A Review of Mama Mia: Here we go again

A Review of Mama Mia: Here we go again

Carla "Campbell" (Gina Lollobrigida) is an Italian woman who - during the American occupation of Italy - slept with three American GIs in the course of 10 days, Cpl. Phil Newman (Phil Silvers), Lt. Justin Young (Peter Lawford), and Sgt. Walter Braddock (Telly Savalas). By the time she discovers she is pregnant, all three have moved on, and she, uncertain of which is the father, convinces each of the three (who are unaware of the existence of the other two) to support "his" daughter Gia financially.

And of course now the three men are coming back for a reunion... and which one is the father?

That’s the plot of the movie “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell” (1968). If that may seem familiar, it is because it was virtually the same plot as “Mamma Mia!” - a single mother trying to hide three potential fathers from the daughter she’s raised alone, honestly unaware of which man is the real parent. It was a shameless steal.

Some elements are different. It was not in the war, but in her student days after graduation that Donna meets the three men, but elements of the plot are the same. And it does work very well.

The reuniting of the girls from the Dynamos bandmates, wisecracking author Rosie Mulligan and wealthy multiple divorcée Tanya Chesham-Leigh, and the arrival of the three possible fathers, and the daughter’s own romance are all done very well leading to a lovely wedding sequence at a chapel at the top of a Greek island.

So what about “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again”, the sequel? Unlike many sequels it does not suffer from trying to do the same kind of plot again. Instead of an old plot revamped, we actually have something new.

In this case, there is little of two of the fathers (Stellan Skarsgård, Colin Firth), and Pierce Brosnan doesn’t sing that much (which is a relief!) – although he does supply some rather tender fatherly love - and virtually just a cameo from Meryl Streep, along with another cameo from Cher.

But this is a story with perhaps even more heart to it than the first. I don’t think it gives much away that is not apparent in the opening five minutes to say that, in the present, Meryl Streep’s Donna has died – we don’t know how. And the current day of the movie is to do with her daughter re-opening the hotel her mother founded, as a tribute and memorial to her, and coming to terms with her grief. Indeed, the present is both about looking to future hope, and coping with past grief.

But alongside the present grief, is the past joy, as we are taken on the journey of the young Donna, graduating from Oxford, setting off to find herself (and in three men’s beds on the way) before ending up on the Greek island we know and love so well from the first film, and the backdrop from the present.

This intercutting of past and present provides the emotional core of the film and I have to say it ends with a real tear-jerker as we see Donna in the church for the baptism of her own daughter, alone apart from the supportive Island community (and she has only one friendly inn-keeper woman at the birth earlier), and her daughter’s own child’s baptism. I won’t give away too many more spoilers except to say it is a moment to keep the tissues to hand.

But along the journey, there is a lot of wild and lively spirits, some really good musical dance numbers to Abba songs, and a great deal of humour – including some rather rude but wickedly funny lines! There was laughter in the cinema, and not just from me! (It’s always worrying when I am the only one laughing at a film, as I did during the more ridiculous parts of “The Exorcist”)

Lily James as Young Donna just shines as we follow her journey, but she is matched well in the present by Amanda Seyfried as Sophie Sheridan, Donna’s 25-year-old daughter.

There’s a lot of fun in seeing the younger counterparts to Donna and the Dynamos, and the actors playing the younger parts of the three “fathers”. Hugh Skinner, as the young Colin Firth may be the most familiar face as interne Will from W1A, the spoof about the BBC, but all three acquit themselves very well (and it has to be said are better singers than their elder counterparts).

The ABBA team themselves have cameos, Björn Ulvaeus as an Oxford professor and Benny Andersson as "Waterloo" piano player.

Julie Walters provides some wonderful physical comedy with her dancing sequences, while there’s a rather nice and amusing cameo from Celia Imre at the Oxford sequence.

But even the smaller parts are memorable. Maria Vacratsis as Sofia, a local who owns the bar and shack which eventually becomes Donna's home is a wonderful part. She is supportive of Donna because Donna has “a heart” and took care of her horse in a storm, and Sophia delivers Sophie.

And of course there are the wonderful ABBA songs, mostly well known ones – although there are some lesser known ones - "Kisses of Fire", "Andante, Andante” and “The Day Before You Came". These are still lovely songs, and it is perhaps good to be reminded that while not everything ABBA wrote and performed became a hit, there is still some very good material there.

It ends with a show stopping all cast present, all dressed up in suitably ABBA style wear, of Super Trouper, a fun show stopping finale... or is it? Wait until the end credits roll, and you’ll be treated to just a small but very funny vignette.

This is a film which comes after the 2008 movie – ten years in the making – and goodness how grizzled and elderly Pierce Brosnan is, and even Colin Firth is showing his age. Mind you, I look a lot older two, and like the Swedish character Bill Anderson, have lost rather a lot of hair on top over the decade!

Would I recommend it? Definitely – and I would also say that alongside the froth of some of the fun big musical numbers, there’s also an emotional heart which is actually stronger than the original.

Musical Jesus

Musical Jesus

“Godspell” was on TV the other night, so I recorded it and watched it for the first time. It is interesting to compare it with “Jesus Christ Superstar”, which came out around the same time, in the early 1970s.

“Jesus Christ Superstar” is essentially a musical passion narrative. It is looking at the end of the gospel narrative. Most of the gospels are structured as a tale of two halves: the teaching period in Galilee, which is very episodic (1), and the story of Jesus coming to Jerusalem, which is a much more tightly connected narrative.

This can be seen, of course, in the way in which the gospel writers move the episodic elements around. Luke, for instance, clearly groups some narratives and sayings material together under what we would call umbrella themes. Matthew puts most of the teaching material into one almost continuous block: the Sermon on the Mount (2). Mark connects the different episodes with linking tropes, such as “immediately, he went…”. The Pharisees are also the main protagonists.

But the passion narrative, the story of Jesus last days coming to Jerusalem, is much more tightly structured. Only the Gospel of John is out on a limb, moving the incident at the temple, where the moneylenders’ tables are overturned, to the start of the gospel, but it is also very different in structure. And now it is the Sadducees, the Temple priests, who are the protagonists, and the Pharisees vanish from the narrative.

Most dramatic renderings have to decide how to place elements in the stories, and general the three synoptic gospels are the structure followed, although where the raising of Lazarus story comes in – it only appears in John – it is usually added just before the entry to Jerusalem, as it is in John. But on the whole, the passion narrative is bereft of miracles, either healings or nature miracles, and while there is enacted teaching – the last supper in the Synoptics, the foot washing in John – there are no parables or sayings material.

