Humphrey Lyttleton

Humphrey Lyttleton died today. For those who don't know, Lyttleton was a number of things- he was a superb comic with wonderful bumbling timing, he was a wit with an extensive repertoire of conversational gambits, he was a trumpetter who brought jazz to BBC radio and ultimately was responsible for much of the fame of the genre of music in the UK. He didn't take himself seriously but came across as a phenomenally intelligent and talented man- the 'elder statesman of British jazz', he was a cartoonist as well with a superb talent not to mention a radio presenter. The thing I always liked about him was that though his jokes belonged in some cases to an earlier era- full of double entendres, it was a gentle comedy, an absurdist comedy but one confident enough of its own intelligence not to need to flaunt it. He had many of the virtues that I described here, and in a sense his comedy lived in the spirit of Wallace and Gromit- in a thread that spreads back to classics like Dad's Army. The comedies are very different- but the one thing that they have in common are that they are gentle, they don't mock people to upset, they mock affectionately- the laughter is a tone of a shared love. Lyttleton I always thought got that- his tone was warm, he was always chortling and his trumpetting was divine. You could tell he did what he did because he loved it- not merely because he continued working till he died at the age of 86- but because his comedy for instance wasn't selfish but was merry. If there are higher ambitions, I don't know what they are.

What is a Public Intellectual?

Polls of the most important public intellectual come out all the time at the moment- the American journal Foreign Policy is doing one at the moment (no prizes for guessing the main subject of that journal) and has a list out of which you can vote the top twenty. Fair enough you might say- accept really what they seem to be talking about here is political polemecists, not intellectuals and that the idea that a vote reflects any kind of intellectual merit is a bit like the idea that a vote could determine the best scientific or mathematical theory, its stupidity is only matched by its inanity.

What do I mean by the first thing I said? Well take a look at the list. At first sight you might see names like Umberto Eco, the Italian novelist, Noam Chomsky, the American linguist, Richard Dawkins, the British Biologist and so on and think aha- this is about a spread of thinkers over a wide area. You would be wrong though. Take Chomsky, I doubt he is there for his linguistic work which has been dominant in that field- I'd suggest his presence there is actually because of his jeremaids against American power. Likewise I'm not sure Dawkins makes the list for his biology, rather than his ability to upset religious people. At least the three I quote above and others like Benedict XVI are distinguished intellectuals (whatever you think of their political thinking- and in some cases (Chomsky comes to mind) their policy ideas are inferior to their other work). But Christopher Hitchens, great polemecist and writer he may be, has contributed very little of intellectual value to the world. His recent biography of Tom Paine is an absolute joke, which would be hilarious if it weren't meant seriously. Likewise Al Gore, good politician no doubt, but I doubt he had anything to do with the intellectual foundations of political theory.

Yes there are some names on the list that I had not come across- Hu Shuli for example the Chinese journalist. But equally there are names which astonished me- as a historian I can name many more intellectually exciting people than Tony Judt and Niall Ferguson (off the top of my head, Quentin Skinner, Sir Keith Thomas and Ira Katznelson all make me think far more than Ferguson with his Telegraph pieties has ever done.) All lists will have names that you don't see- but the difference between the two sets of people is that Ferguson say is a great self-publicist (the man has an ego the size of Olympus to go by his TV appearances and lectures- only exceeded by David Starkey) whereas Skinner, Thomas and Katznelson have made some very original contributions to their periods and to their studies. In a sense this isn't so much a set of interesting people who can provoke and make you think, as a collection of great self-publicists- the list produced by Foreign Policy is about marketting not mastering a leading subject.

The same thing goes for their method of choosing the top twenty- again what does the fact that x wins a vote tell you about the ideas that the winner has expressed? It tells you nothing! To take an example, I am not qualified to tell you how good a physicist Richard Feynman was and how he compared to Enrico Fermi- I have no idea because I don't know about higher physics. I do have an idea about historians but that's because I have a PhD in the subject- and even then with history outside my own specialism, I don't know who has the best knowledge of the sources. To say that I can judge the most original and thoughtful intellectual on all these subjects is crap! And it reinforces something that I think we should be very careful about- to understand the best idea as the most popular idea is not a sensible thing. Subjects are complicated and they require a lot of patience and learning- becoming an intellectual is not writing a blog, its not writing for a newspaper, its learning facts, understanding arguments and thinking deeply. The list from Foreign Affairs includes trivial people and is based on trivial grounds- that is a pity- I want to know who are the most interesting people in other subjects because then I can go and read them- a list that contains Christopher Hitchens is unlikely to give me that.

All the way without Jose?

Chelsea this season stand on the brink of winning maybe one and possibly even two trophies- they sit in the semi finals of the Champions League and are second in the Premiership behind Manchester United. Other clubs will have something to say about that: obviously Manchester United are favourites to win the Premiership and in the Champion's League, the men from London will have to beat Liverpool over two legs (something they haven't managed so far in that competition) and then confront one of United or Barcelona in the final. But for the moment, Chelsea's season is ending well and given a disastrous start, its possible to even argue that Chelsea haven't done that badly this season at all. So what, you might be tempted to say- well the key thing about that fact is that whilst it has happened Chelsea have lost a manager, Jose Mourinho who almost everyone in football reckons is one of the great coaches of his generation and have brought in a nonentity Avram Grant. What does their continual success say about media perception of managers? What does it say about the cult of the manager?

Lets start with the first question. Its pretty obvious that Mourinho is a very good manager- he won the Champion's League with Porto, has two English Premierships and a couple of the more minor cups in the UK to his name. There is no doubt that he comes across as a very bright guy as well, swatting away the sports reporters of the BBC and Sky with the contempt that they deserve. The real point though is that the press have never taken Grant seriously- he hasn't managed in England or one of the big leagues- but he has got experience in Israel and has won championships with Israeli clubs. He might not come across as impressively as the Portugeese and scowls, but he is someone who has real acheivements and spent quite a considerable time in England as director of football in both Portsmouth and Chelsea. Not merely Roman Abramovich, who didn't get his money by being thick, nor Harry Rednapp, who hasn't got a long success in football management by tolerating fools, are idiots: and someone who both of them like has got to have a presumption of being at least competent.

But even so, Mourinho and Grant are still far apart. Journalists close to the Chelsea camp suggest that Grant hasn't had much of an effect on Chelsea players- some speculate that the backroom staff are having more of an effect. I disagree. And I wonder whether privately many chairmen would disagree- their bank balances would argue that. Cristiano Ronaldo takes home the astonishing 120,000 pounds a week from the Glazers, Alex Ferguson takes home a fraction of that. That suggests that players have more of an effect than managers on results- I wonder whether the Chelsea situation makes that point as well. Chelsea are still playing in exactly the same way as they were under Mourinho- its the same squad too with the addition of Nicolas Anelka- and largely we are seeing the same type of results, grimly grafted out by athletic players. Chelsea's totems are their central midfielders, industrious souls like Michael Essien, Frank Lampard, Obi John Mikel and others sitting in front of a terrifying back four, sternly safeguarded by John Terry and Ricardo Carvalho. The manager Mourinho had to bring them together and see how they would fit, he had to design the training routines that would make them tick- but seemingly since then they have been on automatic pilot. With a good plan they have just got on with it.

Of course that is a mischeivous point of view- but its worth thinking about. Afterall in the Victorian era, players did choose the team and make the decisions- there were reasons why that changed but it also reflected something true about any team game. I wonder whether the situation at Chelsea is more Victorian or Edwardian than we think it is, with figures like Terry and Lampard having more of an influence than their nominal superior. Without being inside the dressing room, we can't know. I wonder also about the margins that managers give teams- would Manchester United be worse off without Ferguson or Ronaldo- the directors pay the two as if that question is resolved in Ronaldo's favour but does that indicate anything real?

The Science of Paracelsus

Paracelsus was an early modern medical chemist- his writings were incredibly influential in the early history of science, in the study of the occult, in the histories of medicine and of chemistry. He wandered through central Europe- Germany and Switzerland mainly though he also went to Scandinavia, Hungary, Russia, France and Asian Turkey. Paracelsus was responsible for the fact that we call zinc, zinc. He was a wandering quack, often despised by contemporary physicians but often also in advance of many of their theories- he beleived in equal proportions things that we would now consider madness and some things which anticipate some of the discoveries of modern medicine. His medicine was not a proper science, as we would see it, based upon evidence and subject to hypothesis- rather as I hope will become clear in this article Paracelsus believed that medicine might be derived from metaphysical and theological views, in much the same way as many ancient philosophers sought to harmonise science and philosophy, testing each by their coherence with each other, rather than their correspondence with what we all see in the world.

