Saturday 11th April 2026
Blog Page 1423

Debate: Does alcohol improve your experience at university?

Alice King
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Debate: Does alcohol improve your experience at university?

YES- Alice King

It’s true that getting wasted every single night will get you nowhere fast, as far as your degree is concerned at least. Heavy drinking can be harmful to your energy levels, your general wellbeing and, quite often, your dignity. However, it’s more than possible to enjoy the university drinking culture without going to excess. 

Sure, we’ve all heard of someone who has been sent to hospital, found themselves in a fi ght, or been banned from one of the many establishments in town because of their drinking habits – but like other things that become available to us as adults, alcohol comes with the condition of responsible use. Personally, I am a fan of doing everything in moderation.

While this does mean saying no to a week of Camera Tuesdays, followed by Park End, Bridge and Wahoo before crashing over the weekend, it doesn’t mean going teetotal either. There’s a lot to be said for having a couple of drinks during or at the end of the week.

It’s no secret – alcohol lowers your inhibitions. That beautiful person you’ve seen at the bar but are far too scared to talk to? Double vodka red bull will sort that out for you. Worried about your awful dancing and your tendency to be just a little bit weird? A couple of ciders down, you really won’t care. I mean, how many of us can say we didn’t need a bit of booze during freshers’ week to fi ght the awkwardness that fi lled our halls?

Alcohol simply makes everyone a bit more interesting – or you a little less likely to notice if they aren’t. In all seriousness, we all need a way to relax. After essays, tutorials and lectures at the crack of dawn, we’ve more than earned ourselves a few drinks in the evening. Drinking is a social activity and brings us out of the libraries and musty bedrooms into communal spaces, giving us the rest we need and the interaction we crave. Lying in bed watching Game of Thrones might be good, clean fun, but it won’t leave you with a funny story to tell or a weirdly shaped scar to show off .

Certainly, among some groups there is a culture of excess – see the sad rugby “lads” who always feel as though there’s something to prove and the exclusive drinking societies that are far too cool to interact with the rest of us – but as an individual, there’s no need to replicate this. Getting a bit too merry once or twice won’t do much harm, and will land you with some brilliant pictures to look at in the morning.

There will be times when you’ll deeply regret the amount of time you spent drinking at university – namely during the 9am tutorial when the room is spinning and you smell like the curry sauce from last night. But drinking at university has only helped me enjoy my time here more. They say that you can’t buy happiness– but you can certainly rent it from the bar staff for a couple of pounds per pint.

NO- Nick Mutch

Experience has taught me and many others that for all the temporary enjoyment alcohol brings to university, it is in fact a most insidious poison that many campuses would be so much better off without. The culture of alcohol abuse at universities is farcical and juvenile at best, and deadly at worst. 

A University of Sheffield study found that there is a consistent and strong correlation between the increase in the pricing of alcohol and a drop in violent crime. At universities, alcohol is considered to be a major contributing factor in a majority of serious crimes and injuries.

If you drink, you are more likely to assault or be assaulted, engage in risky sexual conduct, and become seriously injured – that much is fact. After only 3 drinks you are eleven times more likely to be involved in a car crash than a sober driver. In the age of social media, drinking to excess can even cost you your job. As students, we are often told that we need alcohol, how could we have fun without it? It’s our most important social lubricant! 

This is a pathetic excuse. It is in fact a social crutch that many use to mask the symptoms of shyness or insecurity while doing nothing about the causes. Yes, it is easier to talk to people when you are drunk, but you present to them your most boorish, charmless self rather than your charisma, intellect or natural personality.

Anyone who has ever seen a video of themselves inhumanly smashed knows this is true. Alcohol gives you a false, fleeting courage that is a pitiful substitute for the real thing. Learning how to be sociable and confident while sober is difficult, but the rewards are far greater than the temporary buzz from alcohol. More importantly, time spent getting yourself absolutely wasted is at the expense of all other productive activity you could be doing.

Alcohol impairs your brain’s ability to process new information, as anyone who has ever had a wretched hangover can attest to. It makes it much harder to exercise or work out, and for those prone to mood disorders or depression, it makes it much harder to control one’s emotions. The relationship between alcohol and mental health issues is an ugly, self-perpetuating cycle of misery which students are particularly vulnerable to. I am certainly not in favour of banning alcohol.

Firstly, I am aware that prohibition does not work, and secondly, I do not think that occasional indulgence is intolerable. It’s true that drinking to excess can be a great deal of fun. But the benefits of having alcohol on campuses are nothing compared to their costs.

