How Martin Scorsese got me blogging

Sunday night and I am just back from the cinema and Scorcese’s latest offering, The Departed. A film about cops going undercover of master criminals and criminals going undercover as hot-shot policemen – about rats, in short.

We have rats in politics; defectors they’re called, but as a good Liberal, I wouldn’t recommend the sort of treatment that is meted out to them in this film.

It is, by no means, a classic in the realms of, say, Taxi Driver or even (a personal favourite) that ever-so-unScorcesean period drama Age of Innocence. But it has Jack Nicholson showing he really can still act, Matt Damon proving that the fine performance he turned in for Syriana was not a one-off and Leonardo diCaprio – well, even he acted well.

But, you’re quite right to ask, whether that has anything to with my liberal inclinations. Tenuous any link would be – except this: at one key moment in one of the denouements to the film (it is two-and-half hours long, it’s allowed more than one), some in the audience sponataneously cheered and clapped.

Now, that never happens in an Almodovar film. It was a reminder that a flat screen can create three-dimensional engagement and connexion – how can everyday life compete? Most of us prefer the fantasy worlds we create to the quotidian ‘reality’ we breathe.

As an alien to this universe called blogosphere, I have to wonder whether this is another chance to escape rather than to engage. Is it a process of conjuring up an audience in the solitary typist’s mind for them to pretend they are actually involved in a conversation?

Or (hello) are there any readers out there? Is there any ‘you’ to whom I addressed the first sentence of this paragraph? Can, to be blunt, this sort of communication compete in a world where there are so many more attractions?

I ask because I am very keen for those of us who hold elected office (however lowly it might be) to do all we can to use every means we can to connect with the communities we represent. Will I be able to do that through this medium?

I can’t wait to find out – if there’s anybody there.