Greetings,

When I started L1 Turkish last semester, I wanted to see if only studying Latin and Ancient Greek the past 10 years had killed that part of my brain used for still-living languages. Unfortunately, I found that old dogs indeed cannot learn new tricks. One Saturday, our professor arranged for us to visit the YUAG so that we could practice describing the paintings in Turkish. While the bright-eyed freshmen in my class were using complex sentences, I would point at a van Gogh and stutter, “Pembe çiçekler.” Or, “Pink flowers.”

Although my Turkish did not improve much from looking at paintings, Eve Sneider, MC ’19, details the more successful experience of students from the Yale Nursing School. Utilizing a set of innovative interdisciplinary programs, the school rethinks how nursing should be taught. First years are required to learn to diagnose patients by describing paintings at the Yale Center for British Art and playing with body sounds at the Yale School of Music, among other collaborative initiatives. This approach trains human understanding: important, given that nurses are often patients’ first point of contact.

We have a range of perspectives to match the nursing curriculum in the rest of this issue. Read along in Reviews as Clara Olshansky, MC ’18, praises Jesca Hoop’s newest album, while in Features Sonia Gadre, SY ’20, reflects on being a Kentuckian at Yale. Or go upstairs at Toads with Rachel Calnek-Sugin, SM ’19, in Culture to find out the truth behind the weekly emails that somehow end up in your spam folder.

We at the Herald may not be able to teach you how to save lives, but we can all use a different perspective now and again (or so my liberal arts education would suggest).

See you when I see you,
Luke Chang
Culture Editor

Last year, one of my friends learned in his Italian class that after dinner, many Italian families take leisurely walks through their neighborhood called passeggiatas. My friend and I started going for our own passeggiatas, and I have to say, the Italians have it right. By walking with no real direction in mind, I’ve come to see parts of New Haven that I otherwise wouldn’t have. I suggest going for a passeggiata on your own route, but if you’d like some direction for your first directionless strolls, here are some suggestions of streets to explore, and streets to avoid.

THE GOOD: St. Ronan Street/Edgehill Road

Running parallel to Prospect Street on its way north, St. Ronan passes by the Yale Farm and the Divinity School before becoming Edgehill Road near East Rock. The old colonial houses and shady trees offer a quiet stretch of New England beauty. Along with being the most scenic way to get to East Rock, there is something that sets St. Ronan apart. Maybe it is the house that had Christmas bunting on its hedges in April? A dog park also sits alongside part of the road to lift your spirits with canine comfort.

THE BAD: Prospect Street

I dread walking on Prospect, and not just because it probably means I have a “science” class. Ever since the sidewalk on the western side closed for the construction of the new colleges, Prospect has been crowded, to put it lightly. Especially whenever it snows, there is barely enough room for two people to pass each other. Sometimes I even loop around on Hillhouse just to avoid it.

THE GOOD: Crown Street

Where else in New Haven can you find a building in which a group of young, energetic people works into the wee hours of the morning to satisfy some strangely strong passion for print journalism, and probably to compensate for all sorts of anxiety?

THE BAD: Chapel Street (east of the railroad tracks)

On the way to Pepe’s or Sally’s, near Wooster Square, there is a stretch of a few blocks where the going gets a little grim. Besides the bleak empty parking lots and car repair shops, there is a line of advertisements for a dog park that looks more like an ASPCA funding campaign. Then there is the funeral home farther up the street, and the groups of adolescents on trick bikes who insist on flying dangerously down the sidewalks.

THE GOOD: Edgewood Avenue

I once saw one of the bouncers from Toad’s walking his dog here. Now I have a conversation topic for the next time I see him.

THE BAD: Lock Street

Has anyone else noticed how morbid it is that Yale Health borders a cemetery? Walking the fine line between the ill on one side and the dead on the other is just a little too precarious to be pleasant.

Keep reading here!

Greetings,

When I was younger, eating dinner with my dad was an intimidating experience. During the week for nearly 40 years, he has basically only eaten one meal a day for no rational reason other than that he can. At dinner, he would go to town. After he finished all the food my mom had prepared that night, he would make all the leftovers in the kitchen disappear. He would often tell us that he was the sole member of the “Clean Plate Club” at school, which apparently was pretty selective. Even now that I am bigger than he is, I still cannot keep up with him. In my family, there was never really a need for composting—my dad could work miracles.

