the earth is blue like an orange

The Chorists is a french film realised by Christophe Barratier, issued in 2004. It has been a succes in France despite the simplicity of the production.French actor, Gérard Jugnot acts as a supervisor, Clément Mathieu, in a boy’s boarding school after the WWII. The pupils are troubled boys, some of them no more than shy and lonely, others violent. The disciplin is strict and rough. The director acts more as if he were in charge of a prison and doesn’t seem to care for the children. His only obsession is discipline and rules. In this hard atmosphere, Mathieu, who has been through lots of insuccesses, will not accept to play his part in such a game. He is a sensitive and good man who can’t desist to trust the boys if they are given a chance to improve. As a musician he will introduce them to music and forms a choir, convinced it could be a way of « salvation » for them. And the miracle will occur. In spite of the scepticism of the director and the others teachers, he will manage to change the atmosphere of the school because of the boys’ involvement.After many ups and downs, Mathieu is dismissed, soon after the director is also dismissed, Pierre Morhange, the famous soprano of the choir, leaves the school, Pépinot, the youngest pupil who desesperatly wants a home, goes with Mathieu.The happy end of the tale still exists : Morhange, introduced to the music by Mathieu, will become a great conductor, Pépinot will find affection with Mathieu. Mathieu will have the simple life of a good man attentive to the others. I agree with reaction of the public and I liked this film very much. In our world of individualism and competition, this film is just like a ray of sunlight in the fog. It defends some kind of anachronistic values : the kindness, the lack of pretention, the humility, the faith in the others’ abilities, the dedication…Last but not least, the music and the boys’ voices are a real pleasure.

Barry Lyndon is a film by Stanley Kubrick. It tells us the tragic story of Barry, a young and gentle Irish boy, whose father died in a duel, and therefore who must take care of his mother.He thinks he has found the perfect woman, until he discovers she is attracted by a man by far older than her, but who has the unquestionable advantage of being quite rich. Barry challenges him to a duel, in which he kills the suitor. He must flee, and after being robbed, he join the English army. After a few time, he desert, however he is caught by the Prussians and  recruit in their army. He save the life from one of his superiors, and obtain to be appointed in the police after the end of the war. He is used as a spy to keep an eye on an Irish gambler, but soon he becomes the Irishman’s spy. Both of them manage to flee, and start to travel through Europe, and they earn money playing cards (and cheating, obviously).After all theses experiences, the loyal, kind, naïve and honest boy becomes a traitor, deserter, cheat, violent person.Barry meets a beautiful and rich woman, the countess of Lyndon, whose old husband dies a few time after. The countess, who has already a son, falls in loves with Barry, who marries her only because of her fortune and title. The day the wedding is celebrated, Barry, who was gentle with the countess, becomes abject. He betrays her without hiding.He has with his woman a son, that he loved  without limits, while he can’t bear the other son of the countess of Lyndon. He tries to obtain a title, but fails. He reaches his apogee. From that moment, his life starts to change. His loved son dies, his woman becomes mad of sadness and tries to commit suicide, …

ro hear the soundtrack : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyqE77jbqmM

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation , also called CBC, is a Canadian national public radio and television broadcaster. It is currently offering a file about work, that joins many testimonies about different aspects of the theme “The Way We Work”: Disappearing Jobs, Looking for Work, No More 9 to 5, Work Vs Life, Where We Work and Work Culture.Work culture is about what work is about what work is and what it implicates.

“Working against the system” is a very interesting testimony about volunteer work. The author, Marguerite Pigeon, tell us about her actual experience in Honduras, in the city of La Esperanza. She is conscious of being, like everyone in our economical system, a victim of the will for more money, more comfort. But as she tries to defend an indigenous group’s rights, alongside the association COPINH (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras), she understood that the volunteered work, though it’s not paid, brings much more than the «normal» work. It gives the impression of fighting for something higher than the wheel.

