March 2014 book and film review

BOOKS


THE JUNGLE, by Upton Sinclair. In the early 1900s, a family of Lithuanians seek a better life in the land of the Free and find themselves in the windy city, where they find employment in the vast meat processing concern called "Packingtown". They soon find life is hard, harder even than their own benighted country which they rapidly (though not out loud) regret leaving in the first place. Wages are just above starvation level (a dead worker is of no use to the bosses) and living conditions are no better than the coal towns of the Welsh valleys in the 19th century. But they are young, full of vigour and determined to make a go of their new life.


Despite this, they are gradually worn down by privation and injustice, to the point where some of them yearn for a new political system which will supply a little more justice for the worker and a little less profit for their masters.


Upton Sinclair was one of America's most famous and effective "socialist writers". This book brought about some important changes to the way livestock was turned into food, with new food hygiene regulations and better pay and conditions for the workers. In the years following the end of the American Civil War, plutocratic families like the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Melons and Guggenheims were allowed to practise capitalism on a scale unprecedented since the feudal system of the Middle Ages, and it was only progressive republican presidents like Theodore Roosevelt with his anti-trust laws and writers like Sinclair who set about stemming the worst of their excesses. This book is a cracking good read as well as being socially important. Read it, and remember how little has changed. In those days it was Standard Oil and US Steel, now it's Apple and Google and Amazon.


A TALE OF TWO CITIES, by Charles Dickens. An old man, almost in a catatonic stupor after years of incarceration in an attic in Paris, is rescued by his daughter and brought to England where he stages a slow, but almost complete recovery. The daughter then falls for a handsome Frenchman, little knowing he is the son of a hated aristocrat. Years later, during the time of the Great Terror, he returns to France to wind up a family business, but is snagged by the proles who are anxious to introduce him to Madame la Guillotine.
A Tale of Two Cities has one of the most famous opening lines in English literature:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" along with a similarly renowned closing line:
"This is a far, far better thing I do now than I have ever done before". These lines alone establish Dickens's classic as one of the foremost novels of the 19th century, though I have to say that much of what lies between these two immortal lines fails to live up to expectations. For me this is not one of the master's greatest offerings. The characters are not as sympathetic or vividly authentic as some we have seen in his other novels, and the plot does not roil quite as exhilaratingly as we might hope. But I will say this: his evocation of the claustrophobic and terrifying atmosphere of Paris in the years following the French Revolution of 1789 is conjured with great skill, as he shows that absolute power is just as dangerous, whether it is in the hands of the aristocracy or the mob.


THE SLAVE, by Isaac Bashevis Singer. In the Poland of the 18th century, a young Polish Jew has his family killed in a pogrom while he is sold into slavery far from his birthplace. Forced to become a cowherd, he lives in constant fear that the locals will simply tire of him and come in the night to murder him. But one woman takes a fancy to him and makes the walk up into the high pastures every day to give him food. Actually she'd like to give him more; everything in fact. He likes her as well but his religious teaching forbids any carnal relations between the two. So year after year goes by, with the sexual tension gradually building between them. Then one day a delegation from his old village arrives and offers to buy his freedom and take him home. But what to do about his would-be squeeze? Can he bring her with him? Of course not. She's a shickse, so it's impossible. Isn't it?


Isaac Bashevis was born and raised in Poland but wisely emigrated to the States in 1939, where for the rest of his long life he produced novel after novel (all written in Yiddish) of such skill and beauty he was finally awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978. This novel is apparently a typical example of his work: a superbly wrought and utterly human account of life and death in a land where life has always been cheap and inter-racial hatred never far from the surface. This reader's verdict: absolutely brilliant.


FILMS


STILL ALICE (2014) W/D- Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland. An eminent New York academic (Julianne Moore) begins to notice she no longer remembers things as well as she used to. Slowly at first, because her high intelligence has enabled her to work in adaptations to her life which effectively mask it, it gets worse.


