Creation, dir. Jon Amiel (Icon Films)

Ringing Roger, March 2010

The controversy surrounding Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection doesn’t seem to be dying down, even 150 years after the publication of The Origin of Species. Creationists adhere to a literal interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis – though some of the more enlightened ones concede that the six days of creation might have actually been six epochs. They are matched against neo-Darwinians, who not only want to maintain Darwin’s theory in every particular, but who insist that it necessarily involves adopting the stance of atheism. Religious fundamentalism and secular fundamentalism are engaged in their own evolutionary struggle for survival, it seems.

Now we have on DVD Jon Amiel’s sensitive cinematic treatment of the critical moment in which Darwin finally got down to writing and publishing his book after years of hesitation as to the veracity of his theory, and an accompanying concern about what its consequences might be. Married to a devout Christian, and friendly with the local vicar, Darwin feared that the doubts he raised about the literal truth of Genesis would be controversial. More importantly, the death of his young daughter Annie cast him into a long period of despair. If he believed in natural selection, and the survival of those creatures which were best fitted to their environment, then he had to accept Annie’s death as a demonstration of his theory. If he believed in a benign God, he had to accept it as an event which was currently inexplicable but which might be understood in whatever afterlife awaited him and his wife. The film doesn’t resolve any of these issues, but it powerfully dramatises them.

Interestingly, we are not allowed to witness the demise of his daughter, but we are allowed to witness that of another character in the film. I refer to Jennie, an orang-utan who has been captured while young and transported from her jungle to reside in an English zoo. Jennie’s story is one of those which Darwin is repeatedly asked by Annie to recount; she likes it because it is sad, and she always insists on hearing it to the end, when Jennie dies in the arms of her keeper. By granting such dignity to this death, the film forces us to ask ourselves why it is that we assume that the fate of other species should be of far less concern than that of our own. Considering the damage wreaked by homo sapiens on this planet, and the innumerable extinctions that it is currently bringing about because of its arrogant disregard for biodiversity, the film offers a useful challenge to our presuppositions about which creatures are entitled to respect and which are not.

Inevitably in a feature film, many aspects of Darwin’s situation have to be simplified. The hostility of the church of the day to his ideas is exaggerated, I would suggest. For one thing, the idea that the Bible offered poetic rather than factual truth had become well-established among the more liberal clergy by then. For another, evolution had been in the air for decades by the time Darwin came to publish his findings; all he did (though that was more than enough!) was to focus on natural selection as the key to how it worked. That said, we must acknowledge that Darwin’s local cleric, who is represented in the film, was hostile to his conclusions, if not his field of enquiry.

Another concern I have is that the film perhaps gives too much gloomy attention to what the poet Tennyson called ‘nature red in tooth and claw’: this distorts Darwin’s theory, which could be said to be as much about cooperation as it is about competition.

Which brings us back to that supposed battle of beliefs which I sketched at the beginning of this review… It’s worth noting that many modern and contemporary theologians have demonstrated that evolution can be made fully compatible with Christianity. One important outcome has been the radical reinterpretation of the verse in the King James translation of Genesis which declares that humankind is in a position of ‘dominion’ over the rest of creation. We have to become aware of ourselves as part of a great web of being, rather than as having a God-given right to do what we want to the earth and its other creatures. Darwin would certainly have approved of this particular evolutionary advance in thinking. But then, it isn’t only Christianity that has to adapt. I understand that the more dogmatic kind of Darwinism is currently  being challenged by some biologists, on the grounds that it exaggerates the function of natural selection in evolution; there is now much more sense of there being multiple factors at work, internal as well as external.

Whatever your own stance, rest assured that, if you are fascinated by the natural world and how we should best understand it, and if you find science and religion as compelling as each other, this is the film for you. And of course, if you just like to imagine how great ideas come to be born, you mustn’t miss seeing Creation.

Christmas In The Heart by Bob Dylan (Columbia)

Ringing Roger, December 2009

For me, one of the main curses of contemporary civilisation is piped music: everywhere you go, you have to listen to someone else’s – or some corporation’s – choice of noise. I say ‘noise’ because in my experience it’s rarely anything one actually likes. But then again, even if they were playing Vaughan Williams or Elgar, Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan, one surely has the right to choose when and where to listen to them? And how would one feel about one’s favourite music being reduced to ‘muzac’, anyway? I’m grateful for the fact that one doesn’t usually hear any of the above when out and about. It would be disconcerting to have Dylan intoning the famous line from ‘It’s Alright, Ma’ – ‘He not busy being born is busy dying’ – while groping for a bag of frozen organic peas.

At about this time of year the noise just gets worse. I wonder if anyone has monitored the increase in violence in supermarkets occasioned by the remorseless repetition of Slade singing ‘So here it is, merry Christmas / Everybody’s having fun’? (It’s the check-out staff I feel sorry for; customers can beat a hasty exit.) Still, at least we don’t get Dylan’s greatest hits reduced to the same level and mixed in with the same cacophony… But when I purchased his new album, Christmas In The Heart, and noted that it included such popular gems as ‘Winter Wonderland’ and ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’, along with such traditional hymns as ‘Oh Come All You Faithful’ and ‘The First Noel’, I had the worrying suspicion that his intention was to sell the rights to some purveyor of piped music, and we’d be hearing him in Morrisons before the year was out. The jolly, upbeat children’s song ‘Must Be Santa’ would become the soundtrack from Hell.

