Category Archives: Movies

BlacKkKlansman

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Extremism, Movies, racism, Trump

 

 

 

The film BlacKkKlansman written by Spike Lee and others and also directed by Lee, is based on a memoir written by Ron Stallworth in 2014. The film is set in the early 1970s and tells the story of Stallworth who was the first black African-American detective in Colorado Springs. Amazingly Stallworth infiltrated the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan (‘KKK’) by posing as a white supremacist on the telephone. When face-to-face meetings were necessary his colleague at the Police Department, also amazingly, was  a Jew, but nonetheless stepped in to help out posing as Stallworth.  He showed up at meetings in the basement of a KKK member whose wife served cheese and crackers to those planning racially based attacks.

The portrait of the Klan members is not flattering. Their racism seems impossible. How could people have the crazy ideas they had? I kept thinking that Lee ought to have made a film about covert racism instead of the easy target of the KKK. After all there can’t be any racists like that anymore, I thought.  Yet the more I thought about the film the more I realized that is not true.  Many of the Klan members expressed views that seem to have come directly from Trump. They said that they just wanted American First and wanted to make it great again. By which of course they meant they white and non-Jewish.

Stallworth said the US would never elect someone “like Duke”, the leader of the Klan.  We as the audience experienced a hush at this point, knowing how in 2016 they did exactly that. Such racism is alive and “well” in the U.S as it is in Canada. Canada just picks a different target–indigenous people.

I was particularly affected by the racism of the women in the film.  One of the KKK members was affectionately hugging his spouse while she coos about how grateful she is that after all these years they are finally going to “kill some niggers.” She loves her husband for giving her this glorious opportunity. And then there were women watching a racist film at a Klan meeting who responded viscerally to a scene where a black man was lynched by a “brave” mob of whites. Watching it, as we cringed, she yelled, “String em up,” reminding me of how Trump’s female supporters would shout out at Trump rallies at the mention of Hillary Clinton, “Lock her up.”

The film ends with a shock. Lee included actual video footage from the 2017 Unite The Right Rally in Charlottesville where various white supremacists, including David Duke the Klan leader, marched the streets of the city Virginia. The march included self-identified members of the far-right, alt-right, neo-Confederates, neo-fascists, white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and others. The white supremacist marchers chanted racist and antisemitic slogans, carried semi-automatic rifles (Virginia is an open carry state), Nazi symbols including the swastika, and of course, Confederate flags. Many wore Trump “Make America Great Again” hats.

The footage of the rampage was shocking. It showed men violently attacking counter protesters and a car mowing down pedestrians. About 40 of the counter protesters were injured and 1 was killed. One of them was paralyzed as a result of the attacks.

Not that all the counter protesters were without blemish. Some of them egged on the supremacists. These days it is sadly not uncommon for Leftists to forget that people who disagree with them also have freedom of speech.

After that the film switched to a few of Trump’s reactions to the events. Trump did not clearly criticize the white supremacists, but instead said, “There were good people on both sides.” The two sides were hardly equivalent.

It’s not surprising that after Trump’s comments Duke the KK leader  responded by calling the protests “a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back. We’re going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.” After Trump’s subsequent tweets Duke thanked Trump for telling the truth and the fact that he “condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Anitfa.” Later when Trump did finally criticize the white supremacists, Duke reminded Trump to  “take a good look in the mirror & remember it was White Americans who put you in the presidency, not radical leftists.” Duke knows a racist when he sees one, even if millions of Trump supporters either don’t or don’t care.

I was wrong.  This is  an important movie. Clearly such blatant racism is not a thing of the past. It is the “history of the present” to use an expression by Pankaj Mishra.

The film closed quietly with a simple but dramatic image: the American flag lying upside down, gradually turning from full color to black and white. As seems to be happening so much in America (and Canada too), many people don’t seem to see in colour any more. Everything is black and white. The extremes are winning. I hope I am wrong about that.

Roma

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Movies

 

This movie is difficult. It is shot in black and white, but there is no black and white in the film. Everything is grey. That makes it a great film. So far, I think it is the best of the movies nominated this year for best Picture.

This is a movie in which dog shit plays a prominent role. I am not kidding. And that is one of the things I liked best about the film. I think there is a sly commentary there about the wealthy family for whom the main character, Cleo an  indigenous domestic  works. domestic.

