The Engine

LOVE WILL TEAR US APART: CONTROL directed by ANTON CORBIJN (2007) This film retrospectively summarises the late ‘70s period after the impact of Punk Rock and the Sex Pistols and before the advent of Thatcherism. It is nostalgically filmed in black and white, underlining the bleakness of the northern setting (Macclesfield in Cheshire). Ian Curtis emerges as lead singer of band Warsaw which then transforms itself into Joy Division . Curtis is a self-absorbed, narcissistic youth dreaming of pop and poetic fame. He comes across as insecure, arrogant, selfish and individualistic. In short, all the needful qualities in his chosen profession. The period is summarised brilliantly but the film is bleak and painful to watch, as Curtis fails to cope with success, relationships and epilepsy. He’s depicted as helpful and conforming too. The band is tinged with fascism, as Joy Division refers to a special division of comfort women in WW2 (depicted in the novel The House of Dolls by Yehiel ...

Sicko, dir Michael Moore How does an obese man with no regular job pay his healthcare insurance in a country that has no universal healthcare scheme? The answer is that he makes a film advocating universal healthcare in America. This is Sicko by Michael Moore, riddled with complex contradictions too numerous to mention. Sicko puts American free market capitalism under the microscope once again in order to tell us what we already know: it has many inadequacies. But what he doesn’t tell us is this: so does Michael Moore. In the first half of the film Moore details all the problems inherent in giving over healthcare to the market. There are people performing their own rough and ready self-operations; people threatening large corporations with a new expose of their corrupt practises by Moore himself before Moore has even made his film; people crossing over the border into Canada to (illegally) take the free healthcare on offer there. What happens when a young girl has a very high B...

In the art of seduction, Parsifal will always retain its rank - as the stroke of genius in seduction. - I admire this work; I wish I had written it myself; failing that, I understand it. - Wagner never had better inspirations than in the end. Here the cunning in his alliance of beauty and sickness goes so far that, as it were, it casts a shadow over Wagner's earlier art - which now seems too bright, too healthy. Do you understand this? Health, brightness having the effect of a shadow? almost of an objection? - To such an extent have we become pure fools. - Never was there a greater master in dim, hieratic aromas - never was a man equally expert in all small infinities, all that trembles and is effusive, all the feminisms from the idioticon of happiness! - Drink, O my friends, the philtres of this art! Nowhere will you find a more agreeable way of enervating your spirit, of forgetting your manhood under a rosebush. - Ah, this old magician! This Klingsor! How he thus wages war agains...

The German Historical Museum, Unter den Linden, Berlin The German Historical Museum is a very dull, predictable museum indeed. If Germans really wanted to underline the most facile, obvious, dull, boring aspects of their history, then the German Historical Museum would be that monument. Treating German history as a linear essay, a parade of facts and dates dotted with the biographies of Great Men, the German Historical Museum trots out all its dullness over and over again. Proceeding from early German History by way of middle German History, we eventually get to late German History. There is so much predictability in this Museum it is difficult to know where to begin. Firstly, the early and middle parts of German History are dealt with cursorily, displays of (obsolete) armour, paintings of Great Men (Martin Luther). Then we get to WW1. There is a display of (obsolete) weaponry, including terrifying Medieval trench weapons that look as if they belong to the middle bit of German History...

Parisfal, (1982) dir Hans Jurgen Syberberg It’s difficult to believe that this film is now 25 years old, since it feels so modern, so contemporary when most other film on offer is dim, clichéd re-tread. Syberberg has dared to re-interprete Wagner’s last, most brilliant opera Parsifal , offering us a cinematic, poetic delicacy served up together with Wagner’s incredible music. There’s a whole range of reference to art history, the history of Germany and the history of Wagner’s era that is impossible to sum up at one viewing. The only thing that seems dated is the heavy-handed Freudian phallic object/castration symbolism that does seem very, very 80s, old-fashioned, ridiculous, bizarre even. Instead of allowing the audience to draw its own conclusions from Wagner’s text, Syberberg once again imposes his own interpretation, as with his docu-film interview with Winifred Wagner. The imposition seems violent, but it can also be revealing and refreshing. Like Syberberg’s Ludwig – Requiem for...

Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King (Requiem für einen Jungraulichen Koenig, 1972), dir Hans Jurgen Syberberg This film definitely bears the imprint of the Fassbinder group more surely than Syberberg’s laterwork. Three of Fassbinder’s most compelling ‘stars’, Ingrid Caven, Peter Kern and Gunther Kaufmann, are part of the cast. The film offers a very schematic account of Ludwig’s life, a bio-pic but framed in an unusual German stylistic, akin to theatre or caberet. It is also filmed on set with back projections, allowing Syberberg to concentrate on a Brechtian and Wagnerian depiction of Ludwig, patron of Richard Wagner, builder of Schlossneuschwanstein, found dead in the Starnbergersee with his psychiatrist, Professor Gudden, in apparently suspicious circumstances. (Today it’s conjectured that he was squandering the Bavarian purse on his romantic, but apparently insane, projects, and therefore was murdered. Of course, Wagner and ‘mad Ludwig’s’ castles are some of the reasons that m...

Tom Waits for No Man, Emergen-cee and Basic Training at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, London First off, the Tom Waits tribute was entertaining, quite essential, an interesting, charged event in its own right. Stewart D’Arrieta takes the audience through the Tom Waits oeuvre. Although I’m not keen on tributes and tribute bands, this one did stand out as being exceptional, original and having both momentum and soul. Basic Training and Emergen-cee were plays shaped from similar material but performed in slightly different ways. I preferred Kahlil Ashanti’s work because it seemed the more genuine, rooted, more down to earth of the two. Both playlets consider the consequences of slavery and the historical roots of racism. Both are sustained in similar ways, one-man shows lasting just over an hour. I liked Ashanti’s courageous little man, being just another Kunta Kinte, (he references Alex Hayley’s novel Roots in the play) a beaten up, down at heel black everyman. This is a play...

Dead Language: Institue of Contemporary Art, The Mall, London This is a new play, whether radically different, breathtakingly original or pretentious, would-be avante garde flop or beyond. Audiences may take to this and this reviewer thinks that a sign that audiences will, is the fact that 50% left at the interval. That was lucky, because the second half is much weaker. The first half ends with a bang: The Andy Warhols are defeated by the Tracey Emins. A very high level of interaction was one of the good ideas in this new play being premiered at the ICA. The material was both unbelievably pretentious and unbelievably bold. That boldness is where the play wins, on every level. The silly plot, turgid language, pretentiousness are understandable, since the play claims its own dynamic (meaning that it doesn’t wish to be taken seriously). That’s a good idea, because this material isn’t serious, but it may make a cultural impression. That’s if people enjoy the style it maintains, the ...

Knocked Up (2006), dir Judd Apatow, starring Seth Rogan, Katherine Heigl ‘Knocked Up’ appears to be a gentle, charming comedy about parenthood but is infested with all kinds of horribleness, double standards, hypocrisy that belies its apparent surface. Ben Stone ‘knocks up’ Alison during a one night stand after a night’s clubbing. Essentially the film piles up allusions, euphemisms in order to distract away from its essential derivativeness but also the hypocritical attitudes, regarding sex, marriage, babies, that the film panders to. At one point Ben is watching Steve Martin in the film ‘Parenthood’ on one of those big monitor hotel television sets that resemble fish tanks more than television sets, referencing the last dire Hollywood attempt to discourse about (something that perhaps Hollywood needs to do more than anything) growing up. This was one of Martin’s direst efforts but even paplike that is at least two notches higher than ‘KnockedUp’. Ben and Alison have fornicated with...

Atonement, dir Joe Wright, starring Keira Knightley,James McAvoy, Vanessa Redgrave The film of Ian McEwan’s novel Atonement summons up many literary antecedents, such as L.P.Hartley’s The Go-Between or D.H.Lawrence’s Women in Love (or a kind of compendium or abridgement of many Lawrence orLawrence-like novels or stories). The word nostalgia breezes eerily across the film’s opening shots, a bigstately home, like Mandalay in Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca or hosts of other possible period stately homes which might form a list too long forthis review. The sepia tinted shots of the big house unfold then into its interiors, a labyrinthine placewith multi-various rooms, halls, landings, all leading onto further rooms, halls, landings. Many of the scenes and dialogues seem rather contrived, as if they had been made with the English Heritage Industry in mind (ie “Briony your a brick.”Etc etc. Has anyone ever heard the word brick ever deployed in such a colloquialism in everyday speech,o...

