Picnic at Hanging Rock--the movie and the series

Picnic at Hanging Rock--the movie--came out in 1975 and was lauded as a great film. Indeed, its director, Peter Weir, of The Last Wave fame, went on to make some hugely popular movies, among them Witness, Master and Commander, Green Card, and The Truman Show. The Last Wave, with Richard Chamberlain, is a masterpiece of a film about a lawyer defending several Aboriginal men accused of murder, who falls under the spell of the Aboriginal culture; he begins to have premonitions about a last wave, which may or may not be a huge tidal wave or a tsunami. The film was released in 1977, two years after Picnic at Hanging Rock, which I never saw until recently. I watched it after I had seen the BBC television series of the same name (now available on the streaming channel Cirkus here in Norway). Although most reviewers and viewers preferred the film, I preferred the television series. 

I have not read the novel by Joan Lindsay on which both the film and series are based, but I plan on doing so. That said, I found the series to be quite good, and I liked it better than the film version, probably because it was longer and viewers could get better insights into the characters and what made them tick. Additionally, I had read movie reviews that kept mentioning how eerie the film was; I thought the series was far more so. It really got under my skin. I do agree with the naysayers that the series could probably have been shortened to four episodes instead of six, but regardless, it held my interest throughout.

I liked that series viewers learned a lot about the main characters--where they came from, their backstories. The series got the chance to really flesh out the characters. They took liberties with the actual story, I am sure of that. But it worked. I liked the dreamy atmosphere that hovered between the natural and the supernatural, I liked the flirtation with subtle horror and madness. Was satanism or witchcraft involved in the disappearance at Hanging Rock of four women from a Victorian era girl's school? Were there evil spirits there, or spirits protecting the rock against trespassers? Was there a time warp into which they slipped, never to return? Why did watches stop in the vicinity of the rock? Were they murdered by local men in the area, or did they commit suicide? Their bodies were never found. One of the women does return, but unfortunately, she cannot remember anything that happened, and that by itself unnerves most of the townspeople as well as the school staff. A run of bad luck ensues, and the wealthy parents whose daughters go to the school begin to withdraw them, one by one, which leads to a crisis for (and eventual suicide of) the headmistress Mrs. Appleyard (played by an excellent Natalie Dormer). 

There are many theories as to what could have happened to the girls. The film and the series tantalize us with possible answers, but never really make clear what actually did happen to them. Apparently that was the ending in Lindsay's book as well, although she purportedly wrote a a rather bizarre ending that never made it into the published book. The ending of the film and series give viewers some ideas of what probably happened to the missing girls, but it remains up to the viewers to intuit how large a role the atmosphere at the rock and legends surrounding the rock played. The series moved slowly in terms of building up to the reality of the horror that occurred; a creeping sense of creepiness as it were. I do not agree with the critics of the series that the focus was not on the picnic. It was, in every episode: it is the backdrop in every episode. The fact that the girls went missing affected just about everyone at the school, and each episode revealed that in one way or another. Bad fortune found a number of them. The music was a good accompaniment to the goings-on--eerie at times, dreamy at other times. 

I suggest watching the 1975 film first, and then the television series. The acting in both is very good, but I prefer the acting and cinematography of the television series, as well as the ever-present intense atmosphere of foreboding in the series, even in daylight. I did not get that same feeling from the movie.  

The International Review of Books' review of Survivable Losses

Survivable Losses is a newly-published collection of short stories on Amazon, that is well-worth checking out:   https://www.amazon.com/Survivable-Losses-Selected-Short-Stories-ebook/dp/B08MCRMYSR/ref=sr_1_12?dchild=1&qid=1605035612&refinements=p_27%3AStokes&s=digital-text&sr=1-12

The International Review of Books has written a timely and positive review of Survivable Losses that I wanted to share with you, and has awarded the book a Gold badge of achievement. 

Stokes left me with the uncanny feeling of looking deep into the character’s soul only to see my own reflection. The experience was like looking into a mirror, a mirror that, if I stood before it long enough, threatened to reveal things I hadn’t known were there. 

One is left with the sense of watching a mind travelling between planes of existence................

Stokes' work contains interesting and deep manifestations of the elements of the craft of writing: dimensional characters, a pleasing arc of tension, evocative language and thematic purpose.  

