Cultural roundup: The Artist and Sylvia Plath
Posted: 30 January 2012 Filed under: Arts and Culture | Tags: Ariel, silent film, Sylvia Plath, The Artist, The Bell Jar Leave a comment »
The Artist
Anyone who knows me well will be aware that I am quite the Alfred Hitchcock obsessive. This comes hand in hand with a love of his silent work and a belief that it was his understanding of silent film that made him such a great director. With this in mind, I was excited to see The Artist, which has really catapulted silent film back into the public’s imagination.
And my verdict? Well, The Artist is absolutely charming. From the strength of its two central performances, to the clever touches is uses to play homage to a bygone era of cinema, this is an exceedingly accomplished film.
It’s the small touches that make it so exceptional: the montage scene of film posters and headlines as Peppy Smith climbs to the top as an actress; the use of intertitles to expert comic effect; the very fact it’s present in 1.33:1 as films of that period were. These small touches add up to produce a whole that seems effortless. I enjoyed every minute.
Rating: 5/5
The Bell Jar and Ariel, Sylvia Plath
I first read The Bell Jar and Ariel in my late teens, so it’s been interesting to return to them after several years and further study.
Somehow it seems they don’t terrify me in the way they once did. I can clearly remember reading The Bell Jar and almost shouting, ‘Don’t leave, you fool!’, as Esther Greenwood looks with cautious optimism to leaving the asylum she’d been in.
It seems to me then that I’m more able now to separate these two works from what happens next. Even largely autobiographical as they are, I’m no longer compelled to draw a line that runs through their madness to Plath’s and then her suicide.
Because there is still madness there. By inhabiting the minds of Esther Greenwood and Sylvia Plath we too get caught under the bell jar and can feel in every word and phrase the feeling of constriction and suffocation, so much so that it is almost a relief to put either book down.
Yet both books remain beautiful. From self harm as she cuts her thumb through to the paranoia of the tulips watching her, Plath’s madness is always expressed so beautifully that it’s difficult not to fall in love, or to regret that her life and her talent was cut so short.
Rating, The Bell Jar: 3/5; Ariel: 4/5
Review: Rebecca
Posted: 18 January 2012 Filed under: Arts and Culture | Tags: Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca Leave a comment »This week I finally finished reading Daphne du Maurier’s best known work, Rebecca, a book that I started at some point in November (I think).
So what did I make of it? Well, I adored it. From the moment I read one of the most famous opening sentences of an English novel, ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again’, I felt that I was there with the narrator. Seeing the world of class and formality that she did, and becoming just as stifled and even suffocated by it.
I think that is what’s the most remarkable thing about Rebecca, the way that it feels almost claustrophobic. We, as readers, are of course stuck in the mind of its first person narrator, but we feel just as trapped as she does, and just as captivated, obsessed and haunted by Rebecca, the first Mrs de Winter.
The mystery of what actually befell Rebecca is the central driving force in the novel, and we as readers feel caught up in the masterful tension and suspense that du Maurier weaves, particularly in the scenes between the narrator and Mrs Danvers, whose ghastly brooding presence seems to sizzle throughout.
That said, I do now find it difficult to imagine Mrs Danvers without thinking of David Mitchell and the brilliant Rebecca sketch in That Mitchell and Webb Look.
Nevertheless, the original remains a novel of brooding intensity that I would, quite simply, recommend to anyone.
Rating: 4/5
Cultural Roundup
Posted: 10 January 2012 Filed under: Arts and Culture | Tags: Meryl Streep, Stephen Schwartz, The Iron Lady, The Wizard of Oz, Wicked Leave a comment »
Wicked, The Apollo Victoria Theatre
After meaning to do so for a long, long time, I have finally gotten around to going to see Wicked. And all I can see is that I was blown away.
For those who don’t know, Wicked is a Broadway musical that tells the ‘real’ story behind the Wizard of Oz. It explores the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda, the eponymous Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Fairy of the North respectively. The question we’re posed as an audience is whether Elphaba truly was wicked, or simply misunderstood.
This is a story that Wicked weaves with so much energy and humour that you can’t help but to enjoy yourself throughout. Add to this all of the requisite ingredients of a contemporary musical – good songs, strong lead performances and breathtaking staging – and you have a real treat of an evening at the theatre.
This isn’t to say that Wicked isn’t without it’s imperfections. Certainly my partner and I both found the Wizard to be wholly disappointing (although we think this is an issue of casting rather than the role) and weren’t entirely impressed either with Fiyero, the slightly wet male romantic lead. The ending also seemed to lack any wow factor, but this is most definitely because the end of the first act – the big hit of the show, ‘Defying Gravity’ – was so electrifying that it would be impossible to do the end justice after that!
