Episode 26 The Culture Show

Hello and welcome to The Culture Show.

This week we're coming from Light Show,

a spectacular new exhibition of light sculptures and installations

from the last 50 years, here at the Hayward Gallery in London.

Tonight - an Alpine architectural delight,

Jonathan Miller's return to the stage,

and the forgotten Spanish master, Murillo.

First, funny man Bill Murray has carved out a career playing

misfits and melancholy losers, but for his latest film,

Hyde Park On Hudson, he has taken on the challenge of recreating

one of America's most revolutionary presidents, Franklin D Roosevelt.

Mark Kermode went to meet him.

As the only president in US history to be elected for more than two terms,

polio sufferer Franklin D Roosevelt was the saviour of a depressed

America in the 1930s, thanks to his economic crusade, the New Deal.

In Hyde Park On Hudson we see the subsequent birth of the diplomatic special

relationship between Britain and America

in the meeting of a president and a king.

He's definitely younger than I'd imagine. For a king, you know?

Is he?

They both seem nervous. That surprised me.

Without some help from us,

Daisy, there soon may not be an England to be king of.

So I'd be nervous, too.

Set on the brink of World War II, FDR plays host to a stuttering

George VI and Queen Elizabeth,

who are there to ask for American support.

Seen through the eyes of FDR's distant cousin and habitual lover,

the film offers a glimpse into the intimate back story to big historical events.

You are going to be a very fine king.

-I don't know what to say.

-Your father would be very proud.

I'm not so certain about that.

HE COUGHS

If I were your father...

..I'd be proud.

Famously elusive when it comes to publicity,

I met Bill for the exclusive UK broadcast interview about the new film.

-What is this show called?

-The Culture Show.

How did you come up with that one?

Tell me about playing Roosevelt.

You've said that what you had to do was to find the things in the character that you most admired.

How did you do that?

He was a complicated guy.

He came into a situation of the Great Depression.

The preamble to war... the run up to a war.

And he had to figure out how to solve those two things, which were huge.

I think he really was a person that saw himself, observed himself,

worked on himself.

I think he was an extraordinary person.

What about on a personal level? One of the things the film does

is that you see him dealing with the fact that he has polio.

Tell me about playing that and how significant that is.

It's significant to me because I have a sister who had polio.

It was kind of a funny fate that I get to play

a famous person that had polio. And after just a couple of days wearing those braces,

having to call my sister and apologise for all my behaviour my whole life!

Women played a central role in Roosevelt's professional and personal life.

By juxtaposing Laura Linney as his amorous cousin with

his crusading First Lady Eleanor, played by Olivia Williams,

and Olivia Colman's spiky Queen Elizabeth,

the film reflects how women's roles were changing during his presidency.

Do you mind if I call you Elizabeth?

No.

One of the things the film deals with is the stripping away of protocol,

because we see British royalty arriving in this American household in which

the Queen is referred to as Elizabeth.

That was Eleanor Roosevelt again. She was the most democratic of all.

She was the cutting-edge of the civil rights movement,

the women's suffrage movement. She was a blade.

The idea that you had to curtsy in front of another woman, that just rankled her.

I have trouble curtsying in front of other women - who doesn't?

You have an interesting relationship with dealing with Hollywood, dealing with the press,

so how much does that appeal to you, the stripping away of protocol?

I find that fuss causes tension.

I overpack sometimes, but I don't pack extra people.

My work is what I do. It is not necessary that

I have a whole team of people.

A film is a collaboration anyway. Why bring too many more people?

There's a whole lot of people to collaborate.

Despite Hyde Park On Hudson's fine performances

and production design, narrative flaws mean it doesn't

rank among Murray's best, but his best sets a very high standard.

We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!

With you much loved comedy classics like Ghostbusters

and Groundhog Day behind him,

Hyde Park complements the tone of his latter projects,

which, though more serious, are still distinctively deadpan.

These collaborations include Sofia Coppola's Lost In Translation

and Wes Anderson's Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.

Then, of course, there's his surprising encounter with

the Wu-Tang Clan in Jim Jarmusch's Coffee And Cigarettes.

