Dustin Lance Black (Getty Images)

Milk’s Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black told The Observer that he was opposed to President Obama’s recent declaration of support for same-sex marriage. “Well, because I think marriage is between a man and a woman, I was incredibly upset,” Mr. Black said, biting a nail. He was joking, though in a quiet, grave tone--the premiere for his directorial debut, Virginia (starring Jennifer Connelly and out this Friday) had been the night before, and he was the worse for wear.

Mr. Black, whose career has included biopics of two of the most prominent queer politicians in history (the openly gay Harvey Milk, the closeted psychosexual morass of J. Edgar Hoover), said that he’d long believed Mr. Obama would come out in favor of gay marriage. In fact, the screenwriter had tried to force the issue. “I had two weeks earlier put a piece in the Hollywood Reporter saying that gay people might consider not supporting the president in the re-election campaign if he didn’t come out in favor. And I hit Romney hard in a way he deserved to be hit hard for his horrific stances on LGBT issues. And I said ‘we can’t be taken for granted anymore, we can’t vote for a less bad candidate.’

“And I took a lot of heat and I got beaten up for that, and I said, ‘It’s a hypothetical! I’m saying ‘If, then! If he doesn’t, then we might consider...’ You gotta ask for what you want in this world. And they were like, ‘He’ll never do it, it’s not a hypothetical.’ But he might do it!”

Mr. Black is now at work on a film adaptation of 8, about the legal struggle over Proposition 8 in California. The film’s to be directed by Rob Reiner. “It’s that Mormon thing,” said Mr. Black, who was raised in the Church of Latter-Day Saints and whose new film deals with life among Southern Mormons. “I’m industrious. Ambitious. I’m like the gay Mitt Romney... That’s a terrible thing to say.”

We mentioned that Virginia was less overtly political than Milk or J. Edgar, and asked if Mr. Black agreed with Godard’s belief that all film is political. “I agree with Godard and I agree with Oprah Winfrey. People are always asking ‘would you run for public office?’ And she says ‘I have so much more influence here.’ We get to tell human stories that have to do with human issues. At our best, we’re telling stories that have to do with problems in our country right now.”

Besides, he joked, we might have missed the point of the film altogether. ““Virginia is a real politician, she’s a gay man dressed as a woman. I thought of this as a sequel to Milk!”

daddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

About five minutes into the slideshow, Davis turns to the electoral map and highlights what are matter-of-factly labeled the "solidly Republican states."

"Today," Davis says, "we start with 17 states that are historically Republican states. They represent about 153 electoral votes." Then Davis highlights 24 states that, he claims, will make up the fall battleground.

The problem? One of Davis' "solidly Republican" states is Virginia. While it's true that the Old Dominion hasn't sided with a Democratic candidate since L.B.J., Obama – who launched his post-primary campaign in the state last week – is set to make a concerted push there this fall, and polls already show an even race.

As I've written before, Virginia, given its recent electoral history and the continuing growth of its population in the more moderate and liberal suburbs and exurbs around Washington, represents the future for national Democrats. Perhaps McCain will end up carrying it this fall, but it is not a "solidly Republican" state – and should not be considered part of McCain's ironclad electoral base.

But don't take my word for it. Here's what Rick Davis – the same McCain campaign manager whose slideshow treats Virginia like a foregone conclusion – told the Washington Post about Virginia (as repeated in Newsweek): "I think it is a battleground state. I know they are targeting it, and we are certainly targeting it."

And two of his primary wins were by convincing margins—in Maryland, where he led Mike Huckabee by a two-to-one margin, and in the District of Columbia, where he was the overwhelming choice of the approximately 4,000 voters who took Republican ballots.

And now the bad news: McCain got a serious scare in Virginia, finally pulling out a high single-digit victory after trailing Huckabee in the early returns. McCain had been the runaway leader—by about 30 points—in polls taken just last week in Virginia.

Huckabee, powered by some momentum from his unexpected weekend successes, very nearly engineered an upset that would have seriously wounded McCain, adding fuel to efforts by some conservatives to find some way—any way—to deny McCain the G.O.P. nomination. Winning Virginia would have radically increased Huckabee's viability in subsequent G.O.P. contests, raising the possibility of multiple defeats for McCain in the remaining contests.

