Sonata for a Good Man…

A few months ago, I embarked on a themed series of posts to explore and encompass politics, the mainstream media, journalism and social media. The final part was to have been a detailed review of my No.2 film of the previous decade, Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others). Set in East Germany during the 1980s’ under the Communist regime and focusing on the role of the Stasi, it could be a fitting conclusion to that exploration.

I wrote three of the four pieces at the end of February into March, considering our ability to trust those in authority.

• We have nothing to fear but fear itself … looks at The Politics of Fear, and if / how Governments need (or even create) an identifiable enemy, an imminent sense of threat and uncertainty to retain control and legitimacy
• I read the news today, oh boy… is if anything bleaker, in that it looks at the very real consolidation of media in many countries, and at the declining standards of scrutiny and all-round quality of journalism (‘churnalism’)
• I’m Spartacus… considers the role of digital media and social networking in all of this, as more people say more things more quickly with less control. How do the media and governments respond to social media…?

After that, things got busy at home, and for one reason and another, I never got around to re-watching the film. I’ve recently put that right, but in thinking about how to link it back , I’ve had to consider some pretty massive events that have taken place since those original posts.

It’s become clear that for years that (at least) signficant parts of the UK media, perhaps led by News International, engaged in pretty scandalous behaviour, systemically and illegally tapping phones of everyone from The Royal Family to celebrities to bereaved families of servicemen and murder victims. This may well also have included illegal dealings with elements of the Police, and has insidious implications for the relationships between the media and politicians of every party.

Even more recently, orderly protests ostensibly about the shooting of a man in North London quickly spread and turned into widespread rioting without a cause, looting and arson. The public,  media and governmental reaction to this has been multi-faceted and often contradictory, with Twitter-led clean-up brigades set against record numbers of prison inmates as the courts seem to apply one set of rules to these thefts or acts of criminal damage from similar crimes committed only a few months ago.

In the meantime, it’s also clear that despite the increased scrutiny of press standards, the quality of reporting isn’t getting any better.

And so Das Leben der Anderen… please be aware this review contains SPOILERS throughout.

Set in East Germany in 1984, Das Leben der Anderen is a masterpiece, tackling the all-pervading oppression of the Communist regime from that time, exploring themes of alienation, political control through fear, Free Will and our human ability to change, to achieve redemption.

In perhaps my favourite performance on film for as long as I can remember, Ulrich Muhe plays Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler, a loyal product of the East German state. He is an interrogator and field agent who implements the Stasi’s mission “to know everything”. He seeks out potential enemies of the state (and therefore the nation), gathers evidence against them, extracts confessions, and secures the stability of the state.

In the opening scenes we see his interview techniques in action as he lectures students eager to work for The Stasi. Everything he does aims to dehumanise: he has fixed routines and processes to his interrogations, almost fixed periods of time during which results can be achieved. Everyone shall conform to his will, there’s no scope for individuality. Indeed, later in the film we learn that “there are 5 types of artists” – everything and everyone can be classified. And once you’ve been classified, there is no chance or ability for you to change.

Wiesler is assigned to listen into the lives of a hitherto ‘loyal’ playwright and his glamorous actress girlfriend. Using effortlessly implanted bugging devices, he is able to lurk in the attic above their apartment, hearing every word, watching every movement, writing detailed reports about every mundane utterance. It is through his observation of their lives, passions and emotions that we unravel quite how dehumanised Wiesler’s own existence is.

He barely exists as a human being, only as HGW/XX7 in his reports. He seems utterly isolated from his colleagues, he doesn’t actually touch anyone except the whores with whom he books an appointment for a clinical, silent, joyless encounter. Only at the end of the film when the actress he has been surveilling is killed does he make physical contact with any meaning or emotion. This very personal depiction is a microcosm of what the state is doing to every individual in the society.

