Fareed Zakaria has an article in the June 22 issue of Newsweek on the current state of capitalism. In it he paints a picture of an economic system that has continued to evolve over time. With each twist and bend of evolution we both sense a pending doom of sorts while also learning something about ourselves, the way the world works, and the human condition. But what you begin to pick up as you read the article is not anything cyclical, rather something very linear and progressive. That is, we continue to push out into the unknown; into the unpredictable—and that is what scares us. The simple fact is that the tension we feel is the tension that results from the need to control something that lies beyond our control. Capitalism remains the best system, but we would do well to remember that it is highly dynamic with the ability to inflict great harm. There is a great line in Lawrence of Arabia when a colleague tries to duplicate Lawrence’s “trick” of putting out a match with his bare fingertips. When the match burns the colleague’s hand, he asks Lawrence, “What’s the trick.” “The trick,” Lawrence responds, “is not minding it much.” Maybe there is no “trick” with capitalism other than expecting periodic pain and finding a way to “not mind it much.” Below are a couple of excerpts from the article:

Consider our track record over the past 20 years, starting with the stock-market crash of 1987, when on Oct. 19 the Dow Jones lost 23 percent, the largest one-day loss in its history. The legendary economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that he just hoped that the coming recession wouldn’t prove as painful as the Great Depression. It turned out to be a blip on the way to an even bigger, longer boom. Then there was the 1997 East Asian crisis, during the depths of which Paul Krugman wrote in a Fortune cover essay, “Never in the course of economic events—not even in the early years of the Depression—has so large a part of the world economy experienced so devastating a fall from grace.” He went on to argue that if Asian countries did not adopt his radical strategy—currency controls—”we could be looking at?.?.?.?the kind of slump that 60 years ago devastated societies, destabilized governments, and eventually led to war.” Only one Asian country instituted currency controls, and partial ones at that. All rebounded within two years.

Capitalism means growth, but also instability. The system is dynamic and inherently prone to crashes that cause great damage along the way. For about 90 years, we have been trying to regulate the system to stabilize it while still preserving its energy. We are at the start of another set of these efforts. In undertaking them, it is important to keep in mind what exactly went wrong. What we are experiencing is not a crisis of capitalism. It is a crisis of finance, of democracy, of globalization and ultimately of ethics.

Read the whole article by clicking here.

This article by Malcolm Gladwell was pointed out to me today with the note, Read this, it’s worth your time.”

It ties together several stories, pointing out a common factor: the amazing results that are possible for underdogs when they break the unspoken rules… following only the declared rules.

The stories include

• David & Goliath – from the account in the Bible.
• Lawrence of Arabia – and his battles in the 1910s against the Ottoman Empire.
• A war game contest – called the Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron tournament – where contestants (most of whom had a long-standing interest in war games) were given several volumes of rules well beforehand, and asked to design their own fleet of warships with a mythical budget of a trillion dollars. The fleets then squared off against one another in the course of a weekend.  (The winning fleet was designed by a computer – with no experience whatsoever in war games, war strategy, tactics, etc.  It just had been programmed with all the rules, to use as a guideline for developing the optimal fleet and optimal strategy.)
• A local basketball team from the Silicon Valley area made up of 12 year old girls – all but two of which had little to no experience, skill, or natural talent for playing traditional basketball.

In each case the underdog came out, if not on top, then at least FAR better off than conventional wisdom would predict.

What did each do?

David surprised Goliath by running at him, instead of patiently marching out to the slaughter.  It was a surprise attack.  Goliath never figured out what was happening.

Lawrence surprised his foes too.  Rather than directly attacking Medina, he attacked them all along their poorly-guarded supply route.  Rather than attacking Aqaba from the sea, he again used the strength of his troops – mobility and the ability to travel long distances in the deserts – by attacking from the desert.

The well-versed strategists in the war games were surprised by the plan concocted by the computer – to create a HUGE floatilla of small but well-armed boats, each of which was considered expendable.  (One strategy, not normally “approved” is to sacrifice one’s own resources for the ultimate goal.)

The inexperienced and unskilled basketball team had a phenomenal season because they incorporated strategies that played upon strengths they were able to develop – endurance – and weaknesses caused by assumptions of regular players.  (That “fair play” means allowing the opposing team to normally get the ball inbounds and down the court with little, to no resistance.)  What’d they do?  They trained for conditioning, and then played a maniacal full-court press buzzer to buzzer.  (They even had one game where only 4 of their girls showed up and played anyway.  Sure, it was one of their few losses… but far from getting slaughtered, they lost by only 3 points!)

How’s that apply in my life?

Not completely sure.  I think it’s something I’ll need to work out.  After all, in each case, the underdogs took at least a little, if not quite a bit of time to assess their situation, their strangths, their weaknesses, and what they were really trying to accomplish.

One thing is clear though…

When playing as the underdog, if you skew things in your favor and, against all odds, start succeeding… then others are likely to object… perhaps quite strenuously.  But I believe that’s all part of “counting the cost.”

Introduction
Since I have been doing a bit of reading lately I thought that I would share my thoughts on the books that I have read . Below is a brief summary of each book I have read recently or am reading .

The Great Betrayal
ISBN Number : 1 85782 1769

The Great Betrayal is the memoirs of the late Ian Smith
.
Smith declared unilateral independence for Rhodeisa in 1965 .
Having read the book I have concluded that Smith was right about handing over power gradually to the black majority in what was then known as Rhodesia .

