By design rather than coincidence, we've had a bit of a Blitz of Korean cinematic outings in the capital lately. First there were the strong selections at London Film Festival, then the Bong Joon Ho retrospective (at NFT) and the annual Korean Film Festival at Barbican ran almost concurrently. We managed to catch quite a few recent releases amidst it all, and these three really stood out.
Mother - Bong Joon Ho's latest, it's the best of both worlds of his two previous films: the who-dun-it Memories of Murder with a skilfully woven plot that would satisfy the most hard-core detective story nerds; and The Host, with the disguise of a monster disaster movie but really is about the complexity and frailty of human relations, especially those between family members. At the opening of the film, we see the mother of the title chopping up dry herbs on a machinery terrifying in its simplicity. We can already foresee the consequence of her action because she is wholly distracted by the movements of her son, cursed with mental disability (the source of which is itself revealed in a particularly chilling moment later in the film), across the street. Yet she's oblivious of it, because what happens and what will happen to the boy is all that matters to her. This single-minded determination accompanies her on her dark journey throughout the film to discover the truth behind the terrible murder that her son has been implicated in. Yet the revelation of every piece of new information, the peeling away of every layer of the onion skin, involves the inevitable, and sometimes fatal, baring of the soul. By the end we're just as much in need of an artifical injetion as the mother herself, to ease us from the pain brought on by the acceptance of our innate, helpless callousness. I can imagine scores of Hollywood directors looking at the script over and over again before giving up on a potential adaptation, because there's no way of making a new version of this one without preserving the poignant ending. The mother has already shown us how her own, and the son's, destinies are sealed with those semi-automatic fallings of the dry-herb gullotin. There can be no nother way.
Scandal Makers - written by the debut director Kang Hyeon-Cheol himself, this is a superb comedy that achieves the almost impossible - making a roomful of Western and Asian audiences roar with laughter for the same reasons. The protagonist of the film is the host of a hugely popular phone-in radio show, a sleek confirmed bachelor in his mid-thirties. The opening sequence is almost a parodied version of the famous 'daily morning ritual' scene from American Psycho, with the eligible single male in his designer bachelor's pad, going through the motions of muscle-building exercise, skincare journey in the power shower, outfit deliberation in the walk-in wardrobe, and nutrition-specific breakfast. His show has been doing particularly well of late, with millions tuning in to follow the gripping story, serialised by emails, of a young single mum in the quest of her own father, who lost his virginity at the age of fifteen to an older woman, and is not aware of the existenc of his offsprings at all. The host charmingly urges her to seek out her destiny, except little does he know this will lead to a knock on his own door at a most inopportune moment... The basics of the story may be far-fetched but are never contrived, and the human reactions by each characters, to the unlikely situations they find themselves in, are hilarious yet touching. Stereotypes and cliches pop up from time to time, but all in good will, and you never feel for a moment that the writer/director is deploying a gag just to create gratuitous laughter. The totally dedicated cast rise up to the challenge, and I defy even the most unflappable cinemagoer not to swoon each time the five-year-old Wang Seok-Hyun (playing the grandson) appears on screen. Highly recommended. Catch it before the inevitable Hollywod remake hits the screen (reportedly already in the works).
A Frozen Flower - you would be forgiven for thinking that it's nigh-on impossible for any other film-maker to try treading the water again with a tangled story of homosexual love involving royalties in the court of ancient Korea, after the sumptuous The King and The Clown from 2005. Well, the director Yu Ha pulls it off with admirable panache, complete with - gulp - even more stunning lead actors. One of the key differences in the plot device from the earlier film is in the female character. The Queen here, instead of being just a jealous, passive aggressor, is one third of the male-female love triangle. The King is also not a tempestuous, ignorant tyranny, but someone who's intelligent and righteous, whose priority in a life-threatening moment is to ensure the safety of his queen, even though he has not spared a sparkle of love for her, either emotionally or physically. Such graciousness is only maintained, alas, until the moment he realises that the Queen has supplanted him in the heart of his true love, the dashing Captain of the Royal Guards who has been groomed by the King since childhood. And who sowed the seeds of the discovery of heterosexual carnal thrill but the King himself, in a desperate attempt to produce a royal heir under the covers ('You're the only one I can trust', he says to the Captain, an ominous key of a sentence, to the Pandora's box for all concerned). All three lead actors imbue their characters with both striking nobility and touching vulnerability even in the most delicate situations, of which there are numerous, running the whole emotional gamut from the farcical to the heartrending. Against the epic backdrop of sovereign battles, royal assassinations and other age-old political games, the director presents us with the simple question of Where the Heart Lies. And even after all the blood is shed, the hearts broken, the skulls brandished (literally), the answer is still appropriately ambiguous. The court scenes at banquets, army inspections and assassinations serve up a visual feast while never losing the meticulous emotional details, which is something that films such as Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Yellow Flowers utterly failed to achieve in contrast.
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Monday, 16 November 2009
Michael Haneke, The White Ribbon
The ancient Chinese adage goes: 'The beginnings of all human beings consist of nothing but kindness.' Well do they really? Haneke's latest masterpiece confronts us, head on, with both sides of the argument. All the adults in the film, including the narrator, the school teacher (an atypically uncomplicated Haneke character), merely provide background layers - albeit crucial ones - to the story. Whereas the group of children, aged four to fourteen, are the focal points of the stark blank-and-white (literally) canvas.
Haneke is well known for pushing his actors beyond the usual limits of performative capacies, yet what superman techniques he deployed here to extract such chillingly heartfelt (for one's heart is over-chilled throughout most of the scenes) performances from these little ones, only the devil knows. For the devil hides himself in every unseen corner, and eventually manages to creep into some of the veins of the underaged beings. Or was he there all along? Every adult playing a noble (in social terms at least) role in life has an appallingly dark side here, and the way they attempt to preserve the 'purity' of their offsprings is via emotional humiliation, physical abuse, religious shock tactics, or all of the above. The oppressed include not just these children, but when their adult company make an attempt at retaliation, the outcome is clumsy and futile, only to bring more severe punishment onto themselves. The children, in contrast, are much more instinctive and ruthless with their acts of evil, and what initial fear there might be it quickly subsides - once the fascination with death is brushed aside, there is nothing left to fear. Respectable adults busy themselves with adultery, incest, religious hypocrisy, deceipt, class resentment, familial despotism (a rather short list for a Haneke film, really). How pathetically banal. The invisible ones - for they are purposefully overlooked, until our ardent school teacher decides to really look around - carry out the horrific acts as if saying, Look what you can really do if you go straight to the core. And we're all alike. We were all born like this, not consisting of an ounce of kindness. The so-called child-like innocence was always a facade after all. We're just waiting to become adults so that we will have proper excuses to web schemes and layers for our brutalities, and then we can instill all that into our own children too, all in good time.
