October book and film review

Welcome to this month's media review. Three books and eleven films, so strap yourself in for a diverse and exhilarating ride!

BOOKS

THE PRINCE, by Niccolo Machiavelli. Are you a commander of men, new to your role? Want to know the secrets of consolidating your power and even expanding it? Then you need look no further than this user's guide, which contains everything you need to holding on to your position and seeing off any threat to your authority. Whether you attained your power through luck, an accident of birth or by military force, you will need this book and its wise counsel if you are to flourish. For instance, how about that old chestnut, is it better to be feared or loved? Mach is clear on this one: fear is better, though love ain't bad, but strictly optional. What is not good though, he reminds us, is to be hated. Hatred ferments revolution, and sooner or later either the nobles or the mob will drag you from your castle and string you up. So, keep the aristocracy sweet, and con the people into thinking they're getting a good deal. Meanwhile, be good to your army. Military might is the key to your power, and you don't want the generals turning on you. You may need them, not to keep down your own people, for they will only stand that for so long, but to ward off threats from neighbouring princes.

Machiavelli cites a number of examples of good "princes"; Cyrus, Alexander and Julius Caesar are three of his favourites, though the last of these is cited as having had almost everything a prince needed, but suffered the sin of arrogance. However I couldn't help thinking of more recent examples: Napoleon for example. Where did he go wrong? Overreached himself, of course, stretched his lines of communication too far, was not content to settle for most of Europe, he had to try to subdue Russia as well. This is something Machiavelli warns against more than once. A century later Hitler made the same mistake. They should have paid closer attention to this book. More recently, Presidents Marcos and Ceausescu could have learnt much from perusing its pages and maybe even kept their heads...Fascinating stuff.

A ROOM WITH A VIEW, by E.M. Forster. At the turn of the twentieth century, a pretty young girl from a good family is visiting Florence with her prim, slightly less genteel cousin/chaperone. There she meets the Emersons, obviously well off but a trifle too plebeian for her taste. Today I suppose we'd call Mr Emerson and his son George nouveau riche, a phrase I'm sure the Edwardians would have loved. George and Lucy exchange a surreptitious kiss, but then she's mortified with embarrassment and flees to Rome, but this tale isn't over quite yet. Back at her home in the garden of England she discovers to her amazement that the Emersons have rented the cottage next door! Whatever next?

Some say Room with a View is Forster's most perfectly realised novel (no less a critic than Virginia Woolf admired it) and I certainly loved its delicate, meticulous rhythms. But others said the characters of the Emersons are poorly drawn, perhaps because Forster himself had little experience of dealing with people living outside his relatively rarefied strata of society. And if true it would be a major problem, because they are, in a sense, the lynch pins of the whole book. But it isn't. I find the Emersons as real as the other characters; their gaucheness seems perfectly pitched. But what do I know? Only that this is a terrific little book.

A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN, by Virginia Woolf. In 1928, the great one was asked to give a talk to a WI meeting entitled "Women and Fiction", and this extended essay is an expansion of the talk she gave all those years ago. She begins, tellingly, by recounting an experience she had when trying to enter the library at Kings College, Cambridge. She was confronted at the door by the beadle. "Oi! Where d'ya think you're going?" Turns out women in those days were permitted entry into the hallowed halls only if accompanied by a (male) fellow of the college, or by a letter of introduction from the dean himself. After this sobering experience, she repairs to a local tea room where she consoles herself with a nice hot cuppa and a cream bun. This she is able to pay for out of her own pocket, because she has been fortunate in being left a legacy of £500 per year for life. Indeed, the piece could have been called "Five hundred pounds", because as Woolf explains, a woman needs both a room of her own with a lock to it and an income if she is to compete on anything like equal terms with men.

In her usual immaculate style, Woolf goes on to cite many examples from history to illustrate how the lives of women are blighted in a patriarchal society. She speculates what would have happened if Shakespeare had been a woman. Shakespeare the man, his mind fizzing with brilliance, made his way to London to make his mark and did so in the most spectacular way imaginable. But if he had been a female, most likely she would never even have made it to the capital without being robbed, raped or murdered, and even had she made it her voice would never have been heard. And, more worryingly, the situation hadn't changed much by the 1920s. Sure, progress had been made, women had the vote by then; some women had even written great books. But precious few. Woolf reminds her audience that change only comes about through struggle, and that it could be more than a hundred years before anything like real equality might be achieved. We're not far off that 100 year mark now, and there still seems to be a long way to go. And as for women outside the "sophisticated west", it's longer still. Because the way she described the lot of women in the 16th century sounds a lot like the position in much of the Muslim world today. Now there's your problem...

