Conclave, for those who have seen it!

 In the film Conclave the name and nationality of the Dean pf the College of Cardinals, who was responsible for running the election of a new Pope, was changed from Jacobo Lemoli, an Italian in the Robert Harris novel, to Thomas Lawrence when Ralf  Fiennes was cast in the role.   The Dean’s post is one of the four senior Cardinals in the Vatican along with the secretary of State,  the Chamberlain of The Holy See, and the Confessor in Chief.

Robert Harris is clear in his introduction to the novel that for the sake of authenticity he used these real titles throughout the novel, but the characters he created to fill these offices were not intended to bear any resemblance to their present day incumbents.

     

According to ‘Political Europe’ several Cardinals watched the film to understand the process of a Papal election. 

 

For those who have seen the film it is worth saying that according to canon law Cardinal Benitez would not have been allowed to attend the Conclave, as appointments made ‘in pectore’ end with the current Pope’s death.  The novel says that the late Pope changed this law, (p 74) though that is not mentioned in the film.     With regard to other matters Harris ‘consulted Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor as part of his research for the book. He later gave Murphy-O'Connor a copy of the novel, and to his surprise, Murphy-O'Connor sent a letter praising its accuracy.’   Wiki. 

 

The Dean’s homily before the conclave starts is pretty much straight form the novel. 

‘My brothers and sisters, in the course of along life in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you that the one sin I have come to fear more than any other is certainty.  Certainty is the deadly enemy of unity.   Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance.Even Christ was not certain at the end. “Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani? He cried out in his agony at his ninth hour on the cross.  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Our faith is a living faith precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt.  If there was only certainty, and if there was no doubt, there would be no mystery, and therefore no need for faith.' 

 

'Let us pray that the Lord will grant us a Pope who doubts and by his doubts continues to make the Catholic faith a living thing that may inspire the whole world,  Let Him grant us a Pope who sins, and asks for forgiveness, and carries on.’  (p123f)

But the words of Cardinal Benitez, in his response to those of Cardinal Tedesco after the seventh ballot, were revised for the script, clearly by Robert Harris and Peter Straughan, and the last of his words  ‘The Church is what we do next’ added.     

 

For me as theologian these words carry deep meaning.   What I hear there is that although we may acknowledge that a Church is not made of stone or bricks,  but of the people of faith, it may be less commonly understood that the Church is not an organisation or institution.   ‘The Body of Christ’ is not a bureaucracy, or even a hierarchy, so it is not defined by its physical presence or characteristics, but by its actions.   The Church is what the Church does,  and that activity keeps changing.   The Church is not what it was in the past, or did in the past, but what it is and does  now – and therefore by ‘what it does next’ in any given situation.  

 

Cardinal Tedesco, in his fear and anger looked backwards for guidance and authenticity.   Cardinal Benitez, in his faith (not hope, which is different), looked forward trusting in his Lord;   the Lord whose body ended up nailed to a cross.   So the Church should not fear even its own death.  The survival of the institution of the Church should not be its major concern.   

        

Peter Straughan, the scriptwriter, had previously adapted John le Carre’s novel ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ for the screen, working with his wife, the late Bridget O’Connor, and later adapted Hilary Mantel’s three ‘Wolf Hall’ novels for the BBC.   I do not think that would have been possible without a clear understanding of the theological background to those historical novels set at the time of the 16^th century English Reformation. He was, by the way, brought up in a Catholic family.    

 

His script for ‘Conclave’  won many awards including the Oscar.     

 

Steve, part 2.

The staff at Steve’s school, called ‘Last Chance’ in the book, are like islands in the stream, standing in a tumultuous torrent of pain and anger trying stop it tearing the young men in their care away downstream,  towards disaster.  Steve and his colleagues know they have to do all they can to hold them, emotionally, heartfully, courageously (heartfulness and courage are really the same thing) to offer them a place of physical and emotional safety in what may be the only place where they are accepted as they are, for whom they are,  despite their behaviour.    

