Post- 02/02/18

In This Issue ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE – ENDURANCE – COFFEE – SUNDANCE – HOUSE OF LEAVES

PostFEB 02

VOL 21 — ISSUE 1

Cover by Linda Liu

“I grew up with the lovably dopey Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man, a glassy-eyed champion whose Spidey sense made all the young girls tingle.”

Table of Contents

—Bianca Stelian, "I'm Too Old for Spider-Man" 02.02.2017

feature

Forbidden Fruit ANDREW LIU 3

lifestyle

Grit and Bear It SYDNEY LO 6

Beans & Brews DANIELLA BALAREZO 6 arts &culture

Star Power JAMES FEINBERG 7

House of Fear

Letter from the Editor Dear Readers, Post- is back, along with your weekly round-up of new releases, Brown gossip and hard-hitting Providence journalism. You may have noticed that some things have changed: we come out on Fridays now and have a brand new look! Also welcome to two new members of our staff, Julian Castronovo and Pia-Mileaf Patel.

Some things, however don’t change: during our first production night of the semester, Post- staff performed our semesterly-tradition of Rose, Bud, Thorn. Some preliminary statistics suggest that Shopping Period was the thorn in the side of at least 55% of our staff; Roses were often related to Ratty-based pasta; the Bud was almost unanimously all that we have in store for Post- and our readers this semester. This issue alone, we have pieces on artificial intelligence, Sundance and coffee in Providence.

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Happy reading!

Saanya

editor - in - chief

Editor-in-Chief Saanya Jain Features Managing Editor Jennifer Osborne Section Editors Anita Sheih Kathy Luo Lifestyle Managing Editors Annabelle Woodward Pia Patel Section Editors Divya Santhanam Arts & Culture Managing Editor Josh Wartel Section Editors Celina Sun Marly Toledano Julian Castronovo Copy Chief Alicia DeVos Zander Kim Amanda Ngo Head Designer Sarah Saxe Layout Chief Livia Mucciolo Julia Kim Gabriela Gil Heads of Media Claribel Wu Samantha Haigood Head Illustrator Doris Liou

this week’s

Ways to Get an Override Code

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Offer up your firstborn child Wait 12 years in Azkaban Bribery Blackmail the TAs Blackmail the professor Declare as an English concentrator (for Creative NonFiction classes) Shameless begging Don’t (give up) Slip a note under the professor’s door (It has been done successfully.)

Offer them an egg in this trying time

Staff Illustrator Becki Shu Caroline Hu Erica Lewis Harim Choi Kira Widjaja Molly Young Nayeon (Michelle) Woo Staff Writer Andrew Liu Anna Harvey Bianca Stelian Charlie Stewart Daniella Balarezo Eliza Cain James Feinberg Nicole Fegan Sydney Lo

feature

Forbidden Fruit

A.I. bites off more than we can chew

By Andrew liu

I

Illustration by Clarissa Liu

n today’s computer age, there is a theory

among the chess community that the game is dying: The current world champion doesn’t stand a chance against a chess engine installed on a smartphone, and everyday computers map out corners of the game’s theory that no grandmaster a century ago could comprehend.

The most powerful supercomputers have already solved every possible game of chess with any combination of seven or fewer pieces on the board, and they are currently approaching eight. There’s a saying in chess that there are more possible moves in those 64 squares than atoms in the universe, but it seems now that, one atom at a time, that universe is being drained of its mystery.

I have always been addicted to chess’s artistic side, the part of the game that goes beyond cold calculation and melds with creativity and beauty. While it is true that computers have mapped out huge portions of chess, I’ve always resisted seeing computers as the death of the game, because they have also produced some of the most inexplicably breathtaking moves I have ever seen.

I remember spending one morning in 2014 studying the Albin Counter-Gambit, a chess opening setup regarded for over a century as a third-tier amatuer choice.