In the opening scene we see water repeatedly sloshing over some tile. Later we realize this is being done by Cleo to clean up the dog shit in the tiny garage attached to the family house. The family dog continually confined to the garage is like Cleo constantly tied to the family. The dog has nowhere else to go to attend to business. Soon after Cleo has finished cleaning the garage Dr. Antonio the owner of the home arrives in his fancy new car and drives right over a piece of dog shit. His car is soiled but he does not know it, or he doesn’t care. Cleo will clean it up. In this way the movie is quietly launched.

It took a while for me to appreciate what was happening. I kept thinking about that dog shit. It bothered me. I think the director and writer of the film, Alfonso Cuarón intended exactly this result. The dog shit was important. I didn’t think I would ever say such a thing.

Cleo’s job is to clean up the family messes. That is a big job for this upper middle-class family. When we first see the house the main floor is immaculate and filled with books. It seems this is a highly civilized family. That is an illusion. The upper chamber is what the family is about and it is a mess. The children leave “stuff” lying around everywhere, just like the dog. Why clean it up when Cleo is there to clean it up? Some of the kids even eat hail that landed on the garage floor where the dog shits.  The children play with guns, like the student revolutionaries we later see.

Dr. Antonio is frequently absent. Later his wife Sofia realizes he is having an affair. The family life is a melee, like the revolution initiated by the students. People are shot for no reason. It is morally chaotic like the house is in moral chaos. If this is the revolution, start it without me.

During the riot, Cleo’s water breaks and she takes a ride to the hospital but gets caught in a traffic jam as a result of the chaos. In the hospital there is another melee, and she delivers a still-born child. Her child is a lifeless as the the child of the revolution.

There is also a scene at the home of Sofia’s friends that again emphasizes the moral confusion. The house has dead animals, kids running around entirely unsupervised, a dog walking through the house, and ducks fornicating in the alley. There is no order. All of this is followed by a wild forest fire that people are futilely trying to put out with tiny pails of water, and puny water hoses, or even wine glasses. Children are trying to help but no professionals are in sight. One man, perhaps intoxicated or drug-crazed, stands around doing nothing to help, and oblivious, in a highly flammable coat of grasses.  It is pandemonium.  And not least it is moral pandemonium.

Things are not much better at with the peasants. Their party is also a melee. Fermin, Cleo’s boyfriend who impregnated her denies patrimony and runs away a second time after threatening Cleo. As if he would have anything to do with a servant!

The children go as a group to a movie Marooned, but no one is more marooned than they are. On the way they look at porn magazines in the public street. No one cares. Back at home the children fight and throw rocks inside the house. Again, the servants must clean up the mess.

More dog shit appears on the garage floor. Sofia, Dr. Antonio’s wife, drunkenly drives a new car into the narrow garage badly scraping both sides repeatedly. Is this shiny new car the real baby of the revolution? Another melee. Again she drives over dog shit. Dog shit is ubiquitous.

After everything settles down for a while, the family goes to the beach so the father can take out his stuff from the house while they are gone. Sofia, the mother, leaves the children to swim with Cleo as a life guard. But Cleo can’t swim! The mother goes to check her car instead. The car that is more important than her children. Cleo though no swimmer, magically rescues the children from drowning.

In the end, Cleo confesses she did not want her child to be born.  It is all a mess. It is all dog shit. Who can clean it up? The family is marooned.

A Star is Born

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Movies

 

 

A life without surprises is a paltry thing. Today I was surprised. Very happily surprised.          Each year in Arizona Chris and I have had a project–to see all the films nominated for best picture for the Academy Awards. It has been fun. One of the great benefits has been that we have a seen a lot of films we would never have seen otherwise. Sometimes we have dragged ourselves kicking and screaming to the theatre.  Today was one of those days.  I really wanted to see On the Basis of Sex, the film about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s career as a lawyer fighting sex discrimination cases in the US. I still want to see that. But we could not make when it was showing near us. So our second choice, was A Star is Born. I’m sure we never would have gone to see it were it not for our project. Thank goodness for the project.

The storey is about country/rock singer (Bradley Cooper) with substance abuse issues who takes on a young woman (Lady Gaga) who works in a restaurant, but sings at night in Trans Bar.  The woman has talent and he becomes her mentor and drags her on stage to sing over her objections. And the rest is history.

