london and the south east (david szalay)

Seeing the author awarded the Booker, and investigating his back catalogue, this seemed like a good entry point. A novel set in London in the world of telephone sales, and, as the title suggests, the South East. It’s a world I once had some knowledge of. My first “job” in London was in an institution very similar to the one where the protagonist, Paul Rainey, works, selling advertising space in spurious magazines. Unlike Paul’s world, which is white and predominantly masculine, based in Holborn, my workplace was in Cricklewood, and my most notable companions were from Ghana and Nigeria, as well as Meli Rome, an Italian former model who had a bedsit in Knightsbridge and had fallen on hard times. It was a world shadowed by the cynicism of the world Szalay depicts, but also a gateway to the more cosmopolitan universe of London, which also included IRA pubs and old colonels.

I only lasted a month, and was rubbish at it. Rainey has lasted 15 years, even if he too appears to be rubbish at sales. Something he recognises and wants to escape from. The novel follows his descent into a tepid midlife crisis. Paul, like his colleagues, his partner Heather, and anyone else he meets, is not a sympathetic figure. It feels as though we’re skirting the edges of the land knowns as Amis-country, a jaundiced trek through the sufferings of the lower middle class, men who spend their lives in pubs, women who are decidedly secondary figures. The book rolls along efficiently, and Paul’s misadventures boil up towards a comic denouement. Nevertheless, this feels like the kind of novel that the British literary establishment adores, a somewhat patronising peregrination leading to a foreseeable resolution. 

war and war (lászló krasznahorkai, tr. george szirtes)

László Krasznahorkai looks in his younger photos a bit like Thom Yorke. There’s something of the recondite, complex musicianship of Radiohead in the prose of Krasznahorkai, which drives around in circles looking for an exit that never opens up. So the driver starts talking about how he’s been driving in circles for hours, spinning plates, and how the way things are going petrol consumption is going to be the end of the world, but he can’t help it, he still needs to find a way out and if he stops the car that’s never going to happen, so he has to keep going and if he does ever find a way out he knows it’s going to lead to the great revelation of why the world is neither round nor shaped in a manner that anyone could ever possibly imagine. A secret some people have known at various times in history which keeps getting misplaced or forgotten, because the world is an amnesiac structure, but if he can ever find a way out of this circular motion, these circular structures, then he might just let us in on the secret, if the narcos don’t narcolepse us first, because they too want the secret or the money or the car or your soul. And the narcos usually get what they want, because that is the way of history.

In short, a hypnotic read. 

the burning of the world: a memoir of 1914 (bela zombory-moldovan)

I imagine there were two reasons which lead me to this book. Firstly, rightly or hopefully wrongly, the northern hemisphere summer, dusky, full of reports of blissful weather and the shadow of war, has had a very 1914 feel to it. Secondly, because of my own obscure roots in the Austro-Hungarian empire, an empire on the verge of dissolution when this book was written. Zombory-Moldovan’s account of the early months of the war on the Eastern front is almost banally harrowing. There is one chapter full of great violence on the newly opened Eastern front, bookended by preparation and recuperation. The violence is fleeting but its mark is irreparable. (The translator’s introductory notes are worth reading for context of the brutality of this Eastern front.) The writer was an artist and one of the most beguiling aspects of the book is his capacity to capture the colours of war, peace and landscape. The author’s description of Budapest and the Hungarian countryside contain a quintessentially European air. The beauty and consciousness of European civilisation permeates the author’s prose. Retreating from the front, he finds himself in Horyniec castle, with its art treasures, ancestral portraits. staircases, and galleries. A few hours after being forced to flee again, he looks back and sees the castle on fire. Civilisation is no insurance against the perils of war, and the notion of European ‘civilisation’ has always been more fragile than we like to believe in peacetime. 

judgement day (ödön von horváth, tr christoher hampton)

Horváth play comes from a recognisable Mitteleuropean tradition. Dürrenmatt, Kafka, and many more. It’s a tale of a small town whose society becomes corrupted. Hampton’s useful introduction notes how Horváth, having fled Nazi Germany in 1933, then returned with the aim, according to Hampton, of documenting through theatre the effects of fascism on society. Judgement Day takes place in a rural town where a succession of minor disturbances in the fabric of the community leads to a fatal industrial accident, when a train crashes, killing seventeen people. In this sense the play feels highly prophetic. So often in an industrial society the small tears in the fabric can lead to tragedy. (In the UK alone, Grenfell, King’s Cross, Hillsborough etcetera). These accident don’t come from nowhere, they have their roots in how society is structured, and the opening scene, where the accident happens, makes it clear that the stationmaster, Hudetz, who will become the anti-hero of the story, has been over-burdened due to cuts or “rationalising, they’re going to keep going until there aren’t any trains left at all.”

