Daniel and Lucia discuss how Edwin Muir wasn’t much of an architect, then Daniel boasts he designed Gull Cottage. Oh, the Gull Cottage in which if you fall asleep on the sofa you can kick the gas on and accidentally kill yourself — THAT Gull Cottage? Brilliant design, that.
(Sadly, this is why I’m not haunted by impossibly charming sea captains.)
Krauss was an unapologetic anti-Semite who supported the Nazi party and its ideology. In 1933 Krauss joined the Vienna Burgtheater ensemble to perform in Campo di Maggio (German: Hundert Tage), a drama written by Giovacchino Forzano together with Benito Mussolini, where-after he was received by the Italian dictator and also made the acquaintance of German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
Veidt had long been known in German theatrical circles as a staunch anti-Nazi. His activities came under the scrutiny of the Gestapo, and a decision was made to assassinate him. Veidt found out about the plot, and managed to escape Germany before the Nazi death squad found him . . . When Britain went to war, he gave most of his estate to the war effort. He also donated a large portion of the salary from each of his movies to the British war relief, as well.
(Previously, I was most familiar with Veidt as Jaffar in The Thief of Bagdad, a villainous role which he played delightfully. He made me a fan.)
Source: IMDB
Facebook has many flaws, but it does alert me when events I might be interested in are coming up. A few weeks ago I found out about the world premiere of Octave Chanute: Patron Saint of Flight, at Indiana Dunes Visitor Center. I knew the Chanute name vaguely from the old Air Force base, but I couldn’t have told you then where the base had been located or why it was named Chanute. This sounded like a way to get in a visit to Indiana Dunes, learn something, and spend what might be otherwise a dull winter afternoon, depending on the weather.
The parking lot was unusually crowded, and when J and I walked in about a half hour early, a good-sized group was watching Shifting Sands: On the Path to Sustainability, a documentary on the history of Indiana Dunes and efforts to restore what can be restored. It’s meant to inspire, but it’s also tragic and depressing.
By the time Shifting Sands ended and Octave Chanute was scheduled to begin, the auditorium had filled up, even when extra folding chairs were brought out. Soon it was standing room only.
Simine Short, author of Locomotive to Aeromotive: Octave Chanute and the Transportation Revolution, and young director Paul Nelson introduced the film. I mention Nelson’s relative age because the audience was mostly 50 plus, possibly 60 plus, which disappointed me because I would like to see younger people interested in history. Of course, when I was younger none of my peers would have been interested, either.
The presentation began with some technical glitches (flashbacks to every high school A/V club everywhere!), but my ears perked up at the mention of the Portage Bridge, accompanied by a photo I recognized immediately. Through this film, I found out Octave Chanute was the engineer behind the much-loved railroad bridge over the Genesee River at Letchworth State Park in New York.
Known for his bridges, Chanute was called in when the original timber trestle, the longest and tallest wooden bridge in the world when it opened in 1852, was reduced to ashes on May 6, 1875, after a train had passed over (spark?). Chanute’s iron replacement opened only 86 days after the fire. According to Short’s book, the piers were rebuilt and the uprights and girders strengthened in 1880, “making the bridge better than new.”
Although modern Norfolk Southern trains were restricted to 10 miles per hour over the Letchworth gorge, Chanute’s bridge lasted until 2017, when the Genesee Arch Bridge opened. The state of New York declined the offer of the 1875 bridge, the last of which was demolished on March 20, 2018. I’d been fortunate to visit the old bridge one last time in 2015. When I’d found out about the premiere of this film, I’d had no idea it would take me back to perhaps the most iconic of my childhood memories. I remember walking along those tracks with my brother during one of his visits.
But wait! There’s more!
My ears perked up again at the mention of Kinzua Bridge. I’d found out about Kinzua Bridge State Park when I was looking up Kinzua Dam, another place I’d visited as a child, for my 2015 swing through Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania.
It turns out that Octave Chanute was behind the original 2,000-foot-long Kinzua Bridge (or Viaduct), built in 1882 at 302 feet above the narrow valley floor. Short calls it Chanute’s “most spectacular bridge.” She adds that the bridge was rebuilt in 1900 “to keep up with the increasing volume and weight of the coal traffic.” Carl W. Buchholz redesigned the superstructure on the original masonry foundation piers.
