Word of the day: larking
August 19th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Larking is the art of looking for the little treasures that are all around us, on beaches (beachlarking), in fields (fieldlarking), at home (houselarking and gardenlarking) and of course mudlarking in rivers, especially on the River Thames, next to which I live.
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A review of the 2016 political thriller “Miss Sloane”
August 19th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
This film is a terrific reminder of a lesson too often forgotten in the world of movies: a really good film has to start with a really good script. Amazingly, the scriptwriter in this case, the British Jonathan Perera, had never written a film before this one which won him Best Screenplay from the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain. His legal and teaching background clearly helped but this is a man who has obviously devoured the work of Aaron Sorkin in “The West Wing” in order to produce this wordy and richly-textured script.
I confess that i could not catch all the dialogue and some of what i caught I didn’t understand, but the narrative is never less than compelling.
The next essential ingredient of a successful film is a fine cast. The eponymous role of Washington political lobbyist is brilliantly filled by Jessica Chastain. She is wonderful at playing strong women (think “Zero Dark Thirty”) and clearly relishes a wordy script (think “Molly’s Game”). But the support cast is excellent too with stars like Mark Strong, Sam Waterston and John Lithgow and newcomers such as Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Alison Pill.
Once you have the script and the cast, it all needs to come together with an able director and here we have more British talent with John Madden who gave us such character-driven work as “Shakespeare In Love” and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel”
If you want car chases and shoot-outs, this is probably not the film for you. But, if you care how laws are made in the USA and how guns are controlled (or not) in that country or if you just like a fast-paced political thriller with as many twists as a corkscrew, “Miss Sloane” is highly recommended.
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As we debate the admission of Afghan refugees, I’m reminded of the Evian Conference of 1938
August 18th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
The Évian Conference was convened 6–15 July 1938 at Évian-les-Bains, France, to address the problem of German and Austrian Jewish refugees wishing to flee persecution by Nazi Germany. It was the initiative of United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt who perhaps hoped to obtain commitments from some of the invited nations to accept more refugees, although he took pains to avoid stating that objective expressly. Historians have suggested that Roosevelt desired to deflect attention and criticism from American policy that severely limited the quota of Jewish refugees admitted to the United States.
The conference was attended by representatives from 32 countries, and 24 voluntary organizations also attended as observers, presenting plans either orally or in writing. Golda Meir, the attendee from British Mandate Palestine, was not permitted to speak or to participate in the proceedings except as an observer. The Soviet Union refused to take part in the conference though direct talks on resettlement of Jew and Slavs between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union proceeded at the time of the conference and after it.
The conference was ultimately doomed, as aside from the Dominican Republic, delegations from the 32 participating nations failed to come to any agreement about accepting the Jewish refugees fleeing the Third Reich. As a bitter irony, the United States never filled its limited quota, admitting some 10,000 less than would have been permitted.
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Ever heard of Sobibor?
August 16th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Sobibor was a Nazi concentration camp in German-occupied Poland where, on 14 October 1943, there was a mass break-out of the 600 prisoners, some 300 managing to escape but only around 60 succeeding in avoiding recapture. This remarkable story is told in a 1987 film with a cast including Alan Arkin and Rutger Hauer which was shot in Yugoslavia. At the end, a voice-over reveals that many of the roles were based on real characters and explains what happened to them afterwards.
In this English-language production, the main role is given to the Polish leader of the revolt Leon Feldhendler (Arkin). In 2018, a Russian version of the event headlined the role of the Soviet soldier Alexander Pechersky (Hauer in the first film). Surprisingly, knowledge of the uprising was neglected until the 1970s and even today the revolt is not as well-known as it should be.
Link: Wikipedia page on the camp click here
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How can one possibly understand the complex and tragic history of Afghanistan?
August 16th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
One way is to read these three magnificent novels by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini:
“The Kite Runner” – my review here
“A Thousand Splendid Suns” – my review here
“And The Mountains Echoed” – my review here
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How do we make any kind of sense of the current cataclysm in Afghanistan?
