“Sylvia” – film review

I forced myself to watch this because a friend put a copy in my hands and asked for my opinion. I had four main concerns with the concept of a film about the life of Sylvia Plath:

1. It had to be about the poetry
2. Her life was not foreshadowed by her death
3. The main character had to be recognisably Sylvia Plath
4. The limitations of the medium of film itself.

The Poetry

Reading Sylvia Plath’s poems as biography is problematic. Poetry is fiction, not fact, and Sylvia transformed direct experience into poetry, using fiction to portray a truth from her perspective. Like most writers, she was not above appropriating others’ experiences as her own. Aurelia Plath, Sylvia’s mother, remembers hauling a crawling Warren from the sea by his ankles. Yet Sylvia wrote it up as if it were her who’d crawled into the waves. She wanted to capture the experience of crawling into the waves and knew the most poetic way of doing so was from a first person perspective, the fact it wasn’t her direct experience wasn’t relevant.

Sylvia role-played and liked to portray her life/self as for example, the all-round-sport-and-straight-As-balanced-student, the doting mother and homemaker swapping recipes and attending church, the dutiful daughter writing home. So the Sylvia extracted from any given poem could depend on what her role was during the experience she was writing about. Instinctively she wrote for her audience, even in letters, writing what she intuitively guessed the reader wanted to hear.

This was behaviour she’d learnt from an early age when she was sent to grandparents whilst her mother cared for a seriously ill husband and an asthmatic baby with bronchitis. Sylvia saw her brother as a rival for her mother’s affection and learnt that exhibiting appropriate behaviour won love and approval. Aurelia Plath lived vicariously through Sylvia’s teenage dates and dances so Sylvia learnt to live and observe herself living to create a fiction to keep her mother happy too; the teenager taking on the responsibility of keeping both herself and her adult mother happy.

But Sylvia’s life was all about her poetry. It burned through her. A film without the poems will not do.

Foreshadowing

We cannot escape from death, however, few people under thirty-five know how they will die. Even on her thirtieth birthday, Sylvia Plath did not know she was going to take her own life. Her life was not foreshadowed by her death. A film that portrays her life as foreshadowed, is false.

Recognising Sylvia Plath

Naturally everyone who reads her poems, her stories, her novel, her journals, her letters home will have a different image of Sylvia and the persona that comes through her work. Will the Sylvia of the film be recognisable as the Sylvia persona that I perceive through her work? My own perception could be wrong, biased by my reading. I never met her or anyone who knew her. Like watching an adaption of a book, I want reassurance that I will recognise the central character.

Limitations of Film

• A film is necessarily visual – poetry doesn’t translate well to film because it’s generally static, characters sitting at a desk writing or reading back the poem they’ve just written can get visually boring and having a voice-over with relevant imagery can become repetitive.
• A thirty-year life cannot be accurately and fully condensed into two hours – films can only give a flavour of a life, not the whole, gritty, balanced detail, just as you can’t condense a novel into a poem. What will get left out and what will be left?
• Actors bring their own acting and real life experiences to bear on their roles – would Gwyneth Paltrow and Blythe Danner bring anything of their own, good relationship to the acted relationship between Sylvia Plath and Aurelia Plath?
• Hype – whilst necessary to bring audiences to the film, it can also be (unintentionally) off-putting. “Sylvia” was billed as “the untold story” and “based on the emotional true story”. Both these claims are patently problematic. There are many biographies of Sylvia Plath, her story has been picked over, analysed and re-told for decades, so how many stories of her life can be left untold? Unless her missing final journal is found, there can be no untold story: only new versions of existing stories. Using “untold” in the sense of “her story has never been told in this matter with this script before” is too narrow a definition of “untold”. I think “emotional true story” is meant to be read as “emotional, true story” with the “emotional” warning those who want an action movie to go away and “true story” a hook to get the audiences to believe this is authentic and not based on some of the more ridiculous or biased theories in circulation. But what if the story isn’t the version I believe or the version you believe? Without the original characters being able to say this scene’s wrong or this scene’s right, all anyone can know of the story is speculation (albeit speculation based on carefully study and reading) so how “true” can the film be?

I expected “Sylvia” to be uncomfortable to watch. I hoped to be surprised and find a film about how the poems came to be written.

 

“Sylvia” – Film Review

The opening image is of Sylvia lying in a white sheet, the image clearly taken from “Edge”, one of the last poems she wrote. She could be dead (the woman in the poem is).

A voiceover talks of a tree, each branch a path she chose in life, each leaf a poem. It’s autumn and the leaves blow away. I like the metaphor or poems like leaves, the tree has to let go of them and let the wind decide their fate. Just as a poet lets go of a poem one it’s sent out for publication and the readers get to decide its fate.

The “Edge”/Sylvia opens an eye. She is not dead. But the implication is that her life is foreshadowed by death. This has failed on one of my four criteria already.

The film opens properly in Cambridge, Sylvia cycling through the streets eager for the latest copy of St Botolphs Review. We see her crushed by the comments on her poems, “potential” (not there yet), “bourgeois” (as an insult – not of the right class in a class-ridden society), “ambitious” (not a good attribute for a poet) and worse of all “commercial” (poetry should never be commercial but have higher aims).  However, her eye is drawn to a poem by Ted Hughes and at the launch party, she demands to be introduced to him. He dances with her despite being with another date. This scene is biographically faithful. Ted takes her pearl earring as a keepsake (this motif is picked up again later).

After making love, Ted asks about the scar near one of Sylvia’s eyes. She tells him about climbing into the crawlspace in the cellar with a glass of water and pile of sleeping pills. “Did you ever have something you wanted to erase?” she asks, before explaining she took too many pills and her mother and brother found her. It explains the mechanics of what she did, but not the why. This is a significant omission.

