A review of a fascinating book on the making of the classic film “Lawrence Of Arabia”

March 12th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

“Lawrence Of Arabia” by Kevin Jackson (2007)

The film “Lawrence Of Arabia” (1962) is my favourite cinematic work and to date (2023) I have seen it 12 times, so I thoroughly enjoyed this short (127 pages) examination of the making of the movie, which is one of the books in the British Film Institute Film Classics series. We become so enamoured and familiar with a classic work that there is a tendency to think of it as the perfect execution of a brilliant plan.

However, Jackson relates the number of failed efforts to bring T. E. Lawrence’s story to the screen, the number of other possible producers before the formidable Sam Spiegel took charge, the other directors considered before the superbly talented David Lean was chosen, the other writers who worked on scripts before Robert Bolt produced such apposite and memorable dialogue, and the other actors who were contemplated for the key positions before newcomers Peter O’Toole in the eponymous role and Omar Sharif as Sherif Ali gave arguably the best performances of their lifetimes (although today white actors would not be given the Arab roles filled by Alec Guinness and Anthony Quinn).

Jackson describes the logistical and financial pressures involved in the filming in Jordan, Spain and Morocco and the rush to cut the gargantuan output down to a screenable length. We learn how Lean was filming before he had a completed script, how Maurice Jarre struggled to finish the score in time, and how Lean was making cuts until the last moment and, even then, was not entirely happy, even with scenes that have become iconic (such as the arrival of Sherif Ali at the well, which Lean would have liked to have been even longer).

When Lean originally finished it in late 1962, “Lawrence” ran for 222 minutes; however, the version that went on general release in early 1963 was cut to 202 minutes; finally, the restored version of 1989, with cuts reinstated by Robert Harris and Lean’s final cutting, lasts 216 minutes (plus overture and exit music). “Lawrence Of Arabia” is not flawless – no work of art is – but I agree with Jackson when he declares that “It’s the most wonderful combination of spectacle and intimate character study which ever fell into a filmmaker’s lap”.

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Would you like to see inside the Global Seed Vault in the Norwegian Arctic?

March 8th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

“Jutting out of the permafrost on a mountainside on Spitsbergen, in the Svalbard archipelago, the entrance to the world’s “doomsday” seed vault is worthy of any James Bond movie. Surrounded by snow, ice and the occasional polar bear, the facility houses 1.2m seed samples from every corner of the planet as an insurance policy against catastrophe. It is a monument to 12,000 years of human agriculture that aims to prevent the permanent loss of crop species after war, natural disaster or pandemic.

The Global Seed Vault in the Norwegian Arctic, which opened in 2008, is closed to the public and shrouded in mystery, the subject of numerous internet doomsday conspiracy theories. Now, to celebrate the vault’s 15th anniversary, everyone is invited on a virtual tour to see inside the vast collection of tubers, rice, grains and other seeds buried deep in the mountain behind five sets of metal doors.”

This is the opening of a recent article in the “Guardian” newspaper.

You can access the virtual tour here.

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A review of the new Italian film “Nostalgia”

March 7th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

My mother was from Naples and took us there twice as children, so the city has a special place in my heart. Naturally, therefore, I was attracted to this 2022 Italian film, co-written and directed by Mario Martone and based on a 2016 novel, which is shot mainly in the impoverished Rione Sanità district of Naples.

The cinematography is simply wonderful and captures brilliantly the atmosphere of this urban slice of comradeship and corruption. Felice (Pierfrancesco Favino) is nostalgic for the friendship that he had with Oreste (Tommaso Ragno) some 40 years ago, before he left the city to make a new life in Egypt, but revisiting his past is going to have huge consequences for his present.

There are so many magical scenes in this moving work but, for me, the most touching was when Felice reconnects with his aged mother and bathes her with gentleness and love.

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So, just how important are our friends?

March 7th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

“Building your life around close friendships rather than family or romance is a joyous and necessary act of rebellion, and governments should put in place ‘friendship ministries’ to radically rethink the way society is organised, a key French philosopher has argued.

