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Kayleigh (12 KP) rated To Kill a Mockingbird in Books
Jan 2, 2019
Well, February is definitely the month for discovering classics I’ve missed! For some reason, I’d always classed To Kill a Mockingbird in amongst the Agatha Christie genre of murder mysteries – not that I’ve read those either – and didn’t know enough about it for it to have piqued my interest. Now I’ve read it though, I can see what all the fuss is about, and it’s not surprising that, despite being published in 1960, it was still the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/aug/09/best-selling-books-all-time-fifty-shades-grey-compare">65th best-selling book of all time</a> in 2012. Beware of spoilers!
The story is set in Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s, and is written from the perspective of Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch, who is between six and eight years old as the story progresses. The start of the book does an effective job of introducing us to all the characters. Scout lives with her widowed father, Atticus, a lawyer, her brother Jem (who is 4 years older than her) and Calpurnia, a black woman who acts as a type of mother figure. A friend, Dill, also joins them in the summer. The three children are intrigued by Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley, who lives in the house on the corner but is never seen outside. I really enjoyed this part of the story; it set the scene brilliantly, as well as helping me reminisce about my own childhood. Even if there is no ‘haunted’ house, children will always make one – at least, my brother and I did! With the limitless amounts of imagination children have, there will always be adventures to be had and ‘monsters’ to escape from. There was one particular house, when we were around the same age as Jem and Scout, where they had a doorbell you pulled, like a cord. My brother Josh said it was a doorbell that made you scream every time you pulled it, so we obviously had great fun in pulling it, screaming, and running away. If by some fluke the person living there is reading this, I’m really sorry, but it still makes me laugh! There was also every Christmas, when we went carol singing. We had decided that the houses beyond the wood were richer than the others, and every year would link arms, lighting matches to try and find our way in the dark and telling ghost stories the whole time.
Once everything has been established, the book moves on to a case Atticus is defending. A black man, Tom, has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell, part of a trashy white family with very poor education and even less money. This is where the casual prejudice of the time is evident – Jem and Scout have to put up with people calling their family a “nigger-lover” (sorry if that language offends, it is a direct quote and I mean no harm); Atticus faces repercussions for his whole-hearted attempt to save Tom; and many of the Maycomb women look down on the black community. However, there’s still a touch of hope – the way Atticus defends Tom’s case makes everybody think, a great feat in the setting where black and white people are in completely different classes. In this part of the story, I really looked up to Atticus, in his seemingly-infinite wisdom.
In the final part of the story, Jem and Scout finally get to meet Boo Radley, and it is here that the title of the book becomes apparent. In the middle of the book, after Jem and Scout get air-rifles, it is said:
<blockquote>When he gave us our air-rifles Atticus wouldn’t teach us to shoot. Uncle Jack instructed us in the rudiments thereof; he said Atticus wasn’t interested in guns. Atticus said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you shoot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.
“Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”</blockquote>
Obviously, not knowing what was coming, I thought the story must eventually be about the children shooting a mockingbird. The last page of the book, though, I realised that it was a lot more subtle and symbolic than that. The mockingjay is Boo Radley, the man who gives when he can and causes no harm.
I really wish I’d read this story as a child, to see what sort of perspective I’d have had back then. Reading as an adult means that, while Scout was a brilliant perspective, I was almost reading as an outsider. I could see her maturing, slowly fitting the pieces together to start acting like an adult, but at the same time it was an undeniably adult reading. I really really enjoyed the book, but I have a feeling it’s one of those multi-faceted ones where you read something different every time. I can’t help thinking that reading it as a child would have been a lot more powerful.
This review is also on my <a href="http://awowords.wordpress.com">blog</a>; - if you liked it, please check it out!
The story is set in Maycomb, Alabama in the 1930s, and is written from the perspective of Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch, who is between six and eight years old as the story progresses. The start of the book does an effective job of introducing us to all the characters. Scout lives with her widowed father, Atticus, a lawyer, her brother Jem (who is 4 years older than her) and Calpurnia, a black woman who acts as a type of mother figure. A friend, Dill, also joins them in the summer. The three children are intrigued by Arthur ‘Boo’ Radley, who lives in the house on the corner but is never seen outside. I really enjoyed this part of the story; it set the scene brilliantly, as well as helping me reminisce about my own childhood. Even if there is no ‘haunted’ house, children will always make one – at least, my brother and I did! With the limitless amounts of imagination children have, there will always be adventures to be had and ‘monsters’ to escape from. There was one particular house, when we were around the same age as Jem and Scout, where they had a doorbell you pulled, like a cord. My brother Josh said it was a doorbell that made you scream every time you pulled it, so we obviously had great fun in pulling it, screaming, and running away. If by some fluke the person living there is reading this, I’m really sorry, but it still makes me laugh! There was also every Christmas, when we went carol singing. We had decided that the houses beyond the wood were richer than the others, and every year would link arms, lighting matches to try and find our way in the dark and telling ghost stories the whole time.
