September 2016 book and film review

BOOKS

SEBASTIAN BERGMAN, by Hjorth Rosenfeldt.
A teenage boy is found horribly murdered and there are no clues as to the perp. An eminent, but of late discredited forensic psychologist insinuates himself into the investigation, but he has a hidden agenda: he has learned he might have a daughter he has never met, and perhaps the IT resources available to the police might help him find her...
The character of Sebastian Bergman has been incorporated into a TV series, highly successful in the Nordic states though it hasn't made it over here yet (it's only a matter of time; our appetite for Nordic noir seems to know no bounds), and some of the later books come over like novelisations of the TV programmes. But this is the original and genuine article, and does read like a proper novel. It is well written, certainly, though some of the twists and turns seem slightly improbable, to say the least. We know our Sebastian has a past, but would a seasoned pro like him really seduce not one, but two women closely linked to the investigation? I thinknottle. Still, if you like your Scandi crime thrillers, this one will do nicely.

DR MUKTI, AND OTHER TALES OF WOE, by Will Self.
Dr Mukti is an Asian shrink working in a provincial London hospital, and a rivalry develops between him and another shrink who works in a more prestigious institution. To begin with, this takes the form of one referring a particularly troublesome or otherwise difficult patient to the other, who returns the favour with an even bigger clinical conundrum. But then it gets darker, much darker...
There is a grain of authenticity to this story. I myself have deliberately referred nightmare patients to clinicians I didn't like, thinking "Hah! This'll fuck 'em up a treat". Usually, of course, that's where it ends.
I chose to read this after being thoroughly blown away by the genius of The Book of Dave, and I
wasn't disappointed. Will Self is a frighteningly intelligent writer who has developed his own unique style. He doesn't insult the reader's intelligence; indeed in this book I had to look up more than 30 words I didn't know. I just love the way he writes. Try this, for example, which appears in the story 161:
...against the left-hand wall was a row of armchairs, as grim and overstuffed as unwelcome elderly relatives watching the dancing at a wedding. One was covered in green plush velveteen, the next in greasy brown leatherette, while the third along had foam rubber bursting from its wounded shoulders. A fourth canted painfully, one short leg broken beneath its sagging arse...
See?

A HEART SO WHITE, by Javier Marias
A newly married man should be enjoying his honeymoon in Havana, but is continually distracted by thoughts of father and his two wives, or is it three? He knows one died young, possibly by her own hand, but this is a family that knows how to keep its secrets... While staring out of the window he overhears a conversation coming from next door. A woman is trying to persuade her boyfriend to leave his wife for her, if necessary by murdering her. He tries not to listen in, but can't help it. Will these characters come back to haunt him later?
I discovered this book entirely by chance. My wife came across it in a charity shop and recommended it to me (I owe her an enormous debt of gratitude for all the wonderful books she has endorsed over the years). And despite the fact that the writing is dense and meticulous I soon realised I was in the presence of greatness. Yes, this is a great novel, putting even the likes of Will Self into the shade. I hear the smart money is on him to win the Nobel Prize in the not too distant future; I can't think of any other living writer who deserves it more.

FILMS

SOMEWHERE (2010) D- Sophia Coppola. An extremely famous movie star (think Brad Pitt, say) seems to be possessed by an unusually severe case of ennui, to the point where even hiring a gorgeous pair of identical strippers to perform for him barely piques his interest. Is it his failed marriage, perhaps? It certainly isn't his daughter, who he occasionally has custody of,  a delightful teenager (Elle Fanning), the only player in the film who isn't completely fucked up. Or is it some deeper, existential angst? To be honest, we never really find out, and I'm not sure we care either. As with her recent film The Bling Ring, Sophia Coppola seems to specialist in empty, vapid types which perhaps reflect her own experience of the Hollywood scene, growing up as she did as the daughter of a famous director. Whatever, the result is disappointing, except as I say for the delightful performance of Elle Fanning.

