Friday, 9 May 2008
John Denham as leader of the opposition
Read his speech today and was impressed. If he can hold onto his seat, which I have this sense he will, then I reckon he's a good shout for Labour leader should the local elections be an indicator of what's going to happen at the general. He's southern, moderate and would make a good contrast to Cameron having a grey haired but not aged gravitas and the advantage of clearly being a man of principle having resigned over Iraq. He'd get my vote.
Happy Go Lucky
This was meant to be a blog about politics but all I seem to do is talk about the films I watch. Happy Go Lucky is in many ways classic Mike Leigh. Even by his standards it's weak on narrative thrust but it's a classic look at London lives with a mixture of affection and a strangely unuanced idea of character. Secret and Lives is a decent film but nowhere near as good as it thinks it is and Topsy Turvy is great fun and for my money his best work. Most of the other Leigh films I've seen seem to have this strange lack of interest everyone but the main character. And so it is here.
Sally Hawkins is great as Poppy, really great. It is very hard to play a cheery protagonist. It's far more traditional for the lead to be quietly likeable and their friends to be zany and off the wall. She has to get you through being every so slightly repelled by her excessively cheery demeanour and out the other side where you like and respect her. And she does this mostly through having a face that shows real, mature care in it. Whether it's dealing with kids who are struggling or with Eddie Marsan as a rage-filled driving instructor, she can demonstrate that behind that overgrown kid persona is a person who's far more emotionally adept then those around here and has a genuine warmth and drive to help people. And help people in an effective way based, to sound utterly wanky, on eudaimonia (Aristotle's term meaning roughly 'the good life') rather than on an unemotional utilitarian basis. The idea that you help more by being a positive asset to everyone you eat then if you give away lots of money to charity.
That last point may be a little overstating it but I've listened to Mike Leigh talk about the film and I'm in no doubt that he is interested in the emotional maturity of optimism. Which fits in well with this post on Never Trust a Hippy. There is a strong pervading sense that optimism and idealism is some student concept which you should grow out of. But the truth is I don't think many people become cynical because they've seen more of the world it's got to them. I think most of the satirists and moaning columnists were always like that. It's why ex-politicians are usually better reads because they're more naturally engaged with attempting to put forward solutions.
This is in danger of becoming a moan about moaning. But I do think there is something endemic in the media that puts those who sit and bitch above those who try and help. And more fundamentally which encourages a viewpoint where you should feel sorry for yourself despite the fact that the 21st century in Britain is historically up there with the greatest places to live in history. End of rant.
So I reccomend Happy Go Lucky not because it's brilliant. She is and Eddie Marsan is brilliant as ever but the rest of the cast are stunningly one dimensional and I can't quite figure out if it's the script or the actor's fault. Actually it's a Mike Leigh film so the two are very much intertwined. But because I think it is an unsubtle but right polemic on the virtues of positivity and not succumbing to self-pity. It's a liberal modern version of the stiff upper lip really.
Sally Hawkins is great as Poppy, really great. It is very hard to play a cheery protagonist. It's far more traditional for the lead to be quietly likeable and their friends to be zany and off the wall. She has to get you through being every so slightly repelled by her excessively cheery demeanour and out the other side where you like and respect her. And she does this mostly through having a face that shows real, mature care in it. Whether it's dealing with kids who are struggling or with Eddie Marsan as a rage-filled driving instructor, she can demonstrate that behind that overgrown kid persona is a person who's far more emotionally adept then those around here and has a genuine warmth and drive to help people. And help people in an effective way based, to sound utterly wanky, on eudaimonia (Aristotle's term meaning roughly 'the good life') rather than on an unemotional utilitarian basis. The idea that you help more by being a positive asset to everyone you eat then if you give away lots of money to charity.
That last point may be a little overstating it but I've listened to Mike Leigh talk about the film and I'm in no doubt that he is interested in the emotional maturity of optimism. Which fits in well with this post on Never Trust a Hippy. There is a strong pervading sense that optimism and idealism is some student concept which you should grow out of. But the truth is I don't think many people become cynical because they've seen more of the world it's got to them. I think most of the satirists and moaning columnists were always like that. It's why ex-politicians are usually better reads because they're more naturally engaged with attempting to put forward solutions.
This is in danger of becoming a moan about moaning. But I do think there is something endemic in the media that puts those who sit and bitch above those who try and help. And more fundamentally which encourages a viewpoint where you should feel sorry for yourself despite the fact that the 21st century in Britain is historically up there with the greatest places to live in history. End of rant.
