Film ‘Midnight Traveler’ by Hassan Fazili (Afghanistan)

NORTH AFRICA, MIDDLE EAST AND CENTRAL ASIA

I’ve never understood the lack of empathy and dehumanizing torrent of media and political ire directed towards refugees and other migrants. It doesn’t take an impossible leap of imagination to understand how desperate someone would have to be to sell their possessions and hand over all their savings to people-smugglers, putting their life, and the lives of their family in the dubious hands of professional traffickers.

Midnight Traveler, a 2019 film directed by the Afghanistani filmmaker Hassan Fazili, documents his family’s attempt to escape Afghanistan after he is tipped off that his life is in danger. The family’s aim is to reach safety in Western Europe.

Shot entirely on three mobile phones over a period of about three years, we follow the ups and downs of Fazili’s family. They leave Tajikistan (where they’ve stayed for over a year during their unsuccessful efforts to apply for refugee status in various countries), after making the desperate decision to make their way to Turkey and take the perilous refugee route that was well-documented in the European media in 2015-16. From Iran they plan to reach Turkey, then cross to Greece, passing through Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary, in the hope of finally making it safely to Germany, which famously announced a (domestically controversial) policy of extending an unequivocal welcome to refugees in the mid-2010s.

Often the events of the film are pictured against an evocative soundscape: sometimes discordant, sometimes beautiful and mournful. Although, like the excellent Syrian documentary For Sama, this is an account of real events, Midnight Traveler is also a work of art – a testament to Fazili’s talents.

Amid the harrowing events, there are moments of joy, connection and fun – playing in the snow in Serbia or the older daughter’s exultation at the tidal waters in Turkey – which really shine forth from this film. And although filmed on mobile phones in difficult conditions, the finished film does not feel scrappy or incoherent. Emelie Mahdavian, a US-based documentary maker, produced and wrote the film that emerged, and it went through extensive post-production. The film notably won the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for No Borders at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Hassan and his mostly cheerful wife Fatima try to remain positive in the most gruelling circumstances, partly for the sake of their two young daughters. Despite nights in the freezing forest and the barest of facilities in the various refugee camps and safe houses in which they end up, the girls and their clothing always look astonishingly clean and well-cared for. But their lives are uncertain, and at best simply on hold. In terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at times they’re not even ticking off the bottom rung, and the countries they reach on their way to Germany do not exactly welcome them with open arms.

I wonder why people avoid films like this. Is it too much reality? I’m really glad I watched this film. It was beautifully made, fascinating and enlightening, and it should be essential viewing.

January 2022 Cultural Round-Up; Reading Plans for 2022; Additions to the TBR

FILMS

I’ve reviewed Japanese film Drive My Car already, but I also watched a few films during January that I’ve not given the full review treatment:

Don’t Look Up was entertaining, star-studded, often very funny, shocking and ultimately heavy-handed.

Freaky was a bodyshock, body swap teen horror – self-aware, bloody and intermittently funny.

Spiderman: No Way Home and Eternals are films that I only saw because of my children – but I must admit I have got quite into the Marvel Cinematic Universe by virtue of having kids, though I always feel slightly lost.

Parallel Mothers, Almodovar’s latest film, which I watched at the flicks with my pal Bridget, was engrossing and surprising, and Penelope Cruz is such a stunning actor in every way, I love her.

BOOKS NOT ALREADY REVIEWED INDIVIDUALLY

As well as reading and reviewing Japanese books, and a couple of randoms (A Moth to a Flame by Swedish writer Stig Dagerman and Hour of the Star by Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector), I also read the following:

The Foundling by Stacey Halls was tightly plotted and very well-performed on Audible. I prefer Audible for these kind of slightly tropey (hmm not a word?) trashy books.

William Palmer’s work of literary biography In Love with Hell traces the lives and dysfunctional relationship with alcohol of 11 writers (eg Martin Amis, Malcolm Lowry, Jean Rhys…). I love writing on addiction (and I am also too fond of wine and use a complicated system of self-regulation to stop myself drinking every night). I think having children is what has saved me from an over-hedonistic lifestyle!

An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley: I read this mercifully short play because my daughter is doing it for GCSE. Its message ain’t subtle, but I guess that wasn’t the point. Can’t imagine ever wanting to watch it performed!

