Page 2 December 16, 2021
Travel
In a Winter Wonderland—
Travel in the Off-Season
Article and photos
by Ben & Glinda Shipley
Maybe it’s an aberration, but we love
stormy weather. And the stormiest place in
all of the British Isles is a tiny fishing village
by the name of Porthleven on the south
coast of Cornwall. For anyone who has spent
a winter in Britain, this is no insignificant
claim. The Ship Inn on the harbor is plastered
The better part of valor in Cornwall: Hogging the fireplace in
freezing Porthleven.
with notices from a recent squall, when its
clientele was stuck all night drinking in the
pub before they could safely tipple home.
There’s a breakwater of sorts, but nothing
you’d want to rely on through more than a
mini-tsunami. So we consulted our calendars
and weathermen and wandered in on
a gloomy, bitterly cold January afternoon.
As it happened, apart from the temperature,
the weather gods were in an unreasonably
good mood. But we secured the nicest room
at the oldest inn on the harbor without calling
ahead. With most of the restaurants shuttered
for the season, we were treated like pretendroyals
at the handful still open. And everyone
we met had nothing better to do than chat
with the only oddball strangers in town. Had
we shown up in the summer high season, we
would have been swarmed and battered and
elbowed aside in the sweat-stained lunge for
the latest iPhone photo op.
If that doesn’t roll your motor, try (what
Albert Einstein might have called) this
thought experiment: Imagine you’re the only
gondola-crazed tourist on all of San Marco
Island in Venice. If only to keep warm, your
gondolier belts out his finest Enrico Caruso
arias, one after another, while you pass from
canal to canal and bridge to bridge without
crashing into a single competitor. Afterwards,
Enrico tells you his life story and his father’s
life story and his grandfather’s life story (all
gondoliers, of course) and so on.
When you ask for restaurant suggestions,
Enrico doesn’t just pass you off to the gaudy
(and shuttered) tourist traps on the Piazza.
Instead, you end up with a few relaxed locals
at the best little seafood diner in the neighborhood,
secure in the smug knowledge that
everyone is being so nice because you’re the
only tourist game in town. Probably not logical,
but it feels like a peculiar kind of power.
We didn’t set out to travel in the offseason—
it just worked out that way. Our
Entertainment
Film Review
Flee is a Breathtaking
Recount of Survival
By Morgan Rojas for Cinemacy
Remarkably moving in both its story and
delivery, Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s animated
feature Flee is a must-watch. Expanding our
idea of what a documentary can be, Flee’s
depiction of an Afghan refugee’s decades-long
plight for survival and, most importantly, selfacceptance,
is a deep well of emotional fragility.
Executive produced by Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj
Coster-Waldau, Flee begins with a title
card informing us that what we are about to
watch is based on a true story, but some names
and locations have been changed to protect
identities and avoid persecution. For the next
hour and a half, we become wrapped up in
the life story of Amin Nawabi (a pseudonym)
as he tells his harrowing journey of life as
a young gay man who was always on the
run from the police, the government, and his
own feelings.
In a very poised, yet hesitant way, much
like he is talking to a new therapist, Amin
describes his earliest childhood memories as
a three-year-old in Kabul, Afghanistan in the
1980s. A-ha’s ‘Take on Me’ plays under b-roll
of live-action footage– a jarring reminder that
despite the film’s mostly animated look, this
is not make-believe. After his father mysteriously
disappears and Amin and his brother
risk getting drafted into the military – which
might as well be a death sentence – the family
flees Afghanistan with hopes and prayers as
their only way forward.
What follows is horrifying abuse and multiple
life or death situations while constantly
crossing borders to cover their tracks. Forever
in flux, it is hard to plan for the future when
you’re forced to live a day at a time. Especially
as a gay man, Amin’s fight for survival was
his only goal.
Set against a haunting score by composer
Uno Helmersson (The Painter and the Thief)
and powerful uses of the tracks ‘Breathe In’
and ‘Help Me’ by the American-Icelandic artist
Low Roar, Flee will put you through your
own emotional journey. Mesmerizing visuals
span throughout Amin’s life; from childhood
to the present day, living in Stockholm with
his partner, and even though it’s drawn in 2-D
animation, we feel his pain. We see the tears
well up in his eyes and sense the tension and
anxiety he has carried around his entire life.
And that last shot… just brilliant.
Flee is a remarkable feat for the entire filmmaking
team and one of the most profound
films I’ve seen in a long time. Now playing
in theaters. •
Flee, courtesy of NEON.
Morgan Rojas
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Mutters in the Austrian Tyrol: As good a place as any to be stranded.
See Travel, page 4