Equilibrium

The secret of educating well to a youngster I suppose that it has to be something as well as that of learning to sail two mortal obstacles: the trend of the mimicry and the borreguisme, that is, the preservation of the degree of sufficient autonomy to the order aesthetic and moral to be a person, and the not to go too far in this defense: avoiding the misanthropy and even to have a corner in the choir to be capable of sustaining a certain friendliness for the other ones. Said like this, it can seem even easy. It is not it at all. It has not been it never and by now, when the adolescence has become already not the transition to the adult personality but the acquisition in plenitude of the condition of consumer, it is more difficult than ever.

Holidays in the Corts

Spain has lately much more place of the usual one on the pages of the British newspapers. The motive is the economic situation of the Spanish state, even though certainly already a lot of time ago, years he would suggest I, that the precariousness of the economic structures is a fact that draws the attention of the British (at least, this of the PIGS makes time that he crawls). There is also other news, apparently different but in the end convergent in a same direction. For example, The Guardian briefs of the opening of the courts next week, second of February. This means the end of a festive period of 48 days, in France and in Italia the members of parliament have 20 days 18 days and in the United Kingdom. In a situation next to the emergency, at least for the normal citizens, this is a surprising fact. For us it is not it at all. At least, safe that nothing will say any of the worried journalists for the nursery of its children (otherwise this school or high school) or for the controllers that even though without doubt they abuse, at least make its work.

The road

Saturday I see a projection of The Road, the version of John Hillcoat of the novel of Mccarthy in the one that precisely I made reference yet not a month ago. From entry the film has the solidity of the distribution to its favor. Viggo Mortensen is completely suitable for a paper, in the that the actors would be easily imaginable of the Hollywood old man, restricted to make papers of heroes with a morality of filtered iron. The boy, Kodi-Smith-McFee is completely competent, and one of the grains really also turns up like Robert Duvall. However, even though I would not say that The Road was a bad film, I believe that Hillcoat does not attain a cinematographic deed that can equal that of the book of McCarthy. Perhaps he abuses a little of the flash-back and woman little weight to the dialogs between father and son. Everything, for those that we remember the book, it has a point of too much beautiful, the hunger and the fatigue of an extenuatoryy path perhaps that it does not take anywhere they are not as clear as the book and therefore that shown in the screen it does not have the epic character that attains its literary precedent. And it is a sentence, because to offer by now the public a history with a dimension epic would be, if more, not a novelty. The novel had the quality of showing the important things of the life that often we forget. My impression is that this transmission, the film, solves it very partially and with a lot of less intensity.

How it is

Since some years ago, the Tate Modern has entrusted several projects to fill in the big space where the turbine was of it manufactures it original and that now it constitutes the hall of this art gallery contemporary. Little ago I experimented the last one of these projects devised by the Polish artist Miroslaw Balka, who has installed a container of great dimensions. Entering in its inland, implies penetrating to the most absolut darkness into a space lacking in every kind of reference, except the noise or of the voice of those that they have entered with you. The sensation was from deep and complete disorientation. In the end and thinking it well, to walk in the dark for completely unknown places is not a at all usual experience. Even though the pamphlet of presentation made a maybe unavoidable reference to the platonic myth of the cavern, I thought rather in the deep waters of those that you Discard he talks at first of the second meditation. A work, in definite, completely subtle because it does not have another matter than the one supplied by our imagination maybe fearful and almost surely, in this case, lost.

Coming back on the war of Iraq

Friday I produced itself the visit of Blair in front of the commission Chilcott that investigated the war of Iraq a lot waited for. As a matter of fact, in spite of being a lot of while he did not say anything of much nine. Pardon did not ask either how any waited. If politically the session resulted from little interest, if it was exceptional as, ¿ last? appearance of the character that Blair invented for the him. Its supposed moral superiority is obviously proportional to its almost absolute disability for any doubt that can induce it to the self-criticism. As a matter of fact, almost all its intervention supposes one constant and absolute to escape for the tangent. It surprises, however, the simplicity of the vision of the world that seems to sustain its relation of the facts. If it is effectively sincere, one works out fact worrisome, but if he thinks that this is the vision that the public can accept, it is still it more. Certainly, one of the possibilities to interpret the character, is to consider it a cynic. It is not, però,ni by far the more interesant.

