The Adjustment Bureau

Plot
Matt Damon is a New York Senate hopeful - young, daring, honest. He loses an unloseable election due to some ill timed stories from his past but a chance encounter with Emily Blunt - a beautiful, sassy dancer - sets him back on track. But what is his 'track'? And who decided it?

Wha Haps?
The Adjustment Bureau was certainly trying for something. It was heavily inspired by our current 1950's obsession - even casting Roger Sterling (aka John Slattery from Mad Men) as the dogmatic 'angel' trying to keep Damon on track. But it just looked at bit try-hard - not very effortless. It all makes sense now that I learn that this was an adaptation of a Philip K Dick short story. The other adaptations of his work have shared an old time feel, perhaps even a parallel world feel, rather than a past or future world. What does this mean? It means that it feels not quite right.

Matt and Emily shared a few zingy exchanges, and there was a real rapport between the two leads, certainly helped by Emily's natural ease with Matt.

I kind of lost interest, or cringed, when they started really hammering home the whole 'Chairman' shtick. We get it. God. He's the boss. Top dog, numero uno honcho, the big man, the big cheese...

Despite the clunking, clumsy, couldn't be more explicit, slide that the second half of the movie shoots down, I guess it does raise some interesting questions about fate and choice. As I said, if we take the second half of the movie out of the equation (and please, lets) and just stick with the questions (and not the pathetic answers) the main question is: what real power do we have over our own lives? Are our 'choices' and our sense of control merely an intellectual attempt to order the true chaos? Are we just getting to pick the pencil colour, and someone/something else is drawing the picture?

Well, you'll get no answer to these issues from this movie. It's just God all along! Silly billy - it is your density. I mean your destiny.

Even more than that, the whole concept seems to be that true love, or basically just a talented woman on equal footing, prevents a real man from reaching his true potential. As if potential is a finite thing, and if you give some to your woman, then you're screwed for giving your all to your job. The old sex before a big game saps your strength routine... don't really buy into this. As far as I'm concerned, significent adult relationships can only make you a better, more well rounded individual. And one who is going to be better at their job.

Now go check your midichlorian count - there could be greatness in your future!

International Women's Day - 8 March ... and a dirty word called feminism

Today is International Women's Day. Never heard of this day before, but a quick perusal of Wiki (...that amounts to factual research... right?!?) tells me that it marks a celebration of womens economic, political and social achievements. I've been talking with a lot of people lately about reverse feminism, so today seems like the perfect time to start the conversation.

Feminism is not a dirty word
This is an issue close to my heart. I am a feminist. Many people are confronted by that word. I'm not sure why or how this happened - but it was happening when I was growing up. People would say, 'of course, I believe in equal pay....but I'm not (da da daaaah... dramatic horror reveal....) a feminist'. Feminists are perceived as angry, confrontational, extremist, ugly, aggressive, hard - and often by other women. When really all feminism is about is valuing women - not about making them the same as men - and about the quest for women to have choices. To vote, to earn money, to conceive, to wear the clothes they choose, to choose ... anything. You get the drift. Choice is the by-product of education. From there, it is a matter of access. And with education, comes access.

Simply put:
Men hate feminists because they are perceived as a direct threat to them: their positions, their power, their money. And women hate feminists because (well, heterosexual women) they want to be desired by men.

Any woman growing up in this country is a feminist by default....free from persecution and assault, they can wear what they want, marry who they want, go to university, go on the pill. So to bite the hand that fed them is pretty repulsive and inexcusable to me.

Let's go back to desire. People - men and women - think they want women to look good, and keep a nice and neat home. Those things are good, sure. Except that this actually isn't what men want. Who men gravitate towards, who men talk to at a party - is the woman who can talk back, who can contribute. Even Cosmo and Dolly know that!

I've heard men and women say recently that things were easier when women had less choices, when they knew what was required of them. The choices of the modern woman are a burden, they say. EXPLETIVE!!! So so so wrong. Wrong in a thousand ways. Try telling a modern woman that she can't work when she gets married (or have sex before marriage for that matter), or use contraception - in fact, tell her to hand back all her clothes and handbags, because now she gets whatever allowance her husband chooses to give her, tell her to expect a smack in the face if dinner isn't hot or to her husbands liking, tell her she must stay with abusive, cheating men... ugh. A little thing called the Stolen Generation? A little thing called Slavery? No no no ... choices are never a burden.

Women have the same rights as men
Well, they don't. The statistics about wages, about senior management, boards - all give evidence to the fact that we are not 'equal'. But more than that, it's not about saying women are the same as men. We are not. It is about finding and placing value on what it is that women offer: a female perspective.

The major problem is that women have children. This involves time away from a career - whether it be to only birth the child, or to take time off to do some raising of said child. This obviously impacts on career progression. And whatever way you look at it, you can't have it all (work full time, and raise your children full time).

