Bloody Sunday's Lessons

For 14 people in my homeland, northern Ireland — a place whose divisions are so fully on the surface that we still can’t agree what to call it (the reason I spell it with a small ‘n’) — the clocks stopped on January 30, 1972. For their families, this week it may feel like they have finally started again. These 14 people were participating in a civil rights march that was fired upon by British soldiers. This event, known as Bloody Sunday, marked a turning point in the history of conflict among Catholic/Irish and Protestant/British.  The killings galvanized support for the IRA, the paramilitary organization dedicated to ending British governance in the six northeastern counties of the island of Ireland, and scarred the two communities — one with the grief at their loss, the other with the dehumanizing coldness that complicit parties often feel toward those whose suffering they are seeking to legitimize.

The wounds were entrenched when a U.K. judicial tribunal, meeting for only three weeks not long after the shootings, blamed the victims for their own deaths, saying that they had been violently provoking the soldiers, something that their families knew not to be true. Over the next 25 years, each side, Catholic and Protestant, tended to justify or at least ignore the suffering caused to the other, all while facing their own terrible wounds.

Yesterday, after 38 years, a new tribunal, set up as part of the peace process that has led to extraordinary change in Ireland, conveyed words that will consign the earlier biased tribunal to history. The tribunal, known as the Saville Enquiry, delivered a set of findings that were stunning, not so much for being based on new information (many people have always believed, rightly, that the victims were not behaving violently when they were killed and that the soldiers were, at best, badly instructed; or at worst, out of control) but because they led to something people imagined they would never see: the state taking responsibility for its own wrongdoing.

British Prime Minister David Cameron announced the findings of the Enquiry from the floor of Parliament and made no effort to conceal the stark reality; he did not say he would merely study the report, which usually means it will be ignored; he did not say primarily that it raises some hard truths but has to be balanced against the context, which usually means the hard truths will be diluted; he did not say that because the events of Bloody Sunday happened when he was himself only five years old, he could not be blamed for it, which usually means that the crux of the matter will only keep re-asserting itself, forever, until someone finally says they’re sorry. Which is what Mr. Cameron did.

On the floor of the House of Commons, a British prime minister said that patriotism does not require us to ignore the sins of our nation; that defending those who risk their lives to protect civilians does not require us to justify everything that soldiers may do; that respecting the sacrifice of one community does not require us to deny the sorrow of another.  He said that what happened on Bloody Sunday “was both unjustified and unjustifiable,” and that he was deeply sorry on behalf of the government and the country.  Despite the fact that some may think the apology didn't go far enough, it was an astonishing statement by any measure.

It was possible only in the context of the ongoing peace process, which over the past 16 years has seen first ceasefires by the various paramilitary organizations, then all-party negotiations, then a power-sharing government established, along with reform of the police, and some of the most radical equality and human rights legislation anywhere in the world.  And, of course, the passing of nearly four decades makes apologies easier than they would have been on the day.

Having said that, there are problems with the Bloody Sunday Enquiry.  It took far too long, and cost far too much (the equivalent of around $300 million).  There is more to be said by both the British and Irish governments, and paramilitary organisations from both sides; but tragically, the time and financial costs may become the most-cited reasons not to establish a more comprehensive truth recovery and acknowledgment process, covering the period since 1965 to the present day in which more than 3,500 people were killed, over half of them by Irish Republican groups (primarily the IRA).  Bloody Sunday was worthy of sustained attention perhaps particularly because the killings were carried out by the state; of course illegal paramilitary groups, by their nature, do not consider themselves bound by legal responsibility, and so it makes sense in political terms to hold the state to a different standard.

But perhaps not morally.  The grief of the loved ones of the thousands of others killed in the conflict in and about northern Ireland is not diminished if they were shoppers blown up by the IRA or mail delivery men killed by Loyalist (Protestant) paramilitaries, rather than civil rights marchers shot by the British Army.  Or any number of other permutations of needless death.  The grief may actually be increased by the effects of a peace process that has, along with its other remarkable conclusions, also led to the early release from prison of many of the people responsible for the more than 3,500 other murders and the election to political office of people who had sought to mitigate, condone, or even ordered them.

