Kultur de Force

Eden Is West

2009-04-01T16:34:00.000-07:00

What it lacks in palm trees, red carpets and yacht-borne photocalls, the Human Rights Watch Film Festival in London makes up for in… well, this comparison is pointless anyway because I don’t think I’m going to receive an invitation to a gala premiere at Cannes anytime soon, so a ticket to an opening night at the Ritzy in Brixton is about the best I can do for now.

The film I saw was Eden Is West. It is the story of one character – Elias – making a journey across Europe. One man undertaking an epic voyage? Like Odysseus, then? Well, kind of. More like Odysseus’ Trojan counterpart, Aeneas. The stoic hero travelled away from the hardship of the Trojan War to found a new city, Rome, and Elias is journeying away from the hardship of their current home in the East to find a new life, in the West.

Elias’ journey begins in an unidentified Eastern European country. There, he is packed with hundreds of other immigrants onto a rustbucket. Sailing (spluttering) across the Mediterranean, the ship is intercepted by Greek authorities. The crew desert their ‘cargo’, Elias jumps overboard and swims off into the night.

The next morning, he reaches a beach – a nudist beach in a luxury hotel complex. Instead of arriving on shore with nothing and having to put on clothes to blend into his surroundings, Elias actually must rid himself of his remaining possessions to fit in. The first of many playful, humorous and downright bizarre incidents, this scene reveals the mischievousness of director Costa-Gavras and sets the tone for Elias’ surreal onward journey.

For a while, it seems his travels will take him no further than the hotel. Full of different nationalities – French, Germans, Poles – the resort represents a mini-Europe. And as the film lingers there, Costa-Gavras is exploring the journeys that people have made – on holiday and in life. When the alarm is raised that illegal immigrants could be hiding in the hotel, for example, Elias avoids detection by pretending to be a handyman. A family asks him to fix their plumbing – very deliberately, this family is Polish.

Elias’ stay at the resort creates another parallel with Aeneas’ journey. The progress of the Trojan was stalled as he dwelt in the court of Dido, the Phoenician queen. Elias, too, embarks on an affair with an older lady, a divorcee from Hamburg. And, just like Aeneas, he cannot bring himself to say goodbye – deserting her in secret, at night.

Paris is Elias’ destination. The only reason, it seems, is that a French magician who performed at the hotel, with Elias as his sidekick, invited him to ‘come and find him’ if ever he was visiting the capital. So Elias decides to take up his offer.

Over the course of his journey, without money, possessions, friends or language, Eden Is West really gets going. Along the way, Elias encounters an eclectic bunch of characters – a pair of jolly German truckers, a bickering Spanish couple, hateful French factory workers. This steady influx of new characters enlivens the film and helps to make some interesting observations about the plight of an immigrant and, more importantly, how other people react to this plight.

Some help him towards his destinations; others try to prevent him from getting there. Some people mercilessly take advantage of him; others seem like they are exploitative but actually prove to be generous. Some immediately welcome him into their lives and treat him as their own; others straightaway mark him out as an outsider and treat him as someone with no rights.

And by making these observations, Eden Is West prompted me to think longer about how people I see begging in London ended up in that situation, and how people asking me for a few pence for the tube may have already been on an amazing journey.

Revolutionary Road & Mad Men

2009-03-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

Watching Leonardo DiCaprio’s Frank Wheeler amongst the daily grey tide that flowed into and ebbed from Grand Central Station, I was reminded of another sharp-suited and skinny-tied character adrift on the same tide – (M)advertising extraordinaire Don Draper.

Our screens (both big and small) are going through a Fifties phase, and Revolutionary Road and Mad Men are the two leading examples. Both focus on troubling undercurrents flowing beneath pristine surfaces. Both feature a man with a beautiful wife and two happy children who resents his seemingly perfect existence, feels constrained by it, and is determined to break free of it.

Both men react to their situation, however, in different ways. Draper leads two separate, secret lives – one with his family in the suburbs, another with his two mistresses and his work in the city. He returns from the latter to the former only late at night – just enough time to tuck his children into bed and to sit in awkward silence with Betty, his wife.

