In The Box, the camera is even more serviceable, for it reveals not only the history of a place or person or house or country but also its future, including, it seems, a catastrophic flooding of the north German flatlands.
Opening it reveals not one, but four books arranged slightly out of synch on a vaguely epic canvas stitched about with literary allusions and quotations, aphorisms, illustrations, and sermons.
The point was made yesterday by one Muslim commentator, who argued that the spontaneous gathering of people in Paris, London, New York and beyond is received like an arrow through the heart of the jihadist since it reveals not a community riven by fear but one steadfast in its beliefs.
It reveals not only the scope of his interests - he is as lucid about the PLO as he is touching about Solzhenitsyn, as excruciatingly accurate about Tony Blair as he is compelling on the subject of Mike Tyson's trainer - but also the deceptive straightforwardness of his style.
