ARTS

lan Holmes, Redgrave in Wetherby: death by modernity.

Wetherby mourns
a passing world

WETHERBY. Directed by David Hare. Screenplay by David Hare.
Starring Vanessa Redgrave, lan Holm, Judi Dench.

At the beginning of Wetherby, the central character, a high
school teacher in a small Yorkshire town, is presenting Shakes-
peare’s Othello to her class. What is the relationship between
seeming and being? she asks. Are people sly if they seem so? Do
people become what they seem?

Wetherby revolves around these questions. It is, in some ways,
structured like a mystery: it probes into its characters to reveal bit by
bit that they are not what they seem. But in David Hare’s film this
common device takes on Shakespearean resonances.

The plot is intricate. A university student insinuates himself into a
dinner party hosted by the school teacher (Vanessa Redgrave). It
seems he is a friend of a friend. In fact, we soon learn, he was a total
stranger. After the party, he does not leave but commits suicide. It
seems the spinster school teacher is the innocent victim of the
“ultimate practical joke.” Gradually we learn that this is not
entirely so, as the film moves back and forth in time to show us the
school teachers’ past and to reveal more and more about the night
of the suicide.

The school teacher, the student and the policeman who investi-
gates the suicide are linked by a shared loneliness. Their loneliness
carries conviction: this is a very well-made film, intelligently written,
with fine acting and a particularly clever use of montage which
juxtaposes scenes from different plot strands with striking effect.

This is also a film with a broad scope, which successfully com-
bines psychological realism with social symbolism. The characters
are believable as people but at the same time they stand for social
forces. The teacher, the student and the policeman share a liberal

Films |

education grounded in humanistic values and European culture;
their loneliness represents the isolation of people steeped in Shakes-
peare who are confronted with a world of TV sitcoms and commer-
cialism. The student’s suicide represents the death of the cultural
tradition in which he is rooted.

The student is killed by modernity. He has been obsessed, we

learn, by a female fellow-student, and she drove him mad. It
gradually becomes clear that she is implicated in the two-
dimensional world of television culture. Alone of all the characters,
she is never revealed to be other than she seems; the film fails to
penetrate beneath her surface and if there is anything else there it
remains a mystery to the end. When the student dies, the depth of
European civilization is symbolically defeated by the shallowness of
commercialism.
_ Wetherby expresses with much poignancy the sadness there is in
the decay and collapse of civilization, and the disorientation and
uprootedness that people feel in the midst of upheaval. There are
values in our cultural heritage that are worthwhile, the film seems to
be saying, values that are being obliterated by the culture of late
capitalism. Like Shakespeare’s tragedies, Wetherby mourns the
passing the passing of a world.

Unlike Shakespeare’s tragedies, Wetherby doesn’t have a great

_deal of humor. There is a deadly earnestness to this film, an
insistence on making statements about the state of the world and
the state of education which makes it didactic and tendentious in
parts. But this is a failing for which the merits of the film more than

compensate.
— Janos Zalavolgyi

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, OCTOBER 16, 1985

ubans here Oct. 20

Some of Cuba’s most acclaimed
“new troubadors” are available to
Vancouver area residents Oct. 20,
when El Grupo Moncada takes to
the stage at the Queen Elizabeth
Playhouse.

The group, which has toured
Africa, Europe, Latin America
and North America — including
several eastern Canadian cities last
year — comprises eight members
who, individually and collectively,
have taken some of Cuba’s highest
honors for artistic achievement.

A leading light in the “Nueva
Trova (New Song)” movement,
Grupo Moncada is sponsored by
the Canadian-Cuban Friendship
Association. The concert begins at
8 p.m.

Receivers .of Cuba’s_ highest
musical awards, Grupo Moncada
combines the Latin American

nation’s revolutionary troubador
traditions with the modern musical
influences that have risen in Cuba
since the 1959 revolution. .

The group, formed in ‘1972 of
teachers and students from the
University of Havana, plays more
than 40 instruments ranging from
the common — piano, flute and
guitar — to the exotic. Their
repertoire includes slave chants,
Latin American traditional music
and modern songs by Cuba’s lead-
ing young composers.

