Jackie Townsend author of Imperfect Pairings and Reel Life

Voyage to Italy

jackietownsend — Fri, 03 May 2013 12:49:15 +0000

A British couple, played by Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders, drive to Naples to deal with an inheritance. The timing is post war. The film is black and white. The mood is grey. On the car ride, a rare interlude alone together, they realize that after eight years of marriage they have little to say to each other.

You never understand the love that was once there, if it was ever there. He is a sardonic-witted businessman, she a cold, empty spirit—“Our marriage wouldn’t have failed if we’d had a child,” she says. “You didn’t want a child,” he says.

Roberto Rossellini, the writer/director is a neo-realist. As his daughter, the model/actress Isabella Rossellini, describes her father’s style, his movies are not driven by plot or narrative, rather, he starts with a reality and explores that reality through tunnels of darkness and blinding light. A man after my own heart. Bergman’s too, apparently. She wrote Rossellini a letter after seeing Open City, and asked if he’d consider her for one of his films. He wrote Stromboli for her, and they fell in love while making it. A scandal (at least in America), as they each had to end their existing marriages.

One gets the idea watching this film—part of a digital restoration project going on at the Film Forum—that the reality he began with for Voyage to Italy was the reality of his marriage to Bergman. By the time this film was made, their marriage was disintegrating, and you get the feeling watching Bergman that she’s not acting. Embitterment exudes in her every scene, as does Roberto Rossellini—a harsh reflection in her eyes. It’s this hardened emotion, her frostiness towards her husband that makes her very un-Bergman-like, unattractive—real, like the rest of us.

Naples has a moody, barren feeling. The dead souls of Pompeii. The smoldering baths of Vesuvius. The museum of archeology. Skulls, ruins, and death, or pregnant women, mothers, and children. Bergman wanders around these opposing forces lost in thoughts of her crumbling marriage and of a poet who once loved her. Her husband has gone to Capri after a fight. She despises him, she mumbles, driving into town. Her facial expressions are so thorny and bitter it’s awkward to watch. At one point, the couple is witness to the excavation of skeletons of a man and woman caught by the lava in their lovemaking. Forever entwined. Bergman breaks down.

It’s no wonder she and Rossellini divorced ultimately, though the couple in the film is saved, in the end, by what could be no less than a miracle. Unreal? Perhaps. But that’s probably the message the director was after. It would take a miracle to save them, or any marriage in ruin.

Preorder a copy of Jackie Townsend’s new novel, Imperfect Pairings, on Amazon

What Korean Crisis?

jackietownsend — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:52:57 +0000

Crisis? I ask, and he says, “What crisis?”

I sigh.

My husband’s in Seoul for business. Once again, the North Korean’s are on a war path. Well, according to the NYT that is, and CNN and every other news outlet. Should I be worried? Probably. Am I? No, not really.

The three times this week he’s bothered to ask a South Korean about their thoughts on the “crisis” these were their answers:

1) Buy stock: during the last crisis the market went down 5%, and then it rebounded.

2) What crisis? You probably know more than me.

3) With indifference: both countries have a new leader; the North’s is testing the South’s, using threats as a negotiating tactic to gain concessions on aid.

Today, someone slipped a marketing flyer under the door of his corporate apartment: Tour the DMZ for just 40,000 won!

I suppose I’d still be worried if I hadn’t witnessed the “crisis” myself.

Two years ago, we were both in Seoul when North Korea, after announcing a plan to increase its nuclear arsenal, sank a South Korean military ship, the Cheonan. A few days later, they’d shelled a fishing village, killing two South Korean soldiers and injuring civilians. The U.S. was sending out Richardson. Things were getting dicey, the New York Times assured me every hour as I checked the news online. It had been the top story for weeks.

What to do?

My husband went to a business dinner that night—one of those men only events involving soju and moving food.

I went down to the lobby bar for a drink.

