Film Review: All Is True

All Is True. Meh. Pleasant enough, I suppose - certainly quite pleasant to look at - but not very interesting and struck me as being a big old dollop of self-indulgence on Brannagh's part, with a portion of mawkish nonsense regarding Hamnet. Nice scenery, though.

Film Review: Green Book

An engaging story that skates across the thin ice of America's 'Jim Crow' era. Whilst the subject matter certainly has room for more weighty treatment than this, 'Green Book' nevertheless delivers in spite of its simplistic 'broad-brush stroke' portrayal of the rampant prejudice of the 1960's.

The redemptive nature of the relationship between the two leads is obvious from the outset but the film contains enough twists to upset the most obvious of expectations.  But it is the performances from both Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen that lift it above what might otherwise have been leaning too far towards the 'Jim Crow LIte'.

Mortensen's appears the bigger role: he more obviously to fill the screen with his portrayal of the overweight, uncooth, mouthy Italian American thug Tony Lip (he put on over 3 stone for the role!). But it's Ali whose portrayal of tightly controlled emotion - often in the face of brutality on many levels - who steals the film. Highly recommended.

Film Review: If Beale Street Could Talk

At it's heart, a story as old as time - deep, unbreakable bonds of love - but viewed through the prism of an African American experience that has been replayed a thousand million times: racially motivated police brutality and a system stacked so far against them as to be impossible not to fall foul of.

Exquisitely sensual - at times almost overpoweringly so - there is a sense of the unreal, the mythological, about Beale Street. It relies, largely, on delicately nuanced body language and subtle facial expressions, rather than physical action, to portray emotion. Long takes allow the viewers to immerse themselves in each scene, to soak up the atmosphere - the clothes, the details of the interiors, the colours - and every shot is carefully composed down to the smallest detail. The cinematography is exquisite and the score elevates the visuals to something almost ethereal. Key scenes relieve what might otherwise be an almost suffocating, lotus eater-like experience and whilst here and there a jarring note might sound, overall Beale Street is achingly beautiful. Sublime. Heartbreaking.

The Wrestling Poet

I'm back to pub titles as post titles!  Not that I wrestle on any kind of professional or amateur basis, you understand.  Well, not often anyway.

No, it's just that I've at last managed to finish a piece of work that I've been wrestling with since NaPoWriMo back in April.  It's been through five different drafts, plus a lot of editorial 'fiddling' to reach something approaching a finished version.  I ended up cutting the two lines I loved the most about it, in order to achieve a finished product.  Funny how that goes.  And it does hurt to do it - cut out something you personally think is really great.  But then I've still got the lines to use in something else.

Alphabetti Poetti

I'm a day late with this, but here's a little piece of nonsense that in no way reflects the greatness of the lady involved.  In fact, as tributes go it's seriously shabby.  Nevertheless, it's the best I've got.

C IS FOR CLERIHEW

In Rosa Parks case
being asked to make space
caused an almighty fuss
over a seat on a bus.

Bonfire Night Of The Vanities

Well it’s all very exciting!  I’ve known for a little while that two online poetry journals have each accepted a poem of mine for publication.  I’ve had notification today that both are going to publish in the week of 4^th November. Quite appropriately, I shall be as giddy as a Catherine Wheel!

What joy is joy if Sylvia be not by?

My mentor has sent me off to read, and more importantly listen to, Sylvia Plath.

I've bought ‘Ariel’ and today listened to her reading Lady Lazarus and The Birthday Present and one other from Ariel (which evidently made a huge impression as I can’t remember the name of it). So what do I think of her?

She's sharp, clipped, controlled, brittle and about as empathic as obsidian.  I have no sense, from listening to her read, of there being any softness or compassion about her: for others or for herself.  It's a very carefully constructed and presented persona that I don't think we are supposed to like. But then that would just feed into her negative feelings of self-worth, so it figures.  Leaving aside the fact that she’s clearly developed in a cultured and educated environment, there’s a sense of superciliousness about her; a sense of superiority and coldness, particularly in Lady Lazarus.  Maybe it’s the quality of the recording, but I think not.  I accept that it may well be deliberate.  I hear also a rather self-centred core: one that craves love and admiration and yet despised both those that offer that and the self for wanting it. 

And yet, when she took her life, I believe she was quite careful to ensure that her children would be as safe from the immediate physical effects of her actions as she could make them.  So not all bad, then. 

How much of her writing was a simple expression of the mental anguish and pain she lived with, and how much shock tactics designed to elicit sympathy in the reader is very hard to determine.  It’s almost impossible to separate one from the other in someone suffering severe, long-term mental illness. 

Should I be concerned that there’s little ‘emotion’ in her reading, especially in the case of something like Lady Lazarus?  I’m not particularly.  Mental illness can give people an interesting perspective on their own behaviours, often being deeply and overly analytical or distancing themselves emotionally (others, of course, are wracked with overbearing guilt, but she doesn’t strike me as falling into that camp).  Actually, that’s not true.  There is emotion in her reading, just not a kind that I find particularly appealing.  Affective, yes.  Attractive, no.