Don’t even think of touching ‘Untouchable’

Posted on 22/10/2012 by Michael

Recommendation: don’t touch this film with a barge pole.

Warning: This review includes spoilers. If you haven’t seen the film, and for some inexplicable reason want to, DON’T read what follows.

In times of capitalist financial crisis there’s always a surplus of so-called ‘feel good movies’ and this one falls into that category. Hollywood produced these by the shedful during the post-Great Crash in the 1930s. Then the poor dreamt of becoming stars of the stage or screen and we have as a legacy films such as 42^nd Street (1933) or the Gold Diggers series, (1933, 1935). Although the stories in these films were silly and slight they did provide some memorable songs, dance routines and the masterful, long tracking sequence in 42^nd Street which has rarely been surpassed and is a master-class in film making.

If dreams on the stage weren’t enough some even became gangsters, thieves and killers, as was depicted in Arthur Penn’s 1967 film of the eponymous heroes Bonnie and Clyde.

On the screen some found fame and fortune, some found fulfilment, some found death, others didn’t. In reality most people paying to see their dreams played out were only taken out of poverty by the outbreak of World War II – a bit like out of the frying pan and into the fire.

In the post-Second World War crises we are treated to patronising, condescending and shallow depictions of people overcoming adversity due to some inspiring individual who was able to impart the impression that all problems could be overcome by the application of hard work and the Protestant ethic.

The favoured vehicle for this (in Hollywood) was a high school in a poor and deprived inner city district where a charismatic teacher would come from outside and transform the situation in the same way that Christ turned water into wine. The school room allowed for the racial tension, that can exist in such a hostile environment, to be resolved in an amicable manner due to the catalyst of the outsider. They might stop fighting each other but they never decided to get together and fight against the system that had caused the problems in the first place. That would be a step too far.

There have been a few films every decade since the 50s, one of the last Hollywood examples being Dangerous Minds (1995), starring Michelle Pfeiffer as an ex-Marine (isn’t that ridiculous?). There was also an earlier, local grown version of To Sir, with Love (1969), which also played the racial card.

In the 21^st century we have moved out of the classroom but the vital characteristics of the poor being ‘educated’, ‘given a second chance’, ‘being allowed to develop their true capabilities’ are still with us. However, in Untouchable (2012) escape comes thanks to the condescending, patronising and philanthropic millionaire.

Now, I can accept that quadriplegics can get angry, I would if I were in that situation. But at least he has the safety net of his money and seems to spend most of his time interviewing candidates for a carer to replace the one that had only lasted a matter of days.

Come the wise-cracking Eddie Murphy/Richard Prior lookalike/soundalike from the banlieue. He only attends the interview process (how did he get past the initial selection procedure?) to get a signature for the dole so that he can prove he’s looking for work. In the process he steals a Fabergé egg (why items of such sentimental value – we learn later – apart from financial value are left out in a semi-public place was beyond me). To illustrate how stupid the working class are this is later referred to as a ‘Kinder’ egg, the ubiquitous chocolate and toy combination that has come to dominate the continent.

Despite his lack of interest in the job, lack of any experience and lack of any social skills out of his own peer group he is given the job as carer because ‘he doesn’t have any pity’ for the millionaire.

This lack of pity is admirably demonstrated when he ‘discovers’, for the first time it seems, that a quadriplegic has no sensation of pain in his legs. The ‘carer’ accidentally touches the bare leg of his client with a hot tea-pot and is surprised there is no reaction. So surprised indeed that he then proceeds to pour the boiling liquid over the legs of the patient. I don’t know what was worse in this scene, the fact that he did it, the fact that the millionaire was totally oblivious to what was happening or the reaction of one of the other employees when she saw what was happening. Here, I assume, we are supposed to realise that the poor are so ignorant that they have no concept of paralysis.

We are given a depiction of his poverty by the sharing of the bathroom and the lack of privacy in the flat in the high-rise block in the Berlioz banlieue (it actually exists to the north of Paris). So in the mansion he has to be provided with a bathroom the size of the whole of his family’s flat. What does he do there but perform to stereotype, put on headphones and sing loudly (and badly) to the music from the ‘hood’, ignoring the intercom that he is supposed to be monitoring.

