A review of the new film “Society Of The Snow”

February 7th, 2024 by Roger Darlington

Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was the chartered flight of a Fairchild FH-227D from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago, Chile, that crashed in the Andes mountains on 13 October 1972. The flight was carrying 45 passengers and crew, including 19 members of the Old Christians Club rugby union team, along with their families, supporters and friends. Three crew members and nine passengers died immediately and several more died soon after due to the frigid temperatures and the severity of their injuries.

During the 72 days following the crash, the survivors suffered from extreme hardships, including sub-zero temperatures, exposure, starvation, and an avalanche, which led to the deaths of 13 more passengers. The remaining passengers resorted to cannibalism to survive. Eventually two survivors, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, made a 10-day trek to find help. On 22 and 23 December 1972, two and a half months after the crash, the 14 remaining survivors were rescued.

This utterly astonishing story of human survival has been told in film before: the 1993 American production “Alive”. It was shot in British Colombia with an American cast led by Ethan Hawke. I never saw that film, but I wanted to see “Society Of The Snow”, the 2023 Spanish version of the story.

The photography is stunning: much of the film was shot in the Sierra Nevada in Spain but other shooting was in Uruguay, Chile and Argentina including the actual crash site in the Andes. Three replicas of the fuselage wreckage were deployed to considerable effect. A deliberate choice was made to use unknown actors for the Spanish-speaking cast and clearly great efforts were made to consult with the survivors and their families. Spanish director J. A. Bayona has managed to make a film that makes you feel that you are in the action while demonstrating sensitivity to the real characters portrayed and the agonising decisions that they had to make.

The scale and impact of this work cry out for it to be seen on the big screen, but the film has only had a very limited theatrical release in a few countries, so you’ll have to see it – as I did – on Netflix. It has been nominated for Best International Feature Film at the 2024 Academy Awards.

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A review of the new film “American Fiction”

February 4th, 2024 by Roger Darlington

This is an African-American work in the sense that the source material (the novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett), the writer and director (Cord Jefferson in a feature-film debut), almost all the actors, and the subject material are all African-American.

But this is not “The Color Purple”; instead the message of the movie is that most white people only encompass black narratives if they are stereotypically about slavery, poverty or gangsterism. So the lead character, Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, is an African-American professor of English who struggles to have his fiction work sold because it is insufficiently stereotypically black. In this role, Jeffrey Wright (whom, I confess, I only know from recent James Bond films where he played CIA agent Felix Leiter), is wonderful and, in an impressive support cast, watch out for Sterling K Brown as ‘Monk”s gay bother.

“American Fiction” is part social satire (the fiction in writing) and part family drama (the roles we play and the secrets we keep). In the former capacity, the film asks us to rethink how people of colour are presented in storytelling media. In the latter sense, we look at the different ways in which we reveal ourselves to family and friends and the benefits of openness and trust. So there is a lot going on here, but the style is light and enjoyable and the ending deliciously multi-choice.

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A review of the new film “All Of Us Strangers”

February 2nd, 2024 by Roger Darlington

Adam (Andrew Scott) and Harry (Paul Mescal) appear to be the only occupants of a new London tower block and, hesitantly at first, become lovers. But both, in their different ways, are troubled individuals. Adam wants to reconnect with the parents he lost in a car accident 30 years ago and, finds that when he visits what used to be the family home, his father (Jamie Bell) and mother (Claire Foy) are there and the three of them are ready to talk in ways that they were unable to do in the past.

This is clearly a deeply personal film for writer and director Andrew Haigh and lead actor Andrew Scott, both of whom are gay men, and the semi-autobiographical nature of the narrative is underlined by the use of Haigh’s real childhood home, just outside Croydon, being used as the location of scenes in the home of Adam’s parents. The direction is assured and the acting achingly powerful in a film that packs an emotional punch as it explores universal themes about the need to love and be loved.

It is a slow work and I wasn’t always sure exactly what was going on, but critics have raved and awards will flow.