The lounge was an expansive space filled with plush chairs and candle lit tables. There was a stage set up before a wall of three story windows that looked out onto a faint mountain’s silhouette, on the other side the DMZ. If people were worried about the rising tensions with the North it wasn’t apparent here. The vibe was relaxed, festive, the holiday season approaching. A live band played soft, jazzy renditions of American pop songs mixed with Christmas cheer. I squeezed into the only empty stool at the bar, between two Korean men, and ordered a martini. I sipped and took in the clientele, mostly Korean businessmen or rich Japanese tourists, some middle-aged Asian women decked in jewels and fur, older men adorned by gorgeous young mistresses. It was a Hyatt, but few Americans actually stayed here. If and when they did visit, they stayed near the Army PX where the soldiers were.

Everyone was chain smoking. I watched the guy next to me light one cigarette after the other for an hour straight. He was a plume of smoke and ash and I thought, in a moment of secret relish—I’m not in America anymore. I’m away from the hyperbole. I’m on the inside looking out. You have to live it to believe it. Which I did the next day. I was getting ready to head off to an appointment when a faint, high-pitched alarm pierced through the walls of my room and my central nervous system. I froze, listening, waiting for it to stop. I couldn’t tell where it was emanating from, everywhere it seemed. I went to the window just as a pair of military jets flew by so close that the panes shook. I stumbled backwards, startled, my heart beating fast, the alarm coming from within me now. I looked out again, this time with a keener sense, for while the view was the same—gray, hazy, grim—something felt entirely different.

The Hannam Bridge, that’s what was different. Normally there was a slew of cars on that bridge—traffic in Seoul was preposterous at all hours—but in this moment the bridge was empty, wiped clean, a ghost of its former traffic-laden self. A faint voice came over the loudspeakers, spouting what sounded like instructions, in Korean. I waited for the English translation, which didn’t come. Some faint notion inside me said: evacuate; go to lobby. But I couldn’t move; my body felt like lead and I collapsed onto the bed.

At some point the alarm stopped, but I was already asleep.

When I awoke, I switched on the TV for news and ended up staring aimlessly at a Korean soap opera. There was this distant idea in my mind that I should be alarmed by my lack of alarm.

My husband called to ask how the appointment went.

I’d forgotten about the appointment.

The alarm, I’d blurted out suddenly, feigning concern. What was that? I was afraid to go anywhere.

Oh that, he responded dully, his tone full of irony. He had been at the client’s office when it had happened. A drill. His Korean friend had explained to him, with some indifference he noted; for these drills happen all the time. And the threats? What does he think about the threats from the North? They’re used to those, too, he shrugged. It’s the top story in the U.S., I reminded him. They say we’re on the brink of war. Even my dad e-mailed me to find out if I was okay.

The U.S. likes to blow things up, was his response.

Getting in The House

jackietownsend — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 14:13:34 +0000

Over the past thirteen years the reality television show, Grande Fratello (Big Brother), has remained a feral sensation in Italy, one far surpassing even its British and American counterparts. Italians rich and poor, young and old, northern and southern, pious and not, gather around their small boxes each evening to watch, riveted, twenty or so gorgeous, half naked men and women wandering around a posh, sprawling mansion. They party, fool around, and do generally whatever it is they feel compelled to do, uninhibited, the world’s eyes upon them. It’s rather sordid, kinky, and strange, like Italian TV in general. It’s this gap between the show’s participants and its watchers that has always flummoxed me, so vast as to be incomprehensible.

In the new film Reality, director Matteo Garrone, who also directed the riveting crime film Gomorrah, depicts the story of Luciano (Aniello Arena), a gregarious and loving husband, father, son, nephew, cousin, brother, and reigning fishmonger to the quaintly derelict Neapolitan piazza where he and his family live. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows everything about everyone, and decisions are made in small kitchens crowded with women, large in numbers and volume. They are adorable, Luciano’s extended family, their obsessive closeness the most charming part of the film. It is this family that, one day, stumbles upon a Big Brother audition at the local mall and convinces Luciano, the performer amongst them, to try out.

A new glimmer hits Luciano’s eyes. Something shifts. Changes. He makes the first cut and takes his family to Rome for the second audition. Afterwards he is ecstatic, breathless as he tells his wife that he’s sure he’s made it on the show and into the pinnacle of all houses, the house to beat all other houses. For he’d revealed his darkest secrets before the judges, even that bad stuff of his past. He’d confessed it all. He’d bared his soul.

