:00:11. > :00:17.Tonight almost a million pounds in shares might be loose changed to
:00:17. > :00:22.banker, but -- change to banker, but a huge bonus for a glorified
:00:22. > :00:27.Civil Service. All line up to criticise bankers' bonus, but can't
:00:27. > :00:30.agree who could have stopped Stephen Hester's bonus at public
:00:30. > :00:33.owned RBS. Newsnight tries to find out who was responsible, whether it
:00:33. > :00:37.was avoidable or reasonable. Is it any business of politicians
:00:37. > :00:40.to get involved. Also tonight:
:00:40. > :00:43.I'm at the exclusive ski resort, where all the fashionable people
:00:43. > :00:49.get together to discuss the state of the world.
:00:49. > :00:53.Not actually Davos, Hemel Hempstead -- os.
:00:53. > :01:03.Our own world economics for yum will be putting the world to rights.
:01:03. > :01:04.
:01:04. > :01:08.Plus: Leave it Jack, he's a kid Jack.'S A punk. The man who brought
:01:08. > :01:11.Mexican cinema into the theatre, Guillermo Arriaga reflects on our
:01:11. > :01:21.globalised culture, and whether economic hard times make the world
:01:21. > :01:25.
:01:25. > :01:30.Good evening, bankers have been the pantomime villains of British
:01:30. > :01:34.politics for so long now, if you want an applause line, attacking
:01:34. > :01:40.bonuses is the way to go. All the leaders of the political parties
:01:40. > :01:46.have tried to out-outrage each other at one time or another, can
:01:46. > :01:50.they meet public expectations. If the best they can do about bonuses
:01:50. > :01:57.is to ask Stephen Hester not to take his, is it all just hot air.
:01:57. > :02:01.OK, here is a quiz question. Just what is RBS? Is it, a major British
:02:02. > :02:11.bank, based here in the City of London, and run according to the
:02:11. > :02:13.norms of global capitalism, or, is it, a bank controlled as it is
:02:14. > :02:17.owned, essentially by Westminster, and meeting political goals for
:02:17. > :02:23.Britain. That is the question that lies
:02:23. > :02:28.behind the row over Stephen Hester's �963,000 bonus today. It
:02:28. > :02:32.has got the politicians frothing. People will not understand how
:02:32. > :02:38.somebody can get a whacking great bonus like that, when they are
:02:38. > :02:43.basically running a state-owned concern. I'm at a loss to justify
:02:43. > :02:46.it. A huge amount of sympathy about people's sense of dismay when they
:02:47. > :02:51.see these figures that just seem figures from another planet for
:02:51. > :02:55.many people in the country. It is a disgraceful failure of leadership
:02:55. > :02:59.by the Prime Minister. He has been promising for months action against
:02:59. > :03:03.excessive bonuses, excessive pay, now he has nodded through a
:03:03. > :03:06.million-pound bonus. So what has he done, this banker, to earn a
:03:06. > :03:10.million on top of his regular million. He was brought in to turn
:03:10. > :03:15.the bank around. Well he has managed to cut the bank's leverage,
:03:15. > :03:20.the relationship between capital and money at risk from 28-times to
:03:20. > :03:25.17-times, but in the last 12 months, exposure to the euro crisis has
:03:25. > :03:29.sent the bank's shares plummeting, down 40%. That leaves the taxpayer
:03:29. > :03:34.sitting on a loss, and the bank impossible to sell. So the
:03:34. > :03:38.investment bank bit, once seen as key to RBS's global status, is to
:03:38. > :03:42.be sold off. I personally think had the Government nationalised the
:03:42. > :03:47.whole thing, they could have taken a much faster set of steps to
:03:47. > :03:50.create smaller units out of RBS that were more easily privatised,
:03:50. > :03:55.and the Government could have gotten its way out. Instead, what
:03:55. > :03:59.we have had is a Government that hasn't realised that it has taken a
:03:59. > :04:04.bet on investment banking increasing in value over the last
:04:04. > :04:08.three years, and really having the tax-payers take a punt on
:04:08. > :04:12.investment banking. That is a really poor strategy. When RBS
:04:13. > :04:19.collapsed in 2008, and nearly took the British economy down with it,
:04:19. > :04:23.Gordon Brown sacked its boss, Fred Goodwin. Yes I'm angry with RBS.
