The other day, while at work, I had a moment that still makes me feel all glowy with pleasure when I think about it.
Because I’m having so much trouble finding a more standard, formal position in a library or archive, I’m freelancing as an archivist, helping out with family papers, personal collections, etc., for private clients.
One of these jobs is at the client’s office, which is shared with another person. We’ll call my client A and the other person B.
A is rarely in the office when I am, but B comes in and out while taking care of other duties. This past week, B had a visit from a client, and after greeting him, B said “That’s A’s librarian working. Why don’t we meet out here?”
Librarian. It’s such a simple thing, really, but because I haven’t yet held a professional position in a library or archive (though I have had a few short-term positions for other institutions since graduating), I haven’t actually overheard myself described as a librarian or an archivist. B said it in passing, and after they left the room, I stood there, smiling, and just enjoying it for a few seconds.
And it’s at that point that I realized that the moment was even better. I had my headphones on, and the music on shuffle. The song that came on during all of this was a song by the Wailin’ Jennys called “Heaven When We’re Home.” It was one of those instances when the perfect song comes on. It’s about feeling like everything you’ve tried has been a dead end, and you can’t see into the future further than your own nose. It’s about feeling tired and worn down by the struggle, but continuing to struggle anyway because what else is there to do? You have to keep believing that you’ll find what you’re looking for so that you don’t get completely swallowed up by despair. And when you find it, you’ll be able to set down your burdens and rest for a while.
“Heaven When We’re Home”
Don’t know what time it is, I’ve been up for way too long and I’m too tired to sleep I call my mother on the phone, she wasn’t home, and now I’m wondering the street I’ve been a fool, I’ve been cruel to myself I’ve been hanging onto nothing when nothing could be worse than hanging on And something tells me there must be something better than all this
I’ve fallen many times in love and every time it’s been with the wrong man Still I’m out there living one day at a time and doing the best I can ‘Cuz we’ve all made mistakes that seem to lead us astray But every time they helped to get us where we are today And that’s a good a place as any and it’s probably where we’re best off anyway
It’s a long and rugged road and we don’t know where it’s headed But we know it’s going to get us where we’re going And when we find what we’re looking for we’ll drop these bags and search no more ‘Cuz it’s going to feel like heaven when we’re home It’s going to feel like heaven when we’re home
There’s no such thing as perfect, and if there is we’ll find it when we’re good and dead Trust me I’ve been looking but tonight I think I’ll go and take a bath instead And then maybe I’ll walk a while and feel the earth beneath me They say if you stop looking it doesn’t matter if you find it And who’s to say that even if I did it’s what I’m really looking for
It’s a long and rugged road and we don’t know where it’s headed But we know it’s going to get us where we’re going And when we find what we’re looking for we’ll drop these bags and search no more ‘Cuz it’s going to feel like heaven when we’re home It’s going to feel like heaven when we’re home
For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings; How some have been deposed; some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed; Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d; All murder’d: for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchize, be fear’d and kill with looks, Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life, Were brass impregnable, and humour’d thus Comes at the last and with a little pin Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
— Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2, William Shakespeare
George R. R. Martin’s sprawling fantasy epic A Game of Thrones is wildly popular – both the books and the critically-acclaimed television series. You really have to try to avoid having heard of one or the other, at least. Both have been recommended to me several times by many people. The theory is that I love fantasy literature (I did manage to get academic credit for studying The Lord of the Rings and related Tolkien works no less than three times) and I enjoy the kind of pseudo-feudal world Martin has created. Both are to some extent true, though I begin to suspect my preference is for specific authors’ creations rather than the genre as a whole.
I’ve tried watching the television show. It was well-done, I freely acknowledge that, and I greatly admire the performances of actors like Peter Dinklage and Emilia Clarke. But I felt no great drive to continue watching after the first episode or two. So I didn’t.
I’ve tried reading the book – in fact, I am about 100 pages into my fourth attempt to read the first book in the series. Each time I have gotten about 200-250 pages in and lost interest. Even though I know I’ll never have time to read all the books in the world, the fact that I have so little interest in reading a well-written (if ridiculously LONG) series of fantasy novels that are so popular kind of rankles. Perhaps this time I’ll finally give myself permission to stop trying.
