Politik: Part V

Lamentably a return to political matters, after thinking about art and propaganda vis a vis I, Daniel Blake and reading A Very British Coup.

 

Lies, lies, and propaganda

Does a government have a right to use taxpayers’ money to fund propaganda campaigns designed to turn some citizens against others? That’s a thought that’s been nagging me a lot recently in cinemas as I’ve sat aghast and agog at a cutesy animation explaining why the nonsense ‘reforms’ of the Junior Cert could only be opposed by heartless monsters equally opposed to learning and out of touch with the real world. It’s hard to find the animation on YouTube for some reason… Possibly because it is targeted at a captive youth audience who for once can’t escape the ads. It takes seconds to articulate an argument against Ruari Quinn’s pet project. If you and your teacher are engaged in a profoundly active balance of terror do you really want that person marking all your work for three years, or would you prefer that your work be in the final analysis independently judged by somebody else, anonymously, and far away from the grudges of your school? Quinn’s folly was based on the syllogism that the Junior Cert needed reform, this was a reform, therefore it needed this reform; without ever articulating why the Junior Cert needed reform. Surely now that Quinn and his party have deservedly been removed from office and almost from existence by an electorate with an unusually good memory of the pig in a poke they were sold in 2011 it is time for his nonsense to be dropped before a system of blind meritocracy is replaced by a system obviously open to abuse. And for God’s sake stop wasting public money on an advertising campaign that would embarrass a communist regime in its substitution of marketing asininity for mental acuity.

God, Lana, read a book!

The latest ad for Liberty Insurance had a young hipster smugly proclaim in voice-over “We’re the first generation in history to live life on our own terms.” … … … The level of historical obliviousness it takes to usher such a sentiment from brainstorming meeting in a hipster advertising agency, through copy-writing and presenting to the client, on into the recording booth, and finally into the editing suite; without anyone questioning whether this assertion might be coming it devilishly high; is truly jaw-dropping. One wonders what the Bright Young Things might have made of such a dismissal of their daring, or what Byron et al might have had to reply in doggerel to it, or the Young Hegelians disproving it in rigorous dialectics through which they now knew how (for the first time [sic] in history) to announce the end of history. It appears there may have been a derisive snort aimed at the right place, because the offending ad is now airing on TV – with a different voice-over, one that admits that we might not have much stuff but we love the stuff we have. A folksy sentiment to warm the cockles of Abraham Lincoln’s heart.

The Saddest Writing in the World

What is the saddest writing in the world? I think there are two answers to that question. The first consists of just three words -‘in happier days’. That phrase as caption pushes the photo below towards farce in the best Marxian sense of tragedy recurrent. But in this age of constant, nay obsessive photography there are surely vast digital archives, never printed out and never properly examined, which, when the selfie-stick snappers wade thru them some rainy Sunday afternoon in the future, will cause many a wince when the omnipresent applicability of ‘in happier days’ becomes apparent.

Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein, in happier days

Few photos will rebound as viciously as Rummy and Saddam’s handshake, but ordinary life has its fair share of unexpected transformations of friends into enemies over the long run. What when perusing old photos and running into any number of problems (graduation photos uncomfortably shared with colleagues who later attempted to plagiarise your work, wedding photos uncomfortably showcasing a guest who later became a reactionary lunatic, fun holiday snaps uncomfortably co-starring someone who cut you out of their life with surgical precision and zero explanation) is one to do exactly? The wonders of digital photography makes it ever easier to take the Stalinist approach, cropping in tight to cut people out of the past without any messy cutting up of physical pictures, hiding someone in a deep shadow without having to use Stalin’s patented airbrushing. Sadder still, especially if delving into pre-digital archives, are the snapshots of people who have simply done an unbidden Stalin purge and disappeared from your life. Each of those polaroids screams out to have ‘in happier days’ scrawled on the back.

