Books, Movies and Random Thoughts

It’s odd that although these are two of my favourite Bujold books, I always skip the first few chapters of each of them when I am re-reading. It’s because I know the main character is going to make an absolutely enormous mistake, and I just can’t stand seeing it happen. So I tend to pick up Mirror Dance at Chapter 12, when Mark arrives on Barrayar (after everything that could possibly have gone wrong has done so); and Memory at Chapter 7, when Miles is discharged. I know in both cases there is good stuff in the earlier chapters (not to mention things highly relevant to the plot!) but I just can’t subject myself to the pain of watching Mark and Miles dig their own graves.

Once the mistakes are made, though, and the books move into “recovery” mode, I love them. In fact, both of these are books that I will occasionally get off the shelf just to read one of the “good bits”. (I also do this with A Civil Campaign – which I also can’t re-read the first few chapters of.) They seem to have more depth than the earlier books in the series, though you probably need to have read at least some of the earlier books in order to fully understand these ones.

Mirror Dance is the first Miles book where there is a non-Miles perspective character. And I actually find the Mark sections of the book (after the excruciatingly painful first few chapters) far more interesting than the Miles bits. In fact, I find the Miles sections pretty dull.

I’m not totally convinced that Mark is the same character I first met in Brothers in Arms – he seems much more brisk and efficient there than he does in Mirror Dance. However, that’s more of an issue when I’m re-reading Brothers in Arms – the Mark of Mirror Dance is the same as the one in Civil Campaign. And I guess you can justify the change partly by saying that you only see him from the outside (Miles’ perspective) in Brothers in Arms, and also that he has spend the intervening time hiding out, and without Galen driving him, so it does make sense that he’d seem a bit more adrift than he did in the earlier book.

I think one of my favourite scenes in the book is the one where Mark overhears Cordelia and Aral talking – I particularly love Cordelia’s analysis of Ivan as only playing the fool, and Aral pointing out that Ivan has been like that all his life, and her interpretation would make him “a fiendishly Machiavellian five-year-old”. And the bit earlier in the book where she points out that “Miles thinks he’s a knight-errant. A rational government wouldn’t allow him possession of a pocket-knife, let alone a space fleet.” Cordelia really enriches this book, even though her part is relatively small (though still bigger than in any of the earlier books except Cordelia’s Honor).

Memory is my absolute, all-time favourite Vorkosigan book. The detective story and Miles’ personal growth are really well woven together, so the book is neither too depressing nor too lightweight. Fun minor characters are either introduced for the first time (Martin, Ma Kosti and Zap the Cat), or developed from earlier books (Duv Galeni, and also Illyan – not that he was previously underdeveloped). And it has so many wonderful scenes: Ivan taking over and moving into Vorkosigan House, the trip back to Silvy Vale, Illyan’s illness and Miles’ management of it, the “wrestling with temptation” scene, the Assault on Cockroach Central, and the confession to Gregor. Some of these scenes are fun, some moving, some powerful – all of them really good to read and re-read.

Possession was the first A. S. Byatt I ever read, and it is still far and away my favourite. I love the variety and interactions of the modern characters, the sense of such a completely diverse group of people linked by nothing more than a passion for two long dead poets, and the fact that they have such different ways of relating to them. I find all the characters – even the unlikable ones – enjoyable to read about. I also love the treasure hunt aspect of it – particularly as it gains momentum towards the end.

For all that I love the book, though, I don’t think I’ve ever read the Ash or LaMotte poetry, and I mostly skip the LaMotte prose as well. In fact, this time through I found myself skimming very lightly through the whole Ash/LaMotte correspondence, and I also skipped large segments of Sabine’s journal. On the other hand, I still read the Ellen Ash journal bits with great pleasure.

For me, though, this book also crystallises why it is I chose to study literature rather than history. With history, there is an absolute Truth – events either happened or they did not – and the historian may never know for certain whether what they believe is right. And there are other things that will simply never be known – as the Postscript to Possession says, “There are things which happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of”.