Part of my disinterest is that most of my reading material is nonfiction, and has been for several years now. After all, why read Game of Thrones, featuring the struggles between the houses of Stark and Lannister (and others), when I can read about the REAL, historical game of thrones, featuring the struggles between the houses of York and Lancaster for the throne of England? Also, seriously, Mr. Martin, you didn’t even TRY to be subtle on that, did you?
For the past four nights I’ve watched one of each of the four plays of Shakespeare’s Henriad, the tetralogy that covers the last gasp of the Hundred Years’ War and the start of the Wars of the Roses in England in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. In 2012, the BBC created four films of the plays and released it for television under the title THE HOLLOW CROWN. From Richard II through Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2, and concluding with the brief flash of military glory that is Henry V, the series is breathtaking. Indeed, there were entire scenes during which I’m not sure if I was breathing.
The cast lineup is phenomenal – performances by Patrick Stewart, Julie Walters, David Suchet, Richard Griffiths, Clemence Poesy, Rory Kinnear, John Hurt, Geoffrey Palmer, Maxine Peake, James Purefoy, and many others are all wonderful. Jeremy Irons turns in a masterful performance as the aged and unwell Henry IV, burdened by the guilt of his usurpation years earlier. One of the things they did to make this such a personal, moving, gripping production was to continue the trajectory of the masters’ evolution in filmed Shakespeare. Laurence Olivier declaimed his speeches as though onstage in a very traditional kind of theater. Decades later comes Branagh, who speaks Shakespearean English as though it is his natural manner of speaking, but still the great powerful speeches are meant to rouse the troops, and they come smoothly, as if practiced. In THE HOLLOW CROWN, some speeches are done as voiceover, such as Henry V’s prayer before the beginning of the battle at Agincourt, or Falstaff’s speech about honor at the end of Henry IV, Part 1. The intention and effect is to seem not just like that’s how the actors normally speak, but as if they’re coming up with the lines on the spot. It is, for lack of a better word, vernacular in style.
In spite of the fact that Irons gets top-of-the-top billing, the three performances to watch for are Ben Whishaw as Richard II, Simon Russell Beale as John Falstaff, and Tom Hiddleston as Prince Hal/Henry V. Beale’s was recognized by the director of the two parts of Henry IV as one of the best, if not THE best, of the past century.
I’d never actually seen any of these plays all the way through, though I read Henry IV, Part 1 in college and have seen parts of Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V. My impression of Falstaff as a character was fat, drunk, comic relief. I hadn’t understood from my earlier reading that the man’s a weasel. He’s a lying, cheating, thieving coward. Literally. It is incredibly difficult to feel any kind of sympathy for him, and yet, at the end of Henry IV, Part 2 when he tries to rejoin the newly-crowned Henry V’s company only to be publicly, harshly repudiated, you do feel grieved for him. In Beale’s performance you see a man who is stunned as if struck a heavy blow. Falstaff suddenly looks old, scared, and confused. At first he is in denial, believing he’ll be sent for privately, but then he and his companions are all arrested. By the start of Henry V he’s a defeated man, and though he has no lines in the play, is said to have died of a broken heart.
Tom Hiddleston, known to many of my friends as Loki from THE AVENGERS charts the young prince’s transformation from what can only be described as a fifteenth-century frat-boy to the ideal medieval king – young, athletic, and militarily victorious. He looks the part, too. Instead of trying to look like the extant portraits of Henry V, which feature the frankly unflattering haircut reproduced by Branagh in his version, the film’s designers worked with what they have, which is a man who at times looks like energy personified and at other times looks as though he might have been carved from marble, so perfect are the angles in his face. His pale eyes laugh at times, look sad at others, and can blaze and pierce you right through the screen.
The winning performance, however, is Ben Whishaw, who dives headfirst into the complicated role of doomed king Richard II. Richard II is one of the more troubling medieval kings of England. He ascended the throne as a child, and dealt with the Peasant’s Revolt at something like age fourteen. And yet he was not hugely popular as an adult. He was considered extravagant, morally questionable, and in short, the barons did not entirely approve of him. Even Shakespeare is unable to make him all sympathetic or all wicked. This is no Richard III, in which you know who the bad guy is. Richard II is all shades of grey. In fact, it was originally titled “The Tragedy of King Richard II,” and he is indeed a tragic character. In one analysis I read, the author writes, “Pathetic and yet too self-conscious to be entirely tragic, sincere and yet engaged in acting his own sincerity, possessed of true feeling and elaborately artificial in expressing it, Richard is the distant predecessor of more than one hero of the mature tragedies, who suffer in acute self-consciousness and whose tragedy expresses itself in terms that clearly point to the presence of the weakness that has been, in part, its cause.”
