Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 3/10/2013)

Nobody understands how George MacKay managed to survive a fishing expedition that claimed the lives of his crewmates. Mother Kate Dickie does her best to help him cope with the fallout, despite mourning the loss of her oldest son, Jordan Young. But the other residents of a small port on the Aberdeenshire coast are deeply suspicious of MacKay's inability to remember anything of his ordeal and his conviction that the others are not dead, but have been claimed by a sea devil in punishment for the wickedness of those left behind. Resisting the psychiatrist Brian McCardie's suggestion that he needs specialist care, MacKay tells Young's girlfriend, Nichola Burley, about his belief that the crew can be rescued from the demon he first heard about in a childhood tale told by his mother. But, while Burley has a certain sympathy with his plight, her beligerent father, Michael Smiley, orders MacKay out of his house and grieving trawlerman Lewis Howden similarly threatens violence when MacKay comes to the pub to explain his theory.

Despite their hostility towards her son, the locals remain on friendly terms with Dickie and she is encouraged to sing `The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' during a karaoke night. But even the village kids led by Conor McCarron take to taunting MacKay, as they probe him about why he can't remember anything of the disaster. One night, the baiting gets out of control and MacKay strips to the waist to fight with some of the boys and even Burley (who had been for a nocturnal swim with MacKay) decides she has to sever all ties with him. McCardie returns to urge Dickie to have her son institutionalised and MacKay seems to agree it would be for the best. But he has already hatched a plan and collects materials discarded around the village to put out to sea on a rickety raft with a tray of stolen fish and a homemade harpoon in the hope of luring the monster to the surface.

He has to be rescued by Howden and he teaches him a lesson by leaving him dangling in a net for the voyage back to shore. But MacKay remains convinced of the rectitude of his mission and, having had Dickie tell him the story of the monster on the night before he is due to leave, he slips away at dawn and rows out in a stolen boat. Taking a knife, he carves gills in his neck and plunges into the water. Back on the mainland, Dickie waits for news of her missing child. However, when her neighbours call her down to the beach, she doesn't find his corpse, but the carcass of a large creature (probably a whale) that has been washed up on the tide. Yet, if MacKay has succeeded in rousing the devil from its lair, there is no sign of the lost fishermen.

Viewed as a mood piece, this has much to recommend it. Benjamin Kracun's cinematography captures the squally coastal light and his restrained use of colour makes the recovered yellow oilskin and the blood on the water all the more effective. Michael Aaglund's editing is also seductively measured and reinforces the ethereality of MacKay's reverie, as it crosscuts between grainy TV news clips, Super 8 recollections of childhood, night vision interludes, underwater imagery and jerky and often blurry phone-cam footage. But, while MacKay admirably maintains a trance-like intensity as he literally finds himself caught between the devil and the deep blue sea and Dickie produces another persuasive display of tough love, the supporting performances are often far less convincing. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the inhabitants seem to belong to a 19th-century Puritan settlement rather than one in modern-day Scotland, while Wright's dialogue is often gloweringly grim. This allows the likes of Smiley to overplay their fury and even Burley, who is initially sweetly forgiving turns on MacKay like a character in a soap opera rather than a work of cinematic art. Sadly, Wright must shoulder the responsibility for setting this tone and for opting to keep the audience at such a distance by providing little social or mythological context for the narrative, by refusing to broach the facts of the catastrophe (and, thus, divulge whether MacKay is traumatised or murderously malevolent) and by couching so much of the later action in obfuscatory magic realist symbolism.

Other aspects fail to convince, such as the fact that someone would bother to record (let alone keep) camera-phone snippets of Young bad-mouthing his brother. Moreover, there is no diegetic logic for its inclusion, as no one appears to be showing it to MacKay or watching it to make fun of his delusions. Instead, it simply creates the suspicion that, for all his outward displays of affection for his sibling, Young was a difficult character himself and that Smiley's rage towards MacKay may owe more to his disapproval of Burley's choice of boyfriend than the teenager's temerity to survive a wrecking that claimed five other lives. Thus, while this cannot be faulted for its earnestness or aesthetic austerity, it is too self-consciously uncompromising and too hazily allegorical to keep onlookers entirely engrossed.

