Transactive memory. Eggs in a meringue? Deep thought is lost.
140 chrctrs. Vous googlez?
Alienate. No plate served. An avalanche of distraction. Send in your pictures.
Give a minute; get the world.
Breaking, breaking, breaking, breaking…
Never search. Never find. Never know.
Before even leaving school, I had tacitly accepted that I would be emigrating once college was over. Back then, it was a matter of only modest consequence. A dozen Leaving Certificate classes or so had already gone that road before our one had even given it any consideration. It was the way that things were back then. Ireland held no prospects; it offered no future. The only way up was a plane ticket out. Then the narrative changed. Somewhere in the space where I was off getting shit-faced, losing my religion, and all the rest of that adolescent-to-adult carry-on, things went and got better… unimaginably better. There were suddenly jobs, a freedom from the shackles, a strange thrill of self-determination, a sense of unquestioning self-belief… We were amongst the first of the tiger cubs and we could not believe our luck.
Now there is a generation with a contrasting tale to tell. Welcome to the poison paradise, if you will, for these are the kids who knew little other than to take things for granted. Ireland had rapidly decayed into being a materialistic society and what more susceptible acolytes of the market economy than image-conscious teenagers who were entirely unencumbered by the grimness of pre-tiger Ireland? Here, the 18-strong graduation class from the Gaiety School of Acting have chosen to peer into the abyss that such misplaced trust in the future can create, with each providing some nice autobiographical detail along the way as to how they saw the world at the age of 14 and what is important to them now. Read the rest of this page »
Yes, its a rich language, Lieutenant, full of the mythologies of fantasy and hope and self-deception – a syntax opulent with tomorrows. It is our response to mud cabins and a diet of potatoes; our only method of replying to… inevitabilities.
For me, Hugh’s description of the Irish language has always burned right through to the sort of people that we are. Not that this should be surprising given how this is a play that delves into how language, memory, and psyche are all immersed in each other. Consider, if you will, the following:
“Property prices will rise and rise”, “there will be a soft landing”, “the cheapest bank rescue in the world”, “at least we are not Iceland”, “we do not need a bailout”, “we will get the interest rate cut”, “at least we are not Greece”, etc.
Meanwhile, our public services crumble to dust, our children leave, and scot-free bondholders get paid back in full. Yes, on the off-chance that this is what Brian Friel meant by renewing the images of the past or fossilise, then we have taken up his suggestion only too well over the 30 years that have passed since Translations‘ first appeared on stage at Derry’s Guildhall. Unfortunately, we Irish have long since been seduced by the promise of what lies around the bend. We live in perennial, awful, inescapable, infantile hope. We bathe in the luxuriant sound of it.
By way of a further example, then, there was the recent visit of the Queen of the Commonwealth Realms to Ireland – an event that conveniently sits well with those that occurred in the Ballybeg of 1833. Step back from the immediacy of it all and you are left with a diminutive old lady being rushed through empty steel-fenced streets while most complained about traffic delays, a few practised wobbly curtsies in front of the mirror, and several more muttered dark things into their beer. The images of the past were honoured, Yolland would have envied how a cúpla focal were spoken, and it all seemed fairly unremarkable. As all of this was happening, though, men in suits spoke privately together about how much in hock Ireland was to its nearest neighbours. The royal visit may have shown that “the new names” have indeed been learned. At the same time, we live in a country that is once more an impoverished “section” of some greater and uncaring dominion.
Shadowy, questionable advisors? A paternalistic elite that thinks it knows best? Horrendous and unjust sacrifices being demanded of the weak and vulnerable? Leaders lacking moral courage? No alternatives?
Yes, the Ancient Greeks have little in common with us.
