The Beatles, analysed

A BOOK by Ian MacDonald, written in 1994 (Fourth Estate) called Revolution In The Head has kept me captive during my lazy, tired late at night moods. It’s primarily a book that dissects the music of The Beatles. It is a thorough exploration of the way they recorded the songs on their albums, from who played lead guitar, and who was responsible for the handclaps and special effects that are a feature of some of their songs. The writer uses a lot of technical musical jargon that is beyond my comprehension, but I find it fascinating all the same. Apparently McCartney wrote ‘Birthday’ ‘on the spot before the others arrived ‘, on their way to his house to watch the first British TV transmission of ‘The Girl Can’t Help It’, in honour of Little Richard. MacDonald explains that the song bolts from ‘an A major blues to a C major boogie by means of a drums passage , a screaming crescendo on E major , and a brief Cream-style guitar/ bass unison.’ I will take his word for it.

MacDonald critiques the songs at the same time, and it is this aspect that is one of the most enjoyable. For example, in reference to ‘What Goes On’ from Rubber Soul he is at his most dismissive, writing ‘Starr sings dolefully, Harrison trots out his Chet Atkins clichés, and another two minutes and forty-five seconds are filled.’ If you have heard this song, you’ll know exactly what he means. And yet, there are a number of very controversial dismissals as well.
The book is also about the sixties in general and the way The Beatles were influenced a lot by what was going on around them and their own musical tastes. It is clear that people like Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan were two of the biggest influences. Drugs played an enormous part too, particularly on Lennon and his obsession with acid from 1966 (Revolver) and heroin during the latter years. Drugs seemed to have had both positive and negative effects on the band. Lennon had an unproductive period somewhere between Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour in which McCartney threatened to become the main drive behind the band, and yet at this time there were a couple of brilliant Lennon exceptions, very drug-influenced: I Am The Walrus and Strawberry Fields Forever (along with A Day In The Life, arguably his best songs). Evidence of acid impacting on McCartney’s song writing too, can be found, even in a song as sweet and seemingly innocent as Penny Lane: ‘although she feels as if she’s in a play, she is anyway..’
It is the observations about the following songs that I found the most interesting:

- MacDonald carps ‘Across The Universe’ as a product of someone who was ‘permanently tripping’ and written in ‘a mentally drained state in the early hours of the morning.’ He refers to the ‘plaintively babyish incantation’ that appears in the song, its ‘vague pretensions and listless melody’, its ‘inspired lethargy’ and whilst ‘rarely boring... (Lennon) made an unwanted exception with this track.’ Interestingly, the high female backing voices belong to two teenage girl fans who were standing outside on Abbey Road and were invited in on the spur of the moment. What a day for them.

- Of ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ we are informed that the song took about 37 hours to record, including two sessions getting a version right that was eventually scrapped. The author calls the ‘quadruple internal rhymes of the middle sixteens pedantically contrived’ and refers to a ‘browbeating self-importance which quickly becomes tiresome’- in other words, not a fan.

- MacDonald is at his most scathing of another Harrison song- ‘Piggies’. He calls it ‘an embarrassing blot on his discography’ and seems to object to its ‘uncharitable’ and ‘industrial strength vitriol’ as much as anything- no objections with the music per se, just the message. Of The White Album, the author considers ‘Long, Long, Long’ to be Harrison’s greatest work- ‘the real George’, as he puts it.

- Going back to 1966, MacDonald completes an analysis of the 12th British single, McCartney’s ‘Paperback Writer’ and Lennon’s ‘Rain’, their ‘finest B-side.’ Apparently there is laughter from Harrison and Lennon heard in the background, and the chanting of Frere Jacques during the second verse is proof that the two weren’t ‘entirely serious’ in their participation of this song. ‘Rain’, on the other hand, mostly recorded on the same day, can be celebrated for Starr’s ‘superb soloistic drumming’ and McCartney’s ‘inventive high-register bass.’ MacDonald doesn’t see it as simply a joyous song with banal lyrics about the changes in weather. He offers a long discussion about the song’s complex imagery in a paragraph beginning: ‘the song’s rain and sun are physical phenomena experienced in a condition of heightened consciousness...’

- Earlier The Beatles recorded ‘You Won’t See Me’ and ‘Nowhere Man’ ten days apart on Rubber Soul. MacDonald notes that the band ‘were too tired by late nights ‘ during the recording of the former song so that they simply repeated the ‘irritating “oo-la-la-la’ backing vocals from Nowhere Man and stupidly placed the two songs side by side on the record- ‘the most inept piece of sequencing on any Beatles LP.’There are countless other criticisms that MacDonald makes of The Beatles music, some of it surprisingly to me and at other times deservedly so ( the clutter of half-songs on the too expansive White Album an example.) As Nick Hornby and others have reportedly done, it’s great to concentrate intently on the music and listen out for the ‘luckiest accident in any Beatles recording’ which is the vibration of a wine bottle sitting on a cabinet as McCartney plays a note on a Hammond organ; or the irreverence of Lennon in the latter choruses of ‘Baby You’re A Rich Man’ becoming ‘Baby you’re a rich fag Jew’ (a la Brian Epstein.

