SENTIMENTAL VALUE and Kerry James Marshall at the RA

🏠

Cast your mind back to what I had to say about Chloe Zhao’s HAMNET… a few hours ago.   Well, either the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is at play or Joachim Trier’s SENTIMENTAL VALUE is dealing with EXACTLY the same issue - grief, and art as the only viable means of coping with it - just in an entirely more masterful, nuanced and fucking brilliant way (and with fewer annoying children!).

The screening was introduced by Stellan Skarsgard (who is elegant and clever and funny and tall, and who used the majority of his time to heap well-deserved praise on his three female co-stars….  No wonder the Skarsgard clan grows by the minute.  Swoon!) and I was captivated by him and by the film, which is about artifice as a pathway to truth and understanding, beautifully rendered, and could easily be ruined by my nonsense opining.  So, I’ll say no more other than to implore you to watch it (particularly if you are a cinephile).

Star-rating-wise, I’ve managed to completely fuck up a simple five star system as I gave HAMNET ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and SENTIMENTAL VALUE is certainly twice as good, so ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. 🤷🏻‍♀️

And in the time you have between now and the first screening you can possibly find, get yerself to the Royal Academy of Arts for Kerry James Marshall’s HISTORIES, a wonderfully curated collection of 70 works including his Invisible Men series (inspired by Ralph Ellison’s novel and featuring black men against near-black backgrounds, forcing the eye to strain to see them) and, in the very first room of the exhibition, his paintings referencing artists and creative spaces (including the Royal Academy itself in a meta-moment), my favourites, which, incidentally, speak to both HAMNET and SENTIMENTAL VALUE.

I was at the RA by 10 am this morning, shaking and miserable from the commute in the freezing rain we’ve all suffered through overnight, and within a hot second of entering the gallery I was warm and relaxed and smiling broadly.   Art can cure us, folks.  I need a daily dose of it to even begin to deal with all of my shite, but Kerry James Marshall is a fantastic place to start (…although my week has also included HAMNET, SENTIMENTAL VALUE, Akram Khan, dancers from the Boston Ballet and the Royal Ballet... and tonight I’m going to John C. Reilly’s one man show… quite the cocktail… and it’s only Wednesday.  Can you have too much of a good thing, I wonder?…. Should probs squeeze in an episode of the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City this afternoon to keep myself grounded…).  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️