely Richardson), knows just enough about the business to keep a genteel distance. Meanwhile, Susie Glass (Kaya Scodelario), the working class woman who actually runs the operation, impresses Eddie with her business savvy, and fascinates him with her somewhat cold-blooded approach to problem-solving.

With gorgeous cinematography, costumes, and art direction (all BAFTA-nominated), this well-acted comedy-drama provides non-stop thrills and no small amount of sharp social satire.

— Peg Aloi