Plenty To Bark At

L considers the Crossdale 10k this morning as did I until I injured myself on Friday but there's usually a bacon butty and a charity cake stall, so we go anyway. L runs and does a really good time, as she usually does on courses where you wouldn't expect her to...

It’s a good morning out, watching everyone crawl up the killer hill they have there and there’s plenty to bark at.

In the evening we head to Broadway to catch a film where they have a choice between the two best Nottingham ales, Supreme and Centurion, with the latter getting the nod. It’s a shame they usually have neither of these on.

A Most Wanted Man, from a novel by Jon le Carre and directed by Anton Corbijn, is set in Hamburg. Hamburg being the city where the September 11 attacks were planned and a city in a state of constant high alert ever since. Gunther Bachmann (Philip Seymour Hoffman) leads a small anti-terrorism unit there who are tasked with monitoring the local Muslim community.

When Chechen immigrant Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) arrives in the city suspicions are aroused and he quickly comes under scrutiny from both Bachmann’s unit and the local German authorities who have a hotline to the American security services.

Issa is put in touch with Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams), an idealistic lawyer specialising in asylum seekers, and tells her he is entitled to a significant inheritance which is held in a Hamburg bank.

Bachmann moves in and cleverly manipulates Issa, Richter and Tommy Brue (Willem Dafoe) the CEO of the Hamburg Bank. Together they lead him to Mohammad Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi), a man who supports Muslim charities but is also suspected of supporting terrorist organizations through a shipping company in Cyprus. In return he promises to protect everyone from the authorities, a promise he probably can’t keep.

Bachmann himself is a highly unkempt figure who seems to survive purely on cigarettes, whiskey and coffee but he knows his job. Unfortunately while Bachmann is content for Issa, Abdullah and co to gradually lead him to the bigger fish, the Americans are far more impatient and send in the cold calculating Martha Sullivan (Robin Wright) to move things along. Bachmann manages to keep them at arm’s length for a while whilst he sets up his operation.

Given the chance to donate Issa’s inheritance to who he sees fit, Abdullah can’t resist syphoning some off to his shipping company and Bachmann knows his trap has been a success. Unfortunately his honourable intentions to all concerned will be thwarted when the American led authorities wade in.

A Most Wanted Man is a stylish, sophisticated thriller with no explosions, car chases or any such clichéd shenanigans. All we have is an insight into a rather subtle espionage game and it’s rather good because of that.

Sadly it was the last film that Philip Seymour Hoffman made before his sudden death earlier this year but at least it’s a good one to remember him by. Hoffman simply propels this film along although he is ably assisted by an excellent supporting cast. He will be missed.

Afterwards Broadway do us an excellent, if overcooked, Sunday lunch but we’ve had worse. Then we adjourn to an almost empty Brewdog, where we have a couple of decent but not spectacular beers. We also discover they have renamed a couple of their more iconic beers to be less iconic for no good reason. 5am Saint has become 5am Red Ale and Dead Pony Club has become Dead Pony Pale Ale, presumably to make them sound blander. 

Everything is a bit bland in Brewdog tonight, so we head to the Peacock for an OP instead.

(Sunday 14^th September)

A Decent Showing

The last of my three indoor winter dog shows is today and it’s just as cold as it’s been at the previous two, only this time without the snow on the ground.

At least we put in a decent showing. There are two fifth places for Doggo, one of which he gets a rosette for. Then a ‘nearly’ clear with MD, we missed a contact on the second last obstacle because I was rushing him but there’s no point being slow and only tenth... It was a good run though. Then we do go clear on a too fast course for a rosette for 12^th, then a second scrappy clear where we’re unplaced, then a bit of a disaster. So a bit of everything today from MD.

In the evening, we head down to Broadway for the usual meal and film deal. L hasn’t finished the book of target film 'Cloud Atlas’ yet, so it’s time to bring on a substitute. I pick something that I hope will be dark and depressing.

‘Lore’ is based on one of three stories in Rachel Seiffert's novel ‘The Dark Room’. It is set in Germany at the very end of World War II.

The father of fifteen-year-old Hannelore or Lore (Saskia Rosendahl), an SS officer, is abandoning the family home. Destroying evidence and shooting the family dog as he goes, before heading off to the front, where he’ll probably meet his death.

Then Lore's mother prepares to leave too. After hearing a radio announcement confirming Adolf Hitler’s death, she surrenders to the Americans. Now her children are left to fend for themselves and Lore, as the eldest, is in charge. Her mother tells her to find a way to their grandmother's in Hamburg, a mere 500km away.

Finding out that the trains are not running, they start their journey across Germany on foot. This is a new Germany, a defeated Germany that lies in ruins, people are starving and sick. They find that some people are willing to help them whilst others most definitely are not and in fact are a danger to them.

This is journey that is viewed mainly through Lore’s eyes and from her perspective. A journey which is as mental as it is physical, as she attempts to comprehend how her country, the supposedly superior one, is now occupied and divided into Russian, American, British and French zones.

Across the failed Third Reich many people mourn their dead leader and condemn the lies the Allies are spreading about him. The Americans post up photographs from the liberation of the concentration camps which many Germans decide are mere propaganda but Lore knows otherwise. We see her tearing away a piece of one of the photos, one that contains the image of her father .

With that Lore realises just how much her father, and probably her mother, were involved in the atrocities. Then she meets Thomas (Kia-Peter Malina), a Jew who was supposedly liberated from one of these camps.

Although Thomas may not be all he appears. It is revealed that the identification papers he carries are not his own. He tells one of the other children that he is not Jewish, but carries the papers because the Americans like Jews. Again though Lore knows otherwise, that is if she realises what the numbers tattooed on Thomas’s wrist mean. They may not be his papers but clearly Thomas has survived the camps and perhaps suspected that the other children would not accept his help if they thought he was Jewish.

An uneasy relationship builds between Thomas and Lore, there is some attraction but mainly it’s out of a necessity to survive as Thomas helps them cross out of the American zone.

When they finally reach Hamburg, Lore finds it hard to settle in at her grandmothers. She has much on her mind. Forced to abruptly grow up, to question her engrained beliefs and to rethink her entire ‘National Socialist’ outlook on life. Then there’s the guilt she feels for how they betrayed Thomas.

‘Lore’ is not an easy film to follow but it’s a good one, although it could have perhaps done with a spot of narration. It’s a film that grows after you’ve left the cinema and it shows a part of history that is rarely shown. Well worth a look. 

Dark and depressing... Bingo. Now for a debrief in Brewdog.

(Saturday 23^rd February)