Falstaff (Chimes at Midnight)

A curious adaptation of several of Shakespeare's historical plays aimed at giving Falstaff centre stage, Orson Welles's 'Falstaff (Chimes at Midnight)' is regarded by some as his masterpiece.  It certainly doesn't suffer from the troubled production it had and that so many of his later films fell prey to.  Also, given his lack of resources, it looks never less than stunning.  The frenetic pace in editing and staging he invests in some of his works, works very well here, and the whole film holds one's attention throughout.  Again it is a beautiful film, beautifully made as well as shot.  However, and not withstanding his iconic make-up, I never felt the love for the character that Welles so obviously did.  Sure, he's a lovable old rogue, but he never seems to be anything other than for himself (Stevenson's Long John Silver somehow manages this selfishness far better) and foolish along with it.  When at the coronation I should have been tearful, instead I was saying, 'What the hell are you doing, you old idiot!'  It may well have been my fault; though I am familiar with the plays, the Shakespearean dialogue often got the better of me.  Whatever it was, and wonderful though Welles' take on the character was, it just did not grab me.  Certainly a high point in his career though and essential viewing for film buffs.

Saint Joan...Up from the Ashes

For completion's sake, I have just finished watching Otto Preminger's 1957 film version of Shaw's 'Saint Joan'.  Adapted by Graham Greene, it has some changes, notably in the use of the epilogue to act as a frame for the tale, but the fundamentals are there.  I didn't have too much of a problem with Jean Seberg in the role.  She emphasised Joan's frailty far more than the strength that comes across in the play, but I don't doubt the sincerity of her interpretation.  I would have liked to see the more definitively Shavian Wendy Hiller in the role, but sadly that can never (and even in 1957 could never) be.  Richard Widmark may over play the buffoon as the King, but again, to be fair, the role calls for such a comical performance.  Generally it isn't a bad interpretation.  To Seberg's credit she showed me some of the more subtle possibilities of the role.  Hiller would have been perfect for it though.  Think of her in 'I Know Where I'm Going!'  And apparently Hiller originated the role of Catherine Sloper on Broadway in 'The Heiress' (playing opposite Basil Rathbone as her father! What a production that must have been).  She could do weak and strong.  Anyhow whatever about what might have been, Preminger's take is a good deal better than cinders.

Visual Correspondence

Visual Correspondence - Historical Letters from a new perspective

Just in passing, if anyone has an interest in historical correspondence, I have created a web site devoted to that very topic.  Using basic information that is common to almost all letters, I try to map where historical figures were over their lives.  I also try to chart their social circles and provide a lot of different tools for seeing what they got up to, as letter writers that is (but actually not just as that).  The site is Visual Correspondence and it would just make me feel a bit better about wasting so much time on it if more than one or two people (mostly me) actually used it.  At present there are over 156,000 letters dealt with, featuring everyone from Karl Marx to Robert De Niro (I kid you not; do a search on the site).  And if you are aware of any online collections of correspondence that you think might be suitable for the site, please let me know.  So remember folks, http://letters.nialloleary.ie/

Saint Joan

Shaw's account of the rise and fall of the curious saint, 'Saint Joan', is a peculiar beast.  It is a battle of two sides, each obsessed with religion, told by an atheist.  Shaw's dialogue is clear, angular, and a delight, but his characters never seem more than mouth pieces.  Don't read this play looking for an insight into the historical figure; Joan starts out a 'saint' and ends a 'saint' and experiences nothing by way of character development along the way.  This is very much a play of ideas, and not the worse for that.
I am always a little bemused by the amount of attention lavished on Wilde, O'Casey, Yeats, Beckett and all the other Irish greats, while Shaw seems to get just a perfunctory once off revival every now and again or a brief aside on how clever he was.  He wrote over 60 plays after all.  Shouldn't we see more of them?  Or maybe it's just I haven't devoted enough attention to him.  (I've spent more time inside his namesake pub than reading him, I will admit.)  Well, there's a New Year's resolution for me!

In the Heart of the Sea

Ron Howard's adaptation of Nathaniel Philbrick's 'In the Heart of the Sea', an account of the sinking of the whaling vessel, The Essex, the supposed basis for 'Moby-Dick', does what it says on the tin, I suppose.  We get some big whales, sailors in lifeboats and dubious cuisine.  However, we also get Chris Hemsworth doing Thor at sea and some fairly unconvincing visuals.  Perhaps Hemsworth himself is a CGI-generated being much like the other behemoths rolling through the fake oceans.  Anyhow remedying matters a little  is Brendan Gleeson playing one of the aged survivors; he is actually better than I've seen him in a while (and he's never too far off the boil anyhow).  The strange thing for me though is the story itself.  A rogue white whale attacking a ship and harrying its mariners!  It all makes better fiction than fact, and I don't quite buy it all.  Granted I came out of the cinema wanting to read the well-regarded book (to get a handle on just how reliable the whole plot is), but for the moment I'll stick with 'Moby-Dick'.