So I reccomend Happy Go Lucky not because it's brilliant. She is and Eddie Marsan is brilliant as ever but the rest of the cast are stunningly one dimensional and I can't quite figure out if it's the script or the actor's fault. Actually it's a Mike Leigh film so the two are very much intertwined. But because I think it is an unsubtle but right polemic on the virtues of positivity and not succumbing to self-pity. It's a liberal modern version of the stiff upper lip really.
Thursday, 8 May 2008
After the wedding
The second sensational piece of drama I watched was After the Wedding a Danish film by Suzanne Bier. It's one of the best pieces of european cinema I've seen in a while. It's nicely done with the kind of performances which make you forget they're acting and a directing style that manages to be unobtrusive even as she whirls the camera around her characters and into extreme closeups. A lesson in intricate camerawork as a tool rather than an end in itself. See Atonement for an example of someone knowing what they want to direct before they know what the story is.
And the essence of all this fine craftsmenship is that you get to concentrate on the story itself which has the capacity to surprise and intrigue in a way that I did not quite expect of it.
It begins in India with Jacob running an orphanage in India but being summoned back to Denmark in order to persuade a vastly wealthy potential benefactor to save the orphanage from closure. He is a typical developing world project man of a sort I've seen a fair bit of. He's amazing with the kids, passionate, kind and devoted to the project. These attractive qualities make him an attractive man but he has no real time for anyone and although he is immersed in India he is not quite of it. But he has no wish to leave because he does not want to go home. He despises the rich comforts of home and this anger drives him to be good at what he does. It also means he doesn't always make the right choices. A distrust of the wealthy and a belief that there is some purity about not thinking too hard about money has meant that most of his projects have come unstuck. It hurts him to acknowledge it but he needs to engage with the smiling face of capitalism if he is going to really bring about the good he so desperately craves.
And there are not many more smiling faces of capitalism than Jorgen. Fat and jolly and enjoys nothing more than coming home to his enormous mansion in the countryside to read nursery tales to his two supremely scandanavian looking twin boys and then putting his dear mother to bed before joining his wife in the bath fully clothed for a canoodle and a discussion of their daughter's wedding. He is someone who presents a picture of captialism completely at odds with Jacob's simplistic view of what the wealthy are like. He's caring and generous and wants to do give away some of his vast, vast self-made fortune.
This in itself was a promising start as far as I was concerned. It dealt with things I find hugely interesting and aren't discussed enough. Particularly the relationship between charities and their donors. But if it has stuck there it would have possibly lost itself in among the preaching. It doesn't. It moves through a range of revelations which dissect issues of disclosure and trust and the nature of love. In particular it looks at how people try to take care of others by hiding things from them and concocting plans without consulting those involved. It's about personal skills that are so effective in one arena can be so useless in others. And perhaps most of all is about the idea of responsibilities.
I don't want to divulge too much but one aspect that really interested me is the sense that when a westerner settles in a developing country they're always expected back. At some point, despite everything, it will make sense to go back. You are not of the world you live in. Your world, whatever your relationship with it, is across the seas and you can't truly leave it behind. The film is brilliant for the way it depicts India slowly leaving Jacob the longer he stays in Denmark.
This obviously becomes less true when they marry and have children but the point about development work is that you are dealing with people so much less blessed than you. No one does aid work unless they're educated, healthy, well-travelled rich (comparative to the local population and usually far from poor back home either) and free of responsibilities. The people you work and live with are none of those things. And while you can do so much to help them you can't make them your equals in terms of opportunity or knowledge. As a result you are in a strange and, to my mind, hugely interesting personal situation.
My parents spents a weekend in the hills of Bali with a british engineer who'd settled out there. He'd spent most of his life in south east asia working for multinationals and, single and not someone who fitted easily into society back home, when he retired he decided to stay in Bali. But being both restless and generously hearted he decided he wanted to help the most deprived people in Indonesia. He scoured the country and to his amazement found that as good an example as any could be found in the hills of Bali itself. So he went to the village and gave them a proposition. He promised to make their lives better but they had to agree to follow the plan he proscribed for them. Essentially he asked to be an enlightened despot. The elders went away for three days to discuss it and then came back and agreed to it. And he was true to his word. They now have running water into the village. They grow a far more varied and productive range of foods. The youngest kids all go to school and have spread their numeracy around the rest of village. As a result they don't get mercilessly ripped off when they go to sell their stuff at market anymore. It's all good and they just have to do what he says. I have no idea what has happened to it in the two years since they last visited but I am hugely curious about the relationship he has with it. And After the Wedding has done a great job of reminding me of this. Something you almost never see in films.
