“Testament of Youth” (2015) occludes politics for romance

I’ve got to maintain my blog silence in order to finish writing this damn book, but I saw Testament of Youth last night and have been spluttering ever since.

Now, this is a very pretty and very sad film. And the first part of the film follows the real-life Vera Brittain’s memoir nicely — in which she fights her way into Oxford University against her father’s wishes, and along the way (against her own wishes) falls in love with her brother’s friend Roland — only to have war break out in 1914. As she remembered it later, the war initially “came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans.” She spent the war’s aftermath trying to come to terms with the meaning of that war and the multiple tragedies it unleashed. Testament of Youth remains one of the most powerful and important feminist/pacifist/intellectual reckonings of that era and that generation.

But this film focuses, instead, on how pretty these people were, and how sad it is when someone dies. Other than a brief moment at the end when Brittain (Alicia Vikander) speaks up on behalf of peace and postwar reconciliation at a raucous political meeting, the film skims over or skips everything that really mattered to the real-life Brittain — her relationship with Winifred Holtby, her agonizing efforts to make sense of the war, her political and feminist work — to a postscript that assures us that she found someone else and married in 1925.

Oh, no no no, this film is all heartbreaking scenes at railway stations and all manner of men gazing at Vera longingly. That’s right: instead of a powerful political assessment, this film is simply a woman’s weeper, made for repetition on the Lifetime channel.

You can say that I was ruined for this film because I’d read the book. In fact, my very first induction into the magic of the BBC world of miniseries came in the early 80s when my mom and I sat ourselves down every Sunday night to watch the 275-minute version of Testament of Youth starring Cheryl Campbell. (Does anyone know how I can get that series on a region-1 DVD?) But even if I was a total novice to the subject matter, this film is empty of anything but aesthetic pleasure and pathos.

This should have been the movie for me: a female lead! based on a feminist text! a period drama with great clothes! But no matter how many tears I shed during the screening, I found myself increasingly exasperated during the film’s final third to the point that my jaw dropped when it ended before any of what mattered to the real-life Brittain made it in.

I’ll give it this: the clothes are fantastic. Really, I wanted to run my hands all over those beautiful fabrics. But more problematic: it has the worst male lead ever. Kit Harington as Roland is .

Okay, back to writing things that result in book contracts, promotion, etc. Apologies for going AWOL, friends, but I’ve got to get some work done!

It’s the time of year for evangelizing “North and South” (2004)

That’s right, bitchez — period drama-palooza.

The ladies are coming over tomorrow for the conflict of social and economic mores that is North and South, and I’m planning to win over new converts. This has happened before.

I find it helps to offer cocktails, spicy food, and some kind of creamy and fruity dessert.

(Because it is four hours long.)

So by the time the ending arrives, and fortunes have shifted, and new reconciliations made, we’ll all be full and happy and less inclined to think that the moody Thornton will likely make a difficult husband for Margaret, and that the stern and judgmental Margaret will closely resemble her mother-in-law.

We’ll just focus on that kiss. Ahh. Summer is here.

“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”

And speaking of busy nothings, the academic conference. I returned from one, and frankly, the very best part was sharing a room with one of my besties from grad school — and watching Mansfield Park (1999) together.

Keeping this blog has allowed me to see a pattern in my life: when April rolls around and the semester gets tough, the not-so-tough (me) watch period drama. Even better if it’s Jane Austen, because she’s so playful and hopelessly romantic that it takes me out of the semester at its worst.

It’s been so long since I saw this version of Mansfield Park that I’d forgotten the ways that it finesses the original Austen novel. Mostly for the better, as far as I’m concerned. Fanny (Frances O’Connor) isn’t painfully shy, sickly, and insipid like she is in the book, and the script by director Patricia Rozema lifts extensively from Austen’s letters and papers as a way to imagine Fanny’s lifelong correspondence with her younger sister Susie as well as her wordy, playful relationship with her cousin Edmund (Johnny Lee Miller). Fanny seems all the more appealing because of her gift for words — and less moralistic, as I sometimes found her character in the book. Other aspects don’t work as well, like the film’s elaboration of a complicated slaveholding backstory for the Bertrams, but that seems less important to me.

Clearly, if you’re going to like this film, you can’t be overly dedicated to the novel. I wouldn’t put up with that nonsense if it were Pride and Prejudice, but I’m willing to let Rozema improve on the less perfect Mansfield Park.

