A review of the 2020 film “Quo Vadis, Aida?” about the massacre at Srebrenica
March 10th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
The break-up of the former Yugoslavia led to a number of brutal conflicts of which the worst was the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992-1996 – a country which I visited in 2007. Hollywood has shown no interest in this war but there was a British-made film in 1997 called “Welcome To Sarajevo” about the four-year siege of Bosnia’s capital city.
“Quo Vadis, Aida?” deals with one particular incident – an especially brutal one – in that conflict when, in July 1995 at the small town of Srebrenica, over 8,000 men and boys were massacred by Serb forces in spite of the fact that the location was supposed to a UN ‘safe haven’ under the control of Dutch blue-helmeted troops.
This film is very much a locally-produced work which required the support of no less than 12 organisations to bring to the screen. It was shot locally with local actors and extras speaking local languages and at times the viewer can feel that it is almost a documentary.
The writer, producer and directer is Jasmila Žbanić, a Bosniak who was born into a Muslim family. The titular role is that of a local teacher turned interpreter Aida Selmanagić, played powerfully by Jasna Đuričić who is actually Serbian, a woman does everything she can to save her husband and two sons.
We feel the fear but we never actually see the massacre in this restrained but compelling account that is deeply moving.
Catch it on Netflix when you’re not actually watching news of the invasion of Ukraine to be reminded of a previous war in contemporary Europe.
Posted in Cultural issues, History | Comments (0)
A review of the history book “On The Cusp” by David Kynaston
March 9th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Distinguished British historian David Kynaston has embarked on a formidable project to produce a post-war history of the country under the banner “Tales Of A New Jerusalem” which will eventually cover the period 1945-1979. The distinctive style of this historical record is his use of contemporary records such as diaries, letters, and news reports.
By the time of the global pandemic, he had written three of a planned six segments (each of two volumes) entitled “Austerity Britain” (1945-1951), Family Britain” (1951-1957) and Modernity Britain” (1957-1962).
“On The Cusp” is something of a break-out work written largely during the first lockdown of spring and summer 2020 and covering only those months between June and October 1962. He calls this period the cusp of the ‘real’ swinging 1960s as highlighted by the release of the same day on the first Beatles single (“Love Me Do”) and the first James Bond film (“Dr No”).
At the time, I was a 14 year old schoolboy in Manchester who had just started writing a daily diary – a habit which would run for (so far) 60 years.
Kynaston’s work is highly readable, almost compulsive, but the picture he paints of 1962 comes across as somewhat grim, although it did not seen so at the time.
People’s teeth were in a terrible state and there was the scandal of thalidomide babies. Race relations were toxic and homosexuality was illegal. There were only two channels of television both black & white. Farming was ceasing to be a major source of employment, while the traditional industries of coal, steel, and textiles were in decline. Beeching was savaging the railways. Harold Macmillan was Conservative Prime Minister and promoting Britain’s application to the so-called Common Market, while Labour’s Hugh Gaitskell was opposing this because it would be “the end of a thousand years of history”.
Thank goodness for the Beatles and Bond …
Full disclosure: my diary is quoted.
Posted in Cultural issues, History | Comments (0)
A review of the 2010 film “East Pray Love”
March 5th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Successful American writer Elizabeth Gilbert left an unhappy marriage and an unsatisfying relationship before deciding to spend a year finding herself through travel in Italy (eating), India (praying) and Indonesia (loving). In 2006, she published a chronicle of this year of “spiritual and personal exploration” which has gone on to sell over 12 million copies in over 30 languages. In 2010, this film version came out with Julia Roberts as Gilbert. I didn’t get round to watching it until I was desperate for an uplifting film to divert me from the terrible news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The movie is too long (two and a quarter hours), too light (PG certificate), and – for me at least – too imbued with spirituality, but it is watchable enough. As well as Roberts who gives a sensitive performance, it is full of beautiful people such as Billy Crudup, James Franco and Javier Bardem – who play her lovers – with some fine support from the likes of Viola Davis and Richard Jenkins. And, of course, there is some glorious location shooting in Italy’s Rome, India’s Pataudi, and Indonesia’s Bali. And, finally, there is a happy ending as Elizabeth falls in love.
I can understand Elizabeth’s anguish over her divorce, having undergone two myself, but the whole idea of taking a year to find oneself – financed through a $200,000 advance on a book deal – strikes me as massively self-indulgent. And, after all that food, meditation and sex, did she find herself?
