The Truth - You Can't Handle The Truth

I've had what seemed to me the germ of an idea for a good blog entry, but I've also been going through one of my troughs of lassitude and the time has never quite seemed right. It still doesn't but, the effects of age being what they are, I'll soon have lost my thread so here goes anyway.

I reminded myself last week of Alan Howard's magisterial Coriolanus in the BBC production. Fabulous. And his unbridled, unapologetic, alienating hauteur put me in mind of some modern dramatic equivalents. Those I have in mind: Jack Bauer in the generally bonkers 24; Malcolm Tucker in The Thick Of It (I've visited this one before); Jed Bartlet at the finale of The West Wing; Colonel Jessep (played memorably by a scenery-chewing Jack Nicholoson) in A Few Good Men.

I hear you protest.  You're probably right. Not perfect analogues I know but all play into the difficult fact that we rely upon people to defend us who stray outside our easy moral code. All of this might morph into a good piece on the Shakespearean tone of the modern pieces I cite - but not just yet, I haven't got my writing head together.

By the by all of this was further stirred by watching a heartwarming old favourite, The American President. This is the film in which Aaron Sorkin (he of both A Few Good Men and The West Wing) tried out several themes (indeed not a few actual lines) he would revisit in less comedic mood in the early series of The West Wing. It's a nicely serious film and seriously nice with it. 7.5/10. There is a self-conscious joke early in the piece about 'Kapraesque' films. The word does in fact fit the bill.