English Journalist, Author, Analyst Paul Mason presents his new book Clear Bright Future, Kreisky Centre for International Dialogue, Vienna, Austria 7.0* out of 10

Paul Mason’s thought-provoking ideas on Humanism, small acts of resistance and the future of society; a talk in Vienna with a post-script on the clear and present danger of the Jew-hate in the UK Far Left and the Labour Party and what the author and radical activist thinks should now be done.

In his new book A Clear Bright Future, published in German translation by Suhrkamp, Paul Mason wants to bring back the values of the Enlightenment, reason and rationality with the human being at the centre of his preoccupation. Contrary to Claude Levy Strauss who believed that the ideas of the Enlightenment led to the Holocaust, Mason believes, as expressed in the English subtitle of his book that they lead to the defence of the human being. The German editor who must have read the book carefully realized that Mason is defending a philosophy that is centred on the human being but not as an individual but as humanity in general. Therefore, Suhrkamp changed the German subtitle to read: “in defence of Humanism”. It seems that German Suhrkamp editors are greater sticklers for accuracy than their English counterparts when it comes to describing on the tin what’s inside it.

Mason’s defence is not or not primarily of the human being as an individual but as a species-being (Gattungswesen), Karl Marx’ term for humanity in larger social groups and classes or humanity as a whole. As Slavoj Žižek likes to remind us: A Marxist is a person who loves humanity but hates people. Paul Mason lacks Žižek’s biting wit and self-deprecating sense of humour. He makes up for this by an apparently sincere and engaging passion for his ideas and an interest in connecting with his audience.

With the philosophical stance, which he propagates in his book, Mason sticks his neck out. Arguing for Humanism a bold approach that runs contrary to current trends in philosophy and academia. In Viennese-born philosopher Sir Karl Popper’s framework, Mason puts out bold hypotheses which are open to corroboration and refutation, as opposed to postmodernist double-speak. For that he deserves respect.

The primary enemy Mason identifies is the one and only form of liberalism he ever mentions: Neoliberalism. This, in his view, has destroyed and continues to destroy the lives of people in the lower classes in the West, so that today they are in a desperate state. He has adopted a definition of Neoliberalism as the advancement of the market into all areas of the economy as well as in all our social and private lives.

Mason dismisses the EU summarily as an enterprise that was made into a Neoliberal institution by Margaret Thatcher. For him, as for the rest of the UK radical left, she is the late wicked witch of the English south. The German social market economy (Soziale Marktwirtschaft) and its ordo-liberal tradition and similar ideas implemented in Northern European EU countries do not warrant a closer look as far as Mason is concerned.

A consequence of Mason’s Humanism is that it puts Humanity above the environment. So, he struggles somewhat to include current fashionable environmental ideas and I suspect he would not be against environmental engineering solutions to climate change problems. A second problem for potential leftist converts to the Humanist cause is that all Humanism’s key thinkers are men.

A further unusual aspect of Mason’s worldview is his support for the Catalan (nationalist) uprising and the Scottish drive for independence. Nationalism does not usually sit well with the left. And what today is a socialist-led nation might tomorrow become neoliberal or even Alt+right state. Here Mason doesn’t think like many in the continental European left who remember bitter experiences with the rise of nationalism.

For Mason the market is a giant black box algorithm that humanity in the Western World has handed over control to, and dragged the rest of the world mostly kicking and screaming along with it. This has led to disaster for the lower classes in the Western World.

Mason also strongly criticises the current Chinese government’s approach in a chapter called Reject the Thoughts of Xi Jin Ping. So, we won’t hold our breath while waiting for him to speak at a Confucius Institute in our neighbourhood anytime soon.

Mason is both nostalgic for the lived solidarity among the mining community of Leigh in Lancashire where he grew up in the 1960s. He sees an example of the ethics of virtue advocated by Aristoteles. He holds a deeply-felt grudge against Margaret Thatcher who in his view destroyed these communities and much that was good about the England of the 1950s and 60s. He speaks movingly about the experiences of his father in this regard.

Mason believes that the Western world is dominated today by western neoliberalism and that neoliberalism is in such crisis, so hollowed out, that not a major violent revolution, but small acts of resistance against Neoliberalism’s purely performative incorporation of progressive ideas will bring it to collapse.

Hearing him speak, one detects an interesting parallel to Christian evangelism. If you just do good deeds and come to church every Sunday you will not be redeemed, progressive liberal!

Only if you accept Jesus into your life, or in Mason’s case the Marxist-Humanist world view will you truly find forgiveness for your Western liberal sins.

The clear bright future for mankind that Mason envisages is were humanity, i.e. the Marxian species-being, takes control of the great-big-algorithm that is the market and all the great-big-algorithms which the age of digitalization and Artificial Intelligence has brought and will yet bring.

Alienation is the consequence of working and if humanity takes control of the algorithm rather than lets the algorithm take control of it a clear bright future where machines do the work and human beings are kind to each other, democratic and equal beckons.

How can we make the “clear bright future” come about? By individuals and groups making use of their human agency and refusing the performative nature of the neoliberal life through small daily acts of resistance. What might these be? An example: treat your Starbucks barista like a human being rather than as a machine when you buy your coffee there. I sure can live with that, and suspect so can many bourgeois liberals.

Mason is an engaging speaker who seems keen on explaining his ideas and sincerely connecting with his audience. He attacks theAlt+right in America and is intelligent enough to not underestimate the intelligence of its adherents and leaders. On two occasions in his speech, he mentions Jewish themes. To emphasise the evil of the US Alt+right he mentions the shouts of the Charlottesville protesters “Jews will not replace us”. When he comes to mention the importance of small acts of resistance, he mentions the uprising of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. It was a heroic act of resistance whose end in the death of those who directed and performed it was always the almost certain outcome.

Following his talk, Mason is interviewed by Robert Misik. Misik’s questions are answered by Mason with relatively long monologues. Perhaps Misik is also not quite comfortable in English. His questions are, like humanity described in the late great Douglas Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, “mostly harmless” almost fawning. Probing they are not.

Paul Mason is welcomed as a friend and admiration for him and the UK left by Misik is palpable. No probing questions here about his support for Catalan and Scottish nationalism here. And why would the Corbynist left to which Mason belongs support national self-determination in those countries but call Jewish self-determination as expressed in the state of Israel “a racist endeavour from the start of its creation”. This even though the Zionist Po’alei Tzion Union were founding members of the Labour Party?

Robert Misik opens the floor for questions from the audience. First, a lady who has some critical questions to ask him about the lack of feminism and women in his ideas of Humanism makes a pertinent point.

Then I get my chance to gently break into the comradely atmosphere of the event and exercise the critical faculties which my years as a student of the social sciences at the London School of Economics has inculcated in me.

I have heard Paul Mason speak at the London School of Economics a few weeks back, and he adapts his speaking style to who he thinks his audience will be. At LSE, his talk contained the occasional “fuck” and “bullshit” when describing people and ideas he did not like. A way of connecting to a younger international audience, no doubt. In elegant Vienna with a more aged audience none of that.

Here a from memory a summary of my question and Paul Mason’s answer.