Dead man of Salinger

Yesterday while he had for breakfast in the deli Italian of Golborne Road (a habit that we sustain every Friday, to celebrate the arrival of the weekend with a breakfast of forquilla:ous and salmon) I had piece of news of the death of Salinger. He came for me to the boss, the night that I read The catcher in the rye and I say a night because I made it of a print run. Afterwards I read the rest of the one his, short, published production. Then I was a filoamericà, qualified consideration like in shameful in the circles predominantly intellectuals and esquerranosos. Now these people of left are in all cases deeply right-handed, even though the degree of consciousness about this fact varies, and, ¿ consequently?, filoamericana. The America reflected by Salinger follows them, however, coming off quite far. Two things I remember now of the novel: in first place, its absolute lack of rhetoric, the simplicity of his notarizes, possibly root of one of the best realizations also our literature. In second place, the facility with the that the book is capable of describing a sensation of moral putrefaction without great escarafalls. The Guardian, where I read the piece of news, insisted to the eccentricity of the character who refused to grant interviews during the senior part of its existence. I see rather a sample categorical of wisdom.

Latin music in the Barbican

Of left in right, Tito Rodríguez jr and Machito jr.

Last Sunday the Barbican one ago concert devoted to the Latin music, in particular, in the mixture between tropical rhythms and jazz that described the music of the the Latin big band of the fifty. Of young, I had a lot of print run for this music and I made a certain collection, which by now must be for the places where I have lived disperse enough. The main part of the he agrees it was the performance of the Big Three Palladium Orchestra, who picks up the name of the mythical neoiorquí premises where they made themselves to hear the orchestras of Tito Puente, Machito and Tito Rodríguez. Precisely the sons of the two last were the leaders of this formation.
Previously they operated a group of the Bronx called the excelencia. Its proposal is set in a conception more contemporary of the Latin music than in this case yes that purely sauce can be said. Even though I do not believe that it is completely new, this group shows as a distinctive feature the protest character of their letters, which in some cases had an evident grace. The problem is that the sound was convincing, too convincing, and the voices of the soloists often came off smothered. Its proposal the public liked a lot, its relation with what now is danced as a sauce was clearer than in the case of the main attraction, and in spite of being the supporting artists its performance went on until the point that the main attraction had to cut its performance. (the concert in total lasted four hours)
From mine of sight it was certainly a sentence. The quality of the orchestra of the Palladium was shown abundantly to its performance. Of entry the direction Tito Rodríguez assumed jr,el qual it is it showed like a drummer worthy of carrying the name of his father. The special guests were probably the best of the night. In first place, Jimmy Bosch, the legendary trombonista of the Fania garlic Stars that Larry Harlow, under the direction of which they happened the best moments of the night, is in a full form in all meanings and afterwards making live again one of the musical demonstrations more fishing-related of the last century.

John Hurt & Julles you jim

Saturday we attend the BFI to see a projection in the Screen epiphanies cycle, which consists to the projection of a film chosen by a local celebrity depending on its inspiring character; would treat itself of something like this like reliving with the public present the film that marks its artistic vocation. On Saturday the celebrity was John Hurt and the chosen film Jules you Jim. Hurt explained the encounter that supposed this film for him until the point of going it to see six Sundays seguits, the film projector earning like this the opposition of its family that he considered like a show "too common". Hurt was fun, kind but enough strong in the judgements about the most commercial cinema made to the present. Afterwards we saw the film of Truffaut, only that he had seen one time makes many years. Then I did not like much and either on Saturday. From entry, I have little print run for Jeanne Moreau, who has always seemed too conscious of how it was from good actress to me. Either I connect essentially with the morality of the history (for similar reasons for the that either I can empatitzar with the protagonist of Gertrud and that already I explained to my book. The difference is that the point of view of Dreyer is much more separated and skeptic that that of Truffaut). Certainly there is, the joyous redecobriment of the cinema, as the first films of Godard. That more interesting of the film the recreation of the period inserting to its material narration coming from the documentaries of the period is and Truffaut demonstrates that the bunch of hours invested to seeing cinema it was not in vain, However the film was not useful for modifying my conviction that speaking by now about Truffaut like one of the grains of the cinema is one for the exaggerated one.

