The ACF Podcast: Cinema, Novels, Political Philosophy
Dear readers, I want to introduce to you the next month of podcasts—the art, the interlocutors, the themes. This will involve everything from medieval poetry to modernist novels, movies adapted from the same, and writing altogether apart from cinema—political philosophy. So, pretty much what you have come to expect from me & the friends who graciously join me for conversation.
1. Noah Millman joined me to talk about Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels—The Remains Of The Day, Never Let Me Go, Klara & The Sun. The first two have already been filmed, the third, out earlier this year, has already been optioned, with a writer hired to adapt it. Noah has a wonderful essay on the novels, on the issue of suffering, serving, and love, over at Modern Age, and his thoughts launched us on a wide-ranging conversation about humanity & politics. Noah deals with humanity, needless to say…
The podcast will be out this weekend! Meanwhile, here’s a fitting prelude to the Kazuo Ishiguro discussion, the Never Let Me Go podcast I did with Flagg Taylor:
2. Peter Robinson & John Yoo on Master & Commander: The Far Side Of The World, the wonderful 2003 Peter Weir movie starring Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany. The movie is far less on the epic side, far more on the lyrical than you would expect. It’s a story set around America, it’s about the Pacific & the Atlantic, about nature & empire, in a way, the past & the future, & it goes much less to the question of war than to the question of the soul of man in democratic times. Weir must have kept one eye on Melville’s Moby-Dick making this movie!
We’ll also be talking about Patrick O’Brian’s naval warfare novels, the basis of the movie, a series of 20 novels (and a 21st unfinished) which is again of interest in Hollywood—there’s an upcoming Aubrey-Maturin movie project at 20th Century. We hope to stir conservatives to make their opinions known, & make their influence felt!
3. Justin Lee & David Woods on The Green Knight, the most hauntingly beautiful movie made in recent years, the surprise of 2021, so far as Hollywood is concerned, made by writer-director David Lowery. This movie is an attempt to give young men in 2021 something of an artistic vision, which is inspired by the medieval poem but varies from it very much both in plot and style—the story as a whole is about the way the vision of honor attracts young men who don’t know if they’ll ever be men, prove themselves, become confident—& the way that vision could lead to authenticity or to corrupt ambition. Lowery is a director who might have a future ahead—it strikes me he is exactly in the position of the movie’s protagonist, his future uncertain. It’s not unlikely he will make the wrong choice, succumb to the temptations of liberalism, & lose whatever insight his interest in medieval poetry & its beauty has given him.
We will also talk about the poem, Tolkien’s translation, & fantasy—what it means for the education of young men. This should be altogether a comparison of democracy & aristocracy, the past & the present, but also empty lives & faith, since the poem is quite Christian & the movie retains some important parts of that faith, starting with the Christmas setting & ending with the fear of damning one’s soul.
4. More Pierre Manent podcasts: I’ve talked to fellow pomocon Carl Eric Scott, as well as Manent’s American translators: Paul Seaton, Dan Mahoney, Ralph Hancock! They’re all eager to introduce to the American audience France’s foremost thinker, a defender of democracy & nation-states, an enemy of liberal ideology, a defender of Christianity, a Catholic, but one who knows that Christians have catastrophically abandoned politics when they most need it… An elegant man of the political right who has dedicated himself to the study of political philosophy, under the guidance of his study of Leo Strauss. Over the next months we will publish regularly our series of discussions, which will include not only introductions to his thought, but discussions of a number of books.
Meanwhile, I leave you with our introductory Manent podcast: