A Portrait of Jane Austen

I suppose (Lord) David Cecil's book on Jane Austen has been superseded by more recent biography and criticism; but it can be read in a day, and for anyone looking to get acquainted with Austen and her world it is a good place to start (after reading a novel or two, of course). Cecil goes through the life steadily, and sticks closely to the evidence, chiefly Austen's letters to her sister Cassandra. We get a vivid sense of the family and the personalities in Jane Austen's life (Cecil writes before it became fashionable to refer to her chummily as 'Jane'), and there are helpful descriptions of the places she lived in, and the gentry class in which she moved. The chapter on the novels makes some acute points, particularly about the place of reticence in Austen's life and work. Best of all, Cecil's style is in the same tradition of elegance as his subject's, and he has a clear sympathy for the sense of reasonable piety which he feels moved her. The overall portrait is affectionate and dwells chiefly on the author's virtues. Thus we can return refreshed to the more hard-edged world of the modern biography. For more recent short introductions to Austen, I'd recommend Fay Weldon's Letters to Alice and the life by Carol Shields. At the time of writing, copies of all three (Cecil, Weldon, Shields) can be had for next to nothing from Amazon, plus postage.

The Ipcress File (Film)

A treat to see this again, courtesy of iplayer. And to itemise the pleasures: the very young Michael Caine winning us over from the first shots of him making a proper pot of coffee; the drab, dingy look of 1965 London; the observation of class, with officer types sporting blimpish moustaches, enjoying military bands and valiantly negotiating supermarkets; satirical stuff about bureaucratic forms and clearance procedures (Ooh, you'll never get a CC1!); the amazing range of camera angles, which have us looking over people's shoulders, up at the ceiling, in focus, out of focus, making us feel like we're spying on the spies; John Barry's score, making a memorable motif capture different moods through inventive arrangements; and the use of sound elsewhere, like the humming lights in the garage scene; the whiff of science and technology without the gimmicky gadgets of Bond; and the super-smooth villainy which stays just this side of nutty caricature. Well, that's plenty of items. I still don't quite get why Mr Bad Guy is allowed to stroll around London with his heavies with impunity: perhaps they have nothing concrete on him?  No one seems to object to doing deals with terrorists - but presumably that's part of the 'we're all dirty in this trade' message. And why wasn't the Caine character just bumped off? Perhaps he was useful for experimental data. Or something. Anyway, it's about style, not plot, and The Ipcress File oozes with it. Like Le Carre, it gives us a sardonic and searching picture of the Brit establishment groping about in a post-imperial world. Years since I read Deighton, but I remember being addicted to Game, Set and Match once upon a time. Must make a return visit to that, too.

Great Expectations (BBC)

The BBC got started on the Dickens bicentenary just before 2012 with a three-part adaptation of Great Expectations (and also excerpts from Tomalin's recent biography nicely read by Mrs Crawley, sorry, Penelope Wilton). This treatment has drawn some critical ire for its rather free approach to the business of adaptation, and it was certainly surprising to see the plot actually being rewritten in the closing stages. All humour was bleached out (no Aged Parent, for example), and the verbal tags (Joe's 'What larks', Jaggers' 'Put the case') were largely excised.  Miss Havisham, played by Gillian Anderson, was much younger than usual, and moped around like the doped out survivor of a grunge rock band.  Biggest mistake was to make Pip (played by Daniel Booth) into a willowy fragrance model, with lean pale cheek and quivering upper lip - this might be the modern metromale in the Age of Beckham, but the idea that a blacksmith's apprentice would look anything like this after seven years in the forge reallis just absurd. Nor could we believe that this rather self-assured young man was inhibited by Estella, who in fact came over as the needier of the two. But from all these changes some of the emotional darkness and strangeness of the work surfaced. Joe, Jaggers, and Magwitch all took their turn as surrogate father in Pip's journey, and what was lost in humour was made up for with the sense of being hopelessly lost, stranded in a pretend self between the marshes and the murky London streets. There was also a real evil about Orlick, Drummles and Compesson which larks and merry evenings at the Wemmicks can obscure. In general the production reminded me of The Crimson Petal and the White, another exercise in new-look Victoriana, much possessed by questions of hysteria and identity. Great performances by Ray Winstone (Magwitch), David Suchet (Jaggers) among others. And plenty of BBC Dickensiana to look forward to.

La Ciudad de los Prodigios

Eduardo Mendoza is a Barcelona novelist and La Ciudad de los Prodigios (1986) is a hymn to his native city. It follows its hero Onofre Bouvila between the dates of the two Barcelona Great Exhibitions of 1888 and 1929. Onofre is a thoroughly amoral character, and his adventures see him involved in anarchism, gang warfare, profiteering, dodgy property deals, deals of all kinds - all leading to fame and relative respectability. Bouvila is surrounded in this picaresque novel by a cast of suitably colourful characters drawn from all social backgrounds. Just as fielding introduces his chapters with a short essay, Mendoza pauses the story from time to time to give us fascinating digressions on such matters as the Ciutadella, the financing of Exhibitions, the early days of film, aviation, and through both story and history we get a wonderful view on the life of this city at its time of greatest expansion and change. Key dates come and go: the end of the colonies in 1898 and the consequent crisis; the 'Tragic Week' of 1909, the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. Real historical figures like Rius i Taulet, de Rivera, King Alfonso XIII, and (briefly) Gaudí cohabit with fictional characters. There are stunning descriptions, such as the port when Bouvila first sees it, or the depiction of life in a small village, or the shantytowns aroung the Expo of '29. Mixed in with the history are artful inventions (a hilarious account of an alternative scheme to the Eixample is just one of them), and touches of magical realism. This mixture of elements is the 'memoria colectiva' that the novel mentions at the end, a blend of history, myth, fact, fiction and dream which make up the City of Marvels of the mind.  La Ciudad de los Prodigios is a colossal work, compulsory reading surely for anyone interested in Barcelona and the modern Spanish novel.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

This was Lang's last film in America (1956) before he returned to Germany. It was a B movie, and I approached it as a completist, not expecting much. It does have some of the look of a great career winding down and fizzling out: we notice obvious budget limitations, fading stars (Andrews and Fontaine are too old for their roles), and a kind of flatness in the look and performances, as if everyone is going through the motions. To which list of criticisms one might add a plot even more preposterous than the preceding While the City Sleeps. No need to rehearse it here - before any details, though, the basic premise is odd. Two men decide to show the justice system is flawed by deliberately framing one of them for murder. But what actually would this prove? It would just show that if you were determined to waste police time and pervert the course of justice you could probably incriminate yourself (and it would help if the police were heroically incurious, too). But what would it tell us about 'reasonable doubt'? Not much. It might show that a verdict can be reasonable but wrong. But everyone knows that already. 

