Top 10 Films of 2018

The annual countdown which was particularly tricky this year given that the top three films were amongst the best I've ever seen. On another day these might have ended up in a different order. There is also still room for late drama given that before midnight tomorrow I am aiming to have seen two other films that will be contenders: Roma and Shoplifters. So there may be an addendum but for now here goes ....

1. The Favourite about which I have waxed lyrical previously. It absolutely requires your attention, preferably wearing a postmodern take on a periwig.

2. Leave No Trace Perfection. Incredibly moving yet utterly understated both in style and as a corrective to the predisposition to judge without taking the time to gauge where value resides for others. Everything is precisely measured right down to the very final image of a piece of bracken curled naturally but in such a way as to resemble a seahorse. The full resonance of that image will stay with me for some time.

3. Cold War about which I have also floated close to the ceiling. David Lean would have used this material to make a three and a half hour technicolour epic in the style of Dr Zhivago. Pawel Pawlikowski covers the ground in a brisk and economical 88 minutes of crisp black and white juxtaposing the romantic relationship of Zula and Wiktor and the entire history of Europe in the mid 20th century. What he has produced can only be described as magnificent.

4. A Fantastic Woman: An utterly gripping account of the very practical experience of prejudice towards trans women by society, government processes, the law, friends and family. The central performance is monumental.

5. Phantom Thread: Astounding. Perhaps the first, probably the only, psychological horror comedy scripted from a lost story by Ivy Compton-Burnett and directed from beyond the grave by Max Ophuls with an honourable mention to Douglas Sirk.

6. The Florida Project: An incredibly empathetic and engaging film about the precarious experience of being poor in the richest country on the planet.

7. First Reformed: Severe, restrained, austere and devastating. Of course Bresson, Bergman (and perhaps even Malick) are in there but for me its a tragi-comedy of the bleakest kind. The tragedy of despair arising from personal failings and a revulsion with humanity and a world of bigotry and stupidity but also the comedy of feeling that we are all ultimately absurd whilst simultaneously being desperate to express our struggles.

8. Faces Places: A masterpiece of humanist cinema which is playful, droll, delightful and very moving but has a steely sense of culture as emerging from the simple act of being or living in a place; the legacy of which lasts in the minds of those involved but can also be manifest for the appreciation of others, particularly as it becomes more fragile with the passing of time.

9. The Wild Pear Tree: A massively long film in Turkish which does little to disguise a love for the stylings of the 19th century Russian novel. Nothing as flimsy as an elegantly turned volume of Turgenev; we are in full on doorstop, arm breaker, closely typed Tolstoy mode. And like Tolstoy it is  quite brilliant even as not a lot seems actually to happen. The same very dull man is still talking to one of the other very dull men but somehow it's completely hypnotic. Ultimately the sense is that digging a well that almost certainly will never be filled because there is no water source and writing a book that no-one reads are similar ways of coming to terms with what to do with your life. Along the way there is some stunning cinematography, some highly resonant imagery and a sense of something quite profound being expressed about our aspirations in life.

10. Angelo: A beautifully observed film about cultural appropriation and identity which is by turns intriguing, horrifying and simply very, very sad. Quietly devastating. 

The Book Of Disquiet: A Thread of Dark Green Silk

“A whole way of life lies before me.

I sense the loves, the secrets, the souls of all those who worked so that this woman in front of me on the tram should wear around her mortal neck the sinuous banality of a thread of dark green silk on a background of light green cloth”.

The Book of Disquiet is full of such amazing, heart stopping moments captured in limpid yet often hugely dense prose. The genius of Pessoa is obsession with the fragmentary and the momentary and yet appreciation that behind each fragment and moment lies a whole world. A ‘whole way of life’. 

Such it is with the green thread on a woman’s dress on a tram in central Lisbon. An everyday journey with everyday people and yet the thread, perhaps a cousin to the madeleine in Proust which stimulates memory of specific past events, is a surface glimpse of an entire past which is comprised of all of the separate individual contributions that have led to that woman wearing that dress with that thread being in that place on that tram at that time.

Those circumstances will never again occur in quite that formation. The observer is granted a unique opportunity in which to encompass the full history of the moment. 

One might describe this as the antique quotidian. 

