November 2015 book and film review

BOOKS

THE HOUSE OF QUEER TRADES, by G.K. Chesterton. Being a series of long short stories based on the extremely unlikely premise that a club exists where to qualify for membership an aspirant must prove he earns his living in a unique way. Hence we see a man who is employed  to act undercover at a society party solely in order to make another attendee look good. You think that's odd? You haven't heard the half of it. Written in 1905, when writers like Arthur Conan Doyle and GBS were at the height of their powers, this is an early example of the eccentric detective, long before Agatha Christie made a brilliant career out of her eccentric genius, and also predates Chesterton's most famous contribution to the detective genre, Father Brown.

You may find his writing style dated, with its long sentences and excessive punctuation, but these tales also have much to recommend them, especially if you favour the style of modern detectives like Adrian Monk.

THE WHITE GUARD, by Mikhail Bulgakov. It is Kiev in 1918. Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian army has withdrawn from its fight against the Germans and is now pre-occupied by stemming the Bolshevik takeover. One family waits while these spasms come to a head, hoping against hope that their lives and property aren't consumed in the ensuing conflagration. Their hopes are in vain. The men of the family, including a young doctor, are soon press-ganged into taking part in the resistance against the socialists- a resistance everyone can see is futile.

This is the master Bulgakov's first full length novel, and already we see the touch of genius which came to its full fruition in his masterpiece The Master and Margarita. We get right inside the lives, hopes and fears of its characters- the coward who is ultimately brave, the professional soldier who runs away at the critical moment, and all the while, the women who wait while their men leave their houses, maybe never to return. Terrific stuff.

THE UNLIKELY PILGRIMAGE OF HAROLD FRY, by Rachel Joyce.
A recently retired man receives a letter from a woman he hasn't seen for 20 years telling him she is dying. The letter comes from Berwick-on-Tweed, 500 miles from his home in south Devon, but he resolves to walk all the way there. He writes that he is coming, and could she do him the courtesy of remaining alive until he arrives? What follows is an epic journey of the feet, but also of the soul. I would not be spoiling the plot by saying he does get there. At the end of the book there is a route map listing all the way points, including his final destination, complete with the line: "Devon to Berwick- 687 miles in 87 days". So right away we know he makes it, but it is his method of making it that is the substance of this book. So it's not will he make it, but how does he make it? And will Queenie be alive when he does?

Someone once said "It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive", which might be the subtitle to this book. I often walk to collect my thoughts, and therefore I can identify at least to a limited extent the journey of Harold's mind. Walking gives us time to think, and Harold's thoughts inevitably hark back to the past: his marriage, the problems of his troubled son, and Queenie herself, the dying woman who Harold used to work with until the day she suddenly left, without any explanation. What happened?

Rachel Joyce writes  in a simple, unaffected style which suggests she has attended many creative writing courses and learned all the rules of modern writing. It is light-years away from being as skillful as The White Guard, but as modern writing it is pretty good and has certainly captured the imagination of the reading public, who have bought the book in its millions.

THE BOOK OF DAVE, by Will Self.
It is 500 years in the future. Sea levels have risen by more than a hundred feet; most of London and the south of England  is under water, and society appears to have reverted to the middle ages. An elite still rules though, and has based its doctrine on a book found buried in the hills of Hampstead Heath.
Now go back 500 years, to Dave, a London taxi driver prone to depression who struggles through life under the intolerable stresses and strains of a failed marriage. Deprived of access to his son by the courts, he writes an epistle to him to explain his position, but in the event decides to bury it instead. It is this book, full of Dave's bitterness and misogyny, which is uncovered centuries later and offered as the way things should be in the brave new society that has emerged from the depths.

I didn't read this book for a long time after it came out, partly because I heard Self had invented a new language he uses in the book, and to be honest I felt intimidated. I shouldn't have worried. The "new language" turns out to be a phonetic form of contemporary cockney- "mokni" and although there is a learning curve one soon comes to grips with it, aided by a very helpful glossary at the end of the book. And what emerges is a quite extraordinary piece of writing, establishing Will Self as one of the most exciting writers alive today. Here we do find someone whose talent may be meaningfully compared to the greats of an earlier era, like the great Bulgakov himself. Stunning.

FILMS

CLERKS (1994) D- Kevin Smith. Being a day in the life of a bunch of no-hopers who run a convenience store in small town USA, and the even less-hopers who come in to score their fags and booze. Coming with the tag-line: "Just because they know you doesn't mean they like you", and filmed in monochrome, we are guided through an anarchic and sometimes hilarious series of incidents which include the introduction of "Jay and silent Bob", who initially enter the store to shoplift, but then invite the clerks to a party instead. The fact that they're supposed to be working doesn't deter J and SB. Are these people irresponsible or what?

Well written and featuring some surprisingly good acting, this is really quite good, and established Kevin Smith, who also plays Silent Bob, as a new force in American cinema. Noteworthy.