Add to that Dana Andrews's slide into inexpressiveness, the apparent indifference to things like suspense and plausibility (like the Downton Christmas Special, a reported remark to which there are no other witnesses can be damning, apparently), and it should be a write-off. But the odd thing is, it isn't. Lang is clearly pursuing soicial inquiry again here, and the focus gets rid of distracting subplots and psychoanalytical waffle, giving a clear storyline. And a close look at capital punishment might perhaps have been more unusual half a century ago. Weaknesses become strengths. The dialogue, delivered almost entirely without raised voices, is rather theatrical and weirdly compelling, as if it is not even trying to be real. The antagonists don't seem to mind each other, really, but that only adds to a picture of society as a closed system, where media magnates, prosecutors and defenders are all really in the same club. Other touches - the onlookers roaring with laughter at a murder trial, the split-second timing of turning on the television just as the programme starts, the film of the trial (in 1956?), the 'Pardon' lying on the Governor's table like a gift certificate - all these give the piece an offbeat quality. Is the film pointing to its own artificiality, or testing our suspension of disbelief as viewers? And there, beneath the semi-surreal plot is the point of it, the heart of Lang's vision: everything in thisd world collapses into pretence, cynicism,  doubt, lies, guilt, suspicion, hypocrisy. Images of mirrors and doubles echo the double life we see on the screen, and the girls in the burlesque clubs are essentially doing the same thing as the main characters, putting on an act . In the end, poetic justice is delivered, choices are made and destinies freely chosen. Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is a social melodrama, but also a final noir film, a disturbing dream which wo't go away.

While the City Sleeps

Lang's penultimate American film, While the City Sleeps (1956) is most interesting for its portrayal of the media. In the rum plot,  three media executives compete for the top job in 'Kyne' News through their coverage of the 'Lipstick Killer'. Main man Ed Moberley (Dana Andrews) is a journo who stays aloof, drinks a lot, chases his girl, and - the weakest bit plotwise - uses her as bait for the killer. The cynicism of the news operation is appealing, though watered down by the basically decent Dana Andrews character. There is fitful interest in the killer's motives (his identity is never a mystery) with some psychobabble ('You're a mamma's boy' in a provocative broadcast) along the way. (Surely the police could have caught him quite easily, though, based on the eyewitness evidence of the first scene?) By this stage in his career, Lang seems to be less interested in noir effects: the visual style is quite flat, bare and geometric. But there are intriguing continuities from the Art Deco of Metropolis and Spione to these simple desks and undecorated office spaces. The 'Kyne' logo appears at least once, its huge 'K' perhaps alluding to Kane, while also reminding us of 'M', Lang's early masterpiece, also about a city killer.

While the City Sleeps is a mixed genre affair, getting into the social criticism movies of the fifties. The way the eventual winner gets the trophy is thrillingly cynical, and the casual adultery and implied sex seems daring for the period. It doesn't have the deep satirical tone of Sweet Smell of Success or The Front Page partly because the romance element softens the edges. While the final chase is oddly uninvolving, the image of Vincent Price (the incompetent but canny young Kyne)  playing golf in his apartment while deciding who will do his job for him is sharp and memorable. His apparent development of a conscience at the end is an unrealistic touch one has to forgive.

Secret Beyond the Door

Secret Beyond the Door (1947), Lang's psycho-noir version of the Bluebeard myth, mixes Lang's noir mode with a fascination - presumably in the air at the time - with psychoanalysis. The film really seems a variation on Hitchcock's Rebecca and Spellbound, but seems a bit unsure what to do with its material. There are, as ever, strong visuals to enjoy with Lang: the chiaroscuro train station and the atmospheric photography of Stanley Cortez, not to mention Joan Bennett's wardrobe, are all enchanting to the eye. But there are too many flaws, and they prevent us getting involved in the story. First the husband, played by Michael Redgrave, seems to be motivated by money ('He hasn't got a cent' we learn at one point), but as the psycho-stuff kicks in that is forgotten,and it all becomes something to do with his mother and women. There is a boy character who is introduced and then disappears. In real life, the Joan Bennett character would leave too, and quickly, when she finds out her new hubby is a serial liar. In the big party scene, no one seems to notice that the man leading them around a collection of rooms and luridly telling them about the murders committed therein is an obvious nutcase. The secretary / admirer figure is confused, and obviously just an attempt to recreate Mrs Danvers, except she has to change from being sinister to being sympathetic. In the final act, there are (at least) three dramatic suspense scenes, which illustarte the rule of diminishing returns. Above all, there is just no chemistry between Bennett and Redgrave, and one wishes Lang would have taken time off from looking at architecture (interesting, though,  that the husband is an architect - maybe a bit of a Lang surrogate?), and tried to think through the male lead character with his star actor. As it is, the sudden shifts from affectionate to coldly aloof simply become comic. Dramatically Secret Beyond the Door is a mess, but it has its moments, the score is effective, and it's an intriguing oddity in the oeuvre.

Sarah Palin: You Betcha

I've always enjoyed Nick Broomfield's films. His quarry is usually some grotesque character in the public eye: Terre Blanche, Heidi Fleiss, Biggie and Tupac, Ailen Wuornos. A portrait is then built up through interviews in which Broofield himself is also visible, lumbering around with headphones and microphone, watched by a videocam in his car etc. There are faux-naif interviews  and stunts reminiscent of Michael Moore; but for all the film-about-making-a-film self-consciousness there is also a sense of real wide-eyed curiosity about the film's subject matter. Presumably Broomfield is an influence on Louis Theroux and Jon Ronson.