Joni Mitchell: A Tribute- Melbourne October 23 2009

THE advertisements in The Age newspaper in the month previous filled me with anticipation- a large picture of Joni Mitchell from her ‘Blue’ period with the words ‘Joni Mitchell Tribute- tickets on sale Monday.’ The word ‘tribute’ was unfortunate because it meant it wouldn’t be the real thing. Joni hasn’t toured Melbourne since 1984. I don’t even remember her being here. The closest I have ever come to her is to smell her stale smoke when I visited George Martin’s Air Lyndhurst Studios near Chalk Farm in London in 2002. I saw somewhere that she was recording her ‘Travelogue’ CD here with a large orchestra. Unfortunately I was two weeks late. A man behind the front desk saw the regret written on my face and took me to the tiny vocal booth where she sang her beautiful words. I imagine she’d had a multitude of cigarettes during what would have been marathon recording sessions.

Hamer Hall on St Kilda Rd in Melbourne is an impressive building which encourages fashionable dress and a hushed atmosphere. There was quite a crowd in the foyer about twenty minutes before opening, consisting of mostly middle aged people, the range somewhere between, say, thirty and sixty- sixty five. I looked around to see if I could see someone I knew (I was by myself). My first thought was to be mildly impressed- to see all these people who were interested in Joni, who like me liked her enough to pay $100 to her a tribute. Then suddenly I felt this powerful sense of being alone. Here I was surrounded by so many like-minded people, yet I didn’t know anyone and didn’t feel I could walk up to strangers and say ‘hey, is ‘Hejira’ your favourite album too?’ I think the reason for this weird alienating feeling was that I know very few people who have listened to Joni beyond ‘Both Sides, Now’ and ‘Big Yellow Taxi’, and absolutely nobody who likes her as much as me and can recite all the words to ‘Borderline’ and ‘Two Grey Rooms.’ So here I was confronted at last by hundreds of people I could theoretically have a gorgeous conversation with on topics I love for the first time, and yet they all seemed self-contained, introspective and unattainable. Once I entered the Hall, and saw that I was so close to the stage, this feeling quickly dissipated.

Seven women teamed up to pay Joni tribute- some a bit obscure, a few quite well known in these parts. They rotated the songs very well. They either sang solo with simple accompaniment- as in ‘Blue’ and ‘River’, for example, or did backing vocals for each other on more complex arrangements as in ‘Raised On Robbery’, ‘A Free Man In Paris’, ‘Come In From The Cold’, etc. They sang spectacularly well in unison on a couple of occasions. The unexpected opener- ‘Shadows And Light’- was powerful, as was the chorus of ‘The Circle Game.’
The first set was enjoyable, but a little predictable. I didn’t purchase a programme, so I didn’t know which song would be next. However, besides the opener, almost every song came from either ‘Court & Spark’ or ‘Blue’: two great albums, but many great Joni records ignored.
I found the final set more interesting simply because the singers borrowed from a greater range of Joni’s material. This time there was an eclectic mix of songs, some of them my favourites, from ‘For Free’ and ‘Edith and the Kingpin’ and ‘Chinese Café/ Unchained Melody’ to ‘Coyote’ and ‘Cherokee Louise.’

The singers were clearly very involved in what they were performing. These are songs they would have sung countless times either by themselves or in small company. This was evidenced by one song more than any others- the sublime ‘Hejira’ sung by Virna Sanzone, like it was the last song she would ever sing, every line producing a face filled with tortured emotion. The audience warmed up too and more well known songs like ‘Woodstock’ and ‘You Turn Me On (I’m A Radio) received rapturous applause. To the singers’ credit, more obscure numbers like ‘Snakes & Ladders’ and ‘Be Cool’ from the 80’s were also warmly received.
I had an irritating woman behind me who was a self-appointed Joni Mitchell expert amongst her friends. She had evidently sung on stage at Hamer Hall before and knew in some capacity one of the singers. When asked by her friends what made Joni so endurable with her audience, she answered ‘Joni has always had a good manager.’

The singers were: Katie Noonan, Wendy Matthews, Virna Sanzone, Kristen Berardi, Louise Perryman, Rachel Goudry, and Tania Bowra.

The music was beautiful, the songs were sung with deep emotion and appreciation, and the backing band was subtle, right down to the bass player’s impersonations of Jaco Pastorious. A lovely night, but alas, no ‘Amelia’- tut, tut.

Wild Strawberries

WILD Strawberries is a pretty simple and familiar story about a self-confessed, lonely old man who re-evaluates his life and comes to realise that he has developed a certain negativity and cynicism about everyone and everything that has affected his own life and those around him. He is a highly respected professor of medicine who knows that there is a large gap between the success of his public life, and the way he has conducted his private life.

The professor’s name is Isak Borg (played by Victor Sjostrom) and most of the film is about the car journey that takes place between his home town in Sweden, all the way to the university town of Lund, where Borg will be given an honorary doctorate for his services to the community.
This is a screenplay that Bergman developed whilst he was in hospital recuperating from an ulcer. It comes just after The Seventh Seal in 1957, and was at the time Bergman’s greatest critical success. The film had success in places such as Cannes and the USA, and for the first time he was being compared to other European directors like Fellini.