Mrs March by Virginia Feito was an excellent read. Published just last year it was a bit Stepford Wives and a bit Patricia Highsmith. Gripping.

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, which seems to have been universally well-reviewed, actually annoyed me quite a bit. I am well-acquainted with mental illness but Martha’s pathological selfishness drove me to distraction – I just couldn’t bear how relentlessly cruel she was to her lovely husband, although I admit it was very funny in places.

LISTENING

Interspersed with my usual playlists, in January I enjoyed listening to the 2021 album Isles by Bicep, which has appeared on quite a few ‘best ofs’ lists for 2021. I also have really enjoyed Prioritise Pleasure by Self Esteem, which, as my 17 year old has pointed out, is “such an embarrassing name”.

READING PROJECTS

After spending the end of 2021 on Turkey and January on Japan (when I reviewed films and books, plus art, TV, food and music), I’m dedicating February to Afghanistan.

Interspersed with this reading, and random books I pick up on a whim, I’m also trying read a load of classic novels from 1922 throughout the year (maybe even Ulysses, who knows), plus lots of Virginia Woolf (who I love but who I also find really difficult!). Oh, and I’m currently tackling Middlemarch on audiobook.

ADDITIONS TO THE TBR

I’ve just had my 48th birthday and received seven exciting books, plus I splurged at the charity shop after my COVID booster, and basically now have teetering piles of books to read, including library ones and some Japanese ones I didn’t get to.

Five of the exciting birthday books (these from my parents and two more from husband Ant – Autobibliography by Rob Doyle and Ill Feelings by Alice Hattrick). Can’t wait to get stuck into these:

Also my Afghanistan pile – I’m re-reading The Kite Runner first, before plunging into the non-fiction:

Teetering randoms, with 1922s standing upright:

And then some library books, eek:

Left over Japan books:

And a few art books to read/re-read and extras:

Japanese Music

I was reliably informed that Japan’s biggest pop act is Hatsune Miku, who sounds like a demented guinea pig singing slightly hysterical tunes at about 190 bpm. Then it turned out that she is not even human. And not a guinea pig. Instead, “she” is a hologram, and started out in 2007 as vocal synthesising software. Now, bizarrely, Hatsune Miku attracts “music lovers” wielding glow sticks to sold-out concerts across Japan.

As usual my slightly leftfield preference is for 1970s psychedelic rock. My husband out of nowhere recommended that I listen to Extremely Bad Man, a laid-back track by Shintaro Sakamoto, who is a Japanese musician, singer, songwriter and producer and former frontman for psychedelic rock band Yura Yura Teikoku before going solo about a decade ago. I love the track, from the 2014 album Let’s Dance Raw, although it also displays some guinea pig/chipmunk-adjacent musical traits (in a good way, this time) alongside twangy strings and excellent drums (sampled I believe).

Next I turned to the group Yellow Magic Orchestra, formed in the late 1970s, for some classic Japanese electronica: these guys were early adopters of snythesizers, drum machines and such, and according to Wikipedia largely anticipated the “‘electropop boom” of the 1980s’. Surely an influence on both Kraftwerk and later Air.

Finally, I rounded off with experimental ambient music by composer and house DJ Susumu Yokota, which lulled me pleasantly to sleep (perhaps it’s my age). Here’s Tanuki off the album Acid Mt Fuji (from 1994).

Japanese TV series Aggretsuko

I’m a bit late writing up my last few posts for Japanuary, as work and so on got in the way – though I’m sure no one is losing sleep over my lack of posts!

I told my fairly underwhelmed family that I needed to watch some Japanese telly during the cultural event that has been Japanuary. “Then watch Aggretsuko” said my 15-year-old, “it’s great”. Anime, I thought. Ugh. It’s for children. But you know what, this series (streaming on Netflix UK in handy 15-minute episodes) is really entertaining, especially if you have ever worked in an office for any length of time. And it’s definitely not aimed at little kids.

Retsuku (meaning “Fierce Child”) is, yes, a cute red panda in a kilt, but she’s also a 25-year-old young woman who is into death metal and who spends her days working in a tedious office environment, with a huge misogynistic pig (literally a pig) as a boss.

