Sport and Age: Watson and Armstrong

Here’s a delightful, well-written and humorous piece in The Wall Street Journal by Jason Gay.  I think he “gets it” when it comes to Watson v Cink, Armstrong v Contador and sport v growing old!  Good on you Jason Gay!

See \’Watson Lights Up the Geezer Meter\” by Jason Gay

Forty Years Ago… walking on the moon and Woodstock

Forty years ago today Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon.  Assuming it wasn’t a hoax (the ultimate conspiracy theory…after Kennedy’s assassination that is) this was indeed “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

That summer’s evening of ‘69 I was a teenager working a typical summer-job (for those who might remember the restaurant chain it was a Friendly’s).  I can still recall the attitude of my shift manager towards the moon landing: “A guy may be walking on the moon tonight but we have customers to serve tonight!”  Indeed, there were a few people in the restaurant that evening, much to my surprise and consternation.  I eventually persuaded my manager to put out a radio so we could listen at least to this historic occasion.  I guess the idea was if there was going to be a giant leap for mankind one might as well eat a burger and drink some coffee!

At the time it wasn’t all that clear what this leap for mankind actually would mean.  That summer guys a few years older than I were being killed in Vietnam (in fact we had learnt that one guy from our town had been killed).  It had only been a year earlier that Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had been assassinated.  Likewise, the country still reeled from the infamous Chicago Democratic Convention, race riots and Richard Nixon’s first election victory.  Mankind wasn’t doing a whole lot of leaping in those days.  Armstrong’s small step was certainly the culmination of loads of hard work, sacrifice, scientific and engineering genius and dollars.  At the same time, things weren’t all that promising.

Later that summer a friend asked Tom, John and me if we’d like to hitch-hike with him up to a music festival in up-state New York.  Tom had to work, John thought the idea rather ‘dumb’ and I didn’t have to use much imagination to know what my dad would say if I asked his permission.  I’ve no idea if Gerry ever made it (at least I cannot remember if he did).

Later, when we heard stories about Hendrix, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez and others who’d performed at the festival, there was a bit of disappointment.  Then again there were other stories of way too much rain, mud, LSD and the like.  Even our teenage male fantasies of “sexual freedom” that reportedly abounded couldn’t really offset our sense that a summer’s job was more important and John was right: it was all rather ‘dumb’.  And when we heard all that happened when people “got to Woodstock” I knew I had experienced a rare moment of wisdom in not asking my father’s permission!

Forty years on now my memories of that summer and, especially that summer’s evening on 20 July 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped off the L.E.M. ladder and on to the lunar surface, are still reasonably fresh. (Ironically, of course, I cannot really remember what I did yesterday!).

Have we advanced or leaped forward since 1969?  I’m sure there have been benefits — technological, scientific, medical and so on — and it would be churlish to dismiss the whole Apollo efforts.  I could also wish for a similar kind of intensity to combat AIDS, malaria, polluted water sources and on and on the list could go.

At the same time I’m afraid we of the Woodstock generation are proving to be considerably paradoxical, compromised and downright foolish.  As Joni Mitchell’s song, “The Circle Game”, goes “we are captive on a carousel of time”.  Her song has sprinkles of optimism or, at least, hopefulness.  I am, alas, not so persuaded.  Instead, I would want to take my stand elsewhere, as the Jewish King David wrote:

¹⁵ As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field;

¹⁶ the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.

¹⁷ But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children—

¹⁸ with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.

¹⁹The LORD has established his throne in heaven, and his kingdom rules over all.  (Psalm 103)

Forty years ago — but it doesn’t seem so long ago — so many changes were taking place.  Forty years on and — with all the changes — some things remain troublesome and there are newer, more chilling problems.  I’m not smart enough to know whether we should or shouldn’t undertake more space explorations (although it does seem to demand a huge, huge amount of money that, frankly, I am under the impression governments don’t actually have!)

