Man Overboard

The Train, by Georges Simenon

2011-11-02T01:52:00.002+13:00

I expected more drama in this wee book than it delivered. Marcel has a nice life: a wife, daughter, house self-employment in a business he enjoys. He lives his life according to a timetable established according to "habits rather than obligations". This life is disrupted by news that the Germans are about to invade; while they are fortunate enough to evacuate, Marcel is separated from his family on the train which is taking them to safety. A "young brunette in a black dress covered with dust", "pale-faced and sad looking" gets into the same waggon as Marcel and huddles in a corner. This is Anna. As the train starts to move, Marcel muses on the break: it is as if the town in which he has lived had lost its reality. He is a sickly man, lucky to be married and he knows it, yet he gives no thought to his wife and family: this carriage has become his reality. Simenon does a good job of presenting life in it.

Marcel's family are in the same train for a while; when it is made into two trains, he is not at all concerned that his family is heading in a different direction but finds himself in a bit of a pickle. He sees messages of sympathy in Anna's eyes and is unwilling to show her he does not care. He and Anna eventually join forces, saying hardly anything to each other but "as if by common consent", staying together for the duration of the train journey. On their first night, Anna draws him to her, on top of her, both "silent as snakes". This is a pretty new experience for poor old Marcel:

I came close to talking incoherently, saying thank you, telling of my happiness... I should have liked to express all at once my affection for this woman ... who was a human being, who in my eyes was becoming the human being... For the first time in my life I had said I love you like that, from the depths of my heart.

Eventually they're off the train and put in a camp, where Marcel claims Anna to be his wife so they can be together. She thanks him and asks what would have happened had they not let her in: "I'd have gone with you" and it didn't matter where.

So the basic thing is that he is living with Anna, feeling more for her than anyone in his life, including for his wife, in a state of "happiness which bore the same relation to everyday happiness as the sound produced by passing a violin bow across the wrong side of the bridge bears to the normal sound of a violin. It was sharp and exquisite, and deliciously painful."

Then, of course, he finds his wife and he has to make a choice. I would have expected a certain amount of angst over which life to choose: the one of duty or the one of love; Jeanne or Anna. For him, the choice is so natural he doesn't hesitate for a moment. I don't even think I would have made the same choice as him.

Three Italian Films

2011-10-31T02:11:00.001+13:00

We have an Italian Film Festival on at the moment; I managed to overlook it for the first three days but sprung into action yesterday and am already three up. The first two are more in the nature of serious dramas while the third is a comedy, but they're all examining the nature of family.

What More Do I Want? (Cosa voglio di più)

Anna is a vaguely attractive but dull woman. Alessio thinks it is time she and he have a baby (the movie starts with their friends having one): Anna, after some, time, says she'll go off the pill. She doesn't: clearly she's after more than Alessio is giving (he seems to be an incredibly sweet, trusting guy, happy in his work and to help out his mates with fixing their random electronic gizmos). So along comes the smiling waiter with a plate of shrimps, Domenico, and its game on. It is all a bit tawdry and full of snatched four hour sessions in a rather baroque motel room.

He, unfortunately has his own family, with two kids. As Alessio rather conveniently reads out at about this time, it only takes a moment to forget a lifetime but it can take more than a life time to forget a moment. Anna is completely taken with Domenico (the sex is apparently the best she has ever had) and he, while similarly smitten, is conscious of his responsibilities. I couldn't help but think how devastating this affair would be to his children in particular (his wife is more knowing). Anna needs and demands more. I left the movie thinking that when she didn't get it, she was probably going to go back to Alessio and make like nothing ever happened, which didn't seem particularly fair to him. I think I would have enjoyed this movie more if I could have seen anything attractive about Anna: I could see how she'd be attracted to Domenico but not the reverse.

Our Life (La Nostra Vita)

Now if Anna had been played by Isabella Ragonese, I could have understood it: she's gorgeous. Unfortunately, she isn't in the movie very long, as her character dies giving birth, leaving her husband, Claudio, to cope as best he can with three young sons. He's in construction and evidently quite ambitious: he takes advantage of a situation to blackmail his boss into giving him his own construction contract. So much of the movie is about his rather poor attempts at getting this apartment block built. He doesn't seem to be a very good boss, as he spends much of his time screaming at his workers. He doesn't seem to be very good at business: he borrows money, via a friend, from the mob. The building itself is, to use a technical term, shit: when it rains, the thing nearly dissolves.

But friends and family rally around, he finds some sort of turnkey building outfit which will move in and complete the project, and learns the life lesson about the value of family. As his kids say towards the end, he never says to them he loves them, but I get the feeling this has changed.

There is one episode which shows just how bad at being a human being Claudio had become. He has as one of his workers the son of the watchmen who had died and whose death had been concealed. I never caught the son's name, but he's troubled by the fact his dad has never been in touch, says dad is worthless. Claudio, thinking to salvage the situation, reveals the truth about his father: the poor son is forced to do an on the spot re-evaluation of everything he understands about his dad.

Something else that this movie did rather well was to show the plight of the illegal immigrant worker: they have to hide whenever the police show up and are vulnerable to being exploited by meatheads like Claudio but, ultimately, they have their pride and will only take so much from him.

Sorry, if I Want to Marry You (Scusa ma ti voglio sposare)

This was a very busy movie, lots of colour, sounds, people, movement. I found it a bit hard at first, working out who everyone was (I suppose it would have helped if I had seen Sorry if I love You, to which this is a sequel). Niki is 20, a student, with rather rebellious parents. Alex is 40, from a very wealthy and traditional family. They each have their sets of friends but they are in love. Alex has a bit of an anxiety attack after imagining what young fellows might say to Niki. Thankfully he rejects the advice of his friends (all of whom have broken up or will break up during the movie): they suggest he follow her, act mysteriously and engage in something called insecurity therapy. In other words, they suggest he play games whereas he runs with his feelings, whisks her off to Paris and proposes (well has a neon sign on a bridge do the job for him).

That's basically the set up, it takes the first 10 - 15 minutes. The fun is in getting them to the altar (it is a romantic comedy, so we know that's where this is going). Her parents hate the idea of Niki marrying someone so much older. His parents don't seem to mind so much, but who would know what they're really thinking. They don't take too kindly to Niki's folks who they have to stay in their grand country house (not helped when her dad shoots the family dog on a pig hunt he detests).

Alex works too hard and isn't there when Nike needs him. She has too much help from his family and in comes a fast young man on a motorcycle, Guido.

But the movie isn't just about them. Their friends are part of the story as well: the young couple struggling with the decision to have a baby, the fashion designer fighting for recognition, the various husbands who stuff things up with their wives. This is probably the most important thing as, bizarrely, all five men end up living in the same house. That finally prompts action which leads to the resolution.

Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) by Werner Herzog

2011-09-28T02:23:00.000+13:00

This movie is something of a curiosity, as it doesn't really go anywhere and features an absurd situation.There's an asylum

for patients who happen to be both mentally ill and dwarfs (although I suspect being the latter helps the powers that be characterise them as the former).There is a day on which all of the staff except one seem to be absent, and the one staff member on duty has an inmate, Pepe, tied up as some sort of hostage to good behaviour of the others.

The problem is that they simply do not seem to be concerned for his welfare. They have their freedom and they're going to enjoy it. It has to be said, he doesn't seem too worried, either: we see him frequently during the movie and he is generally smiling, and never says a word.

Oddly enough, although town is nearby and they have a vehicle, they never leave the environs of their insitution.Instead, they revel in their freedom. Some of what they do is kind of sweet, innocent even, like arranging for Hombre to get "married", which seems to be no more than putting him in a room with a woman (there is no account of what sort of feelings they might have for each other - this movie doesn't do backstory):

Unfortunately, he finds getting on to the bed a bit elusive:

even with the large number of magazines he uses as a platform, which turn out to feature pictures of naked women, so they all have a good time

Even sweeter is the inmate who has an entire wedding party, comprised of various bugs, which she shares with her fellow inmates

A lot of what they do is fairly harmless, like setting the vehicle to run in circles all day in the compound, and surf on top

or practice bull-fighting techniques with it

They also ransack the kitchen, but the food looks inedible (presumably this is the slop they've been fed) and so they have a food fight with it instead and have great fun throwing the crockery at the van as it passes by.Various objects are broken or burnt (although not the asylum itself).

Not all is fun and games, however. There are two blind dwarfs, who are normally kept separate for their own good but today they're out with the others and are periodically tormented. I think its mostly in fun, like sneaking around them and taking some food

but as the day wears on, the actions of the inmates darken - I actually think they do away with one of the blind dwarfs. Every so often, they get the person on duty out on the balcony and harrass him to the point he goes mad

Even though that was sad, I had to laugh at one of their ways of tormenting the person on duty, which led to him chasing around his office after a bunch of chickens

There is even a form of crucifixion scene (apparently it is a live monkey on the cross)

This is not a movie which comes to any sort of point or has any sort of lesson, save the simple celebration of freedom. Perhaps that is why Herzog saw fit to conclude the movie with the most unlikely of images

Tokyo Story by Yasujiro Ozu

2011-09-22T01:34:00.001+12:00

This is a movie with quite a reputation, showing up in various best films ever made lists, so I thought I should watch it. Although I did enjoy it, I don't quite get why its such a big deal, although I can see it is a kind of film-maker's film. It was very carefully paced and I noticed several recurring images, such as the way characters were often posed in lines.

This was a movie about family, and yet it was very noticeable how they never touched each other and how there were recurring images of empty rooms.

The basic set up is quite simple: an elderly small town couple go to Tokyo to see their adult children, who have very little time to spend with their parents. The next generation seems worse - the son was portrayed as incredibly selfish and set permanently to whine mode:

They feel guilty that their parents are sitting upstairs doing nothing, so send them off to a beach resort (Atami - just out from Mt Fuji) to do nothing. The parents get a bit fed up with this, decide to go home - not before their kids let them down one more time and they find themselves "homeless".

They find a solution: dad catches up with an old mate and has a big night on the town, getting absolutely plastered

and has to be taken to his po-faced daughter's

house by the Police.

She is very unamused to find he has brought a mate home and neither can stand up:

Mum, on the other hand, visits with their deceased son's wife, the lovely Noriko,

and is well looked after for the night.

Both parents have a good talk with Noriko, saying that she has to move on, that they won't be worried if she finds someone new to marry, which was kind of sweet - these were among the few times that there was any sort of conversation in which the people connected with each other.

There seemed to be something going on with small town values versus big city ones. The movie is framed by appearances of a cheery neighbour, initially wishing them a happy trip to Tokyo, and then giving Dad a sort of cheery welcome home (although she may not have cheered him as much as she could have, by pointing out how lonely he will be. The parents themselves are particularly dignified

and here, at least, there is one of their children who will stay home and look after them, despite having a job which is just as important as those of her her cityfied siblings

Since the movie is on so many lists of best movies, I am glad I've seen it, and I enjoyed its sombre investigation of the breakdown of family. Unfortunately, some of the characters came across as caricatures - Mum and Dad were incredibly slow moving, although they seemed like decent uncomplaining people.I had thought that maybe the trip to Tokyo was made with knowledge that Mum would not live much longer, because there was talk that they wouldn't be able to make it back up to Tokyo, but I don't think they expected death to come quite so soon. When I think about it, with the effort it took for them to get to Tokyo and their knowledge it was probably not going to happen again, the way their kids acted was rotten: I don't buy Noriko's story that this is what to expect, that kids develop their own life and abandon their parents.

Leave Her to Heaven

2011-09-18T04:01:00.001+12:00

Another movie watched solely on the basis that someone said the female lead (Gene Tierney) is beautiful - not really my style, however.

She plays Ellen Berent Harland: as she is returning by train to her father's funeral, she spots a young man,

Richard - they talk, she says he reminds her of her father, there's a bit of humour where she says the book she's reading is terribly dull,

he agrees and then it is revealed he is its author and before you know it, she's dumped her fiance (Vincent Price) and is marrying Richard, saying she'd never let him go.

He's a nice enough fellow, loves his disabled brother (Danny), gets on well with Ellen's sister, Ruth, and all could have ended happily. Problem is, Ellen is screwed up, can't handle competition so those who appear to love Richard have to go - there's one cold blooded scene in which she watches Danny drown. When it looks like Richard might like Ruth more than he should (he dedicates his book to her), we're led to think that Ellen is about to poison her, but Ellen is more subtle than that, as well as more damaged.

The movie tended to move fairly slowly through these waters, but then the pace and tension picked up remarkably at the end, with a murder trial. Ellen's former fiance is the prosecutor, and he's like a dog with a bone - going way beyond merely badgering his witnesses - his questions were intense and repetitive (spoilers after the photos):

So, as I said, Ellen's plan was a bit more subtle than just killing Ruth: she killed herself and framed Ruth. She might have got away with it - Ruth confesses to being in love with Richard. If the fiance hadn't been a bit bitter and twisted about losing Ellen to Richard, he might have stopped: instead, he recalled Richard to the stand in order to force him to confess to being in love with Ruth. Only then does the truth spill out.

On a completely unrelated point, I liked the look of the club car of the train:

Bug

2011-09-18T03:22:00.000+12:00

I've just joined Fatso, and already have a queue of movies lined up to watch. Because my membership is just $3 for two months, I feel no need to be particularly discriminating in what I watch, which is how I came to watch Bug - someone on the net said Ashley Judd was beautiful in it and that was enough for me. I didn't even know who Ashley Judd was. Maybe if I'd known that the movie is directed by William Friedken and that he also directed the Exorcist, I would have known better what to expect.

In Bug, she plays a bit of a loser - a waitress in some out of the way place,

living in a run down motel in an even more out of the way place.

Part of her backstory is that she has a child, who was taken from her a few years back, just stolen from a supermarket trolley. She has a husband who has been locked up for violence and has just come out of jail. While he is a jerk and does beat her up a couple of times, he is the least of her problems.

Her friend introduces her to Peter, he seems nice, he never once hits her, even protects her from her husband - she gives him a place to stay.

The inevitable happens, and the initial part of their story is sweet - he does seem kind and she's in need of someone, too much so, because when he turns out to be more than a little deranged, she buys into it, totally. His story is one of a grand conspiracy, that he has been part of some Army human testing programme which has seen him injected with some form of bug (an aphid) which allows him to be the subject of central control. There's some pretty articulate statements from him as to how it is done and what they are up to - of course, he is probably nuts and there are no bugs: the point is, she believes him, enters his paranoid world where the Army is out to get him. First the motel room is decorated with bug strips, but ultimately it is lined with tinfoil - it stops the bugs communicating.

The movie is more of a psychological thriller than violent, although there are a couple of disturbing scenes, such as when Peter wrenches out his own teeth, or becomes convinced that a Government agent who comes into the room is a machine. I have to say, the fellow playing Peter (Michael Shannon) was pretty convincing.Ashley Judd was even more so, as she goes from a normal sort of person to someone who totally believes her house is infested with bugs deployed on some sort of Governmental secret mission.

Into the Heart of Borneo by Redmond O'Hanlon

2011-08-09T02:40:00.000+12:00

I recently went to Borneo, but nowhere near its heart. In fact the heat got to me so quickly that I even abandoned a trip I had planned to a national park to see some wildlife.

Redmond and his mate, James Fenton, walk, boat and carry a boat right into the centre, to a place which had had no explorers for 50 years (I'm pretty sure there were some local inhabitants). Their destination is a Mt Batu Tiban, which is sort of accessible by going up the Rajang and Baleh Rivers. I don't know how they did it! Its not like they're commandos: they're a reviewer of natural history books and poet respectively. O'Hanlon gets off the plane in Kuching and is sweating withing 15 yards and thinks "a mile would be impossible; five hundred miles an absurdity".

This is the book of their trek, which I read in my comfy seat in the Air Asia plane taking me to Malaysia (Borneo is an island (third largest in the world) to the East of mainland Malaysia, comprised of two Malaysian states (Sarawak and Sabah), Brunei and the Indonesian province of Kalimantan):

The first couple of chapters are about their preparation - lots of reading very quickly:

Powerful as your scholarly instincts may be, there is no matching the strength of that irrational desire to find a means of keeping your head upon your shoulders;... of barring 1700 different species of parasitic worm from your bloodstream and Wagler's pit viper from just about anywhere...

He wanted to wear a wetsuit and steel waders but for obvious reasons could not. Luckily he gets help from the SAS (I like the line from their visit to a SAS training area: "impossibly burly hippies in Levi jeans and trendy sweaters piled out of a truck like fragments of a hand grenade").

There's public transport available from Kuching upriver to Kapit: from then they have to find their own way. The local Iban Tuah Rumah, or headman, agrees to lead the party along with a couple of young Iban guys. Right from the beginning, they show they care, asking "Redmon" if he has been with the women from the hotel, they'll make his spear rot, there's a disease, they don't know the English word but in Iban, its called syphilis.

As they travel, Redmond is frequently consulting his history and natural history books, which give depth to the story. By way of contrast, James reads poetry as they putter upriver, pausing as they go through rapids - very stylish. So, too, are the Ibans when they have something to laugh at:

There was a weird, gurgling, jungle-sound behind us [Redmond has just hooked himself in the rear with a fish hook]. Dana, Leon and Inghai were leaning against the boulders. The Iban, when they decide something is really funny, and know they are going to laugh for a long time, lie down first.
Dana, Leon and Inghai lay down.

If the heat wasn't enough, there was also the insect life that attacked every night and the fact that the only fish to be caught were like "a hair brush caked in lard". The river journey lasts several days - there is only one incident in which one of the party nearly dies - James loses his footing and is swept into a whirlpool, but his crew save him, and are very proud to also save his boater. The writing is a revelation - it gives a very realistic account of the river, the birds and other wildlife they encounter and of the good humour of the men.

At one point, they come across another tribe, the Kayan, and after exchanging formal greetings, its time to party in the longhouse (I hadn't realised how high off the ground they are or that they're accessible only by scrambling up a notched log, one which was muddy and very slippery when Redmond tries it). There are war dances (Redmond tries one and is so good at it his Iban mates need to lie down), singing, dancing, clowns, what read like a fantastic dance performance by the headman's young daughter, story-telling and lots of the local booze, tuak.

But it is not all song and dance - Redmond and James provide medical aid for lots of people and learn there is an extremely high mortality rate - there are many threats to life in the jungle and they're too far from medical help for it to do much good. This is one of the sad aspects of the book, the other is the feeling that this life is coming to an end. Redmond is quite keen to see some particularly rare birds he has pictures of in his book, but he has great trouble finding anyone who has even seen these birds. Saddest of all for me was the visit to the Ukit longhouse - the Ukit are the people who live right in the centre of Borneo, the most nomadic and independent of all, so having a government provided longhouse is something of a contradiction. Its an unfinished sort of place and the younger generation know nothing of their parents' way of life, are quite disparaging of it.

As they get near journey's end, where the Baleh river splits in two, they find themselves in a particularly beautiful spot, an "enclosed, still world of gentle water", "ringed with ochre-coloured shingle, edged with boulders and driftwood". So what do they do in this oasis? They have a cook-off, Masterchef-style - James v Leon. The former cooks something which look like peas but which the Iban dismiss as tasting like rat shit (Redmond finds that they taste like a particular haemorrhoid cream made from the oil of shark fins). Leon's contribution is a fish soup with spaghetti - at least it looks like spaghetti, but are actually "the little snakes that live in the fishes", otherwise known as worms.

The end, when it comes, was curiously anti-climatic. They've had to abandon their boats and climb, even the early slopes were so steep Redmond is reduced to hands and knees, then its up and down through the horribly humid jungle (98%), temperature well over 100 degrees F, James is attacked by a leech (which causes another Iban lie-down). There's three days of this then "suddenly the steep slope levelled: we had reached the top". They look around a bit, did a peasant dance, exchanged hats and "returned to camp at great speed". It is no time at all, one day and a short chapter, and they're back where they started, yet going up had taken more than a week.

Gary Numan in Auckland (21 May 2011)

2011-05-31T23:21:00.000+12:00

I have a list of musicians, the idea being that once I have seen them all play in New Zealand, I'll be ready to die. It is a slightly worrying list in that there is only one musician to go (Tom Waits). If it had ever entered my mind that Gary Numan might tour, he'd have been on the list. I still remember the impact he had on me with Are Friends Electric? The combination of a barely moving Gary, the electronic sounds of the synthesizers and the lack of any sort of rock and roll feel came as an extreme novelty (I think my musical diet consisted largely of Dire Straights, Pink Floyd and the Motels at that stage, with the only "edgy" song being Ian Dury's Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick).

So when I heard that he was coming, it was a no-brainer: I bought a ticket as soon as I could. I flew up to Auckland the night before, made a fruitless journey to much touted pizza place Epolitos (who ever heard of a pizza shop selling out, before 8:00 on a Friday night?), spent the day wandering around coffee and food places and finally it was game on.

I was a bit disappointed that I didn't have my camera - I was worried I wouldn't be allowed it, but others were there, snapping away. Mind you, it might have proven to be a distraction. I was also a bit disappointed that it was an all seated venue, but the music had hardly started and people were leaving their seats. By the end of the show, the spaces around the seats were packed with happy dancing people, right up to the back wall. Me: I'd scooted forward early, and was right against the stage.

There was one slightly confusing aspect: Gary was here to play the Pleasure Principle in full. Its not my favourite of his albums (Replicas is), but still that was the game plan. So why were people calling out for other random songs? Mind you, he did play an equal number of songs after he'd finished playing the album. Thanks to the magic of the internet, here is his setlist:

Edit this setlist | More Gary Numan setlists

Some of those songs in the second half were completely unfamiliar to me, and a bit of energy leaked out of the show, but on the whole it was a fantastic experience. The thing that really got me was Gary himself: as I said, when he first emerged, it was as a rather robotic presence, and a lot of white makeup was involved:

If he was wearing any in Auckland, it was not noticeable. And the robot thing? Completely gone! He looked like he was thoroughly enjoying himself on stage, and gave a very physical performance. Here he is at his Adelaide show:

Doesn't show his broad smile but when you're stealing images from the internet, beggars can't be choosers. For more images, there are plenty on this fan page.

All in all, it was a brilliant night which I polished off with a dose of Korean Fried Chicken and roast duck before the long walk back to my hotel in Parnell.

Another Year, by Mike Leigh

2011-05-29T23:42:00.000+12:00

There was quite a lot of bemused laughter from the audience as this movie come to an end, with the camera taking a long, lingering shot of Mary (Lesley Manville). Maybe I joined the dots in an odd way, but it made perfect sense to finish with Mary, as the movie seemed to be her story. After all, the movie started with an otherwise random character, Janet, complaining of sleeplessness and being told by Geri (Ruth Sheen) that insomnia is not a disease, just a symptom. By the end of the movie, its Mary who can't sleep. I bet Geri, Tom (Jim Broadbent) and their son, Joe (Oliver Maltman) have no problems - in fact, there are several scenes where Tom and Geri are nice and cosy in their bed.

In some quarters, they might be called smug marrieds

and Mary is their less fortunate friend.

As I watched her, I was thinking of Poppy in Happy Go Lucky. Poppy is young, attractive, continuously cheerful in a way that is more than a front. Mary is older, still attractive

but for her it is harder to maintain the appearance of happiness. She works hard at it, and so comes across as a bit over the top and ditzy. Love, even friendship, has proven elusive for her but she has been lucky to have her good friends, Tom and Geri. She's a constant visitor to their house, has a bit to drink, stays over but ultimately there's only so much you can hope for from friends. When it becomes clear that she's interested in starting something with Joe, the shutters start to go down. When Joe finds a girlfriend, Katie (Karina Fernandez), Mary has a lot of trouble processing it and there's quite a split. The movie traverses the four seasons and they seem keyed to her mood, finishing in the winter of her despondency.

I felt for Mary: although its natural for people to put their family first, it hurts to live one's life knowing that there is no-one for whom you are the person who will be put first and its hard to maintain the hope or illusion that anyone ever will: she's lonely Manville is reported as saying that loneliness is a base ingredient in Mary's life). That was her predicament and, really, there was nothing particularly wrong about Mary that she should have to live through it. If the edge could have been taken off her hunger, who knows how she might have been? She was still able to keep things together much better than Tom's old mate Ken (Peter Wight) and lacked the anger of Tom's nephew Carl (Martin Savage). She was even able to prod taciturn old Ronnie (David Bradley) into opening up, just a little. She does try independence, even gets a car (bought it from a pair of brothers, one had a gold tooth, insisted on cash) but it doesn't go very well - essentially the car is a pile of crap and she ends up selling it to a wreckers for 20 quid. Gloriously, she spends the proceeds on a bottle of champagne and drinks the lot.

Not saying that she and Joe should have got together: she's known him since he was a wee boy thanks to being Geri's workmate and Katie did seem to be a great fit - the humour between her and Joe's family showed how good a fit she was. Nor am I saying that they should have done more for Mary, as their kindness wasn't actually doing her all that much good, it possibly diverted her from working harder at meeting people. Mind you, Mike Leigh himself has said that the film is about the issue, "which is when you are generous to somebody and they overstep the mark, where do you draw the line?" What does he know?