If I could somehow flick a switch that would turn off the supply of alcohol in the world, I would do it. I think the most dangerous part of our drinking culture is the fact that our first week of university is dedicated to getting hammered, creating a continuing impression that getting excessively drunk is a sign that we are “fun” or “laddish”. University should be a place where we come to enrich ourselves, not poison ourselves.

Profile: Ghetts

Niamh Mcintyre
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Profile: Ghetts

To quote from the sample which begins Ghetts’ first studio album, Rebel With A Cause, “The rebellious spirit unleashes the strengths in passionate individuals. Their frustration, resistance and defiance formulate an uncontrollable, yet undeniable energy”.

To those unfamiliar with the genre, the suggestion of grime’s political or subversive content might be unexpected. Its culture of clashing, violent lyrical content leaves the genre open to the ubiquitous criticism of ‘glorifying’ criminality rather than analysing its motivations.

For some, a perceived over-emphasis on the egotistical MC and a love of wordplay for its own sake also superficially vitiate grime’s progressive agenda.

These are unimaginative criticisms which have been levelled at any movement which has its roots in urban, black, working-class culture, most notably hip-hop. However, since Chuck D’s famous description of rap music as ‘the Black CNN’ when Public Enemy were at the height of their power, the radical potential of US hip-hop is something to take seriously.

This praise of unflinching social commen­tary has rarely been accorded to grime or UK hip-hop by anyone outside its community: Ghetts’ album name, and repeated reference to Biggie, one of hip-hop’s most prophetic voices, shows that this is something he is determined to change. Perhaps this discrepancy can be attributed to grime artists such as Wiley only reaching wider public consciousness with commercial hits, or others like Dizzee Rascal abandoning the genre entirely. This is some­thing Ghetts claims he’s always tried to resist.

“After Tinie Tempah dropped ‘Pass Out’, I was having meetings with labels and they were all saying ‘You need a Pass Out!’ You can combine both, Wiley combines both very successfully, but for me it compromises the music,” he says.

Ghetts is excruciatingly aware of the expecta­tions and misconceptions of non-commercial grime. For this reason, despite being around since the heady days of early noughties grime, organizing the Fuck Radio DVD which is symbolic of the movement’s early energy, and releasing mixtapes, Rebel With a Cause is his first studio album. Ghetts has aimed to buck the trend of the MC whose commercial success – “making tunes for radio, for TV” – is removed from anything with more integrity.

Obviously, not every song or artist associated with the genre is concerned with bold social commentary. Grime is often less serious. But at its most thoughtful and meditative, as well as at its darkest, most violent and most nihilistic, the expression of rage against all forms of authority and of alienation from wider society becomes protest and creates a community of voices that are routinely ignored. So-called ‘glorification’ of vio­lence, drugs and aggressive materialism is a myth designed to demonise grime culture. These themes exist because they are, for many, a fact of life. Often this anger is accompanied by the bitter awareness of being marginalized, as in Wiley’s cult-classic ‘Gangsters’, where “the Government tried to destroy my race, but them man turned into gangsters”.

The discussion of whether grime is politi­cally detached or engaged has clear parallels with the debate about the motivations behind the 2011 London riots. The riots loom large in Rebel With A Cause, resonating in lyrics such as, “All I acquired from the riots/Is people sick and tired of being quiet/Dying to be heard/That’s why there’s fire in my words”.

The same perspective which condemns grime as apolitical would similarly see the ri­ots as the ‘apathetic’ actions of an opportunist, criminal underclass. This ignores the fact that a section of society felt sufficiently alienated from their own communities to smash, loot, and burn them.

Ghetts speaks volumes about our political landscape: “At the time when I was making the album the riots was going on. And I felt like what the media focused on… was the looting. I was watching the news so much and it was drifting away from what all this was a reaction to. Don’t get me wrong, it got out of hand… but I was like, are we forgetting why all these people are rising up?”

It is for this reason that Ghetts tells me he is not a “political” rapper: I can almost hear him miming his own quotation marks around the word, to signify that he does not identify with any narrow, traditional sense of the term. He clarifies, “I’m a reflection of what I see… my surroundings are filled with violence and drugs.”

This is the true social force of grime – its ability to, in the rapper’s own words “reflect reality”. Ghetts says he’s “glamourizing noth­ing”. Rebel With A Cause is a highly personal experience of life and death on an East London estate.

Ghetts describes disillusionment – “liv­ing life like ‘fuck it’/living life like there’s noth­ing” – and of routine victimisation by the police – “before I ever stepped foot in the courtroom I was a victim of judgement/Man like me, I’ve been licked by a truncheon, sprayed by gas/Beat up, handcuffed, lashed in the van”.