Set during the preparations for the invasion of Troy, the fleets led by King Agamemnon (Michael Bates) and his brother Menelaus (Neil Hogan) have become becalmed at Aulis. When a seer warns that they have angered the goddess Artemis and that only the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia (Aoife Moore) will bring back the winds, Agamemnon wavers at the horror of what is being demanded of him. However, feeling boxed in, he nonetheless sends for his daughter under false pretences. Bizarrely, though, the king has not counted on his wife Clytemnestra (Lesa Thurman) turning up for her child’s (purported) wedding and his demented, ditchwater-weak plan is exposed in less time than it takes for Achilles to lose his temper over a broken sandal strap or some other such calamity.
If only for it was intended to be a tragedy, it could have been a black screwball comedy that the bold Euripides has penned here.
Indeed, even though it is terribly potent to see Iphigenia gain strength initially from an acceptance of her fate and then by way of a defiant proclamation of her patriotism, the bastards still appear to win here. Even the wind instantaneously picking up would seem to give credence to this appalling notion of the need for the innocent to pay heavily for the mistakes of the guilty. This is to forget, of course, that the siege of Troy would take a decade to reach its conclusion and much more senseless slaughter would be needed to bring that result about. If such things are victory, then we have long since lost. Read the rest of this page »
There was a television programme on the other night asking why Irish playwrights had generally failed to challenge the orthodoxy of crass greed during the Celtic Tiger years (my way of summarising it). Even though the question was fiercer than the attempt to answer it, it was still interesting to watch the piece in the lead up to Shiva Productions’ revival of Blood Knot – Athol Fugard’s 50-year old play about two brothers living in a shack in apartheid-poxed South Africa. Unsurprisingly, in offering up lines such as dreams being evidence enough to have one arrested, whilst lampooning racial discrimination through savage play-acting, this was a work that was never going to endear Mr. Fugard to the loony-tunes in charge. Even now, its final scenes still offer up the meaty thud of pricks being kicked, so it was not surprising to learn that those involved in its initial domestic performances did fall foul of the authorities.
Set in a corrugated one-room box next to a fetid lake, brothers Zach and Morrie endure a brittle and meagre existence together. As played by Keith Ward, Morrie is decidedly Gollum-like in his toadying appeasement early-on of the exhausted bread-winning Zach (Kolade Agboke). Meanwhile, the latter – his memory the consistency of cotton wool – is reduced to caveman utterances about his need for “woh-man”. The contrasts between the two are stark, with Morrie literate, regimented, introverted, and prone to nervy babble, while Zach is less sharp-witted, more physiological in terms of his needs, and quite unvarnished in terms of how to fulfil them. He dreams of Friday nights filled with beer, birds, and bonhomie; his brother of vacant, nameless green spots on the map of Africa. Read the rest of this page »
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
From Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2
You can forget all about Terence Malick’s Tree of Life juggernaut, one of the four stars of this comically quirky and quietly spiritual look at life is an enormous fir tree swaying gently in the forest. Our three other protagonists in this novel drama from director Michelangelo Frammartino, then, are a bronchial old man, a kid goat, and, um, a sackful of charcoal. Confused already? Well, throwing “world-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras” into the mix may not sound like the most obvious way of alleviating that predicament. However, what Mr. Frammartino is gently paying homage to here is this Greek philosopher’s view that the human soul passes through four states – those of man, animal, vegetable, and mineral respectively. In this respect, we can be glad that Gaspar Noé read The Tibetan Book of the Dead instead or the already-interminable Enter the Void (2009) would have gone on for longer than it took to build the Pyramids
Although a drama, the film is shot with such striking realism and seemingly callous detachment that it borders on the incomprehensible that anyone could continue to film certain events without staging an intervention. However, exhibiting a tremendous talent for staging elaborate visual gags, Mr. Frammartino’s unmissable centrepiece scene is the single take of the mayhem that the old goatherd’s dog causes as an Easter procession passes through the ancient Italian hilltop village. It is simply deadpan comedy at is finest. Equally, the pensive close-ups of actor Giuseppe Fuda are reminiscent of Rembrandt’s portraits of his ageing self in terms of their mute unvarnished sadness.
