Monday 19 December 2022

What's Sad - A Christmas Monologue

​​​Benjamin Victor performing What's Sad at The Water Rats, December 2019. Photograph by and © Honey McKenna.

This short monologue was originally written after I received an invitation from Niall Phillips to contribute to an evening of Christmas-themed pieces he was producing at the Omnibus Clapham on 6th December 2013. It was later performed at The Water Rats, Kings Cross on 2nd December 2019. Around this time every year I think I should post the text on this blog, but never do - well, now I have. Enjoy. 

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The lights fade up to reveal David (mid-twenties) seated on a plain chair, centre-stage. He is wearing a knitted Christmas jumper, but his facial features betray his Jewish heritage.

David: You know what's sad? I sit here, like all the other kids, thinking about Christmas, excited about what's under the tree. Like them, I'm old enough to know better, but I still wander outside to get lost in the glittering wonderland around me. I see the sparkling lights, the glowing Santas and the people dressed as elves. I drink their mulled wine and eat their Christmas puddings and I pull their cardboard crackers and I steal a kiss under the mistletoe. I even dance along to Noddy Holder, and I wear my knitted jumper with pride. But never do I light the candles.

Short pause.

Sometimes, Christmas makes me sad for other reasons. Like when I think of Chinese Paul sitting alone in his one bedroom flat, eating his roast turkey in silence, bending forwards to pull his cracker apart by himself. And then I think of orphaned Sally, mourning for her late mother on Christmas Eve. It's hard for her. The pressure to conform. To be happy. Maybe that's what gets to me too? (Beat) When people ask me if I celebrate Christmas, I laugh. Of course I do, I say. How could I not? It's not like you can get away from it. But Hanukkah? Hanukkah passes me by. Sometimes it's almost like it doesn't exist. And sometimes that makes me feel guilty, like I'm self-perpetuating the condemnation of my own people. I mean, the closest I've ever gotten to celebrating the festival of light was asking my parents to buy me a Michael Haneke boxset for Hanukkah. They did.

Short pause.

Hanukkah finished yesterday. And I only know that because I just Googled it. (Beat) But I know when Christmas is. I'm literally counting down the days. (Beat) It makes you think, doesn't it? I guess the crass commercialisation of Christmas has served its purpose. Or has it? I mean, I might enjoy eating the twenty-four pieces of naff, powdery chocolate hiding behind the doors of my unethically produced advent calendar, but I've never set foot in a church. Not on Christmas anyway. So maybe the secret indoctrination has failed. But then, come to think of it, I never go to the synagogue either. Not even on Yom Kippur. I mean, I don't like smoked salmon or gefilte fish and my skullcap doesn't fit. It hasn't for years. (Beat) And yet the image of the menorah still haunts me.

Short pause.

I feel like maybe, somewhere, somehow, I'm being plagued by images of Ross Gellar dressed as the Holiday Armadillo, so desperate to teach little Ben about his ancestral roots. (Beat) And what of my roots? Have they died? Or just been dyed? Are they disguised, coloured, waiting to grow out and be washed clean? As I think this, I look at the presents under the tree, and I see the packages bulging out of the stockings, and I think – what does all this matter to me? I'm Jewish. But then I notice that one of the presents is small and rectangular and I think: that might be the new Masters of Cinema DVD. Excitement overcomes me, and then I think – what does it matter if I'm Jewish? It's Christmas.

Blackout.

Monday 4 January 2021

My Top Films (and Books) of 2020

I may not have made it to the cinema much in 2020, but that didn't stop me watching films, both old and new… As always, I've limited myself to one film per director/one book per author.

My Top Films of 2020
01) Last and First Men (dir. Jóhann Jóhannsson)
02) The Assistant (dir. Kitty Green)
03) 180° Rule (dir. Farnoosh Samadi)
04) Shadow Country (dir. Bohdan Sláma)
05) Days (dir. Tsai Ming-liang)
06) Red, White and Blue (dir. Steve McQueen)
07) Build the Wall (dir. Joe Swanberg) 
08) The Truth (dir. Hirokazu Koreeda)
09) Moffie (dir. Oliver Hermanus)
10) The Reason I Jump (dir. Jerry Rothwell)
11) Fire Will Come (dir. Oliver Laxe)
12) Where'd You Go, Bernadette (dir. Richard Linklater) 

The Best Films from Previous Years that I Saw for the First Time in 2020
01) Red Beard (1965, dir. Akira Kurosawa)
02) Doktor Glas (1968, dir. Mai Zetterling)
03) Distant Journey (1949, dir. Alfréd Radok)
04) Transport from Paradise (1962, dir. Zbyněk Brynych)
05) The Last Stage (1948, dir. Wanda Jakubowska) 
06) Hiroshima (1953, dir. Hideo Sekigawa)
07) The Heiress (1949, dir. William Wyler)
08) Black Girl (1966, dir. Ousmane Sembène)
09) Columbus (2017, dir. Kogonada)
10) The Cheaters (1930, dir. Paulette McDonagh) 
11) The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929, dirs. Arnold Fanck and G. W. Pabst)
12) Moontide (1942, dir. Archie Mayo)
13) The Magician (1926, dir. Rex Ingram)
14) The Song of Ceylon (1934, dir. Basil Wright)
15) Chess of the Wind (1976, dir. Mohammad Reza Aslani)
16) Frieda (1949, dir. Basil Dearden)
17) The Farewell (2019, dir. Lulu Wang)
18) Western Approaches (1945, dir. Pat Jackson)

