Author: Antenna

“Obstinate questionings of sense and outward things”

This is my review of Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time by A S Byatt.

Daily life, the structure of society, political views, education and childhood, the literary world and the landscape: these themed chapters explore the response of Wordsworth and Coleridge, the two pioneers of the Romantic Movement, to the unsettled period in which they lived with the fear of political revolution and disruption of industrial development.

The introduction supplies some very astute analysis of the marked differences between their personalities: “Wordsworth, in his innermost self, proud, solitary, courageous and self-regarding was on the surface suspicious and awkward. Coleridge, who lacked self-respect or self-confidence at the deepest level, was on the surface charming, warm, welcoming and quick to relax and involve people…Wordsworth increased Coleridge’s sense of his own value” and Coleridge had a “humanizing influence” on Wordsworth. Both, initially excited by the French Revolution, were so appalled by its violent excesses that they both became much more politically conservative with age, but Wordsworth, as a respected national figure , became ever more “remote, arrogant, self-absorbed and self-praising”, while Coleridge, a much more profound thinker, found his life severely blighted by frequent illness and opium addiction, for which he was too often dismissed contemptuously.

This book is packed with entertaining anecdotes and fascinating observations. In his sincere if somewhat theoretical concern for the deserving poor, Wordsworth’s poem about “The Leech-gatherer” was based on research that they “did not breed fast and were of slow growth” because of dry weather and being gathered too much so that “formerly 2/6 per 100, they are now 30s”.

Both poets agreed that young children should be allowed to develop naturally, with education a process kindling natural curiosity. Coleridge’s observation of his small children makes moving reading (“a little child, a limber elf, singing, dancing to itself”), and his natural skill in teaching them through play sounds quite modern. It is therefore a shock to learn how he abandoned them for long periods, at one point preferring to stay in Germany where he was having a good time studying rather than return to England to comfort a wife grieving over the loss of their infant son.

Wordsworth questioned the desire of Utopian idealists to educate working class girls on enlightened lines since it was likely to make them “unsettled…..indisposed to any kind of hard labour or drudgery. And yet many of them must submit to it or do wrong”. This was arguably true, but not what one might hope for from a Romantic poet.

A.S. Byatt is clearly shocked by Wordsworth’s support for capital punishment on the basis that time spent in the condemned cell gave a fortunate opportunity to repent. Nimbyism is evident in the opposition to construction of railways in his beloved Lake District which would be spoilt by “droves” of working people from Lancashire who would not appreciate the mountains

He opposed the extension of the right to vote, as likely to produce frequent parliaments and “convert the representatives into mere slavish delegates, as they now are in America, under the dictation of ignorant and selfish numbers misled by unprincipled journalists”. In view of the recent shock of democracy producing a Trump victory, these ideas seem remarkably relevant today, even if one disagrees with his opinion.

Perhaps because he tended to consider issues from more angles, Coleridge comes across less clearly than Wordsworth, but as more engaging. Yet even he came to fear democracy as the misguided pursuit of an abstract idea: “the incorporation of individuals into one unnatural state, the deluded subjects of which soon find themselves under a dominion tenfold more oppressive and vexatious than that to which the laws of God and nature attached them”.

The many quotations are often inserted clunkily into the text, and assume more practice in interpreting poetry than most readers are likely to possess. The passages wrapped round these extracts are often indigestible, even disjointed, since they read as if condensed down from detailed notes.

Recommended, but best read with other texts, such as the biographies of Richard Holmes on the Lakeland poets.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars


Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time

Attractive “organiser” bag, although “medium-sized” rather than “large” as described

This is my review of PRIMEHIDE SOFT LEATHER LARGE CROSSBODY HANDBAG BAG 9 FAB COLOURS ! 985 (Purple).

I like the soft leather and large number of useful compartments which "take the pressure" off the main section. The capacity of the bag is a little smaller than I had hoped, partly because the width is shorter than the depth. So, for instance, I cannot insert a Kindle and small folding umbrella as I would like. On the other hand there is room for all the other essentials, and if there were the capacity to add more, it would be too heavy for the straps. Quality seems good for the price.

Recommended for regular daily use, but not for longer trips where it may be necessary to carry more.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

PRIMEHIDE SOFT LEATHER LARGE CROSSBODY HANDBAG BAG 9 FAB COLOURS ! 985 (Purple)

Entertaining, but does not improve on the dramatic reality

This is my review of Sully: Miracle On The Hudson [DVD + Digital Download] [2017].