Forty years ago — but it doesn’t seem so long ago — a man stepped on the moon and a music festival promised days of peace.  Was this all a hoax?  Woodstock wasn’t a hoax although it failed to deliver the goods.  If the Apollo landing was a hoax (and this morning on Radio 4’s Today programme a gentleman insisted it really was) then I say let’s hire some of the surviving 4,000 government employees who’ve managed both to pull off this greatest of hoaxes and then keep quiet about it for the past 40 years.  If they were able to do this then just think what they could do with our current economic problems, health care demands, environmental challenges and threats from terrorism.  We could really use some “small steps for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

But that’s just the problem: forty years ago it wasn’t a hoax; and however great a feat it wasn’t really one giant leap for mankind.  So the surviving personnel from the Apollo days would not be the answer to our problems forty years on.  Will we see this reality forty years from now… or will we, effectively, on another summer’s evening ask for a cup of coffee and a burger?

Film(s) Recommendations

In a household overwhelmingly female, I’ve clocked lots of hours watching so-called chic flicks.  Most of the time I either fall asleep (much to my daughters’ frustration) or get up and see if I can clean up the kitchen yet again (much to my wife’s bemusement).  I do try, honest, to watch these films but, as in the case recently with 27 Dresses, I have to punch out. Enough is enough!

So, in the first instance, I tend to watch foreign films (i.e. non-English language films) like those I recommend in this blog.

When the estrogen levels really get too much, however, I go for –well, how else can I put it– guy films.  The Great Escape, Guns of Navarone or Where Eagles Dare are at the top of the list.

During a recent re-calibration or adjustment (in other words when none of the females in my life were at home for a couple of days) I watched two remarkable films — and they are this month’s recommendations.

First, is Clint Eastwood’s latest production and direction, Gran Torino (2008).

Eastwood stars in this film as a recently widowered elderly guy (named Walt Kowalski) living in a Detroit community — a community starting to look as run down as Walt.  Walt is a disgruntled, gruff and angry Korean war vetran. Walt is an ex-auto worker.  Walt’s sons and their children are total pains — what with their self-centredness and superficiality.  Walt doesn’t have a whole lot of time for his late wife’s Catholic faith and for the Catholic priest who tries to comfort Walt.

Walt is also racist, which is a particular problem given that his next door neighbours are immigrants from Vietnam/Cambodia/Thailand (they are Hmong people).

For complex reasons, young Thao (played by Bee Vang) from next door attempts to steal Kowalski’s 1972 Gran Torino — his pride and joy but hugely symbolic in this film.  Thao’s attempt to steal from Walt ain’t a smart move — for not only is Walt a grumbling, growling, beer drinking, ex-auto worker but he’s a decorated war veteran who still has his guns!

But just as things look predictable and even cliched (racist meets young immigrant) the story takes a variety of twists and turns.  Walt reluctantly (with lots of Eastwood grumbles, scowls, swearing and sheer “Dirty Harry” looks) ends up befriending his next door neighbours.  His developing relationship with Thao has touches of a ‘father-son’ relationship, but nothing so shmaltzy or sentimental as to make you sick!

He’s won over by their strong family and by Thao and, especially, his sister (excellent acting by Ahney Her).

Ahney Her

Much to his pained consternation he says to himself, “I’m more at home with these people than I am with my own family…”

I will not give the story’s final twist and turn away.  First, because I don’t want to ruin it for you.  Second, because at just the point you think this film is Eastwood cliche the story takes a hugely unexpected twist.

To nudge you along, the final twist carries with it something I’ve noticed in a number of Eastwood films (especially Unforgiven which came out in 1992 and the more recent Million Dollar Baby 2004).  There is a kind of hope for atonement or forgiveness.  This isn’t necessarily atonement or forgiveness in the Christian sense — in fact the Christian meaning of both is juxtaposed with Catholicism in Gran Torino).  Some viewers might say I’m making this up, but I am not so sure I am imagining this.