I mention Paracelsus, largely because of Cedric Beidatsch's interesting article in Eras, an Australian history journal. Beidatsch is interested in Paracelsus's views on love- and though I don't know much about Paracelsus and therefore cannot vouch for Beidatsch's work, what he has uncovered is, if true, very interesting. He argues that basically Paracelsus's medicine and theology rests upon a pretty unique view of the way that love works. For a moment its worth going back to Plato. In the Symposium, a dialogue about love, one of the speakers argues that originally every human being was a hermaphrodite, and that they were split up by a vengeful God, and that ever since we have been striving to find our other halfs- hence the strength of the emotion of love and its fixation on one object is the fixation of a disunited human upon its other part. Its worth thinking about that, partly because I am sure Paracelsus would have been aware of the doctrine, but also because the idea provides a useful entree to Paracelsus's thought when he like Plato approached the problem of love. You see ultimately we ought to be more promiscuous than we are: this emotion of love which comes across us for one or a couple of objects out of several thousands is something that needs to be explained. Plato, at one point, explained it by reference to this idea of a split human being: Paracelsus argued that we were not split but we were created so as to have a perfect partner. He argued that God had created us and predestined us for one particular partner.

Some interesting implications flowed from this view. Paracelsus believed that we would always meet this partner eventually: providence would direct that we did, unless sin turned that providence aside. He argued that amongst such sins, we should reckon the marriage contract. The marriage contract was an attempt to bind us where no bounds were neccessary: ultimately only a sinner would break from their lover. It was also an attempt to fix us within the bounds of an artificial matrimony- marriage and inheritance could in his view distort our actual mission which was to find the love that God intended for us, in favour of finding property or power or family pride. Paracelsus believed that such love was embedded in our very natures- our chemistry was orientated to this kind of love. He found that his alchemical investigations, not to mention his theological speculations about the nature of God cemented this perspective. The construction of the human body reflected the importance of love to our health. God himself, Paracelsus held, was the product of these forces- and within the depths of the divine nature was concealed a love between God and Mary which had produced the Holy Spirit and the Son, the second and third persons of the Trinity. This structure radiating downwards provided him with some of the theses that he wanted to cure people with, but also with the ways that he understood God and the nature of our obligations to each other.

Obviously most of this is completely mad. But what is interesting about it is what it says about the way that Paracelsus and many of those who followed him, most of which probably did not understand the full ramifications of his doctrine worked. Our science and our metaphysics are actually not often related- we tend to make science empirical and metaphysics philosophical. For Paracelsus consistency between the two was much more important than it is to us- metaphysical conclusions determined things about how one would seek to cure phsyical problems. Furthermore for Paracelsus the explanation had to be complete- he sought completeness and consequently sought consistency all the way up and down the spectrum of knowledge. Every area represented an analogy of every other area- the world worked by consistent rules. Much of modern science rests on the idea that we are actually ignorant and that we have to be sceptical about what we can know. Paracelsus differed from a modern scientist because the basis of his science was not the derivation of theory from empirical matter, or from mathematics (then to be validated by empirical data) but he derived his ideas from the logical extension of metaphysical and ethical principles. He expected nature to conform to the moral world and vice versa and he expected to see a complete system.

In that sense he represents a man very much of his times and from that perspective the way his attitudes work, especially if they are as bizarre as Beidatsch suggests, reflects the different nature of science as he understood it from the way that we understand the same process.

Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925)

Two films were made of Ben Hur: this evening I went to see the earlier 1925 version, a silent film accompanied by the London Philarmonic orchestra. There is something amazingly powerful about the musical accompaniment, especially when played by an expert and profficient orchestra live- if you have the chance to see them play this, then go and see it. But turning to the film itself- made in 1925 it relies upon all the conventions of silent cinema. The style of acting is different- with more importance being placed on large gestures. You can see in some of the makeup the influence of theatre- with too much makeup being applied to an actor's face- something you would do in a theatre in order to make the actor's features visible to those sitting at the back of the theatre, but something that with close ups and all the rest is hardly needed in the cinema. These features of the film mark it out as a product of the 1920s and the silent era, in addition to the fact that there is no noise. There are moments of colour in the film- but it looks experimental- its fascinating to see the first contrast in colour in cinema that wasn't black and white, reds and blues in a black and white background.

There is more than historical curiosity though to this film. One of the most interesting features is the display of Rome as a power: Rome today is often seen as a positive thing- see for example the repeated calls from some for America to become a new Roman empire. This film demonstrates another view- whose antecedents spread back to the early Christian sources (the number of the beast in Revelation adds up to the Jewish numerical code for Nero for example) and some Roman sources (see Calgacus's speech in Tacitus, which as Mary Beard rightly points out is a critique from within the Roman system). Ben Hur embodies these critiques of Roman power- the Roman soldiers are all brutal and strong. They exploit their power over the subject Jewish population with scarcely concealed racial superiority- they are the image of imperial arrogance- and the central Roman character, Marcellus, is their archetype. Arrogant, brutish and powerful, he enjoys the rewards of imperial arrogance- sexual access, bullying condescension and an absolutely secure arrogance. All of these things ultimately doom him to destruction, as they doom in the vision of the film, the wider empire of Rome. We are left in no doubt that Rome's imperium is brutal and violent- the scenes of casual violence from the soldiers to Jews and to galley slaves make it clear, the battle with the pirates is about as violent as you could imagine with humans being spitted on pikes again the impact is profound and makes the point about Roman imperium and piratical brutality.

The other strain of the film concerns Christianity. Ben Hur is a Jewish prince whose life is destroyed by the Marcellus- and the rest of the film concerns his search for revenge against the Roman soldier (who was once his friend). That search dominates his life- but it also is not enough. For Hur hungers after the restitution of justice- in a sense his sense of justice is a mirror image of the Roman sense of entitlement- both base their senses of self on vigour and power. Both are imperial ideologies which claim an ideal of Kingship to be above anything else. But throughout the film, we get hints, sidelights of another story- like a theme of music which slowly matures from a single note to a chorus, of another approach to subjugation and loss- an approach which is deliberately counter to Hur's hunger for vindication from injustice, to Rome's claims of imperial suzereignity and that is the story of Christ. The events of Hur's life take place with the story of Christ- they only meet tangentially- but for Hur Christ is the messiah, the messiah who will restore a real Jerusalem. Throughout the film though, we are shown and eventually Hur is shown that Christ will do no such thing- that military domination, revenge and all the rest is not the mission of a true Christian, instead forbearance and a confidence in eternal justice, not to mention meekness, kindness, forgiveness no matter the slight and turning the other cheek and the emblems of Christianity. My comrades watching the film thought that was overblown- I thought the film made its point rather well- ultimately the ethic of Christianity is very different both to that of Rome but also to that of Hur, the film keeps us identifying with the Christian approach and hence we see Hur's search for revenge as justified within its own terms, but obsolete given the ethical revolution of the Nazarene.

What is interesting though is that the film shies away from making that contrast totally explicit- at the end of the film Ben Hur does indeed become a Christian, as do his family, and they embrace this new ethic. But his quest for revenge has been fulfilled- Marcellus is dead. Furthermore his family are rescued from prison and cured by Christ of their leprosy- again note that they have restitution. One of the things which is interesting here is that the director isn't able to go the whole way- isn't able to have the film finish with Marcellus alive, with Hur's family still ill and yet all having confidence in the Christian message. In a sense therefore the ending of the film surrenders its point. In part though that is too harsh- for a film's viewers the conventions of cinema require that we receive some satisfaction, the challenge of giving us satisfaction without rewarding the pagan virtues of revenge and anger is something that the story fails to acheive. In that sense, cinema would have to wait for Robert Bresson for someone who could acheive the true expression of Christ's actual message.

Overall this film though is excellent- its sequences are amazing. There was said to be a cast of 125,000 people in the film and in some sequences- the chariot race and battles at sea you can well believe it. Actors like Marion Davies and Douglas Fairbanks have uncredited roles in the crowd scenes. The acting is very good- though of its time- there is an interesting message and the music and the film chime wonderfully together. Simply put if this is on again anywhere near you, go and see it- this is one of the jewels of silent cinema and it has to be seen.