Back in Napoli, while waiting for the studio to call with the news, Luciano sells his fish store (St. Peter was a fisherman…), he is not sure why exactly, it’s just something he feels compelled to do, like a calling. Plus, he’s become plagued with the feeling lately that he’s being followed, that the Big Brother judges are spying on him, assessing his character, making sure he’s worthy of The House before making that much awaited call. Each day that passes with no call brings more spies, more eyes (or guardian angels), Luciano’s every move judged. (George Orwell’s 1984 comes eerily to mind. Good thoughts only, else Room 101.)

He begins to give away his possessions, showering kindness on the poor and homeless. At a cemetery with his family, he beseeches two pious women in black—more spies—to tell him, honestly, if he is going to make it into in The House. “The house?” they ask. When they realize his reference, they reassure him that yes, he will make it into the House, but that he must be patient, he must not lose faith.

Garrone deftly juxtaposes religion and Big Brother until they finally become one. Luciano’s religion, his beliefs, his Church, has become Big Brother and everything it represents. It’s the light that shines from his very core. This is where the film transcends from cute and charming to dark and melancholy as Luciano’s quest for heaven (the House) descends him into hell.

Luciano is not a depiction of some microcosm of Italian life but a depiction of the modern world. We all want to be stars because to be a star is to live on and on forever, to be perennially observed, and more than ever in today’s world we can—on You-Tube, Twitter, Facebook, podcasts, blogs—24/7, we are there for anyone out there willing to see and listen.

As Reality ends, the camera pulls away from a lit window looking into the set of Big Brother, and as it pans out it becomes like a lone star shining from an otherwise darkened, sprawling landscape of tiny shadowed boxes in which live all the lives that don’t shine, that we don’t see on TV or hear about in the news, all the lives we will never know existed.

Benvenuti al SuD (Welcome to the South)

jackietownsend — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:44:07 +0000

I dropped my husband off at Malpensa in the pre-dawn light, plugged Corso Vittorio Emanuele 135 Naples into my rental car’s GPS, and drove off with one last giddy nervous wave. I still remember the look on his face as he stood on the curb watching me go: disbelief, consternation, a touch of irony, but mostly surrender, for I had a mind of my own, and a taste for adventure that he didn’t.

“You can’t go to Napoli alone,” he’d assured me, when I’d told him my plans.

“Why not?”

“It’s full of thieves.” He doesn’t really believe this, it’s just something he has to say because he’s from the north.

“They throw garbage out of the windows.”

I continued packing.

“Why can’t you just go for the day, like everyone else?”

I shrugged. We’d already gone over this. I was staying for a week.

“I’ll take you to Napoli next year, when I have more time.”

We’d been in Piemonte for a family reunion. “It’s now or never.”

He sighed, long and burdened.

His families’ phone numbers were programmed on my speed dial, underneath my shirt I had a money belt tied to my already-sweating waist. Eight white-knuckled hours on the Autostrada before I hit Campania, where Vesuvius rose ominously in the distance and the bay grew into a moody shimmer on my right. I swerved off into the last Autogrill before the City Center tollbooth, my heart beating through my chest. What the hell was I doing? I refilled my tank. After triple locking the car door, I went to the bathroom and emptied my bladder. Inside the café I bought rations of water and panini in case I got lost, stopped in traffic, car jacked, robbed… Thump, thump, thump went my heart with all the possibilities for which I’d been forewarned as I proceeded cautiously through the tollbooth. After this I flew for an exciting few minutes with the window down, hair flying, taking in the curious scents of rot, kelp, diesel. Then a halting stop, a sea of traffic, a sprawl of messy, car cluttered, soot-stifling chaos.

There is no description of one’s first venture into Napoli better than Luca Minero’s in his film, Benvenuti al Sud, in which a postal worker from Milan, Alberto, gets re-assigned to Napoli for two years. Think about what happens to Woody Allen when he ventures off the Island of Manhattan. Unfortunately, you can’t find the film in the U.S., nor does it have English subtitles, but it’s this early passage, amongst others, that can’t be missed.

“I’ve got some good news and bad news,” Alberto’s boss tells him at the beginning of the film.

“Am I fired?”

“Worse than fired.”

“Am I suspended?”

“No. You’ve been transferred to the south.”

“You mean Bologna?”

“No.”

“Rome? I can’t stand Rome.”

“It’s not Rome.”

