Found these fascinating vids today.
The first one is a potted history of the cafe culture in London from its humble beginnings in the 50's - the birth of rock 'n roll and Beatnik culture - through to the the 60's student/hippy/arts scene.
The second film, is a lament on how the smoking ban in France is affecting the traditional Parisian cafe clientele.
As I wrote in the 'Smoking for beginners' post, I am partial to a pinch of tobacco in moderation but can understand the irritation it causes to others.
I can still have a fag with my Espresso outside a Cafe Nero though...not really the same though is it really.
I like to play 'spot the cigarette' when watching old movies, documentaries and TV - so funny, Richard Burton sparking up and chaining it on 'Parkinson', as natural as breathing at one time.
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Saturday, 17 July 2010
The Three Wayfarers
“This stark surprise, these vivid figures among the rocks,
seemed to be there for his benefit alone. It was as if they were
actors striking up a tableau whose meaning he was supposed to guess,
as if they were not quite serious, only pretending to know he was watching.”
So feels the musician character in Ian McEwan’s ‘Amsterdam’ novel as he covertly witnesses a couple arguing in the isolated beauty of the Lake District.
I read that part last night lying in bed, and it made me tingle in recognition of a similar experience I had about three weeks previously in ‘the wilds’ of the local countryside.
It was a sweltering hot day and I embarked on one of my usual nature rambles along the Staffordshire Way – it was just after lunchtime on a Thursday and I was prepared as usual with the essentials for outdoor survival: spicy Nik Naks, Tuna sandwich, bottle of squash and a notepad and pen. Strangely I forgot my camera this time.
After about a mile from my village, as you exit the long bridal path, there’s a lane which takes you onto the main road to the adjacent village, and just before that, the stile to reconnect with the rest of the public footpath.
Instead of automatically swivelling to the right on this day, I stood and pondered for a while, just listening and letting the countryside envelope my senses.
It was so quiet, no cars, cyclists, aeroplanes, other walkers – just a few bird tweets springing up every now and then. It was beautiful but a bit unnerving.
At times like this I often like to imagine I’m in some Sci-Fi movie, maybe Charlton Heston’s version of the Omega Man.
After a couple of minutes, I decided to take the left fork for a change, remembering that the local country house - Chillington Hall - was only ten minutes walk down the lane. I used to go past it a lot in my younger cycling days, and for some purely random reason had missed it for a few years by taking other routes.
Maybe all that aristocratic opulence had been a turn-off - lets face it there isn’t anything more blatant in the local countryside that reminds you of the class division in England.
Odd really, or maybe not: Mother Nature and Daddy Big Bucks in a strange symbiotic dance. (Maybe the Big Bucks thing has long gone though eh, thank god for the vulgar but essential tourist trade.)
Anyway, I came to the main entrance gate of the Hall, and sat down on the exquisitely manicured ‘grassy knoll’ to the right. This gave me a great panoramic view of the hall in the June sunshine. I was like a little aristocrat myself: liquid refreshment, finely sliced tuna sarnies and the exotic delight of hand-rolled foreign tobacco…otherwise known as Golden Virginia.
I’d been there for around ten minutes, leaning back and just smelling the breeze and ruminating on the social history of the place – visualizing a black horse-drawn carriage rumbling up to the Hall in ages past – when my reverie was rudely interrupted by a crass reminder of the modern age: a big motorcycle engine, bubbling and whining its way into my little Eden.
‘Twat’ I sighed.
The biker had pulled up at the other gate over the road, behind me. I was thinking, ‘please leave me alone’, ‘let me return to my tranquillity’, ‘don’t talk to me’.
“Takes your breath away doesn’t it!”
Oh God.
I turned to see a small chubby, shaven headed guy (or balding) in his late fifties, dressed in regulation Black Country sun-seeker attire: Ice wash cut off denim shorts, white basketball shoes, white socks and proud beer-belly spilling out of the tight vest.
It was the equivalent of D-Day in the vulgarity stakes.
Then the most hideous thing of all happened…he sat down next to me…and carried on talking.
Joking aside, the guy was really interesting and funny.
He was retired now, and had been in the removals game for many years. He told me his tales of country house clearances, of being a personal acquaintance of Lord Lichfield in years gone by, of the loneliness and boredom of living on his own.