And that's it. In what is really one of the simplest plot developments I have seen in a Hollywood movie for many years, Julianne Moore (as big a cert for best actress Oscar as Eddie Redmayne was for best actor) demonstrates with extraordinary skill and subtlety the terrible scourge that Alzheimer's disease is, not simply for her but also for her family. The family members are also excellently portrayed, especially by Alec Baldwin as her husband and by an unexpectedly good Kristen Stewart as one of her daughters. If you only go to the movies once this year, make it this one. You won't regret it, though don't expect a bundle of laughs.


BIRDMAN (2014) D- Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. A fading Hollywood superstar who made his reputation (and money) as a mythical superhero seeks to kick-start his fading career by producing and starring in a Broadway play. Events conspire to confound his plans: one of his co-stars breaks a leg (literally) and then he hears the NYT's leading drama critic is about to publish a review trashing his best efforts. Things don't look good so far...


This is the latest in a line of highly articulate movies (New York Synechdoche, Me and Orson Welles) that intermittently hit our screens and blow us away with the sheer audacity of their writing. This writing though, does not come without its own problems. Three screenwriters are credited, and it seems there were almost intractable script problems from day one. It took nearly two years to agree on the script, and despite its tremendous cleverness one still wonders if they got it completely right. But one does become deeply involved with Michael Keaton's character as well as the people around him who at turns help him out and stand in the way of bringing about his apotheosis. There are still some minor issues about the plotline for my money, but let's not be too pedantic. It's still a damn good film.


SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN (2012) D- Thalik Bendjalloul. (documentary) In the early 1970s a new singer/songwriter known as Rodriguez appeared on the scene, think a kind of Bob Dylan meets Jose Feliciano though with a tougher, more streetwise edge than either. But he failed to make an impression on the American public, and following a disastrous show when he was pretty much booed off stage, he virtually disappeared from the face of the Earth. Entirely by chance, his songs were played in an Apartheid South Africa where they struck a chord with the disaffected (white) youth of that pariah state. Unbeknown to the artist himself, his records started selling by the million there and at one point he was the most popular recording artist in South Africa. Small point: where did the money go? His American manager insists he never saw any of it, and that in the US he sold about six records: "I bought one, Rodriguez bought one and I think his family bought the other four", he reports.
Then in the 1990s two South African hyper-fans sought to find out what had happened to their hero. Did he set fire to himself on stage, as a popular rumour had it at the time, or did he shoot himself in the head on stage, which was another equally popular folk legend? The answer, as they eventually found, was stranger than either of these theories, but I try not do spoilers in this blog. See it for yourself and find out. The journey's worth it...


BEAUFORT (2007) D- Joseph Cedar (Israel) In 1982, during the disastrous Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon, troops occupy a decaying crusader castle and make it their home. For 18 years. Finally, in 2000, the soldiers are preparing to quit their mountain redoubt. But Hesbollah aren't about to let them go quietly...


A realistic and thoughtful Israeli film which, like the grunts themselves, is not interested in the politics of the situation. The soldiers are just happy to go and frustrated at the repeated delays that continue to put them in jeopardy. Like a lot of British war films of the sixties, there's the inevitable bolshie one who wants to know why they are there in the first place, but the others don't care. They just want to be back home with their families. Will they make it, or will Hesbollah's increasingly accurate shelling take them out even as the last convoy of trucks is taking them home?
A creditable offering, and not half as bellicose as its current generation of political leaders.


THE BABADOOK (2014) D- Jennifer Kent (Australia) A single mum does her best to bring up her son by herself in semi rural Australia. Then she finds a rather strange pop-up book called "The Babadook" on the bookshelf and selects it as bedtime reading. Big mistake. The story turns out to be much too dark for a six-year-old and she abandons it. But things begin to happen which suggest the book is not simply a work of fiction: perhaps it has a personality of its own and that personality is not nice. Not nice at all. In fact even their lives come under threat, despite Mum's attempts to exorcise its evil influence from their home.