Truth may indeed help heal, and the lesson of Bloody Sunday is that truth delayed makes wounds fester.  The families of those killed on Bloody Sunday have always believed they knew what really happened that bleak day in 1972; what happened yesterday was that the state finally admitted they now know it too.  The families of the nearly 4,000 other victims of the conflict may know some of the truth behind the murder of their loved ones.  What they need to know now is that the organizations responsible, whether state or paramilitary, are sorry for the suffering they caused and that they will not kill anyone again.

So to those tempted to turn the Bloody Sunday Enquiry into a justification for anti-British sentiment or to see my home through the single lens of anti-colonialism, please remember, for instance, that more people were killed by the IRA than by any other organization during the Troubles; and that Protestants were in Ireland before the Pilgrim Fathers landed on Plymouth Rock.  So the conflict won’t be solved by the “British” leaving: of the 1.7 million people living in northern Ireland, nearly a million Protestants who consider themselves British were born there.  More important, the various political parties in northern Ireland have agreed to work together for the common good, and the constitutional status of northern Ireland can change in the future, if it is the democratically expressed will of the people.

In this context, rather than more attempts at equalizing blame (although accountability is of course necessary where it’s due), we might be better served to reflect on three realities whose value to the process of creating a more humane society cannot be underestimated, whether in northern Ireland or anywhere else: empathy for those who suffer, the state taking responsibility for its own wrongdoing, and telling the truth in public.

It is not unpatriotic to tell the truth when your country is engaged in shameful behavior. It does not disrespect your own suffering to offer empathy to those in pain because of the actions of people associated with your own community. Hiding from the truth may only hurt more people for longer.

'Revanche': The Film I've Been Waiting For

I knew nothing about 'Revanche', other than it was the kind of film people tell you you’re supposed to like, but they say it so often, and the acclaim is so overwhelming that it makes you wonder if it’s going to be a rehearsal of the time you didn’t get to see ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ on its first release but it seemed as if every four paces you took in town or every third hyperlink you clicked on you’d bump into someone telling you that ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ was not only the Greatest Film Ever Made™ but would make a supermodel fall in love with you and have you develop a six-pack within a matter of days after watching and so by the time you finally did go to see ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ it couldn’t possibly measure up to the standard that had been set for it and anyway the cinema you saw it in was forced to LEAVE ITS LIGHTS ON DURING THE MOVIE because of an absurd local government health and safety injunction ordering it to get new dimmer switches despite the fact that in thirty-five years of operating NO ONE had ever fallen over and sued or lost their soul or even stubbed a toe so it was difficult to engage with ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ cos it’s kinda hard at the best of times to suspend disbelief when watching a fantasy film even moreso WHEN THE LIGHTS IN THE CINEMA HAVE BEEN LEFT ON but it didn’t really matter because...

Pan's Labyrinth: Not as Good as 'Revanche', even with the lights off

‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ turned out a) to be less imaginative or engaging than Guillermo del Toro’s previous films (check out ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ – perhaps the most moving horror film I’ve ever seen); b) to not really have much of a labyrinth anyway and c) to remind me why it’s a good idea, in the words of a wiser man than I, to, shall we say, not pay much attention to the propaganda.

So, I try, perhaps not as hard as my genial co-host, but nonetheless with sincere intent, to not believe the hype.  And so, if you are like me, then don’t pay any attention to what you’re about to read.

I knew nothing about ‘Revanche’.  But, and I mean every word of this: it’s the film I’ve been waiting for.  The Austrian film by Gotz Spielman, released this week on DVD by Criterion opens like a Tarkovsky film, with a near-static image of trees reflected in water, setting a mood of something sinister happening amidst the beauty of nature.  It takes its time, the opening lines left untranslated, the location revealing itself as one of the all-time awful cinematic brothels, in Vienna, where women trafficked from Eastern Europe are abused, fat men in silver suits make themselves comfortable off the backs of the people they are breaking, and an ex-con slops out the building, trying to assert some dignity for himself in a profession that could not be said to have benefits.