A point in time in an unremarkable day that reflects so much else but is in itself of no consequence. Yet it reflects multitudes which are unknown to the observer. The observer knows that more of those multitudes are known to the wearer of the dress and that increasing degrees of knowledge can be extended to the point when the wearer first caught sight of the dress and then back to the point at which the maker decided to use that particular weave and that particular thread.

The full profundity starts to become apparent as seemingly incidental decisions culminate in a moment full of deep meaning for one observer on a Lisbon tram. 

No wonder that the observer becomes dizzy. He imagines the lives of the workers, their realities, their homes, the source of the material. It all happens in a moment but is transcendental in effect.

The observer leaves the tram exhausted. As if he has lived a whole life. And, so, in the sense meant by Pessoa he has indeed through an acceleration of time’s arrow which has returned to its point of origin and then flown untethered through all the successive moments to pierce the eye of the observer.

I have a longstanding obsession with this notion of the everyday moment - how nothing can ever be quite the same again; that how something actually is depends on everything that has gone before so that each moment is truly antique culmination which by its very nature is as old as the hills. 

Pessoa gives this the greatest effect of any writer of whom I am aware and uses the most extraordinary literary techniques to worry away at the simultaneity of direct profound recognition of the significance of a moment and the utter unknowability of why it is as it is. 

To read The Book of Disquiet is to be waylaid by these extraordinary apercus on a continual basis. 

The ‘regular irregularity’ of the thread both captures a moment and describes a whole way of writing about the world for which Pessoa is fabulously equipped. Underpinned by a lugubrious fatalism the constant battle to continue to live with banality and tedium is central to his view of the world. 

Then the focus achieved through the individual moment brings everything into sharp, depleting and almost overwhelming relief.

That thread of dark green silk should be as well-known as the madeleine. 

Anni Albers: Sculpting With Thread

Wandering around this kaleidoscopic exhibition at the Tate put me in mind of so many other artists that I began to wonder whether Albers was a conduit for their influence or whether I was simply engaged in a procession of imagined serendipity.

It may seem strange to begin with a sculptor given that Albers primarily worked with textiles but I was constantly reminded of Brancusi. The wonder of Brancusi is that he aims to reveal and develop the inherent nature of the material whether stone, wood or metal. The form that he finds is therefore perfectly suited to the stuff with which he is working.

What is striking with Albers is that she does exactly this with the techniques applied to different types of material. Development In Rose (one of my favourite pieces in the exhibition) is made from linen and the impurities and imperfections in the thread are used in essence as highlights. The slightly muted colour also captures the often slightly faded nature of the linen palette.

This is later conceptualised as the ‘event of the thread’ particularly through the use of knots and free lines using brocading - a technique that allows for improvisation because it allows thread to be added over the basic weave. As she said: ‘The thoughts … can, I believe, be traced back to the event of a thread'. So strong is the emphasis on the tactile that this is close to sculpting with the material.

The frequency with which alarms went off in the exhibition because people were keen to be closer to and in fact wanted to touch and feel the exhibits is a testament to the supremely attractive quality of the combination of material, colour and weave. When seen up close the effect is utterly compelling. 

The second major influence - and likely a direct influence given that both attended the Bauhaus at the same time - is Paul Klee. The use of small colour blocks (see above) is very reminiscent of the approach used by Klee to capture light fractured into tiny pieces in a vast environment such as a desert.

Then there is Robert Delaunay in the use and development of colour theory and the representation of the colour spectrum. Looking at 'Sunny' (below) by Albers reminded me very strongly of Delaunay pieces seeing to represent the way that light, particularly strong sunlight, refracts into different colours.

Other pieces with stronger abstract patterns deliberately place colours in relation to each other given their position on the spectrum. Colour Studies not surprisingly gives effect to this .....

Albers also achieves a remarkably immersive quality. The extraordinary Torah scrolls have almost a 3D effect when stared at for some time; the pieces simultaneously move towards the viewer and drag the viewer in akin to the effect of a monumental Rothko. They also share the characteristic of being explicitly architectural in that, as was often the case for Rothko, the pieces were designed for a particular space and were an opportunity for Albers to give effect to her ideas about the role of textiles as part of broader architectural design. 

But there are some aspects of Albers that seem wholly sui genesis bringing together in extraordinary effect motifs to which she seems to return constantly. In Red and Blue Layers she has fashioned cotton knots which resemble the wheatsheaf interspersed with verticals in a completely beguiling and endlessly fascinating combination which seems at once centuries old (it certainly reminded me of 17th century fabric design) and completely new. Given that I could happily stare at this for hours why not do just that .....