I started to feel a bit uncomfortable, but I could tell he was just a lonely guy, wanting some kind of human contact, just someone to tell his story to, a reminder that he is still alive – has being in the world.
One fascinating anecdote he told me was about a ‘punishment logbook’ he discovered in the stables of a manor house he was clearing out in his youth.
He told me of a particular entry that had caught his eye and stayed with him over the intervening years.
A stable boy had received six strokes of a whip for being seen spitting by the Madam of the house.
I nodded at his ‘Cruel bastards’ estimation.
So I sat and listened, nodded and smiled at the appropriate moments, told a few tales of the countryside myself, and thought of the strangeness of these chance human encounters.
I noticed out of the corner of my eye, behind the bikers shoulder, a patch of white moving up the lane towards us. As it got closer, I became more and more intrigued.
It was another walker, around my age, but so attired that he kind of captured my attention.
White Fedora hat, (and despite the heat) buttoned up long sleeve denim shirt, white Chino’s, Oxford brogues, little goatee beard and specs. I kid you not.
He seemed somehow out of place and time, yet…somehow totally appropriate.
He looked the classic ‘Creative type’: maybe a painter out to capture a few sketches, or an academic, meditating on Kant’s categorical imperative after a morning lecture.
And yes, he walked up to the entrance and sat down on one of the stone bollards opposite us – another talker, another wayfarer at the crossroads.
(Oh yeah, that’s another thing, the track to the Hall continues on the other side of the lane, originally unbroken before it was bisected and scarred by modern tarmac.)
The new guy had a small canvas shoulder bag with him, and on it was printed the name of the local university I’d attended years ago. Okay, the academic guess was probably pretty near the mark. Sure, just a coincidence, but I was getting a little nervous by now.
I stood to leave, making my excuses (I was genuinely hot and sweaty) but also feeling something I couldn’t put my finger on…a feeling of a scene being enacted, like the tableau that McEwan’s character felt in the quote at the beginning.
All this is for my benefit; I’m a little pawn on a giant cosmic chessboard.
I had the compulsion to break the surreal tableau, because I think I felt on a very deep level, that to stay would mean the encounter would escalate into ever more bizarre loops and synchronicities of symbolism.
Looking back, I think I felt I’d lose my identity, or grip on reality in some strange and incomprehensible way.
I walked back the way I had come, retracing the steps of the ‘academic’, not looking back until I got to the twist in the lane.
There they both still were, but standing now in the road…and looking my way.
Maybe they weren’t looking at me, but it made me shudder a bit.
I just felt this weight of signification and meaning, like you get now and again when waking from a particularly vivid dream – the voice in your head saying: ‘remember this, its important!’
One idea struck me quite profoundly when I got home, and has stayed with me ever since.
It was as if those two characters were possible aspects of myself, almost like twin Doppelgangers that I’d projected from the depths of my own psyche.
The life of the mind, creativity, intellectualism - or the lonely older guy, speaking only of the good old days of yore and being on nodding terms with the moneyed classes.
I'm still having fun 'deconstructing' the experience three weeks later.
It felt right that I went my own way in the end, the middle path.
I still don’t believe those two ‘wayfarers’ were real even now.
Here’s a pic of Chillington Hall, this is what I could see, or we could see from our vantage point at the crossroads almost exactly, but it was a bit more green when I was there.
seemed to be there for his benefit alone. It was as if they were
actors striking up a tableau whose meaning he was supposed to guess,
as if they were not quite serious, only pretending to know he was watching.”
So feels the musician character in Ian McEwan’s ‘Amsterdam’ novel as he covertly witnesses a couple arguing in the isolated beauty of the Lake District.
I read that part last night lying in bed, and it made me tingle in recognition of a similar experience I had about three weeks previously in ‘the wilds’ of the local countryside.
It was a sweltering hot day and I embarked on one of my usual nature rambles along the Staffordshire Way – it was just after lunchtime on a Thursday and I was prepared as usual with the essentials for outdoor survival: spicy Nik Naks, Tuna sandwich, bottle of squash and a notepad and pen. Strangely I forgot my camera this time.
After about a mile from my village, as you exit the long bridal path, there’s a lane which takes you onto the main road to the adjacent village, and just before that, the stile to reconnect with the rest of the public footpath.
Instead of automatically swivelling to the right on this day, I stood and pondered for a while, just listening and letting the countryside envelope my senses.
