Author: Graham Swift
I think that it’s a given that we are the sum of our own experiences. But, of course, we are also dependent to some degree on our parents’ experiences, without which we would not have gotten our start in life, and by which we are heavily influenced in our early years. And thus they were dependent upon their parents’ experiences, and, consequently, so are we. Also, we are the sum of our parent’s genes, and they of their parents’ genes, and so on, ad infinitum. And so, if all the above is true, then at birth a great deal of who we are has already been decided: who we will be, what we will do, what we are capable of. Then we must be more than just a sentient individual; we are part of, and are the sum of, something much greater. Graham Swift uses this concept to explain to us how the first appearance of pre-historic man in the Fens on the east coast of England will eventually lead to a middle-aged man, a retiring history teacher, the husband of a baby snatcher, how it will eventually lead to him addressing, one final time, his beloved pupils.
And so it begins - ‘ And don’t forget,’ my father would say, as if he expected me at any moment to up and leave to seek my fortune in the wide world, ‘whatever you learn about people, however bad they turn out, each one of them was once a tiny baby sucking his mother’s milk…’ - at the end, looking back. Tom Crick, history teacher, storyteller, Fenlander, narrates us through the story of his life, and his parents’ lives, and their parents’ lives, and… Epic, thoroughly detailed, masterful, compelling, brilliant; we are gripped from that baby’s first nibble. He paints a picture of this flat, desperate place - the Fens - of growing up, of adolescent sexual curiosity, of jealousy, of murder, of incest. And further back he goes, to the dawn of time, and back again; back and forth, forth and back. He dips in and out of his life, and his ancestors' lives, contrasting the phlegmatic ambitionless Cricks with the ceaseless aspirations of the Atkinsons. And then they meet, two contrasting families, and he is begotten.
One might argue that we didn’t really need to know about the quest to discover the mating habits of the common Eel, but it all finally makes sense. It all manages to nit together. It finally makes sense that a middle-aged retiring history teacher, a man who’s life has completely fallen apart, a man who has been undone by his experiences and his genes, and his ancestors’ experiences and genes, that this broken man would stand up in front of a hall full of children and his fellow teachers and speak of the French revolution and the end of the world; that silt, and sluice gates, and strong ales, and fires, and elections, and wars, and God, that all these things and many more would indicate the relevance and importance of history. A masterpiece.
ss808
Trainspotting (1993)
Author: Irvine Welsh
A person without hope is little more than an animal. With no ability to see the future, the present is all that there is. There are no rules. The word consequence is not in their vocabulary. Theft, violence, drugs (legal and illegal), casual sex; when there is no tomorrow, anything goes. Irvine Welsh’s first novel, set in Leith, Edinburgh, explores these hopeless lives in all their grimy detail.
Marketed as a novel, Trainspotting is essentially a collection of short stories, each loosely connected by location and common character. The majority of the stories are narrated by one or other of the myriad of troubled characters that inhabit Welsh’s world. With that in mind, the author has written these vignettes in an Edinburgh variety of Scots, which may cause problems to the untrained ear (eye.) I , personally, had little trouble with the language, as I have a number of relatives from Scotland, and grew up listening to these words; although, at first it was a little jarring to see them written down. But once I found my Edinburgh voice it was a delight to read.
The most featured character, and the only one with whom all the other characters have a common connection is Mark Renton, affectionately known as Rents or Rent Boy to his friends, a young man blessed with more intelligence than most (not that it seems to have done him much good), who finds life with and without heroin barely tolerable. One suspects that he prefers life on heroin, as a heroin addict has but one worry, albeit a great one, namely the procurement of heroin. When off the skag (heroin) he has to worry about dealing with family and friends, his re-awakened sex-drive, the ageing power of make-up, his soap-dodging, Hun Weedje relatives (loyalist Glaswegians), and the Hibbies, amongst other things. His is a life of wasted potential.
The most likeable character in the book is Daniel Murphy, better known as Spud, a man that, although greatly effected by his surroundings, (he is a heroin addict and petty thief), has not been stripped of his humanity. He abhors the casual violence that his friends commit towards animals and their fellow Leithians, but he tolerates it; He has no choice, this is where he lives, this is who he is, this is his lot in life. Spud provides the heart of the novel.
