In this episode, Dara is reckoning with great creative men, two real and one fictional. The world has recently lost the bodily forms of Irish poet Pat Ingoldsby and Hollywood actor Gene Hackman, but their work remains indelibly with us. Ingoldsby was a beloved figure in Ireland whose sparkling and deceptively profound poetry arguably never received the credit it was due, although its accessibility ensured it reached legions of appreciative and dedicated readers, many of whom have expressed their grief and gratitude since he passed.
Hackman was a movie icon whose performances always seemed effortlessly real and fully belonging to the world in which they appeared on screen, even when playing comic book villains or the head of a quirky New York family. The unusual circumstances of his death, and that of his wife, seemed a million miles from the litany of fierce characters he played throughout his long and varied career.
Dara attempts to pay tribute to both men by sharing a couple of Ingoldsby’s poems and by taking a potted journey through the highlights of Hackman’s filmography.
Brady Corbet’s award-winning film The Brutalist, reckons with another unique talent, – the brilliant Hungarian architect Laszlo Toth and his dependency on imperfect patronage from a clumsy and spiteful benefactor. Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce excel in the respective roles in a fictional story that is many-layered and uncompromising in its depiction of artistic compulsion and torment. It is also a commentary on the migrant experience in post-WWII America and the uneasy relationship between the host nation and those it deigned to accommodate. Dara gives his verdict on a film that isn’t easy to pin down.
Pat Ingoldsby website – https://www.patingoldsby.org/