The 50 Years War: Israel and the Arabs, the 1998 TV Series

December 1, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Nor­ma Per­cy has pro­duced doc­u­men­taries on some the world’s most volatile regions, with The Death of Yugoslavia (1995), Iran and the West (2009), The Iraq War (2013) and most recent­ly, Putin Vs the West (2023), which was reviewed by me ear­li­er here. 

But in 1998 she made a six part series on what is sure­ly the most con­test­ed cor­ner of the entire globe; The 50 Years War: Israel and the Arabs.

What Per­cy man­ages to do, some­how, is to per­suade prac­ti­cal­ly every sin­gle one of the prin­ci­ple play­ers to sit down and talk to her, on the record. The rea­son they agree to do so is that she allows them to artic­u­late their views, what­ev­er they are, which she presents in a trans­par­ent and entire­ly neu­tral manner. 

Here, we hear from a host of Israeli defence, for­eign and prime min­is­ters, includ­ing Ben­jamin Netanyahu, Shi­mon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir, a wide range of com­bat­ants, nego­tia­tors and min­sters from both the PLO and a num­ber of its splin­ter groups, from for­mer U.S. pres­i­dents Jim­my Carter, George Bush and Bill Clin­ton, from for­mer KGB oper­a­tives, Jordan’s King Hus­sein and from an array of senior diplo­mat­ic and mil­i­tary fig­ures from every cor­ner of the region.

It’s both com­pre­hen­sive and con­sis­tent­ly illu­mi­nat­ing, with prob­a­bly the most sur­pris­ing rev­e­la­tion being the fact that it was in fact the Rus­sians who’d qui­et­ly trig­gered the Six-Day War in June of 1967.

They’d looked at how stretched the Amer­i­cans were over in Viet­nam, and had con­clud­ed that open­ing up a sec­ond war front in the Mid­dle East could be the final nail in their cof­fin. So they put a great deal of effort into con­vinc­ing every­one in the region that the Israelis were amass­ing troops on their bor­der with Syr­ia. Which, plain­ly, they were not. 

They even went so far as to try and con­vince the Israelis that that was what they were doing, even though they knew per­fect­ly well that they were mak­ing the whole thing up!

Then, in the after­math of that war, after Yass­er Arafat and the PLO had plant­ed them­selves in Jor­dan, a fac­tion with­in the PLO took it upon them­selves to go to war with their hosts, on the grounds that they clear­ly weren’t being suf­fi­cient­ly sup­port­ive of them. 

And before he knew it, King Hus­sein found him­self under attack from Russ­ian-pro­vid­ed Syr­i­an tanks that were on their way to Jor­dan, fund­ed and sup­port­ed by Egypt, to help their Pales­tin­ian broth­ers with their fight against the Jor­da­ni­ans. Arab against Arab. 

So the King turned to the only mil­i­tary force capa­ble of com­ing to his aid. But the Amer­i­cans insist­ed that they could have noth­ing to do with what was going on. It would have to be the Israelis. So the King of Jor­dan was final­ly res­cued by the arrival of Israeli jets, that sent the Syr­i­an tanks scur­ry­ing back to whence they’d set off from. 

King Hus­sein of Jor­dan, by the way, exudes effort­less grace and charm, and is the most mar­vel­lous adver­tise­ment for breed­ing and the kind of edu­ca­tion that only obscene wealth can pro­vide you with. And the con­trast he pro­vides to the sight of those sim­i­lar­ly schooled clowns who’ve been knock­ing the fur­ni­ture over in West­min­ster for the past decade or so is, to put it mild­ly, stark.

There are, inevitably, one or two gaps. I was sur­prised that there was no ref­er­ence to the way in which the price of oil was used by the Arab coun­tries in the wake of the Yom Kip­pur War in 1973. Notwith­stand­ing which, this is a land­mark tele­vi­sion series. 

But it’s impos­si­ble not to note that, for all the vio­lence, blood­shed and hatred that was then in the air, when the series end­ed in 1998, that was, we now know, a high point in Israeli-Arab relations. 

What­ev­er about the first 50 years, the next 25 would, unimag­in­ably, see a sig­nif­i­cant deterioration.

Very unusu­al­ly, you can see all 6 episodes on YouTube:

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Filed Under: Television Tagged With: ,

“Killers of the Flower Moon” Perpetuates the Crime it Chronicles

November 3, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Killers of the Flower Moon is a sump­tu­ous beast of a film that’s impec­ca­bly direct­ed by Mar­tin Scors­ese and boasts pow­er­ful per­for­mances from Leonar­do diCaprio and Robert De Niro. And the more that the nature of its sto­ry sinks in, the more dis­ap­point­ing that is. 

