It is one of the greats paradoxes of remote landscapes that they can imbue a sense of confinement. Ask any of the crew of Ryan's Daughter, the hulking production that embedded itself in the Dingle Peninsula fora year in the late 1960s, and they'd probably agree.

avid Lean's romantic epic was the original Waterworld, a film so swollen, expensive and problematic that the scars of its burden would always show through over its sprawling three hours-plus running time. A flawed Oscar-winning classic or a swollen mess, depending on your viewpoint, by the time Ryan's Daughter was released in 1970, the production had run 135 days over schedule and gone $3.5m over-budget.

This added expense that accounted for a quarter of the final $13m cost was down to paying cast members overtime. In those 12 months when Kerry became a movie set, there was an ever-present factor that put paid to any notions of a streamlined shooting schedule - the Atlantic weather. The concept of a call sheet, an agenda drafted before filming setting out a timetable for scenes, locations and cast, was impossible as the Atlantic threw five seasons a day at the filmmakers.

Add to this the demanding attitude of Lean and the result was countless days of inertia. Throw in the then-47 pubs of Dingle and customary showbiz attitudes of the era and Ryan's Daughter became a sodden knees-up where resentments festered among the under-stimulated Hollywood egos trapped there.

A gift from the non-fiction gods, then, for Paul Rowan, the award-winning sports writer who first heard about the film from his parents during one of countless childhood holidays in the area. This expertly-researched romp is the result of 15 years of interviews with those on set or looking on at the time, and arrives right on cue for the film's 50th anniversary this year.

Reading though the book, you wonder might the filming of Ryan's Daughter make a better story than the actual movie itself. Between its end-of-the-world location, the injection of cash and glitz into the frugal rural community, and the clashing colour schemes of preening film stars and reserved locals, it has the hallmarks of some brand of hair-raising Ealing comedy.

With a catalogue that included The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957),Lawrence of Arabia(1962),and Doctor Zhivago(1965), Lean was the golden goose of a financially unsound Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. When he and scriptwriting foil Robert Bolt had set out to retell Flaubert's Madame Bovary against the backdrop of post-Rising Ireland, he had carte blanche. The studio needed this to bail them out of the red.

Lean, meanwhile, waschasinghis biggest hit to date and pushed the throttle too far. He insisted on shooting in 70mm, which, while giving the film a majestic sweep, requires bigger technical specs. This gets interesting when trying to shoot a currach scene in the wind-lashed surf. If the Kerry light and weather was misbehaving - which was all it did - he would cut and postpone filming. Self-important cast members waited in bars for calls that never came, sozzled and embittered about Lean's unyielding, joyless style of helmsmanship.

Robert Mitchum, as the cuckolded schoolmaster Charles, was at the peak of his devil-may-care years, and decided that he wasn't going to play ball with Lean. Relations got so sour between the two prize bulls that they couldn't stand to be in the same room as one another.

Mitchum didn't lose sleep over it. HeturnedMilltown House, the hotel he rented in its entirety, into a notorious party den where booze and broads were flown in and a marijuana greenhouse was cultivated around the back. When Mitchum's long-suffering wife Dorothy paid a visit, apause button was pressed.

In the title role of the sexually unfulfilled Rosy was Bolt's wife, Sarah Miles. She admitted to an affair with Mitchum occurringin the aftermath of the production, but other sources here are not so sure. Lean quickly took a disliking to the brattish ingenue, but far more problematic was a rift that emerged between her and Christopher Jones, who would play her love interest, Major Doryan.

Jones, a Tennessee pretty-boy who sleep-walked into movies, infuriated Lean with the woodenness of his acting. Sohopeless was he at accents that a voiceover had to be recorded in post-production using anotheractor.

When the time came to film what would become one of the most scandalous cinemasex scenes of that era, Jones' refusal to co-operate with Lean and Miles heldup production for days. To make him more malleable, Mitchum and Miles spiked his breakfast with a sedative.

Despite the hell-raising and juicy gossip, Rowanreminds us that this was ultimately an unhappy film, one that ruined marriages, shortened lifespans, and sent careers into decline. Ryan's Daughter met a critical mauling on its release, anddespite a decent box officeand two Oscar gongs (for supporting actor John Mills and cinematographer Freddie Young), the film has not aged well.

