The Thin Red Line

Two films released by the Criterion Collection this week focus on men at war.  We'll discuss Terrence Malick's 'The Thin Red Line' on the next episode of The Film Talk, and below; later in the week I'll post a piece on 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence'.  These are two of the most compelling films released on DVD this year.

When I first saw Terrence Malick's 'The Thin Red Line', it was the turn of the century, Bill Clinton was still in office, the Twin Towers were intact, and the film seemed to be about the past.  The distant past, to be sure: a film that begins with a reptile submerging and ends with a plant growing on a beach seems to exist a long time before we did.  The nearer past, ostensibly: it takes place in 1942 during the early Guadalcanal Campaign (although you'll look in vain for the caption that appeared on the print I saw over a decade ago to indicate it; Malick, it seems, has had that removed from the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray and DVD release: he wants the movie to exist outside time). This is only appropriate, as it aims to be a poem about the primitive roots of violence, the lack of maturity among men who see the world only as a fight, the power of love to sustain even when it is broken, the tragedy of human beings caught in a web that they think dictates that only violence can be the path to power in this life.

Voices of men mingle over images of nature, John Travolta pulls rank on Nick Nolte, ironically mirroring the tragic missing-the-point skirmishes between some blogospheric film critics, Jim Caviezel auditions for Jesus' last day by playing out some of his early life, prayers are sung and sound like food.  Watching it now, after what may be the defining decade of our generation has passed, it's impossible not to think of 'The Thin Red Line' as a film about the here and now.  Jared Leto sends men to their deaths not knowing why or what he's doing, and perhaps not even caring; how was I to know, in 1998, that this was a prophecy about the man about to steal the White House?  Bodies are on fire and I hear the voice of Max von Sydow in 'The Exorcist' invoking the notion that evil is allowed to happen to make us believe we are unlovable.  Youth is wasted as guys accidentally blow themselves up; identity is formed through 'having your own war'; loss is made flesh as its stewards are 'mocked with the sight of what we might have known'.  Terror rules the world.  And then, there's light.  And trees.  And a new, untouched space, underwater, unaware.  A place where poetry underwrites the state of things.  The paradox of 'The Thin Red Line' is that it makes you feel at peace even as it confronts you with horror. It opens up a space of wonder amidst decay, serving as an awe-striking religious shibboleth.  It's not a war film.  It's a warning: of what we are like when we make the economic and political purposes of life depend on an avoidance of the transcendent.

Bloody Sunday Follow-up

My ‘Bloody Sunday’ article from last week received a critical comment from a reader, and I wanted to respond. I wrote to the commenter - Taicligh - as follows: No response to critical comments is likely to satisfy entirely either your criticism or my defensiveness ;-)  But I hope you can see my response as an opportunity to continue dialogue, rather than to shut it down.  I apologise in advance for what I've got wrong this time round - we are all frail and faltering, and looking toward the same light.  I hope we can keep talking.

To take each of Taicligh’s points in turn:

>wow, you're certainly not biased.

I’m sorry that my article gave rise to such a critical response; it was not my intention to entrench division; the article was actually an attempt at expressing a broader view of things than is often seen in conversation about divided societies; one that would endorse the Bloody Sunday enquiry, respect the pain of the families, and endorse the British Prime Minister’s apology while suggesting how the context could expand beyond (and because of) this single event.  I’m sorry also that my article seemed biased and insensitive.  At the same time, I’m not sure that biases can ever be avoided in writing about something so powerful as the history of a violently divided society.  What might be better would be if we could all acknowledge our the existence of our biases, and dialogue in the knowledge that none of us has a monopoly on truth.

>let’s see, how many orange paramilitaries refuse to disarm? i was living in dublin during 9/11, and that october the IRA disarmed. what were the main loyalist groups reactions? not us. we’ve got britain on our side.

1: The International Decommissioning body has, in fact, confirmed that all loyalist paramilitary groups have decommissioned their weapons.  They did this by stages over a period of time, beginning in 1998.  Loyalist paramilitary decommissioning was confirmed as complete by the start of 2010.

The IRA’s complete decommissioning was confirmed in September 2005; Sinn Fein was in government with Unionists within just over a year and a half after this.  Such time lapses were characteristic of the peace process, it having originally been stipulated in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement that parties would seek to use their influence to bring about decommissioning by May 2000.

