Keeping Mum

Every now and again I find a film that appeals directly to my sense of humour. In general these films tend to be not as widely watched as I think they should be, to such an extent that, when I accidentally come across anyone who has seen one, I experience a moment of connection with someone I would never have been less than irritated by under most other circumstances. This particular film gave me a fun five minutes with a posh Tory boy in my English class who liked to stare at my boobs and copy my homework, like, simultaneously. They are that powerful, these films.

Keeping Mum is definitely in this category. It defines to category. Starring Kristen Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, Rowan Atkinson and Patrick Swayze, it is pretty much a masterpiece of warped morals with a sense of humour tending toward the deeply, if comically, disturbed.

Keeping Mum is about a family with issues. Walter Goodfellow, a vicar, and his wife, Gloria, aren’t connecting, let alone having sex. Their daughter, Holly, does nothing but have sex. Enter Grace, the family’s new housekeeper and, unbeknownst to Gloria, her estranged mother. Grace is there, in her own, twist on the idea of Mary Poppins (Mary Poppins with hammer that she will use) way, to fix their lives. Just because Grace’s method of fixing happens to be murder doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.

It is surely impossible not to fall in love with this film. From the beautiful, quintessentially British village setting of Little Wallop, to the lovely, if mystified and occasionally a little useless outlook of Walter Goodfellow (seriously, how can anyone not love Rowan Atkinson? I’m convinced it’s impossible), you find yourself unable to disengage from the complicated world in which Gloria lives her life.

Every joke cracks me up (even the ones that aren’t supposed to. Religious humour, anyone?), every murder is hilarious and, maybe a little alarmingly, makes it’s own kind of sense. Afterwards my mum and I found ourselves wondering who Grace would remove from our lives if she came to stay. Don’t worry about us or anything, we were just hypothesising. 

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A Film With Me In It, starring Dylan Moran, Mark Doherty and Keith Allen.

My Favourite Film

… Sort of. I don’t tend to have favourites. I find the idea of seeing something and classing it as better than anything you have ever seen, and perhaps anything you will ever see a little depressing, not to mention pointless. So many different emotions go into liking something, whether it’s a film or a book or some other piece of art (I also feel uncomfortable with the term “art”. It sounds alarmingly like I know what I’m talking about.), that I don’t think it’s very honest to call something your favourite. Yes, there is a difference between liking something and thinking of it as exceptional, but that feeling you get from something truly amazing is unlikely to be limited to one particular film. If it is, you probably haven’t seen enough. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ways in which certain stories that I see or read affect me, and it’s immediately obvious that it is a lot more complicated than seeing something and thinking “I love this!” therefore making the immediate announcement of it as “my favourite!” seem a little shallow.

That said, Stranger Than Fiction is one of the best films I have ever seen. The film tells the story of a lonely IRS agent, Harold Crick (Will Ferrell), who ones day wakes up with the voice of a British woman in his head, narrating his every day life and speaking of thoughts he had never admitted to anybody. Despite this considerable problem, he tries to continue with his life, auditing a baker called Anna Pascal (Maggie Glynenhaall). Continues, that is, until the narrator in his head informs him that “…Little did he know that this simple, seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death.”

Meanwhile reclusive author of famous tragedies, Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson) is struggling with writer’s block, as she cannot work how to kill her supposedly fictional main character, Harold Crick. As such she is forced to accept the help of an assistant (Queen Latifah), unwanted by Karen as she feels she cannot be helped “by you, a woman who never thinks of jumping off buildings”. She’s a little odd, but we love her. Not knowing the source of his problem, Harold seeks the help of literary mind Professer Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman) in order to attempt to save his life.