The playwright then uses this tragedy as a way of examining the mores of the small town, the fickle way in which the residents change their allegiances, depending on how the news is reported, another feature of the play that feels all too contemporary (twas ever thus). However, the play takes a sudden turn when it gets to the last of its seven scenes. Here, Horváth veers off towards more metaphysical territory. At this point the narrative embraces what might now be called horror. The use of stage elements, sound, lighting, is employed to the full and this final scene is devastating both in its judgement of the society and its theatrical originality. 

darkness at noon (arthur koestler, tr philip boehm)

Darkness at Noon was an essential text of my adolescence. One of those books that everyone had to read. A time before the fall of the iron curtain, when the cold war still wrapped the planet in an icy embrace. At the same time, we in Britain weren’t sacred of being imprisoned for out political views, unlike someone my age growing up in the country I now live in, and many others. We thought, reading the book, that we were being given an insight, allowed to eavesdrop, on a world that was ‘over there’, the land of the bogeymen. We weren’t aware of what our government had been doing in the likes of Kenya, Borneo, India, even Northern Ireland, at the same time as Stalin & co were waging their ideological wars against their own citizens, a war that Koestler examines with forensic skill. Then for a long time, I guess after the fall of the wall, all that jazz, the novel seemed out-dated, belonging to another era. In truth, its meticulous intellectual tone does sound like it emerges from another mindset, on that predates Tarantino, Baudrillard, and all the other high priests of historical relativity. However, the content seems, if anything, even more pertinent now than it did back in those adolescent Winchester days. Koestler examines a state where the personal and the political cannot be divorced. For decades we inhabited the false idea that these Siamese twins been successfully and surgically pulled apart. But it was never that simple. Sooner or later they were likely to collide once more. From China to the USA to Europe (including the UK), from Guantanamo detainees to Uyghur camps to Catalan rappers,  the liberty of political expression, and the punishment for deviating from the received status quo, is ever more in the balance. Darkness at Noon reads like a voice from the near-past bearing warnings about our near-future. 

son of saul (d. lászló nemes, w. nemes & clara royer)

It struck me about five minutes into Son of Saul that László Nemes, the director, probably knows the work of the previous entrant on the blog, fellow Hungarian Imre Kertész. The scars of the Holocaust on the Eastern European psyche still run deep. How is it still possible to make a film about the Holocaust that feels urgent, pressing, of the now? And why is it necessary? 

Son of Saul is brilliantly made, possesses a peculiar beauty, yet still succeeds in conveying shock. The shock is twofold. On the one hand there are the prosaic details of the process. The death, the barbarity, the bodies, the showers, the machine, the complicity. All these things are known, have been visited time and again. By framing his story through the prism of its ‘hero’s’ journey over the course of three days, maintaining a narrow focus, we observe all these things at the periphery of our vision. Every now and again the background leaps out at the viewer. A body dragged across the floor; a bloodstain being scrubbed. Sound and image are employed to make this terrible world come to life, every shot meticulously constructed to portray the heaving mechanism of the concentration camp, a machine of constant movement and barely-controlled chaos. 

The second shock has more in common with the wry observations of Kertész: that within the confines of this hell, a man can retain his values and his humanity, as shown by Saul Auslander’s desire to provide a fit burial for the child he believes (or chooses to believe) is his son. The simple, ludicrous, mission renders everything else secondary. It’s a classic piece of storytelling which is delivered via a masterly use of the cinematic format. 

