The Lives of Others really is as good as the hype

Clive, Clive...I'm mystified by your post on The Lives of Others. I've always thought of you as a man of discernment and taste. So I don't understand how you could you write this: "[T]he characterisation is one-dimensional, the pacing is ponderous in the extreme and the storyline is full of unexplained holes."

I think we must have seen two different cuts of the film! Here's the acid test: from within about five minutes of the film starting, I was desperate for a pee. But it was so riveting, every scene gripping and every nuance on every actor's face so spot on, that I couldn't leave to do what I needed to do for the duration of the film. Rarely have I been so utterly transfixed by a film, by the characterisation or by the - this too deserved an Oscar - simply wonderful score.

Timothy Garton Ash seems to me to get it right:

Watching the film for the first time, I was powerfully affected. Yet I was also moved to object, from my own experience: "No! It was not really like that. This is all too highly colored, romantic, even melodramatic; in reality, it was all much grayer, more tawdry and banal." The playwright, for example, in his smart brown corduroy suit and open-necked shirt, dresses, walks, and talks like a West German intellectual from Schwabing, a chic quarter of Munich, not an East German. Several details are also wrong. On everyday duty, Stasi officers would not have worn those smart dress uniforms, with polished knee-length leather boots, leather belts, and cavalry-style trousers. By contrast, the cadets in the Stasi university are shown in ordinary, student-type civilian clothes; they would have been in uniform. A Stasi surveillance team would have been most unlikely to install itself in the attic of the same building—a sure give-away to the residents, not all of whom could have been reliably silenced by the kind of chilling warning that Wiesler delivers to the playwright's immediate neighbor across the stairwell: "One word to anyone and your Masha immediately loses her place to study medicine at university. Understood?"

Some of the language is also too high-flown, old-fashioned, and simply Western. A playwright who knew on which side his bread was buttered would never have used the West German word for blacklisting, Berufsverbot, in conversation with the culture minister. I never heard anyone in East Germany call a woman gnädige Frau, an old-fashioned term somewhere between "madam" and "my lady," and a Stasi colonel would not have addressed Christa during an interrogation as gnädigste. I would bet my last Deutschmark that in 1984 a correspondent of the West German newsmagazine Der Spiegel would not have talked of Gesamtdeutschland. This strikes me as more the vocabulary of the uprooted German aristocracy among whom the director and writer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck grew up —both of his parents fled from the eastern parts of the Reich at the end of the Second World War—than that of the real East Germany in 1984.

But these objections are in an important sense beside the point. The point is that this is a movie. It uses the syntax and conventions of Hollywood to convey to the widest possible audience some part of the truth about life under the Stasi, and the larger truths that experience revealed about human nature. It mixes historical fact (several of the Stasi locations are real and most of the terminology and tradecraft is accurate) with the ingredients of a fast-paced thriller and love story.

It is a film, not a documentary. It's not perfect but so what? Even Don Giovanni has its flaws. To my mind it succeeds stunningly well as a film and I can't recommend it too highly.

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The cult of Scientology

One of my journalistic heroes is John Sweeney. A one-man justice machine, he is one of the few people in (to define it broadly) public life who is entirely a force for good, righting some terrible injustices. His most recent triumph was the case of Angela and Ian Gray (the couple wrongly convicted of poisoning their child with salt), which he wrote about in this Sunday Times piece.

He has been in the news this week because he lost his temper interviewing a spokesman for the Scientologists, in the course of a Panorama investigation. The cult put a clip of his temper loss out on YouTube in an effort to destroy his reputation and the message of his superb film.

Talk about backfiring! The Panorama film will doubtless have had far more viewers than otherwise, as a result of the publicity given to it by the cult's efforts to damage Sweeney. I urge you to watch it (you can see it here). Not only does it make clear that Sweeney's temper loss is understandable - I can't imagine how he kept his cool for as long as he did under the duress to which he was subjected - but it exposes the 'Church' of Scientology in the most effective way possible - through its representatives' own actions.

