Robert Donington writes in his benchmark book Wagner's Ring and it's Symbols: "At all costs to himself and those around him, Wagner had to go on being Wagner. That meant something more than being egocentric. It meant being centred interestingly on the self, whose purpose it was that he should achieve his creative work. We become more truly individual by becoming more at the service of the self, which is perhaps one of the meanings of the Christian paradox: 'in they service is perfect freedom' (p.266 of the Faber paperback edition). "To live up to our potentialities means to let go our outworn values." Which as Wagner also showed in his music is not the same as ignoring lessons from the past.
It is well known that Wagner wrote a vehement anti-semitic book (under a pseudonym) in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik Das Judenthum in der Musik (Judaism in Music)(1850). Wagner republished his beliefs under his own name in 1869 so it is clear 1850 wasn't simply a momentary outburst. This was one year after his most famous treatise The Art-Work of the Future (1849)- opera as Gesamtkunstwerk where the composer envisions a total uniting of all the artistic elements. What must also be remembered is that Wagner was a left-wing radical (or right-wing depending on where you're viewing from) and part of the growing nationalist movement against the powerful independent German States. People wanted constitutional reform and they wanted it now. The Saxon King dissolved Parliament in 1849 with Wagner playing his part in the quashed left-wing revolution. Moreover, Wagner had many Jewish friends and supporters. In July 2001 Daniel Barenboim (a Jew himself) conducted the Berlin Staatskapelle in a performance of the Tristan und Isolde overture at Jerusalem's Israel Festival. Wagner had never been played since WWII in that country. In 1985, the Richard Wagner Museum in Bayreuth, Germany, opened an exhibition Wagner and the Jews trying to find the truth of the composer's beliefs.
And it is surprising that whenever liberal minded cultural pundits are broached about questioning Wagner's motives none ever feel very dialectically moody: understandably. Much of the world's great music premieres - Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, Mahler's 4th Symphony to name but two (both recently in the BBC Proms)- were met with derision if not outright disgust by critics. And once again at the Proms this year, Barenboim conducted Wagner with his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra of youthful Jewish and Muslim players soaring beyond the Middle East political divide. History in retrospect gets distorted, politically co-opted, slackened if not downright re-written (as historian and TV presenter Simon Schama is always at pains to show).
Lunch with the FT: Daniel Barenboim
Symphony No 7 as part of as part of David Zinman's Mahler cycle. Symphony No.3 in D minor from Medici Arts and a new issue on DVD of Claudio Abbado conducting Mahler's 4th Symphony.
The Red Baron written and directed by LA based Nikolai Mullerschon but German funded won't go down in cinema history as a great war film anywhere touching Samuel Fuller, Sam Peckinpah or John Ford. But its rarely cine-told WWI story from Baron Manfred von Richthofen's POV (point of view) - the 24 year old legendary German pilot - engages with honesty and passion (and great special effects from Pixomondo) with one lone character representing all the Jewish fighters of that war.
Without sounding like an apologist in any way, could Wagner have spat his venom enraged by a bunch of individuals who in no way represented the whole - as many of us still do? Through half his life he struggled constantly to make money from his music in 'an industry' he believed was controlled by Jews. Historically, French anti-Semitism is always played down but look at the Alfred Dreyfus case (the army officer in 1894 accused of dealing secrets to the Germans). Just as Wagner's reputation never recovered from Hitler's use of his music nor did Dreyfus for being Jewish. The point being that as a human race we still fail to look at both sides, fail to really want to remember, if not a true history then at least one that hasn't been air-brushed if not downright discarded. Much of the Arab world loves Hollywood films just like everyone else - an industry often accused of being run by 'Jews'. Much of the Arab world hates American foreign policy - tenets often reflected in the very Hollywood movies they adore. The dialectic goes on and on and on.
The Last Night Of The Proms is to be broadcast live to cinemas around the world
Samson
Clearly Wagner's writings were anti-Semitic. Rarely (again with good reason) does anyone wish to question why or how. Why is American-Jewish comedian Jackie Mason funny even to most Jews (his last New York show available on Arrow DVD)? Because many entrenched 'norms' are ridiculous and comedy rarely works unless based in truth. Does the new Adam Sandler/Seth Rogan film Funny People make you laugh? Overlong, but its the truisms (many crude) intrinsically resonate with humour (particularly from Eric Bana's jilted Aussie husband).