Whereas Draper’s reaction is to close down, Wheeler’s is to open up. He just can’t stop talking. About anything. Even about his drunken fling with a nubile secretary. Which prompts April, his wife, to ask him ‘why are you telling me this?’

Frank thinks they can talk through their problems with each other will bring them together. It does, but towards a collision – an unremitting, unrecoverable collision.

Don thinks he and Betty can talk through their problems apart – he with his mistresses, and Betty with the psychiatrist to whom Don sends her. As an ad man, it is Don’s job to create, however illusorily, a sense of happiness. At home, he does exactly the same. His concealment postpones a collision and maintains the illusion of a functional relationship* – calm on the surface, discontented and rankling underneath.

The idea that ‘appearances can be deceptive’ makes the Fifties such an intriguing period. Partly because it’s interesting to delve beneath the façades (as I’ve clumsily attempted to do above). But also partly because, taken at face value, these façades are rather nice to look at.

Mad Men oozes style – from the glossy red lipstick and immaculate bouffants to the neatly-knotted ties and dazzling grey suits. The men in those suits were unabashed commercialists, driving people to spend and promising them that materials goods equated to feeling good. From their outfits, homes and cars, we see that the characters in Mad Men adhere to the principles they espouse – and from their turmoil, we see that these principles are false.

Revolutionary Road focuses less on the clothes the people of the Fifties were in, and more on the pressures they were under. To sharpen this focus, the film is infused with dreary dull colours. The costumes and set are grey, white, beige, brown – the design equivalent of saying ‘there’s nothing to see here’. Only at one point (I won’t give away exactly when) is this dullness enlivened with a bright colour – a symbol of the freshness and the fragility of life.

These intriguingly deceptive (and, in the case of Mad Men, alluringly attractive) appearances are, I think, the reason why the Fifties have been the subject of such current interest.

Just like in the post-war decade, recent years have seen opportunities grow and a belief established that success can – and should – be achieved by anyone. This preoccupation with ‘making it’ puts great value on outward gloss. That in turn leads to gloss being coated over fragile foundations.

With these foundations crumbling, everyone now seems to be questioning how ended up here in the first place. And I suppose looking at people like the Wheelers and the Drapers, who asked a similar question, might us help find an answer.

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*At least until the end of first season one – I'm a bit behind on the second.

How Revolutionary Road Reveals The Secret Of Happiness

2009-03-22T07:53:00.000-07:00

One by one, I’m working my way through the slew of thought-provoking, Oscar-contending films released at the start of the year. The Reader, Milk, Frost / Nixon all down. Next on the list was Sam Mandes’ adaptation of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road.

The film reunites DiCaprio and Winslet, twelve years after their glacier-interrupted transatlantic voyage. Just as in Titanic, DiCaprio plays an impulsive adventurer who sweeps the beautiful if a little prim Winslet off her feet and into a whirlwind romance. But, this time, DiCaprio and Winslet are torn apart not when they hit an iceberg – but when they hit thirty.

Their characters Frank and April marry, have children, and move out of the city to leafy Connecticut. That’s when the relationship starts shipping water. April attempts to bail it out (last aquatic analogy, don’t worry) by suggesting that the family move to Paris. He will abandon his dull office job at Knox Business Machines and figure out what he wants to do with his life. She will support the family by working as a secretary.

With April’s suggestion, the dynamic in their relationship changes. The young Frank enthused about the joys of continental life. Now April has the energy and the adventure to liberate themselves from their suburban life, and he is becoming entrenched in it. Shortly after they met, April calls him ‘the most interesting person I have ever met’. By this point, he is no longer that person.

“Americans have always assumed, subconsciously, that every story will have a happy ending”. This quote, from the politician Adlai Stevenson, was pinned above Yates’ desk. For a fleeting moment, we think that the assumption will be proved correct – to begin with, Frank goes along with the plan to relocate to Paris. A happy ending is offered to us but disappears almost immediately. The bleakness descends and it is obvious that events will unravel, the relationship will disintegrate, and the ending will be anything but happy.

Frank’s initial enthusiasm about a new life in France quickly turns into growing hesitation. Perhaps because he feels a sense of innate duty to provide for his wife and children – he knows that his responsibilities as a ‘family man’ can be ignored temporarily (during his dalliances with the secretarial pool, for example) but not deserted forever.