We really need to shift the way we work. With the advent of the internet and mobile communications, we are truely operating in a global community. Business hours don't mean a lot to most of the workforce that I know. People are working longer and harder and for less money than ever before. None of this supports raising children. There aren't a lot of flexible work arrangements - and this means that the business world loses the voice and input of a whole demographic, and an extrememly valuable one.... women with children!

If you want bottom line, businesses make more money when staff are happy. They can get happy by working productively, but in more unconventional ways. This is true for both men and women. This might mean working part-time/job sharing, working from home, having breaks away from the desk, working outside normal business hours.

But the best person should get the job
I agree. Currently they don't. It's about the old boys club, but it's also about diversifying the criteria to redress gender inequality.

Part of this problem has got to be how we hire people (or is this a diversion?). Anyhoo, what's with outsourcing human resources (in fact, what's with human resources full stop), and all this psychometric testing. You should be able to meet someone and ask them questions - and either employ them or not. That's what 3 month probabations are for - to rectify any mistakes. I've been employed by companies who have gone through staff like printer ink (we used to go through a lot of printer ink....). My problem is - who was interviewing these people? Who was determining their fit for the company? It took me about 5 minutes to see that it wasn't going to work. I know what you're going to say, "but you're a genius"- and yes, you're right ... but even a lesser mortal could have seen the uselessness of these appointments...

Images of women
Cyndi Lauper said in a recent interview, "If you think chauvinism has gone away, you're out of your mind. It's more sexist now than ever. It comes in waves, and now we're back to the dark ages". She goes on to talk about the misogyny of the music industry, particularly in lyrics and video clips. The sexualised woman is nothing new, but what is slightly distrurbing is the sexualised child (Miley Cyrus, Justin Beiber, Twilight). In the 80's and 90's, it seemed that woman reclaimed their power, their sexuality. Now in the 00's we seem to have handed these things back to men - on a chained up, fetishised plate.

Final word
I'm sorry if this has been a bit all over the place. I'm passionate about this, and have lots of thoughts on the matter, so they might not be as coherant or well thought out as they could be. I have to hope that things will change, and hopefully quickly, because it's extremely demoralising to realise that your (out of paid work child rearing) skills are not recogonised or valued by the 'traditional' workplace.

127 Days

Sometimes you see a film or read a book, and there's just not much to say about it. It just is. 127 Days was a bit like this for me. But here goes....

Synopsis
The film recounts the true story of what happened to keen mountaineer Aron Ralston after his arm becomes trapped by a boulder in Canyonlands National Park in Utah. 127 hours is the amount of time he is held hostage by the rock, before breaking his own arm and severing his flesh with a blunt multi-tool. He makes it - but you already knew that.

Em says...
I'm not a fan of non fiction. There's something limiting about how and in what ways I, as the audience, can interact with a true story. Fiction allows me to imagine and interpret in ways that a biography can't. I believe we get more insight into humanity when we take the 'truth' out of the equation. With someone's real story, what I think or have to say about it becomes redundant.

With that in mind, I appreciate that Danny Boyle fought hard to convince Aron that his part should be played by an actor (the awesome James Franco). Boyle understands that the audience can be engaged in a different way - perhaps in a more intense way - if we understand that this is a movie. That these are actors. That this isn't really happening. Smart move. Touching the Void and Into Thin Air were such successful documentary films that I don't think another re enactment doco-style product would have been as successful.

This has the unmistakable look (and soundtrack) of a Boyle film - flipping between frantic ADHD to calming and trance-like. It's a good film: showy, but still humble and low-key (is that possible?). I mean, it looks good and he does some nifty tricks with the camera, but it never feels incongruous. The film-making and use of effects compliment the plot, instead of fighting against it like some other big-budget films.

James Franco was brilliant as Aron - totally believable as this driven loner (is that a mounteneering pre-requisite?). I loved the interplay of the reality with his hallucinations - particularly the torrential downpour and his escape....as a committed 'magic' thinker, I totally related. Or 'related' insofar as anyone can relate having never had to cut their own arm off.

And about that, I felt a duty to watch him cutting his arm off - albeit through splayed fingers. I felt I owed Aron, or the actor playing Aron, that at least I should bear witness. The ear shattering jar of his nerves being snapped - sends a shiver up my spine remembering it.

That it takes these loner types to be dragging their broken body out of a crevasse or cutting their own arm off to realise that life is about sharing the journey with people - your family, your friends - and that they provide the value and worth ... that's perhaps the most interesting question. I mean, it's not like they got on the tram and saw a mother with her baby, and thought, 'oh, yes, family is special'. But I suppose that makes for a pretty boring movie. And probably a pretty boring life if you all ever did was get on and off trams.

Verdict
Simple story dynamically told.