Woody's World

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Ross Wilson's Woody Allen

Woody Allen's latest movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, is a paradox. It won Penelope Cruz an Oscar but has garnered some thumpingly bad reviews.

I watched it this afternoon and was sporadically baffled and entertained. The story of two young American women (Vicky and Cristina) coming to Barcelona for a summer is an extended advertisement for the Catalan tourist industry. They wander around beautiful churches, buy local delicacies, have a bit of romantic confusion with a passionate artist, but do very little that constitutes a plot. It's charming somnambulism.

Then Penelope arrives as the artist's certifiably unhinged ex-wife. She's brilliant - she jolts the audience awake with a volcanic performance which is funny, shocking, fresh and, above all, alive.

I'm not giving anything away by saying that none of the elements in the slender story is resolved. The footloose character stays footloose, the staid one opts to stay staid, the unhappy wife stands by her man, and the separated couple stay... you've guessed it.

I normally love films which make gratuitous use of voiceovers. Remember Goodfellas' pre-title line? "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster."

But Woody's flick ends with downbeat commentary that constitutes, literally, an anticlimax:

Vicky went home to have her grand wedding to Doug to the house they both finally settled on, and to lead the life she had envisioned for herself before the summer in Barcelona. Cristina continued searching, certain only of what she didn't want.

I left the cinema with John Patterson's damning critique of Woody's recent career ringing in my ears. He argues that the Americans realised he had run dry and kicked him off their shores long ago. Since then he's been on a trawl across Europe with Scarlett Johansson in tow wooing financiers.

And it's true that VCB doesn't have the creativity of Annie Hall, the insight of Manhattan or the empathy of Hannah and Her Sisters (not to mention the jokes of Bullets Over Broadway, the drama of Crimes and Misdemeanors, the bonkers brilliance of Love and Death or the acerbic bite of Deconstructing Harry).

But look back at that voiceover quote. Whoever's speaking is doing so from a vantage point far in the future. The one thing that can be said about VCB is that this is a film of the "now". You can't get a more contemporary cast than S Johannson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem and P Cruz. But the fog of mortality hangs over this picture and, by extension, us.



The film's travelogue moments and romantic couplings appear meaningless because in Woody's worldview such distractions are meaningless. As Koheleth, the writer of Ecclesiastes, might say: "There’s nothing to anything - it’s all smoke." The ageing filmmaker has no desire to give examples of Aristotlean individual redemption because he doesn't believe in it. There is nothing new under the Catalan sun and Woody is not about to shine false hope in anyone's eyes. The characters go to see a giant crucifix which the artist loves as a "statue", but there is no suggestion any God-shaped hole can be filled.

My friend Joel Wilson believes Woody's personal philosophy boils down to an existentialist belief that life is defined by the shadow of death and you had better pursue individual happiness, such as romantic love, even if you need to destroy your world in order to grasp it.

Nothing happens in VCB because the characters don't have the courage - according to such a view - to overturn their existences and pursue individual fulfilment. Is Woody saying that the existentialist project has run out of steam and we are just waiting for the final reel to come to an end? Is this deliberately superficial film actually one of his most radical? If it is, it shows he has never abandoned his wrestle with the question of the meaning of life.

And if he is still focused on this ancient question, then it is fair to close with a contribution from one of the greatest thinkers on this subject. Over to you, Karl Barth:

If a man believes and knows God, he can no longer ask, What is the meaning of my life? But by believing he actually lives the meaning of his life, the meaning of his creaturliness, of his individuality, in the limits of his creaturliness and individuality and in the fallibility of his existence, in the sin in which he is involved and of which daily and hourly imparted to him through God's interceding for him, in spite of him and without his deserving it.

He recognizes the task assigned to him in this whole, and the hope vouchsafed to him in and with this task, because of the grace by which he may live and the praise of the glory promised him, by which he is even here and now secretly surrounded in all lowliness. The believer confesses this meaning of his existence.

The Christian Creed speaks of God as the ground and goal of all that exists. The ground and goal of the entire cosmos means Jesus Christ. And the unheard-of thing may and must be said, that where Christian faith exists, there also exists, through God's being trusted, inmost familiarity with the ground and goal of all that happens, of all things; there man lives, in spite of all that is said to the contrary, in the peace that passeth all understanding, and which for that very reason is the light that lightens our understanding."(Dogmatics in Outline, p.26-7)

Bushmills Fire

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I was back on the old turf for less time than it takes to defrost a chilli but a quick trip to the Bushmills Inn was a priority.

Walk to the Barmouth

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Anyone who lives on the northern fringe of Ireland is familiar with the concept of the "walk to the barmouth". This is both a metaphor for "shaking a leg", "getting some air" and "looking lively" and a literal walk to the far end of Portstewart Strand. It is a way of escaping the long dark teatime of the soul on a Sunday afternoon and one of the best reasons for living on the last rock before Bermuda.





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Engaged Tunes

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The person on the far left (politically as well as geographically speaking) and the chap with the beard are getting married. Darn fine champagne was rightly de-corked.



