December 2018 film review

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (2018) P/D- The Coen Brothers

Netflix presents their production of this collection of 6 ‘penny-dreadful’ type stories from the American West, all told in the Coen brother’s distinctive style, and a very engaging whole it is too.

          This film was financed and distributed by Netflix, which to me says a lot about the way the motion pictures industry is going. More and more mainstream film makers are going to go down this road, because this is where the money is. Last year the BBC’s annual budget was about 6 billion pounds. Netlix’s Budget was 12 billion. See what I mean? Someone was trying to persuade me to buy Netflix shares in 2014. I declined their advice, as I don’t speculate in shares. On this occasion I wish I had. They’re worth more than 3 times their 2014 price today...

WONDER WHEEL (2018) D- Woody Allen
In 1950s Coney Island, an aging fairground worker and his family are placed in turmoil when a young woman seeks their help. For she is on the run from a failed marriage to a mob boss, and he would like to reclaim his lost property...
          Woody Allen once said of sex: “When it’s good it’s very good, and when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.” The same can be said of Allen’s movies. When they’re good, like Crimes and Misdemeanors, Broadway Danny Rose or Hannah and her Sisters they aspire to being some of the greatest offerings of post war American cinema. And when they’re not so good, like this film, they’re still worth watching. All the performances, from Kate Winslett to Justin Timberlake, are spot on, and as always Allen’s observation is acute.
           Small point: this film was made with Amazon money. No longer do we see the names of Rollins and Joffe in the producer’s credits of a Woody Allen film. And hence, once again, we see how cinema is changing. Netflix and Amazon are now calling the shots, and just when Disney thought it had the entertainment business by the throat. Must be annoying for them...

ROMA (2018) W/D- Alphonso Cuaron
A well-to-do family in Mexico City is torn apart when hubby leaves for a conference, then doesn’t come home again. Despite being paid virtually nothing, the maid stays on to ensure at least a vestige of continuity for the children and their embattled mother. But the maid has her own problems. She falls pregnant to a ne’er-do-well who has no interest in taking responsibility for his actions...
        Shot in crisp black-and-white, with a beautiful, languorous cinematography that allows the action to unfold before a remarkably static camera, this film is a revelation. Everything about it is noble, from the stately unwinding of the plot, to the stunning acting of all the players; this, along with The Happy Prince, is definitely the best of the 92 new films I have seen this year.

BIRD BOX (2018) D- Susanne Bier
A strange plague has afflicted the world: if you even look at, something (what, we’re not completely sure), you immediately become suicidal. Except those who are already insane, who then try to force all the others to look at...it. Only solution: keep your eyes wide shut or cover them with blindfolds. This, it has to be said, makes life a little difficult, but, what the hey, Sandra Bullock manages it for several years, hell, she even manages to steer a boat down a river for days at a time without being able to see a thing. Exciting or what?
           Actually, only for so long. This film is over 2 hours long yet would have been better at 70 minutes. They used to make films that long, but of course that wouldn’t hack it with today’s audiences. Or so we are led to believe. After a very brief theatrical run, this was acquired by Netflix (yeah, them again), and I have it on good authority it was streamed by no less than 45 million people over the Christmas period alone. You can see why DVD sales and ‘live’cinema are in trouble right now, and why I should have bought those Netflix shares 4 years ago...

Happy new year film watch

December 2018 book review part 2

THE EMPEROR OF ALL MALADIES, by Siddhartha Mukhergee
Subtitled ‘A Biography of Cancer’, this Pulitzer-Prize winning book is indeed a rundown of cancer, from its earliest apprehension by Hippocrates and other physicians of antiquity, to the most modern genetic therapies for that most terrible of plagues on mankind.
          Now, as a doctor, I consider myself something of an expert in this field, as do all doctors, even if they are not oncologists (cancer specialists), because cancer is just about the commonest life-threatening disease we encounter. But cancer, as Dr Mukhergee is quick to remind us, is not a single disease, but hundreds of very different types, so the question “Can we find a cure for cancer?” Is the same as saying “Can we find 500 different cures for cancer?” Having said that, there are certain things that are common to them all: they are groups of cells that cannot stop dividing, and are, worryingly, immortal. Recent work in genetics has worked out why this is the case. Cancer cells have genes in them which do one of 2 things: either they ‘press on the gas’, accelerating the growth of cell division, or they ‘cut the brake cables’, inhibiting the usual mechanisms that limit cell growth. In either case, the results are the same: uncontrolled growth. Also cancer cells possess a gene which inactivates processes which make cells age and die - conferring immortality on them. All this is bad for us, their hosts.
           The bulk of this book is about humanity’s (or at least America’s, for this is above all a book about America) attempts to combat this awful disease, and, it turns out, the future does indeed lie in genetic modification treatments, which is good for us, because the predecessors, anti-cancer drugs and radiation therapy, inflict so much damage on healthy cells it was often a case of ‘the cancer was cured, but the patient died’.

AUSTERLITZ, by W.G. Sebald
An academic runs into a rather interesting man at a railway station and they chat. Later, entirely by coincidence they meet again and their conversation continues as if it had never been interrupted. Then they decide to meet again intentionally, and slowly the story of Austerlitz is revealed. Turns out he was part of the “Kinder Transport” scheme in 1939 and found himself living with a nonconformist priest and his wife in, of all places, Bala in North Wales. But he is not told of his origins until much later, when he makes the decision to find out what he can of his lost parents and the life he left behind at the age of four.
           Like all Sebald’s books, the text is littered with blurry photographs which augment the often strange but always beautiful text. (Interestingly, Edmund de Waal opted to use the same device in his book - see previous blog) And as is usual with Sebald, what emerges is a book of great depth and subtlety, but which remains disarmingly easy to read - this despite the entire book being composed of only 6 paragraphs in its 300-odd pages, and, even more amazingly, often composed of 4, 5 and 600 word sentences; indeed one is nearly 4000 words long, and covers 16 pages of text! This may be a record, I’m not sure. I certainly haven’t seen anything like it outside Ulysses.
In summary, may I say this: everyone should read Sebald, and I mean everyone. Start, like me, with The Rings of Saturn, go on to The Emigrants, then Vertigo, and round it off with Austerlitz. You won’t regret it for a second, I guarantee it.

December 2018 book review part 1

PEREIRA MAINTAINS, by Antonio Tabucci
A man gives an account of his recent life and activities - to whom? Police investigators? We aren’t told; all we know is that what we are reading is what happened, or what “Pereira maintains” at any rate. But what did happen?
          An editor of a literary journal leads a quiet enough life until a young writer accosts him and asks him to publish something, anything he has penned, for he needs the money bad. He submits a couple of obits, but they are totally unpublishable because of their political content. For Periera lives in a Portugal under the spell of the far-right, and dissent is frowned upon. But Pereira feels sorry for his down-at-heel would-be employee, and pays him an honorarium out of his own pocket. Meanwhile his peaceful life goes on. He chats to his dead wife often, even asking for her advice about various issues. Obviously this is something of a one-sided conversation... Eventually the writer goes into hiding, only a step ahead of his fascist persuers. What will Pereira do? Ask his late wife?
          This book is what I call a ‘creeper’; that is to say, you read it quickly, move on but then finding yourself thinking about it again and again in the coming weeks. This is truly a little masterpiece of a novella, superbly written, with an intriguing and highly disturbing plot. Highest recommendation.

THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES, by Edmund de Waal
The hare in question is a netsuke, a small carved object from Japan designed to fit in the palm, made of hardwood, ivory or ebony and usually executed to the highest standards of craftsmanship. They became collector’s items in 19th century Europe as Japan opened up to the West, and the author’s great-great grandfather, Charles Ephrusi, a fabulously wealthy Jew living in Paris made a collection of 264 of them. And it is these, along with the wider story of the Ephrusi family, that makes up the substance of this fascinating book.
          It all began in Odessa in the 18th century, when Ephrusis began to export grain from ‘the breadbasket of the world’ ie Ukraine, and made themselves the billionaires of their day. Later, one branch of the family established themselves in Vienna, the other in Paris. All went swimmingly for a long time; bigger and bigger mansions were built, and more and more lavish art collections were amassed. Then the Nazis arrived, and it was all taken from them - by force. You want to know the real meaning of anti-Semitism? That’s it. Fortunately, money talks, and most of the family escaped with their lives, though not all.
          I loved this family biography, which at times almost resembled Proust, who was in fact a friend of Charles (see above). A unique window on another world.

Please See next blog for more books...

Are you an anti-vaccer? Please tell me you’re not

I was chatting to a neighbour the other day about Trump, and she came up with something I actually agree with him about, namely the power of ‘Big Pharma’ and its egregious policy of pushing opioids on American doctors, who have created thousands of addicts in the process. But then she went a step too far. She also agreed with him in his distrust of immunisation generally, admitting she had not had her children immunised against anything.

I took exception to this, as you might imagine. After all, I have been immunising people, especially children, throughout my 40 year medical career, and see it as perhaps the most useful single activity I ever undertook. I pointed out to her that what she getting was “immunisation for free”: that her children were being protected by all the other children in the community who had been immunised; therefore she should acknowledge a debt of gratitude to all the parents who had taken a tiny risk in having their kids immunised, whereas she had not. I’m not sure she got what I was saying.

There was a piece in last week’s Guardian which looked at the growth of these ‘anti-vaccers’ as they are known, not only in the US (remember, Trump actually invited Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced British doctor who was struck off for his unethical research programmes, to his inaugural ball), but in Britain, Europe and around the world. As libertarians from the left and populists from the right come together to foist on a gullible public the lie that immunisation is some sort of evil government conspiracy, politicians who support this pernicious view are winning elections and thereby in a position to effect anti vaccination laws. What do these people really want? Do they want to go back 200 years, to a point where nobody was vaccinated against anything? Don’t they realise the terrible genie that would let out of the bottle? Within a generation a whole set of hideous diseases, currently on the verge of extinction, would make a dramatic comeback. Smallpox, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, all manner of meningitis types - the list is long and lethal. Yet all that would come to pass in just a few decades if we stopped immunising children and adults.