WHIPLASH (2014) D- Damien Chazelle An aspiring drummer (Miles Teller) would become part of an elite music academy, but has to impress their director of music (J.K. Simmons) first. And he is hard to impress. Very hard. His method is teaching through humiliation, a method with which I am familiar from experience with my father, grammar school and especially at medical school. And while it is true that I never forgot the things I learnt in this way, I never forgot how it made me feel either.

The film really revolves around a central anecdote told by the brutal teacher:
"Charlie Parker would never have been great if Joe Jones hadn't thrown a cymbal at him"
Meaning that sometimes extreme measures have to be used to bring the best out in people. Is this right? Do we have to be bullied to reveal our hidden greatness, or are there other, more gentle methods that can achieve the same result? An impressive movie with several fine performances (J.K. Simmons won the best supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of conductor Terence Fletcher)

WILD (2014) D- Jean-Marc Vallee. Following the failure of her marriage and the death of her mother, Cheryl Strayed decides to walk the 1200 miles of the Pacific Coast Trail as a way of re-booting her life. Only thing, Cheryl hasn't had any previous experience of walking beyond schlepping over to the convenience store. Never mind. She's got her plan and she's going to hang in there, in a way she never really has with anything else in her life.

Comparisons with this film and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry are inevitable. Both are about epic journeys of self discovery, even though one concerns a gnarly old git and the other one of Hollywood's premier foxes. Both  attempt, in their own way, to discover something vital that has been missing from their lives for so long, and both succeed, though in very different ways. Which leads me to wonder when they're going to film Pilgrimage, with perhaps Jim Broadbent as Harold, Judi Dench as his wife and Vanessa Redgrave as Queenie. It's a smash hit waiting to happen...
While we wait for that, try this very creditable attempt.

AMERICAN SNIPER (2014) D- Clint Eastwood. Chris Kyle is an all-American boy who joins up after 9/11, mainly because he reckons he can put his skills as an outstanding marksman to good effect in Iraq to blow away ragheads. Which he does. And that's the film, right there. We have Sienna Miller playing a peripheral role as his wife, reduced to someone Chris occasionally calls on his mobile, sometimes even at the height of battle. Should he be doing that?

I have a lot of respect for Clint Eastwood, his legendary right-wing politics notwithstanding. He had tremendous screen presence in movies, from his "man with no name" of the "dollar" movies, to his  uniquely successful Dirty Harry roles. Behind the camera too he has enjoyed great success, especially with the brilliant Unforgiven and the twin movies about the Battle of Iwo Jima, told first from the American and then the Japanese perspectives. But here he has faltered. American Sniper turns out to be little more than a jingoistic, chauvinistic rant on why the USA is number One. Bradley Cooper does well with what he is given, but the character of Chris Kyle (a real person, who was himself shot by a nutter with a gun- those who live by the sword, etc) is almost a cypher.
Disappointing.

STARMAN (1984) D- John Carpenter. You remember when they put a special golden record on the Voyager One spacecraft so that after it left the solar system any extra-terrestrial culture might have an insight into the humans who sent it? OK, So ET does find it and sends Jeff Daniels to Earth to do some field work. First move, and a wise one, is to snag Karen Allen. He does this partly by obtaining a lock of her late husband's hair and morphing himself into an exact copy of him. But as we might expect, the Men in Black get to hear of him and would cart him off to Area 51 and dissect him out.

John Carpenter is another American director I have a lot of time for. Ever since his terrific debut Dark Star and the even better Assault on Precinct 13 he has been making highly watchable, if sometimes flawed movies. And this one, which I somehow missed when it came out in the 80s, is one of his best. Jeff Daniels has rarely been stronger, and Karen Allen's understated performance is excellent.

MY SUMMER OF LOVE (2004) D- Pawel Pawlekowski. Working class girl Mona (Natalie Press) is being driven mad by her brother (Paddy Considine) who has turned the pub left to them by their parents into a happy-clappy meeting house. She turns to a wealthy girl of her own age (Emily Blunt) and an unlikely friendship develops. But will it stand the clash of very different cultures? Turns out poor little rich girl has a past of her own, being expelled from her posh finishing school for getting drunk. So maybe there can be a meeting of minds. Or can there?

Set and filmed in Yorkshire, this well written and directed Brit movie went down well, with a lot of praise for the two central performances. Certainly worth a look.

MADAME BOVARY (1991) D- Claude Chabrol. A beautiful, but bored girl from Normandy (Isabelle Huppert) thinks she has done well to snag the local GP, but almost immediately realizes she has made a big mistake. It isn't long before she is seeking solace in the arms of another. And another...
Following closely the text of the original classic from French master Gustave Flaubert, this sensitively made film is graced by the extraordinary, but highly unconventional beauty of  La Huppert, one of France's finest actresses. It is she who makes us believe in the story, as much as Chabrol.
Madame Bovary was remade only last year with Mia Wasikowska in the lead role. I haven't seen it yet, but it will have to be very good indeed to better this earlier effort.