This film may be most dramatic for those who have not heard of the US passenger plane which in January 2009 was forced to make an emergency landing in the near freezing waters of the Hudson River, too close for comfort to the densely built up centre of New York. Both engines shut down on impact with a flock of Canada geese, but the skilled pilot Sullenberger (“Sully”) judged correctly that there was insufficient time to reach a nearby runway.

Clint Eastwood, who has proved a skilled director, saw the potential of the celebrated pilot’s memoirs to produce the kind of drama which will make the most nonchalant air passenger a little apprehensive on his or her next flight. Since the survival of all 155 passengers is still widely remembered, the interest lies in developing the technical and psychological aspects of the story. So we see the outwardly cool and collected Sully suffering stress-induced nightmares and visions of the plane crashing 9-11-style into a Manhattan skyscraper. Even if not prepared to admit to any doubts, he is inevitably forced to question the soundness of his actions by the initial report that one of the engines was in fact working. Has he put lives at risk needlessly?

Yet, although there is compelling drama in the scenes of terrified passengers bracing themselves as the plane hurtles towards the water, or forced out to totter on the wings, awaiting rescue, the film, despite being relatively short at 90 plus minutes, often seems essentially quite thin in content. The heavy reliance on flashbacks is fine, but the repetition of some scenes, however dramatic, Sully’s frequent banal telephone conversations with his anxious wife and shots of his younger self learning to fly or succeeding in a difficult landing often seem like efforts to pad the film out.

The tension between the media adulation of Sully’s achievement and the speed with which a censorious National Transportation Safety Board latches on to the charge of pilot error may have been exaggerated to make the story more gripping. However, when I read the details of the real events online, I was surprised that more drama was not made of the recorded details of the rescue. It bothered me that passengers were shown leaving the plane without life-jackets, unless lucky enough to catch one thrown by the cabin crew, a woman even falling into the water with a jacket hooked precariously over one arm. If the evacuation was performed as shown, it would seem that the cabin crew for whom the pilot was responsible were at fault. This is an interesting twist, but unfair if untrue.

Although the graphics used to show the emergency landing are impressive and the technical details to do with use of flight simulators to recreate the forced landing are interesting, dialogues are sometimes hard to hear, and overall the film lacks the spark it could have had. I would as soon have seen a good documentary on the incident.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars


Sully: Miracle On The Hudson [DVD + Digital Download] [2017]

The acquired taste of a self-indulgent “rigmarole”

This is my review of The Violins of Saint-Jacques: A Tale of the Antilles by Patrick Leigh Fermor.

In this short novel, written in a continuous chapter-free flow, an elderly artist name Berthe recounts to the narrator the dramatic climax of her time spent fifty years previously on the Caribbean island of Saint-Jacques, ruled as a benevolent dictatorship by the aristocratic expatriate French Count, by whom she was employed as a governess but came to enjoy the status of a respected virtual member of the family, his “confidant and counsellor”. It took me a while to grasp that the island is outlined so sketchily on the map provided, because it is imaginary. This enabled me to overlook some of the worrying geographical inconsistencies (for a travel writer) of having lush forest grow so close to the active volcano forming the core of the island.

Although many devotees of the travel writer Patrick Leigh-Fermor may be delighted by the only novel he ever produced in a prolific writing career, I abandoned it mid-way and had to force myself to finish it. I concede that the second half is better, since it contains more dramatic action, when all the “hazards and sorrows ahead ” begin to crack the surface of the idyllic bubble of exotic privilege which the author has inflated with his literary flourishes at full spate in the first half, largely devoted to the preparations and conduct of a grand Shrove Tuesday ball, no expenses spared.

I understand why some readers revel in Leigh-Fermor’s Rococo prose, which I admit once aroused my curiosity to visit what proved to be the remarkable Austrian monastery of Melk. However, in this context, the verbosity is just too much to take. In the course of a lengthy description of the Count’s background, Leigh-Fermor turns to the memorial slabs of his dead ancestors, the Serindans: “The orgulous record of their gestures…..their impavid patience in adversity…..the splendour of their munificence and their pious ends was incised with a swirling seventeenth-century duplication of long S’s and a cumulative nexus of dog-Latin superlatives which hissed from the shattered slabs like a basketful of snakes”. The “Serindan cognizance” crops up again: “ a shield bearing three greyhounds passant on a bend on a field of cross-crosslets within a tressure flory-counter-flory”. I found myself irritated by the author’s continual flaunting of his erudition and addiction to flamboyant verbal excess, rather than sincerely seeking to create three-dimensional complex characters for whom one might feel real empathy.

