The Lion in the Desert

In 1929, after nearly 20 years of facing resistance in Libya, Benito Mussolini, the Fascist ruler of Italy, appointed General Graziani as colonial governor to put down the military resistance of Libyan nationalists led by Omar Mukhtar. Graziani was ruthless, and fortunately he was arrested when Mussolini was toppled. His foremost atrocity was putting over a million Libyan civilians in a camp in a desert, with the intent to starve them in retaliation for the guerilla fighters objecting to the Italian occupation. The film, The Lion of the Desert (1980), faithfully depicts the historical events that took place in Libya from 1920 to 1931. The sheer arbitrariness other than from brute force in the occupation and the impotence of the League of Nations are salient themes in the film.

Both in peace negotiations, which Gaziani posed merely to given him more time with which to build up his army in Libya, and after Mukhtar’s capture, the direct refusal of Mukhtar to accept the legitimacy of the presence of the Italians on Libyan soil combined with the inability of the Italian brass to furnish a legitimate justification for the occupation leaves the viewers with the sense that overwhelming modern military power was the reason in search of justification. At one point, Graziani admits to Mukhtar that the fact that Italy is there is what justifies the presence. The Libyan’s guns and horses are no match for the Italian metal tanks and machine guns. The result is a foregone conclusion. Yet Mukhtar holds to his principles rather than accepts bribes to turn on his cause.

The want of any international constraint on the fascists was also clear. At one point, the Italian delegation to the peace talks remind Mukhtar that the Libya is not a nation and thus the fighters don’t even have a voice in the League of Nations. No one would care, anyway. Yet even if a world does care, such as in the case of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza in 2023-2024, not even the World Court’s verdict and the United Nations itself had any teeth. At one point, Israel’s ambassador to the UN shredded the UN charter document in front of the General Assembly. That it had created Israel apparently made no difference to the Israeli government. As a concurrent case in point, Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine triggered resistance from the E.U. and U.S., but pushing back the aggressor was difficult. Russia’s bully-threat of using nuclear bombs just showed how dangerous it is for the world being unable to provide a check against aggressors.

General Graziani’s mass camp for Libyan civilians is eerily similar to Israel’s camps for Gazans nearly a century later. In both cases, the world was not able to defend even such numbers of innocent civilians. In the film, an Italian military man admits that the Geneva Convention is not being followed. The same could be said of Israel in Gaza. The 9000 Palestinian hostages being held in Israel and the reports of the torture of at least some of them did not dissuade the U.S. from passing $24 billion in aid to Israel. Clearly, having the U.S. as the “global policeman” was not an effective basis for a peaceful global order. Similarly, the League of Nations is depicted as impotent in the film.

From the vantage point of more than 40 years since the release of the film, viewers could be excused for feeling utter frustration at the lack of political development since 1929. The advent of nuclear bombs just makes the lack of international political development all the more striking. At some point, humanity will likely pay dearly for its refusal to cede any governmental sovereignty to an international force with teeth. To be sure, back in the eighteenth century, Kant claimed that world peace would only be possible, rather than probable, if a world federation exists. But his notion of such a federation we would call confederal, rather than a case of modern federalism, as he makes no mention of ceding some sovereignty to the federal level. The UN, rather than the E.U. and U.S., is akin to Kant’s federation. I contend that the shift from confederal to (modern) federal would be decisive in shifting the chances of world peace from possible to probable.

In short, a film can indeed be useful in terms of depicting the need for further development in political theory. With all the advances in technology and medicine during the twentieth century, the lack of any international political development is all the more perplexing, especially given the brazen military atrocities against even civilians in Ukraine and Gaza. A look back to 1929 just shows how static the international system has been.

The Private Life of Henry VIII

The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) is on the surface a partial chronicle of the marriages of King Henry VIII of England, but, underneath, the film is on the human instinctual urge of aggression. With unchecked power, such as in the case of an absolute ruler or in the international arena, the instinct can be quite dangerous. In other words, the film demonstrates just how unsuited human nature is to the political type of absolute ruler and a world of sovereign states sans something like what Kant refers to as a world federation that could provide some check and balance to wayward, aggressive states, which in turn are really just human beings.

