J.Edgar – Clint Eastwood

Little Boy, Fat Man, Operation Ranch Hand, CREEP, Operation Geronimo: respectively – Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Agent Orange in Vietnam, Watergate and the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

We are all, as people, organisations or nations, tempted by the subversive moral argument that ends can sometimes justify means: but perhaps none more so than the United States, where an almost mystical reliance is placed upon the individual, President, General or city cop, to save or protect the citizens and the country at home or abroad.

Clint Eastwood has virtually made a whole career out of characters representing this principle – if principle it be – from the iconic Harry Callaghan through endless Westerns, frontier or city; as the cop/cowboy-who-saves-the-day. It represents the belief, running deep within the American psyche and constantly reflected by Hollywood, that the last resort of Justice and Security is not the Law and Due Process; but the exercise of extra-judicial power by a single individual. This is perhaps part of the underlying rationale for the mystique of the gun so prevalent in American culture and perplexing to the rest of the democratic world. The gun is the great leveller: everyone can be a warrior; everyone can save the day; everyone can kill, and get killed.

Many of Eastwood’s films to me are either morally muddled, muddling, or both: none more so than this deeply American take on an iconic American figure; creator of the FBI, myth and legend – John Edgar Hoover. There are a surprising number of parallels with The Iron Lady: an impersonational central performance and a directorial focus on the emotional life of a profoundly political historic figure. A mistake, in my view in both cases: but for very different reasons.

Hoover made so many powerful enemies in office it is not surprising that his death set off an avalanche of revelations about a life the reality of which was so outrageously at odds with the myth to which he so assiduously contributed.

On Eastwood’s own account Hoover was a ruthless, tight-assed, prurient, mother-dominated hypocrite; a deeply repressed homosexual and an un-giving, unforgiving friend who conflated his own ambitions, blatant prejudice and political paranoia with what was best for the moral and political health of the American people. Believe me, Eastwood’s Hoover ain’t much fun.

This was a man who served under 8 Presidents and blackmailed at least half of them; set up and ran for almost 40 years the most famous law enforcement agency in the world; later claimed there was no such thing as the Mafia or organised crime; helped to stoke up national paranoia against Communism and was directly instrumental in the formation of the McCarthy HUAC (House of Un-American Activities) witch-hunt against among others, many of the most talented artists, writers and directors in Hollywood.

So tell me: what would you say might be the most interesting thing about such a malodorous guy? Eastwood’s answer is largely – that Hoover was gay. Amongst so many critical moral, social and political questions it just seems downright perverse to concentrate on the most irrelevant – to today’s sensibilities and priorities. A clue here may be Eastwood’s screenwriter Dustin Lance Black who is on the board of one of the major US gay organisations and also wrote Milk. Don’t get me wrong: Milk was rightly, entirely about the relationship between Harvey Milk’s battle to achieve political parity of esteem and his gayness. But, however salaciously, secretively sensational Hoover’s sexual orientation was, the odd way they are linked in J.Edgar is dangerous for two reasons: either it invites anti-gay prejudice only too willing to attribute Hoover’s crimes and misdemeanours to his homosexuality; or in a subversive kind of way, it builds an odd kind of sympathy or indulgence towards his worst actions because of the real stresses and risks of having to hide his sexuality.

Eastwood it seems to me falls in to the second of these traps – the same mistake, though for very different reasons, Phyllida Lloyd made in The Iron Lady. Both subjects get away far too lightly: Mrs Thatcher from her political actions; and Hoover from an endless list of nefarious acts.

Time-shifting, sometimes confusingly, between Hoover’s early days as a mother’s boy with an obsessive approach to work; and some of the key events in his later life you have to keep a close eye on haircuts and waistlines to know which period you’re in.

From creepy agent of the Bureau of Investigation, no-life Edgar, egged on by his doting widowed mother (Judi Dench) is appointed its head. Determinedly ambitious, Edgar tries unsuccessfully, to muscle in on the State police’s investigation of the nationally sensational kidnapping of the Lindberg baby. Concentrating on a forensic science approach to crime investigation and compiling the largest collection of fingerprints in the world, Hoover eventually persuades President Roosevelt of the need for a Federal body to apprehend cross-border crime, especially from famous gangsters like Capone, Dillinger et al. Hoover grabs headlines and credit wherever possible and in the volatile pre-war period persuades Roosevelt to increase his brief to include political surveillance of potential threats.

With only his devoted Secretary (Kelly Lester) to rely on, Hoover is drawn to the Harvard style and good looks of Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) eventually to become Hoover’s life-long ‘companion’ and deputy Director of the FBI. With the unquestioning support of these two devoted acolytes Hoover builds up private, unofficial files, including wire-taps and tapes on among others: Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jack and Bobby Kennedy, and Richard Nixon. He becomes an arch-proponent of the ends/means argument and perhaps the first political figure to fully exploit the immense de facto power of holding ‘dirt’ on key figures.