Joyce Carol Oates

I had the good fortune to attend a reading and Q&A by the respected American author last week.  She proved to be refreshingly straight-forward in her discussion of her work and the influences that drive her.  I was a little surprised though at the basic level of analysis.  I am no perceptive critic when it comes to weighty literature, but some things appear obvious.  One was  the similarity between the heroine of her latest novel and Oates herself as documented in her recent account of widowhood.  Jerusha McCormack nodded sagely beside me as Oates appeared to spontaneously note this resemblance, but anyone with ears to listen could not have failed to see it far earlier in the discussion.

One incident did distress me a little.  A fan in the audience asked a 'question' that ran on for several minutes. Everyone, myself included, began to sigh as the never-ending 'question' rolled on and on.  The questioner was obviously a little star-struck in the presence of her idol, but she couldn't fail to feel deflated when Oates prefaced her answer (one she had to interrupt to give, it must be said) with the remark that she'd hate to have to have the question repeated.  Humorous though this might be, the effect of the put-down could only have been exacerbated by the round of applause the remark got.  Much as she initially annoyed me, I felt for the fan.

Coincidentally

Given the pleasure of watching "The Cabin in the Woods", I should mention that I'm reading Lovecraft's "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" at the moment. It's the one major work by Lovecraft I haven't yet read (though of course I am familiar with the story and have seen both Corman's "The Haunted Palace" and O'Bannon's "The Resurrected"). It is a frustrating piece of work. Even more than usual, Lovecraft's insistence on not describing what he describes as indescribable is just plain annoying. The plain thrust of things is pretty clear, yet to make his 'big reveal' late in the novel, he feels the need to obscure things early, so of the raid on Curwen's farm we get small hints and glimpses from people uninvolved in the action. You see it is terrifying just how close-lipped everyone actually involved subsequently became! I feel like throwing the rubbish away, but my dedication to the genre necessitates some hard work. It shall soon be over, thank Yog-Sothoth!

A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder

I've also recently read James De Mille's 'A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder'. Claiming to be a castaway's account of a trip to a lost civilisation at the South Pole, it is also a clever satire (as most of these tales are; consider Butler's 'Erewhon'), on Western Civilisation. In this lost world, the locals are kind, considerate, selfless and completely in love with death, so much so that sacrifice and cannibalism are considered the highest honours. Only a few radicals believe that selfishness, greed and exploitation are the true, noble aims of life.
Written in 1888, it makes a heavy nod at Edgar Allen Poe, but, though coming after Verne, apparently still anticipates much that was written by Burroughs, Haggard and Doyle (this Antarctica features dinosaurs and Moas as well as cannibals and pyramids). As if in apology for its sentimental aspects, De Mille frames the whole tale by having the manuscript read aloud by a motley group of dilettantes on an aristocrat's yacht. One of their number insists on critiquing the manuscript as if it was a fiction, pointing out its sensationalism and absurdity, while the others supply the science behind its authenticity.
All of this is admirable and entertaining. Sadly the hero, the English sailor Adam More, is a pessimistic, often cowardly, and very often overly submissive fool, making it very hard to care for his adventures, even with the framing critique highlighting his double standards. Indeed, De Mille is trying to give us a rip-roaring adventure, a healthy dose of anthropology, biology and linguistics, and a sly, self-conscious black comedy that highlights the dangers of a first person narrative; all at the same time. It is incredibly ambitious, and were he to have achieved all his aims, he would be regarded as one of the best writers of his generation. Suffice to say he is not. However, there is no doubt of his importance in the development of the science fiction genre, and for that alone, this is worth a read.

Wise Blood

Just to say I finished Flannery O'Connor's first novel and masterpiece. It is notable how she keeps you close enough to her grotesque characters to think you're inside their heads, but actually just enough outside to surprise you. Then you think, yes, well, that does make sense. Dark, funny, and cold as Hell, with a small, warm heart beating somewhere within the ice.
For completeness I also watched John Huston's film adaptation again. I saw it years ago, and always remembered Brad Dourif playing Hazel Motes. This time around his relatively over-heated, one-note performance didn't impress me as much. Ironically he plays it as it is, and the film is generally very faithful to the book. Updating it to the Seventies didn't lose anything, but instead showed how relevant the whole nasty tale still is for America. However, the dreadful score by Alex North highlights the slightly off-key tone that the film makers adopted and that ultimately loses a lot of the book's power. The characters are not just the grotesques that the film portrays; they are warped, but real people, struggling for meaning, companionship and love. Ultimately the film works, but as soon often is the case, the novel works on a higher, finer plane.

Keeping Tabs

Okay, to be expanded, but books in the last while:

A Mercy - Toni Morrison
Just couldn't get into it. I dislike fiction that tries to replicate a person's dialect (put me off Robert Louis Stevenson for quite a while after I read 'Thrawn Janet'), and the parts of the novel told by Florens aggravated me. Morrison tries to tell her (very simple) story through the stories of her characters and as an insight into 17th Century America, it has its interesting aspects. However, drawing similarities between slavery and indenture is hardly ground-breaking. For a more subtle analysis of the dynamics of slavery read Octavia Butler.

