Dealing with the Past

Today is a huge day in my home of northern Ireland as it sees the latest development in the long-running peace process. The report of the Consultative Group on the Past - established to recommend how we might find ways to deal with the legacy of nearly 4000 murders, 43 000 physical injuries, a divided society, and brokenness everywhere - has been published. The report includes suggesting, among many other things, establishing a Legacy commission to investigate violence and provide information, a bursary to address the effects of the conflict including addiction and suicide prevention, and calling on churches to take responsibility for their/our role in nurturing the social context in which the conflict could occur.

It's a controversial report - very little in northern Irish public life isn't controversial - because it deals with the monumental pain of decades in which neighbors suspected neighbors, people were blown up in public places, and nobody could feel entirely safe. The suggestion that family members of people killed should receive an 'acknowledgement payment' has been particularly focused on in the media, because it makes no distinction between non-combatant civilians on the one hand and combatants in the police, army, and illegal paramilitary organisations like the IRA and their Loyalist counterparts on the other. There are good reasons for this, for victim hierarchies serve to continue our society's division; just as much as there are completely legitimate reasons for some to feel hurt by the suggestion that their pain is equal to that of the relatives of someone who killed another person before being killed themself.

It's important reading for anyone with an interest in northern Ireland, as well as anyone who cares about questions of dealing with violence and trauma anywhere. Perhaps the most important element is the fact that the principles of restorative justice are implied in the consultative group's report; an attempt to transcend revenge and establish a way forward based on the understanding that justice and mercy go hand in hand - and that your security and mine depend on each other.

The Consultative Group on the Past have given more serious attention to the question of trauma and societal healing than almost any other initiative anywhere in the world, and their report is a document of historic significance. I can't over-emphasise how important it may be for people to read, whether or not they have any connection with northern Ireland. We in northern Ireland were stunned by the ongoing, repeating and spiralling wounds of our recent past; and it has taken over a decade to get to the stage of even starting to negotiate our future together. This report builds on the case that burying the scars of violence and trauma do not heal them, any more than vengeance makes a victim feel better in the long term. It might offer some contributions to the questions of conflict and its aftermath that face us all; indeed, as my adopted country of the US emerges from a traumatic period in its own history some of the principles outlined in this report might be useful too.

The Best Disney Film You've Never Seen

I’m loving my Blu-ray player and, inspired by the fact that a number of film critics I like have named Disney’s ‘Sleeping Beauty’ as one of the best releases of the past year, have been watching this fifty year old cartoon in ten minute bursts since the Netflix copy arrived on Monday. It’s twee and sentimental, but also happens to be visually astonishing. The backgrounds in particular are feats of the imagination that amaze; the wicked queen’s (if indeed she is a queen - I haven’t really been following the story) lair has the detail of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ while also reminding me of the production style Tim Burton used more recently in ‘Sweeney Todd’; and the character images are elegant and evocative - a comedy fat king, an embosoming fairy or three, a jutting-chinned handsome prince. Beyond that, the way the Blu-ray makes the film look is almost too good; I like a bit of grain in my old film transfers rather than feeling like I’m watching a robot painting in ‘THX 1138′, but I suppose that’s churlish when faced with the upgraded image available on the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ blu-ray.

Having said that, I’m not writing here to encourage you to watch a Disney fairytale cartoon with Freudian resonance, engaging as that may be. It’s the short film special feature included on the disc that blew me away. ‘Grand Canyon’, a 25 minute live action film putting incredible photography - much of it aerial - of the canyon to the music of Ferde Grofé. I remember seeing such nature documentaries when I was a kid, as the ‘B’ film before movies like ‘The Dark Crystal’; I remember being bored, the anticipation of the main event making patience impossible. I’m guessing that ‘Grand Canyon’ might have been one of the film I couldn’t wait to end; and like many things I wasted as a child, having watched it again the other night, I wish I hadn’t.

Disney’s ‘Grand Canyon’, directed by James Algar is, quite simply, my film of the week; maybe the month; maybe the year. The images evoke the stargate sequence of ‘2001′, making it one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen; the fact that the images are timeless - the Grand Canyon was here before any of us, and will still be here after we’ve gone (if indeed we ever do leave here - but we’ll get to the theology of the afterlife in a future episode ;-)) makes it one of the most disturbing. The lack of tricks available to film-makers in 1958 compared with today makes it a far more naturalistic short than might be made with a computer or IMAX; all to the good, as far as I’m concerned. It’s like a live action ‘Fantasia’; and I’d guess that your feelings about ‘Fantasia’ will largely shape your response about ‘Grand Canyon’.

Sundance Festival 2: Mary and Max

One of the surprises of this year’s festival is that the opening night film is a stop-motion animation about the penpal relationship between a lonely Australian girl and a profoundly overweight man with Asperger’s Syndrome living in New York. If ‘Mary and Max’ had been a live action drama starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette, featuring elegant images of the Manhattan skyline looking like you’ve never seen it before, intercut with a knowing reflection on human isolation and the things that can heal it, this would appear to be the perfect choice for the world’s best known independent film festival. The fact that it’s made of plasticine instead of live action makes it so much more interesting than so many other independent dramas; it was good to see it as the opening night film.

