The Kid

Because the cricket was going so badly today I switched to watching Warrington win convincingly against Wigan and head the championship table by one point and with one away game to go at Hull victory will see them take the Shield for the first time in nearly forty years, I then decided on a catch up film and with five to chose selected The Kid, without knowing anything except for a brief note via the TV remote and then found it was another parallel life kind of experience, in the sense that led to me think, feel and face issues of my childhood and subsequently. It was also interesting because over the past two weeks I had been writing about many of the issues arising from the Rioting, including families with multiple problems and criminality.

The film is based on the two biographical works by Kevin Lewis who was brought up in Croydon, taken into care for his protection twice, became a bare knuckle fighter and bar night club manager, wrote two books about his life and then became a crime writer. The film ends with a clip from an interview with Kevin and his wife on a morning TV show in which he comes over in a more rounded way than the rest of the film led one to expect although by then he had become a family man with two children, published several successful crime thrillers and become financially self sufficient.

The film begins with Kevin living at home and the eldest of a growing family of four or five living in a small council property with his alcoholic unemployed father and shrill foul mouthed inadequate mother, typical products of the UK social care and mental health system that ahs developed over recent decades. Recently the government after the riots announced it was establishing a mentoring scheme for 120000 family with multiple problems whereas fifty years ago I worked with the same designation of family in Salford for the Manchester and Salford Family Service Unit and later for the Lee Crescent Residential Unit in Birmingham, In each instance the mother lacked basic housekeeping and parenting skills and was still a child for all intents and purpose in an adult body governed by emotions and without the usual inhibitions and restraints built up during childhood, and usually with a history of being in care, and correctional institutions, illiterate and without ever having held down paid work of any kind. It cannot recall one such family where there was a the kind of steady in work male figure which could have enabled the family to function and even where there as one male figure he would be out of work, in and out of prison and into petty crime which even when successful failed to provide relief for the family economy. Gas and electricity would be cut off and the only fuel for heat and cooking would be the open fire, I learned to drink tea from jam jars and the family survived on the chip butties. One of my jobs in the residential unit was to go round and check that the relatively new family planning pill was being taken each day. One worked in marginal improvements over a period of time and hoped that the children would through education and external influences find a way of breaking out the cycle of illiteracy, ignorance, poverty and dependency on social and financial care through the state and independent bodies. The odds were stacked against them and many went on to create they own families with multiple problems.

The film not only portrays Kevin’s family in such light but also the mother’s violence towards him, but surprisingly not against others. Usually the violence is spread throughout. It is also not unusual in such families for the male to use his daughters in succession. The film and I suspect paid no attention to the plight of the other children in the family and it is surprising that having removed Kevin not once but twice the other children were allowed to remain at home

In Kevin’s instance he was removed into care and placed in a children‘s home after a number of foster parent breakdowns unable to cope with his behaviour. He had no social skills and no knowledge of how to behave except within his family context and behaved like a corned animal.

The film paints a positive picture of the residential home in which he thrived until a change in family social worker led to a change in approach and the decision to place him back presumably on a trial basis rather than going back to court which would have required in the first instance. As he explains it was difficult to condense 14 hours of story telling into a 90 minute film.

Back home and moving on to the local comprehensive he could have developed in one of two classic ways. He could have become a terror and a leader, bullying younger or weaker children or become bullied, a loner, not fitting in which is to some extent what happened, constantly in detention but full of animalistic rage if provoked. He is portrayed as the victim and when a teacher takes an interest and finds evidence of physical assault the social worker is shown as someone anxious to preserve the status quo, taking the view of the parents. I am not surprised at this given the growth in the number of social workers which took place, the move to genericism and the lower in the standards in supervision and child care management that occurred during the 1970’s.