The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula Le Guin
Or Ursula Le Guin. The world is changed by put-upon George Orr's dreams, and things get tough when self-righteous psychiatrist, Dr Haber, gets his claws into him. Sounds like Philip K. Dick, but Le Guin has a discipline to her narrative that Dick rarely showed. Not that there ain't problems (I hate 'real world' prophecies, aliens and clichéd 'battle against the wind' endings), but there's far too much that's brilliant here not to be won over. Fine stuff.

Trouble Is My Business - Raymond Chandler
Just a novella, but Marlowe all the same. A routine muck-raking case escalates into a massacre in Chandler's inimitable way. Always passes the time.

Just reading Flannery O'Connor's 'Wise Blood' now. A novel of grotesques that spawned everything from 'Taxi Driver' to 'A Confederacy of Dunces', as far as I can see. I link O'Connor to Shirley Jackson in the way I might link Morrison to Butler, but I'm liking O'Connor a lot more than I did Morrison. I'll keep you posted.

Things Fall Apart

One of the first African novels to hit the Western mainstream, Chinua Achebe's 'Things Fall Apart' details a large Nigerian community at the point when Western colonialism starts to erode its traditional ways. Centering on Okonkwo, a respected warrior and fiercely ambitious patriarch, it unflinchingly shows the good and bad aspects of indigenous life. For the most part, it navigates a fine line of objectivity expertly allowing us to see a culture that is not necessarily better or worse, just different. Okonkwo in particular is a masterful creation, all male bluster and insecurity. Priding himself on his fearlessness, he is ironically riddled with fears; of losing face, failing in his career, showing emotion, etc.. Of course, the 'objectivity' is shed a little towards the end in the service of righteous anger, but Achebe's cause is just. Presented as a collection of linked anecdotes, 'Things Fall Apart', presents a lucid pen picture of a world that has not so much died as been replaced by a more wily version of itself.

Books

Read a few books earlier in the week:

Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Michael Chabon - The Final Solution
M.J. Engh - Arslan

I'll try to write something on each soon. (I'm still recovering - slowly - from that last one.)

Mockingbird

The wonderful 'Mockingbird'

Set in what could be humanity's dying days, Walter Tevis's 'Mockingbird' is a delicate retelling of the Genesis myth and a beautiful hymn to reading.
In a world where privacy is a religion and drugs a sacred tool, the art of reading has all but been lost. Dean of Faculties at NYU, and melancholy robot, Spofforth, sees no reason to change this. But then lowly Ohio professor, Bentley, investigating some ancient porno films, discovers "Roberto and Consuela and Their Dog Biff"....
Full of humanity, authentic wonder and sincere passion, Tevis rarely puts a foot wrong throughout the novel. He makes Bentley believable as a middle aged man suddenly growing up and finally learning what it means to live. If some of this sounds sentimental, there is enough grimness to leaven the mood, with group immolations and a palpable sense of loss. And who would have thought that a conversation with a bus could be so uplifting!
Not a million miles from '1984', 'Fahrenheit 451' and other dystopias, Tevis's book is probably closest to Bradbury's in its tentative optimism. Considering half of his novel output has already been turned into film ('The Man Who Fell to Earth', 'The Hustler' and 'The Colour of Money'), one hopes someone has the good sense to adapt this for the screen. It is a story we could all do with right now.

Catch-up on Books, Movies, etc.

Lots of books read and films watched which, if I muster up the enthusiasm, I will review properly soon. For the moment:

Books
Jonathan Carroll - White Apples - dreadful.
Philip Roth - Nemesis - heart-wrenching.
Octavia Butler - Fledgling - disappointing, if interesting.
Willa Cather - Alexander's Bridge - Wannabe Henry James.

Currently reading Walter Tevis's 'Mockingbird' and assorted pieces by Twain.

Movies
Rawhead Rex - so bad, it's bad. A demon wearing a cabbage patch doll for a head.
The Forbidden Zone - bizarre, but it does show how much of an influence Danny Elfman was on Tim Burton.
Harry Potter Yadda Yadda Yadda Part 2 - Far better than Part 1, but then what's left of last week's kippers are too.
The Green Lantern - Strangely slow-moving and dull, but a nice human slant. Better than 'Thor', but then what's left of last week's....
The Tree of Life - as close to a prayer in mainstream cinema as you'll get. Bizarre for many, mesmerising for me.
Unknown - A lot of what you've seen before done pleasantly again.
Paul - Pleasant with some nice sci-fi references, etc..

There was some advertising slot for 'Cars 2' masquerading as a documentary on Pixar shown on BBC3. Is anyone immune to the first ten minutes of 'Up'? They showed a few moments and I had to immediately chop up some onions to maintain some semblance of self-respect. Hell, I'm welling up now!

I finally got to see the Family Guy Star Wars trilogy. Much better than watching the real thing all over again, though they are right with their apology for the third one; it ain't as good as the first two.