The Most Important Film I've Seen This Year

hunger-1 I recently had the chance to see ‘Hunger’, the astonishing feature film debut of the visual artist Steve McQueen, which compelled audiences on its release last Autumn, and is now available on DVD.

The political responses to the film were predictable – but the film itself was not.  In the first instance, it is not, as was assumed, a film primarily about Bobby Sands, or even about the 1981 hunger strikes in general.  No historical knowledge of the socio-political context is necessary to understand or appreciate ‘Hunger’; in fact it’s likely that people outside northern Ireland will experience the film as a work of moral philosophy, while we locals may be unable to divorce ourselves from the traumatic memories of violence and sorrow that so many of us harbour, whether we know it or not.

‘Hunger’ is about the descent into dehumanization that every violent political conflict includes: the reduction of other human beings to ‘types’ and not personalities, sociological cohorts and not individuals with hopes and dreams and fears and pain.  In the film this descent has already taken hold; but we know that in our own society it began as such a reduction, and continued to form part of a deceptive and recursive narrative that, our history has shown can, unless it is arrested by a non-violent negotiation, end with genocide.

The film is in two parts, the first of which focuses on the daily existence – to call it a life would be an overstatement, it being so full of emptiness that it can’t be described as a humane experience – of a prison officer played by Stuart Graham (a magnificent portrayal of broken and brutal northern Irish masculinity).  He lives in a tidy middle class Protestant shell; with a quietly terrified wife, eating the same fry for breakfast every day, life regimented by the morning hand and face wash, the surreptitious pulling back of the curtains, the look under the car, the Puritanical schoolboy folding of tin foil sandwich wrapping, the punching he meets out to dirty protest prisoners, the tidiness of the flowers brought to his mentally frail elderly mother, ultimately leading to one of the most horrifying images I’ve ever seen in a film.

The second half begins with a long dialogue between Bobby Sands and a priest, tossing back and forth the question of the morality and purposefulness of the hunger strike.  This scene has been acclaimed by critics for taking such a long hard look at one thing: why someone would choose to die for a political cause.  Sands, as played by Michael Fassbender (it’s difficult to find adequate superlatives for his performance, so enveloped by the idea of what a human being would go through in starving to death), would call it a human cause before a political one; and perhaps substitute the word ‘inevitability’ for cause – so driven by what he sees as the forces of history to take this stand.

And after the talk, the agonizing death.  In this, as in the rest of the film, McQueen is both unsparing and subtle – elliptical scene giving way to elliptical scene, a lot of conversation followed by periods of almost silence, a memory sequence of Sands running as a child.  And then, it’s over; fade to black, a caption telling us how many died in the hunger strike, and how many prison officers were killed during the period, and how the prisoners’ demands were met.

For me, ‘Hunger’ might be the most important film yet made about northern Ireland and our shared trauma.  It is also the least one-sided (that doesn't mean it is without prejudice; and it's certainly neither a perfect film, nor an attempt at telling the whole story - none could, of course.  But for those of us who want our stories to honour the truth of the victims of violence without denying the brokenness of our society, 'Hunger' is a start.  A harrowing start that I wouldn't recommend to everyone, but a start nonetheless.)  No film has taken more seriously the horror of the taking of life by paramilitaries in the Troubles, nor the brutalization of some citizens by the state.  No film has more clearly stated that all violence against the person requires dehumanization; and that such dehumanization will always diminish the credibility of the cause (ostensible or real) of those carrying it out.  No film has upset me more.  And no film about my home has given me more hope.  I understand those who say they would prefer such films not to be made – that they stir up painful memories, or focus too much on those considered combatants rather than non-engaged citizens; but this film does not set out to lionize or demonise anyone.  It simply states what should be obvious, and a central part of what people who take being human seriously might be called to embrace: when one suffers, all suffer.  You can’t kill a person without tearing a part of yourself.

