Film Review - Therese Desqueyroux - Audrey Tautou

Gilles Lellouche and Audrey Tautou in Thérèse Desqueyrou

Thérèse Desqueyroux is the last film directed by French director/producer/screenwriter Claude Miller and is an adaption of a novel of the same name by Francois Mauriac, published in 1927. Claude Miller died in April 2012, and the film was screened to close the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

The film's storyline, set in the 1930s, involves a young woman, Thérèse (Audrey Tautou) who marries her free spirited neighbor Bernard Desqueyroux (Gilles Lellouche). They then join their properties forming a vast estate of forests. Bernard has a forceful personality and Thérèse quickly finds her life is stifled by the tedium of provincial life, the intellectual mediocrity of her husband and the chores of motherhood. Through the eyes of her sister-in-law's lover, she dreams of escaping to Paris for stimulation and culture, and starts looking for a way to escape. Her husband Bernard almost poisons himself with an overdose of medically prescribed arsenic which Thérèse makes no effort to prevent even when she detects the overdose. This emboldens her to try and poison him directly but she is discovered and disgraced within her own family, as well as that of her husband. Claude Miller is known for his complex almost tortuous films involving female characters and this is no exception. Audrey Tautou well known for her comedy roles but increasingly for strong relationship drama (A Very Long Engagement) is well cast as Thérèse. Overall, a well shot period piece from France.

Film Review - The Company You Keep - Robert Redford

Robert Redford and Richard Jenkins - The Company You keep

Robert Redford is considered to be one of the most political filmmakers of his generation and his latest film as producer, director and as a lead actor falls well within that template. The film is a fictional story although based on a real life left-wing radical group known as the Weathermen or Weather Underground Organisation (WUO) which operated in the United States during the late 1960s to the mid 1970s. Formed at the University of Michigan, the group was connected with bombing attacks against US Government buildings and violent demonstrations. The film takes place many decades later when all the former radicals have disappeared into ordinary suburban life which is upended when one of their number decides to turn herself in to the FBI. A young newspaper journalist sees the opportunity to make a name for himself and starts pursuing his own investigation into one of the former group leaders who is now on the run. The film features a stellar cast including, (in addition to Redford),  Susan Sarandon, Julie Christie, Shia LaBoef, Brendan Gleeson, Anna Kendrick, Richard Jenkins, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper and Stanley Tucci. The film explores the motives and methods of making a stand in political issues and the choices people make when confronting those situations. In keeping with many Redford films there is considerable proselytising however it is within tolerable limits.

Theatre Review - Fury - Sydney Theatre Company 2013 season

Harry Greenwood and Sarah Peirse on stage

Playwright Joanna Murray-Smith's new commissioned work for the Sydney Theatre Company is impressive, however there is a feel to this play that perhaps further polishing of the script would not go amiss.The story is focussed on the characters of Alice (a medical scientist and humanitarian award recipient), Patrick (a successful if slow producing novelist) and their son Joe who is still at high school. Alice and Patrick's comfortable, inner-city, politically-correct, safe, intelligensia focussed existence is thrown into turmoil when Joe is accused of graffitiing a mosque. Concurrently a young student journalist, Rebecca is also seeking to interview Alice regarding her humanitarian award and yet there is something more to many of Rebecca's questions. In the ensuing controversy, some of the secret personal history of Alice and Patrick during their younger protest years is thrown into sharp relief with uncomfortable questions arising as to their own motives, beliefs and most tellingly, methods. The script masterfully provides contrasts between Joe and his parents, between Patrick and Alice versus the parents of another boy (also accused of being involved in the mosque incident) and with the student journalist Rebecca. Sarah Peirse (as Alice), Robert Menzies (as Patrick), and Harry Greenwood (as Joe) provide a solid base for the central family characters with an element of latte-sipping, Chardonnay-quaffing for the parents. Set design is minimalist white and sheer. The only weakness of this one-act play is potential over emphasis and repetition in the monologues of the central characters. Meanings are captured effectively across the script and require little further elucidation.

