Richard Madeley's Winter of Discontent

The Professional Dickhead Richard Madeley (Dick by name, Dick by nature) wrote a column for the Daily Express this weekend. In it, the rampant Tory bemoaned the way that Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party has politically enfranchised a great number of young voters and advising them that they would do well to take heed his personal memories of the Callaghan government of the late 1970s. Yup, the hoary old line of 'rubbish piled up in the streets' and 'not being able to bury the dead' was wheeled out by the real Alan Partridge.

"This week, chatting to a group of 30-somethings," Madeley writes "I described what the Winter of Discontent was actually like if you were there (I was 23). Endless power cuts, freezing evenings spent by guttering candlelight or evil-smelling paraffin lamps; no fire service (the lads were on strike); no funerals (so were the gravediggers); rubbish piling above head height (what we used to call the dustmen were all out too)"

This was all the result of an out of touch, weak Jim Callaghan, Dick attests, who was on 'a jolly' in the West Indies when it all kicked off and came back seemingly oblivous to the situation or how to decisively end it. Hmm. Calling the Guadeloupe Conference, where the world's biggest leaders discussed topical and pressing subjects of the day, 'a jolly' is a pretty odd thing to do if you wish these days to be taken seriously as a political journo, Dick. 

But it seems Dick Madeley's advice to his wholly fictitious young audience was falling on deaf ears.

""But don't you see - this is what will happen if Corbyn wins," I said. "He's a Marxist! He says he wouldn't even press the button! He doesn't understand the basic principles of detterrence!" Reader, I'm not sure they even knew what Marxism is - and as for "the button"..."

The Professional Dickhead Richard Madeley, it seems, knows all about 'the button'. Because, prior to this, his article pontificates at length about what it was like to grow up and come of age during the Cold War. However, what I personally took from this is that the BBC4's recent, excellent Cold War season had been on TV at Chez Madeleys. 

And reader (I mean, seriously?) it's clearly Madeley who doesn't know what Marxism is if he thinks that Jeremy Corbyn is a Marxist.

Perhaps Dick should have done some reading and listening during the Winter of Discontent. He might know then that the industrial action of which he speaks came as a direct result of Callaghan's government reneging on the promise of reforms previously made to the TUC. Now, that doesn't sound like a very Marxist from Callaghan's Labour does it? So, if by his logic Corbyn is a Marxist, why would that happen again on his watch? He also doesn't seem to realise that much of the industrial action was actually against Tory led councils, for example the binmen strike was against Westminster Council, whilst the dead were left unburied in Liverpool, whose county council was controlled by Conservative.

Dear old Dickie also seems rather confused in his memories. Bless. Old age does that I guess. But the fire brigade (or 'the lads' as he condescendingly calls them) were actually on strike for nine weeks at the end of 1977. They actually returned to work in January '78, when the Winter of Discontent commenced.

Perhaps he should have used his valuable long memory and cast further back in time, to the first Winter of Discontent, the one that occurred under Tory Ted Heath's government that led to a three day week and victory for the miners. Actually, maybe I am being unfair because he seems to have done this a little bit, as his reminiscences seem like a fudge of both time periods. Where there even power cuts during Callaghan's Winter of Discontent? There certainly were during Heath's. Perhaps someone with a more reliable memory could give me a definitive answer on that one. No, I'm not looking at you Dick.

Then again, maybe Madeley could have considered a more recent memory, such as Blair's Labour government. He could have told his imaginary 30-something pals all about the tremendous, progressive achievements made in the late 1990s, such as the creation of the Sure Start scheme which gave our children, and our country's future, the very best start in life - something that Corbyn has pledged to bring back after the Tories spitefully closed it down. Or maybe he should just consider the present; a time of breaking-point NHS, of food banks and homelessness and disabled people dying because of inadequate benefits, and of working families unable to make ends meet because the cost of living has soared whilst wages have stagnated for a decade. 

In conclusion, the Professional Dickhead Richard Madeley thinks the late 1970s were bad? Clearly the realities of the present day do not reach his ivory tower. Or maybe him and his wife are just too pissed to notice most evenings?

Atomic Blonde (2017)

I finally did it. I finally played GTA: Berlin '89.

No sorry, I mean I finally did it. I finally read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold whilst listening to Now That's What I Call The Best Of The '80s.

No sorry, sorry, I mean I finally did it. I finally watched Atomic Blonde....but you can see why I might be confused.