Johannes Krisch and Joanna Strauss in 'Revanche'

And so, there we are.  What happens next is so compelling that I’ll leave it spoiler-free.  It might suffice to say that ‘Revanche’ becomes something like ‘Heat’ remade by Krzysztof Kieslowski.  It’s about men loving women and women loving men; the dehumanization of certain kinds of work; the meaning of the human body; sex as both an expression of need and a commodity too.  The lead actor Johannes Krisch has more than a touch of Colin Farrell’s older brother about him; and the connection with one Michael Mann’s recent films doesn’t end with ‘Miami Vice’ and ‘Heat’;

Jamie Foxx’s character in ‘Collateral’ is the better dressed, less grumpy corollary to Krisch’s in ‘Revanche’, a re-imagining of the cinematic archetype we know and love as the ‘guy who just wants to get out of where he is if only he could find the cash’.  But there’s nothing clichéd about it’s telling here.  Sure, there’s a couple of shots of a crucifix, and some elegant cuts – from a firing range to a forest, to suggest just one example, sure there’s intimations of power and its corruption, and the existential crisis of being out of place is evoked not least by Ukrainian accents in Austrian locations and a character telling another literally ‘You don’t really belong.  That is your problem.’  But the language – verbal and visual – seem entirely in keeping with a vision of the real world.  You wouldn’t want to belong in the place where this guy is at home – a place where men are actualized only through violence.

Hannes Thanheiser with Krisch and Strauss

Where ‘Revanche’ ultimately takes us to is the notion that belonging accrues through relationships whose parties devote enough time to allow a shared history to develop – the 'regular-type life' that de Niro/Pacino in ‘Heat’ refer to as ‘barbecues and ballgames’, a binding practice explicitly referenced in ‘Revanche’.

Barbecues and Ballgames

Such belonging is better placed, as far as Spielman is concerned, with a view to the outside – otherwise we become members of cliques or cults or private armies, serving only to perpetuate their self-perception and exclusivity.  Spielman often frames his characters just inside or on the edge of doors, looking out; ‘Revanche’ is about the groans of a world that bears the costs of selfishness, but doesn’t quite know how to renew the bonds of community.  It’s a film that grips you and twists you and breaks your heart; and yet for all the cinematic depth it plumbs and archetypes it references, it never feels less than realistic: when a character does something ridiculous that characters in thrillers always do, you believe that this is nothing less than exactly how he would behave in the real world.

I’ve seen a lot of movie depictions of violence against the backdrop of a recognizably ‘ordinary’ world lately; and I’ve got tired of self-consciously ‘knowing’ attempts at saying something about the fragility of life/the human capacity for evil/the sins of colonialism (delete as appropriate).  But ‘Revanche’ is something else: ethically, it’s like a miniaturized ‘Macbeth’ or Greek myth; philosophically it can stand comparison to Kieslowski and the recent work of Michael Haneke (and, for that matter, Sean Penn’s extraordinary ‘The Crossing Guard’); psychologically, if you’re like me, it will speak to your sense that the fear of death must be transcended if you want to be happy in this life, and allow for the hope that you might not harm others in this pursuit.

'The Crossing Guard' and the Pursuit of Happiness

An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind; the taste of a piece of fruit from your grandfather equates to humankindness; and one extra piece of information can change everything.  ‘Revanche’ is made to remind us that easy violence and sentimental redemption narratives cost too much, because they reinforce the dehumanization that characterizes The Way Things Are.  This film wants to take people seriously; to take our struggle to get by, to do right, to live gracefully within the limits of what we can control.  Spielman says in the interview on the Criterion Blu-Ray, which looks gorgeous as usual, that he didn’t so much set out to make a film, but to get to know a world, and the people who inhabit it.  After watching ‘Revanche’ I felt like I knew myself better.