 CAFE SOCIETY (2016) D- Woody Allen. A young man in the 1930s wants to break into Hollywood and is lucky enough to have a distant relative in a powerful role. Unfortunately he only gets extra parts and like stuff, though he does fall for the mogul's secretary. She likes him, but belongs to another. He becomes disillusioned and returns to New York, where he falls on his feet and manages a successful night club. But then, who should he run into... Woody Allen is over 80 now, which doesn't seem to stop him churning out film after film, year after year. How does he do it? Christ knows. All I know is, his poorer efforts (which this is) are better than most people's best.

 FRANK (2014) D- Lennie Abrahamson. A talented but unemployed musician hears an avant grade group one day and decides he could be part of their ensemble. Small point: the leader wears a large, papier-mâché head and never, ever, takes it off. OK, never mind, that's all part of the experimental nature of the band, right? Our boy puts his life savings into renting a cabin in the country for a year, which the band inhabit and make their beautiful, obscure music. Maybe some day they'll take their show on the road. Won't they? This strange, and rather wonderful tale is based on the character of "Frank Sidebottom" a persona created by the British DJ and notable eccentric Chris Sievey back in the 90s. He really did go round for prolonged periods of time with his strange head, and was apparently deeply loved by a select coterie of admirers in the Manchester area. It all passed me by, but I'm glad this film didn't. Weird, but excellent.

 HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT (2015) D- Kent Jones. In 1962, rookie auteur Francois Truffaut, entranced by his hero Alfred Hitchcock, wrote to him requesting he film a series of in depth interviews on the rotund one's canon of extraordinary films. Understandably flattered, Hitch graciously agreed. From these interviews came the book "Hitchcock/Truffaut" published later that year, which remains one of the most intimate and detailed analyses of any film maker. Now director Abrahamson has unearthed the source material, namely all those filmed interviews and edited them down into one fascinating little piece. What we see is a totally unaffected Hitchcock expounding on his favorite subject, his own work, while a star-struck Truffaut interjects only an occasional brief question to keep him going. We learn a lot, but above all we find that what Hitchcock wants to do is to affect the audience, make them feel what he wants them to: lust, longing, fear, joy, the whole gamut in fact if he can, and my goodness he can, if movies like Stangers on a Train, Psycho or Vertigo anything to go by. A must for anyone who'd like to think they were a film buff.

Is Keith Richards our GLE? Part 2

Last night I finished watching my recordings of BBC 4's remarkable exploration of the life of Keith Richards, explored mainly by the man himself over three days of broadcasts. I feel slightly disloyal to him because I have not watched all of it live, that is to be with him at night and into the small hours approaching dawn. For this is Keith's time. A man who has spent his whole life awake and plying his trade when the rest of us are sleeping, and vice versa. They say this kind of inversion is bad for us; that it shortens life: Keith appears to be the living example of why that theory may be wrong. At 73 he is not only still here, but as feisty, charming and charismatic as he has ever been, despite his nocturnal habits and a host of other pursuits that might have seen lesser men succumb decades ago. "At night we're more free", he says, and more relaxed, open and honest too.

It was also notable for what wasn't said. Although he salutes his fellow band members as true friends and even comrades in arms in the war to make great music and foil the establishment, he hardly mentions Mick Jagger at all. This despite the fact that almost every song in the huge canon of the Rolling Stones has the credit: "written by Jagger/Richards". Brian gets the briefest of tributes; Ronny Wood is cited as one who loves fame and knows how to handle it. Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman, however, don't even make it onto the radar.


Not that the whole 27 hours of programming were Keith talking about himself and his life with Rolling Stones, though it has to be said that it was when he was the television was at its most riveting. But Keith was allowed to show us a range of his favourite films and other features, revealing a taste that aligns in many cases precisely with my own. Films like The Thirty-Nine Steps, The Man who would be King, Build my Gallows High and Bicycle Thieves, shorts like a selection of wonderful Tex Avery cartoons and experimental films from the 60s, even the odd Hancock's Half-Hour. 