The frequent inclusion of Latin tags, and dialogues in French, often with a Creole patois, plus an imitation of the Count’s weak “r”s which the local people have innocently copied, often seem both pretentious and irritating if one cannot understand them. I may be underestimating his intention to write tongue-in-cheek as in the passage about ancient tree trunks, each “half following the spiral convolutions of the other like dancing partners in a waltzing forest; the rising moon entangled overhead in the silver and lanceolate leaves, had frozen these gyrations into immobility.” – A “highly literary simile" which he attributes to Berthe. Perhaps I should excuse the dated character of a book written more than sixty years ago about a period now more than a century past. Yet, in his creation of a dawn of twentieth century period when privileged people still lived complacently in the conspicuous consumption of untrammelled luxury served with unquestioning loyalty by contented slaves, I have the uneasy impression that Leigh Fermor does not question the morality of all this – it reads like a lost world for which he feels a sentimental nostalgia. An extreme example of this is the jovial acceptance of the Count’s practice of “droit de jambage”, a Leigh-Fermor conceit for “droit de seigneur”.

Perhaps, I am taking it too seriously, and should simply laugh at a guest dressed as a swordfish, and a heroine in flight falling over an armadillo.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

The Violins of Saint-Jacques: A Tale of the Antilles

“Golden Hill” by Frances Spufford: Crackling pyrotechnics a tad let down by a concluding damp squib

This is my review of Golden Hill by Francis Spufford.

In the parochial little British colony of mid-eighteenth century New York, no one knows what to make of the handsome young new arrival from London, Mr Richard Smith. Is he a provocative conman, or a well-intentioned blunderer? Should the wily merchant Lovell accept his bill of exchange demanding the vast and ruinous sum of a thousand pounds? When the gossip grapevine spreads the word of Smith’s wealth, everyone wants to curry his favour, but a twist of misfortune can quickly set the whole community against him

Francis Spufford has used his research skills as an established writer of non-fiction to recreate in his first novel the minute and vivid detail of a past age which seems to ring true even if it is fact an artful illusion. This is a modern take on a Henry Fielding, Tom Jones kind of fiction, a succession of quirky events, with a sometimes intrusive narrator, but free from the sententious, long-winded moralising of the classics. The author has even taken the bold risk of adopting an eighteenth century turn of phrase, and appears to carry it off. Although some may find the style somewhat contrived and overblown, I was continually impressed by his skill in moulding words into distinctive, original images and thoughts. Often funny, entertaining yet farcical, the narrative keeps returning to the alternating spark and pathos of Smith’s encounters with the sharp-tongued, unpredictable Tabitha Lovell, the bird in a cage of her own making. He is drawn to her fatefully, despite knowing that “there is something very wrong with her”.

He made me realise how the lack of coins in New York obliged people to trade with a bewildering variety of coins of arbitrary value “ a Morisco piece we can’t read, but it weighs in at fourteen pennyweight, sterling, so we’ll call it two-and-six”. He can write a whole page on the simple act of walking in near darkness through a hall and up a staircase: “picture frames set faint rumours of gold around rectangles of darkness or curious glitters too shadowed to make out, as if Lovell had somehow collected, and drowned, a stairwell’s worth of distant constellations”. And so the narrative rattles on through the twists and turns of pursuits of a thief, sinister bonfire celebrations, melodramatic escapes across roof-tops, imprisonment, amateur dramatics, and duelling in the snow.

Francis Spufford could make paint drying sound interesting, as when Smith describes a boat trip up the Hudson River through a fog which shifts from “coagulated grey curtains…. to mere streamers and tatters….. while little cats’-paws of breeze come wrinkling and dabbing…..scuffing the water… from silver to pewter” or observes the winter ice forming on the East River, “into whose depths you could look and see swirls of grey brine and glassy freshwater fused together as still and rigid as the heart of a child’s marble.