Here I found myself asking a more general question about black comedy. In many depictions on the screen when black actors are funny their voices go into an extreme falsetto. This was the case with Eddie Murphy and in an even more extreme case with Richard Prior – whose falsetto was so infectious that Gene Wilder caught the disease and eventually made both of them annoying and impossible to watch. Even Lenny Henry does this. I was listening to an interview with him, on the radio, a week or so ago. He speaks normally but when he wants to say something funny up his voice goes a number of octaves. Why? I don’t understand.

But our tough, disenchanted and demoralised young man is not devoid of humanity. He eventually carries out acts of ‘kindness’ for the millionaire. The rich man obviously knew that there was humanity underneath the hard exterior. The carer watches, agonised, as his aunt works in a glass walled office as a night cleaner. He feels for her, but not enough to give her any of the money he’s been earning as a carer. (At the beginning the answer of one of the applicants for the job to the question why he wanted the post was the money, so we are to assume that the eventual successful carer was not on the minimum wage – but none of that gets back to the banlieue.)

The scene in the mountains is bounding on the surreal. Would a para-glider instructor really take on a novice who was screaming and reacting aggressively against taking part in the flight without the ability, and the permission, to pull a strap that would send the miscreant plummeting to the ground thousands of feet below? I don’t think so.

Towards the end he leaves the employ of the rich man to sort out the trouble his kin has with some nasty gangster types. Then we see our ‘hero’ talking to a thug in a big motor and, presumably, sorting out the matter. Are we supposed to believe that? At the beginning of the film he’s doing what he has to in order to get his dole and at the end he’s able to just talk to the hard men to get his wayward young relative off the hook. French gangsters must be pussy cats.

He returns for one act of kindness and gets the millionaire married off. He now owns a company – so say the words on the screen before the final credits. Everyone is happy! Not only has his humanity been revealed he now adopts the bourgeois lifestyle to escape from his poverty-stricken and deprived past.

This is the official French nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards next March. With all the publicity the producers had bought (surely not all the reviewers are that crass? – although I think I might know the answer to that question before even asking it) pre-release there is a strong likelihood of success. Having, not yet, been able to see all the possible films in that category it would be a tragedy if Untouchable was called up on any stage to receive any award.

Based on a true story? A feel good movie? Pass the sick bag.

A walk around the Jewish Quarter of Segovia

Posted on 08/10/2012 by Michael

Corpus Christi Church as part of the Segovia City Walls

A walk around the Jewish Quarter of Segovia

A short walk, peaceful and crowd free, which explores Segovia’s Jewish past providing a perspective on the ancient town missed by most visitors.

In Segovia it is impossible to miss the Roman aqueduct but most of the thousands of visitors to the city are totally unaware of an area of narrow, medieval streets which bore the brunt of one of the most traumatic episodes in Spain’s history.

In Granada, on March 31^st 1492, just a few months after the final defeat of the Moors, the ‘Catholic Monarchs’, Isabel and Ferdinand, promulgated The Edict of Expulsion, decreeing that the Jews in all of Spain had four months to either convert to Christianity or leave the country. This ended almost 300 years of Jewish presence in Segovia.

However, now there’s a growing movement to recognise the role of the Jewish community in the development of the city and visitors have the opportunity to re-discover something of the past.

A Jewish community can be traced back to 1215 and for almost 200 years there were few restrictions on their place of residence. That changed in 1412 when they were restricted to the area, more or less, around the present Cathedral but things worsened in 1481 when they were forced into much more of a ‘ghetto’, the area of this walking tour.

The start is in the small square of Corpus at the top end of Calle de Juan Bravo. Here there is a fork in the road and the entrance to the Judería Vieja is the one to the left – the quieter of the two, this is not a walk that will be hampered by crowds of people!

Before entering the narrow street go through a Gothic arch, on the left, taking you to the entrance of the Corpus Christi church, which used to be the Principal Synagogue, but only for a few decades. This building has had a troubled past. It was a synagogue by 1373 but was expropriated by the Catholic Church after a supposed and unproven act of profanation around 1419 – a painting in the church depicts the alleged sacrilege. A disastrous fire in 1899 destroyed virtually all remnants of the old synagogue and it was rebuilt at the beginning of the 20^th century. Further work has attempted to recapture much of the old Synagogue with its horseshoe arches, the capitals decorated with vegetable and geometric designs and the beautiful, wooden ceiling.