You are right, however, to say that there was more public pressure on the IRA to decommission than on Loyalist paramilitaries.  This may, as you suggest, have had something to do with residual Protestant ambivalence toward Loyalist violence, and the fact that Unionists had more to fear from Republican violence than that of mainstream Loyalists (although Unionist politicians agreed that decommissioning needed to happen on both sides); but it was mostly due to the fact that Sinn Fein wanted to become partners in the power-sharing government, whereas Loyalist political parties did not have enough seats in the assembly to grant them a position in the government.  Part of the reason for this lack of support is that Protestants did not vote for parties directly linked to mainstream Loyalist paramilitary organisations in the same numbers as the Catholic community voted for the party linked to the IRA.  The sudden and untimely death of David Ervine, the leading moderate Loyalist politician, probably also contributed to the reasons why Loyalist decommissioning took longer.  The chief reasons that there was more pressure on the IRA to decommission was the potential role of Sinn Fein in government, and the fact that the Loyalist paramilitary groups did not appear to represent significant enough numbers of people to be eligible for a role in government.

> the *massive* and *egregious* civil rights violations against gaelic irish/native irish/"catholic" irish people in NI for centuries is not brought into context properly here.  oh no, it's the IRA that's to blame for it all. 2: You’re right that the article does not fully contextualise the situation.  But this is merely the consequence of it being impossible to name every dimension of the conflict in every article I write about it.  Far from ignoring the divisions and injustices in Ireland and northern Ireland, I have worked to promote understanding about these issues.  The book that I co-authored twelve years ago on the history of anti-Catholicism is an attempt at a relatively comprehensive outline of the systemic and individual injustices against the Catholic population of the island, for instance; the book that I’m co-authoring now is a history of the role of the churches, Catholic and Protestant, in the peace process.  I participated the earlier book as someone who would be perceived to be a Protestant from a mixed background, as an attempt at facing the shadow side of my own community.  I do not think that ‘the IRA is to blame for it all’; nor do I think that it was all the fault of agents of the state.

>yes, using violence as a means to achieve a political platform is wrong, no if's, and's or but's.  however, for decades the average irish "catholic" person in NI felt that there only protection was found in the IRA.  being a "protestant" i doubt you'd understand that.  the police, the military, the foreign occupiers, the orange paramilitaries & the greater size of the population they "represented" were all against irish "catholics". Of course I agree about the immorality of using violence as a means to achieve a political platform.  There was no justification for the use of the violence by the IRA, even by the most open-ended interpretations of ‘just war’ theory, on a number of fronts - but this one fact would be enough for me: non-violence had not been exhausted as a means for resisting oppression before the IRA formed itself and started killing people, police, soldiers, and civilians alike.  This happened.  It’s not the whole story, but it happened.  Of course the Loyalist paramilitaries were also utterly wrong in their use of violence; and the treatment of northern Irish Catholics as second class citizens, backed up by repressive security measures was absolutely indefensible.  Had I been in my mid-teens or older in the late 1960s, I hope I would have become sensitised to the divisions in our society, been taught to listen to others, and had the courage to join the non-violent civil rights movement, and to work for a long-term non-violent strategy to bring about its goals.  I wish more people had done that.  I wish the leaders of the US civil rights movement had been able to be more deeply involved in training our own civil rights activists, as some of our local leaders surely wanted.

But we must deal with history as it is, and not as we might wish it to have been.  The fact is, the civil rights movement did not achieve enough traction as a non-violent movement to sustain itself long-term in the face of the overwhelming Unionist opposition to its goals; and the events of Bloody Sunday were so shocking that the movement did not recover.