An entertaining and genuinely frightening movie with some of the understated atmosphere of fear that was so brilliantly created  in the original 1963 film The Haunting (and not its terrible 1998 remake with Liam Neeson and Catherine Zeta Jones, which was more laughable than scary).


HAXAN (1922) W/D- Benjamin Christensen. (Danish, documentary) Also known in Britain as A History of Witchcraft through the Ages, this alternative title neatly sums up the subject matter of the film, which is based on a famous 16th century German text known as the Malleus Mallifecarum, or "Hammer of the Witches" which was a sort of do-it-yourself guide to finding your witch, torturing her (it was usually her) to get at the truth, then how to dispose of them once condemned. It is reckoned that followers of the guide may have murdered over a million innocent women in the three centuries following its publication, and this extraordinary film, incredibly advanced for its time, illustrates all the horrible steps from apprehension, through torture to execution. It uses straightforward documentary techniques but also some amazing dramatized scenes which set the scene for dramatized documentaries for the next century. Groundbreaking.


BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB (2001) P- Ry Cooder, D- Wim Wenders. In a "let's put on a show" tradition which goes back at least as far as A Midsummer Night's Dream, American musical icon Ry Cooder goes in search of some of Cuba's most talented jazz musicians in order to bring them together for a one-off concert in Amsterdam. In so doing he wanders the shanty towns of Havana to find a collection of legendary musicians, living quietly (and in great poverty) and puts his great idea to them. Laconic, laid back fellows that they are, they gladly agree, not only to Cooder's proposal but also to having Wim Wenders and his film crew record the whole thing for posterity. The result is an amazing piece of film making, unique in its structure and exceptional in terms of its musical quality. I happened to watch this film on "World Happiness Day" and I can say it was an excellent choice for that day (or any other come to that); watching it certainly made me happy for nearly two hours.


CHRONICLE (2012) D- Josh Trank. Three teenagers discover a new sinkhole has opened up in the woods close to their homes. They go inside to investigate, where they find a curious glowing material coating the walls. They go home, and find the next day that the hole has fallen in blocking the entrance. Then they find strange things are happening to them... They can move chess pieces by the power of their minds, even cause them to hang weightless in the air. Before long they can do much more, cause a car to veer off the road with a wave of the hand; next, they can fly...
But with great power comes great responsibility and these three adolescents are in no way equipped to deal with their newly acquired superpowers. Trouble, bad trouble is just around the corner.


Entertaining debut from director Josh Trank who was given a big budget to work with and amply justified the outlay. I thought the pace flagged a little about twenty minutes before the end but otherwise this was a very satisfying little movie.


MELANCHOLIA (2011) D- Lars von Trier. An exoplanet the size of Jupiter is discovered to have entered the Solar System and might be on a collision course with Earth. Some astronomers say it will just miss Earth, others (whose pronouncements are suppressed by governments fearful of mass hysteria) say there will be a direct hit, in which case all life on Earth, indeed Earth itself, will be annihilated. As the planet, named "Melancholia" draws nearer until it is clearly visible in the night sky, two sisters watch its approach with a mixture of apprehension and stoicism.


A fascinating premise created by one of the world's most innovative directors, this film is saturated with sublime images of the new planet and emotionally overpowering music, particularly Wagner, which is interesting in itself as it wasn't that long ago that Von Trier in his famous "Dogmae 95" treatise insisted that films should, among other things, be made solely in the 4/3 format and be free of any musical soundtrack. He breaks both of his own rules here, making a picture of incredible beauty and emotional power. Kirsten Dunst shows she is capable of turning in a really superior acting performance on screen, as does Kiefer Sutherland who plays her astronomer brother-in-law and demonstrates that he doesn't have to shoot someone every five minutes to make his screen presence felt. Astounding.