Fortunately the violence is so bad at one point that he needs to go to hospital and this jolted the authorities into taking him back to care where he is placed with a mature married couple with a grown up family living in a residential neighbourhood rather than the estate of New Addington according to one shot although in fact this part of the film was not filmed on site. I had assumed that he had been housed in the great London County Council overspill estate that had been created on land that was once Croydon airport and which caused no end of problems for the surrounding community for several decades but this does not appear to have been the situation

It is that this point that I felt the approach of the filmmakers and maybe the book became romanticised as Kevin appeared to have had a warm and understanding home situation and a good school which he felt part of and which opened several windows on possibilities. This included a visit to the stock exchange and a burning desire to make lots of money and conquer the world as well as himself. I know these feelings and desires only too well and because I know then I also know the complexity of the development whereas the film provides only a single track. I find it difficult to believe that he would have settled down so quickly into what would have appeared an alien lifestyle given his previous experience of care or moving into an unfamiliar environment such as the secondary school.

At some point he decides he wants to leave school at the earliest opportunity and the foster family appear to have enabled him to live at home and become independent providing on going financial support. The film is vague about how his foster father made his money mentioning being a barrow boy and taking book keeping through evening classes. There is a shot of Surrey Street which used to extend over two streets in my childhood and youth but is now restricted to one. There is also the involvement of Kevin in a local boxing club but there is a whole in the story of how became involved with criminals and the world of illegal bare knuckle prize fighting which remains hazy to me.

Kevin is promised a share in the surplus from the sale of the family home where the intention is for the foster father and mother to move into a smaller property but before this happens the foster father dies and then I am not clear what then occurred except that be becomes a successful prize fighter and this led his backers to offer him the opportunity to technically own and manage a bar night club.

Although living on his own he takes out a mortgage on a family size home and then fails to make any interest repayments so action is taken to repossess, With his share of the proceeds of the first prize fight is able to gain a stay of execution. The bar night club is a great success and he establishes an ongoing relationship with a young woman and then those financially backing him pull the plug saying he has to become bankrupt. The film suggests that while he immediately challenges he basis for their action it is only later after he has reach rock bottom that he is able to work out he has been significantly used and defrauded of a substantial amount in the tens of thousands. He was driven back to prize fighting but when he lost he was dumped and reached the lowest of the low as his home was repossessed and his possessions dumped in the garden.

The core of the story is his relationship with the woman who became his wife and mother of his children and who appears to have come from a stable, rational and sensible background. He was unable to communicate why he had become as he had and eventually when having reached the lowest of the low and contemplating suicide, (drinking and drugs is suggested), he decides on a plan which involves getting hold of a gun and demanding the money he is owed, taking only what he earned and no more and then writing down his story in order to explain to the young woman his need for her. The film suggests that she then takes the initiative in turning his notes into the first autobiographical story The Kid which finds a publisher and becomes a great success and the rest they say is history although the film does encompass parts of his subsequent account. I managed to find a news report of the couple having done up a million pounds home which was then at on the market for twice the amount.

There is almost nothing on Wikipedia about him and the site about his books and life is also short on information. I am resisting the temptation to buy and read the books at present although I have many questions. I wish him and his wife all the best on what from my experience will continue to be a challenging life for them all.

Food Pray Love

Another individual who is good to look at although unlike the previous film I felt the word Fake described everything about the super glossy visual candy of Eat Pray Love with Julia Roberts throughout and Javiar Bardem towards the end

However I had better rephrase the introduction because the film is based on an autobiographical best seller by Elizabeth Gilbert. I must also admit that there is a time in my life when the existential search attracted although my interest was psychoanalytical, psychiatric and psychological than transcendental meditation, yoga and all that jazz.

As with The Rebound the film is about a marriage that did not work because the two individuals involved had different life agendas and as in The Rebound, a follow up affairs does not work out either, so the subject, played by Julia Roberts, sets out on a year long adventure of self exploration which takes her to Italy, India, Bali and back to India although I may have got the order of the adventuring wrong.

The trouble is that Julia Roberts looks good, fails to convey any of the insecurity uncertainty trial and error, the panic and misadventure which someone in that position would experience. The Fake aspect is the performance of Julia Roberts and the overall direction which has to show the countries visited at their tourist best and portrays a character who appears comfortable in whatever her surroundings. Life is not like that nor are individuals who engage in such experiences. The write of the original book might be closer to the reality as Oprah Winfrey devoted two of her programmes to the subjects covered.

I enjoyed the Italian experience best because it primarily consisted of Julia eating glorious meals in which she had to sample everything, usually at the same sitting. However far from putting on weight she remained her gorgeous self without taking exercise or deliberately making herself sick. I love Italy and the Italians, (despite the Mafia), because of their love of life, great climate and beautiful country.