Lucy Walker presents a far more cogent portrait of a young man coming to terms with life-changing events in The Crash Reel, which confirms the prolific New College alumna among this country's finest documentarists. Following on from the Oscar-nominated pair of Waste Land (2010) and The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom (2011), this compellingly combines an appreciation of extreme sports with an intimate record of courage and the importance of family that effortlessly avoids being mawkish or tritely inspirational in showing how Kevin Pearce gained a wider perspective as he recovered from the terrible injuries that ended his promising career in snowboarding.

Born and raised in Vermont, Kevin Pearce began boarding as a young boy and soon started competing in local and regional events. In 2005, he was winning regularly enough to attract sponsorship and the 18 year-old turned professional and found himself in an intense, but mostly friendly rivalry with the sport's reigning superstar, Shaun White. As it became increasingly difficult to separate the pair in competition, they began devising ever-more audacious tricks that exploited half-pipe walls rising to 22 feet.

Pearce always had the backing of father Simon, mother Pia and siblings David, Andrew and Adam. But his main support came from the Frends crew that comprised of Mason Aguirre, Danny Davis, Scotty Lago and brothers Jack and Luke Mitrani and which deliberately misspelt its name because `there is no "i" in frends'. The gang was with Pearce, therefore, when he travelled to Park City, Utah go put in some practice in the run-up to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. However, while attempting the notoriously difficult `cab double cork', Pearce crash landed on his head and he was bleeding profusely by the time the Frends reached him. He was airlifted to the University Hospital in Salt Lake City and his family flew to his bedside, as he remained in a coma for several days before doctors announced that he has broken his left eye socket, as well as suffering serious brain damage.

Already used to dealing with medical situations, because David has Down Syndrome, Simon and Pia spent the next few months on vigil at the hospital, as Kevin began to make a slow recovery. However, he struggled to speak, let alone walk and his vision and memory were temporarily compromised. But, through sheer tenacity, Kevin started to respond to treatment and was soon pushing himself through rehab in Denver. His aim was to return to the slopes and re-establish himself as a force in the sport he loved. However, his doctors had warned his family that he was now six times more likely to suffer another wipe-out and that any significant bang on the head could well prove fatal.

Frustrated with the slowness of his recovery and resentful that he could not resume his career, Kevin became difficult to live with, as he set his sights on returning to the powder. Brother David, who is himself a fierce competitor and has won a number of medals at the Special Olympics, pleads with him not to risk his life just to prove how macho he is. And Kevin is further shaken by a visit to a fellow boarder Trevor Rhoda, who suffered two traumatic brain injury within a year and is now entirely dependent upon the care of his mother. Nevertheless, two years after his accident, Kevin rides the slopes at Breckenridge, Colorado. Yet, rather than insisting on pushing on with his training, he decides that he had achieved enough merely by boarding again and he bows to family pressure and announces his retirement.

Kevin has since found a new métier as a commentator. But he receives a shocking reminder of how lucky he was in January 2012 when Sarah Burke, the blonde Canadian queen of freestyle skiing, died after lying in a coma for nine days following a crash at the same Park City track where Pearce had sustained his injuries. As she had no insurance, her family is left with a $500,000 medical bill and Kevin decides to lend his name to a campaign to encourage snow athletes to wear crash helmets and other protective gear when training, as well as competing.

Superbly edited by Pablo Kos from materials gleaned from 232 archival sources, this is as much a celebration of sporting excellence as it is a cautionary tale. Yet, for all the pumping rock and kinetic montage sequences, there is no doubt that Walker dislikes the way in which the media glamorises extreme endeavours and identifies as much with the family members sharing Kevin's pain as she does with his heroic recovery. The contributions made by the devoted David could so easily have been presented in a maudlin manner. But, even though the climactic sequence shows David and Kevin challenging each other to accept their limitations, Walker eschews easy emotion, even as Kevin behaves boorishly to family and friends while struggling to come to terms with the loss of his cherished lifestyle. However, the film's great strength lies in the way Walker understands and balances the arguments on either side and, at a time when so many documentaries exploit domestic dysfunction and tension, it is refreshing to see a family so readily exhibiting genuine affection and encouragement.

A second British woman documentarist pursues another perfervidly driven character in Folie à Deux: Madness Made of Two, in which Kim Hopkins sets herself the challenge of keeping up with mother of seven Helen Heraty, as she strives to convert the handsome and historic Gray's Court in York into a boutique hotel. Situated a stone's throw from the Minster, this 72-roomed, Grade One-listed building has its own ghost and Heraty and partner John Edwards became the first commoners to occupy it when they bought it on impulse for £1.6 million in 2007. However, their timing could not have been worse, as the economic downtown began to impact upon their plans and Heraty finds herself battling banks, planners and grumpy neighbours alone, while Edwards struggles to keep his architectural practice afloat down south.

