Friday 27 December 2013

A biopic that leaves a lot out.

   Mandela: Long walk to Freedom
   Starring Idris Elba and Naomie Harris. Directed by Justin Chadwick.



 'Mandela:Long Walk to Freedom' which is based on Nelson Mandela's autobiography
 was released a few weeks after Mandela's death on December 5, 2013. this film is three things.
    First off, it's a love story. Here, Nelson Mandela, a rising young black lawyer in white ruled South Africa, meets a young telegenic social worker called Winnie Madikizela played by Naomie Harris. The two fall in love, get married, go to prison  and then fall out of love.
     Second it's the story of the black South African struggle for freedom against a violent white racist white apartheid regime. In the end the black and brown people succeed but they pay a terrible price. For example, Nelson Mandela played by Idris Elba spent a backbreaking 27 years in prison for his violent acts. Tens of thousands of other anti-apartheid activists were killed in the struggle, or tortured or both.
    Finally, the film shows us the true side of Winnie Madikizela  Mandela who was a genuine heroine. "I piss on you," she shouts at one of her white torturers and she does. She serves a lesser time in prison than her husband. Yet she emerges from behind bars as a true revolutionary while her husband moderates his views   
      This portrayal of Winnie Mandela is long overdue. Too often  in the media she was shown to be a murderer who threw burning rubber tires or 'necklaces' as they were called over other black people. The fact that many of these people were black informants or snitches wasn't mentioned .
     'Mandela' is chockful of mostly white-on-black violence, inspirational speeches by Mandela and tender love scenes between Winnie and Nelson. All of this is interesting and well-acted. But this biopic leaves out one big thing and it's called 'communism'.
     Communist rulers in the 20th century were tyrants. No one can deny this. Yet the now defunct Soviet Union and East Germany, as well as Castro's Cuba and non-communist but socialist  Algeria gave the Mandela-led African National Congress, money advice and weapons  to help  bring down the white dictators of South Africa.  The South African Communist party played a key role in bringing down apartheid too, but none of this is in the film either
     Nor does 'Mandela' deal honestly with the negotiations between nelson Mandela and his white rulers. The white leaders, led by South african president. F.W. de Clerk, played by Gys de Villiers were certainly worried about their fate in a black-ruled South Africa. Yet they also worried about what would happen to the economy.
     After all, the original freedom charter of the African National Congress, called for the nationalization of the the white -owned banks, diamond mines and gold resources. Mandela and the ANC leadership scrapped this idea and some blacks were angry.
     "My husband went into prison a revolutionary," Winnie Madikizela Mandela told Nobel Prize winning author V.S. Naipaul. Yet when he came out of prison, she said, he had changed his politics .
     None of this in the film and I didn't expect it to be. Nelson Mandela emerges in the film as a true hero, angry but forgiving and wise and patient. Yet this film isn't the final word on Nelson Mandela.
      It's a feel-good film for a feel-good conservative era. I enjoyed watching it, but a whole lot was left out of the story.
    
    
   

Monday 16 December 2013

Mathew McConaughey Stars in a Film About AIDS.

'Dallas Buyers Club' Starring Matthew McConaughey, Jared Leto and Jennifer Garner. Directed by Jean Marc Vallee.


   'Dallas Buyers Club' opens with a mustached, pencil slim Matthew McConaughey in a rodeo, up close to the bull riders' pen. The film ends with McConaughey playing Ron Woodroof riding a bull in a rodeo. In between these moments, Woodroof has died.
      Woodroof is a cocaine-snorting, hard drinking, homophobic electrician. He's a Texan redneck who hates gays. Then suddenly he's HIV positive which came from screwing an infected woman and not wearing a condom.
    "You've tested positive for HIV," the doctor at a Dallas hospital tells Woodroof. "You have 30 days left" to live.
      A shell-shocked Woodroof can't believe this. Then he rebels against the verdict and the medically imposed use of the drug AZT that's supposed to help AIDS
 patients. Still a businessman, he sets up the Dallas Buyers Club which HIV infected people can join. Here they can buy alternative drugs that will keep them alive.
      In the U.S. of A. in the 1980's, which is where the film takes place, Woodroof's course of action leads  to clashes with the government. Along the way Woodroof meets Rayon, played by Jared Leto. Rayon is a transexual who at first disgusts Woodroof, but then he cures Woodroof of his homophobia.
      Director Jean Marc Vallee is a Quebecker who in this film shows us the grim side of HIV infected lives and the terrible prejudice the disease provokes. Yet there are also decent people in the film like Doctor Vass played by Griffin Dunne. Dunne saves lives in his Mexican clinic.
     "I want kids," Woodroof says at one point in the film. Yet Woodroof never did live to have children. His life, which is based on a true story, ended in 1992, seven years later than the Dallas doctor predicted.
     Matthew McConaughey has now changed in his film career from being a heavily muscled hunk, into now being an anorexic looking actor. "Dallas Buyers Club' sometimes goes over the top and sometimes becomes too sentimental. Still, it's well worth seeing.
     

Wednesday 4 December 2013

A Feel Good Film That Has Some Very Bad Parts In It

  'Philomena'. Starring Steve Coogan and Judy Dench. Directed by Stephen Frears.



    The Roman Catholic Church has a lot to answer for. That's the message I took away from 'Philomena'.
     In this film Martin Sixsmith and Philomena Lee played by Judy Dench come together. Their enemy in the end is the Catholic Church's true believers
     Sixsmith is a former spin doctor who's now a journalist again. He lost his spin doctor's job with Tony Blair's government in the United Kingdom .Philomena is an  ageing retired nurse who wants to track down her son from long ago.
      Lee had a son when she was an unmarried 17 year-old in the 1950's in a very Catholic Ireland. The nuns of the Sacred Heart took her in and then took her baby. Then they sold it to rich Americans and then forced Lee to work for years for nothing in their nunnery. This, by the way, is a true story.
      "Can you help me find him?" Lee asks Martin at the film's beginning.In the end they do track him down, as the journey from Ireland to the U.S. and back to Ireland again.
     The film takes swipes at U.S. Republicans and Catholicism along the way. Philomena remains a devout Catholic. The cynical and snobby Martin is  a non-believer. Martin belongs to the British upper middle class. Philomena isn't rich and loves mass culture.
    Still, they stay friends as the argue, chatter and drive through beautiful Irish and American countrysides. Director Stephen Frears doesn't show us too many scenes from big city America and small city Ireland. Philomena and Martin do visit a few big historical sites in Washington, D.C. And Martin does try to jog along some scenic pathways.Yet overall 'Philomena' takes place in countryside and suburbs.
     "The Catholic Church should go to confession," an enraged Martin says near the film's end. I agree but I don't think that's going to happen.
     'Philomena' in the end is a fell good film and a good film too. It show us a past that the Catholic Church fathers would rather hide.

     
   

Saturday 23 November 2013

A Very Realistic Film About Slavery

12 Years A Slave. A film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt. Directed by Steve McQueen.



     "Every plantation is a little community," John C. Calhoun, a pro-slavery senator said in the U.S.A. in the 1840's, "with the master at its head who concentrates in himself, the united interests of capital and labor, of which he is the common representative."
     This of course is nonsense and the film '12 Years a Slave' shows us why. At the film's beginning. Solomon Northup, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, is a happy man, father of two with a loving wife and he's a talented violinist. He lives in New York state. Of course, he's black and therefore targeted by kidnappers. This is the U.S.A. in the 1840's exactly when Calhoun was sounding off about the virtues of the slave plantations.
      Suddenly Solomon is in chains and sent to plantations in the U.S. south where slavery is legal. He is now a slave working on cotton plantations.This shift from freedom to slavery is traumatic.
     Director Steve McQueen show us the hideous side of slavery. We see whippings, lynchings, rapes and endless cruelty which  white men and women inflict on black slaves. '12 Years A Slave' is the absolute opposite of 'Gone With The Wind', the film that romanticized the U.S. South under slavery.
     "I've had a difficult time these past several years," Northup says when he's at last re-united with his family. His story, by the way, is a true one. He's the lucky one, despite his sufferings. Left behind, are still millions of black slaves toiling in the American south.
     But Northup does not forget these people and in the end their slavery ended. From 1861 to 1865 the U.S. North fought the slaveholding South in a vicious civil war and won. At war's end, slavery in the U.S. was finally abolished. '12 Years A Slave' shows us the horror of slavery and why it had to end. It's a very fine film.
    
    

Wednesday 13 November 2013

Second review of 'Blue Is The Warmest Colour'

    'Blue Is The Warmest Colour' Starring Adele Exarchopoulos and Lea Seydous. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche. French with English subtitles.


    I don't usually add on anything to a review I've written. Yet the preceding review doesn't do complete justice to the film 'Blue Is The Warmest Colour'.
     This is a film about lesbians and lesbian love. At one point in the film when Adele played by Adele Exarchopoulos goes off from her school with Emma played by Lea Seydous, she comes back to the school at another time and gets harassed by her schoolmates. They think she's a lesbian and they're right.
      Now I don't know how many women are  lesbians. Yet I know one thing: I've seen many films and rarely do they show two lesbians having a love affair. At this point I'm sure there are quite a few films where women fall in love with each other, but I haven't seen any of these films show up at local theatres.
     So though I still think that 'Blue Is the Warmest Colour' is way too long I think also it's an exceptional film. I also hope that one day we'll see many films showing men falling in love with each other. That's another set up that doesn't show up at local theatres, too often if at all, and it's time that it did.
      "People aren't going to be going to local theatres too much longer to see movies," a friend of mine said recently. "They'll be watching them on their cell phones, i-Pods or computers." That's probably true, but wherever people watch films in the future I hope they'll be able to see films about gay and lesbian lovers.
    If ' Blue Is the Warmest Colour' helps make that happen then it'll have done a good job of  opening the eyes of movie star moguls to the idea that movies about same sex lovers can be popular.

