So, one of this evening's films on tv was The Greatest Showman! Starring Hugh Jackman, it's the story of P. T. Barnum, the famous showman. And it's a musical.
The second-longest-running chat show in the world is the Late Late show, and every year, just before Christmas, they do a Toy Show, to showcase different popular toys and books. These generally have a theme - and sure enough, a few years ago, the theme was The Greatest Showman. The host came on dressed for the part, and songs from the film were performed throughout. So it was good, finally - as I'd never seen it before - to see what all the fuss was about!
The songs are the stars of the show, truly. Each is a show-stopper, and the choreography that accompanies them is stunning. Apart from that - there's not much to say. P. T. Barnum seems more personable here than in the Wikipedia article about him, and you can fairly ignore most of the plot. Basically, it's rags to riches, and he's trying to prove himself to his rich in-laws. So he gets this idea to stage a show, and it's a hit. Mind you, the sound levels in the film were very off - the dialogue seemed very muted in comparison to the musical numbers, and so in order to hear what people were saying to each other, I had to increase the volume quite a bit - now, my mother screeches in complaint if anything is too loud, so there was a limit to what I could do, and I did miss a lot of dialogue. There might have been some complexity there that I failed to notice. But it is a very enjoyable film, for the musical numbers and the excellent trapeze work that is included. Not very deep, though.
Later tonight, feeling less tired, and with nothing interesting on tv that I hadn't already seen, I caught up with the first two of the three episodes of the tv documentary made by Robert Fisk, From Beirut to Bosnia, about the relationship between the Middle East and the West. Hard to find, it's available on the Sands Films site - part of an homage to Robert Fisk. And wow, it does require concentration - one of those where I feel I should be taking notes.
In short, Episode 1 details Israeli attacks on South Lebanon. They always plead self-defence in these cases, but as this documentary shows, many attacks have been completely unprovoked, and others completely disproportionate - revenge for attacks that caused the deaths of eight Israeli soldiers, for example, resulted in the killing of 150 Lebanese in retaliatory shelling. Nine of those killed were later shown to be militants.
And particularly interesting to an Irish person was the scene where an Irish UN peacekeeper was showing him around a bombed-out building. (We send out a lot of UN peacekeepers, particularly to Lebanon.) Entering a room whose front wall had been completely blown away, his guide explained that another peacekeeper (Irish-sounding name) had been in this exact room when he was killed by a shell from an Israeli tank. Indicating the Israeli tanks, observing them from a nearby hill, he explained that although the tank driver concerned had apparently been disciplined, nobody had ever actually explained why they'd done it..
Mind you, one thing about Robert Fisk was that, living among the Arab community as he did, he always had links to that side of the conflict - and another interesting segment has him visiting a Lebanese "underground prison", of the sort where many Lebanese, and some Westerners, were famously held - generally without any kind of due process. Always good to see the whole picture.
Episode 2 concerns dispossession of the Palestinians, either through bombing and shelling, or land grabs. He visits the Gaza Strip.. not a nice-looking place at all. It's amusing to watch Israeli soldiers, constantly telling him and his cameraman to stop filming, or they'll close the area and force them out. Undeterred, he manages to interview a 16-year-old girl, already married and about to have her first child, who's experiencing pains. The curfew is in effect, and there's no way to get her to hospital - the Israeli soldiers he questions about her tell him she's already left in an ambulance. Finally, he and his cameraman end up driving her and her mother to the UN hospital.
One woman is filmed, in hysterics about how all the houses in her neighbourhood have been destroyed by Israeli shelling. And, just outside Jerusalem, he highlights the case of one lone farmer holding out against the encroaching wave of Israeli settlers. Interviewing the family, he discovers that they've owned the land for hundreds of years - they have title deeds both from the Ottoman days, and also from the British Mandate period. However, the Israeli government has issued them notice to quit - they need the land for a housing scheme. For Israelis only - Arabs need not apply. Sadly, this is the same family he mentions in This is Not a Movie, who were evicted shortly after he interviewed them. It's also interesting how the Israeli settlers he speaks to are adamant that the foundation for their right to be there, and to evict the Arabs, is given to them in the Bible..
Finally, he was given directions by a Palestinian, living in Lebanon, to the house in Acre that his family was evicted from in 1948, during the formation of Israel. He's keen to find out what happened to it - he is not allowed to enter Israel, nor are any expelled Palestinians. When Fisk gets there, he finds a lovely family, happy to talk to him. The grandad, who was the first Jew to occupy the house, is a Holocaust survivor. In an interesting twist, Fisk then goes in search of this man's family history, and visits the Polish town where they were from. Once known as a Jewish town, there are no Jews there at all any more.. and no record of those killed in Treblinka, where his search takes him.
Any correlations that you might draw here are for you to decide - Fisk says nothing about them.
I'm looking forward to Episode 3 - and very glad I don't live anywhere near there..
And yes, I haven't forgotten about my film backlog of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Snowden, The Unbelievable Truth, Time (all on Amazon Prime), and Zero de Conduite, on the Internet Archive. Watch this space..
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