By 1959 the viaduct failed safety inspections and was closed to commercial rail traffic. Restoration began in 2002, but in 2003 an F2 tornado “tore eleven towers from their concrete bases. Investigators found that the anchor bolts, installed under Chanute’s supervision, had rusted over the past 120 years.” Over time, the materials had failed the design.
After seeing this film, I’m even happier that I had the opportunity to walk out on what’s still standing of Kinzua Bridge and get a look at the remnants resting in peace on the valley floor. Even destroyed, Kinzua Bridge is indeed a “spectacular” sight.
Of course, most of the film was about Chanute’s contributions to flight and relationship with Wilbur Wright (rocky; Chanute was an open source kind of man and Wilbur believed in closely held information). What’s the link to Indiana Dunes? With their lake winds, elevations, and soft sand, the Dunes were Chanute’s choice for safely testing their experiments — the Kitty Hawk of the Midwest.
Octave Grill in Chesterton is named for Octave Chanute. Found out they serve a Chanute burger.
Oh, Auntie Em, there’s no place like home.
With a day off from work, temperatures in triple digits, and no air conditioning in my apartment (I’m a holdout), I decided Independence Day would be a great opportunity to go to the movies.
Choosing a movie is always hard. I don’t like urban, gritty, violent, inane, Disney, or Disneyesque movies, which doesn’t leave much these days except the occasional period drama or book adaptation, and even some of these (like the 2011 Jane Eyre) disappoint me.
J. mentioned Prometheus, but after reading the description I had an unpleasant vision — right or wrong — of Solaris with George Clooney. When I looked on Flixter, a movie called Moonrise Kingdom had scored more than 90 percent positive with both critics and moviegoers, and the plot seemed innocuous. So that’s what we set out to see.
Normally, going to a movie on July 4 is the last thing I’d think of, so I was surprised to find a good-sized crowd at the ShowPlace ICON Theatre on Roosevelt Road. I thought most people would be watching TV or entertaining in their air-conditioned homes or, if feeling especially heat resistant, cooking out in their yards or favorite parks. But many like us apparently decided to escape the relentless sun and heat in the dark coolness of a movie theater.
When the ticketing system asked us to choose our seats, we were surprised to find that the only seats left were a few in the front, those for the disabled, and a few scattered singles. Our only choice was to be on top of the screen. We wondered what was up because we’re used to these theaters being at most one quarter to one half full, even for a big movie like the first Sherlock Holmes directed by Guy Ritchie. When the lights came on at the end, we saw that there really had been a nearly full house.
First, I should admit that I’d never seen a film directed by Wes Anderson. I mention this because so much of the commentary online is focused on how Moonrise Kingdom is (or isn’t) a typical Wes Anderson film. I can’t agree or disagree with either position. Even if Moonrise Kingdom were just like every movie that Anderson’s made, at least it’s not a sequel or a period piece written, acted, and filmed according to today’s sensibilities. That alone gave it a leg up in my world.
If the title Moonrise Kingdom weren’t enough of a hint, the maps showing the location throughout and the stylishly clad narrator (Bob Balaban) who describes future events are strong clues that this is a fable that requires us to lay aside our expectations of realism or at least reality and to fire up what imagination remains to our adult selves.
Set in 1965, the story is centered on two misfit pre-teens, Suzy (Kara Hayward) and Sam (Jared Gilman). We’re taken on a tour of Suzy’s house and family as though it were a dollhouse and they the inhabitants whose lives are exposed from almost any angle — a sly acknowledgment of their unwitting role as subjects and our omniscient one as viewers. This is no ordinary house in an ordinary location. It’s part of a series of isolated and insular New England coastal islands, a world unto itself.
It’s raining to beat the band, and each family member finds a way to fill his or her time. The boys don’t watch TV or play Battleship; they listen to an educational recording by Benjamin Britton. At first Suzy turns her vision inward, reading one of her fantastically titled library books, then she picks up her binoculars to look outward toward the normally expansive world of water, now confined by rain and mist.
