a soldier of the seventy first [joseph sinclair]

A little bit of context regarding why I read this book is necessary. Currently in Madrid, I have been dipping into Hugh Thomas’ Madrid, A Reader’s Guide, a lovingly edited anthology of pieces on the city through the ages. As a result, I came across the events of 1812, when Wellington’s army arrived in Madrid during the Peninsula Wars (to be received it would appear with enthusiasm by the locals, as they had succeeded in pushing the French out). I possessed the vaguest understanding of the Peninsula Wars, knowing not much more than they proceeded the battle of Waterloo and established Wellington’s military reputation. The detail about the occupation of Madrid intrigued me. I began, as one does, to dabble in the writing of a tale about a psychic soldier who meets some Spaniards who have fled Colombia in the wake of Bolivar’s liberation wars and returned to Madrid. However, they’ve returned with a small item of gold from the fabled lake of El Dorado, looking for allies to help them now return to the Americas in a bid to recapture the remainder of the gold haul from the lake, which ties in with another true story of the botched attempt to drain Lake Guatavita, 

As a result of all of the above, which is undoubtably the result of having too much time on my hands, as they used to say, I did some research on contemporary accounts of Wellington’s wars and came across this book. Stuart Reid’s useful introduction informs that the book, published originally in 1819. “deservedly caught the public imagination and soon went through the first of  a succession of book editions”. Ostensibly written by one Joseph Sinclair, Reid states that the book is probably the result of more than one first-hand account, edited by John Howell. There is an additional layer of interest for me in that in the first part of the book, before the Peninsula Wars, the narrator is part of the British expedition to the River Plate, spending several months in a Montevideo he seemed to enjoy, in spite of the heat, with descriptions of the “native” population.  

Thereafter the narrator spends many years fighting his way around Portugal and Spain. The depiction of life is one of hardship, violence and a kind of weary, masculine companionship. The second part of the book becomes a succession of battles with the French, with the odd anecdote thrown in. If anything, the book highlights the importance of the figure of the writer. Whilst not negating the value of the first-hand account, it reveals the prime importance of an ability to shape, condense, editorialise events in order to convey their significance. Or perhaps this is line between journalism and literature. One imagines that the contemporary success of the book is down to the fact that this was the journalism of the day, a way for people to vicariously experience political events that shaped their world, most famously in this case, the battle of Waterloo. As the significance of these events diminishes, superseded by the onrushing tide of history, Sinclair’s account loses its capacity to absorb the reader. 

What we are left with is the petty savagery of 19th century war. Men holed up in appalling conditions in an alien society for years at a time.  The physical endurance demanded by the job, which only luck and a robust constitution could help you survive. Perhaps sensitivity too: there’s nothing gung-ho about this soldier. He doesn’t enjoy killing or violence. He’s a fly caught up in the geo-political whirlwhind of his days. On the front line, which is the worst possible place to be. 

lazarillo de tormes [anon, tr. michael alpert]

This novel, written in 1554, is composed of seven chapters. Each one describes the narrator’s relationship to a master. The narrator’s story begins when he’s just a boy, forced to flee from his mother’s house. He is taken in and taken advantage of by various masters, including a blind beggar, a mean-spirited priest and a penurious aristocrat. The novel is a tale of survival and the acquisition of cunning. In the final chapter, we learn that he now has a position of town crier, which he says is a ‘Civil Service’ job. It would be interesting to know the original Spanish description. All over Latin America, the goal in life has been for many to become ‘municipal’ - to have a job supplied in some capacity by the state. (In at least one country this can include being an actor.) The novel makes clear why this was and has continued to be such a cherished ambition. The narrator documents a life of direst poverty. His main aim in life is to acquire food. This aim forms him: he has to learn how to be cunning in order to satisfy his hunger, how to steal from his mean-spirited masters. It’s a poverty which also helps to contextualise the colonisation of the Americas. People set out to make a new life to escape this poverty. In the process, looking at it today, it might be said that they only succeeded in exporting this poverty, whilst the powers that be did a decent job of importing as much wealth as possible. As Michael Alpert’s introduction points out, the novel is notable because it employs an anti-hero as its protagonist. Perhaps nowadays this might be described as giving a voice to the underclass. It reflects the way that a fundamental element in the praxis of writing literature has always been to explore the complexity and variety of the writer’s social world. Lazarillo de Tormes is classed as anonymous (there are various theories regarding the author’s identity), but one thing we can say is that the writer was someone who cast a measured eye over the whole range of his society; someone who looked beyond the confines of their silo. 

note: I purchased and presumably first read this novel in January 1983, at which point I would have had no idea about most of the above.

the general in his labyrinth [márquez]

My parents are ageing. I’ve been staying with them for the first time in a year. They are ok, but that trickster death is popping his head around the door, saying, bear me in mind, before he slips off somewhere else. Marquez’s novel is about the last days of the great revolutionary, Simon Bolivar, but it is also about the egalitarian process of dying, a process that makes all men equal. Marquez traces the General’s final voyage, ostensibly towards exile, but in practice towards his final end. 