It's fair to say that Helen Heraty is an acquired taste. Highly opinionated and unswervingly confrontational, she is well aware of what she wants and usually gets her own way. However, she also has a tendency to speak or act before she is in possession of the full facts, which makes her a compelling, if occasionally irksome screen character. She met John Edwards through an advertisement in The Times for a companion and they moved to York after a whirlwind romance with her seven children: Rhiannon (20); John (17); Amber (16); twins Morgan and Michael (14); Kendal (10); and Oliver the toddler. She also as a cat called Smudge and two dogs, Yoshie and Max, and only sees John at weekends.

Such was Helen's need for a fresh challenge that she quit her well-paid job (she was in the top 3% of global earners) to embark upon the conversion with John serving as architect, Bill Shaw as the quantity surveyor and Jill Holst as the interior designer. However, with 11 months to the planned opening, Helen begins to worry that the design quotes are too high at £50,000 per room. John has already sold his holiday home to raise funds and they are talking to the banks about a loan. But, in the spring of 2008, the effects of the American credit crunch crisis begin to be felt across the Atlantic and the banker handling their case becomes increasingly nervous about the sums they wish to borrow.

Adding to the growing tension is a developing feud between Helen and her neighbours. She is convinced that she owns the courtyard outside her property and challenges Jane the National Trust manager when she leaves her wheelie bin in public view. Helen also speaks her mind when deliveries are made to the adjoining Trust addresses and she is less than amused when her lawyers discover that the Trust has had unopposed access to the courtyard for 20 years and that it is now highly unlikely that any court would now disbar them. However, by August, this seems like a minor inconvenience, as Helen rants at Alistair Darling on the television and blames him for causing a financial panic just as she needs the banks to lend her a sizeable sum.

Hopkins asks Helen if she doesn't fear that John is working too hard and could end up like Willy Loman at the end of Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman. It seems a rather left-field and intrusive question. But Hopkins is not averse to involving all of Helen's family in the unfolding drama and follows Michael and Morgan around the house after the former tells a teacher that he hasn't done his homework because his mother has been run over and the latter gets upset when she learns that her sibling has been copying from her exercise books. Rather callously, Helen calls Michael an exasperating little tw*t' and laments that every family has a weird one.

As the National Trust seem to provoke Helen by using community service offenders to perform odd jobs around the courtyard, the manager phones from NatWest to announce that he has decided to start her loan application from scratch to take into account the shifting fiscal situation. An emergency meeting is called with the designers and they are disappointed when Helen informs them she needs to save £340,000 from their budget. Meanwhile, she accuses a tree surgeon of taking the Trust's side in their dispute and he gives her a mouthful when she threatens him with the police. She decides to have a sign made to put in the gateway forbidding entry on Trust business, but this only serves to exasperate tenants like retired QC Gilbert Gray, who has no qualms in pushing the sign out of the way and refuses to be intimidated when she starts taking photographs to prove his vandalism of her property.

By September 2008, the recession has taken a grip and all efforts to find a more sympathetic bank are dashed. Hopkins ventures that the intrepid Helen is finally feeling the strain and she admits she is now worried that they have bought a white elephant they cannot afford to restore and cannot afford to sell on a deteriorating market. Things look up, however, when a couple of bankers from Lloyds TSB come to assess the project and seem quite bullish about getting involved. But they fail to get back to her and Helen fumes at Mervyn King as he declares the British banking system close to collapse on 21 October 2008. Hopkins rather tactlessly suggests this is `Black Friday' and it bleakens further when Helen prods Lloyds into denouncing the entire venture as speculative.

A welcome distraction comes when a ghost is spotted in survey photographs, but, with John's company also feeling the pinch, Helen is coaxed into conceding that she is having doubts and regrets for the first time. She takes little comfort on 24 November when Gordon Brown insists that Labour is adopting the right strategies because the bank is still refusing to lend and has now started bouncing her cheques. Moreover, NatWest is claiming £10,000 pcm interest on the original loan and Helen has to get special permission to pay an engineer threatening to sue for unpaid invoices. When she loses her temper with the manager, he protests that his hands are tied by forces he cannot control and she complains that he is hanging them out to dry by luring them into following their property dream and then changing the rules halfway through.

