Revoluçao dos Cravos

 

A revolution, or revoluçao as spoken in the noble Lusitanian tongue, which has hardly been forgotten but - like the regime which it ended - overlooked in its execution, ,composition, result - and largely, which is hard to disentangle from the legacious and enduring war in Angola, or rather, the Savimbi phase of it, its causes - is that which sprung out like a quickly blossoming spring on the 25th of April, or 25 de Abril, the name of the previously named Ponte Salazar still making a red scar across Lisbon, five days and five decades ago. It was in reality a revolution both long and short in the making, which preceded the more anticipated, and more present - although arguably more violent - one in Spain the following years. 

And it should be called a revolution, not only for the mark of the time and the drastic circumstances which it changed, if perhaps inexorably, with the ejection of the civilian bureaucratic regime 

Ever Agatha

 

The great Agatha Christie, known as Lady Agatha in her closing years as so many of her peers, passed nearly half a century ago, closing a final page on a literary career begun over another half before with Curtain and Sleeping Murder (and a number of less-read short stories), cutting short a career as extensive as her own... two, including the slightly less iconic and extensive one of the ever-Miss Marple (herself never a Lady) and, quite complimentary, immortalised by an almost cancerous stream of adaptations, second only to her peer, colleague (their publishing overlapping, in fact) and countryman Sir Conan Doyle, a name used (perhaps unintentionally, although her style and sense of detail may preclude only a direct intent on her part, if we are to judge the queen of murders by her own standard) in Death on the Nile. 

As Kenneth Branagh . I must confess to not liking this strongly, although I felt a certain glee against my poor expectations (either a good or a bad feeling, depending on your personality) that it felt, above anything, to be complimentary to its nearly insurmountable 1974 predecessor, which even the talented Branagh could impossibly have rushed to shoot himself, much less playing the iconic lead (doing both, to this Lumet-Finney backdrop, is impressive enough). As I rewatched it, with its competing (or, diplomatically, complimenting) movie siblings I found these strengths played stronger, and having re-read the book it is indeed both surreal and quite charming. More beautifully shot, but with some crazy, hence not too impressive CGI imagery, with a cast intending to , . 

Sadly, some (inescapable, but here almost deliberately obvious) anachronisms are glaring from the letter, specifically relating to current-day, or perhaps eternal, questions of ethnicity and gender. The considerations of an exiled white Russian noblewoman for the possible (and then quite noticeable) ascent of an American actress to a directorial position, however personally explicable through the relationship therein exposed, is plain ridiculous, if overshadowed (at least in terms of very contemporary American political discourse) by the assumption that royal Yugoslavian police would, naturally, slate a Hispanic passenger for judicial murder. Really? Not the Italian, Austrian? How about, just for sake of variation and anticlimax, pose the danger of the police covering the thing up? The addition of Johnny Depp, among no less impressive contemporaries (here seemingly pressed by things current, and about to come flailing in his face the following years, but to no damage to his take on the obnoxious American, as if he were - in the words of Fantine - already dead) . On the subject of overacting, the action sequences. Overplay? Sure, though perhaps . On the note of action; if Branagh's Poirot, undeniably more physical and athletic than his illustrious predecessors - and, as the script very clearly puts out, a former policeman at that. -he might as well match the over-dramatic, almost perversely decadent moustache with some physical discipline. As far as , the clear departure from the Finney, and more so Suchet (Agatha's favourite, for my money) adaptions, 

 

One of many incarnations. Ken's Poirot and Daisy as Mary Debenham, previously viewed by millions of fans of the 1974 picture cherished even by Christie herself (a rare gem) and the 2010 installment in the series - bearing her name - by Albert Finney, Vanessa Redgrave, Jessica Chastain and the David Suchet. 

The following adaption, just as audaciously chosen to be Death on the Nile, one of the favourites certainly of the post-Christie era, and just as undeniably a 1970s cinematic classic, and . This I liked a bit more, although if failed, more so upon rewatch, to live up to the illustrious mark. Adding to the 1978 classic, which was decadent and elephantine in its magnitude if nothing else, but with certain narrative perplexities (such as the continuity in the moment of Doyle's solitude, and the subtle cut to his widower status) and ultimately Ustinov's ability to supplant Finney as a credible Poirot, doing so by playing to a different character. The Suchet adaption is, adding to this, magnificent in its own right and, while with a smaller budget (even in dollar figures) and fewer minutes, admittedly also with less famous actors (although Emily Blunt would certainly eclipse Gadot or Lois Chiles eventually). Suchet, although then very established in the role since Ustinov's twilight, added , with even some sadistic impulses unleashed quite coldly on the breaking culprit.  

The India Question

 

The unspoken, but still valid assumption that China is inadequately discussed and debated in the talk of the new world order, replicates itself as the world's most populous democracy (or is that "most popular" democracy...? Some, and as for now migrant flows, may differ...) and now populous (or popular) country full stop - no discussions on micro-states here - and whether India, seventy-five and some years since independence from the colonial, outspokenly imperial grasp of the Britain then still an empire... a fact so very changed in the infancy of never-Emperor Charles I(II) will take a place and shape, as well as being shaped by a successive string of foreign rulers and invaders since the Original Aryans and before. Never before, since the rise of the American experiment on the world stage and likely not since long before that, has an actor been so unspokenly derided, insulted without the slightest intention 

Why is that? 