This is all part of the ‘anti-science’ movement which is becoming so powerful these days- headed up by that arch anti-scientist, Trump himself. The same sort of thinking will tell you climate change is a con. That billions are being wasted on pure science research. I could go on. But I’m getting too depressed. Happy New Year peeps!

The Best least worst deal on offer

Pelagius doesn’t blog much about Brexit. It’s all too depressing, he says. But today he’s having a go.

Teresa May’s deal (“there is no other”) is, almost in her words, the best deal we could get from the EU, that is to say, the deal which would do the UK the least amount of damage when we exit the European Union. The only better deal we could get, then, would be to not leave the EU at all. Oh dear. Because if we do that, we will be betraying the will of the great British People, those who voted to leave the EU. Yes, those people who voted in their millions in order to be able to give the NHS an extra 350 million quid a week - allegedly.

Those people who were hoping that very soon after the vote all those awful immigrants, those immigrants who actually contribute more to society than they take in benefits, to say nothing of their role in keeping the NHS from collapsing altogether, would be quitting the country in their droves - and not just Poles and Romanians (such awful, awful people) but the darker skinned ones too, with any luck. They didn’t consider the problem of the Northern Irish border, because no one did. It never came up in the campaign, or if it did I certainly missed it. yet now it has turned into one of the most critical issues.

 A no-deal would be a bit of a problem in Northern Ireland. Some sort of special arrangement would be required to deal with a land border between the EU and a non-EU country. And don’t think the DUP will be of any help in solving that little conundrum. They are so committed to their views - as fundamentalist in their own way as IS, that I believe they would be perfectly happy to build a Berlin-like wall right along the 350 mile border, risking the wrath of the entire Republican movement and possibly sparking off a full-scale war. Oh sure, they want to be part of the UK, except in matters of gay marriage, access to abortion and a few other human rights issues we addressed long ago on the mainland.

Well they’re getting what they wished for already. EU citizens are indeed leaving en masse causing a burgeoning labour shortage - no matter - as long as we get our precious sovereignty back, right? Funny thing: you don’t hear the French, the Germans, the Italians, bleating on about losing their sovereignty, even though they gave up their Francs, Marks and Liras. They still, as I understand it, feel French, German and Italian and not part of some hideous Euro-polyglot.

It seems there are now 2 main factions abroad in society: those who are pushing for no deal- what the ‘fundamentalists’ want, regardless of the fact that it could see our economy shrink by 10%, with the predictable effect that would have on the most vulnerable in our society - and those who are lobbying for a 2nd referendum, with 3 choices on the ballot: no deal, Teresa’s benighted deal and- surprise surprise: staying in the EU. Guess which way Pelagius is going to go..

November 2018 film review

HACKSAW RIDGE (2016) D- Mel Gibson
Being the (more or less) true account of one Private Desmond Doss, an American soldier in WW2 who refuses to take up arms against the enemy, but does agree to put himself in harm’s way by acting as a paramedic.
           The principle action of this extremely violent film (think of the first 20 minutes of Saving Private Ryan: this is even more horrific) takes place during the Battle of Okinawa, a battle which for some reason is given less attention than other less terrible conflicts, but was in fact the biggest air/sea/land battle in history.
           American troops must ascend a steep escarpment to get at the enemy, who have plenty of opportunity to prepare for them. The result is a protracted carnage of almost unprecedented magnitude, shown in loving detail by director Gibson. I have a pretty strong stomach, but some of this was hard to watch, even for me. But the story still shines through, with PFC Doss showing the most incredible bravery in his attempts to rescue his comrades, bravery that won him the Congressional Medal of Honour despite his non-combatant status.

DARKEST HOUR (2017) D- Joe Wright
Summer 1940. France has fallen, the British Expeditionary Force has been forced onto the beaches at Dunkirk, awaiting its fate, while at home, Neville Chamberlain has been forced from office and replaced by the wild card that is Winston Churchill. Decisions made now will affect Britain, and perhaps the whole world, for hundreds of years to come. Better get them right then...
          Gary Oldman’s performance as Churchill has become the stuff of legend, and rightly so, but is this film really any good? I fear not. It doesn’t really add much to the wealth of material we already have on the subject, and some of it is palpably untrue. The writers simply made stuff up to make it look good on screen, and that is a dangerous policy, I suggest...

GAME PLAN (2017) D- John Francis Daly and Jonathan Goldstein
In suburban Atlanta, a couple attempt to spice up their lives by playing a realistic “murder weekend” game. Turns out it’s a bit more realistic than they anticipated, as real bad guys become mixed up with the fake ones, causing confusion and terror to all involved, with often hilarious results for us, the viewers. People keep getting blown away by high-calibre weapons - or do they? Nothing is as it seems in this crazy caper, which is very well directed (though it took 2 guys to do it, apparently) and acted with great style by all the players, particularly the leads Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman.
            The best line, among many top class zingers, comes from Rachel when she is being threatened by gunmen:
“Please don’t kill me. I have children at home.”
Gunman: “Not with that ass you don’t.”

PETERLOO (2018) D- Mike Leigh
In 1819, disquiet grows throughout the land as the price of staples (bread especially) goes through the roof and the government, the one for whom the term laissez faire might have been invented, doesn’t appear to give a damn. And when the authorities learn that certain parties are agitating for reform, fearing some sort of revolution akin to the one across the Channel only a few years before, they begin to work out how to nip it in the bud. But the people don’t want revolution, they just want a bit of food on their table and a wage that will enable them to secure it.
             Mike Leigh’s film dissects out the events of one of the most notorious events in British history with his characteristic skill and subtlety. It has been criticised for being a bit heavy on rhetoric and short on narrative pace, but rhetoric was what it was all about - winning the hearts and minds of ordinary people in their struggle to win a few basic human rights. Highly watchable, for me at any rate.

November 2018 book review

THE INHERITORS, by William Golding
Being an everyday story of country folk, living in the Home Counties, circa 40,000 BC. An extended family ekes out a precarious existence, never far from starvation or the predations of larger, more dangerous animals than them. Then another band of people, very different from them, kills one of the group and kidnaps a child.
            Golding leaves it to us to work out what is going on in this strange, troubling tale of Neanderthals encountering Homo Sapiens. And that isn’t always easy, for we are placed inside the minds of the former, whose brains seem to have hypertrophied right, or instinctual brains, strong on emotion, imaginative powers and even a touch of SEP, but tiny left brains, leaving them short on logical deductive ability and problem solving. No wonder they had to give way to the more aggressive, inventive and resourceful sub-species of Man. Us.
            Golding sets down a challenge for the reader in this book, which requires patience and application, but the result, as with all his works, is immensely satisfying.

THE EMERALD PLANET, by David Beerling.
When we think about evolution, our attention is naturally caught first by the animals, dinosaurs, whale-eating aquatic monsters and other equally sexy creatures. Hardly surprising really: plants don’t move around much (except, as Marge Simpson famously pointed out, those Mexican fighting trees - sorry) But as David Beerling explains in this fascinating book, understanding the evolution of plants is key to understanding the evolution of the Earth as a whole. It is plants, remember, that have made huge contributions to the composition of the atmosphere, enriching it with life-giving oxygen, so much so in the Permian Period (300-250 million years ago) that oxygen levels were 50% higher than today, enabling the appearance of giant insects; metre long centipedes, scorpions as big as labradors and dragonflys the size of buzzards.
            To be fair, without the basic scientific background I have had this book may have been hard to follow, but it is well written and designed for the well-informed layperson. Intriguing stuff.

THE SUSPICIONS OF MR. WHICHER, by Kate Summerscale
In a small Wiltshire village, a well-to-do family is stunned when their five-year-old son is abducted in the night, and later, found with his throat cut. With no clues apparent, the local constabulary calls in Inspector Whicher of Scotland Yard, noted thief-taker and model for detectives fashioned by such luminaries as Wilkie Collins (Inspector Cuff in The Moonstone) and Charles Dickens (Inspector Bucket in Bleak House). After interviewing all the main players, Whicher comes to the disturbing conclusion that a family member is responsible for this dastardly deed; worse she is a 15 year-old girl. How can this be? A young girl capable of such a terrible crime?
            And Inspector Whicher doesn’t just have universal incredulity to contend with: soon class sensibility rears its ugly head. There are rumblings that a working class artisan, albeit a talented and successful one, is hardly the right person to delve into the dirty linen (literally in this case) of an upper middle class family. Will the truth ever come out? Read on...
            A tremendous success when it came out in 2008, Kate Summerscale’s book is now seen as one of the finest ‘true crime’ books in English, and in this reviewer’s opinion, one of the best pieces of ‘creative nonfiction’ I have read in a long time. Highly recommended.

A LEGACY OF SPIES, by John le Carre
A retired MI6 agent is disturbed in his reverie on a farm in Brittany by the news that he is about to be sued over an operation that went wrong nearly 50 years before.
             Like everybody else, I read Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold a very long time ago, but it is the action of that book which forms the backdrop to this latest foray into the mysterious lives of George Smiley’s people. The main protagonist of this tale being a former spy who as part of his job is used to lying all the time, so will lying his way through this see him in the clear? Not if the new guard at MI6 have anything to do with it, because they need someone to throw under the bus, and our man seems tailor-made for the fall-guy.
            If you like Le Carre, and let’s face it nearly everyone does, you will savour this tale of the past entwining itself with the present. Give it a try.

Chapeau to Air BandB

Air Band B recently decided not to extend their operations to the Jewish settlements in the West Bank of the occupied territories of Palestine. In doing so they were simply taking note of the fact that in international law these settlements are illegal.

Palestinians are second class citizens in the land of Israel, almost aliens in their own country. They are denied the right to free travel, to live where they wish and even to set up manufacturing in order to survive economically. They are corralled behind 8 meter high concrete walls, which often deny them access to their own land. The situation has been described by no lesser personage than Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who, let’s face it, is in a position to speak on the subject, as “akin to Apartheid”.

Naturally Air  BandB’s decision has been greeted by a hail of protest from Zionist groups around the world, who have labeled their decision, as they label anything critical of the Zionist state of Israel, as “anti-Semitic”. But I say, congratulations to them, for having the courage of their convictions in refusing to buttress an illegal state of affairs in Palestine.