Many of Albers' more regular pattern designs now looks as though they come from a catalogue. There's a reason for that. She has been so enormously influential that we now don't fully realise the extent to which her work has imbued so much of what we see and experience. However, what a catalogue most certainly cannot capture is the desire, as with the best sculpture, to set off those alarms and hold the material in your own hands.

'Nude Pomegranate Tory': A Parable for Our Times

Any film that contains a character credited as 'Nude Pomegranate Tory' is deserving of our attention. It transpires, however, that this is only the most modest of reasons to be interested in The Favourite, the magnificent new film by Yorgos Lanthimos which as a parable for our troubled times provides precious little by way of encouragement.

The film looks amazing. Baroque starts at the point when the dial has been turned up to eleven, so now we are at, to coin a phrase, eleventy stupid. Pictures, tapestries, wallpaper, dresses, wigs are all off the scale and then there is an amazing improvised routine that starts somewhere in the vicinity of a formal dance like a Rigaudon before moving into something more akin to a high kicking Tarantella as envisioned by a New Romantic practising to be a cheerleader. Clearly that doesn't end well.

There are vaulting sexual politics in that all of the men are treated as dolts and idiots by the three women at the centre of the court and the action. These women all adopt personas: one largely apeing masculine stylings; another much more traditionally feminine and between them a Queen who lives in a personal fantasy world, in which rabbits play a major part, as a response to the sadness of having 17 children none of whom has survived and who is plagued by gout and other illnesses.  The way that these women empathise but also psychopathically manipulate, satisfy (in all senses) and exploit the others is a delight but also a tragedy given greatest effect in the final astonishing phantasmagoric sequence. 

The film is all extreme angles, sinuous movement and mirrored curves; a fluidity that is truly baroque - the kink in the pearl from which the term derives. There are corridors of which the hotel in The Shining would be envious. Dark corners in which candlelight makes hardly an impression or shows up only faces protruding from periwigs. Whispers in galleries and half seen or half heard events. Some of these are the very stuff of blackmail and high politics when or if they emerge into the daylight. What you know and who you know it from is the very stuff of power. 

For we are in a time of extreme faction. We are amongst the Whigs and Tories. The country is viscerally divided  over an issue - in this case whether or not to end the War of the Spanish Succession. The landowners see their taxes rising and their tenants being wiped out on the battlefield; the merchants do not want their trade limited by the French. 

In the real world thousands of men are being killed and maimed in one of the bloodiest wars of the 18th century. Yet the issue is considered solely in terms of the interests of the patrician figures who inhabit the corridors of power in Whitehall Palace. The death and destruction is of little moment compared to unblinking ideology and personal and party advantage. 

Just momentarily I saw some contemporary parallels.

These are people seeking to manipulate a figurehead for whom most have barely concealed contempt. So much of the game is about who can make the Queen say what they want to hear. Is the Land Tax going to be raised to pay for the war or cut because the war is ending? Is Marlborough going to have a big house built for him by the state or sent abroad to spend some quality time with his family?

Again, fleetingly through the fog of centuries something chimed.

Who is seeking to have their voices heard? Arrogant posh boys. Naturally. These people are hopeless, arrogant, unthinking and uncaring products of extreme privilege who think everything is solved by debating tricks, intimidation and influence by virtue of birth and social standing. People who simply cannot bear not to get their own way and who expect deference as a matter of course. A clique who spend all of their time with each other in a club to which entry is denied to everyone else.  Most appallingly everything is as an endless game. A group of dilettantes for whom actual expertise is of no value since it would question why they were in charge in the first place. 

Strangely, this also reminded me of a few people. 

There is also genuine violence under all of the finery. Casual violence towards women and anyone inferior and deliberate violence towards equals. You definitely don't want to be anywhere close to the Duchess of Marlborough or Mrs Masham when they have some firearms to hand.

Bullying, intimidatory behaviour. Nope, think we've moved on from that. Haven't we?

Finally, after all the deceptions and lies which have played upon real fears and insecurities, often in the most cynical and manipulative of ways, there is the realisation of what winning actually means: on your knees rubbing the gout ridden leg of your monarch whilst being held by the hair. That wasn't what winning was meant to be all about.