The do-gooders and world leaders who pushed Zimbabwe into the arms of Mugabe have never been held to account for there actions . For the remaining do-gooders and world leaders who are still alive who supported Mugabe coming to power I hope that you are all happy .

The U-Boat Peril An Anti Submarine Commanders War
Author : Bob Whinney
ISBN Number : 0 7137 1821 8

The title of this short book comes from Churchill famous quote concerning the fact that the only thing that frightened him during the war was the U-Boat Peril . The title of this book is a bit misleading as topics such as the Invergordon Mutiny and the destroyer action against the Bismarck . The Royal Navy Pre war neglect of Anti Submarine Warfare is also mentioned .
Most potent on all is the reminder of how a variety of men from differnt backgrounds in civilian life could become vital to the safety of a ship and the convoy it was escorting .

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
ISBN Number : 0224 00896

Currently I am reading the memoirs of T.E. Lawrence entitled the Seven Pillars Wisdom .Lawrence stlye of writing makes for heavier then usual reading . Take for example the quote I have already emailed to a few people already .

All men dream but not equally . Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity , but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men for they may act their dream with eyes open to make it possible.

Now all that can be summed by saying some people fulfill there dreams and others don’t . Clearly that wasn’t Lawrence writing style . Perhaps another example of a word that may have gone out of use in the english language or the author style of writing is ” husbandry . ”

At first I thought that the word husbandry referred to homosexual practices amongst the people in region . However that didn’t fit into the context of the paragraph , it turned out that husbandry is a term that refers to raising live stock .

Although I am making slower progress thou the book die to having to re read a paragraph every now and then to get its meaning . Still this hasn’t taken away from my enjoyment of the book so far . Students of the English Language may be interested in the fact that the spelling of the same Arabic names differs thou out the book . The reason for this is that there are only three vowels in Arabic which somehow leads to Mohamed being pronounced Muhammad .

Since at the time of the original publication of the book few people were aware of this fact the Arabic names are spelt phonetically.

Now if you were reading a later addition of (enter name of book ) would expect common spellings and modern place names or would you prefer that the original text was preserved ?

This is a photo of me in front of the house that dad lived in when he was a boy. Woodlands was the birthplace of TE Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, born in 1888.
It sits opposite Capel Peniel where Nain’s funeral service took place in Tremadog.

The kick-start, roar and rev take me away,

out of the gates of my Clouds Hill retreat

and onto far-too-narrow Dorset roads,

across M.o.D. land and past startled

Sika deer. A stag with Viking antlers

stares boldly with patient annoyance. Then

onward! Up the graded hill, on the side

of which stalled tanks sprawl slewed in mud, rusting

on their ferocious tracks in holed armour –

a violent shabbiness. Hurtling signs warn

of SUDDEN GUNFIRE, but I feel no fear

for I was forged in furnace fire. Besides,

this today’s not the today of my death.

The kick-start, roar and rev take me away.

T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935)

© R J Dent (2004)

www.rjdent.com

David Lean’s splendid biography of the enigmatic T. E. Lawrence paints a complex portrait of the desert-loving Englishman who united Arab tribes in a battle against the Ottoman Turks during World War I.

There’s no getting around a simple, basic truth: watching Lawrence of Arabia in any home-video format represents a compromise. There’s no better way to appreciate this epic biographical adventure than to see it projected in 70 millimeter onto a huge theater screen. That caveat aside, David Lean’s masterful “desert classic” is still enjoyable on the small screen, especially if viewed in widescreen format. (If your only option is to view a “pan & scan” version, it’s best not to bother; this is a film for which the widescreen format is utterly mandatory.) Peter O’Toole gives a star-making performance as T.E. Lawrence, the eccentric British officer who united the desert tribes of Arabia against the Turks during World War I. Lean orchestrates sweeping battle sequences and breathtaking action, but the film is really about the adventures and trials that transform Lawrence into a legendary man of the desert. Lean traces this transformation on a vast canvas of awesome physicality; no other movie has captured the expanse of the desert with such scope and grandeur. Equally important is the psychology of Lawrence, who remains an enigma even as we grasp his identification with the desert. Perhaps the greatest triumph of this landmark film is that Lean has conveyed the romance, danger, and allure of the desert with such physical and emotional power. It’s a film about a man who leads one life but is irresistibly drawn to another, where his greatness and mystery are allowed to flourish in equal measure. –Jeff Shannon

Lawrence of Arabia (Single Disc Edition) is available at Amazon for $7.99. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• Casablanca
• Citizen Kane (Two-Disc Special Edition)
• The Bridge on the River Kwai
• Ben-Hur
• Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Special Edition)

T.E. Lawrence in War and Peace: An Anthology of the Military Writings of Lawrence of Arabia is available at Amazon for $31.96. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• The Diary Kept by T. E. Lawrence While Travelling in Arabia During 1911
• Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
• A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence
• Lawrence of Arabia: The Life, The Legend
• The Mint

Num barco pra Ibiza conheci uns filhos de diplomatas. Curiosa, perguntei como era a vida “fantástica” de crescer em vários países e conhecer diversas culturas. A resposta, marcante: “É péssimo. Não tenho raízes. Não tenho um lugar no mundo que eu chame de meu. Isso me deixa sem identidade, não sei direito quem eu sou.”

