MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS

HOLLYWOOD IS ON THE OFFENSIVE Stephen Applebaum Published in The Scotsman: 07 March, 2002 There is nothing new about blaming society's violence on Hollywood. But did it, as Robert Altman insists, really help to inspire the events of 11 September? Could last year's outrage actually be the worst copycat crime yet? "The movies set the pattern, and these people have copied the movies," Altman told the Hollywood Reporter after the Twin Towers fell. "Nobody would have thought to commit an atrocity like that unless they'd seen it in a movie. How dare we continue to show this kind of mass destruction in movies? We created this atmosphere and taught them how to do it." Altman's remarks are undoubtedly as much a reflection of his own jaundiced view of Hollywood as of a wider reality, for he added that he hoped the outcome would be a return to a more thought-provoking and character-driven cinema. The kind of cinema, in other words, that he represents. But special pleading or not, the question remains: how should Hollywood respond to 11 September? Six months on, it has so far produced patriotic public service announcements that have been playing in American theatres; then, of course, there was the knee-jerk re-editing of existing movies and the hasty re-shuffling of release schedules immediately following the attacks. So far, though, there has been little indication of whether film content will change to echo the post-11 September zeitgeist. Despite appearances, the glut of war movies we are currently experiencing - Black Hawk Down, Behind Enemy Lines, We Were Soldiers - has nothing to do with the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, although their focus on bravery and heroism, cleansed of all self-questioning, chimes well with the times. Probably we are expecting too much too soon from Hollywood. Akiva Goldsman, writer of A Beautiful Mind, lives in New York and watched the Twin Towers crumble from his roof. Talking at last month's Berlin Film Festival, he told me he thought the sense of collective shock was still sinking in. "I think it has affected everything so much more deeply than is easy to characterise. If movies change as a result of 11 September that's just because it has changed everything." "I've always imagined this truth: when death touches your life, you are suddenly less able, and less willing, to wield it whimsically in terms of a construct," he added. "So I've always tried to resist writing things that are particularly violent in anticipation of that. In that sense it was a wake-up call to everyone." So fewer films that bask in violence, perhaps? If so, Berlin offered a few glimpses of what's to come. Kevin Spacey, for example, is surely on to something with an ensemble drama, The United States of Leland, which starts with a horrific act and then tries to understand how it happened, from a multitude of different perspectives. The film, which Spacey is producing, is in tune with the way he thinks we should be dealing with 11 September. "We hear political leaders on television frame the perpetrators of that act as evil, but I don't think that is enough for us as citizens of the United States or elsewhere," he told me in Berlin. "If we don't try to understand how it is those people (the terrorists) got to that place, then we'll never understand the why. And I do believe there is a why. It may be difficult to understand. It may be crazy. But it's too easy to say it's crazy and leave it at that. People have got to educate themselves." Debate is what is needed, a politically clued-up Donald Sutherland told me. "What the nation's built on is discussion, contradiction and growth, and at the moment you can't discuss anything. If you do start to discuss it, you get criticised. If people hate us, you have to find out why and try to solve that problem." What is not the answer, he argued, is to "railroad through an abrogation of the ABM treaty" as Bush has done, nor is it a missile defence system that will cost the country billions. "The reason the United States wants it, and unilaterally wants it, is because it makes them feel like they're better endowed as masculine individuals than the rest of the world. We all know that's a silly idea, in any relationship." Given the atmosphere in America described by Sutherland, it looks unlikely that Hollywood will be in the vanguard of those trying to explore the underlying causes of 11 September. The political film-maker Costa-Gavras fears studios will follow Bush's lead and "start doing movies against terrorism without dipping, a little, into the problem of terrorism, because it's more dramatic and satisfying for the American audience." THE massive success of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Collateral Damage last month- a film delayed after 11 September due to its gung-ho "Arnie vs terrorists" plot - suggests he may be right. Ironically, Mathieu Kassovitz, the French actor/director, has been persuaded by events to return to a project he had almost dropped before 11 September. "I thought I was going too far," he reveals. "But after the plane crashes, I said, 'No, I'm way under reality'." Not one to shy away from difficult subject matter, the controversial director of La Haine says his new film "is a very personal project about us as a species that is going to destroy itself, one day or another. "We are going to see nuclear terrorism or nuclear war during our lifetimes, no doubt about it," says the 34-year-old, chillingly. "Every time we make a warhead, we increase the risk of blowing ourselves up. So how can we avoid it?" That, surely, is the question we should be asking ourselves. © Stephen Applebaum, 2009

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL'S SCOTT DERRICKSON ON THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE

In September this year, a woman in Guyana was convicted of bludgeoning a friend to death. Her friend, she explained, was possessed, and she was trying to beat the Devil out. In Romania, meanwhile, a priest and four nuns from the Romanian Orthodox Church are on trial, accused of murdering a 23-year-old novice. In his defence, the priest who led the exorcism has claimed his approach was better than the medical treatment she had been receiving for her schizophrenia.