It doesn’t hurt that it starts with an eminently appealing little-girl version of Fanny. Taken away from her impoverished family to live with wealthy cousins at a young age, she has never been treated as an equal in the family — except by her cousin Edmund, the Bertrams’ younger son. From the cold little garret the Bertrams provided for her, she busies herself with the pleasures of her own imagination — rollicking gothic tales mailed off to her sister Susie, and an irreverent “History of England” for Edmund. In this respect, this version is far superior to the 2007 BBC/ Masterpiece version.

She might be shy, but Fanny has a wonderful inner life. One wants to be friends with her. As they grow up, she and Edmund develop a bond beyond words.

And it might all have turned out differently, I suppose … until the family receives a visit from the fashionable new neighbors, a brother and sister named Henry and Mary Crawford (Alessandro Nivola and Embeth Davidtz).

The film plays the Crawfords’ appearance to great effect — everything about them screams “danger!” so I wanted to clap my hands with delight, because you know the real story is about to begin.

Mary Crawford looks just like a spider, with her self-satisfied smile and ruffled collar. This is no idle comparison; Mary is a spider, and the target for her paralyzing bite is the impressionable Edmund — to Fanny’s horror.

Henry Crawford is a beast of a different sort. If his sister appears laser-focused, his own inclination is a vaguer kind of troublemaking. Pushed by Mrs. Bertram toward her younger daughter, Julia, he keeps his options open, flirting with the newly engaged Maria Bertram instead. Maria, engaged to an idiot, is happy to reciprocate.

The Crawfords entrance the entire Bertram clan. These two seem to flaunt every ordinary social convention. Which is all well and good while Fanny can withdraw to the background and observe their machinations — but everything changes when Henry turns his attention away from Maria and fixes his gaze, for the first time in his life, like a laser on Fanny.

She knows him too well to accept his offer of marriage. She cannot trust him. She knows his rakish character too well. But Rozema’s film toys with us, leads us to second-guess Henry’s motives. Does he not, suddenly, appear sincere? Does he not appear to love her? When her uncle sends her back home to live in her parents’ squalid home in Portsmouth, Henry follows and woos her, showing little alarm at her parents’ poverty and misery.

He’s charming and wonderful. He appears completely in love with her. And in a hasty moment, she accepts his proposal of marriage.

Only to change her mind. How can she marry him, even if Edmund is due to marry Mary Crawford?

And yet the film does a lovely job of making Henry seem like a true lover. He really has fallen for her, we believe — and even after things go sour, I continue to believe it. It’s such a nice spin on the story, for it shows (perhaps) his ability to change, and Fanny’s willingness to change her mind.

My grad school bestie pointed out that Edmund is a bit overly judgmental — as a wannabe clergyman, perhaps this comes naturally. But considering how much he has fallen for the mostly-immoral Mary Crawford, the judgy sternness seems a bit out of place.

Out of curiosity, which Edmund do you prefer? I’m inclined to find both adorable, but are they too obviously adorable? As in, am I getting fed an easy pair of soulful eyes here by a crass casting director? (Ritson has particularly soulful eyes, obvs.) I’m not sure that either one is as perfectly matched with his co-star as much as he ought to be. I mean, a true Austen tale ought to have a perfectly matched heroine and swain, amiright?

Jonny Lee Miller as Edmund in the 1999 film

Blake Ritson as Edmund in the 2007 ITV movie

 

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

If you’re wondering which is the superior production, there’s no question: the 2007 may be a teensy bit more faithful to the book, but the 1999 wins hands down for the inclusion of all those delicious bits of Austen’s writing. Besides, Frances O’Connor makes a much better Fanny than Billie Piper. Most of all, the 2007 ITv production feels a bit as if everyone is acting solo before a green screen, with no sense of  chemistry or drama between characters.

Anyway.

Sigh. This is one of those posts that rambles around. My attention is divided — and I keep staring at that stack of papers that I ought to have finished grading a week ago.

But perhaps this is all the more an endorsement of taking a look at the film as balm for the soul in these sad days of the late semester. Especially if you find yourself blissfully sharing a room with a bestie at a tedious conference of academics.

“We neither of us perform to strangers”: Inside baseball for P&P fans

Is there a more delicious, meaningful, opaque line of dialogue from Pride and Prejudice? (Quick apologies to those readers who are, like, line analysis from P&P? yawn.)

Even better that it signals Mr. Darcy’s ability to flirt. If pressed, I would argue that this is the moment when their courtship begins, as it proves Darcy capable of a kind of flirtation that can disarm Lizzy’s quick wit.

It comes during one of my favorite moments in Lady Catherine De Bourgh’s parlor, shortly after Darcy and his cousin Colonel Fitzwilliam have arrived (and therefore before the marriage proposal and even the information that Darcy might have prevented Bingley from marrying Jane).