Despite some favourable reviews, I found this just too gimmicky. I got that David Leitch watched the rather good German TV series Deutschland '83 and has decided to culturally appropriate it within the first 20 odd minutes when he chose to use three tracks - Blue Monday, 99 Red Balloons and Major Tom (Coming Home) - that series had previously used, but far too much of this feels like one of those music videos that accompanied the Bond films in the 1980s as opposed to an actual good spy film in itself. 

I find it really interesting that this has scored highly in the wake of #MeToo whilst Red Sparrow has fallen foul. I really fail to see why Atomic Blonde with its male-centric gaze towards lesbian sex and the death of Sofia Boutella's character, whilst conveniently dressed in skimpy underwear, gets the thumbs up? To me, Leitch's film is superficially empowering but ultimately depicts the same kind of wanky fantasies that Red Sparrow has been criticised for. Overall, I think I actually preferred Red Sparrow because that at least was a relatively mature movie whereas this was just too loud, too all over the shop and too plain silly. Oh and the CIA are of course the best - is this a comedy? Whilst MI6 give a much sought after list of agents the 'code name' The List - seriously is this supposed to be a comedy?

In its favour, Charlize Theron really knows how to pick projects. Coming after her brilliant showcase in the excellent Mad Max: Fury Road this is the perfect follow up to establish her action movie heroine credentials and she produces - for much of the movie at least - the most bad-ass British secret agent since Mrs Peel (which makes me wonder why cinema is more concerned with Marvel's Avengers than ABC's The Avengers because there's clearly a market for a revival that is bound to be better than the turkey from the '90s). However the only sequence I truly engaged in was the one where her attempts to transport Eddie Marsan to the West went pear-shaped. It's telling that the only action sequence in the movie that plays it all totally straight, rather than a kid on Ritalin watching a Bourne film alongside the weekly TOTP 80s repeats on BBC4, is the most effective.

RIP Christine Keeler

Christine Keeler, the woman who arguably tipped the pendulum that commenced the swinging decade of the 1960s, has died at the age of 75. 

As a young model and the protege of society osteopath Stephen Ward, Keeler was the girl at the heart of the Profumo affair that subsequently demolished Macmillan's scandal rocked government. It was notoriety, rather than fame, that swiftly followed Keeler following her lover John Profumo's resignation and Ward's immoral earnings trial, and it was notoriety that continued to dog her for the rest of her life. 

I have blogged about Keeler, Profumo and Ward several times down the years (see here) as it's long been a subject that has fascinated me. The news today that she passed away from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease came just a little over a week after Profumo made the news once more, when declassified MI5 files which revealed that the disgraced MP had had an affair with German model, Gisela Winegard, a Nazi spy in the early 1930s. It's ironic that, given how Profumo and Keeler's names and fates are forever intertwined, her death should arrive just days after one more revelation from her former lover who passed away eleven years ago. It was a fate Keeler certainly paid a hefty price for; broken marriages, estranged family, and scarce employment (she was sacked from the position of school dinner lady when a headmaster learned her real identity) all added to her woes. In later years she lived as a virtual recluse, often donning disguises to preserve her anonymity and keep out of the spotlight.

A victim of her time whose main crime was simply to be Christine Keeler, I hope she's at peace now.

RIP

Letter To Brezhnev (1985)

You can read my review at The Geek Show

Wordless Wednesday: Burtonwood Pavilion

Red Dawn (1984)

In Dirty Dancing, Patrick Swayze vows that 'nobody puts baby in the corner' before tripping the light fantastic with 'Baby' herself, Jennifer Grey.

Three years earlier, Swayze passes a fatally wounded Grey a grenade in Red Dawn, ensuring Baby is put in several corners all at once.

Thank you and goodnight!

Anyone who knows me or reads any of my ramblings will know that Red Dawn is not something that I, as a lefty, am politically attuned with. In fact I'd argue that Red Dawn plays solely to the Trump demographic were it not for the fact that Trump supporting neo-conservatives these days seem quite keen on Russia. But what I am quite keen on is some of the dafter elements of '80s Hollywood, and they don't get much dafter than Red Dawn.

John Milius' jingoisitic ode to the culture and values of traditional right wing America and the sabre-rattling Reaganite administration, Red Dawn immediately jumps the shark in asking us to consider America (Fuck yeah!) not as the aggressor, but as a peaceful, sedate country that was essentially minding its own business in the '80s and was not in fact parking Pershing's in West Germany or sending troops to fight in Grenada, Nicaragua and El Salvador to name but a few. Russia, joining forces with Castro's Cuba, are the aggressors here, putting boots on America soil because, it seems the USSR had a bad harvest that year. 