'A story is told as much by silence as by speech'

I saw the recent film ’Martha Marcy May Marlene’ last night, and was reminded of this quote by Susan Griffin, 'A story is told as much by silence as by speech'. My first response—yikes, what a movie. Creepy. Right from the start—an atmosphere of tension, dread, and foreboding. An atmosphere of intensity and tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. Probably one of the most intense films I’ve seen, definitely not for the weak of heart. And I mean it. I found myself having to breathe, because I kept holding my breath for much of the movie. The film is not overtly violent from the physical standpoint except for one scene where you can see the violence coming a mile away—the person happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, unfortunately. The other violent scene involves cats, but you don’t see the result of the violence. That scene also contains the implication of violence toward a human being, and that by itself is nerve-wracking. Even though it doesn’t occur, you know it’s likely to in the future. From the psychological perspective however, the film is a continual assault on your nerves and psyche. It is the story of a young woman who manages to leave her ‘family’, a collective of men and women who live together on a farm and sleep together at random. The family has cult overtones, and not surprisingly, once you get a glimpse of its leader, Patrick, you cannot help but think of Charles Manson and his family. What the film gives you is an insight into how such families function, and even how they came to be. Besides Martha’s story, there is one scene where one of the male family members drives home with a new female ‘recruit’ in his black SUV. It made me think of the film Silence of the Lambs, how the serial killer Buffalo Bill managed to lure women into his van and kidnap them. The promise of love, family and acceptance is the lure in this film—the family members are young men and women who have come from presumably dysfunctional families. But you never really know for sure, in the same way as you never find out much about Patrick’s earlier life. I kept remembering back to my own youth, and how the Moonies used to come onto my college campus to try and recruit us to join them. I remember one young woman who nearly succumbed to their propaganda and how I fought to keep her from joining them. She didn’t, luckily. But it’s possible to get fooled in other ways, not necessarily by a cult--but by a man who says he loves you, or a woman who says she is your friend, that you can trust her. We want to hear those things. ’Martha Marcy May Marlene' is a scary film, and more of a horror film than any horror film you’re likely to see. Because it involves real people, who abuse one another in the name of ‘love’, and who have lost all semblance of what it means to be living breathing emoting human beings. They have turned into automatons who obey their leader, who mostly does not punish them with physical violence except in one respect (the ritual for the new women who become a part of the family is that they ‘sleep’ with Patrick, but the reality is that he rapes them. This is all presented to the new recruits as a cleansing and a special night that they will never forget). Patrick manages to be a truly menacing presence in their lives. You know that he is capable of physical violence if triggered, and you’d rather not trigger him (psychological abuse).

Martha is mostly silent. She says very little, talks very little, offers few explanations for why she ‘disappeared’ off the face of the earth to live with her ‘boyfriend’ on a farm in the Catskills in New York State. She is mostly monosyllabic in her responses, and you know it is because she cannot begin to verbalize what she has been through. She is mostly in shock, and is trying to come to terms with what happened to her in the setting of her sister Lucy’s summer home on a lake in Connecticut. Lucy’s husband Ted has little patience with her, and the tension between Martha and Lucy and Martha and Ted is also nerve-wracking. You know something bad is bound to happen. I was glad to see that the director did not take the trite route of having Ted seduce Martha. There have been too many of those sorts of films and they most often don’t strike me as realistic. Lucy tries all sorts of ways to get Martha to open up about what happened to her and how she spent the last two years; she is overprotective and a bit controlling, but has a good heart and wants her sister to ‘get better’. Martha remains quiet and robotic. Her silence makes her powerful, even though she is not seeking that power. The natural silence of the rural settings in the film (the farm and the lake house in the woods) also lends to the tension and foreboding. Martha’s silence gives her a kind of (unwished for) control over her surroundings, but you know that she cannot control her former family. Patrick’s family is the wild card in her life—a menacing presence at all times, one that invades her dreams and her waking hours. Lucy and Ted merely dance around her, trying to integrate her into their lives as best they can. They fail. When they finally realize that she needs professional help, it really is too late. Without giving away the ending of the film, which I found rather abrupt, I can tell you that this is not a film with a happy ending, as ambiguous as it was. Elizabeth Olsen did a great job as Martha, ditto John Hawkes as Patrick, and Sarah Paulson and Hugh Dancy as Lucy and Ted, respectively. The movie's writer and director Sean Durkin has made an unsettling and uncomfortable film, one that you will not quickly forget.  

