The Guardian 20 April, 2005
TV programs worth watching
Sun April 24 - Sat April 30
The composer under the spotlight in this week's episode of Howard Goodall's Great
Dates is Mozart and the date in question is 1791 (ABC 2.00pm Sundays). It is another
fascinating exercise in relating a composer's work to the historical and social conditions of his
time.
Goodall gives short shrift to the myths that sprang up around Mozart's early death, especially
the ones perpetuated — or even perpetrated — by that travesty of history Amadeus. The
truth is much more interesting.
Goodall shows how Mozart was deeply influenced by the Enlightenment, the revolutionary
philosophical and political movement of the 18th Century, which in turn influenced the French
and American Revolutions (both at their height in 1791).
Goodall demonstrates the radical change in musical form as the free-wheeling adornment of
baroque was replaced by structured — and more pleasing — forms exemplified by the
sonata.
And he traces the wealth of philosophical ideas in Mozart's extraordinary opera for the masses,
The Magic Flute.
Hopefully, Revealing Gallipoli (ABC 7.30pm Sunday) should dispel a few
myths too. A joint production by broadcasters in Australia, Turkey, New Zealand, Wales and
Ireland, it takes a sober, no nonsense approach to its subject, showing the campaign to capture
the Gallipoli peninsula (and then Constantinople) as the useless bloody slaughter that it
was.
Officers on both sides had no compunction about sending men "over the top" to certain death in
futile efforts to capture a few metres of ground that were of no military significance whatsoever.
And, as the commentary points out, they did this time and again.
Considerable effort — imaginative effort at times — has been spent on treating the archival
images (mainly still photographs) to make them appear three dimensional or to have the illusion
of movement within them.
The three on-screen commentators (the Australian War Memorial's principal historian Dr Peter
Stanley, Turkish filmmaker Savas Karakas — the grandson of a Gallipoli veteran — and
prominent Irish historian Professor Keith Jeffery) are integrated into the battlefield as it is today
so thoroughly that you begin to remember them as being there with the troops.
But it is the program's attitude to authority that you notice most of all, as the commentators
reveal the ineptitude of Churchill's original plan, the greater ineptitude of the attempt to carry it
out, and the truly appalling number of casualties that resulted on both sides.
Wain Fimeri, who directed Revealing Gallipoli, also directed the program that follows it,
Love Letters From A War (ABC 9.10pm Sunday). This is a repeat screening
of this touching true story about a country couple from Albury and the grief the War (WW2 in
this case) brings them.
John and Josie Johnson battle through the Depression, living on rabbits, and struggle to bring
up their seven kids. When the War comes, although they have another kid on the way, John
volunteers.
He is sent to the Middle East and eventually to Tobruk, where he cops it.
Adapted from their short but frequent letters, the film is excellently filmed, well written and very
well acted. Andrew Blackman is perfectly cast as John but Trudie Hellier as Josie is the
standout performance. There are lines in the real Josie's letters that remind you eerily of Jane
Austen.
Running the two programs back to back however does have one small flaw: it makes all too
obvious the way Fimeri has used the same piece of footage — of a ship leaving a wharf,
streamers flapping, and a lone young girl walking away down the deserted wharf — to represent
two different ships, two different ports and even two different wars.
April 30th 2005 marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon and this occasion is being
marked by, amongst other things, a program about the unprecedented movement against the
war in Vietnam that developed within the US military.
Sir! No Sir (SBS 9.30pm Thursday) tells how through demonstrations,
underground newspapers, combat refusals and more, American GI's altered the course of the
Vietnam War and rocked the foundations of the American military.
By 1971, resistance had grown to a level of mass defiance that rendered the majority of ground
troops "unreliable" in the eyes of their government. A Pentagon study that year determined
more than half of all troops in the military opposed the war.
Yet today, the memory of the GI movement has been buried.
With hundreds of thousands of American soldiers again spread across the globe and signs of
opposition emerging among troops Sir! No Sir resurrects the suppressed memory of the
GI movement.
SBS is marking the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, not with a program about the
anti-fascist alliance that was the key to the defeat of Hitler and co, nor a program about the 26
million people the Soviet Union lost in because of Hitler and his backers.
No, we are being given yet another program about the last days of poor Adolf, deep in his
bunker, still fantasising about victory even as retribution for those 26 million dead Soviet citizens
was smashing its way towards his bunker door.
The Bunker (SBS 7.30pm Saturday) is a mixture of dramatic reconstruction
and documentary (in the modern manner) from German television network ZDF. Conceived as
"psychological portrait", this latest addition to Hitler lore, asks such profound questions as: Did
Hitler know what was really happening outside of his bunker?
A question I would like to ask is: If the German people had known where Hitler was, had caught
him, shot him and hanged him by his heels (like his fellow fascist dictator Mussolini) would there
still be this fascination with his last days? I think not.
Faith and Fear: The Children of Krishna, screening in the Hot Docs
timeslot (SBS 10.00pm Tuesday), explores the abandonment and abuse of children raised in
Hare Krishna boarding schools. The program traces the history of the Hare Krishna religion,
inaugurated in New York's Bowery district, and follows its meteoric climb through American pop
culture. Also examined are the Krishna's proselytising and fundraising activities.
Dozens of young adults have now come forward with chilling allegations of systematic abuse by
teachers and caretakers at Hare Krishna boarding schools across North America. The alleged
abuse is now the subject of a landmark $400 million lawsuit filed in Texas.
Plaintiffs include scores of former students; defendants include the International Society for
Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) and dozens of former teachers and officials at the now-
closed boarding schools.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit claim they were sent to boarding schools in order to allow their parents to
spend most of their time raising money for the movement. They charge that the result was
substantial and repeated physical, sexual and emotional abuse.
If successful, the lawsuit could strip ISKCON of most or all of its North American assets. The
current ISKCON leadership admits much of the abuse but has decried the overwhelming size of
the claim, offering to pay the plaintiffs a much smaller sum to assist with counselling and
rehabilitation.