TV/Movies Megathread

[Capetan Mihali]

McNamara is a very smart guy and he did have a number of interesting thing to say.
I think it was intention that the movie be received in the way that Mihali describes it was received by some at the time and that is why he did the project.
But he just can't help himself.
What I don't know is whether Morris was intentionally (if subtly) trying to frame the message that McNamara didn't really learn from his mistakes.  It really doesn't matter though, because it succeeds in that sense, at least it did for me.

Here's a good interview with Morris on the topic:

http://sensesofcinema.com/2004/31/errol_morris_interview/

On the "lessons"--

My lessons are ironic, although many viewers somehow don't notice this. But to me, they're endlessly ironic. "Get the data" – but what if the data's all wrong? "Maximise efficiency" – what if the efficiency in the end produces 100,000 deaths in one night from napalm? And, of course, the last lesson: "You can't change human nature", which tells us that perhaps the other ten lessons are meaningless.

[Sheilbh]

Sheilbh, what did you think of Wind that Shakes the Barley?  I found it extremely effective emotionally but ultimately a bit repulsive.  Loach's anti-Irish Protestant/English sentiments are near self-hating.

Repulsive how?

Okay anyway, I've thought this out.

I think it would be difficult to find sympathetic English characters in a film about the Irish war of independence and civil war without tokenistic reaching. There's probably a baker's dozen of sympathetic Englishmen (in Ireland) in the entire history of English colonialism there. It was, in my view, the first and the worst of the English empire-building. On Protestant Irish I think it would also have been difficult in a film of this type which is local and rural, obviously if you're making a film about Irish nationalism in general then you include the urban and you have the great heroes like Parnell and Yeats. But the more common experience was the conservative, fearful and fearsome local gentry.

This film is also the most pretty I think Loach has ever made.  I think he's always suspicious of prettiness and style so it never goes totally overboard but this is his nearest to a normal film and is, at moments, beautiful. He doesn't deny that beauty to characters who betray the IRA to the British or later to the pro-treaty forces. We see them play hurling too, we know them and we know they're not evil it's circumstance and life that places them where they are. I wouldn't actually be surprised if Loach could make a moving film about a demobbed unemployed socialist soldier who ends up a brutal Black and Tan.

I think that maybe Loach's great theme is how structures force a sort-of self-betrayal. We see it in the Navigators which is a really moving film about rail privatisation (and who but Loach would think that were possible?) and in It's a Free World where these ordinary people trying to get on in their lives are forced through economic circumstance to betray themselves and others. We see it again in his grander films like Land and Freedom and this one which are both, in different ways, about the betrayal of a revolution. In this case it's about the moment a revolution starts to ask questions not just about political and national but social and economic freedom.

The truth is that in Ireland the Irish Civil War caused more death than the War of Independence and the Free Staters were backed by the British. It's that lingering, often slightly collaborating divide and conquer legacy the British left all over the world in microcosm. (Also as an aside if it weren't entirely unlike the films he actually makes Loach is the one director I'd love to see do something set in the English Civil War - that radical tradition is his and I think he'd get it perfectly minus the religion, which is also missing in this film.)

But as ever with Loach that self-betrayal has an individual face. Remember our hero who is a doctor, and was meant to go to London to learn more of his trade and who could have been a great aid for a free Ireland, instead ends up killing traitors to the movement. If he doesn't do it in cold blood he's at least composed and again there's betrayal in that.

I don't personally find it repulsive, but in fairness my grandfather was in the (anti-treaty) IRA in the 20s and my family's pretty nationalist whenever the subject of Ireland comes up - I mean even the area of Liverpool I'm from was represented by the great T.P. O'Connor an Irish Nationalist MP from 1885-1929. In addition, if I think a film (or a book for that matter) is good then I very rarely care about its politics.

Edit:

Maybe he finds the notion that all Protestants are barbarians with an never-ending appetite for blood, oppression, and violence repulsive.  The rest of us just know it as a self-evident truth.

Also this.

[mongers]

.....
(Also as an aside if it weren't entirely unlike the films he actually makes Loach is the one director I'd love to see do something set in the English Civil War - that radical tradition is his and I think he'd get it perfectly minus the religion, which is also missing in this film.)
.....

Have you seen Winstanley ? (spelling?)

[Sheilbh]

Have you seen Winstanley ? (spelling?)

I haven't but it sounds interesting.

You know St. George's Hill, where the Diggers did their digging, is now a private residential estate where the average property costs £3 million

[mongers]

Have you seen Winstanley ? (spelling?)

I haven't but it sounds interesting.

You know St. George's Hill, where the Diggers did their digging, is now a private residential estate where the average property costs £3 million

Indeed.

Old history seems ever more relevant by the day. 

edit:
my dvd of it is messed up, so I've only been able to watch 4/5th of it, not seen a crucial middle section. 

[Queequeg]

Edit:

Maybe he finds the notion that all Protestants are barbarians with an never-ending appetite for blood, oppression, and violence repulsive.  The rest of us just know it as a self-evident truth.