Once everything has been established, the book moves on to a case Atticus is defending. A black man, Tom, has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell, part of a trashy white family with very poor education and even less money. This is where the casual prejudice of the time is evident – Jem and Scout have to put up with people calling their family a “nigger-lover” (sorry if that language offends, it is a direct quote and I mean no harm); Atticus faces repercussions for his whole-hearted attempt to save Tom; and many of the Maycomb women look down on the black community. However, there’s still a touch of hope – the way Atticus defends Tom’s case makes everybody think, a great feat in the setting where black and white people are in completely different classes. In this part of the story, I really looked up to Atticus, in his seemingly-infinite wisdom.
In the final part of the story, Jem and Scout finally get to meet Boo Radley, and it is here that the title of the book becomes apparent. In the middle of the book, after Jem and Scout get air-rifles, it is said:
<blockquote>When he gave us our air-rifles Atticus wouldn’t teach us to shoot. Uncle Jack instructed us in the rudiments thereof; he said Atticus wasn’t interested in guns. Atticus said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you shoot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.
“Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”</blockquote>
Obviously, not knowing what was coming, I thought the story must eventually be about the children shooting a mockingbird. The last page of the book, though, I realised that it was a lot more subtle and symbolic than that. The mockingjay is Boo Radley, the man who gives when he can and causes no harm.
I really wish I’d read this story as a child, to see what sort of perspective I’d have had back then. Reading as an adult means that, while Scout was a brilliant perspective, I was almost reading as an outsider. I could see her maturing, slowly fitting the pieces together to start acting like an adult, but at the same time it was an undeniably adult reading. I really really enjoyed the book, but I have a feeling it’s one of those multi-faceted ones where you read something different every time. I can’t help thinking that reading it as a child would have been a lot more powerful.
This review is also on my <a href="http://awowords.wordpress.com">blog</a>; - if you liked it, please check it out!
Kirk Bage (1775 KP) rated Roma (2018) in Movies
Mar 2, 2020 (Updated Mar 3, 2020)
I watched Roma exactly a week ago today. And although I knew 20 minutes in that I loved it, and at the end that I really loved it, I have taken that time to let it settle within me in before coming to write about it. Some films are so good that you have to do that: let it sink into you fully, before doing anything so trivial as judging and comparing them. Roma is incomparable! I have never seen anything like it, or felt as deeply moved by a film in a long time.
Not that it didn’t get attention at the time of its release, it did, receiving 10 Oscar nominations and winning 3, for best foreign language film, director and cinematography, but it certainly wasn’t seen by as many people as it should have been, despite its presence on Netflix from the start. Having digested it now, and spending some time reading about how and why it was made, I feel a slight mission to recommend it to as many people as I can.
Based on Alfonso Cuarón’s own childhood in Mexico City, and his memories of his family and especially their housemaid, Liboria (Libo) Rodriguez, to whom the film is dedicated, it is a masterpiece labour of love that few directors ever achieve or even attempt to make. After a strong career of exceptional films, including Y Tu Mamá También, Children of Men and Gravity, it was the box office and critical success of the latter that gave Cuarón carte blanche to go and make whatever project he chose. Where many might have been tempted by the big money of superhero or fantasy movies (for which he had some experience with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) he went back to his roots and shot a very personal non-English film, in black and white, where no music exists except that which occurs naturally, and on the surface not much happens.
At least it feels like not much is happening, such is the naturalistic, almost improvised (although it wasn’t) style and pace; shot with a lens capturing detail and nuance with some of the most beautiful photography I have ever had the privilege to see. Truly, an awful lot is happening, but you have to feel and experience it, not simply be told it by the narrative. It takes a while for our Hollywood conditioned brains to accept this at first, and many might come to it and give up half an hour in because of that challenge. I can promise, however, there is not a single thing boring about this film, unless humanity is boring.
Oscar nominated lead Yalitza Aparicio as the shy, loving maid, Cleo, was not an actor before this film. She auditioned and was hand picked by Cuarón from hundreds of young women, without knowing who he was or what the film was about. Apparently, the film was shot in sequence so as not to confuse her emotionally on her extraordinary journey. She is so unassuming and natural that part of you falls in love with her immediately. In time, we almost come to forget we are watching an act at all, and almost become her, such is the empathy she evokes.
Which isn’t an easy ride, as we watch her be gently and then cruelly ignored, mistreated and used; climaxing in one of the most astonishingly painful and jaw-dropping scenes imaginable, and then a scene of such powerful redemption and humanity it instantly breaks the heart and lifts the soul. All the while she never asks for attention or love, but is just herself: a young woman living a difficult but beautiful life in a country and time full of turmoil, prejudice and social change.