The fact that these children would grow up to be the Nazi generation has been pointed out by every film critic worthy of his job, but to me it's almost an afterthought. The abrupt ending to the village horrors, as everyone, adult and child alike, is distracted by the onset of WWI, could almost be replaced by the onslaught of any arbitrary war, without the specific historic reference. The really vital context of the story is not that particular annus horibilis of human history, but the human nature itself. For our children's innocence had been tainted not just by these parents, but by generations of forbears already. When did it all start, and where will it end? In an even more atypical Hakane scene, l'auteur depicts an almost completely care-free, happy moment between prim, shy, ingenuous young lovers. Not a message of hope amidst despair exactly, but a provocatively tender masterstroke nevertheless.
Haneke is well known for pushing his actors beyond the usual limits of performative capacies, yet what superman techniques he deployed here to extract such chillingly heartfelt (for one's heart is over-chilled throughout most of the scenes) performances from these little ones, only the devil knows. For the devil hides himself in every unseen corner, and eventually manages to creep into some of the veins of the underaged beings. Or was he there all along? Every adult playing a noble (in social terms at least) role in life has an appallingly dark side here, and the way they attempt to preserve the 'purity' of their offsprings is via emotional humiliation, physical abuse, religious shock tactics, or all of the above. The oppressed include not just these children, but when their adult company make an attempt at retaliation, the outcome is clumsy and futile, only to bring more severe punishment onto themselves. The children, in contrast, are much more instinctive and ruthless with their acts of evil, and what initial fear there might be it quickly subsides - once the fascination with death is brushed aside, there is nothing left to fear. Respectable adults busy themselves with adultery, incest, religious hypocrisy, deceipt, class resentment, familial despotism (a rather short list for a Haneke film, really). How pathetically banal. The invisible ones - for they are purposefully overlooked, until our ardent school teacher decides to really look around - carry out the horrific acts as if saying, Look what you can really do if you go straight to the core. And we're all alike. We were all born like this, not consisting of an ounce of kindness. The so-called child-like innocence was always a facade after all. We're just waiting to become adults so that we will have proper excuses to web schemes and layers for our brutalities, and then we can instill all that into our own children too, all in good time.
The fact that these children would grow up to be the Nazi generation has been pointed out by every film critic worthy of his job, but to me it's almost an afterthought. The abrupt ending to the village horrors, as everyone, adult and child alike, is distracted by the onset of WWI, could almost be replaced by the onslaught of any arbitrary war, without the specific historic reference. The really vital context of the story is not that particular annus horibilis of human history, but the human nature itself. For our children's innocence had been tainted not just by these parents, but by generations of forbears already. When did it all start, and where will it end? In an even more atypical Hakane scene, l'auteur depicts an almost completely care-free, happy moment between prim, shy, ingenuous young lovers. Not a message of hope amidst despair exactly, but a provocatively tender masterstroke nevertheless.
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
What I Believe In
Because we're destined to be ordinary people
We owe it to ourselves
to live extra-ordinary lives
We owe it to ourselves
to live extra-ordinary lives
Sunday, 11 October 2009
Ten Days in October
[optional subtitle: 'Finally we've realised why we never manage to do all the laundry...']
1 October, Thursday.
Philharmonia Orchestra concert, Royal Festival Hall
It's always a treat to hear Janacek's mindblowing Sinfonietta, and the RFH is probably the only London venue fit for the piece. I shouldn't be lavishing Magnus Lindberg's chorus-and-orchestra piece Graffiti with praise due to conflict of interest, but for me, it really revealed itself as a substantial addition to the repertoire, especially with the splendid choir (Philharmonia Voices) in this performance. I had heard the piece at its world premiere back in May, in Helsinki, and this second hearing eally helped to confirm my faith in it. If only more contemporary orchestral works could be blessed with repeat performances similarly in quick succession, by different but equally devoted interpreters - can't wait to hear the third commissioner (Oslo Philharmonic) tackle the piece, alas it's going to be 18 months away.
2 October, Friday
Judgement Day, Almeida Theatre
A five-star production in all aspects for me. Christopher Hampton's beautifful translation of the Horvath play keeps that most crucial element - the ambivalence of morality - exquisitely poignant throughout. The ensemble cast is uniformally powerful yet subtle, with Joseph Millson the devastatingly effective leading man. Why isn't this guy more famous? I sure hope every casting director who knows their business came to see this and that he lands a big starry role on stage somewhere soon, before we lose him to the screen. Special praise also goes to the set and lighting designers - this was probably the most daring transformation to the Almeida set-up I had seen for as long as I can remember, and it packs a punch.
3 October, Saturday
Le Grand Macabre, English National Opera
I knew from the curtain rise that I was going to like this production immensely. ENO's director-led programming strategy has has its hits and misfires, but this one firmly belongs to the first category. Everthing that happens to the naked giantess that dominates the stage, literally, dramaturgically, musically, anatomically - made me shudder. Ligeti's score, as a whole, actually convinced me less than I'd expected, despite the wonderful playing from the pit. But all in all this was an outstanding achievement by everyone involved. A lot of the straight-faced operagoers manifestly hated it, some politely baffled by it, but sure enough no one was going to forget it in a hurry.
4 October, Sunday
District 9
So this is what a mock-documentary, quasi-arthouse, humanitarian/existential/Sci-Fi/racial morality tale in the shape of a sleeper hit looks like. The only thing that displeased me about it was the rendition of the ending, which was an undisguised act of paving the way for sequel(s) to come.Those Big Blockbusters offering simpler versions of the plot usually try their mightiest to restore your faith in humankind, this one shatters it ruthlessly - or does it? See it and decide for yourself.
Another, more notable event of the day: our first-ever attempt at making seafood risotto, a joint operation, ended up a resounding success. The whole thing was gone in a matter of minutes.
Everything those five-star reviews say about this is true. No wonder there was already a queue of about 20 people waiting for returns when I collected my tickets 2 hours before the show started (such irrational tenacity never fail to amaze me - why would you join a returns queue at a sold-out show if there're already more than 15 people in front of you?!). Rupert Goold and his team clearly knew from the beginning that their show was destined for West End and Broadway, for this was conceived as a blockbuster show of the smartest kind, multi-media theatre par excellence. The changes he made to the script (which is still in pre-rehearsal form in the published version) all make perfect sense, tightening up the dramaturgy considerably. Sam West's central performance as Jeff Skilling deserves at least a nominatin for every acting award going this year, and the young, energetic ensemble tackle their many fantastically choreographed scenes (never will you think of the trading floor in the same way again) with total panache.
