Humanism Ireland • No 115 • March-April 2009 FILM Bellissimo! Brian McClinton plucks out the Italian heart of Humanist cinema

HE RECENT DVD RELEASE of Vit- world he inhabits the poor must steal from torio De Sica’s classic 1948 film A Humanist film rejects the each other in order to survive. Bicycle Thieves and the acclaim notion of art for art's sake in Moreover, although an apparent drown- Taccorded to Steve McQueen’s Hunger favour of the belief that art ing incident reminds him that his son is have prompted me to ask why so many should reach out beyond it- more important than his stolen bike, the Italian movies seem to capture the real self and connect with the knowledge doesn’t morally redeem him. essence of Humanism, whereas their Human values are a luxury in hard times, British counterparts excel only in de- wider world and he succumbs to temptation himself. Yet picting misery. in the end social Humanism is a form of re- The answer begins at the level of A third distinctly Humanist approach is demption as Bruno becomes Antonio’s sav- theory. The British, as we know, tend that the content takes precedence over the iour and protector, taking his hand as they to be sceptical of ideas, an attitude form. The film seeks to say something first walk away. displayed by Andrew Tudor in an arti- and foremost, and the way it says it is sub- cle in the New Humanist (March-April, servient. A Humanist film rejects the notion 2006). He argued that the term of art for art's sake in favour of the belief ‘Humanist cinema’ was simply too big that art should reach out beyond itself and and too unfocused to have any real connect with the wider world. The individ- meaning or use. But he is wrong. The ual is not just telling a story or speaking to fact that the term is often loosely used himself; as a Humanist, he is trying to con- does not render it meaningless, so per- nect with others through his art. This also haps he didn’t find its essence because implies that the text and structure of a film he didn’t really want to. itself requires analysis in context, embrac- If Humanism exists as a distinct phi- ing extra-filmic considerations such as the losophy, then presumably there must social, economic, political and cultural en- be a distinctly Humanist approach to vironments in which the narrative occurs. the arts, and to film in particular. And But what about the actual Humanist con- this is exactly how it has been seen in tent? Well, we have to dispose of the notion Father and son in Bicycle Thieves continental Europe, especially in Italy, that it has to be anti-religious. Life of Brian the birthplace of Renaissance Human- can be seen as a satire on blind faith, organ- CINEMA PARADISO ism. What, then, are the chief charac- ised religion and even Hollywood movies THIS redemptive power of children is a teristics of a ‘Humanist’ film? about Christianity. Federico Fellini was strong feature in many Italian Humanist First of all, we have to abandon the forever lampooning religion, as famously films. In Cinema Paradiso (1988), Giuseppi mindset of the Hollywood crap facto- in the opening shot of La Dolce Vita, where Tornatore’s heart-warming paean to the lost ries and their assumption that the me- God – in the form of a giant statue of Jesus world of childhood and the golden age of dium is merely a source of entertain- – flies over Rome in a helicopter, reduced to film, the key relationship is between Toto, a ment to while away a couple of hours, the decadent celebrity status of the modern fatherless child, later a young man, and Al- a bit of mindless fluff that is quickly media world depicted in the film. But in ei- fredo, the Sicilian town’s childless cinema forgotten as we move on to the next ther case is the satire Humanist? The nega- projectionist. It is through their bonding slice of dross. At its highest level, the tive aspect of secular Humanism is only via a love of cinema that Tornatore explores cinema is surely an art form and, like part of a bigger canvas, which might even the themes of friendship, nostalgia, com- all the best art, it tries to communicate embrace moral perspectives shared with munity, career and the power of film. criticisms of the status quo, ideas to theistic beliefs. A European Humanist film Religion is omnipresent in the story. be debated, powerful emotional expe- is not just or even at all a criticism of relig- Toto is an altar boy whose real name is Sal- riences, greater awareness of the hu- ion; it is ultimately more concerned to con- vatore, ‘the saviour’. The Catholic Church man condition, insights into life's vey a positive and life-affirming message. controls the cinema in its early years, and meaning and values worthy of emula- Toto woos Elena, his girlfriend, in a confes- tion. BICYCLE THIEVES sion booth. The cinema itself is a place to Secondly, and following from the THIS doesn’t mean that it ignores the darker worship movie icons – it is no coincidence first, Humanist films are not simply a side. In Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves), that it is called the ‘Paradiso’. Yet religion collective product of an industry but, Antonio Ricci (Lamberto Maggiorani) is a is gently mocked as an obstacle to the hu- more importantly, like other forms of decent man who wants to sustain his family man spirit. In the cinema’s early