Il Divo

divo_ver2 "I recognize my limits but when I look around I realise I am not living exactly in a world of giants," says Giulio Andreotti, Italy's dominant post-Second World War politician, in Paolo Sorrentino's 'Il Divo', the most exciting narrative fiction feature film I've seen this year.

Sorrentino's films look like Edward Hopper paintings, dreamed by people who have been lying face down in the mud after attending a mid-90s rave.  And that's a compliment.  His 'The Consequences of Love' is one of the most compelling (in story) and enthralling - in sound and image - films of the past decade.  He fuses elegantly structured images with dance music to tell tales about broken men - Mafia accountants, small town moneylenders, and, in 'Il Divo', his current film, corrupt Prime Ministers who end up appearing to be the embodiment of menace.  The protagonists in 'Consequences', 'Il Divo', and 'The Family Friend' (the moneylender) are all capable of evil while feeling sorry for themselves; Sorrentino is so good at getting under the skin of his guys that his skill with surfaces seems almost contradictory.

'Il Divo' is a complicated film if, like me, you lack intimate knowledge of Italian politics since 1972 (!); but its central performance is so detailed and immersive that you'll forget you don't know who's who at any given point - the roll call of Mafia hoods, Catholic cardinals, and elected representatives eventually blending into a seamless garment of corrupted power.  And you're never in any doubt over who is in charge: Andreotti rules the world, and the actor Toni Servillo rules the film, his performance an invitation to face the terror of what happens when greed and ego combine to shred their victim's moral compass.

The most resonant thing I can say about 'Il Divo'?

It's the film 'The Godfather Part III' could have been.

This Week

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Woolman Hill

Had an amazing experience of getting lost at the weekend - wandering away for half an hour's solitude at the Woolman Hill Retreat Center - a gorgeous collection of old buildings, no artificial light around, banks of sky shrouding the place to make it one of the quietest places I've ever been.  I missed a turn on one of the trails, and ended up walking for about eight miles in rural Massachussetts, with no phone to complain to people with, or to ask for rescue.  The sense of powerlessness gave way to a kind of nuanced epiphany - a lot of things that have seemed unfixable suddenly became clear as all I had to do was to keep walking.  It left me in no doubt: getting lost is the best way to find yourself.

This week is a combination of seeing friends, watching some films for review, and helping with another retreat.  I'm in Nashville til Thursday, but will be with Ian Cron leading a contemplative couple of days from tomorrow afternoon.

Today I'm interviewing Glenn Kenny for The Film Talk with Jett; we'll talk about the state of film criticism and his role in Steven Soderbergh's new film 'The Girlfriend Experience'; which suggests that this period of capitalism has turned us all into salesmachines.  Later, I'm watching  'Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky' - a documentary about everyone's favourite Russian mystic film-maker (if you're in New York, Lincoln Center are showing all of his films in July: don't miss them if you can).  Later I'm seeing 'Il Divo' - the new film from the Italian film-maker Paolo Sorrentino, responsible for 'The Consequences of Love', one of the most striking films of recen years: a melancolic film whose philosophy I couldn't disagree with more, but the experience of watching is astonishing.  For such a sad story, it's an almost ecstatic inspiration to love.

Later in the week I've a preview of 'Public Enemies', Michael Mann's Dilligner/gangster/FBI piece with Johnny Depp and Christian Bale - I like Mann's surfaces, but tend to think he's in love with making violence look elegant; will be interesting to see what happens with this one.  I want filmed violence to be apocalyptic in the truest sense: i.e. to reveal what it is really like; and although there is a certain sense of 'justice' in his movies (the bad guy rarely gets away with it), he can't resist making force look sexy.  (Though his visuals are pretty irresistible.)

Hope everyone has a good week.

Prophetic Comedians

Jon Stewart's the cover boy for Sojourners magazine this month - [full disclosure: I'm a contributing editor.  But I'd like the magazine even if I wasn't] - engaged in conversation with Jim Wallis about the comedian's role in society.  Stewart tends to downplay his identity as prophetic jester - he deflects praise with statements like "Because we’re in the public eye, maybe people project onto us their desires for that type of activism coming from us, but just knowing the process here as I do, our show is maybe the antithesis of activism, and that is a relatively selfish pursuit. The targets we choose, the way we go about it—it’s got more of a personal venting aspect than a socially conscious aspect."