Today we all feel a little less safe

Now it has emerged that the German airliner which crashed in the Alps was directed to its doom by the deliberate actions of the co-pilot, every airline passenger in the world ( and that's over a million people a day, every day) will have felt an awful chill running through their bones. For myself this feeling is mixed with a great sense of rage at that man's callous disregard, not only for his own life but for the 150 other souls aboard that fateful day. I'd almost feel better if it was some sort of terrorist outrage; almost any other explanation is preferable to the thought that someone wanted to die and didn't mind how many people he took with him.


The desire to take someone with you when you commit suicide is a well recognised phenomenon. Police know to be very cautious when approaching potential jumpers from high places. They know some of them like to drag someone else with them on their final journey. Perhaps it makes them feel better in their enterprise to know someone else is joining them on their final journey. I don't know, but I do know that what we saw earlier this week represented the most astonishing level of selfishness: quite literally, how could he do that?


There are a number of precedents for pilots committing "suicide by airliner"- a couple in America in the last twenty years, an Egyptair flight when the facts were vehemently denied by both the pilot's family and the entire Egyptian establishment, which came together to reject any possibility that the impossible had actually taken place, although an exhaustive investigation by the American NTSB found there could have been no other explanation. Here the reasons have emerged very quickly, so quickly in fact that I find myself wondering whether that is really the right answer, though perhaps that is just my mind refusing to accept such a terrible thing- a bit like the Egyptians I mentioned above in fact. But unlike them, I am prepared to listen to the evidence and accept the truth if that evidence is convincing.


All that remains is for everyone to take a deep breath the next time they climb aboard a plane and hope that everyone on board wants to land safely at their destination as much as they do. Stay lucky, people...

Me and Alistair: like that.

When I heard the news last night that DC had anointed his preferred successors my first thought was: Say wha? Shortly followed by: that's a bit, inept, isn't it?


So I was surprised and gratified when later that night on Newsnight Alistair Campbell, high priest of spin and general political savant, expressed those self-same views. Cameron's choices are not exactly shocking: George Osborne, Israel's best friend in Britain and the best friend of  laissez faire capitalism outside the Russian oligarchs club and the American Tea Party. Theresa May, a woman of even less charisma than Osborne, if such a thing is possible, but undeniably possessing that great quality of durability, and Boris, as big on charisma as the other two are lacking in it, but unfortunately little else; a triumph of style over substance if you will.


No, the interesting thing is Cameron's timing. One's first thought was we were witnessing some piece of political machination worthy of Machiavelli, but on reflection, as Alistair concluded, it seems it was simply dumb. Which doesn't say much for his political nouse nor his advisors- if indeed they had any part in it. More likely they were as gobsmacked as the rest of us and wondered what the hell he was thinking in making an announcement of this sort barely two months ahead of a General Election.


To me the whole thing speaks to the intellectual poverty of the Tories in general and DC in particular. If they do actually win in May it will only reflect the fact that the electorate are as stupid as they are.

The eclipse: how was it for you?

Did you see much? If you live in South Wales the answer is you saw everything, because skies here were completely clear throughout the two hours it took for the Moon to pass across the face of the Sun. If you live in the Home Counties, where a third of Britain's population lives, you were, for once, rather less successful. It isn't very often the skies of South Wales afford the best opportunity in the UK for making astronomical observations, but such was the case today.


From my garden I was able to observe the strange change in light quality that occurs during an eclipse, and note how the tiny holes in my bedroom curtains cast beautiful little crescent-shaped images all across our bed. The same phenomenon could be observed out in the garden as eclipsed sunlight filtered through the foliage.


But any partial eclipse is a disappointment compared to a total solar eclipse, two of which I have been privileged to witness in my life, one on the slopes of Mauna Kea in Hawaii in 1991 and again in 1994, high in the Chilean Andes. Only then can the magical corona be seen, the glowing atmosphere of the Sun which extends out many millions of miles from its surface. If you're really lucky, as I was in Hawaii, you may also see solar prominences, brilliant smudges of crimson on the Sun's rim, marking huge plumes of incandescent gas streaming out from the sun. If you are less fortunate, as we were in Cornwall in 1999,  heavy, rain-filled cloud can obscure the sun completely and all you experience is it going dark in the middle of the day, which is pretty amazing in its own way but not exactly what you went there for. And I understand that is regrettably what happened in the Faeroes this morning where they saw... bugger all. Better luck next time all you eclipse chasers. It's in South-East Asia next year, so you should have a much better chance there.