Hoje recebi um email do meu pai, parte da campanha “volta pra casa”;), que fala sobre este tema e resolvi compartilhar com vcs. Acho que faz sentido para as pessoas que já moraram/moram fora da terra onde nasceram.

Reks,

Estou lendo um livro de memórias do William Shirer, um jornalista/escritor americano que foi correspondente estrangeiro na Alemanha nos anos de ascenção dos nazistas e durante os primeiros anos da segunda guerra mundial. Tem uma passagem em que, depois de 10 anos na Europa, ele volta aos EUA e sente-se um estranho em sua própria casa. Achei que seria legal para você (e para todos) que, depois de algum tempo, está nessa estranha sensação de estar no Exterior sem bem estar, de começar a deixar de ser alguém sem se tornar outrem (enfim, de perder as “raizes” sem ter criado outras). Veja o texto (e a conclusão) dele:

“I was a little disturbed that autumn in New York to find myself feeling a stranger in my native land. It made me uncomfortable. But I could not deny that I felt much more at home in Europe than in America. I guess it had been true for a long time but I only realized it on rare visits home – just two in the last ten years. Now that I thought of it that fall of 1935 in New York, I had felt strange the first time I went back – in 1929, when I had returned to Chicago, the city of my birth, and then to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where I had grown up after I was nine.  I had been happy in 1929 to get out of the the country again and back to Paris. Now, in 1935, after a fortnight in New York, I was restless to leave and to get back “home” – even if home had become Berlin. This feeling still puzzled me. Why was it, I wondered, that we Americans were so rootless that after a few years abroad we felt strangers in our homeland? This could not be true of the English, French, Greeks and others. In due time I would come to feel that we Americans who worked abroad were really strangers in the countries in which we worked. We never quite mastered the language. We never quite slipped into the native way of life. We continued to be foreign observers. When that realization came, I knew what I would eventually do: go home. Before it was too late, I hoped.”

Aí me lembrei de outro texto sobre o mesmo tema, este escrito por T.E. Lawrence (o Lawrence da Arabia), num livro magistral: The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, onde ele conta a sua saga na Arábia antes e durante a primeira guerra mundial. Tratando do mesmo tema – a perda de identidade – é um texto magnífico (num inglês primoroso), um dos melhores que já li. Fui buscar pq achei que você gostaria de ler.

“A man who gives himself to be a possession of aliens leads a Yahoo life, having bartered his soul to a brutemaster. He is not of them. He may stand against them, persuade himself of a mission, batter and twist them into something which they, of their own accord, would not have been. Then he is exploiting his old environment to press them out of theirs. Or, after my model, he may imitate them so well that they spuriosly imitate him back again. Then he is giving away his own environment: pretending to theirs; and pretences are hollow, worthless things. In neither case does a thing of himself, nor a thing so clean as to be his own (without thought of conversion), letting them take what action or reaction they please from the silent example.  In my case, the effort for these years to live in the dress of Arabs, and to imitate their mental foundation, quitted me of my English self, and let me look at the West and its conventions with new eyes: they destroyed it all for me. At the same time I could not sincerely take on the Arab skin: it was an affectation only. Easily was a man made an infidel, but hardly might he be converted to another faith. I had dropped one form and not taken on the other, and was become like Mohammed’s coffin in our legend, with a resultant feeling of intense loneliness in life, and a contempt, not for other men, but for all they do.  Such detachment came at times to a man exhausted by prolonged physical effort and isolation. His body plodded on mechanically, while his reasonable mind left him, and from without looked down critically on him, wondering what that futile lumber did and why.  Sometimes these selves would coverse in the void; and then madness was very near, as I believe it would be near the man who could see things through the veils at once of two customs, two educations, two environments.”

Veja o filme “Lawrence da Arabia”, que é muito bom, que você entenderá melhor o sentimento dele.

Beijos

“all men dream but not equally.  those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.” – t.e. lawrence

Where does life of a man or woman begins? Birth is merely a point, a reference point, a milestone as death is. Influences of life from its parents have already made its own impressions even while it is still a foetus. A life is measured between birth and death as a way of convenience. But it misses the essentials, which are supplied by life. Stendhal in his own time had to put up with indifferent public and conspiracy of silence from literary critics of the day. Nevertheless he kept on with his writing of which a few perceptive minds, Honorè de Balzac was one, were enthusiastic about. Stendhal dedicated his ‘ The Charterhouse of Parma’ to these ‘ happy few,’. He also predicted that he would be read some 50 years hence which uncannily was proved true.
Oneness of things works on a different timescale than we hold. We have a quality time and it is for doing the needful things like our creature comforts. We are simple and misguided to think of success in terms of material riches. It is arbitrary. Creative genius of Van Gogh or Gaugin was such that they had different priorities in life and they outraged the conservative tastes of the day.

2.

