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Twin Billed Terrorism

Posted by :James Howden On : February 24, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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It was necessary to get away from Frank and Gordon (God help me, but I liked dem beavers) and the rest of the Olympic circus on my television, and the mighty Mayfair Cinema gave me a perfect excuse. (I’m normally a Bytowne Cinema loyalist, but the twin bill was tough to resist. Capital readers, these are Ottawa’s two best ways to see the best films. Check ’em out, and then you’ll be glad you read this.)

Yes, it was double-header terrorism: Steven Spielberg’s Munich and a film by the Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad called Paradise Now. I staggered out of the Mayfair feeling a bit bludgeoned, and on the 360 degree lookout for spies and assassins and suicide bombing candidates. Almost everybody I saw was a suspect, and why not?

Munich is anything but subtle in its effect, though it tries to be nuanced in its discussion of the ethics of violence. We follow the hand-picked Avenging Angel of the Israeli secret police, the Mossad, as he systematically (though uncertainly) exterminates the Palestinians behind the Munich Olympic massacre of 1972. At least, Avner (laconically played by Eric Bana) is assured that the disturbingly human, even charming men that he incinerates, ventilates and mutilates are, indeed, the bad guys. He wonders. He asks questions. He and his team keep on blasting.

Spielberg is at great pains to do two main things. First, he does not want to come across as a Jewish apologist for Israeli policies. We recall the full horror of Munich in documentary footage (Peter Jennings on the ground for ABC) and painful recreations of the hostage-taking and the killings of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. However, Munich insists that we  also get to know the Palestinian victims of Israeli revenge (beyond the several hundred Palestinian peasants killed in the air assaults that immediately followed the Munich conflagration). One is a literary scholar. Another is a diplomat with a lovely French wife and an adorable daughter. A third is an altogether likable guy who shares some hotel balcony chit-chat with Avner.

Mr. Spielberg’s second imperative is to stun us with the violence of their various demises, and that of the dozens of other graphically depicted bits of savagery in the film. It works. We’re supposed to be compromised by the gulf between the carnage and the (often) appealing camaraderie of Avner’s team, just as we are by the presentation of sympathetic characters on the Palestinian side. (Spielberg includes, for example, a most unlikely tête à tête in a stairwell between Avner and a young, preternaturally eloquent operative who delivers the Palestinian side of the story.) So, moral ambiguity is the order of the day, and the doubtful utility of violence is hammered at in an extraordinarily violent way.

And yes, I was stunned, but somehow not too deeply moved; riveted, but not very involved. Acting takes a distant third place to spectacle and philosophical debate, though Geoffrey Rush as Avner’s shadowy chief is terrific, and Daniel Craig is compelling as the blunt, remorseless thug of the Israeli team (and not only because we’re wondering how those bright blue eyes and blonde hair became so furiously Zionist). But though we are required to sympathize with Avner—his ghostly heroic father, his cold mother, his radiantly pregnant and pretty wife—I didn’t, much. It’s just a massively ambitious movie that can’t quite sustain the weight of all that it is trying to be and do. And those monologues! Still, it is strong and thoughtful stuff.

It was Paradise Now that really took me in. It’s ambitious, too; it’s the story of two young men from Nablus getting ready to die for the Palestinian cause. Their chance for martyrdom arrives, and we watch their preparations with fascination, dismay and even a few quiet laughs. (For Israelis, though, I’m sure the dismay was torturous and the humour rather bitter.) In blunt contrast to Munich, the violence is implicit. Hany Abu-Assad shows us life in Palestine, without some of the obvious tugging at heartstrings that Spielberg is prone to. Against the war-ruined (but often lively) backdrop of Nablus — everything was filmed there and in Bethlehem, if I remember rightly — we are shown the lives of Khaled (Ali Suliman) and Saïd (Kais Nashef), a couple of car mechanics and close friends who are shuffling through their fairly pointless days.