Woyzeck at the Norwegian Opera and Ballet

Last night my husband and I went to see the modern dance production of Woyzeck at the Norwegian Opera and Ballet. It was in fact the fourth performance of this modern dance piece; it premiered in Oslo during the last week of September. The story of Woyzeck, written originally as a play by Georg Büchner, has also been adapted as an opera and as a number of different films, but this was one of the few times it has been presented as a dance piece. It was created by the German choreographer Christian Spuck to music by Martin Donner, Philip Glass, Gyorgy Kurtag, and Alfred Schnittke. As fate would have it, Inger-Margrethe Lunde, the theater critic for Aftenposten (the Norwegian newspaper), did not like it. In fact, she strongly disliked it, going so far as to call it ‘bullshit’. I am attaching the link to her review (in Norwegian—it can be translated using Google Translate but you have to tolerate some weird translations here and there): http://oslopuls.aftenposten.no/kunst_scene/article605271.ece.  She headlined her review with the words “Embarrassing and disappointing”, followed by “Bullshit, I think, despite the frantic, endless standing ovation”. And the review gets worse from there, ending with the same-- “Bullshit, I think”…… I cannot remember ever reading a review of any production, dance or otherwise, quite like hers. When I read her review, I thought, yikes, just our luck; we have season tickets to the ballet, and Woyzeck was the first dance of the season for our subscription. I have to say I was dreading it, because there is nothing worse than sitting for two hours watching something that is boring. That has happened on occasion—that I have been bored by an opera, but I do manage to differentiate between my subjective feelings and my objective appraisal of the actual performance—were the singers good, were the sets attractive, and so on. I am not opposed to someone writing a negative review, but hers could have been more professionally-done. In any case, as luck would have it, we ended up not sharing Lunde’s opinion of Woyzeck. And in fact I have to wonder if we actually saw the same dance piece. I cannot understand what it was she did not like, and have to conclude that it was the theme of the story (the humiliation and cruelty that one man is subjected to that results in a tragic outcome) that bothered her. That I can understand—that it would have bothered her. But not that it would lead to her disliking the entire production or calling it bullshit. Because it wasn’t. I was actually quite moved by this dance production, especially by one of the final scenes where the low-ranking soldier Woyzeck dances with his girlfriend Marie who has been unfaithful to him; the dancer who played Woyzeck last night, Kaloyan Boyadjiev, was wonderfully expressive with his body and his arms, and really made you feel his humiliation, his pain and his desperation. His murder of Marie is the culmination of a long series of humiliations that he has been forced to endure because of his poverty; he is often humiliated by the army for which he does odd jobs and by the scientists who poke and probe him as part of the experiment that he is a part of. He endures all of these humiliations in order to earn some money, and when he comes home in the evening to Marie and their son, he is free and you see that in the way they dance with each other. They actually know some happiness and they seem to be in love. So that makes it all the more tragic and poignant at the end when he realizes he has lost her, lost the only thing that means anything to him.

Apart from what Lunde explained about the story of Woyzeck in her review (and I forgot the plot by the time we went to see it), I really did not know the story in detail nor what we were about to see when we walked into the theater. It was the same for my husband. During the dance, I had so many thoughts and feelings about what was transpiring on stage. Franz Kafka came to mind (as it did for my husband as well), as well as the brilliant English series, The Prisoner, with Patrick McGoohan (where the prisoner, a former spy, was just a number, surrounded by a nameless bureaucratic system of jailers all trying to probe him for information). The feeling of systematic cruelty, of a total lack of empathy, pervaded the piece. I found myself thinking about totalitarianism and communism and the loss of personal dignity and identity. So if a dance piece can make me feel all those things, as well as move me because of its poignancy, then for me it was something of value that I was privileged to experience. It is impossible to defend the man Woyzeck because he murdered Marie, but it is completely possible to understand what drove him to do that. I felt sorry for him in spite of his tragic choice. That is a testament to the quality of the dancing and the quality of the production. I’m proud to say that I disagree completely with Inger-Margrethe Lunde, and I truly hope, as my husband also commented, that her review did not discourage people from going to see the production. My guess is that it did, unfortunately. So perhaps she should take heed for the future and remember that the dancers have worked hard, likewise the choreographer. She should separate her personal feelings from an objective appraisal of the production. There do exist objective criteria for the evaluation of cultural events and creations. Perhaps she had a bad day going into the theater—car broke down, problems at work, or other irritations. Let’s hope she manages to write a better review next time. 