Given that the relationship between Tolson and Hoover, known in the real life FBI as ‘J. Edna and Mrs Tolson’ is the chosen focus for his film Eastwood is uneasily both clear and coy about their behaviour to one another. Edgar’s homophobic mother and PR-based efforts at entertaining women are shown but De Caprio’s Hoover seems more a-sexual than anything; which stories of all-male sex parties in real life tends to belie. The central relationship in Eastwood’s film just never works. True this is not helped by Di Caprio being lumbered with an accent so deliberate and clearly assumed (accurate or not) it slows down the whole pace of the film. Di Caprio’s make-up is obvious and therefore distracting and Hammer’s elderly Tolson would look over-done at a Halloween party – with acting to match.

Eastwood gives us the worst of both worlds: first, merely anecdotal events and politics with no clarity or incisiveness that prevents us making a serious judgement about this politically potent, much feared figure who abused his position and the very principles he claimed to stand for. Second a coyly uneasy view of a personal life so denuded of emotion, or passion that the disreputable empathy Black’s script invites us to feel doesn’t work either: true pathos isn’t this pathetic.

We never get any sense of how Eastwood feels about his own subject: and his own ambivalence and uncertainly transfers to us. It can be a powerful Directorial method to take a non-judgemental, objective perspective on a subject but Eastwood’s treatment of nearly everything in Hoover’s life is so unequivocal as to seem like a hatchet job at times – yet totally belied in tone by the treatment of other elements in his film.

Ethically, morally and politically J.Edgar is totally uneven. As a film the central performances are so laboured they constantly distract rather than engage us with the characters. It seems to me to be a muddled movie born of a muddled, unresolved approach to its central character.

Just as with Mrs Thatcher, I am sure there is a great film to be made about Hoover and the historic events in which he was such an influential figure: but this isn’t it. That said this was a fascinating, complex period of the last century and the backdrop of many of the most dramatic political events on the world stage. With his usual meticulous care for detail, Eastwood powerfully recreates the atmosphere of the times.

There are other good things in J.Edgar that make it worth a look and perhaps its moral ambivalence simply reflects that of its director. The ends/means justification is by definition an exception: once it becomes an accepted general principle as it did with Hoover it corrupts; not just the person but the organisation that sustains him. The person closest to Hoover’s self-serving hypocrisy was I think Richard Nixon. Now that was a relationship that would have been worth exploring.

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Haywire – Steven Soderbergh

Soderbergh’s pacy little action thriller has three things going for it: a heavyweight cast; the most convincing woman Black Ops agent ever; and directly linked to the last – a chance for once for a woman to credibly kick some seriously deserving male ass.

Real life champion martial arts exponent Gina Carano plays Mallory Kane, a laid-back, laconic Bourne-ette agent; double and triple-crossed by her own bosses – well what would you expect from a bunch of weedy male creeps who can hardly get a foot, or their minds, above the waist? Thanks to her Muay Thai (kickboxing’s ‘Art of eight limbs’) and MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) background Mallory’s battles look like edited fights rather than fight edits: the longer ‘takes’ give the clue to the apparently authentic, though of course choreographed conflicts. When not handing out leg-crossing suffering to every guy who lies to her, and most do, (so what’s new?) Carano has an appealing ‘stillness’ on camera; with an enticing combination of strength and intelligence that serves Soderbergh’s purposes and my pulse rate pretty well.

Adding gravitas to a pretty sketchy bunch of liars, manipulators, control freaks and assassins are variously Michael (well-endowed flavour of the month) Fassbender, Michael Douglas, a nastily duplicitous Ewan McGregor, an unrecognizable, almost audible, tongue-in-cheek Antonio Banderas; and beefy beefcakey Channing Tatum. McGregor especially seems to be having fun playing against good-guy type while sporting the worst haircut since the mischievous Cohen brothers took a pudding basin to Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men – “no Javier, I’m sorry we don’t have a mirror – honestly, it looks great!

I will blatantly make a virtue of necessity and not spoil your enjoyment or ruin my parlous reputation by trying to ‘do’ the plot. Suffice to say Mallory is the best ‘man’ McGregor’s ‘Kenneth’ (no disprespect to you ‘Kens’ out there but that has to sound different to Americans for someone still on the payroll to have chosen it) has in his privatised security agency to which governments have outsourced their more nefarious aims and objectives. I think, though I’m not sure, that Douglas’s Coblenz (sounding like an up-market bottle of Port), is supposed to be official Secret Service representing some undisclosed American acronym (I guess ‘SS’ is out), trying to catch Kenneth out. As Kenneth is screwing Mallory, in a non-sexual way, to achieve his own ends which never became entirely clear to me, Coblenz enlists Mallory’s unsurpassed combative skills to help him. But he issues the traditional warning in such situations – that she’s on her own should things go what I guess in this case we must describe as tits down.