But as a tale from a bygone era when filmmakers couldn't just "CGI-in" the world at will, Rowan's book is a lively and perceptiveaddition to Irish cinema literature.

He achieves a real intimacy as he charts Kerry's ownFitzcarraldo, an endurance test of a production wherethe best screen performance was given by the one element that caused the most grief- the location itself.

Sunday Indo Living

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An epic year of misbehaviour, hedonism and havoc behind the scenes of 'Ryan's Daughter' - Independent.ie

William J. Schultz is a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation and Vanier Canada doctoral scholar at the University of Alberta, as well as a former correctional officer. Dr. Sandra M. Bucerius is the director of the Centre for Criminological Research and an associate professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Alberta as well as the director of the University of Alberta Prison Project. Dr. Kevin D. Haggerty is Canada Research Chair and professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Alberta.

If the idea of decriminalizing possession of small amounts of illicit drugs once sounded radical, the coalition of people who now espouse the idea would certainly seem to be strange bedfellows.

On July 9, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police called on the federal government to decriminalize possession of small amounts of illicit drugs; B.C. Premier John Horgan asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to do the same in a Jul. 20 letter. Benjamin Perrin, the top criminal justice adviser in Stephen Harpers tough-on-crime administration, recently wrote a book in support of decriminalization, and major publications, including The Globe and Mail, have published editorials urging the same.

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Despite this, there is still political hesitation on this issue, because decriminalizing even small quantities of hard drugs runs counter to decades of misinformation and partisan posturing.

However, there is one group we never hear from in this discussion: imprisoned drug users. So over the past four years, we spent extensive time working in and around prisons as researchers, asking questions and hearing stories about drug use. To date, our research team has interviewed more than 800 incarcerated men and women and more than 170 correctional officers as part of the University of Alberta Prison Project. Our participants work or are housed in sentenced and remand facilities in six federal and provincial prisons across Western Canada. Although they are a complex group for many reasons, prisoners perspectives on drug use provide important insights into wider discussion about decriminalizing hard drugs.

To start, we must recognize that Canadian prisons are full of men and women who are incarcerated because they use drugs. In interviews, our prisoner participants estimate that between 85 and 90 per cent of the people on their prison units have substance-abuse issues that directly contributed to their incarceration. The continued criminalization of drugs ensures that an unending stream of men and women are incarcerated for drug possession and drug sales, and also influences a much wider group of prisoners who commit crimes to pay for their drugs or use violence as part of the illicit drug market.

While officials have long sought to keep illicit drugs out of prison, they remain prevalent. In prison, drug sales are lucrative and provide the financial life-blood of prison gangs. When drugs are circulating in a unit, they contribute to volatility, violence and the exploitation of vulnerable inmates. This in-prison drug situation has become much more disturbing in recent years with the emergence of stronger and more lethal street drugs like fentanyl. As such opioids are illegal, prisoners who use them do so in a clandestine fashion, something that increases the risks of infection, disease, and inadvertent overdoses. We have interviewed prisoners who have overdosed multiple times in a single week while incarcerated, and in some institutions, correctional officers describe being overwhelmed by constant emergency calls, where they work to resuscitate overdosing prisoners on the edge of death.

Tough-on-crime political rhetoric portrays hard drug use as a form of moral decay, associated with a lack of self-control. The prison situation we describe above is a direct result of this outlook, as such policies promote harsh prison sentences which are assumed wrongly to scare people away from drug use. However, our participants add a unique and crucial insight to the conversation. The great majority of our participants describe experiencing acute and/or recurrent trauma throughout their lives. 95 per cent of all the men we interviewed in federal prisons and 97 per cent of all the women have been sexually or physically victimized before ever being charged with a crime. A disproportionate number have backgrounds defined by a string of traumatic events, such as suicides, lethal overdoses, or the murder of a parent, child, partner or friend, or a major assault that leaves them with life-long PTSD. For a disproportionate number of prisoners, using hard drugs is not a sign of rampant hedonism; it is a means to deal with the physical, emotional, and psychological legacies of abuse, victimization, and trauma.

