China Miéville's 2007 novel for young adults, which I finished reading last night. Paraphrasing this comment on Whitechapel, he is a maestro at weird urban landscapes, something I've already experienced from reading Perdido Street Station and The City & The City. Here, a greater level of wackiness and humour is allowed in the world-building. Miéville, out of humility rather than vanity, includes a list of influences in each of his books, and for this one he name-checks Lewis Carroll and Beatrix Potter. While his other worlds are very rigidly defined, Un Lun Dun shows Miéville's imagination at play.
All that is well and good. But as I mentioned on the thread: can't escape the feeling that it's all a bit of an intellectual exercise for him. I dunno... a bit bloodless. All affect, no throbbing pulsating mucky uncomfortable FEELING in it.
Miéville is an interesting critic, and he gives good interviews. See e.g. here, where he talks about Jane Eyre and monsters and genre and the tyranny of plot and the way characters in his novels disrupt expectations. That last is a big feature of Un Lun Dun, where prophesies and quests are very obv questioned and subverted. There are also revolution metaphors to spot (the dialectic of the um- un- re-brellas is the one I got). All of which is fun in a kind of Where's Wally way...
I got through it, riding on the cool environments and the metaphors, but I'm still waiting for Miéville to have that breakdown / epiphany that leads him to start writing from the heart.
26.2.12
18.2.12
Chronicle
Realism is an effect just like any other. I haven't seen Blair Witch Project or Cloverfield, but I imagine what they do is use the 'found footage' conceit to create a sense of immediacy that makes the horror or the monster all the more scary and exciting. Chronicle tries to do the same with superheroes and supervillains, with mixed results.
The problem is that the conceit doesn't have a lot of credibility through the film. The camera is set up too perfectly in each scene, and there often isn't a good explanation for that. This is distracting, and undermines the 'realism' the conceit is supposed to produce. What's disappointing is that the film didn't need to do that. It could keep the style, without having to continuously explain to the viewer why this character is filming at this time.
Because the style itself is great, I think. And applying it to superheroes is a great idea. I remember the giddy feeling I got when I saw Iron Man zoom through the sky in the trailer for the first Iron Man movie. Chronicle can match that feeling by putting you behind the eyes of the guy zooming around in the sky. It is AWESOME. The epic showdown at the end also thrills precisely because it's so realistic. In fact, by that point, the film abandons the constraints of the 'found footage' conceit, forgetting the cameras, hoping to distract its audience with all the excitement and emotion. It could have done that throughout the whole film and I wouldn't have minded.
So the film is a failure in formal terms. But I liked it, not least because it proved very knowledgeable about the genre, and crafted two origin stories that captured the best aspects of what superheroes can do. I also liked the little nods to established tropes -- such as training in Tibet to become a ninja, and swooping to rescue / the death of Gwen Stacy. What I liked most about it is that it was mean about nerds. This is what bugged me about Kick Ass (among other things). Chronicle understands that the shy guy in the corner can be just as conceited, violent and misogynistic as the jock or the bully. And nerds with power can be srsly scary people.
The problem is that the conceit doesn't have a lot of credibility through the film. The camera is set up too perfectly in each scene, and there often isn't a good explanation for that. This is distracting, and undermines the 'realism' the conceit is supposed to produce. What's disappointing is that the film didn't need to do that. It could keep the style, without having to continuously explain to the viewer why this character is filming at this time.
Because the style itself is great, I think. And applying it to superheroes is a great idea. I remember the giddy feeling I got when I saw Iron Man zoom through the sky in the trailer for the first Iron Man movie. Chronicle can match that feeling by putting you behind the eyes of the guy zooming around in the sky. It is AWESOME. The epic showdown at the end also thrills precisely because it's so realistic. In fact, by that point, the film abandons the constraints of the 'found footage' conceit, forgetting the cameras, hoping to distract its audience with all the excitement and emotion. It could have done that throughout the whole film and I wouldn't have minded.
So the film is a failure in formal terms. But I liked it, not least because it proved very knowledgeable about the genre, and crafted two origin stories that captured the best aspects of what superheroes can do. I also liked the little nods to established tropes -- such as training in Tibet to become a ninja, and swooping to rescue / the death of Gwen Stacy. What I liked most about it is that it was mean about nerds. This is what bugged me about Kick Ass (among other things). Chronicle understands that the shy guy in the corner can be just as conceited, violent and misogynistic as the jock or the bully. And nerds with power can be srsly scary people.
12.2.12
Wuthering Heights
Haven't seen the film, although really should, since Andrea Arnold would certainly have done something interesting with the material. I wanna talk about the book, which I finished reading yesterday. Organised notes might be the only thing I can manage, because there's a lot to get thru, and I'm too tired to polish prose right now. The enjoyment was in the reading and the thinking. This I'm doing just so I have a reference when I forget everything I read and thought, an inevitability this blog is, in part, designed to prevent. So the following is work rather than play, and liable to be very dull. I'm already bored typing this introduction. I mean, I could be reading YA fantasy or drinking Orval rather than raking over all this again... Here we go:
The narrator denies being conceited, but his voice is rather smug (and he has much too much money). The only interesting thing about him is his dream at the beginning of the book, after his exposure to Joseph, which looks like a critique of evangelical (Methodist) religion: practitioners clutching staffs as support which turn to clubs to punish infidels. Lockwood rebels, but in the eyes of the faithful appears a materialist ("crush him to atoms"), and is assaulted. The blows soon turn indiscriminate, and the entire congregation is swept up in the brawl, where "every man's hand was against his neighbour" — Christian morality entirely inverted.