You are Bill Murray! Bill Groundhog Day, Ghostbusting-ass Murray.

-Who you gonna call?

-I know that, just don't tell anybody.

I don't all have my movies on a little shelf, or anything like that,

but if you're going through the TV, sometimes, there's one of your movies.

And sometimes you'll stop and go, huh. You know.

I watched a movie I made a couple of years ago, called What About Bob?

Which is incidentally a great film. It is really funny!

It's funny.

I feel good. I feel great. I feel wonderful.

I think they are all important.

I really do. I work as hard as I can on all of them.

You just want people to see it. You just want people to see it.

Bill, thank you very much.

I really enjoyed that, especially the overtime!

And Hyde Park On Hudson is in cinemas now.

Next up - the Dulwich Picture Gallery is Britain's oldest public art gallery.

And now it's getting something of a makeover.

Parts of it are being transformed into a 17th-century church

to coincide with a new display of work by the great Spanish baroque painter Murillo.

I went along earlier this week to take a look.

When you think of 17th century's Spain's golden age of painting,

the name Murillo is not the first that springs to mind.

Zurbaran, Velasquez, El Greco.

In the 20th century, their masterpieces were deemed far

superior to Murillo's luminous virgins and jolly urchins.

It's hard to think of an Old Master whose reputation has fallen further than Murillo.

In the 19th century he was regarded as a god.

Now, almost nobody has heard of him.

In my book he was one of the great artists.

Not only that - his story is deeply moving.

It's one of tragedy, compassion - ultimately hope.

And I hope that this exhibition opens people's eyes to his true genius.

So, meet the man himself - Bartholome Esteban Murillo.

A wonderful self-portrait of a proud artist. Look at that.

But what really strikes me about this picture is his face.

There is something very wise, very compassionate

but also very melancholy about that expression, and he had lived a hard life.

His wife died after just 20 years of marriage,

having borne him nine children, only four of whom survived.

And Murillo in fact painted this picture, as the inscription

tells us, for his children.

And I think that his love for his own children and indeed

for the children of Seville was very much at the centre of his life.

Murillo's best known in Britain for his sensitive

portraits of street children.

Sadly, he had no shortage of subjects

because, although art had blossomed in its golden age,

by the second half of the 17th century, Spain was suffering.

Seville during Murillo's lifetime was absolutely ravaged by plague,

by famine, by crop failure.

The population of the city halved.

And the streets were full of beggar children, vagabonds.

The pictures call attention to the plight of the city's poor children

and they also ask a question.

They say - what can we do?

Murillo was joined in his quest for the answer by Don Justino de Neve,

canon of Seville cathedral.

Wealthy and devout, he founded religious buildings

offering sanctuary for the needy.

In Murillo he saw a man

who could paint powerful symbols of spiritual salvation.

A lifelong friendship and patronage was born.

Their most ambitious project was the reconstruction of a local church,

dedicated to the universal mother, the Virgin Mary.

So, Xavier, you've turned the central hall of Dulwich Picture Gallery

into the nave of a cathedral.

What is the thinking behind it?

Well, for me it was highly important to put the pictures

back into their original context.

When Murillo was asked to paint these by Justino,

they were meant to go up high in the church of Santa Maria la Blanca.

Normally we see them in the Prado as paintings on the wall of an art gallery,

and you're saying, no, no, no - they're pieces of holy theatre,

and they should have been up there.

We can see the underneath of his foot.

Exactly, and suddenly

you are appreciating the arches within the composition.

He is trying to echo the actual arch of the architecture in his composition.

So he's taking everything into consideration.

It's a wonderful piece of painting.

It is - it's Murillo at his best. He's just come back from Madrid

where he's looked at Velazquez, Titian, all the great Venetians.

And he's really trying out his own technique.

I can feel him, or sense him, looking at Titian.

That's a very Titianesque dog.

I think Venus in one of Titian's paintings has got a rather similar dog curled up.

It's great domestic setting.

The Spaniards regard this as la siesta time.

