Author Archives: markdowe1

Arts, Films

Film Review: The Guardians

TRAGEDY ON THE FRENCH HOME FRONT

Sowing tension: ‘Land girls’ Francine (Iris Bry) and Hortense (Nathalie Baye) work the fields of the Massif Central.

THE story of France’s land girls during the First World War is told with patience and painterly finesse in this softly virtuosic period drama from Xavier Beauvois (Of Gods and Men), based on a 1924 novel by Ernest Perochon. The place is the pastoral folds and plains of the Limousin in the Massif Central, the year 1915, the mood tense but perseverant.

The region’s menfolk are gone, swallowed up by the front some 400 miles to the north-east. So it falls to the women to till the soil and gather the crops – women like 20-year-old orphan Francine (screen newcomer Iris Bry), who arrives at the door of stoic, pewter-haired farmer’s widow Hortense (Nathalie Baye) on a 12-month contract, ready to do her bit.

The war itself is rarely glimpsed, but always invisibly present, through both the landscape’s eerie half-emptiness and the water-torture drip of death notices announced in church, as Beauvois’s camera watches the faces of the mourners.

When Hortense’s son Georges (Cyril Descours) comes home on leave, a seam of sexual tension is struck through the daily routine: Georges is at least informally betrothed to young Marguerite (Mathilde Viseux), but he and Francine strike up a close relationship, and the two correspond by letter when he returns to active duties.

Hortense’s daughter Solange (played by Baye’s real daughter, Laura Smet) is already married, but her husband Clovis (Olivier Rabourdin) has been embittered by the conflict – a far cry from the handsome American GIs now roving around the landscape.

Beauvois’s vision of the period is totally convincing, and his depiction of hardscrabble farm life rings with a quiet vibrancy – a slow-burn story of tragedy and betrayal takes shape, but some of the best moments here are when the film just watches Hortense, Francine and Solange go about their work, and scenes in which charcoal is made in a mossy forest kiln and pats of golden butter are slapped into shape in the pantry look like magical rites.

Period detail feels truthful thanks to its particular way of looking: cinematographer Caroline Champetier’s compositions look like canvassers by Daubigny, Corot and Millet, capturing the essence of a moment so vividly you can almost smell the morning mist.

This is a rich, fulfilling film that rolls along with the bittersweet turn of the seasons, and makes century-old rhythms of living engrossing and fresh.

 

The Guardians (15 cert)

Verdict: Endearingly rich and moving

★★★★

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Asia, Books, Britain, China, History

Book Review: Imperial Twilight

DARK TRUTH OF THE OPIUM WARS

THE Opium War began in 1839 in which the British and Chinese faced one another. It was a one-sided affair: The Royal Navy was the most powerful military force in the world, while the Chinese possessed weaponry that was centuries out of date.

The Chinese were reduced to desperate measures. One commander hatched a plan to strap fireworks or pyrotechnics to the backs of monkeys and catapult the poor primates onto the British ships in the hope that they would blow up their powder magazines. In the event, nobody could get close enough to launch the monkey bombs at the enemy.

The war was the end result of a decades-long, often fractious relationship between China and Britain, characterised by misunderstandings and ignorance on both sides.

Eighty years earlier, in 1759, there was only one British national, James Flint, who knew how to speak and write in Chinese. His attempt to present a petition to the Chinese emperor on behalf of the East India Company ended with Flint imprisoned for three years and the man who had taught him Chinese decapitated.

In 1793, Lord Macartney arrived in Beijing, bearing gifts from King George III including telescopes, a planetarium and a hot air balloon. The Emperor announced that they were “good enough to amuse children”. Macartney left Beijing having achieved little.

It was trade that finally brought the two nations together, but there were, unfortunately, two kinds.

One consisted of legal commodities such as cotton, silks and tea. The other was in opium, which the East India Company smuggled from India into China, where demand was high.

The two countries had very different attitudes to opium. In Britain, the drug was legal and sold by apothecaries and tobacconists. There was even a tonic for teething babies called Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup.

But China’s growing addiction problem was devastating its cities. Opium was illegal and punishments for using it grew even harsher.

The war was precipitated by the Imperial commissioner Lin Zexu, who confiscated vast amounts of the drug and threw it in the sea. (He wrote a prayer to the god of the sea apologising for his defilement of the waters.)

Charles Elliot, the chief superintendent of the British in Canton, sent a furious dispatch to the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, demanding military action. Some months later Elliot got what he wanted.

The Opium War was not the British Empire’s finest hour. The Times newspaper described it as “nothing less than an attempt, by open violence, to force upon a foreign country the purchase of a deadly poison”.

But the twilight of Stephen Platt’s title was not that of Britain’s empire. It was China that was in decline – and worse was to come. Now that China is once again one of the world’s great powers, knowing the history of its relationship with the West becomes ever more important. Platt’s book makes a scholarly, but enjoyable, contribution to that knowledge.

– Imperial Twilight by Stephen Platt is published by Atlantic for £25

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Britain, Defence, Government, NATO, Norway

Britain and Norway in collaborative mission to curb Russian threat

DEFENCE

BRITAIN’S new fleet of submarine-hunters will work alongside Norwegian forces as a deterrent to the Russian threat.

Britain and Norway will combat the resurgent threat from Russian naval forces by sharing facilities for new Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA).

The “significant increase in Russian submarine activity” means NATO naval forces are at particular risk in the North Atlantic and Baltic Sea.

The UK will take delivery next year of the first nine P-8A aircraft, at a cost of around £3billion.

Norway is buying five of them in a move that reflects the “changing security environment” in the North Atlantic, according to a statement jointly signed by the UK, Norway and the US.

The UK aircraft will be based at RAF Lossiemouth in Moray, Scotland, with operational and logistical support extended to the Norwegian planes.

The plan to share facilities comes in the wake of comments by Gavin Williamson, the Defence Secretary, that increased Russian naval activity in the Atlantic “shows the increasing aggression [and] increasing assertiveness of Russia”.

He said the Royal Navy had responded 33 times to Russian warships approaching UK territorial waters in 2017 compared with just once in 2010.

The decision in 2010 to scrap Britain’s MPA capability was subsequently reviewed in light of Russia’s military actions in Georgia and Ukraine, according to a spokesperson for the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The UK is investing in nine P-8A maritime patrol aircraft.

“The change of gear in the relationship with Russia meant filling the gap [in MPA capability] in the 2015 Defence Review was a significant priority.”

Submarine hunting skills had been retained in the RAF by embedding personnel in the US, Canada, Australian and New Zealand armed forces. The decision was taken in 2015 to revive a sovereign British maritime patrol capability.

Submarines are the most potent part of the Russian navy.

The fleet consists of about 60-70 vessels and only a handful could pose a problem for NATO naval forces. The P-8 conducts anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, and shipping interdiction, along with an electronic signals intelligence role.

This involves carrying torpedoes, depth charges, Harpoon anti-ship missiles and other weapons.

The Poseidon’s search radar is optimised for detecting small objects on the surface of the sea, such as submarine periscopes, as well as larger surface contacts. And it deploys sonobuoys to help detect submarines.

A spokesperson for Norway’s Ministry of Defence previously stated: “Norway and the UK are natural partners given our shared values, as well as our history and geography.”

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