Doing Good and Living Well: Beaches I

On my first day in India in December 1968, I walked around the Gateway of India overlooking the Arabian Sea and knew I had made the right choice.  Although I had to wonder as we drove in from the airport past miles of slums fetid with shit-smell and garbage, flimsy rag hutments lining the road, huge cement pipes waiting for installation which were used as dwellings – long, big-circumference horizontal slums, I eventually saw the apartment towers of Bombay, and knew that I was not in for two years of filth and pestilence.  I went to India because I wanted to travel, an urge that had started many years before with my first contact with a French foreign exchange student at my country day school.  He was irrepressibly – and now that I look back – insufferably French; but his was the reality that my French II Grammar and scenes of the Café des Deux Magots lacked; and with his European-cut clothes, mangled English, and long hair, I knew I was hooked.

Another way to look at it, said a good friend and colleague in Bombay, was that we early “development” travellers were offspring of the missionaries who went off to help in the colonization of the Third World – they too went with an overt mission, but at heart were young adventurers fleeing the steel mills, flat and empty farmlands, and  isolated towns from Plainville to the Manitoba border; and, he added, “Peace Corps Volunteers are carefully vetted and chosen for a bus driver mentality – not smart enough to have their minds wander off the little white line; smart enough to right the bus if it does drift”.  We were different – ordinary passports, chosen because of a selection algorithm that was as random as it was genius.  We were a bunch of dopers, mad scientists, Korean War vets, and dog lovers who all were missionaries and foreign legionnaires.

So there I was, overlooking the Arabian Sea, surrounded by hawkers, strollers, beggars, touts, and layabouts, shit-eating grin on my face – “How could I be so lucky?”.  There were some few doubts that crept into this panorama of exotic India.  I saw everyone spitting red and, thanks to prejudice, bad or misinformation, was convinced that the whole country had TB; but these passed quickly as I moved into my flat on the 16th, top, terrace floor of Mt. Unique on Peddar Road.  The apartment was breezy and the view spectacular.  I could see the Sea, Nariman Point, Victoria Station, and the Towers of Silence.  In December, the night breeze was still cool, and had the fragrance – or pungency – of Bombay.  I didn’t care what the night breezes brought in from the city.  I was only happy to be there.

I had a similar experience in Port-au-Prince in the 80s.  I stayed at the Splendide Hotel, half-way up the mountain to Petionville and a ten minute walk from the Olaffson.  The Splendide was an old Victorian hotel, with a long verandah overlooking the entrance and the drive; balustrades on the top floor with a view over the city out to the harbor.  Most nights of the year there was a breeze from the mountains and with it the sounds of the voodoo tom-toms.  It was again the same feeling I had in India – how could I be so lucky to be in such an exotic, romantic place – and this being the days of the Duvaliers, a peaceful, crime-free city.  I worked little, following the rhythms of the Haitians – come in at 10, go home at 1, have a civilized lunch, siesta, drinks at the Olaffson and a three-star French meal in Petionville.  It was one of the places in the world – Bucharest and San Salvador – where not only did nothing go wrong, everything went right beyond my expectations.  In all three places, there was love, superb food, beaches or mountains, and the excitement of knowing that this would all pass.  Haiti could never remain the Duvalier Haiti; Bucharest would soon lose its old-world charm and join the EU; and El Salvador would turn from dynamic, modern/old city into a crime nightmare, fueled by ex-combatants in the civil war who only knew how to kill.

My first Indian beach was Chowpatty Beach, a short strip of sand and palm trees in the middle of the city, more of a city block than a beach.  In the evening it was the place for Indians to escape the stifling heat of their apartments and stroll with their families, eat bhel puri, nuts, and sweets.  The sea was dead there, grey, stagnant, and empty; but at least for the Indians it was a respite and certainly a consolation.

My first real Indian beach was Juhu Beach, out towards the airport.  To get there you had to drive past all the Indian clothing mills of the industrialists who made Bombay – Tata, Gwalior, Modi – and then past the goat-stinking Muslim area around the Mosque.  To this day I cannot eat goat cheese because of that rancid, putrid, gagging smell; but perhaps the sight of the Arabian Sea was all that much more fresh and open because of it.  The hotel/restaurant was modern, catered to the well-to-do of Bombay and served lobster thermidor, baked pompano, and great desserts.  More importantly, the restaurant was on a large patio right at beach edge, the tables shaded by big umbrellas, and even in summer the intense heat was moderated by a light sea breeze.  The beach itself was nasty – it was like Chowpatty, but more upscale; and there were camel and donkey rides, pin-wheel hawkers, nut-wallahs, and sweets.  The air in winter was clear and bright, the colors intense, and the whole experience very Mediterranean.  I loved it. As the winter faded, so did the colors, even with the breeze clouded in a hot haze, but it was getting out of the city, and we went there every weekend.