They have fallen completely asleep.

It's a siesta from which they are about to be awoken.

The cloud of their dreaming is being parted.

Of course, and she is basically instructing them

to build a church dedicated to herself.

And...there she is. At the far end.

The ultimate image, perhaps, by Murillo of the Virgin Mary.

Murillo's Immaculate Conception Of The Virgin Mary

is one of his most radiant paintings,

but like much of his work,

taken at face value, it was derided in the recent times.

It's precisely the kind of painting

that gave him for so long such a bad name.

It has been dismissed, this kind of painting.

Chocolate box, saccharin, sentimental.

But if you clear your mind

of those prejudices and see it in the context of Murillo's life,

Murillo's Seville, you can see it

for the radiant masterpiece that it is.

Look at the way that the Virgin rises up.

The rhythms of her drapery, look at the way she is clothed in the sun,

she treads on the crescent moon.

And I love this joyful crowd of cherubim and seraphim.

I wonder if Murillo thought of them as cherubim and seraphim

or whether he thought of them as the souls...

..of his own lost children.

Of the children that he and Justino de Neve did so much to try and help.

I think it's an image of great hope.

It's a way of telling the people of Seville that despite the darkness,

despite all the loss, despite all the death - at the end,

there is light at the end of the tunnel.

And Murillo and Justino de Neve: The Art Of Friendship

is on at the Dulwich Picture Gallery until May.

Next, the Royal Gold Medal is the most prestigious

prize in Britain for architecture.

And tonight it's being awarded to Peter Zumthor,

one of the most elusive men in the profession.

Tom Dyckhoff travelled to Switzerland to catch up

with architecture's master of understatement.

Deep in the Swiss Alps, nestled between the mountaintops,

is a masterpiece of one of the most revered men in contemporary architecture.

A shaman. A mystic of his craft.

Peter Zumthor's only designed a handful of public buildings.

He's an architect of quiet gestures.

His buildings don't shout, they whisper.

And yet he's been awarded

architecture's equivalent of the Nobel Prize, the Pritzker in 2009,

and has just won architecture's highest accolade in Britain

the Royal Gold Medal,

which puts him firmly in architecture's Hall of Fame.

He wants to create spaces that leave room for emotions and memories.

An architecture of the senses.

Like a great poem or a piece of music, his buildings capture mood.

The thermal baths at Vals encapsulate Zumthor's approach.

The buildings feel like they have been hand-hewn

from the mountainside, into layers of quartzite.

To swim along these gurgling pools,

particularly in the snow, is as close to a mystical,

sensual experience as you're likely to get in contemporary architecture.

Zumthor's earth-bound designs are reticent but powerful,

the kind of architecture that stays in your memory,

ordinary buildings made somehow extraordinary.

Zumthor doesn't do flashy, he doesn't do show-stoppers.

You won't find him on the celebrity circuit,

but it is this very unattainability,

the shunning of the showbiz of architecture

that makes him all the more alluring.

True to his publicity-shy persona, Zumthor's work and living space

is in a remote village in the Chur valley,

about an hour's drive from Zurich.

You've won the Pritzker Prize and the Royal Gold Medal now - congratulations.

Talk to me about how you start work on a project,

what the process is that you go through?

The most important thing is to prepare the job.

I am careful not to be caught

with the wrong client.

If it's only commercial, I am not interested.

Not because I'm against business, but I don't trust so much

the people who do something out of commercial reasons.

For you it's about - what?

It's about maintaining the quality of the finished project?

Basically, what I am doing is sort of like a whole project.

My approach is holistic.

So there are no parts.

No, "We did not have time to do this as there is no money."

So that's what I am doing.

If somebody wants a well-made building,

costed and designed to its purpose and site, that is my client.

#If somebody wants a Zumthor building, that's not my client.

THEY CHUCKLE

You see? I'm not a brand!

Zumthor gained a degree of public recognition

for bigger civic buildings like the Kolumba Museum in Cologne,

where the building fuses seamlessly with the Roman ruins it houses.