Two good sci-fi horror films--Alien and Pandorum

I keep promising myself that I won’t stay up late to watch sci-fi horror films on cable TV because they usually have a negative effect on my sleep. However, they’re not on all that often, so that when they do show up on cable, I’m tempted yet again to sit and watch them. I have been a sci-fi fan for years; the combination of sci-fi and horror started (for me) with the Alien films (four in all), all of which are excellent films due to tight plots and the terrific job that Sigourney Weaver did with her character Ripley in each of the films. And of course HR Giger, who crafted the Alien monster, did a fantastic job of creating one of the scariest non-humanoid creatures to ever inhabit a spaceship. The first Alien film (from 1979) mesmerized me. It managed to depict a claustrophobic, dark, scary and utterly mechanical/soul-less environment onboard the spaceship, which of course made the film very intense to watch. The scene in Alien where one of the crew goes in search of the missing cat in one of the more remote areas of the spaceship has to be one of the most nerve-wracking ever filmed. You know what’s coming, you just don’t know when and you’re not sure what the scene is going to look like. It delivers, as does the rest of the film. The other famous scene is one of the most revolting—suffice it to say that if you haven’t seen the film, you should be prepared for blood and a violent unusual alien birth. The Alien sequels also deliver, surprisingly enough, since sequels are usually never as good as the original film. This is not true of Alien 2, 3 or 4, which are stand-alone films and just as nerve-wracking to watch as the original, with the same measure of claustrophobia and terror.

I was reminded of Alien last night when I was watching Pandorum, a German-American sci-fi horror film from 2009 with Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster. Pandorum refers to the psychological condition of paranoia and hallucination that the astronauts experience due to their being in deep space. The film tells the story of the (remaining) astronauts who are on board a huge spaceship that is on a long journey to the planet Tanis, which they are to settle since Earth has been destroyed. All passengers on board are suspended in bio-chambers (pods) where they can sleep (a kind of dormance) for the long space journey. The spaceship also carries seeds and plants of all kinds that can be used in the creation of a new society on Tanis. But when the astronauts emerge from the pods they have problems remembering their mission, who they are, and what they are doing on board the ship, and they spend a good deal of time trying to figure out what is going on and what has happened to most of their fellow passengers who have disappeared. The film is pretty scary, with the same kind of claustrophobic intensity and paranoia that Alien has, but unlike Alien, its monsters are not aliens. Rather, they’re fast-moving strong humanoid-like monsters that were once human, but which mutated/evolved into monsters due to a combination of circumstances that the film explains nicely. They have been hunting and eating the passengers on board the spaceship that has become stranded on its way to Tanis. One of the major plot ideas of the film is that the remaining astronauts must repair the ship’s nuclear reactor before it shuts down and destroys the ship, and this quest puts them in constant danger as they must battle these creatures on their way to the reactor. You don’t find out until the end of the film what really happened to the spaceship or what has happened to the captain, which is good because the ending is definitely worth waiting for. Pandorum is a very good film on a par with Alien, and that’s saying a lot.

So I broke my promise to myself and watched Pandorum, which brought to mind Alien, and which led to my writing this post. I’m guessing that my life will be like this for a long time to come—loving and hating being scared at the same time and arguing with myself about whether or not I should watch these films. My husband doesn’t like these types of movies; he will always say how unrealistic they are. My father used to say the same thing. I know this is true, but there’s a part of my mind that’s willing to suspend reality so that I can enjoy such films. You either like sci-fi horror or you don’t. I guess I fall into the first category. I’ll write more about some of my favorite sci-fi films in future posts. 