From this restricted and restrictive world of Suzy and her trapped family, we’re transported to the great outdoors and the equally restrictive, even hostile world of Suzy’s counterpart Sam — the Khaki Scouts. When the officious Scout Master Ward (Edward Norton) discovers Sam has gone AWOL, his Scouts consider the unpopular missing boy a “fugitive” and arm themselves accordingly.
For the rest of the movie, it’s Sam and Suzy vs. the dysfunctional adults around them. No matter how troubled the parents, scout leaders, police, and other authority figures may be, Sam and Suzy emulate their furrowed brows, he while smoking his short-stemmed pipe, she while sporting an eye makeup combination last seen on one of James T. Kirk’s alien conquests. The misadventures, some epic, that follow are never bust-a-gut, slapstick hilarious, but with a few gratuitously sad exceptions they are delightfully amusing. The audience soon finds itself guiltily on the side of a friendship so unfamiliar to the 12-year-old couple that they want it to be love and for it to last forever.
Too many directors fail to use the visual, kinetic possibilities of film, but Anderson isn’t one of them. His color palette evokes the popular Hipstamatic and Instagram apps, which in turn mimic the grainy, off-hue, decaying prints taken by cheap cameras decades ago. The characters and the camera are kept moving — away from one destiny and toward another. Many of the visuals, even the maps on which the fugitives’ progress is tracked, are memorable.
Each time you see Moonrise Kingdom, you’ll probably spot some new visual, verbal, or aural nuance. The performances are spot on, although I confess I didn’t recognize Bruce Willis as Captain Sharp. Newcomers Hayward and Gilman are the showstoppers, while Norton as painfully earnest and ineffectual Scout Master Ward never misses a beat.
For such a quirky film, the ending is predictable and conventional, yet still satisfying, while leaving the possibilities open. As Samuel Clemens knew, that’s the way childhood fables should end.
From my original diaryland.com journal:
I’m reading A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, and he mentions Clayton, Georgia, and Billy Redden, who appeared in the film adaptation of Deliverance.
I saw Deliverance only a few years ago, when my cousin’s daughter lived in a converted hunting cabin in Pennsylvania. This seemed appropriate a venue from an aesthetic/ambiance viewpoint — somewhat remote (well, in the woods and a bit of an uphill driveway off the road, with a steep hillside looming immediately off the living room picture window, waiting for a hard or a long rain to have an excuse to knock the house down the rest of the hill into the road).
Not being a fan of suspenseful or violent movies, I couldn’t comfortably sit through it without closing my eyes, wandering to the kitchen, the bathroom, etc. This fit in perfectly with the ambiance of the occasion — it was over the Christmas holidays, and my cousin, his wife, his daughter, her husband, his hound dog (a beagle), and miscellaneous other furry friends were ambling among all the rooms in the same manner I was, so I didn’t stick out too much like the proverbial sore thumb, well, except for constantly saying, “I can’t take suspenseful or violent movies, so I can’t watch this . . .” Deliverance was in the VCR because my cousin’s son-in-law had gotten it as a gift.
Like many, I was struck by the boy who appeared to play the banjo in the “Dueling Banjos” scene. “Appeared” because not only could he not play the banjo, but he could not fake playing the banjo; apparently, there’s another kid’s arm in the sleeve faking the playing.
The face that you don’t forget when you see Deliverance belonged to a backward boy of fifteen named Billy Redden, who had the role of a retarded banjo player. The thin-lidded eyes and simple grin are haunting on film, and they were just as disturbing to see on the set.
Summer of Deliverance by Christopher Dickey
A short time later in the movie would appear a woman and child who were equally “disturbing” and underdeveloped. Then there are, of course, the two men who attack the Ned Beatty character.
My gut reaction was to think, “Oh, who would believe this — that this kind of thing existed in 1970s America?” I was a skeptic. I posted my doubts to a mailing list that happened to have a lifelong Georgian on it, and he told me that such people do indeed exist, especially in the northern part of the state, and nothing in the movie was an exaggeration.
I thought back to a young adult book I’d been given years ago named Christy by Catherine Marshall, about a young urban girl, living at perhaps turn of the century or a little after, who is drawn to the Appalachians to serve as a Christian missionary. It’s been years since I read it so I don’t remember details, but Christy is taken aback and unnerved by the poverty, ignorance, and backwardness she sees everywhere. The only person who can really understand her perspective and that of the local people is a Scots doctor who grew up in the area.