:04:23. > :04:27.Brown needed a competent replays., fast. In the rush they created a
:04:27. > :04:30.problem. There is no doubt there is a bit of schizophrenia in the
:04:30. > :04:35.Government at that time, we expected, first of all, the bank to
:04:35. > :04:39.become much less risky. At the same time we wanted the bank to be a
:04:39. > :04:42.state institution, mostly, to be lend to go corporates and
:04:42. > :04:51.individuals and therefore contributing to the recovery in the
:04:51. > :04:53.economy. When you have these two things coming at the same time and
:04:53. > :04:56.taking more risk when you are trying to reduce the risk level,
:04:56. > :05:02.that is very difficult. As the investigation dragged on, the
:05:03. > :05:10.prospect of selling RBS is healthy dwindled. New banking rules, new
:05:10. > :05:16.targets for lending pressed in on Stephen Hester when his size of
:05:16. > :05:19.bonus became a cause celebre, and the board was threatening to resign,
:05:19. > :05:22.George Osborne had to step in. alternatives would have been worse
:05:22. > :05:25.for the taxpayer. There would have been a larger bonus of the kind he
:05:25. > :05:30.would have got a few years ago, or the British Government would have
:05:30. > :05:34.had to takeover complete ownership of RBS and overruled the board. I
:05:34. > :05:38.think that would have cost the taxpayer more, as well. I
:05:38. > :05:41.understand people's frustration about levels of pay across the
:05:41. > :05:44.banking sector, but the alternatives when it came to
:05:44. > :05:48.Stephen Hester's bonus, would have been worse for the taxpayer.
:05:48. > :05:57.are the people who really took this decision? The Government owns RBS
:05:57. > :06:04.through UK Fingers Investments, a company -- UK -- UK Financial
:06:04. > :06:07.The acting chairman consulted with RBS and the Treasury before signing
:06:07. > :06:11.off Stephen Hester's bonus. They couldn't tell us when or how the
:06:11. > :06:16.decision was finally made, or whether the Government had proposed
:06:16. > :06:21.a lower sum. So where does this leave the �45 billion of the
:06:21. > :06:26.public's money invested in RBS? One banking expert is pessimistic.
:06:26. > :06:29.Government should be highly focused on how fast it can get rid of RBS,
:06:29. > :06:33.the money that was spent wasn't spent as an investment in banking,
:06:33. > :06:38.it was spent to save the economy from collapsing. So we shouldn't
:06:38. > :06:42.confuse the fact that we put money in to save our economy, that money
:06:42. > :06:48.is gone, right now we are speculating on the banking sector,
:06:48. > :06:53.the longer we hang on. The truth is, for Stephen Hester, the game at RBS
:06:53. > :06:57.has completely changed. He was origin yaally hired to grow the
:06:57. > :07:00.business, to keep the investment bank intact and sell the bring at a
:07:00. > :07:10.profit for the taxpayer. Now conditions have changed so badly
:07:10. > :07:17.that the problems at RBS go much deeper than one man's bonus. We
:07:17. > :07:23.have with us the chief executive of the advertising group WPPP, Martin
:07:23. > :07:26.Sorrell, the deputy chairman of the Labour Party and my other guest. Is
:07:26. > :07:30.this reasonable in your view, a reasonable reward for a job well
:07:30. > :07:35.done? I think if you look at the history to this, Stephen Hester
:07:35. > :07:41.came, I think, from British Land several years ago, had he no
:07:41. > :07:46.involvement in how RBS was run prior to joining from British Land.