There is a wonderful scene where the pair are punting on the Cam. Cows appear to be watching. Ted comments on the intelligence of cows. Sylvia asks if they would prefer Milton or Chaucer. Ted decides Chaucer and Sylvia stands to recite “The Wife of Bath.” The scene may never have happened, but that’s irrelevant. It shows Ted grounded in nature delighting in this passionate, spontaneous woman in love with literature and him. The pair are complementary, sharing and she is drawing out the poet in him. If there are more scenes like this, I could forgive the opening failure.

This scene is underlined by the next. Sylvia sits at a typewriter under a notice board pinned with correspondence from editors. Ted’s kissing her. However, the film implies she’d sending out his poems and doesn’t clarify that is she also sending out hers. The film moves to the acceptance of “The Hawk in the Rain” in an American competition Ted didn’t know he’d entered with its invite to America. This prompts a marriage proposal – the implication being so they can travel together.

The wedding ceremony is perfunctory and Sylvia is wearing a shocking shade of fuchsia, an odd choice for a “pink woolen suit dress” (from Sylvia’s journal) provided by Aurelia. The film fails to explain it had to be low key and secret as Sylvia feared she’d lose her Fulbright scholarship if it was discovered she had got married (it was only afterwards they found out it didn’t matter). The date’s not mentioned either, but the date, 16 June, was specifically chosen because of its links with Joyce’s Bloomsday.

The film jumps to America and Ted meets his mother-in-law Aurelia Plath (in life he met he before this, but a film doesn’t have time to explore the earlier meetings). Tellingly Sylvia asks her mother, “Why can’t you be happy for me?” Her mother says, “I’m always supportive.” Sylvia feels her mother’s disappointment. Actually she and Ted got on reasonably well, but she was more worried about how he was going to earn enough to support her daughter and potential grandchildren. Sylvia points out she can sell stories and both can teach.

Unfortunately the film doesn’t have enough space to tease out the fact that Sylvia’s attitude towards earning and paying her way in the marriage was unusual for the time where women did work after marriage but generally expected to become stay at home mothers when children arrived. It’s also in direct contrast to Aurelia’s own experience. Aurelia married a man 22 years her senior who asked her to give up her teaching job and become a housewife. She did, thinking she could have a houseful of student guests and brilliant dinner table discussions, which didn’t happen as Otto Plath tended to spread papers which could not be disturbed over the dining table. Aurelia sacrificed her career; Sylvia clearly does not intend to.

Aurelia asks what she should say. Sylvia says she should like Ted. Part of this liking Ted includes showing him photos of Sylvia’s father, Otto Plath, and mentioning the crawlspace incident (again how and not why). She suggests to Ted that Sylvia likes him because she usually frightens men but Ted frightens her. This is acceptable back story information being fed in.

The film Sylvia and Ted settle in Cape Cod. Ted goes fishing and writes. Sylvia is baking instead of writing. On a boat trip, Sylvia recites “Full Fathom Five” as a way of explaining an even earlier suicide attempt when she was nine (shortly after her father died), walked into the waves and swam out of her depth. A storm brews, the film used the image of an empty boat being tugged by a rescue boat. It’s a troubling image, showing again the foreshadowing. (The incident is based on a truth, Ted and Sylvia were caught out by a storm and after a terrifying time, the storm blew out and Ted began to show Sylvia how to fish and they both returned with a respectable catch of flounders).

There’s a glimpse of Sylvia teaching. She didn’t enjoy teaching as it left her too drained to write. She leaves class and hurries into one of Ted’s readings. Naturally he’s the centre of admiring glances and curiosity about his Yorkshire accent (Daniel Craig does this well without labouring it). Sylvia excuses herself and drives home. A female student turns up with a manuscript she says Ted said he’d look at. Sylvia snatches the manuscript and slams the door in the student’s face, waiting with a tormented expression for Ted’s return. “She’s nobody, a student. I took pity on her. She had these poems, I said I’d look at them,” he explains. He realises Sylvia thinks they’re having an affair and denies it. In the morning he suggests returning to England, blaming America and teaching for having a detrimental effect on their work – if Sylvia can write, maybe she won’t be so jealous is the logic. After class, Sylvia goes to meet Ted but he’s not where they arranged to meet so she looks for him and finds him talking to the female student who’d dropped off the manuscript. It’s clear from their body language and the student’s sudden exit when she sees Sylvia that something more intimate has been going on. Ted and Sylvia go home, row, she sits in the car in the rain and then returns, asking him to never leave her.

The incident is back to front. Sylvia didn’t accuse Ted of having an affair until she was sure he was. The filmmakers are setting the scene for a later affair. But the scene here suggests Ted didn’t have an affair with the student until Sylvia suggested it and he thought he might as well be damned for something he did do. Here it makes Sylvia’s jealous rage unreasonable. Whilst the intensity of her jealously was unreasonable, she did have reason for her rage. The birth of her younger brother, who was asthmatic and frequently suffered bronchitis, coincided with Otto Plath’s health deteriorating. Already coping with an ill husband and an ill baby, Aurelia sometimes sent Sylvia to her grandparents. Sylvia saw her brother as a rival for her mother’s affection and learnt to write letters to her mother acting out the role of a dutiful daughter. Sylvia learnt that if she portrayed herself as behaving just as she intuited her mother wanted, she would get approval. Of course she was always in fear of being abandoned and never fully grieved her father’s death (Aurelia decided the children shouldn’t attend the funeral).

The film jumps to 1960 and London, Frieda has been born and “The Colossus” just published. Sylvia has the humiliation of being unrecognised at her own launch party and a critic suggesting she’s in competition with Ted (she never was). She scours the newspapers for reviews, finally finding one by Alan Alvarez. Ted tries to reassure her it is a good review, but can’t help her with her disappointment. Suddenly Sylvia and Ted are showing the Weevils around their flat as they are in the process of moving to Devon. The Weevils are invited down for a weekend. The odd thing about the scenes in London is that baby Frieda is always seen with Sylvia and Sylvia is bottle-feeding her. Sylvia breastfed Frieda (and her second child, Nick, until her milk dried up) and Ted was a relatively hands-on father. He adored his daughter and played with her and read nursery rhymes and poems.

