Author: Antenna

Not free to speak

This is my review of Wolf Hall [DVD] [2015].

Henry Vlll's reign is one of the most intriguing periods in popular history but to appreciate Hilary Mantel's work requires a good understanding of the issues involved. The director Kosminsky has maintained her approach in providing little by way of explanation, and does not make clear the roles, let alone the names (which at least you get in the books), of many of the minor characters. The likely resultant confusion may well be more of a reason for viewers to turn off than the difficulty of identifying charaters in the flickering candlelight.

Kosminsky has managed to compress two quite hefty novels into six one hour episodes yet still maintain a slow pace because the books consist largely of description and Cromwell's internal reflections rather than action. The director has replaced descriptions with the use of authentic sets in Elizabethan dwellings like Montacute combined with painstaking attention to period detail – perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the series. Cromwell's thoughts have been handled with short flashbacks and the watchful, miss-nothing stares and glances of which Mark Rylance is a past master. Perhaps the puzzle as to what he is really thinking is part of the drama. Is he sizing Jane Seymour up as a malleable and hopefully fertile substitute for Anne Boleyn, or as a wife for himself, so that Henry's interest in the girl comes as a blow? Brilliant though he is, Rylance seems just too wiry, playful and sensitive to play the beefy, calculating fixer we see emerging from the shadowy background of the famous Holbein portrait, but no doubt this is legitimate dramatic licence.

In a perhaps intentionally "stagy" film production, Kosminsky has been true to Mantel's interpretation of Cromwell, if anything developing some of the characters more clearly through his tighter format. So, we see Henry becoming a capricious tyrant, although his sense of vulnerability over the lack of a son evokes our sympathy, surrounded as he is by scheming nobles. Similarly, Anne Boleyn's vicious bitchiness is ever more obviously a cloak for her own insecurity and growing sense of panic with each miscarriage, and at the end she goes to her death with a dignity that commands respect. Cromwell himself appears more ruthless as the plot progresses, prepared to twist and fabricate evidence and showing vengeance in making victims of men against whom he has a grudge, such as the young noblemen who mocked his former master Wolsey so cruelly in a masked play. But he too has become trapped in his role as the King's fixer, with no real choice other than to do Henry's bidding. It was an unpleasant surprise to find Thomas More, the saintly "man for all seasons", portrayed as a cruel bigot in Mantel's book. If anything, Kosminsky makes him rather more sympathetic, greatly reducing the trial scene which forms the climax of the book, to focus more on the interplay between More and Cromwell: the former wearily unable to sacrifice his beliefs, even to regain his freedom and home comforts, the latter giving vent to a rare burst of real feeling to express his anger over More's own persecution of reformers, yet still privately regretting the demise of someone he has admired from his poverty-stricken boyhood, although the privileged More does not admit to remembering him from then at all.

I understand why the series has been so highly praised, but feel it would have made more of an impact in a feature-length film, or a two-parter, like the recent stage play. For me, Wolf Hall as a book has a contrived quality, a hollow heart, which is inevitably reflected in this filmed version.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Wolf Hall [DVD] [2015]

Paved with good intentions

This is my review of Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty,Arthur Goldhammer.

The Industrial Revolution saw an increase in inequality resulting from increased capital accumulation by the wealthy. The economist Kuznets misread the evidence in arguing that an "advanced phase" of industry would lead to a more equal spread of wealth, for "the sharp reduction in income equality in rich countries between 1914-1945 was due to the violent economic and political shocks resulting from two world wars…. The resurgence of inequality after the1980s was due to political shifts as regards taxation and regulation of finance". Piketty aims to enhance his academic credentials by analysing and presenting a vast amount of data between 1700-2010 to explain the above more fully and to support his central thesis that there is no natural, spontaneous process to prevent destabilising, inegalitarian forces from prevailing permanently.

At first, the style seems very clear, well-translated, with minimal use of obscure formulae beloved by economists and graphs which relate to actual numbers on the axes rather than indicate trends, although Piketty admits that such complex data over long periods of time comes with many caveats. He tends to reiterate points, which apart from reinforcing learning helps readers who wish to dip into chapter sections. However, such repetition adds significantly to the length of the book.

