raiderhayseed Reviews

A Most Violent Year (2014)

A Most Non Violent, Righteous Year

[8/10 · 1 March 2015]

I did not enjoy J.C. Chandor's film, "Margin Call".

It depicted the grubby actions of rich bankers, scuttling like cockroaches in the scullery, to protect their often ill-gotten gains from their own injudicious financing policies. Their very determination to protect their personal fortunes at all costs made them unsympathetic characters.

He has reworked the formula in "A Most Violent Year", by providing us with a moral, but by no means financially disinterested hero, with whom we can identify. The bankers are still an unreliable lot who should be avoided wherever possible, fulfilling that old definition as people who beg you to take their money when you don't need it, and demand it back when you do.

It is almost as if Chandor has reworked the film "Godfather II" It is almost as if he has reversed the roles of Al Pacino (Michael) and Diane Keaton (Kay). As if he has made Michael Corleone the moral one and his wife, Kay, the amoral one.

In "A Most Violent Year", self made heating oil supplier, Oscar Isaac (Abel Morales) manifests a lot of the Al Pacino mannerisms while rejecting the 'Corleone family" way of doing things.

His 'daughter of a New Jersey gangster' wife, Anna Morales (Jessica Chastain) sees no real problem with that mindset.

Oscar Isaac brings great screen presence to his portrayal of a man with a determination to succeed in business following a moral compass that justifies his faith in the way the capitalist system can be made to work.

But there are some intriguing paradoxes that raise questions about the ability of a just man to withstand the forces of corruption when running a business.

He refuses to allow his truck drivers to carry guns to act as a deterrent to the hijackers who are draining his resources. But it the actions of the driver who disobeys his directive that brings to light the 'injustice" of the actions of the 'justice system' that is failing ignominiously in its conduct of its duty to enforce justice. A public gun fight deprives the district attorney's slow and misdirected investigatory process of the anonymity that amounts to persecuting a man who is seeking to act in a just manner

He uses a gun (as a blunt instrument rather than a fire arm) when he comes face to face with the independent hijacker who has been preying on his drivers. In other words, he conforms to the need to use tempered brute force to combat brute force.

But to be fair, he has the self control to use restraint rather than violence to attain his goals. He presents the incriminating evidence to the business competitor who has been purchasing the oil hijacked from his trucks and threatens him with exposure to the judicial authorities if he does not repay him for the losses incurred

He uses his net working skills and access to the criminal underworld as a lender of last resort when faced with financial ruin

He refuses to accept the 'standard industry practice' way of doing business. But it the actions of a person who has been following those corrupt business practices, the very actions the judicial bureaucracy is investigating, that saves him from becoming a servant of the criminal underworld who have the money that is necessary to run a business when the banks withdraw their support

But director Chandor has created a character with whom we can celebrate the ultimate success of a righteous man when he finally triumphs over the forces of evil and stupidity that beset him. That makes for a satisfying, stimulating and rewarding cinematic experience.

And the added bonus is some continuing food for thought as to the way things happen in the real world. Maybe even the way in which sometimes, to quote from the redemption seeking hit man,Jules, in "Pulp Fiction""The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children....

The Water Diviner (2014)

The Water Diviner Discovers a Flaw in Australia's National Myth

[7/10 · 11 January 2015]

"The Water Diviner", Russell Crowe's first attempt at directing a film, opened the day after Christmas and within a week, Australian cinema goers made it the biggest grossing Australian film for 2014. Money talks, and the critics are grudgingly acknowledging its success. (It was popular in Turkey too) But their praise is muted.For example…The Water Diviner is far from perfect… Its main failing is that it tries to be too many things …it feels like you've watched three or four different movies.

I beg to differ. To me it seemed like the film was propagating a very simple yet radical view of Australian history. It's one that I have been thinking about for some time. It is a view whose expression will mark one out as mad, bad and dangerous to know. Unless, of course, you can wrap it up in a rattling good yarn, as Crowe and his writers have succeeded in doing admirably.

So I will start by mentioning my maternal grandfather. He fought in the first World War, in Europe rather than Turkey, before being wounded, sent home and conceiving my mother before the armistice had been declared.

My mother said he, like so many of his fellow soldiers, refused to talk about his war experiences.

Albert Facey, a survivor of the Gallipoli expedition and author of "A Fortunate Life", a best selling memoir, was rather more forthcoming about his experiences. However, when talking about his fellow Australians who were not there, he said (287), "Some men who did not go got a rough time, but we never said anything to them because we thought they had some brains. I would have stayed behind if I had known"

My grandfather had a few of things in common with Albert Facey. They were both wounded in the first world war, they both had their first encounters with the girls they would marry in the tea rooms in Boans, Perth's biggest department store and both of them outlived their wives.

The film opens with the Turkish army, advancing against the armies that have invaded their country only to discover that they have retreated after a bloody war that has achieved nothing other than to hasten the already inevitable decline of the Ottoman Empire. The post war Greek incursions into Turkey to take chunks of its territory for themselves forms the backdrop to the film.

So why were the Australians invading a country that was no threat to them in 1915?

There is a disturbing answer to that question.

When Connor (Russell Crowe) intervenes in a fight between the film's charismatic love interest, Ayshe (Olga Kurylenko) and her brother, she remonstrates with him, saying that Australians involve themselves in other peoples wars for no good reason. Connor does it again, taking the side of the Turkish commander whose actions led to the death of his sons, against the invading Greek armed forces.

There is a great deal of cant, masquerading as history, taught to Australian school children, about Australia becoming a nation of the shores of Gallipoli.

The real reason the Australians were there was an ill-founded belief that the military might of the British Empire had to be defended at all costs, because Australia's very existence depended on that remaining the case. During World War II, when it became clear that this was no longer the case, Australia found a new master to serve - the USA. The nonsensical and disastrous post war military adventures of the USA, have all been aided and abetted, small part, with Australian troops. Or as Ayshe said, Australians involving themselves in other peoples wars for no good reason

During World War II, the Australian prime minister turned back the boats that were transporting Australian soldiers at the whim of the British prime minister (who had been the architect of the Gallipoli landing) to some foreign theatre of war, and brought them back to thwart the previously unstoppable Japanese army's southward progress through New Guinea. That should have been the cause for national myth building and solemn remembrance. That should have been the genesis of a proud and militarily self reliant Australian nation.

Canberra Times editor at large, Jack Waterford, wrote about an Australian senior Defence Department bureaucrat seconded to work at the US Pentagon. He jokingly asked the Americans with whom he was working what they thought of Australia. After the platitudes such as "old friends, steady and reliable allies, close companions who have stood along side us in tough times, etc", he asked them what they really thought. There was a silence, then one of them said, "we think you are an easy lay".(26 July 2014)

That is the kind of relationship a pimp has with his whores.

I have been critical of the way in which the nation state of Israel has conducted itself since 1967, but it has to be admitted that they have developed a proud and militarily self reliant national mythology in a way that Australia has failed to do.

So, far from trying to be too many things, The Water Diviner, has made a bold statement about the craven lack of self reliance that has infected the Australian national spirit. And it has done that in a way that has had Australians flocking to the cinemas to enjoy a rattling good yarn. That's something of a coup for Crowe and his collaborators to have pulled off, if you give any credence to my take on film.

Boyz n the Hood (1991)

How to get the Boyz n the Hood to Increase the Peacke

[8/10 · 13 April 2014]

Some films hang around at the back of your mind for days, like the aftermath of a bad dream, influencing your mood and giving you a feeling that all is not well, for no apparent reason.

John Singleton's" Boyz n the Hood" (1991) did that to me. If I could sum it up in one image, it would be that of a kid lowering the car window and pointing his gun at anything that caught his attention. It conjures up a darkness, a barbaric senselessness, an uncivilised malevolence that infects the spirit.

I was surprised at the difference between the two halves of the film when watching it again recently. The first seems to be infused with light. OK. Laurence Fishburne unleashes his gun on an intruder in his house the night he takes in his son. He has accepted the responsibility of caring for him at the request of his ex-wife, who wants to concentrate on finishing her masters degree in teaching and establishing her own career.

Fishburne's physical resemblance to Samuel L. Jackson always leads me to expect a "And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy My brothers…" kind of tirade every time his bulky frame fills the screen. Instead we get the warm and cuddly velvet glove over the just as powerful, iron fist threatening presence. We saw that persona in Michael Apted's 1991 film, "Class Action", in which Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio produced a female version of the Samuel L. Jackson style of acting.

So, after violently defending the home he will share with his son, we see him him singing along with his favourite soft soul music song on the car radio and spending time fishing and passing on his philosophy of life. That's the first half of the film

The second is so much darker. Now the father is preaching to his son, his friend and interested bystanders on the need for African Americans to retain the identity they have given to their neighbourhoods and to resist the seductive offers by real estate agents bent on acquiring their houses with a view to gentrifying those areas.

The son (Tre ,played by Cuba Gooding Jr.) and his football champion childhood friend and neighbour (Ricky Baker, played by Morris Chestnut) are both determined to improve their prospects in life by means of getting a tertiary education. But then the dark forces of meaningless violence masquerading as a means to earn 'respect' impinge upon their quest to leave their troubled environment.

Paradoxically, it is the innocent, mild mannered Tre who sets the tragic events in motion, when he objects to being shouldered out of the way by an outsider at the local hangout. That action unleashes the forces of evil, revenge and vendetta. It is powerful stuff. Tre opts out of the savagery. Ricky and his delinquent brother are murdered.

At the conclusion of the film, Singleton places the words, "increase the peace" on the screen.

In the context of the film, that gesture is quite dramatic. But in the cold light of day - it is just words. How can anyone "increase the peace" in such an environment. And it is not just the 'drive by shooting' infested areas of inner city Los Angeles. Australians were sobered on 21 August 2013 by an event described by CNN as "A random act of violence has left a promising 23-year- old college baseball player dead, a family devastated and two countries half a world apart rattled. Christopher Lane, who was from Australia, was gunned down in Duncan, Oklahoma, while he was out jogging last week. The motive? Three teens who had nothing better to do, according to police."

That got me thinking about how Americans, with their fiercely protected rights to bear arms could "increase the peace'.

It brought to mind the concept of "hot spot policing". (New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani corrupted the initial concept and turned it into "zero tolerance policing"). Hot spot policing worked on the basis that some areas had effectively been turned into war zones. Violence reigned. So the authorities instituted a TEMPORARY version of "zero tolerance policing". Once order had been restored, and the forces of darkness had been moved on, the heavy policing of that locale ceases.

