Stimulating sports: The Richard Riot and the Roots of Quebec Separatism

Although I don't follow the sport, hockey season is just around the corner. Below is a story of an incident from some 60 years ago that I had never heard of, but which I find completely fascinating. It stars all-time Montreal Canadiens legend Maurice "Rocket" Richard and some extremely p-o'd French Canadians.

Maurice Richard was star player for the Montreal Canadiens and it was common for opponents to provoke him during games. Teams reportedly sent players onto the ice to purposefully annoy him by yelling ethnic slurs, and hooking, slashing and holding him as much as possible. Throughout his career, Richard was fined and suspended several times for retaliatory assaults on players and officials, including a $250 fine for slapping a linesman in the face less than three months before the March 13, 1955 incident.

Richard was considered the embodiment of French-Canadians and was a hero during a time when they were seen as second-class citizens. He was revered when he fought the "damn English" during games. In his book, The Rocket: A Cultural History of Maurice Richard, Benoît Melançon compares Richard to the Brooklyn Dodgers' Jackie Robinson by stating that both players represented the possibility for their minority groups to succeed in North America.

During the 1950s, Quebec's industries and natural resources were controlled primarily by English Canadians or Americans. Quebecois were the lowest-paid ethnic group in Quebec, which resulted in a sense that control rested with the Anglophone minority. Because of this and other factors, there had been growing discontent in the years before the riot. In early 1954, Richard's teammate, Bernie "Boom Boom" Geoffrion, was suspended in a move seen as anti-Francophone.

Following the suspension, Richard, who had a weekly column in the Samedi-Dimanche newspaper, called League president Campbell a "dictator" in print. The league in turn forced Richard to retract his statement and stop writing in the newspaper. In his 1976 biography of Richard, Jean-Marie Pellerin wrote that his humiliation was shared by all Québécois, who were sent running once more by the "English boot".

This was reflected in a Montreal newspaper's editorial cartoon (right), which portrayed him as an unruly schoolchild made to write lines by Campbell, shown as the teacher; the cartoon had a deeper meaning as an example of the societal hierarchy that existed between English and French Canadians.

On March 13, 1955, an on-ice episode sparked one of the worst incidents of hockey-related violence in history. On that date, Richard was part of a violent confrontation in a game between the Canadiens and the rival Boston Bruins. The Bruins' Hal Laycoe, who had previously played defence for the Canadiens, high-sticked Richard in the head during a Montreal power play. Richard required five stitches to close a cut that resulted from the high stick. Referee Frank Udvari signaled a delayed penalty, but allowed play to continue because the Canadiens had possession of the puck.

When the play ended, Richard skated up to Laycoe, who had dropped his stick and gloves in anticipation of a fight, and struck him in the face and shoulders with his stick. The linesmen attempted to restrain Richard, who repeatedly broke away from them to continue his attack on Laycoe, eventually breaking a stick over his opponent's body before linesman Cliff Thompson corralled him. Richard broke loose again and punched Thompson twice in the face, knocking him unconscious. Richard then left the ice with the Canadiens' trainer. According to Montreal Herald writer Vince Lunny, Richard's face looked like a "smashed tomato." Richard was given a match penalty and an automatic $100 fine, while Laycoe got a five-minute major penalty plus a 10-minute misconduct for the high stick.

Boston police attempted to arrest Richard in the dressing room after the game ended, but were turned back by Canadiens players who barred the door, preventing any arrest. Bruins management finally persuaded the officers to leave with a promise that the NHL would handle the issue. Richard was never arrested for the incident. He was instead sent to the hospital by team doctors after complaining of headaches and stomach pains.

The Laycoe incident was Richard's second altercation with an official that season, after having slapped a linesman in the face in Toronto the previous December, for which he was fined $250. Upon hearing the referee's report, league president ordered all parties to appear at a March 16 hearing at his office in Montreal.

The game's on-ice officials, Richard, Laycoe, Montreal assistant general manager Ken Reardon, Boston general manager Lynn Patrick, Montreal coach Dick Irvin and NHL referee-in-chief Carl Voss attended the March 16 hearing. In his defense, Richard contended that he was dazed and thought Thompson was one of Boston's players. He did not deny punching or attacking Laycoe.

After the hearing, Campbell (left) issued a 1200-word statement to the press:

... I have no hesitation in coming to the conclusion that the attack on Laycoe was not only deliberate but persisted in the face of all authority and that the referee acted with proper judgment in awarding a match penalty. I am also satisfied that Richard did not strike linesman Thompson as a result of a mistake or accident as suggested ... Assistance can also be obtained from an incident that occurred less than three months ago in which the pattern of conduct of Richard was almost identical, including his constant resort to the recovery of his stick to pursue his opponent, as well as flouting the authority of and striking officials. On the previous occasion he was fortunate that teammates and officials were more effective in preventing him from doing injury to anyone and the penalty was more lenient in consequence. At the time he was warned there must be no further incident ... The time for probation or leniency is past. Whether this type of conduct is the product of temperamental instability or willful defiance of the authority in the games does not matter. It is a type of conduct which cannot be tolerated by any player--star or otherwise. Richard will be suspended from all games both league and playoff for the balance of the current season.

The suspension--the longest that Campbell would ever issue in his 31 years as league president--was considered by many in Montreal to be unjust and severe. No sooner had the judgment been handed out than the NHL office (then in Montreal) was deluged with hundreds of calls from enraged fans, many of whom made death threats against Campbell.

The general feeling around the league was that the punishment could have been more severe. Detroit Red Wings general manager Jack Adams commented that Campbell "could do no less" and "I thought he would be suspended until January 1 of next season." Red Wings forward Ted Lindsay, whom the league had disciplined for an incident in Toronto in which he attacked a Maple Leafs fan who had been threatening teammate Gordie Howe, opined that Richard was lucky not to get a life suspension. He stated, "in baseball, football or almost anything else that much would be almost automatic. I say they should have suspended him for life."

Bruins president Walter A. Brown agreed with Adams, saying, "That's the least they could do", and Bruins player Fleming Mackell commented, "if they had thrown the book at Richard in 1947 when he cut Bill Eznicki and Vic Lynn, it might have stopped him and made him an even greater hockey player because of it." Interest was high in the hockey world; the Detroit Press reported its switchboard was swamped with calls.

Public outrage from Montreal poured in about what residents felt was a too-severe punishment. Many Quebecer saw the suspension as the English minority further attempting to subjugate the French majority and an attempt to humiliate French Canadiens by "excessively punishing their favorite player".

Campbell, who received death threats, stated that he would not back down and announced his intention to attend the Canadiens' next home game against the Red Wings on March 17, despite advice that he not do so. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the Montreal Forum lobby two hours before the game. Attempts to "crash the gate" by these fans without tickets were denied by police. They then began to gather at Cabot Square across from the Forum (below).

The crowd of demonstrators grew to 6,000. Some carried signs that denounced Campbell, and others had signs reading "Vive Richard" (Long Live Richard), "No Richard, no Cup", "Our national sport destroyed", and many others.

The crowd, originally described as "jovial", turned "surly" after police intervened at the ticket gate. After the mood turned foul, some members of the crowd began smashing windows and throwing ice chunks at passing streetcars

The game vs. Detroit was a battle for first place, but the suspension unsettled the Canadiens. Goaltender Jacques Plante later recalled that the game seemed secondary, and players and officials were "casting worried glances at the sullen crowd". Montreal coach Dick Irvin likewise said afterward, "The people didn't care if we got licked 100-1 that night."

Midway through the first period, with Montreal already down 2–0, Campbell arrived with three secretaries from his office (one of which he would later marry). The 15,000 in attendance immediately started booing Campbell. Some fans began pelting them with eggs, vegetables, and various debris for six straight minutes. At the end of the first period, Detroit had taken 4–1 lead, and the barrage began again. Despite police and ushers' attempts to keep fans away from Campbell, a fan, pretending to be a friend of Campbell's, managed to elude security.

As he approached, the fan extended his hand as if to shake Campbell's. When Campbell reached out to shake his hand, the fan slapped him. As Campbell reeled from the attack, the fan reached back and delivered a punch. Police dragged the attacker away while he attempted to kick the NHL president. Shortly after the fan attack, a tear gas bomb was set off inside the Forum, not far from where Campbell was sitting. Montreal fire chief Armand Pare mandated that the game be suspended for "the protection of the fans," and The Forum was evacuated.

