CH-CH-CH-CH-CHANGES...

  

IT’S ALWAYS GOOD to have a bit of a refresher and to bring things up to date as near as it’s possible to do. So, I’m sure that most readers are unhappy, as I was, over the latest “Global Happiness” census published in the World Happiness Report (2025). Naturally, the “Nordics” all made the Top Ten happiest countries in the world, with Finland rated Number One (again), garnering a 7.764 out of 10 score, up a tik from 2024’s 7.736. Did Finland’s decision to join NATO and its new government’s decision to host American nuclear weapons give it a boost in the happiness index? Who knows with the Finns, but their 1300km. border with Russia is now closed and militarizing on both sides. In the past it was porous, with local Finns and Russians crossing over for work or to hook up and the like. Perhaps nestling down in the crosshairs of nuclear Armageddon adds a spring to the step in the average Finn and the thrill of being closer to oblivion or a catastrophic war with their neighbour, a nuclear superpower, makes each day more precious and therefore not to be wasted. It is indeed more exciting to contemplate megadeaths than being forced to stare off into the vast tundra and boreal hinterlands of Mother Russia eight months of the year. A change is as good as a rest, they say. Hopefully Finland can keep its happiness standing even after the place is turned into a radioactive ashtray.

 

OF COURSE, the country most on people’s minds these days is Israel. How does it fare with respect to the various indices* of our Happiness survey? While it remains in the Top Ten (and has done so for several years), 2025’s score of 7.187 out of ten on the GHI is down a tad from 2024’s score of 7.234, though both scores give Israel an Eighth Place in the global rankings. It’s a worrying trend and not a statistical outlier says Professor Arno D. Piffle of the University of Tel Aviv’s Centre for Israeli Wellness, who I interviewed shortly before the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) launched its military campaign to liberate Lebanon from the Lebanese:

“Look”, the dour-faced academic began after introductions and drinks, “2020 was our best showing. We came fourth on the Happiness Index that year. Fourth! Ever since, there’s a slow decline. In 2026, Israel falls to Eighth Place and there is every reason to believes this trend will continue for the rest of decade. Shocking, I knowz.” When I suggested Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza, its ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, its attacks on Lebanon, land grabs in Syria, and war with Iran might have something to do with the country’s less than ‘top tier’ happiness performance, Professor Piffle chided this reporter: “Look, Mister Goy, Israel is small country with big plans, so no omelette without breaks egg. What I can say?” 

WHILE the academic poured more drinks I commented on the high suicide rate among returning service personnel; on reservists not reporting for duty in the Gazan or Lebanese warfronts (a figure much higher than before the war), and on the failure of Israeli and American military might to subdue Iran despite months of bombing, and finally the fact that Hamas is still a factor in Gaza and Palestinians are still there after more than one-thousand days of what most observers now concede is a genocide. I pressed my point that these may be the cause for the elevated levels of 'funk' within Israeli society, hence its lower GHI score.

Not so, contends Professor Piffle. Instead, he says Israel’s lower GHI rating is caused primarily by it’s standing in the Eurovision Song Contest:

[Sotto Voce.] “Shkutz!” [Normal Voice.] “Nonsense! Look, Mister Smarty Pants, Israel is home of God’s chosen people, don’t forget! We came first in Eurovision 1978-79, again in 1998 and in 2018 with Netta’s charming rap/dance fusion song, “Toy”. “You see, Goy Boy? Look at how charts of Eurovision and Happiness Index line up [Professor Piffle put pages of graphs and flow charts on the table where we sat drinking his rather fine bourbon.]

“See? Don’t you see? Here and here.”

AND I MUST SAY, after a while, Professor Piffle’s theories made increasing sense. Even though Israel was not actually in Europe, the governing body of Eurovision saw fit to include it in their deliberations, much to the credit of the show’s organizers, who brought the wares of talented Israeli song meisters to the global stage. “Listen, Shirley, [Not my name, though Professor Piffle took to calling me that as the night progressed.] “Many Jews today in Israel are descending from Europe after you-know-what happens in last century. We come here to an empty land for the sake of our people. But, we are one foot in Levant and other foots in Europe. We are a bright, white light in the Arab darkness. Our songs are sung for the ages. But, if our songs go unsung in Eurovision as the best songs in world, so too goes our happiness. And who would want us to be unhappy other than antisemitic scum, I ask you? They are everywhere. But this year Israeli song team made number two in Eurovision contest! Two, Shirley! I predict we will have happier Israelis this year and next as we set our sights [Professor Piffle chortles] on the number one Eurovision spot next year. You wait and see! Hoo boy! Drink up! Let’s order pizza. Extra anchovies! Yah!”

OUR INTERVIEW continued until late into the evening. Professor Piffle played his Eurovision collection of Israeli entries since 1973.

 

CHEERS, JAKE.

_____________________________________

 

* Social support; GDP per capita; healthy life expectancy; freedom; generosity; perceptions of corruption.  