These are however minor niggling flaws, those points you mention briefly but are more less forgotten the moment you’ve left the theatre. Wicked is undoubtedly one of the finest, most thrilling musicals I’ve seen in some time.
Rating: 5/5
The Iron Lady
The Iron Lady, starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher is undoubtedly the film that everyone (when I say everyone I mean Twitter) was talking about this weekend. I was quite relieved to see that there a lot of people thing what I was thinking: that it isn’t actually very good.
Before I get started outlining why it disappoints, let me point out that Meryl Streep is, as almost always, astonishing. The sense of energy, drive and determination she brings to the role is breathtaking. Unfortunately though, hers is a virtuoso performance stuck in an otherwise mediocre film.
The truth is that for the most part it’s just quite dull. About half the film is entirely imagined, with an elderly Baroness Thatcher, suffering from dementia and conducting imagined conversations with Dennis, her dead husband. It simply beggars belief that with a life and career as rich as Thatcher’s that anyone would feel the need to make up significant amounts of material for the film. And, as I say it simply ended making a large part of the film entirely uninteresting.
My other big gripe is the shallowness of the film, by which I mean it doesn’t probe into anything in any depth at all. It feels as if the writer wrote a list of bullet points to include, and decided that there wasn’t much expanding needed to turn this list into a screenplay. The film seemed something like this:
- Mention of poll tax
- Clip of poll tax riot footage
- Mention of Falkland Islands
- Consulting with armed forces and looking torn about what to do
And so on, and so forth. I can’t help but feel the film would have been much better if a leaf had been taken out of Peter Morgan’s book (writer of The Queen, The Deal and The Special Relationship) and focussed just on one event – the Falklands seems the obvious choice – as a way of exploring the character of Margaret Thatcher.
If they had done just that, they may have succeeded in producing an interesting film. As it is, I was quickly bored and am left advising you not to waste your money.
Rating: 2*/5
*I considered giving it three, but on sober reflection, even the star turn from Meryl Streep doesn’t quite succeed in raising it that much in my esteem.
New Year’s Resolutions
Posted: 5 January 2012 Filed under: Arts and Culture, Running | Tags: 10k, blogging, half marathon, New Year's resolutions, reading Leave a comment »One thing I’m yet to do is share my New Year’s resolutions (or targets as they could better be described) with the big wide world. I’ve been slightly reluctant to do so, mainly for a fear of falling short – there is in fact one that I’m still holding back and refusing to share with anyone – but I figure I need to nail my colours to the mast (with the one exception) if I’m going to be able to measure my success this time next year.
So, without further ado (or too much unnecessary trumpeting) here they are:
- Read and review 52 books this year (I managed 6 in 6 for the Booker, so I don’t see why not if I make the time)
- Run at least 500 miles (I’m hoping to eclipse this one, but am trying at the same time to be realistic!)
- Run a 45 minute 10k (ambitious, but I think achievable)
- Run a 1:40 half marathon (extra ambitious, but I hope to get as close to it as possible)
- Blog daily (clearly not going to happen, but I’ll see how close to 365 posts I can get this year)
- The resolution that no-one shall know (mysterious, huh?!?)
So there we go. Consider my colours firmly nailed to the mast. Now I just have to check in periodically to see how well I’m getting on!
Review: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Posted: 4 January 2012 Filed under: Arts and Culture, Running | Tags: Haruki Murakami Leave a comment »I’ve just finished reading Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which was kindly given me by my Secret Santa. Part memoir, part running diary, part philosophical treatise, it is easily one of the most profound books I’ve ever read.
Every single page seems suffused with the discipline, determination and motivation of Murakami who, at in his mid-fifties when he wrote this book, continued to participate in yearly marathons and triathlons. I think this is precisely where it borders on the philosophical and, accordingly, the profound.
As Murakami explores his running past and present, we are given a glimpse into the ways in which he motivates himself to achieve his personal feats of long distance running. Given that long distance running does of course push our bodies to the edge, this bridges the gap between the running and non-running worlds (as Murakami often does by talking about his experience as a novelist) as it becomes more broadly about human endurance.
I’m not really sure I want to say much more at risk of over thinking a book that dazzles with its simple authenticity. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is a book that has left me inspired and excited to continue creating my own running history.
I’ll just finish with the mantra that Murakami includes in his preface:
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
I doubt anyone has ever put it better.