Van Gogh sold only one painting in his troubled life and now his works are priceless. Paul Gaugin’s bad luck persisted throughout his life. He left France and Paris the art capital of the world hoping that the king of Tahiti would buy his works. Before he could see him the king had died leaving him to fend for himself to a yahoo life as TE Lawrence qualified any life that was given into ‘ possession of aliens.’ Worse still his only skill, which he possessed was of not much use in Tahiti. He was forced to a life in a limbo entirely cut off from the world of art, which was necessary for him. Three years after his death in 1903 in Marquesas islands, an exhibition of his retrospective works held in Paris was a triumph. It caused a revival and interest in his works. Soon he was judged as one of the greatest painters who had impressed upon the 20th Century art.
One may in course of his or her life come up for many disappointments. What are many missed opportunities or disappointments  of a genius if he is denied what is his due? It is not that the public or the masses are dumb but the sorrows of a genius owe to the fact the public and the genius march to a different beat; The  public have their opinion on tastes and would act as an arbiter of what is good and what is bad. These guardians of morality derive their authority from their perception of finite time: they fashion their judgment to explain their times from their insufficient evidences; they are like automatons sold to the tyranny of time. Creative minds have a different concept of time. As the sage who said, these march to a different drummer than they. Character is what balances a life whether it is done on the coordinates of time or Time. These variable Speeds still give Character its recognizable form. Truth.
Truth is that quality which, like a keystone, holds all facets of a life where influences, what is derived and what is patently homegrown, are in equipoise.
benny

Picture by Brian Mentor

The the windows of the parish church of St. Nicholas at Moreton were designed and engraved by Sir Laurence Whistler to replace those blown out by a bomb in World War II. Moreton is also the burial place of Lawrence of Arabia.

Brianna (with Ryan)

What do you do?
I’m an actress—I’m in Wicked.

Has a piece of art ever made you laugh or cry?
I had a piece of art that made me laugh today. It was a portrait of Arnold Schwarzenegger [in the Vanity Fair exhibition]. I thought, “Look at the governator!”

•

Paul

What do you do?
Research director for a TV network in Canada.

What are you reading right now?
Would you believe the Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence. It’s a bit unusual.

•

Margie, Gabe, Chloe, Oscar, Olivia

What do you do?
Gabe: We’re both lawyers for the federal government. We live in Washington.

If you were a piece of artwork, which one would you be?
Olivia: I know, I would be Mona Lisa, because I like Mona Lisa and I think it’s a cool painting.

Margie: I think I’d be Winged Victory. She’s powerful and elegant and strong and I’ve been thinking about her a lot.

Rachel Mullennix and Michael Storc

I just gave a lecture on Lawrence of Arabia, and it is David Lean’s centenary. That’s my excuse for reprinting this article, published in Film Comment (editor: Richard T. Jameson) Sep/Oct 1991. Just one caveat from today: the political stuff in Lawrence is much stronger than I give Lean credit for in this piece.

by Robert Horton

The Bridge on the River Kwai happened to be playing in 70 mm. at a Seattle theater the week David Lean died. Not just any Seattle theater, either, but the one that sits a few blocks from my apartment. Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia says that “nothing is written,” but this coincidence suggested a minor cosmic imperative, and anyway it had been a decade since I’d seen the movie (and then only on TV), so it seemed right and fitting to march in time over to the Guild 45th and pay some respects.

David Lean

I remembered Kwai as an engrossing boy’s adventure, dandy and long, with an air of respectability hanging over it. But, in the way that movies can change on you, there was more than that going on at this most recent viewing. A sense of mortality overrode any official-classic feel, lending eerie-shivery shadings to that bird of prey that opens and closes the movie, to the eternity-glimpsing glance into the sky that Col. Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) takes before he turns and walks away from a tense early encounter, and to the musings of Col. Nicholson (Alec Guinness) as he stares into the water from the bridge he has so meticulously built for the enemy and realizes that he is “nearer to the end than the beginning” of his life.

But the shot that haunts me from Kwai is one I’d never noticed before. It’s the night before the finale, and Shears (William Holden) and his fellow bridge-blowers have reached the river and packed their explosives onto a raft. In longshot we see the raft begin its drift downriver toward the bridge: it is night (or day-for-night), the men are blacked-up and the raft is camouflaged; from this distance they are part of the jungle, almost. The camera follows their drift by moving laterally along the riverbank, trees flicking by and huge rocks obscuring the view. The shot goes on for almost a minute, longer than it needs to to convey any simple plot point. Lean seems under the sway of the shot, of the technical feat of tracking the camera over that long a stretch of jungle but also with the undirectable flow of the river itself, which very gradually quickens as the shot moves on. Over the sounds of the river and the jungle, Lean lays on the faraway music of a cabaret act, coming from the Army theatricals at the POW camp. (Lean liked that counterpoint: Lawrence singing “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo” to the vast echoes of noncivilization, the chipper swing music that plays to an empty room as tragic news is delivered offscreen in This Happy Breed, the husband realizing his wife’s infidelity as a musical comedy chatters away in The Passionate Friends.)

It’s just a single shot. But I think it may be the moment when Lean gives himself over to the jungle. Going native: That is the threat in so many of Lean’s films, a threat he views with such contradictory impulses: fascination and yearning, and some kind of fear. In a 1985 interview in Film Comment, Lean said that he invented the scene in A Passage to India with Miss Quested (Judy Davis) amongst the erotic carvings and lust-crazed monkeys to suggest her Subcontinental sexual awakening: “India can do this, you know….it happens to people when they go down to the Mediterranean…and behave as they wouldn’t normally. It’s that sort of thing. And so the idea is that it’s a sort of walk into old places, old mountains with that old ancient animal climbing up them.”