There is no such thing as sanitation, so typhoid is rampant. When babies are “tetchy,” the mother shakes them as a “cure” — often resulting in the baby’s death. Trepanning is high-tech surgery. There is an otherworldliness to Christy that is difficult to explain, just as there is an otherworldliness that comes across briefly in Deliverance. The awesome beauty of nature populated by people who are little evolved from ancestors hundreds of years ago — and who clearly suffer the result of generations of inbreeding.
I find this otherworldliness, for all its suffering, brutality, and primitivism, strangely haunting and fascinating. My mind, overwhelmed by urban and suburban sprawl, a mushrooming population, media saturation, the Internet, people and technology and information everywhere until I feel a desperate need to escape at any cost, cannot fathom that there are, or were in the 1970s at least, parts of the country where everything I feel crushed by barely exists.
I would love to see northern Georgia today. Somehow, I suspect I would find satellite and cable/digital TV, an onslaught of advertising, and even a computer or two. I would be disappointed.
You see, Deliverance (and Christy) are trips in time, to a past that we no longer remember or care about, when America was covered in forest and young and brutal and backwards. That time is past, but the snapshot may still be there, and that is surely a wonder.
3 March 2002
I started my new job on March 28 and, just as I was getting used to the new schedule and routine, a nasty cold knocked me out two weeks later. Outside work, dozing off and falling asleep were becoming my only recreational activities.
I did manage to stay awake for a few cultural experiences. On March 30, J. and I met friends for dinner at Ras Dashen before crossing the street to the Broadway Armory for the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch. Aside from the venue name, the space seemed perfect for a dark, spare, echoing look at contemporary war — in Iraq. A storied regiment, Black Watch finds itself a writer’s object of study even as its members recount their observations about their American counterparts. Like making movies, war seems to be a matter of waiting, but with a tragic ending. The starkness of the space reflects the raw emotions the men of Black Watch feel as the war inexorably draws them in and then as the writer, who has seen nothing, tries to draw them out. You had to be there to understand and to know death.
I’d like to be more interested in current movies, but the ongoing crop of action, comedy, reality, and franchise retreads leaves me cold. That’s why I almost missed Jane Eyre. Granted, like most movies now it has been done before. In the version I’ve seen most often, baby-faced Orson Welles does the honors as jaded man of the world Edward Rochester, while Joan Fontaine keeps her lips pursed, her feelings repressed, and her heart open. That Jane Eyre is memorable for a strong performance by Peggy Ann Garner as little hothead sinner Jane, a pretty turn by Elizabeth Taylor as the sweet but sickly Helen, and a cloying but good showing by Margaret O’Brien as Rochester’s coquettish ward (and daughter), Adèle.
While the 1943 Jane Eyre was shot primarily and noticeably within the confines of a sound stage and lot, the 2011 edition is more expansive (and expensive), beginning with a distraught young woman running across the haunting, perpetual twilight of the moors, which may be the best feature of the movie. The rest is almost as claustrophobic as the earlier version or the mad woman’s confinement. For all his wealth, worldliness, and travels, what we see of Rochester’s world is as narrow as Jane’s.
Aside from the brooding open-air cinematography, I didn’t find much to recommend in this Jane Eyre. There’s less focus on Jane’s childhood and the influence of her “education.” The child actors aren’t as important to the movie, and their performances are weak. I found myself missing Peggy Ann Garner’s explosive farewell to her aunt (Agnes Moorehead). Adèle appears tangentially only, speaking French because she’s French, and apparently no one needs to know what she’s saying. She’s there because the plot requires it but what her presence reveals about Rochester’s character is lost. Even Rochester’s supposed intended bride flits through without making an impression. The only character who does is Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, because she’s played by Judi Dench, who is talented enough to pull off such a weak role with aplomb. The man who, along with his sisters, takes Jane in is also noteworthy, but mainly because his appearance is jarring, his personality tightly wound, and his relationship with his guest awkward and forced.