This is also reflected earlier in the book, when Roland and Maud go to the Boggle Hole to “take a day off from them, get out of their story, go and look at something for ourselves. There’s no Boggle Hole in Cropper or the Ash Letters”. And then in the next chapter we see that Ash and LaMotte did go to the Boggle Hole – I love the parallel between the two pairs, but at the same time it is incredibly frustrating and sad that Roland and Maud will never know about it.

The same idea comes up in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (which, co-incidentally, I saw at about the same time I first read Possession). As in Possession, while the modern characters end up knowing most of the things the audience does about the past, there are some things they are unaware of – or, as in the case of the Fuseli portrait, some things they have a gut feeling about, but no way of proving it (“I know it’s them. … How? It just is.”)

Studying literature isn’t like that, at least for me. You have the text, and you have the reader, and you really don’t need anything else – it’s all about the relationship between the two, which, of course, will be unique for each reader. I guess an exception to this is if you are specifically trying to work out “what the author intended”. But I suspect this is a task sitting somewhere between the problematic and the impossible – and, as with history, leads to the situation where you will never know – or never be able to prove – how close to the truth you are.

But in terms of general appreciation/interpretation of a text, everything you need to know is between the covers of the book. If the author has written or said something elsewhere about it, that’s a bonus; and a greater knowledge of the author’s life, or the historical period they lived in, or anything else of that nature, may shed a different kind of light on the text. But ultimately, any interpretation a reader chooses to make of the book – unless it is actually contradicted by something between the covers of the book itself – is totally valid. It’s not like history, where you may never know if you are right or wrong. If you know something about a text, then it is true – even if the next person to read it knows the complete opposite.

I think Sin City is the most violent movie I have ever seen. How on earth did it have an “MA” rating rather than an “R”? The violence wasn’t redundant – it was an important part of the kind of world the film was presenting – but that didn’t make it less shocking.

In some ways, the main male characters were reminiscent of Raymond Chandler. Marv, in particular, was very much descended from Moose Molloy (by way of The Maxx, with a bit of input from Wolverine), but all three of them had elements of the chivalric, protective approach towards women that is the foundation of Phillip Marlowe’s character. But they also had a sadistic side that just isn’t present in Chandler. Marv didn’t just kill people – he revelled in the slaughter and ultimately performed horrific acts of torture. And Hartigan gave way to a berserker fury when he killed the Yellow Bastard. Dwight didn’t do anything as extreme in the film, but he did casually mention that he was a murderer who had been given a new face.

Chandler said “down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. … He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor – by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.” In Sin City, the streets were mean, but the men were not untarnished. In a way, they were men of honour, and they might even have been the best men in their world, but they were certainly not good enough for any world. Not even Hartigan, and certainly not Dwight or Marv.

The men were definitely the centre of the film. The women were all decorative – and mostly incredibly lethal – but they were objectified. The men were doing what they did for, or because of, the women. A somewhat misogynistic world view – but, again, very Chandler.

The visuals in this film were just amazing. On the black and white film, the splashes of colour had a stunning impact. And the script and performances more than matched this. In the excerpts I’d seen on At the Movies, Clive Owen’s lines had seemed stilted and unrealistic, but somehow in the context of the film they worked. Nevertheless, Dwight was the least complex of the three main characters, or, at least, the one you gained least insight into. His part of the film was more plot-driven, which made it less interesting than the other sections – though probably also less disturbing. You got a much better idea of what was driving – and I do mean driving – Hartigan and Marv, so there was a much closer connection with their stories. Also, they both had creepier villains – amazing performances from Nick Stahl and especially Elijah Wood. The women had less to work with in terms of either character or menace, but insofar as it was possible, they all gave strong performances.