Helped by an adoring, awe-struck ex-military dad (Bill Paxton) Mayhem Mallory, as you may guess, wins through with a beyond-the-credits come-uppance awaiting the real villain – who I will of course let you guess for yourself dear reader.

Soderbergh keeps the whole show rolling along with enough pace to still any initial misplaced efforts to understand exactly what’s going on.

Great fun in a white hat, black hat, cheer the Goodie (girl) boo the (boy) Baddies kind of way. Corano looks good, fights good, and under Soderbergh’s expert tutelage acts good: i.e doesn’t try too much and lets her latent physical prowess simmer inside to create a pretty potent and definitely sexy presence on screen. The girl, sorry, the woman done good. Definitely a more impressive gig than her last one – as ‘Crush’ on American Gladiators.

And watch out Mr Cruise – this girl can run too! Over 100 metres for my money there’s nothing like this dame.

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Silence is golden

The Artist – Michel Hazanavicius

A film that unites critics; but I suspect divides cinema-goers. I find myself with a foot in both camps. The Artist is almost entirely silent throughout its 100 minutes running time. Cleverly and I think effectively, Hazanavicius has created an impressive blend of form and content: telling his Singin’ in The Rainy story obversely through the superseded silent medium rather than its loud, upstart successor. If Singin’ In The Rain exploits the humour and musical possibilities that sound provided; The Artist is an homage to what was lost; its tone nostalgic about the reliance on expression and physicality the necessities of silent cinema imposed upon directors and artists alike.

It will be tedious to link all parallels with Singin’ in The Rain throughout this piece so I will leave you dear reader to note many of them in passing. George Valentin is a Silent Movie star oozing charm and vanity in equal measure. Hogging the limelight and the public adoration, he has a totally chance meeting with Peppy Miller – besotted fan and wannabe star. The press pick up the ‘star-meets-unknown-pretty-girl’ and Peppy is ‘discovered’. Both good tap-dancers this shared skill is what connects the two.

With the advent of sound Valentin’s latest movie bombs and gradually Peppy’s flapper-fun dancing and voice make her the golden girl of the new craze for sound. True to his vision, Hazanavicius brilliantly conveys this transition while remaining within the silent film format. This gives The Artist a totally different tone to Singin’ in the Rain. The silent movie genre of Chaplin and Keaton is perfect to convey the pathos and sadness of Valentin’s decline and fall onto hard times and Peppy’s concern and desire to help him without offending his pride.

If Singin’ celebrated the brash, noisy fun of the future, The Artist offers a quiet lament to the loss of the old; a paean to the past. Most critics express a deep, often purist reverence for the films of the Silent Movie era which perhaps explains the almost universal praise they have heaped on The Artist. That’s my problem: I can see that there is much to admire in some silent classics but if one looks at popular cinema and the stars who created the cinema-going habit, they mostly leave me cold. Sacrilege I know: but I very rarely find Chaplin funny and even the sublime dead-pannery of Keaton diminishes with repetition. I also find Chaplin’s little tramp far too sentimentally cloyingly cutesy and coy; much preferring Keaton’s bemused, perplexed, astonished stoicism before the onslaught of disaster the world throws at him.

Interestingly modern technology offers Hazanavicius a visual quality denied the directors of the Silent era. This frees his actors from the theatrical, exaggerated physical acting imposed by the limitations of the early technology. Performances in The Artist benefit therefore from a subtlety and reticence that adds depth and a degree of ‘innerness’ to the jerky gesturing of yesteryear. The cinematically critical close-up works better and differently inThe Artist than its rare use in the old silent era.

There is no denying that The Artist has style, panache and elegance; it pace and editing is beautifully and seamless supported throughout by Ludovic Bource’s original soundtrack; as vital here as the musical accompaniment was to the original silent movies. It has an endearing innocence and charm to carry most people through the challenging absence of words and sound effects. The film also builds to a vivacious climax that is full of sheer exuberance and joie de vivre.

Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo carry the lead roles lightly, ably supported by the occasional familiar face like John Goodman, Macolm McDowell and James Cromwell. It is also a labour of love; for its general critical success could not have been predicted, so in a play-safe repetitive industry, the sheer innovation and artistic courage to challenge the general public with something truly different and requiring some effort – must be recognised and honoured.

I think most people will enjoy The Artist; many will absolutely adore it. I’m in the first category because I have never bought in to the purist philosophy that sees imagery as the ‘essence’ of cinema and the use of words and dialogue as an unfortunate compromise.

For me the Silent movie era with one or two notable exceptions is to Modern cinema what mime was to the Theatre. Interesting – but limited. And in the immortal words of Sam Malone in response to Diane Chambers’ Arty claim that “everyone loves a Mime” – “no: everyone hates a Mime” (Cheers).