The acting was superb, as in all Mike Leigh movies I've seen. This is a bit surprising actually: Lesley Manville has now been in seven of his movies, been in loads of TV and theatrical productions (which I'm sure she will have done well) and yet looks like she was born to play the part of Mary.

C by Tom McCarthy (Part Two)

2011-04-28T01:25:00.006+12:00

Last week, I wrote of the first part of Tom McCarthy's novel, C. Now its time to comment on the last three parts. Part 2, Chute, reads as a much more straight-forward, authentic account of a young man at war. It starts with Serge sitting am aeronautics exam - readers are located right in the exam room with him, as he writes his answers. The exam is possibly an academic irrelevance, as his father's mate and his own god-father, Widsun, is high up in the military: there's a mention later on that he is recorded in the paperwork as Serge's protector. He pulls strings and Serge is in the air-force, training in a rumpety-sounding pain (a little joke - the plane noise is rumpiteerumpitee...), but he's in his element, as an observer - taking photos, shooting his Lewis gun, sending back radio messages about what he sees. He and his partner take to landing at a particular spot where the girls prove to be extremely friendly.

His first posting is to Saint Omer, a lethargic place where the rumbling sound might be snoring or guns, he can't tell. There's a kind of grimness to his assignation: he's told there's no space in his Squadron right now, he just has to wait for someone to die: "It shouldn't take long" "What shall I do while I wait?" "Sleep, have an omelette, pick your nose" - it really doesn't take long before there's a death and he's in - within a matter of months, two thirds are dead.

Serge has a charmed existence, and feels no fear, he even pleased by the idea his flesh might merge with that of his machine - maybe its all the cocaine he's taking. He's told to rub it into his eye to improve his vision, or to snort it for a "stronger effect". He certainly sees things with extra clarity, but it also has an impact on his sexuality - the first time he takes it, he gets a sudden erection, takes his trousers off (he's still in the air) and his "seed shoots from him, arcs over the machine's tail and falls in a fine thread towards the slit earth below". Given the title, it is perhaps significant that he accompanies this action by yelling "From all the C!s ... The bird of Heaven."

On morphine, his drug of choice, he seems to get the same state as when Sophie blew up the shed - there's an initial euphoria, then "everything slows down and seems to float" - even the tracers (ie bullets with every potential to be lethal) "rise toward him languidly, like bubbles in a glass", and he likes it best when they come very close:

so that they're almost grazing the machine's side: when this happens he feels like he's a matador being passed by the bull's horn, the two previously antagonistic objects brought together in an arrangement of force and balance so perfectly proportioned that it's been removed from time, gathered up by a pantheon of immortals to adorn their walls.

He also notices that the intersecting lines of ordnance residue and exhaust fumes form a grid in which all past manoeuvres have been recorded and so history itself seems to hang suspended. Its a beautiful image, but he's not much good at his job in this state. So when he's finally attacked by a German aircraft, all he can do is think about how graceful it is, with a special message just for him, an annunciating angel. He wants it to carry him away in a "long, whispered rush of consonants". Even now, its as if he's under special protection: on its way down, his plane collides with a parachute, which breaks his fall. He's behind enemy lines, so he's taken prisoner. The guards get so slack he manages to escape, is captured and to be shot as a spy - and here's the most unbelievable element of the whole novel - just as the fellow is about to pull the trigger, they get the news that the war is over.

The third section, Crash, is an odd one. Serge is in London, ostensibly studying architecture but he's fallen with a crew of party-goers, united in their taste for drugs, and rarely does anything. His friend, Audrey, finally persuades him to go to a seance - there's an extended account of it, but Serge works out its a fraud and is angry - at the frauds, at those who believe them, and himself for busting that belief. I think this is his lost soul period - he's looking for somewhere to be: home doesn't work, these friends don't do it for him (although they promise a special form of communication) and his old friends, like Clair, aren't any use to him. And so he drives off, and the section ends as predicted by its title.

In Call, the final section, things break up. Serge has been rescued by his godfather and given a job, associated with establishing the BBC in Egypt, along with a secret squirrel spy mission to report back to his godfather anything he finds interesting. His time in Alexandra sounds like fun - he's being fed lots of history by a workmate, attending meetings he doesn't need to attend to, writing reports and then enjoying the cinema of an evening - he's sworn off drugs and finds this to be an enjoyable rhythm. Alexandria itself sounds to him of unrequited longing - he hears it in the cries of tradesmen, the wails of beggars, the muezzen's chants "threading meshed balconies" and in the music spilling from cafes, the clang of metal cups, ships' sirens. More than anything he hears it in his workmate's voice:

its exiled, hovering cadences - and what he sees in Petrou's face and body, his perpetual slightly sideways stance: a longing for some kind of world, one either disappeared or yet to come, or perhaps even one that's always been there, although only in some other place, in a dimension Euclid never plotted, which is nonetheless reflecting off him at an asymptotic angle; and reflecting, it increasingly seems, straight towards Serge.

Things in Egypt are rather chaotic for the British, as there has just been a revolution and newly minted independence for Egypt - which rather raises the question of the appropriateness of the Empire Wireless being established. The Egyptian response is to build a network which parallels the British one. Things are even worse for Serge when he finally gets to Cairo, as the Ministry is in the process of relocating. Cairo is a fine mix of British officials and their civil servants, labourers from all over Europe and entrepreneurs and hustlers from the earth's four corners and tourists (Serge picks up a particularly dim example of the latter). These tourists sound a lot like contemporary ones, searching for independence using Lonely Planet and finding themselves in a congregation of Lonely Planet clutching individualists.

There's an interesting wee passage here which picks up on something Sophie said, several years earlier, just before she died. She says that an unnamed "he" is coming soon, tomorrow or the next day. When Serge asks if she means father, she says "Father! He's not your ... It's the other one." Then she says "Didn't use paraphylectic" and later "I'll have kill him in me, or there'll be more bodies: segments on the battlefields." Now in Cairo, Serge's boss says to him "I can see your father in you", then when Serge asks about him knowing his father, the boss says "Of course ... After all, he's the one who sent..." So - I think that his so-called godfather, Widsun, is actually his father and is also the man he saw having sex with his sister - this sent her over the edge.

Now its Serge's turn to do so. He goes up the river to a place called Sedment, an enormous burial site, thousands of tombs, all stacked one on top of the other.There was a pretty major excavation there in 1921 - he's there at roughly that time, with a small crew of archeologists who fill him in with a great deal of detail about the area - its quite the learning experience to read it. Another overt reference to the title comes along - Serge asks one of the archeologists what he's found - he rattles off a list which concludes "Surtout, the C: the C is everywhere ... Carbon: basic element of life". One of his main companions and sources is Laura - I really liked her for the first time when they're in the tomb (and I think this is when Serge first really attended to her as a woman):

She's streaming information again - but the langour's gone, and the excitement's back. It excites Serge as well: not only what she's saying but how she's saying it, its strip-procession from her. He looks at her mouth. Its lips, coated by dust, are brown. Watching them move, he has the strange sensation that he's closing in on something: not just her, or information, but what lies behind these.

In fact, this part of the novel is perhaps my favourite part - not just because of the constant stream of information, but also the descriptions of the tombs they're going through - McCarthy creates the sensation of actually being there, as well as a desire to explore a part of the world I have never even considered going to. Anyway, Serge and Laura go on a bit of a magical mystery tour through previously unexplored tombs, its like an underground city, I'm all worried that they're going to get lost, then there's this ominous "small tickling sensation" on Serge's ankle which has developed to a full blown itch by the time he regains the surface. Back in Cairo, its worse - he's stumbling, disoriented, dazed, feeling something deeper than seasickness. Then his mind goes, he's imagining all sorts of things - first time I read this, I struggled to get through this part but now, now I see I missed out something pretty dramatic: his imagined marriage to his sister. It is no coincidence that he has been addicted to heroin, also called sister in the slang of the time.

There is probably no answer to what the title refers to: I've seen Carrefax, communication, carbon, copper, continental philosophy, code, crypt, cocaine all mentioned in various reviews. Then we have the author's own take, which may or may not be taken seriously. He has been asked what the genesis of the novel is, and responds:

But one of them was thinking about Carter and Carnarvon, who dug up Tutankhamun. And I knew that a kind of hybrid of those two historical figures was going to be part of — I mean, Serge is a composite of several things. But that’s kind of one part or two parts of it. And so as a marker, I just used the letter C. I said, “Well, Carnarvon. Carter. Let’s just call them C for now.” And it was stuck. I liked the single letter title. It made me think of Sesame Street. You know, how every episode is brought to you by the letter.

It really did take the second reading to appreciate this book - the first time through, I was a bit like Serge at times, dimly conscious of something else going on just beyond my ken. I won't say that I've grasped everything by reading it twice, but at least I have become more conscious of the things in the background, the connections between the first part and later parts and more appreciative of the writing itself. Despite its being set nearly 100 years ago, there were parallels: sure, the technological developments accounted for were primitive by today's standards, but they were the origins of what we rely upon today, and the issues and conflicts arising then have their modern counterparts. Serge was out there in cyberspace just as much as we are today.

There are lots of reviews out there, but these three contributed most to me:
New York Times review
Slate review
Surplus Matter review: this one shows the connection between Serge and Sergei Pankeyev, a patient of Freud known as the Wolf Man, something I was completely unaware of. There is something I seriously like from the Wikipedia page about Sergei. In C, Serge sees his sister out his window a couple of times at night, dressed in white. According to Freud, Sergei dreamt of a pack of six white wolves but apparently "the expression "pack of six", a "sixter" = shiestorka: siestorka = sister".

C by Tom Mccarthy (Part One)

2011-04-23T02:13:00.006+12:00

I've not yet read McCarthy's first book, Remainder, but I've read enough about it to create expectations: he is said to be a master of literary theory and that book is said to explore a deep philosophical question by having the narrator doubt his own existence. I've seen "experimental" and the phrase avant garde used a fair few times to describe Remainder and so thought C would be something similar. For the most part, it reads like straight-forward historical fiction - although I guess that is a logical progression from Remainder, where it is the narrator who seeks to re-enact the past: now the novel itself purports to be a re-enactment of a past, one which only partly happened.

C is the story of Serge Carrefax, from birth to death, told in four stages: Caul, Chute, Crash and Call. The narrative is firmly located in time (starting in about 1898) and contemporary events. There's no obvious religion, we get no insight into people's motivations, not even Serge's, but there is a huge amount of technological and other scientific detail - something I liked a lot about the novel.

There are at least three types of caul in the first part: Serge is born with the amniotic bag over his head as a silky veil or hood (silk is also significant, as his parents have a silk-making enterprise, from which they make parachutes); his dad puns on the idea of a caul by predicting a web around the world for sailors to send their signals down; and the section ends when Serge finds that the gauzy crepe that has blurred his vision has finally gone (which made me wonder if he spent the entire first 18 years of his life with his eyes behind a caul).

His upbringing is unusual: his parents run a school for deaf mutes, but dad doesn't believe in either condition. He thinks anyone with the right body parts can speak, the body just needs fine-tuning, alignment and the speech must be wring or wrenched out - all it takes is a proper explanation of the correct adjustments of their organs. As part of the process, he forces an annual pageant on both pupils and guests. The pupils admittedly do speak, after a fashion, but take every opportunity to use sign language despite his prohibition. Dad is also fascinated by technology - he spends his entire life hoping to come up with some great invention. A mate brings in a Kinetoscope, an early form of film projector. These obsessions leave no time for parenting - that role is taken up by the maid, who sees the Carrefaxes as arrogant and incapabe, and the tutor, Mr Clair. But they leave their mark: Serge is very obviously his father's son.

There are quite a few creepy scenes from his early childhood: his sister, Sophie, when he is 2.5 years old, using his penis as some form of telegraph key; his beating up of a toy soldier at the same age as an enactment of killing the gardener and the completely mechanical way in which he kills a wasp. Later on, his sister becomes quite the chemist, and creates an explosion which Serge experiences in slow motion - his sister's face "seems to have slowed down" and expanded, instruments rise and hover, "incredibly slowly, as though willing themselves upwards, through excruciating effort". Then a window breaks: he watches each of its glass fragments soundlessly separate.

There is some fun: I loved it when a visitor finds all sorts of coded messages in the personal's column in the Times: he and Sophie decode them and reply. Poor old Serge is not very adept at this sort of thing. There's a wee joke: the cat is buried in the family crypt: does that make it a cat-a-comb? Then there's the Realtor's Game - which sounds a lot like Monopoly (which can be traced to 1924, but Serge and Sophie were playing in about 1905). He transforms the make-believe telephone company into an actual telephone network around his family's estate. This transforms into an interest in radio and communications - something which stays with him for his entire life. We are treated to a detailed account of his set up and of a night he spends going through the radio bands. Early txt speak features- logical, given the reliance on Morse code, and there's a wee joke: Serge notes that one fellow can't be very young as no-one over 20 would tap out the complete word. As he searches the waves (in much the same way we might now surf the web) he's conscious of things just beyond his ken, gets glimpses and half-hears them.

There's one small point which troubled me here: radio enthusiasts are called hams, they use a bug to send morse code but several references are made to the enthusiasts as "bugs". I had to consult an American dictionary on this one: Merriam-Webster does say a bug is an enthusiast. Maybe that was an early usage which has died away - there's nothing in the OED. But there is a kind of pun happening: he's a bug and Sophie becomes obsessed with bugs, of the natural variety. She, too, is said to be tuned in, as if she's a receiver. It doesn't end well for her.

I think that there's yet another form of caul: innocence. I am pretty sure that Serge sees his sister having sex although he doesn't recognise that's what he's seeing. He's heard a noise, a "rhythmic scratching, a rubbing chafe that carries on its back a higher sound". Its coming from behind the sheet (the movie had been projected non to it), and he sees a shadow cast on to it:

It's some kind of moving thing made of articulated parts. One of the parts is horizontal, propped up on four stick legs like a low table, the other end is vertical, slotted into the underside of the table's rear end but rising above it, its spine wobbling as the whole contraption rocks back and forth. The thing pulses like an insect's thorax, and with each pulse comes the rustle, scratch and chafe; with each pulse the horizontal, low part squeaks, and the vertical part now starts emitting a deep grunt, a gruff, hog-like snort. The grunts grow more intense ... the squeaks grow louder... The thing's rocking and wobbling faster and faster, squeaking and grunting more with every pulse.

Later on, he gives a peculiar account of what lovers do: he's seen a photo of a woman kneeling with a man standing beside her, holding his member while she smiles at it. This image seems to stick with him: every account of his sexual activity involves a woman kneeling in front of him. It is when he finally has sex for the first time that his vision clears. This is at Klodebrady, which seems to be a spa in Bavaria, where he is sent for hydrotherapy because he is suffering from, in old fashioned terms, black bile or mela chola. He has good reason to be melancholic: what is more interesting is the reference back, back to classical notions of the humours. The woman he chooses appeals, because he likes the illness within her body, the sulphuric smell of her, the impression she creates of things gurgling up from below. His other female companion, the pretty Lucia, is too light-blooded, and two light-hearted (and probably light-headed) to make much of an impression on him.

Its only in my second reading that I've really got that there's quite a lot lurking in this first part, things which connect outwards with actual history (the impending war is hinted at several times, and there are the numerous references to technological advances, such as the erection of Marconi radio towers) and forwards with the history presented by the novel. So, yes, I'm starting to see why those with more knowledge than me are saying its a novel which deserves a lot of attention. So much so that I want to defer any consideration of the final three movements to another post.

The Nameless, by Joshua Ferris

2011-04-03T23:58:00.003+12:00

Ferris made quite a name for himself when Then We Came to the End. Although I snapped up a copy, I haven't actually got round to reading it and he's published The Nameless in the meantime. I noticed it sitting in the library so decided to try it out.

The central premise (it can't be a gimmick, because then this book would have nothing) is that Tim Farnsworth has some sort of condition, it makes him get up and walk for miles, walk until he cannot walk any more: then he falls down and sleeps. The condition has no name, all of medical science has been consulted and can't even work out whether it is a physiological or mental condition. It comes and goes, but when it comes, it stays for quite some time. There doesn't seem to be any correlation between its arrival and his work or relationships - it just is.

So, a lot of the book is just him walking, learning to survive out there in the big bad world, falling asleep, having bad things happen to him while he sleeps, then calling his wife (Jane) to come get him. Its not a good way to live. Every so often, something nice happens to him, he gets looked after while he's vulnerable, but that's the exception, not the norm.

This puts a lot of strain on Jane's ability to work and consequently upon their relationship - the book is pretty good on tracking the times she can't work, and showing what it means for her to love him, the temptation to give up on him, to drink to forget about everything, but never really explains why he can't employ someone to follow him around or come get him - he is, after all, loaded.

It is such a weird condition that his teenage daughter, Becka, is convinced for years that he's faking it. When Jane employs her to babysit Tim, Becka finally gets that its real. They've spent a week bonding over Buffy DVDs and then, finally he walks, with her following

He shed his suit coat and his buttondown in the heat without stopping, without the least concern for how he looked to those he passed: a crazy man possessed. She picked up his discarded clothes and followed him... She trailed behind him, ready to seize on his first false move, at any subtle sign of fakery, but he never halted, he never paused... She watched him slog inside the KFC and collapse.

When he wakes, she's there and crying, apologising for not believing. This was on page 103, and the first time I felt any real connection to the novel. After she becomes a believer, Becka is a stalwart.

His family is all he has, when it comes down to it. He starts out as a partner in a law firm (and a good lawyer) but when they can't count on him (there is a bit of a sub plot involving a client on murder charges, someone Tim could save if he could work), his partnership is revoked. He fights it, even takes a menial lawyering job, thinks he has nothing other than his work to focus on, (hello - your family?). But then he needs to walk again.

He decides - and its not clear whether its because he thinks its better for his family or for himself - not to call to be picked up any more and so is getting further and further away from home. The more he walks, the more body parts (toes and fingers) he loses and the worse his health becomes. At one point he is admitted to hospital as a Richard Doe, with renal failure, enlarged spleen, sepsis-induced hypotension, dysentery and cellular damage to his heart. The final shift is when he seems to have some sort of mind/body split - its his body which demands to walk, to be fed, to sleep, complains of the various hurts and his mind which resists, calling his physical self "the other" and "brute want". There's a fair amount of musing about God, about the mind being captive of the body as he walks: this philosophising is one way in which Tim's mind fights back, along with appreciating the finer things in nature and art. Although Tim seems to win this war, after that his condition never goes into remission.

The end is really quite sweet. He's managed to keep track of what Becka is up to and when she's in Portland (I'm thinking it must be Oregon, which is a hell of a long way from New York), he goes to her. Their reunion was so tender, it brought a tear to my eyes. Its only then that Tim learns Jane is sick, and resolves to go home. His walks take him in all sorts of random directions, but he does have some wakeful periods when he has control, and he uses them to retrace his steps (he had tried buying a car, but was taken by the need to walk and never found the car again). Quite apart from the need to see Jane again, he needs to be "more than the sum of his urges", which is why he won't let Becka collect him.

Ultimately, I don't think that the unnamed in the title refers to his condition at all, but to something all humans have - the primeval wants that live beneath our sophisticated veneer and which do, like it or not, call the shots. What called him back, although he didn't really see it until he got back, was something even stronger: love.

Last Life in the Universe (2003) Pen-Ek Ratanaruang

2011-04-03T01:24:00.010+13:00

I'm not sure I have ever seen a Thai movie before. This one was more than a little odd, but I enjoyed it a lot. It opens with an impossibility - the central character, Kenji (a Japanese fellow) musing over the possibility of suicide, being dead within three hours. He says its not for the normal reasons, but to relax and get away from it all. What's impossible is this shot
Life does seem sweet, however: he is a good looking young guy, has a nice apartment, one which looks more like a library than a house, he works in a library, every so often his brother comes round for what looks like a ritualised drinking session (this is his brother handing in his beer, shoes and briefcase before he makes his own appearance):
Nothing seems so busy that you'd need to kill yourself to get away from it. He has everything very organised
In fact, I'd say its the opposite - the lack of activity might be driving him nuts. That is, of course, until Kenji's brother is killed in his apartment (he's been with the wrong woman, it seems, and has the kind of boss who will send hitmen).

Every so often, the film cuts away to an unexplained woman (Noi)
but the connection is made about 20 minutes in. Kenji is perched on a bridge, thinking about his last lizard in the world story, looking like he's about to jump, but Noi's sister, Nid, sees him.
This scene is shown in a subsequent flash back (which left me a bit confused the first time I saw the movie): in going to help Kenji, Nid is killed in traffic.
The scenes bleed into each other here - we're watching Noi and Nid but hearing Kenji talk about loneliness - which made me think she's as lonely as he is.

When Noi returns Kenji's bag to him,
things take quite a turn - they have a silent dinner, walk along the riverside then he's asking "can I go to your home". Its here that the film is at its most odd, in that in the hour or so of the movie spent at Noi's house, nothing much happens.
The place is a mess,
he cleans up,
they talk a little (she's learning Japanese, he's learnt some Thai and they share a little English). She's more or less annoyed with his presence and even kicks him out at one point but, ultimately, she's grieving and he's a form of support. He has his own reasons for not wanting to go home - Noi thinks its a joke when he says "two dead people inside".

Poor Noi - she buys him some "fucking expensive" sushi to make amends, but he's allergic to fish. He does know the important things to say in Thai:
(she is pretty, beautiful even):
Eventually there's even a little bit of playfulness in their relationship, but it remains chaste and innocent throughout. I suspect that's what appeals to Noi about Kenji, as her sort of boyfriend is far from innocent. There's a scene where the house magically cleans itself
- I think this is about her getting her life back on track, getting her house in order

The movie has a spare aesthetic, is normally very slowly paced, with long, lingering shots and very slow closeups. Quite beautiful (the cinematographer is the famous Chris Doyle). Watching it a second time revealed so many things that I'd either missed or not understood the first time round. Still, there are some things left unanswered - why is Kenji in Thailand (he does have a suggestive major league tattoo), what does Noi do, what actually happens right at the end?

There's an overall tone of sweetness, and sadness, as these two quite unlikely characters come together. My favourite scene is towards the end, when Noi is getting ready to go to Japan and gives Kenji her car - its tender, funny and generous. Least favourite is the farcical second shootout in Kenji's apartment - it made no sense, and the hitmen were jokes.

Down by Law - Jim Jarmusch (1986)

2011-03-28T23:55:00.014+13:00

I've been meaning to watch this for ages, even have my own copy of the DVD but have no idea where it might be so when I saw it in the library, I grabbed it. It is entirely black and white, which was gorgeous to watch. It opens with panning shots around the streets of New Orelans and introduces us to two of the central characters before the credits roll: Jack (John Lurie) a small time pimp and Zack, a drifting DJ. He has a row with his girlfriend (Ellen Barkin) and hits the road).
He makes a very convincing drunk

Both are arrested for no good reason, maybe because the cops need to make a bust and non-one's going to make a fuss about either of these two. Of course, they end up in the same cell in jail. Zack is first in, by 17 days. When Jack turns up, he's none too welcoming - its three days before Zack says anything to him. This says a lot about the movie, actually - its very laconic, lots of long still shots with very little spoken and when the camera does move, its generally very slow.

Of course, they do start talking after a while
and Jack convinces Zack to do some DJ spiels (once he gives up thinking Jack is a garbage man). They even have a fight
It is just after this that they are joined by the third man, Roberto or Bob (Roberto Benigni): he has a tough time finding an audience
He's a great lover of Walt Whitman, although he can only recite him in Italian. There is a vaguely comic tone to the movie, Bob in particular introduces a gentle humour to proceedings, but the one time I laughed out loud is when he starts them off on a ridiculous chant "I scream, you scream, they scream, we all scream for ice cream". The fun comes when he gets the whole prison chanting it but when the guards come along, our three friends are the first to quieten down and play innocent.

Bob seems to be the only one with any real aspirations of freedom - he draws this window
and organises what seems to be a most random escape. This leads to about 40 minutes of running time with them lost in the swamps and woods of Louisiana. Once again, Bob is the hero: they're all starving and he manages to kill a rabbit, start a fire and cook it (although he does apologise for a lack of rosemary, thyme and olive oil).
Eventually they find civilisation, in the form of Luigi's Tintop:
Jack and Zack send Bob in then criticise him for walking "in there like an idiot". He's no fool, quite the fast mover - by the time they go in, he's already fallen in love and engaged to be married!

Although there isn't really much of a story and several points at which you just have to accept what you're given (the escape, the fact they're not caught, Bob's engagement), this was an incredibly charming wee movie, wonderful to watch with a very understated soundtrack. I particularly liked the slow waltz of the characters around each other as they gradually formed a friendship and really don't begrudge Bob his freedom (he's the only genuine criminal among them, if you accept that throwing a billiard ball in self defence, albeit with fatal consequences, is a criminal act).