Last night More4 showed Broomfield's latest, Sarah Palin: You Betcha, in which, like Ian Hamilton looking for J D Salinger, Broomfield tries and  - of course - fails to get an interview with the former Governor of Alaska. He goes to Wasilla, where Palin started her political career as Mayor, and finds that everyone is either friend or foe of the Palin camp. The friends will not talk to him, nor will those who fear that retribution will follow. So Broomfield's interviewees are the foes, usually former allies who have been cast off somewhere on Palin's ruthless ascent. So the film is inevitably one-sided, but no less interesting for that: what we get is a portrait of power being wielded by someone whose vision of the world never gets above that of a street fight. So there is the with-us-or-against-us mentality, the sackings and vilifications of anyone perceived as a threat, the deep suspicion of thought and knowledge, and the constant need for an enemy to do battle with - here gays and abortions are the Evil One, an obsession fuelled by an evangelical group. Indeed, the fundamentalist evangelical background, it is proposed, is the key to understanding Palin - and, by extension, the Tea Party and the Republicans today. Manipulative and power-crazed figures can come from the left  as well as the right, of course, and the polularity they command suggests something about the power of media and the level of public education.

I imagine this film will have been much more interesting to a British audience than an American one. Presumably over there anyone with any interest in politics knows all about troopergate, the disastrous interview in front of a turkey slaughter, the huge power of evangelicals and the gun lobby etc. And there must be scope for real naivety too. You have to wonder what, say, a Michael Moore film about Gordon Brown would look like. But for those of us who are vague about the exact details of Palin's career it was an entertaining briefing. I didn't think the stunts added much, and I was quite sympathetic to the mayor who kicked Broomfield & team out of his office, where they had  no business to be. The non-interview was non-suspenseful. Presumably Broomfield is one of an army of journalists who has been after any dirt on Palin, so their suspicion (especially given his track record with films, and hers with unscripted interviews) was understandable. It might have been interesting to learn more about the funding behind her campaigns: the film presented her as a driven Mean Girl, but might she not have been the script-reader for larger corporate interests? McCain's choice of Palin as a running partner was still a profound mystery at the end of the film.

But the real strength of the piece was as an analysis of power and its destructive effects: I recently read someone correcting Acton's 'Power corrupts' to 'power exposes' and this film confirmed that this was closer to the mark. In the spotlight, every act of pettiness, and the pain it causes, simply becomes more visible. The Alaskan setting (collections of antlers!) added to the exotic feel of the whole thing, for a Brit viewer at any rate.

Barcelona, Architecture / Gardens / Spaces

Some more Barcelona links. On contemporary architecture, there is some very good material - photos and text in Spanish and English  - on the blog by José Miguel Hernández

And on gardens and public spaces, the Ajuntament site has some useful information.

I found both of these from the Learning from Barcelona blog, an interesting project in studying the use of public spaces and encouraging children to observe and enjoy them.

Scarlet Street

The BBC are playing some of Fritz Lang's Hollywood period films this week, deep into the early hours. Scarlet Street (1945) is one of the best of these,  a classic of film noir. The action takes place in alleys, coffeee bars, and apartments - the underworld of a prosperous modern city. Lang brought the language of German expressionism to American cinema: each scene is beautifully shot, with deep shadows modelling faces and interiors and suggesting the darkness of this shifty, amoral universe. Usually the camera is still, impassively capturing the characters as they move within small spaces, the frame suggesting the constrictions that the world places upon them. Even the spacious large apartment where the destructive female resides is made to seem dangerous, angular, an analogy for the spiritual blankness of its tenants. There are brilliant touches, like the long shot of Johnny being taken to his fate, and the sudden suggestive cut from that to the buzzing of the electric light outside the apartment where the protagonist is burned up by guilt. The individual shots of witnesses int he trial take us right back to Lang's German pictures like Spione and M.

The noir of fiulm noir really describes its picture of the human heart. Cynicism is all-pervasive, the cheating and fakery of the plot echoing the main character's name, Chris Cross. In Scarlet Street, love is either deliberately feigned as a ploy, or surges up as a delirious obsession, a kind of illness. Artistic talent is ignored, derided, traded upon and finally commodified. Nothing is to be believed and everything is for sale. Even the apparent models of rectitude - the boss J.J and the supposed dead husband Homer - have their own shadowy secrets, while the respectable wife is a terrifying harridan behind closed doors. The familiar pieces of film noir chess are there - the hapless sucker, the con man, the femme fatale, the Tiresian bartenders who have seen it all - and we watch as they go through a story as remorseless and inevitable as a Greek tragedy, the acting - led by Edward G Robinson and Joan Bennett - immaculate as every point.  There can be no happy ending, no sudden salvation, just the chance calamities of fate and the ineluctable and awful justice which awaits them all.

Black Mirror, 3: The Entire History of You

The final episode of the Black Mirror trilogy wasn’t written by Charlie Brooker but by Jesse Armstrong, whose CV includes Peep Show and Fresh Meat. Here the topic was memory. In The Entire History of You, we entered a world where our memories are captured by an implant called a ‘grain’ (not unrelated to a pod). We can then scroll through these (how they are sorted into files is left to the viewer to imagine) and select memories to replay: install recall at a click. It is a neat way of taking the world we already have, where we are already familiar with vast internet memory caches, tablets  and memory sticks, and looking a little further down the road.

The Entire History of You touched in passing on various possibilities created by this technology: memories scanned and checked when we travel; the chilling prospect of ‘retrospective litigation’, where parents are prosecuted for their children’s lack of earnings; and the idea of memories being stolen, manipulated, sold. In the end, the story explored the idea that instant access to memory stores could (already does?) lead to obsessive behaviour, as a young husband pursues his suspicions of his wife’s infidelity until their relationship is destroyed, and memory itself has become toxic. Most of the action in fact lay in the relationships of the key figures in this triangle, the technology being worked into a familiar jealousy story. As the story unfolded, it was clear that the perfect availability of the past was eroding the value of the present: this was suggested in the sleek, soulless houses and the oddly empty green spaces between them. There were a few quirks, perhaps: wouldn’t the wife know her husband was the jealous type? Is it plausible that his behaviour could be suddenly triggered at a moment he feels vulnerable about his career? And why does he drive such an old car? Are those who voluntarily don’t have a grain -  it doesn’t seem to be a compulsory ID marker, yet - not able to travel? The main character of Borges’s greart story ‘Funes el Memorioso’ remembers everything but as a result he cannot really think, because thinking involves constantly abstracting from particulars. In The Entire History of You the protagonist drowns in a sea of particulars, until he comes to realize that living must involve forgetting. In a world where we recreate ourselves on Facebook, blogs, and in digital info of all kinds this is worth, well, remembering. A strong end to this interesting series.