Following the evacuation, Campbell took refuge in the Forum clinic, where he met with Canadiens' general manager Frank Selke. The two wrote a note to Adams declaring the Red Wings the winner of the game due to the Forum's ordered closure

The departing crowd joined the demonstrators, and a riot ensued outside the Forum. Rioters were heard chanting "À bas Campbell" (Down with Campbell) and "Vive Richard" while they smashed windows, attacked bystanders, set fires to newstands, and overturned cars. Over 50 stores were looted and vandalized within a 15-block radius of the Forum. Twelve policemen and twenty-five civilians were injured. The riot continued well into the night, eventually ending at 3 a.m., and it left Montreal's Saint-Catherine Street in shambles. Police estimated between 41 and 100 individuals were arrested. Damage was estimated to be $100,000 ($851,064 in 2011 dollars) to the neighborhood and the Forum itself. One jewelry store alone estimated its losses at $7,000 ($59,574 in 2011 dollars).

Adams blamed Montreal officials after the game: "If they hadn't pampered Maurice Richard, built him up as a hero until he felt he was bigger than hockey itself, this wouldn't have happened."

The incident was national news in Canada. Reporters lined up to see both Campbell and Richard on March 18. Richard was reluctant to make a statement, fearing it could start another riot, but he eventually gave the following statement, both in French and English, over television to a national audience:

Because I always try so hard to win and had my troubles in Boston, I was suspended. At playoff time it hurts not be in the game with the boys. However, I want to do what is good for the people of Montreal and the team. So that no further harm will be done, I would like to ask everyone to get behind the team and to help the boys win from the New York Rangers and Detroit. I will take my punishment and come back next year to help the club and the younger players to win the Cup.

Campbell was unapologetic. He said that he considered it his "duty" as president to attend the game. Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau was livid at Campbell for attending, and he laid the blame for the riot on Campbell. A Montreal city councilor wanted Campbell arrested for inciting the riot. Years later Canadiens' centre Jean Beliveau stated that, although he disagreed with Campbell's decision to attend the game, as well as feeling Campbell might have been using his appearance to make a statement, he concluded that Campbell may have felt that if he did not attend he could appear to be hiding. He also noted that Campbell's absence might not have made much of a difference.

The suspension came when Richard was leading the NHL in scoring and the Canadiens were battling Detroit for first place. Richard's suspension also cost him the 1954-55 scoring title, the closest he ever came to winning it. When Richard's teammate Geoffrion surpassed Richard in scoring on the last day of the regular season, the Canadiens' fans booed him.

The points from the forfeiture provided Detroit with the margin it needed to win first place overall and be guaranteed home ice advantage throughout the Stanley Cup playoffs. That season, the Canadiens lost the Cup final to Detroit in seven games. Richard retired in 1960 after the Canadiens' fifth consecutive Stanley Cup, a record that still stands.

The episode was a prelude to the departure in the offseason of coach Irvin. Selke felt Irvin had contributed to the "periodic eruptions" of Richard by riling him. Selke offered Irvin a job for life with the Canadiens, as long as it was in a non-coaching capacity. Irvin turned him down and moved on to coach the Chicago Blackhawks. He was replaced by former Canadiens player Toe Blake. Irvin coached only one more season before succumbing to bone cancer.

The Richard Riot has taken on a significance greater than a mere sports riot in the fifty years since it happened. The sight of French Quebecers rioting in defense of a Québécois cultural icon like Richard led many commentators to believe it was a significant factor in Quebec's Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. Furthermore, the cause of the riot has been suggested to not be as a result of the severity of the suspension-- instead, what mattered was that a Québecois player had been by suspended by an anglophone president of an anglophone league.

French Canadians saw themselves as inherently disadvantaged within Canada and North America as a whole. Richard was seen as a national hero by French Canadians, and almost a sort of a "revenge" against the anglophone establishment. The riot was a clear sign of rising ethnic tensions in Quebec.

In an article published four days after the riot, journalist Andre Laurendeau was the first to suggest the riot was a sign of growing nationalism in Quebec. Entitled "On a tué mon frère Richard" ("My brother Richard has been killed"), Laurendeau suggested the riot "betrayed what lay behind the apparent indifference and long-held passiveness of French Canadians".

Stimulating sounds: "The Kings of Benin Urban Groove: 1972-1980" by TP Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo

Year released: 2004

A fine selection of tracks from a band that delivers what it promises in the album title. Hailing from the tiny African nation of Benin, TP Orchestre Poly-Rhythmo (the 'TP' in the title is French for Tout Pouissant or "all mighty") storm through an album full of dance floor groovers, displaying the versatility, musicianship and energy that made them legends in their homeland.

This collection reflects their many poly-rhythmic styles including hard afro-funk, driving afrobeat, deep Afro-latin and Cuban grooves--this fusion is the product of combining the sounds they had heard in Lagos with two traditional Vodun rhythms: sato and sakpata.

For my money, the later cuts on this compilation are somewhat weaker; a little to disco-y for my taste in most cases. But the earlier tracks absolutely stink with funky nastiness. Top honor go to the psychedelic screaming banger "Les Djos," which sounds like a hopped up version of the classic Archie Bell and the Drells tune "Tighten Up." Massive stuff for the most part.

Stimulating sounds: "Latin-Soul-Rock" by Fania All-Stars

Year released: 1974

Effortlessly blending Latin rhythms, rock, soul and funk into a bubbly, heady groove-infused package, the Fania All-Stars blazed a trail across the musical landscape in the early 1970s. The standout tracks for me on this one are the swaggering "Chanchullo" and the three live cuts. The review is from allmusic. Viva Fania!

"Live at the Cheetah, Vol. 1" (1971) and "Vol. 2" (1972) elevated the popularity of the Fania All-Stars significantly, as did the film "Our Latin Thing (Nuestra Cosa)" (1972), which included live footage from the Cheetah gig.

So in 1973 label head Jerry Masucci brazenly went ahead and booked Yankee Stadium at the cost of $180,000 for a one-night concert. It was a gamble that paid off in spades when the concert, featuring Tipica '73, El Gran Combo and Mongo Santamaria in addition to the All-Stars, drew a crowd of roughly 45,000. Problem was, the crowd rushed the field mid-show--a condition that was not allowed under contract, for the fans had to stay in the stands and the performers had to stay on a platform stage because of the delicate nature of the baseball field-- and unfortunately that was the end of the show, as the police intervened and the lights were turned on.

Hoping to compound the success of "Live at the Cheetah," Masucci had recorded the August 24, 1973, Yankee Stadium show for future release. Portions of it showed up in the film Salsa (1976) and on the two-volume album "Live at Yankee Stadium" (1976), which was filled out with concurrent material from a concert at Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico. However, "Latin-Soul-Rock", issued in 1974, was the first release to feature material from that historical night at Yankee Stadium: "El Ratón," sung by Cheo Feliciano and featuring a standout guitar solo by Jorge "Malo" Santana, and "Congo Bongo," featuring a congo duel between Ray Barretto and Santamaria.

These two songs comprise the album's original B-side, along with a live recording of "Soul Makossa" from the date at Roberto Clemente Coliseum featuring saxophonist Manu Dibango (only readers of the liner notes will note the difference of time and place, since the material sounds remarkably similar). The original A-side of "Latin-Soul-Rock" is comprised of five excellent studio cuts that had been intended to be performed at Yankee Stadium, if not for the premature conclusion of the show: "Viva Tirado," "Chanchullo," "Smoke," "There You Go," and "Mama Güela."

These songs, which feature Dibango and Santana as guests, along with Billy Cobham and Jan Hammer, are more fitting of the album title, as they're an impressive showcase of the band's ability to fuse rock, soul, and jazz with the style of New York salsa that was the stock-in-trade of Fania.

Stimulating cinema: Down to the Bone

Director: Debra Granik
Year released: 2004

This one made me squirm, because as someone who battles every single day with addiction (food), I saw a lot of myself in the character of Irene. The lying, the sneaking, the selfishness, it's all there. And it hurts me to my heart to know that I have treated people I love like Irene does her loved ones. Regardless of the addiction, it's hard as hell to try to undo years and years of destructive behavior. And this film does a superb job of matching a face to that struggle. Here's a good review from Emanuel Levy at emanualLevy.com.

Winner of two awards at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, for director Debra Granik and a Special Jury Prize for actress Vera Farmiga, “Down to the Bone” is a low-budget, digital-video feature about the arduous process of drug rehab as experienced by a working class mother.

Vera Farmiga gives a solid performance as Irene, the lower-class mom who struggles to keep her marriage together and raise two young sons, while keeping her cocaine addiction a secret. After a series of nearly fatal mishaps, and finally hoping to make a change in her life, Irene decides to check herself into a rehab center. She knows that kicking the habit would be tough, but the experience proves even more difficult than she could have anticipated.