Khaled is excitable — the closest thing to violence in the film is him taking a crowbar to a difficult customer’s front fender — while Saïd, the still centre of the movie, is quiet and diffident. He eventually emerges from his morose silence to quietly but powerfully speak the thematic heart of the piece. Yes, it’s another monologue, unfortunately, and the only real misstep in the film. “A life without dignity is worthless,” he tells a militant leader, trying to convince him to allow the suicide operation set for Tel Aviv to go forward after a false start. I couldn’t believe the silence of this father confessor, but I did understood the deep sadness in Saïd’s eyes. In this picture, we are shown the hopeless lethargy and the chronic indignation that can make suicide bombing seem a worthy option, but it is far from propaganda. Abu-Hassad, with his frank depiction of the clumsiness and hypocrisy of the “martyrdom operation” recruiters, as well as a brief but fiery rebuttal of violence by Saïd’s pretty new friend, Suha (Lubna Azabal), is no advocate for terrorism.

The quiet balance of the director’s approach is what allows Warner Independent Productions to promote Paradise Now with the tag line, “From the most unexpected place, comes a bold new call for peace.” I’m not sure that’s what the movie is, because aside from one stagey soliloquy, it mainly does what any good storyteller should. It shows, it doesn’t tell. I guess that’s what Spielberg tried to do with the special effects violence, though it becomes too blatant. Munich falters when he lapses into telling, and this is one of the reasons I found myself more moved and intrigued by the more gentle yet deeply suspenseful arc of Paradise Now. Both are eminently worth seeing, but I’m not sure if I’d recommend a double bill.

February Empowers, Brings May Flowers: A Greenhouse Valentine

Posted by :James Howden On : February 15, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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And to show what a WILDLY romantic pair my bride and I are, we spent Valentine’s evening at a meeting of the World Federalists. Now there’s a dedicated, thoughtful bunch. (“In schoolyards, cities and democratically governed nations, agreed rules help ensure a peaceful social order. Why not for our global community?” The WF movement has been quietly working at this for decades, and their program and aspirations are worthy of more attention than they get. As their evening’s speaker, they’d brought in Elizabeth May, Order of Canada member and head of the Sierra Club nationally, and my lady has long been an admirer. I’ve joined her now. May is passionate, funny and vividly intelligent. I’ll join the Club, too. My favourite quote from last night: “Climate change can be narrowly categorized as ‘an environmental issue’ in the same way that drowning is ‘a water issue’.”

Ms. May took us through the history of climate change in a lively and superbly informed way. It is interesting, in the light of the present mania for security, that the first international conference on climate change (in June 1988) issued a report called “Our Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security”. It’s also interesting that this conference was hosted in Canada and co-sponsored by the Conservative government of Mr. Mulroney. The subsequent 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro was the one where President Bush the First threatened to boycott the session if there were to be ANY figures, targets or timelines for action discussed there. After all, he insisted, “the American lifestyle is not on trial”. Ahem. And so Rio spoke only in vague terms about “dangerous levels of anthropogenic [human-produced] carbon” in the atmosphere. (Meanwhile, the scientists in Toronto four years earlier had said this: “Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences are second only to global nuclear war.” Gulp.)

Only the third subsequent “Conference of the Parties” to the climate change convention adopted in Rio – now I finally know what the “COP 11” acronym for the recent Montreal conference actually meant – was finally able to arrive at some targets for reduction of carbon pollution. (These are the infamous “greenhouse gases”, like carbon dioxide (CO2) or methane (CH4)). These targets were, in the light of the scientific consensus, shockingly modest.  They were clearly acknowledged — at least among non-governmental organizations — to be feeble ones that, at best, could buy us a little time (the UN scientific agency had recommended, in 1990, reductions of greenhouse gas emissions in the order of 60%; by 1997, COP 3 adopted only single-digit targets). You might even remember the name of the city where COP 3 was held. Yes. Kyoto, Japan.

And we’re still struggling to get nations, most notably our own, to commit to the low Kyoto Protocol targets. (By the way, tomorrow is Happy Birthday, Kyoto: on February 16, 2005, with Russia’s ratification of the treaty, two things occurred. One, the United States and Australia were left as the only two nations that signed the Kyoto protocols but refused to ratify them. Second, Kyoto became legally binding. The protocols, that is, not the city.)