Beneath the flippant, tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a varied cast of well-drawn characters with hints of their failings and secrets, run the darker currents of the serious rivalry between the Governor and smoothly menacing, power-hungry Judge De Launcey, the crude and corrupt system of justice, and the contemptuous exploitation of the slaves on whom the prosperity of the colony is based. There is the lurking knowledge that even a happy ending will be short-lived, since the colony is shortly to be blasted apart by the War of Independence with Great Britain.

On finishing this book I was left with a sense of disappointment, partly because the verbal pyrotechnics of this well-plotted page-turner made other novels seem bland. It was also due to my finding the denouement revealing Smith’s much-hinted at but long-kept secret something of an under-developed anti-climax, and the final unsettling twist too clever by half. Yet I did not mind that the ending is inconclusive. In general, for sheer originality and the quality of the writing, this book would make a deserving winner of the Man Booker Prize.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

Golden Hill

“Blackout” (Dark Iceland) by Ragnar Jonasson – Saved from run-of-the-mill by atmospheric Icelandic introspection

This is my review of Blackout (Dark Iceland) by Ragnar Jonasson.

When an American student on a visit to the rural north of Iceland discovers the body of what looks like a murder victim, it is obvious that local police inspector Tómas will be involved, along with his competent if erratic assistant Ari Thór. But why does Hlynur, the third member of the team, seem to be “losing his edge”? Also, is there more than simple ambition in journalist Ísrún’s intense interest in the case?

The third novel to be published in Ragnar Jonasson’s “Dark Iceland” series of crime thrillers, “Blackout” is chronologically the second book, so is best read after “Snowblind”.

The series is not as dark as recent televised “Scandi Noir” but still manages to give essentially straightforward detective fiction a different twist by creating a strong, distinctive sense of place. So in “Blackout”, we have the cobalt blue waters of the northern fjords where cruise ships have begun to dock, the surreal experience of rambling along the shore on summer nights as bright as day, while by contrast the capital of Reykjavik languishes under an unfamiliar pall of volcanic dust and families struggle to rebuild their lives after the financial crash.

As in most police dramas, the likeable young detective Ari Thór has problems in his personal life, and undermines a flair for sniffing out the truth with impulsive behaviour and a difficulty in controlling his temper . However, in a book which possibly has too many characters, he is not clearly the main one. The author takes pains both to craft a complicated but coherent plot, and to develop his characters as individuals, giving us detailed insights into their thoughts, even when they prove to be minor players, although he tends to do this through an overuse of lengthy flashbacks and descriptive often rather similar back stories, with a theme of unhappy childhood and unfulfilled adult life. I am not sure how much it is due to the translation, but the style of writing is simple to the point of minimalist like the landscape of an Icelandic lava field. Sometimes the plot seems plodding, at least giving a sense of the tedious and often seemingly fruitless nature of police work, but the pace picks up at the end to give a satisfactory denouement, leaving the details of the aftermath to our imagination.

Even if the author’s main aim is to sell popular fiction, one senses he is a born storyteller, and with a serious, reflective desire to explore the complexity and darker sides of human nature.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars


Blackout (Dark Iceland)
 

“A United Kingdom” [DVD] – A timely reminder that integrity can still win out

This is my review of A United Kingdom [DVD].

This heart-warming story of the power of love and clear-sighted integrity in the face of prejudice and ill-judged political expediency is worth reviving at a time when many people are too young to remember the true events on which it is based.

When London office worker Ruth Williams fell in love with a black African student who shared her love of dancing to jazz music, she did not realise what problems would be posed by his role as future King of Bechuanaland, a British Protectorate on the borders of South Africa, which was in the process of developing apartheid.

The film is effective in showing the flowering of a romance based on deep-rooted love and the couple’s shifting emotions of shock, despair, anger and defiance as the two find themselves caught between racism and hostility in both white and black communities resistant to change. It conveys a strong sense of place in foggy post-war London and the semi-arid African plains. We see how Ruth gradually begins to forge relationships with the local people, who are perhaps a little too good – gentle and law-abiding – to be true.

The drama is less successful in charting a coherent course through the political shenanigans, as entertaining but stereotyped British diplomats try to cajole, bully and trick the pair into giving up a marriage thought likely to stir up local unrest, or worse still threaten UK access to South Africa’s supplies of diamonds and uranium. Since in real life the couple were exiled from Bechuanaland for several years, perhaps the filmmakers feared the narrative would lose pace unless events were concertinaed somewhat. The weakest scenes are those involving poor look-alikes for British ministers gabbling lines at each other to explain complex geo-politics to the audience, on a set which looks nothing like the House of Commons, as intended.