Milius wanted to pose a 'what if?' question, a warning for his country to take heed, drawing parallels he maintained with what was occurring at the time with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But it's such blatant anti-communist propaganda, perpetuating the myth that Russia was still a force to be reckoned with in the last few years of the Cold War, that it's a question/warning that is instantly null and void, and one that is tragically short sighted too when you consider all that has happened since then - both with 9/11 of course (from the Afghanistan Milius was drawing comparisons with, whilst Reagan bankrolled these future world terrorists) and with the sobering fact that if a gun massacre occurs in a US school (as it does in the film's opening invasion scenes) its perpetrator(s) have been one of the students rather than any foreign aggressor. 

It isn't just hindsight that damns Milius' xenophobic and overt patriotism, on its release the film received numerous bans in various parts of the world that were sympathetic to communism and was even picketed in many American states, with critics arguing that such a film shouldn't have been made in such politically tense times. Milius' response that these naysayers were 'un-American' only further served to widen the divide, though given its controversy and the arguments made at the time it surprises me that a 2012 remake would go on to feature North Korea as the invaders. 

Watching the film again, it's best to imagine it as a strange kind of alt-reality tale to get the most enjoyment from it, but even then the film is littered with some incredibly dumb, deeply unsubtle and downright odd flaws. Why, despite the numerous successes achieved by the 'Wolverines' (the teen rebellion of Swayze, Grey, Lea Thompson, C Thomas Howell et al) does their ranks not swell? In reality any guerrilla movement would be bolstered with each notable attack on the oppressive occupying forces. And the bit where the camera lingers on an NRA bumper sticker ('I'll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead fingers') before moving down to show a Russian paratrooper take a pistol from, yup you've guessed it, a dead man's hand is as laughably hamfisted as some of the atrociously clunky dialogue - not even the great Harry Dean Stanton can make something of the melodramatic line 'Avenge meeeee!'. Lastly, it's almost too hard to care about our band of heroes who are a mix of whingeing, virtually indistinguishable and interchangeable squirts or swaggering jocks as best exemplified by Swayze's sneering lead turn.

I hadn't seen Red Dawn since the 1980s but weirdly as I put it on a couple of weekends back the abiding memory I have of it was nothing to do with the film itself, but was in fact a memory of an argument I witnessed at school about twenty/twenty-one years ago. Some of the girls were claiming what a great film Red Dawn was, before going on to list the famouse and hunky actors who featured. When one girl claimed River Phoenix was in it, Dawn Prescott quickly pointed out that she was wrong. 'Perhaps there's a River Phoenix film you haven't seen?' the girl daringly suggested to this huge River fan. 'I've seen Red Dawn! And he ain't in it!' Dawn passionately retorted, so passionately that you could say she became Red (faced) Dawn. Is it weird that I remembered more about one moment in photography class in 1995 or '96 than I did about the whole of this movie?

Still, that memory answers the question as to just who Red Dawn is for - it's the perfect film for teenage girls and right wing, survivalist obsessive old folk.

Silent Sunday : Spying

Wordless Wednesday: Greenham Common

Red Heat (1988)

"You think parakeet is feminine?"

So asks Arnie at one point in Red Heat. And I have to reply no, I don't actually Arnie. But I do think that opening scene to Red Heat is one of the most homoerotic ever committed to celluloid. Even watching it as a kid, I hoped my parents didn't walk in at that precise moment, for fear they'd get the wrong impression regarding my burgeoning sexuality. It's a scene that made me feel really awkward; I do not want to see Arnie's bare ass in a fight scene. And even though the scene features some naked girls on display too, it's worth pointing out that the one who positions her rather fine, large and shapely bottom under the bathing fountain has (to quote Him and Her) 'dykey hair'

In recent years Red Heat has become something of a perennial in the post pub closing time ITV schedules on a Friday night. Though I'm 99.9% sure they still edit some of the violence out in these screenings, which is weird considering we're talking gone 11pm at night.  

On the whole, you have to give credit to director Walter Hill for delivering a film which features an unashamedly Soviet hero when The Cold War was still, at best, lukewarm. Not for Arnie's Ivan Danko the scales falling from his eyes and the decision that America is the saviour of the world. He doesn't defect, it doesn't cross his mind for one second. Pretty impressive really. It's also fair to say that Red Heat gives Arnie one of his more credible action hero roles too; appearing in an urban America setting that actually allows him to play up to the fact that he sticks out like a sore thumb. 