At times the book feels like a prosaic read, riddled with details and flashbacks. The narrative, like the journey, is stop-start. It flows, then it comes to a halt, then it picks up again. It’s not a history book, but the writer clearly felt the need to educate his reader with pertinent facts; the country’s greatest living novelist writing about its founder and great patriot. Anyone who has travelled in South America knows the obsession with the continent’s founding fathers, venerated and elevated to mythic status. Young countries seeking to construct a mythic history. Marquez seeks to humanise this figure, bring him down to earth, inject his flaws into the narrative, although at times it feels like the writer struggles. There’s a hint of uncertainty in the way the writer documents Bolivar’s voracious sexual appetite, describing him like a rock star with groupies, before at the very end there’s a reference to his first and only wife who died soon after they got married. In fact, the contradictions and complexities of Bolivar’s history are never explored in any depth. His Damascene conversion to the cause of independence, something which Alexandra Wulf’s biography of Humbolt refers to, is ignored. The psychology of the liberator feels underworked, the text promising more than it delivers.  

Rather, the novelist seems most engaged in the aforementioned issue of the process of dying. If there is any way to bring a glorified historical character back down to human scale, it is to chart his weakness in the face of the one enemy he can never defeat. The book is a portrayal of Bolivar, but it’s also a portrayal of the stalking horse, death, who lies in wait on the bend of a river down which we are all headed.

ash is purest white (w&d jia zhangke)

Jia Zhang-ke latest film is a sweeping tale which chronicles recent Chinese history through the story of Qiao, a gangster’s moll who takes the fall for him and then discovers when she emerges from five years prison that he hasn’t shown her the same loyalty. Instead he’s gone off with another woman, and in addition gone straight. As such the film is split into two parts, pre and post prison. The first part, building up to the incident where Qiao saves Bin’s life, is by far the most effective. It details how the charismatic Bin manoeuvres himself in the small but growing mining town. The film offers a vivid portrayal of a society on the point of transition, a metaphor for the country. Qiao becomes a sacrificial lamb on the altar of change. The second part is more picaresque, with the narrative having less of a sense of purpose, leading to a consciously anti-climactic finale. It feels a little bit as though the film is slipping out of the director’s grasp, in much the same way as Bin is fated to always escape the grasp of Qiao. Nevertheless, even if the film doesn’t quite live up to its promise, there’s something in the overarching vision that Jia Zhang-ke conjures which lends the film a flawed grandeur. 

birds of passage/ pájaros de verano (d. cristina gallego, ciro guerra; w. maria camila arias, jaques toulemonde)

As Epstein pointed out, (see review of Monos below), budgets for Latin American cinema are not easy to obtain and don’t tend to be big. Interestingly, this is the second Colombian film I’ve seen this year which would appear to have managed to put a respectable budget together. This is an epic, with neatly delineated chapters, taking place over a decade or so, charting the rise of a small scale family cartel in a remote, indigenous corner of the country, where they still speak the native language, and exist within a circumscribed cultural space, with its own rules and rivalries. The opening scene, showing a young woman getting ready to present herself to the world at a ceremony where she performs a striking dance with a suitor, is compelling. The suitor, Rapayet, emerges as the film’s protagonist, with the film following his rise and demise as a marijuana dealer in the seventies. 

The film looks amazing. It’s well shot, the insight into this curious coastal world feels revelatory, it lacks nothing in style. However, the narrative soon  becomes a somewhat prosaic tale of revenge and counter-revenge. The young woman we meet at the film’s opening becomes a secondary character. Her husband too remains slightly one-dimensional and resigned to his fate. The framing device at the start and finish of the film, when a storyteller sings the song of the tale we will see and have just seen suggests the filmmakers are aspiring to a mythic dimension as they recount the pre-history of the cocaine wars, (the man who ends up at the top of the pile comes from Medellin, no mas). But the film never seems to hit the additional notes required to raise the turbulent material onto another level. It’s a well-made, solid, engaging film, which uses its budget effectively, but never quite gets under the skin. 

voz lux (w&d brady corbet)

Being big fans of the director’s first movie, Mr C and I diligently made our way to the Curzon to catch his new offering. Where we encountered that difficult second movie syndrome. This feels like a film hung on a premise which has failed to be be developed. The ubiquitous Willem Dafoe provides sporadic voiceovers to join the dots, but the end these only highlight the gaps. The film is divided into three parts, with some creative casting (the mother becomes the daughter). After surviving a school shooting, Celeste writes a song which goes viral and leads to  her becoming a slightly generic pop star. The first act is the shooting, the second the aftermath and the third takes place years later, by which stage Celeste has transformed into Natalie Portman. Which is where things really start to go awry. Portman’s performance is turbocharged but aimless. There’s a desperate intensity which only serves to annoy everyone, including the viewer. On the one  hand this seems quite plausible: no doubt most mega pop stars are a pain in the ass in their private lives. On the other hand it kyboshes and unbalances the whole film. Corbett shows flashes of innovative talent, but as a whole the film doesn’t hang together. It might be worth noting that with Childhood of a Leader, he had a co-writer, Mona Fastvold, whereas on Vox Lux he’s going solo. Nevertheless there’s an incipient, nagging talent at work. He won’t be the first to have been struck down by the grizzly disease of second film syndrome.