Nick Earls - The Story of Butterfish

2011-03-20T01:18:00.007+13:00

It is always a delight reading a Nick Earls novel, because he manages to be so real in the presentation of his characters. Until this one, all of the novels I've read have involved people in the medical profession (presumably because that is his own background). There has always been a fair amount of music in his novels but this time round, the central character (Curtis Holland) IS a musician - he played keyboards for recently broken up band Butterfish (which has made a career out of very popular "over-ripe overblown ballads" and then made the fatal third album which was "pretentious and directionless at the same time") and is back in Brisbane, trying to work out how to live.

Being the keyboard player for a band that has sold 20 million CD's has insulated him from any such need in the past (and even when in the band, he could leave most responsibility to others, particularly front-man Derek). He's very rich but is still working, now with a commission to produce music for a Scandinavian band. One consequence of this is that the novel is full of music talk, both about bands and about the actual making of music.

Curtis makes a surprisingly good fist of this new life, considering his reputation as being a "shit communicator" and what he has to deal with. His father has died, his brother is recently single, his neighbours require careful negotiation and then Derek comes back to town.

The novel starts with Annaliese coming into his life. She's the girl from next door, sixteen, a "confounding mixture" of self-assuredness and fragility looking for her missing not so bright dog, Oscar, although "he's never really got that". Later on, he spots her coming up the street, her hands playing an imaginary keyboard:

she was concentrating, playing precise notes. Not with great feeling, but marking them out neatly as if she might come back later and put more into it. Then she noticed me and her fingers sprung back from the keys and her hands turned into two fists that dropped to her sides. She was holding onto the very slender hope that I had seen none of it.... The air keyboard player can only surrender. There is no other choice.

They come to spend quite a lot of time together - she hangs out in his studio where its air-conditioned, gets involved in his music. I particularly enjoyed their conversations, there's lots of playful teasing between them, although the dialogue is spot on throughout. The blurb makes it plain that something happens between the two of them, but for once we have a muso who acts responsibly. He is very fond of Annaliese, thinks that if she were only 25 it would not be a problem, but she's too young at 16. So, there's a bit of a startled rejection scene, leaving him wanting and needing to "put some kind of patch on the hole it had left in how she felt about herself".

Her brother, Mark, is 14: apparently a stereotypical sullen teenager, playing computer games and dressed in black with inappropriate facial adornments. Curtis's first assessment is that he would have hated Butterfish on principle, too close to pop and insufficiently evil: "fourteen year old boys with nails through their ears had taken it upon themselves to be our natural enemies". But Mark has great commercial instincts - I loved his negotiation of the deal to mow Curtis's lawn - is a talented although disturbing writer, and turns out to have a secret plan which is really quite lovely. He and Curtis turn out to have quite a surprising rapport.

They are both summarised as "complicated people", neither children nor adults with

lives full of negotiations and power shifts and forced trips across town, and hormones and wild ideas. Everything was to be tested - themselves, the inconsistencies the world offered them every day.

Then there's their mum, Kate. She does the neighbourly thing and invites Curtis over to dinner:

"I was just swearing at the meal when you came in."
"As long as it didn't swear back, I think we're okay."
"You'll never hear it with the oven door shut."

Sure, it may not be highbrow literature, but for suburban Brisbane, this seems to me to be perfect in its naturalness. She's a "crap" cook but Curtis is kind, blames her tools - there's an amusing scene when she uses what Curtis says is a comedy knife stolen from a clown to cut (or at least bruise) mushrooms. Somewhere along the line, he has learned to be a great cook, so he helps her out and they go on a shopping expedition to buy a proper knife. This reminds me: there were two aspects I didn't like about the book - he made this absolutely delicious sounding curry that left me salivating and wrote so convincingly about a particular kitchen knife that I have to get one!

Because Curtis has been away so long, and his dad has just died, he needs to get re-acquainted with his brother, Patrick, and with the idea of family, albeit a family of just two. Curtis is no rockstar to Patrick, just the little brother, so Curtis spends a fair while sparring with him, taking pre-emptive (conversational) strikes against him so he won't be bested. Things get better when Curtis learns that Patrick has separated from his partner, asks if this is when he says he never liked him (the partner, Blaine), thought him a narcissist:

"Oh, God. He had so little to be narcissistic about. And yet he managed, against such odds..."
"And you have much more to be narcissistic about than he does."
"I've always thought that."

The coolest thing about their relationship are the revelations - both about how they saw their own and each other's childhoods - and about the secret life of their dad (who had a mad scheme pretty well developed to put on an opera about an early explorer, Sturt). Once they learn he'd been on internet dating sights, they develop a running joke about him having a mail order Russian bride.

Derek is the one character who is closest to being a caricature but even he has his moments. He "has a big mortgage on the whole rockstar cliché" and really has only one layer at most times. But he's back because his dad might die, and that brings the meagre best out of him (after he and Curtis have a ridiculous fight in the street).

Oddly enough, this book shares something with the last book I wrote about: it was also a play. Here is the author talking about the creative process.

David Nobbs - Cupid's Dart

2011-03-14T23:30:00.005+13:00

Best known for creating Reggie Perrin, David Nobbs is still producing fiction, with 17 novels under his belt. Cupid's Dart (2007) has a slightly unusual history, as it is a novel based upon a televised play, written way back in 1981.

The central character, Alan Calcutt, shares a little with Reggie: he is deeply out of touch, has trouble relating to his workmates, mainly because he despises them and has trouble with family. His mother is in a rest home and he makes a dutiful weekly visit, desperately trying to work out how to fill in the time but at the same time wishing his mum would get out a bit more, so she'd have some quality of life. Things are so bad that he at one stage plots to kill her, in both their interests, with a poisoned cake.

But the major story here is his meeting of Ange (in the play, she was played by Leslie Ash - the cool chick in Quadrophenia), a much younger but vastly more experienced girl he delights in saying he picked up on a train. She is 24, a darts groupie. He's 56, a philosophy don, a virgin, and has no idea what she's talking about half the time. But he has enough self awareness to work out that he's doomed to an increasingly sad life if he doesn't do something.

He talks like a textbook but somehow they find a way to chat with each other as they share a table in the train and he, for the first time in a couple of decades, finds himself interested or, in his words, "she inspires an affectionate response", particularly her unselfconscious joy at being alive. He is full of ponderous talk of philosophy and how it provides no answers, just questions. Instead of even trying to address his conversation, Ange muses about birds:

I wonder if birds are afraid of heights - it'd be a right old do if one of them was afraid of heights. Fuck up his life a bit, wouldn't it? The old singing and that. Know what I mean?

To their mutual surprise, Alan asks Ange out (to dinner at a very fussy restaurant) and she accepts. Although he has no idea how it will go, he has the wit to "avoid Wittgenstein, concentrate on darts".

And so, a relationship of sorts develops: the opening chapter makes it clear it does not last beyond the year but, surprisingly, good things happen to both of them during the year. He finds her thoughts extraordinary, because they do tend to come out of left field, but that helps shake up his very stale take on life and his work or, in his words, he is screwed up until she "unscrews" him (and they do spend several nights just talking before anything approaching sex happens). He is taken way out of his comfort zone (pubs and international darts tournaments for a start). She gets to be taken seriously - no-one has ever wanted her for her mind before - and escape the Essex girl stigma and a rather concerning lack of esteem when it comes to men.

There are not many laugh out loud moments here (although I did laugh when Alan is very anxious about a declaration of love he wrote under the influence of several pints of Belgian lager and sent to Ange - he is so desperate to retrieve it, convinced that it will be fatal to their relationship but it is so unreadable she thought he'd sent her notes for a lecture) but I enjoyed these two characters. They may have been laid on just a little thick but they were distinctive.

The Past is a Foreign Land

2010-11-08T02:51:00.005+13:00

This was another unrelentingly sad, but well made movie. It starts at a party, which was a good sign, but its all down hill from there. Three toughs in suits come in, obviously have a bone to pick with one of the guests. He and another give these toughs a kicking: that's how Giorgio and Francesco meet. Giorgio is a law student, but what about Francesco? He takes Giorgio for a coffee, then to some card games, where Giorgio can't believe his luck: to get four Queens twice on one night, well that's too good to be true.

Francesco lets him on a little secret: he's been cheating and, now that he's tested Giorgio, wants them to be a team. So, they go out and win lots of card games, against some of the tough men of Bari (which explains who the guys were who were after Francesco earlier on), they live the good life, Giorgio drops further and further away from his law studies, hooks up with a woman he beat at cards, gets a bit distant from Francesco.

This makes it all the more surprising that Francesco agrees to have Giorgio along when he has to go to Spain, to expand his sphere of operations. They're sitting in the car, fuming rather than talking, but after a 1600 km road trip they seem to be best of mates again. Its while they're in Spain that things get dark and violent. I'd never trusted Francesco, he looks like a minor hoodlum (he's on the right):
Events in Spain are impossible to mention without major spoilers, but its these events which seem to be the most important in the movie. Although Giorgio is clearly having a great time with his new-found wealth, Francesco is a bit over it, wants more, and its not just the cocaine they've come to collect: there is also the cool waitress that they befriend. But just normal dating is a bit passe for Francesco as well: he needs to transgress. Giorgio is watching on: he needs to make a choice - go to her aid, sit back and enjoy his drink or take the same path?

Temptation is too much but proves to be a high price to pay: later, back in Bari, when he is accused of attacking a woman there, he says nothing, despite the rather heavy going over he gets from the cops. He's obviously seeking to expiate the guilt of what happened in Spain.

Giulia Doesn't Go Out at Night

2010-11-08T02:11:00.002+13:00

This was the first of the 2010 Italian Film Festival movies I had a chance to see. It is not the most cheerful movie I've ever seen, in fact I came out feeling very sad.That's not to say its not a good movie, but it wouldn't suit someone seeking a light-hearted and funny romance. Guido is a novelist, there's a subsidiary story about his hope to win some big writing prize. The main story starts when his daughter decides she's bored with swimming lessons and, since they've been paid for, Guido takes over as pupil. So, yes, there's a fair amount of swimming.

His instructor is Giulia - she initially presents as a little stern, but she and Guido bond as he tries to do more than float. Of course, he's all "will you have coffee?" and she's all "I don't go out at night" - the reason is revealed so early in the movie that its not really a spoiler to share: she is in jail, for killing a man. The lover she left her husband and daughter to be with moved on, she killed him.

Italian prisons seem to be more enlightened than those with which I am familiar: Giulia is allowed out on day release to teach swimming and even has 45 days leave a year. Guido thinks he is doing the right thing when he tries to reunite Giulia with her daughter: it is something which has clearly oppressed Giulia for years but, well, things don't turn out so great.

There is one fun element to the movie: Guido tends to daydream, so there are whimsical little movies within the movie, stories he might write but never does. One featured a cute umbrella seller. Even these take on a darker tone: some of the characters start to inhabit Guido's real world, showing up in the swimming pool, for example, and then there's Giulia in these dream narratives.

I & Claudius, by Clare de Vries

2010-08-10T01:01:00.008+12:00

Having long dreamed of a road trip across the USA (I have now half completed one of my own, NYC - San Antonio), I am always keen to read about other people's experiences of such trips. Clare de Vries even took much the same sort of route as I did, down the Blue Ridge Parkway, Asheville, Memphis and then down the Mississippi and across to Austin (I skipped New Orleans and took a wrong turning and ended up in Chattanooga rather than Nashville, but otherwise we might have followed the same inspiration). Her journey took her right across, I finished mine by train.

Clare was at a loose end, 28 and worried about turning 40 before she knew it, no success at jobs or relationships, her mother had just passed on, and she wanted to have an adventure and spend some quality time with her cat, Claudius, a rather magnificent looking creature who was coming to the end of his days: the road trip became the thing to do. Somehow she managed to get a flight that would let him fly in the cabin and had no problems with quarantine. Her list of essentials suggests a slightly different traveling style from my own:

"What is essential for a road trip? A cat. I have one. Some Gucci slingbacks. I have some. Am I forgetting something? How about a car? I have that too. It is being shipped over as we speak. My precious Lancia Fulvia Coupe 1.3S Rallye."

And that's it (apart from a bit of a rave about loving her wee rally car). Shame that it only did about five miles of the trip, broke down, was sold and replaced with a brand new Buick LeSabre.

I can't say that Clare was my favourite travelling companion: to be that obsessed with a cat is a little beyond my own experience, but it was probably her most endearing feature. Except that, well, at critical points, when Claudius is not feeling so great, she seems to leave him to his own devices, so that she can find a party or a fellow. But the times he does get seriously ill and has to be left with a vet, poor Clare does end up devastated at the possibility of losing him - even though she kind of knows that this is a farewell journey for him.

Things tend to go fairly well for her when she has contacts to keep her company, and I was rather surprised at how easy it came to her at times to make contacts, people would offer their home or give a friend's address to stay with: this never happened to me. But then I'm not a late 20's party girl. When it was just her and Claudius, life closed in on her: she'd have Claudius provide a running commentary but it was obvious there were times she found the solitude that comes with long distance travel very hard to deal with.Staying in grotty motels that don't allow pets, so she had to constantly engage in subterfuges to have Claudius with her, can't have helped. Fairly early on she thinks to herself:

Maybe I meant this trip to be a journey to the heart of my loneliness in the mistaken view that that would somehow cure it, as if by provoking it out into the open I could take a good long look at it. Well, here I am and it hasn't worked. If anything it just sits there staring back at me, like some Jabba the Hun, splayed out in its debauched extravagance, making no attempt to disguise its vile layers.

I don't think she came out of the trip feeling any less lonely. So maybe that's what led to her guard being down, and finding herself in some quite odd situations with blokes. Towards the end of the book, Clare feels, and possibly is, in quite significant danger from some random bloke who just can't get the message that its time to move on.Earlier on, she has a lucky escape when a waitress tips her off to a couple of guys she's hanging with being con artists.

It was fun watching her reactions to some of the places I saw. Take Gatlinburg, for example, at the south end of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I hated it, couldn't get out of the place fast enough; my main recollection now are the millions of traffic lights that prevented my escape. She loves it, but then we have Claudius saying why:

I believe on the other side [of the Cherokee mountains] is an adult amusment park-cum-holiday village-type place, full of bright lights and fast ideas, perfect for someone who has no desire to face the void.

After seeing Ripley's Believe or Not, she takes a walk, catches the "souvenir shops with mini tepees Made in Taiwan and Indians posing for photographs with folks on the street", then there is the Tomahawk Diner, TeePee Motel, Big Chief Inn, Moccasin Gift Shop...

There are not a lot of times I had much of a sense of the physical world through which she travels: every so often, Clare will talk about what its like to be in the Grand Canyon (illegally, as she has Claudius with her) or in Las Vegas (after somehow going to the wrong one). Mostly however, it was more about Clare, or Claudius, or the people she's met or is hoping to meet. I was looking forward to her accounts of Oxford, or Asheville or even the Blue Ridge Parkway but she largely just name-checked and moved on - which left me thinking that this is more life story than travel writing.

The Tree

2010-08-08T23:16:00.008+12:00

One of my guilty pleasures of late has been to make sure that I see Shortland Street: not the current shows, but the "from the beginning" version. So right now I'm in early 1993 and Martin Csokas is playing the very sweet but very clumsy Dr Leonard Dodds:
Another long term pleasure has been to watch movies with Charlotte Gainsbourg. Seeing them together seemed inconceivable. Seeing them playing together in an Australian movie even more so, yet that is exactly what The Tree is. Sure, it is a French co-production but it is shot and set in Australia (shot in Queensland, Boonah to be precise, but I had the distinct impression we were supposed to think it was New South Wales). The scenery was gorgeous in a spare sort of way - I've found a couple of photos:
Even better were the shots taken when everything was misty and mysterious, which seemed to happen quite a lot. Of course, there was a tree as well (a Moreton Bay Fig, to be precise, imported to the spot to do the job):
The story was quite a simple one (I don't think I'd go quite as far as one reviewer, who called it a "painfully maudlin, unambitious and oversensitive melodrama" which had no place in Cannes at all, let alone closing it). Peter, who we see in the opening scene driving a truck with an entire house on the back (and hanging out in it cleaning his teeth when his partner takes over driving duties, has a heart attack and dies. Dawn (Gainsbourg) is left to fend as best she can, with four kids and no skills at all. This makes it a little odd when she wanders into town to find the plumber (Csokas) (there are frogs in the toilet and unexpected eruptions elsewhere) and he just gives her a job. Of course, he and she start to get it on, and this does not please Simone, the 8 year old daughter. She's convinced that her dad is talking to her through the tree, and sees great significance in a large piece of the tree crashes into Dawn's bedroom. Of course, there could be a logical explanation: the season is very dry, the root system is trying to cope but the tree is not getting enough sustenance.

I thought Morgana Davies in particular did a fantastic job as Simone who, faced with the choice to be sad or happy, went with happy
and of course Charlotte Gainsbourg was great (but after Antichrist, this role was probably a walk in the park for her). Marton Csokas didn't seem to have all that much to do either - he had to be a plumber (which must resonate for a New Zealand audience as he was such a clutz he kind of needed a plumber to follow him around) and be the boy-friend. There was only one scene where he was really pushed, when there was a show-down between him, Dawn and Simone - I would have liked to see him do more. It was funny seeing him nearly two decades later (he has been in lots of other films, but I don't think I've seen any, certainly not recently). He still moved in a way that reminded me of Leonard. The tree was something of an actor as well: it posed quite the threat to their house.

A couple of things struck me as a bit odd about the movie: there's a great emphasis in the panning shots on the rural nature of where the family lives, yet there's a grumpy old neighbour close enough to have the tree's roots intrude into her wash-house.The tustle over whether the tree had to come down and then the storm might point to the futility of human choices, but might have simply been a curious plotting choice. Then there was the end, which just didn't satisfy me at all, it was neither of the things I thought they might do.

There's a nice interview with the cast and director (Julie Bertucelli) and some footage from the film on the SBS site.

Kawasaki's Rose

2010-07-24T21:38:00.003+12:00

This is a fantastic Czech movie, set in the present. A movie crew is filming Pavel and Jana, as Pavel is about to get a medal, both for his post-revolution achievements and for making a stand against the communists back before the Velvet Revolution.

I wondered what might be found: the Police organisations in states like the now Czech Republic and other Eastern block countries were notorious for the fanatic way in which records were kept, no matter how suspect the methods used to obtain the information recorded. Sure enough, the events of those times prove to cast a long shadow over the present.

I struggled for a while with the title, as it didn't seem to have any kind of reference within the film. Eventually, however, there is a Japanese fellow by the name of Toshik Kawasaki who does indeed paint a rose (after fifteen years of not being able to, thanks to the sarin poisoning in the Tokyo subway). Film-maker Jan Hrebejk has another notion in mind: Kawasaki's Rose is also one of the hardest figures to make in origami. His point is that the overall shape might appear simple, but there are many complexities in its creation. I don't think he's talking about the movie so much as the present.

So, while there are skeletons in Pavel's closet, the movie is not at all polemic in its tone. The story gradually unfolds, thanks to Ludek (one of the crew making the movie) who just happens to have found a complete version of Pavel's file and decides to dig for the truth. This might normally be seen as noble, but motivation is rendered murky by the fact that Ludek is Pavel's son in law and has a burning rsentment against him. Ludek's own truthfulness is brought into question very early in the film, when it is revealed that he's been cheating on his wife, Lucie. I didn't buy the bollocks he and Radka, the woman he was involved with, tried to sell Lucie about truth-telling being important to forgiveness and moving on. Sure, it is a great concept and works well with the overall theme and momentum of the movie, but in this scene, it all seemed a bit fake.

Two other characters are important: Borek, the man Pavel is said to have wronged, and Kafka (yes, really), the agent of the secret Police who used Pavel as his instrument to get rid of Borek. There is a nice parallel with real life in that Antonín Kratochvíl, who plays Borek, also left the country as a reaction to the regime prior to the Velvet Revolution, although not under quite such dramatic circumstances. Borek moved to Sweden where he creates sculpted balls - he had branched out into cones, but thought it best to focus on one shape. You wonder if his life is better or worse than it would have been had he stayed home.

Kafka, who had interrogated Borek, denies any use of force or even any need to, saying that you have to remeber this is the 1970's, only the inept use violence. The technique in the 1970's focused on mind-games and traps, gathering information to use against a person so that a person falls into error. The director, Hrebejk, has said that

In Kawasaki’s Rose, we tried to expose the mechanisms with which the totalitarian power, more specifically the secret police literally destroyed people or got them to compromise their morals. Sometimes it wasn’t about getting rid of people or getting them to emigrate, but driving them to compromise themselves, and I think that there are a lot of myths surrounding that. Even people who lived during that time don’t have an exact memory of it. Or they never got into contact with the secret police and don’t understand the mechanisms with which the secret police worked." (http://www.radio.cz/en/article/124758)

This makes it extremely difficult to say that the actions of a person caught in such a trap are morally wrong, although, as Pavel admits, it is weakness and cowardice. His daughter, Lucie, has a real problem with him being what she calls a snitch, but there are other factors which might be at the root of her distress. Strangely enough, Radka (who was also in the film crew) comes through as the person most sympathetic to Pavel.

With the various family controversies and grapplings with the past to deal with, this was not exactly a funny movie (despite Hrebejk's history of making comedies). There were a couple of lighter moments, such as when Lucie learns that she has had a tumour of a type which does not normally grow in humans. When sharing this with Ludek, she says "You always thought I was a bit of a cow" and considers moving to India to take advantage of being sacred. But while humour was not the focus, it remained a fairly warm movie, lots of intimate photography with appealing colours and shading.

Morally mixed as everything may have been, there was a "victor", and the disturbing final scene shows who that was.

Joanna Newson @ Christchurch Repertory Theatre

2010-02-01T21:48:00.008+13:00

The lady, she is a genius. First there’s the harp, an instrument I understand to be a little more complex than most to play, and she has the most intricate of arrangements to many of her songs (a review on Pitchfork says it well: "Newsom's fingers flitting about the massive instrument looked like the rapid untangling of something hopelessly knotted"). I'd thought she'd carry her harp with her, but she confessed she'd seen the harp she was playing for the first time earlier in the day - that can't have made her job any easier. Then the songs themselves: long, intense, wordy. And this is Joanna Newsom we’re talking about: her voice adds an extra layer of complexity, as it has such a wide range, one she seems to have expanded, not so much use of the upper registers. Here she is, playing the Sprout and the Bean. Isn't she just lovely?

While some people seem to have difficulty just walking in a straight line, Joanna Newsom sings her complex songs while both playing the harp and managing her voice at the same time. I don't know how she keeps it all together, because her songs are long. At the end of each, she smiles beautifically at the audience, as if a little surprised we're there. Perhaps she does forget we are there: I don’t think I’ve heard a quieter audience, and there were a lot of us, too many for the Harbourlight in Lyttleton so the show was moved to a place that would hold 400. I’d had my doubts about my fellow audience members: they muttered their way through the Renderer’s set and were only a little bit quieter for Jens Lekman.

Most of the songs were brand new, off the album which is yet to be released. I’ve not listened to any of her music for more than a year anyway, so it was as if I was hearing each song for the first time. That’s a bit of a problem when it comes to Joanna Newsom because I have problems keeping up. Ideally, she’d do one of her songs maybe five times, then ask us to come back then next night for another. But no, she sang new songs without a break for an hour and a half and then came back with a single song for the encore. Ah well, her new CD has been announced (it is actually 3 CD's!, called Have One On Me, made largely in Japan last year) and I have already placed my order, direct with Dragcity. I might even manage to get my stereo properly set up in her honour.

Apparently she has put together quite an ensemble for the CD: she pared it down to four musicians for the Australian leg of the tour but sent two of them packing before coming to New Zealand. One fellow was on drums: I was impressed that he was nattily dressed in a college professor sort of way, corduroy suit and tie, yet had bare feet. The other fellow played an assortment of stringed instruments and a flute. They were for the most part a great addition: there was just one point, during the second song (Daddy Long Legs): Joanna was singing very fast, so it was already hard to work out exactly what she was singing, and the drums became so loud and frenetic it was completely impossible.

I found myself wondering what it would be like to talk with her: applying her wordsmith skills and romantic sensibility to a conversation could be quite mind-blowing. She didn't have a whole lot to say while on stage and although I have seen her in real life, as it were, she was just ordering food in a cafe. Again Pitchfork comes to the rescue: when interviewed, her answers are "as extensive and eloquent as the lyrics" in her music.

At her gigs, she comes across as quite the folkie - she was wearing a dress that wouldn't have looked out of place on a hippie, so I've been a little surprised to read that she has an alternate career as a model, doing a magazine cover for Armani, for example. This photo doesn't look anything like her!

I’m not sure why, but it seems they deferred opening the doors for quite some time and yet didn’t stop the Renderers from starting. I came in with the rest of the queue and they seemed to be half way through the setlist. As seems to be the case with them, the larger the venue, the more subdued the mood – I saw them at Sammy’s once and it was awful. They are in their element playing loud in a small venue, like Chicks. Here, I think they’d toned things down anyway: MaryRose mentioned a couple of times that the song was best when played loud. So, they were OK but I’ve seen them much better.

