diego garcia (natasha soobramanien & luke williams)

As the title suggests, the novel’s focus is on the eponymous archipelago that was ceded by the British to the USA as a military base, meaning the Chagos islanders who lived there were forcibly deported, destined to roam the world as they sought to make the case for being permitted to return to their islands. One of the co-authors, Natasha Soobramanien, is of Mauritian descent, which helps to explain her interest in the islanders’ fate, as their first port of call after being deported was Mauritius, where a strong community of Chagos islanders remains. Others have moved to the UK, specifically Crawley,  a consequence of the stateless islanders arriving at Gatwick when they first came to Britain. A select cohort of the islanders have been granted UK citizenship, but others haven’t and their fate, as is the fate of so many stateless individuals, is to roam the world in limbo. One of these, called Diego, is a character in the novel, albeit a peripheral figure, as the novel on the whole revolves around the relationship between Damaris and Oliver, which appear to be nommes des plumes for the writers themselves. This auto-fiction is the dominant strand of the book, as it traces the relationship between the two writers, who are also writing this novel we are reading together. The novel thus becomes a somewhat solipsistic project, albeit very Fitzcarraldo. It comes as no great surprise to discover that Soobramanien is an alumni of the UEA Creative Writing MA, which in turn has been so influenced by the work of Sebald. Whilst the novel incorporates segments which are memoirs of other characters, figures in the story of Diego Garcia, there is perhaps a sense that it is slightly less radical than it purports to be and the interweaving of the novelists’ stories with that of the Chagos islanders has moments which feel somewhat tenuous. 

london to brighton [dir paul andrew williams]

London to Brighton is a well-made film. It features commendable performances from unknowns, taut direction, and one fine scene where the gangster’s son meets his father’s killer. The technical proficiency is impressive, a masterly handling of a limited budget. However, I do have a couple of caveats.

These are: at points it seemed to me as though this film was an A grade in the British film-making A-level. With its nod to the british gangster genre (Long Good Friday etc) and vague Loach-ish hints in the characterisation of the runaway. Getting an A in any system cannot be criticised – unless you don’t rate the system. Another British gangster flick which seems less likely to have been in the director’s or producers’ mind would be Performance, a demented film that does its damndest to break narrative conventions rather than re-affirm them, thus breaking character conventions and filmic conventions. What grade would Performance have got?

Whilst some do not hold Performance in high regard, most rate Taxi Driver, that doyen of Anglo American film culture. Like London To Brighton, Taxi Driver manipulates the audience’s relationship with a pubescent girl at risk, knowing that an audience would want her to come to no harm. It’s an effective semiotic device – the innocent abroad in the big bad world. Scorsese’s unstinting exploration of Bickle’s personality, forcing the audience to side with the psychopath’s tender side, was a bold, devastating treatment of this theme. It took the audience to the same dark place Jodie Foster had found herself entering, the sewer of the city. (‘The sewer’ being a word the psychopathic son likes to use to describe the London world the UK runaway finds herself lost in.) London to Brighton lets its audience off Scorsese’s hook. It lacks passion: the runaway becomes a cog in a plot, a final hug from her grandmother seems perfunctory; the audience ambles out stirred but barely shaken.

The point of all this is that cinema has both a Pavlovian and a Brechtian effect on its audience. Film which makes us think twice, which makes us marvel or despair, will manipulate our Pavlovian instincts and then make us reflect as we participate – (perhaps by our just going – how can I watch this?). London to Brighton is a functional film which generates functional responses effectively. Whilst it’s churlish to criticise competence, it may be reasonable to long for ambition.