The beaches at Kovalam and Goa were more European  beaches – that is, they were fairly empty except for local fishermen.  They were open, the water was swimmable (unlike the waters off of Bombay where the sewage outfalls were not far from the beach), and it felt like a beach.  The beach at Panjim (the Portuguese name, later changed to Panaji) was the hippy beach.  There was a nudist end to it, and for clothes to come into town the hippies wore the same g-strings as the fishermen.  The boys strolled down the main market streets of the town, barefooted, long, matted hair, and a ball-pouch and a g-string pulled tight up the crack.  At first the local residents of Panjim, as many communities in India at that time, were very tolerant of the new foreigners.  There was enough craziness in India to go around, and these white outcastes didn’t belong to any social code or Vedic stricture anyway; but the g-strings did it.  The hippies were dressed and acting like the lowest-caste of Indian – these wealthy Americans, Germans, and French, who could go back to their life of luxury at any time, imitated those who were barely tolerated, marginalized, and abused.  The paradox, the contradiction between these privileged foreigners and the fisherman finally broke the idyll.  They were sent packing and the Indians reclaimed their beach.

I remember little about the beaches at Puri in Orissa, except that they fit my idea of a beach – big waves, pounding surf, empty, white sand beaches, palm trees, and a stiff salty sea breeze.  You couldn’t swim there, however, for the undertow was among the worst in India, a great sucking force that no one braved. The beach was too desolate, somehow, to set up an umbrella and watch the rising sun – even if you could because any place in India that looked desolate and uninhabited was not; and within minutes you would be surrounded by curious children and horny teenagers.

The only time I ever really lost it was at a beach paradise near Galle, the southernmost town of Sri Lanka, home to tea planters who came down for Sunday curry at the hotel where we stayed.  These mestizos, a mix of Dutch, Indian, and whatever else, Indonesian, Malaysian, ran the plantations up the slopes, kept to themselves, but enjoyed the meals and drinks at the hotel.  It was a great place in the old British style – all mahogany and teak, planter chairs on long verandahs, sun shades, Tamil bearers, a delight.  The beach which was affiliated with the hotel was about an hour’s ride.  It was an idyll – turquouise waters, sugar sand beaches rimmed with palm trees, puffy white clouds, heaven.  However, it was someone’s home, and they were curious about these white foreigners in scant clothing broiling in the sun.  The ringed our little beach patch within about three feet, hunkered down and staring.  After almost two years of this invasiveness, Eve-teasing, and worse, I jumped up, grabbed one of the boys, pushed him down to the water, trembling and enraged. He shouted, “This is our home”; and I realized my stupidity, and walked away.  By that time the rest of his friends were letting the air out of our tires and things were getting very uncomfortable.  On half-aired tires, we drove off.  A beach idyll that went wrong, badly wrong.

Another fabulous beach was called Batu Feringhi, or Foreigner’s Beach about 10 miles outside of Penang.  It was a real resort, old style – cement block hotel, basic amenities, long sand beach, warm waters, and all foreigners.  The food was exceptional as it was back in town – Tamil, Chinese, Malaysian food, fresh, spicy, delicious.  Only after a couple of days there did an old Aussie tell us, “Watch out for them sea snakes.  Sea snakes’ll get you”.  One of the most poisonous of all snakes or all things.  Watching out for them in the water made it a lot less appealing. 

MORE ON THE BEACHES OF AFRICA, THE CARIBBEAN; AND THE RIVERS ALL OVER, NEXT…..