Fear and dread is palpable throughout the film. Citizens (even loyal ones) are totally isolated from each other by the fear of betrayal or even thinking the wrong thing. Wiesler tells his students that to even think of their interrogation procedures could deliver injustices is tantamount to treason. Everything you say can count against you, and you never know who’s listening, and how they might react to your words…

Towards the very end of the film, we see Axel Stiegler again, and it’s clear those words did come back to haunt him…

It becomes clear to us and to Wiesler that the reasons for his latest assignment have nothing to do with preserving the State, and everything to do with petty vendettas, an abuse of power and his lecherous boss’ determination to climb the ladder. He starts to doubt everything he has grown up with as he starts to make connections (albeit silent, one-way ones) with the lives of other people. He starts to question the Stasi’s labelling of its enemies.

Ulrich Muhe says more and conveys more human truths in his expression and eyes than many actors do in a career. This scene in the lift marks a turning point where he begins to make unilateral decisions, he abandons his rule-books. It is the start of Wiesler reclaiming his humanity and achieving some sort of redemption.

The final scenes of the film are bleak and uplifting almost at the same time. We see Wiesler’s career wrecked by the State he loyally served, by his boss who, not getting the report he wanted, punished those who failed to please him. We see him emerge from the (metaphorical) wreckage of the  fall of The Berlin Wall into a menial, anonymous life. But it is a real life, and it has meaning, and his actions have been recognised. He has been a Good Man.

Das Leben der Anderen is a fabulous film because it believes that humans are able to change themselves, they can act with free will even against the most astonishing odds, they have the power to do good. This to me is a vital message and should be heeded by everyone who cares about our society…

…where (in the absence of Osama Bin Laden) we’re creating a new enemy in the feral youth underclass
…where we’re labelling the rioters with their ‘sheer criminality’ and evicting families
…where Twitter and Blackberries are blamed for the riots rather than considering anything more complicated
…where politicians’ first thoughts are to restrict free speech (social media) in the face of discontent

Of course we’re not living in a police state where neighbour informs on neighbour. But this film resonates with me on so many levels, that I can’t help making comparisons. I recommend it unreservedly.

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England are best in the world at a team sport: this is not a misprint…

England don’t often top the world at team sports, despite producing individual sportsmen and women of awesome talent. Since the Glory Days of 1966, England’s football team has occasionally flattered to deceive, but mostly stuttered and disappointed. England won the Rugby World Cup in 2003, and have flirted with the top since then, but never quite sustained those performances. Even a year ago, England’s cricket team was only ranked 5th in the rankings.

Back in January I was overjoyed when England retained The Ashes in Australia for the first time in 25 years. That five-match series ended 3-1 to England, which by no means told the whole story of a gripping 6 weeks of sport. Today England completed a 4-0 whitewash of India (until a few weeks ago the top-ranked cricket test team in the world). England have replaced them as the best team in the world.

Unlike the Ashes, the 4-0 scoreline does pretty much tell the story of this series. England outplayed India in every respect, and barring a few sessions of play, this was the most one-sided series I can remember since England were humiliated in Australia in 2007. It has tested all my English reserve in not revelling ‘too much’ in this victory, but, well…

…there are plenty of reasons why England have become the best test cricket team in the world.

England’s bowling attack made great batsmen look ordinary, and has strength in depth more than any other team. To win test matches you have to take 20 wickets. England have taken 8o Indian wickets in 4 matches, while India took just 47 English wickets. Broad and Bresnan have taken 41 wickets by themselves at barely 15 runs apiece. Let’s not forget that Tim Bresnan came in as a replacement for the injured Chris Tremlett. Until this afternoon, Graeme Swann (apparently the 3rd best bowler in the world according to the latest ICC rankings) was a bit-player in the series. England now have 3 of the Top 5 and 5 of the Top 11 bowlers.

England have spirit and self-belief that means they can rescue a bad situation. Perhaps dating back to Cardiff in 2009, when Jimmy Anderson and Monty Panesar held out for 11 overs to rescue a draw against Australia, England have cultivated this tremendous quality. Test cricket is played over 5 days, eventually every team has a bad session. But the ability to persevere and believe you can change the situation is invaluable.