It was so quiet, no cars, cyclists, aeroplanes, other walkers – just a few bird tweets springing up every now and then. It was beautiful but a bit unnerving.
At times like this I often like to imagine I’m in some Sci-Fi movie, maybe Charlton Heston’s version of the Omega Man.
After a couple of minutes, I decided to take the left fork for a change, remembering that the local country house - Chillington Hall - was only ten minutes walk down the lane. I used to go past it a lot in my younger cycling days, and for some purely random reason had missed it for a few years by taking other routes.
Maybe all that aristocratic opulence had been a turn-off - lets face it there isn’t anything more blatant in the local countryside that reminds you of the class division in England.
Odd really, or maybe not: Mother Nature and Daddy Big Bucks in a strange symbiotic dance. (Maybe the Big Bucks thing has long gone though eh, thank god for the vulgar but essential tourist trade.)
Anyway, I came to the main entrance gate of the Hall, and sat down on the exquisitely manicured ‘grassy knoll’ to the right. This gave me a great panoramic view of the hall in the June sunshine. I was like a little aristocrat myself: liquid refreshment, finely sliced tuna sarnies and the exotic delight of hand-rolled foreign tobacco…otherwise known as Golden Virginia.
I’d been there for around ten minutes, leaning back and just smelling the breeze and ruminating on the social history of the place – visualizing a black horse-drawn carriage rumbling up to the Hall in ages past – when my reverie was rudely interrupted by a crass reminder of the modern age: a big motorcycle engine, bubbling and whining its way into my little Eden.
‘Twat’ I sighed.
The biker had pulled up at the other gate over the road, behind me. I was thinking, ‘please leave me alone’, ‘let me return to my tranquillity’, ‘don’t talk to me’.
“Takes your breath away doesn’t it!”
Oh God.
I turned to see a small chubby, shaven headed guy (or balding) in his late fifties, dressed in regulation Black Country sun-seeker attire: Ice wash cut off denim shorts, white basketball shoes, white socks and proud beer-belly spilling out of the tight vest.
It was the equivalent of D-Day in the vulgarity stakes.
Then the most hideous thing of all happened…he sat down next to me…and carried on talking.
Joking aside, the guy was really interesting and funny.
He was retired now, and had been in the removals game for many years. He told me his tales of country house clearances, of being a personal acquaintance of Lord Lichfield in years gone by, of the loneliness and boredom of living on his own.
I started to feel a bit uncomfortable, but I could tell he was just a lonely guy, wanting some kind of human contact, just someone to tell his story to, a reminder that he is still alive – has being in the world.
One fascinating anecdote he told me was about a ‘punishment logbook’ he discovered in the stables of a manor house he was clearing out in his youth.
He told me of a particular entry that had caught his eye and stayed with him over the intervening years.
A stable boy had received six strokes of a whip for being seen spitting by the Madam of the house.
I nodded at his ‘Cruel bastards’ estimation.
So I sat and listened, nodded and smiled at the appropriate moments, told a few tales of the countryside myself, and thought of the strangeness of these chance human encounters.
I noticed out of the corner of my eye, behind the bikers shoulder, a patch of white moving up the lane towards us. As it got closer, I became more and more intrigued.
It was another walker, around my age, but so attired that he kind of captured my attention.
White Fedora hat, (and despite the heat) buttoned up long sleeve denim shirt, white Chino’s, Oxford brogues, little goatee beard and specs. I kid you not.
He seemed somehow out of place and time, yet…somehow totally appropriate.
He looked the classic ‘Creative type’: maybe a painter out to capture a few sketches, or an academic, meditating on Kant’s categorical imperative after a morning lecture.
And yes, he walked up to the entrance and sat down on one of the stone bollards opposite us – another talker, another wayfarer at the crossroads.
(Oh yeah, that’s another thing, the track to the Hall continues on the other side of the lane, originally unbroken before it was bisected and scarred by modern tarmac.)
The new guy had a small canvas shoulder bag with him, and on it was printed the name of the local university I’d attended years ago. Okay, the academic guess was probably pretty near the mark. Sure, just a coincidence, but I was getting a little nervous by now.
I stood to leave, making my excuses (I was genuinely hot and sweaty) but also feeling something I couldn’t put my finger on…a feeling of a scene being enacted, like the tableau that McEwan’s character felt in the quote at the beginning.