Now that’s what I call reading...

If asked about my hobbies, I will reply that I love reading; am an ‘avid’ reader in fact. I read 30, 40, sometimes 50 books a year and have been doing so since about the age of 10. Hence I may have read about 2000 books in my life, and should I live another twenty years, which is doubtful though not impossible, I may have read 3000, which I consider an excellent figure. It does not really qualify me as ‘well read’ in the classical meaning of that term, but it isn’t bad.

William Ewart Gladstone, the celebrated Victorian liberal politician who served 4 terms as Prime Minister, also described himself as an ‘avid’ reader, though with somewhat greater justification. In his life (he lived to the great age, at that time, of 89) he read over 22,000 books; that represents about 1 book a day throughout his adult life. And he didn’t just skip-read either. He kept most of the books he read, which are now collected into an impressive library, and they are filled with annotations which show he was reading every word, and paying close attention. Considering how busy he must have been (he served a near record 12 years as PM,  held several cabinet minister posts and spent several decades as an MP), and also considering he had only candlelight to assist him in the night hours, it has to be an astonishing achievement.

I met a bloke once who was a member of a book-crossing club who reckoned he read 8 books a week. I wasn’t sure if I could believe him, though maybe I am being unfair. He is only half my age, in which case he must have surpassed my score years ago. Whether he will reach the prodigious proportions of Gladstone only time will tell. But how much does he (or did Gladstone, for that matter) retain of the books he reads? An Italian literature professor has said that if you have read a book but can remember nothing about it, then to all practical purposes you haven’t read it at all. Now that’s going to bring your score down a bit, I would have thought. But Gladstone sounds like he could have written a lengthy review of pretty much every book he ever read. Which is why in the realm of intellectual achievement. I would place his very high indeed. Keep reading guys...

Shock horror! Simpsons not politically correct!

In the home of free speech, a comedian of Indian origin (Hari Kondabolu) has spoken up for his 1 billion country folk and called Apu as being a travesty of their character; worse, he is voiced, not by an Indian but a Caucasian, namely Hank Azaria. So, people, stand up for your ethnic/social group and change the Simpsons for the better.

Come on, billionaires club, are you going to stand for Mr Burns portraying you as cynical money-grabbers who care only to increase their money mountains? And Frenchies, will you allow them to get away with calling you cheese eating surrender monkeys? Come to that, what about the originator of that calumny, Groundskeeper Willie? Surely he traduces the whole Scottish nation by his ridiculous accent and questionable practices of saving up grease for his retirement. Come to that, we must rid ourselves of the main character, Homer himself. A man who regularly binge drinks and physically abuses his son should be an affront to fathers everywhere.

George Bush snr once said he wanted American families to be more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons. I have often found myself differing from the Bush family in their views, but here we can say he definitely got it right. We don’t want anyone other than Indians portraying Indians, we only want gays playing gays, trans-genders playing trans-genders, and cockneys playing cockneys. No more Americans pretending to be Brits, or the other way round. And let’s never, ever say anything that might offend anybody at all. That would be wrong.

October 2018 film review

BATTLE OF THE SEXES (2018) D- Jonathan Dayton
In 1973, having already thrashed women’s number one player Margaret Court, unabashed male chauvinist pig Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell), 30 years her senior but still very much a force to be reckoned with, takes on Billy-Jean King (Emma Stone). The smart money is on Riggs once again, after all, didn’t King lose to Court only a few months previously?
           All this takes place against the backdrop of a world where females are awarded only a fraction of the prize-money offered to their male colleagues, and if there’s anything Billy-Jean cares more about than winning, it’s equality.
            I enjoyed this film enormously. It’s directed skillfully, and the acting throughout, especially by an oily Bill Pullman who plays arch-chauvinist Jack Kramer, is exemplary. There isn’t quite enough tennis in it, or at least we have to wait a long time before it makes its appearance, but the end result is out of the top drawer.

BLACK PANTHER (2018) D- Ryan Coogler
In the heart of Africa there is an ideal society, hidden behind an invisible barrier. There its population lives in splendid isolation from the deeply racist world outside - a kind of Shangrila, if you will, until that is, the heir to the throne of ‘Wakanda’ has to deal with the threat from a young pretender, who would oust him and place himself on the throne.

Speaking of equality, this film is a wholly black effort, black stars, black production team, black everything. Yet surprisingly, you hardly even notice. What you see is a 21st century blockbuster with all the high-tec trimmings, woven into a gripping narrative. Based on an idea by superhero wizard Stan Lee, this film works on every level, from acting, directing, all the way to its on-screen look. Most importantly, it doesn’t suffer form the clunky, uncomfortable feel of other all-black efforts of the past, such as Carmen Jones or Porgy and Bess.
Highly recommended.

BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY (2018) D- Bryan Singer
Being the life and times of one Farouk Bolsara, aka Freddie Mercury, and the incredible rise and rise of a band called Queen. It is much more than the story of their remarkable single which gives the film its title; indeed, I would suggest a better title might be Don’t Stop Me Now, if only because that says more about Freddie’s non-stop lifestyle, which was eventually to be his downfall.

Rami Malek puts in a highly serviceable performance as Freddie, and even if the whole is slightly marred by wide-ranging digressions into Freddie’s private life, it remains an absorbing biopic of one of the most iconic groups of the 20th century. I even shed a couple of tears towards the end, and it takes a lot to draw the tears out of this grizzled, cynical old git...

PRIZZI’S HONOUR (1985) D- John Huston
Principal hitman to a New York Mafia family, Prizzi’s (Jack Nicholson) eye is caught by an attractive woman (Kathleen Turner), much to the ire of his ex - a splendid Angelica Huston, who still burns a candle for him even though they broke up years ago...
           They marry, but his job interferes even on their honeymoon when he is asked to take out another victim - and guess who that is...
           John Huston chose to give this film a sort of graphic-novel, mythical feel which is highly engaging. Nicholson is particularly strong as a kind of ingenue, despite the extremely grim nature of his day-job. I somehow managed to miss this movie when it came out in the mid 80s; I guess life intervened. But I can only say I am extremely gratified to have caught up with it at last. Some things are worth waiting for...
         

October 2018 book review

PALE FIRE, by Vladimir Nabokov
An American academic is working on a 1000 line epic poem on life, liberty and loss when he is tragically shot dead, with just one line to go. A colleague takes it upon himself to provide a detailed commentary on the poem by way of explication. But his interpretation differs widely from others, for Professor Kinbote is of the view that Dr Shade’s poem is in fact a coded life of Charles the Beloved, deposed king of “Zemlya”, a land to the “far north”. Who to believe? When one reads the poem, which is printed in its entirety at the beginning of the book, one finds no obvious relation between its substance and Kinbote’s explanation. Is Kinbote, then, that ‘unreliable narrator’, who should not be trusted, or are we simply not being subtle enough to see what he continually alludes to?

Pale Fire is a very strange, beautiful book. As we read Shade’s poem, we are entranced by its technical skill as well as its grand themes. Likewise, as we read ‘Kinbote’s meticulous ‘commentary’ we are transported into another world, namely the court intrigues of a small kingdom, which lead to the king escaping from captivity and making an heroic escape to America, pursued meanwhile by a relentless assassin. Without spelling it out, Kinbote is suggesting that in fact he is the deposed king - I think. I’m not sure, and I’m not sure Nabokov wants me to be sure - about anything in this unique novel, described by some as his greatest achievement.

CONFESSIONS OF FELIX KRULL, CONFIDENCE MAN, by Thomas Mann
In the Bavaria of late 19th century Germany, a young man of limited means convinces himself, not without reason, that he is a very special person. He realises is bound for greatness, but, how to achieve that? As so many before him, he realises his destiny lies in the big city, and his godfather is able to secure a lowly position for him in one of the leading hotels in Paris. There, his natural charm and charisma works its magic on all around him, the guests, the management, his colleagues and, especially, the ladies. But now he has entered the adult world, we discover that his supreme communication skills are balanced by a complete lack of moral sense. This boy will do anything to get ahead.
           He is befriended by a German count, who notices a remarkable similarity in their physical appearances, and a plan is hatched which exploits this serendipitous coincidence. More about this, the meat of this marvelous novel would spoil the plot; indeed I may already have said too much. So let me leave it like this: Felix Krull is an absolute delight. Superbly written, funny, moving, if you look at Mann’s other books such as The Magic Mountain or Buddenbrooks, and think they look a bit long and complicated for you (which you shouldn’t; they’re both wonderful too) then try this eminently readable novel first. I guarantee it: you won’t regret it.

BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, by Alfred Döblin
Franz Biberkopf, a pretty ordinary guy really, is released from jail and does his beast to survive on the outside. But as so often happens, he finds it hard to leave his criminal past behind him, and soon falls in with a number of more or less ne’er-do-wells. The authorities make little attempt to help him: early on he receives a letter from them indicating that he, as a convicted felon, is not allowed to live in Berlin, so simply by staying there he is breaking the law.
          “There is a mower, death yclept.”
           What is the meaning of this strange phrase, which recurs throughout the book? Turns out the word yclept is from Middle English, and may be understood as “goes by the name of”. Hence the phrase means: “There is a reaper, whose name is death.” I mention this to convey the strange atmosphere the book creates, and to illiustrate just how extraordinary this book is.
            Described by some as an ‘expressionist novel’ it mixes stream-of-consciousness, documentary style and other quirky idioms to create a grim, claustrophobic atmosphere, enabling us to walk alongside our ‘hero’ as he trudges the mean streets of Berlin in his search for meaning, or at least earn his daily bread. Franz is not particularly loveable. He survives by pimping out women, hurting some of them badly in the process, but despite everything we still find ourselves identifying with our unfortunate protagonist. We want him to be OK in the end, even if that looks increasingly unlikely as the book proceeds.
A very special read...

Sure we disapprove, just not that much...

