Laurence Coupe: Film and music reviews

There's always that awkward moment when getting to know somebody: at what point do you reveal that you actually like western films? Actually, there's no need to apologise, when one thinks of the great John Ford, director of The Searchers, My Darling Clementine and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. They offer a profoundly moral vision of human beings struggling to make sense of the world, against a backdrop of landscape which is breathtaking but often inhospitable. I believe that Clint Eastwood belongs to that same tradition, even if one of his most famous films, Dirty Harry, isn't a western at all; Harry is, of course, the archetypal lawman who has to act outside the law in the interests of justice. So Dirty Harry and High Plains Drifter are really two versions of the same story, and neither is worse for that.

Now, in what might be his last film, Eastwood has revisited a preoccupation of his earlier work: how should society be protected from those with no morals, no compassion and no scruples about using violence? In Gran Torino, Eastwood plays Walt Kowalski, a retired factory worker and a veteran of the Korean War who has recently been bereaved. Unable to relate to the contemporary world, with its lack of respect for tradition and decency, he is initially hostile to his new neighbours, a family of Hmongs, in exile from the mountain region bordering Vietnam and Thailand. It is through his belief in justice that he gets to know them: he instinctively defends them against a local gang of marauding, vicious youths. In the process, he forms a particular band with the son, Thao, whose cousin is a member of the gang, who is pressurising him to join them.

The confrontation between Walt and the gang leads to a violent climax. I won't spoil the ending, but I would just say that Gran Torino is far more than an excuse for a shootout. It makes one ponder the relationship between age and youth, between the native resident and the foreign incomer, between traditional morality and contemporary chaos. Above all it asks us to reconsider what exactly is involved in being a hero. Yes, it really does deserve to be ranked with the best of John Ford!

Winstanley, dir. Kevin Brownlow & Andrew Mollo

In April 1649, not long after the execution of Charles I by the Parliamentarians, Gerrard* Winstanley led a band of about forty people, impoverished and dispossessed, onto common land on St George's Hill in Surrey. There they cultivated crops and established a community of 'Diggers'. An admirer of Oliver Cromwell and an enthusiastic supporter of the English Revolution, Winstanley had expected to witness the restitution of the land to the English people. Seeing no evidence for that yet, he trusted that his own community of 'Diggers' would show the way. His inspiration was the Christ who preached universal love, and whom he believed to dwell in the hearts and minds of humankind rather than in some celestial realm; his conviction was that, with Satan's monarchy having been overthrown, 'King Jesus' would make the earth 'a common treasury'. Proclaiming a 'Law of Freedom' which would 'turn the world upside down', Winstanley found himself opposed by both the local landowner and the local parson. Indeed, it was they, supported by Cromwell's own army, who forcibly suppressed the Diggers' venture after it had survived less than two years. Yet even in defeat, Winstanley retained his religious faith and his apocalyptic vision. A leading figure of the 'inner light' tradition in English Christianity, he reportedly died a Quaker.

Brownlow & Mollo's austere black-and-white film, first released in 1975, has now been carefully restored by the British Film Institute and issued as a DVD. It's not a film for relaxing with on a Saturday evening: it's more a film for sitting up straight and concentrating on, preferably on a Sunday. It's a powerful history lesson; it's also a breath of spiritual fresh air. If you're a Christian, it asks you: what kind of world would it be if we actually lived according to Christ's teaching? If you're not, it makes you think again about religion being nothing more than a distraction from 'the real world'. Either way, this film reminds us that Winstanley is one of the most challenging of English visionaries and (as it includes generous quotations from his pamphlets) one of the finest of English writers.

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, dir. Yves Simoneau

When Barach Obama was elected president last year, the historian Simon Schama suggested that his victory represented the 'redemption' of the United States. Why? Because the constitution had been founded on an 'original sin', namely slavery. (Thomas Jefferson himself owned over 600 African slaves.) But we must not forget that there was another offence, equally grievous, which was committed in the course of the settlement of that continent. I refer of course to the murder of millions of Native American people. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is a dramatisation of this act of genocide, this second 'original sin' of the USA. The film, based on the book of the same title by Dee Brown, was made by the HBO network and first broadcast on US television in 2007; it is now available on DVD. It focuses on the Lakota tribe of the Sioux nation of Great Plains Indians, led by Chief Sitting Bull, the man credited with the Indian victory against General Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn (1876). That is where the film starts; but the story it tells is one of defeat and subjugation. We see Sitting Bull and his people having to give up more and more of their land as the US army becomes both stronger and more devious. Eventually, they are forced onto a reservation at Standing Rock, South Dakota, where Sitting Bill is murdered. This act provokes an uprising, which is suppressed in the notorious massacre at Wounded Knee Creek (1890).

While it conveys a shocking message, alerting us to a legacy of violence, exploitation and betrayal, this beautifully shot and sensitively acted film cannot be dismissed as propaganda. It is judicious in its depiction of the US authorities. In particular, Senator Henry Dawes is shown to have genuine sympathy with the Indians in their plight, trying his best to get them the best deal he can, given the pressures on him from the government and the military alike. But his flaw is his assumption of the innate superiority of the white man, which he shares with both his president and the army generals with whom he has to liaise. It is this flaw which introduces a fascinating subplot, involving Charles Eastman, an Indian who has been converted to Christianity and white culture. Mentored by Dawes and trained as a doctor, he goes to work at Standing Rock, and participates in the project of 'civilising' the Indians. It slowly dawns on him that the disease and alcoholism which is rife on the reservation is the result of the very policy he is supporting – no matter how well-intentioned his mentor might be.

Dee Brown's book, first published in the early 1970s, is credited with waking up the descendants of those responsible for the virtual destruction of Indian culture to a hitherto unstated truth about American history. Yves Simoneau's film, coming thirty years later, is a salutary reminder for those who have chosen to forget. It should also be of interest to the many non-Americans who are trying to decide whether Barack Obama's presidency signifies a genuinely new start. Simoneau leaves us in no doubt of the extent of the damage done in the very formation of the America we know all too well today. Importantly, it demonstrates how the destruction of the Indian culture went hand in hand with that of the land which they held to be sacred – land which the settlers regarded as wilderness that had to be tamed. So the film hints at a third 'original sin' for which absolution needs to be sought, that against nature itself. With so much of the global population currently engaged in destroying the planet in pursuit of American-style affluence, 'redemption' still seems a long way off.

'O Thou Transcendent': The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams, dir. Tony Palmer

The piece of music which is repeatedly voted England's favourite is The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams – or VW, as he is often referred to. It is right that the English people have taken his music to their hearts as he, more than any other composer, stands for what the poet William Blake meant when he preached 'mental fight' on behalf of 'England's green and pleasant land'. It is no coincidence that VW set Blake to music, for they both belong to a tradition that is deeply patriotic without being narrowly nationalistic. I suspect that the affection that so many feel for The Lark Ascending arises from its evocation of the English countryside, for what's left of it becomes all the more precious as we pollute, degrade and 'develop' the rest. Nor should we overlook the fact that it was written just at the start of the First World War – in which the pacifist composer participated as a stretcher bearer – and came to acquire deeper and wider significance as a lament for a vanished Eden, a lost innocence.

The occasion of these comments is the release on DVD of Tony Palmer's long, leisurely film about VW. Not only does it document the life with a wealth of archive film and photography, but it includes interviews with people who either knew him (eg, his second wife, Ursula) or were influenced by him (eg, the composers John Rutter and John Adams), along with extracts from filmed performances of the major works.

VW's love of the English musical tradition was initially prompted by his concern about the dominance of European influences, notably German and Austrian: he took exception to the excessive deference of his countrymen to Brahms, Mahler and others. This love took two main forms. Firstly, VW wanted to rescue from generations of condescension the rural culture which expressed itself in folk music: he was the man most responsible for the recovery of hundreds of songs that might otherwise have been lost once the singers who knew them by heart had died. It is fitting that one of the interviewees in the film is Richard Thompson, a pioneer of English 'folk-rock': he recalls working in Germany prior to his musical career, and having to defend VW's music against the accusation made by his colleagues that the music was typically English in being 'sentimental'.

Secondly, VW wanted to revive English sacred music. He was particularly keen on the Tudor period, and greatly admired the religious songs of Thomas Tallis – composing his haunting Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis in 1910. Prior to that, he accepted the role of musical editor for The English Hymnal (1906), which contains some of England's favourite hymns, with original melodies by VW himself in many cases. One thinks, for instance, of 'Come Down, Oh Love Divine' and 'He Who Would Valiant Be'.

Palmer's film celebrates all this. In doing so, it radically revises VW's reputation. It is often said that his love of England renders his music safe and predictable. Far from it. His great-uncle was Charles Darwin, whose work fascinated him; so he knew all about the long, withdrawing roar of what Matthew Arnold called 'the sea of faith'. Indeed, he comes across in this film as a complex figure: simultaneously a nature mystic, a cultural Christian and an anxious agnostic. It is no coincidence that the chorus from his first symphony which gives the film its title, 'O Thou Transcendent', is based upon a work by the American poet Walt Whitman, whose spirituality was unorthodox, to put it mildly.

Moreover, the man who saw unspeakable horrors in the trenches went on to write some very dark music indeed – for example, the sixth symphony – which conveyed his sense that civilisation was on the verge of collapse and that the earth was heading for catastrophe. It certainly does not make comfortable listening. He deserves our respect and gratitude, and this fascinating film suggests that we are finally able to do him justice.

