Harry Potter and our meaning of life

A little Viva dalliance into film previews this week:

Made in Dagenham is one of those 'feel good' Brit films where human decency triumphs over social adversity- but not a John Sayles film or Rosie the Riveter this isn't. In 1968 the women of the Dagenham Ford Plant voted strike action demanding equal pay to their male counterparts. Prime Minister Harold Wilson's Secretary of State Barbara Castle (who until 2007 held the record for female MP with longest continuous service) had a register of of social achiements during her time in office that most men couldn't even shake a carrot at. And the granting of 92% to the Dagenham girls was just one of them culminating in her Equal Pay Act of 1970.

One of the many funny, quirky touches to director Nigel Cole's film is Rita (Sally Hawkins), somewhat oblivious to the hoards of press, discreetly comparing fashion notes with Barbara Castle (Miranda Richardson) on their outfits as they emerge on the Whitehall steps after hashing out the pay deal over scotch and sherry upstairs. The film's theme song has lyrics by socialist singer/songwriter Billy Bragg and is sung by Sandie Shaw (a former Dagenham Ford worker).

Ahhh- BBC radio. While it's frustrating not to be legally allowed to see/hear much that is on the BBC iPlayer in the States, there's enough that is available (for weeks if not months) to keep one's brain alive. Midweek is as it suggests on a Wednesday and Nov. 3 had a great line-up of guests: Jane the astronomer who built a mini-observatory in her barn, Jo Wilding who wrote about running off in Iraq with the circus in Don't Shoot the Clowns.

Historian Amanda Foreman (of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire) has a new book out A World on Fire -about the 1000's of Brits who took part in the American Civil War - arguing that the Anglo-American special relationship was anything but! The textbooks hitherto were 'massaging' history yet again in to a slumber. Unless you were recipient of the Turkish bath pummeling from historian Simon Schama.

Peter Weller narrates Yony Leyser's documentary William S. Burroughs: A Man Within getting some great interviews just when you think the MAN has been done to death. Film director John Waters: "He violated the rules of even junkies worlds...and didn't respect any of the rules of the gay world [either]...he opened up to me not gay culture but gay rebels...a rap on the knuckles of poor, white, staid backyard America...he invented a style of book" never identifying with the media hype of the Beat Generation. Patti Smith (who Burroughs encouraged to sing in public): "William had a connection to anything and everything" his words developing as the Beat Shakespeare - blade runner, heavy metal, soft machine, steely dan.
Article in The Independent

Today's Special directed by David Kaplan casts Aasif Mandvi (of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) as the son desperately trying to revitalise his father's ailing Indian restaurant in Jackson Heights, Queens. A really hearteningly end of the week movie to sit back and enjoy. And not a whiff of Burroughs in the Queens night air;)

And what will non-Harry Potter fans make of the latest installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1?
Well, I confess to being one (a 'non' that is) though I also confess to having read the first book. And you do have to listen quite intently sometimes to grasp all the plot points. But then again, wouldn't it have disappointed fans if the film had 'signposted' everything and left them saying 'yeah, right get on with it'. What manifests itself in this penultimate installment (and what the franchise has always had going for it) is the art of wonder - perhaps giving the transitive verb 'wandering' a new sensibility with the importance of the noun 'wand' in Potter-dom.

Harry Potter has always been concerned with one's place in the world: where one's loyalties lie, 'the total eclipse of the heart', ways of seeing. And it's hard to imagine bursting into tears at the [is this where I say spoiler alert] death of a rather ugly CG elf Dobby (voice/movements by Toby Jones) but it really is incredibly moving. Am I sounding soppy girlie? Oh dear. Not so much the actual death itself perhaps, but everything that's lead up to this moment on the beach. Dobby's saved the trio (Harry,Hermione, Ron) from a tricky situation with Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham-Carter) and paid the mortal price gasping a final breath, but it is "a beautiful place...among friends" (actually Pembrokeshire, Wales).

It's the Leibniz monad theory of the many in one and the one in many that is so palpable in this film. Much of this seems due to the wonderful partnership of veteran HP director (last 3) David Yates and the world renowned cinematographer Eduardo Serra (Claude Chabrol's last 7 films, Girl with a Pearl Earing and many others). As the cast have said many times in interviews, their characters are for the first time in the big, bad world entirely away from the safety of Hogwarts. Serra exquisitely, painterly photographs nurturing symbiosis with them and the world. And one in which they must find themselves, find each other, as well as finding and destroying the objects harboring the shards of Voldemort's evil soul, the Horcruxes. Such philosophy does sound 'hokey' in description - and maybe is a bit. But the cast give it such a deep human interiority and Serra such a breadth of vision that the film is like watching a Grimm's fairy tale unfold - terrifying, romantic and sad. As is the silhouetted animation of the fable The Tales of Beetle the Bard where the Deathly Hallows symbol's origin is revealed. Definitely a film to see in IMAX cinemas.

Although not dying alone, Dobby's humble dignity, Harry Potter's characters' inner journey, and the film's almost Greek cathartic search reminded me of this poem about the town center of Sydney, Australia. The one in alone is always linked to the all of the many.

An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow

The word goes round Repins,
the murmur goes round Lorenzinis'
at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him.

The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile

and drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk
and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets

which minutes ago were busy main streets, pointing:

There's a fellow weeping down there. No one can stop him.

The man we surround, the man no one approaches

simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps

not like a child, not like the wind, like a man

and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor even

sob very loudly—yet the dignity of his weeping

holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him

in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow,

and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him

stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds

longing for tears as children for a rainbow.

Some will say, in the years to come, a halo

or force stood around him. There is no such thing.

Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him

but they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood,

the toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us

trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected

judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream

who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children

and such as look out of Paradise come near him

and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.

Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops

his mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit—

and I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand

and shake as she receives the gift of weeping;

as many as follow her also receive it

and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more

refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance,

but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,

the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out

of his writhen face and ordinary body

not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow,

hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea—

and when he stops, he simply walks between us

mopping his face with the dignity of one

man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.

Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.

Les Murray-from The Weatherboard Cathedral (1969)