‘Money’, however, ‘is always the reason but never the cause’, as says the son of Frank and April’s neighbourhood friends, who is supposedly afflicted with madness but is in fact the only character with the ability to see through the grey suburban fog and to be piercingly – and (too) candidly – perceptive.

So perhaps the reason for Frank’s unwillingness to start afresh is fear – fear that we can all recognise in ourselves. He is afraid to take a risk, because if he doesn’t try anything he won’t fail at anything. It’s better, he thinks, to sacrifice his own satisfaction for the good of his family and to wonder what might have been, than to gamble and to be embarrassed about what wasn’t.

What I found most interesting was that, when Frank agreed to go to Paris, something went click. His perception of the world around him changed. Knowing that he wouldn’t be there for the rest of his life, he started enjoying his time in the office – he started getting satisfaction from, and recognition for, his work. His fresh enthusiasm and newfound ability creates a paradox – the fact that he is leaving for Paris is the reason for his promotion, and the fact that he has been promoted gives him a reason for not leaving.

I think everyone experiences this paradox, to a lesser extent, when we plan a holiday. As soon as the forms are filled in at work and the flights and hotels are booked, a psychological shift occurs – and this shift affects our whole well-being.

For me, the benefits of going on holiday begin, and are in fact greatest, long before I actually depart. When I know that, in however many days time, I will be far far away from my desk, I enjoy my time there much more. I suddenly feel free of constraints and full of contentment as I work on projects – because I will soon be handing over these projects to someone else.

So perhaps happiness lies not in the places we find on away from home, but in the places we can find inside our own head.

Jeffrey Lewis TV

2009-03-16T18:16:00.000-07:00

When I was growing up, my grandparents lived quite far away. So it was only on special occasions – birthdays, Christmases – that the three generations of my family all met up. Only once or twice a year did me and my sister, my parents and my grandparents spend time together.

This video reminded me of one of those special occasions. It bears little resemblance to a family reunion on the surface, I’ll admit. But it brings together three ‘generations’ of my favourite music – someone I liked at school, someone I discovered at university, and someone I’ve been listening to recently.

It's the first of a series made for The Guardian by Jeffrey Lewis, the New York anti-folk singer whose songs bring together small things (like moving house) and big things (like life and love) and strange things (like singing trees and creeping brains), and are filled with emptiness and hope in equal measure.

He is joined for a duet by Laura Marling, whose intricate, delicate songs about heartbreak and longing barely left my headphones (or my head) all last year.

And they cover a song called ‘Brain Damage’ by Eminem, who, for all his macho posturing and controversial lyrics, has an incredible way of telling a story – a skill that I appreciated as an angsty, befuddled 16-year old, and I still appreciate now, as an angsty, befuddled 25-year old.

Please watch it.

All That Jazz

2009-03-15T11:08:00.000-07:00

The other night I went to a pub and there was a band playing. Nothing wrong with that, you might think. And I would agree with you. Except when the band is playing jazz. Which they were the other night.

Now, I’ve never really got into jazz. There are a couple of reasons why.

1. Words. I like words. And I like music to have words. So I tend to listen to songs. Not just songs. But mainly songs. Sometimes electronic music. Occasionally classical music. But never jazz.

2. People. The people I know who like jazz don’t just like it. They don’t listen to it every now and then. They don’t just have a couple of records. They’re into it. They go on about it. They have an encyclopedic knowledge of it. They force you to look at their record collection as soon as you express the slightest interest in it, handing you obscure session tracks that they can’t believe you’ve heard of and that you absolutely need to listen to right now.

This enthusiasm isn’t a bad thing. Being passionate about music should be encouraged. It’s just that such die-hard fandom reinforces the idea of jazz being an exclusive club – a club that it’s impossible to join without owning the entire The Weather Report’s back-catalogue and turning your nose up at anyone who says ‘Jazz? Well, I quite like A Kind Of Blue’.

nb. I’m also aware that this idea may stem, in part, from watching The Fast Show:

And, when I was in the pub the other night, I realised that there was a 3.