These conversations shed new light on the benefits of drug decriminalization. Decriminalization would allow police to concentrate on more serious issues, by reallocating resources away from the Sisyphean task of preventing drug use. It would also halt the revolving door of incarcerated drug users and allow for greater investment in services designed to assist people who want to address their substance use. Most crucially, it would allow us to reframe Canadas drug problem, and understand it as a public health and public education problem, rather than a moral failing. Decades of experience have demonstrated that the criminal justice system cannot solve public health issues, and prisons are probably the worst imaginable option for addressing the social challenges posed by substance misuse.

The time is right to decriminalize the possession of personal amounts of drugs. Our research leads us to believe that such a change would result in a more logical and fair approach to substance use and, best yet, provide the prospect of improving the lives of thousands of Canadians.

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Tough-on-crime anti-drug moralizing does a disservice to Canadians - The Globe and Mail

Forty is a magical age. Dr. Spock doesnt list any milestones for this age but I can tell you its surprisingly enjoyable and free-ing to crest that hill and begin your leisurely roll down the other side. By far the best part of turning forty, is the perspective it gives you. But you cant rush it! Youve got to wait for it. You have to live all forty years before perspective is in your purview.

What do I mean by perspective? Well, maybe patterns is a better word. It takes the blessing of living and observing for forty years to recognize the patterns in the world, in people, in our spouses and in ourselves. Recognizing these patterns makes living much calmer.

When one is young, each new pattern may feel traumatic. Like it will last forever. The political party you dont support wins an election and it feels like theyll be in power for-frickin-ever. Your child enters a new, annoying phase of growing up and it feels like their snarky Whatevs phase will last forever. You get in a mood and it feels like itll last forever.

Turning forty helps you realize that life is cyclical and nothing lasts forever.

Around 250 BC, King Solomon penned these words in Ecclesiastes 1: 9 (KJV):

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;and that which is done is that which shall be done:and there is no new thing under the sun.

In the laste 1950s Pete Seeger made the concept more approachable when he penned the song Turn! Turn! Turn! made famous by the Byrds.

A time to be born, a time to dieA time to plant, a time to reapA time to kill, a time to healA time to laugh, a time to weep

It took turning forty to make me realize just how true this was, is and ever will be. Every season of darkness is pushed out by enlightenment. The Roman hedonism and debauchery was eventually replaced by Puritanism. What was seen as shocking in the 1960s is seen as quaint, almost prudish, sixty years later. Democrat follows Republican follows Democrat. Sworn enemies become allies. Enrons come and go. Nothing ever stays the same.

Life is like the weather. Here in Minnesota we say that if you dont like the weather, just wait five minutes. Itll change. Life is like that. Theres no reason to take each new fad or season or politician all that seriously. Just wait five minutes. Itll change.

One of the most interesting things about turning forty, is being able to recognize patterns in people, including yourself. Instead of being reactive and a slave to those patterns, one can say with a chuckle, Youre doing it again. Im doing it again. Calm the heck down!

My pattern, or rather weakness, is freaking out about things. When trauma is your normal and youve sloshed through life in a sea of cortisol and PTSD, freaking out comes naturally. I have a quarter century of practice at quietly freaking out. Im an expert!

Almost a decade of attacks and threats from family members, Michaels medical emergencies, unforeseen medical bills and domestic disasters have only heightened my trauma response. Even trivial things going wrong makes me feel like my world is crumbling round my ears. I overreact. I go into hyper-defense mode. I hit that problem head on like an M1A1 tank. Thats my pattern. I dont like it but identifying it was half the battle in fixing it.

Fixing it usually means holding very still and waiting for the storm to blow over. It always does.

Michael has his own pattern. In his world, the unthinkable always happens. Everyone hes ever loved has died or been snatched from his arms. The worst things that can happen in life have happened to him and thus he feels the worst things are not only possible, but probable.

He expects the worst to protect himself from ever being blindsided again. He might be admitted to hospital for something trivial, but hell loudly say he expects to be split from stem-to-stern for exploratory surgery. Thats silly, of course, but expecting the worst makes every other treatment easy for him to bear. Thats his pattern.

