“A fantastic final day in store,” reckons Krishnamoorthy V. “While all the attention shall be on Bumrah (rightly so), I have a feeling that it is Ravindra Jadeja who is going to be the matchwinner, should India win this match. A Root century is going to be inevitable whether England wins it or loses it.”
Principality Stadium, Cardiff The US singer-songwriter graduates to the UK’s biggest venues with a theatrical show to match, featuring a house on fire, Allen Ginsberg recitals and some very real tears
Lana Del Rey is standing in a blue-on-white summer dress in front of a wood-panelled house, crying real tears next to plastic weeping willows, momentarily overcome by the size of the audience staring back at her. This sort of tension, the push-pull between genuine vulnerability and an exploration of aesthetics, has always been there in her music, and her wonderfully ambitious first stadium tour runs on it. Its theatrical staging and big ideas are all the more remarkable thanks to some very human moments of doubt.
Opening with Stars Fell on Alabama, one of several new songs foreshadowing a country record that might be around the corner, Del Rey’s voice is barely there, with its final notes followed by a dash to the wings to kiss her husband. But she stays on the rails. During Chemtrails Over the Country Club and Ultraviolence, she falls to the floor in Busby Berkeley-esque arrangements alongside her dancers, her vocals now steely as power chords and pulsing red lights ratchet up the drama.
The European Championships of 1980 and 2000 were only 20 years apart. They also belonged, both literally and figuratively, to different millennia. Euro 80 was a violent mess of negativity, apathy and hooliganism, Euro 2000 a joyous, sunkissed celebration of 21st-century football.
That jarring contrast was the spark for the latest series of Nessun Dorma: an odyssey through the history of football in the 1980s and 1990s. Our aim is to highlight, via a series of subterranean dives into each football season, how it went from being a “a slum sport played in slum stadiums and increasingly watched by slum people” – as a Sunday Times editorial called it in 1985 – to a multi-gazillion pound industry.
Economic assumptions about risks of the climate crisis are no longer relevant, says the communications expert Genevieve Guenther
Climate breakdown can be observed across many continuous, incremental changes such as soaring carbon dioxide levels, rising seas and heating oceans. The numbers creep up year after year, fuelled by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
But scientists have also identified at least 16 “tipping points” – thresholds where a tiny shift could cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically, irreversibly and with potentially devastating effects. These shifts can interact with each other and create feedback loops that heat the planet further or disrupt weather patterns, with unknown but potentially catastrophic consequences for life on Earth. It is possible some tipping points may already have been passed.
Shrouded in secrecy, the US law enforcement agency has become a kind of domestic stormtrooper for Maga’s agenda
Across the US, group chats and community threads have started spiking with warnings. Not just the typical alerts about traffic or out of service subway stations, but where and when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raid was last seen. What places to avoid. What the plainclothes agents might look like.
“Hey all,” a Brooklyn, New York, resident wrote in a closed chat with neighbors last week. “A little birdie just told me ICE is out.”
The hosts have lost the veteran Ramona Bachmann but Lia Wälti’s leadership gives them hope
This article is part of the Guardian’sEuro 2025 Experts’ Network, a cooperation between some of the best media organisations from the 16 countries who qualified. theguardian.com is running previews from two teams each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 2 July.
Eliza Lynch was at her warlord partner’s side in a cataclysmic war and died in obscurity in Paris but is now being honoured – although not without controversy
By the time she turned 21, Eliza Alice Lynch had fled famine-stricken County Cork for Paris, married and left a French officer, become entangled with a South American warlord-in-waiting, and returned with him to Paraguay.
Ten years later, her partner – by then, president and grand marshal Francisco Solano López – led Paraguay into a cataclysmic four-year war against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Half of Paraguay’s population was wiped out. López was cornered and shot on a jungle battlefield called Cerro Corá, along with their 15-year-old son.
The former governor, now a New York City mayoral candidate, marks the party’s drift into boorishness and cruelty
As the far right has gained ascendancy, and the 2024 election is historicized as a blowout victory for Donald Trump rather than the relatively close contest that it actually was, members of the Democratic establishment and party leadership seem to be settling on the lesson that they will take into the second decade of the Trump era: if you can’t beat him, imitate him.