That leaves Jane (Mia Wasikowska) and Rochester (Michael Fassbender), a pairing that has as much chemistry as two inert substances. Jane lacks a distinctive personality, substituting white-faced teariness for controlled emotions. Rochester, who should be bitter, brutal, and enigmatic, seems to be doing his fairest impression of a 1980s sensitive guy in touch with his feminine side. Their pairing, the dynamics of which should be at least a little disturbing, is about as interesting as that between two Yuppies circa 1987. Passion of feeling there is not, especially that passion that makes the Victorian society of literature so compelling. I wanted to like Jane Eyre, but it needed to be more than a movie with pretty scenery and attractive faces rushed through without life or context.
Fast forward from the Industrial Age to the Machine Age and beyond for Death and the Powers by Tod Machover (music) and Robert Pinsky (libretto). This time — perhaps ironically, given the subject matter — the performances outweighed the subject, and the repetitive movements of the Crow-like robots held more interest than either the torturous music or stilted libretto. Strangely, nothing about either music or libretto evoked the monotonous, regular, stifling hum of the machine, despite the use of that word, no matter how awkwardly, enough times to make me grind my teeth reflexively. The music is more random than a well-ordered machine (whether industrial or computer) could make it, although perhaps a machine could create a mood — any mood. It wasn’t even irritating.
In a weird anachronism in this futuristic world of blended man and machine (technology), people still read newspapers, and the print press is still powerful. Neither my hostess nor I quite understood where that came from or what it was supposed to mean. In the age of technology, the conventional notion of the press is obsolete has been for some time. What was the point?
The robots were cute, the set decor different if a bit too reminiscent of a disco, and the performances good. Sara Heaton as the daughter was exceptional, which the audience appreciated. But it’s going to take something truly awful to unseat Death and the Powers as my least favorite opera to date.
Doctor Atomic is modern opera executed beautifully, with music that evokes emotions and a libretto that fuses poetry and arguments into a thought-provoking vision of the apocalypse, before and after. Death and the Powers seemed to be words and notes signifying nothing.
Last Saturday, the 23rd, I dragged J. to It’s Complicated. I didn’t force him, really; he seemed willing enough to go, although I’d venture to say that it wouldn’t have been his first choice of movies.
I didn’t want to see it because I’m a fan of Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and/or Steve Martin. Aside from Out of Africa and A Prairie Home Companion, I’ve seen little of Streep and even less of Baldwin or Martin. I wanted to see It’s Complicated primarily because of the question of how often does a movie come along in which people over 40 (in this case, 50) have explicit love and/or sex lives? It also sounded light hearted and fun, both of which I need to have imposed on me more often these days. I’ve become so tetchy in the past few years that I wonder what happened to the old me, the one was sometimes sad, rarely angry, and always more patient and empathetic.
Those who were disappointed by It’s Complicated possibly expected something . . . complicated. While the situation may have been, for the most part the characters treat it as a romp. Jane (Streep) even waylays her therapist to ask his permission for her to have an affair with her ex-husband, now married to the woman for whom he had left her. Her oily ex, lawyer Jake (Baldwin) doesn’t seem to know whether love is better the second time around or the grass is always greener, but for the moment he’s sure his younger, ovulating wife Agness (Lake Bell) isn’t making him as happy as Streep did and does. Enter Adam (Martin), the shy architect who shares Jane’s vision for the expansion of her kitchen and house and who, two years after his own divorce, still listens to self-help tapes. There’s genuine chemistry between Jane and Jake, and appropriately less between Jane and the less brash, more gun-shy Adam. In this tangle of relationships and feelings, only Jake’s wife drew the audience’s disdain.
It’s Complicated is too slight and lightly amusing to be sexy, but at least the middle-aged mother of three grownup children and her friends are shown to be every bit as interested in sex as any hot 25-year-old. Of course, Jane, Jake, and company are not middle America middle aged — they live in southern California, where Jane’s house overlooks the ocean and where, in addition to running her fabulously successful and creatively named The Bakery, Jane has time and money to consult the typical adjuncts of stereotypical southern California life, including the aforementioned therapist and a plastic surgeon. In whichever direction Jane’s love life heads, there’s little sense that her life ever been all that empty, let alone sad or tragic. It looked to me like money, success, perfect children, and a dream house in a dream location can go a great way toward making up for the loss of such a fickle creature as Jake.
