Further Thoughts on Non-Violence (3): How can we talk about Forgiveness?

Ok, so the photo above might seem a bit obvious, but two things are also self-evident to me.  1: Parts of the place where I grew up really are that beautiful.  2: A re-engagement with beauty is perhaps the core of  what is necessary to save the world.

I'm back home in Belfast briefly, for the first time since I moved to the US.  It's beautiful to be re-welcomed by longstanding friends, but there is still a kind of detachment in knowing that I don't live here anymore.  I'm back at a time when tragedy has made its presence felt with force, in the midst of the long and difficult road toward a peaceful political settlement.

Three people were murdered, and several have been injured in the past few weeks, in attacks carried out by people who do not support the process that has already led to a power-sharing government, the release of all politically-motivated prisoners, and the establishment of a strong human rights and equality culture, along with one of the most transparent policing services in the world.  After nearly 4000 people were killed, most between 1969 and 1994, three new names were added to the list read out on Good Friday at a memorial service.  48 year old police constable Stephen Carroll and young soldiers  Patrick Azimkar and Mark Quinsey were shot dead in March.

On the way from the airport when I arrived back a few days ago, I drove past the barracks where the soldiers were killed; I hadn't felt those emotions for a long time.  There is a changed atmosphere for some of us.  We have had traumatic memories re-stirred; the old feelings of cautiousness with strangers, and discretion about personal conversation are detectable, and could threaten to return to everyday life in northern Ireland.  At the same time, some of the reaction to the murders has exemplified how far we have come as a society, with cross-community condemnation mingled among profound public mourning, and some large scale protests by people sick and tired of being used as human shields for ideological purity.

It's impossible to be sure of what it would take to prevent further violence.  The people arrested in connection with the killings range from 17 years old to middle age.  As far as they are concerned, their political cause legitimises the use of violence to achieve what they perceive to be justice.   Confronting them with the human costs might make a contribution to challenging this notion, which, to my mind, has never been legitimate.  But we struggle, because our public conversation these days seems so colonised by cynicism and shortcut that a re-assertion of human dignity may be not only necessary, but inevitable, as people are confronted by the costs of not taking life seriously.

There's a specific example I have in mind.  I'll write more about it later.  For the time being, it's Easter Sunday, and the resurrection that hundreds of millions are remembering offers the most transcendent reason to value human life: because it might just last forever.

Film Recommendation of the Week: 'Man Push Cart'

I don't usually do recommendations of the week; heck often I don't do recommendations at all. But after the exhiliration of wall to wall documentary at the Full Frame Festival, I settled in last night, as I am wont to do, to catch up on a film I know I should have seen earlier, but was watching something else at the time.

Ramin Bahrani's film 'Man Push Cart' is deceptively simple. It's about a man struggling to make a living in America. This struggle prevents him from making a life. He's from Pakistan, and we see the ties that bind his ethnic community - everyone knows each other, but unlike some romanticised visions of immigration ('The Godfather' is an interesting example), they don't always help each other.

Ahmad sells coffee and bagels in Manhattan. People are often friendly to him. Some are not. He used to have family, home, money. Now he doesn't.

'Man Push Cart' is so well crafted that it's almost too slick - and there are some potentially unsubtle notes in an otherwise sparse and thoughtful script. But - and this is why it is my recommendation of the week (there may never be another such recommendation, so listen carefully ;-)) - it is a supremely confident piece of early work from a director whom Roger Ebert has just pronounced the 'new great American director'.

It feels like real life.

It starts before we see anything; and the characters live on after the fade out. It doesn't do much more than tell an honest story of struggle - mingling questions of the diversity of US society, the barriers between cultures, and the death-dealing of privatised capitalism vs. communitarianism. If, as my co-host on The Film Talk, Jett Loe has come to believe, 'staged cinema' is dying, 'Man Push Cart' rages against this, because although it is a work of constructed fiction, it feels like a documentary. It doesn't offer anything easy; and challenges us to live more humanely. Given that such a challenge has become one of my litmus tests for the meaning of art, 'Man Push Cart' succeeds where others fear to tread.

Update: Please note spoilers follow in comments below.

Some Thoughts from the New Book: What is America?

I'm currently writing a book about how cinema explains my adopted country - the most well known art form of the US should reasonably be expected to be a key interpretative tool for understanding America, right?

I  don't want to give too much away at this point, but suffice to say, Oklahomans know how to dance, Massachussetts residents like sea food, and people from Illinois believe in any means necessary to stop other people drinking whiskey.

What's most obvious from my research so far is that America  (and I use the term 'America' in the knowledge that I'm referring to the 48 contiguous states between Mexico and Canada, the large cold one to the left, and the exotic series of islands on the way to New Zealand.  I usually say 'the United States', but 'America' has become such a mythical term that it seems appropriate) hasn't settled its own mind about what it wants to be.