It’s long been the impulse of the party to move right, chasing Republican victories by replicating Republican policy positions, and since their loss last November many Democrats have followed in this decades-old tradition, shifting their rhetoric still further rightward on border policy, crypto, foreign policy, trans rights and DEI. They respond to polling and to a vague sense of the cultural zeitgeist, aiming less to persuade than to imitate. Often, Democrats seem as if they are not offering a different policy vision for the country so much as they are offering a different stylistic one: the same austerity, cultural revanchism and inequality but in a more polite package.
Peake stars opposite Jason Isaacs, as Politkovskaya’s husband, in this sentimental look at the life of a woman who, 19 years after her death, remains a folk hero
This British-American co-production offers a dramatised portrait of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya (played by Maxine Peake) who was assassinated in 2006. Politkovskaya’s gutsy, impassioned reporting on the second Chechen war was highly critical of the Kremlin, the Russian army and Vladimir Putin personally. (The fact that she was murdered on his birthday was surely no coincidence.) Nineteen years after her death, she remains a folk hero worldwide for resistances to autocracy, especially given the rise in repression everywhere and constant threats to journalists.
Given all that, the film deserves respect for the subject matter, even though this is a pretty basic rendition of Politkovskaya’s story, a little too sticky with hagiographic sentimentality and the cliches of crusading journalist-led movies. It also should be noted that Politkovskaya’s family haven’t given the film their blessing; some of them may not be happy, for instance, with the thinly written characterisations of their fictional counterparts, like her son Ilya (Harry Lawtey) who is made to seem peevish and self-absorbed even when his feelings are understandable. (“I’m not watching you die!” he bellows at one point.)
My talent for attracting coffee stains and mud splatters brings misery to my friends – especially the ones who lend me their pristine white shirts
I have a friend who curates her wardrobe pretty carefully – there’s nothing in it she doesn’t wear – and consequently she gives, sells or lends me a lot of things, and her taste is nonpareil so I never say no. Maybe one item in 10 is white, which unleashes dismay: she has to watch while I stain a pair of cream jeans she has kept pristine for five years, as fast as you can say, “Ooh, what’s this delicious salad dressing?”
Once, I splashed mud all the way up the back of a skirt she’d given me while she was cycling behind me, saying, “We’ve really got to get you some mudguards if you want to wear white.” Once, I got Tabasco sauce on her white bra, which was fine because who would see it? And yet, not fine, because how do you get sauce on your bra? Once, I spilled espresso down a white shirt, and that ain’t never coming out – but it actually wasn’t hers, it was her mother’s, so I’d trashed three decades of spotlessness in a moment.
By refusing to slash funding to poorer nations, Spain became an outlier in the new world disorder. Next week it hosts a UN summit in Seville to prove it
Spain swims against the tide. At a time when much of Europe is grappling with economic crises, caving in to populist anti-aid narratives and slashing development budgets, the country is increasing its financial support for the global south. Instead of planning future aid cuts, Spain has put ambitious goals for 2030 into law.
Moreover, at a time when much of the world is looking inward and retreating from multilateralism, Spain will host a UN summit in Seville this month, the first of its kind in the global north. Dozens of heads of government, state and multilateral organisations will discuss how to finance development in a post-aid world, suffocated by military spending and unpayable debt in dozens of countries, particularly those in Africa. For the Spanish government, the forthcoming Seville summit is a clear political statement.
Researchers say urgent conservation efforts will be needed to mitigate the ‘shocking statistic’ that threatens to unravel ecosystems
More than 500 bird species could vanish within the next century, researchers have found, calling for urgent “special recovery programmes” such as captive breeding and habitat restoration to rescue unique species.
Birds such as the puffin, European turtle dove and great bustard will be among those to disappear from our skies if trends continue, according to the paper. Their loss threatens to unravel ecosystems across the globe.
The rapper is booked to headline the Rubicon festival in Bratislava, which protesters have called ‘a debasement of all victims of the Nazi regime’
A petition has been launched calling on the mayor of Bratislava to prevent Kanye West – legally known as Ye – from headlining a festival in Bratislava, calling the planned appearance “an insult to historic memory, a glorification of wartime violence and debasement of all victims of the Nazi regime”.
The Rubicon festival in the Slovakian capital claimed that they had secured an exclusive performance by the “hip-hop visionary, cultural icon and controversial genius” for mid-July.
