A review of the entertaining new film “Conclave”
December 2nd, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Which is best? The book or the film? It’s an endless – and perhaps fruitless – debate.
I’ve read and enjoyed so many books by Robert Harris, but not the 2016 novel on which this film is based. The book has been an international bestseller, but this excellent cinematic version has so many visual and aural elements that cannot be rendered as vividly on the written page: imposing settings in Rome and at the Cinecittà Studios (standing in for the Vatican), vibrant clothing and ornamentation (all that red and all those crosses), superb cinematography (the French Stéphane Fontaine), an arresting soundtrack (the German Volker Bertelman), a magnificent roster of actors (Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, Isabella Rossellini), and lines delivered in Italian, Spanish and Latin as well as sonorous English).
Of course, we have to thank Harris for the narrative: the machinations and power plays of the election of a new pope by the College of Cardinals sequestered in the Sistine Chapel. However, German director Edward Berger, giving us such a different work from his “All Quiet On The Western Front”, and British scriptwriter, Peter Straughan, who adapted “Wolf Hall” for television, have done brilliantly in creating a cinematic version, while Ralph Fiennes – playing the cardinal who must convene the conclave – gives an understated, but career-best and Oscar-worthy, performance.
If the film has some weaknesses, they are essentially those of the novel: a rather fanciful plot with a weak ending and a simplistic representation of the dichotomy in the Catholic Church of the debate between liberalism and conservatism. But now I am going to read the book …
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Need a suggestion for a Christmas present?
December 2nd, 2024 by Roger Darlington
This Christmas, if you’re looking for a modestly-priced and personal gift for family and friends, please consider one of these books which are available on Amazon. You can tell them that you know the author.
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A review of the book “Orbital” by Samantha Harvey
November 26th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
It won the 2024 Booker Prize, it is short (136 pages), and it has a great cover – all reasons why I was attracted to this strikingly unconventional and utterly original novel, the fifth by British writer Samantha Harvey who is a tutor on the MA course in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. It is set on the International Space Station and describes 24 hours in which the craft makes 16 orbits of the Earth – in effect, “a day every ninety minutes” – carrying four astronauts (American, British, Italian and Japanese) and two cosmonauts (both Russian), four of them men and two women.
It is a work with no plot or narrative, simply a record of the passage of time with a series of observations and reflections. Every portion of the globe is referenced and every colour of the palette is deployed. It is beautifully written with glorious language and imagery utilising a vocabulary both eclectic and extensive. One moment we have a three-page sketch of the 14 billion years of our universe and another moment there are three pages examining an enigmatic painting by Velázquez. It’s that type of book.
So, what is it about? Quite simply, it is Harvey’s love letter to our fractured and fragile planet. She writes: Without that planet there’s no life … without that earth we are all finished” and suggests that “The earth is the answer to every question”. She describes it as “a sight of such magnificence it shoots your senses apart”, “this thing of such miraculous and bizarre loveliness” and “an unbounded place, a suspended jewel so shockingly bright”.
Harvey is in love with our planet: “Continents and countries come one after the other and the earth feels – not small, but almost endlessly connected, an epic poem of flowing verses.” She appeals to us all with the existential ecological question: “Can we not stop tyrannising and destroying and ransacking and squandering this one thing on which our lives depend?”
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A review of the new blockbuster movie “Gladiator II”
November 20th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Ridley Scott is an outstanding director with a terrific canon of work. Many of his films cry our for sequels and he regrets now not having directed the sequels to “Alien” and “Blade Runner”. He’s been working on a sequel to “Gladiator” for decades and now, 24 years later, here it is. The guy is now 86 and I’ll have whatever he’s having.
Of course, “Gladiator” was so good – it was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won five – that even Ridley Scott could never equal it, but this is a very satisfying sequel that does what good sequels should do: reprises all the main themes but with variations and inversions. So, for instance, we have an enthralling opening battle sequence again, but this time on a different edge of the Roman Empire on a different terrain and with the hero on the losing side.
All the character types in the first movie are reprised but, with only two exceptions (Connie Nielson as Lucius’s mother and 86 year old Derek Jacobi as a senator), all the actual actors are different. Most notably, of course, we have Paul Mescal in the eponymous role, with a voice and body far removed from his breakout role in television’s “Normal People”, and he plays the part ably with more sensitivity than the macho version that we had with Maximus.
The most interesting character is the owner of the gladiator school Macrinus because his motivations are obscure. If one can overlook his American accent, this is one of Denzel Washington’s finest performances.
The greatest strengths of “Gladiator II” are the same as the original: convincing costumes, stunning sets, clever special effects, and exciting battle and fight sequences but, as well as not exhibiting the sheer originality of the 2000 film, the sequel rather plays lose with history in its main colosseum scenes, does not have similarly quotable lines of dialogue, and has a weaker ending. Nevertheless, you will be entertained.
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What is time?
November 17th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Now there’s a question and a cold and wet Sunday is as good a time as any to attend a course on this topic. It was at London’s City Literary Institute and just one day. It was delivered by Radmilla Topalovic and it was mind-blowing.