Win Win ought to be an entirely forgettable film experience, given that its comedic ideas have been sitcom chum for generations on end. For example, Mike Flaherty (Paul Giamatti) is rotund, balding, hiding financial pressures from his wife, and hanging out with men who still have difficulties in letting their youthful days go. In a moment of desperation, he does something stupid, the situation inevitably becomes complicated, and he ends up being forced to confront his shortcomings. I ruin nothing in revealing this. The way this film is going to work out is only short an explanatory title card at the start. Fortunately, though, unbridled creativity is not the reason one goes to see a Thomas McCarthy offering. Instead, he tends to provide us with agreeable reminders that despite being as pathetic, flawed, and lazy as we know ourselves to be, with even just a little more effort and social awareness, the good that we can then do could be exponentially greater.
Here, Mike and his wife Jackie (Amy Ryan) end up taking in listless youth Kyle (Alex Shaffer), who comes replete with bad tats and an even worse dye-job. As attempts to re-unite him with his mother in Ohio prove problematic, Mike’s eagerness to see his temporary charge on the bus back home is softened, though, when Kyle turns out to be an exceptional addition to the school wrestling team that Mike coaches. However, there are enough flies in the ointment here to keep pest control busy for a month, so things are soon buzzing off course for our good-natured hero with a guilty secret or two. Read the rest of this page »
O, then, what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turn’d a heaven unto a hell!
After the garish costumes and goofy antics of A Comedy of Errors in the Abbey Theatre, it was a strange sort of relief to see that director Jason Byrne’s next foray into Shakespeare would be back with the Loose Canon Theatre Company in the more experiment-friendly environs of the Project Arts Centre. Strange? Well, the marketing folks were emphasising “donkey fucking” in their promotional material for this production. However, animal rights activists need not go reaching for their placards, the scene in question is decorous enough to have pleased the Irish censor’s office a half-century ago. Instead, the performance lingers on Titiania (Catriona Ni Mhurchu)’s growing sense of horror when the charm is lifted from her eyes the following morning. Equally, the confusion and then the anguish on the faces of Hermia and Helena, as the targets of their affection behave in beastly fashion towards them, is notably emphasised here. Even the happy reconciliation of the lovers at the end transpires under the blinding glare of the rising sun.
Love hurts, right?
For all that, this is a play that takes its tongue and plants it firmly in adjacent cheek. The male fairies (Barry O’Connor and Phil Kingston) wear heavy metal t-shirts, smoke copiously, and plod about the stage. Meanwhile, Louise Lewis, as Helena, is hysterical as she frantically tries to shoo away the unwelcome attention of two suddenly ardent male suitors. Unsurprisingly, then, Bottom also gets in on the act, with a slovenly-looking Ger Kelly splendidly cast as the play’s artless self-aggrandised anti-hero, replete with a bray loud enough to wake all of Greystones. Read the rest of this page »
The first time that I saw Ciarán O’Brien in a leading role was as the impressionable lovelorn Warren in a production of Kenneth Lonergan’s This is Our Youth. There, he imbued the character with a memorably puppy-dog vulnerability. Warren, though, at least had time on his side in terms of maturing into adulthood. Here, Gethin, a freshly-minted film studies graduate seems to have come out the other side a hard-boiled cynic and unsympathetic observer of human life. Accordingly, in Brass Eye-fashion, he has now come up with the idea of provocatively exploring the oft-hysterical reactions to the dangers that paedophiles pose. However, whereas Chris Morris ultimately distanced himself from his subject matter through stunts and satire, Gethin foolishly puts himself right in the firing line here… with some unexpected outcomes.
