The Soviet Story demolishes deeply-rooted myths

The other week, I sent an email to my son's lycée, to the attention of the history teachers to let them know about the existence of a film which I thought might be of interest to them and their students, The Soviet Story. My DB told me that I was probably now marked as an interfering parent and that my son would be eyed suspiciously as having a mother who thought she could boss his teachers about. Paranoia is alive and well in the French teaching profession.

I have had no answer to my mail, not even an acknowledgement of receipt.

The reason why I thought it might be of interest to the school is because it demolishes two deeply-rooted myths in French society (and now has French subtitles).

The first is that communism, as opposed to Nazism started off with good intentions.

Our own dear former socialist president of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, M. Georges Frêche proved this by installing a number of bronze statues on the Place des Grands Hommes du XX^e siècle including Lenin and Mao, because « les idéologies représentées sur la place sont toutes des idéologies de libération et de conquête des droits malgré leurs parts d’ombre » (Translation: the ideologies represented on the site are all ideologies of liberation and the conquest of rights despite a few dodgy bits). The editor of top Polish newspaper Uważam Rze wondered why a member of the French Parti Socaliste had decided to honour two of the greatest criminals against humanity...

Edvins Snore, the writer and director of The Soviet Story, shows that communism is about class warfare, which meant eradicating whole sections of the population. Those in opposition were first up against the wall, then came intellectuals, good workers, engineers and so on. Lenin, Mao, and indeed Pol Pot and Stalin were all supporters of forced social engineering. They even used it on ethnicities who were considered too resistant. During the winter of 1932-3, for example, 7million Ukrainians died of starvation because their food and grain reserves were confiscated, and anyone trying to get food or escape was shot.


The second myth is that Soviet communism and German national-socialism are two completely different ideologies.

Both aimed at creating a new Man because neither accepted human nature as it was. In fact, both systems were at war with human nature, which is the root of totalitarianism. Nazism was based on false biology, and communism was based on a false sociology, but both claimed to have a scientific base (Françoise Thom, professeur d’histoire, Sorbonne, interviewed in the film).

According to Natalia Lebiedeva, a Russian historian, between 1937 and 1941, 11million people were assassinated. Hitler followed what was happening in the Soviet Union very closely, knew about George Bernard Shaw's support and his appeal to scientists to develop a gas that could exterminate those people who were useless for society humanely. Hitler used this gas, Zyclon B, later in his camps.

The Soviet Union helped Nazi Germany instigate the holocaust. The film shows evidence from archive documents and interviews with former Soviet military intelligence officers. Between September 1939 and June 1941, the Soviets handed over to the Nazis whole groups of Jews who had managed to flee Germany.

So, I believe it's a film that is worth seeing, especially to young people so that they can learn more about what really happened, stop believing the myths and be able to make their case based on knowledge not fantasy.

This is important because communism has played an important role in defining French society, and its political echoes are cited as a reason why French politicians are historically against liberal market economics. Here are a couple of examples:
« Libéralisme, thatchérisme, reaganisme, des oripeaux. » (oripeaux = flashy rags)
Alain Juppé, Le Figaro Magazine, 24/11/84.

« Je suis convaincu que le libéralisme est voué au même échec que le communisme et qu’il conduira aux mêmes excès. L’un comme l’autre sont des perversions de la pensée humaine. »
Jacques Chirac, dans « L’inconnu de l’Elysée », de Pierre Péan (Fayard, 2007). 

The Secu was set up in October 1945 under the influence of the Parti communiste and the unions. The unions went on to infest the state's administrative, political, economic and social machinery and have managed to stay there with the tacit support of successive heads of government whether on the right (through weakness or cowardice) or on the left (ideological convergence). You can read more about the dodgy monopoly French Secu here which, despite condemnation by the Cour Européenne de Justice for non application of directives concerning medical insurance has resisted practical application, so it's almost impossible to quit. In fact, only a total collapse of the system could put an end to this communist-inspired monopoly set up in 1945 without any public approval.

Explains a lot, wouldn't you say?

Anyway, the school might not be interested, but I am certainly going to buy the dvd to show to my son and any of his friends who want to see it too.

From The Soviet Story website:

SYNOPSIS

The film tells the story of the Soviet regime.
- The Great Famine in Ukraine (1932/33)
- The Katyn massacre (1940)
- The SS-KGB partnership [in the late 1930s the KGB was called NKVD]
- Soviet mass deportations
- Medical experiments in the GULAG.
These are just a few of the subjects covered in the film.
“The Soviet Story” also discusses the impact of the Soviet legacy on modern day Europe. Listen to experts and European MPs discussing the implications of a selective attitude towards mass murder; and meet a woman describing the burial of her new born son in a GULAG concentration camp.
The Soviet Story is a story of pain, injustice and “realpolitik”.

