Letter to the Globe - Let's Not Forget Sudan

I sent this letter to the Globe a week ago; at this point it seems unlikely they will publish it. Nor have they published other letters on the crisis in Sudan--and nor have many letters on this topic appeared in the New York Times (another newspaper that's been doing a good job of covering the crisis). Sadly, it seems that Gaza and Ukraine may have crowded out what seems likely to be at least as great a tragedy. Just to give some idea of the scale, it's been credibly reported that the RSF (the total nasties who are fighting the somewhat-less-nasty Sudanese official government) massacred 15,000 people in a single urban center a few months ago--https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/ethnic-killings-one-sudan-city-left-up-15000-dead-un-report-2024-01-19/. Not only should our governments be doing much more; we should be doing much more as individuals (or, at least, those of us who can afford it), donating to the UN World Food Agency, Medicins Sans Frontiers, Unicef, or to any other of the aid agencies that desperately need more funds to help them help those who need help.

Re ”Response to plea for Sudan aid falls short” (March 22): Credit goes to Geoffrey York and the Globe for providing incisive coverage of a conflict that so much of the media is ignoring. Vitally important though the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine are, we should not let them overshadow what may well be an even greater catastrophe in Sudan, with “tens of thousands of civilians killed,” as well as “8½ million forced to flee their homes” and “18 million facing acute food insecurity.” To date, Canada has committed over $100 million to Gaza aid. We should surely be providing at least as much to help the millions who are homeless and starving in Sudan; so far we’ve pledged well under half that amount.

The Best Films of 2023: Barbie and Simple Comme Sylvain/The Nature of Love

It seems likely at this point that the 2023 Academy Awards will have a good deal in common with the 1939 Academy Awards and the 1959 Academy Awards; one of the funniest and most original comedies of all time will lose to a bloated historical drama with impressive special effects. In 1939 it was The Philadelphia Story losing out to Gone with the Wind. In 1959 it was Some Like It Hot (not even nominated) losing out to Ben Hur. And this year it will of course be Barbie losing out to Oppenheimer.

The case that Barbie (and Greta Gerwig) deserve to win the Best Picture Oscar has been very well made elsewhere (see, for example, Ann Lee’s “Why Barbie Should Win the Best Picture Oscar” in the March 5 issue of The Guardian); it doesn't need a boost from me. The great comedy by a woman director that does need more of a boost (in the English-speaking world, at least) is arguably Monia Chokri’s Simple Comme Sylvain (entitled The Nature of Love in its English-language subtitled release). It tells the story of how the happy-enough but largely sexless marriage of Sophia and Xavier is disrupted when Sophia and Sylvain (who has been hired to renovate Sophia and Xavier’s chalet) enter into a passionate affair. There are no villains and no heroes in the piece; we sympathize with all the characters. The dialogue is quite often excruciating at the same time as it is excruciatingly funny (“I think I might have met someone,” is how Sophia begins to break the news of the affair to her loving husband.) The difference in social class between the two lovers (and between their families) is the source of much of the film’s comedy—and also of considerable sadness. It’s a film that makes viewers think too—about love, about sexual attraction, and about social class. As Konrad Yakabuski reported in the March 2 Globe and Mail, Simple Comme Sylvain beat out Oppenheimer for the Best Foreign Film award at France’s César Awards. My partner Maureen and I watched the film after seeing Yakabuski’s column—and we both agreed that the French are right in thinking Simple Comme Sylvain a better film than the overly long, pretentious, and badly organized Oppenheimer. You can rent Simple Comme Sylvain/The Nature of Love online through several sites; it’s worth it!

(I also wrote about Oppenheimer in a Jan. 14 post, "Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer—and Heinar Kipphardt’s In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer"--see below.)