:07:46. > :07:53.He gave up a contractural entitlement there, swapped shares
:07:53. > :07:57.for shares in RBS. And the shares have fallen in value since then. He
:07:57. > :08:04.was hired at a salary of just around one million. He forewent his
:08:04. > :08:08.bonus in 2009, he was awarded shares in 2010, the following year,
:08:08. > :08:15.to the tune of about �2 million. Shares that have not been cashed,
:08:15. > :08:20.as yet. He has received no cash in bonuses subsequent to then. This
:08:20. > :08:24.year the Government, or the Government holding company and the
:08:24. > :08:29.board have agreed a bonus of a million pounds. The bank's
:08:29. > :08:35.financial position has been de- risked. The original risk to the UK
:08:35. > :08:40.taxpayer was a trillion pounds, he has reduced that risk by de-risking
:08:40. > :08:45.the balance sheet by �600 billion. The bank has gone through a
:08:45. > :08:51.seriously difficult time, with the eurocrisis. It has lent significant
:08:51. > :08:55.amounts, �65 billion to SMEs, it is 40% of SME lending. Whether it is a
:08:55. > :08:59.good deal or not, it is a deal, I think, that in relation to what
:08:59. > :09:03.he's done, how he's performed, and the contract that was signed by
:09:03. > :09:06.both sides, and the Government asked him to come in, I think it's
:09:06. > :09:10.fair, yes. Michael Fallon, you obviously
:09:10. > :09:15.believe this is a good deal, I'm wondering if George Osborne signed
:09:15. > :09:19.off on it? Nobody likes the bankers' bonus, but we inherited a
:09:19. > :09:22.contract here, which the board has been operating under. Obviously as
:09:22. > :09:28.the largest shareholder, we have a view on what the board, the way the
:09:28. > :09:31.board has come to its decision. George Osborne did sign off on it?
:09:31. > :09:35.David Cameron has been talking about shareholder power? This is an
:09:35. > :09:38.example of a shareholder power. George Osborne and the Prime
:09:38. > :09:42.Minister, shareholder power there? This is an examine of shareholder
:09:42. > :09:47.power, the Government has the biggest stake in the bank, and
:09:47. > :09:51.clear made its views known, as a result the bonus is half the bonus
:09:51. > :09:53.that was there last year. Just to be clear, I'm sorry to interrupt,
:09:53. > :09:57.to be clear, George Osborne and David Cameron have done very well
:09:57. > :10:01.in getting a really good deal for the taxpayer, because they have
:10:01. > :10:06.exerted shareholder power, is that it? No, everybody would have liked
:10:06. > :10:11.to have seen this bonus much smaller than it was. Bonuses aren't
:10:11. > :10:14.popular, of course not, under the contract the Labour Government
:10:14. > :10:17.signed with Stephen Hester, the board of directors has discretion
:10:17. > :10:21.to set the final bonus. Shareholders can make their views
:10:21. > :10:24.known, and I understand the shareholders certainly did make
:10:24. > :10:28.their views known. The buck stops with the Chancellor doesn't it?
:10:28. > :10:34.a result the bonus was halved from what it was. The Chancellor did
:10:34. > :10:37.very well? It is a negotiation in the end between the major
:10:37. > :10:41.shareholder, the institutional shareholder and the board of the
:10:42. > :10:47.directors. Could the Government have walked away from it, we are
:10:47. > :10:51.not having it if you cut it too much? Shareholders don't run a
:10:51. > :10:54.company, it is run by a board of directors, we need a board of
:10:54. > :10:59.directors and a chief executive to run the company, it couldn't be run
:10:59. > :11:02.by civil servants. We have �45 billion at risk in this company. We
:11:02. > :11:06.need to try to get that back. This company has to be run by a banker,
:11:06. > :11:09.that is what Labour recognised when they appointed Hester. That is what
:11:09. > :11:13.they recognised when they gave Stephen Hester a contract under
:11:13. > :11:18.which the board had discretion to pay him a bonus. Your party should
:11:18. > :11:21.take credit for this great deal as well? This is pathetic, the fact is,
:11:21. > :11:26.we have seen his contract, we have a copy of his contract, his
:11:26. > :11:30.contract does not give him an automatic obligation to have a
:11:30. > :11:34.bonus. Discretion. Who owns the company? We own the company.