The film’s Court Green is dismal, the scenery is drab browns and greys, the exterior shows damp countryside. Yet Sylvia painted furniture white and opened up Court Green to light. The Weevils visit, there’s a walk in the countryside and dinner. Sylvia resents this elegant, glamorous presence. The resentment is recognisable and understandable to any new mother: exhaustion from night feeds and disturbed sleep, the constant changing of plans to fit a feeding schedule and that post-natal frumpiness – Sylvia described herself as “cow-heavy” – don’t leave anyone feeling or looking their best. Alone with Ted in the kitchen she accuses him of an affair. Blaming tiredness, she asks the Weevils to leave in the morning, “If you had two small children, you’d know how it feels.” Of course, the childless couple don’t and David is baffled by Sylvia’s behaviour. The Weevils leave. Ted leaves for London – the film doesn’t clarify he’s actually going to record a programme for the BBC. This time the film and biography agree. Sylvia did suspect Ted and Assia Weevil of an affair before they were aware their attraction was anything more than flirting. On Ted’s return from his recording, Sylvia asks him to leave, after he discovers she’d burnt his manuscripts.

The glaring omission from this scene is Aurelia. At the time Aurelia was staying with Ted and Sylvia. Aurelia let it be known she wasn’t going to interfere, that Ted and Sylvia had to sort things out. Yet she didn’t. She urged her daughter to divorce Ted and return to America. Sylvia hadn’t appreciated that in playing the role of deserted wife, she’d created an opening for her mother to ask her back to America. Sylvia knew this would be disastrous: that being a continent apart enabled her to keep her mother at arm’s length and escape the claustrophobic relationship the two had. Aurelia clearly saw the chance to get her daughter back. It is strange that Sylvia and Aurelia’s contacts in America urged Sylvia to divorce Ted. They had all taken Sylvia’s side of the story at face value and accepted it. Not one of them asked if Ted had a story, let alone what his version of events was. This is telling: clearly Aurelia was interfering. Her absence in the film here is unjustified.

The next scene is a failure too. Ted has left and Sylvia is shown putting Nick and Frieda in the car and driving down to the beach. It’s winter so the beach is wet, grey and misty. Sylvia stops the car and gets out, walking out so she’s paddling in the sea looking out. Worse, the windscreen wipers on the car are still operating, suggesting that this Sylvia had deliberately left her children in a car with the engine running. This is totally out of character. A shout from Frieda distracts Sylvia and she returns to the car. Again we have yet another scene foreshadowing her death.

Suddenly Sylvia’s in Court Green writing poems in tears, bizarrely. At the time, Sylvia primarily wrote her poems between 4 – 6 am, working and editing through until lunch. She wrote the poems “in a fever” (Sylvia’s words in a letter to Ruth Fainlight) and was clearly tipping towards hypomania, only her grounding in a firm routine enabled her to keep control and overcome her insomnia. She was buzzing with energy, writing and making plans to return to London for the winter and then back to Court Green in the Spring, already suggesting Ruth Fainlight and her family stay. Then the film jumps to a private reading of “Daddy” to Alan Alvarez in London. Gwyneth Paltrow’s reading is too polite to compare with Sylvia’s actual reading, but this is a minor blemish. She’s planning to move back to London.

London is covered in a chocolate-box snow storm – not severe enough to suggest that pipes froze and traffic ground to a halt or the sheer effort involved in bundling up two pre-school age children to walk to the phone box. Sylvia’s new flat hadn’t had the phone installed and it wasn’t installed while she was there. Ted visits to see the children and attempts reconciliation. Sylvia won’t have him back until he leaves Assia for good. The film shows her writing “The Moon and the Yew Tree” which was actually a suggested creative writing exercise from Ted while they were still in Devon. It yielded three poems (“The Moon and the Yew Tree”, “Little Fugue” and “Grosse Fugue”) and an essay (on the differences between prose and poetry).

Alvarez is a useful condensation of several characters and in the film acts as a go-between for Ted and Sylvia. Alvarez sees Ted’s despair and visits Sylvia for dinner, where she’s wearing pearl earrings just as she was when she first met Ted. Concluding Ted wasn’t going to leave Assia, Sylvia begins trying out different roles and trying to find a new life for herself. She tells Alvarez she’s thinking of taking a lover. He reads this as a pass at him, tells her she’s a great poet but that she shouldn’t throw Ted away over an affair. This was advice passed on via different characters and Sylvia vacillated between divorcing Ted and starting a new life whilst also hoping for reconciliation. She wasn’t scared of single motherhood and knew she could work to support herself, but something held her back. She appeared to be numbed into indecision.

There’s a tearful evening with Professor Thomas who rented the flat downstairs from Sylvia. What the film doesn’t explain is that she was upset over a review of her novel “The Bell Jar” appearing in “The Observer” next to one of Ted’s poems. Not knowing that prompt, makes a conversation with a stranger she only knows in passing about “conjuring up” Assia because she most feared losing Ted and her worry she’ll lose her babies too, rather dramatic. Although it is biographical.

Next morning, Sylvia makes the walk to the phone box with no coat or children. She phones a friend who can’t have her to stay and then phones Doctor Horder (she was actually in regular contact with Doctor Horder who was trying to find a hospital bed for her). Suddenly she’s back in the flat counting out pills but putting them back. We get the hint already: stop foreshadowing.