All of which brings us back to the nude pomegranate tory. He is most certainly a tory, he's naked and his colleagues are finding is quite hilarious to pelt him with pomegranates. At the time, along with pineapples and other exotic fruits, pomegranates were the absolute preserve of the most wealthy stratum of society. As one might say, only the best people are subject to deluge of pomegranate. It is a moment of pure Bullingdon buffoonery.  

Alas, no pictures of the nude tory are available.

But here is a smashed pomegranate.

An Epic In Miniature

David Lean would have used this material to make a three and a half hour technicolour epic in the style of Dr Zhivago. That would have been a legitimate artistic choice given the vaulting ambition of the subject matter juxtaposing the romantic relationship of Zula and Wiktor and the entire history of Europe in the mid 20th century. 

In contrast, Pawel Pawlikowski covers the ground in a brisk and economical 88 minutes of crisp black and white but by the time the iconic Glenn Gould interpretation of the main theme of Bach's Goldberg Variations starts playing at around 85 minutes the tears will rise unbidden.

This is a film which brilliantly engages with history and period and how we deal with the inheritance from the past. The point of departure is Polish folk song and dance as a way of showing national resilience and pride after the horrors of the Second World War but also as the expression of a newly minted state which has to develop its own way of recognising the importance of the national story alongside the communist international. 

That tradition is subtly and then not subtly negotiated to be more appealing to audiences which are less concerned with the specifics of Silesian peasant culture in the 19th century and more interested in showing off Poland to other nations in the Eastern Bloc. 

Interpretation rather than adherence to tradition is also the spark which lights the central romantic relationship. This is then pursued through a series of specific locations and periods in which the central characters negotiate with each other whether they can find a balance which suits their needs and allows them to live together in a world in which where you are from and how you adapt to where you are now is a constantly contested issue. 

As you watch these short sections in Warsaw, in Berlin, in Split, in Paris unfold you can also see that Pawlikowski is using some of the dominant film styles of the relevant period for each section. So we have film noir for the scenes in the early 1950s, we have early Truffaut for some of the later scenes in Paris, we have some Fellini, we have Bresson towards the end and throughout there are images that could have come straight from an album of Cartier-Bresson photographs. He is in fact interpreting the period as it could have been represented in a contemporary film. 

The sections in Paris are resonant with iconic imagery. The jazz clubs, the garret rooms, the streets, the arrogance of the supposedly bohemian among the artistic elite. Paris as the great metropolitan entrepot, the melting pot in which style and innovation are paramount and in which one can supposedly submerge one's identity in that of the world in one city. Cold War shows just how hard it can be to do so in practice. This is perfectly encapsulated when Wiktor almost without recognising he is doing it moves from jazz to Chopin as he plays. His fellow musicians look at him in incomprehension. 

Cold War may be set in the middle of the last century but it speaks directly to our times in which cultural identity and its appropriation for nationalistic purposes is such a central issue and free movement of people is once again contested in a way that we had mostly hoped would never again be seen in Western Europe.

The film brings these abstract issues home to the difficulty each individual faces of being comfortable in their own skin when they wish to move beyond the boundaries of their place of birth but cannot accept the adaptations required to live elsewhere. In such circumstances, tragedy is rarely far away.

Finally, back to the Glenn Gould. It's a perfect finishing point for a scenario in which the interpretation of musical and other inheritance in ways that are, and are not, acceptable to the listener or observer is so central. Gould was famously eccentric in his approach to playing the canon, particularly Bach, sitting on an awkward stool and humming along as he played. For some, including me, the results are utterly sublime. 

The critical point about Gould though is that he manages to combine a strange kind of affectlessness in his playing with supreme emotion. How he does it is similar to Pawlikowski. He just gives it to you. He's not trying to secure a particular response. You can take it. Or you can leave it. So in fact if you connect the response is all the greater because you are connecting with his own very personal experience of playing the thing, humming and all. 

That feels a perfect encapsulation of the film too. It's the personal experience and the personal connection that matters. That either feels right. Or it doesn't. 

Zula and Wiktor would, I am sure, have agreed.

The British Labour Party, Palestine and Antisemitism

The biggest cheers of the whole speech given by Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour Party Conference in September were generally reckoned to go to his plea for an end to the oppression of the Palestinian people.

