You Can't Take It With You

Last night I watched - for the first time, I think - the 1938 movie, You Can't Take It With You. I've had a DVD of it for some time, but apparently have never got round to viewing it! Though it's based on the stage play by George Kaufman and Moss Hart, it substantially changes a number of things, drops some characters, adds others, and in general makes a much more successful fist of things than if it had stuck to the layout of the original play.

A good deal of the original script survives, especially in terms of the main characters, but the snobbish and extremely wealthy Kirbys are given a much greater amount of screen time than they get on stage, and this adds strongly to the contrast between them and the eccentric Vanderhofs. In this version, Mr Kirby, a ruthless businessman, is about to take over entire blocks of the city in order to build a massive munitions factory.  In the process, a whole community will be torn apart. The only thing standing in his way is Mr Vanderhof, who refuses to sell his house - it's right in the middle of the proposed development. Apart from the romance between Kirby's son (James Stewart at his gawky best) and Vanderhof's granddaughter (Jean Arthur, not as dizzy as in some of her comedies) the film focuses on the contrast between Kirby and Vanderhof's philosophies of life: the latter is content to live with what he has, and to enjoy life; the former can only see life in terms of making money, and lots of it, yet he enjoys it not at all, and is told at one point he has stomach ulcers - though he claims it's merely indigestion.

The eccentric Vanderhof family look a little unlikely these days, and the idea of them just surviving on next to nothing, and welcoming others into their home to do the same, was probably somewhat improbable even when the film was made. However the point of their eccentricity is that they're not driven by ambition, or money, or any of the other things that give people emotional disease. Furthermore, in the film at least, they express a certain kind of Christian ease with the world, and it's notable that people flock around them (Vanderhof himself in particular) because there is a kind of charisma about them. Vanderhof even walks (or rather limps - he's sprained his foot) into a busy office and persuades an unhappy worker to give up his job and do what he really enjoys doing - making crazy toys.

Mr and Mrs Kirby live the life of wealth - he is full of greed and ambition and ruthlessness; his wife is a snob who's only hobby is spiritualism. This 'hobby' is trounced soundly by one of the Vanderhofs at a later stage of the movie as being nonsense.

It would be interesting to know how much input director Frank Capra had into the script. Though it's credited to Robert Riskin (who collaborated on several Capra movies), it seems as if Capra may have had a great deal to do with the structuring and characterization.  The film is full of typical Capra touches and scenes, the sorts of things that couldn't have been added at the last minute.  These include the hectic night court debacle with four attorneys turning up to defend the Kirbys (who've been arrested along with all the Vanderhofs), a host of reporters getting wind of the story, a crowd of the Vanderhofs' friends and neighbours - who at one point pass the hat around raucously to fund the Vanderhofs' fine - and the arguments and interactions between all the main characters. It's the kind of thing Capra revelled in, and did very well.  He seemed very capable of directing crowd scenes in which every person visible has a part to play, rather than just being in the background, and of bringing chaos to the screen without losing his audience.

The film is probably more Christian in tone than the play. Twice Vanderhof prays a grace before a meal, and on both occasions (addressing God as, 'Well, Sir') his prayer is simple and humble, showing a willingness to go along with the Lord's plans rather than his own. The parable of the wise man who built on a rock, and his opposite, the foolish man who built on sand, is brought to mind frequently, even though it's never overtly stated. There's a sense that everything happens according to a plan rather than randomly in spite of the chaos of the household, and there's a wonderful ease amongst the characters who live in the house - even though some of the things they do are basically pointless. Vanderhof's daughter (Spring Byington) spends her time typing plays - because a typewriter turned up one day.  Her own daughter, played by Ann Miller, spends her time dancing - yet she's not very good at it, and never will be. Her husband enjoys printing things, some of which are misinterpreted as revolutionary - he also plays the marimba, accompanying his wife at the drop of a hat. Byington's husband, and the iceman who arrived one day to deliver ice, and never went away again, spend their time in the basement making fireworks for the sheer pleasure of it. Two black servants seem as relaxed around the place as anyone. Though they're still servants, they have as much honour as anyone else.

Vanderhof is played by Lionel Barrymore, that bastion of many movies of the period, and member of a well-known theatrical family.  He was only sixty at the time - Samuel S Hinds, who plays his son-in-law, was two or three years older than him. Edward Arnold (who once supposedly said, in regard to not losing weight, "The bigger I got, the better character roles I received") is Mr Kirby, and he brings a great subtlety to the role, which may well have been expanded to fit his talents.  Incidentally, the theatrical poster pictured above must rank as one of the worst in terms of disfiguring the actors' faces. Most of them are unrecognizable.

Passing by and Time

James Nesbitt is a fine actor who doesn't always get parts that give him enough to get his teeth into.  Furthermore, he's an actor who can show vulnerability without it seeming in the least bit hammy.  We caught up with a TV movie the other night called Passer By (a somewhat unusual 'spelling' of this common phrase - usually it's hyphenated if it's not treated as a single word).  Nesbitt plays a man who seems to have it altogether, but when one night coming home on a suburban train he's forced to make a decision as to whether to help a girl who's likely to be sexually assaulted if he leaves the train, he still decides to get off at his normal stop, suggesting she pull the emergency cord if there's further trouble.  Once off the train, he comes to the place where he can make an emergency call himself, but still fails to speak into it.  The consequences for the next year of his life, and for his family, are traumatic, as he's more and more pushed into having to face his cowardice and his unwillingness to get involved.