Going down to meet that old ancient animal: It’s in the marital infidelities, consummated or not, in Brief Encounter and The Passionate Friends and Ryan’s Daughter. It’s in Katharine Hepburn’s swoon to Venice in Summertime (though the original title, Summer Madness, more closely suggests the going-native phenomenon). It’s Lawrence of Arabia and A Passage to India and Zhivago’s delirious trek through the snow to serve a romantic/poetic obsession (Lean loves the corny icicles in Zhivago’s beard — the landscape becoming the character, or vice versa). Lean’s case of jungle fever seemed to intensify as he went along, not just with the expansion of his budgets and running times, but even with the use of color and location shooting — in which case, Summertime, rather than Kwai, may be the first film of the second half of his career.

The ballooning of Lean’s movies coincided with the rise of auteurist criticism, and Lean’s critical profile suffered from the timing. At the moment when critics were rightly and gloriously discovering the virtues of eloquent professionalism and crisp personal expression within the studio-imposed structure of Hollywood moviemaking, Lean was indulging himself with longwinded epics that managed to be both firmly in the tired old Tradition of Quality and somehow fundamentally murky (“Pointlessly obscure,” Andrew Sarris called them; Truffaut, who had tagged Brief Encounter “the least sensual and most sentimental film ever wept over,” found Kwai “one of those collective enterprises that end by being anonymous”). And so the line was that Lean’s spiffy early period, from In Which We Serve (codirected with Noel Coward) in 1942 to Summertime in 1955, was admirable enough within the limits of Lean’s “meticulous craftsman” identity. But the lumbering later marathons were out.

Which is intriguing, because Hitchcock was getting the opposite treatment. Auteurism said that Hitch’s much-respected English period was just peachy, but that the newer American films, with their luxurious perversity and experimentation and obsessiveness, were the greater accomplishment. Well, they were, and it’s easy to see how this against-the-establishment-grain argument was more exciting to make than any sympathetic treatment of Lean: Hitchcock needed championing, Lean was busy winning Oscars. But in some ways the two directors are parallel cases. Lean’s early films are smart and trim, in line with his fame as a sensible film cutter; the collaborations with Coward are honorable, the Dickens adaptations evocative (although it seems curious in retrospect that this lean Lean should have tackled the clutter of Dickens; what would the later Lean have wrought from Bleak House — an eight-hour film?). But I would suggest it’s when Lean goes south to meet the ancient animal that he comes into his own; that even while the epics grew ungainly and gigantic in ways that Hitchcock would never have allowed, Lean was finding the means for the most moving personal expressions anywhere in his work.

Lean actually made a Hitchcock movie, sort of. The Passionate Friends is a foray into Master territory, a series of brief encounters between two lovers (played by Ann Todd — then Mrs. Lean — and Trevor Howard) whose desire must be patted down over the years as they keep running into each other, because she married money and prestige (in the impeccable form of Claude Rains). Lean stages some exquisite Hitchcock scenes, including a great suspense set-piece in which we wait for Rains to reveal to the lovers that he has discovered their affair, as they squirm under the pressure of maintaining the civilized facade of an evening’s nightcap. Lean likes the tension, the tremble behind the stiff upper lip that also keeps Brief Encounter quivering so superbly. At the same time, all that English self-denial is so very…English. Even the title suggests the war between behavioral states: “passionate” turns the heat on, “friends” chastely closes the door. The jungle looms before these lovers but they stay across the river, holding fast to decorum lest they begin swinging from the trees.

In The Passionate Friends, Todd and Howard decide to remain platonic, and find themselves riding an aerial tram that rises into the mountains; they pass into a cloud, where everything appears whited-out and they look like ghosts to each other. As an alternative to passion, it isn’t exactly alluring. In Brief Encounter, Celia Johnson flirts with the idea of doing a Garbo under the wheels of a train, but returns to her armchair and her crossword-puzzle husband and Rachmaninoff on the gramophone. It’s all right to play Rachmaninoff, but difficult to live him.

Brief Encounter

Is Lean on the side of civilization in these films? He seems to be. The heart of Brief Encounter and The Passionate Friends beats with detached bittersweet irony, as in the way we realize that those two people discovered almost casually at a table at the Milford refreshment room at the opening of Brief Encounter were in fact living through the final moments of a love story. Lean’s scrupulous camera sense, including such expressionistic maneuvers as the tilt in to Celia Johnson’s face after she hears Trevor Howard’s last train going away, are appropriate and calculated. Howard’s doctor might be directing the films, calm and fluent in the Latin terms for the exotic diseases he will study in Africa (jungle fevers?) as Lean is expert in his technical skills. The films stay fine and staid and controlled; the bleats of passion that escape now and then are within Lean’s check.

By the time Lean reaches Summertime, he appears more willing to allow himself to be seduced, like his heroine. This is not the refreshment room at Milford station; this is Venice, and Technicolor. Hepburn admits to a midlife fantasy when she gives a third-person description of her impulse: “In the back of her mind was something she was looking for…a wonderful mystical/magical miracle…I guess to find out what she’d been missing all her life.” The when-in-Venice business may be a schematic idea for a movie, and travelogue overwhelms at times, though Lean does make a point of showing garbage dropping into the romantic canal. The shots of Hepburn staring into space seem true and lonely, and there’s something about that rich red goblet she finds in Rossano Brazzi’s antique store that rings deep and mysterious.

