A review of the new Mexican film “Roma”
January 2nd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
This is a deeply personal film from Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón whose previous work was the stunning “Gravity”. He has said that 90% of the narrative is autobiographical and accordingly it is set in a very particular place and time.
The place is a district of Mexico City called Colonia Roma – hence the title – which, at the period of the story, was a decadent area of middleclass families down on their luck. The time is a 10-month period from late 1970 to mid 1971 which included an earthquake and a student revolt.
Cuarón tells his personal story in a pronouncely personal style as writer, director and cinematographer, shooting in black and white, largely on location, and often using his signature long shots. The authenticity extends to the dialogue which is in both Spanish and Mixtec – the language of the Oaxaca region from where the domestic staff hail – plus (not subtitled) a bit of indigenous language.
From the opening credits – a lengthy view of a driveway being mopped by soapy water – to the closing shot – a sky traversed by the occasional aircraft – you know that you are in the hands of a true artist.
This understated film begins slowly, painting an intimate portrait of a professional family consisting of parents, a grandparent, four children and two housekeepers. But, as the story unfolds, there are scenes of profound impact which have life-changing import for all the characters.
Most unusually, the point of view is that of one of the servants Cleo who in real life was the Libo to whom the film is dedicated and who is still alive. The Paco boy character is director Cuarón who was 10 at the time of the incidents represented. Amazingly, only the person playing the mother (Marina de Tavira) had previous acting experience and yet the debut performance of Yalita Aparicion as Cleo is simply mesmerising.
“Roma” has rightly received rave reviews and it is Mexico’s entry to the Academy Awards for 2019. You can catch it on Netflix.
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For me, a new year means a new diary
January 1st, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I have a near-lifelong practice of writing a diary and I have an entry for every day since I started. As 2018 ends and 2019 starts, I have now kept a diary for 57 years and the total number of daily entries now stands at 20,817.
I find comfort in keeping a diary: I record everything I have done and I can note whatever I am feeling. Also I think that keeping diary makes me more reflective about my life.
I’ll keep going as long as I can …
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (2)
Why it’s fun to be in one’s 60s or 70s in today’s Britain
December 29th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Since I was 70 this year, I’ve had to change the title of my light-hearted look at some of the advantages of being a pensioner in Britain. Check it out here.
Posted in British current affairs, History, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Binge-watching the television adaptation of “My Brilliant Friend”
December 28th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Two years ago, it took me almost three months, but I completed my summer/autumn reading project: to read the four works and 1700 pages that make up the ‘Neapolitan Novels’, an acclaimed series by the Italian author Elena Ferrante.
This is a saga of the 60-year friendship between two girls from a poor neighbourhood of Naples after the Second World War: the narrator Elena Greco, known as Lenu, who becomes an accomplished writer and Raffaella Cerullo, known as Lila, whose never leaves Naples.
The first novel in the series is called “My Brilliant Friend” and I reviewed it here. The second novel is titled “The Story Of A New Name” and you can read my review here. The third novel is “Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay” and I reviewed it here. The fourth and final novel in the chronicle is called “The Story Of The Lost Child” and you’ll find my review here.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve been recording a couple of television series so that I can binge-watch them over the Christmas/New Year period and I’ve just started working my way through the eight episodes of the adaptation of “My Brilliant Friend”.
This is a wonderful Italian production with all the dialogue in Neapolitan or Italian and it’s available in the USA on HBO and in the UK on Sky Atlantic. You might not be able to catch the television series but I do recommend the novels.
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“Listening at Christmas – and always” by Roger Darlington
December 24th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
A few years after I left my secondary school in Manchester, I was invited to help out with the school’s Christmas Fair and I decided to have a go at being Father Christmas. I had recently grown my first full beard and thought that I would enter into the role by rubbing flour into my growth. Though I say it myself, I looked rather splendid and certainly I attracted lots of custom.
I was enjoying myself enormously, bringing a sense of magic to so many young children, but I was mystified by one young boy who paid for a second visit and then astonishingly for a third. The presents on offer were really pretty pitiful, so I asked him why he was coming to see me so often. He answered simply: “I just love talking to you.”
It was then that I realized that, in many households, parents do not encourage their children to talk and really listen to them. This was a lesson that I have taken with me throughout my life. So, at home, at work, socially, always encourage family, friends, colleagues to talk about themselves and their feelings – and really listen.