Walt is deeply marked by his war experiences.  He carries pain: both for what he did as a soldier and for what, as he says, “he wasn’t ordered to do”.  The Catholic priest who visits Walt and, in the end, does befriend Walt actually sees this.  It is this sense of inarticulate desire for atonement or some sort of forgivenss combined with Walt’s sense of dogged “well, damn it all, doing what’s right…” that brings about some of the story’s twists.  Watch the final scene and notice Eastwood’s body position or body language.

Eastwood is an icon, there’s no doubt.  Don’t blast me here, but there’s something intrinsically important to Eastwood’s beer drinking, swearing, ‘taking down the bad guys’ along with his endearing gruff charm towards Thao’s family.  But it is especially this intricately paradoxical portrayal of serious falleness that somewhat longs for atonement or forgiveness which is a feature of this film worth your study.

Even my wife liked this film.

The second film is Taken (2008) staring Liam Neeson.

Neeson plays a former CIA spy (Bryan Mills), whose special skills were helpful “to prevent bad things from happening”.  He worked for a special CIA unit that did, well, all sorts of not so nice things to really not so nice people.  The downside for Mills is that his commitment to his job cost him his marriage and his relationship with his only child, his daughter, Kim (well played by Maggie Grace).  Yet Mills, upon retirement, manages to arrange his life so he can live close to his former wife and daughter so he can see his daughter, especially on her birthdays.

Things get real complicated when Kim, just having turned 18, goes off with a friend to Paris.  Mills is very concerned; and just as you’re unsettled by his paternal obsessiveness and paranoia, well, you just know he’s going to be proven justified.

The story is about a father-daughter relationship — at least at its most simple level.  It is also a chilling story about human traffiking, particularly the abduction of young women to be sold into sex slavery.  In this respect the film is gritty and not “nice” viewing.  Then again, there is absolutely nothing at all nice about human trafficking and the evil of those who perpetrate this trade.

As you probably guess, Kim is abducted while in Paris with another young girl. (Just at this point there are strong warnings to young women travelling by themselves who happen to ‘encounter’ charming young men who speak with romantic French accents!).

But just before she’s abducted Kim manages to ‘phone her father and hysterically cries for her father’s rescuing.  And, my goodness, this is precisely what Mills undertakes.  Single-handedly, drawing upon all his skills and trade craft, he shoots, blows up and tortures his way through French/Albanian/Middle-Eastern sex traffikers.

And you know what?  What Mills does is exactly what any right minded father would want to do if his daughter was abducted!  This is what is both compelling and yet disturbing about the film.  In the face of such wickedness and evil — compounded by police compliance — this father’s violent actions to rescue his daughter grabbed me.  I found the whole viewing experience unsettling and conscience provoking.

I’m not and never have been a pacifist, for reasons both theological/philosophical and emotional.  At the same time, I was troubled by how easily and emotionally I was sucked into justifying such violence (including torture).  In this particular sense I found the film’s conclusion less than artful.  It was a “whew, I’m glad it all worked out” kind of ending.  Yet I think the writers (French writers Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen) did us a disservice in as much as they let both Mills and the viewer off the moral hook.  I should have been pressed a bit more — even though I still would want to do what Mills did if my daughter was abducted and I had the skills to rescue her. And this is the moral tension — a tension often found in life but a tension that really has to be addressed lest we all end up justifying our actions on the basis of our emotions or pragmatism.  A society cannot endure such even in the face of the appalling and damnable human sex traffiking.

Peggy Noonan on Sarah Palin’s Resignation

With apologies to my US Republican friends, for I don’t wish to anger them, let me recommend Peggy Noonan’s recent  Wall Street Journal op-ed piece on Sarah Palin.  Palin recently declared she was leaving her governorship of Alaska.