If you turned up expecting dazzling contemporary dance, you'd leave disappointed. If you changed your mindset and decided to take it all in as an 80-minute piece of performance art as devised by one of China's most interesting visual artists working today (Cai 'Olympics Firework Architect' Guoqiang), you could end up reasonably gratified. I say 'reasonably' because with this length the poetry is diffused (as is our attention), and although there were undeniably breathtaking moments, in the end the piece as a whole seriously lacked coherence. Still, the final moment, which really delivers the impossible and sucks you in relentlessly (yes, I mean it), was worth spending the evening with this troupe.
7 October, Wednesday
Alas, a night in (early train tomorrow morning to Brussels)! Repeated the same risotto recipe with the same satifying result. Now firmly a new addition to the repertoire.
8 October, Thursday
Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra concert, Palais de Beaux-arts, Brussels
This was the opening concert of the Europalia-China festival hosted by the capital of the EU. If you happen to be in town, or have the chance to go, anytime in the next two months, it's well worth checking out the festival programme, which features an impressive line-up of artists for what is essentially a government-led diplomatic event. I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that the Margrittte Museum next to the Palais had just opened its shining doors, after being shrouded in a giant Margritte-esque building facade for the last couple of years. Even though I didn't get a chance to go in on this trip, it's certainly been added to my long list of reasons for returning to this (still highly underrated) city for a personal visit as soon as possible.
9 October, Friday
Life is a Dream, Donmar Warehouse
How rare it is these days to see a major institution (for that is what the Donmar is, for me) taking the Spanish Golden Age really seriously, and it probably would have faulted in a production any less dazzling than this one (literally - the bare back wall of the stage is gilded with golden splashes which later metaphorphoses into a vertical pool of blood). Legions of The Wire fans can drool about Dominic West for all they like, for me this performance - utterly frightening with uncontrolable rage one minute, vulnerable with nuanced confusion the next - showcases a very fine stage talent indeed. For once, the big TV-name casting for the sake of box office allure is justified. Some would say the material is merely second-rate Shakespeare from a lower latitude, and in places the long monologues do drag a bit, but the fine actors here (Kate Fleetwood, aka Mrs Rupert Goold, is the worthy equal of West with her dramatic arias as well as her depth and gravitas) give us a consistently gripping evening, and even the ludicrous all's-well-that-ends-well finale can be forgvien with a smile. Additional marks to the haunting music provided by Dominic Haslam (complete with muscles, in the 'cage').
10 October, Saturday
Inherit the Wind, The Old Vic
There are two things you need to know about this: one, when someone like Trevor Nunn who applies the broad-stroke brilliance he's known for (this is the man who brought Les Mis to life, after all - he really hasn't needed any work for the last 30 years on account of this royalty bill alone) to something that might otherwise looks a bit on the dull side on paper, it works. And two, Kevin Spacey gives his most memorable Old Vic outing yet (I don't want to think of this as 'the culmination' - more to come, please!), and his is a tornado of a performance, eclipsing a remarkable David Troughton and various supporting acts. We've all seen the American courtroom face-off scene in films that we can all rattle off for a good few minutes, but this is infinitey more gripping, intelligent, funny, complex and humane - all these things in turn.
"And on the morning of the eleventh day, we decided -"
- that we really needed a nice, big dose of visual arts. Turning up at Tate Britain 20 minutes after opening time on a Sunday morning to find the Turner and the Masters exhibition already crowded was uplifting (we aren't the only freaks!) and dispiriting (I'd hoped to see this in a much emptier setting!) in almost equal measure. Some of the aesthetic parallels theorised, between Turner and the sources of his inspirations seemed a little too academic/arbitrary, whereas the comparisons of his later works with his contemporaries were more fascinating to this viewer. While we usually conjure up those mesmerising seascapes as the main association with Turner's name ('Atmosphere is my style', apparently the man declared), it was particularly interesting to discover his forays into portraiture, and to conclude that some of those attempts were a bit clumsy. Later, in the courtyard of the Royal Academy, we couldn't help wearing the smug smile of the RA member while walking past the substantial queue (limited timed entries, no doubt) for the Anish Kapoor show. The word 'retrospective' is utterly inappropriate and irrelevant here, for the centrepieces are tailor-made for the space, and even pieces that weren't, such as Yellow, looks like it was always destined to be on that side of the wall. Breathtaking, thought-provoking, dizzying (literally, in one of the rooms).
1 October, Thursday.
Philharmonia Orchestra concert, Royal Festival Hall
It's always a treat to hear Janacek's mindblowing Sinfonietta, and the RFH is probably the only London venue fit for the piece. I shouldn't be lavishing Magnus Lindberg's chorus-and-orchestra piece Graffiti with praise due to conflict of interest, but for me, it really revealed itself as a substantial addition to the repertoire, especially with the splendid choir (Philharmonia Voices) in this performance. I had heard the piece at its world premiere back in May, in Helsinki, and this second hearing eally helped to confirm my faith in it. If only more contemporary orchestral works could be blessed with repeat performances similarly in quick succession, by different but equally devoted interpreters - can't wait to hear the third commissioner (Oslo Philharmonic) tackle the piece, alas it's going to be 18 months away.
2 October, Friday
Judgement Day, Almeida Theatre
A five-star production in all aspects for me. Christopher Hampton's beautifful translation of the Horvath play keeps that most crucial element - the ambivalence of morality - exquisitely poignant throughout. The ensemble cast is uniformally powerful yet subtle, with Joseph Millson the devastatingly effective leading man. Why isn't this guy more famous? I sure hope every casting director who knows their business came to see this and that he lands a big starry role on stage somewhere soon, before we lose him to the screen. Special praise also goes to the set and lighting designers - this was probably the most daring transformation to the Almeida set-up I had seen for as long as I can remember, and it packs a punch.
3 October, Saturday
Le Grand Macabre, English National Opera
I knew from the curtain rise that I was going to like this production immensely. ENO's director-led programming strategy has has its hits and misfires, but this one firmly belongs to the first category. Everthing that happens to the naked giantess that dominates the stage, literally, dramaturgically, musically, anatomically - made me shudder. Ligeti's score, as a whole, actually convinced me less than I'd expected, despite the wonderful playing from the pit. But all in all this was an outstanding achievement by everyone involved. A lot of the straight-faced operagoers manifestly hated it, some politely baffled by it, but sure enough no one was going to forget it in a hurry.