I was at the 4th day at Lords in the first test, and watched Ishant Sharma bowl a terrific spell to reduce England from 50-1 to 65-5. This wasn’t in the plan at all. But then Matt Prior and Stuart Broad scored 160 runs and took the game away from India in just a couple of hours. At Trent Bridge India led by 40 runs with plenty of 1st innings wickets in hand, but ended up losing by 319 runs overall. This was because of

(a) Stuart Broad… Named man of the series for taking 25 wickets at under 14 runs apiece, and scoring 182 runs in 4 innings at virtually a run a ball. Remember that before the series started, it had taken him 10 tests to take 25 wickets, and had scored only a handful of runs. At Lords he and Matt Prior took the game away when India threatened a recovery. At Trent Bridge he and Graeme Swann took England from 124-8 to over 200, then he took a hat-trick to restrict India’s lead. He dismissed Sachin Tendulkar three times. An amazing rebirth for a cricketer of undoubted talent…

(b) Tim Bresnan… A replacement for Tremlett, he ‘came off the bench’ to score 154 runs in 3 knocks and take 16 wickets.

(c) Ian Bell… who has come of age as a genuine world-class talent. In this series he switched to No.3 when Jonathon Trott was injured, and scored over 450 runs. Since the Boxing Day test in South Africa in 2009, he’s scored over 1,800 runs, averaging over 85, including 7 centuries.

(d) Kevin Pietersen… Before The Ashes series last winter, he was being written off as a busted flush. He top scored in this series, taking over as a run machine if Alastair Cook occasionally failed. He has mixed hard graft with extravagant technique, which makes him hard to bowl at…

(e) er, all of the above and more. It is true that the current England team is more than the sum of its considerable parts. We may have to start thinking of this as a team of true superstars, but they don’t behave like the Galacticos of Real Madrid. 3 players hit a double century in this series, 4 bowlers had a ‘five-for’ innings. I’ve not even mentioned how good Matt Prior has been both behind and in front of the stumps. Nobody averaged under 18 with the bat. Everyone has contributed, and often in significant ways.

The key challenge for England will be to maintain and prove their position. India were pretty woeful throughout this series, with only Raoul Dravid performing to his wonderful career heritage. Zaheer Khan was injured, but his replacements weren’t up to it. Sehwag was injured, then rushed back before he was fully fit. Others who had starred in recent series were tired, deflated or out of form, simply taken apart by England.

More importantly, England’s ascent to the summit has been on the back of several series wins in England. They may have only lost 4 of their last 31 tests, but to truly lead the cricketing world, they need to win in India, and to beat South Africa, whom they haven’t played since 2009, and whom still boast the best batsman in Jacques Kallis and the fearsome bowling attack of Steyn and Morkel. But if they can maintain their focus, collective and individual performance and team spirit, these should be challenges to relish and feel confident about.

It has been a terrific year for following the England test team. I’m looking forward to the future, and loving the feeling of being World Number 1…

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Allow me to make a snobservation…

We were first bitten by the camping bug a couple of years ago, and this year our summer is punctuated by several trips (long weekends in the main) to new and familiar sites. Last week we spent 4 nights at Norden Farm just outside Corfe Castle in Dorset. If life really is a journey and we can learn something from every experience, allow me to share…

My daughters are freakin’ brilliant kids. I love them to pieces. This trip reminded me just how much (as if I needed reminding). More details to follow below…

Dorset might just be my new Devon/Cornwall. Much as I love that Southwest peninsula, we’ve spent this break in the ‘Isle’ of Purbeck and a week in West Dorset this year, and I’ve really loved it. Studland Bay is a simply gorgeous beach, and the whole Jurassic Coast is full of surprises, delights and treasures…

Lulworth Cove

There is almost nowhere cosier in the world than the four of us under the duvet in the early morning.

Camping is definitely at its best when you let your body clock slow down and you simply exist in the moment. Things take longer, so let them. You’re at the mercy of the weather (more of this too!) so just go with it. If there’s a queue for the washing up facilities, don’t panic. You’ll get it done soon. I really wanted to spend more time at Studland Bay, but the brevity of our stay and the unseasonal weather conspired against us. So now I just want to go back…

Camping is about walking, not driving. I really liked the proximity of this campsite to Corfe Castle. From zipping up the tent we could walk up the hill to woods that surrounded the site, and barely 15 minutes later we were rewarded with a stunning view of this amazing ruin.