Wallabies coach says agreement is not to release all players
Schmidt highlights clash between Waratahs and Fiji games
The Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt has hit back at the British and Irish Lions management, insisting Australia are adhering to the tour agreement regarding the release of international players for pre-Test games and that his front-line home players were only unavailable because they were preparing to face Fiji on Sunday week.
The issue has flared up again this week after the Lions chief executive, Ben Calveley, said he expected Schmidt to release Wallaby players back to their Super Rugby franchises for their respective games against the touring team. Some fringe Wallabies are due to feature for Western Force this Saturday but it is set to be a different story for the subsequent games against the Reds, the Waratahs and the Brumbies.
Trafford was disappointed deal fell through last summer
Newcastle ready to sell Longstaff or Willock but not Isak
Newcastle hope to succeed where they failed a year ago by signing the Burnley and England goalkeeper James Trafford for a fee that could approach £40m.
The 22-year-old has long been admired by Eddie Howe, with the Cumbrian’s excellent footwork a key reason why Newcastle’s manager was disappointed a £20m move for Trafford foundered last summer.
The maverick behind Tom Holland’s Romeo and Nicole Scherzinger’s Sunset Boulevard is now stunning passersby with Rachel Zegler’s Palladium balcony scene
Rarely can a balcony have caused such a kerfuffle. But the row about the extramural staging of Don’t Cry for Me Argentina in Evita at the London Palladium is a sign of its director’s increasing celebrity status. Indeed I’m tempted to rephrase a number from an earlier Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice musical: “Jamie Lloyd Superstar, Do you think you’re what they say you are?” What, in short, does it tell us about our theatrical culture that this puckishly likable director has become a figure famed on both sides of the Atlantic?
His beginnings, as a recent Vogue feature pointed out, were relatively modest. He grew up in rural Dorset, was turned on to live theatre by seeing Michael Jackson on tour and attended the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. But, right from the start, there was something there. The first production of his that I saw was The Caretaker, which in 2007 transferred from the Sheffield Crucible to what was then the Tricycle in London. Two things made it original: the use of a creepy score by Ben and Max Ringham to give the play a film noir feel and the insistent presence of Nigel Harman’s Mick reminding us that the work is about the fraternal bond between him and the brain-damaged Aston, which Pinter’s intrusive hobo fails to understand.
The award-wining composer of soundtracks to video games including Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is composing again for the first time since a traumatic pandemic
For the fortunate among us, the Covid lockdowns have, years later, become a memory – if not distant, then certainly ever-so-slightly faded. We have had a few years now, to get out there, to rebuild careers and relationships, to travel, to live in the world again. That’s not the case for everyone. Award-winning composer Jessica Curry, who crafted the beguiling, elegiac soundtracks to games such as Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and Dear Esther, has only just emerged. Diagnosed with a degenerative disease in her mid-20s and seriously immunocompromised as a result of her condition, she began isolating at the start of the pandemic, and for the next five years barely left her home. While there, unable to work or write, her world began to collapse.
“Like many people I had an extraordinarily painful and difficult pandemic,” she says. “I watched my dad die on Zoom, and then my auntie and more family members. Then they found a tumour in my ovary, and I had major abdominal surgery, but the operation had gone wrong, so I nearly died in 2022. While I was recovering from the third operation, the roof of our house fell in. It felt like a metaphor for everything. If a novelist had written this, no one would believe the story. And things just kept going wrong. So I wasn’t writing music, I wasn’t even listening to music. All of a sudden, I couldn’t bear it. I’m still trying to work out what that rejection was about – I was just in too much of a mental crisis. I wasn’t even feeding or dressing myself.”
Leftwing Zohran Mamdani, 33, sees surging support in race with former governor for Democratic nomination
New Yorkers are headed to the polls on Tuesday in a primary election that is both likely to decide the city’s next mayor and have major political implications for the future of the Democratic party.
The race pits two drastically different Democrats against one another. Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist endorsed by the progressive wing of the Democratic party, is the main challenger to Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor who has been backed by the party’s centrists and billionaire donors.
The NBA postseason remains a psychodrama of moments, memes and memories unlike anything in sport. We look back at the biggest takeaways
If a single, overarching lesson can be taken from this year’s NBA postseason, it’s this one: no game is over until the clock hits 00:00. Whether it was the New York Knicks stealing victory from the jaws of defeat against the Celtics in Boston in round two, Aaron Gordon’s buzzer-beating dunk sealing a crucial win for the Nuggets against the Clippers in Los Angeles in round one, or the Indiana Pacers defeating the odds over and over again with their clutch time brilliance throughout the playoffs, a lead has never felt less safe in the NBA.
The Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, is about to descend on Venice with his fiancee, some ex-Marines and his limitless credit card. We meet the Italian activists who are saying: enough
When she heard that Jeff Bezos was getting married in Venice this June, Heather Jane Johnson felt worse than she had in her entire life. Twenty-five years ago, she ceased trading as a bookseller in Boston, Massachusetts. “I lost a lot because of Bezos and the complicity of Americans in the making of Amazon,” the 53-year-old says. “A big reason I moved to Italy is because I felt betrayed by my countrypeople.”
So when posters went up calling a public meeting in the city she now calls home, she went, and she has been to every meeting of anti-Bezos activists since, including one the day before her own wedding last week. “These young people have really restored my faith in humanity,” Johnson says.
Travel and leisure stocks across Europe are rallying too.
This has pushed up the STOXX Europe travel and leisure index by 4.1% in early trading, which Reuters reports it the biggest one-day jump since 10 April.
Downing Street’s disability cuts will have a “devastating” impact on women’s health and dignity and could breach equality law, the government has been warned.
Whittaker also says that he is expecting US president Donald Trump “might deliver some remarks” on his views on the summit, as he stresses that “we need to make sure that everyone’s investing in the common defence of the Alliance.”
“I don’t want to … sort of … steal what he might say, nor do I claim to be able to read his mind and know what he’s going to say. But I think he has demonstrated through, again, decisive action leading to peace.”
“And again, that’s good for Europe, because there’s been a lot of irregular flows of migrants through Europe, from the Middle East because of the instability.
And so hopefully, with Syria now appearing to be stable, with Iran, maybe in check a little more than they had been, I think we could really see a generational moment here where the Middle East is more stable than it has been in a while.”
“That strength is what’s going to deliver peace for generations to come, because no one will want to mess with Nato and the Alliance.”
“I have said that many times, and I know you have heard me say it, the United States is going to be a reliable ally, and as you see, and as you’ve seen over the last several days, the United States has certain capabilities that you want an alliance to have.”
“We’ve never been more engaged, that’s the thing.
I sound like a broken record, and I am sure there are people in this room that have heard me say this in many different places, whether it’s in Estonia or Latvia or in Turkey wherever I’ve been.
Today’s rumours are still feeling that late-Sunday file
Despite a breakthrough season at Paris Saint-Germain, where he registered double digits for both goals and assists in Ligue 1 and made a sizeable contribution to the club’s maiden Champions League triumph, Bradley Barcola finds himself as the odd one out in Luis Enrique’s forward line. Ousmane Dembélé, Désiré Doué and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia appear to be in the box seats for PSG’s starting XI, the latter signing in January from Napoli, which has meant the absurdly talented Barcola could move on this summer. Europe’s elite are lining up, fluttering their eyelashes at the 22-year-old, with Arsenal, Bayern Munich and Liverpool all seen as frontrunners, should Barcola (and PSG) decide to move on.
Nothing stirs the heart quite like the words “Japanese wonderkid” and the latest J1 League star to make his way to England is Kōta Takai, who is on the verge of a £5m move to Tottenham from Kawasaki Frontale – which would constitute a record sale from the Japanese league. The 20-year-old centre-back is already a senior international and, standing at 6ft4in, is expected to slot straight into Thomas Frank’s first team, competing for a place alongside Micky van de Ven, Cristian Romero, Kevin Danso and Radu Dragusin.
Low-cost and quickly discarded products are playing a key role in world’s fastest-growing waste problem – electronics
It is cheap, often poorly made, and usually ends up in the bin or buried among the other knick-knacks, takeaway menus and birthday candles in the kitchen drawer.
Known as “fast-tech”, these low-cost electronics are increasingly common – from mini-fans and electric toothbrushes, to portable chargers and LED toilet seats, often bought for just a few pounds online.
All seems perfect for these rich and successful New Yorkers – until a bond is violently shattered in this sharp and pleasurable debut
Amos and Emerson are the best of friends; everyone knows this. They are a model of male intimacy and understanding: confiding in each other, trusting each other, hugging each other (“real, loving hugs, clutches without irony”). Theirs is truly a friendship for the ages.
