We watched the movie, Atonement, two or three years ago, but I'd never read the book. I thought the movie was very well done, and its surprise ending came as quite a shock. Don't read this next bit if you haven't seen the movie or read the book: it'll spoil it. But it turns out that the book we've been reading is, to all intents and purposes, the creation of one of the characters within the story; at the end she not only reveals this but also tells us how she changed the events to make them more palatable to the reader, and also to atone for her behaviour as a 13-year-old, when she all but destroyed the lives of her sister and her sister's lover.
While we were in Auckland, I discovered the book of Atonement on our friend's shelf, and began to read it, bringing it home with me to finish. Knowing how the story played out and how it ended perhaps spoiled it to a degree for me, but the book was still well worth reading. Ian McEwan writes so wonderfully throughout that you turn page after page even after the main story has ended - about two-thirds of the way through - and the three kind of follow-up episodes take place. Structurally, you might say that the first two-thirds of the book is strongly plotted and the other three sections are quite discursive, although the last section ties up some loose ends. The long sequence when Robbie is heading towards Dunkirk with two other soldiers is gripping only because of the detail; there's little forward movement, in a sense. Briony's story of being a probationer-nurse is equally enthralling, but again, until the very end, doesn't move things forward much, except to give us a hint that what we're reading may be not quite what we think it is. Briony gets the last word, in the last section, where she reveals what the book has been about. By this time a number of the characters have died (either of old age, or accident) and the party for Briony's birthday includes the long-lost play that she wrote as a child, and which was to have been performed on the fateful day that takes up so much of the first part of the book.
The first part of the book is impressionistic, full of wonderful portrayed detail, superbly delineated characterisations, and much more. Yet in spite of its impressionistic feel, this is where the nitty-gritty of the novel takes place. There is much more grit and graphic detail in section two and three, but in the end they don't seem to add much to the story, although they create a dark and fearsome world where people are dying horrible deaths as a result of the War. It's interesting that though the Dunkirk sequence was given quite a bit of room in the movie, Briony's time as a trainee nurse was reduced considerably, and the last sequence, in which - as an old woman - she reveals what truly went on, is given only a few minutes of screen time, but more than enough to bring the movie to a satisfactory conclusion. Dramatically, the movie makes a very good fist of the book. Its only indulgence is the long tracking shot of the beach near Dunkirk, an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, but not actually relevant to the story.
I've never read any of McEwan before, and since this book is touted as his masterpiece, I'm not sure what I'd read else that wouldn't come across as a lesser book. No doubt there are excellent things in his other books...time will tell.
Showing posts with label party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label party. Show all posts
Friday, September 06, 2013
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Special weekend
We have all of our grandchildren here at the moment, because my daughter and her family, who live in ChCh, are down for the weekend. It's also the birthday of one of the my grandsons - he's nine tomorrow - so we had a party for him this afternoon. We realised during it that it's the first time all of our grandchildren have actually been together (it's also the first time my daughter's man has been here for about six years). On the last occasion when there was this big a collection of grandchildren, about three years ago, one of them hadn't been born.
So the house has been full all weekend, with aunts and uncles reacquainting themselves with various nephews and nieces, and with party food everywhere, until no one feels like eating anything anymore. We had part of the birthday party at the Dunedin North Intermediate swimming pool - it was just our family and a few of my grandson's friends. Not only don't we feel like eating any more, we're all wiped out from the swim, especially those of us who don't go in the pool very often.
So there's a lot of ongoing cleaning-up, as you can imagine; the fabric tablecloths don't get more than one use before they're in the wash, for instance.
But families are great.
So the house has been full all weekend, with aunts and uncles reacquainting themselves with various nephews and nieces, and with party food everywhere, until no one feels like eating anything anymore. We had part of the birthday party at the Dunedin North Intermediate swimming pool - it was just our family and a few of my grandson's friends. Not only don't we feel like eating any more, we're all wiped out from the swim, especially those of us who don't go in the pool very often.
So there's a lot of ongoing cleaning-up, as you can imagine; the fabric tablecloths don't get more than one use before they're in the wash, for instance.
But families are great.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
La Dolce VIta
After watching the possibly-pseud, Babel, a couple of nights ago, seeing La Dolce Vita again after more than fifty years brought on similar misgivings. Is it really a classic? Does it say anything at all, apart from condemning paparazzi? Is there actually any acting in it, or were ninety percent of the cast merely playing themselves?
When I first watched it, in the enormous St James theatre here in Dunedin, the place was packed. A typical Saturday night out for most of the people in the audience. By the time the movie finished, the place was half empty. Fellini had managed to alienate most of his audience.
Nearly fifty years on, the film is highly regarded by anyone who writes about it, and Fellini’s name has entered the film history books as being one of the great film directors. There’s no doubt he was that. Quite apart from La Dolce Vita, he made increasingly detailed and visually-stunning movies that kept on hammering away at certain themes, particularly the loss of self in an existential society.
The films also became increasingly long: La Dolce Vita itself finally reaches its last scenes after some 160 minutes, and the rather overblown Satyricon, while only 128 minutes, seems endless.
So what are the plusses?
LDV boasts superb cinematography, with wonderful use of the wide screen, and a black and white view of the world that is a feast for the eye.
In spite of my remarks above about the acting, there are any number of fine performances in the film: Marcello Mastroianni holds it all together, while playing a character who’s losing his soul; Anouk Aimee is Maddalena, promiscuous to the core because she doesn’t know how else to live her life; Yvonne Furneaux is Emma, Marcello’s long-suffering girlfriend, who first appears just after having tried to kill herself because Marcello continually neglects her in favour of more seductive and powerful women; Alain Cuny is the world-weary philosopher who proves to have no inner life after all; Anita Ekberg plays herself pretty much, but does it wonderfully. There are hundreds of others, some of them given moments of high comedy, some given moments of drama, some playing people full of tosh, some playing people spouting arty nonsense, some playing dilettantes, some playing people whose lives consist of nothing but endless, tedious parties, where happiness is almost completely absent. And there’s the not-to-be-forgotten Annibale Ninchi, who plays Marcello’s father, seeming at first to be more virtuous than his son, but proving to be just as empty.
There is the directing. The details are endless: so many things thrown into the mix that it’s impossible to pick up all the clues as to what’s happening. The extraordinary moments: the famous Trevi fountain scene (or Ekberg’s calling to the wolves just before this); the procession of aristocrats first looking for a ghost and then walking in the dawn (‘I’ve never seen the dawn before’) like a procession of ghosts themselves; the trumpet-playing clown, Polidor, who calls a host of balloons to follow him, after playing a typically Felliniesque piece of melancholy (compare the trumpet playing in La Strada, for instance). And on and on. But beyond this is the putting together of a dozen or so sequences which are each as extraordinary as the other.
The script. Such an open-ended script as this can barely exist. Fellini prompts us to think in certain directions, but continually throws us off-course. He lets us empathise with Marcello one moment, and then loathe him the next. We are dropped into emotional relationships but given only the minimum of clues. We are handed hundreds of sharply-drawn characters, and left to wonder at who these people really are. (Only a handful of characters appear in more than one sequence.) And always, always, we’re asking ourselves: Why? Why does Marcello commit himself to this lifestyle? Why do so many of the people hate life? Why do the paparazzi invade people’s privacy with such disdain? Why do at least two of the main characters wear sunglasses at night? What is the anger underneath Marcello’s handsome exterior? How does he manage to include himself in so many different circles?
The cons. The film is too long. The final party scene, in which Marcello has apparently reached his nadir, adds little to the film, and merely makes us loathe him all the more. The sequence before this, with the aristocrats, comes at a point when the audience has been saturated with people. And though it includes an important scene, it seems to me to wander off course towards the end.
