A wound of betrayal

One of the Warsaw modern cinemas. After 15 minutes the sound of pop-corn stopped annoying me. No, they did not finish it, they just stopped eating. For the first 15 minutes of the movie quiet conversations go on. Nothing seems to happen on the screen.

Indeed for people brought on with pompous and effective image of MI6 draw in their heads by James Bond, his fellow, George Smiley (excellent Gary Oldman) seems to be absolutely boring.

He is not sexy either. He wears grey coat and thick glasses, his hair could have seen a hairdresser weeks earlier. He seems to be grey guy doing grey job.

But the real picture of an intelligence officer is exactly that average looking chap. Watching his actions, we may feel like in a theatre. Despite moving around the streets on occasion, most of the plot happens between just a few people in not more than 4 or 5 rooms. Engaging dialogues in harmonious calm set where even a bee has it's place.

"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" has one genuine strength. The very very realistic scenery. Every detail in the movie is worked perfectly. There are no GSM towers on the horizon, or too modern cars, or any cellphone ringing anywhere. It is real London of the 70's, a little bit brownish, grey, rainy with low buildings, always dirty from forever smog.

The extreme accuracy with which the movie is done is I suppose a result of a close cooperation between the director Thomas Alfredson and the author of the book upon which the movie was done, John le Carre.

While every single of John le Carre's books is an ideal real life plot full of surprising events among very boring normal people, the book "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is a special one. David John Moore Cornwell, as is le Carre's real name has got 20 years of active service in British intelligence. His role and identity in the Circus as MI6 is called among the workers, got burnt down due to betrayal of Kim Philby, one of the Great Five, group of smart Oxford students recruited into intelligence work. By writting the "Karla Trilogy" le Carre deals with memories of his own past in the service. Only long after those events he can finally write about it and be not afraid for his life.

In history there had been probably a number of moles situated at the top of British intelligence. One of them was allegedly Richard Hollis, the very head of MI5. Peter Wright who first wrote a book about him, could not have printed it anywhere outside Australia. He was forced into retirement and lived as a farmer until his death as a millionaire due to sells of his book "Spycatcher".

Several days ago the identity of another Russian spy who tried to infiltrate British high class was revealed by Daily Telegraph. Mikhail Repin, young, synpathetic, witty gentleman who spoke flawless english had done his best to try to recruit members of the Parliament and officials working at Downing Street 10.

He was cought. Maybe there is hope for Britain, that the country may improve it's image which got really compromised. If indeed there was a mole at the top, a lot of events in the history of 20th century makes sense, including the story of Polish army in the West which got buried officially and banned from publically being spoken about until the very fall of communism. There is indeed something in it....

For those boys who dream in their mucho heads about James Bond life. Beware.

Cash, maybe. Women, sometimes.

Peace of mind, never. Friends, never. Watching behind your shoulder, always.

***********
"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", Thomas Aldredson, 2011.

The Way Back

...in other words, I would expect more of Peter Weir.

But let's start from the very beginning. Some time ago I had finally seen that movie just because of family reasons. After all Siberian experience of forced labor, escapes from the camps, death shots in Katyń woodlands or elsewhere, that's all a family history, so watching a movie done by a great director in 21st century may make this thing kind of closer.

There are several guys in the camp of several different ethnicities. Some of them Russian, some of them French and a Polish guy (Jim Sturgees) who was betrayed by his own wife. Not of her own will, obviously. Soviet bastards forced her to do this. After all if you rape or beat the lady, not many of them are tough enough not to talk what the "authorities" want to hear.

In the camp we see rules of life. Urkas are the rule and among them the leader - called exactly Urka (Colin Farrell), not Walka like some idiots writting movie reviews want us to believe.

Soviets divided prisoners into political ones: enemies of the state, and Urkas - mere criminals, rapists, murderers, etc. After all every system has this kind of people. They had been rewarded by the camp rulers for spying on those political ones and exactly that is shown in the movie. Scenes in the camp belong to the best ones, because the rest is unfortunately not as good.