Whishaw’s performance is redolent with the air of otherworldliness that you see in someone like Michael Jackson – he is always on stage, always acting a part, and not entirely on the same wavelength as other humans. And yet you sense that in spite of the magnified presentation, his feelings are real and deep. In the making-of featurette to Richard II, the actor and the director spoke of Richard’s sense of himself as an almost messianic figure, and they worked with that. The image of Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows also arises more than once, and the production does an admirable job of never quite straying into heavy-handed religious imagery. It’s there, it’s impossible to miss, but you don’t feel like it’s beaten into you.
This is an extraordinary set of films. I heartily recommend it. I suspect I will be returning to it to watch it many more times.
The film world lost one of the greats today. Peter O’Toole died quietly in a hospital at the age of 81. The online NPR report describes him as “a bit of a hellraiser” which is probably the nice way to put it. My mother described him as “living hard.” A comment I saw on the NPR report said he’s back with his fellow hellraisers – Richard Burton, Richard Harris, and Peter O’Toole are reunited now and it’s fun to think that they’re out there, somewhere, at a roaring great party celebrating their reunion.
Though O’Toole was one of the greats, he was also one of the great always-the-bridesmaid-never-the-bride of Academy Awards history. Always the nominee, but never the winner of that coveted statuette. In 2003, the Academy awarded him the Lifetime Achievement Award. The Academy showed its sense of humor by having the award presented to him by Meryl Streep, who holds the record for most Oscar nominations.
I’ve had the main theme from LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in my head since I saw the breaking news alert blowing up my social media feeds. That said, the man had an amazing career (and, to the end, one of the most fantastic pairs of blue eyes you’ll ever have the privilege of seeing). There’s the wickedly funny HOW TO STEAL A MILLION that places him as a cat burglar alongside Audrey Hepburn, and then there’s the emotional turmoil of BECKET and THE LION IN WINTER. He also clearly had fun in his recent turn as Pope Paul III in THE TUDORS. I admit, I try to forget that he was in CALIGULA (along with Helen Mirren, I might add). There’s MAN OF LA MANCHA, THE RULING CLASS, THE LAST EMPEROR, RATATOUILLE, and many, many others.
So pour yourself a glass of something fermented and enjoy a few videos I’ve found of one of the greatest actors in film history:
Best. Entrance. Ever.
apologies for the subtitles, but I wanted the whole clip.
I can’t explain why, but today as I was hanging my laundry on the line, this song popped into my head:
I haven’t thought about this song in ages! It used to be that I could do most of Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” by heart, and I still know most of the words to “On the Steps of the Palace” if I stop to think about it.
Just wanted to share a fun song performed by the lovely Kim Crosby, who originated the Cinderella role on Broadway back in the early 90s. I don’t have anything particularly insightful to say about it, just that it was always one of my favorites of the show and often gets overlooked in favor of more popular songs in “Into the Woods.” There’s the title song, of course, but more frequently I notice people breaking into impromptu performances of “Agony” (either rendition) or “Children Will Listen.”
SUCH a good show. Sondheim’s a genius, but we all knew that. If you haven’t seen “Into the Woods” go to netflix, your local library, or your local musical theater geek and ask to borrow their dvd of the performance starring Kim Crosby, Bernadette Peters, Joanna Gleason, Chip Zien, and Robert Westenburg. Do it because it’s awesome, and because the proposed 2014 film starring such big names as Johnny Depp, Christine Baranski, and Meryl Streep have a hell of a lot to live up to… though I will say the prospect of Jake Gyllenhaal and Chris Pine as the princes already makes me giggle with glee.
When I was little and people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I only ever had two responses. When I was very small, I said I wanted to be an artist. That ended when I discovered that I really don’t have any drawing talent. And yes, I know there are other kinds of artists. At age 6 that was pretty much a dealbreaker.