Palestine: a new hope (sort of)

Israelis go to the polls today and some say Bibi is in trouble. He's not far enough right for many of his colleagues in the Likud party, and he hasn't gone down well with America recently after his shrill denunciation of Iran, a country with whom the Yanks would like to do business, especially since they have shown their willingness to fight "so called Islamic State" as the BBC now likes to call them. This opens the door to a slightly less right-of-centre party which might make a tiny difference to the political complexion of Israel.


Israelis talk about the "banana of hate" that surrounds them: Iran, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. And it's true these countries don't approve of the Israeli state in general and their treatment of the Palestinian people in particular, though they might be a little better disposed if the latter were granted some of the human rights they have been denied for so long. Part of the problem is the refusal of the "banana states" to even officially recognise the existence of Israel. If they did, and it's an awfully big "if", the door might just open a crack to allow the light of dialogue creep into the negotiating room. At present that door is slammed shut and securely locked.


However it isn't all doom and gloom on the West Bank. Much vaunted (mainly by himself) Middle East peace negotiator Tony Blair has found himself losing support from the "Quartet" which currently pays him a large sum of cash every year for doing approximately nothing at all beyond lining his own capacious pockets, and is now thinking of withdrawing from his current role. Apparently he's trying to re-tool his job description out there. Good luck with that. With any luck he'll be gone soon and they can maybe begin something halfway constructive. When I last visited the West Bank few people had even heard of him and the ones that had said he has never once done anything of value for the Palestinians. So farewell, Tony: you'll be sorely missed by, absolutely no one.

Stop press: dinosour recognises himself as such

The culture secretary Sajid Javid was on the news this morning as a new statue of Ghandi is to be unveiled in Parliament Square. Yet the BBC interviewer still couldn't restrain himself asking the culture secretary his views on L'affaire Clarkson. The poor bloke was actually wrong-footed for a moment before recovering himself and pointing out that he was there to talk about someone of marginally greater cultural significance. I'd have liked to hear a little discussion about, say, the irony of the fact that Ghandi is to be placed in Parliament Square despite the fact that he was perhaps one of the greatest advocates of extra-parliamentary action in history. Ghandi's scheme to remove the hated British from India was based on non violent direct action, without which India might still be the jewel in Britain's Imperial Crown.
But no. There was, in the BBC interviewer's mind at least, a far more important area of discussion.


And there you have it. But if you must, let's look at Clarkson. A man is three hours late arriving at his hotel, apparently entirely due to his own actions, then launches into one of his famous hissy fits because there is no hot meal waiting for him. He throws a punch at his producer in frustration, grounds for dismissal in most workplaces, especially considering his track record. But then half a million loyal fans declare undying allegiance to the Politically Incorrect One, these including his personal mate and near neighbour, David Cameron. What it is to have powerful friends... Poor BBC! What will they do now? They don't want to kill their golden goose, but then they must show that Clarkson's bosses are in charge, not him.


And now finally Jezza admits in print that he may indeed be past his sell-by date.


We know Top Gear is one of the BBC's most successful franchises, making millions in no less than 214 countries around the world. But do they all tune in to watch him? I doubt it. I have connections in Palestine, where the programme is a smash, but not because of Clarkson, whom most Palestinians couldn't even name. They love it because of the cars, stupid, not the presenters. So here's my advice Beeb: lose him now, bring someone new in, Damon Hill say, or Martin Brundle, and you'll still make your millions. And put Jezza out to grass, which is where he should have been put long ago.