Sculpture: The Figure in the Landscape

There’s a gem of an exhibition at the Winchester Discovery Centre, called The Figure in the Landscape. It brings together works by sculptors who are all responding to the landscape, and shaping their responses through different materials methods. One striking feature of the show is how individually each artist responds to the land and its elements. For Barbara Hepworth, ideas of community are essential: the dolmens of Cornwall evoke individuals, linking culture across time; and the landscape itself is a palimpsest of human communities, a place where land, mind and spirit are integrated. Henry Moore, represented here by a small reclining figure, turns figures into landscapes: we seem to catch the human form as it is shifting through some metamorphic process into the contours of mountains and hills. Some artists are drawn to the pure forms and geometric patterns of the land: Tim Harrisson captures concentric ripples in marble in Double Vision, while Peter Randall-Page’s Entomology II arranges ceramic shapes in a symmetrical leafy pattern, like a picture of the fractal series underlying natural phenomena. Charlotte Mayer and Lotte Glob respond to seismic forces and the rough textures of the earth in their work, which somehow imbues inert matter with a feeling of potent force and the character carved into it over great passages of time.  

Sculptures are not only finished products, They also tell a story of a process which, when we know about it, becomes part of our apprehension of the work. Keith Rand’s abstract constructions are the end result of walking, absorbing and exploring the downlands of Salisbuy plain, while Chris Drury – represented here by a video of an iceberg – is another walker, whose work offers traces of journeys, captured in different media. Simple images can have multiple resonances: Roger Stephens’s Shore, made up of three marble forms, irresistibly suggests a group – a family – looking expectantly … where? Out to sea, or from sea to land? Or from past to present? From one work to another we become conscious of the quality of the different materials – marble, chalk, bronze – and  their suggestive, expressive qualities. In the synthetic world of the modern city, it is refreshing to have an exhibition like this to bring us, so to speak, back to earth. The Figure in the Landscape is curated by Rachel Bebb of The Garden Gallery, Broughton.

Yale Lectures on T S Eliot

I've been enjoying, and learning from, Professor Langdon Hammer's lecture series on Modern Poetry (given in 2007), one of the courses published online in video form by Yale University. Hammer uses a variety of critical approaches - biographical, psychological,  textual - and offers some exciting readings of canonical works. I've been concentrating in particular on the three lectures (10-12) on T S Eliot. Hammer considers in detail Prufrock (the poem), The Waste Land, and key critical essays 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' and the review of The Metaphysical Poets. But the ideas suggest ways of approaching the rest of the work too. My own notes are here, but they are offered as a memory aid only - you have to hear this for yourself!

Black Mirror, 2: 15 Million Merits

A much better effort, I thought, than the first programme in this trilogy. Without an against-the-clock storyline we were able to enter more fully into the world depicted and muse upon its verities. So here we are, in a world where humanoids (or at any rate the young good-looking ones) are locked away underground, pedalling on gymn bikes to build up credits / merits (the creatrors seem to take a dim view of gymns), and fed a Matrix-like world of videogames and streamed TV junk (porn being in heavy supply). There do not seem to be  books, or any other source of real culture, and language has decayed to the point where conversation is denuded into almost nothing.  Individuals are locked away for some time in individual cells made of screens where video is beamed from all sides and watching appears to be compulsory. The only way out of this inferno seems to be to spend 15 million merits to have a chance to appear on the talent show 'Hot Shots', an amphitheatre of cruelty and all things synthetic, there to perform to the boos and yelps of an artificially generated audience. Before you go on stage, you have to drink 'Compliance'. Thus a promising singer can be recruited to a porn channel (it's either that or back to the bikes). In the story her champion manages to appear himself on the show and speak out angrily against the tat, the packaging, the fakery ... but the system, as total systems do,  immediately co-opts all opposition, and the would-be rebel is rewarded for his 'passion' with a penthouse, a more attractive artificial reality to look at, and regular slots as a show protestor on another 'stream'. (A neat acknowledgement by husband-wife writers Brooker-Huq here that their attack on TV is also TV entertainment).

Regular dystopian tropes, then, but beautifully observed. The 'Hot Shot' judges (led by a brilliant Rupert Everett) were amusing but also sinister, and touches like the bored-out-of-their heads staff and the awful Scouse contestant ('singing is my destiny') gave it all a credible air. Most memorable of all was the picture of human nature itself melting into something else, as endless junk, grey uniforms, and the vanquishing of the past by media tat did their work. We sensed that tender relationshiops like the one between the two protagonists did not have long to go. Not Orwell's totalitarianism, but late post-humanist capitalism triumphing over the human spirit. This one really did hang together, and will linger in the mind.

Biutiful

Alejandro González Iñárritu makes viscerally powerful films which take us through the depiction of physical and mental pain to the suggestion of spiritual release. Biutiful follows this journey, though unlike the Mexican director’s earlier films (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel) it does not intercut frenetically between different plotlines (though his genius for the sudden cut is at work here - it is not a surprise to learn it took 14 months to edit this work). Everything here is seen through the story of Uxbal (played by Javier Bardem), who is trying to set his affairs in order in his last few months on earth. Set in the non-tourist board Barcelona, Biutiful checks in on a long list of social issues: human trafficking, illegal immigrants, contraband goods, police corruption, prostitution, drugs, mental illness, child abuse and, everywhere, desperate grinding poverty.

Striding doggedly through  this unremitting bleakness  is Uxbal, a flawed but fundamentally decent figure: he does his best to look out for immigrant workers, and as a (genuine) medium brings some comfort to the bereaved. We see him take money for these services (he is too much of a mixture for us to view him sentimentally), but it is clear from his behaviour that he is guided by more than mercenary motives. Above all Uxbal tries to do his best for his children, and to assure some kind of stable life for them when he is gone. A dreadful event in the centre of the film lays a terrible weight of guilt on him just as he is worn to almost nothing by his material worries and medical condition.