Here at Yale, composting is an important part of reducing our environmental impact. We all see the composting bins in the dining halls, but very few of us know much about the other steps in the process of turning our food waste to useful compost. For this week’s cover story, Calvin Harrison, CC’17, visits New Milford Farms to see where our food scraps go after we dump them off our plates in the dining hall. At the compost piles, he reports on the downstream consequences of what we choose not to eat and talks to the workers whose jobs become harder when we contaminate the compost bins with regular garbage after finishing a meal.

There is plenty more content for you to check out while you join the Clean Plate Club. In Features, Will Nixon, PC’19, questions whether we should pay attention to YCC elections (why do none of their platforms feature composting?). And in Reviews, Emma Chanen, TD’19, revels in the products of a very different farm at Arethusa Dairy.

Yours,

Luke Chang

Reviews Editor

Greetings,

When I was younger, eating dinner with my dad was an intimidating experience. During the week for nearly 40 years, he has basically only eaten one meal a day for no rational reason other than that he can. At dinner, he would go to town. After he finished all the food my mom had prepared that night, he would make all the leftovers in the kitchen disappear. He would often tell us that he was the sole member of the “Clean Plate Club” at school, which apparently was pretty selective. Even now that I am bigger than he is, I still cannot keep up with him. In my family, there was never really a need for composting—my dad could work miracles.

Here at Yale, composting is an important part of reducing our environmental impact. We all see the composting bins in the dining halls, but very few of us know much about the other steps in the process of turning our food waste to useful compost. For this week’s cover story, Calvin Harrison, CC’17, visits New Milford Farms to see where our food scraps go after we dump them off our plates in the dining hall. At the compost piles, he reports on the downstream consequences of what we choose not to eat and talks to the workers whose jobs become harder when we contaminate the compost bins with regular garbage after finishing a meal.

There is plenty more content for you to check out while you join the Clean Plate Club. In Features, Will Nixon, PC’19, questions whether we should pay attention to YCC elections (why do none of their platforms feature composting?). And in Reviews, Emma Chanen, TD’19, revels in the products of a very different farm at Arethusa Dairy.

Yours,

Luke Chang

Reviews Editor

Before this past weekend, the Saybrook Underbrook Theater had probably never played host to so many scenes of mutilation and torment. The Pillowman, a YDC play that ran from Thurs., Nov. 5 to Sat., Nov 7, does not flinch from plunging into the depths of human nature. Written by Martin McDonagh, The Pillowman depicts child abuse and murder with an intensity that verges on the absurd alongside a grotesque strain of dark humor. Director Alcindor Leadon, SM ’17, and producer Noah Kim, BR ’18, wrestle admirably with the weight of the story, imbuing the production with alternating tones of horror and humor. The Pillowman at times exploits its emotional ambiguity to achieve remarkable dramatic tension, but its ingenuity wears off by the end of its grueling length.

Set in a dystopian police state, the play begins in a sparse interrogation room. Detectives Tupolski (Will Nixon, PC ’19) and Ariel (Aaron Orbey, DC ’19) question writer Katurian Katurian (Ivan Kirwan-Taylor, JE ’18) about his connection to a string of child murders in his town, after noticing close similarities between the plots of several of Katurian’s grotesque stories and the grisly details of the three murders. As the interrogation proceeds, Katurian learns that the police have also detained his brother Michel (Simon Horn, JE ’18). Soon, the audience discovers that Katurian and Michel came from an abusive home, and Michel suffers from an ambiguous mix of mental handicaps and psychological trauma due to his ordeal. While the detectives search for the truth about the murders, Katurian and Michel embark on a parallel quest to separate fact from fiction in their own troubled relationship.

Fluidly blending reality and the fantasy of Katurian’s stories, The Pillowman offers a compelling commentary on artistic freedom and the power of writing. The police condemn Katurian because of his writing, and as a result, he seems to defiantly stand for freedom of expression. His defiance, however, turns out to be more than complicated than a moralistic stance: it becomes apparent that Katurian is not merely pushing the boundaries of fiction. His stories are much more than works of imagination—Katurian uses them to revise his own personal history. By writing, he embraces his own traumatic past and takes control of his memory.