The recreation of Mexico in 1970 is so breathtaking, it is hard to imagine at times we are not watching a documentary from that era. But, it is the detail the lens chooses to capture that reminds you this is a visual poem and a love-letter to a time, a place and a family far away in history and the memory of one man (represented by ten year old Carlos Peralta as Paco). At times it evokes the work of the very greatest film artists of all time: Bergman, Fellini, Hitchcock etc. Not one image is wasted or insignificant, from the reflection of the sky in water, to the dog-shit constantly lining the driveway. Everything is chosen and meaningful in the full context of the work.
There is no awkward exposition, no dramatic moments milked for all they are worth, no sequences of heightened excitement that manipulate us; simply truthful moments that hang in the air for what they are, leaving us to decide how we relate to them without ever preaching or teaching us how. In that way, it is a work of such maturity that I doubt many living directors could emulate it at all. The closest comparison I can think of is the personal passion Spielberg put into Shindler’s List, but really it is a moot comparison, and in fact owes much more to films like Haneke’s The White Ribbon.
Can it be faulted? Well, yes, certainly. But, honestly, I don’t see the point in trying. It is as close to perfection a small story of this kind can be. Importantly, I think it is an open film, that allows us to take from it whatever we like, relating to our own experiences and cares. For me, it said that any pain and hardship can be overcome, as long as there is love and beauty walking by its side. A message of no small importance. If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to do so. If you have, then please keep spreading the word. I believe it to be a genuine classic that will endure the criticism of many decades to come. Without a doubt in my mind something very special indeed.
Not that it didn’t get attention at the time of its release, it did, receiving 10 Oscar nominations and winning 3, for best foreign language film, director and cinematography, but it certainly wasn’t seen by as many people as it should have been, despite its presence on Netflix from the start. Having digested it now, and spending some time reading about how and why it was made, I feel a slight mission to recommend it to as many people as I can.
Based on Alfonso Cuarón’s own childhood in Mexico City, and his memories of his family and especially their housemaid, Liboria (Libo) Rodriguez, to whom the film is dedicated, it is a masterpiece labour of love that few directors ever achieve or even attempt to make. After a strong career of exceptional films, including Y Tu Mamá También, Children of Men and Gravity, it was the box office and critical success of the latter that gave Cuarón carte blanche to go and make whatever project he chose. Where many might have been tempted by the big money of superhero or fantasy movies (for which he had some experience with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) he went back to his roots and shot a very personal non-English film, in black and white, where no music exists except that which occurs naturally, and on the surface not much happens.
At least it feels like not much is happening, such is the naturalistic, almost improvised (although it wasn’t) style and pace; shot with a lens capturing detail and nuance with some of the most beautiful photography I have ever had the privilege to see. Truly, an awful lot is happening, but you have to feel and experience it, not simply be told it by the narrative. It takes a while for our Hollywood conditioned brains to accept this at first, and many might come to it and give up half an hour in because of that challenge. I can promise, however, there is not a single thing boring about this film, unless humanity is boring.
Oscar nominated lead Yalitza Aparicio as the shy, loving maid, Cleo, was not an actor before this film. She auditioned and was hand picked by Cuarón from hundreds of young women, without knowing who he was or what the film was about. Apparently, the film was shot in sequence so as not to confuse her emotionally on her extraordinary journey. She is so unassuming and natural that part of you falls in love with her immediately. In time, we almost come to forget we are watching an act at all, and almost become her, such is the empathy she evokes.
Which isn’t an easy ride, as we watch her be gently and then cruelly ignored, mistreated and used; climaxing in one of the most astonishingly painful and jaw-dropping scenes imaginable, and then a scene of such powerful redemption and humanity it instantly breaks the heart and lifts the soul. All the while she never asks for attention or love, but is just herself: a young woman living a difficult but beautiful life in a country and time full of turmoil, prejudice and social change.
The recreation of Mexico in 1970 is so breathtaking, it is hard to imagine at times we are not watching a documentary from that era. But, it is the detail the lens chooses to capture that reminds you this is a visual poem and a love-letter to a time, a place and a family far away in history and the memory of one man (represented by ten year old Carlos Peralta as Paco). At times it evokes the work of the very greatest film artists of all time: Bergman, Fellini, Hitchcock etc. Not one image is wasted or insignificant, from the reflection of the sky in water, to the dog-shit constantly lining the driveway. Everything is chosen and meaningful in the full context of the work.
There is no awkward exposition, no dramatic moments milked for all they are worth, no sequences of heightened excitement that manipulate us; simply truthful moments that hang in the air for what they are, leaving us to decide how we relate to them without ever preaching or teaching us how. In that way, it is a work of such maturity that I doubt many living directors could emulate it at all. The closest comparison I can think of is the personal passion Spielberg put into Shindler’s List, but really it is a moot comparison, and in fact owes much more to films like Haneke’s The White Ribbon.