Length seems a major problem. If I were an economics student, I would not wish to trawl through so much verbiage to glean the useful nuggets of knowledge. As a general reader, although the history of wealth distribution is quite interesting, I am most concerned about the final section on regulating capital, that is, the reduction of destabilising inequalities of wealth in this century. Here, I find the author skirting round the problem in a woolly and diffuse fashion, as in the single 25 page chapter (out of 577 pages, excluding notes) in which he considers aspects of "A Global Tax on Capital" which he introduces, not for the first time, as a utopian idea "which it is hard to imagine the nations of the world agreeing to any time soon". Other chapters in this section each go off at a tangent without being clearly related to the book's central theme of "capital", such as Chapter 14, "Rethinking the Progressive Income Tax" which is confined to examples from the US, France, Germany and Britain .

The author's heart is in the right place but since the arguments for redistribution are controversial, they need to be thought through and presented more strongly. A shorter book would have been more effective: the first part his research, the second his reasoned case. How many of the purchasers who made this a best-seller have actually read it?

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Not much left to learn except for algebra

This is my review of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

The better to appreciate Harper Lee's recently discovered prequel to this celebrated classic about life in segregated 1930s Alabama, I decided to reread it. I was surprised to find that the dramatic trial in which principled oddball lawyer Atticus Finch provides the convincing defence of a black man accused of rape, which only a prejudiced white jury could reject, forms a relatively small section of the novel.

I now see the book as a C20 female American writer's response to Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, for at its core lie the attempts of feisty tomboy Jean Louise, nicknamed Scout, to understand the contrary adult world in which people speak one way and act another and the confusing social divisions in the inward-looking, gossip-ridden, tightknit factions of the backwater community of Maybury. Some of the escapades of Scout and her brother Jem are entertaining, I was fascinated by the Southern turn of speech and vivid portrayal of small-town life in another age.

And yet, like some other recent reviewers, I was not impressed to the degree I had expected and hoped. The whole business of the childrens' obsession with catching sight of their reclusive neighbour Boo Radley becomes wearisome, although I admit that it proves relevant to the denouement – a tale which often seems clunkily plotted and rambling manages to pull the threads together for a satisfactory conclusion.

Although dealing with an adult subject, everything is seen from the perspective of a child between the ages of six and eight. Thus Scout frequently misconstrues the situation, which may be amusing for a more mature reader who is "in the know" although this can get tedious after a while. The problem for me is that, despite her fear of hot steam ghosts and penchant for sugar sandwiches, Scout often seems to have too precocious a grasp of vocabulary and thoughts too sophisticated for her age, which is a common problem with a first person narrative, although admittedly in this case there is the excuse that she is writing years after the event, able to put an adult construction on matters and to employ dramatic licence to recreate detailed conversations word for word.

So it is that I found the story funny and moving, yet at the same long-winded, corny and sentimental at some points and think that for the greatest impact it needs to be read for the first time by teenagers untroubled by the pros and cons of good creative writing.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0099549484/ref=nosim?tag=nowordlimitco-21NaNTo Kill A Mockingbird

Call of the wild

This is my review of Wild [DVD] [2014].

"Wild" opens with Cheryl Strayed hiking the arduous 1100 mile Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada with a monstrous backpack, feet bloodied by ill-fitting boots, never knowing whether the next incident will be a mishap or encounter with an act of kindness or passing friendship. The film is based on the best-selling real-life memoir of a woman who embarked on this challenge as a way of "saving herself" after a failed marriage, destroyed by her descent into drug addiction and promiscuity. The reasons for this decline – although she comes to regard it as part of the process of developing -, in particular the sudden loss of the person she loves most, are gradually revealed. We learn about her past in a series of flashbacks, some so fleeting as to be almost subliminal. Despite abandoning college, Cheryl has a deep love and knowledge of poetry and literature, some of which she cannot bear to discard to lighten her pack. The literary messages she leaves in the books stored en route – intended to keep track of walkers – make a deep impression on other hikers even the rowdy threesome of boys she meets towards the end. Apart from the mixture of poignancy and humour, the scenery is remarkable, with dramatic changes of both topography, from mountain and crater lake to grassy plains, and climate – hot sun, drenching rain and snow. I was also struck by the emptiness of the wilderness, as Cheryl seemed to hike without seeing another soul for days on end, only to have the odd sudden intimate encounter, sometimes uplifting, occasionally a menacing reminder of her vulnerability.

Reese Witherspoon puts in an excellent performance as Cheryl – despite being in her late thirties, she retains a youthful, girlish quality. Laura Dern is also very effective as her inspirational mother with an indestructible love of each new day of life.

My only reservation is that, in changing the facts of Cheryl's past life a little perhaps to make the plot tighter, sadder and more dramatic, some areas of confusion have been introduced unnecessarily, which I found annoying.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Wild [DVD] [2014]

“What a true work of art looks like”

This is my review of The Emigrants by W. G. Sebald.