It's a play that hits home to all of us: how far are we willing to go to help a stranger in distress, someone who means nothing to us in terms of relationship, and whose only connection with us is their common humanity?  Nesbitt's character is given grace in more ways than one, as it turns out: from his wife (who's a good deal wiser than him, but who hasn't personally had to face the crisis), from his 14-year-old son, who's having trouble himself with bullies at school, and from the police.  The young woman who's attacked, of course, has to live with the ongoing trauma, and decides to repress it to a great extent, and comes to despise Nisbett's character.  The story could have ended far more tragically than it does; however without any great tweaking of the characters, it manages to offer a satisfactory and hopeful ending,   Nesbitt's wife in the film is played by Siobhan Finneran, who's perhaps now more famous as the sharp-tongued personal maid, Sarah O'Brien, in Downton Abbey.  Here she shows a much softer side, though it's combined with considerable strength.  Nesbitt's troubled son is superbly played by Ben Smith, who was 15 at the time, and already had considerable experience in television (he'd first appeared when he was four.)  His part certainly needed an experienced actor, since it combines violence and vulnerability in fairly equal measure.

On a different note, we watched In Time, last night.   This is set in some future time, though it doesn't appear to be too far away.  At this point everyone is genetically engineered to stop aging at 25, and then given only one more year to live.  By swapping and buying 'time' they can achieve longer life spans (the first female 25-year-old we meet is actually 50), and of course, those with enough capital in 'time' are effectively aeons old.  There's a difficulty with having all that time available: this form of immortality can become increasingly tedious, but it's also dangerous, as those with greater amounts of time are at greater risk from those who want to steal their 'time' from them.  Time can be transferred from one person to another, like a kind of debit/credit system, or can be bought from places that charge increasingly large amounts of interest.  It doesn't pay to think too much about how this system works; during the course of the film it makes sense enough for the viewer to go along with it.

The film stars Justin Timberlake (as a young man from the wrong side of the tracks - the 'ghetto') and Amanda Seyfried as the daughter of one of the most wealthy men in the country (she lives in 'New Greenwich').  Through various circumstances they meet, and wind up on the run - from the Timekeepers.  These are a kind of police unit that aims to keep some sort of balance in the society, ensuring the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor (the latter often only having the means to accumulate one extra day, or less, at a time). 

The story behind the film has been done innumerable times before, but the twist in having 'time' as something that can be bought and sold adds an interesting and novel approach.  The cast of mostly mid-twenties actors is excellent, though I'm not sure that Justin Timberlake is quite your action hero.  He pulls it off, and adds some warmth and humanity to a character who could have been nothing but macho. Seyfried is a nice match for him, and the two become a kind of Robin Hood duo in due course.  At the end of the movie we see them continuing on their goal of robbing the rich to give to the poor; given the world they live in, it may be the only way the film can end, but it seemed just a little less than satisfactory.

The world they inhabit also seems a little constricted: there are lots of empty streets, and in the ghetto everything visible has been reduced to blandness: there are no shops, apart from pawn shops, so it's hard to work out how anyone manages to eat or clothe themselves. There's no entertainment, apart from one or two streetwalkers.  Even the Mission gives away only 'time' - no food or clothing or shelter.  When people do appear in the streets, it's as if they have nothing else to do all day.  Even in New Greenwich there's a shortage of bodies.  Perhaps this is intentional, part of the kind of world that we're experiencing.  It certainly feels a little odd.

The film is sharply directed (and written) by New Zealander Andrew Niccol, who leans towards stories in which the world isn't the way we normally experience it (The Truman Show, Gattaca).  A small-scale action movie, perhaps, but worth watching.

Sarah Grace - and a bit about my music

Via my old 'friend' Jurgen Wolff (in the mostly Internet sense - though I have actually met him), I came across a blog written by Sarah Grace.

Sarah writes longish posts (although I guess I should check out the length of some of mine) and talks a lot about the joys and woes of being a writer. She's also a Christian, and discusses that in some of her posts too.

The post that Jurgen pointed me to was 10 lessons I've learned from both running and writing. A neat post, full of good comparisons.

I began writing another piano piece during the Easter break. I'd begun two other pieces, one of which was going well and then fizzed; the second seemed a great idea when I improvised round the piano with the main idea in it, but somehow there seemed to be too many options when I came to write it, and at the moment it's just sitting going nowhere, with only a page of music.

The one that's nearly finished, however, took off from the start. I'd had this idea of naming the pieces with some reference to a famous composer: the first is called Someone's Knocking - is it Beethoven? The title only arrived after the piece was part way done. The second started out with Bach in mind from the beginning, and is called, Bach does the Housework.

The most recent one, however, missed out on having a composer in the title. I was working through it, going fairly well, and suddenly had a kind of moment when I thought, this has something to do with a cornet/trumpet player. Opted in the end for the cornet player, and so it's called, The Cornet Player goes on Holiday. Having that in mind gave me a real impetus to keep moving on it. I wanted to write something that was lighter in tone rather than heavy, and the holiday element kept me focused.

I'm not a composer who's good on structure, as I think I've mentioned before, and I'm better composing a piece that's four to six pages long than a symphony. (Much better, in fact - there ain't no Crowl symphonies.) With music I find that I just have to sit down and start and see what happens. The structure usually sorts itself out in the end, but composing is a bit of a journey for me. (Like writing, really, though I tend to see the overall structure of written things better than composed ones.) If the journey goes well, I'll finish a piece easily. If it doesn't seem to get out of the gates of the town, then it may stay there for a very long time.