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A review by seeyf
Delayed Rays of a Star by Amanda Lee Koe
4.0
Delayed Rays of a Star begins and ends with a photograph of three actresses at a party in Berlin in 1928: Marlene Dietrich, Anna May Wong and Leni Riefenstahl. Ambitious in its scope and its attempt to render these famous personalities of the early 20th century into relatable and flawed humans, the novel moves back and forth between these three characters as they each make their marks as independent women in a male-dominated film industry, and also wrestle with their respective demons: Dietrich being labeled a traitor for renouncing her German citizenship to go to Hollywood during WWII; Wong’s predicament of being offered only roles that were stereotypes of Asian women yet also being deemed “too Chinese to play a Chinese” when auditioning for the one Hollywood film with an Asian lead; Riefenstahl’s close relationship with the Nazis leading to attacks on her and her work after the war. I confess I did not know about any of them before reading the book, but was inspired to watch Shanghai Express after finishing it and appreciated the scenes that Koe so lovingly describes, as well as the butterfly lighting that made Marlene look like “she’d been dusted in gold foil.”
I loved Koe’s earlier collection Ministry of Moral Panic for its inventive twists on the people of the Singaporean heartland, and the minor characters here showcase her skill: Bébé, a Chinese immigrant who serves as Dietrich’s housekeeper as she lives out her last years; Ibrahim, a poetry-loving Turkish German who forms a bond with Bébé, and Hans Haas, the best boy on Riefenstahl’s crew for Tiefland who struggles with finding his own voice. The cast becomes a little crowded with the added cameos of Walter Benjamin, JFK, Marlon Brando and Hitler among others. I felt that the large ensemble of characters prevented me from deeply identifying with any one of them too closely. However, each character and the events they feature in are carefully crafted and sequenced in a complex web of space and time that illustrates the conflicting ideas and tensions each individual faces, juxtaposed against the march of history.
If there is one common thread that runs through the book, it is how we construct and edit the images and identities that we choose to see, and that are projected to the world. As Anna May says in response to a Chinese critic, “An actress’ authenticity is not in her life, it is in her performance.” This is most memorable in how Leni’s devotion to her artistic vision while filming Tiefland is also a way of survival by ignoring the atrocities of the Nazi death camps nearby: “she could not show that troubled face to the crew…if one person broke down to ask why they were making an alpine movie about a shepherd and a dancer when the world around them had gone mad, everything would turn to dust—they would all be back in the city, queueing for rations and cowering in bunkers. That must not happen.” Koe paints everyone in believable shades of grey, such that a reader could empathise with even Riefenstahl (who directed two of the most effective Nazi propaganda films ever made).
The title of the book is taken from a passage from Barthes’ “Camera Lucida”: “the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star.” Just like how the characters calibrate their images to transcend their realities and regain their agency, so does Koe revise and embellish history, shaping the rays of these bygone luminaries of film so that they continue to ask questions that still resonate today.
I loved Koe’s earlier collection Ministry of Moral Panic for its inventive twists on the people of the Singaporean heartland, and the minor characters here showcase her skill: Bébé, a Chinese immigrant who serves as Dietrich’s housekeeper as she lives out her last years; Ibrahim, a poetry-loving Turkish German who forms a bond with Bébé, and Hans Haas, the best boy on Riefenstahl’s crew for Tiefland who struggles with finding his own voice. The cast becomes a little crowded with the added cameos of Walter Benjamin, JFK, Marlon Brando and Hitler among others. I felt that the large ensemble of characters prevented me from deeply identifying with any one of them too closely. However, each character and the events they feature in are carefully crafted and sequenced in a complex web of space and time that illustrates the conflicting ideas and tensions each individual faces, juxtaposed against the march of history.
If there is one common thread that runs through the book, it is how we construct and edit the images and identities that we choose to see, and that are projected to the world. As Anna May says in response to a Chinese critic, “An actress’ authenticity is not in her life, it is in her performance.” This is most memorable in how Leni’s devotion to her artistic vision while filming Tiefland is also a way of survival by ignoring the atrocities of the Nazi death camps nearby: “she could not show that troubled face to the crew…if one person broke down to ask why they were making an alpine movie about a shepherd and a dancer when the world around them had gone mad, everything would turn to dust—they would all be back in the city, queueing for rations and cowering in bunkers. That must not happen.” Koe paints everyone in believable shades of grey, such that a reader could empathise with even Riefenstahl (who directed two of the most effective Nazi propaganda films ever made).
The title of the book is taken from a passage from Barthes’ “Camera Lucida”: “the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star.” Just like how the characters calibrate their images to transcend their realities and regain their agency, so does Koe revise and embellish history, shaping the rays of these bygone luminaries of film so that they continue to ask questions that still resonate today.