Another Case of Truth more Dramatic than Fiction

This is my review of The Sinking of the Laconia and the U-Boat War: Disaster in the Mid-Atlantic by James Duffy.

A recent television drama on the sinking of the Laconia during WW2 prompted me to obtain this book. With the aim of putting the already well-documented Laconia incident in context, it provides plenty of examples to show that Hartenstein, Captain of the U-boat U-156 which torpedoed the Laconia, was not alone in putting himself out in the attempt to rescure survivors once they had ceased any attempt to retaliate. German U-boat crews regularly pulled people out of the water, helped them into lifeboats or even on board the submarine, provided food, blankets, medical aid when needed and gave directions to the nearest coast, helped to repair lifeboats, even towed them to passing ships that would take them to safety.

What has made the Laconia incident so striking is the sheer number of survivors, meaning that Hartenstein did not have the capacity and enough supplies to meet their needs without calling for help. As photographs bear out, at one point the entire deck of the sub was crowded with some 200 survivors. There is also the issue of their composition: the Laconia was found to be carrying up to 1800 Italian prisoners of war. The fact that many were trapped below decks as the Laconia sunk was likely to cause diplomatic tension between the Germans and their Italian allies, so Hartenstein was under pressure to do what he could to save the rest.

If Hartenstein had been able to carry out his plan of calling on available U-boats and enemy "Allied" craft to relieve him of his human burden, virtually all those surviving the inital onslaught would have been saved. Sadly, an American bomber on the mid-Atlantic refuelling base of Ascension Island was given by officers who were probably not in full possession of the facts the terse and fateful order "Sink sub at once". Hartenstein had no option but to order the survivors to jump overboard, cut loose the lifeboats, and make a rapid dive for his own crew's survival.

Although the level of detail is sometimes too much for a general reader to take, this book is full of fascinating information. To reduce the risk of attack, ships used to follow a zigzag course, very wasteful of fuel. Only on moonless nights could they risk travel in a straight line, with all lights blacked out. The subs used diesel fuel at the surface but battery power under water. They faced risks on a daily basis when it was necessary to rise to the surface to use diesel power to recharge these batteries.

After the Laconia incident, Admiral Donitz was obliged to issue the infamous "Laconia Order" forbidding U-boats from taking enemy survivors on board. For this he suffered opprobrium, and was imprisoned after the war for his aggressive attacks on Allied shipping. However, Donitz probably refused in the sense of managing not to obey Hitler's order for U-boat commanders to kill the crews of sunken ships, even if they were on lifeboats.

This book leaves it to us to debate the morality of launching a torpedo with the aim of killing as many people as possible, but then risking one's own life to save the survivors of this action. Hartenstein, a brave and humane man with the misfortune to live under the authority of a crazy dictator lost his own life when the U-156 was blown up a few months later.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

The Sinking of the Laconia and the U-Boat War: Disaster in the Mid-Atlantic

An Unexpected Success

This is my review of The Big Picture [DVD].

I went to see this film with no expectations, and was pleasantly surprised. Duris plays a successful but outwardly cocky and insensitive young lawyer who harbours regrets over failing to pursue a youthful passion for photography. When he is forced to accept that his wife wants a separation, the fact that her lover is a photographer adds to his pain. An encounter with the man turns violent. As a result, the course of the "hero's" life is dramatically changed, at last he is able to pursue his art, but at a huge personal cost.

The film is well-acted, with Duris a charismatic leading man. His grief over losing contact with his children – his son is irresistibly appealing – is moving. The scenery when he hides away in Montenegro is beautiful, as is his photography, catching a ship in dock from dramatic angles, or groups of workers, half spontaneous, half wary of the camera. The plot maintains a sense of tension in which "anything could happen" and often does. I like the playing around with dream and reality, in which some dramatic scenes turn out to be imagined.

You can enjoy this story as an exciting adventure yarn – with a few implausible twists to be swallowed – or on a deeper level – an art house film as already suggested in an earlier review – as a study of man's instinct and capacity for survival, the price to be paid for one's actions, or the way that fulfilment may lie in creativity and a simple life – as exemplified by Duris's barren dwelling above a lake in a valley of incomparable beauty.

Finally, the open ending leaves you to imagine the hero's future fate as you will.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

The Big Picture [DVD]

The Skin I live in – Skin Deep

This is my review of The Skin I Live In [DVD] [2011].

Almodovar is so celebrated as a film director that one expects any criticism to be construed by “connoisseurs” of his art as a sign of one’s own lack of sensibility.

