| The
Winslow Boy has nothing whatsoever to do with the
subject of drugs or related issues. It is a film about
family love and honour, family support in the face of
adversity, the family versus the system.
In
a radical departure from four letter word-laden, hip,
pacy dialogue challenging American institutions, screenwriter/director
David Mamet has adapted Sir Terence Rattigan's 1945
play for the screen. (Closely following the play,
Sir Terence wrote the script for the 1948 British
film starring Robert Donat.)
Based
on a real-life media-celebrated case in Britain in
1910, a father brings his family to financial ruin
to back the integrity of his thirteen-year-old son,
a naval cadet dishonourably dismissed from school,
accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order.
London banker, Arthur Winslow (Nigel Hawthorne) engages
famed barrister, Sir Robert Morton (Jeremy Northam)
to take the school to court to clear Ronnie Winslow's
name. The ensuing court battle dominates the English
papers for over a year.
Whereas
in the original play and film the barrister is the
leading character, in David Mamet's version, the father
is the dominant person. It is the father's fight,
his belief in his son.
David
Mamet has introduced other elements to good effect,
such as the cadet's sister being given a more prominent
part by her involvement in the suffragette movement,
with her strong political awareness and the hinting
of a possible romantic interest between her and the
barrister.
Casting
his American wife, Rebecca Pidgeon, whose English
accent is impeccable, in the role of the sister, David
Mamet has a trio of lead actors who spark off each
other in intelligent, witty, multi-layered dialogue.
The
Winslow Boy is not a fast-food, salt and fat-saturated
blob-out kind of film. It is thought-provoking, inspirational,
fresh home-cooked dinner fare.
Book
Reviews
Communities
That Care
Action
for Drug Abuse Prevention
by
J. David Hawkins, Richard F. Catalano, Jr and Associates
(publ.
Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco)
When
I review books for heroInsight I do read every
word from cover to cover but Communities That Care
is an exception. I read Part 1, realised it is a textbook
for American professionals in the Social Sciences
and then skim-read the rest.
It
is a worthy book, proposing a worthy model for creating
communities which are healthy, productive places
for young people and adults alike, provided people
at every level get involved and stay involved long
enough to make a difference.
There
are some interesting facts backing why previous measures
have failed, for example, from 1986 to 1989 federal
(US) spending on drug enforcement more than doubled.
At the same time, the street price for cocaine dropped
from $100 to $75 a gram.
Communities
That Care suggests that the key to a zero drug
problem is to reduce demand before problems
develop. As a discussion on how this can be achieved,
it is aimed at certain communities in crisis, in which
every family is dysfunctional with appalling parenting
skills.
The
model suggests mobilisation of the proposed strategy
should start with the mayor (imagine Mayor David Doust
of Burwood with his attitudes towards addicts as people
of weak character), the superintendent of schools,
the community's lead law enforcement official and
a business leader!
Q: Where
are the `experts'? the people at the coalface who
have the experience?
A: It
is assumed they are inept, bad parents steeped in
their own addictions.
Communities
That Care is not a book for the readership of
heroInsight who obviously have more clues than
our present community leaders, a good example of which
is Fay Morritt's letter reproduced in our last heroInsight
in response to Mayor Doust's comments in the Inner
Western Suburbs COURIER.
how
to stop time
heroin
from A to Z
by
ann marlowe
(publ.
Basic Books)
Warning:
Another negative review of yet another book on heroin
written by yet another rich, intelligent soul-bearer
with a love-impoverished childhood.
A
title like heroin A to Z suggests a reference
book, a heroin ready reckoner; but it is autobiographical,
Ann Marlowe's thoughts on her experience of heroin,
using the contrived device of headings alphabetically
arranged. At times I felt any old word starting with
the appropriate letter would do.
It
is not an insight into heroin use and its effects
social, physical and emotional; it is a voyeuristic
peep at the East Village, New York artiste and drug
scene in the 1980s, the reflections and analysis of
a recreational heroin-user, who gave up her drug of
choice as easily as changing her clothes, offering
little of relevance to families struggling with true
addiction (which Ms Marlowe terms `a myth'). In fact
some of her blithe statements are an insult to those
suffering the heartache and anguish wreaked by heroin-use,
for example, under need: Not for a minute can I
subscribe to the popular view, encouraged by William
Burroughs, of addiction as uncontrollable need. Heroin
eventually made me bad-tempered and remote but it
didn't make me beg, cheat or steal. Under money:
Many people who develop these vastly expensive
habits are looking for a way to punish themselves
for making or inheriting a lot of money.
Ann
Marlowe's heroin use was a way of expressing herself,
a studied, controlled chicness. She has no concept
of being desperate. She never had the need to steal
the loose change from a sibling's piggy bank or hold
up a chemist with a blood-filled syringe. This side
of addiction is completely foreign to her, outside
the realms of her intellectualising. She is proud
of her drug-taking, proud of being in `the minority'.
Despite
her intense self-preoccupation and narrow heroin milieu,
there is much in her writing and reflections to be
admired. The sections digital and television are of
particular interest: . . . advertising
breaks accustomed us to discontinuous narratives and
the effortless shifting between the tragic and the
trivial.
Her
observations on heroin being a maturity-retardant
tie in neatly with the title of how to stop time
as does the evident distortion of time while under
the influence.
Ann
Marlowe is obviously a brainy lady . . .
as well as a horny (sex looms large throughout the
book), self-absorbed, wealthy one. Ann Marlowe, the
existentialist heroin dilettante.
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