paradais (fernanda melchor, tr sophie hughes)

Fernanda Melchor’s short novel is another to add to the compendium of contemporary visions of a Mexico which has been scarred by violent crime. Reviewer notes at the front of the book mention 2666, but this novel feels closer to Escalante’s Heli, as a touchstone. Melchor interrogates the crudeness of a macho violent culture through two characters, Polo and Franco. Franco is the wealthy Fatboy loser who lives with his grandparents in a gated community. Polo is the young odd-job-man who Franco befriends with free alcohol. Polo despises Franco, who lusts foolishly over a middle aged neighbour, but his own desperation means he allows himself to get sucked in to Franco’s plan to rape her whilst Polo plunders. This frightful and foolish mission is described at the end of the book in pages of machine gun prose. Behind Polo’s desperation there lurks the presence of his cousin, Milton, who has been coerced by the narcos into working for them, something which has obviously destroyed Milton but which Polo envies. For Polo, Milton’s new status means money and power, whereas for Milton it clearly means moral degradation and hopelessness. This is a short, brutal novel, steeped in the evil of men and the things men do. Mexico bleeds through its pages, a Mexico where no-one is safe, even those living on a gated community, seemingly immune to the violence of the world that prowls beyond the confines of the perfect lawns and swimming pools. But most of all, Melchor represents the violence through the hopeless cynicism of Polo and Franco, two characters who are devoid of moral compass, having no need of this in a world which has no respect for morality. 

mirador (w&d antón terni, w. patricia olveira)

Antón Terni’s film is a slender, beautiful thing. It is an intimate study of three blind people who spend time together in the Uruguayan countryside. Terni’s camera is a silent observer, as the three play cards or go swimming in the ocean or even, on one occasion, get lost. This sequence when Oscar, searching for firewood for the barbecue, loses his stick and then his way, is heart stopping. Whilst the film is on the whole an affecting and life affirming study, this moment opens the door to the viewer on the vulnerability of the blind. It also draws our attention to the presence of the filmmaker and there’s a paradox here because we know that in this moment Oscar will be ok, because someone sees what is happening to him, but in another, when he is not seen, disaster could strike. Terni seeks to keep himself out of the story, but it’s an impossible task. In some ways the luscious use of the camera as it drifts, in keeping with the slower rhythms of its subjects, would appear to be his way of acknowledging this. The filmmaker’s eye is distinctive, it is a counterpoint to all that his subjects cannot discern, or rather, that which they discern in another fashion, which the camera could never capture. 

the secret agent (joseph conrad)

There’s a history attached to this novel. The first week or so at university, we were given Conrad’s novel to read and write an essay on. I spent those days holed up in my room, avoiding the Freshers escapades, suffering from migraine, reading the book and writing about it. When the seminar arrived, no-one else wanted to read their essay, so I volunteered. My thesis, I remember, was that the real secret agent in the novel was humour. The essay went down well, it might have been the only good essay I ever wrote, because I later ceased being a model student with migraines and became the chaotic student I have remained for the rest of my life. That seminar group was, in its way, something that would radically affect my whole life and way of seeing the world, for better or for worse, and The Secret Agent was a big part of that process.

It has been in the background ever since, over the course of thirty plus years. As is the way with books you read in your youth, I have retained a clear but erroneous memory of it. I realise it was erroneous as, for some reason to do, I suspect, with ageing, I recently chose to revisit the novel. It is not as funny as I might have remembered it to be (suggesting my thesis was wide of the mark). It is a strange, unwieldy book, which shifts point of view almost chapter by chapter, which rambles, whose central dramatic moment happens offstage (something I had not remembered). Characters come in and out of the text with no-one establishing centre stage. Just as a dismembered body is at the heart of the narrative, so this is a dismembered story, with the writer choosing to scatter its parts across Edwardian London.

On another level, the novel, which deals with Russian interference in British politics, feels astonishingly prescient. Terrorism, state terrorism and the shady characters who make up that world, have been leitmotifs of the twenty first century. In a world where centralised geopolitical power is waning, Britain is susceptible to the Machiavellian wiles of opponents it doesn’t even realise it possesses until it is too late. Little men representing an ideology that holds no real interest instigate actions which threaten the fabric of society. Conrad’s vision is cynical and prescient.

