I am seventy two. I find this an amazing concept. So far it has been a good day with an excellent overnight sleep and enjoyable swim and sauna session. On return home after buying treats for the rest of the day I enjoyed the first of them, a cooked breakfast of sausage, scrambled egg, bacon, beans and two hash browns.
It has been a week of birthday celebration commencing on Saturday when I enjoyed three sausages and two eggs with chips for lunch before the 3D showing of Carmen in the evening. On Sunday I enjoyed an excellent three course meal commencing with a coarse pate, toast with salad followed by two large pieces of chicken breast on a bed of crisp vegetables and finishing with a slice of melt in the mouth chocolate cake, chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream accompanied by a glass of Merlot and a Pepsi cola followed by coffee and late sandwiches and a birthday cake sponge filled with a rich whipped cream with strawberry pieces.
On Monday after Toast and coffee for breakfast, lunch comprised gammon, eggs garden peas and chips followed by apple crumble and custard and Americano coffee and in the evening a two egg omelette with chopped olives followed by grapefruit segments and coffee.
Yesterday after a cereal breakfast, I enjoyed an aromatic Thai chicken and lemongrass soup, a piece of white fish in a dill sauce with five pieces of scampi and some crisp vegetables, with a prawns from shell salad in the evening followed by a plain banana and several cups of filter coffee the day while I wrote solidly.
I was greatly impressed by Barcelona’s win against Arsenal and agree they are undoubtedly the world’s best club side at the present time. This does not mean they cannot be beaten but I would have been surprised if they had not won more convincingly against the Arsenal even if Van Perses had not been sent off for his second bookable offence. He claimed the only reason he had played on was because he had not heard the whistle of the referee because of the noise from the 95000 crowd, My comment to that is hmmmmm and to Mr Wenger who has already seen his team lose to Birmingham in the League Cup and where it is six years since gaining any kind of trophy I also say hmmmm but also your unsportsmanlike behaviour is becoming unacceptable as well as boring. Your team was just not good enough, it is good but not good enough.
On return from the swim and sauna today I enjoyed the breakfast while catching up on last night’s episode of Blue Bloods which featured the subject of teenage drug taking, Three young men die and one girl survives a lethal drug taking at a party where it is subsequently found there was a lethal addition. First on the scene and life saver of the girl is the rookie cop member of the Blue Blood family and it is the Police Commissioner who goes to see the Bishop to twist the arm of the Catholic School head to gain voluntary access to any school locker where the sniffer dog indicates an illegal substance within. He finds the school seller of the killer drug and who buys the drugs to see on via the Internet and where the trail leads to a bicycle shop with a drug manufacturing laboratory at its rear. Analysis of his drugs confirms his statement that his success was due to providing good merchandise. When the recovered schoolgirl report an attempt hit and run, the police work out that this was not a bad trip drug but a successful attempt to kill one of the young men and his girl friend. After pursuing one red herring lead the culprit is the female Vice Principle of the School, whose speciality is chemistry and who had an illegal sexual affair with the young man in question who she privately tutored and who wished to punish him and the girl when he rejected her someone of his own age. Underpinning this story line was a mini debate about whether drug should be made legal like alcohol and then controlled, that parents do not know what they teenage children are doing, and the need for the Catholic Church to be more open about the problems it as with some of its clergy and in its educational and other social facilities. There was nothing original about the episode but will have served a useful purpose.
I chose my lunch with care, French Pain rather than baguette cut into two portions and filled with a French made salami Le Justin Bridou 200g which I thick sliced and then both in their entirety accompanied by two and a half large glasses of an Italian Spumante, medium dry, and drinking the rest with a pork shop an a salad mixture from Morrison’s which included Feta cheese, black olives, bacon, ham pieces, spaghetti, pasta twirls cheese flakes, onion pieces, a great feast, finished with strawberries.
Later I watched an edition of master chef in which amateur cooks seek to become professionals through a series of challenges and competitive experiences. The food is always extraordinary with emphasis on flavours, textures and presentation. And of the kind where a three course meal with selected wine will cost £100 per head. I had been watching Spurs at home to A C Milan where they held out to win the tie with their away goal. What occurred to me is he cost to fans who travel on a regular basis as well as having the occupation and family lifestyle to enable such a commitment.
I also watched two and three quarter films. The first was 2012 again. Another end of world experience which despite all the spectacular destruction and losses of life in their billions several hundred thousand human being survive representing about 50 nations, heads of state and their governments, security services, selected individuals who can contribute to the redevelopment of the human race plus those willing to purchase the continuation plus those able to contribute one billion euros a time. There was a time when I would have seen myself in the role of the President of the USA electing to stay with his people, trying to comfort as disaster upon disaster struck where as now it would be good to be like the ancient Tibetan man who was able to join the survival party through one of his sons.