Worse comes in later 2008 when John's company goes bankrupt and he fears he is now too old to get another job. The children are also becoming concerned and, when the boiler packs up over Christmas, John and Helen demand a meeting with NatWest. The manager tells them that he will commission a valuation, but warns that unless the finished premises are worth £3.5 million he will be forced to reconsider their loan application. A miserable Christmas is assured when Helen forgets to thaw the turkey and John jokes that they can always go scavenging in the bins at Pret A Manger.

But Helen is back on fighting form by New Year's Eve, when Jane invites three carloads of friends to a party and Helen parks in such a way as to block them all in and defies the police when they come next morning to demand that she lets the vehicles pass. A senior officer arrives and tells his Irish female subordinate that Helen is entitled to park wherever she likes and John makes an unnecessarily sniping remark about her sexuality. Delighted to have the upper hand for once, Helen agrees to move if Jane apologises and she revels in the knowledge that her enemy is scared of her. 

Seven weeks pass and Helen still awaits the valuation. She phones NatWest to complain and tells Hopkins that she thinks the manager is a coward for failing to back them. Oliver shows off while playing hide and seek, but the rest of the children help out with a major spring clean and Helen is confident this will help them raise an additional £1.3 million. However, when the valuer finally calls, he stresses how much property prices have fallen and Helen admits she has started doing the lottery as a last resort. (What is never explained, however, is why, if she is such a high-powered sort, she doesn't go back to work and bring in the hefty salary that could solve many of their problems). But she is genuinely shocked when the valuation verdict of £500,000 arrives, with a rider that it would only be worth £1.8 million after three years of healthy trading.

Suddenly, the dream has become a nightmare and Helen opens a bottle of wine, as she admits that they could soon be homeless and penniless. Hopkins asks rather tactlessly what Helen proposes to do next and she merely shrugs. Within a fortnight, however, she has devised an action plan of turning the gallery into a café to bring in some much-needed cash to keep the interest under control. She uses her credit card to have the floors sanded and positions potted plants around a portion of the courtyard to create a table area. However, the National Trust insist upon their removal by claiming squatters' rights and, when Helen goes to the city archive, she discovers that they have a prescriptive right dating back to the 1980s. She also finds out that the ownership of the land has been disputed since 1795 and that she could claim prescriptive rights to an unused entrance at the rear of the courtyard. But, it soon becomes clear as John tries to drive their car down the narrow passageway, that this is a hollow victory.

Helen spends £60,000 on the café and a new kitchen, but she can barely meet her costs and pay the staff wages on the first day's take of around £500 in the summer of 2009. A year later, the café is still losing money and not only does Jane still leave her bin out, but Gray films everything that Helen does. She complains that the squatters have won, but refuses to let them know they have upset her. Hopkins asks why she persists when her scheme is causing family friction and Helen says that she cannot afford to give up.

A year later and Helen has a race against time to get the hotel finished before its grand opening. She chats on the phone on New Year's Eve 2011 and reveals that John has died and that his ashes are going to be scattered at his favourite spot, Alnmouth Beach. It's a misty morning and Helen feels angry that John worked so hard on a project he couldn't see come to fruition because of the fiscal recklessness of some and the timidity of others. Hopkins rather smugly reminds her of Willy Loman and notes the irony that Gray's Court now caters for funerals. Helen shows her round and admits to using John's insurance money to complete the work.

As the film ends, Hopkins reveals that Gilbert Gray died in 2011 and that Helen and the National Trust brokered a truce over the courtyard and that Helen became a member as a gesture of goodwill. She has always obviously possessed such pragmatism, but she clearly derives much pleasure from a showdown and it is this spikiness that makes Ms Heraty such a fine subject for a documentary. In many ways, this is a mirror image of Lauren Greenfield's The Queen of Versailles, with the scene shifting from Las Vegas to Yorkshire and British haute bourgeois pluck replacing Yankee nouveau riche swagger.