The second answer to the question what is the saddest writing in the world isn’t a maxim, but a wide category – inscriptions in books in second-hand bookshops. It is remarkably depressing to pick up a book you’d like to buy and while checking the price scratched in pencil inside notice a careful, loving inscription by one person to another, and realise that the person receiving this gift obviously didn’t feel the same way or the book wouldn’t currently be residing in the suddenly melancholy hands of a perfect stranger. Buying a book and inscribing it bespeaks a volume of thought completely absent from sending someone a Kindle read, or a voucher. A voucher declares ‘I have no idea what you like, but would like you to have something that you like’. A specific gift declares ‘I have a very good idea what you like, know what you have, and think this is right up your alley; you just haven’t reached it yet so let me bring it to you’. And an inscription further nails that certainty by making it impossible to exchange the defaced book. But it also adds a personal note for posterity. If the discovery of writing enabled people to live on and impart their wisdom beyond the end of their own lives, then an inscription allows a friend to provide a reminder of their love even after they’re no longer physically present, whether by distance or death. You can trace a friendship by comparing the inscriptions on various books, and noting changes in tone, and even the calibre of book. You can shelve together entire mini-collections provided by one person for another. And you can notice how suddenly one inscriber can disappear forever and shed a tear at a friendship sundered.

And so to throw away a book with an inscription seems an act of unconscious callousness on the part of a relative getting rid of an unwieldy estate bit by bit, or an act of deliberate rejection by the inscriptee of all the inscripter’s aims: their certainty of familiarity, of second-guessing taste, and, most importantly, of reciprocal esteem and love. “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee” and all that…

 

Politik: Part IV

It has been, mercifully, nearly two years since this blog last strayed in the direction of politics; and yet now, very regrettably, it’s happening again.

“What’s his angle?”

JK Galbraith once memorably quipped that every time an Old Guard Republican leaned over to nudge a compadre and muttered “What’s his angle?” while they listened to some liberal do-gooder proposing something fiscally irresponsible if not downright treasonous, there, in the heart of McCarthyland, you could justifiably claim spoke a true red Marxist, rummaging through fine words for the base economic motive. Whenever I hear someone from Fine Gael’s caretaker Cabinet proclaiming “We will not cling to power at any price” I hear “We will not cling to ministerial salaries, ministerial pensions, ministerial cars and drivers, ministerial prestige, patronage to reward our friends, the apparatus of the state to harass our enemies, and free travel to far-flung destinations on St Patrick’s Day power at any price.” And it sort of changes how seriously I take their sentiment.

 

50+1+3+7+2+6+5+…

Hunter S Thompson once mischievously wrote that Ted Kennedy was not President because he never learned to drive properly. One might say we are still without a government because a deplorable number of TDs never learned to add properly. The magic number is 79. There is a party with 50 and a party with 44. This is not that hard. But instead the country is being cast in the role of an increasingly exasperated parent trying not to step in and solve the problem while its child tries to mash all the small numbers together first to come up with less than 79 over and over again before looking at the actual obvious solution of putting two big numbers together. But it gets worse.

 

Shunning S(h)inners

The magic number, 79, is actually quite easily reached. Fine Gael (50) + Labour (7) + Sinn Fein (22) = 79. Hey! How about that? Only Fine Gael have decided that Sinn Fein cannot be in government. But then across the aisle Fianna Fail are letting I dare not wait upon I would for the ‘end of Civil War grand coalition’ because they have decided that Sinn Fein cannot be in opposition. Surely this is approaching insanity. Are we seriously to have another election because Sinn Fein cannot be allowed in government or in opposition? Perhaps the simplest solution at this point is to simply proscribe Sinn Fein. If people will insist on voting for them then surely it’s moot whether it’s more anti-democratic to not allow them vote for Sinn Fein than to disregard their votes afterwards.

Suffragette

Carey Mulligan stars as a young suffragette in 1912, whose life falls apart as she becomes ever more militant in her fight for the vote.

Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) works long hours in an East End laundry. Her husband Sonny (Ben Whishaw) also works there, delivering the freshly-laundered clothes. Their boss is a tyrant, but that’s the way of it in 1912. But when Maud is caught in the middle of a violent protest by Mrs Drayton (Lisa Dillon), and Violet (Anne-Marie Duff) comes to work at the laundry, the door is opened to a new world. Maud finds herself testifying in front of Lloyd George (Adrian Schiller) as part of a campaign by Alice Haughton (Romola Garai) to convince Parliament that working women deserve the vote. Little does Alice know that her husband, Cabinet Minister Benedict Haughton (Samuel West), is simultaneously ordering Inspector Arthur Steed (Brendan Gleeson) to break the ring circling around chemist Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter). And Steed targets newcomer Maud…

‘The Time is Now’ proclaims Suffragette’s posters. What is the contemporary relevance? Pankhurst proclaims “We want to be lawmakers, not lawbreakers.” We also hear “We will not respect the law, if the law is not respectable.” Lincoln ignored the similar contradiction in his legalistic philosophy. He wanted to make slavery illegal, but if he doesn’t respect the existing law, despite wanting everyone else to respect his future law, then he’s guided not by law but a higher ethical imperative. So his opponents could claim a similar ethical imperative when not respecting his law. Suffragette’s politics are as muddled as expected from Iron Lady scribe Abi Morgan. Maud’s petulant “They lied to us” is shot down by Gleeson’s “They didn’t lie. You were promised nothing, and you were given nothing.” Yet the opening scroll tells us 50 years proved peaceful campaigning was a waste. Does Morgan know how long Catholic Emancipation took? The eternity it took for the Chartists’ demands to be met? (And we’re still waiting on one, annual elections).

Gleeson’s Irish detective makes you realise that blowing up post boxes, smashing in random shop windows, GBH, and dynamiting the Chancellor’s summerhouse aren’t civil disobedience. These are outrages, which, Fenian or Anarchist, were a feature of the times. There’s a more interesting period-appropriate Conradian tale floated when Steed tries to recruit Maud as a double-agent, but this is too simplistic a film for that. Eduard Grau renders 1912’s East End grimy and occasionally dreamy in his grainy, close-in camerawork, and Mulligan and Gleeson are on fine form as the antagonists. The problem is the script. Meryl Streep appears for two scenes as Pankhurst, but Brick Lane director Sarah Gavron shies away from contrasting Pankhurst’s comfortable fugitive life with Maud losing everything when Sonny shuns her for fear of unemployment and further ostracising by their neighbours. The closing scroll proclaims that because of Pankhurst women of property over 30 got the vote, i.e. Pankhurst, not Maud. WWI might deserve that credit, but in either case Maud was merely an expendable pawn.

Suffragette’s final image; women marching at Emily Davison’s funeral as Maud narrates; is jaw-dropping for historical obliviousness. Less than 14 months later, millions of men would march to death.

2.5/5

The Transporter Refuelled

Luc Besson reboots his Transporter franchise with a younger version of Frank Martin, but without the State in the lead, things just aren’t the same…

Ed Skrein replaces Jason Statham as Frank Martin, and, in a transparent attempt to give proceedings a Last Crusade vibe, Ray Stevenson is his retired spy father Frank Sr. But the film’s all about Anna (Loan Chabanol), a traumatised hooker on the French Riviera who comes up with an audacious plan for revenge on her pimps, which begins with the dispatching of Bond henchman Anatole Taubman’s Stanislas. She plans to get out from the under the thumb of the Russian mob, and take her sisters in prostitution with her, by turning junior bosses Yuri (Yuri Kolokolnikov) and Leo (Lenn Kudrjawizki) against their more successful colleague Arkady (Radivoje Bukvic). But if Anna and her comrades in arms Gina (Gabriella Wright), Maria (Tatiana Pajkovic) and Qiao (Wenxia Yu) are to pull this off then they will need the help of both Franks.

It seems silly complaining about the 19 year age gap between Stevenson and Skrein given only 12 years separated Connery and Ford, but Stevenson is the same age as Keanu Reeves; it almost feels like he’s there as back-up in case Skrein couldn’t carry the film (and indeed he displays little of his Game of Thrones’ swagger). This is a double redundancy as Anna controls the film, to the point where, following Mad Max: Fury Road, it must be said this peculiar bait-and-switch manoeuvre is as unacceptable as any other. Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers features prominently, copies even being left lying about lairs, but another key 1840s text seems more apposite given that the logline for this movie could be ‘Hookers of all countries unite, you have nothing to lose but your pimps, you have a world to gain’.