What I Thought I Always Knew About Robert Duvall

tender mercies What You Thought You Always Knew

1: That Robert Duvall is a great actor

2: That he won an Oscar for his performance in 'Tender Mercies'

3: That, despite the fact that you loved him in films as various as 'The Godfather', 'The Apostle', and 'Wrestling Ernest Hemingway'; that you have never been let down by a Robert Duvall movie (he even lifts 'Deep Impact' beyond cheesy melodrama with one of the most emotionally resonant final scenes a character has ever had in an American film); that just looking at the man's face grants you access to the secrets of the human heart; but for some reason you think this magic doesn't apply to 'Tender Mercies' because its title makes it sound like something you wouldn't want to see, and because he wears a cowboy hat on the poster, which for some unfathomable reason has also factored into your self-justification for not seeing it.

4: That, one day, you'd 'get around to it', but not until after you have seen everything else you want to see.

AND THEN....

An interruption.

You find yourself Robert McKee's Story Seminar (something you assumed you'd always get around to as well; but were unprepared for just how good it was), and he harps on about how 'Tender Mercies' is one of the best scripts ever filmed, and even though McKee is so concerned to convey this assertion that he tells you the whole story arc including giving away every possible spoiler, you decide that the first thing you need to do after the seminar is to watch it.

And you spend your Monday morning watching 'Tender Mercies', which does indeed turn out to be one of the most elegant, wise, discreet, and emotionally resonant stories told in Hollywood cinema; a story about something you don't exactly consider the most stimulating topic imaginable - country music, alcoholism, family and how they intersect - but turns out to be utterly gripping; a small story about a broken man trying to fix himself that eventually ends up looking like the story of the whole world; a film in which Ellen Barkin appears so beautiful she'd make you want to redefine the concept of screen beauty; in which Tess Harper gives the protagonist the most generous space to work with; and, yes, a film that leaves you wondering why you never found the time to see one of your favourite actors give one of his best performances.

This movie makes you want to love all the people you've neglected; touches the grief you have over your own regrets; and write a sentimental blog post.  And watch it again.

Healthcare and Me Part 1

Some time in the spring of 1974, my world was somewhat disturbed by the event of my conception, in Belfast, northern Ireland.   When this became obvious to my parents, they went to see a doctor, employed by the UK National Health Service.  They saw the doctor quite a few times.  They got ready. The doctor’s fee to them?  Nothing.

My mum spent a few days in hospital in January 1975, including a monumental and pretty heroic 24 hour labor.  She was attended to by the doctor she had come to know well and by excellent nursing staff; my dad was there for the duration.

The hospital’s fee to them?  Nothing.

When I was seven years old, I had my tonsils removed due to the fact that my doctor thought it would help with a recurring sinus problem.  Two nights in hospital.  Very dry throat. Large-scale Boba Fett ‘Star Wars’ toy arrived to make me feel better.  It worked.

What it cost my parents?  Nothing.

Thankfully, my health has been pretty good since then, but any time I got sick, my prescriptions cost me the equivalent of around $10, the same as any prescription for any medicine did in northern Ireland until recently.  In fairness, I have to acknowledge that the price has changed in the last year.

It’s been cut in half.  And from January 2010, medical prescriptions in northern Ireland will be entirely free.

Of course it isn’t strictly true to say that ‘my parents paid nothing’ for my health care.  They paid taxes.  Taxes that in the UK amount to nothing on the equivalent of the first $10500 of income; above this level average earners pay 22%; in practice, this is favorably comparable to US federal income tax rates.  (Frankly, the total amount I have paid in tax in my adult life may amount to less than one typical private industry major medical intervention in the US.)

This is what funds the UK National Health Service.  This is what made it possible for my parents to have three children cared for through pregnancy, labor, birth and throughout our lives.  This is what paid for my childhood surgeries and medications.  This is what salaries my doctor.  This is what paid for the attempts to save my grandmother’s life from breast cancer, covering two mastectomies and long hospital stays.  This is what has paid for all of my sister’s diabetes medicine and hospital care for over twenty years.  This is what paid for another family member to have electronic breathing apparatus at home when his asthma sometimes became so severe he needed extra support.