Doing Good and Living Well–Eating, Drinking, and Dancing in Africa

The first African country I visited was Mauritania, perhaps not as African as Mali or Kenya, but more so than Tunisia or Egypt because of its black belt along the Senegal River, the border with Senegal.   One of my favorite stories of my time in Mauritania is about a famous World Bank project designed to build two dams on this River, providing water to the deltas on both sides and therefore giving agricultural fertility to the black Africans who lived there and who for centuries had been enslaved by the northern nomadic Moors.  Slavery still existed in 1978 when I first visited and was only criminalized in 2007, and the World Bank felt that a direct and deliberate investment in the black population would redress the economic and social imbalances in the country, and by so doing effect a de facto end to slavery.

This of course didn’t happen.  Once the dams had been built, water provided, and agricultural productivity improved, the Moors simply took over the land, and the black Africans remained to work it.  The dams were a windfall for the Moors.  It was not a case of unintended development; just illusionary development planning.  As often happened in large projects and small, mission, desire, and ideology gummed up the works, and projects either failed from their original purpose or failed entirely.

One of my very first meals in Africa was a picnic on an Atlantic beach near Nouakchott.  Mauritania has an Atlantic coastline as long as North America’s, and if you count the 3000 miles or so across the Sahara to the Arabian Sea, the worlds biggest beach.  The outing was organized by M. Diouf, a Senegalese from St. Louis who had been one of France’s “chosen” Africans – Africans by dint of family, social class, intelligence, French language and orientation, selected as honorary French citizens, sent to France for their education.  It was a kind of ex post facto justification that colonization and the famous mission civiliatrice (mission to civilize Africans, i.e., Westernize them, and especially make them as French as an African could every hope to be). 

Nouakchott was well provisioned with French products to serve the fairly sizeable French community that ran the ports, many agencies of government, hotels, restaurants, and shops.  There was Camembert, jambon de Parme, salami, pate, lettuce, wine, and baguettes.  The baguettes, done in traditional ovens according to old French recipes, were far better than you could get in Paris whose bakers had begun to cut down on ingredients, speed up the process, and in general modernize.

The picnic started well.  Of course there was no one on the beach, the day was bright, clear, and pleasantly cool, and the waves and light salt spray made it feel like home.  We helped M. Diouf spread the blanket and array the food.  We sat down, and hungry after a long and early morning of teamwork (we were part of a UN team in Mauritania to assess the health system), tucked in.  I remember hacking off a big chunk of Camembert and slathering it a piece of baguette, and swilling it down with a glass of Bordeaux.  Another American colleague made himself a big salami, lettuce and tomato, and cheese sandwich on a baguette, slathered with mayonnaise. 

This display of American barbarity was too much for M.Diouf. “Mais non!”, he exclaimed. “Non, non, non, non”.  Cheese was never to be eaten as a first course; and it was inconceivable to eat a salami, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise sandwich.  Sandwich de saucisson, by all means; but never with anything but French butter.  The mission civilatrice not only had worked, but obviously had worked very, very well.

To be fair, M. Diouf came by his pro forma food preferences quite naturally.  On a trip to France, we had visited good friends who lived in a region in the southwest of France.   They organized a picnic which we would eat in the mountains near their house.  They could forage for wild mushrooms, and then we would eat.  They would get everything ready if only we could put together the silverware and buy some bread in the village.

The day was cool and fresh, and the woods where the mushrooms grew were scented with pine and old forest trees.  Robert and Diane romped through the woods like children, yelping with excitement when either one found a mushroom.  The picnic was much higher up the mountain, in a grassy glade overlooking the valley.  The blanket spread, the food laid out, all of us ready to tuck in; but before we could, Diane gave out a shocked and offended wail just like M. Diouf – “O, non, non, non, non, non!”  We had brought the wrong kind of forks and there was not enough bread.  The French, I decided, had internalized some ratio of bread to food which was calibrated for each type of food, because after one quick look at the paltry two baguettes we had bought (of course we thought that two big baguettes were way too much bread but we bought them anyway) and the array of food she had prepared, Diane knew that it was all wrong.  The picnic had been ruined. 

This episode, however, was minor compared to The Pigs’ Feet, a story retold to this day by our family.  On another trip to visit Robert and Diane, we brought our two children, aged about eight and ten, and our dog.  Robert’s mother, La Duchesse de Manon, had come down from her chateau  to spend time with her family.  Our children spoke no French, but Diane, Robert, and La Duchesse no English, so all conversation was in French.  Our children were very patient and sat quietly as we all chatted and laughed.