Christmas In The Heart by Bob Dylan (Columbia)

For me, one of the main curses of contemporary civilisation is piped music: everywhere you go, you have to listen to someone else's – or some corporation's – choice of noise. I say 'noise' because in my experience it's rarely anything one actually likes. But then again, even if they were playing Vaughan Williams or Elgar, Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan, one surely has the right to choose when and where to listen to them? And how would one feel about one's favourite music being reduced to 'muzac', anyway? I'm grateful for the fact that one doesn't usually hear any of the above when out and about. It would be disconcerting to have Dylan intoning the famous line from 'It's Alright, Ma' – 'He not busy being born is busy dying' – while groping for a bag of frozen organic peas.

At about this time of year the noise just gets worse. I wonder if anyone has monitored the increase in violence in supermarkets occasioned by the remorseless repetition of Slade singing 'So here it is, merry Christmas / Everybody's having fun'? (It's the check-out staff I feel sorry for; customers can beat a hasty exit.) Still, at least we don't get Dylan's greatest hits reduced to the same level and mixed in with the same cacophony… But when I purchased his new album, Christmas In The Heart, and noted that it included such popular gems as 'Winter Wonderland' and 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas', along with such traditional hymns as 'Oh Come All You Faithful' and 'The First Noel', I had the worrying suspicion that his intention was to sell the rights to some purveyor of piped music, and we'd be hearing him in Morrisons before the year was out. The jolly, upbeat children's song 'Must Be Santa' would become the soundtrack from Hell.

Dylan, of course, has a large and loyal body of admirers. They have either enjoyed or endured his frequent changes of persona: the Woody Guthrie imitator, the 'hip' icon of the sixties counterculture, the ultra-conventional country music artist, the religious zealot denouncing 'rock'n'roll addicts', and so forth. But would 'Bob the Christmas muzac man' be the last straw?

Having heard all the tracks on the album, I can say that I doubt that this will happen. True, the backing singers make a sound that the cynical might describe as saccharine. True, before Bob joins in, one might think one was listening to The Perry Como Show. But of course, it's precisely when Bob does join in that one realises that it is (thank God) business as usual. That weary, rasping voice is inimitable -- paradoxically, both disconcerting and reassuring. We rely on him to disturb us. Dylan is to my mind the greatest religious songwriter of the present era: right back to his early 'protest' phase ('I can't think for you, you'll have to decide / Whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side'), right through his 'born-again' period ('I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man / Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand'), up to his sombre meditations on mortality of recent years ('I don't even hear the murmur of a prayer / It's not dark yet, but it's getting there'). By reinterpreting standard Christmas songs, without being either subversive or, worse still, 'ironic' (the usual excuse for bad taste these days), he makes us ask what we really think the Christian feast is all about. Listen to this in good faith … but please don't forget to subscribe to 'Pipedown', the campaign against muzac: www.pipedown.co.uk !!!

The Kinks Choral Collection by Ray Davies and the Crouch End Festival Chorus (Decca)

IIf you had to choose one piece of popular music that you could not live without, what would it be? If that’s impossible, perhaps we could narrow this down by specifying a song performed by its writer… That would mean you couldn’t have Fred Astaire singing Irving Berlin’s ‘Cheek To Cheek’ if you wanted something cheerful, Bing Crosby singing Jay Gorney & E Y Harburg’s ‘Brother Can You Spare a Dime?’ if you wanted something serious, or Elvis Presley singing Junior Parker & Sam Phillips’ ‘Mystery Train’ if you wanted … well, something mysterious.

Woody Guthrie: ‘This Land Is Your Land’. Hank Williams: ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’. Charles & Ira Louvin: ‘When I Stop Dreaming’. Sam Cooke: ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’. Bob Dylan: ‘Mr Tambourine Man’. John Lennon: ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. Paul McCartney: ‘Eleanor Rigby’. George Harrison: ‘Beware Of Darkness’. Paul Simon: ‘American Tune’. Loudon Wainwright: ‘School Days’. Johnny Cash: ‘Man In Black’. Joni Mitchell: ‘Both Sides Now’. Jimmy Webb: ‘Galveston’. James Taylor: ‘Fire and Rain’. Fred Neil: ‘Everybody’s Talkin’’. Townes Van Zandt: ‘Waiting Round To Die’. Gram Parsons: ‘Return of the Grievous Angel’. Emmylou Harris: ‘From Boulder to Birmingham’. Richard Thompson: ‘The New St George’. Nick Drake: ‘River Man’. Marvin Gaye: ‘What’s Going On’. Ry Cooder: ‘Across The Borderline’. Leonard Cohen: ‘Anthem’. The Smiths: ‘There Is A Light And It Never Goes Out’. Pulp: 'Common People'. Kate McGarrigle: ‘Mendocino’. Shane McGowan (with Kirsty MacColl): ‘Fairy Tale of New York’… (That’s enough! Ed.)

But wait! There’s one other performance that can stand up to any of them, and may even come out top of the list. I refer, of course, to Ray Davies singing ‘Waterloo Sunset’ in his old Kinks days. Those of a certain age will recall the way it conveyed a sense of deep English melancholy, all the more remarkable given the fact that it appeared around the time of the so-called ‘summer of love’ in 1967. Then, not long after that came the Village Green Preservation Society album, which confirmed our suspicions that Ray Davies was closer in spirit to Thomas Hardy, John Betjeman and Philip Larkin – and, for that matter, Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams – than he was to Scott (‘If You’re Going To San Francisco Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair’) McKenzie. Well, now he’s recorded his greatest song again, in a totally new treatment, with the Crouch End Festival Chorus.

Additional treats on this beautiful album are new versions of ‘Days’ and ‘See My Friends’, plus ‘Village Green Medley’. They all sound wonderful: timeless, profound classics. Of course, if Davies is the choice, the song simply HAS to be ‘Waterloo Sunset’, we all agree! But which version: Kinks or Crouch End? I simply can’t say. Perhaps I’d better go back to that list again, as in this case my indecision seems to be final! How about you?

Creation, dir. Jon Amiel (Icon Films)

The controversy surrounding Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection doesn't seem to be dying down, even 150 years after the publication of The Origin of Species. Creationists adhere to a literal interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis – though some of the more enlightened ones concede that the six days of creation might have actually been six epochs. They are matched against neo-Darwinians, who not only want to maintain Darwin's theory in every particular, but who insist that it necessarily involves adopting the stance of atheism. Religious fundamentalism and secular fundamentalism are engaged in their own evolutionary struggle for survival, it seems.

Now we have on DVD Jon Amiel's sensitive cinematic treatment of the critical moment in which Darwin finally got down to writing and publishing his book after years of hesitation as to the veracity of his theory, and an accompanying concern about what its consequences might be. Married to a devout Christian, and friendly with the local vicar, Darwin feared that the doubts he raised about the literal truth of Genesis would be controversial. More importantly, the death of his young daughter Annie cast him into a long period of despair. If he believed in natural selection, and the survival of those creatures which were best fitted to their environment, then he had to accept Annie's death as a demonstration of his theory. If he believed in a benign God, he had to accept it as an event which was currently inexplicable but which might be understood in whatever afterlife awaited him and his wife. The film doesn't resolve any of these issues, but it powerfully dramatises them.

Interestingly, we are not allowed to witness the demise of his daughter, but we are allowed to witness that of another character in the film. I refer to Jennie, an orang-utan who has been captured while young and transported from her jungle to reside in an English zoo. Jennie's story is one of those which Darwin is repeatedly asked by Annie to recount; she likes it because it is sad, and she always insists on hearing it to the end, when Jennie dies in the arms of her keeper. By granting such dignity to this death, the film forces us to ask ourselves why it is that we assume that the fate of other species should be of far less concern than that of our own. Considering the damage wreaked by homo sapiens on this planet, and the innumerable extinctions that it is currently bringing about because of its arrogant disregard for biodiversity, the film offers a useful challenge to our presuppositions about which creatures are entitled to respect and which are not.

Inevitably in a feature film, many aspects of Darwin's situation have to be simplified. The hostility of the church of the day to his ideas is exaggerated, I would suggest. For one thing, the idea that the Bible offered poetic rather than factual truth had become well-established among the more liberal clergy by then. For another, evolution had been in the air for decades by the time Darwin came to publish his findings; all he did (though that was more than enough!) was to focus on natural selection as the key to how it worked. That said, we must acknowledge that Darwin's local cleric, who is represented in the film, was hostile to his conclusions, if not his field of enquiry.

Another concern I have is that the film perhaps gives too much gloomy attention to what the poet Tennyson called 'nature red in tooth and claw': this distorts Darwin's theory, which could be said to be as much about cooperation as it is about competition.

Which brings us back to that supposed battle of beliefs which I sketched at the beginning of this review… It's worth noting that many modern and contemporary theologians have demonstrated that evolution can be made fully compatible with Christianity. One important outcome has been the radical reinterpretation of the verse in the King James translation of Genesis which declares that humankind is in a position of 'dominion' over the rest of creation. We have to become aware of ourselves as part of a great web of being, rather than as having a God-given right to do what we want to the earth and its other creatures. Darwin would certainly have approved of this particular evolutionary advance in thinking. But then, it isn't only Christianity that has to adapt. I understand that the more dogmatic kind of Darwinism is currently being challenged by some biologists, on the grounds that it exaggerates the function of natural selection in evolution; there is now much more sense of there being multiple factors at work, internal as well as external.

Whatever your own stance, rest assured that, if you are fascinated by the natural world and how we should best understand it, and if you find science and religion as compelling as each other, this is the film for you. And of course, if you just like to imagine how great ideas come to be born, you mustn't miss seeing Creation.

