For the past eight weeks I have been emotionally gripped by several aspects of my experience, the resurrection of my own discoveries of historical crimes of physical and sexual violence against children in public care by staff employed to protect the present and future welfare, concerns about my health both with remain and the plight of other affected by the weather,
The interesting aspect of the government response from the coalition government and the media was that for the first six week there was limited concern. The number of homes including farms affected on the Somerset levels , a reclaimed flood land was under 500 and the issue appeared strait forward. The decision had been taken not to dredge the river Severn tributaries because of environmental considerations so that with excessive rainfall the water table filled leaving no where for surplus water to drain away quick enough. Now after the fuss huge pumps have been acquired from Holland at great costs I assume several times the cost of the dredging and which together with funds to help the farmers reclaim their land and a sum of £5000 per household to improve defences for the future short sighted economic policies restricting the budget and professional judgements have proved costly in terms of emotional impact on people, livelihoods in some instances and for the treasury and other departments where contingency funds are being raided.
Worse was to come as a great storm with hurricane force winds put the main coastal line into the west country out of action for months as the combination of wind and spring sea high tides ripped apart coastal defences. The storm has been followed by three others destroying property, cutting off electricity and transport because of falling trees and broken power cables. The three storms have swept in from the Atlantic and up the west coast from Cornwall to Cumbria.
Fortunately the loss of life has been limited to less than half a dozen.
And then there has been the impact of several months rain falling on already saturated grounds which has caused even more damage to homes on two of our great rivers The river Thames and the Severn where over a thousand homes have been flooded, a small number comparatively because of the vast expenditure on flood defences without which the damage would have affected tens of thousands of properties although I am still to find out if the defences held out in several areas.
In Worcestershire the cricket ground is again under water but the defences prevented thousands of properties although with only one of two roads into the city open many people decided against the hour long journey and more which getting into the city involves can usually involve which I experienced on my cricket trip there even with the park and ride scheme. It was along the Thames from Oxfordshire and Berkshire through to Surrey including as far as Teddington Lock and severe flood warnings have been issued,
At first was evident that the owners of most properties in the affected areas were left on their own to protect but the media had the impact of forcing the coalition into unpredicted action although least weekend the blame game had commenced with government minister contradicting each other over issues of responsibility. By this weekend the Prime Minister the government had given singled minded attention to the unfolding dramatic crisis implying that money was now no problem. Soon some authorities were charging huge sums for sandbags the government again stepped in saying this was wrong and that authorities could claim back such expenditure at 100%. The army was deployed with 2200 deployed including naval and air personnel with several thousand others standing by. The two princes were noted yesterday helping military colleagues with a ten hour shift moving sandbags to defend properties. All the political leaders became visible touring the most affected areas,
Even here on the East Coast the wind and driving rain was unpleasant and a performance of Don Giovanni relayed from the Royal Opera House London was interrupted several times because of the wind force affected Satellite transmission, Cineworld responded by offering a small chocolate drink during the interval and a free pass to another show,
Some of the images shown on TV will be with me for the rest of my lifetime, huge waves engulfing three storey buildings, a road impassable and in one instance on the Somerset Levels, flood water reaching the height of a door knocker.
What of the future and which brings me to the first lecture of the spring series of public lectures at Newcastle University where the speaker was the new chief executive of the National trust an organisation with an annual income of half a billion with about a third of this profit in order to acquire new properties, including in recent times 700 miles of coastline and to keep other in good condition. The approach of the Trust was made quite clear on three of the questions raised. The first was on fracking where the Trust has said no; the second on wind power which they are not against supporting energy creation which does not depend on fossil fuels, but against farms and sites which destroys the perspectives of natural beauty; and finally perhaps the most significant area fro development water retention on the uplands to river with reforestation and bio diversity recreation including some flooding in upland valleys although whether thy will be too little too at remains to be determined. What is clear is the government must go back to drawing board in terms of expenditure, speed of work and heights and nature of the barriers especially to support the transport system of road and rail.
Now to continue film catch up and first the period dramatization of the novel by Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina and her adulterous affair in pre revolution Russia, Anna who is married to an influential elder statesman who is much older travels to Moscow to convince Prince Oblonsky to take back her husband and father of their five children after he had an affair with the governess. While Anna is successful in her mission she becomes quickly infatuated with a rogue about town Count Vronsky and which is main subject of the film.