In 1984, Scientology was described by Mr Justice Latey as: "both immoral and socially obnoxious...it is corrupt, sinister and dangerous. It is corrupt because it is based on lies and deceit and has as its real objective money and power for Mr. Hubbard, his wife and those close to him at the top". The same year, in Los Angeles, Superior Court Judge Paul G. Breckenridge, Jr., called Scientology: "a vast enterprise to extract the maximum amount of money from its adepts by pseudo-scientific theories ... The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and this bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard" .

I lambast the BBC regularly, but praise where it is due - its ramrod straight backing for its superb journalist, John Sweeney, and its commitment to making this necessary film deserves our gratitude. If only one potential recruit to Scientology is deterred, it will have been worth all Mr Sweeney's efforts.

UPDATE: As I suspected, the Scientologists' tactics backfired spectacularly. Panorama's audience was its biggest ever in its 8.30 slot:

 Last night's edition of Panorama, called Scientology and Me, was watched by 4.4 million viewers with a 19% share, according to unofficial overnight figures.

The programme grew its audience by a million viewers during its 30-minute run, ending with a peak of 4.9 million in its second quarter hour.

Panorama's average of 4.4 million viewers beat the previous high in its new Monday night slot of 4.1 million, for its investigation into the GMTV phone-in scandal last month.

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Hezbollah's hidden armoury

There was an important story in Le Figaro last week which seems to have been ignored by the British press:

In the past six months, UN troops in South Lebanon have uncovered "over a hundred bunkers, some built mischievously next door to UNIFIL positions, and numerous weapons caches hidden under mosques and on football pitches". A senior officer with the UNIFIL suspects that Hezbollah "is hiding ammunition in the cellars of South Lebanese houses to which the UNIFIL has no access".  In his words, "we (UNIFIL) may be ignorant of a lot what is going on".

 

But then some don't see that Israel has any right to be concerned by Hezbollah.

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is I rubbish too?

I'm always facinated by what sets people off and what leaves them quiet and unstirred. On Saturday I posted the deliberately tendentious claim that French music is second rank. I do actually believe that, but I think there's probably more room for debate about it than I allow. A commenter quite rightly calls Poulenc's Dialogue des Carmelites "one of the most riveting operas of the twentieth century"; it's one of my very favourite operas, but I do think it second rank compared with the likes of Die Meistersinger, Don Carlos or Le Nozze di Figaro.

But what interests me is that that small post on what, my passion for music aside, must be a relatively unimportant subject, has attracted more comments than anything else so far on this blog - allegations that the Leader of the Opposition is doing terrorists' work for them, Tony Blair's legacy or my defence of Israel's war last year.

When I worked on the Express I would write all sorts of things which one might have expected to annoy the readers. But by far the biggest and most hostile postbag I ever had was when I wrote two sentences comprising a total of five words after Britain had lost in the Davis Cup to the US. My words:

Who cares! It's only tennis.

I was besieged with letters full of hate. My favourite was simple and made its point clearly:

You hate tennis because you are a fat bastard.

It must be said that at least one assertion made by my correspondent was correct.

Daniel Finkelstein, however, has had the best such message:

You IS a RUBBISH columist.

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Wikinonsense

On my old blog I wrote about Wikipedia, a thoroughly pernicious site:

I cannot understand how anyone with the least interest in factual accuracy gives Wikipedia the time of day. I have yet to read an entry on a subject about which I know something that has not been marred by glaring errors. The entry on me, for instance - probably the only subject about which I can claim to the the world's leading expert - has so many basic errors of fact that it is laughable.

I have made a point of never correcting it because once I start, there will be no end to it, as it is forever altered with new errors.

But here is just one sentence:

He is the official biographer for David Blunkett and is an occasional guest on the BBC's flagship Question Time discussion show. 
 
Both statements are wrong. My biography was not official. Nor was it ever stated, anywhere or at any time, by me, my publishers or David Blunkett that it was. I started it off my own back, wrote it to my own schedule and editing criteria and published it as I saw fit. Mr Blunkett gave me interviews for it, but that in no way made it official, since I chose what to report and how. But because someone wholly ignorant of the facts about which they have chosen to write makes that claim on Wikipedia, it will now be repeated elswhere as fact.

As for my being "an occasional guest on the BBC's flagship Question Time discussion show"; I have never appeared on it. Not once. And I think I should know.