American VI: Ain't No Grave by Johnny Cash (American Recordings)

April 2010

For many years Johnny Cash was dismissed as a middle-of-the-road country singer. People forgot how dangerous he had seemed when he first started recording at Sam Phillip's Sun studio in Memphis, along with the likes of Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. After all, this was the man who sang, in 'Folsom Prison Blues': 'I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.' That song, which is written from the point of view of a convicted murderer, hardly fits in with the kind of sentimental material which we associate with easy-listening country music, as represented by Jim Reeves and Eddy Arnold, for example. That line, which is probably one of the most striking in the history of American popular song, strikes me as country music's equivalent of the moment in Coleridge's famous poem, 'The Ancient Mariner', when the sailor shoots the beautiful and beneficent albatross for no good reason, thereby bringing catastrophe to his ship and his fellow-sailors. It forces us to ask ourselves: why do human beings gratuitously commit the most evil acts? and does the gift of free will demand too high a price?

Even if you think I'm going too far here, it has to be said that Cash's main preoccupations as a performer have been with the darker side of life. He has always been able to make a light-hearted love song sound like a meditation on death, desolation and despair. Listen, for example, to 'I Walk The Line' or 'Ring of Fire'. This tendency to despondency was, of course, always held in check (and perhaps thereby intensified ?) by his very public and defiant commitment to Christianity. Thus in his song of self-justification, 'The Man in Black', he explains that he dresses in dark colours 'for the poor and the beaten down', and can't help but add that he does so also for 'those who never read / Or listened to the words that Jesus said'.

At least, then, let us agree that Cash is not a talent to be dismissed lightly. It's fascinating to chart the ups and downs of his reputation, and to ponder the miraculous ascent of his career in the years leading up to his death. I'm referring of course to the series of recordings which he made with the producer Rick Rubin from 1993 to 2003, when he died. On these albums Cash re-recorded some of his old songs; and he also offered new material, such as 'The Man Comes Around', which is his version of the Book of Revelation. Moreover he offered unadorned acoustic versions of not only traditional American 'roots music' but also 'pop' material. His version of John Lennon's 'In My Life' makes it sound like the statement of a man nearing his end – thereby revealing that a strong sense of mortality was always present in that composition by a young, successful and apparently carefree Beatle. Nor did Cash exclude the more extreme forms of 'alternative rock'. Who can forget the deeply affecting sound of Cash intoning the sombre lyrics of Trent Reznor's lament, 'Hurt'?

The last of the series, which consists of material recorded in the few months of 2003 between the death of his wife June and his own demise, stands up to comparison with earlier volumes. Like the host of the wedding feast at Cana, Rick Rubin might have been expected to leave the second-rate material until last, but this is far from the case. Cash renders the title track, a Negro spiritual which I seem to recall hearing the majestic Sister Rosetta Tharpe perform, so that one is simultaneously aware both of his approaching death and the strength of his faith: 'There ain't no grave gonna hold my body down / When you hear that trumpet sound / Gonna get up out of the ground / There ain't no grave gonna hold my body down.' Typically, he juxtaposes this with a contemporary song by a performer more often associated with secular entertainment, namely Sheryl Crow. In his version of 'Redemption Day', Cash brings out the sense of frustration at the evils and injustices of the world, while giving full force to the notion of divine judgement (of the wicked) and deliverance (of the good). Other gems include his serene rendition of the Tom Paxton classic, 'Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound': the image of life as a journey is given a new resonance; we come away from this performance with a sense of how strange, difficult and lonely the sheer act of survival can be; but also we realise how necessary it is to embrace rather than evade suffering.

The necessity for acceptance, and for resolution in the face of mortality, is brought out in Cash's own song, '1 Corinthians 15:55'. This is an elaboration on the words of St Paul – 'O death, where is thy sting? / O grave, where is thy victory?' – set to a charming, old-fashioned waltz tune which seems initially incongruous but then sublimely appropriate. Cash certainly brings that particular passage to newly triumphant life.

It's not appropriate for me to go through, track by track, ticking them off or giving marks out of five. You really have to immerse yourself in the whole experience. From Bob Nolan's song of physical and spiritual thirst, 'Cool Water', to Queen Lili'uokalani's Hawaian song of farewell, 'Aloha Oe', you can't help but feel privileged to be in the company of a talent so wide and deep. And you can't help but marvel at how he managed to affirm the power of music, and the preciousness of life, in face of his imminent death. You don't have to share Cash's religious faith to feel inspired and uplifted by this album; you just need to listen.

Music on YouTube: Dominic Williams

Dominic Williams has been appearing in folk clubs for about three decades, performing his own and other people's songs, as well as traditional material. He has played at the Edinburgh Festival, and has also appeared several times on Radio 2. To me, the way he delivers his own lyrics is very striking: a mixture of fragility and resolution. I would strongly recommend looking up some of his performances on 'You Tube'. If you've not tried such a thing before, take it from someone who's only just started himself that it's really easy! I'll just offer three examples which you might want to search out.

This is Williams' classic lament about the Great War – and, by extension, all wars. If I say that the song and its accompanying film constitute a brilliantly economical history lesson, that might make it sound too dull. Put simply, I've rarely come across such a vivid reminder of the price paid by millions of ordinary men for the incompetence and hunger for power of their so-called betters. The idiocy and horror of war are conveyed in sharp, searching lyrics, accompanied by skilfully selected images and a sound that can only be described as superb – delicate but deliberate, lyrical but incisive.

Go to Dominic's YouTube Channel. Once you're there, you'll find links for most of his other material, including:

Here we move from historical disaster to ecological catastrophe. This is an elegy for nature, in our age of planetary crisis, as well as an expression of a personal sense of loss and bewilderment. The songwriter wonders what has happened to the land, to the climate, to the seas and to the very heavens above our heads, registering his own disorientation both sensitively and succinctly. Although the title might just be an ironic echo of Irving Berlin's uplifting ditty, made famous as performed by Fred Astaire, I suspect that what Williams has chiefly in mind is Marvin Gaye's 'Mercy Mercy Me', with its simple, searching line: 'Where did all the blue skies go?' If so, then this song makes a worthy pairing with that: each is a classic 'Ecology Song', to use Gaye's subtitle. The accompanying film, complete with sound effects, moves between images of family & friends and of the natural world. The effect is poignant and thought-provoking.

If 'Tommy's Lot' is about history, and if 'Blues Skies Gone' is about ecology, then this song is about ideals. It explores what it feels like to be alive now, having come of age in the 1960s – the decade of flower power and the rise of the counterculture. The question it asks, essentially, is what went wrong? Williams addresses an old friend whom he used to think was really radical and alternative, but who has ended up as a pillar of the establishment, enjoying an affluent way of life and espousing reactionary principles. Yet there is compassion, both in the lyric and in the delivery; and Williams is canny enough to include himself in this shrewd assessment of how ideals get abandoned. Moreover, there is more than a hint that, in the first place, those ideals had been adopted by both of them, like so many others, as a matter of fashion rather than conviction.

In all three songs, the songwriter manages to explore what we might call the big issues while registering their impact on individual lives. The political and the personal are brought together, to powerful effect. The songs can stand perfectly well on their own, but I do think that 'watching' them is really worth the effort – even if you have to unravel the mysteries of the internet in order to do so. Do have a go!

Listening to Van Morrison by Greil Marcus (Faber)

Forgive me if I start by quoting some of my favourite lines of poetry. They come from T. S. Eliot's great religious sequence, Four Quartets: 'Words, after speech, reach / Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, / Can words or music reach / The stillness, as a Chinese jar still / Moves perpetually in its stillness.' Eliot is talking about the way art gestures towards a sacred meaning beyond itself. In the case of music, the sound makes sense only because of the silence – the healing emptiness of the divine – which surrounds and sustains it.

It may seem a far cry from one of the greatest religious poets of the last century to one of the most famous rock musicians, especially if our theme is silence. Popular music has become the inescapable soundtrack to all of our lives – leaking from headphones in railway carriages, blaring from speakers in restaurants, thumping out of passing cars, echoing from next door's sound system. It is as if the general assumption is that life without noise is unbearable; for many of us, it's the other way round, of course! But Van Morrison has, throughout his forty-odd year career, been obsessed with what lies on the other side of sound. In 'Summertime in England' he sings: 'And you listen to the silence. Can you feel the silence?' We know that he is talking about mystical communion, which relies on a willingness to sit quietly without being, in Eliot's phrase, 'distracted from distraction by distraction'. In case we don't get the point, he even has a song called 'Hymns to the Silence', in which he implies that all his music is written in honour of the sacred soundlessness which lies all around us, but which we seldom hear because we're addicted to noise.

All this may sound pretentious, but there are a lot of people who take Morrison very seriously. Greil Marcus is one of them. The author of probably the best book ever written about American popular music, Mystery Train, and of one of the most interesting on Bob Dylan, Invisible Republic, he has taken his time to get round to the world's most famous Irish singer-songwriter. Is Listening to Van Morrison worth the wait? Yes, if you're of the opinion that the early albums are the best. Marcus is very good at conveying the atmosphere and significance of Astral Weeks, of Tupelo Honey, of St Dominic's Preview, and of Into the Music. His approach is to use one or two particular songs as keys to the whole albums: eg, 'Madame George' for Astral Weeks. His thesis is that Morrison's greatest gift is a voice which has what the Irish tenor John McCormack once claimed is a sure sign of genius: the 'yarragh'. The question to ask of any singer, explained McCormack, is this: 'is the song singing you?' Marcus believes that with Morrison this is the case: his voice 'strikes a note so exalted you can't believe a mere human being is responsible for it, a note so unfinished and unsatisfied you can understand why the eternal seems to be riding on its back.'