We spent a lot of time looking at how time is expressed in terms of years, months and days and where the measurements and terminology came from. The story goes back to the Sumerians, but we can thank the 16th century Pope Gregory for the calendar currently used by most of the world.
Everything became more complicated when we moved on to quantum physics with talk of entanglement, quantum foam, quantum tunnelling and quantum electrodynamics. It maybe that time does not exist at the quantum level.
The main takeaways from the course were: there is no absolute time; for any particular person, time feels absolute, but it is all relative to you and where you are; beyond the sub-atomic level, time emerges from the notion of entropy or disorder; it may be that time is not fundamental to the universe.
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A review of the classic 1975 film “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”
November 2nd, 2024 by Roger Darlington
This classic film won all five of the top Academy Awards: Best Picture and Best Screenplay plus Best Director (the Czech Milos Forman), Best Actor (Jack Nicholson as rebellious inmate Randle P McMurphy) and Best Actress (Louise Fletcher as the acidic Nurse Ratchet). It is based on the best-selling novel by Ken Kesey, which he wrote after his experiences working in a California Veterans Hospital, and it was filmed in Oregon State Hospital.
It is a powerful work, by turns amusing, moving and tragic. Maybe, for Forman, the hospital was a metaphor for then Communist Czechoslovakia but, for all of us, it is symbolic of a society that struggles to show tolerance and kindness to those who are different and even challenging.
It is a tour de force by the brilliant Nicholson as the central protagonist and victim, but so many minor roles stand out too, notably Will Sampson as the giant chief and newcomers, soon to be stars in their own right, Christopher Lloyd and Danny DeVito.
One of the advantages of being a member of the British Film Institute is that one can often see classics on a big screen again and viewing this film once more, some 50 years after its release, was such a pleasure, concluded with audience applause.
Of course, times change and, like all older moves, this is a work of its time, but I hardly feel that it was necessary for the BFI to provide the warning: “Contains racist and sexist language and outdated depictions of people with mental health issues.”
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Kamala Harris vs Donald Trump: who will win?
October 31st, 2024 by Roger Darlington
This evening, I attended online a 90-minute presentation on the US presidential election given by Mark Malcolmson, the Principal of London’s City Literary Institute and an expert on American politics. Here are my take-aways with some key quotes.
Following Joe Biden’s eventual withdrawal from the race thanks to the decisive intervention of longtime ally and friend Nancy Pelosi (apparently they haven’t spoken since), Harris has proved to be “an incredibly strong candidate” and performed “infinitely better than we expected”.
Some 60 million people have already voted. So few Americans remain to be convinced one way or the other that “I genuinely believe this is a turnout election” and so “It will be the ground game”. Like almost everyone else, Malcolmson believes that “It’s too close to call”.
Of course, the vagaries of the Electoral College mean that the winner of the popular vote and the winner of the EC vote may not be the same person. Malcolmson is fairly sure that Harris will win the popular vote (so am I) and “My heart tells me that she’s going to win” the EC vote (again I agree, but that may just be because I can’t contemplate the notion of Trump back in the White House).
This election will be historic for a number of reasons:
1) If Trump wins, it will be only the second time in history that the same person has won two non-sequential presidential elections. In the final decades of the 19th century, Grover Cleveland was the 22nd and 24th president and, over a century later, Trump would be the 45th and 47th president.
2) If Harris wins, it will be only the second time that a person of colour has occupied the White House and the first time ever that a woman has won the presidency in the near 250 year existence of the United States.
3) This is the first time that every swing state – there are seven in this election – has had the two leading candidates separated by a polling difference that is within the margin of error.
4) Every presidential election, the candidates claim that it is the most consequential such election, but: “It is the most important presidential election ever“.
As well as the presidential election, next Tuesday voters will choose all 435 members of the House of Representatives and 34 members of the Senate. Malcolmson thinks that the House could be won by the Democrats but that the Senate will be won by the Republicans.
If both of those assumptions prove to be correct, this will be the first time in history that both chambers have changed majority but in the opposite direction.
If neither the Democrats nor the Republicans win both chambers, then whoever becomes president will struggle to pass legislation and will resort substantially to the use of Executive Orders.
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A review of the new film “The Room Next Door”
October 29th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
An internationally acclaimed director: the Spanish Pedro Almodovar making his first English-language film in his distinguished canon of 23 movies and one where he is writer as well as director. Two very talented actresses: Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore who are rarely off the scene in what is effectively an impressive two-hander. A serious social issue: the benefits and risks of assisted dying. An award winner: the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
This is a film that promises much and largely delivers. Both the characters played by Swinton and Moore are writers and we are invited to consider to what extent we should be allowed to write our own narrative. There are many literary allusions in this richly-textured work, most notably to “The Dead” by James Joyce, but this is a story about active listening as well as active dying.
Thematically, this stylish work – sound and colour are both engaging – recalls a more emotional film of four decades ago: the 1982 “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” This is a question that we have still not answered but, at the time of writing, is being debated in the British Parliament. “The Room Next Door” takes a particular position and puts its case with calmness and sensitivity.