This one offers an interesting struggle – Box Office vs Critical Acclaim. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.

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Layin’  Down Trouble

they’re laying down trouble
cos they can’t get ahead
the Suits are all sagely noddin’ their heads
you made it yourself now lie in your bed
talk to the banker
take out a loan
you gotta be kiddin’
try blood from a stone

they’re laying down trouble
cos life is too short
fight for your pride, fight for your kin
and the pink shirts’ll take your ass to court
talk to the boss
the man who’s in charge
sure I can help
cost you 25 large

they’re layin’ down trouble
cos life’s gettin’ dark
holding a job, payin’ your dues
ain’t any more a walk in the park
talk to the man
the man in the sky
but he ain’t listenin’
‘til you’re fixin’ to die

they’re laying down trouble
with the smoke and the drink
seekin’ oblivion
cos it’s too hard to think
talk to each other
share half the pain
hold on to your brother
be whole again

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Margin Call – J.C.Chandor

Amidst all the Shame-ful noise,  Iron-Lady controversy and War Horsey hype, don’t let this superb little film slip under your radar. Shot in about 17 days for under $4m it has more tension and suspense than many films costing 50 times that amount.

New Director J.C. Chandor has made best use of an all-star cast (Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci, Paul Bettany) all committed to a meticulously constructed screenplay that ticks towards its known but scarcely credible climax like a watch attached as detonator to a massive bomb.

Margin Call is a fictionalised account of a thinly disguised Lehman Brothers-type US investment bank which was the first financial domino to fall in an endless line, still tumbling today; the momentum of which Governments around the world first struggled to slow and are now trying to halt; while there are still some dominoes left standing.

We are all broadly aware of what led to the credit crunch which in financial terms was and remains cosmological in scale – the numbers beggar belief to the point of incomprehensibility. Importantly however, the credit crunch is the critical context of Chandor’s film but not its focus. It has been, wrongly in my view, compared to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street movies (1987 and 2010). Wrongly because however entertaining, Stone’s films were typically polemical and perpetuated the myth that many want to clutch at today: a sound system perverted and exploited by a charismatic, larger than life corrupt individual in turn corrupting other individuals into collaborating with him in criminal activity. This is a dangerous delusion as it suggests that if we get rid of a few rogue rotten apples the barrel will be fine.

Chandor’s film is deeper. Forensically, and from my own experience, accurately, he perfectly captures the atmosphere and tone of an aggressively competitive corporate structure. Ordinary men and women with spouses and kids and mortgages but also ‘blessed’ with extraordinary acute minds especially mathematical, are enveloped in an atmosphere of ambition, aggressive competitiveness, single-minded commitment and a toxic blend of fear and unimagined rewards.

Sitting above this high risk but thrilling dynamic is a rigorous hierarchy with a sedulously sustained mystique: at least 5 levels of line management with a seldom seen, legendary figure at the top: legendary not just in terms of wealth and success but also in terms of maintaining a ruthless absolute priority of the needs of the business over any individual or any principle.

We see the implacably Darwinian social organism that is a highly competitive corporate entity in action from the very beginning of Margin Call: 80% of the traders specialising in what we now know to call sub-prime mortgages and their derivative financial products are fired in a chillingly efficient, well-tested process: you’re out; here’s your deal; fight it and you’ll lose; now security will escort you from the building. I’ve seen this happen and believe me it’s ugly; especially as you cannot supress the feeling – thank God it’s not me. Cf: wife, kids, mortage etc etc. The surviving 20% are told “this is your great opportunity- we’ve just removed 4 people between you and your boss’s job.”

Everyone is stunned when the head of the trading floor Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) is also canned. As he leaves he throws a memory stick to his protégé Peter (Zachary Quinto) – “something I’ve been working on – check it out: but be careful).” Peter is an ex-rocket scientist selling his maths brilliance to a higher bidder in the world of finance.

What Peter discovers is an undetected, unrecoverable, financial exposure of the company that threatens its very existence. What follows is a gradual ascent through the jealously guarded levels of status and authority: Peter primes his new boss, the savvy, cynical Will (Paul Bettany) who knows he will never be admitted to the inner sanctum of the corporate structure. Then up to long-serving company Trading Director Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) who when he has had the obscure maths spelt out, immediately realises the seriousness of the situation. On up through Director Jared Cohen and eventually with hushed and a palpable sense of anxiety, to Jeremy Irons’ John Tuld who of course flies in by helicopter to deal with the situation.

This gradual ascent up through the increasingly rarefied managerial air towards the corporate mount Olympus Tuld occupies is as tense and exciting as any assault on a mountain or rock face. We see men who preside daily and with assiduously cultivated detachment, over the wreckage of junior employees’ lives, realising that they too may now be at risk.