“Sicily?”

“No worse. You’ve been transferred to Napoli. You leave Monday.”

“What do you mean?” he says in a rambling panic. “I don’t have any summer clothes. Where am I going to stay? I don’t speak the language…” his voice trails off into silence. His head bows, then lifts again. “What’s the good news?”

“That is the good news. The bad news is that you have to stay there for two years. It’s either the south or you’re fired.”

Alberto says flatly, “I’m going to die.”

Before driving off, his wife, beside herself, gives him a bulletproof vest, SPF50 sunscreen, and advises him to take off his wristwatch (and wedding ring) lest they sever his arm to take these prized possessions. He also brings along a fire extinguisher, a fan, a hunk of Gorgonzola, and a mousetrap given to him by his son.

And what happens when he gets there? It’s all rather charming and you’ll need to see the movie, which means you’ll need to learn Italian. Or just go there, hog wild, like I did.

Pre-order a copy of Jackie’s new novel, Imperfect Pairings, on Amazon today.

Why must Caesar die?

jackietownsend — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 13:17:19 +0000

My dad used to recite Shakespeare, often and at random, mostly when he couldn’t find his own words. “To thine own self be true,” he might say to me. My responses were either to stare at him blankly or roll my eyes, lest he see that I was intrigued, for Shakespeare’s words seemed to transform my father into an alternative person, this breathtaking, glorious force. Acting freed him in ways life couldn’t.

As it does for the men in the Italian film, Caesar Must Die. Real-life drug traffickers, criminals, murderers performing Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar from within the walls of a maximum-security prison outside of Rome. Filmed in mostly stark black and white, in what the prison calls a “theatrical laboratory,” the men move around the barred and stoned structures practicing their scenes, agonizing over how they will get their audience to understand their characters and Shakespeare’s intention for them, to understand why Caesar must die so that they can remain free.

I saw the play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival when I was thirteen, or I should say I slept through it. It had been a dream of my father’s to attend the festival, and one summer he rented a camper and finally did, with my brother and I along as unwilling participants. Fifteen-hours of slow driving up to Ashland, the only thing I remember about the festival is sweating. The amphitheater was outdoors in heat approaching 100 degrees, and yet I somehow managed to contract pneumonia and wind up in the hospital. Instead of being at the festival, my dad spent his days nursing me back to health, and then after all that we headed home early.

What’s nice about this film, for those of us non-purists, is that the laboratory’s production of Caesar is an abridged version; one hour and seventeen minutes versus the four hours I slept through in Ashland. No thines and thous, in fact the dialogue was so simple and straightforward that I actually, miraculously, understood some of the Italian they spoke (the movie is subtitled). It wasn’t like they were speaking particularly slow. Like Shakespeare had transformed my father he had transformed these men, and perhaps I could read it in their seething, tormented faces. Caesar has died before and he’s going to die again. Again and again, so that more men can be free. Freed from tyranny, and by the sheer form of acting.

Maybe art can be freedom, even inside one of the least free places on earth.

Pre-order a copy of Jackie’s new novel, Imperfect Pairings, on Amazon.

John Turturro’s “Passione”

jackietownsend — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:42:38 +0000

John Turturro’s documentary, Passione (2010), is an ode to the city of Napoli and a menagerie of its music. There is no beginning, middle, or end, we simply wander down dark alleys into beaten down piazzas enticed by exotic women and mysterious men, professional musicians or people the director pulled off the street belting out songs full of heartache, melancholy, urgency, and desperation. Rhythmic, operatic, theatrical, classical, flashes of jazz and hip-hop, undertones of Africa and Cuba… This, the city most tourists observe from train windows as they pass by on their way to the Amalfi Coast or Capri, or skip altogether, unable to fit it in with itineraries to Rome, Venice, and Florence.

I’ve always loved finding new music. I’d wander into Virgin Records on Union Square and peruse the aisles listening to random albums they had on display, always finding something intriguing, bringing it home, and uploading it into iTunes. Then Virgin went away (it’s a Citibank branch now), as did the concept of the “album” for me. I found myself suddenly stranded and lost, stuck in a time warp of my five and ten-year old playlists. I can’t seem to advance to purchasing one-off songs on iTunes. I can’t help be swayed by the “favorites” meter; I’ll listen to the song clip, then get frustrated and slam the laptop shut.