His pattern used to freak me out, but once I identified it, and stopped taking it so damn seriously, I could stay calm about it.

Being held against my will for so long, to me life became a Destination. I was in a holding pattern, hoping that Someday life would start for me. Life was a Goal much desired, never granted.

Then one day, all my dreams came true. But no one told my brain. I was stuck in Destination-Someday-Goal mode.

Turning forty is helping me to realize that Life is not a Destination. You never arrive. You are never done. It is a Journey. Being focused exclusively on a Destination robs you of the joy and pleasure of the Journey. And, spoiler alert, our final destination is Death. So youd better enjoy the journey, Honey Child! Dont save up all your living for Heaven. I know the world is a dangerous place but dare to do your living here too!

Everything you do today will have to be redone tomorrow, next week or next year. When you vacuum the carpet for the 1,497,268th time, that begins to sink in. Everything you wash today, will have to be washed again (including yourself!). The paperwork you fill out and file today will probably have to be done again. The house repairs you complete today are already under assault by the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, not to mention Murphys Law!

Actually, thats a gift. In Season 2 of Torchwood, Dr. Owen Harper dies and is brought back to life by the Resurrection Gauntlet. He can move and talk but technically hes still dead. No breath, no pulse, no blood, no eating, no drinking, no healing. Hes shown sadly throwing out all his toiletries, putting the contents of his refrigerator in the trash and bemoaning not being able to shag anymore.

That puts the monotony of re-doing everything weve already done into perspective. The need to re-do everything over and over means were alive and life is the greatest gift of all. Even the most boring, sedate life is full of small pleasures that, if you take the time to notice and savor them, are quite hedonistic! As Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, The world is so full of a number of things, Im sure we should all be as happy as kings.

If you or someone you love is dreading the Big Four-Oh, take heart! Life is actually better on the other side. Its calmer. You can wink at the ridiculousness of it all once you have the perspective of being forty and identifying all those cyclical (I was going to say silly) patterns.

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Turning 40 Gives the Gift of Perspective - PsychCentral.com

Reading Time: 12 minutesDrew Pavlou outside the Supreme Court of Queensland after contesting his expulsion by the University of Queensland PHOTO: AAP IMAGE DAN PELED

University of Queensland student activist and media sensation Drew Pavlou, who has been suspended by his institution until next year for what he claims to be retaliatory action against protesting against Chinese Communist Party who UQ are accused of having strong business ties and their violations of human rights.Drew opens up to The Catholic Weeklys David Ryan in an exclusive interview about what inspires his passion for human rights advocacy inspirations which find their origins in Catholic social teaching.

You were schooled at Villanova College, an Augustinian Catholic Boys College in Brisbane. Did that experience influence you in any meaningful way?

My Catholic schooling at Villanova focused heavily on human rights issues. Villanova has a really strong social justice tradition we were always encouraged to raise funds for Caritas and school expeditions to the Philippines to aid communities there. This strong social justice tradition influenced me greatly. I think throughout my life its not something I have been able to talk to the media much about because obviously in Australia there is an overwhelming emphasis on secular issues but I truly think my policies have been influenced by the Christian worldview. I was raised in the Orthodox Christian Tradition baptised Greek Orthodox and attended Catholic Schools all my life.

The Catholic focus on social justice has always been there. Studying religion in senior year, we focused on theology in Latin America, especially with regard to Oscar Romero.Honestly, I see Oscar Romero as a great political hero of mine. He was a warrior for justice and I do look to his example and others in the Church. Catholic Social teaching has influenced my politics. Certainly, there are issues where I diverge from the Church but I think the fundamental emphasis on human dignity thats something thats always stayed with me and shaped my entire political outlook.

2 So the Christian tradition is central to the notion of human dignity and social justice in modern society. Can you explain this in more detail?