Geoffroy de Lagasnerie this week publishes a manifesto for friendship, ‘3 Une Aspiration au Dehors’, detailing his close friendship with two other writers, Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis.”

This is the opening to a short article in today’s “Guardian” and made me think.

My sister lives in Leicester and my brother lives in Manchester. My (second) marriage broke up seven years ago. So, by default, I’ve had to focus on friendships over family or relationship. This was especially true during lockdown but, more generally, my friends sustain me each day.

I think that there is a reason why, in all countries and cultures, women live longer than men in spite of generally having harder lives. I think that women are better at building and sustaining social networks.

Literally, our friends keep us alive.

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A review op the 2022 Korean film “Broker”

March 5th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

I admired and enjoyed the 2018 Japanese film “Shoplifters” which was written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda. In this 2020 work – which again he both writes and directs – he switches both location and language to South Korea, although he reprises some familiar themes.

The core of this story is the notion of a ‘baby hatch’, a place where new mothers who do not want to bring up their baby cam leave them for care in an orphanage, a practice which exists in Japan but more commonly in Korea. A worker at the church where the baby is left, a black marketeer, and the child’s mother form an unlikely team to travel round the country looking for a couple to whom to sell the baby, all the time trailed by two female cops hoping for an arrest.

Like “Shoplifters”, Kore-eda does not make moral judgements and shows the gradual formation of an unconventional ‘family’ so that, despite the subject matter, there is some humour along the way and an uplifting ending.

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A review of the 1975 film “Jeanne Dielman 23, Quai du Commerce, 1800 Bruxelles”

March 2nd, 2023 by Roger Darlington

Every ten years, the prestigious magazine “Sight And Sound” conducts a poll to nominate the top 100 films of all time and, in 2022, the No 1 was “Jeanne Dielman”. In spite of over 60 years of serious film-viewing, I’d never even heard of this work but, when the British Film Institute screened all 100 of the chosen films, this was one that I made a point of seeing for the first time.

The film, written and directed by Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman (then just 24), used a predominately female crew. It chronicles three days in the life of the eponymous Belgian middle-class widow, played by Delphine Seyrig who is rarely off the screen. Jeanne cares for a teenage son who is almost mute in his engagement with his mother.

There is little dialogue and little plot. All the sound is diegetic – that is, inherent in the scene and not overlaid from without. Over a bum-numbing length of 3 hours 21 minutes, we have a series of wide-angle shots of the rooms in her flat with the camera held in a fixed position for very long periods of time as Jeanne cooks, washes and cleans in a life of quotidian routine of domesticity.

Sounds exciting? This feminist work is a vision of oppression and alienation presented in the starkest of terms. It is highly original and, in its own way, ground-breaking. But the best film of all time? Not in a hundred years.

Footnote: Following a period of hospitalisation for depression, Chantal Akerman committed suicide aged 65.

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A review of the Indian blockbuster “RRR”

February 24th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

This Indian-made Telegu-language movie is one of the craziest that I’ve ever seen but it is immensely entertaining.

Let’s start with that enigmatic title which doesn’t appear on screen until 40 minutes into the story. The initials stand for different things in different languages used in India. In English, they mean Rise, Roar, Revolt. But that gives you no indication of the film’s subject matter.

It is a fictional imagining of how two real Indian revolutionaries, who never actually met, establish something of a bromance before taking on the might of the British Raj in 1920. The central characters are Alluri Sitarama Raju (played by Ram Charan Teja) and Komaram Bheem (played by N T Rama Rao Jr).

Separately and together, they exhibit almost superhero powers and bounce back from brutal punishment in their dealings with British colonial personnel who – with only one exception – are represented as unbelievably cruel, Nazi-like oppressors (one woman in particular is the personification of Lady Macbeth)

So politically this film is problematic in embodying an almost spiritual version of anti-colonialism and patriotism that will be welcome to the current Hindu-nationalist government.

But it delivers just over three hours of one fabulous and fantastic action sequence after another, leavened with humour, romance, dances and seven new songs. It presents a full palette of brashly colourful scenes from a terribly brutal public whipping of one of the heroes to a terrific dance competition set to the hit song “Naatu Naatu”.