4 October, Sunday
District 9
So this is what a mock-documentary, quasi-arthouse, humanitarian/existential/Sci-Fi/racial morality tale in the shape of a sleeper hit looks like. The only thing that displeased me about it was the rendition of the ending, which was an undisguised act of paving the way for sequel(s) to come.Those Big Blockbusters offering simpler versions of the plot usually try their mightiest to restore your faith in humankind, this one shatters it ruthlessly - or does it? See it and decide for yourself.
Another, more notable event of the day: our first-ever attempt at making seafood risotto, a joint operation, ended up a resounding success. The whole thing was gone in a matter of minutes.
5 October, Monday
Enron, Royal CourtEverything those five-star reviews say about this is true. No wonder there was already a queue of about 20 people waiting for returns when I collected my tickets 2 hours before the show started (such irrational tenacity never fail to amaze me - why would you join a returns queue at a sold-out show if there're already more than 15 people in front of you?!). Rupert Goold and his team clearly knew from the beginning that their show was destined for West End and Broadway, for this was conceived as a blockbuster show of the smartest kind, multi-media theatre par excellence. The changes he made to the script (which is still in pre-rehearsal form in the published version) all make perfect sense, tightening up the dramaturgy considerably. Sam West's central performance as Jeff Skilling deserves at least a nominatin for every acting award going this year, and the young, energetic ensemble tackle their many fantastically choreographed scenes (never will you think of the trading floor in the same way again) with total panache.
6 October, Tuesday
Cloudgate Dance Company, Barbican TheatreIf you turned up expecting dazzling contemporary dance, you'd leave disappointed. If you changed your mindset and decided to take it all in as an 80-minute piece of performance art as devised by one of China's most interesting visual artists working today (Cai 'Olympics Firework Architect' Guoqiang), you could end up reasonably gratified. I say 'reasonably' because with this length the poetry is diffused (as is our attention), and although there were undeniably breathtaking moments, in the end the piece as a whole seriously lacked coherence. Still, the final moment, which really delivers the impossible and sucks you in relentlessly (yes, I mean it), was worth spending the evening with this troupe.
7 October, Wednesday
Alas, a night in (early train tomorrow morning to Brussels)! Repeated the same risotto recipe with the same satifying result. Now firmly a new addition to the repertoire.
8 October, Thursday
Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra concert, Palais de Beaux-arts, Brussels
This was the opening concert of the Europalia-China festival hosted by the capital of the EU. If you happen to be in town, or have the chance to go, anytime in the next two months, it's well worth checking out the festival programme, which features an impressive line-up of artists for what is essentially a government-led diplomatic event. I was also pleasantly surprised to discover that the Margrittte Museum next to the Palais had just opened its shining doors, after being shrouded in a giant Margritte-esque building facade for the last couple of years. Even though I didn't get a chance to go in on this trip, it's certainly been added to my long list of reasons for returning to this (still highly underrated) city for a personal visit as soon as possible.
9 October, Friday
Life is a Dream, Donmar Warehouse
How rare it is these days to see a major institution (for that is what the Donmar is, for me) taking the Spanish Golden Age really seriously, and it probably would have faulted in a production any less dazzling than this one (literally - the bare back wall of the stage is gilded with golden splashes which later metaphorphoses into a vertical pool of blood). Legions of The Wire fans can drool about Dominic West for all they like, for me this performance - utterly frightening with uncontrolable rage one minute, vulnerable with nuanced confusion the next - showcases a very fine stage talent indeed. For once, the big TV-name casting for the sake of box office allure is justified. Some would say the material is merely second-rate Shakespeare from a lower latitude, and in places the long monologues do drag a bit, but the fine actors here (Kate Fleetwood, aka Mrs Rupert Goold, is the worthy equal of West with her dramatic arias as well as her depth and gravitas) give us a consistently gripping evening, and even the ludicrous all's-well-that-ends-well finale can be forgvien with a smile. Additional marks to the haunting music provided by Dominic Haslam (complete with muscles, in the 'cage').
10 October, Saturday
Inherit the Wind, The Old Vic
There are two things you need to know about this: one, when someone like Trevor Nunn who applies the broad-stroke brilliance he's known for (this is the man who brought Les Mis to life, after all - he really hasn't needed any work for the last 30 years on account of this royalty bill alone) to something that might otherwise looks a bit on the dull side on paper, it works. And two, Kevin Spacey gives his most memorable Old Vic outing yet (I don't want to think of this as 'the culmination' - more to come, please!), and his is a tornado of a performance, eclipsing a remarkable David Troughton and various supporting acts. We've all seen the American courtroom face-off scene in films that we can all rattle off for a good few minutes, but this is infinitey more gripping, intelligent, funny, complex and humane - all these things in turn.
"And on the morning of the eleventh day, we decided -"
- that we really needed a nice, big dose of visual arts. Turning up at Tate Britain 20 minutes after opening time on a Sunday morning to find the Turner and the Masters exhibition already crowded was uplifting (we aren't the only freaks!) and dispiriting (I'd hoped to see this in a much emptier setting!) in almost equal measure. Some of the aesthetic parallels theorised, between Turner and the sources of his inspirations seemed a little too academic/arbitrary, whereas the comparisons of his later works with his contemporaries were more fascinating to this viewer. While we usually conjure up those mesmerising seascapes as the main association with Turner's name ('Atmosphere is my style', apparently the man declared), it was particularly interesting to discover his forays into portraiture, and to conclude that some of those attempts were a bit clumsy. Later, in the courtyard of the Royal Academy, we couldn't help wearing the smug smile of the RA member while walking past the substantial queue (limited timed entries, no doubt) for the Anish Kapoor show. The word 'retrospective' is utterly inappropriate and irrelevant here, for the centrepieces are tailor-made for the space, and even pieces that weren't, such as Yellow, looks like it was always destined to be on that side of the wall. Breathtaking, thought-provoking, dizzying (literally, in one of the rooms).
Thursday, 6 August 2009
Thoughts on Flights II - What is Haute Cuisine?
23 May 2009. VS 238. LHR-HKG
I've just started my first in-flight meal on this thirteen-hour flight. If only plane food actually is presented as it sounds – alas, not in the twenty-first century. The 'menus' could look and sound terribly fancy, and yet each and every item on the tray just manages to contain that bit of awkwardness that you do wish they'd given you something quite plain but more pleasing than, say, yellow-brown green beans boiled two days ago and now 'dressed up'. As if the prospect of being bound to the half-foot space for the next half-day isn't depressing enough already, I suddenly realise that I've made one of the worst mistakes you can make when having an economy-class in-flight meal - I've chosen a programme called 'Yi-Pin Ryoyi' on the V! Japan channel on the entertainment system (sure, the food sucks but I still stick to Mr Branson's airline where I can, mostly for their entertainment programmes).