Jean Simmons

Yesterday on the pages of The Observer I informed of the piece of news of the death of Jean Simmons. A lot forgotten, how I could check out only yesterday talking to some colleagues, one of the most popular stars produced by the British cinema was, however, everything and that the senior part of its career it developed in the United States. Its first important appearance was in one of the best films rolled by David Lean, Great expectations, where it made the paper of the feminine protagonist at its years of childhood. In United States it worked often in the Blockbusters de l'època from The Robe until Spartacus. Two of its papers deserve it seems me a special remembrance: the sergeant of the army of salvation Sarah Brown in the musical one of Mankziewick Guys and jets, a film if you blow up thoughtless, but close and coherent and, over any other, the his paper in Angel Face d'Otto Preminger where a powerful and convincing answer of the most skeptical and fatalistic of the black heroes played the lead in by Mitchum made, a paper a lot driven away of the usual record of this actress but where it succeeded to to construct one of the portraits of unbalanced woman more attractive of the history of the cinema.

Real The sacred made

Maria Magdalena meditando about the crucifixión (Pedro de Mena)

San Francisco in Meditación (Zurbarán)
Until today it has taken place in the National Gallery, the real exhibition The Sacred Made, an exhibition that shows some treasures of the Spanish sacral art, illustrating the interrelation among the painting and the sculpture of the period. The first is very known in Great Britain. For historical reasons, in its museums there is a representation of first order. The second is however not it very much and a surprise from a good part of the British public represented, little usual to the naturalism of these sculptures removed the flesh from and the utilization of the policromada wood. The selection of the paintings is very varied. Some works come from Madrid, Seville and Barcelona but a good part already They were in the country, like the Sant Francesc in meditation of more up that constitutes one of the treasures of the National Gallery and that he shows off here extraordinarily. The game of light of this cuadre of Zurbarán is simply extraordinary. The sculptures sell from Spain. The more represented authors are Martínez Montañes and Pedro de Mena. There are six spaces to the exhibition. The first wants to show the interrelation between painting and sculpture that it finds in this period. The second is devoted to the portraits. The third in one of the basic subject matters of the artists of the period: the meditation of san Francesc. The fourth, the biggest, to the passion. The fifth to the subject of the death and finally the last one wants to replay the environment of the rooms De Profundis where the monks were set forth before being buried and the San Serapió of Zurbarán is only set forth.

The purpose of the exhibition is double: showing a little known artistic modality and showing how the interrelation with the sculpture was one of the causes of one of the most important merits of the Spanish painting of that moment: its facility and happiness to represent the third dimension that allows to speak about its sculptural character. On the other hand the contrast with the witnesses of the XVII English that often I find for these regions can not be more living and he makes think a common denominator difficult for two in the end so opposed cultures.

aruitemo. aruitemo

Aruitemo, aruitemo (translated like still walking) is the film of the Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu projected in the BFI like one of the main elements of the retrospective one that this institution devotes to the fundamental Japanese movie director, Yasujiro Ozu. This film is included in the section to dedicate to the continuity of Ozu that it includes also movie directors like Jarmusch. The continuity is evident regarding the subject matter. Aruitemo, aruitemo registers in an a lot cultivated gender for the Japanese cinema and especially for the same Ozu: the family drama. The action reflected in the film reaches, its daughter with its family, husband and two children, and the other son who has married little ago to a widower, mother of a boy, only an interval of 24 hours where we attend a family gathering among some parents already big. The motive of the meeting is the commemoration of the anniversary of the death of another brother, the biggest and the favorite one of the parents. Purely in the film nothing passes beyond the mentioned meeting. The film but it is fascinating for its subtlety on showing the tension inherent to the most routine family day. I remind some years ago The Pais de Rafael Argullol, applauding Ran from its skill on giving a universal message in a very Japanese form (contrasting this fact with the disability of the Catalan and Spanish cinemas for making product intelligible without the local keys), of an article. A similar thing happens in this film, Japanese in its environment, but universal in what it shows: the claustrofòbic character of the family institution, here and in Japan. One could consider dramatist that which finally the film seems to reveal, the fact that in the family area the disappointment is unavoidable normally because at the end of everything never not there had enough time for nothing, but the prospect of the film is rather humorous and kind in its forms, as pointing out that it is not necessary either to worry about the one that can not be from another way. In this sense the remission in Ozu of what we spoke at first is a little forced. The famous transcendence does not turn up and the gravity is infinitely minor. Because of that the protagonist, the not accepted son Ryota, all the film shows an unrest that can not be qualified of rage, but that drives it away from the universe of the characters of Ozu. In any case this difference does not take out value to an exceptional film almost from all the points of view.