Biutiful is to some degree a portrait of modern Barcelona, or rather its underbelly, which could be that of any large Western city. Hand-held camera techniques take us into the tenements , basements and small shops of the Raval until we can almost smell the damp and feel the cold. There is a breathtaking setpiece as the African merchants are chased down the Ramblas by the police, while the development of an old cemetery, and the construction site in Badalona illustrate the ongoing  concrete sprawl. Sometimes the camera swoops up to the heavens, with Gustavo Santaolalla’s characteristically ethereal score suggesting the spiritual dimension to which Uxbal has some access. Somehow I found myself on this occasion resisting the film’s pull to the spiritual: perhaps this was because by now with this director’s work you see the themes of penitence and redemption coming; or perhaps because it just seemed unnecessary. The simple fact of Uxbal’s resilient humanity is enough, whatever lies beyond.  But the depiction of the life of the underclass of a big city, and the relationships between the main characters, were deeply affecting. Biutiful is in pretty much every way a complete contrast to Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which also as it happens stars Javier Bardem,  now surely established as one of the greatest screen presences of film today.

Lluís Domènech i Montaner

Lluís Domènech i Montaner (1849-1923) was a great Modernista architect working principally in Barcelona. Because of the huge promotion of Gaudí his work is often overlooked, at least on the short-term tourist trail. His work is well worth exploring, and makes an interesting, rationally based, stylistic contrast to the overtly expressionist buildings of Gaudí.  More posts on Domènech to follow, but for now here are some general pieces:

• Wikipedia entry
• Barcelona Yellow Guide, short and handy
• Unesco description of Palau de la Música Catalan and Hospital de Sant Pau (both World Heritage sites)
• Article in New York Times, ‘Barcelona’s other Architect, Domènech’
• Jumping over the language barrier, a transcript of the programme on Domènech i Montaner in the series Noms is available from TV Catalunya.

In Our Time, The Waste Land

There is a very good edition of Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time on T S Eliot, 'The Waste Land and Modernity'. Guests are Steve Connor, Fran Brearton and Lawrence Rainey.

Rainey's books, Revisiting the Waste Land and The Annotated Waste Land are listed, and would be a good follow-up. My own rather hurried notes on the discussion are available below:

Montserrat Figueras

Last week brought the sad news of the death of Catalan soprano Montserrat Figueras. With her husband, master viol de gamba player and conductor Jordi Savall, Figueras opened up the world of early music to a huge audience. Their work with the ensemble Hesperion XX (later XXI) and La Capella Reial de Catalunya combined scholarly knowledge of repertoire and performing techniques with a deep personal feel for colour and expression. Most recently I listened to their Cançons de la Catalunya Mil.lenària, an exquisite treatment of traditional folksongs. From these local roots, Savall and Figueras explored intercultural musical traditions, in a prolific series of recordings and concerts drawing repertoire from the Mediterranean, the Middle and Far East and the New World. Music was the model for wider intercultural understanding. Many more informed homages to her art have been published, including this homage on the NPR music site. And here is Figueras in action, drawing our attention to every note, phrase and word with her magical art:

Book: Craig Raine, T S Eliot

Raine’s study of T S Eliot is a curious book. It clearly assumes familiarity with the major works, and with the broad shape of the biography, so is not for first-timers. Yet some of the summary passages, such as the account of Eliot’s view of the person who suffers and the mind which creates, will not give anything new to experienced readers. So who is it for? It offers excellent close readings of some less noticed poems (‘Lune de Miel’ and ‘Dans le Restaurant’) while skipping important works like ‘Preludes’ and ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’, and it gives only a general impressionistic account of ‘The Waste Land’. The reading of ‘The Four Quartets’ is too fragmentary to be satisfactory, while as usual making neat local poits about word choice along the way. The main thesis of the book is that Eliot’s work is animated by the Arnoldian Buried Life, the sense of life unlived, emotions unfulfilled. This is just about made to cohere with the secondary thesis that Eliot is a classicist in the sense of being sceptical of romantic emotional effusion, and more interested in the detached depiction of less usual, fugitive emotions. The difficulty here is that, as Eliot recognised, the terms ‘Romantic’ and ‘Classical’, when applied as anything other than period terms – and perhaps even then -  are too vague to do any useful work.

The main difficulty of Raine’s book is that the  theme of the buried life is strained to breaking point, as it is used to apply to so many things:  Prufrock’s stifling of impulse, the buried voices in ‘The Waste Land’, the idea of a positive renunciation in ‘Ash Wednesday’, the dramatization of repressed conscience in the plays and the spiritual experience in ‘The Four Quartets’. This makes us feel that a whole oeuvre is being blurred over and made to fit a single idea, a reductive strategy false to the variety of Eliot's writing. Along the way, there are some scrupulous readings of lines, interspersed with weird tabloidese one-sentence paragraphs, surprising choices of adjective for a critical work (a Walcott poem, left largely unquoted, is ‘botched’; an interpretation by George Steiner is ‘stupid’). The chapter on the Criticism is entertaining for its comments on inconsistencies and vagueness in Eliot’s work, but Eliot’s criticism really needs to be traced chronologically and systematically, and there is too much hopping about from one essay to another. The chapter defending Eliot against accusations of anti-Semitism is a much-needed counterbalance to what has become critical orthodoxy; it might be stronger if Raine had not earlier been vigorously defending TSE from any and all other accusations (mistreatment of his first wife etc.), making him look like  a defence lawyer rather than an impartial critic (an effect contributed to by the dedication to Valerie Eliot). Some of the readings, such as the contention that Burbank is a dramatic monologue, which we would see if we knew our Joyce better, seem to me over-ingenious. Some are brilliantly precise. The book is certainly not a general introduction to a major writer, but a vigorously argued pursuit of a big idea, the Buried Life that is alleged figure in the carpet of the whole work from beginning to end. Raine's TSE is certainly worth reading, and one would generally prefer criticism with a personal touch like this to a toneless Introductio. But for a general overview of Eliot’s art we need to look elsewhere.

