religion
Kieron Tyler
How much suffering is it possible to take? Can suffering be depicted on film in a way which evokes its true depths? Is it possible to draw anything positive from a film that succeeds in capturing the essence of suffering? In short order: the human spirit can surprise; yes; yes. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc) is a film that still affects and has an ominous power, despite being silent, being made in 1928 and eschewing the overly demonstrative. It’s also strikingly timeless.Dreyer has been celebrated this year and the opportunity to assess the films Read more ...
howard.male
Perhaps only someone as supremely confident of his world view as Richard Dawkins might think he could come up with a TV series that would live up to such an all-embracing title. But at least in this three-part series the evolutionary biologist gets off his militant atheist’s high horse to tackle the God question from a more constructive angle. Instead of continuing with his usual line - God doesn’t exist so get used to it - he offered ideas as to how we can best prosper in a godless world.These programmes were essentially built around two stultifyingly naive and unimaginative questions that Read more ...
mark.hudson
I’ve rarely come across an exhibition as loaded with context as this one. Voodoo – or Vodou, as the show has it – is a massively complex and contested phenomenon, from the pin-sticking and zombies of legend and fantasy to the no-less colourful reality. Haitian history is tragic and dramatic, fraught with misinformation stemming from the country’s creation in an 18th century slave revolt. The religion, the history and the art produced from them feed in and out of each other in fascinating ways which the exhibition’s promotional material presents as a great slab of facts and ideas that have to Read more ...
graeme.thomson
The 1989 production at the Tron in Glasgow of Bill Findlay and Martin Bowman’s translation of Les Belles-Soeurs, the 1965 play by Québécois writer Michel Tremblay, has become a landmark event in Scottish theatre. This new co-production between the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company and the National Theatre of Scotland marks a major and very welcome revival of a work which, although initially written to challenge the prevailing cultural constraints of Canada in the 1960s, retains a real contemporary kick.The themes of The Guid Sisters – economic desperation, the politics of language, religion, the Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Stop me if you know this one. What do you get if you combine Gallic absurdity with a pristine, pouting Eva Mendes and Kylie as a suicidal chanteuse? The answer, it turns out, is gloriously unpredictable entertainment – by turns satirical, melancholy and effervescently eccentric. Following on from David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis, which chose to set its verbose and violent social critique in a white stretch limo, Holy Motors uses a similar vehicle both to transport and transform its protagonist.The short prologue sees the film’s French director, Leos Carax, fumbling blindly about a hotel room, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The onset of puberty is difficult, and especially so for girls in art house films. Marta is 12 and has been away from Italy for 10 years. In the days after returning with her mother and sister, she contends with being prepared for her first communion and her changing body. Quietly, as if not there, Marta observes the hypocrisy of adults. Dog-tired from working in a bakery, her mother is forced into the background.As Marta, Yle Vianello is terrific, a watchful presence who tries hard to do the right thing but is frustrated, who keeps a distance but is forced to interact. She bakes a cake for Read more ...
Steve Clarkson
Is it the greatest story ever told, or the most indulgent nativity ever staged? The return of the York Mystery Plays – this summer’s blue-ribbon theatrical spectacular in the North – begins by beguiling, ends up bemusing, while in between is a sacred story about the eternal battle of good and evil, from Creation to the Last Judgement. The show’s subject matter is as epic as its telling, which involves more than 1700 volunteers (including 500 cast members) and takes place in the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey. It is the UK’s largest outdoor theatre production this year.The timing of this showpiece Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The sacred word 'om' is spoken in different ways according to its context. Elongated, it can be stretched over multiple syllables. As a musical unit, OM work with building blocks that are similarly minimal, yet drawn out for maximum effect. And like the origins of their name, their heady, psychedelic music is heavily indebted to cultures which lie to the east.California’s OM were originally vocalist/bassist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius. Both used to be in drone/metal outfit Sleep. After a late-2007 five-hour live set in Jerusalem, Hakius left and was replaced with Emil Aros. Although Read more ...
howard.male
Apart from the fact that it’s a razor-sharp piece of writing, what most delights and impresses me about Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion is how it gets under people’s skin. It has generated several books in fevered opposition to it and, needless to say, countless abusive emails land in the poor man’s inbox every day. If it wasn’t such a lucid, incisive and relentlessly powerful piece of work I doubt it would have got such fierce and sustained opposition.But what poor Richard needs now is not some other despiser of organised religion like myself singing his praises, but a well conceived Read more ...
howard.male
I’ve long held the belief that much of what is wrong with the human race stems directly or indirectly from religion. But while this subject has had something of a renaissance in recent years, thanks to the likes of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the absolutely central story of the global banishment of the Goddess - in all her many forms - has largely remained untold. So it was with some excitement that I sat down to watch the first instalment of this three-part documentary series.Historian Bettany Hughes' ebullience about her subject was immediately palpable. In the opening minutes Read more ...
Dylan Moore
The Gospel of Us is a film about remembering. It is based on and was filmed at The Passion of Port Talbot, Michael Sheen’s triumphant theatre-event that took over his home town in south Wales to retell the Easter story this time last year. Writer Owen Sheers has novelised The Passion as The Gospel of Us. Continuing the chain of collaboration and adaptation, director Dave McKean has taken this title and managed the incredible dual task of producing a lasting memorial to the incredible events of that weekend while also making a film that stands in its own right as part of the pantheon that Read more ...
Emma Dibdin
Now on its third showrunner and entering its sixth season, it’s perhaps not a surprise that this once pitch-black drama, centring on a disturbed forensic analyst who moonlights as a vigilante serial killer, has lost its edge. The latest episode begins on a promisingly perilous note as Dexter (Michael C Hall) staggers through an abandoned lot having been stabbed, but there’s a characteristically punch-pulling reveal in the offing. Dexter was never in any danger, but his long-overdrawn series is at risk of becoming, despite its provocative premise, wholly conventional. Where last Read more ...