Yi-pin ryoyi means, literally, 'first-class cooking'. Any producer of the equivalent of such programme in the English-speaking world would have named it 'Haute Cuisine' (with just enough English accent in the pronunciation to ensure the snootiness of it). And what would this be in the heart of Tokyo, which is consistently featured in the global chart of cities with the highest living costs? Since Japanese food (I mean the real deal – perish any thoughts of Wagamama!) worldwide is already synonymous with freshness, exquisiteness, tastiness as well as nutritional values, you'd be excused for thinking, as I did, that it would be the Tokyo version of Gordon Ramsay/The Ivy/Nobu. But that couldn't be further from what's presented next.
Yu Café, located in the beautiful, historic neighbourhood of Ueno, is famed for its 'bi-hu shituro'. That's beef stew to you and me. And actually, that's the only dish they offer, day after day after day, all year long, . 'They' consist of a total staff number of two, a mother-and-son team. The mother, who must be in her fifties but has such impeccably beautiful skin common among Japanese women, looks like she could be in her late thirties. She brought up the son (now in his late twenties/early thirties?) all by herself, remarkably while remaining a career woman, working in publishing. A few years ago they opened up the café together in the front room of their own 75-year-old house, and since then it's become, if the crowd of lunchtime customers captured on screen is anything to go by, a real hit. They take us through their daily routine – the son takes their two dogs walking, picking up all the cooking ingredients (fresh beef, miscellaneous vegetables) he needs en route from local shops. Meanwhile mum cleans up the space and gets ready for cooking. The secret of the beef stew is in the stock apparently, and even though I didn't understand a thing being said, they clearly didn't give out the secret here. Each order of the stew is beautifully presented in a little stone pot, topped with freshly steamed vegetables, and served with bread and salad. It may sound utterly un-Japanese, yet the visual aspect of it – how you can tell the beef would be tender and juicy and delicious just by looking at it – already beats a lot of dishes that sound much more pretentious and are much less tempting. The customers, who include local businessmen as well as tourists, can't get enough of it. One of them is a heavily-accented, middle-aged man-in-suit from Osaka, who could have come all the way on the bullet train for a bowl of the stew for all I know. And there's just something intrinsically satisfying about the fact that everyone's eating exactly the same thing and in agreement with each other on their high opinion of the food. If only real socialism could be achieved thus! Oh, and the cost of the set? A total of 1000 yen (approximately US$10). No wonder the cute female presenter keeps widening her big eyes, with non-stop exclamations of 'Soo nan desu-ka!' (Is that so!)
Next up is a Ten-don place, in the heart of Ginza, where real estate prices rank among the highest in the world. Ten-don is short for 'tempura-don', don being the generic dish of bowl-of-rice with topping, which is just tempura in this establishment. And yes, you've guessed it – they serve nothing else but this signature dish, and if your tempura encounters so far have mainly/only involved greasy batters with a barely recognisable soggy centre, just watching this would make you a complete tempura convert (well, as well as making you feel so awful, about not being able to actually have it right here and now, that it hurts – trust me). Again – one can only accept that the Japanese haute cuisine is routinely borne out of such circumstances – it's a family business through-and-through, in this case a husband-and-wife team in their fifties. The words 'forty-one years' appears in the subtitle when he describes the history of the restaurant, and I guess it's been a family business for at least a couple of generations. The whole process of tempura being created here is captivating to watch from start to finish. First he selects three huge, plump shrimps whose freshness manifests itself abundantly. They're dipped in a special batter before being fried in sesame oil at 180C – the chef here does a hand gesture to stress the importance of the precision of this temperature. There's some magic working here, for when they're lifted from the fryer a couple of minutes later there's no residue oil dripping at all, almost a physical impossibility. Next up is assorted vegetables – again, unlike the bog-standard line-up of carrots and sweet potatoes we tend to get, they use carefully selected asparagus, aubergine and other indigenous Japanese varieties. In the meantime, the other half of the don – the rice base – is being made by the Madame of the house. Whereas usually this would be just plain steamed rice, not so at an Yipin-ryori restaurant! She lightly fries sliced onion with beaten eggs, using a minimal dollop of oil, which acts as a sub-topping, the scrumptious, soft layer between rice and the crown jewels of tempura. The whole appetising bowl is then served with miso soup and pickles. At this point the lovely presenter reveals yet another house secret – the chef conjures up a whole line of miso pastes from under the counter, each originating from a Japanese prefecture, from which he chooses and serves each customer depending on their accent – 'so that they can have a taste of home' (or at least that's what I think he said). And the pretty lady – if she weren't obviously so nice I'd have really, really hated her by now for the privilege of devouring all this – now lightly sprinkles green tea salt – I couldn't have made this up if I tried – all over the tempura, then everything is devoured, in a matter of seconds, with a lot of 'umms' and 'ahhhs' (well, their Japanese equivalent). Again, local workers and visitors alike don't seem able to get enough of this place, and the sight of impeccably-besuited bankers patiently waiting in line in this little side alleyway amidst all the surrounding Ginza grandeur is something to behold. Yet the most memorable frame is the humble smile of the proprietor/chef and his simple motto: 'Beautiful food makes you want to smile, I guess that's why I've enjoyed doing this for so long.' Oh, and the most important piece of information – the heft costly of all this 'ji-pin' (the ultimate food) as pronounced by our presenter? 1200 yen for the set, that's US$12. Those shrewd bankers sure know how to get the best value out of their hard-earned money.
If you think my enthusiasm about all this is completely disproportionate, and probably due to exceptionally bad accompanying meal thanks to Virgin Atlantic, think again. I didn't even understand what was being said on the programme 98% of the time, and just about managed to piece together all the practical information with the aid of the Japanese subtitles, some of which were in Chinese characters (as with all written Japanese). I'm simply struck – as I have in the past, time and again – by how differently the Japanese define 'high quality' as Westerners mostly do nowadays. Even in Tokyo, the most expensive city in the world, haute cuisine needn't cost the earth, quite the opposite in fact. The things they believe in, and celebrate as a people, are what make their food so unique. Sure, there are places all over the country where you can find thousand-pound-bottles of champagne, Phillip Starck interiors, set menus that can take a lengthy ritual to finish and cost a small mortgage to consume, and establishments where 'tipping' (although in the discreet Japanese manner) is a euphemism for 'be prepared to leave half of your savings account here'. But they choose not to show any of those exclusive and elusive options as their places of joy and pride, instead giving us a perfect and illuminating lesson of what haute cuisine means to them with these two little gems of examples. And for me, there is an upside to having this on the in-flight system after all: by the time I've watched this for the fourth time, Hong Kong is not that far away.