But it's his small projects like the Brother Klaus Chapel,

commissioned by a farmer for his field in Germany,

that reveal the essential purity of his designs

and his ingenious use of materials.

The chapel was built with concrete

surrounding a framework of tree-trunks,

that were then burned and removed.

It is a very existential space.

It talks about the wind, the rain, the snow, the weather,

the stone and darkness, and light, and charcoal and...

There was a fire.

And you still can smell it!

So that's, it's elemental, I guess.

It's only two years ago

that Zumthor finally designed a building in Britain -

a temporary structure for the series of annual summer pavilions

at the Serpentine Gallery.

He's currently working on what he calls "a secular retreat" in Devon

for Alain de Botton's Living Architecture project of holiday homes.

This secular retreat.

This is two blocks. And a big roof.

You'll see. That's all!

-It can't possibly be that simple?

-Yeah, that's it!

We made it like an invitation house.

It works like it has, like, your hotel unit

where you have your bathroom and toilet for yourself

and then the big roof where you come together

and eat and cook and talk and so on.

I think it should be very good for you and for me

to go there with your family! And you will feel really good.

That is what I'm trying to achieve, that is all.

THEY LAUGH

MONASTIC MUSIC

Like his secular retreat in Devon,

Zumthor's buildings are sanctuaries, spaces to withdraw to.

His most modest building is St Benedict's Chapel,

perched on a mountainside not far from his home.

It's built on the same spot as an old baroque chapel

that was destroyed by an avalanche.

It's designed to conjure up memories of the old building,

down to the deliberately nostalgic creak of its floorboards.

Zumthor's quiet architecture

has been attracting more and more disciples.

They're after what it offers - a kind of integrity or authenticity

rare in today's globalised construction industry

but more and more relevant in these times of crisis and austerity.

Now that he's been anointed by the high priests of the industry,

many more will be converted to his way of thinking.

Now, it's been six long years

since Jonathan Miller last directed a play on the British stage.

But now he's returning for Northern Broadsides's production

of Githa Sowerby's long-forgotten classic Rutherford & Son.

Alan Yentob visited rehearsals

to find out what's tempted Miller out of retirement at the age of 78.

Cecil Sharp House,

home of the English Folk Song and Dance Society.

Just around the corner from London Zoo.

Currently it's home to two big beasts of English theatre,

Dr Jonathan Miller and Barrie Rutter,

Artistic Director of the theatre company, Northern Broadsides,

in the storming role of Rutherford,

a tyrannical patriarch from the industrial North.

Because it's life?

I've lived here nigh on 60 years and I'll tell you, life's work.

Keeping your head up and your feet on the ground - that's life!

Sleep, begetting children and rearing them up

to work after you're gone. That's life!

Work and more work, and six foot of earth at the end.

That's life!

One of the things that impressed me apart from the play

is this extraordinary achievement of my host.

In other words, Barrie Rutter,

who has established over the course of the last 20 years

one of the most important dramatic institutions in this country.

-You really think I'm going to give in?

-I know you'll give in.

-Well, I'm not.

-What will you do?

-That's my business.

-Curse it.

-Nowt! That's what he'll do.

That's what you've done these five years, and what's come of it?

Rutter believes in Northern voices

doing classical work in non-velvet spaces.

It starts with him there. Ignore me entirely!

HE LAUGHS

The play is noteworthy, not only as it was written in 1912 by a woman

but because Miller is on record as saying it's as good as Chekhov.

I have a right to get paid!

I have a right to have my children live respectable!

I raised you all up a class.

I've a right to expect you to stay there!

John Rutherford is a widower, the owner and master of a glassworks.

The survival of his business and the status it brings to his family

is what drives him.

Janet, his daughter, has been ground down

by years of looking after her father. His two sons live in his shadow.

All are trying to escape in their own ways.

John, through his new invention.

If he thinks he's going to pick my brains, he can think again.

And Dick, a priest, by moving to a different parish.

Wear your collar stood at the back if you like.

It's all one to me.

You were no good for my purpose, and there's an end.

Everything Rutherford stands for is threatened

when a visit from an angry villager bring a shocking revelation.