At the center, Irene meets and falls in love with a fellow reformed addict, Bob (Hugh Dillon), who works as a male nurse. Since she is married, Irene makes all efforts to keep the illicit affair clandestine, until she's caught off guard by one of her kids. What makes the movie interesting is that Irene and Bob's stories are complicated and full of paradoxes.

The narrative follows with extreme restraint as Irene goes through drug busts, counseling sessions, group therapy, and honest and dishonest conversations with her husband. And director Granik shows humor too. Reproached by her supermarket boss for a slower pace and less than graceful attitude toward her customers, Irene fires back, “When I was high, I was fast, and now that I'm clean, I'm slow.”

The tale is excellent at conveying how frail and vulnerable people who go through rehab are. Indeed, when one of the couple falls into a relapse with the addiction, their commitment to staying clean and to each other is completely shattered.

Both characters hit bottom and do things, consciously and subconsciously, that they know they would regret and would also hurt those around them. Highly aware of her predicament, Irene in particular knows that she must fight her way to a better place at a price. The characters' epiphanies are not tidy, and there's no happy or sweeping resolution. While there's movement toward redemption, it's not neat or pat; the film just ends.

Aptly titled, “Down to the Bone” is based on Granik's 1997 short film, “Snake Feed,” which won the Sundance Film Festival Short Award in 1998. In its current shape, the film is not only ultra-modest but also under-populated. In addition to Irene's husband, Steve (Clint Jordan), there's only one other character, Lucy (Caridad De La Luz), Irene's co-worker in cleaning houses.

Granick uses her central performers and working class locale of Upstate New York to good effect. Downbeat and realistic, the script is remarkable for avoiding clichs about drug-addiction and rehabilitation and for maintaining a matter-of-fact, non-melodramatic approach. Neither the characters nor the actors who plays them ask for sympathy from the audience, just greater sensitivity to a subject that so far has received mostly sensationalistic Movie-of-the-Week treatment.

Adopting a semi-documentary style, this beautifully wrought film accurately and authentically explores the wrenching road to recovery, without ever resorting to histrionics. It's hard to tell whether the flags shown at the beginning of the film are meant to reflect the post 9/11 mood of run-down working class-America, or whether they are used as an ironic backdrop for a truly downbeat story.

The origins of the film go back to Granik's meeting with Corinne Stralka, a woman who worked as housekeeper at an inn in Upstate New York, where Granik was shooting a documentary. After this chance meeting, Granik began videotaping Corinne and her family, thinking her work would result in a cinema verite documentary.

In “Snake Feed,” the short that preceded the feature-length movie, Corinne, her kids, and her partner, Rich Lieske, played themselves. After making the short, Granik continued to videotape and interview her subjects for several years before deciding to try her hand at a feature.

Stimulating cinema: Bigger Than Life

Director: Nicholas Ray
Year: 1956

In its own way, this slice of the darker side of 1950s suburban American life is scarier than 50 slasher flicks. And perhaps it resonates more for me because I can relate to the central premise of the film--watching someone you love become a changed person thanks to misuse of prescription drugs. Been there, done that. So while things never quite got to the point that they did for the characters in this movie, I've been awful close. Like Walter Matthau's kindhearted best friend Wally, I've had to literally have to wrestle someone back from the brink. It's hard to fight with tears in your eyes and it's even harder to watch a movie, but that's what "Bigger Than Life" was for me. A snapshot, a memory and ultimately, a nightmare.

Ed Avery (James Mason) is a fine upstanding man. He has an adoring wife named Lou (Barbara Rush) and a happy little boy named Richie (Christopher Olsen). Ed is a schoolteacher, well-respected by colleagues and superiors alike. He has two secrets though, a fairly benign one and a more serious. Two or three times a week, he works as a dispatcher for a cab company in order to make ends meet. Money is tight in the Avery household and that's one of the threads that runs through the film. Ed is also in great and almost constant pain, and apparently has been trying to keep this hidden for the last six months.

Following a dinner party for Ed's friends, the pain becomes too great and Ed passes out--not once but twice. He is taken to the hospital where a battery of tests are run. Lou comes to visit and--after one of his co-workers from the cab company drops in--Ed confesses to his "double life." There's much relieved laughter--Lou of course thought he was having an affair but it turns out that Ed was only trying to make things better for her and Richie. It's a real puzzler as to what's wrong with Ed's health, but eventually the doctors decide on a diagnosis. And the prognosis is grim, Ed could very well soon be dead. However, there is some hope; the (then) new drug cortisone has been known to help. Ed is given a prescription with strict instructions on how and when to take the pills.

Very soon, Ed's behavior begins to change. Despite the family's financial hardship, he insists on taking Lou to the finest store in town to buy some clothes. Throwing the football around with Richie now has an intense, hard edge. And in one memorable scene, Ed manages to offend practically every parent of his students as he delivers a speech about the limitations of children at a PTA meeting. Things grow even worse--a now paranoid Ed, who is taking far more than the daily dosage, accuses Wally and Lou of having and affair and in due time he announces his plan to leave her and devote his time to a nebulous research project that he feels will change the course of education.

It's riveting to watch, and Ed's descent is made more poignant by his family. Lou is the classic enabler, refusing to see the obvious even when Wally implores her to do something. Richie, who eventually becomes the focal point of Ed's psychotic rantings, is a poor confused kid. At one point, when things are at their worst, Richie exclaims that he'd rather have his father stop taking the cortisone and die than continue on his downward spiral. The movie reaches its frightening crescendo when Ed turns into a Bible-quoting madman bent on the destruction of his family.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this movie was not a financial success upon its release. It's not the typical happy nuclear family, "Father Knows Best" fare. But it earned enormous respect among critics--writing in the influential French journal "Cahiers du Cinema," Jean-Luc Godard proclaimed it one of his 10 favorites. But looking back, we see that Ray and Mason, who also co-wrote and produced the film, were remarkably forward thinking in their portrayal of the insidious things that can happen when prescription drugs are misused. Ray is simply wonderful in his role, spanning the entire range of human emotion in the course of 95 minutes. Matthau is also strong in his role as the best buddy, offering humor, logic and empathy throughout the proceedings.

Stimulating cinema: The Pope's Toilet

Directors: Cesar Charlone and Enrique Fernandez
Year: 2007

Note: Originally I wrote this back in January of 2011. It's not cold and snowing here today; alas, the part about the diet is true.

It's a cold gray day outside today. Snow is coming down in buckets and it's been consistently freezing for several weeks. Combined with the fact that I have just embarked on a new workout/diet program in an effort to (once again) lose those unwanted pounds, I am not the happiest camper right now. But I've had my pity party and now it's time to move on. I have to remember that I have a lot going for me in my life and annoyances like the weather and working out for an hour a day are just that--annoyances. I'm not in danger of going bankrupt or anything like that. I haven't staked my entire future on a dream that may or may not come true.

Which brings me to today's post and this remarkable movie from Uruguay. Maybe my mood is affected by watching this--"The Pope's Toilet" is truly one of the most poignant, gut-wrenching movies you will ever see. And the genius of it is, that the raw emotion stems from what should be a wondrous experience--a visit from the Pope. The sadness is tempered with lots of comic episodes, but the overall theme of the movie is chasing dreams--and we all know that more times than not, the dreams escape our grasp.

The setting is 1988 in Melo, Uruguay, a mountain village near the Brazilian border. Beto (Cesar Troncoso) and buddies eke out a meager existence working as smugglers, riding their bikes back and forth across the border several times a week, returning with groceries and other goods which they can then sell to small-time shopkeepers in their village. The work is grueling, the rewards are small and on top of it all, Beto and his friends are the frequent victims of shakedowns, courtesy of a corrupt customs official named Meleyo (Nelson Lence). Beto has a wife Carmen (Virginia Mendez), who is patient and kind and remarkably supportive even in the face of the tough life they are living. There is also brooding teenage daughter Silvia (Virginia Ruiz), who is ashamed of the way her dad makes a living and who dreams of fleeing her tiny village to go to the capital of Montevideo and study to be a radio broadcaster (the scenes where Silvia practices her delivery under the cover of darkness are incredibly touching).

Excitement is running high in Melo--Pope John Paul II will soon be arriving for a visit. The townspeople view this as an opportunity to make some quick and plentiful cash selling food and souvenirs to the multitudes that are expected to descend on their village. Of course, these plans require start-up capital and the villagers are forced to mortgage everything the have in order to acquire their materials. It's a risky proposition--extremely so--and Carmen cautions against trying to make money off the Holy Father. But the lure of riches is too great and everyone busily throws themselves into making chorizo sandwiches and cookies and blowing up balloons. Beto, of course, has a scheme too. With everyone eating so much, certainly there will be a need for a bathroom. So he decides to build one on his property with the plan of charging visitors who need to make use of the facilities.