Mr Trump has said he doesn’t approve of a nation who sends an 18 man hit squad to another country to murder one of its citizens in its own embassy. But, he points out, the US has just signed a $110 billion arms deal with the Saudis, and to turn his back on that could cost half a million American jobs. So... they’re not going to do jack. Likewise, we have extremely lucrative arms deals with the Saudis too, small beer compared with the US deal, granted, but the principle still applies. Then there’s the oil...

What would it take for Trump, or the British government for that matter, to stop doing business with any particular country? Not murdering a journalist, certainly. Deliberately bombing a bus load of children? Apparently not. The Saudis did that a couple of weeks ago. Carpet bombing an entire city? They haven’t done that yet, but seriously, I don’t think even that would be enough for us to turn our backs on them.

Way back in the 70s, a growing number of workers at Lucas Aerospace voiced their disquiet at what they were being asked to do, namely manufacture weapons of war. They started a “Socially Useful Work” initiative, and made many suggestions for how they could maintain Lucas’s profits without needing to make killing machines. The project died a death, as we might imagine, but the idea hasn’t gone away. Right now we could be going all-out with renewable energy schemes, rather than buying oil from whoever and fracking. There are 12,000 wind turbines in the UK, only a small fraction of what countries like Germany have. Building wind turbines is labour intensive; expanding our building programme could create thousands of jobs. Then there’s recycling. If we started doing that properly, instead of simply paying lip service to the idea, again, thousands of jobs would be created, and even better, as with renewable energy schemes, profits would soon be seen on the balance sheet.

The trouble is we continue to depend on fossil fuels to a terrifying extent, therefore we have to be nice to the producers, however horrible they are. If we could reduce our demand, we could tell the Saudis and other awful regimes where to go, without worrying about the consequences. Let’s go people!

State sponsored murder- it goes on all the time

On the 1st October the eminent Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi embassy in Istanbul to collect papers for his upcoming marriage. That much is sure, because by now the whole world has watched CCTV pictures of him entering the building. But there appears to be no footage of him ever coming out again. On the same day, 14 members of Saudi state security were seen entering Turkey, and leaving the following day. Why were they there? Were they there to kill Khashoggi, and then, if we are to believe stories swirling in Istanbul, using an angle grinder to cut his body into tiny, easily disposable bits?

Obviously the Saudis have been quick to deny any wrongdoing but I say, if so, why don’t they do the Habeus Corpus thing, and “produce the body”, as that ancient Latin phrase has it? If they’ve done nothing wrong, where is he?

As my headline suggests, there’s nothing new or uncommon about state sponsored murder. We’ve seen, for instance, the pathetically inept attempts of the Russians to kill one of their opponents in Salisbury only this year. But what of Palestine? A few months ago film emerged of a teenager in Gaza get within 100 metres of the fence that confines the population of the Gaza Strip, rendering it the largest concentration camp in history. He was shouting insults at the border guards, but he was unarmed, even with so much as a caterpault. The soldiers shot him dead. Certain bleeding-heart liberals such as myself registered protests, but at governmental level, from the ‘world leaders’ such as the EU states and the US, there was little if any response. In Israel itself the soldier himself was not even so much as reprimanded for his actions. If that isn’t state sponsored murder I don’t know what is.

Placebos: more than fake drugs

I’ve been watching the BBC2 programme Horizon for over 50 years; it’s now in its 57th season and I have to say it continues to fascinate me in the same way as it did when a far-sighted David Attenborough introduced it all those years ago.

Recently, redoubtable medical journalist Dr Michael Mosley ran a trial on 100 people with chronic back pain. He pretended that half the group would get an active drug, the other half an inactive placebo. In fact everyone received the placebo, yet after 3 weeks, 45% of the group reported a significant improvement in their symptoms.

As a doctor I have seen the placebo response work on countless occasions. Obviously doctors cannot hoodwink their patients by giving them one while pretending it is active, though, amazingly, a number of patients improve even when they know they are getting the placebo. In fact some would argue that drugs which the doctors believe are active, such as Prozac, or old-school antibiotics, are actually working via this effect. And remembering that those drugs often have unpleasant side effects, it makes one wonder whether it might not be a better idea to give them a placebo to start with.

The most dramatic example of a placebo in action I have ever seen was at medical school, when a patient was injected with a dilute dextrose solution. Or that’s what she thought. In fact she was given plain, distilled water. But the reaction was astounding. Within a minute of the injection, the patient’s face became swollen and purple, she began to shake uncontrollably and within two minutes had collapsed unconscious. She experienced a phenomenon called “angio-oedema” a catastrophic reaction sometimes associated with severe allergy. But you can’t be allergic to water: our bodies are 90% water after all. So what happened? To be honest, nobody knew then and nobody knows now.

The placebo response is still poorly understood. In the test group above, why did 45% of the group experience an improvement, while 55% did not? The response is independent of age, IQ or social
background. As a doctor I’ve long recognised that if you give a patient something along with a forceful promise that it’s going to do the trick, it is far more likely to work than otherwise. If I was still working now, would I offer people placebos with the words: “Look, I know there’s nothing in this pill, but research has shown that even so, it often works”? You know, I think I might. And let’s face it, it’s no more or less than homoeopathists do every day of the week...

Green Light for Brett

It now seems certain Brett Kavanaugh will win his nomination to the Supreme Court despite the allegations of sexual assault levelled against him by several women. At one level this is no bad thing. It would be a shame if a moment of alcohol fulled bad behaviour 36 years ago destroyed a man’s chances of reaching the highest office. But, rather than adopting a hectoring, defensive posture, it would have been nice if he’d said: “I do not remember the incident described by Dr Ford, but if on the night in question I behaved in a less than appropriate manner I apologise unreservedly.” Then he might have won more approval from the women currently most strident in condemning him.

In 1977 I was a young psychiatrist when I was asked to see a medical student who, during someone’s 21st biurthday celebrations took it upon himself to drink an entire bottle of vodka in one go. Hardly surprisingly he suffered a cardiac arrest and very nearly died. Even more surprisingly, he was remarkably unrepentant when I challenged him over his arrant stupidity. Amazingly, he persisted in thinking it was “a bit of a lark’ that had perhaps been taken a bit too far. As you can imagine, I tore him to shreds over the incident, not least over the amount of NHS resources that had been devoted to keeping such an idiotic person alive. That man is now in his 50s, if he is still alive, having modified his behaviour since those crazy days, and may have carved out a distinguished career in medicine. I don’t know. But I don’t think that moment of extreme recklessness should have destroyed his career.

There are 2 problems in the ‘Kavanaugh epsisode’ which trouble me, as an observer far from the land of the ‘Free’. The first is that Mr Kavanaugh, and his sponsor Donald Trump, have made no secret of their partisan, ultra-right wing agenda, and that the former will put these views into action once he becomes a member of the Supreme Court. I know this has happened before, and probably many times, but you would have thought that a neutral, impartial position would be what was required from any judge, never mind one in the highest court in the land. Now the decisions from that court will be coloured with a far-right hue for many years to come, and heaven help those people trying to pursue any kind of liberal agenda.

The second is about a huge banner unfurled by demonstrators in the Capitol building yesterday.
“BELIEVE ALL SURVIVORS!” It proclaimed, suggesting that professor Blasey-Ford, and, presumably, all other complainants of sexual abuse, should be believed, and unquestioningly. The only problem with that is, if my accuser had been believed unquestioningly, not just by the police and the CPS, which she was, but also by the jury, then I’d be in prison right now, 9 months into a life sentence for a series of terrible sex crimes - crimes that in truth did not take place. Unfortunately, we cannot, in the interest of justice, afford to believe all “survivors”. If we did, hundreds of innocent people, like myself, would be in prison. Rather we have to take all complainants seriously; I have no problem with that, but then investigate their claims impartially and objectively. I’m sorry, Me Too movement, but that’s the only way.

September 2018 film review

THE HATEFUL EIGHT (2015) D- Quentin Tarantino
A traveller (Samuel L Jackson) on foot in the the American north west hails a passing stage coach, but once on board finds himself caught up in a sticky situation. The coach is already occupied by a bounty hunter of some sort (Kurt Russell) and his captive (Jennifer Jason Leigh) en route to a nearby township. But the coach is forced to seek shelter in a lonely trading post, inhabited, it seems, by an even more motley crew of bad people. Cut off from the outside world by a blizzard, our drama plays itself out inside this rundown shack that is all that separates the players from an icy death. And as this is a Tarantino film, we know there will be blood. But when, and whose?
           Tarantino’s films are always worth watching, his obsession with violence notwithstanding, and this is no exception. The atmosphere of threat and paranoia builds up nicely to a climax which disguises itself expertly, and all the players, especially Jennifer Jason Leigh are very strong. I always love it when an extravagantly beautiful woman such as JJL is happy, when the occasion demands it, to be made up to look like a hideous old hag. Chapeau!

HARD EIGHT (1997) D- P.T. Anderson
An obvious loser (a very youthful John C Reilly) is offered a helping hand by a much older man (an absolutely brilliant Phillip Baker Hall). At first the loser suspects this must be a gay thing, but it soon emerges the older man’s offer of help is genuine, though the reasons for his apparently spontaneous charity are not made clear. The two go to Vegas, where they operate a couple of scams to clip the casinos of some of their cash. Then the young guy meets and falls for cocktail waitress Gwyneth Paltrow. And once a woman is introduced into the mix, everything gets complicated, as it always does...
          This movie is terrific. With the dialogue pared to the bone, it comes over almost like a Raymond Carver short story, complete with the mystery and pathos which is so characteristic of that writer’s method. This was director PT Anderson’s debut feature film, and promised well for the future, though I’m not sure he has made a better film than this first effort. Brilliant.

RING OF BRIGHT WATER (1969) D- Jack Couffer
A writer (Bill Travers) sees an otter for sale in a pet shop and decides to take it with him to a remote crofter’s cottage in northern Scotland, where he plans to write a book about the Marsh Arabs. Soon, he and Mij, for lo that is the otter’s name, are getting on famously in the wilds of nowheresville. Enter Virginia McKenna, as the local GP to whom Bill takes a shine.
          One of the most celebrated British films of the 1960s, based on the book by Gavin Maxwell, and following the book fairly closely, this film was almost universally loved. It’s easy to see why. Although it has dated somewhat, the charm is all up there on the screen for us to enjoy even today.

WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND (1961) D- Bryan Forbes
A young girl (Hayley Mills) growing up on a farm in the north of England discovers a stranger in a barn. When she surprises him and asks who he is, the man (Alan Bates in a minimalist, but nonetheless brilliant display of acting) exclaims “Jesus Christ!”
          What happens next is written into the folklore of British cinema, as Mills, her siblings and a growing band of credulous schoolfriends convince themselves they are witnessing the Second Coming.
           I may have seen this film before, but if so it is probably 50 years or more since I did. Hence I was able to watch is afresh, and be quite stunned by the skill displayed all round - from the writing (the screenplay is by the renowned pair Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall, from the book written by Mills’s mother, Mary Hayley Bell) to the highly skilled direction of Bryan Forbes, and then the acting, by both children and adults, which make the whole utterly convincing and deeply moving. I cried.

September 2018 book review

TIME REGAINED, by Marcel Proust
At last we come to the final volume of Proust’s masterpiece, in which our ‘hero’ (actually he is a monster as much as anything else) re-emerges into high society after a long, self imposed exile. He finds its denizens much altered by time, as we see in this brief excerpt, where Marcel finds it impossible to reconcile the fair-haired girl he had known in his youth, who was famous for her elegant dancing, with the massive white-haired old lady “making her way through the room with an elephantine tread”:

“... to have succeeded in giving to this waltzer this huge body, in encumbering and retarding her movements by the adjustment of an invisible metronome, in substituting - with perhaps as sole common factor the cheeks, larger certainly now than in youth but already in those days blotched in red - for the feather-like girl this ventripotent old campaigner, it must have been necessary for life to accomplish a vaster work of dismantlement and reconstruction than is involved in the replacement of a steeple with a dome, and when one considered that this work had been effected not with tractable inorganic matter but with living flesh which can only change imperceptibly, the overwhelming contrast between the apparition before me and the creature that I remembered pushed back the existence of the latter into a past which was more than remote, that was almost unimaginable...”

Hey, Marcel, people get old. Give ‘em a break. I look at myself in the mirror today and I see the same old git I have always seen. But then I look at a picture of myself taken in 1981, and the 2 images are, as above, almost impossible to reconcile.
           This revelation is what has come to be known as the “Proustian Moment” and is, I think, familiar to everyone. Not that it makes it any easier to bear...
           I promised myself this reading treat as part of my emotional recovery from the traumas I faced last year, and it has worked. For the second time in my life I have relished Proust’s sublime use of language, his dazzlingly witty dialogue and intricate dissection of the vagaries of time and memory. In his great novel Pale Fire (see next month’s review) Vladimir Nabokov, through his character Kinbote, says of Proust:

“...His huge, ghoulish fairy tale, an asparagus dream... adorable seascapes, melting avenues, light and shade effects rivalling those of the greatest English poets, a flora of metaphors - described - by Cocteau, I think - as a ‘mirage of suspended gardens’...”

Treat yourself royally, and see for yourself what a great work of literature looks like.

VERTIGO, by W.G. Sebald
A man goes on a tour of notable European sights; Verona, Lake Garda, his birthplace of “W”, in the heartlands of Bavaria and has a series of disturbing and hard-to-explain experiences along the way... Like this one, for instance, which takes place in Vienna:

“...On one occasion, in Gonagegasse, I even thought I recognised the poet Dante, banished from his home town on pain of being burned at the stake. For some considerable time he walked a short distance ahead of me, with the familiar cowl on his head, distinctly taller than the people on the street, yet he passed by them unnoticed. When I walked faster in order to catch him up he went down Heinrichgasse, but when I reached the corner he was nowhere to be seen. After one or two turns of this kind I began to sense in me a vague apprehension, which manifested itself as a feeling of vertigo...”

Vertigo is right. This book is one of the strangest, yet at the same time most beautiful, books I have ever encountered. You want to see it as a kind of nonfictional memoir, yet things keep happening, as in the above excerpt, which confound that prosaic notion. An astonishing piece of literature, which has no equivalent, except perhaps in Sebald’s other offerings. The real surprise is in how easy it is to read, despite the depths it plumbs...

AMERICAN GODS, by Neil Gaiman
A man known as Shadow is released from prison early so he may attend the funeral of his wife, killed in a car crash. On the way to his home town he is offered a job by a fellow-diner at a fast-food outlet who seems to have a supernatural knowledge of our hero’s life. The man’s name: “Mister Wednesday”.
          With absolutely nothing else going for him, Shadow agrees to accompany his new boss on his travels, performing such small tasks as his boss requires of him. There begins a bizarre journey into the American heartland, a heartland apparently peopled by mythical beings: gods, in fact. Gods brought with them by all the immigrants from all the lands of the Earth which now make up America. Forgotten now, but still real, and ready, in a kind of latter day Ragnarok, to do battle against the new gods, of money and greed, of interstate highway and urban sprawl...

Neil Gaiman’s Magnum Opus is a fascinating an intriguing read, funny, mysterious and terrifying by turns. I love a writer who can conjure an imaginary world, even one like this which is salted into the real one. On the whole, a worthwhile and satisfying experience.

A Question of Belief

For a few hours yesterday, the whole world’s attention was focused on the issue of historical sexual abuse. A candidate for one of the most important jobs in America, an appointment for life, remember, and his accuser, gave evidence before a panel of American senators. There seems little doubt who came over better in the public eye. She was measured, sober and restrained as she gave her testimony of what she recalled of an incident 36 years in the past. Her accuser, on the other hand, was angry, bitter and belligerent. “It’s a carve up!” He as good as said, citing such things as ‘the revenge of the Clintons’ and a liberal conspiracy to scupper his chances of becoming a Supreme Court judge, despite the passionate support of his President.

This case, as is the case with so many claims of historical sexual assault, comes down to he said/she said. Who do you believe? Is is right to believe her, because she came over as the voice of reason, and he came over as some hysterical bully? I think a jury of his peers would have to find him not guilty, if that is he was facing criminal charges, which of course he is not.The statute of limitations in the U.S. means no charges could be brought against him anyway.

As followers of this blog know, I recently faced very serious charges of historical sexual assault, as the result of the allegations of a single female complainant. The case never came to court because the CPS finally faced up to the reality that my accuser had been caught out in one lie too many, and therefore her testimony could not be trusted. But had it gone to trial, it would have come down to the he said/she said scenario, with the jury having to make up their minds whose story they believed: her claims or my denials. Maybe in court her lies would have been exposed by my defence team, leaving the jury doubting her truthfulness. But they might have made a perverse decision, as juries often do, and thought: “All those terrible stories of rape and sexual assault: why would she make them up?”- and convict me on her word alone. It happens all the time.

Back to Mr Kavanaugh. The question really is not, should you send him to prison based on one woman’s claims, but is this the sort of man you would want to be sitting in judgement over his peers in the highest court in the land? And, the answer has to be, in the opinion of this observer at least, no.

Tiger Woods: chapeau!

When Tiger Woods’s wife could finally stand no more of his appalling behaviour (namely, screwing a succession of women who, oddly, closely resembled his spouse), his very public excoriation threatened to destroy his career. Then, as often happens in life, misfortune piled on misfortune, and he developed a severe back problem, not good for any golfer, never mind one who had looked like becoming the greatest of all time.

He dropped out of the world’s top 1000 players, and we all (certainly myself) thought it was all over.
“He’ll never win another tournament” I said, “let alone another major.” Well, the PGA Tour Championship is considered by many to be the unofficial 5th major, and yesterday he won it in magnificent style.

Pelagius loves a comeback kid. When Roger Federer fell victim to the Epstein Barr virus in 2008 this correspondent wrote him off, saying he would never win another big tournament. He went on to win another seven Grand Slams, proving me spectacularly wrong and securing his reputation as history’s greatest tennis player. Going a little further back, I will always remember the 1980 Moscow Olympics, when Seb Coe failed to win his favoured event, the 800 metres, losing to his great rival Steve Ovett. But a week later he came back to win the 1500 metres, his rival’s strongest event. I am not Coe’s biggest fan, but for that achievement alone he deserves to placed in the sporting Pantheon.

Now we can place Tiger Woods alongside those immortals of the Great Comeback. He has yet to win a Major, but, you know, I am no longer saying it’s never going to happen.

Sexism: alive and well in women’s tennis

As can be evidenced by Serena Williams’s treatment at the hands of a very senior (male) umpire at the final of the US Open on Saturday.

First, she was warned for coaching, a venial sin committed by almost every coach of the top players, men and women, the world over. Think of Rafa Nadal, for instance, who was coached by his uncle Tony on almost every point he ever played. Did he get penalised for it? Rarely if ever is the answer. Then she had a point docked for smashing her racket and finally, having called Carlos Ramos a ‘thief’ for stealing a point from her, was penalised by giving away a whole game. As she was already 4-3 down with her opponent, Naomi Osaka, next to serve, this was as good as gifting the match to her Japanese rival. But would this have happened to a man, or even a white woman? I doubt it.

After the match the great Billy Jean King noted that when men show anger they are only called ‘outspoken’, or at worst ‘passionate’, while women are labelled ‘hysterical’. She could have added that in the case of a black woman, they would be called ‘out of control’. This last point was underlined by a female tennis player on BBC’s Today Programme this morning (I’m sorry, I don’t know her name) who used this exact phrase in describing Serena’s behaviour on court. This attitude is despicable, being not only sexist, but racist too.

Let us look at men players again. Take Djokovic, for example. He is a master of gamesmanship.  Bending the rules as far as he can get away with, he is still admired (and rightly so) as a master of the game, and officials customarily cut him a lot of slack. Or let us look at Nadal again. Now, Rafa is a divine player to watch, but also agonising because he takes so long between points. 25 seconds is what he is allowed, yet he nearly always adds 10 more to that. How often is he warned, or even penalised about this? About as often as he loses 6-love 6-love is the answer.