I Now Pronouce You Chuck and Larry, (2007) directed byDennis Dugan and starring Adam Sandler and Kevin James It’s hard to know where or when to begin to summarise this awful film. Two died-in-the- wool heterosexual firefighters, Chuck and Larry, decide to go through a Gay marriage in order to iron out some issues ofpension rights. Chuck is an inarticlulate sexist thug, who beats up anyone who even breathes or speaks in his immediate vicinity. That is when he is not sleeping with five or six women at a time. Any problem in any social situation can be solved by merely crunching any other person’s chin. This includes people who say the word ‘faggots’ (to or about them) or the hate-filled religious bigot who vilifies them verbally. This looks as if it has more to do with Popeye or some other comic book fantasy than relationships, for this film purports to be something of a ‘relationship’ film and also a ‘comedy’(but it isn’t very funny). Exploiting every jaded cliché in the book abo...

Gemälde Gallerie, nr Postdamer Platz, Berlin Amazing collection of Old Masters. The work by Franz Hals is really interesting, remarkable, some of the Caravaggios and the works by Gainsborough have real dignity, gravitas, wonderment. Strange how an artist manages to dig so much out of what appear to be conventional portraits. Franz Hals is beginning to investigate really elementary but hitherto uninvestigated things about portraiture, such as; what happens when the sitter moves? The paintings have a snapshot quality, the artist has attempted to portray heads twisting and turning. Rembrandt is also represented. A fantastic painter who had many financial and personal difficulties to overcome, he was claimed as a Nazi icon when Holland was over-run in WW2. Rembrandt had many quarrels with Jews who (apparantly) bought up his work cheaply and then sold it at profit. (isn´t that what commerce is about?) But Rembrandt also spent money wildly, never paid taxes or bills. Anyway, the case of R...

Pergamon Museum, Musee Insel, Berlin Musee Insel, Berlin, is home to several major German Museums. The Pergamon Museum is perhaps the most striking. In many ways a German version of the British Museum, it houses several key exhibits, the Ishtar Gate from Babylon and the Pergamon frieze from Pergamon in Turkey (a major Greek colony in Asia Minor, Pergamon itself was reckoned by the Greeks to be their major city apart from Athens). Obviously these great historical treasures, like so many of the treasures housed in the British Museum, didn't originate in Germany. No, in fact they were stolen from their respective countries.  Now obviously these priceless treasures (a cliche made even bigger by the fact that these items reside here and not where they originated) should, like the Elgin Marbles - really the Parthenon Marbles - be returned from their place of origin. But are the Germans (or the British) going to do that? No sadly. They are a salient reminder of the main tragedies o...

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, (2007), directed by Tom Tykwer, starring Ben Wishaw, Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman Imagine Amadeus with perfume. This seems to sum up Tom Tykwer’sadaptation of Patrick Sueskind’s novel Perfume. Grenouille grows up in Medieval Paris, working as a tanner, but is also a young perfume prodigy/imbecile. Taken in and then instructed by master perfumer Baldini (Dustin Hofmann), who lives in a rather shaky house perched on a medieval bridge in Paris. Grenouille demonstrates a natural ability at his trade and everything is well until he decides to up the stakes by kidnapping young women, draining their bodies of much needed chemical components for his latest brands of perfumes. Baldini’s house collapses/is blown up, Grenouille flees to Grasse in Southern France which is, Baldini tells him, the centre of the perfume industry. Here he continues his trade until he is eventually captured, tortured, confesses and is sentenced to death. Predictably he escapes hanging ...

Black Book (Zwartboek), (2007)USA, dir Paul Verhoeven, Carice Van Houten, Thom Hoffman, Halina Reijn, Sebastian Koch, Christian Berkel In Black Book Paul Verhoeven returns to his native Holland to make a film about the last days of WW2. Das Untergang (Downfall), The Pianist, even Schindler’s List had some worthwhile point to make about WW2, some worthwhile acting or cinematography or even constituted an interesting historical reconstruction. Unfortunately, Black Book has nothing at all to commend itself. It borrows conventions from Schindler’s List and The Pianist, notably the framing opening and closing scenes in an Israeli kibbutz. Most of the rest of the film seems to be a very dull thriller mixed with the kind of end of the pier humour we know from TV programmes like Allo Allo. But Black Book isn’t a very funny film either. There is a kind of admix of thriller, ‘sauciness’ and soft porn that really adds up to absolutely nothing at all. Some of Verhoeven’s Hollywood films wer...