Here are some reviews from Amazon.

Not worrying, but living

I thought I'd write a post about the sort of stuff I do when I'm not worrying and not at work (the two are not mutually exclusive, mind).

I'm not actually a dessert person but I appreciate this idea :)

This weekend, for example, my DB gave me a choice, as my boys had gone to see their dad. We could either go away somewhere or eat out in a nice restaurant. An image floated into my mind of a nice hotel room and me spending Saturday evening munching on a tomato. I wondered where we could go in this cold weather and decided that I couldn't be fagged to go anywhere if it meant something crappy for dinner.

So I voted for staying put, with bed warmer, cosy cat and dinner out. We went to a restaurant called l'Authentique and had a lovely evening eating, drinking and chatting. After a fishy mise en bouche, I started with a millefeuille of brandade de mourue with prawns, mussels and a red pepper sauce, followed by taureau steak (Aubrac), all washed down with a delicious and perfectly balanced red from Domaine Henry, le Paradines 2010 at €25 per bottle. It was well-presented, very tasty and with good service. The place was full too.

Yesterday I went a bit cooking mad. I had cooked a turkey leg in the slow cooker on Saturday so turned it into individual pies in a leek sauce, meat for wraps or maybe turkey pasties, and stock for soup. Then I cooked a lamb Madras dish from Saturday Kitchen which I got into a bit of a mess with as I don't have a spice grinder and my small food processor does a crap job. By the time I'd decided that the burnt bits were not going to affect the overall flavour, the dish was almost ready, not to eat mind because my DB doesn't eat lamb. The boys and I may have it tonight, or I might be so fed up with it that I'll just chuck it in the freezer until I've forgiven it for being such a pain in the arse.

It brought home to me the importance of having the right tools because 'good enough' just isn't when it comes to some things.

This brings me to my favourite tele programmes at the moment. Right up there at the top is Saturday Kitchen which is great fun in a jovial, blokey kind of way, has some delicious-sounding recipes, and interesting guests. Last Saturday, they had Swedish chef Magnus Lisson who made a complex Porridge of grains from Jämtland. They cooked a haggis in a potato pancake dish which I might try as I'm partial to haggis and have a tin of it for emergencies.

When I'm not being nagged to free up the tele, I also then watch The Good Cook with Simon Hopkinson who demonstrates how to make restaurant-quality food in your own home. He was particularly enamoured with this recipe for grilled aubergines with olive oil, garlic, parsley and feta cheese.

On Mondays at 10pm (French time) we have Lewis, on Tuesdays there's Death in Paradise, on Thursdays and Fridays there's Silent Witness and on Sunday there's Mr Selfridge which I like watching because I used to have a summer/Saturday job there. If I have to miss one because there's something worth watching on French tele, then I can just catch up with BBC iPlayer on my IP hider.

Last weekend, my DB and I watched a French film, Poupoudidou with Jean-Paul Rouve and Sophie Quinton. We were not expecting much joy from it (because we are not great fans of French navel-gazing films), but this one turned out to be a bijou. It's set in Mouthe, the coldest town in France and focuses on the murder of Candice Lecoeur, a (bottle) blond bombshell who is convinced she was Marilyn Monroe in a former life. The police chief has his reasons for deciding her death was a suicide, but a visitor to the area, David Rousseau (JP Rouve), a successful author of 'polars' (thrillers), is not convinced. He decides to stay for a bit, not necessarily because he wants to interfere in the police work, but because he wants to investigate Candice's past and hopefully find some inspiration for his next book.

The deeper he digs, the more dirt he finds, and his life becomes the target for someone who wants to keep him quiet. We really enjoyed the dark humour and irony in this film, the intriguing scenario, and the muffled ambiance reflecting the stifling effect of snow on sound.

L'Avventuro Interminablo

My TWDB is a prolific renter of films, to the extent that he's worked his way through the entire collection of what he might vaguely like at the local film rental shop. I am not a prolific renter so there's a ton of stuff I haven't seen, and am not likely to either now. My local rental shop has ceased trading. It's still there, but permanently closed for some reason.

Anyway, last night we wanted to watch a film so my TWDB went to his local mediateque (library for books, audio, video) to see what they had. He came back with L'Avventuro, an Italian film made in 1960 and directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.

It won the Prix du Jury at the Cannes film festival although it was initially booed off the screen during the first showing. Obviously the audience didn't 'get' the film first time around. I'm not sure I did either because it was interminable. I kept waiting for something to happen and it just continued not happening.

