The Fortunate Pilgrim
Puzo’s The Fortunate Pilgrim is almost entirely unknown, yet it is his most illuminating work. The Fortunate Pilgrim takes us to a world that has now disappeared. It is the squalid and desperate world of first and second generation Italian migrants in the bowels of early twentieth century New York city. The Fortunate Pilgrim tells the story of the bitter but […]
Gattaca
It’s hard to work out if the 1997 movie Gattaca presents a vision of human triumph or human failure. It presents a dystopian future which echoes the dystopian elements of our present and past. In this future, people are judged solely by their genetic scorecard. Those whose parents do not engineer their children for success before […]
The Hundred Foot Journey
The Hundred Foot Journey, plays out against a physically short distance, yet the chasm between its characters is vast. The movie tells the story of a meeting between two cooking cultures: Indian and French. Both are proud of their cooking traditions. An Indian family, displaced some time before to England by political […]
Belle: Slavery, High society, and Family
Humans are complex beings. The movie Belle (director: Amma Assante) explores human complexity, particularly as it manifests in everyday human relationships. The movie is set in the late eighteenth century at the height of the transatlantic slave trade. Dido Elizabeth Belle (played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is the central character of the movie. She was born into […]