Stranger Than Fiction is an endlessly inspiring film set in the perhaps surprisingly wonderful city of Chicago. Strong vertical lines run throughout the backdrop of the film, with square shapes creating a world that appeals directly to Harold’s mathematical thinking. Harold Crick, a beautifully understated Will Ferrel, is able through the narrator in his head to escape his monotonous lifestyle and fight the path that fate (or perhaps Karen Eiffel) has set out for him. The film shows a great love of clever stories. Its every action describes the constant search many of us are on for something more than that which our every day life is providing. The film works on the basis that, to paraphrase Jane Austen, if a person is destined to be a hero, nothing will prevent him, something must and will happen to throw a heroine, or a whole new way of life, in his way. Harold Crick is able to break out of his mundane existence, do all that he ever wanted to. Learn the guitar, stop the boring job, go to the cinema alone, get the girl. To learn, finally that “you’re never too old to go to space camp, dude.” With this the very environment of the story begins to change. Though the now characteristic vertical lines remain, softening curves are introduced, particularly around the world of Anna Pascal, creating a stark contrast between the very sets on which Harold has been living his life.

Harold: You have to understand this isn’t a philosophy or a literary theory – it’s my life.

Professor Hilbert: Exactly. So just go and make it the one you always wanted.

It is the background elements that make this film quite what it is to me. The dark grey day contrasted by a bright yellow umbrella, Professor Hilbert’s constant eating and bare feet and Emma Thompson’s wonderfully strange portrayal of Karen Eiffel create the bizarre, real, hilarious, ironic, foreboding and tragic atmosphere of the film.

The search for Karen Eiffel progresses suddenly, Harold Crick finding her far too late. The ending, his death, finished, but not yet typed. Karen’s subsequent freak out and Harold giving the book to Professor Hilbert to study, to look for any possible way out is heartbreaking. Harold reads the ending himself, and loves it. His end is beautiful, meaningful and poetic and he accepts it.

The book would be Karen Eiffel’s masterpiece. If she can finish it, and in doing so, finish Harold’s life.

“Dramatic irony, it’ll fuck you every time.”

Wading in at the Deep End (a little tentatively): KONY 2012

I am going to start now what I am sure will be a continuing trend on this blog: wading into a particularly discussed piece of news, late. I need time to think things over, okay?

I’m finding it difficult to form all of my jumbled thoughts about KONY 2012 into a cohesive statement, let alone any kind of explanation.

If you haven’t watched the video yet, do it. While I can’t really call myself a supporter of Invisible Children it is undeniable that they have done something extraordinary.

To summarise, earlier this week, Invisible Children, a non-profit organisation, posted a 30 minute film on the internet, KONY 2012. The video became an instant hit and has had so many millions of views there is little point in my stating the number here. The idea of the video is to campaign for the arrest of Joseph Kony, head of the Lord’s Resistance Army. The Lord’s Resistance Army are a rebel group operating in Africa with the intention of spreading and eventually dominating with laws based on the Ten Commandments. I’m thinking it’s not the Ten Commandments as we would recognise them though, because this guy has killed, like, a lot. In order to fight towards his goal, Joseph Kony kidnaps children and forces them to fight and kill for him. He is a truly terrible man, and I don’t think anyone is debating his arrest. That needs to happen, obviously.

The overall aim of KONY 2012 is to make Joseph Kony so famous that American forces will have no choice but to step up their efforts to find and arrest him. Invisible children believe that this goal can be achieved by supporting the Ugandan military.

The video has been viewed millions of times. People immediately tweet it, retweet it, share it on Facebook. This should be a good thing, right? After (a lot) of reading around I’m beginning to realise it maybe isn’t.

The massively viewed KONY 2012 video is not a proper presentation of the facts. Contrary to what Jason Russel and his cute kid would have you believe, Joseph Kony is not in Uganda. He hasn’t been there since 2006, and the time in which he held any power there is long since passed. The Lord’s Resistance Army is not the group it once was. From what I’ve read, it sounds as though the LRA moving from Uganda to the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo was not so much an expansion as them running away, fast. That’s not to say they aren’t causing hell where they are now. The people of the Congo (a place I thought must be so awesome as a kid) are absolutely suffering because of them, just not on the scale that Invisible Children have presented. The Lord’s Resistance Army are few now, in their hundreds at most.