Speaking of Joseph, his piety is wielded as a weapon to oppress others. It is an act of power, a way for him to prove he is in fact superior to his masters. He believes the tables will be turned on the Day of Judgement, which keeps him obedient and satisfied. The reason he sticks with Henley and Heathcliff is because they make maintaining his superiority complex so easy. Hareton's ignorance and vulgarity is attractive because they are signs of deserved downward mobility.
Religion is emptied of all meaning for the characters. The novel pegs transcendence to the very immanent emotions of love and hate. Heathcliff would prefer to punish Henley himself, "God won't have the satisfaction" he will have. Henley blasphemes because providence has decided to take away his wife. For Catherine Earnshaw, life with the Lintons promises to be heavenly, but she confesses she would rather be in hell, with Heathcliff. The two lovers have only each other for solace — they are each other's "souls". They have shared the same upbringing and miseries. Heathcliff is Cathy's only benevolent universe, and vice versa. Everything else is hostile and strange.
And the upbringing is miserable. Emily Brontë is tough with her characters, none of them are entirely likable. As children, they are rapacious fiends. Henley and Cathy nag their father for presents, and get a gypsy brother instead. They show their disappointment by bullying him mercilessly. Unable to share, Linton and Isabella almost tear their pet dog in half. Heathcliff sees through the hypocrisy of privileging culture and manners: the pampered and educated can be as cruel as the destitute. He and Cathy are honest, wild and free on the moors (cf. Lockwood's praise of Ellen Dean: people outside towns "do live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface, change, and frivolous external things"). The two lovers share everything, they have a true understanding of heaven, the Lintons ("the petted things") only have heavenly surroundings. But while Heathcliff wants to remain "dirty", Cathy is tempted to reform her waywardness.
What to make of either of them? Heathcliff's altercation with Henley over his horse reveals his ability to withstand pain and manipulate others, in order to achieve his goals. Cathy is a "wild, wicked slip", flaunting her power over Heathcliff in front of her father. The old Earnshaw is not a good parent, admitting to his daughter that he "cannot love" her, which only encourages greater defiance: "Why cannot you always be a good man, father?". Catherine's eyes reveal her brilliant spiritedness, Heathcliff's are two "black fiends".
Cathy is ambitious, and caught between Linton and Heathcliff, adopts "a double character". When Heathcliff gives up on education, she complains of his boorishness. But in polite company, she cannot mask her impulsive duplicity and violence. She uses emotional blackmail to keep Linton with her, and he proposes. This is the first notable instance of Cathy feigning weakness to overcome Linton's defences. When Linton forces her to chose between himself and Heathcliff, she throws a fit like something out of The Exorcist and goes on hunger strike. I think Cathy manipulates her femininity to obtain mastery over her husband. Her mastery over Heathcliff is more straightforward — pure love: they share one soul, they are one person.
Cathy doesn't know if accepting Linton was the right choice, and seeks Nelly's advice. Lindon is handsome, pleasant, young, cheerful. Most importantly, "he will be rich". He's the most eligible bachelor around — it is the "rational" choice. And yet the soul and heart rebel. Nelly doesn't want to know, she doesn't care enough, having put up with Cathy's pride for too long (our narrators are no heroes). But she hears the confession anyway: Cathy doesn't want "heaven", she wants the moors and Heathcliff. But marrying him would "degrade" her (Heathcliff steals off at this point). They would be beggars. But marriage to Linton would mean she could help Heathcliff get free of Henley, who has become an abusive negligent drunk, even worse to his offspring than his father was to his.
Heathcliff doesn't need anyone to rise up in the world. He leaves and makes his fortune soldiering abroad, comes back wolfish and pitiless. The only thing holding back his savagery is Cathy. He cannot retaliate against her directly, he will love her for eternity. But he can get his revenge indirectly, by ensnaring Isabella. Heathcliff is not aware of the effect of his Byronic image at first. Cathy mocks Isabella's infatuation: "don’t imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior! He’s not a rough diamond — a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic". Heathcliff learns quickly, however, and mocks Isabella in the same way: her idea of him as "a hero of romance" is a "delusion".
I think this is an important part of Brontë's message. Both Cathy and Heathcliff are able and willing to use romantic myths to deceive and destroy. Indeed, by placing such myths in a realistic setting, and detailing the horrific abuse that results from them, Wuthering Heights aims to critique such simplistic conceptions of romantic (perhaps Romantic) love. Isabella admires Heathcliff's brutality while hoping to be the one special enough to be preserved from it. Brontë shows how dangerous such expectations really are. More broadly, she warns against declaring anyone to be your "soul" or your "universe" — such inhuman devotion leads to madness, death and a lot of collateral damage.
Cathy pretends to be ill, but the illness becomes real enough. Her dreams recur: Wuthering Heighs, the moors, the wind, draw her away from Thrushcross Grange. She wants to feel her power over Heathcliff again ("be content, you always followed me!") And she is manipulative to the end, blaming Heathcliff for killing her and testing his faithfulness. But Heathcliff proves true, they share souls, he will love her forever, and will hurt as much as she does. Cathy relents, declares reciprocity and asks forgiveness. Heathcliff can't bring himself to grant it, her decision to forsake him and kill herself is too difficult to accept. But Cathy is a better player. She scolds him, endangers herself yet futher, until Heathcliff comes to her aid. Heathcliff loves and hates Cathy. He worships her, but as an earthly agent with free will, she forsakes him to her ruin. In the end, her only comfort is to imagine that death will elevate her "incomparably beyond and above you all".
Cathy's undoing, like Satan's, is the result of pride and ambition. After her death, Heathcliff is convinced she walks the earth as a ghost. She cannot be peaceful, she said she will remain as tormented as he will be. The only tranquility Heathcliff has is when he is clutching Cathy's dug-up corpse. He feels her presence then, but why doesn't she return? Why is he still disturbed by separation? Cathy betrayed him because he was poor... perhaps if he acquires all the property Linton had, she will come back to him.