existence, art, they are expressions of a deliberate and a sense of moral dignity without relig- the local priest views the films beforehand human activity by the individual ion or superstition. However, when the bi- and rings a bell as a signal to Alfredo to re- director/artist who is communicating cycle upon which his work depends is sto- move all kissing scenes. At his funeral, Al- his vision of the world and stamping len, and he and his nine-year-old son Bruno fredo’s widow gives Toto, now a middle- each frame of the work with his own (Enzo Staiola) scour the streets of Rome in aged film director, a rusty can of film. Back visual and intellectual footprints. search of the thief, he learns that in the in Rome, he watches in rapture as the ➤ 21 Humanism Ireland • No 115 • March-April 2009 contents are projected. And there they are Guido and Dora have a five year-old-son future, that things will be better than before his very eyes: all the forbidden Joshua (Giorgio Cantarini). World War they are now – that life will indeed be kisses, spliced together by the wily pro- Two is in its final days, and the persecu- beautiful, not just for innocent children jectionist. In this sublime end, the film tion of Italian Jews increases. The police but for all of us. It is the hope that affirms the ultimate triumph of love over take Guido and his son into custody. As a Guido’s life-affirming lie will become the dogma. gentile, Dora doesn’t have to go, but she truth. And it will be if we reject destruc- Or, in Toto’s case, is it the triumph of decides to join her family, in one of the tive totalitarian dogmas and replace them celluloid love over real love? For him, it many instances of Uncle Eliseo’s dictum with love, humour, courage and imagina- is the cinema, not the church, that has that ‘nothing is more necessary than the tion. been his salvation and his path to a suc- unnecessary’. cessful career. Alfredo had greatly as- They are herded like cattle on a train to a sisted in this choice. He unselflishly nameless concentration camp, where the broke the bond between them when he women are separated from the children. told Toto to leave Sicily and pursue his Guido’s son manages to stay with him and career on the mainland, even if he had to hide in the barracks. As in Bicycle Thieves, stay away for good. He said that he didn’t it is now father and son against the world. want to hear from him but only to hear of Guido works all day long melting down him. In the longer, darker version of the metal for weapons while the old, infirm film he even concealed from Toto the and young are sent ‘to the showers’. knowledge that Elena had come back Realising that Joshua will suffer in fear looking for him, because he thought she if he knows the truth, he shields him from Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful would hold him back from his creative the terrifying reality by a sustained pre- destiny. tence that they are at a summer camp, play- I’M NOT SCARED So the Humanist redemption of film is ing an elaborate game to get 1000 points YET it may reasonably be argued that at a price. Toto is unmarried and largely and the prize of a life-size version of the none of these films really says anything unloved, except by his mother whom he child’s treasured toy tank. So, when significantly Humanist, other than that has neglected. But perhaps Alfredo’s Joshua complains that he cannot find any parents (or surrogate parents, as in Cin- montage will inspire him to put things of the other children competing for the ema Paradiso) want to protect their chil- right before it is too late. Maybe he will prize, Guido tells him that they are better dren and their children can redeem them. eventually find salvation in love as well at hiding than Joshua, and the child best Is that all there is to the Humanist mes- as art. at hiding will win. And when Joshua tells sage? The answer is provided in the won- his father he has learned that little kids are derful 2003 film Io Non Ho Paura (I'm ‘cooked in the oven’, Guido laughingly Not Scared), directed by Gabriele Salva- says it’s a lie others told him to persuade tores from the novel by Niccolo Am- him to drop out of the game. maniti. This work is a Humanist film par Guido succeeds in maintaining the illu- excellence, yet it has been largely ig- sion for the child that ‘life is beautiful’, nored, perhaps because it didn't win ma- but at the cost of his own life. Even at the jor prizes at the Oscars or at Cannes end, he continues with the game, winking (Cinema Paradiso at first met a similar at his hiding son and performing a comic fate, with lukewarm reviews from British goose-step as he is led away to be shot. critics, but after it received awards it was The liberating army then rolls in and a sol- suddenly hailed as a masterpiece and dier invites Joshua to take a ride in his successfully re-released). tank. The boy then notices his mother. As I'm not Scared is a philosophy film he is handed over to her, he exclaims with dressed up as a thriller. It is the story of a exuberant joy, “We won, we won…a thou- strong-willed ten-year-old boy Michele Salvatore Cascio in Cinema Paradiso sand points”. (marvellously played by Giuseppi Cristi- Some detractors have argued that Life is ano) and his journey through lost inno- LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL Beautiful lessens the horror of the Holo- cence to moral integrity. The idyllic and La Vita é Bella (Life is Beautiful), winner caust by making it the backdrop for a com- sensual setting is rural southern Italy in of the Grand Prix at the 1998 Cannes Film edy: such an obscenity is surely beyond the hot summer of 1978. While the adults Festival, is also about the triumph of the humour. It has also been accused of treat- stay indoors to escape the August heat, human spirit, this time in the face of the ing its audience like children by conceal- Michele spends his day out playing with Holocaust. Roberto Benigni, who also co- ing the hell on earth from us as well as the his friends, doing dares, riding his bicy- wrote and directed, plays the Chap- child. But this work is not so much about cle and running through the golden linesque Guido, a Jewish bookseller in the Holocaust as a film about the meaning wheat fields that seem lifted straight out fascist Italy. The film is in two parts, an of life in the midst of the most horrible of Van Gogh paintings. extended prologue which is essentially a evil. For Guido it is to live for the sake of One day, looking for his myopic sis- light romantic comedy, and the second the family he loves. And his death is, as ter's glasses, he finds a hole in the half set in a concentration camp. Joshua, the grown-up narrator, tells us, the ground covered by sheet metal. He peers The first fifty minutes of humour and sacrifice his father made as his gift to him. in, thinking he has discovered a 'cave slapstick is about the wooing of Dora, a He has not only saved his life but his filled with gold and gems'. But this mo- Christian schoolteacher, played by Nico- spirit too. ment is the beginning of an epiphany, for letta Braschi, Benigni’s real-life wife. Life is Beautiful is partly a celebration what Michele has found down the hole is There is then a sudden shift from joy and of a father’s love that transcends evil and nothing less than the meaning of life it- innocence to pathos. The year is 1945 and death. It is also a message of hope for the self. ➤ 22 Humanism Ireland • No 115 • March-April 2009

For over two thousand years, the for- nourish and develop the better qualities. mula of man being confined in a dark hole In I'm not Scared we are made fully has been the archetypal metaphor of the aware of our dual nature. The children are human predicament. In The Republic Plato not idealised and the adults are not evil. uses the allegory of the cave to illustrate The kids possess a measure of innocence the difference between appearance and re- mixed with a sliver of selfishness, like all ality. The majority of people are like ig- kids. They can be cruel, and Michele him- norant prisoners in a cave, chained from self is prepared to humiliate the plump childhood and looking at a blank wall. girl Barbara up to a point. The adults love Behind them burns a fire. Between the fire and care for their children. Good and evil, and the prisoners there is a parapet, along lightness and darkness, merge into each which puppeteers walk and hold up other like day and night. marionettes that cast flickering shadows on the wall. It is these shadows of illu- He defies authority and sions that the prisoners see and perceive what his parents try to im- to be reality. The rare individual manages to escape Michele (Giuseppi Cristiano) stares into pose on him to do the right the limitations of the cave. When he is Plato’s cave thing amidst great wrong free, he is initially blinded by the light, but then he opens his eyes again and sees like Plato's cave. Yet through this illusory Michele, however, knows where to draw the sun. This is the moment of under- medium, the director can tell the truth – if the line. He acts freely from his own standing, with the sun serving as symbol he dares. choice, not from the pressure or with the of the intelligible light by which we com- Plato's allegory is clearly represented in help of others. He has to find the true way prehend real goodness. This freed person I'm not Scared. Down the hole Michele sees entirely on his own. He defies authority can now return to the cave to share his in- a foot covered in a blanket. Frightened out and what his parents try to impose on him sights with the others and to educate them of his wits, he runs away, but his curiosity to do the right thing amidst great wrong. to enlightenment. overcomes his fear, and he returns to find a This is a fundamental Humanist princi- But what exactly is the Enlightenment? wretched kid his own age, chained and with ple: to show moral courage and stand up The Grand Narrative that dominated west- his eyes closed in the darkness. He is against the crowd for what is right and ern culture for nearly two millennia was thirsty and hungry and Michele brings him true and good. the Christian myth. It viewed enlighten- first water and later bread and then goes The film also inverts the expected con- ment as religious: man is rescued from the down the hole to face him. The boy thinks trast between the child, who seems irra- hole by faith in a higher deity, leading to he is dead and that Michele is his guardian tional – he daydreams, he recites fantasies a transcendental movement of grace. This angel. to himself and he is sometimes reckless – notion of