Jesus Christ Superstar follows the passion narrative, or at any rate, a kind of harmonised version of it. And it is a very traditionally told tale. Mary Magdalene is the repentant prostitute – which in fact was a Western fiction, largely created by one Pope – it is not there in the texts. Jesus is white, with long straight hair and a beard. The disciples are all men. And the story ends with the crucifixion.

Many of the songs, and the depiction of the protagonists are either traditional, or seventies style fashion – Herod is wearing a Demis Roussos style caftan. It is a story with songs, with clever lyrics, and again following traditional but modern renderings, Mary Magdalene, is young, beautiful, and in love with Jesus – the song here is “I don’t know how to love him”.

“Godspell” is a very different production. It is largely centred on the teaching material – sayings and parables – and while it states these are in Matthew’s Gospel, actually three are from Luke’s Gospel. Jesus is a hippy-like clown character with frizzy hair, and no beard, although the clown makeup works effectively as he draws it on his followers faces, marking them out as different. It is set in contemporary New York, where the disciples are drawn from (a crowded street), although apart from the start and end, Jesus and his disciples are the only ones visible.

Confusingly in a way, the character of John the Baptist and Judas are both played by the same actor – he is the one who has a more traditional look of long hair and beard. The division of the 12 apostles is about fifty-fifty between men and women, and they have their own names, apart from Jesus and John / Judas. There is no real equivalent of Mary Magdalene. They are also from different ethnic backgrounds.

As they move around locations in New York – and one looking on the world has an extra modern resonance, being the roof of one of the Twin Towers – they sing and also enact in a variety of ways, the sayings material and parables. Much of this is like mime with added narration, and there is a lot of humour in the visual enactments.

The final act, the move towards the end, has a Last Supper scene, and Judas leaves to bring the authorities, in this case represented by flashing lights of police cars that are themselves just shadowy outlines in the dark. Jesus is tied to a wire fence, and this is the crucifixion scene, after which the disciples raise and carry his body away.

In comparison, Jesus Christ Superstar has the strength of telling a well known story, with all the clichés that we have come to expect. The character of Mary Magdalene is as much a fiction constructed from a number of different stories, not all involving a Mary, just as the Christmas stories have three wise men, shepherds, angels. Like a nativity story, it has a similar resonance, and a variety of songs in styles from rock to ballad. We know where the story is going, and the enjoyment is seeing how it is going there and enjoying the songs, and the rather large Dickensian style caricatures of Pilot, Herod, and Caiaphas etc.

Its weakness is that it comes into the story half way through. The teaching materials, the healings, the wonder working preacher is not present. We have to take it on trust that Jesus is a charismatic figure, and of course he is portrayed in a traditional manner. It ends with the crucifixion, and that is the end of its story.

Godspell concentrated largely on the sayings and parables, and again leaves out healings. We can understand that the much more legendary nature miracles are always going to be a problem. But it portrays the parables inventively, with a lot of humour (some of which has almost certainly been lost in translation and the way they are rendered) and also gets over effectively and emotively a surprising amount of sayings from Matthew’s gospel. Although the central theme is the building of a community of followers, it does tend to have a more episodic feel to it as a result. On the other hand, Jesus as a charismatic teacher is something that does come over well

The passion narrative is a very bare bones affair, with almost everything of note –Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod – cut out from the story, but it is still quite effective. The ending is apparently supposed to depict that the disciples continue having been bound together by Jesus after his death; there is a final scene in which in less hippy outfits, they return to the normal crowded, bustling world of traffic and people.

Both are products of their time, and have a lot of late 1960s motifs. Rather like Dennis Potter’s “Son of Man” (3), Superstar follows the more structured passion narrative while at the same time pointing more than Potter actually did that Jesus is just a man – Potter kept an element of agnostic ambiguity. Godspell has Jesus, after his baptism in a fountain, suddenly wearing dungarees with a Superman symbol over the chest, and doesn’t apart from that symbolism, every pose the question who Jesus is.

Superstar is better on Judas motivation. Judas is always a problem because the gospel narratives provide so little to flesh out the motivation for his betrayal. John’s gospel suggested he was in charge of the money bag, and helped himself to some, but while that implies he was dishonest, it still doesn’t really supply motive.

In Superstar, Judas is actually Jesus right hand man as it begins, but is full of doubts about the way the message is being portrayed, thinking that the Romans might misinterpret and clamp down on Jesus and all his followers as a threat. It’s an interesting contrast: Judas is often seen as a Zealot who wanted confrontation: here it is the converse. Judas also sees himself as usurped by Mary, and this also accounts for his motivation in wishing to teach Jesus a lesson. In Godspell, Judas is increasingly sounding the wrong note against the teachings, almost taking the role of a Pharisee, and his motivation remains largely a mystery.

Superstar has the high priest concerned about a Roman clampdown, Pilate concerned about threats to Rome and the Jewish mob, and so follows standard motivations. Godspell has no real reason given: the authorities – depicted in background flashing lights and a siren – just appear, and no people come to take those roles. It is much more minimalist, more like a Picasso painting with strange sharp lines and faces barely recognisable than the more realistic style of Superstar. It assumes you know the story, and the bare lines are all that is needed.

Superstar is more traditional, but Godspell does provide a fresh way of approaching the parables, and a different way of seeing the whole story in perhaps a way in which the traditional set dressings are not as important as the material. The mirror it holds up is early the 1970s, the backwash of 1960s culture and optimism.

It is difficult to know which one I would prefer, as both have strengths and weaknesses. On the whole, I think I prefer the approach of Godspell because while it is less structured, it does illustrate what liberties can be taken with the material, and how it can be transformed and fresh. Superstar doesn’t really show us anything new, and while a few of the songs are memorable, they are not as strong in their own right in the same way as, for example, most of the songs in Les Miserable are (4).

The disadvantage is that Godspell does look very much a product of the late 1960s because of the fashions and style, and it would be interesting to see if something similar could be done with our own more sombre culture, and the more fearful, darker and less optimistic times we live it.

Notes:

(1) I am drawing largely on Ed Sanders "Historical Figure of Jesus" for the understanding of the different pericopes as episodic.

(2) The Diatesseron, an early harmony of the gospels, goes one better than Matthew, and adds Lucan sayings to the Sermon on the Mount.

(3) Potter has a much more nuanced and ambiguous Jesus, without any rather obvious "just a man" message which does rather bludgeon the viewer of Superstar.

(4) An exception is the ballad like "I don't know how to love him".

The Raven, Upstairs Downstairs, and Empire: Reviews

The Raven

Last Saturday, we watched "The Raven" on DVD tonight. Not the gruesome Karloff / Lugosi one, but the lighter, rather more fun one (1963) produced by Roger Corman where Vincent Price and Boris Karloff have a magical duel. It is extremely loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe - Price does recite the poem at the start - and is quite a short film, a bit slow at the start, but working up to a fine comic gothic horror film.