Or so it seems. For on the weekend of Emerson’s 52nd birthday, an occasion at the centre of Hal Ebbott’s probing and insightful debut novel, something happens that changes everything – and raises the question of whether we can ever truly know anyone.
Hind Meddeb’s documentary draws on her on-the-spot experience in 2019 as protesters rose against the 30-year rule of Omar al-Bashir
Franco-Tunisian-Moroccan film-maker Hind Meddeb is based in Paris but it was her on-the-spot experience in Khartoum in 2019 of the Sudanese uprising against the reactionary 30-year rule of president Omar al-Bashir which has led to this intensely engaged and sympathetic documentary study. The film immerses itself in the world of the protesters – particularly the young and female protesters – a whole generation energised and brought together by the insurgent movement; their passion was complicated and intensified by the fact that the revolution, at least at first, only brought in a “Transitional Military Council” or TMC, which did not seem in any great hurry to transition to democratic civilian rule. In fact, it carried out a grotesque massacre against people at a sit-in in June 2019, resulting in 127 people dead and 70 cases of rape.
Meddeb finds among the protesters a vivid, vibrant artistic movement: an oral culture of music, poetry and rap which flourishes on the streets. There is also a kind of subversive, surrealist energy: the camera finds a mock traffic roadworks sign reading: “Sorry for the Delay – Uprooting a Regime”. The most amazing performances from both women and men are witnessed, as well as a kind of soixante-huitard culture of slogans and maxims; young women hold up signs and prose-poems.
A lively history of the paper from 1986 to 1995 covers global upheaval, internal conflict and a bold but brilliant redesign
In my early career as a cultural historian, I made many journeys along the Northern line in London to the now defunct British Newspaper Library at Colindale. It was a melancholy place, with that vanilla-and-almonds smell of decomposing ink and paper, and little crumbs of disintegrated newspaper on the floor by the reading desks. Like the mayfly, a newspaper is meant to die on the day it is born. News now lives longer on the Guardian website, but prominently displayed warnings tell us when an article is more than a month old. “Who wants yesterday’s papers?” the Rolling Stones sang. “Nobody in the world.”
So newspaper history is a tricky genre that must capture the ephemeral and show why it matters. Ian Mayes’s excellent book follows two previous, quasi-official volumes of Guardian history by David Ayerst and Geoffrey Taylor. It begins in 1986 when the Guardian was still a one-section, inky, monochrome paper full of misprints and poor quality pictures, newly threatened by Rupert Murdoch’s move to Wapping and the birth of the Independent. It ends in 1995 with a radically restyled paper, with new sections such as G2 and the pocket-sized TV and entertainment supplement, the Guide. A second volume will tell the story up to 2008, when the Guardian moved to its current home in Kings Place.
Google could be forced to make a series of changes to its search business, including giving internet users an option to choose alternative services, after the UK competition watchdog proposed to tighten regulation of the company.
The Competition and Market Authority (CMA) is preparing to designate the world’s largest search engine with “strategic market status” – a term that gives the watchdog extra powers to regulate technology companies deemed to have considerable market heft.
I don’t want sex, I just long to be cuddled. But she continues to reject any such suggestion, and my resentment is growing
After years of no sexual intimacy with my wife, I am now craving the comfort of somatic connection. Not actual sex, but simply cuddling and being held close while nude. But my wife has refused. I have suggested we try “progressive desensitisation” therapy, which would involve lying down together, with one item of clothing removed, but with no physical contact. We would build from there in the knowledge that this would not lead to sexual contact. My wife, when I suggested it, was not at all interested in this, and in fact, she was actively opposed.
She told me the problem was in my head and that she had zero interest in physical intimacy. She also said that this was normal for older women. I told her it was my impression that older people actually craved appropriate physical touch. She then agreed that I could just lie in her bed fully clothed before retiring to my own bedroom. But this was just awkward and humiliating for me, because it was obvious that she wasnot in the least invested in my presence. So I gave up the idea completely. In every other regard our marriage is healthy. At times, I consider asking her if she could accept my seeking intimacy elsewhere, but I think this would lead to the end of our marriage. I feel trapped – I love my wife but my resentment is growing.
Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.
If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.
