November book and film review

BOOKS

I'm afraid there are no books to review this month. I am 800 pages into Dickens's classic Martin Chuzzlewit, but there are still 140 pages to go, and I wouldn't be much of a reviewer if I did it now, would I?. See my December review, however, to find out what I thought of it. As an appetiser, consider this: Dickens himself felt that while the semi-autobiographical nature of David Copperfield made it his favourite book, he considered Martin Chuzzlewit his best book. We shall see...

FILMS

GRAVITY (2013) D- Alfonso Cuaron.   There's nothing like making a rule and then breaking it. For the  truth is, I haven't seen Gravity. Why wouldn't I, considering it is a massive world-wide success, with two hyperstars involved in what has been called "the wildest fairground ride in film history"? OK, I'll try to explain. First, it's in 3D (and I have made my feelings plain on that subject more than once) and unlike other films like Thor: The Dark World  (see below) there is no 2D version. Second, I am informed that lovers of physics may have certain objections to its scientific authenticity. Here's the news: I do love physics, and hence I think that would be a problem for me. I prefer space films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, where Kubrick went to extreme lengths to keep it as real as, well, real life in space would be. And it didn't detract one bit from the film's drama- who will ever forget Hal going rogue and attempting to kill the fallible astronauts because they couldn't do a job as well as a computer that was incapable of error? Third: when I want a wild fairground ride I'll go to Alton Towers, or wait for the "Gravity ride" at Disney world- which I'm sure is in the planning stage as we speak.
 I may catch a 2D version when it eventually comes to TV, but right now I am refusing to buy into it.

THOR:THE DARK WORLD (2013) D- Alan Taylor. Everyone's favourite demigod goes into battle again against the forces of darkness and chaos, exemplified on this occasion by a barely recognisable but truly demonic Christopher Ecclestone. In order to win he must ally himself with his evil half-brother, Loki. Now look, Thor, are you sure that's wise? I mean, we all saw Avengers Assemble and we know you can't trust a god with severe BPD. Don't say I didn't warn you... The first Thor was directed in great style by Kenneth Branagh, who played it as much for laughs as anything, and although there are jokes in this too, somehow it just doesn't hack it, despite the fact that the chosen director this time is Alan Taylor, who has distinguished himself superbly in the field of fantasy with his work on Game of Thrones. You know what? I think I've had it with the Thor franchise. In fact I think I've had it with the whole Marvel comics superhero thing. Let's try something new, people!

COME AND SEE (1985) (Belarus) D- Elem Klimov. A teenage lad living in a remote village in the Russian steppe in 1941 is given a harsh choice: join the partisans and fight the Germans, or be branded a coward for life. Not surprisingly, he takes his rifle and goes off with the fighters. But he has a poet's heart, not a warrior's, and soon the things he sees have traumatised him beyond anything imaginable. Then to make matters worse, he is soon captured by the Germans...
 For those of you not familiar with Hitler's Barbarossa campaign, when the German army roiled into Russia in 1941, they had a dedicated group with them, the Einsatzgruppen.  And they weren't there as a military fighting unit, they were there to murder Jews, and anyone else they didn't like the look of. In a couple of years they had killed 800,000, and their activities were only curtailed when it was decided it was too expensive to shoot everybody and that gas chambers were a far more cost-effective method of mass-murder. This film, powerful. moving and containing some of the most shocking scenes ever committed to celluloid (at one point we watch, in intimate detail, as an entire village is crowded into a church which is then torched), is perhaps one of the finest ever to come out of Eastern Europe. Watch it, if your stomach is strong enough.

BRAVE (2012) D- Mark Andrews. A tomboy princess is a whiz with the bow and arrow, but mum wants her to be all demure and get married soon. So our girl hires a witch to change her mum's mind. This she does, though not in a way anyone would have predicted. That's the thing with witches: you just can't trust 'em.
The Disney/Pixar group has been turning out one piece of quality animation after another for some years now, and this is no exception. The voice characterisations (including Kelly McDonald and national treasure Billy Connolly) are first rate and the plot leaps along vigorously throughout. Not bad.

PLEASANTVILLE (1998) D- Gary Ross. A teenage brother and sister from the nineties somehow find themselves transported into a wholesome, 1950s sitcom. At first the denizens are shocked by the modern ways of their two visitors, but they soon learn to adopt some very 1990s behaviours themselves...
Hollywood has had a thing about "timeshift" fantasies for some time (Peggy Sue got Married, The Lake House, Back to the Future et al) and like a not wholly dissimilar effort, The Truman Show, they can make it work rather well. One of the hooks in this picture is the way everyone, even the newcomers, appears in black and white, but as they begin to catch onto the new ways, they transform into technicolour, reflecting their spiritual and emotional growth. But there are some hold-outs, notably the excellent William H Macey. Interesting stuff.