I am impressed with the strides India is taking to do something about its unacceptable racism and poverty although the class barriers are more ingrained and perverse than in the UK when it is possible to move from the lowest to the top within the one generation and well as to drop.

I do admire the self discipline and self control that is at the heart of oriental spirituality although it is something which is for those already integrated with themselves and their environment rather than for those full of internal strife and relationships out of equilibrium although I make the observation at some distance. The aspect of the relationship with Bardem which had some reality is the need for some to have a partner who understands, with whom they can fight, who is themselves secure and uncertain sufficient to let them be free and fly away if needs be. The film also did well at the box office making 300% on production costs.

The Rebound

A third fill in time film was the Rebound with the adorable Catherine Zeta Jones who decides to abandon her conventional American suburban home and lifestyle with husband and two children after finding he has cheated with a friend. The reality is that she was discontented with who she has become and needed to find herself. She is able to do this with the help of a young man fifteen years her junior who become a welcome baby sitter and who is also trying to overcome a relationship with French woman seeking a Green card and citizenship who departs his life as soon a eligible to go off with her true lover who has posed as her brother. The two appear destined to have a relationship as the young man his family, children and women orientated having taken women’s studies and supporting feminine. His family are horrified at the relationship which falls after Catherine finds that she is not pregnant and realises she is not ready for motherhood again having re-embarked on a career which leads her to become a front of camera TV personality. They part.

He goes off to find himself travelling the world help out people in Africa, India and Asia (my memory fails at this point). They meet by accident in a restaurant 4 years later. Previously Catherine had learnt to express the anger she felt at her former husband directly to him when he visited to try and win her back and this had enabled her to find herself and create a life for herself and children now teenagers. The young man now in his thirties is joined by a young boy from the Indian sub continent who she assumes is his son by marriage but is in fact a son he was able to adopt from his travels. He is celebrating an event with his parents who are only too willing to make up one dinner party for a joint celebration of the present and what is to come and the couple hold hands under the table. Nice. A far from original story but Catherine is always good to look at.

Takers

I am not enthusiastic about the pass the time when tired film Takers which has Matt Dillon in the leading role as a Detective trying to solve series of successful crimes by a gang four sophisticated technology orientated criminals who lead the high life and are basically undone by their desire to prove they are the best and unmatchable, and the desire of a former colleague for revenge after he was left in jail, despite his former partners keeping his money. One other bone of contention is that one of the gang has hitched up with his former girlfriend. Another weakness proves to be the drug addicted sister who cannot cope with the rehabilitation programmes which her brother finances.

The released gang member successfully persuades them to become involved in a $30 million armoured vehicle hijack which involves getting the vehicle to fall down a hole created under the roadway close to its stop area and then for the robbers to get away from the adjacent link to the Metro system. It goes wrong of course being rushed and involved their former crime colleague.

The other complication is that the prison released robber has previously cut a deal with the Russian Mafia who want their promised cut. As the film draws to a close the surviving robbers find themselves in a shoot out with the Russians and one survives to hunt down the released colleague who he realises has been out to go off with all the funds himself. He finds the former girl fiend murdered.

A complication in the story early on is that Dillon’s Partner has made personal use of a money found during an arrest but unknown to him the Feds have this on tape because of a stake out. He is now facing ruin so when he appears to be fatally injured at the end of the film this appears to be a good way out with Matt promising to ensure that from the family viewpoint the colleague and friend died in the line of duty.

Matt manages to survive the final shoot out which sees he last of the villain killed but he is also wounded with a question mark over his survival. The film had some box office success making twice the production costs but like me. I speculated from the ending that a sequel was already on the genre conveyor belt, but I gather a prequel is planned about how the gang of five came together with only one ending in jail. I can’t wait.

Finding Nemo

I enjoyed the family film using the latest computer animation techniques Find Nemo although the consequences for clownfish have been devastating as well as for their coral reef environment. First there was a huge demand for the colourful fish by the public to add to domestic aquaria and then when the impact was fully appreciated when aquarium owners understood what was happening they released the fish into the wrong ocean thus causing more problems for the fish and for the environment in which they were placed.