When I ask him if he thinks there is a culture of fear around grime, he cuts me off before I’ve even completed my question: “There is, absolutely.”

We discuss the recent cancellation of the Just Jam event at the Barbican by the Met­ropolitan police. The day after our interview, Skepta is mysteriously barred from perform­ing at the Indigo2 arena, despite having played there on numerous previous occasions.

Ghetts mentions a Sun article which referred to him, almost cartoonishly, as a ‘gun-rapper’, and more worry­ingly, as “a notorious rap­per who rhymes about killing rivals in drive-by shootings”.

“It’s how the media portray us,” he says. “And in recent years we have not had the know-how to deal with that.”

However, he also sees Rebel With A Cause as an achievement of personal emotional maturity. The album describes fatherhood and redemp­tion alongside the vivid portrait of his com­munity. While Ghetts keeps the vitriol of early lyrics such as “I’m a greengate gunhappy goon/And before 2007 ask anyone, I never had one happy tune”, he can take a more detached and analytical approach, combining an aggressive flow with an intimate reflection on his content: “I put out certain songs that allowed [the me­dia] to label me. As much as I blamed them for not digging deeper I blamed myself. This is one scene of a whole movie”.

Over the course of our interview, he con­stantly refers to grime as “our culture”. Ghetts humbly describes his own work as “just talking about the negative stuff that happens in my area.” But in doing so, he affirms his own power to powerfully focalize the experience of being alienated, demonized and feared.

Interview: North Korea expert Brian Myers

Alex Stronell
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Interview: North Korea expert Brian Myers

Brian Myers, Associate Professor of International Studies at Dongseo University in South Korea, believes that the West has not quite come to terms with the inconvenient truth about North Korea – namely, that the regime is actually quite popular, and well in-tune with what people are thinking.

At first, I am somewhat taken aback by what Myers says. With the catalogue of horrific human rights abuses, stories of prison camps and unimaginable torture that the UN published in its report on North Korea earlier this year, it seems very difficult to imagine that this is not a state which controls its people with an iron fist.

But Myers believes that North Korea neither has the money or the technology to police its citizens Nineteen Eighty-Four style; rather, Myers says the oppression is based upon tapping in to popular consciousness. In fact, Myers believes that “Kim Jong-Un looks enviously upon the wealth of personal information that social media provides Western leaders on their people”.

Why, if the regime is so in-touch with the North Korean people, is the government so hard-line? Why the command economy, why the military-first policy? Aren’t the things that people really want healthcare, pensions – or at least clean water and enough to eat? Myers explains, “I think our inability to understand it is our inability to understand what motivated people in the world sixty or seventy years ago”.

“The whole point of national life was not economic growth, even as late as the 1920s and 1930s. The whole point of the state was to protect its citizens from foreigners, and to induce a sense of pride in belonging to a certain state. This way of thinking that we have now is actually something quite new in historical terms”.

He continues, “A country like Prussia, for example, which was really the North Korea of the 18th century, was considered a very successful state by people. It had a powerful military, the world respected it, the fact that its citizens were one or two meals away from starving to death didn’t bother anyone”.

“So I don’t think that it should be that hard for us to understand that sort of mind set continuing into North Korea today, especially considering they’ve never actually experienced democracy. They went from Japanese fascist rule, basically, into this North Korean state”. After the Second World War, the Korean peninsula was divided in two by the Western allies and the Soviet Union, across the 38th parallel. North Korea underwent a transition from Japanese fascism to the Soviet-supported regime of the north. But with time, Kim Il-Sung purged the pro-Soviet elements within the government, and a new, race-based nationalism related strongly to the fascism was established.

Being a state rooted in nationalism and notions of race, to Myers North Korea is not a socialist state. Rather, it is a far-right state, which survived the fall of Communism by clinging to the state-sanctioned ‘Juche’ ideology. “Had the North Koreans not created this myth, had they said the whole time ‘we’re Marxist-Leninists’, just like the Soviet Union, then the fall of the Berlin Wall would have probably led inexorably to the fall of North Korea as well.  So this myth did perform a very important service, and it continues to fulfil an important service in making the North Koreans believe that they have some sort of key to wisdom that the rest of the world doesn’t have”.

‘Juche’ is normally summarised in the Western media as a commitment to national self-sufficiency, much like the autarky of the Nazi state. But, Myers says, ‘Juche’ is not understood by the population, and nor is it meant to be – it’s simply a tool to support the cult of personality surrounding the Kim family, who have ruled North Korea since the peninsula was divided. “Kim Il-Sung’s selected speeches are dozens of volumes long, and some people take that as an indication of how important the ideology is. It’s quite the opposite.

