Author: Antenna

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

Loving to hate

This is my review of The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike by Philip K. Dick.

Energetic, pushy and prickly, realtor Leo Runcible has great ideas for property development in rural California, but he will probably never gain acceptance in 1960s Marin County, being not only an outsider but Jewish. An exaggerated grievance against his neighbour Walt Dombrosio sets off the quirky chain of events which form the theme of this novel.

As he continually switches his viewpoint between four of the main characters, so that Walt and his classy wife Sherry are as central to the tale as Leo and blurrily drunken Janet, I became engrossed in his capture of how they perceive each other and of the continuous small shifts in emotions – the observation of psychology and social life. This is a match for Philip Roth, I found myself thinking. Then, the narrative slips more into black farce and although I accept that the early 60s was a period of male chauvinism, of the sense that a man was emasculated if his wife worked, of unabashed racism and callous dismissal of the disabled, I began to have a nagging concern as to exactly how misogynist and non-PC Philip Dick may have been himself – or perhaps this is a mark of his skill as a writer.

It seems that this was one of the mainstream novels which remained unpublished in his lifetime, since his cult status was achieved only through his sci-fi, which does not interest me personally. Although I agree with a reviewer who found the end of this book somewhat rushed – he sets up an interesting final twist but fails to develop it adequately – he has clearly been underestimated as a writer with a keen eye, sharp insights into how mismatched people may tear themselves apart in relationships, “hell is other people” leavened with wry humour and a laconic style. I shall read another, but perhaps that will then be enough.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike

Asking of Fortune more than she can grant

This is my review of Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts.

I embarked on this great slab of a historical biography – 820 pages excluding sources and notes – in an attempt to understand to what extent Napoleon was truly "great", particularly after reading a popular biography of Josephine which seemed to sell him short.

In the course of wading through the mud and slaughter of his interminable military campaigns, I concluded that he was a remarkable man whose greatness stemmed from enormous energy and vision, insatiable curiosity, the capacity to absorb a huge volume of facts, the confidence to take risks in putting ideas into practice, great tactical skill, flexibility and speed in conducting campaigns – when he had a single enemy to contend with and a small enough army to control personally – undeniable courage, a keen sense of self-publicity and understanding of how to motivate men at all levels – this sometimes deserted him – through a mixture of praise, rewards and decisive orders when needed. He was also capable of moments of refreshing candour and regret as to his shortcomings, and possessed a sense of humour and charm which captivated even some of his enemies.

On the downside, his desire to emulate Caesar and Alexander the Great may have led to megalomania, his attention to detail made him a control freak, as Emperor he made himself an unbridled political dictator, although he listened to the opinions of others and adopted a more democratic approach towards the end when he was fatally weakened. His continual exaggeration of enemy losses and playing down of his own may have been judicious PR, but suggests a failure to face up to his frequent squandering of the lives of the men he had inspired to follow him. He was a male chauvinist – although perhaps most men were at the time – and he made some major errors.

The most costly of these was the attempt to fight on two fronts simultaneously – Russia and Spain, and to allow himself to be lured as far as Moscow, over-extending his supply lines and then underestimating the time needed to limp back to France before the onset of winter. The shocking death toll of more than half a million soldiers, and the destruction of his horses made it hard to put up an effective defence with fast-moving cavalry when the extent of his conquests set most of the rest of Europe against him. He picked the wrong issues for stubborn obsessions, such as an unworkable scheme to block trade with Britain with which he annoyed the Tsar by trying to impose it on Russia, or the rejection of fairly reasonable peace terms when his luck had run out.

In an academic yet mainly very readable text, the author fired me with some of his own enthusiasm for Napoleon. I found myself rooting for him and wishing he had desisted from some campaigns to build his reputation as a social reformer – even as a prisoner on Elba, he arranged the provision of fresh water, improvement of roads, irrigation schemes, etcetera. He may of course have been in a cleft stick, in that he had to wage war to avoid being overrun by belligerent neighbours outraged by his assumption of a crown.