We coined the phrase ‘snobservation‘ during this trip (it was new for us). In a large campsite like Norden Farm, with so many strangers living in close proximity and relatively cramped quarters, most with their children, and lacking solid, insulating walls, it’s difficult to avoid family arguments or particular styles of parenting…

…my empirical evidence from last week would suggest that siblings between the ages of 3 and 13 can play well together for between 48% and 81% of the time. But they do spend most of the rest of the time screaming; at each other, at their parents, at the world. Or at least it seemed that other children scream, and their parents often scream back. Without meaning or wanting to sound smug, I am genuinely proud of my girls for the way they don’t scream or yell or bellow over trivial matters. Of course they quarrel and squabble and sometimes shout at each other, but they also apologise and forgive. For a 9- and 5-year old they seem pretty emotionally mature <end of smugness>.

Having previously experienced pretty fantastic weather on our camping breaks, we were brought down to earth by Dorset in August. The forecast had been OK for most of the week, but it mostly turned out to be breezy, not-that-warm, and cloudy with intermittent drizzle and showers. We still managed to do most of the things we wanted to, but then on Thursday the bland predictions of ‘heavy rain’ came true with a vengeance. It started raining in the early hours of the morning, but by breakfast time it was a constant downpour. As fair-weather campers this was not what we signed up for. We had planned ahead for this and pre-booked cinema tickets, but as we left the site and drove to Poole, conditions seemed to get much, much worse.

It was clear the rain was falling much more quickly than the drains could cope. Main roads were awash, fast becoming barely-passable fords. In fact, 2 weeks’ rainfall was delivered in just a few hours and parts of Bournemouth were suddenly under water.  We went to see Studio Ghibli’s latest work of wondrous beauty, Arrietty, which we all loved. On emerging from the cinema it was still hammering down with rain (in fact I’d flinched several times during the film as I could hear the rain on the roof of the cinema), and we were increasingly nervous. What would we find when we returned to the campsite?

Well, our tent is fantastic. Not a leak, not a drip. Only a couple of instances of condensation resulting in tiny splashes of water in a couple of corners.

And then, what a difference a day makes. Friday dawned bright and sunny, clear and calm. We indulged in a tremendous breakfast and learned (again) that proper food cooked and eaten outside simply does taste better. The morning was so sunny that the tent even managed to dry out completely before we had to pack it away.

Camping Breakfast of Champions: cheese omelette, bacon roll, baked beans, tea.

I’m not a completely fair-weather camper any more. I can cope just fine with less-than-perfect conditions, but I definitely don’t want to do Thursday again. Roll on and fingers crossed for our trip over the Bank Holiday next weekend…

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In our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people…

Like James Naughtie broadcasting on Radio 5Live on a Sunday morning when Princess Diana died, it takes something apparently monumental to shake the routines of the British Establishment. Today Parliament was recalled from its 6-week summer recess to debate the recent rioting that started in London but was soon repeated in other English cities. Given the initial reactions to the riots, I wasn’t feeling very hopeful this morning, so I penned a short note which I posted on my Facebook profile. It was largely unedited, stream-of-consciousness stuff, but it summed up how I felt this morning.

An open letter to our elected representatives

Dear MPs,

You’ve cut short your precious holidays that many of us can’t afford. At least have the courtesy to have a grown-up debate, considering broader social and economic issues rather than just ‘restoring order’ and ‘rooting out criminality’. It appears that the police and the courts are making pretty good progress on much of that already.

Thinking beyond next week… the Police can’t keep working 16 hour shifts. Charities & Community Groups can’t support your Big Society with no funding.

Pause for a moment to reflect on how banking bonuses & corporate tax avoidance, MPs’ expenses fraud and Media amorality might have affected those people who struggle to feed their families. How might they feel about what you have to say if all you do is condemn and talk tough, or merely score party-political points? Will that make things better?

Take a moment to review the reaction to the riots: most of the outrage has come from people who don’t live anywhere near those communities. Please note the dignity and bravery of the people affected cleaning up their own streets, the calm vigil for the murdered men in Birmingham.

We condemn Syria, Egypt, Libya and Bahrain for using force on their own people. So please make today’s discussions go beyond the use of water cannons and rubber bullets.

Certainly punish the convicted criminals, but try to reconnect them with their communities by making them contribute. Use them to rebuild, not simply punish, isolate and alienate further.

