I was thinking, what shall I write about today? There are so many current issues, with immense long-term implications. The Supreme Court, in various contexts The depravity of the Republican Party. Guns. Climate.
Washington State did a great job in passing the first statewide ban on the sale of assault weapons. So much credit goes to their legislature, governor, and the group “Moms Demand Action,” founded by the heroic Shannon Watts, who stepped down from the leadership, with all the horrible attendant death threats, a few months ago, but is still very active.
A great step–except of course that we know that if and when the Supreme Court hears the case, they will strike the law down, and very likely write an opinion which will invalidate any other state’s effort to write such a law. And this is so depressing and upsetting; particularly the fact that millions of people who should have realized this, refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, for various self-indulgent and stupid reasons. It did not take a PhD in Logic to have known what would happen to the Supreme Court if Trump got to appoint two or three Justices.
But there were enough people who were so full of themselves, that they thought they would manifest their presence by voting for Stein, or Johnson, or Trump, or not voting at all. And by being so utterly selfish and stupid, they were instrumental in getting Trump elected. And here we are, And how many years will it take to switch two or three seats on the Supreme Court?
And then I thought, maybe I could hold that in abeyance for at least a while, and write about a couple of movies and a television show I liked. That is actually a rather big deal for me, because there are very few movies and shows which I like. I don’t say this in a supercilious fashion, though I do think that I have good taste. I just think that the writing in these genres is generally not nearly as good as it once was; and that “political and social correctness,” and agendas, find their way into much of it, spoiling or circumscribing it.
That doesn’t mean that because I like something, you necessarily would. But it is always nice to be able to find some art to recommend.
The first is a full-length movie, “The Lost King.” It is a British film, and almost completely a true story. It is about Philippa Langley, a British woman who has a respectable but fairly mundane job, from which she is unfairly not promoted. She has two cute sons, and a sort of ex-husband who lives there, but sees another woman, as part of their arrangement. She suffers from something like chronic fatigue syndrome, but gets by all right.
She takes her boys to see a performance of Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” She is engrossed by the story, and learns that there is a small but dedicated group of people who are devotees of a sort, and believe that Richard III was not the evil figure of the Shakespearean play. The forces of Henry Tudor defeated Richard and his army at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, and Richard was killed and his body supposedly thrown into the river.
Philippa becomes animated by the possibility that Henry, who became King Henry VII of England, may have wanted to enhance his prestige and the validity of his ascension, by having Richard portrayed as a villain. This narrative would then have been continued during the reign of Henry’s son Henry VIII, and then that of Henry VIII’s daughter Elizabeth I, who of course was Shakespeare’s patron, as was the case then with monarchs. And Shakespeare accepted this history in framing his play.
So Philippa takes a surprising leap into action, and is determined to somehow get the financial backing so that she can have a search for Richard’s bones which may have actually been interred, perhaps under what over 500 years later, is a car park in Leicester; and that perhaps evidence will show more, including whether he was a hunchback as portrayed in the play, Her serious yet amusing efforts; her husband and young boys becoming involved, too, make this a vivid story, with a good deal of charm, and a message about the possible inaccuracy of historicaI canon, I very much liked the film, and was touched by it as well, from the side of Langley, and of King Richard III.
Then there is a short animated film which won the Academy Award in that category. “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse.” Many people have loved it, some think that it is “saccharine” or filled with homilies. I am not someone who ordinarily likes cartoons or after-school specials with a message. But this is a beautiful film, if only for the brilliant animation, which really captures the style of E.H. Shepard, in his immortal drawings for “Winnie The Pooh,” or “The Wind in the Willows.” If for nothing else, the short film is a treasure. And the mole is particularly cute.