McCain's close call can be chalked up to several factors. For one, the Democratic race—as has been the pattern throughout the primary season—attracted far higher participation from independents than the Republican contest, removing from the G.O.P. electorate many moderate voters who would favor McCain. That, in turn, exaggerated the significance of the party's conservative core—including the religious conservatives who dominate Republican politics in the southwest part of Virginia. McCain also might have been hurt by conservative voters who previously favored Mitt Romney deciding to vote for Huckabee as a way of objecting to McCain's impending coronation.

Given his reliance on religious conservatives in rural areas, Huckabee's 41 percent showing in Virginia can not be regarded as a sign of growing appeal. He struggled mightily in the moderate and densely populated suburbs of Washington and was walloped in moderate-minded Maryland. The ceiling that has stymied his campaign all year—he can't win where religious conservatives don't hold sway—remains intact.

But there appears to be a ceiling for McCain, as well. Even though he's been declared the presumptive nominee, self-described conservative voters continue to prefer voting for his hopeless opponent than for McCain. McCain does well enough among conservatives that he is still able to win in most states, thanks to support from moderates and independents.

There will probably be more calls for Huckabee to exit the race after tonight, since he has fallen much further behind in the delegate count. But his Virginia showing will be enough for him to justify pressing ahead.

It's noteworthy that, while he has drawn some distinctions with McCain in the past week, Huckabee has made sure to use kid gloves. That's because his continued presence in this campaign can be read as his audition for a spot on the national ticket. By stubbornly attracting more than 40 percent of the vote in states like Virginia and Louisiana, he is making it clear—both to McCain and to hesitant members of the party establishment—that his presence on the ticket in the fall might go a long way toward soothing members of a party base that has never felt much kinship with John McCain.

Nor is the fact that she now trails in most every independent delegate count—even the counts that include the non-binding pledges of superdelegates. And nor, for that matter, is the likelihood that her skid will reach double-digits a week from tonight, when Wisconsin and Hawaii vote.

No, the most troubling development for Hillary Clinton is that—for the first time—Barack Obama has demonstrated an ability to eat significantly into her base of support while retaining his, creating the possibility that the Democratic race is shifting decisively in his favor and that it is no longer a clash between opposing and immovable coalitions.

Before tonight, Democratic primary voters had seemed to divide themselves along economic, gender, geographic, ethnic and age lines. Obama monopolized the black vote, scored much better among white men than white women and attracted voters who were younger, more affluent, more educated and more politically independent. Clinton's coalition was comprised of women, older voters, Hispanics and lower-income voters.

With those voting habits seemingly locked in, the Democratic race appeared destined for a split verdict in the primary season, with both candidates winning about the same number of delegates and popular votes and with the 800 or so superdelegates then being empowered to break the tie.

That outcome may still come to pass, but there are clues in tonight's results that suggest something very different may be happening.

In Virginia and Maryland (no exit polls were conducted in the District of Columbia), Obama performed very well with his usual constituencies, even boosting his share of the black vote (to 90 percent in Virginia).

But he also won—overwhelmingly—lower-income and less-educated voters, who before tonight have formed the backbone of Clinton's coalition. Among white men, Obama beat Hillary 55 to 43 percent in Virginia. On Super Tuesday, white men were evenly split. Obama also won Hispanic voters in Virginia and Maryland, a group that until now has lopsidedly backed Clinton—that was the main reason for her Nevada victory last month. In Maryland, Obama narrowly won among voters over 65 years old and also carried white Catholic voters, two more typically pro-Clinton constituencies.

Poaching Clinton's base translated into two of Obama's most dominating performances in primary states. In Maryland, where he'd been expected to win by somewhere between 15 and 20 points, his margin was 15 with about 15 percent of precincts reporting, and likely to climb higher. And in Virginia, where Clinton's campaign had held faint hopes of an upset victory, his margin was an astounding 29 points with nearly every vote tabulated. (He also won D.C. by more than 50 points, although a blowout Obama win there had always been expected.)