I was running Stockfish, the strongest chess computer program in the world at the time, as my “assistant” on my laptop. I forgot to turn Stockfish off when I was done, and it turned out to be one of the best mistakes I have ever made. When I returned a few hours later, the monitor displayed something mystifying: In a chess position

played over in hundreds of games and analyzed in articles around the world, Stockfish was suggesting a shocking move never seen before. It was a bizarre idea, seemingly suicidal; and yet when I delved into Stockfish’s thoughts, I realized that I was staring at a revolutionary find, one that could breathe new life into this opening. The lines of moves that Stockfish suggested were outlandish and otherworldly, utterly impressionistic and beautiful on the outside, but devastatingly powerful due to its brutal calculating vision. Stockfish suggested a loss that was not only considered fatal in chess, but would also put the opposing player’s position in complete paralysis, a concept never seen before in any books or archives.

In that moment, I saw the magic of Stockfish, the lone creator and destroyer of chess’ future.

A few weeks ago, a piece of news appeared that shook the whole world: AlphaZero, the machine learning entity created by DeepMind, had obliterated Stockfish in every game out of the 28 it played. AlphaZero had taken just four hours to master the game from scratch. This was incomprehensible; Stockfish was supposed to be supreme, unbeatable—as close to chess perfection as we were ever going to manage. What was AlphaZero seeing that Stockfish, a program that can calculate millions of moves every second, could not? Yet, this was not even where the true shock factor lay. DeepMind also released 10 games from the match. Looking at them for the first time, I have to admit that I did not know what to think or say. They were utterly alien. It was as if AlphaZero february 2, 2018 3

FEATURE

LIFESTYLE

We push and keep pushing every day, forgetting that we may be eating forbidden fruit.

Grit and Bear It Knowing when to grit and when to quit

By Sydney Lo

were on the other side of some all-knowing veil, standing on some new plane of chess understanding. I felt like I was staring at the work of a god. There was one final nail in the coffin—in all 10 games, Stockfish did not stand a chance. Chess computers are generally boring in their style and stingy with their pieces, preferring to suffocate their opponents to death with their “perfect” play. AlphaZero’s style, on the other hand, was sleek, turbulent, almost human. In some games, it had a bloodlust and thirst for direct attacks more severe than any human could muster, sacrificing pieces left and right with cold rage and controlled recklessness.

In other games, it played like a python, strangling the life out of Stockfish with a precision that was agonizing to watch.

One might think that I would be awash in appreciation for AlphaZero’s ingenuity, having seen a new level of creativity in chess, and to an extent this was true. My jaw dropped with each game I went over, and the warmth and excitement of falling in love with a game of infinite mystery reignited in my senses. Yet, deep in my chest, I felt something was off. I felt fear.

It took four hours for AlphaZero to surpass over a millennia of chess knowledge.

There was something so impressive, yet so hollowing in this fact. All the chess greats, all the “masterpieces” I looked up to with all my heart growing up, seemed now like flies circling a blinding light. For an instant, the chessboard was no longer a place of mastery or a blank canvas to me—it was a void, and I had just met the entity that knew everything about it. That feeling, of staring straight into a dark expanse filled with so much wonder and unease—I felt like a child again, outclassed, outmatched, and utterly helpless.

As students here at Brown, we’re growing up in a world that is changing faster than ever before. The question ringing in people's minds around the world is no doubt how to face it. Yet, in the midst of smog-breathing cities and an economy teetering on excessive spending, we continue to embrace the same selfish thought as every generation that came before us: No matter what evils or advances are embraced in the future, we will likely not see it—how fast can the world change in 80 years anyway? The answer to that question now cuts me to the core some days. We will be the first generation to create some of the most daring and groundbreaking advancements in technology, and we will also be the generation here to see their consequences. I’ve always been a sentimental person with what I’d like to think of as a hopeful, even romantic heart.

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I wish I could look at this in an optimistic light and say that the future is brighter than ever before; I truly hope that technology like AlphaZero will be used to create the transcendent ideas I’ve always dreamed of in chess, and that whatever AI algorithm DeepMind invents will be used to provide food, energy, and livelihood with greater efficiency than ever before. But the truth of the matter is that my heart is tainted with fear. The world is filled with selfish incentives and unchecked recklessness. The race now between the superpowers of the world to invest in AI reminds me of the time we discovered the unholy energy generated by splitting a uranium-235 atom. The children of those scientists discovered even more cataclysmic ways to kill, and now every day we hover our fingers over launch buttons, fearful that our time of reckoning has finally come. Perhaps the scariest thing of all is that we can’t imagine what weapon or fallout is possible with AI—only they can. If a current prototype could master one of the most complex games on earth in four hours, future intelligence will have a relentlessness that we are not ready for. I can’t help but wonder if some things are not meant to be discovered; we push and keep pushing every day, forgetting that we may be eating forbidden fruit.

