Church Going

Despite his quixotic conservatism, which made him love jazz but hate be-bop, Philip Larkin was not religious, but it inspired a nostalgia deep enough for him to write a beautiful elegy for "Church Going".


Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

Public Enemies

What little I know, or care to know, about John Dillinger, former "public enemy number one," gives me a pretty good idea that he was a loathsome man. That he should be played by Johnny Depp, Hollywood's number one heart throb, in the film Public Enemies is just another example of the loathsomeness of American film.

Michael Mann's films (Heat, Collateral), with the exception of The Insider, are virtually a testimonial to Montherlant's old assessment of the American film: "A perfect technique in the service of cretinism." The technique of Public Enemies, however, is far from perfect. It is hampered by the stupid craze (largely created by Mann) for hand held camerawork. Shot on digital video, it has the look and spatial feel of television. No attempt whatever is made to convey the period, except for bad haircuts and tinny music. It is all costumery and Thompson submachine guns.

One of the things I enjoyed about Brian di Palma's The Untouchables was its portrayal of Al Capone as a murderous pig. Every film portrayal of Dillinger has attempted to portray him as a typical anti-hero, sympathetic to the public for his "daring" exploits and ability to elude the cops (including the G-Men of the Bureau of Investigation). Christian Bale, as Melvin Purvis, wasted his time in a totally lacklustre role. There are a few suggestions in the film that Purvis was pressured by J. Edgar Hoover into some of his more brutal actions. An end title informs us that Purvis resigned from the Bureau in 1935, and died "by his own hand" in 1960. So much for the intervening twenty-five years.

Much is made of Dillinger watching the Clark Cable-William Powell movie Manhattan Melodrama shortly before he was killed outside the theater. There is also a rather forced attempt to suggest a resemblance between Myrna Loy and Marion Cotillard, who plays Eveline "Billie" Frechette, at least in the eyes of Dillinger. Only in one of Dillinger's sick dreams could Cotillard look like Myrna Loy. And Mann couldn't even resist the clearly overwhelming urge in filmmakers to shoot climactic scenes in slow motion, as if Dillinger's death were some sort of historic event.

It's not surprising that this film, which might have stood alongside Bonnie and Clyde, only showed people what a dead genre the gangster film is. Public Enemies resembles Bugsy in its concentration on the relationship between Dillinger and Frechette. It isn't nearly as awful as Bugsy, but I am sure several more budding public enemies have seen Public Enemies and have thrilled to its glorification of murder.

Charity

When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth. Matthew 6:3

What the man in the passage above was talking about is that people shouldn't give (charity) the same way they invariably give it nowadays - publicly and proudly. One shouldn't derive satisfaction from it. It should be done without thinking of its effect on oneself, on one's goodness or on one's chances for salvation.

It was announced this week that Warren Buffett, the oracle of Omaha, and a consortium of forty other billionaires are committed to giving more than half of their personal fortunes to "charity." Of course, many of them have insisted on bequeathing theirs. Pardon my cynicism, but unless these men are worrying about the reception they will get at the pearly gates, what do they hope to accomplish?

Do they believe that a last act of philanthropy can make up for a lifetime of selfishness - what Adam Smith called "personal gain"? Does anyone still believe that one man should be in control - should be allowed to control - so much money? The fact is there would be no need for charity if we had an economy that made such rapacious, insane acquisitiveness as Buffett & Co. have practiced all their lives impossible.

Bondage

Upon watching the latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace (a strange title even for a Bond film), I was both impressed at how completely the worn out old franchise has been overhauled and depressed by how thoroughly it has killed Bond himself. I did not see Casino Royale, the film that introduced Daniel Craig as the new Bond, the sixth actor to play the part. He is the blondest and easily the ugliest of the six, but he can act, which some others could not, and he is the most physical Bond since Sean Connery. When Craig gets into a fight, you believe it when he wins. Only Connery could do that before now.