This is why no one in the UK ever has to go bankrupt due to medical bills.  This is why no one in the UK has to choose which part of their body to care for.  This is why no one in the UK has to stay in a job they hate because they’re afraid of getting sick.  This is why no one has to hide details from their doctors in case a pre-existing condition became the reason an insurance provider refused to provide insurance.  In my book, that would suggest the insurance provider probably should call its business something else.  No one in the UK ever worries about how they are going to provide for their own, or their families’ health.  This, to me, is an astonishing example of communitarian justice; the highest ethic of humanity: when people care for their fellow people, with no concern for individual reward.  And this is why, if I require major medical intervention in the future, instead of receiving it in the United States where I now live, work, and hope to contribute as a grateful immigrant, I may have to go back home.

Forget Your Perfect Offering

leonard-cohen It’s been a strange few weeks – suddenly UK politicians have been forced to live like the rest of us (or maybe just a little bit more like the rest of us), senior US politicians are claiming that the CIA lied to them about torture, a Scottish Presbyterian minister is comparing the gay rights movement to Nazism, US radio hosts are implying that President Obama is the antichrist, Tom Hanks is chasing the Illuminati, and Leonard Cohen’s still coming to town.  Thank God.

Next week the Canadian poet, novelist, and singer will once again perform his exquisite songs in public, over three nights in Dublin and one in Belfast, inviting his audience to participate in the mystic wandering that first spoke loudly for a generation seeking to live meaningfully, in the late 1960s, between what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the triplets of racism, materialism and militarism.  Cohen is now 74 years old, and after an eventful decade in which the sacred and profane mingled perhaps more obviously than usual (six years in a Buddhist monastery on the one hand, having his retirement fund stolen by his accountant on the other) seems more at peace than ever, more amused with life than complaining about its struggles, honest about human need – for companionship, pleasure, answers, or at least the beginning of answers.

His recent live album showcases a voice slow-crackling with gravel, but incarnating generosity – he speaks often of his sense of privilege to be able to share his art in public, and his addressing of the audience as ‘friends’ evokes a sense of genuine community.

“Forget your perfect offering, there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets through,” he wrote in 1992; and listening to him today, it feels like these words have been traveling for seventeen years to meet an audience living between the same triplets as Dr King, but perhaps with a new demonic sibling in the form of constant fear.  When Cohen sings these words, you can feel the light.

I can feel it especially, as I continue to try to make sense of my new life in the United States.  This past week the news out here has been dominated by the suggestion that the CIA may have lied to members of Congress about the use of the euphemistically named ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’.  I wonder if this story will admit the cracks that Leonard Cohen speaks of – because we surely need some light when we can’t be sure who’s telling the truth, when our public conversation has been so colonized by vengeance and snark that we couldn’t even be sure of the truth if an objective robot truth machine appeared on television to tell us what it was.

This makes me feel more than a little depressed.  I need to remind myself that darkness can get the upper hand only if I tune my mind to its frequency.  I think this is what the Apostle Paul means when he asks us to focus on ‘whatever is noble’.  You can be captivated – captured, actually – by images of suffering and violence; you can be consumed by the notion that the world is a terrible place.  But you have to learn this.  You learn it from the strangest of places – from the LCD screen that dominates your living room, from a party political campaign billboard, from the over-mined themes of fiction sold in supermarkets or multiplexes.  You don’t have to think to believe that everything’s going to hell.  It’s the default position of our cultural discourse; or at least the part of it that turns up as headlines in the mainstream media, most of the time.  You do have to think to challenge the tide of negativity and even nihilism that wants to be in charge.   There are, of course, poets and writers and musicians and architects and activists and artists in every medium of life that offer lenses through which you can resist this tide.  And if I were in Ireland, I’d be planning to make a kind of religious pilgrimage to hear Leonard Cohen in my home town later this month.  I’d want to be balmed by his voice, the way we feel when we are with someone who seems to know more about everything than we do; I’d want to be graced by the sound of his music; I’d want to meditate on lyrics that require us to face ourselves, and in the light of God, to see something more than just the cracks.  The light shines through the cracks, and the cracks cannot overcome it.