Hazel Court provides some eye candy, and an extremely young Jack Nickolson is present, and is bewitched at one point, showing that even then he could turn in a manic performance. Peter Lorre also provides some excellent humour as second rate magician Dr Bedloe who is turned into a talking raven. Nothing is what is seems in this light comedy horror film, with an extremely clever magic duel using "gesture magic", and some very good effects that work even today. Here is where Dr Bedloe wants to be returned to human form....

Dr. Bedloe: Restore me to my rightful form
Dr. Craven: But I just don't know how
Dr. Bedloe: Oh no, well do you got some dried blood of a bat in the house?
Dr. Craven: I beg your pardon
Dr. Bedloe: Bat's blood! dried or evaporated bat's blood
Dr. Craven: No
Dr. Bedloe: How about some chain links from a gallow's burg?, jellied spiders, rabbit's blood, dead man's hair?
Dr. Craven: No we don't keep those things in this house - we're vegetarians

Upstairs Downstairs

Sunday night, we watched the new series of Upstairs Downstairs: War looms, and there is considerable focus on the "rioting" against Jewish shops, synagogues and homes, which Sir Hallam rightly sees as deliberately instigated by the Nazi Party.

Lady Persie decides to come back from Berlin, as the riots erupt around her, while the Kindertransport is launched to save Jewish children from the dangers to come. There's a lovely piece where the children arrive on the train, and instead of incidental music is a choir singing "I vow to thee, my country", which works extremely well.

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

And there's another country, I've heard of long ago,
Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.

Joseph Kennedy comes to a dinner party at Eaton Place, with his son Jack, and offers Sir Hallam a post as European policy advisor to him in America. Curiously, no mention is made of Joseph Kennedy's strong anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi leanings - perhaps this will come in a later episode?

Meanwhile a subplot concerned friction below stairs, and the temporary loss of the cook to take up residence with her nephew's family (and get on their nerves). This was a much weaker story and didn't work terribly well, especially with the contrast to the larger events unfolding.

Empire

Monday had Jeremy Paxman on Empire - the first of a five part documentary. Part of it is history, but Paxman doesn't quite seem to know where he is going; whether it is a historical documentary, or a verdict on the legacy of Empire. It's not as assured and coherent a narrative as, for example, Andrew Marr did recently.

So in between the history, for example, of the Empire in India, Paxman speaks to Indians to get their judgment on the Empire. It's sound-bite politics, and the Indian army officer quite rightly said that there was both good and bad in British rule in India, with Paxman pressing strongly for an answer that the Indians are well rid of the Empire; the officer sees the historical continuity as well as discontinuity with the standards and banners of his regiment. The way in which the questions seem to lead the person being interviewed comes over as painfully obvious - Paxman has an agenda, and he's looking for support for it.

Yet the questions, which seem very leading about how bad the Empire was, suddenly turn about when he questions the elderly Jewish lady who helped plant a bomb at the King David Hotel in Palestine in 1946, an attack on British officers and rule. Didn't the British help Jews with the Balfour Declaration and do some good, he presses home?

Grudgingly she concedes they might, but has no regrets about causing the loss of life in what she saw and sees as a necessary strike against the British. The lack of doubt and cold certainty is quite chilling.

As Paxman sees it, the Empire was a massive confidence trick, pulled off by the odd show of force, but more by grand architecture and pomp and ceremony, by the sheer assumption of superiority, and by forcing deals which were later reneged upon once they had the reigns of power. I think that's very superficial, and overlooks the fact that - in India, for example - the forging of a single nation state was also done by railways linking the disparate regions together. India benefited from the industrial revolution and without the violent disruption of peasant populations in Russia when Stalin industrialised there. It's worth remembering that.

It was a kind of globalisation in microcosm, as suddenly transport between parts of the country, and movements of goods, became swift and easy. The effect of that on promoting a more uniform culture and a sense of Indian identity under Empire could not be underestimated, nor could the widening out of trade to wider markets than the next village or town. This, too, is a legacy of Empire, and one that Paxman conveniently overlooks, as also the construction of a civil service capable of administering such a vast region, which could be taken over after Indian independence.

Without mentioning America once (and America surely has a similar outlook), he talks about how the British Empire saw itself as a champion of right, with a God-given mandate to interfere in other countries where necessary; he also shows how the lesson of history is that the best of intentions are so often flawed as other people's perception of that intervention is not the same; they see a bully and are resentful. Britain had to pack up and leave Israel, failing in its self-appointed mandate. Surprisingly, he didn't mention Northern Ireland, where the same mandate for bringing peace by armed force collapsed into decades of violence against Britain.

And yet even after the Empire was disbanded (globally over a mere 20 years), the legacy remained, and Britain has been involved in other conflicts across the globe to try to bring peace.

This was the first of a five part series, and sometimes these can be patchy because they are setting up an overview of the series, but the meandering narrative didn't grip. Paxman interviews in a similar manner to Newsnight, as well, which is entirely inappropriate for a documentary, and this documentary suffers badly with comparison with Marr's Diamond Queen. It also seems to suffer from a bias against Empire that is almost a reaction against the more triumphalist Whig histories; history is more nuanced than Paxman makes out.

But this bias may help to sell it to American TV, especially if it is shown around Independence Day, and the lack of obvious comparisons between the mistakes made by the British Empire and American interventionism will surely help there.

TV and Film Reviews

Law and Order UK: Last Friday saw a very dark story about a manipulative woman who conned men out of money to help her supposedly dying sister in Africa. The men (police, court officials) were floundering until a woman lawyer pointed them in the right direction for finding evidence. At first sight, it was not obvious, because the woman suspect was at first apparently a victim, and worked for a police forensic laboratory.

It was a very uncomfortable tale, with perjury, fabrication of evidence (leading to a taxi driver being arrested for a murder), and a climax in court where the accused told the judge he had said she would be alright when she had sex with him that morning. She hadn't, she was using that kind of accusation to attack the judicial process.

When she was found out, she finally launched into a bitter tirade about how men treated women as meat, and she was only getting her own back, and justifiably so. I hope I never meet anyone like that; it was a seriously scary portrayal of someone who appeared on the surface to be quite a normal human being, but who used their sexuality as a weapon.

"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned" said William Congreve in the Mourning Bride (1697); often misquoted, this summed up the plot of this episode.