Based on David Grann’s award-win­ning best­selling book, it tells the true sto­ry of the Osage, who briefly become the rich­est peo­ple on the plan­et when oil was dis­cov­ered under their cor­ner of Okla­homa in the 1920s. The result is a world that’s been turned upside down, with impos­si­bly wealthy brown skinned peo­ple being served and wait­ed upon by white maids, lack­eys and chauffeurs.

Inevitably, the white major­i­ty are deter­mined to restore the nat­ur­al order, which they do by mar­ry­ing into the Osage and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly mur­der­ing any­one who stands between them and their now right­ful inheritance. 

Okla­homa, by the way, was where the Tul­sa riots took place in 1921, when planes were used to bomb the town of wealthy black peo­ple. Which was the oth­er way that the white pop­u­la­tion sought to restore the nat­ur­al order, and which was used so potent­ly as the back­drop for Damon Lin­de­lof’s The Watch­men, reviewed by me ear­li­er here.

The book of The Killers of the Flower Moon tells this sto­ry by fol­low­ing the par­al­lel nar­ra­tives of Mol­lie, one of the vic­tims, and of the FBI agent whose inves­ti­ga­tion uncov­ered what was going on. 

But a cou­ple of years into the film project, DiCaprio told Scors­ese that he was uncom­fort­able with the way they were telling the sto­ry because it was so obvi­ous­ly the sto­ry of Mol­lie, her peo­ple and what was done to them. 

So Scors­ese was faced with a dilem­ma. Does he do the obvi­ous thing, and turn it into Mollie’s sto­ry? Or does he com­plete­ly re-fash­ion the whole nar­ra­tive so that he can keep his two favourite actors cen­tre stage? 

Under­stand­ably, he opts for the lat­ter, mak­ing De Niro the regal mas­ter­mind and cast­ing DiCaprio as Mol­lie’s schem­ing hus­band. After all, mak­ing a film takes lit­er­al­ly years. And we’re talk­ing about two of the most tal­ent­ed and excit­ing actors in mod­ern Amer­i­can cin­e­ma. So what we’re giv­en is a film whose script con­demns the two men, but which shows us a pair of love­able rogues whose charm and mag­net­ic screen pres­ence make them impos­si­ble to hate in the way that their con­duct demands.

We have of course been here before. Good­fel­las sim­i­lar­ly asks us not to think too deeply about the vic­tims of the vicious thugs the film so lov­ing­ly cel­e­brates. And most of us are more than hap­py to sit back and enjoy the ride. 

So we watch as Good­fel­las tells us that crime doesn’t pay, but which shows us impos­si­bly glam­orous indi­vid­u­als, beau­ti­ful­ly lit and impec­ca­bly chore­o­graphed to the tunes of white pick­et-fence, 1950s mid­dle Amer­i­ca. And, as with The God­fa­ther, we’re pre­sent­ed with a crim­i­nal under­world that’s seduc­tive­ly roman­ti­cised and impos­si­ble to resist.

But unlike Cop­po­la, whose pri­ma­ry inter­est is in sur­face spec­ta­cle and the busi­ness of enter­tain­ment, Scors­ese seemed so much more inter­est­ing, and was and is clear­ly an artist riv­en by guilt and dri­ven by self-examination.

And Good­fel­las, it seemed at the time, was but a momen­tary dis­trac­tion that Scors­ese was divert­ing him­self with before return­ing to the busi­ness of more serous fare. And Killers of the Flower Moon is exact­ly the more seri­ous affair that we’d all been wait­ing for him to return to. Which makes it all the more disappointing. 

What a pity they didn’t all sit down togeth­er to watch Once Upon a Time in the West. De Niro could have been hand­ed the black hat and giv­en a small­er but much more mem­o­rable part as the unequiv­o­cal vil­lain, just as Hen­ry Fon­da had been in Leone’s film. And they could have made it what it clear­ly is, Mollie’s story. 

An unknown actress could have been giv­en the same kind of spring­board that Dustin Hoff­man was afford­ed in The Grad­u­ate or Al Paci­no in The God­fa­ther. And Mollie’s hus­band would have remained the very minor and irre­deemably nasty char­ac­ter that he was in real life. A revolt­ing, despi­ca­ble indi­vid­ual so blind­ed by greed that he was pre­pared to do lit­er­al­ly any­thing if he thought it might feath­er his nest. 

And DiCaprio could have mag­nan­i­mous­ly stepped aside to take on the dull but wor­thy and much small­er role of the FBI agent. So that the spot­light could have been left to focus exclu­sive­ly on where it so clear­ly ought to be, on Mol­lie and the sto­ry of how her fam­i­ly were mur­dered and their land raped and stolen.

