Distinguishing The First Rate From The Great

No sooner have I immersed myself in the murky waters of film rankings and pulled myself out than I find myself volunteering to dive right back in again. The reason - Richard Atennborough's seminal work, Ghandi. 

This is a stately and properly sympathetic biopic about Mahatma Gandhi, whilst also giving the viewer a balanced overview of the sacred wonder and worry that is an independent India. It is masterful. But is it a great film? Ben Kingsley's central performance is magnificent, compelling even. I would say on a par with Peter O'Toole's tour de force in Lawrence of Arabia, but the movie that contains it arguably falls just shy of the greatness of David Lean's masterpiece. Don't get me wrong, Gandhi is, by a comfortable margin, a first class film but it is, perhaps, the undoubted saintliness of the central character that contains the germ of the film's slight defect. Lawrence was no saint and in his neuroses we have the stuff of great drama. So that leaves me perching on the edge of a designation of greatness for Gandhi. In the final analysis the film leaves me awestruck but not anxious to see it again soon. 89/100.   

The Impossibility Of Rankings And The Irresistibility Of Doing It Anyway

I'm on about films again. Those of you who have been with me since the beginning (for which thanks) might recall that my film reviews were intially accompanied by gradings out of 10, with half point demarcations. At some point I refined this to marks out of one hundred with single point separations. When I took this revolutionary step it was underwritten in my mind by the grading (to which I had become accustomed) applied to undergraduate essays, that is to say, sixty betokens a 2:1, seventy a First. Belatedly therefore I admit that when I award a mark of seventy or more, I am classifying a movie as first class. I have also to admit that, because I do have a life outside the blogosphere, I do not go out of my way to watch films that are likely to prove crap. There may therefore seem to be a surfeit of Upper Seconds and Firsts. 

Explanation out of the way. Now, about the impossibility of such rankings - hardly needs any explanation does it really? So often one is comparing apples with pears. But fun anyway and this was all brought back to me yesterday when greatly enjoying watching Mrs Harris Goes to Paris. This is a confection of the type that Ealing Studios might have made in the forties of fifties. Deceivingly slight but quite beautifully put together and faultlessly played. Not a text of soaring ambition but one crafted with quiet skill. First Class. It's on Netflix. 72/100 

 

An Unquiet Mind

There but for the grace of God. What follows is not intended to be presumptuous or self-aggrandising - it is a subject close to my heart.

Graham Thorpe played one hunded test matches for England, scoring sixteen centuries along the way. Last week he ended his own life by standing in the way of a train. We need to talk about this.

I had no particular affection for Thorpe as a player, rather a considered admiration. I'm afraid that my romantic soul made me more of a Gower fan when it came to the left-handed batsmen of my lengthy cricket-watching life. We do not need to talk about this.

There but for the grace of God. My personal stars aligned (family, medical, religious and social) to keep me alive but the loss of a soul brother touches me. We need to talk about this. Please, please, just talk. Sleep peaceful my brother man.

Novella No. 1:3

Memory is not linear but memory of memory tends to the linear. So we start with that peace-still pond. An after-life should be comforting but not if it means that the dead can see our frailty. Falling through a hedge is easy. The guilt of recreational onanism. This has always scared you. But not stopped you.

Memory floats like the body in Sunset Boulevard. Internalized but potent and damning and not unspeaking. Now Dylan washes over him, redolent of a confined world where eyes are never open but unclosed. Not music. Not that Dylan. Go not gentle. His grandfather was Welsh. You weep for not knowing him better. I weep.

Are you asleep? You can never go back but waking dreams invent a new past in which you are given infinite chances but still spurn them. At dream's end he is still me. I, you. Plagued by chronic failures that signify true measure. Measure this man by his failures, his accomplishments come too easy. As does falling through a hedge. Ironic that. Chuckles. Je ne peut pas parler Francais. Quel dommage.    

Back On The Mean Streets

You have to promise not to laugh. Last Sunday I was out on the precious bike, the vestiges of plantar fasciitis decreeing that running was out of the question. You really wouldn't credit it but I was attacked by a stationary car. That's my story anyway. Okay, I will admit some contributory negligence on my part. I had slipped a gear as I came to the top of an incline and I was being clever by unclippng and trying to persuade the chain back using my foot. I have done this before but this time it took longer than I had allowed for and that is when when the stationary car jumped out at me. I took a right old smack on the head (thanks goodness for the helmet) and drew blood (quite a bit of it actually) from leg, arm and left hand. I still bear the scars and my hand is too swollen for golf but all in all I got off lightly for this bit of self-inflicted stupidity. Most importantly the car and the bike were both fine.

Big Fat Pig Comes A Cropper

But it takes more than one act of crass stupidity to discourage the Pig. No I haven't been back out on the bike - The Groupie would not allow that. Give it time. No, I have started running again after a lengthy interval - a full three months to be precise. I have mastered the strapping-up of the offending foot and, touch wood, so far so good. Mind you I have thus far confined myself to two flat runs of 2.5k. And, do you know what, I feel all the better for it. I was even cheerfully greeted by one resident on my route who enquired why I had been absent for so long. That alleged canard, the Runner's High, turns out to have a basis in the truth. 

The Money Pit would not be anyone's idea of a great film but as fare for a Sunday afternoon it more than does the job. It relies on physical comedy rather than any degree of wit, scabrous or otherwise. 57/100. A nice alternative to watching the Olympics and having to put up with the ungrammatical inanity that passes for analysis in much of the BBC coverage - there are honourable exceptions of course but you do pine for the days of David Coleman and Ron Pickering. 

All of which is a welcome distraction from the seamier side of the news. In America, Trump manages to crawl lower and lower with his dog-whistle fascism. There is at least an ocean that separates us from that horror. But at home an opportunistic embodiment of race-hatred erupts into violence on our streets. Less than ten miles from where I safely type this, a hostel for asylum-seekers was attacked last night. Let me be clear, nothing, I repeat nothing justifies this immoral godlessness. Nothing.