February 2014 book and film review

BOOKS




THE SCARLET LETTER, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the New England of the early 1700s, an unmarried woman has a baby. In the harsh, unforgiving puritan climate of the day, she is branded an adulteress and forced to wear upon her breast a letter "A", as a lasting indication of her terrible crime against God. She could mitigate her offence by naming the father, but this she refuses to do. And so the other guilty party continues to hide in plain sight in the community which respects and reveres him.


Sometimes thought of as the first "psychological novel", Hawthorne's masterwork is now one of the most famous ever to have come out of America. And with good reason. Its gripping plot development and its intimate dissection of the characters of the protagonists establishes its position as a novel of the highest quality. For me the most telling part is the way the adulterer's guilt, the guilt that dare not speak its name, affects his health to the point of grave illness. Students of psychodynamics today would find much to base their theses upon in these pages.


THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In  mid-1800s New England, a wealthy man has built a fine house, but lives elsewhere. Instead it is occupied by two classic agoraphobics: his sister, a woman who is rarely seen outdoors except perhaps when tending to her garden, and her brother, a man clearly deeply traumatised by past events of which we know nothing at first, and is an even more reclusive figure than his sister. Then a pretty young niece comes to stay, and she catches the eye of another important player: a lodger who is something of an amateur photographer. Underneath all this lie deep, dark secrets. Did ancestors of the house's owner preside over the hanging of the photographer's ancestor as a witch? Is there, hidden somewhere in the eternal shadows of this old, dark house, a document which could prove ownership of a vast tract of land and the untold wealth that would imply?


In a tale with as much, or possibly even more, subtlety than The Scarlet Letter, this book has the elements of greatness about it: a dark and compelling plot line, acutely drawn characters and, running through it all, that essential Americanness that marks it as so different from Dickens. On the face of it, it is a tempting comparison to make. After all, they both wrote around the same time in the 19th century, and both use a meticulous, immaculately crafted prose style. Both used long, superbly punctuated sentences (though Hawthorne seems to favour commas rather more than Dickens) and both examined in detail the moral mores of their day. But of course Dickens wrote dozens of novels; Hawthorne just these two. But oh, what a pair to leave to history! Such a shame, then, that Hawthorne never received the plaudits in his lifetime he so richly deserved.




INFERNO, by Dante Alghieri. (Hesperus publishing, 2003; translated by J.G. Nichols) A Florentine man, "midway through his life" (ie he is 35) finds himself in a dark wood, confronted by three beasts: a lion, a leopard and a she-wolf. Terrified, Dante is about to lose hope when a ghostly figure appears and offers to help guide him out of the wood, but that their route must go via hell, purgatory and finally paradise. This is the ghost of Virgil, Dante's greatest literary hero, so Dante accepts the proposition with alacrity. What follows is one of the most extraordinary works of the imagination ever created. Obviously Inferno covers only the first of these three, but is by far the most famous, and indeed, after centuries of neglect (it was written around 1300) is now recognised as one of the greatest poems of all time and continues to exert tremendous influence to this day. As Dante journeys through the inverted cone which is hell, stratified into 9 layers (venial sinners towards the top, the most vile at the bottom), he encounters famous villains from antiquity (Judas Escariot, for example), as well as more recent ones who have either done him or his family down, we inevitably speculate who he might encounter in a more modern version of Inferno. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot would surely be there, along with Ted Bundy and Dr Shipman. And when their time comes, perhaps might we not find Berlusconi, Bernie Madoff, and, dare I suggest it, George Bush Jr and Tony Blair?


Obviously I lack the sophistication to take a work like this at all the multiple levels required to understand it fully; despite this I found it a gripping, horrifying tale, full of terrifying archetypes that have haunted my own dreams since I first opened it. I thoroughly recommend the edition I used, with its extremely helpful footnotes and beautifully written introduction to each canto. Verdict: worthy of its fame.






FILMS


OBLIVION (2013) D- Joseph Kosinski. In a world abandoned by the human race following an alien invasion, Tom Cruise is left behind to mop up the remnants of the attacking force. Got it? Good. That's about all you need to know, other than don't waste useful hours of your life staying with this one to its conclusion. My problems with this lie in its basic premise, namely that the entire human population has been transported, via an enormous space transport craft, to the moon Titan and this in 2077, and not ten thousand years in the future. Now I know atmospheric pressure there is close to that of our home planet, but you can't breathe the air and its temperature is twice as cold as central Antarctica on the coldest day it has ever seen, so the idea of billions of humans living there is pretty ridiculous.


