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15 arts&styles

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Sifting through Songs For the Man Inside


Its there, fat and juicy, right on the track listing of the new Chris Brown album, Fortune a song called Dont Judge Me. Since pleading guilty in 2009 to assaulting Rihanna, his girlfriend at the time, Mr. Brown has released three good to very good essay albums, each an opportunity for listeners to scavenge closely for hints about his inner life. A song called Dont Judge Me screams out for deeper consideration. Maybe Mr. Brown is finally ready to share. No genre seems to demand this sort of magnifying glass as frequently as R&B these days. Mr. Brown, Usher and R. Kelly, the three biggest male stars in R&B, each of whom has a new album out, have each grappled with a major moral crisis in recent years that has shaped the direction of their careers. Their travails have left stains on their images. For Mr. Brown the Rihanna attack remains a cloud over him, even as his popularity has grown. R. Kelly has largely changed tacks since he was acquitted in 2008 of child-pornography charges, emphasizing neutered classic soul over the more salacious music he specialized in previously. Only Usher has faced his controversies allegations of infidelity, a nasty divorce though to be fair, they were moral and personal, not criminal allegations. All three artists, though, highlight the seeming impossibility of listening at a remove, and only Usher even offers that possibility. Over the years Ushers voice has congealed into one of the most soothing in R&B, and on his often-great new album Looking 4 Myself, he covers a range of styles. His vocals betray the smallest amount of trouble, even as his lyrics convey the most, though this is probably his least intimate record since his 2004 smash Confessions. Hes the most malleable R&B star, and also the most at ease. Climax, the first single from this

JON CARAMANICA

fox Searchlight pictureS

beasts of the Southern wild depicts ordinary people facing hardship. Quvenzhan wallis, right.

In Mythical Bayou, Real Passions


By RACHEL ARONS

album, is pure unflustered seduction in the singing, but the lyric is tragic. I gave my best/it wasnt enough, he coos. We made a mess of what used to be love/so why do I care at all? Usher is the rare artist emboldened by his missteps, while R. Kelly seems to have been cowed by his. Mr. Kellys implicit response to this issue has been to cleanse his music altogether. Usher has done the opposite, cleansing himself through confession. Write Me Back, Mr. Kellys new album, is for him tepid that is, technically accomplished, but lacking the snakelike vocal slither and moist subject matter that mark him at his most virtuosic. His legal issues seem to have taken away Mr. Kellys ability to be romantically forceful or to use any of the unfortunate metaphors that link sex to violence. Mr. Brown has been the least ar-

MONTEGUT, Louisiana The filmmaker Benh Zeitlin has an intuitive way of letting real people and places work their way into the mythical stories of his imagination. His short film Glory at Sea (2008) is about a band of mourners who build a boat from storm debris and rescue their loved ones trapped underwater. Mr. Zeitlin, 29, had planned to film abroad, but on a 2006 visit to New Orleans, he felt the story in his head connect with the period after Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city in 2005. The premise was that the residents of a community could band together in a wild, reckless movement of hope, he said recently. And I felt that start to happen when I got down here. Mr. Zeitlins first feature film, Beasts of the Southern Wild (now showing in the United States; featured at the Munich film festival on June 30; in wide release through summer and fall in Europe), creates another richly imagined universe rooted in his connection to an actual place and the people there. The debut won awards at Sundance and Cannes. Writing in The New York Times, Manohla Dargis said the film was hauntingly beautiful both visually and in the tenderness it shows toward the characters, and The Timess A. O. Scott called it a blast of sheer, improbable joy. Shot on a limited budget with nonprofessional actors in remote southern Louisiana, Beasts is set in a mythologized bayou called the Bathtub, a harsh utopia cut off from civilization by a levee but pulsating with natural beauty and the raucous, defiant spirit of its inhabitants. At the films core is tiny Hushpuppy (Quvenzhan Wallis, only 6 at the time of shooting) and her magical way of making sense of her world: the absence of her mother; the failing health of her

father, Wink (Dwight Henry); and the storm that threatens to wash her world away. When you look at the map, you can see America kind of crumble off into the sinews down in the gulf where the land is getting eaten up, said Mr. Zeitlin. I was really interested in these roads that go all the way down to the bottom of America and what was at the end of them. What he found were the bayou fishing towns of Terrebonne Parish. Relatively unscathed by Katrina but hit hard by subsequent hurricanes, Terrebonne has a vibrant culture that extends to the edge of the Mississippi Deltas vanishing wetlands. On his first trip he drove down a narrow road, halfsunk in water, leading to the tiny Isle de Jean Charles. Only 40 years

A defiant spirit in the harsh utopia of the Louisiana gulf.


ago the thriving home of Frenchspeaking American Indians, the island, with two dozen families left, is disintegrating into the Gulf of Mexico. Isle de Jean Charles provided Mr. Zeitlins reference points for the Bathtubs surreal ecological precariousness and its residents fierce commitment to remaining. Mr. Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar adapted the script from her play, and Mr. Zeitlin said his goal was to capture emotional facts that the reality of land loss or hurricane damage alone fail to convey. What is the feeling of going through this loss of a place or of a parent or of a culture? How does that feel, and how do you respond emotionally to survive that? Mr. Zeitlin, whose parents are

folklorists, inherited their passion for finding art and poetry in ordinary life. He developed the script over eight months in Terrebonne and was all but adopted by a family there. Despite the films myth and fantasy, scenes in the Bathtub channel the feeling of hanging out in a bayou bar, at a crab boil, and at one of South Louisianas exuberant celebrations, one of the most powerful ways the region copes with tragedy. I didnt put anyone or anything in the movie that I didnt have awe and love and respect for, Mr. Zeitlin said. The films intimacy has much to do with the nonprofessional actors who bring the central relationship to life. Mr. Henry is a baker, and Quvenzhan Wallis, a sprite who holds the cameras attention with a charismatic poise that might make grown-up movie stars weep in envy, said The Times, was chosen from some 3,500 Louisiana children. The crew, a small army of artists and filmmakers from across the country (Beasts is a production of the film collective Court 13), built the Bathtub with found artifacts and rusted-out equipment, and the spirit of self-sufficiency and resourcefulness that characterizes rural southern Louisiana suffused the set. On the first day of the shoot the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the gulf, and the filmmakers were getting word that the approaching oil could shut down the fishing industry for years. I was rewriting scenes as we were going based on moments that we were experiencing with this sort of dread, Mr. Zeitlin said. But his story remained hopeful: a modern-day Louisiana folk tale about the power of a tiny subculture obscure, imperiled, but with more holidays than anyplace else on earth to fight back against terrific forces of nature.

Lyrical responses to personal turmoil can vary wildly.


ticulate in response to his actions, sneaking resentful lyrics onto his albums while still largely failing to address in public the events that almost made him a pariah. The slick and energetic Fortune continues that trend; Dont Judge Me is not about his public image. At least not that part of his public image. Youre hearing rumors about me, he sings, and you cant stomach the thought/of someone touching my body/when youre so close to my heart. Even Mr. Browns confessions are boasts of his sexual prowess. Listening to Mr. Brown balances aesthetic pleasures, when they happen, with superegolike self-protection against aligning oneself too closely with someone whos done such heinous things.

Samir huSSein/getty imageS for american expreSS, left; robyn beck/agence france-preSSe, center; chad batka for the new york timeS

r&bs top male stars: usher, left to right, chris brown, r. kelly.

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