There is one important sub plot concerning the sister of Princess Oblonsky, Kitty, who at first turns down the offer of marriage from Constantin Levin a wealthy estate owner who manages alongside his tenants and as no inter in the social life of Moscow and St Petersburg. The sister is hoping to marry Constantine Vronsky and where she is successful as a family attempt to break his relationship with Anna..
The affairs between Anna and Vronsky develops and at first the husband refuses a divorce but then anger at the situation take hold refuses to allow Anne to have any contact with their son. Anna nearly dies giving birth to the child of Vronsky and later when he abandons her throw herself under a train. Her husband returns from country life and brings up the Vronsky child has part of his household,
Meanwhile Levin remeets Kitty whose marriage to Vronsky has also ended and they not only marry but she willingly rejects the social life of cities and takes to the country life working alongside her husband on the estate. She also shows understanding towards the brother of Levin who has commenced an affair with a prostitute and becomes dangerously ill. He is brought back to the estate with his woman living separately on the estate, However after nursing the brother back to good health Kitty also invites the woman into the household and she, her husband and gamily become the moral force in the tale and symbol of the Russia of the future. The story as the novel is a great one but I was put off from seeing the film in cinema theatre because of the production which places the story in the form of a traditional theatre setting although it is expanded at times but misses out on the grandeur and splendour of Russian cities and landscape as in Dr Zhivago.
A film which I enjoyed seeing again was based this time on the true story of Gladys Aylward the Christian Mission who story was told by Alan Burgess in the Small Woman 1957 and hen made into the film The Inn of Sixth Happiness in 1958 which starred Ingrid Bergman. From a working class family working as a housemaid she spent her life savings in 1932 to travel by train across Europe to China against best advice having been rejected by a missionary society of her faith.
She worked with n old missionary to found the Inn of Sixth happiness which provide accommodation for travellers and the goods trains of pack animals but her success came later when she took on the job as foot inspector for the government persuading mothers and their husbands to stop the practice of binding the feet of young girls. This established the confidence of the people which was prove so valuable later, bringing over 100 children to safety through mountains from the advancing Japanese forces in 1939 , returning to the UK. She was denied re-entry into China by the Communists and settled in Taiwan where she founded and ran an orphanage until her death in 1970 aged 68. Various books, films and documentaries have been written and produced with a book in 2005 and a documentary as recent as 2008. The Ingrid Bergman film had Robert Donat plying the wise local Mandarin who makes the best use of the young woman and converts to Christianity because of her courage and character. There is also a love interest implanted with Curt Jurgens although in reality this cockney small stature woman never kissed a man and she hated the inaccuracies in the film with its suggestion that she game up the work for the Chinese colonel. She did become a citizen of China in 1936.
The Master was also seen on TV and a curious film, the last of Philip Seymour Hoffman with Jaquin Pheonix and Amy Adams. Pheonix plays someone who had a good second World war and finds it difficult to settle down and is drawn to Hoffman who heads a religious cult with anything goes sex between its members which fits into Phoenix’s obsession with the subject. The extent to which he becomes the right hand man of the cult alienates him from other members with a longer track record and at one point he leaves and goes on the road and in search of the love of his life who he abandoned after the war only to find she is married and settled. He returns to cult but is forced into a choice of devoting the rest of his life to The Cause or leaving. I am not clear what we are supposed to conclude from the ending or what the film is actually about.
A film where its purpose is clear throughout is Hitchcock and the making of Psycho which gave him a new lease of life and financial success in later years. However I thought the film boring and failing to engage Anthony Hopkins is brilliant Hitchcock and Helen Mirren as his wife with Scarlett Johansson as Janet Leigh. The film does bring out the importance of his wife to his career as artistic collaborator.
I had a similar lack of engagement with Hyde Park on the Hudson where the advertised attraction is the visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to the country home of the USA President Franklin D Roosevelt mother. The royal visit designed to create support for the Britain as war with Germany loomed and opinion against any USA involvement was still strong is in fact the excuse for the story of the relationship between the president and a distant relative Margaret Daisy Suckley who he has had contact in the past and why he chose to invite her to join the family party at the war not clear to me.
There is evidence that during World War 1 the president did have an affair with one of the women part of the entourage at Hyde Park but no in relation to other women including Marguerite LeHand who is shown having a current affair with the disabled and sick President, and I addition to Lucy she mentions Dorothy Schiff w later admitted a relationship which is significantly different from a sexual affair. The same may well have applied to Suckley and the president where there is no evidence that they enjoyed each others company although it is said that she was persuaded to destroy correspondence between the two.