I’m becoming scared of the things I don’t know in this world. Pride has given way to an almost crippling open-mindedness, an alarming inability to choose between what I think is right or wrong, in a world where that choice is more clouded and needed than ever. I’m at the age now to decide what to believe in, what values to cling to when the future becomes critical, and I’m bombarded with how I should think every day. My own compass is now pointed in jagged directions.

Today the world is developing almost like a computer would, choosing efficiency and speed over livelihood, and obsessing over large power plays while forgetting the millions of individuals that are the pawns of each drastic decision. In an age of globalization and stunning technological advances, we are at our most empty in our humanity. We are trained in cold cost-benefit analysis, learning how to extract every drop out of this world where the winners and heartless take all, a world filled with soft things and easy pleasures. As the future and all its terrifying possibilities collide, we must remember not to push the boundaries of comfort and power too far, to not try to escape the ailments of our flesh and blood— the most poignant reminder of what makes us human

at the brink of midnight and a mid-semester breakdown, four lecture-captures into studying for my second physiology exam, a Facebook notification disturbs my academic focus. I minimize the Canvas tab and check my feed.

Everyone at Brown apparently has had the same idea, and the page fills with posts and photos from peers venting about professors or lamenting their own procrastination. I glance at them half-attentively, pausing to watch a few shared videos of fall recipes or cute animals.

Among them, a TED Talk video from 2013 has strangely reentered circulation—a few friends must have raked it back from the depths of the internet. In an effort to escape my misery, I turn the mute off and watch the six-minute clip.

Against the classic red-lettered backdrop of the TED Talk stage, Angela Lee Duckworth, a professor in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, passionately describes her journey to find the true determinant of success in individuals. A former management consultant turned highschool teacher (and eventually college professor), she explains that she was very interested in uncovering why some of her students, despite having high IQs or a lot of talent, seemed unable to get good grades in her course. Conversely, she hoped to find out why others, with lower IQs and less talent, were able to succeed. Her investigations eventually went beyond the classroom, as she looked into success within military training camps, national spelling bees, and even stressful workplaces. She explains to the audience that she uncovered the factor most important to the achievement of goals in all those areas: grit, which she defines as “passion and perseverance for very long-term goals.” It is tolerating a current, imperfect state of living in order to reach an intangible, improved future state of living. Duckworth asserts that those with grit were able to work through failures, persisting in their fields until success was reached, and concludes the talk by asking the audience to work harder to develop grit within themselves and those around them.

I close my computer and hop off my bed to make a cup of tea. As the water warms I overhear the stress-induced ramblings of fellow students in my dorm, their voices heavy with exhaustion and suppressed (or maybe not-so-suppressed ) tears. Someone has to finish a CS project, someone might fail a midterm, someone can’t figure out a concentration. Their collective dejection resonates in my chest, and I find myself fighting back sobs. Could I be Angela’s gritless failure?

Success and failure are intimately evident

LIFESTYLE

Coupled with this, of course, is the crippling, cultural fear of being the person who couldn’t pass the class, who couldn’t handle the pre-med or pre-law or pre-whatever track, who didn’t have enough grit to stick it out. in every corner of College Hill and in every competitive, insecure, brilliant student it hosts. Internships, fellowships, jobs, grades, research positions, and acceptances into prestigious graduate schools function like flashy indicators of the university’s best and brightest, whilst everyone scrambles to be extraordinary. Between classes, people debate who really has the most rigorous concentration, is taking the most difficult class, is doing the best or the most in relation to coursework and extracurriculars. Even personal activities like keeping up a fitness routine, having a social life, and participating in self-care become incorporated in the campus-wide parlay of accomplishments and one-upmanship. Coupled with this, of course, is the crippling, cultural fear of being the person who couldn’t pass the class, who couldn’t handle the pre-med or pre-law or pre-whatever track, who didn’t have enough grit to stick it out.