I don’t know about Jens Lekman: the audience lapped him up and wanted an encore, but I was obscurely irritated by his whole performance, and can’t even put my finger on the reason. It had something to do with a sense that the whole thing was manufactured and a bit poppish.

They Call Him Mullet-man

2008-07-25T23:58:00.002+12:00

I last had my hair cut in October 2007 or thereabouts, by a charming Irish girl in Queenstown. Since then, my hair had grown somewhat and was neither manageable nor tidy. With a funeral to attend and a mother to face, it was time for surgery. Obviously, I have no regular hairdresser (they tend to retire or go out of business soon after I visit) so I thought I'd have one on the road. Besides, a Winton hairdresser has recently won national awards, so surely I'd find someone decent.

I did try at Winton as I went through, but would have had to wait at least three hours, so pressed on, right through to my destination, Otautau. There I found a hairdresser who would take me immediately. To jump ahead slightly, when I reached my uncle's house, I was told "I wonder what particular instructions you gave to get THAT haircut". Well, the answer is that I told the hairdresser that I have no idea, but that I like length in my hair but had reasons for looking sober and respectable, so could she work something out.

First, I had to get my hair washed, and I was quite enjoying the long and deep scalp massage I was being given. I was slightly discombobulated, however, to find that the girl doing it was actually my cousin. Then it was time to surrender to Bev, the voluble woman who was able to fill me in on the ins and outs of her entire life, together with those of half my family, and tell me about the funeral I'd be attending. I only attended to a fraction of what she was saying as just as she started to cut, she told me that she was going to give me the style that was just coming in: "they call it a mullet".

It has certainly aroused a lot of conversation: a classmate yelled out "mullet-man" as I went to class, everyone and their dog has pointed out I have a mullet; complete strangers have said as I go by "that man has a mullet'. Some have asked if I intend to get it bleached. A girl who has chosen to stop talking to me guffawed at that but would not face me. Apparently the good people of Southland have come up with their own variant, in which just the fringe is bleached. Kind people tell me that, yes, the mullet has never gone out of style in Southland, in more fashionable centres it is, in fact, coming into fashion. The same kind people have told me it suits me; more honest people have asked when I am going to remove the fish-tail of hair adorning my collar.

Life has certainly been interesting since my last post. In the six or so weeks, I have read just one book (Lullabies for Little Children) which is abnormal for me. Less abnormal, I've seen a number of movies. But my time has been taken up with more substantial adventures: a trip to Portland (Oregon) and subsequent road trip to Butte (Montana) and back; some heavy duty marking, writing on Jonathan Swift's Tale of A Tub and Alexander Pope's Dunciad and, some might say, most importantly, falling in love.

Newcastle (NSW) - February 2008

2008-06-03T23:47:00.007+12:00

The bus trip to Christchurch was long and tedious, leavened only by the kid throwing up next to me. At least she didn't throw up on me.The flight to Melbourne was, once again, ridiculously early - I had the taxi pick me up at 04:15. Hardly worth paying the hotel for the use of the room, once I'd wandered about to find dinner (Greek) and had a drink.

It was a fleeting visit to Melbourne: three hours later, I was boarding my $10 Tiger Air flight to Newcastle. It is an impressive city to fly into, what with the coastline north of Sydney (quite what we were doing out there, I have no clue), the rivers curving their way around Newcastle, its port and the way that Downtown Newcastle is on a narrow peninsular. To add to the general effect were the numerous areas of shallow flood and the general greenness of the place.(OMG, as I'm typing this, I'm playing something from the second record I ever bought, which I haven't heard for ages, not since my Radio Woodville days - I found The Best of the Motels on CD today, and "Total Control" is still doing it for me). Newcastle itself was not quite what I expected: yes, it had some great old buildings, some had been done up nicely but in between, there were lots of empty buildings, and lots of new buildings, which were not a patch on their older cousins. The main street has been turned into a Mall - I walked down it a number of times, at various times of the day, and it strikes me as a cold and forbidding place.

But overall, I liked my time in Newcastle. I got organised and went down to the Hawkesbury River by train, a place that has been in my imagination ever since The Oyster Farmer and The Secret River. Of course, trains are not the ideal mode of transport when it comes to rivers, so I only got to see a very small part of it. I went on a day long wine tour out in the lower Hunter Valley, which mysteriously turned into a beer tour when I noticed a micro-brewery. Since there were only three of us on the tour and we all enjoyed beer more than wine, the driver could be accommodating. It was a good day out, a good use of a wet day which might otherwise have confined me to the hostel.

Not that I would have minded terribly, as it is a very nice hostel - the common area, with its pool table and leather club chairs, makes me think it might have been a gentleman's club in its earlier life. I did some shopping, I explored the Newcastle library and art gallery, I found some good places to eat and drink coffee (on Darby Street), I read (Narayan), I saw some movies (I'm Not There and The Jane Austen Book Club) and I went to Maitland.

Maitland is more in line with my expectations of Newcastle - it has a "heritage" mall, lots of gracious old buildings and a general good feel to the place. I could have easily made this my base, had I not discovered it the day before I returned to Melbourne.
So I had a very nice Thai meal and caught the train back to Newcastle, then Tigered it back to Melbourne. There I just hung about for a few days, exploring a few more nooks and crannies, enjoying the place, staying at the North Melbourne YHA.

This trip has been marked by more interesting encounters with other people than is normally the case. First was the kid who didn't quite throw up on me. Then there was the couple in Newcastle airport (who had also found $10 fares so flew up just for the night): they gave me and another lost soul (the next bus was 90 minutes later) a ride into town.

In Maitland, I was walking past a pub, with its attendant group of smokers loitering outside, and heard what I am sure was a conversation about rats. One of the people said "there goes one now"; I had the uncomfortable sensation she was talking about me. I carry on walking, and then there's someone running after me - I look round in a fairly terrified fashion, and its some girl going "Happy Valentine", as she hands me a crumpled flower and a fag. When I say I don't smoke, she says "give it to someone you love" and is off, back to her group. Maybe they weren't talking about rats.

Then on a tram in Melbourne, there's this young guy, no shirt, fairly wasted, who gives me a big hug, quite prolonged really, all because I passed him his bag. But above all is Naomi: she came on the wine tour, so I had pretty much the whole day with her and her Welsh friend. Neither made much of an impression when they first got on the bus, but we'd stop and taste some wine and chat; then I found myself sureptitously looking at her as we drove and, despite knowing I'd never see her again, getting rather enchanted by her as the day progressed .

Old Men in Love: John Tunnock's Posthumous Papers

2008-06-01T21:34:00.005+12:00

by Alasdair Gray (2007). I bought what is probably Gray's best known novel, Lanark, quite some time ago as the result of considerable chatter around the place. I have yet to read it, however, but when I spotted his latest book, Old Men in Love, on the library shelf I had to pick it up. I'm glad that I have been reading Pope and Swift for my studies this year and read Flann O'Brien a couple of years ago, because this book is very much in their tradition. Indeed, the book has the famous quote from O'Brien's Ar Swim Two Birds about good books needing "three openings entirely dissimilar and interrelated only in the prescience of the author". It also has blurbs from Lawrence Sterne, Samuel Johnson and Sidney Workman ("This book should not be read"). The first two are, of course, fictional but the third has an extra layer of fiction in that Workman is a character from within the pages of Gray's work.

As was common with these authors, the book has a somewhat elaborate cover page
although by no means as elaborate as, say, Swift might have employed. It is a layered text - it is ostensibly the papers of one John Tunnock. He was something of a scholar, attempting to write a history of the world. At the same time, he was recording his own life in a diary. After his death, the job was given to one Lady Sara Sim-Jaegar, his next of kin, to wind up his estate. She sells of all his material assets but still had his papers to "embarrass" her:

I had a mass of typescript and a large desktop notebook two-thirds full of undated entries in tiny, clear, almost sinisterly childish calligraphy. It would have been heartless to discard all that as waste paper, but what else could I do? The typed pages were historical novels, which I detest. I also dislike reading diaries, even those written for publication, and a sample of John's miserable confessions made me think them unpublishable - I now know this idea is old-fashioned and out of date.

As it happened, one Alistair Gray was available to help her do the impossible: this book is the result of his exertions on her behalf. She has written an introduction ("because his [own] reputation as an occasional writer of fiction often led critics to doubt the value of his serious work") and he has provided the reader with a number of marginal notes (not footnotes or endnotes because "I like widening my readers' range of expectations") and a table of contents. There are a number of illustrations, all apparently hand drawn by Gray himself and rather exquisite in their detail
The introduction raises several questions about Tunnock's mode of living (including whether he ever had sex - he lived with his maiden aunts until they died, just a decade ago) and how he came to die: his diary entries serve to answer those questions and to reveal him as a rather odd man. Here is how it starts:

The time is now three in the morning after the most bemusing hours of my life. They started yesterday when I arose and as usual on days when cleaners come, had to start by tidying away signs of female presence scattered over my floors from living room to lavatory: discarded garments, cosmetic tools, photographic magazines about the sex lives of beautiful rich people. The women I once knew kept a tidy house - why are young things who stay here different?

He lives a fairly quiet, retired sort of life - spending his days researching and writing in the library, evenings in the pub with some old chums, is described as a "fat wee ugly old man", lives in an extravagantly Victorian house and is himself resolutely old-fashioned yet seems to have some sort of extraordinary appeal to tough young women, women so young that he writes "My fondness for young things could lead to difficulties if Niki is under the age of consent. What is the age of consent? (Memo: find out.)." In between his commentary on these various young things and the ways in which they interrupt his writing, he also muses about more enlightened topics, such as Socrates, his difficulties in understanding Aristophanes' The Clouds...

These diary entries introduce his pieces of writing, pieces he is having published in a local journal as he goes but which may or may not add up to some sort of ultimate world history - they are pretty random. First is a section concerning the war between Sparta and Athens, with a call to arms by Pericles. The next section moves onto Florencethe time Holy Roman Empire, where he has Fra Filippo (Lippi?) arguing about tomatoes and sinning carnally with the nun he was about to paint so he could paint without the distraction of carnal lust.

This theme is picked up, big time, in the third (and longest) section when he pillories a particular Brethren religious sect from England in the 19th century. Henry James Prince is its leader and the account here is taken directly from his journalAt first, he seems sound: in a nod to Silas Marner, he refuses access to his services to prominent people from the neighbourhood if all they're doing is coming to church for a nap. He wants only those actively engaged in receiving the word and in a Christian life to be there - which seems entirely reasonable to me, but it was not to the powers that be in the Church of England. And so Beloved Brother Prince sets up his own brotherhood - but he is gradually revealed as being an "enthusiast" in the sense described in Dr Johnson's Dictionary i.e. one who has a vain belief in private direct revelation from the Deity. Everything they do is the result of the spirit - a nice justification for doing what he wants. And so his Church becomes rather a vast financial empire in which Beloved Brother Prince is either the second coming of Christ or suffering a blasphemous delusion, depending upon who you listen to. In the same way, he celebrates his ascension by some sort of divine anointing or by raping a 15 year old virgin.

Quite how these three pieces work together, I'm not sure. There is a fourth element to the tale, in which Tunnock sets out in his history of the world (starting with the big bang) to make Scotland the logical successor of Greece and Rome. I think that perhaps the key to it all is a poem Tunnock claims to have found as a child which contradicted everything he had ever learnt about history in its portrayal of a grim view of civilization:

This beauty, this Divinity, this thought,
This hallowed bower and harvest of delight
Whose roots ethereal seemed to clutch the stars,
Whose amaranths perfumed eternity,
Is fixed in earthly soil enriched with bones
Of used up workers; fattened with the blood
Of prostitutes, the prime manure; and dressed
With brains of madmen and the broken hearts
Of children...

and finishes with a reminder that it is dung which keeps the roses sweet.

The author himself says that he had all these bits he didn't quite know how to join together, and so invented John Tunnock as his device to do so. While there is a lot of fun to be had in reading some parts of the book, and the book itself is a wonderful artefact, the best bits are the tales of Tunnock himself, rather than the pieces he is ostensibly writing. But then Gray pre-empts criticism by having a "review" by Sidney Workman as an epilogue, in which the book is heavily criticised: Henry James said HG Wells made novels by tipping his miind up like a cart and pouring in its contents. At first Old Men in Love seems to have been made in the same haphazard way, but some research in the National Library of Scotland shows it is stuffed with extracts from Gray's earlier writings... These rags of forgotten historical plays fill nineteen chapters. The rest are stuffed with a great deal of half-baked popular science... also political diatribes from pamphlets published before three general elections... Like most Scotsmen Gray thinks himself an authority on Burns, so we find an essay on Burns...

A lot has been written in the press about this book, but I think the account given by the Times Literary Supplement provides the best context for it.

Nakedbus.com Comes Through (Twice)

2008-06-01T19:49:00.010+12:00

I've had the occasional grumble about nakedbus.com and their inability to stick to timetable, but I have had two trips recently, each for a mere $1, which have redeemed them in my eyes. The more recent of the two was when I was in Wellington for a few days to see the Mountain Goats. As it happened, the band was a no-show, so I wanted to do something just a little out of the ordinary (in between my trips to the various libraries I was working in, delicious French, Italian and Malaysian food and, of course, visits to numerous cafes). And so I found myself doing a guided tour of Wellington - I don't think they took me anywhere I hadn't been (the first part actually went past the door of the apartment I was staying in and circled the environs for a while) but it was nice to be taken to the Botanical Gardens, around the south coast and up to the lookout. All for $1 (nakedbus works by contracting with various operators to carry its passengers, and they always sell the first seat (at least) for $1).

But my real coup was at the end of January, something I had scored for myself late last year. There was a question on the thorntree about whether the nakedbus trip to Milford Sound was any good: I didn't even know they had such a trip. Nor did many other people, it seems, because I was able to get myself a bus trip from Queenstown to Milford, a 2.5 hour cruise on the Milford Sound and then back to Queenstown - all for $1!

I decided to make a weekend of it, and hired some sort of semi-monstrous Ford SUV to take me. My first night I only got as far as Owaka (maybe 100 km from home) where I stayed in the newly opened YHA - the former Owaka Hospital, which still had quite a bit of its equipment in one of the wings. It is a big hostel, and only had half a dozen guests so I had the dorm to myself. I had a very pleasant meal in the Gumdiggers Cafe in town and then, just before the light faded, drove out to the beach (I had no idea it was only about 5 km away). Most spectacular was Surat Bay. I'm not sure why, but I took no photos, but here's an amazing shot google images conjured up, by a fellow called Chris Garden:
There's a hostel right at Surat Bay - one day I expect I'll go stay there.

I had an early start on the Sunday, a pick up at something like 7:00! The tour included full commentary and stops at various points of interest along the way, such as:I have been to Milford before, but I was driving, so pretty much all my energy was taken up navigating - there was certainly very little chance of getting a photo along the way, as the road offers few stopping places. Going through on the bus meant I could take plenty:Through some oversight, I failed to take a photo of the particular boat we went on. All I can say it was not like this one, not even from the same company ours was rather smaller. The crew was nice - I spent quite some time talking with - it turns out her home town is the place I was visiting in my next trip after Milford. As for the Sound,I didn't see any whales or dolphins although they do show up every so often. I did see what looked like large brown slugs in the distancehaving a peaceful day, not at all perturbed by the gaping tourists at their shouldersand a waterfallIt was a nice day out, not quite as spectacular as all the hype had led me to expect, but it would be nice to take one of the overnight cruises here at some stage.

Auckland Writers and Readers Festival 08 – Day Three

2008-05-31T00:11:00.005+12:00

An Hour With Anne Enright This was an interesting session, made so because the chair, Kapka Kassabova, seemed not to get things that the author saw as obvious in her work (such as its humour) and was a little pre-occupied with its bleakness and portrayal of women as “broken”. Enright did not see this at all, didn’t really see it as being much about gender politics at all, commenting (a) that men are often in exactly the same sort of place and (b) it was a line of questioning that male authors don’t face, they’re even celebrated for a bleakness of vision.

Enright’s take on her novel is that, yes, Veronica has things tough but at the end, she is re-made and is actually making her own choices – which is a good thing. I haven’t read it yet, but I don’t think Kassabova was buying this.

The novel has a certain reputation for being bleak and depressing, but Enright herself was very funny and the piece she read out from The Gathering itself was very funny, concerning what Veronica would do if she was giving three wishes. Here is my remembered paraphrase of some of what to do: The first thing to wish for is another three wishes, because you always waste your wishes on the wrong things, like Sophia Loren’s boobs, and find you’re burdened with silicone, so you then have to wish for her boobs back whenever they were fresh. So, you can use the second set of three wishes to get you roughly back to where you started.

I must read it, but am currently caught up in the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Read to Me

This was a session in which four authors simply read extracts from their books. Mo Hayder and Louise Wareham Leonard (who?) didn’t do anything for me. Sarah Laing, on the other hand, had a wonderful short story from her collection called Freezer Burn in which Rachel gets her first job in a pie factory. Not a promising setting but she does wonders with it. Then we had Duncan Sarkies who read a very funny extract from his novel, Two Little Boys. Nige and Deano have been mates for years, but Deano has a new friend, Gavin, making Nige a bit jealous. He gets some revenge (in the scene we heard) by repeatedly flushing the toilet – a noise Gavin apparently can’t stand to hear at night. So, yes, it is quite literally toilet humour but actually funny.

An Hour With Mo Hayder

I don’t think I’ll be buying her books, but she tells an interesting story. One in particular was about a water hole, Bushman’s Hole, in the Kalahari desert, which is incredibly deep, with just a small hole in the ground, a narrow neck for about 150 feet but then a bulbous body (in which you could put the Eiffel Tower, if you so chose) and a tapering tail. Apparently people drown in this, they dive to the bottom and get stuck in its tail, can’t get back. One fellow, Deon Dreyer, did this 10 years ago. More recently, another fellow, Dave Shaw, was diving, actually found the first guy. Couldn’t bring him up, because diving so deep means a long slow ascent (9 hours!) even by himself, so he organized a rescue party. Problem was, on the return trip, he got snagged on the dead fellow, and that was the end of him. His diving companion, against all the rules, went after him but it was no use. He must have dislodged him, however, as he and the other, long-dead guy – they both burst to the surface. Full story here. This, apparently was what inspired her to have a police diver as a feature character in one of her novels.

I didn’t really get her explanation of what she was doing in her novels – something about showing people to live in circumstances they’re never going to experience.

An Hour With Michael Pollan This was my last session – Michael Pollan is a bit of a food-writing guru for these threatened times, so I thought I’d better go. His message is pretty simple, actually, and he makes no secret of its simplicity, even plays on it: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Alternatively: never eat anything your grandmother would not recognize as food. His latest book, In Defence of Food, wants us to eat real stuff, not processed crap, not something planned by a nutritionist. Real food, preferably something you grow yourself, hence the focus on plants. He does eat meat, just not much: for the purposes of this book, he learnt how to kill a wild pig (I’m still wondering if the guy who took him out was just being kind when he said Pollan killed it) and turn it into edible products (of course, no pretension is involved in making sure they’re prosciutto). Best quote was from his dad, who couldn’t see any need for hunting once they’d invented the steakhouse.

Some Images From Earlier Sessions
Luke Davies (author of Candy etc):
Sarah Hall (author of The Electric Michelangelo, Carhullan Army and Haweswater)
Heather O'Neill (author of Lullabies for Little Criminals)
So, this was my very first Auckland Writers and Readers Festival: I am sure I will be back. It was a whole lot more fun than the Melbourne one I went to, where despite having a list of events a mile long, I didn’t actually go to anything. In a way, it was a nicer event than the Sydney one I went to last year, a bit more intimate, with all events in one of two rooms. In between, I could lounge around and visit the bookstores set up for the Festival, or wander into town. Coffee was in constant supply and in between events, one coffee girl in particular would entertain the space by singing and whistling.

In the evening I treated myself to something I should have had all along. I’d been in a backpackers in Parnell, but since I had an early start to catch my plane, I wanted to be somewhere on the Airbus route. Wotif came up with a marvelous $99 room, sorry Executive Apartment, at the Elliot Street Apartment Hotel – one block from the Festival, in an interesting old building that has been done up. The room was a great size, bed was huge, it had a full blown kitchen (not that I used it) and it was excellent value.

Second Hand Wedding, a film by Paul Murphy (2008)

2008-05-30T22:29:00.003+12:00

It was by some sort of appropriate coincidence that I went to Roy Shuker's talk about the slightly obsessive nature of record collecting today. Jill Rose (Geraldine Brophy) is a bit of a fanatic when it comes to bargain hunting at garage sales: she has a good eye for valuable items, but brings home a whole lot of kitschy crap (little blue name holding gnomes are a good example). She's lucky in her choice of husband: Brian (Patrick Wilson) is gentle, solves everything with a cup of tea and is a bit of a hoarder himself. The entire movie hangs on this rather slender premise concerning Jill's hobby: surprisingly, it works and the movie is just wonderful, funny, very Kiwi (the sole reveiwer on IMDB wonders if it would be understood outside of Wellington) but with just the right touch of sadness to give the movie an emotional appeal. I found myself on the verge of happy tears a number of times.

Find more videos like this on www.truveo.com.

We see an example of how mum operates when Cheryl Rose (named in honour of Cheryl Moana Maree, the song by John Rowles, upon whom Jill had a crush) talks about getting a pet (quite why she's doing this is another story): mum is immediately getting things sorted at various garage sales, and arrives home not only with a puppy, but books, feed, blankets, everything a puppy owner could possibly want and more. So when Cheryl and Stu get engaged, it is understandable that Cheryl might have a nightmarish vision of what her wedding would be like if her mum had anything to do with organising it, and would want something new, all to herself, rather than yet more second hand bargains, and so be fearful of telling her mum.

Of course, they live in a small community, so it is inevitable that word will get to Jill anyway (via another sub-plot involving Jill's erstwhile friend Gracie). This gets Jill off-side with both Cheryl and Brian, who's had a real hard time keeping this secret from her. It is a comedy, so of course things happen to resolve these tensions, along with seeing various singletons find their true love along the way.

I did think the actors took a while to warm to their roles - it took me some time to believe in the relationship between Cheryl and Stu, but that might have been because they were pretty low key and had a teasing way of being with each other: the audience's first sight of these two is when Cheryl is getting her car from the mechanic, and they pretend they are customer and mechanic, when it turns out that the mechanic is Stu, the fellow she's been living with for a year. The three guys in the garage were wonderful - I loved the scene when Stu's boss is basically dropping Stu in it when the boss's wife takes over the wedding organisation. And speaking of the wedding, it couldn't have ended any other way: John Rowles had to be there.

Auckland Writers and Readers Festival 08 – Day Two

2008-05-28T00:03:00.002+12:00

An Hour With JM Coetzee

This was my one “duty” session: he is such a prominent author, and has never been to New Zealand, so I had the sense I should go. I wish I had not: it was a lecture, no questions from the audience, no questions from or discussion with Witi Ihimaera, who was "chairing" the session (in reality, he had to simply sit idly by). And what did we get? A lecture on censorship, primarily the result of his looking at the notes of the censorship committee set up in South Africa to decide if his work could be published. His take? While there one or two inappropriate elements in his books, they were so fantastic that they ought not be censored. He then read two passages from his earlier works, the ones that were so great that the South African government would not interfere with their publication: these readings sent me to sleep.

Reading With A Torch Under the Blankets After Lights-Out

I went because Elizabeth Knox was on the bill, along with Kate di Goldi and Bernard Beckett. Kate (I call her Kate, not because I’ve met her, but it is like I have) is too much a kids and young adults author to be of much interest to me, and I had never heard of Beckett. Unfortunately, Knox decided her visit to France had to take precedence over the festival.

While there was a little discussion of reading under the blankets, it didn’t go very far: Beckett was not that keen on reading as a kid, and Kate didn’t need to read under the blankets, reading at all times was the norm, an important one for her (like me) because it formed much of her social life. She said something that I don’t think I had ever realized about myself – despite reading a lot, as a kid, I didn’t have others to talk books with (I still have vivid memories of talking the previous night’s TV shows with my classmates on the school bus, but not books). They (and I) had a very similar sort of reading trajectory – kids serial books, then books more for teens (Beckett name checked the same authors I would – Helen McInnes, Alistair McLean and co) along with a bunch of randoms that really got them going as readers.

Most of the talk was about writing for the young adult market: I think I am with Beckett, who explains that he goes to various functions involving YA authors but when he is asked who is favourite YA authors are, says he doesn’t actually read YA fiction because “I am not 15”. I think the most interesting aspect of this part of the talk was the inadequacies of definitions of YA, although I did like their notion of it being a matter of perspective. A teen novel will be nostalgic about childhood but completely unaware of adulthood, speculating about it maybe. Even though the same teen and experiences might be in an adult novel, the perspective will have switched to someone who has been there and done that.