 

 

QUOTES: SUN TZU

  

 

“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

--Sun Tzu (544-496 B.C.)

 from The Art of War  

 

 

MOVIE REVIEW: THE BRUTALIST

 

THIS MOVIE IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. It’s long (three-and-a-half hours long) and drags in parts, if I can put in my two-cents worth, but one thing I found interesting is its depiction of post-war America. The story centers around László Toth, a Hungarian refugee and holocaust survivor from the infamous Buchenwald concentration camp who arrives in New York in 1947 to begin a new life. An architect by trade, we see him struggle to make a living and find work commensurate with his talents. In the 1950s he worked at several jobs. One, as a product designer in a friend’s furniture factory, is where he first encounters the rich van Buren family whose patriarch, Harrison van Buren, commissions him to design a home library on his estate.

 

László’s design is so fresh and original that Harrison subsequently commissions him to design and supervise the construction of a community centre in Philadelphia in honour of Harrison’s late mother. The project will take years to complete, and we never actually see the completed building—only glimpses of foundation walls, staircases, interior walls, all made of concrete. The camera work is energetic throughout, with rapidly changing perspectives, inverted horizons,* and constant movement along and within the slowly evolving structure of the community centre, interspersed with scenes depicting László’s struggles to adapt to his life as an immigrant. The camera’s almost dizzying activity is a visual metaphor depicting the drive, energy, and vibrancy of post-war America, with its brash, ‘can do’ confidence, its roaring economy, and seemingly limitless possibilities. However, inter-woven between scenes at the construction site are László’s struggles for more funding from Harrison, and his dogged insistence that his architectural vision be made manifest in the tonnes of poured concrete and rebar. 

 

An example of Brutalist architecture 

AT ONE POINT, there is a depiction of a narrow interior stair, whose ceiling is thirty feet or more high, that reminded me of stairs inside an Egyptian pyramid. There, the cold stone echoes, millennia later, the unrelenting concrete structure of László’s ‘pyramid’, with an aesthetic as sterile and un-human as the tomb-pyramids of Giza. One of the questions the film asks is how the two are related.  

THE FILM also examines the immigrant experience and the power imbalance existing between native born Americans, who have wealth and privilege, and those, like László and his family, newly arrived and struggling to realize their dreams and ambitions. We see him as he constructs his first major project, working though his ideas of form and function to develop and promote a new architectural style and ultimately a new school of architecture called “Brutalism”.

 

👉IT IS CLEAR IN THE FILM that German fascism, under which László and his wife, Erzsébet, suffered during the war, has its correspondence in America. And it's displayed in fine fashion by Guy Pierce in his role as the multi-millionaire Harrison van Buren, someone who wields great power and control over László but wears wingtip Oxfords instead of jackboots. This inequality is laid bare for all to see after a party with the workers onsite at the growing community centre. There, Harrison rapes a drunken László who has no recourse but to bear the assault in silence or face losing the project he has spent years developing. Interestingly, it is Erzsébet who confronts van Buren during a family dinner calling him out as a “rapist”. Her accusation does not destroy László’s chances to complete the project, though delays occur amid turmoil within the van Buren family. 

 

Venice, Italy

 

 NEAR THE END of the movie is a scene where László is on a trip to Venice. There he rides in a gondola along the city’s famous canals. It is a magical, colourful excursion amid the baroque and highly decorated buildings, and in stark contrast to the Brutalist buildings he would spend his life designing and building.

 

THE STORY MOVES FORWARD in time to the 1980’s with László, now an invalid and unable to speak, attending a retrospective of his work. His grand niece speaks for him, telling the audience that his work was inspired by his experience in the Buchenwald death camp. She says he deliberately removed from the buildings he designed any form, decoration or amenity that suggested or celebrated community life. The bleakness of the death camps, their austere, unhuman, anti-life design and function he incorporated into his buildings to act as a reminder to the world about what happened during the war, and to lay down a marker for posterity, perhaps serving a function similar to the ancient pyramids of Egypt.

👉WHETHER OR NOT Brutalist architecture of the post-war era was indeed a concretization of one of the darkest periods in human history, it sure goes a long way explaining that ‘someone just walked over my grave’ feeling you sometimes get when encountering such buildings. 

👉Brutalist architecture was a relatively short-lived phenomenon¹, and frankly, give me Venice any day!  

 

 

CHEERS, JAKE. _____________________________________

 

* The scene when László first arrives in America, passing beneath the statue of liberty at the entrance to New York harbour is an example of the camerawork found throughout the film: edgy and with a jazz sountrack. An ‘inverted’ statue of liberty suggests freedom is perhaps not as universal as advertised. Freedom at the top; at the bottom, not so much.

1. Though, I am told it's making something of a comeback of late. I'm not sure whether I'm happy with this news.  

  

The Ross Building, York University, circa 1970