Glorious 39

Film Review

Stephen Poliakoff’s film the Glorious 39 is a suspenseful study of identity, class and paranoia set in the immediate period before the start of the Second World War. Romola Garai plays the adopted but eldest daughter of an aristocratic family whose life unravels as she progressively uncovers their complicity in a plot to dissociate Great Britain from the battle against Nazism unfolding in mainland Europe.

Avoiding the pitfall of presenting a far fetched action thriller, the director underplays the murder and espionage elements of the film to subtly study the deterioration of once secure familial relationships, as well as the suffocation and patronage of the highly cultured and excessively mannered pre war British nobility. Using classic suspenseful cinematic touches, the director heightens the viewer’s sense of the main protagonist’s immediate danger, her escalating isolation and deteriorating mental health, so much so that seemingly innocuous occurrences evoke irrational apprehension and a sense of extreme peril in the audience.

The accidental discovery of an intriguing gramophone recording that she stumbles on in the family’s barn, triggers the disappearance then murder of friends and close associates eventually revealing the full extent of her adoptive family’s involvement in a plot to undermine the war effort. These events are portrayed against the backdrop of palatial family homes the idyllic surrounding countryside and the misleading calm cleverly contrasts the insular life of the privileged rich with the gathering storm poised to engulf Europe.

The beloved daughters increasing alarm is frequently assuaged by her father, played by Bill Nighy a brilliant paragon of calm assurance and unctuous duplicity. Even at her worst moment when his actual evil intent is starkly exposed, he speaks to his daughter in such caring fatherly tones that it is possible to believe that he still harbours genuine concern for her. The erosion of her position as a cherished and beloved daughter culminates in the alienating revelation and discovery of her Romany heritage and the rising tension of her estrangement both grips and horrifies. Her outsider status is manipulated so comprehensively that her sanity becomes unhinged, isolated, desperate and times drugged, her captors undermine and fragment her tenuous hold on reality.

This enthralling film emphasizes the vulnerability of women in the pre war age, their dependence on social status for security and protection, without family and deprived of social connection whilst living in permanent anxiety with mental instability an inevitable outcome.

I Am a Serious Man -New Film

This new and totally absorbing film by the Coen brothers is replete with their customary stylistic idiosyncrasies, gentle yet farcical humour and off beat quirky characters through which they stunningly pull off an incisive and culturally accurate film. Based on elements of their own upbringing, set in a mid west Jewish American middle class suburb in the late sixties, the narrative of the film throws up a series of unpredictable yet believable circumstances, as it depicts a tsunami of familial and personal crises that engulf its main protagonist.

The unerring precision with which the Coen’s portray this passage of history, its claustrophobic banality and simmering unspoken emotional tension, induces in the viewer a state of suspended horror even nausea, at the grating awkwardness of everything it portrays.

The area where the film scores its greatest successes lies in the riveting portrayal of a huge variety of Jewish characters played, by an assumedly all Jewish cast. These actors vividly bring to life the tensions of the time through not expressing them. This is conveyed magnificently and simply through the acutely precise body language through which each actor imparts the alienation and mute isolation of the times as well as the characters from one another. As a subtle contrast to this stifling tone, the film refers at times obliquely and at others more directly to the countercultural seismic shifts occurring outside the perimeters of this enclosed world.

Ultimately bleak, the film traces the travails of Larry Gopnick, Physics Professor as he is sideswiped by a completely unexpected separation and possible divorce, blackmailed out of the family home and cringingly patronised by his wife’s intended new husband and bribed and blackmailed by a student potentially undermining an impending offer of tenure. Understandably he descends into a state of anguish, from which not one single acquaintance is able to assuage his deepening gloom. In desperation he seeks out two of three local Rabbis only to be offered glib platitudes or meaningless obscurantism.

The film within its own parameters is a triumph of convincing pathos, humour and whilst not nostalgic, an affectionate backward look at a very a specific time and place of a cultural rite of passage.

However stepping outside the Coen brothers’ milieu and seeing through, the artistic oeuvre that they inhabit, it is possible to discern certain cultural assumptions upon which the film is based. These presuppositions pervade the fabric of the film and render the overall message and content of the film a portrayal of a lost and nihilistically bereft humanity.

Whilst perfectly capturing the emptiness and isolation of modernity, the knowing almost sneering, poking of fun at human eccentricity, the nonexistence of any sense of underlying meaning or purpose in the lives of those portrayed, guarantee this movie carries the Coen’s typical filmic emotional undertow –their pervasive signature note of human futility and purposelessness. Whilst this film is not as much overt homage to the death drive as ‘No Country for Old Men’, ‘A Serious Man’ its ultimate longer term affect is to reduce art to smug irony.

