Tag: Merab Ninidze

REVIEW: The Courier [2021]

Jared Mobarak

Sometimes a lie is a gift. There’s a great line about mid-way through director Dominic Cooke and writer Tom O’Connor‘s The Courier wherein Greville Wynne (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze) are talking about the lies they have to tell to keep their families safe. The latter’s Russian official turned CIA asset is trying to comfort the former’s British businessman turned amateur operative by saying they’re in a similar predicament when it comes to home life only for Wynne to incredulously explain the exact opposite with the words, “Your…

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REVIEW: Lou Andreas-Salomé, The Audacity to be Free [2016]

Jared Mobarak

Become who you are. There’s a great line spoken by an aged Lou Andreas-Salomé (Nicole Heesters) to new friend and potential biographer Ernst Pfeiffer (Matthias Lier) upon his praise-fueled declaration that the way she lived her life—her freedom—was a touchstone for modern feminism. Her reply is, “Nonsense. What’s changed for us women since then?” It’s not presented as a jaded reaction or one specifically attached to the era in which she spoke it (the 1930s), though, because you could say the same today and not be wrong. Yes, women do…

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