So what about the argument it is just shifting the problem elsewhere. It is not a problem. When the problem moves to a new location, a new "hot spot policing" area can be declared for the area to which they have moved, and the same processes can be instituted. Areas should only be declared to be hot spots for a defined time. The status should be temporary - not permanent.

So why not ban all weapons from such "hot spot policing" in public areas? All such weapons would be seized by the police and destroyed in a weekly public ceremony within seven days of seizure.

Such a policy should not need to an affront to members of the NRA. People, like Tre's father, who keep their guns at home for use against intruders would not be affected. It would only be those involved in drive by shootings, or those who carry guns with them as a means to demand "respect" in places that could be temporarily declared to be "hot spots"

Australia (which does not have any right to bear arms laws) instituted a "gun buy back" for automatic weapons after a gruesome mass shooting in 1996. The gun buy-back scheme started on 1 October 1996 and concluded on 30 September 1997.The buyback purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 firearms, mostly semi-auto .22 rimfires, semi-automatic shotguns and pump-action shotguns. (Wikipedia)

How's that for increasing the peace?

Hannah Arendt (2012)

The Shining, Deceptively Beautiful Banality of Evil

[7/10 · 12 April 2014]

Adolf Eichmann was the Nazi bureaucrat who organised the transport of Jews to concentration camps during Hitler's reign in Germany.

If the anti-semites who peddle all that Holocaust denial nonsense had enough intellectual curiosity to read Hannah Arendt's book about his 1960-2 trial in Israel, they would discover a far more potent means of spreading their racial hatred.

Arendt describes the way in which Eichmann, a mediocrity rather than a monster, used his negotiating skills to convince the Jewish organisations that they could "save" a certain number of Jews by assisting in the "deportation" of others

I watched the unfolding of Margarethe von Trotta's film with something akin to disbelief. I went away and read the book version of Arendt's series of articles for the New Yorker magazine on the trial of Eichmann in Israel in 1960-62.

…(Penguin Edition 2005) page 58 The Councils of Jewish Elders were informed by Eichmann… of how many Jews were needed to fill each train and they made out the list of deportees… The few who tried to hide or to escape were rounded up by a special Jewish police force

page 60 Without Jewish help in administrative and police work…there would have been either complete chaos or an impossibly severe drain on German manpower

page 61 to a Jew this role of the Jewish leaders in destruction of their own people is undoubtedly the darkest chapter of the whole story

page 62 … we can still sense how they enjoyed their new power – the Central Jewish Council has been granted the right of absolute disposal over all Jewish spiritual and material wealth and over all Jewish manpower … Jewish officials felt like Captains "whose ships were about to sink and who succeeded in bringing them safe to port by casting overboard a great part of the precious cargo" … In order not to leave the selection to blind fate, truly holy principles were needed as the guiding force of the weak human hand which puts down on paper the name of the unknown person and with this decides his life or death. And who did these holy principles single out for salvation? Those who have worked all their lives for the community i.e. The functionaries and the most prominent Jews (through page 65, 70-71 and 80-83)…

The film then depicts the way in which the Jews with whom Arendt had associated in America before writing those articles virtually excommunicated her.

Nothing new about that. Read chapters 20 and 29 of the Jewish prophet Jeremiah (628-587 B.C.E.), who faced 'criticism' for daring to tell his countrymen they were to be exiled in Babylon for seventy years. In fact it was Jeremiah who came up with the notion of 'assimilation'. That's in chapter 29 of his prophecies too…

Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.  Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.

The whole assimilationist trend has been attributed to the eighteenth century philosopher and wandering Jew, Moses Mendelssohn by, among others, Simon Schama in his 2013 BBC television series "The Story of the Jews". As that series pointed out, Theodor Herzl contested the assimilationist idea in his 1895 book, "Der Judenstaat" ("The Jewish State") which launched the Zionist movement, whose activities culminated in the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

Arendt makes the astounding disclosure that it was one of the few books Eichmann ever read. He not only read it. It became the foundation of his 'idealistic' view that Jewish feet should stand on Jewish, not German, soil. Everything that he accomplished was directed toward that purpose.

But maybe there is an even more shocking idea inherent in the film's narrative than that.

I had heard the striking phrase, 'the banality of evil' before I had heard of Arendt. She uses it in her paragraph describing the hanging death of Eichmann at the hands of Israeli officials. But like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, evil has a way of disguising its banality.

If we can define Nazism as evil, was it something in the Nazi tendencies of her teacher and lover, Martine Heidegger, that attracted her to him? (If the depiction of Heidegger in the film by Klaus Pohl is accurate, it was certainly not his looks). There is the scene in which she and her female confidante, Mary McCarthy, talk about 'the love of her life" over a game of billiards. She denies it was Martin Heidegger

But then I was surprised when I heard the critics raving about the performance of Barbara Sukowa in the lead role. To me, watching the film, I found her performance in her scenes of domestic interaction with her husband rather forced. It brought to mind those rather overstated intimations of affection of people who seem to be trying to convince themselves that feel more strongly for their partner than their hearts' tell them that they do. Her performance seemed to be 'artificial'.

Maybe Mary McCarthy was right. Maybe it all gets back to that idea of Chris Hedges, quoted as a preface to Kathryn Bigelow's 2008 film, "The Hurt Locker" to the effect that "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning". Maybe the serpent, the Shining One, in the Garden of Eden had an attractiveness that transcended mere banality. Maybe it was something about the evil in Heidegger that made him the love of Arendt's life

Baksy (2008)

Native Dancer: The Shaman with the Law of Moses Written Upon Her Heart?

[7/10 · 10 April 2014]

The problem with ethnographic films lies in the pacing, which is usually slow. The problem with "institutional" churches, be they Jewish, Moslem, or Christian, is the spiritual impotence of their leaders and their congregations. Remember that old saying, "I like Christianity. It's just Christians I don't like"

Ethnographic films… think The Weeping Camel (2003) (Byambasuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni). It was moving and memorable, but lacked the car chases, charismatic American stars and those endless fight sequences that seem to be a staple of films that make a lot of money at the box office and beyond.

Gulshat Omarova seems to have solved a lot of those problems in "Native Dancer".

The protagonists drive the narrative at a fast clip as they gun their stylish SUVs through the barren yet striking scenery of Kazakhstan.

Aidai the Baksy, the shaman like Muslim-lady-healer who is being evicted from the land she has been gifted by the hero provides the substance so necessary to make gangster films work. Those gangsters, their ever so slightly corrupt police quislings and the hero who endeavours to stand up to their nefarious deeds are instantly recognisable from so many American movies. The characterless taverns in which they transact their sleazy business seem strangely familiar. It all works to keep the viewers' attention from wandering away from what is going on up there on the screen and on to the undeniable truth that this is, in fact, an ethnographic film

Central to the success of the film is the unflinching, unsentimental, unquestioned efficacy of Aidai the Baksy, in healing the maladies, both physical and spiritual, of those who seek her aid. In the past fifty years, many anthropologists have been taken with the idea of the shaman- healer-spiritual intermediary. Joseph Cambell, whose "Hero With the Thousand Faces" provided the structure of the Star War series of George Lucas, was very taken with them.

What strikes the viewer is the strength of her character. Her mode of dealing with damaged human beings may be brusque and unyielding, but none of them doubt her righteousness. Many seemed to be healed by her old world ways.

And her resurrection from death. I recall a person who had travelled through Africa telling me how he once encountered an old man outside a village who seemed to be dead. Upon alerting one of the villagers he was berated for being silly. The man had merely placed himself into an inanimate state of rest. Some of the voodoo stories about the walking dead zombies have been explained by reference to the temporary effects of eating certain species of poisonous fish. The shaman's resurrection hangs together just like everything else in the film

Think about the American evangelical, so called "Christian" churches. They lack people such as Aidai the Baksy. Her righteousness. Her efficacy. The genuine respect she imbues in those with whom she has dealings. Paul in his letter to the Roman Catholic church (the sixth book of the Christian bible's New Testament) described her status. She is the righteous gentile who has never heard of Moses' Law, but who proves by her actions that what that law requires is written upon her heart (Romans 2:14). He may well have been talking about Abraham, whom he describes as the father of all those who exercise faith (Romans 4:11), but it might also apply to Baksy, the Native Dancer. Food for thought, hey?

"Native Dancer" is a film that makes you want to see more ethnographic films. That makes it special

The Gatekeepers (2012)

Gatekeepers, Moses' Law and the Prophets

[8/10 · 17 February 2014]

According to Wikipedia, "The Gatekeepers", director, Dror Moreh, wanted to understand how Israel's Shin Bet security agency worked. He contacted a former head of the Shin Bet (a "Gatekeeper,)" Ami Ayalon, who had since been elected to the Knesset for the Labor Party. Ayalon agreed to participate, and helped Moreh contact the other surviving former heads of the Shin Bet

My Response to The Gatekeepers #1: Blame the politicians - not the spies

Avraham Shalom, one of the Gatekeepers after the 1967 war believed, like many, that the conquered territories would be returned to their former occupants. He says, "The problem is that the security agency executives are so busy conducting the activities of their organisations that they only get to think about these things when they are on holidays, or when they retire" (my paraphrase). The problems is that " There was no strategy, just tactics…As soon as we stopped dealing with the Palestinian state and started dealing with terrorism,… we forgot about the Palestinian issue"

My Response to The Gatekeepers #2: Politicians pander to the prevailing popular opinion - in other words - what they think the people will vote for. Blame the people, not the politicians

I have a feeling that if Israelis took the words of their prophets more seriously they would have a nicer country to live in. Take the words of Jeremiah, for example…"If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly,  if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow… then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever.  But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless." (chapter 7:5-8)

"All six former heads of Shin Bet argue – to varying degrees – that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is bad for the state of Israel."

Carmi Gillon, head of Shin Bet from 1994 to 1996, suggests that the deceptive words of the extremists led to a serious attempt to blow up the Muslim Dome of the Rock mosque, which stands on the site of the old Temple of Solomon. Shin Bet operatives were able to interrupt it.

He suggests that such an act would have united Muslims around the world, from Arabia to Indonesia, to take up arms against Israelis, and lay siege to Zion. Such an occurrence is referred to in Israel's prophetic scriptures as "the Great Tribulation".