“You Know You’re Done With A Story…”

This session was about the short story, and featured three authors who started with short stories and have written, or are writing, a novel: Peter Ho Davies, Anne Enright and Sarah Laing. The last is a completely new name to me, despite the fact she grew up in Palmerston North before moving to New York and back to Auckland. To be honest, I don’t know that a whole lot came out of this session for me: each author read some or all of one story, Kate Camp talked to them about various things, Sarah seemed a little less at ease about participating but her stories actually sounded the most interesting, so much so that I bought her book Coming Up Roses and had her sign it. No conversations this time – I’d say the whole notion of having fans come get her sign things is still quite new to her, which was kind of sweet.

An Hour With Luke Davies

This hour made me so glad that I had snuck away at lunch time and bought Candy at the 30% off sale at Dymocks. He read from it and showed a clip from the movie - it sounds like a fascinating book, one which draws heavily on his own experience while immersed in the world of addiction. Weird shit happened. He was pretty open about this, but I was curious as to the timing: he is not your typical junkie, in that he was an English teacher for at least some of the time he was having his troubles and, four years after escaping the net, was able to process those experiences into what appears to be some fine fiction. He is now in LA, trying to work as a script-writer, with two other novels to his name. While Speed of Sound is of little interest to me, I am interested in his “forgotten second novel, it has had hundreds of readers”, Isabelle the Navigator.

In the evening, I had a sort of continuation of the Festival, in that I went to an Italian restaurant, one in which the tables were very close together, and found myself seated to people who’d been at the Festival – in fact, I rather believe that one of them had been given an hour to talk about himself.

But later on, I was well away from books: up to the Kings Arms for an HDU gig, a band which hardly uses lyrics at all (although more now than in the past). Great stuff.

Auckland Writers and Readers Festival 08 – Day One

2008-05-24T19:58:00.002+12:00

This was a five day event, held last week. It would have been wonderful to get to the whole thing but, well, work intervened. I did manage to have a three day weekend in Auckland, and get to see most I would have wanted to see plus a have few nice surprises, attending about a dozen sessions in all.

Innocence and Experience

I didn’t really know anything about the three authors running this session, which was playing with the twinned notions of innocence and love, how love can generate a form of innocence. I had seen Peter Ho Davies’ novel The Welsh Girl in various shops, but Peter Wells and Laurence Fearnley are pretty much completely unknown, surprising given that both have written several novels and both are New Zealanders. Fearnley not only lives up the road, but she had a writing fellowship at my university! I listened to Peter Wells read from his book, Lucky Bastard, and talk generally about it and went and had a look at it in the bookshop, but have no sense that this book will be of any interest to me or, indeed, what it is about. The Festival blurb says it is “an exploration of family relationships and a little known aspect of the Second World War”: I have already forgotten what that might be.

The Welsh Girl sounds much more interesting, again a bit of family exploration happens, which is not necessarily confined to humans: Ho told of his discover of the territoriality and maternal instincts of sheep. I have no idea how he works this into his novel, but apparently he does. The story is of this young barmaid who has some sort of dealings with a German prisoner of war incarcerated in Wales, with a side dish of Anglo-Welsh tensions. Ho’s inspiration was the fact that his grandmother had a collection of small hand-made bronze sculptures made by the local POW’s during the war. The local landscape seems to be an important aspect of the novel.

I liked his story of one of his short stories: he spent a year on it, only to find that there was only one element he really liked, one he was able to salvage as an 8 page story. I also really liked what he was saying about his characters: by the time he had finished, he felt like it was really their story, and he was more in the nature of a reader, one who was sad to see them go when he was done. Very Flann O’Brien. Of course, the writer must be much closer to the characters than any reader, since they have lived together for the duration of the writing process (seven years, in his case).

This talk of missing the characters was inspired by Laurence Fearnley talking about her relationships, both with the physical world and fictional characters. She confessed to not really being into people, and finding lots to entertain her in the random things that she sees around her (such as some rubbish blowing across the street in Invercargill). This leads to her providing a very detailed and real sense of the physical landscape in her novels. She also confessed that she gets enough company from the characters inhabiting her head and finds them much more accessible than real people: I have to applaud her for her bravery in making such statements, because society has a dim view of loners. Curiously, I immediately wanted to meet her (but when I had my chance later on, chickened out). Her novel, Edwin + Matlida, features the title characters finding their way into a relationship, despite a 40 year gap between them (he is 62).

Addicted to the Dark

I went because I wanted to hear Duncan Sarkies; thanks to being fog-bound, he could not make it, so I only had Luke Davies and Heather O’Neill. She looked so much like one of our students that it came as a shock that she has a teenaged daughter. Her novel, Lullabies for Little Children, is pretty brave in the topic it takes on: a twelve year old girl (Baby) whose life is so shit and who is so damaged she takes to the streets and is selling herself. Her dad is a big time drug user, but going straight, so part of the novel explores her getting re-acquainted with this new father. The chair-person, Stephanie Johnson, raved about the freshness of the voice and the lovability and strength of this incredibly resilient kid. She’s possibly paid to say such things but Luke Davies, the other guest, rated it a highly important book and extremely good – at a world-beating level. There was talk of filming it, but of difficulties in getting the right sort of team on the project (if we could ever get Ellen Paige to look 12, I get the sense she’d be fantastic). O’Neill herself seems to have gone through the kind of life I can’t comprehend: at some stage, her mum said to her and her sisters “Your dad is out of jail now, you go live with him”; he was a bad man, but one with enough clout that he could pretty much do what he would want, such as wander down the street in his underpants smoking a cigar to do his shopping and no-one would interfere.

Luke Davies was there for his new book, God of Speed, a fictional biography of Howard Hughes – forgetting about his love of flying, but looking at him as a fellow suffering from OCD (apparently he had a team of Mormons to keep his house clean) and his addictions to drugs and sex. Davies was saying that he pretty much detested his character, which must be an odd place for an author to be in, although felt for him – the fact he went 15 years without ever having a real conversation, that he could neither love nor be loved. Still, I don’t think I’ll be rushing to read this one, but it re-ignited my interest in going back to his earlier work, Candy, where the central character is caught between his twinned needs – for heroin and a girl called Candy.

An Hour With Sarah Hall

It was when I saw Hall’s name on the list that I decided I’d go up to Auckland for this festival. Sure, I might well have done it anyway, but this set my decision in concrete. I loved The Electric Michelangelo, largely on the basis of her talent for description and language. Now I love it even more: the conversation gave it a context that I hadn’t really grasped – Cy ends up at a crossroads, in that he could continue the nasty habits of Riley into the next generation, or he could end that cycle, give his acolyte a better role model than he himself had. I hadn’t fully got what was going on with Grace – of course it is an extremely evocative name, but I get now that despite the truly awful things that happened to her (there was quite an audible gasp in the audience when that was revealed), her spirit remained intact.

It was nice to be told more about Haweswater and how there are various features of Hall’s growing up in the next valley over contained in the text. It is a book I have always intended to read but never quite managed. One thing that really connects these two novels is the sense of strong women – Cy’s mum and Grace (and potentially the newbie) in The Electric Michelangelo and the central character in Haweswater. This focus on the power of women comes to the fore in her latest novel, The Carhullan Army. This is her first contemporary novel (set in a present vaguely parallel to our own) – the army of the title, as far as I could work out, is a secret force of armed women, who are either terrorists or freedom fighters, depending on your perspective. I’m pretty sure that Hall is taking the latter perspective: the world has gone wrong, there’s no food or freedom, women are made to wear contraceptive devices and the Carhullan army is going to do something about it.

It is funny – I have spent quite a bit of time this week with an extremely well known public intellectual (Professor Stanley Fish) and a very short time with Sarah Hall, but she’s the one who seems to be the more relevant and with more of importance to say.

Perhaps I should have told her that. I’m sure that it is not that long ago that I would not have even dared approach someone with such stature in my eyes, let alone engaged her in conversation but that is what I did. I was wanting to have my book signed and since I couldn’t ask a question during the talk (my voice was all but gone), I asked her about the authors she had been talking about, the ones she loves for their descriptive power – she named Michael Ondaatje, Alex Miller and Hilary Mantell. I told her that it seemed a shame that her latest novel is a departure from her own descriptive voice and was reassured that the next one will be a return to it: it suited the characters and story to pare the current one back. I then left her with the suggestion that she might like Catherine Chidgey’s The Transformation.

An Hour With Junot Diaz

This was an unusual session, in that Diaz would not read from The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and, indeed, barely even talked about it. I’m not really sure what he did talk about – his family got mentioned quite a bit, often in the context of fame or money. On being chosen as an Oprah book, his sister has pointed out “There is lots of cursing, you curse a lot, there are perverse sexual acts. This is not for Oprah” or words to that effect. On the Pulitzer, a prize which gave him $10,000, his mum pointed out he lost some to his agent, more to tax, and took him 11 eleven years to write. “As a source of income, you do the math.” So, there was some self-deprecating humour, a few hints about the novel, his hopes for reception in the Dominican Republic once the novel is translated into Spanish and, unlike authors I heard from earlier in the day, he seems to be thoroughly over his characters.

I had hoped that I could go to Poetry Idol, but was greeted at the door with “Sorry, we’re full – there’s a poetry gig on”, given in such a tone as would suggest I should have known better than to get into a poetry gig, because they always sell out. Yeah, right! So, instead, I went back to where I was staying, got into a row with a German fellow and ordered some of the Festival books.

In the Country of Men, by Hisham Matar (2006)

2008-05-05T22:56:00.003+12:00

I don't think I have ever read any books set in Libya before. I doubt I would have read this one had it not been shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2006: it was sitting on the shelf in the library, so I picked it up. As it happens, I have now finally read the entire 2006 shortlist.

It is a fairly simple story, nothing flamboyant about the writing style, a little bit lightweight to be honest: nothing really grabbed me about it until very near the end. The narrator is Suleiman, a nine year old boy at the time of the action (which is set ten years into Qaddafi's regime, with no end in site). Much of the tale could have been anywhere - stuff about his relations with his parents (mum is ever present, dad is a far more shadowy figure) and his school friends, with their shifting allegiances.

One significant difference is the story of his mother: married off at the age of 14 after her brother dobbed her in for talking to a boy. Very little is said about relations between her and her husband: all we are really told is that she's drinking an awful lot of "medicine", the kind that comes from the baker and is illegal. The worse things get, the more she drinks and the more she tells Suleiman.

The other major thread to the narrative is the ever present threat of Qaddafi's regime: the neighbour has recently been taken and is seen being interrogated and than hanged on public TV. Who knows whether Suleiman's dad has ever actually done anything: all know it is inevitable his turn will come. The odd thing is that when it does, he actually returns (the only time he and his wife seem to be happy together and she doesn't drink). Is he "innocent" (whatever that might mean in Qaddafi's Libya) or has he done some deal, turned someone in to ensure his release? What nature of man is he? This is left entirely ambiguous. All we know is that at the age of 48, he apparently cracks, reads a forbidden book in public: "Had he come to prefer death over slavery, unlike my Scheherazade, refusing to live under the sword?"

As parents, they had earlier faced difficult choices: too what extent are they to insulate their son from the horrors around them? One problem in doing so is that he might get too friendly with the watching secret police. Although they could not leave, should they take the chance to send their only child abroad, to Egypt? He fits readily in to his new life, and it is only really as an adult that he can say

I suffer an absence, an ever-present absence, like an orphan not entirely certain of what he has missed or gained through his unchosen loss... Egypt has not replaced Libya. Instead, there is this void, this emptiness I am trying to get at like someone frightened of the dark, searching for a match to strike. I see it in others, this emptiness... How readily and thinly we procure these fictional selves, deceiving the world and what we might have become if only we hadn't got in the way, if only we had waited to se what might have become of us.

Hunting and Gathering, by Claude Berri (2007)

2008-05-05T00:18:00.002+12:00

This movie didn't quite go where I thought it would, and that's a good thing. There seems to be a type of movie where a girl gets caught between a bad boy and a nice guy, and she becomes the prize (normally for the bad boy, much to the nice guy's disgust). Philibert Marquet de la Tubelière (Laurent Stocker) is definitely the nice guy: he rescues a damsel in distress (Audrey Tatou as Camille, who is freezing to death in her garret) and puts her up in his rather opulent apartment, to nurse her back to health. He dresses foppishly - bow ties and an exquisite red velvet (or maybe corduroy) jacket - stutters and has some sort of aristocratic background. He has his flaws - an unwillingness to make much of himself, no "take charge" attitude. Franck (Guillaume Canet) has all the trappings of the bad boy - motorcycle, leather jacket, loud music, random women and a job as a chef. Yes, he visits his dear old grandmother every week, but begrudges every minute and comes back in a foul mood - a contrast with Philly taking in a random stranger.

But things don't go the way I thought they would. For a start, Camille is not this perfect women they fight over - she's almost anti-social (at least, that's her claim about herself, but it doesn't really come through). She too is an under-acheiver: there are many suggestions (without evidence) that she is smart, but works as a cleaner. Sure, Franck cleans up his act and turns in to a genuinely decent guy (which had me wondering - if all Camille wanted was to turn him into a decent guy to have as a mate, why not pick the fellow who is decent to start with). Turns out he (Philly) is not interested: he's got all googly eyed over another girl, Sandrine, and isn't even in the contest. During the course of the movie, he goes from being this nerdy stutterer to stand-up comedian (Stocker is a comedian in real life).

But the thing I liked was that instead of Franck winning his prize, she turns out to be a bit more independent in her attitudes: it is Franck who has to plead for something more than sex.

Update: World Cinema Showcase

2008-05-03T23:18:00.003+12:00

Film watching has gone a little awry, as me week got away on me a little. I have managed to see three movies, but none can be the subject of a post in their own right. One is because I simply did not like it: Terence Davies' 1988 movie Distant Voices, Still Lives had an amazing write up as "one of the greatest of British movies", but I found it too depressing. It is set in Liverpool, and tells the story of a family through a generation, starting around WWII. Instead of a conventional narrative, the movie is more like edited high-lights (or low-lights, to be more accurate) - a friend with more technical command of film speak than me says it is "elliptic" in style. The old generation was subjected to what seems to be unyielding violence and rage from the patriarch. The new generation seems a little better - but there are some guys shaping up to be just as bad. And the singing! The characters seemed to be singing the whole way - sometimes the song chosen would be an ironic under-cutting or setting for a scene but my basic problem was that there was far too much of it.

The other two movies leave me with a different problem: they are very visual and I'm not sure I can say much about them. Southland Tales is the new movie from Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko). People seemed to hate it - critics and the movie going public, but I kind of liked its madness. I was talking to someone last night about the big-scale madness of the Russian movie Nightwatch - it shares something with Southland Tales, which builds up to the end of the world, from a variety of sources - neo-Marxist terrorists, war veterans and a breach of the space-time continuum were the most obvious. Meanwhile, people still like to have a good time, so there's lots of pop stars and pornstars - it is a carnivalesque apocolypse.

Then there is Holy Mountain, directed and written by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky, maker of cult movies. His first major movie, the psycho-religious western El Topo was on earlier in the week but I had to miss it. As the title suggests, religion plays a part in The Holy Mountain - the latter part is clearly some sort of quest towards immortality. There is a group of nine - all but two live on one of the planets - the other two are the leader/alchemist and the fellow who looks like Jesus. One phase is the loss of self - which they achieved by having plaster mannequins of themselves and destroying them. When they have to count the number of members, they have become sufficiently selfless to fail to count themselves, so "one is missing" - then they see themselves reflected in some water and decide "that missing person has drowned". And this is the most sensible part of the movie! The Onion says this is "all in service of a typically Jodorowskian call to action, urging us to abandon fantasy and embrace reality".

There is lots of blood, of mutiliation, of focus on sexual organs and function (but no actual sex), of disabled people, of things that couldn't possibly happen (e.g. a string of birds flying out of someone's body) and the general wierd. Three scenes show how weird things can get: one has a bunch of toads dressed up in armour as part of a circus (which gets blown up); another sees the Christ like figure wake up surrounded by a multititude of his likenesses cast out of some edible substance (he eats the face out of one) and the third sees the Alchemist turn this fellow's excrement into gold ("You are excrement. You can change yourself into gold."). I think that this first half was the mad bad world at its worst, the one that provokes the climb up holy mountain.

But the end shows such a pilgrimage has no point: the holy mountain is just a myth, not real.

Gods Behaving Badly, by Marie Phillips (2007)

2008-05-03T16:37:00.004+12:00

I've been reading Marie's blog for years: back before she became famous, I think I even linked to her private blog in my blogroll, but when she did become famous, her blog was closed to randoms such as myself and replaced with a less personal one . She is one of my earlier blog crushes (not because she looks good, because we can't normally appreciate such aspects of our fellow bloggers and so it is only recently I have become acquainted with her appearance): funny, smart, warm and "real".

I knew she was writing but didn't really know what, again until recently. Then I started reading bits and pieces about her book on other people's blogs (and a pretty good backstory in the Telegraph) and had to get a copy: luckily, the Waikouaiti Library could oblige. There is a Youtube video of the author telling us herself about her book here .

Funnily enough, a footnote to Alexander Pope's Dunciad is as good a place as any to view this book from. It reminded me that with the fall of man, the ancient Gods (Zeus, Aphrodite, Artemis, Dionysus, Eros, Hermes, Apollo, Athena and the rest) decided that they'd leave earth to the mortals, as being undeserving of the gods. In Gods Behaving Badly, they're all still on earth, living dysfunctionally in a rundown north London house. They're pretty much unknown in modern London - partly because Jesus and the Christian God have displaced them, but mainly because people just aren't into gods these days. This lack of support from mortals is the reason the gods lack power, not that the gods know it, despite the best efforts of Athena (goddess of wisdom) to tell them (she speaks in a particular form of incomprehensible business-speak - I'm surprised there were no "going forwards".)

So they're making a living as best they can: Aphrodite has a phone-sex business, Dionysus is running a seedy pub and is a DJ, Apollo is trying to make it as a TV psychic and Artemis is a dog walker. The novel in facts start with her: she's out walking dogs when she encounters a tree where no tree had previously been:

She reminded herself not to get angry with the tree, that it wasn't the tree's fault. Then she spoke.
"Hello," she said.
There was a long silence.
"Hello," said Artemis again.
"Are you talking to me?" said the tree. It had a faint Australian accent.
"Yes," said Artemis. "I am Artemis." If the tree experienced any recognition, it didn't show it. "I'm the goddess of hunting and chastity."
Another silence.
Then the tree said, "I'm Kate. I work in mergers and acquisitions for Goldman Sachs."
"Do you know what happened to you, Kate?" said Artemis.The longest silence of all.
"I think I've turned into a tree," it said.
"Yes," said Artemis. "You have."
"Thank God for that," said the tree. "I thought I was going mad." Then the tree seemed to reconsider this. "Actually," it said, "I think I would rather be mad." Then, with hope in its voice, "Are you sure I haven't gone mad?"
"I'm sure," said Artemis. "You're a tree. A eucalyptus. Subgenus of mallee. Variegated leaves."

This is Apollo's doing: feeling slighted because Kate wouldn't sleep with him, he turned her into a tree. No anger management and a complete sense of entitlement.

Into this come two mortals, Alice and Neil. They're in love with each other without ever being able to declare it, so have spent years in a kind of relationship limbo, playing scrabble and other innocuous activities. Aphrodites engineers it: she's in a snit with Apollo and so has a spell cast; he is to fall in love with the next person he sees i.e. Alice. Supposedly, she is also supposed to be magicced into hating him, but Eros (who has become a Christian) doesn't have the heart for it. So, Alice is brought into Apollo's house (as a humble cleaner) and he does his best to woo her. But when he can't, his anger gets the better of him: she must die. For reasons I won't go into, he then has to apologise to Neil but, well, to be a genuine apology, he has to make it clear why he's apologising: Neil can't get why he'd be apologising for Alice's death when she was struck by lightning. The fun in all this is that Neil is this weedy wee guy who's never had the balls to tell Alice he loves her, yet he has to call Apollo out on his half-hearted apology. He does so so successfully that Apollo needs to demonstrate his power: he stops the sun.

All of this leads to Artemis and Neil taking off so they can sneak into the underworld (accessed via Angel tube station in Islington and portrayed as endless suburban mock-Tudor mansions) on a mission to retrieve Alice and confront Styx and Hades to see if they can help get the sun put back on. To be successful, Neil has to be a hero, so when he meets Styx and realises he can't lie about not being dead:

"I am a hero," he said eventually, hoping that this was a category that transcended notions of dead or alive.
The river raised an eyebrow. "you are most unlike any hero who has visited me before," she said.
"It was an emergency,"...

But he shows the qualities necessary for a hero on this mission: he might not be able to beat Cerberus in a fight, but his years of playing word games and his niceness ("It is what I am best at") equip him well to deal with Styx and have her agree to help him. The same qualities help out when he has his meeting with Hades. He's the kind of hero I can relate to.

Oh, and here's the author - I said she was good looking:

4 Months, 3 weeks and 2 days, a film by Cristian Mungiu (2007)

2008-04-26T23:03:00.005+12:00

Just the one movie today, and even more sombre than On the Edge of Heaven, more like hell. The movie is set in the Romania of 1987, a time when there was strict surveillance, and a repressive internal security force. This is two years before the Romanian Revolution, so it can be imagined that things were pretty much at rock bottom, in terms of morale and its economy.

Wikiepedia says that Ceauşescu's Police State apparatus was "greatly strengthened" at this time. Abortion was a hot button issue in Romania: Ceauşescu had banned it (along with sex education and contraception) in 1966 in order to populate the country. Women were even tested for pregnancy and fined for failing to conceive! "The fetus is the property of the entire society ... "Anyone who avoids having children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity." The only way to get an abortion was to have it illegally and incredibly stealthily. Given that knowledge about human sexuality was a "state secret" and the poor state of the economy, unwanted pregnancy must have been the norm and abortion a natural response.

I wish I'd known all this before seeing today's movie, as it would have given a context and helped me get the deadened responses of its two main characters, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and Gabriela (Laura Vasiliu). They're both students, sharing a dorm. Gabi is pregnant (I think the title is a reference to exactly how pregnant she is, although it is not made clear and she certainly doesn't look pregnant) and has made arrangements for a hotel and an abortionist, Mr Bebe (Vlad Ivanov). The movie starts with the two of them making preparations for being away for a couple of days - as one of them wryly comments, they could be going on holiday. It takes a while for the film to reveal just why the two of them are checking into a hotel. Of course, all has to be done under great secrecy, so it is understandable why Bebe is concerned when it is not Gabi but Otilia who meets him and when his nominated hotel is not the one they've checked into. The fear of him not doing the job if he knew the truth makes it understandable that Gabi has not told him how pregnant she is (and might be the explanation of why she wouldn't meet him herself). I think it probably explains why Gabi has not told Otilia all the details as well.

Of course, it doesn't take Bebe long to find the truth out as soon as he starts examining her: Gabi's situation has given him enormous power over her, which he is not too scrupulous to use.
I was pleased that after this sordid bit of business, he did seem to adopt a professional manner and ensured that what he had been "paid" for was done.

The thing that disturbed me the most about the movie was the near complete lack of emotional responses of Otilia and Gabi: they never smile or laugh, which is understandable, but they never show any anger either, or give each other a hug. Having to get the abortion and to pay the price that Bebe demands seems to be just what they have to do - there's an interesting contrast with the other characters we see in the movie. Otilia's boyfriend's family and various other people in the hotel seem to have a good time and to have a punch up when they're angry. Otilia even has Bebe's rather formidable looking flick knife but does nothing with it.

They finish resolving never to talk of these matters again, in near complete stillness:

On The Edge of Heaven, by Faith Akin (2007)

2008-04-26T00:22:00.003+12:00

This was a much more sombre movie, quite a shift from seeing Outsourced just half an hour earlier. Gone was the exuberant sound track (this movie has hardly any sound at all) and fast pace. Instead, death predominates - the two central sections were announced off by reference to deaths and then showed how those deaths happened. I'm sure there was more going on than I was aware of, because I'm not really up with the current situation of Turks in Germany (the central concern of this movie).

In the first main section, "The death of Yeter", Ali Aksu (Tuncil Kurtiz) has moved from Turkey to Bremen, in Germany. He's a widower and pensioner and, it seems, lonely. He does a deal with Yeter (Nursel Köse) by which she will stop being a hooker and live with him if he pays her the same as she'd earn on the street. He's an unpleasant drunk, but luckily this particular segment of the movie was not long. I'm not sure why, but after Yeter dies, Ali's son Nejat (Baki Davrak) tries to find Yeter's estranged daughter, Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay). This search provides the only slightly humurous element to the movie, as she ends up in his house, possibly without him ever knowing it - the movie ends with Nejat out on the Black Sea coast wanting to re-connect with his dad.

To say how Ayten was in Nejat's house would be to give too much away. She is in some sort of political movement struggling against the Turkish Government: it has decided she's a terrorist. She flees to Bremen to find her mother - I think there is even one point where their paths cross - but instead finds Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska), who takes her in to her home and to her heart. The happiness is not to last: sheer bad luck sees Ayten deported back to Turkey, where she's imprisoned. Lotte devotes her life to seeking Ayten's freedom, much to her mum's displeasure. But bad luck intervenes yet again, and there's another death. Or maybe it wasn't luck, maybe it was a death ordained by events Ayten had triggered.