Like the recent French Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano, author W.G. Sebald was preoccupied with memory, nostalgia for the past and a haunting sense of loss. In a superb, sensitive translation from the German, "The Emigrants" comprise four freestanding sections, each recording the life of a man forced to leave Germany at some point in the last century, either to find employment in the States or to evade Nazi persecution.

Sebald has a very distinctive style, often described as dreamlike – and in the course of his meandering he sometimes resorts to recalling in detail real or imagined dreams, and tends to merge plain fact with probable invention. Slotted into the text to illustrate points, the frequent small, grainy photos of people, houses, scenery and objects are in some cases evocative and compelling, in others just quirky, such as a couple of keys for opening a cemetery gate, which in fact do not work. The first person narrator often finds out about his emigrants through the memories of others – perhaps emigrants themselves – but slots their commentary into his text without any inverted commas, creating in the process a stream of consciousness.

Opinions will differ, but I was most impressed by the final section on "Max Ferber". for which I would give five stars. In this, Sebald reveals himself to be an immigrant: a young German postgraduate student who came to Manchester in the `60s and found that he preferred not to return permanently to his homeland with its amnesia over the recent guilty past. Sebald "never ceased to be amazed by the completeness with which anthracite-coloured Manchester, the city from which industrialisation had spread across the entire world, displayed the clearly chronic process of its impoverishment and degradation". But the most moving part is his friendship with the reclusive Jewish painter Ferber, who was sent on a flight to England by his once wealthy parents before they were themselves deported. Ferber inspires some of the author's most magical prose. The artist's method was to apply paint in a thick layer, only to spend hours scratching it off, leaving "a hardened and encrusted deposit of droppings mixed with coaldust..in places resembling the flow of lava". Ferber "never felt more at home than in places where matter dissolved, little by little into nothingness." He reflects: "I gradually understood that, beyond a certain point, pain blots out the one thing that is essential to its being experienced – consciousness – and so perhaps extinguishes itself". Ferber gives to Sebald the journal kept by his mother, which the author incorporates into his account – how much of this he actually writes himself is unclear. In any event it is a fascinating description of an ordered, carefee life in the one-third German village of Steinach at the start of the C20, all the more poignant since, "It goes without saying there are no Jews in Steinach now".

This strange account of people damaged by loss has the power to alter one's perception of life and is worth rereading for the quality of the writing and the insights expressed.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

The Emigrants

A powerful reminder of injustice ever with us

This is my review of Selma [DVD].

Well-acted, with a cast who often uncannily "look the part" and sound it in the case of David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King, this is a powerful and moving reconstruction of the charismatic preacher's 1965 campaign in the Alabama town of Selma to obtain the right for Negroes to register for the vote. A focused approach is probably more effective than a lengthy "Lincoln"-style biopic of his complex life which might have overloaded the viewer and either exaggerated him as a saint or demeaned him by an overemphasis on his Achilles heel of womanising – the sin he could neither refrain from nor admit to publicly.

Dedicated to non-violence, King apparently saw Selma as an ideal place for a march to the capital of Montgomery via the Edmund Pettis Bridge. He knew that the Selma Police Chief was a "pitbull" and that Governor George Wallace's refusal to allow the march would not be overridden legally. In other words, King was creating the scene of possible carnage which, viewed on States-wide television would provoke outrage and gain vital support for his cause. Yet, although a shrewd politician and inspiring orator, he also suffered periods of personal doubt, particularly when faced by the brutal murder of his supporters.

Some scenes would have benefitted from sharper editing, and they require a good deal of prior knowledge. A younger viewer might be confused by the brief appearance of Malcolm X – who was hostile to King's pacifism, calling him an "Uncle Tom" – or about the politics of the time, with crusty Democrat Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) absorbed by Vietnam, and resting on the laurels of introducing the Civil Rights Act without worrying too much about the details of its implementation: with Alabama still segregated, he asks King, how can he expect the right for Negroes to vote there?

Many scenes are strong. On a small scale, we see Orpah Winfrey as a determined black nurse trying to jump the hurdles against registering for the vote: she even knows there are 67 local councillors, but falls at the impossible barrier of naming them. Then we see King, using his Nobel status to gain access to the White House, progressing from respectful petitioning to fearless exhortation that Johnson should use his authority as President to force the issue. Johnson may be shown in an unfairly poor light for much of the film but it makes good drama, as does sinister Governor Wallace (played by yet another Brit, Tim Roth), whose concern for the poor is marred by an obsessive racism.