The series follows her day-to-day travails as she negotiates office politics, friendships, crushes on unsuitable men and her relationship with her over-protective mother, who is always popping round to hoover Retsuko’s apartment and trying to fix her up with awful prospective husbands. (To be honest, with a daughter about to go off to university, I actually hard relate to this woman as much as I do Retsuko!)

Retsuko, who was dreamed up by the same people who came up with the Hello Kitty brand, is outwardly sweet and placatory, until every now and then she loses her shit and goes into “death metal karaoke mode” (when she’s voiced by an entirely different actor!). You go girl.

The series is funny and cute and relatable, and I’d recommend it to anyone for a bit of light relief after a January that seemed never to end. And I found out that the series is so widely loved that there’s even a whole fan Wiki to take a deep dive into, if that’s your bag!

Drive My Car – Japanese film

Review by Imogen G.

I went to see the much-praised Japanese film Drive My Car at my local, vaguely art house cinema. The movie is an adaptation of a short story by Haruki Murakami, directed by Japanese auteur Hamaguchi Ryusuke, and a long film at 179 minutes. The opening credits don’t roll until we’re 40 minutes in, and the story moves at a leisurely pace, but, to its credit, it is never boring. Sight and Sound have named this their third best film of 2021.

The plot seems straightforward enough. Kafuku Yusuke is an actor and theatre director who lives with his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), a former actor and screenwriter. They have a stylish, glamorous lifestyle, but a tragedy lies at the heart of their marriage: the loss of their only child, many years before. Oto copes with her sublimated grief by spinning elaborate and oblique erotic fairy tales in a sort of fugue state during sex with her husband (which I think a lot of people would find a bit off-putting!), and by sleeping around, though Kafuku keeps his knowledge of her affairs to himself, as he fears losing her.

After Oto’s sudden death, Kafuku travels to Hiroshima to direct a stage version of a Russian play, Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. Hiroshima, a place that was utterly destroyed and then rebuilt, is surely a symbolic choice of location. Kafuku casts one of Oto’s lovers in the play, bad-tempered celebrity rake Koji (Masaki Okada). Meanwhile, during his residency in Hiroshima Kafuku is allocated a driver to transport him to rehearsals and back each day in his glossy red Saab 900 – a tersely proficient young woman called Misaki (played by Toko Miura). Kafuku initially resents having a driver imposed on him, but over time he begins to open up to Misaki, who is also grieving, another complicated grief, after losing her mentally ill, abusive mother.

With themes of loss, betrayal and art, this film is Oscar catnip. Full of interesting ideas and arresting visuals, it is Japan’s official entry for the upcoming Academy Awards.

A Moth to a Flame by Stig Dagerman (Sweden)

Translated by Benjamin Mier-Cruz

Reviewed by Imogen G.

I took some time out from Japanese culture to read the Swedish novel A Moth to a Flame for Annabel’s month of Nordic FINDS. By the end of this very beautifully written, psychologically intense novel, however, I felt a bit sullied after spending so much time with such horrible people.

The book was first published in Sweden in 1948, and appeared in English in 1950 as The Burnt Child; it has been republished in English translation as part of the new Penguin European Writers series (2019). Dagerman was one of the most prominent Swedish authors in the period after the Second World War, and is still widely read there.

The novel opens with the funeral of a middle-aged woman, Alma, who leaves behind her husband Knut and her 20-year-old, sometime student son, Bergt. While Knut is superficially focused on what is beautiful, and seems unable to face those things in life that lack beauty (such as a dying wife, or a dead wife for that matter), Bergt initially inspires sympathy, as he weeps openly and describes his love for his mother simply and openly too:

He isn’t doing it [crying] because he’s been drinking. In fact, he never drinks. Almost never. He is doing it because he loved her. And, of course, you talk about the one you loved – if you talk at all. And he loved her because she loved him. And the one who has loved you should always receive your love in return. Otherwise you are a fool.

But this isn’t a straightforward novel, or a straightforward family. There’s an abundance of shame here: lowered shades, lies – to oneself and to others – and the covering of keyholes.

