fake

the big bail-out - opportunity lost!

fakerepublic — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:26:36 -0400

up until the 1940s the west was wrestling and fighting hard to find the best system by which to govern itself. communism, fascism and 'democracy' wrestled it out on the world stage with our present system becoming the winner by default rather than merit (remember churchill's aphorism that it's the worst way to run a country, apart from all the others we've tried). it seems western capitalism (usually) works really well for those of us lucky enough to be on top of the heap - by virtue of our skin colour, our geography, our innate intelligences, our education, our gender, our sexual preferences etc. for the rest of the world it has always been a system which squashes down the 90% to allow the 10% to rise to the top - and in the last months we have seen that it doesn't even work for the 10% and we need the biggest socialist intervention in world history to bail even us out.

capitalism is a beast that will eat itself!

isn't it incredible what the international community can do when it wants to. suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, the world's richest and most powerful governments find a spare $3 TRILLION! (some even argue that the us alone has spent more than this already - a staggering 25% of it's gdp!!) to put some meat on these financial bones, oxfam has estimated that $700 billion (less than a quarter of this amount!) would be enough to:

"clear the accumulated debt of the 49 poorest countries in the world twice over...[or] eradicate all world poverty for over two years."

did you get that? for a fraction of the amount that has already been shelled out to bail the richest people in the world out of a hole we could have made a giant leap towards assigning world poverty to the history books! alli and i could have been teaching smudge about poverty as a theoretical issue - one which his/her generation would know nothing of outside of textbooks!

with the victory of our present system over the others in play, it seems to me that we simply stopped searching for new and better alternatives (anarchy anybody?? explained in chomsky's inimical style here) i'm simply saying that someone needs to rock our foundations again (like marx and engels did long long ago) and make us examine ourselves once more and ask: is this the best there is?

as bobby kennedy so eloquently put it:

"Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why'? I dream of things that never were and say, 'Why not'?"

avoiding average

fakerepublic — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 08:55:57 -0400

i remember my best friend in school coming in one day and asking me if i’d seen the new movie “pretty woman” with a brand new lead, julia roberts, who was, according to my friend, the hottest thing on earth since fire had been discovered. and so began my obsession with redheads - from faux to genuine…

but that’s another story!

anyway, at the end of this cinderella fairy-tale, after the prince has scooped the girl onto his white steed, the camera focuses on a homeless guy ranting to (or at) bemused passers-by on the streets of l.a. “everybody’s got a dream” he says, “what’s your dream?” the idea being that america is the place where all your dreams can come true — where every prostitute has the chance of meeting and marrying a handsome multi-millionaire, who knows everything about her and still loves her passionately.

of course, it’s a lie. hooking is lewd, grubby, isolating and dangerous and america is a country where the rich get obscenely rich and the poor stay put, at best. so it is with most dreams — they lose their lustre in the unforgiving daylight. (had joseph known that his brothers bowing before him would come only after slavery, exile and imprisonment, i wonder if he would have been so quick to boast to them of his visions).

i’m at a stage in life where i’m spending a lot of time reflecting on my dreams. to be honest, i’m not at all sure what they are any more. here we are in canada, in our beautiful house with our incredible view; alli and i love one another passionately - not in any merely superficial way, but surrendering to one another’s gaze, apprehending each another’s flaws and faults and volitionally choosing what our hearts have already chosen; after being resigned for many years to the fact that i would never have children naturally, i’m going to be a daddy in nine weeks! the fairy-tale.

and yet i am restless.

part of this is simply symptomatic of being a malcontent - a mid-life crisis as cliched as is possible. but, deep down, there is a kernel of something nobel in this relentless itch to which i must pay heed.

in nine weeks i’m going to be a father. in one sense, that makes me feel incredibly special. in another sense i feel all too common. as it did when alli and i got married, the world stands at our door and says “now you have to settle down! put all the childish nonsense behind you and fall in line.” we resisted absolutely back then by selling everything we owned and investing it all in our amazing trip through north america. this time resistance feels much more difficult; i’m not even sure i know how.

i see train tracks stretching off into the distance and i am on them - the course of my life totally planned out, with no room for variation or digression. the tracks lead in only one direction. the destination is unavoidable and every day which passes pulls me inexorably towards it: cookie-cutter existence; the average; normality; doing a job which involves me spending at least 40 hours a week away from the people i love most in the world; doing something i’m not utterly passionate about, to get a pay-cheque at the end of the month. here we are, husband and wife, with the house, the kid on the way, the dog and even the minivan (no longer for traveling round the world in, but for school runs and hockey games).

after a lifetime of taking the road less travelled, i feel like i’m suddenly on the highway with everyone else. ironically, this is the moment i feel more isolated and alone than ever.