When I was accepted to Brown University, I stubbornly believed I would concentrate in a STEM field or would double-concentrate in a STEM field and a humanities field. I speculated the prospects of biochemistry, chemistry and English, cognitive science and visual arts, biology and literary arts. I planned my future classes countless times over to see what my path at Brown might look like, how I would manage all the requirements and graduate on time. Whenever friends or family were apprehensive, I firmly assured them that it was the best and only option for my academic future. However, almost a year and a half into my education, I’ve realized that while I love many STEM classes and subjects, they’re not where I want to spend the majority of my university career. Moreover, I’ve realized how much time I have spent trying to convince myself they were. I struggled with everything from individual classes to difficult subject structures to unwelcoming departments. In spite of simply not having helpful, positive experiences, I tolerated or ignored my difficulties in STEM because I was not a quitter. I was sure that I was the problem and not the fields, and that if I just studied enough I could find my place there. Still, even though I’m much happier knowing I won’t be trapped in a concentration that makes me unhappy, I am a failure, and a failure in STEM at that (which at Brown is synonymous to a

failure in being an employable human being).

Furthermore, I’ve given up on my own goal to concentrate in STEM, something I was once so determined to do. Not very gritty at all.

The problem with the notion of grit, both in Duckworth’s talk and Brown University’s culture, is that it rarely takes circumstance into account. Sure, people who accomplish things never gave up on those specific achievements, but who's to say they didn’t give up on other things before that? Does grit really have to be an all-or-nothing characteristic that one applies to every facet of life? If I stuck to every commitment I’d made, I would be really good at a lot of things that I don’t find fulfilling, like soccer or piano or ballet.

Choosing not to continue with those activities granted me the freedom to find other activities that I truly enjoyed. Indeed, even the decision to drop a second concentration was made in part because it would allow me the flexibility

to take more electives and explore other facets of myself and my education. Duckworth’s theory about grit doesn’t seem to acknowledge that it costs opportunities, keeping people from growing into new passions that could be more fulfilling.

The insistence on desperate exhibitions of grit is not without merit of course, as most success requires continued effort and time to be achieved. Furthermore, dealing with unpleasant situations is an inevitable part of life, and the culture of grit develops tolerance of such situations. The opposing notion of self-care, which strives to keep students from overexerting themselves, is ineffective in this way because it conveys a sense that projects do not need to be seen through. Furthermore, self-care can limit personal growth, because it keeps people in a relative comfort zone where skills or character cannot be fully utilized. Is there, then, some delicate balance, some precise amount of negativity that justifies throwing in the towel or fighting through the pain? Furthermore, is it the same for everyone?

My tea finishes steeping. I weigh continuing work over calling it quits for the night, then grab my mug and return to the collection of notes and textbooks on my bed.

Deep breaths. Grit and bear it. I press play on the lecture capture

Duckworth’s theory about grit doesn’t seem to acknowledge that it costs opportunities, keeping people from growing into new passions that could be more fulfilling.

Illustrated by Molly Young

february 2, 2018 5

LIFESTYLE

Beans & Brews Roasting the Wickenden coffee shops

By Daniella balazero

sprightly brown campus tour guides love to spew one particular fact when trying to convince prospective students that Providence, Rhode Island, is the place to be: Providence, they contend, has the most coffee and donut shops (per capita) of any city in the country. While this “fact” may be more Rhode Island folklore than peer-reviewed research, it wouldn’t be surprising if Providence indeed held the title for Coffee Capital of the United States. On Wickenden Street alone there are three great spots ideal for working, drinking a cup with friends, or reading a nice book. All three are true beatnik shops, where one can easily imagine some brilliant MFA attempting to write the N.G.A.N. (Next Great American Novel). Each shop has a distinct character, so choose your player or test all three! the granola liberal - wifi: NotTonightHoneyImSavingMyself Just east of Hope Street and west of Ives Street, past the piercing and tattoo shops and right before the carpet store, is The Shop, a trendy establishment that Google Maps deems “an eco-conscious spot for coffee & pastries.” If “eco-conscious” alludes to the health-focused, granola lovin’, yoga-andbullet-journaling-are-my-life vibe of the place, then Google definitely nails it.