The fact that the North Korean people do not have a portable canon of Kim Il-Sung’s teachings shows you right there that doctrine is not at the centre of this thing, it’s biography”. We turn to the UN; I am curious as to whether the recent re- port on the state of human rights is responsible for the torrent of abuse that North Korea recently hurled at the South Korean President, Park Geun-hye; last month the North’s committee responsible for relations with the South described the new President as a “crafty prostitute”, “animal” and a “bitch”.

Myers is dubious; he tells me “I don’t think they’re that affected by what the UN think. They actually admit in their own media that they are under fi re for human rights abuses; they will say ‘the world is complaining about our “human rights problem”’ – they write that in inverted comas”. He continues, “They have a different definition of human rights – it’s the sovereignty of the nation as a whole, not the rights of the individual – that matter”.

Rather, Myers thinks the torrent of abuse directed at Geun-hye is indicative of the North losing all hope of reconciling itself with the South Korean left wing, and as such is abandoning any pretence of dealing with the South reasonably; with the South Korean population rapidly aging, the left wing is increasingly becoming more conservative, and increasingly less likely to deal with the North. “They were holding back for a while there, I think, in their criticism of her”, he observes. “The problem with insulting a South Korean female president is that you can’t do it without sexist language. You know, to call a man a ‘bastard’ is fine, but to call a female president a ‘bitch’ is sexist”.

Our discussion moves on to the potential for the North Korean regime to come to an end. Depressingly, Myers is sceptical that change is on the horizon, even though he believes it is naive to say that North Koreans are not aware of what life is like outside of the country. Rather, “people are psychologically invested in the way the system is now. For them to admit that the South Korean system is superior to theirs is tantamount to admitting that their whole lives were in vain, that their parents’ lives were in vain, and I think they naturally resist that”.

The interview ends on a disturbing note; if regime change is to come, it will reflect what happened to the military Junta in Argentina – namely that it will have to be discredited by losing a war. “That last missile launch was quite a while ago. I tend to think that the North Korean regime has induced a kind of missile fatigue, a nuclear test fatigue in their people. If it cannot achieve the same propaganda results by conducting the sixth, seventh, eighth nuclear test, or eighth, ninth, tenth, ballistic missile test, then they’re going to have to do something more dangerous – another attack, perhaps, on South Korean territory”. “If they lose that conflict then the people would turn on the state immediately, because then they would have nothing left. A military first country that does not hold its own on the battlefield or in military terms has no reason to exist”.

Union in disarray following President’s arrest

Alex Stronell
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Union in disarray following President’s arrest

The Oxford Union has been rocked this week by the arrest of President Ben Sullivan on suspicion of rape and attempted rape.

Addressing the audience at a debate on Thursday night, President-elect Mayank Banerjee announced that, “I am the acting President of the Oxford Union until further notice.

“It would be useless for me to pretend that tonight is business as usual.”
Sullivan, who is studying History and Politics at Christ Church, was taken in for questioning by Thames Valley Police early on Wednesday morning. Thames Valley Police later confirmed that, “A 21-year-old from Oxford has been arrested today on suspicion of rape and attempted rape.”

In a statement to Cherwell, the Dean of Christ Church, the Very Revd Christopher Lewis, commented, “We have nothing to add to the police statement, which is that ‘a 21 year old has been arrested today on suspicion of rape and attempted rape’, except that the person concerned is a member of this college.”

Sullivan was released on police bail without charge the same day. He had been due to face Union members in an open meeting on Thursday, but this was cancelled following the arrest.

Sullivan’s authority was challenged earlier in the week as the Standing Committee revoked a prior decision to cover £1,000 + VAT of legal expenses against student website The Tab. Sullivan agreed to cover his own legal costs following the presentation of a Special Adjournment motion signed by Union Members in protest.

Tensions came to a head the following day, when Union Librarian Kostas Chryssanthopoulos walked out of a Union debate following an impassioned speech that criticised the President’s leadership. He said, “I refuse to sit next to a President who does not believe in freedom of speech. And I refuse to sit next to a President who has lied to members and tried to cover it all up with our money.”

Chryssanthopoulos resigned the following day. In his resignation letter, he stated, “I refuse to hold this position any further, having suffered repeated and continued attacks which have been personal from the start.”

In a statement at the time, Sullivan told Cherwell, “I am extremely sorry that Kostas has resigned. It is a great shame that our friendship has ended in this manner. The Union is grateful for everything he has done for the society and I wish him all the best for the future.”

Sullivan will remain on police bail until 18th June.