I think this is what drives Heathcliff's schemes in the second part of the book. The law makes him the legal guardian of his wife — which Heathcliff demonstrates to be a grossly unjust rule. Moreover, Ellen's threat that there's "law in the land", even "in an out-of-the-way place" proves empty. The structure of society, as much as Cathy's pride, casts Heathcliff asunder. Those same structures make him into a tyrant.
Cathy doesn't return, as the start of the book shows. Heathcliff has run out of things to do, and grows listless. He has lost his enjoyment in destruction, with his rival dead and his lands appropriated. But getting Cathy back has defined his existence. It must happen. In the end, he wills it so. His obsession alters his reality. All chains of association lead to her (near death, the same happened to Cathy). He (unconsciously) stops eating, finally receiving spiritual nourishment. His excitement builds to a frenzy. He lets the winds and the rain in, his love is consummated, and he dies.
This is a bleak novel, and it is at its bleakest when we come to the younger Linton, callously sucking his stick of sugar candy. But Brontë offers some redemption at the end. Heathcliff's revenge on Hindley is to make his son as coarse as Hindley made him. When he sees Hareton's attraction to Cathy Junior, he vows that their love will make him an outcast and a beggar, as he was. But Cathy does not repeat the mistake her mother made. Her father did love her, and she remembers how a real family functions. As Heathcliff retreats into himself, his influence over her wanes, and she softens towards Hareton. Peace is restored. The novel ends with Lockwood wondering how anyone could imagine ghosts still walking such a beautiful landscape.
I was going to describe Wuthering Heights as a very (very very...) black satire, except there's nothing remotely funny about the carnage it details. What I mean is that I think Brontë aims her novel at certain carefully-chosen targets. Her Heathcliff is a deconstruction of Byron. Her Joseph is an attack on evangelical religion. Heathcliff's machinations are an indictment on social structures that fail to nurture and protect families. Finally, the love between Cathy and Heathcliff is the perfection so many poems and romantic novels attempt to describe, and yet the real world warps it in hideous ways. Cathy and Hareton's relationship is unequal and imperfect, but proves stronger. I guess part of the novel's enduring power is due to the fact that we are still learning Brontë's lessons.
The narrator denies being conceited, but his voice is rather smug (and he has much too much money). The only interesting thing about him is his dream at the beginning of the book, after his exposure to Joseph, which looks like a critique of evangelical (Methodist) religion: practitioners clutching staffs as support which turn to clubs to punish infidels. Lockwood rebels, but in the eyes of the faithful appears a materialist ("crush him to atoms"), and is assaulted. The blows soon turn indiscriminate, and the entire congregation is swept up in the brawl, where "every man's hand was against his neighbour" — Christian morality entirely inverted.
Speaking of Joseph, his piety is wielded as a weapon to oppress others. It is an act of power, a way for him to prove he is in fact superior to his masters. He believes the tables will be turned on the Day of Judgement, which keeps him obedient and satisfied. The reason he sticks with Henley and Heathcliff is because they make maintaining his superiority complex so easy. Hareton's ignorance and vulgarity is attractive because they are signs of deserved downward mobility.
Religion is emptied of all meaning for the characters. The novel pegs transcendence to the very immanent emotions of love and hate. Heathcliff would prefer to punish Henley himself, "God won't have the satisfaction" he will have. Henley blasphemes because providence has decided to take away his wife. For Catherine Earnshaw, life with the Lintons promises to be heavenly, but she confesses she would rather be in hell, with Heathcliff. The two lovers have only each other for solace — they are each other's "souls". They have shared the same upbringing and miseries. Heathcliff is Cathy's only benevolent universe, and vice versa. Everything else is hostile and strange.
And the upbringing is miserable. Emily Brontë is tough with her characters, none of them are entirely likable. As children, they are rapacious fiends. Henley and Cathy nag their father for presents, and get a gypsy brother instead. They show their disappointment by bullying him mercilessly. Unable to share, Linton and Isabella almost tear their pet dog in half. Heathcliff sees through the hypocrisy of privileging culture and manners: the pampered and educated can be as cruel as the destitute. He and Cathy are honest, wild and free on the moors (cf. Lockwood's praise of Ellen Dean: people outside towns "do live more in earnest, more in themselves, and less in surface, change, and frivolous external things"). The two lovers share everything, they have a true understanding of heaven, the Lintons ("the petted things") only have heavenly surroundings. But while Heathcliff wants to remain "dirty", Cathy is tempted to reform her waywardness.
What to make of either of them? Heathcliff's altercation with Henley over his horse reveals his ability to withstand pain and manipulate others, in order to achieve his goals. Cathy is a "wild, wicked slip", flaunting her power over Heathcliff in front of her father. The old Earnshaw is not a good parent, admitting to his daughter that he "cannot love" her, which only encourages greater defiance: "Why cannot you always be a good man, father?". Catherine's eyes reveal her brilliant spiritedness, Heathcliff's are two "black fiends".
Cathy is ambitious, and caught between Linton and Heathcliff, adopts "a double character". When Heathcliff gives up on education, she complains of his boorishness. But in polite company, she cannot mask her impulsive duplicity and violence. She uses emotional blackmail to keep Linton with her, and he proposes. This is the first notable instance of Cathy feigning weakness to overcome Linton's defences. When Linton forces her to chose between himself and Heathcliff, she throws a fit like something out of The Exorcist and goes on hunger strike. I think Cathy manipulates her femininity to obtain mastery over her husband. Her mastery over Heathcliff is more straightforward — pure love: they share one soul, they are one person.