This film surprised us. I liked many things about it, but particularly the singing. First, Bradley Cooper. He was pretty good. How can a movie star be a singer too? How does that work? I have so little talent and he has so much. How can that be?  I really enjoyed his portrayal of the substance abusing country/rock star. It was a great performance.

Then comes Lady Gaga. I have to say I really knew little about her. I would not even have recognized her. I had never paid attention to her or her music. I always thought Lady Gaga was shallow. I thought her name sad it all. That shows you how ignorant I was. Iam the one who was shallow. That is a bit hard to admit. Once again I have to be humble. As everyone knows, I have no good reason not to be humble, yet I have a hard time with it.

I thought her singing and acting was outstanding. Again how can she have so much talent while a nice guy like me has so little? It doesn’t seem fair but no one ever promised fair. I particularly liked her song “Shallow”, which she wrote and they  performed. I have been told that all the singing in the movie was live. Well it certainly was real!  The impromptu performance  transforms her life. The song is not shallow. It starts as a duet but Lady Gaga raises the bar for the last exuberant solo verse including the line I really liked, “We’re far from the shallow now.” That’s exactly it. What a great surprise.

The Favourite is not my Favourite

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Movies, Trump

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The Favorite is another movie nominated for best picture. At first I thought the movie was largely a waste of time and effort.  Then I mulled it over. I think it did deliver  an important message, especially for these times we live in.  The movie demonstrated  that absolute authority is not pretty, nor are the sycophants that suck up to it. It is important to remember this at any time we encounter absolute power, or even its ugly little sister, like that of Donald Trump and the Republican sycophants  that suck up to him. This is a very good time to think about that. The Favourite is not my favourite movie, but it has it’s good points.

If Beale Street Could Talk.   

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Movies, racism

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If Beale Street Could Talk is not an outstanding film, but it is a good one. Based on a novel by the same name,  by one of America’s greatest writers, James Baldwin, this movie tells the story of 2 young black lovers from Harlem, Fonny and Tish. Fonny is falsely accused of rape and is placed in jail without bail very early on in the film. Tish is only 19 and is already pregnant when Fonny is put in jail. Tish’s family hires a white lawyer to defend him and her mother tries to get evidence that would support Fonny’s case.

The root of the film is love–parental and romantic. It is love that drives the film and floods it with warmth. The love between Trish and Fonny is palpable, as is the love between Trish’s family and the couple. The love from Fonny’s family, except for the father, is pretty thin gruel, diluted as it is by religion. Fonny’s   family evoked a familiar Baldwin theme–how racism frequently turned its victims, especially black men, into self-hating monsters that lash out at the only ones they could–i.e. their own families. Black people too often attack the ones they love the most because they are incapable of attacking those who oppress them. Warmth from family is desperately  needed to hold back the cold of prison and the American “justice” system.  That system is the background for the film, and it is not a pretty one. For the sad fact is that the criminal justice system is not a just one for black Americans.

Trish makes a telling remark early in the film. She says, “We were told we weren’t worth shit, and looking around us we saw the proof that it was true.” The reality of the American criminal justice system is that starting around the time that the book on which the film was based, mass incarceration as a result of ‘law and order’ politics was beginning to fill American jails, primarily with black men. In recent years in America 65% of convictions are against blacks who only make up 20% of the population.

Last year while we were in Arizona Chris and I heard a talk with Cornell West who rages against this system.  I heard him say on the radio one time, “If you don’t speak out against such injustice the rocks are going to cry out.” He also pointed out that “Every 28 hours for the last 7 years a black or brown man, woman, or child in America was murdered by the police or private security guard services. And the reason West said was because black lives are devalued. Black lives don’t matter. That was even though a black President led America at the time.

One of the real values of this film, is that it puts such facts in your face. This is particularly brought home during the family meeting between Fonny, Trish, and their young son in prison. Prison is the background to their “family life.” The couple lives in a toxic atmosphere of racial suppression. That was what life was like in America at the time. How much has it really changed?

The movie offered no facile solutions. I appreciated that. Such “solutions” would not have been honest. Fonny was in jail at the beginning of the film and he was still there when his young son came to visit him there with his mother.

The movie showed some “good whites” like the woman storekeeper who tried to defend Fonny and the Jewish landlord who was kind.