Setting out wine for two and dressing up in a cocktail dress, she opens the door to Ted who tells her she looks amazing. She tells him she wants to see him, denying she’s taking pills and denying the pass at Alvarez. They make love. She talks of going back to Court Green as a family and implores Ted to leave “her” (i.e. Assia). Ted tells her Assia is pregnant so can’t be left. Sylvia is left in shock as Ted leaves. This scene is out of character for Ted. Assia was pregnant and Sylvia did find out, but it wasn’t from Ted (who might not have been completely sure the baby was his; the film doesn’t focus on Assia’s backstory or the affair so here is not the space to discuss it). If Ted had told Sylvia, he wouldn’t have left her on her own. He knew she was vulnerable and still cared. (In reality, Sylvia did dress up and go out to meet someone on that night, but no one’s been able to establish who as Sylvia’s journal from the period is missing.) The scene is probably to illustrate that both clearly still had feelings for each other, but that throwaway “I can’t. She’s pregnant” from Ted completely spoils the effect and the tone of the scene changes from chance of reconciliation to the relationship being completely over and Sylvia’s hopes dashed.

Left alone, Sylvia dresses and goes down to see Professor Thomas, apparently to buy to stamps but actually to tell him a nurse is coming to help with the children at nine in the morning (it’s now around midnight). This is important as she wanted to make sure Professor Thomas would answer the front door and let the nurse into the block of flats. After hovering in the hallway, Sylvia returns to her own flat. She leaves bread and milk for the children and tapes over the kitchen door. The film cuts to the next scene where the nurse and a neighbour break in, rescue the children and an ambulance is called for Sylvia’s body.

The final scene, wonderfully controlled by Daniel Craig, has a despairing Ted Hughes look down at Sylvia’s desk and reach out to touch the manuscript of “Ariel”. He’s a huge shame he doesn’t pick it up and read one of the poems. Daniel Craig is certainly capable of doing a poem justice. It would also have reminded the film’s audience about the poetry.

It’s a huge shame then that the film relies on the over-simplistic conclusion she died because she couldn’t live without Ted Hughes. By cutting Aurelia out from a key scene and throwing in continual foreshadowings, “Sylvia” is reduced to a tragic love story of a tragic woman. But Sylvia was intelligent, independent, determined to earn a living from writing (she wasn’t going to be Ted’s housewife) and absolutely passionate about poetry.

“Sylvia” has its strengths:-

• It tells the basic story reasonably accurately
• The scene where Sylvia is reading Chaucer as Ted punts them along the Cam is a very good illustration of their early relationship.
• Ted mostly keeps in character (except for the scene where he tells Sylvia Assia is pregnant)
• The poetry works, except where “The Moon and the Yew Tree” is used out of sequence for the purposes of the plot.
• Using Alvarez’s character as representing conversations and advice given by several different friends works.
• The final scene where Ted discovers the “Ariel” manuscript.

It also has weaknesses:-

• The bizarre beach scene where Sylvia is completely of character and leaves her two children in the car
• The failure to explore the relationship between Sylvia and Aurelia
• The constant foreshadowing. Sylvia never lived in the shadow of suicide.
• Making Sylvia depressed when she was writing the poems in “Ariel”
• The failure to draw parallels between the crawlspace incident and her final attempt at suicide
• The reduction of key scenes to what happened rather than exploring why.

I set out four main concerns before watching the film. This is how “Sylvia” measured up:-

1. The limitations of the medium of film itself – “Sylvia” successfully acknowledged and worked around these
2. The main character was recognisably Sylvia Plath – she was at the beginning, but the scenes at Court Green slipped out of character although back in London she was back to being recognisable
3. It had to be about the poetry – reasonably so, the film did focus on poetry at the beginning of Ted and Sylvia’s relationship but let the poetry drift out of focus towards the end, which is where reading one of the poems from “Ariel” would have helped.
4. Her life was not foreshadowed by her death – failed.

Ultimately then, it wasn’t a bad film, but it’s not one I can recommend.

Why Poetry Headlines Do Not Translate into Poet’s Earnings

Good to see poetry in the headlines again: Derek Walcott was awarded this year’s T S Eliot Prize and for the second year running the overall Costa Book Award went to poetry, this year to Jo Shapcott’s “Of Mutability” and last year to Christopher Reid.  Whilst Derek Walcott is recognised in his native St Lucia in street names and the national Nobel Day in recognition of his being awarded the Nobel Prize, both Jo Shapcott and Christopher Reid can walk British streets without the fear of being recognised.

Despite poetry’s apparent popularity, it doesn’t sell.  Even a prize-winning poetry collection will still sell in the region of 1% of the sales of a comparable, literary novel. 

Poets have to do the performance circuit, take up teaching poetry or become writers in residence if they want to earn money from poetry.  Poets won’t make money from selling books.

Why has poetry become so devalued?

Poetry in School

Most people are introduced to poetry in school, where generally a poem is presented as an esoteric piece of work.  A poem becomes seen as something to be worked out often interpreted by pupils as something only the academically inclined can do so poetry becomes too hard to read and thus irrelevant.  Poetry then is boring and difficult.  It’s rare a teacher will simply read a poem out loud so pupils can appreciate the rhythm and sound patterns and so understand that you don’t have to work out a poem to like it.

Occasional Poetry

Poetry is something read at weddings and funerals or turned to at times of strong emotions whether that be love or distress.  It’s not read daily like a novel or newspaper. 

Whilst initiatives such as Poems in the Underground go some way to countering this, they tend to be in specific localities or done as part of a literature festival.  So overall poetry is seen as something for special occasions.

Defining Poetry

Unlike a novel or an article, poetry is harder to define.  It’s like being in love, you know when you are, but trying to define love or how you know is very difficult.  Poetry is more than “not prose”, it incorporates rhythm, sound patterns, stress patterns, may (or may not) rhyme.  If prose is walking, poetry is dance.  Poetry takes its definition from what it is not rather than what it is.  The lack of clear, independent definition hinders attempts to describe it or share what it is that makes poetry special.