Celtic Spirituality and Radical Activism Gathering

We're making some final plans for the Celtic Spirituality and Radical Activism Event - a week in Northern Ireland in August, leading up to Greenbelt.  There are still some places left, but we need to make some decisions this week about numbers - so if you're interested we need to hear from you very soon.  More details on the event here - if you're interested in participating, let us know...

Non-Violent Policing Update

What's annoying me about this story is that the kids stopped throwing stones, and the trouble dispersed, but the guy still got reprimanded.  Why not turn using music instead of force to reduce violence into a policy option, rather than giving grief to people who are trying something imaginative?

'The End of the Line'

'I think that man is not going to change, and the sea going to be dead, because man is crazy'. - 'The End of the Line' (That's not a photo of the 'end' - it's actually a picture of Ira Levin, but that'll make sense if you read on.)

(Re-posted from The Film Talk): The first time I had a tuna sandwich I was eleven years old. It was October 1986, and my mum had cast me in a staged reading of Ira Levin's play 'Critic's Choice', in which, if memory serves, I played the 12 year old son of an unpleasant theatre reviewer, who advises his dad on how to respond to a play written by his wife that he doesn't like. I was terrified, having neither developed a sense of being comfortable on stage, nor having had more than an hour or two to peruse Mr Levin's script. Well, he went on to write 'Rosemary's Baby' and 'The Stepford Wives', and I went on to eat more tuna. I never really thought about where my food came from until the fair trade movement of the late 1990s convinced me to change coffee brands in a neat inverse colonisation move; and since then it seems that every five minutes there's a new documentary about what's wrong with the world's supply-and-demand chains, and what to do about it. Thus far, Al Gore has made me switch off lights that I'm not using, Michael Moore has made me avoid certain banks, the Francis Brother's 'Black Gold' has reinforced what I'd already become convinced of where coffee's concerned. Now it's Nemo's turn.

What marks out 'The End of the Line' (just out on DVD and at I-Tunes) from other recent campaigning films is the fact that it has wedded astonishing visual imagery to an intelligent unfolding narrative.  Images that present the sheer enormity of some fish are married to a narration (by Ted Danson, serious, eminently listenable) that tells us, among other things, that some sea creatures are so over-fished it's the equivalent of ploughing a field seven times a year.  There's an overhead shot of a flotilla of boats that looks better than the CGI pre-battle sequence in 'Troy'; there are knowing jabs at the 'fashion-conscious diners' of Nobu, whose spokesperson helpfully acknowledges his apparent belief that telling people the fish they're eating is on the verge of extinction will preserve it, rather than simply not selling it; there are critical scientists who issue portents such as 'It's negotiating with biology; you can't do that an expect the biology to survive.'

So far, so educational.  And it's as education that 'The End of the Line' most succeeds; as a work of cinema its contribution may be limited to the extraordinary visual imagery (and the fact that it's only as long as it needs to be; there's no padding here).  The worry is that, after 'An Inconvenient Truth', people may either not be willing to sit through campaigning non-fiction films, or the climate crisis as presented in mainstream media - dominated, rightly, by Al Gore - has so overwhelmed the public consciousness that there is little room left to discuss or explore related issues such as the death of the sea.  Yet I learned in watching 'The End of the Line' that it takes 5kg of other sealife to produce 1kg of farmed fish.  The seafood industry as currently framed kills more fish than it produces for humans to eat.  The system of regulation, as someone in the film says, simply does not work.  But it was difficult to avoid the conclusion that, thus far, the delivery of educational/campaigning films has not been enough to address the concerns presented therein.  These films scratch the surface of what needs to change; but, to my mind, they avoid the issue at the heart of why our culture reverts to the mean, puts up with the postponement of living the way we know we should, if we are to maintain even the possibility of life: that is our fear, collective and individual, of death.  And in one of the almost too good to be true segues for which The Film Talk has more recently become unable to extricate ourselves from, that's exactly what Jett and I will be talking about in Episode 113, on its way to you soon.