Unfortunately, not all of the fish out of water stuff works and that's partly down to the fact that the buddy buddy relationship between him and Jim Belushi doesn't really fly. Indeed, Belushi had more chemistry and a more authentic buddy buddy cop partnership with the dog in K9! It's not really Belushi's fault, the character's underwritten and doesn't seem to serve the comedic purpose you'd originally imagine, after all it's Arnie who gets the best gags; "I do not want to touch his ass, I want to make him talk" and "I am not shitting on you" springs to mind. There's nothing here to suggest Belushi is, as the tagline had it, 'Chicago's craziest cop', which is a shame.

I'd really like to see what contribution Troy Kennedy Martin made to the final screenplay. Given how Hollywood mistreated many British screenwriting greats in the '80s, I imagine a lot of the man behind Z Cars, Edge of Darkness, The Italian Job and Kelly's Heroes ideas didn't make it to the screen, but I'm prepared to be surprised. 

Lastly, Gina Gershon is really pretty here, but has very little to do in accordance with the time; '80s buddy cop action movies just offered nothing for actresses really. Also, it's hard not to think of her as Larry David's hasidic Jewish dry cleaner these days!

The Silent Enemy (1958)

The Silent Enemy remains a somewhat low-key but very interesting war film, interesting primarily because of the influence it would subsequently have on future films, most notably those in the Bond franchise.

The film attempts to depict the life and wartime exploits of the legendary British frogman Lieutenant Lionel Crabb, R.N.V.R, known to all as 'Buster' Crabb. It was based on the biography Commander Crabb by Marshall Pugh and released on the wave of publicity and fascination that arose from Crabb's disappearance and likely death whilst secretly investigating the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze and its propeller design on Naval Intelligence orders in 1956.

The film opens with an incident from 1941, the Italian manned torpedo raid on Alexandria, which saw their frogmen plant limpet mines on the hull of two British battleships, attacking and disabling them. This was to be first strike in a concerted Italian effort against British naval supremacy in the Mediterranean and, in Spain, the Italian underwater expert Tomolino observes the British base in nearby Gibralter, planning their next move against a British convoy. Concerned by this new Italian tactic, the British navy assign bomb disposal expert Lionel Crabb to head up their response. Crabb quickly develops a flair for diving during this posting and begins to form a team of divers who can intercept the attacks from the Italians and defuse their bombs, as well as investigating the suspicious death of General Sikorski of the Polish Army, whose B-24 Liberator aircraft crashed in the waters off Gibraltar in 1943. Infiltrating a Spanish dock, Crabb and his team identify the torpedo-laden ship the Italians are planning to attack from and launch an unauthorised and pre-emptive strike against them, destroying the ship and foiling their plans. In recognition for his efforts during the war, Crabb was awarded the George Medal.

The real Crabb, photographed in Gibralter

Laurence Harvey as Crabb

Crabb may not be the well known name he once was (after all it is some sixty years since his mysterious disappearance in a Cold War incident that will not be revealed by official records until 2056) but he was unmistakably a true British hero. William Fairchild's film ought to stand on a par with Lewis Gilbert's biopic of ace flier Douglas Bader, Reach For The Sky, released two years prior to this, as both films try to get under the skin of what was clearly a very courageous, but also complex and eccentric breed of hero. Laurence Harvey's dark locks are dyed blonde for the role and he also wears a full naval beard to deliver one of his more memorable performances, coming off occasionally like a cross between James Robertson Justice, James Bond and Roger Moore's diving hero character ffoulkes from 1979's North Sea Hijack.

Which brings us neatly on to the question of inspiration. The lead character in North Sea Hijack is undoubtedly based on Crabb, whilst Ian Fleming was compelled to write the Bond novel Thunderball in both the wake of Crabb's disappearance and the release of this filmed biopic. The splendid underwater cinematography on display here from Otto Heller - including the underwater hand-to-hand battle scenes between British and Italian divers (which didn't actually happen) - is certainly a key influence on the similar underwater segments of Terence Young's subsequent adaptation of Fleming's novel, and indeed of other Bond film to feature similar scenarios that has followed.