Kansas produced a militaristic President (Eisenhower) who later said that no glory in battle was worth the blood it costs.

Oklahoma - one of the most conservative states in the Union - also has the most registered Democrats.

The popular movies produced in the land that loves to call itself 'free' are disproportionately pre-occupied with the violent taking of human life for our viewing pleasure.

America, in the movies, at least, is the definition of paradox.  And its mind is not yet made up.   Zhou Enlai is supposed to have said, in the 1950s, that it was 'too early to tell' the consequences of the French Revolution of 1789 - and that social movement was only thirteen years younger than newly constitutionalised America.  So then it's also too early to tell what America is.  Or maybe I'm misleading myself - for diversity of opinion does not necessarily equate to a lack of confidence in national ideals.  Maybe that's what America is: everything?

So, friends, I'd value any thoughts on the following question, in the comments section below:

What, in one sentence, is America?

The Sacredness of Questioning Everything

My friend David Dark has a new book out.  It's called 'The Sacredness of Questioning'.  It's a philosophical-theological-psychological-communitarianistical-nashvillianestical-cinematical-musical thrill ride.  It mentions the Coen Brothers, Flannery O'Connor, Tom Waits, and the mysterious figure who lives in the basement known as Uncle Ben.

And it manages to find new and interesting things to say about each of them

It's cultural commentary for people who don't think they like cultural commentary.

It's comedy for smart people.

It's religion for the sceptical.

It's very good indeed, and I'm not just saying that.

It has endless potential to delight and provoke, and I can think of no one who can read English who wouldn't appreciate spending a few hours in the presence of this very fine writer and communicator.  If you're buying a book any time soon, 'The Sacredness of Questioning Everything' really does deserve to be it.  There won't be anything else like it on your bookshelf (unless you own Dave's previous books, in which case, you already own the new one.)

'Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie

Full Frame Day 2: There’s a man going round with a red nose making people smile; documentary festivals can be very serious affairs - from 10.30 in the morning it’s usually the case that we’re plunged into questions of genocide, disease, loss and sorrow. So it was more than a relief when I found Wavy Gravy in the room today.

I missed the sixties by 5 years, and am never sure if the mythology around the decade is the pharmacological residue of the various substances ingested by its protagonists, or the over-statement of a movement that failed by misty-eyed retired peace warriors.

They didn’t stop the war; they didn’t permeate the culture in any positive lasting way; they didn’t change anything, did they?

Hold on, I’m getting a little bit too ‘film critic burned out on not realising that being here is a privilege’.  Forgive me.  Please. That’s what Wavy would do.

A better question: What’s the problem with fun?  What’s the problem with trying to bring more love into the world?  What’s the problem with making people happy just by being in the same room?

‘Saint Misbehavin’, the film about the former Hugh Romney is dedicated to revealing that this clown is warm on the inside, I think; burdened for his poor and suffering brothers and sisters, and alive to the possibility that smiling can make almost anything better.

‘Saint Misbehavin’ is about people who were prepared to live beyond the narrow circle of self.  Living in community, sharing possessions, helping people look up from the difficulties of the everyday and enjoy it while it lasts, with a detour along the way to help save the eyesight of 2 million people (and counting) in the developing world.  The film challenges the notion that the sixties were mostly about self-indulgence.  Of course they  were nothing but indulgence for some; but we may together suspect they have their reward.

A great Scottish architect once told me that the purpose of architecture is ‘to help human beings live better’.  I don’t know if I’m what passes for a serious film critic or not; and I’m not even sure that I want to be.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  So I’m not certain if what I’m about to say is an academically rigorous theory of film, but watching this movie left me thinking that at least part of the purpose of cinema might be the same as designing buildings: to create a space in which people can find more of their better selves; to become the best of what is already within them.  ‘Saint Misbehavin’ isn’t necessarily the most aesthetically accomplished documentary I’ve ever seen, but when you’ve got this much humanity on screen it does everything I needed it to do.  (Have no fear, dear listeners, I haven’t lost it - that phrase can apply equally to ‘The Exorcist’, ‘Fanny and Alexander’, ‘Solaris’, ‘Magnolia’, and any number of other accepted parts of the canon.  I just happen to have had an uplifting experience with a delightful documentary today, that turned out to be far more substantial than ‘delightful’ implies.)

‘Saint Misbehavin’ becomes more than one man’s life story; it’s indicative of what living communally can be, and how human security depends on generosity, not fear.  It’s a modest work of art that wants to gently irritate accepted norms of human behaviour and respectability.  It loves all people.  It offers what its protagonist has dedicated his life to.  It wants to suggest that it is possible to harness the energy that all human beings have toward peace.