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In his speech to the chamber on Thursday, Banerjee, acting as Union President, said, “I would just like to clarify one important point. We live in a country with a legal system where a person is innocent until proven guilty. Ben Sullivan has not yet been proven guilty. This may change in the future and if it does I sincerely hope he is punished to the full extent, with the full force of the law. However, this is not the case at present.”

The Thursday debate continued as usual, although a Summer Drinks event was cancelled.

OUSU Women’s Campaign and It Happens Here have since published an open letter to the Oxford Union in The Oxford Student in which they invite members of the committee to attend OUSU sexual consent workshops.

Union Treasurer resigns

Robert Walmsley
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Union Treasurer resigns

The Treasurer of the Oxford Union, Charles Malton, has resigned. 

Malton’s letter of resignation was addressed to all the elected members of the Standing Committee and the Returning Officer. In his letter of resignation, Charles Malton, a student at Christ Church, said, “I am saddened that an institution which I have held in such high regard, has become such a toxic environment”.

In his letter, he states that, “Two weeks ago I voted in favour of the Union paying for Ben Sullivan’s legal fees, believing that in doing so I was protecting the Union against rumours rather than what have now transpired to be formal allegations. I later made a speech defending this decision. These decisions were taken in good faith, but I now recognize that they were misguided.

“People are innocent until proven guilty and I have every hope that Ben will prove to be innocent. However, the way in which many within the Union have handled this situation over the last few weeks is not behaviour that I would wish to associate myself with, and in which I have played no part. As such I no longer feel comfortable continuing to be involved with this society.”

The resignation follows a week in which the Union has attracted national attention follwing the arrest of the Oxford Union President Ben Sullivan, on Wednesday, on suspicion of rape. Sullivan was later bailed without charge.

The President-elect of the Oxford Union, Mayank Banerjee, announced that he would be acting President until further notice on Thursday night at an Oxford Union debate. In a speech to the house, Banerjee said, “It would be useless for me to pretend that tonight is business as usual.” 

Malton’s resignation follows his defence of the Union Standing Committee’s original decision at the beginning of term to cover Ben Sullivan’s £1,200 legal expenses. He voted to withdraw the claim later that week, following Sullivan’s decision to cover his own fees. 

This follows the resignation of the Union Librarian Kostas Chryssanthopoulos last Saturday.

Mayank Banerjee, acting President of the Oxford Union, commented “It fills me with great regret to hear of Charles’ resignation. This has been an emotional time for everyone, and Charles has been a fantastic colleague and friend. The Oxford Union and I wish him all the best for the future”

“I would also like to clear up any ambiguity about the position of the President, Ben Sullivan. Following his arrest on Wednesday Ben and I decided that it would be best for me to take over much of the day to day running of the Union for the time being, to give him some time to consider his position. Although I am currently acting as President, I would like to stress that he has not at this stage stepped down.”

Charles Malton’s full letter:

Dear Mr Acting President,

I am writing with immense sadness to tender my resignation.

Two weeks ago I voted in favour of the Union paying for Ben Sullivan’s legal fees, believing that in doing so I was protecting the Union against rumours rather than what have now transpired to be formal allegations. I later made a speech defending this decision. These decisions were taken in good faith, but I now recognize that they were misguided.

People are innocent until proven guilty and I have every hope that Ben will prove to be innocent. However, the way in which many within the Union have handled this situation over the last few weeks is not behaviour that I would wish to associate myself with, and in which I have played no part. As such I no longer feel comfortable continuing to be involved with this society.

I am saddened that an institution which I have held in such high regard, has become such a toxic environment. I am only sorry that I did not tender my resignation earlier when I first became aware of how the situation was being handled.

I will not be seeking any further office within this organisation so I wish it the very best for the future.

Yours Sincerely,

Charles Malton

Review: Pompeii

Fergus Morgan
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Review: Pompeii

★☆☆☆☆
One Star

‘Paul W. S. Anderson’s ‘historical’ epic lacks the character development, the plot imagination and the emotional depth to adequately convey any sense of meaningful tragedy’

The most emotionally moving facet of The British Museum’s 2013 Pompeii Exhibition was its final rooms, where the famous plaster casts of victims were displayed. Human forms writhed in agony, their tendons excruciatingly contracting in the unbearable heat. One woman lay face down, surrounded by her jewellery; a family sat together where they died, mother and father flung backwards, child curled up on the floor; a soldier lay stricken next to his sword. This is heartbreakingly poignant stuff.

