Unmistaken Child

Nati Baratz (Director and Screenplay)

Documentary, Israel, 2008, 102 minutes, Ilil Alexander & Arik Bernstein (Producers) Yaron Orbach (Cinematographer), Ron Goldman (Editor), Alex Claude (sound), Cyril Morin (Music)

At the age of seven Tenzin Zopa was called to be a lifelong disciple of the Lama Konchog. Lifelong for Zopa, that is. When the Lama died in 2001 the Dalai Lama told Zopa to wander wherever he had to go until he had found the inheritor of Lama Konchog’s soul. The film begins at the cremation and ends at the Dalai Lama’s recognition of a tiny boy as the late Lama’s reincarnation.

It’s a remarkably objective documentary which passes little obvious judgement. The staggering scenery of Nepal is beautifully and closely photographed as are the events going on in the villages precipitately mounted about its ravines and high altitude pastures.

Through these scenes wanders Tenzin Zopa, alone with his mission, which he is not permitted to fail. The discovery of the perfectly un-beguiling boy and the inevitable separation from his parents is given an appropriately poignant but not cloying treatment, and the film deals frankly with the boy's remarkably swift recognition of the late Lama’s possessions, which helps to prove him to be the reincarnation.

Soon the child is enjoying his new life while his grandmother paradoxically plays with the toys he has left behind. By the end of the film the child Lama is ceremonially borne to his throne there to expertly bless the thousands who come to praise him as if he has been doing this for years. However it is not the reincarnation of Lama Konchog which leaves the strongest impression. As the grief, self doubt and despair he experiences at the begining of his mission evolve into dignity, wisdom and authority, it’s Tenzin Zopa, the disciple from the age of seven who is the real “Unmistaken Child” of this beautiful film.

U. N. Climate Conference

Copenhagen, Denmark, December 6 - 19 2009

It's almost impossible to remember how hopefully the world anticipated the UN Climate Change Conference. It turned out to be a complete failure, a terrible example of bad faith posturing as global leadership. 

It also turned out that neither the United Nations Organization nor the Danish Government were able to manage the process with anything like the degree of discipline required to produce even a moderately acceptable outcome.

The UN Secretary-General distanced himself from the conference after the first week and the Danish government sacked their own chairperson when the meeting broke down soon afterwards. In her place they substituted the Prime Minister in the vain hope that he would be able to produce a cogent result once the heads of government arrived for the final 48 hours.

This was not to be; the meeting was literally abandoned by many delegates before a meaningless accord (to continue discussions in the summer of 2010) was finalised.  It was published to the disappointment of almost everyone and the disgust of many, including hundreds of observors who were literally locked out of proceedings and and thousands of protestors who were assaulted, arrested and imprisoned by panic stricken Danish police.

I decided to monitor the proceedings and was spellbound and horrified by what I saw. Click here to read my daily summary of the Conference.

Comfort Me With Apples: More Adventures at the Table

By Ruth Reichl

Paperback, 320 pages, April 9, 2002, $14.95, ISBN: 978-0-375-75873-7 (0-375-75873-9)

Ruth Reichl is not a great writer, nor does she appear to be a great cook. But she is a great food journalist and this, the second of her autobiographical food books, is easy to enjoy without being free of quirks which make you stop and wonder what she is up to before compulsively reading on. The book succeeds Tender At the Bone, which exposes her childhood with her erratic, imposing mother and remote, aristocratic father, and precedes Garlic and Sapphires which describes her period as the New York Times Food critic.

In Comfort Me With Apples she describes her life in Berkeley during the earliest days of the food revolution which is best symbolised by the legendary restaurant, Chez Pannise. She lived in Berkeley with her husband and many others in a communal house and eked out a tiny income to live as a food writer and cook.

Judging by her books, this seems to be the only time during which Reichl worked as a cook and it may have been this distance from the practicalities of the art she documents that ultimately led to the Conde Naste organization chopping Gourmet magazine last year. Reichl was its editor and the decision appears to have been based on the somewhat academic if not esoteric approach to food which was Gourmet’s main attraction, and ultimately the reason for its demise.

After an affair, the end of her marriage, the death of her father and her appointment as food reviewer for the Los Angeles Times Reichl ends this book with a new marriage, a hideous experience while attempting to adopt a Mexican child and, despite negative fertility tests, a child of her own. That’s about it.

Ruth Reichl with Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto  (photo by Corkery/News)

Towards the end of the book Reichl embarks on a self defeating argument in favour of her status as a serious writer, yet nothing in this or any of her other books matters which is not related to the exhilarating experiences she has every day with food. It is as if she is literally incapable of writing well about anything else.  But her accounts of food make her books compelling. They not only illustrate her expertise in the discrete, if not discreet, art of taste, but in understanding the science and technique of cookery, the influence of time, place, and environment on how we regard what we eat, the psychology of food in our society and even the increasingly significant role of the celebrity chef, several of whom are expertly drawn in Comfort Me With Apples.

Literary skill aside, every reading of Reichl is an education, every anecdote is a fascinating expose of something new and most of what she writes is underlined by a subtle irony which might not always be intentional but is always very welcome.

Visit Ruth Reichl's website

Garlic and Sapphires; The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise

By Ruth Reichl

Penguin, New York, March 2006, Paperback, 352 pages, $16, ISBN 9780143036616

Ruth Reichl is witty and informative about the complexity of food writing. I'd been waiting to read this book since it was first published in 2006 but I did not want to buy it and it took me this long to borrow it from the library.

When Reichl was restaurant reviewer for the New York Times she had to disguise herself to avoid recognition. The disguises ended up teaching her important lessons about herself as much as they fooled the restaurateurs. It's funny and poignant.

Visit Ruth Reichl's website

Royal Prerogatives: Princess Farial Farouk

HRH Princess Ferial Farouk of Egypt

17 November 1938 - 29 November 2009

Princess Farial Farouk of Egypt died on November 29. She was the eldest daughter of the late King Farouk of Egypt. Her mother was the beautiful and popular Queen Farida (formerly Safinaz) Zulfiqar (all Egyptian royal names began with the auspicious “F.”)

A year after her birth her aunt Fawzia married the Shah of Iran and she herself was proposed in marriage to the tragically doomed King Faisal 11 of Iraq when the two came of age. When the Princess was born her mother was losing out in a power struggle with Queen Nazly, Farouk's powerful mother. Her parents divorced and King Farouk then married Narriman Sadeq.

After being exiled from Egypt Princess Farial taught typing and French literature under an alias to disguise her royal identity. After marrying a Swiss hotelier she and her husband ran a hotel near Montreux.

Princess Ferial with King Farouk and Queen Farida, Cairo, 1939.

She remained a well known and popular figure to Arabs everywhere and in the last year of her life she gave several important interviews on Arab television channels about the coup d’etat which forced her exile.

She died in Geneva of stomach cancer, and was buried alongside her father and sisters in the Khedival mausoleum of Cairo's Rifa'i Mosque. Fifty eight years after the Royal Family's exile the Egyptian government remained wary of ther influence and the well attended funeral was held at night with minimal coverage by official state media.