Tuesday 12 November 2013

A LONG FILM WITH LOTS OF SEX

 'Blue is the Warmest Colour'. Starring Adele Exarchopolous and Lea Seydous. Directed and written by Abdellatif Kechiche. In French with English sub-titles.


   Why is blue the warmest colour? Because when Emma played by Lea Seydous first sees the younger Adele, played by Adele Exarchopoulos, Emma has dyed her hair blue. While at the film's end, Adele goes to Emma's art show wearing a blue dress. Blue turns on both women, or at least one of them. Got it?
     In between these times and spread out over four or five years, the older Emma and the younger Adele fall in love, make love and then fall out of love.
     "I want something concrete," Adele tells Emma's parents as all four eat a luxurious meal of oysters. Emma's parents are far richer than Adele's. At Adele's home, her parents usually serve up spaghetti at meal time. Emma's parents don't mind that their daughter's going to be a visual artist. Adele's folks want Adele to have a steady job like teaching which Adele takes up. Adele isn't a French intellectual; Emma is.
     The heart of 'Blue Is The Warmest Colour' are two long scenes, stretching out over 30 minutes where Adele and Emma make love. At film's end, Adele still hungers for Emma who's moved on to another woman. Adele is like many people who get obsessed with their first love.
      "Are you an athlete?" a young French woman once asked a visiting American who said she didn't smoke. "In our country only athletes don't smoke." Emma and Adele smoke all the time and they're not athletes. Yet in the lovemaking scenes they perform with athletic skill.
    Yet there's another side to this film which is interesting. The film also shows us life in the  small French city of Lille. We see political demos, music festivals, intellectual get togethers, art shows and gay clubs. The film  also spends some time in Adele's classrooms, where she teaches the very young.
    These things don't usually pop up in most North American films. So director Abdellatif Kechiche, a Franco-Tunisian,  has written and directed an interesting flick. Yet this film clocks in at 179 minutes and is way too long. At times it can bore you to tears. Yet then again, there are those love scenes..
    

Tuesday 29 October 2013

Watermark Makes A Mark

'Watermark' A documentary film by Jennifer Baichwal, Nick de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky. 


    A  film about water. What's even better 'Watermark' is a Canadian film about water.
    So there'll be lots of conflict here right? A massive struggle over water rights in Bolivia ended up with a progressive government in power headed up by a First Nations president Evo Morales. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher against public opposition, privatized British waterworks in the 1980's. And outspoken Canadian patriot Maud Barlow fears that American companies are casting envious eyes on Canadian waters.
     But 'Watermark' directed by Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky isn't about the politics of water at all. It  takes us on a peaceful journey through the waterways of ten countries including Canada.
     "We're water," says First Nations guide Oscar Dennis as he takes us along the Stikine River in northern B.C. "We're all water."
    Who can disagree with this? And who can criticize either the beautiful photography by Baichwal, Burtynsky and Nick de Pencier of oceans, rivers, streams and deserts?
    Burtynsky's still life photos of massive factories and huge landscapes, have had a big influence on 'Watermark'. The man is one of the world's outstanding photographers. Baichwal has racked up a lot of films as a documentary film maker. This film is one of her best.
    Abalone farms and the huge Xilodu dam in China, contesting surfers at California's Huntingdon Beach and scientists in Greenland are all grist for the film's cameras as they soar and swoop around the world.  We took "20 stories from 10 countries" says Baichwal, "and somehow flow(ed) them together into a single experential stream." I wanted to see an overarching story that linked all the separate stories . Yet perhaps water itself was the story that brought together all the separate stories.
     Baichwal and Burtynsky in any case have made a fine documentary. I'm glad I saw it. The politics of water belongs in a separate film  which I'll be waiting for. It probably won't come from Baichwal and Burtynsky. But that 's okay since they've done a great job by making 'Watermark'.
     
    
     

Wednesday 16 October 2013

Pirates of the Deep Threaten U.S. Ship

'Captain Phillips'  Starring Tom Hanks and Barkhad Abdi. Directed by Paul Greengrass..


    The American writer John Judis once pointed out that the world's countries are placed in a pecking order. At the top of the pile sits, naturally, the U.S of A. Its wealth and military might, even to-day, overawes most people. At the bottom squat the poorest countries like Moldova, Afghanistan and Somalia.
    'Captain Phillips' starring Tom Hanks as the captain of a huge cargo ship, points up Judis's idea. Phillips leaves his wife at the beginning of the film at an airport in Vermont. They live in a comfortable house but now Phillips heads off to the high seas. Hanks has a very good role here as a captain. A little chunkier and greyer than when I last saw him on the screen, Hanks remains a fine actor.
     Cut to Muse, a poor dark skinned man played by Barkhad Abdi. He lives in abject poverty in Somalia on the coast line of the Horn of Africa. He's a modern day pirate who rides with a gun in a broken down boat along with his friends. They capture ships like the one Phillips captains. .Probable ransom for releasing the captured ships? Six to nine million dollars.
      "Nice work if you can get it," that old song used to go. "And you can get it if you try." But the work is dangerous and violent.
      At last Phillips and Muse meet on the deck of Phillips's ship. But Muse is doomed after putting Phillips through hellish tortures. "There's got to be something more than being a fisherman and kidnapping someone," the captain says to Muse. But here there isn't.
     Director Paul Greengrass has given us a very competent thriller with small glimpses of the living conditions of the poverty-stricken Somalis. In the end though the massive military might of the United States comes through to kill and save the day. This is what happened in real life for this film is drawn from a true story.
     And what happens to the Somalis left behind in their sad villages? Alas, they just go on being poor or dying early as quite a few do in this film, unless of course they move to North America, as many already have. You can't blame them for coming here, especially if you've  viewed 'Captain Phillips'. At least I won't blame them for landing at our airports or on our shores. It sure beats living in Somalia.
     
    

Tuesday 1 October 2013

A powerful violent film.

'Prisoners'. A film starring Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhall, and Viola Davis. Directed by Denis Villeneuve.



      No sunlight pierces through the slate grey skies around a Pennsylvania town. Huge evergreen and leafless trees hover around it. It's late November at Thanksgiving.
     "Be ready," Keller (Hugh Jackman)  tells his son as he aims his rifle to shoot a deer. So from first to last, 'Prisoners' is bathed in violence. Two couples namely Keller and his wife Grace (Mario Bello), and their neighbours, Franklin (Terence Howard) and Nancy (Viola Davis) lose their daughters to a kidnapper.
     Then comes the search for the daughter. Enter Detective Loki played by Jake Gyllenhall who searches tirelessly for the missing children. Keller tries a different route. He zeroes in on and tortures Alex(Paul Dano), a mentally challenged man whom he believes is the abductor.
    Clad in nearly all black clothing, and a tieless buttoned up white shirt, Gyllenhall, with his thick,swept back hair, plays Detective Loki to perfection. Denis Villeneuve, a transplanted Quebecker, has used his first stint in Hollywood to direct a powerful violent film.
     But in the end 'Prisoners' which stretches out over more than two and a half hours, serves up a fantasy. Most detectives would never measure up to Loki and I wouldn't expect them to. Most serial killers and child abductors are men not women. And unfortunately, abducted children vanish forever or don't survive. Still, this is a powerful film.
     "Violence," the black militant H. Rap Brown said many years ago, "is as American as cherry pie." True or not, 'Prisoners' serves up this idea very well. I enjoyed it, and it'll be interesting to see what film Denis Villeneuve directs next.
    
   

Thursday 19 September 2013

Why some people hate the West

'Occidentalism; The west in the eyes of its enemies' by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit. Published in 2004.


   On September 11, 2002 Arab fanatics hijacked four planes and drove three of them into the World Trade towers in New York City and the Pentagon near Washington, D.C.
     Over 2000 people, mostly Americans but some 11 Canadians too, were killed. An era of war was unleashed as U.S. and NATO forces invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq. The Osama Bin Laden Arabs who hijacked the airplanes hated the western world. But how typical were their views of the west? And did Islam encourage such terrorism?
      No, says Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit to the second question in their book called 'Occidentalism'. "In the heat of  battle," Bin Laden said about his recruits, "they do not care about dying, and they cure the insanity  of the eenmy by their 'insane' courage."
     As Buruma and Margalit point out, human sacrifice as Bin Laden urges "is far removed from Islam." Occidentalism, or a hatred of the west or a belief in stereotypes about the west has been embraced by many people. Margalit and Buruma's small book outlines anti-western feelings that ran through 20th century Japan, 19th and 20th century Germany, 19th century Russia and many Islamic countries.
     Western countries and their conquest of Arab countries in the 19th and 20th centuries encouraged the spread of Occidentalism. This book doesn't deal directly with the western imperialism in Arab places, only with the ideas that came with it.
      But the book does end with the rise of revolutionary Islam and its hatred of Israel. Now the western world faces what the authors call, " a synthesis of ancient bigotry and modern technology." Published nine years ago and long before the rise and fall of 'Arab Spring', 'Occidentalism is still a useful guide to the history of anti-western feeling, both inside the Arab world and outside it.
    