The role of a lifetime

Yesterday I wrote a post about the definition of success, and then last night I went to see a movie that deals with the topic of success in a rather bizarre way--Black Swan, a film about what it takes to reach the top in the dance world. You might say that it is a film about what it takes to be the winner at all costs, but it is just as much about what happens to the losers in the competitive world of ballet. Mostly it is about the psychological disintegration of a talented but passionless young ballet dancer, Nina (played by Natalie Portman), who desperately wants the role of a lifetime—the coveted role of the White Swan/Black Swan in the new production of Swan Lake. She is a technically-perfect dancer who cannot seem to let go and give her role the passion it requires, whereas the woman whom she perceives as her rival, Lily (played by Mila Kunis), while not a technically-perfect dancer, is a passionate and free-spirited one. Lily is everything Nina is not; she is the ‘fantasy’ girl of teenage years, especially for the wall-flower types--cool, a party-girl, a flirt, and a seductress. She is unafraid of authority and of her peers. Nina is attracted to her and fantasizes about being with her. Nina on the other hand is virginal, repressed, afraid of her feelings, introverted, cowed, and immature, and of course she admires Lily’s free-spiritedness at the same time that she realizes that Lily is after ‘her’ role. The overwhelming pressure to succeed, as well as the perceived extreme competition coupled with Erica’s (Nina’s mother, played by Barbara Hershey) overbearing and controlling behavior toward her daughter, is too much for her and she ‘cracks’. The film’s portrayal of her mental disintegration borders on the grotesque—the obsession with her body, her scratching that leads to bloody wounds on her back, fingernails that need to be cut so that she doesn’t scratch herself, toenails that are cracked and bloody, and so on. When the former White Swan, Beth (played by Winona Ryder) is pushed out of her role due to her age, she deliberately walks out into the street and gets hit by a car. She ends up in the hospital with injured legs. Nina visits her, and while Beth is sleeping, Nina takes a look at the damage to her legs and recoils in horror. The film does a good job at showing just how dependent ballet dancers are on a functioning body—legs, arms, feet, hands, toes, etc. Without any one of them, a dancer cannot perform well. So the obsession with the body is understandable. But the film also has Nina pursued by a kind of evil ‘double’, which is a jolting experience at times when she appears (shades of The Grudge—also in the scene where Nina’s bones start to crack and she ends up deformed-looking). Again, I won’t spoil the film for you by giving away the different events or the ending. I will say that it is a good film, albeit a demanding one to watch. But I did not think it was a great film, and I am surprised that so many critics thought it was. It could have been a great film, but it was too disjointed in parts and it could not make up its mind whether it wanted to be a horror/thriller film or a dramatic film. It opted to be a bit of both and for me it didn’t quite do both well. I would have liked more focus on the relationship between ‘stage’ mother Erica (who was a former dancer who gave up dancing when she had her daughter) and Nina, because that to me was one of the most interesting relationships in the film. It was clear from the way Erica behaved that she was unsure about whether she wanted Nina to achieve success. It seemed as though she would have preferred that her daughter ‘failed’ like she had done. I would have liked a bit more insight into Beth’s life. How was it possible that a top dancer in a top dance company was so unaware that her years at the top were limited? How could she not have prepared for that eventuality? That seemed unrealistic to me. Both Erica and Beth were portrayed as the losers, and I would have liked to have known more about them. I also did not think that the lesbian scene between Nina and Lily added much to the film. I didn’t find it offensive; I just thought it was unnecessary. The scene of the two of them kissing in the taxi would have been enough to give us the general idea that this is what Nina wanted, what woke her passion. I would have preferred a more realistic and dramatic exploration of this aspect of Nina’s personality. Overall, I would perhaps have liked the film better if it had been a more realistic story of a ballet dancer’s life instead of a horror film about a repressed ballet dancer’s life. I was reminded of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion because it also dealt with a sexually-repressed young woman who goes insane. I think Repulsion is a better film than Black Swan. Watching the completely-repressed and frigid Catherine Deneuve’s breakdown was disturbing, but at least we understood that her actions were real—she really did kill the men who came into the apartment, and her condition led her to imagine all sorts of bizarre things, like the sequence where she walks down the apartment hallway and sees hands coming out of the walls to touch and grab her. Repulsion was a genuinely scary film in the same way that Psycho was—they were horror films. I would have liked to have understood the ending of Black Swan—in order to have some kind of closure. It would also have defined the film better for me. But there are some beautiful moments in the film—when Nina and Lily dance or just listening to the incredible music of Tchaikovsky. These make the film worth seeing. And Natalie Portman will probably win a well-deserved Oscar. But I don’t know if the film itself will win for Best Film. 

