Woo ha! I am turning cartwheels of sheer joy. Sure, Em and I got married and had a fantastic honeymoon and all, but there’s something else that’s making me want to shout from the rooftops:
They’re making a movie of Fraggle Rock! Yay!
“Lets have another Matrix”, said the producers.
The thing is, there should be a special phrase for this. Maybe a new word. “Pregret”, perhaps. I know it will be shite, but I also know that at some point, I will spent 2 hours of my life watching it. Perhaps I’ll even pay to do so. I will bow, eventually, to the hype.
When I was first asked if I wanted to see Mike Leigh’s film about a 1950’s backstreet abortionist, I have to say I wasn’t keen. It’s not what you might call a cheery subject - not even something you can just sit there and let it wash over you, either. Knowing Leigh’s previous work means that you expect a certain approach which forces the audience to engage with the characters; usually this engagement involves thankfulness that your life is not theirs. I’m sure if Mr. Leigh had a penny for every time a review of his work had the word “gritty” in it, he’d be a rich man. He probably is anyway: he certainly deserves to be, if you compare the craft and the humanity of his films to some of the abject dross coming out of Hollywood.
If you’re still thinking in terms of Leigh stereotypes, at least one goes out of the window at the start of Vera Drake. It might be gritty, but this one’s not Northern. It’s a false stereotype anyway. While the subject matter is undoubtedly weighty, there is plenty to raise a smile, too, and to draw the audience into the story without ever having them feel that’s what’s happening. The joy and comfort of a nice pot of tea subsumes every existence, it seems, and that might at first appear strange until you remember that in the setting of post-war London a pot of tea says so many things: you’re alive to drink it, for a start, and you have tea! Rationing’s still in force, so there’s no taking small luxuries for granted.
A film on this subject could fall into one (or more) of several traps. It could take a hard and fast moral stance, or it could take pains clinically to ensure that there is perfect neutrality at every turn. Somehow this film for me does none of these things, but instead follows a natural path through the issues and observes the characters with a detachment that reflects humanity and respect rather than being over-analytical. I didn’t feel like any particular point of view was being shoe-horned into the narrative, which in any story is an achievement, but with something as emotionally charged as abortion is practically miraculous. As I write this, I wonder if Leigh, like me, actually does not have a hard and fast opinion about the rights and wrongs here. Maybe the only way honestly to portray subject this is to admit that when you get right down to it, “rights and wrongs” are exactly what we don’t have. Moral absolutes aren’t too useful in the real world. Hell, even the Police characters here are portrayed with enormous sympathy!
A techy aside: IMDB are a pain in the arse to link to! Have they never heard of clean URIs?
Today was a write-off because of the strange flu-like lurgy that’s been going round. Didn’t feel up to much, and ended up having a Martin Sheen day: finally watched Apocolypse Now on Sky Plus (the greatest gadget known to man) and the first three West Wing episodes on my lovely new first series box set Christmas present.
I couldn’t put my finger on what was different about the first episode - then I realised that of course there was no “previously on the West Wing”.