Yet Fonny’s friend, another young black man, asked if Malcolm X was right when he rhetorically asked if the white man was the devil? Fonny’s friend after describing briefly his woes in prison commented, “The white man sure does hate niggers.” I would apologize for using this word, but it was used in the movie. Scrubbing it would not be honest. That is also the way young black men would talk at that time in that situation.

Are such uncomfortable question like this not entirely appropriate when more than half of black men without a college education go to prison at some time in their lives? Or when you consider that there are more black men in American prisons than there were enslaved during the height of slavery? In America black lives often don’t matter, at least to whites. In America, as in Canada, racism still lies at its core. Until it is expunged and redeemed there is no hope for either country.

Vice

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Movies, War

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The film Vice is the far from unbiased story of Dick Cheney the controversial former Vice President of the United States. It opens up with scenes of the horrendous aftermath of the September 11 attacks in the United States. There were scenes of disbelief, panic, and astonishment everywhere, including in the government offices. I wish they had included the video of President George W. Bush reading a story to kindergarten children in a Florida school. Bush was told of the attack by an aide, as he was reading,  but Bush did not stop reading the story. He clearly was stunned, but had no idea what to do. So he just kept reading. I think this scene would have grounded this film.

The scenes that followed showed how the United States was maneuvered into attacking Iraq in response for reasons I will never understand. There really was no connection between Iraq and the attacks in the United States. Cheney however either believed in the mythic connection or just had it in for Saddam. The war had absolutely no discernable purpose. Iraq, unlike Afghanistan had little to do with the war on terrorism.  But Cheney wanted that war. Cheney always promised that weapons of mass destruction would be found, but that promise proved flatulent.

According to the film, the war resulted in the death of 600,000 Iraqis, mainly civilians, and 3,000 to 4,000 Americans. Other estimates have varied from much less than this to even more. Actual reliable numbers are hard to find. Before the war even started credible sources estimated that as many as 500,000 people in the country died as a direct result of sanctions levied by the US led coalition forces.

The numbers vary greatly. What is true and what matters is that a lot of people died as a direct result of this war and it was a war without any logical  purpose. Many of the deaths were suffered by children and other civilians. Of course, many wars have been initiated by elites for their own purposes, too often nefarious, while the price, the awful price, has been paid by grunts and their families. This alone is a darn good reason to be sceptical when the political leaders are braying for war.

Dick Cheney was instrumental in starting the war in Iraq. Many think that he was easily able to manipulate a young and inexperienced President to enter that war for reasons that remain opaque. Cheney was a former executive with Halliburton, a private American company that benefited greatly from contracts secured during and after the war.

The disproportion between Iraqi and American deaths was stark. It was a war by the richest, most powerful, and most technologically advanced country, and its allies, against a 3rd world country led by a cruel and vicious dictator. Few people in the United States were clamoring for this war. There were some extreme right-wingers who saw the corporate opportunities as a result of the war. Some of these were cronies of Cheney. This is the background to the film. I think it is important.

The film shows  Cheney as the great manipulator hiding and really, lurking, in the shadows behind George W. Bush. Bush is shown frankly, and not entirely without justification, as a boy beside the man, Cheney. Vanity Fair reviewer Richard Lawson bluntly dismissed the basic approach of McKay, when he said McKay’s film “issues at a busy, self-satisfied blare”

I found the shotgun approach of the film too scattered for my taste. But there were some fascinating parts. For example, I really enjoyed the scene with young Cheney and his mentor Donald Rumsfeld in the US Congress. After getting introduced to the inner workings of the political machine Cheney asks Rumsfeld, “What is it that we believe in?”  Rumsfeld is stunned at the absurdity of this question and he reacts by howling uncontrollably with laughter. What a stupid question.

I was amazed at how well Christian Bale, starring as Cheney, captured his physical dimensions. He evoked well his mannerisms.  He looked liked Cheney. He sounded like Cheney. He was Cheney. Admirable as this performance though was, it is not enough to make a great film.