The Orphanage

The Orphanage is not an easy film to review- it depends to a large degree on elements of surprise so I'm going to strive not to give away anything in this review which will make it less satisfying. The Orphanage is really really good- its scary and plays with your mind in an interesting way, you never quite know where the story is going- there was one moment in the cinema I was in, where several voices, male and female, shouted out in amazement, surprise and horror. I can't tell you when that was but there are a couple of moments, where everyone I was with screamed or ground their fists. It is really interesting as a film as well- exploring all kinds of things, notions of family life, of the way that kids and parents interract and men and women get along or don't. Essays will be written about what the film means- who knows I might write one myself, but they might give away the ending and I don't want to do that here.

What's the story anyway? Basically our heroine, Laura, pictured above, turns up at an old house with her husband Carlos and her son Simon. Carlos and Laura want to convert the house into a refuge for kids with special needs- seems like down syndrome and the like. The house previously was an orphanage where Laura stayed as a kid before she was taken away and she recalls being very happy there, playing games with the five or six other children she was with at the time (they seem to have been the only occupants) and enjoying life. As you'll expect there is more to this orphanage than that, and more secrets to its past that Laura has repressed and that others are concealing: it all comes back ultimately to questions about disability in this case and how society deals with it- but again I run before my horse to market.

The performances are very good- Belen Rueda as Laura does brilliantly- she conveys excellently the way that a woman can lose control but also her determination in pursuit of her son's good. Fernando Cayo has a thankless task playing the husband but acquits himself very well- he is both reasonable and sensible and irritating. Roger Princep playing Simon, the son, is really cute and he fits into the template of the movie- he isn't required to do anything particularly complicated but he manages to be childlike, cute and angry at the right times. The rest of the cast also does well- there are some wonderfully haunting moments and some terrifying moments which the actors concerned portray well. The centre of the film though is Belen Rueda's performance, without it the film wouldn't work- but she does brilliantly and the film does indeed work.

I have tried not to tell you anything about this movie- beyond the details you'd know from the credits. But it is definitely worth seeing and that's why I have done what I have done. Its a fantastic film, interesting on so many different levels and one that you'll be terrified by at the time but think about for days afterwards. Go out and see the film...

Hobbes's education

Reading Quentin Skinner's Ford lectures, as I am at the moment, its interesting to reflect on the education of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes was one of the great philosophers of his or any other age- he was an innovative thinker, reviled in his own time but incredibly influential on a whole range of philosophers, both contemporaries like Spinoza and later individuals like Vico and Rousseau. Hobbes's education was typical of his era and his time- as a predigiously intelligent individual he went through a traditional education, through Oxford University and became eventually secretary to the Duke of Devonshire: as secretary to the Duke, Hobbes was able to take advantage of the library at Chatsworth and furthermore to exploit the contacts that Devonshire could give him, with intellectuals working for other English noblemen (though Skinner does not mention it, other noblemen had intellectuals working for them in similar capacities: Henry Parker for example worked for Lord Saye and Sele, Henry Ireton (a future commander in the New Model Army) worked in some capacity for Lord Wharton). Others had similar commitments- John Rushworth worked for the Fairfaxes for example and continued working for them through the civil war.

That environment brought a young intellectual like Hobbes right into the centre intellectually of the seventeenth century. Through accompanying the Duke's son through Europe, he met Mersenne, Descartes and others. Hobbes's background was incredibly conventional and strains of it were retained when he came to look at his future work: the style of his work was humanist even though its content was not. The style of his work was influenced by the fact that he Hobbes was a Latinist, who had consumed vast ammounts of classical literature. Despite saying that his time in Oxford was wasted (something he shares with that other great English intellect of the early modern period, Edward Gibbon), he learnt a great deal there- gaining a background both in classical history and in classical philosophy. He probably wasn't involved in texts which were definitely produced at Chatsworth, including a translation of Tacitus in the mid-1620s, but it was translation that took his fancy early on. We have his magisterial translation of Thucydides's History of the Peloponesian Wars: Thucydides had in analysing the break up of the democracy in Athens and the society of Corcyra (modern Corfu) provided the great classical accounts of social instability- which were to influence Hobbes's later famous account.

But even more than that, such studies influenced what Hobbes's works looked like. The Humanist scholars of the17th Century loved to illustrate their work with pictures which denoted their ideas. Hobbes translated humanist texts from 1627 onwards and despite disagreeing with them, he adopted the conventions of humanist presentation in this form at least. Take a look at the frontispeice of Leviathan (1651) shown above- it represents the central idea- that the state is a corporate personality made up of many men in a simple illustrative version. Hobbes in that sense was as in many others typical of his times, his atypicality was a production, a swerve out of what most people were doing but he used the ladder of a humanistic education, in order to demolish humanism as an idea later in life. I'll pass to his ideas and Skinner's lectures on them soon- but I think it is interesting that the relationship between this incredibly influential individual and his times was not that he sprung original from the womb, but that he was a typical educated man of the 17th Century, who had some new and revolutionary ideas.

They drive by night (1940)

They drive by night was made in 1940. It wasn't one of the greatest films ever- but it is a very interesting document of American history or rather of the American depression. Rather than understanding the story, lets understand the situation. George Raft and Humphrey Bogart play the Fabrini brothers- self employed truckers who mainly take fruit up and down the highways of the United States. A film about truckers is a film about those on the borders of society- this isn't about the New Dealbut its interesting in exposing some of the attitudes of 1930s America. The life of the open road is viewed with a kind of nostalgia and also a desire which is fascinating. Raft and Bogart play two brothers but in reality one is a young man, an overgrown adolescent, whereas the other is beggining on family life and the responsibilities that that entails. One is a boy who tempts older women, the other is a husband whose wife desires kids. Of course they are sometimes opposed in those interests: but its also worth remembering that they have an identity too- they are both truckers.

One of the interesting things about them being truckers is that this film in a sense begins an American genre or continues it. The genre is that of the adolescent road movie: more realistic than its modern inheritors, the film still has an aspect of adolescence, it is about the development of two characters through journey. But its about more than that, these two believe in journeying as a hopeful activity, they need no qualities, education or creased trousers- all they need is hope and a truck to take them to their dreams. Of course that's not quite it and constantly both of them are brought up against the limits of their dreams. Destruction and near death dog the drivers at their heels- one of them loses his arm and they both witness the death of one of their friends plunging in his sleep over the curb as he chases yet another load. Hope though provides the fuel with which one of the twins, the adolescent, played by Raft, Joe acquires a business empire which his brother later joins. However again you have the contrast between the younger man who acheives something and the 'elder' brother who retreats to the home and the solidity of family relationships. The dangers to Joe are represented by the presence of a femme fatale who attempts to distract him from the woman he should be marrying and by her wiles to take revenge when he slights her. Joe sits in a more exposed position, but can succeed more because of his innate hopeful stupidity whereas Paul is more realistic and consequently less likely to taste both triumph and disaster.

Women come into this therefore in an interesting way- and in a sense represent the classic masculine tropes. You have the woman as inspiration- driving her man to success. You have the woman as incubus, trying to destroy the man she loves. And lastly of course you have the wife who keeps her husband down through children and the patterns of homely life. All these stereotypes are present in the film- and they are all twisted through the prism of the film to become signifiers of the stages of life of a man- from adolescence to comfortable and boring middle age. Its a film whose female characters are strong but definitely off centre- something I find objectionable is that women here are objects- parts of a thesis that is only about men and only important as they contribute to male lives. Adolescence marks out Joe to be battled over by sweetheart and femme fatale stereotypes and adulthood sees Paul moored to his wife.

That main theme runs like a chord through the entire piece and in that sense it maps out the American life- in the thirties and of course in the military forties. What is interesting though here is that unlike in a film from the fifties the married middle aged man, the bureaucrat, is not held in the same universal respect. You could argue that Joe is a more successful character: you could argue he is the centre of the film. And in that sense the switch between the forties and fifties was a switch in sympathy. The film noir of the forties was a much more critical creature- it sought to expose those who aspired. Even this film, such an establishment effort in terms of its attitudes to women, argues in effect that virtu matters more than perspiration in the creation of a business. In that sense it remains a fascinating document of its time- for it argues both that success is in some sense the result of real merit but that merit is not the same as bourgeois virtue. It is a bridge between a film like the Sweet Smell of Success, where all is corrupt, and the world of the Waltons and as such exposes a lot about attitudes to marriage, employment and the world in the America of the early 1940s.

