MOVIE MONDAY - ALICE'S TRAVAILS...

“Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.” - Eugene O’Neill

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (a.k.a. ‘Alice in Wonderland’) is an 1865 novel written by English mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre. Its narrative course and structure, characters and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.

Carroll wrote the book for a little girl, Alice Pleasance Liddell (born 1852) who was the daughter of The Reverend Robinson Duckworth a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. Alice and her two sisters went on a boating excursion with Carroll and their father in July 1862 and the author amused them all with a story on which the book was subsequently based on. On 26 November 1864, Carroll gave Alice the handwritten manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground, with illustrations by Dodgson himself, dedicating it as “A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer’s Day”.

“Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There” (1871) is the second novel by Lewis Carroll, written as a sequel to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Set some six months later than the earlier book, Alice again enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it. “Through the Looking-Glass” includes such celebrated verses as “Jabberwocky” and “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, and the episode involving Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The mirror that inspired Carroll remains displayed in Charlton Kings.

Whereas Carroll’s first book has the deck of cards as a theme, the second book is based on a game of chess, played on a giant chessboard with fields for squares. Most main characters in the story are represented by a chess piece or animals, with Alice herself being a pawn. Both books are magical, whimsical, a delight to read for both children and adults and have been translated into numerous languages worldwide (despite the immense difficulties in accurately translating such punning, word-playing, nonsensical and idiomatic prose!).

The making of films based on the two books has been fruitful, beginning with the 1903 British silent film directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow right up to the latest, 2016 offering “Alice Through the Looking Glass” by James Bobin, made as the sequel to the 2010 Tim Burton movie “Alice inWonderland”. Disney’s 1951 animated version of “Alice in Wonderland” is the other one that immediately springs to mind, but there have been other filmed versions, more than two dozen of them!

The films I am familiar with (about 5 of them) have been less than successful in bringing the wit, whimsy and sheer delight of the word-play to the screen. The emphasis has been on visual effects, with the Burton and Bobin versions going overboard with CGI and spectacularly splendiferous technicolour image wizardry. The latest offering especially James Bobin’s “Alice Through the Looking Glass” is so far removed from Carroll’s novels that to associate it with them is presumptuous.

Bobin’s “Looking Glass” movie is a very pedestrian, heavy-handed and frankly boring tale that  Linda Woolverton (responsible for the screenplay) has managed to put together for the sake of a sequel to Burton’s “Alice”, which was more or less OK (I was not ecstatic with that version either!). Take an unexciting script, add actors who are in it for the paycheck and seemingly take no pleasure in the movie, add lots of special effects and CGI (some of it of rather poor quality and into which the live actors are placed and look like fish out of water), and you have a movie that is quite laboured and tiresome. The main theme of this movie is time and unfortunately by watching it, I felt as though I had wasted lots of time – 1 hour and 53 minutes of it in fact…

MOVIE MONDAY - MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN

“Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.” - Salman Rushdie

Director Deepa Mehta’s 2012 film “Midnight’s Children” starring  Rajat Kapoor, Vansh Bhardwaj, Anupam Kher is based on the novel of the same name by Salman Rushdie. The author collaborated with the director to write the screenplay. Generally, if the chemistry between the author and director is good, the results can result in excellent cinema. Unfortunately, this is not always the case…

Sir Ahmad Salman Rushdie, FRSL (born 19 June 1947) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. “Midnight’s Children” (1981), his second novel, won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He is said to combine magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilisations. His fourth novel, “The Satanic Verses” (1988), was the centre of a major controversy, provoking protests from Muslims in several countries. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwā calling for his assassination issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989, and as a result the author was put under police protection by the British government.

Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Britain’s foremost literary organisation, in 1983. He was appointed Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in January 1999. In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the fifty greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States, where he has worked at Emory University and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published “Joseph Anton: A Memoir”, an account of his life in the wake of the controversy over “The Satanic Verses”.