Cathy doesn't know if accepting Linton was the right choice, and seeks Nelly's advice. Lindon is handsome, pleasant, young, cheerful. Most importantly, "he will be rich". He's the most eligible bachelor around — it is the "rational" choice. And yet the soul and heart rebel. Nelly doesn't want to know, she doesn't care enough, having put up with Cathy's pride for too long (our narrators are no heroes). But she hears the confession anyway: Cathy doesn't want "heaven", she wants the moors and Heathcliff. But marrying him would "degrade" her (Heathcliff steals off at this point). They would be beggars. But marriage to Linton would mean she could help Heathcliff get free of Henley, who has become an abusive negligent drunk, even worse to his offspring than his father was to his.
Heathcliff doesn't need anyone to rise up in the world. He leaves and makes his fortune soldiering abroad, comes back wolfish and pitiless. The only thing holding back his savagery is Cathy. He cannot retaliate against her directly, he will love her for eternity. But he can get his revenge indirectly, by ensnaring Isabella. Heathcliff is not aware of the effect of his Byronic image at first. Cathy mocks Isabella's infatuation: "don’t imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior! He’s not a rough diamond — a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic". Heathcliff learns quickly, however, and mocks Isabella in the same way: her idea of him as "a hero of romance" is a "delusion".
I think this is an important part of Brontë's message. Both Cathy and Heathcliff are able and willing to use romantic myths to deceive and destroy. Indeed, by placing such myths in a realistic setting, and detailing the horrific abuse that results from them, Wuthering Heights aims to critique such simplistic conceptions of romantic (perhaps Romantic) love. Isabella admires Heathcliff's brutality while hoping to be the one special enough to be preserved from it. Brontë shows how dangerous such expectations really are. More broadly, she warns against declaring anyone to be your "soul" or your "universe" — such inhuman devotion leads to madness, death and a lot of collateral damage.
Cathy pretends to be ill, but the illness becomes real enough. Her dreams recur: Wuthering Heighs, the moors, the wind, draw her away from Thrushcross Grange. She wants to feel her power over Heathcliff again ("be content, you always followed me!") And she is manipulative to the end, blaming Heathcliff for killing her and testing his faithfulness. But Heathcliff proves true, they share souls, he will love her forever, and will hurt as much as she does. Cathy relents, declares reciprocity and asks forgiveness. Heathcliff can't bring himself to grant it, her decision to forsake him and kill herself is too difficult to accept. But Cathy is a better player. She scolds him, endangers herself yet futher, until Heathcliff comes to her aid. Heathcliff loves and hates Cathy. He worships her, but as an earthly agent with free will, she forsakes him to her ruin. In the end, her only comfort is to imagine that death will elevate her "incomparably beyond and above you all".
Cathy's undoing, like Satan's, is the result of pride and ambition. After her death, Heathcliff is convinced she walks the earth as a ghost. She cannot be peaceful, she said she will remain as tormented as he will be. The only tranquility Heathcliff has is when he is clutching Cathy's dug-up corpse. He feels her presence then, but why doesn't she return? Why is he still disturbed by separation? Cathy betrayed him because he was poor... perhaps if he acquires all the property Linton had, she will come back to him.
I think this is what drives Heathcliff's schemes in the second part of the book. The law makes him the legal guardian of his wife — which Heathcliff demonstrates to be a grossly unjust rule. Moreover, Ellen's threat that there's "law in the land", even "in an out-of-the-way place" proves empty. The structure of society, as much as Cathy's pride, casts Heathcliff asunder. Those same structures make him into a tyrant.
Cathy doesn't return, as the start of the book shows. Heathcliff has run out of things to do, and grows listless. He has lost his enjoyment in destruction, with his rival dead and his lands appropriated. But getting Cathy back has defined his existence. It must happen. In the end, he wills it so. His obsession alters his reality. All chains of association lead to her (near death, the same happened to Cathy). He (unconsciously) stops eating, finally receiving spiritual nourishment. His excitement builds to a frenzy. He lets the winds and the rain in, his love is consummated, and he dies.
This is a bleak novel, and it is at its bleakest when we come to the younger Linton, callously sucking his stick of sugar candy. But Brontë offers some redemption at the end. Heathcliff's revenge on Hindley is to make his son as coarse as Hindley made him. When he sees Hareton's attraction to Cathy Junior, he vows that their love will make him an outcast and a beggar, as he was. But Cathy does not repeat the mistake her mother made. Her father did love her, and she remembers how a real family functions. As Heathcliff retreats into himself, his influence over her wanes, and she softens towards Hareton. Peace is restored. The novel ends with Lockwood wondering how anyone could imagine ghosts still walking such a beautiful landscape.
I was going to describe Wuthering Heights as a very (very very...) black satire, except there's nothing remotely funny about the carnage it details. What I mean is that I think Brontë aims her novel at certain carefully-chosen targets. Her Heathcliff is a deconstruction of Byron. Her Joseph is an attack on evangelical religion. Heathcliff's machinations are an indictment on social structures that fail to nurture and protect families. Finally, the love between Cathy and Heathcliff is the perfection so many poems and romantic novels attempt to describe, and yet the real world warps it in hideous ways. Cathy and Hareton's relationship is unequal and imperfect, but proves stronger. I guess part of the novel's enduring power is due to the fact that we are still learning Brontë's lessons.
11.2.12
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
I haven't read the book. Spy or crime fiction is too plot-heavy for me to really be interested, the only thing that really attracts me is the noiry mood and themes. Happily, it's all about mood in Alfredson's film. I'm comforted by the fact that few could follow the ins and outs of the investigation completely. I just about managed to get the overall contours of the picture, but I wouldn't be able to give the details.