The performances are good, as you might expect, but the character who stood out was Harley, Jane’s future son-in-law, played by John Krasinski. Through circumstances, he knows a lot more about Jane and Jake than he’d like, and every facial expression, gesture, and action conveys his discomfiture, sometimes broadly, sometimes more subtly. I found myself looking for his reaction in all his scenes.
It’s Complicated has nothing profound or insightful to say about relationships, other than that sometimes they work and feel good and sometimes they don’t. J. found the attitudes of Jane’s children puzzling, but I suspect that when one parent betrays the other, assuming all else is equal, the children feel betrayed, too. In It’s Complicated, their feelings are more cartoonish than painful.
I liked It’s Complicated. It’s not the proverbial laugh riot (although it has its moments), and it’s not going to make you see life, love, and marriage in a bright light, either, but it’s a sweet way to pass a cold Saturday evening in the middle of what by this time can seem like the endless midwestern winter.
I’ve seen more first-run movies with J. in the last month than I’ve seen over the last few years. The contributing factors are: (1) I downloaded Flixter for iPhone, so it’s easier for me to pay attention to what’s coming out and when, who’s in it, and whether it’s something I’d be interested in, (2) there seem to be a few more movies than usual in this category of late, (3) J. has been in a movie-going mood; he was the one who suggested seeing Bright Star, and (4) I’m not in ongoing pain 15 minutes after my last bathroom stop; this makes a huge difference, as anyone who has had 2+ pounds of tissue squashing their bladder can tell you.
So far, this is what we’ve seen.
Bright Star is a lovely tribute to John Keats and the inspiration for some of his finer writing, Fanny Brawne. The direction, however, didn’t take advantage of the screen or the possibilities of film, so the movie, confined by the localized narrative, felt small and narrow at times, like a solid edition of Masterpiece Theatre.
Later I learned that Keats and Brawne were both about 5 feet tall, a detail that was not included in their characterizations. They appear to be similar in height to their peers, and he is appropriately taller than his love interest. They are beautiful people in the tradition of movies, which colors the viewer’s perception of the sweetness and heat of their romance. Would we be as likely to swoon over the passion of a poet-hero who is self-conscious about his stature, which is that of a half-grown boy? Would we sigh as he gazes upon his diminutive lover eye to eye? Central Casting would never consent to that kind of realism for real people. We aren’t ready for a portrayal of Keats and Brawne as they actually were.
Me and Orson Welles might have been a more robust film had Welles received top billing and the fictional “me” been relegated to obscurity with the delete key. The story of an aspiring teenage actor’s experience and rivalry with Welles is not the stuff of greatness, but Christian McKay’s portrayal of Welles is. He’s not 22 like the prodigy Welles, but in every nuance — the set of the turned back, the tilt of the head, the hooding of the eyes, the inflection of the incisive voice — McKay has mastered the master. I caught my breath a few times, so well has he evoked Welles. The supporting cast, portraying the Mercury Theatre company on stage and off, including Eddie Marsan as John Houseman, Ben Chaplin as George Coulouris, and James Tupper as Joseph Cotten, also made me a believer. It’s just too bad the story and direction fell far short of the performances.
The Young Victoria surely didn’t glow like Emily Blunt; after all, we think of her as a prudish old woman during whose long reign science, industry, and the novel flowered and characters such as Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and the evasive Jack the Ripper captured the public imagination. As in Bright Star, the representations are more attractive in a conventional sense than the originals. Beyond the human eye candy are sumptuous costumes and locales that make Victoria’s observation that “a palace can be like a prison” especially banal.
The Young Victoria is lovely and well paced — the time seems to fly. Like Bright Star, it suffers from a lack of substance. The villain, Sir John Conroy (played by Mark Strong, who appears as Lord Blackwood in Sherlock Holmes), the man who would control the regency, isn’t especially villainous or effective, and Victoria isn’t powerless against him. Although her situation is convoluted, and she finally realizes that she is young and naive in her new context, there’s little danger and no sense of suspense or drama. We know that Victoria will become Britain’s longest-reigning monarch and that Albert will die in early middle age after producing nine children with the queen.