“It has to Rhyme”

It doesn’t.  Alongside a solid library of rhyming poetry sit Shakespeare’s blank verse and Milton’s “Paradise Lost”.  But it’s easier to say “poetry rhymes, prose doesn’t” than explain that each poem has its own internal structure that may be based around sense, rhythm, syllabics, internal rhyme, para- or part-rhyme or take a traditional form such as a sonnet or sestina. 

Poetry can knock people out of their comfort zones.  It can also look like chopped up prose.  But if a singer sang an instruction manual or a musician composed a piece that involved playing household items, no one would say “that’s not a song” or “that’s not music” so why is poetry not poetry?

Poetry is a Vocation

Like being a parent: utterly thankless, incredibly intense yet very rewarding, unless you actually want to get paid for it.  However, I chose to be a parent.  I didn’t choose to be a poet and surely the world’s moved on from expecting artists to starve in a garret?

It’s true that a prize-winning poetry collection only selling a fraction of the sales a literary novel can command doesn’t reflect on the artistic value of the poetry collection, but it also means the poet isn’t earning to pay bills or put food on the table.

Wannabe Poets Do Not Read Poetry

Real poets read poetry because they know that’s the main way of learning how to write it. 

Wannabe poets thrust their work at anyone they think will read it.  They show no interest in actually reading poetry because they are only interested in promoting their own work.  Ironically they are harming their own work.  Poetry publishers need readers to buy their publications and poetry magazines need subscribers.  By not buying poetry books and not subscribing to poetry magazines, wannabe poets are killing the markets for their work.

Reversing the trend won’t be easy and joining the teach, perform and do residencies circuit won’t be for every poet.  But as long as the status quo continues, poets will continue to struggle to earn anything from writing.

Bright Star – film review

Director Jane Campion, starring Abbie Cornish (Fanny Brawne), Ben Whishaw (John Keats)

“Bright Star”, with its focus on the relationship between poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, is a true, dramatic story.  The Romantic poet had just published his first collection to a mixed critical reaction and she was the eldest daughter from a respectable family trained in lively, light conversation and homemaking.  There was resistance to the match: his friends didn’t much like her, suspecting she’d force him back into an energy-sapping career in medicine and she was frequently reminded a penniless poet was not a good match. 

Ultimately their love was doomed as Keats became terminally ill and died at the age of 25, and, when your audience know the ending, it can be difficult to maintain dramatic tension and interest.  But that’s not the problem here.  There is no dramatic tension to maintain.  Fanny’s mother seems very sympathetic towards her daughter’s love for a poet who can never marry her.  The family friend’s warnings about Keats’ unsuitability carry all the weight of a mother asking a child to wear a sweater on an overcast day.  Similarly, when Keats asks his friends to let him see Fanny, it carries no urgency.  Fanny does suggest they become engaged so she can travel to Italy with him, but meekly accepts her mother’s refusal.  Whilst this is no place for melodrama, it’s also no place for a lack of urgency.

Visually “Bright Star” looks like a Jane Austen adaptation with darker sitting rooms and poetry in place of wit.  And the poetry is good.  It doesn’t sound forced and watching the characters recite poetry from memory looks and sounds natural.  No one falls into the trap of putting on a ‘poetic’ voice, usually the one that’s slower and more ponderous than normal speech.

Watch “Bright Star” for the poetry, but don’t expect more than a faithful re-telling of a well-worn story that curiously under-utilises the natural drama it has to draw on.  It’s gentle and Ben Whishaw did little but look wistful and weak.  Abbie Cornish though carried the film and made Fanny Brawne’s story compelling, giving her more to do than just sitting around languidly watching John Keats write poetry.

The Other Boleyn Girl – film review

Director Justin Chadwick, starring Scarlet Johansson (Mary Carey nee Boleyn), Natalie Portman (Anne Boleyn), Eric Bana (Henry VIII), Kirsten Scott Thomas (Lady Elizabeth Boleyn)

“The Other Boleyn Girl” is based on Philippa Gregory’s novel which starts when Catherine of Aragon has produced a stillborn son endangering both her marriage to Henry VIII and the English Royal lineage.  The Duke of Norfolk knows Henry VIII will seek consolation in a mistress and ensures his nieces, the Boleyn girls, are available to his political advantage.  He even stoops to marrying their brother George off to a potential rival to get her out of the way.  It’s the sweet, younger, married Mary who catches the king’s eye first until she lies-in and produces an illegitimate son, paving the way for the king’s attention to turn to Anne.  After all if one sister can produce a son, the other unmarried sister can produce an heir.  But for the problem that the king is still married.

The girls’ mother is drafted in as historian.  Dryly she observes that she can’t be happy with the advantage and wealth her girls have brought the family since she has a son who’s married to a girl he hates, one daughter whoring for the king and the other about to be banished to France.  Anne bounces back, naturally, having taken her mother’s advice about charming a man into believing her idea was his to heart.  Anne doesn’t see a problem with breaking with the Catholic Church and creating a Church of England with a powerful king at its head.

Here the film displays its weakness.  Henry VIII is shown as a charmless womaniser and playboy prepared to break with the Catholic Church for the sake of a woman.  The real Henry VIII was ambitious, strong-willed and intelligent.  Qualities that could equally apply to Anne Boleyn, who moves from being prepared to have an affair with the king for the political advantage and wealth that her family would gain if she can also marry at least a duke afterwards to realising she has the opportunity to be queen.  But ambition stills ill on the shoulders of a Tudor woman and secures her downfall and ultimately her life. 

