A little sugar coating

My younger brother has gone off to Paris for a couple of weeks to hang about in cafes and discover the beating hearts of the French, eat croissants.

To prepare for his trip he watched a couple of films to get him in an appropriately French frame of mind. His choices? Amelie and Paris, Je T’aime.

I know, it’s a bit like watching Mary Poppins and Notting Hill to get a feel for London. But perhaps there’s no harm in a little sugar coating from time to time*. Don’t most of us, as visitors, try to project on to a place whatever it is we are looking to find there anyway? It's not as if coming back from a trip with brutal memories and dashed hopes is going to fix a city's social problems.

Before I went to New York, Woody Allen's wonderful cinematic tributes had led me to suspect that most, if not all, New Yorkers were neurotic intellectuals with a penchant for complicated relationships. Sadly, that turned out not to be the case - and whatever happened to the jazz soundtrack? Still, I'm pretty sure it was the Woodster’s efforts, particularly Annie Hall and Manhattan, that ensured I was too busy focusing on the magic of his home city, like those amazing skyscrapers, to notice much of the grimmer, grimier reality on the ground.

So if people want to imagine London as a warm-hearted town full of books and stained glass and well-meaning children who aren't capable of stabbing anyone, or Paris as a dreamy stage for fairytales, romance and Carla Bruni, then good luck to them.

After all, I shouldn’t think sitting through La Haine or Irreversible would have made my brother’s croissants taste any nicer.

*Within reason. Too much sugar can rot the brain. Stay away from Love Actually.

Some good films set in London (in descending order of quality):
Withnail and I
Shaun of the Dead
Children of Men
Notes on a Scandal
Closer
This Year’s Love
Scenes of a Sexual Nature
Face
Match Point
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Difficult second post (Batman)

I quite enjoy ludicrous analogies between politics and pop culture. They make even the most tedious of subjects seem so new, so “now”! So you can imagine how pleased I was to come across an interpretation of the new Batman film as “a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage” of George W. Bush.

According to Andrew Klavan in the Wall Street Journal, President Bush is the real-life embodiment of the Dark Knight because, like Batman, he is “vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand”.

There's more. You know that beam of light they project into the night sky to rouse our cinematic superhero? That’s not a bat – it’s a “W”.

Disturbingly, rather than dismiss this love letter out of hand as a laughable attempt to salvage some admiration for a politically bankrupt leader, I fear Klavan may have a point. The “terms” of confrontation adopted by Bush and Batman do seem comparable in some respects, although perhaps not in the way he intended.

[Enter the spoilers…]

Batman kidnaps (extraordinarily renders, if you like) a dodgy businessman from Hong Kong and dumps him outside a Gotham police station, no doubt flagrantly breaching all kinds of diplomatic niceties. He listens in on the phone calls of the entire city without authorisation, and he beats up the bad guy to extract information.

Bush, as if we need reminding, is content to stretch a few rules too, initiating a secret programme of wiretapping without warrants, detaining suspects indefinitely without charge and torturing those who fail to co-operate.

That said, and without seeking in any way to undermine what is in many ways a wonderfully crafted edifice of bollocks, Klavan’s analogy falls down when it comes to the respective characters’ willingness to follow through.

While Batman resiles from killing the nasty Joker when he has the chance on more than one occasion, instead handing him over to the authorities to be dealt with under the rule of law, Bush pursues his enemies violently and ruthlessly as he struggles to secure world domination at any cost.

Bush's indelible link to human suffering, combined with a special talent for leaving chaos and instability in his wake, recall an entirely different character from the movie. He may be vilified and despised, but he’s no superhero.
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