Outsourced, by John Jeffcoat (2006)

2008-04-25T23:42:00.004+12:00

I'd never heard of this director - not surprising when you see his one previous effort, Milk is listed on IMDB with no reviews, no discussion, nothing. But the premise sounded entertaining so I went along, making this my first movie of the World Cinema Showcase.

I'm so glad I went - the title and poster give much of the plot away, but give no indication of how much of a light-hearted comedy would be provided. Todd is the "Fulfilment Manager" of a Seattle-based firm which sells "kitsch to rednecks" i.e. patriotic memorabilia to America, such as big foam blocks of cheese to wear on their heads or cowboy hats emblazoned with the stars and stripes or a hot dog toaster. As is the modern trend with many phone-based work, Todd finds out that his work has been outsourced to India: his job is to go out to a town near Mumbai and make the new team work.

It is obvious he's never been to this part of the world: I love the way he hits Mumbai airport, is completely bemused by the hordes of drivers with signs waiting for their passengers. Instead of going to the taxi chit desk, he wanders out to the taxis and is mobbed by all those drivers who don't yet have fares. There is at least a football field sized lot filled with taxis.

His task: to make the team of Indian telephone operators sound like those they're selling the product and get their time on each call down to unfeasibly low levels.The moral is as old as the hills: when in Mumbai, do as the Mumbai-ites do. Until he does, he's unhappy with things like this happening and is no good at getting his new workers on board (although watching his culture shock was amusing). Only when he immerses himself in holi (the festival of colours) by retaliating on those who bomb him with coloured powder do things start to come right. He responds to his new team as regular people, becomes friendly with the fellow he's training to replace him and calms his fiercest critic, Asha (Ayesha Dharker)Ultimately, the movie is a sort of romantic comedy, so we can't expect too much by way of a searing commentary on globalisation, but I doubt many would watch the amazing job Todd's team of workers did to meet their impossible target and not at least wince when the inevitable happens: if this team has only been chosen because they equate to "eight heads for the price of one", then when "twenty heads for the price of one" can be found, they'll be out of a job. I say a sort of rom-com because there is an overlay of the Indian way that dictates the outcome of their relationship. In the meantime, they enjoy their "holiday in Goa", as did I watching it (and listening - the movie has a vibrant soundtrack).

Gary Numan

2008-04-25T01:15:00.002+12:00

I hadn't thought about him for a decade - I think I may have bought a vinyl version of Replicas about then. But flying home from Wellington yesterday, reading the Mojo feature on him, I was having a musical emergency. I needed me some Gary Numan: back when I was first getting serious about music, it was because of people like him showing up on Radio With Pictures and doing things I'd never considered. The Mojo article was a very good reminder of what I had liked about him.

And so I leapt into my car and made a beeline for Real Groovy, to discover that Replicas has been re-released to mark its 30 year anniversary (unfortunately my need for Gary Numan didn't stop me buying half a dozen other CD's). I had it playing before I'd left Litchfield street, and was once again enraptured by "Are Freinds Electric":

Lars and the Real Girl, by Craig Gillespie (2007)

2008-04-24T23:48:00.004+12:00

Loved this movie even more than Juno. I wonder how many went in knowing it was about Lars (Ryan Gosling) having a relationship with a RealDoll, only to have that knowledge swept away from them. Sure, he does have a RealDoll, her name is Bianca, he bought her off the net, and he constructs a fairly elaborate backstory and set of interests for her. He presents to his family and community as his girlfriend and they knock about together, as much as one can with a life sized plastic doll:
Of course, his family is concerned, his brother is angry with him, wants to knock him down for his idiocy but Lars is recognised not to be well and the whole community eventually goes along with the notion that Bianca is real, and she does take on a sort of reality for the community. But as Lars sister in law, Karin (Emily Mortimer) makes it clear - this is for love of Lars - Bianca acts as some sort of catalyst for this to come out into the open. Sure, it is a bit of an idealised world, but if we can't get to see ideals in our fictions, where the hell do we get to see them realised? And just maybe the film was made with the notion in mind that communities don't actually behave like this but asks the question "what if they did?"

But the real story is about Lars. We see very little of him before Bianca's arrival, but I'd say he doesn't get out very much, has a lot of trouble socialising, is more than a little sad
And let's not forget the title - there is a real girl, she works with Lars, is really rather taken with him and is simply impossibly cute: This is Margo (Kelli Garner). I loved the little skips of joy she'd do while she was bowling.

I'm no expert in psychology, but it seems to me that somehow, despite whatever was ailing Lars, he was able to recognise both that Kelli was into him in a big way and that he needed somehow to fix himself to be able to take on that role, to be a man. One possible thing that is ailing him is guilt or hurt over the fact his mother died in giving birth to him - he needs to mourn her death properly. And so Bianca is the prop he needs to make that breakthrough (although it is a bit odd that he takes her as a girlfriend if she's the mechanism to mourn his mother).

But I know how hard it can be to get involved in social activities when there's just the one of you, it is much easier to stay at home and read, or blog, or whatever. And so I get how inventing a companion to spur you into action, to join into the social world, might seem to be a good way out. I saw this most clearly when he went to his workmate's party: he was getting ready to bolt, but he'd made a commitment to Bianca to take her, and so he pressed the bell and went in. He socialises more and more as the movie goes on, even manages to have a sort of date with Kelli (not that he'd cheat on Bianca, of course) and his subconscious tells him when Bianca needs to bow out and how to make it happen.

Sidetrip: Great Barrier Island

2008-04-12T18:56:00.011+12:00

One of the things that has made it very hard to keep current here is the fact that I've had several chances to go travelling. I finished my trip around Northland on 2 January, but that does not mean I cam straight home. Oh, no; I had an addendum all arranged - a night in Auckland, and then a stupidly early (7:00 a.m.) ferry for four hours out to Great Barrier Island. Very few people have been there, it hardly ever features, either in the news (although there has been the big court battle between the two airlines serving the island over their names and yellow pages adverts) or in general conversation. I didn't think I knew anyone who'd been there at all, but once I'd made my bookings, I was talking to a colleague about summer plans, and she said that not only had she been there but loved it so much they'd never go back, so their memories might not be besmirched by reality.

Only a few hundred people live on the island, in several small settlements. Ferries arrive in Tryphena Harbour
The voyage over was peaceful, only a handful of people wanting to go to the island. It was a little disconcerting to get there and find crowds of people waiting to leave (apparently it is horrendously busy over the New Year, but by about 2 or 3 January, the numbers are dropping off dramatically). Even more disconcerting was the sight of the local policeman on the wharf, wearing not only an armoured vest of some sort but also his sidearm. He turned out to be a friendly fellow - I met him on the road several times while I was there and he always waved; the gun and vest were because there'd been some sort of incident in the pub and police HQ in Auckland had told him to go prepared until the people involved left the island.

Tryphena town is tiny, and even so, split into two - one part has a store/cafe, camping ground and librarywhile the other part has another store and Irish pub. They're separated by a headland, but look out in the same general direction: I was nearly confined to this part of town, as the rental car I had booked never showed up and public transport is limited. I had a slightly uncomfortable session on the phone when I rang the rental car people to complain about their no-show: I had rung the wrong firm! Luckily, they could produce a car for me - not the biggest car I have ever seen. In fact, I had carefully not booked with this firm because I thought their cars were too small. Given the rugged nature of the roads, it turned out that the Mazda 121 was a good choice, and was fun on the corners - it would bounce its way round them and then roar off to the next one.

So, I explored the island for a couple of days - up to Port Fitzroy where I took a bit of a walk in the bush, along an old logging track Now, the island, even today, is a four-five hour ferry ride from the mainland, and is mainly covered in bush yet some brave souls have attempted farmingWhangaparapara Harbour is on the West Coast of the island:- here I tried to get some lunch and maybe hang out on the internet, it was about 2 in the afternoon, but I was told that the generator was off so could not have anything involving cooking. Hard to believe that I am still within the boundaries of Auckland city! The East coast has the only traditional white sand beach on the island - this is Medlands Beach:
For my last night on the island, I just had to try the local Thai restaurant (I'd eaten at the Irish bar, my hostel (Stray Possum) and the cafe in Tryphena) simply because it struck me as odd that there would be one in such a remote place. They were doing a buffet only, and probably the less said about the food the better. At least I tried them out, and they did appear to be lovely people.

So, it was time to go home (although I had several hours to kill, reading Don de Lillo's Underworld before the ferry departed)
I think I'd be quite happy to go back, it was very peaceful, particularly as my hostel was in the bush, a couple of kilometres from Tryphena.

This was not quite the end of my northland holiday, however. My flight back to Dunedin was for the next day, with my time carefully planned so I could hire a car (a very nice shiny red Suzuki Swift) and go up to the Leigh Sawmill Cafe to watch Don McGlashan (with the Seven Sisters) and Little Bushman (Warren Maxwell and his band) perform as part of their Summer Sunsets Ultimate Warm Lazy Summer Concert series. It was a great way to finish off my trip, a very chilled atmos and warm-hearted music.

England All Over, by Joseph Gallivan (2000)

2008-04-12T17:21:00.003+12:00

This is one of my more random acquisitions, and just goes to show that you can make some judgment of a book based upon its cover. I found it in the discard bin at the Whangarei Public Library; unlike many such bins, the contents of this one were entirely free, so I spent very little time on the selection process. For this one, I thought "English travel book, free, cool" and picked it up without even looking inside.

It is actually a novel, and quite an interesting one and surprisingly funny (although I don't think any of the jokes are family friendly). Clive Pointing was a geography teacher who had an affair with one of his pupils. As a result, he was fired and has been cast down a bit by the difficulty in finding a job. He's living in a horrible sounding flat (the last occupant killed himself, but not before amassing a bunch of debts to some unsavoury characters) in Streatham, South London which is far from being one of its more salubrious or interesting suburbs. As the novel opens, he is waiting in a pub to be interviewed for a job as tour guide:

The way Clive saw it from his seat in the Shakespeare just outside Victoria it looked like a bit of a row. Thirty people stumbled from a coach which was illegally parked and had its hazards going. They spread across the pavement with shocked looks or scowls on their faces, as though they were emerging from a fart-filled lift. Several made a beeline for the nearest fast food. Six well-dressed women hurried into the pub, brushing past Clive on their way to the Ladies. After everyone was off the coach, a fair-haired, slightly pudgy young man in a red parka emerged with a clipboard. One of the ladies, tall with silver hair, a belted raincoat and a silk scarf, moved into his path and began fiercely asking him questions. At first the man hung his head, then looked away, then wrote on his clipboard. As he went to the luggage compartment he said something to her over his soldier. The lady followed, still talking, still castigating hiom. After thirty seconds he slammed the door shut and turned on her, talking very close to her face, his head bobbing. She shrank back in surprise, but when he paused, she started back at him again. Definitely telling him off.

This is Barry, a fellow born and bred in East London, a man who lives to drink and pull, generally from the female customers off his buses, although he has a circuit of pubs where women tend to congregate. He and Clive are chalk and cheese, really; Clive is off drinking altogether, so he can prove to the court he can be a fit father to his daughter. We see their differences most plainly in the way they do their tour guiding: Barry makes stuff up, both because he doesn't know much but also because he wants to be liked. Clive is far more knowledgeable, but his lectures, at least at first, turn the customers off. It takes him a fair while to get into the swing of using his storehouse of knowledge in a way that makes him a good tour guide, but he gets there.

For me, this was the most fascinating part of the book, reading his lectures cum commentary, as they were very educational, and quite inspired. I can imagine some readers being put off, in the same way that his customers were, both by the level of detail and the oddness of the things Clive saw as important. But the novel is a love story to these odd charms, the kind of England that the normal tourist outfit does not show tourists - they get a whip round "Bath Stone'enge and Windsor Castle ... all in one fucking day". Brittannia Tours is one of these firms, but it goes broke.

Clive has a bit of a revelation: things have got so bad that he throws himself off Blackfriars bridge to put an end to it all. Before he hits the water, he has already changed his mind, and luckily he survives. He spends several days making his way home, walking through London, seeing so much to recommend it, and taking the reader with him on his walking tour. He sleeps rough in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Instead of being robbed, he finds that every hundredth person drops a few coins at his feet and he wakes up to find that someone had given him a sandwich. I think this is my favourite chapter in the whole book - there's a glorification of the humble things about living in London:

The Greek scooped me out a triple hopper of pale golden chips and threw on a huge curling cod. I don't remember what it cost, other than to say it seemed a lot more than it used to, but as soon as I tasted it I knew it was the best meal I had ever tasted. I bit the chips in half, and watched their floury insides steaming, and the cod oozed hot fumes from under its bronze batter coat and warmed my lips. I stood in the street devouring them transported back to Folkestone... By the time I tasted the sticky inside of the batter and felt the vinegar fumes tickle my nostrils, I was ready to kiss the tarmac.

Then he has a pint, the first in more than a year, and is well set up for a comeback. I think the turning point is when he thinks back to the girl with whom he'd had an affair and basically thinks, bugger it, I'm not going to defend myself, I did it, it was wrong, and stupid because I lost everything,but I enjoyed it. Now he has a new plan - tour guiding, but of the real England, places off the map, such as the Fleet River, power stations, shopping malls, housing estates, slaughterhouses, ruined seaside towns (Blackpool gets some stick, but I enjoyed the notion of meta-tourism, taking tourists to see tourists tour), race tracks, old markets, other prehistoric sights, not just Stonehenge...

He gets the old crew together, hires a bus (with the lovely Rose at the wheel) and it is all go, they do well. Sure, they had a bit of a fluke with their first tour, to Princess Diana's home - their tickets are forgeries, they break in the back way, the boss is arrested, the press is all over the story and Albion Tours is on the map - but the customers seem to love the novelty of being taken to the odd places Clive arranges for them, and Albion makes a fortune taking passengers on day trips to a surprisingly dry Glastonbury Festival.

Apart from the development of the business, there are all sorts of side stories going on - such as Barry's dad's attempts to star in a documentary about cab drivers, Clive's ongoing problems with his ex, his relationship with his own family (and his mother's love for traditional English poetry) - and various nights out, most amusing being the night our narrator gets so drunk he can't remember, so over the next few chapters, bits of the night are narrated back to him by his companions. Its just like real life. But the major sub-story is, of course, Clive and Rose - I love the way they ride off into the sunset at the end, just the two of them in a flaming big tour bus. Completely appropriate. She is only in the second half of the novel, and every so often Clive ticks off the things that are one more step towards them being in love. They seem to find joint nirvana in a spare parts catalogue:

Clive explained how he loved all the things people filtered out, things that were just too common to care about, or too confusing to worry about. 'It's like the unspoken language of the landscape.' He felt he had gone a bit too far, so he added: 'Some of the names in there - we used to think they were so funny. Things like vice-jaw tools, banana plugs, caged nut-insertion tools, deep-throated g-cramps..."
'I know! L-shaped ball driver sets, clinchnut riveters, oblique-cut cutting nippers, fire-resistant sheaths...'

Fantastic! I only have one quibble. There is a lot of poetry in this novel, Clive seems to have a certain knowledge of English poetic history (can quote Blake, for example) yet he apparently does not know who Alexander Pope is, despite the fact that at times the novel seems to channel his spirit.

Charlie Wilson's War, by Mike Nichols (2007)

2008-03-18T00:03:00.002+13:00

I had a quick trip down south over the weekend, out to Bluff in time to see the one place that sells meals close, so back up to Invercargill I went. There, I faffed around so much that by the time it was time to eat, only McDonalds was open. No Bluff oysters for me. Coming home Saturday, I wandered around a bit, out to Riverton (nice Havana coffee at Mrs Clarks cafe and a great banana cake with more coffee at the Beach House) and then up via Otautau to Winton. Not really wanting to stay, I pressed on, thinking that if there was something showing at the St James in Gore, I'd stop.

So, that's how I got to see Charlie Wilson's War: it was due to start in 15 minutes. I'd often thought about seeing a movie at St James, it is one of those old school movie theatres, still has the old vinyl seats, and this was my chance. I'd only been sitting a few minutes when I remembered that I'd decided I didn't want to see Charlie Wilson's War. The trailers did not augur well, either; something truly dire called The Ironman and then two more so bad, I've blanked them.

But, I actually quite enjoyed this movie. Old Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) is a bit of an old style politician - lots of girls, drugs, booze. He's spent several terms in office basically doing nothing, but piling up favours by being agreeable. But he gets his nose rubbed in what the Russians are doing in Afghanistan: seeing the plight of the refugees stirs him to action, which I thought was quite an interesting commentary on what makes politicians tick. He gets himself oaired up with a rebel CIA agent, Gust Avrakatos (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and they go to work, enlarging the CIA budget for covert ops in Afghanistan. It wasn't clear how long it took, but over the course of the movie, they went from a $5 million budget (which, when you're facing the latest Russian attack helicopters, is nothing) to a staggering $1 billion. Along the way, for reasons of secrecy, so no-one would know of US involvement, they had to put together a mad deal involving Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan! Quite what the point of the secrecy was, I have no idea, because as soon as the plan looked feasible, the chairman of the US committee funding things is in the refugee camps, making speeches.;

But, in the current climate, it was kind of cool to see a movie showing Muslims jubilant at their ability to shoot down the Russian helicopters. And there is a sting in the tail with direct relevance to Iraq: America was great about going in guns blazing to sort things out in Afghanistan, but that then left things in a hell of a mess, with no willingness to clean it up. After getting up to the billion dollar commitment to arms, Wilson can't get a million to rebuild a single school.

Of course, with actors like Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks playing the lead, this is a movie aimed at a popular audience, so it was never going to get bogged down in seriousness. At one point, they even went for farce: Wilson is trying to get a serious briefing from Gust, but his antics in a hot tub with some strippers are about to hit the press. So,Gust gets to brief him for half a minute, then has to leave so Wilson can talk to the "jailbait" (his pet name for his secretaries), then they have to leave and so on. The farce ends when Gust reveals he knows the story anyway - not by listening in, but because he'd bugged a bottle of Scotch he gave Wilson.

I don't think I've ever seen Amy Adams in anything: she played Wilson's administrative assistant, went with him on his various trips (but there was never anything untoward between them). I found her to be very impressive - am looking forward to seeing her play Julia Powell.

Amnesia Moon, by Jonathan Lethem (1995)

2008-03-17T18:50:00.003+13:00

Lethem is known to me as writing fine novels of New York life, such as Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude, which I plan to read one day. It came as something of a surprise to see this book sitting on the library shelf, as the blurb refers to it as being a novel of the future and the cover makes it look like a bad horror movie (it actually has "A Road Movie" as a sub-title).

Something has happened to America (maybe the world, but it never gets a mention). No-one is quite sure what, or even when it happened, although many call it "the break", when "a weirdness came over the USA" so the nation was all broken up, localized, everyone living in someone's dream. Each district has become a Finite Subjective Reality, which is why no-one can really explain what happened: each place has its own FSR and this generates its own myth about what happened. (Not surprising, in that the novel is a group of different pieces Lethem wrote and was then inspired to join together.)

In Hatfork, Wyoming, they say it was bombs which created mutants out of the human race; in Los Angeles, they're under attack from aliens, while in San Francisco, well, that place was so weird to begin with that no-one noticed the appearance of antiGrav cycles and robot televangelists.

Chaos, or Everett, or Moon, or Everett Moon (it all depends where he is) lives in the old cinema in Hatfork, where he seems to live a slothful life, his only activity being to get booze and act as go-between for the local bigwig, Kellogg, and his town. He's lived her for what seems to be a decade, but has no idea what came before. He has these awful dreams, as does everyone in the district. Little does he know that he can generate his own dreams, dreams which have the power to re-shape society. Not really sure why Kellogg doesn't tell him earlier, but when he finally does, Chaos does a runner, along with a very hairy young girl, Melinda.

Their progress seems to be more a result of accident than design although getting to California does appear to have been an objective. They get there via a couple of interesting places - one which is covered in a thick green fog, where the populace has no desire to see what might exist elsewhere. Then there is the Strip, where every shop glares with (solar powered) neon but there's virtually no-one to see it. The one business still functioning is McDonalds: such is the rigour of their rule book and the simplicity of the staff running it, that all they know is how to run their McDonalds. They don't seem to notice they only have one customer - a hippy who rescues Chaos and Melinda.

Then there's Vacaville, where all the residents have to move twice a week, leaving everything behind, and where the only shows on TV are gameshows featuring the local government officials. Here, people are citation mad, a notion Lethem has a lot of fun with. Everything seems to run on a calculus of luck - those who have poor luck get sent to "Bad Luck camp"; presumably, those with the best luck become "government stars". Its a mad sort of place, made worse when someone decides to distort everyone's appearance, as if they're in a funhouse. This gives great power to the government, as they retain the ideal body image: "everyone is in love with the Government".

But, ultimately, all these places are diversions: we get to the heart of the story when Chaos is cajoled into going to San Francisco, where he realises all of his pre-Break friends are. But there are those who want to use his power for their own ends; he can be used to dream a society as servient as that of Vacaville. Ilford Cole has some power to dream; he can change people from one thing to another (which leads to a brilliantly surreal chapter, told from the point of view of a gold clock) but it is not enough. Of course, for Chaos to ever actually do anything, whether it is for Ilford or to prevent his mad plans, he needs to first believe in his own power to conjure.

The Rachel Papers, by Martin Amis (1973)

2008-03-16T15:54:00.002+13:00

A friend has recently encountered Martin Amis's work; her raving has inspired me to go back and read some of his earlier work - I don't think I've read anything he's written since The Information. I had vague memories The Rachel Papers being about an obsession with a girl, one I had enjoyed meeting in his pages, but very little else so when I noticed this on display at the library, I picked it up. Amis certainly hits the ground running in establishing his character and tone:

My name is Charles Highway, though you wouldn't think it to look at me. It's such a rangy, well-travelled, big-cocked name and, to look at, I am none of these. I wear glasses for a start, have done since I was nine. And my medium-length, arseless waistless figure, corrugated ribcage and bandy legs gang up to dispel any hint of aplomb. (On no account, by the way, should this particular model be confused with the springy frames so popular among my contemporaries. They're quite different. I remember I used to have to fold the bands of my trousers almost double, and bulk out the seats with shirts intended for grown men. I dress more thoughtfully now, though, not so much with taste as with insight.) But I have got one of those fashionable reedy voices, the ones with habitual ironic twang, excellent for the promotion of oldster unease...
The main thing about me, however, is that I am nineteen years of age, and twenty tomorrow.

He's an odd wee fellow: he has documented everything about his life, with folders of material devoted to his various family members, and others devoted to particular themes, such as Conquests and Techniques: a Synthesis. And so, he has The Rachel Papers. The novel is a countdown, from 7 p.m. through to midnight - not that that was his time of birth, but it is a time chosen for "dramatic edge and thematic symmetry" (his mother's parturition was "prolix and generally rather inelegant") - in which he accounts for the past three months. This time has been occupied cramming for the Oxford entry exams, watching the relationship between his parents turn to shit, finding he has issues with his father, and seeing his sister and brother-in-law (with whom he is living) go through a terrible time.

Naturally, a girl called Rachel tends to dominate. Being a teenager on the brink of wandering "into that noisome Brobdingnagian world the child sees as adulthood", sex is a major pre-occupation.

But Amis deals with it in an entirely different fashion from anything I've read; sex is often something over which teenagers angst because, well, they're not getting much or over which they brag. For Charles, it is something to be endured; as a teenager, one has an obligation to oneself to experience sex. As an adult, that obligation shifts, and is owed to the partner. Here is what seems to be his first time:

Anyway: Gloria. I imagine that the older man thinks it's going to be hell and is often agreeably surprised to find its not quite, not quite as bad as he had excellent reasons to fear. With the youngster the very reverse is true. Gloria and I undressed like lifeguards, and without actually separating. I always forget the full drama of the change that came over her the minute she was underway. In normal circumstances, with her embarrassment in any kind of pre-coital conversation, her unassumingly pretty face, the stiff-limbed movements: you were a plaything of her unease. Once underway, though, Gloria would have been able to detect few noteworthy points of contrast between sexual arousal and rabies.

For him, the enjoyment is very shortlived (he even claims to fake it once), but then he has to spend hours seeing to Gloria's continued enjoyment. And yet, when he meets Rachel, he is convinced all will be different. His meeting with her is pretty cringeworthy - they're at a party, he notices her standing alone "like myself, excluded rather than merely detached from the festivities" which convinces him she must have soul. So, after watching her, thinking shes "fairly formidable, a bit out of my league really", deciding she's half Jewish on no evidence at all, he moves in for the pull:

'Hhullo,' as if someone had just informed me that this greeting had an initial h and I was trying it out...
'I notice you haven't got a drink.' This was an excellent line because there usually followed: 'Are you giving this party?'

After a bit of pretentious nonsense from him:

'Look, I ought to help clear up,' said Rachel.
'Nonsense,' I said. 'Don't do that. Leave it to whoever was frivolous and conceited enough to give the party.'..
'No, I really will clear up.'
'What the devil for?' I asked.
'Because its my party.'

