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Many of the people I mentioned this to responded the same way: “that is one depressing film”. So it was.
The key image is the Russian cargo planes that land and depart from an airstrip on the shores of Lake Victoria in Tanzania. This leads to an exploration of many problems: the voracious Nile Perch, an introduced species that completely outcompeted the native fish and proved unfishable by traditional methods, forcing industrialisation; the demand for Nile Perch overseas that means all the best parts of the fish are too expensive for the locals to eat; the lack of options for those scrabbling to make a living off the fisheries; the lack of local ownership of anything of substance (the fisheries are run by an immigrant Indian/Pakistani cohort, the planes are owned and flown by Russians, etc.); the orphan street children, manufacturing their own narcotics so they can sleep rough without fear; the unchecked spread of AIDS and HIV; the deliveries of foreign arms to sustain local wars.
The film keeps peeling back layers to reveal connections between its problems it depicts, until you are left with a picture of a system that has found temporary stability as it devours its own foundations. Because it is stable, it resists change fiercely; because it is a large and complex system, each individual actor seems powerless to move things in a different direction. And that, I suspect, is why it comes across as depressing – there doesn’t seem to be a way to unpick the terrible knot in place. And implicit in it, although never onscreen, is us – the Western consumer, with our demand for products for our markets, the effects of which set the base conditions that lets everything else unfold as it does. We are profoundly implicated although the film doesn’t come close to pointing the finger – it doesn’t need to.
Anyway. Wikipedia reveals a controversy over the film – unsurprisingly, the Tanzanian government have spoken out against the film. More curiously, a French writer has attacked the film, calling it a colonial exercise, and feuding with the producer – all the relevant links are to articles in French that are beyond my limited grasp of the language. Francophones are invited to follow the resource links at the bottom of that page and report on the substance of this controversy…

Mike Leigh’s new one (after Secrets & Lies and Vera Drake, both wonderful and memorable character pieces) is about Poppy, a relentlessly cheerful woman who learns to drive. And that’s about it. It’s marvellous.
There’s a lot of ground covered in H-G-L, but I’m most interested in how the film explores learning. The theme of how our social interactions shape us. Using the device of formal education of different sorts, it highlights the hidden lessons that exist all around us and that shape us from early childhood onwards.
This is obliquely explored through different kinds of talk. Poppy’s responses to life are fascinating for their incoherence – she contradicts herself repeatedly, and it’s clear that what she says isn’t representative of any inner set of beliefs, but is entirely strategic to build positive relationships. Her counterpoint, Scott the driving instructor, is similar in how what he says doesn’t relay any deeper truth – but in his case, it’s because his talk is founded in self-deception.
There’s a scene in the middle that has not been well-received in reviews, a lengthy sequence where Poppy interacts with a derelict. I loved that sequence, for its sustained tension and its avoidance of clear meaning, and for showing how Poppy’s talk works even when all obvious meaning is stripped away. It’s a brave scene, that exasperates the viewer as much as it should enchant and unnerve – and it’s at the midpoint of the film for a good reason.
See it sometime. No big-screen needed, at all; wait for DVD with impunity. But if you want a change of pace after some big-budget popcorn flicks, this is worth checking out.

Despite me being wall-to-wall busy, Cal and I found time this weekend to finish watching the fifth and final season of ‘The Wire’. Fantastic, urgent, essential television. The flaws in the last season – it had plenty – faded as it built to a pleasing and unexpectedly tight conclusion.
In celebration, then, here are a bunch of links about the greatest TV show of the decade:
Seven minutes of Wire creator David Simon talking about why he loves Baltimore (with cameos from some Wire cast members) (no spoilers)
David Simon on The Wire, talking right at the beginning of season one in 2002
The Guardian interviews Snoop Pearson about how she went from prison to acting (no real spoilers)
Salon on ‘everything you need to know about The WIre’ (no spoilers in the excellent overview in page one, then it describes seasons one and two in detail)
The Atlantic interviews David Simon at the start of season five
Simon writes in the WaPo (which, by the way, gets a hammering in season 5) about his experience of journalism
Simon’s letter to viewers at the end of the series (no spoilers, actually)