Review of Joyride

Another Olivia Colman showcase, this time she's Irish and about to give birth to a daughter that she plans to give away to her sister, only she runs into a young boy who's enmeshed in a complex relationship with his really bad dad, a thief and a cheat. Some great chases and escapes, lots of lovely local details. 

Review of Wicked Little Letters

 

A nice period piece of a film, with Olivia Colman as the recipient (and - spoiler alert, but not much of one - the writer) of obscene poison pen letters in Littlehampton. Lots of cameo roles for great British actors - Colman is just great.

Review of "The New Authoritarians Convergence on the Right" by David Renton

 

Declaration of interest - I know David Renton, and I think he's great. He's very astute politically, he avoids glib explanations and snappy prescriptions, and he writes very well in a way that is accessible and intelligent.

So no surprise that I liked this book very much. It makes several very important points; firstly that not every manifestation of the far right is fascist - fascism is a particular form of far right politics, with an emphasis on violence, control of the streets, and a "revolution" against the liberal state. So other versions of the far right, including the electorally successful versions in Europe, North America and Asia, have made their peace with elections and with a version of the liberal state. I don't think Renton says so explicitly, but the main differentiator isn't ideological or policy content. Fascists have been all over the place in terms of policies. They are clearly not free market ideologues, and often advocate a role for the state in managing the economy that would not be out of place in middle-of-the road Social Democracy. 

The second important point is that calling out the far right as fascists isn't only inaccurate, it's also decreasingly effective. There was a time, especially in the 1970s, that it was enough to demonstrate the historic links between the far right and the fascists of the inter-war and wartime periods. Since everyone thought that Nazis and fascists were bad, proving the connection was enough to place the far right outside the domain of acceptable politics. Sadly, that's no longer the case. The taint of Nazism is wearing thin and as a younger generation without personal memories of the antifascist generation don't care nearly so much. Nazism isn't as a toxic as it once was.

Which means that different tactics, and different arguments are called for in confronting the far right in its present manifestations. Responding with classic antifascist rhetoric and tactics is not going to work in the way that it once did.

I think Renton is also saying that addressing the root causes from which the far right draws its strength - in particular the failure of liberal capitalism to live up to its promises - is not only the most comprehensive response to the far right, but it's ultimately the only thing that will be effective.

Review of "Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt" by Edward P. Kohn

A slightly plodding account of the New York heatwave of 1896, and the impact that it had on the careers of two American politicians - Teddy Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan.  Bryan is the more interesting, though the least successful - a failed almost-populist, almost-radical who's career came off the rails at a mass rally in Madison Square Gardens, during the heatwave. The book doesn't say this, but some people think that Bryan was the model for the cowardly lion in The Wizard of Oz. 

Despite this not being a brilliant book there's lots to think about - how our cities are going to cope with climate change, for one thing. And also about how the United States has always been separate economies forced into a single sovereign state, and the Populist moment was about the way that the agricultural west didn't really belong in the same monetary system as the industrial North East. 

Review of "Lily" by Rose Tremain

A Victorian melodrama. It's Rose Tremain, so it's very well written, with lots of beautiful description and a well observed interior life for the main character. Lots about the misery of orphans and foundlings in this time, and a not at all sympathetic portrait of the Coram orphanage. 

I read it during my recent bout of covid, and it was absolutely perfect for that - engaging without being too intellectually or emotionally demanding.

Review of All Quiet on the Western Front

Long, gruelling, realistic...I watched it in four tranches because it was too much all at once. My first thought was that this was actually like being there...without the smells, of course, but with lots of noise and mud and gore. But on reflection, it's not - the cinematic "God's Eye" view means that you see the enemy approaching as you would if you were, because the camera keeps cutting from one side to the other, and providing longer views so that the watcher can understand what's going on. Which means it's not like being there at all.

It does capture the randomness of death and the awful pathos of war, even though this was mainly a war in which combatants died and civilians didn't - perhaps it was the last such war.

I have a dim memory of the first film on the book, and this includes things that I don't remember being in that, as well as leaving out some of the poignant details from that - wasn't the protagonist a butterfly collector? Doesn't he die reaching for a butterfly?

Review of "Pigs in Heaven" by Barbara Kingsolver

A sequel to The Bean Trees, and a much better book - not really positioned as a sequel, but I realised a little way in. Readable without having read the previous book. I read it during my recent bout of covid, and it was just perfect - interesting and engaging enough without being too emotionally taxing (despite themes of racism, abandonment, child abuse and so on). I learned a bit about how racism against Native Americans has worked, and a bit about Cherokee culture. I had a little cry at the end.