Putting it in the terms we've used above, Marcus could be interpreted as saying that the sacred silence is being made manifest in the sound which Morrison makes. Why, then, does he ignore, or even dismiss, most of the explicitly religious music of the past three decades? He doesn't really explain, but I suspect that he considers that in the later work Morrison is singing about 'the eternal' rather than conveying it directly through his voice; in other words, he has lost the yarragh. If so, then I think Marcus is being unfair: true, there is something self-conscious about some of those later albums. But it's quite an achievement to incorporate into one's music the traditional wisdom of Zen Buddhism and Christian mysticism, or the philosophy of Jiddu Krishnamurti, while still producing music that can inspire, console and, to use a favourite Morrison word, heal. I certainly wouldn't want to jettison Inarticulate Speech of the Heart, or No Guru, No Method, No Teacher, or Avalon Sunset.

Nor should one forget that that last album afforded Morrison one of his very few 'hits', namely 'Whenever God Shines His Light' – for which he deserves special praise for proving himself indifferent to the whims of his trendier admirers by (a) releasing an explicitly religious, almost evangelical 'single', and (b) asking Cliff Richard to sing it with him. If the task is to produce 'hymns to the silence', that born-again stalwart of British rock'n'roll has as much right as anyone to sing from the same hymn sheet. I think that Morrison's manifest lack of concern about image and reputation, about who's in or who's out, is a good sign that he is concentrating on what really matters.

Though I've written about Morrison elsewhere, I've often found it difficult to put my finger on what is distinctive about his art. I'm grateful to the author of Listening to Van Morrison for bringing into play that word 'yarragh' – suitably indefinable, but having the advantage of actually sounding like the way Morrison sings. My only difference from Marcus is that I think I can hear the yarragh in more work of Morrison's than Marcus can. Perhaps you can too?

^ top

The Infidel, dir. Josh Appignanesi (Revolver, 15 certificate)

September 2010

Is it wrong to make fun of religion? If religion represents what its adherents take completely seriously, has anyone got the right to mock their beliefs? Debate usually ends up with a discussion of the Monty Python film, The Life of Brian. Some say that it undermines the Christian faith by laughing at the whole idea of a Messiah; but others say that its real target is the unthinking obedience of his followers. I'm inclined to the latter view, not forgetting a third, all-important consideration: is it actually funny? Well, I still consider that its witty challenge to mindless discipleship stands up well, and moments like this still raise a smile:

BRIAN: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me, you don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for your selves! You're all individuals!
CROWD: Yes! We're all individuals!

It's worth noting that one of the Python team was Terry Jones, who in his spare time was (and is) a scholar of medieval literature, with a special interest in the work of Geoffrey Chaucer. Here one thinks of the scathing descriptions of the corrupt clergy of his day which Chaucer included in the 'General Prologue' to The Canterbury Tales: for example, the worldly, self-indulgent monk. There again, Chaucer makes sure he includes a positive portrait, that of the poor parson, which suggests that the church is not entirely corrupt. By implication, of course, Jesus – whom the parson does his best to imitate – is himself the revered and unnamed inspiration behind the poet's vision: it is not he who is the target; rather, those who have debased his teaching. You might say that The Life of Brian does something similar: it mocks the very sort of people whom Jesus himself denounced, that is, those who dogmatically follow the letter of religion while entirely missing its spirit.

So how does The Infidel, now out on DVD, compare as a humorous critique of what can easily go wrong with religion? The main thing to bear in mind is that this film, written by David Baddiel and directed by Josh Appignanesi over thirty years after the Pythons' masterpiece, addresses a much more difficult context. The Python team only had Mary Whitehouse, Malcolm Muggeridge and the odd Anglican bishop to worry about. Baddiel and Appignanesi are having to make their way across a minefield of religious and cultural anxieties. Here Christianity isn't the focus, but those other two Abrahamic faiths, Judaism and Islam. All three have witnessed an alarming rise in fanaticism and fundamentalism, but the film carefully avoids criticising the beliefs of either Jews or Muslims; it pulls no punches, however, in addressing the issue of extremism.

The main protagonist of the film is Mahmud Nasir, played with panache by the comedian Omid Dijali. Living a comfortable life as a partner in a minicab company, his faith is so moderate as to be almost non-existent: he seems more devoted to the memory of a 1980s 'synth pop' singer than to the teachings of the prophet. His problem is that his son wants to marry into the family of radical jihadist preacher, and so he is expected to convince this dictatorial patriarch of his devoutness and doctrinal purity. If this situation weren't bad enough, he discovers that he is, in fact, Jewish by birth and Muslim only by adoption. Much of the film is about his quest for identity. Failing to impress his son's prospective father-in-law with his Islamic credentials, he hardly does better in his attempt to gain access to his dying Jewish father by adopting the mannerisms and expressions taught him by a local taxi driver – initially a hated foe, as a Jew and as a rival for a parking space, but subsequently a dear friend.

Things go from bad to worse when Nasir attends a Free Palestine demonstration, and his Jewish identity becomes known to the Muslims present – and thereafter to the whole nation, thanks to television reporting. It is a real achievement on Baddiel's and Appignanesi's part that they can extract so much humour from the increasingly dark world which Nasir plunges into. I won't reveal the ending, but suffice it to say that the final sequence of the film, in which this very ordinary man proves himself a cultural hero, is quietly impressive – even if the message of the film, about the evils of extremism, is spelt out a little too deliberately.

Without spoiling the plot, it's worth pointing out that a motif of the film is the idea of having difficulty in seeing. This turns out to be dramatically significant, but it also reminds us of the film's concern with the way a sense of religious righteousness can blind us to our own weakness and to the needs of our fellow-humans.

Where, though, does it leave us with regard to the choice between Judaism and Islam? Again, I won't disclose the details of Nasir's final stance, but in their moderate forms both emerge comparatively unscathed. As far as the experience of watching the film is concerned, though, I'd have to say that the humour belongs mainly to the Jewish side of the equation. To see Omid Digali mime, mumble and moan his way into his new ethnic identity, including an impromptu speech at a Bar Mitzvah ceremony, is hilarious. Not that the humour is an evasion of difficult themes. For instance, when Nasir causes uproar in an office of his local town hall, upon discovering his identity, and is escorted out of the building by a security guard, he laments: 'You find you're Jewish and then suddenly a man in uniform is leading you away!' It's a one-off joke, perhaps, but it reminds us that, while we all know that fanatical believers in God have always caused trouble, it is what we might call secular religion that lies behind most of the atrocities of the last century: Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism. That's a sombre note with which to end a review of a very funny film; but since when was comedy not a serious business?

Laurence Coupe

^ top

Bob Dylan in America by Sean Wilentz (The Bodley Head)

November 2010

On 24^th May 1966, Bob Dylan appeared at the Paris Olympia, as part of his European tour. His progress had already been a difficult one, thanks to his decision to use loud, electric backing in the second half of each concert. A few days earlier, he had played the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, and been taunted by the cry of 'Judas' from an audience member. Now, he knew he could expect the same sort of reaction from folk purists who objected to his rock'n'roll antics. But he was actually taking a further risk. For as the curtain parted, the audience was greeted by the sight of a huge USA flag, there to serve as backdrop to the performance. This was not an ironic gesture: Dylan saw himself as a representative of North American culture – a culture which, musically, he regarded as of paramount importance. Needless to say, Dylan's stance was not well received by Parisian youth, many of whom identified the USA with imperialism, racism and consumer culture. He had to perform in the face of not only angry demands to turn down the amplifiers (which he was well-used to by now) but also cries of 'U.S. go home!'

Sean Wilentz does not recount this story until about two-thirds of the way through this impressive tome of a book. It is typical of his technique: to hone in on specific moments in Dylan's career, seeking to draw out their significance, before moving onto another, but not always in strict chronology.

If one is looking for a general thesis, it seems to be that Dylan, having made his name in the folk revival movement centred on New York in the early sixties, remained true to his roots even when he seemed to be abandoning them. What Bob Dylan in America demonstrates is that, in drawing on urban rhythm & blues, as well as the rock'n'roll which derived from it, the songwriter was legitimately exploring the possibilities of a distinctively American tradition – that tradition which includes not only the blues (rural and urban, acoustic and electric) but also the hymn, the parlour ballad, gospel music, 'hillbilly' music and the innumerable gems which arose from 'Tin Pan Alley'.

Of course, it would be silly to suggest that Dylan's career is one long, simple homage to the American past. Admirers of his who, like your humble reviewer, have reached a certain age will bear witness to the unprecedented impact of the songs of the mid-sixties especially. That was the period when he simultaneously transformed folk and rock by making the music serve as a vehicle for hallucinatory lyrics inspired by the likes of William Blake and Arthur Rimbaud. Dylan famously said in an interview in 1965, when asked whether the music he made should be called 'folk-rock', that he thought of it rather as 'vision music'.

Mention of Blake may remind us that Dylan's interest in 'vision' was partly inspired by his friend, the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, whose own work had been hugely influenced by Blake's. Wilentz devotes a long chapter to Dylan's debt to Ginsberg and the Beat movement. I didn't find much new in this part of the book, to be honest, but then I must come clean and declare an interest: I've explored this territory myself, at some length.* Still, it's good to know that I'm not the only one who realizes that Dylan transformed Beat poetry, by putting it to music and making it accessible to the world, as well as revitalising folk and rock.

I could go on explaining and exploring the key moments which Wilentz chooses to focus on. As space is short, perhaps I'd better demonstrate the advantages of his historical approach by focussing on just one performance from his later career.