It takes a bit of background to get an understanding of what that involves.

The biblical prophets sought to explain the destruction of Israel by the Assyrian and Babylonian empires as part of an atoning process that would remake the people of Israel in a way that was acceptable to Jahweh. It is likened to the way in which precious metals are refined by having the ore (dross, impurities) burnt off. The process is described in Deuteronomy chapters 28 to 30. That theme is taken up by the prophet Jeremiah in chapters 29 to 31, in which the supposedly new covenant he discusses seems to be identical with the one Jahweh negotiated with Moses

Both the Moses and Jeremiah covenants involve people adopting a righteous mindset - or to use the rather more poetic language employed in the bible - having the words of the Law "written upon their hearts". It is the same righteous mindset that Jahweh ascribed to Abraham in Genesis 26:5, "because Abraham obeyed me and did everything I required of him, keeping my commands, my decrees and my instructions."

What the expression, "the Law written upon their hearts" actually means was summarised by Hillel as "the ethic of reciprocity", or "Golden Rule": "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn." (this is another quote from Wikipedia - go and read)

The Israeli prophets are obsessed with the idea that this atonement, this refinement ,will take place in three stages. 1 the Great Tribulation of Israel 2 the Day of the Lord 3 the prosperity of the Messianic reign in Zion of David's son

The Day of the Lord occurs when God intervenes in human history, delivering Jerusalem from the armies of the nations that have besieged it (the great tribulation), then places a descendant of King David on the throne in Jerusalem.

The Roman expulsions of Jews from Israel (70 and 138 CE) occurred after Jewish extremists decided to speed up that process by getting involved in revolutionary politics. The book and film of Chaim Potok's, "The Chosen" depict this idea when the fictional, orthodox Rebbe Saunders launches into a tirade against the efforts of post World War II Zionists to re-create a state of Israel. I would paraphrase it as, "Hitler killed Jewish bodies - these Zionists will kill the Jewish soul", but you would probably be better advised to read the book or see the film.

It seems that the extremists want to do it all again, but this time against the Muslims rather than the Romans. Carmi Gillon notes that these sentiments culminated in the assassination of prime minister Rabin, and emasculated the efforts of Israeli officials at peace talks from Oslo to the present day. All the Gatekeepers agree such talks must be continued in a serious manner.

Spielberg's film, "Munich" highlighted the problem of Israeli born Jews leaving Israel.Maybe its time they stayed home and discovered for themselves what it means to have Moses' Law written upon their hearts. Not what some medieval commentator says. Not what some critical text analysis says. But what it means "not to do what is hateful to your fellow.". Then maybe they should get themselves elected.

Zelig (1983)

Zelig: Not Just About Jews Who Don't Fit In, No Matter How Hard They Try

[6/10 · 7 February 2014]

Ned Flanders, the Simpson's next door neighbour, said he liked Woody Allen films, but was not quite sure about the nervous little guy with the glasses who always appeared in them. Neither am I.

There were only four I have ever really warmed to. "Play It Again, Sam".(The personal Bogart mentor is fun but the slapstick becomes tedious) "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex" (It is still funny and insightful) "Radio Days" (a rare delight - but the little guy with glasses is an offscreen narrator) "Broadway Danny Rose" (an examination of the idea of "grace", forgiveness, turning the other cheek as an alternative to revenge)

"Crimes and Misdemeanours" - The suggestion that you tend to forget about guilt if you live with it long enough and make enough money to buy respectability is interesting. But is the film just a technicolor morality tale.

In "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan", the little guy with glasses reveals himself as a self deluded, self obsessed brat.

And then there was "Zelig". It runs out of steam about half way through and has to be resuscitated by a rescue mission resulting in a new world record for flying a plane upside down across the Atlantic.

It seems to depict the age old plight of Jews, who were kicked out of Israel by the Romans and have endeavoured to become citizens of North Africa, then Spain, then mid Europe then Russia. The more ambitious and successful tried to assimilate with the people they lived amongst, (take on the identity of such people) only to be violently rejected in the end.

However there is a universality to "Zelig".

"Man is born free but all around us we see him in chains".

If you try to make yourself identical to everyone else to 'fit in', you will never know who or what you really are. You will ultimately miss out on the wisdom gained through atonement - the means to 'Know Thyself". That may well apply to the timid Germans of the 1930's, the conformist faces in the crowds in those old newsreels. But it's not just about1930's Germans.

You can see it acted out in Luis Bunuel's, "Exterminating Angel". The high society supper party guests slowly realise that they can not escape from the room in which they have gathered. Their increasingly desperate plight is finally brought to a head when one of them suggests they go back to doing what they were doing before it dawned upon them that they were trapped. The solution works. They find a way to exit the room. To celebrate their deliverance, they all attend a grand cathedral church service. And at the conclusion of the film, they realise they are trapped in the cathedral.

So how do you escape the invisible chains that trap people in a society that is very imperfect? Ask the Greek philosophers.

The beginning and end of all wisdom is to "Know Thyself" By beauty it is that we come at Wisdom

In Keats' words,"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

But what is the route that leads to that beauty that is wisdom, that is self knowledge?

Woody Allen might well have gained some insight into that question had he spent more time becoming acquainted with the Hebrew scriptures than he did in "Crimes and Misdemeanours". Moses' Law and the Prophets have a great deal to say about the journey that leads to wisdom and beauty. Take the feasts prescribed in Moses' Law.

Moses' Law ties the Exodus from Egyptian slavery story to a fortnight in early spring in which Passover, Unleavened Bread and First Fruits feasts are observed. They celebrate redemption. Of course only two of the people who were redeemed on that first passover made it to the promised land. The rest did not even make it into God's rest (Psalm 95), whatever that means.

A fortnight at the end of summer contains the new year, atonement and tabernacles feasts. They commemorate the forty years of wilderness wandering (atonement) that allowed them to see and know God's ways(wisdom) .

Passover is about redemption. The child at the loving mother's breast is protected from harm, nourished and kept warm. It would die without that redemptive care. Think of redemption as beauty, love, mercy, forgiveness, grace. Think of the closing scene of "Broadway Danny Rose"

Atonement is about law, truth, consequences of actions. The child who has been weaned and goes out into the world soon discovers the truth that it is not at all like suckling at mommy's bosom. Wisdom is truth. The truth that is discovered about oneself by life experiences in the hard, cold world. They either make you, or break you. You get to decide by the way you react to the calamities of nature and actions of other people. Think of wisdom as truth. It is symbolised as a virtuous wife in the book of Proverbs. It is expressed as the knowledge of God that comes from riding out grief, pain and loss, in the book of Job. Apotheosis.The man who had his ex- lover murdered in "Crimes and Misdemeanours" failed to gain that wisdom.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty Redemption is beauty. The Wisdom discovered by atonement is truth.

If you want a new definition of the construct referred to as "God", recast that idea as what happens at some abstract point at which Redemption intersects with Atonement - at which grace and beauty intersect with truth. Using that definition, knowing God is to know redemption and atonement - beauty and truth - true wisdom.

There's an idea for some new movies, Woody. Some really worthwhile movies, with or without the little guy who wears glasses.

Mad Bastards (2010)

Mad Bastards Get a Dose of Sanity and Redemption at the Hands of a Hard as Nails Sheriff

[7/10 · 26 January 2014]

There seems to be a trend developing in Australian films dealing with the aboriginal inhabitants.

It is a theme of an indigenous man returning (from a big city) to see a child he has fathered and the child's mother, with an ill-formed but real view to effecting some sort of reconciliation. That's the situation in Ivan Sen's 2013 film, "Mystery Road".

It is also the narrative backbone of Brendan Fletcher's 2010 film, "Mad Bastards".

"Mad Bastards" also seems to exhibit thematic resonances with a couple of other Australian films.

The first is Michael Joy's 2008 very affecting "Men's Group", which details the coming together of damaged, Australian (caucasian) males who over a period of time manage to surmount the reserve men have about exposing their weakness to other men. That reticence is probably a survival instinct, but it can leave them lonely and alienated, especially when they lack female companionship.

In "Mad Bastards", Texas (Greg Tait), the local police officer of an isolated settlement in the north of Western Australia, to whom we will refer as the local sheriff, has started a men's group. Little bonding or communication has taken place among the participants. They seem to attend only to partake of the barbecued sausages meal on offer. But it all goes to demonstrate the 'sensitive new age guy' sensibilities that co-exist with the 'hard as nails' persona of the local sheriff. He wants to show decency, love, forgiveness, redemption to the broken people with whose security he has been entrusted. They include his juvenile grand son, who has escaped a jail term by submitting to a "bush survival skills" intervention run by a tribal elder.

The other film with which it resonates is Elissa Down's, "Black Balloon" (2008). That film tells the story of an autistic kid who lives with a loving family who do their utmost to tolerate his perverse behaviour by treating it as essentially 'harmless pranks' . Those perversions include 1 Entering into strangers' houses and interrupting their private functions 2 Defecating in his own home and smearing his faeces into the carpet 3 Masturbating at the dining room table in front of his brother's new girlfriend

The latter 'prank' provokes his brother to resort to a violent, physical response. The kindness, the understanding, the love, mercy and redemptive good will have finally run out. The only response left is physical violence.

Should the autistic kid be allowed to carry on in a barbaric manner? Is a violent response the only way to convey to the offender the gravity of his behaviour and the need to change that behaviour? The resort to such physical violence is the means by which the sheriff conveys to his Mad Bastard, de facto son-in-law TJ (Dean Daley-Jones) that his violent behaviour will not be tolerated. He beats him up then gives him enough money to obey his command to 'get out of town'.

TJ, the violent Mad Bastard, declines the offer of money and a form of reconciliation takes place. At the culmination of the film he will attend the sheriff's "men's group'. Who knows? He may end up as the deputy sheriff. He has already commenced the process of establishing a relationship with his juvenile delinquent son and possibly his mother.

It is a film that depicts the nastiness of alcohol fuelled violence in all its many manifestations, both domestic and public. But it also demonstrates the civilising effects that discipline in all its manifestations, can imbue. It demonstrates the two opposing but co-habiting concepts of redemption and atonement. The redemption is underlined by the gentle music of the Pigram family band music. The atoning forces by the performance of Greg Tait.