Also this.

Ken Loach is an Englishman who lived through the bombing campaign and still believes that all of the North should just be handed over to the Republic, regardless of the opinion of the local Protestants.  It has been 8 years since I've seen the film, but I've found the simplicity of Loach's pro-IRA position extremely suspicious and more than a little troublesome, as I think it should be the natural instinct of a man to feel at least a degree of contempt for an organization that spent much of its energies trying to slaughter innocent Englishmen and women.  I remember Murphy being a much less complicated hero.

[Sheilbh]

Ken Loach is an Englishman who lived through the bombing campaign and still believes that all of the North should just be handed over to the Republic, regardless of the opinion of the local Protestants.  It has been 8 years since I've seen the film, but I've found the simplicity of Loach's pro-IRA position extremely suspicious and more than a little troublesome, as I think it should be the natural instinct of a man to feel at least a degree of contempt for an organization that spent much of its energies trying to slaughter innocent Englishmen and women.  I remember Murphy being a much less complicated hero.

And that has what to do with the War of Independence or Civil War?

If you want to criticise a Loach film for that, I suggest the one about Northern Ireland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Agenda_(1990_film)

But again I don't generally have problems with political artists doing political art so long as it's good (which doesn't mean you don't acknowledge it).

Edit: For what it's worth there was a lot of criticism in the UK when it won Cannes. Turned out most of the critics hadn't seen it and some refused to watch this sort of IRA propaganda ( ), but the general reception was very positive and not that the nuance and the fact that it was about a totally different war made even conservative reviewers say it basically wasn't pro-IRA (as in pro-Provo).

[Admiral Yi]

I enjoyed Barleywind, but it is a one-dimensional film, lacking any nuance or shades of gray.  It would have benefited immensely by giving the "bad guys" one or two good lines of argumentation.  Particularly as the good guys were such retards.

Which author was it that said you should always give your villains the best lines?

[Sheilbh]

I enjoyed Barleywind, but it is a one-dimensional film, lacking any nuance or shades of gray.  It would have benefited immensely by giving the "bad guys" one or two good lines of argumentation.  Particularly as the good guys were such retards.

I don't think it's one-dimensional or lacking nuance - though it is black and white. But then I think the situation was.

There's also the question of which bad guys. The English don't have any good lines, but really what good reasons did they have by 1920? I think the pro-treaty forces do get good lines. One of the early heroes joins the National Army and there are entire scenes of political debate as old comrades are forced to choose sides in a new war - which is the key bit of the film for me. Do they complete the revolution or uphold the social order?

Edit: I need a CDM Batman-light for threads like this

[Admiral Yi]

The Irish bad guys. 

[CountDeMoney]

Edit: I need a CDM Batman-light for threads like this

Only the good, brooding Batman, not the cartoonly nipples Batman.

And no, I don't mean "not the nipples, Batman" but as in "the Batman With Nipples."*




*In France, it would be a Royale with Nipples.  On account of the metric system.

[Razgovory]

Ken Loach is an Englishman who lived through the bombing campaign and still believes that all of the North should just be handed over to the Republic, regardless of the opinion of the local Protestants.  It has been 8 years since I've seen the film, but I've found the simplicity of Loach's pro-IRA position extremely suspicious and more than a little troublesome, as I think it should be the natural instinct of a man to feel at least a degree of contempt for an organization that spent much of its energies trying to slaughter innocent Englishmen and women.  I remember Murphy being a much less complicated hero.

And that has what to do with the War of Independence or Civil War?

If you want to criticise a Loach film for that, I suggest the one about Northern Ireland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_Agenda_(1990_film)

But again I don't generally have problems with political artists doing political art so long as it's good (which doesn't mean you don't acknowledge it).

Edit: For what it's worth there was a lot of criticism in the UK when it won Cannes. Turned out most of the critics hadn't seen it and some refused to watch this sort of IRA propaganda ( ), but the general reception was very positive and not that the nuance and the fact that it was about a totally different war made even conservative reviewers say it basically wasn't pro-IRA (as in pro-Provo).

See, this is what happens when you get raised as a Mormon and are taught from a young age that Rome is the great whore of Babylon.  It sticks with you, even if you aren't a mormon anymore.

[Sheilbh]

The Irish bad guys.

Okay but as I say they do get an argument. There's two brothers Murphy's character who's anti-treaty and the commander who's pro-treaty. There's an entire scene when there's a debate between the fighters and others over which side to join and both sides of argument are shown getting applause.

Yeah the hero's anti-treaty, but both sides get far more of a fair hearing than they do in, say, Michael Collins.

[Ideologue]

I liked the part in Michael Collins when the armored car gunned down the IRA insurgents on that rugby field.

[Admiral Yi]

Okay but as I say they do get an argument. There's two brothers Murphy's character who's anti-treaty and the commander who's pro-treaty. There's an entire scene when there's a debate between the fighters and others over which side to join and both sides of argument are shown getting applause.

There's give and take on signing peace, but not on the retards retarded sense of social justice.