Carmen tries to point out some possible negatives ('what if they go before they leave home?") and offers an idea of her own that Beto promptly shoots down. It's all or nothing for him and soon he is launching himself headlong into building the finest public convenience in the area. The family's savings are soon exhausted though and Beto ultimately makes a deal with the devil--Meleyo--to make some "special" runs. The payout is handsome but the price is high--Meleyo now owns Beto. And when Silvia sees her dad discussing terms with the local bad guy and calls him on it, the simmering tensions in the house spill over.

I won't go into any more plot details because I would really hate to spoil the final moments for anyone who is reading this and is interested in this movie. I will say though, that there are some truly moving, powerful scenes and it makes you wonder if the title of the movie can be taken metaphorically as well as literally. Everything about this movie is amazing--the acting, the camerawork, the cinematography, everything. I could go on and on but trust me on this--if you watch "The Pope's Toilet" and aren't moved, well ...

Stimulating cinema: Greenberg

Director: Noah Baumbach
Year released: 2010

It's kind of a hackneyed cliche at this point but I'm going to trot it out there because it fits; I wanted to like this one more than I did. I just found myself being overwhelmed by my dislike for the title character, to the point where there was little else that I could even remember after it was over. And there's certainly a whole lot to like, as A.O. Scott points out in his review that was originally published in the March 24, 2010 edition of the New York Times. Still in all, a good little movie and certainly not a waste of time watching it.

“Hurt people hurt people.” This nugget of therapy talk is passed from one character to another in Noah Baumbach's "Greenberg," offered as an explanation, an excuse and a sort-of apology. While those four words don’t quite sum up the whole of the human condition, they might stand as a concise summary of Mr. Baumbach’s recent movies. The battling pair of married (and then divorced) writers in "The Squid and the Whale," the warring sisters in "Margot at the Wedding"--they and their loved ones walk through life nursing psychic wounds and brandishing metaphorical knives.

Roger Greenberg--a former musician who works as a carpenter and whose vocation is writing eloquent letters of complaint about apparently minor inconveniences — is both heavily scarred and heavily armed. Played by Ben Stiller as a wiry, gray-haired ball of raw nerves and well-oiled defense mechanisms, Roger returns to Los Angeles after 15 years in New York and a short stay in a mental hospital after a breakdown. He roosts in the large hillside house of his brother (Chris Messina), who has gone with his wife and children to Vietnam for a long vacation.

“I’m trying to do nothing right now,” Roger explains to everyone who doesn’t ask. Whether he succeeds is an open question. He looks up some old friends, worries about the neighbors and his brother’s dog, and pursues an awkward stop-and-start romance with his brother’s personal assistant, Florence Marr (Greta Gerwig). Roger, at 40, seems uncomfortably stuck in his own receding youth, but Florence, who hangs out in art galleries with her friends and sometimes sings at a half-empty hipster bar, really is 25.
Although Roger Greenberg is a world-class narcissist, “Greenberg” is not all about him. It is the funniest and saddest movie Mr. Baumbach has made so far, and also the riskiest. Mr. Stiller, suppressing his well-honed sketch comedian’s urge to wink at the audience, turns Roger into a walking challenge to the Hollywood axiom that a movie’s protagonist must be likable. But Mr. Baumbach, relishing his antihero’s obstinate difficulty--which is less an inability to connect with other people than a stubborn refusal, on hazy grounds of principle, to try--treats Roger with compassion, even tenderness.

And in finding others who are willing, sometimes against their best interests, to venture that kind of generosity, he turns what might have been a case study of neurosis into an exploration of loneliness, friendship and the sense of emotional deprivation that can fester in a landscape of comfort and privilege.

This landscape is an important part of the film, as is the city of Los Angeles, captured in its shaggy, smoggy, unglamorous beauty by the exceptionally talented cinematographer Harris Savides. The easiest rebuke to aim at Mr. Baumbach, the child of East Coast literary intellectuals and the husband of a much-admired actress (Jennifer Jason Leigh, who appears in “Greenberg” and shares a story credit with her husband), is that he occupies himself with a narrow and (to him) familiar swath of social reality. Fair enough, but so did Henry James. And like James — I swear I won’t push this analogy too far, lest I start sounding like the dad in “The Squid and the Whale” — Mr. Baumbach is highly sensitive to nuances of behavior and tiny distinctions of status.

To some extent, “Greenberg,” like nearly all of Mr. Baumbach’s work going back to "Kicking and Screaming" is a comedy of manners. West Coast versions of the hyper-articulate recent college graduates of that movie, his 1995 directing debut, have grown up and been supplanted by a strange new generation. Some of the humor in “Greenberg” comes from the various collisions between youth and middle age. Kids these days! They don’t know what you’re talking about when you quote "Wall Street" and they don’t appreciate Duran Duran. Damned Internet!

Roger drifts partly back into a circle of old friends and band mates, and seeks out Beth (Ms. Leigh), a former girlfriend who has been married and divorced since he saw her last. She, like Roger’s still loyal best friend, Ivan (Rhys Ifans), has been attempting to live an adult life, and several scenes capture the awkwardness of people trying to hold on to their youth and trying to find a comfortable way to be grown-ups. (By drinking beer, for example, at their children’s birthday parties.)

You don’t have the feeling that Ivan or Beth has changed much since the mid-’90s, but each has accepted the necessity of compromise. This is a basic element of maturity that Roger refuses. Beth and Ivan are trying to swim, or at least are managing to tread water, while Roger can barely dog paddle his way out of the shallow end of his brother’s pool.

It is partly arrested development--the refusal to act his age--that draws Roger to Florence, who functions less as a standard love interest than as his mirror image and moral counterweight. Like Roger, she is lonely and adrift, but her identity crisis is different from his. While he is aggressive even at times of indecision, Florence, at her most decisive, still seems tentative and hesitant.

“You need to stand up for yourself,” Florence’s employer tells her, and Roger, who takes repeated advantage of her passivity, mistakes it for low self-esteem. “You have value,” he tells her at one point, repeating another therapeutic nostrum he picked up from Beth.

“I already knew that,” Florence shouts back, in a rare display of anger. “You didn’t have to say that.”

Her problem is that she is not sure what or who else should have value to her. Florence is in the early stages of the battle for love and success, having taken her marching orders along with her college degree. But she has only a vague sense of the mission.

Roger, meanwhile, fancies himself a conscientious objector, courageously refusing to follow the rules of engagement and showering contempt on anyone who does. This gives him license to be thoughtless and mean whenever he wants, and his repeated, unprovoked cruelty to Florence may be, for some viewers, impossible to forgive.

But “Greenberg” is not easily forgotten, and the misery of Roger’s company provides its own special kind of pleasure. Mr. Baumbach’s sense of character and place is so precise — the film seems so transparent, so real — that his formal audacity almost passes unnoticed. Rather than push Roger and Florence through the grinding machinery of an overdetermined plot, he allows them to wander and sometimes to stall, to inhabit their lives fully and uneasily. They are more like characters in a French movie than the people you usually meet under the Hollywood sign.

Only at the end, in the wake of a brilliantly executed party sequence--in which Roger, the solitary Gen-Xer, finds his world of defensive ironies and carefully preserved pop cultural references overrun and trashed by a swarm of Millennials--does his arc, as residents of Hollywood might call it, become apparent. Mr. Baumbach abruptly, and with a subtle display of self-conscious wit, reveals “Greenberg” to have been a romantic comedy all along. Here we are in a car speeding toward the airport and what might be the prospect of a happy ending. And suddenly a movie about a man who is defiantly difficult to like becomes very hard not to love.

Stimulating cinema: Welcome

Director: Philippe Lioret
Year released: 2010

The folks at Film Movement are responsible for this one, along with a number of other gems--all of astonishingly high artistic value. The review below was written by Stephen Holden and published in the New York Times on May 7, 2010.

Philippe Lioret's compelling, finely balanced immigration drama, "Welcome," is set mostly in Calais, the port in northern France that is the closest French city to Britain. Here, where on a clear day the cliffs of Dover are visible like a glimpse of the promised land, is where Bilal (Firat Ayverdi), a 17-year-old Kurd, lands on a chilly, bleak February afternoon in 2008.

Having spent three months traveling on foot from Mosul, Iraq, during which he was captured and held prisoner for eight days by the Turkish Army, Bilal is a stubborn fool for love who hopes to cross the English Channel to be with his Kurdish sweetheart, Mina (Derya Ayverdi, Mr. Ayverdi’s sister). But he is persona non grata with her family, which has settled in London, where her father plans to marry her off to a prosperous cousin who owns grocery stores.