In youth work and schools we kept saying that ‘if there is something wrong with a child or young person’s behaviour there is almost certainty something wrong with their situation.’       Their behaviour is symptomatic, not causal.   We needed to look beyond the behaviour and explore what was behind it.   Why, for instance, is the bully bullying? The liar lying?  And we learnt that those who have been abused, in whatever way, are not likely to present themselves in ways that arouse our sympathy.  

That is why we needed to set aside our expectations of ‘good behaviour’, of politeness, even decency, and to reach out across the void and offer a hand,  even when we expected it to be bitten.   Even when it had been bitten.  Being bitten hurts and these young people knew exactly how to hurt.   Their emotional (and too often physical) scars told their own story.      

But even this is not enough.   Such children and youths also need firm boundaries  consistently maintained by those who care for them.   This is the same discipline all children need of course, but for them it is in spades.   The young boys in Steve need to know that this really is their last chance, that outside the boundaries is a void.  Both Steve the character and Steve the movie are clear about this.   

But how can the Staff  doing work like this be so strong, so consistent, so alert and responsive  when  they are also standing on rocky ground, also in danger of being swept away  by the torrent?   The film is set in 1996, after 18 years of Tory Government,  but now Britain has emerged from another 15 years of their rule, another 15 years of underinvestment in education and youth work. 

I remember attending a national conference  called by the Tories in the mid 1990’s, when they wanted youth work to be ‘contracted out’ from Local Government to charities such as the uniformed organisations, the denominational Churches and the YMCA and YWCA.    But they needed us to tell them what measurable ‘outcomes’ we would produce to justify the work – and the expense.    These needed it to be quantifiable, so we could be accountable.   

Many of us did not know whether to laugh or cry, or both.    For most of us the only justification for our work was the potential benefit it might bring to those we worked with, and these benefits could not be measured, predicted, tracked or tested.  Many of them  might not emerge for years, long after they had left our clubs or organisations.     Some young people might not benefit at all from our efforts.   Some would certainly have been damaged, but none-the-less we were there to ‘cast our bread on the waters’ in hope.     We did the work simply for the sake of the young people. 

The situation we see in Steve shows what happens when work with children and young people is shaped by a governmental ethic of profit and loss.    Not by ‘what can we give?’ but by ‘what shall we gain?’    In our case the Minister suggested that our efforts might mean more young staying on in education, or going into work.   These things, they were sure, would improve the Nation’s economy.    Now, of course, most English schools are run by Academies, by businesses.   The work done in places like Steve’s school is not really economically viable.       

If this does not read like a movie review forgive me.   It is a review of the truths that this movie tells.     If you read The Guardian article linked to it you will see that Steve  was made by people who know what they are talking about, and who care about it passionately.  That is why it is a passionate movie - and yes, I say again that movies can be made to move us, and as the great critic Roger Ebert said, “to generate empathy”.    I was going to write about the Direction, the Music, Cinematography and of course the Actors, but you can find out all about these elsewhere.     This article is simply about what their combined efforts meant to me as someone who spent most of their working life in Youth Work and Child Protection.   That is why this film means a lot to me.   

 

Steve. A film about heroism.

  

Steve is Ciaran Murphy’s new film.   He stars in it and produced it, working with Max Porter as they adapted Porter’s novel Shy into this screenplay.  Murphy had already worked with Porter in the stage version of the novel Grief Is The Thing With Feathers,  and the short film All Of This Unreal Time.    Adapting the two novels  required considerable work, as they both used interior monologue, chaotic nonlinear time scales and in the case of Grief, poetry.  Shy also mixed in the jumbled memories of previous conversations and confrontations.    Shy is played by Jay Lycurgo, who previously worked with Ciaren Murphy on Peaky Blinders,  and consecutively follows the events of just 24 hours.

Steve moves the focus away from the initial narrator, Shy, a 16 year old boy living in a corrective school trying to cope with behaviour that other schools could not manage.   It is 1996.  Shy is a central character, but most of the time we follow Steve, the Head teacher.    

Why is Shy there? We are told that “He’s sprayed, snorted, smoked, sworn, stolen, cut, punched, run, jumped, crashed an Escort, smashed up a shop, trashed a house, broken a nose, stabbed his stepdad’s finger.”  Already expelled from two schools, his first caution came when he was thirteen, and this may be his last chance, as it is for other boy there.   Shy is depressed and confused.  His mother also suffers from depression and, it seems, can no longer cope with Shy in her life.  This is a desperate time for Shy. 

