We finally got around to watching The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen), on DVD this evening. It is excellently acted and directed and chilling, simply chilling. We have friends and acquaintances who were on the receiving end of such monitoring and surveillance. And those in power had subtle punishments down to a fine art. A Polish friend told me that school results were frequently manipulated – upwards, if the children’s parents were in good odour with the régime, downwards, if not. How dispiriting it must have felt! I recently saw a Czech animated film designed to explain to younger people what the Iron Curtain had been all about.  The Lives of Others would be a good place to start.

McCarthy, Keenan, Waite and Morrell

I am a great BBC Radio Four listener. One of the programmes I like is called ‘The Reunion’. It’s a simple idea but it works very well, thanks in no small part to the excellent journalism and chairing skills of the presenter, Sue MacGregor. This Sunday she brought together, apparently for the first time in a very long time, John McCarthy, Brian Keenan and Terry Waite, who were all held as hostages over many years in Lebanon, and Jill Morrell, who was then McCarthy’s girlfriend. The sheer humanity of all four is wonderfully communicated by their reminiscences and by the almost complete lack of bitterness about their experiences. It is also leavened by their good senses of humour. McCarthy recounted being bundled, taped and put in a sack, and then dumped into the boot of a larger-than-usual car for one of the frequent changes of place where he was held. All of a sudden, the car stopped, the boot was opened and another hostage, also bundled, taped, and in a sack, was dumped on top of him. It was Terry Waite. ‘This seems larger than the usual boot,’ he remarked. ‘It was before you got in,’ McCarthy retorted. Wonderful stuff. You can listen to it at here.

Not the dung thing

As Clyde led me for a jog around the lakes at Tervuren today, a thought suddenly occurred. We dog owners are now legally obliged to take with us, visible on the lead, a store of small plastic bags to clear up any mess our dogs might make. This is thoroughly commendable, especially in a city once known as the dog poo capital of the world (sadly, Naples must be in the running for that title now). But what, I suddenly thought, as I dodged a vast, stinking mound, about horseriders? I mean it. Why shouldn’t they dismount and get out a plastic bag (one of the more robust ones sold by supermarkets, I should imagine) and shovel up the mess? I mean, dog poo is dramatic enough but when a horse goes it really does go. All right; you don’t often see a horse in the City Deux gallery but, still…

I'll take the glory, please

The family watched Troy in the evening. Two years back my son and I read through a modernised version of the Iliad. This story has it all (and the film is, for epics of this kind, pretty faithful to the main lines of the original). There are some wonderful characters and roles: Achilles, who opts for glorious doom over an anonymously happy dotage; the brave and noble Hector, accepting the whimsies of the Gods and of his silly brother, Paris; Patroclus, who dons Achilles’ armour and is killed by Hector, and who is in his turn killed by Achilles; King Priam, reduced to begging for his son Hector’s body so as to give him a hero’s burial and Achilles empathetically relenting. Lastly, there is Achilles’ knowledge that, having opted for glory in battle, he will never know the happiness of homecoming. I have adored this story since I first read an abridged and illustrated version in Puffin books many moons ago. In 1981 I at last visited the real Troy and, later, picnicked on the plains before it, and all the time I had in my mind the exploits recounted so vividly in the Iliad. What a story!

They are, you know: if I could work four days for a fifth less salary, I’d do it. On the other hand, I have a friend who argues that holidays are unhealthy for busy people. This, he says, is because when they relax their defences come down and they become prone to infections. Whether he’s right or wrong, I caught a cold on Labour Day, chiz, chiz. Still, I finished the other half of Free Agent (some excellent twists in the plot – see 26 April post), visited the Luc Tuymans exhibition at the Wiels Gallery and took in Gomorra as a DVD in the evening. Oh for a few more days like that!

Free Agent is set in Africa, in Nigeria, during the Biafran conflict. That brought back a few vivid images; all those pot bellied, wide eyed starving children. In my childhood memory (I was ten when Nigeria’s civil war broke out) images of that ghastly Cold War-by-proxy-struggle competed with the Vietnamese War on the evening news bulletins. The author, Jeremy Duns, gets a number of clever twists of the ‘what if?’ variety into his plot.

The Wiels Gallery is one of those buildings (like London’s Oxo Tower) which, I can honestly say, I helped to survive. I did this by donating occasionally (very, very modestly) and lending my name to campaigns and, therefore, it has a special place in my affections. With its distinctive modernist architecture, the old Wielemans brewery (brewing hall picture above) has been wonderfully transformed into a brilliant series of hanging spaces, with lots of natural light and tall, broad walls.

In the end, Gomorra left me feeling irritated and frustrated. Yes, it is well-acted and filmed on the whole. But, as a film, it is self-indulgent and could have done with some rigorous pruning, and as a sort of ‘docu-drama’ I felt it over-egged the pudding. I don’t doubt the horror stories detailed in Roberto Saviano’s original book, but the film gave me the impression of wanting to bring the gangster film back from New York. As entertainment, it pales in comparison with Le Conseguenze dell’amore  or Il Divo  (both Sorrentino films).