Talking about the hereafter

It is not often that society talks about what happens after death in any meaningful way. That topic is mostly left over to different religions to tackle, and is frowned upon in more pragmatic westernized cultures, like the one I live in at present. There is very little discussion at all concerning personal faith and beliefs about life or death. They are mostly ignored. Of course, the fascination with death as a process exists. There is no dearth of films or TV shows showing the deaths of one or many persons, the different modes of death, the fear of death and so on. Witness the popularity of TV series like CSI that dwell on the realistic aspects of deaths and autopsies and the science surrounding them. The goal of series like these is to get people to understand that science can help in crime-solving, and that is a good thing. But any real discussion (or attempt at one) of what happens to a person after death is almost taboo. So that the recent Hollywood film Hereafter is a welcome exception. It surprises me that it was made at all, and I’m guessing the only reason it was made was because Clint Eastwood directed it (he did not write it). I really enjoyed the film. It’s not a great film but it’s a very good film about very difficult subject matter. A few minutes into the movie, we are witness to a horrific tsunami that sweeps in over a vacation paradise, crushing much of what is in its path and taking many people with it. One of those people is a young French woman (Marie, beautifully played by Cecile de France) who apparently drowns and then is brought back to life by two men who rescue her. While she drowns she experiences visions of the hereafter, where she sees a world of shadow people (silhouettes) all walking toward her bathed in a kind of white light. She cannot let go of that vision and decides to find out more about it. Most of the people in her life—her boyfriend/boss, her colleagues—are cautiously supportive but ultimately move away from her, except for one man who puts her in touch with two potential publishers for the book she wants to write about after-death experiences. Her story is one of three in the film. The other one is about a real psychic (George, played by Matt Damon) who can contact the dead, who has retreated from that world in favor of a factory job that helps keep his mind off death. His story is poignant because you are witness to how his life can never be normal once people find out what he can do. They want to talk to their departed family members and friends, but when they find out what the dead are saying to them, they are disturbed enough by it so that it is not hard to understand why the psychic ends up mostly alone, with no friends and no girlfriend. The film does a good job of showing how many people view this kind of contact with the dead as a game. It is not hard to understand that either since most of what pass for psychics are probably fakers. The third story is about a young boy whose twin brother is killed by a car and how he wants to find a way to contact him. All three of these characters end up at a book fair in London—a kind of synchronicity of events that allows them to meet each other. The film is slow-moving, so that by the time you get to this point it is possible that some people have lost their attention span. But the film has to be slow-moving in order to build up credibility. We have to see that the psychic‘s gift is a real gift, that he suffers because he has that gift, that it results in his living a lonely life, and that his attempts to change his life are mostly half-hearted. He mostly always gives in to people who want him to help them, even though he has stopped contacting the dead as a job. I don’t know if I would call Hereafter a dark film as much as a searching one. All three characters are in search of clarity and hope. The psychic knows that the hereafter exists (he doesn’t question its existence) because he can talk for the dead, but he wants to live his life and not focus on death, the young woman is searching for answers to what happens after death because she had previously only focused on her successful earthly life and she has understood how fragile it is, and the little boy wants to talk to his brother who was his companion in life because his brother supported and protected him. The film doesn’t really provide any answers—how could it—since no one has come back from the hereafter to tell us what it is like. But it opens doors to thinking and talking about it and that is a good thing, even though there are no real answers. Perhaps there is some comfort in just talking about it at times. Talking about it doesn’t have to mean focusing on it obsessively. The message ultimately is that it is this life we are given and that we should live it and have hope, and that is what Marie and George find out at the end of the film. He changes his life by taking a definitive stance to not do any more readings, and he leaves California for a European vacation that starts in London. His path in London leads him to Marie, and by the end of the film you know that these two will somehow get together. Is it a Hollywood ending? Perhaps. In any case, it was an acceptable ending for this film (at least for me) because the characters had decided to focus on life and not on death. Perhaps because they no longer feared death, they could focus on life. But the film in no way diminishes their journeys, and that is one of the things I liked about it. It didn’t scoff or poke fun at their questionings and beliefs. I know that the film’s theme will either attract or push people away, and I’m guessing that is the reason that the reviewers are as divided as they are about the film. Nevertheless, I give Clint Eastwood credit for taking on the film, since the topic is not a simple one and opens the door to skepticism and rejection purely because of the theme alone.    

'Quiet desperation'

I wanted to really really like the movie Another Year, directed by Mike Leigh. After seeing it last night, I ended up somewhat liking it. Loving it? No. In fact, I ended up a bit irritated—I’m not sure at what. Myself for sitting through it? The theme? The passivity in the film? The depressing aspects in the film? The real-life aspects? The ending? There are so many things I could find fault with. I wonder if I expected something different. The acting was superb. But I guess I wanted something more than I got. I felt a bit cheated at the end, because we’re asked to care about characters about whom we’ve learned very little.