The Clinton campaign is facing must-win primaries and Texas and Ohio on March 4, states where they still hold sizable leads in polls. But with tonight's bad news, and the likelihood of more to come next Tuesday, Clinton's support may begin to erode—something that apparently happened in Virginia and Maryland in the wake of Obama's victories over the weekend.

For the first time since his Iowa triumph, Obama now has his opponent on the ropes. If he can win as he is expected to do next week and then steal Ohio and Texas from her in three weeks, the nomination will be his. Right now, he trails in the polls in those two big states, where Clinton's coalition is stronger than his. But what he proved tonight is that he has the ability to win over big chunks of Clinton's coalition. If he can do the same thing again on March 4, that may be the end of it.

"I promise you I am fired up and ready to go," he told a cheering crowd.

The Arizona senator's speech seemed to target Obama more than Clinton, in yet another sign of the shifting dynamics of the Democratic race.

At one point he suggested that Obama's candidacy offered "not a promise of hope but a platitude."

And in an implicit jab at the cockiness which some of Obama's critics believe he can be guilty of, McCain also said, "I do not seek the presidency on the presumption ... that history has anointed me to save my country in an hour of need. My country saved me. I'm running to serve America.”

McCain also included Hillary Clinton in his criticism, saying of both main Democratic candidates, "We know where each ... will lead this country and we dare not let them."

In the end, McCain won all three of today's primaries comfortably. He congratulated Mike Huckabee on his performance, saying with a smile that the former Arkansas governor's candidacy "keeps things interesting—maybe a little too interesting at times tonight."

But this evening's event, held in the ballroom of a Holiday Inn, did see one potential blow to McCain's ego.

As a line of dignitaries including former Senator George Allen and John Warner lined up onstage and music pumped out in anticipation of McCain's entrance, it became apparent that CNN had just begun to cover Obama's speech in Madison, Wisconsin.

McCain was forced to cool his heels for 20 minutes until the Illinois senator's speech began to wind down.

Virginia was Clinton's best chance of scoring an upset victory, or at least keeping the race close enough to declare a moral victory. If she has lost lopsidedly in Virginia, it points to even worse defeats for her in Maryland and D.C.

On the Republican side, the news is good for Mike Huckabee, who trailed by 30 points in Virginia polls just last week. But the Virginia race is now too close to call—perhaps the result (in part) of independent voters flocking to the Democratic primary, leaving a tiny and ultra-conservative Republican primary electorate. Huckabee needs a win—or a very strong showing—for his challenge to John McCain to retain its relevance.

Democrats

Barack Obama is supposed to go three-for-three on the day. Short of engineering an upset victory—which would represent a campaign-changing development—Hillary Clinton’s best hope lies in containing her opponent’s victory margins and keeping the delegate race close, possibly positioning her to declare some kind of moral victory. On the heels of her weekend drubbings—and the news that she is replacing her campaign manager—the risk for Clinton tomorrow is obvious: Three more unspinnably lopsided defeats could create the impression that her campaign is in a tailspin, and that Obama is beginning to pull away.

Maryland:

To appreciate why Obama is all but assured of winning the statewide vote, just consider Maryland’s most recent Democratic U.S. Senate primary, a racially polarized 2006 contest between former Congressman and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume and ten-term Congressman Ben Cardin. Mfume had little money and relied almost exclusive on black support. And it nearly worked: He was edged out by the well-funded Cardin, 43-40 percent. (Several minor candidates also ran.)

It stands to reason that Obama—who has consistently won more than 80 percent of the black vote in other states—will perform as well as Mfume did among black voters while also making inroads among white voters that Mfume couldn’t, thereby running his share of the statewide vote into the mid to high-50’s. The key question is how dominating Obama’s win will be: In how many districts will he cross the 60 percent threshold that will allow him to run up the delegate tally?

One factor that should help Obama is the hot Congressional primary between incumbent Al Wynn and attorney Donna Edwards in the heavily (about 60 percent) black 4th District. This is actually a rematch of a 2006 primary, in which Wynn was nearly caught sleeping by Edwards, who came within three points of knocking him off. This year, the incumbent may be more prepared. To prevail, he needs to produce a large plurality in his Prince George’s County base. Prince George, home to one of the largest black middle-class concentrations in the country, accounts for about 65 percent of the district, and a higher turnout here will probably translate into good news for Obama.

