Savage culture

The sign "Savage culture" hangs above a shop in that extraordinary Cantabrian town Santillana del Mar: it's an oxymoron that came to mind during Inside Llewyn Davis this evening, and in reflecting about last night's film too.

The latest Coen Brothers offering, beautifully set in the early '60s, pivots round a young, gentle-till-provoked hobo, a talented New York guitarist and song-writer. Through many difficult and some violent relationships, not least with ginger cats, we watch his life slowly disintegrating, as his lyrical ballads are ruthlessly dismissed as noncommercial. Ulysses turns out to be the name of the no. 1 cat, but Llewyn Davis' Odyssey has no such happy ending. Why did he fail when Bob Dylan succeeded? we ask. Coming away, Caroline and I agreed: there but for the grace of God goes one of ours (similarly hirsute and entangled with cats).

Inside Llewyn Davis is an extremely funny, very sad film, a description applying equally to Dans la maison, François Ozon's brilliant second-to-last feature from 2012: our Film Society showed it last night. This centres on another male character encumbered by a busted flush of a father, but this time manipulating those around him, as opposed to being manipulated. Claude, aged 16, wreaks havoc within his bourgeois community, sending his literary Maestro mad as fantasy conflicts with reality. Culture, once again a double-edged sword.

I took the photograph in Elmley Castle. Four of us reached there starting from Ashton-under-Hill, happily a dry walk this morning, with fine, long views: the rain has come back since.  It was mostly firm underfoot across Bredon Hill, but horribly muddy on the long descent. (We trudged back the long way, around the road.)

In St Mary's Church, you can't fail to see and wonder at two extraordinary tombs. On one, dating from c1700, the first Earl of Coventry lounges nonchalantly in full wig, one hand reaching out to pick up his coronet. The other - 25 years, but what seems like a whole world earlier - depicts members of the Savage family. Three lie as if asleep, the lady holding her baby daughter; while four other children kneel attentively at their feet. And between them, the head of a stag, with golden locks and one remaining but wondrous ear: its neck is pierced with an arrow. Savage culture once more.

The almost true

I took this photograph 21 years ago at the official opening of Glenfall House, by the short-lived Bishop Peter of Gloucester: Sister Frideswide was one of the Anglican sisters who had occupied the house as their convent prior to the Diocese taking it over. Here she is enjoying a dish of strawberries and cream.

We saw "Philomena" this evening, the film based on Martin Sixsmith's book, "The Lost Child of Philomena Lee", about the forcible separation of a mother and child by the (Catholic) nuns of an Irish convent during the 1950s, and the subsequent attempts of the mother and child to contact one another. It's magic to watch. But it makes three contested points, without which it would undoubtedly have less impact.

First, it alleges the nuns willfully destroyed records that would have helped mothers and children to become reunited. Secondly, it says the nuns received payment from those adopting children. On both counts, the Order of nuns has issued a vehement denial.

And thirdly it portrays one of the nuns fiercely condemning the eponymous heroine for giving into her "carnal" desires - the nun in question having died almost a decade before the confrontation in question could have taken place.

It's ironic that the man behind the film (and brilliant in it) is Steve Coogan, by his own admission "forced to fight for the truth" on behalf of phone-hacking victims.

"No Impact Man"

I don't photograph rubbish much, but this is a detail of a scene I took in April, when making a detour off my Camino to visit the Abbey of Oseira. The human-induced chaos of this far-away farmyard seemed strikingly at odds with the unspoilt beauty of the Galician countryside surrounding it.

"No Impact Man" is the title of a documentary made four years ago about a family who determined to see by how much they could reduce the impact they made on their New York environment over a period of 12 months. I asked Leo if he could get it for us to watch through "Love Film", and he came up with it on DVD this evening.

I can see that many would find the journey it describes tiresome, and perhaps trite, but it's lightly done, and raises some good questions en route to its conclusion - that whatever you do is best done as part of the community, rather than in an isolated fashion.

