Stranger on Earth

A Note to the Reader: In writing this piece, I have attempted to avoid spoilers. The plot summary below is of the superficial kind and should not spoil anyone’s viewing experience. For a more comprehensive summary, refer to:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Condition_(film_series) As far as cinematic war chronicles go, there is not one that is grander and more urgent than Masaki Kobayashi’s mammoth 9-hour-and-47-minute trilogy The Human Condition (1959-61), with David Shipman, the famed British film critic, calling it “unquestionably the greatest film ever made” (984). And yet, ironically, few casual viewers will have seen it, partly due to its off-putting length. This should be rectified. The trilogy carries with it a message as pressing and disconcerting as that of Platoon (1986) or Apocalypse Now (1979), and should be acknowledged by anyone with an ounce of interest in humanist cinema. The film may be more than half a century old, but the protagonis...

31 May 2013  bbc.co.uk A Point Of View: Gatsby and the way we live now F Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby was able to invent himself because he lived in an age of illusion. Does the novel say something about the way we live now, asks John Gray. (Spoiler alert: Key plot details revealed below) Not long before he died, a celebrated conjuror, whose beautifully simple yet seemingly impossible tricks had earned him the baffled admiration of his fellow magicians, was asked if there was anything he still wanted. He replied, "I wish somebody could fool me one more time." The magician's confession came back into my mind when, a few months ago, I re-read The Great Gatsby. Scott Fitzgerald's novel - now in cinemas again - about a magnetically attractive millionaire, can be read as a story of the Jazz Age and a comment on the corruption of the American dream. It's also a tangled, and finally tragic, love story. Using the traumas of the "Lost Gener...