Sexuality and manipulation featured strongly in an early James Bond film, "From Russia with Love" (1963), which I watched at the weekend. He sleeps with the girl, and wants to get his hands on the Russian Lector decoding machine (a clone of an Enigma - electronic rather than mechanical, but typewriter size). Yet he is not prepared to abandon her to the villains, and there is a degree of chivalry present there as well, which is also there in the original book.

A notable highlight is the recreation of a match between Chess Masters Boris Spassky and David Bronstein at the USSR Championship in Leningrad in 1960, where the Spectre agent Kronsteen wins the game. It's a wonderful set piece, in a vast open hall, with chess pieces on the table being mirrored on the large magnetic board. It was almost a visual illustration of Bobby Fischer's remark about playing the game. "Chess is war on a board," he once said. "The object is to crush the other man's mind." And Kronsteen is the one who sets up the elaborate plan, with move and counter move, to crush Bond.

The whole film presents a much more leisurely pace than modern Bond, and the Istanbul location and the Orient Express is used to great effect. Would you be allowed to film in Mosques nowadays though, I wonder?

I remember visiting Istanbul in the 1970s, and seeing people puffing away on those strange bubbly globes, which looked quite fun. The Turkish coffee, small cups of very hot, black, sweet coffee, was another memory I'll not forget. I've seen lots of other types of coffee nowadays, but Turkish coffee is not usually one of them at coffee shops. According to David Warr, who knows all about coffee in Jersey, no one makes it locally. Agatha Christie loved Turkish coffee, and it features in one of her short stories, "The Harlequin Tea Set"

"They have some special Turkish coffee here," said Mr. Quin. "Really good of its kind. Everything else is, as you have guessed, rather unpalatable. But one can always have a cup of Turkish coffee, can one not? Let us have one because I suppose you will soon have to get on with your pilgrimage, or whatever it is."

The Turkish coffee was brought in little cups of oriental pattern. Ali placed them with a smile and departed. Mr. Satterthwaite sipped approvingly.

"As sweet as love, as black as night and as hot as hell. That is the old Arab phrase, isn't it?"

Harley smiled over his shoulder and nodded.

I caught up with "The Great British Countryside" with Hugh Dennis and Julia Bradbury at the weekend. While there is a degree of overlap with the BBC's programme Coast, this is one not so tightly focused on separate bits of the coastline, but instead gives more of an overview in contrast to Coast's fine detail. It used the different parts of the coast - and inland - to illustrate the changing geology and use of the land.

Any series which devotes just one hour to Devon and Cornwall is going to be a bit of a "big picture", but this series doesn't do badly in conveying a sense of deep geological time - and it was good to see ordinary people - such as a man who works in Tesco - also have an interest in geology. He regularly went fossil hunting, and although not a paid professional, had found an particularly fine ichthyosaur fossil; he keeps it in his kitchen!

I always like learning new snippets of knowledge that I didn't know before, and this series did that. I didn't in fact know that limestone from around the town of Beer is in fact the best for working with, and is used extensively in Exeter Cathedral, nor that the rise in copper and tin prices has made opening a Cornish mine viable once more, which is rather nice. I did recognise the vast China clay quarry in Cornwall though, because it was used as a very different location from bog standard quarries for filming Dr Who "Colony in Space". That geeky fact went unmentioned, which was probably for the best.

I liked the fact that Dartmoor ponies keep the landscape from becoming overgrown by grazing - an eco-friendly method. We've a lot more sheep in Jersey than we used to, and they do much the same task. I didn't know that Cornish hedges are in fact not hedges, but stone walls with earth in the middle, which prevent soil erosion and flash flooding. All in all, a geological focus with some interesting historical asides that I'll be watching next week - Yorkshire!

‎"Call The Midwife" ended on a high note, with a wedding. Chummy stood up to her terrible snob of a mother and married the policeman she loved. Before that was a wonderful sequence where, with candlelight and a bare minimum of resources, she delivers triplets. The houses have a 50s feel around them and often look rather dingy, but this one had no electricity, no water hot or cold, and really looked like a slum. We forget how low the standard of living was in the 1950s, and how wartime austerity still was biting after the war. Formica worktops would become a new sign of modernity, and I still have an old table with one dating from the 1950s in my garden shed.

‎"Upstairs Downstairs" came back with a slightly different feel, a bit more of an edge to it, as the realities of impending war, and the legacy of the Great War, both began to impact on Eaton Place. The Butler, Mr Pritchard, stood up for Quaker conscience in the face of hostility from both the police and the household, although those upstairs were more tolerant.

It is rare for belief to play a large part in a drama as this did, but the script was nuanced, so that you could both see why Mr Pritchard followed his conscience, and why others were hostile to it. They had sacrificed much, and saw conscience as a convenient excuse, an easy way out. But as he explained, he had been brought up by Quaker parents, and had embraced their belief; it was a deep seated and not a shallow conviction. He had, in fact, worked at an ambulance driver in the Great War, which he saw as the easy option because he did not go to prison like other more principled Quakers, and it was only when he protested against the unspeakable prison conditions that his fellow Quakers were in that he himself was sent to prison.

On the larger stage, the Munich Treaty was well done, with an impressive portrayal of Chamberlain as a man prepared to sign away almost anything to preserve the peace. It is not perhaps surprising that "appeasement" became such a dirty word. Chamberlain had no principles, except peace, and this part of the narrative showed how there can be such a thing as a bad peace where there is a fundamental lack of honesty. Peace and principles were at loggerheads here, unlike the small domestic drama played out back at Eaton Place.

A Game of Chance, Call the Midwives

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Chance is a brilliant film, cleverly lifting the odd line verbatim from the books, Robert Downey does a very good and very different period Holmes, lots of humour and some big panoramic vistas. He maps out fight sequences in his head, calculating moves, before it actually takes place.

We forget that Holmes, in the original stories, is not above fighting, and indeed in "The Final Problem" we know that is how he survived. Although he is often presented as handy with his fists, pugilism is not his only fighting technique. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was aware of Bartitsu, and puts it in one story. So the idea of martial arts being used by Holmes is not as far fetched as the critics make out; they probably are not careful devotees of the original stories.

 

Bartitsu was a kind of martial art system originally developed in England during the years 1898-1902 by Edward William Barton-Wright, which he said combined the best elements of a range of fighting styles into a unified whole. The name was a mixture of  his own surname "Barton-Wright" and  "Jujitsu", hence "Bart-itstu "

It is mentioned, or more exactly, misspelt and mentioned in "The Empty House", the first story in the return of Sherlock Holmes (in 1901).

Holmes explained his victory over Professor Moriarty in their struggle at Reichenbach Falls by the use of "baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me"

A Game of Chance also has Stephen Fry as an excellent Mycroft Holmes. There is a comic scene in which he walks around his stately home - stark naked! Fear not, viewers, the camera used discrete angles to avoid giving cinema goers the fright of their lives.