The reason for the natural destruction of planet earth is that the rays of the sun, in this instance called neutrinos instead of providing warmth are also heating up the earth‘s core in microwave effect so that new volcanic activity on an unprecedented scale will occur, the planet will become unstable which substantial seismic activity shifting the continental masses as well as the North and South Poles coupled with devastating earthquakes and Tsunamis covering continental masses. When this is discovered the major nations unite in secret to devise a way of surviving which is not immediately disclosed to the audience, and then as a spacecraft, a solution which has been used in previous science fiction from the 1950’s. In this instance we then discover that giant ships with reinforced sides have been created, called Arks, with at one point helicopters transferring animals two by two.
The fundamental questions raised are who should be saved and when should everyone been told the truth? Do you tell someone they have an incurable disease and when? Who gets what in life and why. Age old questions retold in the latest most spectacular fashion. Of course the best way is to tell their story through the eyes of a small group of individuals especially children and the aged, pets and people we can identify with.
In this film we concentrate on two sets of individuals functioning at very different levels in society. Jackson Curtis(john Cusack) is a divorced science fiction writer with one published credit which only sold a few hundred copies and who earns his keep working as a limousine driver for a Russian oligarch with two sons and dumb blonde type mistress and pet dog as well as chief bodyguard. They are all to play leading roles later. He borrows the car to take his two children on a camping break leaving his former wife and her lover free for the weekend.
He takes them to his favourite spot in Yellowstone National Park only to find the area fenced off and the lake dried to a pond. He is collected by the military(Close encounters of the third Kind style) brought to the attention of Dr Adrian Helminsky the chief USA geological scientist whose Scientist friend in India is part of another team who forecasts what is likely to happen and the exponential speed of the changes and their consequences. Adrian has taken the information direct to the President’s Chief of Staff and now works direct to him and the President advising what is happening. The Yellowstone Park is over the St Andreas fault and become a hot spot, likely to be become a volcanic explosion of nuclear proportions and trigger everything else that happens.
By good fortune he is one of the few people who has read Jackson’s book, given to him by his father to read because it foresaw how nations would deal with the situation, in this instance the space craft solution. When off the camp site the family encounter a conspiracy fanatic with a radio internet site and online newsletter who is currently predicting what is happening and who shows Curtis his media cutting where a number of leading figures ranging from art experts to scientists have died. The art expert dies in the same spot and same way as Princess Diana.
Jackson and the two children are recalled home after their mother and lover are in a supermarket when a fault opens up separating them on each side of the divide along an aisle. Jackson after depositing the children is also recalled to take the Russian family to the airport and their private jet and as the nasty children depart one calls out that they will live while he will be among those who do not. Realising that what he has learnt adds up to a major catastrophe he hires a private plane and then rushes to the home of his ex wife and family and orders them to get in the car immediately with him. They think he has gone crazy as the Governor of California is telling everyone on TV the crisis is over and they are not to worry at the same point as the land all around the family home begins to break up. There is then the first of several fantastic journeys in which the family amazingly escape the spectacular horrors around them. When they get to the plane the pilot has been killed but fortunately the ex wife’s new partner had had a few flying lessons and is able to get the plane away with great skill and good fortune.
They go to Yellowstone Park where the conspiracy guru has a map showing where the ships, assumed to be space ships are located. When they arrive Jackson finds the guru is broadcasting from the top of a nearby peak and takes the camper van broadcasting and research centre to him and back with one of the children in another hair raising travel, and then finds the map before the plane takes off and this time the volcanic eruption is of nuclear proportions. The problem they now find is that the centre for the ships is in China Tibet and they need a larger plane. They make their way to the airport when they find the plane of the Russian oligarch stranded but he finds their is a cargo jet full of Russian cars attending a trade exhibition. The chief security man and partner of the ex wife somehow manage to get the plane off the ground as everything is destroyed around them. Their aim is to refuel in Hawaii but the state is now a mass of molten rock so they continue knowing they will only get to somewhere in the South China sea. However when they arrive in the area they find that the land mass has already shifted and the plane comes down close to the departure site. They are picked up by Chinese Military helicopters They take the oligarch and his children who has he correct boarding pass but leave his mistress together with the Jackson family. The Russian bodyguard has given up his life in getting the plane down on the ice. Fortunately the family encounter a worker at the site, his Buddhist brother and their parents.