This realisation came to me during the fourth seven-minute saxophone solo. Lengthy improvisation is a big part of jazz. But all too often a song seems to be superseded by these solos – it becomes a collection of individual performances rather than one cohesive piece.

I think jazz is the equivalent of this:

Skilful, yes. Admirable because of the amount of practice and determination it must take to master these skills, yes. Entertaining for about a minute, yes.

But showing-off? Devoid of any real meaning or significance? Rather pointless? Yes, yes and yes.

For me, jazz just consists of parts. These parts are intricate and pretty, but they don’t combine to form anything more than that.

Other forms of music, however, are much more effective at combining their parts to create a whole. On their own, the composite elements might appear to be simpler and less elaborate. But together, they create power and emotion and meaning. Rather like this:

Have A Nice Day

2009-03-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

Bold geometric shapes, blocks of bright colour, large confident typography. Sometimes the most basic of elements can combine to form the most engaging of designs – like these Polish jam labels.

Such clever designs of such everyday items reminded me of the uplifting work and the egalitarian approach of the Constructivists (whom I wrote about here).

The Constructivists believed that everybody has the ability to appreciate good design, and that good design has the power to affect everybody – to improve their lives, to lift their spirits, to make them feel positive about their country and their future.

Whoever designed these jam labels thought in the same way. They too must have believed that art belongs not just in galleries but also on the breakfast table. And they too believed that design has the potential to uplift and inspire – and to help get the day off to a good start.

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I came across the labels on the Delicious Industries blog, who in turn found them here.

Albion

2009-03-12T18:28:00.000-07:00

After a few cold, fun days in Helsinki, I was stricken with a condition called continento-philia. This condition, I find, is normally induced by holidays abroad. It causes me to enthuse about any aspect of life in Europe and to be scathing about any aspect of life in Britain.

ie. The weather – ‘The weather in Britain is rubbish. I can’t build a snowman. And I can’t get a tan. It’s just grey and drizzly and boring’.

The people – ‘People on the continent seem so much more cultured and urbane. They wear stylish, modern clothing and spend all day sitting in cafes. I can’t understand what they’re saying, but I bet it’s something really intelligent’.

The transport – ‘Is that another No. 19 bus driving past because it’s too full? That wouldn’t happen in [European city from which I’ve just returned]. I’d be on the tram by now’.

As you can tell, when I suffer from continento-philia I get very annoying, very quickly. So I needed a powerful tonic – a dose of something unmistakeably British that would end my Blighty-bashing and remind me of all that is good about this Fair Land.

Albion, Terence Conran’s new English ‘caff’ / deli in Hoxton, seemed like a good place to go for treatment.

As soon as I walked through the shop, past plates stacked high with gingerbread men and baskets laden with rosy apples, and sat down at the table, I could feel myself getting better.

The space was light and airy – comfy red benches lined the walls, behind long wooden tables simply adorned with ketchup (Heinz) and brown sauce (HP).

The waiters, dressed in elegant utilitarian smocks, were attentive (but not overly) and friendly (but not ingratiatingly).

And, if ever there was an occasion to describe food as ‘scrumptious’, then this was it. Pork crackling was crunchy and chewy and sticky. Cauliflower cheese oozed out of the bowl and onto the spoon, weighed down by cheesy strands. Fish and chips moved much more swiftly from plate to mouth – the fish succulent and pearly white, coated in a bubbly batter; the chips perfectly sized (neither too chunky nor too thin).

It wasn’t just the food that caused my dormant patriotism to stir once more. The smallest details left me with a warm, nostalgic glow – the bill came on a flow blue Wedgewood plate, and the teapot was kept warm by a stripy cosy.

The whole place reminded me of the England of Just William, of Jennings and Darbishire, and of the Famous Five.

A place where all you needed in your pocket to get by was a ball of string and a conker. Where your uncle visited you at boarding school and took you out for a slap-up meal. Where an average Saturday consisted of going on a bike-ride round some hedgerowed lanes, exploring some caves, getting chased by a cantankerous landowner and ending up at a pal’s house for Victoria sponge and ginger beer.