I can live with a ludicrous plot and tolerate a certain level of sex and violence for a good reason, but I want something more as well. In this case, a criminally insane surgeon, grief-stricken by the loss of his wife in a car which caught alight, is bent on developing a skin immune to burning. He uses as a guinea pig a beautiful young woman called Vera who is a prisoner in his house, continuously observed via camera on vast screens. How and why does she resemble so much his dead wife? Is the surgeon falling in love with his own creation, thus making himself too vulnerable? So far so good, but the plot proceeds in jerky steps and unrealistic scenes so that I began to lose interest. At one point, the maid has to explain to Vera what is going on, a crude device for relieving the audience of its growing perplexity.

It is true that scenes are often visually very striking. With infinite care, Almodovar has paid attention to every detail of a shot. In particular, he displays his love of fabrics, colours, textures and costumes. The arrival of the maid’s violent son, dressed as a tiger, provides a cue to indulge this love. This also provides an example of the bizarre, sinister, no holds barred physicality beloved by Almodovar. Fabrics also give rise to striking images – the dummies in the shop window of a fashion store – where we encounter Vicente, another key character in Almodovar`s crazy weaving of violent sexual fantasies with rational explanations.

Eventually the strands of the plot twine together to achieve an ending which reviewers have described as a twist, although it seemed to me quite predictable.

Even admirers of Almodovar admit this film is “tosh” but love it for the visual effects. Doesn’t a film need to be more than a beautifully embroidered duvet cover in an unsettling (when you know the facts) sex scene, the guzzling of scraps of torn dresses in a hoover nozzle, the curves of a slender body in a yoga pose, or a startling red gown in a shop window?

“A Clockwork Orange”, although withdrawn by Kubrick himself for its “gratuitous violence” shows by comparison how a bizarre and visually striking tale can also have a coherent plot and a thought-provoking message.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars


The Skin I Live In [DVD] [2011]

Why is this disappointing?

This is my review of Solace by Belinda McKeon.

The following is an attempt to analyse why a book which has been well reviewed so far disappointed me.

This slow-paced novel commences with descriptions of places – the Irish countryside – and small incidents – buying a ball of twine. The reader is left to work out who the main protagonists are, what the characters are like and what is going on, and that is fine. We meet Tom the farmer, his son Mark who has returned to assist him, with an infant daughter Aoife in tow. Where is the child's mother? Is Mark's excessive anger over his father taking the child with him to buy twine without telling him a cover for some deeper-seated resentment? There are all the ingredients for the unwinding of some moving Irish tale and my expectations are suitably kindled, but nothing much happens over and above what is given away on the flyleaf.

As the book progresses, I find it hard to engage with any of the characters. I think this is because the differences in their personalities are not very clearly drawn and sustained. The most dramatic incidents seem strangely muted. The description of someone discovering she is pregnant, another of someone dying in an accident – the events and people's reactions, none of this moves me as it should. Likewise the old grievance between the fathers of Mark and Joanne does not strike me with sufficient force, given the flyleaf's reference to "spectacular…wrongs" and "betrayal". I think part of the problem is that, once the book gets under way, there is too much "telling" rather than "showing". Also, events seem too disjointed.

Pehaps the plot is too slight to sustain a book of this length in the absence of a strong narrative drive. I feel that I am reading the words of someone with an ambition to write, who loves putting words down on paper or the keyboard but does not as yet have much to say.

Yes, the simplicity is to be admired, but needs to provide new insights or find ways of expressing truths that we cannot produce for ourselves.

For examples of "less is more" I cite the work of the late Brian Moore and also William Trevor.

⭐⭐ 2 Stars

Solace

Striking if Overblown Insight on Life in Trinidad

This is my review of The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey.

My view of this book see-sawed violently as I read it. Starting with the over-used ploy of the description of a shocking event, in this case the beating of a young boy by corrupt policemen, the novel launches into a study of Englishman George Harwood and his French wife Sabine, who have lived on Trinidad for fifty years. It dissects their rum-fuelled love-hate relationship with each other and the island.

For many pages I read without feeling absorbed, noticing the stilted, banal scenes, characters who did not quite ring true. I was interested to realise that George's interviews for the " Trinidad Guardian" are with real people still living at the time of writing, and wondered if one of them , the famous calypso singer "The Mighty Sparrow" takes exception to being described as the suspected father of a poor, illegitimate Trinidadian boy.

Gradually, I found myself impressed by some of the vivid descriptions, say of the colourful island vegetation, which I found to be very apt when I googled their images. For instance, we see George's favourite month of May described in language which implies his casual promiscuity.

Sabine's habit of talking to the surrounding green hills which she sees as a voluptuous reclining woman seducing George and her appreciation of Trinidad's beauty, contrast with her hatred of the country's corruption and its failure to progress once free from white domination, and the way it makes her feel an outsider.