It is now time to return to the macro scene. The Black President of the United States is portrayed as a kindly man who wife has died from cancer and whose daughter has been part of an organisation collecting the great artefacts from around the world, including the Mona Liza so they can be stored in safety from terrorists with replicas almost as good as the originals. When she hears of the death of the art expert in the Parisian road tunnel her father explains that she is to become one of a handful of individuals to know the truth about what is happening.
This raises the issue of the relatives of those involved who have tickets for the great escape. The father of geologist is a recovering alcoholic jazz musician on an cruise liner with a friend who has not had contact with his son who has married an Asian woman. The son is able to say goodbye to his father who has a drink and his friend is able to contact and speak to his grand daughter before disaster strikes and he is unable to speak to his son and daughter in law. The mother of the chief of staff has decided to stay home with her friends. The President decides to stay with his people as does the Italian head of state who stand with his family at the Vatican. Eventually an aircraft carrier swept in by a Tsunami flattens the White House, the Vatican is destroyed and the cruise liner is flipped over in an instant.
Earlier in the film we are privy to the evacuation of communities in Tibet and the enforced Labour of young men including the brother of the Buddhist monk who is separated from his aging parents. The reason for the disruption is the creation a new major dam project where the world leaders have arranged for the Arks to be built. My impression was that each would hold 400000 but the Wikipedia notes state that the overall total is 400000. Because the speeding up of the process not all the Arks are completed so that there are only four to take the final selection of survivors and one of the four is damaged leaving thousands stranded at the base.
In the film there is crisis upon crisis as the family make their way on an Ark which is also that with the geology scientist and the daughter of the USA President. The Russian Oligarch dies but manages to save his sons. The partner of the ex wife also dies. The husband nearly does not make it but manages to free the hydraulic system which enables the Ark to become water tight and use its engines and avoid being crushed against the remains of Mount Everest. The film ends as the three Arks stay afloat while the dramatic changes to surface of the earth planet take place. They find that what was South Africa becomes the place where they can begin a new society. They are able to open the hatches to breathe the air again naturally. There is hope for the individual we have come to know. The sci fi writer and his family, the scientist and the President’s daughter who reads the copy of the sci fi novel which the scientist has brought with him, never expecting to have seen the author and his children again.
There is also a different ending in the DVD version where the Ark is shipwrecked on a Island and before this the geologist who has advised the government finds that his father has survived on the cruise ship where he was a musician.
The film asks the question how do set about deciding who is saved and who is not? World leaders, religious leaders, bankers and business giants, medics and scientists, sportsmen, artists, entertainers and the media, together with their families? What of those who built the Arks and their families? What of the balance between old and young, the physically able and the disabled? Do you include convicts and drug addicts? Do you include the military and airforce instrumental in getting the chosen to the Arks and what abut the makers, the builders the cleaners, the cooks and bottle washers? Surely this is something all government will have decided long ago in their What/If scenario‘s?
In November of last year I spent a week rereading Brideshead Revisited and watching DVD’s of the original Television series after going to see the two hour film version. In several pieces I attempted to describe each of the three works and to the extent to which the film and the TV communicated the original novel by Evelyn Waugh. On Saturday while was I returning from the Carmen in 3D experience I recorded a showing of the film using my Sky Box and today seemed appropriate to view again the magic of life at Oxford University and my one short visit to Venice.
The film provides an overview of the story, dipping in and out, providing only glimpses of life as an undergraduate with no intent or ambitions for the academic life which I disapproved yet found fascinating. The story is that of Charles Ryder who lives with his father in a comfortable upper middle class house close to Paddington station. His father is of independent means with his own limited circle of friends while Charles appears to have acquired no circle from childhood and boarding school and cannot wait for any opportunity to escape from distant and meaningless communication with his father.
At Oxford his serious cousin warns against his allocation of a room in college in the front quadrangle on the ground floor and this is quickly borne out when Lord Sebastian Flyte is sick into his room from beyond a window having been out drinking with his aristocratic chums from Eton and a camp South American with a slight speech impediment who appears to have been the object of Sebastian’s attentions until he resolves to make amends to Charles by inviting him to an arranged luncheon in his college rooms and taking him up. The film is more blatant about the nature of the love which develops between Sebastian and Charles, something which is picked upon by those closest to Sebastian, particularly his devout Catholic and controlling mother, Lady Marchmain played in the film by the always excellent Emma Thompson.
She quickly sees Charles, for what he is, an ambitious social climber who falls in love first with the family country house and then the eldest daughter, Julia, whereas Sebastian torn between his love of life and Charles and the controlling Catholicism of his mother wants to keep Charles to himself and away from his family. Sebastian insists they drive immediately back to Oxford on the first visit Charles makes to Brideshead where he is introduced to Nanny and also the family chapel when he learns that Julia and her mother are also returning.
