Monthly Archives: February 2014

The Bens 2014

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My movie-watching for 2013 was way down on previous years. 26 in total, and of those, 8 were watched on the way to, at or back from Worldcon in San Antonio. Dear me. I can only put this down to an increase in Scandi crime viewing on Saturday evenings, our usual viewing slot, including working our way through two series of The Killing.

So anyway. Remembering the criterion and adage that “It’s not what it’s about, it’s how it’s about it”, here goes. The Ben Awards for 2014.

Best movie

So, how do I define “best”? I go for what I perceive as the most satisfactory meeting of ambition and ability; my enjoyment levels in watching; and the crunch question, would I mind seeing it again or would I rather just read a book? All of the above meet these criteria; and indeed, I have seen two of the three more than once. (Cloud Atlas on two successive evenings, TGtB&tU more times than I can possibly count over a period of 49 years.)

Ultimately I felt TGtB&tU is so much in a class of its own that comparisons are unfair, bringing it down to a choice of two. Ender’s Game is a flawless recreation of the book which still allows the director’s own vision to show through (unlike, say, the early Harry Potter movies, which were equally flawless book recreations). The story is simplified for the screen without losing anything, though bizarrely gaining a Kiwi accent for Ben Kingsley which contributes nothing. Ultimately however the movie misses out on the Best tag because, being as good as it is, it also highlights the absurdities of the novel – an interstellar fleet run by children? Most attendees at any games expo would wipe the floor with world-saving genius Ender.

Cloud Atlas wins not only because Ender loses but also for being, quite a simply, a 90% successful attempt to film an absolutely unfilmable book. The book tells six stories broken down into 11 consecutive chunks: five half stories in a chronological sequence, then a whole story set at the farthest point in the future, then the remaining five half stories in reverse chronology. The film takes them and chops them up much more finely, with the same core cast playing characters who are not only very different in type but sometimes age, ethnicity and even gender. In some cases it’s not until you see the end credits that you realise just how many times you have seen the same actor. And every one of them acts, even Hugh Grant, who appears in a brief role so utterly against type that I wanted to rewatch the movie straight away, just to catch another glimpse. (I didn’t, I waited 24 hours.) And, even more so than TGtG&tU, you can tell the cast are having a ball, which adds to the enjoyment; Ender’s Game, it must be said, is just a tad po-faced.

Best actor

Ender’s Game sinks or swims on the strength of Ender’s performance, and it’s hard to imagine any other boy actor in the last 20 years doing as well. Asa Butterfield is spot on: he’s grown since The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas but is still small enough to appear vulnerable, and his character is completely different to pyjama-boy and to his lead role in Hugo. But for all that, maybe because the character of Ender himself is such a contrivance, it’s hard to shake the feeling he’s jumping through hoops on demand, as is every other character in the movie.

Ditto Suraj Sharma, who is very good indeed in his debut performance as Pi, spending much of his time acting at a CGI tiger. Both these young men have the true triumphs of their careers yet to come.

And then we come to Karl Urban, who is Dredd, and conveys it despite having half his face obscured for the entire movie. What was I saying about contrived characters? Well, he takes the not-entirely-uncontrived lawman of Mega City 1 and makes him human. With half a face. And he is also pretty good as McCoy in Star Trek Into Darkness, playing a totally different role. So, Urban it is.

Most unexpectedly good

Dredd comes very close indeed to winning here; its one drawback is that, apart from the Judges themselves, it just looks too contemporary. One thing I will give Stallone’s Judge Dredd is that what we saw on screen really was Mega City 1, which sadly was the setting for a lousy story. But this Mega City is just like downtown Detroit, with (okay, okay) brutalist kilometre-high concrete skyscrapers, but brutalist kilometre-high concrete skyscrapers alone do not a Mega City make.

Whereas Man of Steel is, believe it or not, not a Superman movie. It’s a movie about Kryptonians. Kal-el is not the only exiled member of his race trying to make a new life on Earth. Meanwhile, before succumbing to damsel-in-distress mode, Pultizer-prize winning journo Lois Lane actually behaves in a Pulitzer-prize winning manner and tracks down Clark Kent by following the inevitable clues a man like him would leave behind, without him realising.