However, I don’t accept your proposition that the average Catholic person in northern Ireland felt their only protection was found in the IRA.  The majority of Catholic people did not vote for Sinn Fein until after the Good Friday Agreement was signed and the IRA had largely ended its combative activities; most instead voted for the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), the non-violent party established to address social injustice and bring about a united Ireland by peaceful means.  The majority of people in the Irish Republic had no IRA sympathies whatsoever.  The IRA came into being when some people decided that they were unwilling to pursue the path of non-violent resistance.  Most people in northern Ireland completely disagreed with this position, both morally and strategically.  It demeans a large number of my Catholic friends to suggest that they supported the IRA, an organisation that was willing, among other things, to blow up shoppers at bus stops, shoot businessmen dead in their gardens in front of their families, and detonate a bomb that killed 11 people attending a religious service.  Of the people I have been close to who were directly bereaved by the IRA, perhaps the most striking and horrifying story belongs to someone I used to know whose father was strapped into his vehicle, forced to drive to an army checkpoint, and blown up by remote control.  He was a Catholic.  It demeans the larger part of his community to suggest that IRA support was typical of the ‘average’ Catholic.  And it demeans those who supported the IRA to say they were only motivated by blood lust.  Like I said, it is impossible to write about this topic without seeming biased.

As for my own personal experience of the conflict and injustices in and about northern Ireland, it’s difficult for me to respond without seeming churlish or defensive.  But I’ll say this, briefly: you’ve made assumptions about my background that are incomplete.  You may have no idea what suffering was caused to me and my loved ones by either the IRA, Loyalist paramilitaries, or the British Army or Northern Irish police (RUC).  You may have no idea what risks I may have taken to be involved in peace-building.  You may have no idea how much my mental health may have been challenged when I was involved with others in dialoguing with people who might previously have threatened us.  I don’t say this to be snarky, but merely to reflect on how easy it is to allow political prejudices to overwhelm personal empathy.  And at the same time, I have no idea about your life experience and pain; I’m sorry if I’ve said anything here that offends; and I’d like to hear from you again. >so, in retrospect, there's far more to the story.  but, again, let's alleviate the loyalists of any wrongdoing, as with "great" britain.  and we can justify "great" britain stealing land that they had any right to and say "protestants were there long before...".  well guess who was there long before them?!?!  good gracious.

4: I did not cite the fact that Protestants have been in Ireland longer than Anglo Saxons have been in North America as a means of justifying everything or indeed anything that has been done in the name of Protestantism in Ireland.  It was merely to show that the argument that the ‘British’ should leave is an impossible ask; as inconceivable, or at least as misdirected as suggesting that the only way to get justice for the Native American population of what is now the United States would be for every white person to go back to England, the Netherlands, or Germany.  There may well be some understandable logic to that suggestion, but there are probably better ways of resolving the questions of historic and contemporary injustice.  I don’t know why you think I was trying to absolve the British in general or Loyalists in particular from responsibility: my original article clearly referred to horrific Loyalist violence, and was primarily an enthusiastic endorsement of a British Prime Minister apologising for an act of monstrous injustice perpetrated against Irish Catholics.

Being Protestant in northern Ireland over the past forty years did not necessarily mean to be consciously engaged in perpetrating injustice; and being Catholic did not mean to be a member of an underclass equivalent to, say, the experience of black South Africans under apartheid.  There was discrimination, to be sure; there was a lack of equal rights, of this there is no doubt; and worst of all, there was violence perpetrated by Loyalist paramilitaries, repressive security tactics by Army and police, and a blind eye often turned by Protestant leaders.  But sectarianism - and the violence it bred - was a two way street.  We ignored, belittled, and harmed each other.  The IRA killed more people than any other organisation, and so some say they are mostly to blame; while its defenders would say that they had more reason to engage in violence, due to the state-sponsored injustices.  I would say that both are wrong.

>i was hoping to find this to be a great article by a writer i had previously found enjoyable via the god's politics email list, but you've certainly lost a fan. I’m grateful that you enjoyed my writing before!  I hope we can dialogue further.  One of the glories of the internet is the facility it affords strangers to talk with each other; one of its shadows is that it’s too easy for blog posts, and comments, to be written in haste and produce more heat than light.

To that end, let me state my biases, inasmuch as I can, faltering toward the light: the unequal society that prevailed in northern Ireland since its inception in the 1920s was unjust, and unjustifiable.  No one should have endorsed it.  The violence used by both Irish Republican and Ulster Loyalist groups was also unjustifiable, and, at times nothing less than a manifestation of evil.  The repressive tactics of successive British governments were unjustifiable too.  The motivations for people who joined paramilitary groups or the police or British Army may have come from all kinds of places, including a mixture of the honourable desire to serve and protect, fear of the other side’s violence, and group cohesion.  And tragically, there may, for some, have been no more complex motivation than the desire to kill.