The Best Books I Read for the First Time in 2020
01) Mariamne – Pär Lagerkvist
02) Unquiet – Linn Ullmann
03) The Book of Dads – ed. Ben George
04) Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge 
05) The Prague Cemetery – Umberto Eco 
06) Africa's Tarnished Name – Chinua Achebe
07) The White Plague – Karel Čapek
08) I Should Have Stayed Home – Horace McCoy 
09) Spring Awakening – Frank Wedekind
10) Lysistrata – Aristophanes 

Monday 19 October 2020

Monday 12 October 2020

Sunday 1 March 2020

Caligari at 100

I wrote a piece for the BFI celebrating 100 years of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Read it here

Wednesday 1 January 2020

My Top Films (and Books) of 2019 – And of the Decade


There seems to be a consensus that 2019 was a strong year for film and, while that may be the case, I feel like overall it's (once again) the films from the archive which excited me most – thanks, in no small part, to the BFI's double-whammy of a stupendous Weimar Cinema season and a complete Antonioni retrospective. Of course, now that we're heading into the 2020s, it's an appropriate time to be looking back, so I've also included a list of my top films of 2010s below, along with my list of the Best Books I Read for the First Time in 2019.

That's a lot of lists!

As always, I've limited myself to one film per director/one book per author.

My Top Films of 2019
01) The Irishman (dir. Martin Scorsese)
02) Waiting for the Barbarians (dir. Ciro Guerra)
03) Ghost Town Anthology (dir. Denis Côté)
04) Vitalina Varela (dir. Pedro Costa)
05) mid90s (dir. Jonah Hill)
06) Venezia (dir. Rodrigo Guerrero)
07) I, Apostate (dir. Jeremy Moss)
08) I Lost My Body (dir. Jérémy Clapin)
09) It Must be Heaven (dir. Elia Suleiman)
10) The Ghost of Peter Sellers (dir. Peter Medak)

The Best Films from Previous Years that I Saw for the First Time in 2019
01) La signora senza camelie (1953, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)
02) Hangmen Also Die! (1943, dir. Fritz Lang)
03) Life Begins Tomorrow (1933, dir. Werner Hochbaum)
04) The Student of Prague (1926, dir. Henrik Galeen)
05) All Quiet on the Western Front (1930, dir. Lewis Milestone)
06) Madagascar Skin (1996, dir. Chris Newby)
07) Room at the Top (1959, dir. Jack Clayton)
08) You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet (2012, dir. Alain Resnais)
09) Mother Krause's Journey to Happiness (1929, dir. Phil Jutzi)
10) La otra (1946, dir. Roberto Gavaldón)
11) No Man's Land (1931, dir. Victor Trivas)
12) The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927, dir. G. W. Pabst)
13) Her Majesty, Love (1931, dir. William Dieterle)
14) Man of a Thousand Faces (1957, dir. Joseph Pevney)
15) Happy End (2017, dir. Michael Haneke)
16) A Special Day (1977, dir. Ettore Scola)
17) In Vanda's room (2000, dir. Pedro Costa)
18) Scherben (1921, dir. Lupu Pick)
19) The Song of Life (1931, dir. Alexis Granowsky)
20) The Story on Page One (1959, dir. Clifford Odets)

The Best Films of the 2010s
01) The Turin Horse (2011, dir. Béla Tarr)
02) Ida (2013, dir. Paweł Pawlikowski)
03) Silence (2016, dir. Martin Scorsese)
04) Boyhood (2014, dir. Richard Linklater)
05) Miss Julie (2014, dir. Liv Ullmann)
06) Blue Valentine (2010, dir. Derek Cianfrance)
07) Birds of Passage (2018, dirs. Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra)
08) Museum Hours (2012, dir: Jem Cohen)
09) La Sapienza (2014, dir. Eugène Green)
10) 1945 (2017, dir. Ferenc Török)
11) I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018, dir. Radu Jude)
12) The Assassin (2015, dir. Hsiao-Hsien Hou)
13) An Elephant Sitting Still (2018, dir. Bo Hu)
14) Demain? (2011, dir. Christine Laurent)
15) The Revenant (2015, dir. Alejandro G. Iñárritu)
16) 36 (2012, dir. Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit)
17) On Body and Soul (2017, dir. Ildikó Enyedi)
18) Horse Money (2014, dir. Pedro Costa)
19) Under the Skin (2013, dir: Jonathan Glazer)
20) Once upon a Time in Anatolia (2011, dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan)


The Best Books I Read for the First Time in 2019
01) My Antonioni – Carlo di Carlo
02) All those Tomorrows – Mai Zetterling
03) The Late Mattia Pascal – Luigi Pirandello
04) R.U.R. – Karel Čapek
05) Mikhail Kaufman: Ukrainian Dilogy
06) The Hound of the Baskervilles – Arthur Conan Doyle
07) Piers of the Homeless Night – Jack Kerouac
08) Nosferatu in Love – Jim Shepard
09) United States Vs. Murder, Inc. – Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming
10) Metropolis – Thea von Harbou