One of the reviews I read described it as “style over substance”. I don’t think this is fair. Certainly, without the visual style the film would have had far less impact, but this doesn’t mean that it was without substance, in the way that, say, Kill Bill was. In fact, it probably would have been an easier film to watch if this had been the case. Rather, the visuals combined with the writing to give a powerful and disturbing picture of a world in which everything is corrupt: in which men can have chivalric ideals yet at the same time perform – and revel in – quite horrific levels of violence. The world of Sin City was morally bankrupt. Unfortunately, I’m not totally convinced that the the film wasn’t as well.

I was distinctly underwhelmed by this production. I didn’t like the mix of Roman and modern dress, I didn’t like the “staginess” of it all, the actors were singularly lacking in charisma and Brutus seemed to spend the whole play in an unchanging cloud of gloom. Rather disappointing, since this was the first time I’d ever seen Julius Caesar live. When Michael was in New York for a conference earlier this year, he saw a production starring Denzel Washington – he said it was a lot more accessible than this production.

I enjoyed War of the Worlds more than I expected. The visuals were (unsurprisingly) stunning, and the plot (more surprisingly) could have been an awful lot worse.

I found all three main characters basically unpleasant – Tom Cruise and the son particularly so. This is not necessarily a criticism – it would have been much worse if they had been nice and wonderful. However, occasionally it seemed to go a bit too far.

I really, really liked the fact that for most of the film, Tom Cruise didn’t actually play the “hero” – he basically just ran away and hid. This also had the benefit that for most of the movie you didn’t really have much of an idea of what was going on at a global level. I liked this limited view of what is happening. It’s not a new idea (off the top of my head, I can think of two episodes of Babylon 5 that took this approach, plus one of Buffy, and I’m sure there have been other feature length films as well – quite possibly, for all I know, including the original War of the Worlds) but I think it made it a much more interesting film than, say, Independence Day.

However, I did feel rather let down when, right near the end, Tom Cruise did suddenly do something heroic and managed to blow up a Tripod. I would have actually preferred it if this had been done by the soldier who was caught along with him. I liked the final defeat of the aliens (I gather this was straight out of the original H. G. Wells story), but I found the very end of the film much too sentimental.

I’m not sure what it says about my reaction to this film that I can’t actually remember the names of any of the characters – I’m just thinking of them as “Tom Cruise”, “Dakota Fanning”, “Miranda Otto”, “Tim Robbins” and “the son”.

Fantastic Four was another film that could have been worse, but could also have been a lot better.

I’m with David Stratton in finding Johnny Storm “supremely irritating”. I assume we are meant to find his arrogance likeable and amusing – and I’ll admit he had a few funny lines – but I found him a pretty repellant personality. I think I’d have to lay the blame for this on the scriptwriters rather than the actor – I’m not sure anyone could have made the character, as written, appealing to me.

This isn’t quite the case with Reed Richards and Sue Storm. It seems that the scriptwriters decided to give them slightly different personalities from the original comic book characters. Fair enough – in fact, based on my limited knowledge of the comic, probably necessary. However, it seemed to be a rather token gesture, and I didn’t feel that either Ioan Gruffudd or Jessica Alba did anything to lift the characters beyond what was written on the page. As a result, they were both pleasant enough, but rather bland.

Ben Grimm was probably the most interesting of them – and certainly Michael Chiklis had more to work with than any of the other actors – but it still seemed to be a rather superficial presentation of a character with great tragic potential.

I guess it’s just another one to add to the growing list of films that could – and should -be about character, but are actually about special effects.

J. K. Rowling’s latest was released yesterday at 9:01am in Australia. Unfortunately, at 9:00am I had to be at Sydney Secondary College, to help load a truck with all the NSW Fencing Association equipment we had borrowed to run the Australian Universities Fencing Championships. I then had to go to the Ann Clarke Netball Centre to unload it. So I wasn’t able to pick up my copy of the book until about midday. However, having had an exhausting week at the championships, I decided to skip Fencing Club training, and put my feet up and read that afternoon.