The idea came to Bergman when he visited his childhood town of Uppsala in Sweden. He walked up to the house where he was raised with his grandmother and had the urge to turn the door- handle and step into the house. He imagined what it would be like to re-enter the idyllic time of long ago. Isak Borg does this very thing in a number of dream sequences in Wild Strawberries.
Isak Borg travels to Lund with his daughter in law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin in her first Bergman film outing). Their conversation is at first strained. Both have stories to tell- Borg of his disturbing dreams and Marianne of her marital difficulties with Borg’s son, Evald. However both are self absorbed and not particularly interested in what the other has to stay. That will change as Borg has a series of real and imagined encounters that alter his attitude and thinking, culminating in genuine warmth between he and Marianne in the last moments of the film.

Professor Borg’s first dream takes place at the start of the film, but the most significant one is at the wild strawberry patch at the place of his adolescence. Unbeknown to those around him, he silently watches activities of his extended family that took place long ago and is able to see for the first time the courting of his beloved cousin Sara (Bibi Andersson) by his brother Sigrid, whom she’ll eventually marry. Sara confides in her cousin that she finds Sigrid ‘brazen’ and ‘exciting’ but she is emotional because of the goodness in Isak who is ‘moral’ and ‘sensitive’ and talks often of sin. Listening to this dialogue stirs feelings of ‘emptiness’ and ‘mournfulness’ in Isak, and probably regret.

Borg’s second significant encounter takes place when he visits his elderly mother. She is cold, distant and unhappy. She complains about a lack of visits from her children and grandchildren. It is significant that she finds the room cold when nobody else does. It is as if she is almost a corpse, and her room is a tomb. Isak doesn’t stay long. Despite the time lapse in their seeing each other, it is not a happy re-encounter. Here we have a perfect illustration of a lack of warmth in Isak’s family.

This leads directly to Isak again evaluating his life, and again it is in the form of a dream from the past. This time Sara can see him, and she holds up a mirror to his face and tells him ‘You’re an anxious old man who will soon be dead.’ Later after she wanders off he sees an image through a window of the amorous couple, Sigfrid and Sara, about to enjoy a romantic meal, and watches on in pain. He has been unable to communicate those kinds of feelings to her.

The most surreal aspect of this sequence is when the Professor is forced to undergo a mental examination to see if he is capable of practising his profession. The lighting and interior of the rooms he enters reinforces the idea that this is going to be some kind of test or trial. Borg notably stumbles on the question of what the principle duty of a doctor is: to ask forgiveness. It is an answer that he is unable to identify.

When Borg, still dreaming, hears his deceased wife talk about his ‘utter coldness’, he discovers his punishment will be loneliness. This is another of the sequences that will lead to Borg’s redemption- and leads perfectly onto a scene in real life again in which Marianne talks about the coldness and emptiness inside her husband, Isak’s son, Evald. He has told Marianne ‘I feel the need to be dead- absolutely dead’ and castigates her for wanting to bring their unborn child into the world. This is the crux of the film- that Evald is a sad product of a sterile and unhappy upbringing, one that Isak must come to terms with for being the engineer of it. The theme is also explored in a play by Ibsen, one of Bergman’s favourite dramatists. In 'Ghosts' the sins of the father have a devastating impact on his young son as he struggles to make his own independent way in the world.

Isak has had his doctorate bestowed upon him at Lund. It is now late at night and Isak’s redemption has come in the form of a new found tenderness between he and his daughter-in-law. Things with Evald, however, are still problematic. The coldness and alienation that exists between them will not be so easily thawed. A final dream sequence is significant. Isak is back at his childhood home as an old man and with the youthful Sara. She takes him to see his parents who are fishing by a river. There is a beautiful new softness and tenderness in Isak’s features, which we haven’t seen before.

This scene was filmed in the late afternoon, beyond the agreed time that Sjostrom was prepared to work. Bergman was earlier able to coax him into playing the part of Isak Borg partly by promising the 78 year old he would stick to a deadline of 4:30 each afternoon so Borg could be home having a whiskey before dinner. A difficulty with the light meant that Borg was asked to stay on, and as Bibi Andersson leads Sjostrom down a hillside on his way to seeing his ‘parents’, Sjostrom was cursing and extremely irritable at the inconvenience of it all. A close look at the scene and his body language reveals a hint of the anger that Sjostrom felt as Andersson clutches him by the arm.

This is a key film in Bergman’s oeuvre. Woody Allen has sung its praises, claiming that Wild Strawberries, The Magician, The Seventh Seal and Cries & Whispers are the biggest moments of Bergman’s career. I would agree with the latter two, but would prefer to throw in Fanny & Alexander and Scenes From A Marriage before the first two. Of course it has great moments, and Sjostrom is a memorable character.

However there are a few things about the film that leave me a bit cold. First of all, I find Sjostrom very likeable throughout, which is a problem considering we are asked to accept the importance of the redemption of his character, and to find him disagreeable and irascible for the first half.