Complete with a standing desk area and $8.50 avocado toast, The Shop feels like a hybrid venue—half cafe at a Whole Foods, half “hygge” Danish coffee shop. The coffee is fairly priced and tastes decent to some and delicious to others, depending on who you ask. Choices are limited—the menu lacks the seemingly infinite variety you find at Starbucks. The few meals on the menu look of acceptable serving size but remain overpriced for what they are (toast, granola, yogurt, roasted veggies).

The atmosphere is relaxed—soft jazz and bossa play in the background. A repeating wallpaper pattern of an old water tower and an adorable painting of a red fox, a nod to Fox Point, the neighborhood where The Shop is located, give the shop a whimsical,

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While this “fact” may be more Rhode Island folklore than peer-reviewed research, it wouldn’t be surprising if Providence indeed held the title for Coffee Capital of the United States. quintessentially Providence flare. The Shop’s windows are large, letting in lots of light for the seasonally depressed, and if one can spare $3.50 for a generous slice of bread with jam and butter, which is served on a rustic wooden block and brought to the long, shared, Eurostyle table by the server, who probably rocks gauges, then of course, one can have an excellent, cozy, and delicious meal. the nonconforming artiste - best blend name: Kind of Blue If you ever manage to find a table at Coffee Exchange, located just a few blocks west from The Shop, I suggest you buy yourself a lotto scratcher. Coffee Exchange is always packed, and for good reason.

For starters, the coffee is delicious, the baristas are friendly, and there are so many kinds of drinks to choose from that Coffee Exchange gives Starbucks a run for its money.

I once asked for a drink that wasn’t on the menu, and the baristas insisted on making it for me, demanded that I let them know if it wasn’t tasty, and then proceeded to make me the yummiest Iced London Fog a girl could ask for—even though they were very busy that day.

Something sweet about Coffee Exchange is that they roast their coffee themselves, and the aroma of the process adds to the already cozy (though perhaps spatially claustrophobic) atmosphere. They boast five distinct roasts and beans from several countries, which you can buy yourself by the pound on location or online. In addition to the coffee, Exchange is brimming with coffee-making contraptions so technical and intimidating that one might assume they are used for making chemical weapons in an evil scientist’s lab. They also sell the more typical, pragmatic contraptions, like French roast presses.

As if their coffee savvy weren’t enough, their pastries are always tempting, especially now that they sell the best donuts in the world, aka Knead Donuts.

The vibe at Exchange is homey and

welcoming with a side of sobriety—it seems like the place for the serious coffee drinker who is here to discuss real issues, like this year’s recipient of the National Book Award or the benefits of non-monogamy. But while this may seem like “a scene,” Exchange never borders on pretension. When you see a couple drawing in individual sketchbooks in complete silence next to one another, and then carrying out a full-on artistic critique right in that public space, you don’t roll your eyes. You smile, and quickly go back to working on your screenplay, or your CS project, or whatever you’re there to do. You get it.

Coffee Exchange feels like a place where customers can truly feel at home in the Providence community. As they work, chat, read, or type, they are surrounded by pin boards covered in posters that advertise local events and workshops, lectures and concerts, invitations to gallery openings and bake sales. If you don’t want to feel alone in your coffee shop-going experience, this is the place for you. the bohemian flowerchild - best alliterated drink: Capricorn Concoction Cafe Zog easily goes unnoticed when you’re walking down Wickenden. Smack dab in the middle of an antique store and a BYOB Japanese restaurant, you’d miss Zog if you blinked—so don’t bat an eyelash.

While I’m not no expert on beans and brews, I firmly believe that Cafe Zog is home to the best Americano in the Northeast.

Moreover, it is home to the best pancakes on Wickenden Street, far better than Amy’s or Brickway’s. Moreover, it is home to the best coffee shop playlist (sorry, Brown Bookstore Blue State) within a three-mile radius—think small-font artists at Coachella with a decent mix of mid-2000s feel-good pop, albeit sometimes too much Coldplay. This coffee shop is fairly small, and it’s kind of hit or miss as to when all seven tables will be packed (or empty). When there’s room, it is so worth it.

