The psychology of mass murder (a brief overview)

We Need to Talk About Kevin - 2011

In a sort-of update to my previous post, I thought I would briefly and tentatively dissect a minute aspect of a multi-layered problem: mass-murder. Much of my thoughts contained herein stem from this article, which talks about psychopathy. I don't believe there is any meaningful conversation to have regarding the link between mental illness and mass-murder, but perhaps by looking at what tenuous links there are, I might educate some people.

Another devastating mass-shooting has taken place in the United States, this time in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, one of the safest states in the country.

In amongst the usual liberal vs. conservative/libertarian arguments over gun-control, I've witnessed a gradual but steady rise in calls for bringing the discussion of mental illness to the table, to make it more "public", as though it were a dirty secret. This comes in the wake of reports that Adam Lanza, the perpetrator of the Sandy Hook shooting, purportedly had a form of autism, or was at the very least "socially awkward", a term often used to describe the kind of "lone, deranged killer" types we're accustomed to hearing about on the news.

The argument, then, is presumably that by raising awareness about mental illness, we can address the issue that REALLY matters, i.e. screening for the wealth of undiagnosed nut-cases stockpiling weapons all around us?

It's fair to say this argument is mostly put forward by conservatives wishing to steer the debate away from the issue of gun-control. This short but sweet response from DSM 5 contributor Dr. Frances sums up my feelings on the matter.

Nonetheless, a troubling and touching account was published today by a mother whose 13-year old son she feels exhibits strong signs of becoming a future Adam Lanza (her article is somewhat dramatically titled "I am Adam Lanza's mother"). She argues that

It's time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health.

What would this conversation be about, in the context of mass-murder, and what outcome would it have? Could we screen for and prevent potential mass-murderers?

Firstly, I think it is important to note that a person with a diagnosis of mental illness is more likely to be a victim of violence rather than the perpetrator.

Secondly, there is not much in the way of literature on the psychology of mass murderers (discounting analyses of historical atrocities like genocide). Seeing as mass murders are relatively few and far between (despite what the media may have you believe), the best we have are case-studies conducted on high-profile individuals after the fact, such as the two perpetrators of the Columbine shootings. 

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, 18 and 17 respectively, have had their motives and minds analysed in a number of books and reports, some less reputable than others. Taking an aggregate of what I've read/heard over the years, the two shooters appear to fit the criteria for psychopathy, or at the very least narcissistic personality disorder.

The year before the massacre, Harris and Klebold had been caught breaking into a van. They avoided prosecution through a “diversion programme” involving counselling and community service. Each wrote a letter of apology, with Harris stressing his empathy for his victim: “I believe you felt a great deal of anger and disappointment.”

But Harris’ journals revealed his true feelings: “Isnt america supposed to be the land of the free? how come If im free, I cant deprive a stupid fucking dumbshit from his possessions If he leaves them sitting in the front seat of his fucking van out in plain sight and in the middle of fucking nowhere on a Frifuckingday night. NATURAL SELECTION. fucker should be shot (sic).”

Hence by joining a few dots in an unscientific way, we could conclude that psychopathy predicts mass-murder...

I doubt it would be the first time, and you might even say it's an obvious deduction, but it's worth remembering that there are a panoply of possible reasons for wanting to go out and kill people, some of which I'm sure we all secretly and shamefully share (bullying, vengeance etc.).

There is no crime of which I do not deem myself capable - Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von, 1749 - 1832

Nonetheless, only a rare minority of us actually goes out and does it. Through the gradual medicalisation of human behaviour, Psychiatry has identified a key set of personality traits that taken together can potentially account for some of the extreme violent acts that the media loves to sensationalise: Psychopathy (often wrongly called Sociopathy in the media).

Ted Bundy

I'm not going to go into it here, but psychopathy is a controversial diagnosis (as are personality disorders in general);  some people think it doesn't exist (it is after all a composite of traits from other personality disorders), others swear by Robert Hare's patented Psychopathy checklist.

Regardless, the construct has built up quite a hefty empirical basis over the years, and is very useful for describing and preempting some of the frighteningly manipulative and cold-blooded behaviour of violent people (friends of mine who have worked with such a population have quite the stories to tell).

We're now accustomed to hearing about men in their late 20s and 30s committing a spate of grizzly crimes, the psychopath tag being an easy fit. But what about relatively young (often male) perpetrators of cruel, violent acts? The conventional wisdom would be to hold off on a diagnosis and blame external influences (video games, music, etc.), assuming that youth equates with impressionability. The research is beginning to challenge this accepted wisdom.

“To me it seems a no-brainer,” says Essi Viding, professor of psychology at University College London. “Nobody’s going to get psychopathy as a present when they turn 18. Of course you’re going to see some precursors. 