The films has universal appealing social messages, and as with Bambi all those decades ago, the film commences with a poignant and potentially traumatizing for some youngsters death of the mother fish and most of her offspring in the form of hundreds of eggs. Only one is saved for his proud father to obsessively protect and cling on to especially as the baby fish is born with one short potentially debilitating fin. This only serves to make the fish, Nemo, more adventurous and eager to demonstrate independence as well as normality. This perhaps explains why over 40 million copies of the DVD have been sold and it is in the top 25 of money earning films just short of 1 billion dollars and a profit over production expenditure of some 900%. The role of father’s in parenting and that disabilities do not mean that any individual is inferior or has to lead a life that has less potential anyone else. That is WoW,

Early in his life attending school he goes on an explore with others and is captured by a scuba diva who returns from the Australian Coral reef to his home in Sydney harbour, placing the fish in his domestic aquaria with a view to giving to his niece who is the kind of child who with the best intentions managed to kill all the previous fish gifts before departing from the premises.

The proud parent arrives on the scene to late to stop his son being taken and attempts to keep track of the boat on its journey back around the ocean. He befriends a Regal Tang fish called Dory played by Ellen DeGeneres who has a short term memory deficiency but who is good natured, optimistic and keeps the father on task. They encounter three recently born again vegetarian sharks but with one finding the desire to keep off fish too great a challenge (played by Barry Humphries), but as a consequence of the encounter the father manages to find a discarded scuba mask belonging to the kidnapper which has the home address, wow that is amazing. The pair become caught up in the huge mouth of a whale and after communicating with the creature it takes them to Sydney harbour releasing them through his blow hole, wow what luck.

Meanwhile Nemo has made friends with the other occupants of the fish in the office of the Dentist scuba diva and he is initiated into their club and they become protective on learning that the dentist plans to give Nemo to his niece. They work out a plan for escape

The story of attempt the by his father to find Memo has spread from their homeland to Sydney when after some early adventures the father explains his search to a shoal of young gossiping sea turtles and the story has reached a Pelican based in Sydney harbour played by Geoffrey Rush! He spots Nemo in the dentist surgery and tells the father on arrival in the harbour. But as with all similar adventures there are more problems and dangers to be faced.

The escape plan rests on the need for the dentist to manually clean the filter which from previous experience clogs up from the sand in the tank. The plan fails because the dentist has installed a new super filter. With the help of Pelican the two arrive at the Dentist Office only to witness what appears to be the death of Nemo (who is playing dead) and who is then flushed down the toilet. However I am wrong in this as according to Wikipedia he escapes down a sink plug hole. In any event this leaves the father in despair and deciding to try and make his way home. Nemo is free and is seen by Dory and his short term memory loss but on seeing the word Sydney regains memory and realises this is the son of his friend and rushes off to find the father and reunite the pair. This is still not the end of the adventure because in the process Dory is captured in a trawl net and Nemo sets out to rescue the rescuer with success. Back home father is able to allow his son the freedom that is natural. Meanwhile back in Sydney the new filter breaks down and the rest of the gang are placed in bags of water but manage to get to the sea but imprisoned in the bags. There are now Nemo theme park attractions, various computerised video games and a musical but as yet no sequel. Wow what happened.

Glorious 39

In Glorious 39 Bill plays the apparently loving adopting dad of Anne Keyes, a successful actress with natural siblings born after her adoption. The family live in a country house in Norfolk with a ruined monastery in the grounds which make a splendid play ground for a happy childhood with her brother and sister by adoption. Bill plays a Member of Parliament with close ties to the government which explains why he is storing confidential papers in a barn where the children now grown up children are not allowed to visit,

The summer has been hot and sunny for months on end, whereas this year the summer has been one of the coldest with an autumn to feel to the new month and children prepare to return to school.

The first action centres on the visit of a young boy to two men at their London home which appears locked into an era before World War Two, including radio sets from that period. They are played by Corin Redgrave and Christopher Lee. The boy wants to know what happened to a missing a relative, his great aunt, the adopted daughter of the Keyes’ family. The two men tell him the story which begins on the day Anne has arranged a birthday party for her father and whose mother who sits in the background tending the garden and is played by Jenny Agutter. Anne’s brother now works at the Foreign Office and he brings a friend (Balcome-Jeremy Northern) to the evening dinner of birthday of Bill where the family has earlier gathered for a party in the garden.

