Opinion | Matt Wingett

English? Yes… But Not Patient Enough…

By Matt on Thursday, January 6, 2011

I’ve just watched one of the least enjoyable movies I have ever had the displeasure of enduring, and it’s not what you might consider a “usual suspect” for such a distinguished honour…

It was as much a surprise to me that The English Patient, starring Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas was the culprit as it would have been if I had spotted a crashed biplane on the surface of the moon.

It’s funny, because it really did take years for me to get to this movie. Every time I saw it lurking in the DVD drawer, or scheduled on the box, something in me recoiled. But I eventually decided I would have to succumb to its call. Anthony Minghella was, after all, from the Isle of Wight. I have eaten his family’s overpriced ice cream and sworn at the ice cream sellers who rip you off on Southsea beach, just across the water from “his” island. We have things in common. So watching it would be showing solidarity with a local boy, right?

Oh! That I had left it out of the player!

So, what exactly is wrong with The English Patient? (- Apart from being hideously burned and looking like a mummy, obviously.) That was the question I began to ask myself when I got about an hour in and found my attention wandering despite efforts to shepherd it back. I had the feeling I used to get when reading worthy books that were supposed to be masterpieces, yet plodded on towards the most predictable of endings. This movie was the filmic equivalent of something by Chekhov or Hardy: ploddingly dull.

Now, there’s no doubt The English Patient is beautifully filmed, although, somehow, not beautifully enough – despite all of the soft shadows on fleshy sands, implying the curves of a woman’s body. It has pretty people in it, although they might have been either more real or more pretty. And the costumes look authentic, down to the German uniforms, and the leather flying jackets, the white cotton dress. The scenes set in Khan Al Khalili look real and sumptuous; the desert looks exotic – mostly. Everything is visually engaging in a 1970s Turkish Delight tv advert sort of a way. So that’s not where the problem lies.

Nope, the thing that did it for me was that I actually didn’t care one tiny little bit for any of the weird characters, who wandered about the desert having their affairs. Not one of them aroused in me the slightest feeling of sympathy, whatsoever. From the autistically deadpan Ralph Fiennes with that strange face he has that looks like it has the texture, flexibility and expressiveness of a crusty bloomer baked in the desert sun, via Colin Firth who comes across as neither hearty nor dull, through to the cold and emotionless Kristin Scott Thomas, nearly nothing engaged my sympathy. Experiencing a series of emotionless faces on a sandy background simply left me wondering if this is what the English really were like before the War. If it were the case, I decided to thank the next German I met for starting something that at least collapsed a culture that was so horrendously repressed that it didn’t once know how to throw its posture off the symmetrical, or put a glimmer in its eye. I might as well have been on Tattooine, so alien were these Sandpeople.

Which of course, left the love affair that was to determine the fates of thousands to be a completely incomprehensible nonsense. Why did Kristin Scott Thomas’ Katherine not recognise the weirdly distant Count Laszlo as a stalker? Why did she cheat on her perfectly serviceable husband who had it all: money, looks, kindness and an aeroplane? There’s no explanation. I charge the film makers with deception. And Exhibit A, your honour, is Breadface’s pulling technique. Ready for this?

He stares at her a bit.

Yes, that’s it. That’s what brings the erudite, brilliant, funny but cold Katherine to the conjunctive bath tub. One would think that with so much going on in her head, it might take more than staring at her a bit to cause her to open her legs to him.

But apparently staring at her a bit really is enough. As is talking in a dull monotone. And not letting anyone know what you’re thinking. Useful tips, which I am sure I have tried to less than erotic effect. That Katherine woman is a singular individual, that’s for sure! If only all socially inadequate stuffed shirts could meet someone like her! I’m sure I’ve read of people in the modern age who’ve tried that staring thing, and they either got arrested, beaten up, or had a restraining order put on them.

And here is the problem with the movie: everything that follows from him staring at her a bit seems as nonsensical as his staring at her a bit does. For another hour, a parade of faces looking disengaged and dull goes by, and I find myself looking once again for how much more of this I will have to endure. At the end of two hours, I start talking to the living room saying: “Please, oh movie, just surprise me.” By now Katherine has been abandoned by Laszlo in a cave as he looks for a doctor. But we all know they’re going to die. And the fact that he sacrifices most of Northern Egypt to the Germans for the sake of recovering her corpse does not seem such a romantic gesture. It just seems as inexplicable as the rest of Breadface’s behaviour throughout.

True, on the other side, Juliet Binoche does save the scenes set in a monastery where she has holed up with Laszlo, and she does have a fleeting romance with a Sikh Bomb Disposal Officer, which adds a medium amount of spice to the proceedings. They talk a bit about Imperial attitudes, and then he talks to Laszlo about how much he dislikes Kipling. But hey, big deal. Binoche’s caring, kind face that actually displays emotions is not enough to engage the attention, because a narrative would also be useful at this point. This very point clearly perplexed Ondaatje and Minghella, who introduced to the plot the thumbless “Moose” Caravaggio. But all he does is go around being a bit sinister in a half-hearted kind of a way and muttering about past lives and revenge, and that is meant to produce the narrative tension the film is lacking.

