The Land of Steady Habits: Film Review

Released September 14, 2018.

I'm approaching sixty, and I've been watching a number of marriages among my friends disintegrate when their children reach young adulthood.

The Land of Steady Habits is a 2018 film based off a 2014 novel of the same name. Ted Thompson is the book's author, but it's Nicole Holofcenter who writes the screenplay, directs, and co-produces the film.

This film reminded me of Cheever's "The Swimmer," and--indeed--Thompson's novel has been noted to capture the same ennui of Cheever as well as Updike--but with a 21st Century style.

The film features sixty-something Anders Harris who has decided that his conventional life in the Connecticut suburbs lacks meaning. In order to inject his life with passion, authenticity, and purpose, he quits his job in the finance world of NYC, divorces his wife, and moves out of his suburban home and into a condo.

All this freedom doesn't produce the happiness he expected.

Race for the Mind: Book Review

Published December 1, 2017.

Daniel Gerard Welch draws on his decades' long experience working in the international pharmaceutical business to write this corporate thriller, Race for the Mind, published in December of 2017.

The book's "MacGuffin" is a drug being developed as a cure for Alzheimer's disease. Given the severity of the symptoms and the increasing prevalence of this disease, a lot of companies are hungry to be the one to manufacture and market this medicine.

The average person may not realize how complicated the process is for bringing a drug to market. It's not just the science and the patents; it's the personalities of the business people that can determine a lot about how a drug moves from a research lab to a pharmacy.

This novel has a number of characters, but Jack Callahan is the character with the most frequent and most sympathetic point of view. He's a business man who adopts various workplace assignments in an effort to get this drug--developed by scientist Dr. Win Lin to market.

45 Years: Film Review

28 August 2015 (UK release)

It's autumn a time for harvest and a time for ghost stories. The film 45 Years--about a couple taking stock of their lengthy marriage-- delivers both.

I first watched this film a month ago, but it still haunts me daily.

Charlotte Rampling and and Tom Courtenay play Kate and Geoff Mercer, who are preparing to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary in a town hall filled with their friends.  About a week prior to this event, Geoff received notification that his girlfriend's body from fifty years prior has been found emerging from a melting glacier. 

And there you have the central metaphor: people, places and events frozen in the past that unexpectedly emerge into the present.

Rampling must come to terms with the person her husband was when he was intimate with this other woman, Katya, and how his relationship with her and his reveries about his youthful romance still affect who he is today. 

The pacing may seem slow to some viewers. However, anyone who has been in a long-term relationship will perceive the tensions, the deep feelings, the profound significance of a turn of phrase, an old photograph, a long abandoned book, a wistful glance away from the present moment. 

Aging with Wisdom: Book Review

Published November 14, 2017. 

Since her forties, Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle has collected quotes, stories, and her own thoughts in a file labeled "Aging and Wisdom."

In her late seventies, this project came to fruition as a 2017 book, Aging with Wisdom: Reflections, Stories & Teachings.

The insights from this book, of course, are drawn from a broader source than a manila file folder.

Hoblitzelle has experience as a therapist, writer, and speaker. She draws from both Western and Eastern traditions, from quests of the mind and of the body.

The result is a book that conveys a tone of "Softness and Ease" (one of her chapter titles) that also offers quiet strength on how to negotiate the Second Half of life.

Summarizing the book proves challenging since the book serves as a catalyst for individual meditation.

I found myself reading some passages slowly. This allowed me to review events from my life in light of the chapter before me. Some of the sections address age-related challenges and opportunities I have yet to encounter. Consequently, I hope to reread this book as my life situation shifts over the coming decades.