Thursday 12 September 2013

One Violent Film

 'World War Z' . Starring Brad Pitt and Mireille EnosPitt. Directed by Marc Foster. Running time 116 minutes.


    "Zombie" says Wikopedia, "is an animated corpse raised by magical means such as witchcraft."
    But after the 1968 horror film 'Night of the Living Dead', zombies turned up in more modern versions. Now in 'World War Z' millions of humans turn into fightening zombies. Soon it seems all humans will be zombies and then where would we all be?
    But along comes Brad Pitt, the very famous partner of superstar Angela Jolie and saves the day and the world. Pitt in the film is United Nations employee Gerry Lane. His wife Karen Lane played by Mireille Enos, waits and waits for him to come back from his world saving mission and be with her and their two children again.
   "It's human nature," an Israeli big honcho tells Lane who goes to Israel to find out how they've kept zombies as well as Palestinian bombers out of their land.'World War Z' can frighten anybody and it sure scared me.
   Yet in the end it's a hymn of praise to battleships, the U.S armed forces and violence. I soon lost count of the number of zombies mowed down in this film by guns wielded by U.S soldiers and Brad Pitt.
     At film's end there's a Canadian connection too as a bearded, wounded and longhaired Lane re-unites with his wife and two daughters. Director Marc Foster and script writer Matthew Carnahan have turned out a competent thriller that was far better than another violent film, namely 'Man of Steel'.
    But the next film I go to I hope will be a quieter, less violent flick than "World War Z'. It had its moments but I need a rest from its blood and gore.

Monday 26 August 2013

'L.M. Montgomery' by Jane Urquhart. With an introduction by John Ralston Saul. Penguin 167pp.


     Think of Lucy Maud Montgomery and like a flash images of small town girls come to mind. There's the world famous 'Anne of Green Gables', 'The Golden Road',  'Emily of New Moon' and many other novels written by one of Prince Edward Island's most famous daughters.
      In these novels, young girls and later as teenagers overcome stern parents, small town rules and other obstacles to win a new life.
     But Lucy Maud Montgomery's life wasn't like that at all. "O God, such an end to life," the sixty something Montgomery wrote nine months before she died. "Such suffering and wretchedness."
     In this short biography, the talented novelist Jane Urquhart spells out the main high and low points of Montgomery's life. There were many low points and it's good that Urquhart has told us about them, though she could have written a little more about the novels Montgomery wrote.
      In any case Montgomery's mother died whan Lucy was two. Her father went off to Saskatchewan and Lucy rarely saw him. She was raised by two stern maternal grandparents. Her closest friend and cousin Frede was killed by the great flu epidemic of 1919.
    Montgomery married a troubled Presbyterian minister Ewan MacDonald. But MacDonald freaked out and dragged his wife down with him.
      "His beliefs," writes Urquhart, "resulted in a paranoid conviction that he had been born damned and that God hated him." This was the Presbyterian creed raised to an impossible to bear level.
   Also Montgomery ended up in lawsuits with her publisher who tried to pay her as little as possible. Many writers have had this problem.
     The last seven years of Montgomery's life were spent mostly in Toronto where her husband's problems caused her to feel terribly depressed. By now which is the 1930's, her rigid judgemental character had turned off her two sons, Chester and Stuart. Another son, Hugh dies after his birth. Chester ended up in prison for a while.
     Montgomery's life was at times tough going and Urquhart hasn't spared us the details. Still, she's written a beautiful last chapter which shows us the great appeal of Montgomery's fiction.
    "Trust the art, not the artist," D.H. Lawrence once wrote. Urquhart hasn't really done this but she's filled us in on the sad background to Montgomery's mostly escapist fiction. I enjoyed reading this book. My only regret is that Urquhart didn't tell us more about the novels Montgomery wrote.
   

Monday 19 August 2013

Israeli Flick Shows The Great Divide

'Attack' Starring Ali Suliman and Raymond Ansalem. Directed by Zaeid Doueri. In Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles.


   The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, Israeli novelist Amos Oz once said, "is a conflict between right and right." In short, Israelis deserve their homeland but Palestinians deserve one too.
    But what happens when this conflict runs right through your life?
    It happens to Amin Jaafari (Ali Suliman) in this film. At the film's opening, Amin is a Palestinian who works in Israel, and has carved out a successful career there.
    He's given an award for his work in front of a crowd of cheering Israeli Jews. But then a suicide bomber kills a crowd of Israelis and the suicide bomber turns out to be Amin's wife Siham (Raymond Ansalem). A grief-stricken Amin launches a search to find out why his wife did this and how she hid her pro-Palestinian feelings for so long.
     "Your wife died for your redem[ption," a church father tells Amin in the occupied city of Nablus on Israel's West Bank. Amin and Sahim were secular Christians not Moslems.
     Amin, it seems, can never accept that his wife was a terrorist until his nephew tells him the truth. Nor at the film's end does he feel comfortable as an Israeli or a Palestinian. 
     Director Zaeid Doueri was born in Lebanon, lived in the U.S., and then shot the film in Israel.Because it was shot in Israel, and maybe due to its politics too, 22 countries have refused to show 'Attack' in their theatres.
     'The Attack' is a very fine film. Yet its message and the many Moslem countries that have banned it from their movie houses, show that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a long was from
ending.
     



  

Israeli Flick Shows the Great Divide.

Tuesday 6 August 2013

Down On Her Luck in San Francisco

'Blue Jasmine' . A film directed and written by Woody Allen. Starring Cate Blanchett and Alec Baldwin.


   "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers," Blanche DuBois says in Tennessee Williams's play 'A Streetcar Named Desire'.
     In Woody Allen's latest film 'Blue Jasmine', Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) hasn't come to San Francisco to depend on strangers. Instead she's fled New York City to stay with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins). A widow of a now dead and ultra-rich, high level swindler named Hal (Alec Baldwin), Jasmine is now down on her luck and broke. 'Blue Jasmine' after all is a modern version of 'A Streetcar Named Desire'.
      Ginger and Jasmine  aren't genetic sisters either. They were both adopted by the same parents. Ginger lives with her two young sons in a crowded apartment.
   Both sisters try to find new lives in romance. Both are defeated in their quests. But Ginger has an old boyfriend (Bobby Cannavale) to fall back on as well as a former husband (Andrew Dice Clay) to forget. Jasmine isn't as lucky. Her husband Hal hanged himself in a prison.
    "There's only so many traumas you can withstand," a disturbed snobby Jasmine, whose real name was Jeanette, tells her two young nephews in a restaurant. Alas, this once rich wife of a multimillionaire crook can't withstand too much more pain. And we see her pain unfold in the past, told through flashbacks, and her poverty-stricken present. In the end she crashes.
    Woody Allen, who wrote the script for the film and directed it, has scored another triumph here. At the age of 78, his vision of life remains bleak and scary . But this better tale unfolds in the city of San Francisco which is still lovely to look at and that's a plus too.
   

Tuesday 9 July 2013

America's War on Terror

'Dirty Wars' A Documentary Directed by Rick Rowley


      The Joint Special Operating force or JSOC was started up by the United States government after the failed 1980 rescue mission to Iran. Jeremy Scahill is a jounalist for 'The Nation ' maagazine in the U.S. "This is a story about the seen and the unseen," says Scahill at the start of 'Dirty Wars' which is directed by Rick Rowley.
     The JSOC is a secret arm of the U.S. military. We knew that it helped kill Osama Bin Laden but not too much after that. Now we know thank to Rowley who follows Scahill around the world that the JSOC kills people who are supposed threats to U.S. security.
   A large part of the film focuses on the fate of Anwar Al Awlaki. Al Awkali was a U.S. citizen who later went to Somalia. He was killed there by the JSOC, as was his 16 year-old son, Abdul Rahman. "The drone that killed the boy," says Scahill, "did not just kill him. It vanished him."
    It seems clear that U.S. president Barack Obama is using the JSOC to kill hundreds, if not thousands of people around the world. This film, based on a book of the same name by Scahill,has uncovered the JSOC's dirty deeds. If one day the JSOC is disbanded, then this film will have done its duty. But at this stage of the wars against Islamic fighters, the JSOC goes on its dangerous path, killing many who stand in its way.
      

Wednesday 19 June 2013

When Times Were Tough For Women Artists

'Alice Neel; The Art of Not Sitting Pretty' by Phoebe Hoban. St. Martin's Press. 2010 500pp.
 'Lee Krasner : A Biography by Gail Levin. 2011 Harper Collins. 564pp.