The US health secretary’s latest report is more interested in vaccine scepticism than the brutal toll inflicted by guns and road traffic accidents
“Make America healthy again”. We can all get behind this slogan and agree that much more could be done to improve the health of people living in the US. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health and human services secretary, recently released a report detailing the challenge of the US’s health. About 90% of it outlines the high rates of obesity, mental health issues and chronic disease, 10% covers vaccine scepticism, and 0% looks at solutions or any discussions of the systemic social and economic issues that drive much of the US’s health problems.
But what surprised me more was a notable omission of the two biggest killers of American children. American children aren’t just unhealthier. They’re more likely to die in the first 19 years of life because of guns – both homicides and suicides – or in a road traffic accident than children in comparable countries. How can an entire report be written without mentioning these factors, and how unique the US is in the burden of disability and death they cause?
Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of How Not to Die (Too Soon)
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While battle lines are drawn between the two strikers with very different journeys to the top, there is a way both can thrive
“They are quite similar,” Enzo Maresca said last week of Liam Delap and Nicolas Jackson, but of course nobody wanted to take any notice of that bit. Already battle lines are being drawn, positions entrenched. Delap or Jackson. Jackson or Delap. One must survive. One must go reluctantly on loan to Serie A. Those are just the rules.
On these terms alone, it’s been a very good week for Delap. Against Flamengo in the Club World Cup on Friday, he was preferred up front, and played with bristling, controlled aggression for more than an hour before making way for Jackson. He then watched as his replacement lost possession with his first touch, went studs‑up with his second, was sent off and scapegoated for Chelsea’s 3-1 defeat, and later issued a grovelling apology on social media for his actions.
The EU wants independence on defence but it is buying thousands of weapons from the US each year
European leaders will meet with Donald Trump at a Nato summit on Tuesday, as the alliance prepares to approve a significant boost to defence spending.
A new target for every member to spend 5% of GDP – more than double Nato’s current benchmark – marks a major win for the US president, who has long railed against America footing the bill for Europe’s security.
That concern is now increasingly mutual. European governments are pursuing an unprecedented push for military independence, amid fears the US is no longer a reliable ally.
The US president is more willing to listen to Israel than his predecessors were and is also deeply suspicious of the CIA
When Donald Trump ordered the US military to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend, the debate among intelligence officials, outside experts and policymakers over the status of Tehran’s nuclear program had largely been frozen in place for nearly 20 years.
That prolonged debate has repeatedly placed the relatively dovish US intelligence community at odds with Israel and neoconservative Iran hawks ever since the height of the global war on terror.
Residencies in storied venues from a panopticon prison to an ancient amphitheatre gave an appropriate backdrop to the Australian band’s existential new record
‘It’s always good to make yourself feel small,” says Stu Mackenzie. We’re sitting behind the stage of the Ancient theatre in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, after the second night of his band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s three shows there. The marble-hewn amphitheatre was built between 98-117AD. We’re flanked by columns bearing ancient Greek inscriptions from back when this place was called Philippopolis; the precipitous drop behind us reveals the east side of Europe’s longest continually inhabited city, the glowing cross of the Cathedral of St Louis and the shadow of the hills in the distance.
In front of the stage where the Australian experimental rock band have just spent two hours wilding out is an arena where man and beast used to do battle in front of a far more bloodthirsty crowd than the one that just drank the venue dry of beer. It’s hard not to feel like a speck here, awesomely adrift in all of human history.
Lucian Pintilie’s grimly ironic 1968 film is based on real events, in which delinquents are forced to act out their brawl in front of government cameras
Lucian Pintilie’s Romanian film from 1968 is a bizarre and wayward political satire that at first involves just a handful of people – and finally unveils a dreamlike crowd scene with hundreds of non-professionals swarming across the screen, their expressions of incomprehension and incredulity pressed into service for fiction. Yet the whole thing is stranger than fiction – more metaphorical, more metatextual than fiction – and, of course, taken from real life.
Pintilie co-wrote the screenplay with Romanian author Horia Patrascu, based on Patrascu’s novel about an extraordinary event that took place in the early 1960s. Two drunken, hapless youths were caught brawling at a riverside cafe and were made to re-enact the event in detail for a solemn instructional film produced by the communist party authorities to be shown in schools, offices and clubs as a terrible warning against alcohol and anti-social bourgeois delinquency. The two stars of this strange film are moreover tacitly expected to redeem their offence, to expunge their sins moment-by-moment, by recreating their lives in the service of state-sponsored morality. (The actual official film that inspired this, on which Patrascu worked as a crew member, presumably exists in an archive somewhere.)
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