How is it then, that with Pompeii, Paul W. S. Anderson has managed to create a ‘historical’ disaster movie that actively degrades this material? Emotion is severely lacking in this ‘swords and sandals’ Titanic-remake. One of the most arrestingly tragic events of all time has been reduced to well-worn cliché, to a derivative monstrosity of commercial enterprise that is mildly offensive and only sporadically entertaining.

Game of Throne’s Kit Harington stars as Milo, a rugged Celt who finds himself thrust into Pompeii’s violent gladiator school after his horseman tribe is slaughtered by Senator Corvus’s army. Predictably, Milo befriends hulking fellow prisoner Atticus (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and falls in love with the comely Cassia (Emily Browning), an upper-class beauty fed up with the barbarism of Rome and (surprise, surprise) also pursued by the malevolent Senator Corvus (Kiefer Sutherland). Vesuvius’ rumbles ominously throughout, until it erupts spectacularly, throwing Pompeii into chaos and our star cross’d lovers to flee for their lives.

The lack of chemistry between all involved is laughable at times. Harington’s attempt at implying a brooding depth of character extends to speaking in a husky voice and balefully staring at everyone/everything. Browning is only marginally more engaging; she does a good job of being smitten by Milo’s horse-whispering compassion but is wholly unconvincing as a woman trapped between love and propriety. Sutherland is mildly entertaining but his strange quasi-British accent is extremely off-putting.

A similar lack of depth is found throughout. Any vestige of profundity the plot contains is lost by the sheer lack of emotion conveyed as hundreds of town-folk are burnt alive. The poignancy of Pompeii lies in the personal nature of the tragedy, the realism of the petrified plaster casts, the apparent familiarity of their day to day life. As hosts of supporting characters meet their fiery deaths, their lack of development, far from leaving one gaping at this heart-rending calamity, leaves one mildly disinterested.

Desperately emotionless it may be, Pompeii retains some cinematographic merit for its well-choreographed fight sequences as fantastically impressive CGI eruption. Although its amphitheatre scenes are virtually copied from Ridley Scott’s Oscar-winning Gladiator, they are still entertaining for the childishly-enthusiastic 6-year-old inside, as is the gloriously eye-catching Vesuvius.

Relating the events at Pompeii to Tacitus, Pliny the Younger wrote:

‘You could hear women lamenting, children crying, men shouting. Some were calling for parents, others for children or spouses; they could only recognize them by their voices. Some bemoaned their own lot, other that of their near and dear. There were some so afraid of death that they prayed for death. Many raised their hands to the gods, and even more believed that there were no gods any longer and that this was one last unending night for the world.’

With Pompeii, director Anderson has taken this description as the unelaborated basis of his film. Presumably he thought that if enough people ran around screaming with their arms aloft, the harrowing personal stories of Vesuvius’ eruption would be done justice. Pompeii lacks the character development, the plot imagination and the emotional depth to adequately convey any sense of meaningful tragedy.

Review: Blue Ruin

Matthew Main
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Review: Blue Ruin

★★★★☆

Four Stars

Jeremy Saulnier, director of Blue Ruin, is primarily a cinematographer. He is credited with performing that role, the direction, and the writing of the film, and it is not difficult to see how the three intertwine as visual and spoken cues are often complemented by aesthetic choices and colour palette. The first feature film Saulnier has had such control over, Blue Ruin is accomplished and compact, and refuses to compromise on his array of skills.

Ostensibly, the film is a revenge thriller in which initially bearded Dwight (Macon Blair) parts the hair from his eyes and sets out to murder the man who has just finished serving a prison sentence for murdering his parents. His ritualistic shaving is the first moment of clarity in the film, occurring after about ten minutes of intoxicating blue washes, where the audience’s experience mirrors Dwight’s perspective. We watch him drift aimlessly through menial tasks, rummage through bins for food, and eventually settle down to sleep at night in his battered Pontiac, the “blue ruin” of the title. Once the news of the release of Wade Cleland, Jr. filters through, however, his existence is given purpose, and the film too gains direction.

And yet, despite the obvious generic reference point, it would not be a spoiler to note that Dwight gains at least a part of the revenge he sets out for. The purpose of Blue Ruin is to dissect the aftermath of his revenge; examining whether any action that he manages to undertake actually furthers his cause in any productive way. On the level of its plot, Blue Ruin tests the validity of the adage that ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’ by forcing the audience to chew over every mouthful.