After the brains of Renton and the heart of Spud, comes the brawn of Francis Franco Begbie, an ultra-violent heed-the-ball, and the sex of Simon Sick Boy Williamson, a handsome young man who could charm the knickers off of a nun. Franco prides himself on being there for his mates, that is, as long as he can use violence to remedy any problems that you might have. If your problems extend beyond pub brawls, he’ll be nowhere to be seen. For Sick Boy, friends are merely people to have a quick drink with in-between sexual conquests.
The other characters, too numerous to list, include: addicts, dealers, sexually precocious 14-year-olds, HIV sufferers, prostitutes, students, benefit-scammers, alcoholics, dead babies, racists and rapists. They all share one thing in common, a lack of hope. They are born into a world in which unemployment, violence and addiction are the norm; a world in which HIV and AIDS, something that quietly haunts nearly every page of this novel, is not feared as a possibility, but merely acknowledged, accepted even, as something of an inevitability. These people never had a chance.ss808
A person without hope is little more than an animal. With no ability to see the future, the present is all that there is. There are no rules. The word consequence is not in their vocabulary. Theft, violence, drugs (legal and illegal), casual sex; when there is no tomorrow, anything goes. Irvine Welsh’s first novel, set in Leith, Edinburgh, explores these hopeless lives in all their grimy detail.
Marketed as a novel, Trainspotting is essentially a collection of short stories, each loosely connected by location and common character. The majority of the stories are narrated by one or other of the myriad of troubled characters that inhabit Welsh’s world. With that in mind, the author has written these vignettes in an Edinburgh variety of Scots, which may cause problems to the untrained ear (eye.) I , personally, had little trouble with the language, as I have a number of relatives from Scotland, and grew up listening to these words; although, at first it was a little jarring to see them written down. But once I found my Edinburgh voice it was a delight to read.
The most featured character, and the only one with whom all the other characters have a common connection is Mark Renton, affectionately known as Rents or Rent Boy to his friends, a young man blessed with more intelligence than most (not that it seems to have done him much good), who finds life with and without heroin barely tolerable. One suspects that he prefers life on heroin, as a heroin addict has but one worry, albeit a great one, namely the procurement of heroin. When off the skag (heroin) he has to worry about dealing with family and friends, his re-awakened sex-drive, the ageing power of make-up, his soap-dodging, Hun Weedje relatives (loyalist Glaswegians), and the Hibbies, amongst other things. His is a life of wasted potential.
The most likeable character in the book is Daniel Murphy, better known as Spud, a man that, although greatly effected by his surroundings, (he is a heroin addict and petty thief), has not been stripped of his humanity. He abhors the casual violence that his friends commit towards animals and their fellow Leithians, but he tolerates it; He has no choice, this is where he lives, this is who he is, this is his lot in life. Spud provides the heart of the novel.
After the brains of Renton and the heart of Spud, comes the brawn of Francis Franco Begbie, an ultra-violent heed-the-ball, and the sex of Simon Sick Boy Williamson, a handsome young man who could charm the knickers off of a nun. Franco prides himself on being there for his mates, that is, as long as he can use violence to remedy any problems that you might have. If your problems extend beyond pub brawls, he’ll be nowhere to be seen. For Sick Boy, friends are merely people to have a quick drink with in-between sexual conquests.
The other characters, too numerous to list, include: addicts, dealers, sexually precocious 14-year-olds, HIV sufferers, prostitutes, students, benefit-scammers, alcoholics, dead babies, racists and rapists. They all share one thing in common, a lack of hope. They are born into a world in which unemployment, violence and addiction are the norm; a world in which HIV and AIDS, something that quietly haunts nearly every page of this novel, is not feared as a possibility, but merely acknowledged, accepted even, as something of an inevitability. These people never had a chance.ss808
9 Songs (2004)
Writer/Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cinematographer: Marcel Zyskind
Cast: Kieran O'Brien, Margo Stilley
Michael Winterbottom, the most prolific and wildly inconsistent of British filmmakers, has produced a Daily Mail-bating film about a fleeting romance, depicted entirely through sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. Whilst one can’t help but admire its concept, (after watching the only-slightly-cheesy trailer, I was actually quite looking forward to seeing it), one also can’t help but feel utter disappointment at its realisation.
The dialogue was mostly improvised, and it shows. Now, while one would expect banal conversations between such vapid characters as these, should we not expect more enlightening exchanges than the following?
- You look like a gangster like that.
- I'm trying to look like a gangster.
-You look ugly.
- I'm trying to look ugly.
And that is probably something of a highlight.