All this is for my benefit; I’m a little pawn on a giant cosmic chessboard.
I had the compulsion to break the surreal tableau, because I think I felt on a very deep level, that to stay would mean the encounter would escalate into ever more bizarre loops and synchronicities of symbolism.
Looking back, I think I felt I’d lose my identity, or grip on reality in some strange and incomprehensible way.
I walked back the way I had come, retracing the steps of the ‘academic’, not looking back until I got to the twist in the lane.
There they both still were, but standing now in the road…and looking my way.
Maybe they weren’t looking at me, but it made me shudder a bit.
I just felt this weight of signification and meaning, like you get now and again when waking from a particularly vivid dream – the voice in your head saying: ‘remember this, its important!’
One idea struck me quite profoundly when I got home, and has stayed with me ever since.
It was as if those two characters were possible aspects of myself, almost like twin Doppelgangers that I’d projected from the depths of my own psyche.
The life of the mind, creativity, intellectualism - or the lonely older guy, speaking only of the good old days of yore and being on nodding terms with the moneyed classes.
I'm still having fun 'deconstructing' the experience three weeks later.
It felt right that I went my own way in the end, the middle path.
I still don’t believe those two ‘wayfarers’ were real even now.
Here’s a pic of Chillington Hall, this is what I could see, or we could see from our vantage point at the crossroads almost exactly, but it was a bit more green when I was there.
Saturday, 10 July 2010
The Stephen Fry Appreciation Society
I've always enjoyed a good intellectual 'Fry up' over the last decade.
Its a dish that appears to get better and better with age.
Fry is a man who appears to have an endless curiosity and boundless knowledge of the world, and a genuine and compassionate fascination with his fellow men and women.
He's an iconic example of that rare specimen:a geek with a soul and the generosity and talent to convey often complex ideas in a witty, interesting and intelligible way.
So many knowledgeable and/or 'bright' people (the two don't necessarily go together) tend to be selfish with their learning, or carry it like a baseball bat - beating the presumed proles into dazed submission.
Fry really wants to communicate, wants you too to become immersed in the dizzying curiosity that he himself feels about...EVERYTHING.
He exudes a kind of vulnerability and sensitivity, which, when combined with his intelligence, creates this (slightly) eccentric Cambridge Don/awed child/world weary hybrid persona.
I know, very complex, but highly entertaining too.
Fry's Bi-polar illness and troubled childhood - culminating in a spell in the nick as a teenager - have been well chronicled in the media and by the man himself.
He's not just an emotionally crippled bookworm who spits out facts like a computer algorithm, he wants and encourages others to engage with the world - both intellectually and socially.
He reminds me a lot of William Burroughs in his ability to make you say, 'Of course, why didn't I think of that!' But unlike the cold aloofness that Burroughs projected, Fry scatters his pearls far and wide and hopes that you'll chuck them right back with a few of your own.
I am aware that this post is something of a hagiography, and if I ever meet Fry he might turn out to be a complete bastard, but its a risk I'm willing to take.
His educational and entertainment value far outweigh potential future disillusionment's - at the time of writing, LOL.
Here's a 2-part vid of the man in full passionate flow:
Its a dish that appears to get better and better with age.
Fry is a man who appears to have an endless curiosity and boundless knowledge of the world, and a genuine and compassionate fascination with his fellow men and women.
He's an iconic example of that rare specimen:a geek with a soul and the generosity and talent to convey often complex ideas in a witty, interesting and intelligible way.
So many knowledgeable and/or 'bright' people (the two don't necessarily go together) tend to be selfish with their learning, or carry it like a baseball bat - beating the presumed proles into dazed submission.
Fry really wants to communicate, wants you too to become immersed in the dizzying curiosity that he himself feels about...EVERYTHING.
He exudes a kind of vulnerability and sensitivity, which, when combined with his intelligence, creates this (slightly) eccentric Cambridge Don/awed child/world weary hybrid persona.
I know, very complex, but highly entertaining too.
Fry's Bi-polar illness and troubled childhood - culminating in a spell in the nick as a teenager - have been well chronicled in the media and by the man himself.
He's not just an emotionally crippled bookworm who spits out facts like a computer algorithm, he wants and encourages others to engage with the world - both intellectually and socially.