I was a little wary to watch the film as Rushdie’s prose, though lush and quite literary, can also be rather convoluted and sesquipedalian, and in parts turgid. Thus is the writing of most literary authors who try “Write” with a capital “W”. And it is because of this (or perhaps in spite of this?) that their work is recognised by the various organisations that hand out literary prizes. Nevertheless, the film was very watchable and the gorgeous cinematography, grand locations, colourful costumes and beautiful music made it, if nothing else, good eye candy.

The plot commences at the stroke of midnight on August 15th, 1947, when India declares independence from Great Britain. Two babies born in the same Bombay hospital at midnight are switched at birth by a nurse. And so it is that Saleem Sinai, the illegitimate child of a beggar woman, and Shiva, the only son of a wealthy couple, are fated to live the destinies meant for each other. Over the next three decades, Saleem and Shiva find themselves on opposite sides of many a conflict, whether it be because of class, politics, romantic rivalry, or the constantly shifting borders that are drawn every time neighbours become enemies and decide to split their newborn nation into two, and then three, warring countries. Through it all, the lives of Saleem and Shiva are mysteriously intertwined. There is another mystic link with all other children that are born around midnight on that fateful date, as all these “Midnight Children” have mystical powers. Saleem and Shiva are also inextricably linked to the history of India itself, which takes them on a whirlwind journey full of trials, triumphs and disasters.

The film is a loose allegory for events in India both before and, primarily, after the independence and partition of India. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, born with telepathic powers, as well as an enormous and constantly dripping nose with an extremely sensitive sense of smell. The technique of “magical realism” finds liberal expression throughout the novel and is crucial to constructing the parallel to the country’s history.

The film was controversial, primarily because of the way India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was portrayed. The same controversy had dogged the book: In 1984 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi brought an action against the book in the British courts, claiming to have been defamed by a single sentence in chapter 28, penultimate paragraph, in which her son Sanjay Gandhi is said to have had a hold over his mother by his accusing her of contributing to his father’s Feroze Gandhi’s death through her neglect. The case was settled out of court when Salman Rushdie agreed to remove the offending sentence.

The film certainly makes Salman Rushdie’s prose more accessible to the general public that perhaps is not as keen to read the novel. The film is beautiful to look at, has some fine cinematic moments in it and there are some poignant and moving parts in it. However, the screenplay is too indulgent (remember the author was responsible for it) and the direction was perhaps a trifle over-ambitious. What was worrying for me personally was that there was a disconnect between me as a viewer and the characters and action on screen. When there is not a strong emotional connection with the characters on film, it can be disastrous in a movie – especially one as long and as epic as this one. I am glad we watched it, but I can think of other more worthy films to recommend to friends to see. If you get a chance to see it, do so, it is good, but I would not go out of my way to hunt it out and watch it…

BOOK TUESDAY - NARNIA

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” - C. S. Lewis

Fittingly, as the year draws to a close, I shall write an entry for “Book Tuesday”. I can certainly describe myself as a bibliophagic omnivore. I often may read several strange things, which can only be described as trash – if nothing else but to have an opinion of them. Andre Maurois says: “In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.” And best sellers often fit into this category of “astonishing choices” in the worst possible way! But, it is very easy also to dismiss “best sellers” wholesale as trash - one must remember that the classics of today were at some stage “best seller trash” too.

If I am reading something that is obviously badly written or formulaic in its approach, or gimmicky, I feel no compunction whatever in stopping reading it and throwing it out. Sometimes I am repulsed by a book that literary critics wax lyrical over. “The English Patient” by Michael Ondaatje is one such book that I cannot stomach at all. I have tried to read it on numerous occasions but it is a grossly repellent book for me. The film was one I walked out of, also. Maybe in my old age I shall come back to it and appreciate its (now hidden) glories…

What is a classic? It is a book that has stood the test of time and appears forever relevant and fresh and appealing in a diachronic fashion. It is a book you can return to with pleasure. “When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.” Says Cliff Fadiman. There are books that I read again for pleasure’s sake. “A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it.” Styron remarks and it is such books that we return to because of their wealth of experience they offer us.  This of course goes well with Samuel Paterson’s opinion: “Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.” My only trouble with this is that if one is forever re-reading a few, well-chosen classics, one is bereft of new experiences, undiscovered treasures, new worlds of discovery. I would rather risk reading many mediocre books in order to find a new gem, than to read only gems that others recommended to me. The thrill of discovery is even more acute if one treads the new paths oneself.

