land and freedom

i am rather irritated about this urge of the politically zealous to define morality- to set up hard edged rights and wrongs of behavior for everyday lives. yesterday in a conversation at zouk any ambiguity was challenged, any insecurity was invalidated. the terms of appropriate behavior were all too rigidly drawn- or attempted to be drawn. a rule book was begun. this in a supposedly liberal space which represents a freedom of sorts was inexplicable.

today in ‘land and freedom’ ken loachs story from the spanish revolution this urge to make cardboard cutouts of the lives of people was even more apparent. a history lesson of betrayal and lost innocence told through the wide-eyed belief of a british member of the communist party who travels to spain to fight with the revolutionaries who were finally betrayed by stalinism. unfortunately as in so many of works of rhetoric disguised as art it suffered from the vulgar triteness and simplifications i have come to expect- the limpid love story in the trenches and the flashback of a grandchild to the revolution through the letters and photographs sent by her grandfather.

merely the fact that the movie was trying to say something serious and the fact that the director had his heart in the right place does not make it a great film. after all, aren’t there aesthetic (“pleasure, pain, desire” – kausik) issues at stake in a work of art? or have we forgotten? or is it snobbish to expect a film to rise above soap opera storylines in uniform with a marching band playing revolutionary songs in the foreground.