hitchens and the king

Having read Christopher Hitchens' eloquent and clever critique in Slate of David Seidler and his screenplay for this year's Oscar frontrunner 'The King's Speech', I began to realise that there are two processes at work in the debate between these men, and that their points were illustrative of a discussion that arises again and again about films depicting the lives of real people, especially historically significant ones.

http://www.slate.com/id/2285695/pagenum/all/#p2

The film, by anyone's estimation is a masterpiece, masterfully performed, photographed, edited, but there is no denying that as a bio-pic the script takes considerable liberties with the historical facts.

Of course there's nothing new about cinema bending history to its will, but in this particular case, the screenplay in its zeal to gain the audience's favour for a man in personal crisis, to make him a likeable character whose story, whose plight we'll empathise with, even though he was the hereditary ruler of 25% of the world's people and wealthy from birth beyond our imaginations, paints George VI or Albert or 'Bertie' as a very different political being than he in fact was at the time.

The truth of the history as Hitchens unveils it would have certainly soured our sympathies for a leader, a man whose persuasions were, like his abdicated brother more in line with preserving the monarchy and his family fortune than in taking a moral stand against a Nazi regime that was enslaving Europe and murdering the continent's Jews, Gypsies, Communists, somewhat later Poles of all religious persuasions, really anyone they found in their disfavour. Moreover, there is strong evidence to suggest that Bertie went out of his way to influence the government into denying entrance to British governed Palestine by Jewish refugees fleeing war-torn Europe, and thereby sealing the fate of untold numbers to the concentration camps and death in the ovens of Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka, Jadwiga, Bergen Belsen, etc.

Once the die was cast, and war with Germany unavoidable, the leadership provided by the king as a voice to help rally Britain and to give strength to the inhabitants of an empire, at least those in England who were raised to feel comfort from the rule of a strong monarch, albeit a constitutional one, was undoubtedly an important factor in the war effort, and the film thoroughly engages us in the private struggle of the man in the process of overcoming a crippling disability to become the king. As Christopher points out, however, it is very dangerous for cinema, especially when it's executed with such a high level of creative skill, to pave over the serious cracks in the real lives of the figures it chooses to portray.

Balancing the tale of a man versus his deeds in the real world, or artistry and inspiring works versus the politics and personal behaviour of any individual has never been an easy task for the storyteller who seeks to inspire and to tell a compelling yarn to that end.

I think, however, the key lies in understanding that all characters, all men and women are a complex interweaving of good and questionable, and that if a writer or a director has faith in their ability to truly tell the story of a human being with all their shortcomings and attributes honestly on display in equal measure, then the reader, the viewer will in the end be all the more inspired by the narrative, and that honesty in all its shades of dark and light will have rendered the tale unassailable for its truth and the stronger story as a consequence.

Film may be entertainment, but it can also quite easily become a vehicle for ideology, and if we celebrate a motion picture's creative achievements, as will undoubtedly be done this coming Sunday evening in Los Angeles, then certainly we have a right, maybe even a duty to critique its manipulations of the truth along the path to providing us with those entertainments.

downandunder

have you ever seen an owl?

Have you ever seen an owl?

I don’t mean in a drawing or a photograph, but a live owl? They’re truly incredible to look at, the intricate pattern of their feathers, not really feathers as you might think of them, but more like fur, combed, ordered in a way that’s astounding, and they stare right back at you. It’s disarming. They’re larger than you expect them to be, that is, if you’ve only seen them in photo books, or as illustrations, especially the white ones. I saw one once in a short film directed by a friend, a colleague. There was a long tracking shot, and as the camera moved around the bird, it followed the lens with its eyes, its entire head swiveled. The wise, old owl. I think they have that reputation, or that myth is attached to them because they seem to stare right through you, as if they know something that you don’t, or maybe something about you personally that you thought only you knew for certain. They’ve uncovered your secret, and they’re telling you with their stare, they’re letting you know that they know. Wise indeed.

I think I’ve seen an actual owl. I think I’ve actually seen a real owl, but when I try and remember when, or where, I realize that I may have imagined it.

Another question. Have you ever seen a dead person?

Not someone lying in a casket in a funeral home, a relative or a friend that you’re mourning, although the viewing of the body probably isn’t done so much in our culture anymore. I mean have you ever seen a person actually die? There must be those who have seen many people die, soldiers, policemen, doctors, people who’ve had the misfortune to live in countries torn apart by war, or disease, but I’d be willing to guess that if you asked most people, people you know personally, they’d say no, they haven’t seen an actual person die, and considering how many people do actually die, that seems strange. Maybe most people who are confronted with death turn away, afraid to see themselves reflected in the face of the one who’s dying. That’s the way the story goes, the excuse we make for ourselves, and for others like us.

I think I’ve seen a person dying, but when I try to remember who, the image that I had in my head disappears, or becomes a scene in a movie, or a story I’ve told often enough to believe that it’s true, even though I realize that I may have imagined this as well.

I suppose the point that I’m getting at, the issue I’m contemplating, is how much of what we think we’ve experienced is really just a remembrance of something that never took place, or if it did, then we weren’t there to witness it taking place, but we’ve been told that it happened. Maybe we saw it happen in a film, or on television, while reading a book, or we saw it in our imaginations, and then it somehow became memory, but transformed to become the memory of our own personal experience, and as real to us as if it had happened, as if we had been there to see it happen.

When someone tells you a story about themselves, something that happened to them, how do you judge whether they’re telling you the truth? What if what they’re telling you is not the truth, but they believe that it is, because that’s how they remember it happening, as if they were there when it happened, as if it happened to them? Recently, I heard a character in a movie say, “Honesty is not synonymous with truth”. I was taken by the line when I heard it, but I didn’t fully understand what it meant at that moment, even though I knew that it was something profound, at least something thought provoking. I also knew it had been uttered by an actor who was not telling me a true thought of their own, or something that they believed in, but something that their character was saying, something that had been written for them to say that would have an effect upon me, me and the rest of the audience. In fact, I was so compelled to recall exactly what I’d heard the character say, that I found a copy of the screenplay and read it a number of times until I’d memorized it, all the while contemplating exactly what it meant. The character in the film was trying to convince a man she was having diner with, a man who would become her lover, her boyfriend later in the story, that she was a truthful person, even though she was confessing to having told a lie from time to time, “to smooth things over”. She was a truthful person, in her estimation, and even though she didn’t always tell the truth, she was an honest person as well. In other words, lying as a tactic in order to make things easier for herself, or for others, without doing any real harm, or at least no harm she was aware of, was understandable, forgivable, even a considerate thing, a kind thing to do.

So maybe truth isn’t as important as we’ve been led to believe, and maybe memory is as much a product of imagination as it is of any accurate recollection, any factual recounting of events, and there is the moral paradox of our age, perhaps of any age. We live in a world where the great storytellers are some of the most valorized members of our society. When they spin their yarns in the context of art, or entertainment, and when they capture us with their imaginations, allowing us all to borrow theirs to fill the empty space where our own might be, they are celebrated beyond imagination itself. In any other context, however, being caught in a lie can be met with humiliation, scorn, and if you don’t have enough money for a really clever lawyer, imprisonment. Truth is not absolute, as it turns out, but contextual.

Now think really hard. Have you ever seen an owl?

downandunder