Theatrical poster for Taxi Driver – Fair Use
I don’t know if it was murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson or not, but I saw Taxi Driver again for the first time in years. Watching Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle, however, I was reminded more of ‘lame duck’ South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol and his declaration of martial law—an intensely straight line, in other words, suddenly veering off.
As various Seoul newsfeeds struggled with those first few moments, Yoon Suk Yeol looked increasingly like a scuppered politician affecting a condition so extreme it justified military rule. Of course, the media there by then were also under martial law, which on camera seemed perplexing for the many US and UK reporters. Unlike Travis Bickle, however, it looked unlikely the South Korean president would be considered a hero in the end.
Talking of endings, striking journalists at the Guardian and Observer were ignored. The Scott Trust, worth a mere £1.3 billion, voted last week to sell the Observer to loss-making Tortoise, described deadpan by Le Monde as a slow news outlet. Tortoise is the start-up fronted by ex-BBC News head James Harding. The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) since passed a motion to continue striking, in the hope presumably of still saving the day. A vote of no-confidence in editor-in-chief Katharine Viner also appeared on the cards.
The Observer, founded in 1791, is the oldest Sunday newspaper in the world. The last time I visited its offices, half an hour later I was with two of its journalists enjoying drinks in a nearby pub. The culture will have changed—a natural rebelliousness no doubt exchanged with studious decorum. As it happened, the journalists quit drinking for good, and I wonder how many of today’s disenchanted were striking from home, their normal place of work. How does that even work?
I see the Blue Lagoon vicinity in Iceland has been attacked once more by the red-hot fingers of fate. This is lava pushing its way across its oddly spongey landscape. Iceland, I was thinking, is a country always fit for a movie. After arriving there late one night once and traveling its space-age deserted icy roads, it was like finding our way around another planet. Of course, a lot of mainstream movies—Batman Begins, Interstellar, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Captain America: Civil War, and Justice League—have used Iceland as a location. Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey came to mind. (As HAL said: ‘Good afternoon, Mr Amer. Everything is going extremely well.’) The static arts go for it, too. As I have said before, the artist went on to show a number of works based on images gleaned in Iceland. One was of a reinvented flatland given its title from a WH Auden poem. Another, a crater, or vent, turned into an image of female empowerment.
I had to phone a friend last week to get advice on a possible podcast. I thought he was just around the corner when, in fact, he was in Australia. His mention of the show he is working on, a popular reality series coming in daily from Queensland, reminded me of how familial productions can be. I used to feel this about Danny Boyle and Michael Winterbottom productions. We would all get together and everyone was familiar, each head of department having his or her own team but with everyone meeting in the middle. I guess it was because it was never permanent that it felt so special. If we were lucky, we didn’t even feel the pressure for each project to make money.
I see a lot of movies today paid for by streaming channels that so clearly suffer from too much pressure. An algorithm does not a good movie make. Money men and women most certainly do not know what is always right. Are the wrong people making movies? I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a film directly paid for by a streaming channel. My only consolation is in knowing various subsidiary industries and various dear friends and former colleagues are supported by these films. But as Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond so famously said in Sunset Boulevard to William Holden’s Joe Gillis: ‘I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.’
Finally, as the winds took hold at the weekend—like The Incredible Hulk on a rampage—I was reading up on the latest from Syria. Incredibly, rebels had already taken Damascus and Russia had proved unwilling throughout to help their ally Syria, though President Bashar al-Assad’s UK-born wife Asma and three children were said to have fled to Russia followed in all probability by Assad himself there too despite wild rumours of a plane crash. And what of Russia’s air base at Khmeimim? What of their naval base in Tartous? Was a friend right to wonder if a secret deal had been struck between Trump, Israel and Russia to neutralise ‘the Shia sphere’ and disrupt further arming of Hezbollah and Hamas before the carving up of Ukraine?
Social media was already showing opposition fighters peaceably escorting Syria’s prime minister, who technically remained in charge at the time, from his office to the Four Seasons Hotel. As the sun came up over London, a gate banged in the wind. Who knew where the wind would blow next? Nor has it ever been a consolation to know the world has seen this all before. Not just in the six Syrian wars of the third and second centuries BC. Not just during the West’s more recent Shock and Awe. Even more recently, we saw the tables turned with similar cavalcades of pick-up trucks and weapons waved in the air belonging to Islamic State. No, at the end of most movies these days, we seldom get to see our happy ending, and why should this be any different? ‘I’m God’s lonely man,’ said Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Assad must be feeling likewise. Maybe even the South Korean President. I wonder if the Observer movie critic has a view on happy endings. Either way: we can be sure of one thing. There will be plenty more sequels to come.