Away from her

Films about the process of aging, about death itself touch us all very closely. Away from her is a film about the most terrifying proces of them all- the slow loss of the mind that accompanies Alzheimers and the slow loss of relationships. The thing about us all is that we have to as one character says you just have to be happy, to accept what comes your way, because life is uncontrollable- and nothing is stable, nothing lasts forever and nothing endures. We live a life which is unstable and forever changing, forever evolving. Our passions, our loves and hates are all mutable and change slowly with time, they alter and they cannot be forced into a single prism, they cannot be stablised. Learning to live is learning to cope with change- change that can be dramatic and terrible but still needs to be survived- still needs to be enjoyed- to use that great theatre phrase the show must go on.

Away from her is a film that really symbolises that process. For forty four years Fiona and Grant have been married- she is now sixty two and begins to feel the affects of alzheimers disease, her brain is breaking down. Over the course of this slow film, exactly what you know will happen happens. Slowly she loses connection with the outside world, she puts the frying pan in the fridge, she forgets where she lives, she forgets who her husband is, she falls in love with a fellow patient, she slowly loses her sense of reality. A fog descends upon her mind. A blankness replaces the ever present life that once was there, curiosity becomes a conviction that the world outside the four walls of the home doesn't matter. For her husband that process is unbelievably painful: she even forgets that he brought the gifts, he brought for her, she thinks they were left around in the home. She even forgets the man who she was in love with in the home. In a symbolic moment, a girl who used to communicate with her family through her mother, the only person who could understand sign language, is forgotten by her mother- her mother is angry at the interference from this stranger signalling to her in her life, her daughter is distraught.

But he lives with the knowledge that everything has died, and he has to live with that knowledge and care for his wife at the same time. Caring for her, going in every day to the home, he doesn't drive away, he stays, he stays and watches and waits for any sign that she might recover. He waits and is dependable when all else seems lost. But he too evolves. You cannot live as a perpetual nurse, he has to learn how to cope, he has to learn how to enjoy life. He has to go to a dance for example with the wife of the man who his wife is in love with. He has to decide to be happy. He has to wake his soul- to learn how to enjoy the precious moments that are left- to enjoy the few moments of lucidity that his wife has. Its a terrifying glimpse into what the human soul has to do: we all face in a way the same dilemma, life is not so much about avoiding tragedy, its about living with tragedy and living with hope. When Pandora's box opened, that was the Gods' last gift to human kind and as Away from her demonstrates even when the person you most love is going mad, that hope can still be a precious commodity. Hope and endurance.

Carrying off a film like this is hard. It softens some of the worst aspects of Alzheimers- many sufferers berate those who come to see them. The worst thing is to see someone who knows that they are losing their mind, losing it and knowing that that is happening. Knowing that they will wake up tommorrow and cease to be Fred, Stan or Dorothy. Imagine if you can't remember the word for chair, that's not a nice feeling. It does illustrate however the way that homes for the old and sick are often surreal worlds: looking at the dining hall in this film brought back memories for me of seeing my grandmother inside such a place. That same slightly stuffy atmosphere with eighty year olds watching TV and not really understanding it. The performances here are all very good- the two leads, Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent do fantastically well at conveying the process that they are involved with. Also worthy of comment is Kristen Thomas who plays the main nurse in the film, she portrays the mixture of sensitivity and toughness that I came across whenever I met the nurses in the homes. Very kind, very sensible and yet also very strong people who are amazingly gentle to their patients and yet strong enough to bear with the quite incredible strain of looking after people who are so ill.

This is a very good film and very much worth watching, it is very sad of course, and it neglects some of the nastier aspects of the condition but it still captures the essential sadness of it. That slipping out of your mind is a tragedy for you, and also for those left behind. They see every day a body out of which the person that they knew is going, the body is still alive, it moves, speaks, but a different personality inhabits it- a personality which lacks the memories, reference points and often emotions that it had before. Those left behind have to cope with that, those going through it have to cope with the slow death of their own personality and its replacement by something else. What could be worse afterall than knowing that you are losing your mind?

George Romney: the fall of a friendless man

George Romney was briefly like his son, Mitt, (the two are pictured together above) a leading contender to be US President. In 1966 the Governor of Michigan rose to be the leading light of the Republican party, supported by the last Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower and with the support of large majorities in the opinion polls. By 1967 though Romney had fallen back to third and he too, like his son, withdrew from the Republican contest before it really got going, falling on his sword like his son before the Spring in late February. He burnt out quite spectacularly, accusing state department officials of brain washing him on a trip to Vietnam and eventually losing even the support of Dwight Eisenhower. His campaign is an interesting specimen though, as Chris Bachelder suggests, Romney fell apart in part because what worked in Michigan would not work nationally and because he underestimated the virtues of being a party man.

Romney became governor in Michigan after a successful career as a self made businessman. He became governor on the back of attacking established interests. Michigan was a state trending democrat over the period that Romney was governor, when he was elected in 1962 he was the first Republican governor since 1946 and the state voted strongly for Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 election. Romney ran against his own party in Michigan, he argued that he was the more practical 'Democrat' and suggested that the Republican establishment were in part to blame for the state's problems. Consequently Romney ran on his electability and against both a Republican party establishment he saw as extreme and corrupt and a Democrat party establishment he saw as incompetent and corrupt. He ran against politics and for competence. In some sense he reminds one of a figure like Mike Bloomberg in New York today: he was the man you could trust. Romney ran on his strong ethical principles- he spent hours praying before he ran for governor and on his practical experience.

Coming to national politics, he followed the same lines. He made a point of a rather quixotic stance against Senator Barry Goldwater, arguing against Goldwater publically only after Goldwater had beaten Nelson Rockefeller in the crucial California primary earlier in the year. Furthermore after Goldwater acheived the nomination Romney failed to support his party's candidate, Goldwater was furious writing to Romney after the election and reminding him that he (Goldwater) had supported Nixon in 1960 and expected every Republican to do the like when the party had chosen a candidate. But as Bachelder suggests Romney enjoyed prickly relations with some of the leading members of his own faction within the party. He didn't like Nelson Rockefeller because Rockefeller had been divorced, he annoyed fellow governors and never really fitted in with the press core. Unlike Goldwater who made friends across the isle with ease, Romney's assurance and prickliness irritated. Like his son he was unable to get on with even those who agreed with him. His attempts to run against the establishment worked in Michigan but did not work nationally, where the party mattered more than the candidate.

Bachelder convincingly dismisses the two other possible reasons why Romney didn't succeed. His intervention on Vietnam was maladroit- but occured after the decline in his popularity and after his main supporters had abandoned him. A more adroit or popular politician might have even survived it. Perhaps more significantly his Mormonism didn't seem to really feature in the campaign- to be honest Romney unlike his son didn't seem to survive for long enough for his religion to matter.

Romney's failure ultimately was down to success in the Republican party. He couldn't get enough politicians to actually like him enough to support him- he couldn't do what politicians as diverse as Rockefeller, Nixon, Goldwater and Reagen could, ie build a constituency of friends and followers who would follow him in a national setting. As a Michigan governor he ran on his principles and against the establishment: but the Republican Presidential campaign required compromise and comradeship. It required him to support people who he naturally found antipathetic: he was from the beggining weakened by the fact that he had not supported and had publically slighted Goldwater in 1964, if others had not supported the Arizona senator, then they had not allowed their staff to openly solicit split votes (Johnson, Romney) as Romney had in Michigan. That kind of arrogance sometimes can come across as independence- but even the most independent member of a political party who has political sense knows to curry favour with other politicians- to campaign for them and furthermore to avoid irritating them too much (John McCain the current nominee from the GOP stumped for George Bush in 2004 and for other Republicans in 2006). Romney failed that basic test- and even at the height of his popularity that earned him rebukes from significant Republican figures like Ronald Reagen. His arrogance also led him to insult and thus alienate even longterm supporters like Dwight Eisenhower, in the autumn of 1967 Romney got a strongly worded letter from Eisenhower when he implied in a speech that the President hadn't controlled foreign policy in the 1950s, he ignored the warning and Eisenhower ended up in opposition to his candidacy.

Bachelder suggests that Romney's failure demonstrates the power of the party machine- but I'd go further and suggest that both his and his son's fall demonstrates the importance to any politician of friendship amongst politicians and between politicians and journalists. Clubbability matters in the social world of politics: Romneys, pere et fils, have not attained the heights of US political power partly because they lack that ability to make their own kind feel happy in their company. Its a talent that is underrated in our democratic age, because we do not like the realisation that politics is often a sport played for a few people's minds and hearts- but the failure of George Romney to get anywhere in US national politics demonstrates the importance of personal tact and party loyalty. Ideology played a part in both their falls but the personal angle was also significant- especially as Bachelder suggests in the case of the father.