Edwards’ strength lies in affluent Montgomery County, which accounts for the other 35 percent of the district. Voters here tend to be white, educated and liberal. But they are also fiercely opposed to the Iraq War, and it was their fervent embrace of Edwards (who, like Wynn, is black) that nearly propelled her to victory in ’06. Montgomery County is supposed to be one of Clinton’s stronger areas in Maryland, but if the anti-war sentiment that drove Edwards’ voters in ’06 is still prevalent, Obama could fare well in Montgomery too.

Clinton is running with the backing of Martin O’Malley, the former mayor of Baltimore who is now in his second year as governor.

Virginia:

In theory, this should be a stronger state for Clinton than Maryland. Virginia has a high black population, but it’s about a third less than Maryland’s, meaning that Obama starts off with less of a leg-up here.

The Clinton campaign would like to make a score in the D.C. suburbs of northern Virginia, where the population—and Democratic registration—has been swelling for the last decade. They are counting on deep support in this area from women voters in particular. And they also hope to run up the score in rural southwest Virginia, where lower-income white voters—if the pattern that has prevailed in other Southern states holds up—will favor Clinton over Obama.

But this might work better in theory than in practice. Obama, who is backed by Governor Tim Kaine, seems well-positioned in northern Virginia, home to the affluent and educated white voters who have supported him elsewhere. And he could post big wins in the state’s heavily black areas, particularly Richmond (where Mayor and former Governor Doug Wilder is on board) and Norfolk.

Polls have shown Obama ahead by around 15 points. If Clinton can keep his margin in the mid-single digits or better, she may be able to declare some kind of moral victory here.

District of Columbia:

The District’s charismatic mayor, Adrian Fenty, has campaigned across the country for Obama, who will undoubtedly win here—and big. D.C. is about 60 percent black, meaning that Obama can probably win the primary without a single non-black vote, assuming he takes more than 80 percent of the black vote (which he has had no trouble doing elsewhere). And, since he has consistently been able to win at least 40 percent of the white vote in previous contests, a landslide D.C. victory is almost certainly on tap for him.

In 2004, D.C. held a non-binding primary the week before the Iowa caucuses, a mostly unsuccessful effort to put the statehood issue and other urban concerns on the candidates’ agendas. But most candidates didn’t participate because the event encroached on Iowa and New Hampshire’s preeminence. Howard Dean ended up winning with 43 percent, with Al Sharpton grabbing 34 percent (his best showing anywhere in 2004) and Carol Moseley-Braun (remember her?) at 12 percent. Overall, turnout was about 12 percent. With actual delegates on the line, it figures to be much higher this time around.

Republicans

Roughly speaking, John McCain is right now in the position Bill Clinton was in when he first seemed to wrap up the Democratic nomination in 1992.

Clinton seemed to emerge when he swept the South on Super Tuesday and then won landslide victories in Illinois and Michigan. His nearest competitor, Massachusetts’ Paul Tsongas, then suspended his campaign, bowing to the front-runner’s seemingly insurmountable delegate advantage. That left Jerry Brown, the former California governor who’d waged a shoestring, grassroots candidacy. The media dismissed him as a nuisance and declared the race over.

But then Brown won an stunning upset in Connecticut, and the media—along with influential Democrats—began rethinking its verdict. Was the Democratic rank-and-file sending a message that they were not happy with the idea of Clinton as the nominee? Was there room for a new candidate to step forward and claim the nomination?

No one considered Brown a serious threat to win the nomination, despite his Connecticut win. He was so far behind in delegates that wins in all of the remaining states still wouldn’t have put him over the top—and the party’s leaders were hardly willing to get behind him.

So the next state on the calendar—New York—became a referendum on Clinton’s nomination: If Brown (or Tsongas, whose name remained on the ballot) won, then Clinton would be considered fatally flawed, and either Tsongas would re-enter or the party’s big wigs would graft a white knight (say, Mario Cuomo) into the race. Or both would happen.

On primary day, Clinton won easily, and the nomination was essentially his.