Instead of which, we get a beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed film with a pair of impres­sive per­for­mances from two of Amer­i­c­as finest actors. And the more you think about that, the more qui­et­ly and pro­found­ly depress­ing that is. Both the film and the way that it’s been so casu­al­ly if pre­dictably lauded.

You can see the trail­er for Killers of the Flower Moon here:

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Filed Under: Film Tagged With: ,

“Past Lives”, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering etc etc. 

October 5, 2023 by Leave a Comment

Past Lives is the fea­ture debut from Celine Song and arrives gar­land­ed with awards and fes­tooned with dew and misty-eyed reviews. 

A 12 year old boy and a girl are sep­a­rat­ed when the girl’s fam­i­ly emi­grate from Korea to north Amer­i­ca. 12 years lat­er they redis­cov­er one anoth­er on a thing called the Inter­net, and 12 years after that they final­ly meet, when he pays her a vis­it in New York where she now lives with her writer husband. 

What a joy it is to see a female film mak­er final­ly being giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make some­thing that’s every bit as for­mu­la­ic and as dogged­ly sen­ti­men­tal as any­thing pro­duced by one of her male counterparts. 

Past Lives is every bit as dull and con­ven­tion­al as any of the recent offer­ings from Steven Spiel­berg or Ron Howard. Or, for that mat­ter, as Oppen­heimer was, a film that did such a ster­ling job of look­ing exact­ly like some­thing that either of the for­mer pair could have made. 

The, yawn, Fableman.

In fair­ness, and in stark con­trast to The Fable­mans, Oppen­heimer or prac­ti­cal­ly any oth­er film we’re sub­ject­ed to these days at the cin­e­ma, at least Past Lives has the good grace to come in at under the 2 hour mark. But lordy, they’re some of the slow­est min­utes you’ll ever have to sit through

Pre­dictably then it’s being loud­ly her­ald­ed from all around the Hol­ly­wood hills. And none of us will be sur­prised when Song gets reward­ed by the bean-coun­ters with one of the vehi­cles pro­pelling one of the cere­al-pack­et, action-fig­ure, meal-deal super­hero fran­chis­es that keep draw­ing pre-teens to mul­ti­plex­es to feast on buck­ets of salt and gal­lons of sugar.

Past Lives is absolute­ly fine. It’s per­fect­ly inof­fen­sive, tech­ni­cal­ly com­pe­tent and pro­fes­sion­al­ly pro­duced. Her agent must be thrilled.

You can see the trail­er to Past Lives here:

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Filed Under: Film Tagged With: ,

Shadow of Truth, another TV gem from Israel

September 1, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Shad­ow of Truth

It’s hard to avoid describ­ing the doc­u­men­tary series Shad­ow of Truth as Israel’s Mak­ing a Mur­der­er (reviewed ear­li­er by me here). Released at round about the same time, in 2016, it was sub­se­quent­ly picked up by Net­flix and became one of their most watched true crime series, before being picked up and aired recent­ly on BBC4.

And, if you’re hap­py to accept my enthu­si­as­tic rec­om­men­da­tion as suf­fi­cient, I sug­gest you stop read­ing now, go away and watch all five episodes, before com­ing back to read the rest of this albeit con­scious­ly brief review. 

Notwith­stand­ing which, I don’t think it’s giv­ing too much away to assume that any­one who sits down to watch a five episode docu series on a famous and infa­mous mur­der tri­al will do so expect­ing at some point to be pre­sent­ed with some class of a twist.

So, and with­out giv­ing any­thing away, here very broad­ly is how it begins. A teenage girl is bru­tal­ly mur­dered in a leafy, bub­bled sub­urb in the Israeli hin­ter­land. And the first episode presents us with a clear and appar­ent­ly un-con­testable expla­na­tion as to exact­ly what hap­pened. Up until that is the final 20 sec­onds, when some­how, we appear to have the rug pulled from under us.

And in episode two, every­thing we thought we knew about what had hap­pened is, remark­ably, turned com­plete­ly upside down.

Cre­at­ed and direct­ed by Yotam Guen­del­man and Ari Pines it stirred up quite the storm when it was orig­i­nal­ly screened in Israel. Con­stant­ly sur­pris­ing, painstak­ing­ly researched and utter­ly com­pelling, it’s a loud and ring­ing endorse­ment for a free and inde­pen­dent media landscape. 

Which is as fun­da­men­tal for a func­tion­ing democ­ra­cy as main­tain­ing a clear sep­a­ra­tion between the judi­cia­ry and the vest­ed inter­ests of polit­i­cal parties.

Watch the trail­er for Shad­ow of Truth here:

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Filed Under: Television Tagged With: ,

Cillian Murphy and the casting of “Oppenheimer”

August 4, 2023 by Leave a Comment

David Bad­diel has ques­tioned the cast­ing of the non-Jew­ish Cil­lian Mur­phy in the role of Robert J. Oppenheimer. 