This inspired some very fine music making.



When Bruce Springsteen plays air guitar he imagines he's Ben Lithman.



If you like the sound of steel drum choirs, who knows, the man above could soon be your neighbour! And you can rejoice that this lunatic below lives very far away.

Black Dog in Bath

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The Order of the White Gull

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Turning Off to Tune In

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The mesmeric Manchester band New Order captured the spirit of a quiet epiphany at the end of a day when they sang:

Tonight I think I'll walk alone; I'll find my soul as I go home.

Robert Frost’s finest poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, also portrays such a moment of stillness when it’s possible to see reality with a fresh sharpness:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

An essential element of such experiences is silence, when the wallpaper of noise which surrounds us is ripped away.

In the Welsh capital there seems to be a conspiracy to stamp out the possibility of silence.

The organisers of the London 2012 Olympics have erected a giant television screen which from 7am to 11pm splurges out noise and images.

This Blade Runner-style monstrosity could be a propaganda exercise to make Wales forget it is set to lose – according to Heritage Minister Alun Ffred Jones – £100m in Lottery funding and spin-offs due to the gushing of spending on the Games.

But this is not the only sensory assault. Many of the capital’s buses now have intermittent connections to the BBC News channel. The sound and pictures cut in and out and a strange audio soup of snippets fills the bus: “Kosovo... high street spending... Britney Spears... Robert Peston.”

A city in the moments before it wakes up or in the hours after the shops have closed used to be a place to think with clarity – somewhere the mind could breath.

Yet today we are trapped in a mesh of noise which frazzles our thoughts and stultifies the imagination.

The poet Christina Rossetti noted: “Silence is more musical than any song.”

And one of the most marvellous moments in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is when Uma Thurman tells the enigmatic hitman over dinner: “That's when you know you've found somebody special. When you can just [shut up] for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.”

Quaker schools and colleges continue to celebrate “moments of silence” as a way to still the heart and prepare the mind. Britain pauses to commemorate disasters, but we should take opportunities to press “mute” more often in our schools and workplaces.

Thomas Merton, a fabulous monk, said: “Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.”

The jibber and jabber of City jargon disguised the fact our banking system has the internal consistency of thrice-boiled spaghetti. The stripping away of vacuous noise may help form a society capable of recognising truth when it sees it – and that would be something to talk about.

The Castle of the Extending Family

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Dr Obama

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The Obama presidency has become a medical drama.

The plot will hinge on whether this dashing statesman can resuscitate a debt-ridden patient.

In prescribing a $787bn “stimulus” package he has reached for the defibrillator and attempted to shock the US back to life.

He is at once trying to sustain the pulse of the capitalist system and the common yet utopian dreams of prosperity which unify America’s disparate citizens.

For generations they have tolerated the absence of an NHS and a weaker welfare state than other developed countries because the hope of a home and ultimate affluence seemed within the grasp even of immigrants on a paltry minimum wage.

Urban America has increasingly become a realm where you do not expect your neighbour to have the same first language or religion as yourself, but you are likely to have the common goal of providing your family with a comfortable house. This vision sends millions of people scrambling for coveted Green Cards.

But last year 2.3 million homes were repossessed. One in 54 households received an eviction order; 7.6% of workers outside the agricultural sector are unemployed.

The chances are that everyone will have an acquaintance or a family member who is experiencing the reality or the looming threat of repossession. Like a plague which is spreading through society, the fear of eviction is gnawing into the national consciousness.

Obama did much to salvage the concept of the American Dream from the mire of the dying days of the Bush administration simply by being elected. This was a rebranding moment which demonstrated that the United States still offers unprecedented opportunity to transcend racial and economic barriers.

But great marketing alone cannot save a creaking enterprise, and as America’s CEO he is striving to preserve the heart and lungs – the capitalist system and the gleeful ambition – which have kept this epic experiment of a country alive.

If he fails, calls for protectionism and an end to immigration will intensify and unsavoury demagogues will swim to the surface of national life. Attempts to unify a diverse country around a common language or creed will have ugly consequences.

This urgency is why Obama was prepared to construct a euphemistically-titled “stimulus” package which was guaranteed to rile Republicans and scotch hopes of a new bipartisan consensus.

A glass of lime cordial could be described as somewhat stimulating. But the president has served the economy a shot of the strongest tequila he could find in his cabinet.

This is not the type of “change” most people imagined when he brandished the ambiguous slogan at campaign rallies. His willingness to spend great mountains of taxpayers’ cash is seen by many on the Right as fundamentally anti-American.

But America is in the ER room, the blue light is flashing, and the young doctor from Illinois believes he has the right medicine.

Bonding with a Donkey

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The House of the Admiral Whose Architect Wife Lured Him From the Sea

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The Fortress Which Never Knew War

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Cupcakes and Camouflage

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Only a handful of days ago I was unaware of the concept of a “wedding fair”.

But like a frictionless seal who has slid off a ledge of polished ice into a crevasse of unfathomable depths, at the weekend I accidentally found myself in the midst of one.