"Call the Midwives" is shaping up to be a very good snapshot of life in the 1950s, before the optimism and hippy culture of the swinging sixties came to define the following decade.

In one recent episode a policeman warned Fred, the chap who looked after the boilers at the nurses home that he was breaking the law with his sidelines of quails and toffee apples. This even then a health and safety issue in the 1950s, demanding official intervention, because Fred was slaughtering and plucking of quails in a kitchen where he was also making toffee apples - so that feathers and blood on some apples!

But rather than arresting him, he told him that even now the public health officials were on their way to investigate, and he was breaking the law - and the best thing he could do was get back sharpish and clear it all up before they got there. Result - no health and safety hazard, no officials with fines and endless paperwork, and the Fred knew not to do it again. That's how policing used to work at its best - preventing people breaking the law, but doing it softly softly.

Last week, an even stronger episode followed. It was the story of the husband whose wife dies of pre-eclampsia, was very strong, and the part when he was just sitting beside her dead body on the hospital bed was very sad; but while he was shy, he came across as perhaps just too slightly reserved at that moment. I think lots of men looking at their young wife - however peaceful they looked in death - would be howling with grief and tears. Perhaps people were more buttoned up in those days; I'm not wholly convinced.

The other story was of the stolen baby, taken by a woman whose own baby had been taken from her from adoption; if ever there was a lesson against forced adoption, it was here. Whatever criticism people level against single mothers (and there is unfortunately a growing number of people and papers - like the Daily Mail - sounding off against them), this shows that the 1950s system of wrenching a mother apart from a child and placing them in adoption because the State knew best was not good either. It was heartless, and it gave no consideration of the trauma caused, which in this story, nearly ends in tragedy.

Alice Unbound: A Review

The Mad Hatter: Have I gone mad?
[Alice checks Hatter's temperature]
Alice Kingsley: I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.

Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" is an imaginative re-working of the elements of the Alice books by Lewis Carroll into a wonderfully rich fantasy for adults and children.

In the film, Alice is Alice Kingsley, the daughter of Charles Kingsley, whom I assume is a nod to the novelist who also wrote the fantasy classic "The Water Babies" (although in actual fact his daughter was Mary); Alice had a dream when a young child, always the same dream, which was of Wonderland.

We shift to fifteen years later, where Alice's father has died, and her mother is trying to make an arranged marriage to a revolting young lord. This is large country estate Jane Austen territory, where the only roles for a woman are that of wife or spinster, and we are shown both, as Alice's mother warns her that if she does not accept the marriage, she will end her days like her dotty aunt Imogene (Frances de la Tour).

At the proposal, in the arbour, in front of all the assembled multitude of aristocrats, she says she needs more time, and follows a fleetingly glimpsed figure that appears to be a white rabbit. There, she tumbles down a hole in the tree and enters Wonderland once more.

This Wonderland owes more to Alice Through the Looking Glass than Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It is a misty post-apocalyptic landscape, dominated by the Red Queen, and haunted by the return of the Jabberwock, the fire breathing monster which wrought the devastation in the first place.

Some characters come from Wonderland, notably the Cheshire cat and the Hatter's entourage, and the Blue Caterpillar, but the story is heavily influenced by the chess motif of Looking Glass.

Unlike the Alice books, which are a series of episodes, mostly unrelated, Burton has fashioned a narrative core, which is driven by a prophecy on a scroll; this denotes the coming of the "frabjous day" when Alice takes the Vorpal Sword and slays the Jabberwock. The illustration of this owes much to Tenniel's drawing of the poem, which curiously shows a figure which could in fact be Alice; the scroll enhances this drawing, but it is fundamentally the same.

At first, Alice is passive, meeting Tweedledum and Tweedledee (played wonderfully by Matt Lucas), the Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), and is told she is not the right Alice. She tries to pinch herself to wake up, but there is no escape from this dream. The JubJub Bird swoops down, and she flees. Then the Bandersnatch chases her and she is driven to escape, ending up at the Hatter's table, where she meets the Hatter (played by Johnny Depp) who tells her of her destiny.

But the dominant Queen in Wonderland, the Red Queen/Queen of Hearts, played as a petulant and childish tyrant by Helena Bonham Carter, wants to stop the prophecy coming true, as it will end her reign, for she alone can unleash the Jabberwock. The Hatter helps her escape, but is himself captured by the Red Queen.

Throughout the story, the character of Alice develops, from a young woman who is at the mercy of the forced in this strange nightmarish land, to someone who can decide to take charge of her own destiny. This can be seen as a distorted mirror of the opening sequence, where the world of the aristocracy, full of its own pomp and formality, is an alien world to her. Similarly, the Red Queen's court of sycophants all wear prosthetic attachments to fit in with the bulbous head of the Red Queen, and yet these are disguises, masks that people wear, hiding who they are in the same way that the formal society into which she is being forced to marry is also a society of disguise. Wonderland is a distorted looking glass of the land above.

But her destiny does not lie in deciding to do as she wants; it is not a case of choosing among many options. Fundamentally, she is forced into a choice: to fight the Jabberwock, or to surrender to the Red Queen's wishes. There is no compromise possible, no escape.

The resolution comes on the "frabjous day", when Alice decides to fight, and there is a grand battle, with the Jabberwock finally unleashed, and defeated. And throughout, the caterpillar is commenting that while at first "she is "Not Yet Alice" ", she becomes "Nearly Alice", and she ends as "Now Alice after all".

When she returns from the hole, and scrambles out, it seems as if she has bumped her head and been dreaming, but the experience means she can now take charge of her life; she is no longer the passive girl that began the story, but can reject the trappings of a fundamentally empty and decadent society that she has outgrown, and head off to distant lands to complete her father's work.

Mia Wasikowska as Alice shines, and makes credible the transition between the passive Alice that begins the story, and the shining heroine at the climax. All the other parts are well played, but Johnny Depp is wonderful, as the Hatter, in parts tender, sad, haunted and eccentric, and completely sympathetic; the interplay between Wasikowska and Depp is delightful .

By fashioning a narrative, rather than being choppy and episodic as the book are, Tim Burton has allowed room for the main characters to be more than just one dimensional, and to bring their characters to life. The special effects are good, but the real expression of the emotions comes with the human characters, however bizarre their make-up and attire.

It is a film partly about finding identity, but not about "finding yourself" in the populist way of all the "self-help" books and courses do; instead, identity is not choosing but finding what your real purpose is, not choosing your destiny, but learning where it lies, and following that path. It is not about self-centered enlightenment, but true enlightenment in discovering where your future is to be.