Chandor builds the suspense of this journey beautifully: as if someone has discovered a massive ticking bomb in the basement and gradually more and people are required to try first to defuse it and when that’s not possible, overseeing the removal of the danger from the building. All in their various ways are presented with dilemmas, personal and ethical. These are people in thrall to a system which turns choice into a necessity. Locked in to a live-style needing large rewards to sustain, all in their different ways feel they have no alternative.

Tuld realises the game is up: so decides to sell all the toxic stock to present clients and contacts as fast as possible before word gets round – knowing full well that it will be worthless as soon as the collapse of the attenuated thread of high risk, unsecured debt unravels. He knows no one will ever buy from them again and the same for his traders, so he offers each of them $2.6m to unload 93% of the toxic stock.

Thinly disguised Lehman’s? The last head of Lehman’s was Richard Fuld. Despite his protests otherwise – he is credibly reputed to have taken at least $500m out of Lehman’s between 2001 and 2007. The consequences for the banking purchasers and the world economy of over a trillion$-worth of worthless derivative stocks are still being felt today.

The only cavil I have with Chandor’s film is that Jeremy Irons is just a bit too good; a bit too charismatic: though no Gordon Gecko he hints at the mythology Oliver Stone peddles. The chilling thing about the real Dick Fuld is how inept and unimpressive he seems. (Check him out on UTube – it’s a relevation).

If you want to understand the detail of the background here, having seen and I hope, enjoyed Margin Call, rent Charles Ferguson’s Oscar winning Inside Job (I reviewed 13.3.11). These aren’t supermen locked into the inexorable necessities of a system neither they nor we can do anything about. They are snake-oil salesmen creating and sustaining an utterly self-serving system of exaggerated rewards and a climate of fear, pushing the venal fiction that what’s good for them must be good for us. And of course that we cannot possibly manage without them.

The answers to this are circular. And they bounce.

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Isabelle and Stephen - Birdsong

Birdsong – Philip Martin (BAFTA Preview 11.01.12)

Back in the day when the Rolls Royce was the iconic symbol of engineering excellence and ultimate emblem of wealth, a rich customer visited the Rolls Royce factory to check on progress with his personal, hand-finished car and was shown round by the chief engineer. Wanting to sound knowledgeable he asked the engineer “what Brake Horsepower does it have?” The engineer smiled and said “sufficient sir.”

The BBC is the Rolls Royce of period drama: each one uniquely tailored to its narrative source but all having a confident authority in authenticity, production values, casting and usually superb writing – often adapted. Although Birdsong is a joint venture with Working Title Films, lovers of Sebastian Faulks’ novel will be relieved to know all these qualities of excellence can be seen from the very first frame of this Philip Martin directed adaptation in two 90 minute episodes.

Abi Morgan, the hottest screenwriter of the moment (Iron Lady, Shame) has created a spare but elegant script that allows a superb cast under Martin’s direction to achieve a powerful and moving transition from book to film. This preview was only the first episode but with its rhythmic cutting from exquisite shots of pre-war Amiens where Stephen Wraysford meets and falls in love with Isabelle, the wife of his industrialist host; and the horror of the trenches, Faulks’ characters and the historical setting of their story are beautifully established.

Casting is superb: Eddie Redmayne is an impossibly handsome young Stephen Wraysford redolent of Anthony Andrews in Brideshead Revisited. Clémence Poésy’s Isabelle is both ethereal and earthy; remote but passionate; and her affair with Stephen totally credible and absorbing. In the trenches, conscripted ‘sewer-rat’ tunneller Jack Firebrace is played with quiet assurance by Joseph Mawle in scenes where we are struck by the way the social hierachy of peace has simply replicated itself in the military hierarchy of war; with often ironic and absurd results.

The plan is for episode 1 of Birdsong to take over the Sunday evening BBC1 slot vacated by Sherlock after this coming weekend. Presumably episode 2 will air the following Sunday (29th January).

Look out for this one – it has BAFTAs and shed-loads of awards written all over it – on this occasion fully justifiably if the concluding episode matches the quality of the first.

How much sheer dramatic, artistic quality does Birdsong deliver? Sufficient sir.

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Coda

In the discussion after the showing I asked whether we may not have reached a point where a film of this quality could be given a brief distribution in cinemas first: not as one 3 hour film but two sequential episodes on separate weekends recreating in the cinema the excitement of anticipation of a TV series . This would offer an opportunity to see a film under the ideal conditions of large screen and top quality sound – for those who value these elements. It seems to me there could well be a market for such a new form of distribution.

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Fassbender as Brandon

Shame – Steve McQueen

In a secular world is there such a thing as sin? That is: behaviour which most people, most of the time will agree is wrong, bad; not just by reference to its consequences social and personal, but in itself. As implied religious narratives weaken and lose their historical force in our social lives we are left struggling to find a new consensus upon which to base agreed judgements of morality and value.