The Science of Sleep, (2007) dir. Michel Gondry, starring Gael Garcia Bernal, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alain Chabat, Miou-Miou This wonderfully sweet romantic comedy from Michel Gondry (director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) combines dreamscapes, borrowings from expressionism, surrealism, and humour. Debating the subject of much romantic literature, how do two twits get together and fall in love, The Science of Sleep goes far beyond its shallow subject matter, offering the audience an intriguing and totally new angle on romance. The film is funny and French. Or French actors alternating between speaking French and English. But the film doesn’t seem to be a foreign language film and probably makes up its mind to be an English language film for purely commercial reasons (although takes its time to do so). Watching it a viewer might be tempted to say that the spirit of Godard, Truffaut and the other directors of the French Novelle Vague, is not dead. However, the film is...

Climates (Iklimler), Turkey 2006, dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan It’s possible to think of Turkish director’s latest film Climates as something that really typifies all the worst aspects of art house cinema; slow-moving, torpid, little or no action, movement or point. Bahar (Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s art documentary maker) is self-referentially filming at an ancient Greek temple in Turkey (for Turkey has more of such sites than either Italy or Greece, escaped the attentions of artefact thieves for much longer). He is inattentive to his wife, Isa (Ebru Ceylan’s university professor), who seems terminally bored even though she states otherwise. The film builds up character through a series of close ups, seems to be an amalgam of close-ups stitched into a larger whole. The setting is striking. The presence of the ancient past seems to underpin the difference between Bahar’s historical fascinations, his younger wife’s desire for fun. The next scene is set on the beach. The film could easily be call...

Paul McCarthy exhibition, Haus der Kunst, Munich I’m staying with Alexander Roth in Munich for a few weeks His apartment is just across the road from where Albert Einstein spent 10 years of his childhood and youth although I´m not sure if he was born there. The address is Aldereitestraße. This morning I ate Volkornbrot with peppercorn cheese, müsli, fresh milk from the Bavarian Alps (more probably a farm in ÜberBayern, the area where Frau Schweinimaus lives. It is Alexander´s birthday, he has gone to Garmisch-Partchenkirchen with Bettina for a walk. He has new work influenced by Paul McCarthy, really interesting except he has made the mistake of abandoning realism in favour of nothing. He had some nice gel pens. I tried them yesterday, sitting up all night with his jaxon crayons, a real joy but amateur junk compared to the neo-pastel. Paul McCarthy has an exhibition at the Haus der Künst. The Haus der Deutschen Kunst (House of German Art) was built in 1933-37 to replace the M...

Die Brucke: Through a Glass Darkly This morning very early in Garsing, a village at the edge of Munich, for an interview. The snow falling all around, so romantically. Then a quick look at Die Brücke (The Bridge), a retrospective of the Expressionist fad with mostly Berlin artists - Nolde, Kirchener, but also Edvard Munch, a member of the movement in the early stages. Lots of great paintings but they become all too familiar after a while. It's a pity that the kind of self-criticism, primitive intensity, radicalism doesn´t surface anymore in German art which has gone all bourgeois and self-satisfied as summed up in the work of Gerhard Richter, practically an artist without a subject. In fact, the eye glides onto his expensive materials, the expensive frame, away from the actual content which might be Richter´s Uncle in German uniform, a mustang fighter plane, a seascape or really just anything. It doesn't matter, because there's nothing there. Only an empty horizon...

Sophokles/Hölderlin 'Antigone' Last night I went to see ‘Antigone’ at the Glyptothek in Königsplatz, München, in the translation of Hölderlin from Sophokles.   A very bad ensemble performance. The cast were dressed in (what they supposed to be) the garb of ancient Thebes, faces daubed with white paint, a bit like the black and white minstrel show in reverse. There was much running about, movement of a non-balletic kind, whistling, Creon reeling off speech after speech. In fact Creon (Ronnie Janot) was the only actor of any real substance, quite clearly holding the whole thing together while the rest of the cast went through the motions of acting, sometimes in a complete, inadvertently hilarious manner. Although the German of Hölderlin was impenetrable to me (Hölderlin was in the throes of schizophrenia when he made the translation, probably spending his days at the local bedlam in manacles or receiving cold water therapy, a popular cure for ‘madness’ of the time.) and possibly ...

Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther), Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin Johann Wolfgang Goethe 1:50h with Werther Hans Löw Lotte Fritzi Haberlandt Albert Ronald Kukulies Regie Jan Bosse Bühne Stéphane Laimé Kostüme Kathrin Plath Musik Arno P. Jiri Kraehahn, Sebastian Morsch Dramaturgie Andrea Koschwitz The beautiful Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin, is now one of the main Berlin theatres, alongside the Berliner Ensemble and Deutsches Theater. The theatre is clearly a historical site, hosting premieres by Felix Mendellsohn and others, but also broader historical events such as the 1848 Revolution that seems to have begun in or near the theatre. Of course, Maxim Gorki, was neither German, nor was he a Berliner. The theatre was formally known as the Berlin Singakademie, the venue where Mendelsohn gave his 1829 performances of the Matthew Passion BMV 244. It became the Maxim Gorki Theater after WW2, when the site fell within the Soviet Sector. It seemed appropriate to th...

Insel der Blütigen Plantage (1983), dir Kurt Raab,with Kurt Raab, Peter Kern This season of Faßbinder films focuses mainly on, what it terms, the Faßbinder group (Gruppenbild mit RWF –Group Portrait with RWF) meaning that a Faßbinder film was, of course, much more than the input of one person, Rainer Werner Faßbinder. The Faßbinder masterpiece, The Marriage of Maria Braun , was preceded by an unknown work by Kurt Raab (1941-1987), Die Inselder blütigen Plantage (1983) (Island of the BloodyPlantation). Raab clearly intended to cash in on his association with Faßbinder in this abysmal Women in Prison picture, shot mainly in the Phillipines. The film is bad even by the low standards of the genre, a daft plot, weak, wooden acting, almost nothing to commend it. Not even sleaziness, abysmal jokes, rapine or violence, just a central message about the evils of authoritarianism so blatantly put it made this reviewer wince. The film demonstrates how intellectually null and void Raab had...

The Age of Cosimo de´Medici (L'ETà DI COSIMO DE' MEDICI) dir Roberto Rossellini I parte: L'esilio di Cosimo - II parte: Il potere di Cosimo - III parte: Leon Battista Alberti: l'Umanesimo 1973, regia di Roberto Rossellini Scheda: Nazione: Italia - Produzione: Manenti Film - Distribuzione: Audio Brandon - Soggetto: Roberto Rossellini - Sceneggiatura: Marcella Marian, Roberto Rossellini, Luciano Scaffa - Fotografia: Mario Montuori - Montaggio: Jolanda Benvenuti - Costumi: Marcella De Marchis - Musiche: Manuel De Sica - Formato: Color - Durata: complessivamente 252'. Cast: Marcello Di Falco, Virgilio Gazzolo, Mario Erpichini, Tom Felleghy, Marino Masé, Adriano Amidei Migliano, Goffredo Montani, Carlo Reali, Fred Ward. This TV docu-drama by Roberto Rossellini, which runs to 270 minutes, is an attempt to describe the era of Cosimo de Medici, ruler of Florence at the time of the Renaissance, developments connected to the names Brunelleschi, Donatello, Ghiberti. Alt...

Land of Hope and Glory Last night of the Proms, Hyde Park, London, September 8th 2007 The annual end of Proms gala has obviously become a national event, with spin-offs in every regional capital (including Carrickfergus, part of Norn Iron as Wogan calls it). There were many flags in Hyde Park, because and quite apart from it being a celebration of traditional British music, the Proms has plenty of pomp, circumstance, even pageantry attached to it which might be called ‘patriotic’.  But there were also other national flags: German, Swiss, Norwegian, even some African flags. I was about to say that one flag was notoriously absent, but then there weres everal skull ‘n crossbones, more prevalent formerly on the Spanish Main than in Hyde Park.  No, the flag I meant was the swastika, perhaps a model for all flags or a model of all flags.  Nevertheless, the event was a celebration of benign English patriotism, not aggressive continental authoritarian nationalism. Or ...

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST DIRECTOR , dir Mel Gibson This film marks an interesting but flawed development in verisimilitude in cinema. The use of original languages in a historical film had been previously restricted to art house productions as Derek Jarmen’s ‘Sebastiane’. Of course Upper Class Romans in the Palestine of Jesus spoke Greek not Latin although the legionaries would probably have spoken a street or demotic Latin. Gibson aims at verisimilitude but ultimately exposes his own inadequacies and points at a variety of textual inadequacies latent in the original version of the Gospels written as they were in bad Greek ("How odd that the god of the Jews would write in Greek, and in such bad Greek!" Nietzsche). The reason for this was of course that the writers of the Gospels spoke and wrote Aramaic but choose to popularize their works throughout the Roman Empire by writing in Greek. For this reason no highly educated or serious Greek or Roman would have anything...