I've just started my first in-flight meal on this thirteen-hour flight. If only plane food actually is presented as it sounds – alas, not in the twenty-first century. The 'menus' could look and sound terribly fancy, and yet each and every item on the tray just manages to contain that bit of awkwardness that you do wish they'd given you something quite plain but more pleasing than, say, yellow-brown green beans boiled two days ago and now 'dressed up'. As if the prospect of being bound to the half-foot space for the next half-day isn't depressing enough already, I suddenly realise that I've made one of the worst mistakes you can make when having an economy-class in-flight meal - I've chosen a programme called 'Yi-Pin Ryoyi' on the V! Japan channel on the entertainment system (sure, the food sucks but I still stick to Mr Branson's airline where I can, mostly for their entertainment programmes).
Yi-pin ryoyi means, literally, 'first-class cooking'. Any producer of the equivalent of such programme in the English-speaking world would have named it 'Haute Cuisine' (with just enough English accent in the pronunciation to ensure the snootiness of it). And what would this be in the heart of Tokyo, which is consistently featured in the global chart of cities with the highest living costs? Since Japanese food (I mean the real deal – perish any thoughts of Wagamama!) worldwide is already synonymous with freshness, exquisiteness, tastiness as well as nutritional values, you'd be excused for thinking, as I did, that it would be the Tokyo version of Gordon Ramsay/The Ivy/Nobu. But that couldn't be further from what's presented next.
Yu Café, located in the beautiful, historic neighbourhood of Ueno, is famed for its 'bi-hu shituro'. That's beef stew to you and me. And actually, that's the only dish they offer, day after day after day, all year long, . 'They' consist of a total staff number of two, a mother-and-son team. The mother, who must be in her fifties but has such impeccably beautiful skin common among Japanese women, looks like she could be in her late thirties. She brought up the son (now in his late twenties/early thirties?) all by herself, remarkably while remaining a career woman, working in publishing. A few years ago they opened up the café together in the front room of their own 75-year-old house, and since then it's become, if the crowd of lunchtime customers captured on screen is anything to go by, a real hit. They take us through their daily routine – the son takes their two dogs walking, picking up all the cooking ingredients (fresh beef, miscellaneous vegetables) he needs en route from local shops. Meanwhile mum cleans up the space and gets ready for cooking. The secret of the beef stew is in the stock apparently, and even though I didn't understand a thing being said, they clearly didn't give out the secret here. Each order of the stew is beautifully presented in a little stone pot, topped with freshly steamed vegetables, and served with bread and salad. It may sound utterly un-Japanese, yet the visual aspect of it – how you can tell the beef would be tender and juicy and delicious just by looking at it – already beats a lot of dishes that sound much more pretentious and are much less tempting. The customers, who include local businessmen as well as tourists, can't get enough of it. One of them is a heavily-accented, middle-aged man-in-suit from Osaka, who could have come all the way on the bullet train for a bowl of the stew for all I know. And there's just something intrinsically satisfying about the fact that everyone's eating exactly the same thing and in agreement with each other on their high opinion of the food. If only real socialism could be achieved thus! Oh, and the cost of the set? A total of 1000 yen (approximately US$10). No wonder the cute female presenter keeps widening her big eyes, with non-stop exclamations of 'Soo nan desu-ka!' (Is that so!)
Next up is a Ten-don place, in the heart of Ginza, where real estate prices rank among the highest in the world. Ten-don is short for 'tempura-don', don being the generic dish of bowl-of-rice with topping, which is just tempura in this establishment. And yes, you've guessed it – they serve nothing else but this signature dish, and if your tempura encounters so far have mainly/only involved greasy batters with a barely recognisable soggy centre, just watching this would make you a complete tempura convert (well, as well as making you feel so awful, about not being able to actually have it right here and now, that it hurts – trust me). Again – one can only accept that the Japanese haute cuisine is routinely borne out of such circumstances – it's a family business through-and-through, in this case a husband-and-wife team in their fifties. The words 'forty-one years' appears in the subtitle when he describes the history of the restaurant, and I guess it's been a family business for at least a couple of generations. The whole process of tempura being created here is captivating to watch from start to finish. First he selects three huge, plump shrimps whose freshness manifests itself abundantly. They're dipped in a special batter before being fried in sesame oil at 180C – the chef here does a hand gesture to stress the importance of the precision of this temperature. There's some magic working here, for when they're lifted from the fryer a couple of minutes later there's no residue oil dripping at all, almost a physical impossibility. Next up is assorted vegetables – again, unlike the bog-standard line-up of carrots and sweet potatoes we tend to get, they use carefully selected asparagus, aubergine and other indigenous Japanese varieties. In the meantime, the other half of the don – the rice base – is being made by the Madame of the house. Whereas usually this would be just plain steamed rice, not so at an Yipin-ryori restaurant! She lightly fries sliced onion with beaten eggs, using a minimal dollop of oil, which acts as a sub-topping, the scrumptious, soft layer between rice and the crown jewels of tempura. The whole appetising bowl is then served with miso soup and pickles. At this point the lovely presenter reveals yet another house secret – the chef conjures up a whole line of miso pastes from under the counter, each originating from a Japanese prefecture, from which he chooses and serves each customer depending on their accent – 'so that they can have a taste of home' (or at least that's what I think he said). And the pretty lady – if she weren't obviously so nice I'd have really, really hated her by now for the privilege of devouring all this – now lightly sprinkles green tea salt – I couldn't have made this up if I tried – all over the tempura, then everything is devoured, in a matter of seconds, with a lot of 'umms' and 'ahhhs' (well, their Japanese equivalent). Again, local workers and visitors alike don't seem able to get enough of this place, and the sight of impeccably-besuited bankers patiently waiting in line in this little side alleyway amidst all the surrounding Ginza grandeur is something to behold. Yet the most memorable frame is the humble smile of the proprietor/chef and his simple motto: 'Beautiful food makes you want to smile, I guess that's why I've enjoyed doing this for so long.' Oh, and the most important piece of information – the heft costly of all this 'ji-pin' (the ultimate food) as pronounced by our presenter? 1200 yen for the set, that's US$12. Those shrewd bankers sure know how to get the best value out of their hard-earned money.