Our cultural paradigm of contemporary knowledge, science, does not help us here. In extreme contexts it leads to what French Philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy on the BBC recently, called the “medicalisation of crime.” The principle however also holds more widely when unacceptable, anti-social behaviour is attributed to physical or social causal forces over which the individual has no control and of which he/she is therefore the helpless victim. We might say that the first is the response of a secular society to the problem that used to be called ‘evil’; and the second to that of ‘sin’.

Alcoholics Anonymous is perhaps the most empirically successful protective response to addiction ever devised. It sees addiction as a challenge to the will not simply as a disease of the body. It rigorously rejects the delusion ofcure with the clear implacable demand of total abstinence as the only sure way to free the addicted from the multiplicity of harms alcohol inflicts: physical, social, personal and spiritual. It challenges the person, the will, to accept and understand he/she will always be an alcoholic and thus must accept responsibility for avoiding alcohol for the rest of his/her life. AA’s irreducibly social structure of support is equally dependent upon personal choice, intention, and resolve – not physical, bio-chemical remedies. This is an impressive achievement especially as at its most severe, alcohol addiction transmutes from aberrant emotional, psychological behaviour into a diagnosable physical disease.

Strategies to protect against drug addiction are more diverse, some emulating AA, others treating it as a physical disease with physical solutions. There are people whose dependency upon alcohol or drugs is profound but remains psychological or social, falling short of bodily disease. To date I am not aware that anyone has argued that Sex addiction is a physically diagnosable disease. It is, in terms of comparison therefore, a psychological, social, even spiritual dependency which should be distinguished from physical disease if understanding it aright is the first step to ameliorating its effects on people’s lives.

The profound empirical truth of the success of AA remains: that it can and does succeed, even against diagnosable disease, by motivating and supporting the non-scientific qualities of the will, intention, resolve – collectively what we call character.

A film cannot, nor should it be, a philosophical treatise or a scientific experiment. But if you are going to use art to reveal and explore a serious issue like the apparent phenomena of addiction to sexual gratification, then it seems to me one should take it seriously enough – not to explain it; but to represent its complexity as truthfully as possible. On this basis, for me Shame is a shallow film perpetuating by default rather than by artistic intention, the victimhood account of destructive obsession with sex.

I watched Shame at the gala preview shown in 60 cinemas across the country and followed by a discussion with Steve McQueen and fellow script-writer Abi Morgan. They were united and adamant that their artistic purpose was purely descriptive; to strenuously avoid linking current behaviour to previous experience; to avoid judgmental attitudes as to how and why Brandon (Michael Fassbender) and his sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) the two principle protagonists in Shame, behave as they do.

This strategy is heroic but self-defeating. What we have are just two sets of symptoms displayed by characters we don’t even begin to know let alone understand, and therefore feel nothing towards: no empathy, sympathy or even anger or comtempt. Of course engaging actors like Fassbender and especially the entrancingly strong yet vulnerable Mulligan, do generate some emotional response from us but it derives from their acting personas not remotely from our engagement with their cryptic, unrealised characters.

McQueen and Morgan’s Brandon is defined by his obsession: apart from f*cking, masturbating and ogling porn; his only other activity is supposed to be work. But as a supposed account executive of some kind, I have no idea what, he is utterly unconvincing as the script gives him nothing to do that would convince us. As a result his masturbating in the office toilets and cramming his work PC with porn just seems pathetically adolescent and immature. Indeed even his serial conquests seem more like hands-free masturbation than anything as demanding as physical intercourse with another human being.

McQueen may argue that this is exactly the point. If so it seems to me any half-way intelligent person who enjoys sex gets that point within about 5 minutes of watching the meaningless moaning of even routine commercial porn.

Tantalisingly we get little hints about Brandon: his meticulous prissy tidiness in a totally characterless flat; his precious territoriality in response to Sissie’s invasion of his space; even his homosexual blow job at one point. Shamefully, pun intended, with all the full-on graphic gyrating nudity and grunting and groaning going on, the interesting possibility of an incestuous sexual bond between Brandon and Sissie is merely coyly hinted at. I am happy to take up McQueen’s challenge to form my own opinion about Brandon; but he gives us no character to form a judgment about.

Mulligan nearly scuttles McQueen and Morgan’s rigorously contrived detachment. With virtually no screen time in which to do it, she almost makes Sissy a real flesh and blood character. Her passion and strength in scenes with Fassbender make Brandon look even more insipid and blank. She brings the only sense of colour and well, balls, to the action.