It's not an historically accurate film, but it is an enjoyable one although a little slow moving. It boasts a fine supporting cast, including Michael Craig as Crabb's lifelong diving buddy, Sydney Knowles (who, before his death at the age of 90, claimed Crabb was killed by MI5, rather than the KGB, because of a desire to defect to Russia) and Harvey's friend and fellow South African Sid James, playing it mostly straight as Chief Petty Officer Thorpe. However, I believe it was this film that ended their friendship as James became angered by how fame had gone to Harvey's head by this point and the allegedly disgraceful attitude he took towards the crew during filming.

Rapid Reviews: Motherland by Jo McMillan

"My mum was quiet on the journey, which didn't worry me because I knew from last year it was just love and the left-hand drive"

That excerpt, which I've highlighted because of that beautiful phrase 'love and the left-hand drive' (I mean, that could almost be a Billy Bragg album title, right?) is from author Jo McMillan's 2015 debut novel, Motherland, which is a semi-fictional account of her teenage years, when she spent her summers with her mother, an active communist, in East Germany as part of an educational programme run by the GDR's Ministry of Education.

Motherland is full of beautiful, quirky little touches and turns of phrase like that, which just about save it from the vagaries you get elsewhere in the narrative.

Spanning 1978 to 1984, the story concerns Jess, the daughter of the only communist in Tamworth, her schoolteacher mother Eleanor - a marvellously eccentric, highly-strung and determined creation. When we meet Jess she is 13 and her belief in the GDR, the Soviet Union and Communism, is unflinching. She sells the Morning Star (or at least, attempts to sell it) with her mother to a disinterested and antagonistic Tamworth town centre every Saturday, and dreams of life at the other side of the Iron Curtain ("It's not really an Iron Curtain" Eleanor says at one point, "More a Veil of Misunderstanding")

That dream comes true when Eleanor is invited over to the GDR in the summer of '78 as part of a group of sympathetic teachers from across Western Europe. There, Jess meets the enigmatic teenager Martina and a strong friendship develops, just as Eleanor falls for Peter, Martina's widowed father; a love that is one of the two reasons for the aforementioned silence on the journey back.

But when Peter is dispatched for two years  of solidarity work in Laos, the trouble starts and Jess realises the GDR isn't necessarily a place for love. Slowly, in this tragi-comic portrait of an unusual childhood, Jess begins to think for herself as she approaches adulthood and the bonds between mother and daughter begin to change.

The author and her mother, Isobel, in Potsdam, 1978

I rather enjoyed Motherland, primarily for its little character touches, than the story as a whole. I would recommend it to anyone who has read and enjoyed the memoirs of similar communist youths such as Alexei Sayle and David Aaornovitch. It seems we're having something of a boom period for these kind of stories now.

Rocky IV (1985)

Did Stallone ever direct music videos? Because if he didn't, he missed his vocation. Those montages, man....those montages....

In fact, Rocky IV is a film of montages. Its actually Rocky MTV!

Let's be clear, we are all in agreement that Rocky IV is utterly dumb. It is completely stupid and so far removed from both reality in general and the reality of the first (and second) film that it ought to sink the franchise. So many stupid things happen in Rocky IV; like how we're supposed to believe that Rocky, a much older fighter who has nearly been destroyed by several other boxers in his career, can now go toe to toe with Ivan Drago, a steroid bingeing soviet fighter, whose punches - we are told several times over - are more than twice the average of a normal fighter. And how we're supposed to believe that a fighter with a 'relaxed brain' (as he said himself in the first sequel) can become a Springer's Final Thought style philosopher on East/West relations. No, seriously. The film concludes with a man who previously couldn't get the teenage girl on her way to becoming the neighbourhood whore to change her ways in the first film now singlehandedly bringing about Glasnost, Perestroika, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the crumbling of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Ridiculous! I mean, we all know that was David Hasselhoff, right?

Also, why end the film on such an optimistic 'hey, we're all the same underneath so why don't we just try to get along y'know?' message when you've just spent the last 80 odd minutes painting Rocky's opponent as an emotionless avatar of destruction ("if he dies, he dies") It kind of defeats the object and positive sentiment really. But this was the 1980s, and every action movie had to be about a hero out to avenge the death of his friend, brother, father (delete as applicable) Stallone obviously has forgotten at this stage that a Rocky film isn't actually supposed to be an action film, it's a sports drama, but what the heck. Ergo, Drago must be a baddie-o, rather than just a fellow athlete and sportsman (just as Clubber Lang was too). It was this kind of thing I was actually concerned about rearing its head again in Creed, especially being a) British and b) living within the limits of Merseyside like Tony Bellew's character. I was so relieved that Bellew was essentially a loudmouth in the Apollo Creed mould, and that his taciturn trainer actually had a good heart - motivated by money just so Bellew's kids could have a roof over their head once his career in the ring was over.

