Jenny McCartney, Author at Catholic Herald

Jenny McCartney

Milan Kundera and the long argument with ‘home’

December 19, 2019

It has been a long road back: the author Milan Kundera, perhaps the most famous living Czech, recently had his citizenship restored to him after 40 years. It had been revoked following his opposition to the communist regime, which he fled in 1975. Two years later, he took on French citizenship. From Paris, in 1984,

Northern Ireland’s lesson for Brexit Britain

December 20, 2018

A depressing phenomenon has occurred in the years since Britain voted to leave the European Union back in June 2016. The national argument has not grown less bitter, as many had hoped immediately after the vote. Instead, we are witnessing the calcification of rage. People who, before the vote, were liable to own that they

Film: A pungent tale of corruption in Cairo

March 08, 2018

There are two main stars of The Nile Hilton Incident (cert 15, 111 mins, ★★★★): the first is the lean, compelling figure of Fares Fares, who plays Noredin Mostafa, a disillusioned Cairo cop. The second is his cigarette. The cigarette goes everywhere with him: in the car, the office, through the dusty streets of the

Film: The businessman who sailed into his own trap

February 15, 2018

The Mercy (★★★,12A, 102 mins) is a film about a man who is first trapped in a dream, and then in a lie, and one watches it with a kind of queasy, vicarious anxiety. It is based on a true story, that of Donald Crowhurst (Colin Firth) – a keen amateur sailor, struggling businessman and

The year titans toppled

December 21, 2017

This year public life has reverberated to the thuds of heavyweight careers hitting the floor on charges of “inappropriate behaviour”. The toppling of some such careers – such as that of the film producer Harvey Weinstein, whose apparently widespread, extreme sexual harassment or assault was Hollywood’s worst-kept secret – was no doubt long overdue. Yet

Film: Just when you thought the romcom was dead…

July 27, 2017

The Big Sick Cert 15, 120 mins, ★★★★ Is cultural tradition a comfort or a trap? Michael Showalter’s The Big Sick is not the first film to ask that question, but it takes an unlikely route – via a hospital ward – to get to an answer. The film, in which the Pakistan-born comedian Kumail

Jenny McCartney: There’s more to Westminster than greasers and fixers

June 08, 2017

It was Louis Heren, a foreign correspondent for the Times, who said – in words famously cited by Jeremy Paxman – that when a politician told him something in confidence, he always thought: “Why is this lying bastard lying to me?” In recent years, it often seems, Heren’s dictum has spread out to the British

Film: A voice for civil rights that can still mesmerise

April 06, 2017

In 1979, the black American author James Baldwin wrote to his publisher proposing a book called Remember This House, a personal memoir of three famous US civil rights activists who were also his friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, all assassinated before reaching 40. By the time Baldwin himself died in 1987,

Film: McAvoy rescues a Shyamalan schlockfest

January 19, 2017

Spilt (15, 117 mins, ★★★) M Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, The Village) has a reputation both for expertly disturbing his audiences and for erratic performances at the box-office; his latest film is being hailed as a return to form. Its star is James McAvoy, who plays a character, Kevin, with 23 personalities and another one on

Film: An ironic extravaganza with a joyous heart

January 12, 2017

La La Land (12A, 132 mins, ★★★★) In his big-screen musical La La Land, Damien Chazelle does for Los Angeles what Woody Allen did for New York: he strings the city with fairy lights and tinkling pianos and the dogged possibility of romance. And just as infatuation can bathe a lover’s unique flaws in charm, so even

Oh, Boris! But actually, he was spot on

December 22, 2016

When my children were under the age of five, there was a book we enjoyed reading called Oh, Boris! It was the story of a large, enthusiastic bear who joins a classroom of smaller animals, and – without malign intent on his part – regularly sets them squealing. The lament of “Oh, Boris!” attended each

Film: A convent tale of terror, chaos and new life

November 10, 2016

The Innocents (12A, 100 mins, ★★★★) Set mainly in a Polish convent in 1945 and loosely based on a true story, The Innocents is austerely and beautifully shot by cinematographer Caroline Champetier (Of Gods and Men) in a palette dominated by black, white and grey. Morally, too, it is full of shadows: secrets and shame, profound trauma

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