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Marking Holocaust Memorial Day

January 27th, 2024 by Roger Darlington

If you know something about history, if you have Jewish friends, if you’ve visited Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, today cannot pass without me remembering the Holocaust.

You can remind yourself of some of the basic facts by reading my review of a book on the subject by a Jewish history teacher whom I met when he was delivering a course about the Holocaust. Never again.

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“Why We Get The Wrong Politicians” by Isabel Hardman (2022)

January 27th, 2024 by Roger Darlington

This analysis of British politicians was first published in 2018 (when it was a winner at the Parliamentary Book Awards) and then revised and updated in 2022. I was given it as a present for Christmas 2023 and therefore read it in a year (2024) when we will have a General Election which is almost certain to return several hundred new Members of Parliament. Hardman is Assistant Editor of “The Spectator” and knows a great deal about Parliament and Parliamentarians. Her book is well-researched and well-written, but ultimately it is dispiriting and – in my view – too critical of individuals and not sufficiently radical in proposing institutional change.

So what does she mean by the wrong politicians? She is right to draw attention to the under-representation, compared to the population as whole, of women and ethnic minorities. In recent years, significant progress – especially by Labour in respect of female MPs – has been achieved, but more needs to be done. I am not sure that it is realistic – or even desirable – to press for more working-class MPs, but certainly it is wrong that such a large proportion of MPS went to a private school (largely a problem for the Conservatives). In a section headed ‘Are they normal?’ Hardman points out that many MPs have had dysfunctional upbringings and exhibit addictive behaviours, but I think that this is true of top achievers in many professions and, in any event, I am not sure how and why selection committees should ‘screen out’ such characteristics.

She explains the incredible pressures of the job: the need to have two homes, the challenges to relationships and parenting, the crazy hours of working, the appalling physical conditions of the Palace of Westminster, the inadequate IT systems, the suffocating control of the whips, the ever-growing volume of constituents’ cases, the vitriol on social media, and even the security risks (MPs were murdered 2016 and 2021). But all of this has nothing to do with MPs being the wrong type of person. We should be thankful that some talented individuals want to endure such hardships.

She is especially critical of MPs behaving ‘wrongly’, notably in their inability adequately to scrutinise legislation and ensure that Bills are likely to achieve what Ministers say they intend. She is right that MPs from the governing party do not challenge Ministers and amendments to Bills proposed by Opposition parties almost never succeed. But this is not the fault of individual MPs; it is a feature of our legislative system. There should be much more scrutiny of draft legislation before it is tabled in the House and much more post-scrutiny of legislation to see whether it has actually worked.

This would require a closer alignment of Bill Committees and Select Committees and more power for the latter. It would also require not just a stronger role for backbench MPs but more involvement of subject experts, think tanks, civil society and – dare one say it – the media (why does the media show more interest in an MP’s sex life than whether a Bill will make poor people even poorer?). And, unpopular as it may be, we need to recognise that MPs need better resources including larger staff in both Parliament and the constituency.

Like so many books on current affairs, Hardman spends much more time describing the problem (which is actually not the wrong politicians but the wrong political processes) and very little time addressing possible remedies. In an informative and enjoyable work of around 340 pages, Hardman devotes just 17 pages to the chapter entitled ‘Can We Get The Right Politicians?’ In particular she avoids the need for constitutional change. On the one hand, she notes “at any one time, over a hundred MPs aren’t actually doing their job as members of the legislature because they are in fact members of the executive” and spends three pages debating the merits of ‘separation of the powers’ before concluding “It isn’t going to happen”. On the other hand, she dismisses much-needed electoral reform in a single sentence.

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What do you know about zero-degree longitude and the international date line?

January 26th, 2024 by Roger Darlington

The location of zero-degree latitude is obvious (the equator), but the location of zero-degree longitude is a purely political decision. It was variously placed at the Canary & Madeira Islands, the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, Rome, Copenhagen, Jerusalem, St Petersburg, Pisa, Paris, and Philadelphia (among other places) before it finally settled down in London. No wonder I grew up as a young child thinking that Britain was the centre of the world.