I think one thing people really miss especially militant secular-atheists, often on the left is how much great social justice work there is in the Church and that the message of Christianity is to focus on the fragile and vulnerable. These are great progressive goals and its definitely influenced my social justice principles. Humanism comes from Christianity. Thats what many on the left forget: our humanist values derive from the Christian tradition. There have been times I have lapsed into agnosticism but in the last couple of months I have been getting much more in touch with my Orthodox Christian background. Ive sort-of been outside Christianity for a while, but I definitely feel thats changed in recent months.

For me the way it came is the notion of universal human rights which I believe in strongly. The question is how do you justify that belief? and I think you cannot just justify that belief from a piece of paper but rather what confers the notion of the dignity of the human person. I was reflecting on this in a philosophical sense and my Catholic friends would say Where do human rights come from if not from God? and I thought to myself We come to human rights through a rational position. But they would respond along the lines of So why cant we also come to a rational position on the social Darwinist Nietzschean notion that the strong dominate the weak?

our humanist values derive from the Christian tradition

At the time, I didnt have a response. But if we discard the Christian tradition then what stops us from becoming a society where the strong dominate the weak? Thats my great fear. And this is partly what we have at the moment. As we lose Christian traditions as a society we have moved towards a neoliberal dog-eat dog hyper-materialism.The strong dominate the weak and the weak suffer what a nightmare. If you lose the Christian humanist tradition whats to stop us from going down that path?

I think, honestly, if God took on human form and he died for the afflicted of the world thats the beautiful idea of Christianity. There is no more humane religion than the notion that someone as almighty as an Eternal God would die on the Cross for the beggars and sinners. Christianity is a religion that teaches us to show concern at a very fundamental level for the vulnerable because Christ died for the vulnerable. Thats what made me recover an understanding of Christianity. So I do understand the traditionalist Christian position because I, too, am opposed to the excess hedonism that comes with modern consumerism. I truly believe we find ourselves through family, community and social life.Our fundamental concern should be the social nature of life which is best seen through family and community.

3 For many student activists, Christianity is often associated with negative connotations (The Handmaids Tale, for example). How do you explain this and reconcile that view with your position as a student activist?

There is always this caricature. But a Christian society doesnt have to be a Handmaids Tale situation so often caricatured. I honestly think the sort of fear you could have a Christian Handmaids Tale dystopia in the West comes from Christianity especially in America and in a lot of places being already distorted to serve a dominant neo-liberal order, the Prosperity Gospel and things of that nature. In places like Latin America, where, there are often dictatorial regimes using Christianity to oppress. A regime like Pinochets in Chile comes to mind as an example: how could Pinochet be Christian when he was murdering unionists, leftists and ordinary civilians?

Thats why people often have the really fearful and hostile idea that a Christian society would be a nightmarish handmaidens tale, but I dont think thats [justified]. I genuinely believe its a distortion of Christianity. God took on human form and died like a beggar in the life of Christ. So I try to say this to other people often on the left who make the accusation that a Christian society means a Handmaids Tale.

No. I want a Christian society in the sense of a society where the poor, fragile and vulnerable are at the forefront of our concerns at all times. The idea that a Christian society lends itself to a totalitarian dystopia comes from distorted versions of Christianity. These so called Christian movements are often there to just serve the interests of the powerful, which is not at all what Christ had in mind. Christ turning out the money lenders in the temple that was the revolutionary nature of Christ. He wasnt in league with the powerful and their interests. No he put the human first and thats what Christian tradition is for me.

4 You advocate for a movement called Radical Democracy. It seems to advocate for small-scale subsidiarity and local representation. Whats it all about?

I guess the idea of radical democracy is that you are invested in the extension of democratic freedoms in all domains. Cornel West is a guy who is a great thinker of radical democracy and an inspiration of mine. One thing a lot of radical democrats like Cornel West say is that, yeah weve got democracy in government and politics but we dont often have democracy in the economic realm. Many people unfortunately go to work where bosses act as dictators. Work is for shareholders and workers suffer in unfair working environments. This affects families and children. So we still dont really have economic democracy and thats where leftist democratic economics come into play. You want to expand democracy so the workers have democratic control of their workplaces and their own economic activities.

5 Are you aware of the Churchs principles of economic justice such as the ideas expressed in the papal encyclical Rerum Novarum which talks about subsidiarity and workers representation?