‘Mary and Max’ is sensitive to Asperger’s syndrome and other special needs without being cloying; it’s honest about depression; it’s extremely funny in places without falling into the slapstick trap; the narration from Barry Humphries is perfectly balanced between sweet and harsh (and Hoffman/Collette both articulate what these characters might actually be like the real world); and, most of all, the animation - which took 57 weeks of days that each produced no more than a few seconds screen time is magnificent. Tonally think ‘Wallace and Gromit’ meets ‘Rain Man’ - with the emphasis on the rain. Director Adam Elliott has made an exhilarating film that genuinely deserves a huge audience when it’s released.

'The Wrestler'

Mickey Rourke plays a version of himself and every other faded star. He’s great.

Marisa Tomei plays a version of the hooker with a heart of gold who’s been around since cinema began. She’s risky.

Evan Rachel Wood plays the angry abandoned daughter archetype. She’s pretty good.

And the wrestlers are great fun; unsurprisingly sweet-natured and kind to each other.

But the film itself…

Well…it’s not that it’s not very good - it’s a well-made, honest little drama of the kind that looked original in the early 90s (think Soderbergh and James Marsh at the beginning of their careers) but there’s nothing in this film that I haven’t seen before. Stories are stories are stories, I suppose; and there aren’t too many to go around, and I’m delighted to see anything that denies the quick fix cosmetic ease with which movie characters often resolve their problems - even ‘Changeling’, perhaps the bleakest story I saw at the cinema this past year, had to have a ‘happy’ ending of some kind. Am also, as listeners will know, a fan of Darren Aronofsky - ‘The Fountain’s one of my favourite films, and ‘Pi’ and ‘Requiem for a Dream’ are so effective at building a mood of dread that I don’t ever want to see them again. But ‘The Wrestler’ is a B-movie; I think what saves it is that that’s what it seems Aronofsky was trying to make.

'Gran Torino'

I heard a seventy-eight year old man sing, through a cracked voice, one of the most moving and gentle jazz melodies, as the iconic image of a fetishised sports car being driven into the sunset were projected. And, not for the first time in recent years, I was crying at the end of a Clint Eastwood film. 'Gran Torino', like 'Million Dollar Baby', 'Flags of our Fathers' & 'Letters from Iwo Jima', 'Mystic River', 'A Perfect World', and starting with 'Unforgiven' and 'Bird' twenty years ago, is a film about a man coming to terms with death, and being confronted with the futility of violence. I'm struggling for a word here, but I'll call it the 'joy' of watching this old man working at the peak of his directorial skill - simple set ups, scripts that sound like the way people talk in real life, often lots of unknown actors filling out the cast so the show becomes less of a celebrity-spotting exercise, sparing use of music (usually written by Eastwood himself) combining to produce not only one of the most prolific bodies of work in Hollywood history, but one of the most artful.

Sure, he has made some awful movies - but, as Groucho might say, haven't we all? For every 'Firefox' there's a 'High Plains Drifter' (one of the most gripping - and violent - revenge fantasies I've ever seen, and an early example of Clint's antipathy toward the church) or a 'Bird' (the second best film about jazz ever made, and maybe the best biopic); for every 'Blood Work' there's a 'Bridges of Madison County' (trust me, how many films about love between men and women actually make you believe they're in love?) or an 'A Perfect World' (a film which the Coen Brothers surely relied on for developing the Tommy Lee Jones character, world-weary sherrif, in 'No Country for Old Men').

'Gran Torino' might be the last film Clint Eastwood acts in. So it's a relief - and somewhat bittersweet - for me to report that I think it may be the best performance he's ever given; or at least the best from the twilight era of his life. There are moments in this film that speak to me about my own preoccupation (some would call it an obsession) with violence and non-violence, and I find myself astonished that these ideas come from man who, when he was my age, was playing characters who shot people dead in order to get a laugh. Agreeing with the philosophy outlined in a film is not, of course, enough of a reason to think it's a great movie. And perhaps if I watch it again in a week or a year or two I'll be disappointed (even on the first viewing there are some obvious wrong notes); but for now, I'll say this. The ghost of Dirty Harry is laid to rest. The brokenness of war veterans is honoured while the powers that be, who send young men to die for politics are utterly absent. This film knows that the future of humanity depends on people being able to live together in diversity, putting up with cultural difference, and defending vulnerable members of the community. But it also knows something that the Man with No Name and Dirty Harry didn't: violence begets violence; and only non-violence is powerful enough to neutralise its opposite. How 'Gran Torino' presents the terms of conflict, or how it ultimately addresses them, may not be a textbook example of Gandhian resistance, but it's a far cry from 'Go ahead, make my day'. On the first viewing at least, it's a heartbreaking, beautiful film. If it proves to be its director's last, while I'm greedy for more, I can't thinking of a more fitting swan song.