    "It's a complex fate to be an American," the U.S. novelist Henry james once said. But to be an American female artist wasn't  sometimes  living a complex fate, whatever that was. At times it was living a life of sheer hell.
    Take the lives of Alice Neel and Lee Krasner. Their lives sometimes overlapped though their art differed. Neel was born into small town Pennsylvania in 1900. "Although Alice suffered enormously," writes her biographer Phoebe Hoben, "she never was a victim." A victim maybe she wasn't, but people tried to victimize her.
   Neel married a man, a rich famous Cuban artist named Carlos Enriquez. He took their daughter back to Cuba and Neel only saw her twice again. Neel also lost another daughter to diptheria.
     Neel lived through the Great Depression in New York City when poverty engulfed millions of Americans. For years Neel painted portraits of her friends and acquaintencies. But her earnings were tiny. She survived like thousands of other artists, by working for the Works Progress Administration projects, set up by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. The WPA hired easel painters, muralists and others to create works of art. Without the WPA Neel would have starved.
    Then there were Neel's men. Sam Brady whom she lived with for a long time, was an abusive child beater.He often beat up Richard, one of Neel's two sons. Nor were most of Neel's other lovers much better than Brady. "I had to reach my sexual aim," Neel explained to one of her friends about her private life.
      Neel ran up against not only poverty and abusive mates, but also pure sexism. Until the 1970's, much of her art was considered by male critics as just inferior women's art. Also her edgy portraits clashed with the tastes of the 1940's and 1950's, when abstract expressionism ruled the roost.
    Only in the 1970's when a new feminist movement emerged, did Neel get her due at last. Her life has now been finely told in this book 'Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty' by Phoebe Hoban.
      The same sort of journey was followed by Lee Krasner as Gail Levin tells us in her book on Krasner called 'Lee Krasner; A Biography'. Born into a Jewish family near New York City in 1908, Krasner early on wanted to be an artist.
      She travelled in artist's circles in New York City in the 1920's and after. She too was nearly stranded by the Great Depression and like Neel was rescued from starvation by Roosevelt's WPA.
     Alice Neel joined the American Communist Party which Krasner stayed away from. But like Neel, Krasner was outraged by the pain and suffering of 1930's America."The times are permanently bad," Krasner wrote to a friend in the 1940's as the Second World war started up. Kranser found Igor Pantuhoff, a portrait painter born in Russia. They fell in love. But then he left her.
     Soon afterwards she met Jackson Pollock and as they say, "The rest is history." But for Krasner this love affair and then marriage to Pollock nearly overwhelmed her.
      Pollock was a disturbed alcolholic who went on massive drinking binges. He was also a prime time abuser. But he did start the abstract expressionist movement in the 1940's. His reputation soon outranked the reputations of all other artists. Kransner had been painting abstract modern works long before Pollock came along. But soon she was only referred to As 'Jackson Pollock's wife'.
      Pollock died in a car accident in 1956 and two other women were with him. One of them also died but the other woman survived. The accident devastated Krasner who was in Paris at the time. Still, she pulled herself together and survived. She managed Pollock's art legacy shrewdly and soon was livng on the proceeds of his works that she could sell. Finally, she was recognized as an accomplished artist too. But that didn't happen until near the end of her life.
      Like Alice Neel, she ran into horrible sexism but also anti-semitism since she was Jewish. Finally, like Neel, the feminists of the 1970's discovered Krasner and rescued her from obscurity where male critics and historians had placed her. "Women's liberation helped me enormously," Krasner said in 1980. "Thank you women's lib," she said in 1973. "In that sense, life now is better than forty plus."
     Also like Neel, Krasner was showered with honours and awards in the last 15 years of her life. Gail Levin, a veteran writer and critic, has written a long and excellent book on this fine American abstract painter.
      Henry James had it easy compared to these two women. He may have endured what he called ' a complex fate'. These women endured far far worse. They suffered but in the end the triumphed and their lives are well worth reading about.
    
     
     

Thursday 13 June 2013

A Nice Touristy Flick

'Before Midnight' . Starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Directed by Richard Linklater.


    In the last 20 years, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke have taken us across Europe. In the mid-1990's, they met in Vienna in 'Before Sunrise'. Then ten years later they came together in Paris in 'Before Sunset'.
    Now here they are, a middle aged couple with two very young blonde twin daughters. Delpy is the French-born Celine and Hawke is Jesse, the American novelist. Their six week stay in Greece's beautiful Pelopenesian area is just coming to an end.
    Not everything's cool and calm with this unmarried couple. Jesse wants to move back to Chicago to be with his young son, the offspring of his first and only marriage. The blonde Celine is tired of being a novelist's wife and is in the process of changing her job.
   'Before Midnight' moves from an airport to a lovely meal full of fine food, drink, and coversation, to the movie's finale, where a massive quarrel erupts between Jesse and Celine in a hotel room."The only upside at 35," Celine tells Jesse, " is that you don't get raped as much." This comes in the middle of Celine's feminist rant about keeping their relationship going which means she's doing all the important work. Jesse responds with his ego-driven take on the couple's dynamics.
     Will Celine and Jesse pop up on sthe screen in another ten years and show us, under Richard Linklater's direction what getting near old age can do to a couple? Hard to know but one thing's clear: I won't probably be around to see this film.
     'Before Midnight' gives us a personal drama in the midst of the beautiful Greek countryside. But where are the thousands and tens of thousands of Greeks, protesting the harsh austerity measures dealt out by the top honchos of the European Union? They don't make it into this flick.
     'Before Midnight' offers us an escapist touristy version of Greece where the main fight explodes between a couple and has nothing to do with politics. I liked this film but I don't see it as anything more than a modern day fairytale, albeit as one with some very salty language.
     

Wednesday 22 May 2013

A Slow Loook at Growing Old

   'Still Mine'. Starring Genevieve Bujold and James Cromwell. Directed by Michael McGowan.

     "There's dance in the old dame yet," an old woman said about 40 years ago. This became the title of a book on old age. But for Irene(Genevieve Bujold), there's not much left energy left for dancing. She and her husband of many years (James Cromwell) live in a 2,000 acre farm in rural New Brunswick.
      "She's fine," Craig says about his wife. But Irene's not fine. She's slowly losing her mind, perhaps to Alzheimer's. Craig meanwhile tries to build a new house for them both.
      But the 80 year-old Craig runs head on into the new rules and regulations that govern the building code. Unlike the recent French film 'Amour', this film is a happy film. This couple laugh together, kiss, make love and reminisce about the past.
   Director Michael McGowan gives us a slowly paced film of ageing and its downsides. Sometimes the film moves too slowly. But the film is also full of stark beautiful images of rural New Brunswick, courtesy of the wonderful photography of Brendan Stacey.
     "Atlantic Canada is plagued by a culture of defeatism," Prime Minister Stephen Harper once said in effect. But there's no defeatism in this film. It's a story of a couple triumphing over the problems of ageing, as death lurks in the background.

Monday 13 May 2013

'The Great Gatsby' Was Too Over The Top

   "The Great Gatsby'. Starring Leonardo Di Caprio, Toby Maguire and Carey Mulligan. Directed by Buz Luhrmann.


       "The rich are different from us," novelist F.Scott Fitzgerald once told his long time rival Ernest Hemingway. "Yes," Hemingway is supposed to have replied. "They have more money."
     Director Buz Luhrmann is the sixth director to create a film version of Fitzgerald's slim 1920's novel. Here in 3-D he highlights the moneyed people of the 1920's, and in many ways they don't differ from us cash-strapped people at all. Though of course, they're way way richer.
     Nick Carroway (Toby Maguire), comes to 1920's New York City seeking fame and fortune. He ends up trading bonds on Wall Street. He lives next door to the mysterious ultra-rich Jay Gatsby, played by Leonardo Di Caprio. Di Caprio looks more and more like the young Orson Welles, whose 1940's film 'Citizen Kane' was another meditation on wealth and power.
     Then there's the blonde Daisy (Carey Mulligan) Carroway's cousin, who's married to an insensitive multimillionaire. But Gatsby adores Daisy whom he met five years ago. He still wants her.
    Click here for romance, sex, endless parties, dozens of servants, many types of musical sound tracks,
 and luxurious houses that dwarf any megamansion in Vancouver. This is Buz Luhrmann's idea of Fitzgerald's novel.
     But tragedy and pain lurk behind this American success story. Gatsby's yellow Duesenberg car roars past coalfields where coal encrusted miners toil from dawn to dusk, under the all seeing gaze of an eye-filled billboard.
    And then there's Gatsby himself, as seen in hindsight by Carroway who's now a reformed alcoholic. Gatsby's real name is James Gatz. "His parents were dirt poor farmers from North Dakota," Carroway tells us about Gatsby, who's heading for disaster.
  'The Great Gatsby' is two and a half hours of bloated fun and games, and then tragedy. It works alright, but for me it was way overdone.But if you want a mega-project of a film, then this is surely the flick for you.
                                  
    

Sunday 28 April 2013

'Renoir' the film is sometimes boring but sometimes beautiful.

'Renoir' with Michel Bouquet, Christa Theret, and Vincent Rottiers. Directed by Gilles Bourdos, 107 minutes long. In French with English subtitles.


     "Among the French Impressionists," writes the British art critic John Berger, "Renoir is still the most popular painter."
     In the film 'Renoir' director Gilles Bourdos shows us why. In 1916 France is besieged by World War One as German and Allied troops kill each other in merciless trench warfare. But here's Auguste Renoir, living peacefully in the south of France, waited on by five women. Now Renoir's life is going downhill. He's widowed, wheelchair-bound, old and arthritic. Still, he paints beautiful pictures of naked, slightly overweight young women frolicking in green pastures.
    Enter Amadeee, a young female  model played by Christa Theret, and then Jean Renoir, Renoir's son, played by Vincent Rottiers. The young Renoir has been wounded in the war and hobbles around on crutches. Fireworks should ensue but they rarely do in this movie.
    The Renoir family is your average dysfunctional family, full of rivalries, fueds and frustrated loves. But director Gilles Bourdos doesn't probe too deeply here. His camera and script stay mostly on the surface of things as Renoir paints and talks.
    Renoir tells his son Jean who in real life later becomes a famous film director, that painting is about painting naked ladies and not "poverty, despair and death."
   Fair enough and the film sticks mostly to that rule. It can bore you at times. but lovely shots of the south of France and Renoir's estate can enchant you also. 'Renoir' is not a great film but it has its charms.

