May 2014 book and film review

BOOKS

JOSE GUADELUPE POSADA: MEXICAN POPULAR PRINTS, edited by Julian Rothenstein AND: MEXICO: DAY OF THE DEAD, edited by Chloe Sayer.
I place these two pocket-books together because of their subject matter, which taps deeply into the cultural heart of Mexico. The first is an illustrated biography of one of the 20th century's most influential print makers. Coming from libertarian/anarchistic roots, Posada used his extraordinary artistic skills and wicked sense of humour to poke fun at the Mexican establishment, pricking the pomposity of the great and good of early 20th century Mexico. Along the way he made powerful enemies, but also earned the love and respect of such figures as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and the poet Octavio Paz. It is hard to come up with a British equivalent to Posada. Gerald Scarfe perhaps, or even Ralph Steadman. Or maybe we need to go further back, to William Hogarth's savagely satirical series, The Rake's Progress. But a picture is worth a thousand words, so google him and see for yourself.

Mexico: Day of the Dead focuses on the great Latin American tradition of calling the dead back to "life" on All Souls Day at the beginning of November. Lavish dinner parties are held, with places laid for the departed, and everyone journeys to the cemetery to visit their ancestors. The festival is huge; as big as Christmas or Easter, and much of it centres around the Calavera, representations of the dead in a huge variety of settings: a skeleton wedding couple, a skeleton family having an afternoon picnic, even skeleton revolutionaries planning an insurrection, the list is endless. For us Europeans, with our tendency to sweep death under the carpet these images are highly disturbing. In Mexico and much of central America, however, the reality of death is accepted and even celebrated as an intrinsic part of life- a kind of sine qua non if you will, And let's face it, this is probably a much healthier attitude than ours, where death is viewed as an unmitigated disaster and not a subject for polite conversation and certainly not for celebrating. Once again I invite you to google calavera and delight in the amazing images you will find.

MR. NORRIS CHANGES TRAINS and GOODBYE TO BERLIN, by Christopher Isherwood.
An intelligent if slightly naive young man decides to make the Berlin of the early 1930s his home, and meets some remarkable denizens of that city, just as the Nazis are beginning to gain real power. He meets Mr Norris on the train for instance, and is rather taken with his eccentricities as well as his politics. For Mr. Norris is a reluctant darling of the communists through his writing and public speaking, but does this conceal a darker secret?
In Goodbye to Berlin we meet one of literature's most famous and enigmatic creations in the shape of Sally Bowles, who was so superbly interpreted by Bob Fosse and Liza Minelli in the film Cabaret. Yet she occupies a section of the book no longer than 50 pages, then suddenly she is gone, and we feel as bereft as we might feel if she were our own lover who has left without warning. These books are writing at its best: easy to read, yet dark, mysterious and so, so subtle.

FILMS

BELLE (2013) D- Amma Asante. An English Earl returns home from the Caribbean possessions in the mid- 18th century, bringing his illegitimate black daughter with him. The family is naturally scandalised, but in a remarkable example of racial tolerance, they come to embrace her and make her part of the family. Of course things can't be that easy. After all, at that time Britain was busy making making itself the world's richest country from the profits of the slave trade.
As Belle grows into a woman she has certain natural advantages to set against her black skin: she is beautiful, she is highly intelligent and she is an accomplished musician. These assets should help her integrate into upper-crust English society, right?
Based on actual events, this is a richly textured, beautiful film of great sensitivity and insight.
See it.

X MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. In a dystopian future where mutants and non-mutants alike are being manipulated by a heartless government to do their bidding, one mutant capable of throwing people's consciousnesses back into the past may hold the key to changing the future into a better place for everyone.
And there you have it: X  Men have gone all time-machiny, and the result is a dog's dinner of a movie which shows the franchise has finally, and rather sadly, run out of good ideas. And that's a pity, because I loved the first three movies, their energy, special effects and especially the high standard of acting throughout. All those elements are here, including a professor Xavier brought back from the dead somehow, but here it's all just a bit tired.
Don't see it.

