Museum Hours

I haven't, as they say, read the book but I have read the  article . The book - Forgetfulness: Making the Modern Culture of Amnesia by Francis O’Gorman - is concerned with what is described as the 'systematic devaluation' of the past since the 19th century. As I understand it the basic points are that: - societies are increasingly obsessed by the future and as such want to relegate where they came from in order to create the new order that will be so much better - big organising ideas like communism found it necessary to sweep away everything that went before - liberal societies are increasingly critical of their pasts and wish to denigrate them for failing to live up to modern ideals.  To say that this left me mildly puzzled is something of an understatement. Listening to our current political discourse one could be forgiven for thinking that the past is in fact the major obsession of many of our politicians constituted as a weird amalgam of Our Is

A brief account of films seen over the last 10 days in what was a bit of a bumper year in terms of quality with only one really loudly squawking turkey. They aren't in a precise order but the ones towards the top are those I most liked. The one at the bottom is running around the room flapping wildly. Zama  by Lucrecia Martel which is a simply wondrous existential fever dream of disappointment and dashed hopes with a stunning walk on llama adding further bathos. Not an easy watch but amply rewards attention with some stunning images and cinematography. Having also just read the book on which the film is based there is a separate blog post about both for those who truly are gluttons for punishment. Columbus  a luxuriantly talky but deeply felt film set amidst the quiet comforts of modernist architecture and dumb phones. Ava  by Lea Mysius which is as zesty as its teen protagonist is spiteful, complex and enterprising. Jeune Femme  with an absolute powerhouse of

"I had done for them what no one had ever tried to do for me. To say, to their hopes: No." That is the  novel - written by the Argentinian author Antonio Di Benedetto in the 1950s but set in a Spanish colony in Paraguay in the 1790s - in a single line. The book and the magnificent film adaptation by the Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel just now being released on the festival circuit are concerned with existential despair; the disappointment in the realisation of hopes being forever deferred, of ambition never being satisfied, of the quotidian as what happens before real life starts. They are also concerned with the identity that we assign to ourselves. As the director said at the screening last night:  "I believe that identity creates an inevitable trajectory so it becomes a trap in itself." That may feel rather hard to unpick but she is saying that once we fasten on to a set of assumptions about who we are and our place in the world w