Film: Animal Kingdom (2010)

Animal Kingdom (2010) is a stunning film debut by director David Michôd. After his mother dies of an overdose, ’J’ (Josh, played by James Frecheville)  is taken into her family and looked after, if that is the word, by his grandmother (Jacki Weaver), who broods contentedly  over his career criminal uncles. Soon J is caught up in a lethal battle between his family and the police, where the armed robbery squad is out of control. Only the detective (Guy Pearce) investigating one shocking crime represents some kind of decent humanity.  Recognising J’s vulnerable  state, he tries to fish him out of the piranha tank. The film is superbly paced, gradually ratcheting up the tension as we descend deeper into the moral murk. J’s uncle ‘Pope’, superbly played by Ben Mendelsohn, is the most terrifying corrupt elder figure I have seen since the César Luciani character in A Prophet. Pope is responsible for the film’s most horrifying scene, and just as we are taking that in J’s grandmother reveals herself in her full disturbing colours. Animal Kingdom is a stunning examination of  psychopathic evil and its savage consequences.

TV: Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror 1: National Anthem

After getting my weekly fix of Southland on 4od I watched the first episode of Charlie Brooker’s satire Black Mirror, a none-too-subtle title for a series clearly meant to hold up a mirror to the darkest aspects of our collective self. This episode was called National Anthem,  in which a contemporary artist (the shocking antics of contemporary  art , tick) kidnaps a 'princess' (celebrity culture, tick)  and demands on a YouTube video (viral media, tick) that the prime minister (politicians, tick) performs a bestial act live on TV (degrading effects of (a) opinion polls and (b) modern media, tick tick), all of which is covered gleefully by TV stations (the hysteria of 24-hour sensationalism, tick) and  - initially - cheered on by a demented population (brain-sapped plebs, tick).

I did watch to the end, but I didn’t find it a particularly effective satire. It ticked all the boxes (see laborious parentheses above) too knowingly, but didn’t seem to be coming from any engaged position. It didn’t seem that we were really being warned about the lobotomising powers of media culture. Instead we were invited to admire the cleverness of the creators as they referenced Facebook, Twitter etc.  As we noticed actors who had been in The Thick of It etc. we found ourselves in the self-congratulatory world of TV shows alluding archly to each other. In other words, the programme was itself a case of the kind of media-obsessed world it was supposedly satirising, and as so often it was more than half in love with the technology (cf a Spooks-style raid) it was holding up to the, well, mirror. It just seemed lacking in insight and fresh angles: Nothing was said here about art / politics / YouTube etc. that we didn’t know already. The plot in particular seemed to be begging for notoriety, but was let down by massive implausibility (eyes, not a DNA test, would normally be enough to distinguish a male from a female finger.  A contemporary artist who is an IT genius + mad + depressed + capable of kidnapping a Kate Middleton-figure from security guards? Please.) It was unsure of its tone: was the scene with the ‘performer’ standing in for the PM meant to be funny? If not, what was it meant to be? Most of the charcterisation was thin. The PM and his wife needed more screentime together for us to get interested in their relationship. There was very little sign of characters with any moral conflict, which might have given the isuues human depth.

So, it was all a bit of a disappointment, especially since Brooker is one of our best observers of pop culture: his Screenwipes and Newswipes are an absolute must. He has also written extremely well: Nathan Barley and Dead Set are strong satiric works.  National Anthem had its moments: there were some comic touches (the idea of a police team surrounding a house in … Truro); the change of mood as crowds watched the PM’s humiliation did go beyond the simplified crowd portrait we had seen up until then; and the very end contained some sharp points about the dynamics of public and private life. But there weren’t enough of them. Having said that, as a Brooker fan I shall certainly give the next episode a go.

Barcelona: Dr Robert Monument (1910)

Sources

English language sources on this work seem to be rather scant. As for all Barcelona monuments, the Art Públic site is the essential online source. In addition, I have used the following:

• A handy summary of the life is given on the Sitges website, and the fortunes of the statue, derived from Art Públic, are recorded on the Catalan blog xino xano per Bcn
• An excellent paper by Santiago Izquierdo Ballester, 'Las políticas de memoria histórica en Barcelona: el monumento a Dr Robert' (see below)
• Stéphane Michonneau, 'Un lieu de mémoire barcelonais: le monument au docteur Robert', Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 41:2 (1994), 269-89, available on JSTOR
• For high-quality photos, see the webpage by van der Krogt
• On the Catalan race speech, there is this (apparently partisan) account on the indymedia site

I have not yet read Ballester's doctoral thesis, Bartomeu Robert i Yarzábal (1842-1902): Medicina i Compromís Cívic.

Barcelona: Mies van der Rohe Pavillion

A building, a monument, a fascinating leftover from the 1929 Great Exhibition, when it must have looked like a spaceship next to the pompous academic style of the official setting. Here's an introduction from the patrimoni.gencat series (several of which have English subtitles):



This iconic building naturally scores zillions of hits on Google. After centuries of patient trawling, I found this piece in Arch Daily was one of the most informative.

Book: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

I reread this recently having seen Thomas Alfredson’s recent film version. I thought the film captured the brooding style and atmosphere of the novel very effectively, but I’d defy anyone to work out the story from the film alone (even following the great TV series with Alec Guinness is quite a mental workout). The plot has been called labyrinthine, but that’s the wrong cliché. Reading the book is like putting together a jigsaw, though without having the overall picture in front of us. This in fact is one of the great qualities of Le Carré, who respects the intelligence of the reader and doesn’t over-explain (Spooks this is not).

Two pieces of evidence (Rikki Tarr’s story and the calamitous Prideaux mission to Czechoslovakia) indicate that intelligence is being passed from the British Secret Service to Russia. George Smiley, victim of new management, is approached in retirement and asked by a ministerial representative to investigate. The curious thing is that the story shouldn’t work. It’s a whodunnit, but we can’t care very much who did it as the suspects only make brief appearances and are generally an unsympathetic bunch. We can’t follow the trail of evidence very clearly, as this consists of night after night of analysis of intelligence data, which we are mercifuly spared (most of the detective action consists of Smiley reading documents in a hotel). And yet the novel is diabolically gripping. What holds us are the set-pieces, the rhythm of the writing, and above all the sense of espionage and betrayal spreading like the London fog. Lady Ann’s betrayal of Smiley is a rather obvious extension of the theme, but then there is the schoolboy learning to spy, Peter Guillam’s doubts about his partner, even the clumsy lovers trying to make a discreet entrance to a house in Oxford. Subterfuge has become the usual way of things. Beyond the terror of a world where trust has vanished is the terror of real violence in the shadows (we are passingly told about networks being wrapped up and have to decide whether to let our imaginations dwell on the implications of this or not). Cold War suspicion is as omnipresent as the darkness and rain that are the characters’ natural habitat. The values at stake have disappeared into weary worldliness and the patois of the officer class. Even the mole’s apologia turns out to be little more than a string of tired platitudes. The novel is a brilliant portrait of postwar, post-imperial Britain as a dreary spectre of its former self.