Near the end of the film Cheney turns away from the camera, it seems and speaks instead directly to us the viewers. He shows no remorse for what happened. Only pride. He really believes he did the right thing and he did it for our benefit. To keep us safe. Sort of like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. I was not convinced in that film; I was not convinced now

One o the things the film showed was how Cheney believed in the absolute power of the President. Sort of like the current President.   This of course is deeply disturbing at this particular time in which America is led by a man who is the most narcissistic man I have ever seen, and who at the same time has very little knowledge, and is entirely satisfied with that state of affairs. Now that we have a much less thoughtful President than Bush (I never thought I would say that this was even possible), we must fear for America and even, the world.  In my own life I have proved over and over again, that life is hard when you are stupid. But when the so-called leader of the Free World and most powerful man the world is stupid, we are all in deep trouble. Life will be hard.

Unusually, as the credits were rolling,  and it appeared the movie was over, the film resumed after most of the audience had left. That was unfortunate for a short insert showed a focus group discussing the film, collapsed into a melee when a boldly opinionated right winger rejected the film as biased (which certainly could be true) and then ended up wrestling a feeble liberal on the panel. Meanwhile 2 other panellists discussed the most recent Fast and Furious movie completely ignoring the chaos beside them. You get the clear impression that this is where we are headed with our increasingly extremist society. Chaos. Thats sort of scary isn’t it?

Green Book

2019 Trip to Southwest United States, Movies, racism

 

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This movie has received a lukewarm reception from the critics, but I dissent from their views. Critics have suggested this movie is superficial. I suggest the reviews are superficial.

Sometimes a movie does not need great subtlety to be worthwhile. This movie tells a story that must be told, over and over again. It tells the story of horrendous racism in America not that long ago. We all need to hear this story. This is even true of us non-Americans who are by no means free of racism ourselves. We must learn to speak out against racism. That is sometimes hard. As Angela Davis said, “In a racist society it is not enough not to be a racist, one must be anti-racist.”  That is one of the reasons I have started to blog. I want to denounce some injustices. Racism is one of them.

I liked the fact that the serious topic of racism in the movie was handled with humour. That is not always easy to do. The movie made us laugh and think. Isn’t that pretty good?

The movie is sort of twist on “Driving Mis Daisy, ” with the racial roles reversed. The driver is Tony Vallelonga, a.k.a. Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen). He is a white iconoclastic Italian New Yorker. The elegant passenger is a brilliant and rich black musician, Donald Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali). Donald hires Tony to drive him through the Deep South before the civil rights successes in the 60s. They need the “Green Book” to find safe places for Donald to eat and stay. His wealth and fame is not enough. They are definitely an odd couple. Tony is brash, loud, unsophisticated and talkative. Dr. Donald Shirley is quiet, thoughtful, and refined.

The story in the film is how both of them become woke to the intricacies of the other. Both have to learn to get around the stereo-types. Tony begins as a racist, who discards in the trash glasses used by 2 black workers in his home, but learns in time to appreciate and befriend Donald. He overcomes his own racism. He is better than that. Donald learns to see the good  heart and street smarts underneath the rough exterior of Tony. Both have to get through the surface of the other to the richness underneath. Both have to look beyond skin color. That should be easy, but by now we know it is not. It is difficult to overcome deeply ingrained prejudice.

Tony is a self-confessed bullshitter. But he denies lying. He tells stories to others to get them to do what he wants. Reminds me a lot of a certain President.

While driving Tony is surprised that Donald seems unconnected to modern black popular music. He doesn’t seem to know the music of Chubby Checker, Little Richard, Aretha Franklin or Sam Cooke. This causes Tony to exclaim: “These are your people!” Tony exclaims, ultimately adding, “I’m blacker than you are!”

Donald on the other hand realizes that he is rich, talented, famous, and alone. He cries out that he is “not black enough, not white enough, not man enough,” and adds, with bewildered anguish, “What am I?” He has no place. He does not belong.  He gains an epiphany of sorts in a black jazz/blues club as he performs classical music for a surprised crowd and then joins a black band playing rousing blues and jazz. I loved their jamming.

I won’t say that the movie is brilliant. But I loved it. Sometimes brilliance is not necessary.

Gimme Some Truth; Beyond Climate

Affinity, Anthropocene, Indigenous Issues, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, Movies, New Attitude to Nature,

I attended the showing of a new film on climate change at the University of Winnipeg in November  2018 as part of the Cinematheque Gimme Some Truth documentary film festival. The film was called Beyond Climate Change and was directed by Ian Mauro of the University of Winnipeg and narrated by David Suzuki. Cinematography was by Len Peterson. The showing was followed by a discussion between Mauro and Suzuki during which  Suzuki delivered a stirring address that all the ingredients of a lively religious Revival. I called it a secular revival.