Dylan, of course, has a large and loyal body of admirers. They have either enjoyed or endured his frequent changes of persona: the Woody Guthrie imitator, the ‘hip’ icon of the sixties counterculture, the ultra-conventional country music artist, the religious zealot denouncing ‘rock’n’roll addicts’, and so forth. But would ‘Bob the Christmas muzac man’ be the last straw?

Having heard all the tracks on the album, I can say that I doubt that this will happen. True, the backing singers make a sound that the cynical might describe as saccharine. True, before Bob joins in, one might think one was listening to The Perry Como Show. But of course, it’s precisely when Bob does join in that one realises that it is (thank God) business as usual. That weary, rasping voice is inimitable — paradoxically, both disconcerting and reassuring. We rely on him to disturb us. Dylan is to my mind the greatest religious songwriter of the present era: right back to his early ‘protest’ phase (‘I can’t think for you, you’ll have to decide / Whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side’), right through his ‘born-again’ period (‘I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man / Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand’), up to his sombre meditations on mortality of recent years (‘I don’t even hear the murmur of a prayer / It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there’). By reinterpreting standard Christmas songs, without being either subversive or, worse still, ‘ironic’ (the usual excuse for bad taste these days), he makes us ask what we really think the Christian feast is all about. Listen to this in good faith … but please don’t forget to subscribe to ‘Pipedown’, the campaign against muzac: www.pipedown.co.uk !!!

Laurence Coupe

‘O Thou Transcendent’: The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams, dir. Tony Palmer (Palmer DVD)

Ringing Roger, November 2009

The piece of music which is repeatedly voted England’s favourite is The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams – or VW, as he is often referred to. It is right  that the English people have taken his music to their hearts as he, more than any other composer, stands for what the poet William Blake meant when he preached ‘mental fight’ on behalf of ‘England’s green and pleasant land’. It is no coincidence that VW set Blake to music, for they both belong to a tradition that is deeply patriotic without being narrowly nationalistic. I suspect that the affection that so many feel for The Lark Ascending arises from its evocation of the English countryside, for what’s left of it becomes all the more precious as we pollute, degrade and ‘develop’ the rest. Nor should we overlook the fact that it was written just at the start of the First World War – in which the pacifist composer participated as a stretcher bearer – and came to acquire deeper and wider significance as a lament for a vanished Eden, a lost innocence.

The occasion of these comments is the release on DVD of Tony Palmer’s long, leisurely film about VW. Not only does it document the life with a wealth of archive film and photography, but it includes interviews with people who either knew him (eg, his second wife, Ursula) or were influenced by him (eg, the composers John Rutter and John Adams), along with extracts from filmed performances of the major works.

VW’s love of the English musical tradition was initially prompted by his concern about the dominance of European influences, notably German and Austrian: he took exception to the excessive deference of his countrymen to Brahms, Mahler and others. This love took two main forms. Firstly, VW wanted to rescue from generations of condescension the rural culture which expressed itself in folk music: he was the man most responsible for the recovery of hundreds of songs that might otherwise have been lost once the singers who knew them by heart had died. It is fitting that one of the interviewees in the film is Richard Thompson, a pioneer of English ‘folk-rock’: he recalls working in Germany prior to his musical career, and having to defend VW’s music against the accusation made by his colleagues that the music was typically English in being ‘sentimental’.

Secondly, VW wanted to revive English sacred music. He was particularly keen on the Tudor period, and greatly admired the religious songs of Thomas Tallis – composing his haunting Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis in 1910. Prior to that, he accepted the role of musical editor for The English Hymnal (1906), which contains some of England’s favourite hymns, with original melodies by VW himself in many cases. One thinks, for instance, of ‘Come Down, Oh Love Divine’ and ‘He Who Would Valiant Be’.

Palmer’s film celebrates all this. In doing so, it radically revises VW’s reputation. It is often said that his love of England renders his music safe and predictable. Far from it. His great-uncle was Charles Darwin, whose work fascinated him; so he knew all about the long, withdrawing roar of what Matthew Arnold called ‘the sea of faith’. Indeed, he comes across in this film as a complex figure: simultaneously a nature mystic, a cultural Christian and an anxious agnostic. It is no coincidence that the chorus from his first symphony which gives the film its title, ‘O Thou Transcendent’, is based upon a work by the American poet Walt Whitman, whose spirituality was unorthodox, to put it mildly.

Moreover, the man who saw unspeakable horrors in the trenches went on to write some very dark music indeed – for example, the sixth symphony – which conveyed his sense that civilisation was on the verge of collapse and that the earth was heading for catastrophe. It certainly does not make comfortable listening. He deserves our respect and gratitude, and this fascinating film suggests that we are finally able to do him justice.