The scenes of violence, such as the break-up of the Selma march, are shot with painful realism, evoking a sense of shame over the injustice suffered by black Americans in what has been called the world's greatest democracy. King's speeches, in particular outside the Montgomery Capitol are also very moving, although they are paraphrasing of the originals for which it seems the film rights have been sold to Spielberg for a film yet to be made: one can only hope the money has been used on a good cause. The skilful insertion of a few moments of real film footage demonstrate the accuracy of the dramatised version.

A further menacing touch is the continual appearance on-screen of terse reports on King's movements, obtained from the bugging ordered by J Edgar Hoover – also, the attempts to drive a wedge between King and his longsuffering wife Coretta (excellent performance from Carmen Ejogo).

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Selma [DVD]

Il faut cultiver notre jardin

This is my review of Candide Voltaire Larousse by Voltaire.

Having discovered "Candide" through a recent lecture on Voltaire's role in the Enlightenment, I would say that it is definitely worth reading, ideally in French. On one level this satirical account of the surreal experiences of a naive and optimistic young man seem very dated and rather silly. On the other hand, put in the context of C18 Europe, it is Voltaire's scathing exposure of the corruption and intolerance of his age, and a justification of reason and open-mindedness. He was genuinely moved by the catastrophic Lisbon earthquake in 1755, clear grounds for refuting the philosopher Liebnitz's simplistic belief in "théodicée", a perfect God, who had created everything for the best in "le meilleur des mondes possibles" as parrotted by the buffoonish Professeur Pangloss. It is fascinating to realise that Voltaire's work was seized by the authorities for its dangerous principles as regards religion and tendency to deprave public morals – yet it still managed to be a bestseller. In these troubled times, Voltaire's concerns remain surprisingly relevant.

I particularly enjoyed the bored Venetian killjoy Pococuranté, sated with privilege and pleasure, disgusted by all his possessions and finding pleasure only in criticising everything – again, a character for any age.

This well-presented book is value for money, with useful footnotes to explain more archaic terms, clear explanation of the context, and in the final section "Pour approfondir" a detailed dissection of the text to assist those unfortunate enough to need to study it for the Bac, which I am glad not to have to do as it could just turn one off this work for ever.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

Candide Voltaire Larousse

Still gripping

This is my review of Spiral – Series 5 [DVD] [2014].

It is preferable to have seen the previous four series to get the most out of this one, that is, to appreciate the past relationships between the characters and how they have developed. This will also mean that certain plotlines and twists become familiar to a degree that may make some watchers feel somewhat blasé if not uneasy, particularly if French: criminals tend to be immigrants living on the soul-destroying graffiti-scarred tower-blocks of the Parisian outer suburbs – when they are not key players in dubious companies, living in the height of luxury. The police are corrupt to the core, particularly in the upper echelons, those putting their lives on the line regularly break the rules, overstep the mark in roughing up suspects and are predictably incompetent – in any attempt to corner a blackmailer or robber, you can bet the suspects will get away.

The familiar key characters remain central: the trio of driven Captain Laure Berthaud with sidekicks in the form of once upright and conscientious but now stressed failed family man Tintin, and rough diamond with a heart Gilou; the silver-tongued temptress, ambitious lawyer Josephine, her amorality held in check by the suave Pierre, and the complex, persistent and independent-minded Juge Roban, who recently seems to have lost his sense of proportion. The Machiavellian Prosecutor Marchard and charming if arrogant head of Crime Squad Brémont also continue to make the odd appearance.

In some ways this series is less good than the earlier ones in which there were more minor cases running in parallel to the main crime, conveying a more realistic sense of the complexity and stress of police work, whilst the whole process of detection has perhaps become a little too repetitive and familiar. For this reason, my interest began to flag a little in the second half but the final episode, despite its deliberate loose ends pending the next, possibly last, Series (although there is no guarantee they will all be addressed) is sufficiently action-packed to provide a resounding finale.

Overall, despite its gratuitous violence, occasional unresolved incidents en route and implausibilities which come to mind when you have time to stop and think about the plot, this fast-moving drama remains gripping not merely because it requires total concentration to grasp what is afoot but also for its sharp dialogue, not least in court scenes, and moments of humour, pathos and irony which set it apart from a run-of-the-mill police thriller.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Spiral – Series 5 [DVD] [2014]

Dividing the world

This is my review of The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941 by Roger Moorhouse.