The Harry Potter books is an example of “best sellers” and they have become so because they follow a successful formula. They also capitalise on the “New Age” craze and they have behind them an enormous modern marketing machine. They are easily consumed, digested and promptly forgotten. Fashionable books rarely become classics. Compare to these Harry Potter books the Narnia books by C. S. Lewis. These were a favourite of mine during my childhood, but they were a pleasure to re-read as an adult. I classify them as classics of the genre and underlying their “fantasy” is a deeper philosophical underpinning, which is latent when they are read in childhood, but becomes so much more obvious when an adult reads them.

Now that I have mentioned them, I guess this book Tuesday I shall dedicate to these Narnia books. C(live) S(taple) Lewis, was born November 29, 1898, Belfast, Northern Ireland and died November 22, 1963, Oxford, England. He was a scholar, novelist, and author of about 40 books, most of them on Christian apologetics, the most widely known being “The Screwtape Letters”. He also achieved fame with a trilogy of science-fiction novels and with the Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven children's books that have become classics of fantasy literature. He fought in WWI and when he returned home he achieved an outstanding record as a classical scholar. From 1925 to 1954 he was a fellow and tutor of Magdalen College, Oxford, and from 1954 to 1963 he was professor of medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge.

The Chronicles of Narnia are extremely English books, in that they conform with that English characteristic, the reluctance to say goodbye to childhood… However, it is this character of the books makes them universally loved by people the world over who still have the child in their heart. The Narnia books are not only exciting, often humorous, highly inventive, but also many-a-time deeply moving. Lewis has utilised several archetypal images and characters but has woven them with threads of his own devising, making for a highly satisfying read.

The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels written by Lewis between 1949 and 1954, illustrated by Pauline Baynes and originally published in London between October 1950 and March 1956. The Chronicles of Narnia sold over 100 million copies in 47 languages and have been adapted several times, complete or in part, for radio, television, the stage, and film.

The series of books are set in the fictional realm of Narnia, a fantasy world of magic, mythical beasts, and talking animals. Various ordinary children from Earth are transported into Narnia one way or another and as they have adventures, they play central roles in the unfolding history of that world. The children are magically transported to Narnia, where they are called upon by the lion Aslan to protect Narnia from evil and restore the throne to its rightful line. The books span the entire history of Narnia, from its creation in “The Magician's Nephew” to its eventual destruction in “The Last Battle”.

Inspiration for the series is taken from multiple sources; in addition to adapting numerous traditional Christian themes, the books freely borrow characters and ideas from Greek and Roman mythology as well as from traditional British and Irish fairy tales. The books have profoundly influenced adult and children’s fantasy literature since World War II. Lewis’s exploration of themes not usually present in children’s literature, such as religion, as well as the books’ perceived treatment of issues including race and gender, has caused some controversy.

Despite the criticism about the books’ racist, sexist and religious subtexts, for me they still are satisfying reads, especially if one places them in the context in which they were written and the cultural background of the author. We may not burn a book from another age simply because it no longer agrees with our own more “enlightened” times. We read it and glean from it the best it has to offer and we attempt to understand the author’s intentions and the perspective it was written.

POETRY JAM - MAGIC

“The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.” - Benjamin Disraeli

“Magic” is the theme for this week’s Poetry Jam challenge - “Let us explore the world of magic in our writing and all that it means to us.”
Here is my contribution:

Nocturne

O, what a moon tonight!