“agh, suck it up cupcake!” i hear you say. “welcome to the real world”.

and maybe i just should, if it weren’t for this nagging restlessness inside me, telling me, reminding me, there is more.

we spend so much time in our institutions - schools, governments, churches (they’re all the same) - breeding quiet clones who will fall in line and become little capitalist consumers like the generation before them and the one before that. but haven’t you been listening? haven’t you heard? capitalism is in its death throes; the west is waning and a new world order is emerging - one no longer dominated by the usa, germany, the uk and france, but by china, brazil, india and the entire african continent. we need a new course. we need a new breed. and now, when we need them, where are the leaders, the liberators, the revolutionaries and hell-raisers? where are the malcolm xs, the martin luther kings, the gandhis, the che guevarras, the michael collinses, the suffragettes, the conscientious objectors?

i want to be a different kind of husband, father, citizen, christian, man. different than i’ve been taught; much, much different than i am.

don’t get me wrong. it’s not that i stand aloof, removed, above, judging from a distance. it’s much more the case that i feel myself judged - weighed and found wanting - every single day, in just about every single way. however, i have the burning, dirty embers of a dream inside of me. i still want to change the world, i’m just completely clueless now as to how to do it (and i was so certain twenty years ago!)

“a voice says, ‘cry out!’ and i say ‘what shall i cry?’”

i have no idea any more, but i’m still willing to scream and scream and scream if yhwh has anything at all for me to say.

where is richard gere when you need him?!

long overdue update

fakerepublic — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:14:13 -0300

where do i begin? it’s been a while. i’ve been silent (silenced) too long i think. time to ease my way back into this thing. i’ve generally been feeling uninspired over the last few months, very few people were reading what i was writing anyway, so it felt like it wasn’t exactly a huge loss to the blogging community to go on hiatus.

that being said, i’m back – without much rhyme or reason really.

first things first: to those of you who don’t know already, i’m going to be a dad come january! talk about major life change! alli’s growing bigger by the day and so far the baby looks to be healthy and happy. everyone keeps asking us if we know what we’re getting – i’m holding out for human and caucasian. it’s not that i have anything against fros, you understand, it’s just that if my kid has one, alli and i’ll be in for a long chat!

we decided not to ask what sex the baby’s going to be. alli would really like to know most days, but then she’s the kind of girl who wouldn’t wait till Christmas day to open her presents – there’s just no reasoning with some kinds of madness!

apart from the whole romance of actually finding out on the day whether i’m going to be a daddy or a mummy, the main reason we’re not asking is because there’s an overly large margin of error in the prediction. our health worker has regaled us with nightmarish tales of times they have gotten it wrong. one couple had three ultrasounds, the last of which occurred in the 35^th week of the pregnancy, and each time it was confirmed that they were having a little girl. the woman had to have an emergency c-section and when she awoke from the general anesthetic there was a baby boy in her arms! it took her many months to bond with the child as she was convinced that this was not her baby.

boys and girls each have strengths and weaknesses, joys and turmoils associated with them. at the moment we don’t care at all which one we have, but if they were to tell us we were having a boy, we couldn’t help but get ourselves orientated in that direction and get all excited about having a son, then, were we actually to have a daughter, i can’t help but feel that we’d feel slightly disappointed.

better to remain excited either way at the moment and find out in less than 3 months!

i’ll be writing much more about this no doubt as it is quite a major event – understatement!

but there’s lots of other things going on too. at long , long last i have a job! like a real one; with a pay cheque and everything – not a very big one, it must be said, but a pay cheque nonetheless! i’m working for the john howard society in a residential home for young people dealing with complex mental health issues. at the moment, 90% of my work is really boring and feels a lot like baby-sitting. 10% of the time, it’s pretty frenetic, trying to de-escalate potentially volatile situations. i’m pretty much at the bottom of the food chain at the moment and really hope it won’t be long till i climb the ladder a bit. i’m not really in a position yet to influence policy decisions or to pose awkward questions to those in power, regarding new brunswick’s atrocious provision for those suffering from mental illness, its poverty, illiteracy, obesity… again, much more on this at a later date.