transcendence, which is also Michele learns from the TV news that the and his parents, who are apparently sensi- found in Plato, suggests a higher reality boy, Filippo (Mattia Di Pierro), has been ble and mature. But in the most important that is vastly superior to the lower exis- kidnapped and held to ransom and, worst of matter of all it is Michele who thinks tence experienced in our everyday lives. all, he also discovers that his own parents through the consequences of their actions What if we reject belief in a God? What are involved. Finally, he overhears them and realises that it is they who are being if man is in a hole and there is no exit? talking about killing the boy. He realises infantile and irrational. He is the one in “Battle not with monsters, lest ye become what action he must take and that in doing the family who ultimately sees the light a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, so he will be disobeying his parents whom while they remain in darkness. the abyss gazes also into you”, wrote Ni- he loves and putting his own life at risk. Again, and crucially, Michele realises etzsche in Beyond Good and Evil. As God I'm not Scared is partly a brilliant drama- that another individual has rights, not is dead, the nihilist peers into the abyss, tisation of a child's moral development. least the right to live and that, despite the only to find meaninglessness and noth- But crucially, more than any of the other difference – he is poor while Filippo is ingness. Redemption and salvation are Italian films, it also encapsulates many of rich, he is strong while Filippo is frail – empty concepts or fictions that conceal the essential Humanist values. There are at the boy is at heart the same as he is. He the ugly realisation of the futility of exis- least five pillars of Humanism: existential- does the right thing and shows true com- tence. ism, freedom, reason, compassion and love. passion, not because of any religious Finally, we come to the Humanist per- First, it rejects the idea of an essential hu- compulsion, but because he has con- spective, which is now the predominant man nature. We are basically neither good nected with another human being. In the paradigm in the western world. Man still nor bad but have the potential to be either, sublime Michelangelo moment at the end, falls into a hole but this time he is saved and Humanism as a philosophy seeks to we see that Michele has given not only by his fellow man. He finds completion life to Filippo but courage too, and that and identification, not with a God, but Filippo is willing to repay the gift. with another human being. Ultimately, in Michele, who does indeed become the words of Bertrand Russell, the essen- Filippo's guardian angel, is a Christ-like tial message is to “remember your human- hero but, as Sally Feldman indicated in ity, and forget the rest”. her review of the novel (New Humanist, Plato's allegory of the cave is almost a December 2002), the Biblical imagery is primitive form of cinema – Plato's picture twisted, because the son suffers not for show – in which the casting of the shad- the sake of his father but at his father's ows is akin to the projection of a camera hands. The father is, however, present and the wall serves as a screen. Moreover, with his son in the final scene, indicating the cinema is a place of illusion, much Life gets tough for Michele the enduring love between them. ➤ 23 Humanism Ireland • No 115 • March-April 2009

The astonishing power of this brilliant film is that these Humanist values of exis- Slumdog Millionaire tentialism, freethought, reason, love and THIS BOLLYWOOD Oliver Twist compassion are all filtered through the mind is a rags-to-riches and romance story and actions of a child. As adults, we follow about a Mumbai street urchin, Jamal him throughout like an imaginary friend, (Dev Patel as a young man), who is willing him to help Filippo, and in the final one answer away from winning 20 fade to black he smiles with satisfaction and million rupees on the Indian version of Who wants to be a Millionaire? reaches out his hand to us as well, as if to The slimy host, played by Anil say: “There; I did the right thing, didn't I?” Kapoor, suspects him of cheating It is enlightening to compare I’m not – how could a mere chai wallah Scared with Steve McQueen’s Hunger, re- acquire such learning? – and has the viewed in the last issue. Bobby Sands and police take him away for some light Michele are linked: Michele is a Christ-fig- torture, including waterboarding and ure and Sands thinks he is. But which is electric shocks à la Abu Ghraib, before more truly 'Christian': Michele saving a life, the final question due to be asked the or Sands leading a collective suicide? Which next day. Jamal reveals that each halo round the hero in the second half. image is more life-affirming: Michele on his question represented a key moment in In this respect the film inverts Dickens. his life, and we then retrace the events In the Victorian novelist the rags-to- bicycle taking bread to the needy Filippo, or in flashback. riches and romance element is a Sands starving himself to death on behalf of We discover how he and his older crowd-pleaser to draw attention to the a futile and destructive cause which his brother Salim were orphaned when degradation. Here the degradation