Not necessarily bad but biggest waste of a good cast

All three have good casts, two of which include Helen Mirren. However, in two cases the story is predictable because it’s already based on historical fact, and in one it’s predictable because the denouement of the entire fiction-based plot is the only thing that could happen in a pastoral comedy starring Tom Courtenay, Maggie Smith, Pauline Collins and Billy Connolly. But the winner, i.e. the biggest waste, has to be Phil Spector, for not deviating one jot from reality and giving neither Mirren nor Al Pacino anything to do other than recite their lines (Pacino mumbling his around the bits of the scenery he was chewing at the time).

Jerusalem underground

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The Temple Mount is an ambitious piece of landscaping by Herod the Great. Originally the site where it stands was on the eastern side of a quite deep valley. It consisted of a rising ridge of stone holding two small hills – in the Bible, “Mount” tends to mean anything between a few and several thousand feet high – on top of one of which Solomon had built the first temple a thousand years earlier. The second hill was a large lump of limestone in the north west corner of where the Temple Mount now is. (Jerusalem is all limestone. It would have looked very different and not half as nice if it shared the black volcanic basalt of Galilee.) The original temple had been ruined for centuries. Herod, installed by the Romans as king of the Jews, wanted to ingratiate himself with his adopted/foisted upon people and decided to rebuild the temple.

The original hill was too small for the temple he had in mind. How handy it would be, he mused, if it was all flat; if the land could sort of be raised up all around it …

And so he did. Or rather, that’s what his slaves did. The smaller lump of rock was dismantled and used as material for four massive walls enclosing the entire site in a slightly wobbly rectangle. The land level within the four walls rose and fell with the natural contours of the bedrock, so in some places the void could be filled in with rubble and in other places enormous vaults were built topped by a stone platform at the level of the new Temple Mount. The rock that the Dome of the Rock is built over is the natural tip of the original hill, poking slightly above the level of the platform. It has a cave in it. Gateways were built into the new walls with stairs leading up to the top. At the north west corner of the platform, the original source of the rock, the natural bedrock has been cut and dressed to look like it was built the same way as the rest of the Mount.

In short, the Temple Mount is a fascinating hodge-podge of caves, tunnels, walls and stone where archaeology and geology become interchangeable concepts. What’s not to love? It is still Jerusalem’s most obvious feature, and in its original form it must have looked stunning. Those limestone walls would have gleamed in the sun, the largest man-made object most people who saw them had ever beheld. No wonder the country bumpkin disciples marvelled at it.

The Western Wall plaza, halfway up the height of the original walls.

The Western Wall plaza, halfway up the height of the original walls.

Meanwhile, as if that wasn’t enough, I said that the Mount is on the eastern side of a valley – the Tyropoeon Valley, or Valley of the Cheesemakers, which of course isn’t meant to be taken literally but should be taken as a reference to any manufacturers of dairy products. As Jerusalem spilled into the valley (and frequently got reduced to rubble and rebuilt), so the floor level began to rise. More strong arches were built, more new ground levels were created on top of them, and then on top of them, and so on until you get to where we are now. The present day street level, defined by the Western Wall Plaza, is about halfway up the height of the original walls.

Going underground, going underground ...

Going underground, going underground …

And all those empty spaces beneath? Well, you can get into them. You can go down and look at the base of those astonishing walls. So that is what we did.

 

Looking down, from several levels up. That there in the black square is the floor of the valley.

Looking down, from several levels up. That there in the black square is the floor of the valley.

Much better pictures than I was able to take can be found here. A very good guide started us off with a little model of pre-construction Jerusalem, showing how the Mount was put off, and he then led us off into the tunnels. Even when we thought we must be at the base of the walls – well, we weren’t. The picture on the right is looking vertically down at a Second Temple period staircase, and the floor is a long way down. We are already below the level of the Western Wall plaza. Big walls.

One of Herod's building blocks.

One of Herod’s building blocks.

In the picture on the right the guide is showing one of the colossal blocks on the lower courses of the western wall. The bottom edge is level with his ribs; the top, left and right hand edges are some distance out of the sides of the picture. He set us an intellectual challenge: how were blocks that size ever lifted into place? Think about it; answer at the end.