I realise that many chapters on military campaigns are unavoidable, and was impressed to learn that the author had clearly tramped many of the sixty main battle sites in person, but I found the information perhaps inevitably too condensed with indigestible lists of names of commanders, companies, details of troop movements, villages and rivers. It is frustrating that maps are not always supplied, and when included, often omit place names mentioned in the text, an indication of location, topography and scale to help one understand the course of events. I did not want to interrupt my reading to go and search for these details elsewhere. It would have been helpful to include more of the factual information in clear tables, charts and timelines – together with better maps- for easier reference.

Overall, this is an impressive work which has increased my understanding and appreciation of a fascinating historical figure.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

Napoleon the Great

“All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque: Old at Twenty

This is my review of All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.

Having read and seen so many books and films about war, I made the mistake of expecting this to have little to add apart from the different perspective of a First World War soldier on the German front. Written in the 1920s by a young journalist who fictionalises his own experiences of the futile lunacy of war, it soon proved to me its status as a classic.

What marks it out is the combination of a whole gamut of reactions, from the MASH-like scenes of cynical survival to moving scenes portraying the psychology of survival at the front. In the opening chapter, the eighty men out of a company of a hundred and fifty who have returned alive and uninjured from the front are delighted to find that the quartermaster has not been informed in time to reduce their supplies so they have double rations for a day. A young man is dying from his wounds in a field hospital, and a friend is mainly preoccupied with laying claim to his rather fine pair of boots.

Using the present tense to give events more immediacy, the narrator Paul describes the sinister nature of the front in apparently calm periods which may be shattered with no warning by shells and gas – how to survive he must throw himself instinctively to the earth, which may protect, bury alive or claim him for ever. He must kill or be killed without emotion to stay alive, feeling his most conscious hatred for the teachers who abused their authority by urging him to enlist, or the sadistic ex-postman, now Corporal who provided his training, none of them with any realistic first-hand experience of the front. The prospect of leave seems like heaven, until Paul realises that he can no longer relate to family and acquaintances, or any aspect of his past life. He can no longer read the books he used to treasure, and his academic education now seems useless.

The narrative makes very early on the telling point which recurs at the end: the fact that young men plucked from school to the battlefield have no clear framework of work, wife or children to which to return, should they survive. They are a generation cast in limbo: “if we go back…. we shall be weary, broken-down, burnt-out, rootless and devoid of hope. No one will understand us – we are superfluous even to ourselves.”

This well-translated novel is saved from unendurable sadness by the range and frequent black humour of incidents. It is one of the most powerful pieces of anti-war writing I have ever read. The saddest aspect is that, when he wrote it, Lemarque might still hope there would be no future struggles of this sort on such a scale.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

All Quiet on the Western Front

Why things happen

This is my review of Lila by Marilynne Robinson.

Marilynne Robinson's writing fascinates me. For a celebrated professional creative writer she has produced relatively few novels, of which three produced over a decade examine and rework the lives of two families in the quiet Iowan town of Gilead, each book focussing on the inner thoughts of a different character. Lila, a newcomer who has married the Reverend John Ames in his old age and borne him a son, is a minor figure in "Home" and "Gilead", but comes to the fore in this latest novel. Best read in turn with Lila last, to understand all the references, they can be treated as standalone novels.

Carried on a stream of consciousness which catches Lila's distinctive voice, we learn how she was abducted as a young child from a neglectful and possibly violent household by Doll, an itinerant casual worker. On the run for years from some real or imagined pursuer, they attach themselves to a small group who find jobs where they can in what sounds like the dustbowl America of the `30s, although the author is vague as to time and place. Despite having been barely tolerated by everyone apart from the protective Doll, Lila retains a nostalgic longing for her childhood, lived mostly out in the open, with a keen sense of nature and the seasons, and what little they all had shared in common.

