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Sounds like a love that won’t last.

That’s too pessimistic, J. But anyway they are all “holographs”.

If it is a good one, who cares.

If it is a bad love, then good luck with that if it lasts.

To me it seems like a matter of perception: one person seeing the other everywhere, despite their bumping into each other being mostly random. Or, perhaps she/he is subconsciously seeking out the other. That’s the kind of silly thing that people in love tend to do.

Shadowy figure, you are oh-so secretly a love sick kitten, aren’t ya?

Tammy, a prof of mine once said that Romeo and Juliet wasn’t a literal tale in the sense that the young lovers don’t literally die at the end, but that rather this is the symbol of the death of romantic love. It’s a rather bold interpretation, I know, but I found it most interesting. I do, in my very old age, tend to agree: that the love that sustains a long, adult relationship is different from the kind that often sustains much poetry, pop music and, dare I admit, novel writing.

I knew you wouldn’t like my first comment, but there it is.

Love sick, sick of love, whatever. I regret using the word at all, it having so many meanings that would have driven Wittgenstein mad (or who knows, maybe it did).

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Last night, we went to watch The King’s Speech in the local cinema. The house was full, even for the ten-o’clock showing. I have liked Colin Firth since his charming turn as Darcy in Andrew Davies’s 1995 BBC adaptation of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.1 And while he excels as the grief-stricken college professor in last year’s A Single Man, his performance as the stammering King George VI (known in his family as “Bertie”) overcoming his speech impediment with the support of an Australian therapist Lionel Logue (played by Geoffrey Rush) is even more impressive.

From the first moments of The King’s Speech, I was both engaged with the story and deeply sympathetic to Bertie’s plight as a stammerer forced to do public speaking. The opening scene, for example, when he is required to give a radio address in front of a packed Wembley Stadium audience for the closing of the 1925 Empire Exhibition, is tense and heartbreaking. “Let the microphone do the work” is easier said than done. Tom Hooper’s direction is particularly strong at capturing the reaction of the audience whose disappointment and embarrassment makes this speech almost painful to watch.

Throughout the film, we get to see more of Bertie’s stammering, although he seems more at ease talking to his wife and daughters than he does speaking in an official capacity. Of course, his condition slowly improves through his treatment by Lionel, which is equal parts physical therapy and psychoanalysis. Interestingly, in the first therapy session, Bertie (who is still “Duke of York”) is able to recite Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy without stammering, and this recitation is recorded while he is listening to loud music and cannot hear himself (a technique called ‘masking’). The script-writer makes use of this moment to give new meaning to the great question and foreshadow what will happen in the film: in this case, the answer ‘To be’ is perhaps more like ‘To be King’.

The relationship between Bertie and Lionel is complicated by class, personality and nationality, especially since the Australian Lionel insists on equality and familiarity with the eventual King. The script exploits these themes nicely and gets a lot of humour and empathy out of the differences in the men’s social status. Despite his position, Bertie is portrayed as profoundly self-conscious and lacking in confidence. However, he is also very funny and oftentimes makes jokes about his condition. For me, one of the funniest scenes is when Bertie is asked by Lionel to swear to express his frustration. At first, Bertie, so used to social propriety, is only willing to express a handful of relatively innocuous profanities, but eventually lets go with an eloquent barrage of fucks and shits, after he is challenged by Lionel to be less of a schoolboy. Bertie finishes his tirade by rhyming ‘shits’ with ‘tits’, a moment that got an uproarious laugh from the audience.

The rest of the film does a good job of portraying Bertie’s battle to overcome his stammer, especially in relation to his difficult father (played by Michael Gambon) and brother (played by Guy Pearce), and the fraught politics of his brother’s abdication and the prospects of war. The climax of the film centres on Bertie’s radio speech in which he tries to inspire the nation to be united against the threat of Nazi Germany, a goal which he reaches with the help of Lionel conducting throughout the address.2 (While previously Logue addresses the King as Bertie, after this broadcast, he finally calls him “Your Majesty”.) The speech is intercut with shots of people from different walks of life, listening attentively to their King, in their living rooms, in the pubs and factories, in the open fields, outside Buckingham Palace, etc. The scene is quite moving, which is of course the point. Republicans might see this as Royalist propaganda, although for me it is as much about overcoming one’s challenges as it is a triumphal representation of the Royal family. Surely, using this inspirational message of individual achievement to hide the Royalist message means that this is very good propaganda indeed. But nevermind when it is this enjoyable.

Every one brings their A game to the film and the direction, cinematography, script and art direction are all top-notch. Likewise, the performances are all excellent. Carter is sympathetic and noble as the Queen, which is particularly effective when played alongside Firth and it is easy to believe them as a loving couple. Guy Pearce is terrifically (when is Pearce not terrific?) immature, arrogant and cruel as George’s brother, David (King Edward VIII). One heart-breaking scene stands out in which David mercilessly mocks Bertie’s stammer to his face: “B-B-B-Bertie”. That David is oblivious to his own failures and irresponsibilities adds to the power of the scene. Gambon as George V only appears twice, but his presence is strongly felt in both, as one would expect.

Also read this moving article about the man.
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1Firth reunites with his Pride and Prejudice co-star Jennifer Ehle (Elizabeth Bennet) in The King’s Speech; Ehle plays Logue’s wife.
2Firth is extremely good in this speech. You can compare his with the real King VI’s here. You can also read extracts from Logue’s diary and his correspondence with the King and Queen.

On 2nd December, 2009, I posted these Banksy images on my previous blog:

Responses:

Recently, I watched Exit Through the Gift Shop. It’s a reasonably enjoyable film, and one of the highlights, for me, is this counterfeited tenner:

Love & Other Drugs

Last night we went to watch Love & Other Drugs in Covent Garden. Thank you, E, for the generosity!