“The rhythm of work” is about Peter Adamo’s business. He is a Toronto’s greengrocer who works for the company North American Produce. He has to accept the constraint of a greengrocer : fruits and vegetables are perishable goods, and must be sold before they are rotten, even if the seller has to offer low prices. Concurrence is severe, and no help can be expected from the other sellers. There is no solidarity. An other problem is the supplier’s punctuality: when a product arrives late, the buyer aren’t here any longer and the seller loose his day. Peter has to lead with the “Tyranny of time”.

The cost of work compares the cost of the clothes, the incomes, the cost of the transportation… for different jobs, different cities. For instance, a business woman clothes cost $490 while an astronaut space suit costs… $3,15 millions.

I think that work is a real value: what are we supposed to do with our time otherwise? Work should be a way of improving our social status, but not only or not necessary that. It must lead to a greater goal: helping the other. It can be doing volunteer work for an NGO, or trying, as expanding a company, to offer jobs for the ones that need them. Work is actually the reflex of our society: a world of elitism and rivalry, while it should be a way of fulfilling our potential, using wisely our capacities for the benefits of humanity and improving the world.

The Ice people is the English name that was gave to the science-fiction book called La Nuit des Temps (literally: the night of times). This romance was written by René Barjavel, the author of Ashes Ashes (Ravage). René Barjavel, a French writer and journalist, was born in 1911 and died in 1985 in Paris. In the Ice Age, he depict, like in many other books he wrote, the excesses caused by science, human greed for knowledge (even with a price for the human kind), … A group of scientists stationed in Antarctica discovers, coming from deeply above the ice, a signal, similar to a radio wave. Curious, the scientists try to reach the place where the signal comes from, but decide to call other scientists from all over the world to help them, as they don’t manage to excavate so deeply (more than a kilometer) above the ice. And what they discover is more surprising that anything they imagine: in a gold “egg”, two persons, a man and a woman, have laid, in hibernation, for billions of years. And they don’t come from a future civilization, but from a past civilization, that ruled the world billions of years before our times.  This discovery awakes the interest of all the nations on Earth. Many scientists are sent there. The team decides to awake first the woman. Both the woman and the man are incredibly beautiful. The woman, Élea, is about to reveal them fabulous things, that can. Simon, a French doctor, falls in love at the instant he sees Élea. But she always seems to be unhappy, and even when she tells them everything she new about her civilization, she is lost in her souvenirs. In fact, in the seemingly perfect world she knew, a war was about to happen between her developed continent, Gondwana, and the other continent where disorder ruled. The most impressive weapon her country had was a bomb more powerful than a nuclear bomb. But people greedy for power had decided to use this weapon. A scientist, Coban, decided to protect the human kind. He made a gold egg, and in this egg the most intelligent man and the most beautiful woman should enter and hibernate until the effects of the bomb cease. Élea was the third most beautiful woman, but the first had an accident and the second became pregnant. Élea was forced to accept Coban’s idea to perpetuate the human kind. But she loved Païkan much more than it’s possible to imagine, and did’nt want to be separated from him. All her world collapse, and the perfect world becomes a frightening one. She tries desesperately to escape with Païkan, but… The man that lies in the golden egg is Coban. In the present times, Simon is also desesperate, why he understands that Élea will always love Païkan, even he is dead. But, while Élea narrate her past, the avidity of some menaces the expedition: Élea’s civilisation had invented a way to create using… nothing, thabns to Zoran’s equation. Some countries would do anything to obtain the equation…The Ice People is at the same time an affecting romance, a science-fiction book (some aspects remember 1984 from Orwell), a philosophical work,… The love between Païkan and Élea is amazing. They never say: “Païkan is mine” or “Élea is mine”, but “I am Païkan’s” or “I am Élea’s”. I recommand this moving, amazing, fantastic book. Behind the story, a critical of our societies and the avidity of the men and the governments. In the team, there is a scientist coming from America, and another one who is a Russian woman. First both blame the other, but finally the American appreciate the Russian and vice versa. As the book as been writen during the cold war, we can see the will of the author to see a word without conflicts.