Like Jackie Siegel, Helen is very much a Marmite character. But what is so fascinating here is less the intra-familial dynamic, but the relationship between Heraty and Hopkins. There seem to be no boundaries and Hopkins clearly has no compunction in including episodes that might strike many as private or requiring a greater degree of tact than she displays. Yet, Heraty is well aware that there is no such thing as bad publicity and recognises that the film is a key selling tool for her hotel. Consequently, she puts up with the odd impertinence or indelicate inquiry and, by being herself throughout the protracted shoot, she emerges as a woman of strength, integrity and determination - unlike the politicians haplessly striving to navigate the nation through the downturn and the corporate functionaries left to bear the brunt of customer fury with their hands by their fat cat bosses.

It would be fascinating to witness an encounter between Helen Heraty and Slavoj Žižek, the Slovenian philosopher who has, over the last decade, become the screen's leading iconoclast. Having introduced himself in Ben Wright's Manufacturing Reality: Slavoj Zizek and the Reality of the Virtual (2004), he reinforced his reputation for quirky observation in Astra Taylor's Zizek! (2005) and Examined Life (2008). However, he seems to have found his cinematic soulmate in Sophie Fiennes, as the pair retain the deceptively playful style devised for The Pervert's Guide to Cinema (2006) in The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, which enables Žižek to present his loquacious dissertation on recreated sets from the very films he is using to illustrate his thesis. It's a tour de force performance that confirms Žižek's status as academe's stand-up superstar. Yet, for all its acuity, this is also a curiously unfocused diatribe that often feels like a highbrow version of the Kevin Bacon Game.

Žižek launches forth while standing beside a dumpster in the Los Angeles alleyway used by John Carpenter in They Live (1988), the story of a man who discovers some sunglasses that cut through the cant of modern living. Rather mischievously dubbing the picture `one of the forgotten masterpieces of the Hollywood left', Žižek opines that we spend out lives eating out of the trash can of ideology. Yet, we no longer have to suffer to uphold our ideological causes because society has downplayed them in insisting that our principle duty is to enjoy ourselves. There is a difference between enjoyment and simple pleasure, however, as the former also includes the possibility of pain and Žižek explains that desire is based upon a lack of an ideal placed just out of our reach. He suggests that religion operates around this lack and uses the `Climb Every Mountain' scene from Robert Wise's The Sound of Music (1965) to show how Catholicism is different from other religions in that it invites followers to have it all.

The song dubbed by Marni Nixon for Peggy Wood was cut from the version that Žižek saw as a youth in Yugoslavia, as the state censor recognised its aspirational lyrics hardly chimed in with the Communist message. But advertisers have continued to embrace its ethos and have long applied it to slogans for Coca-Cola. One memorable line proclaimed that `Coke is it!', but Žižek reveals that the combination of a chocolate egg and a mystery gift inside a Kinder Surprise actually materialises the `it' in a neatly harmonious manner. However, he warns that we should always be wary when things appear to be so perfect and employs the example of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony to prove his point. The famous `Ode to Joy' is taken to reflect the dream of a peaceful world. But Beethoven was not `a cheap celebrator of the brotherhood of all people'. Instead, he sought to show how social antagonism continually disturbs the easy emotional impulse and we should not be surprised to learn that `Ode to Joy' has been pressed into service as an anthem for the united German team competing at the Olympics between 1956 and 1968, the European Union and the white supremacist state of Rhodesia. 

Of course, `a bit of the old Ludwig van' played a key role in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1973) and Žižek contrasts the vicious delinquency in this adaptation of Anthony Burgess's novel with the cosier kind on view in Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins's West Side Story (1961). Indeed, he uses the lyrics to the song `Gee Officer Krupke' to beat the liberal commentators who tried to excuse the kids who exploited the 2011 London Riots to go on a looting rampage. Moreover, he compares this desperate lashing out against an uncaring system with Travis Bickle's violent outburst in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and Anders Breivik's killing spree in Oslo in the same summer of 2011. Žižek avers that, in such cases, ideology is a lie masking our inability to understand the world and our place within it.

Having used Ethan Edwards's rescue of his niece from the Comanche in John Ford's The Searchers (1956) to demonstrate how a frightened society reacts to alien interlopers, Žižek utilises Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) to explain the success of the most extreme ideology of the last century, National Socialism. He also compares Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic policies with John Major's back to basics assault on unemployed teenage mothers as an example of how to governments scapegoat minorities to enlist public support. However, Žižek wisely points out over clips from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1935) and Bob Fosse's Cabaret (1972) how surprisingly close certain aspects of Nazi and Communist ideology actually were and he seems to delight in the way the heavy metal combo Rammstein has reclaimed debased notions from the Third Reich and, in the process, proved how pernicious they were in the hands of master propagandists. .

