Theaetetus

It is rare to see a film these days that demands intellectual attention from the audience. Here we are taught lessons in musicology and the detailed scholarship needed for conducting a score. But we are also shown something greater. Plato once wrote that the divine gift given to the mind is its love of Beauty. The beauty Plato has in mind was a purely spiritual, though also erotic attachment. This exquisite taste for the celestial can be profaned by the ordinary complexities of human relations. And outside observers who lack that divine taste for celestial Beauty can then easily misunderstand the complex relations among,say, a Mahler score, the orchestra performing it, and the conductor trying to put the performance together in such a way as to give the audience an experience of the divine. What do you love and who do you love can then enter into conflict, between the sacred and the divine. Cate Blanchett is brilliant in this demanding role, portraying the complexity of an artist and an ordinary human being made one.

The racist treatment of black South Africans in the opening of this 1989 film was appalling, notwithstanding its ostensible early 20th Century setting. Yes, that racism was also true to Christie's earlier 1939 title for her story, but her tale was never so overtly racist as the opening of this film.

These six interconnected narratives address the barriers faced by migrants trying to enter the US from Mexico and the efforts of ICE to thwart them. This documentary does not address the larger number of migrants illegally entering the US via airports with tourist visas with no intention of ever returning home. It does not fully address the profits made by US businesses in hiring such migrants in other areas besides agriculture and construction or the abuse of legal guest workers. The film glosses over the effects of economic migration on localities, hospitals, schools, cultural habitudes, linguistic identity, legal migrants, and established minority communities. These factors radically change perspectives on illegal immigration.