The couple in question are Englishmen Matt (Cracker’s son, Kieran O'Brien), who has some kind of scientific job that is completely at odds with his coke-snorting, chain-smoking persona, and American Lisa (the slightly annoying Margo Stilley), who has a childlike way about her that, when combined with her boyish, underdeveloped body, disturbs somewhat when we see her having sex; she is described as being 21, but acts much younger. We witness their relationship through the concerts that they visit (the 9 songs of the title), the drugs they take, the sex that they have (which is explicitly shown), and the excruciatingly dull conversations that they babble.
The main action is interspersed with footage of Matt in Antarctica, whose terribly cheesy voice-over (underscored by horribly sentimental music by Michael Nyman) fills in the gaps left by the bonking. Although none of it is particularly interesting. The sex itself is shot, for the most part, sensibly and sensitively in a low-key manner. But when the young couple discover bondage, and Lisa takes to saying things like “I want you to fuck me” and “fuck me harder”, we enter territory that is somewhere between 1970s Euro-erotica and cheap internet porn, and it becomes almost unwatchable; one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The film’s one saving grace is the concert footage, shot from low angles within the crowd, avoiding any vaguely ostentatious shots, it has a raw power that is quite enticing. However the choice of songs are something of a mixed bag, with some of them sounding, to my ears, like tuneless noise. C'mon C'mon by The Von Bondies though, is a particular highlight.vv686
Cinematographer: Marcel Zyskind
Cast: Kieran O'Brien, Margo Stilley
Michael Winterbottom, the most prolific and wildly inconsistent of British filmmakers, has produced a Daily Mail-bating film about a fleeting romance, depicted entirely through sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. Whilst one can’t help but admire its concept, (after watching the only-slightly-cheesy trailer, I was actually quite looking forward to seeing it), one also can’t help but feel utter disappointment at its realisation.
The dialogue was mostly improvised, and it shows. Now, while one would expect banal conversations between such vapid characters as these, should we not expect more enlightening exchanges than the following?
- You look like a gangster like that.
- I'm trying to look like a gangster.
-You look ugly.
- I'm trying to look ugly.
And that is probably something of a highlight.
The couple in question are Englishmen Matt (Cracker’s son, Kieran O'Brien), who has some kind of scientific job that is completely at odds with his coke-snorting, chain-smoking persona, and American Lisa (the slightly annoying Margo Stilley), who has a childlike way about her that, when combined with her boyish, underdeveloped body, disturbs somewhat when we see her having sex; she is described as being 21, but acts much younger. We witness their relationship through the concerts that they visit (the 9 songs of the title), the drugs they take, the sex that they have (which is explicitly shown), and the excruciatingly dull conversations that they babble.
The main action is interspersed with footage of Matt in Antarctica, whose terribly cheesy voice-over (underscored by horribly sentimental music by Michael Nyman) fills in the gaps left by the bonking. Although none of it is particularly interesting. The sex itself is shot, for the most part, sensibly and sensitively in a low-key manner. But when the young couple discover bondage, and Lisa takes to saying things like “I want you to fuck me” and “fuck me harder”, we enter territory that is somewhere between 1970s Euro-erotica and cheap internet porn, and it becomes almost unwatchable; one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The film’s one saving grace is the concert footage, shot from low angles within the crowd, avoiding any vaguely ostentatious shots, it has a raw power that is quite enticing. However the choice of songs are something of a mixed bag, with some of them sounding, to my ears, like tuneless noise. C'mon C'mon by The Von Bondies though, is a particular highlight.vv686
Billy Wilder - Brussels Referendum Top Ten 1952
Billy Wilder’s top ten list from the Brussels Referendum of 1952.
Battleship Potemkin (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924)
Variety (Ewald André Dupont, 1925)
The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925)
The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928)
La grande illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
The Informer (John Ford, 1935)
Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)
The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)
Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
zz24z
Battleship Potemkin (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924)
Variety (Ewald André Dupont, 1925)
The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925)
The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928)
La grande illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
The Informer (John Ford, 1935)
Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)
The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)
Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)
zz24z
Orson Welles - Brussels Referendum Top Ten 1952
Orson Welles’s top ten list from the Brussels Referendum of 1952.
- City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931)
- Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924)
- Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916)
- Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922)
- Shoe-Shine (Vittorio De Sica, 1946)
- Battleship Potemkin (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925)
- La femme du boulanger (Marcel Pagnol, 1938)
- La grande illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
- Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939)
- Our Daily Bread (King Vidor, 1934)
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