Alexander Solzhenitsyn – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)

This simply-told story recounts one day for a 40 something Russian man, Shukhov (Ivan Denisovich), in one of Stalin's labour camps, somewhere in northern Kazakhstan. A place described as:

“Strange! Yes, a strange sight indeed: the naked steppe, the empty
building-site, the snow gleaming in the moonlight.”

But this isn’t a story built on languid descriptions of landscape. Shukhov and his 104th team are the focus: how they fight the extreme cold, how they work together, how the guards rule every movement, and how individuals fight for every precious personal moment. These moments are sacred to Shukhov. No longer a member of the 104th, but an individual suddenly, with the rare ability to focus inwards, concentrating thoughts on something other than inspections, marching in rank, and hard labour. Shukhov finds these moments in eating. He spends his entire day negotiating, bartering, and seeking opportunities to carry out favours, all in return for extra portions of thin porridge or “skilly”.

As the skilly “went down, filling his entire body with warmth” then

“Shukhov complained about nothing: neither about the length of his stretch, nor about the length of the day … This was all he thought about now: we’ll survive. We’ll stick it out, God grant, till it’s over”.

For Shukhov there is nothing to think about outside of the immediate need to keep warm, healthy and alive. As a middle-class Western man bombarded with all the distractions and information that the 21st century can throw, cast off into a distance-less and timeless void where anything can be got and anywhere reached at speed, it is a state of mind I am in curious awe of. Oh, if one could be satisfied with the basic necessities for survival taken care of each day, instead of this perpetual longing for some thing or some place else. (I did say middle-class!)

“’Why d’you want freedom? In freedom your last grain of faith will be choked with weeds. You should rejoice that you’re in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul.’ … Shukhov gazed at the ceiling in silence. Now he didn’t know either whether he wanted freedom or not.”

Does someone really need an experience like Shukhov’s to be able to appreciate home, family and security? Of the camp Shukhov says: “That’s what everyone used to say: ‘Going home.’ We never had time to think of any other home.”

Solzhenitsyn himself spent 8 years in various camps, charged with making derogatory comments about Stalin. When he was released in 1953 he spent another 3 years in exile, eventually returning to Russia to teach, this novel appearing in the early 60s thanks in large part to Alexander Tvardovsky.

As a writer I wrestle daily with what shall I write about? Time seems to stand still and shrink all at once. Constantly I feel like I am wasting time. Personal experience seems pithy and weak. The future weighs heavy, like a distant dark cloud looming on the horizon.

“Wonder of wonders! How time flew when you were working! That was something he’d often noticed. The days rolled by in the camp – they were over before you could say ‘knife’. But the years, they never rolled by: they never moved by a second.”

Solzhenitsyn’s writing was the first to expose much of the hard facts around Stalin’s labour camps, and, to me, raises many questions about how one lives one’s life today – both internally, and in action. This novel is as vital now as it ever was.

“You can push a man this way, and you can push a man that way.”

Belle & Sebastian - Are You Coming Over For Christmas?

I completely failed to check this out over the christmas period, but another friend has been busy making music. Celia Garcia sang on Belle & Sebastian's christmas tune, and you can hear her sultry tones here.

Here's Celia enjoying a typical Scottish christmas moment, with her partner letting it all out behind her.

FOUND in session

My friend, Gavin Sutherland, continues to produce quality tunes - as he has done since a wee boy. This is one of his incarnations, FOUND, performing for Radio 1.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

The focus of the discussion around The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford (2007) centres on its main themes of mass-media circus and celebrity obsession. And rightly so due to our current cultural climate But as director Andrew Dominik displayed with his last (and first) feature, Chopper (2000), his interest is in the power struggle and fascination felt between two men – where one is charismatic and psychotic, the other weak but infatuated.

Where the aesthetic of Chopper was claustrophobic and grainy – with tight interior shots in the cell and home dominated by Eric Bana as Chopper (reminiscent of the palpable violence and menace of Ray Winstone in Gary Oldman’s Nil By Mouth (1998)) – Jesse James is full of light, colour and the wide expanse of middle America. There’s no mistaking the sumptuous work of cinematographer Roger Deakins (involved in anything by the Coen Brothers).