As Henry VIII, Charles Laughton acts out the foibles that absolute power can render particularly pernicious. When Henry’s privy council informs the king that Katherine Howard, his fifth wife, has been unfaithful in having an ongoing affair with Thomas Culpeper, Henry physically attacks the messenger. At another point in the film, Henry wrestles one of the two wrestlers performing at a banquet just because his wife has just told Henry that one of the wrestlers is the strongest man in England. The cinematography provides a link to the aggression that is the stuff of war, as the shadows of Henry and one of the wrestlers are shown on a wall tapestry of an army.

The attitude of the film toward Henry is one of sympathy, for he is portrayed as a lonely man who feels that he has never had a wife who has really loved him. He says at one point that he would rather live the life of a man above a carriage house with a wife who loves him than that of a king who must remarry for reasons of state. Unlike most accounts of the king, this film portrays him as a victim of a political system in which the ruler must give up so much of a personal life for the state. Although on a constitutional rather than an absolute monarch, the series, The Crown, on Queen Elizabeth II emphasizes how she must sacrifice so much in putting the interests of the Crown above what she wants. Is even a limited monarchy fair to the inhabitants of the role, given how subservient their personal lives must be to the interests of the office?

In The Private Life of Henry VIII, a title which if taken literally is an absurdity, for an absolute ruler, in this case, a king of 3 million subjects, can have no private life, Henry laments there being so many “cooks” in his court who treat him as a breeder. “Refinement is a thing of the past,” Henry tells members of his court at one point. “I’m either a king or a breeding bull.” He asks Cromwell, “Would you make me a false marriage?” Although Cromwell’s reply, “we need more heirs” so as to reduce the change of a power-struggle (i.e., aggression) when Henry dies, Henry’s planned marriage to Anne of Cleves, a German, is to keep the warring Germany and France from involving England in war. Later in the film, Henry remarks that both Germany and France have offered new lands to England in exchange for siding with the one or the other in their ongoing wars. “What’s the use of new territories if it means war, war, war.” Henry wants peace in Europe, and fears that the fighting between Germany and France would someday leave the continent in ruins, but there is no one to help him to stop the aggression.

From the shadows wrestling on the cloth tapestry of an army to having to marry an ugly foreigner to stave off war from spreading to England, to having to keep marrying to get a male heir, the prominence of aggression is highlighted in the film. For much of the film is either showing angry fits of an absolute ruler or what he must give up for England to avoid aggression in the political domain—both in the matter of succession and in international relations. It is no wonder that Henry says to his infant son, “The crown is no smiling matter.”

It is ironic that the film skips over, in ellipses, the (aggressive) beheadings of two of Henry’s wives. Perhaps the narrative’s extension to cover even Henry’s last wife in a reasonable playing time is the reason, but the audience is left only with the sharpening of the sword to intimate the missed state-sponsored acts of aggression against two women (though one of whom was not innocent).  Even in the twenty-first century, executions under state auspices occur. How much more so that must have been the case when absolute rulership was common. Even in the time of Queen Victoria, when British sovereigns were no longer absolute monarchs, Lord Acton famously wrote to an Anglican bishop, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  By 1887, Parliament could act as a check on a monarch, but the titans of industry could still operate as absolute rulers over their workers in demanding very long hours and refusing to improve harsh working conditions. 

We moderns look back at stories of ancient and early-modern kings like Henry VIII as if the problem of abuses of power has since been solved, yet we watch citizen-videos of horrendous police brutality against unarmed innocent people. Human nature has not changed even as political theory has made some progress. It is still true that if we are angels, then surely we must be killer angels. This line comes from Gettysburg (1985), an epic film about the bloody battles at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 1863 as the Confederate States of America warred against the United States of America in what is more commonly known as the U.S. Civil War. More than seven thousand men died at Gettysburg and 33,000 were wounded. A total of 1.5 million casualties were reported in that war.  This is nothing compared to the casualties in World War II during the “modern” twentieth century, and many more people died from Hitler and Stalin outside of battle.  So I put to the reader, how significant really is the development in political theory since the time of Henry VIII? Have our great minds really come to terms with the salience of the aggressive instinctual urge in human nature in developing types and processes of political organization that take account of our intractable penchant for aggression? 