THE LONG MEMORY (1953) D- Robert Hamer. John Mills is framed for a murder he didn't commit and does fifteen years hard time. But his memory is long (geddit?) and once free determines to track down those who screwed him. Filmed in bleak, but immaculate monochrome, this film is in itself memorable, most notably for the stand-out performance of its star. I've always loved John Mills, loved his passion, his total commitment to his role, and the way his face can betray a whole range of conflicting emotions with just a scowl or a furrowing of his eyebrows. Now there's a national treasure for you...

MONSTER'S BALL (2001) D- Mark Forster. Halle Berry's hubbie (Sean "Puffy" Combs) is on death row for killing a cop and what with a compulsive-eater son to look after, we can't blame her if she simply can't cope. Following the execution, she seeks solace in the arms of Billy-Bob Thornton. She has no idea that he's one of the corrections officers who presided over her husband's last moments, and because she didn't attend the execution, he doesn't know who she is either...
A truly heart-wrenching piece, what we might have called a "tearjerker" in another era, though maybe it's too tough and raw to be included in such a category. But everyone concerned acts their heart out, not least a youthful Heath Ledger, who is simply stunning in his cameo performance as Billy-Bob's doomed son. Superior movie making.

Harry's game

So, Prince Harry is going to trek 200 miles to the South Pole across some of the most inhospitable conditions to be found anywhere on Earth. Good for him. He is doing it for charity, (I'm not sure which one, could it be Help for Heroes?) and he should, given enough publicity, make an absolute bomb. But I have a little question. Who is footing the bill for protecting our intrepid boy, to prevent him becoming some sort of latter-day Captain Scott? Doubtless he'd make even more money if he did, but the state isn't about to let that happen. Just like when he was in Afghan, an elaborate machine will be put in place to ensure he comes to no harm. In a war zone this is hard (and expensive) enough; but in Antarctica the logistics will be tremendous. And just like in a theatre of war, those protecting him will be putting their own lives at risk too. You just can't get anything wrong in such an unforgiving environment, and I can already imagine the fleet of aircraft that will be needed for the job, circling overhead, getting his party in their benevolent sights, making sure everyone is safe, warm and well fed. I shouldn't be surprised if Harry ends up getting sick of the constant drone in his ears and tells them to bugger off and leave him in peace for a while. But they won't. They can't. He's too damn precious.

What I'm saying is, take out what it will cost to prevent Harry from dying from hypothermia, knock it off from the money he will raise: how much will be left? It's like people (and I know one or two personally) who do things like climb Mount Kilimanjaro for charity: couldn't they just donate the airfare and hotel bills instead and stay at home? It'd be a lot greener.

When my wife and I climbed Snowdon in the summer of 2006, there were literally dozens of people sharing the mountain with us who had already climbed Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike in the same day- the so-called "three peaks challenge". Most of them were doing it for charity. And although a number of them ended their epic journey staying at our hotel, there was no talk whatsoever about the green cost. This challenge involves, not just a lot of shoe leather, but hundreds and hundreds of gallons of petrol and diesel. Maybe I'm being a curmudgeonly old bastard, but there isn't enough consideration of these issues when people are doing what they want to do: whether it be raising money for charity, or simply having fun around the world. Travel is cheap, so the argument goes, so why not? Why not indeed...

I'm out of here

Today something big happened. In view of just how big it was I am more than a little surprised by how good I feel about it at this moment: I decided to quit my job.

As observant followers of my blog may know, I took my retirement from the NHS in 2011 when I turned sixty. However, although I sold my practice and was no longer the senior partner, I continued to work on as a part-timer. I worked two sessions a week at my old surgery, and also extra sessions when other partners were away on leave. Looking back, I think I was fearful of stopping work altogether at that stage because I realised how much it meant to me. And indeed in theory I could keep going like this indefinitely. Amongst my GP peers it is common practice to go on until they "die in harness" as the phrase goes, literally going sparko with a massive coronary right in the middle of a surgery, aged ninety-seven or whatever. But I didn't see it like that when I was in my late twenties. The idea of a well funded early retirement sounded like paradise, and I grabbed it with both hands.

 Back in the late seventies the NHS opened up a brief window (they withdrew it seven years later) which enabled GPs to "buy extra years", by paying increased superannuation fee which then, if you so chose, enabled you to retire at 60 while retaining the same pension you would have accrued had you worked all the way through until sixty-five. In other words, you could pay extra in advance to retire early and not lose out financially.
However, despite the culmination of my financially shrewd move, ingeniously planned all those years ago, when it actually happened I was reluctant to give up the role that meant so much to me.