Secondly, there is a lighter, less serious strand in the plot that doesn’t work for me. The less successful of Bibi Andersson’s dual roles is the character (again called Sara) whom Borg and Marianne pick up hitchhiking with her male friends on the way to Lund. She is very playful and a bit silly and quaint, and her two doting companions often argue and wrestle, and take part in an unconvincing existential debate. Bergman dealt with this themes about the existence of God so brilliantly in his previous film, The Seventh Seal, that it comes across as trivial and unconvincing this time around.

Finally, as in the case to a lesser extent in The Virgin Spring, the whole film seems a bit too moralistic and obvious, almost as if Bergman is delivering a sermon based on lessons about the way you shouldn’t live your life. The heartening thing is, I suppose, is that it is never too late to learn these lessons and make amends.

Persona (1966) and its Complex Relationship

PERSONA was a huge critical success for Ingmar Bergman, but must have been very alienating for audiences in 1966 when it was released, just as it is confronting and puzzling in many ways today. The enigmatic opening of five and a half minutes is a case in point. The swiftly changing shots before the credits are of an erect penis, footage from the silent movies of early cinema, a crawling spider, the slaughter of a lamb, a thick nail being bashed into the palm of a hand, plenty of shots of a completely blank white screen, shots similar to Walkabout of walls and fences and open spaces, extreme close-ups of old people’s faces apparently inside a morgue, a young boy covered with a white sheet who at first appears to be dead, echoing footsteps sounding like those in an institution, the sound of a tap incessantly dripping, and the sound of a ringing telephone that disturbs the boy’s rest. The boy then explores a massive white screen in extreme close up with his fingers, in which appears a faded or blurred image of Bibi Andersson who plays Sister Alma in the film. Mixed in with these images are several shots of film projection, including the quick passage of a reel of film going through its spools. After that we are delivered a more or less conventional narrative about the aforementioned nurse who has been given the responsibility of looking after a famous stage actress, Elisabet Volger, (Liv Ullman in her first Bergman role). She has withdrawn from life and is feigning muteness . The rest of the film takes place on Faro Island and explores the unusual relationship between the two female protagonists.

Although the narrative does become more conventional once the action begins on the island, there are other various avant-garde complexities that are a hallmark of 1960’s European cinema. There are moments that interrupt the action to reinforce the fact that we are watching a film. The sound of a horn informs the crew that shooting is about to begin. The crew can occasionally be heard in the background, and even Bergman’s voice introducing a change of scene. An enigmatic moment in the film involves Elisabet walking right up to Sven Nykvist’s camera and taking a photo directly into the lens.

Alma is 25, engaged, and somewhat naïve. She clearly has a lot of regard for Elizabet and at one point recounts to her an extremely intimate story of an experience she had with a boy on the beach. It was an embarrassing moment for Bibi Andersson, whose voice was dubbed later. She describes an explicit orgy in some detail and therefore makes herself vulnerable to the mysterious actress who doesn’t speak to her and is clearly suffering some kind of pain. Later Alma realises her foolishness when she secretly reads a letter that Elisabet has written that comments on Alma’s intimate story and her naivety.

Bergman himself was ill during the making of the film, and in particular in the lead up to it, with dizzying spells, ear problems and penicillin poisoning. It was with some difficulty that he wrote the script for Persona, and at one stage he wasn’t sure if he would be able to direct a film again at all. The upshot for him when he was able to feel better was the meeting of Liv Ullman. She was a young Norwegian actress at the time, new to film, introduced to him by Bibi Andersson who had already appeared in Bergman films like The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. Bergman fell in love with Ullman and she later became his wife. They had a daughter, and she appeared subsequently in many of his films.

The relationship between the two women grows more complex and at times there is a strong hint of intimacy, possibly lesbianism, and at other times a raging hostility on Alma’s part. Alma is optimistic and caring, but her positive outlook threatens to be engulfed by Elisabet’s dark outlook and general emptiness and despair. In one scene Alma deliberately plants a shard of glass onto the path that Elisabet will tread on in her bare feet. She is also close to throwing a pot of boiling water over her.

Despite this, Alma has a fascination for Elisabet and makes it clear in passages that she would like to become just like her. She is able to enter Elisabet’s consciousness and even dreams of making love to Elisabet’s husband. Bergman was struck by Andersson and Ullman’s physical likeness and he is able to emphasise this with the exploration of a kind of psychic merger. When both actresses were shown a shot of one side of their face merging with the opposite side of the other, they weren’t able to recognise themselves, but saw only the ugliness in the other. At the end of the film Alma is able to disengage herself from the incredible effect that Elisabet has had on her, and she returns to work on the mainland to resume her old life.

Persona raises lots of questions about Bergman’s ambivalence in regards to art and film making in particular. Bergman wrote a famous essay at the time entitled ‘The Snakeskin’ (Sight & Sound 1965), in which he said ‘To be quite frank I experience art–not only the film art–as being meaningless. By that I mean that art no longer has the power and possibility to influence the development of our lives.’ Some of this attitude seems to be apparent in Persona in which Bergman continually directs our attention to the idea that we as an audience are being manipulated. The deliberate reminders that we are watching something constructed and artificial are evidence of this. We also witness the naïve Alma talking to Elisabet near the start of the film about how much respect the general public should have for artists. Bergman has admitted that this is meant to be ironic.