I’m sure that an unremittingly aroused obsession with sex every waking moment must be a curse and a burden not lightened by the mocking dismissal of popular sentiment, especially male, that a chance would be a fine thing. But it is people who have pain, not bodies; thinking, feeling, willing persons who love, suffer, and indeed obsess.

We may be aroused by a body but we make love to a person. That may be what McQueen wants to show, not tell us, is part of Brandon’s emotional void – I can’t bring myself to say tragedy – but the invitation to see Brandon as a helpless victim with no choices, no possibility of fighting his own self-destructive impulses; seems to me to be a deeply objectionable form of sentimentality. And dangerously false.

Downbeat, drab and depressing. Interesting more for the serious questions it hints at rather than the ideas it develops.

Coda

There is a pattern here. I have been banging on about Lisbeth Salander in the Girl with The Dragon Tattoo. By every objective standard Lisbeth is in (her fictional) reality the ultimate victim: subjected to systematic, prolonged abuse physical, psychological, sexual; personal social and institutional. Yet as Larssen writes her she utterly rejects the excuses of victimhood. Against all the odds she assembles her personal qualities to fight those who would harm her, control her. And importantly, against all her experience she gradually accepts help from others to succeed in this. As different from Brandon or even Sissy as it is possible to be – though Sissy at least seeks help from Brandon.

Again: compare Paddy Consadine’s Joseph in the brilliant Tyrannosaur with Andrea Arnold’s Mia in Fish Tank: the one utterly free of the self-indulgence of excuse the brutal context of his life invites; the other portrayed as a helpless victim we are asked to feel sorry for.

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Play 'em as the fall. Or fold.

The Game

Cut the crap
the dealer said
wanna talk – talk
wanna play – play
don’t talk and play
don’t play and talk
It ain’t just a game
until you’re out
you’re in
deep

Gimme no shit
’bout lousy cards
ain’t no such thing
just cards
cards’ what you get
hand’s what you play
God don’t play dice
or load the deck
like justice he deals
blind

The deck ain’t marked
the deal is straight
rain is rain
nothin’ personal
you wanna stay dry
stay indoors
you wanna look around
gotta risk getting’ wet
you ain’t no lily
gotta sow or reap

Luck ain’t a lady
fickle or true
ain’t got no favours
for me or for you
its always your call
however they fall
check or raise
stack in your hand
to hedge is to lose
to be is to do.

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Be quiet! And listen.

The Iron Lady – Phyllida Lloyd

Margaret Thatcher was for 15 years in British public life, the eye of calm certainty at the epicentre of a storm of chaotic energy endlessly fed by political events: from the Poll Tax riots; the ineradicable social toxicity of the Miners’ strike; the callous brutality of the IRA campaign; and the Falklands War – Britain’s last colonial hurrah as a lone military power player on the international stage. Mrs Thatcher was the last Prime Minister ever, to actually win a war. And many will forgive her anything for that.

Then and now this uniquely divisive figure generated extreme emotions from a British public rendered almost schizophrenic in their reactions to her: many who hated her politics stifled a guilty admiration for her determination and unbending sense of purpose. She was perhaps the ultimate cross-over politician: with a fervent level of support among many Labour voting working class people; yet arousing a naked personal detestation from many on the right – such as Ted Heath. I always believed, and it depressed me, that the British people would never vote Mrs Thatcher out of office: but that a mixture of jealousy and thwarted ambition reinforced by an institutionalised misogyny amongst her Conservative Party colleagues would bring her down. And so it was.

The radio-active half-life of the Thatcher effect is undiminished as watching The Iron Lady you will hear from the audience both murmurs of approval and heckles of hostility. Examining exactly what it is that explains this phenomenon would have made a fascinating film. The Iron Lady is not it.

That said Phyllida Lloyd’s film has much to recommend it, even for Thatcher-phobes like myself. But it states for us its own deepest flaw: in a telling scene with her doctor monitoring her incipient senility, with typical rapier-like lucidity she contemptuously observes “One of the great problems of our age is that we’re governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas. Instead of asking me how I feel, why don’t you ask me what I think – that would be interesting.” Just so.

Lloyd completely ignores this insightful dictum: her film is politically anecdotal at best; there is nothing in the whole movie that resembles a coherent political idea let alone a clash of political ideologies – one version of which Mrs Thatcher passionately proselytised. What we see is an emotive but simplistic sound-bite historical tour with more whistle-stops than a film twice the 104 minutes here could handle.

Ignoring therefore her own subject’s stated view; Lloyd contents herself with emotions over thoughts ideas and actions. However on this level the film is affecting, moving and of course powerfully played by the Grande Dame of impersonational character acting – Meryl Streep. It would be churlish not to admit that Ms Streep does with great subtlety and artistic insight bring much more than mere physical accuracy to an at times eerily credible impersonation.