Reviewers got all poetic trying to describe the film's atmosphere... I could litter descriptors like 'coffee-soaked', 'cigarette-stained', 'mouldy' and '1970s' around, but I think my favourite would be 'geriatric', because it describes the lethargic pace quite well, and because it is all about wizened spies living with their crimes. They are all poisonous toads. Ricki, whose hands drip with blood, has the right idea when he says he doesn't want to grow old and become like the rest of them.
It's a formidable roster of actors Alfredson marshals up. All do sterling work. Gary Oldman wears a mask for most of the film, the cinematographer just moving some lights around when he needed to look tired or kindly or sinister. Both of them deserve some kind of recognition.
I did need more on the mole's treason for aesthetic reasons. The film goes out of its way to look as drab as possible, but it's not like what we see of Budapest or Moscow is flashier. Haydon is a bit of a dandy, a philanderer. Perhaps the Orientals were more attractive than the stuffy alcoholics he was surrounded by. As for Karla, a bit like Lord Sauron, he stays an incorporeal menace. We are told "the fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt", but that may just be Smiley's delusion. He can't see a weakness so he makes one up. Smiley is not a fanatic. He knows exactly how compromised his own side is. He strikes me as the consummate professional, loyal to Control because Control was always right. Loyal to his wife and his country, despite their betrayals.
Reviewers got all poetic trying to describe the film's atmosphere... I could litter descriptors like 'coffee-soaked', 'cigarette-stained', 'mouldy' and '1970s' around, but I think my favourite would be 'geriatric', because it describes the lethargic pace quite well, and because it is all about wizened spies living with their crimes. They are all poisonous toads. Ricki, whose hands drip with blood, has the right idea when he says he doesn't want to grow old and become like the rest of them.
It's a formidable roster of actors Alfredson marshals up. All do sterling work. Gary Oldman wears a mask for most of the film, the cinematographer just moving some lights around when he needed to look tired or kindly or sinister. Both of them deserve some kind of recognition.
I did need more on the mole's treason for aesthetic reasons. The film goes out of its way to look as drab as possible, but it's not like what we see of Budapest or Moscow is flashier. Haydon is a bit of a dandy, a philanderer. Perhaps the Orientals were more attractive than the stuffy alcoholics he was surrounded by. As for Karla, a bit like Lord Sauron, he stays an incorporeal menace. We are told "the fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt", but that may just be Smiley's delusion. He can't see a weakness so he makes one up. Smiley is not a fanatic. He knows exactly how compromised his own side is. He strikes me as the consummate professional, loyal to Control because Control was always right. Loyal to his wife and his country, despite their betrayals.
28.1.12
The Prestige
A Nolan film's themes could be written on a napkin as far as I'm concerned. Storytelling as wish-fulfillment, basically. What the protagonist in Memento demonstrated is that people need their lies in order to live their lives. Batman is deceived about Rachel's intentions, Gotham is deceived about Batman -- all for the greater good, so people can be better people. Inception asks whether living in your dreams is preferable to reality, skewed by that last scene so the question becomes whether films are preferable as well. The Prestige is about filmmaking (as a friend of mine told me a long while ago). The three parts of a trick are like the three acts of a movie -- set-up to deliver audience satisfaction. Such manipulation is addictive -- one does it for the roar of the crowd, the other for the ingenuity of the thing itself. Both leave destruction in their wake. While the rivals look to uncover each other's secrets, Sarah wants the truth that really matters. As Inception suggests to the audience at the end -- family is better than all the dreams you can invent.
The Nolans' ideas are interesting, sure, but they do tend to make characters into props. Moreover, the tight control over the plot, the economical script, the utilitarian cinematography, fail to dazzle or astound me. The Nolans are mechanics that build ingenious storytelling machines, and however good their actors are, they never blast through the complex contraptions that surround them.
There is one exception, The Dark Knight, which I watched again not too long ago and am still wowed by. Others found the indulgence the Nolans allowed themselves to be a weakness. For me, the improbable scenarios building to ever more improbable scenarios created a kind of operatic swell that no other Nolan movie can match. It is the feeling of Heath Ledger's magisterial Joker asserting his will over Gotham, an entire city enraptured and terrified by this sinister charismatic presence, that goes down as their supreme achievement. And I have my doubts about whether The Dark Knight Rises will be able to match it.
The Nolans' ideas are interesting, sure, but they do tend to make characters into props. Moreover, the tight control over the plot, the economical script, the utilitarian cinematography, fail to dazzle or astound me. The Nolans are mechanics that build ingenious storytelling machines, and however good their actors are, they never blast through the complex contraptions that surround them.
There is one exception, The Dark Knight, which I watched again not too long ago and am still wowed by. Others found the indulgence the Nolans allowed themselves to be a weakness. For me, the improbable scenarios building to ever more improbable scenarios created a kind of operatic swell that no other Nolan movie can match. It is the feeling of Heath Ledger's magisterial Joker asserting his will over Gotham, an entire city enraptured and terrified by this sinister charismatic presence, that goes down as their supreme achievement. And I have my doubts about whether The Dark Knight Rises will be able to match it.
27.1.12
The West Wing
Schmaltz is just unBritish, isn't it? I think it was Ian Hislop I remember reciting that old cliche about The West Wing being a kind of liberal fantasy to comfort the political classes, the warm glow from their tv sets making them forget the horror show playing out in the REAL White House. But Brits are made of sterner stuff. No, no. We know that politicians are nincompoops, civil servants are weasels, and spin-doctors are power-crazed bullies. We can take it. In fact there's a certain grim enjoyment whenever those low expectations are met.
The defining feature of The West Wing is its sentimentality. The conceit is that all that guff about public service actually means something to the people you're watching. I just finished the final season: this is a show where one of the characters obsessively re-reads the Constitution of the United States when he has time off; where one of the most moving scenes is the President handing his own pocket-sized copy to his aide. When Josh says he prefers Rob Zombie's early work, I'm pretty sure he just has the wikipedia page crammed somewhere in his memory.
The famous frantic walk-and-talk shots don't connote chaos, but efficiency. These people work even when they are between offices, and they stay on top of everything. They also speak inhumanly fast, and make jokes so quickly it seems as if they're somehow telepathically linked -- a hive mind of witty conversation where the improbable set-ups whizz by so fast you don't notice them until the punch-lines hit.
And the show luxuriates in the grandeur of office. Just the title sequence gives you a flavour. Washington isn't just a place, it's a magical palace at the center of the universe where all human life is monitored and nurtured by caring, committed worker elves buzzing around a kindly Father Christmas. It's manned by impressive guards, it hosts shimmering balls, it has hi-tech video screens displaying satellite images. There is protocol, there are obscure ridiculous rituals. You're all supposed to call him 'Mr President'...
And man alive, the melodrama you endure for SEVEN YEARS watching the cranky, awkward political genius and the patient, perpetually crestfallen secretary circling each other, never quite connecting. And their romance so mercilessly stretched out, every advance circumvented, derailed by their own brutal indecisiveness. This is epic romance on an ENORMOUS scale, Sam and Diane manipulation taken to the very limits of tolerability. By the time they get it on, trumpets sound and the Second Coming has arrived (well, the election of another Democratic President anyway).
And I do love it. I find all of this soppy, idealistic nonsense supremely addictive. Having gone through all the seasons now I'm more aware of the traps this show lays down to ensnare your comfort-seeking mind. But there is a lesson here as well. Undoubtedly all this pomp and ceremony really does affect people, inside and outside the machine. And sometimes, you need that myopia, those inspiring speeches. They give you that glory-boost to get your ass working and motivated through 15-hour days.
The West Wing is at its most touching when it focuses on characters who sacrifice their lives, their sleep, their peace-of-mind to the never-ending marathon that is governance. When the show steps outside the White House to examine the utter wasteland of their private lives, it reaches a place of deep pathos. I remember some long-ago season where Josh arrogantly lists his achievements before admitting he 'doesn't know how to do this' i.e. ask someone on a date. C.J. says something very similar to Danny at the end: she doesn't know how relationships work, she didn't have the time to figure it out. Sam Seaborn has a life in California which he didn't have when he was Deputy Communications Director. And yet he gives it up, because the job is that important.
And while you're watching The West Wing, you really believe it is.
The defining feature of The West Wing is its sentimentality. The conceit is that all that guff about public service actually means something to the people you're watching. I just finished the final season: this is a show where one of the characters obsessively re-reads the Constitution of the United States when he has time off; where one of the most moving scenes is the President handing his own pocket-sized copy to his aide. When Josh says he prefers Rob Zombie's early work, I'm pretty sure he just has the wikipedia page crammed somewhere in his memory.
The famous frantic walk-and-talk shots don't connote chaos, but efficiency. These people work even when they are between offices, and they stay on top of everything. They also speak inhumanly fast, and make jokes so quickly it seems as if they're somehow telepathically linked -- a hive mind of witty conversation where the improbable set-ups whizz by so fast you don't notice them until the punch-lines hit.
And the show luxuriates in the grandeur of office. Just the title sequence gives you a flavour. Washington isn't just a place, it's a magical palace at the center of the universe where all human life is monitored and nurtured by caring, committed worker elves buzzing around a kindly Father Christmas. It's manned by impressive guards, it hosts shimmering balls, it has hi-tech video screens displaying satellite images. There is protocol, there are obscure ridiculous rituals. You're all supposed to call him 'Mr President'...
And man alive, the melodrama you endure for SEVEN YEARS watching the cranky, awkward political genius and the patient, perpetually crestfallen secretary circling each other, never quite connecting. And their romance so mercilessly stretched out, every advance circumvented, derailed by their own brutal indecisiveness. This is epic romance on an ENORMOUS scale, Sam and Diane manipulation taken to the very limits of tolerability. By the time they get it on, trumpets sound and the Second Coming has arrived (well, the election of another Democratic President anyway).
And I do love it. I find all of this soppy, idealistic nonsense supremely addictive. Having gone through all the seasons now I'm more aware of the traps this show lays down to ensnare your comfort-seeking mind. But there is a lesson here as well. Undoubtedly all this pomp and ceremony really does affect people, inside and outside the machine. And sometimes, you need that myopia, those inspiring speeches. They give you that glory-boost to get your ass working and motivated through 15-hour days.
The West Wing is at its most touching when it focuses on characters who sacrifice their lives, their sleep, their peace-of-mind to the never-ending marathon that is governance. When the show steps outside the White House to examine the utter wasteland of their private lives, it reaches a place of deep pathos. I remember some long-ago season where Josh arrogantly lists his achievements before admitting he 'doesn't know how to do this' i.e. ask someone on a date. C.J. says something very similar to Danny at the end: she doesn't know how relationships work, she didn't have the time to figure it out. Sam Seaborn has a life in California which he didn't have when he was Deputy Communications Director. And yet he gives it up, because the job is that important.
And while you're watching The West Wing, you really believe it is.