Films have no obligation to follow books with exactitude (why should they?), and I thought Alfredson’s variations were inventive: the arrest of Prideaux was suitably tense, and interestingly different to both book and series. I liked the edge of real menace in Gary Oldman’s Smiley, and the thrilling atmosphere of key scenes (Guillam’s visit to the archive may be the most exciting piece of document retrieval on film). One change which was puzzling, though, was Prideaux’s harshness to Jumbo at the end. I take it this is meant as tough love, as he wants to save the boy from the spying path, but the understanding between teacher and pupil at the end of the novel seems to represent an important hint of hope and decency after the miasma of deceit.

Barcelona: Gaudiana

En los archivos de rtve.es hay una serie sobre Antoni Gaudí en seis capítulos. Desgraciadamente, dos de los programas son muy abreviados. Pero vale la pena. Se llama Gaudiana.

Barcelona: Robert Hughes on Gaudí

In Robert Hughes’s long book on Barcelona the best chapters are on the nineteenth century.  The account of Gaudí, ‘The Hermit in the Cave of Making’ (ch.8) is superb. Hughes’s programme on Gaudí is characteristically opinionated and beautifully written. It’s available in seven chunks on YouTube. Here is a link to part 1 of Antonio Gaudí: God’s Architect.

Barcelona: Picasso, Dalí, Miró

Part 3 of Andrew Graham-Dixon’s excellent series The Art of Spain, on 'The Mystical North'

Film: The Illusionist (2010)

Thou metst with things dying, I with things new-born. The latest film by Sylvain Chomet, The Illusionist (2010) is a portrait of endings and beginnings. Based on an unproduced screenplay by the great French comic actor Jacques Tati, The Illusionist presents a stage magician in the 1950s at the end of his career. In France audiences for traditional entertainment are dwindling. In London our he is preceded, and supplanted, by a rock and roll band. At a garden party he is spotted by a drunken laird, who invites him to his Scottish island, where his act is warmly received in the pub. But even there the new is superseding the old, as electricity brings a light bulb and a juke-box (presumably also a threat to the jigs and reels, which seem to be danced only by folk of a certain age). He forms an alliance with the girl Alice, who works at the pub, and she follows him to Edinburgh in search of a more glamorous life. The plot from there traces their father-daughter relationship in poignant detail.

Chomet is a wonderful artist and the greatest pleasures of this film are the delicate, affectionate renderings of Scottish islands and the townscapes of Edinburgh. The surreal brilliance of Belleville Rendezvous is replaced by a gentle, nostalgic atmosphere, accentuated by Chomet’s own music. There is a certain flatness to the main characters, but perhaps that is part of the point: the shy Gaelic girl and the fading Gallic entertainer are nobodies in the big city, lodgers in search of an identity. They are offset by more colourful characters - including a rather maudlin bunch of other entertainers at the end of their tether, who for some reason are all staying at the same hotel – and there are glimpses of Tati’s own comic magic, such as the scene in the garage. The Illusionist himself is a carefully observed portrait of Tati, and at one metanarrative point he walks into a screening of Mon Oncle. But as in  Shakespeare’s romances, the light of comedy is surrounded by deep shadow. Together with the evident love for the world being portrayed in The Illusionist, there is a sense that it is all slipping away. Art, magic, apparently secure relationships, the brief glimpses of local fame: all are illusions, washed away by the relentless rain. Perhaps our common fate is to end performing our act on a stage, when no one is watching and the world has moved on; the illusionist finally manages his own retirement from the scene with grace and dignity, leaving Alice and the cantankerous rabbit to continue their stories without him.

Barcelona: Films

Two lists of films set in Barcelona:

• Jill Adams, '10 of the best films set in Barcelona'
• This one is courtesy of NN Hotels; 'Barcelona in the Movies'

Barcelona: Art off the Beaten Track

An interesting  list by Jill Adams for those who want to get away - if only for a while - from the iconic figures of Gaudí, Tàpies, Miró, Picasso - and see something off the tourist track: '10 of the best spots for art in Barcelona'

Barcelona: Columbus Monument

The Columbus Monument which looks out over Barcelona's harbour is a striking landmark. Although the first stone was laid on 26th September 1882, it was not inaugurated until 1st of June 1888, the year of the Universal Exhibition (which opened on 20th May). Consequently it is closely associated with that event and its great themes: the celebration of modern industry and industrial materials; Barcelona's pride in its own economic and industrial growth, as it puts itself alongside Paris and London; and  Catalonia's assertion of its rightful place in centre stage in Spain. The monument's neoclassical, heroic figures (the work of several Barcelona sculptors) clearly articulate a confidence in - or nostalgia for? - imperial power, just ten years before Spain was to lose the last of its colonies in the disastrous war of 1898.  Like other works of the late nineteenth century the Columbus Monument makes a statement about the present through its representation of the past. The various elements make up a complex symbolic whole, and the entire piece needs to be read as a narrative to make sense.

Here is an introductory video by World Site Guides, with the calming background music that seems to be deemed essential for such productions:




Detailed information, with excellent illustrations, is given in Peter van der Krogt's remarkable website on Columbus monuments around the world.

As with all Barcelona monuments, the essential local source is the Art Públic site, which also appears with suitably calming music. Remembering the date (1888), the entries on the monument can be found in a few clicks.

as for the great question, was Columbus in fact Catalan? The case is summarised here, and discussed in exhausting detail on the Catalan Wikipedia entry.

Modernisme in Barcelona: Some Links

Here are some useful resources on Modernisme, the Catalan version of Art Nouveau:

To start with ...