Review of "Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country" by Gillian Slovo

A well-written personal memoir of the Apartheid years and the end of white South Africa by one who was intimately connected with the struggle, this swing back and forward between the big-p political and the entirely personal.

Gillian Slovo is (or at least was, when she wrote the book) still angry with her parents for not loving her as much as they loved the struggle; something she acknowledges herself finding in the children of other figures from the movement, including Mandela's daughter. So there's sometimes a petulant, aggrieved tone to the book, and it doesn't make me want to know the author.

But there's lots to absorb, about what people in the opposition to Apartheid went through, especially those white people in leadership roles - and about the way it played out in their personal lives. 

And I'm aware, too, that it's a little bit of insight into the world in which Ruth grew up, even though her parents were not actively engaged in any kind of anti-Apartheid politics while in South Africa - though they did have personal relationships with many of the people that were. 

Every so often Slovo seems to remember that her parents were both Jewish, but it doesn't feature in a major way - maybe it didn't for them either. Some of the considerations of this seem implausible - could her grandmother really have forgotten her childhood Yiddish so thoroughly that she was no longer able to speak to her own mother?

Review of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

I'd never heard of this film (even though it came out several years ago), until I came across it in covid-dazed mindless scrolling through reels on Facebook. I almost never do this, but I sought out the film and watched it (lots of time during covid, I can't do much else). Unlike many reviewers I think it's great - beautifully filmed, lots of great actors, and cleverly crafted if somewhat bleak stories, each one perfect in its own right as a critique of the American dream and fantasies about the Old West.

Well worth watching.

It's on Netflix but I foolishly watched it via informal channels, meaning I had to faff about with USB stick unecessarily.

Review of Civil War

Gruelling violent dystopian war film, set in more-or-less contemporary America in which a civil war has broken out. with a secessionist movement implausibly consisting of California and Texas, and maybe Florida. There's never any discussion as to what the background to secession or the war, just lots of scenes to remind Americans what it looks like when the war comes home. So mass graves, execution of prisoners, shattered towns, that sort of thing.

The narrative focuses on a group of press photographers, and there is some reflection on the role of the media in war time, but it doesn't go very deep.

The film ends with the storming of Washington DC, and then the White House, where team of soldiers find and kill the defeated US President, and then pose smiling by his body.

Lots of affect, but not much thought - perhaps just a warning for Americans to draw back from the brink?

Watched via informal distribution.

Review of Georgia Rule

Mostly watchable "comedy-drama", though not all that much comedy. Set in a small town in Idaho (which in my mind was one of those flat states, but there seems to be a lot of mountains). California-dwelling woman drives back to small hometown to dump wayward teenage daughter on her own mother, with whom she doesn't get on, for the summer. Grandmother is strict and believes in discipline etc, grand-daughter doesn't - could be a relatively straight conflict of wills comedy. In fact it has themes of paedophilia, child sex abuse (oops a bit of a spoiler there), alcoholism and drug addiction. 

Not many laughs, and a narrative structure that lurches from crisis to crisis rather than building up a plot and characters.

Watched on Netflix.

Review of "Bournville" by Jonathan Coe

Another book by Jonathan Coe that's well written but not very enjoyable. I think that it's because it really is a heart of England story, and he does it well but the heart of England is a bit rotten. Not completely, and he doesn't make out that it is, but we quite rightly spend a lot of time with some unpleasant right wing racists, and the series of episodes that he chooses as a slice through English history are all in some way about patriotic fervour - VE Day, the Coronation, the Investiture of Charles as Prince of Wales, and so on.

I remember quite a few of these myself - especially the Investiture, the wedding of Charles and Di, and Di's funeral. Recalling them didn't bring me any pleasure.

Looking forward to another Coe book with a subject that I can get behind, because I do like his writing.

Review of The Sisters Brothers

A mainly nice western, despite lots of heavy duty violence. Lots of really beautiful landscapes too. Two brothers are hired killers for a local boss in Oregon, and they are hired to track down and kill a man who the boss ("the Commodore") has taken against. Another guy is actually doing the finding and the tracking, and he will detain the planned victim until the brother arrives. But the victim persuades the tracking guy to join him in his venture - he has developed a chemical method of illuminating gold in rivers, making it easy to extract - and he plans to make money in order to fund a utopian community in Dallas. 

I don't need to talk you through all the rest of the plot twists, but there are plenty, and it's a lot to do with the relationship between the brothers, and with their now-dead father. 

I watched this with Covid, and I liked it much more than I expected to.

Thanks to BBC iPlayer.