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Arts
Wednesday, November 6, 2019 — 5A

Seeing as it’s 2019, it’s really about time that
a movie about Harriet Tubman was made. Most
people only know Harriet Tubman for her role
as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, but
as “Harriet,” directed by Kasi Lemmons (“Black
Nativity”), shows, she had a much greater
story than that. Tubman did more than just
lead slaves to free land; she led soldiers in the
Civil War, she was an aggressive and powerful
woman who didn’t let men tell her what she
could and couldn’t do and above all, she had the
utmost care and devotion for her family. Her
story deserved to be played in theaters around
the world.
However, “Harriet” may not have been the
best way to showcase it.
There seems to be a disconnect in the
storytelling of the script and the action on
screen. Any time Harriet is being chased by
slave-catchers, we as an audience are supposed
to feel suspense. We are supposed to hold our
breath as we wait for her to reach safety. But
when her running seems like a slow jog and
the chase scenes are dragged out to the point
of being unrealistic, the stakes feel lowered.
It doesn’t feel like she is really being chased.
It doesn’t feel like she is running for her life.
These action scenes feel overly scripted and
too careful to be believable, which is a major
disappointment.
The subpar action scenes and forced dialogue
are, unfortunately, not the worst parts of the
movie. The most devastating thing about the
film is that there are parts of Harriet Tubman’s
life that are fictionalized, over-exaggerated
and entirely falsified for dramatic purpose.
A central plot point of the film was Gideon
Brodess’s (Joe Alwyn, “The Favourite”) pursuit
of Harriet after her escape. Alwyn did a great
job of portraying an obviously evil character
with malicious intent, which makes the
falsified part of his character so much worse.
In the film, he is the son of her owner Edward
Brodess, but in Harriet Tubman’s real life,
Gideon Brodess did not exist. The character was
added to the story for dramatic effect, which is
disappointing, because Tubman’s inspiring life
story should be enough in itself to be the plot of
a film. Adding dramatizations seems to belittle
what she actually did.
Similarly, the film portrays Harriet as having
“spells” (following a childhood head injury)
where she believes she can contact God and see
the future. While in real life, Harriet Tubman
did believe that she had a connection to God via
these spells, the movie over-exaggerated her
condition and made it seem like the only reason
she had any success in freeing herself and other

slaves was because of a semi-supernatural
ability. Just as with the addition of Gideon
Brodess, this undermines what she actually
accomplished. In real life, she couldn’t actually
see the future; she escaped and helped others
escape because of her resourcefulness, stealth
and courage. In the movie, it seemed as though
she only relied on a “super” ability to see into
the future and contact God to be a successful
Underground Railroad conductor.
The heartfelt acting was probably the film’s
only redeeming quality. Cynthia Erivo (“Bad
Times at El Royale”) did an excellent job in
bringing an amazing woman to life on screen.
Harriet’s love for her family and her unshakable
faith in God were portrayed so believably on
screen that as I watched Erivo act, it seemed
like I was right there with Harriet Tubman,
watching
her
accomplish
such
amazing
achievements in life.
“Harriet” enlightened me, and I’m sure
many other viewers, about aspects of Harriet
Tubman’s life that until now had gone mostly
forgotten, but frankly, the fictionalized aspects
of her story are unforgivable. Adding extra
drama through a fake character and adding
an almost supernatural quality to a real life
human being makes Harriet Tubman’s story
seem unrealistic. These additions to the story
are disappointing, unnecessary and make for a
rather disheartening viewing experience.