An interesting detail is that TJ, the Mad Bastard is of Noongar origin. The Noongar people have recently become the first indigenous Australians to enter into a settlement agreement with the European colonisers of Australia that reflects the findings of the High Court in the Mabo and Wik cases. They have relinquished their land rights claim over Perth, the capital city and the south west of Western Australia in exchange for a compensation settlement. In the course of the film, TJ refers to the brewery that had been constructed on a spring that feeds water into the Swan River near Perth. He sees it as a desecration of the body of Wagyl, a snakelike being from the Dreamtime that meandered over the land creating rivers, waterways and lakes.(see Wikipedia for more details) That site was an important part of the settlement.

At the end of the film, the principal actors go out of character and relate snippets of their own volatile experiences and the decisions they have made to embrace a more disciplined, civilised life style. It seems to involve family ties, temperance in all things, and (perhaps) a renewed interest and valuation of their cultural heritage by 'going bush'. That has some resonance with the prevailing sentiments of "Blackfellas", a 1993 film about West Australian aborigines coming to terms with the European colonisation of their land.

Yolngu Boy (2001)

Aboriginal Australians Choosing the 'Right Way' to Lead Their Lives

[7/10 · 21 November 2013]

Australian cinematographer Dean Semler is perhaps best known for his work (and some say co- direction) of "Dances With Wolves" (1990). He got his start with the Australian Commonwealth Film Unit (a kind of half-arsed government propaganda body) and was involved in Ian Dunlop's striking ethnographic documentary,"Marrakulu Funeral - Yirrkala" (1974). That film tells the story of the funeral ceremony for an Australian Aboriginal clan leader.

The film was made at the request of the tribal elders, who wanted to ensure that a record remained of the "old ways", available for future generations.

At one stage of the film, the funeral is interrupted by some drunken young boys. They are told, in no uncertain terms, to leave immediately. There is no place for the profane in this sacred ceremony.

That problem is the narrative core of "Yolgnu Boy".(The Yolngu are an Indigenous Australian people inhabiting north-eastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory of Australia. Yolngu means "person" in the Yolŋu languages. The term Murngin was formerly used by some anthropologists for the Yolngu)

It tells the story of the different life courses embraced by three young aboriginal boys, Lorrpu, Botj and Milika, who have undergone the initial rites of initiation given to young children.

Lorrpu and Milika are about to undergo the final rites conducted by the tribal elders that initiate boys into manhood.

The rites of initiation are described in the book that laid down the narrative structure for the first three Star Wars films of George Lucas. (Joseph Campbell's "Hero With A Thousand Faces" Fontana 1993 pages 137-142, 154-55, 174-5). They are a very serious undertaking. The well being of the clan group relies on the law and ritual imparted during these ceremonies. Those who are responsible for their administration are respected and feared (with good reason) by the community as a whole.

Milika is more interested in becoming a star player for the Essendon Australian Rules Football Club in Melbourne, at the southern extremities of Australia.

Botj, a rebel without a cause trouble maker has been refused initiation because of his errant ways. In fact he has just returned from jail in Darwin when the film begins, and after a night of petrol sniffing, vandalism and injurious self harm, is about to be sent back to there.

Lorrpu wants to stop this happening. He believes that if the tribal elders will not seek to reform Botj, then he should. He interrupts the tribal initiation rites to "go bush" with his two friends on a journey to Darwin. If he can make it to Darwin, he can argue Botj's case with tribal leader Dawu. They travel through much of the land seen in the Crocodile Dundee film.

Sadly, when they make it to Darwin, the errant Botj acts according to his worst instincts and self destructs, again, this time fatally.

The real significance of the film is its (perhaps) oblique depiction of a vibrant, all encompassing, tribal Australian Aboriginal culture that continues to exist as it has done for forty thousand years or more. Regardless of the encroachment on European civilisation, it is still possible for those who are willing to practise their cultural beliefs to do so. Those who are seduced by the squalor of the worst excesses of European culture will fall by the wayside. But the film presents a view that it is possible for Aboriginals to take what is good from both cultures.

From 1787 until 1971, the European colonists who had settled in Australia treated the aboriginal population as an illusion. The legal doctrine Terra Nullius claimed the land was empty when they arrived. (Search on Mabo and Wik in Wikipedia for details as to how that doctrine was overturned). The aboriginal culture was strong enough to resist the barbaric depredations of the white settlers. In the area in which this film was made, a Yolgnu leader, Noel Pearson, is in the process of creating a new way for the original owners to deal with the relatively new European culture.(Check him out in Wikipedia too).

The film was partly funded by the Yothu Yindi Foundation, and there a quite a few of the Yunupingu family (the driving force behind the Yothu Yindi band) involved in its making. You may recall the song (and video clip) "Treaty" which is used in this film.

While Australians have a great deal to be ashamed of in their treatment the indigenous population, but this film suggests that a mutually beneficial accommodation can be reached between two vastly different cultures.

Close to Home (2005)

Israeli - Palestinian Relations - Time to Rethink Current Strategies

[6/10 · 17 November 2013]

On 14 May 1948, a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel was established.The following day, the armies of four Arab countries—Egypt, Syria, Transjordan and Iraq—entered what had been British Mandate Palestine, launching the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. It was a case of an ill-equipped army defending a new homeland with a population of half a million against armies representing a combined population of forty-eight million.

In fact it was more than that. It was a case of an ill-equipped, vastly outnumbered army defending land, almost all of which had been purchased over the preceding hundred years from its original owners by Zionist groups on behalf of the Jewish National Fund. The Israeli armed forces won a praiseworthy reputation for the manner in which they fought to defend Israel, the land and its people.

The proportion of land owned by the Jewish National Fund is reported to be around 13% by 2007, according to the Wikipedia entry on that institution. The discrepancy arises from the land obtained by military conquest since 1948.

By 2005, when "Close to Home" was made, the young Israeli conscripts have been reduced to the boring and uninspiring task of patrolling the streets of Jerusalem stopping Palestinian passersby, asking for their identity cards, and to writing down their details on special forms. That is a long way from the training of sabras in the use of military weapons and procedures to be used in defending their homeland against attack by foreign armies. In fact it brings to mind the pointless US "war on drugs" depicted in such films as "Traffic". Their efforts will only make the real villains - in the Israeli case, the terrorist aggressors - exercise more evasive techniques, while gratuitously offending the great majority of Palestinians who live in and around Israel and who do not engage in such violence

The film begins with a young conscript refusing to search a Palestinian going about her peaceful business as she crosses the Israeli border. The conscript is sent to prison, where she is required, along with other miscreant conscripts, to sort buttons. The viewer can not help but wonder which is the more meaningful employment - sorting buttons or harassing Palestinians.

The two central characters spend their time looking in shop windows, visiting hair dressers, smoking, contemplating true romance, and half heartedly taking down details of a few Palestinians. It is hardly riveting, involving cinema. The IMDb synopsis by writers-directors Vidi Bilu and Dalia Hager suggests that, "As women, this film is our own way of soul searching, about our army service and the occupation" The film, like many Israeli films, seems to be questioning the policies of the country's leaders. These films may well represent the best hope, not just for Palestinians who do not seek the violent overthrow of the state of Israel, but for those Israelis who take seriously the words of their own prophets... Jeremiah(7:5-8) If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever.  But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless.

Field of Dreams (1989)

Field of Hope and Faith

[9/10 · 14 November 2013]

Peter Castaldi,who was, for a while, the amiable ABC Youth Radio Triple J film reviewer made a very perceptive comment about American film making. "The Yanks make the worst films in the world, but when they get it right, they make the best films in the world". I tend to agree with that notion. He also said that Phil Alden Robinson's "Field of Dreams" was a load of rubbish. I don't agree with that notion.

OK. So farmers who turn their best corn growing land into baseball diamonds for dead guys will pretty well always go broke. Hoping for good outcomes from crazy notions does not make a man righteous. In fact it is down right irresponsible.

But that raises an interesting point about religious beliefs. There is a difference between "faith" and "hope". The writer of the New Testament letter to the Corinthian church made that clear at the end of chapter 13 of his first letter to that church. Love. Faith. Hope. They are eternal. Everyone can define what hope is. The first two are not as easy to define as most people would like to believe. Read the parable about the Good Samaritan to muddy up your ideas about the definition of Love. Likewise Faith has a very specific meaning. it is more than Hope. It is the "confidence in what we hope for… and… assurance about what we do not see". (the letter to Hebrew believers - chapter 11). Moses - the most revered of the Hebrew believers made it clear that if a prophet prophecies something that does not happen, then he is a fraud. The writer of Hebrews chapter 11, the roll call of people who exercised "faith" goes on to say, "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth." So Moses' requirement that faith must be backed up by tangible results needs a bit of refining. What seems to be the important component of faith is some revelation received by a person. So the people mentioned in Hebrews 11 all had divine revelations.

Ray Kinsella (played with great dignity and authority by Kevin Costner) hears voices emanating from the corn field and stakes his very existence on their veracity, even though he has no idea what they are on about. He has to continue his crazy quest, seeking to gain the acceptance of disapproving people of his crazy utterances…"People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.  If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.  Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one."

Peter Castaldi's disapproval notwithstanding, this idea stands up to scrutiny given the sanctimonious hypocrisy of respectable folks back the sixties,(and seventies) and the evil they perpetrated in the name of conventional morality. Anyone standing up for true righteousness was going to be a "foreigner and stranger on earth"

Kinsella: When it came time to go to college, I picked the farthest one away from home I could find. That drove my father right up the wall, but I guess that was the point. At Berkeley, officially my major was English, but really it was the sixties. I marched (in protests), smoked some grass and tried to like sitar music…then I met Annie, who became my wife… But until I heard the voice, I never did a crazy thing in my whole life.

The sixties: that period during which the intellectual, emotional and moral bankruptcy of the respectable citizenry was laid bare for all to see, in all its horrible godlessness.

I remember an amusing reference in Rolling Stone to the downfall of the Nixon administration. "All his advisers were respectable, short haired, god-fearing people who didn't take illegal drugs,. Maybe its time some long haired,atheist, drug taking hippies were brought in to government".

Kinsella is scared to death of turning into his father, who may have heard voices but sure didn't listen to them

OK A whole self help industry has been built on the feelings of alienation baby boomer sons had from their fathers. Maybe it is the affluence experienced by the baby boomers that gave them the security to contemplate revelation - faith - alienation from their fellows.