LSE talk by Susan Neiman titled What Makes Heroes?

Susan Neiman is a moral philosopher and a distinguished scholar, she is director of the Einstein Forum and is used to asking big questions and making the tools of her academic discipline relevant to the average, thinking citizen.

She has authored a new book titled Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown Up Idealists and the topic of heroism is central to the book. I became enthused about her having read an interview with her in EnlightenNext magazine written by Elizabeth Debold.

In her talk at the LSE one of her central themes was to reconstruct our idea of heroism. For her Odysseus represents bears true hallmarks of heroism in contrast with the invulnerable Achilles who has been become our prevalent heroic archetype, modelling in her view, an infantilised hollow version of heroism. Odysseus is heroic because he uses his wits and guile and endlessly struggles to overcome he challenges and trials he faces. Unusually for a Greek myth he utilises no super powers or assistance of the Gods. It is these momentous efforts that make Odysseus heroic, this process moulds and shapes his humanity and character into one to which we should all aspire.

Another theme that emerged from her talk was that our most common heroes are usually ones that die, sometimes martyrs and almost always tragic and have generally tended to die for a noble cause. Nieman was emphatic that a dead hero was next to worthless because they let humans off the hook, if a hero dies their example is almost impossible to follow and therefore we consequently let go of our own aspirations to heroism.

She illustrated her argument with little known vignettes of what she regarded as true heroism what follows is one example. We all know about the man that lay in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square who was crushed, yet there was a more potent story in the background that got far less media exposure. A bus driver noting what was happening drove his bus forward to block the route of some the tanks and realising that the bus would be removed threw the keys of the bus away where they would not be found and remained by his bus.

Most of us worship Gandhi, Mandela, the Dalai Lama because they are distant and therefore safe and they personally, can have extremely little direct impact on our lives. Therefore there is very little impetus to desire for change. Philosophically she is deeply influenced by Kant and thus wants to reinvigorate ‘Enlightenment Heroism’. This includes having an awareness of ‘the difference between things as they are and things as they should be’.

This was a dense rigorously argued talk packed full of cultural philosophical and political references many of which were lost on me. However in addition to the authoritative call for a new type of heroism Susan thoroughly punctured many of the revered and jealously guarded tenets of postmodern culture. Heroes she argued inspire us to struggle to become more fully human. She is arguing for a re-evaluation of the terms good and evil honour and nobility because social theory has relegated the hero to the sterile term role model.

Initial Impresssions from SDi UK Summit 26-27 June 2009 with Don Beck

This post was written in response to the summary of the UK Summit event posted by Keith Rice on his blog

Keith as you have done the 'fill in' so well on the facts I shall not blog my own summary!!

This leaves me with the luxury of just adding a few qualitative background comments to your informative structure.

I was struck to begin with how Don adapted his teaching style to be more inclusive of the group and how he initially surfaced everyone’s thoughts on the current LIFE conditions in the UK. Then how he followed this by highlighting the PRIORITY Codes of each meme system and finally focused on the common BELIEFS and Worldviews of each system over the passage of the two days

His use of Chariots of Fire film and particularly the scene in the Scottish Church hit me with a tsunami of overwhelming BLUE. When I first watched this film many years ago I would have enjoyed the propriety and Britishness of the characters but would have been glad not to been present for the stultifying suffocation of that age.

What was shocking was that despite how many conventional ritualistic and bureaucratic structures still being present in our social and other institutions, yet the rigour of these blue values has almost been entirely erased from the social and personal culture sphere(including mine!)

Over the two days I found the feedback from non UK nationals very refreshing and the objectivity of their reflection on the positivity of UK or British culture was both useful and uplifting. Because of the peculiar lack of value, I personally place on these positive characteristics, I found I appreciated the foreign perspective more highly than the Brits!!

On day two I was hugely affected by the statement from the MP read aloud by Lynn Sedgemore. This conveyed so utterly positively, our unique nationalistic qualities and history. The relationship to British identity was resoundingly unequivocal and at the same balanced informed and resolutely as well as pointedly anti extremist. Interestingly the writer’s sense of self was so fused with responsibility and appreciation for British identity that it also contained a clarion call for the need for all Brits to move forward together. I was therefore completely gobsmacked that the piece was written by a British Asian former MP and Justice Minister Shahid Malik. The appreciation of British values was so accurate and unambiguous it made me think that this is the direction from where the reconstruction of British identity might arrive!!

More to be posted here on the two day summit.

Dr. Rupert Sheldrake: The Extended Mind, Morphic Resonance and Spiritual Experience

Notes based on a joint conference held by the Alister Hardy Trust and the London Science and Medical Network group at Kensington Unitarian Church 6th June 2009.