This England is a place that I have certainly never experienced – because I was born in 1983, and grew up in Scotland and Wales. It’s a place that has probably never existed. But that doesn't matter. What does matter is that this place got me thinking ‘well, maybe Britain isn’t all that bad after all… maybe next time I’m booking a holiday I’ll forgo a Scandinavia city and opt for a Cotswolds village instead’.

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You can read more about Albion here and here. And you can see other things that I like about Britain here and here.

Rodchenko & Popova: Defining Constructivism

2009-03-05T16:05:00.000-08:00

I went to see Rodchenko & Popova: Defining Constructivism at the Tate Modern the other day. It’s a nicely put together exhibition. Enough pieces but not too many, and the two artists’ stylistic progression flows clearly from room to room.

I was given an unwitting introduction to the show by Child 44, a book that I read a couple of weeks ago. Rob Tom Smith’s taut thriller is a murder mystery, set in Communist Russia – a state in where murder officially didn’t exist.

It was also a state where, deep in the bowels of the Lubyanka prison, loyalty was enforced by brutality. Where punishment was meted out before questions were asked. Where the slightest suspicion or the shakiest rumour of anti-Soviet activity resulted in torture and death. Where everyone, never mind intellectuals or artists, was viewed with mistrust.

And the art of this period – during Stalin’s reign – reflected this fear, this need for overt displays of loyalty to the state. Monumental statues, flattering portraits, celebratory friezes.

But the Constructivists belonged to a different period. Tsarist rule had come to an end, Lenin had led the revolution, Russia was starting afresh. For this new dawn, Rodchenko and Popova created a new style – a style that looked towards the future with optimism and boldness.

Slogans are enlivened with sharp linear designs, audacious perspectives, and photography taken from unusual angles. The Constructivists’ art is challenging, but it is also rooted in everyday life. It is useful, it is purposeful – and it speaks to the people without patronising them.

To reach the masses, Rodchenko and Popova refused to restrict themselves to one specialism but rather worked across a number of fields – posters, clothes, furniture, film idents, theatre sets and costumes.

Their approach struck a chord with me. Experimenting with various disciplines and techniques. Applying what they learnt when working on a billboard and applying it to designing a teacup. Ignoring superficial differences and instead seeing connections.

For me, the things I like – the things I attempt to write about here – only make sense when linked together. Music, film, art, adverts, books… not isolated elements, but connected forms. All containing words, sights and sounds. Which feed into and off each other. And create one shape.

The Constructivists acknowledged the existence of this interconnected shape. By seeing it, they could reach millions of people with their work.

And I think we should all see it, too. By spotting connection between things, we can understand them more, enjoy them more – and, most importantly, discover other things just like them.

Frost / Nixon

2009-03-03T14:14:00.000-08:00

I shouldn’t really be admitting what I'm about to write, considering this blog is supposed to be about culture.

I don’t go to the theatre much. I don’t really know why. I’m sure I’m missing out. Maybe I just have too many preconceptions about what it will be like (not so much what the play itself will be like, but what the experience will be like). It will be too expensive, I think. If it’s any good the tickets will sell out, I think. So I don’t go.

And because I don’t go, I don’t realise that these preconceptions are entirely false – that, even when booked at the last minute, tickets are neither extortionately expensive nor completely unattainable.

One of the last plays I saw, and the last play I saw that made me think theatre was really special and I should really start abandoning my prejudices and going more (although evidently not enough to make me actually do it), was Frost / Nixon.

So I was quite excited when I heard that the play was being made into a film, with the two lead actors who appeared in the stage production, Michael Sheen / Frank Langella (although evidently not enough to make me go and see it as soon as it was released in January).

But go and see it I did at the weekend. And I really enjoyed it.

Not quite as much as the play. The whole ‘story’ is centred on the interview between the confident and blustering talk show host David Frost and the resigned and disgraced President Nixon – two men sitting opposite each other, talking.

Since Frost / Nixon the play was, by its nature, simpler, it was easier for it to strip away all the other aspects of the story, all the extraneous details and distractions – and focus instead on the electrifying intensity of the interview, the tense tactics of this meeting of two minds.

For all it adds sets and colour and locations and pace, Frost / Nixon the film does its best to retain the intensity and tension of the centrepiece interview – and by and large it succeeds. Due mainly to the strength of the performances of Sheen / Langella.