But then a lot of baby boomers voted for Nixon to be president not once, but twice. A lot of baby boomers supported the Vietnam War. And a lot of baby boomers sit around, drinking in taverns, speaking ill of pot smokers.

Kinsella was lucky enough to have a wife who was prepared to stand by her man. Alden Robinson might well have restrained Amy Madigan's kinetic performance, but she does make the point that the alternative was probably becoming one with the local wanna be book burners.

It is also refreshing to see Ray Liotta cast in a role of someone other than a villain, assuming you do not judge Shoeless Joe Jackson too harshly. Watch John Sayles' "Eight Men Out" to refresh your memory on that matter.

Perhaps if America had more people of faith, as it is described in the bible, then the corruption of people such as Shoeless Joe Jackson and the White Sox might be expunged from so many American institutions. But then they have always been a scarce commodity. As Ray Kinsella is told, faith is the province of the chosen few, to whom 'what is out there" is revealed. Everyone else can exercise hope. For those who meekly exercise hope, hungering and thirsting after righteousness, showing mercy and dreaming of purity of heart, its not such a bad deal. It's one of the three eternal values.

Mystery Road (2013)

Mystery Road - More than just a Peckinpah Tribute film

[8/10 · 20 October 2013]

"Cactus" is a film set in outback Australia with excellent actors, impressive cinematography and insufficient tension to sustain its sparse and obscure narrative over the course of its running time. I've been noticing that malady afflicting US television series such as "Dome" of late. No tension - no viewer involvement. No viewer involvement - an unsatisfying, empty experience. Tension. That's the sort of thing the English playwright, Harold Pinter could deliver in bucket loads with just a few characters and claustrophobically small settings in his early plays, such as "The Birthday Party"

"Mystery Road" is not edge of the seat, scary movie stuff either, but it involves the viewers intellect and emotions by allowing them to share in the aboriginal detective hero's quest as he works out how and why an Aboriginal teenage girl has been murdered. It seems a car containing drugs produced at the local drug laboratory has been stolen. Elements of the local police force have a "relationship" with the drug lab proprietors. A bikie gang also seems to be involved. The thief is a local drug dealer/police informer who is owed "favors" by some of the wilder, young, local aboriginal girls. He has arranged with one of them to hold the drugs for him until the fuss over their "disappearance" has died down. But which girl? It seems the likely suspects are being murdered with a view to scaring the girl with the drugs into returning them and facing the consequences. The hero detective finally discovers the whereabouts of the drugs, and the identity of the girl who has hidden them. He realizes the only solution is to return the drugs himself. The murderous lack of gratitude of their 'rightful' owners leads to the brilliantly staged final shootout.

The discovery of what has happened to the drugs involves digging through the layers of different cultural milieus involved in their disappearance. In the process it says much about how those different milieus usually co-exist and what happens when they collide with each other. It is that collision that culminate in a shoot out worthy of a Sam Peckinpah movie at the end of the film. But this is no cheap and vulgar genre knock off

The cinematography seems to emerge from the paintings of Russell Drysdale. The final shoot out could be an updating of Tom Roberts' painting, 'In a corner on the Macintyre' 1895. Up there on the big screen for all to see is the undeniably horrible Australian architectural ugliness of a country town. This aesthetic hell hole of prefabricated housing has been plonked down in starkly beautiful, aeons old, dry and dusty countryside. The overhead shots of the town that recur throughout the film frame this ugliness in all its intellectually, emotionally and spiritually deprived, "Wasteland" emptiness.

The actors are drawn from the cream of Australian screen thespians. Aaron Pedersen delivers a thoughtful and quietly compelling performance as the hero detective. The other actors have done their time on quality Australian crime mini series such as Underbelly (as well as the usual breakfast cereal advertisements). The ethnic make up of the Australian population has undergone a dramatic change in the last fifty years, but these actors depict the pre-1970's White Australia Policy Eurocentric Australia that can still be found in country towns ( even those with Chinese restaurants) as authentically as any you will ever see.

The script, and that is where the necessary tension has its genesis, is so much better than the usual fare that makes its way to the screen. It has the authority and presence to deliver a riveting story, but poses an underlying question in a quietly understated but compelling manner.

That question is, "How much worse could things be if all drug taking was decriminalized? "

The film depicts the corruption that the unworkable drug laws have wrought among police forces around the world. The film depicts the hopelessness of people being turned into criminals merely because they turn to drug abuse to relieve the boredom of their empty lives. The film depicts the easy money available to psychopaths, sociopaths and plain, old fashioned lawless thugs who can gain instant riches from flouting the unworkable drug laws.

I was underwhelmed by director Ivan Sen's, "Beneath Clouds", but this effort marks him out as an undeniably gifted film maker. If the film, "Chopper" could galvanize the Hollywood money guys into putting Andrew Dominik and Eric Banna onto their "A" lists, "Mystery Road" should do the same for director Ivan Sen and lead actor Aaron Pedersen

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

2001 - A Prophecy About US Foreign Policy and the Need to Change It?

[5/10 · 2 October 2013]

Former liberal Democrat US Congressman Dennis Kucinich has tied the significance of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" to the aftermath of the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. (If you want read it in his own words, google, 'Dennis Kucinich Restoring Hope for America's Future Through Developing a Culture of Peace" )

Kucinich suggests that the frenzied celebration of the ape-men victors after the battle over the rights to the water hole at the start of the film is not dissimilar to the feelings of national pride by US citizens after the President George W Bush "Iraq mission accomplished" speech. Kucinich goes on to suggest some more highly evolved response, such as an examination of mind set behind American foreign policy, would have been more appropriate. His sentiments are admirable, but he seems to ignore the significance of the recurring monolith of the film. His speech encompasses the reality of the destruction of two monoliths that actually occurred in 9/11/2001. But he seems to ignore the significance of the film's monolith, that appears to ape-men, the astronauts on the moon, and Dave, the astronaut seeking it on Jupiter but finding it in his own memories and life experience.

The people at IMDb have done a stirling job in coalescing the various contributions of their reviewers and the reluctant explanations by Kubrick into a workable explanation of what the film is all about, but I am not totally satisfied in what they have come up with. The conclusion seems to be that higher beings have placed a monolithic receiver on earth, an amplifier on the moon and a signal transmitter on Jupiter, to enable mankind to become more like them. Or, as Kubrick put it..."the hero is taken into a stargate - another dimension - into the presence of godlike entities - creatures of pure energy...his life passes before him... And he's reborn...(in a) room made of his own memories

Sounds like all those tired old UFO theories.

I find the Kucinich explication more satisfying, but the problem of the missing monolith remains.

So I sought my own interpretation in the life experience of Kubrick. I visited with Wikipedia to get some grist for the mill of my own heretical concoction.

Kubrick's agent, Sam Jaffe, fled the madness of the 1950's McCarthy House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and settled in London in 1959. Three years later, in 1962, Kubrick moved to England to film Lolita "because of easier financing and freedom from censorship".

He found a very pleasant working environment, moved into a castle and never left the place

...In 1964 he transformed a novel about nuclear war ( Red Alert) into the satirical film Dr. Strangelove According to his biographer, LoBrutto and others, "Kubrick was taking a bold and dangerous leap", as the topic at that time was "considered taboo" and "hardly socially acceptable"...The film stirred up much controversy and mixed opinions- a "discredit and even contempt for our whole defense establishment . . . the most shattering sick joke I've ever come across"...Historian and philosopher Lewis Mumford, decades later, "saluted" Kubrick for "having successfully utilized the only method capable of evading our national censor—relentless but hilarious satire" Kubrick himself once stated: "A satirist is someone who has a very skeptical view of human nature, but who still has the optimism to make some sort of a joke out of it. However brutal that joke might be."

Could "2001: A Space Odyssey" be a prophetic but similarly black exposition of the way in which the USA has degraded the admirable ideas of its founding fathers into the ape-man like violent aggression of its modern day rulers?

Could HAL, the computer, be acting in accordance with its programmers and their masters at the US Pentagon and State Department along with unpleasant cast of sociopaths Oliver Stone depicted in his film "JFK"?

"In the recorded message which plays after Dave has "lobotomized" HAL, Dr. Floyd reveals the computer has known the nature of the mission all along"

Was HAL's error a programmed precondition to killing the crew?

Could the 'powers that be' have decreed that people who seek some higher, better way of organizing society - the Kucinich quest if you will - should be blasted off into deep space and disposed of quietly, beyond the prying eyes of social/political critics and other malcontents?.

Could the black monolith be a symbolic depiction of being "born again", not in the debauched meaning given to that term by evangelical "Christians", but in some purer, more aesthetic , more ethical way.

" Kubrick and Clarke studied Joseph Campbell's book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in order to find inspiration. From this mythological perspective, the hotel room (On Jupiter at the film's conclusion) can be seen as a symbolic womb where the hero goes through the process of death and rebirth - an essential part of the hero myth "

The post-production of the film obviously influenced George Lucas in manufacturing his Star Wars trilogy and in the Joseph Campbell thesis that the human stories deal with...

1 The hero's departure from home on a spiritual quest, in the company of a mentor, and often with a brief stopover "room" to gain extra powers. Think of the first Star Wars film

2 A death-rebirth atoning experience of reconciliation with a father figure. Think "The Empire Strikes Back"

3 The return of the enlightened hero to the world. Think "The Return of the Jedi"

I would like to expand upon this thesis, but IMDb space restrictions prohibit me from doing so. If you are interested google, "star wars peter henderson"

Jobs (2013)

A Celebration of the Real Great Step Forward for 20th Century Man

[6/10 · 31 August 2013]

The warm, beating heart of Jobs, the man and the movie, is revealed in the final minute. Jobs talks about the crucial role played by misfits, misanthropes and idiot savant maniacs in the constant struggle to stop civilization devolving from mediocrity to the mindless mendacity of moral, intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy. The photos of the actual participants are then flashed up on the screen, alongside those of the actors who played them.

So it's not just a puff piece for Apple Computers. It's a non fiction re-telling of "Revenge of the Nerds"

But here's the rub.

Society, culture, civilization also needs bastards, like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg (featured in a similarly unflattering light in "The Social Network")

They form the bridge between the talented rejects who can invent the technology that can provide the potential to make the world an amazing place for everyone and the rich dudes with the resources to actually package up and deliver that technology to the great unwashed masses.