Women with good memories

Yesterday, walking home from London to my home, I was listening on my Ipod to a lecture given by an academic at Bath University about Russian literature and in particular about the Village novelists- people like Valentin Rasputin. The lecturer, Professor Gillespie of Bath University, argued that running through the Russian village novelists like Rasputin who acquired their fame in the 1970s was the motif of the surviving family- the family that survives trauma through the endurance of their women folk. Its an interesting theme, and of course was a reality for many Soviet citizens, as Orlando Figes has recently documented in his book the Whisperers, families under Stalin were broken up and destroyed by the effects of the terror and the Gulag. These ideas came to my mind when watching the Hungarian film, Szelerem (Love), which is I think the most interesting cinematic reimagining of the enduring women and the enduring family that I have ever seen.

The issue at the heart of Szelerem and of the period was the arrest and deportation of political prisoners- whether in Russia, Hungary or anywhere else subject to the horrors of the long lived Marxist tyrannies. Men often were carted away for years, taken from their womenfolk and their children for an unspecified period of time, a period in which noone knew whether their husbands, fathers or sons were alive or dead. Its a film about that removal. Alone in a room at the top of a house, is an old woman waiting for her son to return from wherever he has gone. She has been informed by her daughter in law that her son is making a film in New York, but we the audience are swiftly made aware of the fact that her son is a political prisoner and that the daughter is hiding this information from the mother in order to spare her the confrontation with the harsh reality of life.

The old woman sleeps up in an elegant white night gown, reminiscing about her earlier life as a Hungarian aristocrat. The director, Karol Makk, intercuts the sequence of the film with single shots- instant moments of long dead memory, preserved like photos in the mind and stimulated by a moment's reflection. The old woman is sustained by the work of her daughter in law- who pretends that her gifts proceed from the fantasy of the son in America- but who like a duck scrambles under water whilst maintaining a perfect aristocratic facade above the surface. More than that though, the daughter does this despite losing her own job for political reasons and despite the fact that she now has rented out her own house, living in the maid's quarters.

There is something haunting and beautiful about this movie and the performances from a superb Hungarian caste, something gently melancholic about its reflections on the loss of beauty and capacity that come with age- the old woman feebly bemoans the fact that she will never go to another concert- but it is also about the nature of affection and love. Love cannot sustain us through tragedy but it can smooth the downsides and help us shape our circumstances. This intimate film is about all that and more- at its heart it shows how the personal and political interract and gives the lie to cynicism, the greatest casualties of communism were the wives and husbands, children and parents, friends and comrades that it split apart- Szelerem is the monument to those (particularly women) who kept remembering and sustained civilisation through the dark times.

Politicians and their private lives

I promised a response to Matt Sinclair and Tim Montgomerie- here it is...

The relationship between politicians and the public is an interesting one: one of the reasons often cited that more talented people do not enter politics is the threat posed by an intrusive press to their families and friends and yet there is a suspicion that politicians live privileged lives and use their high positions in order to misbehave. Elliot Spitzer in New York has just proved the suspicion by using prostitutes whilst in another context prosecuting those who use them vigorously. Hypocrisy has never been more aptly called. Is that the reason though that we should be interested in the private lives of politicians, and how far should our interest go?

Its a question that recently has been agitating the conservative blogosphere in the UK: two of its principle representatives, Tim Montgomerie and Matt Sinclair have argued that private lives do matter. Both of their posts are worth reading. Montgomerie's essential argument is that there are public ramifications to private decisions and politicians ought to acknowledge when they have made private decisions that harmed the public good: ie taking drugs for example. Matt adds to that by reminding us about the emmense power that politicians hold over us: as he says, "we can't judge politicians entirely on their policies because we are not just electing a manifesto but a set of oligarchs to rule for four to five years." Matt doesn't really develop that point, but I think that's the central reason that we ought to be interested in the private lives of politicians.

Many decisions in government are made in ways that cannot be predicted at the time of election: in 1982, 1990, 2001 and 2003 the United Kingdom went to war in places that could not have been predicted by the general public when the elections beforehand were held. Tony Blair's second term in 2001 turned from a domestic reforming term (as intended by Blair when elected) into a Premiership concerned with the battle against terrorism. Understanding how Blair responded to terrorism of course includes understanding his ideology: New Labour was always committed to democratisation in foreign policy from the Kosovan adventure of 1999 onwards and because of the events of the early and mid 1990s in Bosnia and Rwanda, but there is more than that to it.

In order to understand Blair's decisions about Afghanistan and Iraq you have to understand his personality and way of working. Iraq, in particular, as Lord Butler's inquiry made clear, was the result in part of the way that Mr Blair and his inner circle worked: their methods meant that they divorced themselves from the reality that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, something I think Blair believed but something he was in error to believe. The problem is that often when we talk about private lives, we seem to be talking about sex lives but actually as I think you can infer from what I'm saying someone's sex life is actually not the crucial part of their private life.

In this case, US political culture, much more used to a system where one individual stands at the pinacle of power, is much more impressive than the UK's political culture. One of the reasons that some Democrats distrust Hillary Clinton is her inability to run her own campaign. Senators Clinton and Obama have not really run anything before today- but the way that they are running their campaigns indicates the way that they might run their White House staff, and the way that they respond to campaign crises, indicates something about the way that they might respond to crises during their Presidencies. The same approach ought to be made more use of in the UK: for example very few of us know anything about the way that Nick Clegg or David Cameron would govern- would they like John Major use their cabinets or would they like Tony Blair rely on a close coterie of advisors, what kind of Prime Ministers or ministers might they be (the question is relevant to Clegg as in the case of a coalition he would be running one of the great departments of state)- it is a question that we aren't looking at at the moment and that's not a great thing.

Looking at a politician's previous life can also tell us things about the way that they would behave within politics: Gordon Brown's time as a PhD student seems to have established his own patterns of behaviour, as both Peter Hennessy and Peter Mandelson have commented Brown behaves like a research student, locking himself away with the data before he comes out with a decision. Often though that means that we pay attention to the less sexy parts of a politicians' lives: a politician's affairs seem to me to demonstrate very little about their method of governing, neither does taking drugs as a teenager. As for Tim Montgomerie's arguments about externalities, I disagree, politics is not a contest about which politician has the most altruistic behaviour towards the public, its a contest about who is best able to run the commonwealth for the interest of all. Politics is of course about ideology and argument: but it is also about management, how the politician manages events and manages a large staff in Downing Street, in order to assess politicians, we need to assess their behaviour as managers of events and people. In order to assess that, often in the case of opposition leaders in particular, we have nothing else to turn to but their private lives. Such may not be perfect indicators: but with nothing else to go on and the certainty that at some point, a politician will be challenged by events that none of us could have predicted, we need to have an idea about how they might respond.

Ultimately its less the private lives of politicians, than their personalities that matter. For the key thing to think about is with what mentality they come to make decisions- are they angry, rash, thoughtful, hesitant, cautious or sensitive? Do they like detail or despise it, preferring the broad brush? How do they treat advice? The difference could be the difference between war and peace.

Crossposted at Liberal Conspiracy.

Mio fratello è figlio unico

Films about communism and fascism are not uncommon: in recent years we've seen Hitler's death, Stasi spies, British skinheads and operations aimed at counterfeiting alllied notes for Fascist uses. The Italian film, My brother is an only child, attempts to deal with these two movements as a way of exploring the growth of two youths near Rome in the 1960s and 1970s. But the film never really takes off to attain the heights of its subject matter- the film treats these professions as though they were youthful follies and to some extent they were, but that's all we get in terms of the analysis of the politics that we see on screen. There are some telling details- the writers and director know their fascist and communist propaganda of the day but incident crowds out ideology.

Rather than being a film about fascism and communism, this is a film about growing up. The two brothers- Accio and Manrico- are united by their strong passions for politics and women and divided in the direction of their political passion. Accio the youngest feels isolated from the rest of his family- victimised by his mother and forced to study at the technical college whilst being an accomplished classicist. Manrico, the elder brother, is a factory worker and a leading communist. Both though as the film goes on seem incomplete and adolescent, veering around madly as the real story of life goes on where they are not looking. This is particularly evident in their politics: here neither fascism nor communism are seen as systems but as illusions. We see the illusion at its most visible when Accio learns about the greatness of Mussolini or when Manrico proletarianises the Ode to Joy. We see it pervade their lives and their thoughts about their lives.