A personal mission objective was achieved when we got to Warren’s Gate – one of the things I wanted to see as being unquestionably somewhere Jesus would have been. Sadly my camera wasn’t wide angle enough to capture it, and in a narrow tunnel you can’t step back to get a better view. At this point in the tunnel we are closest to the titular Rock above, which many believe to have been the site of the Holy of Holies within the Temple, So, many Jews come here to pray, and unlike the Western Wall plaza it isn’t gender segregated..

As you proceed northwards along the base of the wall you pass through (what is now) a buried quarry and a section of the old water tunnel. Now you’re in the bits where the bedrock has been carved to look like building blocks. Then you come to a bit where the carving and quarrying just – stops. It looks like the builders just downed tools and walked away one day. Why? Another puzzle. Maybe it was because Herod died. Maybe work was interrupted by the slight detail of the Romans destroying Jerusalem. Whatever the reason, the Mount was never properly finished, but it came pretty close.

Just before the end of the tunnel you come to the Struthion Pool, an underground reservoir. This was sort-of discovered in the nineteenth century by Charles Warren, in the best Victorian white man tradition of discovering things that people already knew perfectly well were there if only you bothered to ask. Warren conducted many of the first proper explorations of the Mount, before all that kind of thing became political and religious dynamite. Finding a pool, he naturally got into a boat and set off to find the other side. Finding a door there, he naturally knocked on it. It was opened by a very surprised and outraged nun from the convent above. The sisters then sealed off their end of the pool so that no more men could come a-knocking out of the darkness.

The Mount may have been a vanity project for Herod, but it served as the basis for the Temple, which was by no means perfect (cf. many parts of the Gospels) but was still the centre of a thriving community and somewhere that God could be found. And for all the religious gunpowder tension that still hangs around it, it is still a positive focal point of many lives. That’s quite a memorial for Herod, in the way that, say, the pyramids very definitely aren’t for their long-dead Pharaohs. And Jesus was there.

Okay, the answer to my little puzzle above: how those huge blocks were lifted? They weren’t. I said they were hacked out of a natural hill that was then enclosed by the walls, and they’re only on the lower courses of the walls. They were cut out of living bedrock, dressed, and dragged along, not up. Simple. Well, simpler.

Two tombs, five pools, one river and a manger

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And after lunch on the day of the walk, we visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre …

Here is the history of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in a nutshell. Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, decided she would find the location of Christ’s crucifixion and burial, so descended on Jerusalem with all the will and force that an Emperor’s mother can command. When she demanded of the locals, “Where was Our Lord crucified?” she got blank looks in return, so starting locking people up until someone miraculously remembered.

Chronologically, of course, this is the equivalent of asking a casual passer-by in 2014 the close details of something they’ve never heard of that happened in the 1750s.

To be fair, I’m prepared to believe she found an execution site that was outside the old city walls of Jerusalem – so who knows, it could be Golgotha. Whether it was the execution site is another matter. Buried in the detritus she sound what seemed to be the remains of some crosses – including one with nail holes. The Bible says that Christ was nailed up. Ordinary perps were only strung up. Therefore this was the One True Cross, QED.

But I’m sorry to say Helena’s analytical detachment, such as it was, deserted her completely when it came to the tomb. I don’t know how many contenders there were for the site, but she found one matching the Biblical description – hewn from solid rock, only one previous owner, empty – quite literally a stone’s throw away from the crucifixion site. Christ’s tomb, QED.

That’s the bit that I really just don’t buy. Christ was buried in a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea, a rich man who had had it excavated for his own eventual use. Would this powerful, respectable citizen, a member of the Sanhedrin no less, have bought his exclusive tomb plot a bare 50m from a place where lowlives were strung up to die in slow agony? Think of the people he would be seen dead with!

I think not.

But Helena did.

The rocky hill was excavated all around it so that now the tomb in its rocky shell stands on a level surface, and a succession of churches were perpetrated over both sites. The tomb is now lined with marble, hung with lamps and censers, and marvelled at by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year who will queue for hours for the privilege. Three or four people can shuffle in for a 30 second gawp before an impatient knock by the Orthodox priest stationed outside makes you shuffle out again for the next group, while your tour guide has a blazing argument with Russian tourists trying to jump the queue and threatens to call the police. Maybe that last bit doesn’t happen to everyone, just us.