Still, I've enjoyed movies with even crazier notions, but it's a bad start. What was much worse was that at about five minutes in I found myself simply not caring a jot for its hero and what happened to him, or anyone else involved. The public, apparently, agreed. Although it cost upwards of $200 million to make, and featured a star normally thought to be box office gold, it made back less than a third of what it cost to produce. Hollywood hubris, thy name is Oblivion...


TRUE GRIT (2010) P/D- The Coen Brothers. A young girls father is murdered, so she goes in search of the perp with the assistance of a man suitably qualified for the task: a man with true grit. This would be Marshall Rooster Cogburn, admirably played by Jeff Bridges in a highly creditable reprise of John Wayne's famous rendition of the role in the 1969 original, a film which won him his only Oscar.


Normally I despise remakes: they are usually cynical money-making projects (recent examples would include Get Carter and Shaft) and turn out to be completely unnecessary and artless.  This, I have to say, is an exception. The Coen brothers have made an excellent job of re-working this western classic, preserving the unique atmosphere of the original while adding a new and original spin. Worthwhile.


PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (1950) D- Albert Lewin. A beautiful but wilful Ava Gardner (more or less playing herself, if I understand it) falls for a ghostly (not that she knows that) sea captain (James Mason) who, in line with the famous myth, is doomed to wander the seven seas until he finds a woman who loves him enough to die for him. So far so good. But what follows is an appalling load of pseudo-artistic claptrap, devoid in reality of almost any artistic merit. The colour is terrible: everyone seems to be suffering from a serious case of radiation sickness, while the colour generally seems to throb and pulse in a way that almost induces nausea. Lewin was a Hollywood insider of the 30s; he was Irving Thalberg's PA, and eventually persuaded the money men to let him direct. They never should have let him near a camera, is all I can say. Terrible.


THE RED DESERT (1964) D- Michelangelo Antonioni. A beautiful, but disturbed woman (Monica Vitti, Antonioni's long-time muse) wanders about in an almost alien-looking Italian industrial landscape, struggling to find meaning and even a scrap of happiness in her apparently meaningless and deeply unhappy existence. Richard Harris (clearly speaking English but dubbed into Italian) would make her happy in his own way, and she is attracted to him in return. But he's her husband's boss, so it's all a bit tricky...


This was Antonioni's first excursion into colour, and the result is as visually stunning as Lewin's disaster (see above) is awful. Somehow the grim industrial heartland of a northern Italian city (it was filmed near Ravenna) is transformed into a strange, magical place. full of colour: blues, reds and yellows fill the screen in a profusion of strange shapes and swirls. Remarkable.


FREE MEN (2011) D- Ismael Farroukhi. Paris at the time of the Nazi occupation. The Nazi view on Jews is well known, but apparently they adopted a more tolerant attitude towards Muslims. So the imam of a Paris Mosque (played by the admirable Michael Lonsdale) uses their indulgence to harbour Jews in the cellars of his mosque. Eventually the Germans get wind of what's going on and their forbearance comes to a swift end...


This unlikely, but apparently true story challenges our traditional prejudices of how things work between cultures, and Farroukhi puts together a fine little piece which engages throughout.


LADYHAWKE (1985) D- Richard Donner. An evil bishop casts a spell on two lovers: the man (Rutger Hauer) is doomed to be himself by day, but transformed into a wolf each night. Conversely, his paramour (Michelle Pfeiffer) is by day a falcon, only to turn back into a woman as the sun sets. OK. This is as good a premise for a fantasy movie as you could wish for, is it not? Trouble is, this movie is an absolute dog. The players, including a youthful, and highly physically talented Matthew Broderick do their best, but struggle with an awful script and leaden direction. Think a sort of Willow with no Warwick Davies. There are some great locations (they used several real castles in the Italian Alps) and one really good set piece which involves a joust along the aisle of a cathedral with the opponents wielding, not lances but huge broadswords; even so this is a film to forget as quickly as possible...


COLD WEATHER (2010) D- Aaron Katz. In Portland, Oregon, a place with weather much like South Wales, in that it is either grey and not raining, or grey and raining, a young man works in an ice factory but dreams of being a great detective, like his hero Sherlock Holmes. He even buys a pipe to enhance the effect. Then by chance an ex-girlfriend has a briefcase of money she is transporting from a to b stolen and he realises this is his big chance to exercise his skills.


An understated little movie which distinguishes itself with some sensitive direction and competent acting all round. To grip the attention without a lot happening for much of the film is not an easy thing to do, but Katz and his team do a fine job. Well done!