See for the strong Boleyn women: Scarlet Johnsson, Natalie Portman and Kirsten Scott Thomas all lift their roles from the weight of history and create women you want to side with and see succeed.  But ignore the portrayal of Henry VIII: it’s not his film but he’s done a great disservice here.  His marriage to Anne, reputedly his favourite wife, produced one of England’s most successful monarchs: Elizabeth I, but you don’t get any sense of Henry’s huge regard and respect for Anne here.

The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker

Director Kathryn Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal, starring Jeremy Renner (William James), JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty)

The title credits roll leaving a quote “war is a drug” fading into a scene where a robot is laying a charge to create a controlled explosion of an improvised explosive device (IED) when it fails. The sergeant suits up and goes in, just getting to the kill zone when one of the company spot a civilian with a cell phone who can’t understand their shouts for him to drop it. It triggers the IED, and bomb disposal team have lost a sergeant.

His replacement is staff sergeant William James with a fondness for Ministry, particularly “Fear (Is Big Business)” and “Palestina”. Contrast the latter’s opening “Palestina was a very nice girl/ She liked to travel and sample the world…” with the second verse’s “Palestina told her family and friends/ She’d be back, to take her revenge/ Palestina made her mind up to die/ Palestina had a belt of death/ She had explosives strapped to her chest/ Palestina is a martyr now in the sky” and the way the chorus fits both Palestina and James’s lives “My life will be short and sweet.”

JT Sanborn’s first reaction is “He’s reckless”. Eldridge is inclined to agree. However, both have to work with him. On their first trip out together, James doesn’t bother sending in the robot first, but suits up. Finding Sanborn’s constant questioning irritating, James takes off his headphones and mike, so his concentration is solely focused on the IED, which he finds is connected to four more devices. Luckily he manages to isolate the charge so the task is reduced to wire cutting. The scene stretches credibility but sets up James as a risk-taker, Sanborn and Eldridge as resigned to working with him and implicates wider questions. The implication is James prefers to recon a suspect device himself rather than rely on a robot that can only see and report, not read a scene or establish the difference between a curious civilian and one who’s carrying a detonator.

A second incident sees the bomb disposal team turn up as an area is evacuated. A suspect device is in a car. James suits up and goes in whilst Sanborn and Eldridge are delegated to watch for snipers and potential remote detonators. Eldridge spies a civilian with a video camera and complains he doesn’t want to end up on You Tube. Sanborn sees three guys in a minaret apparently communicating with the cameraman. James has abandoned the suit so that he can climb in and out of the car and rip up the seat easier. The charge is found and IED isolated. Later that day a colonel asks James how many bombs he’s disarmed. James responds that he can’t remember but the colonel insists on an answer. Clearly thinking off the top of his head, James says “Eight hundred and seventy-three,” which would equate to three IEDs a day. That the colonel is amazed rather than incredulous non didactically illustrates the gap between those in command and those on the ground.

The rotation continues. Searching for an IED, the team find a hastily-left temporary camp and a dead boy left lying in blood-soaked clothes: the one gory scene in the film. Bigelow doesn’t shy away from death and injury but the focus is towards the people left behind, the people still fighting to survive today, whether civilian or soldier. Sanborn’s reaction is to get inexperienced Eldridge out but James hesitates as his instinct tells him there’s something the boy’s hiding. He’s proved right. That evening he phones his ex-wife who’s trying to put their toddler son to bed but can’t find anything to say.

But the team aren’t just about disposing of found unexploded devices but also investigating post-explosion. An apparent suicide bomb is detonated and the team are sent in to establish whether it was a suicide bomb or remotely detonated. Sanborn thinks the latter and recommends leaving it to the infantry to search for snipers. James decides it’s the former and commands them to carry out a brief search that almost results in Eldridge’s capture. Yet, in another incident James recognises that even he can’t detonate a bomb in time and clears the area before it explodes. So the recklessness is underlined by a self-preservation instinct.

At the end of the rotation, Sanborn reckons he’s done. Realistically the rotation is shown as a series of incidents with no story or narrative behind it. There’s no pattern behind where the devices are left. Some are clearly the product of organised groups attempting to terrorise people into fighting, others are left behind after an evacuation and seemingly forgotten, others are used by suicide bombers. This is a country where goat herders carry guns, young boys throw stones at American armoured vehicles and people are suspicious; perhaps damaged beyond rebuilding in any semblance of peace. Like a poem, the film focuses on one team of bomb disposal experts to tell a wider story.

James returns to his home, his ex-wife rescuing him in a supermarket by suggesting he come for dinner as he’s completely flummoxed by the choice of cereals. He casually mentions Iraq is short of bomb disposal experts. It’s no surprise when the next scene shows him returning to Iraq and suiting up before approaching another suspected IED, soundtracked by Ministry’s “Khyber Pass”, “Where’s Bin Laden/ Where’s Bin Laden/ He’s probably runnin’/ Probably hidin’/ Some say he’s livin’ at the Khyber Pass/ Others say he’s at the Bushes’ ranch.” The unspoken last word is that opening quote.

The Day the Earth Stood Still – movie review

Director Scott Derrickson, Keanu Reeves (Klaatu), Jennifer Connelly (Dr Helen Benson), Jaden Smith (Jacob Benson), Kathy Bates (US Defense Secretary Regina Jackson)

I’ve not seen the original so am taking this remake on its own merits.  The US military track a “natural object” heading towards earth, but it’s not following a meteor trajectory and is heading for Manhattan and therefore is not a natural object.  A group of scientists is gathered by the military, including astrobiologist Dr Helen Benson, to deal with the aftermath.  A giant sphere lands and is immediately surrounded by the military.  The scientists, in protective suits, approach, a being emerges and is shot by a trigger-happy soldier.  In hospital the being enters a nascent state and is reborn as human or something like it.  The US Defense Secretary wants the being sedated and transferred to a military unit so it can be interrogated.  The scientists don’t.  But the US Defense Secretary, knowing that military satellites were disabled so the sphere could land, knows the being is more intelligent than humans and whenever a more intelligent life form invades, the less intelligent residents tend to get annihilated.  Dr Helen Benson offers to sedate and accompany the being, however, swaps the sedation dose for a harmless saline.  The being, Klaatu, escapes, naturally having the advantage of a few special powers and joins up with Dr Helen Benson who thinks she’s helping especially when Klaatu claims to be saving the earth, failing to realise he means the planet, not the people on it.  It’s then a race for Dr Helen Benson and stepson Jacob to persuade Klaatu to stop the destruction of the human race.