So COP 11, last fall, was held in Montreal, with 8000 people in attendance, including Bill Clinton (though not officially – the Americans apparently would have walked had he spoken to the Conference itself). It was very significant. First – and the American government was not happy about this, according to May – the Conference was being held in North America for the first time, and thus was much more difficult for the western media to ignore. The unwillingness of the American delegation was a matter of public interest and debate. As key environmental “tipping points” approach – the Gulf Stream is slowing down, the stupendous Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are eroding, and each of these evolving situations is potentially cataclysmic – the Montreal conference was a major sign of hope. The allied non-governmental organizations (yes, acronym-lovers, the NGOs), such as the Sierra Club, had set out an ambitious set of goals, of which even the most optimistic felt that few could actually be adopted. Through a fascinating process of infighting, influence and genuine international intrigue – all-night sessions, mysterious Russian dealings, perhaps even the American delegation blinking in the face of a geopolitical stare-down – every single NGO goal was eventually adopted. This is good news for polar bears, Bangladeshis, Rideau Canal skaters and coastal cities. This is good news for the world, though it’s not much more than a start.

As the Montreal Conference of the Parties was about to begin, the Liberal government had just fallen. Its finest moment may have come on its deathbed. Ms. May praised former Prime Minister Martin’s administration for bringing COP 11 to Montreal, and especially lauded the immense preparation and committed Chairmanship of former Environment Minister Stéphane Dion. I found it quite wonderful, in the face of all the easy cynicism about government, to hear of useful contributions and real engagement by our political leaders.

It’s not all sunshine, of course. Elizabeth May has no shortage of dire warnings about the consequences of the world’s addiction to fossil fuels and the attendant effect on our global climate. People like her, though, are seen less and less as mad voices wailing in the wilderness. Valentine’s Day or not, the world still needs a wake-up call, and it was good to hear that there are real signs of attention and action. And as serious-minded as they are, the World Federalists did not forget to bring  May flowers. That was sweet. (See how romantic I am?)

Pre-Packaged Romance

Posted by :James Howden On : February 15, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Yes, it’s all about the loving. I don’t care much for Hallmark, for commercially driven expressions of personal devotion. But my lady likes Valentine’s Day, and so do I. (There may even be a causal connection between those two statements. Happy wife, happy life, someone smarter than me has said.) No roses this time, and I forgot the chocolate [note to self – it’s never too late for truffles], but big son had little son under control, we were in the Star of Siam for Thai goodies, and my hand-scribbled card did the trick again. [Note to self: it was an interesting choice to guess what the Cyrillic script meant on that Russian card in the bottom of the correspondence drawer. Happy New Year?? Yikes. So close to goodness, though, and it did have some hearts on it.] There has to be something good about being married to a struggling writer. Hallmark needs me!

"Poor Poor Pitiful Me"

Posted by :James Howden On : February 12, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Is there anything worse than the desire for sympathy on the part of someone with little apparent reason to receive it? Well, actually, there are lots of things worse than that, but I must say that the whining of pretty comfortable people drives me NUTS. The victim mentality, the “look at what I have to put up with!” schtick.

Which makes me shudder, In turn, when I consider the psychological truism that what most irritates us in others tells us a great deal about ourselves. (Oh-oh.) And I definitely don’t like it when others just don’t seem to realize how hard poor li’l me has it. And I hate it when I realize that I’m dipping into self-pity. (And then I really start feeling sorry for myself…)

What is the best possible light in which to regard this? Hmm. It’s quite simple, really. If life is suffering – and a focus on material things always brings, late or soon, some kind of challenge or difficulty, just like the Buddha and His Buddies have always said – then it is somewhat natural to want another person to be aware of our troubles. We want to be known, and the guiltifying fact that “others have it worse” doesn’t help with that at all. Sympathizing with the others, though, is a great start, and all part of acting as if other people (all six point whatever billion of ‘em) are real. The other half, it seems to me, is what loving and being loved are for. (And what prayer is for: Big Friend, Creator of All, You see me, You know me, You are my haven and my refuge…) The greatest consolation is to know that someone (Someone?) else, fallible or Infallible, knows our secrets and cherishes our single little lives anyway.