BOYHOOD (2014) D- Richard Linklater. In 2002, a six-year old boy is struggling to adapt to his life with his newly divorced mum. Fortunately his mum has a good heart and struggles just as hard to give him and his elder sister a good life. As the film proceeds, we see him negotiate the usual traumas of childhood and adolescence, as well as some traumas no one should have to face, like living with a violent, alcoholic step-father.
But we see so much more than that, because in the course of 164 minutes we see the players age twelve years, not by virtue of special effects but because the film actually took twelve years to complete. The effect was achieved by getting the whole cast, film crew and director together twice a year through the course of twelve years, and the result is absolutely uncanny. We have all seen people age in movies and TV series. Sometimes it is courtesy of latex masks and clever special effects; sometimes it is in "real time" when in series like The Sopranos and Mad Men (you could add Malcolm in the Middle and The Middle) we see children growing up and their parents slowly ageing over the course of a number of years. But here, uniquely, we see the process unfold in the course of a single movie. The effect is really quite incredible to witness. Add to that some very fine writing and acting and you have one of the most extraordinary films I've ever seen. Much better, for instance, than Birdman, which beat it (quite unfairly in my view) to the best movie Oscar this year.
Apparently the film has received some criticism on the grounds that there are no black faces in it, despite the fact that it is set in Houston, which has a substantial black population. But I find the accusation bogus. I live in central Cardiff, over 20% of whose residents have come from abroad. How many of them do I know, never mind have close relationships with? The answer is none. Does that make me a racist? I don't think so. The reality is that ethnic groups by and large tend to stick to their own, even in the Millennium, and if this movie reflects that it doesn't, in my opinion, reflect badly on it as a piece of art.
A masterpiece.

TOM AT THE FARM (2013) D (and starring)- Xavier Dolan. A beautiful young man's boyfriend dies suddenly, and he reluctantly agrees to visit his late boyfriend's home and meet his family. Even more reluctantly he agrees (under pain of being beaten senseless) to pretend that his boyfriend was straight, even to the point of making up an imaginary girlfriend to whom the son was betrothed. Eventually, to add authenticity he recruits a girl to play the part. But this web of lies can only hold up for so long...
A strange and rather beautiful film in which we can only marvel at how such a young man as Xavier Dolan could be capable of making a film of such maturity and insight.
Excellent.

OCTOBER 1917: TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD. D- Sergei Eisenstein. In 1928 the Soviet authorities gave Eisentein the job of making a silent documentary of the momentous days in 1917 when the socialist revolution was born. Based in part on the American (how's that for irony?) John Reed's famous account, Eisenstein produced this amazing piece of film making, itself revolutionary in its editing techniques which were seen here for the first time but imitated on countless occasions since, and all under the watchful eyes of the Soviet censors. Early versions made mention of Trotsky,  (the edition we saw did contain brief references to him) but were soon airbrushed out when Trotsky was exiled and became a non person. But all the hard work, sleepless nights of meetings in smoke filled rooms, the manning of the barricades, the efforts to persuade the army not to fire on the people, it's all here. Talk about rousing. I nearly went out and set up a barricade myself...

THE SQUARE (documentary, 2013) D- Jehame Noujaime. Nearly 100 years on, another film about a revolution. No one can forget the deeply moving scenes when in the spring of 2011 the Egyptian people massed in Cairo's Tahrir Square to demand the resignation of Egypt's despotic leader Moubarak and replace him with a genuinely democratic government. I remember comparing it with those other shining examples of "people power" we have seen in recent years, the ousting of the Marcos regime in the Philippines and the demise of the Caucescus in Romania being two notable examples. We saw the same intoxicating atmosphere of freedom asserting itself on the streets of Cairo, for once not being crushed by a brutal military as it was say, in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
This film charts the long months of occupation of the Square as the ordinary people of Egypt refused to go away and let others do their work for them. It also chronicles the impact of the Muslim Brotherhood, who attempted (with some success) to subvert the struggle into a religious thing- much to the disapproval of most of the ordinary citizens, who carried banners saying things like "MUSLIMS AND CHRISTIANS- WE ARE ALL TOGETHER IN THE STRUGGLE" And tragically, these banners would soon no longer be seen on the streets as the Brotherhood gained power and influence.
The rest, as we say, is history, with the Brotherhood winning the election only to be ousted by an army who weren't about to let a fundamentalist religious clique run the show.
I remember watching the coverage on the BBC in the early days of the great protest in Tahrir Square when one commentator expressed his fear that all this would ultimately amount to nothing.  He said something like "You can change the names of the leaders but in a couple of years very little will have changed. The army will remain in charge" And I fear the maker of this outstanding documentary, when confronted with these words, might have no option but to agree that this is exactly what has happened...