There is indeed much to applaud in this. Labour has traditionally been a party of the oppressed and the Palestinian people are widely acknowledged, including in several UN Resolutions, to have legitimate demands for restitution, focused particularly on the annexation of land by Israel following the 1967 war. 

For many in the Labour Party Palestinians are, however, seen as uniquely oppressed. 

Moreover, support for Palestine allows some in Labour to turn a blind eye to antisemitism.

Worse, support for Palestinians for some Labour members moves over into being actively antisemitic.

So why are some in the Labour Party so concerned with Palestinian rights compared to many other oppressed people across the globe; why is antagonism towards Israel as a state so much stronger than towards other states that have truly awful records in terms of using force against their own people and other countries and why does all of this lead to a worryingly prevalent strain of antisemitism in the party?

The answers seem to be assembled from several building blocks:

- Britain in its Imperial past was heavily involved in paving the way for a Jewish state in Palestine, the Balfour Declaration being the starting point. 

- Israel is regarded as a product of colonialism and settlement and hence its very foundation was oppressive towards the indigenous population

- For some the Jewish people in this context are regarded as 'white' in obvious contrast to the Palestinians

- The principled stance of anti-racism is then engaged in a binary manner so that Israel is judged to be engaged in white oppression

- Israelis are then characterised only as oppressors

- For some this opposition to the oppression of the Israeli state moves over to viewing not just Israel, not just Israelis but the Jewish people as a whole as oppressors. The fact that Israel is far richer and far more powerful than the oppressed is tied in to longstanding antisemitic tropes about 'the Jew' as privileged and powerful.

So tragically the very principles of anti-racism, anti-colonialism and support for human rights have become warped to the point that for some in the Labour party the actions of the State of Israel particularly human rights abuses are used as an explanation for criticisms which are just anti-semitic. 

Opposition to oppression has ended up demonising the entire Jewish people - who have of course themselves been oppressed for centuries and subjected to systematic genocide. 

This includes many Jewish people who are themselves strong critics of the actions of the Israeli state.

The effect within the Labour Party is increasingly severe. Group think -  part and parcel of increasing factionalism - is emerging (or perhaps in some case re-emerging) in some local Labour party branches which is highly and aggressively antagonistic towards any criticism of this explicit or implicit anti-semitism. 

More sadly still this antagonism is couched in terms of protecting free speech; but the intention is anything but free speech. In fact it is about denying the validity of criticism and, particularly when accompanied by a strong 'no platforming' stance, is a way of closing down discussion. 

This failure to respond to anti-semitism seems to be metastasising within the Labour party. Allowing it to become a peculiarly revolting aspect of virtue signalling to a factional in-group is a catastrophe.

Bathing In the Bathos

I am in love with bathos.

Bathos may not know this and would doubtless find the whole concept a touch overblown. 

Rather than an overwhelming crush one should have a mild disposition towards bathos. Otherwise it would doubtless need to take things down a peg or two. 

If bathos were French it would not pirouette or stoop to a proper moue but merely shrug you a bof. 

If you look up bathos on Wikipedia (rather than Tinder) you will be see it defined as a literary term, coined by Alexander Pope, to describe amusingly failed attempts at sublimity  

In particular, bathos is associated with anticlimax, an abrupt transition from a lofty style or grand topic to a common or vulgar one. This may be either accidental (through artistic ineptitude) or intentional (for comic effect). 

So why the love? 

As a staple of satire, bathos is one of the great ways of puncturing and undermining the arrogant and the self obsessed. At a time when there are more people than is remotely healthy with an over inflated view of their own importance we need bathos to do its work letting the air out of their little bubbles and allowing them to drift in somewhat dilapidated fashion down to earth to land with a muted minor thud on soggy ground. 

I see bathos as a laconic mischievous imp with a wry smile and sharp pen, a subtle and nuanced mind, a well developed sense of scepticism and a penchant for laceration. 

Bathos is, however, particularly attractive precisely because of its sense of its own absurdity. Otherwise one cannot properly appreciate the absurdity at large in the world. 

That said bathos really does care.  It is serious about stuff. But it doesn't do overblown concern and grand gestures. It stands (literally) in contrast to pathos. 

Instead it undertakes a modest checking in with reality and works its magic through juxtaposition. In doing so it keeps us all magnificently aware that we are all but a few steps from being absurd. 

In that regard it truly loves us so much more than those who see value in inflation and overstatement. 