Can it be faulted? Well, yes, certainly. But, honestly, I don’t see the point in trying. It is as close to perfection a small story of this kind can be. Importantly, I think it is an open film, that allows us to take from it whatever we like, relating to our own experiences and cares. For me, it said that any pain and hardship can be overcome, as long as there is love and beauty walking by its side. A message of no small importance. If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to do so. If you have, then please keep spreading the word. I believe it to be a genuine classic that will endure the criticism of many decades to come. Without a doubt in my mind something very special indeed.
Bob Mann (459 KP) rated Darkest Hour (2017) in Movies
Sep 29, 2021
Not buggering it up.
As Doctor Who repeatedly points out, time is most definitely a tricksy thing. As I think I’ve commented on before, the events of 1940-45 are not in my lifetime but were sufficiently fresh to my parents that they were still actively talked about… so they still appear “current” to me. But I find it astonishing to realize that to a teen viewer this film is equivalent in timeframe to the sinking of the Titanic! #ancienthistory! So I suspect your connection to this film will be strongly affected by your age, and that was definitely reflected in the average age at my showing which must have been at least 60.
It’s 1940 and Western Europe is under siege. Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup, “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel“) is the Conservative Prime Minister but is voted out of office in an attempt to form a grand coalition government with Labour leader Clement Atlee (David Schofield). Despite appearing a shoe-in for the role, Viscount Halifax (Stephen Dillane) turns it down, thinking that his alternative (and bête noire) would drink from the poisoned chalice and be quickly be out of his (and Chamberlain’s) hair. For that alternative choice is the volatile and unpredictable Churchill (Gary Oldman), grudgingly invited into the job by King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn, “Rogue One“). With the Nazi’s bearing down on the 300,000 encircled troops at Dunkirk, and with calls from his war cabinet to capitulate and seek terms of settlement, this is indeed both Churchill’s, and the country’s, ‘darkest hour’.
Despite the woeful lack of historical knowledge among today’s youngsters, most will be at least aware of the story of Dunkirk, with many having absorbed Christopher Nolan’s film of last summer. This film is almost the matching bookend to that film, showing the terrifying behind-closed-door events that led up to that miracle. For it was terrifying seeing how close Britain came to the brink, and I’m not sure even I really appreciated that before. While this might have been a “thriller” if it had been a fictional story, we well know the outcome of the story: but even with this knowledge I still found the film to be extremely tense and claustrophobic as the net draws in around Churchill’s firmly-held beliefs.
Gary Oldman’s performance is extraordinary, and his award nominations are well-deserved. We have grown so used to some of his more over-the-top Russian portrayals in films like “Air Force One” and last year’s (pretty poor) “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” that it is easy to forget what a nuanced and flexible actor he is. Ever since that “No, surely not!” moment of that first glimpse of the film’s trailer, it has almost been impossible to ‘see’ Oldman behind the brilliant make-up of the character (Kazuhiro Tsuji gets a special credit for it). But his eyes are in there, and there are some extreme close-ups (for example, during a bizarre and tense phone call with Roosevelt (David Strathairn)) when you suddenly see “There you are!”.
The supportive wife – Clemmie (Kristin Scott Thomas) gives Winston (Gary Oldman) a hug.
While I have nothing against Brian Cox as an actor, I far prefer the portrayal of Churchill on show here compared to last year’s “Churchill“: true that that film was set three or four stressful years later, but Cox’s Churchill was portrayed as an incompetent fool, an embarrassment to the establishment that have to work around him. Oldman’s Churchill is irascible, unreasonable, but undeniably a leader and a great orator.
Mirroring “Churchill” though, the action is seen through the eyes of Churchill’s put-upon secretary, here played delightfully by Lily James (“Downton Abbey”, “Baby Driver“) who perfectly looks and sounds the part. The character is more successful than that of Ella Purnell’s Garrett in that she is given more room to develop her character and for the audience to warm to her. Oldman is getting all the kudos, but Lily James really deserves some for her touching and engaging performance here.
Perfectly cast: Lily James as Churchill’s secretary Elizabeth Layton.
Also in Oldman’s shadow is the always marvelous Kristin Scott Thomas (“Four Weddings and a Funeral”, “The English Patient”) as Clemmie Churchill, expressing all the love and frustration associated with being a long-suffering wife to an over-worked husband in the public service.
At the pen is “The Theory of Everything” writer Anthony McCarten, and I’d like to say its a great script but with most of the best lines (“a sheep in sheep’s clothing” – LoL) coming from Winston himself it’s difficult to tell. Some of the scenes can get a bit laborious and at 125 minutes – though not long by any means – the script could still perhaps have had a nip and tuck here and there.
Where some of this time is well spent though is in some sedate shots of London street life, across two separate scenes panning across everyday folk as the stresses of war start to become more evident. This is just one of the areas where director Joe Wright (“Atonement”, “Pride and Prejudice”) shows considerable panache, ably assisted by the cinematography of Bruno Delbonnel (“Inside Llewyn Davis“): a boy closes his telescope-fingers around Churchill’s plane; a bomb’s eye-view of the beleaguered Brigadier Nicholson in Calais; and – very impressively – the smoky imperiousness of the House of Commons set.
