Catching up on Classics

Just finished reading Treasure Island, for the first time ever. I knew the outline of the story, so I may have seen the Disney movie way back in the fifties (but don't really remember it) and I may have read a Classics Illustrated comic version of it when I was a child, but as for the book, I've never opened it before. The only reason I've read it now is that someone wrote about it in an article I read - an article I can't put my finger on again now - and it struck me that Treasure Island would do nicely as something to read, even more so as there was a free version of it on Kindle.

The book is surprisingly grim and violent. Deaths abound from beginning to end as the various pirates associated with the treasure are disposed of one by one by other pirates intent on being the last man standing, so it seems. It's much worse than one of those TV series in which a bunch of seemingly random people are killed off in order to make it more difficult for the detective to figure out whodunnit.

And even Jim Hawkins, the young hero (Stevenson isn't particular about his age, though he's often called a 'boy') kills at least one of the pirates. Hawkins tells most of the story, and this aspect of the book is very well done...until Stevenson, out of the blue, interrupts his narration with one by Doctor Livesey. Naughty Stevenson, I can hear all those contemporary writing gurus saying. It does come as a bit of a shock, and only lasts for a few chapters before Hawkins takes up the tale again. Was it necessary? I suppose so, since Livesey gives us information Jim can't possibly know.

Stevenson's writing is superbly stylish. There's a great deal of atmosphere, the discussions of ships' tackle is convincing, and the Island is vividly drawn. The characters are nicely delineated, especially the more well-to-do ones such as Squire Trelawney and the Doctor, and Captain Smollett. Long John Silver is of course a character who's larger than the book, almost, and some of the other pirates have their peculiarities both of mannerism and speech.

And the names are great: apart from those mentioned above, the names stick in the mind. In fact, as each one appeared, I thought, Yes, I remember this one. Remember it from what? Classics Illustrated? Blind Pew and Israel Hands and Ben Gun and the like.

Well, this year so far I've managed to catch up on The Three Musketeers as well as Treasure Island. I'm onto Peter Pan next, another one I've never read. Must be a year for classics...not necessarily illustrated.

Captain Phillips and City of Ghosts

Two movies - Captain Phillips and City of Ghosts - take us to foreign climes where unconventional things happen. In the first movie we know exactly what's going to happen because it's hinted at so strongly from the beginning that we'd have to be stupid not to read the signals. In the second movie, which begins in New York but soon after heads to Cambodia, we have almost no idea what's happening, what's happened, and what will happen. Eventually we get the picture, but it takes quite some time, and if it wasn't so well crafted and full of such eccentric characters, we might not hang around to find out. 

Captain Phillips is earnest, and super realistic. City of Ghosts takes place in a world where apparently only peculiar people live - with the exception of the main character (played by Matt Dillon, who also directed and co-wrote the film). Even his love interest is a strange woman who seems to have no life beyond the moment. 

Captain Phillips was intensely exciting, although much too long: we know from the beginning that Phillips, the captain of a container ship heading through pirate waters will be boarded by a most ambitious but tiny group of Somali pirates; there are only four of them and they argue with and scream at each other - and everyone else - a good deal. And we know that once he's taken prisoner by them - he's allowed to escape with some money onto a lifeboat - that he'll eventually get rescued. This is a film based on a true story, and Phillips survived. 

Yet somehow in the midst of all the tension the films' often quite dull; the crew of the container ship are played in a way that allows none of them to be individuals, and Tom Hanks is left to carry most of the movie on his own. Of course he can do this, but he has no one to play against before the Somalis arrive, and once they do it's all shouting and screaming and scrambling to get out of the way of bullets. It's perhaps indicative of the script that the opening scene, in which Hanks and his wife head to the airport for the umpteenth time so he can fly to the place where he'll board his ship, consists of a dialogue that is not only intentionally banal but oddly uninteresting. Hanks and Catherine Keener (who plays his wife) seem to be wondering what the heck they've got themselves into, script-wise.