Then there is the issue of their support for the Ugandan army. They, along with the military of the Congo and Central African Republic have on many occasions themselves been accused of flagrant disregard for human rights laws. These armies, the so-called protectors have been the cause of suffering themselves. The huge publicity that now exists around the crimes of Jospeh Kony should not mean that suffering caused by others is forgotten. That is not acceptable.

The extensive and complicated issues within Uganda suggest that Invisible Children have perhaps ploughed all their resources in the wrong direction. While it is still obviously a problem, the amount of children being kidnapped is now relatively small. The ex child soldiers however, still need help. It seems to me that part of Invisible Children’s proposal is more likely to hurt the children they are calling on us to help protect. They want us to support an attack on Joseph Kony. An attack that will more than likely cause a violent response. Who do they think is protecting him? The children, of course.

So many people have thrown themselves behind this campaign now without really looking into it. They’ve retweeted and taken 2 minutes to sign a pledge, maybe even brought a bracelet. But are they really helping? I can't even pretend to understand the complexities of the political situation in Uganda. I know that people work hard for most of their lives to gain enough expertise to help without causing harm. Surely the millions of ignorant, if caring individuals now swarming around the subject could make the problem worse?

This is the point at which I become even more confused, because despite everything that is wrong with KONY 2012 I can’t think of it as an entirely bad thing. It has us all talking about something important for once. We have learnt about suffering not directly affecting ourselves that we would have perhaps never have known about otherwise. I know I have learnt a hell of a lot through all the research I’ve done over the last couple of days. We are opening our minds to a problem and caring about it, deeply if, in some cases, fleetingly. We are looking beyond the cute and the gossip that dominates the internet to the potential of what it could actually do, if we gave it a chance.

I’m sorry for any mistakes I may have made. I’m new at this.

Recommended Reading (I.e People Who Know Far More Than I Do):

http://visiblechildren.tumblr.com/post/18890947431/we-got-trouble

http://www.warchild.org.uk/news/kony-2012-our-response

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/guest_post_joseph_kony_is_not_in_uganda_and_other_complicated_things

http://africanarguments.org/2012/03/08/stopkony2012-for-most-ugandans-konys-crimes-are-from-a-bygone-era-by-angelo-izama/

http://www.markwatsonthecomedian.com/web/2012/03/08/kony/

Introductions

Apparently the point at which your mother informs you you need a project is the point at which you start a blog.

I used to blog, until about a year ago, on a different website about my various neuroses. I’m not sure how it happened, but although I found it to be a good support through my tending towards the unbearably awkward and miserable school existence, I now at the ripe old age of nineteen feel ready to move on to something else. Something less needy.

I am really bad at geography. I feel the need to point that out up the front. I don’t know where anywhere actually is.

At any given time I sport at least six work related injuries. I currently have a bruise on my nose from an unfortunate tray incident. I work in a coffee shop where I alternate between boredom, frustration, hatred and mild interest depending on the conversation going on around me.

My plan for this blog hasn’t yet progressed towards much more than it being something. I care about politics. I find them really hard to understand, but I’m trying. I know that I am sad that I waited 18 years to vote only to have no one to support.

My brother has autism, dyspraxia and epilepsy, so issues around disability will be coming up a lot. Oh yeah, and I was brought up entirely by my mother. Guess what? We lived off benefits for a while. Scandalous in this day and age, I know.

I’m a nerd. I read, watch television and go to the cinema as much as I can. I don’t think this is a waste of my time. In fact, I plan to write about it.

I want to write. I really do. Eventually I am going to have to put this want in to slightly more regular practise, ignoring the very loud voice in my head telling me that I suck.

I think this is the point at which Eventually has to become Now.


I have no idea how this is going to go.