If you think my enthusiasm about all this is completely disproportionate, and probably due to exceptionally bad accompanying meal thanks to Virgin Atlantic, think again. I didn't even understand what was being said on the programme 98% of the time, and just about managed to piece together all the practical information with the aid of the Japanese subtitles, some of which were in Chinese characters (as with all written Japanese). I'm simply struck – as I have in the past, time and again – by how differently the Japanese define 'high quality' as Westerners mostly do nowadays. Even in Tokyo, the most expensive city in the world, haute cuisine needn't cost the earth, quite the opposite in fact. The things they believe in, and celebrate as a people, are what make their food so unique. Sure, there are places all over the country where you can find thousand-pound-bottles of champagne, Phillip Starck interiors, set menus that can take a lengthy ritual to finish and cost a small mortgage to consume, and establishments where 'tipping' (although in the discreet Japanese manner) is a euphemism for 'be prepared to leave half of your savings account here'. But they choose not to show any of those exclusive and elusive options as their places of joy and pride, instead giving us a perfect and illuminating lesson of what haute cuisine means to them with these two little gems of examples. And for me, there is an upside to having this on the in-flight system after all: by the time I've watched this for the fourth time, Hong Kong is not that far away.
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
A Streetcar Named Desire - a (p)review
Walking into the intimate space that is the auditorium of Donmar Warehouse, you're immediately struck by the sense that something quite familiar has been subtly changed. Upon closer inspection, all three sides of the balcony seating area have been transformed into decorative balustrades that echo the spiral staircase in one corner on stage, and the railings that seem to constitute 'floating ceilings' high up in the air. Welcome to Tennese Williams's New Orleans. Even before the play starts, you're captivated by this elegantly constructed world (designed by the Donmar veteran, Chris Oram, in his signature grey hues) where there's a sense of mad decay lurking just underneath the plain surface, in every corner, of the Kowalski household. It captures the stage direction by Williams perfectly, juxtaposing the exterior and the interior in one setting.
Any production of Streetcar, though, ultimately depends upon the central quartet of the cast, and in particular to whoever portrays Blanche Dubois, the faded Southern beauty whose own decay in this household forms the emotional core of the play. Vivienne Leigh's Oscar-winning performance on silver screen was such a definitive interpretation, made all the more poignant by her real-life descent into madness, it's almost the inevitable yardstick to which every actress taking up the role would be compared. I suspect Rob Ashford (who choreographed Donmar's celebrated 'Guys and Dolls', and also directed the excellent yet underrated 'Parade' here) thought long and hard about choosing Rachel Weisz as his Blanche. Despite a slightly faulty start, she quickly takes total command of the role, showing us Blanche's deceptive dreaminess, innate passion and vulnerability, jealousy (fundamentally, of everyone else whose life seems simple and straightforward compared with her own) and eventual derangement, layer by layer, an onion of a human tragedy, to devastating effect. Her long, breathless monologue to Mitch, the eager and clumsy suitor, revealing her unfortunate past (or at least part of it) at the end of Scene Six, was the highlight of the whole evening, an acting tour-de-force, and the perfect spot for an interval filled with a much-needed stiff drink (for the audience, not her).
Yet there's one fatal problem to this otherwise commendable casting choice: Weisz is decidedly not a faded beauty, but a beauty in full bloom. When Blanche, pondering the possibility of bagging Mitch (an Barnaby Kay, also impressive) as her last chance at settling down with someone, nervously suggests to Stella that 'Men lost interest [in women] quickly, especially when the girl is over – thirty', the intended comic effect cannot possibly be achieved, because she truly and honestly looks like, well, thirty one. And later, when a drunken, heart-broken Mitch confronts her about her less-than-honourable recent past, tearing down the lampshade which she's used to create the eternal haze in the room in order to hide her own decay, what's startlingly obvious to anyone in the room is the fact that this is a stunning young woman, not the memorable, deeply-lined, heavily made-up face of Vivienne Leigh from the same scene in the film. One may argue that this should be overlooked in lieu of the strong performance from Weisz, but impressed as I was, I couldn't help thinking this was a perfect example of dramatic incongruity.
The rest of the cast also did a good job, although easily eclipsed by Weisz's central performance. Elliot Cowan's Stanley is muscular, ruthless and viciously attractive in the Brando mode, who also handled the comic element in some of the early scenes (especially when he scavenges through Blanche's suitcase) well. Ruth Wilson is a competent Stella, though one would have wished for a bit more emotional depth. A very nice touch from Ashford is the ghostly appearances of Blanche's ex-husband and his old lover, in her reminiscence/monologue scenes. It would be churlish to dismiss such a remarkable effort just on the grounds of miscasting, so I would really recommend that you do go to see it. Just use your imagination and try to accept Ms Weisz as really being fifteen years older than she appears. You may need to try very, very hard but this Streetcar's worth it.
Any production of Streetcar, though, ultimately depends upon the central quartet of the cast, and in particular to whoever portrays Blanche Dubois, the faded Southern beauty whose own decay in this household forms the emotional core of the play. Vivienne Leigh's Oscar-winning performance on silver screen was such a definitive interpretation, made all the more poignant by her real-life descent into madness, it's almost the inevitable yardstick to which every actress taking up the role would be compared. I suspect Rob Ashford (who choreographed Donmar's celebrated 'Guys and Dolls', and also directed the excellent yet underrated 'Parade' here) thought long and hard about choosing Rachel Weisz as his Blanche. Despite a slightly faulty start, she quickly takes total command of the role, showing us Blanche's deceptive dreaminess, innate passion and vulnerability, jealousy (fundamentally, of everyone else whose life seems simple and straightforward compared with her own) and eventual derangement, layer by layer, an onion of a human tragedy, to devastating effect. Her long, breathless monologue to Mitch, the eager and clumsy suitor, revealing her unfortunate past (or at least part of it) at the end of Scene Six, was the highlight of the whole evening, an acting tour-de-force, and the perfect spot for an interval filled with a much-needed stiff drink (for the audience, not her).