A perfect, limpid night,

This year’s first truly summer’s night!

And in the languid garden, just watered,

In the heavy, warm, wet, jet-black air

Streams golden moonlight

From a bright, full orb of a moon.

The still, thick air is rich with perfumes:

The heady honeysuckle and gardenia,

The devastating bouvardia,

(A hint of green poison lurking in its leaves);

Homely, honest lemon verbena,

Pennyroyal, spearmint, peppermint

(High notes of freshness),

With:

Solemn parsley, pungent fig,

Bitter crushed ivy underfoot,

And sweet, dreamy, dusty lavender

(Fresh sachets)…

Melding with shadows, a black dog

Barks up at the face in the moon;

Melting with moonlight reflection in the pond,

The distant chant of crickets.

Mixed with the magic of the night,

Echoing in the stillness of green-black leafy shadows,

Coalescing in water drops that trickle down wet foliage,

Is the sound of my soft footfall,

(In empty garden).

Gently around the paths between the sleepless beds,

My steps, gingerly

Tracing an endless, enchanted circle

Of mystic insomnia,

(My daydreams made real by magic of the night).

POETRY WEDNESDAY - VENGEANCE

“Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.” - Charlotte Brontë

Magpie Tales stimulates the creativity of her followers weekly by choosing an image, which fires the imagination and results in a swathe of poems and short prose pieces in its succession. This week the image was dark and evocative of witchery and the black arts. It appears that this image was very popular with Magpie’s readers as there seem to be a large number of participants!

Here is my contribution – a sad story of love and trust betrayed, with a terrible vengeance wrought, complete with a spell in an arcane tongue of my own invention. Now if you are to use this spell, do so wisely for it is full of terrible power and can wreak great havoc! Enjoy this week’s tales of mystery and imagination as the supernatural never ceases to fascinate most of us and come to think of it, it has repeatedly stimulated the creation of some good stories, poems, paintings, drawings and other flights of the imagination!

The Vengeful Spell

“Aléa bánna dítta zom
Perés ambón maréa dom;
Filíz anés pería mar,
Andrôn mané cadíz a dar…”

She rises tall and speaks the spell
Her figure dark, her hair so long.
Her raven black, hearkens the knell
Of distant bell and silvern gong.

“Adél, períz calón gervain
Marísen por, felón fervain!
Adár, cadíz pería star,
Gedrón pané filíz azar.”

Her fury matched by lashing rain
Her tearful face all haggard, drawn.
Her spell a terrible refrain
Her voice resounding till dawn.

“Callé, alíz perfór allón,
Deníz, mané seníl a son.
Senné filíz adór selím
Pané ranné cadén a plim.”

He left, she cried; alone, bereft;
He fled at night, his sojourn brief –
He cheated her with wiles so deft,
He robbed her love as would a thief.

“Aléa bánna dítta zom
Perés ambón maréa dom;
Filíz anés pería mar,
Andrôn mané cadíz a dar…”

His hours short each second’s fleet
Her spell is cast, and now complete.
The raven rises, quickly flies
The faithless lover gasps and dies.

The woman smiles her work’s all done
Her witch within the spell has spun.
With frightful magic she’s avenged;
The wrongs he’s done are now revenged.

POETRY WEDNESDAY - NOCTURNE

“Music and rhythm find their way into the secret places of the soul” - Plato

I am in Brisbane for work and the weather has been marvellous. The nights are soft, warm, balmy and the subtropical vegetation lush and beautifully green. Walking to the hotel tonight the air was perfumed with the aroma of some subtropical bloom and thinking to the picture stimulus of the latest Magpie Tales challenge it was easy to be quite literal and rhyming in my interpretation once again, influenced no doubt by the sweet, subtropical night. Henri Rousseau’s mysterious and beautiful painting is very evocative of music and its power, and his “Snake Charmer” charms also the viewer who feels drawn into the depths of the image.