Essi Viding is actually professor of Developmental Psychopathy at UCL, and the bulk of her research is dedicated to examining the early markers for later development of antisocial personality disorder, a component of adult psychopathy. Particularly strong markers are Callous-Unemotional traits (CU).
According to Paul Frick, who so named the Callous-Unemotional traits based on parents' descriptions of their children,

The difference between children with conduct disorders and this particular group lacking in empathy can be seen in two referrals that he recalls. Both had been cruel to animals. One child had shot and killed a cat in a tree, in a reckless attempt to get it down. The second had, little by little, cut pieces from a cat’s tail to see how it would respond.
Viewed in terms of severity, the first child is worse, having killed the cat, Frick says. But it is the dispassionate cruelty of the second that indicates callous-unemotional traits.

I have to say, I find that second story particularly unsettling. It's worth noting however that only 2 to 4 percent of children have conduct disorders, and only a third of these display the aforementioned traits, so it is relatively rare. Here are the traits in full:

“One is lack of guilt. They just don’t seem to show remorse or guilt. A person doesn’t feel bad or guilty, unless they’re expressing guilt when they’re caught.

Second, a lack of empathy. They have a disregard for the feelings of others. Third, they are unconcerned about how well they do in their school work. And fourth, shallow and deficient affect. They don’t show emotions except if emotions will get them something. These kids are often described as cold.”

As alarming as these traits are, to start labelling children as psychopaths is problematic, as psychopathy has historically been seen as an untreatable illness, the only solution being preventative incarceration. An example of this can be seen when a murderer pleads insanity, thinking they'll spend a reduced sentence in a medical facility, ending up spending the rest of their life in a high-security institution like Broadmoor Hospital, due to a diagnosis of psychopathy.

Nonetheless, Professor Viding's research indicates that CU traits and Antisocial Behaviour (AB) are not only present in early childhood and predictive of adult psychopathy, but based on adoption and twin studies appears to have a strong genetic basis as well, particularly CU.

The CU and AB traits could well describe an Adam Lanza, or the Virginia Tech killer, and it is chilling to think that the signs arrive so early in life, even in the absence of bad parenting. In this regard, the film We Need to Talk About Kevin is remarkably perceptive in presenting an ambiguous account of a mother struggling with her CU child, feeling guilty for her suspiciousness and lack of emotional connection with Kevin, despite him being, in clinical parlance, a little shit. And when the titular Kevin commits the heinous acts his short life has been building up to, the ensuing community backlash towards the mother is all the more painful to watch.

I would argue that culturally, we assume children are born innocent and naive, becoming damaged or warped by whatever neglect and abuse they suffer over time. Viding's research would argue for a strong heritability of the C-U trait, which may then exhibit itself in early childhood. This contrasting image of a child essentially born "evil" is hard to swallow, as this article explains

It is clear that our growing understanding of callous-unemotional traits in children presents a massive challenge to schools: to accept that children can be without remorse or regard for others’ feelings

So are we to assume that these young, budding psychopaths are irreparably damaged goods, with close monitoring and eventual incarceration the only solution?

The added benefit of early identification is the opportunity for early intervention. As it happens there is already an intervention that claims to produce meaningful change in behaviour (if not in underlying psychology): positive reinforcement. This may come as a surprise, given the received wisdom:

Faced with some of the most serious misbehaviour, teachers and parents are asked not to reach for their most instinctive response: punishment.

Laura Warren is an educational psychologist who, like Frick, became frustrated that the methods she had been taught were increasingly failing on children with conduct disorders.

At the time, teachers would universally attribute bad behaviour to low self-esteem, she says. “What I was finding was that usually the children who were the most disruptive didn’t have low self-esteem. If anything, it was over-inflated. They thought they were fantastic. Overly high self- esteem is a bigger predictor of aggression than low self-esteem.”

A grandiose sense of self-worth is in fact one of the characteristic traits of adult psychopaths. Viding points to an anecdote from Robert Hare, a psychologist who developed one of the leading tests for psychopathy. He met a prisoner who insisted that he was going to swim for Canada in the Olympics, despite the disadvantages of being overweight, unfit and serving a life sentence.

 Hence, the need for a solution that plays into the interests of this rather unique population:

The programme, called Let’s Get Smart, replaces sanctions with rewards. Some teachers were uneasy. “Some teachers felt that punishment happens in the real world; if they misbehave in the real world they will still go to prison. Why are we setting them up for unrealistic expectations?” says Jones. “Our point is that it doesn’t work.”

By offering regular rewards, perhaps three times a day, controlled by the adult in authority, it aims to provide a rational, self-interested motivation for pleasing adults where that motive is emotionally absent. “The adult becomes the clear intermediary between the child and what the child wants,” Warren says. The rewards are tailored to each child’s interests.

These children often have a strong desire for control and teachers have to resist attempts to negotiate, because any concession just leads to more demands. “I teach parents and teachers to say, ‘It’s not open for discussion, go away.’ Adults don’t like to dismiss children,” Warren says.

All this is backed by role play and other exercises that are intended to build children’s capacity to pay attention to and respond appropriately to others’ emotions. Video playback helps the children to see their behaviour as others do, often to their surprise. (“I do swear a lot,” one girl told Warren.)