There is no hint of anything in Victoria herself that contributed to the duality of Victorian culture — the surplus of educated women and the lack of employment for them; the focus on the family accompanied by an expansion of prostitution and the market for Gothic and erotic literature; the appearance of such dark aberrations as the Ripper; the battle between conventional religion and the boom in scientific discovery and knowledge.
While Albert is a bit more complex or at least duplicitous — he’s capable of discussing the strategy behind wooing the princess even while falling in love with her — in young Victoria we don’t see much of the older Victoria, or the rapidly evolving nature of the 19th century during which much of the status quo was challenged and eventually toppled. The Young Victoria is, not surprisingly, Victoria Lite.
If you’re an Arthur Conan Doyle/Sherlock Holmes purist, the Guy Ritchie film is not for you. If, however, you love the idea of a DC Comics-style live action hero battling a very bad baddie against a steampunk backdrop, you’ve probably seen the movie several times already.
It’s not that there’s a lack of Arthur Conan Doyle references scattered throughout, from one-liners to entire scenes. Lines, scenes, and even actions, however, don’t constitute character, and so merely saying things like, “The game is afoot!” doesn’t make the Robert Downey, Jr. character Sherlock Holmes any more than being fat makes me sing as well as Cass Elliot.
It’s easy to forget that Doyle’s Holmes was inspired in part by an Edinburgh University medical professor he admired, Dr. Joseph Bell, a father of forensic medicine renowned for his ability to draw conclusions from seemingly insignificant details. Instead of looking to Doyle or his inspiration, Ritchie and crew re-imagine Holmes as a flaky bohemian with hygiene issues, someone petty enough to argue with his roommate over an article of clothing, earthy enough to box bare fisted (illegally) for the entertainment of society’s dregs (the same type of folks who today support dog- and cock fighting), inventive enough to experiment with everything from anesthetics to silencers (unsuccessfully), and anal enough to retain scads of arcane information and to be able to retrieve it at will and factor it into the equation.
While Doyle’s Holmes is the consummate actor, able to win the confidence of the royalty and nobility of Europe as well as that of housekeepers, London cabbies, and the Baker Street Irregulars, Downey’s Holmes can’t fool Watson’s fiancée, Mary. He even has to be prodded to “clean up” (with little effect that I could see) after a night in the lockup.
Doyle’s Holmes could have been an example of mild Asperger’s, which would explain his phenomenal memory, his single mindedness and unerring eye for minutiae, and his ability to write an entire monograph on tobacco blends.
The film Holmes is more of a flawed superhero with amazing abilities tainted by a few mundane weaknesses. Even his admiration for “the Woman,” Irene Adler, and her masculine ability to dispassionately stay one step ahead of him, is transformed into a BDSM sexual relationship — an outcome I’m certain Doyle never envisioned for his pointedly asexual detective.
Over the years, Holmes, his milieu, and the mysteries he solves have become a reflection of contemporary times. Basil Rathbone’s stellar portrayal was wasted on a series of low-budget movies in which the great detective is yanked out of time and plopped into World War II, with spying as valuable an activity as detecting. The Holmes of the 1976 film, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, is another Holmes for his times, addicted to cocaine, neurotic, and in need of Freudian therapy.
The 1980s and 90s, bland as they were, brought us the most accurate representation since Conan Doyle in the form of Jeremy Brett, who is distinctly not bohemian in appearance, tastes, or lifestyle. He’s alert, incisive, ironic, imperious, bored, and occasionally somber when he realizes he’s made a terrible mistake. Brett captures a key element noticeably absent in Downey’s characterization — Holmes’s maddening yet well-deserved arrogance that is rarely humbled.
David Burke and then Edward Hardwicke excel as Watson, always a step behind but quick to catch up with a little prompting. They’re surrounded by a cast and a setting Conan Doyle might have selected himself. Indeed, the Ritchie Sherlock Holmes pays homage to the Granada Television series by duplicating the beginning of its title sequence, as a cab rounds the corner onto Baker Street.
With the legacy of Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett behind us, there he is, the Sherlock Holmes of our age — part comic book action hero, part substance-addled rock star, part failed inventor — traipsing about a steampunk land worthy of Howl’s Moving Castle, with special effects galore. It doesn’t matter that he little resembles the Sherlock Holmes of Conan Doyle’s invention, only that there’s enough action, suspense, and excitement to draw millions of moviegoers willing to spend $10 to $15 (or more) a pop.