But it is also a complex many layered film, a visual feast, a rich delight, which is not exhausted by one narrative thread - it is a tapestry of many colours; Tim Burton has wrought a myth, and words themselves can never do full justice to the power of the mythic.

Alice Kingsley: [from trailer] This is impossible.
The Mad Hatter: Only if you believe it is.

Adaptations of M.R. James

M.R. James (1862-1936) was a noted mediaeval scholar, and Provost of Eton. It was in the latter capacity that he began the tradition of scribbling and reading out ghost stories to the boys; these, duly polished and written out, were published, and are some of the finest ghost stories written. James knowledge of antiquarian minutiae meant that he could convey the world of old manuscripts, strange documents, odd artifacts with considerable authenticity. Into this world came malevolent ghostly figures, never fully described, but only hinted at, which were, naturally, much more frightening than any total description would have been.

 

On television, there have been several versions of the Ghost Stories of M.R. James. Of these, "A Warning to the Curious" is available on DVD. It was one of a sequence at Christmas which included "Lost Hearts", and the "Stalls of Barchester Cathedral" and the "Treasure of Abbot Thomas". It captures MR James very well, and there is a lot that is not seen, or suggested in outline, or at a distance, which is more effective for that.

 

Now it is probably best known for Clive Swift (well known in Only Keeping Up Appearances, a sitcom) who was Dr Black, not in the original stories, but introduced as a narrator in this one and "Stalls of Barchester". The setting of the treasure hunter played by Peter Vaughn (a sympathetic performance from an actor who was usually cast as villainous) as someone out of work in the 1930s depression is also new to the TV story, but works very well in giving it that period feel. There are indications of this - the newspaper about people being out of work, the threadbare shoes etc.

All these 4 stories kept period settings, which was very effective, being a strength of the BBC drama department. A Dickens's story - the Signalman - was also produced at the time by the same team. They are occasionally repeated on satellite.

"Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You" was quite different; it was produced by Jonathan Miller, and takes a few liberties with the text, but is very atmospheric, and the black and white quality helps enormously. Its feel is very different, as Miller is definitely an auteur in his stylish presentation.

A later TV adaptation , "Casting the Runes" is in fact the second take on this story.

 

The first was a Hollywood Film called "Night of the Demon" which followed the story very well but had to show the demon at the start (forced on the producer by Hollywood). That is still is brilliantly spooky, and apart from the start, using subtle suggestions to build up a sense of impending menace.

The TV version is quite different, being placed in a modern setting; it takes more liberties that the early 1970s stories, but still works quite well. The character of Dunning was made female, and the whole setting modernised. Still spooky, but lost a lot of the MR James ambience. For a short story adaptation, whole chunks of the material was left out, which was a shame. James would have turned in his grave over the runes themselves - not only do they not resemble runes in this adaptation, but instead of being Nordic, they are "Old Teutonic derived from Greek", picking two alphabets that have almost nothing in common. Iain Cuthbertson as Karswel, the villain, was alright, but disappointing compared to his sinister performance  in other occult stories such as ITV's Children of the Stones. Contrasting it with the film version (Night of the Demon), in the TV version, Karswel hardly appears, whereas in the film, Niall MacGinnis, has a lot more to get his teeth into in the character.

There were also TV versions of The Ash Tree, and View from a Hill (about binoculars that could see into the past), but I've not seen them.

Two TV version have been produced which presented many of the stories in a brief 15 minute narrated form. One was by Robert Powell, and used woodcut style illustrations to great effect. The other had Christopher Lee, and was more of a Jackanory style presentation, which the camera on Lee who narrated, still to good effect, as he is known for his strong commanding voice.

There have also been 15 minute radio narrations which were very good, and a play "The Midnight House" involving MR James as a young man, suggesting the inspiration for some of his tales.

 

Star Trek and Klingon Antivirus from Sophos

The new Star Trek movie is brilliant, and cleverly so pitched as to appeal to a general audience, not just fans. It may help if you know that Mr Spock is the man with pointy ears from Vulcan, but that is about it!  It is set at a time when Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Scotty, Chekov and Sulu are all cadets, joining Star Trek, but the story steams forward at a fast pace, with lots of tension and excitement, so there is really no chance of the viewer being bored.

Without giving too much of the plot away, as far as fans are concerned, the plot involves time travel and changing the past (which is the movies "present") in such a way that the rest of official canonical continuity about what happens next is more or less wiped out. This is a clever move because it means that any sequels are not hamstrung by the "future" of the Shatner/Nimoy series, or any other series which came after that. Doctor Who's own revamp played a similar trick with its "Time War", which wiped out the Time Lords, and allowed a "reboot". After time, any long running series can be swamped by its own past, and continuity becomes obsessive at the expense of original stories; it appeals to a certain kind of fan, but can lose touch with a general audience - who are "out of the loop", and do not want to need to know all the long and convoluted background material. As with Doctor Who, the Star Trek film has sly little homages to the television shows, and the previous movies, but these are a plus for the fan who will notice them, and not to the detriment of the story (as happened with the 1980s Doctor Who of Peter Davison and Colin Baker, or Star Trek - Enterprise). Instead, these are subtle, such as the team member in red who joins Kirk and Sulu for a skydive; you know that, as in the original series when Kirk, Spock and a crewmember beam down, that person is surplus to requirements and will meet a sticky end!

The effects are good, but unlike the first Star Trek The Motion Picture, they don't get in the way or slow down the story telling - that film had endless slow and ponderous effects shots. The costumes reflect the originals in colour, but have been modernised slightly, and the bridge has the same structure, but is a much larger, lighter structure; it is a good re-imagining of the Star Trek ship's bridge for a modern audience's expectations. But the story and characters drive the movie, amd Chris Pine as Kirk and Zachary Quinto as Spock are especially good, capturing the nuance of the originals very well, but without mimicry. It is a Star Trek to capture a new audience, and please an existing one, and it has succeeded extremely well!

On the subject of Star Trek, Sophos actually (this is not a joke!) produced a version  of Sophos Antivirus in Klingon, which must be a first! The details, and a download link, are on Graham Cluhey's Blog. Cluhey and the Sophos team are obviously Star Trek fans, as evidenced by their April fool - the Shatner virus which infected Satellite systems with a subliminal messages

IT security and control firm Sophos has discovered that hackers have successfully infected an orbiting communications satellite with a virus, and are interfering with television broadcasts.