Diane was preparing a regional specialty – pieds de cochon, pigs feet, and Robert had gone to a special butcher 20 miles away to get what were considered the very best.  Diane exclaimed with pleasure when she saw them, and immediately started cooking them in a fragrant broth she had prepared while Robert was in Blesson.  They would take all day to simmer and would be ready for a seven o’clock dinner.  We couldn’t wait, we said.

At seven, we all sat down to dinner for our first course, a delicious mushroom soup from wild mushrooms that Robert had collected on the mountain.  Our children sat quietly and patiently at the table, eating their soup.  That morning, La Duchesse had commented to us how well-behaved our children were – a left-handed compliment because of course she believed that all American children were little barbarians.  The “compliment” was especially meaningful because in the aristocratic, royal milieu from which La Duchesse came, children were not even seen, let alone seen but not heard.  Robert had told us that he and his sister were brought into his mother’s sitting room in the morning to give her a little peck on the cheek before heading off with the nanny for the rest of the day.  Little did La Duchesse know that the reason that our children were so quiet was because they didn’t understand a a word of French.

After the first course dishes were cleared and new ones set, Diane brought in the piece de resistance, the pieds de cochon.  All the adults smiled in anticipation.  She dramatically lifted the lid to show off her creation.  The pigs trotters were sticking straight up, hoof first out of a gummy, viscous liquid.  That did it. My son blurted to his sister – “Liddy, look at that!  Pigs legs, disgusting, yeccchhhh…and what are they floating in?”

“Oh, how gross”, his sister replied.  “Beyond disgusting.  I am NOT eating that.  No way.  Never”.

The table was completely silent.  La Duchess looked at our children in dismay, then at her disappointed daughter-in-law, then with a knowing, censuring smile to us.  Although she did not understand English, she knew exactly what the children had sad.  She had been right all along.  Little barbarians.  And of course barbarian parents from a barbarian country.  The only member of our family who had behaved properly was the dog.

“Please eat them”, my wife pleaded.  “They are really very good”, and she put one trotter on each of their plates.

“There’s nothing but fat and gristle hanging off them”, my daughter said.

“But that’s the best part”, replied my wife.  More groans.  My son pushed and picked at the trotter, but ate nothing.  The meal had been ruined.

As I have written before, I have eaten very well in Africa.  The continental shelves off the coast of Mauritania are among the richest in the world in fish, and it was a treat to eat fresh lobster, crabs, tuna, bonito, and sole.  Ti--bou dien, a dish of Nile perch and couscous eaten in the Sahel is succulent and fragrant.  Nile Perch (capitaine) is for me the king of fishes – sweet and flavorful, I ate it in Mali from the Niger River, Burundi from Lake Tanganyika, and in Senegal from the Senegal River.  My best memories of ti-bou dien were in a small village near Mopti, the home of my Malian Ministry of Health counterpart.  We had driven to Mopti to review some programs in the local hospital and health centers, and he invited us to dinner at his house.  We ate outside in the early evening after the sun had set, and the heat had begun to lessen.  His mother served the food on a very large, round plate, heaped with couscous and vegetables and fish on top; and she apportioned pieces of carrots and cabbage, and pieces of steamed, spiced fish by hand to each of us.  It was delicious, generous, and pleasant.

I remember the traditional Indian Sunday tiffin, a curry buffet at the Norfolk hotel in Nairobi, an old colonial gem similar to those I have described in Sri Lanka and India, lots of wood and polished brass, well-mannered servants, and delicious food.  There was a large Indian community in East Africa, and curries were popular.

I will mention Tunisia because it is Africa, after all, and because I ate better there than anywhere else on the continent.  The food is Mediterranean – seafood, salads, fresh oranges, olive oil, dry rose wine and I could not get enough grilled octopus and squid, Tunisian salads of chopped grilled tomatoes and red pepper, olives, tuna, dressed in olive oil, and of course oranges.  I remember the first time I ate at what became my favorite restaurant I ordered oranges for dessert, and the waiter brought out a bowl of what I knew were juicy, sweet, tender, seedless wonders.  After I had eaten the whole bowl, the waiter came over and, Frenchified enough to wonder the habits of Americans, told me he had expected me to eat one orange, but was happy that I had enjoyed myself.