Weeks later, he's wanting to call her, wondering if she'll remember - with such a crashing introduction, she's hardly likely to forget him! He is sort of sweet, however, poring over his notes, trying to get prepared to talk to her. Then, when he finally has a date, he's equally endearing in the time he takes to prepare for her - pity that to her, it is just a cup of tea, to which she brings her friends (and boyfriend). Ouch! But somehow they start dating, Charles always playing a role; for example, he's taking her to see the Blake exhibition at the Tate. Rather than just see what's to be seen, he goes along the day before the date "decked out like a walking stationery department, also with a pocket edition of the poet's work and the well thumbed Thames and Hudson", so that he has some views and speeches to deliver.

This compulsive need to be organised carries on into their love-making; he keeps his room in a state of "red alert", every move he makes is as if he is playing chess, adopted to trigger a counter-move on her part. And so we have a scene like this:

With my left hand I was making swirling motions on Rachel's stomach, outside her jersey, not touching her breasts but coming mischievously near them sometimes. Thus I maintained a tripartite sexual application in contrapuntal patterns.

What is lacking is any sense of joy on his part, any desire for her, or any feeling of exploration. Instead, it is a mechanical formulaic sort of love-making; the tragedy of which is that it works. I think the only genuine moment between them was the result of an accident; they're going to the movies, but "owing to the mendacity of the girl who answered the telephone" at the cinema, instead of the intended French New Wave feature, they find themselves at something called Nudist Eden. This is a documentary set in a nudist camp:

The camera patrolled the grounds, examined, the facilities. Grubby colour, low-budget incompetence; it had a nightmare quality: you can't tell whether you're going mad or whether everyone else is going mad: you stare around the cinema to check your bearings; you expect the audience to make some gesture of spontaneous protest. What was more, the producers could afford only middle-aged actors and actresses.

The thing sounds awful, and quite dodgy as well; Charles is quite worried that Rachel, with her posh tastes, will hate it, but after a scene in which the old nudists are trampolining vigourously for several minutes, she's all "I love this sort of thing". Only then does Charles truly look at her and think "goodness, I really do like her. A novel turn in our relationship. What had it been up to [now]? It didn't seem like affection, far less desire: rather a kind of gruelling, nine-to-five inevitability."

There is a period of a couple of weeks which are hardly recorded in his notes: during these two weeks, Rachel has moved in with him while her mother is away. While they do seem to have connected at times and had lots of sex (nine times one night), the close proximity is also showing Charles there is only one thing to do. Of course, being the kind of fellow he is, he can't sit Rachel down and talk things through; instead, he sends her a letter. I was left wondering what will happen to him; is he going to realise in the future that the Rachel he chased after, won and then rejected was simply a construct in his mind. What if he had allowed for more spontaneity and not only looked more often at who she was but also at what he really wanted?

Goodbye, Wee Friend

2008-03-13T01:05:00.003+13:00

Today, I said goodbye to a companion of one year's standing. Although I'd not given him a name that had stuck (I tried out Klauss but it didn't last long), I was quite fond of himHe came off trademe in a hurry, because the Council had decided my previous vehicle was cluttering up the neighbourhood and not worth anything, so straight to the dump for Webster. By way of test drive, I brought this one back from Christchurch and then for a quick jaunt up the west coast. He never let me down, not until I tried to get a warrant. Even then, I was tempted to get the work done (around $800 - $1000) but he only cost me $650 and so commonsense prevailed. I put him back on trademe on Sunday; by the time I came into work Monday, my asking price had been met. Today, the cash was brought to me and, I assume, he was taken away from his park.

I'll miss him, partly because very few people drive Opel Kadett GSI's in this part of the world, and partly because he had quite a lot of pep. More than his replacement, a Subaru, which frightens me with its enigmatic messages to "check engine". But my new car has one thing going for it; the previous owner had had the foresight to instal a very widebore exhaust pipe. So, I might not wear a backwards baseball cap and sit so low that my forehead is level with the dash, but I at least sound like a boy racer.

No Country For Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy (book) and Coen Brothers (movie)

2008-03-12T23:15:00.007+13:00

It is impossible to say what I want to say about this movie without disclosing at least one important detail of the plot. I've now read three of McCormack's works (No Country..., Blood Meridian and The Road) and they all share the same characteristic; their central figure, hero if you like (although as heroes they have their flaws) dies. In Blood Meridian it is the kid, the father in The Road and now Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin).

He's a pretty ordinary sort of fellow; you can't get much more blue collar than a welder. He lives in a trailer park in Texas with his wife, Carla Jean (Kelly McDonald). As he says, towards the end of his story

Three weeks ago I was a law abiding citizen. Workin a nine to five job. Eight to four, anyways. Things happen to you they happen. They don't ask first. They don't require your permission,

Out hunting one day, he comes across a bloodbath in the desert; several dead bodies, a bunch of drugs and, that most American of conveyance, some trucks. He's smart, he can work out there must have been a fellow who got away with the money. He's brave, maybe a little foolhardy, because he decides he'll take the money. He must know the kind of people who'll have an interest in it but he wants the good life. the risks must seem worth it. I love the way he tells Carla Jean about what he's done. He walks into the house with a satchel of money, around $2 million:

She looked at him over the back of the sofa and looked at the television again. What have you got in that satchel?
It's full of money.
Yeah. That'll be the day.

And that's it; he doesn't press the point, and she doesn't believe him, just asks him to get her some cigarettes. Of course, a point does arise where she's forced to believe him. I like their relationship; there's a kind of dry humour to it and she actually has a rather touching faith in him. It doesn't come out in the movie very well but Llewellyn really loves his wife. For a start, of course, he takes the money because of her. But there's a telling episode in the book, where he picks up a hitch-hiker, a young woman; she's pretty persistent in her offers to him. They've had a few drinks and she wants him to change his mind about saying no:

All right. You aint changed your mind have you?
About what?
You know about what.
I don't change my mind. I like to get it right the first time...
I'll tell you somethin I heard in a movie one time, she said.
He stopped and turned. What's that?
There's a lot of good salesmen around and you might buy something yet.
Well darlin you're just a little late. Cause I done bought. And I think I'll stick with what I got.

This episode was so truncated in the movie, I really don't know what I'd have made of it without having read the book.

Now, the money is owned by some pretty bad guys, and there are some cops after him too, but they're not Llewellyn's major threat. That would be Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), who is given an extra level of menace by his choice of weaponry. The book leaves a little to the imagination, but there's a scene in a hotel where his equipment can be heard coming down the corridor. He has this trademark way of blowing out the locks in doors, and using the same device to punch a hole in people's foreheads. When he's not using that, he delights in having rifles with ostentatious silencers.

He's an implacable threat but, in his own special way, a man of his word. He promises Llewellyn that if he doesn't hand over the money, he'll kill Carla Jean. Llewellyn's life is already forfeit at this point, but he can still save her. When he doesn't, well, then Chigurh has to keep his promise.

McCarthy presents this in his characteristic flat style, where something quite dramatic can happen, such as a killing, but be told as a simple continuation of the mundane. The one variation is that he has an alternate narrator, who turns out to be Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), the old sheriff, in a state of despair about the state of the world, one where a couple would rent out rooms to old people and then kill them but "they'd torture them first, I don't know why. Maybe their television was broke.":

Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I don't want to confront him. I know he's real. I have seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I won't do it again. I won't push my chips up and go forward and meet him. It aint just bein older. I wish that it was. I can't say that it's even what you're willin to do. Because I always knew that you had to be willin to die to even do this job. That was always true. Not to sound glorious about it or nothing but you do. If you aint they'll know it. They'll see it in a heartbeat. I think it is more like what you are willin to become. And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I won't do that. I think now that maybe I never would.

This is how the novel starts! Despite the loss of several of his men, and his sympathy towards the Mosses, the good sheriff never really gets involved.

The movie is pretty faithful to the novel, with some liberties taken towards the end of Llewellyn's life. One thing made clearer in the movie than the novel was that Chigurh seemed to have an odd fascination with older women, particularly those who were running accommodation establishments. When Chigurh was going about his daily life, if he encountered any resistance, he'd normally just kill whoever got in his way. If he's feeling kindly, he might flip a coin. But he went into the trailer park where the Mosses lived, and asks where Llewellyn works:

Sir I aint at liberty to give out no information about our residents.
Chigurh looked around at the little plywood office. He looked at the woman. Where does he work.
Sir?
I said where does he work.
Did you not hear me? We cant give out no information.
A toilet flushed somewhere. A doorlatch clicked. Chigurh looked at the woman again. Then he went out and got in the Ramcharger and left.

I really liked this: she's fairly much a loser, to be her age, working in a shoddy little office and yet she stands up to him, almost parodying the snooty kind of refusal a five star hotel would give ; he just accepts it and mooches off. This happens all over again, at another hotel.

Delirious, a film by Tom DiCillo (2007)

2008-03-06T01:11:00.007+13:00

I think this film was too angry for me truly enjoy it. Steve Buscemi did a fine job of portraying Les Galantine but, well, Les is a bit of a scuzzball. He's a washed up photographer, tired of following celebrities around, tired of being a paparazzo but lacking the energy, will and probably talent to do anything else. His big moment was back in the 1970's, when he took a photo of Elvis Costello with his hat off. He still talks of "the shot that's heard around the world" but he's not going to get it - the one photo we see him get is sold for $700, finds its way into some trashy magazine and completely offends his parents. His apartment is a disgrace, he obviously has no money to speak of and no prospects. Not really a lifestyle to be proud of.

And so he vents - the film opens with him swearing furiously because he is being denied access to the latest singing sensation, K'harma (Alison Lohman, who also did a fine job). In an odd sort of moment, he takes a homeless fellow, Toby (Michael Pitt) under his wing - gives him a job (unpaid) as his assistant and a place to sleep, in a cupboard. In an equally unbelievable moment, Toby and K'harma see each other and it is love at first sight. Sure, he's pretty and all, but he's a homeless bum who claims to be an actor. A singer who is moving "ten million units" and launching her own fragrance (Instant K'harma) is going to take him back to her hotel, right?

And so we end up with a fairly conventional sort of rom-com, with the ups and downs one expects from a rom-com provided by Les's job as a paparazzi - he's invited to K'harma's birthday party, Elvis Costello is there and the inevitable happens. I think the one departure from convention is that there's no prolonged "will they ever get it together" period; things happen pretty smartly. I think the most enjoyable part of the movie for me was towards the end, when Toby has found himself in the limelight thanks to being in some sort of truly atrocious "reality serial killer epic", and his manager and K'harma's manager are battling over who should have precedence on the red carpet at the awards ceremony. In front of all their fans and about a million cameras, Toby and K'harma entwined themselves in each other. Sweet.

Northland Trip - Stage Nine (Final)

2008-03-06T00:18:00.007+13:00

I was in Opononi just two nights before the end of the year, the place was hotting up and I had no organised place to stay. I had to keep moving, as I still had ground to cover before New Year's eve, so moved on. First stop - Rawene, just a few kilometers up the road and far too soon to think about stopping. It is not a very big placebut literally on the water's edgemeaning the cafe can give a pretty good view of the inner HokiangaTo leave, I could go back, go east to Kaikohe (not a pleasant option) or go northYep - another ferry crossing, this time to Kohukohu. This place has quite a reputation as an artists' hangout, and when we were kids, the parents would once or twice stop for a drink in the pub, leaving us to our own devices. The place always seemed interesting but when I was there, mid-afternoon on the last Sunday of the year, it was very quiet. Two people in the pub (yet it had nowhere for me to stay) and a handful in the Waterline Cafe, and that was about the only sign of life.

I am pleased by the way these small communities have embraced cafe culture, and produced quite nice venues. I was a little surprised to walk in to this particular cafe and not only find a jazz band, but one I had seen before, somewhere, Queenstown I think. Their name has disappeared into the mist, but listening to them was a very pleasant way to spend some time.

But with no place to stay, I had to move on, heading south towards Whangarei, wondering how far I'd drive. As I was nearing Okaihau, it struck me that I could camp in the forest, up Forest Road. There were indeed people getting ready to stay the night but, well I had no food, no torch; it would be a long night unless I made a mad dash to Kerikeri for supplies. It seemed a bit silly to go back down to the bottom of the forest, as I remembered in my days as a boy scout (truly - I lasted all of three weeks) there was another camping area at forest headquarters. And thus I spent my last night on the road in the Puketi Forest Conservation Campsite.

No doubt I would have looked daft to onlookers; since there were mosquitoes by the million, I had to install a deck chair inside my tent, with the zipper closed tight and a torch dangling from a hook in the ceiling, so I could get some reading done.The forest in this picture is the Puketi Forest; the farm land is the farm I spent my teens on. Here is our house and a couple of random shots of the farm, land which had been solid bush - blackberry, gorse, fern, rubbishy trees - when we took it over:
Heading south, I struck it lucky in Kawakawa. One fellow had obviously not spent a lot of time there or, indeed, in the north, as I could see him say to himself "holy f*ck" as he drove up the main street, and encountered a view something like this The train only runs a couple of times a day, so it was a bit of a fluke to see it - not that it is worth going on, as it simply runs from one end of town to the other. After that little excitement, it was time to head south, for a bit more quality library time, to find my motel and to hit the town for New Year's Eve. Not a good plan, as it happened; Whangarei was not exactly going off, so it was back to the motel with Chinese takeaways (a bit of an anti-climactic end to the year but at least they were very good Chinese takeaways).

New Year's Day was spent pottering around in the car, then on the 2nd, after a nice breakfast down at the town basin (where I was served by yet another familiar face from Dunedin), it was time to drop the car off (goodbye car)and make the long bus journey back to Auckland.

Northland Trip - Stage Eight

2008-03-03T21:40:00.010+13:00

Near the end now. After leaving Pouto, I spent a bit of time in Dargaville, which looks rather nice from this angleIt was more than a little odd to go into the museum and find my childhood doctor as an exhibit, looking better than he ever did!I liked these as wellA Saturday afternoon in Dargaville has little to offer, even the tea rooms were shut so after checking out the Boxing Day sale at a pretty much deserted Warehouse, and a farewell look at the Northern Wairoa River I went to Bayley's Beach. Now that I am a proper camper and all, I checked into the camping ground and had my tent up and beer in the communal fridge within a matter of minutes. Dinner was at the rather wonderful Funky Fish cafe which was just through the wall from my tent; some thoughtful person had even installed a gate. Something must have frizzed my brain, as I have no photos at all. So, take my word for it that I drove on up through the Waipoua Forest, via Trounsen Kauri Park and Donnelly's Crossing.

North of there, at Morrells Cafe in Waimamaku, I found the best lamington EVER!It wasn't really like this one, except that it did have deep chocolate covering and the long cocounut shards. But it was huge, the sponge was as light as a Krispy Kreme donut while the chocolate was crunchy, providing a nice contrast. Surprisingly, when I bit into it, there was cream and jam in the middle - these things were completely indetectable from the outside. So good were these items that I drove back the next day for a second go.

Up the road, over a hill
and you have the rather fabulous Hokianga Harbour, with Omapere to the east a little of the entranceI would have loved to stay here
but it was sold out weeks ago. Instead, I found a nice old backpackers, the House of Harmony at Opononi, pigged out on fish and chips and all was well.

Northland Trip - Stage Seven

2008-02-26T20:11:00.011+13:00

After Christmas in Auckland, it was time to return to the north, this time with family to spend some time in Pouto, on the tip of the North Head of the Kaipara Harbour. It is not a very big place, just a few baches, a lodge and a lighthouse: I spent the early part of my childhood here; for some reason, my eldest nephew had a hankering for us to come up here for Boxing Day. Unfortunately, he was the only one in the family not to make it. We had booked the Memorial Hall, which has been equipped with bunks since I was last here, but the green space surrounding it was so inviting, that I decided camping was the way to go. Yes! That's right; I have taken up camping.

Some random beach scenes from Pouto:
This will explain why Ninety Mile Beach had little appeal; I grew up on a superior beach, one we had always simply called Pouto Beach, but apparently all along it had another name, Ripiri Beach - it stretches all the way past Dargaville. As a kid, we'd sometimes make the 22 mile journey up the beach, always well after midnight, in order to get toheroa. This time, we drove up to Bayley's Beach, where there is a very nice cafe, for coffees, beer and ice cream, going past the old Pouto Lighthouse on the way
The beach was just like a road, smoother even (back in the days we lived there, the road out of Pouto was so bad it would take us a couple of hours to get to Dargaville). On this trip, we averaged 100 km/hrOn the way back, we detoured through Kelly's Bay, as there were rumours of a shop. Nothing of the sort was to be found, just this fellowSince my plan was to carry on up the West Coast and be back in Whangarei in time for the New Year, it was time to push off. Not before visiting my old school, however, where I walked around having a smoke, just to show how bad I am. No-one was there to see it Finally, this is the sort of scenery to be seen from the back of the school I think my brother was right: we lived in paradise and never knew it. Maybe we needed a sign:

The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford (1915)

2008-02-24T00:10:00.005+13:00

This is the book Ford regarded as his best: it is certainly his most famous. He wrote it when he was forty and had a few problems of his own, "an intensely lived history of unhappy marriages, agonized love affairs, and troubled male friendships" according to the introductory note to the Oxford World's Classics edition. This is the very stuff of the novel. The more I think about, the gladder I am that I have finally read it, as I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Ford employed what was then an unusual technique, but one which actually makes a lot of sense in terms of realism in story-telling. Rather than a faithful rendition, starting at the beginning and working through chronologically, Ford took on the task of giving an Impressionist account (James and Conrad are vital influences in this). As Ford says, a problem with the English novel is that it goes "straight forward, whereas in your gradual making acquaintanceship with your fellows you never do go straight forward." Instead, you form an initial impression, you discover various things about him as you go along. So "to get such a man in fiction you could not begin at the beginning and work his life through to the end. You must first get him in with a strong impression, and then work backwards and forwards over his past."

So, in this way, things that might well be spoilers in a more conventional novel are given to the reader in the first chapter, with the novel then providing an idea of how such things come about, as well as details of the narrator's present predicament, why he starts the novel with "This is the saddest story I have ever heard". Of course, the technique could simply lead to a lot of muddle and repetition - at one point, his narrator apologises for telling the story in a very rambling way but, really, it doesn't matter. In fact, it adds to the story, because events can be seen in a new light when we the reader have learnt more about the characters and their situation.

The novel involves two couples - the Ashburnhams (Captain Ashburnham is supposedly the "good soldier" of the title, and he is certainly kind to his men) and the Dowells. John Dowell, an American, is the narrator. They become acquainted by going to the same spa resort at Nauheim in Germany for nine seasons in a row. Florence Dowell and Captain Ashburnham both had "a heart" and were thus sent there under doctors orders: both are now dead. For the four of them their

intimacy was like a minuet, simply because on every possible occasion and in every possible circumstance we knew where to go, where to sit, which table we unanimously should choose; and we could rise and go, all four together, without a signal from any one of us...

So close, and yet so much beneath the surface; "poor dear Florence" (Dowell) and Edward Ashburnham were having an affair, despite saying little to each other in public and having very little opportunity to be just the two of them. At the same time, the Ashburnhams "never spoke a word to each other in private". Poor old John Dowell wails

No, by God, it is false! It wasn't a minuet that we stepped; it was a prison - a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went along...

But then he thinks - for nine years, things went along apparently smoothly, even if he had no clue as to what was really happening

If for nine years I have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn't it true that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple?

Um, I don't think so. Anyway, he spends the subsequent chapters telling the story of the previous nine years and six months. Key components are that Edward Ashburnham is a womaniser who has no passion for his wife, but she is in lockstep with him, both because she is in love with him and because she is a strict Catholic - at one point, there is a suggestion that she must stick with him as some form of duty to all women. He accepts it because, really, its for his own good; he's a soft touch, to women, to loan sharks, and to those in need. So, he's had various affairs but all has been fairly quiet for the last nine years, ever since his last squeeze died. Yes, he's been carrying on with Leonara, but there's no passion involved.

But his final big thing, wow, that's the biggest ever in a way. He and Leonara have this semi-adopted daughter, Nancy Rufford - she kind of slips into the narrative under the guise of the "poor girl" and it takes a while for it to become clear who she is. One night, however, "something happened" to Edward, that took him completely by surprise - he sees the poor girl in a new light, as a woman rather than as someone in his charge, and discovers her to be the only woman he ever loved.

Now, the thing that makes this novel different to most is that, having discovered this sudden passion, he makes no declaration, is careful to take no action of any sort towards "possession". He recognises the tabu, recognises his position as her stand-in father and also recognises that to say anything would be a "final outrage" against his wife. And so, he goes mad. The thing is, so does she, once she finds the cause of his behaviour, such is her utter devotion to him.

As for John and Florence, he, as soon as he saw her he "determined with all the obstinacy of a possibly weak nature, if not to make her mine, at least to marry her." As it happens, he never made her his, just married her

I do not know that my courtship of Florence made much progress at first. Perhaps that was because it took place almost entirely during the daytime, on hot afternoons, when the clouds of dust hung like fog, right up as high as the tops of the thin-leaved elms. The night, I believe, is the proper season, for the gentle feats of love, not a Connecticut July afternoon, when any sort of proximity is an almost appalling thought. But, if I never so much as kissed Florence, she let me discover very easily, in the course of a fortnight, her simple wants.

All it took was for him to have lots of money, to be a gentleman of leisure and to enable her to enter English society. "And - she faintly hinted - she did not want much physical passion in the affair. Americans, you know, can envisage such unions without blinking." He must have been referring to himself, as she had her own sources of amusement which did not involve him, poor dupe. I felt for him when, two hours after Florence has died, Leonara chose to talk openly to him, to suggest he might marry Nancy and to thank him for being a brother to her in her troubles

'You are all the consolation I have in the world. And isn't it odd to think that if your wife hadn't been my husband's mistress, you would probably never been here at all?'

That was how I got the news, full in the face, like that.

But the poor girl cannot be married, as she has lost her reason, something needed by the Anglican church to marry. So, John Dowell, who might also be called a good soldier, finds himself very much where he started, "as attendant, not the husband of a beautiful girl, who pays no attention to me."

There Will Be Blood, a film by Paul Thomas Anderson (2007)

2008-02-21T21:24:00.003+13:00

This is a movie which has garnered a lot of critical acclaim along with popular support, with nods towards the possibility of Oscars success. I see a long list of reviewers at Metacritic have given it 100 out of 100. I don't remember a longer list. But then there is the occasional voice in the wilderness: I find it quite funny that I came out of this movie with almost exactly the same response that I now see Stephanie Zacharek of Salon had: she called it an "austere folly". Numerous letter writers have panned her as someone who basically doesn't have a clue. To me, the film seemed like a grand failure, a flawed masterpiece - a movie which had the bones and intents to be a truly great one but which somehow miss-fired, along the lines of Heaven's Gate, although not quite so dramatically. The cinematography is brilliant, so too is most of the acting but, well, there's just something missing with the actual story.

To be fair, even its most ardent fans seem prepared to call it an eccentric epic. Its director, Anderson, has certainly taken some risks: the first fifteen minutes tell the story of 15 years in the lives of the central characters without a word being said. Blink and you'll miss the fact that H.W. (Dillon Freasier), claimed by Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) as his son is in fact an orphan created when his father dies in a mining accident. So, are we to believe Plainview later on when he claims that he only took H.W. around with him because it helped him raise money and get land for his oil drilling operations: his targets seemed sympathetic to his "family values" claim and were quite chharmed that this solemn-faced boy of 9 or 10 was Plainview's "business partner".

It seemed to me that there were two main narratives at work here. The first was simple: the making of the oilman, Daniel Plainview. So we see him hard at work down a silver mine in 1898, then having modest success with an oilwell a few years later and much more success in 1911. Finally, someone is speaking: Plainview is making a sales pitch. He has several wells producing and is fully equipped to commence drilling on his own account just as soon as any landowner with prospects of oils lets him do so. Throughout the movie, we see him persuading others to give him what he wants; on the whole, what he says to get what he wants is false. I love the mention in the Age of his "honeyed yet faintly off-key rhetoric".

His big break comes a while later, when a fellow with an oddly blank and pale face (Paul Dano) sells him information about a place so flooded with oil it is seeping to the surface. This land is about 100 miles from the Californian coast; oil can be extracted and, instead of being reliant upon the rapacious railwaymen to find a market, can be piped directly out to Californian refineries.

It is up here that the second narrative starts: Plainview comes into conflict with a very religious young man, Eli Sunday, also played by Paul Dano (I have no idea where is brother is supposed to have got to - apparently it was not the original plan that both brothers be played by the same actor, but the fellow had been signed up to play Eli found something else to do, and Dano had about a week to get up to speed). At first, Eli seems innocuous enough, but Plainview is immediately dead set against him. So there is this great scene, where it has been agreed that Eli will bless Plainview's new derrick, and Plainview will introduce Eli as a man of the soil. What does Plainview do? He introduces Eli's sister as a young woman of the soil and gives the blessing himself, with Eli looking on. Ultimately it is revealed that Eli is a preacher, with his own church, that "of the Third Revelation", and the capability for an extremely histrionic form of preaching.