Viaggio in Italia (1954), dir Roberto Rossellini, starring Ingrid Bergmann, George Sanders The Rossellini season at the Arsenal cinema, Berlin continues with Viaggio in Italia . The film sets up a set of contrasts. Bergmann´s interest, possible obsession with history, visiting museums, investigating the past. George Sanders interest in fun which might consist of things less boring, one assumes music, drink, drugs, sex, gambling. A journey to Italy very much sets up an encounter with the past, not only The Past but also one´s own past. Bergmann´s experience of Italy might be compared with Goethe´s Italian Journey, which consisted in an attempt to unite more recent Germanic culture with the ancient past of Rome (and Greece). So the film is an essay about Northern Europeans losing their connections with the past, re-visiting ancient sites to re-establish those connections. The film is largely set in and around Naples. Katherine Joyce and Alexander 'Alex' Joyce go there to...

Chinese Roulette (Chinesisches Roulette), 1976, dir Rainer Werner Fassbinder Written and Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder Produced by Michael Fengler [some sources credit Fassbinder as producer] Cinematography by Michael Ballhaus Edited by Ila von Hasperg Production Design by Kurt Raab, Helga Ballhaus & Peter Müller (as "Curd Melber") Original Music by Peer Raben Additional music from Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony Anna Karina as Irene Cartisse Alexander Allerson as Gerhard Christ Margit Carstensen as Ariane Christ Ulli Lommel as Kolbe Brigitte Mira as Kast Volker Spengler as Gabriel Kast Andrea Schober as Angela Christ Macha Méril as Traunitz After the daft, screwball comedy Satansbraten comes this obviously more sombre, portentous piece by Faßbinder. A group of people gather in a mansion near Munich. Gerhard Christ and his lover Irene Cartisse (played by Anna Karina, for sometime a star in films by Jean Luc Godard) arrive only for Gerhard ...

Satansbraten Satan´s Brew (1976), dir Rainer Werner Faßbinder, starring Kurt Raab The Arsenal cinema, Berlin, is running a Faßbinder retrospective in tandem with a look back at the films of Roberto Rossellini.The season was kick started with this rare comedy from Faßbinder, known mainly for more portentous works like Die Ehe der Maria Braun (The Marriage of Maria Braun) and Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (The BitterTears of Petra von Kant). In some ways the film resembles conventional sex comedies of the era, the most obvious slapstick, bums ´n tits, the usual slap´n tickle end of the pier fare, something we´re entirely accustomed to in Britain. In fact the film is unusual for a German or continental director because it resembles Anglo-Saxon tastes in cinematic populism, rather than the continental drive towards opera or portentousness. Walter Kranz, an Über-heterosexual writer, fantasises that he is the gay nineteenth-century poet Stephan George. He lives with his ma...

Volksbühne Theatre, Rosa Luxemburg Platz, BerlinGeschichten aus dem Wiener Wald (History of theViennese Wood) by Ödön von Horvath The Volksbühne is situated in the east of the city centre, just a little further east from Mitte and the commercial boulevard Frederichstraße. Broadly speaking, it has the feeling of being a political theatre, with primitive art and (seeming) political slogans in the foyer, brash advertising posters done in an overtly Socialist-Realist style. Socialist-Realism was the former aesthetic of the former Communist regime. It depends on an outdated (pre-Modernist) aesthetic, where subtlty, abstraction, even any form of impressionism, are entirely sidelined in favour of everything that is big, brash, obvious, a clarion call to the most obviously grandiose populism. Although traces of this style persist, the Communists are now finished, the wall has been destroyed. The Volksbühne perhaps registers traces of the old regime while aiming itself somehow in the direc...

Blaise Pascal, Italy-France 1972 Dir Roberto Rossellini with Pierre Arditi. 131min Blaise Pascal is a perhaps better realised historical docu-drama than The Era of Cosimo Medici , better realised because it tends to dramatise more completely its subject and his era. There is a definite tension in the film between the forces of science and religion, summed up in the life of the mathematician, philosopher Blaise Pascal.  Pascal grows up under the auspices of his father in their mansion in the Auvergne. Blaise Pascal´s father is a local judge, a member of the minor nobility, passionately interested in science and mathematics. The details of Blaise Pascal´s life are adumbrated in the film, his journey from science and scepticism to his embracing of religion, which is seen very much as a death bed recantation. The historical backdrop is 17th century France. One thinks of The Three Museketeers or The Flashing Blade, other docu-soaps aimed at entertainment yet to some extent narrow...