In early1945 while the Jews of Europe were murdered by the German and other Nazis in Auschwitz, Treblinka Maidanek and other death camps as well as outside of these, George Orwell wrote about Antisemitism on the Left. In his essay Antisemitism in Great Britain, he highlights that the people he speaks to deeply dislike Jews because of what they are and do. They deny, however, that they are anti-Semitic. They say Hitler and the Nazi-party are anti-Semitic and they are the enemy, we on the other dislike the Jews and believe that they do for good reasons. Orwell points out that he himself finds it attractive to dislike the Jews and so has some empathy with that view but he also realizes that it is a wrong view Orwell would like to know why it has such a strong hold over people, even people like him who know it is untrue. Here a link to his article. 

http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/antisemitism/english/e_antib

The Labour Party has a “both-and” strategy with respect to Jew-hate that is not dissimilar to the FPÖ’s in Austria: The Labour Party is theoretically against racism including speech acts, threats and physical acts of Jew-hate. In practice, however, almost every day prominent members of the Labour party and Corbyn-supporters inside and outside the Labour Party perform a lot of Jew-hating acts. For instance, many women Labour Party Members of Parliament who are Jewish and not Corbynist are constantly inundated with Jew-hating abuse by Corbyn supporters. Would Mason recommend that other European Leftist parties that are currently in trouble like the German SPD and the Austrian SPÖ also adopt this both-end strategy towards Jews?

In his answer, Mason, who is familiar with George Orwell’s essay, mentions three sources of Jew-hate in the Corbynist left in the Labour Party. One is that the poor and downtrodden in the UK are suffering a lot of oppression from the neo-liberal system. They do not, however, identify this as a systemic problem. They want to identify the people who suppress them rather than the system, among the international billionaire business elites and these people are often Jewish. This, secondly, gives rise to a lot of conspiracy theories; it is necessary but difficult to fight against these. Thirdly, within the UK Labour Party, there is an age-old fight between Jewish Anti-Zionists on the one hand and Jewish Zionists on the other. This has extended to large swathes of the party exceeding in importance and in the tone of the debate its actual proportions. Mason thinks that it is important that the British left not be deflected by the Zionism debate. There are more important issues at stake. He also wants to have a more active education about the Holocaust in the Labour party taken groups of Labour Party members to Auschwitz and Maidanek. In his remarks, Mason also says Corbyn is not an anti-Semite.

I only have the right to one question, which is fair, so I cannot probe how sincere Mason is in his views. What does he mean by Anti-Semitism? After all the Corbyn supporting Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said recently “Hating all the Jews in Israel is not anti-Semitic”. It is, however, certainly Jew-hate.

On the day Mason speaks in Vienna, there are numerous reports in the news dealing with tweets and tape recordings expressing Jew-hate by members of the Labour Party including National Executive Committee Members like Mr. Willsman, the Labour Party candidate standing in the by-election in Peterborough and member of the left and talk show host for Rupert Murdoch George Galloway “there will be no Israeli flag on the Cup” Galloway triumphantly writes in his hateful message alluding to Tottenham’s Jewish connections in North London. The assertion that one can be virulently anti-Zionist without veering into vile Jew-hate may work in theory but turns out to be untenable in practice. Just read the comments by Corbyn supporters in the Independent and Guardian on-line when these issues are part of an article in those papers.

Given that Labour Party this week became subject of an official investigation by the statutory UK Equality and Human Rights Commission Paul Mason’s sincerity maybe born of legal necessity rather than personal conviction. Mason had mentioned earlier that he had recently worked in the theatre. And as someone once said: “The most important quality in the theatre is sincerity and if you can fake that you have really got it made”.

Nevertheless, Paul Mason appears sincere if incomplete in his response and ready to discuss and engage.

I wanted to end my report on this hopeful note but unfortunately for the international far left, but unfortunately I cannot.

A young Austrian man asks to speak and starts to sharply question Mason. I am very surprised at your response, he says. Why do you accept that there is Jew-hate in the left of the UK Labour Party? Are you not aware that all this is trumped up charge by Blairites and agents of the Israeli government who want to stop Jeremy Corbyn? This has been proven by Al-Jazeera I can show you the sources, the young man says.

Mason seems a bit uncomfortable but looks like he has heard this before. Not wishing to lose a potential left-wing Humanist just because he spouts conspiracy theories, Mason says that what the young man says may be true but doesn’t change what he Mason said about the subject even if it were.

I, on the other hand, leave the event with the feeling that the Jew-hating acts of the Labour Party left are spreading their poison internationally. Someone once said: Primary Antisemitism is the anti-Semitism that led to Auschwitz, secondary anti-Semitism is the anti-Semitism because of Auschwitz. Similarly, the Jews who fight the vicious Jew-hate widespread in the left are the cause of Jew hate (they are dubbed Blairite Jews, Trump-loving Jews, colonialist slave trader Jews, etc.). It looks like the UK’s Labour Party’s left and their allies’ poison of Jew-hate has now spread internationally. This is not the time for dropping one’s guard to the Jew-hate of the Alt+right and the Far Left.

https://www.kreisky-forum.org/cal/2082/2019_6/kalender.html

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clear-Bright-Future-Radical-Defence/dp/0241320100/ref=sr_1_1?crid=38UIFFDG9M41V&keywords=clear+bright+future&qid=1559737404&s=gateway&sprefix=Clear+Bright%2Caps%2C197&sr=8-1

Robert Misik (left) and Paul Mason 

Small editorial changes were made on 5 June 2019 at 17:45 to my paraphrasing of Orwell's essay: Antisemitism in Great Britain. 

Downstate, Play 2018, by Bruce Norris directed by Pam MacKinnon, National Theatre London, 8.5 out of 10

Four men who have served their sentence for various child sexual abuse offences share a home in downstate Illinois. If the premise of this play puts you off, do not let it. Playwright Bruce Norris (Clybourne Park) has written a thought-provoking new play with sharp and punchy dialogue. The ensemble cast is excellent, too. The questions Downstate raises will keep you reluctantly but deservedly busy well after the final curtain has dropped. While this National Theatre-Steppenwolf co-production has ended its current run in London’s National Theatre it is likely to reappear on the theatre circuit in London or elsewhere.

Downstate Illinois 2018; in a house shared by four men, Andy (Tim Hopper) who is in his thirties comes to confront the whitehaired wheelchair-bound mild-mannered Fred (Peter Guinan). Andy seeks acknowledgement of the crime Fred has committed against him when Andy was a 9-year-old and Fred his piano teacher. Fred has served his time in prison. whose Andy has spent much of his life in therapy and attending child abuse survivors-groups. Fred’s three housemates are also convicted child offenders: The black gay Dee (K Todd Freeman) is unrepentant about his “love affair” with a Peter Pan cast member just about underage. Loud-mouth tattooed Gio (Glenn Davis) was in prison for sex with a 15-year-old girl and the Hispanic Felix sexually abused his own daughter. Having completed their stays in prison, laws in the US demand that their neighbours be informed of the offences. Moreover, restrictions are imposed upon their movements, that can make their day to day life difficult. It is almost impossible for them to find a house or apartment to rent. Hence the sharing arrangement in one of the rare available properties in rural Illinois. Their weary overworked probation officer Ivy (Cecilia Noble) regularly checks up on them. As the inner and outer tensions of the different protagonists become apparent a drama begins to unfold.

There is probably no topic on which one can get most people to agree so easily as on the vileness of the crime of child sexual abuse and of the people who commit it. There will also be widespread agreement that the safeguards set by society after offenders have served their sentence. Playwright Bruce Norris (who had a hit with his previous play Clybourne Park https://alondontheatergoer.blogspot.com/2010/11/clybourne-park-by-chuck-norris-royal.html), however, is nothing if not a talented contrarian. In a cleverly constructed play with punchy, witty and moving dialogues he manages to make us see the perpetrators of vile sex-offences as individuals with human character traits beyond their sexual offences and proclivities. Norris does this without detracting from the fact that the men concerned are guilty of various offences ranging from the vilest to the quite bad. Every individual is different; every offence is too. Be that as it may, all the perpetrators will remain under the scrutiny of their neighbours and the penal system for the rest of their lives with severe restrictions imposed upon them. 