The figure of the Pillowman embodies Katurian’s instinct to alter the past. In one of Katurian’s stories, the Pillowman travels back in time to convince children to commit suicide to avoid their painful futures. What makes the play even more disturbing is that the Pillowman actually does appear to be a tender figure. The similarities between the imaginary Pillowman and Katurian suggest the way fiction and reality inform each other. It soon becomes difficult to separate the real from the imaginary, for Katurian’s identity seems intrinsically linked to his stories. The effect is extremely enthralling, for the audience experiences the same confusion as the characters on stage. Although Katurian writes the stories, it is Michel who holds the audience’s attention and embodies the play’s narrative ambiguity. In a strange way, he mirrors, or even guides, the audience’s interpretation of the play. Listening to Katurian’s stories with the audience, Michel jokes about their gruesome contents, and we actually laugh along. The presence of humor throughout the play implicates the audience in viewing and actually being entertained by the disturbing action on stage. Michel’s inability to distinguish between fact and fiction also mirrors the audience’s attempt to perceive the true parts of the conflicting histories each character presents. The play stresses the fact that Michel is psychologically damaged, which makes the connection between Michel and the audience troubling.

The relationship between Katurian and Michel is the most intriguing aspect of The Pillowman, but the play persistently draws attention away from the brothers. The play interweaves narrated enactments of Katurian’s stories alongside the main plot in the police station, but they are more distracting than dramatic. The stories are simplistic fairy tales that are interesting mostly due to their shock value, which wears off after repeated scenes of mutilation and abuse. Gore becomes gratuitous at a certain point: several members of the audience were visibly disturbed during the enactments. The production is most compelling at its simplest, when the characters conversed in the sparse interrogation room or prison cell, and becomes less convincing as the action increases.

The second act brings us farther away from the sibling relationship at the heart of the story, as it attempts to delve into the personal lives of Ariel and Tupolski. But despite the admirable efforts of Nixon and Orbey, they fail to display significant character depth. The detectives function better when they are charismatic interrogators whose personal lives are mysterious. These side-plots add to the play’s total length of about two and a half hours, which could have been cut down considerably while retaining the play’s compelling features. The sheer length of the play detracts from appreciation of its ingenious structure.

The Pillowman manages to foster sympathy in the audience for characters who would not normally seem to be sympathetic with its effective dynamics of mirroring, but the play at times suffers from its own scope. The production impressively conveyed the complexity of the narrative structure and its interweaving of fact and fiction, but its length and side-plots distracted from its essential success.

Bridge of Spies, Steven Spielberg’s Cold War espionage thriller based on a true story, lacks the suspense typical of its genre. Moving slowly and methodically, the film forgoes action and covert maneuverings to emphasize its straightforward moral lesson to treat others humanely even when it is inconvenient. Its unabashed morality is convincing, but the film sacrifices depth and suspense. The real divide in Bridge of Spies is not between the U.S. and the Soviet Union; it is between its humane protagonist and the impersonal governmental agencies he serves. The polarization between good and bad is too static to be interesting. Although its sincerity is touching, the film loses much of its force due to its lack of ambiguity.

After American intelligence agents capture Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), the task of defending Abel in court falls to insurance lawyer James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks). The government hopes to show that even an enemy spy receives due process in the American justice system, but Donovan soon realizes that Abel’s trial is a merely a show. The film portrays Abel as a sympathetic character, but its efforts to do so are too obvious. Abel is seen only as a stodgy old man constantly painting: it is never clear what lurks beneath his endearing surface that would drive him to become a spy. Abel may just be talented in deception, but the film suffers from his opacity, as created by the filmmaker.

Although Tom Hanks is convincing in his performance, his acting does not save Donovan from remaining a shallow character, too. When explaining his decision to defend Abel, Donovan stresses his belief in the admirable but unexciting principle that everyone is entitled to protection under the Constitution even if they are criminals. Unflinchingly moral, Donovan sets the world in a binary of right and wrong. Even later on, when the CIA turns to Donovan to negotiate a prisoner exchange with the Soviet Union, the film never creates any doubt that Donovan might fail to live up to his morals. The sincerity with which the film shows Donovan standing up against the impersonal world of espionage and bureaucracy is heartwarming, but Donovan is ultimately a flat symbol of morality rather than a dynamic character. The overbearing force of his righteousness drains the film of suspense. By so sincerely holding Donovan up as an immoveable moralizing force, the film makes it difficult to feel any sort of dramatic tension or fear that Donovan might fail in his task. The portrayal of Cold War politics is at first intriguing, but the film moves too slowly for a spy thriller.

