Wednesday, 10 December: Grim viewing, compelling reading

I was urged by friends to view the German movie, The Counterfeiters, directed by Stefan Ruzowitsky and winner of Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2008. Somehow I had missed reviews about this movie at the time of the Academy Awards. I had a vague and incorrect idea of a Mob movie set in glamourous Monte Carlo or Cannes. Just as well I was uninformed as I don't know if I would have had the stomach for it otherwise. The movie tells the story of a motley bunch of Jewish prisoners in the dreaded Sachsenhausen concentration camp during WWII. The men, some with and others without any printing expertise, led by a wily professional forger, 'Sally' Sorowitsch, were spared the horrors in order to forge pound and dollar banknotes to flood the Allied economies and destabilize them. Grim viewing, indeed.

But amidst the camp's miserable greyness, the bullying cruelty of the guards and SS overlords, the anguished guilt of the forgers who are given special treatment while their family and fellow-prisoners were randomly shot, beaten and starved, emerge those small acts of heroism: gestures of kindness, a whispered word or a telling look that meant another's survival. They made the viewing worthwhile.

In similar vein, this week I read 'The Reader' by Bernhard Schlink. The novel is restrained, understated and tragic. It deals with the experiences of a young man in post-war Germany, who is confronted in a SS war crimes trials with the brutal past of a woman with whom he was once in love. So doing he is also faced with his country's past and the questions that no one has ever been able to answer satisfactorily (at least, in my view).

Hardly Christmas entertainment but compelling viewing, compelling reading.

On a happier note, today is the first day of my annual leave! Hooray! And I am going to blog, blog, blog so keep your ears peeled. Yes, that's me standing at the front gate ringing the bell for a quick visit to your world!

Thursday, 30 October: Brideshead revisited

Going to a matinee on a Friday afternoon felt deliciously decadent as I abandoned my PC, locked the dogs to sleep in the cool house and treated myself to a viewing of 'Brideshead revisited'. All on my own - no neighbourly comments to distract, no popcorn to crunch, not even a chocolate bar to unwrap soundlessly - I feasted on the latest movie version of one of modern novels I most admire: 'Brideshead revisited' by Evelyn Waugh.

Emma Thompson made a stately, stern yet human Lady Marchmain, Michael Gambon was there as a crusty and repentent Lord Marchmain (just for you, Willow), Ben Wishaw as the tortured Sebastian, Hayley Atwell as a robust Julia and Matthew Goode as a cool yet not unaffected Charles Ryder. Castle Howard provided a magnificent Brideshead.

I enjoyed the movie but, of course, it cannot supplant Waugh's magnificent prose. Some may think the story a criticism of stern religion; others about illicit love in between-wars Britain. Personally, I think the main theme is about men and women's futile attempts to escape the Hound of Heaven.

"I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter." (Francis Thompson)