Death of a magpie

This morning I was interrupted from my usual diet of watching interesting programmes from the tele I recorded last night (on this occasion I was watching a slightly dry Horizon on the subject of gravitational waves still reverberating in the universe even though they formed in its first second) when I heard a commotion in the garden. I went out to look and there was my ginger tom Rufus holding a fully grown magpie in its maw. I did my usual thing of trying to startle him, hoping he might drop the bird, allowing it to escape. This sometimes works but I could see the bird was hanging limply and was in all probability already dead. But its fellows, a tiding of anything up to eight other magpies launched into a furious fusillade of protest: cah-cah-cah-cah- cah! Acting in concert they flew around and around our cat, perching on tree branches perilously close to him and screaming out their disapproval. I don't think I have ever heard such a small collection of birds make such an infernal din.


Twenty minutes later they were still at it, vowing their revenge on my cat and grieving the loss of their fellow creature. But in all their mobbing they were careful not to get too close to him. They had already witnessed what happens when a bird does that...


I have shared my house with cats for as long as I can remember, and I do harbour deep misgivings about the toll they take on birds and other animals. A cat may kill as many as 500 birds in its lifetime, driven, not by hunger but a deep, primeval instinct to hunt. And unfortunately for other wildlife they are superbly adapted predators with acute senses with a range of vicious weaponry at their disposal. We know that cats are partly responsible for the decline of birds in Britain, and I don't feel good about that. But they rarely take down magpies. Magpies are one of the species which hasn't declined in the last 50 years, partly because of their vigour, high intelligence (some say they are as smart as dolphins) and supremely adaptable nature. But just because they are common and widely distributed doesn't make me feel any better about seeing one of their number taken down.


Why have a cat at all? For me the answer is, if I may use thecurrent expression: my cats are emotional support animals, central to maintaining my emotional equilibrium. So I won't be getting rid of them any time soon. But I will continue to do my best to retrieve animals from their clutches when I can. I owe the animal kingdom that much at least.

The "beautiful men" destroying history in Iraq

The human rights group "Cage" didn't make many friends when one of their spokesmen described the man now known as "Jihadi John" as a "beautiful man". Turns out he didn't really know him, but that was the line they decided to take. Seems like we now need to redefine that term in light of what Emwhasi was actually getting up to.


The Cage spokesman also suggested that if he had gone bad then we must look to MI5 for the reason, as it was them who pushed him over the edge with their monitoring and harassment. Now here I have a certain sympathy with both sides. British citizens have a right to their views, however unpleasant they may be, though they don't have the right to blow us up because they disapprove of our government's foreign policy. I also feel for MI5, who are clearly out of their depth when it comes to assessing and monitoring threats. To me, stopping people in the street and asking them what they think about 9/11 or 7/7 is not necessarily the best way of going about it, though apparently that is exactly what they did.


Today we have heard more about what Jihadi John and his co-religionists have been doing in Iraq: bulldozing the ancient site of Nimrud in northern Iraq. Of course this is not new. In 2009 the Taliban dynamited the giant Buddhas in the Bamyam valley in Afghanistan, because they, er, weren't Islamic. Same thing in Nimrud. This site was built thousands of years before Mohammed, peace be upon him, was ever thought of. No matter. If they don't approve- it gets blown up. Sounds like if they came over here they would flatten Stonehenge, which is a spiritual site which pre-dates Islam and therefore should be destroyed, as should the west front of Wells cathedral. Come to think of it, we have had our own, homegrown cultural vandals in the shape of the puritans who laboured long and hard to destroy anything they didn't approve of. There was man they called "Stone-killer Robinson" who made it his business to topple all the stones in the great Avebury Stone circle in the 17th century. Fortunately there are several hundred of them and he never achieved his goal, though dozens of stones are now missing or buried deep in the ground, with only concrete markers indicating where they once stood.


These ancient sites do not belong to the countries where they are found: they belong to the world, and when they are destroyed they represent a crime against the entire world, and it is for this reason the devils of ISIS stand condemned in the court of public decency everywhere where history is cherished.