Bathos is also howlingly funny to be around. That lacerating style is uncompromising.

But hey (to coin a phrase) it's worth it.

PS. Still not convinced. Try this: I Am A Tinder Guy Holding A Fish And I Will Provide For You

Translucent and Opaque: Rachel Whiteread's 'Ghost, Ghost II'

Rachel Whiteread's recent exhibition at Tate Britain included this quite astonishing piece. The most bizarre scale model or cast that one can imagine; it is positively spectral both clearly inhabiting this world but also seemingly shifting in and out of our consciousness as our perception of the exterior and internal spaces are constantly confused and confounded.

Made in polyurethane and light purple in colour it has the amazing quality of being both translucent and opaque. The effect is extraordinary because perception of the interior is never consistent. Visibility depends on the angle of sight and the specific point being viewed. It is possible to glimpse some of the interior - a staircase; a room; a corridor - but never to perceive it fully.

There are also shafts of real space intruding into the material that offer sight lines through which one has to squint to try to see more clearly what is happening inside the structure. This is generally a forlorn hope. One may simply see right through to the other side. It is as if the sculpture mocks attempts at seeing properly because all that one can see clearly is through to the world outside the building.

Then there are internal reflections as light is refracted through the structure. So the building contains a palimpsest of itself superimposed on its own internal surfaces. 

The structure has the modular look of being put together but it also feels complete as if there were no other way that these parts could possibly have been assembled. But the assembly is almost mischievous as if it could only be like it is now but that is not to say that at some future point it could equally convince as something subtly different.  It put me in mind of the deeply worrying House of Leaves :

Upon returning from a trip to Seattle, the Navidson family discovers a change in their home. A closet-like space shut behind an undecorated door appears inexplicably where previously there was only a blank wall. A second door appears at the end of the closet, leading to the children's room. As Navidson investigates this phenomenon, he finds that the internal measurements of the house are somehow larger than external measurements. Initially there is less than an inch of difference, but as time passes the interior of the house seems to expand while maintaining the same exterior proportions. A third and more extreme change asserts itself: a dark, cold hallway opens in an exterior living room wall that should project outside into their yard, but does not. Navidson films the outside of the house to show where the hallway should be but clearly is not. 

An equally disturbing echo is that of the eldritch shape shifting that seemingly responds to the perception of the viewer in Annihilation. This is particularly brought home by the fact that viewing Ghost, Ghost II from particular angles does indeed affect how it is seen. It is almost as if the house does indeed respond to the viewer.

One could look at this piece for hours. It is endlessly fascinating. 

A spectral shape shifter hovering at the very boundaries of perception. 

Is Football Uniquely Painful?

Two multi million pound businesses reach agreement for a prominent employee of one to start working for the other in exchange for a very substantial payment as compensation for early termination of a contract of employment. 

This must happen reasonably frequently throughout commercial environments and mostly passes without comment. 

When the businesses concerned are football clubs it can amount to something close the end of the world with a torrent of comment and contumely, metaphorical rending of garments akin to a funeral during the Trojan Wars, triumphant celebrations in one capital, fearful reading of the auspices (to mix metaphors) in another and a general sense of the world turned on its axis even on a day when we have the ghastly VSG being more geniuser than anyone has ever been.

The reason for this is not hidden. Football clubs inhabit a space that extends well beyond the commercial into communal bonds and culture, shared history, local and national rivalries and the very stuff of personal orientation; Red or Blue is a choice that matters more than most. It's essentially tribal. 

So early termination of a contract of employment by one of your very best employees comes with  personal and cultural baggage wholly out of proportion to the surface transaction. In particular:

- rejection. Few are good at dealing with this but for those left behind it feels like a personal kick in the teeth. Here is someone in whom trust has been deep; here is someone on whom to rely; here is someone akin to a saviour who can dig you out of a deep hole and can create magic almost on a whim. And then in a blink of an eye it's all gone

- jealousy. And of course it's gone somewhere else. To another team who are a European rival. We've been jilted and now our player is elsewhere. Worse, as anyone who has experienced the ending of a relationship knows, they're even happy to be elsewhere. It's as though you don't exist any more.

- inadequacy. We weren't big enough or good enough. We've failed. It's our fault for screwing up the chances that we had to win something that might have made us a genuine contender for the top.