Monday 15 April 2013

Three Stories Don't Add Up To A Great Film

'The Place Beyond the Pines' A film starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper and Eva Mendes.Running time 141 minutes. Directed by Derek Cianfrance.


     'The Place Beyond The Pines' is three heavy male stories that hinge on the man who sets the film in motion. Ryan Gosling, the blonde, blue-eyed, jut jawed hunk from Cornwall, Ontario, dominates the film's first part. He's a motorcycling stunt man, who travels with a carnival and maybe he's scattering his seed among many women.
    Then he meets a special woman named by Romina, played by Eva Mendes who lives in Schenectady New York and bears their son Jason. Soon Luke Glanton, played by Gosling takes up robbing banks and with dire results.
    Enter Avery Cross, played by Bradley Cooper. Cross is an honest cop who ends up working with a bunch of crooked policemen.Targeted for murder by his one-time pals, he survives and then prospers. He and his wife have a young child too, just  like Luke and Romina.
     "I'm a cop," Avery tells his wife after a brutal encounter. "That's what I am, a cop." But flash forward 15 years and Avery is now an aspiring attorney-general running for office in the state of New York. Meanwhile, his son  AJ played by Emory Cohen meets up with Luke's offspring Jason in the cafeteria of a Schenectady high school.Jason is played  by Dane DeHaan.
    Jason never did find out how his father died. Soon he tries to turn up his roots, and this means danger. "You're a liar," a beaten up Jason tells his mother Romina as he lies in a hospital bed after discovering the truth.
     Well what does all this add up to?
      Despite some fine acting , maybe not too much. The heart of the film, directed by Derek Cianfrance, lies in the wonderful, sometimes hair raising rides and chases through forests and tree-lined roads in a very green, nearly always sunny New York state. These scenes seem based on  American critic Leslie Fiedler's idea that most of American literature is based on the theme of escaping from civilization  into the wilderness.
    At movie's end Jason takes off on a motorcycle to head out west on a blue-skied fall day, just like a latter day Fiedler might predict. He flashes past trees tinged with orange and yellow. Like his dad he's on the road roaring away from the troubles of the past, on a motorcycle. It's a lovely peaceful moment in a film racked by violence.
    At this point, most viewers might whisper "Enough" and wish Jason a peaceful future and good luck wherever he ends up. After all Schenectady has been through in this film and  everything Jason has felt, he deserves a rest . Hopefully he'll find what he's looking for out west. 'The Place Beyond The Pines' in the end disappointed me, but cheapskate that I am, I didn't hobble away from the theatre feeling cheated. It only cost me eight or nine dollars. At that price it was a good bargain. 
   
    

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Douglas Coupland Looks At Loneliness

'Eleanor Rigby: A Novel by Douglas Coupland. Random house Canada. 249pp.


     Douglas Coupland is my favourite novelist. His novels often take place in North or West Vancouver, places I've often gone to. It's nice to read a novel that happens near where you live. Also his novels are easy to read. So you don't have to stress your mind wading through some incredibly dense work. Last but not least they remind me of t.v. dramas, but they're so much deeper, funnier and sadder than most stuff on the box.
   'Eleanor Rigby' published in 2004 takes off from the Beatles' song of the same name. "Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where her wedding has been," sang the fab four about fifty years ago. "Lives in a dream." And the song's chorus asks "All the lonely people/ where do they all come from?" Coupland's novel like the Beatles' song is about loneliness.
    When the novels opens, Liz Dunn a very lonely middle aged person is living, sort of, in a North Vancouver condo. Then the Hale-Bopp comet lands on the north shore and signals better things to come. Liz takes us back in time to a distant trip she took to Italy with one of her high school classes. Here, she ended up in a party that took place on   a roof, and met a man. Then something happened.
     "I'm overweight and my clothes are serviceable," Dunn explains to us. "They're usually loose fabrics because they conceal my roundness. Men af all ages don't notice me, period. To them, I'm a fern." So life looks grim for this plain Jane.
    And her family is not very supportive. But then a stranger intrudes and transforms her life.
    The novel here, I think, goes astray. The Beatles' song 'Eleanor Rigby' ends on a depressing but realistic note. Coupland's novel gives us an old-fashioned Hollywood style ending where all of Liz's problems vanish.
      But in the end so what? The novels entertains and also Coupland drops all sorts of observations on life into the story. Now that I've unplugged my t.v. I'm going to keep reading Coupland's work. It beats watching the dramas on the box anytime, unless they're written by Dougals Coupland, that is.  
  

Thursday 4 April 2013

Review of 'Tea With Hezbollah'

'Tea With Hezbollah: Sitting at the Enemies' Table. Our Journey Through the Middle East' by Ted Dekker and Carl Medearis. Doubleday, 245 pp.


    What happens when a Canadian author and an American author get together? Well if the Canadian is best-selling novelist Ted Dekker and the American is Middle East specialist Carl Medearis you get an interesting book. They don't spend their time arguing about Americans' know nothing take on Canada or the high price of American-made goods on this side of the border.
      Instead off they go to the Middle East to find out whether the top honchos over there obey Jesus's injunction, "Love thy neighbour as thyself."
   This is a dangerous journey. And as the twosome touch down in six countries, death, despair and violence lurk everywhere, as do many cups of tea.
   Dekker, an experienced novelist, describes the lands they pass through. Medearis, with a background in the Middle East, helps track down the leaders of movements like Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Sami Awad, the leader of non-violent resistance to settlers in Israeli's West Bank. Canada and the U.S. governments , by the way, classify Hezbollah as a terrorist group.
    Most of the men interviewed agree with Jesus's saying. Others are not so sure and who can blame them? "I've stood in front of moving bulldozers and Israeli jeeps many times," says the Palestinian leader Sami Awad, "to try to prevent them from destroying farmland. I've been physically assaulted more times than can be counted by Israeli troops who use their rifles, boots and batons."
   Awad has been denounced by Israeli leaders and by other Palestinians as a CIA tool. But he agrees with Jesus.
      This is a male-dominated book. The only woman who shows up in the book is Nicole, who Dekker invents. And Israeli leaders don't show up in the book at all. Nor do U.S. politicians who launched invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But the book contains an interesting history of the Samaritans, one of  whom inspired Jesus's injunction.
    'Tea with Hezbollah' doesn't probe too deeply but it's an enjoyable read. "A simple teaching," Dekker concludes, "made 2,000 years ago may bring agreement and hope."
    

Tuesday 26 March 2013

Review of the film 'No'.

When 'No' really did mean No'.
Film review of 'No' starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Antonia Zegers. Directed by Pablo Larrain. In Spanish with English subtitles.


   In the 1970's one Latin American country after another succumbed to brutal right wing military dictatorships. Left wing critics claim that these events happened because of 'Operation Condor', a joint U.S. military plan to snuff out democracy all over Latin America.
    Right wingers disagree. "Latin America has often been ruled by generals," they say, "and the U.S. played no part in any anti-democratic plan."
    Whatever the truth, Chile in 1988 was ruled by a brutal military dictator called General Augusto Pinochet. He came to power in 1973 when he and his army overthrew the left leaning government of democratic President Salvador Allende and killed Allende and other leftists besides. Suddenly in 1988 Pinochet decided to hold a referundum on his 15 year rule of Chile.
     The film 'No' is about this referundum.Gaul Garcia Bernal who plays the advertising executive Rene Saavedra sets up the advertisements for the 'No', the anti-Pinochet side. His boss ends up heading the 'Yes' side. "The election campaign is completely fixed," Saavedra tells the co-ordinator of the 'No' campaign.
    Still, Saavedra stays on the campagin although he assumes that Pinochet will fix and win the outcome."The point of U.S. support of military governments," writes Noam Chomsky, "is to crush independent nationalism and popular forces that bring about meaningful democracy."
     But the U.S. did fail sometimes, as did Pinochet. 'No" shows us how. But the movie ends up as a contest between advertising executives namely Saavedra and his boss at the ad agency. Meanwhile the protesting Chilean people, who provided the basis of the 'No' campaign, serve as just a backdrop to the two ad men. And the bearded Saavedra remains a detached observer of the whole campagin, until his wife, played by Antonia Zegers gets horribly beaten up by the police.Maybe that's how all ad executives,  who weigh in on political campaigns, feel and  act. But I found this kind of strange.
     Director Pablo Larrain shot 'No' in a 1983 U-matic videocassette camera. So the film matches newsreel shots of the day and the commercials back then. 'No' is a fine film but it should have included more people from the 'No' side. Not all of these people were politicians or ad company executives.

Thursday 21 March 2013

The photos of Patrick Faigenbaum

Photographs by Patrick Faigenbaum. At the Vancouver Art Gallery in downtown Vancouver


    On the ground floor of the Vancouver Art Gallery there's some beautiful photographs by the French photographer Patrick Faigenbaum. I'd never heard of Faigenbaum before which is too bad.
    "It now seems clear," wrote the British art critic John Berger way back in 1968, "that photography deserves to be considered as though it were not a fine art. It looks as though photography is going to outlive painting and sculpture as we have thought of them since the Renaissance."
   Faigenbaum's photos dispute Berger's first point. But they may support his second belief.
   His photos fall into three or four types. There are still lifes taken mostly in Sardinia. There are portraits taken in France, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Italy. Faigenbaum has also taken some beautiful
colored photos of French and Sardinian landscapes and townscapes.
    Fiagenbaum grew up in France in the 1970"s. First trained as a painter, he later switched to photography. "He is part of a generation who during the 1970"s," says a comment on the gallery wall," began to consider photography on the grand scale of historical easel painting." In line with that belief, Faigenbaum's photos are big. One photo of a farmer in a barn takes up one side of a gallery wall. Only a set of 26 small snapshots of a garden all lined up together stand out as an exception to the general rule of the photos's large size. All the rest of the photos take up lots of space.
    My favourite photos by Faigenbaum in this exhibition are his black and white portraits of Italian aristocrats. Here, families pose for the camera in their houses, surrounded by expensive furniture and  family treasures. But maybe just as powerful are Faigenbaum's landscapes and portraits of young, middle aged and older French people. Here you can see that this man has studied painting and a lot more besides.