Having boned up on Wikipedia I now know that this was intentional because it "systematically subverted the filmic codes, practices and structures in currency at its time." I wasn't born in 1960 and am not a great expert in film studies so I can't tell you what filmic codes it subverted, but maybe 'action', 'plot', 'dialogue' were three of them...

The initial story of a rich girl who disappears on the volcanic island of "Lisca Bianca" transforms itself into a story about her fiancé getting the hots for her best friend in less than 12 hours of her disappearance and his efforts to seduce her thereafter. He's a cad, needless to say, and the last scene shows him weeping over the fact that he had some naughty nooky with a call-girl in a pricey hotel resort while his worn out lover, Monica Vitti, was sleeping upstairs. She came down early in the morning looking for him only to discover him on a sofa having his wicked way with the call-girl. Naturally she was a tad upset and went running off to a scenic balcony overlooking the sea where he followed her to wallow in his 'hopeless weakness and emptiness'. Instead of shrieking at him with fine display of Italian verve and fruity vocabulary, she just stood behind him and stroked his hair. They deserved each other!

At the end of the film I asked my TWDB whether he'd worked out the point of the film. Not being aware of subversive reputation he said he hadn't. It had just gone on and on and on. Nice scenery though, and some great shots, but I did rather give up the will to watch halfway through. Luckily we were sustained with home-made pizza to keep our strength up.

He's very keen on going back to the mediateque. You can borrow films and audio books for free, so it doesn't matter too much if they are duds and at least we'll have enlarged our knowledge of films which impress as long as we check up on Wikipedia what you're supposed to know about them!

Trou de moviemoire

I watched an obscene number of films over New Year, but ask me to name them and I'm wracking my brain. The penultimate one was La Tourneuse de Pages with Catherine Frot - a French film about revenge. Revenge served cold after exquisite planning and meticulous execution. Added to that was a lovely score of music - Catherine Frot plays a professional pianist,  a magnificent country manor with indoor basement pool set 40km from Paris, and a delicious suspense throughout.

The one after that was L'Ivresse du Pouvoir which I didn't really understand. It was another French film - we'd run out of foreign action/thrillers by then - which was very much inspired by the Elf Affair. Isabelle Huppart plays a Juge d'Instruction who goes after big business corruption, abuse and political influence. A bit lacking in action... I sat through it as it sailed over my head.

I'm now in deep water trying to remember what else we saw. I know I have a bad memory but this is fairly recent history, and it's not like 'you seen one film, you seen them all' as they were all different. Come to think of it, many were not very good which is maybe why I'm having such difficulty remembering their titles.

I was going through a real 'chill in front of the tele' mode - didn't want to go to Nice, didn't want to go out, just wanted to plant myself on my lovely comfy sofa, heating on, and wallow in front of the tele. Preferably with my TWDB. Must be a mid-winter thing - it saps the energy, especially after the excitement of Christmas, travel and accompanying organisation.

It's no good, my memory is still a blank. I haven't even been able to shock myself into memory recovery, or shame my lazy brain cells into activity. No, they are all, themselves, sitting with their feet up watching tele in the cosy recesses of my skull. Try to stir things up a bit and they're out on strike threatening to wipe out the rather delicious memories of New Year's Eve and provoking flashbacks of my divorce years. The buggers.

So, while I would love to share with you my film reviews of the last week of 2009, I'm afraid that's all you're gonna get. The rest left no obvious mark on my conscious mind, so that rather puts them in their place, n'est-ce pas.

The next time we decide to rent a film, we're going to try and find one from the Le Point list which includes Benjamin Button, LOL, La Première Etoile, Neuilly Sa Mère, Very Bad Trip, Un Prophète, Slumdog Millionaire, Welcome, Irène etc. I may even remember enough to write a review of the less obvious ones. Yeah.

Screen Speak/Real Speak

My eldest is a fan of 'Poubelle la Vie'... oops, I mean 'Plus Belle la Vie' which is a tele series on France 3 at 8.15pm on weekdays. It has a certain charm, mostly because it's not set in ubiquitous Paris, but in Marseille.

I don't really follow it, but if it's on, and I'm sitting down facing the tele, then I will, for want of anything better or more energetic to do, watch it.

What always amazes me when I watch French people talking French on tele not in real life, is that they sound nothing like French people do when they normally speak French. I'm not sure whether this is down to crap acting (which it probably is) or is an acting school technique to show how difficult it is to be an actor because you've got to sound totally different and totally alien to real French people.

On the tele, folks are always mumbling, gabbling, sulking, shouting, being cross and basically sounding like they have memorised their lines and want to get them out as quickly as possible: 1) to show how well they know them; 2) because the lines are so bad the actors would be cringing if they had to say them any slower; 3) because they have to cram everything into 30mins which means either they say them within their allotted span of time or they get edited out.