However, Almodovar’s dialogue occasionally feels a little clunky and some might find it too much of an art house movie, somewhat removed from everyday life: a slow exposition of the issues facing a cultured and economically-comfortable pair of empowered women.
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A review of the ambitious work “Why Empires Fall”
October 27th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
John Rapley is a political economist at the University of Cambridge and Peter Heather is Chair of Medieval History at King’s College, London. Together they have written a work which essentially argues that currently the Western Empire faces the kind of challenges that led to the collapse of the Roman Empire around 500 AD. The book seems to have attracted considerable praise, but I confess that I found it a difficult read and the central argument unconvincing.
The book is heavy going because it bounces constantly between the period 1945 to present, when the Western economic and political model has dominated world trade and geo-politics, and the middle centuries of the first millennium AD, when the Roman Empire came crashing down. It is insufficiently clear on why Rome fell and on why the West might do likewise.
The argument fails to convince because there is no consensus on why the Roman Empire collapsed when it did, the West today does not constitute an empire in the same way, and – even if we agreed on why Rome fell and that the West is a comparable empire – empires fall for different reasons.
I do agree with the authors when they assert: “It is not possible make the West great again in the sense of reasserting an unchallenged global domination.” They argue that survival of “the best of Western civilisation” requires an accommodation with a resurgent China, rather that across the board confrontation, and the implementation of “a new fiscal contract” which would include such elements as greater taxes on wealth rather than income, fairer labour laws, a universal basic income, increased home-building, and later retirement ages.
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Holiday in India & Bhutan (14): back to Kolkata
October 16th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
On Tuesday, we started the return home by leaving Bhutan for India, so it was another early start as we left our hotel at 7 am.
In all my years of travel, I’ve never experienced an airport which is so calm and so beautifully decorated and so gloriously located as Paro in Bhutan. It was such a peaceful way to leave such a beautiful country.
Very soon after take-off, those of us on the starboard side (which included me) could see the Himalayas including Mount Everest (but I did not have a window seat and did not manage to take photographs).
We flew with Bhutan Airlines on a short flight of one hour. Then we were back in Kolkata with its heat and hustle and honking. The festival of Durga Puja was over, but now the entire city was consumed with excitement over the festival of Kali Puja.
We were back in the same hotel as the start of our trip, the Taj Bengal, but very quickly we were collected by our city guide from last time, Malini, for some more sightseeing in Kolkata.
We started with South Park Street Cemetery, formerly known as as ‘the Great Christian Burial Ground’. This is one of the earliest non-church cemeteries in the world (1767-1790) and houses numerous graves – often quite ostentatious – of British Empire soldiers, administrators and their families. Death often came early in those days because of diseases.
Next we visited St John’s Church which was founded in 1787. This was the second Anglian church in India. Today it hosts in its grounds a memorial to the British victims of ‘the Black Hole of Calcutta’ in 1756.
Finally we walked around the centre of colonial Calcutta.
This was originally known as Tank Square (so called because the city’s main water tank was there), then called Dalhousie Square (named after the Governor General of India from 1847-1956), and now renamed as Binoy-Badal-Dinesh Bagh (named after three young independence activists who in 1830 assassinated the Inspector General of Prisons) but always shortened to BBD Bagh.
We saw the former Governor’s Mansion, the old Post Office and the Writers’ Building. These days, the square houses all three branches of the Government of West Bengal.
We were supposed to have gone on to see a Jain Temple, but our guides were fearful of the traffic building up for the Kali festival, so this visit was abandoned (I saw Jain temples in Khajuraho in 2003).
The journey back to our hotel would normally take no more than half an hour, but there was so much traffic, so much police redirection, and a demonstration about the rape of a female health worker that we mostly edged our way forward, frequently were halted for lengthy intervals, and sent by police to parts of the city unknown to our driver, so that it was three hours before we reached the hotel and a bladder-pressured six hours since we had originally left the hotel.
That evening, the group celebrated the 47th wedding anniversary of a Indian couple in the group. Interestingly, it was an arranged marriage.
Wednesday saw our return to London in the afternoon, so we had a free morning. Jenny and I were keen to use the time to visit a new location and chose to go the the Indian Museum. We hired a hotel-provided car which had us at the museum in a mere 10 minutes and picked us up exactly as planned two and a half hours later.
The museum was founded in 1814 and it is the oldest and largest museum in the country. On two floors of a grand building, there are a dozen or so sections covering a wide range of subjects. We chose to explore the sections on evolution, painting and archaeology.. Everything is labelled in three languages (Hindi, Bengali & English) and the exhibits are genuinely fascinating and impressive, but the cafe and shop are very poor.
Before we left for the airport, our tour manager for the whole holiday, the wonderful Tracey Richards, gave us final information and I gave a short speech of thanks to her on behalf of the group. I called her “the divine goddess” and praised her attention to every detail and ability to flex the programme when necessary.
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