Many interpretations of both women are possible. It seems to me that the film primarily explores a psychic battle between two women, with Elisabet being the callous and manipulative of the two, determined in a secretive way to enforce Alma to have a mental breakdown. The reasons for Elisabet’s cruel narcissism are hinted at in scenes involving her callous attitude to her husband and her child. But what happens to people who must be going through so much mental torture that they suddenly feel the need to pretend they cannot speak?

Between Two Worlds: Colm Toibin's 'Brooklyn'

BROOKLYN is Colm Toibin’s follow up to his novel The Master in which he imagined the final years of the life of Henry James. Some people have compared its main character, Eilis Lacey, with James’ Isobel Archer (Portrait of a Lady). Toibin completed an intense amount of research for his novel about James, and it seems he is still in a Jamesian frame of mind. Both Isobel and Eilis operate in a society in which they feel inhibited for various reasons, and suffer a conflict between duty and personal freedom. Brooklyn begins in Enniscorthy Co. Wexford, 1950’s provincial Ireland, where the local talent is uninspiring and the best thing Eilis can find to keep busy and contribute to life is to sell food items in Miss Kelly’s corner shop. This work is horribly limiting: “That bread there is the freshest. It came yesterday evening all the way from Stafford’s, but it is only for special customers. So you don’t touch that bread whatever you do. The other bread’ll do fine for most people. And we have no tomatoes. Those ones there are not for anybody, unless I give precise instructions.”

It is doubtful that Toibin would construct a whole novel around a heroine who must wait on instructions regarding the sale of tomatoes. So it is no surprise that Father Flood recognises something else in Eilis and encourages her to live in Brooklyn for the chance of a fuller, more meaningful life. The horrible voyage over would suggest that Eilis isn’t up to it. She is too timid to complain about a locked bathroom and a strong contrast is made with her room partner Georgina, who is cocky and self assured: “The bastards! ...watch me dealing with them.”
The rest of the book deals with Eilis’ life in Brooklyn and her unexpected and unwanted recall home to Enniscorthy to comfort her mother. The ending of the novel, and Eilis’ decision to return to America or spend time comforting her needy mother, is crucial to our understanding of how far she has come. She makes the decision that is best for her, at the same time honouring an important promise. Meanwhile she has experienced a number of things that reinforce our understanding of Eilis as a gutsy heroine. She meets Tony and later takes a considerable risk in engaging in sex with him in a conservative boarding house she is renting, that operates under strict house rules. She has a brief, flirtatious relationship with a local when she is back in Ireland and undecided about where her future lies. And she deals admirably with Miss Kelly when she sees her again at the end of the novel, when Miss Kelly is full of disdain and gossip about her knowledge of Eilis’ secret Brooklyn past: “Oh, don’t try and fool me!” Miss Kelly said. “You can fool most people, but you can’t fool me.”

Toibin captures the subtle changes in Eilis brilliantly, as she returns to her roots. She is now far more sophisticated both in her manner and in her clothes, but not arrogantly so. It is just that people notice her more. She has become glamorous. She learns a lot in America, both in her warm relationship with Tony and his family and in her selfless repaying of debt to Father Flood. Brooklyn is far less stifling in its scope and level of opportunity. Eilis is even confronted with a potential lesbian encounter that Toibin couldn’t resist including, as she is fitted somewhat eagerly for a new bathing suit. It is in fact possibly the only false note in the whole novel.
Tony is the second most important character. He is simple but very caring and supportive, baseball- mad and deeply Italian. He finds Eilis sexually alluring, but waits patiently and has his moment with her well after their relationship has been cemented. All he asks for is a future with her and hopefully some kids.

Father Flood is also virtuous and without any of the vices of a clichéd priest. Andrew O’Hagan created an equally memorable priest in ‘Be Near Me’. Toibin’s priest is much more old fashioned and simple and fits perfectly with the time.

This novel reminds me, in its prose, of The Heather Blazing, more than any of Toibin’s other novels. We discover only the bare essentials about people and setting and the narrative is driven slowly and smoothly throughout and it is a book that is best read in one or two sittings to appreciate the beautiful mood that is created. The second half of the novel is the best. In my edition (Scribner), the exact half way point is on page 131, and it is here that Tony is first introduced, sizing up Eilis at a local dance hall. This is the moment in which Eilis truly comes into her own, as she begins making decisions that will enrich her life, instead of being too anxious about doing the right things by others.

Toibin has said, in an interview with Robert McCrum, how he became ‘mildly obsessed with extracting the maximum effect from the minimum of prose.’

Christopher Tayler of The Guardian has noted that Toibin’s ‘…plain style is unostentatious even in its plainness, avoiding musical balance but also taking care not to seem mannered or excessively clipped.’

Colm Toibin has also talked about how difficult it was to create one of the passages in the novel, an experience that has occurred in the writing of two previous novels. Writing in such a deceptively simple way is extremely difficult. It is getting towards the extremely pared back style of Raymond Carver, which is even more difficult to achieve. How different to Zoe Heller, who on the back of the Scribner edition says Toibin has created a ‘beautifully rendered portrait of Brooklyn.’