That's probably the reason it reasonates for me so much but I think anyone who's ever had to deal with family secrets will find something in this film. I reccomend it as much as any film I've watched on DVD this year.
And the essence of all this fine craftsmenship is that you get to concentrate on the story itself which has the capacity to surprise and intrigue in a way that I did not quite expect of it.
It begins in India with Jacob running an orphanage in India but being summoned back to Denmark in order to persuade a vastly wealthy potential benefactor to save the orphanage from closure. He is a typical developing world project man of a sort I've seen a fair bit of. He's amazing with the kids, passionate, kind and devoted to the project. These attractive qualities make him an attractive man but he has no real time for anyone and although he is immersed in India he is not quite of it. But he has no wish to leave because he does not want to go home. He despises the rich comforts of home and this anger drives him to be good at what he does. It also means he doesn't always make the right choices. A distrust of the wealthy and a belief that there is some purity about not thinking too hard about money has meant that most of his projects have come unstuck. It hurts him to acknowledge it but he needs to engage with the smiling face of capitalism if he is going to really bring about the good he so desperately craves.
And there are not many more smiling faces of capitalism than Jorgen. Fat and jolly and enjoys nothing more than coming home to his enormous mansion in the countryside to read nursery tales to his two supremely scandanavian looking twin boys and then putting his dear mother to bed before joining his wife in the bath fully clothed for a canoodle and a discussion of their daughter's wedding. He is someone who presents a picture of captialism completely at odds with Jacob's simplistic view of what the wealthy are like. He's caring and generous and wants to do give away some of his vast, vast self-made fortune.
This in itself was a promising start as far as I was concerned. It dealt with things I find hugely interesting and aren't discussed enough. Particularly the relationship between charities and their donors. But if it has stuck there it would have possibly lost itself in among the preaching. It doesn't. It moves through a range of revelations which dissect issues of disclosure and trust and the nature of love. In particular it looks at how people try to take care of others by hiding things from them and concocting plans without consulting those involved. It's about personal skills that are so effective in one arena can be so useless in others. And perhaps most of all is about the idea of responsibilities.
I don't want to divulge too much but one aspect that really interested me is the sense that when a westerner settles in a developing country they're always expected back. At some point, despite everything, it will make sense to go back. You are not of the world you live in. Your world, whatever your relationship with it, is across the seas and you can't truly leave it behind. The film is brilliant for the way it depicts India slowly leaving Jacob the longer he stays in Denmark.
This obviously becomes less true when they marry and have children but the point about development work is that you are dealing with people so much less blessed than you. No one does aid work unless they're educated, healthy, well-travelled rich (comparative to the local population and usually far from poor back home either) and free of responsibilities. The people you work and live with are none of those things. And while you can do so much to help them you can't make them your equals in terms of opportunity or knowledge. As a result you are in a strange and, to my mind, hugely interesting personal situation.
My parents spents a weekend in the hills of Bali with a british engineer who'd settled out there. He'd spent most of his life in south east asia working for multinationals and, single and not someone who fitted easily into society back home, when he retired he decided to stay in Bali. But being both restless and generously hearted he decided he wanted to help the most deprived people in Indonesia. He scoured the country and to his amazement found that as good an example as any could be found in the hills of Bali itself. So he went to the village and gave them a proposition. He promised to make their lives better but they had to agree to follow the plan he proscribed for them. Essentially he asked to be an enlightened despot. The elders went away for three days to discuss it and then came back and agreed to it. And he was true to his word. They now have running water into the village. They grow a far more varied and productive range of foods. The youngest kids all go to school and have spread their numeracy around the rest of village. As a result they don't get mercilessly ripped off when they go to sell their stuff at market anymore. It's all good and they just have to do what he says. I have no idea what has happened to it in the two years since they last visited but I am hugely curious about the relationship he has with it. And After the Wedding has done a great job of reminding me of this. Something you almost never see in films.
That's probably the reason it reasonates for me so much but I think anyone who's ever had to deal with family secrets will find something in this film. I reccomend it as much as any film I've watched on DVD this year.
Tuesday, 6 May 2008
A good day
Day two and I already fail to blog. Oh well, it was really rather a great day. To sound stunningly parochial, I haven't been to many countries in the world which do better weather then we had yesterday. It's sunny and green and breezy so that you feel comfortable whether you're in shorts or in trousers. In a jumper or a t-shirt. And everyone just looks so damn happy. Especially slackers like me who could have their lunch on Primrose Hill.