FILMS

INCENDIES (Canada, 2010) D- Dennis Villeneuve. The son and daughter of a recently deceased woman are in for a shock when the will is read. In order for them to obtain their inheritance, they must track down their father (believed to be dead) and their brother (they never knew they had one) At first the task seems impossible, but as they trace leads into a war-torn middle east, the truth turns out to be weirder than they could have imagined...
An intelligent, thoughtful film that maintains the tension right the way through. Intriguing.

THE FOG OF WAR (documentary, 2005) D- Errol Morris. A fascinating portrait of Robert Macnamara, one of the critical figures in post war American politics. Following a distinguished war record, a youthful but brilliant Bob became a high-powered executive with General Motors, transforming the ailing car builder into one of the most successful companies in the world. Seeing his potential, he was given a job with the state department, from which he became one of the principle architects of the war in Vietnam. It occurs to me that Machiavelli would have liked Bob a lot...

MISSION TO LARS (documentary, 2010) D- James Moore. Tom Spicer suffers from a form of autism called "fragile X syndrome" and inhabits a strange world of obsessions and isolation. But he's heard of the rock band Metallica, and admires them enormously, especially its drummer, Lars Ulrich. His two siblings Will and Kate decide to achieve Tom's fondest dream: to see the band and meet Lars. They fly out from Britain to Las Vegas, hire a camper van and go in search of the super-group. But can it work? Tom is so odd, so fickle and capricious (perhaps eccentric would be a kinder word) that even if he is granted an audience with his hero, will he even show up? The tension builds steadily as the Brits draw closer to, but then further away from, their ultimate goal. An incredibly moving and skilful film as well as a highly revealing insight into the world of autism. Highly recommended.

CHOCOLATE (aka Zen-The Warrior Within. 2008) D- Prachya Pinkaew. A Japanese gangster upsets his boss by having an affair with the wrong woman and flees with her to Thailand. They have a daughter who turns out to be autistic. She spends all day watching martial arts movies and before long becomes a supreme adept. She learns her mother has been cruelly treated and that she needs money to treat her cancer. Our girl takes on the job of recovering her debts, even when the debtors turn out to be vicious murderers. Not so vicious as her though...
Not to be confused with several films of  a similar name, you might think you've been there with youthful karate expert movies, going back to The Karata Kid series and lots more in recent years, this is better by far than those; gritty, unforgiving, and thoroughly entertaining.

NOTHING SACRED (1937) D- William Wellmann. A hard nosed reporter tracks down a country girl (the luscious Carole Lombard in one of the last films she made before dying in a plane crash) who is said to be dying of radium poisoning. The fact that her doctor has just given her a clean bill of health fails to deter the hack from bringing her to New York where she is feted as a dying heroine. But you know how it is, the truth always come out in the end... A delightful and hilarious romp conducted at a furious pace, as good as anything Capra did around the same time.

DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012) D- Quentin Tarantino. A dentist turns up in town (Christoph Waltz) but it's a cover. Really he's a bounty hunter, searching for a high-priced felon, but doesn't know what he looks like. But slave Jamie Foxx does, so he buys him and together they go in search of their quarry. Much blood and guts is spilt along the way...
When Reservoir Dogs was released upon an unsuspecting public in 1993 we knew were in the presence of a major new talent. For me it remains one of the best films of the 90s, and since then Tarantino has gained the reputation of making films which demand attention. And here we see vintage Quentin in action: innovative cinematography, a slew of references to other movies (in Kill Bill it was kung fu movies; here it's spaghetti westerns) and lots, I mean lots, of violence.
 The violence doesn't bother me, though it has some people. Other film makers, including Peckinpah and Kubrick, have already cornered the market in violence-become-art, so there's nothing especially shocking about Tarantino's blood-letting, except perhaps the sheer amount of it. As I say, Tarantino continues to make movies which demand to be seen, but for me he has never bettered his first effort. Its spare, lean perfection is something he might do well to revisit, rather than the sprawling epics he likes to do these days, and with far less impact.

LADY OF DECEIT (1947) D-Robert Wise. aka Born to Kill, we might also call this film The Man Without a Conscience. When Clair Trevor (remember her as the lush in Key Largo?) returns to her hotel room having just obtained a Reno divorce, she finds her friend and her paramour murdered. She does nothing about it and goes home to LA. Then by a twist of fate the murderer (an excellent Laurence Tierney) snags her sister and marries her. Trevor once again does nothing: she kinda fancies him and he likes what he sees too. An essay in psychopathy, this film still chills the bones 65 years on. One of the better films in the noir series BBC 2 is showing early on Sunday mornings. Set your TIVO on record and have your lie-in uninterrupted. Remember when you just had to be there or miss out? Seems like the dark ages now...