:11:34. > :11:38.Cameron said he would do something about it, he hasn't listened to the
:11:38. > :11:42.British people. You would not have paid him a bonus? We would not have
:11:42. > :11:46.paid him a bonus. Even if there was a risk, the board of this very
:11:46. > :11:49.valuable asset to the British people, perhaps in the future, were
:11:49. > :11:53.to walk away? We think there are people in the public service, up
:11:53. > :12:00.and down this country, who do a good job. They do a good job for
:12:00. > :12:04.daorn sight less than a million pounds. They don't run banks with
:12:04. > :12:07.trillion-colour debt? J why did you sign off on the -- Why did you sign
:12:07. > :12:13.off on the contract? The contract was a million pounds and he doesn't
:12:13. > :12:18.need the bonus at all. This is not an argument with Hester, the RB
:12:18. > :12:21.shares have gone down, and thousands have lost jobs. Why did
:12:21. > :12:24.you sign off on the deal in the first place? We signed off on the
:12:24. > :12:30.contract, but that does not give an automatic obligation for him to
:12:30. > :12:33.have a bonus. It is discretionary. The board can give it. The board
:12:34. > :12:37.answers to the shareholder, who is that, us. The public say do not
:12:37. > :12:40.give him any more of a bonus, and this Government is completely out
:12:40. > :12:45.of touch and not listening. I will bring in Martin Sorrell again. In
:12:45. > :12:48.your position, I mean, do you have some sympathy with Stephen Hester,
:12:49. > :12:55.would you turn down this bonus because of the public outcry, how
:12:55. > :13:00.would you handle it? I have some sympathy for Stephen Hester, from
:13:00. > :13:03.whence he became, he had nothing to do with the bank prior to its
:13:03. > :13:09.difficulties. He wasn't running the bank before. He was asked to come
:13:09. > :13:15.in to do this, giving up a much better position with British Land.
:13:15. > :13:18.The issue is this, if the shareholder decides -- shareholders
:13:18. > :13:22.decide this is inappropriate and sacks the board, they can replace
:13:22. > :13:28.them and the chief executive. The thing we have to face up to, there
:13:28. > :13:34.is a competitive market place n banking and other activities. If we
:13:34. > :13:38.don't give payment via results, if we don't give payments for success,
:13:38. > :13:43.I agree if it is a total fail yu, payment should be denied. But he
:13:43. > :13:47.has -- failure, payment should be denied, he has taken shares and
:13:47. > :13:50.held those shares f the price falls he suffers as much as any other
:13:50. > :13:57.shareholder. Let me just finish. The Government has the right to
:13:57. > :14:02.sack the board f Labour was the Government, and the Labour minister
:14:02. > :14:06.said she would have denied the bonus, that Stephen Hester can walk,
:14:06. > :14:11.they can find somebody else. The directors can walk, we can try to
:14:11. > :14:14.run the bank without a board of directors and CEO, there is a
:14:14. > :14:18.competitive market, we have to live with the consequences. In this case
:14:18. > :14:23.judgment was exercised, and it is a reasonable judgment. At the last
:14:23. > :14:26.bonus you got, 40% of your shareholders voted against you
:14:26. > :14:31.getting an increased bonus, I understand why you feel so strongly.
:14:31. > :14:34.In this case we are the shareholder, Cameron has said it is a time for
:14:34. > :14:40.shareholder power, he said he wasn't going to let Hester have a
:14:40. > :14:45.million pound bonus, he said it a few days ago, he has left everybody
:14:45. > :14:49.down? We have halved the bonus, he's getting deferred shares f the
:14:49. > :14:52.share price doesn't rise he's not getting anything at all. It is
:14:52. > :14:56.�5,000 light of a million, do you think it is reasonable and you have
:14:56. > :15:03.done a good job. You are talking about contracts, what about the
:15:03. > :15:08.contract with the British public. Cameron says shareholder power,
:15:08. > :15:13.rein in the excesses, public banks not paying big bonuses and goes
:15:13. > :15:20.back on his word. You signed off on the contract that gave the board
:15:20. > :15:24.discretion to set the performance and bonus. The board have judged he
:15:24. > :15:29.has started to meet the criteria, increased small business lending,
:15:29. > :15:35.reduced the risk to the taxpayer by shrinking the balance sheet.
:15:35. > :15:40.could have gone to an Annual General Meeting and voted no.