The setting was a manor house on the outskirts of London – the type of place where secret societies probably gather on a Thursday evening to recite Egyptian poetry and explore the hallucinatory properties of UHT milk.

But the toastmaster standing at great wooden door did not ask for a password and I don’t think he gave me a secret handshake. Instead, he handed over a glossy card advertising his services.

Inside, a young woman in a bridal gown wafted through the rooms like the ghost of a wedding past. The uncanny atmosphere quivered to the pluckings of a harpist, who was also for hire.

Seats draped in white silk were laid out for a ceremony which would never take place. It was as if Walt Disney had hired Miss Havisham to design a theme park.

But the Apocalypse Now moment when any person of measured equilibrium would have the urge to wear camouflage and whisper “The horror! The horror!” was still to come.

Laid out on a table were an assortment of advertisements for – if my memory has a correct recollection of this terrifying sight – dental correction and plastic surgery services.

It is not geometric perfection which enchants but the expression of individual character, flair, panache and imagination.

It is bad enough that western society’s most wonderful brides are compelled to wrap themselves in starched ivory-coloured curtain material on a day which should celebrate their uniqueness. Even more horrendous is the notion that social pressures in the 21st century will send young lovers into the surgery to be remodelled in line with the harsh diktats of the arbiters of official beauty.

In the Hebrew story of Jacob, the young man is shocked to discover on the morning after his wedding night that he has been tricked by his crafty uncle and actually married the sister of the woman for whom he laboured for seven years.

Almost as great will be the dismay of the groom who lifts his bride’s veil to find that his wife’s legendarily cute nose has vanished. She will not be pleased, either, if he has had his ears redesigned to resemble those of an Austro-Hungarian dynasty.

The most splendid thing at the fair was the roulette wheel in an adjoining room showcasing evening entertainment.

In this dastardly game of chance there was more life than in the corseted universe next door. We need to escape these industrial fairs and rediscover wedding flair, powered by the hope, joy and light which has sustained humanity since the first flame of life.

Digital bishop

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I've enjoyed dipping a toe into digital waters, but I don't think Paxman will be worried.

The Gallery in the Morning

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The Mausoleum and Museum of the Warrior Queen

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The Castle on the Way to New York

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What the heck, anyway?

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Even the great Chas Leck needs to let off steam after the Tom Daschle fiasco.

Do you have an organization that doesn’t know how to vet your nominees for high positions? Around our farm, if a potential customer wants to buy a horse, they have him vetted (examined by a veterinarian) for any potential problems. If the vets around here were as sloppy as your team, they wouldn’t be able to find work anymore.

As we say in Minnesota: "What the heck, anyway?"

What the Dickens, what a movie!

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Slumdog Millionaire is a riveting marvel of a film and it is a source of rightful national pride that director Danny Boyle is a graduate of Bangor University.

It looks like a blisteringly modern work of cinematic craftsmanship. Editor Chris Dickens cuts and splices with the precision of a surgeon and the power of a butcher; each scene throbs to the beat of AR Rahman sensational score.

This is a story told through pictures. Some films are essentially stage plays captured on celluloid but Slumdog is a shattering example of cinema as a distinct and thrilling art form which – little more than a century after its birth – is just beginning to reveal its true power.

But the imaginative muscle behind this film’s grip is not the product of technical expertise. Slumdog stands in a storytelling tradition which must be fully revived if we are to make sense of this young but already bewildering century.

Its story of a child from the slums pursuing true love while scrambling for survival could have jumped from the pages of Charles Dickens.

Scriptwriter Simon Beaufoy told the director he felt the “shadow of Dickens” as he worked.

Dickens’s stories are classics of literature but his works were published in individual episodes designed to obsess and enthral his readers. Yes, he was a master of social observation and a chronicler of injustice, but he was also a genius at crafting a cliffhanger.

Slumdog is a commercial film which will enrich investors but it will also do more to inform audiences about the horror of the slums and the paradoxes of globalisation than any worthy article in a charity magazine.

A key achievement of the film is that there is no role for the likes of Mel Gibson or Angelina Jolie, no “good westerner” arrives to resolve crises. The story of Jamal’s journey from poverty to quiz show success – via terrifying encounters with gangsters, zealots and police interrogators – is more than sufficiently dramatic to engage even the most insular western audience.

Dickens enabled bourgeois readers to identify with people with whom they might have thought they had nothing in common. Great literature allows you to see the world through new eyes.

Brilliant television such The Wire and The West Wing illuminates the thinking of drug dealers and presidents, respectively. Such storytelling contains a voyeuristic element but is also enlightening and, as with Dickens’ novels, can be a force for social change.

Mighty entertainment takes us to new places and opens up amazing vistas. We need bold stories about the lives of Afghan villagers and Kremlin bureaucrats, credit crunching bankers and Lithuanian migrants.

But instead of telling stories about people, too often on television we are presented with professionals going about their jobs – doctors being doctors and police being police.

Let us hope the hot brilliance of Slumdog burns through Britain’s imaginative permafrost.