The movement Grupo Mon-
cada represents began in the early
60s following the Cuban revolu-
tion that ousted the U.S.-backed
Batista dictatorship.

The name Nueva Trova distin-
guishes the post-revolutionary
musical expression from the trou-
bador movement that flourished

during the days of the old Cuban
republic and the decades of U.S.
economic and cultural domina-
tion.

Cuba’s new song movement is
part of a phenomenon that embra-
ces all Latin American countries.

Grupo Moncada has recorded
several albums, has written for and
performed in television and stage
production, and its members have
won several awards for their efforts
in songwriting and performing.

The group consists of director
Jorge Gomez, composer Julian
Fernandez, singer Alberto Faya,
pianist Tomas Rivero, new song
movement founder Jose Rodri-
guez, flautist Pedro Trujillo, artis-
tic director Juan Gomez and per-
cussionist Jose Himely.

‘Real substance’ of Mac report

THE OTHER MACDONALD
REPORT. Edited by Daniel Drache
and Duncan Cameron. Toronto,
James Lorimer & Company, Publi-
shers, 1985. Available at People’s
Co-op Bookstore.

Most readers will already know
something about the Macdonald
Commission Report from what
they hear in the conventional
media. The business agendas of the
Canadian Bankers’ Association,
the Canadian Manufacturers’
Association, the Canadian Federa-
tion of Independent Busienss, and
the Fraser Institute are very well
represented. Less space is allotted
to the ideas of state agencies, such
as the Science Council of Canada,
and nothing at all is said about the
views of the “popular sector”
groups representing ordinary Can-
adians.

The Other Macdonald Report
presents the submissions of twenty
of these organizations whose pro-
posals do not appears in the
recommendations of the Macdo-
nald Commission. As the subtitle
states, the report is “the consensus
on Canada’s future that the Mac-
donald Commission left out.”

In fact, social consensus on eco-
nomic policy does exist among
churches, trade
unions, womens’
groups, social
agencies, organi-
zations repres-
enting Native
peoples, farmers
and the disad-
vantaged. The
editors of this
alternative report
make the point
that the Commis-
sion ignored that
consensus in favor
of the consensus
among “the cor-
porate sector”
representing weal-
thy Canadians,
and transnational
corporate inter-
ests.

’ The Macdonald
Report urged that
Canada make “a
leap of faith” and
embrace a “com-
prehensive free
trade” agreement

with the United States. The pro-
ductivity “problem” is to be solved
by more automation, cuts in labor
costs and further “rationalization”
of the production processes. The
Canadian recovery is to be sup-
ported by increased dependence on
the U.S.

The Other Macdonald Report
asserts that the problem is not one
of productivity but rather unem-
ployment. The solution lies in
government pursuing an industrial

strategy to create jobs, a strategy
based on direct government inter-
vention and changes in the eco-
nomic structure which currently
suffers from corporate concentra-
tion, foreign ownership and exces-
sive dependence on resource ex-
ports.

The submissions presented rep-

_ resent views which differ consider- -

ably with the corporate sector’s
vision. They range from the Social

Planning Council of Metro Toron-
to, and the Canadian Conference
of Catholic Bishops to the Cana-

dian Union of Public Employees |

which urged the commission to
examine “the very real possibilities
which public ownership provides
for democratic control by citi-
zens.”

None of the briefs makes any
appeal for “‘a leap of faith.” Rather
they present clear research and

analysis based on the experience on

the “shopfloors” and “homefronts”

of ordinary Canadians. It appears
that their concerns for democracy,
justice and social progress are con-
sidered ‘“‘inefficiencies” in the
boardrooms of corporate Canada.
It is predictable irony that one has
to sift through the leftovers on
Donald Macdonald’s editing room
floor to find the real substance in
the Macdonald Commission.

— Norman Jacob.

COPE

(Committee of Progressive Electors)

FILM
FESTIVAL

Sunday, Oct. 13
2 p.m. (Van-East)
TRACK TWO

THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK