Wednesday, February 28, 2018

the shape of water...

Moira and I went to the Watershed again this afternoon… this time to see Guillermo Del Toro’s much-acclaimed “The Shape of Water” (it’s received ‘quite a few’ Oscar nominations!), featuring the extraordinary Sally Hawkins (as Eliza – an orphaned, mute, isolated woman who’s a cleaner working in a secret US government facility in 1962), plus Doug Jones (as a brilliant marine creature), Michael Shannon (Strickland - the cruel research head) and Richard Jenkins (Giles - shares a sort of father+daughter bond with Eliza)… amongst a very talented cast.
So, the facility receives a ‘creature’ in a tank, which has been captured from a South American river by Strickland… and the US government wants to exploit the creature for possible advantages in the Space Race.
Meanwhile, Eliza accidentally discovers that the creature is a humanoid amphibian and begins visiting the creature in secret, forming a close bond with it… which slowly turns to love.
Essentially, the film is a deliciously weird, extraordinary fairytale-cum-romantic thriller… Daughter Ruth described the film as being something of a ‘dark “Amelie”’… and I think this is a pretty good description (although, perhaps not quite in the ‘Amelie’ league for me, personally – perhaps my very favourite film of all time!). Like ‘Amelie’, the soundtrack is also an important feature within the film (eg. Alice Faye’s “You’ll Never Know How Much I Love You”), as do various Hollywood film references/extracts.
It’s certainly ONE of the best films I’ve seen this year but, perhaps fairytales are not quite my out-and-out cup of tea? Nevertheless, it's very beautiful and has to be one of those films you just HAVE to see.
PS: And if you thought Paddington Bear could make a mess in a bathroom, just wait until you see this!
PPS: But the film also highlights the awful homophobic, sexist and racist views adopted by many people in the US (and elsewhere) in the early 1960s. The fact that they come across as hugely shocking probably says much about how far we come since that time.

Friday, February 23, 2018

lady bird…

Moira and I went to the Watershed yesterday afternoon to see Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird”. It’s a film about adolescence set in west coast America in the early 2000s. Specifically, it’s about the relationship between mothers and daughters.
Christine (or “Lady Bird” as she prefers to call herself), brilliantly played by Saoirse Ronan, is an artistically inclined 17 year-old in her last year a Catholic school with has dreams of a different life of cosmopolitan culture, Ivy League universities on the East Coast and her own self-importance (of course!). Her mother Marion, equally brilliantly played by Laurie Metcalf, is a nurse working double shifts to keep her family afloat (her husband’s just lost his job).
So, confused, precocious teenager with lofty aspirations, falling in and out of love, trying to balance friendship and popularity (and frequently failing)… and trying to be true to herself. Mother attempting to manage her daughter’s expectations and, annoyingly/frustratingly, regularly ‘getting it wrong’ (telling Lady Bird that she has ideas above her station, telling her how expensive it’s been to raise her… and, of course, criticising her lack of tidiness and her dress sense etc etc).
You get the general idea…
Lots of the film’s other characters are excellent too – I particularly liked ‘best friend’ Julie (played by Beanie Feldstein)… and I came away feeling that I needed to watch the film again in order to pick up all the nuances and to appreciate some of the ‘secondary’ performances and characters a little more.
It’s a film about growing up, about relationships and about the things that shape our lives… about how teenagers perhaps can’t imagine the emotional lives of their parents and about the difficulties and sense of loss for some parents when their children leave home.   
I thought it was a really lovely, frequently funny, sometimes sad (often predictably uncomfortable), very enjoyable, coming of age film… you need to see it.