Which brings us to McCain, who was declared the presumptive nominee by the press after his strong Super Tuesday showing prompted Massachusetts’ Mitt Romney to suspend his campaign, leaving the hopeless Mike Huckabee as McCain’s only remaining foe. And given the delegate disparity between the two, Huckabee was also immediately written off, since he—like Brown in ‘92—would also fall short of the nomination even if he won every remaining contest.

But Huckabee caused McCain a serious headache by winning Kansas by 36 points over the weekend, eking out a narrow victory in Louisiana, and almost scoring an upset in Washington state—a narrow loss his campaign is now contesting. Like with Clinton in ‘92, McCain is now being forced to answer all
sorts of questions about the message his party’s base seems to be sending.

Which makes Virginia and Maryland McCain’s New York. Convincing wins over Huckabee in both states—Virginia, in particular—should silence talk of a widespread Stop-McCain movement and cement his status as the presumptive nominee.

A win in Maryland, where the G.O.P. electorate is more moderate and independent-friendly, is all but assumed for McCain. Virginia might be trickier, because the electorate is more conservative and the presence of religious conservatives is more pronounced. This is, after all, the state of Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell.

If Huckabee can engineer a win in Virginia, it will prompt serious questions from G.O.P. leaders about the wisdom of nominating McCain, just as it will portend similar results in many of the remaining primaries and caucuses, guaranteeing embarrassing headlines for McCain throughout the spring.

The good news for McCain is that polls show him clearly leading both states. Despite his weekend stumble, he is in a position to win both handily, and while that might not be enough to flush Huckabee from the race, it will be enough to prove that—as fervent and devoted as it is—Huckabee’s support has a clear ceiling and is not expanding.

The stark difference in enthusiasm was noticeable even in passing. Outside the Stuart C. Siegel Center, which played host to the Jefferson-Jackson dinner, a couple hundred of Obama supporters beating drums, wearing paper Obama masks and holding giant white letters spelling Obama’s name urged passing cars to honk. Many of them did.

A quieter group of Hillary supporters had less success.

Inside, there was more of that. The same giant cardboard Obama letters flanked the dozens of crowded tables on the floor, and dwarfed the “Hillary” signs lined up between the A, the M and the A. From the stage, past and current governors of Virginia boasted about their endorsements for Obama. Chants of O-ba-ma broke out intermittently from the rafters.

Clinton, her hair flatter than usual and her chances sinking in Washington and Nebraska, soldiered through.

Taking the podium under an enormous Jumbo screen, Clinton struck positive and even sweeping notes that received solid, if not ecstatic, applause from the crowd.

”Hello, Virginian Democrats—that sounds so good,” said Clinton. “I am delighted and honored to be here with you this evening.”

Clinton thanked Virginians for electing Senator Jim Webb and expressed her hope for the election to the Senate of Mark Warner, who ran for president last year as a moderate Democrat, but was essentially forced out of the race by his inability to compete with Clinton for that space.

As Clinton spoke about how the next president would be inaugurated with “his or her hand on the Bible” and talked about mortgages and tuitions voters couldn’t afford, a television anchor stood up on a riser and told his camera about Obama’s overwhelming victories in Nebraska and Washington as they became official.

Clinton had only pleasant words for her rival, though she draw the usual contrast with Obama (and John McCain) by saying that she is the “only candidate left in this race, Democrat or Republican, with a health care plan that will cover every single man woman and child.”

Other than that, her sights fell on President George Bush and the likely Republican nominee, John McCain.

Bush’s way, said Clinton, was to “shred the constitution,” and “smear dissenters” and said that with “Senator McCain as the likely Republican nominee, Republicans have chosen more of the same.”

In perhaps her best-received line of the night, Clinton said “President Bush has already put his stamp of approval on Senator McCain’s conservative credentials”—she waited a beat, then smiled—“and I’m sure that will help.” Addressing her opponent’s criticism that she had too much in common with Bush, Clinton argued “I will be among those most happy to see the moving van leaving the White House” and announced herself “ready to go toe-to-toe with Senator McCain whenever and wherever he desires.”

With Mr Inspiration and Hope due to take the stage later in the evening, Clinton did her best to make remarks with some historic and narrative sweep. Judging from the audience’s reaction, it wasn’t a bad effort.