Having established a relationship over their first year, Charles is something at a loss when he returns home for the long summer vacation and jumps at the opportunity to visit and stay at Brideshead on receipt of a telegram from Sebastian saying he has been in an accident which proves to be only a damaged bone in his foot playing croquet. Julia is sent to collect Charles from the railway station before going off again on her social outings her mother has arranged after being presented at Court bur where suitor are carefully selected among Catholic families of devotion and wealth.
To understand Brideshead the book and the original TV series it is necessary to understand the perspective of the Marchmain’s aristocratic Catholicism, the gradations of class and the sexual norms and taboos of the era in which the book was written, between the two World Wars. Lady Marchmain’s puritanical religion has driven her life loving husband into the arms of a worldly Italian and the mist hedonistic of Italian cities, along with Rio and New Orleans, then Berlin as well as Paris. He is played by Michael Gambon whose performance is on a par with that of Olivier in the TV series.
Lady Marchmain initially sees Charles as a responsible young man devoted to her son, so she encourages the relationship recommending that he accompanies him and her eldest daughter when they want to accept the invitation from their father to holiday with him in Venice. She does this despite the insistence of Charles that he is an atheist and not an agnostic. In Venice two things happen, he learns from a conversation with Marchmain’s mistress of the difference between British Catholicism which was then alleviating and uncompromising while the Italians live as they wish and then confess their sins periodically, do the required penance and continue as before. He also wants Julia and mistakes a moment of passion during carnival as the start of an ongoing relationship leading to marriage. On return Lady Marchmain attempts to cut Charles from the lives of her children. This includes young Cordelia who is fascinated by the atheism of Charles and hopes to convert him. She is destined for a nunnery although the eldest son and heir is beyond influence, aware of his responsibilities, social position, need to maintain the estate which includes a London House. His faith is true and unshakeable. So as to reinforce the separation Lady Marchmain announces the engagement of Julia to an American of property, who converts to Catholicism while Sebastian embarrasses the party by expressing his grief at the betrayal of his love for Charles by Charles’s ambitions for his sister.
Charles is disappointed that Sebastian does not take up with him again when they return to Oxford, especially on finding that his friend is escaping more into alcohol to escape the attentions of a Catholic minder appointed by his mother.
After the separation Sebastian heads for Morocco no doubt via Gibraltar where he lives as a subject to a dominant, and Charles is sent by terminally ill Lady Marchmain to find her son and bring him home. Unfortunately he is also terminally ill and mother and son are not reconciled.
Charles becomes successful as a painter and is courted and then marries by the sister of one Sebastian’s aristocratic Eton and Oxford chums. He then travels alone to South America to live and paint for two years and his wife joins him on board the Atlantic crossing back from New York. She takes to her bed with sea sickness while Charles encounters Julia, who is estranged from her husband who has taken up control and residence at Brideshead having bailed out the financially struggling elder brother. The two become lovers and live together although this is a problem for the Catholicism of Julia, reinforced when they go to Brideshead to see her husband and seek his agreement for a divorce. He agrees for the price of two of Charles’s paintings, something which shocks Julia but more significantly is the attitude of her elder brother, who announces he is to marry a widow with children, someone who will not be able to accept Julia because of her adultery.
Her father returns to the family home when he becomes seriously ill and on his death bed, the lifelong disbeliever, regains his faith and accepts the last rites of his church. This has a profound affect on Julia who decides that she cannot marry or continue to live with Charles.
The films opens with Charles an Officer in the British Army in World War 2 awaiting to go to France as part of the D Day offensive. His regiment is stationed at Brideshead with the House the headquarters, and he visits the chapel where he was taken on his first visit and after the first meal with the family, Lady Marchmain insisting. Charles learns that the elder brother was killed in the Blitz and that Julia is alive and an army reservist. In the chapel he lights a candle after dipping his hands in Holy Water and anointing himself. He leaves the candle alight when he leaves after first moving to extinguish.
I was not surprised that the film failed to excite critics or the box office. After all it depicts a lifestyle which only has appeal to those decreasing few within British society who are aristocratic or are socially ambitious and having something to offer. He film is no more than a pictorial aide memoiré to the book and the TV series, although the photography is brilliant, the mood creating effective and the acting of high class. The film will lack appeal to the average weekend audience and will displease those who know the originals, but who cares, not I?
All three, the book, the TV series and the film remain important to me for several reasons. The relationship which I once had with a young woman from a wealthy and socially connected Jewess, whose mother counselled against a serious relationship with me. She was not the first to wisely do so. Secondly my own wrestles with Catholicism and relationship with my mother. But most of all because of my experience of being a student and then living and working In Oxford and Oxfordshire which commenced 50 years ago last autumn and that one brief visit to Venice as experiences of London life at all levels of society. It was a great day.