The rest of the movie shows the escape and obstacles on the way. But something was wrong with music. This movie had been too silent. Semi-desert had also been too silent. Several times there have been scenes repeated picturing the group walking down the bank of the Baikal Lake (deepest one in the world). These scenes might have been of bigger variety of angles, light etc.

Strong sides of the movie? Yes, there are two of them, well three. At first people responsible for light should be awarded with Oscar. It's been quite a while since I had seen a movie where light was worked out to the tiny detail. Currently noone seems to care and very often we see that a person is additionally lit up with a 300W light bulb even if the scene is shot outdoors. This is against a lot of rules, but rich producers of nowadays explain it by budget reasons. Oh really? They receive 10x that much as their predecessors some 20 years ago and yet 20 years ago light was light. It had to be obeyed with no exceptions.

So if you want to see a movie where a sunlight is a sunlight and if it shines it shines properly with right intensity from the proper side of a person, you should watch The Way Back to learn how to do it. If compared hardly any movie of recent matches up to this standard, and here including Avatar, Sherlock Holmes and many others.

Another plus is the scene when Urka decides to stay. In some conversations with Russian dissidents or from Vladimir Bukovsky book I have learned that the lowest category wolf still never ever leaves his pack. And that the most Soviet people did not want to pay the price of freedom. Known hell is still better than unknown heaven.

The third good thing in the movie is a feeling of reunion... a march to freedom, when finally in 1989 a husband can hug a wife whom he had not seen since 1940's. I won't say more. I would expect much much more of Peter Weir, but nevertheless it is a movie worth watching.

Booming Aid Hoax

It's not a movie, but who knows, maybe one day someone uses it as a good script.

Up to 30% of aid funds in conflict areas are wrongly spent. Jean Mazurelle, former director of the World Bank branch in Kabul, estimated that 35%–40% of all international aid being sent to Afghanistan is “wrongly spent”. “In Afghanistan, the wastage of aid is sky-high: there is real looting going on. In the 30 years of my career, I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.

Similar looting took place in Somali, which cause direct American intervention back in 1992. Black market traded aid goods for real dollars there where people were dying of hunger.

As an author of War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times Linda Pulman says, foreign aid became a reason of some unrest and rebellions in many corners of the world. The logic behind it is simple: without violence and devastation, there is no aid. So, the more devastation, conflict, violence and terror, the more place seems to be in need of humanitarian approach, and together with it, real money comes.

In post-conflict Mozambique, mafia organizations founded NGO's which made a lot of attempts to swingle money from overseas aid funds.Foreign diplomats and UNDP workers were forced to carry guns if they really wanted to supervise how money is being spent. Some of them got themselves seriously injured.  

Not only insurgents consider foreign aid as a good way to get richer. There is a growing number of websites which represent problems with some area by heartcatching words and no real concrete details of implemented projects, dare to ask good-willing people for donation. How many of them trust such websites? It is difficult to say. It is not easy to prove a hoax being done this way. What if these money are really helping someone?

How to recognize which initiative is trustworthy and which isn't? My long term practice in watching NGO actions tells me that each organization which wants to build social credibility, gathers some big names in their scientific or advisory boards, or the members themselves have long enough scientific or diplomatic careers that their call for money gives some hope, that it goes for real needs. Next thing is project evaluation report, which credible organization should do and publish at least once a year. What has been done? What did we accomplish? It is easier to monitor such things if it is a hard-aid NGO, much less easy if it is just a watchdog. But even a watchdog gains credibility by making it's actions really known.

I have known a lot of NGO activists and workers starting from Amnesty International, ending on local environmental initiatives. Some of them, after 10 years of hard work for bigger and better known NGO, started new initiative, new foundation which fulfilled certain niche, a space in society which still needs some action. The basis of trust however, are former careers of these people, their long years of experience, and the very simple fact that, they are not John Doe's.

If you see that the owner of some website which calls for donations and gives literally no solid information, is a John Doe, a "noname" with no achievements, no history, no background, skip it. If such a person wants to help others, there are thousands of better ways than starting his or her own "organization" in the age of 23 with a "donate" button using Joomla template.