so, we have health care, a work permit and a social insurance number now. when added to our house, our friends and community here it makes quite a nice little package. you just wouldn’t believe the bureaucratic hoops we’ve had to jump through to get to this point, but here we are. next step is permanent residency. alli is working on the application as we speak. hopefully we’ll have that sorted in less than a year. that’s the point at which they can’t throw us out and we can do pretty much anything we like. after that it’ll be only a year until we can apply for full citizenship. the hard part is permanent residency as far as we can tell. the citizenship part is simply a paperwork exercise, involving quite a substantial amount of money.

but that’s all for the future.

for now, hey, we’re here for a while longer – pregnant and working.

that’s about it for this gentle reintroduction. sorry it’s information-heavy and fact-full. i really will try and give this whole blogging thing another shot and try to provide you with a bit more heart stuff (and maybe even one or two more things to make your head itchy!) next time.

thanks for hanging in there, the few of you who are left.

city life - je me souviens!

fakerepublic — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:17:44 -0300

it feels great to be back on the road. we’re travelling the 1500km to guelph, ontario for the wedding of alli’s great aunt pearl to ted. pearl is in her 70s (never tell a lady’s exact age!) and has more energy than i do. pearl’s life hasn’t been the easiest and now she’s fallen in love with a guy who treats her like she’s a princess. it’s a little fairy tale and we’re going to help her celebrate.

the reids (alli’s vast clan) need little excuse for a get-together and a party and so the wedding will be hiving with cousins, uncles, nieces and the like who have flown in from all over the place. we’re most excited about seeing alli’s dad and his wife noreen who are coming to stay with us for a couple of weeks after the party dies down - there could well be snow on the ground by then!

so we decided to make an event of the trip and are taking about 5 days to cover the ground. we traveled for a day and then spent a beautiful day sitting by a one of the million lakes quebec has to boast of (that’s literal, not hyperbolic! again: canada is quite big!) we chilled out completely, swimming when we got too hot and reading our books in the sun - something i haven’t done in too long. it feels like our cares, stresses and practical problems are a galaxy away.

after a brief detour to ikea (who can ever resist?!) we arrived in montreal in 38 degree heat and the kind of humidity which makes you think you might just be leaking. we’re staying with our friends, ‘matte the irrepressible’ and the wonderful (but sadly sick - in a literal, not metaphorical way) dean. they live in a beautiful condo right in the heart of the city and have treated us like family - not even the family you really, really can’t stand either!

it feels weird being back in a proper, real-live, all grown-up city - the hustle, the bustle, the trample and the squish. everyone is so chic, so debonaire, so rushed and so rude. the traffic is horrendous, the air stinks; everything is 57% louder, 63% brighter and juts at least 23% more into the future. it’s wonderful. at least for a while.

we needed a quick fix of city life. we miss fashion, the arts, the cutting edge. but a few days is really enough. maybe we could stretch it out to a couple of months. max. maybe. but then we’d be drawn inexorably back to our little patch of paradise overlooking a sleepy slice of the kennebacasis river. as we press on to guelph and the big smoke of toronto we’re keeping the hunger for the simple life at bay.

but sometimes i can feel my tummy rumbling!

BBC NEWS | South Asia | US 'killed 47 Afghan civilians'

fakerepublic — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:39:29 -0300

BBC NEWS | South Asia | US 'killed 47 Afghan civilians'.

why will no-one face any charges for this atrocity?

o, sorry i forgot - they're foreigners.

and not white.

Exclusive: secret film reveals how Mugabe stole an election | World news | The Guardian

fakerepublic — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 16:16:08 -0300

Exclusive: secret film reveals how Mugabe stole an election | World news | The Guardian.

it's incredible to watch this short film and see how much some people are prepared to risk for rights we take completely for granted. as joni mitchel put it, you don't knwo what you've got till it's gone. i wonder if we'll look back with regret as fascism becomes the norm in the uk, the us and even here in canada? as i wrote before, we actually debate whether torture is wrong now! (maybe rape isn't such a bad thing after all - discuss!) habeas corpus (latin we should have tattooed on our hearts) is no longer simply a given (as i've said).

we here in the west are not so different - mugabe lurks at the not-too-distant end of the slope down which we have allowed ourselves to slide!