Žižek next confesses to a liking for Starbucks cappuccino, but explains how cleverly the company plays on consumer guilt to excuse its high prices by boosting the good causes it promotes through its profits. He insists that capitalism could not function unless it consistently condoned our self-indulgence. Yet, one only has to look at the discarded aeroplanes in the Mojave Desert to realise that our heedless consumption is having a deleterious effect upon the environment. According to Žižek, such waste forces us to experience ourselves as historical beings and he points to apocalyptic pictures like Francis Lawrence's I Am Legend (2007) as the embodiment of the `inertia of the real', which requires us to accept that failure and dissipation are elements of an evolution we should embrace rather than resist because capitalism thrives on crisis.

Cutting away from the plane graveyard, Žižek takes us to the bed of the Atlantic Ocean to find the wreck of the liner at the centre of James Cameron's inspired piece of Hollywood Marxism, Titanic (1997). Superficially, this is an egalitarian tale of cross-class romance. But, in Žižek's eyes, it demonstrates how the exhausted élite feeds off the energy of the lower classes to reinvigorate itself and keep them in their place. He opines that even iconic events need to be reassessed and, over an extract from Jan Nemec's Oratorio for Prague (1968), he suggests that the Prague Spring of 1967 needed to end in Soviet oppression for its core dream to remain alive, as if the people had toppled the Communist regime, the sheen of their idealism might well have been tarnished by the consequences of their actions when they became responsible for governing themselves.

Returning to Titanic, Žižek declares it a highly conservative film, as its purpose is `the production of the couple'. However, this is not exclusively a Hollywood trait, as one of the great works of Soviet Socalist Realism, Mikhail Chiaureli's The Fall of Berlin (1949), also binds its action together with a love story. Indeed, this colour flagwaver even boasted dialogue written by Josef Stalin himself. But the ideological message would have been lost without the romance between Natasha (Marina Kovaleva) and Alesha (Boris Andreev), as what would have been the point of surviving the Great Patriotic War unless there was someone back home making the defence of the revolution seem so worthwhile.

From here, Žižek leaps to the unwritten rules that underpin the British public school system and the American military and uses clips from Lindsay Anderson's If... (1968), Robert Atlman's M*A*S*H (1970) and Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987) to highlight the obscene enjoyment many derive from belonging to such institutions. Yet, as the pictures of the humiliated prisoners at Abu Grahib prove, it is all-too-easy to overstep boundaries and Žižek wonders how this affects the maintenance of the social order. However, it is not just ordinary citizens or agents of the establishment who abuse power and Žižek contrasts the ruse used to restore faith in Batman in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008) with the 45 second lie used by George W. Bush and Tony Blair to justify the invasion of Iraq. Indeed, he goes further in denouncing elected governments that pay lip service to democracy while doing whatever if deems fit to retain power. 

The fundamentalists behind 9/11 claim to have been doing the will of Allah and Žižek turns around a quotation by Jean-Paul Sartre that is often mistakenly attributed to Fedor Dostoevsky to claim that everything is possible because God exists. If atrocities can, therefore, be laid at the door of a higher order, there is no wonder humanity sets such store by what psychoanalysts call `the big Other', as this can be applied to an extreme belief in any doctrine. Both Lenin and Stalin insisted that acts perpetrated in the name of Soviet Communism were necessary to advance historical progress and Žižek applauds Miloš Forman for having the intelligence to turn his satirical gaze away from the leadership in The Loves of a Blonde (1965) and The Fireman's Ball (1967) and focus it on the masses, as they gave legitimacy to the regime and, if they could be shown to be so deeply flawed, then ridicule reflected back upon the Czechoslovak authorities. 

The big Other doesn't simply give out lives meaning, however. It is also a virtual entity that serves as the ultimate witness to our actions. Yet, Žižek isn't sure such an entity exists and uses Celia Johnson's inability to confide in her gossipy friend Everley Gregg in David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945) as proof. He also suggests that we take solace in bureaucracy, like the one depicted in Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985), to atone for the fact that there is no divine being. Warming to his theme, Žižek says that being liberated from ideology is the ideal state and audaciously employs the Crucifixion sequence from Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) to support his notion that there is no god and that Christianity is unique in incorporating doubts about its veracity in its own teachings, ranging from the Book of Job to the gospels.