I congratulate the Beeb for their courage in devoting so much time to this project, and also to Julien Temple for putting the whole thing together. One wonders who else currently alive could warrant such an accolade: David Attenborough perhaps, or Paul McCartney? But neither, I suspect, nor perhaps anyone else could provide the sustained fascination for such an extended period as did our Keith. Nice one, mate. You did good. Real good. In your own parlance, you are one cool cat.

Is Keith Richards our GLE?

You might not think of the Wrinkled One first on your shortlist of Greatest Living Englishmen. What about David Attenborough, you might say, or Tim Berners-Lee? I might have said the same thing, until last night when I began to watch BBC 4's bold and highly courageous donation of a huge tract of their airtime to El Ricardo to talk about his life and work. Keith was born in 1943, making him eight years older than me. He was born in hospital, which was fortunate because when the family returned home they found it had been flattened by a German bomb.

His childhood was spent playing in bomb-sites (so was mine; many were still there by the mid 50s) and waiting for the ration on sweets to be lifted (it was the last commodity to be rationed, and when it was lifted, in 1955, it constituted one of my first memories) Being smaller than his contemporaries, he was bullied at school until one day the red mist descended and he lashed out at one. From that day on he became the defender of other bullied children. All this I can to some extent identify with. What I can't is his early infatuation with the guitar and playing the blues on it. But as we know, the rest is history, and the most extraordinary history at that. When we finally gave up and went to bed last night, he was talking about making friends with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, their initial success and resultant fame and how poor Brian couldn't cope with that.

I am looking forward to watching the next instalment of The Keith's Progress with enormous anticipation. You could do worse than join me...

The Big Day has arrived!

I've had some big, bad days recently, but hopefully this will be a good one, one to mark a new and positive direction in my life: It is the first day of my Masters in creative writing course at Cardiff university. My first task will be to find room 126 in the School of English, Philosophy and Communication, no less, housed in the "John Percival Building". Google maps has helped me find it; let's hope that works.

I know how to write, write quickly sometimes when called upon to do so. I know some of the regle de Jeux of creative writing, you know, show not tell, kill your darlings, your final draft minus 10%, that sort of thing. I have even put one or two half-way decent short stories and travel writing pieces together. But can I learn to write really well, produce something of real depth? It remains to be seen.

I'll admit to feeling a bit scared. After all, it's been a cool 42 years since I was last a student, and I fancy things may have changed a little in the interim. When I went to collect my student card, essential shibboleth to enable anything to happen on campus, I was given a number and told to wait until it came up on a big board. I was given the number 032. The number on the board was 705. Nearly three hours passed before my number came up. I felt most sorry for the processors, just six of them to deal with a massive student body, at least 75% of whol did not hail originally from the UK as far as I could make out. But I was impressed by the general atmosphere of calm that prevailed among the students. Nobody lost their cool and started shouting, although clearly many had complex visa or other administrative issues to grapple with. Most occupied their time by staring at their mobile phones, though some did engage in actual conversation with their peers. That's a good sign, right?

So it's yes to Hinkley C after all

When in the summer Theresa May called whoa to the signing of the deal to have the French and Chinese to build a nuke at Hinkley Point I thought, good for her, this bodes well for her leadership.
But then the Chinese had a word in her shell-like at the recent G8 summit and now we're going for it. What did they say? It isn't hard to imagine. Something like: "You frustrate us now at your peril. I don't think you want the ire of the world's second biggest economy falling on you. There's too much at stake, not for us very much, but for you a whole lot..." And she buckled.

Now we're going for Brexit, she has doubtless argued behind the scenes, we can't afford to alienate one of our biggest trading partners. We'd be fucked. But would we? They talk about "energy security" all the time these days, but tell me, what is more secure than the knowledge that the wind will blow and the tide will go in and out twice a day? That's where we should be concentrating our efforts, not in an extremely expensive, potentially catastrophic method of creating electricity.