On returning to the street turn left into the Judería Vieja and in a few steps go down left through the archway (the Puerta del Sol). From here you have a view of the other side of the church, forming part of the city walls.

Return to the Judería Vieja and continue along to number 12, the Didactic Centre of the Jewish Quarter (Centro Didáctico de la Judería). This Education Centre is based in a building that was part of the property of Abraham Seneor. Very rich and powerful he had enemies in both the Jewish and Christian communities and by the time of his death in 1493 had probably attained more influence in the Spanish court than any Jew ever before – quite amazing when you remember that this was at the time of Isabel and Ferdinand, under whose reign the Inquisition was initiated and who decreed the expulsion of the Jews.

Established in 2004 by the Segovia City Council, the Centre houses a small exhibition space which tells of the history of the Jews in Segovia and Spain. The information boards and the two video presentations (one in 3D) are in both Spanish and English and are very much directed to those who know little about Jewish history or culture. The centre also stages discussions and conferences which address Spain’s Jewish past.

Turn left on leaving the centre, reach the corner of the Cathedral and then follow the road as it goes quite steeply downhill (Calle de Martinez Campos) towards the Puerta de San Andrés. Here there is a museum that gives the history of the city wall. The narrow, stepped street that goes up hill to the right is the Judería Nueva, a street that is virtually unchanged from the time of the Jewish presence more than 500 years ago.

From the gate continue along the lower road to what is now the Museum of Segovia, housed in a building that was originally the Jewish slaughterhouse.

Return to the Puerta de San Andrés but this time go through the gate and outside the wall. Take the path immediately on the right hand side and within seconds you get a fine view of the abattoir, standing on a rocky outcrop over on the right. From here it is easy to understand the reason for its location, the blood and offal would be just thrown down into the gully.

Follow the wide path downhill and then, in less than a minute, the narrow path, indicated by a stone pillar with a carved menorah (the seven-branched candle holder), that goes down to the left. Cross the small bridge and then straight ahead as the path climbs, go through a tunnel beneath the road to come out to the old Jewish cemetery. This has been excavated a number of times but not a lot of information has been gained from these investigations – the gravestones having been looted soon after the remaining Jews had converted to Christianity.

However, it’s possible to see the different methods of burial used, the limestone being carved in the shape of a human body or a cave-like room being created for multiple burials. What can be seen is that all the identifiable graves point in the direction of Jerusalem, with the heads orientated to the west and the feet towards the east.

Another poignant feature of the cemetery is that it was here that those who refused to convert spent their last days in the area, before leaving both Segovia, and then Spain, forever. Their last view of the place they had called home being one of the sun shining on the magnificent, golden, medieval walls.

After a relatively short walk in distance, but one that is full of interest, together with the walk down to the dry river bed and up to the cemetery (that has to be done twice!) when you return to within the city walls you will be looking for a good place to eat and drink.

This can be a bit tricky in a town whose culinary speciality is roast, suckling pig but there are a number of restaurants that are now offering Sephardic menus and this gets extended every September, for a weekend, when many restaurants provide a Jewish orientated menu – some even offering kosher wine.

Useful Information:

The Corpus Christi Church/Synagogue, Puerta de San Andrés and the Segovia Museum are all closed on Mondays.

A recent book, in English, about the history of the Jews in Segovia providing more information than I have been able to give here is the ‘Jewry Guide to Segovia’ by Bonifacio Bartolomé Herrero, available in the Centro Didáctico, priced €16.

Segovia City Map

Segovia’s City Wall and San Andrés Gate

Centro Didáctico de la Judería – in Spanish

Segovia, World Heritage Site

The air raid shelter of Placeta Macià, Sant Adrià de Besòs

Posted on 08/10/2012 by Michael

Paw print of a dog, also an anti-Fascist, who first heard the bombers

Signature of the Republican air raid wardens

The air raid shelter of Placeta Macià, Sant Adrià de Besòs

The air raid shelter (refugi antiaeri) in Placeta Macià, Sant Adrià de Besòs, Barcelona, provides an insight to what life was like for ordinary, working class, people during the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.

Many thousands of visitors go to Barcelona each year but an increasing number of them are starting to go off the beaten track of the Rambla and the Gaudi buildings to explore some of the lest ‘touristy’ aspects of the city.