Ultimately though, their lives go on in different and much more important ways. Accio beds the wife of his mentor, Mario, and because of that leaves the fascists. He also leaves the fascists because of his devotion to Manrico's girlfriend, Francesca (played by the incredibly beautiful Diane Fleri). Manrico's relationship with Francesca causes Accio a great deal of jealousy but also a great deal of sorrow. Eventually Manrico makes Francesca pregnant- and as the story goes on, we see that pregnancy and the child produced from it as a test of the two brothers. One brother passes it and one brother fails it. Significantly at the end of the film, the brother that passes the test takes the only meaningful political action of the entire film: not an act of terrorism or an act of violence, not making a speech or berating an enemy, but an actual political act that helps people in living their lives forwards.

In reality this is as much a critique of the whole notion of being political as it is a critique of these two specific ideologies. It is a critique of the idea that one has to be violently politically motivated, that one's time spent down a pub discussing political ideas is meaningful or useful. What the film points out is that it does not compare to the time spent with one's family and that politics is a trivial game compared to life itself. There is a great truth in there. But its a truth not so much about politics as about growing up- as we grow and change we cast off our youthful frivolity (of which politics is and can be a part) and anchor our convictions in our communities. My wife, my kids, my friend matter much more to me than the abstract nouns about freedom and revolution that used to inspire me. One brother reaches the stage where people are people, the other sees them in the end as the ultimate abstraction.

The film has a good tempo to it- there are longeurs and it could have been shorter- but its tempo is nice. There is a vivacity to the way that the filmmakers tell the story which appealed to me, a lightness of touch and the music is excellent. Not to mention the performances which are all good. The ideas about politics may not be that interesting- this presents no analysis of either fascism or communism- but it does present an analysis of the way that part of political maturity is the realisation that people matter more than 'the people'. Furthermore in some sense it does suggest something about extremism: that communism and fascism can arise not so much from a false logic, but from a failed empathetic capacity- they are diseases of the psychopath and the adolescent for that reason. One of these brothers manages to get past that, the other is trapped finally in a heroic and yet harmful moment. Like Achilles he will not come back from his youth an old man, like Achilles in a sense he intends it.

Britblog

Apologies for being late with this, but as the Tin Drummer suggests Blogging is harder than it looks. Having said that, here goes with this latest series in the Britblog roundup- I hope you enjoy- there is everything from politics to a free film involved!

So lets get started. How about a glass of wine before we zoom into the distance, I mean afterall as Gene Expression notes that was Asterix's magic potion. You aren't so sure about drinking on a school night, well yes I agree, my behaviour changes over the week as well, as Vino points out that's hardly surprising, apparantly the polls in the US are different depending on what day of the week they are taken on. But at least we can trust polls, which is more than you can say, as Tim Ireland argues, about some of the visiting figures put out by bloggers. Tut, tut Tim obsessive I call you- obsession leads to all sorts of bad things, to what Thunderdragon shows is a really bad idea, banning samurai swords and it leads to multiple useless articles being published. Paulie wonders do you really for instance need to read a film's reviews before you go to it: as a reviewer of films I feel guilty and slink under my desk at this point, though I'd argue mine are best read after you've seen the film!

Its hard to type under this here table (thanks Paulie) but I can see the tv screen and even from here I share James Hamilton's view that Cristiano Ronaldo is really astonishing, its almost like watching Dixie Dean. And then I started wondering afterall plenty of people hide under tables, maybe its quite normal- yeah I'm behaving a bit like Letters on a Tory says David Milliband behaves. David and I need to realise that folly ain't so bad, like Lear (as the Wardman Wire suggests) we need fools to tell us the truth. Or else we might all go through that evil process Bob Piper has labelled Torification. Bob is right afterall, the private lives of politicians do matter to an extent. Tim Montgomerie provides the a list as to why they matter over at Centre Right, Matt Sinclair comments on it a bit (and I'm going to write a further addition later). Private lives, that's code for sex isn't it? Sex, sex and more sex. So what about sex then- as Dave Cole argues, our definitions of what constitutes a sex establishment varies- time to go campaigning against lapdancing.

Ah puritanism- that brings us to religion doesn't it. I can see it now the dangerous territory of religion where a blogger mustn't lose their footing, otherwise they are swept off the path to righteousness. Chris Dillow discusses the left's approach to religion. I mean even being secular, as Stephen Law points out, is a difficult enterprise- maintaining neutrality always is. Kate Smurthwaite is not interested in maintaining neutrality, her granddad died of Alzheimers and she doesn't think that religious scruple ought to stand in the way of curing people. Death is the final frontier and its a terrible one: Ellee suggests that there are correlations between people's deaths and the deaths of their partners. Talking of our grandparent's generation, on a brighter note, they would have thrilled to the film The Third Man and despite the fact that its not a British blog as this is a masterpiece of British cinema, I think its worth pausing over this tribute to Bernard Lee and the film in which he played a crucial part (not to mention the fact you can watch it embedded there). Talking of embedded videos, Ben Goldacre has a great one of Jeremy Paxman embarrassing a quack, well worth seeing.

There aren't any quacks on the Blogosphere though- as Francis Sedgemore suggests there is plenty of good leftwing writing out there, despite the fact that the new Burkeans are out to depress us all. And sometimes all that remains is for us bloggers to shake our heads in despair about the way the 'real' world works: I mean as Winchester Whisperer argues do we really need another layer of regulation on the already regulated financial services industry. Whatever our attitude to the present government, we can all marvel that there are people too fascist for the BNP with Mr Eugenides. Away from such depressing thoughts, away lets instead study not the crazy marginalia of society but the interesting marginalia of books. Comments left on the pages of books or tea spilt on the spine are all the topics for Mercurius Politicus's blog post about books and their marginalia. Or lets take a look with the Umpire at some of the cricketing stats- honest they are fascinating.

Alright so there are some of you who just want to be depressed, ok kids well head over to the Early Modern Whale and read this post on Hell! That sorts you out. What you mean there are still some people in the corner who persist in being happy, good luck to you Philobiblon isn't in the mood for bad news either and has some good news items. That seems to have got rid of everyone! Good night and good luck!

Politicians' Expense Claims

For those interested, Matt Sinclair did a rather good radio interview on Radio 4 recently about this subject (it is about 26 minutes in to the program). He lucidly explains the two main points, that MPs must live like ordinary citizens and therefore not be shielded from rising prices by an expenses system and furthermore that openness can only be a good thing when it comes to Parliamentary expenditure. Both are good points.

October 1969

This is a fascinating article in Wired magazine about how in October 1969, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger decided to feint a nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. They believed that such an attack would terrify the Moscow government into helping them in Vietnam and taking disarmanent seriously. The risks were obviously vast as American planes crossed Canadian airspace into the Arctic ocean, the Russians had no reason not to beleive that they were under attack and consequently to respond appropriately. Nixon and Kissinger believed that only if Nixon were seen as a madman willing to do anything, would negotiations take place in ways that suited the United States. Obviously the calculation did not completely backfire- we are all still here- but on the other hand neither did it work fully. Vietnam did not see peace until 1973. Kissinger claims that the move was responsible for the gradual Soviet acceptance of disarmanent in the 70s, it would be interesting to hear from someone on the Russian side or even look at Russian documents to confirm what they thought of the crisis. As it is it remains one of those episodes when the cold war almost got very hot.

The inversion of Oscar: the neccessity of employment

Bruno Anthony is one of the most compelling evil geniuses in cinema. He is compelling because he is charming. He begins the film, Strangers on a Train, by attaching himself to Guy Haines, an amazing tennis player, and proposes a scenario

now lets say that you'd like to get rid of your wife... oh no no just suppose, lets say you had a very good reason, no no lets say, you'd be afraid to kill her, you know why, you'd get caught, and what would trip you up, the motive! ah now here's my idea... listen its so simple too, two fellows meet accidentally like you and me, no connection between them at all, never saw each other before, each one has somebody that he'd like to get rid of, so they swap murders...each fellow does the other fellow's murder, then there's nothing to connect them, each one has murdered a total stranger like you do my murder I do yours,... for example your wife, my father, criss cross.

That sets off a plot which twists and turns. Haines never wants to get involved- and Bruno spends the film trying to force him to murder Bruno's father and then attempts to incriminate him in the murder of his own wife (a crime that Bruno committed). It is a plot worthy of the finest artists of suspence and in Patricia Highsmith the novelist and Alfred Hitchcock the director it found those artists. Raymond Chandler was also involved but withdrew as a screenwriter. But the key here is in Hitchcock's version the character Bruno. Bruno is the charismatic centre of the film: he is charming and sinister, an artist- but this is also one of Hitchcock's most sexual films, filled with homoerotic tension between Bruno and Guy, phallic imagery- popping balloons with cigarrettes for example- and a conspiracy to murder which is in part a seduction.