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How Jeremy became Paddy
December 24th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Why was th deceased Liberal Party leader Paddy Asshdiwn called Paddy rather than Jeremy like the current Labour Party leader? This explanation is taken from the “Guardian” obituary:
John Ashdown, an Ulster Protestant who was an Indian army captain and his Ulster Catholic wife, Lois (nee Hudson), who had been an army nurse. The family did not return to Northern Ireland until after the end of the war, when his father invested his savings in a pig farm and then a market garden, both of which failed. Ashdown was christened Jeremy John Durham but gained his nickname, Paddy, from his Irish accent when his father managed to obtain a place for him at Bedford school, where he himself had been educated. The accent was soon lost, though the nickname never was, and there Ashdown obtained a military scholarship, which paid the school fees.
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My review of the award-winning film “Shoplifters”
December 24th, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, this wonderful Japanese work was written, directed and edited by Hirokazu Kore-eda. Set in Toyko, it presents a vision of Japanese society that we rarely see: a disparate group living in real poverty and surviving through a mixture of irregular and insecure work, benefit fraud and the eponymous shoplifting.
The literal translation of the original Japanese title is “”Shoplifting Family” which is a better appellation because it more accurately conveys what the film is about. This is not a story about criminality but an examination of the nature of the family unit.
We never see a genuine family genuinely happy, but we do observe a gathering of different ages and origins who manage to create a support group imbued with sensitivity and care, although the motivations may be opaque and even selfish.
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A review of the new super-hero movie “Aquaman”
December 23rd, 2018 by Roger Darlington
After two brief previous appearances in earlier movies in the DC Extended Universe, Aquaman (aka Arthur Curry) – played by Hawaii-born Jason Momou who has real physical presence – now has his own feature film in the form of the traditional origin story for super-heroes.
The unusual environment of the undersea world of Atlanta provides some novel visuals with giant sea horses as marine cavalry and a drum-playing octopus (I kid you not). But I found the whole thing someewhat disappointing – a messy plot and action that is often just too fast and furious (director James Wan was responsible for “Fast And Furious 7”).
I’m afraid that all that hanging around in front of green screens was not fully rewarded, not least for an under-utilised Nicole Kidman as our eponympus hero’s mother Atlanta.
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A review of “This Book Will Blow Your Mind”
December 22nd, 2018 by Roger Darlington
The title certainly grabs the attention. The subtitle – “Journeys to the extremes of science” – is more explanatory of what to expect. However, while science books generally tell us what we know about a particular branch of science, this work suggests that much of what we think we know may be incomplete or even wrong, across a range of sciences especially in the worlds of cosmology and quantum physics.
Frank Swain is Communities Editor at the “New Scientist” magazine and has collated 59 essays by 41 of the magazine’s contributors. It is not an easy read, with some technical language and some tough concepts to embrace, but it is a fascinating and sobering review of how little we really know about so many important features of our universe.
At the hugest level, it asks such questions as “Why does the universe even exist?” and postulates that “a quantum leak could be flooding the universe with dark energy” and “gravitational waves could reveal hidden dimensions”. We are invited to consider the possibility of white holes as well as black holes and the notion of antigravity where things fall upwards.
At the tiniest level, it reminds us that matter has characteristics of both a particle and a wave at the same time and mentions the weird idea of entanglement which is the ability of quantum objects that were once related to apparently influence each other’s properties when subsequently separated. We are introduced to the use of imaginary numbers, such as the square root of minus 1, and a possible new sub-atomic particle called the dilaton which would help us to understand the Higgs boson.
Mindblowing? Well, yes – and discombulating too.
Posted in Science & technology | Comments (0)
All the president’s men and women who have left the service of Donald J Trump
December 21st, 2018 by Roger Darlington
Jim Mattis, US Defence Secretary, has announced his resignation over the president’s premature withdrawal of US troops from Syria.
is incredible – and very damaging to public policy – how many key officials in the Trump administration have resigned or been fired in the space of just two years.
But, of course, it tells us everything about just how utterly dysfunctional is today’s White House under the leadership of the worst president in memory if not history. The consequences are felt not just by Americans but by all of us around the world.
The BBC has helpfully produced a summary of 27 of the departures: who left and when and why. Check it out here.
Posted in American current affairs | Comments (0)