August 15th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Seven years ago, I read and reviewed a book titled “Zone Of Crisis: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran And Iraq” by Amin Saikal (2014). These are extracts from my review as it related particularly to Afghanistan:
Afghanistan and Pakistan are predominately Sunni states, while Iraq and Iran have a Shia majority population (the only such countries in the world except for tiny Bahrain and secular Azerbaijan). Afghanistan and Iraq have suffered recent invasions by predominately American and British military forces, while Pakistan and Iran have ‘only’ faced drone attacks and economic sanctions respectively. Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq have some of the veneers of a democracy, but their political institutions are massively flawed, while Iran – the most stable of the states examined – has its own version of elective power that is counterbalanced by a more powerful theocratic elite.
For Afghanistan, Saikal explains how the Taliban and their supporters largely come from the Ghilzai part of the Pashtun community, while former President Karzai and most of his cohort belong to the Durrani segment of the Pashtuns, so that “the conflict within Aghanistan since 2001 has been essentially an intra-Pashtun one”. He is scathing of Karzai insisting: “His approach and policies gave rise to politics of patronage, corruption and inefficiency in both the civilian and military spheres at all levels.” But he is equally critical of the Americans: “the Bush administration failed to draw up a comprehensive and coherent programme of reconstruction for Afghanistan. The approach that it adopted was piecemeal, poorly coordinated and badly implemented.” In this chaotic state, opium cultivation has continued to expand, so that “Afghanistan has for all practical purposes become, once again, a narco-state.”
Although Pakistan of course has its own chapter, Saikal notes that “Developments in the two countries have been so intertwined that some analysts and policymakers have opted to lump them together under the joint designation, ‘Af-Pak’.” But Pakistan has its own ethnic mix with the largest groups (in order) being the Punjabis (who back the Pakistan Muslim League political party), the Sindhis (who support the Pakistan People’s Party), the Pathans as the Pashtuns are called here (responsible for a Taliban insurgency), and the Baluchis (supporting another insurgency). Political power has oscillated between the PML, the PPP, and the military with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) always massively influential. This is a nation that spends around one quarter of government revenue on defence (which includes a nuclear arsenal) but less than 2% on education and under 1% on health.
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As the Taliban rush to complete their retaking of the control of Afghanistan, we should remember how this all started
August 15th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
Twenty years ago, I read and reviewed the book “Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil And Fundamentalism In Central Asia” by Ahmed Rashid (2001). This is what I said:
Rarely can a book have been so timely and so topical. Rashid is a Pakistani journalist who has been writing about Afghanistan for over 20 years. His book was published in 2000 to critical acclaim but a limited readership. Then, on 11 September 2001, there came the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and the book became required reading for anyone wanting a better understanding of the complex politics of Afghanistan and the wider region. I was only able to start reading the work as the American bombing commenced and the collapse of the regime proved so surprisingly swift that I was struggling to finish the text before the Northern Alliance finished the Taliban.
Rashid describes the history of Afghanistan as “one of the greatest tragedies of this century” and reminds us several times that the invasion by the Soviet Union and the subsequent civil wars have cost some 1.5 million lives in a desperately poor country of some 20 million where life expectancy is just 43 years. The Taliban appeared almost out of nowhere when they took over Kandahar on 5 November 1994. The capital Kabul fell to the Taliban on 26 September 1996 and, if it had not been for American intervention, who knows how much longer the reign of terror would have lasted.
The tragedy of Afghanistan is its position - surrounded by many neighbours with their own agendas - and its ethnic mix, providing plenty of proxies for the adjacent states to use to their own ends. The Taliban would never have arisen, but for the support of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – supported by the US – who wanted to use the Pashtun ethnic group to block the influence of the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkmen who eventually formed the Northern Alliance, backed by Iran, Turkey, India, Russia and most of the Central Asian Republics.
The Americans created a Frankenstein regime that later harboured Osama Bin Laden, because the USA forgot about Afghanistan once the Soviet Union withdrew and was content to leave matters to its Pakistani and Saudi friends. As Rashid puts it: “The pipeline of US military aid to the Mujaheddin was never replaced by a pipeline of humanitarian aid that could have been an inducement for the warlords to make peace and rebuild the country”.