And both Clarisse Loughrey and Peter Brad­shaw were sim­i­lar­ly crit­i­cal in their reviews of the film for The Inde­pen­dent and The Guardian respec­tive­ly. But the film’s far more egre­gious sin, sure­ly, was its fail­ure to cast an actu­al physi­cist in the role.

After all, his voca­tion as a nuclear physi­cist was far more fun­da­men­tal to Oppen­heimer the man than his cul­tur­al her­itage. But, bizarrely, the film­mak­ers chose inex­plic­a­bly to cast an actor in the role! Which isn’t just frankly sil­ly, it’s gross­ly unfair. 

Antho­ny Hop­kins, doing his best.

How on earth can an actor be expect­ed to have any kind of under­stand­ing or feel­ing for the casu­al back­stab­bing and ruth­less com­pet­i­tive­ness that aca­d­e­mics have to deal with, every day?

The only way to make a role like that in any way believ­able is by cast­ing an actu­al physi­cist. Actu­al­ly, now that I think about it, you know who would have been absolute­ly per­fect? Stephen Hawk­ing. If of course he’d been Jew­ish. And still alive. 

It’s that kind of old fash­ioned, colo­nial-era mis­cast­ing that’s bedev­illed Hol­ly­wood since God was a child. Exam­ples are, almost, too numer­ous to cat­a­logue. But prob­a­bly the most infa­mous was the sor­ry sight of the mild-man­nered, unfail­ing­ly polite and vis­i­bly well-mean­ing Antho­ny Hop­kins try­ing for­lorn­ly to con­vince in the role of Han­ni­bal Lecter.

Orson Welles as Othello.

Sure­ly they could have found one of the many flesh-eat­ing mass mur­der­ers bid­ing their time in any num­ber of the jails there to take on the role? Whose idea was it to imag­ine that Hop­kins could be in any way believ­able por­tray­ing a char­ac­ter he clear­ly had absolute­ly no cul­tur­al con­nec­tion with?!

And don’t get me start­ed on Orson Welles as, if you can believe it, Oth­el­lo!! Or, for that mat­ter, Mar­lon Bran­do as, wait for it, Mark Antony!!

Bran­do had nev­er set foot in Italy, had nev­er stud­ied the Clas­sics and had had absolute­ly no prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence or knowl­edge of the life or world of a prac­tic­ing politi­cian, what­so­ev­er. Nev­er mind a Roman one!! And yet there he is, casu­al­ly don­ning a toga, if you don’t mind. 

Mar­lon Bran­do as Mark Anntony.

What is it about priv­i­leged, white, mid­dle class, mid­dle aged males that makes them imag­ine that all you need do is don a cos­tume, mem­o­rize lines that have been care­ful­ly sculpt­ed and painful­ly ago­nized over, and immerse your­self in an exten­sive pro­gramme of pro­found, unre­lent­ing and often mani­a­cal­ly obses­sive research, that can stretch for months and years at a time, and then, hey presto, you’re sud­den­ly equipped, mag­i­cal­ly, to some­how inhab­it anoth­er char­ac­ter?! I mean, seriously?!

Would that it were that sim­ple, gen­tle­men. All any of that can be called, I’m afraid, is cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion, pure and sim­ple. And I, for one, say enough. Enough is enough, it real­ly is. It’s lit­er­al­ly the same word (© any num­ber of Late night Amer­i­can stand-ups).

Which isn’t, of course, to in any way take away from any of the mar­vel­lous per­for­mances that actress­es have giv­en in the role of, for instance, men. Each of which, with­out excep­tion, were coura­geous, thought-pro­vok­ing and bril­liant­ly chal­lenged our social mores and cul­tur­al preconceptions.

I’m think­ing of course of Judi Dench as M, Cate Blanchett in I’m Not There, Gwyneth Pal­trow in Shake­speare in Love and, for that mat­ter, any one of those won­der­ful­ly inven­tive all-female pro­duc­tions of Shake­speare. Which, delight­ful­ly, are often per­formed in the park.

Welles’ cel­e­brat­ed pro­duc­tion of the Scot­tish play.

Equal­ly, Welles’ ‘voodoo’ Mac­beth, from 1936, in which all of the Scot­tish parts were per­formed by an all black cast, was brave, admirable and entire­ly to be applaud­ed – and one of the few that things that, for once, Welles man­aged not to make a mess of. 

But as for that unfor­giv­able per­for­mance in -

(con­tin­ued on pages 62–187. For the full list of all the films that we should nev­er watch, ever again, see Appen­dices F(1) F(2) and S.)

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Filed Under: Film Tagged With: , , , ,
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