:15:40. > :15:46.beginning to turn the bank around. The Government has expressed a
:15:46. > :15:50.strong view not to have an excessive bonus from last year, it
:15:50. > :15:54.is halved. Sir Martin Sorrell, a final thought from you, do you
:15:54. > :16:01.think this will put off talented people from running a business such
:16:01. > :16:06.as this? I think that's definitely the case. If you look at the
:16:06. > :16:09.history of this, if it was a banker, there for ten years, and led the
:16:09. > :16:13.bank into the crisis you could understand it. That is not the case
:16:14. > :16:16.here. I think it will he discourage people. I think people will look
:16:16. > :16:20.for alternatives, that is what I think the Government of whatever
:16:20. > :16:28.colour has to face up to. We live in a competitive market place,
:16:28. > :16:32.there are all -- alternatives, if you don't pay people according to
:16:32. > :16:37.results in that environment they will take up opportunities and go
:16:37. > :16:41.elsewhere. This has to stop, and now is a time when Cameron ought to
:16:41. > :16:46.have stopped it, he let us down. That is not fair. Your Government
:16:46. > :16:51.entered into the contract, you gave the board discretion to do it, if
:16:51. > :16:56.you don't like it, fire the board. I have told you what should happen
:16:56. > :17:01.f we owned the company, if Cameron agrees with shareholder power.
:17:01. > :17:06.think it is...Would You really want this bank. If you did that, it
:17:06. > :17:10.would be an even bigger shambles. You should have stood up to them.
:17:10. > :17:14.final word? We did stand up to them, we halved the bonus proposed and we
:17:14. > :17:20.have touch benchmarks in place where eventually we will get tax-
:17:20. > :17:25.payers' money out again. Tell that to public servants again.
:17:25. > :17:31.For those of us who have never vend turd up a Swiss mountain to discuss
:17:31. > :17:34.the issues of the world, the summit at Davos remains a mystery. It is
:17:34. > :17:37.thought the Masters of the Universe who meet there build in time for
:17:37. > :17:43.skiing to clear their brains. Which explains this report from the
:17:43. > :17:51.slopes nearer to home. The little town of Hemel Hempstead
:17:51. > :17:55.never looks lovelyier than this time of year. What better than to
:17:55. > :18:00.bundle up against the chill and join the others on the black run at
:18:00. > :18:10.the snow centre. But the real action is all at the apres ski,
:18:10. > :18:14.
:18:14. > :18:23.when a glittering elite puts the world to rights. We have brought
:18:23. > :18:28.together senior financial analyst, Louise Cooper. From the Occupy
:18:28. > :18:38.London campaign, it is activist, Dave Do youhurs. Completing our
:18:38. > :18:40.
:18:40. > :18:44.panel, a man who hasn't been to Davos, but has choreographed snow,
:18:44. > :18:49.Wayne Sleep. We are lucky enough to be in Hemel Hempstead, what about
:18:49. > :18:52.the world leaders in Davos, what kind of job do you think their
:18:52. > :18:56.doing of running the economy? great job. One of the interesting
:18:56. > :19:00.things to come out of Davos is how much criticism a lot of
:19:00. > :19:04.corporations have heeped on the politicians in the eurozone crisis,
:19:04. > :19:07.for really failing to get to grips with it. These are the wonderful
:19:07. > :19:11.people who got us where we are today. Possibly if we could keep
:19:12. > :19:16.them there for a very long time, and get on with the running of the
:19:16. > :19:19.society for ourselves, it might be more functional. The Davos thing I
:19:19. > :19:23.think is just to show they are pretending to do something about
:19:23. > :19:28.the dreadful economy we are in. So they have all collected together,
:19:28. > :19:32.in fact, I would have gone over to help them out at Davos, but nobody
:19:32. > :19:36.gave me a big pension to get there. President Obama wasn't actually in
:19:36. > :19:41.Davos, had he some things to say this week about sharing the burden.