The father looks briefly into the son’s eyes. The funeral eyes. He think they are ugly, and he doesn’t like anything ugly. There is something about ugliness that he fears. Therefore it isn’t his son that he fears. It’s the ugliness inside him. And the ugliness inside him is so hideously similar to the dead wife that he immediately has to look at something else.

The characters’ interactions are often described in this distant, depersonalizing way, in terms of their familial role, rather than their names. All the major characters are majorly flawed, from violent, disturbed Bergt to his insipid girlfriend Berit, dissolute father Knut and his largely amoral lover, Gun.

Everything feels bleached-out and heavy. Bergt writes angry, circular letters to himself, drinks and takes his violent despair out on dogs. As he becomes increasingly obsessed with Gun, who quite literally wears his mother’s shoes, the angst ramps up and the novel begins to read more and more like a cross between Ingmar Bergman and Barbara Vine, with a sense of creeping dread, incipient violence and brooding intensity.

Sadly, Dagerman stopped writing in 1949, and killed himself at the age of 31.

Intense family relations in a nihilistic Sweden

A Japanese Meal at Yama Momo, London

As part of my monthly exploration of different countries, I’m trying to sample a menu from each country. In ‘Turkey month’ I cooked some Turkish meze, but frankly the idea of cooking up a Japanese feast during ‘Japanuary’ was too scary. We have two Japanese restaurants near by, but because I have a sesame allergy I felt it was a bit dicey to try them (so much Japanese cooking is heavily reliant on sesame).

I was really pleased then when I noticed that Yama Momo, 15 minutes walk from my house, has a detailed allergy menu online (although strangely not in the printed menu on tables). So I booked a table for 2 and headed off there with my husband.

The restaurant was very busy on a Saturday night, with a dubious 80s soundtrack playing all night (Beautiful South, anyone? OK, how about a bit of Steve Winwood’s Valerie?). There were tons of staff, slightly too many staff one might say, but at least that meant the service was good.

I had veggie sushi, noodles and lovely crunchy veg, plus tempura and a sort of seafood dumpling, while my husband added an order of truffle rib eye beef and eek, sesame rice for himself.

We had fun with the sake testing order, each trying three different sakes, as well as trying a Japanese-influenced cocktail and a digestif. This, combined with the two large G&Ts consumed at home meant we were nicely oiled by the time we left.

The food was amazing, fresh and light and delicious, and much better than I would have expected from the bland decor and terrible music!

Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector (1920-77, Brazil)

Translated by Benjamin Moser

I’ve made a minor incursion into South America during Japanuary! I don’t really know where to start with this very short book, which was definitely interesting, if not madly enjoyable.

Published in 1977, the year of Clarice Lispector’s death, Hour of the Star is a sort of story within a story, as a self-consciously very present (male) narrator/author, writing in the first person, effortfully crafts a story about a young woman’s failed romance.

The protagonist of that tale, Macabea, is a secretary living in Rio. She is poor, neglected, deliberately unremarkable in character, unintelligent, nondescript – but definitely horny, and a bit romantic. The writing is self-referential, often surreal, and shot through with a sort of dark and desperate humour.

The text must have been horrible to translate from the original Potuguese, as Lispector wields language rather than writes it, layering on adjectives, going off at tangents, and constantly the writer (or Lispector in the guise of the anonymous male writer) forces their way roughly into the text.

“I have to say that the girl isn’t aware of me, if she was she’d have someone to pray to and that would mean salvation. But I’m fully aware of her: through this young person I scream my horror of life. Of this life I love so much.“

We have the sense that Macabea’s tale will not have a happy ending, and the ending is sudden, brutal and ironic.

Looking around to see what others have made of this book I was amused to see that Peter Boxall’s 1001 Books You Must Read Before you Die basically gives up in its very patchy attempt to discuss this novel, announcing that “Lispector must be read, not written about”. (A cop-out, no, in a book about books?!)

Overall, I have to say that I found this book to be weirdly brilliant – but definitely not a relaxing diversion. And despite being only 77 pages in length, it took me an awfully long time to read!

Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima (Japan)

Translated by Geraldine Harcourt

This was a book that was flagged up by Cathy and Rebecca as a buddy read for literature in translation week during Novellas in November, but I ran out of time for it in the autumn. Instead I read it this month as part of my focus on Japanese culture during what I’m cunningly calling Japanuary, and as part of the Japanese Literature Challenge hosted by Meredith at Dolce Bellezza.

