August 2016 book and film review

Finally, and just in time, I have caught up with my media reviews. It has been an enormous effort do achieve it in view of my current predicament (more on this later; watch this space), but I owe it to my  vast readership (hah!) and indeed to myself to keep up my blog. So welcome to the books and films I encountered this month.

BOOKS

MAUS, by Art Spiegelman.
A graphic novelist reckons he can make a book out of his father's recollections of Auschwitz. But his father's memories have faded over the decades; he has burnt his diaries and there is another slight problem: he finds his dad's quirky ways extremely irritating. However, by exercising reserves of patience he never knew he had, he gradually coaxes the reminiscences out of a man who has spent half his life trying to put the past behind him...

His father turns out to have been a highly intelligent and infinitely resourceful man, who used his wits and numerous acquired skills to keep him out of the gas chambers for year after year. Which is more than could be said of his many friends and relatives, who weren't so lucky. Slowly the son begins to understand his father's miserliness and motivation to do everything for himself despite his frailty. In Auschwitz you had to- or die.

Normally I am not much of a graphic novel guy, though I have tried a few. This, however, is one of the very best. Beautifully drawn (the Jews are portrayed as as mice, the Nazis as cats while the Poles are pigs), funny, deeply moving, it won America's Pulitzer Prize for its astonishing originality and humanity.
Highly recommended.

THE BLOOD STRAND, by Chris Ould.
A British detective returns to the Faroes of his childhood to visit a father he hasn't seen since they fell out over twenty years before. But now it's a different situation. The abrasive, hostile man he knew is now lying in a coma following a stroke, and there's something else: there's a discharged shotgun in the car he was found in, and nearly half a million in cash in a brief case in the boot. What happened?
On a strictly unofficial basis, he makes friends with the local police investigating the "crime", though it isn't yet clear if there was crime at all. But piece by piece, a strange train of events begins to unfold...

Chris Ould's "Faroes" series has gone down very well with the European thriller-buyng public, and he has been commissioned to write at least two more. I can see why. His style is calm, fluid, and full of fascinating procedural detail. There are some problems though. I find it hard to believe a foreign police force would so readily bring a foreigner into their investigations, even if he is a police officer himself and related by blood to some of the main players. That aside, I found the story gripping and skilfully constructed.
Nice one, Chris.

BERLIN, by Anthony Beevor.
It is January 1945. The war is as good as over, and everyone except Hitler and his coterie of sycophants knows it. The Allies are closing in from the west, while on the borders of Poland the biggest army ever amassed together in one place is preparing to storm the citadel. Will the Germans accept the inevitable and give up to avoid further suffering? Will they hell. What follows in the next four months is one of the most terrible tales in the annals of war.

Many of the facts are now common knowledge: the Red Army engage in a programme of mass rape which is sanctioned, albeit tacitly, at the highest level, roil through Poland, not as a liberating force but as a heartless army of invasion; the Allies coming over the Rhine, ready and able to get to Berlin before them, but prevented from doing so by a gullible American leadership who believe all Stalin's lies. And the terrible struggle for Berlin which cost so much suffering and so many lives.

With my own life in turmoil, I think I chose this book to read about people in an even worse mess than I am, which I have to say takes some doing. But this book achieves it. Anthony Beevor is a brilliant writer of non-fiction, bringing to life the horrors of Hitler's Gotterdamerung in vivid and graphic tones. I thought I knew this story pretty well, but I know a hell of lot more now...

FILMS

THE MARTIAN (2016) D- Ridley Scott. In the 2060s a team of astronauts on the Red Planet have to leave in a hurry when a huge storm (they do have them there) threatens to destroy their spacecraft. They think one of their number has been killed by flying debris, but no, he's still alive. He's got food and oxygen enough for a month, then he will die. Unless of course, he can apply his knowledge of engineering and combine that with an incredibly fierce survival instinct to figure out a way to stay alive.