Like few other films about illegal immigration and its perils, “Welcome” puts you so completely into the shoes of a young man facing almost insurmountable obstacles that you feel a profound empathy not only for him but also for all who are ready to risk everything for the dream of a better life. Mr. Ayverdi’s portrayal of a shy innocent driven by blind faith in himself and ferocious stamina finds exactly the right spirit of determination tinged with petulance to make him entirely believable.

Because Bilal finds a reluctant, and unlikely, champion in Simon (Vincent Lindon), a middle-aged swimming instructor at a public pool in Calais, the movie has a lot in common with "The Visitor," which portrayed a similar relationship. But its story has a more organic feel and deeper emotional resonance. Granite-faced and baggy-eyed, his mouth set in a tight line, Mr. Lindon’s Simon epitomizes a solid, stoic Gallic masculinity in the mold of Jean Gabin.

When Bilal enters his life, Simon is in the midst of being amicably divorced from his wife, Marion (Audrey Dana), a schoolteacher who helps run an outdoor soup kitchen for the city’s 500 or so illegal immigrants. The spur to Simon’s unexpected patronage of Bilal is Marion’s accusation that he is indifferent not only to her but also to the plight of those less fortunate. Her stinging criticism wakes Simon up to his own self-absorption at exactly the moment when Bilal visits the pool where Simon works, seeking lessons so that he can swim the English Channel in a wet suit.

Bilal has already blown his best chance of crossing the water safely, having borrowed 500 euros to pay a “handler,” who in an early scene smuggles him and several others in the belly of a truck bound for a ferry to England. During the trip, which involves putting a plastic bag over his face at checkpoints to foil sensors programmed to detect human activity, he panics and gives the group away.

Because Simon and Marion were childless, Bilal, without Simon’s quite realizing it, becomes his surrogate son. The most dedicated pupil Simon has ever had, Bilal makes astonishingly rapid progress, and eventually Simon takes him to the water’s edge for practice.

One of the film’s achievements is to put you just as much in Simon’s shoes as in Bilal’s. Simon’s cynicism and sense of caution are constantly pulling him back and making him question his impulse to help the boy. Tiny misunderstandings can flare into lightning rages if Simon thinks Bilal might be playing him for a sucker. And Bilal, for all his sweetness, is no meek little angel. Below his litanies of humble thank yous is a will of iron, along with a streak of avarice.

In agreeing to help an illegal immigrant, Simon is breaking the law. His neighbors complain to the police and insinuate that Simon is sleeping with Bilal. If it can be proven that he is sheltering the boy, Simon faces arrest and possible incarceration. Even Marion, who is amazed at his change of heart, decides that he is going too far.

When Bilal eventually undertakes the solo journey, the movie shows you just how perilous it is. Aerial views reveal the currents Bilal will be fending off, while sea-level shots in the choppy gray water, in which vessels loom like predatory monsters bobbing in and out of view, make you feel like a fragile, shivering dot. The same sense of visceral immensity is conveyed by scenes of giant trucks lined up to make the ferry crossing at twilight.

As deeply as it explores the souls of Bilal and his wary protector, “Welcome” evokes a world of overwhelming forces, both natural and social, plying the waters of history. These forces may be resisted, but they will not be stopped.

Random picture from an exotic place I'll probably never get to visit

You can almost hear the waves gently lapping on the shore on Aitutaki in the Cook Islands. A picture postcard come to life.

Curling up with a good book: Written Lives

Complete title: Written Lives
Author: Javier Marias (translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa)
Year published: 2007

I have a copy of this one tucked away in my closet, so a big thanks goes to the mighty Germantown library for not having to dig it out in order to enjoy it once again. The Spanish author Javier Marias explores the various peccadilloes, neuroses and overall odd behavior of some of literature's best known authors. You've heard it said that musicians are different? Well, authors take a back seat to no one. The review below was written by Alex Wenger and published on the Words Without Borders web site.

It is a small but unmistakable invitation to chaos in the prologue to his newly translated Written Lives when Javier Marias deadpans that he has made up "almost nothing" in the content of this book. Written Lives is a collection of biographies of canonical authors, and making up anything would constitute an act of mischief upon both the reader and literary history as a whole. In fact, the whole project reads like a gentle prank: to treat the greatest writers as if they were short story characters. Marias thankfully has a masterful touch, and his toying with the tradition has a purpose.

Most readers will be excited by the notion of William Faulkner and Henry James as short story characters, a well-founded faith. The stories are irresistible. James, we are told, was fussy as a guest, never forgiving Flaubert for his host's having received him in a work-shirt. But he found it the height of civilization when Guy de Maupassant greeted him for lunch in the company of a masked and otherwise naked woman. Is it true? The reader will certainly want it to be true. Indeed, the deliciousness of the stories—did Malcolm Lowry really break the neck of a friend's pet rabbit while petting it and then lug the corpse about with him for two days?—often threaten to appear impossibly fanciful. They suggest the work more of a confectioner than a gardener.

This doubt and the anxiety it produces seem central to Marias's project. At some point, a great writer becomes a necessary appurtenance to his own pages, and his absence creates a problem for his readers. Is there any more biographied personage than William Shakespeare, a man about whom almost nothing is known? So slender is our dossier on the man that we would throw it out entirely, deny attribution of authorship, and give him a new identity more easily documented, perhaps Sir Francis Bacon or Christopher Marlowe.

Larry McMurtry once wrote that the lives of writers are almost always more interesting than the works they produce—a useful, if bizarre, overstatement. Writers can become ultimate characters, in a way. It isn't that we compare Nabokov directly to Dolly Haze and judge the relative excitements of their stories. It is rather that Nabokov is all at once attendant with, subordinated to, and in possession of Lolita and all of the rest (Humbert, Kinbote, Pnin, Quilty, etc.), with the added benefit of being credited with a corporeal existence. That the author can be photographed makes this addition of a body only better.

Pictures play a major role in Written Lives. Each biography is preceded by a portrait of its subject, and the final chapter of the book is an essay on author photographs. In this essay, Marias describes the "perfect artist." A perfect artist is an artist who both has been photographed and has died. Marias chooses not to explain this perfection, but implied is the idea that in leaving behind an image after a death, a transfiguration is possible. Having sailed for Byzantium, the writer is rendered into his own bust and set alongside his creations, the artifice of eternity his reward. Without the image, the bust would be impossible—and the artist without a bust could hardly be perfect.

Perhaps oddly, then, it is a fixation on eternity or the eternal that most draws Marias's ire among his biography subjects. He admits in his prologue to having failed to generate affection for three men—James Joyce, Thomas Mann, and Yukio Mishima. The self-seriousness of each man is highlighted and his dreams of posthumous celebrity ridiculed. None of these three biographies are much fun, coming across as mean-spirited and not a little puzzling. For what writer, let alone what great writer, has ever been utterly free of the sins of vanity and self-seriousness? Such invidious distinctions seem especially curious coming from a writer such as Marias, whose ambition and accomplishments make him a yearly candidate for the Nobel Prize. But these minor dissonances detract little from the overwhelming effervescence of the book. The past becomes all text and image, as has been said in one form or another by Derrida, DeLillo, and countless others. Marias offers us one of the sunniest upshots yet of that formulation without sacrificing intellectual depth. And we can all be grateful to him for the image of Isak Dinesen at a dinner party, casually menacing her boyfriend with a revolver.

Stimulating structures: Stadium Bowl, Tacoma, Wash.

With Puget Sound providing a beautiful backdrop, the 15,000-seat Stadium Bowl in Tacoma, Wash. is a fantastic place to check out the local prep football team, Stadium High. After coming home dirty and dusty from my nights spent covering high school football, it would be a real treat for me--not to mention the players, coaches and fans--to have something like this in our area.

Stimulating cinema: In Bruges

Director: Martin McDonagh
Year released: 2008

Another excellent film--and really, why should you waste two hours of your time knowingly watching something that isn't any good. Two hitmen--hilariously with guidebooks in tow--are sent to lay low in Bruges, Belgium. There's a great mixture of action and comedy. I'm not Hollywood enough to worry that Colin Ferrell's performance in this one got him "back on track" or "fulfilled our expectations of how funny he could be." I just know it's a very fine film--and Roger Ebert agrees:

You may know that Bruges, Belgium, is pronounced "broozh," but I didn't, and the heroes of "In Bruges" certainly don't. They're Dublin hit- men, sent there by their boss for two weeks after a hit goes very wrong. One is a young hothead who sees no reason to be anywhere but Dublin; the other, older, gentler, more curious, buys a guidebook and announces: "Bruges is the best-preserved medieval city in Belgium!"