:19:41. > :19:46.I guess that was code for tax, Louise? I think a 50% higher rate
:19:46. > :19:52.tax rate in this country compares pretty well, compared to Mitt
:19:52. > :19:55.Romney's, was it 13.9% tax. That is a luxury Mr Romney for being able
:19:55. > :20:03.to achieve that. I don't think there is that many people in the UK
:20:03. > :20:08.that work for companies that do that. Until we have people at Davos
:20:08. > :20:12.not hiding Nair stuff in tax havens, whether Jersey, Switzerland or
:20:12. > :20:22.Delaware, not much else will happen for us. To be fair Governments have
:20:22. > :20:27.cracked down on tax havens, but not enough. Do you really believe that?
:20:27. > :20:33.On the crest run in Hemel Hempstead, what else are they hoping from the
:20:33. > :20:38.slopes at Davos, what do our own experts see in the crystals? You
:20:38. > :20:42.have a background in ice dance choreography, if you were in Davos,
:20:42. > :20:48.what would you be urging, do you think? A lot of the money seems to
:20:48. > :20:54.go into people just discussing what's going to happen. Consultants
:20:54. > :21:00.and things? Consultants, air fares, meetings, like in Davos, how much
:21:00. > :21:03.did that cost to get there. We have built up too much debt, Government
:21:03. > :21:07.debt, personal debt, massive amounts of debt, the most important
:21:07. > :21:12.thing is to pay that back. That will be ten years of pain. That
:21:13. > :21:19.involves cuts, that involves spending cuts. Nonsense, basically,
:21:19. > :21:22.if you look at the percentage people pay in taxation, say in the
:21:22. > :21:26.Scandinavian countries, it is higher than here, but they are
:21:26. > :21:31.happier and healthier. The main debt in this country is owned by
:21:31. > :21:35.the financial sector. Do give us your honest answer, what do you
:21:35. > :21:40.think of Newsnight's Hemel Hempstead economic for yum. I think
:21:40. > :21:44.it is far better value for money than all those people in Davos, and
:21:45. > :21:48.if we can speak to the 99%, they would learn a lot more than if they
:21:48. > :21:58.were just speaking to people who have their own convictions and
:21:58. > :22:03.their own self-deillusions. Louise, you would -- Louise you would
:22:03. > :22:13.sooner be in Davos? disappointed we didn't get any hot
:22:13. > :22:14.
:22:14. > :22:19.wine to warm us up. Latin America cinema has become
:22:19. > :22:23.globalised, Mexico in particular. The work of Guillermo Arriaga is
:22:23. > :22:31.astonishingly popular for audiences around the world. With the fighting
:22:31. > :22:38.underclass in a Amores Perros, to The Burning Plain. Leave it Jack,
:22:38. > :22:43.he's a kid, Jack. He's a punk. Grams, with Benicio del Toro and
:22:43. > :22:48.Sean Penn, Arriaga, who describes himself as a hunter who works as a
:22:48. > :22:54.writer, the characters search for relationships and each other in a
:22:54. > :22:59.fractured narrative. Richard, why did we come here? What do you mean
:22:59. > :23:06.why? Typical of Arriaga's work, films are told in a non-linear form,
:23:06. > :23:14.with events told out of sequence. In his 2006 hit, Babel, the lives
:23:14. > :23:18.of Oliver Blanchard and Brad Pit it's characters took a sudden and
:23:18. > :23:22.gloody turn. Guillermo Arriaga is bloody turn.