Folkets val

 

Om något i livet är säkert, för att inleda den första svenska krönikan (?) på läänge med en parafras på den olycksdrabbade hemvändande sonen Corleone, så är det att utträdarna (khawarij, på det ädla arabiska tungomålet) Sara Skyttedal och Jan Emanuel Johanssons - en duo osedvanligt igenkännbar genom sina ömse akronym - nya parti inte kommer att bli en större succé. Men det kan vara på plats att diskutera vad som här, och mycket senkommet, väntar på att födas, och 

De utkastades osköna nya allians. 

Detta, en 

A New Era, and the Brunt of this Green New World of ours

With regard to the challenges of the future 

I solemnly acknowledge I haven't given this topic full coverage, as I have given no topic in the latest years, or any time before, and for that reason there is, I hope, particular venom to appreciate this particular angle. Not only is humanity facing multiple crises broadly interlinked and related to overconsumption, overpopulation and over-technologisation (for this particular, nasty, truth, see Jevons paradox, no apostrophe, and then compare to the ever-pliant and ever-reproducing Amish, who will inherit the American earth if scary demographic trends is anything to go by) but also biting itself in the foot in the brave attempt at eluding these crises, tightening the proverbial noose by outsourcing , further stoking a paradoxical dependence on primitive fossil fuels in the process of abandoning them and jumping ship. 

Undoubtedly, these crises interlinked will herald a new era of unassailable and incalculable proportions, altering the equilibrium for human survival on earth (admittedly, a very precautious and precise one at first, and it sure has been worse, even in the absence of thermonuclear device which, then, would mostly have been thought as an obliquely clever machination to preserve heat) and, in all likelihood and with some inherited optimism, providence or god or our unmade nature will not be completely erased, although conditions as well as the purported loss of death - or rather premature death - will mean incalculable psychological harm for those lucky to carry the torch through the new era. As the Klown once mused at the prospects of a television-free future, egotistically recognising his jugular for what it is, the survivors may well envy the dead. 

Carrying the weight of the future... or its obstacle, rooted in an economic order not nestled in the consideration of further hundreds, or millions, of generations but the development of humanity beyond the capacity of its (current) habitation, with consequences blooming those beyond the capacity of readily available remedies. Malthus or techno-hubris, the adaption of the future within the confines of the present does, no doubt, pose the greatest question above the horizon since the advent of nuclear weapons, and since well before and beyond it. 

The development of this conundrum, posed by a combination of a post-industrial order without which we would sooner not endure (would not, most of us, now even in Third World countries, foreclosing any vague fantasy of returning to the past by those deeming themselves most progressive) and the population explosion permitted, if not demanded, by this greatest revolution, having now advanced into the stage of micro-chips, the ever-present "smartphone" and the purposed Artificial Intelligence now born like a prodigal son, a digital Zeus - or, as Nietzsche would have it, the sons of Adam - developed into a stage to slay its parent. 

And then, perhaps - which is often, and perhaps too often professed - maybe a great remedy is beyond our grasp? Beyond the question of human nature, determinism and representative democracy, which all put certain definite, if not immalleable constraints, on our collective decision-making, akin to the surgeon with a scalpel determined to dig out a cancerous but young tumour from his own belly, or collectively expected to do so to a third party by and before an audience, an example realised by group psychology, mental training and sectarianism, but often to great condemnation and resistance, there is perhaps variables not exactly determined, but which we have avoided in our attempt to rationalise our existence as well as the importance of human agency. To this, I can only offer a sigh of unresigned acceptance, of "well, at least I tried". 

McMurphy failed, or so we think at least, but the goal - undesirable or dangerous illusion - of breaking the window was reached. We would better put up resistance, and at the worst, we will have completely readjusted our economy . This has been done, gloriously or in vain, as it were, in response to the German, and Japanese (Italians need not bother) military threat to dominate the globe - meaning, as it still frequently does, the Eurasian landmass, or quite a lot thereof - and the result, for the survivors that is, was not necessarily bad, Stalinist and post-colonial (now inevitable, due to German-Japanese efforts) resettlements and re-drawings of maps without rulers notwithstanding. On the contrary, both for the colonial liberator (and post-colonial technocrat, at best) and European rising from the ashes, the following decades are frequently thought of as the best, the epitome of human existence, barring that question of nuclear warfare between he new, undisputed victors. Would this, a prospect of an "unnecessary" restoration, be something undesirable? Either we die, or many of us will die much sooner than they would have preferred, not because of but regardless of efforts to escape the same, or we survive knowing the neuroses of a great collective of scientists was just that... a collective response to certain trends, pointing fatefully, but ultimately misguidingly (is that a word?) towards a great need to sudden and dramatic adaption, no box office. 

The core question, leading me back to the topics I like to discuss, is that of external consequences and ulterior motives. The latter, usually not a concern of mine, is that of using the adaptive measures to 

The contradiction of new tech, its demands and the prospects for further consumption (the advent of independent currencies being one major demon to slay, although its demarcation by paying for its ecolocial effects would be more desirable) 

What then - as the now forgotten Russian author immemorialised by his reader V. I. Ulyanov, also more famous under a name of his own hand - is to be done?