Dwight might shave his mass of tangled facial hair in order to create a disguise — he is startlingly transformed — but the lesson of the film seems to be that nothing can alter his pathetic core. One poignant moment of many in this darkly comic film is a scene that begins with Dwight attempting to reason with his sister through the translucent back door, while she potters around her kitchen. Even after discovering that he is a killer, Dwight gains no status in her eyes, and indeed gradually wilts as the film wears on; Blair is impeccably convincing in the role of a man caught up in something he has long since lost any control over. The film strips back many of the masculine, dominant characteristics we might typically associate with a revenge thriller hero, and challenges the clean conclusions of many similar genre flicks.

Blue Ruin’s willingness to wallow in the failures of its protagonist simultaneously excites sympathy and pity, and Saulnier’s handling of Dwight’s narrative arc is sensitive. Ultimately, it is the distance he creates between himself as auteur artist and his project’s character that is most striking; his direction revels in the act of portrayal, rather than the subject it is portraying. Dwight’s flawed revenge is not smooth or clear-cut, and the humour Saulnier displays in enacting it — complete with a farcically messy headshot scene — is what steers Blue Ruin away from self-absorption. Like his symbolic, ruined Pontiac, Dwight’s failures are not romanticised, and neither are they indulged. They are spattered with the blood of revenge, and it gets everywhere.

All the world’s a screen

Marcus Balmer
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All the world’s a screen

Films are often considered to be definitive pieces of work. While the restaging of plays is passionately celebrated, peculiarly the industry of movie reboots has been vehemently decried by critics, supposedly symptomatic of a modern-day artistic slump. Despite the general disdain for the enterprise of re-interpreting narratives, the invisible culture guardians seem to grant exceptional ‘reboot privilege’ to one particular figure — William Shakespeare.

This year, there are two major Shakespeare films in production. First is Cymbeline, a contemporary reimagining which moves this lesser known play from Ancient Britain to modern day New York. Starring Ethan Hawke and Ed Harris, Cymbeline is here cast as a grudge war between corrupt cops and a drug-dealing biker gang. Though it sounds ludicrous, one has to admit it’s intriguing. Second in line is the hotly anticipated Macbeth, led by a stellar double act in Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, this is an adaptation that promises to be electric.

With such a plethora of Shakespeare retellings gracing our screens, one witnesses the potential for the reboot as an artistically satisfying endeavour. Admittedly, the ‘Shakespeare license’ has spawned some absolute shockers, and last year’s Romeo and Juliet was head-thumpingly awful. However, 2013 also saw the bitingly funny and genuinely uplifting Much Ado About Nothing. Shooting the film at his home, in 12 days, with actors who are close friends, Joss Whedon’s monochrome vision of the woozy American elite is engineered with a profoundly personal touch.

It’s entirely unlike the formality of Kenneth Branagh’s (equally brilliant) 1993 adaptation, but the world is certainly a better place for having both.

By resisting the idea that any adaptation could be perfect, the history of Shakespeare on film is a singular testament to the medium’s natural capacity for reinterpretation. For example, Lawrence Olivier’s 1944.version of Henry V is unashamedly patriotic, designed to resonate with Second World War Britain. Olivier famously compounded his nationalistic, glorious vision by only shooting the Agincourt battle when the sun was out.

This stands in contrast with Branagh’s 1989 adaptation of the same play, which places Agincourt in a post-Vietnam world. Patrick Doyle’s heart-breaking score, the close-up shots of bodily wounds and the mud-strewn plain all underpin the film’s anti-war sentiment. The scene’s final shot is a stunning tracking shot as Henry carries one of these dead luggage boys across the array of bodies and away from the battlefield. The films are compelling in entirely different ways.

However, it was Baz Luhrmann’s production of Romeo + Juliet in 1996, with its MTV sensibility and filmic thriftiness that set the precedent for cinema as a bold means of reinventing Shakespeare. Consider how the film contains the story within a TV report – just another tragic news-item. It’s a bold opening, only possible in film, in which a seven second montage of 26 rapidly deployed images actually shows us the fated narrative of these ‘star cross’d lovers’, while a CGI statue of Christ is suggestively dwarfed by the buildings of Montague/Capulet business corporations. Cinema provides the opportunity for sensory assaults in a way which corresponds with Luhrmann’s violent, godless Verona.

If reboots have worked so well for Shakespeare, why hasn’t it worked for Hollywood movies? Unfortunately, the process has commonly been a mindless case of profit seeking – which is a shame with a medium that is so ripe for revisiting and rewriting established narratives. Editing, special effects, colour blocking, cinematography, sound design – these are all dynamics used particularly effectively.in film. They are devices that can be used to influence the way that we respond to a text.

In production currently are remakes of 1994’s The Crow, 1990’s Jacob’s Ladder and 1986’s Short Circuit. If these projects were handled with the same care and adventurousness as Shakespeare’s texts have been, Hollywood remakes would be a cause for celebration rather than a sigh.