Rupert gave a perfectly organised and cohesive talk on this topic straying into areas that he does not frequently cover in public forums. Interestingly he talked about the use of psychedelics to catalyse religious experiences throughout the history of spirituality and also divulged the positive lasting impact of his own personal experimentation with these drugs. He included this comment within a comprehensive categorisation of the types of activity that induce or generate religious experiences.

He followed this by describing three theories of mind; the materialist view which he claims has failed to prove its case, those metaphysical theories that are in essence platonic because they claim that there are laws outside of nature that govern the mind. Finally he explained his own theories and evidence for what he terms the extended mind.

He then talked about his appreciation of religious place, ceremony and ritual observance, commenting on how acts of ceremony and liturgy repeated consistently over time provide us with a direct ancestral connection. Those identical acts performed by our forbearers have set up a sympathetic field of Morphic resonance that is so embedded in sacred spaces that they can induce spiritual experiences in people simply by entering them.Rupert also extrapolated on his recent musings on the nature of consciousness and the past as well as the realm of possibility.

In the plenary session he depicted his own views of the 'credit crunch of materialist science'. He states that conventional science has constantly offered promissory notes on it’s conviction that a complete explanation of various phenomena in scientific terms is not far off. He stated it was time to insist on an end to these promised explanations. Especially because these scientists have cornered all the available funding using just one modality of scientific research.

He proposed a Littlewoods football pools betting exchange, whereby scientists had to declare specific dates and then bet their personal finances on these predictions! Furthermore he proposed an ‘ecumenogenesis’ of western life sciences in order to properly pool information to create a more convincing explanation of the unexplained and conveniently ignored gaps in the current scientific model .

In the break I commented to Rupert that his musings on consciousness the past and possibilities had move forward since the time he had spoken on the topic, he replied by stating that it was constantly on his mind as he tried to come up with a coherent explanation for the relationship between past present and future.

The International

I went to see this film on Sunday at the Holloway Odeon; and I have to say it was more than disappointing. The key characters fulfill their stereotypical roles with Clive Owen appearing as if by rote angry, unkempt, brutalised, horrified and angry again, as with Naomi Watts who is sorely under utilised as the female lead, conforming religiously to genre type. This was not the actors' but the writers fault, the producers of Bourne and Bond at times, overcome incredulity, through audacity and stunning action, however the International fails to deliver on all of these fronts.

Despite the topicality of the subject matter, essentially the storyline failed to engage me enough to suspend disbelief in the lead characters. A summary of the plot is as follows;

Interpol agent Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) and Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) are determined to bring to justice one of the world's most powerful banks, the International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC). Uncovering illegal activities including money laundering, arms trading, and the destabilization of governments, Salinger and Whitman's investigation takes them from Berlin to Milan, where the IBBC assassinates an Italian prime ministerial candidate. (from wikipedia)

What attracted my to see this film was the stunning look of the trailers and the production values implicit in such ravishing appearances. The scenery and the backdrops are mainly breathtaking, particularly the scene featuring the Italian arms factory and shots of the precipitous cliff edge route away from the site. Additionally the building and location shoots are visually poetic, their imposing immenseness conjuring up resonances of feudal castles and palaces of a more mythological era.

Armin Muelher-Stahl is very credible and skilfully underplays his role as an ex Stasi Head of Security for IBBC and his character allows some (shock!) moral complexity to enter into the film. Furthermore Ulrich Thomsen a Jonas Skarssen , the president of IBBC plays the head of the evil empire as a normal businessman, coldly calculating the best way to further the banks financial goals without any hint of sadism or megalomania, whether these portrayals are down to superior acting or better drawn characters it is hard to tell.

These positive points aside it leaves me wishing for more nuanced ambivalent portraits of the ‘good guys’. Who in the International are so preposterously always doing the right thing, that the evil banks employees, partially steal the show and demonstrate to some degree the motivations that caused the current economic crisis.

Don Beck:Dancing the Integral Vision

A day workshop with Don Beck in on March 14th 2009

The whole event was phenomenally successful as over 100 people attended, which were far more than the forty we had initially envisaged.The participation was of a very high calibre and we were very happy to host so many delegates at the EnlightenNext London centre.

I thought though that I would write about two of the interludes during the workshop might were of greatest interest to me.

The most electric part of the day was after Don Beck played the video (below) titled `I am a Reborn American' Afterward he canvassed the audience to feedback their experience of the video whilst it was playing. Apparently the Norman Lear media people, in the wake of Obama are seeking to unite the country and leave the divisive Bush legacy behind. The videos producers have approached Don and asked him about how to improve the video and widen it's appeal.

This video was a masterly way to surface the implicit assumptions and values held within our cultures' memetic structures. The video provoked some strong reactions as well as bringing to light many of the darker shades of pluralistic (green) from Europeans and an occasional an American alike!

