7/31/2019 0707NYP048

1/1

15 Sy, J

ar t s & s t y l e s

Its there, fat and juicy, right onthe track listing of the new ChrisBrown album, Fortune a songcalled Dont Judge Me. Sincepleading guilty in 2009 to assault-

ing Rihanna, hisgirlfriend at thetime, Mr. Brownhas released threegood to very goodalbums, each anopportunity for lis-

teners to scavenge closely for hintsabout his inner life. A song calledDont Judge Me screams out fordeeper consideration. Maybe Mr.Brown is finally ready to share.

No genre seems to demand thissort of magnifying glass as fre-quently as R&B t hese days. Mr.Brown, Usher and R. Kelly, thethree biggest male stars in R&B,each of whom has a new a lbum out,have each grappled with a major

moral crisis in recent years thathas shaped the direction of theircareers. Their travails have leftstains on their images.

For Mr. Brown the Rihanna at-tack remains a cloud over him,even as his popularity has grown.R. Kelly has largely changed tackssince he was acquitted in 2008 ofchild-pornography charges, em-phasizing neutered classic soulover the more salacious music hespecialized in previously. OnlyUsher has faced his controver-sies allegations of inf idelity, anasty divorce though to be fair,they were moral and personal, notcriminal allegations.

All three art ists, though, high-light the seeming impossibilityof listening at a remove, and only

Usher even offers t hat possibility.Over the years Ushers voice

has congealed into one of themost soothing in R&B, and on hisoften-great new album Looking4 Myself, he covers a range ofstyles. His vocals betray the small-est amount of trouble, even as hislyrics convey the most, thoughthis is probably his least intimaterecord since his 2004 smash Con-fessions. Hes the most malleableR&B star, and also the most at ease.Climax, the first single from this

album, is pure unf lustetion in the singing, but tragic. I gave my bestenough, he coos. We of what used to be love/care at all?

Usher is the rare artened by his missteps, wseems to have been cowMr. Kellys implicit resissue has been to cleanaltogether. Usher has dposite, cleansing himsconfession.

Write Me Back, Malbum, is for him tepidtechnically accomplishing the snakelike vocamoist subject matter that his most virtuosic.

His legal issues seemtaken away Mr. Kellysromantically forceful oof the unfortunate met

link sex to violence.Mr. Brown has been

ticulate in response to sneaking resentful lyrialbums while still largto address in public thealmost made him a par

The slick and energetune continues that trJudge Me is not about

image. At least not thapublic image. Youre hmors about me, he sincant stomach the thouone touching my body/so close to my heart.

Even Mr. Browns coare boasts of his sexua

Listening to Mr. Broaesthetic pleasures, whappen, with superegotection against aligninclosely with someone wsuch heinous things.

Lyrical responpersonal turmvary wildly.

Samir huSSein/gey imageS for amerirobyn beck/agence france-preSSe, cener; chad baka for h

r&bs t sts: us, t t t, cs b,

JON

CARAMANICA

essay

Sifting hrough SonFor the Man Insid

By RACHEL ARONS

MONTEGUT, Louisiana Thefilmmaker Benh Zeitlin has an in-tuitive way of letting real peopleand places work their way into t hemythical stories of his imagination.His short film Glory at Sea (2008)is about a band of mourners whobuild a boat from storm debris andrescue their loved ones trapped un-derwater.

Mr. Zeitlin, 29, had planned tofilm abroad, but on a 2006 visit toNew Orleans, he felt the story in hishead connect with the period afterHurricane Katrina, which devas-tated the city in 2005.

The premise was that the resi-dents of a community could bandtogether in a wild, reckless move-ment of hope, he said recently.And I felt that start to happenwhen 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 festivalon June 30; in wide release throughsummer and fall in Europe), cre-ates another richly imagined uni-verse rooted in his connection to anactual place and the people there.The debut won awards at Sundanceand Cannes. Writing in The NewYork Times, Manohla Dargis saidthe film was hauntingly beautifulboth visually and in the tendernessit shows toward the characters,

and The Timess A. O. Scott called ita blast of sheer, improbable joy.Shot on a limited budget with

nonprofessional actors in remotesouthern Louisiana, Beasts isset in a mythologized bayou calledthe Bathtub, a harsh utopia cutoff from civilization by a levee butpulsating with natural beauty andthe raucous, defiant spirit of its in-habitants. At the films core is tinyHushpuppy (Quvenzhan Wallis,only 6 at the time of shooting) andher magical way of making senseof her world: the absence of hermother; the failing health of her

father, Wink (Dwight Henry); andthe storm that threatens to washher world away.

When you look at the map, youcan see America kind of crumbleoff into the sinews down in the gulfwhere the land is getting eaten up,said Mr. Zeitlin. I was really inter-ested in these roads that go all theway down to the bottom of Americaand what was at the end of them.

What he found were the bayoufishing towns of Terrebonne Par-ish. Relatively unscathed by Ka-trina but hit hard by subsequenthurricanes, Terrebonne has a vi-brant culture that extends to the

edge of the Mississippi Deltas van-ishing wetlands. On his first tr ip hedrove down a narrow road, half-sunk in water, leading to the tinyIsle de Jean Charles. Only 40 years

ago the thriving home of French-speaking American Indians, theisland, with two dozen familiesleft, is disintegrating into the Gulfof Mexico. Isle de Jean Charles pro-

vided Mr. Zeitlins reference pointsfor the Bathtubs surreal ecologicalprecariousness and its residentsfierce commitment to remaining.

Mr. Zeitlin and Lucy Alibaradapted the script from her play,and Mr. Zeitlin said his goal wasto capture emotional facts thatthe reality of land loss or hurricanedamage alone fai l to convey. Whatis the feeling of going through thisloss of a place or of a parent or ofa culture? How does that feel, andhow do you respond emotionally tosurvive that?

Mr. Zeitlin, whose parents are

folklorists, inherited their passionfor finding art and poetry in ordi-nary life. He developed the scriptover eight months in Terrebonneand was all but adopted by a fam-ily there. Despite the films mythand fantasy, scenes in the Bathtubchannel the feeling of hanging outin a bayou bar, at a crab boil, and atone of South Louisianas exuberantcelebrations, one of the most pow-erful ways the region copes withtragedy. I didnt put anyone oranything in t he movie that I didnthave awe and love and respect for,Mr. Zeitlin said.

The films intimacy has much to

do with t he nonprofessional actorswho bring the central relationshipto life. Mr. Henry is a baker, andQuvenzhan Wallis, a sprite whoholds the cameras attention witha charismatic poise that mightmake grown-up movie stars weepin envy, said The Times, was cho-sen from some 3,500 Louisianachildren.

The crew, a small army of artistsand filmmakers from across thecountry (Beasts is a productionof the film collective Court 13), builtthe Bathtub with found artifactsand rusted-out equipment, andthe spirit of self-sufficiency and re-sourcefulness that characterizesrural southern Louisiana suffusedthe set.

On the first day of the shoot the

Deepwater Horizon oil rig explod-ed in the gulf, and the filmmakerswere getting word that the ap-proaching oil could shut down thefishing industry for years. I wasrewriting scenes as we were goingbased on moments that we were ex-periencing with this sort of dread,Mr. Zeitlin said.

But his story remained hopeful:a modern-day Louisiana folk taleabout the power of a tiny subcul-ture obscure, imperiled, but withmore holidays than anyplace elseon earth to fight back againstterrific forces of nature.

A defiant spirit inthe harsh utopia ofthe Louisiana gulf.

In Mythical Bayou, Real Passions

fox Searchligh picureS

bsts t St w ts s. Qvz ws, t.