Reading fiction by Colm Toibin is incredibly rewarding and luxuriating. It forces you to rest and breathe. And Eilis is another character, like Henry James in The Master, who is painted with beautiful subtlety and with immense psychological insight:

“She discovered a vantage point from where, unless he looked directly upwards and to the left, he would not see her. He was, she thought, unlikely to look in her direction as he seemed absorbed by the students coming and going in the lobby. When she directed her gaze down she saw that he was not smiling; he seemed nonetheless fully at ease and curious. There was something helpless about him as he stood there; his willingness to be happy, his eagerness, she saw, made him oddly vulnerable. The word that came to her as she looked down was the word “delighted.” He was delighted by things, as he was delighted by her, and he had done nothing else ever but made that clear. Yet somehow that delight seemed to come with a shadow, and she wondered as she watched him if she herself, in all her uncertainty and distance from him, was the shadow of nothing else. It occurred to her that he was as he appeared to her; there was no other side to him. Suddenly, she shivered in fear, and turned, making her way down the stairs and towards him in the lobby as quickly as she could.”

The ending of 'Through A Glass Darkly' (1961)

'THROUGH A Glass Darkly' is the first of many Ingmar Bergman films set on the island of Faro. There are literally only four people in the film. The most interesting of these is the young Karin (Harriet Andersson) who is schizophrenic and suffers a series if crises, the most damaging being the final one in which she imagines she has been sexually violated by God in the form of a monstrous spider. In her lucid moments she is charming, particularly towards her younger brother Minus. She is primarily a bleak figure, however, who won't allow others to become close to her because of her awful delusions.

Minus is another lost soul who feels unloved by his father and is sexually confused and frustrated. He is bewildered by his sister's actions and spends his whole time brooding or running around in a state of confusion. Karin and Minus commit incest in the depths of a shipwrecked hull. This act sends her over the edge and he close to it.

The other characters are older men. Martin (Max Von Sydow) is Karin's husband. He genuinely loves Karin and is helplessly unable to reach her and be of any use. He is the least interesting because he is the only character not to undergo any sort of crisis. David (another Bergman regular- Gunnar Bjornstrand) is Karin and Minus' father. His children are critical of him. He doesn't feel much love for them. He is cold and self-obsessed and indifferent and is often away on his journey as a pseudo poet/ novelist. He has a lack of understanding of his children's needs and Martin is critical of him for using their experiences as fodder for his fiction and diaries.

What saves David and makes him a compelling figure is his breakdown that occurs offscreen in Switzerland. He tries to kill himself (offscreen) by driving off a cliff face, but miraculously survives because his car stalls at the eleventh hour, and two wheels are left dangling off the precipice. Because of this near death experience he has a sudden genuine, rapturous love for Martin and his children.

This new found love isn't shared with others until the end of the film. Karin has been taken off to hospital and presumably an asylum by helicopter. Martin leaves also, no doubt feeling useless and bewildrered. Minus has tried to avoid his father because of the understandable guilt he feels because of the incest. He reaches out to his father, helplessly, and announces that he cannot live in this world any longer. He must have some comfort. Is there a God? This is the exact moment when David has to help his son, probably for the first time. He tells him that 'love exists for real in the human world', and as a consequence Minus feels reassured that God, if 'love and God are the same', surrounds and provides comfort to Karin.

The ending of the film has been criticised as being unconvincing in its attempt to provide hope and reconcile Minus and David. David's words do come across as being a bit forced. Bjornstrand is very solemn in his simple explanations, and this is easy to mock. There is a camera pan towards his face that emphasises the solemnity of the occasion. Bergman himself is said to regret the ending, that it makes the film belong to the decade of the 50's rather than the 60's. Yet, despite all this, the message is still beautiful in its own way, even though it is simplistic. It is this new found love in his heart that will enable David to go on living. And it is a fantastic thing that Minus can share in the authenticity of it and have his own obliterated hope renewed. Unfortunately the final words spoken in the film (from Minus) are: 'Papa talked to me.' So much better if we were just left with no words, just that boyish enlightened face!

The 20 Best Songs of The Moody Blues

The two best Moody Blues albums- Seventh Sojourn and On The Threshold Of A Dream

WHENEVER we see 'best of' records in the shops we find ourselves getting annoyed that the ones that have been chosen are the boppy, commercial ones, and in a lot of cases, not the 'best ones' atall. Hence, 'Brown Eyed Girl' is always on Van Morrison albums such as this, as is 'Love Me Two Times' by The Doors.

So for what it's worth, here is my own personal list of the best Moody Blues songs- from the period of 'In Search Of A Lost Chord' to 'Seventh Sojourn' at any rate (1967-1972).