Review: Tracks

Clara-LaeïLa Laudette
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Review: Tracks

★★★☆☆

Three Stars

The first things we see of Robyn Davidson are, perhaps unsurprisingly, her sandal-clad feet. But as the opening shot spans upward, we realise that Tracks does not begin at the physical start of the young woman’s journey through the Australian bush and desert. Rather, John Curran’s last film unfolds with an initial, dream-like flashback of Davidson as a young girl, during the personal cataclysm which haunts her throughout the narrative, and is a profound part of her motivation for the extraordinary undertaking. Her drawn-out steps hit the rural dust of her parents’ farmyard, which she is leaving behind after her mother has hung herself, and she prepares to live alone with her aunt, away from her father, her sister, even her beloved dog.

Still, one should not think deduce from this that Tracks is a film solely centred on the psychological origins of Davidson’s record-breaking, and, let’s face it, near-suicidal plan of walking 1700 miles on foot through some of the harshest climactic conditions and least populated expanses of the world. Granted, Mia Wasikowska’s terse voice-over gives fleeting insights into the mental processes which impel her, like the generational “malaise” of her sex and class – the social privilege of a white woman in still segregated, 1970s Australia, which Robinson struggles under like a burden of guilt.

But the bulk of the film consists of an incredibly pared-down, unutterably beautiful recreation of the journey itself. There is no romanticising or elaboration necessary when the camera’s raw material is already so insanely self-sufficient. What is impressive in terms of cinematography is how well they have imbedded the human presence of Davidson into these landscapes, at times swallowing her up like a tiny dot on the brink of disappearing, at times letting her rise from the boiling mirages, a shivering slip of persistent willpower.

Meanwhile, if there is a social or political consciousness in the film, it irrupts abruptly, like an intrusion into the single-mindedness of Davidson’s endeavour – which is odd, given her involvement with the Aboriginal Land Rights movement. Still, questions like racism towards the aborigines are treated with a rawness which mirrors Davidson’s indignation. The violent slap which the white owner of the first hotel bar where Davidson works inflicts on an elderly aborigine who has strayed in may happen just beyond the door frame, but the sound echoes and the camera’s angle gives us the raised arm as it plummets down to contact. Likewise, the first look we get at the 27-year-old Robinson who will trek the astonishing distance is at her sleeping face, as the train which brings her to Alice Springs – her home during the two years of preparation for the journey – pulls into the station. When she hits the dusty high street, a decrepit truck roars past, with four men in the back who hoot and aim physical guns at her with leery laughter.

Nevertheless, the details of Davidson’s biography, and the brief glimpses into the conditions of 1970s rural Australia, remain but the parts of a whole. Tracks is a film which also charts Davidson’s personal evolution during her voyage, and the realisations she comes to through her various attachments, which are all the more significant given her avowed “aloneness”, the overwhelming solitude which her isolating enterprise is a paradoxical attempt to detach herself from. She develops strong, often largely silent ties: with the naturalised Afghan camel farmer Sallay Mohamet, the couple of aged settlers who offer her the rest of their home in the dead of the outback, the chatty, seemingly unbreakable Aborigine elder Mr Eddy who guides her through sacred lands from water point to water point – and, not least, National Geographic photographer Rick Smolan. Their complex relationship is also a significant feature of the film, but I’ll avoid spoilers and keep mum as to its nature.

Tracks is no flawless masterpiece. Some have perhaps rightly argued that it fails to kindle entirely, losing itself at times in an intermittence of aesthetic windings and psychologising scenes. But it is also an undeniably compelling film, full of strength, fear, and blisters. And the humanity at its core, sparingly conveyed by a fantastic cast, along with its lush cinematography, and the fact it is a true story, make it an impossibly stand-out film.

Ceiling collapses on rowers at At Thai

Megan Gibbons
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Ceiling collapses on rowers at At Thai

Students eating at restaurant, ‘At Thai’, last night were disrupted when pieces of the ceiling collapsed on top of them and their food.

A number of students were attending a rowing crew date there when plaster and small pieces of ceiling crumbled and collapsed above them. 

The Thai restaurant, located on the high street, is often a popular choice for crew dates.  

A first year historian from Balliol, who was at the crew date, told Cherwell, “It was really unexpected, one minute everything was normal and the next all my friends were covered in white dust. At Thai weren’t great about it either; they relocated us but were really fussy about giving us a discount or anything, which you’d expect after something like that.”

No one was injured and some continued their crew date to a night club.

At Thai were unavailable for comment. 

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