Such a fascinating story does not need much tinkering to hold our interest. If anything, the film underplays Seretse Kharma’s achievement in developing an independent, much more prosperous and relatively free from corruption African country, renamed Botswana, one of the tragic continent’s few success stories.

The film inspired me to familiarise myself with the details of the original true story, is a salutary reminder of the extent to which attitudes have changed over the past sixty years, and reminds one of the overall benefits of a tolerant, open-minded society – also of the important link between individual freedom and democracy of which we may be in danger of losing sight.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars


A United Kingdom [DVD]

This Long Pursuit: Reflections of a Romantic Biographer by Richard Holmes – A marmite of reflections

This is my review of This Long Pursuit: Reflections of a Romantic Biographer by Richard Holmes.

Having read his two-part study of Coleridge, and “The Age of Wonder” which explores how the Romantics were influenced by “the beauty and terror” of the scientific discoveries of their day, I admire Richard Holmes as outstanding amongst biographers. So perhaps my expectations were too high for “The Long Pursuit”, the third in a series of reflections on the nature of biography, fleshed out with brief portraits of past lives.

Despite attending a lively talk by the author, I remain unclear about the three-part structure of this book: “Confessions” which explores the process of writing a biography, with many digressions, asking to what extent it can be formally taught as a “body of knowledge; “Restorations” which amounts to five short biographies of it would seem arbitrarily-chosen women who mostly formed part of the Romantic period, including Mary Wollstonecraft, already covered in his work “Footsteps”, and finally “Afterlives” which focuses on five “Romantic era” men, mostly poets (Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Blake) with the at times almost invisible “common thread” of how reputations may fluctuate after death, as individuals are misremembered, judgements alter as society’s attitudes change, source materials are selectively destroyed or discovered, biographers develop rival interpretations, and so on.

The book contains fascinating “nuggets” such as the author’s collection of two-hundred handwritten notebooks, with objective facts on the right-hand page, and subjective responses to the person under study on the left. There are amusing anecdotes such as the fact that, when Richard Holmes- who rightly travels in the footsteps of all his subjects – climbed on to the roof terrace at Greta Hall where Coleridge wrote and observed “the old moon with the new moon in her arms”, he found that the pupils at what is now a girls’ boarding school hid their vodka and cigarettes there. The portraits included as illustrations are also striking.

However, the book contains too much rehashing of “old material”, a patchwork of fragments from works by Richard Holmes which I have already consumed, leaving me with a sense of being cheated. In all the previous books of his which I have read, there has been a strong cohesive theme linking the chapters, providing a clear context for the often minute detail. Here, I felt unengaged by the continual flitting around without a clear purpose. I concluded that the book is best treated as a series of free-standing essays.

“This long pursuit” has a detailed index, and may include points of value to students. It has a “serendipitous” quality by which I mean that reading it, you may discover the odd point of interest by chance, without actively looking for it. This may make it very appealing to some readers, but I suspect others will skip through or abandon it with a sense of regret.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This Long Pursuit: Reflections of a Romantic Biographer

“The Essex Serpent” by Sarah Perry – Cleaving hearts

This is my review of The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry.

This imaginative yarn set in the 1890s revolves around Cora Seaborne, the unconventional young widow who acknowledges her sense of relief over the death of a sadistic husband. Within days of his demise, she has left the bustle of London with its sharp social divisions for the stark beauty of the Essex coast, often obscured by shifting mists, accompanied by Martha, the competent nanny who never left and son Francis, who would nowadays be considered autistic. With his inability to show the normal affection of a child, and his obsession with collecting objects, Francis is a continual source of puzzled concern, but Cora obtains emotional support from Martha, who manages to combine this with her commitment to persuading wealthy men like her admirer Spencer to invest in the replacement of the London slums with decent housing for workers.

It being the 1890s, Cora is thought to have a “masculine mind”. Although a wealthy woman with the means to dress fashionably, she often tramps the country dressed like a bag lady, in a man’s tweed coat with grimy fingernails. Apart from being practical gear for a geologist, perhaps this is a sub-conscious desire to conceal her femininity, having been so abused by her husband. It is hard to believe that such an independent-minded woman would have submitted to this, but perhaps she was trapped by her initial youth and the social attitudes of the day.

