Dark And Light Poem by gershon hepner

You have to balance dark and light,
have a secret and a frame,
highlighting what may see right
with faint traces of the shame.

Balance like your checkbook dark
with the light that is your goal,
subtle as the watermark
validating your bankroll.

Shade the meanings of the text,
leaving secrets that unfold
not in what may happen next
but when all the tale is told.


Lynn Hirschberg writes about Sam Mendes in the NYT Magazine (July 7,2002) . She tries to discover what the secret of the many successes of this young Anglo-Jewish director is. He is about to follow-up the phenomenal success of “American Beauty” with “Road to Perdition, ” a movie that has already been compared to “Godfather: Part One”. Hirschberg writes:

His films have a surface optimism but are never naïve. Mendes knows exactly how to balance the dark and the light. “You have to have a secret, ” Mendes says, explaining his strategy. “There is a hidden movie in all the best films. The secret is in every frame. With a play, the secret is your way in, an idea that dominates the production. But in a good movie, there is always a shadow movie underneath the text, which allows the film to float above reality.

7/10/02