Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, by Brian Kellow (Viking)
Film critic Pauline Kael could be as brilliant and maddening in person as she was in the pages of The New Yorker, whether you were a filmmaker who failed to meet her standards or an acolyte who dared to disagree with her judgment.
Movies, after all, were her life.
Some considered Kael an irresponsible bully and an opportunistic writer who could be far too chummy with filmmakers. Others found her friendly, gregarious and bawdy, though hardly faultless, sometimes boorish but never boring. She reveled in such attention and devoted herself to earning it.
In “Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark,” author Brian Kellow offers a making-of story as engaging as her criticism. It’s no easy feat — what’s less dramatic than scribbling into the night? — but Kellow tapped her friends and foes and her writing while developing a colorful, evenhanded appreciation of one of film’s most influential critics.
A literate style driven by passionate opinions and punctuated with cutting, crude remarks was central to her appeal. She could overly praise movies, too, like “Last Tango in Paris” (“a landmark in movie history”), and she practically wet-nursed directors like Robert Altman and Brian De Palma. Reading about Kael — she retired as a regular reviewer in 1991 and died in 2001 — will no doubt rekindle interest in her work. Douglass K. Daniel, The Associated Press
The Unconquered: In Search of the Amazon’s Last Uncontacted Tribes, by Scott Wallace (Crown)
Dream assignment or nightmare?
An editor from National Geographic asked journalist Scott Wallace to join an expedition into the deepest wilds of the Amazon jungle to find the mysterious “People of the Arrow,” a tribe never contacted by the outside world. The expedition was to gather information about the tribe without actually meeting it. The magazine wanted an article about its leader, a charismatic defender of indigenous tribes.
Was Wallace up for the job? He was, and while the experience was pretty much a nightmare, it’s a blessing for readers of Wallace’s fascinating book, “The Unconquered.” Wallace joined a group of natives and whites who hacked their way through a jungle so thick it blotted out the sun. It was tough and dangerous going.
“Vines yanked my hat off. Thorns ripped at my sleeves,” Wallace writes. “Stands of bamboo encased in three-inch spikes threatened to impale an eyeball in a moment of carelessness.” Oh, but there was more for him to ponder during the three-month journey. Swarms of vicious fire ants on the ground and on tree branches. Bullet ants whose sting can send an adult into shock.
Huge anacondas. Jaguars. Alligatorlike caimans lurking in the night, their eyes glowing like red coals when a spotlight caught them. Not to mention poison- tipped arrows that might greet the explorers.
Leading the expedition was Sydney Possuelo, at the time an official of the Brazilian agency in charge of protecting Indians. Wallace found him to be a hero to Indians they encountered but often a moody enigma to the people he led. Wallace tells us human stories of the expedition, men persevering as individuals and as a group despite disease and hardship.
Yet Wallace also describes scenes of stunning natural beauty and eye-opening encounters with native tribes. As his expedition draws to a close, successful in its mission, he almost begins to sound nostalgic. It was so unlike his life in Manhattan, he realizes, that his experiences would soon seem unreal.
Lucky for us, he wrote them down. Malcolm Ritter, The Associated Press