Jesus Christ rose from the dead and Žižek ponders whether it is possible to be `reborn' in a state devoid of ideology. He finds his answer, however, in John Frankenheimer's chilling allegory, Seconds (1966), as the ageing man who is given a new identity and the chance to forge a second life pines for what he left behind in his previous existence and pays a cruel price for his nostalgic weakness. Such attachments to the old order have prevented humanity from dreaming beyond its existing state and Žižek alludes to the desert orgy in Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970) to show how quickly the hippie ideal of the mid-1960s began to fail and explain why epoch-shattering revolution is so rare.

Cinema is the art of dreams and, as such, allows us to assess the ideologies governing our world. `We are not simply submitted to our dreams,' Žižek concludes, `they just come from some unfathomable depths and we can't do anything about them. Our dreams stage our desires and our desires are not objective facts. We created them, we sustained them, we are responsible for them.' Given the state of the planet, perhaps the time has come to become realists instead of dreamers and demand changes in the social, economic and political orders, as `the depressing lesson of the last decades is that capitalism has been the true revolutionising force'. But, even if our utopian vision turns out to be impossible, we should not despair and should remain vigilant because although `the ghosts, the living dead, of the past failed revolutions are roaming around unsatisfied, they will find their home in the new freedom!'

Let's get one thing straight. This is not a definitive account of The Pervert's Guide to Ideology. It is merely the attempt of a reasonably bright bloke to keep up with the torrent of ideas and asides espoused by Slavoj Žižek during this demanding, but endlessly enjoyable film. Some of the links are extremely tenuous and this doesn't come close to a coherent thesis. Instead, it feels like a lecture by a scatty don whose notes are in the wrong order. Yet, with his skittish gestures and distinctive articulation, Žižek proves an irresistible companion and there is much more of a twinkle of knowing humour in his eyes here than in previous outings.

Sophie Fiennes seems to recognise this and the settings designed by Lucy van Lonkhuyzen are often as hilarious as they are apposite. The standouts see Žižek lying on Travis Bickle's bed with his shoes off (Taxi Driver), sitting in Hitler's plane seat (Triumph of the Will), standing on the steps of Stalin's aircraft (The Fall of Berlin), perching on a barrack-room toilet (Full Metal Jacket) and reclining on a gurney being rushed towards oblivion in Seconds. The moments afloat from Jaws and Titanic are less effective, but Fiennes, Žižek and editor Ethel Shepherd seem willing throughout to go with what tickles them and accept that not every gag will be equally appreciated. Indeed, this hit-and-miss attitude pervades the entire picture, with some of Žižek's assertions feeling less persuasive than others. Thus, as a `critique of ideology', this is clearly more populist than scholarly. But, while he frequently covers his back with vague pronouncements like `ideology is an empty container open to all possible meanings',  Žižek remains a beguiling performer and this undeniably difficult film more than repays the concentration it demands.

A growing number of documentaries have been made in recent times about North Korea, but none has been as crushingly compelling as Marc Wiese's Camp 14: Total Control Zone. Rarely has mankind's depravity been more starkly or chillingly exposed than in the testimony of Shin Dong-huyk, who had lived his entire life in the eponymous punishment camp before he escaped to China at the age of 23. Wiese supplements Shin's harrowing recollections with confessions by ex-secret policeman Oh Yang-nam and former camp guard Hyuk Kwon, who have also sought sanctuary in South Korea. But it is Shin's struggle to compose himself as he remembers deeds of hideous inhumanity that leaves the deepest impression, if only because it is clear that he became so conditioned to the cruelty of the regime that he now finds freedom almost impossible to bear.

There is nothing normal about any aspect of Shin Dong-huyk's early life. His parents came together at the camp in Kaechon when his mother was given to his father as a reward for his good behaviour. At the age of four, Shin witnessed his first public execution and, two years later, he started work in the camp mine. He lived with his mother in a room with no furniture, but rarely saw his father and brother and had no concept of family. Instead, he accepted that he would always be hungry (unless he could catch and cook a rat) and that his every move would be monitored by guards who tortured, raped and murder inmates with impunity.

