The Station Agent, a SenArt Film by Tom McCarthy, reviewed by Kathy Lowe HERE'S a film that's the perfect antidote to the sentimentality, violence and reactionary values of Hollywood.
Unusually, the central character of The Station Agent is a young man 4 feet 5 inches tall. Finbar McBride copes with his anger about being a dwarf' and with the prejudice of others towards him by withdrawing into solitude.
Writer-director Tom McCarthy makes us see the world from Fin's point of view and takes us with him on a journey of personal liberation.
A train enthusiast, Fin unexpectedly inherits a disused station house in the small New Jersey community ot Newtoundland and moves out there.
He's not surprised to encounter the same sniggers and prying eyes he suffered A PAINFUL JOURNEY back in New York but he hopes to be left alone to walk the tracks and go train spotting. He never smiles, never speaks unless spoken to, and keeps everyone at arm's length.
Yet ebullient Cuban hamburger salesman Joe, who craves company, insists on befriending him.
He also comes across Olivia, a reclusive painter mourning her dead son and Cleo, a black schoolgirl who plays alone in the disused railway cars at the side of the track.
Perhaps because Olivia and
Joe feel outof-step themselves with the narrowminded society around them and because they recognise in Fin something of their own fragility, they are drawn to him and confide in him.
They accept Fin and each other at face value, have no truck with the local rednecks who mock him and offer an easy, loyal comradeship he comes to value.
Slowly he opens up, remarking to Olivia: "It's really funny how different people see me and treat me because I'm a dwarf. I'm actually just a simple, boring person."
The repeated shots of Fin striding along the railway tracks, first alone, then with his new-found companions in tow, become a metaphor for his personal journey.
He discovers the rewards of friendship, learning to trust, reach out - even risking rejection and the very kind of pain he has always shielded himself from.
He also begins to confront bigotry and to challenge it.
Another important dimension of The Station Agent is that Fin is shown as an attractive, sexual being who admits to having been in love and is not averse to a full-on kiss from Emily the librarian.
This gem of a film, made on a shoestring with the minimum of technical razzmatazz, tackles big issues with gentle, wry humour.
It is memorable, above all, for a stunning performance by Peter Dinklage as Fin, ably supported by Patricia Clarkson as Olivia and Bobby Cannavale as Joe.
The Station Agent scooped a Bafta prize and won the coveted Audience and Writing awards at the Sundance Film Festival.
If you didn't catch it at the cinema it's now out on DVD and video. Oil as a curse Eastern Cauldron. Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq in a Marxist mirror, (Pluto Press, 2004) £12.99, reviewed by Susan Moore Achcar's book is made up of articles written over almost twenty-five years - between 1980 and 2003. Despite this, they maintain a freshness and a relevance to activists today particularly in the aftermath of George Bush's re-election but also the likely developments in Palestine and Israel following Arafat's death.
The introduction to the book, written specifically for this purpose is a powerful analysis of US strategy in the region, taking up the centrality of the question of oil to the region's geo-strategic importance for American imperialism.
Throughout the work, while damning the Israeli state and its strong alliance with American imperialism, he avoids the trap of is Achcar's essay; The Arab Despotic Experience in which he argues that oil has been a curse for the working class and the oppressed of the region.
He also explains what has become common currency on the left since 9/11, but was hardly recognised when he wrote the piece in 1997 - the way the US administration supported and sometimes created these dictatorial regimes for their own ends.
Other gems include Eleven theses on the Resurgence of Islamic Fundamentalism and the two pieces from the long section on Palestine - Where is the PLO going and The Dynamic of the Intifada.
However in these difficult days after Bush's re-election, as the murderous assault on Fallujah begins it is the concluding piece, "Letter to a slightly Depressed Antiwar activist", written after Baghdad Tell to the US armies last spring that I intend to reread this evening.
Its final lines remind me and all its readers what we have achieved since 9/11, as well