It's an older story, though, that inspired a film out this month, The Exorcism of Emily Rose. It concerns the death of Anneliese Michel, a Bavarian woman who died in 1976, aged 23, also after an exorcism. The two priests involved were charged with negligent homicide. So were the woman's parents.

Born in 1952, Michel was raised in a strict Catholic family. While other teenagers were experimenting with sex and rebelling against authority, she tried to atone for the sins of wayward priests by sleeping on a bare floor in the middle of winter. In 1969, according to court findings, Michel experienced her first epileptic fit; by 1973 she was suffering from depression and considering suicide. As her feelings of torment grew stronger, she reported seeing faces of demons on the people and things around her (a phenomenon eerily portrayed in the film) and hearing voices informing her that she was damned.

Michel's behaviour became increasingly erratic and violent. She ripped at her clothes, barked like a dog for hours, attacked other family members, broke religious icons; she ate spiders and coal, claiming that is all the demons would allow, licked her own urine from the floor, and performed hundreds of genuflections each day, damaging her knees to the point where she was unable to stand.

The girl's distraught parents looked for a priest to perform an exorcism. At first their desperate requests were denied. Then, in September 1975, the Bishop of Würzburg, Josef Stangl, gave Father Arnold Renz and Pastor Ernst Alt permission to perform the rite based on the 1614 Rituale Romanum. Michel endured two rites a week, some lasting as long as four hours. She briefly recovered enough to take her final exams at the Pedagogic Academy in Würzburg, but then her condition once again began to deteriorate dramatically. During her last exorcisms, Michel talked about wanting to die in order to save the souls of others. She stopped eating, rejected all medical help, and relied solely upon the priests to deliver her from the demons she believed were attacking her.

Although horribly emaciated, she displayed incredible strength. Unearthly voices claiming to be those of the demons possessing her - Judas Iscariot, Nero, Hitler, a disgraced priest and Lucifer himself - emanated from her withered frame. By the time she died, Michel was so undernourished that she had to be held up during exorcisms. She weighed only 68 pounds.

When director Scott Derrickson and co-writer Paul Harris Boardman set to work on The Exorcism of Emily Rose, their aim was to make a film that not only scared audiences, but provoked thought about the "big" questions: "Does the spiritual realm exist? Is there a God? Is there a Devil? These basic, fundamental ideas are things that everyone must answer, I think, on some level," says Derrickson. "And it's good fodder for discussion. So that was the goal."

The popularity of programmes such as Living TV's Most Haunted (whose recent live show was broadcast simultaneously to America) and Joan of Arcadia, and, of course, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ are perhaps evidence of a growing interest in spirituality and the paranormal, and in the kinds of questions that the film-makers wanted to address. Newsweek, says Boardman, suggested a few years ago that the quest for spirituality, or a spiritual underpinning beyond everyday life, among young Americans, "might be the great untold story of that generation".

Boardman sees it as a recurring sociological phenomenon that rises and falls in the culture, depending on different factors. "Some people feel it's a millennial thing," he says. "It also tends to happen when there are world events going on that make people feel devastated or like they have no control, and that maybe they don't have all the answers. But Scott and I just kind of feel it's fundamental to human nature."

This is not to say that they agree on the subject of possession: Derrickson, a practising Presbyterian, is a believer; Boardman, although raised in a Methodist-Protestant household in Tennessee, is a sceptic. "We joke about having a Scully-Mulder approach but we both respect each other's point of view so much that, going into a movie like this, I would trust that he wouldn't make something that was trying to preach to people to go a certain way," says Boardman.

In the film, Tom Wilkinson plays a priest on trial following the death of a young woman, Emily Rose (scary newcomer Jennifer Carpenter), during an exorcism. Was she mentally ill and did abstaining from medical treatment lead to her death, or was she genuinely possessed and a victim of demonic forces? Told in Rashomon-like flashbacks, the film makes a good fist of remaining even-handed in the battle between rationalism and faith, impressively piling up opposing interpretations of Emily's experiences. Even so, the outcome of the trial ultimately feels fudged. But whether it is in order to satisfy atheists and theists, the faithful and the faithless, or simply to allow the debate to continue, is a moot point.