“You will not survive here. You are not a wolf. This is a land of wolves now.” Grimly spoken from the shadows during Sicario’s closing scene, these three sentences sum up its essence. Director Denis Villeneuve shows his talent by delivering a taut narrative that contrasts the beauty of the arid plains bordering the United States and Mexico with the vicious drug conflicts that lace the landscape. It is fitting that the film’s characters, who spend their time crossing and re-crossing the physical border between two countries, are themselves mercurial. The divide between the predators and the prey constantly shifts in the barren landscape.

Faced with escalating cartel activity, the U.S. government places Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) in charge of team to combat the narcotics trade using more direct and violent methods. Graver enlists Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) and the mysterious hitman Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), but refuses to explain what his team is achieving by taking the fight into Mexico. Macer becomes increasingly disenchanted with her new team’s illegal activity and her position as the only woman on her team. As the violence escalates on both sides of the border, the motivations and loyalties of both Graver and Alejandro grow more obscure.

At first, Macer promises to exert a forceful morality on the shadowy world of counternarcotics, but she quickly proves outmatched by the sweeping scale of the violence her team must confront. Graver, too, is not what he initially seems to be: at first introduction he is funny and engaging. Once Macer sees more of his methods, however, his humor becomes a veneer to a vicious side that defies justification. By gradually exposing the flaws of its characters, Sicario maintains an unsettling dramatic tension that defines the film as a successful thriller rather than an action movie.

Although Blunt and Brolin make
 a convincing and dynamic pair,
their roles are primarily supportive:
 Villeneuve skillfully balances their
 shifting roles around the immovable 
figure of Alejandro. Benicio Del Toro’s mesmerizing performance gives
the film its compelling grip. As Alejandro, Del Toro appears constantly
 weary, with heavy eyelids and a slow walk that hints of a limp. His passive appearance is precisely what makes Del Toro’s performance so riveting. Rather than playing the role of the enigmatic hit man as sinister or threatening, a more expected take on the trope, Del Toro makes Alejandro appear vulnerable, older and softer than the other government operatives and the young narcotic gunmen Alejandro faces. His demeanor conflicts with the evident respect and fear Alejandro has garnered from the other operatives, forcing the audience to concentrate on his every word or motion to try to glean some explanation for his reputation. Just as Alejandro appears to be impenetrable, Del Toro allows only the briefest of slips in Alejandro’s weary expression, beguiling the audience as we wait to see who he truly is.

Ultimately all the characters must face the question of whether or not they are able to be predators. With compelling dramatic depth, Sicario withholds the answer to produce a riveting conclusion that determines who will survive in a land meant for wolves.

The limited-print books on display along the back wall of the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library testify to the variability of artistic interpretation. The exhibit that features them, How Right They Are to Adore You!, brings together modern renderings of the text of the biblical Song of Songs from the Arts Library Special Collection and the Divinity Library. The single row of display cases allows the viewer to easily compare the samples to appreciate how one poem has inspired such a range of artistic interpretations. Consisting of fifteen books in a quiet space, the exhibit offers library-goers a quick break from looking at computer screens. Returning to the physicality of books, especially such beautiful books, is a relaxing change of pace.

Although each book is open only to a single page, the limited view is sufficient to give a sense of each interpretation’s unique style. Informational cards accompany each book to point out its unique features. Given their limited production, the books render the text in ways that would be impossible in commercial printing. One of the more striking examples is David Moss’s elegant Hebrew calligraphy, which is accompanied by his son Yoni Moss’s translation.

The visual art that accompanies the poetry is even more impressive than the artistry of the text. Drawing from the love lyrics of the Song of Songs, the artists illustrate the themes of the text in styles ranging from Heidenheim’s colorful figures inspired by cave paintings to a modernist collage of shapes. One book presents a bold black and white image of a couple embracing, but not all the illustrations are so overtly romantic. Another book features the white cupola of a building and a mountain slope.

The exhibit stresses the role that interpretation plays with the Song of Songs—the information accompanying the books explains that while some Jewish scholars interpret the poem as an allegory for the love God has for the Jewish people, some Christian scholars interpret the same poem as describing Jesus’s love for his followers. Most of the artists do not directly focus on the religious significance of the poem in their illustrations—the natural or human relationships are the dominant images of the books. By organizing the books seemingly at random, How Right They Are to Adore You! allows the each book to stand for itself—not as a representation of a religion or a culture, but as an individual’s interpretation of a poem.