Am I becoming my father?

Good, bad, or ugly, an album tells a story. The stepchild songs of that album, the runts, are part of that story. And without the story I’d lost the picture. Passione brought that picture back, if only momentarily, like food for my music-starved soul. During the course of the film I listened to at least a dozen performers, not all of who were harmonic, some were even disturbing. In a few cases I had to force myself not to mute the TV, as if I’d inherited the ten second listening tolerance of my nephews, no doubt acquired by the free song clips on iTunes.

I muted no songs. I respect Turturro; he was pouring out his heart to tell me the story about this strangely singular, rapturous city of his heritage. I was going to listen, and it was worth it.

Along a shimmering bay, beneath a moody Vesuvius, Neapolitan life pulses and thrums, a city that’s been ravaged, beaten down, built back up, beaten down again…a blend of cultures. No performer sounds the same, because not all music sounds the same, lest we forget. Like a foreign language, one’s ear must be tuned in order to comprehend, one must listen over and over until the sound has settled under their skin, and then soon one can’t imagine the album without the song. Like Napoli, the city, if given a better chance than a day trip for a pizza, one day one might not be able to imagine an Italy without it.

Pre-order a copy of Jackie’s new novel, Imperfect Pairings, on Amazon.

Amore, passione, filmed by those who know it best

jackietownsend — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:22:51 +0000

Five films by the Italian masters. Not the sweet, sentimental films we all love—Cinema Paradiso, Il Postino, Mediterraneo… I’m talking about films that will make you stir or scream, not weep.

I am Love (2009) has one of the most sensual love scenes I’ve ever seen on screen, in a sun-dappled garden, birds and bees included. Directed by Luca Guadagnino, who is known for, among other things, stories of female suffering and sacrifice. A Russian woman, Emma (Tilda Swinton), marries into Milanese wealth, raises a gorgeous Milanese family, and ultimately finds herself at one with that wealth, with all its cold poise and refinement. There is no trace of her former self until she comes in contact with a young Lawrentian chef, Antonio, who speaks her native tongue and who will awaken her, startlingly, to the woman she’s lost.

“The mass loves strong men,” Benito Mussolini once said. “The mass is female.” Mussolini grew out of the most possessed of young loves. When he was still only Benito, he caught the captivation of a young woman named Ida through his raw, visceral beliefs, not only in politics, but about love, life, her. She became his first wife. Then he became what we know him for and cast her aside to marry another, more reputable woman. He denied that Ida’s son was his, and denounced the existence of their marriage. Vincere (2009) by Marco Bellocchio is a fascinating, rapturous account of a passionate man’s possession of one woman, and an entire country.

On the softer side, try Silvio Soldini’s Bread and Tulips (2000). Mid forties, a tired, sort of pretty, sort of overweight woman, Maglietta, gets left behind at a service station when the tourist bus she’s on with her husband and teenage children takes off without realizing she’s not aboard. Her husband later calls her, angry, because of course this is all her fault. Sound familiar? It could really be the last straw, no? What else can Maglietta do at this point, really, but hitchhike to Venice, and pretend to start over.

Did you know that until 1962, divorce was illegal in Italy? Divorce, Italian Style (1961) will provide you with a host of farcical guffaws, so I’m told, for I’ll admit I have not seen the movie, I just think the title has a nice ring to it. Staring Marcello Mastroianni as Ferdinando, a wealthy Sicilian baron who is bored and disgusted by his comically unattractive, lust starved wife, tries to engineer her adultery so that he’ll have to shoot her in order to save his honor. In this way he can marry his young cousin, with whom he is in love. Wasn’t it nice, back when the rules were so straightforward and simple?

If you like historical fiction, first read the book, The Leopard (1963), then see this wonderful old film staring, of all people, Burt Lancaster playing the part of a Sicilian aristocrat. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa wrote the book and this story with his heart and soul and based it on his great-grandfather. It’s long and epic and big-hearted, about a wise and noble man, who, aging, must watch on as his big bold life bleeds on into the next by way of his devoted, handsome young nephew, Tancredi.

