I’ve just returned from a very pleasent trip to France, 3 days in Paris, followed by 3 days out in the country in the very small village of Valliere just outside Sens (more or less between Champagne and Burgundy regions I’m told). Paris was looking mighty fine, if rather hot – I’ve decided that June / July / August is probably not the most comfortable time to be doing the tourist thing in Paris – I’d much rather have just spent the time lazying around on the banks of the Seine in the glorious sun. Down in Valliere, with Claire & Richard and friends, basically to consume a freshly roasted wild boar. Yes, there are many pictures to come in the next few weeks as I scan through the various rolls of film. In fact some on my first rolls of Kodak T-Max are really rather nice – the superfine grain has given a gloriously smooth / soft finish to them. I’ll definitely be shooting some more T-Max in the very near future.
A little over two weeks back I made my first (yes really!) trip to the ICA cinema to see Cafe Lumiere. There’s not really any significant plot to speak of, but then that’s not really the point of this film – its all really about getting to feel the know the regular, everyday life of the lead character – the very cute Yoko. As someone who’s never been to the far east, let alone Japan or Tokyo, just observing the cinematography was satisfaction in itself, giving the viewer access to a slice of Tokyo life altogether different from that shown by Lost in Translation
While checking out the White Stripes latest single Blue Orchid, I found myself getting rather irritated by the Linux RealPlayer client which, despite my having broadband was incapable of playing the video without pausing multiple times to buffer more data. A little Googling later and I came across a Hungarian site which has a handy bundle of all the Windows video codecs you can just drop into Totem. So finally I have a sane video player which no stupid ‘skins’ which plays every video format under the sun, and it does a hell of alot better job at buffering than RealPlayer – no dropout at all on exactly the same stream.
So, the US Sentate was foolhardy enough to summon George Galloway to a hearing, blazenly accusing him of illegally profiting from sales of oil to Iraq. I didn’t occur to them that, with Galloway recently having won a libal case against the Telegraph, it might be a good idea to have at least a little evidence to back up the accusations (well they ought to have that regardless, but with the results of the libal case, its just plain stupid, rather than merely careless). What was clearly not expected the far side of the pond, but at the same time clearly inevitable for those in the UK familiar with his character, was that Galloway would come out fighting with all guns blazing & aimed at the US administration. Amongst the choice quotes are
“The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and maps – the better to target those guns. I met him to try to bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war,”
“I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice.”
One analyst put the Washington reaction best, when saying something along the lines of ‘Senate hearings are supposed to be fearful events, to be respected by those summoned’. It reminds me of how Noam Chomsky describes the range & freedom of the media in the US – you have all sides represented, left, center & right wing, and the output is described as balanced, and open to all publication of articles on from all viewpoints. The reality, however, is that the over time the media output has become tightly controlled, such that while there are still opposing viewpoints, the range is dramatically reduced, tightly hemmed in on all sides, such that you never really get any ‘extreme’ or seriously non-conformist articles published in mainstream press. You can see a similar thing with the reaction to George Galloways first testimony – amazement & shock that someone before a Senate hearing should dare to question it with such force & ferocity. Going back to the Iraq War, while in the governemnts in the US and Britain clearly didn’t appreciate the anti-war demos before hand, once the war started there was a very different effect in the two countries. In the UK, the media continued to publish articles questioning the War, and held the government to account (at least to the extent that its really possible given the often unclear information flow during a War). The US, other hand, more or less closed ranks behind the Government, and anyone daring to question the policy was vilified for being ‘anti American’ – in other words once decided upon, the population was essentially expected to be submissive and blindly back the policy regardless of personal views – a fine characteristic for a Totalitarian state
While I’m on this theme, there’s time to mention Amnesty International‘s recent press release describing Guantanamo Bay as “the gulag of our time”. Perhaps a little exageration, there haven’t been several million Civilian deaths in Guantanamo, but frankly, given the [astonishing] lack of harshly critical press coverage on the real human rights atrocity being carried out, this exageration can easily be forgiven. Perhaps just time to quote from Kafka again, his book “The Trial”, an ever more prophetic consideration of the descent of democratic buraucracy into totalitarianism.
..the first plea was almost ready. This was highly important because the first impression made by the defence often determined the whole course of the case. Unfortunately…the first pleas filed with the court were sometimes not read at all.
…the fact that the proceedings were not held in public; they could, if the court deemed it neccessary, be held in public, but the law did not stipulate this. As a consequence, the written records of the court and in particular the document recording the accusation were not available to the accused and his defending counsel…..
…Truly pertinent and convincing pleas could only be prepared later when through questioning of the accused the separate charges against him and their basis emerged more clearly or could be guessed at. In these circumstances the defence was naturally in an unfavourable and difficult position. But that too was intentional. The defence was in fact not really sanctioned by the law but merely tolerated,.
Prophetic words indeed considering that many hundreds of inmates in Guantanamo have been held without charge or credible justification having been made for their continued detainment. A travesty of human rights and worthy of the label ‘gulag of our times’.
The grandure of its title, led me to expect this to be a somewhat more intimate film than it turned out to be. In fact, given the lack of details on the story in the various reviews, the title was about all there was to go on when deciding whether to spend time to watch it. After watching the film, however, I can now understand the difficulties reviewers must have had when trying to write something about it, for this is a film that works best when you know little to nothing about its story. There is a strong focus on style and camerawork, and indeed at first this appears to be all there is to it, there being very little story at all, but over the duration, little sequences here & there let slip & hint at details of the lead character’s background & life. Eventually details in the present & past tie up showing you the full picture of his life, at which point the film moves into its final sequence and a rather unexpected and shocking climax. You might be left wondering in the end, what the title was all about, but give it a little while to sink in and it’ll all become clear. So was it any good ? I wouldn’t say it was perfect by a long shot, and I’m not sure it would bear repeated viewings (since as I said earlier, it works best when you’ve no knowledge of whats to come), but if you like more experimental / unorthadox films then its certainly an interesting watch, and give you a little to think about after the fact.
Before I go, just mention, that while browsing around I came across the White Stripes’ cover of Jolene – fantastic.