To my mind the most negative responses highlighted the inadequacies of a global worldview.When you watch the video below at the bottom of the blog you might be interested to monitor your own responses. I deliberately have not explained too much because the it provokes and evokes a wide range of responses.Post your responses on this blog!

The other aspect of the workshop that was most fascinating to me was Don's intention to reawaken the healthy aspects of British Identity; that impulse that travelled explored and civilized the world as well as the innovation and creativity for which our nation is noted. In fact he titled his presentation `From Rule Britannia to Cool Britannia to Integral Britannia.'

I think Don was trying to elicit a sense of responsibility for the world/spiral and encourage us Brits to take global problems on using the knowledge that Spiral Dynamics contains.You might be amused to know that most of us Brits drew a bit of blank here!

Partly the postmodern deconstruction, of the British colonial and imperial legacy has left a vacuum in our identity, which combined with British reserve uptightness and cynicism means a healthy British identity seems a long way off!! I questioned the panel at the end on this subject and only found one of the responses remotely inspiring.

I believe that Don was also encouraging this because our British tolerance of extremism and inertia around a positive sense of British identity would actually allow those radicals with greater convictions to fill the ideological/political vacuum and ensure that they thrive in the absence of a robust opposition.

Though very worthy, obviously a healthy nationalism would preserve numerous vital forms and structures here; it still feels retrogressive to reconstruct a nationalist identity given that global consciousness leaves that behind. But a healthier Brit identity could be helpful given the challenges we might face. Perhaps the Kosmic consciousness could help figure this conundrum out!!

As a volunteer at EnlightenNext London I am and have been a key organiser, promoter and networker supporting the work and the mission to transform consciousness and culture. As well as meeting numerous people and going to an eclectic range of London talks and events, I spend hours writing copy for various Enlightennext events, sending e-mails and posting web listings to publicise these various happenings.

This year key tasks outside of working hours, have included the following; I have written copy and promoted Ursula King's talk at the Islington centre on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: An evolutionary mystic with a global spiritual vision, worked with the London Integral Circle to present the Don Beck workshop Don Beck Spiral Dynamics in Action: Dancing the Integral Vision this last weekend do see the report below. The tasks for Don included a huge copy writing fest a massive mail out, endless to and froings via e-mail with Don, countless discussions on how to best organise present and partner, for an event that turned out to be a massive success.

Other work in the pipeline has included more copy writing and consultation around a partnership with Alternatives St James in Piccadilly for the third in a fantastic series of dialogues between Rupert Sheldrake and Andrew Cohen Creativity, Habit and Freedom . In addition I have been prinicpally responsible for drafting the copy for another EnlightenNext partnership event with Olivier Mythodrama Associates titled 'Men and the Quest:A weekend evolutionary journey for Men, with Richard Olivier, Linus Roach and Chris Parish. More on this to follow.

A Record of an Emerging Culture?

The profound ramifications of Charles Darwin's scientific model of evolution are still barely unfolding within human understanding. The implications of his work stretch, far beyond the mere materialistic ordering of cosmic, planetary and ecological human development.

Whilst Darwin's discoveries, inform most contemporary scientific and technological developments to some degree. What is rarely considered, by even the most educated individual, is what Darwin's discovery implies, for the bio, socio, cultural and spiritual development of the human race as whole. Those few individuals that have deeply explored this subject, frequently characterise this approach as an evolutionary worldview.

This aim of this blog is to be offer, informative and educational content, concerning those events, notions, happenings and ideas, that might shape the progress of a culture based on an evolutionary view of human development. To some degree it will be a personal journal that aims to record my efforts to explore develop and link to people, events and experiences in London , that might apply, or uncover what it means to live according to evolutionary principles. My fellow pioneers charting these frontiers, believe that evolution has not stopped, but needs to be engaged with individually and socially at the level of consciousness and culture.

Though these evolutionary principles have only recently come to light within human consciousness, a growing number people are discovering, that the most exciting and positive way forward globally for all, is underpinned by an evolutionary worldview. This revolutionary perspective offers the immense possibility of utterly positive future for the human race.

This worldview is emerging through the efforts of a few radical, visionaries, thinkers and leaders who are integrating, science, religion and culture to create and formulate, a comprehensive rational and meaningful meta narrative, of the entire human story from before the big bang until now and forward to the future . These include but are not limited to Andrew Cohen, EnlightenNext the organisation and magazine, Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute, Brian Swimme, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Robert Godwin, James Gardner and many others.

As a former close student of Cohen and volunteer at EnlightenNext London, I wanted to add a voice and views on this blog, concerning the development and implications of an evolutionary worldview.