From the various landers and an extremely comprehensive overview of the surface from satellite imaging, we know a lot about how Mars looks, and Ridley Scott has done a bang-up job of making it look remarkably authentic. And for once, we have a film about science which with a very few minor exceptions is completely believable. Matt Damon is ace as the stranded Martian; in fact the only problem I had with the film is his almost overwhelming will to survive the months and years before any kind of rescue mission can be mounted. Perhaps I'm saying I wouldn't have the strength and ingenuity to do such a thing, but I guess if you are possessed of sufficient quantities of the right stuff, then maybe you can.
Pretty good stuff.

LES COMBATTANTS (2014) W/D- Thomas Cailley. Over the long hot summer of central France while waiting to go to college (maybe), boy meets girl. She's convinced of the forthcoming apocalypse and is developing her survival skills accordingly. He, on the other hand, just wants to have some fun.  They join the local French equivalent of the TA; she to loan her survival skills, he for want of anything better to do, and of course, to be near her. She soon finds the training isn't hardcore enough for her, so they do a bunk and run off to live on their wits in the forest. But living off the land is not as easy as the survival guides suggest...

Also known as Love at First Fight, I really liked this little offering, with its unusual twist on young romance. The directing is highly professional, and the two stars, Adele Haenel and Kevin Azais turn in very neat performances.
Bittersweet and engaging.

DAVID BRENT: LIFE ON THE ROAD (2016) W/D- Ricky Gervaise. David Brent is back after ten years, now a junior sales exec, but still trying to convince himself he can become a rock star if he only pours enough (borrowed) money into the enterprise. It doesn't matter that his band is made up of session musicians he barely knows, or the fact that no one comes to the gigs. Everything will work out, surely some agent will discover his talent and make him a star.

The Office was one of the most remarkable comedy phenomena of the Millennium. Spawning a slew of other "mocumentary" style comedies, including the massively successful Modern Family and making stars out of actors like Martin Freeman, to say nothing of catapulting Ricky into megastardom on both sides of the Atlantic (not an easy trick), David Brent can now be seen alongside Basil Fawlty and Alan Partridge as one of the quintessential comedic characters of the last fifty years. And here we see the man in full, a man who cannot grasp the fact that in order for people like him he only needs to be himself and not what he thinks they want him to be. The squirm-inducing laughs are still there as before, but this movie also has a heart- which it had to have; otherwise the psychological self-destruct David indulges in might engulf us in a pit of depression we might find it impossible to escape from.
The thinking person's comedy film of the summer.

SUFFRAGETTE (2014) D- Sarah Gavron. Not so long ago, in a world where ladies' brains were considered to be incapable of taking on big themes like who should run the country, and should concern themselves rather with things like fluffy little kittens, a group of women struggle to change the law. Sometimes at a terrible cost to themselves...

A very tidy little movie which should educate today's young people of what is now an almost forgotten struggle, of a time when these women were seen as threats to the establishment in a way we might think of IS today. All the players are excellent, especially Carey Mulligan and HBC (though re Meryl Streep, blink and you'll miss her) and I thought the re-creation of the Houses of Parliament were brilliantly realised, until I learnt that Parliament actually allowed filming to take place there,
apparently for the first time. That should say something about how seriously this film, and the issues it explores, should be taken.

JULIETA (2016) D- Pedro Almodovar. A Spanish woman hasn't seen her only child for years. We don't know why yet. Then she bumps into one of her schoolfriends who tells her she ran into her quite recently when visiting Lake Como on a photoshoot. This starts her thinking. She's tried repeatedly to get in touch over the years without any success. Maybe she should have one last try...

It has occurred to me Almodovar is sort of the European equivalent of Woody Allen: a guy who can't stop making funny, thoughtful movies, most of which are pretty good and some of which are exceptional. This is in the latter category. Apparently based on three separate short stories, Almodovar puts together an intricately wrought storyline and peoples it with some beautifully drawn characters. Some aspects will deeply disturb anyone who is a parent, because it is all about parenthood, and the agonies that can bring about.
Movie making of the highest quality.