To all the whiners out there (and in here!), my slippery thesis is saved for the end: Tell the Maker, not me! Prayer is the cure for self-pity. (And probably a few other things, too.)

PopCult Quiz o’the Day

Posted by :James Howden On : February 9, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Do you know that witchy girls repeatedly adorn the grave of a J. Dawson – it’s in a Halifax graveyard – because they believe it to be Jack Dawson, the character played by Leo DiCaprio in Titanic? The only problem is that the dashing Mr. Leo plays a fictional Dawson, a James Cameron invention. The man in the Atlantic Canadian grave is Joseph, a coal shoveller on the Titanic. So, this gives us today’s multiple choice quiz.

Are people in general, and young women in particular, a) fatuous idiots b) natural believers c) eager lovers or d) watching too many movies? (You don’t have to log on anywhere to take the quiz. But be nice to people.)

Leonard Cohen and Five Good Songs

Posted by :James Howden On : February 7, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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“You should never throw anything away, including people and ideas. It’s really true that we should never give up on anyone.”  That was Leonard Cohen, in my radio today.

Cohen is 71 now. Five of his songs were inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame on the weekend. (Did you know there was one? Not the weekend, I mean the Hall. Although, actually, there is no actual hall for the Hall. Someday.) He was on Sounds Like Canada this morning, a taped interview he’d done with Shelagh Rogers. I missed the first 15 minutes or so of a warm, intelligent conversation of the type that CBC Radio occasionally pulls off so wonderfully well. (The “Mother Corp” takes a lot of hits from people who don’t listen to it. The TV side has its highs, even beyond Hockey Night in Canada, but I don’t watch it much; it’s so-so, even before you account for having to watch commercials. But the radio side is brilliant, commercial-free, and getting better, getting a little younger. Superb.) It was an hour-long conversation, followed by an hour of highlights from the HoF awards show. (How’s a guy supposed to get any work done?)

“Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in…” This is an example of the songwriter as Writer, as Poet, a designation Cohen once refused, feeling that it was too early in his career to apply to himself such an exalted title; I take it upon myself to confer it now). It comes from “Anthem”, which enters the Canuck Songster Pantheon along with “Bird on a Wire” (Willie Nelson was there to sing it, and that’s the version I hear), “Ain’t No Cure For Love” (I hear Jennifer Warnes), “Hallelujah” (kd lang did a glorious version at the ceremony, but I like Bono’s, too) and “Everybody Knows” (Don Henley does a terrific rendition on the tribute album Tower of Song, but Cohen’s own is one I find more listenable than some of the others, gritty and morose).

I’m hoping that the whole interview, as well as the awards package, will be available. I looked on the CBC site tonight for it tonight, and instead went wandering through their archives of 1950s radio interviews and 1960s television chats – Adrienne Clarkson, in all her youthful bouffant glory! – and on into the more recent past. And in case there’d been any doubt, I found an extraordinary man. Even in his youth, Leonard Cohen was profoundly articulate, gently contrarian, an artist and a seer who sounded and looked as contemporary as his interviewers looked and often sounded quaint. Now, his intelligence, insight and deep humility are beautiful to hear. I hope to hear today’s interview again. (Apparently it was filmed for eventual airing on television. I’ll let you know.)

Of Groundhogs and Heroes

Posted by :James Howden On : February 2, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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We have such mixed feelings about rodents. Hate rats, revere bunnies. Kill mice, make them movie stars. Laugh at lemmings, make beavers a national symbol. But will someone explain to me why the news leads with groundhog sightings? Wiarton Willie says early spring, I’m told, but the American pet hog-caster (Piskaquatty Phil, or some such) says six more weeks of winter. More continental discord. Oh, my. February 2 makes me curmudgeonly. Hey, let’s celebrate ignorance! Let’s pretend that furry critters are news! Sigh. Lighten up, buddy. There go your “Man of the People” credentials. You’ll lose your drive-through status. “Man refused Canadian Maple doughnut – called unpatriotic snob.”

