Thursday, 18 November 2010

Wetherby
(1985)

80%

Impressive look at an alienated and lonely culture where no-one really expects anything genuinely good of anyone else; further exacerbating both the anomie and the negative expectations. Here, people do not relate to one another but play a game of acting in each other's presence to conceal the loveless need inside. Yet this play-acting results in the self-fulfilling prophecy of never finding anyone genuine to have a satisfying human relationship with. The peculiar characteristic of White English culture - a rigidly-hierarchical social class system - is shown as the source of much of this cultural tension and furthered by an education system that does not teach independence but the dependence that leads to the malaise described here.

The desperate loneliness shown here leads people to do strange things: Suicide, superficiality, sexual promiscuity, stereotyping, wanting something for nothing, physical violence, snobbery, imperialism, etc. but there is no love here nor any prospect of any as the impeccably-drawn and well-acted characters wend their weary way through needfully-explicit movie. What is worst of all is that the young know adults are lying to them when they tell them to get a good education to improve their lives when it cannot make you happy.

While this lacks the incisiveness of something like Look Back in Anger, it wears its heart on its sleeve well.


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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.