To paraphrase Pink Floyd, “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way” from their song Time may actually be the clue to my feelings of irritation. The film is decidedly British from start to finish, and that is usually fine with me, as I am a real anglophile when it comes to most British film and TV dramas—such as the Jane Austen, Charlotte (and Emily) Bronte, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy tales made into films and series. It’s just that in this particular case, I felt like screaming a few times during the film and at the end—“do something”. I wanted some life to be injected into an otherwise rather dreary daily existence (non-life) for many of the characters. They mostly did nothing—lived life in the same way as they had done for years, passively waiting for life to change instead of trying to change it actively. This may be how some British people (and other people in other lands) live, but I am not sure it is how all of them live. I have read so many reviews of the film that talk about how blissfully-married Gerri and Tom are, and to be sure, their relationship is nice. They respect each other and are kind to each other after many years of marriage, but I found their relationship to be somewhat superficial. Perhaps that is what happens after so many years of marriage, but I never got the feeling that they were passionate about anything. They did what they needed to do but there was no real excess of feeling, either toward each other or toward their friends. There were a couple of instances when Gerri offers silent comfort to one or two friends, but otherwise I felt that Gerri and Tom kept their emotional distance. Emotional distance, or a kind of remoteness from the world around them, or efficient emotionality (just enough but no more) seemed to be the secret to their happiness. If this is true, it’s rather interesting, but nothing was made of this or of much else. As it was, so much in the film was understated, and that may be the British way. The presentation of the lives of their single friends was an exercise in slow torture. Mary and Ken (who was interested in Mary who rebuffed him) are single middle-agers who seem to have found no meaning in life whatsoever. Mary has a crush on Joe, Gerri and Tom’s son, who ends up with a girlfriend (Katie) by the time autumn comes and this sends Mary into a downward spiral. While the actors did an excellent job at portraying such lives on film, it was the most depressing depiction of single life I have seen up to now. Nothing in Mary or Ken’s lives seemed to work. They were unhappy, miserable, emotional vampires (especially Mary) who sucked the life out of most of the people with whom they came into contact. Perhaps there was some hope for Ken, I thought, since he seemed to be more jovial, but no, he was apparently close to being suicidal. If I was a single person and saw these types of portrayals, I’d be pissed as hell. I’d wonder, my God, is this how the world sees single middle-aged people—as a sorry lot of folk who are just desperate for happiness and meaning? Is that the only thing that gives their lives meaning—desperation for love and acceptance? What about their jobs? What about participating in charity work? There was nothing. While I know that some single people suffer from loneliness after many years of living alone, I know others who have made a lot of their lives. It is so unfair to peg singles in this way. I would have liked to have seen a middle-aged single person in this film that was happy, or if not happy, at least content with life. They do exist. It would have balanced out the misery. Tom’s brother Ronnie, newly-bereaved, was another silent stone-like personality. He didn’t seem to like his deceased wife very much, and he had no relationship whatsoever with his son Carl. Yet this is presented as though there is something very much wrong with Carl (who is a quite angry individual), when in fact this is the first time in the movie that there is any real life at all. I was interested to know why Carl was angry. How had he grown up? Did he have a good relationship with his mother? Why was his relationship with his father so awful? But none of these questions gets answered, and they are the interesting questions. It’s as though Mike Leigh is saying that in order to survive in this life and be happy, you have to dampen your feelings and your passion and live totally on an even keel. That would be impossible for most people I know. And if you do all this, you achieve balance and harmony, yes, but do you really know the people around you, the people with whom you are living? No wonder Carl was angry. There didn’t seem to be much honesty. And perhaps that is what I was looking for. Why couldn’t Gerri have said to Mary that she was hurt by her behavior toward Katie and Joe? Why did she save it all up for months at a time? Real friends would have talked it over. As it was, they were not real friends. So these are the things that stick in my mind. I guess you could say the film made an impression on me, but I think I would have been fine not having seen it. It did not really add any new insights to my life. And that is what I am looking for when I go to films like these. 