Absorbed in her fashionable pursuit of fossils, Cora is intrigued by the “Essex Serpent”, a creature of local folklore who is thought to have made a recent return to prey on the the inhabitants of Aldwinter, terrifying them in the process. Cora harbours dreams of making her name as a female geologist through the discovery of some giant ichthyosaurus. Frustrated by his parishioners’ superstition, local vicar William Ransome is driven to hac away the carving of a sea serpent which adorns the arm of a church pew. Although holding diametrically opposed views on religion, William and Cora are drawn to each other by a powerful meeting of questioning minds, the joy of conversing and bouncing ideas off each other. But can such a friendship endure in 1890s England, when does friendship become love, and what is to be done since William Ransome already has a beautiful, sensitive wife whom neither William nor Cora could bear to hurt – although she is conveniently frail and consumptive, so perhaps they can have their cake and eat it if their love can survive all the interim setbacks?

At first, I found the characters somewhat unconvincing, such as the brilliant, eccentric surgeon Luke Garrett, and his wealthy friend Spencer. Too often both dialogues and descriptions seem artificial, clunky contrivances for informing the reader about the burning social issues of the day. Yet, the descriptions of the Essex countryside and shoreline, together with the unsettling suspected presence of the serpent, are well-written and evocative, and once William Ransome is established alongside Cora to provide the two most fully developed central characters, I found myself more fully engaged in the story. Sarah Perry is also good at writing about children.

Overall, it is a modern writer’s take on the late Victorian world a generation after the period of Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Written somewhat in their vein, it avoids cloying sentimentality, yet is over-long and repetitious in places, and soft-centred at its core, although these are all features of the writing of this period.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars


The Essex Serpent
 

Perverted faith

This is my review of The Innocents [Blu-ray].

The setting is rural Poland in the aftermath of World War Two. Unable to bear any long the anguished cries of pain which the pure-voiced chanting cannot drown out, a young nun tramps through the snow to the French Red Cross hospital to seek help, with the insistence that the Polish Catholic authorities must not get to hear of it. When a young French nurse called Mathilde is eventually prevailed upon to drive to the convent, she discovers that not only is one nun in labour, but that several others are heavily pregnant, having been raped by boorish Soviet Russian soldiers. As an atheist from a communist-sympathising background, it is hard for Mathilde to comprehend that, far from being supportive, the Catholic Church would close the convent down, causing hardship to all the nuns, who would also be rejected by their families, if the truth ever became known. A further frustration is that the nuns believe it a sin to remove their clothing, let alone be touched, as part of the essential business of giving them medical aid. If the mothers can be saved, what is to be done with the children? At what price should one place religious belief or duty over acts of basic humanity or the expression of natural human emotion?

What could be an unbearably harrowing tale is made a memorable and thought-provoking film through the well-developed plot, focusing on a few specific, clearly drawn personalities to show different points of view as events unfold. The scenes are very convincing in their apparent authenticity, the French Director Anne Fontaine having undertaken very thorough research of the real-life situations on which the film is based. There is a striking contrast between the convent and the hospital. In the former, calm routine prevails against the odds, with Mathilde finding herself moved by the beauty of the singing, but fear, grief and violence keep breaking through the delusion that rules and rituals can carry on as normal. In the crowded hospital with its makeshift operating theatre, Mathilde and the Jewish doctor who fancies her work to the point of exhaustion, then seek release in dancing, drinking vodka and casual sex in the knowledge that, in a few weeks, they maybe posted on separate ways. Meanwhile, the orphaned street children sell cigarettes for coins and clamber over a coffin for fun. The film may suggest that the flawed, secular world is more honest and humane, but the young nun Maria’s ability to maintain both her faith and her integrity support the other side of the argument.

The direction seems flawless apart from the details of a few scenes which I found confusing since the nuns tend to look so similar in their habits. The film has been criticised for a failure to analyse issues in depth and for a rather saccharine ending. Instead, I felt that the Director takes the mature approach of sparking questions in our minds, but leaving it to us to formulate our own answers, while the ending is merely a convenient stopping point, with much yet to be resolved.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars


The Innocents [Blu-ray]