phalsall Reviews

Chariots of Fire (1981)

Sheer Beauty

[16 February 2002]

I was a student at Edinburgh University in 1981 and was actually lodging with one branch of Eric Liddell's family.

My friends and I all went to see this movie repeatedly -- and I mean five, six, or seven paid entrances. Why?

Personally, I don't think it had anything to do with the plot, character development, the music, or moral virtue. It was simply that the film was so utterly beautiful.

The men were beautiful in a clean, non-glamorous way that we had never seen before. Not in British films, and certainly not in Hollywood movies.

The social and educational expectations shared by all were beautiful. I know it is fashionable to decry the British class system, and in principle I agree with all the criticisms. But it also seems that erasing class-by-birth leaves little else but crass meritocracy and the sheer vulgarity of the uneducated masses. Abraham's fellow students at Cambridge and Liddell's at Edinburgh participated in a social and educational system not driven by concerns about jobs, and not pathetically challenged by students who saw themselves as consumers and professors as entertainers.

Britain was beautiful. Of course some parts still are, but Nazi bombs, post-war architecture, and modern cars have destroyed much. This was a Britain where people at the time might have decried "Victorian" architecture, but we in 1981 were just coming to realize how great it was. And this was a Britain where, for good or ill, middle class people kept their houses tasteful, and working-class door-steps were white-stoned each week.

In all this movie was a connection to the beautiful aspects of the British past. That past might never have existed in reality, but in 1981 we could just about touch it, above all in Edinburgh, spared by German bombs and still one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

In the Bedroom (2001)

Class Warfare?

[27 January 2002]

The acting by Wilkinson, Tomei, and Spacek is superb, as most comments have noted. The movie is slow to begin with, but that is why TV can never replace moviehouses: knowing that the audience cannot leave, a director can afford to take time to develop a story. Truly most real stories do not gein with some big incident, but creep and creep until they suddenly seem fill our world. The greatest problem with the film, however, is in its class politics. Everybody in the movie is middle class to upper middle class: the central family is that of the town doctor; The lobster fishing community is quite well off; and, most importantly, the murderer comes from a very wealthy family. Let me repeat this -- the murderer's family owns a local factory, is able to post substantial bail, and pays good alimony to his estranged wife.

And yet the murderer is presented a working class white trash. His body is ungainly, his clothes are slovenly, he drives a pick-up, and he has cheap overdone highlights in his hair. In other words, this Maine-born son of the towns main employers is made to come across like a New Yorker or Los Angeleno's worst fantasy of violent white trash.

Why -- that is a problem.

I, the Worst of All (1990)

A Great Historical Movie - Addresses the Lesbian Continuum

[26 November 2001]

The movie is well made, although not much money seems to have been spent on sets! It sticks fairly closely to the basic historical data, but a quick read up on Sor Juana in the Encyclopedia Brittanica might help many viewers.

Now to the rating issue. There is no good reason why this movie should be restricted to those over 18 by Amazon and other online merchants. There is no overt nudity or genital sex. There is a fairly chaste kiss between women. I suppose the violent scenes of nuns whipping themsleves in a penitential exercise might be offensive to some, but self-flagellation was indeed a part of Catholic monastic life until well into the 20th century, and the scene is not presented in any prurient way. If this amounts to a need to ban the movie for young people, then the Bible also would need to be banned. It has far more sex, nudity, and violence.

The writers who object to the "Lesbian passion" line on the box do have a point. Anyone buying this for erotic arousal would be profoundly mislead.

There is, however, a real lesbian aspect to this film. Sor Juana is clearly a "woman identified woman." She achieves her greatest triumphs while in the nurturing and all-female world of the Convent; her relationship with the Vicereine is the most heated in the film; and the destruction of her writing comes from the intrusion of the exclusively male world of the church hierarchy and the inquistion. Most importantly, her writing reflects an explicit feminist critique of women's oppression.

Just as one does not need to have genital sex in order to be a "heterosexual," neither does one need genital sex in order to be part of the lesbian continuum. Sor Juana is indeed part of the that continuum.

Saladin (1963)

A Well Done Movie - About Nasser as much as Saladin

[1 September 2001]

It is interesting to see an Muslim movie about the Crusades, and this is generally well done. Some of the special effects are, however, a bit hokey.

It is not clear in the movie that Saladin was a Kurd rather than an an Arab. Instead he is presented as a hero for calling for Arab unity in the face of western colonialist intrusion.

In this respect director Chahine makes Saladin a prototype of Gamel Abdul Nasser in calling for Arab unity in order to expel the western intruders.

ITV Saturday Night Theatre: Conflict (1973) Season 6, Episode 9

An Intelligent Religious Movie

[5 August 2000]

It's a relief to find a movie that can deal with Catholic religion that is intelligent yet not sentimental. For some reason other religious groups have been dealt with much better in recent years (think about _Kundun_ or _The Apostle_).

By far the most important event in late 20th century Catholicism was a the Second Vatican Council held in the early 1960s. There, amazingly, a group of bishops brought up in traditional Catholicism set out to revitalize the Church and make it relevant to the modern world. For many liberals (both within the Church and without), they failed, and we are still left with a sex-obsessed church leadership that is focused on bureaucratic control. Few could deny, however, major improvements: the way Catholics deal with Jews, Protestants, and members of the other religions has been transformed; a decisive (and apparently permanent) opposition to the capitalist reduction of human beings to economic figures; and so on.

For most Catholics, however, the greatest changes brought about by the council (and shortly afterwards) were in practice rather than faith: Friday abstinence was abolished; a number of saints were demoted (St. Christopher, St. George, St. Nicholas) or declared non-existent (St. Catherine of Alexandria); and most dramatically the old Latin Mass was replaced by a rather pedestrian English-language "liturgy." For very many people, it turns out, old fashioned "devotional Catholicism" was the root of their existence and the loss was devastating.

Very few movies have addressed the impact of Vatican II (in fact, I find it hard to think of any), and even fewer the pain of the loss of Catholic devotionalism. It turns out that devotionalism was not especially connected with hierarchical power, and that the Vatican centralists have been very happy with the pop-py new liturgy. _Catholics_ addresses a future Church (actually in 1999) where has been devotionalism is destroyed (Lourdes has been closed down; the Vatican has repudiated transubstantiation), but the Church hierarchy is still as power hungry and controlling as ever.

This film is based on the novel _Catholics_ by Brian Moore, perhaps the greatest Catholic novelist in the tradition of Graham Greene. What is this tradition? A tradition which breathes Catholicism, but which stands in critical opposition to the power-seeking elements within Catholic structures.

There are, of course, other elements in the film, addressed by other reviewers, and if you are not concerned with the history of modern Catholicism the film may not appeal. But that is hardly the point.

The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)

Pro-British Hollywood

[1 August 2000]

I saw _Charge of the Light Brigade_ shortly after seeing _The Patriot_, mainly in order to compare the battlefield scenes.

Much could be written about the different possibilities open to the directors and the approaches taken. What interested me more, however, was the very different stance towards Britain.

Recent American movies have been extremely prejudicial towards Britain, either appropriating events in British history as American, or adopting an outright hostility. _Charge_ reflects a different era in which American viewers were apparently expect ed to be on the side of the British.

I suspect the reason for this change derives from changes in American education. Until roughly twenty years ago, most history departments in American colleges had two or three historians who concentrated on Britain, and British history was a required subject. Despite the Revolutionary Wars, the United States was seen in a very real sense as a "continuation" of Britain. This has now changed, perhaps for the better.

My point is that not only could a film like _Charge_ not be made today because of damage to the animals, but because Hollywood would be incapable of seeing British history as does this film.