She hates George too at times for choosing to ignore all this, so that he can exploit the situation, indulge in the free way of life, the scope to grow rich through land purchase, enjoy "the sounds and smells….smiles and shapes", the "bewitching" local women and booze, in a way that would never have been possible in England.

The first part of the book proves to be a novella set in 2006, building up to a dramatic conclusion which I felt for a time should be the end of the whole book. Since the next section moves back in time, to the Harwood's innocent arrival on Trinidad in 1956, I had to force myself to continue because of the numerous hints already provided as to what had happened in the past.

I remain unsure as to whether a structure that moves back in time is a good idea. The reader may gain a sense of "one-upmanship" through knowing more than the characters, but on balance this does not compensate for the loss of suspense.

However, once the narration becomes first person, Sabine's viewpoint from part 2 onwards, it seems to come more alive, grow more moving, and the quality of the writing also improves.

I remain unconvinced by the idea of Sabine loving the unsuccessful leader Eric Williams, the first black leader of an independent Trinidad who promises the people progress, but fails to deliver. I also think the story is not just about the exploitation of Trinidadians first by whites, then by their own leaders. It is also about issues of feminism – the way some women are attracted by powerful men, and allow themselves to be dominated by men, as well as the sense of regret many women have over failing to achieve much in their lives.

The book "goes on too long" and the attempt to create a resounding finale in 1970, after moving back from 2006 to 1956, then forward again, makes for a final chapter with some of the overblown or ludicrous paragraphs which mar an otherwise striking novel.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle

A Wake Up Call or Slick Entertainment?

This is my review of Page Eight [DVD] [2011].

Apparently David Hare wanted to "update" a George Smiley-type M15 yarn. Bill Nighy plays an intelligence officer who has spent so many years concealing his feelings that he has become a shell, who finds it hard to give or receive real love or trust.

He is intrigued by a beautiful neighbour (Rachel Weisz) who seeks justice for her brother, killed by the Israelis during a demonstration against their destruction of Palestinian housing: Issue No. 1 on Hare's agenda, an important one, and I was keen to see this aspect developed.

Nighy's boss (Michael Gambon) has discovered that the Prime Minister (a menacing Ralph Fiennes beneath his smooth charm) has collaborated with the US government over the concealing of evidence of torture, but kept this information from his own ministers and intelligence officers, thereby seriously undermining them. It is clear that Gambon wants Nighy to take action over this undemocratic "betrayal" and Nighy feels a belated compulsion to take a moral stand. All this amounts to Issues 2 and 3: shades of Blair's collusion with the Bush regime over weapons of mass destruction, and possible British involvement in torture to get information on terrorists.

I agree that the play is witty and often amusing, a definite TV Saturday night improvement on corny whodunnits. It is slick and well-acted, as one would expect from the all-star cast, with fast-changing scenes and cryptic dialogue that sounds clever, but the issues raised are not fleshed out. The focus is on personal relationships, but these are generally brittle apart from the warm friendship with Nighy's boss. We see Nighy with his daughter, his mistress, his ex-wife, new neighbour, jealous colleague (a splendidly vicious Judy Davis) etc but all this takes up too much time to develop the rest of the plot in depth. This matters since we need to understand why Nighy is so cynical, and what is so serious that it shakes him into "cutting loose". Or is it just true love that galvanises him into using illegal means to a moral end? If so, the relationship with Rachel Weisz is not totally convincing.

Without giving too much away, Nighy compromises on one issue to resolve another. He "plays god" as to which scandal should be suppressed and which revealed, and his choice is based on personal, even self-interested considerations. This could be the intended point of the drama, but I am not sure that it is.

Although I am sure that Hare is keen to engage and enlighten us as regards topics on which he feels passionately, and I share his concerns, I was left quite unmoved by the play, without any fresh insights. The end result is all somewhat superficial and shallow, leaving me thinking "So what?"

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

Page Eight [DVD] [2011]

Impressive Courage or Ignorance is Bliss

This is my review of Wagons West: The Epic Story of America’s Overland Trails by Frank McLynn.

I was inspired to read this after watching the recent film about "Meek's Cutoff" in which a small number of pioneers hire an unreliable guide to show them a short cut on the Oregon Trail. The true story proves to have been much more dramatic, involving more than 1000 people and perhaps 300 wagons. Soon clearly lost, the party ran dangerously low on food and fresh water at times, or found more than they bargained for in the form of torrential rivers which could only be crossed by dismantling their wagons piece by piece. Resentment against Meek rose so high at one point that he came close to being hanged from a gibbet made from raising up the tongues of three wagons and tying them together in the kind of summary justice often practised in a society which had to maintain its own system of law and order. In fact, the travellers were often remarkably lenient. The punishment for killing a man in angry self defence might be expulsion from the group, perhaps to be readmitted fairly quickly.