The original “hill”, such it was, of Golgotha was left untouched. The Crusaders built a stone platform so that you can now ascend in comfort to the very top, crouch down beneath an altar erected over it and touch the very site where the cross went.

I didn’t. I honestly don’t know what happened to me in that place, but it was like a kind of spiritual anaphylaxis. I rarely feel claustrophobic but I think I did that day. Whatever the case, I found the church ugly and oppressive and as spiritual as a lump of the dead rock it is built of, with my only options to burst into tears or turn atheist. I felt the words ‘He is not here’ take on a whole new significance.

And that is why, as a symbolic equivalent of shaking the dust from my feet, I don’t intend to post any pictures of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The sponsored walk takes a break on the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Yes, really. It's a handy shortcut and surprisingly easy to do.

The sponsored walk takes a break on the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Yes, really. It’s a handy shortcut and surprisingly easy to do.

Well, okay, maybe just one.

So, what else did we do?

Well, Bethlehem, obviously. For some reason the Church of the Nativity didn’t upset me quite as much as its cousin over in Jerusalem. It helped that it was relatively empty, though at the right time of year I can imagine it heaving and a lot less pleasant. Also, the main body of the church is a tastefully austere Roman basilica, with what are apparently some quite gorgeous Byzantine mosaics, being restored while we were there so sadly hidden behind scaffolding.

The original Christmas decorations.

The original Christmas decorations.

It’s only the altar end that is blingtastic, on a scale that would make Gerald Ratner re-evaluate his life. You queue up on the right hand side, then descend a few steps into the nativity grotto: site of Jesus’s birth on your right, site of the manger on the left (he wasn’t born in it, remember, just laid there). The grotto is just part of a whole network of underground caves and passages that link up with next door’s Chapel of St Jerome, though now walled off so you can’t any more get from one to the other – but come on – underground caves and grottoes FTW!

Manger, site of

Manger, site of

Bethlehem is also worth a visit just to get it into your head how tiny and small a place it was back then; the Son of God really was slumming it by choosing it as Ground Zero for his incarnation, which is kind of the point. And once again, the geography is amazing. The original village was perched on top of a very steep hilltop. The whole area is sharp ups and downs. I always imagined “shepherds on a hillside” being far away; indeed, far too many Christmas cards show them – or someone – looking down on the town from a distance. In fact I can well imagine the hillside was right next door, because everywhere is a hillside.

Manger Square, with my back to Church of Nativity. NT era Bethlehem fitted between the two tall towers in the distance.

Manger Square, with my back to Church of Nativity. NT era Bethlehem fitted between the two tall towers (minaret and church spire) in the distance.

Cf. David Roberts’ mid-nineteenth century painting of Bethlehem to see what I mean. All those slopes are built up now, of course.

There is of course an official Shepherds Fields site, with church and ruined monastery and … okay, we had a brief service there but I felt no sense of significance to it. Not even a holy relic sheep poo from the lamb presented to Baby Jesus, and when I think of the religious tat that was on offer, I’m astonished no one has thought of that one before.

The last full day was our Desert Experience day, attained by driving there in a comfortable air conditioned coach. Hey, we’re pilgrims, not martyrs. We stopped off in the Judean wilderness – sun baked rolling hills and plunging chasms, sheer geology in front of your very eyes. And then down to Dead Sea level (didn’t get as far as the Sea but saw it in the distance) and the plains of Jericho. The plains are essentially a rift valley between Judea and the hills of Moab t’other side of the Jordan, and the Judean hills are merely mildly warm by comparison. It helps that we were >400m below sea level, whereas when we started our sponsored walk the day before shivering in a biting wind at Jerusalem’s elevation of +700m.

The Land of Milk & Honey

The Land of Milk & Honey

When Abraham and Lot decided to go their separate ways in Genesis (like Peter Gabriel many years later), and Abraham gave Lot the choice, Lot looked upon the plains and saw that they were fertile and well watered, so chose to stay there. He must have seen them on a good day. The impression I got was more “flat and arid”, not really somewhere to manage large herds of sheep. And that would have been the first sight to greet the eyes of the Israelites when they crossed the Jordan into the Land of Milk and Honey. Gee, thanks, I bet they thought. At least in those days they would not have had to pick their way through the minefields set out to discourage incursing Jordanians.