“It is what it is,” I say with Jock Zen wisdom, and turn to the real news. Benjamin James is heading North, groundhogs be darned, for twelve more weeks of winter. He’s my hero today. A teaching job 200 light-years north of Churchill, Manitoba, and he has jumped on it instantly. He’ll teach ESL, some life-skills maths and sciences to the largely Inuit residents of Arviat, Nunavut. He’ll be able to keep working on his novel and other writing. He’ll cut into student debts. He’ll be a service pioneer in the tiny Bahá’í community there. He’ll play trombone to the caribou. How exciting is that? My kid is going to beat me to the Arctic. Lay on, McBen!

KV Junior, I Miss You Already and You Haven’t Quite Left

Posted by :James Howden On : February 1, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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I happened to pick up my hero, Kurt Vonnegut, on CBC Radio’s The Current this morning. He’s 83, and his combination of profound pessimism and dogged goodness continues to knock me out. He’s so appalled by all the dastardly things humans have done that he figures it’s about time we were done.

“Done?”

“Over! We’ve had our chance; we screwed it up. The dinosaurs are finished and I suspect they did a lot less to screw up the planet than we have.” He imagines a great voice from “the bottom of the Grand Canyon or someplace, saying ‘It is finished. These beings did not like it here. They were not happy.’” He advocates a “War on Petroleum” instead of the failed war on drugs (or war on terrorism, bien sûr), and ridicules the wealthy and powerful for their residence in the 51st state (“the state of Denial”). In one of his characteristic KV Junior  flights of bitter fun, he offers that driving a car is perhaps the happiest thing humans have ever found to do, and now we’ll keep on driving blissfully until there’s no fossil fuel left and the system falls for those who follow us. “And what do I care? I’ll be dead! What does a CEO care, ‘just fuel up my jet today ‘cause I’m going to be dead anyway.’”

I saw Mr. Vonnegut give a public talk years ago in Stratford, Ontario. We were all so delighted to laugh with him, so ready to rumble. He got talking about smoking, his status as an “old fart with his Pall Malls”, and laughed at the warnings on packages. “These warnings are ridiculous. ’Smoking can kill you,’ they say. So what? That’s the whole point?” Strangest thing I ever heard in a theatre: the audience rolled instantly into a good laugh, and halfway through it collectively realized the nihilistic point he’d just made. In midstream, the laughter morphed into a sudden groan. “Ha, ha-ooohh.” When Anna Maria asked him today about his smoking, he said he was planning to sue Pall Mall. “Their packages promise they’re going to kill me. But I’ve been chain-smoking unfiltered Pall Malls since I was 12 and I’m still alive! They owe me.”

He was on the radio, of course, to comment on the war in Iraq, to compare it with his Second World War experience as an American soldier in Germany, and the imprisonment that became so well-known with his classic novel Slaughterhouse Five. He has sworn off novels, but has a new book out called A Man Without a Country. As pessimistic as he so volubly is, he continues to stand and to write and fight for what he has called the greatest thing we can have, “a little human decency”. This dogged use of his despair is terrifyingly good, painfully inspiring.

“You’re awfully pessimistic,” the interviewer says with some surprise.

“That’s what my wife says. Imagine what my marriage is like!”

“If you were to speak on behalf of your generation to young people today, what would your message be?” I’m sure Ms. Tremonti expected some warm and emphatic clichés, but I didn’t. Without fail, he breaks my heart with his sadness and courage.

“I apologize.” There was a pause. “And love one another, what the hell.”

“Thank you for talking to us, Kurt Vonnegut.”

“Go jump in the lake!” He chuckled and coughed. What a voice we will lose when he is gone.