Sam Rockwell (Charley Ford) and Casey Affleck (Robert Ford) steal the show here, with Rockwell arguably the standout – his attempts to diffuse various situations with laughter and jokes makes for compelling viewing.

Brad Pitt’s (Jesse James) performance is layered and nuanced and the menace – especially sitting at the dinner table with Charley, Robert and Zee James (Mary Louise Parker) – is almost childlike as he plays with the taught emotion of the room.

Childishness is something that runs throughout the film. None of these ‘men’ seem to have grown out of adolescence. When Robert finds his brother Charley and Wood Hite (Jeremy Renner) rummaging through his box of Jesse James paraphernalia, the scene is one of boyhood bedroom bullying. The boys sleep and eat together, dormitory style, and crash around the house in fights and shouts.

Robert cannot shake off his childlike wonder and affection for James until he has shot him in the head and then recreated the murder a thousand times on stage. Affleck gives a supreme performance in awkward obsession.

Jesse James represents a period of change. A cowboy with one foot stuck in the stirrup of the past, the other on the industrial ground of the onrushing Victorian era. Holding up the train, James stands symbolically on lumber piled up on the track – the dark forest all around him, the steam-train lighting him up like a beacon. Later, when Robert and Charley flee James’ home having committed murder, we see spread across the valley floor, for the first time, an industrial landscape of factories and brick homes. Behind, silhouetted against the clear sky, James’ home, alone, on the edge of nothing.

Acacia

It was with a feeling of excitement that I got stuck into David’s latest book – Acacia: Book One – The War With The Mein. First in a trilogy it charts the downfall of the mighty Acacian empire through the assassination of its king. Before he dies he sends his four children to the four corners of the known world where they are to mature and return one day to reclaim the throne.

Part of this enthusiasm, I must admit, was a selfish awareness that David had (loosely) based the main characters on my own family. King Leodan was modeled somewhat on my father, Laughton, and the four children on myself and my three siblings. Quite how far this inspiration stretched I’m not sure. Not too far I hope, as my sister, especially, comes out of it all rather dark and twisted.

David said Ursula Le Guin was an inspiration, as were Tolkien – no clearer than in the character of Rialus Neptos, his Wormtongue to the king – and other fantasy writers. He borrowed from myths around our world to create his own. And it’s a unique and very believable world. The first quarter of the book is fairly heavy going as the wheels are set in motion and the reader introduced to many characters, plots and cultures. But perseverance is rewarded with a rich tapestry of drama, intrigue and epic battles.

David obviously picked up the knowledge in pulling together massively disparate strands of narrative across such a vast landscape with Pride of Carthage. Perhaps the greatest skill he learned from that experience – and has honed here – was presenting battles in unique and arresting ways. There is film talk, and if that should ever come to fruition it will be interesting to see if they include the scene where an army (both male and female) of thousands strip all their clothes off to combat a beast attracted to bright colour!

There is a supreme sensuousness to David’s writing that comes in all forms.

It can be about physical characteristics: P.52 – “Her mother had given her the shape of her face, the character of her lips, the pattern of lines across her forehead. They had the same hands: the same rate of taper and length, the same character to the knuckles, the same thin fingernails, the same off-kilter slant to the small finger.” This passage resulting in a sublime refrain: “The girl of ten held between her palms an aged, decaying, fading grip on herself, like some strange conflation of the past with the present or the present with the future.”

It can be about sexual tension: P.418 – “She wore only a diaphanous shift, so short it was really just a shirt. Walking toward him, feeling his eyes on her, knowing the candlelight would highlight the contours of her hips and abdomen and breasts, she hummed with nervous excitement. It was the strangest of feelings. She felt tawdry and jaded, her lips moistened with oil, eyes shadowed like a courtesan’s. But she also tingled with innocence, as if she were a child again, girlish, walking in the glow of an appraising eye that seemed somehow fatherly. Very strange, she thought, but also decidedly to her liking.”