But I digress. Further irritants are the stupid weight and height difference between Rocky and Drago, the Russian has so much reach advantage on him it's unlikely he'd ever have been hit once. The film is applauded for its use of genuine sound effects from the ring, and its depiction of training methods, but once again we really jump the shark once we step onto the actual canvas. And the bits where Rocky and Drago grapple each other and get tossed around the ring like it's a WWE match? Seriously! Then there's the even stupider robot ("Happy Birthday Paulie") and the fact that the film seems to imply that Paulie is actually fucking that robot and NO ONE SAYS ANYTHING ABOUT THIS. Paulie is of course now the series comic relief (as well as one of Rocky's team ringside, though fuck knows what he brings to the table) rather than the alcoholic who was physically and verbally abusive to his sister and whose dream job was collecting debts for a notorious loanshark. Yup, that's loveable Paulie.

And yet....

Rocky IV is intoxicating fun. A glossy confection, with an almost Tony Scott-like sheen, this is easily the most enjoyable watch I've had in this season of revisits since the first film. Part of this might be nostalgia; I was around 6 years old when Rocky IV came out and, when on holiday in Malta, we picked its soundtrack up on tape and listened to it on a loop. It's a great soundtrack and its clear Stallone knew that, given how many fricking montages he gives us showcasing the songs, Conti's stirring instrumentals and his flashy 80s visuals. 

But is it just nostalgia? I'm not so sure. Because you can't deny Rocky IV is the most successful film of the series -  it is the most financially successful and was actually the highest grossing sports movie for twenty four years (being overtaken by The Blind Side in 2009) - so it clearly always had something. It's a film that certainly taps into the cultural ethos of the time and gives the audience exactly what it wants even if that means moving further and further away from what a Rocky movie was initially all about. In many ways, though Rocky III is an incredibly weak movie, I'm actually grateful it exists because, if we jumped straight from II to the outlandish heights of IV it would just make no sense.

Plus points - well, it's fitting that this is Carl Weathers' swansong in the series as its his best performance as Creed (and he manages to invest so much energy into the film that you almost forget Stallone is essentially just revisiting the death of Mickey storyline again just one film later) and it's nice to actually see Tony Burton as Creed's trainer Duke (a regular in the series from the start) actually have some stuff to do in this one. 

Dolph Lundgren is an imposing Ivan Drago who fits the bill perfectly as this unknowable threat from the icy mysterious East, though it's surprising to learn he actually won a Best Actor award at one film festival for his performance here as the script doesn't require him to much other than look threatening and impassive. Far more fun is what was then the future Mrs Stallone, Brigitte Nielsen as Drago's wife and self appointed spokeswoman, as always a very striking presence on film. 

A real guilty pleasure.

Knockout Rating : 3 Punches out of 5

Fatherland (1986)

Fatherland is something of a forgotten, overlooked film in Ken Loach's body of work. Made in the 1980s, a decade which saw Loach at his least prolific and most openly disillusioned with the feature film making process, this marked an intriguing change of pace for the director; working from a script by acclaimed left-wing playwright Trevor Griffiths, it saw Loach move away from his familiar social realist depictions of the issues based within the UK to focus instead on the issues inherent within 1980s Germany and specifically Berlin, then still divided by The Wall.

German singer-songwriter Gerulf Pannach stars as an East German protest singer Klaus Drittemann who is, at the start of the film, facing expulsion from the GDR because of the openly critical views he expresses through his work. As the politicians, reporters and record company executives in the West eagerly await his arrival, they openly wonder if such a move is hereditary, given that his estranged father was also concerned a political dissident asked to leave by the East in the 1950s. Presumably Drittemann can be viewed as a fictionalised version of Pannach himself, given that he too was expelled from the East Germany in the previous decade. 