The survivor Andy is not only traumatized by his experience but also conditioned by the lifelong treatment and the ideas purveyed in the survivors-groups to solidify his victim-status which he tries hard to overcome. 

Norris poses the issues very skilfully and in an entertaining way that keeps the audience on the edge of their while making them think about strongly formed ideas well after the play is over. His writing has a touch of the great David Mamet’s (Oleanna, Race) about it. 

Downstate at the National Theatre was a co-production with Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre where playwright Bruce Norris is a talented actor and playwright. Pam MacKinnon’s direction is spot on. Acting performances of the ensemble are excellent. Francis Guinan as Fred and K Todd Freeman as Dee stand out, as does Cecilia Noble in the role of probation officer Ivy. While the play has ended its current run in London’s National Theatre it is likely to reappear on the theatre circuit in London or elsewhere. I can recommend it despite its seemingly off-putting subject matter. It is an important contribution to a fraught subject. 

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/downstate

Three Sisters, Play by Anton Chekhov, directed by Rebecca Frecknall, Almeida Theatre, London 8.5* out of 10

Chekhov aficionados may not see the need for modernization in Cordelia Lynn's adaptation of Three Sisters, but many ordinary mortals among the theatre-going public will enjoy this production of the Russian author's great play. All acting performances are of a high standard, Patsy Ferran as Olga is magnetic, Pearl Chanda as Masha seductive. The Almeida remains a great place to see accessible high-quality theatre. 

Russia at the turn of the 20th century. After the death of their father, a General in the Russian army, the Prozorov sisters Olga (Patsy Ferran), Masha (Pearl Chanda) and Irina (Ria Zmitrowicz) live in a remote small garrison town with their brother Andrey (Freddy Meredith). They live a comfortable life and the social and intellectual stimulation, such as there is, is provided by the stationed officers. Olga is a spinster of a pragmatic nature. Masha is a sassy lady who married her first love the fatherly local Latin teacher Kulygin (Elliot Levey) and now regrets it; Irina the youngest dreams of romantic love and city life in Moscow. And then there is their young brother Andrei, who seems suited for an academic career, but falls in love below his station with a local town girl Natasha (Lois Chimimba). She starts out shy and uncertain but will prove more than a handful for the Prozorov clan. A posse of officers from the local garrison show interest in the ladies of the Prozorov-household and engage in romantically-charged intellectual and philosophical banter with them. What is man’s and woman’s purpose on earth? How does one get to fulfil one’s potential? (The renowned Austrian psychiatrist and bestselling author of Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, would have a field day with Chekhov’s protagonists.) Big dreams clash with the limitations and flaws of the different characters and with unfortunate chains of events to ultimately end in more and less dramatic disappointments. If this summary puts you off, don’t let it: Anton Chekhov makes it very compelling.

The Almeida production of Chekhov’s classic is based on a new adaptation by Cordelia Lynn. The outcome may not please Chekhov connoisseurs, but ordinary mortals will find it accessible, moving and entertaining. And even Chekhov-aficionados should enjoy this production where music (Angus MacRae), choreography including a  lively start into the action, direction (Rebecca Frecknall), and acting performances are in good balance and hold the audience’s attention from beginning to end. Peter MacDonald as Masha’s lover Vershinin and Eliott Levey as her husband Kulygin stand out among the male actors. Patsy Ferran is magnetic as Olga, Pearl Chanda seductive as Masha both when she leaves her hat on and when she takes it off. Almeida Theatre productions are usually of a high standard and this production of Three Sisters lived up to my high expectations. Recommended.

https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/three-sisters/8-apr-2020-25-may-2019

Top Girls, Play written by Caryl Churchill directed by Lyndsay Turner, National Theatre, London 7* out of 10

Top Girls, the celebrated 1980s play by Caryl Churchill is well constructed and makes some important points still relevant today. In this production, however, the balance between drama, comedy and “Lehrstück” (pedagogic play) is tilted towards the latter and that did not quite work for me.   

England 1981. Thanks to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s policies, Britain is open for business like it has not been for decades. Marlene (Katherine Kingsley) has landed the top job at the employment agency Top Girls. She celebrates in a trendy Asian Restaurant with a few female historical figures who were in or close to it over the centuries: Isabella Bird (Siobhan Redmond) the Victorian lady traveller, the Pope Joan (Amanda Lawrence) who became pope pretending to be a man, Lady Nijo (Wendy Kweh) Japanese concubine, Boccaccio’s Patient Griselda (Lucy Ellinson) – it’s complicated, and Dull Gret (Ashley McGuire) a female warrior from the Low Countries in full armour. As they exchange their “war-stories” it becomes clear they are all female outliers who achieved some measure of success by abandoning a larger or smaller part of their femininity or enduring male cruelty with extraordinary resilience. Each had to pay a price for this over and above that paid by men in similar positions. As the play proceeds in non-chronological order we get to know Marlene’s work colleagues, the wife of the man who she beat to the top job, as well as Marlene’s sister Joyce (Lucy Black), Angie (Liv Hill), Marlene’s niece who suffers from learning difficulties and her younger friend Kit (Ashna Rubheru). 

What kind of feminism is the one based on ruthless competitive and individualistic Thatcherist worldview? Is it desirable to have a small number of women rise to the top by behaving like men, at a cost to other women and themselves? These questions are put most convincingly by Marlene’s sister, the life she leads and the dignity she aspires to.

One doesn’t have to agree with playwright Caryl Churchill’s views to appreciate the intelligent way she weaves them into a contemporary drama with historical references and director Lyndsay Turners lavish production with an all-female cast of 18. The 1982 play is still relevant, although in the context was different from today. Top Girls examines the price to be paid by exceptional women who succeed in the business world and the divide between them and the other women: those whose support is crucial, those who need support and will not function well in a ruthlessly competitive environment. And there’s the question of children or career. 

The key relationship is between Marlene and her sister Lucy, which is reflected in how their different lives have led to different worldviews: Marlene’s sister wants a social structure that gives dignity to all and looks after its weak. Marlene has worked herself up from humble beginnings and operates successfully in a world that focuses on the most talented, and disrespects weakness even in those close to us by social or family connection.

The physical absence of men from this play is notable. When absent men are mentioned they are portrayed as weak and vulnerable, neither as unsurmountable competition nor as potential support to the women in their lives. Through the thoughtful and acutely observant character of Marlene’s sister Joyce, the writer expresses her concern about women accepting the neoliberal narrative that, be it man or woman, the talented will rise to the top and the untalented (including those with learning difficulties) and the unwilling will find the place they deserve on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Organising motherhood in an environment where market-based competition reigns supreme seems to demands that some women must substitute in caring roles for those women who succeed in business.

Lindsay Turner's lavish production of this revival features 18 woman actors giving strong performances with Lucy Black shining as Joyce, who is also the character that seems to be the most genuine.

While I appreciated Top Girls on an intellectual level as cleverly constructed and at times witty, I did not connect to the characters on an emotional level. The simultaneity of part of the conversations in the opening scene is unnecessary and a bit irritating as one loses out on hearing some good lines. Except for Joyce and to a lesser extent Angie I found the characters to be written too much as types for making an admittedly important social and political point to fully engage with them and their fate. The balance between drama, comedy and “Lehrstück” (pedagogic play) is tilted towards the latter in this production. Still, Caryl Churchill fans will not want to miss this revival.