City of Ghosts holds our attention as it wends its way through a very murky and surprisingly long opening stretch by providing us with a bunch of quality actors (including those playing very small parts) who bring individuality not just by having quirky roles to play but by being individuals themselves. (Of course the actors in Captain Phillips are different people; but they're not given anything to get their teeth into.) The cast of this film are such a varied bunch that you begin to wonder if Cambodia doesn't attract strange Europeans. They're like the actors who used to play in the old noir movies: such a movie might not be up to much itself but once you add in the likes of Peter Lorre and co, even in small roles, you have interest and intensity on the screen: those actors never failed to bring life to their parts, however well or badly written they were. 

The roles here aren't badly written at all: the actors might not always say much but we know that there's plenty of subtext, and we wait expectantly to find out what the heck they're on about. Matt Dillon plays a man with some considerable angst; it's an angst he can hide from the FBI, but once he gets to Cambodia, he starts to unravel in some degree. Nevertheless, unravelling isn't where he intends going, and he spends more of the movie ravelling up again than unravelling.

Stellan Skarsgård is a world-weary character, one of the henchmen of the elusive Marvin (played by James Caan with an awful confidence and suave evil), and he remains ambiguous from whoa to go. Whose side is he really on, and is he going to get his comeuppance or not? Should he get it, even? We sympathise with him; he's trapped in his own corrupt behaviour and can't find a moral way out again.

Gérard Depardieu is a fat, barkeeper-cum-hotelier who lies through his teeth with almost every sentence he utters, who keeps control of the crazies who come into his bar, and who carries a bambino of mixed parentage around with him much of the time. Depardieu is obviously enjoying himself in the role, though he's not as consistently at home in it as the other members of the cast are in theirs. 

At first it seems as though Dillon is merely filling up his screen with oddballs to make things quirky. But the oddballs are in part caused by the strange country that Cambodia is, and Dillon is intent on making us realise that Cambodia isn't the place for unwary tourists to go. One of the apparently drug-addicted archaeologists (I think that's what the group were) soon succumbs to the evil that's just under the surface because of his naivety and because of his assumption that Europeans/Americans can behave as they like. 

When the plot finally kicks in, about halfway through the movie, things both tighten up and also become a bit more conventional. But Dillon has a way of putting scenes together that eschews the usual. There's an element of Fellini in the way he peoples the film with the curious and misshapen, and perhaps another director would have concentrated on different kinds of theatrics. Nevertheless, the risks he takes in filming the story this way pays off. 

Dillon takes another risk, that of casting a real-life taxi-driver, Sereyvuth Kem, as the man who takes him everywhere in one of those pedicart taxis. Kem provides a wonderful gentleness and wisdom, a cleanliness and honesty in the midst of the city's widespread corruption. You can believe that this man would very likely do the good things he does in the movie. He's virtually the heart of the film.

 

Despicable, teeth, health

I went to the movies the other day with my daughter and her son. (Yup, my grandson - you're pretty sharp, aren't you?) The movie, for those who want to know, was Despicable Me, and while it took a little while to warm up, it got itself into a reasonable amusing state by the time it was finished. I think it's one of those movies you need to see again in order to catch up with all the little details that make it interesting.

Anyway I was chewing one of the lollies my daughter had handed over to me and suddenly bit on something that wasn't anything like the jelly texture I'd been throwing around in my mouth. Hmmm...a piece of tooth had broken off. It turned out to be mostly filling when I got it out in the light, and I thought, Okay, that means the dentist can probably just clean it up and cover it over.

Nope. One x-ray later, and the dentist is talking about removing it. Which meant taking casts of my teeth set-up so that they can add another false tooth onto the plate I already wear. At this rate there'll soon be nothing for the plate to hang onto.

Today I've been at home (still on holiday) plateless. Which means the pirate look (gap in the front teeth area) is very easy to display - and very ugly.

While I was on the plane coming home yesterday I finished Tim Parks non-fiction book, Teach Us To Sit Still. I'm not sure where I first came across this - think it might have been advertised on the Book Depository site (did you know that books and magazines are the second most ordered things on the Internet, as far as New Zealanders go? I'm glad I'm not in the book trade anymore.)