"Wagon's West" provides a useful history of the background to the great pioneer movement which began in earnest in the 1840s. The young nation of the United States did not yet clearly control the western part of the continent: Oregon was still effectively a British province, and California part of the decayed Mexican Empire. The first pioneers were neither religious refugees – apart from the Mormon trek of 1847 to establish Salt Lake City – nor were they the poorest elements of society. It took moderate means to assemble a wagon and provisions for the trek along the Oregon Trail, or to branch off it at the staging post of Fort Hall to reach California.

I agree that the "blow by blow" account of the first great treks from 1841 is repetitive at times, and includes far too many characters for one to absorb. Clearer, better positioned maps would be helpful, together with a few more photographs, although Google images provide a fascinating accompaniment to descriptions of landmarks like Chimney Rock, or the many rivers, mountains and forts described en route.

McLynn conveys well the courage and resilience of people who would set out with only sketchy knowledge of a route which would cover hundreds of miles and take weeks. It helps one to understand why so many modern-day Americans are so opposed to the idea of relying on state aid. Of course, the travellers were mostly farmers or skilled craftsmen like blacksmiths, and used to living off the land. Descriptions of encounters with vast herds of buffaloes, using their droppings as fuel in the absence of timber for firewood, rattlesnakes bunking with prairie dogs, Indians who wanted some compensation for encroachment on their territory, stole horses or shot at oxen so they would be abandoned to provide them with food, the petty bickering triggered by the sheer boredom of travelling mile upon mile, or the hardship of running short of vital supplies, the crazy jockeying for position to take the lead, rather like the road rage of car drivers today – all this makes for a fascinating read.

Just when you feel that you have had enough, McLynn changes tack slightly, with a chapter on the infamous "Donner Party" who became stranded in snow on a treacherous cut-off, and may have resorted to cannibalism: other sources now dispute this horrific twist which McLynn presents as Gospel. The chapter on the Mormon Trek is particularly interesting, showing how an autocratic, manipulative leader, Brigham Young, maintained discipline to provide an impressive example of rapid colonisation. The Epilogue ends with the Gold Rush of 1848, which disrupted the former relatively orderly pattern of migration. McLynn describes how, in the craze to get to the riches first, people set out with too many goods and abandoned them after only a few miles, littering the landscape, so that the traders who had sold them could easily collect them up again for resale. The Westerns with which we are so familiar do not appear at all far-fetched.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Wagons West: The Epic Story of America’s Overland Trails

Morality is not Clear Cut

This is my review of In A Better World [DVD].

This skilfully shot, well-acted and tightly scripted Danish film deserves its Oscar. It will appeal to people of all ages and nationalities. You can sit back and view it simply as a "good yarn" about a couple of barely teenage boys who slip into delinquency for moral reasons, following a warped logic which may stem from unintentional neglect by their well-meaning, hardworking middle-class parents. If you wish, you can ponder the film's messages on a deeper level, focusing on the issues which strike a chord with your own concerns. In fact, the last thing this film does is preach. Instead, it highlights the complexity of morality.

Is Anton, the idealistic, pacifist surgeon to be admired for devoting his working life to caring for people in what looks like a poverty-stricken refugee camp somewhere in Africa, or is he selfishly avoiding his guilt over his estranged wife and neglecting his two young sons back in Denmark in the process? Is he right to agree to treat the local villain when his black colleagues wish to leave the man to rot? Has he failed morally when he is eventually driven to give way to righteous anger? Is there one moral standard for a brutal, impoverished developing country and another for liberal, affluent Denmark? Is Anton hopelessly naive to insist that "violence only begats violence" to the extent that he literally "turns the other cheek" when an aggressive man punches him in front of his two sons, one of whom is Elias, with his inaptly named friend Christian a sceptical observer?

Christian's fierce sense of justice – his determination neither to be bullied, nor to let a bully go unpunished – seems more realistic, but he takes it too far. To what extent can his behaviour be condoned as a reaction against grief over his mother's death, and his father's inability to communicate honestly with him? How much more harshly would Christian and his tag-along sidekick Elias be punished for their attempts to take justice into their own hands if they were working class kids?