Aside from the weather, it was also a good day because I saw two exceptional pieces of drama. In the morning I took advantage of my slacker status and saw Henry VI part I. I'd gone there thinking I was seeing Henry IV part I (I'm writing them like this to try and emphasise how easy the mistake is) and am rather glad for the mistake. Never seen Henry VI and it's a great play. It has a real sense of the epic. In the programme the director compares it to the Bible, the Sopranos and War and Peace. Never read the Bible but I agree with the comparisons to the other two. It was a real shame I couldn't go and see all three parts.
As a play about a country decaying because of the bickering of its ruling class I felt obliged to try and draw parallels with what's happening at the moment. But the truth is there's none really to make. I suppose you could just about portray Brown as York but then Blair would be Henry VI which is farcical. And that's why parallels can't be drawn. No one in politics is underqualified for office in the same way people were in a feudal government. They are all intelligent and canny. Some more than others, undeniably. And some with a far stronger grasp about how to elicit public support. But they're not children thrust into the deep end. And they can't truly fight amongst themselves with no thought of the people. They're under far too much outside scrutiny. Labour may be struggling to woo the electorate at the moment but it's problem is not that it's ignoring them. The u-turn on bin taxes is an example of them listening and changing their policy even though they know it's right.
It's not a very profound point to say that politics is better than it was in feudal times or that the country isn't actually decaying at all. But it's always worth repeating. We are terribly bad at remembering what a good country this is.
So I'd rather talk about the beautiful production. Productions of shakesepeare have to be visual. You won't catch every line if a story is completely new to you so you need people to be physical in the performance to really bring out the wit of the words. I remember seeing a version of Romeo and Juliet which finally allowed me to understood how dirty, witty and bullying Mercutio and Benvolio were when they were together.
And this truly is a visceral production. The music is sensational. Atmospheric and far more than just background fodder. The costumes are a strange mix between medieval and Mad Max, especially Talbot who has the added bonus of having a slight air of Colonel Blimp. The action scenes are genuinely action-packed with spellbinding choreography and great use of ladders and exits. The acting was, as you'd expect top drawer, with Talbot a great romantic figure, York suitably evil, Gloucester avuncular and domineering and Henry VI able before he even said a word to portray how ridiculous a system is that puts a boy of no special qualities at the head of a warring nation, ridden with factions.
I'm no theatre critic; I hadn't been for well over a year before yesterday. But if I could, I'd see all the histories while they're still on at the roundhouse. It was amazing and it's sad that they're about to end.
Aside from the weather, it was also a good day because I saw two exceptional pieces of drama. In the morning I took advantage of my slacker status and saw Henry VI part I. I'd gone there thinking I was seeing Henry IV part I (I'm writing them like this to try and emphasise how easy the mistake is) and am rather glad for the mistake. Never seen Henry VI and it's a great play. It has a real sense of the epic. In the programme the director compares it to the Bible, the Sopranos and War and Peace. Never read the Bible but I agree with the comparisons to the other two. It was a real shame I couldn't go and see all three parts.
As a play about a country decaying because of the bickering of its ruling class I felt obliged to try and draw parallels with what's happening at the moment. But the truth is there's none really to make. I suppose you could just about portray Brown as York but then Blair would be Henry VI which is farcical. And that's why parallels can't be drawn. No one in politics is underqualified for office in the same way people were in a feudal government. They are all intelligent and canny. Some more than others, undeniably. And some with a far stronger grasp about how to elicit public support. But they're not children thrust into the deep end. And they can't truly fight amongst themselves with no thought of the people. They're under far too much outside scrutiny. Labour may be struggling to woo the electorate at the moment but it's problem is not that it's ignoring them. The u-turn on bin taxes is an example of them listening and changing their policy even though they know it's right.
It's not a very profound point to say that politics is better than it was in feudal times or that the country isn't actually decaying at all. But it's always worth repeating. We are terribly bad at remembering what a good country this is.
So I'd rather talk about the beautiful production. Productions of shakesepeare have to be visual. You won't catch every line if a story is completely new to you so you need people to be physical in the performance to really bring out the wit of the words. I remember seeing a version of Romeo and Juliet which finally allowed me to understood how dirty, witty and bullying Mercutio and Benvolio were when they were together.
And this truly is a visceral production. The music is sensational. Atmospheric and far more than just background fodder. The costumes are a strange mix between medieval and Mad Max, especially Talbot who has the added bonus of having a slight air of Colonel Blimp. The action scenes are genuinely action-packed with spellbinding choreography and great use of ladders and exits. The acting was, as you'd expect top drawer, with Talbot a great romantic figure, York suitably evil, Gloucester avuncular and domineering and Henry VI able before he even said a word to portray how ridiculous a system is that puts a boy of no special qualities at the head of a warring nation, ridden with factions.