Anyway, I'll do a longer review of the book in due course. Suffice to say, it's very well written, full of interesting corners, and metaphors and dreams, but most of all, it presents a picture of a man torn between his two selves (he explains that at one point). The result is that he's in constant pain in his abdominal area. I was interested initially because it was thought at first that he had prostate problems. Seemingly that wasn't the case, but nothing medical seemed to be able to pinpoint what his problem was. The book is about his discoveries in that regard, his 'cures' (not quite cures in the usual sense) and his insights into his own personality. Great reading.

Narnia again

Another long Narnia rehearsal today, with a lot of time at the end spent trying to get the movements of the ship right. Because we change the audience’s point of view of the ship from scene to scene, it has to be moved around the stage. At the moment it’s only the actors doing this, although in due course hopefully there’ll also be some stage hands.
There are a couple of issues: remembering which way it has to be turned, and what has to be moved out of the way, for one; and getting all the right bits and pieces picked up or shifted out of the way for another.
There are some twenty or more people involved at any time, some of whom have got to get to another part of the ship and some of whom have to move things. All in all it’s taking quite a bit of co-ordination. Without this complication, we’d probably have more time to rehearse everything else! However, it’s an essential part of the play, and has to be worked out thoroughly.
We’ve just about covered all the play – I think there’s only one or two small scenes right at the end that haven’t actually had any rehearsal time. But since they only involve the main characters rather than the people who play pirates, sailors, dufflepuds and ‘crowd’, it should be a bit easier to get them sorted in the next rehearsal. Once they’re done, we should be able to concentrate on getting everything really tight and tidy. We went back and did some of the earlier scenes again today, since they involved the ship, and it was a relief to find we still remembered what to do and say…!

Here be spoilers

I didn’t mention the marvellous Tom Hollander in POTC3 (he’s also in edition 2). He seems to suit historical parts very well, and has appeared in several costume dramas. Unfortunately he often gets to play rather unpleasant characters: he does a marvellously obnoxious Mr Collins in the latest version of Pride and Prejudice and the man at odds with all sorts of issues in Gosford Park. His height is always going to be an issue: leading men usually need to be a couple of inches taller (Tom Cruise isn't tall, but he’s built differently). But he has an intensity about him that conveys deep currents running beneath the smooth surface. The characters he’s played are usually not people you’d want to muck about with.
He’s given a rather ignominious end in POTC3 – of course he would have to come to some sort of nasty end, being the villain – but it’s an ending that’s almost beneath him. His sudden failure of confidence is out of character, and you get the feeling Hollander finds it a bit difficult to reconcile with the rest of his scenes, in which he’s always in control.
Still, I can understand that sudden failure of confidence: it’s something I’ve had to deal with on several occasions in my life, and even more particularly over the last months. It takes quite an effort to hoist yourself up out of loss of confidence, and some people just don’t make it, breaking down, or spiralling into depression.

POTC3

My wife and I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean Mark 3 the other night. I hadn’t been looking forward to the prospect of a three-hour stint in the theatre, but in fact, the three hours went by pretty quickly, certainly more quickly than the third in the Lord of the Rings series, which was at least twenty minutes too long.
That’s not to say that POTC3 couldn’t have been cut. There are some sequences – particularly the pitched battles – that go on to such a degree you’d have be a numbskull to think there was anyone left alive. But there always is. And several versions of Jack Sparrow on screen at once is almost several too many. It’s only the fact that Johnny Depp’s character is so perfectly realised, and so intrinsically hilarious, that saves these scenes. In fact, Depp saves quite a few scenes.
All the characters are back in full force, plus a few additional ones, such as Chow Yun-Fat as an Asian pirate lord. And the special effects are extraordinary, as befits a blockbuster of this ilk in this day and age. Once upon a time you could spot many special effects; these days it’s well nigh impossible.
Apparently there’s a scene after the credits – which we missed. No doubt we’ll catch up with it when the DVD comes out.
The story line is utterly complicated – almost as bad as the later Star Wars movies. It resolves itself in the end, to a degree, but you have to keep your wits about you to follow it first time round. And it has a nasty twist at the end which really took the edge off the romantic part of the story – for me. I won’t say what it is, as it would spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it.