Dylan surprised his fans in the nineties by releasing two albums of acoustic folk and blues, all either traditional or penned by musicians of the early twentieth century. It was as if he'd gone back to where he started, his first album having been the same sort of thing (except for two self-composed pieces). Wilentz provides every possible fact and theory about one particular song featured on the album World Gone Wrong: 'Lone Pilgrim'. Tracing it back to a hymnal called The Sacred Harp, first published in 1844, he identifies its subject as one Joseph Thomas, a young preacher who had himself published a volume called The Pilgrim's Hymn Book in 1814. A fierce opponent of slavery, he preached a gospel of simplicity and equality, and had a large following. Dying prematurely of smallpox, he inspired another preacher, John Ellis, to write a song called 'The White Pilgrim', which was subsequently included in The Sacred Harp. Eventually it ended up in the repertoire of the renowned folk & country artist, Doc Watson, which was how Dylan himself came across it.

When Dylan sings 'Lone Pilgrim', he is singing what we call 'roots music', or 'Americana'; but we must not forget that it is essentially a hymn. No wonder that he has gone on record as saying that he gets his religion from music: 'These old songs are my lexicon and my prayer book.' Again: 'I believe the songs.' So those who objected to Dylan's 'born-again' phase of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when he wrote in the gospel music idiom, were missing the point. The American musical tradition is at root a religious tradition, and Dylan – with all his apparent inconsistency and his capacity for outrage – has always been true to it. Wilentz provides just enough history for us to understand and appreciate that. It is a typical insight from a fascinating book.

*See my Beat Sound, Beat Vision (MUP, 2007): now out in paperback, at long last.

^ top

Why We Can't Forget 'White Christmas'

December 2010

Fondly known as 'The Old Groaner', Bing Crosby was the most successful singer of the last century: he sold more than 250 million records. He single-handedly invented the style of singing which we call 'crooning'. Previous singers had been almost absurdly exact in their enunciation of lyrics, but he developed a loose, open sort of phrasing that managed to sound like the chap next door – the chap next door with a superb voice, that is!

Perhaps nowadays Bing Crosby is regarded by younger listeners as a bit too cosy, but it's worth reminding ourselves that when he started his solo career in the early 1930s, he was not afraid to tackle controversial themes. It was he who agreed to record 'Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?', effectively one of the first American protest songs, in 1932. With lyrics by E. Y. Harburg and music by Jay Gorney, 'Brother' takes the form of a lament by a man reduced to begging on the street in the era of the Great Depression, after being 'always there, right on the job' whenever there was work needed doing. Believing that when he 'built a railroad' or 'built a tower', he was 'building a dream', he went on to go 'slogging through Hell' in the service of his country during the Great War. Now all he can do is stand in line 'just waiting for bread', or else ask: 'Brother, can you spare a dime?' The new Jerusalem that was promised has turned into Babylon, in which hungry people walk the streets while the wealthy and powerful are indifferent to their sufferings.

Jumping forward a decade, we find Crosby crooning the song with which he is most associated: 'White Christmas'. It was written by his old friend Irving Berlin in 1942 for the film Holiday Inn, in which Crosby starred. Berlin wasn't sure about the song, but Crosby assured him that it would be the big 'hit' which it in due course became. Crosby knew exactly how to sing it, and it is still hard to imagine anyone else making such a good job of it as he did. He manages to sound sad and hopeful, relaxed and yearning, all at once.

The song did indeed become very popular. This had a lot to do with the time in which it was written: that is, just as the United States decided to involve themselves in the fight against Germany and Japan. Earlier songs by Berlin had been mainly about glamour and good times: for example, 'Blue Skies', 'Cheek to Cheek' and 'Top Hat'. Now, with so much being at stake in the Second World War, people wanted something much homelier which embodied lasting values. Neither their relatives back home nor the troops serving abroad could get enough of Bing Crosby's moving evocation of a pastoral winter landscape: 'I'm dreaming of a white Christmas / Just like the ones I used to know / Where the treetops glisten, and children listen / To hear sleigh bells in the snow.'

If 'Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?' is about a phoney promise, a pseudo-Jerusalem, 'White Christmas' is about our need to retain a vision of the garden of Eden. It is an example of what we might call nostalgia for paradise. Interestingly, the word 'nostalgia' comes from the same source as the word 'homesickness': literally, in Greek, it means 'the pain that arises from the desire to return home'. Berlin & Crosby convey with great skill that yearning for a place and a time that we hope against hope existed once, but may be gone forever. For many troops, there was a strong likelihood that they would never return to any kind of home at all, let alone that one depicted in the song; but it was important for them that they were fighting to defend an ideal, which 'White Christmas' articulated for them. The season about which Crosby sings represents what scholars of religion calls 'sacred time; the place that he dreams about represents 'sacred space'.

As always with genuine nostalgia, the point is to remind ourselves that the pain and turmoil of the present is not how things were meant to be. We all have some version of Eden in our heads, whether we get it from the Bible, from reading Tolkien (Middle Earth) and A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood), or from listening to Van Morrison (Cyprus Avenue). We know what we mean by paradise, but we know that it is unlikely that it will ever be regained. At the same time, we are aware that it represents something precious, which we need to retain in our collective memory. That's why the song is curiously both uplifting and heart-rending. When Crosby sings 'May all your Christmases be white', he is effectively saying 'May you have your glimpses of Eden … even though we all now we can never get back there permanently.' But of course, even his expert crooning isn't up to fitting all that into one line!

Whenever I hear 'White Christmas' I always think of a short poem by A.E. Housman. Though its landscape is very different, both in location and weather, and though it is much more obviously mournful than Berlin's song, they both seem to me equally poignant:

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

We are saddened by such thoughts; but we surely take immense pleasure in the beauty of the way they're expressed. Not unlike 'White Christmas'…

^ top

Avatar, dir. James Cameron (20^th Century Fox)

February 2011

Now that Avatar is out on DVD, we can really get to grips with the film, and answer the question that many people asked when it came out: is it all just special effects and sentimental platitudes? My unequivocal answer is NO! Not only has Cameron given us an interesting variation on the classic hero myth, but he has dramatised the absolutely crucial issue of our era, namely the human destruction of the natural world.

Turning to the first of these two aspects, let's draw on the outline of the 'monomyth' – the one fundamental story of the mythological hero – as provided by Joseph Campbell in his famous work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. If I may adapt Campbell's scheme, we end up with something like the following main stages of the hero's typical journey:

call to adventure
meeting with the helper
crossing of the threshold of adventure
battle with the dragon
descent into the darkness
sacred marriage
father atonement
return to where he started, involving…
threshold struggle / rescue
resurrection and bringing of boon.

My instinct is that Cameron is reworking the above motifs to make his point. So we get the following stages of the journey of the film's hero, Jake Sully:

Injured on duty with the Marines, Jake is confined to a wheelchair; but he is glad to be invited to replace his dead brother in a project led by government-backed scientists on the Earth (pretty obviously, in the United States). The aim is to find out more about the Na'vi, the inhabitants of Pandora, the moon of the planet Polyphemus. The reason is that Pandora contains a precious mineral called (significantly?) 'unobtanium'.
His main helper is Dr Grace Augustine, overseer of the personnel who, as part of the scheme, each assume the identity of an 'avatar', a virtual incarnation which resembles a Na'vi. She is a true helper in that she realises the horror of what is being undertaken, and agrees to aid Jake in his own rebellion against the scientific programme, the ultimate purpose of which is to displace and, if necessary, kill the Na'vi so that their resources may be exploited.
Jake enters his avatar by way of a kind of supervised, computer-driven dreaming. Finding himself on Pandora, he can move about freely, no longer disabled; but he almost immediately gets lost.
He has to ward off huge, violent creatures (dragons, as it were) throughout the night which he has to spend alone on Pandora. But none of these are as terrifying as the monstrous machines of his own people (see 9 below).
Interestingly, the Na'vi refer to the intruders as 'Sky People', given that they travel down into their habitat in their huge, grotesque machines. Hence the descent into the darkness carries ironic overtones: it is the world that Jake comes from that represents the true darkness; the rainforest environment of the Na'vi may contain terrors, but they themselves are perfectly at home in it, and regard it as sacred.
Having been rescued from ravaging beasts by a young Na'vi woman called Neytiri, he is taken by her to meet the leaders of the tribe, who are also her parents. Jake is inducted into the worldview of the Na'vi, which centres on Eywa, the Great Mother, who represents the spirit of nature, and on behalf of whom her parents speak. He learns that for the Na'vi everything is interconnected, and that there is an energy running though all of nature which must always be respected. Jake in due course undergoes a rite of passage, learning to ride a 'toruk', a giant mountain creature; this establishes him as having access to the ancestral powers of the Na'vi, and he is permitted to marry Neytiri.
In doing so, he also is accepted by her father. However, he has another father-figure back home, Colonel Miles Quatrich, a macho military man who, impressed by Jake's spirit, has offered to ensure that he gets the surgery he needs to enable him to walk again. Jake will in fact grow in understanding by seeing through the swagger of Quatrich, who despises Grace for reminding him that the Na'vi deserve respect.
Jake 'returns' to the Earth in the sense of confronting the values of the people who are engineering the whole campaign to defeat the Na'vi and destroy their rainforest. He also 'returns' to his true self, which was hidden by the values of the civilisation he once fought to defend.
When the military descend for the final showdown, Jake very deliberately sets himself against Quatrich and all he represents, confronting the monstrous machine he is driving: ie, the true 'dragon' of the monomyth (see 4 above). He uses his knowledge of the military and scientific campaigns to rescue the Na'vi – or, at least, help them rescue themselves in a crucial confrontation.
Jake may be said to experience resurrection, but not in the conventional sense. He is reborn as a Na'vi hero by aligning himself entirely with them, and helping them repel the demonic 'Sky People', whom he now sees as the true aliens. The boon he brings is that of affirming the values of the Na'vi community, as opposed to the greed and arrogance of his/our own civilisation.