Nocturne

In the stillness of the night
To the silvern moon’s delight
Sweetly does the flute resound
Spilling music all around.

Ebon skin and hair that shimmers
Shiny glance that softly glimmers,
Sinuous and sweet’s the air
Luring beasts from out their lair.

Music makes the jungle tame
Calms and yet ignites a flame.
Music soothes the savage beast
Rouses passions in the priest.

Neath the moon’s resplendent orb
Flowers music strains absorb.
Snakes start to slither, slide,
And up to the flautist glide.

She charms serpent, beast and bird
With her music not her word;
Now the snakes around her creep
Up they climb, roused from sleep.

Music heals the deepest wound
Makes the air around perfumed.
Music calls to arms and strife,
Yet assassins drop their knife.

And each gentle leaf unfurls,
Flower twines and softly curls;
As the music upwards floats
Rhythm, melody, sweet notes.

In the stillness of the night
To the silvern moon’s delight
Sweetly does the flute resound
Spilling music all around.

MOVIE MONDAY - THE PRESTIGE

“Magic is believing in yourself, if you can do that, you can make anything happen.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Yesterday we watched an interesting film, which although being quite fluffy (i.e. not deep and meaningful, at least superficially), nor artistically noteworthy it was quite enjoyable as entertainment and a bit of escapism (pun intended, you’ll see what I mean). It was Christopher Nolan’s 2006 film, “The Prestige”. It starred Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansonn. On the International Movie Database (IMDB) site, the film has a rating of 8.4/100 based on about 175,000 votes, which means a lot of people that have seen it thought it was a pretty good movie. However, I am not always convinced of the merit of the ratings on IMDB. They can be skewed quite considerably in favour of the people that use the site and may not necessarily represent a good cross-section of the movie-viewing public. Nevertheless, as I said earlier, the movie was enjoyable and good enough to watch as a bit of escapist fare for a Sunday matinee.

The plot revolves around a pair of magicians in 19th century London. Hugh Jackman plays Robert Angier (magician #1) and Christian Bale plays Alfred Borden (Magician #2). These two start out as good friends but end as bitter enemies with each bent of revenge in the wake of a botched stage act that goes tragically wrong. Both magicians become famous and as their rivalry grows, each sabotages the performance of the other on stage. When Alfred performs a successful trick, Robert becomes obsessed trying to uncover the secret of his competitor. They are aided by their ingénieurs (masters of the devices and devisers of the mechanics of the tricks). There is a particularly good performance by Michael Caine, as Cutter, Angier’s ingénieur. In search of the ultimate trick, Robert goes to the USA, finds Nikola Tesla, the famous physicist (played with great aplomb by David Bowie!) and gets him to construct an amazing electrical device that helps him create the magic trick that astounds all of London…

The film examines the duality of human nature and the triggers that force a human being to go from good to bad, from loving to hating, from helping to hindering. It asks the question is even a saintly person likely to turn to an evil one given a powerful enough trigger? It posits that most of us enclose within both the good and the bad balanced precariously. It is a constant struggle to maintain the balance weighed down on the good side. The movie looks at what pushes that balance towards the bad side.

The cinematography, costumes and sets are successfully Victorian and the atmosphere that is created is one of authenticity. One has a good insight into end-of-the-century Vaudeville and the cut-throat competitiveness that existed then. The direction is very good and the music is quite suitable and appropriately unobtrusive. Although the film is 130 minutes long, it is not tiring. A word of warning: There are some challenging scenes, which the faint-hearted may find disturbing (people drowning, canaries being violently killed…).

The film reminded me of a clutch of other films that have to do with magicians. For example, “Houdini” the 1953 classic with Tony Curtis. The 2007 “Death-Defying Acts” with Guy Pearce and Catherine-Zeta Jones; and the very satisfying 2006 film “The Illusionist” with Edward Norton.

Quite a good movie to watch and unwind with.