These thoughts swirled in a week where mentioning last week's funeral of Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy "a champion for those who had none" and the film District 9 (or indeed the last paragraphs of this posting) seemed suddenly bizarrely possible. The Senator was no saint (admitted openly by many at the funeral) but he became one through the humbleness of this ceremony. One could be cynical and say it was all nothing more than political manoeuvring (a skill not foreign to the Senator himself) and the PR public face of humility. But even a cynic would have found it hard to be so. "The greatest legislator of our time," orated President Obama. One could never accuse this Senator of hypocrisy. Kennedy always delivered to his constituents and to many that weren't. With such family wealth his life would have been so much easier if it weren't for being "the kind and tender hero" to those in the world without his privilege. The Senator was a rich swashbuckling pirate who knew well the sea and what it would do if he betrayed it. That it was never his enemy only his friend. And if the sea did rise up against him it was akin to his own temper swaying a man's passions. Whatever the pitfalls of a private life that became so public, Senator Kennedy always listened.
Bobby Baker has been offering up her performance art for years to Britain but few suspected that she suffered acute mental health problems which she captured over a period of 10 years in hundreds of diary drawings.
Kennedy realised that politics began at home. The devil in the detail. That one must needs be conversant with those grievances or else capitalism will begin failing- the reason far right groups (some democratically elected) are currently on the rise in many European countries including the U.K. A liberal press wishes to dispel such groups as society's aberrations. Clearly they are not. Significant minorities, certainly in the U.K., probably feel just as Wagner felt - deprived of their talents, close to poverty and underrepresented. Unable to vent their frustration at an amorphous, impenetrable system, they promulgate racist opinions against individual groups that they might not have done otherwise. No excuse, of course.
Five and the Fascists on BBC Radio 4
District 9, Neill Blomkamp's incredibly impressive debut sci-fi feature (after glowing success in commercials) is one of the few mainstream films in recent years that manages to open up toleration of difference discourse without alienating a broad church. Beleaguered inter-stellar aliens arrived 20 years ago in Johannesburg and the government segregates them in a township akin to Soweto. For the first quarter hour one shifts uncomfortably fearing a sci-fi 'message' movie. But you realise the film's far cleverer than say the recent gung-ho G.I. Joe. The filmmakers (including producer Peter 'Lord of the Rings' Jackson) stress that though it's impossible to divorce the film from its setting, no direct metaphor is intended. "In South Africa, we have to deal with issues that generally people around the world try to sweep under the rug," says Sharlto Copley who plays the lead character Wikus. This guy is the friendly face of corporate greed, charming and cajoling the aliens or 'prawns' into signing eviction papers for their relocation. Men with guns cover his back. What's interesting is that there are no heroes here only survivors. (Without plot spoiling) Wikus becomes the victim of a smear campaign when his mutating body forces him to join the aliens. Little is redeeming only his disturbingly human qualities. He most probably would have joined the NAZI party. Nor does one feel that the aliens are being patronised as saintly. They are as disparate as is humanity. If some could use their weapons they would most probably. Neighbours can be a**holes no matter what their origin. District 9 riffs on the archaeology of sci-fi movie entertainment leitmotifs (themes) - thirst for power, subrogation, subjugation, the alien shadow dormant within oneself: a John Coltrane inspired jazz symphony. Or as Brit poet Philip Larkin disparagingly described modern jazz - like sipping a quinine Martini whilst enduring an enema.
Oliver Hirschbiegel's Five Minutes of Heaven (originally UK broadcast on the BBC) just had a NYC release through IFC Films.