‘Harriet’ was good, but bad

SABRIYA IMAMI
Daily Arts Writer

BOOK REVIEW

In her debut novel, “Last Ones Left Alive,”
Sarah Davis-Goff boldly takes on a genre that
can go wrong in so many ways: the zombie-
thriller novel. The main monster has to be
scary while also being believable, there have
to be defined rules to the world without over-
explanation, the characters have to undergo
some sort of growth without being swallowed
by the drama of the zombie (no pun intended).
Davis-Goff manages to sidestep these pitfalls
and creates a feminist, environmentally-
concious, survivalist coming-of-age story. It
follows 15-year-old Orpen as she embarks on a
journey to leave her island, the only place she
has ever known, after the death of her mother
(“Mam”) and her mother’s partner, Maeve. She
lives in a post-apocalyptic Ireland, decimated
by a mysterious event called “the Emergency”
that turns those who are bit into “skrakes,”
the zombie-like principal monsters of the
book. Maeve and Mam are the only people
Orpen has ever met before leaving the island,
and Maeve has just one rule regarding others:
“Beware people.” Maeve and Mam train Orpen
rigorously in the hope that she will one day be
able to leave the island with them, but a skrake
bites her mother and two years later, another
bites Maeve. This propels Orpen to finally
venture off the island in search of a rumored
all-female fighting force called the “banshees”
and their home, Phoenix City.
Without ever describing the cataclysmic
event that led to the destruction of society as
we know it, the novel still does an excellent
job building a believable post-apocalyptic
world in which the vestiges of civilized
society, like skyscrapers and signposts, have
all half-disintegrated and left room for nature
to come back in full force. Davis-Goff spends
precisely enough time describing Orpen’s
lush surroundings; her writing is beautiful
and descriptive without feeling unnecessary
or
drawn-out.
The
environment
always
seems to subtly reflect Orpen’s inner state —
after a brush with death, she describes the
landscape by saying, “the green of the grass
is particularly violent-looking against the
darkening clouds.” There is harmony and
dissonance in the way people interact with
their environment in this novel, a distinction
made between taking from the land and living
with it. Orpen repeatedly expresses her awe
and confusion at the technological marvels
of the world she never knew, wondering, for
example, why gas was pumped to the island
to power the heating when it would be much
easier to just build a fire outside. Orpen has a
certain environmental innocence, and Davis-
Goff uses this to make a subtle point about our
sometimes over-complicated technological
problem-solving.
The only living connections to this past are
Orpen’s mother and Maeve, and they are also
Orpen’s only example of romantic love. The
deftness of Davis-Goff’s portrayal of a same-
sex couple comes from her ability to not over-
explain. She never feels the need to hit the
reader over the head with the fact that the main
romantic relationship portrayed in the novel
is a lesbian one. Instead, she allows this fact
to be unquestioned and almost uninteresting
— in a world infested with zombies, there’s
no time to ponder the existence of a same-sex

couple. Orpen has never known anything else,
she never questions it, and because it does
not concern Orpen, it does not concern us as
readers. Davis-Goff makes it clear that there
is real love between Mam and Maeve, and that
this love existed before Orpen was even alive.
The other and decidedly less well-developed
romantic coupling in the book is between
Orpen and Cillian, a man she meets on the road
to Phoenix City. Before she meets Cillian, she
has never met a man before, and in fact Mam
and Maeve posit men as a threat equal to the
skrake in the real world. Orpen is consistently
told that the world before “the Emergency” was
characterized by “men making the decisions
and women suffering from them” — her main
takeaway from Mam and Maeve’s teachings is
that “men are dangerous.” Consequently, she
is terrified and aggressive upon her initial
meeting with Cillian. But over the remainder
of the book, she ends up developing feelings
for him. This romance, in contrast to Mam
and Maeve’s gentle and sure companionship,
feels gratuitous. Orpen spends her whole
life conditioned to believe that men are the
source of all evil, and when she finally meets a
man, the only way that she can overcome this
ingrained assumption is to fall in love. For its
first half, the novel seems to finally build a
dystopian plot with a young female protagonist
who manages not to have a romantic side-plot.
With this hope in mind, Orpen’s romance
with Cillian is a disappointment. With so few
characters, Cillian is the only male character
in the book, and the lesson Orpen learns from
him is essentially that, “men aren’t that awful
after all.” This message is not problematic in
itself, but the fact that Orpen can only seem
to reach it by falling in love is. Their romance
cheapens the stronger bonds presented in the
novel, and undercuts Davis-Goff’s point that
within the patriarchy there are still decent
men.
Despite the pothole of Orpen and Cillian’s
relationship, this novel’s road to being a well-
crafted feminist novel is relatively clear.
Davis-Goff has a basic feminist principle
anchoring the book: Two strong women raise
Orpen, another strong woman, who survives
using her own skills and wits. Amid the many
themes with which this novel grapples, at its
core it is a coming-of-age novel about a young
girl who must venture out into an unforgiving
world alone. Strip away the zombies and the
crumbling civilization and Orpen is simply a
girl teetering at the point between child and
adult being thrust into maturity in a world she
does not yet understand.