It has been a week of birthday celebration commencing on Saturday when I enjoyed three sausages and two eggs with chips for lunch before the 3D showing of Carmen in the evening. On Sunday I enjoyed an excellent three course meal commencing with a coarse pate, toast with salad followed by two large pieces of chicken breast on a bed of crisp vegetables and finishing with a slice of melt in the mouth chocolate cake, chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream accompanied by a glass of Merlot and a Pepsi cola followed by coffee and late sandwiches and a birthday cake sponge filled with a rich whipped cream with strawberry pieces.
On Monday after Toast and coffee for breakfast, lunch comprised gammon, eggs garden peas and chips followed by apple crumble and custard and Americano coffee and in the evening a two egg omelette with chopped olives followed by grapefruit segments and coffee.
Yesterday after a cereal breakfast, I enjoyed an aromatic Thai chicken and lemongrass soup, a piece of white fish in a dill sauce with five pieces of scampi and some crisp vegetables, with a prawns from shell salad in the evening followed by a plain banana and several cups of filter coffee the day while I wrote solidly.
I was greatly impressed by Barcelona’s win against Arsenal and agree they are undoubtedly the world’s best club side at the present time. This does not mean they cannot be beaten but I would have been surprised if they had not won more convincingly against the Arsenal even if Van Perses had not been sent off for his second bookable offence. He claimed the only reason he had played on was because he had not heard the whistle of the referee because of the noise from the 95000 crowd, My comment to that is hmmmmm and to Mr Wenger who has already seen his team lose to Birmingham in the League Cup and where it is six years since gaining any kind of trophy I also say hmmmm but also your unsportsmanlike behaviour is becoming unacceptable as well as boring. Your team was just not good enough, it is good but not good enough.
On return from the swim and sauna today I enjoyed the breakfast while catching up on last night’s episode of Blue Bloods which featured the subject of teenage drug taking, Three young men die and one girl survives a lethal drug taking at a party where it is subsequently found there was a lethal addition. First on the scene and life saver of the girl is the rookie cop member of the Blue Blood family and it is the Police Commissioner who goes to see the Bishop to twist the arm of the Catholic School head to gain voluntary access to any school locker where the sniffer dog indicates an illegal substance within. He finds the school seller of the killer drug and who buys the drugs to see on via the Internet and where the trail leads to a bicycle shop with a drug manufacturing laboratory at its rear. Analysis of his drugs confirms his statement that his success was due to providing good merchandise. When the recovered schoolgirl report an attempt hit and run, the police work out that this was not a bad trip drug but a successful attempt to kill one of the young men and his girl friend. After pursuing one red herring lead the culprit is the female Vice Principle of the School, whose speciality is chemistry and who had an illegal sexual affair with the young man in question who she privately tutored and who wished to punish him and the girl when he rejected her someone of his own age. Underpinning this story line was a mini debate about whether drug should be made legal like alcohol and then controlled, that parents do not know what they teenage children are doing, and the need for the Catholic Church to be more open about the problems it as with some of its clergy and in its educational and other social facilities. There was nothing original about the episode but will have served a useful purpose.
I chose my lunch with care, French Pain rather than baguette cut into two portions and filled with a French made salami Le Justin Bridou 200g which I thick sliced and then both in their entirety accompanied by two and a half large glasses of an Italian Spumante, medium dry, and drinking the rest with a pork shop an a salad mixture from Morrison’s which included Feta cheese, black olives, bacon, ham pieces, spaghetti, pasta twirls cheese flakes, onion pieces, a great feast, finished with strawberries.
Later I watched an edition of master chef in which amateur cooks seek to become professionals through a series of challenges and competitive experiences. The food is always extraordinary with emphasis on flavours, textures and presentation. And of the kind where a three course meal with selected wine will cost £100 per head. I had been watching Spurs at home to A C Milan where they held out to win the tie with their away goal. What occurred to me is he cost to fans who travel on a regular basis as well as having the occupation and family lifestyle to enable such a commitment.
I also watched two and three quarter films. The first was 2012 again. Another end of world experience which despite all the spectacular destruction and losses of life in their billions several hundred thousand human being survive representing about 50 nations, heads of state and their governments, security services, selected individuals who can contribute to the redevelopment of the human race plus those willing to purchase the continuation plus those able to contribute one billion euros a time. There was a time when I would have seen myself in the role of the President of the USA electing to stay with his people, trying to comfort as disaster upon disaster struck where as now it would be good to be like the ancient Tibetan man who was able to join the survival party through one of his sons.