UNDERGROUND (1995) D- Emir Kusturica. aka Once Upon a Time there was a Country. Two wide-boy brothers carve out a fun loving existence in Yugoslavia. Then the Nazis arrive and everything changes. Not all to the bad, however. One brother does well on the black market, while the other finds himself running a sweatshop. When the war ends brother A cons brother B into staying underground (geddit?) in his factory because he has been duped into believing the war isn't over. This is all meant to be a commentary of the fate of Yugoslavia; how the warring factions were brought together by war, held together by the sheer charisma of Marshall Tito, and finally dissolved back into its ethnic enclaves once Tito departed this world. OK, but is it a good film? I would say yes, even though we have to sit through 165 minutes of semi-farcical tragi-comedy before reaching its conclusion: And we never get rid of a brass band which seems to follow the players through almost every scene. Perhaps we should think ourselves lucky. The director wanted the film to go out in its original length as made for television- a cool 346 minutes. The producers, thank God, disagreed.

LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961) D- Alain Resnais. A man meets an attractive woman in a vast French chateau: haven't they met before, specifically at Marienbad, last year? He cites various events that occurred, other people who were also there, and so on. One little problem: The woman has no idea what he's talking about; indeed she is about to report him to the authorities as a loonie. But he persists, and she can't help herself listening to his strange story. As we watch, a number of  possible scenarios are put before us for our consideration (or confusion) to add to, or detract from, the picture we have built up of what might have happened. Last year. At Marienbad.

This film, I think we can safely say, has had mixed reviews. It won the Golden Lion of St Mark at the Venice film festival; and some see it as one of the great surrealist movies. But it also makes an appearance in a book I have entitled "The Fifty Worst Movies of all Time", where it appears alongside some of the most disgraceful abortions ever committed to celluloid. Is that fair? I don't think so. Because although it is difficult and sometimes annoying to watch (you never really work out what the hell's going on) it is actually a serious and well-made film which does hold one in a sort of dreamy, claustrophobic grip. Alain Resnais has said that the film is a commentary on the nature of human thought, and seen in that light the film begins to make more sense. For the fact is that much of our thinking time is made up of replaying the past and playing out alternative scenarios in our heads. That's when we're not speculating about the future, which takes up pretty much the rest of our waking hours.
Does the film work today? Alas I fear not. But as part of the discerning movie-goers canon, it should not be overlooked.

EPIDEMIC (1987) D- Lars von Trier. Two men are writing a screenplay for a film about a lethal pandemic which sweeps the world. And what we have is the old "film-within-a-film" concept, where scenes of the writers engaged in their creative process are cut with sequences from the film they are devising. Lars went on to make some really outstanding films after this (Dogtown, Dancer in the Dark) but unless you are a seriously committed fan, you could probably miss this one out. Most mystifying is his decision to imprint the name of the film, in red, on every frame of stock, like some sort of watermark. I actually thought it was a mistake until I read up and found it was deliberate. Lars, man, what were you thinking?

BLUE JASMINE (2013) D- Woody Allen. Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) is a New York socialite living the perfect life until her husband (Alec Baldwin) is exposed as a fraud and goes to prison. Having fallen on straitened times, she goes to live with her more modestly equipped sister in (and can you believe this of Woody?) San Francisco. And she doesn't think much of her sister's aspirations to the upper crust, especially now she's broke. Jasmine has to find a way back to the good life, but how? A dentist fancies her, and that could work (dentists are loaded, right?) but she doesn't like him. Then the perfect guy comes along, big house on the coast, a salary with seven noughts on the end of it and gorgeous into the bargain. All she has to do is wear some of the designer clothes she's kept form the IRS, make a favourable impression, tell a few white lies and she'll be home free. Or will she?

I have saved the best until last this month. This film is brilliant, perhaps the best thing Allen has done in more than twenty-five years. Woody has made four truly great films: Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and her Sisters and Crimes and Misdemeanours. And he's made four outstanding movies that are nearly as good: Love and Death, Sleeper, Broadway Danny Rose and Radio Days. I'm not certain which category this film fits into, though I am veering toward the former, ie one of his best ever offerings. I couldn't stop thinking about it for days afterwards; its social insight, its savage and uncompromising truth-telling, the sheer perfection of Cate Blanchett's performance. What's wrong with it? Absolutely nothing.