There is a nice fight involving some business with filing cabinets, but too often Frank is a supporting player, while Frank Sr gets kidnapped twice to aid plot mechanics; as a spy he’s more Kim Bauer than Jack. And then there’s the action directing of Camille Delamere, who edited Transporter 3 and Taken 2 before helming Brick Mansions. Some of what should be the film’s best moments (car landing in an airplane tunnel, Frank jumping off a jet-ski into a jeep) become conceptual stunts, where there’s a nice physical set-up, only for a digital pay-off to leave you feeling cheated. The under-used Inspector Becatoui (Samir Guesmi) leaves you pining for the absurdist comedy of previous Transporters, and wondering why Besson decided that Bill Collage and Adam Cooper, writers of Tower Heist and Exodus: Gods and Kings, fitted this knowing franchise

The Transporter Refuelled has some fun fights, but if the Transporter becomes a backseat driver in his movie what exactly is the point of rebooting the franchise at all?

2.75/5

The Good Lie

Quebecois director Phillipe Falardeau makes his first Anglophone feature with a riveting tale of colliding cultures inspired by a true humanitarian crisis in 1980s Sudan.

Rural Sudan in the 1980s would be recognisable to a Sudanese villager of the 1880s or 1780s. A simple life of cattle-farming is carried on, with tribal traditions intact. Brothers Theo (Okwar Jale) and Mamere (Peterdeng Mongok) bicker over a game of naming ancestors, while sister Abital (Keji Jale) despairs of them. And then civil war erupts around them, with helicopters raining gunfire on the village. As the elders grab spears to repel invasion, the three siblings run for safety. However, safety is a perilous thousand mile trek to a Kenyan refugee camp, during which they meet brothers Jeremiah (Thon Kueth) and Paul (Deng Ajuet). Thirteen years later the adult Mamere (Arnold Oceng), Abital (Kuoth Wiel), Jeremiah (Ger Duany), and Paul (Emmanuel Jal) are sent to Kansas City, Missouri, to be helped successfully integrate by employment agent Carrie (Reese Witherspoon).

Ah, Reese Witherspoon… The Good Lie is an engaging film, but the first 35 minutes are by far the most interesting, because thereafter Witherspoon and Corey Stoll as her taciturn but secretly compassionate boss Jack take the focus away from the Lost Boys of Sudan. Without going into Marxist overdrive, it’s not reasonable to criticise this shift in narrative focus, because it is so self-evident a truth that there is no way this movie gets a $20 million dollar budget without Witherspoon and Stoll being given leading roles. It is though admissible to lament this self-evident truth. The reality that in 1987 a lifestyle belonging to bygone centuries was still alive is fascinating, the realities of growing up in a ‘temporary’ refugee camp intrigues, but these stories are displaced by a ‘Coming to America’ culture clash, played for odd laughs.

Falardeau’s last film, Monsieur Lazhar, showed his enormous skill in working with child actors, as well as his concern (building on Congorama) in exploring collisions between cultures. He elicits wonderful characterisations from his child stars, especially the responsible Theo, and from the adult actors Duany and Jal who are both former child soldiers. But the culture clash feels patronising, even though American culture, much like PC Montreal in Lazhar, doesn’t seem as shining as one might expect when interrogated by refugees. Screenwriter Margaret Nagle (Boardwalk Empire, Warm Springs) doesn’t shrink from portraying the heartless bureaucratic insanity (that only increases after 9/11) of the American government. She also encapsulates the horror of civil war in a tense moment when the young Jeremiah takes a bible from Theo after he joins them, and you’re unsure if Theo’s led his siblings into danger.

The Good Lie is a solid but frustrating movie that makes you wish Falardeau had instead been let loose on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s story about literal African-American culture clash.

3/5