Promising, although the article describing this intervention points out that it took the children's' behaviour from being in the worst 99% to the 89th percentile. Additionally, as they rightly point out, the approach plays directly into the children's preponderance towards cold, rational self-interest (mini-economists, if you will), without attempting to change their underlying psychological make-up.
Still, it's positive to hear that something works at all, given that historically psychopathy has been considered untreatable.

To summarise, it would appear that psychopathy is rare, has a strong genetic component, and the signs can be detected early. What's more, leading researchers in the field are collaborating to develop and empirically support interventions that will help curb the cruel, calculating behaviour of psychopathic children. 
If awareness needs to be raised as has been suggested, it would be amongst schools, parents, and clinicians, so that any eventual programs tailored to the needs of such children could be introduced without the fear and hysteria that one might expect if we simply start labelling callous children as psychopaths.

So, regarding a "meaningful" conversation about mental health, it seems that if there is any connection to be made between mental illness and mass-murder, psychopathy is the best one we have, but it's a tenuous link at best.
As interesting and valuable as all of the research on psychopathy is, none of it links directly with mass murder. Equally, none of the interventions and measures I've discussed have anything to do with preventing mass-murder. As Dr. Frances explains

Psychiatry has no way of predicting or preventing rare and fairly random acts of senseless violence—it is simply impossible to find needles in haystacks. We must accept the fact that a small cohort of deranged and disaffected potential mass murderers will always exist undetected in our midst. The only questions are how often will these ticking time bombs go off and how much damage will they do when detonated.

As is hopefully clear, I decided in this post to focus on explaining the roots of psychopathy, in part because I read an article written by a mother whose young son she fears will become an Adam Lanza. I have a feeling her son may simply be displaying Callous-Unemotional traits (albeit severe ones), and by taking her jump in logic seriously, I hoped to show that no direct link actually exists between psychopathy and mass murder.

Mental illness is but one small component (if it is at all) of a complex and nuanced problem. Wanting to understand the psychology of  extreme acts like mass-murder may help bring a sense of control in the midst of confusion and chaos, but ultimately it distracts from other, more worthy causal factors (like Adam Lanza's mother being a survivalist with a large gun collection, for example).

Should mental health evaluations be required before the purchase of a fire-arm?

EDIT: This post was written hastily in response to something inflammatory posted on Facebook (isn't it always the case?) about the Aurora shootings. Please excuse errors and the gradual deterioration of my argument into a general anti-guns rant.

Regarding whether psych evaluations are necessary or indeed useful, I think we first have a to dispel a few myths and look at some data.

First of all is the way in which we psychologise extreme and disturbing acts that involve firearms, like mass murder. There's a great article here by a Cambridge Professor discussing how we tend to see Western murderers as lone, deranged individuals, but see non-Western murderers as acting on cultural influences (Islam, dictatorships, social deprivation etc.).
The reality in all cases West and East is it's a combination of many factors that we tend to ignore in favour of a simplistic analysis of motivations which helps us make some sense out of the chaos.

A recent Fox News article actually tried to blame failings in Psychiatry for not being able to properly understand and pre-emptively catch the aforementioned "lone deranged killers". Dr. Allen Frances, Chair of the Psychiatry department at Duke University and contributor to the upcoming DSM5 (the American bible of psychiatric illnesses) wrote an eloquent but pithy response to this kind of article explaining that we will never be able to find the needles in the haystack and we either need to accept Mass Murder as part of the American Way of Life, or we need to get in line with other industrialised nations and accept reasonable gun control laws.

Does that mean psych evaluations are useless? Not exactly. Up until now I've only been talking about mass shootings, which by default represent extreme exceptions in society, and sadly contribute to stigma and the false association between mental illness and violence.

The majority of murders in the US are overwhelmingly represented by firearms and are not carried out by mass murderers. Again, all these gun-related homicides aren't all caused by one type of person. It's certainly clear that most gun deaths happen in poor urban areas, and black teenagers appear to be most highly affected in terms of gun deaths, so that does help narrow down some of the social factors.
But from a purely psychological point of view, what lines can be drawn? We do know that a significant section of the criminal population may be suffering from mental illness (sometimes as a consequence of prison!). Furthermore, there is evidence that 64% of males and 50% of females in prison suffer from one form of personality disorder or another (in the UK), although the exact relationship between type of personality disorder and type of offence is unclear.

Additionally, we know that there is an association between violent offences and this narrow sub-set of psychiatric illness called personality disorders. Antisocial personality disorder is a fairly robust construct that can account for a lot of violent offending, and a recent large-scale study in Baltimore found that early disruptive behaviour and anti-social personality was predictive of later criminality (on the plus side, this was tempered by the introduction of a behaviour management program; remember season 4 of the The Wire?).