Still, I struggled with the novel. I wanted it to return me to a place I had known once upon a time, an Anthony I had been once upon a time. But the novel resisted, insisted on disabusing me of any intimacy with the previous version of it and myself that had existed. The reading of a novel is like the living of a life. Our perception of the novel is contingent on our surroundings, our sense of self at the time we read it. The secret agent isn’t humour. It’s time. The most dangerous, destabilising agent of all. 

young ahmed (jean-pierre & luc dardenne)

You know exactly what you’re going to get with the Dardenne Brothers. You’re going to get a well-crafted movie dealing with social issues. Which is exactly what Young Ahmed delivers. Instantly, the efficiency of the storytelling grabs the viewer. Simple scenes with little flannel, told from the protagonist’s perspective, which present their portrayal of the film’s eponymous protagonist. No great science. Ahmed with his family. Ahmed at the mosque. Ahmed with the teacher who will become the focus for the conflict within the film. Ahmed commits the action which changes his life.

The trouble with the efficiency of this approach is that it runs the risk of feeling more about the way in which stories are presented than the issue the story seeks to present. In the case of Young Ahmed, whilst the representation of his ablutions and prayers felt urgent and necessary, the viewer comes away with little insight into the issue of the clash between the Muslim world and the West and the associated desire for Jihad which Ahmed has somehow accrued. We see an adolescent in crisis, as we might see in many a Dardenne movie, but the specific crux of his crisis, the aforementioned conflict, feels as nebulous at the film’s end as it did at the start. A few grainy moments of an on-line video and the mutterings of a manipulative mullah don’t quite seem to explain how Ahmed has become so disconnected from his society that he can now carry a burning desire to kill in the name of Allah.

Some might say that the Dardenne Brothers, white males, don’t have a right to tell Ahmed’s story, that it is a form of colonialism in itself. This writer doesn’t hold to that, stories belong to everyone and representation matters, no matter how it gets to the screen. But Young Ahmed does leave one questioning the issue of the formula as a storytelling mechanism. The Dardenne brothers have a formula, which works effectively within the constraints of cinematic narrative (90 minutes, two dimensional etc). But when a film starts to feel formulaic, it strips the blood from the body and what is left is in danger of seeming robotic.

guilty of romance (w&d sion sono, w. mizue kunizane)

Sion Sono has recently made a film with Nick Cage and been accused of abusive behaviour on the set of his many films. He is a prolific Japanese auteur who I had never heard of. I discovered the above information after watching Guilty of Romance, a Grand Guignol mix of sex, crime and hysteria. The film knits together three women’s stories, one of whom is a police investigator who is investigating a grotesque crime which might involve one of the other two women. They are Izumi, a straight-laced wife of a famous writer who starts to go off the rails when she is chosen for a soft porn photo shoot. The other is Mitsuko, a literature professor by day and prostitute by night. The three tales become more and more outlandish The timeline feels constantly on the brink of being out of synch and storylines are thrown around willy nilly. What starts as a compelling if lurid police thriller becomes an increasingly self-indulgent fable which tries to shoehorn in mutiple Kafka references and rambles towards its end. From this one film, one can see the attraction of Sono, whose overblown narrative, heightened lighting and over-the-top set pieces seem like a Japanese version of the alt-Korean cinema, but with Guilty of Romance it felt as though he could have done with an editor who was as ruthless as the cruel matriarch who is revealed to be the kingpin of Sono’s criminal empire. 

putin’s people (catherine belton)

It’s hard to know what needs to be said about Catherine Belton’s book about the rise of Vladimir Putin and the way the former KGB has seized power in Russia and infiltrated the corridors of power far beyond. It’s one of those books which is essential reading for understanding the state of our modern world. Even if some of it were to be wide of the mark, enough of it surely hits the mark to mean that its central thesis cannot be too far off. Power is power and power always seeks to reinforce itself, but when you are British and you see the way in which the country has been manipulated and brought down, if even if a tenth of what Belton speculates is true, it makes for a profoundly depressing read. Essentially, the book argues, the establishment in Britain has allowed itself to be bought by foreign interests. As she frequently states, Putin understood that the establishment in ‘the West’ had been hollowed out of all moral value. So he could mercilessly steal, oppress and wage war, without any risk, so long as he kept their coffers full. In London, this establishment is represented by lawyers, accountants, property developers, politicians and who knows what else. Russian money has been a Trojan horse and Britain is not the only country to have been susceptible to it, but it might be we were the weakest.

