Ida

Ida is a film about an orphaned young woman who has grown up in a convent in Poland knowing nothing about her ancestry. Just as she is about to take her vows she finds out that she has a single living relative, her Aunt Wanda. Aunt Wanda is the opposite of Ida in just about everything: she is loud, brash, and somewhat self-destructive while Ida is quiet, kind and thoughtful.

The Aunt reveals to Ida that she is in fact Jewish and that her mother. father and brother died during the Second World War (the film is set in the Sixties). The two women go on the road with the intention of finding out exactly when and where Ida's parents died. Both Ida's naivety and her Aunt's cynicism come out very clearly as they are confronted with traffic cops, seedy boarding houses, jazz joints and finally with the man who murdered Ida's parents and stole their farm from them.


The revelation of the truth about Ida's parents' death has a quite different effect on both women: Wanda becomes increasingly depressed and boozy, while Ida becomes withdrawn and sad. The one source of comfort comes in the form of a jazz musician who takes a shine to Ida and who is at first rebuffed by her. I won't give away too much of the plot in case you want to watch the film yourself on DVD (I watched it at the cinema some months ago!). The film isn't entirely sad; there are a couple of funny moments and the two women do share some happy times looking at old photos.

The film is beautifully shot in grainy black and white, the acting is superb and the sense of place and of suspense are both very powerfully conveyed. The only weaknesses of the film are that it is rather slow moving and you sometimes have to put in a bit of effort to work out exactly what is going on. But once you adjust to the fact that this not a mainstream type of film it is a very rewarding watch.

Belle

Went to see the film a couple of weeks ago and enjoyed it hugely! It's the story of a woman of mixed race growing up in an aristocratic family in 18th Century England and facing many of the problems that might be expected and some unexpected ones too.

As expected, Belle the eponymous heroine encounters prejudice both from within her family and from potential suitors. What's not expected is the jealousy she arouses in her white half-sister who though very pretty and from a good family has no dowry. It soon becomes apparent that Belle, despite her colour, is a better catch for young men on the look out for a rich wife since her father died leaving her a considerable fortune.

Belle's kindly guardian and Uncle, brilliantly portrayed by Tom Wilkinson is the Lord Chief Justice of England and is facing what became known as the Zong case. The Zong was a slave ship on it's way from the coast of West Africa to the Caribbean with a "cargo" of people intended for the West Indian plantations. Finding that most of the slaves had sickened and many were dying, the crew decided to throw them overboard rather than face the prospect of making a loss on the voyage. This cruel act was not so unusual in those days, and since slaves were considered property there were no legal penalties. What was unusual in this case was that the ship's owner had the nerve to make a claim on his insurance, in effect, that the "cargo" had been lost through no fault of the crew.

There is a good deal of chat between the characters about the case, and it provides the opportunity for Belle to do a good deal of thinking about her own position in society. Compared to many others Belle has had a very privileged upbringing and the film shows very convincingly how she grows up into someone who knows her own mind partly through the influence of the dashing John Davinier (played by Sam Reid) who provides the film's social conscience.

What none of this conveys is the strength of the performance by the lead, Gugu Mbatha-Raw who very convincingly portrays a range of emotions in a variety of situations, from sadness, offended pride, social awkwardness through to strong passion and anger. The complexity of her relationship with her half-sister Elizabeth (played by Sarah Gadon) is very well done... the two actresses shine in every scene they are together.

There is a portrait of Belle and her half-sister Elizabeth hanging in Scone Palace near Perth which was very unusual for the time in portraying someone with dark skin as the virtual equal of a white. View it here: http://www.hha.org.uk/learning-and-outreach-2/heritage-for-all/abolition-of-the-slave-trade-1807/scone-palace.html

This painting was part of the inspiration behind a novel I wrote last year with a protagonist of mixed race who struggles to make a living and find acceptance in 18th Century Edinburgh. Read it here: http://goldensquare.me/?page_id=54

Temporary Change of URL for Golden Square

Due to some unforeseen technical difficulties, the "parent" website for this blog has had to change URL from www.goldensquare.org to www.theheir.co.uk
I'm hoping that this will only be a temporary thing!

Fanny Burney's Diary

Considering the 18th Century is my current obsession, it's surprising that it's taken this long to review a book or film from this period! Fanny Burney was famous in her own time for writing the smash-hit novels Evelina, Cecilia and Camilla.None of them are very well known these days, probably because she has been overshadowed by the woman she most heavily influenced that came after - Jane Austen.

Having read and enjoyed Evelina, which is substantially racier than Jane Austen and is populated with colourful and very well-drawn characters, it was no surprise to find that Fanny Burney's diary is very interesting and well-written.What I hadn't anticipated is her almost Forrest Gump-like ability to place herself in the right place at the right time in terms of being at the centre of history.

In terms of her own comfort she actually tended to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it makes her journal all the more interesting! Amongst other famous or semi-famous people she knew very well were the writer and compiler of the first English dictionary, Dr. Samuel Johnson, and the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds. She was in Bath during the Gordon Riots of 1780 when there were anti-Catholic disturbances in London and in many of the major English towns. She was a servant of Queen Charlotte when the so-called madness of King George the Third began to manifest itself. She lived in London during the French Revolution and knew personally many of the great French princes, princesses and nobles who had fled the country.