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/top-girls

Free Solo, Documentary Film (2018), directed by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, 8.5* of 10

Besides showing some spectacular nature and rock-climbing sequences, Free Solo paints the portrait of Alex Honnold, the best rock free-climber in the world at the pinnacle of his death-defying athletic and cognitive achievement. The psychological insights into Honnold and those close to him are as intriguing as his incredible athleticism in a discipline where any small misstep or misgrip means almost certain death.

At 33 years of age, the rock climber Alex Honnold belongs to the 1% of top climbers who risk their lives with every move they make: free-climbers do not use ropes or any other equipment that might prevent or mitigate a fall. A documentary film making team, itself consisting of experienced climbers, followed Honnold during his preparation and attempt to free-climb the 975m (3200 ft) El Capitan rock in Yosemite National Park, California. 

This results in the spectacular nature and climbing photography one would expect from a National Geographic documentary. What makes Free Solo stand out, however, is the portrait it paints of Honnold, his unusual personality and how it impacts on the way he handles himself and the relationships with those close to him. There is his mother the extremely demanding French teacher, his late father a compulsive world traveller. There is a youth with any warm physical contact, without any hugs. He explains in the most matter of fact tone, how he taught himself to hug in his twenties. It sounds like the way he trains a challenging climbing move. 

And there’s his recent girlfriend Sanni MacCandless. He describes her as someone whose goal it is to have a cozy and happy life. This baffles him. Cozy and happy is fine but it doesn’t achieve anything. Sanni manages to make Alex Honnold come out of his shell a bit; fortunately for both, she appreciates the brutal honesty with which he answers her questions about their relationship. “Would putting me into the equation actually ever change anything?” she asks. “No,” he answers. “But I appreciate your concerns.” Yet one wonders. Is Honnold’s shell not an armour he needs to be able to complete his death-defying climbing feats and will his relationship make chinks in it? His friend the climber Tommy Caldwell, himself a family man, certainly seem to think so. Clearly, being in a relationship makes some aspects of climbing more difficult, but intriguingly, although he’s clear that climbing comes first in everything he does, Honnold seems to know a good woman when he has one. 

Besides showing some spectacular nature and rock-climbing sequences, Free Solo paints the portrait of many complex personalities and their interactions with each other. This includes the team of experienced climbing documentary film-makers  Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin and their talented team of filmers/climbers, who cannot be emotionally detached from their seemingly cool as a cucumber protagonist. Despite the use of climbing ropes and other mountaineering equipment their work and risk-taking are anything but unspectacular. And so are the results.

The last 20 minutes of Free Solo show the pinnacle of athletic achievement; as Honnold puts it it’s like entering the Olympics on the basis that you either get the gold medal or you die. Together with the insight the filmmakers give us into Alex Honnold's personality and entourage this a highly entertaining and thought-provoking documentary going far beyond the subject of high-performance rock climbing into psychology and life philosophy. Free Solo is an entertaining and riveting documentary to watch on the edge of your seat. Highly recommended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4F3JK7oHn0

Studio 54, Documentary Film USA 2018, directed by Matt Tyrnauer, 8* out of 10

Matt Tyrnauer's film is an interesting record of an important cultural moment in time for New York, and indeed America. Studio 54, the club, was an integral part of a social revolution led by the rich and famous who reached out to the gay and black community to gay and black culture mainly for their entertainment. Tyrnauer’s documentary is a watchable and entertaining reminder of  30 months of abandon and bacchanalia New York City-style when Studio 54 shone ever so brightly. Above all, it is a testimony to an ingenious business couple who created an extraordinary theatrical and social experiment and paid a heavy price.

New York in 1977 was the sweet-spot in space and time when the trauma of the Vietnam War and the hippie love culture gave way to the desire for indulging oneself: partying, dancing, taking drugs, having sex and its feeling good. It was the time when money, celebrity, sex, drugs and disco music all seemed good and those indulging in it thought that there would be no price to pay. It was the time when the inclusion of gay lifestyle and black disco-rhythms provided heightened enjoyment for the privileged people in the fashion, entertainment industries and when art meant pop-art. Studio 54 was the place in New York which perfectly enacted this. 

In his documentary about the iconic club, Matt Tyrnauer looks at the two people who created and ran it on Manhattan’s West Side 54th Street and 8th Avenue, a sleazy area in a city plagued by street-crime. Two Brooklyn kids with big dreams of success New York style, Ian Shrager and Steve Rubell were the perfect business couple to fall upon the most outrageous right idea at the right time. 

Matt Tyrnauer’s film is mostly about these two people, who complemented each other perfectly. It shows how their outrageous business plan, became reality in a disused television studio come theatre and achieved immediate success. 

Studio54 was more like a crazy Broadway show, with the audience being the cast than a night club. The show began with the long queue of people wanting to gain entry and the triage at the door. 

The outward star of the documentary is the extrovert Steve Rubell. But the more interesting character is Ian Shrager, son of Max Shrager, a Jewish Toni Soprano also known as "Max the Jew". Ian, a lawyer and businessman, whose roguish charm and raspy voice reminds one of Robert de Niro’s best comedy-drama performances.  Ian Shrager is a serious and engaging character. Answering Tyrnauer's questions, he charts the meteoric rise and hard descent of the Shrager-Rubell partnership. He recalls the frantically energised Studio 54 fantasy-world, and the business-couple's downfall followed by the (by New York City standards) slow rise from the ashes. A rise that was punctuated by tragedy and shared with many who were all totally unprepared for the impending doom of the HIV-AIDS epidemic.

Matt Tyrnauer's documentary captures a brief an important period in the cultural history of New York. Studio 54 was an integral part of a social revolution led by the rich and famous who reached out to the gay and black community to gay and black culture, mainly for their own entertainment. And it looked for a moment like the rest of the world did not have to be considered. The arc of history would run not towards ever more divided identity-thinking but towards the late Martin Luther King’s ideal, a world where we would all recognize our commonality as human beings and our separate “identities” would be secondary. 

That was the feeling on the dance floor of Studio 54, where we see images Liza Minelli and Andy Warhol. We see a shy Michael Jackson dropping in on Steve Rubell. Caught unprepared, he genuinely gives his full endorsement to Rubell and Shrager’s creation. Nile Rogers of Le Freak C’est Chic reflects on what Studio 54 meant for the social and musical scene of the late 1970s, and he can't help smiling as he remembers. 

Tyrnauer’s documentary is a watchable and entertaining reminder of a unique short moment of abandon and bacchanalia 1970-New- York-City-style shining ever so brightly for a brief moment in time. Recommended for everyone interested in 1970s New York.

https://www.facebook.com/studio54doc/

The text of the original blog-post has been edited and corrected to eliminate some of the grammatical errors and repetitive phrasing in the early version.

Ratlines - Human Rights Lawyer, Author, Podcaster Professor Philippe Sands at the Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue, Vienna 9* out of 10

Prominent International Lawyer Philippe Sands in an enthralling wide-ranging conversation with Austrian journalist and author Tessa Szyszkowitz on International Criminal Law, family history and Brexit. You can watch the award-winning documentary starring Sands and listen to his Podcast series Ratlines by following the links below.   