I could go through the rest of my entry and point to the similar inaccuracies which litter it, but what would be the point?. Wikipedia is a pernicious tool, and no one should rely on it. Ever.

(No doubt someone will read this and change the entry to reflect my corrections, but that will merely prove my point. If I hadn't happened to be vain enough to look at my entry, and then to write about it here, the errors would stay.) 

The entry on me was, as I predicted, changed. Oliver Kamm has a post today on the same sort of thing, and explains why this ex post facto alteration makes not the least difference to my case:

I recently commented on a trivial error in Wikipedia on which I could speak with some knowledge because it concerned my family. As I had expected, someone then corrected the relevant entry and pronounced that the revision showed that my criticism was ill founded. With respect: it didn't. My beef with Wikipedia is not that it contains errors - all reference sources do - but that by design it makes no discrimination between different kinds of contribution. Wikipedia is an essentially anti-intellectual venture. One correspondent asked why, if I had found an error in Wikipedia, I did not merely join in and correct it myself. My answer, I hope, is clear: because I believe it is better to carp from the sidelines and hope for the eventual implosion of the whole enterprise than to contribute constructively to incremental improvements in it.

But the meat of his post is about a more important error than mistakes about Oliver's family or my books. Here is part of the Wikipedia entry on fascism, explaining the Hitler-Stalin pact:

Initially, the Soviet Union supported a coalition with the western powers against Nazi Germany and popular fronts in various countries against domestic fascism. This policy was largely unsuccessful due to the distrust shown by the western powers (especially Britain) towards the Soviet Union. The Munich Agreement between Germany, France and Britain heightened Soviet fears that the western powers were endeavoring to force them to bear the brunt of a war against Nazism. The lack of eagerness on the part of the British during diplomatic negotiations with the Soviets served to make the situation even worse. The Soviets changed their policy and negotiated a non-aggression pact known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939.

:As Oliver writes: 
 

Where do you start with this ignorant, pernicious and ungrammatical Stalinist propaganda? Do CiF's editors know (and perhaps they can tell me) that, instead of providing for their readers a working definition of fascism, they've linked to a piece of dreary agitprop that omits any reference to Stalin's expansionist designs? It's not an article you can judiciously amend with a few historical facts. It's ahistorical nonsense of a high order.

Wikipedia is a dangerous tool. It spreads ignorance and error under the guise of knowledge, and should be treated with scorn by anyone concerned with fact and scholarship.

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Cameron plays into terrorists' hands

Conservative Home has had this picture made up from a David Cameron piece in yesterday's Observer: 

  
Sometimes you have to wonder if there is any limit beyond which Mr Cameron will not go in securing power? On the fifth anniversary of 9/11 he made a dreadful, cynical speech which can have served only to undemine the war on terror: 

David Cameron has said the UK must not be an "uncritical" or "slavish" ally of the US - and said recent foreign policy had lacked "humility and patience".

The Conservative leader accused the US and UK of viewing the "war on terror" in "unrealistic and simplistic" terms.

Melanie Phillips rips what passes for Cameron's argument apart here, by pointing out the message of a superb and essential new book, The Islamist, by a former Hizb ut Tahrir supporter, Ed Husain. Here's her conclusion: 

We may draw three principal lessons from this book. 1) The recruitment to Islamist extremism and terror of large numbers of British Muslims long predated 9/11 let alone Iraq. 2) The British political and media class is criminally negligent and worse in their appeasement and indulgence of HuT and Islamist extremism. Those politicians who refuse to ban it and those newspapers and broadcasters which promote HuT and its ilk have blood on their hands. Those like David Cameron or the British police who refuse to use the term ‘Islamist terrorism’ are doing far more than merely sanitising the language; they are actively conniving in the lie that enables this horror to replicate itself.

And 3), Husain shows that Islam and Islamism are two different things: that it is perfectly possible to be a Muslim who derives spiritual solace from the faith in a way that threatens no-one — and that it is essential to distinguish such Muslims from Islamists and protect the former, along with all of us, from the latter. Muslims like Husain need our support, encouragement and protection. David Cameron’s words instead take the ground from under his feet. ‘The Islamist’ should be sent to every politician at Westminster, put on the desk of every counter-intelligence officer and thrust under the supercilious nose of every journalist who maunders on about ‘Islamophobia’ and the alleged right-wing conspiracy that identifies Islamist terrorism solely to promote bigotry and sow needless fears to sanitise the crimes of the evil Bush and Blair.