One more river, and that's the river of Jordan

One more river, and that’s the river of Jordan

We trod the verge of Jordan, already firmly on Canaan’s side and not an anxious fear in sight, and beheld with our own eyes the blessed site where Rupert Murdoch’s baby was baptised, 2000 years after some other guy set the trend. I dipped my hands in the Jordan to say I had and there was a chance to renew our baptismal vows. I’m not sure mine can be renewed as I never actually made any, apart from the occasional “gah” or “oo” which frankly could have meant anything. It was done on my behalf by godparents. But anyway, it was nice to be able to confirm my agreement (which I suppose I already did at my Confirmation … meh). We did not sing “Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer”, though I felt we should have.

Then it was lunch in Jericho, sadly not pausing to look at the ruined town of that name. Modern day Jericho is built next to it – probably wisely, as I believe there’s a Biblical curse on anyone who rebuilds it.

Then back to Jerusalem, and with that, the pilgrimage was officially over. Done. Pilgrimated. But there was time for extracurricular activity and so we managed a visit to the Garden Tomb – and very glad I am too.

Garden Tomb, sans stone

Garden Tomb, sans stone

This is General Gordon’s alternative tomb to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, following his fortuitous discovery of the Real Golgotha: a tomb matching all the Biblical descriptors including rollaway stone. No stone now because it, well, rolled away, but the trough before the door where it would have stood is clearly evident.

Well, maybe. Sadly I find Gordon’s logic as flawed as Helena’s, in that it’s but a stone’s throw from the alleged site. But as it’s some distance away from Helena’s Golgotha, who knows, it could be. There again there are or were doubtless hundred of rock-cut tombs.

The Garden

The Garden

But, frankly, it’s not important. What is important is that the tomb is kept in a small garden, well maintained by an English charity, tranquil and relaxing, with all the noise and clamour of Jerusalem kept out by natural or manmade walls. It is an oasis of peace and calm, restoring something that I lost at the other place the day before without even realising it.

On the doorway to the Tomb: possibly not original.

On the doorway to the Tomb: possibly not original.

And the key thing is that the tomb is empty. Even if it’s not The Tomb, it’s a visual reminder of what is important about Easter. As, I have to grant, is the one inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I’ve been rude about that place but I can’t deny them this. Its empty tomb has helped keep the flag flying for centuries. As a clergyman on our group commented: “Just thank God that the church is full and the tomb is empty.”

Bethesda's pools. Trust me.

Bethesda’s pools. Trust me.

On our last morning, before departing for the airport, we visited Bethesda, scene of one of Jesus’s healings and another Jerusalem site that I particularly wanted to see. The Bible gives a clear description of this place: five pools and running water. And so it was with great excitement that French archaeologists in the nineteenth century uncovered the remains of five pools in a bath complex that had (once had) running water. The five pools themselves were buried beneath a much grander bath complex put up by the Romans in honour of Aesculapius, god of healing – which to me is another good reason to believe this is the site.

The pools are next to St Anne’s church, which suggests the Crusaders who built it were astonishing acoustical engineers. It’s famous for its echoes. A soloist in an American group sang “Blessed assurance”, line by line, leaving a pause after each one, and after each one the sound persisted in the stonework for two or three seconds. Then “Amazing grace”, then “O Lord my God”. Beautiful music, but it must be a real pain for whoever reads the lesson.

Jerusalem from on high

Jerusalem from on high

After which, coffee and some excellent strudel at the Austrian hospice, whose roof affords a fine view over the old city, and home.

And so it was that we were able to do good to others and get a little restoration for our own souls. One week makes no one an expert, but we both feel we understand Palestine and Israel, both ancient and modern, a little bit better.

Two closing thoughts. One from our local Christian guide: “When Joshua stepped into the Jordan, the waters parted, exposing the dry land and showing the way into the Promised Land meant for the Israelites. When Christ stepped into the Jordan, the heavens parted, showing the way into the final Promised Land that is meant for all of us.”

The other from a street vendor we passed on our way back from Bethesda, offering us t-shirts, religious tat, the usual, and getting the usual polite brush off.

“No, thanks,” said we pilgrims, the memories of visiting a place where Christ transformed a man’s life still fresh in our minds and our ears still ringing with beautiful music.

“F**king tourists”, he muttered.