A Professor at University College London and a Barrister at Matrix Chambers, Philippe Sands is a renowned International Lawyer specializing in International Human Rights Law. In 2015 he published East-West Street, a book on the origins of the concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity and a report on the search for his own origins. By fate or coincidence, Raphael Lemkin and Hersh Lauterpacht, the protagonists behind these two profound and competing milestones in the progress of International Human Rights Law, developed and applied at the Nuremberg Trials in the wake of World War 2 and Sands’ grandfather’s family all lived at some point in their lives in the city of Lemberg, Lvov, Lviv. This city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, part of Poland and today is in Ukraine, which explains why it has at least three names. It was Philippe Sands who, when he discovered this connection, proceeded to unearth and tell the story of two great legal minds’ invention of two key concepts in International Humanitarian Law.  He also unearthed his own family history, a family most of whose members fell victim to such crimes.

Having gained fame as a writer of a popular book about the history of international law Sands went on to star in a BBC Storyville documentary My Nazi Legacy: What our Fathers Did. He took 2 sons of key figures on the German/Austrian/Nazi side of his story whom he had met during the research for his book to Lviv. Niklas Frank is the son of the notorious War Criminal Otto Frank who headed the Nazi Administration in Poland. Horst Wächter is the son of SS-Baron Otto Gustav von Wächter who under Otto Frank headed the civil Nazi Administration in Lemberg. Civil in its designation it was not civil in its behaviour.  Niklas Frank detests his father who was found guilty and hanged at the Nuremberg Trials after World War 2. Horst Wächter, in the face of overwhelming indications to the contrary, is convinced of his father’s innocence. To his credit, Horst Wächter has opened all the family correspondence, as he desperately wants to find indications that his father under whose direction as head of the civil administration the Jews of Lemberg were sent to their death, was a good man who participated, if at all, only reluctantly in the abominable crimes so deliberately and efficiently directed by his good friend and boss Otto Frank. Sands, whose relatives were murdered under Frank’s enthusiastic leadership maintains throughout most of the documentary the persona of the accomplished barrister looking for the facts and prepared to defend or prosecute as the barristers’ code of ethics demands. He says he is not proud of the moment where he temporarily loses his professional cool with Horst Wächter.

The award-winning film led Sands to research what happened to Otto Wächter after the war. How had Wächter escaped the attempts of the allies to catch him? The story is revealed in a suspenseful entertaining and chilling manner in a BBC Podcast – The Ratline, with a cameo appearance by John Le Carré, master of the spy novel and Sand’s neighbour in London’s Hampstead neighbourhood. 

The Ratline is the name given to the operation of a network by the highest levels in the Catholic church in Rome to help Nazi war criminals escape from justice. Since soon after the end of the War the Western Allies were putting what they perceived as their own interest ahead of the pursuit of justice, most senior German and Austrian Nazis had their crimes whitewashed in return for helping the Western Allies fight the threat of Soviet Communism. 

This prompted me to raise my hand in the Q&A session and ask Sands how he would answer the question: Do "genocide" and "crimes against humanity" pay, if not for the perpetrators at least for their perpetrators' legally innocent descendants? The dead cannot have descendants anymore while most Nazi-criminals and their descendants, the latter being innocent of their parents' crimes, can live rich and comfortable lives undisturbed by survivors and any descendants or other relatives of the murdered? No, answered Sands, the passionate International Lawyer, International Criminal Law is a long game with small but important steps having been made over hundreds of years, and big steps having been made by the adoption of Crimes against Humanity and Genocide into International Law in the 20th century.  

In a wide-ranging conversation with the London based Austrian author and journalist Tessa Szyszkowitz, Philippe Sands showed himself as great raconteur thoughtfully reflecting on the experience of his journey through the history of his family during World War II and explaining the competing ideas of "Crimes Against Humanity" and "Genocide" and their origins. Charming, eloquent and a trifle self-possessed, as one would expect from a barrister, Sands showed himself as a man who can listen as well as talk. He is passionate about the importance of facts and possesses the persistence needed to look for such facts in all the most unlikely places. His persistence is so often rewarded that in Sands’ case serendipity appears to have become a trusty companion.

Sands spoke about the research and the writing of East West Street as a search for his identity. But listening to him, it becomes clear that the identity he exudes with the most natural confidence is that of the gifted lawyer driven by curiosity to tell the story based on where the facts lead him.

Horst Wächter, the son of the protagonist of Ratlines, was also in the audience and asked to speak, trying to convince us all that his SS-father who had joined the Nazi party in Austria in the 1920s and stood with Hitler on the balcony of the Heldenplatz after the Nazi-German invasion of Austria in March 1938, would never have willingly participated in the killing of innocent people including the deportation and killing of Jews. After the event, Horst Wächter, now Philippe Sands' friend, took 10 minutes to try and convince me personally of this too. So, he deserves at least 8* out of 10 for effort; but the weight of the facts speaks against his father’s “reluctance”. Horst Wächter did tell me that he had brought with him letters of people vouching for his father and showing that he had saved numerous Jewish people from certain death. Perhaps we’ll hear if Horst Wächter has made a dent in Philippe Sands’ view of Otto Wächter. 

Ably interviewed by a knowledgeable and thoroughly prepared Tessa Szyszkowitz, an Austrian journalist and author living in London, Sands effortlessly switched from intriguing secrets of the past to British politics of the present.  As a prominent international lawyer in Britain, he is involved in advising on the legal aspects of Brexit and was as eloquent and interesting when speaking about that topic as he was about the past. Although a convinced “remainer”, Sands delivered a stinging critique on the European Court of Justice for being unwilling to submit itself to the European Court of Human Rights on Human Rights issues. With democracy coming under strain and scrutiny in Europe and beyond, Sands indicated that the protection provided individuals and groups by the rule of law is becoming an important counterweight against attempts to limit the rights of the individual by the means of a democratic majority as some governments in former liberal democracies are veering towards authoritarianism. He answered questions on Trump’s USA, the Uighurs in China the reach of International Criminal Law today. A very interesting evening at the Kreisky Forum.

Below I have listed a number of links to Philippe Sands book, podcasts, and films. Anybody with an interest in contemporary history and politics who would like the role of international law explained clearly and in context will enjoy reading, watching or listening to Philippe Sands. If you get the chance don’t miss it.

Philippe Sands

Links to books, youtube videos, and podcasts:

EAST WEST STREET, ON THE ORIGINS OF “GENOCIDE” AND “CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY” By PHILIPPE SANDS

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/227917/east-west-street-by-philippe-sands/9780525433729/

Documentary Film: My Nazi Legacy: What our Fathers Did 
Available on Youtube 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LVZOgmvPCk

BBC 10-part Podcast: The Ratline on BBC Sounds:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2018/radio-4-the-ratline-podcast

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06hmv8c

East West Street: A conversation with Philippe Sands recorded at the London School of Economics November 2016 on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP8XccDAPB8


I made a number of spelling/grammar corrections and small editorial updates to the original blog entry on 17 March 2019.

La Promesse de l’Aube (Promise at Dawn) Film (France 2017) co-written and directed by Eric Barbier, 8* out of 10

Adapted from Romain Gary’s autobiographical novel, Eric Barbier, his cast and crew have made a beautifully designed and photographed film that tells a powerful story based on true events in the turbulent Europe of the first half of the 20th century. Pawel Puchalski as the very young Romain Gary and Charlotte Gainsbourg as Romain's mother Nina shine.

