Bronze Iceberg: The Square, directed by Ruben Östlund.
+.+.+
4th:
Cold war, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski.
"At last," she said, "we can have our martinis." She opened the
wicker basket and poured the drinks into the silver goblets. "If you
look at the gravestone," she said, "you'll see it's a bit unusual." It
was a double gravestone bearing the names of Dr. William F. Aiken and
his wife, Anna. "They were the parents of Conrad Aiken, the poet. Notice
the dates."
Both Dr. and Mrs. Aiken had died on the same day: February 27, 1901.
"This is what happened," she said. "The Aikens were living on
Oglethorpe Avenue in a big brick townhouse. Dr. Aiken had his offices on
the ground floor, and the family lived on the two floors above. Conrad
was eleven. One morning, Conrad awoke to the sounds of his parents
quarreling in their bedroom down the hall. The quarreling subsided for a
moment. Then Conrad heard his father counting, 'One! Two! Three!' There
was a half-stifled scream and then a pistol shot. Then another count of
three, another shot, and then a thud. Conrad ran barefoot across
Oglethorpe Avenue to the police station where he announced, 'Papa has
just shot Mama and then shot himself.' He led the officers to the house
and up to his parents' bedroom on the top floor."
Miss Harty lifted her goblet in a silent toast to Dr. and Mrs. Aiken. Then she poured a few drops onto the ground.
"Believe it or not," she said, "one of the reasons he killed her was .
. . parties. Aiken hinted at it in 'Strange Moonlight,' one of his
short stories. In the story, the father complains to the mother that
she's neglecting her family. He says, 'It's two parties every week, and
sometimes three or four, that's excessive.' The story was
autobiographical, of course. The Aikens were living well beyond their
means at the time. Anna Aiken went out to parties practically every
other night. She'd given six dinner parties in the month before her
husband killed her.