As I got older, I said I wanted to teach. The kind of teaching changed every few years. It’s only been in the past six years that I realized I said I wanted to teach for one reason: I’ve never been able to envision myself outside of school. Other kids said they wanted to be doctors, lawyers, athletes, writers, musicians… I simply found it impossible to imagine myself in a situation that didn’t involve education.
There have been times in the past year when I wondered if I went to library school for the same reason, that I just couldn’t imagine myself outside of school but since I don’t want to teach, the library is the logical choice. Maybe that’s true, but it’s also true that I have an aptitude for the work involved in the daily functions of an academic library or archives.
This year one thing has kept me determined to finish the MLIS degree. This project has continually reminded me that I’m good at this, and that I like it. The classes involved in a library degree may not always hold my attention, they may seem to have questionable relevance, or they may be based entirely on theoretical propositions. The practical, hands-on work, though. I’m good at that, and I like it, which is even better.
The project to which I refer started with a promotion on Twitter. Last summer, I emailed in time and won a pair of free tickets to a Chanticleer concert at Mission Santa Clara. I had to arrive early to pick them up from will call, and while waiting for the concert to begin, I was approached by someone who identified herself as Chanticleer’s new development director. In the course of the conversation, I asked jokingly if the group was looking for a librarian.
A few weeks later I got this email:
Greetings,
Our Development Director, [name redacted], mentioned that she met a “student archivist” at our Santa Clara concert who was interested in volunteering with us. Would this happen to be you?
If so I would love to talk with you!
You can imagine how excited I was at the chance to work directly for a choir organization I had worshiped from afar for so long!
I ended up as a designer of the Memory Lane exhibit at the 35th Anniversary Gala for Chanticleer, which took place last night. I wasn’t the sole designer – I’d say Joe, my primary contact at Chanticleer deserves a massive amount of the credit – but my part was not insignificant.
Of course there were frustrating times. I was working on this from a thousand miles away, so I had no access to the materials and anything I sent out went off into the blue yonder. And the project went through several iterations of scope, scale, and layout before we ended up with the final result.
But yesterday, putting everything together and up on the walls at the San Francisco Music Conservatory, I felt nothing but pride in the accomplishment. An idea I’d had in the summer turned out to be the primary focus for the exhibit, and the physical layout of that part was (almost) entirely done by me.
On one wall we posted a world map with dots stuck on all the places Chanticleer has toured, surrounded by magnetic poetry-style statistics (110 men, 3 women, 1 million records sold, etc.), and tour posters from around the world and through the years.
My idea, however, covered three walls. In previous anniversaries, Chanticleer has turned to the music critics and the regular audience members for testimonials. This time, I suggested, ask the singers. Get their stories, their memories, their favorite moments of chaos or perfection. Get their insight into what it means to be part of Chanticleer.
So that’s what we did. We ended up with about a dozen stories that encompassed a wonderful variety of eras and themes, from accidentally setting stage curtains on fire, to tour bus breakdowns, to those shimmering moments of musical perfection that reduce an audience to silent tears. And scattered among the stories I posted photographs at random, not labeled or captioned. I love the power that a simple photograph can have, and adding text to them seemed like it would diminish the effect. It was like a montage, mixing up the years and the groups, mixing the serious photos of performing, teaching, and rehearsing with less formal ones that show the close bonds between these talented men. One of my favorites is a recent photograph, a little blurry, from the last concert of a Christmas season. Clearly punchy with exhaustion and euphoria, a group of men cluster around a scrawny Christmas tree decorated with green room rubbish, like soda cans and M&M wrappers.
The concert portion of the evening ended with the current group inviting all alumni to the stage to join them in what has become a signature piece: Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria.” It wasn’t anywhere close to the full 110 Chanticleer singers over the years, but the swelled ranks maybe added up to 30 or 40 men.
As they sang, the delicate harmonies made more vibrant and clear by the added voices, I found myself remembering the months of research and work. I remembered lists of names, dates, and voice parts. I thought about the fat binders bulging with carefully labeled concert programs dating back to the late 1970s. I remembered the piles of unidentified, unsorted photographs and those silent, motionless faces captured on film.