Tennis is an aggressive game. Nobody ever won a game of tennis by being timid. Serena can be pretty scary on court, but then what about Sharapova’s 100 decibel scream? Did anyone ever penalise her for that? I’m old enough to remember Margaret Court, who could be extremely unpleasant at times. But they’re white...

Pelagius says: Leave Serena alone! She is arguably the greatest woman player of all time, and she didn’t achieve that by being the shy, retiring type. OK, if she breaks the rules, apply the disciplinary rules to her, but make sure you apply them to everyone else too.

August 2018 film review part 2

BRIGSBY BEAR (2018) D- Dave McCary
A young man (Kyle Mooney, who devised the film as well as starring in it) is abducted in childhood and kept isolated from society. His ‘father’ (an excellent Mark Hamill) entertains him by creating a TV show starring a fluffy-toy superhero called ‘Brigsby Bear’. Our abductee is entranced by these amateur offerings, which carry lots of moral messages like being honest, always doing the right thing and good ultimately triumphing over evil. Then he is finally released from his cozy prison and encounters the real world for the first time. But, perhaps understandably, the young man remains obsessed by the Brigsby character to the point where the authorities are seriously worried he has been permanently warped by his incarceration.
             Eventually he decides he can only fulfill himself by making a movie of Brigsby Bear himself, by using the props seized from his abductors, and reluctantly, the authorities let him have his way...

This movie is terrific. Beautifully realised on screen, this is a deeply moving and beautiful tale which is in my experience unique - and that isn’t easy today. Highest recommendation.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD ((1968) D- George A. Romero
A young woman is visiting a cemetery with her brother when they are attacked by a strange, flesh-eating ghoul. The boy is killed, and she flees, finding an abandoned farmhouse nearby in which to hide. There she finds another man also escaping from the zombies outside who would kill and eat them. In one terrible night they, and a few other ‘norms’, attempt to fight off the attack from a growing band of flesh-eating monsters.

Romero’s famous cult schlock-horror is now seen as a classic of the cinema, and if we rate it by the number of spin-offs and copycat films that followed, it certainly qualifies. Shot in grainy black and white, it captures the menace and horror of a zombie attack perfectly, using a number of devices that are guaranteed to keep us riveted: the dead that won’t die, the hands coming through the walls, the danger that lurks within, it’s all there. The ultimate horror film.

August 2018 film review part 1

THE DUELLISTS (1977) D- Ridley Scott
A soldier in the Napoleonic Wars decides he has been dissed by a fellow officer and challenges him to a duel. They fight. Neither dies, and they go their separate ways. Until chance brings them together again and the issue of ‘face’ forces them to fight again. And again...
             Based on a short story by Joseph Conrad, this was Ridley Scott’s first full length feature film, and it boded well for the future. Soon the film acquired cult status, despite its unremarkable script. With too small a budget to build sets, the whole film is shot in a series of real locations, which only adds to its authentic feel. Harvey Keitel and Keith Carradine perform well, as we might expect, but it is the film’s overall atmosphere which lingers in the mind.

EQUALIZER 2 (2018) D- Antoine Fuqua
A retired black-ops specialist (Denzel Washington) finds a bunch of former colleagues have gone rogue and would do him in. Big mistake. They soon find themselves wishing they’d chosen an easier target...
           The tag line for this film could be “If you liked the first Equalizer film you’re going to like this one, ‘coz it’s more of the same”, because all the elements of the original are in this film too: a quiet, unassuming man whose skill set makes him into a kind of one-man army, righting wrongs in a way we all fantasize we’d like to do ourselves. It isn’t quite as good as the original, which I found totally engaging, but it’s still pretty exciting. My favourite trope was the prospect of a hurricane on its way, while the atmosphere on the ground was ramping up in a way that reflected the maelstrom to come. Superior summer movie fodder...

STUDIO GHIBLI SEASON ON FILM FOUR
My goodness, what a treat Film4 have been giving us in August! They’ve taken it on themselves to show the entire cannon of that revered anime production company, from the 80s to the present day.
Take time to enjoy the unique animation style which seems to place us in the midst of Japanese culture, and let the plots, whether they be of young love (Whisper of the Heart), survival at the end of WW2 as the Americans rain down fire bombs on Japan (Grave of the Fireflies) or enter a magical world (Castle in the Sky) simply wash over you and enter into your subconscious. Even when they decide to use a European story, such as Diana Wyn Jones’s Howl’s Moving Castle, you’re still in a world that is the Japanese psyche through and through. Just pick any at random and enjoy...

See next post for more films

August 2018 book review

THE CAPTIVE and THE FUGITIVE, by Marcel Proust
“...At daybreak, my face still turned to the wall, and before I could see what shade of colour the first streaks of light assumed, I could already tell what the weather was like. The first sounds from the street had told me, according to whether they came to my ears deadened and distorted by the moisture of the atmosphere or quivering like arrows in the resonant, empty expanses of a spacious, frosty, pure morning; as soon as I heard the rumble of the first tramcar, I could tell whether it was sodden with rain or setting forth into the blue...”

This is how volume V of Proust’s magnum Opus begins, and I offer this brief extract to illustrate the crystalline beauty of what lies ahead.
          This book, or books, because they were originally published separately, has been alternatively known as ‘Albertine’s book’, because Albertine, Marcel’s inamorata, is both the captive, kept virtual prisoner by his terror that the moment she is out of his sight she will seek a lesbian encounter, and fugitive, because she eventually wrests herself from his tyranny. Now read on...

THE SECRET BARRISTER, by the Secret Barrister
Being a rundown of our venerable legal system, the worst in the world except for all the others, by a working criminal barrister. From the ‘Mag’s courts’, run by a bunch of amateurs with no right of appeal against their arbitrary decisions, all the way to the Court of Appeal, where appellants find it next door to impossible to reverse lower court’s decisions, this is a devastating takedown of a broken system.
          Having got far closer than I would ever want to the workings of the criminal justIce system /recently, I kept finding myself saying, “Oh my God! So that’s how I nearly went to prison for a crime I didn’t commit!”, but also reading tales of injustice even worse than my own. But the book’s overall thrust is that our justice system is seriously underfunded, but because most of us never actually get face to face with it, we don’t complain as we might about, say, underfunding in the NHS. We all get ill, we all see our doctor from time to time so we can see how that might affect us directly. Underfunding of the legal system just isn’t sexy enough to make it big in the news, especially with what he (or is it she?) calls the ‘inherent anti-defendant bias’ in the media. Shocking reading...

HIROSHIMA, by John Hersey
A year on from the world’s first live experiment in nuclear fission, in the summer of 1946 the New Yorker magazine sent correspondent John Hersey to find out from people on the ground what happened. He concentrated on 6 people who had by some miracle survived the inferno, and got them to tell their stories. What emerged was a 30,000 word essay, and it so impressed his editor that the New Yorker made the unprecedented decision to run the piece in its entirety in a single issue devoted solely to the story.
          Almost immediately the piece was hailed as a masterpiece of creative nonfiction, with its cool, almost dispassionate accounts of suffering brought about by the Great Flash. There is no moral judgement at all, Hersey preferring to leave that for the reader.
Footnote: you can read the full text yourself by typing the words “Hiroshima John Hersey full text” into google, and I promise you will be forever changed by the experience.

Long distance trade good, short distance bad

Or so it would seem. Today Theresa May is in Cape Town, announcing her intention to be G7’s biggest investor in Africa by 2022. All well and good one might say. Small point. When she says Africa, she means South Africa mainly, which is why she chose to make the announcement there. South Africa is the most prosperous country in Africa. It makes sense. But remember, our current trade with the whole of Africa is only 17.5 billion pounds pa, while our trade with the EU is more like 250 billion. So it’s going to have to undergo something of a transformation before it even comes close to what we will have lost to the EU when we leave it behind. And let’s not forget other players, just as keen as us and with even more clout; I speak of course of the USA and China, who want a large wedge of the African pie for themselves.

I’m probably going to be accused of naivety at any moment, but something else occurs to me:  Cape Town is 8000 miles from Britain. France and the rest of the EU only a few hundred miles. Does no one other than me see how crazy it is to abandon nearby markets while seeking others on the other side of the world? We know air travel is contributing significantly to the CO2 emission/global warming thing. Imagine how much worse that’s going to get when we start trading with all these far-flung nations? And all this to wrest back our ‘sovereignty’, whatever that is? OK, I’ll tell you what that is: a con.

I spent a few days in Richmond, Surrey last week, and of the several places we visited, Ham House, Syon House and Kew Gardens, it was hard to avoid noticing that they all lie directly under the main flight path to Heathrow airport. Every 45 seconds a jet plane passes overhead, 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. Are all these journeys necessary?

Look, I know I’m part of the problem too. I’ve travelled by jet 3 times this year, albeit all within Europe, so I am not setting myself as some sort of ecological saint. But I do worry that many, many plane journeys aren’t really necessary. Business people going to meetings - how about Skype? Holiday makers - how about a destination closer to home?

Mine is a voice in the wilderness on this subject, as that never ending queue of planes overflying West London testifies. But at some stage this issue is going to have to be addressed. Anyone noticed the world’s weather recently?

The biggest cult in history

It seems it doesn’t matter what Trump does, or says, he can do, or say, no wrong in the eyes of millions of Americans. Even today, when he shrugs off his complicity in paying hush money to women so they wouldn’t embarrass him during the 2016 election campaign by saying “I did nothing wrong”.

I saw someone on CNN the other day willingly supporting him in everything, and I mean everything, which might not be that surprising, except she was a black, female, doctor for Chrissakes. If he’s even got people like her on his side, things look very good for him winning the election in 2020.

A commentator pointed out yesterday that in effect Trump is the leader of a cult, and hence the biggest cult there has ever been, as it comprises about 1 in 3 of the American population, that is over 100 million people. People who slavishly support his xenophobic foreign and immigration policy, his destruction of the environment in favour of big business, and his trashing of anyone who has the temerity to disagree with him. This is how people behave towards the leaders of their cults, Bhagwan Sree Rajneesh, Jim Jones, Adolph Hitler to name a few.

