Ranting up the wrong street

When we begin talking about freedom of speech and expression, it is necessary to pick out the strand of radical Islamist fundamentalism but it is important to do this in a context that recognizes the concurrent existence of radical Christian, Hindu and Jewish fundamentalisms. There are enough instances of the impact these have had in recent years on writers and artists; say, for the sake of an argument, you have been out of the loop: less than a minute on google gave me this, this, and this.

Which is why I am taken aback by Christopher Hitchens' enthusiastic but lopsided article in Vanity Fair where he refuses to acknowledge anything but Islamic extremism. Is he being deliberately ignorant or obtusely ignorant? And what is this refusal if not an irresponsible indulgence in demagoguery?

Trainspotting (1995)

This is my first Danny Boyle movie. His much feted "Slumdog Millionaire" is supposed to come to Browning Cinema in March; I'm (just a little) impatient. The Hindi teasers of "Slumdog" are out as well and I want to watch that version too. It would be interesting to see what came through and what was lost in both - in the English original and in the Hindi dub.

I loved the stylistic touches of "Trainspotting", especially its heroin-laced surrealistic scenes. Ewan McGregor squirrelling himself into a filthy toilet, and finding himself in blue, clear underwater. McGregor having a heroin seizure and falling down, falling through the carpet, peering up at a carpet-rededged world. McGregor, locked in a room and in the throes of drug withdrawal, finds his bed trolleying forward as the space behind it turns into a tunnel. While a dead baby crawls on the roof.

Another brilliant scene is Spud's interview - the camera moves forward, then back, then forward, then back, dizzyingly as though mimicking Spud's jagged, imbalanced senses - also, every once in a while, cut to the interviewers and you can see them getting more and more bemused/repelled by his answers.

In these scenes it is drug use which causes reality to slip away, sometimes into horror. Drugs are not always needed, as "Synecdoche, New York" which I just saw shows; it has slipped up reality, chronology and sanity.

How could anybody say this movie justifies/celebrates drug use? It thoroughly incriminates.

3CFF website

TRI Continental Film Festival has its own website now!

Go catch some films, if you can.