It sounds like I’m romanticizing, but I’m really not. I sat there, listening to the music swell with longing and devotion, and in my mind names and images flicked past, almost too fast to see. And I admit that at the end of the piece my eyes were watery and my throat was tight.
A lot of people thanked me effusively for my work and what I helped to create last night, but I felt as though I ought to thank them. Chanticleer helped me hold onto the love of singing since I started high school, and in the past year they also helped me hold onto the reason for my current path.
I wish they had the funding to take on a full-time archivist. I feel like I could do some good there. Whether I ever return or not, though, they gave me a wonderful gift, and I’m sad that it’s over.
Interesting bit of trivia. Two supporting roles, one in each of these films, were played by actors who went on to create relatively high-profile characters in the science fiction television world. Alice Krige, who plays Sybil Gordon in CHARIOTS OF FIRE, created the role of the Borg Queen on STAR TREK: VOYAGER. ORDINARY PEOPLE has a small supporting role played by none other than Adam Baldwin, who was Jayne Cobb on FIREFLY. Anyways…
Ordinary People (Best Picture, 1980)
I’ve been dreading watching ORDINARY PEOPLE. The prospect of a tightly-wound emotional drama about a family dealing with the death of a child… well, it didn’t appeal. But I’m not sorry to have seen it.
Like many of the movies that have won the Academy Award for Best Picture, ORDINARY PEOPLE is not the kind of film that leaves you with warm fuzzy feelings of having spent a couple hours in pleasant entertainment. There’s something about it that grips, though, and it catches you up and draws you in. I suspect this is especially true of anyone in the audience who has dealt with the major thematic elements, either in themselves or in another person.
ORDINARY PEOPLE is, at heart, a story about dealing with emotion. The main character, Conrad, begins the film a month after leaving a psychiatric hospital he’d lived in for four months as a result of slitting his wrists. Before that, and only seen in flashback, is the boating accident involving both Conrad and his elder brother, Bucky. Conrad survived. Bucky didn’t, and Conrad blames himself. The parents have different approaches, too. The father, played by Donald Sutherland, devolves into a spiral of worrying about everything. He is the more sympathetic of the parents, for he is genuinely concerned about Conrad, almost to the point of hovering and being too encouraging about every small victory. The mother (Beth), played by Mary Tyler Moore in a departure from her best-known TV roles, retreats into a brittle cheer, chattering about inane nothings and refusing to either deal with emotions or make any special effort to help Conrad readjust to normal life. The more sensitive natures of the men in her family are an embarrassment to Beth.
Dealing with strong emotion is a challenge for the best of us, especially when it’s a negative emotion. Grief, guilt, and anger can be overwhelming and frightening. They have a way of becoming larger than ourselves and devouring us from within. In a piece of rather angsty teenage poetry, I once described grief as a “ravening monster.” I can chuckle at the memory of that thankfully-destroyed poem now, but I still think the description is apt. These emotions, if strong enough, have the power to destroy anything they touch. One of the most honest moments in ORDINARY PEOPLE is towards the end of the film, when Conrad is leaving a school swim meet, and gets in a brief fistfight with a former friend. Another friend follows Conrad to his car, gets into it, and tells Conrad that he misses Bucky too. He asks why Conrad is so determined to go through this alone. These strong negative emotions make us feel isolated, but also make us perversely insist on further isolation. We push people away, even when they’re offering to help us bear the load.
There’s a song that was featured on GREY’S ANATOMY’s musical episode called “How to Save a Life.” A recurring line, in that episode sung by a character going through the grieving process and finally realizing the damage she’s done to her surviving relationships, is “Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend somewhere along in the bitterness…”
ORDINARY PEOPLE doesn’t show that part of the story for Conrad, but there’s a taste of it in the disintegration of the parents’ marriage as expressed by Calvin, the father. Beth finds him weeping in the dark dining room, late at night, and is stunned when he explains that he was crying because he doesn’t know if he loves her anymore. He doesn’t know if she’s capable of love.
Conrad does seem to get better, but those of us who’ve gone through therapy know that one cathartic session does not a stable person make. He’s got a fight ahead of him, and so does Calvin, now seemingly separated from Beth. I can’t help but wonder if Conrad is able to repair some of those friendships lost in the bitterness of guilt, grief, and isolation. Even if he does, it’s never quite the same. Scars will remain.