What I'm saying is that we're already well aware of some of the early signs and causal factors and there are (often under-funded) prevention programs in place to help avoid high-risk individuals from becoming violent, but again, it's a very complicated, multi-layered problem, and honestly, guns shouldn't have to be part of the equation.

Let's not forget though that guns don't just contribute to homicide rates; ready availability of guns in the household increase the risk of suicide in the home. Most states in the US actually ban the purchase of firearms for individuals who have a diagnosis of mental illness or have ever been hospitalised, but clearly it's not enough.

I don't know if mandatory psych evaluations would help or not, I do know that police have to take them before entering the force, and their gun is seen as an enormous responsibility, something that contrasts with my experience of walking into a Bass Pro shop in Oklahoma and seeing a large sign saying "Glock Giveaway!! 2 for 1!!".

I guess debates over mandatory screenings, and gun ownership in general relate to the wider notion of Isaiah Berlin's Positive and Negative Liberty.

Without going into too much detail, positive liberty represents the degree to which we have social representation (in other words, how democratic our society is), and negative liberty represents our ability to be left alone and do what we want, while still being held individually responsible for our actions (agency). Sir Berlin was more focused on negative liberty, as at the time the cold war had left the Western world feeling that any form of de-individualised mass movement could only lead to violent revolution.

I completely understand this concept and can largely agree, but in America the cultural history has strangely tied the notion of gun ownership tightly to this core principle of the Liberal conception of Freedom.

What provides a sense of agency about having a gun? Provided you're not a member of the Crips or the Bloods, you're probably a homeowner who feels that owning a weapon is a necessary part of home protection, leaving you and your family free to enjoy the fruits of liberty:

It's a well-known finding that, rather than confer protection, gun ownership increases the risk of homicide.

We don't have guns in the UK, or rather, we do have illegal guns in certain gangland areas near Manchester and London, but I've never seen one or been in a situation where I thought a gun might be necessary. Illegal guns are very difficult to come by as they are simply not manufactured and sold in a way that benefits the criminal underworld in Europe.

The police advise people in my neighbourhood that if someone breaks into your home, you should barricade yourself in one of the rooms of the house; intruders are mostly looking for stuff to steal, and that's covered by insurance. The best way to effectively deal with a violent situation is to get out of it. Charles Bronson most of us are not.

So as you can tell, I'm pro gun-control. I'm really anti-guns full stop, but I'm willing to meet halfway. Here's a study from Austria where guns are legal, comparing the homicide and suicide rates before and after the introduction of restrictive firearm legislation. The results speak for themselves.

And this cultural myth that America is simply a more historically violent nation and you simply can't compare it with other civilised nations? Need I remind you of Austria's history?

The Imposter: Review (with as few spoilers as possible)

Early into Bart Layton's unsettling documentary, the filmmakers employ a striking gimmick that while initially jarring, ultimately helps elevate The Imposter from a good film to an excellent one.
The opening salvo is high-concept enough already: A stylish mixture of one-on-one interviews spliced with reconstruction footage details the tragic disappearance of 13-year old Texan Nicolas Barclay, culminating in the tantalising reveal that 3 years after vanishing without a trace, Nicolas has apparently resurfaced in Spain, traumatised and unable to speak.

Just as this preamble lets us settle into a seemingly conventional whodunnit, with a jolt the film is physically rewound: spooling past the interviews with teary-eyed family members, back past the reconstructions, we arrive once again at the opening credits. The film then starts anew, and as we re-watch the reconstructed footage of an unknown child hiding scared in a Spanish phone booth, an accented male voice chimes in, informing us of how he impersonated Nicolas Barclay, and of his expertise in manipulation.

This meta-narrative twist of rewinding the film we're watching is lifted wholesale from Michael Haneke's Funny Games, and benefits greatly from the comparison. Anything that references this scene is certainly going to create a deep sense of unease in anyone who recognises it. In an interview for Funny Games, Haneke explained that he constantly tries to give the viewer an out over the course of the film, so that if the audience persists beyond each narrative break, they have to bear the responsibility of their decision to do so.
Similarly, once we realise that the disembodied voice is none other than Frederic Bourdin, serial missing-child impersonator wanted by Interpol for many years, we are forced into a compromising position. The filmmakers have signaled to us that we are sharing company with an unreliable narrator: the eponymous Imposter. Right from the off we know something is deeply wrong, but we decide to go along for the ride regardless.

Frederic Bourdin

Then, of course, there's the voyeuristic pleasure of having Bourdin tell us what was really going on while doe-eyed clueless family members and FBI agents hopelessly try to piece together the events that characterise this truly bizarre story.

Profound creepiness notwithstanding, Bourdin turns out to be a gifted storyteller, hardly surprising given his honed ability to convince all those around him of the most unbelievable things. How else could a 23-year old Frenchman with dark hair and brown eyes convince a family and the FBI that he was a 15-year old blonde-haired blue-eyed teenager from Texas? It is a testament to his easy charm and ability that for the most part his story comes off as wholly believable.