Fertile sound His invention

The Emmanuel College de Cambridge

From November I have been reading fertile sound His invention, a biography of Sir Christopher Wren work of Adrian Tinniswood, expert in history of the architecture. The work of Tinniswwod futile but beyond the architecture, because the figure of Wren did not come off closed in this field. Known by the construction of Sant Pau and of 56 londinenques churches, Wren was one of the most active members of the first period of the Royal Society, they are especially tied to Hoooke (in the grave of which, the epitaph explains us only that he was a friend of Wren). During a time he was the president. Even though its scientific work did not obtain any result from those which it allows to pass to the posterity, she was astronomical and physiological of its time to the first line of the research.
Tinniswood speaks very little about the intimate life of Wren. The documents to lean are well migrated, but the same one does not pass with its public life and this allows to the author a portrait living and interesting of the stages where Wren was a decisive actor: the incipient Royal Society, the courts of the kings Carles, Jaume, Guillem and Anna (Wren was a type skillful enough like not to be affected by the changes of dynasty, even though in the end the help of its prestige was considerable) or the Oxford of the time of Cronwell.
Certainly it is but the work as an architect the one that it fills in the senior part of the pages of the book. Wren is obviously the most crucial figure of the English architecture. The appreciation of its buildings is not universal but can not argue that it imposed a vision in the islands completely new of its work, attaining the milestone of making fruit of the design of an author alone a cathedral for the first time in Great Britain. Wren used all what could, but not completely the one that would have wanted, the opportunity that the fate offered him when almost every the city of London disappeared after the fire of 1666. If its plans of integral urbanistic remodelling were not carried out, if that the reconstruction of the churches and the new construction of the cathedral allowed it to develop its work.
Not log step an expert in architecture and in some moments I have gotten lost to the descriptions of the processes, but my interest but for the Great Britain of XVII he justifies abundantly the reading of the book. Wren was not as a matter of fact, an architect in the modern meaning of the term; how the senior part of the geniuses of XVII, starting for Discard, it was in very good a delivery one self-taught with an insatiable curiosity that unfolded in multiple dimensions. Its longing of prestige you make it to incline towards the art of the construction, even though in many moments its dissatisfaction for not having continued expresses its scientific studies. The reading of the book is profitable for all which we share the idea that I set forth to the presentation of the book of Hermeneutics and modernity: the need of to integrate the reading of the philosophical works into the cultural context where the dialog of the philosophers with its public (a good philosopher can never write only for the colleagues of guild), a little in the way of what Leo Strauss made with Plató, is produced.

In prophet

A prophète was the film winning of the festival of Cannes de l'any past and the chosen film as best film of the year for the critics of Sigth & Sound. French Jacques Audiard, a man of a solid talent but who it needs to work without dams, is a work of the director. Each of the films has a period of preparation from four to five years. A prophet is the history of the imprisonment of Malik, an Arab youngster condemned to six years of prison, for an offense of the that never not him he will suggest us nothing. We will not know very much about the past of Malik. A small reference in which part of its childhood passed in a home of reception is only made. Malik is a character without past and when the film starts without attributes, a rather ignorant boy. The film describes essentially from here, the educational process of the youngster who will allow him, firstly, to survive and to have a preeminent position afterwards in the carcerari microcosm. In this sense the film follows the generic line of any Bildungsroman in spite of that with an evident perversion, because Malik will be made a man, in the possible less pejorative meaning of the term, through its career of criminal.