To know more, a website dedicated to Barjavel and his work (in French)

photo from flickr

All buildings are meant to collapse. As we construct them, we know  perfectly well that they will crumble, gnawed by the years. Such are societies, arts, revolutions. The men that paid with their life revolutions to establish a new government knew that this system would not be eternal, that one day other men would destroy what they had done to rebuild a new world that would also be ephemeral. The men that fought for new ideas or a new conception of art knew that one day their movement would be considered as old and outdated ; the avant-garde would give place to a new avant-garde. When we invent a fabulous machine, the oldest machines are eclipsed by it. To create is to destroy. Whatever we erect, we knock over the precedent construction. Each movement sweep away the precedent and is inevitably destroyed by the following.So why do we built and give everything to build? Maybe because some buildings cross ages. When it happens, the man who managed to build a durable thing enter in the history, because he defied the time. Everything fades with time. But the greatest reason is that we want to ignore that the time will rub out our existence. And, anyway, the creation is no vain. Indeed, what matters is not the creation itself, what matters is the moment of the creation. It is maybe a thousand times more important than the object, the idea, the government, … we create. It’s the idea that stays and not the object. We build just for building. The ideal work is the one that has never been finished, like sigh ready to fly off. The artist captured the moment of the creation. When we finish a work, then we know that it’s ended, that the spark of the creation extinguish, that we will have to make it reappear, because from then on that the work is completed, it starts its progression to oblivion and collapse.

Tales of the Otori is a very interesting book.. The author, Lian Hearn, decided to locate her story in a feudal imaginary land that is very similar to Japan. Tomasu, a fifteen-years-old boy, lives in a small village with his mother and his stepfather. He has two half-sisters. His life is tranquil until the day he comes back home after a vagrancy in the mountains and smells a strange odor of something burning. First, he thinks it’s the smell of the cooking. But then he starts to fear that a house caught fire. But when he arrives, the situation is worse: the whole village is burning. His step-father lays on the ground, dead. Tomasu hears horrible cries, and discovers that the village chief is being tortured by soldiers. Theses soldiers are from the Tohan clan. In fact, many clans live in this land: The Otori, the Tohan, the Sheishu,… The Tohan chief, Iida Sadamu, is a cruel man, who persecutes the Invisibles. The Invisibles are the people that adhere to a religion that teach them there is no castes, and that all the men are equals. This kind of though is not admitted by Iida, and he tortures the Innocents and destroys their villages. Tomasu’s village adheres to the Invisible belief. Because of this, the hamlet is being destroyed. Tomasu tries to escape, but three Tohan soldiers chase him. Suddenly, he hits a man who cropped out of the bush. He thinks this man is going to give him to the soldiers, but in fact the stranger protects him, kills one of the soldiers, hurt another and make the third run away. Tomasu goes with the stranger. He discovers that the stranger is Shigeru, a seigneur, just as Iida. However, Iida is his enemy. Shigeru rename him Takeo, because Tomasu is a typical Invisible name. In fact, he also rename him like this because his brother, Takeshi, died some years ago during the battle between the Tohan and the Otori. The Tohan won, and since this battle the inhabitants of the country suffer famine, fear,… Takeo understand that Shigeru wants him to help him to kill Iida and liberate the country from the Tohan domination. Takeo discovers he has strange powers. It’s an inheritance from the Tribe, a group of persons that keep and cultivate the powers that all men had in the past. How could he use theses powers to kill Iida, the responsible of the death of his family? Will his love for the beautiful Kaede be possible? Why does he looks so much like Shigeru?The first, second and third book, are really incredible: a mixing of action, love, feelings, magic,… narrated with a great talent. The style is beautiful, in an elevated language. Tales of the Otori is a marvelous book, and must be read. There is only one negative point: the fourth volume. The tone is different, the psychology of the characters dashed off. The behaviour of the characters is totally illogical according to their attitude in the books one, two and three. Lian Hearn claims she has done this fourth book (and will make a fifth one), because she had inspiration. She should have said that she earned a lot of money and that she would like to have some more!