In search of the holy grand | Salon Books

fakerepublic — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:03:32 -0300

In search of the holy grand | Salon Books.

wonderful little article about the preternaturally talented, canadian pianist/composer/madman, glenn gould. a caveat must follow though: the article will whet your appetite and soon you'll be craving gould recordings (especially his incredible "idea of north")!

BBC radio exec Jeff Zycinski criticises Amy Winehouse coverage | Media | guardian.co.uk

fakerepublic — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:18:36 -0300

Radio Festival 2008: BBC radio exec Jeff Zycinski criticises Amy Winehouse coverage | Media | guardian.co.uk.

here, here for the bbc actually taking a stand against public prurience and the media's complicity in feeding it.

the age of innocence

fakerepublic — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:57:47 -0300

so i'm fifteen years old (the year is somewhere around the 1830s!) and i'm sitting on the floor in ardaluin house in newcastle, county down on a scripture union weekend retreat. there are around 80 14-17 year olds from the one school (belfast high school) who are there to learn more about being dedicated followers of jesus - it has become something of an annual tradition by that stage. the speaker is concluding the session with a call to repentance before we share communion together. he alludes to matthew's words (in chapter 18) about the value of unity in fellowship coupled with his exhortation to leave your offering at the altar if you remember your brother or sister has something against you. jesus tells us to repair that relationship and only then return to worship god (matthew 5:21-26). the speaker then invites us to examine our hearts, be reconciled to one another and repair broken friendships before we continue with the session.

i can remember like it was yesterday wracking my brain to think of someone who would have something against me, someone who i had hurt or treated unfairly, a genuine enemy with whom i needed to make up. it is a fruitless exercise. try as i might, no name comes to mind.

i feel almost despondent.

now, over twenty years later when i repeat the exercise the effect is very different. names spring effortlessly to mind: broken friendships; torn relationships; people with whom i was once close who no longer call me friend. as i think about it, i am at a complete loss to know what exactly i did to cause some of the friendship to end - this is just sad. but with others, i am only too aware.

i have enemies. not many. but there they are.

and with the remembrance comes regret; and with the regret comes shame. and this is something which warrants shame.

sometimes i am desperately homesick for my former despondent days.

keith green - part of the great cloud of witnesses

fakerepublic — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:55:29 -0300

as a teenager keith green was a huge influence on me. one of my youth leaders in church recorded some of his albums on tape for me when i was about 14. his was the first contemporary christian music i had ever heard. i listened to those tapes until they literally wore out. then when i was about 17, melody green's account of her husband's life "no compromise" came out. i tore through the book in one sitting and am still reeling from the impact all these years later. i don't think any other book has affected my life quite as much as that one.

this morning i sat down and watched this documentary about keith's life. it's strange that i had never actually seen him on video before. i cried the whole way through. i'm not totally sure why. something to do with my own times in the spotlight, my own sin and struggle, the desire to simply speak about jesus and not waste time doing anything else at all. i reckon that now, he and i would have some passionate disagreements theologically, but there's something about his story i identify with: the struggle, the zeal, the passion, the desire to serve god first and foremost, to tell everyone about the incredible good news there is in jesus christ and the continual doubt that god had chosen a worthy instrument.

often in church we are reminded that at heart we are miserable wretches - sinners. the thought is that were we to be stripped bare, right to the core, what would be left would be this solid kernel of wrong. i think very differently: i feel that in my very heart-of-hearts i am a good man, one who loves god desperately and wants nothing more than to love and serve the people around me. the other shit - the failings, the fallen-ness, the brokenness and sin which is all-too-apparent to anyone who looks at me for more than a second - isn't who i am at all. at my core i am a child of god. i want to love god and the people around me and (as brennan manning put it) to want to want nothing else. i really do.

watch this video and be inspired. there are enough people living the average life; mediocrity is overpopulated; grab hold of god as he has grabbed hold of you and go change the world!