Wednesday 13 March 2013

review of the movie 'The Gatekeepers'

'The Gatekeepers' starring Ami Ayalon, Avi Dicter, and Avraham Shalom. A documentary by Dror Moreh.


    Is Israel a good thing or a bad thing? I'm a Jew and yet I've never been able to make up my mind on this question.On the plus side, Israel is a homeland for all Jews and that's certainly needed after all the hell that Jews have been put through over the ages. But then there's the 750,000 Arabs that Israel kicked out of the country when it was set up in 1948. And Israelis are still kicking arabs -  or as they're known today Palestinians- out of Israel.
     Once upon a time, Israel was a social democratic state that gave out some generous social programs. That was good. But to-day Israel's an armed state that runs one of the most brutally efficient killing machines in the world. Which is not so good. Israel's existence has raised the self-esteem of most Jews around the world- which is good. But many Moslems now hate Israel and want  to see it destroyed along with world Jewry - which is bad. And so on.
     These thoughts and others flitted through my mind while watching 'The Gatekeepers' an Israeli film by Dror Moreh. Here, four or five past leaders of Shin Bet, Israel's security agency, talked about their wars against Arab terrorist or as some might say freedom fighters. "When you're fighting terrorism," one of the former Shin Bet heads says, "there is no morality."
    Film clips from the 1950's down to today, back up this statement. 'The Gatekeepers' is chockful of endless pictuures of Israelis killing Arabs and vice versa. Also it seems that Shin Bet carries out massive surveillance from the air of all Palestinian towns in Israel. Scenes of Israeli soldiers torturing captives pop up on the screen too while forrner Shin Bet heads discuss the best way to get Palestinian prisoners to reveal their secrets.
    But overall the film left me with a sense of total futility.
     "When you retire," another former intelligence chief says, "you become  a bit of a leftist." No doubt. But when these men headed up Shin Bet they were hard, tough and ruthless. Then they were not leftists. 'The Gatekeepers' is an interesting film by Dror Moreh. It tells us about the insoluble conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Its main message to me was" The killing goes on," whcich is too bad.

Monday 11 March 2013

Continuation of book review of 'Nellie McClung' by Charlotte Gray

Review of book continued


     Of course the Canadian Senate is a useless body, where even to-day, Liberal and Tory stalwarts get appointed to sit and draw some nice fat salaries. Still, in 1928 totally-male dominated Canada, this court decision counted as a victory for women.
    McClung's life wasn't tragedy-free. One of her four sons became an alcoholic and then later killed himself. Her husband had to take a back seat to her life, which was very very busy. "I spoke at two guest teas this week," McClung told a friend in a letter, "and will speak at one tomorrow. And I have two lectures to give."
     In the 1930's the 60 year-old McClung and her husband Wes finally retired to Victoria to spend their last years there. McClung died in Victoria in 1951. The feminists of the 1970's rediscovered McClung and rescued her from obscurity. She'll never rank up there with Justin Bieber. But she deserves to be remembered and Charlotte Gray has done a good job in capturing McClung's life.

Nellie McClung an extraordinary Canadian

'Nellie McClung' by Charlotte Gray. With an introduction by John Ralston Saul. Penguin. Part of 'Extraordinary Canadians' series.


    Ask most Canadians'Person' in section 24 of the act meant 'women' as well as men  to name a famous citizen of their country and they'd probably reply, "Justin Bieber" or "Sidney Crosby" or maybe even "Stephen Harper". Don't think too many of them would mention Nellie McClung.
     McClung died in the 1950's. Still she deserves to be remembered and long-time author Charlotte Gray tells us why. Gray has written a  good short introduction about McClung. Gray touches on the main points of McClung's life. McClung moved from being a farm girl to being an author, a politician, a temperance advocate, a wife, a mother and a one-time Canadian icon. McClung led the pre-world war one struggle to win women the right to vote. Along with four other women - 'the famous five' as they're now known- she won the right for women to be a senator.
     The British North American Act created Canada in 1867. The victory of the five women was that they used the courts to rule that the word 'Person' meant 'women' as well as 'men'.Now women could be appointed to the Senate as well as men.

Wednesday 27 February 2013

Review of the movie 'Quartet'

Quartet: A film starring Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly, Pauline Collins and Maggie Smith. Directed by Dustin Hoffman. Script by Ronald Harwood.


    Jean is an arrogant, ageing operatic star. She's coming to live at Beecham House, a place for retired musicians that sits in the English countryside. "Be careful with that one," an irritable Jean {Magge Smith},
says to her driver as he removes boxes from her now nearly empty apartment.
    Meanwhile over at Beecham House, Reginald Paget {Tom Courtenay}, Wilfred {Billy Connolly}, Cecily Robbins {Pauline Collins} and other retirees play the usual games. They sing, play music, flirt, gossip, quarrel, grow old and relive past glories.
    Jean, a once famous diva, sets 'Quartet' in motion. "Jean has arrived and shattered everything," Reginald says. True, but she also forces the other main characters to confront the truth of their lives. 'Quartet' is ably directed by Dustin Hoffman and the witty script is by Ronald Harwood who wrote the play on which this movie is based. It's a comedy and the elephant in the room for all of us ageing people, namely death, never intrudes.
    The beautiful countryside sits as a lovely backdrop to this enjoyable but light movie. Then there's the mostly classical music that gives the film some lovely lyrical moments.  

Monday 25 February 2013

Book review of 'Temptations of the West'

 'Temptations of the West. How To Be Modern In India, Pakistan and Beyond' by Pankaj Mishra {Picador}.


     Peshawar is a mess," writes Indian author Pankaj Mishra. But so it seems is most of India, Pakistan and Nepal,or at least as they appear in his book 'Temptations of the West'. An Indian middle class of 200 million people or more and hundreds of millionaires prosper in a country where another 800 million struggle to survive a grinding poverty. In Pakistan, the military and the mullahs still rule the roost. Meanwhile the tiny kingdom of Nepal is split between Maoist guerillas and an absolute monarchy. Then there's Tibet which squirms under the iron heel of the Communist rulers of China.
      Mishra takes us on a tour of the conflict-ridden areas of South Asia. But he also touches down in Bollywood to meet Indian celebrities and movie stars.
    One point he leaves out is the massive increase in the area's population. India's population of roughly 500 million in the 1950's has now doubled to a billion people or more. Nepal's skyrocketting  population is mentioned but no other country's birth rate gets a mention. This is strange since massive increases in population in poor countries also means more social problems.

      "A new elite of politicians and bureaucrats," writes Mishra about Kashmir, "emerged from the culture of corruption that grew around the administration." The same can be said about most of South Asia and Mishra does say this. More could have been written about the high tech world that's booming in India. And not too many women pop up in sthe book to give their views on what's happening in their countries.
    But Pankaj Mishra has written a fascinationg and probing book about the problems of many of the countries of South Asia.
      

Monday 18 February 2013

Review of 'When the Gods Changed' by Peter c. Newman

.When The Gods Changed: The Death of Liberal Canada by Peter C. Newman. A book published by Randdom House Canada. 291pp.


   Once upon a time, which wasn't too long ago, the federal Liberal party won one election after another and therefore was the the government of Canada. Their main rival, the Progressive Conservative party could only look on in envy. "Conservatives are like measles," one Liberal said. "You get them once in a lifetime and then they're gone forever."
    But then all of that changed. A reformed and very right wing Conservative party started to win one election after another and the Liberals ended up in second place. In the 2011 federal election, the Liberals fell to third place behind the New Democratic party and the governing Conservatives, led by the very right wing Prime Minister Stephen  Harper.
      Why did all this happen? Peter C. Newman thinks he has the answer. "A groupie of the power elite," I once said about Newman. But while this may be true, Newman is also a fine writer who has written many interesting books about Canadian politics and business. In this book called 'When The Gods Changed' Newman zeroes in on Michael Ignatieff the Canadian-born writer, traveller, professor, human rights activist and then leader of the federal Liberal party. Ignatieff was supposed to lead the Liberals back to power. Instead he led the party to a disastrous third place finish and then resigned as leader.
    Newman singles out many reasons for the Liberals's collapse. They include the now ancient sponsorship scandal, the ferocious rivalry between Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his Finance minister Paul Martin, Martin's weak role as Prime Minister and so on.But the main reason is simple; the Liberals got old.
     "Of the many Canadian politicians who flashed like meteors across the northern sky," writes Newman, "Ignatieff was the most complex, the most puzzling and the least transparent." Newman is well positioned to say this, since he's known and hung out with many politicians and leaders of the last 50 years. But Newman's focus on the leaders, ignores the upheaval among the vast majority of non-leaders. For the past 30 years, Canadian governments of all stripes and labels have slashed social programs, shovelled out big tax breaks to the rich and hammered private and public sector unions.
     The Liberals party could and did promise all Canadians a better and more prosperous life. But that promise has now vanished as the welfare state disappears. As Canada becomes a very unequal society, the middle ground that the Liberals stood on started to shrink. And so did their supporters too.
    In the end, Newman blames the Liberal party for Ignatieff's crushing defeat. He also realizes that an academic like Ignatieff took too long to learn political skills.
     The best parts of 'When the Gods Changed' are Newman's interviews with Ignatieff and Ignatieff's reflections on his life. The book takes us on an interesting ride through the collapse of the Liberal party. But the Liberals"s eclipse may only be temporary. After all there is the figure of Justin Trudeau looming on the political horizon. Maybe the ageing Peter C. Newman will give us another book about the Liberal party's revival. After all he did the same about Justin Trudeau's father more than forty years ago.
    