- unfair competition. The playing field wasn't level. What chance did we have against this team who keep on telling everyone that they're the biggest/best/richest team in the world? It's impossible to compete against them.

- recurrence. We've been here before. Our best players keep on being stolen by other teams. How can we ever win something significant if this just keeps on happening? It's doubly unfair. Every time we look like we can break through it's snatched away.

- the hope kills you. We're just starting to play some of the most expansive attacking football on the planet and have just signed a player than other top teams really wanted (whatever they might say). He's just scored a winner against our bitter local rivals. Then this happens. 

- we were better in the past. Just can't escape the history. We deserve to be at the top because we used to be there. Forget all of those other fallen idols, the Ozymandiases of the football world. Your team always has a certain exceptionalism; a manifest destiny to be the best. 

- catastrophising. It's all downhill now. Only the downsides will come to pass. We won't win another game all season. We've handed our rivals a massive advantage. We might as well just take the pearl handled revolver out of the desk drawer and put ourselves out of our collective misery. It's just not worth going on. And we just hate those other teams so much (see jealousy, unfairness, recurrence ...)

- decline. This is another one of those signs of mortality. It's inexorable. 

So basically the ending of a contract of employment in football is akin to ending a relationship in the most acrimonious manner possible; experiencing severe depression and feelings of worthlessness; meeting people who share and reinforce these feelings; hating their new partner; fearing that you'll never have another meaningful relationship whilst those in the new relationship are having a great time somewhere on the east coast of Spain (as it happens) and feeling that you might as well just end it all now. It's better than the pain of ongoing failure. 

That's why football is so painful. 

Life and Death. It's more important than that. 

Top Ten (and Worst Five) Films of 2017

Some reflections on last year at the cinema including five absolute turkeys to be avoided at all costs.

First the best ....

1. Zama : A simply wondrous existential fever dream of disappointment and dashed hopes with a stunning walk on llama adding further bathos.

2. Personal Shopper : Grief and loneliness have rarely been as fascinating. The contemporary world expands the opportunities for communication whilst enhancing the resonance of the insight that you can be most lonely in a crowd. Coming to terms with loss involves psychologically either believing that what has been lost is in fact still there or the fact that it truly has gone. The account of that process in this film is a tour de force.

3. Toni Erdmann :' He's less a dentist; more an architect'. Side splitting, disquieting and moving and brilliantly performed and directed.

4. Columbus : The quiet comforts of modernist architecture and dumb phones. Wonderful to behold.

5. The Killing Of A Sacred Deer : Revelatory marrying of medium and material with affectless delivery perfect for the Absurd but also ancient inexorable fate being encountered. Stiff drinks required after viewing.

6. Aquarius : A mesmeric central performance by Sonia Braga and a meditation on life, death and property development.

7. Montparnasse Bienvenue : An absolute powerhouse of a performance by Laetitia Dosch cast adrift in the Paris precariat and nostalgic for things she never had.

8. The Son Of Joseph : None more droll. From the deliberate stately Baroque staging and the beautifully delivered lines to the wonderfully beatific Natacha Regnier this is an absolute delight. And careful reading of the credits delivers some final amusement.

9. A Quiet Passion : Riveting, literate, enraged, bitter, humane and with a simply astonishing rhapsodic sequence to the accompaniment of The First I Ever Saw Your Face.

10. La La Land : This is for the fools who dream.

And now the worst in descending order with the bottom one in the inner ring of the Inferno ...

5. The Lost City Of Z : Dullsville, Amazonia.

4. Marguerite et Julien : 'We must never meet again'. That may be a problem for the main characters but certainly not for the viewer who is unlikely ever to wish to see this wildly misconceived turkey a second time.

3. The Girl On The Train : Interminable; dull enough, indeed, to drive one to drink.

2. Elle : Manages to be both exhaustingly dull and deeply reprehensible and has a by the numbers Isabelle Hupert performance that is now becoming worryingly familiar: icy, detached, clipped and boring.

1. Good Time : I did actually run screaming silently from the cinema after seeing this. If being shut in a room for an hour and three quarters with people for whom you have zero empathy or interest, the most annoying soundtrack on the planet (unless you're reliving your Tangerine Dream days) and some of the most pretentious direction imaginable then by all means go and see this totally empty, dispiriting pile of crap. Otherwise do yourself a favour and avoid like the proverbial plague.