Mexico 1960 – Day of the Dead, amid the crowd of the celebrations, Lesley Blanch (Catherine MacCormack) is looking for her French husband Romain Gary (Pierre Niney). He is feverish and believes that he may be dying. On the five-hour taxi ride to Mexico City to take her husband to the hospital, she reads the manuscript of his autobiographical novel, which comes to life before her eyes. Young Roman Kacev (Pawel Puchalski) comes from Russia where he was born to Polish Vilna (today Vilnius the capital of Lithuania) as a child with his mother Nina (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her maid Aniela (Katarzyna Skarzanka). Nina hails from a Jewish family, is a seamstress with an imagination that is larger than life and a love of everything French. She puts her creativity into her clothes as well as into her marketing efforts and she puts a boundless ambition into her son Roman. Her willingness to share the ambition she has for her son to become a leading recognized figure in the arts, in the French military and diplomatic corps, does not only lead to most of her neighbours considering her megalomaniac but makes her son’s social life hell. Yet Nina goes further: she quite practically ensures that between the ages of 8 and 14 her son practically prepares for the fantastical life she has ordained for him: Roman learns French, takes dancing lessons, takes pistol shooting lessons and acquires other skills, some more successfully than others. Although talented in painting, he is not allowed to become a painter, since, in Nina’s view, great painters have sad lives and only get recognition after death; this is certainly not what she wants for her boy Roman. What follows is the story of Nina imposing a giant sublimated Oedipus Complex on Roman which leads him on the road to seemingly reluctant multitalented achievement and almost effortless success in obtaining the attentions of beautiful women. Yet inner unrest and suffering are growing inside Roman as time passes. No matter how many successes he may try for to please his much-larger-than-life-mother, he cannot will happiness and everlasting life for Nina and himself.

Adapted from Romain Gary’s autobiographical novel, Eric Barbier, his cast and crew have made a beautifully designed and photographed film that tells a powerful story based on true events in the turbulent Europe of the first half of the 20th century. The story of young Roman and his mother's early days in Vilna is particularly well told and acted; Charlotte Gainsbourg as Nina and the Pawel Puchalski as the very young Roman shine. In the second half of the film, the telling of the story is still very competent and the production values are impressive, but the psychological depth of the relationships is lost somewhat. It is too much up to the viewers to add this aspect in their imagination. Nevertheless, the multi-award winning Promise at Dawn is a spellbinding film based on a true story of courage, promise, ambition, talent, and love.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5061360/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ql_1

Promise at Dawn

The Who and the What, play by Ayad Akhtar translated from English into German by Barbara Christ, Akademietheater Wien, 7* out of 10

Ayad Akhtar’s comedy/drama is watchable, entertaining and raises important issues of growing up in different and especially since 9/11 often conflicting emotions concerning living in America, as an American of South East Asian/Muslim heritage, in the first and second generation. But faced with an all-white cast I asked myself: are there no German-speaking competent actors of Southeast Asian extraction? If so, it is high time for something to be done about this by theatre schools in Europe's German-speaking countries.

Atlanta, Georgia, USA 2010. Afzal (Peter Simonischek) originally from Pakistan is a widower and successful owner a local taxicab company. He has two grown-up daughters, who he brought up in a modern interpretation of his traditional Muslim faith. The elder one Zarina (Aenne Schwarz) is a writer who is respectful yet interested in exploring deeper questions of faith and culture. Her sister Mahwish (Irina Sulaver) is prepared to make painful compromises to maintain outside appearances of following her faith while being attracted to leading a modern life without the religious and cultural restrictions of her Pakistani ancestry. Mahwish has presumably chosen a high school sweetheart from her own cultural group as her future husband. For Zarina, Afzal starts a search for a partner on the internet site muslimlove.com. As Afzal, Zarina and Mahwish each try to reconcile modern American life and the traditions of the Pakistani Muslim heritage in their own way, serious conflicts arise. Will the love and respect they have for each hold up in the face of the choices they need to make in their professional, personal and spiritual lives.

Ayad Akhtar’s comedy/drama raises important issues of growing up with different and especially since 9/11 often conflicting cultures and emotions. It is about living in the US, as an American of South East Asian/Muslim heritage, in the first and second generations. It also touches on questions concerning second-generation Pakistani Muslim American women. The play is written by a man, so given this limitation, it does what it can to portray the dilemmas from the perspective of the female protagonists. Akhtar won the Pulitzer Prize with his first more edgy and dark play Disgraced which deals with similar subjects from different perspectives. The German translation of the play by Barbara Christ is good, although I was unable to divine why Ms. Christ did not translate the title of the play. Perhaps the money of the organisation commissioning the play ran out just when she was about to deal with the play’s title? European Film Award Best Actor Winner Simonischek (for his role in the Oscar-nominated film Toni Erdmann) leads a competent cast. Felix Prader’s direction is straightforward and clear.

It takes some adjusting to watch a modern American play in German translation, but it is not too much of an effort. My problem is with white actors (thankfully not black- or brown-face though) playing the roles of people of South East Asian/origin. Are there no German-speaking competent actors of Southeast Asian extraction, i.e. Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi etc.? A young woman in the audience raised this issue with her parents after the play and made the point that it was said that she was the only person in the audience who even noticed or cared. This was not quite correct, as there were at least two of us, but I believe she had a point. The answer by her parents that the public would not accept anyone but the best actors in what is being performed by a cast of the famous Burgtheater and that would today exclude German-speaking actors of colour is not a satisfactory one. It is time that the German-speaking theatre finds young people of all colours and backgrounds to train. After all, metropolitan areas in Germany, Austria and the German-speaking part of Switzerland have become very diverse. I can see and hear Viennese dialect spoken by people of all backgrounds and colours every day.

In summary, The Who and the What at the Burgtheater’s Akademietheater in Vienna is watchable and entertaining but left me with questions and mixed feelings about the production.

https://www.burgtheater.at/de/spielplan/produktionen/who-and-what/termine/2019-02-17/983613186/

The Favourite, Film UK 2018, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos 9* out of 10

The Favourite is an excellent film with a witty screenplay,  beautiful sets, costumes and photography. Direction and editing are excellent.  The ensemble acting performances by Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone are outstanding. Highly recommended.

England in the early decades of the 18th century. Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) is suffering from gout and her trusted friend and advisor Sarah Churchill, the Duchess Marlborough (Rachel Weisz) makes many decisions concerning the affairs of state on the Queen’s behalf. Sarah’s husband the Duke of Marlborough is a successful commander of the British army in the Wars of the Spanish Succession against the French. But parliament is divided between 2 parties, the Whigs who favour continuing the war to beat the French decisively and the Tories who largely pay for the war effort and wish to see the war come to an end as soon as possible. Sarah uses her influence with the queen to support her husband and the Whigs. When Abigail Hill (Emma Stone) an impoverished cousin of hers asks her for a job in the royal household, Sarah helps her to a lowly position; but young cousin Abigail is cunning and ambitious. Moreover, Queen Anne is not always as malleable as Sarah would like her to be. A fateful dance of personal and political intrigue, affection and sexual desire is beginning to take its meandering course.  

The eccentricities of English politics and its protagonists are spectacularly on display these days as the story of Brexit is unrolling before our eyes. What we may have assessed to be as edgy exaggerated and satirical in Yorgos Lanthimos highly entertaining telling of the fiery triangular relationship of three deceptively headstrong women and the effect it has on the politics of the kingdom is probably pure realism. 

Not long ago, an expense scandal in the UK parliament uncovered that a member of parliament put in an expense claim for a custom- built duck-house another for the cleaning of his moat. When Lanthimos shows us a Tory prime minister awaiting an audience with the Queen with his cherished racing-duck Horatio in his lap, we may conclude that 300 years is a short time in politics. Moreover, Lady Sarah's descendants include Winston Churchill, Princess Diana and the princes William and Harry.

The Favourite is an excellent historical costume drama which manages to wrap the personal, political and satirical in a rather moving and entertaining package, where All About Eve meets Saturday Night Fever without detracting from the historical narrative. An excellent, witty screenplay is the starting point, sets, costumes and photography are striking, direction and editing are excellent. The acting performances, jointly and severally, by Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone are outstanding.