Illustrated by Pia Mileaf-Patel

LIFESTYLE There is no particular ambience to Zog— it could be any coffee shop anywhere in the United States of America—and maybe that’s what makes it so comfortable. Zog, however, certainly maintains a unique personality. By personality, I mean that, whereas Exchange’s space flaunts a quirky pseudo-genius vibe and The Shop a polished aesthetic, Zog eccentrically advertises (read as: writes in chalk) its smoothie menu, which just so happens to be tailored by astrological sign

(shoutout to Sagittarius Rising). It also hosts various other menus including Sandwiches, Kids, Coffee & Beverages, Build Your Own Omelette, plus both a Specialty Drink and a Signature Drink menu. I’m convinced if Zog were a real person they’d read their horoscope religiously, wholeheartedly believe in the healing power of crystals, and let’s face it, would 100 percent attend Brown University.

Which is why, with a heavy and anxious

heart, I suggest you go to Zog immediately.

Particularly if you want to do work, and especially now that they actually have wifi—because in past years, the cafe has had absolutely no signal of its own and no other wifi to freeload off, so only the brave few who actually print out their readings would go to do work. Now that Cafe Zog wifi is at full speed, there’s no reason to not make the trip down. When you do, you really should get the Americano. With a short stack on the side ARTS&CULTURE

A play-by-play of Sundance 2018 by james feinberg

Over the first weekend of this year’s Sundance Film Festival in late January, three cradle-to-grave documentaries on cultural figures of near-religious obsession held center stage. Two of them, Susan Lacy’s probing but self-contradictory Jane Fonda in Five Acts and Marina Zenovich’s warm but glancing Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, will soon air on HBO. The third, Morgan Neville’s gorgeous Won’t You Be My Neighbor, about Fred (“Mr.”) Rogers, will be distributed

by PBS. Fonda hits its beats predictably, and the sanitized Williams would’ve been better as a “Greatest Hits” of Williams’ stand-up.

But Won’t You Be My Neighbor gives you the feeling you’ve just come out of a room with Rogers himself—and that is a good feeling.

But PBS is PBS, and HBO is HBO, so maybe 30 people, generously, will watch (and cry during) Won’t You Be My Neighbor. And I liked it about 10 times better than the other two put together.

That’s the beauty of Sundance—in the albeit elitist isolation of the Rockies, where everything is a world premiere, movies can be judged neither by their box office nor the notices they warrant, but by their quality, in the crucible of a community of filmgoers genuinely excited to see every picture. The lack of advance notice works to the benefit of some films, like Sara Colangelo’s The Kindergarten Teacher, based on the 2014 Israeli film of the same name and starring Maggie Gyllenhaal as a dissatisfied Staten Island educator and self-styled aesthete.

The film’s first half-hour is almost painfully mundane, which is why Gyllenhaal’s performance, which very gradually warps into the terrifying with careful, near-superhuman deliberation, comes as a delicious shock.

Other movies don’t do so well in a vacuum, like Ben Lewin’s The Catcher Was a Spy, a World War II docudrama so slight it can barely be said to exist. If all one knew about a film was that it starred Paul Rudd (as a baseball-player-turned-assassin), Paul Giamatti (as a physicist), and Mark Strong (a brutish English stage actor playing, for some reason, Werner Heisenberg), and was written

by Robert Rodat of Saving Private Ryan fame, one might expect something of it. This, unfortunately, would be a mistake. It’s an hour and 25 minutes long, and feels like 15.

If you want a biopic with Sundance street cred, you’d be much better off with Wash Westmoreland’s Colette, based on the early life of the French novelist of the same name.

It, too, starts slow, but thanks to stars Keira Knightley, as Colette, and Dominic West, as Colette’s husband, a phony author for whom Colette ghostwrote, it soon ratchets into gear.

I cannot remember the last time a film dealt with fraught sexual politics more satisfyingly, quite apart from the fact that the whole film is a marvel to look at. Carlos López Estrada’s Blindspotting, the opening night film this year, is visually splendid too, but it’s got racial politics on its mind. Star and co-writer Daveed Diggs, late of Hamilton, witnesses a police shooting in Oakland and deals with the consequences in a stylish, elevated romp that resembles nothing so much as an extended music video. (That’s meant as a compliment— that medium is where Estrada got his start, and he’s mastered it.) It’s a pity this style minimizes a climactic confrontation for Diggs’ character. I’ll stay mum, but let’s just say the film—though wonderfully, breezily enjoyable—can’t make up its mind whether or not it’s a musical.

