Why Do I Like the Chicago Bears This Week?
I.
Always.
Like.
THE.
Chicago.
Bears.
Caleb’s Continuation
Something occurred to me while watching Caleb Williams Sunday against the Los Angeles Rams. He doesn’t look, physically, like a rookie. He has pre-snap command at the line of scrimmage, comfortability in the pocket (when one exists), and makes quick decisions.
And when I watched young Josh Allen and Cam Newton, I used to bemoan their inability to take the underneath stuff well into their second seasons. It was hero shot, run the ball, or bust. It only took Caleb four weeks to grasp that essential element of playing quarterback play in this league. Against the Rams, he put the football in the hands of his playmakers and let them make plays. This is an offense that should be nearly impossible to defend underneath.
What’s his signature flaw currently? Same as those two quarterbacks early in their careers: touch passes. He’s all fastball, but the off-speed stuff will come.
Through four games, Caleb is completing 61.7% of his passes (good), for 787 yards (projects to more than 3,300), 3/4 touchdown to interception (expected but needs improvement), and a passer rating of 72 (but trending in the right direction). It’s quickly becoming a respectable rookie season for the kid, and the next two weeks should be opportunities for him to continuation his upward trend.
Lumet IV: The Pawnbroker and Post-War Memory
The Pawnbroker (1965) is the portrait of Sol Nazerman, a Holocaust survivor operating a pawn shop in post-war New York City. As he confronts the memory of his imprisonment, and the murder of his family, he struggles to connect the human beings alive before him, on the streets and the subways of the city. It is a film about memory, and as such, it is wholly reliant on its director (Lumet) and editor (Ralph Rosenblum) collaborating to establish a technical vocabulary to represent not only memories, but the process of remembering when one prefers not to do so.
If you’re interested in reading an extensive essay on this concept, I recommend “The Representation of Trauma and Memory in The Pawnbroker” by Peter Wilshire for Off-Screen. Wilshire brilliantly connects the film’s technique with deeper studies of memory, trauma, PTSD, etc.
Any syllabus constructed around Lumet must include 12 Angry Men as the philosophical foundation of the career that follows. But as we previously discussed that film still feels an extension of his career in theater and live television. The Pawnbroker is Lumet’s first work of pure cinema, his first profound exploration of his Judaism, and his first New York City masterpiece.
Watch the below clip to see how Lumet visualizes memory.
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