is movement subsequently abandoned? And their Muslim mother is murdered by a the crowd-pleaser. In other words, the which is more aesthetically satisfying: a mob of Hindus. They take up with ‘real India’ is cynically used as a sussurus of wind through a sunny wheat another orphan Latika, and Jamal falls drawing-in device for the romance. field, or shit painted on a wall? in love with her. The three of them live This is indeed a kind of ‘poverty porn’. The French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma in a garbage dump until they find refuge Here is a film that depicts with recently published a list of 100 best films. in an orphanage. But Maman, the graphic violence a grim picture of the Not one British movie featured, and Hunger benefactor, turns out to be a nastier world of orphans, poverty, crime and version of Fagin, mutilating kids and child abuse in India. So how on earth tells us why. Like most serious British films, blinding them with acid to make them can it be described as a happy movie? it is depressing and gloomy and lacks a co- better beggars. Salim saves Patel from Is there not something immoral about a herent narrative and a clear ethical perspec- blinding and they escape, but Latika is work that shows such horrors and yet tive. Aesthetics divested of engagement with left behind. asks us to leave the cinema feeling good intellect or emotion is empty, exactly like The brothers go on the run up about ourselves, even stressing the this overwrought and grossly overrated film. north to Agra, where they work as point with a celebratory Bollywood There are Humanist films out there, but unofficial guides and steal shoes from dance sequence at the end? Imagine they are rarely British. The real heart of Hu- tourists at the Taj Mahal. But Jamal Schindler’s surviving Jews dancing the manist cinema remains in Italy, the country still yearns for Latika, and he returns to Hava Nagila at the climax of Spielberg’s where Humanism began. Even when a life-af- Mumbai, where he finds her first as a film. prostitute and later as a gangster’s Arguably, too, the film is unfair to In- firming, 'feel-good' movie is made by a mistress. But when he loses her yet dians. In Dickens there are good adults Briton, as in the case of Danny Boyle's again, he decides to go on the quiz as well as baddies. But here there isn’t Slumdog Millionaire, it is set in a foreign show in the hope that she will see him. a single decent grown-up. Apart from country. Why does a British film director This ridiculous and contrived story, Jamal and Latika, every Indian in this have to go to India to find a real sense of much inferior to anything Dickens movie is either a victim or a slob. For a hope and joie de vivre? ❑ would have dreamed up, comes from a film that is supposedly a hymn to life it mediocre novel called Q&A by Vikas has a distinctly poor view of Indian hu- Swarup, and is transferred into film by manity. Indian culture is portrayed as director Danny Boyle of Trainspotting essentially violent, corrupt and rotten to HUNGER: ANOTHER VIEW fame. the core. The only adults who treat Ja- AS an avid reader of Humanism Ireland, I was ap- The first half has considerable raw mal kindly are tourists (who are robbed palled, but not surprised, at Brian McClinton’s re- energy, and the kids are great, but for their efforts!). view of the film Hunger. It is obvious that Brian had it all dissipates when they become Yet I suppose that it ultimately de- made up his mind to slate it even before he went to young men and a shallow and pends on who you are. If you are a see it, judging by his sarcastic remarks. improbable romance takes over. There homeless Mumbai urchin, then Slumdog Brian made flippant comments about the prisoner is also a problem of identification. We Millionaire may be a fantasy of hope and with the excremental artistic vision, about a vis- feel for the two young boys, who the triumph of the human spirit; if you ceral filthfest and about a torture porn movie. And display considerable vitality and lust for are a relatively rich Anglo-Saxon, then trust Brian to find more than a hint of homoeroti- life despite their hardships, but when perhaps you should be inspired to do cism in the work Salim grows up he becomes a something about the degradation in I myself went to see Hunger in a city centre cin- homicidal sonuvabitch and Jamal which the vast majority of Indians live. ema, on its third week of release and, unlike Brian, becomes dull and laconic. It is easy to Slumdog Millionaire is not a totally I was not a solitary man because the cinema was lose interest in their fate. bad film. Its first half with the kids is full about 75% occupied. More crucially, it is difficult to match of zest but, as it unfolds, the unconvinc- The director Steve McQueen does not have to the two parts of the story: the ing plot, the one-dimensional charac- try to turn Bobby Sands into a martyr. The British darkness of the poverty, homelessness, ters and the patronising Third World cli- government did that by letting him die. religious intolerance, murder, child chés become all too obvious. Ultimately, prostitution and mutilation of the first it just doesn’t live up to all the hype and Martin Keenan, part, and the celebration of the power hyperbole. East Belfast of dreams and the brightness of the BMcC 24