I remember getting some insight into that dream that must have fueled Jobs' ambition to take computing power out of the hands of governments and big industrialists (and after all, what is the difference?) and place it in the hands of the people who can make or break them. It was an article in "Rolling Stone" that talked about the way employees of the big computer manufacturers moonlight with their employers' resources and make applications that " track domestic expenditures for people in shared accommodation". There must be a load of mobile phone apps that do it now, but then it seemed like a revelation.

Some years later (in the 1980s) I purchased my Apple II to run a music synthesizer that I never did get to work properly. That was well before the advent of the internet and the world wide web ("take a bow, Jobs and the NEXT computer") I remember being appalled at a prediction that one day the personal computer would become a mere connection device to big, remote mass server computers that would contain boundless information. (Me and Bill Gates, at the time)

But the irreverent and inventive spirits of those who followed in the wake of Jobs and so many other hip capitalist ensured that the PC and Apple is no mere adjunct to the power hoarding Big Brother wanna be's and their sugared water marketing and mind control acolytes. It gives the power of expression, mass organization and creative endeavor to people who could never have dreamed of such a thing a mere decade ago. Witness the Arab Spring uprisings. OK. The terrorists and criminals have got on board too. But as for me... I tried to make videos on various Windows PC's for a couple of decades and failed. Within a month of purchasing an Apple Pro laptop for around $1200, I had twelve videos expressing my idiosyncratic, heretical and supposedly blasphemous views on what the bible actually says up on YouTube. More have followed. And that is the point made in the scene in which Jobs meets his next tech guru, Jonny Ives. What has kept Ives at Apple during the lean years is the Jobs philosophy that machines can unleash the creative potential of ordinary people and open up new ways for them to share the fruits of the labors

OK. It may not be a great film, but it celebrates the great step for mankind in the twentieth century that did not involve walking on the moon. That makes it worth watching.

The Other Son (2012)

Arising from the police state brutality and hatred - a film about hope

[8/10 · 20 April 2013]

A hospital mix up results in an Israeli army colonel and his wife raising a Palestinian baby as their son, while a Palestinian family raise the Israeli baby as their son. The film deals with the discovery of the administrative error, while raising the obvious question - why apartheid is alive and well in Israel.

OK. Let's deal with the "elephant in the room" criticism of the happy (or at least positive), Hollywood ending out the outset. David Stratton (ABC TV Australian 20/4/13) summed it up..."The resolution Levy proposes isn't  entirely satisfactory however and there is a nagging feeling that this scenario is a little bit too schematic"

Remember, it was the Sabras who finally imposed their reluctance to obey orders and break the bones of rock throwing Interfada demonstrators that changed the way these matters were policed. Why could it not be the same Sabras who take on their elders over the way the country is governed?

There is a great quote in a 1998 back packers tourist guide that makes this idea plausible

"Israel adores its children they are indulged, undisciplined, ill mannered and forgiven by everyone.Even dare to mention that they might be a nuisance and eyebrows will be raised. Somehow their exuberance and enthusiasm, their noisy boisterousness, their robust tanned health and energy all seem to symbolize the state itself. Israel too is young and new and vulnerable. But above all the children of today are alive. Even now when Israelis look at the children they are reminded of a dark past and an uncertain future

Surely no film has captured so dramatically the police state mentality that pervades Israeli culture, and not just at the border crossings. Who says the next generation can't be involved in knocking down (both figuratively and literally) the walls so evocatively depicted in this film.

It is the mothers who have garnered the most notice for the quality of their acting. Both Emmanuelle Devos (all grown up since I last saw her in "Read My Lips") and Areen Omari depict a near erotic delight in stroking their estranged sons faces as they are re-united over the course of the film. It is quietly powerful stuff in what is essentially a comedy of manners. The other cast members deliver too. And the cinematography brings the viewer right into the locales

I found myself caring less and less about the criticism of the unlikely resolution as I thought about the film more and more. Like that other outsider's film (Spielberg's "Munich") this film may well change attitudes in Israel, this time for the better. A satisfying and quietly enjoyable film about hope

Morning Glory (2010)

A brief history of recent Australian politics that may help explain why "Morning Glory" is even more important than "Broadcast News"

[9/10 · 8 February 2013]

Becky (Rachel McAdams), a hard-working morning TV show producer: I hate to break it to you but the country, the world, has been debating news versus entertainment for years. And guess what? Your side lost.

Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), an acclaimed TV journalist she has co-opted to work on her morning TV show: You know what? You're wrong. People are smart. They want information. Not junk which is all you're willing to give them. Junk. Sugar. Sugar. Sugar

Becky: We have to get the ratings up, or we can have a lot of high minded ideas and not be on the air.

The very articulate and passionate film, "Broadcast News" made exactly that point. If you treat news as entertainment, then "journalists" are no longer mercurial messengers of the gods, but merely slaves of those with money (and its concomitant power) softening up the general population to consume more sugar, sugar, sugar and allowing the people with money/power to govern them in way that will promote their own interests rather than those of "we, the people"

But "Morning Glory" takes the debate one step further. Surely the media can present "high minded ideas" in an entertaining way. "Broadcast News", for all its incisive vision just leaves you feeling defeated and depressed. "Morning Glory" actually presents the possibility that the media can, and should, enrich the lives of "we the people"

I can argue that proposition with a quick venture into Australian federal politics in the last thirteen or so years.

In 2007 Kevin Rudd, a nerdy looking bloke led the Australian Labor Party to government by inflicting a crushing election defeat upon a long serving conservative prime minister.)

You could argue that Kevin Rudd transformed himself from being an ambitious but unremarkable back bench politician to being an inspiring, reformist prime minister of Australia by using his weekly appearance on a high rating breakfast television show.

A couple of years after he became prime minister, he was shafted by labor union power brokers and his own his own ministers - probably because he was a lousy administrator with an ill disciplined office staff. They installed Julia Gillard as prime minister.She was a better negotiator and facilitator of government policy than Kevin Rudd, but never managed to gain the affection of, or inspire, the Australian people.

So what? That was then, this is now... I will let the Australian Broadcasting Commission "DRUM" website (13 February 2013) continue the story,,, "Kevin Rudd's return to Sunrise is instructive. Parliamentary performances matter, but that's not what they're watching in Sydney's western suburbs, writes Barrie Cassidy. It's an indictment on modern politics that such a brief weekly media appearance should carry with it such implied political consequences.But that's the way it is. It seems parliamentary performances matter, but brekkie TV is where the real action is. That's what they are watching in Sydney's western suburbs."

OK. Breakfast television does not have to be mindless entertainment, but unless it is fun to watch, like "Morning Glory", no one will watch it.

And why is "Morning Glory" so much fun to watch? It's a funny, fast paced rom-com. Lots of sight gags. The music is terrific. But it is so much more than just the sum of its exemplary acting, scripting and direction.

Rachel McAdams' Becky could so easily have been grating and annoying. But her performance concocts a recipe for converting Becky's vulnerability and her unshakable determination not to allow cute, inspiring ambition to become embarrassing heartbreak into a fluffy but pleasing frittata of a character, who comes to see she needs to add more substance to her diet. Our demos are getting better but our overall numbers are just not where they should be. We're just missing something...

Harrison Ford manages the transition of Mike Pomeroy from grumpy, disillusioned old man... (Becky's lover and former producer of Pomeroy)...He didn't open a bottle of forty year old Bruichladdich, did he?...When I was working with him, if there was something he didn't want to do, the Oscars, the Olympics, something people might actually get a tiny twinge of pleasure from, the night before he would go on a bender and call in sick for work the next day...start at Elaines

...into a member of the Day Break "family"

Pomeroy: "Excuse me. One moment please. I have a story I'd like to do. Sauerkraut, Big annual sauerkraut festival. Up state. They bowl with cabbage. Make a big sauerkraut cake. They have a competition for the best sauerkraut" Becky: "You want to do that?" Pomeroy: "Do you have a problem with that?" ... Becky: "Where are we going?" Pomeroy: T"o cover the news. At eight am this morning I'm going to cover a story. A real story." Becky:"What the hell is the story?" Pomeroy:"The Governor" Becky: "...Are you insane? I'm not going to run it." ... (Becky, to the Day Break studio, as she appreciates the significance of what Mike is about to achieve) "Live. Live" ... (and after Day Break has broken the story of the Governor's arrest...)"You know you could have told me. I might have covered it anyway" Pomeroy: "Liar"

At the end of "Morning Glory", when Becky reads the rave review of the new format for the show... "Mike Pomeroy's gravity leavens the silliness of morning TV making for an incongruous but somehow perfect match. It turns out that after forty years in the business the real Mike Pomeroy has finally arrived. Not bad..." ... The viewers can see there is hope for mass media news. OK. "Morning Glory" has not yet reached the standards of the real mercurial messengers of the gods, such as David Barsamian's "Alternative Radio", (http://www.alternativeradio.org) but the message is a lot more hopeful and comforting than that coming out of "Broadcast News"

Max Payne (2008)

Is Max Payne a Fable About the Discovery of Heroin?

[5/10 · 20 January 2013]

I don't play computer games and tend to avoid films based on them, but "Max Payne" has an interesting twist in its tail. The story has it genesis in the discovery by a pharmaceutical company of a drug that will turn mere mortal soldiers into supermen, capable of fighting like Scandinavian warriors of mythological times, whom the valkeries would resurrect to live with the gods when they perished in battle. The company has had to cease manufacturing the drug when its side effects are discovered.

That idea has resonances with another drug that formed the basis for cough medicines in the 1800's and was only outlawed in Australia in the 1950's. Can you guess its name???

"In 1874 in the Journal of the Chemical Society chemist C.R. Alder-Wright described a series of experiments in which a number of acids had been combined with morphine. There is no clue as to why Alder-Wright should have carried out such an experiment, or even what he might have been looking for, but in any event the result of his labours was a long list of compounds, one of which was a chemical known as diacetylmorphine... It was to be a another 24 years before a German pharmacist Heinrich Dreser conducted further experiments with the drug. He discovered it had enormous potential as a powerful analgesic and popularised it with the name, heroisch meaning strong powerful or heroic. In future decades the drug was to become known universally as heroin" (page 30, 31 "Shooting Up: Heroin – Australia" - author Simon Davies - published Hale & Iremonger 1986)

Is "Max Payne" (pain as in hurt and suffering - max as in an abundance of hurt and suffering?) a fable about heroin? The book by Davies makes the point that it has often been used by soldiers in war situations.