Laurence Coupe

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, dir. Yves Simoneau (Warner)

Ringing Roger, October 2009

When Barach Obama was elected president last year, the historian Simon Schama suggested that his victory represented the ‘redemption’ of the United States. Why? Because the constitution had been founded on an ‘original sin’, namely slavery. (Thomas Jefferson himself owned over 600 African slaves.) But we must not forget that there was another offence, equally grievous, which was committed in the course of the settlement of that continent. I refer of course to the murder of millions of Native American people. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a dramatisation of this act of genocide, this second ‘original sin’ of the USA. The film, based on the book of the same title by Dee Brown, was made by the HBO network and first broadcast on US television in 2007; it is now available on DVD. It focuses on the Lakota tribe of the Sioux nation of Great Plains Indians, led by Chief Sitting Bull, the man credited with the Indian victory against General Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn (1876). That is where the film starts; but the story it tells is one of defeat and subjugation. We see Sitting Bull and his people having to give up more and more of their land as the US army becomes both stronger and more devious. Eventually, they are forced onto a reservation at Standing Rock, South Dakota, where Sitting Bill is murdered. This act provokes an uprising, which is suppressed in the notorious massacre at Wounded Knee Creek (1890).

While it conveys a shocking message, alerting us to a legacy of violence, exploitation and betrayal, this beautifully shot and sensitively acted film cannot be dismissed as propaganda. It is judicious in its depiction of the US authorities. In particular, Senator Henry Dawes is shown to have genuine sympathy with the Indians in their plight, trying his best to get them the best deal he can, given the pressures on him from the government and the military alike. But his flaw is his assumption of the innate superiority of the white man, which he shares with both his president and the army generals with whom he has to liaise. It is this flaw which introduces a fascinating subplot, involving Charles Eastman, an Indian who has been converted to Christianity and white culture. Mentored by Dawes and trained as a doctor, he goes to work at Standing Rock, and participates in the project of ‘civilising’ the Indians. It slowly dawns on him that the disease and alcoholism which is rife on the reservation is the result of the very policy he is supporting – no matter how well-intentioned his mentor might be.

Dee Brown’s book, first published in the early 1970s, is credited with waking up the descendants of those responsible for the virtual destruction of Indian culture to a hitherto unstated truth about American history. Yves Simoneau’s film, coming thirty years later, is a salutary reminder for those who have chosen to forget. It should also be of interest to the many non-Americans who are trying to decide whether Barack Obama’s presidency signifies a genuinely new start. Simoneau leaves us in no doubt of the extent of the damage done in the very formation of the America we know all too well today. Importantly, it demonstrates how the destruction of the Indian culture went hand in hand with that of the land which they held to be sacred – land which the settlers regarded as wilderness that had to be tamed. So the film hints at a third ‘original sin’ for which absolution needs to be sought, that against nature itself. With so much of the global population currently engaged in destroying the planet in pursuit of American-style affluence, ‘redemption’ still seems a long way off.

Laurence Coupe

Winstanley, dir. Kevin Brownlow & Andrew Mollo (BFI)

Ringing Roger, September 2009

In April 1649, not long after the execution of Charles I by the Parliamentarians, Gerrard* Winstanley led a band of about forty people, impoverished and dispossessed, onto common land on St George’s Hill in Surrey. There they cultivated crops and established a community of ‘Diggers’. An admirer of Oliver Cromwell and an enthusiastic supporter of the English Revolution, Winstanley had expected to witness the restitution of the land to the English people. Seeing no evidence for that yet, he trusted that his own community of ‘Diggers’ would show the way.

His inspiration was the Christ who preached universal love, and whom he believed to dwell in the hearts and minds of humankind rather than in some celestial realm; his conviction was that, with Satan’s monarchy having been overthrown, ‘King Jesus’ would make the earth ‘a common treasury’.

Proclaiming a ‘Law of Freedom’ which would ‘turn the world upside down’, Winstanley found himself opposed by both the local landowner and the local parson. Indeed, it was they, supported by Cromwell’s own army, who forcibly suppressed the Diggers’ venture after it had survived less than two years. Yet even in defeat, Winstanley retained his religious faith and his apocalyptic vision. A leading figure of the ‘inner light’ tradition in English Christianity, he reportedly died a Quaker.

Brownlow & Mollo’s austere black-and-white film, first released in 1975, has now been carefully restored by the British Film Institute and issued as a DVD. It’s not a film for relaxing with on a Saturday evening: it’s more a film for sitting up straight and concentrating on, preferably on a Sunday. It’s a powerful history lesson; it’s also a breath of spiritual fresh air. If you’re a Christian, it asks you: what kind of world would it be if we actually lived according to Christ’s teaching? If you’re not, it makes you think again about religion being nothing more than a distraction from ‘the real world’. Either way, this film reminds us that Winstanley is one of the most challenging of English visionaries and (as it includes generous quotations from his pamphlets) one of the finest of English writers.

[*Yes, this is the correct spelling!]

Laurence Coupe