The filmmaker James Gray taught himself to face the problem of the future through something that he calls classicism: the idea that what remains from the past can provide guidance for making art in the present. He found his models in clear, almost mythical stories and enduring films—most of all, those movies of the nineteen-seventies in which a generation of directors seemed to exercise daring creative control.
But the assurances of the past are limited; a risk is distancing yourself from the world where you live now. A classicist, like a parent, has the expectation of being understood in retrospect. What remains is the challenge to connect before the delicate human moment has passed.
One Sunday evening two Octobers ago, James Gray had guests over for pasta at a large house he was renting in Central Los Angeles. Gray, a tall, pale man with tufted auburn hair and a whitening orange beard, had moved into the place a month earlier, from the apartment in Hancock Park where he had lived for some years with his wife and their three children. He was the writer and director of six movies, and was shooting his seventh, “Ad Astra”—a film set largely at the outer reaches of the solar system. It was a warm, still evening, two weeks before Halloween. In the front yard, an adult-size skeleton and a child-size skeleton, dressed by Gray’s kids, perched against a gnarled tree in the long late light.
Denne historien er fra September 16, 2019-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra September 16, 2019-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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QUARTET ISLAND
Mendelssohn on Mull celebrates chamber music away from urban pressures.
FIX YOU
The self-help positivity of Coldplay.
ILLUMINATIONS
Suzanne Jackson captures the transformative power of light.
RAT PACK
The classic rodent studies that foretold a nightmarish human future.
ROYAL TREATMENT
The unrivalled omnipresence of Queen Elizabeth IL.
WELL, WELL, WELL
Eating—and not-in the epicenter of hype diets.
NEWARK STATE OF MIND
Mayor Ras Baraka's reasonable radicalism.
DOOM SCROLLING
Social media and the teen-suicide crisis.
THE WORKER REVOLT
Harris and Walz try to stop blue-collar Americans from drifting to Trump.
THE CHIT-CHATBOT
Is talking with a machine a conversation?