I have expressed my preference, such as it is, for the original Bond elsewhere. I must admit to having some residual, misplaced affection for the Bond franchise. Partly because it is almost as old as I am, and perhaps because it has not been permitted to grow old. But just like a woman who is getting on in years and who gets one too many facelifts and wears a ton of makeup, James Bond is showing his age in subtler, more disturbing ways.

Some of the old characters are still there, like M, played lately (since 1995) by Judy Dench. But many of the other characters, which managed to keep Bond safely in Movieland, are gone. Ian Fleming, who died in 1964, would probably not recognize the people in Quantum. Having died long before the end of the Cold War, it is easy to see Bond as a relic of that era, even if Fleming's bad guys were usually madmen without a country, wanting to rule the world or destroy it (or both).

One of the film's set pieces takes place in a particularly ugly modern amphitheater during a typically stupid updated staging of Tosca. The killings onstage mirror the killings offstage, as Bond tries to corner the chief bad guy (played smoothly by the accomplished French actor, Mathieu Amalric). The trouble is, it was at times difficult to tell them apart, what with the players in the opera using automatic weapons. It gets even messier when Bond drops an adversary (who is actually an MI6 agent) off the roof just as Tosca is throwing herself off the castle battlements (which are left entirely to our imaginations by the minimalist staging). There is an irony here that the clever Bond script writer (Paul Haggis) overlooked: removed from its context, the opera's director was trusting that Tosca would retain its coherence in a "relevant" new setting, just as the creators of Quantum trust that Bond continues to make sense after fifty years.

The Swimmer part seven

The ocean's emptiness appals the swimmer, but only because it can supply nothing for his own survival. He cannot entertain flabby polemic about dolphins. His is the mind of a man lost in the sea. Yet even as he struggles to save himself he is hollowed out by despair. What is it that he is saving? The thought corrodes his every intention. In this wide salt world which he treads he is nothing, has nothing but a face mask and a pair of trunks. Until one loses everything it is never clear what it was one had. Now, in a bleak inner glimpse, he finds he has dissolved. The landscape of his own past, his private history, seems to have vanished, leaving only a sense of attrition. As he glances down through the water his body dwindles whitely like a distant peg and sheds a small discolored puff of urine which briefly unravels itself in thready convections like those of lime juice being diluted. Nothing but ocean. His entire body is dissolving, too. He only ever existed as three tenths and that fraction is melting into water.


However, this 30 percent contains an animal which does not want to die. A passive animal, maybe, but still perversely convinced that help will turn up as if by more than mere chance. Sooner or later someone surely has to pass within hailing distance of the psychic beacon he must have become, broadcasting his distress signal on all frequencies. He squints at the sun. Now that he no longer wants it to be stuck vertically at noon, it seems reluctant to move at all. Night with its hope of fishermen is still many hours away.


The swimmer tells himself he need not bank only on them. He has been overlooking all the other sorts of boat which continually cross these waters. Besides tattered interisland launches there are all the craft which used to fetch up on "Tiwarik": friendly gunrunners, wanderers from the south with their faces wrapped against the sun, poverty-stricken vagabonds neither peaceable not violent but chance-takers of more or less competence. Any of them might spot him from miles away with a vulture's quick eye for a weakening beast. He tries to imagine into being a huge arch of cloud letters in the sky: REWARD!, and underneath a gigantic arrow pointing straight down whose tip balances on his sunburned head. It is a message aimed impartially at any of the seagoing mavericks who still inhabit this last corner of the ocean.


So hard does he will it that he soon thinks he hears, above the infuriatingly loud slop of wavelets, the faintest putter of an engine.


James Hamilton-Paterson, Seven-Tenths: The Sea and Its Thresholds.

¿Dónde está la Revolución?

Visitors to Venezuela have, for the past decade at least, commented on the fervor of Hugo Chávez supporters routinely - and spontaneously - demonstrating their love for their president and their enthusiasm for Venezuela's "revolución." There's only one problem with their demonstrations and enthusiasm: there was no revolution in Venezuela. There was an election.