One of the only two good things about Luanda – a pestilential, crime-ridden, polluted, congested, dysfunctional city – was the fresh seafood available at restaurants on the Ilha, a  peninsula along the Atlantic Ocean about 10 miles from the city.  The ride was hot, long, frustrating, and agonizing but sitting on the patio, under the palm trees in a civilized, quiet restaurant, overlooking the ocean was my reward for the ride and for the Purgatory of the day.  The margaritas were the best, and the fresh, grilled, giant shrimp were the best I have ever eaten.  Coconuts, the best restaurant on the beach was an oasis of calm and civility.  I went out to the Ilha every night.

The other good thing was the music – a pastiche of Brazilian, Portuguese, American blues, and African hip-hop that was energetic and more interesting than the West African high-life (English-speaking) and pop (French) I danced to in the clubs and discotheques all over Africa. Wikipedia describes it as follows:

…a diverse group of styles including Angolan merengue, kilapanda and semba, the last being a genre with roots intertwined with that of Brazilian samba music. Just off the coast of Luanda is Ilha do Cabo, home to an accordion and harmonica-based style of music called rebita.

When I first brought back African pop music back to Washington in the early 80s, few of my friends had ever heard it.  It was the dance club music.  The songs were based on repetitive phrasing, a pumping beat, high-range electric guitar riffs, and the most delicious of all, the change of key, the pause in phrasing, and major-to-minor shifts.  You never knew when they were coming, but you knew they were, and the expectation was exciting, and the change a happy release.  I danced in clubs all over Africa – in Dakar before it became dangerous to go out at night; in Ouagadougou, in Bamako, Brazzaville, Kinshasa, Maseru, Banjul, and Douala.  Everyone danced in African clubs – young, old, and children.  There were always prostitutes if you wanted to dance with or sleep with them.  The atmosphere was always happy, upbeat, and pure pleasure.

I went on a lot of UN Missions to Africa in the 80s, and the custom was for the sponsoring government agency to treat the team in some way before leaving the country.  In the then Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), the Ministry of Health took us to one of these clubs.  We were told that they were paying for everything – food, drink, and girls – so we should enjoy ourselves.  The food was traditional African, served in great vats with lots of sauce; the music was hot; and the girls beautiful.  It was the best sendoff of all my missions.  The worst, by the way, was the banquet organized by the Mauritanian government who never showed up.  The twenty-five place settings were empty, while the five of us foreigners waited hours, then ate a hilarious meal, joking about the phantom Moors.

I brought back cassettes and later CDs of all this music and went to African clubs in Washington.  In the early 80s there was one particular favorite, the Kilimanjaro on Florida Avenue.  Outside is was a slightly sketchy DC neighborhood.  Inside it was no different than any of the clubs I had visited in West Africa.  It had the same driving, pumping music, the atmosphere, and the friendliness of an African discotheque.  We always were the only white people in the club, but as in Africa, it never mattered.  A few years later American blacks and Jamaicans started to go to the club, and it became clear that we were no longer welcome; but it was great while it lasted.

In addition to Angolan semba, there are two types of African music which stand out as very different from high life – Senegalese and Malian music.  Senegalese music is very jazz-based, subtle, and distinct from the pounding bass and upbeat guitar riffs of the rest of West Africa.  Watching African women dance to this music was hypnotizing and entrancing.  They barely moved, just an almost imperceptible movement of the head and and a sensual undulation of their bodies, and it was the sexiest dance I had ever seen.

Malian music is a music apart – it is unique, truer to its native, folk roots than any other music; but yet so blues-influenced that some scholars have surmised that the American blues must have come from Mali.  Whichever direction the influences went, it was the most interesting and complex music of the continent.  Many musicians played it on the kora, a kind of very resonant gourd with a sound like a harp; but soon transposed their music to the guitar without losing the character of it.  The most well-known Malian musician is Ali Farka Toure.  I saw a documentary about a music festival held in the desert near Timbuktu and all the great musicians from Mali from the South to the Berber North came and played.  That is one festival I am sorry I missed.

Africa was great when I travelled there, before the cities became infested with crime, decimated by AIDS, and still economically viable.  My world travels have satisfied three important desires – India was a sensuous cultural kaleidoscope and an intellectual challenge, but was never fun.  South America was stunningly beautiful, especially the high plateaus and the Andes, but also the vast Amazon jungle; but the machismo and pseudo-sophistication of the Europeanized population was numbing.  Africa was neither kaleidoscopic nor intellectually challenging like India; nor spectacularly beautiful like South America, but lordy lordy, was it ever fun!