The Private Life of Henry VIII would have us believe that much of what obligated that king was the need to forestall or obviate fighting. This points both to the salience of aggression in our “social” species and whether ethical obligation (i.e., a duty to the state being put above personal desires) should be relied on as a corrective or constraint.

Downton Abbey

Taking a story from a television series to a movie can present hurdles for screenwriters and directors, especially if they do not fully appreciate the qualitative differences between a movie and a television series. To be sure, well-crafted series such as Downton Abbey, The Crown, Game of Thrones, and House of Cards had narrowed the difference in terms of quality. Even so, a narrative limited to around two hours of play time is different than a narrative meant to be on-going. The financial resources are also more concentrated in the making of a film than an ongoing series (even if it ends after five or six years). I submit, therefore, that Julian Fellowes, the producer and screenwriter of both the Downton series and movie, erred in hiring a director of the series, Michael Engler, to direct the movie. Just because he had directed (just) four episodes of the series does not mean that he knew how to direct a movie. A seasoned movie director would have been a better choice.

That Fellowes did not replace a television director with a movie director is especially glaring given the salience of replacing a less-experienced or "lower" person (or entire staff!) with a more seasoned or "higher" one in the film's narrative. Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham, replaces Thomas Barrow, who just a year or so earlier had been promoted butler, with Mr. Carson, the retired seasoned butler, during the royal visit. Moreover, the palace replaces Downton servants with royal servants for the visit. Both moves make sense. 

Firstly, a house’s own cook (or aristocrat) could poison the king. Because one assassination attempt is highlighted in the movie, I’m not sure why Fellowes did not write the rationale into the script. Given that he did not, I’m not sure why he (and the director) did not give Mrs. Patmore, the Downton cook, more of a fit as she confronts a royal cook taking over the Downton kitchen.

Secondly, as the Downton staff is star-struck by the presence of the king and queen, and mistakes or gaffes are more likely if nerves are fraught. Mr. Molesley, for instance, is so nervous that he loses control of himself while serving the dinner table. The close proximity of the king and queen makes that situation so different from the usual that Molesley blurts out a secret and, when he realizes this, he curtsies to the royal couple.

Replacements, therefore, are salient in the film. Why, then, didn’t Julian Fellowes replace a television-series director (of Sex in the City, Six Feet Under, and 30 Rock) with a director having experience directing movies? Fellowes may have been impressed with Engler’s direction of four episodes of Downton Abbey, but being a good television director does not translate into being a seasoned movie director. To the extent that television is common and the movie genre as aristocratic (e.g., The Academy of Motion Pictures and its gold Oscar awards), Fellowes failed to grasp the upside in his replacement-motif in his screenplay. 

Julian Fellowes had written and acted in several films and television series. In fact, he received an Oscar for screenwriting on Gosford Park (2005). As he was no doubt knowledgeable in how writing for a series differs from screenwriting, I was surprised to find the dialogue pattern less extended in the film. As noted above, Mrs. Patmore’s rants are notably missing, especially with her kitchen being taken over by a foreigner. So too is Thomas Barrow’s scheming, which could be expected to make a brief return to protest the Earl of Grantham bringing back Mr. Carson as butler during the visit (only for Mr. Wilson of the palace to replace him!). Even given Carson’s penchant for hierarchy, it is too easy for Wilson—also a servant!—to take Carson down.