One aspect of this deserves commentary- and that is the way that Bruno is a comment on Oscar Wilde's characters in his plays about Victorian London and hence a comment on European civilisation as a whole. Wilde's characters in his novels are typically idle aristocrats: they need no incomes and no occupations. They live lives without profession or usefulness: they are noble exceedingly witty and they are sexually ambiguous. These characters live in masks and disguises which hide their neverending expeditions to bunbury, to devise more time to waste time in London or to unfold their sophisticated plans. Wilde's plays often end with the good triumphant and married (eg the Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan) and conventional endings but their structures, their comedy is subversive. Hitchcock evidently knew Wilde well: his later films are indebted for instance for scenes and ideas to films of Wilde's novels and Hitchcock to some extent lived out a Wildean fantasy of life. But Strangers on a Train is a very Wildean film and its main character Bruno is deeply Wildean: a painting in Strangers just like in Dorian Gray reflects the true personality of a respectable man, Bruno even quotes one of the most famous lines from the Importance of being Earnest and there are many other examples of direct quotation. In the play Lady Bracknell commends Jack for smoking as 'a man should always have an occupation': are we surprised to find that in the first meeting between Guy and Bruno, Bruno tells Guy that he doesn't do anything- apart from smoking which he does too much of.

That cinematic quote of a theatrical line and Bruno's overall manner, his charm and disguises, not to mention the whiff of homoeroticism (indeed bisexuality- he manages to seduce Guy's wife into being murdered) is very Wildean. It reminds one instantly of Wilde's characters. Hitchcock though was no mere ingenue, quoting simply in order to quote. He knew what he was doing- and in the character of Bruno, indeed in the set up of Strangers on a Train, he was deliberately trying to do something. Hitchcock's intentions are not easy to elucidate: the film is dark and powerful. It ends with the best of endings: heterosexual unity in the face of bisexual criminality- but noone watches this film for Ruth Roman's performance as Guy's love interest. (Ruth Roman's pubescent sister is another woman semi-seduced by Bruno and their abortive romance is more interesting than the real romance between the sister and Guy- she is another with some amazing lines, 'Daddy doesn't mind any scandal, he is a senator'.) Everyone watches the movie for Bruno's act as a Wildean genius, a dark malevolent and yet charming and seductive presence on screen.

Let us for a second go back to Wilde. In Wilde's plays, the aristocratic dilletantes are the majority of the cast- in this play Bruno is alone as the sole member of the cast with Wildean characteristics. Whereas Wilde lauds leisure in the classical manner- as a Latin poet might laud otium, Hitchcock uses Bruno to express the value of a puritanical ethic. This isn't really about sexuality- there is no doubt that other members of the cast exhibit homoerotic characteristics- but it is about manner, it is about a judgement about psychology. Hitchcock's purpose here is in my view to reject the whole concept of leisure- instead of supporting character and enabling contemplation, Hitchcock tries to show that it fosters a spiralling of character out of control. Bruno is more clearsighted than most of the other characters: he has afterall experienced everything once. But his experience, his intelligence are redundent and he knows that he is a drone, he knows that he has been forced out of three colleges and that his position in society is not assured. In contrast to Wilde's assured aristocrats, Bruno's aristocrat has to realise that the twentieth century has changed the way that position works: employment now defines your status not your birth or even your cultivation. In a previous society, Guy the proletarian trier with a solid sporting and political career would be the outcast, in 20th Century America it is Bruno.

His reaction to that is interesting. Again for Wilde frivolous sparring reduces easily to conventional or even unconventional morality. In Hitchcock's darker view leisure creates the atmosphere which perpetuates triviality: and thence arrives at an even darker possibility as genius spirals into insanity and psychosis. Bruno is more charismatic than the rest of the characters, but he is not made happier, securer or stabler by this knowledge. Rather Hitchcock's movie is a sceptical statement about the possibilities of decadence, it is a statement about the psychological possibilities that lead on from leisure, that contrary to the Romans the devil makes work for idle hands. This insight is in part basically right- and Hitchcock far more than Wilde confronts the reality of leisure and aristocratic leisure at that- it gives the time for brooding, a brooding which can create genius but as in the case of Bruno also can create psychosis. The contrast to Wilde enables us to observe the way that Hitchcock makes a historical as well as a psychological case: the time of the aristocrats is over and in the new society of 1950s America leisure is, whether it was a sensible proffession in the days of Wilde's aristocrats when society was more leisured, corrupting.

Simply put, if your only profession is smoking, the consequences are likely to be devastating in our society.

H.H Asquith and Gordon Brown

Martin Kettle argues in today's Guardian that Gordon Brown risks facing the fate of Herbert Henry Asquith in the early twentieth century. I think that Kettle seriously underestimates Asquith and overestimates Brown's possible position in the UK's political history. In order to understand things I think we need to briefly understand where Asquith stands and why he is one of the crucial British Prime Ministers of the Twentieth Century- and then understand where Brown stands, at the moment, in British political history and what dangers threaten the Premiership at the moment.

Asquith was Prime Minister for eight years. He took over two years after a general election, when Henry Campbell Bannerman retired from the Premiership and he stayed there through a second and third election (both in 1910). He was a great reforming Prime Minister- bringing in a great deal of reform over the years. Asquith brought in free medical treatment for children, free school meals, pensions, sick pay, health insurance for the poorest workers and unemployment insurance. Asquith presided over a ministry of great talents: Lyold George at the Treasury, Winston Churchill at the Home Office, Board of Trade and later Admiralty. Asquith ultimately was also significant because it was he as Prime Minister who presided over the UK's entry into the First World War. That led to his fall as Prime Minister in 1916, but as long as he was a peacetime Prime Minister he survived and did rather well.

Gordon Brown shares neither Asquith's circumstances nor his longevity (yet). Brown became Prime Minister over what looks like a tired government with many ministers having been in charge for ten years- people like Jack Straw are old figures on the political stage. The cabinet is in no way as attractive as the cabinet of 1908. Brown has not brought forward any marked reforms: he has not yet brought forward ideas which will really change Britain, rather this is a continuation of Blair's regime at Downing Street. That is the sense that Brown is really so much different from Asquith: he is a continuation of a previously charismatic Prime Minister, Asquith was the charismatic Prime Minister. The other difference is in their mentality: Brown is by all accounts an obsessive, Asquith was relaxed to the point of insouciance.

Kettle's article suggests to me one of the major perils of making historical analogies. It is attractive to think that Brown is underestimated as Prime Minister and to look for other underestimated Prime Ministers. You could possibly argue that Labour faces a threat to its position as one of the two great parties of state from the Liberals (more on that later, I do not beleive it) and look to the last time one of the two major parties was replaced by another party (the Liberals by Labour in the 1920s just after Asquith had been the last Liberal Prime Minister). But that brings you to an illusory parallel. Asquith's situation and Brown's were and are so fundementally different: their tempraments are almost opposite, they took the Premiership in different circumstances as well, Asquith's career was a casualty of the First World War, Brown's might be of the pressures of the Premiership itself and there are further distinctions about the degrees of reform that Asquith and Brown have made to Britain. In truth its a bad analogy because it doesn't instruct us as to Brown's possible future and Labour's possible trajectory.

Intelligent design and terrorists

I just recently posted two articles at the Liberal Conspiracy: one is on the difference between Brits and Americans in their beliefs about evolution and what that shows, and the other is about why we ought to talk to terrorists.

Jesus Camp

Jesus Camp is a documentary about one of the most perplexing phenomenon in the world today- American charismatic evangelical Christianity. I think I have to preface this review with two comments: firstly I am not a believer and secondly if I were, charismatic religion revolts me on an aesthetical level. For me religion is quieter and more reflective, at its best it is deeply personal and internal- an examination of the soul- I come you might say out of a different tradition, in the sense that going back generations everyone in my family was either a Methodist or an Anglican. So in that sense, this film represents a strain of Christianity that I am naturally unsympathetic to: speaking in tongues and enthusiasm generally denote for me a rock concert, not a religious profession.