Others have accused Keanu Reeves of woodenness but they’ve fallen for the cliché.  Klaatu is necessarily dispassionate: he’s observing a race that’s about to be obliterated to save the planet.  He can’t afford to connect.  But he discovers he likes Bach, so there’s room for manoeuvre, right?  Jennifer Connelly does well initially to move from bafflement to scientific curiosity but then seems stuck.  Klaatu notices a change in Dr Helen Benson but that change isn’t obvious to the audience.  Jaden Smith starts out as a typically annoying child thwarting his stepmother’s efforts, but then we see he’s still grieving for his late father and doesn’t see things the way she does.  The change Klaatu notices comes when Jacob accepts his father’s death and finally sees his stepmother as his adult protector and stops being annoying.  Kathy Bates deserves a meatier role then being forced to follow orders she doesn’t agree with.  The special effects are well done too: from the scale of the spheres to the detail of the swarms. 

But the film’s weakness lies in its pedestrian pace.  It feels like a series of scenes that hasn’t quite cohered into a whole.  It lacks a sense of danger.  Even though we see cities evacuating – large scale tailbacks of cars, not individual families packing and leaving – and we know Klaatu could stop the destruction, there’s no sense of foreboding.  Just a sense of the inevitable.  The ending peters out as if the director decided “Hey, we better stop here.”  An average film that could have been better, but that’s not the fault of the actors.

Street Kings

Director David Ayer, starring Keanu Reeves (Detective Tom Ludlow), Forest Whittaker (Captain Jack Wander), Hugh Laurie (Captain James Briggs), Terry Crews (Detective Terrance Washington).

Tom Ludlow is a rule-bending cop who nonetheless gets results because he kids himself he’s past caring and regularly tops himself up with vodka. His wife died after a brain haemorrhage but was in another man’s bed at the time. Ludlow only has a job because his captain’s prepared to keep the line and defines the truth as how you look at it. Familiar territory to James Ellroy, who co-wrote the script. His mark is also all over the staccato pace and macho dialogue that’s spat rather than said.

Ludlow’s ex-partner, Detective Washington, has reported him to Internal Affairs. Following Washington into a store, Ludlow becomes involved in a shoot out with two local thugs. The thugs are identified as Fremont and Coates but drugs were found in Washington’s car, implying he was selling on drugs taken as evidence. Off-duty Ludlow finds the bodies of Fremont and Coates, the state of the bodies mean they were clearly murdered long before Detective Washington was fatally shot. His captain, Wander, urges Ludlow to “turn the page and close the book” but Ludlow’s girlfriend says he shouldn’t turn his back on Washington. Giving a man who believes he has nothing to lose a sense of purpose is dangerous if you want to keep the status quo. Doesn’t take Ludlow long to work out he’s a pawn, but the question is whose and will it corrupt him in the process?

Keanu Reeves is credible as a grieving man fighting a losing battle with the chaos around him who knows he can’t trust anyone. Forest Whitaker as the politically ambitious captain, who regards knowing the dirt on everyone including his own unit as an insurance policy, is manic, slightly over-played now and then. Hugh Laurie reprises House albeit less grumpily but it’s a way of signalling to a British audience that he’s serious here. Terry Crews’ Washington is well-judged, a man who thought that the means didn’t matter if the end result was desirable but becomes sickened by the stench of corruption and coverts to an evangelist for Internal Affairs and at the same time can’t understand why his fellow cops don’t follow him.

The pace is intense. The action nonstop. And it stays that way as the plot twists and turns through the multi-ethnic mayhem and macho angst. It questions whether when you’re dealing with corruption and law-breaking on a daily basis don’t you become tainted too? Where corruption is rife, who’s the good guy? And just how wide a line separates police from criminal? Where are the women? Washington’s widow believes he was a good man but is packing for a new life elsewhere. Ludlow’s girlfriend is a slightly-drawn character who chides him for only seeing her when he gets shot. No surprise she’s also a nurse and hence knows her role in his life only too well. Frenetic but worth sticking with.

Control

Control

Director Anton Corbjn, starring Sam Riley (Ian Curtis) and Samantha Morton (Deborah Curtis)

I’d put off watching (and reviewing) this movie because I was wary of how a familiar story would be told and whether I’d recognise the characters portrayed on screen.  I never met Joy Division but have read Deborah Curtis’s “Touching from a Distance” on which the film was based.  I needn’t have worried.

A film fills a finite time: it cannot portray every single event in 23 years. What it can do is capture and convey aspects of the subject: pictures that may have to bend small truths to tell a greater one.  “Control”, atmospherically shot in monochrome, starts with school boy Ian dating Deborah and joining Warsaw, a band in search of a singer.  It ends with his death.  It’s not a cheerful story, although there is humour on the way.  Ian Curtis’s black humour isn’t captured here: Anton Corbjn prefers a moody, brooding Curtis.  Manager Rob Gretton (played by Toby Kebbell) is used as light relief.

Sam Riley catches Curtis’s persona well – the on-stage jerks and twitches, his confusion developing into despair as he sinks into inertia.  Curtis didn’t know he was epileptic until he had a grand mal attack after a gig.  One of the side-effects of the medication he was on to control his seizures was mental confusion.  Sam Riley creates that both believably, with empathy and without self-pity. 