It was in October 1884 that the Greenwich Meridian was selected by 41 delegates representing 25 nations at the International Meridian Conference held in Washington, D.C., United States to be the common zero of longitude and standard of time reckoning throughout the world.

But how did we decide on the international date line (IDL)which is the degree of longitude that determines the date of where you are at any given time?

By universally accepted convention, the IDL is essentially 180 degree longitude, but no international organisation, nor any treaty between nations, has fixed the IDL drawn by cartographers: the 1884 International Meridian Conference explicitly refused to propose or agree to any time zones, stating that they were outside its purview.

Conveniently the line 180 degree longitude runs through the least populated part of the globe – the middle of the Pacific Ocean. In many places, the IDL follows the 180 degree meridian exactly. In other places, however, the IDL deviates east or west away from that meridian. These various deviations generally accommodate the political and/or economic affiliations of the affected areas, usually small islands.

Conventionally, the IDL is not drawn into Antarctica on most maps.

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A review of the new film “Leave The World Behind”

January 25th, 2024 by Roger Darlington

I was attracted to this Netflix offering by the impressive cast list: Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali, Kevin Bacon. At first, it looked promising: an apocalyptic setting full of strange events, discordant sounds, and unusual camera angles.

I kept waiting for the slow pace to pick up, for more dramatic sequences, and for a convincing ending but none of that was forthcoming. The film is too long and says too little. Maybe the story worked better as the novel on which it is was based.

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Have you ever watched ASMR videos? Apparently it’s a thing.

January 24th, 2024 by Roger Darlington

If you follow social media, you may have noticed a few of the more than 13 million ASMR videos online. Many of the videos create ASMR-inducing sounds to play out social situations with actions that may trigger a response. The videos have rapidly gained popularity, but they may still leave you wondering: What is ASMR exactly? How does it work? And, does it help as some people suggest?

ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response; a term used to describe a tingling, static-like, or goosebumps sensation in response to specific triggering audio or visual stimuli. These sensations are said to spread across the skull or down the back of the neck and, for some, down the spine or limbs. When experiencing ASMR sensations, some people report pleasant feelings of relaxation, calm, sleepiness or well-being.

Not everyone experiences ASMR. For those who do, the experience seems to be in response to various triggers or situations involving sight, touch or sound. The intensity of specific stimuli may vary, and while one person may respond to the sound of whispering, another person may experience ASMR while talking softly or moving slowly.

Not my thing.

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A review of the new movie “The Holdovers”

January 21st, 2024 by Roger Darlington

The odd title refers to those students and staff at an exclusive boys boarding school in New England who are forced to stay behind at Christmas 1970 when everyone else leaves for family and fun. An accomplished director, a brilliant script and three stand-out performances make this comedy-drama a thoroughly enjoyable film that swings back and forth between humour and pathos with ultimately a message of revelation and redemption.

The director is Alexander Payne, a man with a distinctive style who has previously given us such successes as “About Schmidt”, “Sideways” and “The Descendants”, but had not had a hit in a while. A recurrent theme in many of his movies is disappointment and here we have that emotion in spades. The scriptwriter is David Hemingson and this is his first writing for the cinema. There are some wonderful one-line zingers (“I thought all the Nazis were in Argentina”) but it is the subtle integration of comedy and sadness that marks this out as superb storytelling.

The lead actor is the one-off Paul Giametti who worked with Payne in “Sideways”. Here he plays an acerbic and bitter classics teacher who does not care what students and faculty think of him as he holds to his own standards. Dominic Sessa impresses in a sensitive first appearance in film as the last student left as everyone else finds somewhere else to go. To complete the golden trilogy of this cast is Da’Vine Joy Randolph as the bereaved head cook who, in spite of her different class, colour and body, brings teacher and pupil together while finding her own sense of escape from the pain of life.

Along the way in this entertaining and moving winter of discontent, you’ll learn why Father Christmas is a false image for the season and how classical history gave us the word punitive.

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