See \”A Farewell to Harms\” WSJ Peggy Noonan

Sure, Peggy Noonan was never all that pumped about Palin — she never fell for Gov Palin’s moose hunting populism.  What some might not appreciate is that Noonan is no flaming-liberal Democrat (just a gentle reminder to, as I said, my US Republican friends).  Noonan is a Republican and conservative at that. (By the way, she also was a consultant to The West Wing, so that can’t be too bad!)

What I find intriguing about Noonan’s take on the whole Palin thing is not only her insightful comments on Palin’s vacuous politics and talk but the more serious challenge facing both the Republican party and Democrats. It’s not that Noonan sells out and buys the so-called liberal elite ‘take’ — no, she’s fairly scathing of liberal elite posturing as well.  Rather it is Noonan’s argument that the challenges facing 21st century nations are so complicated, so intricate and so, well, dangerous, leaders must be women and men who truly have the “right stuff”.

Here’s why all this matters. The world is a dangerous place. It has never been more so, or more complicated, more straining of the reasoning powers of those with actual genius and true judgment. This is a time for conservative leaders who know how to think.

Here are a few examples of what we may face in the next 10 years: a profound and prolonged American crash, with the admission of bankruptcy and the spread of deep social unrest; one or more American cities getting hit with weapons of mass destruction from an unknown source; faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements as Americans for various reasons and in various areas decide the burdens and assumptions of the federal government are no longer attractive or legitimate.

For my money, Noonan rightly sees some of the huge challenges facing not only the US but the world.  These challenges are too great to give a moment’s notice to “hockey moms” who posture and pretend and for Republicans who fail to see that things are really, really serious and moose hunting populists aren’t going to help.  As Noonan writes:

The era we face, that is soon upon us, will require a great deal from our leaders. They had better be sturdy. They will have to be gifted. There will be many who cannot, and should not, make the cut. Now is the time to look for those who can. And so the Republican Party should get serious, as serious as the age, because that is what a grown-up, responsible party—a party that deserves to lead—would do.

It’s not a time to be frivolous, or to feel the temptation of resentment, or the temptation of thinking next year will be more or less like last year, and the assumptions of our childhoods will more or less reign in our future. It won’t be that way.

We are going to need the best.

CD of the Month (July 09)

Joni Mitchell Blue (1971)

This is  a nostalgic call for me.  I bought this album (vinyl) in 1971; I have no idea where it went.  Those of you who know of this Canadian musician hopefully will agree with me: Joni was/is exceptional.  Now a new generation ought to get to know her work.

Blue is her third album and, after her Woodstock album, probably her best known work.  Some of her classic songs are contained in this album: “A Case of You”, “My Old Man”, “Carey” and my favourite “All I Want”.

Her lyrics are intriguing and beguiling with honesty.  In 1979 she said in a Rolling Stone interview, “The Blue album, there’s hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either.”

For those of you who are guitarists, listen to Joni Mitchell’s open string tuning. She was a master of it and it enables her to accommodate different keys that enhance her unique vocals.

As I said, nostalgia gripped me and I went to iTunes to find this album from my past.  It is still a gem and, what with more life experience, I find her words and sentiments all the more poignant.  So, let me encourage those of you 38 years old and younger to listen to her!  Now to listen again to Crosby, Stills and Nash!

Richard Dawkins’ Summer Camp for Kids

Now here’s an interesting news item.  Dr Richard Dawkins, formerly of Oxford University, is to subsidise summer camp experiences for kids.  The Daily Mail reports that Dawkins intends to support the efforts of those who wish to provide for children and young people an opportunity to experience a new way of thinking.  The aim is to encourage campers to think “sceptically and rationally”.

The Times also reports the story (see article6591231.ece). As one father expresses things, “I’m very keen on not indoctrinating them with religion or creeds,” he said this weekend. “I would rather equip them with the tools to learn how to think, not what to think.”

Reportedly these camps have been going on in the States for the past 13 years and folk here in this country (UK) want to give British kids a similar experience.  As one person puts it, “I think this is superb and will encourage young people to think for themselves. To say that the world was created by a god disallows people to think beyond. There is no ‘God’ the world has evolved and will continue to do so.”