But I think it would be too simplistic to describe this second narrative as a fight between good and evil; you have to put capitalism in the mix and, while capitalism is shown to be an evil force in Upton Sinclair's book Oil which inspired this movie, I don't think the movie makes that claim for capitalism. In fact, I think the movie might even be more generally concerned with zealotry of any stripe: we have a narrative focussed upon strife between two zealots, two men who really have nothing but the thing they have devoted themselves to. This explains something which has troubled many critics: there are no women in the movie, not until H.W. is an adult.

I'm not too sure there is any good in Daniel; yes, he seems to have genuine feeling for H.W. but maybe it is simply a means to an end. Daniel is ultimately awful to H.W, really awful. He also might have some sort of brotherly feeling for the fellow who turns up and claims to be his brother, but generally treats him as another worker, no closer than his second-in-command. Again, he is awful to this fellow as well. There is a certain inscrutability which masks everything he does, although it is clear he has no time at all for religion. This provides a context for two successive bargains between Daniel and Eli: Eli will help Daniel get the land he needs if Daniel will allow himself to be baptised. Later, a couple of decades later, when things have turned bad for Eli and his church, Daniel says he will buy some land Eli can procure if Eli will renounce his faith and declare it to be superstition.

The very end puzzles me, as it seems completely gratuitous in light of Daniel getting his own way in everything.

Catering For Vegetarians

2008-02-21T00:25:00.003+13:00

I had to pay a visit to Oamaru last night as two of my favourite musicians were playing the Penguin Club. They sang and entertained with wry stories about spending days on the road until about eleven. As I had had to make a quick exit from Dunedin and even then arrived at the Penguin Club after the thing had started, I'd not had a chance to eat. Surprisingly, Oamaru does not have many options for food at 11:00 on a Tuesday night - no McDonalds, no Subway. I was thinking it would have to be an awful service station pie, but was surprised to find a fish and chip shop might just be open. The street sign had been taken in, but there was still a sign on the door saying open. I stopped outside - there was a woman wiping the door, but she paused in her activity when she saw me watching her, trying to decide if she was just doing the last cleaning up before going home, or was in fact open for business.

I took up the only way of finding out for sure - I went in. While she was cooking my fish and chips, I had some time to investigate the menu. Unlike most fish and chip shops I have been in, and in fact unlike any fish and chip shop of this particular style, which had a range of western and asian foods on offer, there was a Vegetarian Menu. Taking pride of place at the top of the menu? Cinnamon donuts. Then jam donuts. Something called a "jam rap" was last - the only plausible vegetarian dinner item was a chopsuey fritter (sounds worse than a service station pie, to be honest).

But my fish and chips from JRS Diner were better than expected. As were the musicians at the Penguin Club. Of course, I expected a lot from Victoria Girling-Butcher and was not disappointed (except for missing half her songs) - she did a bunch of Lucid3 songs, along with what seemed to be a couple of new solo ones. But my expectations of Age Pryor were not high - I'd only seen glimpses of his performances in the past and been left underwhelmed, so last night's show was a revelation. I'd only ever seen Paul McLaney as part of a bigger lineup, never doing the solo singer-songwriter thing. He still strikes me as the most unlikely looking musician - I was watching him closely last night as he did his thing, and decided that he looks like a pastry chef, mainly because I have no real pre-conceptions as to what one looks like. He sings fantastically, however, and ain't bad on the guitar either. The best song of all, however, was when they all joined in together at the end and sang Dylan's I Shall Be Released.

Hard Candy, a film by David Slade (2005)

2008-02-15T01:09:00.003+13:00

When I saw this movie, Juno had not quite arrived yet, but someone mentioned that Ellen Paige was also in Hard Candy so when I saw it on the shelf in the video store, I grabbed it.

Wow! I do have one objection: the character she plays is an impossibly sophisticated 14 year old girl (Paige was, I think, 18 at the time). I found myself in the early parts of the movie asking "how old is this girl?", but still, wow!

The movie was made in 18 days, by a largely new team, for around $1 million. Apart from one scene, the entire action occurs in a single house, and for 90% of the time, only two people are in it - Jeff and Haley. As the movie went on, I was reminded of Richard Linklater's Tape, both in the way the action was shot in such a confined space and in the way in which one character confronted the other with a particular truth.

It is quite a mission for actors to carry a movie under such circumstances, but they did it, Ellen Paige in particular was amazing. They "meet" in an internet chatroom: the movie starts with Haley agreeing to see Jeff at a local cafe. From the start, she's playing a dangerous game with him, talking the talk of a much older female. It is she, not he, who suggests they go back to his place. I was fearing the worst; sure, he was "nice" but we've all seen these movies before, and know why 32 year old men take 14 year old girls home. There, she plays with him over the making of a screwdriver, saying that she'd been taught never to accept a drink she'd not seen made. So she makes one for them both.

This is when the true purport of the movie starts to emerge: she has drugged him ("that advice about watching your drinks being made, that's good for everyone") and ties him up. She spends the rest of the movie on the attack: about how she'd been in various chatrooms in different guises but he only ever talked to her when she was 14; that as an adult, his place was to stop her coming to his house, and to not give girls ("and I place emphasis on the word girl") alcohol. Then she's at him about his work - he's a photographer, and has photos of half-dressed young teenaged girls.

The morality here is left ambiguous: we've not seen the photos, so can't judge and, frankly, Haley is coming across as a psycho and Jeff as quite a decent guy, one I had trouble believing ill of. But this is a careful construct by those making the movie: underneath Haley's rage is a missing girl named Donna (her picture had featured earlier, in the coffee shop). Haley is convinced that Jeff did her in, and is going to torture Jeff to get at the truth. It takes a long time - he even faces castration without confessing. My belief in his innocence really only started to shift when Haley finds his secret cache of truly disgusting photos and a photo of the missing girl. At this point, she has him pretty well set up: she's sent out various messages in his name, there is some incriminating evidence and the love of his life is about to turn up.

What to do - face the music or hang oneself, against Haley's promise to clean everything up? It is never quite clear what Haley's involvement is with this missing girl, but she has mentioned another guy, Aaron, who was involved: Jeff blames Aaron and claimed he only watched, but Haley seems to have some secret source of information to the effect that that is not how it was (my theory is that she knew Aaron, maybe he was her brother or maybe she'd put him through similar treatment).

Have Mercy On Us All, a novel by Fred Vargas (2001)

2008-02-15T01:08:00.008+13:00

This thoroughly enjoyable book is my second experience of French detective fiction writer Vargas. It is the opposite of hard-boiled - almost 100 pages pass before anything sufficiently alarming to involve the police happens.

These opening pages are devoted to introducing the central characters. There is former ship's captain Joss Le Guern, who (wrongly) spent time in jail after his ship went down, taking all hands. I had thought that this was going to be the dominant aspect of the story - the ship sank because its owners cut corners with safety, but Joss took the blame and was blacklisted from all French ports.

But the story took off on a whimsical detour instead. After a "visit" from a long deceased ancestor, Joss has taken up the curious calling of town crier in a Parisian suburb. It is surprisingly lucrative - he reads out messages at a minimum of 5 franc a pop:

Five: For sale, litter of white and ginger kittens, three male, two female. Six: Could the drum players making jungle noises all night long opposite number 36 please desist. Some people have to get some sleep. Seven: All types of carpentry, especially furniture restoration, perfect finish, will collect and deliver. Eight: The gas and electric company can go jump in a lake. Nine: Pest control is a complete scam. There are just as many cockroaches as before, and they take 600 francs off you for nothing. Ten: Helen, I love you and I'll be waiting for you tonight at the Dancing Cat. Signed, Bernard. Eleven: Another rotten summer, and now its September already. Twelve: To the attention of the butcher on the square. Yesterday's meat was old boot leather, that makes three time this week. Thirteen: Come back Jean-Christophe. Fourteen: Cops means perverts means pigs. Fifteen: For sale, garden apples and pears, tasty and juicy.

Three times a day, he reads out a similar batch to a fairly regular audience, who must also accept a marine weather forecast and a daily story from maritime history.

There is former school teacher, Hervé Decambrais, who has also had a run in with the law and who now runs some sort of counselling service and a small boarding house; one so desirable that Joss secures a place there. There is his tenant Lizbeth and their neighbours, Damascus and Marie-Belle, who run a skate shop. Everyone in this community seems to have elements of their past best not talked about.

Elsewhere, there is Chief Inspector Adamsberg, who has just been promoted to lead a crack murder investigation squad, and his assistand, Danglard. These two are chalk and cheese: luckily, each recognises the importance of the other. Danglard is a by the book, exercise of logic sort of policeman. Adamsberg is intuitive, a woolgatherer, one who takes long walks to solve his crimes: of course, he is extremely successful. He reminds me of Columbo, with his vague ways (much is made of his inability to remember names), his poor dress sense (Decembrais came across him during his mishap with the law, and thought he was in custody himself, such was his general appearance and demeanour), his solutions which seem to come from nowhere but so often prove to be right ("I said woolly, but I could have also said magical") .

One day, two apparently unconnected things happen. Mysterious signs start appearing on doors in Parisian apartment buildings. Adamsberg starts to investigate, despite his promotion and the lack of any murders, simply because he did not "like" the signs, and finds a lot of them. The second event is that Joss receives the first in what proves to be a sequence of odd messages:

When manie woormes breede of putrefaction of the earth: toade stooles and rotten herbes abound; The fruites and beastes of the earth are unsavoury; The wine becomes muddie; many birds and beastes flye from that place.

Decambrais, being a bookworm, finally works out what these passages are: they are extracts from a variety of narratives about the plague, which he sees as a warning. It is at this point that Adamsberg gets involved - he is not very interested, not until he hears that these messages started on the same day as the signs on the doors, and then hears that these signs were used to ward off the plague. Then people do actually die.

There is quite a lot going on in this novel about the differences between appearance and reality: many of the characters have found themselves in jail because it appeared they were guilty, whereas the reality was otherwise. Similarly with the plague, which has its tokens e.g. blackened skin. If those tokens are present, will people believe the plague to be present?

Someone is responsible for what is going on; as I read through, I got as close to solving the mystery as to decide that, well, it has to be one or more of the characters we've already met if the novel is to have any sort of sense to it, but i never really worked out who it was. Adamsberg's solution depended upon a mixture of orthodox police work, historians (Marc Vandoosleir, who was a central character in The Four Evangelists, is a medievalist and plague expert) and, ultimately, upon his own special technique of going for a walk.

There seemed to me to be a funny sort of pun involved in the thing that finally triggered his understanding of who was responsible; he arrives at his answer when a flash of a diamond catches his eye - is this a sort of punning reference to the flash of brilliance with which he solved the crime?

There is an intriguing story told about diamonds, one I am not sure how much credibility to give. When the plague struck, it was the poor who were most badly affected: the scientific explanation is that the plague thrives in situations of poor hygeine, so those who were well off tended to be cleaner and less vulnerable. But a belief developed that gems were good at warding off the plague (because rich people all wore gems and did not die). Diamonds were best of all, and so they became the thing to give to one to protect them from the plague, particularly if you wanted to keep them safe to marry them. In other words, our custom of diamond engagement rings is derived from the plague. It is a nice story but I haven't found much to establish its truth (but then, I have not looked very hard). I do know that Pliny saw diamonds as being proof against poison, but that's about it.

Northland Trip - Stage Six

2008-02-15T00:40:00.009+13:00

After hitting the cape, it was time to head south in order to meet up with family in Auckland for Christmas. Since I still had a wee bit of time up my sleeve, I thought I'd do a bit of the second leg of the trip, by exploring the very top of the west coast. This meant a quick trip out through forestry to see Ninety Mile Beach, a quick decision of "not much too see" and then voyaging out past Awanui towards Herekino. There, I was faced with the road south, which curved off to the left, or the road with no sign straight through "town" (i.e. past the pub, and avoiding the kids playing in the road).

I didn't actually know where I was headed, but this is where I ended up
I found myself surrounded by small churches
I don't *think* this is the same one
In all, I'd say there were four or five, all in the same area (which turned out to be Whangape, when I finally found a map). I am still not entirely sure where this is
It was another inlet, nearer to Herekino, off to the left (north west) as I approached Herekino. Heading south on the main road to Broadwood, more churches
After hitting the #1 highway, it was a quick trip to Whangarei, except that I became disturbed by the fact that several petrol stations, starting at Ohaewai, had fallen into disuse. After Kawakawa, you have this one, just out of town
and then the one at the Ruapekapeka turn-off
the one at Towaiand finally at Hukerenui
This is of little moment to the passing motorist, who can simply think ahead, but the farming communities around these service stations will now need to go to Kawakawa or as far south as Whakapara just to get petrol.

By the time I hit Whangarei, I'd had enough of beaches, so for something different, I caught up with some old acquaintances
and went in to explore the new library
This is just a random nearby tree, very pretty!

Darjeeling Limited, a film by Wes Anderson (2007)

2008-01-24T18:36:00.000+13:00

In some quarters, going on a pilgrimage to India to find oneself is a still a big deal. For others, it is more about the drugs and for yet others, it is about the shopping. Wes Anderson, who seems to delight in making slightly off-kilter movies, combines all three motivations, but gives them an ironic twist. The three Whitman brothers have not seen each other for a year, not since their father's funeral, and they all have stuff, important stuff, happening. Who knows how long it is since they last saw their mother; Francis (Owen Wilson), who just has to be the oldest brother, has had to hire a private detective to find her. I don't know how he convinces them, but Francis then organises his brothers into taking a trip on the so-called Darjeeling Limited, a train that will take them for a six day journey across India, without really telling them what they're doing it for. He has meticulously organised his path to enlightenment, down to the point of bringing his personal assistant along to create daily plans, with every minute planned; multiple visits to spiritual places is the key ingredient in their enlightenment. As they go, they take a variety of prescription drugs and buy some rather peculiar objects - such as a poisonous snake. It becomes clear that these are rich guys - one is wearing $3000 shoes, and they fight over a $6,000 belt - products so ridiculously priced that I expect they are being mocked.

But at the same time, there is something quite important going on: their familial relations have been fractured, they insist on keeping secrets from each other - one brother would often reveal something to another while the third was absent, with instructions "don't tell him", but he always would. In this way, their stories are gradually revealed (e.g. that Peter (Adrian Brody) is about to have a baby (and thinking of leaving his wife) or that Jack (Jason Schwartzman) is more than a little obsessed with a girl he dumped a fair while ago (there is a connected short movie called Hotel Chevalier which I saw with The Darjeeling Limited - it was even credited as being Part One of it, but apparently not all theatres are showing it). Despite themselves, you might say, they are getting the proclaimed benefits of a trip to India.

I am still a little confused as to where the trip started from - maybe Calcutta, but if so I don't know why it would take six days (I did Mumbai to Calcutta in three, and their journey was to Udaipur). Since seeing the trip was my main reason for watching this movie, I was a little disappointed that they were thrown off the train after about a day - bringing the poisonous snake on board was a bit much for the train manager, but he relented; then the brothers fought and that was too much - but it was a vital stage in their development. While they were on the train, there was a kind of Lost in Translation feel to their voyage. Oddly enough,the English spoken by the train staff bore no signs of being Indian English - Rita's sounded very posh (and it turns out she was played by an actress born in England who went to Oxford, who seems to have been asked to speak in her own accent).

There is an aura of inauthenticity over the entire venture until they find themselves stuck in the middle of nowhere, forced to haul an amazing amount of luggage (all stamped with their dead father's initials) to wherever they might be going. Going "off script" as it were seems to be the making of them, when they get involved in a local village's life (with no language in common).

Of course, Francis's ultimate objective all along has been to be reunited with their mother, who has become some sort of nun. She seems to be a character straight out of Dickens' Bleak House - the woman so concerned with the plight of starving children in Africa that she fails to attend to, or even notice, her own family and how much they need her. Even when they make this huge trip across India to see her, mum is not very motherly. No matter - the trip seems to work its magic on the brothers so that they can now have functional relationships. As they returned to the East on the Bengal Lancer, I was intrigued by the fact that the train staff were now speaking in heavily accented English. I did think there was a certain triteness to the end: with enlightenment comes a release from worldly possessions: these guys are running so hard for their train, they have to discard their luggage, or should I say baggage, to avoid missing it. And thus they symbolically divest themselves of whatever power their dead father may have had over them.

Northland Trip - Stage Five (The Cape)

2008-01-22T23:38:00.000+13:00

This was the biggie: the Cape. Big in two senses; quite a lot of driving (Mangonui up to the Cape and back to Henderson's Bay) and big because, despite growing up just down the road, it was my first time. Family mythology was that we had got as close as Te Kao and dad got sick of driving so we went home, but my mum has, since I went up there, confessed that we had had to abandon our previous attempt "because I forgot my lipstick". I didn't ask.

I was a little disappointed at the shopping opportunities, or lack of them. I did not expect the extravaganza built up around Niagara Falls, I didn't even expect the various shops and exhibitions at Land's End in the UK. But I would have thought that getting to the very end of New Zealand's Highway # 1 and, of course, to the end of New Zealand itself might have had a bit more celebration thanGoing over that bank, there is a small celebratory sign, but still not much
There is, of course, one of New Zealand's more famous icons
Out to the west, there is a bit of a path that one can take and get down to the beach - I was feeling a bit like going for a walk, but standing on top of the hill, I had a weird panic attack, and had to sit down for fear of falling off - falling off solid land, that is. So I took a picture of New Zealand's most northern pointand returned to my lodgings at Henderson's Bay - a very quiet, out of the way place with about three houses, yet it was one of the noisiest nights I have had for a long time. It was amusing in its own way - we had a German fellow staying at the backpackers, and he had a few of his countrymen to stay. I have no idea what they thought they were doing, but around midnight, they all went outside and started making all sorts of animal noises, singing and shrieking - no actual conversation was happening. This went on for a while, until another guest yelled at them to "shut the f*** up, you f***ng morons". I'll bet he regretted it because they then mimiced him for a while, before resuming their earlier pursuits. It wasn't bothering me, because I was not sleepy anyway - the Germans had all collapsed by the time I was ready to sleep.

On the way up, I had to take a tiki tour out to Tokerau Beach and Whatuwhiwhi - most of which seemed to be for sale
check out Hohoura and stop in at Te Kao for a fantastic ice cream.

Monsieur Ibrahim, a film by François Dupeyron (2003)

2008-01-21T21:43:00.000+13:00

I missed this movie when it came through Dunedin in the film festival and if it was on general release, I didn't notice. It is an extremely charming movie, one which would have been just too nice if it were not for the way it ended. Momo lives in Blue Street, Paris. His father seems to require a lot of care: Momo does all the cooking and housework; all dad does is eat and retire into his rather fabulous library. They do not seem to get on at all; Momo has the idea that he has failed to be as interesting as his older brother. But he makes other friends: the movie starts with him breaking into his piggy bank to get the necessary funds to pay for a prostitute - they are abundant in his street and all seem to be gorgeous and have a heart of gold.

Momo does his shopping in the "Arab's" shop across the road. The "Arab" turns out to be a Turk, Monsieur Ibrahim (Omar Sharif), but such distinctions do not seem to trouble many shoppers; being Arab simply means the shop is open from 8 till midnight, Sunday's included. There is a scene which reminds me of a childhood incident when I engaged in a little shoplifting, not knowing that I was observed and that the shopkeeper had discussed my theft with my parents. Momo helps himself quite liberally to various treats, not knowing that he is always spotted doing so.

For some reason, M Ibrahim takes a shine to Momo, makes him his protege, forgives him his trespasses, conspires with him to feed his father catfood in the guise of pate and rob him, so that Momo has money for the ladies. He is a Moslem, but one who has no problem with taking the occasional drink: while all the truth he needs is to be found in the Koran, that truth can, it seems, be modified when the circumstances dictate. This leads to M Ibrahim being a man both of wisdom but also great kindness and warmth - an ideal role for Omar Sharif.

When dad does a runner and then kills himself, things get even nicer in this movie: M Ibrahim adopts Momo. Everything goes swimmingly, and now that he has a son, M Ibrahim decides it is time to go back to Turkey - which leads to one of the few purely comic moments in the movie, as he has never had a driving licence and needs to learn to drive. He gets a pretty cool car to do it in:

I enjoyed it when the movie transformed into a road movie - they drove all the way from Paris to some remote region of Turkey, through landscapes I am never likely to see myself - but have to say that the end came as a bit of a shock. I just don't get how or why it happened, and it jarred with the mood of the movie.

American Hisotry X, a film by Tony Kay (1998)

2008-01-20T18:22:00.000+13:00

Without realising it, I saw some of this on TV a couple of weeks ago: it looked awful. This horrible skinhead with Nazi insignia tattooed on his body was having a row with his family - making his mum feel awful for daring to date a Jew, making the Jew in question leave the house, hitting his sister. Worse, his brother was saying "I still trust you". I did not know the movie, but if I had known it was American History X, there is no way I would have taken the DVD out of the shop. As it was, when I saw it, I though "hmm, that's supposed to be good, I'll give it a go".

And it was good, the performances were spot on, even by minor characters such as Stacey, although I don't know that I completely buy the transformation that overcome Derek Vinyard (Ed Norton) while he was in prison. He'd been put there for killing a couple of African-Americans - one he might have got away with, as it could have been self defence, but the other was a gratuitous, hate-inspired killing. It didn't help that Derek was caught up in some sort of white supremacy outfit. He had the fellow put his head on the kerb, mouth open, and just stomped him on the back of the head. In jail, his early alliances were with other white supremacists: naturally, he lived in fear of the African-Americans in jail with him. He seems to have spent quite a bit of his time inside assigned to working with one, but refusing to talk with him.

But things change for Derek when he realises that his fellow supremacists are tossers and decides to go it alone (is the prison population really made up of just white supremacists and those they hate?). Only now do things start to lighten up between him and his co-worker: I think the idea is that Derek finally gets to see him as being a human being, rather than some black cypher, and that this transforms his whole world-view. Mind you, the co-worker does seem to have done a lot to deserve Derek's admiration, by keeping him safe.

Derek is revered by his little brother Danny, so Danny naturally follows in his footsteps. The film is largely told through his eyes, with flashbacks: he is writing an essay for his teacher about his relationship with Derek, just after Derek has been released from jail. This is a huge moment for the white supremacist group: somehow word has not got to them of Derek's change of heart, and so he is welcomed as a hero.

I think it would have been incredibly easy for Derek to just fall back on his old ways, take the worship that was being offered. Instead, he takes the hard road: his old "friends" now see him as being "no better than a nigger". Of course, the big thing for him to worry about is Danny: he wants him out, he wants to maintain his relationship with him and the whole relationship is based upon their shared hatred. When Danny confronts Derek, Derek sits him down and just tells him what happened while he was in jail: the honesty is supposedly enough to have Danny reverse his attitude. It all seemed just a little bit too contrived to me, as if this transformation could be so easily achieved. Of course, as anyone who has seen the movie knows, it was all a bit too late: the last sequences of the movie have such a feeling of foreboding to them, that it was obvious something bad was about to happen.

Battle Royale, a film by Kinji Fukasaku (2000)

2008-01-18T22:12:00.000+13:00

I can't believe I watched this; I am having trouble believing that people think it is a great film (it is rated more highly on IMDB than A Quiet American). Surely, it is an appalling movie? The storyline is just grotesque. A friend described the battle royale phrase as a wrestling term, in which there is a round-robin fight to the death. That is the basic idea underpinning the movie.

Japanese society has turned bad, the adults blame the kids. Since the adults have the power, they pass a law, the Millennial Education Act. Every year, a "lucky" high school class wins the chance for a battle royale. The kids are taken to a remote island, issued with a random weapon and told to fight it out. The weapons range from a machine gun through rifles and handguns to, um, a potlid and binoculars. They have three days. Every few hours, a list of the dead will be called out. To make sure they play the game, each has been fitted with an explosive necklace: if there is no winner at the end of the three days, all necklaces will be detonated. Their teacher, a dour sort of fellow with a grudge, gives them an example when one pupil misbehaves. There's also a video, with an incongruously perky girl setting out the rules for the massacre, although the teacher makes it simple: "So today's lesson is, you kill each other off till there's only one left. Nothing's against the rules".

Not all of the kids respond kindly to this: some suicide, some devise complicated plots to break out. Some seem to thrive on the rules of the game. One fellow has chosen to be involved: he turns out to be the best armed.

Friendships splinter. Others are strengthened. Some reveal long secret loves - these scenes were particularly sweet. But, as the rules stipulate, almost everyone dies: generally with lots of blood, and after a huge number of bullets have been fired into them.

The weird thing was that after knowing the premise of the movie, it didn't seem to trouble me, watching all these innocent kids (and, yeah, they seemed pretty likable, gave no reason to think that they were a menace to society) killing each other. A few of the killings were a bit more shocking than others, but ultimately I'd say I quite liked the movie, think the fellow was very bold for making it.