By comparison, in the reverend's comfortable old house, with his kind and patient attention, she often feels lonely and reluctant to confess details of her past for fear this may turn him against her. It appears he has married her out of his own loneliness and a sense of her reflective nature, drawn to the same spiritual questions which perplex him. Perhaps he feels a desire to give practical support to a woman in need who has endured hardship through no fault of her own, outside the safe shell of his own life troubled only by self-concocted theological dilemmas. We can never be any surer about his motives than Lila, for everything is seen through her eyes. The book is full of irony: the old man never grasps that she likes to read Exekiel because its fire and brimstone images capture a sense of her own past life. He is amused by her announcement that she never wants to have a credenza in the house, not realising that this was the piece of furniture in which a whorehouse madam kept locked up the few possessions of the young women she exploited.

Since every phrase appears crafted with care, the book needs to be read slowly, rereading some sentences aloud to capture the full meaning by stressing the right word. Although it has been described as one of the saddest books imaginable, the beauty, expressiveness and wry humour of the style make the bleak aspects tolerable. Lila's pregnancy also strikes a continual optimistic beat. The mistrust of John Ames' old friend the Reverend Boughton, and likely bewildered disapproval of parishioners, held in check by respect for the old clergyman, are only hinted at in this subtlest of novels.

If I have any criticism it is over the repetition of some points, although this could be intended to convey how the mind keeps revisiting old ground. In the same way, the very muted ending could reflect the reality of most people's experience. The author's Calvinist background exerts a strong influence, which could deter readers with no biblical knowledge or belief. As an atheist who accepts that Christianity is deeply embedded in mid-west American society, I would say that this book is worth reading if you appreciate skilful writing and have an interest in psychology, how people think and interrelate, often failing to communicate, and how they come to terms with intimations of mortality and the transiency of both pleasure and pain.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

Lila

Violets where his mangled body lay

This is my review of Testament of Youth [DVD] [2014] [2015].

It is probably an advantage not to have read Vera Brittain's celebrated First World War autobiography on which this film is based, since it means one can come to it without inflated expectations. Born into a prosperous Edwardian household, strong-minded Vera battles to be allowed to apply for Oxford where, in 1914, women are permitted to attend lectures but still not take degrees. Despite her intention to avoid the conventional path of marriage she falls for one of her brother Edward's friends, Roland Leighton who like her has ambitions to write, in his case as a poet. When war is declared, all the young men of her acquaintance who are fit for service feel honour-bound to enlist. Since Edward has supported her case for Oxford, she returns the favour by arguing fiercely for her father to let him join up, finding the clincher she may live to regret, "Let him be a man". A stint as a nurse on the Front opens her eyes to the chaos and waste of war.

Seen mainly from Vera's viewpoint, the course of events is saved from intolerable sadness by moments of humour and fascinating touches of period detail. There are telling situations such as Roland's behaviour when he returns on leave, masking his preoccupation with the horror of war behind a mixture of bravado and moodiness. Many moving scenes compensate for others which seem a little wooden, but perhaps the latter reflect accurately the "stiff upper lip" restraint of the period. Also, in keeping closely to Vera Brittain's text, the film may have become too restricted as a drama.

Since "Testament of Youth" was an early exposé of the futility of war, it is perhaps surprising that it was not made into a feature film long ago. Its power has been somewhat diminished by our familiarity with the facts, but there is still particular poignancy in Vera's experience of World War One, and it is an effective introduction for anyone finding out about it for the first time.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Testament of Youth [DVD] [2014] [2015]

Doing one’s best

This is my review of The Theory Of Everything [DVD] [2015].

Despite or perhaps because of my admiration for Steven Hawking's brilliance and the courageous determination shared with his former wife, now Jane Wilde, I was ambivalent about watching a film which I feared would be harrowing and intrusive as regards some of the more intimate aspects of motor neurone disease. In fact, it is a sensitive and moving portrayal of their lives from their first meeting when he was embarking on a PhD and about to be hit with the unexpected diagnosis of MND with two years to live.