Once again it’s not enough. There is no narrative tension. Everyone lives these internalised, introspective lives, and then they die. Of course, it was always going to end unhappily, as we knew it would from the opening scene. Besides, we all know how the love triangle must end in this sort of a movie. It all seems very French, what with all that predictable misery that comes from Breadface and the Ice Queen getting it together. I wondered whether Binoche had been included because it might fire off a few cultural buttons about the Gallic obsession with doomed love affairs. A kind of shortcut to class.

And that’s the end of the movie. The Breadman becomes Toastman, the Ice Queen melts away in the cave of the swimmers, the Moose ends up getting married unexpectedly, and the Frenchwoman is left to seek her Sikh in a Christian church in an Italian town.

All very picturesque, but missing the passion, missing the feeling – and missing a cast of human beings that actually walk, talk and emote like human beings…

Perhaps a biplane really did crashland on the moon. I just wish that someone had told me before I watched it that all the characters were meant to be aliens.

Opinion Pleasures

Arts and Their Impact on Human Relations – by Maha Moussa

By Matt on Saturday, December 18, 2010

I have a guest writer on the blog today. I first met Maha Moussa 10 years ago while I was working for the British Council in Cairo. Maha was interested in learning English, and was a wonderful hostess to me, taking me around the markets and secret places of Cairo, walking along the Corniche, teaching me about Egyptian food and taking me to cultural events, including Sufi dancing. It was a wonderful time.

When I moved back to the UK, we lost touch, until one day she popped up on facebook and said “hello”. Maha has lately been studying English again, and she sent me an essay that she wrote for her teacher. I was impressed by it, not just because of the competency of the English, but because Maha engages with her subject with a great deal of honesty, joy and optimism. It is the second essay she has written on the course. Before now, Maha was all self-taught – writing to friends in the West, and meeting Westerners in the markets. I think it is impressive for that feat alone – but above and beyond that, she raises some really wholesome points and some great, uplifting descriptions. It is very different from the way that I write – and I hope you enjoy the change!

Arts and Their Impact on Human Relations – by Maha Moussa

Music, Singing, Dancing, Drawing, Poetry, Movies, and Plays, each of them is an important aspect of the culture of different countries and their civilizations. As such, they help us to form our ideas of life with many different perspectives.

There is no need to learn to be an artist, or even to study The Arts in order to feel the beauty which we see in the painting of the great works of Leonardo Da Vinci, or in the painting of an unknown person who lives in a slum area in India, for example. Napoleon Bonaparte said: “A picture is worth a thousand words”, and yes, this is true . There is also no need to speak several languages to be able to enjoy the wonderful music and songs that we listen to in different languages. All we need is to learn how to feel, to see, and to listen to these inspiring arts, by using our senses, our hearts, our minds and our consciousnesses. We can follow our desires to become acquainted with other people’s cultures and deal with them on a human level through their arts. That is all that we need to appreciate art.

One of the most famous quotes by Victor Hugo is: “Change your opinion, keep to your principles, change your leaves, keep intact your roots”. Thus, to be proud of our roots, our civilization, and our culture’s artistic heritage is something truly good and healthy. This sense of pride should help us to have a deep sense of understanding and respect for the cultures and arts of other countries, too. It gives us a wonderful chance to know more about the arts that contribute in some way to shaping the hearts and minds of other people, and affects our ways of dealing with each other in life. The fact is that, the global exchange of arts between countries, such as music, singing, dancing, drawing etc., provides opportunities for humanity to open the door of knowledge, to help people to add richness to their values, their dreams, and their ambitions to create a smooth path to communicate with other wonderful people around the world, and accept their differences. In this way, we learn to accommodate others in a way that is less severe or intolerant, regardless of their beliefs, their customs, their religions, their nationalities, or even their lifestyle. This shared gateway frees us to meet each other naturally and respectfully with more flexibility, respect, and tolerance.

Someone once said about music: “Music expresses feeling and thoughts without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words.” So, if anyone has the opportunity to watch or to listen to any of the various music performances that come to Egypt from different countries such as: Korea, America, Zambia, France, Ireland, Pakistan, or India, etc., I think that the most useful way to be able to enjoy and feel this music is to let your soul go free and clear your mind, as if you are traveling to those wonderful countries and attending these performances by yourself. This is my advice from personal experience.

