Living Wittily

The King's Speech and why I'm going to see it again

I have a friend who is a speech therapist. But though helping others speak is her job, she is much more than a speech coach. She sees her work as a vocation that involves befriending, encouraging and accompanying each of those she deals with. Many speech impediments are physiological and are helped by exercises, behaviour modification and various breathing techniques. Some are caused by trauma, psycholohgical barriers and other emotional difficulties that affect the confidence, spontaneity and social freedom to speak. But whatever the causes, the distress and personal cost of being unable to speak clearly or fluently can be all but unbearable.

Last year we were sharing in a meeting and she told the story of a child who was unable at pre-school stage to identify and make the sound of the five vowels, let alone construct and articulate words, phrases, sentences. Five years on the girl now well into primary education was able to say in class, equilateral triangle! There is something profoundly humane about a life's work helping others speak. Speech is a primary form of social exchange, of relational building, of personal expression. And those who enable and empower others to speak contribute a precious gift to people like that child, and equally provide one of the most valuable services within our education and health services.

Last night we went to see The King's Speech. Plenty of reviews are available about how good this film is. Most of them are not overstating the achievement of Colin Firth in his portrayal of a proud, self-conscious but decent man who is the son of a King, and who stammers.The speech therapist, Lionel Logue, played by Geoffrey Rush is equally convincing. relying on the experience of helping traumatised soldiers returning home and rendered incapable of speech by what they experienced. There are powerful protective walls in our consciousness that hold back what cannot be spoken. Rush brilliantly portrays a compassionate and good man.

I will go and see it again while it's still in the cinema. As a study in friendship across the chasm of social differences; as an essay on the human voice as an instrument of personal identity and social relations; as a demonstration, through close-up camera, of the human face as the window to that place from which our deepest emotions sustain or wound us; and as a portrayal of that longing to be free of what constrains and limits us that is common to every one of us honest enough to face our imperfections and struggles - as all of these and more, I think the film is a masterpiece. There were moments when it wasn't clear whether my tears were of laughter or sadness, and the truth is there are scenes that are comi-tragic and which encapsulate how hilarity and burden intermingle in the life we all have to live.

Gabriel's Oboe - and why only the occasional composition should be called "glorious"

I saw The Mission the year it was released, and still remember my first hearing of the soundtrack, and the glorious Gabriel's Oboe. I was once told by someone who knows a bit about writing that the word "glorious" is too overused, and now a cheapened word. Well, yes it can be. And a lazy word, a flattering exaggeration, a way of investing importance in something relatively mediocre by invoking a vaguely heavenly glow. But Gabriel's Oboe on its first hearing was glorious, and hundreds of subsequent hearings have only confirmed that for The Mission, Morricone composed a musical score that is heartbreakingly congruent with the tragic story of a priest for whom glory only came through martyrdom.

The Mission remains a potent and subversive statement of the perilous connections between church and state, faith and empire, prayer and politics - because mission is itself an ambiguous word. If the Church has a mission, so has the state. The word mission is used of an army incursion, a diplomatic service, a task delegated by a higher authority. And in the film, there is a collision of missions, an encounter between the Gospel and the Empire, a fatal meeting between the priest carrying the gold sunburst Ostensorium surmounted by a cross out of the burning mission church, and the lead musket balls that tear the life from his body. And all of this haunted by the aching melody of Gabriel's Oboe, and a film score redolent with the gift of genius.

The popularity of Gabriel's Oboe made it inevitable someone would want to put words to it. Written by Chiara Ferrau, and first performed by Sarah Brightman, the lyrics (English translation below) convey the aching longing of humanity for a different and better world, a humanity more humane and a world more just, and a wistful yearning for cities warmed by the winds of peace. And the singer confesses this is all in the imagination - but the music is not wistful and resigned - what makes Gabriel's Oboe such an emotionally subversive experience is a melody that weaves together our deepest longings and highest aspirations as human beings, and composes them into imagined possibilities and resilient hopefulness. I suppose that's what is meant by saying the piece is inspired....and glorious.

All the above reflection is because I've just ordered the double CD (will wait for Christmas for the DVD) of Morricone's recent Vienna Concert.  I'm familiar with a number of other Morricone scores. There's an apparent incongruence between some of his music and the films that engendered them. The spaghetti westerns of Clint Eastwood are bleak, violent, enjoyably cynical, and minimally moral, other than the blunt and dubious morality of vengeance in the shape of a poncho wearing gunfighter who gives the really bad people their come-uppance. Yet in for example, "The Good the Bad and the Ugly", some of the soundtrack is haunting, even tender, while other tracks even 40 years on have a menacing edge that bears comparison with the best of contemporary cinema music. The versatility and imagination of Morricone has produced for cinema goers unforgettable music - and for music lovers some of the finest compositions of the last 50 years.  The music of Gabriel's Oboe, and the lyrics translated below, are still for me the pinnacle of cinematic musical interpretation.

In my imagination I see a just world,
Everyone lives in peace and in honesty there.
I dream of souls that are always free,
Like the clouds that fly,
Full of humanity in the depths of the soul.

In my imagination I see a bright world,
Even the night is less dark there.
I dream of souls that are always free,
Like clouds that fly.