But Steve and his exhausted under-resourced staff are having a hard time coping too.    An intrusive film crew arrives, totally insensitive to the febrile atmosphere, the knife edge that too many relationships negotiate, or fail to negotiate.   Verbal and physical violence can break out at any time, with fearful possible consequences.     An MP arrives trying to engage in conversation with the boys, and win their support in the upcoming General Election – and have it filmed for propaganda.  Needless to say this does not go well. In the midst of this Steve seems to be suffering from PTSD after a car crash and resorts to pain killers and alcohol.    

This is not an easy film to watch, and it should not be easy.  There is so much pain, anger, sadness, despair, fear and confusion, but there are also moments of joy, hope and emotional intelligence, shown by both members of staff and the boys.    I remember Hemingway’s definition of courage as ‘grace under pressure’.    That rings true to me, and so did this film.    

In 1996, when this film is set,  I was doing group work in an establishment one rung lower down, in the place young men ended up when all other systems failed; a prison for ‘Serious Young Offenders’, seventeen and eighteen years old, many of them there because their uncontrolled violence had led them to commit GBH, manslaughter or murder.   I worked with some of them, with some Warders, and the Prison Chaplian.    And I was over whelmed by admiration for so many of them.     Not all Warders are brutes, many of them will do whatever they can to help their charges to be rehabilitated, to find hope and purpose in their lives.  And many of those young men were determined to do so themselves.   

I also came to see that the difference between many of those boys and myself came down to sheer luck.  In so many of their lives there came a time, maybe just 10 minutes,  when they could no longer cope with the pressures life had brought down on their shoulders.   The weight of their pain, anger, confusion and despair leading them to acts of hate and violence.   Acts they would regret for the rest of their lives.     I am sure that many other people are put under  such pressures, I know I one was, but we got through those 10 minutes – or however long they last – not by virtue or moral strength but by luck and  having previously been given the support we needed to survive.   Given, not deserved.  We all deserve it, but not everyone is given it.     

The boys and staff  portrayed in Steve are heroic.    I will write more, later, about the performances,  direction, music, camera work and script, but for now it is enough to say that this is a fine film, a grown up film, a Good Thing, a ray of light in the darkness and a beacon of hope in hard times.    It is not fun.  At times it is properly frightening.    It does not have a happy ending, in fact it does not really have an ending at all.  The 24 hours are simply over.  Another 24 hours will follow.   Things will not necessarily get better; in fact they will almost certainly get worse,  but for now we have come through and there is hope.

Why hope?  Because this is a film about love.   Not sentimental love, which is cheap, but about love-in-action, the love we call compassion, and that is always costly.     I urge you to see it.   We need more films like this.  We need more works of art like this.  We need more real life examples of the loving endurance portrayed in this movie.    My thanks to all involved.   

28 Years Later.

 

23 years ago Danny Boyle directed Alex Garland’s ground breaking script, 28 Days Later.   The  film was also ground breaking in its early use of digital cameras, and Cillian Murphy’s first lead role.    It also starred Naomie Harris (later Miss Moneypenny) Brendan Gleeson and Christopher Eccleston.  It was shot by Anthony Dod Mantle using the new lightweight Canon XL1 digital cameras to great effect.   Although often still called a Zombie movie, it was not about the ‘living dead’ but about folk infected with a Lab created virus called Rage that turned them into highly energetic, murderous and seemingly mindless people - and ones who could move very fast in pursuit.   One drop of their blood would infect anyone who came into contact with it in less than a minute.    Despite being  a horror movie, and a very popular and influential one, its deeper theme (as with many other ‘horror movies’) was that of family.    And the true monsters turned out not to be the ravening infected but the uninfected.     

 

A couple of years later the studio made a sequel, 28 Weeks Later, which did not involve Boyle of Garland.  It did not impress. 

 

28 Days Later, however, has maintained a loyal fan club, and when Boyle and Garland got the rights back some years ago they started thinking about a sequel of their own.     