 But then my son died in 2006 and that changed everything. Medicine has always been a huge part of my life, but after my son died, I guess it assumed an even greater significance. And I never calculated for that, now did I? Saying goodbye to a world that has brought so much over nearly forty years of doctoring proved harder than I thought.

Problem is, humans aren't very good at letting go. If they were, half of the world's worst problems would disappear overnight. However, the Buddhists and sage counsel from across the spiritual divide seems to agree on this constituting an all-pervading neurosis in our species. And that to succeed in your letting-go process is the essence of spiritual wisdom; possibly even something towards enlightenment. They also acknowledge how difficult it is in practice. Personally, I would characterise it as being hard-wired into our screwed up mental genetics, like anger and grief. Perhaps there's even a survival factor going on there.

Is letting go a superhuman task, beyond the scope of  us fucked-up normal types? And should we even try? I say no, it can be done. It will be hard work, but then great achievements are not won without great effort. And if it worked, the payoff would be huge. We'd be happier.

 Going back to my little exercise in letting go,  I have now had nearly three years of this half-way house situation; just hanging on to a little bit of what was my former life was about, but not feeling strong enough to quit it for good. And in fact it may actually have been therapeutic for me to do it in this way, tailing off my "addiction to work", you could say. However, at a deeper level I have known for a while what needs to be done. I must finally cast off my medical mantle and move on into a truly retired life, but one that with any luck could still hold a lot of opportunities for me to continue becoming myself. And do you know what? Having made the fateful decision this morning and given in my letter of resignation, it doesn't feel too bad. It's still a novelty right now, naturally, and I know my feelings may change as time passes. They usually do. But I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.

Wish me luck.

Back to Earth, back to reality

If your contract at work meant you had to work nights and weekends throughout your working life, and then some government came along and said: you don't have to do that any more, and here's more money for your (less) trouble, wouldn't you grab it with both hands?

That's exactly what happened to GPs in 2004. And of course, we grabbed it in our greedy little mitts like anyone else would. But then the opposition began. At a personal level, even some of my own friends expressed their disquiet over the highly favourable deal the BMA had secured with the labour government of the day. With the ending of our responsibility for covering our patients "out of hours", the government instead put in place special centres designed to replace us. That's when the problems really started. People were poorly informed about the changes, and started using A and E departments as their OOH cover, placing intolerable strains on that service. Then an influx of immigrants arrived who naturally used A and E all the time because that's what they did in their own countries.

Now, and some would say, not a moment too soon, the coalition has introduced plans to return some of these OOH responsibilities to the people who are best placed to carry them out. And I have to say, much as it goes against the grain to agree with a Tory plan, it's probably a good thing. Problem is, it's going to take years to re-educate the public in how the new system will work, so expect more chaos and lengthy waits at A and E before that happens. This winter could be the worst one yet, especially if we get a nasty flu epidemic, which is overdue on statistical terms at least.

GPs used to be some of the most respected people in our community. I fancy this has changed now many see us a greedy, money-grabbing and workshy. Perhaps now we can rebuild our image as caring professionals who demand a solid working wage but are not afraid to do a bit of extra work to justify it. And in terms of how we are viewed around the world, we've got to make the NHS work, if we are to be a model of excellence and the gold standard for health care, and not the object of contempt and derision.

Storm surge

No one who has seen the effects of Hurricane Haiyen could fail to be moved by the enormity of the human suffering it has wrought. For the dead there is sympathy, but they are gone, gone in a rush of fast flowing water or crushed by a falling house. It is the survivors who have the real problem. As in the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, perhaps 250,000 people died in seconds, but is was the millions left homeless and destitute that touched our hearts. A new tsunami of aid arrived from the wealthy west; some said it was too much, that it threatened to overwhelm the authorities in its sheer volume. As the campaign to raise funds for the hapless residents of the Philippines rapidly gains momentum, will the same happen there? I hope not, and perhaps they will be able to distribute the aid better than in 2004, because that embattled little archipelago is used to disaster and dealing with its terrible consequences.

One wonders if our opulent country would do any better if we had been struck by such a storm. If the early accounts are to be believed, wind speeds were the highest ever recorded at something over 200 mph. My house is made of sturdy brick and stone, but it was not designed to cope with such a battering as this. Its roof would have been ripped off in a heartbeat and left it uninhabitable. Low lying areas would have been inundated; had the storm hit London the Thames barrage would have been of little help. If it roiled up the Bristol channel, where I live would be under several feet of water. It is as if not a hurricane, but a massive tornado had struck the Philippines, as can be seen from the views from the air that have been seen around the world: huge areas where every structure has simply been blown flat. We are used to tornado tracks in America's mid-west; they look very similar but they are at most a mile wide. In the Philippines the track was hundreds of miles wide.