Most people like to compare Venezuela with Cuba, and Chávez to Fidel Castro. Hugo Chávez may be an staunch admirer of Castro, but he is essentially the opposite of him. Chávez was elected president of Venezuela in 1998. And re-elected in 2000 and in 2006. Castro led a band of guerrillas in a violent takeover of Cuba in 1959 - a genuine and bloody revolution. What Chávez's success has demonstrated is that there are two kinds of Socialism: revolutionary Socialism and democratic Socialism. Many of Socialism's enemies may disbelieve in and deny that there is any such thing as democratic Socialism, but they are demonstrably wrong.

Legislating Socialist reforms in a democracy, especially one with a former oligarchical class structure, is not exactly like changing horses in mid-stream. It's more like changing the course of the stream itself. Unlike a revolution, which sweeps old regimes and their policies away in one violent upheaval, legislative reforms take a painfully long time to take effect. Chávez's enemies like to point out that his reforms aren't working, but this is not the fault of Socialism, but of democracy. In fact, Leftist reforms in a democracy are always disappointing because they take so long to have any impact. People, who are naturally apathetic and conservative (even George Orwell knew this), grow impatient with reforms and want to change governments before they can come to fruition.

Add to this the opposition from practically every other democratic country in the world that would be delighted to see Socialism fail one more time, even at the expense of people's livelihoods and the welfare of their families. I became a Socialist the moment I learned, in 2002, that virtually everything I have been led to believe about Socialism was a lie. The reasons behind all these lies are simple enough to comprehend. For the better part of forty years, Americans had to accustom themselves to the prospect that a nominally Socialist state, Soviet Russia, wanted to blow them all to smithereens.

But another reason for the lies I was told about Socialism is that too many people stood to lose too much if it were to come to pass. It is never the average Joes who want nothing more than to live a decent life and provide for their families that makes Capitalism such a "free-for-all in which the worst man wins."* It's the real Capitalists, the people who want impossibly more than they could ever need, the IMF and the World Bank, who have made Capitalism such an inequitous and unjust system. They are the people that Hugo Chávez is fighting against. There was an attempted coup in 2002, which threatened democracy itself, which was organized and led by members of the former ruling class. After briefly removing Chávez from power, the coup was defeated.

Venezuela is a small, poor country. Its oil resources have made it seem more important than it is. If Socialism is not allowed at least a chance to work properly by its internal and external enemies, the fault will not be Chávez's or Socialism's, but ours.

*George Orwell's words.

Ugetsu

In the history of world film, 1953 was an exceptionally fruitful year. In Italy, Federico Fellini introduced his semi-autobiographical hero Moraldo to the world in I Vitelloni (1). In Sweden, Ingmar Bergman nailed his reputation as a filmmaker of genius with his first great film, Sawdust and Tinsel. In Japan alone two of its greatest film artists created masterpieces: Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story was released, a film that has turned up on Ten Best lists ever since (at least since foreign distributors finally decided that it be shown in the West); and Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu Monogatari was immediately hailed as one of the most beguiling films ever made, whetting Western audiences’ appetite for Eastern exoticism – something that had been created by Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) and considerably expanded by Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Gate of Hell, also released in 1953, and shot in glorious Agfacolor. Mizoguchi’s film was in black-and-white but had the advantage of being billed as a ghost story. As audiences quickly discovered, however, Ugetsu Monogatari is a peculiarly Japanese ghost story.

In the 16th century, a time of civil wars, Genjiro (Masayuki Mori), lives with his wife Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka) and young son while plying his trade as a potter. Though poor, he talks incessantly of bettering his lot by selling all his wares in town at a great profit, and his brother Tobei (Eitaro Ozawa) boasts of buying a suit of armour and becoming a samurai. Their wives tell them to be thankful for what they have instead of wasting their time on such dreams.