Hopefully (so the argument goes) these camps will rival not only Scout summer camps but Christian summer camps (which here in the UK has played a wonderfully significant role).

It’s not so much that one resents competition or rival summer camp experiences.  Rather it is the continued assumption by Dawkins et al of a totally neutral starting position.

Dr Richard Dawkins

In one sense, I agree: I don’t want kids to be ‘brainwashed’ or discouraged  to think critically and carefully.  But this is precisely my beef with Dawkins’ statements.  He and others actually ’stack the deck’ just as much as those whom he and they despise.  It is assumed, from the get go, that the wise and rational assumption is “there is no god or supreme being”. Well, ergo, one starts to see all sorts of ‘logical’ conclusions from this.  But isn’t this simply yet another faith assumption — and one untested, unvarifiable and, well, ‘a leap’?

See the story at Richard-Dawkins-launches-childrens-summer-camp-atheists.html

The ‘iconic’ Michael Jackson

There’ll be countless articles, comments and blog statements about the news of Michael Jackson’s death last evening.  And there probably should be: Jackson, whatever one thinks about both his music and his life-style, was a dominant figure over the past (and let’s not forget how young he was when he shot to fame with his brothers, The Jackson 5) four decades.

There is already one expression used about Michael Jackson, it is icon.  Look up the meanings of the word icon or iconic and you find that it probably does describe him.  Admittedly, Jackson was not an icon in the normal, Christian or religious sense — like icons used in various Orthodox traditions.  At the same time, using some of the other definitions available, Jackson did iconically “represent a symbol as in semiotics” or a “graphic image used in computer language to convey values or representation”.

He came to symbolise (and not one dimensionally) in the late 60s and early 70s a type of celebrity.  To be sure child stars and child celebrities earlier caught people’s imaginations (Shirley Temple or Judy Garland come to mind).  But Michael, in particular among his brothers, became a celebrity both talented and young. And this dynamic tension between talent and child was never reconciled but, by both his father and Motown, encouraged and manipulated.

Jackson symbolised black funk and rock ‘n roll blending with white mainstream pop music and culture.  Again, we simply have to think of the time in history: post Civil rights and post Martin Luther King.  If Diana Ross and the Supremes were one of many Motown proto-types they were still, more or less, blacks looking, acting and performing sort of like white women.  Jackson wasn’t like white boys — despite the futile imitations of Donny Osmond and David Cassidy trying to be like him.

Jackson was an icon of postmodern cliche.  It wasn’t Madonna it was Michael Jackson who came to represent the ‘fluid and changeable’ self-identity of the postmodern self.  As his appearances changed over the years we wondered: is he white or is he black, is he male or is he female, is he well or is he ill.  But these questions were questions somewhat indicative of what was within (and still is within) some of the ways society seeks to find definition: playfully, paradoxically and incompletely.

Jackson’s monumental 1982 album Thriller with both the eponymous hit and “Billie Jean” was one of the first music productions to use movie/video to promote the album and to be at the centre of the album’s work.  This album did what the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) album did: gave both unified structure and visual impact to an album.

Jackson was iconic as well in his brokenness and confusion.  This sounds trite of me to suggest but I’m not entirely sure how else to express it.  Over the next days, months and years lots of things will be written about Jackson’s childhood (if it can be rightly called that) and his relationship with his, reportedly, dysfunctional father.  I cannot comment.  But whatever the source and cause of Jackson’s own dysfunction — symbolised by his marriage and divorce with Elvis’ daughter, Lisa-Marie — his brokenness and confusion cannot be entirely his own doing.  Society contributed in no small way.

We don’t like thinking that we contribute to celebrities’ problems because either we reject our culpability in preference for individual responsibility or we chose to deny that those whom we idolise we tend to create in our own image.