You think you're so grand, with your big 'ouse and high ways!

And your grandfather, a potman like my own!

You, with your son that's laughing stock of t'parish

and your daughter that goes with a working man behind your back!

So goodnight to thee!

Very good. A bit more clarity.

With the accent, it's a little bit hard.

It is a foreign language to some people.

It just needs to be a little bit more clarified.

Oooh! Careful, Mr Miller! We've been touring for 20 years.

We play Winchester, Southampton! Portsmouth! We're not that foreign!

Well, at that speed it is, but it's very, very good.

So who was Githa Sowerby?

This portrait was painted just after

the great success of Rutherford & Son on the London stage.

As the daughter of a Gateshead glass manufacturer,

she wrote about what she knew.

Even so, when it opened to rave reviews,

the fact that the author, GK Sowerby, was a woman, was not mentioned.

The Telegraph did an amazing review of the play.

A week or so later, the journalist put another thing in the paper,

saying, "Had I known it was a woman who had written it,

"I wouldn't have given such a favourable review."

You found it appealing, partly, and this is interesting in itself,

because, as you say, it reminded you of Chekhov.

Now, of course, Chekhov was a physician, a practising doctor.

What does that sensibility, that connection you have with Chekhov,

how does it connect to theatre?

Well, I don't want to draw too many comparisons between Chekhov

and myself, but both for me and Chekhov

there was a pre-occupation of observing the negligible details

of human behaviour from which you hoped to be able to draw conclusions

about what was wrong with the patient.

That, I think, was for me, transferable into the theatre.

I suspect that it was what was transferable into the theatre

when Chekhov was writing.

You have ruined my life.

You, with your getting on!

I have loved in wretchedness.

All the joy I have ever had, made wicked through fear,

and you, who are you?

Who are ya?!

I mean, I remember hearing someone talking about the theatre,

saying, "I go to the theatre to be taken out of myself,"

and it's usually said by people who have nothing to take out.

I think the most important thing about going to the theatre

is that you go in order to be taken INTO yourself

and to reacquaint yourself with aspects of your own life

and also the aspects of the negligible lives

of those who surround one.

That, actually, what is the case

is that we have this short, negligible existence,

and then we are forgotten.

And Rutherford & Son runs at the Viaduct Theatre in Halifax

from 8th to 16th of February before beginning a national tour.

That is almost it for tonight. For more culture go to:

Next week we have Lichtenstein, Cerys Matthews,

crime-writing, and we'll reveal Your Paintings,

works of art you, the public, own.

But to play us out, a band hotly tipped for big things.

AlunaGeorge have been short-listed for the BBC's Sound of 2013 poll

and the BRITs Critics' Choice Award.

They're here with us tonight to play You Know You Like It. Good night.

# Some people want me to be heads or tails

# I say no way Try again another day

# I should be happy not tipping the scales

# I just won't play Letting my life get away

# I'm no fool, no, I'm not a follower

# I don't take things as they come if they bring me down

# Life can be cruel

# If you're a dreamer

# I just wanna to have some fun Don't tell me what can't be done

# You know you like it but it drives you insane

# You know you like it but it drives you insane

# You know you like it but you're scared of the shame

# What you want, what you gonna do?

# You know you like it but it drives you insane

# Follow me cos you know that you wanna feel the same

# You know you like it but it drives you insane

# What you want, what you gonna do?

# Yeah, hoo!

# If you wanna train me

# Like an animal

# Better keep your eye on my every move

# There's no need to be

# So damn cruel

# Baby, you got nothing to prove

# I'm no fool, no, I'm not a follower

# I don't take things as they come if they bring me down

# Life can be cruel if you're a dreamer

# I just wanna have some fun

# Don't tell me what can't be done

# You know you like it but it drives you insane

# You know you like it but it drives you insane

# You know you like it but you're scared of the shame

# What you want, what you gonna do?

# You know you like it but it drives you insane

# Follow me cos you know that you wanna feel the same

# You know you like it but it drives you insane

# What you want, what you gonna do? #