An atmospheric chamber: the recreation of the wartime House of Commons is spectacular (with production design by Sarah Greenwood (“Anna Karenina”, “Atonement”)).
And most-importantly Wright delivers what Christopher Nolan couldn’t deliver in “Dunkirk“: a properly CGI’d vista of hundred of small boats crossing the channel to Dunkirk. Now THAT is a scene that Kenneth Branagh could justly have looked in awe at!!!
There are a number of scenes that require disbelief to be suspended though: the biggest one being a tube train ride – very moving and effective I must say – but one that features the longest journey between any two stations on the District Line than has ever been experienced!
One stop on the District Line via Westminster…. via Harrow-on-the-Hill!
So this is a great film for really reliving a knife-edge moment in British history, and is highly recommended particularly for older viewers. If I’m honest though, between “Darkest Hour”, “Churchill” and John Lithgow’s excellent portrayal in “The Crown” I’m all over portrayals of the great man for a few years. Can we please move on now Hollywood?
It’s 1940 and Western Europe is under siege. Neville Chamberlain (Ronald Pickup, “The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel“) is the Conservative Prime Minister but is voted out of office in an attempt to form a grand coalition government with Labour leader Clement Atlee (David Schofield). Despite appearing a shoe-in for the role, Viscount Halifax (Stephen Dillane) turns it down, thinking that his alternative (and bête noire) would drink from the poisoned chalice and be quickly be out of his (and Chamberlain’s) hair. For that alternative choice is the volatile and unpredictable Churchill (Gary Oldman), grudgingly invited into the job by King George VI (Ben Mendelsohn, “Rogue One“). With the Nazi’s bearing down on the 300,000 encircled troops at Dunkirk, and with calls from his war cabinet to capitulate and seek terms of settlement, this is indeed both Churchill’s, and the country’s, ‘darkest hour’.
Despite the woeful lack of historical knowledge among today’s youngsters, most will be at least aware of the story of Dunkirk, with many having absorbed Christopher Nolan’s film of last summer. This film is almost the matching bookend to that film, showing the terrifying behind-closed-door events that led up to that miracle. For it was terrifying seeing how close Britain came to the brink, and I’m not sure even I really appreciated that before. While this might have been a “thriller” if it had been a fictional story, we well know the outcome of the story: but even with this knowledge I still found the film to be extremely tense and claustrophobic as the net draws in around Churchill’s firmly-held beliefs.
Gary Oldman’s performance is extraordinary, and his award nominations are well-deserved. We have grown so used to some of his more over-the-top Russian portrayals in films like “Air Force One” and last year’s (pretty poor) “The Hitman’s Bodyguard” that it is easy to forget what a nuanced and flexible actor he is. Ever since that “No, surely not!” moment of that first glimpse of the film’s trailer, it has almost been impossible to ‘see’ Oldman behind the brilliant make-up of the character (Kazuhiro Tsuji gets a special credit for it). But his eyes are in there, and there are some extreme close-ups (for example, during a bizarre and tense phone call with Roosevelt (David Strathairn)) when you suddenly see “There you are!”.
The supportive wife – Clemmie (Kristin Scott Thomas) gives Winston (Gary Oldman) a hug.
While I have nothing against Brian Cox as an actor, I far prefer the portrayal of Churchill on show here compared to last year’s “Churchill“: true that that film was set three or four stressful years later, but Cox’s Churchill was portrayed as an incompetent fool, an embarrassment to the establishment that have to work around him. Oldman’s Churchill is irascible, unreasonable, but undeniably a leader and a great orator.
Mirroring “Churchill” though, the action is seen through the eyes of Churchill’s put-upon secretary, here played delightfully by Lily James (“Downton Abbey”, “Baby Driver“) who perfectly looks and sounds the part. The character is more successful than that of Ella Purnell’s Garrett in that she is given more room to develop her character and for the audience to warm to her. Oldman is getting all the kudos, but Lily James really deserves some for her touching and engaging performance here.
Perfectly cast: Lily James as Churchill’s secretary Elizabeth Layton.
Also in Oldman’s shadow is the always marvelous Kristin Scott Thomas (“Four Weddings and a Funeral”, “The English Patient”) as Clemmie Churchill, expressing all the love and frustration associated with being a long-suffering wife to an over-worked husband in the public service.
At the pen is “The Theory of Everything” writer Anthony McCarten, and I’d like to say its a great script but with most of the best lines (“a sheep in sheep’s clothing” – LoL) coming from Winston himself it’s difficult to tell. Some of the scenes can get a bit laborious and at 125 minutes – though not long by any means – the script could still perhaps have had a nip and tuck here and there.