A few months ago, in the last Month of Ramadan, I was attending one of the greatest and most talented performances that I have ever seen in my life, along with one of my foreign friends, who was working in Cairo at the time. This wonderful show was one of religious music. It was the international annual festival of “Samaa for sufi music and chanting“. It was a new cultural event that started 2 years ago. It is held annually during Ramadan, in one of Cairo’s oldest and most iconic Islamic buildings, El Ghoury Dome, or Qobat Al-Ghoury. The event I attended this year at the festival had bands from many countries, such as: India, Morocco, Spain, Turkey, while the core band had members from Egypt, Indonesia, and Akabila. This wonderful performance was a mixture of Islamic religious chanting, Coptic hymns, and Opera songs, at the same time. All of these bands were glorifying God, and His messengers Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, but with many languages and in various musical styles. They provided to the world through their music ”a message of peace“, to explain that God created us equal. Regardless of the religions or the beliefs we follow, we all are humans. When my friend and I were listening to them, we felt as if the amazing music and sounds came to us from heaven. All we could do was just enjoy the Islamic Sufi chanting and the Coptic Hymns and we felt that there was no difference between them. When the whole group said the same words together, such as; Allah, God, Mohammed, and Jesus, we became surprised at how they felt the pleasure and the power of their words, and how they transferred that feeling to us, even with our inability to understand most of the languages in which they were performed. We had no choice but to respond to their music and their songs. Really we felt as if we had already traveled to each country.

In my opinion, there is no specific way to enjoy the different kinds of arts; every person has the absolute freedom to see, to listen, and to taste the art in the manner that suits him or her. Art and freedom are two sides of one coin. Thus, our freedom creates a sense of love, care, tolerance, and respect between peoples. So let us know and learn more about each other from our arts and our cultures. They translate many great and deep meanings in life into one common language we can all understand. Art provides us with convincing answers to many questions that we have in our minds about others, and the answer always is this: that we are all human, just human.

Opinion

Hypnosis: It’s All Bollocks

By Matt on Thursday, November 4, 2010

I heard the sentiment a couple of days ago, from someone who should have known better, and I answered clearly enough: “Yes. You’re right. What you’ve got in your head that you’ve decided is hypnosis… THAT is complete and utter bollocks. But then, I wouldn’t expect any more of you than that.”

Swirly Bollocks

So my rapport-building skills were not at their best on that day. But really, I have heard this sentiment repeated so often in different ways, from so many different people, who really should know better than to talk about something of which they have no knowledge and no experience.

Common objections to hypnosis come in at least three broad forms. Firstly, there’s the all-encompassing: “There’s no empirical evidence for it” argument, that I had with a pharmacist a little while ago.

No empirical evidence..? Oh, okay. So a woman comes into my office, having had a lifetime of bird phobia, having seen counsellors, undergone CBT, desensitisation and seen various psychiatrists that never touched the problem – and then, coincidentally in the time that she was sitting in my room, while I was coincidentally talking about ending her phobia, she coincidentally stopped having it. No empirical evidence? The assertion isn’t only unintelligible. It’s moronic.

Having established his profession with him, I thought it best to simply reply to him on his own level: “What scientific papers have you read on outcomes using an empirically-based methodology involving hypnosis?” He shrugged and mumbled something, and so I followed up: “Because, if you haven’t done the research, then don’t start the discussion. Otherwise it’s prejudice.”

Then there is the: “We all know it’s stage trickery” argument. Which would be a half useful argument if I was a stage hypnotist getting people to French-kiss mops. In that case, you use whatever you can to establish compliance. But I’m not a stage hypnotist. Telling me that someone who has come in to see me because they were terrified of birds for 60 years and who walked away 2 hours later able to feed the ducks on the local pond is the subject of a trick is simply incoherent.

“Oh, right. Okay. Someone just paid me a fee to get me to trick them into thinking they were no longer afraid of birds.” Who is being tricked, here? The client feeding the birds? Onlookers? The birds? I mean, what are you saying? Think a moment, will you?

The “trick” argument is bloody rude, too. Here’s a question I asked of someone who tried it on me:

“You do realise that you are calling me one of two things when you say it’s all bollocks, don’t you? Either I’m deluded about the changes that go on before my very eyes – or I’m a conman. Just so we can get things clear between us, which is it that you think I am? – A madman or a liar?”

Then there is the “lack of theory” argument. This one utterly makes me howl. “There’s no theoretical model for the effectiveness of hypnosis. Therefore it can’t work.”

This assertion is also close to being unintelligible, and yet I’ve heard it time and again from so-called “scientists”. They are no such thing. They are sheep in white lab coats. Just because someone doesn’t understand something, it doesn’t make it untrue. Edison invented the electric light bulb in 1878. Lorentz published his first paper on the theory of the electron in 1892. If we followed the argument that because we don’t understand it, it doesn’t exist, Edison would have had to drum his fingers for 14 years before filing his patent. It’s a nonsense.

As for me, I’m just waiting for the lightbulb moment to happen in hypnosis. Until then, I’m expecting to hear a lot more “bollocks”. But while a lot of bollocks is spoken around me, I’m also expecting to help a lot more people out of a hole, too

And in the end, that’s what really counts.