Her “I see an America” refrain (in which the country she envisions stands up to oil companies, employs the unemployed, builds schools, makes college affordable) was followed by her taking a step back to appreciate the historic scope of the election. “Neither Senator Obama, nor I, nor many of you in this room were included in that original vision,” she said, but evoked “a movement of men and women”—the abolitionists, suffragists, progressives and civil rights activists—who made the voting rights shared by the diverse group of people in the room something everyone now took “for granted.”

She folded herself into a narrative that seems most closely associated now with Obama, that the next generation would “take it for granted that a woman or an African-American can be president of the United States.”

“That is the genius of our Constitution” she said. “It was crafted to expand as our hearts do.”

After her speech, Obama’s entrance to the stage resulted in an eruption.

Obama excels in large, friendly, partisan settings like the Jefferson-Jackson dinners (the address he gave to one back in Iowa is considered a watershed speech of his candidacy). And while his message of change has remained essentially unaltered, he has added concrete wins to the feel-good rhetoric.

“And today,” Obama said after taking the stage,“voters from the West Coast to the Gulf Coast to the heart of America stood up to say, ‘Yes we can.’ We won in Louisiana. We won in Nebraska. We won in Washington State. We won north and we won south and we won in between and I believe that we can win in Virginia on Tuesday if you’re ready to stand for change.”

At that point the candidate, and the crowd reaction, essentially turned it into an Obama rally.

While Clinton had kept her speech as bland and non-combative against Obama, he showed no such concern, turning his requisite criticisms of McCain into veiled shots at Clinton.

Referring to McCain’s about-face on opposing the Bush tax cuts, Obama said “This is what happens when you spend too long in Washington.”

With a nod to his own opposition to the authorization of the war in Iraq, he said “I am looking forward to having a debate with John McCain about foreign policy,” and when he argued that he would make the better Democratic nominee against McCain, the understood point was understood.

“It’s a choice between debating John McCain about lobbying reform with a nominee who has taken more money from lobbyists than he has,” said Obama, “or doing it with a campaign that hasn’t taken a dime of their money because we’ve been funded by you—the American people.”

He added, “And it’s a choice between taking on John McCain with Republicans and independents already united against us, or running against him with a campaign that’s uniting Americans of all parties around a common purpose.”

Then, he tacitly argued against Clinton’s electability.

“There is a reason why the last six polls in a row have shown that I’m the strongest candidate against John McCain,” he said. “It’s because I’ve done better among independents in almost every single contest we’ve had.”

At times, Obama chose to take Clinton head-on, especially when talking about health care, which has emerged as the major domestic fault line between the two.

“I know what it takes to pass health care reform because I’ve done it—not by demonizing anyone who disagrees with me,” said Obama, this time echoing one of the criticisms against Clinton’s hardball tactics in trying to pass healthcare reform in 1993. A few minutes later he added “I know that Senator Clinton likes to point out the difference between our health care plans, there is a real difference here. Because Senator Clinton has said that the only way to provide universal health care is to say that we will go after your wages if you don’t buy health care. Well, I believe the reason people don’t have health care isn’t because they don’t want to buy, it’s because they can’t afford it.”

The Clinton campaign has repeatedly pointed out that the Obama plan requires coverage for children and thus would also have similar payment enforcements for the parents of those children. Furthermore, many health care experts argue that Clinton’s plan is a more proven route to universal health care.

In what was perhaps an accurate indication of the way the primaries have played out so
far, the Obama supporters made all the noise, but some attendees quietly moved toward Clinton.

“I think Barack Obama is exciting, but there is no there there,” said Cathy Smith, a 58-year-old marketing executive from Fairfax who said that she had started the day still undecided about who to vote for. “Given the crowd, I was actually hoping for something more from him—some more detail and substance. She did that.”

Ryan Abbott, a 34-year-old teacher from Richmond, disagreed.

“Obama did a really good job of distinguishing himself from Hillary and McCain,” he said. “McCain is always seen as this outside Republican, but today he did a good job of saying he really is not different from Bush.”

You may remember Mr. Cohen masquerading at a Virginia rodeo as the hapless Kazakh journalist in Borat. As seen in the film, the cowboy spectacle is a haven for yahoos, rednecks and astonishingly casual racists. The squirm-inducing comedy confirmed the prejudices of big-city types, who are, of course, a more highly evolved species. The rodeo, it concluded, is barbaric entertainment.

