October 2016 book and film review

BOOKS

FIRST WE READ, THEN WE WRITE, by Robert Patterson
Being a brief biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 19th century American writer and philosopher. They don't have many, so they're particularly proud of him. Most famous for his sayings "HItch your wagon to a star" and "Make a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door", Emerson wrote a number of highly influential essays which are full of useful advice to aspiring writers. Take your inspiration form nature, he urged, and put pen to paper. If you want to be a writer, then write, Goddamit. If not get out into nature and observe, take notes then go home and allow your pen to move across the page. I shall use extracts from this book in my essay on the creative processs which we must complete by next January. But first I have to learn how to write an academic essay...

WHY I WRITE, by George Orwell.
 I've admired Orwell since I read Animal Farm in the 60s, and his essays are every bit as good as his fiction. Indeed, he is one of those people whose style I would most like to emulate. This book of essays includes the brilliant A Hanging, an account of an execution Orwell witnessed during his colonial days in Burma in the 1930s. But I read this because of the title essay, which addresses the issue which comes before the issue of  how to write. 

Orwell admits that he wants to inject some politics, some socio-political insight, into everything he writes, because, essentially, he wants to change the world. But he reminds us that all writing, including political pamphleting, must be clear, concise and easy to read. His message is, never use a long word when a short one will do, and never use complex sentence design just to show how erudite you are. Put another way, he's saying: cut the bullshit.

FILMS

THE YELLOW SEA (2010) (S. Korea) W/D- Na Hong-jin.
About 800,000 Koreans live in China. Technically they are illegal immigrants, though the Chinese authorities tolerate them because they are good for the economy. They can, however, deport them any time they like. A man has run up gambling debts and his bookie tells him he'll get him deported unless he travels back into South Korea and murders a rival. Sounds like a plan, but our man soon runs into difficulties. What follows is a skillfully made blood-fest which demonstrates that the "hero" of the tale is resourceful, determined, and so tough he makes the Bruce Willis of the Diehard  movies look like a bit of a cissy.
If you like your movies rugged and uncompromising in their portrayal of violence, you'll love this. Also, in Korea there aren't that many guns, but plenty of knives. Big, sharp, terrible knives...

LO AND BEHOLD (2016) D- Werner Herzog.
In California in 1971 the internet was born. The first message was supposed to read: LOG ON NOW, but the network (which at the time comprised only 500 people, most of whom knew each other) crashed after the first two letters were tapped in. Therefore, the first message ever sent on the internet read: "LO".

Rather appropriate, concludes our Werner, perhaps the world's most interesting film maker. What has happened since, he believes, is the biggest revolution in human culture since we changed from being hunter- gatherers to settling down in towns and villages and started growing crops. A third of the world is online, three million emails are sent every second, and society has reached the point where, if it ever broke down for any reason, it would fall apart. We'd have no food, no water, no safety, none of the essentials we take for granted in the modern world. Then there are the casualties, the twitter hate campaigns, revenge porn and so on. Herzog interviewed one family, where a daughter was decapitated in a car crash and was photographed by an attending paramedic who I then posted the pictures online. Their agony was so acute it was almost impossible to bear.

I love Werner Herzog. He can't stop making films that make you think, make you wonder and make you shiver. You go, mein Herr.