If you really want to help, donate your work, donate your time for something local, something you really know. Give cloths away to Caritas, volunteer to clean space after the flood. If you need to give cash, think twice before you do.

Lupa

...jump! So she avoided sight of scent hounds again. Another time on that winter night. Snow and ice crunching under their feet made it possible tobe heared from the far. But so she could be heard from a distance too. The skillful silent walk made very slight noise which her humters more felt than crealy heard.

She stopped to look around. Spruce, pinewood and oaks so high above closed their crowns up there. Warm steam of breath moved slowly away from her nosdrils. Lungs worked like crazy up and down. Pulse slowly very slowly went back to normal. Light of million stars glistened everywhere. She thought it is visible, the embrace of freeze which forces to struggle, makes trails visible. Hunting was easy for her in these long weeks in the forest. This time however she was being hunted for...

The passion of a goal in the air speeded dogs foreward. Lupa was there in the woods in front of them, strong, fast, but so vulnerable in her solitude. Scent of her fur excited their senses, scent of freedom they had never known.

She stopped resting and thinking and moved own slowly. Blackberry bushes marked the way to the swamps. Scream of tawny owl teared apart heavy silence in the air. Not far from her way of escape brave mother of the mice tribe gave herself up to the ancient pirate. Circle of life went on.

Not me! You will never get me!, thought she running restlessly ahead. Passing junipers and royal ferns Lupa could smell increasing humid essence of swamps ahead of her. It was the kingdom of elks where she headed. Never before needed she to be hidden so deeply in the woods running for dear life, trying to avoid the fate.

Moss gently moved under her paws. Instinct told her to stop going this way but instinct also told her to live. One step after another. In between fallen pines and small birches and willows she could see black mirror of water, black as a coal with none spark of a star in it. Waiting for it's victims... waiting patiently... for her?

Moss moved again as she jumped on a fallen pine. Another one she could see so far away. Too far to reach it! Bark of dogs went closer, her front paws slipped into the black sucking hell. Long seconds of struggle to get them out but why, for approaching nemezis. destiny? Is it her time now, is it what has to happen?

Goddess of nature herself helped her that moment. Told to stretch muscles and jump, her thin body almost reached the pole of pine, clinging to remains of birch she suffocated , breathed with a wistle trying to grasp a bit of air inside, pulling herself up. She laid on the pine getting strengths back. Long minutes seemed to pass endlessly. Her body shivered in convulsions. There, 100 m away ahead was the shelter of deep forest. If only she could get there?

Could she?... Her bright eyes measured difficulties. Only small birches and willows had given any hope for salvation. So she started gently jumping from one poor piece of wood to another. Had she fallen into black deepness she would never come up from it's embrace. Never...

But Goddess of Nature had grace on this night. Exhausted, grey mistress of night, climbed up the moss on the other side. Black hell let her go. On the other side, male cohort of hounds blinded with primeaval passion went on to the swamp to meet their destiny. She stood looking onto the dance macabre, kept watching first two brave ones as their nosdrils desperately tried to gasp and soon their bodies sucked into the black arms of death.

She stood watching the rest as they kept barking in a helpless desperation, could see her, could not get her.

"Darkness is my kingdom, not yours". Her proud pose had spoken unspeakable.

She turned her thin body and vanished in the woods. Long time could she hear desperate barking.

Lupa of the White Forest
to be continued....

Closer

And so it is...

It has been a while since I had seen "Closer" by Mike Nichols. I had seen many more movies which I should write about here.

But. I had just closed a chapter in my life, directly related with life away from my circle of best friends and family. I met another best friends but after 6 months I am emotionally exhausted. Decided to sort out quantities of my stuff and found souvenirs and memoirs and many other things.

Have noticed how often one ends up clinged in a situation when it seems impossible not to get hurt because you have a ringing bell in your brain. Some people decide to listen to a ringing bell some decide to ignore it. Some yet decide to fight.