:23:22. > :23:27.Your country has some of the richest people in the world in t
:23:27. > :23:31.and some of the poorest people, I wonder if you felt in your lifetime,
:23:31. > :23:36.globalisation had made it a better place to live? It has been a better
:23:36. > :23:43.place in certain ways, but certainly not for the majority of
:23:43. > :23:50.the population. I think one of the worries and problems in Mexico
:23:50. > :23:54.began in the 180s. This was this agenda to -- 1980s, this was the
:23:54. > :23:57.agenda to open the markets around the world, and have huge
:23:57. > :24:01.corporations that they will be more economically solid, more solid, and
:24:01. > :24:06.they would spread the wealth. That didn't happen, at least it didn't
:24:06. > :24:10.happen in Mexico. Did the phenomenon of globalisation open
:24:10. > :24:14.people's minds and eyes to different cultures, I'm struck,
:24:14. > :24:21.looking at your films, Amores Perros is very particular to Mexico,
:24:21. > :24:24.yet it impacts on us all, because we all have similar feelings, that
:24:24. > :24:29.is globalised? What is good about globalisation, we understand that
:24:29. > :24:33.we human beings have very basic things that make us have a lot in
:24:33. > :24:37.common. Very little but a lot in common. We have the fear of death,
:24:37. > :24:41.we have the sense of love, we have the sense of protection for the
:24:41. > :24:46.kids, I was amazed, for example, with Amores Perros, someone was
:24:46. > :24:55.saying it is the story of my life. And he was from Finland, or from
:24:55. > :25:01.Vietnam. It is amazing how a film can bring people from so many
:25:01. > :25:04.different places to this common human thing. You are talking now
:25:04. > :25:07.like someone who is basically optimistic, you have said you are
:25:07. > :25:13.an optimist, some people looking at your film, those little clips are
:25:14. > :25:17.hardly explaining a lot, but they are pretty dark? That is why they
:25:17. > :25:22.are optimistic. Because these people come from very dark places,
:25:22. > :25:26.into a chance of redemption, or a chance of changing, or a chance of
:25:26. > :25:31.finding love, it is not they stay in the dark places. That is why I
:25:31. > :25:39.say it is a feel-good movie, a feel-good movie with a romantic
:25:39. > :25:42.comedy, OK, but these people come from very dark places. Listening to
:25:42. > :25:45.blues music, it is so miserable it makes you happier. Maybe you didn't
:25:45. > :25:49.put it quite like that. Are you equally optimistic about the way
:25:49. > :25:53.your country is going, the way the world is going? Do you see the
:25:53. > :25:56.opportunities of globalisation may actually make things better in the
:25:57. > :26:02.long run for the people we are talking about? I think it is
:26:02. > :26:06.difficult. I'm basically, I have an addiction for optimisim. I would
:26:07. > :26:13.like things to work out. But I think that a lot of things have to
:26:13. > :26:17.change in the world, in order to achieve that. Given these hard
:26:17. > :26:22.times, is this a good time to be in a creative business? Is it a good
:26:22. > :26:26.timor a film maker? Absolutely. You know I think the more the
:26:26. > :26:33.contradictions there are in culture and society, the more you have the
:26:33. > :26:38.need to express them. It is a good time for creativity. I'm struck by
:26:38. > :26:42.the films of the 130s, they were so popular because they were escapist
:26:42. > :26:46.-- 1930s, they were escapists, they were take me away from the world.
:26:46. > :26:50.You are saying the world is worse for some people, is that part of it.
:26:50. > :26:55.It is interesting, is that what makes them so popular? I think
:26:55. > :26:58.people right now want to have a dialogue within themselves and have
:26:58. > :27:04.the opportunity to talk with the rest of the people about the things
:27:04. > :27:07.that are happening in your lives. So I think they don't want to
:27:07. > :27:17.escape from reality, but have an understanding of what is going on.
:27:17. > :27:19.
:27:19. > :27:25.People have become too abstract. The Nikkei falls down, and it is in
:27:25. > :27:29.Japan, and it is so abstract that people need to have something to
:27:29. > :27:32.give a sense of reality. When we have discussions, I don't know if
:27:32. > :27:35.you saw any of the discussions tonight, talking about fairness,
:27:36. > :27:40.and about how much people should be paid and so on, are those common
:27:40. > :27:46.discussions that people in Mexico and other places you go to would
:27:46. > :27:56.understand? Of course, same discussions everywhere. Yes.
:27:56. > :27:56.
:27:56. > :29:04.Apology for the loss of subtitles for 68 seconds
:29:04. > :29:14.That's all from nice night tonight. We wanted to leave you with news
:29:14. > :29:16.
:29:16. > :29:24.that the opening ceremony will be entitled Isles of Wonder.
:29:24. > :29:29.It is echos of the Tempest. Be not afraid, the Isle is full of noises
:29:29. > :29:34.and scares that give delight. Sometimes a thousand twinkling
:29:34. > :29:41.instruments will hum about mine ears, sometimes voices, if I had