Where some of this time is well spent though is in some sedate shots of London street life, across two separate scenes panning across everyday folk as the stresses of war start to become more evident. This is just one of the areas where director Joe Wright (“Atonement”, “Pride and Prejudice”) shows considerable panache, ably assisted by the cinematography of Bruno Delbonnel (“Inside Llewyn Davis“): a boy closes his telescope-fingers around Churchill’s plane; a bomb’s eye-view of the beleaguered Brigadier Nicholson in Calais; and – very impressively – the smoky imperiousness of the House of Commons set.
An atmospheric chamber: the recreation of the wartime House of Commons is spectacular (with production design by Sarah Greenwood (“Anna Karenina”, “Atonement”)).
And most-importantly Wright delivers what Christopher Nolan couldn’t deliver in “Dunkirk“: a properly CGI’d vista of hundred of small boats crossing the channel to Dunkirk. Now THAT is a scene that Kenneth Branagh could justly have looked in awe at!!!
There are a number of scenes that require disbelief to be suspended though: the biggest one being a tube train ride – very moving and effective I must say – but one that features the longest journey between any two stations on the District Line than has ever been experienced!
One stop on the District Line via Westminster…. via Harrow-on-the-Hill!
So this is a great film for really reliving a knife-edge moment in British history, and is highly recommended particularly for older viewers. If I’m honest though, between “Darkest Hour”, “Churchill” and John Lithgow’s excellent portrayal in “The Crown” I’m all over portrayals of the great man for a few years. Can we please move on now Hollywood?
A Bibliophagist (113 KP) rated Wuthering Heights in Books
Feb 12, 2020
Stands up (2 more)
Enthralling
Unique
Dislikable characters (1 more)
Difficult accents without translations
I will do my best to review this, however, I didn't heed the intro, this tour de force really does leave you as quickly as it comes, and reading another book before reviewing this one was a mistake.
In reading reviews prior to reading this book, I learned three major things; 1, people either love or hate this book, 2. I had no idea what I was actually in for, and 3. this may have not been the romantic pick for February I was expecting it to be.
So yes, PSA for anyone out there considering going into this thinking it's a romance. It is NOT. There are love stories in this, absolutely, powerful love stories that made me read quotes to my boyfriend with snarky statements like "if you don't say this at my funeral, did you ever really love me?". But it is NOT a romance. If anything this has more in common with "The Count of Monte Cristo" than it does "Pride and Prejudice". Honestly, the only thing it has in common with other, romantic books of this time, is the time period. But beware, no balls and high society and Mr. Darcy's await you in this novel. I feel a number of the reviews decrying the book, calling the characters "monstrous" both were the orchestrators of their own disappointment by assuming it to be like an Austin, and really need to look in the mirror and reflect on if they are really as perfect as they think they are. Especially if they were in the circumstances that surround this tale.
I find that Heathcliff himself addresses this mistake many readers had going into this book.
"picturing in me a hero of romance, and expecting unlimited indulgences from my chivalrous devotion. I can hardly regard her in the light of a rational creature, so obstinately has she persisted in forming a fabulous notion of my character and actin gon false impressions she cherished."
SO many readers went into this expecting Heathcliff to be some misunderstood brute or one harsh but salvaged by the purity of his love of Catherine. But this isn't the case.
Wuthering Heights tells the story of (I guess technically 3) but really 2 generations of families. Living in the Yorkshire Moors, isolated from high society. We have the Liptons, primmer and properer and more in touch with society, and the Earnshaws which become a little rough around the edges in their isolation and loss. Papa Earnshaw has two children, Catherine and Hindley, and adopts a small boy of unknown heritage but is implied to be Romani or of mixed race (sorry Tom Hardy and nearly every portrayal of Heathcliff), that he names, simply, Heathcliff. He loves Heathcliff, and dotes on him greatly, much to the chagrin of Hindly who grows to resent Heathcliff, treating him terribly until Hindly leaves for school. Catherine and Heathcliff become great playmates, their care is given primarily to a maid scarcely older than them, as Papa Earnshaw is a single daddy. They are wild things, as children I would assume would be, in such isolation as the Yorkshire Moors in a time before the creature comforts and entertainment we have. They grow very close, obsessively close. Upon Papa Earnshaw's death, Hindley returns (at around the age of 23) to run the household, and take over the care of these two youngsters, one of which, he hates. So, Cinderella-style, Heathcliff gets treated worse and worse and treated like a servant rather than the adoptive child that Papa Earnshaw loved so dearly. Suddenly Heathcliff is nothing, treated terribly, and has the most important thing in his life banned from him, Catherine. Meanwhile, the Liptons also have two children, not wild, but spoilt in their own ways, Edgar and Isabella, close in age to Heathcliff and Catherine. When H and C run off on a camping adventure and find themselves at the Lipton's house, Catherine is injured and stays with the Liptons, in their higher society for 5 weeks. Leaving Heathcliff to the abuse of her brother and further isolation. She returns much more a lady and with her connection to Heathcliff slightly burned. In an attempt to protect Heathcliff, and because Heathcliff is now no more than a servant and not an option to marry, Catherine intends to marry Edgar. Causing our resident bad boy to run off for a number of years. Only to return a proper, but still broody gentleman, and confuse Catherine's affection much to the displeasure of Edgar.
Now, this is where a number of shows and movies end things. With a focus on Catherine and Heathcliff's whirlwind romance, obsession. It has some of the most to the point and beautiful lines regarding love, not all flowery, not "I love you most ardently" but rather cries of "I am Heathcliff" by Catherine. Absolutely heart-rending, even though I didn't like Catherine. But this is not where the book ends. The book goes on to follow Heathcliff's obsession with revenge, with his treatment as a child, his rage against Hindley, and against losing Catherine to Edgar. He spends years slowly ruining everyone's lives. Not that you could really ruin Hindley's life, he was a mean drunk. But he even goes as far as to meddle with the next generation, Hindley's son Hareton is raised terribly and is a bit of a wild thing (those his redemption and love story is quite beautiful), Catherine's daughter Cathy and Heathcliff's son Lipton are whisked up into a big scheme by Heathcliff to take everything. Heathcliff even marry's out of pure spite.
Love does not redeem this man, he's barely an antihero without his youth story. He is angry and passionate and obsessed. Which for the first half of the book I didn't fault him for, but he does do some damnable things in the second half that you cannot argue away. No matter how romantic and beautiful and heartrending his lamentations can be. I was quite the character arc, quite the tale of revenge and loss. He was unredeemable because of his big sprawling schemes and harsh intentions. Catherine for me was unredeemable because she was an obnoxious, selfish thing, that honestly if Heathcliff had stopped thinking about two minutes would have found a better woman in every town. She whined and treated Edgar (who was honestly super sweet) so terribly, she had an anger problem and would work herself up until she was sick. But it is in this imperfection that I fell in love more with the book. Here is something unique and real, this is no Elizabeth Bennett. The isolation and hermetic lifestyle created very different characters than what we see in Jane Austin or even in Emily's sister's novel.
It's no wonder this book was harshly critiqued upon release, here is a woman, writing a revenge story, with love stories in it. That based on the biographical intro had some parallels to her own life. She lived an isolated existence, surrounded by the death of the majority of her family young. She was in her late 20s when she wrote this and died a year after publication. She made humans of monsters and monsters of humans and wrote something unexpected and truly unique.
It's hard for me to explain, amongst the harshness and bleakness of this novel, why I loved it so much. But I did, I loved every bit. The anger, the passion, the love, the scheming, I loved it all.
I also feel it's important to note that this whole story is told by a maid to a new tenant. So the narrator is unreliable. Were these people truly this way? Or is it clouded by this maid's opinions of them? How much is omitted due to the maid not being privy to an event?
Truly a fantastic read, that punched me in my chest and gut, grabbed and twisted my insides and refuses to let go. I would argue it's a cult classic rather than a classic. So please, shed all preconceived notions of what this book is, shake that Austin out of your mind and read this tale of obsession and revenge. It's well worth it.
In reading reviews prior to reading this book, I learned three major things; 1, people either love or hate this book, 2. I had no idea what I was actually in for, and 3. this may have not been the romantic pick for February I was expecting it to be.
So yes, PSA for anyone out there considering going into this thinking it's a romance. It is NOT. There are love stories in this, absolutely, powerful love stories that made me read quotes to my boyfriend with snarky statements like "if you don't say this at my funeral, did you ever really love me?". But it is NOT a romance. If anything this has more in common with "The Count of Monte Cristo" than it does "Pride and Prejudice". Honestly, the only thing it has in common with other, romantic books of this time, is the time period. But beware, no balls and high society and Mr. Darcy's await you in this novel. I feel a number of the reviews decrying the book, calling the characters "monstrous" both were the orchestrators of their own disappointment by assuming it to be like an Austin, and really need to look in the mirror and reflect on if they are really as perfect as they think they are. Especially if they were in the circumstances that surround this tale.
I find that Heathcliff himself addresses this mistake many readers had going into this book.
"picturing in me a hero of romance, and expecting unlimited indulgences from my chivalrous devotion. I can hardly regard her in the light of a rational creature, so obstinately has she persisted in forming a fabulous notion of my character and actin gon false impressions she cherished."
SO many readers went into this expecting Heathcliff to be some misunderstood brute or one harsh but salvaged by the purity of his love of Catherine. But this isn't the case.