He reminds me a lot of William Burroughs in his ability to make you say, 'Of course, why didn't I think of that!' But unlike the cold aloofness that Burroughs projected, Fry scatters his pearls far and wide and hopes that you'll chuck them right back with a few of your own.
I am aware that this post is something of a hagiography, and if I ever meet Fry he might turn out to be a complete bastard, but its a risk I'm willing to take.
His educational and entertainment value far outweigh potential future disillusionment's - at the time of writing, LOL.
Here's a 2-part vid of the man in full passionate flow:
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Caledonia Dreaming
I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks because I’ve been living something of a schizophrenic existence between Staffordshire and Edinburgh.
Most of the past fortnight has been spent hopping on buses, watching train timetables, dodging herds of overloaded tottering backpackers, straining to hear that ridiculous and totally unintelligible metallic platform announcer, and of course, trying to evade deep vain thrombosis on those weird torture devices more popularly known as Virgin train seats.
Okay I’m exaggerating a little – well, a lot actually.
I quite like the feeling of transitions, train travel, the flashing, crab crawling parallax viewed landscapes, the clack, rattle and shoosh of that softly furnished ground-to-ground missile.
The chaos and buzz of city railway terminus’ (or is it ‘termini’?) appeal to my Bohemian/Beat sensibility on an almost primitive level.
Its like a medieval carnival atmosphere: colour, noise, meetings, lovers leave-takings, entrances and exits, the plethora of accents – both national and international – the vendors, soldiers, children, gendarmerie, the vagabonds seeking alms, the old, and the lost and the lonely.
My girlfriend lives in a small village around an hours bus ride outside of Edinburgh, it’s a lovely place to recuperate and get loved up (and be fussed over) after the physical and psychological stimulation of travel and the noisy, gymnastic pavement slalom of Edinburgh.
In-between this most personal of liaisons, I had to see a few men (and a woman) about a job as I’m in the middle of moving to the Edinburgh area and building a new life there.
I love Edinburgh.
Its so European in a wide boulevard, cosmopolitan, medieval, old meets new town, parks, plaza’s, cobbled street, silent close kind of way…if you know what I mean?
I like to sit in Princess street gardens smoking a ciggy and meditating on the historical significance of Edinburgh castle as it towers above me like the surreal follie of some mad Bavarian aristocrat.
Dean Village is fascinating too.
I visited the Dean gallery and the Museum of Modern art there. They’re like two stately homes set in beautiful leafy, landscaped gardens, only around twenty minutes walk from Edinburgh centre.
The city is a flaneur’s paradise, everywhere you look, no matter how crowded, you feel a sense of space, a view. I was of the crowd but not with it - the objective watcher.
Unlike London for example, I never felt claustrophobic or overwhelmed at any point. I always felt me, free and relatively unencumbered by the architecture, crowds and traffic. I felt in balance, like Edinburgh itself appears to be.
One of my favourite little pleasures of the Scottish commute, is the summer evening train journey from Edinburgh Waverly to Birmingham New Street station.
It takes around 4 hours (7pm to 11pm roughly).
Yes I’m going back to the Midlands and leaving a loved one, but hey, what a way to go.
Watching the unfurling fabric of the Lake District with its blue misty hills and dark valleys, the lonely homesteads flicking past. I often wonder who lives in these places, what are their histories?
I often get mesmerized by the wind, whispering its patterns on the fields - like a sign language meant only for me.
The Sky.
Last night it was vast, stormy and Biblical. I could see enchanted oceans and celestial cathedrals, strange faces and portents, churning away in ‘twilight's last gleamings’.
I was timeless and the landscape was eternal, and I felt a kinship with William Blake, Kerouac and other visionaries for a while.
Freedom and beauty is ready and waiting if you just know where to look.
I’ve uploaded this vid, as it has something of the vibe of what I’ve been talking about, plus, it’s a favourite of mine anyway.
Most of the past fortnight has been spent hopping on buses, watching train timetables, dodging herds of overloaded tottering backpackers, straining to hear that ridiculous and totally unintelligible metallic platform announcer, and of course, trying to evade deep vain thrombosis on those weird torture devices more popularly known as Virgin train seats.
Okay I’m exaggerating a little – well, a lot actually.
I quite like the feeling of transitions, train travel, the flashing, crab crawling parallax viewed landscapes, the clack, rattle and shoosh of that softly furnished ground-to-ground missile.