That said, a postscript portraying Emily as a saint-like figure essentially aligns the film with her conviction that if her suffering, which she chose to endure unto death, was the work of the Devil, then how can anyone claim that God is dead? By this point the film has become less about her exorcism than her passion (in the religious sense of the word). Derrickson, who has taught in a Christian screenwriting programme in Hollywood which puts faith and spirituality at the centre of its curriculum, admits that he is fascinated by aspects of Catholicism (he cites GK Chesterton as his favourite author) and, significantly, the role of suffering in particular.

"Protestants and Catholics have very different views of that and when we got into these characters and realised who they were going to be, that felt like an interesting direction to go in, and an interesting thing to explore as a writer. We wanted to think a bit more about that and, again, to try and understand it."

As in the film, the investigation into the death of Anneliese Michel became a clash of faith and science. Ultimately, it was the coroner's conclusion that Michel had needlessly died of starvation that swayed the jury. Despite being found guilty, the defendants received just six months in jail and probation.

The court's judgment notwithstanding, Michel's story has continued to grip people's imaginations and her grave site is a place of religious significance for those who still believe that she died battling demonic forces. A commission comprised of German bishops and theologians decided in retrospect, however, that she had been mentally ill, and in 1984 they petitioned Rome to change the exorcism rite.

The problem, as they saw it, was the practice of speaking directly to the demon, which they believed caused damage by confirming and reinforcing the patient's belief that they were possessed. When Rome did issue a revised version of the Rituale Romanum in 1999, it caused astonishment by leaving open the option to speak to the Devil directly.

The tragic case of Anneleise Michel has done nothing to prevent a rising tide of exorcisms worldwide. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church considered itself so under-equipped to deal with the numbers of people claiming they have been possessed, that October saw the start of an eight-week Vatican-sanctioned course at Rome's Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum, designed to teach priests how to distinguish and fight demonic possession.

"With proper scientific study, priests and bishops should be better prepared to distinguish and meet their real foe: the rise of satanic worship," one of the instructors told Newsweek.

The course could not have come quickly enough for one American, who claimed that priests in Nebraska have been receiving a growing number of reports of poltergeist activity and ghostly sightings from their parishioners. "There are a lot more behaviours and lifestyles that are not of God," he said.

"There's a lot of relativism. Whatever goes, goes. There's a big surge in New Age, pantheism, young people playing with Satanism, a lot of drug use, black magic, psychics are so big, pornography, MTV. People are not searching for holiness."

Clearly, Derrickson and Boardman are on to something with The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Derrickson is pleased with the results (the film netted an impressive $40 million in its opening weekend in America); although he admits that the film's journey to the screen was not always a happy one.

"I read probably two dozen books on possession and exorcism, which was the most godawfully unpleasant thing I think I've ever done," he says. "The documentation that is out there is bone-chilling. And it's serious. I don't care whether you believe in it or not, it's so dark and so awful.

"Theologically, I was willing to discover I don't really believe in demons. But I found the evidence for the documented cases that are out there to be much more credible than I was expecting.

"So I found in the end it confirmed, or reaffirmed, my perspective on it."

Originally published in The Scotsman, 11/05

THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS IS NO BEDTIME STORY

IF YOU mainly equate Disney with cuddly and fuzzy, then you are in for a shock if you settle down to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas expecting to leave the cinema with a warm glow. For while the film's title makes it sound like a cosy bedtime story, Mark Herman's (Brassed Off, Little Voice) brave drama, from Disney subsidiary Miramax, is ultimately the stuff of nightmares.

Though a tale of childhood set during the Holocaust, this is no Life is Beautiful. Where that film's mawkish coda offered the audience bogus consolation, the harrowing final few minutes of Herman's film rush us headlong into the infernal machinery of the Final Solution, to which the only responses can be silence, sorrow and tears.

Survivors' stories, or the stories of so-called righteous gentiles such as Oskar Schindler, may be uplifting and life-affirming, but they do not reflect the truth of the Holocaust: that most people perished. Irish author John Boyne's 2006 best-selling children's novella did not duck this truth, and neither does Herman's adaptation.

Read the full story at http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/features/Disney39s-39The-Boy-in-the.4479755.jp

Copyright Stephen Applebaum, 2008

NEIL YOUNG WAGES WAR ON WAR IN CSNY: DEJA VU

At the height of the Vietnam War, folk-rock supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were at the forefront of the musical protest movement. When the US National Guard killed four demonstrating students at Kent State University in 1970, an enraged Neil Young wrote Ohio, directly attributing the deaths to Richard Nixon.