Summertime ends with the train carrying Hepburn back to her world, circumscribing her fling into a safe vacation. Lean’s next film, The Bridge on the River Kwai, begins with the jungle and immediately a train, rolling up to the end of the tracks to set the story in motion. Trains slice through Lean’s work with the regularity of a romantic obsession, though he never gets as moony about them as Ryan’s daughter is about her romance novels. Lean even uses a trainlike sound at moments where a couple of films turn: when Rosie Ryan (Sarah Miles) is introduced to sexual gratification in the Irish jungle in Ryan’s Daughter, and when Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft) hears the voice of the eternal in the strange echo of the caves in A Passage to India. Both effects sound like an onrushing locomotive; that’s Lean’s soul-stirring noise.

In fact, the catalogue of Lean’s favorite pictures and pet sounds is remarkably consistent. Trains, curtains moving with breeze, leaves skidding through the street, the moon reflected in the water (Charles Laughton tries to capture it during his drunken hopscotch through street puddles in Hobson’s Choice; the crocodiles thrash in the moonlit Ganges in that thrilling moment in A Passage to India). In Brief Encounter, when the doctor must say his final goodbye to his beloved as that prattling biddy sits between them, he gently, feelingly grasps her shoulder from behind. Twenty-five years later, in Ryan’s Daughter, Lean elects almost precisely the same shot: Charles Shaughnessy (Robert MItchum) brings his hand to rest on Rosie’s shoulder as they begin their ill-starred engagement.

The repetition of that gesture across time is uncannily moving. It’s less the work of a cool technician than a physical memory. If Lean’s later films are more unruly and imperfect, perhaps it’s because the novels and Robert Bolt scripts that absorb the director are just so much canvas; Lean becomes less the storyteller and more the abstract dabbler. Lean was accused of abandoning his talents as a miniaturist, but he remained one, in many ways.

Consider the political nature of the epics, or lack of same. Ryan’s Daughter has something to do with the Irish Troubles as they simmered during the First World War. Bolt may have had some idea where he stood on this when he wrote the thing; Lean hasn’t the foggiest. Nor does he appear interested. What does interest Lean, despite the topheavy requirements of a superproduction, are the tiny elements of atmosphere, such as the sound of the wind perpetually straining against the windows of Shaughnessy’s schoolhouse, like a mischievous banshee trying to break into his protected world. That’s beautiful. The movie is a collection of such nuances, meanwhile going dead in long patches of landscape and miscasting and the basic feeling that Lean doesn’t know what it’s about. This is all but admitted at the end, when the priest and the fool walk away from this mess and the priest blesses the proceedings by muttering, “I don’t know. I don’t know at all.” That these two are played by Trevor Howard and John Mills, two central actors of Lean’s early period, makes the sense of late-life disillusionment and doubt all the keener.

There’s some central emptiness in the epics, some missing key. What was Nicholson doing at the end of Kwai — intentionally or accidentally blowing up the bridge? We’re pretty sure Lawrence was buggered at the hands of the Bey (Jose Ferrer), but how does that send him into his radical changes that drive the final section of Lawrence? What happened in the Marabar caves between Miss Quested and Dr. Aziz (Victor Bannerjee)?

Doctor Zhivago has something missing too. This is a love story set against the Russian Revolution. But the Revolution is so much muddled bother, and the love story, for all the running time of the movie, has a curious ellipsis — the six-month period when Zhivago (Omar Sharif) and Lara (Julie Christie) are working side by side at the country hospital. We don’t see any of it. We see the arrival and the parting, but why and how they have fallen in love in the interim isn’t evident, except that they are a couple of scrumptious creatures. Their passion, which dictates the movement of the personal stories in the rest of the movie, must be taken on faith. It’s a hole into which the rest of the film falls, despite the many beauties along the way: the awesome dead impersonality of the Soviet-built dam in the framing scenes, and Lean’s exacting visualization of key interiors (one of his sharpest talents, easily overlooked amid the location-shooting fuss): Komarovsky’s place, Lara’s apartment, the house in the country — the inside covered in those cascades of ice, frozen at a moment in time like Miss Havisham’s home in Great Expectations.

Lean found a way to make this central emptiness the actual subject of one movie, and that may be why Lawrence of Arabia is his masterpiece. The bravura moments are sometimes visual riddles themselves, such as the ship cruising through the desert, and the trail of smoke that becomes a black mirage and then a man. Much is made of the enigma of Lawrence (Peter O’Toole), as in the funeral at the beginning when the interviewees cannot define the man. Lean has found his Citizen Kane, his own way of saying that all of the photography and editing in the world cannot reveal the answer of someone’s existence. That’s a conclusion to be resigned to. That’s why Lean takes the time to have his characters look up into the sky and see the stars or the moon, and allow them a shudder at the transience of being human. Both Col. Nicholson and Miss Havisham end their lives by asking, “What have I done?”

Footsteps in the sand…Lean takes the image a big literalmindedly, as it appears in the epics (footsteps in the snow, in the case of Doctor Zhivago). Was it the technician or the poet in Lean that was so painstaking about having his actors tread upon virgin, unblemished sand? To show them walking in tracks is to break the movie illusion, to acknowledge that there was a previous take, that his people are not magically the very first across this landscape. At the end of the Kwai, when Nicholson follows the detonator wire to the shore, the line comes ripping up out from where it lay buried in the smooth sand — how did Lean do that? dam the entire river? reshoot the whole thing time after rigorous time? Nicholson wants to leave a bridge behind him; the doctor in Brief Encounter tells his beloved that she cannot die, for then he would not be remembered; Lawrence wants…to be the only Lawrence who ever lived. Lean made movies so big they could not be ignored, or forgotten.