The reason for the natural destruction of planet earth is that the rays of the sun, in this instance called neutrinos instead of providing warmth are also heating up the earth‘s core in microwave effect so that new volcanic activity on an unprecedented scale will occur, the planet will become unstable which substantial seismic activity shifting the continental masses as well as the North and South Poles coupled with devastating earthquakes and Tsunamis covering continental masses. When this is discovered the major nations unite in secret to devise a way of surviving which is not immediately disclosed to the audience, and then as a spacecraft, a solution which has been used in previous science fiction from the 1950’s. In this instance we then discover that giant ships with reinforced sides have been created, called Arks, with at one point helicopters transferring animals two by two.
The fundamental questions raised are who should be saved and when should everyone been told the truth? Do you tell someone they have an incurable disease and when? Who gets what in life and why. Age old questions retold in the latest most spectacular fashion. Of course the best way is to tell their story through the eyes of a small group of individuals especially children and the aged, pets and people we can identify with.
In this film we concentrate on two sets of individuals functioning at very different levels in society. Jackson Curtis(john Cusack) is a divorced science fiction writer with one published credit which only sold a few hundred copies and who earns his keep working as a limousine driver for a Russian oligarch with two sons and dumb blonde type mistress and pet dog as well as chief bodyguard. They are all to play leading roles later. He borrows the car to take his two children on a camping break leaving his former wife and her lover free for the weekend.
He takes them to his favourite spot in Yellowstone National Park only to find the area fenced off and the lake dried to a pond. He is collected by the military(Close encounters of the third Kind style) brought to the attention of Dr Adrian Helminsky the chief USA geological scientist whose Scientist friend in India is part of another team who forecasts what is likely to happen and the exponential speed of the changes and their consequences. Adrian has taken the information direct to the President’s Chief of Staff and now works direct to him and the President advising what is happening. The Yellowstone Park is over the St Andreas fault and become a hot spot, likely to be become a volcanic explosion of nuclear proportions and trigger everything else that happens.
By good fortune he is one of the few people who has read Jackson’s book, given to him by his father to read because it foresaw how nations would deal with the situation, in this instance the space craft solution. When off the camp site the family encounter a conspiracy fanatic with a radio internet site and online newsletter who is currently predicting what is happening and who shows Curtis his media cutting where a number of leading figures ranging from art experts to scientists have died. The art expert dies in the same spot and same way as Princess Diana.
Jackson and the two children are recalled home after their mother and lover are in a supermarket when a fault opens up separating them on each side of the divide along an aisle. Jackson after depositing the children is also recalled to take the Russian family to the airport and their private jet and as the nasty children depart one calls out that they will live while he will be among those who do not. Realising that what he has learnt adds up to a major catastrophe he hires a private plane and then rushes to the home of his ex wife and family and orders them to get in the car immediately with him. They think he has gone crazy as the Governor of California is telling everyone on TV the crisis is over and they are not to worry at the same point as the land all around the family home begins to break up. There is then the first of several fantastic journeys in which the family amazingly escape the spectacular horrors around them. When they get to the plane the pilot has been killed but fortunately the ex wife’s new partner had had a few flying lessons and is able to get the plane away with great skill and good fortune.
They go to Yellowstone Park where the conspiracy guru has a map showing where the ships, assumed to be space ships are located. When they arrive Jackson finds the guru is broadcasting from the top of a nearby peak and takes the camper van broadcasting and research centre to him and back with one of the children in another hair raising travel, and then finds the map before the plane takes off and this time the volcanic eruption is of nuclear proportions. The problem they now find is that the centre for the ships is in China Tibet and they need a larger plane. They make their way to the airport when they find the plane of the Russian oligarch stranded but he finds their is a cargo jet full of Russian cars attending a trade exhibition. The chief security man and partner of the ex wife somehow manage to get the plane off the ground as everything is destroyed around them. Their aim is to refuel in Hawaii but the state is now a mass of molten rock so they continue knowing they will only get to somewhere in the South China sea. However when they arrive in the area they find that the land mass has already shifted and the plane comes down close to the departure site. They are picked up by Chinese Military helicopters They take the oligarch and his children who has he correct boarding pass but leave his mistress together with the Jackson family. The Russian bodyguard has given up his life in getting the plane down on the ice. Fortunately the family encounter a worker at the site, his Buddhist brother and their parents.
It is now time to return to the macro scene. The Black President of the United States is portrayed as a kindly man who wife has died from cancer and whose daughter has been part of an organisation collecting the great artefacts from around the world, including the Mona Liza so they can be stored in safety from terrorists with replicas almost as good as the originals. When she hears of the death of the art expert in the Parisian road tunnel her father explains that she is to become one of a handful of individuals to know the truth about what is happening.