The events of the last week have demonstrated something much more important than a small number of people willing to wager their future (or perceived lack of) against the chance for a free TV. The relationships between state and some parts of our country have broken; perhaps not irreparably, but definitely seriously. This needs serious, considered leadership. The citizens of this country deserve your serious, considered leadership.

Honestly, I wasn’t very hopeful. Literally minutes after posting that note, I read a tirade from Melanie Phillips in The Daily Mail. I know I shouldn’t read that stuff, but it was so poisonous, so utterly insane today that I couldn’t keep away. Over several long paragraphs she rails at what she regards as 3 decades of failed liberal intelligentsia policies that have wrecked the moral backbone of this country. She seems to blame everything about this week’s disturbances (and a whole lot more besides) on Tony Blair and New Labour, despite the fact that the Tory Party under Margaret Thatcher and John Major were in power for 17 of the past 30 years. And even when Blair came to power, he hardly swept away the Thatcherite legacy… The very excellent liberal thicko (his words not mine) Robert Llewellyn wrote an entertaining and absolutely right-on-the-money piece about Ms Phillips this afternoon.

Now that I’ve watched some highlights (sic) and read about the parliamentary debate, it seems I was right to be concerned. Rather than serious leadership that acknowledges the short-term but also looks further ahead, and deeper into the problems, we got a lot of soundbites about the riots themselves – “sheer criminality …the only cause of  crime is a criminal”, and ‘bold’ statements about the use of water cannons, enabling police to remove hoods, about blocking social media if it’s being used to coordinate criminal activity.

Where was the recognition or even a tentative acknowledgement that there might be something deeper beyond this than just a ‘feral underclass’? David Cameron referred to pockets of society that are “not just broken but sick”, but it seemed his only diagnosis was to hunt them down and amputate them. Not so much a doctor looking to heal a wound as putting the patient out of their misery.

The rioters have rightly been condemned as criminals, who should be identified, charged and punished. In the scenes of recent days I’ve watched people whose only allegiance is to themselves and others like them, who were out for whatever they could get for themselves, who lacked any kind of empathy or understanding of the consequences of their actions on other people, and who often seemed oblivious to the shock, outrage or distress felt by the rest of us in what we might describe as ‘normal society’.

Well, if they are the feral underclass, we have a feral elite: Corporate bankers who continue to award themselves massive bonuses even after they’ve wrecked the real economy, politicians whose only remorse after being caught using our money to pay for their televisions seemed to be that they got caught, and media moguls who illegally tapped phones of innocent victims in order to sell more newspapers. These groups who rule over us have been just as oblivious to ‘normal’ codes of conduct, just as amorally self-centred and opportunistic. Peter Oborne has written similarly in his blog for The Daily Telegraph.

Franklin Roosevelt was the speaker of this post’s title. He managed to draw his divided nation together, inspire them to a better future. Today our leaders had a chance to make even a small step towards that, by rising to the occasion and taking a chance that they could actually inspire us. I reckon they failed us, because they failed to see this nation as one people, but a country still divided into ‘us’ and ‘them’. They talked almost entirely about protecting and insulating ‘us’ from ‘them’. By focusing on punishment, they will continue to alienate ‘them’ from ‘us’. If they don’t get their act together and start behaving like leaders, we will all go down as one people.

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Out of the ashes…

Tuesday 9th August 2011 was a strange day. As a (bleeding-heart) liberal, I’ve always felt a sense of pride about my faith in humanity, my belief that people are generally good. I believe that strangers anywhere can connect with each other. I’ve also been trying to be more positive this year, to lessen my outrage at stuff that’s just a a bit shit.

But then last night, on my 13th wedding anniversary, I watched Twitter explode and the TV news coverage descend in a storm of petrol bombs and violence against innocent people and their property. What had ostensibly started a couple of days earlier as a community protest over the police shooting of a local man in Tottenham somehow metamorphosed into something approaching urban warfare. Gangs of (mostly) young men, their faces (mostly) covered, were running amok. Buildings and businesses all over London were torched. Flats above shops were burnt out, their inhabitants forced to jump from windows to save themselves. Restaurants and shops were attacked and looted. TVs were torn from the walls in bookies. Supermarkets were raided for their alcohol stocks, sports stores ransacked for their trainers. Cars were set alight. For a few hours it genuinely felt like anarchy.