The director shows several of characters mutually involved in a romance. An affair starts between a lost guy who saves a young girl from some accident ( brilliant Natalie Portman here). Soon after he is bored with a heart given up to him on a plate and moves on an affair with a silent mysterious photographer (Julia Roberts) who thanks to our mr Lost (Jude Law) meets her husband (Clive Owen).

"Quit the crap" heard I from one close Dutch friend recently "if you want something you get it. As long as you believe in it you fight for it. You lose or you win but you fight".

Very soon betrayed husband finds out his wife's cheating actions and enraged makes a show of anger and jealousy on her. But suprisingly the director wants us not to see how he quits with dignity but how he fights her back. How he uses the very fact of a bond between a man and a woman and he fights her back successfully.

Mr Lost who ends up as Mr Looser in this moment returns to what he had rejected earlier, a young girl freshly heartbroken who unfortunately had sex with everyone would thought "honest and thuggish" Mr Husband in a moment of weakness. Rejected once again, Alice walks off in a crowd of people just as she walked in in the initial scenes. What happens with her later? Does her young inexperienced heart ever recover? Who does she become? That we do not know, this is the question the director leaves to be answered by everyone individually.

Despite enormous volume of pain it is still a movie of hope. It is subconsciouslly suggested to us. The dominant color in the movie is green, all shades of green including greenlike water in the aquarium, or greenlike surroundings of the streets and apartments. Green is a color of hope.

When Alice walks away she wins. Mr Lost stays himself alone first time ever crying because games after all, do not pay off.

Alice walks away to start over and to leave the chapter called "mistakes" behind her. 

This all had come to my mind when l was watching Damien Rice today. Long time ago someone had send me a link and told me to watch a movie. 

And so it is... just like you said it should be...

SALT

I was planning to watch Salt by Philip Noyce since my last birthday. Recently there was some occasion to get my hands on this picture.

Primary reason of interest was Daniel Olbrychski getting his 5 minutes in the movie, possibly 5 the most valuable ones. The main character, Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is a CIA agent under cover of a businesswoman. Her husband has no clue of her profession. Moreover he has no clue that she is a sleeping mole for ex-KGB officers who form a secret unit.

At one moment into the Agency HQ comes man called Orlov who reveals that there is a mole inside whose name is Salt. After his escape Evelyn Salt, exposed and trusted by noone, starts struggle for her survival and for saving the Russian president in a way that her Russian supervisors believe he is actually killed.

The director sets us off on a journey full of kicking, killing, jumping, speeding on the highway. The scenes with Orlov (Daniel Olbrychski)  are one of the best ones, but even him who supposed to be falsely slow and sneaking like a snake makes a show of combat skills which are not really needed. Two scenes of conversations between Orlov and Salt are the only good sides of the picture. After all, the tension is not always about kicking whatever walks by. A silent threat of not even raised voice makes bigger impression.

The plot itself is outdated. Lee Harvey Oswald and Kennedy conspiracy theory are things no longer fashionable. In recent history of post -Soviet era the reality is full of secret service actions which would serve far better as a start-point of the movie. Enough to mention poisoning of colonel Litvenenko in this place, a mystery which still remains "unsolved".

Rare case, I don't remember music from this movie. Probably it was very well matched with whatever action and served it's purpose as a good background. Good music sometimes saves the movie, but I don't remember it.

By chance I checked who was the scriptwriter. Kurt Wimmer... is it really the same person who had written the Thomas Crown Affair screenplay? Everyone has better and worse outcomes of his work. But to write a successful script for a spy story is like writting a novel on it. It has to be very well prepared and thoroughly researched before writing any word. Otherwise any ultimate fan of political fiction, like me, will be disappointed. I didn't buy a cinema ticket, just seen dvd at the friend's place. And, I wouldn't buy it.

****
Is there anything she likes, a reader may ask. Yes. There is one movie done exceptionally well which pictures daily struggles of secret agents operating in the shadows of society and law. "Secret Agents" with Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel is a must watch and good rest after watching "Salt" Not that everything is perfect in that one either. I will write about it some time later.