The critical British and Frenchwoman have been enthusiastic in front of this film. In mí, it tired me in a certain moment of the projection when the meticulousness to the description of the businesses of the protagonist was made to me excessive. Perhaps because I sustain the idea that the shortness is always a point in favor of a history. The film wins, however, from the distance from the remembrance. As I keep on remembering it, I become more conscious of its thematic wealth. One of the points of interest is the relation of the youngster with the boss of the Corsican mafia that will become a kind of father, everything and that of these parents in those which it is necessary to kill. The realization is completely adjusted and one of the absolute winners of the film is the actor who makes the very convincing paper of protagonist, Tahar Rahim, in its paper. The transcorreix film almost completely in prison, we will only go out of the prison with Malik to accompany it to its occasional permission, and a description of the penitentiary world offers French of interesting realistic vocation (the film was rolled in study, but the sound of background comes from a prison), the prison is a fragmented area ethnically and the success of Malik founds at its capacity to understand the speeches of everybody (French-Arab is bilingual and to a scene we will see it learning Corsican), but also ambiguous, because if the film is trustworthy, to kill or to make somebody kill in a French prison is something that ends up being practically free.

Our class

Jedwabne was a small Polish town of 3000 inhabitants at first of the second world-wide war. More than half of the population was Jewish. On the 17th September of 1939 it was occupied by the red army and it was in Soviet hands until 1941 when the Germans took it. On the 10th July of 1941, the Jews of the city were concentrated in a granary in the one that took fire for him. All they died. After the recovery of the city for the red army, the German occupants were made for the facts responsible and this was the official truth until at the beginning of our decade, some neighbors started to speak and to stimulate a less comfortable truth: those that took the initiative would not be the Germans and they did not decide that afternoon but the Poles, once the Jews had been instigated by the prejudices themselves against the Jews and the consideration, spread to a large extent by the Catholic church, of all of them like Soviet collaborationists. The advertising of the facts animated a very painful debate about the definition of the Polish history memory that has not closed yet. In any case, the work believes to show very clearly that the antisemistisme in Poland was never an article of import
These facts constitute the background of the play represented in the National theatre, Our class of Tadeusz Slobodzianek. The work starts in 1925. The actors introduce, that is they reveal its ethnic and social origin, and explain its aspirations of future. Further on, they themselves explained us their evolutions and will see how some end up assuming the paper of victims and other those of hangmen. The course of the work goes on until our days and will see like this the biggest of all to participate, or to abstain from participating, in the awakening of the facts. I believe that the best praise of the show is to point out that I did not notice until the end that the representation lasted more than three hours. The intensity with the that the actors, fief that the time literally blew up, were manifested. The scenography is minimum. Only the chairs at first that they describe the class and where afterwards the characters who keep on dying and remaining out of the stage are seated to follow the representation (that it is not disposed in an end how it is the most conventional situation but in the beautiful half a one of the room). The effort of the actors was superb like its success.
The class is composada of three girls, two Jews and one Polish, and of seven boys, four Polish and three Jews. One of the Jewish boys will emigrate to the United States at the beginning of the thirty and the correspondence with its ancient colleagues constitutes one of the threads of the narration The fate of the other ones rest in the people and it will be marked by the tragic events that it corresponded to them to live. Even though the moment where it is remembered the progrom acquired an absolute emotional intensity, maybe the vicissitudes most interesting for me was the of one of the Jewish girls, Rachelka, that he attained the salvation marrying to a Pole and being baptized as a Catholic, becoming like this Marian then Maria does not consider a name suitable enough for a Jew (!). The scene of its wedding where among the gifts it keeps on identifying the possessions of its relatives burned only some days before seems me of an infinite and perfect sorrow. Marian is the unica of the characters of which its death is not explained, simply we will know that he passed its last days to a residence seeing the television, remembering the languages Englishwoman and Frenchwoman that learned when he was the daughter of the rich people of the people but that it could never use and searching to the documentary about animals, a meaning that the actions of the humans do not seem capable of offering.

More snow

For the third time this week we have gotten up with a powerful snowfall that it has covered of white the city. A fact, of the everything unusual for the one that I knew of the city. The weather prediction indicates that it will not be the last one. In the high school the situation is complicated, especially at the level of primary, because it is a problem to sustain 300 children at a school without possibility to go out to the courtyard. The alarmist newspapers, almost all, they start to spread rumors about a possible lack of foods. Everything, beautiful but quite a lot of emprenyador.