That’s the cynicism of our times. Muscle edges out mind, and nonstop action replaces contemplation; I can’t see Downey’s Holmes warning Watson that “it is quite a three-pipe problem.” The affectionate, sometimes ironic banter between Holmes and Watson has been transformed into bickering, and Holmes’s indifference toward women is now passive-aggressive childishness toward the waspish Mary. Just so we know that this isn’t your great grandfather’s Sherlock Holmes, a gratuitous fart joke is tossed in. Why? Because otherwise Sherlock Holmes isn’t blockbuster material. If Sherlock Holmes as written can’t generate millions in revenue, then he simply needs to be re-invented — keeping the name, the gloss, and the cachet.
While there is little Holmes in Sherlock Holmes (and not much more Watson), it’s still an entertaining action film, with a barrage of exaggerated sound complementing the barrage of exaggerated visuals, although the immediate flashbacks and forwards grow tiresome quickly like any overused gimmick. There are plenty of explosions and explosive moments, exposure to which could explain why Holmes can’t seem to hear or notice anyone right behind him until it’s too late. The industrial color palate should appeal to the steampunk crowd, almost making up for the plethora of sometimes laughable continuity and logic issues (one hint: It would be difficult to defend Watson’s flagrant medical incompetence).
When we returned here, I turned on BBC America, and there was Robert Downey, Jr. on The Graham Norton Show. In a sketch taped in silent movie mode, referring to Downey’s star turn as Chaplin, Norton mouths a question on the title card that appears, “Why didn’t they get a proper British actor to play Sherlock Holmes?” Downey flies into a silent rage, jumping up and knocking everything off the table, finally sitting down again in an enraged snit. His title card: “Dunno.”
But that’s not “quite a three-pipe problem,” either.
Both yesterday and today I’ve been unusually tired. I didn’t get much sleep Saturday night. I wanted to do some writing and reading on the train, but after I had settled in I couldn’t stay awake. Even sitting up in an uncomfortable position, I fell soundly asleep. This morning after breakfast I fell asleep, and then again this afternoon after I had gone for a walk and eaten a portobello mushroom and mozzarella sandwich at Café Verde. Even Love Buzz coffee and Earl Grey tea couldn’t keep me conscious. I hope I don’t sleep away my time here. The room, The Maine Woods, is comfortable, and the weather has been what my Pennsylvanian parents called “good sleeping weather.” My stressed body has noticed.
At Borders, of all places, I found four-color Camel pencils from Japan, as well as “Be Goody” lead pencils, also from Japan. The latter have an eraser end, but no ferrule. It’s an interesting and sleek design, and they write fairly smoothly and darkly, too.
At Motte and Bailey, I found The Complete Poetry of Richard Crashaw published in 1970, clearly never cracked open and therefore read; a similarly pristine copy of Gondal’s Queen: A Novel in Verse by Emily Jane Brontë published in 1977 by the University of Texas Press; and an unloved library edition of The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse published in 1973, complete with the stamped name, address, and phone number of a previous owner.
After lunch, a brief stop at People’s Food Co-op, the haul back, and some reading and writing on the balcony, I slept and dreamed that, as I was trying to get up and get off a bus, I noticed some of my favorite pencils missing from my case. I’m under the impression that I held the bus and made a fool of myself by getting down awkwardly to look under the seats, which I sensed didn’t endear me to my seat mate or other passengers. Then I finally got off the bus and found myself isolated on a quiet country road. The next thing I remember, someone had asked about the long-delayed development brochure, and the responsible person had a shouting fit and nervous breakdown over it.
After eating A.’s pizza, we watched Sweet Land, which, aside from being a love story, represents the foibles and the strengths of a small community, and how one can overcome the other. The scenes in set in 1968 were very evocative for me; Inge’s hair and glasses reminded me very much of a friend of my mother’s who happened to be not of German ancestry, but Norwegian. I do not know if her coffee was “too black.”
After I came back, I couldn’t sleep for a long time, but I also couldn’t stay quite awake, either. I am what my parents would call a “good tired.” Perhaps I should simply give into it and enjoy it when I can, even if it is during the day.