Jesus Camp was made to shock. The documentary makers are definitely not evangelical nor are they conservative: though their subject is both evangelical and conservative. They show their subjects- in particular Becky Fischer the children's pastor at the centre of the film- in a particularly bad light. Fisher uses the swell of group emotion to put forward both a religious and a political cause. She also teaches these kids to isolate themselves from other kids: the stress is on everyone else's sinfulness. Furthermore she and those affiliated with her ministry teaches them ideas which are just bizarre, that evolution did not happen, that Global Warming is a government conspiracy. What you have to say watching the film though is that she is an impressive propagandist in her own cause, she uses toys, keeps the kid's attention and is charismatic and fun to listen to. Her message is obnoxious and repellant- this is a call to extoll faith and neglect evidence based reasoning. She admits at the start of the program that she admires Islamic Fundamentalists and how in camps in Palestine they educate their kids (she derives this information from that incredibly accurate source- unidentified websites) to commit terrorist acts, she argues that she wants to do the same thing for young Pentecostal and Evangelical kids.

This woman is mad and dangerous. There is an issue though with her madness which I think the film should take more seriously. I am absolutely sure that lots of kids attend her camp in the summer but the film made me uneasy because it failed to take on two rather important questions. The first of which is that Becky Fischer may not be representative of most evangelical children's ministers: at various points she says that in her techniques she is an advance of them. I wouldn't mind betting that she comes from the more extreme fringe of this phenomenon. The second thing is that we should beware that we assume how the kids react to her: at one point one of the camp workers says that the kids are far too interested in having fun and far too uninterested in Christianity: they prefer climbing stuff to theology. In that sense I wondered how long this stuff will remain in the children's minds: you may be overcome in a crowd shouting that homosexuality is evil, you may be overcome in the crowd dismissing others, but does that endure or is that just a surface phenomenon. We get interviews with Kids demonstrating that some do internalise it, but I'm not sure we get any proof that all of them do.

There is another facet to this. This kind of ministry only works because in a sense there are kids who need it. One of the most interesting facets of this film I thought was less the condemnation of evangelical right wing crazies- I can do that for myself, thankyou- than the way that it portrayed the kids. At the beggining of the film Becky Fischer approaches two boys, who must be both about 10 and one of them confesses that he doesn't find social situations easy. For that boy religion gives his life meaning and means that he can confront to some extent his fear of social situations in Christian camp. Christian camp is something that these kids look forward to as a bonding experience. The thing that is central to them I'd suggest is that the Camp is fun, the beliefs flow out of the fun that they are having. In that sense, they aren't convinced by reason or by faith but by tieing together fun with this belief system. Its an interesting sidelight on why humans end up believing what they do, I don't think it is only relevant here and another post hopefully in the future will deal with it. But the central thing that I am trying to get at is that Jesus Camp is not a good thing, but that it supplies for these children things they would not naturally have.

All that said, and I hope you see why I am ambivalent about this film, the one thing you don't find at Jesus Camp is Christianity. Bear in mind all my aesthetical conditions above, but I found the purveyors of Jesus Camp to deeply unChristian. They do not know what Christ meant when he said do not cast the first stone, they seem not to have read the New Testament and to be using Christianity as a justification for expressing their own hatreds. More than the kids, it is the adults who run the camp who seem to me to end up looking ill, Fischer and her minions have such a warped view of reality, they are so consumed by hate, that they have lost their humanity. All kindness is directed to an end, all forgiveness is secretly abandoned and self righteousness is endorsed. I am not sure that that was the message of the New Testament. There is something very disquieting about hundreds of kids yelling 'righteous judges' without really knowing what it means and wanting to listen to anyone who disagrees. Something sinister about kids wandering around a bowling ring telling customers that they are going to hell.

Many of our belief systems in the end are psychological crutches- we rely on them to sustain us during the bad times and there is nothing neccessarily wrong with that. I think what we see with Jesus Camp is interesting: of course the theology and politics is crap, a point the film makers blast into your mind again and again and again. But in some way the more interesting thing is that the kids seem to enjoy it, for some of them it fills a gap in their lives. In part that is because say the boy who said he was isolated is home schooled- he doesn't meet many other kids- so in part it arises from this unique conservative Christian culture in the States, but it also arises out of real needs the kids have. I am not saying that I endorse anything that goes on at Jesus Camp, but in a way that's not the interesting question. The interesting question is about why these kids enjoy it so much, adult attention, the sense of being part of a 'greatest generation' and the comradeship of their fellow Christian kids I'd suggest have a lot to do with it. The basis of a religion, you have to be joking! But the film presents us, despite the intentions of its makers, with an interesting sociological portrait of how these camps perform a role in the life of the kids that go to them. And that is far more interesting than bashing Bush another time.

Paul Schofield

When Paul Schofield died I wrote this on Bits of News. I think at the time I should have posted it here- but I didn't and so I post it today, concurring even more than I did when I wrote it with my judgement on March 20th- as such I feel it should go on this blog.

Paul Schofield was one of the great actors of his generation. He did the great roles- Lear, Hamlet- and succeeded in being according to others the best Lear of his generation. He also took an oscar for playing Thomas More in a Man for all seasons. I came across him towards the end of his career, but even so you could see that this was a formidable actor. Its three performances of his- neither of which much remembered in today's obituaries that I particularly remember him for. That in a sense seared his impression upon my brain as a film viewer and as a consumer of poetry.

Schofield in 1989 was persuaded by Kenneth Branagh to take part in Branagh's Henry V as the King of France. Normally the French King is a pathetic man with little time on stage, but Schofield's presence imbued a small part with great weight and majesty. When he was on the stage, even playing a doddery old failing King, he gave that part a sense of Priam-like forsight. This was a man you could see who could not hold back the tide but could forsee the way that it was turning. He used Shakespeare's lines which create the personality of the King of France, to flesh out a role that was both feeble and wise. A role which in a sense performed the perfect counterpart to Branagh's Henry. Henry is of course the good King, vibrant and vital- Schofield's King was the good king grown old surrounded by foolish councillors and an even more foolish son. In a sense his presence in the play made it unneccessary for the earlier history plays about Henry IV to be performed- for Schofield's role demonstrated that the other side of Kingship was there, the side of kingship that worries and frets, that is powerless under the threat of fate. He performed that role so well that I can't think of the film without him in it- even though he was on stage during none of the major set pieces and probably only for a few minutes.

Secondly I came across him in Quiz Show where again he played a father to a brilliant son- but this time the brilliance of the son was flawed. The son, played by Ralph Fiennes, was corrupted by the lure of money. Schofield's role as the father was brilliant. He was able to make the father's slightly intellectually snobbish academic knowledge charming and forgivable. He was able to demonstrate how beneath the crust of sophistication there were very strong principles that this man believed in and wished to follow. Again Schofield's performance did not take away from the main drama of the film, rather his performance strengthened many of the other aspects of the film. He was the dressing that made the salad work, but he didn't obscure its other components.

My last memory of Schofield, and again it'll be one that lots share, is as a reader. He read in the early 2000s as he reached his eightieth birthday, the Waste Land on BBC Radio. He captured the full range of its voices, appreciated its nuances and the rhythm with which Elliot managed to infuse the closing calls at a pub or the crowds over London Bridge. Its one of the most frequently listened tracks on my Ipod and it demonstrates the ability of the man's voice to permeate the poem, to give a difficult text meaning and also its versatility, coping with all the different voices of Elliot's imagination.

I cannot claim that I knew Paul Schofield, nor that I saw his best work which people say was on stage. I was too young to observe him in his prime as an actor, too unobservant to realise as a teenager that I should have made an effort to see him and others of his generation before they passed. Yet I think from these three moments- captured on film and on radio- even I could sense today was a moment of sadness. We have lost a superb actor who lightened up the stage and was able to really reach into and think about great parts. For me, neither of the three experiences I wrote about above could have been the same without Schofield's sure grasp of what he had to do and his talent for doing exactly that- bringing out of his character something to make the films and poem work even better. Working with the grain, not against the other members of the cast, but with them and not overacting them off the stage with his performance.

PhD

I just thought I'd apologise for the radio silence on the blog- normal service will resume shortly- by saying that the reason is that I have just handed in my PhD thesis!

A Pigmy Leaf Chameleon

I was just watching Life in Cold Blood the latest David Attenborough series to get to sleep and saw this: its a pigmy leaf chameleon and is the smallest reptile in the world. Attenborough has been searching for it for the last fifty years.

Moses on drugs?

A recent paper argues that he was on drugs. I'd suggest that he hasn't proved anything: there isn't much else to say but if you are interested in a fuller discussion of the argument, then have a look at it. I don't suggest that you can refute the argument but I do suggest that the article doesn't prove its case.