Large portions of the film feature close-ups of Bourdin, now approaching 40, his face filling the screen with his coy, knowing smile, as he excitedly guides us through the twists and turns of this implausible story. Despite his disturbing sang froid, it is everyone around him who comes off looking bad by corroborating his claims; claims that would have most of us scoffing in disbelief.
The audience is essentially forced into judging the naive family and FBI for their lack of deductive awareness, rather than sympathising with what are essentially a group of easy "marks" who have been exploited by a master puppeteer.

Hence when Bourdin offers a sinister explanation of the family's unsettling eagerness to accept him as their missing son, we're ready to buy the theory that their naivete might have been a deception. Only later upon reflection does it become abundantly clear that if anyone in the film was being deceptive, it was surely Bourdin himself. It leaves the viewer uncertain as to whether Bourdin was ultimately spooked by the implausibility of his own situation and jumped to a dark conclusion, or whether he had in fact fooled the world once again.

As an invisible fly on the wall, the audience can feel safely distant from the intimate violation Bourdin's deception brings on his victims. The brilliant third act shatters this assumption. If I'm honest, for a good 10 minutes I bought the family's complicity hook, line, and sinker. I actually wanted Bourdin to be telling the truth. One way or another I had been fooled by a narcissistic psychopath drawing me into his ficitonal world. 
My unofficial diagnosing of Bourdin as a psychopath (often falsely termed sociopath) may seem initially hasty, but as someone who works in psychiatry it is difficult not to reach that conclusion.

Born to a rejecting mother and an absent father, Bourdin builds the image of a victimised orphan in search of parental love. Certainly, witnessing the nature of his crimes makes it clear that his pathology is very specific and even tragically relatable, but this does not preclude a concomitant personality disorder. He is at the very least a narcissist, and at worst, a classic psychopath according to Hare's checklist. This does nothing to reduce the complexity of his crime, nor does it ruin the incredible suspense the film generates in spades. For me, it helps reduce the ambiguity surrounding his story.

I think Bart Layton might have arrived at the same conclusion. The film begins with the only existing archive footage of the the real Nicolas Barclay. This short home video, filmed by Nicolas himself, actually bookends the film, and it becomes clear as Bourdin's voice-over is introduced that this footage was to be our last glimpse of reality before as an audience, we are collectively sucked into the weird fantasy world of Frederic Bourdin.

Dark Knight Rises: Review

It's sad that in googling Dark Knight Rises in preparation for this post, I found the search results to be overwhelmingly dominated by the tragic news of the Aurora shootings. When I walked out of my local cinema having watched the film last friday, I switched on my phone and immediately saw the news. My parents-in-law live in Colorado so I have a feel for the place, and I often went to midnight screenings when I lived in America. There's a half-crazed air at those showings, and the thought of a sudden outburst of real violence amidst the witching hour delirium is truly haunting. And all accomplished with guns I associate with films! I still find it shocking that anyone other than farmers are allowed to not only tool up with semi-automatic weapons, but can also stockpile vast amounts of ammunition. As the Guardian put it:

It says something about America today that emergency personnel now pride themselves in coping with mass shootings.

Regardless, this post was not supposed to be about anything other than my thoughts about a new film that I saw.

There's long been a dictum stating that the third offering in a movie franchise will be found lacking in quality when compared to the previous two incarnations. Most trilogies, The Godfather, Terminator, Alien, etc. with a few exceptions, have suffered this fate. So, even with the heft of Christopher Nolan's intellect and epic vision behind it, does the Dark Knight Rises end up leaving a sour taste in the mouth? Or will the box-office behemoth leave the world foaming at the mouth for "MOAR", like the anonymous patrons of 4chan's porn .gif threads? My humble verdict would be: not exactly.

Let me explain.

I had the slight misfortune of turning up late to a packed screening filled with noisy undergrads (I live in Oxford), only to discover that the last seat was on the far right of the front row.

While I wasn't at the IMAX, which apparently the film is intended to be seen in, I was sat in front of a screen incongruously large for a high-street cinema chain. This meant I got to fully appreciate Wally Pfister's gorgeous cinematography, albeit sat at an angle that would have rendered the hidden skull in Holbein's The Ambassadors fully visible.

I'll say right away that the performances are excellent across the board; even Anne Hathaway surprised me in a frankly silly role that gave her little to do. While the late Heath Ledger's Joker deservedly dominated most of the running time in the second outing, Batman regains centre screen here, played with depth and charisma by Christian Bale. Eight years into self-imposed seclusion, in full Howard Hughes mode and sporting a cane for his ailing bones, there's more for Bale to do, and he manages to provide conviction to the character's arc, even if at times the narrative borders on the ludicrous.

Nolan's visuals retain their exceptional gloss and composition. I've long been a fan of his eye for sumptuous imagery. I have the half-formed theory that in each film he incorporates one or two stand-out images intended to leave an impression on the audience's mind that reaches beyond the immediate narrative. One might call them "non-submersible units" to quote the Kubrickian origins of this blog. In Insomnia, there was the visual motif of the blood soaking into the fabric reminding Al Pacino's weary cop of his past guilt; Inception had the spinning top as symbol of the precarious nature of reality; the entirety of Memento was in its own way a re-working of how we expect to view images unfold on screen.