Which brings me, briefly, to the second aspect of the film which deserves attention: its ecological message. There can be no doubt that Cameron had in mind the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest when making this film. Nor was the environmental commentator George Monbiot missing the point when he said that the film made sense to him in the light of the hundred million native inhabitants of North and South America killed by European invaders from the late-fifteenth to the late-nineteenth centuries. Insofar as the butchery and suppression is still going on, under the guise of a benign globalisation, it is a pertinent point to make. Cynics may moan that Avatar is just another Hollywood blockbuster; but in what other form could Cameron get his message across to as many people as possible? The power of myth has been channelled in order to speak up for nature and for those who can show us how to respect it.

Townes Van Zandt: Texas Troubadour (Charly Records)

The troubadours were poets of medieval France who sang their verse rather than just read it aloud. The word 'troubadour' simply means someone who composes in verse. Poetry has its roots in music, and troubadours can just as easily be discovered in the country music of twentieth-century Texas as the courtly music of twelfth-century Provence. Yet still there are many people who say that they love poetry but have no time for popular song at all, let alone country music. Bring up that latter topic, and wait for the standard reaction: it's music for rednecks; it's all about divorce; it's all about deceased dogs. Well, I'd argue that some of the most interesting American poetry of the last century came from people whom you'd associate with the Grand Ole Opry rather than the Pullitzer Prize.

Consider this by Hank Williams (1923-53), bearing in mind that it is so much more effective when you hear the music that accompanies it: 'Did you ever see a robin weep / When leaves begin to die? / Like me he's lost the will to live / I'm so lonesome I could cry.' And look at the startling way he concludes his lament: 'The silence of a falling star / Lights up a purple sky / And as I wonder where you are / I'm so lonesome I could cry.' Williams was once perceptively referred to as 'the poet of pain'; and reading these poignant lines you can understand why. Yet he still hasn't been afforded the respect he deserves for what he achieved in his short life, as a skilful writer who addressed the tragedy of existence.

Townes Van Zandt (1944-97), a great poet of country music if ever there was one, learnt a lot from his gifted predecessor about the art of crafting a song. Not only did he learn how to write a memorable tune but he knew how to put the best words in the best order. For him, the two skills went together. Listening to this new four-CD collection of his work, I'm struck how the discipline of the musical form enabled Van Zandt to express his thoughts with economy and wit. I should explain that by 'wit' I mean a way of stating an idea or feeling that makes you feel that it's just right – what the poet T.S. Eliot once called 'the tough reasonableness beneath the slight lyric grace'. Take for instance these lines from 'Many a Fine Lady', in which the songwriter catches the melancholy air of a woman he loved and lost: 'Ah, her words like the mountain stood lonely and lofty / With her face like a daydream and her hair like the shawl / Worn by a mourner as he steals away softly / From those that would have him mourn nothing at all.' How he fits the complex thought into the strict form of the song is a wonder to behold.

Though that song is sad, it seems almost cheerful next to the more characteristically bleak songs. If Williams saw life as tragic, Van Zandt seemed most of the time to see it as futile. Consider 'Waiting Round To Die', a meditation on the way that people somehow manage to get through their blighted lives: 'One time, friends, I had a ma, I even had a pa / He beat her with a belt once 'cause she cried / She told him to take care of me, / [She] headed down to Tennessee / Ah, it's easier than just a-waitin' 'round to die.' Yes, that's bleak, but it's very well said: beautiful in its precision, I'd suggest. Equally bleak, though rather more romantic, is 'Kathleen', a song which I interpret as being about wanting to join one's beloved in death: 'Stars hang high above, the oceans roar / The moon is come to lead me to her door / There's crystal across the sand / And the waves, they take my hand / Soon I'm gonna see my sweet Kathleen.' Again, the words couldn't have been better chosen, whatever one thinks of the sentiment.

There's no denying that many of Van Zandt's songs express a profound gloom; but his genius lies in the way the gloom is channelled by way of his sense of form, his love of language – above all by what I've referred to as his wit. Consider finally 'Rex's Blues'. Of humanity in general, the songwriter observes, with a playful use of words that stops you in your tracks: 'Legs to walk and thoughts to fly / Eyes to laugh and lips to cry / A restless tongue to classify / All born to grow and grown to die.' As for Rex himself, he is assigned these simple but striking words: 'So tell my baby I said so long / Tell my mother I did no wrong / Tell my brother to watch his own / And tell my friends to mourn me none.' That is a beautiful enough epitaph, but the songwriter pushes his song that bit further as he concludes: 'I'm chained upon the face of time / Feelin' full of foolish rhyme / There ain't no dark till something shines / I'm bound to leave this dark behind.' The songwriter is simultaneously facing up to his own mortality and resolving to make the best of what is left of life. The paradox of listening to Van Zandt is that, though he faces the worst, and though he uses what he modestly calls his 'foolish rhyme' to do so, he really does help you – for the duration of the song, at least – to leave the dark behind.

Songs Lost and Stolen by Bella Hardy (Navigator Records)

Nobody of a certain age can forget the impact of first hearing the original songs of Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They had already shown, along with Ashley Hutchings and others, that traditional folk music could be revitalised and given a contemporary sound. Now, with wonderful works such as 'Farewell, Farewell' and 'The New St George' (Thompson), or 'Who Knows Where The Time Goes?' and 'Fotheringay' (Denny), we began to appreciate what might happen when an individual talent with a sense of tradition sets to work. We lost Denny far too early, but Thompson continues to come up with songs of great relevance to our age that also have the authority of both craft and continuity.

I'd heard the first two albums by Bella Hardy and was impressed by her interpretation of traditional songs: for instance, her version of 'All Things Are Quite Silent', that moving lament by a wife over the husband press-ganged into the navy, seemed a match even for Maddy Prior's outstanding version. But I was also intrigued by the original material that she included – not least because, on first hearing, I thought they were traditional. Now she has produced a third album which is composed entirely by herself, and listening to it gives me a similar sensation as I had when I first heard those songs by Thompson and Denny.

The sound of Songs Lost and Stolen is mainly acoustic guitar, fiddle and concertina, with Hardy's voice being both strong and subtle, both invigorating and intriguing. You can – such a relief these days! – hear every word. Again, it is a voice that is unmistakably English, not gratingly mid-Atlantic; and it is unapologetically regional, not blandly metropolitan. But even when the sound is augmented by several other instruments, including drums and slide guitar, the lyrics come across clearly and cleanly. In every song the music perfectly matches the words, and in every song the sound is simultaneously traditional and contemporary.

It really matters that the lyrics are enhanced by the sound, because they are always worth thinking about. 'Labyrinth' is an ingenious retelling of the myth of Theseus, with the singer taking the part of Ariadne, the woman who helped the hero to find his way out of the underground maze once he had slain the Minotaur, only to be subsequently abandoned by him. Here, though, the labyrinth is that of life, love and loss, and the suggestion is that we all wander through it without making connection. It's a bleak song, but it's briskly told, and matched by a daring use of instrumentation which becomes increasingly edgy. 'The Herring Girl' is a ballad about the young women who worked in the fishing industry along the east coast of both Scotland and England: no use of myth here, but stark social realism, with the protagonist being put on trial for defending herself and her friend against a rapacious stranger. If I hadn't read the credits, I would have sworn it was at least a century old. 'Jenny Wren' is a reflection on the lives of the homeless: here located in New York, with their day-by-day suffering set against the catastrophes of history – the stoic message being that 'It all comes round again.' Perhaps the least 'folky' of the songs on the album, it has a quietly compulsive effect.

Throughout the album, we are invited to see life as story, life as song – the recurrent wisdom being that one has to accept one's part in the story and sing as best one can. This is perfectly persuasive, given her narrative skills and her distinctly expressive voice. For me, one of the most memorable tracks is 'Full Moon Over Amsterdam'. It's a vision of all the to-ing and fro-ing of life, as people travel the world while 'clocks dance back and forward / as time shifts so recklessly': this is all seen under the aspect of eternity, represented by the moon shining down. Of course, that moon always has to appear in a specific time and place: here it's the time when the moon is full, and it's Amsterdam; but the beautifully simple refrain, which is so exquisitely sung, lifts us out of time and place, so that we sense the beautiful natural order against which our lives are lived. If I say I've not heard anything quite like it since 'Who Knows Where The Time Goes?', I trust it will be clear how highly I intend to praise it. But then, I'm confident that this whole album will be widely listened to with pleasure forty years from now.

True Grit, dir. Joel & Ethan Coen (Paramount)

In 1969, Henry Hathaway directed John Wayne in a film version of Charles Portis’s cult novel, True Grit. I wouldn’t rank his performance with those of his in the great western films directed by John Ford, such as The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. True, his depiction of the ageing, unscrupulous marshal, Rooster Cogburn, was enormously entertaining, but it had far too much of the loveable, grumpy rogue for my liking. Now we have the Coen brothers’ new version on DVD, what will we say about the performance of Jeff Bridges in the same role? Muttering and cursing where Wayne would declaim his lines self-consciously, this Rooster is a much meaner, nastier character – which is fitting, given the dark depths which the story plumbs.