But these things are neither the whole story, nor do they matter as much now as they used to.  We talked to each other, and decided to stop using violence as a political tactic.  We share government together.  We have human rights and equality legislation that, if applied elsewhere, could transform the world.  And we have our wounds, and our memories, and the desire for truth.  The Bloody Sunday enquiry opens up possibilities for change in our society as it establishes a precedent: that a common vision of facts (or at least the beginnings of such) can actually be arrived at, and that sometimes one side of a story is more factual than another*.  Don’t you think that those bereaved by the IRA deserve the same kind of acknowledgement received by those bereaved on Bloody Sunday?  And wouldn’t it be quite something if the current Deputy Prime Minister of northern Ireland could offer the same kind of apology for some of the IRA’s actions as did the Prime Minister of Great Britain?

*To those readers who have now written me off because they think I don’t understand postmodernism, three brief responses:

1: You’re right: I don’t understand postmodernism.  To say that I did would be rather a modernistic statement, don’t you think?

2: The place of facts in the debate about truth needs to be re-asserted.  That’s one of my truth claims.

3: The Bloody Sunday enquiry was a kind of community hermeneutic, if ever I saw one: 12 years of people telling their stories in public, filtering into a process that attempted to get to a larger story that could liberate the community that told it in the first place.  I don’t imagine that Derrida would object to that.

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.

Slow-Burning Americana Report: 'Mystery Train'

Small town America may rightly fear that it has been overfilmed; certainly after watching Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Mystery Train’, one imagines that it would be difficult to show anything new that isn’t already telegraphed from or curled up inside this vision of Memphis.

What a gorgeous, beguiling film - beginning with the incongruous image of a young Japanese couple traveling through Tennessee industrial wasteland. We are in a space that is at once familiar and alienating; and inviting - for in about fourteen seconds at the beginning of ‘Mystery Train’, Jarmusch reels us in to ask the only question that really matters at the start of a movie: ‘What’s going to happen next?’

Where is this train going? Well, we know from the title that Jarmusch isn’t going to tell us. Deeper than that, we know from his other films that he doesn’t really care about the future.

What matters is now.

Where we are. Why we’re here. No matter how far we travel we’re going to face the same inner conflicts that we had before. So it goes for the characters in Jarmusch-land; who, while they may not immediately seem to remind us of ourselves, become familiar through the repetition of their ordinary extraordinary actions.

A debate between lovers over what music to listen to; a slightly unhinged barber struggling with his red and white pole; a woman unnerved by a strange encounter at a diner. ‘Mystery Train’ is an ally of Scorsese’s ‘After Hours’, which itself takes place in a heightened vision of New York City as hell; Memphis here is a kind of magical hybrid of sacred and profane, as if an old Western saloon town was built around the hotel in ‘Barton Fink’.

Jarmusch creates worlds in which people are humane to each other; or when they’re not, we feel it. His characters are stuck in their ways, and noticeably more like real people because of it. His vision of the American micro-urban landscape is as evocative as the way Ansel Adams saw mountains. His exploration of the weirdness of American mythology represents a dimension of the culture that doesn’t easily fit into red and purple state schismatics; his characters are authentically American (or American dreamers), but they are neither wearing ten gallon hats, nor would they read the Huffington Post.

The guy knows how to do atmosphere; how to pace his whole world to within an inch of its life. He does incredibly sexy incredibly well; and utterly normal utterly right. He can put a skinny guy from Yokohama in a hotel window and make him look like James Dean. He can get Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to wear a red suit as if no one else on earth has the right. He can make you feel nostalgic for trains, aware of the absence of peace and quiet in your own life, amused at the mistakes of others, because they are your mistakes too; and he’s not afraid to make you wait til you remember.

‘Mystery Train’ looks like it was made tomorrow, in a world where computers had not replaced heartbeats as the cinema's focus, so clean and crisp is the transfer on Criterion’s Blu-Ray; and Jarmusch’s welcome habit of avoiding audio commentary in exchange for recording answers to questions submitted by thoughtful fans is a genuinely enriching addition to this disc’s splendid special features. Extras aside, ‘Mystery Train’ is so good I’m going to watch it again tonight.

'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.