MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Rising to the bait
An outstandingly original film addresses burning issues of class conflict head on, says MIKE QUILLE
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
ESCHEWING the straightforward narrative arcs of social realism employed by a Ken Loach or a Mike Leigh, in Bait director Mark Jenkin’s Brechtian approach never lets us forget we’re watching a film.
That sense of confronting material reality is there in the hand-processed images, scratchy and lined and a soundscape that engages yet disturbs.
The dialogue, recorded and then dubbed, imbues the uncomprehending, Pinteresque conversations — clipped and occassionally comic — with an eerie sense of alienation, abetted by moments where the plot runs ahead of itself.
More from this author
MIKE QUILLE applauds an excellent example of cultural democracy: making artworks which are a relevant, integral part of working-class lives
MIKE QUILL reports on a lively conference in Barnsley that took stock of working-class access to culture and proposed strategies to embed culture within the trade union movement
MIKE QUILLE relishes political theatre at its most entertaining, engaging and effective
MIKE QUILLE is impressed by the rigorous Marxist approach to be found in a new book on the dialectics of art