1. Legend Of A Mind (Thomas)

2. Voices In The Sky (Hayward)

3. Nights In White Satin (Hayward)

4. Another Morning (Thomas)

5. Tuesday Afternoon (Hayward)

6. Never Comes The Day (Hayward)

7. Have You Heard?/ The Voyage/ Have You Heard?

8. Emily's Song (Lodge)

9. One More Time To Live (Lodge)

10. Question (Hayward)

11. And The Tide Rushes In (Thomas)

12. It's Up To You (Hayward)

13. Gypsy (Hayward)

14. Candle Of Life (Lodge)

15. Watching & Waiting (Hayward/ Thomas)

16. Lost In A Lost World (Pinder)

17. When You're A Free Man (Pinder)

18. New Horizons (Hayward)

19. Land Of Make Believe (Hayward)

20. Isn't Life Strange (Lodge)

Ingmar Bergman's 'Autumn Sonata'

UNBENOWEST to me at the time, when I was nearly 13 in September 1977, and enthralled with North Melbourne's second flag in the VFL (over Collingwood at the MCG), Ingmar Bergman was working hard in Sweden making a film with the very ill Ingrid Bergman: 'Autumn Sonata.' It was a typical Ingmar Bergman film in that it was a chamber piece with only a small number of actors, mostly women, almost all of it set indoors. Another psychological study with a lot of close ups about the angst that exists between female family members, whether it be sisters or mothers and their daughters. This is evident in other Bergman films such as 'Persona', 'Cries & Whispers', 'The Silence', etc, etc. It has been said that Bergman enjoyed working with women, and exploring issues about women, much more than he did with men, and these are his best films. It has also been said that in 'Autumn Sonata' both he and Ingrid Bergman were working with very personal themes which involved material that they could both relate to and feel uneasy about.


I watched scenes from this film several times today, inspired by two sources. One was an essay about Ingrid Bergman by the Irish writer Colm Toibin. It was published a short while ago in 'The Guardian' and served as a commentary on a BFI festival on Ingrid Bergman's films in London. The second source was the lavish Taschen publication called 'The Chronicles of Ingmar Bergman' which not only has several beautifully produced interviews and photographs about all of Bergman's films, it also contains a DVD which features a twenty minute 'behind the scenes' documentary of the making of 'Autumn Sonata' that Ingrid Bergman was totally unaware of at the time.


The film is ostensibly about the relationship between Eva (Liv Ullman) and her mother Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman). Eva lives a quiet life at a vicarage with her loyal husband, Viktor, and her sister Helena who has a severe physical retardation. Eva hasn't seen her mother for seven years and longs for contact- possibly an explanation- and writes her mother a letter. Charlotte arrives suddenly and there is an initial warmth and a vague intimacy. Charlotte seems to talk about herself mostly, however, and ruminates for a long time on the death of a boyfriend (Leonardo), and makes continual reference to her career as an accomplished pianist. A sure early sign that there is a gap between mother and daughter comes early in the film when Charlotte is alarmed that Eva now looks after Helena at the vicarage, and shows a heavy reluctance to see her. The scene in which the estranged mother finally sees her sorrowful daughter in her anguished condition and looks to Eva for translation of Helena's own words chillingly reinforces her long absence and lack of care. Charlotte has simply been too busy to find time to see Eva- flashbacks tell us that this happened in Eva's important growing years as well- and as for Helena... well we get the impression that she is the cruelly forgotten daughter.


The climax of the film takes place at around midnight when Eva has been drinking and offloads her long built up frustration and anger towards her mother. These are brilliantly acted scenes- Liv Ullman is overwrought and at times almost hysterical. Ingrid Bergman is equally convincing in that she is at times withdrawn, exhausted looking and helpless." Touch me..." she says in a role reversal, just as a long suffering daughter might say to her mother. "Please hold me. Please love me." It is something that Eva wanted to say many times to her mother as she was growing up. It isn't revenge that Eva seeks when she rejects her mother. She is simply unable to reach out to her and provide her solace.



Ingrid Bergman was very reluctant to say these appeasing words. After Liv Ullmann's torrent of repproachment for years of bitter neglect, the veteran actress wanted to slap her face and leave the room. Apparently it took a great row and a lot of persuasion for Ingmar Bergman to convince Ingrid Bergman that his words were the best ones to use, and it is for the betterment of the film that he got his way. There were myriad other complaints from Ingrid Bergman in regards to the script. Perhaps it was due to many years of working in Hollywood that she thought the film should contain more jokes. There is a scene in which Bergman lies on the floor to talk to her daughter- a prelude to the climax of bitter words- and she thought the audience would laugh when they saw this. This is clearly not the kind of humour she was after.



I am sure the film has influenced many other film makers. I think in particular of films by Mike Leigh in which there is an incredibly emotional catharsis towards the end of the film between people who love each other. There is a midnight confrontation in "All Or Nothing" in which the taxi driver (Timothy Spall) tells his wife that she speaks to him like a piece of shit and she doesn't love him anymore. Both are crying either at this sudden realisation of the shocking truth, or that they have allowed things to deteriorate so badly in their relationship and making things better is going to take a huge amount of dedication. Whatever the relationship that is being explored, these are incredible roles for great actors and exhaustingly moving moments for the audience.

The novels of Zoe Heller

ZOE HELLER is an interesting British author now living in New York. As is often the case with author's books, you read the latest one that has just come out, and if you like it, read the earlier ones next, and therefore miss out on the opportunity of allowing them to unfold before you in chronological order, discovering the development of the writer.

As is to be expected, EVERYTHING YOU KNOW, the first one, published in 1999, is the weakest. I read NOTES ON A SCANDAL- the middle one- some time back, so I don't remember it very well (except for its beautifully clear prose and extensive vocabulary), and the newest, THE BELIEVERS is exceptionally good.