At the dinner party is a friend of Anne’s and her fiancée/lover who also works at the Foreign office and is also a Member of Parliament played by David Tennant(Dr Who) and who warns about the danger facing the country unwilling to understand the nature of the Nazi threat. He wants the country to have a new Prime Minister, a Churchill man.

The following day while searching for the missing family cat Anne enters the forbidden store where the car is found and she also finds a collection of gramophone records which takes a handful back only to find that they are recordings of people in conversations and not orchestral dances as per the labels.

The outspoken Member of Parliament is then found to have committed suicide and her fiancée goes off to investigate and support the parents who he knows. Anne tries to share concerns about the situation with her father who promises to listen to her but is busy with a recall of Parliament because of the international situation with Germany. Bill agrees to have the government archives removed and Balcome presses Anne from the return of the gramophone records which reinforces her suspicions about him. She keeps a couple of the records.

Her balance of mind is question after the child of her sister by adoption goes missing at a family picnic. She is concerned about the role of young boy relative who appears involved in the disappearance although the child is recovered unharmed. She goes to stay with an aunt played by Julie Christie when the family go off to London. In the absence of her boyfriend and not knowing who to trust she gives one of the records to her friend and fellow film actor played by Hugh Bonneville who was also a guest at the picnic. He is also found to have committed suicide although the gramophone record is retrieved. At one point while trying to leave for London is is apprehend by the military who say they now have unlimited powers because of the outbreak of war with Germany. She is released by the intervention of her family.

Another record is broken by a maid when she secretly listens at the family home in London following their return and this appears to reveal Hector expressing concern about the behaviour of Balcome towards him and his parents. At a Foreign Office party in London she attempts to tell her father about the concerns but he presses her to join her brother and sister who are holding a party for the children of Ambassadors. She is offered by her brother to find out the truth about her parents but she decides against. Her fiancé has also returned from a mission to Paris and she agrees to send him the remaining gramophone record after learning that he brother is involved in what has been going on an led to two deaths. He already knows and arranges to meet her vets where she agrees to take the family cat and that of her aunt to be killed as are many animals because of the deprivations expected because of the war, although he father and family are trying to do a secret deal.

At the vets Anne finds Lawrence’s body among the dead animals and she gives the record addressed to Winston Churchill to an evacuee girl to post. She is now in fear for life. She then discovers that her father, her brother and sister have been involved to keep Britain out of the War at all costs doing secret deals with Nazi Germany and Hitler. This includes the murders of her lover, the MP friend and the film actor. They family is at the centre of a conspiracy to take over the country if necessary.

Anne is kept prisoners and refuses to eat and drink from justified fear of being sedated. She is released from captivity by her mother by adoption and disappears. The plot is foiled and Churchill becomes Prime Minister.

The brothers finishing telling the story to boy explaining that the part they played had been required of them by the family. They say that Anne had died Canada some twenty years before. One admits that it was Balcome who had persuaded him to move the pushchair containing his younger brother away from Anne while when she went to sleep and had it down the lane where the child was found. The boy asks the brothers to meet his mother at a local square and when they go to meet the woman she is pushing an old woman in a chair and it is Anne, the boy’s grandmother who had known the truth but the family had wanted the brothers to admit the truth.

The film has nice rounded ending and good mixture of suspense although I was able to work out the father’s central role in the plot from his statements to Anne about the horror of the First World War In an interesting link to the Harry Lamb story her brother by adoption had insisted on giving her the information that her parents were travellers.

Page Eight

Page Eight is a highly enjoyable top spy film shown on the BBC on Sunday August 28th having only been released in June and which will be shown in the United States later in the year.

It stars the brilliant Bill Nighy who never fails to please and whose film 39 was shown the previous Sunday and will be reviewed later. Both films are political fictions based on true events in the UK, Page Eight on Extraordinary Rendition Torture camps and 39 on the willingness of British top families and politicians to compromise with Hitler rather than face participation in another World War.