She met and married a Frenchman with whom she returned to France during the peace of 1802 and met Napoleon. She was unfortunate enough to be forced to remain in France when war broke out again between France and Britain in 1803. She was in Paris when Napoleon spectacularly returned from exile on Elba in 1814, and was close enough to the battle of Waterloo in 1815 to be frightened by the thunder of the artillery and to see the incredible number of wounded being taken away for treatment.

The beauty of her writing is that everyone, from the highest King down to the most ordinary person is shown as human and portrayed with a warmth that is at times quite moving. She was clearly a very talented woman, but was very uncomfortable with the fame that her compositions brought. This is no doubt partly because she could be very shy. It could also be attributed to the fact that it was unusual for women to be authors in the late 18th Century and because the social standards of the day stipulated that virtuous women did not draw attention to themselves.

Being a popular author certain brought her a good deal of attention and some of the most interesting passages in her books show her embarrassment at the position she often found herself in. A classic moment is when a female aristocratic acquaintance tries to persuade her to read her amateurish composition The Mausoleum of Julia. The title alone conveys something of the sheer awfulness of it's contents!

The Book Thief

Went to see The Book Thief at the cinema last Friday... It's about an illiterate German girl, Liesel, who loses her parents and is adopted by an odd couple in the years leading up to the Second World War. Her step-mother is almost stereo-typically harsh at first, while her step-father provides light relief in the form of accordion playing and jokes. As a new girl, Liesel struggles at school (particularly since she can't read) but her step-father teaches her and she develops a friendship with Rudy, the boy next door.

The backdrop to all this is the growing power of the Nazis, the declaration of war and the increasing persecution of the Jews. A Jewish friend of the family ends up on the run, living in their basement. Meanwhile the girl attends a Nazi book burning and waiting behind until everyone is gone, manages to rescue one of the books, H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man which is so warm it's practically smoking!

There are quite a few genuinely funny moments and the acting on the whole is very good. The thing that I didn't like, and I can't quite put my finger on it, is the tone. The narrator is death, and there is certainly a fair bit of death in the film as you might expect, but the contrast with the almost unreal chocolate-box depiction of wartime Germany was unsettling. Which may have been the film-maker's intention. The book is aimed at young adults, and I think the film is aimed at this market too.

 I wouldn't say it was a great film,  but that's probably because it invites obvious comparisons with such heavyweight titles as Schindler's List and The Pianist. It's certainly not as good as those, but the lead actors are very watchable, particularly Sophie Nelisse as Liesel and Geoffrey Rush as her step-father.

There are some powerful moments, and I have to say that I didn't leave the cinema dry-eyed!

Paul of Tarsus

At first sight, this book looks a bit weighty and hard to read. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although Paul of Tarsus was written in the 1940s it has a freshness that brings the Apostle Paul's life and the Roman world in which he lived entirely alive.
Anyone who has ever read the part of the bible entitled the Acts of the Apostles will be familiar with some of the aspects of Paul's life.Of how he trained from quite a young age to be a bible scholar under the Jewish Rabbi Gamaliel, how he was involved in persecuting the early Christian church and how his life was radically transformed by an encounter with God on the road to Damascus. Also the many missionary journeys that he carried out in his later life.
All of these key scenes are in Paul of Tarsus, but we are also given a glimpse into the early life of Paul as he grew up in the busy Mediterranean port of Tarsus with it's colourful pagan festivals, Greek sports and rowdy street life. We are shown how all these influences shaped the older Paul and particularly his use of sporting metaphors in his writings.
We are exposed to some of the rigour of the Rabbinical training that he experienced in Jerusalem, so that we can understand to a degree some of the misplaced zeal he showed in persecuting the church. Most of all we're shown the extent to which Paul saw himself as rescued by God's grace from what he later saw as a fruitless life of hatred and intolerance. This helps to explain why he was so adamant as a Christian in his opposition to the group of Judaisers in the early church who were trying to impose the Jewish religious law on new Christians, whether Jews or Gentiles.
Most interesting of all, we are shown Paul's later life. The book of Acts ends with Paul's imprisonment in Rome, but we are shown that he was actually released from there and along with Peter, became very active in the rapidly growing church in the capital of the Roman empire. It was some years later, after Rome was burned to the ground, that Paul and others were wrongfully convicted of arson by the Emperor Nero and executed.

The author's warmth and knowledge of the ancient world shines through, bringing the world of 2000 years ago vividly to life. My main criticism is that in attempting to summarise Paul's writings, the Catholic author has a tendency to blur theological points and abuse the Protestant theologian Martin Luther for no obvious reason.
Having said that I would thoroughly recommend this book to Christians of any denomination, and to anyone interested in the early church and ancient world of the Near East.
I bought a second-hand copy from here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/PAUL-OF-TARSUS-Joseph-Holzner/dp/0906138612/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1394479558&sr=8-12&keywords=Paul+of+Tarsus

The Rebecca Code: Rommel's Spy in North Africa and Operation Kondor

I just finished reading this today, and what a page turner! It tells the very interesting story of how the Germans attempted to place spies in WW2 Cairo in an attempt to find out what the British Generals were planning in the North African campaign. It's a story of ineptitude as much as anything else and is very entertaining in parts.

As well as being a little-known story, what makes it interesting is that it provides a fascinating insight into some of the roots of the present troubles in Egypt.

What it lacks is proper maps! Like most military history (frustratingly) it describes journeys and battles without providing maps which would make them much easier to visualise. Nevertheless, highly recommended.

Link to book