Samantha Morton is the Deborah of “Touching from a Distance”.  Her consistent support and love for Ian are shown.  Ian couldn’t cope with a day job and playing gigs at night so Deborah took on a job so Ian could stop working.  Deborah accepted she would effectively be a single parent to their daughter Natalie as Ian toured with the band while she was left at home.  The film touches on that too: how she as a wife was excluded from gigs and from being with the band because it was thought she would be detrimental to the band’s image.  She turns up at one gig whilst heavily pregnant and even her husband asks if she should be there “in her condition”.  The question isn’t directly asked, but if Deborah had been allowed on tour, would Ian have had an affair with Belgian fanzine writing, Annik?  Ian develops two lives, a home life with Deborah and Natalie and a touring life with lover Annik.  He oscillates between the two women.  He drops out of a tour, too confused to continue.

There’s a dichotomy at the heart of every suicide.  It’s both a selfless act and a selfish one.  The suicide thinks he’s ridding others of a burden, yet those left behind have lost a loved one.  Deborah screams.  Annik collapses.  The film’s closing shot focuses on a crematorium chimney: tall, clothed in grey, jerking out smoke against clouds.

Naturally, the soundtrack’s brilliant.  The film seeks to tell its story, but not tell viewers how to think.  Ian may have behaved immaturely, but he was only 23.  If you don’t know his story, “Control” is a good starting point.  But don’t forget to check out the music.

“The Dark Knight” – Movie Review

Directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Christian Bale (Batman/Bruce Wayne), Heath Ledger (Joker), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Rachel Dawes), Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent/Two Face), Michael Caine (Alfred)

 

Dark indeed, Gotham is in the grip of the mob, Gordon knows his own police officers are corrupt, Batman’s inspired bat-suited vigilantes and now there’s a Joker in the pack.

Joker was always Batman’s nemesis. Joker never had a plan but was an intelligent opportunist who aimed to cause mayhem. He didn’t want money or power so couldn’t be corrected. The only option was to dump him in the Arkham Asylum until his next escape. Practically the opposite of Batman who never had a plan but was an intelligent opportunist intent on cleaning up Gotham. He didn’t want money or power so couldn’t be corrupted. Batman feared Joker the most because he was the only criminal who made Batman question what he was doing, whether he was helping or hindering Gotham’s efforts to clean up.

Hence much being made of Harvey Dent, the new DA, being Gotham’s White Knight. A man Gotham could really believe in. A man who didn’t hide behind a mask, but was highly visible, his face all over news broadcasts and papers. Aaron Eckhart balances the surface, cocky, ambitious lawyer and the deeper desire to make Gotham a place where love can flourish, where he and Rachel can create a family like the Gordons.

It’s Gordon (promoted during the film to Commissioner) who gets to explain that Gotham gets the hero it deserves. Christian Bale captures Batman’s duality: the millionaire playboy and noctural crime-fighter; the outlaw who upholds the law. An Academy Award nomination for Heath Ledger may in part be motivated by sympathy, but it shouldn’t detract from a fine-judged performance. Heath Ledger’s Joker is no cartoon buffoon, but carries a dark intelligence, the instinct for self-preservation and the inability to take responsibility for everything he does. He points out to Harvey Dent that he was in prison when Rachel was captured so it’s not his fault (although it was his plan). Joker blames Batman for making him who he is and argues the deaths he causes are Batman’s fault (akin to a bomber arguing deaths were the fault of the police for failing to decode the bomb’s location and disarm it in time).

It is a violent film and the violence is mainly hidden by explosions, but not a gory one. Joker does carry a knife and does menace people with it. He always did: guns are too quick and don’t give him time to explain how he got his scars that make him look as if he’s always smiling. And it’s never the same story twice. Joker’s hollow laugh is the theme of “The Dark Knight”. Worth watching, but it’s not a children’s film. It was rated PG-13 in the US, but a 12A here when a 12 would have made more sense.

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1408

The Lake House

1408

Director Mikael Håfström, John Cusack (Mike Enslin), Mary McCormack (Lily Enslin), Samuel L Jackson (Gerald Olin, hotel manager).  Rating: US PG-13 / UK 15

Mike Enslin told his wife he was “goin’ out for some cigarettes”. He didn’t come back. Instead he gave up smoking and embarked on a book, “Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Hotel Rooms”, beginning each night by placing an unlit cigarette in the ashtray before rendering another dull night in sparklingly cynical prose. So a hotel room that’s seen 56 paranormally-induced deaths since 1912 – excluding deaths from natural causes, ie strokes and heart attacks – sounds like an ideal final chapter.

So far John Cusack plays to type, selfish, wisecracking loser, but then the alarm clock radio bursts into The Carpenters’ “We’ve only just begun” and starts counting down from 60 minutes. “No guest lasts more than an hour,” Mike Enslin helpfully repeats the hotel manager’s warning. The tension racks up as escape routes are closed off and we’re left with the claustrophobic room of Mike Enslin’s headspace. If you prefer blood and gore, wait for Rob Zombie’s remake of “Hallowe’en”. If you like being scared, check into room 1408. John Cusack makes it watchable as he moves from cynicism, being startled, scared, grief-stricken to almost relief as the hour counts down towards its close (of course there’s a twist, but I’m giving it away). The horrors aren’t random. Mike Enslin thoughtfully packs a night-vision Luma-lite which reveals blood-splatters from previous guests and we get to see how some of them used the “express check out service”. But we also learn why he left his wife. Anyone familiar with Stephen King’s work may guess the ending, but John Cusack makes you root for him as 1408 imposes its final choice.

The tension does dissipate as Mikael Håfström takes us out of the room on a red herring, conveniently signalled by the colour red. But John Cusack, who once commented that a good film stays with him “like a fever dream for a long time afterwards”, would be justified in feeling that fever dream. A welcome addition to the horror oeuvre.