July 2014 book and film review

BOOKS


EFFIE BRIEST, by Theodore Fontane. Effie is a pretty, fun loving 17 year old who thinks being married off to an ambitious minor aristo 20 years her senior might be a lark. But having moved from her beloved family home into a creepy old house miles away and her husband always away at his work, she slowly realises she may have made a mistake. And as so often happens in real life, one mistake leads to another...


Thomas Mann thought this little masterpiece was one of the six most influential novels ever written, and it is widely acknowledged, along with Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary as one of the three greatest books written by a man, about a woman. Fontane's style appears simple and naturalistic, but the text conceals layer after layer of hidden significance. We may not approve of her headstrong, even foolish life decisions, but we remain sympathetic to this beautiful little bird locked in a cage of her own making. Marvellous.


CAPTAIN SCOTT, by Sir Ranulph Fiennes. The life of one of Britain's greatest "heroic failures", and unlike many of the hundred or so other books written about Scott, this is by someone who has literally walked in his footsteps. Fiennes probably knows more about trekking in the Antarctic than anyone else alive, and is also, as a leader of many expeditions to the Poles, able to identify strongly with the burdens of command in such extreme environments. And there indeed is the rub: Fiennes tells Scott's story paying close attention to the shifting attitude of the "Great British Public" towards Scott in the decades since his demise.


In the early part of the 20th century Britain was in need of a hero, and Scott's tragic story lit up the public's imagination in a way not seen since the time of Wellington and Nelson. But over the years his reputation has been picked apart by witters who have never been to the polar regions, culminating in the appalling slander committed by a man called Roland Huntford in his book Scott and Amundsen, in which Scott is accused of everything from incompetence to culpable homicide. Fiennes reserves particular venom for this piece of pondlife, not fit to shine the shoes of the Great One in his view. True, Fiennes tells us, Scott was a complicated man, troubled, prone to depression and anger, and who did make some poor decisions. Yet Fiennes admits he himself has made mistakes on every expedition he has ever commanded, some of them serious, and his final verdict is that Scott was a great man, a great explorer and a great commander, despite his failings. Fascinating reading.


LA BETE HUMAINE, by Emil Zola. Lust, murder and mayhem set among the railways of late 20th century France. As always in Zola, all human life is here: a dirty old man with a guilty conscience, an attractive woman pursued by a variety of suitors, and a young man who can't see a pretty girl's décolletage without wanting to plunge a knife into it. Will he be able to resist the beast within him?


For me Zola is one of the most approachable French writers of the 19th century. My dental hygienist spotted me reading it and said she could never manage a novel like that, but I told her she probably could if she just tried. Remarkably easy to read, his characters spring from the page in their vividness, and the plots race along like something out of James Patterson. Superior holiday reading.


ALONE IN BERLIN, by Hans Fallada. In 1940 in Hitler's Germany, a quiet couple is brought the telegram everyone fears: their only son has been killed during the campaign in the Low Countries. In a mixture of grief and anger against their Fuhrer, whom they rightly blame for their son's death, the couple mount their own low-level campaign of resistance: they write little postcards with pithy epigrams like The Fuhrer killed our son! Don't let him kill yours! and then leave them in places where people will see and read them, and maybe pass them on. This kind of behaviour will of course be construed as treason by the authorities, and the penalty for that is death. So they're careful... But the postcards soon come to the attention of the Gestapo, who are determined to take these despicable traitors down.


Based on actual events, this is quite simply one of the most powerful and affecting books I have ever read. Its overwhelming humanity, its brilliant narrative, its quiet, understated atmosphere of fear are quite unlike anything else I have read. In my last blog I wrote about the importance of protest, whether or not that protest is effective in bringing about change, and this book demonstrates this to the ultimate degree. Otto Quangel's postcards don't change anything: most are handed over to the authorities as soon as they are found - they actually instill great fear in the hearts of the people who discover them, but no matter. Otto has remained true to himself, and that is what really counts. A quite wonderful book.


FILMS


JACK THE GIANT SLAYER (2013) D- Bryan Singer. A young man discovers some beans, then loses one, which sprouts. The resulting beanstalk reaches to the sky, but he doesn't want to climb up there, because there be giants. Nasty giants... Since the phenomenal and richly deserved success of Game of Thrones we have seen a rash of movies and TV series with the emphasis firmly on the medieval/magic theme. This, for instance, looks like it was made in the same studios with the same special effects crew. Unfortunately this is no GOT. The writing is poor and the acting risible, even though there are some good actors involved including the excellent Stanley Tucci. Disappointing.


COLD COMES THE NIGHT (2013) D- Tze Chun. The single parent owner of a motel has her life turned suddenly upside down when the mob send one of their own to recover a stash of money, and he enlists her help to find it. Strangely, he seems to need quite a bit of help, because he's blind...


Bryan Cranston showed how good he can be with Breaking Bad, but here they make him do a comedy Russian accent which is wholly unconvincing, and that with the very hard to swallow premise of a blind man being sent by the Russian mafia to do a job of this importance made it impossible for me to suspend my disbelief.


THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1939) D- Wallace Worsley. In medieval Paris, a beautiful young gypsy girl turns people's heads, so much so that the very foundations of government may fall as a result. Above it all, a disfigured man swings from the great bells of Notre Dame and laughs at it all...


One in an occasional series of films I have actually seen before, though I believe the last time was in the 60s, and all I could remember from that distant time was Charles Laughton saying "I can hear the bells!" I had completely forgotten Maureen O'Hara's Esmeralda, the girl who bewitches (without even trying) every man who lays eyes on her. She was well cast, as she does indeed radiate the most luminous beauty in every frame she appears in. And Charles Laughton is equally magnificent as the beast to Esmeralda's beauty. A classic which has dated surprisingly well.


DRINKING BUDDIES (2013) D- Joe Swanberg. Being the life and times of a disparate group of souls who operate a micro brewery. They work hard, they play hard, and they definitely enjoy too much of their own product. And there's your problem. Don't mess with Mister Booze! seems to be the message here in this well made and notable effort. Olivia Wilde's drinking threatens her relationship as well as the livelihood of her fellow workers. Can she come out the other side a better person, or will everything fall apart? Try it yourself and find out.


EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH ((2006) D- Greg Coolidge. A luscious creature (Jessica Simpson) joins the team at the local supermarket, and Dane Cook is determined to snag her. Trouble is, rumour has it she will only go out with workers who win the employee of the month award, and Dane is something of a slacker. Time for a change... One of those films which owes a lot to films like Ron Burgundy, Anchor Man but lacking the unselfconscious charm of that film. Jessica Simpson's part is particularly disappointing as she is reduced to a mere pneumatic cypher. Leave it out.


NEVER BEEN KISSED (1999) D- Raja Gosnell. A cub reporter (Drew Barrymore) is sent to do an undercover expose on college life, but soon finds herself in the same sort of binds she encountered when she was in college herself- labelled a dumpy nerd, a general no-hoper. Then one of the teachers falls for her and suddenly she has a real story on her hands, but does she want to print that, or allow the romance to progress naturally? Tricky problem... This reminded me a little of Legally Blond, with its apparent innocence blended with hard-nosed reality. It sort of works, but only just.


HAMLET TWO (2008) D- Andrew Fleming. Drama teacher Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan in a wholly plausible American accent) is on his final warning  but fancies himself as an inspirational theatre producer, so he does one of those classic "Let's put on a show!" things, much to the ire of his highly sceptical colleagues. In a way they have a point. A sequel to Hamlet? I mean, didn't everybody die in the first one? Coogan doesn't allow little details like that to get in his way; he just invokes a time machine to solve those little problems and despite the shock-horror reaction of his fellow teachers and governors, this project might just work...


Never content to rest on his laurels, Steve Coogan has mounted his assault on the American market, and while he hasn't yet scored like, say, Dudley Moore a generation before, he could be on his way. He's welcome back here any time he likes though, as he's still one of the biggest comedic talents we have.


WHITE MATERIAL (2009, French) D- Claire Denis. In an unspecified central African country, a woman (Isobel Huppert) struggles to keep her coffee plantation operating, despite the imminent arrival of a rebel army which is operating a scorched earth policy. And they consider her enterprise as mere "white material"- of no relevance in their world. She does her best to ignore the threat, while all around her everyone is fleeing, even her most trusted employees. To make matters worse, her brother is selling the concern off behind her back. Still she will not be dislodged...


Isobel Huppert is one of my favourite French actresses: her face is angular, even gaunt, yet she remains stunning for all that, and her acting is wholly convincing.in everything she does. Here she commands attention in every shot with her passionate, if doomed, commitment to her precious coffee beans.


FRIGHT NIGHT (1985) W/D- Tom Holland. A young man is addicted to horror movies, especially a TV series hosted by "Peter Vincent" (a deliciously camp Roddy McDowell) and when a real-life vampire (a much-praised Chris Sarandon) moves in next door and nobody believes him, he decides to seek out Peter Vincent and enlist his help to put a stake through the evil one's heart. At first McDowell is dismissive, but when he notices Sarandon doesn't cast a reflection in a mirror, he realises this is the real deal...


A really rather good vampire movie, which was well received at the time and made the producers a lot of money into the bargain. If shlock-horror movies are to your taste, you'll like this a lot...


WINGS (1927) D- William Wellmann. (silent) Two young men are full of patriotic zeal when World War One begins in 1917 (this is America, remember) and both sign up for the newly formed US Air Force. They leave behind girls, one of whom (Clara Bow) decides to follow them out to the Western Front and enlists as an ambulance driver. But the real action is in the skies...


In my last film review I catalogued one of Wellmann's last films, a war picture called Darby's Rangers, and here we see Wellmann almost at the dawn of his career, a full thirty years earlier, given a big budget and showing every cent of it up on the screen with dog-fight sequences that were revolutionary at the time and remain riveting to this day. Howard Hughes took a leaf out of Wellmann's book when he made the famous Hell's Angels three years later, using many of the devices Wellmann introduced. But Wellmann got there first. Very special.