Respiro (2002) reminds me that there can be passion and love without the quintessential “other.” Grazia lives in a small fishing village with her husband and children, but she is mentally challenged in some undefined way, witnessed by the lavish ways she abruptly embraces life and all its rapture—skinny-dipping in the sea, for instance, while with her children, and for all to see. But the sea enchants her, as she enchants it, to the dismay of her husband, who loves her dearly, as well as her children, who must hide her away in a cave by the sea so that she won’t be sent away. I forget how it ends. Probably not well. Above all though, the film’s portrayal of simple village life illuminates the soul.

Tancredi, Grazia, Antonio, Giuseppe, Marcello, Ferdinando, Maglietta, Marco, Benito…don’t you see? Don’t you see what they’re doing to us?

Pre-order Jackie’s new novel, Imperfect Pairings, on Amazon

Italian for Beginners

jackietownsend — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 12:58:02 +0000

Italian for Beginners is a precious little Danish film (2002) about a group of lonely misfits searching for sanctuary, connection, and purpose in an Italian language class taught at their local community center during the dead of one Copenhagen winter.

There’s nothing like pouring your heart out to someone who doesn’t speak your language. This is what Jorgen, a shy, insecure hotel manager, does to Giulia, a pretty young Italian girl who cooks at the hotel’s restaurant, one day when he just can’t hold back anymore. She speaks no Danish. He speaks no Italian, which is why he took the class in the first place.

As if that’s going to help. His friend Halvfinn, partially fluent in Italian, assures Jorgen his quest for Giulia is hopeless. “You don’t speak Italian.”

“But it’s the feelings that count.”

The reason Halvfinn speaks Italian is due to his obsession with the Italian football team Juventus. A failed footballer himself, he goes about his work as a manager of the restaurant where Giulia cooks, carrying with him a seething anger, exploding at customers for behaving like beasts. It’s not long before he’s fired.

When the Italian insegnante suddenly drops dead, Halvfinn takes over teaching the class, clad in a black and white striped jersey, and turns out to have a knack for it.

Repeat after me.

“Penalty. Rigore.”
“To throw. Buttare”
“Goalie. Portiere”
“To whistle. Fischiare”

Translations embedded in my subconscious, I was disconcerted to discover. My Italian for the day, check.

You have to endure a few deaths, an abusive father, an alcoholic mother, lots of funerals, an abundance of grieving. All the while romance blooms, breathing life into anyone and everyone, even you. There are some very touching moments. “When someone dies, how long is it before you can fall in love?” asks the clumsy, soft-spoken Olympia, who has fallen for the new Pastor.

However long it takes you to fall in love, I think, would be the answer.

I’ve tried the class. Imagine being in kindergarten again, memorizing the alphabet and learning how to conjugate the verb to be, only you’re an adult, in a room with other adults. On one level it’s silly, kind of fun, good for the soul stuff. On the other, you might look around and wonder. Why are we here? Our language stripped from us, our security, our sense of direction, our purpose, this abyss? Our brains are no longer supple, and we are weary from the long journey that’s led us here. Will we ever even get to this place we seek to know?

Pre-order Jackie’s new novel, Imperfect Pairings, on Amazon

You just don’t understand

jackietownsend — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 22:58:01 +0000

In Imperfect Pairings a woman struggles to find a common language with the man she loves, her business colleagues, the Italian family that embraces her, her own family, and ultimately, herself.

How do you survive in a world where everybody is speaking different languages?

When I was in business school I gave a speech promoting Deborah Tannen’s book, You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in Conversation I was quite passionate about the book, as I was about my career, staking out my place in the world, so many things back then. It seemed to trigger something deep within me. Why that was, exactly, I had no idea, for I was only twenty-six at the time. I’d a good heartbreak under my belt, a couple of banal office jobs, but that was about it. I knew little about the world.

And what was coming.

The book stayed with me over the years. “You Just Don’t Understand” was posted like a neon sign in the back of my mind, flashing red every time I got one of those blank nods from the person to whom I was speaking. In other words, pretending to understand me when, in fact, he or she didn’t—part of the fundamental problem, I believe, which is that essentially we are good people; we don’t want to hurt each other’s feelings. We’d prefer to agree with them, rather than offend them.

