Some universities are investing more in support services, in recognition that if students leave their course, it can damage their prospects and lead to the university losing their fees.

(italics mine)

tell me you are fucking kidding me!

(thanks to ZoneStyx)

The Hill 1

"You'll stuff it up!"

The Hill has several areas of concern, one of which is the question of justice.

A weak and effeminate (closet gay) soldier dies as a result of his disciplining at the hands of newly arrived Staff Sargeant Williams and the men in the prison demand that someone be held to account. The only man who is prepared to put himself forward as a witness is the "broken" Sergeant Major Roberts, who has been arrested for refusing to lead his men to certain death and punching his commanding officer. Roberts is the disruptive, progressive figure in the Glasshouse, a correctional facility for soldiers, who draws  other staff and soldiers into his conflict with his nemesis, Williams, who arrives in the camp the same day. He shares his cell with three other men after Steven's death, Monty a fat, illiterate Spiv, Mc Grath, a brawling Yorkshireman and Jacko a black soldier. On the Staff side the sympathetic figures are Harris a gay, liberal staff Sergeant and the bumbling and ineffective Medical Officer.

At the end of the film ( a conclusion often judged to be the film's dramatic weakness by critics) the flimsy possibility of justice that has been brought about, the coalition between the men prepared to testify and the staff prepared to protect them is undermined by the men themselves, by Jacko and McGrath attacking Staff Sergeant Harris. This is the conservative message of The Hill, that there is the possibility that the good, progressive Men of Rank can, in alliance, bring about change and see that justice prevails but this is doomed to fail, compromised by the bestiality of the proles and the inferior races whose lack of self control will only condemn them all to remain subjects of power. The tragedy of The Hill is that the subaltern classes don't know what is good for them, they have only directionless rage and immediate gratification, unlike the higher ranks who believe in and understand the reforming power of institutions.

Why The Hill?

If you were to ask me what the greatest film of all time was I would probably stop to reflect for a moment wondering what the right answer was, y'know, the smart answer, the surprising answer, the answer you wanted me to give you and then I'd probably just think "fuck it!" and say The Hill.

I had a little go at The Hill here and I'm returning to it again partly as a consequence of reflecting on the recent shifts in the UK (in fact the three Connery-Lumet movies with which I am unhealthily obsessed, The Hill, The Anderson Tapes and The Offence all seem highly relevant at the moment) and the visibility of the deeply embedded and interlinked structures of power, privilege and authority that the rapidly receded tide of Old Skool neo-liberalism has laid bare. Just to clarify, what I mean is that while aggressively neo-liberal practices continue there is no comforting patina of progressive ideology anymore, this fantasy element, strong under both Thatcher and Blair has been whisked away: for the first time in a long time the sense of horror and dread is not, as it was during the Blair years, one of feeling smothered or suffocated, of feeling overwhelmed by ideology but rather a distressing lack of fantasy, the exposing of the thing itself, the machinery of Late Capitalism going nakedly about its business. In this sense the cumulative affect of this most recent stage is one of obscenity and insult whereas before it was weariness and fatigue, if before you were patronisingly smothered, now you are mockingly over-exposed.

This relates to The Hill in a number of ways and I may have to go at it from number of angles in order to get at what it says fully. Broadly, and veering off slightly I also feel that the critical strategies that were useful pre-2008 feel less urgent now, in that what needed to be "unmasked" during the previous decades is now quite plainly and unrepentantly present.

I say contemporary but really the hill is also primal, pyramidal, the method through which man dominates nature, disciplines the vast, impersonal expanse of the desert by imprinting the symbol of his Will upon it and also the means by which the "broken" soldiers are broken down further and then rebuilt. In a sense the return of and the return to the Hill is an extension of Pound's maxim that Literature is "news which stays news". The progressivist fantasies melt away, the ruling order is challenged and power asserts itself, hard-power, not the cultural soft-power of "repressive tolerance" or many of the other buzzwords of last decades' Leftist critique, along with the reality of social antagonisms presumed to have been relegated to the dustbin of history.

It's useful then to return to director whose primary focus was on power and the institution.

I'm going to write several short posts and the first one is about the end of the film so it definitely CONTAINS SPOILERS.


.

Good, Socialist cover that, innit? 

sign this!