Anyway, the real visual stunner of the festival is Paul Dano’s Wildlife (based on the 1990 novel of the same name). Co-written by Dano and Zoe Kazan, Wildlife is disciplined and reserved; it’s miles better than their previous screenplay, Ruby Sparks, which was pretty damn good. Jake Gyllenhaal is tensed and frightening as a husband and father who abandons his wife (Carey Mulligan) and son (Ed Oxenbould, in a thrilling debut) to fight a wildfire in the hills of 1960s Montana. (As an aside—his is the second Jake Gyllenhaal film, after Brokeback Mountain, in which he abandons his wife in favor of the hills of 1960s Montana. Typecast much?) Dano’s directorial debut is almost overwhelmingly beautiful. Courtesy of cinematographer Diego Garcia, every frame is a nearmasterwork, lending the film a spare and dangerous, but transcendent, atmosphere.

Duds this year were few and far between.

The only stiff of note is Bridey Elliott’s

confused Clara’s Ghost, a vanity project in every sense of the word. The film stars the writer/director and her immediate family (including Chris and Abby Elliott) as a drunken, warring family of performers beset by supernatural phenomena (maybe) and cruelty-induced insanity (definitely).

It sounds a lot better than it is—everyone’s appropriately unlikeable, but so is the film. Family drama is served far better by Elizabeth Chomko’s What They Had, a saga of dementia—Blythe Danner plays the affected matriarch—that skirts cliche with alacrity. It helps that everybody in it is great; anything with Danner, Michael Shannon, Hilary Swank, and Robert Forster will necessarily be a good time at the theater. But there’s something real and uncomfortable about Chomko’s story that really hits home. It’s a story of a family backed into a corner with no exit strategy, and Chomko gives that reality the space it needs to sink in.

The ultimate question—once out of snowy Park City, UT, which of these films are most likely to force their way into the public consciousness come awards season?

Well, Wildlife, for sure, based on the talent behind it and its true staying power, but edging it out for the two best films I saw at the festival were Joshua Marston’s Come Sunday and, especially, Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life. Marston, who gave us last year’s awful Complete Unknown, which also played Sundance, turns on a dime for this true story of a Pentecostal televangelist, Carlton Pearson (Chiwetel Ejiofor, characteristically extraordinary), who ceases to believe in Hell, and preaches his discovery—much to

Illustrated by Eileen Holland

Star Power

february 2, 2018 7

ARTS&CULTURE

House of Fear

Not damaged, still scathed

by Nicole fegan

The week I started reading House of Leaves, I found myself frightened by the static of my hair. I am not normally a paranoid person.

However, halfway through the novel, while innocuously walking across my room, I felt a few hairs rise due to the static, and my immediate response was fear. Was this connected to the fact that the broken heating system in my room spontaneously began working again? Did any of this have to do with that blood-like substance I found on my drawer yesterday that I could not reconcile no matter how hard I tried? The expanding chaos within House of Leaves was settling within me before I even got close to the climax of the action. I am not normally a paranoid person.

I have tried in the past to describe the novel in a one-sentence summary, but it never goes well. The layers get too complex, and the one sentence becomes overwrought and convoluted. Instead, each layer deserves its own focus. House of Leaves is a 700-plus-page novel

by Mark Z. Danielewski. The narrative begins with Johnny Truant, a young man who has 8 post–

"The world is slowly decaying... it's so lit."

"It's time for the daily condescending loop around the Ratty."

"I'm feeling very Greco-Roman." gotten ahold of an incomprehensible manuscript that he has tasked himself with editing and publishing. This manuscript, which was written by a blind man named Zampanò, is The Navidson Record, a detailed study of the documentary also entitled The Navidson Record. The documentary follows the Navidson family as they discover a door in their new Virginia home that opens into a seemingly infinite labyrinth of rooms.