This raises the issue of the relatives of those involved who have tickets for the great escape. The father of geologist is a recovering alcoholic jazz musician on an cruise liner with a friend who has not had contact with his son who has married an Asian woman. The son is able to say goodbye to his father who has a drink and his friend is able to contact and speak to his grand daughter before disaster strikes and he is unable to speak to his son and daughter in law. The mother of the chief of staff has decided to stay home with her friends. The President decides to stay with his people as does the Italian head of state who stand with his family at the Vatican. Eventually an aircraft carrier swept in by a Tsunami flattens the White House, the Vatican is destroyed and the cruise liner is flipped over in an instant.
Earlier in the film we are privy to the evacuation of communities in Tibet and the enforced Labour of young men including the brother of the Buddhist monk who is separated from his aging parents. The reason for the disruption is the creation a new major dam project where the world leaders have arranged for the Arks to be built. My impression was that each would hold 400000 but the Wikipedia notes state that the overall total is 400000. Because the speeding up of the process not all the Arks are completed so that there are only four to take the final selection of survivors and one of the four is damaged leaving thousands stranded at the base.
In the film there is crisis upon crisis as the family make their way on an Ark which is also that with the geology scientist and the daughter of the USA President. The Russian Oligarch dies but manages to save his sons. The partner of the ex wife also dies. The husband nearly does not make it but manages to free the hydraulic system which enables the Ark to become water tight and use its engines and avoid being crushed against the remains of Mount Everest. The film ends as the three Arks stay afloat while the dramatic changes to surface of the earth planet take place. They find that what was South Africa becomes the place where they can begin a new society. They are able to open the hatches to breathe the air again naturally. There is hope for the individual we have come to know. The sci fi writer and his family, the scientist and the President’s daughter who reads the copy of the sci fi novel which the scientist has brought with him, never expecting to have seen the author and his children again.
There is also a different ending in the DVD version where the Ark is shipwrecked on a Island and before this the geologist who has advised the government finds that his father has survived on the cruise ship where he was a musician.
The film asks the question how do set about deciding who is saved and who is not? World leaders, religious leaders, bankers and business giants, medics and scientists, sportsmen, artists, entertainers and the media, together with their families? What of those who built the Arks and their families? What of the balance between old and young, the physically able and the disabled? Do you include convicts and drug addicts? Do you include the military and airforce instrumental in getting the chosen to the Arks and what abut the makers, the builders the cleaners, the cooks and bottle washers? Surely this is something all government will have decided long ago in their What/If scenario‘s?
In November of last year I spent a week rereading Brideshead Revisited and watching DVD’s of the original Television series after going to see the two hour film version. In several pieces I attempted to describe each of the three works and to the extent to which the film and the TV communicated the original novel by Evelyn Waugh. On Saturday while was I returning from the Carmen in 3D experience I recorded a showing of the film using my Sky Box and today seemed appropriate to view again the magic of life at Oxford University and my one short visit to Venice.
The film provides an overview of the story, dipping in and out, providing only glimpses of life as an undergraduate with no intent or ambitions for the academic life which I disapproved yet found fascinating. The story is that of Charles Ryder who lives with his father in a comfortable upper middle class house close to Paddington station. His father is of independent means with his own limited circle of friends while Charles appears to have acquired no circle from childhood and boarding school and cannot wait for any opportunity to escape from distant and meaningless communication with his father.
At Oxford his serious cousin warns against his allocation of a room in college in the front quadrangle on the ground floor and this is quickly borne out when Lord Sebastian Flyte is sick into his room from beyond a window having been out drinking with his aristocratic chums from Eton and a camp South American with a slight speech impediment who appears to have been the object of Sebastian’s attentions until he resolves to make amends to Charles by inviting him to an arranged luncheon in his college rooms and taking him up. The film is more blatant about the nature of the love which develops between Sebastian and Charles, something which is picked upon by those closest to Sebastian, particularly his devout Catholic and controlling mother, Lady Marchmain played in the film by the always excellent Emma Thompson.
She quickly sees Charles, for what he is, an ambitious social climber who falls in love first with the family country house and then the eldest daughter, Julia, whereas Sebastian torn between his love of life and Charles and the controlling Catholicism of his mother wants to keep Charles to himself and away from his family. Sebastian insists they drive immediately back to Oxford on the first visit Charles makes to Brideshead where he is introduced to Nanny and also the family chapel when he learns that Julia and her mother are also returning.