My inexcusable and unworthy pleasure in the film, "Shooter" has left me with a soft spot for the often incoherent mumbling of Mark Wahlberg, but his Max Payne did not affect me as much as his performance as Bob Lee Swagger. Maybe it was the surfeit of gun fights and explosions, or maybe the script was not just not as good.

But do other films based on video games have such interesting subtexts? Does this mean I have to watch Laura Croft's tomb raiding exploits?

Probably not. I think "Crazy, Stupid, Love" did the whole exposure of problems of Big Pharma a whole lot better.

No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos (2008)

Whatever happened to American Film Making - See it all here

[9/10 · 13 January 2013]

I have been watching the fifteen hour Mark Cousins documentary series, "The Story of Film: An Odyssey". It has reinforced my view that I just do not like that "golden years of Hollywood" stuff the big studios used to pump out. Could that be down to the values and ideals of the tycoons who ran the joint? You can hold Neal Gabler (book), Simcha Jacobovici and their 1998 documentary, "Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream" responsible for that speculation. Maybe I am just getting old and grumpy. Even the French New Wave movies that awakened my love of cinema seem to have lost some of their lustre for me of late.

But film making underwent a revolution around 1969 when Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper created "Easy Rider". That film proved to the industrialists who had wrested control of Hollywood from the old studio bosses that scruffy, unkempt, drug taking hippy types could actually make money for them, and at the same time garner critical respectability for their tarnished product.

The change was dramatic. Suddenly American films (or at least the independent ones) started holding up a mirror to a very corrupt society. Think about it. Political dissent had been all but stifled. The Hollywood moguls joined the rush to appear before the House UnAmerican Activities hearings of the 1950's. Young Americans were being forced (drafted) to fight a series of immoral and crazy South East Asian wars while Hollywood was still promulgating the idea that married couples did not sleep in the same bed.

If you have seen the documentary about the making of "Easy Rider" that details how the start up seed money was used to finance the drug crazed, mainly out of focus New Orleans Mardi Gras footage you will realize what a disaster it all might have been.

So what went right?

Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond.

That's what went right.

They had not been allowed to enter the mainstream film making industry so they had been involved in porn and (even worse) those Roger Corman "Bikies From Hell v Space Aliens" trash flicks. Those activities brought them to the attention of the likes of Jack Nicholson, Bob Rafelson, Dennis Hopper, etc. So when Hopper and Fonda wanted cinematographers who were good, and more importantly, cheap, Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond were the obvious candidates.

Just as the French New Wave directors and cinematographers brought new sensibilities to the ART (not just the business) of film making, so too did Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond. These Hungarian film school refugees gave the young American independent film makers a dignitas, an authority, the lack of which might have killed off their aspirations before they had been able to realize their dreams. It was they way they saw, and used, LIGHT in their films. It was they way they could improvise camera dollies from tree branches they picked up by the side of the road ("Five Easy Pieces"), or jumped into the rapids ("Deliverance") to get the shots they deemed necessary. It was their realization of the beauty of America's natural scenery and the contribution it could make to their cinematography.

And so was born what one critic refers to as the American New Wave.

It took about thirty years for it to crest and break, washing up truly great cinematic masterpieces. Think Quinton Tarantino's 1994 "Pulp Fiction". That was to fin-de-vingtieme- siecle cinema what Orson Welles 1941 "Citizen Kane" was to pre Word War II cinema. Think David Fincher's "Se7en" (1995) and "Fight Club" (1999). Think Spike Jonez's "Being John Malkovitch" (1999). By the start of the twenty first century that disrespectful, unblinking eye of the outsider, independent film maker had become main stream

The revelation of the contribution Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond made to this metamorphosis of American film would have made an engrossing documentary all by itself. But there is so much more to this film than just cinema history.

The film depicts the great bond of friendship and fellowship these two enjoyed. The story about the return to Hungary to bring out their old sweet hearts (and future wives) would alone make the film worth watching. There is a warmth, a celebration of humanity and the values of human talent and friendship that make this documentary compulsive viewing. I was so high after watching it, I brought out my old Crosby, Stills and Nash record and played the "Judy Blue Eyes Suite", just to bring myself down.

Think seventeenth century Elizabethan England. Think 1960's America. They were both cultural revolutions that will be remembered centuries from now. And "No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos" is a birds eye, up close and personal recollection of the mechanics of that period of foment.

Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream (1998 TV Movie)

An Astounding Series of Assertions that Keep You Thinking,..

[9/10 · 20 October 2012]

Simcha Jacobovici's film demonstrates how cinema or television can encapsulate the ideas presented in a book and bring them to a wider audience than they might otherwise have garnered.

The book in this instance is Neal Gabler's "An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood" (1989)

I would probably never have heard about it if not for Jacobovici's enthralling documentary.

But is it true?

Did the Jewish, European immigrants to the USA create the Western? OK. They may have been the first to depict the plight of their grandparents being attacked by Cossacks in Russian stedtels as indigenous Americans (Indians) attacking the wagon trains of westward bound settlers. But did such scenes occur in the penny dreadful western novels that preceded the invention of cinema?

Was the whole McCarthyist persecution of "communists" in 1950's USA a local variation of the European pogroms?

They are fascinating questions that stay with the viewer, but like Ruben, Chaim Potock's hero in his novel, "The Gift", I like the questions raised by the film, but am not so sure I am satisfied with the answers.

But the film is certainly deeply affecting and a rich source of images of the plight of "the wandering Jew". The familiar cycle of fleeing persecution, finding seeming acceptance in a new country, seeking to assimilate with the citizens of that country, only to be be rejected and suffering new forms of persecution has been told many times in a European context. The conversation between Ruben and his father in Chaim Potok's precursor novel "The Chosen" about how such things come about is one of the high points of the book. (I don't recall it making it into the astoundingly good film version of "The Chosen").

It certainly explains the potency of the line used by the character played by Paul Giamatti in "Barney's Version", to the effect that contributions to the various Zionist Israel Land Funds, were best considered as an "insurance policy" for American Jews.

The depiction of Jews who created the Hollywood film industry marrying gentile wives and sending the children to catholic schools, only to find they could not break down the barriers erected by gentiles is sobering. What was it that Alex Portnoy's dad told him in Philip Roth's, "Portnoy's Complaint", that upset him most when he was called a "dirty Jew" by his first, would- be 'conquest'?

"They'll always use the Jewish thing against you, when they can't find another way to beat you"

Mind you, I am glad the whole Hollywood studio system depicted in the film broke down. The ideas the "golden years of Hollywood" propagated about the experience of "living in the USA" was horribly distorted. It took the profits that "Easy Rider" and other ground breaking films of the nineteen seventies generated to allow film to "come out" from the the moral, intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of the MGM Musical view of living in the USA.

It took Jewish minstrels (secular cantors) such as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springstien to depict a more honest view of twentieth century existence in America. Their general acceptance of life as it is (and could be) paved the way for the truly great American films of David Fincher, Quinton Tarantino and so many others who made the "fin de twentieth century" masterpieces for the Hollywood studios.

The IMDb entry for Neal Gabler notes that he is a Liberal commentator, and one of the few on- air personalities at the Fox News Channel to acknowledge the alleged pro-Republican bias of the network. It does not mention that he was 'moved on" to the PBS network. Could it be that the Fox executives still cling to the distorted world views of their founder?

Killing Them Softly (2012)

Killing (off Hope) and Replacing it with Nihilism: Come on Andrew - You can do better than this

[6/10 · 13 October 2012]

Andrew Dominik took Eric Banna, a failed television comedian and transformed him into an archetypal Australian underworld celebrity, Chopper Read. In doing so, he not only created a Hollywood start but made a terrific Aussie movie.

So he has to be judged by the standards he has set himself.

I can't remember a single thing about Jesse James. I did not get it when I was watching it

I doubt I will remember much about "Killing Them Softly", either.

It's not just all the talk. Chopper was full of talk. Talk of that entertaining, 'low life argot"- heightened variety that Tarantino served up so generously in "Pulp Fiction"

Maybe "Pulp Fiction" is the key to understanding the let down feeling I had after watching "Killing Me Softly". "Pulp Fiction" was about atonement and redemption. "Killing Me Softly" is just that old Post Enlightenment nihilism. Its easy to be nihilistic. It may even garner critical acclaim from the types of people who have been dead for years but just not realized it yet.

Take for instance, the incessant references to Obama's election throughout the film. Take that last scene in which the Brad Pitt character dismisses Jefferson as as slave owning hypocrite. The American Dream for some but not all. OK. But at least Jefferson's flawed vision envisaged more than the one per-centers who run America now.

Obama seems to get it from both sides. The Republicans seem to think he is the devil incarnate. The Democrats seem to think he is a sell out.

Obama pulled off something that Clinton failed to achieve. After finding the Treasury bare of all but Republican military-industrial complex, "set in concrete" spending commitments, Clinton just seemed to give up and set about freeing the banks of lending restraints and chasing tail.

Obama succeeded in getting a universal health scheme up and running. So why all the fretting about loss of hope?

An Australian Governor General said, many years ago, "the only thing you have to boast about if you live in a rubbish dump, is that you are pulling it down." The bigger the rubbish dump, the longer it will take to pull it down.

So why all the doom and gloom about Americans who are committing themselves to the task of making their country a better place to live in. I had given up on Americans until I started to listen to David Barsamian's "Alternative Radio" shows. (http://www.alternativeradio.org) There are a lot of good Americans.

Take for instance Hollywood. It has undergone a revolution in the last thirty years of so. One fueled by money, for sure, but one that seeks to depict the rubbish dump in all its ugliness. Take Matt Damon, that former neighbor of Howard Zinn, who has campaigned with such success to make his fellow citizens see the folly of the war-making endeavors. Even George Clooney, that pal of Clinton's has joined him in making spectacularly good films that would have had their proponents hounded into obscurity well before the production stage by the forces of McCarthyism that prevailed in US culture until a few decades ago. Take directors such as Cameron ("Avatar") and Stone (too many to mention) and others, whose ideas will be the source for future historians who find the paper trail in the government archives too bizarre to have any credibility at all

So why the nihilism. Come on Andrew Dominik. You gave us "Chopper". You can do better than this.

