Locke: a classic gem

Occasionally, one comes across a real little gem on TV (and I should say in passing that Netflix is good at producing them).

The latest we’ve watched is a TV-length film, Locke, written and directed by Steven Knight. No, nothing to do with the philosopher. In fact, the eponymous protagonist, played with fine self-restraint by Tom Hardy, is a construction director, on the eve of the greatest “concrete-pour” Europe has ever known. And he’s leaving his post in charge of this historic event…

Locke: short but classically perfect

What makes it a gem? It reminded me of so much from my long-distant student past. I studied French, and therefore, in particular, the drama of the seventeenth century, and its preoccupation with observing the canons of classical theatre. The unities, for instance, of place and time and plot. And the carefully prescribed elements of tragedy.

Tragedy,” explains Aristotle in the Poetics, the authority on these matters, is an imitation not only of a complete action, but also of incidents arousing pity and fear. Such incidents have the very greatest effect on the mind when they occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence of one another; there is more of the marvellous in them then than if they happened of themselves or by mere chance. Even matters of chance seem most marvellous if there is an appearance of design as it were in them; as for instance when the statue of Mitys at Argos killed the author of Mitys’ death by falling down on him when a looker-on at a public spectacle; for incidents like that we think to be not without a meaning. A Plot, therefore, of this sort is necessarily finer than others.

Locke gives us all of this.

The unities are all about plausibility. How can an audience be expected to believe that several years have passed, when they’ve been siting in their seats for only an hour or two? The seventeenth century in fact took a bit of a liberty: the action could be stretched to twenty-four hours and still respect the unity of time, but no more. Locke does far better: it occurs as near as possible in real time – it lasts an hour and a half and shows us an hour and half of a man’s life.

Similarly, the unity of place was designed to limit the need for suspension of disbelief, by not constantly moving the setting of the action. None of the brutal, anarchic shifting around the place as in that uncouth Shakespeare: you couldn’t have a play start in a Royal Palace, continue at Southampton as the King prepares to cross the Channel with his army, and culminate in a muddy field near Agincourt in Northern France. Now Locke handles this unity cleverly: we travel from the English Midlands to London, but always in the protagonist’s car.

Finally, Locke majestically maintains unity of plot: the focus is entirely on Locke, as his life gradually unravels before our eyes, from one mobile phone call to the next.

And those calls? Exactly the components of tragedy for Aristotle: incidents that occur unexpectedly and at the same time in consequence of one other. Locke is a man who made a mistake but is true to himself. It is that mistake and his unbending commitment to the principle that he will make it right that will destroy him. There is indeed even a sense that his fate is in his genes, as he explains to his absent, dead father that he has no intention of behaving in the same shameful way, even at the cost this will inevitably inflict on him.

So we sit and watch his destiny grind out stolidly, imperturbably, inescapably, event by event, call by call. Our fear and pity mount for the man who cannot escape the effects of the machine he himself set going. Like Mitys’ murderer killed by Mitys’ statue, one event linked to the other, he is being crushed by its inexorable logic.

Just an hour and a half. A real gem for anyone who might enjoy the classic canons applied, with freshness and intelligence, in a modern setting.

The best of friends

Being made redundant is, I’ll admit, a pretty depressing experience (particularly when it happens for the third time – why, I may soon have to start wondering whether I’ve been doing something wrong in my career, a thought that had never previously occurred to me). However, there are benefits too.

First of all, there’s the time for reflection offered by what I hope will turn out to be a brief period of unemployment. Then there’s the redundancy itself which can be quite a learning experience.

In my case this has led to my giving some thought to the nature of friendship.

My reflections were helped by listening to a discussion on the theme in an old episode of In Our Time. The participants started their review way back in classical antiquity.

Now I should say that I don’t always go along with the unquestioning admiration of all things Greek. For instance, Plato’s Lysis which I learned is devoted to the subject of friendship, rules out the attraction of opposites as a possible basis. This is because it would imply the good being attracted to the bad. This strikes me as a painfully formalistic and limited view of good: two people of opposite temperament can still both be good – there are many ways to be good. My way of being good may be the best way, but I’m tolerant and broad-minded enough to admit that yours may not be entirely without merit.

What really interested me was when they got onto the subject of Aristotle. He, it seems, distinguished three categories of friendship on the basis of utility, enjoyment or excellence. The problem with the first two is that as soon as the utility or enjoyment ends, so does the friendship – only the third endures.

Now this I can go along with. Utility friendship is clearly the kind of thing that exists in general between colleagues. At the lowest end of the scale, it’s forced – you oblige yourself to get on with people you’d probably go out of your way to avoid, left to your own devices. I confess I’m not good at that kind of artificial friendliness as people read my real feelings much too easily. I like to think that I have no patience with fools, but lots of people link to think that: after all, it’s a neatly disguised boast wrapped in contempt for others. Clearly, I think numerous people around me are fools, while thinking that I’m not a fool myself. Ironically, I’m probably at my most foolish when I get impatient with others who disagree me with me (and class themselves by that token with the fools).

Then there are the colleagues with whom one can have a real friendship. These are people one admires or who do outstanding work or with whom it’s just fun to work. Sadly, however, once we part company there’s little basis for the friendship to continue. It’s a pity, but I suspect before long all I’ll have of these utility friends is some pleasant memories and a sense of pride over some of our of things we achieved together.

This is the same as what happens with friends of enjoyment. Drinking friends or friends with whom one plays football are great until one realises that hangovers really aren’t much fun and running up and down the same pitch several dozen times is no way to spend an hour or two. When you go off to do something a bit more rational – which means more or less anything – you tend to lose touch with the old friends, some of them getting very old, who are still trying to cling on to the image of their youth and its pastimes.

Then there are the friends of excellence. These are the ones to whom you’re bound by an affection that’s mutual and unconditional: they’re your friends not because they’re cleverer or more skilful or more amusing than others but because they are who they are. No-one summarised that better than Michel de Montaigne, the sixteenth-century French writer. After his friend the poet Etienne de la Boétie died, he wrote if people pressed him to say why he loved la Boétie, he could find no better of way of replying than to say ‘because he was Etienne de la Boétie and I was Michel de Montaigne’.

Now that’s the kind of friendship that’s worth having. And I’m glad that I leave my former company with a few friendships of that strength and they won’t be broken by a mere inconvenience like redundancy.