If the film reminded me of any other, it’s perhaps Mungiu’s Five Weeks. The ability to convey a story with a claustrophobic focus, the bigger picture always present but kept in the background. Like the novel, cinema allows the storyteller to lead you through a world from the point of view of the narrative’s chosen protagonist. Why is it necessary? The urgency of the filmmaking stye succeeds in making Saul’s story feel like something that could be happening today. Nemes bridges the historical gap, creating empathy through shared experience. We don’t look on Saul as a historical figure, but as a contemporary. Cinema revokes history, and a modern audience is compelled to think: that this should never be permitted to happen again. The reasons why it might be necessary to remember this all over again right now, in the second decade of the 21st century, are, sadly, far too evident. 

fateless [imre kertész]

The brilliance of Kertész’ terrible novel is bound up with the tone of its narrator, Gyuri, a laconic boy who is incapable of seeing the worst in life, even when it’s placed in front of his nose. This boy happens to have been born Jewish and living in Budapest during the 2nd world war. He approaches life as would any other teenage boy, curious about girls, trying to work out why his parents separated, phlegmatic, reluctant to fall into the trap of self-pity when there’s so much to live for. This same boy is then sent via Auschwitz, to the Zeiss concentration camp. At no point could it exactly be said he was an innocent, because the writer is wise enough to know that children are no more innocent than anyone else; but equally, no more than anyone else, this is not a fate which he has in any way merited. The way in which the narrator struggles to maintain his dispassionate attitude towards life, something which it seems helps him to stay alive, whilst coming to terms with the cruelty of his destiny, is told masterfullly.

I know nothing about Kertész, but one imagines that this book is autobiographical. The author’s capacity to resist cliché, to not necessarily say those things we as readers want to hear, suggests a degree of honesty which is frequently present in the writings of Holocaust survivors, although rarely present in the writings of those who choose to visit the holocaust as fiction writers (or filmmakers). The last sentence of chapter seven in the book is worth quoting in full to demonstrate Kertész’ remarkable, ambiguous take on his plight: “Despite all the deliberation, sense, insight and sober reason, I could not fail to recognise within myself the furtive and yet - ashamed as it might be, so to say, of its irrationality - increasingly insistent voice of some muffled craving of sorts: I would like to live a little bit longer in this beautiful concentration camp.” 

The camp in question is Buchenwald, which Gyuri survives. It’s only when he gets back to Budapest that the real weight of his suffering seems to catch up with him. All too often, writers are accused of not showing enough “heart” or “emotional truth” if their characters fail to emote sufficiently, to talk about their pain or their suffering. Kertész’s novel, would appear to suggest that the privileged world’s need for emotional catharsis is a self-indulgence. The character who is genuinely immersed in a world of terror requires their energy, their cynicism and a certain dispassionate sang-froid to resist. It’s more important to find reasons to live than seek reasons to lament. 

the door (w&d istván szabó, w. andrea vészits)

Szabó's film is a curio. It seems to be keeping with Cinemateca's penchant for screening the new films of old masters, preferably with a famous name attached. This may reflect a laudable ethos or it may be slightly cynical. What it does ensure is a succession of strangely off-key offerings which have the faintly tarnished feel of visiting an elderly relation whose best days are clearly behind them. There may be flashes of what once might have been, but on the whole it makes for an unsatisfactory experience, like being offered stale biscuits and weak coffee. 

Szabó's film is constructed around an engaging story, as Hungarian writer, Magda, befriends the curmudgeonly Emerenc, played with full frontal acerbicness by Helen Mirren. Emerenc has secrets. Her waspishness appeals to Magda, and there's the suggestion that it helps the younger woman come to terms with herself, as wife, woman and writer. However, there's no real sense of dramatic tension. The film is set in 60s Budapest but all the characters speak a clearly-dubbed English. The camera work is conservative, straight out of a TV drama. Perhaps most gallingly of all, given the director's former achievements, we don't really get any sense of the world of 60s Budapest. Everything feels so tightly budgeted that it's reduced to relative anonymity. A chamber piece which lacks the intensity required to make a chamber piece feel either relevant or compelling.

the turin horse (w&d bela tarr)

Amidst the raft of new films about to appear under discussion in the small corner of the BBC where I once again find myself working, The Turin Horse has not featured. Not once has its name been mentioned. Bela Tarr belongs to that parallel cinematic world, the one that makes no money but is adored by the festivals. Someone whose work never has been and never will be 'commercial'; but who has made film after film nevertheless. He reflects the peculiar taxonomy of the film world.  It would be interesting to see a proper Jeremey Deller style Venn Diagram, mapping the vagaries of cinema, from Transformers to Tarr. 