A highly entertaining film about some larger than life female characters in a little-known chapter of English history. The prizes and the 10 Oscar nominations for The Favourite are deserved. Highly recommended.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5083738/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

Caphernaüm (Capernaum), Lebanon 2018, co-written and directed Nadine Labaki, 8.5* out of 10

With Caphernaüm, Nadine Labaki and her team have made an important and powerful film that deserves prizes but makes for difficult viewing. Not easy to stop one's eyes from welling up with tears of anger and emotion. The unsentimental acting performance by the young charismatic Zain al-Rafeeah is brilliant and memorable. It stays with us long after the film has ended.

Beirut 2018. Serving a five-year jail sentence for a violent crime 12-year-old Zain (Zain al-Rafeeah) is suing his parents Selim (Fadi Yousef) and Souad (Kawsar al Haddad) for bringing him into this world. What follows is a flashback which shows Zain's life in Beirut’s poorest quarters where children are brought up as slaves of their parents being farmed out to unscrupulous employers. They must learn to beg steal borrow in the chaos, dirt, and cruelty that surrounds them in order to survive from hour to hour. Zain’s best friend is his 11-year-old sister Sahar (Haita 'Cedra' Izzam); but his father sells her into marriage and seals her fate. Zain rages against his parents against the chaos around him. He runs away and finds a friendly adult in the illegal immigrant Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw) from Ethiopia who asks him to babysit her one-year-old child Yonas (Boluwatife Treasure Bankole). We follow Zain, Rahil, Yonas and the others as their lives are thrown into ever more unbearable chaos within which they are trying to survive with a last remnant of human dignity.

Caphernaüm, named after the chaotic biblical city in Northern Galilee, near where today’s Israeli town of Kfar Nahum stands, is near enough cursed to hell in the New Testament Matthew 11:23 “And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day.” That is the hard-hitting accusation that Nadine Labaki brings against all those who allow a place where young children face the chaotic violent and hopeless living conditions in full sight of the Lebanese government and the international humanitarian community. Living conditions forced upon their children by parents, relatives and neighbours who see themselves as victims of "the system" too. 

Accepting the fantastical premise of the boy dragging his parents to court and a court dealing with the case is a bit of a stretch to our credulity, but the hard-hitting almost unbearable depiction of the lives that street children and asylum seekers face in the poorest quarters of Beirut every day is heart-breaking. The moment when Zain decides that his best chance of getting food and a future is copying a young Syrian refugee-girl's accent and making up a war-story for himself to get food rations from UNHCR is shocking. There are a few scenes of humour too, but not of relief.

The chaos of the precarious street life is impressively captured by Nadine Labaki and her team. The viewer feels right in the middle of it,  looking at it from a child’s perspective, and it is gut-wrenchingly uncomfortable. 

The acting performance by young charismatic Zain is brilliant and memorable. It will stay with the audience long after the film has ended. Zain is unsentimental. He curses, he fights and he accuses the adult world around him with an unrelenting harshness of judgment that it deserves. 

Caphernaüm won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, was nominated for a Golden Globe and is Lebanon’s entry for Best Foreign Movie at the 2019 Oscars. 

Nadine Labaki and her team have made an important and powerful film that deserves prizes, but it makes for difficult viewing. Therefore, I would advise discretion in deciding whether to go and see it. While the ending is somewhat unbelievably not all doom and gloom, I did not sleep too well in my oh-so-comfortable bed in my oh-so-comfortable apartment after seeing Caphernaüm.


https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8267604/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

Colette, Film 2018, co-written and directed by Wash Westmoreland, starring Keira Knightley, 8* out of 10

With Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette this biopic costume-drama fin-de-siècle France has a most interesting and astonishingly modern subject. While the chance for a more edgy treatment was missed, this is still a well made and highly entertaining film. Keira Knightley shines in the title role.  

Burgundy, France, late 19th century. Strong-willed country girl Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley) meets the 14 years older Henri-Gauthier Villars (Dominic West), a successful publisher and self-publicist with a posse of ghost-writers spreading his literary fame in find de siècle Paris. Henri and Gabrielle fall in love, get married and she moves to Paris. Far from being intimated by the French metropolis, its freedoms and opportunities for the comfortably-off, Colette, as she will become to be known, begins to take Paris by charm, in the shadow of her illustrious husband and eventually by storm in her own right. In a deceptively equal partnership with her brilliant PR man and lovable cad of a husband, she manages to turn her literary and other artistic talents into a means to leading the life she wants to lead.  Colette breaks many taboos but somehow succeeds in turning her transgressions of bourgeois norms into desirable trends and fashions. 

Colette’s life is a tour de force of sexual liberation and self-realization that swings all ways (and always). Driven by her strong-willed intelligence and a flawed but perfectly matched “partner-in-crime” and companion, who at some point will become unable to keep up with her let alone control her, she leads the transition to a libertarian Zeitgeist with good cheer and integrity.

Colette the film does what British period biopics (even f they are about France) do so well: give an aesthetically pleasing impression of place and time with great sets, beautiful costumes and pleasing colourful pictures. In this case, pictures of the bourgeois intellectual and just a little bit decadent life of fin-de siècle Paris, and the Burgundy countryside. 

A well-written screenplay tells the story in a straightforward manner, a story which strikes a 21st-century audience with themes that chime with our own times in terms of the concepts of a woman questioning men’s privileges on behalf of her sex. Colette did so with verve, intelligence and a good-natured humorous attitude often lacking today. She did so enlisting support from talented friends and lovers she chose with great skill and good fortune. 

Another parallel to contemplate is the ruthless marketing, merchandising and branding of Colette the author (initially falsely presented as Gauthier-Villars under his pen-name Willy) and her literary creation “Claudine”, both of whom are made to go viral, in an anticipation of social media based techniques. 

All this makes this film very interesting and entertaining viewing.  Keira Knightley beautifully portrays a multifaceted and deep character like Colette through the different stages of a long and productive life, a strong performance by Dominic West as her caddish, yet loving and supportive husband. As usual, when British actors are at work, there are very pleasing performances in supporting roles too, notably Fiona Shaw, as Sido, Collette’s mother, and Sloan Thompson as Colette's lesbian lover, friend and long-time partner Mathilde de Morny, Marquise de Belboeuf.

Personally, I would have liked an edgier form of telling the story than the straightforward costume drama. On the positive side, the strong screenplay by Westmoreland, Richard Glatzer and Rebecca Lenkiewicz presented “Frenchness” in English without giving way to the temptation of satirizing it from an English viewpoint. 

All in all, Colette the movie is interesting, entertaining and rewarding film, skilfully made. 

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5437928/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt

Cold War (Zimna Wojna), Film Poland 2018, co-written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, 10* out of 10

After Ida (2015) this is another brilliant film by Pawel Pawlikowski apparently inspired by the story of Pawlikowski’s own parents.  Cold War succeeds by beautifully interweaving the personal, political and musical with memorable cinematography in black and white by Lukasz Zal and an unforgettable performance by Joana Kulig as Zula.