Fatherland is a film of two halves. The first half of the film establishes Klaus's situation in the East and sees him cross the checkpoint into the presumably more open West Germany. Here he is promised greater artistic freedom, a more appreciative audience and huge money-making potential. He is wined and dined and thrown parties and press conferences by the record company, and he meets up with Rainer (Hans Peter Hallwachs) another previously outspoken, artistic exile from the GDR and an openly gay man who now makes music videos in the most sexually explicit of styles. In these scenes the film asks us to compare the notions of East and West and whether the grass really is greener on the other side - indeed Rainer seems no happier for the fame and freedom he has secured. In the East, Klaus had a family which, like his father before him, he has left behind. His artistic integrity was compromised by censorship and open contempt from the authorities and he was plagued by constant surveillance by Stasi agents. In the West, Klaus is alone; he has no family, he is followed by other intelligence agencies such as the CIA, and his record company openly refer to as a 'commodity'; a money-generating product for this capitalist society whose art will surely be compromised by commercial pressures. In one blisteringly good key scene, set at his inaugural press conference, Klaus rips into a local Christian Democrat politician who promises him a better, freer existence in the West by pointing out how the oppression he faced within the GDR was likely to be more honest than the hypocrisies he faces in West Germany. He mentions the Bitburg controversy - the 1985 visit by Ronald Reagan to a German military cemetery which contained many burial plots dedicated to members of the Waffen-SS - and argues that a society that was founded on the fascist ideals of Nazi Germany, and which continues to protect and preserve those war criminals in high office, can offer him no guarantees of greater personal freedom. It's a great scene and one which was cut by West German backers ZDF when broadcast on television in Germany; "It was ironic that they cut the only decent scene in the film" Loach lamented, being somewhat harsh on himself.

The second half of Fatherland deals with the mystery surrounding Klaus's father. Once he arrives in West Germany, Klaus meets a French journalist, Emma (Fabienne Babe), who believes she has tracked down his old man to Cambridge, England where he is now living under an assumed name. En route to the UK to investigate further, the pieces of the puzzle gradually begin to fall into place revealing exactly why Klaus's father defected and why he is keeping his identity such a closely guarded secret start to fall into place, revealing exactly why Klaus's father disappeared from the limelight after he left East Berlin, and why he might now be living in England under an assumed name. In short, Klaus's father was working every possible side and, upon that discovery, Klaus is forced to confront the fact that the reality of his estranged father is not in keeping with the image he has carried with him in his head since childhood.

Whilst the general consensus may be that Fatherland is a film of two distinctive halves as I've laid out, I've yet to actually discover anyone who agrees which half is the most superior. Loach himself believes that the key to Fatherland ought to have been the East v West argument that appears in the first half and that, giving over to the search for the father in the concluding half, was something of a mistake; a strong storyline, but a mistake nonetheless. Others however claim that the first half is a little too ponderous and that the internal argument Klaus feels about his country can be summed up in just a couple of scenes (such as the aforementioned scene where Klaus finds his critical voice again during the press conference, and Rainer's obvious dissatisfaction with working and living in the West) whereas Griffiths' script only really comes into its own with the father storyline. It's fair to say that Loach has always been found of an arbitrary style when it comes to plot and is happy to allow narratives to go off wherever they will. His only other feature film of the 1980s, Looks and Smiles, which came out five years earlier, also employs an overdue narrative in the film's final half which suddenly focuses on the girlfriend of the central character and her own estranged father, but Loach seemed happy with that instance, whereas he is most emphatically not happy with his work on Fatherland. He cites a frustration with film making at the time which led to an incompetence on his part when it comes to clarity. He also felt that, despite he and Griffiths sharing the same political outlook, the script was more literary than the type he usually works with and that the film required a director who would have allowed the film to be more plot driven. Lessons he claims he went on to learn when exploring the mystery at the heart of his next feature, 1990's Hidden Agenda.

In my first review for Hidden Agenda I argued that it was sometimes hard to believe such a thriller, with two relatively big name American stars, was a Ken Loach film. I would argue that Fatherland is equally disorientating, if not more so. This was the first time Loach filmed outside of the UK (he would go on to do this in films such as Carla's Song, Land and Freedom and, most explicitly, the US set Bread and Roses) and a good 80% of Fatherland is a proper European foreign language film, with its German cast understandably speaking German to one another (it's worth pointing out too that some actors have a better command of English than others; I struggled with Fabienne Babe's pronounciation at times, which rather detracted from the key information we were being given at that stage) . There's also the somewhat expressionist dream sequences, shot in eerie black and white, that concerns Klaus's father and haunts his nocturnal hours. All these things are stuff that you do not expect from 'A Ken Loach Film'. Indeed there's one scene, when Klaus and Emma arrive in the UK and are travelling to Cambridge only to be stopped by a police patrol who are checking all the cars coming into the region, that I found myself wondering if the real 'Ken Loach Film' wasn't actually occurring on the periphery of the frame at this point; when we witness a group of striking Yorkshire miners, intending on a peaceful protest at a Cambridgeshire power station, turned back by the police.  