Sheen’s Frost is, as you might expect, louder and brasher on screen than on stage. He captures the daring and audaciousness of a man who put everything on the line for a shot at fame and acclaim – an English St. George who boldly crossed the Atlantic to slay Nixon’s dragon.

Much has been said about Sheen’s finely studied performances of real-life characters (David Frost follows Kenneth Williams, and precedes Brian Clough) blurring the line between acting and impersonating.

Of course, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that Sheen’s performances are emotionally convincing. Which they undoubtedly are.

But I think the actor vs. impressionist distinction is an interesting one, especially since Sean Penn won an Oscar for his immaculately judged portrayal of Harvey Milk.

And I think this distinction really depends on the sort of person who is being portrayed. Milk and his story weren’t well-known (to me at least). He was a serious individual. His voice and his mannerisms were distinctive, but they didn’t define who he was. As a result, Penn’s performance was that of an actor. And it was recognised and awarded as such.

Frost, however, is familiar and recognisable (to me at least). His louche reputation makes it hard to take him seriously. His languid delivery is his trademark. He is his voice. (Similarly, it would be hard for anyone to manage a convincing performance as Loyd Grossman).

For that reason, Sheen occasionally strayed into the territory of an impression – not a reflection of his abilities as an actor (of which there is no doubt), but rather a consequence of Frost’s qualities as a person.

Watching Sheen play Frost, another of his recent characters came to mind. Another character who was smooth, confident and (although hardly to the same extent) put style over substance – Tony Blair.

And if Sheen’s Frost reminded me of Blair, what about Langella’s Nixon – the man with whom he tussled so heatedly and contrasted so sharply?

A loner, ill at ease with people, unemotional, unable to generate empathy, intellectual, reluctant to admit that he was wrong or apologise for his actions… hmmm…

The most compelling moments of Frost / Nixon come when the ex-President is pushed by Frost to apologise for his criminal wrongdoings – an anguished look spreads over Nixon’s face as he came to terms with his actions and how he, and he alone, would have to live with their consequences for the rest of his life. He didn’t utter the words, but that was his apology.

Brown seems similarly unwilling to say sorry. Even to admit some responsibility for leading Britain into the financial mire. This article puts a good case for why he must apologise. And there’s no doubt that he should. Brown’s doing all he can to get as close as he can with President Obama – the world’s favourite politician. Adopting the Obama’s refreshingly open and candid tone – the President was happy to admit that he ‘screwed up’ – would bring the two politicians together in people’s minds.

But Brown won’t. He’s not like Obama, or Blair. He’s much more like Nixon. A man who doesn’t accept that soothing words can make a difference. Who doesn’t want to tell people what they want to hear, even if it makes them feel better. Who thinks that actions, not words, created his predicament, and only actions, not words, can change it.

Which, given that Brown’s predicament affects every one of us, may not be such a bad thing.

Kate Winslet at the Oscars

2009-03-02T17:56:00.000-08:00

I’m glad that Kate Winslet won too. The Reader was a powerful and thought-provoking film, for lots of reasons. But it wouldn’t have been nearly as powerful and thought-provoking without her performance.

Compared to her gasping at the Golden Globes, her oration at the Oscars displayed great composure and restraint.

Kate Winslet wasn’t the first British actor to get a little emotional at an awards ceremony. Or to emotionally profess their love for the American people who bestowed the honour upon them (Julian Fellowes famously exalted ‘the most generous nation on earth’ when he won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Gosford Park). Or to publicly criticise their unemotional, cynical fellow Britons for not joining in her delight.

Being fairly unemotional, reasonably cynical, mostly British and definitely male, I found it hard to watch Kate Winslet’s Golden Globe speech.

Not because I found such public outpouring of emotion and obsequiousness to America un-British.

Quite the opposite. I found it profoundly British – and deeply recognisable.

Getting tongue-tied when unexpectedly called upon to speak in public? Forgetting people’s names when caught off-guard? Trying to please those around you with excessive praise? I do all of these things. Most British people do all of these things. They are truly British traits.

So maybe that's why Kate's Golden Globe gushings are so hard to watch - deep down, us British know that we would react in exactly the same way.