Not long ago the Japanese premier visited Wales, where we are considering replacing the ageing Wylfa nuclear power plant with a new one. He reminded us what happened at Fukushima, where, despite sophisticated defence barriers, a massive tsunami overtopped it with ease and flooded the place. OK, you might say, tsunamis aren't very common in Wales, although some people say there was one in 1607 (though others say it was a massive, storm driven tidal surge) which flooded huge areas of Wales and the West Country. What I'm saying is that it's actually impossible to predict what might happen next (as I discovered for myself this summer), especially in the brave new world of climate change, when all over the world, weather events not seen for hundreds of years seem to be becoming almost commonplace. We live in an uncertain world. Why don't we play safe?

DC: a lot to answer for

A report today says the whole terrible mess in Libya is basically David Cameron's fault. It started out OK, when the world had to act to prevent a possible holocaust in Benghazi, stronghold of resistance to Gadafi's rule. He made dire threats about what he was going to do when he marched in there, and even I, usually very wary of interfering with the internal affairs of another country, felt we had to do something. But then the whole thing morphed into a regime change thing, apparently at DC's behest, and from there the situation in Libya spiraled downhill rapidly. Now from its shores, people traffickers dispatch thousands of hopefuls towards Italy on a daily basis, only putting enough fuel in their craft to get half-way, where with any luck they will be rescued, or drown if not. That they are able to do this on such a massive scale is down to the essentially lawless state that has prevailed in Libya since Moamar was taken down.

Saying all that is Cameron's fault may be a slight overstatement, but only a slight one. Now let's look at Brexit. To say he's responsible for the frightful mess this country now finds itself in today may again be a slight overstatement, but again only a slight one. It was his decision to have a referendum, rather than facing down the "bastards" in his cabinet and on his back benches, and he signed off on the decision to have the result decided on a 50% plus one basis. Nice one Dave. Some legacy you're going to have...

A look back at the summer

For me this summer has been different from any other. It has been characterized by feelings of shock and fear, lately transformed into anger as I have processed the enormity of what took place on the 1st July. I don't think it would be wise to describe in detail what has happened to me, although in time I hope to be able to reveal all. For now I want to list a few of the things that were able to penetrate through the fog of terror under which I have been just about surviving.

 Brexit. My God, did we really do that? I think we must have. Boris was on the news this morning,
talking about a "hard brexit"- which I take it to mean, get out, and get out now. Sod the single market, sod my protestations about this having nothing to do with immigration, as I said during the campaign. Of course it bloody is, so the sooner we up and leave, the sooner we stem the tide from Romania, the Baltic states and all those other loser countries and get our country back for our people.
Good for Vanessa May (sorry) for saying she won't be offering a running commentary on the negotiations. She's going to have to rein in the more rabid brexiteers in the cabinet; maybe fire a few if necessary. I suspect it will. She could start with that idiot Liam Fox, who wants our business managers to concentrate on maximizing their profits 24/7 and not playing golf on a Friday afternoon, apparently.

Sport. Where do I begin? At the beginning I guess, with Andy Murray's stunning victory at Wimbledon. Only problem for me, I kept looking at the crowd and thinking, you're not in as much trouble as me, you're not in as much trouble as me; good grief, nobody's in as much trouble as me right now!The same thing when I watched Henrik Stenson triumph over Phil Mickelson at the Open.
As for the Olympic Games, a lot of that was spoiled by the timing, which had less to do with the four hour time lag and more to do with Brazil's own programming issues. I mean, some of the biggest events took place at 11.30 pm their time! Consequently I missed Usain Bolt's finest hours (all three of them) as well as Mo Farrah's golden moments. I did see our hockey women show our men's football team how to take penalties though; I did see Jason Kenny and Laura Trott show the world that the couple that  wins together stays together, and I did see Neymar take revenge for Brazil's ignominious defeat at the hands of their nemesis two years ago.

Slowly I am returning to some degree of normality. I am beginning my Master's in creative writing next week,  and this will be vital for me as something to distract myself from my other "problem". Otherwise I could crumble, and I don't intend to do that. My life has been a succession of recoveries from major blows (like a lot of people) and I guess that process is not yet over. I'll get there, and I'm going to be OK.