The Thing(released next weekend digitally by Universal across 60 UK screens) is most often deemed one of director John Carpenter's least successful films (1982 - a remake of the 1951 The Thing from Another World) praised mostly for its goulish Rob Bottin special effects squelching from human orifices. Carpenter adept at composing his own synth scores, here enlists Italian master Ennio Morriconi to score symphonic avant garde classical weirdness. Carpenter is also supremely adept at using his lens to engender our trepidation and suspense - even with minimal resources and a well-worn plot. (Looks amazing in widescreen anamorphic too) The Thing is no exception as we try to fathom which one of the ice-station team remains human. And what indeed that means.
Werner Herzog's Encounters at The End of the World out on DVD with loads of extras
After Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker Venice Film Fest premier last year, Sight and Sound's editor, in spite of the film's other merits, found the central character championing jingoistic American heroism. On a very superficial level for some this may be so. But the film's remarkable achievement is exactly the opposite. Where do we retreat in time of war? As Coppola and Brando showed us in Apocalypse Now it is deep into the heart of darkness. New 'EOD' bomb disposal expert (Jeremy Renner) may be gung ho but his actions are totally motivated towards the self rather than patriotism. Ironically, what many people deem to be heroic. Yet he's relatively indifferent when a commanding officer jealously praises his 140 (?) achievements. When his other two team members discover a box of fuses kept under his bed from each defused IED bomb they think he's just plain weird and psycho. Moreover, in their minds he becomes an enemy (to such an extent that they consider blowing him up) because he's deviated from the norm. The entire film explores the somatics of explosion. The young DVD local kid huckster whose dead innards are wired as a booby trap, the innocent man in the Iraq town square a body hijacked to be a suicide bomb, the soldiers punching the stomach shit out of each other in a drunken late-night game. Using four lightweight Super 16mm cameras (DP, Barry Ackroyd - United 93, The Wind that Shakes the Barley), Bigelow offers us documentary style detail after minute detail to foreground Mark Boal's script (a US journo embedded with troops in Baghdad and whose story In the Valley of Elah was based).
Blow for Gordon Brown as defence aide quits over Afghanistan strategy
The Sunday Times article on Kathryn Bigelow
More male bonding in the doco Greek Pete - a young London based rent-boy who wins Escort of the Year in LA's World Escort Awards. It's a thin doco (scenes with clients yet no interviews) and all from Pete's perspective. But his comments about success in Britain not really being admired ring very true. And regardless of what one thinks of his choice of occupation he works damn hard to support a lifestyle others just dream about. The final scene alone makes the film worth a look.
Everyone proffered a different opinion about Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (a loose remake of a good 70s Italian schlocker). And of course Tarantino couldn't make a bad, uninteresting movie even if he tried. So why is this one fascinating (if indeed it is flawed)? Tarantino creates a world poised on the edge of something. Slapstick violence: the reality from which that derives (cf Charlie Chaplin), the memory from which it escapes. A huge close-up of the Nazi's strudel dollop of whipped cream is both comical and terrifying as the sole survivor of a Jewish family, shrouded in French identity, suddenly finds herself feted at Paris table by her tormentors. American G.I. Brad Pitt ridiculously disguised as an Italian movie stunt man at the Nazi propaganda premiere, as ridiculous and obvious as the arbitrariness of passport identity. A world of war movie clichés where the rewriting of history bears no shame only deep discomfort. A world not of escapism but desperation - a desperate hope that film may have the power to change something even though what most of the world wants is to be distracted from itself. Or for the more enlightened, at least subdued from own shadows.
The Observer Tarantino interview
"Man produces evil as a bee produces honey," wrote William Golding whose John Carey biography is just published by Faber.
Peter Brook's film of Lord of the Flies on DVD
Golding also coined the name for James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis (the Greek goddess of the Earth). As the 90-year-old father of Gaia prepares to blast off from Earth on the inaugural Virgin Galactic flight, he reflects on his own mortality, the future of our planet and wind farms.
And for the past year, the eagle-eyed will have seen growing mentions of the honeybees dying off - CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder). Who Killed the Honey Bee? on BBC Four TV came to the conclusion that there was no one cause (exploring the possibility of a parasite) whereas The Vanishing of the Bees to be released in the UK on October 9 by Dogwoof and The co-operative felt chemical pesticides to be the real culprits. The BBC doco used Wagner underscoring as swathes of the empty hives resembled coffins. And both docos pointed out that one in three mouthful of our food is dependent upon the survival of the bee. You also learn that it was an English (or was he Scottish) clergyman who stopped the 1,000 year-old practice of murdering the bees for their honey and substituted the idea of harvesting honeycomb frames.
