religion
Kieron Tyler
Post Tenebras Lux is a hard film to love, but it is one which engrosses. Although riveting, its appeal is akin to the fascination exerted by catastrophes and car pile-ups. Fittingly, the taste it leaves is bitter. It’s also hard to digest. Contrary to the title – light after darkness – there’s little to suggest either salvation or a path towards redemption.Director Carlos Reygadas doesn’t make it easy for viewers: there was animal cruelty in Japón (2002) and explicit sexual situtations in Battle in Heaven (2005), but he seemed to have mellowed with the Dreyer influenced Silent Light (2007). Read more ...
David Nice
It’s a dilemma of anniversary years, and never more so than with Wagner’s and Verdi’s 200th birthdays: do you stick to the masterpieces or try and bring the rarities to life? No-one would have minded, I suspect, if Antonio Pappano and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia forces he has raised to the level of one of the world’s great ensembles had reprised their peerless Verdi Requiem. It was unfortunate, then, if some of us sat with interest through unusual fare wishing for better alternatives in every case.Oh for the Ave Maria of Otello’s Desdemona, you couldn’t help thinking as ethereal Italian Read more ...
David Nice
How often should a music-lover go to hear Britten’s most layered masterpiece? From personal experience, I’d say not more than once every five years, if you want to keep a sense of occasion fresh. So how often should an orchestra play it? Sir Simon Rattle and his Berlin Philharmonic decided they could manage three nights in a row towards the end of their 2013-14 season. At the first of the performances, it already felt like a lot might have been kept in check. This, alas, was for the most part the kind of workaday performance Shostakovich, who rated the work alongside Mahler’s Das Lied Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Returning from Germany to her native Romania, Alina is reunited with her childhood friend Voichita, now resident in a convent. The pair return to Voichita’s orthodox sanctuary but Alina changes. Aggressive, hearing voices and seemingly suicidal, she disrupts the convent. Eventually, she is exorcised. The tragic consequences result in the nuns, including Voichita, and their priest being taken away by police who think Alina may have been crucified.Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills is based on a real case. Like his 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days, it’s long and unfolds slowly – almost glacially Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Is the BBC taking dictation from the Gradgrindian brain of Michael Gove? According to the education secretary’s latest wacky diktat, what the nation’s children want is facts facts facts. Plus, in the teaching of history, lots of stuff about England/Britain giving Johnny Foreigner a bloody conk. So let’s give it up one more time for the Tudors, who are essentially our very own Nazis. This is less for the dodgy human rights record than their permanent status as a small-screen visitor attraction.As the old rhyming mnemonic might put it, Harrys twain and Ned the Lad, Mary, Bessie: modern fad Read more ...
fisun.guner
Much of Michael Landy’s work concerns destruction or decay. The British artist, who recently turned 50 and is part of the YBA generation, came to prominence in 2001 with the Artangel commission Break Down, which saw all his worldly possessions destroyed in an industrial shredder. His next project saw him scale right down, surprising everyone with an exhibition of beautifully executed drawings of weeds.Landy’s love of close observational drawing continued with a series of arresting portraits. But then we saw the cathartic destruction of Art Bin, in 2010, where he'd invited members of the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
A female hiker is naked. A village is close. Lying on the slope down to a river, she invites the taciturn man she’s followed to have sex. They do. She begins shrieking and foaming at the mouth. He fastens his face to hers. She could then be dead yet begins crawling into the water, looks heavenwards and spreads her arms.The images of baptism and rebirth are clear. But the motivation of the man, David Dewale’s Le gars (the man or guy), is less clear cut. Bruno Dumont’s Hors Satan (Outside Satan) is hard to read in terms of specifics, but overall it dwells on the arrival of a mystical outsider Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Early on in Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene, John le Carré remembers Greene telling him that childhood provides “the bank balance of the writer”. Greene remained in credit on that inspiration front throughout his life, even while he struggled financially in his early writing days with a young family; later in life, too, he lost everything to a swindling financial adviser – the move to France was to avoid the Revenue.Greene went to Berkhamstead School, where his father was headmaster, and was bullied, not least for the assumption that he was a spy for paternal authority (the spy Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
It’s one of the most anticipated theatrical openings of the year, with tickets allegedly changing hands for astronomical sums and some pundits rushing to issue dire warnings of the depths of its lewdness and its shattering shock factor well before its official first night. So can this musical by Robert Lopez and the incorrigible South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker possibly live up the hype? The answer – rather like the existence (or not) of some supreme guiding deity – depends on your point of view. Is it fun (or, as those clean-cut Mormon boys with their ultra-white shirts, Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Simon Sebag Montefiore is a historian in a hurry - as well he might be when there’s a whole millennium to fit into an hour. A year ago we had his three-parter Jerusalem - The Making of a Holy City, now we’re well into Rome - A History of The Eternal City: no mean feat, given that these are major, impeccably researched and made projects. At least there’s no need for a costume change: Montefiore is back in his panama and chinos, outfit of choice for summer filming that lends him an almost Forsterian élan.Rome - or at least, things loosely Roman - has been cropping up a fair amount recently. The Read more ...
fisun.guner
The Royal Academy’s spacious white galleries at Burlington Gardens are flooded with mystic light and filled with New Age baubles. You are bathed in a trippy purple haze as you enter one gallery which contains a giant glowing pod. The translucent pod is meant to resemble an ancient monolith but instead looks more like an oversized Ikea lamp. The work derives its title, Tom Na H-iu II, from the Celtic “Tom na h-iubhraich” – a site of “spiritual transmigration”. These consist of standing stones intended to guide souls returning to earth after spending 100 years in the spirit world.The pod Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
My phone's predictive text posed an interesting question. Robert le Doable it insisted on calling last night's opera. And it's often been asked of this and other grands opéras. Are they doable? Such was the munificence of the times in which they thrived, and such has been the collapse in their popularity, are grands opéras worthy of resurrection? And do we have the resources and good will to do justice to their singular vision? If any opera company could meet the all-singing, all-dancing demands, it is the Royal Opera House. And if any of the hundreds of grands opéras that graced Read more ...