So it certainly seems. If the movie accomplished nothing else, it inspired in me an urgent desire to visit Bruges. But it accomplished a lot more than that. This film debut by the theater writer and director Martin McDonagh is an endlessly surprising, very dark, human comedy, with a plot that cannot be foreseen but only relished. Every once in a while you find a film like this, that seems to happen as it goes along, driven by the peculiarities of the characters.

Brendan Gleeson, with that noble shambles of a face and the heft of a boxer gone to seed, has the key role as Ken, one of two killers for hire. His traveling companion and unwilling roommate is Ray (Colin Farrell), who successfully whacked a priest in a Dublin confessional but tragically killed a little boy in the process. Before shooting the priest, he confessed to the sin he was about to commit. After accidentally killing the boy, he reads the notes the lad made for his own confession. You don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Ken and Ray work for Harry, apparently a Dublin crime lord, who for the first two thirds of the movie we hear only over the phone, until he materializes in Bruges and turns out to be a worried-looking Ralph Fiennes. He had the men hiding out in London, but that wasn't far enough away. Who would look for them in Bruges? Who would even look for Bruges? Killing the priest was business, but "blowing a kid's head off just isn't done."

The movie does an interesting thing with Bruges. It shows us a breathtakingly beautiful city, without ever seeming to be a travelogue. It uses the city as a way to develop the characters. When Ken wants to climb an old tower "for the view," Ray argues "why do I have to climb up there to see down here? I'm already down here." He is likewise unimpressed by glorious paintings, macabre sculptures and picturesque canals, but is thrilled as a kid when he comes upon a film being shot.

There he meets two fascinating characters: First he sees the fetching young blond Chloe (Clemence Poesy, who was Fleur Delacour in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"). Then he sees Jimmy (Jordan Prentice), a dwarf who figures in a dream sequence. He gets off on a bad footing with both, but eventually they're doing cocaine with a prostitute Jimmy picked up and have become friends, even though Ray keeps calling the dwarf a "midget" and having to be corrected.

Without dreaming of telling you what happens next, I will say it is not only ingenious but almost inevitable the way the screenplay brings all of these destinies together at one place and time. Along the way, there are times of great sadness and poignancy, times of abandon, times of goofiness, and that kind of humor that is really funny because it grows out of character and close observation. Farrell in particular hasn't been this good in a few films, perhaps because this time he's allowed to relax and be Irish. As for Gleeson, if you remember him in "The General," you know that nobody can play a more sympathetic bad guy.

Martin McDonagh is greatly respected in Ireland and England for his plays; his first film, a short named "Six Shoooter" starring Gleeson, won a 2006 Oscar. In his feature debut, "In Bruges," he has made a remarkable first film, as impressive in its own way as "House of Games," the first film by David Mamet, who McDonagh is sometimes compared with.

Yes, it's a "thriller," but one where the ending seems determined by character and upbringing rather than plot requirements. Two of the final deaths are, in fact, ethical choices. And the irony inspiring the second one has an undeniable logic, showing that even professional murderers have their feelings.

Stimulating cinema: Four Lions

Director: Chris Morris
Year released: 2010

Bloody brilliant film about a group of would-be jihadists who can't seem to can't out of their own way. Genuine laughs are derived from a scary topic (terrorism). Truly one of the best films I have seen, ever. The review comes from A.O. Scott and was originally published in the New York Times on November 4, 2010.

Terrorism is stupid. Terrorists are stupid. It seems to me that these truths have not been sufficiently acknowledged, especially by movies, which tend to imagine terrorists as the diabolically clever authors of complicated conspiracies. But surely the recent historical record suggests that for every extremist mastermind scheming in a cave somewhere, there are innumerable stooges, fools and copycats, their dreams of glory tethered to half-baked ideas and harebrained plots. Incompetence married to zeal is hardly benign--dumb people have done their share of damage in the world--but it can nonetheless be funny.

These musings are inspired by "Four Lions," a shockingly hilarious, stiletto-sharp satire directed by Chris Morris and written by a squad of British wits. It concerns a squad of British nitwits eager to wage jihad and unsure of just how to go about doing it. That there are five of them in a movie called “Four Lions” is testament either to their aggregate brain power or to their mathematical skills, though it is also true that one of the group is subtracted by an incident of premature martyrdom involving a sheep.

Shot in a jerky, low-budget style just a few steps removed from the inflammatory Web videos its characters try to make, “Four Lions” is unsparing and yet also curiously affectionate. Taking place mainly in a nondescript, lower-middle-class suburb, with excursions to Pakistan and London, the film proceeds through a barrage of multilingual, heavily accented slang, punctuated by bursts of nearly “Jackass”-worthy slapstick, some fatal. In the manner of "Extras" or "In the Loop" it offers a thoroughly cynical, cringe-inducingly precise portrait of a slice of contemporary society.

It is hard to know just how to introduce the five self-styled mujahideen whose confused, powerful desire to blow something up sends the movie on its chaotic, farcical journey. Perhaps in ascending order of intelligence? In that case, Waj (Kayvan Novak) would probably come first, since he cannot tell a chicken from a rabbit and studies Islamic doctrine in children’s books like “The Cat Who Went to Mecca.” He would be followed by Faisal (Adeel Akhtar), a dreamy, timid soul whose big operational idea is to train crows to be suicide bombers.

Waj and Faisal are disarmingly sweet-natured, given that they have chosen the path of violence. The same cannot be said for Barry (Nigel Lindsay), whose belligerent fanaticism may stem from the fact that he is presumably a convert to Islam. Or he may just be nuts. His big operational idea is to bomb a local mosque, which he says will “radicalize the moderates.”

In any event, when Barry recruits Hassan (Arsher Ali), who expresses his religious beliefs through bad hip-hop rhymes, he precipitates one of many schisms within the cell, in particular because the leader, Omar (Riz Ahmed), is jealous.

To say that Omar is the brains-- and also the conscience-- of this band of brothers is accurate, as far as it goes. Though he cannot aim a rocket launcher, a failure that gets him and Waj thrown out of a training camp in Pakistan, Omar can tell a rabbit from a chicken, and he can see his comrades’ foolishness. This means that he can expand the movie’s comic range by making fun of them and also that he becomes a vessel for the audience’s sympathy. That he is a regular guy with a job as a security guard, a good-humored wife (Preeya Kalidas) and a young son makes him all the more likable, even as his likability makes his commitment to violence especially disturbing.

Unlike, say, Udayan Prasad and Hanif Kureishi's sensitive and prescient "My Son the Fanatic," "Four Lions" is not an examination of the social and psychological roots of British Muslim fundamentalism. Its mockery is cruel, well aimed and, in its way, fair, since non-Muslim Britons and nonviolent Muslims (like Omar’s pious brother) come off no better than the titular pride of lions.

Inept as they are, the five members of this foursome follow the logic of their convictions to the end, and the film is nervy enough to do the same. It sustains its comedy past the point of sensitivity or good feeling, tickling the audience with matters that may be too painful, too awful, to contemplate otherwise and building toward an ending that manages to be grim, appalling and uproarious all at once. You laugh until the laughter turns to ashes in your mouth. And then you laugh some more.

Stimulating cinema: A Screaming Man

Original title: Un homme qui crie
Director: Mahamat-Saleh Haroun
Year released: 2010

For a film with the word "screaming" in the title, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun's latest is actually a very quiet, thoughtful--and thought-provoking--work. The screaming takes place on the inside, as the central character Adam (Youssouf Djaoro) deals with his searing inner turmoil and conflicting emotions. The central theme is about the struggle of growing old; once a champion swimmer Adam is now seeing his little corner of the world taken away by his son Abdel (Diouc Koma). And he doesn't like it--even though he clearly loves and respects his only child. This is a beautifully shot film that explores that darker side of the father-son relationship. The review below was originally published in the May 13, 2011 edition of the London Guardian and written by Phillip French.

When the name of the landlocked African republic of Chad comes up, most cinephiles will think of the opening of Antonioni's The Passenger. In that masterly 1975 film, playing a reporter at the end of his tether while covering a hopeless civil war, Jack Nicholson swaps his identity with a dead man he finds in a remote Saharan hotel. It seems to sum up the sense of desperation and extreme experience that, rightly or wrongly, Chad incites.

However, as in other troubled, desperately poor African countries, there are a handful of gifted artists of world stature, mostly musicians but also painters and film-makers, and A Screaming Man, the fourth feature film by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Chad's only prominent film-maker, won the jury prize at last year's Cannes film festival. This year Haroun is serving on the festival jury under Robert De Niro and later this month he's to be the subject of a brief retrospective season at BFI South Bank, or the National Film Theatre as some of us insist on calling it. For many years Chad hasn't had a cinema, so making a movie there is rather like cutting a key without having a lock to use it on. But – a hopeful sign – an old cinema has been reopened and renovated to show Haroun's movies.