21.1.12
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
I haven't read the book, but you can't spend the past few years engaged in cultural discourse without being aware of the problematic nature of the author's feminism. Laurie Penny, whose opinion on this I tend to trust, insists that he clearly didn't "intend to glamourise violence against women", he was just trapped by genre conventions. According to Penny, Salander's character is "well drawn" in the books, but I remain doubtful. Following conventions is a choice, and I wonder whether this heroine really escapes the "ninja computer hacker" box Larsson puts her in. But I have no desire to read the book, so I guess I'll never find out.
I wanna talk about David Fincher's adaptation, which is an uncomfortable watch. Back in 2010, Fincher's The Social Network drew out the moralist in me (not always a good thing). This film also gets into trouble on gender politics grounds, which makes me suspect that Fincher is a stylist extraordinaire who doesn't trouble himself with questions of philosophy. Salander doesn't escape sexualisation in this film, even, I dare say, in the rape sequence, which is shot in a dramatic rather than a realistic way. I think the impact would have been harder if the scene ended with Salander desperately trying to escape as the door shuts. The audience can work out the rest from her revenge.
Depiction of rape is complicated. One argument is that it can only be justified when it is done from the P.O.V. of the victim, with his or her lack of consent irrevocably clear to the audience. Thus you try and limit the circulation of potentially dangerous sexual fantasies, which might lead to imitative behaviour in the real world. Another is more liberal, one that the Alan Moore who wrote Lost Girls might support. Fantasies are fantasies, who are you to judge what is criminal or not, if it remains inside people's heads? You can be as disgusting as you like, as long as you respect the rules of consent in the real world and ensure you do not hurt anyone. There are difficulties with such a John Stuart Mill view, but I tend to lean towards it rather than try and legislate on how sex should be portrayed in art. We should live in a world where we can be trusted to control our desires, rather than have them controlled by someone else.
What is crucial for me is that a work is upfront about its intentions. As Sady Doyle tried to show in her demolition of G.R.R. Martin, there is something creepy about a fixation on sexual violence against women (the Tiger Beatdown post about Larsson makes the same point). For me it is enough that someone who fixates on sexual violence should be aware of how creepy it is, so that their work becomes at least in part about that creepiness. I would feel better about Larsson if he treated his stand-in Blomkvist less kindly, and showed the uncomfortable similarities between himself and his straw-men antagonists.
The film tries to do this: the villain suggests that the "urges" he has are shared by the hero. But this is one line going against an entire film in which Blomkvist is hot, smart, suave and impeccably principled. It's not enough. I wanted to see Blomkvist's mind becoming polluted by the heap of mutilated women he is investigating. I wanted him to get srsly worried about the state of his mental health, feel the risk of contagion from being stuck on an island with a bunch of depraved fascists. Moreover, I could have accepted the film's slick and stylish coating, its motorcycles and its lesbians, if the veneer was more evident. Reviewers have suggested that the opening music video credit sequence was misjudged. It is definitely incongruent with the mood of the scenes that bracket it, but I would have changed those scenes, not the music video. Fincher could have thrown his audience into a fever dream of hip fashion, fast cars and delinquent sexuality, rubbed all the problematic genre conventions in people's faces, so that, as in The Matrix, they are convinced of the unreality of everything around them. And in the middle of this whirlwind, he could have had one bespectacled persecuted journalist becoming ever more uncertain of the ground he is standing on, starting to question himself, just as Larsson should have done.
I wanna talk about David Fincher's adaptation, which is an uncomfortable watch. Back in 2010, Fincher's The Social Network drew out the moralist in me (not always a good thing). This film also gets into trouble on gender politics grounds, which makes me suspect that Fincher is a stylist extraordinaire who doesn't trouble himself with questions of philosophy. Salander doesn't escape sexualisation in this film, even, I dare say, in the rape sequence, which is shot in a dramatic rather than a realistic way. I think the impact would have been harder if the scene ended with Salander desperately trying to escape as the door shuts. The audience can work out the rest from her revenge.
Depiction of rape is complicated. One argument is that it can only be justified when it is done from the P.O.V. of the victim, with his or her lack of consent irrevocably clear to the audience. Thus you try and limit the circulation of potentially dangerous sexual fantasies, which might lead to imitative behaviour in the real world. Another is more liberal, one that the Alan Moore who wrote Lost Girls might support. Fantasies are fantasies, who are you to judge what is criminal or not, if it remains inside people's heads? You can be as disgusting as you like, as long as you respect the rules of consent in the real world and ensure you do not hurt anyone. There are difficulties with such a John Stuart Mill view, but I tend to lean towards it rather than try and legislate on how sex should be portrayed in art. We should live in a world where we can be trusted to control our desires, rather than have them controlled by someone else.
What is crucial for me is that a work is upfront about its intentions. As Sady Doyle tried to show in her demolition of G.R.R. Martin, there is something creepy about a fixation on sexual violence against women (the Tiger Beatdown post about Larsson makes the same point). For me it is enough that someone who fixates on sexual violence should be aware of how creepy it is, so that their work becomes at least in part about that creepiness. I would feel better about Larsson if he treated his stand-in Blomkvist less kindly, and showed the uncomfortable similarities between himself and his straw-men antagonists.
The film tries to do this: the villain suggests that the "urges" he has are shared by the hero. But this is one line going against an entire film in which Blomkvist is hot, smart, suave and impeccably principled. It's not enough. I wanted to see Blomkvist's mind becoming polluted by the heap of mutilated women he is investigating. I wanted him to get srsly worried about the state of his mental health, feel the risk of contagion from being stuck on an island with a bunch of depraved fascists. Moreover, I could have accepted the film's slick and stylish coating, its motorcycles and its lesbians, if the veneer was more evident. Reviewers have suggested that the opening music video credit sequence was misjudged. It is definitely incongruent with the mood of the scenes that bracket it, but I would have changed those scenes, not the music video. Fincher could have thrown his audience into a fever dream of hip fashion, fast cars and delinquent sexuality, rubbed all the problematic genre conventions in people's faces, so that, as in The Matrix, they are convinced of the unreality of everything around them. And in the middle of this whirlwind, he could have had one bespectacled persecuted journalist becoming ever more uncertain of the ground he is standing on, starting to question himself, just as Larsson should have done.