Ms. Lucier, whose video installation The Plains of Sweet Regret is on view at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., attends the rodeo and sees something radically different: a poetic blur of muscle, movement and, unexpectedly, a gracious deference to the natural world.

In one sequence of the video, a bull is let loose from a holding pen. A cowboy tries to ride it, but is thrown off in a matter of seconds. He comes precariously close to being trampled and gored; at one point, he lands directly between the animal’s horns. A cadre of men, including a clown, circles their comrade and attempts a rescue. They manage to drive off the bull, whose rampaging hurdles are terrifying to behold. The scene runs at a pace slightly slower than life.

Once the bull calms down and lopes off, the scene begins again. But this time, a mirror image is superimposed upon the original. A Rorschach-like tumult ensues, bull and rider expanding and contracting into a heaving field of action.

The scene is run yet again, complicated further by shifts in time. The temporal stagger creates a kaleidoscopic abstraction of transparent earthy tones and magical, transitory pictures. At one point, a virtual totem pole coalesces and just as swiftly dissipates; it exists as a ghostly flash of portent.

The camera makes a sudden rush sideways, and we’re presented with different moments of the same rodeo projected in a similar manner. At the end, a wrangler brings a calf to the ground. For one fleeting instant, man and animal morph into each other as the divide between them dissolves. A rough-and-tumble collision of purpose is choreographed into a sinuous ballet. We intuit the cowboy’s respect for the animal, despite the confrontation that’s taken place.

The rider, wearing a white cowboy hat and a pinstriped shirt, lets go of the calf; both pick themselves up and walk away with breathtaking nonchalance. The cowboy comes toward the camera. Turning sideways, his head is briefly transformed into a Janus-like effigy. All the while, George Strait’s “I Can Still Make Cheyenne,” a plaintive country song about distance and loss, underscores the archetypal drama enacted by the rodeo. Ms. Lucier conjures up myth with a deceiving dispassion. It’s an awesomely beautiful sequence.

The rodeo scenes come at the end of The Plains of Sweet Regret, and they all but eclipse what’s come before. Which isn’t to say that the rest of the 18-minute video, presented on five separate screens, isn’t, in its own way, stunning. The installation abounds with iconic heartland images—more documentary than lyrical—from the vast and consuming plains of North Dakota.

Laurel Reuter, the director of the North Dakota Museum of Art, commissioned The Plains of Sweet Regret as part of a larger project titled Emptying Out of the Plains. This initiative invites essayists, poets and filmmakers to respond to the ongoing evolution of the state and its economy, population and landscape.

“The land is now occupied,” Ms. Reuter writes, by “agribusiness with its massive machinery, global positioning systems … worldwide marketing networks, and government safety nets.” Communities are changing: Some are adapting and most, it appears, are dying; the migration of farmers, cowboys and jobs has left a disheartening mark. Ms. Lucier’s video is a kind of historic preservation.

Talk of “global positioning systems” shouldn’t deter anyone wary of political ax-grinding. Ms. Lucier steers clear of explicit commentary; the intractability of time is her subject. In her hands, time’s unsparing momentum is rendered monolithic and is stilled, however precariously.

The artist juxtaposes panoramic vistas with remnants of individual achievement and desire. Isolated highways, smokestacks expelling pinkish-purple smoke, and wind-blown fields of wheat are set against abandoned homes and churches, a mysterious stack of suitcases, a cow giving birth, a weathered bowling trophy and farmland seen from a speeding car. History haunts The Plains of Sweet Regret, but through quiet understatement and an unfailingly humane focus, the video dexterously avoids the pitfalls of easy nostalgia.

Ms. Lucier has a cinematographer’s gift for composition, tempo and point of view, as well as an impressionistic instinct for narrative, however obscure or diffuse. Camera movements are various, recording events straight on, at first-person vantage points, gently rocking back and forth, panning downward or moving at an almost indiscernibly reduced speed.