Zoe Heller's vision in her first novel was a bit limiting. It told the story of a sad, ageing writer of scandalous memoirs called Willy Muller who is drifting through life burdened by memories of mistakes made in the past, and their consequences. His wife died when she hit her head against a refrigerator door handle during a violent argument between the two of them. Even though he served a short time in prison, he didn't admit to pushing her at the time, and it is a long way after the event that he finally admits to what he has done. At the start of the novel one of his two children, Sadie, has recently committed suicide. His other daughter, Sophie, only wants to make contact with him because she needs his money. She lives in a council estate in London with her heroin addicted boyfriend. Both daughters have illegitimate children.

Willy's level of satisfaction is compromised further by his poor, guilty treatment of his girlfriend, Penny, who, although a bit stupid, deserves much better. His alcoholic friend, Harry, brings him down even further, by encouraging him in his slothful ways. The main thrust of the story, along with his sorry attempts to achieve some sort of equilibrium in his life, is the journal that Sadie has sent him before she died, detailing amongst other things an abusive relationship she had with an older man which resulted in the birth of her daughter Pearl, soon to be a motherless child.

A new excerpt in italics from Sadie's journal begins each chapter. You are meant to get the feeling that Willy is reading this journal bit by bit as he goes along, and you wonder what sort of effect Sadie's sad tribulations will have on her father.

Inside the front flap of this book there is mention made of Willy's 'unlikely path to redemption.' I guess there is a redemptive aspect to Willy's character in the closing sections of the story. He unexpectedly makes a visit to Sadie's daughter and her guardian at the very end of the novel. It is as if Willy is finally coming to terms with his reckless past and the part he has played in a generation of family members feeling grief or dislocation of some sort. However, the sense of redemption is blurred a little bit because the main focus on the story has been about wit and satire and sex throughout. These are the sections of the novel that stay with you the longest, so the ending doesn't have the same impact, as, say, the moving finish to a book like 'The Remains of the Day.'

Here are some good illustrations of Zoe Heller's writing, the wit and the satire in particular:

'I removed the toothbrush from the glass and drank back the fibre mixture. I paused for a moment, concentrating on not gagging, and then I stepped closer to the mirror, to examine my face. The whites of my eyes are yellow these days- as if someone has been pissing in them. My skin has the ancient, batterred look of fried liver. My ears, which seem to have grown exponentially in recent months, are developing a violent tinge at their curly edges, like exotic salad leaves. I returned to the basin and hawked up three dime-sized gobs of khaki-coloured phlegm laced with black stuff, like- what is that stone?- like agate. A spider was lurking in the shadow of the plug. I reached for the tap, intending to wash it away, but the movement sent the spider careering madly around the slopes of the basin. (50)

Describing bodily flaws is one of Zoe Heller's onbsessions, as it is with the Australian author, Beverly Farmer. The difference is that Heller does it with humour, whereas for Farmer her descriptions have tragic undertones.

In this excerpt, you get a sense of the way in which Willy's friends weigh him down. Harry is not much help for him:

' When we got back from the Cabana last night, Harry raged about the house for a while, managing, in the process, to spill a full ashtray into the swimming pool and pour red wine on to Sissy Yerxa's white rug. Eventually he fell into a drunken swoon on the sofa with a lit cigar in his fat hand. He woke briefly as Penny and I were dragging him upstairs and expressed his desire to give someone (or something) 'a good rogering.' In his room, we got his shoes off and levered him onto the bed. And then, as we were leaving, he surfaced into semi-consciousness once more. "Where are the wenches? he was calling plaintively into the darkness as I closed the door.

During the night, he crowned his achievements by copiously wetting his bed. I know this because in the morning, as he was lying out on the veranda sucking up a pint of Bloody Mary, the maid called me into his room to witness the befoulment of her snowy linens.' (98)

There isn't a lot of poignancy in this novel- much more in Zoe Heller's next two novels- but there is a lovely moment near the end where, after his mother has died, Willy decided to have a rummage through the things she has left behing, mostly junk. Amidst the junk is a purple crayon drawing of a house that Willy evidently drew for his mother when he was a small boy. It triggers something in Willy, and he ruminates on the discovery, wistfully:

' I must have love her, I thought. She must have loved me. You think you know who you were all your life, but you don't. You can't hold Paradise Lost in your head, so why should you be able to retain your entire existence to date? You forget things. You forget things. You have to. You make do with cribs. People ask you about other times in your life and you give them vague topic headings: 'Oh, I was unhappy as a child... My twenties were very wild...We had a bad marriage.' You have to use those precis, otherwise you would spend your life being a bore, like those people wo think 'How are you?' is a rea question and insist on giving detailed answers. The terrible thing, though, is that in the end you believe the cribs yourself. The past, in all its epic detail, gets lost. Years pass and pass until you simply don't know any more that you were once a boy who liked his mother enough to draw her a purple picture.'

Interesting that Zoe Heller chose to write her first book from the point of view of a mostly selfish and obnoxious male. There is plenty of her satirical writing style in her recent third novel, THE BELIEVERS. This one is from the point of view of an acerbic female, and is better because it is more multi-layered and complex, and asks much more interesting questions.