Poland 1948. Wiktor (Tomasz Klot) is a musician helping to set up a folk music group in post-World War 2 Poland, where the Communist Party is using patriotic feelings to make its Soviet dominated internationalist ideology palatable nationally and internationally. Zula (Joana Kulig) escapes a prison sentence for using violence to defend herself against an abusive father by joining the newly formed folk music group the Mazurki (named after the Polish Mazurka folk dance). Wiktor and Zula fall in love and begin a deeply passionate, sensuous and poisonous relationship, where strong feelings of love alternate with feelings of contempt, while over many years they jointly and severally physically cross from East to West and back again. The political developments in Poland and Eastern Europe, represented by the political commissar and director of the folk group Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc) and the relationship political climate between East and West, represented by Paris, form an unusual, vivid and interesting context for Wiktor and Zula’s turbulent personal story of “je t’aime, moi non plus”.

Pawel Pawlikowski succeeds by beautifully interweaving the personal, political and musical with memorable cinematography in black and white by Lukasz Zal. The influence of the Lodz film school is evident. The strength of the story is underlined with a beautifully judged understated performance by Tomasz Klot as Wiktor and an unforgettable performance by Joana Kulig as Zula. Seeing an evolving communist Poland from inside and the experience of being a Polish musician in exile in the Paris of 1950 are insightful and unusual perspectives for audiences in the West. 

After Ida (2015) this is another brilliant film by Pawel Pawlikowski apparently inspired by the story of Pawlikowski’s own parents. It’s a story that now belongs to the history of Europe of which Poland is now an integral part, something we in Western Europe have not yet internalised as we should have. On the latest count Pawlikowski, who grew up in Poland, the UK and Germany, has received over 60 nominations and 22 awards for Cold War, all of which are richly deserved.  Highly recommended; do not miss it.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6543652/?ref_=ttawd_awd_tt

RBG, Documentary Film, USA (2018), written and directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, 9* out of 10

RBG, the documentary, has been an unexpected box-office hit among young people in America and it deserves a wide audience beyond.  The portrait and life story of a highly intelligent woman fighting with her outstanding talent and well thought out strategy for a worthy cause: women’s rights. Don't miss getting to know Justice Ginsburg of the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

Imagine God looking down on the United States of America that has given rise to Donald Trump and everything that implies – and she is not best pleased. If you were to advise, who would you pick to help people reinterpret their foundational texts and lay down the law? 

Well, how about a 155cm tall fragile yet austere looking Jewish lady in her eighties whom her grandchildren affectionately call by the Yiddish “boobbah” (grandma)? Yes, God has a sense of humour as well as a penchant for being effective. RBG are the initials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America appointed to this position by President Bill Clinton in 1993, only the second female justice of four ever to be confirmed to the court. 

And RBG is the title of a hagiographic documentary on the life and times of Ruth Bader-Ginsburg. At 85 years of age, the woman referred to as “this witch, this evildoer, this monster” and as a “liberal super-hero” prepares herself for a work-day like Rocky Balboa prepared himself for his bout with Apollo Creed in Rocky 1.

RBG tells the story of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s life from its beginnings to the present day based on extensive interviews with the lady herself and admiring fans and adversaries and audio archive footage of her appearances as a lawyer arguing cases in front of the then Supreme Court to claim for several women (and a man) the equal protection of their rights under the law that the US Constitution supposedly grants to everyone. In one of her court appearances, she memorably quotes the 19th century abolitionist Sarah Moore Grimké: “I ask no favour for my sex. All I ask of my brethren is that they take their feet off our necks”.

What emerges is the portrait of a highly intelligent woman fighting for women’s rights with great talent and a brilliant feel for strategy. In a quiet, unassuming way, she exudes seriousness, intelligence and the ability to listen and convince with a quiet voice and powerful arguments. She strikes up unlikely, yet genuine, deep friendships on her way, such as the one with ultra-conservative Justice John Scalia, a colleague and determined adversary on the court. Being moderate in tone and clear in argument at the beginning of her career on the Supreme Court, the film shows how she has become ever more outspoken. Remaining highly respected by her colleagues she writes trenchantly argued dissenting minority opinions as recent Republican Presidents' appointments to the court have changed its balance towards the conservative right. 

Most recently, she has ever less reluctantly become an unlikely pop icon of the young generation of social media savvy women who celebrate her in Tumbler blogs like “The Notorious RBG”, a reference to Brooklyn rap artist The Notorious BIG, and a regularly parodied character on the widely-watched Saturday Night Live television comedy show.

RBG shows all this while making no secret of the admiration and affection the film-makers have for their subject. But then Ruth Bader Ginsburg is clearly a highly intelligent woman with an outstanding talent for the law and an enormous amount of civil courage, who has made a deep and important impact for the good of society in the USA.

RBG, the documentary, has been an unexpected box-office hit among young people in America and it deserves a wide audience beyond. There is nothing much special about this documentary other than its content and its subject, and these make for a highly interesting and surprisingly moving experience. Don’t miss it!

https://www.rbgmovie.com/

First Reformed, Film USA 2018, written and directed by Paul Schrader, 8* out of 10

"First Reformed" is only slightly marred by a weak ending. Ethan Hawke in the role of a troubled priest in troubled times leads a strong ensemble of actors, but the cinematography by Alexander Dynan is the true stand-out in this thought-provoking drama.

New York State 2017. Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) is the priest in a small picturesque village community church in upstate New York which was founded by Dutch Protestants in the 18th century and provided shelter to black slaves escaping with the help of the Underground Railway. Starved of funds and with a very small congregation, Toller’s church survives because it is part of Abundant Life a large modern evangelist congregation with its own broadcasting facilities. It also has a large modern church and community center and attracts young people and wealthy donors, among them Mr. Balq (Michael Gaston) the founder and CEO of the major local industrial company whose donations ensure the upkeep of Toller’s small church. 

Reverend Joel Jeffers (Cedric Antonio Kyles) who heads Abundant Life has helped Toller obtain his post so that he can free himself from the demons of a difficult past which haunt him. The small congregation and the occasional tourist group looking for a guided tour of the historic church are not very demanding, but the upcoming Jubilee celebrations for his little church are an unwelcome source of limelight and stress for the troubled priest.

One day after services one of Toller’s congregants the young pregnant Mary (Amanda Seyfried) asks him for advice and guidance for herself and her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger). Michael has been away in Canada where he has become part of a radical environmental activist group. He has come to believe that the future for humanity is bleak and hopeless due to capitalisms nefarious impact on the environment and wants Mary to abort. At Mary’s urging, Toller reluctantly agrees to speak to Michael. But with his own troubles, Toller is quite vulnerable to pessimism, particularly when it is not unfounded. As the pressure slowly mounts events take a dramatic turn.

First Reformed is an understated drama that slowly builds up suspense. The issues raised in tense conversations are big issues of our time.  It is a credit to the writing that they are not dealt with in a preachy way, but serve as triggers to moral dilemmas that cause inner turmoil and desperate actions by some of the protagonists. Apart from the decidedly lackluster (non-)ending, this is a good story well told. The direction and the ensemble acting performances are all strong. What makes First Reformed stand out, however, is the cinematography by Alexander Dynan. The almost sepia tones of some of the landscape scenes and the static wide-angle view with people moving through the picture are very well matched to the pace and feel of the story. 

Is there is any damaging development whose future impact we feel confident in predicting that justifies us resorting to violence against people who are maliciously or willfully blind? This is not about using violent self-defense against imminent mortal danger as authorized by the law, but violence against a longer-term threat. There is apparently something deceptively and disturbingly attractive in having a cause which authorizes an inner drive to give way to righteous indignation leading to the feeling of justification for “righteous violence”. Given mankind’s evolutionary path violence is always a temptation and violence authorized by a strongly held belief, whether religious or secular, is apparently hard to resist. 

First Reformed is a movie that makes one think, a visually appealing, thought-provoking and suspenseful drama.