great(ish) pt 31: heists, gossip, buns
Hello! Today: a Frans Hals painting has been stolen for the third time; a Netflix film about archaeology; a novel about boarding school propaganda; a music documentary and yet another bun recipe.
Article: The Mystery of the Painting Thieves Love by Graham Bowley, published by the New York Times in January 2021
When I see an article about paintings being stolen, I click. Maybe this is because I watched How To Steal A Million, the Audrey Hepburn/Peter O’Toole heist film, at an impressionable age. This article is about Frans Hals' “Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer”, which was stolen from its home in the Dutch town Leerdam for the third time last August. I love a story about a heist that goes into the various financial incentives of insurance money and rewards for returning a painting, and I've also finally reached the peak "get me out of here" stage of desperately wanting to go to small museums in the Netherlands (or anywhere), so I enjoyed the 15 minutes I spent listening to this article.
Film: The Dig (2021), directed by Simon Stone
I'm not sure if anyone needs me to recommend the latest Netflix release, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this period drama about the discovery of the Sutton Hoo grave in an English lady's backyard (or rather, huge field). If you, like me, are not English: from 1938 on, archaelogists discovered a big grave from the 6th/7th century with lots of intricately worked gold jewellery (do belts and shoulder clasps count as jewellery?).
The film focuses on the relationships and lives of people involved in the dig in a way that I would call understated and other people might call boring. It also works as a meditation on life, death and transcience, with the start of the British involvement in World War 2 as a background, as well as the tension involved in digging up someone's grave. Not everything works – there's definitely one storyline too many, and my usual rule of "if in doubt, you don't need the romance" applies here – but it was the equivalent of the 3pm bath you take when you feel stressed and dejected: warm, generous, melancholy.
Book: Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga, translated by Melanie Mautner
The combination of the two horrors of boarding school and looming ethnic genocide does NOT sound like it would make for anything that could remotely be described as funny, but for long stretches at a time that is what Scholastique Mukasonga's novel is, in a dark, sarcastic way. Set at a girl's school at the source of the Nile in Rwanda, it follows a group of senior girls during their last year at school. Gossip and vicious anti-Tutsi propaganda meld and blend into one, and the stupidity of both becomes as apparent as the hypocrisy of the school's religious teachings. 10/10, couldn't recommend it more.
Learning: Remastered: The Lion's Share (2019)
This Netflix documentary tells the story of "Mbube", the song now widely known as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", which was written by South African singer Solomon Linda in the 1930s and was then recorded and re-recorded without Linda or his relatives getting royalties from overseas sales. The story in itself is fascinating and frustrating, but what it says about the different people and power structures involved is maybe even more interesting. What is at first a tale of contracts, appropriation and money quickly turns into one of patriarchal racism and the ongoing effects of apartheid in South Africa, which results in some truly brazen stereotyping on the part of the white lawyers involved in the case. This is not a perfect documentary – too much screen time is given to aforementioned white men and not enough to Linda's daughters – but it is definitely worth watching, especially because it lets viewers draw their own conclusions. Read this review on The Daily Dot for more.
Other: Yet another cinnamon bun recipe
Somewhat reduced access to baked goods is one of the many sad things about life right now, but luckily I live with a person who will happily knead a yeasty dough for 10 minutes and produce the best homebaked buns I've ever had, using the above recipe. Instead of turning these into cinnamon rolls we just baked them like hot cross buns (not glazed, obviously – this is an anti-glazing household). They are very delicious and soft. I also recommend cutting off 20cm of your hair in front of your bathroom mirror and giving yourself a bob that makes you look like Patricia from You've Got Mail instead of cool-girl-with-a-bob, but that's another story.
Until next time. Take care!