The chaos and buzz of city railway terminus’ (or is it ‘termini’?) appeal to my Bohemian/Beat sensibility on an almost primitive level.
Its like a medieval carnival atmosphere: colour, noise, meetings, lovers leave-takings, entrances and exits, the plethora of accents – both national and international – the vendors, soldiers, children, gendarmerie, the vagabonds seeking alms, the old, and the lost and the lonely.
My girlfriend lives in a small village around an hours bus ride outside of Edinburgh, it’s a lovely place to recuperate and get loved up (and be fussed over) after the physical and psychological stimulation of travel and the noisy, gymnastic pavement slalom of Edinburgh.
In-between this most personal of liaisons, I had to see a few men (and a woman) about a job as I’m in the middle of moving to the Edinburgh area and building a new life there.
I love Edinburgh.
Its so European in a wide boulevard, cosmopolitan, medieval, old meets new town, parks, plaza’s, cobbled street, silent close kind of way…if you know what I mean?
I like to sit in Princess street gardens smoking a ciggy and meditating on the historical significance of Edinburgh castle as it towers above me like the surreal follie of some mad Bavarian aristocrat.
Dean Village is fascinating too.
I visited the Dean gallery and the Museum of Modern art there. They’re like two stately homes set in beautiful leafy, landscaped gardens, only around twenty minutes walk from Edinburgh centre.
The city is a flaneur’s paradise, everywhere you look, no matter how crowded, you feel a sense of space, a view. I was of the crowd but not with it - the objective watcher.
Unlike London for example, I never felt claustrophobic or overwhelmed at any point. I always felt me, free and relatively unencumbered by the architecture, crowds and traffic. I felt in balance, like Edinburgh itself appears to be.
One of my favourite little pleasures of the Scottish commute, is the summer evening train journey from Edinburgh Waverly to Birmingham New Street station.
It takes around 4 hours (7pm to 11pm roughly).
Yes I’m going back to the Midlands and leaving a loved one, but hey, what a way to go.
Watching the unfurling fabric of the Lake District with its blue misty hills and dark valleys, the lonely homesteads flicking past. I often wonder who lives in these places, what are their histories?
I often get mesmerized by the wind, whispering its patterns on the fields - like a sign language meant only for me.
The Sky.
Last night it was vast, stormy and Biblical. I could see enchanted oceans and celestial cathedrals, strange faces and portents, churning away in ‘twilight's last gleamings’.
I was timeless and the landscape was eternal, and I felt a kinship with William Blake, Kerouac and other visionaries for a while.
Freedom and beauty is ready and waiting if you just know where to look.
I’ve uploaded this vid, as it has something of the vibe of what I’ve been talking about, plus, it’s a favourite of mine anyway.
Saturday, 19 June 2010
The Swimmer: A life in a day.
The movie ‘The Swimmer’ was released in 1968, its one of my favourite movies: beautifully strange, with an undercurrent of darkness (excuse the pun) and bleak existential profundity.
The film opens with ‘Ned’ (Burt Lancaster) jogging in swimming trunks through a sparkling autumnal woodland in the bright early morning sunshine.
Ned looks tanned, healthy and happy as he drops into a friend’s backyard pool and announces to the folks sitting there that he’s about to embark on a little personal odyssey: he’s going to swim across the county in a wild loop using the pools of old friends and acquaintances and return back home again.
As the day wears on, Ned is confronted with the various aspects of his past and present as an affluent Connecticut Advertising executive, living in the picturesque suburbs with his perfect family and the party set clique.
In one meeting he attempts to seduce a former babysitter of his daughters when she confesses she had a crush on him when younger. But this ends in embarrassment and rejection for Ned, as does confrontations with ex-lovers and former close friends.
Something is wrong.
Ned’s glittering smile, gushing bonhomie and boastful remarks about his beautiful wife and daughters, are increasingly met with cool indifference, sarcasm, and finally, outright anger.
At a public pool Ned is confronted by angry shopkeepers and various creditors he owes money to for unpaid grocery bills and so on.
The summery, smiling façade begins to crack at this point, ‘the swimmer’ is not welcome and his attempts at joviality are interpreted as waffle and evasiveness.
In the final scene, Ned arrives home at last after his strange Homeric journey.
His ‘home’ is of course locked and empty, a storm is brewing as darkness begins to fall.