Where writer Stacey Gregg initially seems to put her own stamp on this work is in a challenging comparison of such frenzied worry about perverts in the community with middle-aged mothers telling fellatio jokes whilst worrying about the sexual orientation of pre-pubescent offspring, with adolescent girls shaking and jiggling away at the older objects of their affections, and with modern technology having concocted many new ways for teenagers to humiliate and torment their peers. This questioning of our love-hate fascination with all things sexual is then emphasised by Alyson Cummins’ (underused) background of angled mirrors. However, rather than tease out this premise into something new and thoughtful, the play then turns into an exploration of privacy in a world of detailed databases of personal information, whilst building towards a twist that gives the play more of a sugar-rush ending than a starchy slow-release one. Read the rest of this page »
A few photographs from the 2011 edition of Barcelona’s Primavera Sound music festival. Muggins here forgot to charge the battery before leaving, so eking out what juice was left means that the photos from the first night are particularly rubbish, with some acts even omitted as a result. Anyway…
Emeralds:
of Montreal:
Glasser:
In The Navigators (2001), Ken Loach trained his camera on the privatisation of the British railways. More particularly, he wanted to depict the economic, physical, mental, and even moral implications of unfettered capitalism on a group of hitherto happy-go-lucky labourers. In a sense, with his latest offering in Route Irish, he is returning to this same theme, as he shows how the combat zones of Afghanistan and Iraq have become the playground of private security firms, whose actions are subject to precious little scrutiny. However, Mr. Loach achieves this by literally bringing the war back home to the streets of Liverpool and the inability of troubled former soldier Fergus (Mark Womack) to accept that his best friend Frankie (John Bishop) could have died from being “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
What follows then is a not entirely successful welding together of Mr. Loach’s social justice sensibilities with the tropes of a vengeance thriller. The main problem is really with Paul Laverty’s screenplay, which lacks both the tension and ability to disguise plot twists needed to make the latter work, whilst some of the dialogue is painfully expositional. On the other hand, the cuts to footage of the bloody carnage actually being wreaked in places like Baghdad may not exactly be subtle either. However, why should anything that appalling ever be? Moreover, its insertion into a work so pointedly set in the heart of working-class Britain allows links to be drawn between how ordinary people suffer everywhere, whilst a handful of remorseless exploiters are able to profit greatly.
That said, Route Irish ultimately has the feel of a half-baked Sunday night mini-series on television. That said, the casting is excellent and Fergus does make for an agreeably angry and single-minded anti-hero here. As with The Navigators, though, it has all come at the price of his soul.
Trace any thorny historical conflict back far enough and you could well find that its origins lie in Cain slaying Abel, Romulus killing Remus, or Set murdering Osiris. Similarly, in Things to Come (1936), the people have continued to fight long past the point where they can remember who the original enemy was or why the war even started to begin with. Indeed, in this film from Jerzy Skolimowski, we are plunged headlong into such a confusing and hostile world. Ostensibly borrowing from the so-called War on Terror in terms of Taliban fighters, water-boarding, and extraordinary rendition, there is virtually no dialogue in this film, never mind any of an expositional nature. Accordingly, all that we cab surmise about Mohammed (Vincent Gallo) is that he can handle weapons, is prepared to kill, is adept at survival measures, and has an enormous will to live, despite all of the pain, terror, and exhaustion that he is suffering from.
Indeed, what Essential Killing represents is an hour-long flight through the frozen forests of an unidentified part of Northern Europe. Mohammed does what he has to do in order to stay both alive and ahead of his pursuers. Although far from devoid of confrontations and other memorably dramatic events, the monotony of the landscape, the speechless nature of the protagonist, and the general stillness of the piece do challenge one’s ability to stay interested in this work. Therefore, despite one or two comic scenes that ensure that this is not an entirely austere work, it is best to think of this offering as being a visceral existentialist drama that affords the viewer plenty of time to ask questions regarding what he or she is witnessing. Moreover, the ambiguous ending is also a surprisingly tender one, as a voiceless human being becomes the first to show genuine generosity and compassion to another. It amounts to a single ray of hope in a world where the life of any individual counts for less and less in the face of State power.