The film was preceded by an important message by First Nation elder Dave Courchene of Manitoba. He emphasized some important matters. I will paraphrase his remarks since it was impossible to make an accurate word-for-word transcription. He said that climate change was a direct consequence of our moral failure to follow our moral obligation to moderate our consumption and protect the earth. Our consumptive society, he said, is based on fear, greed, anxiety, stress, discontent, and ultimately genocide. Those were unsettling words. He said, “We are a species out of control.”  This attitude comes from looking at the earth as a non-living entity.  “We need a change of heart to survive as a species,” he quietly but powerful said. We must remember, as aboriginals have always preached, “What we do to the earth, we do to ourselves.” This of course follows from the fundamental premise of many indigenous people that we are fundamentally connected to the earth; we are not separate and apart from it. We have to renew the spirit—i.e. we need to awaken our deep feeling of kinship and affinity with each other and the earth itself. I have already blogged about how this is in my opinion a deeply religions notion.

Courchene added, “We need to disengage with a life that is not in alignment with the earth and aboriginals have an important role to play in this process. They can help the rest of us do this.”

Early in the film Suzuki quoted from American poet and environmentalist Gary Snyder. He was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Petr Kopecký called him “the Poet laureate of Deep Ecology”. Snyder, according to Suzuki said that the two most important words were “Stay Put.” I think he meant that we should resist being removed from the place we call home. We should stay connected to it. That is our base for all we do. We should not sell that home to anyone for money. That is what the first nations of British Columbia are doing when they refuse to sell rights to oil and gas companies to build a pipeline over their land to the Pacific Ocean.

Suzuki pointed out that “climate change is the critical—the existential issue of our times. The science has been in for 30 years. We know that the problems our children and grand children face will be immense.”

If you think this is alarmist or bat shit crazy here is what the World Health Organization had to say. Climate change is “the greatest threat to global health in the 21stcentury.” “Climate change is a global emergency.” But it is not all bad news.  The policies that we must adopt have demonstrable health benefits beside the climate benefits! However our Canadian government that held such promise when the newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that Canada was committed to the Paris agreement on climate change, has been disappointing. Committing billions to supporting the purchase of a pipeline for bitumen without adequately assessing its effects on health or the environment is a big step in the wrong direction. As Tim K. Takaro and Jennifer Miller said, “Our government must invest in solutions to, not the causes of, climate change.”

The film emphasized what we already know, particularly after this horrific year that brought us record wild fires, spectacular storms, and brutal heat waves, and that is that extreme weather events will relentlessly plague us and we had better get ready for that. This is not how things are supposed to be, but this how they are. As Suzuki said, “the entire planet is at risk because humans have become so powerful that we are actually impacting the water, the air, the soil in a way that no other species has ever done.”

Albertans are very upset that BC and some indigenous nations are objecting to their project to bring liquefied natural gas and oil to the Pacific coast through the province of British Columbia and over indigenous land. But what do they think gives them the absolute right to bring a project to the land of others without their consent? Just because such projects produce a lot of money? As one indigenous leader said in the film, “Fundamentally there are just some projects that Canadians, and indigenous peoples, and British Columbians have the right to say no to.” As another leader said, “It is not just about corporate quarterly profits.” Another indigenous leader said, “I don’t feel comfortable pushing this off to my children.” These leaders summed up the issue precisely. Albertans by and large don’t understand this. Each of us has to take responsibility for this issue. We all have to do our part.

I liked many things about the film. For example, I liked the sign held high by one of the protesters: All you need is less. That is what we always forget and this is the problem. We always want more. I loved another sign, “Live gently upon the earth.”

I liked the scene in the film where a young aboriginal boy made a sensational jump when he drove his bike into the wall of a sandbox filled with a big mattress. The photographer caught him in midflight as he lifted off after hitting the board “flying” through the air completely horizontal, with a massive grin on his face and a bright gleam in his eye. The boy was obviously confident that he would hit the mattress. He knew he was resilient. He had hope.

I loved the comments about British Columbia and Vancouver in the film designed to explain to us why many of them  opposed pipelines into their bay up the coast. I did not know it, but Vancouver is the major city with the lowest per capita greenhouse gas emission in North America. This has been achieved at the same time that Vancouver has undergone significant growth: 27 per cent increase in population and 18 per cent increase in jobs. They are justifiably proud of that.  Why would they want to lose that? I wonder how much of this achievement is the consequence of their carbon tax?