A 'great new life'

I went to see the new Woody Allen film—‘You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger’—last week with some friends. We enjoyed it and I think it is one of his best films even though it really doesn’t cover so much new ground. He is always focused on personal relationships in one form or another and this film was no exception. The actors and actresses did excellent jobs, especially Anthony Hopkins and Gemma Watson as an older married couple who divorce when he finds her boring and resistant to the changes he wants to make to keep himself young; he falls in love with and marries a prostitute much younger than himself. His ex-wife flounders about trying to figure out her life, visiting a fortune teller who keeps telling her that it will all work out as well as getting her to believe that she has lived before. As might be expected, it goes to hell for Anthony Hopkins and his new wife when he discovers that she is still sleeping around, preferably with hunky younger men. She ends up pregnant but he knows deep down that it’s not his baby. He realizes he’s made a huge mistake at the end of the film. At some point during the film, before he finds out that he is going to be a father again, he asks his ex-wife for another chance, and she refuses. She has also met someone, an older widower who is a spiritualist. Their daughter’s marriage has also fallen apart; she is in love with her boss at the art gallery where she works, and her husband is in love with the neighbor woman that he watches from his window. There is more to the plot, but it is worth watching the film to find this out. I recommend it.

Strangely enough, my friends and I actually felt a bit sorry for Anthony Hopkins’ character. Yes he was stupid, yes he was vain, but his desire to stay young and to think young was not so strange and actually made him seem quite human. He made the typical mistakes that men his age make when they think they are going to have a wonderful new life without their old wives dragging them down. The problem is that they do enjoy that new life for a while; then reality hits—the younger women they’re with want children, a house, money, material goods, a good life, and they want these wealthy older men to provide it for them. And these men step up to the plate. I am always surprised by the eagerness with which older men leave their older wives for younger women; they start new families with these women when they are in their sixties and seventies. I cannot see the appeal in this. I couldn’t imagine wanting to take care of a screaming baby or babies again after I had done it once when I was younger and had more patience. These men don’t look ahead and see what they’re getting themselves into. They don’t really get their new and improved life after all—freedom, lots of sex, no responsibilities. They may get a new and eager sex partner for a while, and then they end up sharing her with her young children or not having much sex at all after the eager young thing discovers how exhausting it is to be a mother. So how is this new life so much different from the ‘boring old married life’ they left? Go figure.

But even if one understands this, still, growing old doesn’t seem to be an attractive thing, especially in today’s world where the emphasis is on being young and staying young forever. There doesn’t seem to be a point to growing old anymore. Years ago, the elderly were revered for their life experience and wisdom. Now they are considered bothersome in a social and in a work context—you are old at 53 and it’s difficult to find a new job if you are over that age. That has been researched in Norway and found to be true. So why would anyone think that turning 70 would be something to look forward to? It’s got to explain the craze for plastic surgery that turns women’s faces into feline-looking catastrophes or the mini-skirts on women who are over sixty, or the overuse of makeup and perfume. Or men’s obsessions with the gym and looking toned, with comb-overs to hide the bald spots and with hair implants, and all the rest. We want to look our best and that’s a good thing. But it’s not a good thing when we try to look thirty years younger than we are.

It’s a tough world we live in these days. Some women experience a double whammy of rejection. They have to deal with not being wanted in their workplaces because they are ‘too old’ or outdated as well as with husbands who are eyeing every young thing they see. Some younger women (married or not) have no respect for marriage whatsoever—they think nothing of going after older married men to have some fun. Texting, sexting, flirtatious comments, risqué photos, emails—they use all means at their disposal to get what they want. They may also provide these men with a shoulder to cry on (‘my wife doesn’t understand me’) or they provide them with a sense of virility if they cry on these men’s shoulders (‘my boss is mean to me or my boss is harassing me’) that leads to these men trying to help them. Either way, it is so clichéd and banal to witness, and I’ve seen it happen several times now. Some of them even inform the wives of these men that their husbands are interested in them in a desperate ploy to sow doubt and trouble in the marriage. I wonder if these women ever look ahead (at least the ones who are married) and realize that they will be facing the exact same threat from younger women when they themselves have reached middle and old age. I guess they don’t, because if they did, they would behave more respectfully. These types of situations help to reinforce my personal views about women and financial independence, especially if I am asked for advice. Love is love, and finances are finances. My advice to women is to make sure you can take care of yourself and to make sure you have plenty of money by the time you reach old age. That way, no matter what happens--your life will not go to ruin if your husband leaves you for some sweet young thing. If that’s feminism, so be it. I call it being smart and taking care of oneself as a woman. So many women seem to have forgotten this, and so few women seem to look ahead, and that seems strange to me given the fact that nearly one in two marriages still ends in divorce these days. Men always seem to land on their feet financially. Most of the women I know who have been ‘left’ for younger women do not. And without that financial cushion, there is no great new life for them.