Tarr himself comes across in his interviews as lugubrious, armed with a self-effacing sense of humour and a didactic if understated belief in the value of what he's doing. Something which is reflected in his films. These have an economy all their own. Turin Horse is two hours twenty long. It takes place on a single location which looks a bit like the set of a Martin Mcdonagh play. The dialogue is sparse. There are essentially two characters and a horse. It ends as it begins, in darkness. My sister, with whom I went to see it, came out declaring it was bleak, and there are what can only be called Beckettian echoes, but in spite of its austerity, it seemed to me a film steeped in a shrewd, unpretentious humour. To my eyes this was neither a long film nor a heavy one; it was eminently enjoyable. In another parallel universe, one where Bresson is the norm, it might even be considered overly 'commercial'. 

Not that this is going to be acknowledged. The director will be tarred with the usual clichés and banished to the 'difficult' salon. People will continue to prefer their US TV box-sets as a way of filling up rainy afternoons. It's the way of the world and there would appear to be no escaping it, but if you're thinking of going to see The Turin Horse, go with an open mind and  your sense of humour switched on. Just because it's long and in black and white doesn't mean it's not full of enjoyable detail nor that it doesn't contain several comical moments. And if you're a fan of the potato there's even more to get your teeth into.

the man from london (d. bela tarr, w. tarr & lászló krasznahorkai)

Bela Tarr is a name to conjure with. On several occasions I've come near to making his cinematic acquaintance, but it's never quite happened. With a film of his finally out on release in London town, the critic makes his way through a sodden, Wintry Brunswick Centre, its Christmas fare suitably bedraggled, with a sense of anticipation.

The Man from London is also a title to conjure with. It turns out that the film is adapted from a Simenon novel. I wonder if school children still learn French with the assistance of Simenon novels. If they don't they're the poorer for it. Moody, dank, black and white - all words which can be applied to the Belgian crime writer's oeuvre and Tarr's adaptation of this novel. I spent quite a long time trying to work out where the film was set: an ancient harbour town with winding streets, presumably within shooting distance of the Channel. Probably, I thought, some small Normandy or Brittany port with a regular cameo on the shipping forecast and which the adventurous motorist can reach after a two day boat crossing from Lyme Regis. When the credits revealed the film was in fact shot in Bastia, on Corsica, it threw everything which had come before mildly off-kilter.

There's plenty of time to ponder the nuances of the film. (Such as how good is Swinton's French accent; and who does that Englishman sound like, again revealed in the credits). The Man from London is as leisurely paced as anyone could hope for, even if it comes in at a Tarrishly concise, Tarr 132 minutes. The opening shot, alone, lasts about 15, as the camera gradually tracks back and forth, following the events that occur when a ship, coming from Britain, docks. Not a great deal ever seems to happen, but what doesn't happen is compensated for by the possibilities of what might happen. This is emphasised by Tarr's roving camera. The film is composed of a succession of luscious camera moves, as a scene is introduced and then gradually explored. The camera is almost constantly on the move, hunting out details, peering behind pillars, suggesting to the viewer that something's lurking round the corner, even when it turns out there's actually nothing there. The times there is something - a suspicious looking man standing in a pool of light; a butcher going about his trade; or a man balancing something on his nose as he dances with another man with a chair - are always good enough to keep you wanting to find out what might or might not be round the corner. For the viewer it's a slow game of suspense, and sometimes hard work, but, as is the way with hard work, it can prove to be remarkably rewarding.

When Maloin, the lead, goes to his cabin, where the man from London has holed up, the camera parks itself outside until he emerges. It stayed there long enough for me to go through the thought processes of firstly thinking: I've probably got time to count the number of planks of wood that make up the door of the cabin; to then actually counting the planks of wood; and then thinking that it didn't seem like very many. I don't think I'd call this sequence suspenseful; I kind of knew by the time I'd got to the second thought process that the camera wasn't going to let me know what was happening inside, I'd just have to wait. It almost felt like a brief time-out - time to look at a wooden door - accept my exclusion, and wait for the film to come back to me. You watch The Man from London on Tarr's terms, not your own, and if you don't like it, you can always leave.

In the end, The Man from London is something of a fable, with the feel of one of Kafka's gentler short stories. It's one of those rare films which I felt would have benefited from being watched with a partner. You can curl up into it, let the time go by, share the experience, come out no more than a little bit the wiser, but having spent time dedicated to the act of spending time together. There's a lovely timelessness to the film, which goes with its understated humour. People tend to describe Tarr as austere or in some way punishingly intellectual, but on this evidence there's more of a warm-hearted and emotional intelligence at work than a heavily cerebral one; albeit one that likes to tell its stories at a leisurely pace, knowing that stories, like fire, can keep us warm through the long Winter nights, and the longer they last, the better.