Cultural Roundup: Grayson Perry and Virginia Woolf
Posted: 12 November 2011 Filed under: Arts and Culture | Tags: Grayson Perry, Mrs Dalloway, The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsmman, Virginia Woolf 1 Comment »
In my first cultural round up for a while, I take a look at Grayson Perry’s exhibition at the British Museum and Mrs Dalloway.
Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, British Museum
From the moment I first heard about Grayson Perry’s new exhibition, that places his work alongside items from the British Museum’s undeniably vast collection, I was excited to say the least. I could tell that there would be something special in the interplay between the two and I certainly wasn’t disappointed.
Upon entering the exhibition I was transported to a world that delights in beautiful things and that is unashamedly fun. Perry’s new work here displays his characteristic wit, inviting us to laugh along at his perception of the world, his pottery existing as the ceramic equivalent of observational comedy.
But despite being the star billing, this doesn’t at all feel like an exercise in grandiosity on Perry’s part. Rather than feeling like his works elevated by being placed in the British Museum, it rather feels like it’s simply placed in a continuum of craft. Just as the craftsmen of the many objects from the Museum’s collection are long forgotten, I’m left with a feeling that Perry too will be forgotten one day in the distant future, but that museum goers will marvel over his then unattributed objects.
Rating: 5/5
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
To my shame, I had never read anything by Virginia Woolf, a wrong that I felt obliged to set right. So Mrs Dalloway made it to the top of my ‘to read’ list.
To be perfectly honest, I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it. I know for certain that I didn’t always get on with Woolf’s dense and complex prose style. But on the other hand I know that there were features I found entirely striking.
Most striking of all is the tortured figure of Septimus Warren Smith, broken by his experiences in the First World War. I think for me this embodies a view of modernist literature as an attempt to come to terms with the seismic effect of the two world wars and the destruction they wrought.
The insanity of Septimus clearly affirms this view for me. But more than that, I think it continus to horrify me, for it is at the same time both cataclysmic, yet also incidental. His war caused insanity is at once able to literally destroy him, yet also able to be just a minor irritation to Clarissa Dalloway herself.
The throw away mention of his suicide at Clarissa’s party and her subsequent shock it has been raised gives an impression of a feeling that life will and must go on. Yet it feels like an affront to the memory of a man who lost his mind, and ultimately his life, by fighting for his country. That seems to me the paradox at the heart of modernist fiction and Mrs Dalloway; life must necessarily go on, but it will inevitably seem both trivial and disrespectful that it does.
Rating: 3/5
Old Favourites – Star Wars
Posted: 31 October 2011 Filed under: Arts and Culture Leave a comment »
It’s little secret among my friends that I can be a bit of a geek. That geekishness expresses itself in various ways: computer games (particularly the über geeky Zelda series), Apple fanboy status, practically evangelical love of Excel and, inevitably, adoration of Star Wars. It was with excitement, then, that I bought the original trilogy on Blu-ray the other week and sat down to enjoy New Hope. It only seems apt now to revisit A New Hope in my Old Favourites series.
I’ve often tried to pin down for myself what makes A New Hope so utterly captivating despite its many manifest flaws. I guess it must be that it transports me back to childhood, when as an 11 year old boy and went to see it at the cinema during its 20th anniversary re-release. I quickly realised that it had it all: humour, excitement, tension and – above all – an epic fight between good and evil.
But what’s truly remarkable about A New Hope and the rest of the original Star Wars trilogy is that I still feel that way to this very day. I sit down, now a 25 year old to watch it, and the moment those infamous words appear on the screen (‘A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….’) I can still feel my breath catch, the excitement building in me for the moment the brass will ring out and the adventure will begin.
One thing I’ve never fully understood though is Star Wars status as a game changer. I think that’s inevitable and that it’s very difficult to appreciate just how exceptionally groundbreaking a film is on anything other than an intellectual level if we weren’t there at the time. But it has to be said, that with the crystal clarity this blu-ray release brings, I really started to understand it.
I’ve heard time and again how thrilling it was for the audience of 1977 in the opening scene as Princess Leia’s blockade runner flies overhead and is quickly followed by the pursuing Star Destroyer. But I could never quite see it. That’s changed with this blu-ray release. Seeing the solid special effects of A New Hope in glorious 1080p is revelatory. They hold up so well and somehow captivated me in a way they never have that – quite literally – made me sit up and say ‘wow’ as those original audiences did.