The film is based on Jane Wilde's book, and in a radio interview I heard her approval of the production with particular praise for Felicity Jones's brilliant imitation of her own gestures and voice, including her clipped diction from a 1950s upbringing in an academic household. Eddie Redmayne also manages to assume with remarkable skill the appearance of Hawking as seen on television. It does not trouble me that he is not a genuinely disabled actor and I would think it hard to employ one since Hawking has to be shown in steady decline from the apparently healthy only slightly clumsy young man at the outset.

Since this is a commercial film, it touches fairly superficially on Hawking's mind-bending scientific theories and the grimmer details of managing his physical decline. The pain of the latter is shown in subtle ways as when, struggling to get him to co-operate over the use of a grossly inadequate letter-board to communicate after it has been necessary to give him a tracheotomy, Jane dissolves into silent tears. So, it becomes in essence the story of his relationship with his wife, with her part in the drama equal to his. Tragically, neither can fully express themselves, he because of his disability and she out of love, a sense of duty and her unusually reserved and self-controlled personality.

The tragedy is highlighted by the fact that, perhaps in particular if one is a woman, one tends to identify mostly with Jane's exhaustion as she struggles to care for him, bring up their three children, and produce her own PhD in odd disrupted moments at the kitchen table. Having insisted on caring for a man only predicted to have two years to live, it is ironically her support which played a major part in keeping him alive. When asked in an interview how matters could have been improved, she stated that it would have helped if Hawking had been prepared to discuss his illness with her, if she had received a great deal more assistance in caring for him, and if the nurses eventually hired had been more carefully vetted. The film is faithful to the truth in making all this clear, yet manages to do so with frequent touches of wry humour.

Although Hawking probably had to be selfish and take his wife for granted to survive, the film made me wonder whether his decision to divorce her to marry his nurse was in fact an act of generosity, in freeing Jane to marry the supportive family friend whom she had come to love. There are other interpretations, of course. Posing such questions feels prurient, but this is the inevitable result of making those who are still very much alive the subject of a mainstream film.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

The Theory Of Everything [DVD] [2015]

Setting the path straight

This is my review of House of Ashes by Monique Roffey.

Inspired by the abortive 1990 political coup in Trinidad, about which I am now embarrassed to have registered so little, the author creates a similar drama in the fictional Caribbean island of Sans Amen. We are introduced first to the simple yet bookish and spiritual Ashes, haunted by the violent death of his freedom fighter brother in an earlier uprising. Under the influence of “The Leader”, charismatic head of a religious cult, Ashes is sucked into a plan to force concessions from the apparently corrupt and neglectful government, by occupying the main parliament building and taking hostages, including the Prime Minister.

The point of view switches between Ashes and Mrs Aspasia Garland, Minister for the Environment, and one of the more sympathetic of the hostages. In a situation which rapidly deteriorates and clearly cannot end well, the author uses her characters to explore their contrasting attitudes, the different experiences which have shaped them including colonisation, their developing perception of events and the way they handle the psychological trauma of a siege.

This reminds me strongly of another highly praised novel about a hostage-taking in a developing country, “Bel Canto”, yet I think “The House of Ashes” is technically superior in being more realistic and focussed on the complex issues of power, inequality and motivation without getting side-tracked into somewhat sentimental romances. On the other hand, what has the makings of an outstanding novel is undermined for me by the author’s tendency to repeat and over-labour points. It would have been much more powerful to have finished at the end of Part V with at most a brief epilogue, that is, omitting the final section, entitled “V1 L’Anse Verte 23 Years Later”. It is as if Monique Roffey is so absorbed in her characters that she cannot resist continuing to supply and analyse details long after the reader should have been left to reflect and reach his or her own conclusions. A minor irritant for me is the overuse of the West Indian term “steupsing”, the tendency to make a noise by sucking in air to express annoyance and derision. Yet perhaps this, and the patois which I enjoyed, give the story greater authenticity, demonstrating Roffey's genuine deep firsthand knowledge of life in Trinidad. Certainly, she creates vivid images of the dusty rundown city, the lush vegetation and Leatherback turtles dragging themselves up onto remote beaches to lay their myriads of eggs – from which most of the hatchlings are doomed to die in the struggle to survive.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

House of Ashes