Very quickly the film has introduced us to one of the central themes of Japanese film: the resigned acceptance of the way things are rather than an insistence on change and resistance to the status quo. While Kurosawa was often on the side of the latter, showing how diligence can sometimes create incremental change (in Ikiru, 1952, and Red Beard, 1965), Mizoguchi, a traditionalist, is always on the side of the former, since it is the only way to attain serenity – what has come to be known as mono no aware (2). But of course, Mizoguchi must allow Genjiro to learn this for himself, at great cost to those he loves most.

Just as the script for Rashomon was derived from two different stories by Akutagawa, the script for Ugetsu is based on two stories by the 18th century writer Akinari Ueda, from his collection Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of the Moon and Rain). Mizoguchi combined the stories merely by making the protagonists of the two tales brothers. In the tales and in the film, they both realise their ambitions – Genjiro finds wealth beyond his wildest dreams in Lady Wakasa’s mansion and Tobei becomes a samurai with his own horse and men under his command. Although two ghosts are introduced as principal characters (3), neither is malevolent (even if, admittedly, one of them tries to make Genjiro hers for eternity). Nor are they your typical movie ghosts – created through double exposure or other special effects. Mizoguchi and his cinematographer, the irreplaceable Kazuo Miyagawa, use only shadow and light to evoke the unforgettable illusion of Genjiro’s idyll with Lady Wakasa.

The film abounds in extraordinary sequences. The long crane shot at the film’s opening, establishing the setting of Genjiro’s hut. The beautiful little scene in the town where Genjiro stops to admire kimonos and imagines seeing Miyagi touching them and trying them on. The interiors extravagantly materialise around Genjiro as he enters the mansion and candles are lit from room to room. The justly celebrated love scene by the shimmering lake.

Mizoguchi’s realism is painstaking in its straightforwardness. All of his great period films – The Life of Oharu (1952), Chikamatsu Monogatari (1954), and Sansho the Bailiff (1954) – deal with ordinary human beings facing real problems, usually highlighting the disadvantaged position of women. If Mizoguchi had a point to his concentration on women, it may have been to explore how their subjugation ultimately affects everyone, male or female. When Tobei discovers his wife has been forced into prostitution, he knows that he is ruined as well, despite his samurai title. Ugetsu Monogatari is, as Vernon Young noted in another context, “a noteworthy essay on the saddest subject there is: illumination glimpsed too late” (4).

Typical of Mizoguchi films, the best performances belong to women: Kinuyo Tanaka’s long-suffering Miyagi, whose patience is rewarded only after her apotheosis; Mitsuko Mito’s playing of Tobei’s wife, who teaches him that position and respectability come with a heavy price; Machiko Kyo’s perfectly realised portrayal of a young woman utterly, distractedly devoted to love and the happiness it gives her. But there is also her startling look of terror and sadness when she finds the Sanskrit prayers written on Genjiro’s skin.

And then there is the long closing sequence, exploiting Mizoguchi’s love for long takes, as Genjiro returns home. The wisdom he has attained allows him even to accept the great loss he discovers in his hut, and the presence of a love so obstinate that it could not be taken away.


(1) Fellini’s original script for La Dolce Vita (1960) was called Moraldo in Citta.
(2) Donald Richie defines mono no aware as “that awareness of the transience of all earthly things, the knowledge that it is, perhaps fortunately, impossible to do anything about it: that celebration of resignation in the face of things as they are.” Japanese Cinema: Film Style and National Character, Anchor Books, New York, 1971, p. 77.
(3) There are possibly as many as four other ghosts in the film. There is the voice of Lady Wakasa’s dead father which is heard coming from his enshrined suit of armor. The other three are uncertain: Lady Wakasa’s maid and two other attendants in her mansion. All three, however, vanish with Lady Wakasa, leaving her deserted mansion in ruins.
(4) Vernon Young, On Film: Unpopular Essays on a Popular Art, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1972, p. 226.

[This essay first appeared in Senses of Cinema in 2005.]