     
    

Tuesday 12 February 2013

Review of movie 'Side Effects'

'Side Effects' a movie starring Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Rooney Mara. Directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Scott Z.Burns.
  


        Stay way from shrinks or if you go to one, don't swallow everything they prescribe.
        That's the message beamed out by the movie 'Side Effects' directed by Steven Soderbergh. Emily Taylor, played by Rooney Mara is a twenty something, very depressed wife of Martin Taylor, played by Channing Tatum. Martin's just done five years in prison for insider trading. Emily has lost a child in a miscarriage and then this childless woman, drives her car into a brick wall. To be cured of her depression, that may have caused her accident, Emily ends up in the care of psychiatrist Jonathan Banks, played by Jude Law.
    "Did you try to hurt yourself this morning," asks Banks when he first sees her in hospital. Soon he's prescribing Ablixa for her to take. This supposed anti-depressant may have side effects.
      To find out Emily's past, Jonathan heads off to see Emily's first psychiatrist, Victoria Siebert, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. Soon all hell breaks loose and there's a murder, a trial and lots of other stuff. The movie turns into a 'who done it' mystery thriller.
    Cleverly scripted by Scott Z. Barnes, 'Side Effects' has twists and turns that'll keeped you glued to your seat. Still, as one formerly unbalanced friend of mine once said, "Some shrinks are crazy." I'd believe that especially after watching "Side Effects'. But also remember that some pills can endanger your life.
     The one message that I didn't like that came out of this film is that lesbians may be evil. But then again, no movie can give you everything you want.

Sunday 3 February 2013

review of book on Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont

    'Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont' by Joseph Boyden, with an introduction by John Ralston Saul. Part of the series titled 'Extraordinary Canadians'. Penguin. 240pp.


     In Canada it seems some things never change. What turns on Quebec turns off the rest of Canada. And vice versa. Also First Nations people often squat at the bottom the Canadian mosaic. Take the story of Louis Riel, the sometimes  visionary leader of the Metis and his military assistant, Gabriel Dumont. The Metis are a part First Nations, part European people.
   In this  book ably told by novelist Joseph Boyden, Riel takes on the Canadian government, first in Manitoba in 1870, and then in alliance with Dumont, in Saskatchewan in 1885.
     Both face offs end in Metis defeats. "To the men in Ottawa," writes Boyden, "the mixed bloods are insolent and stubborn. The Metis represent two painful thorns in Canadian Prime Minister John. A. MacDonald's feet as he attempts his Anglo-Saxon stride to the Pacific."
     So MacDonald and the Canadian army sweep the Metis out of the way. Riel orders Thomas Scott, a fanatical anti-Cayholic, anti-Metis Protestant to be shot dead in the Metis revolt of 1870. Orangemen Protestants in Ontario freak out. Then in 1885, the Canadian army defeat Riel and Dumont's Metis soldiers at the Battle of Batoche. After a short, totally unfair trial, Riel is condemned to death. French-Canadians in Quebec and elsewhere, and many others around the world, plead for the Canadian government to scrap the death sentence.
    But Prime Minister MacDonald won't listen. "He shall hang," says MacDonald of Riel, "though every dog in Quebec bark in his favour." Once Riel hangs, the French Canadians go ballistic and rarely vote for MacDonald's party, the Conservatives ever again.
     Author Joseph Boyden wisely spends most of the book on the Battle of Batoche and the trial of Riel. As he points out, compared to the massive trench battles of the First World War, Batoche was a mere skirmish. At the battles of Vimy Ridge and Ypres during  World War One, thousands of Canadians were killed, sometimes in a single day. And at Batoche? Maybe five or six soldiers died. This was sad but not tragic.
      Dumont by the way survived and lived away from Canada for quite some time.
      Since this book came out, the Idle No More movement has surfaced . Also a recent court decision has ruled that the Meis and non-status Indians are Indians under the Constitution Act and so may be entitled to benefits paid to status Indians.
     Yet despite all of tthese hopeful signs, the French-English divide still slices through Canadian politics. In the last Quebec provincial election, the sovereigntist Parti Quebecois ended up as the government, and is still committed to taking Quebec out of Canada.And the majority of Canadians don't like the Idle No More movement or Chief Theresa Spence who fasted to force the Canadian government to listen to First Nations demands.
    As the motto of the London-based 'Times' newspaper used to say, "Times change, values don't."Boyden's book fills us in on  a turning point in Canadian history that explains much of the politics of to-day.
   

Thursday 31 January 2013

Review of movie 'Amour'

       'Amour'. Starring Jean Louis Trintignant, Emanuelle Roy and  Isabelle Huppert. Directed by Michael Hanneke.


    There's definitely two distinct ways of looking at old age. One is Jane Fonda's way or the North American way. "Old age is wonderful," goes this message. "It's just another stage of growth. Sure, it ends in death but don't think about that part." Then there's the European take on ageing which says it can be hell on wheels.
    The French film 'Amour' hews to the second view. Georges and Anne Laurent are an upscale French couple who've made it into their eighties. They're living in a big apartment somewhere above the ground floor in a building that maybe in Paris.
    Anne, played by Emanuelle Riva is a former classical music pianist who gets hit by a stroke. Then a second stroke hits her. Georges, played by another veteran actor, Jean-Louis Trintingnant has to take care of his now invalid wife. Director Michael Hanneke spares us nothing. We see how hard it is for Georges to lift his wife from the wheelchair she's in,  to the bed and back from the bed to the wheelchair. In long stable camera shots, Hanneke gives us closeups of the couple's struggles just to do what used to be normal everyday tasks.
     And sometimes Georges has to change the bedsheets,  as Anne now urinates in bed. I've never seen that in a film before.
     Isabelle Huppert plays a small role as the daughter Eva. Like many middle-aged children she has trouble facing her parents' physical decay and their oncoming death. Near the film's end, Georges has to feed  his near paralyzed wife. "Come on sweet," he says. "You only ate three mouthfuls."
    The ending hurts. But you can't condemn anybody. Ageing , disability and death stalk us all. 'Amour' means love of course. In the end Georges shows his love for Anne. 'Amour' is one tough film, worlds away from the upbeat mood of most North Americans. For that alone it's well worth watching.

Thursday 24 January 2013

Review of 'Against Our Will'

     Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, a book written by Susan Brownmiller. Published in October 1975. 541pp.


      In 1975 my life was a mess. Rage, sadness and paranoia  buffeted my mind.  Patella femoral syndrome, a degenerative disease ate away at my knees making me unable to walk more than six or seven blocks a day. And some young feminists I met abused me whenever I saw them. In fact, as I now realize, they were just giving me back what I'd dealt out to other people.
     So when some young woman told  me about 'Against Our Will'  a book by Susan Brownmiller, I said something like, "I won't read that. I'm tired of feminism and feminists."
       But a week or so ago, I came across 'Against Our Will' in a tiny thrift store in Vancouver's West End. I bought it and read it. And to-day, I think it's one great book.For Brownmiller, rape of women by men, is the very essence of men-women relations. Rape, she says, "is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation, by which all men keep all women in a state of fear."
      To prove this controversial point, Brownmiller ranges across history, religion, culture, psychology and above all criminal law. Along the way she denounces so-called famous rapists and killers  like the 19th century murderer 'Jack the Ripper'. She also disputes the teachings of famous religious figures like the theologian St. Thomas Aquinas.
     There are long chapters in the book in which she shows how wars give men the chance to rape and kill. There's a small section on child molestation that's become a huge issue in recent years. She also examines the delicate area of white-black relations in the United States and concludes that black men as well as white ones have raped many women. Liberals and some progressives may have not liked this part of the book, since white racists in the  U.S. and elsewhere have always denounced black men for raping and hungering after white women.And Brownmiller concludes that black men have raped white women many times.
   Then in one of the most moving parts of 'Against Our Will', she quotes long testimonies of rape victims and the terrible impact that rape had on their lives. Here, Brownmiller hammers criminologists and others who blame women for being raped.
     "Because men control the definition of sex," writes Brownmiller, "women are allotted a poor assortment of options." This is true and no one can read 'Against Our Will' and call rape as one person I knew did, "No big deal."
       Since this book came out, much has changed for the better. Many police are now women and will listen to and act on the complaints of rape victims as many male police never did. Women have led marches across Canada and the U.S , demanding that laws against rape be enacted. Due to their efforts and books like 'Against Our Will', rape is now seen as a serious crime.
      Still, much remains to be done. In India, for example, a recent news story revealed many rapes of Indian women by men. And the case of serial killer Robert Pickton shows that many policemen still will not act to protect women from rape and murder by men.
,   Now that my mental state has improved as has my opinion of feminism, I can only agree with the words of Carol Rinzer, a journalist at the  New York City-based 'Village Voice' newspaper.'Against Our Will' she wrote way back in 1975, "is a major work of history. It's a classic." 38 years later it still is.        