This readable and informative analysis of the infamous 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact covers an aspect often confined to a few paragraphs in a history of the Second World War. In upsetting "the ideological clarity of the bipolar world of communist versus fascist", this Pact dismayed many in both camps, justified to communists by the specious argument that: "Soviet leaders had a responsibility to the working class of the world to defend the USSR and could, if necessary, for this reason make an alliance with the devil himself".

On one hand, mistrustful of imperial Britain and the US, Stalin felt more comfortable with an agreement that would leave Europe to exhaust itself through conflict at little cost to the USSR. He also saw a chance to regain and occupy eastern Europe – parts of Poland, the Baltic States, Finland and Bessarabia (from Romania), sanctioned by the secret protocol which his henchman Molotov signed with the Germans, but always denied.

On the other hand, the Pact gave Hitler the confidence to fight on a single front in 1940, sweeping through the Low Countries, France and Norway, humiliating Britain in the process. The map showing Europe largely under Axis control or neutral in June 1941 reminds us of how scaring it must have been to be living in the UK at this time.

By then, the stage was set for Operation Barbarossa, since the unnatural alliance had fractured under Hitler's fears over the long-term Soviet designs on Europe, and his hubristic underestimate of the risks involved in overextending his forces in the throes of a Russian winter. Moorhouse points out the irony of the German troops' advance into Russia, fed by Soviet grain, tanks fuelled by Soviet oil, boots made of rubber transported on Soviet trains, weapons made from Soviet manganese-hardened-steel as a result of the mutually beneficial trade under the Pact. In turn, the surprisingly effective Russian tanks had been manufactured with machine tools imported from Germany.

Moorhouse shows how there was little to choose between the two powers as regards their callous and brutal resettlement policies for those judged to have unacceptable views or the wrong ethnic origin. He cites the two trainloads of Polish refugees travelling opposite ways on the Nazi-Soviet frontier, "each group astonished that the other was fleeing into the zone they were trying to escape". He also reminds us how, until Gorbachev's regime, discussion of the Nazi-Soviet Pact was taboo, the new histories of the 1960s covering it only briefly with "the expected omissions, evasions and justifications".

Moorhouse has chosen to omit concluding references to the Germans' defeat in Russia after the carnage of their initial blitzkrieg, and to the new alliance formed by Stalin with the UK and USA. Neither is there an attempt to speculate on the course which events might have taken if this alliance had been formed earlier, instead of a pact with the Germans.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941

From the dim ruins of the Enlightenment project

This is my review of The Enlightenment: And Why it Still Matters by Anthony Pagden.

In the eighteenth century, conditions combined to create a demand for the right to think for oneself. Avoiding simple clear-cut definitions, Anthony Pagden deploys his encylopaedic knowledge to explore the factors which gave rise to the enlightenment, its complexity, strengths and weaknesses and why it is still relevant. A scholarly page-turner, which somehow manages to be engrossing yet flawed, this is a book to keep on one's shelf and revisit from time to time, as it includes too many ideas to grasp in a single reading.

Each chapter is like an encounter with a passionate expert thinking aloud as his mind flips back and forth, linking the ideas of respective "lumières" with extensive quotations and frequent little digressions and asides "(more of him later)". No philosopher or thinker is introduced without a few nuggets of potted history, which tends to be distracting. Despite the author's penchant for convoluted sentences, his approach is gripping and thought-provoking, but can create a kind of overstimulated mental fog. A reader with some prior knowledge of the main enlightenment thinkers is likely to cope best. I decided that the best course is to read this through once to get an overview and then study chapter by chapter to fix some key insights. I could have done with a chart to show the dates of the various philosophers to clarify exactly who was influencing whom, and to note their respective works, often with long and similar titles.

Some assertions seem open to question, but it is perhaps no bad thing to face the challenge of explaining why one questions a certain argument. The typos noted by other reviewers did make me wonder whether the proofreader(s) hadn't become too numbed by the spate of information and ideas to check the sense properly, but this is a minor point. The major criticism is that the book is somewhat chaotic in structure, repetitious and longer than it needs to be – but Pagden certainly conveys a sense of the enduring fascination of the subject matter.

I was looking forward to the "Conclusion: Enlightenment and its enemies", but Pagden seems to have run out of steam at the end, not dissecting "communitarianism" and the Catholic philosopher MacIntyre as forensically as he does the earlier anti-enlightenment thinkers and ending with a final confirmation of continued relevance which seems rather woolly, I suppose due to the sad fact that our enlightenment has not built on that of our visionary eighteenth century ancestors to the degree that they might reasonably have hoped.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

The Enlightenment: And Why it Still Matters