Inconspicuous consumption: they're rich and they love to spend - but they like to pretend they're having as hard a time as the rest of us. The Guardian charts the rise of the 'poorgeoisie'.
Supermarket suppliers 'helping destroy Amazon rainforest'
Renowned Polish director Andrzej Wajda's Katyn (The Katyn massacre in which thousands of Poles were murdered by the Soviets) is re-aired at the BFI and just issued on DVD by Koch Lorber in the States.
More 4 News
Man of Iron from Mr. Bongo DVD
Criterion DVD's Essential Art House has Wajda's Three War Films (as a 3 disc set) while Arrow DVD in the UK has (singles and set) of the director's famous trilogy.
Ashes and Diamonds on Criterion with audio commentary as well as A Generation and Kanal
Andrzej Munk, a giant of the Polish School of the 1950s, has a Trilogy of films out on Facets DVD in the States: Eroica/Bad Luck/Man on the Tracks
Eroica on Youtube (in Polish)
Bad Luck is perhaps the most 'accessible' with its Roberto Benigni-esque quality - the bitter comedy of survival for its lead character.
New Wave's UK release of Tricks apparently offers some sunlight to alleviate the Polish gloom.
"I do feel that the standard of the real, which is the basis of Italian neorealism, must now be met in a wider and deeper sense. In today's return to normal conditions (for better or worse), the relationship between an individual and his environment is less important than the individual himself in his complex and disquieting reality and in his equally complex relations with others," wrote Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni in 1959 and published in Eureka DVD's booklet for the not often seen Il grido (B/W-1957). Also quoted are the out of print observations of William Arrowsmith: "[A] recurrent Antonioni theme [is] of a private shelter - a world of the private self as embodied in a particular house and a specific sentimento della casa, constantly broached and invaded by an external or public reality." "I don't live anywhere," defiantly says the film. As the director is quoted on a doco extra for Second Sight's DVD reissue of Beyond the Clouds (Al di là delle nuvole) (1995): "we always want to live in somebody else's imagination...lighting a candle in a room full of light". American film academic Seymour Chatman says in his audio essay regarding Il Grido that Antonioni felt it was "his job not the actors to formulate character". There's a fascinating doco by the director's wife Enrica To Make a Film is To Be Alive: "it's very much in the eyes in a spite that is played out in the characters' memory...rather than in their gestures...my craving to look is such that my eyes will end up being consumed and this wear and tear on my pupils will be the sickness that will make me die. One night I shall stare so fixedly into the darkness that I'll end up inside it...how often indeed are phantoms more desirable than reality...reason alone cannot understand reality...the irrational."
Und die Leute werden sagen
In fernen blauen Tagen
Wird es einmal recht
Was falsch ist und was echt
Was falsch ist, wird verkommen
Obwohl es heut regiert.
Was echt ist, das soll kommen -
Obwohl es heut krepiert.
And people will say
In far away blue days
It will become clear
What is false and what is true.
What is false will perish
Although it rules today
What is true shall come
Although it dies today.
- Ödön von Horváth (found in his pocket after his death)
Back in the early 90s (actually 1989 - a link for that to come next week) moi produced the UK premiere of Horváth's Judgment Day directed by the then unknown Stephen Daldry. A new production (in a new translation by erstwhile Horváth champion Christopher Hampton) has just opened at the Almeida.
Safety fears could shut District Line
No Sunday drivers could be found for London Midland trains
Campaign for a rail future
La Fura dels Baus, the Catalan ‘total theatre’ company that famously created the Barcelona Olympics opening ceremony, makes its ENO debut with György Ligeti's dark comic masterpiece Le Grand Macabre.
Ligeti's Piano Concerto is spotlit on BBC Radio 3's Discovering Music and well worth the journey.
A solo show opening Sat Sept 12 by Talia Chetrit at New York's Renwick Gallery could also prove a worthwhile visit.
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