Having established a relationship over their first year, Charles is something at a loss when he returns home for the long summer vacation and jumps at the opportunity to visit and stay at Brideshead on receipt of a telegram from Sebastian saying he has been in an accident which proves to be only a damaged bone in his foot playing croquet. Julia is sent to collect Charles from the railway station before going off again on her social outings her mother has arranged after being presented at Court bur where suitor are carefully selected among Catholic families of devotion and wealth.
To understand Brideshead the book and the original TV series it is necessary to understand the perspective of the Marchmain’s aristocratic Catholicism, the gradations of class and the sexual norms and taboos of the era in which the book was written, between the two World Wars. Lady Marchmain’s puritanical religion has driven her life loving husband into the arms of a worldly Italian and the mist hedonistic of Italian cities, along with Rio and New Orleans, then Berlin as well as Paris. He is played by Michael Gambon whose performance is on a par with that of Olivier in the TV series.
Lady Marchmain initially sees Charles as a responsible young man devoted to her son, so she encourages the relationship recommending that he accompanies him and her eldest daughter when they want to accept the invitation from their father to holiday with him in Venice. She does this despite the insistence of Charles that he is an atheist and not an agnostic. In Venice two things happen, he learns from a conversation with Marchmain’s mistress of the difference between British Catholicism which was then alleviating and uncompromising while the Italians live as they wish and then confess their sins periodically, do the required penance and continue as before. He also wants Julia and mistakes a moment of passion during carnival as the start of an ongoing relationship leading to marriage. On return Lady Marchmain attempts to cut Charles from the lives of her children. This includes young Cordelia who is fascinated by the atheism of Charles and hopes to convert him. She is destined for a nunnery although the eldest son and heir is beyond influence, aware of his responsibilities, social position, need to maintain the estate which includes a London House. His faith is true and unshakeable. So as to reinforce the separation Lady Marchmain announces the engagement of Julia to an American of property, who converts to Catholicism while Sebastian embarrasses the party by expressing his grief at the betrayal of his love for Charles by Charles’s ambitions for his sister.
Charles is disappointed that Sebastian does not take up with him again when they return to Oxford, especially on finding that his friend is escaping more into alcohol to escape the attentions of a Catholic minder appointed by his mother.
After the separation Sebastian heads for Morocco no doubt via Gibraltar where he lives as a subject to a dominant, and Charles is sent by terminally ill Lady Marchmain to find her son and bring him home. Unfortunately he is also terminally ill and mother and son are not reconciled.
Charles becomes successful as a painter and is courted and then marries by the sister of one Sebastian’s aristocratic Eton and Oxford chums. He then travels alone to South America to live and paint for two years and his wife joins him on board the Atlantic crossing back from New York. She takes to her bed with sea sickness while Charles encounters Julia, who is estranged from her husband who has taken up control and residence at Brideshead having bailed out the financially struggling elder brother. The two become lovers and live together although this is a problem for the Catholicism of Julia, reinforced when they go to Brideshead to see her husband and seek his agreement for a divorce. He agrees for the price of two of Charles’s paintings, something which shocks Julia but more significantly is the attitude of her elder brother, who announces he is to marry a widow with children, someone who will not be able to accept Julia because of her adultery.
Her father returns to the family home when he becomes seriously ill and on his death bed, the lifelong disbeliever, regains his faith and accepts the last rites of his church. This has a profound affect on Julia who decides that she cannot marry or continue to live with Charles.
The films opens with Charles an Officer in the British Army in World War 2 awaiting to go to France as part of the D Day offensive. His regiment is stationed at Brideshead with the House the headquarters, and he visits the chapel where he was taken on his first visit and after the first meal with the family, Lady Marchmain insisting. Charles learns that the elder brother was killed in the Blitz and that Julia is alive and an army reservist. In the chapel he lights a candle after dipping his hands in Holy Water and anointing himself. He leaves the candle alight when he leaves after first moving to extinguish.
I was not surprised that the film failed to excite critics or the box office. After all it depicts a lifestyle which only has appeal to those decreasing few within British society who are aristocratic or are socially ambitious and having something to offer. He film is no more than a pictorial aide memoiré to the book and the TV series, although the photography is brilliant, the mood creating effective and the acting of high class. The film will lack appeal to the average weekend audience and will displease those who know the originals, but who cares, not I?
All three, the book, the TV series and the film remain important to me for several reasons. The relationship which I once had with a young woman from a wealthy and socially connected Jewess, whose mother counselled against a serious relationship with me. She was not the first to wisely do so. Secondly my own wrestles with Catholicism and relationship with my mother. But most of all because of my experience of being a student and then living and working In Oxford and Oxfordshire which commenced 50 years ago last autumn and that one brief visit to Venice as experiences of London life at all levels of society. It was a great day.
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