This just one strand of modern Russia’s geo-political strategy. Belton’s book is also very informative about the development of tensions between Russia and Ukraine, outlining the steps since the break-up of the USSR that have lead to the current outrageous but predictable Russian aggression. The early part of the book which details how Putin and his cronies seized power first in St Petersburg and then Moscow, displacing Yeltsin and his chosen oligarchs, is told with meticulous and plausible detail. Whilst the Putin/ KGB playbook perhaps encounters more fertile ground in a society such as Russia, which has never known democracy, there seems little doubt that others in the West have watched and sought to emulate his methods and will continue to do so. 

the conquest of spain (mary pix)

 In a conversation about classic British theatre texts, C upbraided me for not being more disposed to include female writers in the conversation. Which seemed upon reflection, a completely reasonable complaint. Aside from Aphra Behn, there are no female writers in the British theatre cannon pre twentieth century (and precious few post.) And to mention Aphra Behn is something of a false lead, as we were never given Aphra Behn to study. All of which lead to some more investigation and the discovery that there have been far more female writers of theatre than we are given to realise. Amongst whom, the name Mary Pix and the title, The Conquest of Spain, stood out.

The Conquest of Spain, first performed in 1705, is a tragedy in five acts, which contrasts the fate of two female characters, Jacincta and Margaretta, both victims of duplicitous male behaviour. Jacincta, daughter of the noble warrior, Julianus, is raped by the King whilst his forces are waging a war against the invading Moors, his army lead by Julianus. Margaretta’s betrothed, Antonio, is part of that army,  but Antonio’s right hand man, Alvarez, has designs on her. Much of this feels, in story terms, quite conventional. There are plenty of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays where the female characters own the stage just as much as the male characters. Pix gives her characters agency, but they are passive characters and the play doesn’t feel as though it is breaking any feminist ground.

What is most curious about the play, relates to another element in the culture wars of today, which we can see spiralling out of the bedrock of history. The enemy the Spanish forces are confronting is the Moors, who they initially defeat. But because of the king’s moral decadence, Antonio and Jacincta’s former lover ally themselves with the defeated army to turn on the king. The Moorish leader, Mullymumen, joins them and together they prevail against the king’s forces. When Antonio asks him to return to North Africa, Mullymumen refuses, announcing the conquest of Spain. Jacincta and Julianus both die, but Margaretta and Antonio are permitted to flee and live out their lives. (“Fly you beauteous mourners”).

There is another moment when Jacincta appears disguised, wearing the veil. These cross-cultural allusions and representations feel surprising to the modern reader, accustomed to an inherited idea regarding racial and religious stereotypes from this era. Not only is Pix representing the Muslim Moors on stage, she is also portraying them as having greater moral integrity than a European king; and there is nothing in the denouement to suggest that Mullymumen will not make a far better ruler than the man he has vanquished. Our inherited understanding of how people saw the world pre twentieth century seems suspiciously limited, when one starts to scratch the surface. 

sexmission (w&d juliusz machulski, w. pavel hajný, jolanta hartwig)

Poland 1984. The country had recently emerged from Martial Law, under the rule of General Jaruzelski. In the shipyards of Gdansk, Lech Walesa was leading a social movement that would change the world. Great Polish directors like Wajda, Kieslowski, Agnieszka Holland, were more or less at the peak of their powers. And Juliusz Machulski released Sexmission, a satire so crude Jonathan Swift would have been proud. Two scientists, Maks and Albert, are cryogenically stored and wake up in the year 2044 to find that men have been abolished and women rule the world. Everyone lives underground because of a nuclear accident. Maks and Albert have emerged into this brave new world, and Maks, played by Jerzy Stuhr, the protagonist of Kieslowski’s Camera Buff, is determined to convince the women that they have been missing out on something. This leads to farcical scenes with the men eventually threatened with being ‘naturalised’, ie having their gender changed, before they finally escape. When they do, they discover that the world outside is far from what they, or any of the women living below, had been lead to believe. The point of the film is in this final sequence, which one imagines was conceived during Marital Law itself, as the film was released in 1984, and Martial Law only ended in 1983. The world outside (the world beyond the Communist block) is nothing like you have been lead to believe, the film boldly declares, dressed up as a sex romp to keep the old guard amused. Reminiscent to some extent of Brazil, and presumably made on a far smaller budget, IMDB informs that it is one of the most successful Polish movies ever made, and shows that subversive, political films don’t have to be po-faced. 