My faith in humanity was dealt a pretty heavy blow. The behaviour so clearly on display betrayed a complete disconnection, a total absence of empathy, an amorality and selfishness that ignored the feelings of anyone else. These were disenfranchised youths attacking and destroying their own community. There seemed to be nothing racial about it – Chinese restaurants were attacked just as Turkish shops. There seemed to be no cause or focus for the violence, nothing specific. A  friend described it today as ‘recreational arson’.

My pinko-middle-class liberal sensibilities were sent reeling throughout last night and today as more and more clips and testimonies came out: shopkeepers assaulted, restaurant diners robbed, even injured teenagers mugged, kids laughing to news reporters, blaming “the government … the Conservatives … whatever … the rich people”. I was bombarded with the calls to bring in the army, water cannons, tear gas, curfews. And I could see they had a point.

Like a dog lying in the corner they will bite you without warning,
Look out!
They’ll tear your insides out…

But I know in my heart that it truly is more complicated than that. The idiots who attacked their own neighbours and trashed their own neighbourhoods must be stopped, identified and punished. A lot of last night was about people who don’t have any sense of community or belonging. Where did all that come from?

• Decades of growing inequality exacerbated by an increasing awareness of, proximity to and access to that inequality through technology (many of these so-called impoverished kids are using very expensive phones to talk to each other)…
• And yet while we’re all more aware of the everyday minutiae of the lives of the wealthy and famous, they seem to live in increasingly isolated worlds, far away from the reality of the rest of us. We can buy their replica perfumes, fashion lines and phones, but we’re still struggling to pay the bills while they their incomes soar…
• The ruling classes of bankers, politicians and the media have all been shown to act in their own (a)moral universes in recent times, wrecking the stability of the worldwide economy, fiddling their expenses, and tapping phones in the name of selling papers. And so far, they seem to have got away with it…
• At the same time the poor are taken to task for being poor or for claiming benefits they might not be entitled to. Community services are slowly dismantled, community charities have had their funding cut, all the little things that can make a difference are whittled away, and replaced by nothing…

The words of bloggers I trust held no easy answers, perhaps because there aren’t any easy answers today. Steve from Until Next Year mirrored my feelings earlier today: a mix of rage, sadness, and disappointment with the leadership vacuum that seemed apparent. Billy Gotta Job was first off the mark this morning with a more coherent attempt at an explanation than I can muster, and Extranea seemed to more closely match my despair this afternoon.

Nevertheless, the green shoots of some kind of Big Society emerged pretty quickly today. @riotcleanup grew on Twitter like the only plant amidst the desolation of Wall-E’s future world laid waste. People flocked to London to clean up the debris, to reclaim the streets; and they did it with a sense of humour, becoming #riotwombles for the day. Politicians were taken to task at the same time as they tried to spout banalities about ‘restoring order’ and recalling parliament. It seemed that we were ready to demand more from them.

It seems that London is quieter tonight, although Manchester and Birmingham are suffering their own disturbances. I hope this can be calmed down quickly, and that leadership can come from both the bottom-up, and from the top-down. This leadership must re-establish the feeling of community, of interdependence, of looking after each other. And it must tackle both the short-term and longer-term issues, the root causes as well as the suppurating boils on the surface.

It’s time for our leaders to step up and prove themselves. But if we don’t show them that this time we want and deserve better, we can’t expect them to go far enough or deep enough.

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Out here you’re a man and a gentleman or you ain’t anything at all…

Probably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered.

This is how Stanley Kubrick described Jim Thompson’s 1952 classic pulp novel “The Killer Inside Me”: and he should know a thing or two in this field, having explored the darker recesses of the human psyche more than once in his filmography.

Michael Winterbottom adapted the novel into a film in 2010, starring Casey Affleck as Lou Ford, a deputy sheriff in small-town Texas in the 1950s. It’s apparent in this close and closed community that appearances and reputations are all-important. Yet beneath his pristine white shirts, despite his beautiful local-girl fiancée and his deputy’s badge, Lou Ford is a sociopath, with a mean streak of sexual sadism thrown in for very, very bad measure. He scoffs at the notion that because people have grown up with him that they think they know him. And very quickly, he proves his point.

