I came out of The Tree of Life with one possible interpretation on my mind – I had just sat rather uncomfortably through an extended essay on grief. Whose grief, I’m not sure – the director’s? Mine? The world’s? No, way beyond that, the grief of the universe. It could have been called The Black Hole of Grief. Go into it, and you will probably never come out again. Perhaps there is the hope that you will come out the other side into some strange beach scene where people wander around peering at each other in vague recognition.
What shall I say? Somewhat overblown? A tad over-inflated?
On the other hand the next movie I went to see was A Separation. An Iranian film directed by Asghar Farhadi: a beautifully detailed portrait of a family crisis seen through an Iranian lens.
Recognisably a good movie.
And what about the riots? Every Tory minister I heard the, used the agreed words of criminality and the thugs will be brought to justice.
In the current BBC2 drama series, The Hour, set in the mid-fifties, the news team (the focus of the series) decide to parallel the Soviet repressive invasion of Hungary and the Israeli, British, French invasion of Egypt.
In a similar way it is hard not to parallel these riots with government policies. These wildfire-like riots perpetrated by (it sounds like) a cross-section of marginalised young men and looting chancers with the help of maybe career criminals sharing information by twitter and facebook. There has been the recent and ongoing demonstrations and violence in the Middle East and North Africa but also I am reminded of Iraq and wholesale looting that took place after the “successful” invasion by the US and the Brits. Government policies aimed at reducing the deficit and pandering to the Tory hatred of public expenditure and continuing to gleefully spread the word of monetarist orthodoxy despite all the evidence that the market left to itself is a dangerous anarchic beast, have, of course, a gloss of legality, but the effects nonetheless are destructive to many in Britain, particularly, the poorest and most vulnerable. I suppose like all bullies they only take on the weakest – they didn’t dare take on News International until it was weakened by increasingly vile revelations of their journalistic practices. They presumably know that their policies will lead to social unrest so when it comes they can appear to take the moral highground.
Meanwhile back with Wallace Stevens:
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
Nuff said.