Almost four decades later, the 62-year-old Canadian is at it again, only now the targets are George W Bush and the Iraq War. His first fusillade was Living With War, a robust album comprised entirely of anti-war songs. Next, Young regrouped CSNY for 2006's Freedom Of Speech tour, building a 35-song set around the new material.

Young told his band-mates, best known for playing gentle, harmony-rich acoustic tunes, that they would only be playing 'songs about war and politics and the human condition', with 'no bullshit in-between'. In doing so, Young laughs: 'We didn't give anybody any relief. They just had to go: “Jesus, what the hell is this?”'

Directed by Young under the pseudonym Bernard Shakey, new tour documentary CSNY: Déjà Vu chronicles Americans' reactions to songs such as Lookin' For A Leader, No More Lies and Shock And Awe. We hear a broad range of views, including disgruntled soldiers back from Iraq, an army deserter, Vietnam vets, a bereaved mother and, in keeping with the tour's title, commentators who dismiss CSNY as hypocritical, over-the-hill hippies.

It adds up to a powerful piece of work. Concert-goers affronted by the group's message – the song Let's Impeach The President almost provoked a riot in Atlanta – were not paying attention, says Young, who likens the tour's name to 'a warning label on a jar of fruit or something, saying: “If you're going to see this, then you're going to get that.” If they didn't read the warning then they ended up with a rude surprise, depending on how they were feeling politically'.

The goal was to start a debate, and Young insists they succeeded. 'We could see families in the audience where the father and the mother would start arguing, and then the kids would be arguing with the parents, and then the father would say: “This is bullshit, I'm taking you out of here.” The kids would be looking at us and waving, and the parents would be dragging them out.'

The film reflects the divisions in America over the Iraq War, and the absence of a unified opposition movement. In the 1960s and 1970s, CSNY played to the converted. Then, however, young people felt personally threatened by the army draft and took to the streets to protest against the Vietnam War. Today's administration, says Young, learned from Vietnam that young people will rebel if they don't believe in the mission, so now the army recycles recruits.

'There's a huge change based on political survivability,' he sneers. '[Bush] wanted to stay in power even more than he wanted to do the right thing.' Whereas Young once believed music could change the world, he now doubts whether that's possible. It doesn't frustrate him, though. 'You just got to look at it for what it is. And anyway,' he adds, 'I'm more interested in changing the world through findinga new fuel source.'

Of course, not everyone wants to hear what Young has to say. Some Americans feel that as a Canadian, he has no right to criticise the US government or its actions. 'Even some people close to me have said: “You haven't got a leg to stand on. You're not an American.” I'm going: “Well, this is the leader of the free world. You do this, it affects us.” Things like that bother and upset me.'

Young is optimistic about the future, though, and hopeful that the US will soon have a 'good leader'. He gets angry, he admits, but tries not to lead an angry life. Indeed, he dropped all references to the war during his UK gigs in March, instead delighting crowds with career-spanning sets.

'I'm exercising a different freedom of speech,' he adds drily. 'Your right not to say anything.' Now happy to talk about the war again in support of CSNY: Déjà Vu, Young says: 'The underlying message is this: what are we doing as the human race? If somebody starts thinking war is not good, and if you can put that in your kids' minds, then maybe we can try to make the human race evolve away from war.

'Why are we stuck with war? Are we forever going to be throwing fireballs at each other like we have for the past 2,000 years? It's like we sleep, we eat and we war. That's it. Why do we need that?'

Originally published in Metro, July 14

http://www.metro.co.uk/metrolife/music/article.html?in_article_id=217744&in_page_id=25

© Stephen Applebaum, 2008

CHARLIZE THERON: IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH

Charlize Theron says smoking helped her land a role in Paul Haggis's Iraq war movie, In the Valley of Elah

"I'm going to do something filthy," says Charlize Theron. "Is that all right?" Go ahead, I say, intrigued. She places a cigarette between her lips and lights up. How disappointing.

Smokers are a dying breed in Los Angeles, but Theron partly has her "filthy" habit to thank for her role in Paul Haggis's haunting Iraq war film, In the Valley of Elah. "It's the one and only good thing that will ever come from smoking," she says, smiling, her green eyes obscured behind designer sunglasses.

To read the rest of this article in the Independent, go here: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/charlize-theron-a-chameleon-who-can-chill-or-charm-769512.html

© Stephen Applebaum, 2008