Each of the five screens may hold disparate actions or objects, yet they’re counterpoised in ways that unify the work’s gentle yearning. An atmospheric cascade of music (composed by Ms. Lucier’s longtime collaborator, Earl Howard) keys in to subtle shifts of rhythm, image and gesture. The undulating electronic score, forever promising crescendos but adroitly glancing off them, indispensably complements the visuals.

Ms. Lucier stumbles when she inserts an unnecessary theatrical device. Two women wearing kerchiefs and a young police officer with an earring are simultaneously seen swaying in slo-mo. Their languorous motions smack too much of the artist’s conscious direction. It is Ms. Lucier’s lone false note.

Otherwise, The Plains of Sweet Regret is a moving evocation of a land burdened with grave uncertainty. A nagging strain of pessimism informs the work, but Ms. Lucier’s celebration of the American character refuses to capitulate to it. There’s resilience mixed with her melancholy. If she doesn’t tell us about the country as deeply or as concisely as Walker Evans or John Ford, Ms. Lucier approaches the stern heights reached by Edward Hopper. Certainly, she gets closer to the heart of things than Borat. Compassionate insight beats cruel humor every time.

Mary Lucier: The Plains of Sweet Regret is at Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., 514 West 25th Street, until April 28.

It’s a Foerocracy!

Certainly no one could accuse them of being unmotivated. The eldest Foer, Franklin, 31, is the editor of The New Republic; Jonathan Safran Foer, 29, is the author of the literary novels Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; and Joshua, after interning at Slate and dabbling in freelance journalism, is at work on his book, titled Moonwalking with Einstein, about his descent into the world of memory competitions (the book was already optioned for film).

The intrigue that surrounds the Foers in New York literary circles is such that one editor who considered Joshua’s book proposal whispered a piece of Foer lore: the rumor that when they were growing up, the three boys were required to make presentations to their parents during dinner each evening as a sort of training for the public stage.

“Family dinners were a big thing,” Franklin Foer, who lives in Washington, D.C., said by phone. “You’d turn off the nightly news and then sit down and eat.” Franklin described his father as a highly experimental cook, and mentioned his dad’s “falafel spaghetti sauce” as one particular dish that left an imprint on his palate.

“Dinner-table conversation had its share of current events and historical discussion, and, you know, analysis of French symbolism … but also its share of fart jokes,” he said.

Regarding the story about the mealtime pageants, Franklin said: “I think that was only me, ’cause I was shy.” He explained that he was an “extremely” timid child, and so to encourage him to break out of his shell, his parents gave him historical, philosophical and other kinds of topics to research and present.

The family is based in Washington, where the Foer brothers were born to Esther and Albert Foer. Esther is the founder and president of a public-relations firm called FM Strategic Communications and a former press secretary in Illinois for George McGovern, the onetime Democratic Senator and Presidential candidate. Born in Poland after World War II, Esther spent her early childhood in a displaced-persons camp in Germany. Her parents were Holocaust survivors; later, they immigrated to the United States and opened a small grocery store on North Capitol Street in D.C.

Albert (Bert) Foer is characterized as the voracious reader in the family. A lawyer by training, he now runs a public-interest think tank called the American Antitrust Institute, which seeks to increase antitrust enforcement. He was born in Norfolk, Va., and grew up in D.C. His father ran jewelry shops. His father’s father was born in Bialystok; he was a wallpaper hanger.

According to Franklin, it was all “pretty darn normal,” and—shockingly—the kids were allowed to watch television. Franklin also maintained a collection of political-campaign buttons. All three attended public school until junior high, when they switched to tony-liberal Georgetown Day School. They scattered for college (Frank attended Columbia; Jonathan, Princeton; and Joshua, Yale.)

Now, two of the three live in New York. The semi-reclusive Jonathan is ensconced in the multimillion-dollar townhouse he bought in Park Slope with his wife, the novelist Nicole Krauss (they just had their first child, Sasha, who may or may not be permitted to watch TV). Joshua moved to the city this past summer. That leaves Franklin in D.C.; he has a wife and a 2-year-old girl, whom he described proudly as a “fifth-generation Washingtonian.”

So are the brothers competitive with one another?

“I would say not,” Franklin said. “It’s more like, I like to think of Jonathan as my protégé, and he likes to think of Joshua as his protégé. I would try to foist all my interests on Jonathan, which in turn he rejected.”