You see, I suspect  our icons very often not only portray ideals we esteem but also are our values, aspirations and longing we unknowingly fashion into the metrics we use to esteem our idols and celebrities.  To put it simply: Michael Jackson is an icon not only of what many, many people valued (worshiped?) but he became what many, many people wanted.  It was a case of mutual use and abuse.

He was hugely talented musician (OK, I admit it: I didn’t really like his music), a phenomenal performer (come on: we all secretly wished we could have danced like him in his “Billie Jean” video even if we well knew we’d seriously hurt ourselves if we tried) and master video producer.  Whatever the cause of his death (and rumours abound already) in his life Michael Jackson was iconic — then again, I wonder if even his death is iconic.

Tim Keller on Faith and Politics

Thanks to fellow blogger, Phil Whittall, I was introduced to an interesting site called big think (http://www.bigthink.com).  This site has tonnes of different video clips covering a vast number of different topics, including one section entitled ‘faith and beliefs’.  I was pleased to see some stuff by Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.

For a variety of reasons, many, many people are really suspicious (frightened?) when Christians speak about politics, especially politics in the USA.  I think there have been some very good reasons for suspicion and fear (think particularly of the most recent years).  So many folk assume that if one is a Christian in the States this means one is Republican, and a certain type of Republican at that!  Truth is, this is probably more the result of  unfortunate rhetoric by some and caricature by others. Finding Christian voices that don’t speak about solely one issue or endorse only one political party/opinion is hard.

In this sense, Keller’s suggestions (and they are only suggestions in general) do sound refreshing.  Watch and listen to what he says — no matter what your country or political persuasion and whether you would call yourself a Christian or not.

http://bigthink.com/topics/faith-&-beliefs/ideas/tim-keller-on-faith-and-politics#

Film Recommendations: Lemon Tree & The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

Two unrelated films are highly commendable.  First, an Israeli film entitled Lemon Tree (2008)  is the story of two neighbours in the hotly contested Israeli/West Bank region.  One is the widowed   45-year-old Salma Zidane (played by Hiam Abbas) who tries to make a living by tending her family’s lemon grove.

The other is Israel’s hawkish Defence Minister (Doron Tavory) and his young wife, Mira (Rona Lipaz-Michael).  For security reasons (but one senses other reasons too) the Israelis erect a wall between their new home and Salma’s lemon grove.  This is where the tension increases.

The Israeli authorities order Salma to uproot her trees because the area represents a potential security threat. Defiantly, Salma asks a Russian-educated lawyer Ziad Daud (Ali Suliman) to help her prevent the construction of the wall and the impact this will have on her lemon grove.  The case ends up going all the way to Israel’s Supreme Court, a process which gains the attention of the national and international media.

Running underneath the obvious Palestinian/Israeli conflict expressed in this film are sets of relationships full of pathos. Salma, for example, incurs the displeasure of a Palestinian elder (Makram J Khoury) for becoming romantically involved with her attorney Ziad.  There is also tension between Mira and her defence minister husband — there is clearly a relational “wall” between them.  But the most poignant relational component is that between Mira and Salma.   Mira is torn between her sense of loyalty to her husband and her unease at what is being done to Salma, admitting that “I wish I could be a better neighbour to her”.

Israeli writer-director Eran Riklis  stated that he wanted to show “people trapped in a political deadlock”, and Lemon Tree creates an almost parable-like context.

I have very little knowledge of the whys and wherefores of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, even as President Obama tries to bring both sides together “yet again” to see if some sort of dialogue and potential resolution can arise.  Lemon Tree, I think, doesn’t end up taking one side or the other.  Instead, it provides a window for viewers to see the heartache, frustration, complexities and pain experienced by all parties in this ongoing tragedy.

The second film is the remarkable, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008), based upon the John Boyne novel.

You’d think that yet another film about the Nazi extermination of millions of Jews during the Second World War would prove problematic.  Yet the novel and this film adaptation prove not to be “yet another film” about this horrific period of European history.