32 flavours and then some

fakerepublic — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:26:25 -0300

i’m a music snob. i like things done my way and don’t bend easily to other people’s preferences. corporate worship for me (is that an oxymoron already?) often seems loud, hollow, brash, repetitive, devoid of theology, grace, reverence, awe and fodder for my mind to feed on.

and so i sit - the silent one in the noise; the monk at the rock concert. i appreciate the music - the skill of the musicians; the wonder of syncopation - and so i’m somehow able to worship; but indirectly - in spite of, rather than because of, the style adopted.

there has to be more!

i’m hungry for silence, liturgy, reflection, chanting, incense, meditation, not as an end in itself, or even a permanent alternative, but simply as a counter-balance to all this incessant, insipid jangling.

when we are stuck within the tight confines of our own tradition, when we fail to look outside for inspiration and guidance, i am convinced this is the inevitable result. for those reared in high church circles drums, guitars, spontaneity, hands-in-the-air-for-the-rousing-last-chorus type praise can be an overwhelmingly liberative experience. to hear someone pray straight from their heart, out loud, can be as fresh as a kiss. but likewise, for those of us all-too-familiar with incoherent, rambling prayers, culminating in sentences such as “so anyway, happy birthday jesus” it can be profoundly moving to be part of a community orating together :

“we do not presume to come to this thy table, o merciful lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table. but thou art the same lord whose property is always to have mercy. grant us therefore, gracious lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear son jesus christ, and to drink his blood, that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.”

we need to humble ourselves and look to our ancient (common) history and to each other - catholics need the anabaptists, who need the methodists, who need the presbyterians, who need the charismatics, who need the orthodox, who need the evangelicals, who need the liberals…

after a while, even my favourite flavour of ice-cream becomes completely sickening.

john's gospel (15)

fakerepublic — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:00:00 -0300

john 9 is one of the (if not the) most tightly woven naratives in the entire new testament. the chapter shows off john's utter brilliance in story-telling as he not only seamlessly illustrates his ongoing themes of light and darkness, but also clearly shows that jesus' signs do in fact illustrate that he is sent from god. the pharisees have utterly failed in their role as israel's watchmen, not because they are skeptical, but because they don't even question their assumptions. the tale is both hilarious and heart-breaking, ultimately transforming the nature of disability itself and showing jesus' tender concern for the ostracised.

download john chapter 9

previous instalments:

and again, for the obsessive compulsives out there who JUST CAN'T WAIT, click on the link below to listen right here.

i've been enjoying your generous comments and emails. please keep them coming. hope this scratches an itch (or better yet, creates an itch where there wasn't one before!) and encourages you to pick up the texts for yourself and maybe even share your learning with other people.

christianville

fakerepublic — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:53:05 -0300

there are days when the entire theological project seems utterly ridiculous to me. i read so many blogs where the conversation revolves endlessly around issues like exactly how christ’s death on a cross applies to our life today; adherents to the vicarious atonement theory battle it out passionately with those “heretics” who dare to question or suggest that the governmental theory, the ransom theory, or even the moral-influence theory may have something to offer.

in other places, i see bloggers genuinely attempting to wrestle with the myriad mysteries of life and faith in god, only to be either denounced wholeheartedly in the comments section, or, worse still, quiesced with vague, meaningless god-talk which adds nothing whatsoever to the conversation. this drivel would be utterly incomprehensible to any chance reader who had not been reared in exclusively churchy circles. it is unintelligible not because it uses technical christian language, but, rather, because it is quintessentially weak, woolly and utterly devoid of discernible meaning! bromides such as “god bless” and “all things work together for good” are tossed out without thought or care in the face of human tragedy and great suffering - on and on it goes.

welcome to christianville!

in this execrable, alien space, the ancient practice of spending time in quiet reflection, study, meditation and prayer becomes the anathema that is the ‘quiet-time™’. the heart-felt prayer of the penitent sinner is patented as ‘the sinner’s prayer™’, the replete glories of the gospel are squeezed, pruned, abridged and tamed into ‘the four spiritual laws™’, ‘four things god wants you to know™’ and ‘the romans road™’. do you see the difference? freedom is prescribed, delineated, dissected, formulated and packaged and in the process is twisted and warped into law, regulation, death. when a partial truth is sold as the whole truth, it becomes an insidious lie!

only the mixed-up, contorted, twisted logic of christianville could vandalise doing good to such an extent that it becomes ‘good-works™’ - apparently a bad thing? do good, people! just do good! stop letting “theology” stand in the way. praise the many people around you - professing christians, hindhus, buddhists; atheists and agnostics; the dogmatic and the unsure - who are doing good; take a look at what they are doing and join in!! analysis can lead to paralysis as they say and all-too-often we let our own internal struggle over mixed motivation stop us from acting right now. do good. just do it. then analyse your motivation and, if necessary, confess.

so much of what happens inside the rarified confines of the church is simply irrelevant to the real world at best and would be farsical if it weren’t so entirely disturbing.