I think Lean had quite a crush on Lawrence. Lawrence really went native, and Lean, enthralled, follows him there, to a degree that the director never dared before or after. It was the only time that Lean, as it were, went to Aqaba without being sure he could make it across the sands. He was a saner campaigner than Lawrence. All those huge vistas and crystalline deserts — they are clean, as Lawrence says — have a point: to conjure up the intoxication that Lawrence fell under. Perhaps this is what it felt like for the little Quaker boy that Lean was to encounter movies, to get just as drunk on the cinema as Lawrence did on the great nothing of the desert. But Lean only rarely allowed himself to get really smashed. Mostly he drew back into his sobersides self. He made clean movies. Thus he seemed intrigued but not necessarily outraged that, as he was nearer to the end than the beginning of his life, there seemed to be no meaning or center to it all, or to his movies. Maybe the trick to that, as Lawrence says of enduring the sear of the match burning your fingers, was in not minding.

This lunchtime I was at the Imperial War Museum in London for the launch of a new series of biographies called ‘Makers of the Modern World’ — leading figures from the Paris Peace Conferences of 1919-1923 and those conferences’ aftermath and legacy – being brought out by the independent publishers Haus (who will issue my new book on T.E. Lawrence next year). As Haus’s Director, Barbara Schwepcke, explained, the inspiration for the series came from a picture in the War Museum’s collection showing figures at one of the Paris conferences. The series editor is Alan Sharp, who is also author of one of the volumes, on David Lloyd George: Britain. Others in the series that I will be particularly looking forward to include Jonathan Clements on Wellington Choo: China, my old Bush House colleague Andrew Mango on From the Sultan to Ataturk: Turkey, and Hugh Purcell’s Maharajah of Bikaner: India.

Link: www.hauspublishing.com

St. Martins, Wareham by alexliivet

The Anglo-Saxon St Martin’s Church at Wareham houses a recumbent effigy of T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)  in Arab clothing.

Some sure-fire signs that someone is a Marxist include: insisting on appealing to Marx for everything, rather constantly choosing to “focus” on Marx for various topics, and taking Marx’s theories and conclusions as canonical (i.e., never taking issue with any of his thinking or giving it any truly critical thought). This is not to say that Marx did not have his points; but this confession is somewhat obligatory. Despite the debate over true Marxism vs. Leninism/Stalinism, when someone’s theory has been put into practice (more or less) only to devastate two continents to 40 million+ deaths in a pretty short period of time, it seems fair to be critical of the theory. That Marxist theory is now taken for granted is a very disturbing irony, with all of our 21st century progress following the disastrous 20th century. Marx was fair in pointing out the separation between classes and the nature of the means of production, distribution, and consumption. And the effects on his thought leading to Postcolonial theory are at least in part laudable. Enter Freud. Put them together and this is what you get. The psychological ramifications of peoples being enslaved, at worst, or unwillingly subjugated, at best, are great and complex. At least an economist and a psychologist are necessary here to sort out the mess. But the question is, are Marx and Freud the best choices?

Cartography as terrestrial domination?

As a Brit with ideas as big as his vision (the man saw everything in 70mm), David Lean exemplified the colonialist tendencies that continue to flourish and (perhaps) prolong Postcolonialism’s anticipated reign. And yet, you have to tip your hat to the guy, who could make movies like few others, and who at least thought he was being nuanced with regard to colonial issues. In this conversation, however, the best way to do Lean justice is to appreciate Lawrence of Arabia for what it was intended to be about rather than the (admittedly undeniable) colonialist implications of the film.

Lawrence initially dominated by Arabs

The form of Lawrence is probably perfect, and its development of the titular character is genius. Who cares about the real T.E. Lawrence when Peter O’Toole’s version is so interesting? Myers-Briggs-wise, he’s either INTP or ENTP, the personality types of two of my dearest friends, which makes him compelling and loveable on a personal level. His learning curve is remarkable, which has been the object of criticism. Rather than seeing him as an extraordinary character, Lawrence has been read as the much more ingenious and crafty Westerner, in comparison with the barbaric Arabs whose rural wisdom is practical but lacks scope. They fail to note that Lawrence has never been at home in his own world. In a different way, no matter how well he seems to integrate himself into the Arab world, he continues to stand out.

On equal level with Arab; matching golden crowns

There does seem to be an interesting Freudian undertone to the film. Lawrence converses with an Arab regarding his own father. Lawrence is somewhat ashamed to say that his father never married his mother, making him a sort of outcast from the beginning. Lawrence is also at pains to tell the Arabs that he never fit in, that England is a fat land full of fat people, but that he is not fat himself. Anthony Quinn’s character, just before battle, proclaims that his mother mated with a scorpion, this shortly after Lawrence’s fireside chat about his family. What was a source of shame to Lawrence was spun slightly to be a source of pride for the Arab. Lawrence’s lack of paternal connection allowed him to make his own name, something which he did through the Arabs. His name change was complete with a baptism by fire (burning his old clothes), a christening (being given new, very white robes), and a full acceptance into the Arab clan. That the Arabs made him their leader could imply that they were a people too primitive to lead themselves and therefore needed a white guy to do it. But again, despite these possibilities, the film seems to be about Lawrence as a person rather than anyone else.