Book number 5 (Order of the Phoenix) had been my least favourite Harry Potter. On re-reading it in preparation for Half-Blood Prince, I found that while I still thought it was crying out for severe editing, the “Harry as rebellious adolescent” was better presented than I had remembered. The problem was, as an angsty, “nobody understands me”, Young Adult kind of story, it didn’t really seem to fit that well into the Potter-verse.

The moody adolescent was gone from Half-Blood Prince, and, as a result, it felt much more like the earlier books. It could probably still have done with some more editing, but it was nowhere near as bloated as Order of the Phoenix or Goblet of Fire. However, it still wasn’t as tightly constructed as some of the earlier ones. I’m not sure if this was an editing issue, or just that there wasn’t as much plot. In particular, it didn’t have that twist at the end that makes you want to re-read it, to find all the clues you missed the first time around. So, while I think she’s heading back in the direction of what I liked about the earlier books in the series, she’s not there yet.

Some general comments, which are FULL OF SPOILERS:

• I thought all the relationship stuff was a bit superficial, but probably inevitable given the ages of the characters. Though I’m wondering how it sits with the original target audience of 9-11 year olds. Of course, the original readers are now older than Harry, but are the current crop of 9-11 year olds supposed to read the first few books, and then wait until they grow up a bit before reading the later ones?
• I’m probably in the minority here, but I was pleased there was a lot less of Hagrid in this book. I was finding the Care of Magical Creatures lessons increasingly painful in the last few books.
• I thought Horace Slughorn was set up as an interesting character, but then nothing much was done with him.
• The revelation that Snape was the Half-Blood Prince was a bit unexpected. There don’t seem to have been any Agatha Christie style clues-that-you-don’t-even-notice scattered throughout the book.
• I got a bit fed up with Harry continually using the Potions book, when it was so obvious all along that Hermione was right about it. And Ron should have taken it a bit more seriously, too.
• I liked the little cameos by Luna Lovegood. I’ll be interested to see what happens with her in the last book.
• I’ll also be interested to see what happens with Percy. My original theory – that his ambition and liking for rules would lead him to Voldemort’s side without him actually realising it, and that he would end up coming good, but probably dying in a sacrificial moment – now seems less likely than it did a couple of books ago. But I’m assuming he’ll have some impact in the final climax.
• I thought Dumbledore’s death scene was much more moving than Sirius’s in Order of the Phoenix (though this may just be that I was getting a bit fed up with Sirius anyway). Dumbledore was the one I had my money on to die in this book, and as the plot developed, and he gave Harry more and more information, it became increasingly likely that he wasn’t going to be around for Book 7.
• My reading of the death scene (which I thought was the only possible reading until I saw some other people’s comments) was that when he says “Severus … please …” to Snape at the end, he is actually asking Snape to kill him, in order to stop Malfoy from doing it (and thus, to save Malfoy from turning to the Dark Side). Presumably he and Snape had already discussed this as a possibility.
• There seemed to be at least one continuity error – Dumbledore says that they haven’t been able to keep any Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for more than a year since he refused the job to Voldemort. But in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone I certainly got the impression that Quirrell had been in the job for quite a while.

Howl’s Moving Castle had its Australian premiere on the last night of the Sydney Film Festival. I’d never been to the Festival before, but when I saw the listing I thought I’d probably go along to Howl’s. Then, a week after tickets went on sale, I read an article that said it was the fastest selling film in the whole Festival. I phoned up the next day – it was almost booked out, but I managed to get seats way up in the circle.

Although I’m not a huge Diana Wynne Jones fan, I read Howl’s Moving Castle a few months ago (see my comments on it), in preparation for the film. It didn’t make an overly strong impression on me, so going into the film I found I could only remember the broad outlines of the plot and characters. Even so, it was enough to know that the film was very different from the book – in fact, I’d hesitate to call it a “film version” of the book. I think it existed in a grey area between “based on” and “inspired by” – sort of like the Olivier film of Wuthering Heights. It took characters and events from the book, but added to, excised from and reworked the material to produce something that was fundamentally different at all levels.