In my imagination there exists a warm wind,
That breathes on the cities, like a friend.
I dream of souls that are always free,
Like clouds that fly,
Full of humanity in the depths of the soul.

Hurry up with my CDs!!

Up. Food for thought and freedom to fantasise.

Sheila and I went to see "Up", the new Pixar animated film. It's a feast for the imagination, visually beautiful, woven through with wit and wisdom, and one of the best arguments around for combining in one film food for thought and freedom to fantasise. No need to tell the story. If you don't go see it you wouldn't get it - if you do go and see it you won't forget it. An entire pastoral theology module could be based around some of its themes of life, death, love, friendship, ageing, care of creation, adventure, courage, rejection and welcome, carelessness and responsibility, selfishness and generosity, and all of it wrapped up for each of us in our personal adventure book, with its page, "Stuff I Want to Do." Do yourself a favour - go see it.

Creation, Darwin and the origin of "The Origin of Species"

Last night went to see "Creation", the new movie about the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. It's more a biographical study of Darwin's family life, particularly the relationship with his wife and children following the unexpected death of his daughter. Decided I don't want to write a review that tries to be cleverly critical of the film 's technical aspects - not my thing anayway; or that attempts to explain the psychology of guilt which when it becomes pathological, is a deeply human and inwardly destructive self-rejection that has roots in life circumstance, our closest relationships and our religious commitments or loss thereof; or that points out the historical liberties taken in order to present such a powerful psychological study of a decade in one man's life; or that defends some particular theory of creation as an act of apologetics dutifully undertaken to correct the theological unsubtleties of some less than convincing intellectual positions.

No. No review.

Just the straightforward admission that I enjoyed it, and that in my view this is a good film. It humanises rather than demonises Darwin; it does not caricature the understandbaly defensive postures of Victorian religion confronted by radical shifts in intellectual, cultural and scientific life; it places the writing of a painstakingly written natural history treatise in its historical, emotional and domestic context; and it does all this with the well practised competence of a BBC costume drama, which in reality it is. No review than - other than to say again, I thoroughly enjoyed it, in the way you do when you take time to try to understand what is so about another person's life, and that the struggle to survive isn't only a theory of life's origins - emotionally, intellectually, spiritually and physically it's the reality and experience we all go through, every day of life.

Amazing Grace

Regret, remorse, repentance - hard to find the right word to describe the emotional and mental legacy of John Newton's years of slave trading. It's too easy to take pot shots at him and mock the man who wrote Amazing Grace because he didn't immediately see the reality of the evil under his nose and give up that involvement. But in this film Albert Finney captures with brilliant perceptivenes, the rough sentimentality, the emotional complexity, the sense even after decades that his part in the horrors of trans-Atlantic slavery compounded his unworthiness and self-loathing- so for me Newton and his tears of too late guilt was a crucial questioning presence in the film. Newton's portrayal adds a dimension of pathos to the reality of structural sin, is a counterpoint to the power of institutionalised inhumanity whose default mechanism is greed, and whose interest is to frustrate every attempt at rehumanising the way our world is, especially if the argument implies economic loss. The interests of the Crown in the revenue from the colonies meant that the link was easily made between the movement for abolition, and disloyalty, even sedition, aggravated by the war with France. Some of this complexity was worked into the film and prevents it from being a pious and politically naive hagiography.

So, the film Amazing Grace, (complete with pipe and wind band with drums at the end! - a blatant anachronism I greatly enjoyed without embarrassment!!) - was well acted, with a script that almost entirely, but not quite, avoids the cringeable, and includes just enough of the spiritual burden of Wilberforce the serious evangelical, to make explicit the connection between political activism and inner piety. The relational network between Wilberforce and Newton, and Pitt, and Foxe, and Clarkson and Stephen, was a convincing mixture of political expediency, moral concern and radical risk.

The almost entire white cast made me uncomfortable - yet I wonder how else to convey the sheer weight of the political argument that had to be won, and to portray the pervasive ignorance of the brutal realities linked indissolubly to national self-interest. The truth is, the presence of African people in the circles in which Wilberforce moved would be rare - and the moment in the film when he has the chance to win the freedom of a slave in a game of cards was a finely observed piece of moral theatre - wasted for me by him returning to the gambling den to sing Amazing Grace! I could understand the bewildered outrage of those whose tavern singing was silenced by a Russell Watson soundalike!

The love interest seemed to convey the cliche that behind every great man there is a stunning redhead! The moment in the film when she convinces Wilberforce to take up the fight again, and to marry her, seems to make that a historical hinge point - well, since it is a film for general release that will do a lot of good by bringing Wilberforce back to our attention, as Barry Norman might ask, 'And why not?'

I enjoyed this film. There is enough historical accuracy and detail to root it in the realities it tries to engage. At times it was very moving, and the scale of the issue, morally, spiritually and politically, is communicated with considerable and convincing care. Evangelicals were portrayed with just that amount of seriousness and involvement that seems justified by the facts - by the way the cameo portrayal of Hannah More was sharply observed - a compassionate snob with a sense of humour and an ethical  edge to her piety.

Go see before it moves away from the big screen.