The Mauritanian is

one of those perfect movies we are likely to see more of; by perfect, I mean perfectly flawed. It is very well made, and features big stars, but is the kind of lecture we get on TV every day. We must treat it like it was  a COVID-19 newscast, there’s nothing new here,  certainly nothing we haven’t heard before, just perfectly groomed excellent people who will clear their throats and prepare to tell us what we already know. In The Mauritanian, as in COVID-19 (but alas, not in life) the good guys win, and the bad guys -- to their chagrin -- don't (that is  — as Oscar Wilde sagely observed — not life, but art). Just as we know anti-maskers are evil, and are pleased to see them denounced on social media, just as we know that there is one way to live — these days— and that is — to stay home and die of boredom, The Mauritanian teaches us that the U.S. government is an evil thing, and there is no one more virtuous, loving, handsome and fun than A Persecuted Arab. You see, the tables have turned somewhat. There was a time when we laughed and frolicked, and ridiculed boring bumpkins who stayed home. There was a time when The Arab was the villain, and it was enough for him to appear with his unruly black beard; we detested the ground he walked on and gleefully threw popcorn at the screen, expecting — nay aching — for the knives and swords to appear —  props that so typified his treacherous race. But now The Requisite Handsome Arab is inevitably gracious, and if we don’t love him for all the injustice done to him then we are not worthy. I cried at the end; I cried several times -- mostly  from watching Jodie Foster grow older by the minute, and Benedict Cumberbatch making a fool of himself.  Of course it’s a pleasure to see two gay icons kind face off -- alas they don’t, really, the film is missing that 'scene-a-faire,' as Cumberbatch (spoiler alert) plays a decent man who comes eventually to understand The Noble Arab’s plight. It would be nice to see Jodie and Benedict in a gay movie, with Jodie going down on a likely wench while Cumberbatch greedily munches on some fetching swain. Both have (I think?) played their own sexuality on screen — but the Gods have decreed that it will not happen too often, and they must certainly not appear together in such a manner —  for it would be too sinfully delicious, like eating dark chocolate ice cream and watching old Woody Allen movies with your younger sister. Jodie  simply is a lesbian, 24 hours a day; she is a movie star, not an actress. I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve those academy awards, she does— along with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant —who also played themselves superbly and honestly. But Jodie is always much butcher than a man, more inhibited, harder, fending off feelings with a steely kind of courage that threatens to consume whatever tenderness she has left. Cumberbatch is another kettle of fish. Here, he is all red hair and red eyebrows, as if someone had just given him a ginger bath. Seeing the two of them together is a like watching Crawford and Davis, you watch Crawford eat up the screen with her own hypnotic narcissism while at the same time being somewhat distracted by the fact that Bette Davis can actually act. Cumberbatch is the Meryl Streep of gay actors, he is so consumed by his role, that we are amazed to forget, for a moment, how open-minded we are for so enjoying a performance by an admittedly homosexual actor -- but somewhat glad of it, for it is irksome to be constantly reminded. Jodie Foster, on the other hand — though she was chided for not properly coming out in that silly speech she made at the Golden Globes so many years ago— can’t help affirming her sexuality on the quotidian. And on top of that she insists on being beautiful. This is something that — come on — admit it — we don’t expect from a lesbian. And the movie is dauntingly earnest, and wishes to lecture us, and we come out of it thinking we are better people, when of course we are not. This is all we want from anything that pretends to be a work of art.  This has movie has all the fire and passion of a magamusical (though considerably more narrative skill). if we were living in civilized times we would be leaving our  houses to see it, now we sit at home huddled over our little silver meme machines, no one to share it with — unless we are family (God help us). And this is certainly a family movie. Even the torture is for a good cause. 'Great for the kids!' says the reviewer from The Christian Science Monitor. I’m so terrifically tired of being told what is good for me. And it has a sneaky, dangerous effect. It’s not so much that I am becoming right wing — though I was enormously tempted to become a fascist after seeing the QAnon Shaman’s magnificent belly on the evening news — it’s just that I always want to do everything I am told not to  -- i.e. make endless human contact (which I am hoping to do with a fetching swain tomorrow night). But if we are cursed with a curfew I will make Love in the Afternoon. That’s the title of a movie with Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper that I reviewed last summer. It was a tiresome star vehicle like this one — its only redeeming characteristic being that it had no redeeming characteristics — it was blatantly sheer entertainment and slightly politically incorrect, thank God, as Gary Cooper appeared to be making passionate love to his granddaughter. Apparently they only filmed him in the dark; I understand -- dark rooms were very kind to me when they existed. If a curfew occurs I suggest you all just sink into the couch and fear everything, which is what they seem to want, or masturbate yourselves to death with all the bad porn available for free online. Just stop initiating things, stop yearning, stop passionately needing. It should be easy enough -- at least that's what Public Health says. “Is this what you call living?” Someone asks in The Threepenny Opera. That is a question I’m afraid to answer. I look at the walls of my room -- and yes, they are a prison, but unlike The Arab in The Mauritanian, I have no mat to pray on. So instead, I inflict — upon you, well — this.