In the Dark Knight trilogy, the first film contained the memorably trippy visuals brought on by the Scarecrow's weaponised hallucinogen. In the second film, the Joker's scars and make-up provided the world with a meme it's still getting over. So what do we have in the third? Sadly, the visual motifs are a little thin on the ground in Dark Knight Rises. The best we get is Bane's sleek S&M mask, whose overall look is generally striking, but ultimately a little uninspired.

His dialogue is equally frustrating, in that it is mostly unintelligible. He certainly sounded menacing, all hoarse and gravely, part Darth Vader/part Hannibal Lecter, but he could have been yelling about filo pastry or horse dressage for all I know. I felt that partly to blame for the lack of clarity was the booming score, which eclipsed most other dialogue as well. I initially thought this was due to my having sat to the right of the screen where giant speakers blasted distortion into my face, but others have picked up on it too.

As I mentioned, the narrative is a little delirious at times, juvenile even, which is a real shame given the maturity and depth that the second film achieved. The cod philosophy and patronisingly "Eastern" mysticism of the Ras Al Ghul subplot from the first film make an unwelcome return early on, then proceed to grossly overstay their unwelcome, like a sweaty overweight person who sits next to you on the train and proceeds to sneeze into your open mouth.

One misjudged interlude seems to take place in the Turkish prison from Midnight Express (sans rampant bum-stabbings), where Bruce Wayne gets treated to some inventive fist-based back surgery as well as spiritual re-invigoration in the form of reverse-Jedi bulshittery ("The reason you fail is because you do NOT fear death!" wrap your head around that one). There are problems narrative-wise right the way through; here's a spoler-heavy link to some apt questions one might have upon leaving the cinema.

The other element that had me mentally rolling my eyes in a perpetual loop was the incorporation of current events into the story, drawing uncomfortable political parallels; a feature carried over from the second film. The Dark Knight definitely had covert themes about the unfathomable nature of terrorism ("some men want to watch the world burn") and the justification of extra-judicial measures used to address said terrorism in times of crisis (the cell phone surveillance scene).

Without giving too much away, there are such undercurrents in Dark Knight Rises, mostly to do with Occupy Wall Street and clean energy. These are riffs more than outright analogies, but nonetheless, the usual intelligence of Nolan's plotting is poorly complemented by the dodgy right-wing politics on show here.

I suppose I shouldn't start nit-picking comic-book politics, as by their very nature all comic book movies serve up a libertarian wet dream of pagan and christian-tinged revenge; solitary ubermensches meting out "justice" against the dangerous radicals that threaten liberal democracy. The fact that Batman doesn't use guns is irrelevant, some deus ex machina (in this case, a woman!) will inevitably pop up to finish off the bad guy, saving Batman from having to do the dirty work his ethos truly implies. Again, I'm not the only one to pick up on this:





All these gripes aside, it's still an epic spectacle that I enjoyed most of the way through. The opening aerial set-piece is masterful, and the peppered in-jokes along the way were mostly cringe-free. As I've stated before, I'm so cynical about the state of big-budget cinema that I'm simply content not to be bored for 2 hours, so take all this with a pinch of salt. Admittedly the stakes were high given the achievement of the first and second films, but overall this doesn't let the trilogy down.

David Nutt: The Truth About Drugs

A quick link to a fascinating podcast courtesy of the Guardian Science Weekly: An hour-long interview with David Nutt, psychiatrist and neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London, sacked in 2009 from the Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs for, well, being rational and not towing the party line, basically.

I think he's enormously clear and it's nice to hear scientific information about drugs that isn't infused with moral or political rhetoric. I've always liked this simple yet controversial graph from his Lancet paper on the relative harm of drugs:

My favourite point in the whole interview? Right at the beginning, where he explains that all drugs are derived from plants, which developed compounds to stop insects from eating them.
All animals, including us, have corresponding receptors for these compounds in their nervous system; in insects it kills them, in us, it produces weird and sometimes pleasurable effects.

If that isn't a prime example of the sublime absurdity and meaninglessness of our existence, then I don't know what is.

Polisse

This French crime-drama probably won't appear in high street chain cinemas (to my knowledge), but if you get a chance, seek this out. Polisse (purposefully miss-spelt as though by a child) is a warts-and-all look at a year in the lives of police workers in a Child Protection Unit in Paris.

It's a real shame that the title is mis-leading and the description a little yawn-inducing. What sounds like a grim look at Paris' gritty underbelly is actually a sharply-written free-form drama composed of several vignettes that are by turns haunting, life-affirming, dramatic, and even surprisingly funny.