Although having lived in France for 30 years after receiving severe war wounds, the 50-year-old Haroun has set all his films in Chad. There's a theme running through the simple, deeply affecting Abouna and Daratt, the previous films by Haroun that have been released in this country, of families falling apart under the strain of war and poverty. In Abouna, a previously dedicated father suddenly disappears from the family in Chad's capital of N'djamena; in Daratt, a young man is dispatched by his blind grandfather to find and kill his father's murderer after a general amnesty has been decreed following 40 years of civil war. This theme is also pursued in A Screaming Man, where social insecurity, poverty and an ever-widening civil war tear a family apart.

All his films are financed in Europe, and A Screaming Man clearly has a European model in FW Murnau's silent classic The Last Laugh (aka Der letzte Mann). Scripted by Carl Mayer (the only truly great writer to work exclusively in the cinema and now buried in Highgate cemetery), The Last Laugh centres on a pompous doorman at a grand hotel in Berlin humiliated by being reduced to working as a lavatory attendant. In Haroun's version he becomes Adam, a 55-year-old swimming-pool attendant at a smart hotel for upper-class guests, mainly foreigners. A former national swimming star known to everyone as "Champ", he has the stiff, proud bearing of a regimental sergeant major and is assisted by his handsome westernised son, 20-year-old Ahmed.

But with fluctuating fortunes in war-torn times, the hotel's new manager, Mrs Wang, is laying off staff and Adam is given the less dignified and remunerated job of gatekeeper. Ahmed is promoted to running the pool and is clearly more popular with female clients. A rift is created between them, and in a beautifully modulated scene shot in a single take, Mariam, the mother of the family, tries to keep the peace.

A Screaming Man doesn't have the expressionistic force of The Last Laugh, but it does have a performance of immense dignity from Youssouf Djaoro as Adam, whose biblical name becomes increasingly appropriate as the film proceeds. It also develops Carl Mayer's story far beyond anything in the original. Through the pressures working on Adam and the demands of a country involved in a pointless war, the young Ahmed is quite literally dragged away to war, and Adam is restored to his old post. This job, however, becomes increasingly unimportant.

The war is never viewed directly. It is something happening across the desert, but getting ever closer. Wounded soldiers appear in the street; UN troops use the pool. The noise of airliners overhead is replaced by that of military aircraft. The guilt-stricken Adam and his kindly wife take in a pregnant singer from Mali, Ahmed's 19-year-old girlfriend they had never heard of. A curfew is called as the town degenerates into anarchy. Having felt betrayed by his employees, Adam is now haunted by having himself become a traitor in a society given over to self-interest. He thus sets out to do the honest, upright thing. His task is to make moral sense of his life in a chaotic world where morality was once established through the position he held in an ordered, hieratic community.

A Screaming Man is a quiet film about family life, the relationship between fathers and children, and the way generations can shape and reshape each other. It ultimately has a sublime quality. The spirit of such quiet, reflective directors as Ozu and Bresson lies behind it and there are no sudden cuts or startling images.

The dominant motif is water. Father and son compete as swimmers. The pool and the river are places of escape from this harsh desert world. Water is not only a precious commodity for survival, but also a religious element for immersion and spiritual cleansing. Appropriately, A Screaming Man begins and ends with Adam in the water which has taken on a divine, healing quality in the course of the film.

Stimulating sports: Henry Kissinger on soccer

As mentioned in a previous post, Henry Kissinger is an avid soccer fan. And he has used his political clout to help further the game, too. He was instrumental in bringing the World Cup to the United States in 1994 (something he harkens toward at the end of the following column) and even served for a time as commissioner of the now defunct Northern American Soccer League. In fact, win the New York Cosmos were in their heyday back in the 1970s, Kissinger was one of the many "celebrity" fans that turned out to watch Pele, Beckenbauer, Cruyff, etc. work their magic at the Meadowlands. And he has attended every World Cup since 1974--with the exception of the 2002 event.

This post contains to excellent writings on soccer, penned by Kissinger. The first was published in the Los Angeles Times during the 1986 World Cup. The second--on Pele--was published in Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century.

I have been an avid soccer fan ever since my youth in Fuerth, a soccer-mad city of southern Germany, which for some inexplicable reason won three championships in a three-year period. My father despaired of a son who preferred to stand for two hours (there were very few seats) watching a soccer game rather than sit in the comfort at the opera or be protected from the elements in a museum.

Soccer evokes extraordinary passions, especially during the quadrennial World Cup competition ending today in Mexico City. It has been estimated that the Brazilian gross national product suffers a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars for every day Brazil plays, as rabid fans sit before television sets or radios. Statistics in other soccer citadels must be comparable.

Soccer lends itself to a competition of national teams because it requires an extraordinary combination of individual skill, teamwork and strategic sense. Since there are 11 players on each side engaged in continuous action, every game produces tactical necessities to be solved by improvisation on the playing field.

This was true even in my youth when soccer was much less complex and much more oriented to the offense. Then there were five forwards, three midfield players, two fullbacks and a goalie. The offense being numerically superior to the defense, goals were much more frequent then. By the late 1930s, managers sought to overcome this advantage by assigning the center half to shadow the opposing center forward. The creation of three de facto fullbacks constricted the attack which since time immemorial had been built around the center forward.

In the early 1950s, the Hungarians showed how to overwhelm this defense, turning their center forward into a decoy. He would move to the sidelines or toward midfield, drawing the shadowing defensive player out of position, creating an empty space in front of the goal.

But as in military strategy every offensive maneuver in soccer evokes a compensating defensive move. The answer to the roving center forward was a zone defense; defensive players were required to cover a certain area regardless of which player was attacking. Total soccer was invented soon thereafter; all players had to be able to defend as well as attack and to shift from one mode to another with extreme rapidity.

The modern style of soccer in fact emphasizes defense — with few exceptions like Brazil, Argentina and France. The basic alignment has become four defensive and four midfield players; the forwards have shrunk to two. Massed defenses can in general be overcome only by rapid thrusts involving very accurate passing. The result is a very tactical game, its complexity becoming a fascinating reflection of national attitudes.

The styles of leading soccer powers like West Germany, Brazil, Italy and England illustrate this point.

West Germany, a finalist today, is, with Italy and Brazil, the most successful team of the modern era. West German soccer entered the postwar era with no particular legacy. Postwar Germany's newly professional soccer being as novel as the frontiers of the state it represents, it could adopt total soccer with a vengeance. The German national team plays the way its general staff prepared for the war; games are meticulously planned, each player skilled in both attack and defense. Intricate pass patterns evolve, starting right in front of the German goal. Anything achievable by human foresight, careful preparation and hard work is accounted for.

And there have been great successes. Of the last six prior World Cups, Germany has won two, was second twice, third once and out of the running only in 1978. At the same time, the German national team suffers from the same disability as the famous Schlieffen plan for German strategy in World War I. There is a limit to human foresight; psychological stress on those charged with executing excessively complex maneuvers cannot be calculated in advance. If the German team falls behind, or if its intricate approach yields no results, its game is shadowed by the underlying national premonition that in the end even the most dedicated effort will go unrewarded, by the nightmare that ultimately fate is cruel--a nightmare reinforced by the knowledge that the German media are unmerciful when high expectations go unfulfilled. The impression is unavoidable that an outstanding national soccer team has not brought a proportionate amount of joy to a people that may not in its heart of hearts believe joy is the ultimate national destiny.

Brazil suffers no such inhibitions. Its national teams are an assertion that virtue without joy is a contradiction in terms. Brazilian teams display a contagious exuberance; Brazilian fans cheer them on to the ecstatic beat of samba bands. Brazil always has the most acrobatic players, the individuals one cannot forget whatever the outcome of the match. But, as in Brazil's political institutions, this individualism is combined with an extraordinary ability to make the practical arrangements required for effective national performance. As a result, Brazil has appeared in more World Cups and won more than any other team. It was eliminated in the quarterfinals of the current competition partly as a result of an egregious seeding placing Italy, the old World Cup holder; France, the European champion, and two potential champions--Brazil and West Germany-- in the same half of a sudden-death elimination round, while the other half contained only one team, Argentina--today's other finalist--that has ever been in the final four.

To be sure, the Brazilians, being human, cannot avoid some weaknesses. The players sometimes are so intoxicated by their brilliant maneuvers that they occasionally forget the purpose of the exercise is to score goals. And I have never seen an outstanding Brazilian goal-keeper. Perhaps the task is too lonely; the goalkeeper after all has to stay put while his teammates enjoy themselves tracing clever pass patterns on the turf. Or perhaps the only purely defensive assignment on a team offends the Brazilian self-image.