The Christ-ening

And yet, coming full-circle, when Lawrence is dressed totally in white (with a touch of gold) with scores of Arabs practically worshiping him, it is impossible to deny the reality of it all. Is Lean saying that Lawrence is extraordinary because it was an Arab (i.e., very primitive) people that he was able to tame? Would a story like this have been as remarkable if a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Brit-boy had gathered unto himself a people from, say, Sweden? Or Canada? But this begs the question, because presumably the idea is that those nations wouldn’t need a Westerner to come help them out. Because they are Westerners, they’re okay. Lawrence criticizes the Arab people early on for being a “little people” by virtue of their petty quarreling and lack of vision. Lawrence’s assumption is that a tribal model is inherently flawed. Bigger is better. For all his contempt for the British way, Lawrence epitomizes it by making the Arabs bigger, largely through giving them tons of Western guns and ammo. What is more demeaning: the British officer who insists that the Middle-Eastern peoples need training before being given these weapons or Lawrence handing them the weapons in order to prove themselves to a Western audience? Should these people have been treated as children incapable of learning or as nothings who needed to aspire to something else? Or, should viewers treat the Arabs as props in a movie that’s really about another really amazing white dude? After all, even the most powerful Arab in the film is played by Alec Guinness.

Let me start by saying I loved this book.  Agnes Shanklin tells the story in the first person as a reflection from the grave. 

Agnes is a 38-year old spinster who has lost her entire family to the Great Influenza Epidemic of 1918.  Because of this she also inherits a great deal of money, so against all the naysayers in her life, she decides to take an extended trip to Egypt alone.

Once Agnes lands in Egypt this book comes to life.  Here she meets T.E. Lawrence, an acquaintance of her deceased sister, who introduces her to Winston Churchill and Lady Gertrude Bell.  Before reading this book, I had never heard of Lady Bell, but she was a renowned world traveler and mover and shaker who was a major player in the political landscape of the Middle East after WWI.

For some time I have viewed myself as a wanderer and adventurer of sorts, so I could easily put myself in Agnes’s shoes as she walked the streets of Cairo and hobnobbed  with the figures who were in Cairo to attend the Cairo Peace Conference.

I was so fascinated by this story that I hope to read more about Lady Gertrude Bell and her influence on what is currently taking place in the Middle East.  If you like historical fiction, you’ll devour this book.

Lawrence of Arabia
[ 3 stars out of 4 ]

This is the first epic film I’ve seen that showcases a main character that I did not understand. Granted, epic films are rich in complexity and sometimes they use ambiguity as a tool to enhance movie-going experience. Still, I personally found it hard to care for a character that one minute is sane and the next the complete opposite. I could tell there was inner turmoil going on regarding his thoughts and courses of action. However, it gets sickening after watching one decision that does not make sense on top of another. That lack of connection put me off so I can’t exactly call it a masterpiece. But perhaps I’m dwelling too much on characterization. I’ve read from a few articles that T.E. Lawrence is an enigmatic man so maybe it was not the filmmakers’ intention to explain everything about him. However, everything else is grand: from the majestic desert to the number of people (and animals!) involved, from the unforgettable score to the insightful silences. There’s many things for the senses… except the heart. Lastly, I must commend everyone’s acting, especially Peter O’Toole’s. Like the film, his acting was both elegant yet flawed, but undoubtedly fascinating in scope and timelessness.

Third Man, The
[ 3 stars out of 4 ]

I will start off with the negatives: Although the story is complex and manages the audience to keep guessing until near the end, I didn’t think the story was exceptional. It’s hard to really get into it because there’s more than a handful of characters that may or may not be important as the picture goes on. This picture would have been fine if there were less characters. As for its positives, I think this film is beautifully shot in black-and-white. The shadows are pronounced, as if they were characters themselves. Interesting camera angles are abound–sometimes surprising because we are occassionally forced to see certain scenes from a character’s perspective. To me, there were four stand-out scenes: when the audiences finally realizes the meaning of the movie’s title, the ferris wheel, the showdown in the sewers, and the last scene involving the beauty of nature. It’s hard to forget those scenes because most modern films can’t quite match the mastery of simplicity. They either succeed by it’s noticeable that they are trying too hard or they completely fail. It’s impressive to see a film that’s about fifty years old to be completely fresh. Finally, I must commend Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. Every time they’re on screen together, the picture ignites and is heart-pounding. This is by no means the most memorable noir film I’ve ever seen but it is one of the most beautiful.

Get Smart
[ 3 stars out of 4 ]

I think this film pretty much got everything right. It could have been a little less silly at times to make room for some character development but as an action-comedy picture, it’s well-done. Steve Carell makes me laugh every time he’s on screen. He could be just standing in one spot and not doing anything yet he never fails to make me laugh. Imagine him actually doing something funny; I’d be on the floor rolling with laughter. Anne Hathaway, too, did a really good job because she provided some sort of seriousness and much-needed girl power. It would have been nice to see a female nemesis for Hathaway to fight, though. I’m actually surprised by the balance of action and comedy. Some scenes that stood out for me were a combination of both genres: the bathroom in the plane, the dance duel, and final action sequences. Granted, there’s nothing particularly original about this movie but somehow it feels refreshing because it’s so earnest and the humor is really good-natured. Think of it as “Austin Powers” but about seven to ten times smarter (and more well-paced). By the end of the film, it felt like it went full circle and we get to appreciate it because we got to see the main characters’ journey. This movie was a lot of fun to watch so I say definitely see it.