On one occasion, Shin watched an eight year-old girl endure a three-hour beating from her teacher for having five grains of rice in her pocket. Yet, Shin felt no distress when she died. Similarly, when he was 14, he had no qualms about informing his teacher when he heard his mother and brother discussing a plan to hide him from the overseers and he looked on impassively as the former was hanged and the latter shot for their treachery. Shin himself spent seven months in the cells while the case was being investigated, during which time he was repeatedly tortured. But, knowing no other existence, he submitted to another nine years of injustice before he became the only known person to escape from a North Korean labour camp. As a result, some have doubted the veracity of his story, but his memories are fully corroborated here by Oh Yang-nam and Hyuk Kwon.

Oh seems penitent for his misdeeds, but Hyuk shows off the illicit movies he smuggled out of the north with an evident pride that also informs his accounts of the crimes he committed in Camp 22. As with Shin's segments, Wiese illustrates the descriptions with sombre animations by Ali Soozndeh, which recall those he created for The Green Wave, Ali Samadi Ahadi's 2010 study of the abortive Iranian Revolution. Wiese also accompanies Shin as he meets with members of Liberty in North Korea and as he goes shopping in a large Seoul grocery store. In each instance, Shin seems uncomfortable, as the joviality of his fellow delegates and the sight of the full shelves bring home the deprivations he experienced in the camp and how difficult he is finding the transition to living according to his own rules rather than those imposed upon him by brainwashed, trigger-happy martinets.

Given the severity of the culture shock, it's not perhaps surprising that Shin should admit at one point to wanting to go back to the camp, as he knew where he stood there. Such deep psychological scarring often leaves one feeling uneasy about the effect that Shin's participation in the film is having on his well-being. But Wiese never exploits him and Shin himself seems well aware of the need to speak out, as this is not a reminiscence about the operation of a since-toppled tyranny. The figurehead in Pyongyang might have changed, but the camps still exist and, appallingly, their dehumanising work continues unabated in the second decade of the 21st century.

Finally, Craig Rosebraugh comes out with all guns blazing in Greedy Lying Bastards, an assault on climate change deniers and the cynical conglomerates bankrolling them that means well, but lacks the focus and control to score many meaningful hits. Regurgitating accusations made more cogently elsewhere, this states its case with laudable zeal. But Rosebraugh makes the dual mistake of demonising and ridiculing his adversaries rather than confounding their arguments. Consequently, this comes across as self-satisfied rather than trenchant and its archly satirical approach grievously undermines its entirely valid arguments.

Rosebraugh opens dramatically with phone footage of a fire raging through Waldo Canyon in Colorado, which he follows up with a montage of soundbites by leading climate sceptics insisting that the planet is in no danger from largely mythical changes in its atmosphere and temperature. These specious claims are set against images of droughts, floods, fires and hurricanes that are accompanied by a stout assertion that such phenomena have been caused by an over-dependency on fossil fuels that the major corporations are bent on defending because they set greater store by short-term profit than the long-term survival of our species. Yet, while the clips recalling the devastation of the Alaskan village of Kivalina and the threat facing the South Pacific islands of Tuvalu are as potent as the alarming statistics supplied by assembled specialists like Kevin Trenberth, Rick Piltz and Mark Serreze the stridency of Rosebraugh's narration is positively off-putting.

Bolstered by organisations like Americans for Prosperity and the Heartland Institute, the campaign run by the naysayers thrives on challenging scientific research and creating doubt among the masses. Appearing on news programmes and on speaker platforms across the United States, advocates like Tim Philips, Glenn Beck, Myron Ebell, Christopher Monckton and Senator James Inhofe seek to re-ignite debates whose conclusions have been reached long ago. Essentially lobbyists for such firms as Exxon-Mobil or empires like the one owned by billionaire brothers David H. and Charles G. Koch, these sophistrists use glib phrases to undermine complex scientific concepts in much the same way that the tobacco industry used to deny there was a link between smoking and disease. They are, therefore, easy targets for denunciation. But, by being every bit as smug in his own narration, Rosebraugh succeeds only in alienating those who would otherwise agree with just about everything he says.

There have been so many eco-documentaries over the last few years that it has become difficult for activists to find a new angle to alert audiences to the very real dangers posed by global warming. As the author of a book on the Earth Liberation Front, Rosebraugh certainly knows his stuff. Why else would he have been summoned by Congress to give his opinion on climate change? But this is such a splenetic tirade that any expertise is drowned out by the snarky name calling that would even embarrass Michael Moore.