So let's get out there and donate! I'm giving my cash to Oxfam, because they have an unimpeachable record for getting the aid to where it is needed and wasting a minimum on administration. You give to the charity of your choice, but for God's sake give!

No poppy for Pelagius

Close observers of this blog may recall my reluctance to toe the poppy line. Last year I looked at the case of Jon Snow, the eminent broadcaster who announced he would only wear one on Remembrance Day itself, and was pulled  from his job at Channel 4 as a result.

I am not the only one who has noticed the total poppy hegemony that operates from around the last week of October to the 11th November. Every news presenter, every politician, everyone, it seems, has to wear one. Perhaps it won't be too long before a non-wearer will be offered a kind of white feather, given to those disloyal  blackguards who refuse to take part in a nation's grief at the glorious dead.

If asked why I don't wear one I would summarise my feelings as "it glorifies war" and I am perfectly well aware of the counter argument, viz "It's not glorifying war; it's paying tribute to those who gave their lives for our freedom" or something like that. But it's all cant.

In an absolutely brilliant piece in The Independent  on Thursday, Robert Fisk explained his reasons for not wearing one. Essentially, he challenged a number of fondly held myths about warfare, and he should know. He's lived in Beirut for over 40 years and has literally been part of the conflict throughout that period. He pointed out that for the most part there's nothing glorious about death on the battlefield, and that those deaths are usually ordered by people far removed from the theatre of war who have no real interest in who dies or how. Tony Blair, Bob reminds us, always sports a poppy, yet he presided over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, as well as thousands of plucky grunts whose major concern was for their fellows in the foxhole, and not for any "higher cause".

He also wondered why the recognition only seems to go back as far as the first world war (which was fought in the belief that it was the war to end all wars, and as AJP Taylor observed, the politicians were prepared to fight more wars to prove that). What about older conflicts, like the Boer war or the Napoleonic wars? What about those glorious dead?

Finally, a point of my own. Let's look at Lord Kitchener, that iconic hero, tragically lost at sea in 1915 at the height of his powers. How did he establish his reputation? In no small part to the Battle of Omdurman, where a small British force devastated the mighty hordes of fuzzy-wuzzies to ensure our influence in that part of Africa for a generation. But what really happened? The "horde" that Kitchener attacked was in fact a vast rabble of men, women and children, many of them slowly starving to death, straggling across an arid plain, when a highly trained array of cavalry charged in with sabres flailing, followed up by an infantry with rifles, a technology unknown to the Africans. The result was an enormous massacre of the largely innocent. Glorious dead preserving our freedom? Give me a break.

We take part!

That's right! On Halloween we engaged with our local community and positioned an exquisitely and scarily carved (if I say so myself) pumpkin in our front window, thoughtfully illuminated by a candle placed deep in its eviscerated core and waited for the trick-or-treaters to arrive. For our scary pumpkin was there, not to scare away evil spirits but as a beacon, announcing the fact that this house was open for business. We didn't have to wait long.

We have never done this before, because over the last few years Halloween has been an opportunity for a mini-riot, with gangs of rat-faced scumbags roaming the streets, throwing fireworks and egging whatever they thought deserved it: cars, my front door, etc etc. However in the last couple of years things have been changing. Now we are beginning to adopt the American way, as exemplified by episodes of The Simpsons and Family Guy, along with countless other TV programmes. So now groups of children made up to their horrific nines (sometimes accompanied by their parents, sometimes not) are going door to door to collect confectionary.

The chocolate companies have been remarkably quick to exploit this new trend. Brands like "Cadbury's screme eggs" "monster bites" and whatever have appeared in supermarkets and sweetshops up and down the country; indeed, we ourselves availed ourselves of several of them to hand out to our visitors. There were quite a few: nine in all, in 4 separate batches (2 of them Polish), some brilliantly made up with wounds, scars and fangs. The atmosphere was warm and friendly, almost euphoric in fact, as for the most part the rain held up. One bedraggled pair lost out and were drenched by a brief downpour; to these  I offered them a double handful as compensation for their trouble.

At one level I thoroughly approve of the de-thugging of Halloween, but make no mistake. The main winners from this little social interaction are the good people of Haribo, Cadbury's and Nestle. Capitalism in action, and who can blame them? That's the trouble with capitalists: they're so damned smart.