On the film:

• Anne, you are no Kate Winslet or Penelope Cruz (with reference to her own comment on screen nudity in this Fresh Air interview.)1 Was she thinking of Little Children or Open Your Eyes, for example? And your Kym-mode (Rachel Getting Married) does not impress this time. Oh wait, you were unconvincing even then. (But bravo on being a good White Queen.)
• Jake, you are no George Clooney (think Up in the Air). Where’s the Jake in Donnie Darko, Bubble Boy, Brokeback Mountain, Proof and Zodiac? (Let’s forget he’s in The Day After Tomorrow.)
• ‎”I cut probably a total of about 5 seconds out of the nude scenes,” Anne says in the interview. At least 100 more should have been cut. Right, it’s worse than Killing Me Softly.
• Both Jake and Anne are nominated for Golden Globe awards. Anne, you are absolutely no match for either Julianne or Annette (The Kids Are All Right).
• (And I hope Jeremy will win the Best Supporting Actor award — he’s marvellous in The Town (and in The Hurt Locker last year).)

I was gripped from the opening seconds of Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker about an elite Army bomb squad whose main job is to defuse roadside bombs. The film uses suspense masterfully to suggest the tension and fear of the soldiers’ tasks. For them, every pile of garbage could be an IED and every corner could hide an insurgent. At times the tension was almost too much for me to watch but my eyes remained glued to the screen. I was particularly affected by the climax of the film in which the squad fails to defuse the chain of bombs strapped to an Iraqi man, even though he was desperate for their help.

The performances in the film are generally strong and unsentimental. Although most of the main actors were unfamiliar to me, the film does have cameos by some of my favourite performers such as Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes (Fiennes also worked with Bigelow in Strange Days, another film which I liked a lot). Perhaps suggesting the realities of war, these stars only appear briefly before they are killed.

To me, Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker was a far superior film than her ex-husband’s production, Avatar. Although Cameron’s vision of Pandora was impressive [I will post my review of the film here later], I was more moved by the Middle East setting of The Hurt Locker: the heat, the sand, the sweat, and the feeling that despite all of their technology and military power the American soldiers were trapped by their situation. These all felt very authentic and sincere.

After the film, I was uncertain what exactly the term ‘Hurt Locker’ refers to. There were a couple of things which I thought may have been the referents, including the anti-bomb suit that one of the soldiers wears or the suit of bombs which the Iraqi man in the climax is forced to wear. However, according to various websites, the term means to cause pain to someone. If so, this was an apt title for the movie — The Hurt Locker was a punch to the viewers’ stomach.

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The Ghost is based on the novel by Robert Harris of the same title. We thought it was a fine old-fashioned thriller; it reminded one of both Hitchcock and the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s. Directed by Roman Polanski, the film shows some remarkable similarities to his own personal life and the viewer can’t help wonder if the claustrophobia and paranoia which suffuses the film came out of his own experience of avoiding extradition. Still, it is best not read too much biography into these things.

The film tells the story of an unnamed ghost writer (played by Ewan McGregor) who has been hired to rewrite the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister, modelled on Tony Blair (played by Pierce Brosnan). The ghost writer is replacing a former aid to the PM, who had been helping with the book and had died under suspicious circumstances. Soon after the ghost writer arrives to an isolated compound on an island in New England where the PM is residing, news breaks out that the PM will be facing an investigation by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes. From this point on, the intrigue and tension slowly builds until some very dramatic final moments.

Throughout the film, Polanski’s considerable skills are on display. Regardless of what you think about him as a person, it is impossible to deny his talent as a filmmaker. As said earlier, the film reminds us of movies made by Hitchcock, especially the sense of suspense just beneath the surface and the psychological isolation of the characters. The score by Alexandre Desplat is also reminiscent of Bernard Herrman’s music used in a number of Hitchcock films.

Of the leading actors, I liked Ewan McGregor and Kim Cattrall (who played the Prime Minister’s personal assistant and mistress) most. The former has a nonchalant detachment that seems apt for his role and the latter is uptightly bitchy and yet sympathetic at the end. I also liked the Professor character (Professor Paul Emmett) convincingly played by Tom Wilkinson. His meeting with the ghost was one of the highlights.

Many of the film’s details are beautifully done: The modernist house where the bulk of the action takes place captures the isolation and paranoia of the characters. The location of the building on a largely deserted island also emphasises the incongruity of its existence with the surrounding.

Lastly, I paid much attention to the fate of the manuscript written by the PM and the first ghostwriter. It is interesting to see its physical deterioration (the initially pristine pages get marked and crumpled) as the film progresses, reflecting the PM’s deteriorating public image and life. The final scene in which the pages of this manuscript scatter down a London street is terrific and effective. It is also quite similar to one of the Liberal Democrat’s ads in which the broken promises of the other parties float around the country as discarded leaflets.

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The Welsh documentary sleep furiously1 by Gideon Koppel records a year of life in Trefeurig, a small farming community in Wales.

The film does not have an obvious structure or narrative. But in its formless way, it documents the slow decline of the farming community. Koppel has an incredible eye for everyday details that reveal the subtle beauty of life and of simple and elegant truths. The director often lets the camera remain motionless for long periods of time. He is especially fond of long shots which show people or objects moving slowly from one side of the frame to the other side. Despite its slow pace, the film manages to be engaging throughout. In fact, there are several very funny moments which sparked laughter in the audience and brought tears to the eyes of j.

The film has been called a love-letter to Trefeurig, the director’s hometown. But it also feels like a love-letter to the audience.

1The film title may have been inspired by Chomsky’s ‘Colourless green ideas sleep furiously’.