14.1.12
Shame
I was puzzled by the title as well, seeing as Fassbender and Mulligan's actions are pretty shameless right up until the very end. Never mind the desperate sex, what interested me were the polarities Steve McQueen sets up between this brother and sister: The brother is tall, rake-thin and haggard, the sister is short, youthful and glowing. The brother is super fit and can run for miles, the sister is a slob asking if she looks fat. The brother works some incomprehensible corporate job, the sister is a singer. The brother is totally independent, the sister is totally dependent. Both are lonely.
All of which makes me wonder if the film assembles these gender roles, pushes them to extremes, in order to undermine them -- neither ideal can lead to any kind of society. There needs to be a mean.
Fassbender's character has a penchant for blue -- swathed sheets wrap his privates in the opening shot, as if to put his overactive gonads on ice. Mulligan's performance at the bar is bathed in shimmering gold. The colour returns at the end as a washed-out yellow, which permeates Fassbender's final orgy, him pumping away, looking more and more ill with each thrust. This is the only connection, the only warmth, either sibling is capable of.
It's a striking film, with brilliant performances by the leads. I don't agree with the complaints from certain quarters that the characters lack depth. McQueen is quite suggestive about the possible origins of their malaise, but leaves enough ambiguity about their past and future to let his audience make up their own minds.
All of which makes me wonder if the film assembles these gender roles, pushes them to extremes, in order to undermine them -- neither ideal can lead to any kind of society. There needs to be a mean.
Fassbender's character has a penchant for blue -- swathed sheets wrap his privates in the opening shot, as if to put his overactive gonads on ice. Mulligan's performance at the bar is bathed in shimmering gold. The colour returns at the end as a washed-out yellow, which permeates Fassbender's final orgy, him pumping away, looking more and more ill with each thrust. This is the only connection, the only warmth, either sibling is capable of.
It's a striking film, with brilliant performances by the leads. I don't agree with the complaints from certain quarters that the characters lack depth. McQueen is quite suggestive about the possible origins of their malaise, but leaves enough ambiguity about their past and future to let his audience make up their own minds.
Jane Eyre
I haven't read the book, but you don't live into your twenties without knowing every beat of this story. I want to talk about the 2011 film directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, which is magnificent. Although I knew what was going to happen, before seeing it I didn't know what Jane Eyre was about. Many things, turns out, all of them leading up to Jane's flight from Thornfield Hall, which serves as the dramatic opening sequence of the film. Jane is young, poor, female, with a rare intellect, a bountiful imagination, and ambitions beyond the station God and fate have assigned her. Her horizon is ring-fenced, but Rochester's betrayal pushes her to escape. This is suicide, and Jane is lucky to survive. Freedom is barren when the mores and institutions to foster it don't exist. What is there to do apart from settle for love.
And for that you need respect, your own and that of your partner. This means honesty, and humility. Jane grows up surrounded by deceit, hypocrisy, arrogance and abuse. It is miraculous she has any faith in family or religion at all. And yet she does, resolutely committed to the idea that her essence as a human being conveys a fundamental dignity no prejudice can efface. Rochester is a coward, and must be maimed and impoverished before Jane can accept him. What is attractive about him is that, as a libertine, he doesn't give a flying toss about Jane's provenance or situation. Also, he's played by Michael Fassbender and Michael Fassbender is all caps HOTNESS. Jaime Bell can't rival that, poor guy. He offers wider horizons but a passionless marriage, and his ultimatums suggest it will be far from equal. Jane has to run again, but this time she has money, and Rochester has been cut down to size. So, in the end, she marries him.
Quite interesting that several viewers, while admiring the gothic tone of the film, missed out on the melodrama. This I find surprising, as I teared up three times in the cinema (even though phones rang FOUR TIMES during the screening, one swine even picked up). My guess is that the film dialled back the romance in the novel (which, after all, is narrated first person). Mia Wasikowska's Jane is very controlled, she pushes the emotions inward. I thought that was believable and moving. The whole film is a glorious piece of work, and will (surely?) become the definitive adaptation of the book.
And for that you need respect, your own and that of your partner. This means honesty, and humility. Jane grows up surrounded by deceit, hypocrisy, arrogance and abuse. It is miraculous she has any faith in family or religion at all. And yet she does, resolutely committed to the idea that her essence as a human being conveys a fundamental dignity no prejudice can efface. Rochester is a coward, and must be maimed and impoverished before Jane can accept him. What is attractive about him is that, as a libertine, he doesn't give a flying toss about Jane's provenance or situation. Also, he's played by Michael Fassbender and Michael Fassbender is all caps HOTNESS. Jaime Bell can't rival that, poor guy. He offers wider horizons but a passionless marriage, and his ultimatums suggest it will be far from equal. Jane has to run again, but this time she has money, and Rochester has been cut down to size. So, in the end, she marries him.
Quite interesting that several viewers, while admiring the gothic tone of the film, missed out on the melodrama. This I find surprising, as I teared up three times in the cinema (even though phones rang FOUR TIMES during the screening, one swine even picked up). My guess is that the film dialled back the romance in the novel (which, after all, is narrated first person). Mia Wasikowska's Jane is very controlled, she pushes the emotions inward. I thought that was believable and moving. The whole film is a glorious piece of work, and will (surely?) become the definitive adaptation of the book.
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