Abi Morgan’s screenplay structure has been criticised, wrongly in my view, for the time-fractured device of an on-going dialogue between the octogenarian Margaret and a long-deceased Dennis as a way into flashbacks of their marriage and the public context within which it was lived out. Cleverly overlapping Dennis actually alive and Dennis alive only in Mrs Thatcher’s failing memory, enables Lloyd to move easily through the narrative she has settled upon. That it is perhaps not the narrative we would like to see is no fault of a quite effective, evocative device.

Jim Broadbent is a perfect foil for Streep as Dennis Thatcher; represented accurately here in the silly arse, John Wells, Private Eye public perception of the man rather than the more substantial, successful businessman he actually was. Olivia Coleman captures well the Jilly Cooperish, jolly horsiness of Carol Thatcher while Thatcher’s only known wilful self-deception – her purblind indulgence of the failings of son Mark who substitutes phone calls for bothering to turn up, is neatly implied.

With verisimilitude defining her approach to her central character, Lloyd is a bit stuck with carrying this through to the rest of the casting. This of course invites the distracting but diverting ‘looks like’ or better ‘doesn’t look like’ party game. A more relevant but disturbing truthfulness in Lloyd’s approach is that she does perfectly capture that insufferable Public School, Oxbridge, born-to-govern suave Establishment chauvinism of not just Mrs Thatcher’s cabinets but most British cabinets – including today’s. We relish here on screen, as at the time through sublime Spitting Image latex, the priceless and justified contempt with which Thatcher threw her Grantham cat amongst this smug, complacent bunch of pigeons.

Streep’s performance has been so extensively praised that it is mere cliché to describe it as extraordinary. She is most effective by far, as the elderly woman, adding a hint of Thatcherite steel to the timeless pathos of age, fading powers and memories of past triumphs. Here the ‘stoop’, missing from her portrayal of the extraordinary handbag-clutching forward-toppling scuttle of Prime Minister Thatcher’s public movements, is convincingly evident.

The Iron Lady is therefore well worth a visit. My hunch is that both Lloyd and Morgan have an underlying interest in the impact of the Thatcher phenomenon upon the perception of women from a feminist perspective which their subject would have little patience with. It is certainly true that Mrs Thatcher’s ‘senility’ as portrayed is in a very benign form: mostly amounting to a bit of forgetfulness and the anticipation, rather than realisation of genuine dementia. This defuses much of the ‘inappropriate’ criticism the film has attracted. However, if the real Mrs Thatcher is as systematically lucid as Morgan, Lloyd and Streep portray her I think she would wonder why they didn’t listen to their own apposite words about the priority of ideas and actions over emotions.

What is the secret of the paradoxical cross-over Thatcher effect? It is rooted I think in fundamental aspects of her character: she had the intellect to analyse complexity; an instinct to distil it into a convincing simplicity; and the arrogant single-mindedness of leadership to implement action based on that simplicity – come what may. These are leadership qualities Tony Blair shared.

However Mrs Thatcher had something Blair conspicuously lacked: a straight-talking, no-nonsense direct courage of conviction, not always justified, but clear to colleagues, opponents and electorate alike. What you saw was what you got: no dissembling, equivocation or endless Blair-like casuistry. Like it or hate it, Mrs Thatcher’s great quality, almost unique in modern politics, was to be absolutely clear what she meant, what she believed in; and utterly consistent in her consequent actions. She said what she thought: and did what she said. She was the first and perhaps the last politician in my lifetime to be clear enough to be accountable for her actions; however prejudiced or wrong-headed they often may have been. While Blair parsed his honour with endless dissembling semantics; Thatcher told it as she saw it and stood by her judgment – come what may. Many of us hated where she took us – but at least we knew where we were.

It is perhaps therefore, not so contradictory that many people preferred Mrs Thatcher’s blunt honesty to Mr Blair’s devious duplicity. Ideology aside.

Personally I hope Streep doesn’t get the Oscar: though forced into it by her subject and the context, this is a highly theatrical form of acting founded upon the meticulous artifice of make-up and impersonation. There is also an increasing ‘grandness’ in Streep herself that emerges not only in her performances but in off-screen interviews. However helpful these qualities are in this case – with some admirable moments of exception – they are the very antithesis of that unique subtlety and intangibility of great screen acting. In my view Rooney Mara’s portrayal of another extraordinary female character, Stig Larssen’s Lisbeth Salander is a performance with more instinctive inner resonance than Streep’s Margaret Thatcher.

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           Lady

She is my lady

old fashioned

though that sounds

she has style

and she has grace

her elegance

abounds

My lady honours me

with her love

for it is rare

that she bestows

her favours

without reserve

without care

My lady

is all woman too

no side or lies

no airs and graces

just honesty

generosity and

truthful loving eyes

If you would know my lady

consider only this

she is wise

and she is strong

she is good

and she is love

she is honour’s prize.

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