diva (w&d jean-jacques beineix, w. jean van hamme)

Diva is another in the vein of eclectic French cinema which embraced a discordant, vaguely operatic structure, foregoing character development in the name of spectacle and provocation. It sits alongside the films of Carax and Jeunet, to name but two. Where this strand emerges from in French culture is an intriguing question. Perhaps all the way back to Rabelais, or Huysmans. Definitely in the arch tomes of Blaise Cendrars, even Jules Verne. This nearest equivalent I can think of in the British canon is Greenaway. The makers of these stories create fantastical fables, which paint unlikely stories with a broad palette. There’s no particular reason why anyone would make a film about a postman who is obsessed with opera and finds himself caught up in a subplot of a vice ring run by a corrupt police inspector, but it’s precisely this melange which makes Diva such a bracing, unlikely watch, catapulting it to cult status. The kernel at the heart of this weird fruit is the opera singer herself, who radically refuses to have her voice recorded, insisting in only existing in the real. Wilhelmenia Fernandez as Cynthia Hawkins, the US singer, lends the film gravitas. Her presence cuts through the slightly hackneyed world of the French policier, and lends a poetic dimension to the journey of Jules, the postman who is obsessed by her voice. This journey is in no way conventional in story terms: we are given little insight into the protagonist’s evolution as a result of his misadventures. Rather, he glides like a note through the film which is in many ways an exercise in mise en scene, with the set piece sequences and locations knitted together into an unlikely collage. If there is a subtext to the movie, it is that meaning should remain as ephemeral as the singer’s voice. As an audience we want to capture meaning, possess it, but just as Cynthia Hawkins resists being recorded, so the real meaning of Jules’ adventure escapes us. The subplot of the vice ring is nothing more than a motor to keep the film ticking, to arrive at the point where the singer is confronted by the beauty of her own voice for the very first time.

Ps it is lovely to see a still distressed Bouffes du Nord theatre make an appearance, and the use of this theatre as a magical space is another key element in the film. At one point we see Hawkins singing from the point of view of Jules, and the back of a few heads seem to interrupt our vision. For a tiny moment, it feels as though those heads might be in our theatre, or cinema: we are placed in Jules’ seat, present for the sound of a miracle. 

el otro tom (w&d rodrigo plá & laura santullo)

The title of the film is derived from the eponymous protagonist’s dual personality. Tom is a nine year old with ADHD. His Mexican mum, Elena, is raising him on her own in a small town in the USA, where she has to work long hours in order to pay the bills. Tom is an impossible child. Restless, destructive, getting into fights at school. Elena, at her wits’ end, seeks medical help and Tom is given a whole array of pills to control his behaviour. But the pills seem, if anything, to be counter productive. Tom doesn’t get any better, he actually gets worse and ends up making a suicide attempt. Elena is informed by a kindly neighbour that this is a possible side effect of the medication Tom is taking. Together, she and Tom decide to stop him taking the pills, but when this gets out to the school, she is told that this is abusive behaviour and could lead to Tom being taken out of her custody.

The film ends with a trip to Mexico, as Elena comes to the conclusion that what her son needs, more than anything else, is a reunion with his father, the kindly but feckless Julian, and his patria. As this narrative development unfolds, we realise that the Other Tom also refers to the bipolar experience of being a Latino/a in the USA. Tom seems like another person in Mexico, as indeed does his mother. The film concludes with a dreamy, hypnotic shot as Elena’s cares seem to be literally washed away. Tom’s ADHD, which never quite takes centre stage, ends up feeling like a metaphor for the immigrant experience. Switching constantly between Spanish and English and highly reminiscent of Samuel Kishi’s Los Lobos, El Otro Tom is one of those films that speak to the little known other in the USA, the barely visible Latino diaspora.