Leena (Noomi Rapace) is a thirty-something woman who learns that her mother (Outi Mäenpää) is close to death and that she wishes to see her daughter one last time. The issue here is that Leena has become so estranged from her mother that her own husband and children are not even aware that the latter is still alive. Indeed, Leena’s first reaction is to say nothing and instead disappear off to the solitude of the local swimming pool. Here, though, she sees a vision of herself as a young girl (Tehilla Blad), which is a symbolic device that then allows debutant Swedish director Pernilla August to embark upon a twin-track tale of how Leena grew up to be this emotionally-scarred woman and what effect going to see her mother will now have upon her. The result constitues such a deeply personal narrative that it comes as no surprise to learn that the screenplay was adapted by Ms. August from a semi-autobiographical work by novelist Susanna Alakoski.
However, whereas Ms. Rapace delivers an impressively intense and emotionally-wracked performance here, the character of Leena’s husband has been underdeveloped and there are several other weaknesses in the narrative surrounding her trip back home. On the other hand, when the film concentrates on Leena’s upbringing, it is at its most potent. Essentially, her parents were Finnish immigrants to Sweden. Her father (Ville Virtanen) was a violent drunk and her mother, an enabler, who was equally capable of drinking to excess. The result was that Leena was much more responsible for her younger brother (Junior Blad) than she ever ought to have been, whilst always left feeling different from her peers. Moreover, the living conditions that both children were growing up in and what they often had to witness were appalling. Read the rest of this page »
In Tell No One (2006), Gilles Lellouche plays a tough criminal who comes to the aid of a doctor caught up in extraordinary events and on the run from the law. In this thriller from director Fred Cavayé, though, Mr. Lellouche plays a trainee nurse caught up in extraordinary events, on the run from the law, and who is in need of assistance from a tough crimimal (Roschdy Zem). Yet, whereas the earlier work balanced its many action scenes with a script that offered up a few decent twists and turns, Point Blank has all of the testosterone-pumping energy that you might expect from a Hollywood offering of the same name. Indeed, it even manages to make Mesrine (2008) seem like a film about schoolgirls picking daisies by a babbling brook – a comparison partly inspired by Gérard Lanvin following up his “hard man” role in the latter with the part of an enigmatic. growling cop in this one.
Essentially, it is the sort of work that likes to turn the set into matchsticks, to make busy with the sweat, blood, and injuries, and to never feel to shy about giving an already convoluted plot a final preposterous tweak or two. Indeed, to the extent that there is a plot here, Mr. Lellouche’s character saves a man’s life, but soon has cause to regret it as he becomes an unwilling agent in getting the man out of the hospital afterwards. From thereon-in, it gets progressively sillier until a scene reminiscent of the first Terminator and Matrix movies respectively pops up to provide us with a breathless but tidy conclusion. To put it all another way, this film is nothing if not derivative city.
And, yes, fear not, for that is the epilogue at the end and not the start of some entirely undesirable fourth act.
A case of the Paddy who went into the cold here, as Irishman Johnny O’Reilly helms this Russian mystery-drama set in yet another icy and remotely-based meteorological station (the other being How I Ended This Summer (2010)). Indeed, the two films initially seem to have much in common, with a nervous newbie in Romash (Pyotr Logachev) being pushed around here by a surly superior in Drozdov (Sergey Garmash). Their relationship then looks set to deteriorate even further when they receive some bad news. However, it is at this point that the two works start to diverge in terms of plot, with this one partially becoming a police procedural drama. This change occurs when the film suddenly skips forward forty-eight hours and the police, led by Andrey (Aleksey Guskov), are on-site trying to piece together what must have taken place during the intervening period.
Unquestionably well-made, this offering does suffer, though, from the use of a number of highly familiar “MacGuffin”s, not least the possibility that an abominable snowman is out there waiting to grind the bones of some Russians to make his bread. Perhaps more problematic again is the fact that the film falls down between two stools here, with it being neither especially suspenseful nor psychological in nature. Hence, as much as you can appreciate the quality of the acting, cinematography, original music score, editing, and so forth, there remains that inescapable sense here that this ultimately boils down to being the sort of drama that you have seen many times before in a variety of other guises. A pity really.
That said, Mr. O’Reilly is understood to be working on a new project that wants to challenge a few international perceptions of what life in Moscow is really like. As such, it definitely sounds intriguing already.