Chariots of Fire (Best Picture, 1981)
CHARIOTS OF FIRE is one of those movies that has become so famous, so popular and well known that it is one of the most mockable in the world. The challenge, therefore (as with the GODFATHER films), is to try to shut out the way the film’s images, music, and themes have entered the vernacular.
CHARIOTS is massively inspirational, showing how faith and determination and conviction can help a person achieve his or her goals. It perfectly captures the spirit of sportsmanship that is what the Olympics are supposed to be about: athletes, the cream of the world’s crop, trying their hardest to outdo each other and outdo themselves, and rejoicing in each others’ successes.
One of my favorite characters is the fictional Lord Lindsay, created to replace a member of that Olympic team who declined to be included in the film. Lindsay is based loosely on Lord Burghley, but more than that he provides a Peter Wimsey-like note of goodnatured (if entitled) sunlight in the story. Indeed, the contrast of personalities is fascinating. Lindsay is all golden hair and loose-limbed readiness for fun. Montague is in the background, quietly observing and admiring, star-struck. Eric Liddell has a slightly dreamy quality to him, an otherworldly element that highlights his religious fervor. And Harold Abrahams is all dark intensity, driven to be the best to prove to all, including himself, that he can be both led to water and allowed to drink.
What else is there to say about this film? It’s been studied and admired and parodied endlessly. Critics remark on that famous musical theme, exclaiming over how the composer opted for a contemporary sound in his use of synthesizers and pianos, rather than a sweeping, period-appropriate orchestral score. They compare the events of the film to the real historical record of this British running team, pointing out what the film used and what it didn’t. I have nothing new to add except that this is a beautiful film with a relatively simple story, and it leaves me feeling uplifted and hopeful.
Perhaps to be iconic is to be mockable. It’s just nice when the mocking is good-natured.
Next Up: Gandhi (Best Picture, 1982) and Terms of Endearment (Best Picture, 1983)
I’ve had kind of a cruddy month so far on all levels – physically, mentally, academically… After I finished class today, and wrapped up a few loose academic ends, I declared the rest of the day and evening a no-homework zone. It’s been at least two weeks since I last took a chunk of time off from homework, job stuff, or job application stuff. I figure I’ve earned it. Weirdly, I’m having trouble with the “relaxing” concept.
In an attempt to remember how to relax, I started watching EUREKA. And I am enjoying it tremendously. I often find that my sense of humor is, shall we say, difficult to communicate. People find me funny, it seems, but usually it has something to do with my phraseology. Anyways. EUREKA is totally my style.
I’m about halfway through season 1, which only gives me a few episodes to go on, but it seems to me that EUREKA achieved what THE MIDDLEMAN tried to do. They’re both science fiction shows with an oddball sense of humor that relies on understatement, deadpan affect, and a willingness to accept the totally unlikely as the actual situation.
THE MIDDLEMAN was a single-season show on ABC Family that functioned on the proposition that comic book evil actually does exist, and is counteracted by an individual simply known as “The Middleman.” In the pilot episode, said Middleman, whose name we never learn (though we do know he was a Navy SEAL), recruits aspiring artist Wendy Watson as his assistant/apprentice/successor. Every episode deals with some supernatural/alien/bizarro situation, like an alien boy-band that feeds off of the screaming of teenage girls, or ventriloquist dummies of Vlad the Impaler and his witch-wife who come to life.
The thing that I love about this show is the understatement. The characters know that at some level their situations are both unlikely and exceedingly ridiculous, but also real threats in their world. Wendy in particular tends to react with a dry exasperation that’s just this side of an eye-roll.
EUREKA does something similar, and since they got six seasons instead of one truncated season, they clearly did it better. So far, there are fewer aliens and more mad scientists, but it’s the same principle. Exasperated sighing and eye-rolling, then getting on with whatever threat is currently on the table. It’s a balance of accepting the ridiculous and acknowledging that it is in fact ridiculous.
Okay, so it’s been almost two weeks since I watched these. Life got a bit complicated, what with heading back to school and all – I haven’t given up on the project; it’ll just go a bit slower while I’m in classes.