Im very sympathetic to the distributionist economic model. Yes, I will say I am of the left, but I really reject popular Marxist strands of leftism because they often lend themselves to authoritarianism and materialism. So I end up at a sort-of distributionist perspective.I genuinely think that possibly may be the best way. The Marxist strands on the left are often hyper-materialist and so in that way also lend to human alienation. Sure, capitalist materialism lends itself to human alienation as is evident, but the materialism in the Marxist-Leninist system in China at the moment or under the old Soviet Union- fall into an authoritarian leftist model that also leads to human alienation.This is why I am a leftist critic of the Chinese Communist Party.

6 Your advocacy highlighting human rights abuses (of the Uyghurs, those occurring in Tibet and Hong Kong) perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party touches on larger geopolitical tensions. Some of this has fuelled anti-Chinese sentiment at home. Is this fair for Chinese people? Is there a distinction between the CCP and the Chinese people?

I always try and emphasise in my activism that I am opposed to the CCP and not the Chinese people. I have a great respect for the Chinese people. They are my brothers and sisters. I come to my activism from the Christian belief that all human beings are equal in dignity and have the same value and worth. So I really empathise with those Chinese students caught in that difficult position, because unfortunately it can often veer into anti-Chinese racism in popular sentiment. I really deplore anti-Chinese racism.Yes, its a problem in Australia and we have to combat it. So I feel for those Chinese students who are the victims of that. Its horrible. We are fighting for their human dignity. They are our allies and should not be alienated. We dont want them to be targeted in ways like that, be it from the CCP or Australian xenophobes at home.

7 Do you hold other governments here and abroad to a similar standard of scrutiny of human rights records?

Of course. Thats one thing I really want to emphasise. Yes I am a critic of the CCP but that does not mean I am just a China-basher. I am also opposed to the Australian Governments human rights abuses. I am on the record opposing the Australian Governments terrible treatment towards refugees. So I am fundamentally opposed to all human rights abuses wherever they occur. If the Australian Government is perpetrating terrible human rights abuses especially toward refugees then I will be in the fight against that as well. But when the CCP says If youre opposed to China youre pro-America thats not at all true for me. I will be critical of the American Government and the atrocious way African Americans are treated in that country. For me, its fundamentally about fighting for human rights wherever they are violated. Its not about bashing China for the sake of China. Its about fighting for human dignity be it in Western countries, China or the developing world. Human dignity is at the centre of society. Pope Francis through his humanism teaches a very strong concern for human dignity and the environment which we must leave to future generations which I admire greatly,

8 You have received multiple and explicit death and other malicious threats from pro CCP activists. Does the life of people like Oscar Romero give you sustenance through such harrowing experiences?

Yes, I look to people like Oscar Romero and those who fought against very powerful forces. Romero died fighting for the poor and vulnerable so that is something that I try and remember when the going gets tough.

The Christian tradition teaches that we find God through loving one another

I know Im fighting for justice and theres strength in that, so Im willing to bear personal sacrifices. The Christian tradition teaches that we find God through loving one another. Theres basically no higher calling than loving your neighbour and loving other people so I think theres no higher calling for me than trying to fight for other people. Thats why Id be willing to face risk to myself because I truly believe there is a higher purpose.

9 What advice would you offer the young?

Please always put the vulnerable, the voiceless, the poor and the fragile, at the foremost in your concerns. Thats what I would really encourage people to do. Do everything you can to try your very best to speak out in their favour and demonstrate love and compassion.I implore people to recognise that and lend their voice to just causes for the voiceless who cannot do so. We want a world where human life is treated with dignity.

We want a world where human life is treated with dignity

Unfortunately we are losing the ability to debate things in society with things like cancel culture. You know, if someone takes the Catholic Churchs position on certain social issues they can be really ostracised. Sure, while I personally disagree with some of the Churchs positions I understand that its a matter of faith for those who do and thats an important thing we need to recognise and uphold.

Drew Pavlou hopes to enter federal politics in the future, with an emphasis on human rights.

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Rebel with a Cause: The Saint and the values that inspire Drew Pavlou - The Catholic Weekly