Yet a Brazilian team on the attack--which is most of the time--looks like a dancing band at carnival. Wave after wave of yellow shirts roll against the opposing goal until the opposition is overwhelmed without being humiliated; it is no disgrace to be defeated by a team whose style no one else can imitate.

Italy's record places it among the top teams of world soccer although it fell victim to the same absurd seeding as Brazil. The Italian style reflects the national conviction, forged by the vicissitudes of an ancient history, that the grim struggle for survival must be based on a careful husbanding of energy for the main task. It presupposes a correct assessment of the opponent's character, paired with an unostentatious and matter-of-fact perseverance that obscures many intricate levels on which the competition takes place. The initial objective of Italian teams is to force the opponent out of his game plan, to wreck his concentration and to induce him to abandon his preferred style. In the early stages of a match, the Italian team tends to look destructive and purely defensive-- a style achievable only by extreme toughness and discipline. But once the Italian team has imposed its pattern, it can play some of the most effective, even beautiful soccer in the world--though it will never waste energy simply on looking good.

No discussion of national soccer styles can be complete without reference to England. Before World War II and for nearly a decade after, England was clearly the dominant power. I say England, because for purposes of international soccer, the United Kingdom fields four teams: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A single United Kingdom team using the best players from each would be even more formidable.

The decline in the fortunes of the English team is, in my view, primarily caused by a refusal to adapt to the tactics of the modern era. Before World War II, the English team overwhelmed its opponents with speed, power and condition. But as defenses massed, the English quick-breaking style lost much of its effectiveness; as most of Europe went over to professional soccer, the advantage of superior conditioning eroded. Yet England refused to adapt its tactical plan to the passing game needed to break open the modern defense.

The English national team had never lost a game at home until 1954, when Hungary prevailed with its roving center forward. Since then, the English team has gradually declined. It is steady, reliable, tough. It never yields to panic. It is never defeated one-sidedly. It achieves everything attainable by character and tenacity. Regrettably-- because I thought the pre-World War II game was more fun to watch-- it has also been somewhat pedantic, as if in nostalgic thrall to a bygone era. England has never won a European championship; it has prevailed only once in the World Cup and that was 20 years ago playing before its own fans. All of us who enjoy England's muscular game hope that England's relative success in the current matches heralds a real revival.

The World Cup arouses passions because it involves both an athletic competition and a contest of national styles. It can be no accident that the most offensive-minded and elegant European team is France, only recently become a soccer power; that no team from a communist country (except Hungary, in 1954) has ever reached the World Cup finals or semifinals. Too much stereotyped planning destroys the creativity indispensable for effective soccer.

Soccer has never taken hold in the United States partly because neither a national team nor a national style has been encouraged. Still, as an unreconstructed fan, I hope for another attempt to popularize the sport, perhaps by holding the next World Cup slated for the Western Hemisphere (1994) in this country.

On Pele

Heroes walk alone, but they become myths when they ennoble the lives and touch the hearts of all of us. For those who love soccer, Edson Arantes do Nascimento, generally known as Pele, is a hero.

Performance at a high level in any sport is to exceed the ordinary human scale. But Pele's performance transcended that of the ordinary star by as much as the star exceeds ordinary performance. He scored an average of a goal in every international game he played--the equivalent of a baseball player's hitting a home run in every World Series game over 15 years. Between 1956 and 1974, Pele scored a total of 1,220 goals--not unlike hitting an average of 70 home runs every year for a decade and a half.

While he played, Brazil won the World Cup, staged quadrennially, three times in 12 years. He scored five goals in a game six times, four goals 30 times and three goals 90 times. And he did so not aloofly or disdainfully--as do many modern stars--but with an infectious joy that caused even the teams over which he triumphed to share in his pleasure, for it is no disgrace to be defeated by a phenomenon defying emulation.

He was born across the mountains from the great coastal cities of Brazil, in the impoverished town of Tres Coracoes. Nicknamed Dico by his family, he was called Pele by soccer friends, a word whose origins escape him. Dico shined shoes until he was discovered at the age of 11 by one of the country's premier players, Waldemar de Brito. Four years later, De Brito brought Pele to Sao Paulo and declared to the disbelieving directors of the professional team in Santos, "This boy will be the greatest soccer player in the world." He was quickly legend. By the next season, he was the top scorer in his league. As the Times of London would later say, "How do you spell Pele? G-O-D." He has been known to stop war: both sides in Nigeria's civil war called a 48-hour cease-fire in 1967 so Pele could play an exhibition match in the capital of Lagos.

To understand Pele's role in soccer, some discussion of the nature of the game is necessary. No team sport evokes the same sort of primal, universal passion as soccer. During the World Cup, the matches of the national football teams impose television schedules on the rhythm of life. Last year I attended a dinner for leading members of the British establishment and distinguished guests from all over the world at the staid Spencer House in London. The hosts had the bad luck to have chosen the night of the match between England and Argentina--always a blood feud, compounded on this occasion by the memory of the Falklands crisis. The impeccable audience (or at least enough of it to influence the hosts) insisted that television sets be set up at strategic locations, during both the reception and the dinner. The match went into overtime and required a penalty shoot-out afterward, so the main speaker did not get to deliver his message until 11 p.m. And since England lost, the audience was not precisely in a mood for anything but mourning.

When France finally won the World Cup, Paris was paralyzed with joy for nearly 48 hours, Brazil by dejection for a similar period of time. I was in Brazil in 1962 when the national team won the World Cup in Chile. Everything stopped for two days while Rio celebrated a premature carnival.

There is no comparable phenomenon in the U.S. Our fans do not identify with their teams in such a way partly because American team sports are more cerebral and require a degree of skill that is beyond the reach of the layman. Baseball, for instance, requires a bundle of disparate skills: hitting a ball thrown at 90 m.p.h., catching a ball flying at the speed of a bullet, and throwing long distances with great accuracy. Football requires a different set of skills for each of its 11 positions. The U.S. spectator thus finds himself viewing two discrete events: what is actually taking place on the playing field and the translation of it into detailed and minute statistics. He wants his team to win, but he is also committed to the statistical triumph of the star he admires. The American sports hero is like Joe DiMaggio--a kind of Lone Ranger who walks in solitude beyond the reach of common experience, lifting us beyond ourselves.

Soccer is an altogether different sort of game. All 11 players must possess the same type of skills--especially in modern soccer, where the distinction between offensive and defensive players has dissolved. Being continuous, the game does not lend itself to being broken down into a series of component plays that, as in football or baseball, can be practiced. Baseball and football thrill by the perfection of their repetitions, soccer by the improvisation of solutions to ever changing strategic necessities. Soccer requires little equipment, other than a pair of shoes. Everybody believes he can play soccer. And it can be played by any number of players as a pickup game. Thus soccer outside North America is truly a game for the masses, which can identify with its passions, its sudden triumphs and its inevitable disillusionments. Baseball and football are an exaltation of the human experience; soccer is its incarnation.

Pele is therefore a different phenomenon from the baseball or football star. Soccer stars are dependent on their teams even while transcending them. To achieve mythic status as a soccer player is especially difficult because the peak performance is generally quite short--only the fewest players perform at the top of their game for more than five years. Incredibly, Pele performed at the highest level for 18 years, scoring 52 goals in 1973, his 17th year. Contemporary soccer superstars never reach even 50 goals a season. For Pele, who had thrice scored more than 100 goals a year, it signaled retirement.

The mythic status of Pele derives as well from the way he incarnated the character of Brazil's national team. Its style affirms that virtue without joy is a contradiction in terms. Its players are the most acrobatic, if not always the most proficient. Brazilian teams play with a contagious exuberance. When those yellow shirts go on the attack--which is most of the time--and their fans cheer to the intoxicating beat of samba bands, soccer becomes a ritual of fluidity and grace. In Pele's day, the Brazilians epitomized soccer as fantasy.

I saw Pele at his peak only once, at the final of the World Cup in 1970. Brazil's opponent was Italy, which played its tough defense coupled with sudden thrusts to tie the game 1-1, demoralizing the Brazilians. Italy could very easily have massed its defense even more, until its frantic opponent began making the mistakes that would encompass its ruin. But, led by Pele, Brazil paid no attention. Attacking as if the Italians were a practice team, the Brazilians ran them into the ground, 4-1.

I saw Pele a few times afterward, when he was playing for the New York Cosmos. He was no longer as fast, but he was as exuberant as ever. By then, Pele had become an institution. Most modern fans never saw him play, yet they somehow feel he is part of their lives. He made the transition from superstar to mythic figure.