It is because of those dark depths that the directors have decided to make central the 14-year old female protagonist, Mattie Ross (played with remarkable panache by the young Hailee Steinfeld). She is the means by which we come to understand them. In the Arkansas of the late 1870s, she is outraged by the fact that her hard-working father could be shot in cold blood in the centre of Fort Smith, Arkansas, and that the authorities are not interested in pursuing the matter because the murderer, Tom Chaney, has escaped into the dreaded ‘Indian territory’. She therefore hires Cogburn to pursue the culprit, and after much argument persuades him to take her with him. Cogburn’s background is criminal rather than legal: he has a history of robbery and violence, and it is clear that he has not become a marshal out of idealism – rather, it is due to his taste for violence and his need for a regular income. What we see as the film progresses is the pious, precise girl and the thuggish, slovenly marshal come to terms with each other. Their companion, LaBoeuf, a conceited Texas Ranger chasing Chaney for another murder (played by Matt Damon), also moves from resentment of Mattie’s presence and hostility to Cogburn towards acceptance and admiration of both.

It is the adult Mattie, decades later, who narrates the story in a sombre voice-over – matched by the austerely authentic cinematography, which conveys the harshness and bleakness of the landscape in which she has learnt to make her way. This narration device is important, as we need to understand that her Christian faith is tested by her experiences with Cogburn and LaBoeuf in the wilderness. They are all three on a quest, but it is Mattie’s spiritual journey that will preoccupy us as the film closes. For it is then that the musical theme, played throughout the film, takes on new meaning as we hear the country singer Iris DeMent singing the words of its source – a late nineteenth-century hymn, ‘Leaning on the Everlasting Arms’. The title of that song comes from Deuteronomy 33: 27: ‘The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. He will drive out your enemy before you, saying “Destroy him!”’ Thus speaks a God of compassion who is also capable of righteous revenge when either he or his chosen people are offended.

If we can catch the resonance of this, we will see that True Grit addresses the Biblical theme of the nature of the law. Mattie believes in God’s law; Rooster Cogburn believes in the law of the gun. Are they related, and does the reconciliation of the two characters tell us anything about the relationship between those two principles? The western film genre, after all, derives from the legendary years in which Christian settlers moved westwards across the North American continent, trying to tame the wilderness as they went because they believed they had a God-given right to do so. This process could only be carried out by force; and many western films have glorified the macho, aggressive stance of characters like Cogburn. Mattie herself starts with an idealised view of him, as she has been told that he is a man of ‘true grit’. She soon begins to see through the swagger and the swearing, but she is obliged to go along with the law of the gun which he espouses, in order to see justice done.

We might, then, wonder where is God’s order to be found, in all the conflict and chaos that we see depicted on the screen. The final use of the hymn certainly suggests that the religious theme is being taken very seriously by the Coen brothers – as does the quotation which forms its epigraph, appearing on the screen at the very beginning: ‘The wicked flee when no man pursueth’ (Proverbs 28:1). Again, this is the language of the law. But to understand the film as a whole, we have to make an important differentiation. For let’s not forget that the most important character of the Christian Bible is the man who, while claiming to fulfil the law, also claims to take us beyond it, issuing in an era of grace. In this light, a crucial statement of Mattie’s may come back to us as we hear DeMent’s poignant delivery of ‘Everlasting Arms’: ‘You must pay for everything in this world one way or another. There is nothing free with the exception of God’s grace.’ It is a powerful statement, which must affect the way we interpret the film. But how?

Well, Mattie’s own journey is, as I say, spiritual; but it involves her acquiring the ‘true grit’ of the film’s title: she proves herself the equal of Cogburn in the violent world of the wild west. By the same token, we see Cogburn being blessed by what we might call ‘true grace’, as espoused and embodied by his young companion. The Coen brothers’ True Grit is the creative exploration of the tension between both principles, without in any way attempting to impose a resolution. As such, it is far more rewarding than the earlier film version, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes widely regarded as their greatest work.

Of Gods and Men, dir. Xavier Beauvois (Armada Films) & Winter’s Bone, dir. Debra Granik (Fortissimo Films)

Two films recently made available on DVD seem at first glance to have nothing much in common. One is about the murder of nine monks in Algeria; the other is about the search by a teenage girl in backwoods America for her drug-dealing father. But let’s see…

Of Gods and Men is based on a true story. A small Cistercian community establishes itself in the Algerian village of Tibhirine, tending to the needs of a grateful Muslim population. Despite warnings from the Algerian army that the monks had better leave because of the growing threat of terrorism, they decide to stay. Sure enough, a violent Islamist group eventually captures them and leads them off to their deaths. A superficial objection might be that the film endorses fatalism and passivity, but the actual experience of watching the film reveals a deeper theme. It is essentially a study in fortitude guided by faith. It celebrates the courage of the monks, and it forces us to ask what values we ourselves might have that are stronger than death. In that sense, it is a religious film: a study in collective sainthood. At the same time, it faces head-on the dangers of fundamentalism, as represented by the Islamist terrorists. Yet it does so without being at all anti-Muslim: one is left in no doubt of the love felt by the locals for their Christian helpers.

At first sight, Winter’s Bone seems to complement another recent-to-DVD film, True Grit (reviewed here last month): a teenage girl fights for justice in a harsh environment. But on reflection, it seems to mirror just as much, if not more, Of Gods and Men in that it celebrates devotion. The protagonist, 17-year old Ree Dolly, single-handedly looks after a mother who is incapacitated by depression and at the same time manages to raise her young brother and sister, all in a run-down shack in the Ozark mountains that traverse southern Missouri. Her father, Jessop, is a producer of ‘crank’, or crystal meth. Having been caught, he has used the family home as bail, while awaiting trial; but he has now gone missing, so the house will be taken away from the occupants unless Ree can either find her father alive and persuade him to give himself up, or else locate his dead body to provide grim proof that he is not jumping bail. The film is about her search, and the hostility she faces in the ‘white trash’ neighbourhood – including that of some of her distant relations, who are keen to take revenge on Jessop, reputed to have been informing on fellow-dealers to the local police. The tale is a harrowing one: the poverty, prejudice and violence are represented with stark, unyielding exactness. Yet somehow Ree keeps going, determined to protect her mother and her siblings.

Both the Cistercians in Of Gods and Men and the young heroine of Winter’s Bone demonstrate a strong, unyielding commitment to their principles. The monks believe in Christian fellowship; she believes in domestic loyalty. Her faith seems secular; theirs is explicitly religious. But both films are about the triumph of spirit over circumstances. Taking this idea further, we may note that Winter’s Bone, being set in backwoods America, inevitably draws on the residual Protestant worldview that helped settle and shape those areas. In case we forget these Christian origins, they’re evoked in the country music that punctuates the film – not just as background but as part of the story. For instance, in the course of her quest Ree at one point drops in on an impromptu hootenanny gathering at which bleak songs of yearning for salvation are sung. Then, finally, we hear over the closing credits a great traditional American song which is both hymn and country standard: ‘Farther Along’. Credited to J. R. Baxter and W. B. Stevens, who put it into its final form in the earlier twentieth century, it asks a timeless question:

George Harrison: Living in the Material World, dir. Martin Scorsese (Lionsgate)

‘Who’s your favourite Beatle?’ Those of a certain age may recall that that was once the burning question for secondary school pupils everywhere. Reflecting on it now, I suppose I’d try and evade the question by simply saying that the one I increasingly find most interesting is George Harrison. I am pleased to concur in this with the great film director, Martin Scorsese.

The first third or so of Scorsese’s film is a reminder of the Beatles’ rise to fame. It’s a story that’s often been told, but Scorsese has been allowed access to family letters and photographs which give us an intriguing picture of the young Harrison coming to terms with the burden of fame. Also, new interviews with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and others help bring home the quandary posed by being a member of the ‘fab four’.

It’s a quandary that affected Harrison most deeply. While we all know that the group grew tired of performing for fans who would rather scream than listen, we often forget how early on he had become disillusioned with the pop world and with the trappings of celebrity. Crucial here is the meeting in the mid-sixties with Ravi Shankar: not only the most important exponent of Indian classical music in the world but also a man of profound spiritual wisdom. Scorsese conveys how strong was Shankar’s affection for Harrison, whom he regarded as a genuine seeker after enlightenment.

It comes as no surprise, then, that the rest of the film focuses mainly on Harrison’s turn to the East: his efforts to master the sitar under the guidance of Shankar; and his rejection of his childhood Catholicism in favour of Hinduism. Even those who have little interest in the Beatles know about the episode of their trip to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s retreat in Rishikesh in 1967, to perfect their recently acquired skill of ‘transcendental meditation’; and the general consensus is that it was just a passing phase, typical of their restless sensation-seeking. But Harrison stuck with the Maharishi, who comes out of this film rather well. Certainly, it is clear that Harrison, prompted by both him and Shankar, became a serious student of Indian philosophy from then on.

Central to the film is a celebration of the still-impressive album, All Things Must Pass, released in the very year of the break-up of the Beatles (1970). Looking back, it was remarkably brave of Harrison to release an album of sacred music at a time when flower power had turned sour, and the whole idea of an alternative spirituality had become associated with drug abuse.

Not that Scorsese is out to paint Harrison as a saint. Indeed, the singer’s lapse into addiction is addressed head-on. Again, his widow Olivia speaks freely about the difficulty of living with a man who could be both angry and amiable. There’s a whole other story behind her wry recollection of what she used to say to people who asked what was the secret of a long marriage: ‘You don’t get divorced!’