Gigi (Best Picture, 1958)
A lot of people I know find this musical a bit dated and even distasteful, thanks to its most famous song, “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” What a sad state our society has come to, that we have to read pedophilia into what is meant to be a simple, charming song about the endless game of romance at any age. There is no indication at all that the singer, an older gentleman (the incomparable and endlessly entertaining Maurice Chevalier) has any kind of inappropriate interest. Indeed, the song thanks heaven for little girls for without them “what would little boys do?” It’s FUNNY and CHARMING, people. Get your minds out of the gutter.
GIGI is based on a short story by french author Colette, and what is less clear from the movie than the story is that Gigi is being trained by her female relatives to be a high-class courtesan. Her great-aunt teaches her to move gracefully, dress elegantly, serve coffee and dine on expensive and exotic dishes correctly, and do all the little things that make a woman a charming companion. So yes, it may seem a little sexist on the surface. And no, I’m not going to try and get modern feminism out of it, but I think dismissing it as merely sexist and demeaning to women is oversimplifying the story.
A few years back, I read a monograph (Courtesans, by Katie Hickman) on a few of the most famous European courtesans of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. What becomes evident from a closer examination of the role of the courtesan is that these women were not puppets, and they can hardly be called exploited. They were highly educated, highly trained professionals, and men fell all over themselves to gain their favor. In the relationship, the woman had the lion’s share of the power. Granted, her status relied on walking a delicate high wire, balancing political power, societal views, finances, and of course her own personal appearance. The fall into prostitution was far too easy. The successful courtesans set fashions, hosted salons and patronized the arts and letters. Some even played a role in determining who rose to political power. Some of the most famous courtesans have names still recognized today – Nell Gwynn, Veronica Franco, Madame du Barry, and Theodora, who ended up as Empress of Byzantium. And then of course there are the fictional ones, like Inara Serra (FIREFLY), Satine (MOULIN ROUGE), and Chiyo Sakamoto (MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA).
But I digress. I happen to love GIGI – when I was little, it was one of the few movies we actually owned, so whenever I was sick enough to miss school it was one of the films I watched. Leslie Caron is adorable and elegant by turns, Hermione Gingold and Maurice Chevalier have one of the funniest scenes in musical history (“I Remember It Well”), and Louis Jourdan vacillates between wilting ennui and amused energy as Gigi’s friend and later suitor, Gaston. Put aside your modern ideas and suspicions and just enjoy it.
Ben-Hur (Best Picture, 1959)
I can’t describe myself as a big fan of Charleton Heston, but I acknowledge that his fame for certain roles is completely fair. His turn as Judah Ben-Hur is brilliant and carries what might otherwise have been a relentlessly saccharine film – or an unwieldy snoozefest. I’d also like to say that BEN-HUR has been remastered for Blu-Ray, and maaaaaan does it look fantastic. The rich color and picture clarity only go to assist the extraordinary sets and costumes, full of brilliant colors and subtle details.
I am not a Christian and I normally feel a little uncomfortable watching films with this kind of story, since the religious aspect of the story distracts me from becoming truly engrossed in the story as a whole. BEN-HUR balances the parts of its story well. It is easy to get lost in the film – it is an adventure film, it is a religious film, and it is a grand Hollywood epic, all at once. The editors did a remarkable job. For a four-hour film, it’s impressive how well it keeps moving, rarely slowing down enough to let the audience wonder how much longer there is to go.
To be perfectly honest, I was less invested in the aspect of the story involving Judah’s mother, sister, friend-turned-nemesis, etc. I was interested in Judah himself – his struggles with the physical hardships and multiple relocations of both geography and social status, but also his emotional journey, from calm contentment to rage and righteous vindictiveness, to faith, to sorrow at the death of Jesus. Heston is one of those actors of great physical intensity. His mere presence onscreen is mesmerizing, and he can communicate more with a glance or a single word than many can do with a speech. Blu-Ray clarity combines with 1950s color film to make his blue eyes practically glow.
It’s a film worth watching, whether or not you adhere to the faith it lauds. And I would encourage viewing it in its Blu-Ray format, on as big a screen as possible – like GONE WITH THE WIND, BEN-HUR is really meant for a theater screen.
Up Next: some thoughts on the 1950s, then The Apartment (Best Picture, 1960) and The West Side Story (Best Picture, 1961)