Anzac Day and the Australian Identity

Anzac Day street march 2013,Sydney, massed pipe bands

Anzac Day held on the 25th April each year - a day of increasing national commemoration of the service of Australians in war - has in many respects become something of a national identity day being imbued so heavily with service, sacrifice, honour, bravery and tumultuous international events such as two world wars. The significance of the 25th April is simply marking the day in 1915 when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps forces landed on the Gallipoli beaches in Turkey as part of the ill-fated Dardenelles campaign, initiated by the then First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. The purpose of the expedition and landings was to force the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Imperial Germany out of the First World War. It was an extraordinary failure and the Allied Forces retreated and left the region by 20 December 2015 having lost 53,000 killed and 96,937 wounded. Of these figures Australia's casualties were 8,709 dead and 19,441 wounded whilst New Zealand lost 2,721 killed and 4,752 wounded. There was no lack of bravery on the battlefield and from this event the Anzac legend has been crafted. However it was a defeat and the Australian forces on the Western Front in contrast performed just as bravely but with greater success and contributed to the victory and the end of World War 1. It remains a somewhat perverse practice to have this focus on the Gallipoli landings rather than the Australian successes on the European battlefields.

As a sombre reality the first Anzac Day was held in 1916 with the objective of raising funds to support wounded soldiers returning from the frontlines. With the creation of the Department of Veterans' Affairs and special pension and health schemes for servicemen and women in later years this activity was no longer required so Anzac Day evolved into a form of memorial day covering all wars. With the First World War veterans now all gone, the Second World War and Korean War veterans dwindling and much smaller numbers of service personnel from later conflicts, it may be that the future of this day will become more of an Armed Services Memorial Day.   

The Jihadist threat within - Understanding the Boston Marathon bombings

The revelation that the alleged perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombings are Chechen brothers, Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, migrants of a few years to the United States, together with their families adds a new dimension to the nature of the bomb attack. Chechen nationals have been waging a war against the Russian Federation for many years following two wars in the mid 1990s and early 2000s.

In their long, violent struggle against the Kremlin, Chechen radicals have hit soft civilian targets many times. In 2010, two female suicide bombers from Dagestan detonated explosives in the Moscow metro, killing at least 40 people and injuring 100. A year later, another suicide bomber struck Moscow’s airport killing 37 and wounding 180. Other attacks include the infamous Breslan school seige in 2004, where 334 hostages died, most of them children. Intelligence company Stratfor summarises the Boston Marathon bombings thus:

“This case highlights our analysis that the jihadist threat now predominantly stems from grassroots operatives who live in the West rather than teams of highly trained operatives sent to the United States from overseas, like the team that executed the 9/11 attacks. This demonstrates how the jihadist threat has diminished in severity but broadened in scope in recent years -- a trend we expect to continue.

There will always be plenty of soft targets in a free society, and it is incredibly easy to kill people, even for untainred operatives. In this case, the brothers conducted an attack that was within their capabilities rather than attempting something more grandiose that would require outside assistance -- and which could therefore have put them in jeopardy of running into a government informant as they sought help. It is thus important for citizens to practice good situational awareness and to serve as grassroots defenders against the grassroots threat”.

In this sense the West will always be a target. The real question is whether they were acting as a small independant team or were there other connections and associations to extremist groups.

Mesothelioma - the emerging new sinister cause of erionite

erionite

The deadly lung cancer known as Mesothelioma is usually associated with exposure to asbestos, a term commonly associated with various commercial industrial and building products. However in recent years there has been a growing awareness that there are other sources of the deadly fine, durable dust which constitutes the asbestos hazard and these sources of lung disease are far more widely dispersed around the world. Asbestos, in fact, is a common name given to six similar silicate compounds which may be either sodium, magnesium, calcium or iron.  A widely found silicate is termed 'erionite' and is caused by the action of water on volcanic ash with deposits of this substance found in mountainous or rocky areas worldwide including Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The threat of erionite has already been proven with extraordinary mesothelioma mortality rates being found in the Cappadocia region ot Turkey where the silicate occurs naturally in vast tracts of rock and throughout the mountains where people live. As a consequence it is also found in the buildings people occupy in that region. In the early studies of recent years, including animal studies, erionite is found to be more likely to cause cancer than asbestos and in fact does. There is little information about erionite and cell biology interaction and hence the capacity to assess at-risk communities remians poor.