Explaining mansplaining

The term ‘mansplaining’ was inspired, though not directly used, by Rebecca Solnit in her marvellous 2008 essay ‘Men Explain Things To Me’.

The word succinctly encapsulates men’s uncanny ability to display what Solnit calls “the confidence of the totally ignorant”.

With barbed wit, she notes how “explaining men still assume I am, in some sort of obscene impregnation metaphor, an empty vessel to be filled with their wisdom and knowledge”.

As she knows to her cost, these kinds of power games are nothing new and represent a pattern of patronizing behavior that, at least until recently, women have learned to put up with.

The #TimesUp and #MeToo initiatives stemming from the outing of Harvey Weinstein’s serial abuses represent a potential sea change in gender attitudes. Now, not a day goes by without fresh accusations and the squalid details of the Larry Nassar case is a further illustration of the can of worms that has been opened.

Room without a view

ROOM directed by Lenny Abrahamson (Canada/Ireland/UK, 2015)

Joy and Jack look for light in the darkness.

Room is the story of survival. The main victim is Joy Newcombe ( which evokes the idea that he is the devil in human form. While in captivity he has fathered Joy’s 5-year-old son Jack and you imagine that sexual abuse is the prime motive for his actions.

There is always a morbid curiosity to uncover the dark secrets that drive this kind of depraved behavior. A weakness of the movie is that we learn so little about this man’s background or what happens to him after being apprehended. We hear of, but never really see any physical abuse and only the sound of a creaking bed tells us that he is repeatedly raping her.

NIL BY MOUTH

Gary Oldman’s debut as director is a brutal and harrowing movie based on his own upbringing in South London. His father was an alcoholic, a condition that he inherited and subsequently overcame. Oldman’s breaking of the cycle of hurt and self-abuse is at odds with his fictional characters who show little  capacity for such change.

At the heart of the story is Raymond (Ray Winstone) who is a split personality – sometimes physically violent and verbally abusive and at other times just  verbally abusive.

As a portrayal of worst aspects of male behaviour it is unforgettable and at times hard to watch. His existence  consists of heavy drinking, chain smoking,  petty crime, drug taking and wife beating and is so relentlessly dire that it’s nigh on to impossible to find any glimmer of  hope. The ending adds a very thin sugar coating but only because by that point  Oldham probably thought the audience had endured enough.

The title refers to the instructions to nurses of Raymond’s sick father and is used as a reference to the inability of the characters to articulate their true feelings or express any emotional warmth. The expletive count puts ‘fuck’  well past the 400 mark while some sad soul has counted 41 uses of ‘cunt’.  You’re unlikely to see it before the BBC watershed!

The hand held camerawork gives the movie a documentary feel so it’s as claustrophobic on the small screen as it would be if viewed in the cinema. Winstone is scarily convincing and Kathy Burke as his long suffering wife  and Charlie Creed-Miles as the young addict Billy are also superb.

It’s a warts and all movie that is both uncompromising and depressingly realistic.