Gone too is the sibling rivalry between Lady Edith and Lady Mary—perhaps though because Mary respects her younger sister now that she is of a higher aristocratic rank. Character development and changed relationships since the series left off are good for the overall narrative, including that of the movie. This does not apply, however, to the truncated exchanges between the Dowager Countess (Violet Crowley) and Isobel Merton (mother of Lady Mary’s first husband). Indeed, the platitudes coming out of Violet’s mouth were fewer, less good, and even stilted. One platitude was even about saying platitudes! Had the two reached a meta-level?  I expected better platitudes in the movie than in the series. Moreover, Violet’s vitriol toward her cousin, who is refusing to make the Earl of Grantham her heir, seems muted. Maggie Smith could have shined. Also, Fellowes could have had the Earl of Grantham overhear his mother, the Dowager Countess, telling Lady Mary of the bad medical news, especially given that Violet tells her granddaughter that the fate of Downton Abbey is in her hands, rather than those of her father, Violet’s son, who presumably has done a lackluster job. A similar scenario wherein Robert is astonished at his mother is in the television series at several points.

In the movie, Robert Crowley, the earl, as well as his wife Cora have noticeably few lines and nothing dramatic. A good example is the truncated exchange in which Robert admits he is excited about the royal visit even if saying as much sounds common. His wife Cora, an American, replies that he can get away with making such a common statement to an American. None of the tension between Robert and Cora regarding her being an American exists, unlike in the series and yet nothing accounts for any resolution having occurred. The dialogue between the two is so short it comes off as stilted. You say something, then it’s my turn, rather than a conversation.

In short, the movie comes across as less well made than the series. Fellowes’ decision to use a television director and perhaps not enough work on the script itself were, I submit, problematic especially given that a movie rather than a television series was being made. It is as if someone took the air out of sails in the making of the movie. I expected better writing, especially given that Julian Fellowes had received an Oscar for screenwriting. I have sung in several choirs. I’ve been amazed at how different the actual concerts are from even the dress rehearsals, which are often better. The conductor, singers, and crew are typically so nervous during the concerts that everything seems rushed, and thus must impact the quality of the singing. I know I’ve taken fewer risks during concerts, and my air-flow is more restricted. I don’t “belt it out,” and am consequently less satisfied after a concert. The Downton crew, including the producer, director, screenwriter, and actors, must surely have been excited to make Downton into a movie, even though the screenwriter and many of the actors had worked in movies rather than merely television. In this case, the movie-making was compromised even relative to the television series.

Inside Job

Documentaries can admittedly be rather boring, particularly if technical details comprise most of the content. This applies also to a film of historical fiction based on true events, such as The Challenger Disaster (2019), which focuses so much on technical details (albeit set in arguments) that the narrative itself may not be strong enough to hold an audience's attention or interest. In contrast, the documentary, Inside Job (2010), provides such alluring "inside the beltway" (i.e., known only to U.S. Government insiders and their outside partners) information that the details themselves can capture and hold interest.  

The full essay is at "President Obama and Goldman Sachs."

The Iron Lady

Sometimes a film is worth seeing just to watch an excellent actor capture an interesting character. This applies to Meryl Streep playing Julia Child in Julie and Julia and Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. I am writing on the The Iron Lady a day after seeing it and watching Streep accept a Golden Globe for her role in the film. Prior to seeing the film, I had heard critics say that the film itself pales in comparison with Streep’s performance. I concur, though whereas the critics complain of the extent of disjunction between Thatcher as the prime minister and Thatcher as an old woman in dementia, I want to point to the sheer extent of “back and forth” between the two. Typically, there would be a snippet of Thatcher as prime minister, than back to the old woman in the dark, then back again to the past. A viewer could get whiplash. I would have preferred to begin at the beginning—with Thatcher’s start in politics—and work up to the dementia (giving the old Thatcher much, much less air time). Perhaps the “linear chronological” approach was presumed too straight-forward, or boring, by the screenwriter or director. However, any story naturally has a beginning, middle and an end, and too much jumping around can eclipse the natural progression.

A more serious problem may exist, moreover, should the viewer wonder what the conflict in the story is. In other words, what or who is the antagonist? Sadly, if it is dementia itself, there is little suspense in the outcome. Perhaps the only suspense in that regard what whether she would get rid of her dead husband, Dennis. Unfortunately, that character had more screen time dead than alive. If the main conflict is Thatcher’s political support while in office, that too could hold little drama. Likewise, it is difficult to view a “war” over a few islands off Argentina as significant to justify Thatcher’s urging her fellow British people that it is a day to feel proud to be British. Perhaps the tension between her ambition and household could have had potential had it been developed beyond a breakfast scene, though it is doubtful that the antagonist in Dennis could have given that conflict enough strength. Of course, if watching Streep inhabit Thatcher is the viewer’s aim, then perhaps drama is of secondary importance. Still, a nice story would have been a nice cherry on the sundae.

Furthermore, I contend the screenwriter failed to capitalize on some rather obvious opportunities to draw viewers into the story. Most notably, both Queen Elizabeth and President Reagan were alluded to, yet without any parts in the narrative (i.e., screen time beyond a bizarre brief dance in Reagan’s case). What, for instance, if Helen Mirren had reprised her role as Elizabeth for a few scenes with the Iron Lady? Might there have been any drama there? I suspect so. What did the Queen think of the Thatcher herself, her conservatism in the recession, and the Falklands War? Did the Queen play any indirect or subtle role in Thatcher’s fall from power? Concerning Reagan, what if we could have seen a bit of what might have been the real relationship between him and Thatcher? Might the screenwriter have gone native, leaving California for Britain? For that matter, what about showing Thatcher at Reagan’s funeral? These were major opportunities strangely lost in favor of a brief shot of the palace as Thatcher was becoming Prime Minister and of a brief dance with Reagan (which was strange in the montage). At the very least, the screenwriter missed a major opportunity by failing to capitalize on the Queen’s jubilee and irritate progressives by delving into two conservative political soulmates doing more than dancing across the screen.

Concerning Steep’s Thatcher, it is difficult to be critical. Besides the uncomfortable “leap” from the young Margaret Roberts and Thatcher as a new member of parliament, Streep herself may put too much stress on certain words in mimicking Thatcher’s sentences. The emphasis itself reminded me a bit of Streep’s Julia Child. To be sure, both characters are strong women, which undoubtedly drew Streep to the two roles. Whereas Streep probably found little not to like in Julia, the conservative politics of Thatcher must have been an obstacle. Yet even here, Streep’s maturity can be seen. “It was interesting to me to look at the human being behind the headlines," Streep said, "to imagine what it's like to a live a life so huge, controversial, and groundbreaking in the winter of that life, and to have sort of a compassionate view for someone with whom I disagree."[1] If only more prime ministers had that sort of compassion!

Ironically, at least as depicted in the film, Margaret Thatcher did not have much compassion for even her own partisans—though they were voicing compassion for the unemployed. As a viewer enthralled by Streep’s acting ability, I found it difficult to care about the protagonist—the lack of drama exacerbating this problem. Perhaps Streep’s acting could be criticized in the end for not having sufficiently communicated her compassionate view of someone with whom she disagrees. In the ending scene itself, it is difficult to feel anything for the old woman wandering in her hallway, regardless of her past politics. The film’s true antagonist may be meaninglessness, or death itself, and I’m not sure the film survives it. Furthermore, I don’t think we find a protagonist doing more than flirt with the inevitable.  How much drama can there be in facing certainty? To be sure, we all flirt with the fact that each of us will die—for all the significance each of us thinks is in our daily battles, we barely acknowledge that one day we ourselves won’t exist and that in a few generations (or centuries for some) we will be forgotten. This is part of the human condition that screenwriters attempt to capture. Even so, perhaps the dementia in The Iron Lady is more of a taste of reality than the viewers would care to tolerate, least of all for entertainment!

1. Huffington Post, “’The Iron Lady’ Star Meryl Streep Talks Playing Margaret Thatcher, Losing Her Glasses,” January 16, 2012.