My Favorite Movies - THE INSIDER and GLADIATOR

I like both films especially because of Russell Crowe, one of my favorite actors, and in both he plays a deeply moral, committed, and courageous man. Both movies are stories of heroism, and in both Crowe shows – more than any other actor – internal conflict. In THE INSIDER – based on a true story - Geoffrey Wigand (Crowe), a former executive at Brown & Williamson, has been fired because of his opposition to his company’s policy of refusing to acknowledge the addictive nature of tobacco and because of their enhancement of nicotine.

After some deliberation and at the persistence of Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino), CBS 60 Minutes producer, he becomes a whistle-blower. Because of this and the escalating threats, physical, mental, and legal by the tobacco company, he not only loses his job, but his wife leaves him, CBS reconsiders and leaves him hanging and the powerful 60 Minutes segment never gets aired. Thus, all his loss and personal suffering has been for naught. The movie has a happy ending – CBS reconsiders, the segment is aired, and Wigand is vindicated.

From the earliest scenes, Crowe shows the inner conflict of Wigand – his honesty and revulsion at the dishonesty and criminality of Brown & Williamson vs. his deeply-felt commitment to and sense of responsibility for his family. He has few lines, and his face, expressions, posture, and demeanor tell all. In a great scene with the company director, played by Michael Gambon who increases the pressure on Wigand by narrowing his confidentiality agreement, Crowe expressed his indignation at this insult. “I always intended to honor the confidentiality agreement”, he says angrily but with self-control, hurt and shocked that Gambon suspects his honor and fidelity.

This is Crowe at his best, seething with righteous indignation but controlling what he says. When Gambon cynically and malevolently says he doesn’t believe him, thus the more restrictive legal agreement, Wigand finally says what he feels. “Well, fuck the confidentiality agreement, Mr. Sandefur, and fuck you!” Gambon is brilliant – he is unctuous but threatening and dangerous. He never raises his voice, makes cynical references to Wigand’s golf game, and in his dismissiveness, frightening.

In the scenes with his wife (Diane Venora), equally brilliant in her display of greediness and total lack of compassion, understanding, and support, Crowe shows his hurt, dismay, and disillusionment – but again with few words.

The scenes in Mississippi while he is deciding whether or not to testify against Brown & Williamson, show Crowe at an almost impossible level of stress – this is the moment when he has to decide whether or not to honor his personal ethics and honesty, or protect his family. He testifies and even more aggressive tactics by B&W begin.

The scenes without Crowe are equally fine. This is perhaps Al Pacino’s finest role as the producer who has equally high ethical and moral standards, stands up to CBS and helps to vindicate Wigand at the risk of great personal loss. Christopher Plummer as Mike Wallace is perfect. He, too, grapples with questions of integrity, but only at the end when it is too late, does he act honorably. He says to Pacino, when the NYT and WSJ break the story on 60 Minutes’ capitulation to their corporate offices, “At my age you see things a little differently”, and goes on to state that he doesn’t want to be remembered for a callow response rather than a life of premier journalism.

THE INSIDER is a powerful story of right and wrong. Perhaps that is why I like it and THE HUSTLER, which I wrote about yesterday. Both are perfect.

GLADIATOR, of course, is a completely different movie - a swords and sandals epic which has great sweep and Hollywood effects; but it is Russell Crowe, again defending his honor, the honor of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris) murdered by his son (Joaquin Phoenix), and his family. Added to this is revenge - Crowe, as The Gladiator, once the General of the Roman Armies of the North, but living the life of a slave after his attempted murder and escape never ceases in his desire to kill the Phoenix character which he does, but dies in the battle.

There is an intensity in Crowe's performance which is even more pronounced than in THE GLADIATOR, which is almost hard to believe. The grief he shows when he sees his family hanged is almost unbearable to watch. The hatred for the new Emperor who tried to kill him and who killed his family, the revenge he must have, and the love of his family all come together in Crowe's performance, and it is a masterpiece.

Joaquin Phoenix is perfect as the scheming, craven, weak, and frightening Emperor. He smothers his old father, the Emperor, and then, when he finds out who The Gladiator is, is ceaseless in his cowardly attempts to kill him. His best performance by far.

So, don't be put off by the swords and sandals, the gory gladiatorial fights and battle scenes. This movie is about Russell Crowe. See it.