Because I’m not passionate about the book, this actually didn’t bother me in the least. Although I recognised that many things were very different, I was quite happy to go along with the flow and enjoy it as a completely new story. When I did notice differences, my reaction was more along the lines of “that’s changed – what an interesting decision” rather than “that’s changed – and it’s completely wrong“. In fact, the only thing that threw me slightly was the changing of the Donne poem. Obviously once it was translated into Japanese it wouldn’t have had any cultural significance, and it didn’t have the same relevance to the plot that I remember it having in the book, but it was still odd to read in the subtitles something that looked like it had gone through a double translation process. I’d be interested to see how it is treated in the dubbed version.

I liked the mechanised Victorianism of the setting (my mental image of the book – rightly or wrongly – was set much more in “once upon a time” land) and I thought the war scenes (which, as far as I recall, were completely not-appearing-in-the-book) were incredibly visually compelling.

I also enjoyed the humour – it was enough to keep you engaged, without actually undermining the serious aspects of the plot, or becoming too Disneyfied (although I have to admit, the dog came close).

The characters of Sophie and Howl seemed (as far as I could remember) to be rather different from the book – I first thought “simplified”, but maybe it was just a significant shift in emphasis. In any case, I found them both interesting, and I cared what happened to them – one of my key criteria for whether or not I enjoy a film. And I think Howl was probably the sexiest animated character I have ever seen!

My initial reaction was that the world was a lot less rich than Spirited Away, but maybe it was just that I found it more culturally accessible. At this point I’m not prepared to say which I prefer of the two films – I think I’d need to see Spirited Away again first.

Coming out of the film, my reaction was that I liked it better than DWJ’s book. However, it has inspired me to re-read the book, and somewhat surprisingly I’m enjoying it much more than I did the first time around.

I thought Batman Begins was better than the other Batman movies by a considerable margin.

The cast was great. I liked the fact that the young Bruce Wayne wasn’t a particularly nice person. I was pleased with the way the romance subplot panned out. I thought there was a good balance between darkness and humour. I liked the bit at the end where they talked about the effect Batman would have – it sort of fit in with The Dark Knight Returns graphic novel, where someone says “if you toss in the victims of his fan club, the Batman-related body count is up there with a minor war”. Of course, it doesn’t come close to being that extreme in the film – so far, there’s only a hint of it raising the stakes for the villains, and no suggestion of a vigilante fan-club – but I like the acknowledgement of it as a possibility.

The only thing I was a bit worried about was the “I won’t kill you but I don’t have to save you” approach. It seems to be a bit ethically dodgy … especially given that Batman/Bruce Wayne created the dangerous situation in the first place. This particularly applied with the murderer he refuses to behead in the first half of the film. Although we don’t actually see the man dying in the fire, I don’t really see how he could have survived, so surely this means that Bruce Wayne is still totally responsible for his death. It almost seems like he can only kill people if he doesn’t actually see it happening … which is a line of thought I really don’t want to follow through on.

Still, at least it’s a clear statement of his moral position. In Dark Knight Returns, Batman says killing someone would mean “crossing a line I drew for myself thirty years ago”. I may not be entirely comfortable with where this Batman has drawn his line, but it’s a lot better than one of the earlier films (Batman Returns, I think) where he deliberately kills someone. That was just wrong for the character.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen or read a Pinter play before. And I don’t think I’ll be rushing out for another one. I’m not sure whether it was the performances or the script, or whether it’s just become a bit dated, but it really didn’t do anything for me. It was stylised rather than realistic, but not in a particularly interesting way; and I just didn’t care at all about any of the characters. I think I just completely missed the point of it all.