Michael Winterbottom is a terrific film-maker, and is almost never boring. I’ve loved many of his films: the relentlessly bleak but compelling Jude, the understated, meandering study of grief that is Genova, the electrifying and shocking Road to Guantanamo, the surreal and knowing A Cock and Bull Story, and his most recent piece of brilliance for TV, The Trip.

The Killer Inside Me is a beautiful film to look at (except for the moments your hands are covering your eyes). It evokes the dusty heat of the Texan summer, setting the dust and heat against shiny cars, wood-panelled interiors, immaculately-tailored suits and dresses. It uses many of the classic tropes of the film noir genre to very strong effect. However, within this well-crafted and wonderfully-acted film there lurks a very dark heart indeed.

As Lou Ford, Casey Affleck dramatises that very dark heart. Within barely a few minutes of the start of the film, he has pursued a sadomasochistic affair with Jessica Alba’s prostitute character Joyce Lakeland. Then almost from nowhere, he viciously punches her into a coma, leaving her for dead. This scene lasts for several minutes, and is unflinchingly portrayed in full-frame. Nothing is spared as we watch her face transform “into hamburger meat”, and the blows just keep coming. It’s almost certainly the most disturbing scene I’ve ever watched on film. He also clinically shoots dead her ‘other’ lover as part of a twisted blackmail scheme. These deeds and their aftermath soon spiral out of control, and Lou begins to lose his cool facade, killing again and again to try to protect himself from the pursuing local DA.

Affleck is quite brilliant in this performance. His face is usually flat, emotionless, reminding me of the way Patrick Bateman is described in American Psycho, to whom everything is of seemingly equal importance or relevance, whether that’s which restaurant to book, the font on his business card, or how he butchers a stranger he met on the street. Like Ford, Bateman seems aware that he’s playing some kind of game, acting normal, conforming to expected behaviours in order to just get along without raising suspicions. However, there’s no apparent discrimination in the way he treats his victims, male or female.

It’s the differences in the way Ford treats women that are deeply problematic. He kills many men, but usually off-screen and/or very quickly. The two women in his life are despatched with protracted, graphic, sickening violence. On top of that, there’s more than a hint that his sadistic streak is accepted and indeed welcomed by these women. They are all seem depicted as submissive, welcoming his dominance. We’re shown flashbacks to his childhood that aim to reinforce this, almost as if to explain away these choices in the film. It was all his nanny’s fault – she led him on as a young boy. That’s what made him…

Much as I admire a lot about this film, I’m not sure that I buy it. Lou Ford is a deeply manipulative man – he knows exactly what he’s doing. He makes conscious choices, and we are painfully aware of them. He seems to revel in his violence against women, just as he is secretly proud of the way he deceives those men who think they know him. His power, his conquests over men are largely intellectual. He avoids the questions of the DA, and the efforts of others to control him. Even at the end he chooses his own final scenes.

However, we periodically see him remembering his affair with Joyce tenderly, with dreamy lighting and settings that feel out-of-place with the rest of the film. For me this turns Ford into a massively unreliable narrator. We are encouraged to think that somewhere inside he is capable of love, empathy and compassion. But his power over women is entirely physical, and brutal in its remorselessness. He says he’s sorry, but to me that feels hollow, another example of him saying what we want him to say, what we need him to say.

I don’t believe this is a misogynistic film, but it does depict misogyny. Michael Winterbottom has filmed strong female characters before, most notably in A Mighty Heart, but this film, for all its strengths, style and great acting, left me feeling deeply uneasy. Peter Bradshaw has mounted as solid a defence of The Killer Inside Me as anything I’ve read. It’s well-written and persuasive. But I’m more on the same side as this terrific blog. There’s a fine line between depicting unacceptable acts and being unacceptable.

At one point Lou reassures a soon-to-be-victim that “nobody has it coming. That’s why nobody sees it coming”. I’d read quite a bit about this film before choosing to see it, but I certainly didn’t realise how it would make me feel. Maybe it does show us how shallow and unrealistic most screen violence is compared to the reality of violence. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

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