The story, published in the late 1970s, covers a year or so in the life of a young woman who has split from her husband, and who is living alone with their 2-year-old daughter. The woman finds a small flat at the top of an office building, works in a library, takes her child to daycare and struggles with loneliness and the difficulties of single parenthood.

I sympathised with the mother, but found myself feeling particularly sorry for the child, whose mother seemed to expect bizarrely advanced levels of maturity from a little girl that was barely more than a toddler.

The main glaring incompatibility with reality that kept hitting me was: how does this woman manage to oversleep in the morning when she has a 2-year-old?! While raising my three children I spent what felt like and probably was 10 years sleeping no later than 7am and often being forced – extremely loudly, by inconsolable, relentless wails – out of bed for the day in the pitch dark, long before 6am, before even the children’s programming had started on the TV and when I certainly wasn’t inclined to get the poster paints out. So I mainly thought, repeatedly, “HOW????”.

My biggest fear at that particular time was sleeping late. More often than I liked to remember, it had been well after ten when I came to. I’d received repeated warnings, both from my supervisor and from the [daycare] centre.

I also failed to relate to the protagonist when she lost her daughter in the (MASSIVE) park and seemed weirdly complacent about the whole experience. Then she is mortified by what seem like standard-issue toddler tantrums, and what on earth was the doctor prescribing the child?! Or maybe it was for the mum – fair enough – and I’ve misunderstood:

And then came these frenzies of rage, triggered by what seemed to me oddly trivial complaints. I took her to see a doctor, who gave me a prescription … I was sure my daughter couldn’t have had a tantrum at daycare yet or I’d have been told.

I got so bogged down in, preoccupied by and let’s face it a bit triggered by what seemed to me a frankly implausible experience of child-rearing that any appreciation or analysis of the actual writing was impossible for me! Having said that other people whose opinions I very much respect have written far less ranty and much more measured responses to this book, and have loved it.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa (Japan)

Translated by Stephen Snyder

Review by Imogen G.

The Memory Police (published in Japanese in 1994, and in English translation in 2019) was shortlisted for the always interesting Booker International in 2020. I’ve read it as part of my focus on Japanese culture in January 2022, and for the Japanese Literature Challenge 15 hosted at Dolce Bellezza.

In the novel, a young, unnamed, female novelist is living on an island from which objects repeatedly disappear. As soon as an object vanishes – whether it be a bird, a rose, an emerald – all associations with that object disappear along with it, and then goes the memory of the forgetting. (As an aside, it always slightly amuses me how many authors write books in which their protagonist is an author, as if they can’t quite imagine themselves into a life in which someone might do something else.)

The disappearances are state-sanctioned and the populace are monitored for compliance with these wordless diktats. Those who retain disappeared objects, question the regime or fail to lose their memories and semantic associations are taken away by the terrifying and implacable Memory Police, who wear fierce green coats and aggressively shiny boots.

Loss of memory and the unquestioned imposition of control seems to be a recurring theme in what little Japanese fiction I have read to date, as do unexplained disappearances. Now-legendary writer Kazuo Ishiguro is a British citizen (with Japanese heritage, who spent his infancy in Japan) whose works repeatedly question issues around memory and a half-veiled understanding of the world in books from his most recent to those decades-old. Meanwhile, Genki Kawamura’s If Cats Disappeared from the World springs immediately to mind as another (much less accomplished) Japanese book based around mysterious disappearances.

Our protagonist has lost both her parents to the Memory Police (her father was an ornithologist who died before the birds disappeared, her mother a sculptor). When she realises that her editor R is in danger, too, as his memories stubbornly refuse to fade, she determines to do whatever it takes to protect him and, with the help of a family friend (known only as ‘the Old Man’) she works to shelter R while dealing with the ongoing, progressively more alarming disappearances.

The book was menacing and enjoyable in an increasingly surreal, sometimes frustratingly obtuse kind of way, as the occupants of the unnamed island adapt again and again, and with resigned acceptance rather than despair, to an ever more limited environment. Perhaps this is what people do…