Well, after her first marriage of 8 years, she married the guy she met in Bali only to split after 9 years. After that she had a commitment ceremony with a female friend dying of cancer followed by a relationship with a mutual male friend that was short lived. I suspect that this is a woman with commitment issues which no amount of spiritual meandering will resolve. She herself has written an article, entitled “Confessions Of A Seduction Addict”, in which she confesses that she has “careened from one intimate entanglement to the next – dozens of them – without so much as a day off between romances”.
So see the film as a very particular effort to find romance without any general lessons on how to find it.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (1)
Have you heard of the “bald-hairy” joke in Russian political discourse?
March 3rd, 2022 by Roger Darlington
“Bald-hairy” is a common joke in Russian political discourse, referring to the empirical rule of the state leaders’ succession defined as a change of a bald or balding leader to a hairy one and vice versa. This consistent pattern can be traced back to as early as 1825, when Nicholas I succeeded his late brother Alexander as the Russian Emperor. Nicholas I’s son Alexander II formed the first “bald–hairy” pair of the sequence with his father.
In modern Russia the pattern is a frequent subject for jokes and cartoons. It is often used in political journalism:
“Bald, hairy, bald, hairy, bald, hairy—that’s how we elect our leaders,” my St Petersburg friend quips when I ask if she voted in the presidential elections. “Think about it: Lenin was bald, Stalin was hairy; Krushchev was bald, Brezhnev was hairy; Gorbachev was bald, Yeltsin was hairy—and Putin is practically bald. Medvedev had to win.”
You can see a full sequence of “bald-hairy” Russian leaders here.
Now, Vladimir Putin has been in power – as president, then prime minister and then president again – for almost 22 years, longer than any leader except Stalin. It is to be profoundly hoped that his disastrous war against Ukraine will encourage a coup against him. For the tradition to be honoured, his successor should have a good head of hair.
Posted in History | Comments (0)
A review of the new Danish film “Flee”
March 2nd, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Animated films for adults can deal with difficult issues in a powerful way. This was true of the French “Persepolis” (2007), which looked at life in Iran, and the Israeli “Waltz With Bashir” (2008), which depicted war in Lebanon.
Now (2021) we have a Danish animated feature which, like the other films mentioned, tells a true story, this time the experience of a refugee from Afghanistan who, travelling via Russia and Estonia, eventually reaches freedom in Denmark. As well as the trauma of this journey, he has to come to terms with his sexuality.
This remarkable tale comes to us as a result of the childhood friendship of the Danish Jonas Poher Rasmussen, who directed and co-wrote the film, and the Afghan Amin Nawabi (not his real name), the co-writer of his own story.
The style of animation is very different from Disney or anime; it is pencil-sketch outlines with minimal colour and for this disturbing subject it works very effectively bringing home via one person’s narrative something of the terror of the refugee experience more widely.
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A review of the 1957 classic film “12 Angry Men”
March 2nd, 2022 by Roger Darlington
If this American film on the jury system were made today, all of the dozen jury members would not be male and white, but the work remains a classic because it is so well written and acted and because its messages remain so resonant: the majority is not always right, discussion can change minds, and – more specifically – in a criminal trial, where there is a reasonable doubt, the defendant must be acquitted.
Reginald Rose originally wrote this as a television play but Henry Fonda was so impressed that he put his own money into producing the film and took the lead role.
Except for very brief scenes at the beginning and end, all the action – shot in black and white with Fonda’s character the only jurist in a white suit – takes place in the confines of a hot, sweaty and claustrophobic jury room and the story is told in more-or-less real time. In his first such role, it was directed by Sidney Lumet whose earlier work in television gave him experience of shooting in black and white and in restricted spaces.
Each member of the ensemble cast is given an opportunity to make his mark and, in a taut hour and a half, we see how everyone brings his background, his life experience, and his prejudices (especially of class and race) to the formation of opinions and the making of decisions.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
What now for Ukraine and the world?
February 27th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I’ve hesitated to blog about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I was embarrassed by the role of Londongrad – my home city – as a laundromat for dirty money from Russian oligarchs and plutocrats. The situation in Ukraine seemed too horrific and heartbreaking for comment. I wondered what I could write when so much has already been said.
I last felt this way in August 1968 when, as a young man of 22, I followed the media coverage of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. I had to wait until 1989 for that wrong to be righted. By then, I was married to a half-Czech and had already visited Communist-controlled Czechoslovakia.
This time things must be different.
I think that many observers expected the Russian invasion to be so quick and brutal that Kviv would be occupied and the Ukrainian government would be overthrown in a matter of a few days. That could still happen but, thanks to the bravery of the Ukrainian military and citizenry and the belated provision of armaments from NATO nations, it is beginning to look as if there may be other options.