Yet there's one fatal problem to this otherwise commendable casting choice: Weisz is decidedly not a faded beauty, but a beauty in full bloom. When Blanche, pondering the possibility of bagging Mitch (an Barnaby Kay, also impressive) as her last chance at settling down with someone, nervously suggests to Stella that 'Men lost interest [in women] quickly, especially when the girl is over – thirty', the intended comic effect cannot possibly be achieved, because she truly and honestly looks like, well, thirty one. And later, when a drunken, heart-broken Mitch confronts her about her less-than-honourable recent past, tearing down the lampshade which she's used to create the eternal haze in the room in order to hide her own decay, what's startlingly obvious to anyone in the room is the fact that this is a stunning young woman, not the memorable, deeply-lined, heavily made-up face of Vivienne Leigh from the same scene in the film. One may argue that this should be overlooked in lieu of the strong performance from Weisz, but impressed as I was, I couldn't help thinking this was a perfect example of dramatic incongruity.
The rest of the cast also did a good job, although easily eclipsed by Weisz's central performance. Elliot Cowan's Stanley is muscular, ruthless and viciously attractive in the Brando mode, who also handled the comic element in some of the early scenes (especially when he scavenges through Blanche's suitcase) well. Ruth Wilson is a competent Stella, though one would have wished for a bit more emotional depth. A very nice touch from Ashford is the ghostly appearances of Blanche's ex-husband and his old lover, in her reminiscence/monologue scenes. It would be churlish to dismiss such a remarkable effort just on the grounds of miscasting, so I would really recommend that you do go to see it. Just use your imagination and try to accept Ms Weisz as really being fifteen years older than she appears. You may need to try very, very hard but this Streetcar's worth it.
Thoughts on Flights I - On Cities Big and Small
20 May 2009. BA 799, HEL-LHR.
The most reassuring public announcement? Whatever comes from a BA cockpit, in a magnetic male voice in Her Majesty's English (I do sometimes wonder if they're filtered by quality of speaking voice as well as aviary skills) must rank among the top. 'Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I'm pleased to let you know that we're making good progress towards our destination, London Heathrow. Weather report is very good indeed, a cloudless day, making it a nice descent...'
Since truly cloudless days are actually something of a real rarity in London's skies, when it turns out to be true, you notice every single window-seat passenger - and some further from the windows attempting a neck-crankling exercise - being completely absorbed by the birds-eye view of the metropolis, noses stuck to the windows. All the more remarkable considering the vast majority of the passengers on this flight appear to be frequent business travelers who may have the tendency to count their daily/weekly commutes in airmiles. The reason is that the view is indeed mesmerising on a day like this. To start with, you can't help being startled by the realisation (or confirmation really) that London is MASSIVE. Even the area within the Circular (the 'inner circle' as opposed to the monstrous M25), which looks like a reasonable size on your road atlas, contains a fascinatingly diverse landscape, viewed from this height. Landmarks along the Thames - there's a reason why every major city in the world has to have a river in the middle of, or circling, it - are easily spotted. But you also take in the green patches everywhere, among the concrete sprawls: parks, heaths, commons, with the undulating trees and boat-dotted ponds. The Millennium Dome (aka 'The O2'), the arch at Wembley Stadium, and the 2012 Olympic site echo each other as 21st-century London's answer to the Colosseum. We spend far too big a part of our daily lives getting from A to B in a sealed tube carriage or on a standing-room only bus, we tend to forget to look up and look around everywhere in between. On this enormous canvas, even the clusters of ugly big council blocks suddenly take on an intriguing character of their own, a striking cubist shade perhaps.
Which, inevitably, brings up the nagging thought I've always had at the back of my mind: how can so much of the London surface that we do encounter everyday seem so helplessly dull? How can so big and great a city have so little character on its streets?
To be specific: London, like every other sizeable city in the UK, is now full of 'cloned streets'. You know the one: a Next next to a Boots next to an Oasis next to a Starbucks next to a Zara next to a Tesco Metro next to a Coffee Republic next to a Waterstones next to... etc etc. And the more upmarket version of this, available to the yummy mummies of the more expensive postcodes (Upper Street in Islington, King's Road in Chelsea, High Street Kensington, shopping centres in Westfield and Canary Wharf), would be something like: a Whistles next to a TM Lewin next to a Café Nero next to a Waitrose next to a Karen Millen next to a Zara (big winners are those who appeal to all classes)... and so on. Even the mighty designer brands, having been so mercilessly bombarded in our faces in every media outlet in the last couple of decades,have lost their previously haughty air of exclusivity, and even Bond Street and the northern end of Sloane Street now merely feel like clones of all the other shops in other world capitals offering identical goods, give or take the currency discrepancies.
I do realise that these are all inevitable and bountiful fruits of market economy/capitalist consumerism/globalisation. And it's produced at least one immortally funny line on screen - in Woody Allen's last good film, Small Time Crooks, the cop who caught the hapless, cookie-shop fronting bank-robbers red-handed offers his priceless one-word advice on how to really make it big without breaking the law: 'FRANCHISE!' But I suspect that I'm not the only one suffering from clone-street fatigue, longing for something different, something that stands out from all this predictable drab (predictability being the evil twin of the omnipresent convenience that modern technologies bestow on us).
This collective frustration has, presumably, played no small part in the increasingly wild popularity of the markets of Portobello, Spitalfields and Borough. That trusty barometer of middle-class Londoners' opinions, Evening Standard, launched its 'save our small shops' campaign last year as a firm rebuttal to the clonisation of high streets everywhere, and had overwhelming responses. Being a realist, though, I think we'll have to accept the demise of independent retailers as an eventuality, a price to pay for having an iconic city without microscopic iconic components on the street level. Yet how does London compare with other capital cities in this respect? My first reaction, on pondering this question, is that the bigger they are, the fewer interesting, non-chain shops they seem to allow. If we take the distinctive architectural backdrops out of the picture (an easy task these days, thanks to technology), the shopping streets of London, New York, Hong Kong and Beijing can all blur into one. Globalisation flaunts itself in the flesh, loud and proud. In comparison, the smaller European capitals and other major cities that often captivate me, rarely fail to come up with unfamiliar brands and logos in their spades (and this is a shopaholic writing): Stockholm, Copenhagen, Antwerp, Berlin, Bologna, Tallinn, Vilnius. But wait a minute, there are exceptions to this theory too. Paris and Tokyo are both bona fide metropolises, yet still have plenty of shop-keepers who run their hundred-square-feet spaces with phenomenal success, and who would run a mile from the smiling corporate boss contemplating a merger/acquisition deal. Is this the great socio-cultural divide again, the one between the English-speaking world –yes, the likes of Hong Kong and Beijing can almost be comfortably categorised as such - and the rest of the (real) world? I don't have an answer, but I know I'd be happy to see London, for one, de-cloned considerably. But I have to stop thinking about it, because in the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at London Heathrow Terminal Five. The local time is seven p.m., the ground temperature, eighteen degrees. It's been a real pleasure to have you on board.
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