Thursday, February 22, 2018

february 2018 books…

The Labours Of Hercules (Agatha Christie): First published 1947 (my copy: 1958)… another Hercule Poirot book. Poirot decides to undertake twelve more cases before he retires… choosing each one because of its resemblance to one of the twelve labours of Hercules – his mythological namesake (but he doesn’t end up dying wearing a poisoned shirt!). Twelve very clever short stories of detection and logic.
Fludd (Hilary Mantel): Set in the mid-1950s, in a village on the edge of some northern moorland and where the Roman Catholic Church holds sway against a dismal backdrop of ancient local feuds and general disillusionment. The village is presided over by a Catholic priest, who seems to have lost his faith in God while keeping to his horrified belief in the devil, and an appalling mother superior of the local convent. Into this bleak world comes the curate Fludd – apparently sent by the local bishop – who turns out to be a spiritual alchemist who can free anyone who will listen with the influence of his magical (not particularly holy!) powers. Enjoyable, funny, moralistic and compassionate.
(This note appears at the front of the book: “The real Fludd (1574-1637) was a physician, scholar and alchemist. In alchemy everything has a literal and factual description, and in addition a description that is symbolic and fantastical”).
Alexander Pope (Edith Sitwell): First published 1930 (my copy: 1948). Before reading this biography, I knew very little about Pope (1688-1744) – apart from knowing he was poet (“The Rape of the Lock”). Her introduction to the book is telling. She clearly worshipped Pope and was ruthlessly disparaging of his many critics, for example: “We must remember when reading certain of the biographies and certain criticisms of Pope’s life and of his work, that the authors were schoolmasters and scholars, not poets, and that no matter how great their learning and how deep-rooted their kindness, they could scarcely be expected to understand that to this man, who was one of the greatest poets England has produced, whose sense of texture in poetry was so excessively delicate that it has never been surpassed, and, I think, has scarcely been equalled, to this fine and sensitive artist, inferior poetry and clumsy texture were an agony, and must have had almost the effect of physical rupture”. As you might have gathered, she was a poet! Frankly, once I’d read her introduction, I realised that it was highly unlikely that the biography of her hero could ever be regarded as unbiased… and so it proved. Nevertheless, an interesting insight into the life and times/work of the poet (and his biographer!) about whom I knew so little. From the age of 12, he suffered numerous health problems, such as Pott's disease (a form of tuberculosis that affects the bone), which deformed his body and stunted his growth, leaving him with a severe hunchback (he was only 4’6” in height) and his tuberculosis infection caused other health problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes, and abdominal pain. At times, 18th century society life seems to have been all about protracted quarrels, snide remarks, jealousy… and publishing correspondence (often altered to suit one party against another). Social media ‘bitching’ and ‘fake news’ are clearly nothing new!
Holy Disorders (Edmund Crispin): First published 1946 (my copy: 1958). The third Crispin crime novel I’ve read (I think)… predictably clever, predictably absurd and, of course, typical of 1930s/40s crime novels - but it provided agreeable, ‘light’ reading material for my train journey. The back cover featured a photograph of the author in a typical pose of its time, with the head suitably framed by the ‘delicate’ fingers of one hand… except that these fingers also held a smouldering cigarette, just a couple of inches from his face. All rather ludicrous!
Where Poppies Blow (John Lewis-Stempel): This is a book about the British soldier, nature and the Great War. At first, I felt the writer was romanticising war and how soldiers (particularly officers) spent much of their time bird-watching, fishing and taking strolls in the countryside. But, thankfully, I was wrong… and Lewis-Stempel goes to great lengths to provide the flip-side to this ‘life’ – including harrowing descriptions of rat-infested trenches, lice, flies, disease and death. It’s very well written and brilliantly researched (using correspondence from soldiers). As my grandfather Frank was a ‘driver’ with the Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) on the Somme from 1914 onwards (ie. horse driver – I think each driver was responsible for a pair of horses), I was particularly interested in this extract: “NCOs and men working in transport or with the artillery also had riding lessons, invariably of the intensive type, condensed into a week, as Sargeant George Thompson recalled: ‘All the drivers were taken to 50th Division RFA and went through a week’s training to learn both to ride and to drive. They gave us some stick, I can tell you. First came riding bareback and then with saddles on : we were sore for days’”. Living in Birmingham, as he did, I suspect that the war was Frank’s first encounter with horses? An excellent book which provides a new perspective on WW1.

Saturday, February 03, 2018

phantom thread…

I went to the Watershed again yesterday afternoon to see Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Phantom Thread”. It harks back to fashion-minded London of the 1950s… where Reynolds Woodcock (brilliantly played by Daniel Day-Lewis), celebrated dressmaker to the debutantes of Britain, is starting to feel the pressure from the ‘New Look’ and influences from across the Channel.
Like many elite artists(?), he is a man of strict routine – who, putting it mildly, doesn’t take kindly to interruptions to his daily routines. Peter Bradshaw in his review for The Guardian describes Woodcock thus: “A brilliant English couturier of the postwar age: fastidious and cantankerous, humourless and preposterous – and heterosexual, in that pre-Chatterley era when being a bachelor and fashion designer wasn’t automatically associated in the public mind with anything else”.
I found Day-Lewis’s characterisation of Woodcock totally mesmerising… and yet I also found myself utterly despising the man and his impossible, controlling ways (actually, despite this, I’m also considering buying a couple of hair brushes and copying his hair style!).
Woodcock meets, and falls in love, with a shy, ungainly German waitress at the country hotel where he happens to be staying. This is Alma (beautifully played by Vicky Krieps)(I absolutely fell in love with her!).
Woodcock sees in her a grace and beauty no one else had noticed, certainly not Alma herself. Dazzled, she comes to live with him as his assistant and model in the central London fashion house over which Woodcock rules with his sister and confidante Cyril (somewhat chillingly played by the impressive Lesley Manville).
Woodcock is the ruthless and selfish. Alma is shy and in awe of her wealthy lover… and yet her personality is stronger than you think.
That’s all I’m going to say… I don’t want to spoil things for you.
But you DO need to see this film – it really is rather good (slight understatement)!