It's refreshing to see a serious and difficult subject being treated in this way. No dark blue/green shots of po-faced actors scowling as they recount the grim details of another child-prostitution ring here. If anything, the most striking element of many scenes (apparently all drawn from real events discovered while researching the film) is their sheer banality.

An early scene has an old man being summarily scolded by the CPU workers as he sheepishly denies the sexual abuse of his grand-daughter as though he were a boy caught with his hand in the biscuit tin. It's awkward and jarring in its domesticity, particularly when contrasted with the tension and weight we might expect from an American drama (especially in the wake of the recent Sandusky case).

A later scene sees the workers practice their shooting in a firing-range, presented in a wonderfully breezy and irreverent way. It's a million miles from the seriousness of recent "séries polars" that have made their way to BBC4 over the years.

The cast is uniformly excellent, mostly comprised of star actors playing low-key every-men with a refreshing lack of ego. The stand-out however has to be newcomer Joey Starr, hitherto best known in France as an infamous rap-artist known for conspicuously lacking grace during interviews. He plays his character with maturity, depth, and range, never selling any emotion short in the more high-drama moments.

Some scenes are a little too on the nose, as is the case half-way in where a conservative male muslim refuses to be processed by a female worker, who in a grandstanding speech reveals herself to also be Muslim, proceeding to point out the lack of basis in the Koran for female oppression amongst Muslims. It is very timely given the anti-Islamic sentiment in France (the far-right party won third place in the General Election this year), but the lack of subtlety makes it stick out in this otherwise effortlessly naturalistic ensemble piece.

Another scene that generated some mixed response, most notably in my mind from Sight & Sound, is the one in which a group of CPU workers are interviewing a teenage girl who admits to performing oral sex to get her smartphone back. Despite their best efforts, the CPU staff begin laughing uncontrollably, cracking gallows humour one-liners as the puzzled victim looks on (e.g. "what would you do for a computer then?"). What appears as an insensitive and flippant treatment of a delicate situation is in my view a common response borne out of fatigue and stress that I have witnessed all too often in burnt-out staff on mental health in-patient wards. The laughter produced by such a moment is intelligent precisely because it is discomforting in the dissonance it creates. Such moments show that the workers we're following aren't wholly likeable and nor should they be; at the same time, when faced day-in day-out with child abuse cases it's natural to develop a dark absurdist humour as a defence mechanism; an identifiably human trait I recognise all too well from my own job.

The vignette style does mean a certain slapdash approach to continuity, and perhaps too much time is given to the private home-life of each worker, but all in all, I give Polisse 5 Jerry Sanduskys out of 5 (I am going to hell).

In Defence of Prometheus

Insert 'Inception BRAAAHM noise' here

I'm a little late to the party, but I thought I'd throw my hat into the ring and give an honest and generally favourable opinion of Prometheus; timely now that the internet furore has begun to subside.

Let me begin by saying that I forked out a mini-fortune to see this film; digitally projected in wholly unnecessary full-mega-rhomboscopic-3D at my local film emporium (rhymes with Ode to Leon). I even brought my own pair of 3D glasses, having sussed out a while ago that extra profit is gleaned from sorry punters by forcing them to part with cash for new glasses at each screening, should you be one of the poor fools who didn't realise you're supposed to keep the first pair you buy: "What, you mean you don't keep your 3D glasses on you at all times you dopey cunt? 5 quid chump.". I did all of this, then sat through all 124 minutes of Ridley Scott's welcome return to the sci-fi genre (subtract around 5 minutes for credits, I'm not that hardcore). And you know what, I fucking loved it.

Let me explain.

It is true, there are many problems with this film: a number of sub-plots that don't tie together, simplistic characterisation, some awful dialogue, and a heft of groan-inducing movie cliches ("Why do they take their helmets off in the cave?", "Why don't they simply run perpendicular to the trajectory of the rolling spacecraft", "Why does it matter that Charlize Theron is Weyland's duaghter?" etc.).

The difference between me and clearly most internet film nerds is that I simply made a mental note of these shortcoming and moved on, too enthralled as I was by the grandiose set-pieces and epic visuals to agonise about plot, character development or scientific accuracy. This last aspect galls me in particular.  It seems to be a problem inherent within the science-fiction genre. Just because Science is involved in this -fiction, it somehow becomes the moral responsibility of all the internet's fanboy geeks erudite logicians to make a comprehensive run-down of all its inaccuracies. Worrying about how plausible the science of an alien thriller in space is is exactly the kind of superficial pretension that passes for discernment these days.

Don't tell me you didn't cry during Wall-E because "the future won't look like that"

But speaking more broadly, to charge a mainstream summer blockbuster with inaccuracy of any kind is, to quote Apocalypse Now, like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500. I've actually heard comic book fans defend the Chris Nolan Batman films whilst slamming the success of The Avengers by saying, quote: "at least Batman could happen." (Should it though by the way? Clearly they've not heard of this guy).
It's these sorts of people that watch a simplistic, yet admittedly well executed dystopian parable like Gattacca and proudly uphold it as a real possibility, thus making it a better film. That's not really the point is it?