It can be about violence: P.441 – “Her sword bit into his wrist at an angle. The honed blade sliced up along the bones and cut free a sizable amount of flesh and muscle like it was soft cheese. His sword hand died, dropping the weapon.

“Despite the shock and pain of the cut, Larken was quick enough to extend his hand for the hilt. He would have caught hold of it, too, except that Mena circled her sword back and sliced the grasping hand. His four fingers twirled into the air, each of them dragging thin loops of blood with them. Mena would never forget the look on his face just then, nor in the following moment, when she carved a smile into his abdomen.”

David, unlike the work of Tolkien or C.S.Lewis, wanted a multi-ethnic world. And it is that. He takes great joy in uncovering wildly different histories, stories and myth. Borrowing from Nordic tales, New Zealand Maori myth, and an assortment of religions and animistic beliefs, his world is rich. Where he will take the next two books is anyone’s guess. He’s given himself plenty to work with.

Many people are likening his work to king of the genre, George R.R. Martin, but I haven't read any of his books so can offer no comment on that.

Like Carthage, this is a bloody, realistic portrayal of violence and power. There is a fair amount of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to some of the duels, but the battles are largely brutal and blunt. P.59 – “There was simply nothing to it other than the enemy pouncing on them and his soldiers dying, blood spray all around, limbs kicked across the sodden snow, bodies like cloth dolls strewn about in broken-backed postures impossible for the living.”

Unlike so much fantasy writing, there is no clear black and white regarding good and evil. Characters are painted in all colours, and we learn of their motivations and their place in a wider corrupt world. No one character is undeniably good or dastardly evil. There is much political and philosophical pondering bubbling under the surface narrative. It can be read in depth, or enjoyed superficially. Either way, he should reach a wide audience, and one that has been whipped into a fantasy frenzy by the recent Lord of the Rings resurrection, the end of Harry Potter and the imminent release of the His Dark Materials films by New Line.

New Zealand Film Festival - Manufactured Landscapes

Most of the most interesting films at the International Film Festival are documentaries. I have added many to my 'must-see' list now as Helen and I have seen only a handful.

A lot of my interest is in the rapid development of China. Especially after researching my article, The Great River Theft. Helen and I saw Dong which was not my first choice. I had wanted to check out Still Life, Jia Zhang-Ke's examination of ordinary Chinese people displaced by the construction of The Three Gorges Dam - the world's largest - but it was one of the few films to sell out. A good sign I feel. Dong is his companion piece, also filmed around The Three Gorges and Bangkok, which follows a painter.

One other film I missed - due to the dog we are looking after having the runs! - was Manufactured Landscapes. It follows Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky as he travels the world observing changes in landscapes due to industrial work and manufacturing. Most of his most stunning images are of mass production in China, and the changing face of The Three Gorges where entire cities were raised to the ground by those living there by hand (the subject of Dong and Still Life) and then rebuilt, again by the same people, in new locations.

This clip is from an interesting website Ted, and is a talk by the photographer Burtynsky.





Helen and I did get to enjoy a more light-hearted documentary based in China. Les Blank has been making great documentaries for years, especially early bayou-style music stories. In All In This Tea he follows David Lee Hoffman as he searches for the best, home-grown, organic tea in China. There is a subtext regarding mass production in China as he drags the factory owners with him to the peasant farmers to show how their tea is of a much higher quality. But first and foremost it's about the cultural exchange and social interactivity surrounding tea. We are now on the lookout for a tea set so we can start trying some 'proper' tea.




The last film we saw was Build A Ship, Sail To Sadness. On paper it looked like the perfect film for Helen and I. "Solitary oddball Vincent mopeds through the Scottish Highlands with a dream of healing the community's loneliness with a mobile disco. A film about the joy of music and a yearning for the ecstasy of art."

Perhaps it was our desire to see the Scottish Highlands in all its glory that tainted our experience. The film is shot in over-saturated High 8 so the colours are lurid and livid. The best description I've heard calls it "a cross between Local Hero and Borat".