Monday 21 January 2013

A review of 'This is 40'.

                                  This is 40. A movie starring Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann. Directed  and scripted by Judd Apatow.


      A fifty something woman outside the Cineplex Tinseltown Theatre in downtown Vancouver didn't like 'This Is 40'. "Too much swearing," she said. "And the story didn't turn me on." But fortunately her opinion didn't sway this viewer so I paid my $9 and seventy five cents and hobbled into the theatre. And I'm glad I did.
       Director Judd Apatow seems to stuff his films full of four letter words, crazy plot lines and his family. So 'This Is 40' doesn't differ from his past films in these ways. A sequel to 'Knocked Up' of 2007, 'This Is 40' features Paul Rudd playing Pete the hunkish husband of Debbie played by Leslie Mann.
      How can such a lovely looking Californian couple living in such a beautiful home in Los Angeles, have so many problems as they both turn forty?Well they just do. Debbie's father only shows up every seven years. Pete's dad, on the other hand, sees him too often. This sixty something father played by Albert Brooks keeps hitting up Pete for money, to support his young triplets.
    Then there's Pete and Debbie's children, ably played by Maud Apatow as Sadie and Iris Apatow who's Charlotte. Judd Apatow, as you may have guessed keeps all things in the family. Maud and Iris are his daughters, while Lesley Mann is his wife.
    "I am happy," a tearful Debbie tells her doctor when she finds out she's pregnant again. But her two daughters seem far from happy. They scrap and fight over everything just like their parents. Meanwhile Pete's music business may be going bust, while Debbie's dress store is being robbed by an employee. Pete and Debbie scream at each other nearly every day, while both of them carry bad habits . Debbie sneaks away sometimes to puff a cigarette, and Pete scarfs down cream puffs while no one's looking. And as that woman said to me before I went into the theatre, Debbie and Pete do swear.
     "People are strange," the late Jim Morrison, himself a Californian and sometime resident of Los Angeles once sang.. All the people in 'This Is 40' act strange. But then who knows? Maybe acting strange is the new normal. Still, 'This Is 40' is a great and funny film.  Judd Apatow, who directed the film and scripted it, is one very talented man and it helps that he had a talented cast to act out his script too. 
     .

Wednesday 16 January 2013

movie review of 'Zero Dark Thirty'

          'Zero Dark Thirty'. Starring Jessca Chastain and Jason Clarks. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Length of 157 minutes.



     When Osama bin Laden planned the bombings and airplane hujackings of 9/11, had he ever heard of Maya, the driven, totally-focused CIA female agent? Probably not, because if he'd have known of Maya, he might have scrapped all his develish plans right then and there.
     'Zero Dark Thirty' is a basically one plot film, in which Maya, played by Jessica Chastain, hunts down the man behind 9/11. When we first see Maya, she's shedding a face mask outside of a torture chamber. At movie's end, she sits in the hangar of a giant aircraft, and a tear finally runs down one of her cheeks. {I think it runs down her left cheek}.
     In between those times, that's to say for more than two hours-and-a-half, the movie ably directed by Kathryn Bigelow, whips us  through the U.S., Afghanistan, Pakistan and various other places. Suicide bombings, torture, by Americans no less, snipings, and just plain violence, litter the screen with bodies.
    Maya is tough. "Help me," a tortured prisoner near the movie's start pleads to her. "You can help yourself by being truthful," Maya shoots back.
     The head of the CIA played by James Gandolfini {based on the veteran Congressman Leon Panetta, I think} asks a room of mostly men who found Bin Laden's probable hideout. "I'm the motherf...er who found this place...sir," Maya says bluntly.
    Zero Dark Thirty is the military name for the darkest time of the night. And that's when the U.S. Navy Seal raid on Bin Laden's refuge in Pakistan takes place. This part of the film streches out for about an hour and ends with the rough and tough Seal crew finding and killing their prey. Kathryn Bigelow's direction and her and Mark Boal's script gives us a film that's part documentary, part drama.Maya stands out as a woman who can escape potential assassins as well as tussle with inflexible bureaucrats.
   It's based on a true story. So if you like war, violence, justice meted out to deserving victims, and total effort finally rewarded, then don't miss 'Zero Dark Thirty'.As for me, I enjoyed the film, but I'm going to see a violence-free comedy the next time I go to a theatre. I need a break right now from dying and death.'Zero Dark Thirty' had just a little too much death in it for me.

Thursday 10 January 2013

Review of the book 'Voices of the Street'

            Special Literary Issue of Megaphone Magazine called 'Voices of the Street'

                                     Voices  of the Street ; Special literary issue 2012
    Megaphone magazine started as away of keeping poor people employed by selling the magazine in Vancouver city streets. Like most papers sold by poor people it's full of the triumphs and tragedies of the poor. 'Voices of the Street' which came out last year, grew out of the Megaphone writing workshops that started a few years ago.
   In this book of 64 pages, 21 poetry pieces, nine prose works and 20 photos once again give us a sometimes rough and ready accounts of being addicted to an illegal drug, living on the Downtown Eastside in a single room occupancy hotel and queing up for HST refunds.
      "Why did I survive?" Brian C. asks "Why when in the hospital because of that thing? Why did I survive?"Although Brian never seems to get the whole answer, his poem is a cry for help.
     Joseph D. tells us, "I am from the land of fish, water and sky {and} the land is green and abundant with trees, though they're/ only a few metres high." Here Joseph celebrates his homeland that's worlds away from the  crowded city streets. Misty-Lee Davis checks in with one poem which talks about living with depression. Then in another poem called 'Why Am I an Addict?' she tells us that 'Trying to stay clean is an incredible feat" .
    In his prose piece 'A Brush With Death' Bob Dennis, whom I know and sometimes buy Megaphone magazine from, tells about the perils of living with schizophrenia. In a longer piece Brian Peters looks back on his life in prison and out of it. 
    There are also some very fine photographs ."Morning View' by Nick Olson is a very fine and graphic look at the roofs of the Downtown Eastside. Kevin Siluch gives us a view of rigs from the ground level view.
     These photos, poems and prose pieces are just a few of the many parts of 'Voices of the Street'. Author Gillian Jerome, Megaphone's Executive Director Sean Condon and Kevin Hollett, Megaphone's editor also contribute a page apiece on the history of  Megaphone Magazine and the writing in 'Voices in the Street'. "These pages of writings," says  Hollett, "are filled with powerful work of literary merit and revelatory pieces containing unvarnished truths."
             I agree and hope that Megaphone magazine will continue to give us the truth on the lives of some poor people as well as revealing their literary skills and other talents.

Sunday 6 January 2013

Review of movie 'A Late Quartet'

                 'A Late Quartet' starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken and Catherine Keener. Directed by Yaron Zilberman. 106 minutes long.


       The Fuge String Quartet that plays classical music is based in New York City. It travels around the world performing, but now life and love pains nearly tear it apart at home.
     "I think you're an amazing violinist," Juliette played by Catherine Keener, who plays the viola in the quartet tells her husband Robert played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. But Robert who plays the second violin in the quartet, wants to sometimes be the quartet's first violinist. But this job is taken up by Daniel, who Robert resents. Robert has a brief fling with a flamenco dancer. When Juliette finds out about this romance she throws Robert out of their house.
     Then Daniel falls in love with Robert and Juliette's daughter Alexandra. Meanwhile, Peter the aging cellist in the quartet played by Christopher Walken, now has Parkinson's disease. And you can't play the big heavy cello when Parkinson's makes your hands and body shake.
      This film doesn't just zero in on the problems of love and ageing. It's also full of beautiful classical music and lovely camera shots of a snowbound New York City.
     "If music be the food of life/play on," Shakespeare wrote in the opening of 'Twelth Night". Peter, the aging cellist seems to prefer T.S. Eliot, whose poetry about Beethoven's late great quartets, he quotes to his class of young students.
     But whatever music or poetry you like or don't like, 'A Late Quartet' Fills more than an hour-and-a-half with fine acting and great but seldom heard music. Yaron Zilberman has directed a pretty good flick that in sensitiveness and intelligence stands light years away from the mostly juvenile fare that's served up these days on many movie screens.
     

Friday 4 January 2013

Book review of book by Leila Nadir

     The Orange Trees of Baghdad; In Search of My Lost Family: A Memoir by Leila Nadir


       Leila Nadir is one of hundreds of thousands of people from other countries who've ended up in Metro Vancouver. In her fine memoir The Orange Tree of Baghdad she tells the story of modern day Iraq through the words of her extended family. For Nadir has never been to Iraq though her father Ibrahim was born there.
     "I feel Iraq in my bones though I have never been there," she writes. "I haven't smelled jasmine or orange blossoms scenting a Baghdad night."
    But her relations have lived in Iraq and they tell the country's story through their lives. In parts of the book they speak of the horrific violence unleashed by revolutionaries, Saddam Hussein's brutal police and army, ferocious American invaders and Sunni and Shiite militants. It seems clear from their lives that the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq has destroyed large parts of the country, though the Kurdish northern region  may have been spared most of the destruction.
    Nadir also also writes about her many relations and above all her father. He left Iraq at the age of 16 in 1960 and never returned . "We've always had war and invasion in Iraq," he tells his daughter near the book's end. One man who went back to Iraq told Leila's father, "Never go back. Just forget Iraq. Forget it."
    So Leila Nadir may never see the orange trees that perhaps grew in the backyard of her father's house. But she recalls them here to tell us a frightening story about her family and the fate of Iraq.