The Far Polo L1 satellite, placed in geostationary orbit to broadcast TV programs to a global audience, appears to have been infected by a virus known as W32/Shatner. Under the control of sci-fi obsessed hackers, the Shatner virus is embedding subliminal images related to Star Trek into popular television programs such as "The Simpsons", "Friends" and "Doogie Howser MD" as they are beamed down to viewers on Earth.

http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/04/01/shatner-virus-planted-hackers-orbiting-satellite/

Anyhow, here is the story behind the Klingon Antivirus product. See the link if you want to download it!

1) From time-to-time Sophos looks into creating bespoke software for particular groups, rather than make them available to the masses. We were asked by a potential customer to investigate whether it was possible to translate our software into Klingon, and Klingon Anti-Virus was produced as a test by our techies. Although the software is finished it wasn't supposed to have been made available to the world at large - some of you have noticed that of the text on the webpage was unfinished. We've fixed that now, and added some additional information.
2) We translated the software with help from naHQun, a member of the Klingon Language Institute (KLI). I'm sure those of you with a good knowledge of the language will agree that naHQun (who also goes by the name of "Michael") did a great job.
3) As the Klingon Anti-Virus software is being widely linked to, we're not going to remove it for now. You can still grab a copy if you like.
4) Which might well upset some people. Because earlier today Sophos received a rather hard-nosed communication from a certain party seemingly trying to bully us into removing the Klingon Anti-Virus software from our site. We think that's daft, so we won't be doing it.

http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009/05/19/klingon-antivirus-facts/

Slumdog Millionaire: A Review

Set in India, in Mumbai, director Danny Boyle's film tells the story of a slum kid who appears on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire". The film is a marvelous evocation of India, of the slum dwellings, the economic changes in India, as finance booms, so that the slums we begin with are replaced by gleaming office buildings, but there is still the seamy side of the Indian underworld, where gang leaders carve out their own fiefdoms. On the way, we also have the railways - always a central and defining part of India - and even the Taj Mahal! Yet this is just the background, sketched out in just enough detail, against which a wonderful personal narrative is constructed.

We start with the interrogation by a police officer of the central character, Jamal K. Malik, and the story gradually unfolds in flashback, as we learn why he is being questioned - for suspected cheating in the Indian version of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. And we move further back in flashbacks, as the way in which the questions unfold in the Quiz show dovetail with Jamal's remembering of his childhood in the slums, of how he and his brother scratch a living, and of his mother being killed in a savage attack on the Muslims by rioting Hindus; he and his brother Salim flee and escape, guided by a vision of the god Rama, and also save the girl Latika.

Rescue comes from the apparent benevolence of a man called Maman searching for children homeless and refugees, but he turns out to be a sinister gang leader, sending children out to beg, and in one sequence - not for the squeamish - his henchman mutilates one boy the brothers know in order that he can be a better beggar. The brothers escape, but lose Latika in their flight. They then take to a life of petty crime and become street wise, with Jamal on one memorable and very funny occasion, guiding a tourist couple around the Taj Mahal, with a commentary that is part fact, mostly fiction. This sequence moves into their teen years (the parts being taken by other actors, but brilliantly ones that capture the look and mood of the child actors). We see them now settled in part in work in fast food kitchens in Mumbai, and their encounters with the crime barons, and throughout this Jamal is haunted by the search for Latika, and never gives up hope. His brother betrays his trust at one point, but then redeems himself in one final act of sacrifice.

All this is told against the backdrop of the - by now almost conversational interrogation - by the police inspector, and the relentless tension of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, with its bearded charismatic host (although in private asides to Jamal, he shows his ruthless egoism), and the prize money in rupees gradually increasing as he gets questions right.

How Jamal eventually finds Latika, loses her, and finds her again - his personal quest - I will not reveal - you'll have to see the film! Did he win by cheating? No. Was it luck? Or, is it - in a wonderful way in which the film both starts and ends - simply that "it was written".

The leading stars are relative unknowns, but give brilliant and naturalistic performances (which is actually very difficult), and this is far from being an urban or domestic drama (good as those can be); as a result, it opens a window onto a refreshingly different world, and I can well see why it has run away with all kind of plaudits.

In terms of narrative construction, the versatile use of flashbacks (and interrogation to call forth memory) works extremely well. This non-linear approach reminded me very much of Ararat, the film about the Armenian genocide, which uses a similar technique to great effect. And don't miss the wonderful Bollywood-like dance sequence at the end while the credits roll.

Lastly, the conditions of poverty that come as the vast panorama reminded me of the wisdom of C.P. Snow, and the call upon our consciences to ensure that this is not just left alone. In an essay on Magnanimity, Snow wrote:

"I have said before, and I shall say it again, because it is the most imperative social truth of our age, that about one-third of the world is rich and two-thirds of the world is poor. By this I mean something very simple. In North America, in most of Europe, in Australia and New Zealand, and now in the Soviet Union, the great majority of the population get enough to eat and don't die before their time. That is what "riches" means, in a world whose harshness those of us born lucky don't willing admit.

In the rest of the world the opposite is true. The great majority of the population don't get enough to eat; and, from the time they are born, their chances of life are less than half of ours, These are crude words, but we are talking about crude things, toil, hunger, death. For most of our brother men, this is the social condition.

It is different from our social condition. That is one reason why there is a direct call upon our magnanimity. If we do not show it now, then both our hopes and souls have shriveled. It may be a longish time fore men at large are much concerned with hopes and souls again.

For the future is in our hands, if we care enough. The means exist for our seeing to it that the poor of the world don't stay poor. The scientific and technical knowledge which we now possess is enough, if we can find the human means, to solve the problem within a couple of generations. I do not pretend that it is going to be easy to find the human means-but the knowledge exists and, since it exists, no man of the faintest imagination or good will can rest easy."

C.P. Snow (Magnanimity)

Links:
Movie cast and details on Internet Movie Database
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1010048/

Quotes on Hunger (including CP Snow)
http://www.scholarisland.org/hunger.htm

CP Snow Essay
http://www.harpers.org/archive/1962/07/0014040

Mamma Mia!

I went to see Mamma Mia! at the weekend. A marvelous film, both entertaining and amusing, and the only film I have ever been at when the audience (and it was packed out!) clapped at the end!

The plot is simple. The story of a bride-to-be trying to find her real father told using hit songs by the popular '70s group ABBA. It includes such hits as "Super Trouper", "Dancing Queen", "Thank You for the Music", "Money, Money, Money", "The Winner Takes It All", "Voulez Vous", "I Have A Dream" and "SOS" (see bottom for full list).