A couple of criticisms: the issue of needing to live without loo paper seemed to loom as large if not larger than restricting (or not) the size of the human family; and having a largish dog in the flat seemed to be a given, with never a mention of the ecological issues to which family pets should surely give rise.

Clothes-horses

Probably to brighten up a dull month, the papers are currently full of pictures showing the latest fashions: ridiculous clothes on ridiculously thin women. But it's not only women - it seems - that are dressed up these days. Dogs and horses too are adorned in ways that were surely never the norm a few decades ago. Is it really colder now? These were just two of many horses togged up in the fields to the North of Greenway Lane this afternoon. I walked along this, once the main highway between Cirencester and Gloucester, on my way back from another lunchtime visit to the Star Bistro at Ullenwood.

This evening, I watched at last the DVD of Of Gods and Men, kindly lent to us. What a superb film! Niall Keenan has an excellent article about its illustration of the virtue of fortitude on Thinking Faith.

Masterly

We are in the middle of a mini home-made film festival - or possibly at the end of one. Caroline hated "The Master", which we saw this evening, and may be hard to persuade back into the cinema for quite a while as a result.

I didn't hate it, indeed I was consistently impressed during what both is and feels like a long session. But I didn't much like it, I have to admit. Human nature in its flawed fullness seems to attract director Paul Thomas Anderson: "There will be blood", his previous film, was equally nasty, equally memorable. And what performances he elicits from his cast! Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role especially - and thank goodness not quite so enigmatic as four years ago in "Synecdoche, New York".

Why is "The Master" worth seeing? For the score (by Jonny Greenwood), apart from all else; for its loving and sumptuous recreation of the immediate post-War era; for its imaging, and for a plot which I'm still puzzling over.

"Rust and bone"

Gritty realism is the keynote of the film we saw earlier this evening. Caroline had her head down for quite a lot of it, she said. I by contrast had a whale of a time, enjoying it the more for its honesty, and the portrayal of a compassionate man who came to learn the meaning of love.

In the days when we used telephone boxes, there was a tiny pause between connection and the requirement to insert money. Thus the word NORWICH is said to have come into use, by those panting to get back from work. The "Rust and bone" equivalent - now of course texted - is "Opé?".

I photographed this rusty shed on the side of the ancient track above Stanway a decade ago: it has since been painted black, I was sorry to see in August, on my last walk past.

"Dekalog"

Nothing attractive seeming to be on at Cineworld, I took out a DVD from the Library today - for the first time. The choice (huge) eventually fell on Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski's Dekalog - a series of ten hour-long films, each of which represents one of the Ten Commandments: they were made originally (1989) for TV. We watched VI and VII only, adultery and theft - strong stuff, but affecting. The little girl Ania looked just like Ida, making VII all the more poignant.

I spotted this sign at St Margaret's, in West Herefordshire, when we were on holiday there four Summers ago. The church stands on its own, next to a farm duck pond.

"The Artist"

This is such a clever film! Our expectations were high, which is usually dangerous; but seeing it last night there was no feeling of let-down. It really has it all: glitz, drama, romance, comedy (lots of in-jokes), dancing, a bit of the surreal – and, reluctant as I am to admit it, a sympathetic dog. When all’s said, though, it left me curiously dry-eyed. I think I was turned off by the hero of the piece: his “Jeeves” was - on the other hand - delightful.

This photograph - taken in Nara when we were in Japan a couple of years ago - is of course of no relevance whatever to the film!

Back to GMT

Before leaving for Japan, I repeated the feast/fast diet I had tried with success on my last long haul flight in 2003: it works well in overcoming jetlag (more of a problem going West to East than vice versa). Coming back yesterday, I had made no such preparations: I ate and drank normally and stayed awake throughout (watching one or two good TV programmes and 1, 2, 3 films - all more or less cheesy). So far, so good - but I shall soon be ready for bed.