Wuthering Heights tells the story of (I guess technically 3) but really 2 generations of families. Living in the Yorkshire Moors, isolated from high society. We have the Liptons, primmer and properer and more in touch with society, and the Earnshaws which become a little rough around the edges in their isolation and loss. Papa Earnshaw has two children, Catherine and Hindley, and adopts a small boy of unknown heritage but is implied to be Romani or of mixed race (sorry Tom Hardy and nearly every portrayal of Heathcliff), that he names, simply, Heathcliff. He loves Heathcliff, and dotes on him greatly, much to the chagrin of Hindly who grows to resent Heathcliff, treating him terribly until Hindly leaves for school. Catherine and Heathcliff become great playmates, their care is given primarily to a maid scarcely older than them, as Papa Earnshaw is a single daddy. They are wild things, as children I would assume would be, in such isolation as the Yorkshire Moors in a time before the creature comforts and entertainment we have. They grow very close, obsessively close. Upon Papa Earnshaw's death, Hindley returns (at around the age of 23) to run the household, and take over the care of these two youngsters, one of which, he hates. So, Cinderella-style, Heathcliff gets treated worse and worse and treated like a servant rather than the adoptive child that Papa Earnshaw loved so dearly. Suddenly Heathcliff is nothing, treated terribly, and has the most important thing in his life banned from him, Catherine. Meanwhile, the Liptons also have two children, not wild, but spoilt in their own ways, Edgar and Isabella, close in age to Heathcliff and Catherine. When H and C run off on a camping adventure and find themselves at the Lipton's house, Catherine is injured and stays with the Liptons, in their higher society for 5 weeks. Leaving Heathcliff to the abuse of her brother and further isolation. She returns much more a lady and with her connection to Heathcliff slightly burned. In an attempt to protect Heathcliff, and because Heathcliff is now no more than a servant and not an option to marry, Catherine intends to marry Edgar. Causing our resident bad boy to run off for a number of years. Only to return a proper, but still broody gentleman, and confuse Catherine's affection much to the displeasure of Edgar.
Now, this is where a number of shows and movies end things. With a focus on Catherine and Heathcliff's whirlwind romance, obsession. It has some of the most to the point and beautiful lines regarding love, not all flowery, not "I love you most ardently" but rather cries of "I am Heathcliff" by Catherine. Absolutely heart-rending, even though I didn't like Catherine. But this is not where the book ends. The book goes on to follow Heathcliff's obsession with revenge, with his treatment as a child, his rage against Hindley, and against losing Catherine to Edgar. He spends years slowly ruining everyone's lives. Not that you could really ruin Hindley's life, he was a mean drunk. But he even goes as far as to meddle with the next generation, Hindley's son Hareton is raised terribly and is a bit of a wild thing (those his redemption and love story is quite beautiful), Catherine's daughter Cathy and Heathcliff's son Lipton are whisked up into a big scheme by Heathcliff to take everything. Heathcliff even marry's out of pure spite.
Love does not redeem this man, he's barely an antihero without his youth story. He is angry and passionate and obsessed. Which for the first half of the book I didn't fault him for, but he does do some damnable things in the second half that you cannot argue away. No matter how romantic and beautiful and heartrending his lamentations can be. I was quite the character arc, quite the tale of revenge and loss. He was unredeemable because of his big sprawling schemes and harsh intentions. Catherine for me was unredeemable because she was an obnoxious, selfish thing, that honestly if Heathcliff had stopped thinking about two minutes would have found a better woman in every town. She whined and treated Edgar (who was honestly super sweet) so terribly, she had an anger problem and would work herself up until she was sick. But it is in this imperfection that I fell in love more with the book. Here is something unique and real, this is no Elizabeth Bennett. The isolation and hermetic lifestyle created very different characters than what we see in Jane Austin or even in Emily's sister's novel.
It's no wonder this book was harshly critiqued upon release, here is a woman, writing a revenge story, with love stories in it. That based on the biographical intro had some parallels to her own life. She lived an isolated existence, surrounded by the death of the majority of her family young. She was in her late 20s when she wrote this and died a year after publication. She made humans of monsters and monsters of humans and wrote something unexpected and truly unique.
It's hard for me to explain, amongst the harshness and bleakness of this novel, why I loved it so much. But I did, I loved every bit. The anger, the passion, the love, the scheming, I loved it all.
I also feel it's important to note that this whole story is told by a maid to a new tenant. So the narrator is unreliable. Were these people truly this way? Or is it clouded by this maid's opinions of them? How much is omitted due to the maid not being privy to an event?
Truly a fantastic read, that punched me in my chest and gut, grabbed and twisted my insides and refuses to let go. I would argue it's a cult classic rather than a classic. So please, shed all preconceived notions of what this book is, shake that Austin out of your mind and read this tale of obsession and revenge. It's well worth it.
Curiosity Quills: Chronology
Richard Roberts, Tony Healey, Piers Anthony, J.R. Rain, Jordan Elizabeth Mierek, James Wymore, Stan Swanson, Darin Kennedy , Julie Frost , Andrew Buckley , J.P. Moynahan, B. C. Johnson, J. P. Sloan, Andrew J. Rausch, Katie Young , Scott Nicholson, Wilbert Stanton, Tara Tyler, Mark W. Woodring, J. E. Anckorn, Nathan L. Yocum, G. Miki Hayden, Matthew S. Cox and Matthew Graybosch
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