• The CulturCat site is informative, but the English version has an autotranslate feel to it.
• Gaudiallgaudi has plenty of information, though the English versions are sometimes unreadable.
• Ruta del Modernisme contains historical background and has links to all the major buildings. The book of the same title is well worth buying and takes you to places beyond the usual tourist routes. (There is an underground shop where tours can be booked beneath the Plaza de Catalunya.)
• The Generalitat produce a colourful pdf guide to the major works in the Modernist style in Barcelona and beyond: Modernism: Art Nouveau in Catalonia
• The Barcelona Modernista site (in Spanish), constructed by an individual enthusiast, is excellent.

More advanced ...

• The Anglo-Catalan Society publishes a monograph by architect and architectural historian David Mackay, Modern Architecture in Barcelona (1854-1939)
• Finally, the blog on Catalan architects gathers a lot of good material, overwhelmingly in Catalan.

Antoni Tàpies, Homenatge a Picasso (1981)

 Tàpies' Homenatge a Picasso (1981) is a striking public monument, in which a contemporary artist (born in Barcelona, with deep family roots in the city) salutes Picasso, who spent only a short time in Barcelona as a student but always retained an affection for the place. The essential information is on the website of the Tàpies Foundation. There is also an excellent article by Colm Toibin, who considers the work and compares the lives of the two artists.

There is probably no one key or 'answer' to a monument like this. It is better to let its many elements play on your imagination. For me, its proximity to the Parc de la Ciutadella makes it a natural episode in the story of memory and the assertion of culture over barbarism which that site represents.

Joan Miró programme

Excellent video on Joan Miró by Eva Bosch, placing the artist in social and cultural context:

Gaudí, Casa Milà

Two useful videos on Gaudí, Casa Milà (La Pedrera). The first is from a series of architectural programmes:



And the second is from the Generalitat Patrimoni series, short but informative:

Gaudí, Architect and Craftsman

Here is a useful video introduction to Gaudi, in English, on the Generalitat educational site. Brief biography and account of methods and techniques, without going into any single work in detail:

Meek's Cutoff

The Meek Cutoff was one of the Oregon trails followed by pioneer settlers in the nineteenth century. The route was a short cut created by mountain man Stephen Meek. In 1845 Meek guided a train of 200 wagons, with some 1000 travellers, across arid plains, a journey during which 23 people died in the desperate search for water. The Wikipedia entry has pictures of a tombstone of one of the victims and a branch on which 'Lost' has been carved (a detail picked up early in the film). The experience was clearly hell on earth. 'Tuck what is called Meek's cutoff ... a bad cutoff for all that tuck it', writes one Samuel Parker: 'I will just say, pen and tong will both fall short when they gow to tell of the suffering the company went through'.

For some viewers, pen and tongue also fell short in describing the tedium of Meek's Cutoff (2010), Kelly Reichardt's film based on this crossing. Personally, I found it an absorbing and increasingly tense experience. Bringing the size of the party down to three families and Meek (I would imagine an unlikely scenario), Reichardt brings out the tension between families and guide (who is clearly lost), touches on issues of gender, and places the pionering evangelism of the pioneers against the endless indifference of the landscape. The capture (we're not shown how) of an Indian, and the decision not to subtitle his speeches, takes us into different attitudes to the Other. The ending is open, which annoyed some, but this is surely a familiar trope (cf John Sayles' Limbo (1999)), and there are at least suggestions that water and deliverance is not far away.

Above all, the film brings out the exhausting parched slog to the promised land, with the women in long dresses and bonnets walking behind the creaking, fragile wagons (actually sitting in them would have been a lethally bone-ratttling experience, it would seem). Existence is stripped down to the task of endurance and the rhythm of expectation and disappointment: will the next valley bring water or more desert? Helplessly following the Indian, the travellers live with a terrifying unknown. Is he leading them to water and life, or to death in some ambush? Dialogue is spare and resonant with unspoken fear. Eerie music floats across the scene from time to time, and the photography is mesmerising. The film took me well away from my usual zone, to websites on trails and a fascinating LRB article (33:24) on the Comanches. This is film as a record of the human journey as something harsh, elemental, inconclusive and troubling; and if you like that sort of thing, Meek's Cutoff is a trip well worth taking.

Terry Eagleton, How to Read a Poem

I've just caught up with Eagleton's book on the close reading of poetry. It might seem a surprising choice of subject for a writer so associated with literary theory, but Eagleton's first point here is that Theory and Practice in the reading of poetry are partners, not enemies. And indeed this must be true: when we read a poem we are inevitably operating in some framework of ideas about the sort of thing a poem is, what it's for, what reading it involves etc. These are plainly matters of theory. Conversely, ruminations on signifiers and the like will at some point bring us to an actual text and its inner workings. Why in any case would one want to use Practical Criticism as a safe haven from the big questions? if it's a hermetic verbal workout you want, do a crossword.

Eagleton's book starts with potted accounts of concepts like formalism, rhetoric, imagination, poetic language etc, some of it familiar from Literary Theory and other works. His affable blokey style can crystallise an idea nicely, but it can also sound glib. Some will like the gags with which he ties up a point, but I found them tedious and learned to skip over them by the end. On the evidence of his writing, Eagleton has a naturally combative temperament and is animated by the sensation of fighting some enemy or other, whether real or imaginary. A deft chapter on the ways in which content and form can work against each other concludes with a surprising ululation of victory: 'Part of the point of this exercise has been to challenge the piety that the two always form a harmonious whole'. Always? Did anyone else notice this piety that needed challenging? There are some odd lurches of tone. Van Morrison is accused of over-performing traditional music - a somewhat laboured illustration of the constratints of possible interpretation  - and then we are told, 'It is as if Morrison's performances in this field reflect a flawed epistemology, surprised though he would doubtless be to hear it'. Is this anything more than a sneer?

Still, these are minor irritations. As an introduction to reading poetry, this is one of the best I've come across. Eagleton establishes poetry as a moral activity, in its older and wider sense: 'a qualitative or evaluative view of human conduct and experience'. This brings the activity into a proper light: Practical Criticism can easily descend into pointless labelling (there's alliteration in line 3!), but Eagleton's own readings show us the much deeper rewards that come from following a text as it leads us into the shifting texture of the felt life. The analyses he presents (based on a surprisingly canonical set of texts) deal acutely with the formal and stylistic properties of poems, while always relating these to their emotional and intellectual life. In considering how texts might transmit the consciousness of their age, he is persuasive but also rightly tentative. Eagleton's style is a matter of taste, but he is convincing about the things that matter.