I work with a bunch of French people and they never sound anything like actors do on the tele, or even very often in films. There seems to be Screen Speak, and Real Speak, and ne'er the twain will meet.

French films are often about shouting. French people, according to screen writers, are always cross with each other, so they shout and sulk and storm off or fling insults at each other. My TWDB does none of those things and neither do any of the couples I know. They all talk to each other normally, so what is it with Screen Speak? Why is it so unreal and so bad? Has no one else noticed how excrutiating it is listening to these same actors becoming the same person over and over? No wonder the best ones work hard at their English so they can expand their horizons.

Before you think I'm being horrid and critical about French movies, let me assure you that there are some that I like very much. Le Diner des Cons is an excellent movie with brilliant social observation. I also have a penchant for the earlier 'Taxi' movies because of the car and the first 'Visiteurs' movie. However, in all three, you'll notice much shouting, pouting and bad temper.

To me, it just gets a bit predictable and boring. Give me lively, funny, jolly 'Men In Black' any day!

A Mes Souhaits

I don't know what's pollinating at the moment, but whatever it is, I just wish it would get on with it and then stop. My head is all full of allergy woolliness; I'm sneezing, or trying to, and blowing my nose every 23 seconds. The thought of going outside has been banished as a Bad Idea.

Yesterday, happily unaware that WhateverItIs was sending pollen out to wreak its havoc, I took my youngest and his bike to Restinclieres. The park is huge, but he was focusing on a particular earthy mound near the picnic area.

We arrived to find the parking area transformed. No longer the huge open space by the playground. Instead they've created a camouflaged car park amongst the trees. Not only that, but they've made the stony, rocky track to the picnic area pushchair- and OAP-friendly by concreting it over. It looks really good and my youngest was able to cycle down it without risking life and limb and a broken nose.

We got to the mound and found it set in a field of very long grasses. It looked a lot less dramatic since Nature had been at work covering it with encroaching fingers of coarse grass. Off went my son to try and cycle up it, but the vegetation either side of the narrow track was too distracting and he couldn't pick up enough speed to hurtle himself up the last metre or so.

By this time my nose was starting to run. I had followed him onto the mound, but beat a hasty retreat to a picnic table under the trees. My youngest had beckoned me over to show me what looked like a scout project to create a little cabin out of sticks and bits and bobs tied up with string amongst a group of small trees. I remember trying to make little cabins out of straw, bracken etc. in various holiday locations, so I could understand his joy at seeing this. He was keen to improve it so hunted for extra sticks he could add, and reworked a bunch of metal planks to make a super wall.

When the mosquitoes started gathering en masse, I called it a day. He was able cycle back up the path with no problem which made a change from having to push it over the rocks and pebbles previously.

Such exposure to Nature did me no good at all, I'm sure. It ensured I got a good blast of pollen to set off the allergy, making me sensitive today more so than I'm sure I would have been otherwise. I've had to spend to day shut in the house; windows and doors closed.

To compensate, I watched 'Keeping Mum' with Rowan Atkinson and Kristin Scott Thomas. Quite delicious, it was - recommended for some beautifully-written, archetypal British black comedy. Lazy Sundays do have their uses.

SATC Crap

Was anyone at the Sex & the City movie premiere last night? Not me. This is not surprising for the following reasons:

1. I am a little-known non-celebrity and thus on no one's invitation list.
2. I didn't have a television when it was on so only caught the last three episodes of the final series.
3. I can't name the four women.
4. When I did see it I wondered why Carrie wore a visible bra on dresses that needed an invisible one, or no bra so I'm obviously a hopeless fashion-nul.

So, I have a fairly tepid interest in the movie, but am wondering why the film distributors chose London to have the premiere and then get all the journalists and guests to promise not to talk about the plot. How stupid is that?

One has to put it down to a cynical publicity stunt. The obvious place to hold the premiere is New York, so not to hold it there guaranteed much chattering, discussion and free publicity. The second annoying aspect about this choice was then to ask all the journalists not to write about the plot which makes me wonder why they were invited at all if all they could expect to write about was Carrie's hat and what make of shoes the women wore. The guests were also asked to hug the super top secret to themselves for all of two weeks so as not to spoil the surprise for the Yanks. Awww diddums.

I ask you. We're talking about a movie plot here, not plans to throw the Chinese out of Tibet. I had a look at the Sun's website, the Sun never being one to hold back at the chance of a few hundred thousand extra sales, and even they revealed nothing. Even the Sun's movie reviewer trotted out the same pointless crap about shoes and guest lists and chick-appeal. Yawn.

It's a good thing I didn't get invited. I'd have told all to the highest bidder!