In Page Eight Bill plays a rounded Spook from the Oxbridge generation with his boss played my stalwart Michael Gambon and a Tony Blair type Prime Minister played by Ralph Fineness. When a say rounded I mean typical Oxbridge creative recruited when at University by his tutor and whose wife became the wife of the tutor because she was pregnant and Bill had already fallen in love with someone else. The daughter has become a recognised and commercially successful contemporary artist who in one moment of truth he tells her that her paintings are either fakes which he does not think or reveals an alarming sense of despair which fills him with horror and regret at his own failure as a father.

The sub plot red herring is when Bill is invited to help a young neighbour he had not met before who shares the same apartment block. She wants his visit to help her get out of a relationship with a young man he later learns she has slept with once. He also sees the same young man at the opening party of an exhibition of his daughter’s paintings. We the audience expect this to have significance although few if any will anticipate the actual connection.

The young woman does have an interest him in the need for help to secure the truth about the death of her brother, a believer in non violent action who she is convinced, as is her father, was executed by the Israeli’s when participating in a peace mission action. Bill uses an undercover operator working as a journalist to obtain a copy of the Israeli confidential file which confirms the murder of her brother.

The main issue is the presentation to Bill of a file which reveals on page eight that the Prime Minister must have known of the existence of the various bases throughout the world where the USA held Terrorist suspects, using torture to gain information. The subject is topical because of an ongoing court case in the USA, in the news today, in which an aircraft firm is suing for money it alleges is due from the USA government for arranging rendition flights. Extraordinary rendition is another name for kidnapping by a government without recourse to the usual rules and regulations.

The information has come from a secret informant known to his boss who then dies of a heart attack. There is nothing sinister in the death which the boss knew was coming but explains why he was insistent on Bill dealing with the information in the file. In addition to Bill and his boss someone in MI5 who appears to have an important role whose designation I missed and played Jill Tankard attends a meeting with the female Home Secretary who tells her but ask her not to do anything including not telling the Prime Minister. Tankard is hostile to Bill and to his boss and warns that his future in the service is in question.

What is revealed is that Tankard has operated a secret service within the secret service on behalf of the Prime Minister in association with the USA Homeland security run by the Republican President. It is a Democrat Senator who has flown to the UK to give the information to Gambon before his death. Tankard uses her son to run a top notch one man secret surveillance unit which again is highly topical as I have been reading the huge report by Liberty on the subject which was followed by a House of Commons select committee report and one by a committee of the House of Lords and which in turn followed the reports and warnings of the Information Commissioner.

Bill accepts the invitation from a third party to attend a college reunion dinner at which the Prime Minister is the Principal guest. The Prime Minister keep Bill waiting until after midnight to have a private chat and attempt to bring him on side, offering to make him part of a new Homeland Security set up if he gives the only remaining copy of the file. That given to the Home Secretary has been yielded as she is made Deputy Prime Minister.

Bill also appears to do a deal on the basis that the Government admits the existence of the report on the death of his neighbour’s brother coupled with an admonition to the Israeli’s.

He makes peace with his daughter who he has learned is expecting a child which she proposes to bring up after a brief relationship with a concept artist. He sells one of his favourite paintings for cash from a art gallery owner former lover, (his flat is covered in paintings) and gives another to his now worshipping you have given be my life back young neighbour who offers to flee with him. He makes his departure/escape via a northern airport at the same time as the Funeral of his former boss and ex wife‘s husband. Wikipedia states that the scene where Bill gives the go ahead to the BBC to release information relates to the neighbour’s brother. I think not.

At the airport while Bill surveys the various flights to around the world and clutching the bag with the money he deposits the file in a bin. I think he has already passed a copy of the file to the BBC and authorised them to release the information bringing down the Prime Minister as his boss had wanted him to do. The parting scene with the neighbour also suggests that they had a future and perhaps she will join him when he is settled if he ever is. Meanwhile she has the paining on her wall and I wonder what arrangements he has made for the other paintings and his flat which are worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to be converted into the cash he will need unless he plans to return after the dust has settled, perhaps in a sequel! It did not matter as I enjoyed the film from start to finish. The film boasts of asking 21st century about the role of governments in the technological era of international crime and international terrorism, and with a week to go before the 10th anniversary of 9/11.