The Edge Of Heaven

I'm a film fan but, I must admit, I'm not a big fan of commercial, American blockbuster movies and the Hollywood star system. Of course, there are many, many American films and film directors I love. Midnight Cowboy. Taxi Driver. Five Easy Pieces. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. John Ford. Orson Welles. David Lynch. Michael Moore. But, given a choice, I'd much rather watch more understated, low-budget European film, which is so far removed from Hollywood's sentimental, melodramatic glitz and glamour. I really don't want to seem snobbish or pretentious, highbrow or high-minded. I just prefer the restrained 'realism' of European cinema to the majority of today's Hollywood movies, which I often find gratuitously violent, cynically manipulative, unadventurously 'safe', ruthlessly commercial, and overtly escapist and unrealistic.

The fact is: I'm an arthouse man. Show me a film with dazzling 'special effects', or a genre film, whether horror, SF, thriller or costume drama - and I can get quickly bored. But give me a slow-moving Tarkovsky - when a camera may pan round a room in a single take for five minutes - or an obscure Czech film about a pigeon-breeding stationmaster, an unorthodox film of Berlin low-life shot in grainy black and white or a surrealistic Cocteau or Bunuel, and I'm hooked. I don't want to be all serious and 'arty' about it, but I just don't like going to movies (or reading books for that matter) for mere escapism or light entertainment (not that I'm looking down on escapism and light entertainment - far from it). I want to be enlightened, stimulated, educated, provoked, transformed; I want to learn something about how we live and survive in this difficult, crazy world; I want to experience real people with real problems and real emotions; I want all the glorious chaos and inconsistency and beauty and horror of real life turned into meaningful art. That's what I want in a good film or a good book. I don't want Terminator or Joan Collins, Gladiator or Jackie Collins. If I sound like a prig, than so be it!

My love of arthouse cinema originated way back in my teens and early twenties, when I watched movies a lot, perhaps several a week. My greatest passion then was for the French 'New Wave' directors: Chabrol, Godard, Rohmer - and, above all, Truffaut. The 400 Blows, Shoot The Piano Player, Jules and Jim, Fahrenheit 451, Stolen Kisses, Day For Night, The Man Who Loved Women - I could watch these films again and again. I was also completely overwhelmed by the bleak, truthful, existentialist films of Ingmar Bergman - one of our greatest European movie makers - and his hugely talented cameraman, Sven Nykvist. Nowadays I hardly ever go to the cinema, but I do watch DVDs and the odd TV film.

A couple of nights ago I saw the 2007 German-Turkish film Edge Of Heaven (Auf Der Anderen Seite in its original German title) directed by Fatih Akin, a brilliant young German film director of Turkish descent. It's a great piece of film making. The lives of six fascinating characters - some Turkish, some German - are intertwined in a complex but engrossing story set against an unsettling backdrop of German-Turkish culture and politics. I won't give a summary of the plot - you can read about it here - but I really do want to recommend this film, which contains some very fine examples of restrained, unsensational, 'realistic' acting. 

One of the characters is played by the very fine German screen actress Hanna Schygulla, who appeared in many of the films made by the controversial German film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder - including Berlin Alexanderplatz, The Marriage Of Maria Braun and his masterpiece, Effi Briest.

Hey, That's My Kind Of Music! (9)

Here's the wonderful Judy Collins...

... and do watch this interview with Judy talking about depression, alcoholism... and being alive...

Costa Del Crime

All last week I was in Málaga and Marbella on the Spanish Costa del Sol. It was not a holiday. I had gone there to try and help with some difficult family issues and problems. My wife was already there. She had been staying with our daughter - who lives in Marbella - for a few weeks. My wife met me at Málaga airport, and we spent the night in a hotel in the old part of town.

The next morning my wife left her handbag in the breakfast room of the hotel. It contained a credit card, a pair of sunglasses, 70 euros, a mobile phone - and both our passports.  Two minutes later she realised what she had done and went back to retrieve it. It had gone. The waitress said two guests had witnessed a well-dressed South American-looking gentleman enter the breakfast room, order an orange juice and a coffee, take the bag, then vanish. We were assured the police were on their way. In the meantime we had to report the theft to the local police station - as we would need an official police report in order to obtain emergency passports for our return home.

But gradually we realised the story just did not add up. We could not trace the supposed witnesses to the robbery. They had mysteriously disappeared into thin air. Then the story was changed to two thieves perpetrating the crime, not one. We were unable to track down the hotel manager for two whole days - and  only managed to arrange a meeting with her after extreme persistence, as the hotel staff blocked us all the way. We have no evidence the police ever showed up, though the manager tried to persuade us that they did. We were never asked to be interviewed by them, and CCTV footage (there was a video camera in the foyer) was never examined. In short, we are more or less certain it was a cover-up job. We believe the waitress took the bag (my wife noticed the table had been cleared by her very quickly), but of course it cannot be proved, and the hotel just wanted to brush everything under the carpet. Petty thieving in hotels is rife. Hotel staff are very badly paid, and the temptations can be great for unscrupulous, temporary staff who flit from one service industry post to another.

All this pretty much run-of-the-mill stuff, you might think. My wife was careless. Tourists are often targeted. Indeed I was once mugged myself in Rome by a couple of expert Eastern European girls. Their scam was so good and well-practised that, when I tried to fend them off, they appealed to passing male tourists for protection! Though on that occasion they failed to get away with my wallet, I'm glad to say.