So now we have 28 Years Later.   In this sequel Europe is free of infection, but the British Isles have been put into an enforced International Quarantine to contain the plague, with the uninfected  left to look after themselves.     One such group live on Holy Island, Lindisfarne, linked to the Northumbrian mainland by a tidal causeway, and thereby protected enough to survive.   The collapse of technology has virtually plunged them back 200 years.   With no electricity or communications they only have bows and arrows to protect themselves with when venturing across the causeway to forage, and to ‘blood’ their teenage boys, a rite of passage completed by killing some of the infected, reverting to some common tribal practices around the world and throughout history. 

 

This movie follows 12 year old Spike, played brilliantly by Alfie Williams (who some years ago had a small part in the BBC’s His Dark Materials).  His mother Isla, played by Jodie Comer, is seriously ill.   His father, Jamie, (Aaron Taylor- Johnson) takes Spike onto the mainland to ritually kill a Crawler, one of the kind of Rage victims that have regressed into being slow ground-hugging creatures living off insects, worms and grubs and posing no real threat to the Rage free.  But a kill is a kill, and killing is a rite of passage for these young males.   While on the mainland  Jamie tells Spike about the ‘Mad Doctor’ who still lives there.  As there are no Doctors on the island Spike resolves to take his mother to the Doctor, hoping he will cure her.   The Doc is played by Ralph Fiennes.   

 

The 3^rd Act includes a scene that knocked me sideways.   I say ‘sideways’ because grief is not something we leave behind us in the past.  It travels alongside us,  and that is why sometimes we can be knocked sideways into its presence.   When I left the cinema I thought that, brilliant as the movie is, I would never want to see it again.  A few days later, however, having got over my initial distress,  I decided it really deserves a second viewing.    The fact that it so moved me is surely testament to its quality.   The terrific script, superb direction and  profound performances held me tight, despite my not being a ‘horror movie’ fan.  And yes, this is a proper bloody, gruesome horror,  but like 28 Days Later, it is much more than a horror movie and again essentially about family – and so much more. I jut so happened that part of the ‘so much more’ impacted heavily on my own long held feelings of grief. 

 

As was said in another fine film, Rabbit Hole, (2010, Nicole Kidman, Miles Teller and Aaron Eckhart, written by David Lindsay-Abaire and directed by John Cameron Mitchell),    

 ‘Grief  can be like a boulder that falls on you.  After a while you manage to crawl out from beneath it.  Then you learn to carry it, and you do not want to put it down.  It is what you have.’  

 

So I do hope you will watch this film, and do so in a cinema, but be warned, it might impact you too.   Roger Ebert, the late revered film critic, famously said that movies can be 'empathy machines'.  They can help us understand how other people might feel.   But they can also put us back in touch with our own deepest feelings.   There is no harm in that as long as they are not traumatic.   And these films do not ‘make us feel’ something, they remind us that we do already feel that something.   

 

The only thing that distracted me was the confused geography.  Some will, I am sure, remember when in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman arrived on the Dover Beach and walked to Sherwood Forest via Hadrian’s Wall, and its now infamous Sycamore Gap.   In this film young Spike walks from Lindesfarne to the same Gap, and then past the ruins of the Angel of the North.   As it happens I know this territory well and  I really do not think he walked that far, and he never crosses the Tyne, which would have been necessary.   Danny Boyle says he showed the sycamore still standing to make the point that this is an ‘alternative’ future,  but the whole film is set in an alternative timeline.    England is not, and has not been, plagued by infected maniacs.    It temporarily broke the spell of my suspended disbelief.     When Jodie and Aaron had mastered the regional accent so well, and the Northumbrian Island was so clearly identified, I thought this was jarring and unfortunate.  Of course, those without a knowledge of the area will not notice,   and once again, this may seem to be a just a horror movie, but.      

 

The sequel has already been filmed and will, Danny Boyle says, be more about evil.  In the first movie the infected were not evil, they were deranged.   Sadly, we still accuse those who are dangerously aggressively mentally ill as being evil, even monsters.  We do so of course to separate ourselves from them.    They are ‘Other’.   Many people believe however that we are all capable of acts of terrible evil – and amazing goodness – in the right or wrong circumstances, without us being ill.  Just by being human.