Rashid’s book is particularly fascinating in explaining how this regional stand-off has at its heart the issue of access to the oil and gas riches of land-locked Central Asia, the last untapped reserves of energy in the world today. Indeed I learned so much from this articulate and well-informed book, including the meaning of the term ‘Taliban’ (students of Islam) and the proper interpretation of the word ‘jihad’ (the inner struggle of a Muslim to become a better person).
If we want lasting peace in Afghanistan, we have to be prepared for a long haul: “Ethnicity is the clarion call of the modern era. Trying to resolve ethnic problems and keep states together needs persistent and consistent diplomacy rather than virtual bribes to keep various warlords quiet”.
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Has storytelling become more opaque?
August 15th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I recently wrote a blog posting suggesting that it had.
Now I’ve just read a fascinating book called “The Science Of Storytelling” by Will Storr (2019) in which there is a sentence that I think supports my view that serious storytelling has become more opaque or challenging:
“Expert readers understand that the patterns of change they’ll encounter in art-house movies and literary or experimental fiction will be enigmatic and subtle, the causes and effects so ambiguous that they become a wonderful puzzle that stays with them months and even years after reading.”
You can read my review of Storr’s book here.
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A review of “The Science Of Storytelling” by Will Storr (2019)
August 15th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I love being told stories (my favourite genre is the cinema and I reckon I’ve viewed around 3,000 films) and I enjoy writing short stories (I’ve produced 31 self-published under the title “The Rooms In My Mind”), so I found this a fascinating book which should help me both to analyse and to create stories.
The central thesis of the work is that all effective storytelling taps into the deep neurological thinking which the first humans evolved on the savannah and Storr supports his proposition with multiple references to academic research. So we like heroes and villains, we look for selfless and evil behaviours, we obsess about status and morality, and we expect cause and effect. As Storr puts it: Good stories are explorations of the human condition”.
For Storr, the essence of storytelling is the explanation of the model of the world or the theory of control held by the protagonist and the highlighting of what he calls “the scared flaw” in the model, before the story examines the challenge to that model and the capacity or otherwise of the protagonist to change the model. So the questions most stories ask are: Who is this person?” and “Are we brave enough to change?”.
Typically, therefore, a story will begin with “a moment of unexpected change”. Storr talks of the classic three-part story: crisis, struggle, resolution. But he devotes much more time to what he describes as “the standard five-act structure”:
- Act I: This is me and it’s not working
- Act II: Is there another way?
- Act III: There is. I have transformed.
- Act IV: But can I handle the pain of change?
- Act V: Who am I going to be
To illustrate his arguments, Storr references many well-known acts of storytelling, especially films and novels, and it helped that I’m familiar with most of these works. The films that he mentions most often are “Citizen Kane” (which many critics believe is the best ever made), “The Godfather” (which seems to be Storr’s favourite), and “Lawrence Of Arabia” (which is my own favourite). Among the novels that he quotes are “The Remains Of The Day”, “Gone Girl” and “Mrs Dalloway”.
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A review the new movie “The Suicide Squad”
August 13th, 2021 by Roger Darlington
I’ve enjoyed many, many superhero movies and I’m sure I’ll delight in a few more, but some of them are becoming a bit ridiculous and this is one of them. Following the original “Suicide Squad” (2016) and the spin-off “Birds Of Prey” (2020), now we have a kind of reboot of the first movie with another eclectic list of tough-guy characters, over-the top-violence, fouled-mouthed tirades and a thumping soundtrack (I saw it in IMAX).
As with the first two films, the best in the team is Harley Quinn played by the wonderful Margot Robbie. The characters portrayed by Idris Elba and John Cena have a certain charisma, but other characters – notably Polka-Dot Man who sees his detested mother in the faces of all his enemies and T.D.K. who has detachable limbs – are just plain silly. Worst of all is the main opponent, a giant starfish that has the ability to spit out smaller starfish which cling to the faces of people like the face-hugger in “Alien”. This is the least evil-looking villain since the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in the 1984 version of “Ghostbusters”.
Writer and director James Gunn of “Guardians Of The Galaxy” fame clearly had a lot of fun with this blood-spurting, body-ripping, head-exploding orgy of violence and mayhem and some of it is entertaining and funny, but overall this is a limp addition to the often-sparkling superhero genre.
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