Fundamentally the film’s success is because it is the story of two 8 year old boys: Bruno (Asa Butterfield), the son of the German S.S. labour/extermination camp commandant and Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), a Jewish boy imprisoned in the camp and, in the first instance, is “the boy in the striped pajamas”.  The two young child actors playing these boys are outstanding (their facial expressions and, especially, eyes are intensely affecting).

Now it is important to say that critics of Boyne’s novel have strongly challenged the story insisting that 8 year old children did not stay long in extermination camps (like Auschwitz) because they were killed almost immediately upon arrival.  Boyne has been accused of creating an erroneous historical picture.  The film’s detractors (and they’ve been outspoken) accuse the film of trivialisation and Hollywood kitsch.  On the other hand there are reviewers who counter with evidence that children were in some of the extermination camps.  You’ll need to read some of the articles and on-line comments.

Of course it could be argued that both the novel and the film are not necessarily trying to present a fully or literally accurate account.  Rather, the two boys are story expressions or ‘devices’ to get underneath our understanding of the Holocaust to show us in another way the horrors.  It is allegorical in this sense.

Concurrent with the developing relationship between Bruno and Shmuel (a relationship existing with innocence and confusion and separated by barbed wire) is the relationship breakdown within Bruno’s family and extended family.

His father (played by David Thewlis of Harry Potter fame) and mother (superbly played by Vera Farmiga) fall apart as his mother’s naivete and superficiality are stripped away, leaving her with the excruciating reality of what her country and, especially, her husband are doing.

I won’t give the story away.  What I will say is this film shows not only the horror of the Nazis’ murder of Jewish people but the multiple levels of ‘culpability’.  Bruno’s family, at the start of the film, display all the signs of a loving and ‘respectable’ family.  Yet at the very heart of things are blindness, naivete, superficiality and (and here is the powerful point) culpability — a culpability that includes them and ends up breaking them.  The boy in the stripped pajamas takes on an unforeseen, personal and tragic meaning.

And it is this sense of culpability that got me thinking of my and our lives: in what ways am I, are we, currently just like Bruno’s family?  What am I and we ignoring?  Whatever else we may say about Boyne’s novel and this film adaptation we really aren’t left with the comfortable option of saying “This is an interesting (or dubious) story of something long ago.”  The story (and its’ devices) tunnel underneath us and, thereby, include us.

CD of the Month (June 09)

U2’s latest work, No Line on the Horizon, kicks to touch the adage that “things tend to fall apart with age.”  Not these boys!  For almost 30 years these guys have been producing outstanding music (with significant help from Brian Eno, whom I wouldn’t mind producing my life!) and they get better and better with age (like fine wine).

Hard core U2 fans may shoot me down but I think this album is their best (followed in my opinion by Joshua Tree).  Of course, some of the reviews are puzzled and even dismissive.

Basically I think U2 splendly subverts all sorts of preconceived social consumer values and ideas.  There is a wonderful blend of the whimsical, the cheeky, the ‘rocker’, the ironic and, most impressively, the prophetic.

Musically, this album is tight and well put together.  There are some good basic rock along with added touches of ambient sounds and fascinating percussion.  I take it that a good deal of credit must go to Brian Eno and DannyLanois.

Bono’s lyrics, for me, are nothing short of magisterial.  For my money, I am blown away every time I listen to ‘Magnificent’ — ‘only love can leave such a mark‘. The multiple levels of meaning and address are wonderful.

‘Get On Your Boots’  and ‘Stand Up Comedy’ display U2’s brilliant subversiveness: here’s rock ‘n roll but within is a clarion call by way of its’ lyrics.

If you like U2, well, you’ve already purchased this album and you know why I’m commending this.  If you haven’t listen yet, do and share the music and lyrics with others.  U2 has once again found a resonance by intriguingly and willingly creating a dissonance with so much of our current trivia, brokenness and blindness.

It’s not that I believe in love, it’s love believes in me…