But perhaps there are two sequences that linger most in the mind. The first is the description by Olivia of the near-fatal attack by a deranged intruder at their home in December 1999. It is hard to get out of one’s head the fact that Harrison sought to dissuade his attacker by chanting the Hare Krishna mantra, nor that he retained his sense of humour in the aftermath of the intrusion when, being taken to the ambulance by new medic recruits, he enquired of them, ‘So what do you think of the job so far?’

The second is the sequence in which Ringo Starr recalls visiting George in the final weeks of the latter’s life, when he was dying of cancer. I defy anyone not to be moved by this. It’s a fitting end to a documentary which stands up well next to Scorsese’s much-praised celebration of Bob Dylan, No Direction Home. Surely these are the two most important films about popular music ever made …

Leonard Cohen, Old Ideas (Columbia)

It’s an odd title for a ‘pop’ album: almost defiantly un-cool. But what does it mean? On the one hand we might think of Cohen’s age: these are the ‘old ideas’ that might well go through the mind of someone in his late seventies, who has had the extraordinary life that he’s had, and who is facing up to his own mortality. A song called ‘Darkness’ confronts the fact that ‘I got no future / I know my days are few.’ On the other hand ‘old ideas’ could refer to the traditional wisdom which is to be found at the heart of all the major religions. After all, Cohen was raised a Jew, early on developed a fascination with the figure of Jesus, and finally espoused Zen Buddhism.

Is, then, the album’s main theme the need to free oneself of one’s worldly concerns and devote oneself to higher principles? Well, not exactly. In ‘Going Home’, someone called ‘Leonard’ (?!) expresses the desire to write ‘a love song / An anthem of forgiving / A manual for living with defeat / A cry above the suffering / A sacrifice recovering.’ But the other presence in the song – religious master? poetic muse? – does not want to grant his request: ‘I want to make him certain / That he doesn’t have a burden / That he doesn’t need a vision.’

Perhaps, then, the main ‘idea’ of the album is that we need to go beyond all ‘ideas’, old and new. If so, then that would be in keeping with the Zen which Cohen has adopted. Often referred to as ‘the religion of no religion’, it acknowledges no deity, it refuses to talk about any afterlife, and it tells us that our duty is simply to live in the moment and revere the workings of the natural world. The trouble is that even these challenging principles can themselves become ‘old ideas’. It is then that art has to step in and restore us to the eternal present, beyond any doctrine. Hence we need albums such as this.

Of course, there’s no need to know all about Zen to appreciate what Cohen is doing; as usual, Jesus puts in an appearance, helping us to get our bearings. In ‘Come Healing’, the songwriter draws on the New Testament to celebrate the possibility that we might ‘gather up the brokenness’. For ‘The splinters that you carry / The cross you left behind’ will make possible a ‘penitential hymn’ which allows ‘healing of the spirit’ and ‘healing of the limb’. But note that the healing hymn is a song of this very earth, not of a remote heaven: ‘O longing of the branches / To lift the little bud / O longing of the arteries / To purify the blood …’ Let me invoke here the title of an earlier song of Cohen’s: ‘Here It Is.’

Be reassured: this album isn’t at all forbidding. Listening to that rich, well-worn voice, perfectly matched by the delicately crafted music, is a pleasure in itself – whatever ‘ideas’ you happen to believe in.

The Tree of Life, dir. Terence Malick (20th Century Fox) and Melancholia, dir. Lars von Trier (Artificial Eye)

Now that these two marvellous films are available on DVD, we can see that they form a perfect pair, balancing each other almost exactly. The Tree of Life is about wondering how everything began; Melancholia is about getting ready for the end.

In Malick’s film, an apparently idyllic American childhood turns out to be a source of endless pain and regret. The family scene is as follows. The spiritually inclined mother believes that the choice in life is between the way of nature and the way of grace, and she wants her boys to follow the latter. The father, however, wants them to follow neither, but adhere rather to his rigidly orthodox code: conventional, restrictive Christianity fused with aggressive individualism. (Let me pause to say that this part is impressively acted by Brad Pitt.) The boys try and make sense of things, despite the confused messages from their parents, but these years are overshadowed by the death of one of them at the age of 19 as an army recruit – news of this tragedy being delivered by telegram at the start of the film.

Much of the narrative is about looking back to childhood and asking where everything went wrong. But it takes us back much, much further. The mother plants a tree – the tree of life of the film’s title – which invites speculation about the story of the garden of Eden in the Book of Genesis: Adam and Eve were denied access to the tree of life because of their pride. Not only that, but in a stunning sequence lasting over a quarter of an hour, we are transported to the very moment of creation, and then given a guided tour of evolution.

Malick shows us human misery in the context of grand, cosmic processes. That might explain his decision to preface the film with a quotation from another Biblical book, that of Job, which tells the story of a good man whom God allows to be tested by Satan in order to see how strong is his faith. The terrible pains inflicted upon him fail to shake his belief, but Job understandably wants to ask God why he allows so much human suffering. God’s reply is to ask a question in return: ‘Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? … When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?’ In other words: once you’ve understood all the mysteries of the cosmos, you may come back to me and complain about the way you’ve been treated! The film doesn’t necessarily condone this divine rejoinder: it draws on it to help us get outside of our normally limited point of view.

So the film presents us with the way of nature, which it sees as God-given. But what of the way of grace? I won’t spoil the end, but I think I’m right in saying that we are offered a vision of salvation.

On the other hand, Lars von Trier in Melancholia seems to be telling us that what matters is to prepare yourself for the ultimate agony: the destruction of the Earth. If Malick draws on Genesis via Job, von Trier draws on the Book of Revelation. This is an apocalyptic film.

The action takes place in a country house hotel, where a wedding reception is being held. There are family disputes and resentments galore, and repressed rage is evident throughout. The bride-to-be is riddled with doubts, and suffers from depression. Not only that, but she is obsessed by the idea that a planet, appropriately called Melancholia, is heading towards Earth. So weary is she of life that she almost welcomes the collision. Meanwhile her sister, initially calmly sceptical, is thrown into a state of increasing terror as the film progresses.

In this case, I won’t be spoiling the end by saying, yes, the planet does hit Earth, and yes, everyone is killed. This is made quite clear at the beginning – with the strains of Wagner’s prelude to Tristan and Isolde providing an appropriately doom-laden atmosphere. Let me just say that this final sequence is unforgettable as a representation of what it must be like to face destruction.

So if The Tree of Life puts our lives into perspective by reminding us of our origins, Melancholia does the same by asking us how we will conduct ourselves in the face of the conclusion of everything (which may not necessarily come by way of planetary collision, but which will come nonetheless). By sheer synchronicity, Malick and von Trier have produced at the same moment an astounding pair of visionary films.

Essays & articles:

Film and music reviews

Gran Torino, dir. Clint Eastwood

Winstanley, dir. Kevin Brownlow & Andrew Mollo

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, dir. Yves Simoneau

'O Thou Transcendent': The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams, dir. Tony Palmer

Christmas In The Heart by Bob Dylan (Columbia)

The Kinks Choral Collection by Ray Davies and the Crouch End Festival Chorus (Decca)

Creation, dir. Jon Amiel (Icon Films)

American VI: Ain't No Grave by Johnny Cash (American Recordings)

Music on YouTube: Dominic Williams

Listening to Van Morrison by Greil Marcus (Faber)

The Infidel, dir. Josh Appignanesi (Revolver, 15 certificate)

Bob Dylan in America by Sean Wilentz (The Bodley Head)

Why We Can't Forget 'White Christmas'

Avatar, dir. James Cameron (20^th Century Fox)

Townes Van Zandt: Texas Troubadour (Charly Records)

Songs Lost and Stolen by Bella Hardy (Navigator Records)

True Grit, dir. Joel & Ethan Coen (Paramount)

Of Gods and Men, dir. Xavier Beauvois (Armada Films) & Winter’s Bone, dir. Debra Granik (Fortissimo Films)

George Harrison: Living in the Material World, dir. Martin Scorsese (Lionsgate)

Leonard Cohen, Old Ideas (Columbia)

The Tree of Life, dir. Terence Malick (20th Century Fox) and Melancholia, dir. Lars von Trier (Artificial Eye)

See also:

Essays & articles:

Film and music reviews

Gran Torino, dir. Clint Eastwood

Winstanley, dir. Kevin Brownlow & Andrew Mollo

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, dir. Yves Simoneau

'O Thou Transcendent': The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams, dir. Tony Palmer

Christmas In The Heart by Bob Dylan (Columbia)

The Kinks Choral Collection by Ray Davies and the Crouch End Festival Chorus (Decca)

Creation, dir. Jon Amiel (Icon Films)

American VI: Ain't No Grave by Johnny Cash (American Recordings)

Music on YouTube: Dominic Williams

Listening to Van Morrison by Greil Marcus (Faber)

The Infidel, dir. Josh Appignanesi (Revolver, 15 certificate)

Bob Dylan in America by Sean Wilentz (The Bodley Head)

Why We Can't Forget 'White Christmas'

Avatar, dir. James Cameron (20th Century Fox)

Townes Van Zandt: Texas Troubadour (Charly Records)

Songs Lost and Stolen by Bella Hardy (Navigator Records)

True Grit, dir. Joel & Ethan Coen (Paramount)

Of Gods and Men, dir. Xavier Beauvois (Armada Films) & Winter’s Bone, dir. Debra Granik (Fortissimo Films)

George Harrison: Living in the Material World, dir. Martin Scorsese (Lionsgate)

Leonard Cohen, Old Ideas (Columbia)

The Tree of Life, dir. Terence Malick (20th Century Fox) and Melancholia, dir. Lars von Trier (Artificial Eye)

See also:

Avatar, dir. James Cameron (20^th Century Fox)