Museum Hours

It's that time of year again so here are my favourite films seen in the cinema this calendar year: Julieta  : the latest Almodovar is stunning and intensely moving. If this tale of a lost daughter is inspired by the myth of Demeter and Persephone, you can see the pomegranate seeds of guilt and loss in each generation. Embrace of the Serpent  : I can report that my serpent was, so to speak, fully embraced. Bracing, evocative, heart rending, psychedelic and beautifully photographed and directed. Arrival  : It was remarkably  emotional watching a film about the empathy of the alien in a dark and depressing week in which a narcissistic sociopath was elected to be the next President of the US. Forget the plot holes, this is a tour de force; Amy Adams is stupendous and the film gives us a faint glimmer of hope for humanity. Manchester By The Sea  (which hasn't opened in the UK yet) : the third great film by Kenneth Lonergan (after You Can Count On Me and M

In the near future 2016 is just going to be the year about which sane people say 'we don't talk about that' and move on to happier times. Let's hope that's true because this is a dismal time to be alive if you believe in, you know, stuff like liberal democracy, the rule of law, the separation of powers, one could even say western civilisation founded on Enlightenment values.  Indeed believing in such things seems now to be the test of belonging to the famous 'liberal elite'.  One of the saddest effects of the vile, pernicious and mendacious campaigns that have been run by thoroughly unscrupulous politicians in the UK and the US has been to make identity based on race, origin or belief the test of whether one truly belongs. This breathtakingly illiberal tidal wave is now making how you look, how you speak and how you behave a matter of political concern rather than a matter of personal choice. It will affect how people are treated and indeed whether

I've been musing about the exhibition which recently closed at the National Portrait Gallery of photographs by William Eggleston . The focus on the quotidian and the mundane and his unsparingly realist aesthetic is nonetheless utterly compelling when presented as art in a gallery. There are no feints just wonderful composition. Yet looking at his pictures put me in mind of David Lynch with all the unsettling, slightly off kilter and quite simply worrying intensity that suggests. Whilst the style is realist and the subjects are familiar the way that objects, but most particularly people, are presented is markedly distinct. I thought at tines that I might have entered the world of Mulholland Drive. There is a constant sense, much sought after by photographers, of having captured a moment with a very clear before and after. The sense that these subjects are caught in the act but also that there is something almost alchemical happening. These moments rarely look comfortable. So

Where indeed is Pierre? Furthermore, who is Pierre? And who is looking for him? And why? In the fabulous production at The Vaults of Strindberg's A Dream Play, the question is posed in ludic and ever more exaggerated manner by an ostensibly French woman situated in what might be a kitchen set for a rudimentary breakfast or what we might take to be a rather down at heel bistro. Either way she is accompanied and indeed prompted by increasingly urgent cello refrains. Her desperation is palpable. The precise focus for her question much less so. The play won't yield easy answers, as Strindberg himself said of it: "The characters split, double, multiply, evaporate, condense, dissolve and merge. But one consciousness rules them all: the dreamer's; for him there are no secrets, no inconsistencies, no scruples and no laws. He does not judge or acquit, he merely relates; and because a dream is usually painful rather than pleasant, a tone of melancholy and compassion fo

'The South' is a 1983 film by Victor Erice - the director of the spellbinding Spirit of the Beehive. Both films deal with aspects of Spanish history and in particular the consequences of the civil war. El Sur is set in the very north of Spain in a deliberately damp and cold landscape, the family around whom the story is spun living in a house on the edge of town joined to the rest of the area by a long, straight road which is referred to as the border. The father used to live in the South, in Sevilla, but left for reasons that are shown to be both personal and political. The effect of the fracture in the family, in politics, and in the his way of life is reflected in the way that characters are frequently lit half in the light and half in shadow. The expertise with which this contrasted light and shadow is used throughout the film is little short of astonishing. This contrast can be seen as reflecting both the sun and light of Andalucia and the dreary winter in Galicia

The mental health charity Mind describe PTSD in the following manner: " If you are involved in or witness a traumatic event, it is common to experience upsetting, distressing or confusing feelings afterwards. The feelings of distress may not emerge straight away – you may just feel emotionally numb at first. After a while you may develop emotional and physical reactions, such as feeling easily upset or not being able to sleep. This is understandable, and many people find that these symptoms disappear in a relatively short period of time. But if your problems last for longer than a month, or are very extreme, you may be given a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder." I'm beginning to think that large sections of the British population are suffering from some of the early symptoms following the catastrophe of the EU referendum - and that whilst we are still well under a month on from the event itself many of us are going to succumb to a fuller version of

Edmund Burke's pamphlet written in 1770 was focused on what he saw as the malign influence of the Court operating through the Royal prerogative on the operation of Parliament and in particular the House of Commons.  Those favouring exit from the European Union have a similar obsession about the degree to which the sovereignty of Parliament is being trammelled by others. Even if that is a stretch it's still a neat title for some reflections on just why we are so unhappy as a nation at the moment as to do something as ridiculous and self defeating as to leave a trading bloc with our major partners and turn our back on an institution which was founded in large part to prevent a return to war in Europe. The single most depressing aspect of the result is what it says about us culturally: insular, nativist, backward looking, increasingly xenophobic and in some respects simply bigoted and with a wholly misguided view about taking back our sovereignty in a world which is in fact in

The missing corner of the three cornered world is common sense. This absolutely exquisite novel from 1906 by one of the most revered of Japansese writers, Natsume Soseki, considers to droll but also profound effect how a slightly hapless artist seeks to engage 'non-emotionally' with the world as he visits a remote mountainous spa or hot springs. As the protagonist describes this aesthetic using the analogy of the game of Noh; the pleasure that we take from engaging in the game is not from any skill at presenting the raw human feelings of the 'everyday' world but: "...from clothing feeling 'as it is' in layer upon layer of art, and in a kind of slowed serenity of deportment not to be found in the real world". That phrase 'slowed serenity of deportment' (instantly becoming one of my favourite ever lines) is a beautiful way of capturing a wholly different disposition towards the world is required in order to be truly able to apprecia