House of Leaves is a glorified movie review, interwoven with hundreds of footnotes, accounts from Johnny’s life, and numerous lengthy appendices. It has no business causing the amount of anxiety it does in readers, and yet, it manages to grab onto something so personal in readers that it renders them helpless. Numerous friends have told me they could not get through the book because the fear experienced by the Navidson family caused them too much existential stress. The most intimidating and headstrong man I know was too frightened by how familiar the book felt that he could not keep reading. My boyfriend who recommended the book warned me that it might deeply, viscerally impact me.

He was right. Yet, I still found myself constantly drawn into the mythos of the story and the impossibility of the house.

Stuck in my own home for what felt like an oppressively lengthy winter break, I could think of nothing more appealing than infinite space. In my house, every time a door is opened or a window is cracked ajar, a buzzer is set off that can be heard throughout the house. My movements were monitored; I was stuck inside the confines of my familiar home, which made me want to dive deeper and deeper into the ever-expanding house of the Navidsons. Where they found darkness and coldness in the hallways, side-rooms, and stairways of this inexplicable space, and where Johnny found confusion and mania in the pursuit of making this manuscript palatable, I found an endlessly intriguing story. The story and the house itself are in so many ways alike: House of Leaves is a labyrinthine, dark, anxiety-inducing story about a labyrinthine, dark, anxiety-inducing house.

The challenge of the reader is combatting

the darkness, and the novel offers respite tucked in little corners of the story. Johnny is in constant search of warmth and of love— or of anything reminiscent of it. Will and Karen Navidson’s marriage is highlighted throughout their struggle, and no part of the novel touched me as deeply as Will’s letter to Karen in which he writes, “there’s no second ive [sic] lived you can’t call your own.”

Danielewski himself has argued that the novel, while often considered to be a horror novel, is more akin to a love story. But maybe love is just as frightening as a mysterious house. Maybe it’s even more frightening.

Or, maybe in the aftermath of reading this novel, I have realized that trying to evade the darkness of House of Leaves is foolish.

It is the farthest thing from escapism; it takes entirely real children and people in love—uninterested in the pursuit of anything but what is ordinary—and inflicts real, understandable pain onto them. My house in Merrick, NY, may have felt stifling; but somehow I could feel the precise anxiety and wonderment that comes along with wanting to enter unexplored territory. I can still feel that anxiety while writing this.

Whatever else House of Leaves accomplishes, it succeeds in staying with its readers. It is unfair to say that this novel irreparably damaged me, but it is also untrue to say that I am completely unscathed. I am left with more questions than I knew I could have about a fictional novel: Was that typo midway through the novel intentional? Is the house real? Are the Navidsons real? What is so seductive about darkness that even now, weeks later, I cannot get it out of my mind?

My friends were right when they told me to take caution when reading this book. But I would rather be anxiously aware, constantly questioning the darkness, than blissfully, boringly ignorant

Illustrated by Becki Shu

the chagrin of his conservative audience.

Structurally, it may be the strongest film of the festival; Marcus Hinchey’s script is tight and engrossing, and Marston ensures the story never drags for a second. Most notably, like Pearson’s megachurch in Tulsa, the film’s cast is as integrated and diverse as real life—it’s not a story of racial harmony, but it negates the preconception that racial tension is the default, which is brave in itself.

If there’s any Sundance standout that can really be said to be Oscar bait (in the positive sense), this is it.

Come Sunday is great, but Private Life is a revelation. Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn shine as an artistic couple struggling to get pregnant in their 40s, buttressed by Jenkins’ extraordinary achievement as a filmmaker.

The work and love she clearly lavished on the film’s complex, frequently hilarious, often touching, consistently brilliant script are evident from start to finish. In the tradition of the great screenwriters, most recently Kenneth Lonergan, Jenkins (whose last film was 2007’s Academy-Award-nominated The Savages) proves that upper-tier movies can actually be true to life, in all its imperfections and intricacies, without compromise. It is a completely honest work of art.

It bears mentioning that these two films had both been acquired by Netflix before the festival even began. What this means for the industry, I’m not equipped to say, but if Sundance merely becomes a showcase for dueling online-only streaming services to peddle their wares, so be it. If it ain’t broke…