And Who is Akaash Maharaj…

Posted by :James Howden On : February 1, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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…and why is he speaking so eloquently on my radio these days? Turns out he’s a former policy chief for the Liberals, perhaps shoved aside during the Martin years but making up for it now. It’s so rare to hear someone speaking of politics with not only elegance (a rich, quite British tone and vocabulary and actual sentences) but idealism and principle. His watchwords appear to be “practical idealism”. He’s death on rule by polls, and on Paul Martin’s institution of “regicide” as a matter of Liberal operating fact. Yikes. I’m sure he’s too intellectual, too soft-spoken (and, likely, too brown) to be Prime Minister, but a look at his website suggests that he is certainly ambitious and very capable. Perhaps by the time he can speak to the Tim Horton’s Every(Wo)man – if he ever acquires that knack and loses that Oxbridge lilt – his ethnicity will no longer be a barrier. (Or perhaps he’s in line to be our Henry Kissinger.) He’s a political animal, but I am still impressed.

Crazy Frenchman on the Road: Catching Up With BHL

Posted by :James Howden On : January 20, 2006
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In my frequently relenting quest to get caught up on the pile of Atlantic magazines  that looms accusingly over my desk, I went back to May 2005 because it began a series by the French writer and philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. The cover story last May was “In the Footsteps of Tocqueville”, a wonderfully affecting and effective look at America a century and a half after Alexis de Tocqueville, another son of France, wrote the famous Democracy in America. (I wrote about this here.) This, of course, was long before the United States had caught the imagination (and inspired the resentment) of much of the rest of the world.  Well, good news, friends! I’m now up to June 2005, whose cover carries the provocative title “How We Would Fight China” and which includes articles like “Managing China’s Rise” (Holy hubris, Batman!) and “The Next Cold War” (more erudite apocalyptica from the gloom-meister, Robert Kaplan).

But the best and most telling writing in the issue belongs to BHL (Lévy’s superstar nom de célébrité in Europe; it sounds quite zippy when the letters are pronounced as in French) and his “Road Trip, Part II”. His favourite American city? Seattle mon amour. “If I had to choose an American city to live in – if I had to pick a place, and only one, where I had the feeling in America of discovering my lost bearings – it would be here, in Seattle.” The Space Needle, the docks, the Sound, the intellectual ferment – he loves it all.

From Seattle, BHL goes on to the queerly conservative, even geriatric ambience of “Gayland”, the heart of the homosexual district of San Francisco. He also has an unusual and characteristically thoughtful take on “one of the most significant and innovative American political movements in recent times”, MoveOn.org. (If this is unfamiliar to you, think Clinton, Lewinsky, and the hungry Republican effort to impeach the Prez.) While in California, of course, Lévy is obligated to meditate (in the spirit of Tocqueville’s investigation of American prisons) on the myth and the meaning of Alcatraz, the long-closed island penitentiary from which none, famously, could escape. His conclusion on the latter obsession: maybe America’s prisons aren’t even really about the usual debate between “rehabilitation or rectification” but more about banishment, exclusion from the “sacred circle” of power. In California, he also ponders the “anti-city” of Los Angeles and the “bombastic kitsch” of San Simeon, the Hearst mansion that inspired Orson Welles’s depiction of “Xanadu” in the immortal film Citizen Kane. It also inspired in BHL the “irrepressible and contradictory wishes to laugh, to vomit, and yet at times to applaud”. (This last may be a microcosm of Lévy’s response to his entire American odyssey, but it’s too soon to say.) He investigates America’s suddenly legendary obesity, and draws some interesting and contrary conclusions regarding Europe’s exaggeration of it but also of its necessity. He wanders along the California/Mexico border, tries to explain the uneasy paradox between the States’ desire to exclude migrants and the undoubted economic need for them, and concludes that “I don’t like any of these explanations….[But] in America, newcomers take nothing for granted. For them, America is a place that must be earned.”

What I offer here, as you can probably tell, are the tiniest snippets from an involved, digressive but coherent 11-page article, pages of text with only tiny flourishes of illustration. (Don’t mean to discourage anyone, but the Atlantic is a magazine for people who read, which is not as redundant a statement as I wish it was.) One of these days, Bernard-Henri Lévy’s series will become a book, and you’ll no doubt thank me for this prescient and forward-looking advance review, even as you now snicker at how far behind I am in my reading.