Meanwhile, Agnes and Ida, alongside us on the plane, are today settling into Herefordshire. Agnes had a new bike, complete with seat, for her birthday and we shall take it over to her on Wednesday.

Japan? A great trip! I'm working on the photographs. Good to get back to English breakfasts though. And soap in the bath.

Home

Two films exist with this title. (Perhaps more.) The latest - starring Isabelle Huppert - has been described as a "rather beautiful eco parable from Ursula Meier." I hope to see it one day, but this seems unlikely to be at our Cheltenham Cineworld.

Meanwhile, I've been watching the other (current) Home - at home, on the computer. It's a 93-minute documentary film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, with the most beautiful photography of our world from the air. It also has the most annoying soundtrack, but that is easily eliminated by turning the volume off and the subtitles on. Well worth watching!

Newman

On Friday last, Paul Newman died. For some 50 years he was an icon to my generation of film buffs; but reading his obituaries you see a bigger picture: in his long life, he suffered much personal tragedy, and whilst his success made him rich, he was also hugely generous.

Today's illustration is of another Newman, John Henry, 1801 - 1890. Here he is, shown as an old man in his robes as a Cardinal. The illustration appears on the front of the current Friends of Cardinal Newman Newsletter, kindly dropped on my doorstep yesterday by Christopher Page.

The picture, by the Birmingham artist, Claude Pratt, was owned by my cousin Tom Townsend, who would have inherited it from either his father Sir Reg Townsend or his mother Millie, the daughter of Birmingham-born Ned and Agnes Cartwright. (Agnes was my grandfather's aunt.)

Tom and his wife Betty had no children, and I was fortunate enough to inherit "Cardinal Newman" on Tom's death. But with our impending move, we have been trying to slim down on pictures, so I am very happy that it has now found its way back to Birmingham, and indeed to Newman's Oratory in the Hagley Road.

WALL-E: spoiler alert!

Caroline and I went to the cinema together last night, a relatively rare occurence. Based on a favourable review and recommendations from Edmund and Thomas, our choice was the latest Pixar offering, WALL-E.

Its hero/heroine -arguably - is not the lovable, sentient robot of the title, but the last, or rather the first, plant on a planet Earth that has been overwhelmed by consumer waste, and whose inhabitants have mass-migrated to Space Station Axiom. The film is the story of their fight to recolonise Earth, which of course they do.

Caroline and I had a good laugh at the choice of the space station's name: her time with the Axiom Centre of the Arts here in Cheltenham was spent making a place full of opportunities to help people be as creative as possible: the computer running WALL-E's Axiom was intent on making its inhabitants as docile as possible.

Coincidentally, yesterday morning's email from Christian Ecology Link read as follows:

Conventional food production incurs the following hidden costs:
· 1,000 tonnes of water are consumed to produce every tonne of grain;
· 10-15 energy units are spent for every energy unit of food on our plates;
· With processed foods, more than 1,000 energy units are used for every energy unit of food;
· 12-15 energy units are wasted for every energy unit of food transported per thousand air-miles;
· 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, which produces 60% of all methane emissions and 70% of nitrous oxide;
· Nearly 90% of all agricultural subsidies benefit corporations and big farmers, while in the USA alone 500 family farms close down every week; and
· Subsidised surplus food dumped on developing countries creates poverty, hunger and homelessness on a massive scale.

Axiom, here we come?

WALL-E, the verdict? A dazzlingly clever film, crammed with an immense amount of imaginative detail, some of it genuinely funny and touching; but a film made with a budget of $180m, trailing movie-related merchandise, advertising, not to mention popcorn in its wake - all those things that give rise to the opening hypothesis, that we are heading towards environmental disaster. The end of this film is to entertain and make money. It is therefore, in my view, ultimately making light of our greatest challenge, its "bold" theme ironically causing filmgoers to become numbed to the possibility of overcoming that challenge.