It is based on a book. It is a simple and yet unusual story of a young boy who is walking in the snow He meets a mole. The boy says that he is looking for a home, he has not found it yet. The mole is mostly looking for cake his favorite food. They walk along and meet a fox, trapped in a snare. The fox ( I very much like foxes) seems fierce, but the mole helps free him. The fox travels along with them, perhaps embarrassed by their first meeting, hanging back. But he later saves the mole, and they all travel along together. Then they meet a very beautiful white horse who does most of the imparting of wisdom. This is the story, about 30 minutes.
One doesn’t need to appreciate the thoughts on life and love which are imparted, though they are gentle, and not heavy-handed. The story could be seen as a metaphor, about life and loneliness and purpose. Or one could just look at the beautiful drawings, the four characters walking along together in the snow. I don’t think that the people who disliked what they saw as greeting card moralizing, are right.
The film is not preachy or trying to teach life lessons. It might even been seen as a dream. It has a happy ending, and is affecting. And the mole gets his cake in the credits! This film beat out “My Year of D- – – -s” for Best Short Animated Feature; and I am glad of that, because it deserves it, and because I am not interested in seeing another self-referential humorous tale of coming of age, or a bunch of harmless but jerky guys whom the female protagonist encounters on her journey toward maturity. So if you have not seen “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse,” you should at least take a look.
Finally, the one television show that I have liked this year; or I guess it came out earlier than that, on BBC, but those usually show up later here. It is “Slow Horses,” it is based on a series of books by Mick Herron, about the “strange, strange game” (the lyrics of the title song by Mick Jagger) of spycraft.
It is reminiscent of John Le Carre, but less elegant. Gary Oldman is the star, and he said it was to be his last performance. It has run two seasons, and has been renewed for a third and fourth season; finally a show I like which does not get taken off the air after one season. Oldman is ostensibly in charge of Slough House, a place where MI-5 people are sent when they are believed to have botched something, or have some kind of flaw, but not badly enough to be fired, so they are sent to this place, where they are essentially supposed to do nothing but bureaucratic work, to no purpose.
Oldman’s character is in some ways appalling, with his slovenly appearance, and references to bodily functions, which thankfully dissipate as the story goes on. He is obviously smarter than his persona. The other “slow horses,” the play on words here, are actually capable; and somehow they get involved in serious maters, where they are scrambling around to avert a human and political catastrophe.
The writing is quite good, and the second season story is better than the first, but they are both quite watchable. The elegant Kristin Scott Thomas plays an icy, aspiring woman who is “Second Desk” at MI-5, aspires to First Desk, and is willing to manipulate to get there, while still seeming to retain some degree of moral sense. Her interactions with Oldman are great. Also notable is Saskia Reeves, whom I used to see in various BBC dramas, who is a very smart person who has apparently been sent to Slough House because of an alcohol problem that she is trying to overcome; and Jack Lowden, a bright young man whose father was a very important person in this realm, now retired; and who has ended up in Slough House because he failed a training exercise which might possibly have been rigged against him.
All of them are tested, particularly in the second season; and so it is a human drama as well as a political one. It is not a perfect show, very few are; but it is much better than almost all of the other shows I have tried to watch an episode or two of. If you like spy stories, you will like “Slow Horses.”
Those are my recommendations; and even if you don’t want to see any of them, it is nice to know that there are at least a few good shows being made. Of course, everyone seems to like “Ted Lasso,” and I did not, so these are just my opinions, of course. I fear for the future of independent movies, as it seems that movies will be dominated by a series of superhero or graphic movie stories, which make hundreds of millions of dollars, while a film like “The Lost King” has grossed only a little over $4 million so far.
I don’t know what has happened to the audience for intelligent, involving small-budget films, which have usually been the ones I have most liked in recent decades. I try to go to them, because they need our support, even though one has to get through some dross to unearth the few nuggets of gold. As to television, there are so many shows being made; I rather wish that I had some cachet in the area, so that I could make a few of them, because they greenlight so many shows, most of which are very predictable, and/or stultified by “correctness,” not wanting to offend anybody; and not that well written. The exceptions are what one looks for, even though it can seem like searching for buried treasure in the wilderness.
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The Confluence 