Of the hoards who walk down the bustling Rambla some might have read George Orwell’s depiction of the Spanish Civil War in his book Homage to Catalonia. Standing outside Café Moka they might imagine what it was like in the stand-off between two armies, on the same side, on the brink of their own ‘civil war’, occasionally taking pot shots at one another.

Orwell had the luxury, the wealth and the opportunity to get out of the country before Hitler and Mussolini’s aircraft, happily brought in on the side of the rebel Franco, started to regularly bombard this Republican city, using a strategy taken to an even higher level a few years later. That was the strategy of terrorising and punishing the civilian population with mass bombing and the destruction of their cities, as was seen in Warsaw, Liverpool and Leningrad, amongst many others.

As in those other cities the people of Barcelona didn’t just sit and wait for what was to rain down on them. If they could not fight at the front then they would construct shelters to protect themselves from the bombs and deny the enemy the satisfaction of their acquiescence and defeat. This form of passive resistance was evident in Barcelona and many other Catalan towns and cities.

In the intervening years, since the end of the war in 1939, many of these air raid shelters have been bulldozed both to eliminate any popular memory of resistance and then later as the country started to develop and modernise after Franco’s death in 1975. However, since 2007, following a decision of the Generalitat (the Catalan government), much of what does remain is coming to light and is being made accessible to both local people and any visitors with an interest in an important and significant struggle in the middle years of the 20^th century.

Those facets of war that might have been hidden are now being visited by an increasing number of people. In their visits they are offered the opportunity to consider the war in a different way from that presented on the big screen. This representation has evolved over the years from the morale boosting antics of Errol Flynn through the gung-ho approach of John Wayne to the more poignant aspect of war as depicted in Saving Private Ryan.

In Catalonia this unveiling of the past is part of a much bigger project, the first in Spain but part of a much wider, in fact worldwide, scheme called Democratic Memory. Of the more than 70 sites already on the list in Catalonia here I just want to talk about one of them, located in the working class district of Sant Adrià de Besòs, (easily reached via Metro L2 from the central cultural highlights of Barcelona), the air raid shelter in Placeta Macià.

This is an impressive construction in its own right, especially taking into consideration the conditions under which it was built, and is the only one of the seven that originally existed in the district to have survived into the 21^st century. Constructed in the shape of a rhomboid it has a central corridor with alcoves on either side and was built, in 1938, to provide shelter for up to 500 local people.

Although it is underground the aim of the cleaning and restoration has been to make it as accessible as possible. First, it is free to enter. ‘Why should those who built it, and their children and grandchildren, now be charged to visit it – 70 years after its construction,’ says Jordi Vilalta, the enthusiastic coordinator for the shelter. He is based in the Museu d’Història de la Immagració de Catalunya (itself one of the 71 sites) which is situated a short distance away on the opposite side of the River Besòs.

One of the aims of the project is to involve children in a conversation with the past of their families and so school visits are organised where those who were themselves school children in 1938 tell of their memories, experiences, fears and daily life in general during the relatively short, but incredibly intense, life of the shelter.

‘We have found it very difficult to find actual photos of people in the shelter’, continues Jordi, ‘but what we do have are some drawings made by children at the time. What we find fascinating is the fact that, apart from the ‘advances’ in aircraft and technology, these images are almost the same as those produced by children in the Palestinian city of Jenin in 2002.’

To encourage the involvement of the young in this small and intimate museum the visitors are encouraged to touch the exhibits and to try to understand the idea of destruction but without any images of death.

A particularly interesting story is that of the dogs that acted as virtual air raid wardens for the population. They would be able to hear the drone of the bombers coming over the sea, from the Balearic island of Mallorca, long before humans. As Pavlov suggested the dogs associated this noise with the inexplicable (to them) consequence of explosions, fire, noise, strange smells and potential death that comes with aerial bombardment.

The people of Sant Adrià suffered on two accounts. Theirs was an industrial area, and so a ‘legitimate’ target in times of war, but they were also implacable adversaries of the fascists and so had to be terrorised.

Visiting the shelter: Open the last Sunday of each month, though Jordi can be contacted, via email jvilalta.pmi@gmail.com or on +34 609 033 867, to arrange visits at other times.

For more on Memoria Democratic see:

Rosanes – a military airfield during the Spanish Civil War