(EDIT: In an earlier version of this post I wrote that the graphic above should be put by the site of a future Islamist murder. It's been pointed out to me that this might have meant I thought Mr Cameron would thus somehow be in part responsible, which of course I don't. It was a silly thing to write and I apologise if anyone was offended by it. That doesn't mean, though, that I resile in any way from the comments above that in his dreaful article he has played in to the Islamists' hands.)

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Hidden benefits

It seems that among the consequences of the liberation of Iraq from Saddam is that the UK is now a no-hoper in the Eurovision Song Contest.

If it means that the BBC no longer bothers to waste an entire Saturday night televising this pointlessly stupid piece of rubbish, then no one will be able to say that the war was entirely without benefit.

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I've said it - it's out there

There's an excellent interview with Sir Simon Rattle here. Well worth a read.

I make a beeline for his all-too-rare concerts in London - I was at the recent Dvorak 7 to which he refers, which was fasinating in an 'it's Brahms' way. But I have passed on what promises to be a musically stunning Pelleas at the Royal Opera House, with the wonderful Simon Keenlyside. I have a problem with Pelleas: I don't like it. Worse than that, I am bored by it. I've yet to hear or see a performance which hasn't left me screaming in my head for it to be over and done with.

It's not just Pelleas. It's Debussy as a whole. He does nothing for me. A big yawn.

But, I now realise, it's not just Debussy. If truth be told...I don't like most French music. I find it dull and pointless. There. It's out there. I said it. It's a huge generalisation, of course. But  while are there are some French pieces I enjoy, there's not one piece of French music I would call great music - nothing more than first-rate second rank music. I do like Berlioz, but I despair when I read inflated claims about his worth. A stunning orchestrator, composer of some fantastic to hear music - the Symphonie Fantastique, La Damnation de Faust, for instance - but nothing that even comes close to any number of pieces by German or Austrian composers. Even - who'd have thought it a hundred years ago? - a British composer, Elgar, whose Second Symphony is a masterpiece.

I wish I could 'get' it. I know I'm the one missing out (although I'd defend my view about no French composer deserving to ranked alongside the likes Bach, Beethoven and Wagner and no French piece deserving the label of 'great'). I toyed with trying Pelleas again. But life's too short to pay a small fortune to sit in the Royal Opera House and be lulled to sleep by Sir Simon Rattle and Debussy.
 

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Blair's legacy is social democracy

The National Review has a rather good series of short posts on Blair's legacy. This is what I had to say:

Blair is misunderstood even in his own county, let alone in the U.S. He has been a traditional tax and spend social democrat — no more, no less — but with the political genius to make that ideology popular with the mass middle classes who decide elections.

Yes, he has been pragmatic in his application of tax and spend, understanding that contracting out the provision of services to the private sector can work, and that it is self-defeating for the left to be wedded to models of provision emanating in an era of state ownership and rationing.

But the vast tax increases under Labor have not been an unfortunate mistake forced on Blair by his chancellor, Gordon Brown, but the very basis of Labor’s purpose in office — taxing income to spend it ‘better’ than people can spend it themselves.

His political skills have rendered it impossible for opponents to oppose. The Left’s old delivery mechanisms look — and are — archaic. But even the Right’s prescription of a limited state and low taxes has been shattered, since it has been portrayed as mean spirited and dated.

So Blair’s legacy has been to change the dynamics of British politics, leaving social democracy as the centre ground around which elections are fought and from which political debates emerge.

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More UN-sense

Samizdata links to this astonishing story:

 

Western countries are concerned about the expected appointment of Zimbabwe to head a key UN body, the Commission on Sustainable Development. Western diplomats said Zimbabwe, which is in the midst of an economic and political crisis, was hardly a good example of development.

...A US state department spokesman, Tom Casey, has said: "We don't think that Zimbabwe would be a particularly effective leader of this body."

As Samizdata puts, it: "So this is what they mean by diplomatic language... "

Not that it's astonishing at all, really. It follows the usual pattern of UN bodies. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the UN Human Rights Commission.

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