photos from flickr

photo from flickr

Al Gore, the well-known politician that nearly became president of the United
States, made an incredible film about the global warming. An inconvenient truth is a documentary film. Al Gore, relying on graphics, videos, and his own past and memories, tells us the future of the earth as it is speculated by the scientists. According to what Al Gore says, there probably won’t be any more an ice cap on the north hemisphere of our planet. That is, what we call North Pole will disappear. The most incredible in what he says, is that everything he maintains is based on scientific studies. We always think that this kind of information is just a tale to scary us and make us react; but it’s not. It’s just the truth. As the trailer says: “Nothing is scarier than the truth”. Al Gore shows the temperature curves obtained studying the ice of the poles. The temperature always stayed between a maximum and a minimum, including during the Ice Ages. But nowadays, the temperature went out of the normal curve, and its average is twice higher than a century ago. Moreover, it will continues like this and the temperature average in 2050 will be again twice higher than today.Despite he tells worrying things, Al Gore does it with humor. For instance, when he asks the question: “Why don’t we react?”, he answered it giving the example of a frog. If we take a frog and plunge it into hot water, the animal will jump out of the bowl. Now, if we plunge it into warm water, the frog will stay in the bowl. And if we increase the temperature of the water little by little, the frog will still stay in the bowl, until someone save it from a certain death. We are like this frog. If the things deteriorate little by little, we won’t react until we’ll be dead or until it will be too late.So Al Gore gives a message: react! If everybody does something, we can avoid catastrophes like Katrina, that Al Gore associate with the meteorological problems caused by the global warming. A great part of the Co2 emissions (and Al Gore says that theses emissions are responsible for the global warming) are caused by the private transports. We always think: “I don’t need to do anything, because my efforts won’t make any difference. We are six billion (and more) on the Earth, and I’m one of theses six billions.” But it’s wrong; all of us must react, and the result will be there.What should we do according to Al Gore?First, we must try to walk or use bike every time it’s possible, instead of using our cars. Cars pollute, bike don’t. Anyway, walking is good for the health.Secondly, we should never be alone in our cars. If someone takes with him four people, instead of five vehicles polluting there will be one.…There are many others things we can do. So let’s do them! 

“The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth.”(Chief Seattle)

photo from flickr

Extending the topic of the Second World War, I also read a very interesting book about this topic. It’s called The Diary of Pelly D, from L.J.Adlington. The story takes place in the future, on a planet which name is Home from Home. The colons coming from the Earth founded five city, and decided to recommence a new life, wanting to abandon all the things that they disliked on the Earth: war, racism,… Pelly D. is a young beautiful spoilt and quite arrogant girl who lives in Number V, the fifth city. Her parents are rich and she has everything she wants. She also has her own court of admirers, and she is perfectly happy. She writes her diary on a notebook Moma Peg, a strange woman, gave her. But in Number I, an important clan called the Atsumisi Inheritance Clan, begins to be authoritarian. They pretend that they are three kinds of persons: the Atsumisi, the Mazzini and the Galrezi. The Atsumisi have a gene, the Mazzini too but it’s not active, and the Mazzini don’t have the gene in question. A severe drought affects Number I, and the overproud Atsumisi ask for workers for the irrigation project. Many people are conscripted, and must go to Number I. The Atsumisi make obligatory a genetic marking: everybody must have his DNA tested and receive an indelible stamp on the hand. Red for the Atsumisi, blue for the Mazzini and green for the Galrezi. Pelly D. doesn’t realize what is going on, and pretend to believe that everything is OK. But she discovers she is a Galrezi, and everything gets worse. The Galrezi are obliged to live in a kind of ghetto, and Pelly D. move with her mother and her sister, both Galrezi, to a small apartment. Her brother flees from the conscription, going to Ultramarine, the other continent of the planet Home from Home. Her father, who is Atsumisi, abandons like a coward his family, and continues trading with and the Atsumisi.
Pelly takes a long time to understand what’s going on, and when she realize, it’s too late, the extermination has begun.
Pelly’s diary ends when the police evacuate the ghetto, taking the Galrezi to a certain death.At the beginning, the diary is quite boring, because it tells the story of a pretentious teenager. But, little by little, the events lead us to the sinister end, without any reaction of the people who believed war and extermination could not exist on their planet. In fact, the author, L.J. Adlington, drew her inspiration from diary found in the Warsaw ghetto in the 50’. I recommend this original book that mixes science fiction and fight against the racism.

An article about this book