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Dark pasts ...

149.254.49.16

In Reply to: RE: Netflix, it came out in 2008 . . . posted by mr grits on November 19, 2009 at 07:10:53

You raise interesting questions.
I'm reminded of the huge popularity in the UK in the mid-80's of the TV adaptation of Paul Scott's 'The Jewel in the Crown' tetralogy, which contradicted the dominant nostalgic vision of The Raj, elaborating on the themes EM Forster had begun to explore in A Passage to India. Two decades on, the murkier aspects of that period in our national history hardly feature at all in popular consciousness, I think.
As for the Mau-Mau period in Kenya .... !
I can't help feeling that current German society has on the whole a healthier engagement with its past, witnessed, for example, by the interest generated by Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, ten or so years ago.

Edits: 11/19/09

Follow Ups:

Surely you have seen "Come and See" which is a portrait of horror... - mr grits 16:12:22 11/19/09 (2)
of Nazi atrocity in Russia. I felt the film was too long and should have cut to the chase more quickly. The final scene was Apocalypse Now meets David Lynch with the SS troops attacking a small village. Truly heady stuff.

Anglo cultured film makers just don't seem to have the yarbles to capture the feel and accuracy of such brutal history as the Germans are doing and Russians have done.

Share a bowl of grits with someone you love tonight.
- As Churchill famously observed .... - Bhasi 00:49:43 11/20/09 (1)
  'History is written by the victors,' so it's good to discover books and films that contradict or deepen the accounts of war and its consequences which gain greater popularity.
  I haven't seen Come and See but will steel myself to. Thanks for the pointer.
  Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (of the same year, 1985) is probably the most affecting film I've seen on this topic, together with Pasolini's ghastly metaphorical Sal� (1975).
  Bảo Ninh's The Sorrow of War (1991) is a great novel about Vietnam that has not yet, I don't think, been filmed.
  My wife has been telling me for years that I must see Harry Hook's The Kitchen Toto (1987), about British colonial rule in Kenya, but I've yet to track it down. It's most famous for the closing screen of text which lists the statistics of the mid-50's 'state of emergency': something like 80 Europeans and 14,000 Africans dead.
  Sadly, the raw materials for future works in this genre are being enacted as we speak.
  
  Edits: 11/20/09 11/21/09
  - Kenya? Favorite guilty pleasure: White Mischief . . . - mr grits 21:04:40 11/21/09 (0)
    About a rather large group of Britons who thought the Germans might actually win the war that set up house in Kenya. The story is based on a true event and trial.
    
    Charles Dance excels at the dashing cad who steals Gretta Sacchi from the aging Joss Ackland. The end result of that relationship was ugly but the study of the decadence and mindless pursuit of pleasure is very interesting.
    
    I had to buy a Region 2 dvd just to be able to get it.
    
    Share a bowl of grits with someone you love tonight.

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