Suzuki was interviewed for his views a number of times in the film. He was clearly sad that although fishing had always been a very important part of his life from the time he was 4 years old, he could not fish in the streams outside of Vancouver anymore. He could not bring his grand children to those streams. That is a pity. Not only that, it is important. It is not all about money. As one indigenous leader said, “you can’t eat money.”

I won’t say that I learned a lot new from the film, but it did inspire. The talk that followed did more than that. Suzuki in particular was in fine form. His speech was powerful. It was a secular revival. My kind of revival.

The Darkest Hour

Movies, War

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I liked this film; I liked it a lot. It was so well done that it really made me believe I was listening to Churchill in the English House of Commons. Of course I admit I get sucked in by movies or television shows like those of Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, Jobs, A Few Good Men etc.) that rely on words and ideas more than action. This film was like that. Frankly, I have loved action movies all my life, but my love has run its course. I am sick of the same thing over and over again. A Good Guy with a gun fights enormous numbers of Bad Guys with guns against enormous odds. No doubt filling the NRA with orgasmic delight. Of course this likely won’t make me skip the next Bond Film, but that only means I am weak.

I liked this movie. As Wendy Ide said in The Guardian, “words, rather than guns, are the main weapons. And wielded by Winston Churchill ( Gary Oldman), peering beadily from behind a fortification of quivering prosthetics and a battery of smouldering cigars), words can be every bit as persuasive as bullets.” I like movies that treat ideas like bullets. After all, ideas are much more powerful than bullets.

I also loved the images of musty old War Rooms filled with cigar chomping old men. Parliament again filled with musty old men and, very rarely, a brave woman. I loved the images of glasses of whiskey and drifting cigar smoke. I found the backroom politics and intellectual skirmishes could build excitement every bit as much as a Good Guy with a Gun fighting a Bad Guy with an AR-15.

Yet I have one major and one minor caveat. First the minor. I found the impromptu poll on the train absolutely unconvincing. With not a word of encouragement from Churchill would the entire train car erupt in patriotic zeal to fight the Huns? Perhaps, but to me it seemed ludicrously staged.

My major caveat was the stunning scene of a Parliament filled with cheering politicians after Churchill’s famous speech on the occasion of the evacuation at Dunkirk, even though I found it believable. It was a great speech and I love great speeches as I said. But I was disturbed by the mob clamouring for war. That image haunts me.

It reminded me of Bertrand Russell’s autobiography in which he described with astonishment the exuberance of the people in Trafalgar Square when England declared war on the Germans at the beginning of World War I. Remember that this was a war that made absolutely no sense. The war to end all wars. That didn’t work too well did it?

We should never forget how after the killing of a Hapsburg Prince in Serbia, the countries of Europe fell into a melee of war against each other in order to protect their right to colonize the world. All in order to support their local business interests. Then they called upon the world’s countries to send their sons and daughters to defeat the enemy. Yet in Trafalgar Square hundreds of people gathered to celebrate! They were ecstatic at the prospect of a dubious war. Few questioned the madness. In the First World War some 40 million civilians and soldiers were killed. And all for no good reason whatsoever.

I know there was more justification for World War II. I would not advocate “appeasing” a second time a political leader like Hitler who had already demonstrated his capacity to ignore international agreements. But I find it difficult to celebrate. The lust for war is not a pretty thing. It is particularly ugly after the fact when the losses are counted. After all In World War II 60 million were killed. Besides that it provided cover for Hitler and the Nazis to slaughter millions of Jews, and others.

I find it difficult to celebrate that. But everyone should see this movie.

Get Out

Movies, religion

This film has been almost universally praised, but I felt it was lame. I know it explores racism and even slavery and it is very important to do that, particularly in a country that seems desperate to forget that there ever was, or still is, racism. I just thought the movie was a lame horror flick. And I hate horror flicks. Perhaps my prejudice blinded my limited critical judgment. I wonder what others think. Was I wrong?

More broadly, the fact that this movie earned near universal applause makes me think that perhaps films are universally overrated as an art from. Films are still a very immature art form. Give them time to grow up. Is that true?