As an aside, I will go out on a limb and say that inaccuracy isn't a problem even for more superficially "legitimate" art-house films.
I recently watched the beautiful and complex A Separation (my favourite film of 2011),
an Iranian quasi-whodunnit with multiple narrative strands that tie together effortlessly. A central plot point involves a man accused of pushing his pregnant maid down the stairs, causing her to lose her child. The ensuing legal process highlights a number of themes in a Rashomon-style examination of truth and social class in modern-day Tehran. Half-way through, the person watching alongside me pointed out that it is a medical myth that falling down the stairs can cause a woman to lose her baby, proudly explaining that there are many sad cases of women being pushed down the stairs by abusive husbands hoping to lose an unwanted pregnancy, only to find their wives battered but still with child. This same person then became noticeably irate during scenes where the prosecutors and defendants argued over responsibility for the lost pregnancy, clearly in a huff at their collective ignorance of modern medical knowledge. If only they could've communicated this to the Academy of Motion Pictures before A Separation won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012...

I would offer a guess that the agony induced by plot holes in film is in part caused by the over-dependence on action and plot in most media, whether it be film, television, or literature (Fifty Shades of Grey, what what ladies!). It seems that even dialogue has simply become another action set-piece where a smart line is like a sword being swung at an opponent; a witty comeback a successful parry. Compare this to a Mike Leigh film where characters are awkward and embarrassing like the people you know; their seemingly innocuous dialogue revealing deep-seated insecurities and dashed dreams.

This action-plot-action-plot dynamic pervades mainstream film-making and produces a streamlined pleasure buffet, akin to a Big Mac meal or a plate of hot buffalo wings at a motorway sports-bar. I'm not being precious here; I like fast food as much as the next man. I just know to call it what it is and move on.

People who complain that their Summer blockbusters aren't intelligent enough clearly don't understand the oxymoron implied in their statement. The simple fact is that such complaints are clever, certainly, but ignorant.
It reminds me of Brave New World, where Bernard Marx's superior intellect produces in him the strange feeling that the pristine manufactured world around him isn't all it could be, but is too unaware of what falls outside this microcosm of passive hedonism that he simply becomes a false cynic, appearing more "discerning" in his continued engagement in the pleasure rituals of The World State. Hollywood ain't all there is, folks.

Well done, you're more intelligent than Damon Lindelof, co-creator of Lost, that brain-buster of a franchise

I've become deeply morose when considering the current and future state of mainstream Hollywood cinema; my default assumption is that the film I'm about to see is riddled with unrealistic characters and plots that don't make any sense. I'm therefore pleasantly surprised when the overall experience is a happy one, as in the case of Prometheus.

But I know that's not what everyone else wanted. You wanted a high-concept horror-thriller with enough integrity to pass itself off as a real "film". You wanted to have your cake and eat it.
And from time to time, this is almost possible. Every now and then, the studio machine churns out a product so filled with talent, so pumped with creative juices that for a brief moment, our brains are tricked into thinking we're watching something meaningful.

I would argue the original Alien achieves this, made at the tail end of a time when Hollywood was in love with European film and a more naturalistic style of acting. The crew of the Nostromo bantered like real grimy space truckers, talking over each other like a Robert Altman film, so that when John Hurt finally has his ribcage redecorated by a frog-snake-thing, it comes as a deliciously horrible surprise (perhaps due in part to the cast not being told what would happen before hand, so legend goes).

But we all knew that couldn't possibly fly in the modern age right? We all knew that Prometheus would be a RIDLEY SCOTT PICTURE (TM), rather than a Ridley Scott film, didn't we? From the moment I heard that aptly-cheekboned Noomi Rapace's main character wore a cross on a chain round her neck, I knew that the film would have contrived simplistic answers to the films big-question premise (Noomi Rapace is lovely though).

I knew that what would fill this hole would be the stunning H. R. Giger inspired design, the beautiful holographics, and the thrilling set-pieces (the surgery scene has to be a stand-out of bonkers Hollywood grue).
I also had a suspicion that the android David, played by my current favourite actor Michael Fassbender, would be an interesting multidimensional character with great lines to spit at the crew in a patronisingly polite manner. It didn't bother me that the rest of the crew were one-dimensional alien fodder.

I also thought the "engineers" looked great. I know they look a bit like albino chippendales, but they're just the right mixture of strange and familiar to help suspend ones disbelief.

If you honestly want to see a real sci-fi film that asks big questions and delivers on all fronts, go watch Solaris; and not the Soderbergh/Clooney indulgent re-hash, the original, full flavour Tarkovsky film. There isn't a single tattooed geologist in there, I can promise you. It also doesn't have any aliens (unless you count the planet Solaris itself) or conventional narrative structure, just a lot of Bach and poetry with characters asking rhetorical questions.

In fact go watch Tarkovsky's Stalker too while you're at it. That shit's brilliant.