am i alone in this, or does anyone else have a problem with christianville?

john's gospel (14)

fakerepublic — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:00:00 -0300

john 8 is one of my favourite chapters in this gospel. it leaves absolutely no room for thinking that jesus was simply a good teacher as many have claimed. these are emphatically not the words of a good man!

download john chapter 8

previous instalments:

David Edgar's open letter to George Bush | World news | The Guardian

fakerepublic — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:44:24 -0300

David Edgar's open letter to George Bush | World news | The Guardian.

ah ya gotta love this. it shows just how much has actually altered in the last eight years and how much less free the world is with the usa, the uk and even traditionally libertarian/peace-keeping canada becoming more and more like the fascistic regimes they abhor. can you believe we are publically debating the legitimacy of torture?! dangerous times to disagree with the mob.

mr. george must be happy at least that america's reputation is improving abroad - though it seems the reason is his imminent retirement from office!

john's gospel (13)

fakerepublic — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:00:00 -0300

ok so we started into chapter eight with good intentions an then the discussion began to wander. we meandered through what happens to you when you die; predestination versus free will; can you lose your salvation; what about people who have never heard of jesus and a load of other sticky issues (so hope that's cleared it all up for those of you who were there - questions? no. then i'll continue) everyone else was delighted, but the control freak in me was jittery!

as the conversation was even more waffly and ramble-y than usual i've only included the actual john stuff we did - the (misplaced) account of jesus' dealings with the woman caught in adultery.

download john chapter 8vs1-11

previous instalments:

john's gospel (12)

fakerepublic — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:00:00 -0300

john 7 continues the ominous theme begun in chapter 5. jesus refuses to back down or soften his tone in spite of increasing opposition. is it just me, or is this getting exciting?

download here:

download john chapter 7

previous instalments:

and

if y'all would like to, y'all can just go right ahead and click on the link below and y'all'll be able to listen right here.

feel free to comment or email if anything you hear makes your brain itch.

john's gospel (11)

fakerepublic — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:00:00 -0300

as we go through john 6 we notice how much jesus pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable. it is almost as if he is deliberately going out of his way to offend people, willfully treading on what they hold sacred.

this is not the jesus we are normally presented with in the church!

download here:

download john chapter 6 (part 2)

previous instalments:

and

ok, ok, ok you don't have to download. just click on the link below. happy now?!

as always please keep letting me know what you're getting out of the study.

john's gospel (10)

fakerepublic — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:00:00 -0300

fortunately or unfortunately for you, the batteries ran out halfway through our john study this week. hope you still get something from our discussion on the bread of life.

download john chapter 6

previous instalments:

and

as always for those of you who tap your fingers at the microwave and would rather rush down 20 flights of stairs than wait 30 seconds for an elevator, simply click on the link below to listen to this instalment instantly on the site.

comments on the commentary are always welcome and appreciated. :o)

there will be blood - daniel day-lewis channeling genius

fakerepublic — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:42:11 -0300

last night i saw there will be blood for the first time. alli and i had waited patiently for it to arrive in the cinema here and when it did eventually show, it ran for only a couple of nights and was gone - we’d missed it. mark kermode (my favourite reviewer) had recommended buying 5 seats in the cinema to make sure that no-one was around to spoil your complete immersement. now i understand why, however, my friend’s living room had to suffice.

this is the best movie i have seen in years. an instant 5/5 (a very select group in my book).

we are all familiar with the mythology surrounding daniel day lewis. supposedly difficult to work with and direct due to his famed intensity, he is, nevertheless, one of a very select group of actors who seem to portray their character so perfectly that it is almost preternatural - christian bale (and possibly philip seymour hoffman) is the only other who springs instantly to mind). what he does appears less like acting than channeling a spirit, or outright possession! think of bruce willis, for example, an excellent actor, but he basically plays bruce willis in every movie he is in. compare his resume with that of day-lewis.

day-lewis is a fervent believer in the method school of acting.