Later the same year that I had made the speech I was sent to Seoul, Korea for seven months on a management consulting engagement. What little I did know about communication, listening, and understanding was blown out of the water in my first smoke-filled meeting. (Eventually, I would be too, but that’s a story for Imperfect Pairings.)

The Koreans I worked with only wanted to please me. I was a guest in their country, and Koreans consider it dishonorable not to take care of their guests. Hence, they would shake their heads “yes” when what they really meant was “no.” I walked into many brick walls on their watch, as did our team, and we accomplished little of what we’d set out to do (downsizing, though we didn’t position it like that).

Language is fundamental. We know this intuitively, but does the realization penetrate through our thick American sculls? Why is it that many people in Italy speak at least two languages, while people in America speak only one? Guilty. We can’t get through to one another because we’re stuck in our own myopic world.

A man speaks one language, a woman the other. He might as well be speaking Italian and she English. Sure, you are communicating on some level, perhaps you’ve even gone to counseling sessions or have read all those books about how to communicate with the opposite sex, just like you do studying Italian or Spanish, memorizing and practicing all those words and phrases, but do you ever really understand what this person is telling you? What’s in their mind, heart, soul?

No.

I guess the real question is whether there is anything we can do about it.

And if not, maybe we just keep practicing.

#100daysofspeakingItalian. Follow me on Twitter @jtownbooks.

It’s good to be the King

jackietownsend — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 15:29:47 +0000

In Bangkok some years ago, my husband and I went to see a movie at the Emporium, a modern US-style mall, housed in a slick skyscraper on Sukhumvit Road near where the old Chokchai Steakhouse used to be. Before the movie began, instead of previews, the Thai National Anthem started playing along with a montage depicting the King’s achievements over his 57-year reign. My husband stood up, as did everyone else in the theater, while I sat munching on my shrimp chips wondering if they’d not laced the Coca Cola I was drinking with extra sugar.

I was yanked up from my chair.
“Oh come on,” I said to him.
“It’s disrespectful.”
“Seriously?”
He grew up here, and was nothing but serious.

A decade or so later, I stumbled upon the film Anna and the King of Siam playing on Turner Classic Movies. A British widow moves with her son to Thailand to be governess to King Mongkut’s 58 children, and no, it’s not the film you think you know, The King and I, the version with Yul Brenner and Deborah Kerr based off the Broadway musical, the one so engrained in our minds that we can no longer stand to watch the film (and why I’d almost changed the channel). Nor was this Anna and the King, the 1999 version with a frosty Jodie Foster and some other guy not worth mentioning. I didn’t even know this Anna existed; the dark horse 1947 black and white original with Rex Harrison and Irene Dunne; no singing, no dancing, I was riveted, at once engrossed.

It is darker than the other versions. Immediately, we are presented with the plight of a highly educated and respected woman transplanted into a country where the highest honor given to a woman is to be included in the King’s harem. It’s where the story begins, with one of the many wives. She has just been delivered to the King along with other token gifts from revelers around the world. She will later dishonor the King by leaving the palace, and this is where the film takes an unexpected turn. While Anna does her best to dissuade the King from the very kind of barbarism he’s trying to extract his country out of, we watch this wife and the man she loves burn at the stake.

Anna is about to leave Siam, but as she’s saying her goodbyes her son dies in a freak horse accident. Anna is devastated, for the only reason she’d taken the position in the first place was to give her son a better life. Ultimately, after a long and grim mourning period, she stays to advise the King, but only because she has nowhere else to go.

Rex Harrison is mesmerizing as the eccentric ruler, a deeply conflicted man, with a kind heart and insatiable mind, relentless in his search for truth and the knowledge that will earn his country respect in the modern world.

Irene Dunne is wonderful as an intelligent, stubborn, independent woman grossly ignorant about the culture in which she has thrown her son and herself into. Her resistance to lower herself before the King (one must always be lower than the King while in his presence, a difficult feat when the King is lying down, for instance), reminded me of my resistance to stand before the King’s tribute in the theater.

I have learned so much since then about what it means to be a guest in a foreign country, the willingness to learn, listen, engage, and, above all, respect. Yes, Anna advised the King, but the King also imparted much wisdom on Anna. Their respect was mutual, and inherent. Anna did ultimately lower herself before the king, as did I stand up tall in that theater.