I'm no theatre critic; I hadn't been for well over a year before yesterday. But if I could, I'd see all the histories while they're still on at the roundhouse. It was amazing and it's sad that they're about to end.
Monday, 5 May 2008
Green Taxes
One of the most depressing things that happened over the weekend was the revelation that one of the motiviations for the Tory revival was a dislike for Green Taxes. As someone who's all about the green revolution this is worrying. You can never expect people to be supportive of tax increases, a tax is a tax is a tax, but when it's something that people are motivated against then this a cause for major concern. A consensus among the parties over green issues is going to be almost impossible if there are lots of votes waiting for anyone who crosses the picket line.
These people who are revolting against the green taxes tend to be those hallowed suburbanites who are a mythical and inexplicable race to a metropolitan elitist like myself. So any presumptions as to why they think anything are exactly that. Presumptious. But hey what's a blog for.
1) They're right. There's been little in the way of clear green motivation for the tax increases Brown and Darling have put on fuel etc. They're in a public finances hole and they need to put taxes up. They feel unable to raise direct taxes and so they put up some indirect taxes and mutter that it's all about green incentives. There is very little in the way of a coherent green strategy; they're building more roads, more runways, coal fired powers stations, so people have every reason to be cynical about the government's motivations.
2) Labour couldn't sell water to a man dying of thirst. And most people reckon they'd try. The brand is toxic. Not to everyone, although many are might fed up with it. But to that brand of suburbanite who often was never particularly fond of them, they are now the devil incarnate. Labour could come up with the most brilliant policy in history tomorrow and people would still hate them and it. I think those who are interested in the green agenda need to think very carefully about whether it's sensible to back Labour currently.
3) These guys aren't very green. Alex Singleton tries to square the circle in his piece by insisting that most people are trying to be green. The taxes are just not helping. I don't really believe this (although as I said I don't spend too much time with these guys). People are very dubious about whether anything really needs to be done. And certainly whether anything needs to be done by them. Big business? absolutely. Provided they don't raise their prices. Government? definitely the incompetent bastards, provided they don't tax me more to pay for it. Me personally? No. I've got enough on my plate.
It's hard for someone who has so little on their plate that they have time to blog to argue too much with this. But I think we do need to keep going with raising genuine awareness and most importantly looking at the easy things we can get people doing. More on that later.
These people who are revolting against the green taxes tend to be those hallowed suburbanites who are a mythical and inexplicable race to a metropolitan elitist like myself. So any presumptions as to why they think anything are exactly that. Presumptious. But hey what's a blog for.
1) They're right. There's been little in the way of clear green motivation for the tax increases Brown and Darling have put on fuel etc. They're in a public finances hole and they need to put taxes up. They feel unable to raise direct taxes and so they put up some indirect taxes and mutter that it's all about green incentives. There is very little in the way of a coherent green strategy; they're building more roads, more runways, coal fired powers stations, so people have every reason to be cynical about the government's motivations.
2) Labour couldn't sell water to a man dying of thirst. And most people reckon they'd try. The brand is toxic. Not to everyone, although many are might fed up with it. But to that brand of suburbanite who often was never particularly fond of them, they are now the devil incarnate. Labour could come up with the most brilliant policy in history tomorrow and people would still hate them and it. I think those who are interested in the green agenda need to think very carefully about whether it's sensible to back Labour currently.
3) These guys aren't very green. Alex Singleton tries to square the circle in his piece by insisting that most people are trying to be green. The taxes are just not helping. I don't really believe this (although as I said I don't spend too much time with these guys). People are very dubious about whether anything really needs to be done. And certainly whether anything needs to be done by them. Big business? absolutely. Provided they don't raise their prices. Government? definitely the incompetent bastards, provided they don't tax me more to pay for it. Me personally? No. I've got enough on my plate.
It's hard for someone who has so little on their plate that they have time to blog to argue too much with this. But I think we do need to keep going with raising genuine awareness and most importantly looking at the easy things we can get people doing. More on that later.
Active participation
I've been addicted to blogs for quite a long time now. I often find that I'll come home and check my emails only to find an hour has passed and I'm viciously looking for more new posts. So I've figured it's time to get involved. Do I necessarily have anything to say? Truth is I don't know until I've said it. I hope to mainly blog on the environment and politics but expect to get in the odd comment about films and rugby. And I'd like to start by giving a big up to AFC Wimbledon who at the third time of asking got promoted to Conference South with an epic comeback in the playoff final against Staines.
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