The swimmer breaks down sobbing on the porch.
The movie (originally adapted from a John Cheever short story) creates a fantastic contrast between the affluent, comfortable, suburban culture of cocktails and swimming pools, and the silent but ever present neurosis that accompanies it; the silent scream of boredom, insecurity, shallowness and existential confusion and loss.
Lancaster’s character is a ghost, he’s already dead to most of his so called ‘friends’. Ned has committed the ultimate sin…he can’t keep up appearances anymore, he’s fallen on hard times. A corpse that remains unburied, ugly and rotting under a cloudless azure sky.
The old life has gone, and Ned’s personal odyssey is like a final haunting, a brief funereal passage of the old self.
The movie is literally ‘swimming’ with symbolism and metaphor.
It’s ‘day-in-the-life’ narrative can be compared to Joyce’s Ulysses - Ned is Leopold Bloom of course.
Ned is always waving not drowning, desperate to stay afloat, to keep up appearances, to convince himself and others that its all okay, everything is beautiful and perfect in the blazing sunshine and glittering waters of his (and their) little world.
Its almost like he’s trying to purify himself too, he feels ‘unclean’ of low caste: he’s attempting to wash away the stains and stigmata of his shame in front of his friends, pool by baptismal pool.
The Swimmer is everyman and every woman, a superb allegory for a single human life.
We’re all just trying to stay afloat against the tides and hidden currents of life…and grinning like idiots while we’re doing it.
Apologies for cheesy voice-over on this trailer!)
The film opens with ‘Ned’ (Burt Lancaster) jogging in swimming trunks through a sparkling autumnal woodland in the bright early morning sunshine.
Ned looks tanned, healthy and happy as he drops into a friend’s backyard pool and announces to the folks sitting there that he’s about to embark on a little personal odyssey: he’s going to swim across the county in a wild loop using the pools of old friends and acquaintances and return back home again.
As the day wears on, Ned is confronted with the various aspects of his past and present as an affluent Connecticut Advertising executive, living in the picturesque suburbs with his perfect family and the party set clique.
In one meeting he attempts to seduce a former babysitter of his daughters when she confesses she had a crush on him when younger. But this ends in embarrassment and rejection for Ned, as does confrontations with ex-lovers and former close friends.
Something is wrong.
Ned’s glittering smile, gushing bonhomie and boastful remarks about his beautiful wife and daughters, are increasingly met with cool indifference, sarcasm, and finally, outright anger.
At a public pool Ned is confronted by angry shopkeepers and various creditors he owes money to for unpaid grocery bills and so on.
The summery, smiling façade begins to crack at this point, ‘the swimmer’ is not welcome and his attempts at joviality are interpreted as waffle and evasiveness.
In the final scene, Ned arrives home at last after his strange Homeric journey.
His ‘home’ is of course locked and empty, a storm is brewing as darkness begins to fall.
The swimmer breaks down sobbing on the porch.
The movie (originally adapted from a John Cheever short story) creates a fantastic contrast between the affluent, comfortable, suburban culture of cocktails and swimming pools, and the silent but ever present neurosis that accompanies it; the silent scream of boredom, insecurity, shallowness and existential confusion and loss.
Lancaster’s character is a ghost, he’s already dead to most of his so called ‘friends’. Ned has committed the ultimate sin…he can’t keep up appearances anymore, he’s fallen on hard times. A corpse that remains unburied, ugly and rotting under a cloudless azure sky.
The old life has gone, and Ned’s personal odyssey is like a final haunting, a brief funereal passage of the old self.
The movie is literally ‘swimming’ with symbolism and metaphor.
It’s ‘day-in-the-life’ narrative can be compared to Joyce’s Ulysses - Ned is Leopold Bloom of course.
Ned is always waving not drowning, desperate to stay afloat, to keep up appearances, to convince himself and others that its all okay, everything is beautiful and perfect in the blazing sunshine and glittering waters of his (and their) little world.
Its almost like he’s trying to purify himself too, he feels ‘unclean’ of low caste: he’s attempting to wash away the stains and stigmata of his shame in front of his friends, pool by baptismal pool.
The Swimmer is everyman and every woman, a superb allegory for a single human life.
We’re all just trying to stay afloat against the tides and hidden currents of life…and grinning like idiots while we’re doing it.
Apologies for cheesy voice-over on this trailer!)
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