‘Last Ones Left Alive’ pairs
zombies and feminism well

EMILIA FERRANTE
For The Daily

Stop what you are doing right now and listen to “A Postcard to
Nina” by Jens Lekman.
Jens Lekman is a Swedish indie musician from Gothenburg.
He sings mostly of love and daily life in Nordic towns. His best
work is the 2007 album Night Falls Over Kortedala, a rich fusion of
baroque, orchestral pop and sample-based, blue-eyed soul, full of
lush swells and silvery horns. I have written about music for three
years and have been an insatiable consumer of music for much
longer. In all those years, no album has made me feel as purely
happy as when I listen to Night Falls Over Kortedala.
It is difficult to pin down what makes Jens Lekman’s voice so
evocative. His tone is pellucid and sweet. He has a showbizzy
style similar to singers such as Billy Joel or Michael Bublé, but
his ineffable sincerity sets him apart. Where others come across
as smarmy and inauthentic, Lekman feels earnest. He is effective
at convincing the listener that his stylized vocal timbre is not a
mere affectation, but an expression of his rich internal experience.
Musically, his ability to combine disco rhythms with chamber pop
or crashing drums with candied harps, creating a distinctive yet
familiar sound without coming off as either tongue-in-cheek or
saccharine, is nothing short of miraculous.
I have a love for this world / A kind of love that will break my heart
Most twee music is obnoxious in that it ignores the darkness and
pain that we all experience. It feels almost insulting, as though the
performer is trying to trick you and/or themselves. In contrast,
Lekman lives in a world where sadness and pain are real and
powerful. However, the world of Jens Lekman is beautiful anyway.
It is precisely not for his lack of pain but for the strength of his
response to it that the musician is such an inspiring narrator. “The
Opposite of Hallelujah” is a sweet and wholesome song not because
it is optimistic — in fact, the lyrics concern the inescapable distance
between our inner lives, and are mostly quite depressing — but for
its relentless authenticity and heart in the face of suffering. Most
artists who attempt to make similar music also tend to be pathetic
to the point of revulsion — not Lekman. While emotional and kind,

he never expects or desires pity. He also has what might strike us
a characteristically European sense of humor, goofy and innocent,
that prevents his lyrics from slipping into whininess.
I was slicing up an avocado
The beauty Jens conveys tends to revolve around everyday
occasions — biking with his sister to the shore, an awkward
interaction with a friend’s father — and their unexpected
intersections with meaning. When he finds such gravity in
mundanity, it makes me hopeful that I can, like him, discover a
deeper significance to the seemingly trivial.
I think I’m gonna drop my cool
now / The best way to touch your
heart is to make an ass of myself
This line coming from another
artist
would
be
awkward.
Indeed, there are times when
Jens is too cheesy, such as in
the above quote. These lapses in
Jens’s delicate balance between
sincerity and oversentimentality,
while not all that enjoyable,
at least serve to make his
authenticity clear. Jens is not
afraid to overextend and make
a fool of himself in the course
of baring his soul. I think his
sense of amiable guilelessness
combined with a healthy dose of
self-deprecation) helps to make
even his embarrassing moments
endearing.
She says that we were just
make-believe / But I thought she
said ‘maple leaves’
This line is from the best
song Jens has made that is not
on Night Falls Over Kortedala:
“Maple Leaves.” It doesn’t sound
that much like Night Falls Over

Kortedala — it’s more of an Avalanches-inspired sample collage
than baroque pop. The narrative plot of the song revolves around
a simple misunderstanding during a complex conversation with
a lover. In some ways, it is the purest encapsulation of his voice:
Heartfelt and lovelorn, he sees beauty (“maple leaves”) where
there exists dissatisfaction (“make-believe”) in the eyes of his
lover. The delicate balance he strikes between melancholy world-
weariness and hopeless romanticism creates a world where every
detail is imbued with color and meaning. Jens makes you want to
see life through his eyes.

A postcard to you: Listen to Lekman and thank me later

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS / SECRETLY CANADIAN

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

Harriet

Ann Arbor 20+ IMAX

Focus Features
Last Ones Left
Alive

Sarah Davis-Goff

Tinder Press

Jan. 24, 2019

FOCUS FEATURES

FILM REVIEW

JONAH MENDELSON
Daily Arts Writer