20 year old Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) has a problem. It's almost her wedding day and she doesn't know who her father is. It could be any of 3 of her mother's (Meryl Streep) past suitors. The only way to find out is to invite all three to her wedding and see what happens. American architect Sam Carmichael (Pierce Brosnan), Swedish adventurer/writer Bill Anderson (Stellan Skarsgård) and English banker Harry Bright (Colin Firth) are all invited. Also present are her mother's friends Rosie (Julie Walters) and Tanya (Christine Baranski)

I knew I'd come across a similar plot, and of course it came to me - I remembered the 1968 comedy Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell where the title character, Carla "Campbell", is an Italian woman who -- during the American occupation of Italy -- slept with three American GI's (a Corporal (Phil Silvers), a Sergeant (Peter Lawford), and a Lieutenant(Telly Savalas)) in the course of a few weeks.

It is a good plot, when all the men come to Italy for a reunion, and revamped slightly, with the Abba songs, filmed in part on the beautiful location of Skopelos, a sleepy little island in the Aegean Sea, it is clearly destined to be a big hit. (Some of the interior and courtyard sets were filmed at Pinewood.)

Meryl Streep is wonderful, expressive in a way that an actress can be and a singer might not be, she takes the songs and makes them her own, and can also be very funny. Benny Andersson of ABBA, co-composer of the songs, called her a Meryl Streep "a miracle". Christine Baranski brings glamour and comedy, while Julie Waters brings charm, and a wonderfully physical comedy to her part. On the male lead, Pierce Brosnan has the most singing to do and manages surprisingly well. In fact, Abba's Benny Andersson has claimed that Pierce Brosnan is "great" in the new Mamma Mia! movie. The songwriter said he was annoyed by criticism of the former James Bond actor, arguing that people are judging him with too high standards. "I think he has a great voice. He couldn't sing 'Nessun Dorma' but neither could I - and I was in Abba. It's like saying Bob Dylan can't sing."

A delightful film, in which all the cast are clearly enjoying themselves, and it translates well from stage to the more difficult medium of film. The finale at the closing credits, with the cast all dancing and dressed in 70s style Abba outfits is a marvelous end to a film that just sets out to provide entertainment, nothing serious, but does so extremely well.

Song list:

"I Have a Dream" - Sophie
"Honey, Honey" - Sophie
"Money, Money, Money" - Donna
"Mamma Mia" - Donna
"Chiquitita" - Tanya and Rosie
"Dancing Queen" - Donna, Tanya, and Rosie
"Our Last Summer" - Sophie, Sam, Harry, and Bill
"Lay All Your Love on Me" - Sky and Sophie
"Super Trouper" - Donna, Tanya, and Rosie
"Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" - Cast
"The Name of the Game" - Sophie and Bill
"Voulez-Vous" - Cast
"SOS" - Sam and Donna
"Does Your Mother Know" - Tanya and Pepper
"Slipping Through My Fingers" - Donna and Sophie
"The Winner Takes It All" - Donna
"I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" - Cast
"When All Is Said and Done" - Sam and Company
"Take a Chance on Me" - Rosie and Bill
"Mamma Mia" - Cast
"I Have a Dream" - Sophie
"Dancing Queen" - Cast
"Waterloo" - Cast
"Thank You For The Music" - Sophie (over the closing credits)

Good night and good luck

Good night and good luck (2005): A Review

(Now available on DVD)

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"We will not walk in fear of one another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. "

This is a film set in the McCarthy era, telling the story of how Ed Murrow and his team of journalists took on McCarthy, and help to finished his communist witch hunt.

It is important today because it shows how someone like McCarthy can become important, and can feed on the fears in society, and fan the flames of prejudice, frequently with no evidence, only hearsay, and the use of a vicious polemic.

The lessons it teaches are wider than the era itself, and certainly in a world post 9/11, where there is fear in Muslim minorities in Western countries that they may be attacked for no other reason than their faith, or fear of those same minorities (who might be a secret terrorist sleeper?), it is necessary to say: do not react out of fear, do not look at others through a filter of prejudice. These are the preliminaries to peace, but they are only the first steps on the road to peace between all peoples of goodwill. Where there is a climate of fear, of people ranting against other people, it is still necessary to speak out, even if it means saying things which are uncomfortable; complacency too often is a cover for a false comfort that hides from speaking truth.

Murrow succeeded in stopping one witch hunt; but he paid a price. There were sudden staff cut-backs, his show was moved from prime-time to a Sunday afternoon slot, and reduced in number of programs. Victory against the forces of fear is never won easily.

This film, with its wonderful black and white photography, its marvelous use of light, and blues music punctuating the story, brings the time vividly to life; an age when cigarette smoke rose pervasively all around (wisps caught in beams of light). The documentary feel to it is precise; it does not make a chocolate coated confectionary, and for this the use of black and white is required; colour would make it seem too artificial.

David Strathairn is perfect as Murrow, George Cluny self-effacing as co-producer, Fred Friendly. The intercut real film of McCarthy blends seamlessly. This is also accurate to history. In his 1954 "See it Now" special, "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy" , Murrow did use excerpts from McCarthy's own speeches and proclamations to criticize the senator and point out episodes where he had contradicted himself.

It is a film that deserves to be seen wherever there is a climate of fear.

Previously, I had regarded the excellent, but underrated, TV biopic of Murrow ("Murrow", 1985) starring Dan Travanti as pretty definitive; it went from the war years (where he reported from London under the Blitz, with the catch-phrase "This is London." ) through the McCarthy era until his the cigarette-induced death. This new film is more precisely focused, but the sharper for it.

Incidentally, the catch phrase of Murrow used as the title of the film, and his sign off for his shows probably dates from his war years. Londoners in the Blitz used the phrases "so long, and good luck", and Princess Elizabeth, in a radio broadcast of 1940, ended with the words "good night, and good luck to you all." At the end of one of his 1940 broadcasts, Murrow ended with "good night, and good luck" and Ida Lou Anderson his voice coach, insisted he keep it.

When most cinema sets out just to entertain, this is a film with a difference, of which Murrow's own words are most apposite:

"This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire, but it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box."

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Thoughts on Films and TV

I'd like to see Spiderman 3 when it is on DVD, think I can wait. Pirates 3 is two rambling stories condensed into one muddled screenplay, with characters changing sides every half-hour. Some nice performances, and some great scenery and scenes with ships, but a real let down. I'd avoid it. Saw on DVD Helen Mirren in The Queen, which was very good. Some good TV at moment, just finished Harry Enfield series which had good bits - the highlight had to be the Laurel and Hardy spoof on Brokeback Mountain, which was brilliant (even if rude). Andrew Marr is doing a very good modern Britain history (1945 onwards, post-war). Derren Brown has just finished ("Trick or Treat"). Amazing the stuff he does. A kind of psychological magic that makes one worried about how easily anyone can be manipulated! Doctor Who, of course, is on and wonderful.