Footnote (2011)

A cryptic and richly rewarding cinema experience

[9/10 · 22 April 2012]

The use of on screen checklists as the start of "Footnte" to establish the identities of the lead characters is a clever and engaging way to get the viewer in the mood for a humorous cinematic experience. The comic devices - the chair shuffling in the fatal meeting of the Israel Prize committee - evinces that sort of cruel but loving satire that made "Spinal Tap" such a rich experience. (If you don't like the comparison, check out the final scene in which Nigel, air guitaring the solo in "Sex Farm" - the song that has taken off on the Japanese charts - is called back on stage and back into the arms of the rejuvenated band)

But then the mood of "Footnote" changes, with the spirited and dignified defense by the son of his father's worthiness for recognition. Nobility of spirit is a phrase that comes to mind. The viewer realizes that Cedar is a director and writer of substance. This satisfying realization is enhanced when the father's chief detractor relents in his opposition to the loyal son.

And then Cedar once again changes the mood of the film, with the father's critical dismissal of the worth of his son's scholastic achievements. By this time the viewer is in no doubt as to the masterful direction and writing and is speculating on how the characters will work out the dramatic culmination of the film.

I was reminded of "Ve'Lakhta Lehe Isha" ("To Take a Wife"), the 2004 film created by Ronit and Shlomi Elkaberz. "Footnore" is a lot more fun, a lot less harrowing but I recalled my "Eureka" moment while watching that film, when I realized it was a retelling of the biblical book of the prophet, Hosea. Had Cedar created a similar cinematic parable? Had Cedar tapped into some rich vein of cultural material to make a point, argue a thesis, establish some view of Israeli society?

The expression, "Chekovian" came to mind. I was reminded of Sidney Lumet's 1968 cinematic recreation of "The Seagull". It remains for me the only re-working of the turn of the twentieth century Chekov's dramatic output that has ever really translated the validity of the characters and situations into the mindset of a mid to late twentieth century audience. Cedar has achieved a similar feat, in making the life experiences of modern Israelis intelligible to outsiders.

The open ended culmination, the cryptic subtitle, "Professor Shkolnik's Revenge" leaves it open to the viewer to make the same mistake as the people who mixed up father and son when contacting the winner of the Israel Prize. Is the subtitle referring to the father of the son?

The richness of the characterization makes the film a lot more satisfying than many of the films that criticize the values of Israeli society. Take for instance, "Lemon Tree", or even "Waltz With Bashir". Cedar gives us much more rounded and human (dare one say less caricatured) characters. But the viewer is left with the feeling that Cedar is saying something of substance about Israelis society. I was wrestling with this question as the film neared (but never fully enunciated) its dramatic climax.

Is he saying that the elder generation or Israeli leadership is misguided in the way they govern? Is he saying that the next generation must value what is good in their parents, but seek to rectify the mistakes they have made? The way the film raises such questions marks it as a cinematic experience of great distinction as well as a thoroughly engrossing and satisfying way to spend time with characters of warmth, complexity and genuine decency

Margin Call (2011)

A film must evoke some response in a view - this one just alienates you

[7/10 · 25 March 2012]

If you listen to Alternative Radio, the show put together by David Barsamian in Colorado, USA, everything about this film will be familiar to you.

When the characters disclose the income they receive for playing with numbers rather than building bridges, or even digging holes in the ground, it will bring to mind the talk by Richard Wolff (Capitalism Hits the Fan). And that's just the characters who, by their own admission, know anything about anything. The others are just pretty boys (and girls) in expensive clothes who happened to impress the right people at the right time. They are just gamblers who add nothing of substance to the economy.

So how do they get away with it? David Korten (author of When Corporations Rule the World and The Great Turning), speaking on Alternative Radio , suggested that the answer lies in the decreasing income received by the American workforce over the last few decades. That means business costs have fallen and profits have risen, so executives in the companies that actually produce something (as well as those that just shift funds around the world) can claim the multi-million dollar salaries because it appears that they the secret to producing huge corporate profits. So the characters in this film are really just overpaid moral, emotional and spiritual dwarfs. They inhabit the same world as the Michael Fassbender character in Steve McQueen's film, HUNGER. Who in the right minds, would want that kind of existence?

Hence the film alienates the viewer. No matter how much one of the characters grieves over the death of his dog as he orders his subordinates sell worthless investments to their fellow traders in competing firms, it evokes no sympathy in the viewer. There is no sense of elation at film's end, as a merchant banker firm escapes the fate of the Lehman Brothers. It is all very dour, which works against the dramatic momentum of the film. At least Tony Soprano carries on his squalid and petty crimes against the backdrop of real humans living real lives. The characters in this film are insulated from any real humanity - so they do not invoke any response from real humans. They make Gordon Gecko (WALL STREET) seem almost humane

John Kenneth Galbraith, the family friend and confidante of John Kennedy, who might have stopped the Vietnam War had Kennedy survived and listened hard enough, prophesied it all in his book, "The New Industrial State". This film depicts the sorry state of life at the top end of a corrupt state. As such it becomes more a documentary than a feature film. It's thesis? "Reinstate the historical levels of wages in the US. Allow the corporate financiers to fail - stop bailing them out. Make way for truly productive, small scale entrepreneurs to prosper. Bring back capitalism as we knew it."

The Hunger Games (2012)

Hunger Games - More than Survivor meets Big Brother

[7/10 · 24 March 2012]

The Australian Broadcasting Commission TV critic was scathing about the shaky hand held camera ( a pet hate of his) and what he described as poor direction. Had it not been for the local newspaper critic's rave review I would not have attended.

It was a very young audience and I figured I was in for a noisy viewing. But surprisingly, the audience was almost funereal. Almost reverent attention would be an apt description.

I was an interested viewer, but I noted that I was not in that state of anxious suspense that a really well made film can evoke. That may have been the root of the complaint about poor direction. That and the camera work. It was not the shaky camera I noticed - even though it made some of my YouTube efforts look positively rooted-to-the-earth stable. It was the surprisingly soft focus, lack of sharply defined clarity of some of the forest scenery.

It struck me that the author (and screen writer) may have picked a rich vein of young viewer familiar context by setting her political thriller up as a sort of Survivor - Big Brother television show. That might explain the lack of palpable, visceral tension. (at least until they released the hounds). Maybe kiddies are used to the long, drawn out, only occasionally exciting Big Brother format. Maybe people forming and dissolving strategic alliances has replaced the ongoing, inescapable terror.

But there is more to Hunger Games than a new take on the Survivor formula It has at its hearth the idea that our culture has no problem with sending its sons and daughter out to engage in killing each other for no truly worthwhile purpose. (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan). Those of us who have heard the late Howard Zinn could extend that back to World War II and from there, to the very dawn of "civilisation".

I am told that the subsequent novels in the series reveal a heroine toying with the idea of rejecting that barbarous notion and demanding that it be re-examined and changed. You don't get that with the Survivor television shows, or the vampire teen movies, so bring it on.

Coriolanus (2011)

Shakespeare for a 21st Century audience - it really packs a punch

[9/10 · 11 March 2012]

I have heard the key Turn in the door once and turn once only We think of the key, each in his prison thinking of the key, each confirms a prison Only at nightfall, aethereal rumours Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

That's TS Eliot at the culmination of the Wasteland.

After years of wondering what "broken Coriolanus" meant, I am still none the wiser.

But this fabulous updating of the context of Coriolanus has at least given me some possible explanations.

The replanting of the action to a mid -European civil war setting allows the viewer to concentrate on what Shakespeare was trying to say. I find traditional versions that endeavor to recreate what it might have looked like at the Globe Theatre four hundred years ago distract me in the quest to come to terms with the central ideas. Using television news shows rather than town criers and anglo versions of a Greek chorus allow me to immerse myself in the narrative.

And the narrative is compelling. The Roman senators re-imagined as sleazy, poll reading, PR spin purveying, party machine men might have stepped out of a news - current affairs TV show. They are instantly recognisable. (Dare I say that Australians may see parallels with their own Labor politicians who would rather retain a nuts and bolts, get things done, transactional leader they liked working with than re-instate a transformative, if somewhat arrogant and aloof, former leader?)

I find clock watching tends to beset me in most Shakespearian productions. This one had me engrossed, occasionally laughing out loud at some of the depictions of recognizable human weakness and folly. Everyone involved in this film - writers, actors, director - everyone - deserves credit for that

And then there is that wise and knowing, yet disappointing culmination. Do the right thing, swallow your pride, seek greatness of spirit and human mercy, and if one pack of bastards don't get you, the others will.

And the relevance of TS Eliot's Waste Land quote? If you have seen the film or play, "Tom and Viv", you will know that one possible interpretation of the poem is a surrealistic re-telling of the poet's disastrous marriage and its breakdown. Maybe Eliot saw himself as Coriolanus, exiled by those he sought to defend, knifed by those he delivered from tyranny, taking his last breaths. It's the never-ending story. Just read the background to Dante's "Divine Comedy"

Queen to Play (2009)

Warning: You will carry the memory of this film around with you for a long time

[8/10 · 13 January 2012]

What is it that makes a film jump off the screen and into the confines of your consciousness, implanting itself there so that years later, when you watch it again, you realize you have been thinking about it in the interim, with pleasure. It has insinuated itself into the fabric of your life and you carry its memory around with you.

If film makers could work out how and why that happens, their investors would sleep more soundly at night

Queen to Play (Joueuse) is such a film.

Obviously its success is anchored in Sandrine Bonnaire's performance, but there is a lot more to it than that, wonderful as it is.

The writing. The direction. The cinematography. The other actors. Whatever...

The scripting is unfailingly delightful. It presents the initial impetus to investigate the game of chess - a beautiful, young woman playing the game with her lover, as the driving force that compels the protagonist to visit her husband at work just to touch him, to extricate her silky nightgown, to acquire an electronic chess game under the guise of giving her husband a birthday gift. It then documents the discovery of meaning and satisfaction in exploiting whatever it is that makes a person excel at some aspect of life, and the coincidental growth of desire by her husband to share that life spirit - the initial impetus for all the chess playing that follows.

I would say it is "nice" were it not for the devaluation of meaning of that word. Let's just call it an examination of compulsion, That's what the film is really all about. And Bonnaire's range of expressions and demeanors feed that camera with all the raw material it needs to hold us, the viewers, captive for the duration of the film. Compulsively so, and I mean that in the nicest way possible.

Actually there is more to it than that. There is that exultation of the human spirit that comes from the process of self actualization. It is a wonderful experience just to observe it up close and personal by watching this film.

Compulsiveness, Obsessiveness. They are not just the province of adolescent boys with computer games