Ultimately, though it's clear Loach recognises it as a production which he should have handled better, I still find much to recommend in Fatherland. Personally I found both halves of the film interesting and felt that they led to an experience that wasn't as disjointed as I initially feared. It also boasts the as usual excellent cinematography from Chris Menges and, in his only film role, an intriguing central performance from the musician Gerulf Pannach who sadly passed away from cancer in 1998 aged just 49. 

Lastly, though the film struggles to preserve its own identity given that it shares a title with the Robert Harris alt-history thriller, I actually really like the title Fatherland, far more than the title it goes by in the US (Singing the Blues in Red - named after one of Klaus' songs) because the irony inherent in that title is really satisfying. Still, you can't expect America to appreciate irony can you?

Theme Time: Peter Schilling - Deutschland 83

Tonight sees the screening of the final episode of Deutschland 83 on Channel 4.

I've loved this wonderful German series about a young East German border patrol guard who is sent over the Berlin Wall by the Stasi to spy on the Western military at the height of the Cold War's nuclear threat. It's like a cross between The Lives of Others (for the espionage and suspense) and Ashes to Ashes (for the nostalgia of the music and pop culture references)

The theme tune is German pop star Peter Schilling's 1983 hit Major Tom (Coming Home) an affectionate ode/sequel to Bowie's Space Oddity. However I believe in its native Germany, the theme used is actually New Order's Blue Monday

Charlie Wilson's War (2007)

It's a big ask to accurately detail the real life events that Charlie Wilson's War intends to portray in just 90 minutes, so it's perhaps only natural that the film fails.

However, it is said that Aaron Sorkin's original screenplay was far more hard hitting and offered a more detailed analysis on how American support for the mujahideen against Soviet forces in the 1980s directly led to the terrorist attack of 9/11 and the state of the world we are now in. But apparently, Tom Hanks found that approach 'too political'

Too political for a film about politics? Is he really Forrest Gump?

Hanks is an odd choice for the role of hard drinking, drug taking womanising good ole boy congressman Charlie Wilson. Right from the off Sorkin references Dallas and it's clear the character requires a Larry Hagman type character. Hanks is not Larry Hagman and his goody-goody screen persona is too heavy handed for such a morally  complex movie. Far too much is left out of the film (the involvement of other counter intelligence agencies such as MI6 and ISI; the different factions in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the small matter of Pakistan's nuclear arms program which Wilson denied at Senate yet in reality, according to his biographer, he not only knew about but fully supported) to focus on Wilson as a flawed but ultimately decent man who moves mountains to up the covert war budget from $5million to a billion because he was so touched by the plight of Afghan refugees. A caption at the start of the end credits claiming Wilson believed the US had "fucked up the end game" is a remarkably glib, trite way to explain away the threat of fundamentalist terrorism on today's Western world as a direct result of his government's actions in the 1980s, yet that's the only explanation we actually get in Charlie Wilson's War - other than a scene in which his request for $1million for a new school in Afghanistan is blocked by senate. It's a scene that feels shoehorned in and is similarly empty in its attempts to explain this most horrific of consequences.

The film has its plus points; Hanks may be miscast but he's talented enough to eke out the likeability factor, whilst Philip Seymour Hoffman delivers the best performance of the film. There's the brief added bonus of Emily Blunt. It may only be two scenes, but one of them sees her in her bra and pants. 

Less enjoyable is a very dull performance from Julia Roberts as a right wing God fearing Texas political hostess and Amy Adams is wasted in the minor, unfulfilling role of Wilson's aide. The final act too sees the action fritter away into a series of montages compiled of archive footage and in vision stats, meaning the film ends more or less with a whimper.

Ultimately it's not altogether clear what kind of a film this wants to be. It's political and complex, yet its leading man put the kibosh on it being too political. Director Mike Nicholls is a strange choice for the material and seems to shoot the action with the same lecherous eye that Wilson is purported to have had (there's a scene where his camera longingly gazes up from Adams' high heels as she purposefully strides through the corridors of power, up to her legs before lingering on the sway of her bottom and then capturing the swish of her pony tail) whilst falling between the stools of satire and misty eyed patriotism. Imagine what kind of a film we could have had if Sorkin was allowed to put the bite into the script and Oliver Stone took the director's chair? A better one, I think.