in his oscar-winning portrayal of christy brown, the irish artist with cerebral palsy, in my left foot, he stayed in character for the entire shoot - being pushed around in a wheelchair, with aides spoon-feeding him at every meal and carrying him over obstacles and up stairs. he contorted himself so much in the wheelchair that he broke two ribs leaving himself with permanent damage as a result.
in in the name of the father, day-lewis plays irishman gerry conlon who was part of a group wrongfully convicted of the guilford pub bombings in the 1970s. conlon spent 15 years behind bars protesting his innocence after signing a confession under duress. daniel day lewis wanted to understand how a person would come to make a false confession even though they knew it would result in a lengthy jail sentence. he lost 30 pounds during the movie and spent several nights in solitary confinement, with crew members dressed up as prison guards hurling abuse at him and throwing buckets of freezing cold water over him at random intervals.
he trained as a boxer for three full years before playing danny flynn in the boxer and was told by barry mcguiggan (the former european and wba featherweight champion of the world who trained day-lewis) that he could easily turn professional.
to prepare for his role as nathaniel poe in the last of the mohicans, day-lewis did extensive weight-training and carried his rifle with him at all times; he actually became proficient at loading his rifle while running (one of the very few people living who can do this) and learned to skin wild animals (later for his role as bill “the butcher” cutting, in gangs of new york, he would serve a full apprenticeship as a butcher). he spent months in the wild before the shoot where he lived completely off the land.

can you tell from all this that i’m a fan?

so, of course i was expecting to be mesmerised once again by daniel day-lewis’ performance; what i wasn’t quite ready for was how utterly engrossing the entire movie is.

where to even start?

there will be blood follows oil man, daniel plainview, from humble and grueling beginnings prospecting for silver and on, through a serendipitous oil strike, to the making of his fortune. the film makes for uncomfortable viewing for several reasons: the violence, though occasional, is viscerally portrayed; the soundscape is filled with menace throughout; daniel plainview has few, if any, redeeming characteristics.
the first 15 minutes of the film (which runs for 2 hours and eighteen minutes) has no dialogue at all (only the kubric-esque music leading us to anticipate an apocalypse). we see daniel sweating and digging in the hard rock down a self-dug shallow mine. we peer over plainview’s head as he breaks rock with his pickaxe and then spits on it to clean the dust off to see if there is any ore in it. we get a sense very quickly of this man’s single-minded dedication to the task when he falls in the mine, breaking his leg, and still manages to collect ore, pull himself out of the mine and drag himself through untold miles of dirt to get his claim assessed.
the cinematography throughout is incredible - in these opening scenes, for example, the brim of plainview’s hat frustrates our desire to see clearly what he has discovered; at other times, the lens of the camera is spattered with oil and even blood; often, while a character is in conversation, the camera focuses entirely on him, only showing us with whom he is talking at a very late stage in the dialogue.

after the opening silence, then comes the voice. daniel day-lewis says that he modeled plainview’s voice on the late john huston but, to my mind, he sounds more like mr. smith of matrix fame. his tone ranges from quiet, absolute control, to seeming compassion, through to a thunderous, terrifying rage! this voice deserves to become a classic.

the movie’s themes of greed, paranoia, oil, family and religion touch on everything we in the west have come to hold dear. the movie doesn’t simply touch on these, instead it tears them up, muddies them, bloodies them, chews them over and spits them right in our face. daniel plainview’s relationship with his adopted son, h.w., is a wonderful example of the film’s complexity. daniel is tender and compassionate then inexplicably cruel and utterly ruthless. the title is a clever play on words - is it an ironic declaration of familial loyalty (blood being thicker than water), a reference to oil as “the black blood” or an ominous portent of death and suffering? well, it’s all of those, at least! by the end of the movie i was left quite literally exhausted and emotionally drained. there are too many amazing scenes to recount in detail, but plainview’s humiliating baptism and the movie’s final scene are tours-de-force that will stay in the memory forever.

the movie shows the sick symbiosis between money (big oil in particular) and organised religion in the united states (though the critique surely applies elsewhere also). both plainview and the preacher, eli sunday, are contemptible people. sunday’s focus on money is evident from our first introduction to him when plainview is trying to buy his father’s ranch. it is no surprise that this will ultimately be his undoing, but when it comes, the exact manner of it is still shocking in its utter devastation.

it is impossible to watch this complex, brutal and beautiful movie without drawing a present day commentary from it:

but, back to where we began: daniel day-lewis dominates this movie. the other characters are shown only in relief to him. when his face is on screen it is impossible to look away. it is hypnotic. and that voice! there are some scenes in the movie which i reckon would have been genuinely scary to shoot with him. he is awe-inspiring. other actors pale by comparison. this is the art practiced at its very best.

ultimately, this is a movie not to watch, but to experience.

are you experienced?