However, the interesting dénouement to such an all-too-common story is this. Applying for emergency passports in the British Consulate in Málaga, we met a lovely Moroccan family, who had endured a far worse ordeal. Driving through Catalonia on their way through Spain to Algeciras (the ferry port to Tangier), they had been the victims of an attempted carjacking. A gang had shot out their exhaust from behind. They were forced to stop, and the gang tried to get everyone out the car. When the elderly, disabled grandmother locked her door, they cut their losses and made off with some luggage - which contained all their passports. The 16 year old daughter of the family was so incensed she chased the thieves to their own car - risking her very life. She saw guns on the dashboard and had to back away. My wife was most  tender and sympathetic as she comforted the grandmother - who cried as she recounted her harrowing story.

But what I take away from the whole affair is this. This wonderful Moroccan family was so calm and philosophical and gracious about its horrendous experience. They were so unbelievably warm, emotional and communicative, so natural and easy as they talked about the significance of Allah in their lives. They impressed me more than I can say. I will never forget them. They are an example to us all. It made our own trivial robbery seem just a minor inconvenience, and put everything into perspective for us.           

Villanelle For Doomed Youth

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita. DANTE

It was at Christmas that he left for good
The Pinyon pines, drafted for Vietnam,
For a strange country and a darker wood.

And now his grandson proves his own manhood,
If this is what it is to be a man.
It was at Christmas that he left for good

To do what his dear country felt he should
For Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan,
For a strange country and a darker wood,

Crossed valleys of tears, rivers of blood,
Heard the cries of the children of Islam.
It was at Christmas that he left for good,

Killing from fear, and just because he could,
Not that self-sacrifice had been the plan
For a strange country and a darker wood,

Where bone fragments and deadly missiles scud.
How to survive he thought he'd understood.
It was at Christmas that he left for good
For a strange country and a darker wood.

Sunday Lunch

Fresh-shaved from chapel, he wields
The carving knife at Sunday lunch,
Slices the beef-rib like a butcher.

The usual question, asked religiously
Each week. Now, do you want
A little bit of fat? You know it’s good for you.

Our giggles dry up with the gravy.
Still standing, cufflinks out
And sleeves rolled up, his braces

Hoisting too high his trousers,
He raises closed lids heavenwards:
Lord, bless this food.

He concentrates on chewing
Each mouthful twenty times.
Except for the exaggerated

Screech of knife on plate, it’s silent
As prayer. Little children
Should be seen, not heard.

My hunger’s gone.
My thoughts sink down
Through the burnt crust

Of meat and marbled yellow
Streaks of sorrow
To the skewered memory

Of bagfuls of blind kittens
He thrust into the water butt.
It’s cruel to be kind.

Farewell, Farewell

Fairport Convention Farewell, Farewell

I really do have to have a blogging break now, for there is a long journey to take. See you later!

Hey, That's My Kind Of Music ! (8)

June Tabor Aqaba

I shall celebrate my 800th post with one of my favourite songs sung by one of my favourite singers - Aqaba (written by Bill Caddick) from June Tabor's eponymous album. In case you don't know what's going on in this song, it's about TE Lawrence (or 'Lawrence of Arabia' - remember the David Lean film?) who wrote Seven Pillars Of Wisdom and died in a motorcycle accident. I've written another post about June Tabor here.

Knowing Society, Knowing Oneself

In short, as Goethe put it, only if we can 'imagine ourselves as the author of any conceivable crime,' and mean it, can we be reasonably sure of having dropped the mask and of being on the way to becoming aware of who we are. ERICH FROMM

In an era of counselling on demand, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, e-coaching and a host of other quick-fix solutions to our mental and spiritual crises, how invigorating it is to reread Erich Fromm's The Art Of Being, as I've been doing recently. Fromm stresses the value of mindfulness and meditation as paths to self-awareness. He's not averse to psychoanalysis, but believes first and foremost in searching and honest self-analysis. And, in an age when Freudian analysis has been unfairly (in my opinion) sidelined in favour of trendier Jungian analysis, and when the theories of people like Janov and RD Laing have been neglected in favour of eminently sensible, no-nonsense regimens like CBT, it's refreshing to see Fromm taking ideas from Freud and Marx and running with them - indeed, developing and broadening them. This paragraph comes from the chapter Methods Of Self-Analysis:

What can I know of myself as long as I do not know that the self I do know is largely a synthetic product; that most people - including myself - lie without knowing it; that 'defense' means 'war' and 'duty' submission; that 'virtue' means 'obedience' and 'sin' disobedience; that the idea that parents instinctively love their children is a myth; that fame is only rarely based on admirable human qualities, and even not too often on real achievements; that history is a distorted record because it is written by the victors; that over-modesty is not necessarily the proof of a lack of vanity; that loving is the opposite of craving and greed; that everyone tries to rationalize evil intentions and actions and to make them appear noble and beneficial ones; that the pursuit of power means the persecution of truth, justice and love; that present-day industrial society is centered around the principle of selfishness, having and consuming, and not on principles on love and respect for life, as it preaches. Unless I am able to analyze the unconscious aspects of the society in which I live, I cannot know who I am, because I don't know which part of me is not me.