One film I enjoyed seeing again on TV was They who Dare, featuring Dirk Bogarde as the leader of a Commando group sent to Rhodes to knock out a couple of airfields and a sceptic sergeant played by Deholm Elliot as only the two are able to return to the submarine picking them up, and only one of the two airfields is successfully mined. The film also highlights the courage of local people including the children. The film was produced in 1954 and retains a favourite especially for those of us to who have visited Rhodes and visited the site of the Guns of Navaronne.
Three Colours White was also an impressive Polish/French film production(1994) which I enjoyed immensely. The Anti hero has come to France leaving the Polish Hairdressers where he was very popular and marries but is unable to consummate the marriage. He experiences a humiliating divorcee losing everything and his citizenship,
Penniless he comes a beggar and a chance meeting lead to an offer to get him home if he agrees to kill someone who wants to be killed. He is smuggled back in a large suitcase trunk, seen with the opening credits but is stolen by airport employees as part of a long running scam. However he makes it home and returns to the Hairdressers from which he first left for France.
He id able to become wealthy by buy land cheaply which he knows is about to be bought by big companies fro development and then uses the money to commenced a skill for and elaborate plan which see his former wife successfully prosecuted and imprisoned for his murder. But does this make him happy the last shot shown him distraught at what her has achieved.
I have previously appreciated Syrianna an important film with George Clooney and Matt Damon. Hence it is not appropriate to say enjoyment.
Matt Damon works as an energy analyst for a USA Firm based in Switzerland and is asked to attend with his family a party held at a Marbella Palace of Middle east potentate who operates a repressive regime. The purpose is to obtain oil interests, but disaster strikes were a faulty underwater cable in the swimming pool electrocutes one of the couples children. His wife returns to the USA with their other child and the marriage is effectively over/ In compensation the firm get the contract and later Matt accepts the offer of becoming adviser to the eldest son who wants to reform his country and use the wealthy to create a long term economy for the benefit of all the people. He is opposed by the younger son and the father so the son kills the father as a means of gain sole control of the company and whose approach has the support of the USA government.
Meanwhile George Clooney is a CIA man trying to stop illegal arms trafficking in the middle east and discovers a plot for a guided missile to be siphoned off and used in a convert operation to kill the eldest son of the Amir because of his socialist leanings. His search to find the missile takes him to the Lebanon where he is betrayed and torture but survives setting off to try and prevent the assassination. He fails and the Prince, his wife and Clooney are killed but not Damon ho had exchanged vehicle seats and is able to return home to be reunited with his wife and child.
There is a third storyline in which the Chinese move into the Middle East attempting to take over from the same firm with whom Damon has been dealing but which spells poverty for the Pakistani workers and their families already employed. The son of one of one goes to school to learn Arabic and is chosen to join a terrorist fundamentalist cell. The young man become the instrument for the use of the second missile on a tanker refinery centre for the oil company which is merging with another.
The fourth Story line involves double dealing within the CIA and financial under the table deals relating to the merger of the two oil companies. One of the key players ends up assassinated to cover the actions of others. Among those involved in film as with many Clooney enterprises are Christopher Plummer, William Hurt and Mark Strong
The original Young guns of Texas of 1962 featured the daughter of Alan Ladd and the son of Robert Mitcham, A young officer is expelled from West point because his brother appears to have run off with a huge sum in gold and traces him to a small community where he meets the daughter of Ladd whose father is very protective and sent East to avoid the attention of the son of Mitcham. With boys adopted father a sort of preacher they join forces with the former officer in search of the brother and the gold chased by the girl’s parents and his ranch hands deep into hostile India Country. Most of those they chase are killed by the Indians and group are rescued by the girl’s father but both father and young Ladd as well as most of the other are killed leaving the young officer to return the remaining gold to the army and to settle with girl who has inherited the ranch.
The Arrival is the latest TV viewed film released in 1996 with Charlie Sheen and also has Richard Schiff, again, Given the era this is an excellent tale in which the hero eventually discovered a network of 20 alien bases polluting the atmosphere escalating climate change although I did not understand why. They can shape shift to look like humans which creates problems for working out who is one of us or one of them. He and a female friend have some very narrow escapes but eventually manage to get the message though the airways alerting humanity. A sequel film was made two years later. I cannot wait
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