PreBirthday Birthday Treats

Big Birthday Tighter Lockdown

I live in an area that has had an increasing Covid infection rate so, with tighter lockdown restrictions, my plans for celebrating my 60th birthday in the middle of October are well and truly on hold. Which explains why my favourite walk on the moors to Top Withins (scheduled for my birthday weekend) happened early. And a trip to the Harvey Nichols restaurant in Leeds was also tacked onto a trip that was meant to be just doing chores. Blowing the cobwebs away and putting the world to rights with a picnic at the Brontë Falls; and savouring the time and tastes over a delicious meal – I already feel I’ve been well and truly treated. (Happy Early Birthday To Me!) As a bonus I visited for the first time the Tiled Hall Café at Leeds Art Gallery.

Seasons Mingling

On Friday, I meandered along the River Aire and bathed in forest light feeling like the luckiest man alive. The day before, on Thursday, marble-sized hailstones battered Saltaire, crushing plants and battering berries off the weeping cotoneaster in our back garden. Is it Summer or Autumn or has Winter sneaked in? Sometime in October I’ll record (I hope) a RETURN TO LIVE THEATRE – I’ll be attending 3 x 45minute performances at Leeds Playhouse…. But yesterday, after the river walk and Tai Chi in the park (who guessed I would ever be doing Tai Chi?) I made a RETURN TO THE CINEMA…. So, in Pictureville, I was one of five masked punters who was glued to The Perfect Candidate.

No urgent justification to fund this project

I may have been so cinema-deprived that The Perfect Candidate felt like the best thing I’ve seen in ages – and that’s because it’s the ONLY thing I’ve seen at the cinema since the beginning of lockdown. There were a couple of moments in the film that felt formulaic – though other parts that were not formulaic and I was definitely transported out of my self and my immediate concerns into a different world. So here’s what I thought about my first cinema film in six months:

• I felt safe and comfortable in Pictureville cinema
• One of my favourite films of 2012 was Wajdja about a girl and her desire to ride a bike, made in secretive conditions in Saudi Arabia by the same director as The Perfect Candidate, Haifaa Al-Mounsour – this new film has a bigger budget, seems more obviously “cinematic” but has the same sensibilities and attention to human detail as Wadjda
• As soon as you see Dr Maryam (Mila Al Zahrani) driving her car, you know this is a 21st century Saudi Arabia. Maryam is an ordinary woman, observant and devout, and with extraordinary determination and enough temper to cut through some of the bullshit she encounters in her life as a trained doctor in a remote clinic and, later, accidentally, as a candidate for the local Municipal Council
• Helping Maryam (at first reluctantly) are her two sisters: Sara (a teenage eye-roller) and Selma (a confident wedding planner, played by Dhay who is, apparently, for those who know these things, a real-life social media influencer)
• The three sisters are left home alone by their patriarchal father who, against stereotype, wants to go “on tour” with his band of musicians, partly to recover from the grief over the loss of his unconventional wife a year before. He is prepared to defy extremist threats to censor his musical talents and states that he wants his daughters to live fulfilled lives.
• The authorities want Dr Maryam to concentrate on treating patients who are prepared to let a female doctor touch them and, later, to focus her political efforts on playgrounds for children and gardens. But there’s a more urgent priority in Maryam’s mind and her rival male candidate has no interest in…. repairing the road to her local clinic
• The Perfect Candidate made me laugh, feel angry, feel nervous, opened new vistas in my mind – and gave me hope