I agree that the ending is a little trite, and for that reason have withheld a star, perhaps unfairly since you could argue that a predictably gloomy Scandinavian ending could "turn off" more viewers than it satisfies. The plot, often shocking and sad, is saved from grimness by frequent touches of humour. After Anton's rather unwise confrontation of a bully in his workshop, to try to demonstrate to the boys how words win out over physical violence, Christian astutely observes, "But he didn't look as if he thought he's lost!" Later, when the two boys construct a potentially lethal bomb, they choose to test it out on the school project over which they have laboured for days. Their excitement over the explosion completely overrides any concerns about the waste of their work, or how they will explain its disappearance. The earnest ineffectiveness of the teachers at the boy's school is also entertaining.

There are moments of pathos, say in Anton's attempts to build bridges with the wife who loves him but cannot accept his past infidelity, or in Christian's father's halting attempts to speak of his complex emotions over the painful death of a wife to whom he may not have been faithful.

I recommend this film as a gripping and thought-provoking human drama – a popular film which stimulates you to work out your own message.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

In A Better World [DVD]

Lest We Forget or Never Realised

This is my review of Sarah’s Key [DVD] [2010].

Films of bestselling books are often a disappointment. Although I had already read and been moved by (enjoyed is an inappropriate word for a holocaust theme) the book, I think the film has a better structure, in that it does not allow the "modern" thread of the story to dominate too much or become too trite and sentimental. It is also beautifully shot and very well acted.

A film version may also serve the purpose of bringing to a wider audience the atrocity of the "Vél d'Hiv", or rounding up by the French police of Jewish women and children in Paris for transportation to Auschwitz. The horror is compounded in this story by the "twist" that the young heroine, Sarah, too young to understand the situation, manages to lock her little brother in a cupboard "for his own safety" so that he is not part of the transportation. Much of the ensuing tension in the film rests on the question of whether she will be able to escape and if she will succeed in being reunited with her brother. The drama is intercut with a modern day thread: Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, married into a well-heeled and highly respectable Parisian family, is tasked to produce an article on the Vél d'Hiv. In the process, she discovers that her father-in-law grew up in the very apartment from which Sarah's family was transported, and which her architect husband is "doing up" prior to moving there with her and their daughter Zoe. Julia's growing sense of disquiet and preoccupation with the tragic events she is uncovering begin to affect her relationship with her husband, and her attitude to life.

This is a story about issues of responsibility and guilt, and how these continue to blight – or transform positively – people's lives into future generations. The book raises the question which polarises people: is it better to draw a line on the past and move on or can one only be whole when one has confronted traumatic events, even if the price is that one is permanently changed as a result? I feel that this important aspect was somewhat blurred in the film. For instance, the wrangling between Julia's relatives and their different views on whether or not one should bury the past is largely missing from the film.

I find Julia's husband Bertrand a more convincing character than in the book, although older and less irresistibly attractive than I had pictured. Julia herself seems more likeable whereas in the book she came across as over-emotional, self-absorbed and even selfishly thoughtless in the way she acts impulsively, keeping and breaking confidences on a whim – although all this is of course necessary to the story.

In short, this comes recommended as a well-made, totally absorbing, shocking but "life-affirming" film.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Sarah’s Key [DVD] [2010]

An Islamic Morality Tale

This is my review of Les hirondelles de Kaboul: Roman by Yasmina Khadra.

Although I read this in French – and it is excellent practice for improving one's French – I thought it best to post a review in my native English.

The swallows are the veiled women of Kabul, who flit through the ruined alleys like fugitives in a perpetual "half-life" of oppression.

It is ironical that all the reviews to date have been written on the English translation. The original French version of this tale – which I am sure must be "better" for those who can access it – uses vivid, striking language to capture the atmosphere of a war-torn city under the bigoted rule of the Taliban, which gives free rein to bullies and fanatics: people survive by keeping their heads down.

We see constant examples of casual brutality and sexism which shock our sanitised western sensibilities.

When a man admits to his worries over his sick wife, a friend condemns him for such a display of his own weakness. The remedy is obvious: he should cast his wife aside for a younger model!

A sensitive young man is aroused by the madness of a crowd to join in the stoning of a woman he does not even know, a momentary lapse on his part which costs him the love of his would-be emancipated wife.

As a final irony, men who feel "dishonoured" when a lunatic tears aside their wives' veils trample on the women in their haste to get at him.

This short, simple tale of cause and effect reminds me of a medieval morality play, as the lives of the various characters begin to impinge on each other and events build to a plausible but inevitably tragic climax.

I have no idea as to the authenticity of this story written by an Algerian army officer under a female pseudonym to avoid censorship at the time. Despite its bleak theme, and at times somewhat overblown prose (which somehow seems acceptable in French), the story of the chain reaction of damage wrought by fanatical repression remains in one's memory.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

Les hirondelles de Kaboul: Roman