Being the final spectators to humanity’s gradual destruction seems a peculiarly Australian concern. Building on the tradition established by Nevil Shute’s classic On the Beach, director Zak Hilditch presents another apocalyptic narrative focused on the inexorable advance of the end times toward Australia’s shores. After a limited release last summer in Australian theaters, Hilditch’s These Final Hours began streaming on Netflix in May. While Shute envisioned fatal radiation from a nuclear war sweeping south over a period of months, in These Final Hours, a wall of debris and heat from an asteroid proceeds hour by hour across the world. Australians must endure their position as the southernmost and final outpost of humanity, continuing to live while death has a definite date.

An ambiguous arc of fire crosses the sky in the opening seconds of the film: an asteroid reported to impact the north Atlantic. After this brief exposition, the characters appear on screen having already comprehended that only 12 hours remain before the end. In a cottage overlooking the western ocean, James (Nathan Phillips) visits his lover Zoe (Jessica De Gouw). Although she pleads with him to stay and discloses that she is pregnant, James insists that he must leave for a party to meet his girlfriend. A broken Perth unfolds before him, with a succession of typical apocalyptic religious hysteria and social collapse. The rapid cuts between images reflect the disparate reactions, from group prayers on the sidewalk to a man hanging from a streetlight. When James sees two men dragging a young girl, Rose (Angourie Rice), into a house, he fights them off only to face another problem: Rose and her father became separated on their way to her aunt’s house. James reluctantly brings Rose to the party before carrying her away to find her family and find some solace for himself.

These Final Hours struggles with many of the shortcomings common to its genre. Scenes of humanity abandoning all morals in the face of certain destruction have ceased to surprise. While James drives to the party, the external spectacle of hysteria becomes the focus at the expense of any sort of emotional introspection. In the same vein, the film at times falls for heavy-handed symbolism and sentimentality. When James visits his sister and then his mother, his sentimental feelings for his estranged family seem too foreign to his character and unnecessary to the plot. The nature of apocalyptic narratives produces pressure for constant dramatic tension to match the stakes of complete destruction, but These Final Hours is most convincing at its least dramatic moments. When James tells Rose to repeat “I’m a tough chick” to raise her spirits, her laughter and his amusement make their relationship seem more believable for a moment.

The film’s sentimentality attempts to speak to a fundamental human desire: We want to believe that our lives have meaning in the face of death—even more so than usual in the face of death on the apocalyptic scale. These Final Hours strains to satisfy the urge for meaning, but its efforts often are too obvious and hurried. Rose especially requires more depth. Her relationship to James is charming, but the crucifix that hangs from her necklace points to her lack of complexity. Instead of allowing her character to demonstrate redemptive potential through her actions, the filmmakers rely on the crucifix’s overt connotations, reducing Rose to a shallow symbol.

Occasionally, These Final Hours does deliver moments of exceptional emotional weight, like James’s breakdown when he is leaving Zoe. Stripped of his capacity to be a father, and later unable to sexually satisfy his girlfriend at the party, James desperately attempts to face the end with unfeeling stoicism, betraying his deeper feelings of emasculation. One of the more moving images of the film presents James wrapping the body of Rose’s father in a sheet and bearing it in his arms: He seems to physically bear the impossibility of meeting traditional standards of manhood. When James drives away, watching Rose wave farewell in the rearview mirror, he abandons his stoicism and weeps. His helpless expression of grief casts aside the pressures of masculinity and attains some level of cathartic clarity.

These Final Hours ultimately falls short of tragedy, which is what makes it compelling. Surely James and Rose die in the wall of fire that arrives in the film’s final seconds, but James defies the tragic tendency of the film in the end. The moment that pivots the film away from tragedy is the party scene, a grotesque tableau of drinking, drug use, and Russian roulette. In their gross desperation the partiers evoke living death, rather than living life to the fullest. The sentimentality that burdens much of the film is refreshingly absent.

When he abandons Zoe in the first scene, James fails to say farewell to her in his desperation. Flashbacks of leaving Zoe haunt James, and it is only at the party, without the oppressive burden of longing for the past, that James can begin to say farewell by choice: a shift away from nostalgia that makes the film much more emotionally convincing.

The procession of farewells ends when James returns to Zoe on the shore, completing the arc begun by his first departure. In learning to say farewell by choice, James robs the apocalypse of much of its devastation. These Final Hours never explicitly shows its characters dying in the firestorm of the closing scene, for the film does not need to confirm the death of all humanity to give its audience catharsis. When James says farewell to each character, the audience is able to have the same experience vicariously. In the end, These Final Hours overcomes its sentimentality to satisfy our human need for closure.