Co-written and directed by S S Rajamouli, “RRR” is a special effects-heavy work that is the most expensive Indian film to date, but it has been so popular at home and abroad that it has easily recouped its investment.

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A review of the classic 1959 French film “The 400 Blows”

February 22nd, 2023 by Roger Darlington

This French-language, black and white film was the first made by François Truffaut who both directed it and wrote the screenplay. It is partly autobiographical and tells the story of 13 year old Antoine Doinel played by the only slightly older Jean-Pierre Léaud. Truffaut went on to make a further four films with Léaud, but this one is regarded as the classic.

It is shot in a naturalistic, almost documentary-like, style in which the city pf Paris itself is almost part of the cast. So the opening shots show the Paris of the tourist, with the Eiffel Tower viewed from a variety of angles, while much of the following narrative portrays a grittier, working-class view of urban life at home, at school, and on the streets.

The final minutes of the work are particularly memorable as the camera tracks the boy running and finally freezes on his face to provide an ambiguous conclusion to this immensely moving and rather sad tale.

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Revisiting my review of “All Quiet On The Western Front”

February 21st, 2023 by Roger Darlington

Now that the film remake of “All Quiet On The Western Front” has this week won seven BAFTA Awards, I think it’s a good time to revisit my review of the work to which I’ve now add a footnote.

I’ve not read the novel by Erich Maria Remarque (1929) but I have seen the Academy Award-winning film version (1930) and, following a recommendation from my brother, I was determined to see this new German-language adaptation on the big screen even though it is a Netflix production. I’m pleased that I did because the cinematography is wonderful and a cinema showing maximises the impact of this powerful work.

The director Edward Berger and the cast – the focus is on young Felix Kammerer as the 17 year old soldier Paul Bäumer – are German, but the film was shot in the Czech Republic and most of the technical team were Czech. The depiction of the appalling life in the trenches and the terrifying attacks over ‘no man’s land’ are brilliantly done and I was particularly moved by details like the collection of ‘dog’s tags’ from the dead and the recycling of uniforms from the deceased.

Opening in the spring of 1917, the narrative concludes with the peace ‘negotiations’ of November 1917 – which was not in the novel but provides historic context – and underlines the hopeless position of the German politicians and the hardline posture of the French military. The film is a tough watch with considerable violence and brutality but it seems that every generation has to be reminded that war really is hell.

Footnote: Although this film has been very well-received outside Germany and it has won many international awards, interestingly in Germany itself it has had a more mixed assessment. This is largely because this version of the novel departs significantly from the original source material – which is a standard text in many German schools – especially in the final scenes of the death of the central character. In fact, the original screenplay was not by a German or in German, but by Scottish professional triathlete Lesley Paterson who wrote it in English.

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A review of “The Joy Of Science” by Jim Al-Khalili

February 13th, 2023 by Roger Darlington

Jameel “Jim” Al-Khalili is an Iraqi-British scientist who is professor of theoretical physics and chair in the public engagement in science at the University of Surrey. He is well-known for his writing and broadcasting in which he explains difficult concepts in an accessible manner. This short and simple book contains little new to anyone who has actually studied science (as I have but many haven’t), but it is an eloquent reminder to us all of the value of the scientific method and the importance of using this in our everyday lives.

Eight chapters each make a powerful point:

  1. Something is either true or it isn’t and ultimately social constructivism is nonsense.
  2. The simplest explanation is not necessarily the correct one and the best theory is one that most accurately predicts the world.
  3. Mysteries are to be embraced but also to be solved because at the heart of science is curiosity.
  4. We’re all capable of digesting more complicated ideas than we may initially give ourselves credit for.
  5. Don’t value opinion over evidence and be open-minded but not empty-minded.
  6. Recognize your own biases – such as confirmation bias and belief perseverance – before judging the views of others.
  7. Don’t be afraid to change your mind, especially if the facts change.
  8. In the so-called era of ‘post-truth’, stand up for reality.

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