There’s a lot of talk about his ‘base’, the core of supporters from ‘the Rust belt’ who want to see him drain the swamp (funny that, he’s deeper in that swamp than most, it turns out), and in a wider context, from the “Bible Belt”. People think this term applies to a strip of America going down the middle, but in fact the Bible Belt is actually all of America with the exception of the west and east coasts and a few liberal states. I sometimes wonder how the Democrats ever win anything...

Speaking of that, apparently it won’t do them any good to try to impeach Trump. First, it wouldn’t work, and second, it would so anger the base they would galvanize support and guarantee his re-election. So, Pelagius says, don’t go down that road. Provide an alternative, spend a lot of money to publicize it and hope he fucks up even worse than he has already. I wouldn’t rule it out. OK, he’s got a hundred million die-hard supporters. But that still leaves 200 million who might not vote for him. Please God...

Just count to 90

It being a slow news day in the heart of the silly season, both Sky and the BBC have run virtually identical items this morning on anger and how to defeat it.

Turns out research has shown that the hormones that surge through our bodies when we get angry dissipate in just 90 seconds, so all we have to do is wait for that long and everything will be fine. And of course, it being the deeply skilled people at Sky and the ubiquitous and terminally lightweight Victoria Derbyshire, there was no further discussion.

But we all know it ain’t that simple. When I was kid my Mum used to tell me to “count to 10”. Now it seems we just have to count to 90. I don’t know about you, but there are some issues that, after 90 seconds, I am even more angry about than I was before. Like Trump’s arrant lying. Like the wreckers who actively seek a no-deal Brexit. God knows, there are things Maggie Thatcher did more than 30 years ago I am still furious about.

The fact is anger can be a good thing. Anger is a powerful and empowering emotion. It helps get things done, it can protect us in some circumstances. Anger is a complex emotion, and one evolution has preserved because it has a survival value. Think before you act, or post, is always a good idea, and one Trump should have taken up a long time ago. But don’t take my anger away. I need it.

Burqa Wars

Just as Corbyn’s Opponents have lighted on the spurious issue of antisemitism within the Labour Party as a way of ousting him, Boris’s detractors are now using the veil as a way of getting rid of him.

As you know, he took a leaf out of Donald Trump’s playbook and appealed to his ‘base’, of whom there are many. Vox pops around the country suggest he has touched a chord with racist elements that lurk in Little Britain, and as we have seen with Brexit, there are millions of them.

Careful to hold on to his libertarian roots, Boris said he didn’t want to ban the burka, as they have in Denmark and elsewhere. But he has ridiculed them, and thereby deeply insulted Muslims everywhere.

I don’t like the Burqa either. I can understand the point of view of certain Muslim women, who insist they like it; that it actually enhances their freedom. But for me, every time I see it, I think: exploitation and male patriarchy. The Burka is just an extension of man’s power over women, women who in certain factions of Islam, have no right to education, to go out by themselves or indeed to have any voice at all. That’s why it’s wrong.

I have heard articulate and intelligent Muslim women speak of the liberating effects of the veil, and how their decision to wear it is theirs alone, and not as the result of a domineering male presence. But to me that doesn’t change anything. As a symbol of male power it remains odious to me, as it should to anyone who truly believes in self determination.

July 2018 film review

24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE (2002) D- Michael Winterbottom
Being the life and crazy times of Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan), Godfather (or would ‘midwife’ be a better word?) to the Manchester music scene from the 1970s to the Millennium. See how he discovers Joy Division, then following their lead singer, Ian Curtis’s suicide, he engineers their transformation into New Order. Marvel how he spots the ‘Shakespeare-like’ talent lurking inside the outwardly repellent Sean Ryder and creates the mega-successful band Happy Mondays.

These bands were all showcased at the Hacienda night club, which became the coolest club in Britain, never mind Manchester, though it never made a cent. For this was the age of ecstasy, and as Tony points out: “When you’re E’d up you don’t spend money at the bar. The only people who made money out of the Hacienda were the drug dealers”. Not that he cared. It was never about the money for Tony Wilson, but the music, and for once, it wasn’t bullshit.

Michael Winterbottom took a chance by putting ‘Alan Partridge’ in the lead, and one has to work hard at first to put this out of mind. But you soon do, as you are swept along in a manic ride, speeding down memory lane at 100mph. A really extraordinary movie, and one of the best British films of the last 20 years.

TO DIE FOR (1995) D- Gus van Sant
Gorgeous Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman) is the weather girl at the local news channel but aspires to be a national news anchor. But she feels her husband is holding her back. Enter two teenagers (Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck) who lust after her, and are willing to do anything to gain her favour.

Based on the real case of American Pamela Smart, on whose story this film is based, director Gus van Sant, whose work I have long admired, brings out the best in his young stars to produce a gripping and tremendously effective piece of cinema. Kidman should have won an Oscar for her portrayal, while the kids never looked back in their careers. Superior.

THE HAPPY PRINCE (2018) D- Rupert Everett
An ageing and damaged Oscar Wilde emerges from Reading gaol, to find his once adoring public have neither forgotten nor forgiven him. He seeks refuge in France, but it isn’t far enough from England, and he is rooted out. He is made happy for a while when former lover Lord Alfred Douglas visits, but he is the same selfish bastard he always was, and he soon buggers off. From there it’s a one way trip to oblivion...

Rupert Everett, who risked a not Di similar fate when he came out in the 1980s, spent over ten years getting his vision to be realised on the screen, but my God, was it ever worth the effort. Beautifully acted by all the players, and directed with supreme subtlety and flair, Everett has pulled together a magnificent movie, funny, moving, and deeply insightful. Will there be better film this year? I doubt it.

DEAD CALM (1989) D- Philip Noyce
A couple (Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman, yes, I’m in a Kidman phase right now) are guiding a yacht across the ocean when they come across a young man (Billy Zane) escaping a sinking ship. Following the rules of the sea, they rescue him, but boy, was that a bad decision. Turns out the guy’s some kind of psycho who killed the crew on the other ship and is now intent on taking this one for himself. But not before he has some fun with the delectable Kidman...

This was an early example of using the trope of ‘the villain who refuses to die’, perhaps most famously exemplified in Fatal Attraction, though it’s now almost passé. Back in 1989, however, it was new and  genuinely terrifying.

Dead Calm was Nicole’s breakthrough film, and she has never looked back since her fine performance as the feisty lady who won’t be intimidated. It wasn’t all good though. It is said Tom Cruise saw her in Dead Calm and decided he had to have her. The rest, as they say, from Nicole’s POV at least, is not very pleasant history...

July 2018 book review

SODOM AND GOMORRAH, by Marcel Proust
As volume 4 of Proust’s masterwork opens, our narrator spots his friend Baron de Charlus flirting outrageously with one of the male servants. OMG! Whatever next? Then, as the book progresses and we watch the relationship between our hero and his paramour Albertine develop, he becomes increasingly paranoid that she might be harbouring lesbian, or bisexual tendencies. For, in Proust’s world, Sodom refers to the male homosexual, and Gomorrah to the other thing.

There is a well known adage about A La Recherche which goes: “Remember, in Proust, all the girls are boys”. Marcel was himself gay, but made the decision to make his narrator both fascinated and horrified by what he calls ‘inverts’. What he never explains is just why the very idea drives him into an hysterical panic, though in Albertine’s case it is partly because he is terrified lest she leave him for a woman. And as he spends half the book talking about how much she bores him, this does seem a little odd. Whatever.

FIT FOR A PURPOSE, by Diana Gruffydd Williams
A young girl is struck by a car, leaving her with several injuries, some obvious, others less so. As she grows, two things emerge: 1. She is exceptionally bright. 2. She is exceptionally odd. She is given a number of diagnoses (a sure sign that the professionals actually had no idea what was wrong with her), and as a result given all the trendiest treatments available in the fifties and sixties. So distressed by her mental aberrations was she, she even lobbied for a lobotomy. Thank God they wouldn’t go there, though they tried pretty much everything else- innumerable drugs, abreaction, group therapy, you name it. By some miracle she came out the other side, still highly gifted but at last, free of her mental demons.

Then, after a little prompting by her GP (thanks for the plug, Di) she realises she might have a calling as a healer in the Christian tradition, and her life moves into a new and wonderful phase. Meanwhile she finds the love of her life and settles down to make an idyllic family.

This, then, is a book in three parts. It is most compelling when she speaks of her mental problems and how they were addressed, and fascinating when she discovers her role as a healer. The often highly detailed description of her family are perhaps the least engaging part of the narrative, though even here she brings all the players to life in a kind of innocent, even naive style which she has made her own. On the whole, a highly satisfying read.

Light the beacons! BoJo is no more!

Talk about being on the case. I write just moments after Boris Johnson announced his resignation from the government, presumably in protest at the PM’s latest version of Brexit arrangements.

“You can’t polish a turd” is how he has been alleged to have characterised the compromise, aimed at appeasing all sides, though of course, as appeasements often do, failing to win anyone’s unqualified approval.

“Hard-line” brexiteers were never going to sign off on it, you know, those jerks like Owen Patterson, who believe we should leave now, no deal, and go for WTO rules, which give us the same status in Europe as, say, Argentina. And remainers, like me, who say a referendum should never have been held in the first place, and certainly not on a 50% plus 1 vote basis on something of such profound importance to everyone in the UK as this,  aren’t completely mollified either.

Boris Johnson, a highly intelligent person, does a remarkably authentic impression of being a highly stupid person. No one is going to forget in a hurry how he prevaricated long and hard before deciding whether he was going to be a leaver or remainer, so strong were his views - not. It was so obvious he was working out which way would more benefit his medium term career it was frankly embarrassing - for almost everyone except himself.

And when he said “Fuck Business!” When asked to comment on business’s worries about the post-Brexit future, a remark so asinine, so dangerous, so at odds with the entire ethos of the Tory party, which for two hundred years has marketed itself as the party of business, a lot of people began to worry that he might be losing the plot altogether, Mrs May included. Or could he playing a deeper game? Like grooming himself for the highest office once he has plotted her removal with his Brexiteer brethren? I shouldn’t be surprised. I just hope it doesn’t work.

In summary, I’m glad he’s gone, he should have gone a lot sooner, and I hope to God he doesn’t come back. Ever.