Still, if those were the only quibbles, the film would still remain an extraordinary achievement. As a work of art it has so many layers most viewers would never get to the bottom of them. As a work of filmmaking, it is superior still, even fifty years after it was made, to many other films that attempt something similar. And curiously, in spite of its age, it doesn’t appear dated. Apart from the odd piece of women’s fashion, and the styles of the cars, little has changed.
When I first watched it, in the enormous St James theatre here in Dunedin, the place was packed. A typical Saturday night out for most of the people in the audience. By the time the movie finished, the place was half empty. Fellini had managed to alienate most of his audience.
Nearly fifty years on, the film is highly regarded by anyone who writes about it, and Fellini’s name has entered the film history books as being one of the great film directors. There’s no doubt he was that. Quite apart from La Dolce Vita, he made increasingly detailed and visually-stunning movies that kept on hammering away at certain themes, particularly the loss of self in an existential society.
The films also became increasingly long: La Dolce Vita itself finally reaches its last scenes after some 160 minutes, and the rather overblown Satyricon, while only 128 minutes, seems endless.
So what are the plusses?
LDV boasts superb cinematography, with wonderful use of the wide screen, and a black and white view of the world that is a feast for the eye.
In spite of my remarks above about the acting, there are any number of fine performances in the film: Marcello Mastroianni holds it all together, while playing a character who’s losing his soul; Anouk Aimee is Maddalena, promiscuous to the core because she doesn’t know how else to live her life; Yvonne Furneaux is Emma, Marcello’s long-suffering girlfriend, who first appears just after having tried to kill herself because Marcello continually neglects her in favour of more seductive and powerful women; Alain Cuny is the world-weary philosopher who proves to have no inner life after all; Anita Ekberg plays herself pretty much, but does it wonderfully. There are hundreds of others, some of them given moments of high comedy, some given moments of drama, some playing people full of tosh, some playing people spouting arty nonsense, some playing dilettantes, some playing people whose lives consist of nothing but endless, tedious parties, where happiness is almost completely absent. And there’s the not-to-be-forgotten Annibale Ninchi, who plays Marcello’s father, seeming at first to be more virtuous than his son, but proving to be just as empty.
There is the directing. The details are endless: so many things thrown into the mix that it’s impossible to pick up all the clues as to what’s happening. The extraordinary moments: the famous Trevi fountain scene (or Ekberg’s calling to the wolves just before this); the procession of aristocrats first looking for a ghost and then walking in the dawn (‘I’ve never seen the dawn before’) like a procession of ghosts themselves; the trumpet-playing clown, Polidor, who calls a host of balloons to follow him, after playing a typically Felliniesque piece of melancholy (compare the trumpet playing in La Strada, for instance). And on and on. But beyond this is the putting together of a dozen or so sequences which are each as extraordinary as the other.
The script. Such an open-ended script as this can barely exist. Fellini prompts us to think in certain directions, but continually throws us off-course. He lets us empathise with Marcello one moment, and then loathe him the next. We are dropped into emotional relationships but given only the minimum of clues. We are handed hundreds of sharply-drawn characters, and left to wonder at who these people really are. (Only a handful of characters appear in more than one sequence.) And always, always, we’re asking ourselves: Why? Why does Marcello commit himself to this lifestyle? Why do so many of the people hate life? Why do the paparazzi invade people’s privacy with such disdain? Why do at least two of the main characters wear sunglasses at night? What is the anger underneath Marcello’s handsome exterior? How does he manage to include himself in so many different circles?
The cons. The film is too long. The final party scene, in which Marcello has apparently reached his nadir, adds little to the film, and merely makes us loathe him all the more. The sequence before this, with the aristocrats, comes at a point when the audience has been saturated with people. And though it includes an important scene, it seems to me to wander off course towards the end.
Still, if those were the only quibbles, the film would still remain an extraordinary achievement. As a work of art it has so many layers most viewers would never get to the bottom of them. As a work of filmmaking, it is superior still, even fifty years after it was made, to many other films that attempt something similar. And curiously, in spite of its age, it doesn’t appear dated. Apart from the odd piece of women’s fashion, and the styles of the cars, little has changed.
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