Vincent is a Scandinavian fellow in cricket jumper, rain mac and pink crash helmet who travels the bleak Highlands on his scooter. He stops and talks to various locals telling them he wants to cure everyone's loneliness through a mobile disco. It becomes rapidly apparent, as each scooter scene ends with Vincent stuffing his nostrils down the gas-tank and then passing out, that the loneliness is his own. The locals are happy enough.

The lo-fi catchy and often hilarious pop tunes are all the actor's originals, and you won't have seen the Scottish landscape shot in such an arresting fashion before, but we left disappointed - although we laughed plenty, a highlight being when he climbs a hill to convert a man burning heather to the joys of disco, only to be turned away by the man's fixation on all things heather-related.

Being ex-pats I think our idea of Scotland is firmly fixed in a traditional 'hands-off' watercolour ideal. Had we been living in the Highlands or Glasgow ourselves, this film would have been a delight.

The Scottish White Stripes

The longer and further I am away from Scottish shores, the more patriotic I become. For instance, I've always been a fan of The Proclaimers, but recently I've taken foot stomping and hand clapping and jaw jutting to a whole new level when their music is playing - often with a tear in my eye.

Another favourite act has, for a long time, been The White Stripes. I'd loved their albums, but after seeing them live at The Greek Theatre, Berkeley, California, I realised just how bloody good they are.

I had noticed the use of bagpipes on their new album, Icky Thump, in particular Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn but just learned of their overt Scottish roots from my friend's music blog - The Pop Cop.

And according to The White Stripes' website they just celebrated their "aluminum anniversary in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. To further commemorate this occasion, the band have produced an array of specialty merchandise including traditional kilts, balmoral hats, kilt hose and flashes. These items are all hand made from the offical tartan of The White Stripes, available in both hunting and dress fabric."

Good god. Now the only question is: Can I wear The White Stripes tartan to my wife's brother's wedding?

Sang sattawat (Syndromes and a Century) (2006)

I'd decided to check this film out mainly because it was Thai. Helen and I had spent 9 months there and I knew that we would take something from it regardless of content. We were both quietly blown away by it. This is a meditative piece of cinema in the David Lynch mould of narrative bending. Apichatpong Weerasethakul tells a simple story based on his own life (his parents were doctors in a hospital) of a female doctor. The story begins in a rural hospital with an interview and then carries on delightfully with a funny exchange mostly off-screen as the credits roll. You realize the director is having fun when one of the characters says he is already bored with this film-making process. The other replies that this is only take 5, there is a long way to go. Characters often break into natural fits of laughter as they talk. There is a gentle understanding of people, and they are given room to breathe.

Like Lynch's Lost Highway, halfway through the story begins again. Same characters, only this time the setting has changed, and the perspective we are given also differs. Now we are in a modern urban hospital. As the classic Thai saying goes: "Same same but different."

The characters' discussion of Buddhism, reincarnation and previous lives now takes on heightened meaning. You try to remember what was said before, just as they try to remember who they were before. "I was not human in my previous life."

Symbolism plays a large part in the film. Water, mirrors. We are given lingering shots of The Buddha and modern statues and a droning soundscape grows as the camera fixes on long interior corridor shots.

This is a lush, funny, patient and poignant film that asks many questions. I will be seeking out his other works.

This is the trailer:


This is a sequence near the end of the film:

Biyeolhan geori (A Dity Carnival) (2006)

Next up was A Dirty Carnival, a South Korean gangster flick with heart.

Obviously low-budget, I was feeling a little detached from the drama unfolding on screen. But from nowhere the film surprised me with a sudden visceral burst of extreme violence. Fist on flesh kind of stuff. Perhaps a few spinning round-house kicks, but nothing that looked too out of the ordinary for our hero - well played by In-seong Jo - which reminded me of the natural fighting talents of Phanom Yeeram (Tony Jaa) in Ong-Bak.

A Soundtrack fueled by a pseudo-Greek waltz on the accordian lent the film a world-weary air, although within the film were strategic set-piece musical sequences as each main character had a go in expressing themselves through karaoke.

This was a film within a film, and linked nicely to the previous showing of Herzog's Rescue Dawn in its shared need to blur fiction-reality. Recommended for all Korean film fans.