Man on the big screen

A big screen bouquet this week on CW. Editor Dolan Cummings reviews HBO’s latest series, In Treatment, and argues it shows both a profound distrust of old authorities coupled with a palpable desperation for new ones. Mark Carrigan looks at a remake of The edge of darkness and finds it offers a dark new reading of an old theme, constructing a self-doubting detective protagonist who ultimately finds redemption in death rather than through conventional forms of justice. And from detectives to spies, as Madrid’s Robert Latona explores a new Spanish film on the man who (maybe) saved the Allies during WWII, concluding it takes two to make a deception.

Meanwhile, Sharmini Brookes is impressed by the unpatronising opening of the BBC’s world in wonder, which focuses on the demise of the comforting platitudes of Newtonian physics, explaining how chaos exists in the natural world, and was organised at the beginnings of the universe to create life its very self.

4 February 2010

Is anyone in charge any more?

In Treatment, Season 1, HBO

When it comes to relationship problems, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. The clash is made stark between a traditional institution like marriage, based on taken-for-granted expectations and obligations, and a therapy culture based on constant reflection and the quest for individual self-realisation.

The man who almost wasn’t

Garbo: the man who saved the world, directed by Edmon Roch (2009)

Whatever the true reasons may be, Juan Pujol walked away from a comfortable life in a neutral country, and, acting entirely on his own, for no discernable personal motive, and certainly without being asked, convinced German military intelligence that he was not only anxious to hasten the Axis victory in Europe, but also in a position to do so.

It’s tough being a man these days

The edge of darkness, directed by Martin Campbell (2010)

The obvious points of reference are films like Taken and television programs like 24. Yet unlike Bryan Mills or Jack Bauer, who never stumble or display weakness, Tommy Craven struggles from the point of his daughter’s death; we see that behind the icy exterior of a man who knows what do and how to do it there is weakness and doubt.

Organising chaos: a natural imperative

The secret life of chaos, BBC 4, presented by Professor Jim Al Khalili

It seemed the end of the Newtonian dream. We could never know the starting point accurately. Scientific certainty dissolved. Chaos was seen everywhere, hard-wired into every aspect of the world in which we live.

And she screams a lot

Fool For Love, Riverside Studios, London

Perhaps aware of the potential pitfalls of his performers, Sheppeck has directed the hell out of them. It isn’t imaginative direction. Instead, Sheppeck has choreographed his actors’ every move – no doubt hoping that these props and movements will help generate what his actors cannot.

Unbelievable colours

The Whisky Taster, Bush Theatre, London

It is a concept that draws the protagonist and stage together - whatever Barney thinks or feels, the stage reflects – and has the potential to create a volatile and revealing space in which to perform. 

A real nose on a painting

Three Sisters, Lyric Theatre, London

Despite Filter priding itself on discovering, re-interpreting and releasing the ‘essence’ of a play – be that whilst working up an original composition or reworking an old classic - this show feels curiously unanchored, poking and hinting at ideas or new directions yet never laying down the interpretative gauntlet.

A lesson not a dialogue

I Am Yusuf and This Is My Brother, Young Vic, London

There is sophisticated style in this production, and there is, as Zuabi declared was his intention, remarkably little anger. Annoyingly, however, there is also a very clear intent to tell the audience what to make of the story, an intent fully embraced from the moment you step into the Young Vic until the time you leave the building.

The mind left hanging

Contigo, Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House, London

We come close to whiplash each time he drops twenty feet, stopping himself just before smacking the floor. Such is his skill – shown in the collectedness demonstrated by the careful dropping of a marble to match its descent and catch it softly at the bottom – that we come to trust him over time, settling in to a calm admiration. His precision, even when holding himself stiffly parallel to the stage, is phenomenal.

Brave New World

Kefar Nahum, Barbican Centre, London / Rankefod, ICA, London

The impulse to zoomorphise, or further still anthropomorphise, is here turned in on itself, such that we become caught up between the illusion and its actual component counterparts. In the former, Nicole Massoux creates an entire alien ecosystem out of a jumble sale’s worth of junk, animating allsorts into peculiar lifeforms. Johnson’s raw material, by contrast, is her body alone, which she twists and contorts.

Beckett with balls

Pan-Pot, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre, London

They stare straight ahead, as if they are overlooking a landscape; simultaneously seers and fools on a hill. As for their juggling itself, it embodies the governing qualities of Kantian aesthetics, welding together the sublime and the ridiculous.

Thought-provoking graft

The Mill, Linbury Studio, London

The paradox is that we are watching work as leisure and, soothing though it may be to watch, The Mill demands too little of us. Like an overly helpful guest, it is neat, tidy and excellent company, but insists on doing all the hard work for you.

Diane solves problems

The Little Dog Laughed, Garrick Theatre, London

If it was enraged indignation for Mitchell’s dilemma that Beane was after, I am afraid that it will be almost impossible to muster for most of us - watching Mitchell taking his decision, I suddenly understood Wallace Shawn’s lack of sympathy for those who lament the loss of the cherry orchard.

Secularism and Multiculturalism: an encounter with Charles Taylor

Charles Taylor, University of Westminster, 15 January 2010

As compelling a speaker and thinker as Taylor is, there seemed to be something rather muted and unsatisfying about his account. One was left with the impression that his experience holding public hearings on cultural integration in Quebec had left him slightly fazed by what the anthropologist Robin Fox called ‘ethnographic dazzle’ and, with it, a movement towards an understanding of social integration which over-estimates the need for social unity and under-estimates the real tensions which stand as obstacles to it.

Don’t look on the bright side – it’s positively fatal

Barbara Ehrenreich at Conway Hall, London, Sunday 10 January 2010

‘Crayons?!!!’ she asked incredulously, ‘what are they for?’ ‘So you can express your feelings’ she was told. As an established writer and author of fourteen books, including the bestselling Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch she was incensed. This infantilisation of adults in the face of what was for her a frighteningly traumatic experience made her want to throw up.