There might be a ceasefire and negotiations. There might be a Russian acceptance of limited territorial gains. There might be a sustained insurgency against any Russian-imposed governance and occupation. There might even be a coup against Putin.
But I can’t help feeling and hoping that, whatever the outcome, geo-politics have changed forever. It would be wonderful to think that the world community has accepted that invasion of one nation by another is so totally unacceptable in the 21st century that it will not be allowed to happen with impunity. There will always be insurgencies and revolutions – but war as we have understood it throughout history should become literally history.
How could this possibly be the case?
First, we now have the satellite and electronic technologies to ensure that invasion by one nation of another – at least at scale – can never be a surprise. In 1941, Stalin could deny the human intelligence that he had of Hitler’s intention to launch Operation Barbarossa, but satellite photographs on an hourly basis and transcripts of political and military communications cannot be ignored.
The intelligence community – especially in the USA – correctly warned of each stage of the Russian military build-up and of the intention of the Russians to invade once the Winter Olympics in China were over. The same forewarning should be true of any future planning for international aggression.
Second, the world community is slowly coming to a realisation that – if it really wants to do so and it is prepared to pay the price – sanctions can have a real impact on an aggressor nation. Targeted and sustained economic sanctions against government entities, corporations and individuals, denial of access to financial and transactional systems, exclusion of all trading relationships, plus total boycotts of sporting, cultural, academic and scientific events and programmes, raise the bar of consequences that any potential aggressor will have to face.
Third, we have to be realistic and accept that war cannot be outlawed simply by good intentions, forewarnings and sanctions. In the end, any potential aggressor has to know that force can be met with force. We may have thought that the end of the Cold War meant that we had a massive peace dividend and that peace-loving nations could now cut back substantially on their military expenditures and preparedness.
The Cold War remained (relatively) cold because of the power of deterrence. It is an ugly truth that we still need deterrence and that it has a cost that we must be prepared to pay.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (4)
A review of the triple Academy Award nominated film “The Lost Daughter”
February 26th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
This psychological drama is based on a novel by a woman (the pseudonymous Elena Ferrante); it is both written and directed by a woman (the debut role for actor Maggie Gyllenhaal); and the three leading roles are taken by women (Olivia Coleman, Jessie Buckley and Dakota Johnson). It deals with an incredibly sensitive subject: the notion that parenting does not come naturally to everyone, even a woman. And there is a suggestion that how we parent is shaped by how we ourselves were parented.
The central character is Leda, a middle-aged literature professor on a working holiday on a Greek island, who is played by Coleman in the present and by Buckley in flash-backs, both of whom give wonderful performances of a woman in anguish. I think this would be classified as an art house film and key features of this style of moviemaking are slowness and opacity. So the pace is languid, which seems to suit the sea-side setting, and, while it is clear that Leda is damaged, we never learn why this is the case.
A seminal incident in the film is the loss of a child (hence the title) and her doll and I cannot help recalling that the final work in Ferrante’s four-part collection of Neapolitan novels is entitled “The Story Of The Lost Child” and that the beginning and the end of the quartet’s text involves respectively the losing and returning of two dolls.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
A review of “The Thursday Murder Club” by Richard Osman
February 25th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I know that crime is an immensely popular literary genre but I generally avoid it. However, I made an exception for Osman’s first book because it has been such an incredible success and I wanted to be part of the zeitgeist. By the time I read the novel, it had achieved sales of over a million, been the subject of a film deal, and announced to be the first of a series of four.
The eponymous organisation consists of four characters in their mid or late 70s (only a little older than me!): Elizabeth an ex-intelligence officer (apparently); Ron who was once a trade union leader; Joyce, a former nurse; and Ibrahim who used to be a psychiatrist. They are all residents of an upmarket retirement village called Coopers Chase and they meet each Thursday in the Jigsaw Room to review cold murder cases until one day they encounter a new murder in their locality.
It has to be said that this is a very readable work, facilitated by the 377 pages being divided into no less than 115 short chapters. The language is plain, the characterisation is weak, and the plotting is very contrived but, unlike other crime novels, the approach is gentle and the style is humorous (is this how crime novels are supposed to be?).
I don’t want to spoil it for you (well, why not?) but, by the end, the bodies are piling up – some murders, some suicides, some historical, some recent – so fast that I found it all rather ridiculous.
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Word of the day: irredentism
February 23rd, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Irredentism is a political and popular movement whose members claim (usually on behalf of their nation) and seek to occupy, territory which they consider “lost” (or “unredeemed”), based on history or legend.
The term comes from Italians seeking ‘lost’ parts of Italy occupied by the then Austria- Hungarian Empire.
Vladimir Putin is a modern-day irredentist.
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