Watching any of the Star Wars trilogy has always been an almost devotional experience for me. With it’s blu-ray release it feels like it’s moved slightly beyond this for me and now fills me with a sense of genuine wonderment and awe at just how brilliantly timeless these films are. If you have the chance, I highly recommend getting hold of a copy of A New Hope on blu-ray and seeing for yourself.
Review: Tory Pride and Prejudice
Posted: 30 October 2011 Filed under: Arts and Culture, Equality | Tags: Biteback publishing, Conservative party, LGB equality, Michael McManus Leave a comment »
Over the past week or so I’ve been reading Michael McManus’s new book Tory Pride and Prejudice, which tells the history of homosexual law reform in relation to the Conservative party. I’m not normally one for reading non-fiction, but I was certainly excitedly looking forward to tucking into a book that sets out with a broad ambition, both in the scale of history that it seeks to tell and its desire to correct the notion that prior to Cameron the Conservative party has always been resolutely anti-gay.
I guess the obvious question is one of whether is succeeds, and in my opinion it absolutely does. McManus is able to present a picture of a Conservative party that has an historical relationship with homosexual law reform far more complicated than the straightforward ‘nasty party’ narrative would have us believe.
From the commissioning of the Wolfenden report on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution, right through to the coalition, McManus focuses on those Conservatives who time and again stood up for homosexual equality and, above all, the fundamental right of the individual to live life free from unnecessary interference of the state. Whether in accord with public opinion or not, or even with their own party or not, we’re presented with a strong contingent of heroic MPs who were willing to vote for what they knew was right.
McManus manages not only to debunk in this way the simplistic narrative so often told in regards to homosexual law reform – Labour good, Tories bad – but he does so in a way that is highly readable and absolutely gripping. Time after time I was particularly left marvelling at his ability to overwhelmingly take Hansard as his primary source, and use what often seems a dry and uninspiring account of parliamentary proceeding to tell his rich and colourful history.
While I obviously approached Tory Pride and Prejudice with a favourable party political prejudice, it is regardless a book that I found truly enlightening and, at points, very moving. The contrition of key Conservatives who opposed the march of homosexual equality is a case in point. To me this was very genuine, the words on the page being full of regret for the positions they held, which in turn held back both their party and country for far too long. I wonder whether this contrition in particular would be read as favourably by someone without the lens of party affiliation and would be interested to hear how my opinion of the book stands up without this.
Tory Pride and Prejudice is a book that I would heartily recommend to anyone with an interest in the (ongoing) history of homosexual equality, because that is of course the end to which law reform has so long been the means, regardless of any party political affiliation.
Rating: 4/5
Cultural roundup
Posted: 18 October 2011 Filed under: Arts and Culture | Tags: Carol Birch, Jamrach's Menagerie, Man Booker Prize, Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers Leave a comment »
After an admittedly sporadic period, I’m back with the final two books fro, the Booker Prize Shortlist, which I blissfully finished in the nick of time before the winner was announced. Tomorrow I’ll be writing about my thoughts on the shortlist as a whole and whether the judges’ decision was a sound one, but for now I’ll just focus on my final two reviews.
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
The Sisters Brothers is a western, telling the story of two contract killer brothers as they journey across America and get caught up in the gold rush.
While being a perfectly readable novel, I failed to see that it really had any purpose. It makes clear attempts to develop notions of curses, supernatural protection and superstition, but without ever seeming to make an interesting point. Furthermore, the plot seems to meander without ever really going anywhere, and the conclusion seems unrelentingly bleak.
The Sisters Brothers is the first western novel to be nominated for the Man Booker Prize, and I get the feeling it will for quite a while be the only one to boot.
Rating: 2/5
Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch
Jamrach’s Menagerie seems to be very much in a similar vein. In this a young Victorian boy, Jaffy, sets sail on the voyage of a lifetime to hunt down a dragon.
‘Listen [...] there’s no meaning in it. Just chance. Random, pointless. There’s no other way of seeing it.’ So Jaffy declares of his own journey near the end of Jamrach’s Menagerie, and I couldn’t help but agree with him. For this is an entirely savagely pointless novel, with large sections that are just plain uncomfortable to read. At times I was left physically repulsed.
To add insult to injury it’s written in language that is entirely laughable. While I have seen it praised as being modern but still unashamedly and obviously Victorian, this could not be further from the truth. To have characters constantly effing and blinding, to discuss bodily functions in detail and to be so brutally godless means that Jamrach’s Menagerie could never have the Victorian grandeur to which it seems to aspire, and which other reviewers have ascribed to it.
Rating: 2/5