I'm sure he believes that; but I'm also sure that his show does a hell of a lot of good - releasing the pressure felt by people who otherwise were ignored or insulted during the Bush era, and holding the rest of the media to account.  (Even though he also denies that's what he's doing.)

"Part of it, honestly, is trying to reconcile our reality to the reality we’re seeing in television. It’s trying to get back to, “Okay, so why is it that I’m seeing this as ‘yes, we have tortured,’ yet it appears that we keep hearing how we have never [tortured].” Make your case! Make the case that in these urgent times that’s what we needed to do, but don’t be disingenuous.

Tell the truth.

Yeah! Tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. Too often the role of government and corporations is to obscure their real argument, and we feel like the role of media and the role of editorial authorship is to re-clarify those things. If there’s anything we think, it’s that we’re presenting it in what we believe to be the clearest position that we can in a satirical framework."

Stewart and his comrade Stephen Colbert are walking in a tradition that demands attention - the Sojo interview put me in mind of a few other prophetic comics:

The Marx Brothers: Not only did they manage to represent Freud's notion of what constitutes the self (if you want to know what the ego, id and superego are, look no further than the interplay between Groucho, Harpo and Chico.  Alas, poor Zeppo, whom nobody seems to have known that well doesn't really get much of a look-in), in 'Duck Soup' they created a political satire that is both insanely funny, and as powerful a humanist statement as anything written by Jonathan Swift or Mark Twain.

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Lenny Bruce: Spoke what he felt, not what he ought to say.  If this meant telling people that he thought Life magazine's saccharine captions underneath photos of Jackie Kennedy's escape from the open top limo made them 'dirty pictures', then he said it, puncturing sanctimony so the light could get in.

Bill Hicks: A man who died 15 years ago and still seems ahead of his time.  Preached against fear and made people feel alive; without denying that transcending fear is itself a frightening business; and told the truth about money, desire and war.  I need to stop now, because a) I'm still a little bit afraid of him (in a good way), b) It seems to diminish his work to talk about it rather than just watching or listening, and c) He'd probably think I was an idiot for blogging.

And finally:

My Dad: A man not afraid to go toe-to-toe with one of the members of Monty Python and at the end of the encounter, Michael Palin was laughing at himself.  Maybe I'll tell you about it sometime.

Displacement in Belfast: A Response

It's good to see that temporary emergency accommodation has been made available to the 115 Romanian people displaced in Belfast last night after violent intimidation.  City Church Belfast - in whose cafe I spent much of the past few years - had provided shelter in the immediate aftermath; local government has now stepped in to allow breathing space for the families to decide what they want to do next.  Many seem to want to return to Romania, and who could blame them?  They've had a terrifying experience. Lots of northern Irish people have shared the experience of displacement - I know something of this from the inside, having had to move house as a child for reasons of safety.  The paradox is that while the communal memory of displacement may increase empathy for its newest victims, it may also mean that we take it less seriously than we should: it seems too much like 'business as usual', and so many of us may let it pass with only a wince and a conversation.  Most of us don't actually do anything about it - partly because we have seen it so often before that we feel disempowered; partly because we can blame it on a small minority (who are of course, directly responsible; but their prejudice is nurtured by social norms that 'the rest of us' have been content to let prevail); and partly because, quite simply, we don't know what to do.

So here's a suggestion:

The recently elected Alliance Party Lord Mayor of Belfast, Naomi Long, a woman with a strong track record in opposing racism and encouraging diversity, should recruit at least one city councillor from each of the parties represented on the council to offer temporary accommodation in their own homes to the families displaced last night.  They should invite their consituents to offer food and employment to the people targeted; and they should organise public gatherings in their various council wards at which long-standing residents can meet their new neighbours.   We northern Irish people are reputed for our hospitality.  The city council could help neutralise the bigotry displayed last night, and that always simmers under the surface for some people, by turning that reputation into a new reality, starting with the most ancient of practices: offering shelter to vulnerable people.