Torres don’t like green

Even if they insist they do. Last week the government refused to fund the Swansea bay tidal energy scheme. At 1.2 billion quid, it was just too expensive, they said. Not that cost got in the way of them giving the go-ahead for Huntley ‘C’ nuclear power station, which will cost at least 20 times as much. And they’re just as keen on replacing the obsolete nuke on Anglesey, which will likewise cost an enormous sum.
            Not so long ago the Japanese Prime Minister visited Britain, and Wales, and warned against building nukes, reminding us what happened at Fukushima, where elaborate precautions had been taken to protect it against any and all disasters that might befall it- and then proved totally inadequate in the event. Funny really, as it’s the Japanese firm Hitachi which has been given the contract to develop the Anglesey site.
            Meanwhile the government has made no secret of its enthusiasm for fracking, which, with its threat to the water table and its potential for further CO2 pollution is the very antithesis of ‘clean energy’. “Energy security” they bleat. We’ve got to ensure the lights keep working and not fear the Saudis or the Ruskies will just turn the supplies off at a whim. Fair enough, but I ask you, what is more secure than the knowledge that the tide will come in and go out twice a day?

It’s true the Swansea scene wasn’t going to be cheap. But it’s an early design, an innovation, the first perhaps in a line of other tidal schemes that could operate up and down the country, each design becoming better as lessons are learned. And it wouldn’t have blown up or pushed out more greenhouse gases into an air already dangerously saturated. For God’s sake, give green energy a chance. We need it, and our children need it even more

June 2018 film review part 2

VICTORIA AND ABDUL (2017) D- Stephen Frears
England, 1887. The Queen’s golden jubilee. She tries to put on a brave face, but inside she’s still mourning her beloved Albert, who died over 20 years ago. Then a Muslim man is brought over as part of the celebrations, and when Victoria sees him finds herself strangely drawn to his unassuming ways. He finds himself being made part of her household, even coming to occupy a role as unofficial, though highly influential personal advisor. Too far-fetched? Maybe, but it really happened, and Frears, with all his customary skill and subtlety, brings the story to life in a way it seems only he can.

There’s a lot to admire about this film, from the performances to the production values, which are stupendous, but one is left with an uneasy feeling that somehow we, and indeed the Indians themselves, are being slightly patronised. I can’t believe Victoria had so enlightened a view of the subjects of her empire that this movie suggests; if she did she certainly didn’t do a lot about it. But the fact remains, the bare bones of this strange tale are in fact true...

GUN CRAZY (1949) D- Joseph H. Lewis
A young man (John Dall) who fancies himself something of a marksman goes to a travelling show where he sees a pretty girl doing all the trick-shots he can do, and more. Love at first shot, you might say. They get together and soon find an anarchic strain runs through them both. Why not use their skills in gunplay to rob a few banks? Not that they’ll shoot anybody, just scare ‘em to death. That would be OK, until someone is killed. Then everything gets a lot darker. You see, the girl doesn’t just kill someone: she enjoys it. This cannot end well...

The producers apparently had to soft-peddle on the fact that its 2 leads were turned on, almost to a sexual degree, by guns and what they can do, though to me it’s hard to miss. The censors had problems with this, but didn’t quite know what to do about it. I mean, you can’t criticise guns in America, right? So the film got its release, and is now hailed as a classic of film noir. Unmissable.

DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES (1988) D- Terence Davies
Being an everyday story of working class Liverpudlians, first in the late 40s, and then, with the same cast of characters, ten years on, with all the added complications 10 years can bring: children, divorce, bereavement and the rest.
             Headed up by a splendid Pete Postlethwaite leading a cast of unknown, but very strong actors and actresses, we see a couple of families at notable occasions in their lives; weddings, funerals, their first date and so on, all told with a delightful lightness of touch which is so skilled it often seems we are watching a documentary film and not a drama at all. I don’t know if you’ve seen Pasolini’s Gospel According to St Matthew, but if you have you will recall how that film comes over as if a documentary film crew had simply followed Christ around on his travels in the Holy Land. Same here.
              Many film scholars have given this relatively unknown film their highest rating, suggesting it is one of the best films to come out of Britain in the last 50 years. I concur.

June 2018 film review part 1

NE LE DIS A PERSONNE (Tell no one) (2006) D- Guillaume Canet
8 years before, Alexandre’s Wife was murdered, presumably by a serial killer. He struggles to come to terms with her loss until a video is sent to him which appears to show she is still alive. Even more worryingly, on the very same day the police inform him they have discovered 2 bodies which, according to them, implicate him in his late wife’s murder. What to do? Run away. Run away fast.

In this film, director Canet draws on a perennial Hitchkockian obsession: ‘the wrong man’, and produces a movie very much in the latter’s tradition. But for me the plot was a little too labyrinthine, and the cuts a little too confusing. But don’t take my word for it. The French loved it and it won loads of awards over there. Certainly notable.

CONRACK (1974) D- Martin Ritt.
A young, idealistic teacher (John Voight in one of his finest roles) is given the daunting task of teaching a class of children living on a remote island off the coast of South Carolina. His name is Conroy, but the nearest the kids can get to pronouncing his name is ‘Conrack’.
             He soon finds a level of ignorance he had not thought possible in an America of the 1960s, and starts from the bottom up, teaching them to swim (a kid drowns on an almost monthly basis as no one knows how to swim) and how to brush their teeth. The kids take to their new mentor, but the authorities are less pleased, especially local superintendent, Hume Cronyn, who orders him to stick to the curriculum. But ‘Conrack’ knows that ain’t gonna fly, and goes his own way, passing on the kind of knowledge these kids will need to survive in the world beyond the island. Finally, the inevitable happens and he is fired for insubordination.

Martin Ritt is one of my favourite American directors. From socially aware dramas like A Man is Ten Feet Tall (also known as Edge of the City) to powerful westerns such as Hombre, Ritt has taken on only projects which appeal to his sense of right and wrong in modern society. And here he has excelled himself, creating a brilliant, funny and moving comment on American life.

SHIN GODZILLA (2016) D- Ishiro Honda
Following the radiation leaks from the Tsunami-wrecked power station at Fukushima, a terrible monster emerges from the depths and wanders ashore, where it reeks terrible carnage. A team is assembled to deal with it, but members of that team suspect that what they are witnessing is in fact a leap forward in evolution, and that Homo sapiens may no longer consider itself at the apex of the evolutionary tree. No matter, it’s causing so much mayhem the only option appears to be: kill it. Only problem? The damn thing appears to be pretty much invulnerable. They could nuke it, but they’d have to take out Tokyo as well, something that might not go down well with that city’s 37 million inhabitants...

There have been innumerable Godzilla movies since its inception in the 1950s, most from Japan, although Hollywood has also done a couple. But for me this is the best of them. High quality special effects, sound acting and a unique atmosphere make this a rather special movie. Give it a go.

See next post for more movies

June 2018 book review

THE GUERMANTES WAY, by Marcel Proust
Volume 3 of Proust’s masterwork finds our hero and narrator entering the rarefied atmosphere of Parisian high society. His parents rent an apartment in the grounds of the great mansion owned by the Duke and Duchess of Guermantes, situated in the heart of the Faubourg St Germain, where all the leading members of the French aristocracy have their Paris homes. He instantly (as is his way) falls in love with the duchess, folllowing her around in what would today be termed stalking, and certainly irritating her. Despite this he is ‘adopted’ by the family, for reasons that are never made clear. Is it because he has already made a mark on the literary scene, or perhaps because he has made friends with the duchess’s nephew?

Whatever the reason, he finds himself invited to all the best parties and salons, and now he meets Baron de Charlus, the Duke’s younger brother, and a man of great refinement, intelligence and rather odd personality. Not that that’s unusual in this setting. Immense privilege and an overwhelming sense of entitlement has made many of the aristos our hero comes across extremely eccentric characters, to say the least. But what they are obsessed with most is their pedigree, and that of everyone else. If they “had to buy their own furniture” as Alan Clarke would have put it, or even if they could only trace their ancestry back a mere 3 or 4 hundred years (the Guermantes being able to trace their family back to before Charlemagne) they were barely worth talking to, unless they possessed an unusual talent, like being a prodigy of some kind. And even then they were strictly ‘flavour of the month’, ready to be abandoned when the next extraordinary talent came along.

But amidst this heady, intoxicating new world he has entered, the narrator’s beloved grandmother, after a long illness, finally succumbs to a stroke, bringing forth from Proust one of the most sublime passages in the whole series. Here is a brief extract:
          ...As in the far-off days when her parents had chosen for her a bridegroom, she had the features, delicately traced by purity and submission, the cheeks glowing with a chaste expectation, with a dream of happiness, with an innocent gaiety even, which the years had gradually destroyed. Life in withdrawing from her had taken with it the disillusionments of life. A smile seemed to be hovering on my grandmothert’s lips. On that funeral couch, death, like a sculptor of the Middle Ages, had lain her down in the form of a young girl...”

By this stage, as we can see from the above, we are thoroughly under Proust’s spell, following the narrator’s journey, almost breathless with anticipation at what will happen next, all the while hypnotised by the magnificence of his prose style. Don’t stop me now. I’m half way through and the best is yet to come...

WHITE TEETH, by Zadie Smith
Two men, Archie Jones (English) and Samad Iqbal (Bengali), are thrown together during WW2 and remain friends from then on, even after marrying and having their own families. Living close by in north London, their children become friends too. Then they get mixed up with a high achieving, upper middle class Jewish family that represents everything they don’t. Whatever. This is Zadie Smith’s home turf: the complexities of cultures clashing and meshing in ways we couldn’t imagine. We couldn’t, but she can...

I hate Zadie Smith. She’s young (relatively), beautiful (very) and talented (extremely). I just don’t think it fair that God should shower his gifts so progiously on one soul, but there it is. Zadie is one of our best writers, and we should be grateful for her contribution to the art of the novel. Try this as a sample:
          “...He continued like this, one word flowing from another, with no punctuation or breath and with the same chocolate delivery - one could almost climb into his sentences, one could almost fall asleep in them...”
            See?