It’s a terrific exchange — well worth reading the short chapter in full — premised on mutual teasing. (Is there anything more wonderful than mutual teasing in the early phase of a romance? Much better than a sonnet.) But it also gets barbed, because Lizzy still dislikes Darcy so much, and she doesn’t realize that his feelings are so much the opposite.

I won’t recount the glories of this exchange, because if you’ve read this far, you surely know it. It’s the one in which they riff on Lady Catherine’s suggestion that Lizzy practice the pianoforte more, which she then uses to prod Darcy about his rudeness to the citizens of Hertfordshire. He tries denial, but ultimately he submits to her teasing.

I want to draw your attention to Darcy’s great line:

Darcy smiled and said,  “You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you, can think any thing wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers.”

It’s not true, is it? As in, not really true at all?

If anyone knows how to perform to strangers, it’s Elizabeth Bennet. She and Jane take great pride in being the kinds of intelligent, genteel women whom anyone would want at a social gathering, of whom any family would be proud. Indeed, Darcy has fallen for her in part because she moves with such skill and intelligence through a room full of people — skills he admittedly lacks (“I certainly have not the talent which some people possess of conversing easily with those I have never seen before”).

He knows she performs to strangers. Why would he say the opposite?

The first thing that always leaps out at me from this line is that it allows Darcy to say we and us in the same sentence, an awfully flirty move for a man so self-controlled. (It also shuts poor Fitzwilliam out of the conversation, but Darcy is flirting hard here, with all his compliments for Lizzy’s playing.)

I suppose you could also say that it smoothes over Lady Catherine’s earlier cringe-making digs at Lizzy’s piano skills. “I have told Miss Bennet several times, that she will never play really well, unless she practises more,” Lady C pronounces, thereby embarrassing her relations. Darcy’s comment is a wholesale rejection of both Lizzy’s modesty and Lady C’s rude ignorance.

But most of all when Darcy emits this opaque, confounding line, he undermines all Lizzy’s accusations about his character. She has teased him for being intimidating and rude, and he returns with a spectacular compliment about her playing. Even more artfully, he has defused her complaints about him by asserting that they are the same.

“We neither of us perform to strangers” asserts the similarity between them; and it also establishes an intimacy between them, an intimacy of mutual recognition. Darcy may be largely wrong about Lizzy’s nature, but not entirely; he recognizes that her intelligence goes beyond what she shows in company. This line says, you and I understand each other; but it does something more: it forces her to imagine that intimacy. Delicious.

In the book, Austen lets this line pass through the scene; but in the 1995 miniseries, the director allows this line to catch Lizzy a little short for lack of a response. Also delicious.

Thanks for reading this opportunity for me to let my P&P freak flag fly. No more close readings for the time being, I promise.

…in which “The Great Gatsby” (2013) makes two critics quote great lines at one another

American teenagers still get marched through F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) early in their high school careers, told that it’s a classic. I hadn’t read it since then, so it was a revelation during the past few weeks to find how much I remembered its contemplative mood. Gatsby is still as inscrutable, and Daisy as shadowy as I remember. It’s a beautiful, evasive book punctuated with moments of the most beautiful prose and clarity of insight — all the better for being so slim and accessible to high school kids.

Told through the eyes of Nick Carraway, a well-to-do Midwesterner whose job selling bonds has landed him a house out on the shores of Long Island Sound, the story fixates on Carraway’s fantastically wealthy neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Rumors fly about him: he might be an Oxford man, or a murderer, or perhaps just a liar. As if to cultivate those tales, Gatsby throws lavish parties and uses oddly unpopular expressions like “old sport.” But as we learn early on, part of this is a show for the benefit of Nick’s cousin Daisy Buchanan, who lives with her lout of a husband across a small bay. Daisy and Gatsby had a short romance years ago when he was a poor serviceman stationed in her hometown of St. Louis. Famously — memorably — Gatsby stands at the edge of his property in the evenings, gazing out across the water to the green light at the end of the Buchanans’ pier, longing for her and hoping that his new wealth and status might be enough to win her back. 

Jack Clayton’s 1974 film with Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, and Sam Waterston emphasized the gauzy, sun-lit aspects of the tale, and the grandeur of Gatsby’s house, but critics generally felt the film was better at conveying the surface appearance of the tale than the book’s melancholy soul. The New York Times’ Vincent Canby famously complained that “the sets and costumes and most of the performances are exceptionally good, but the movie itself is as lifeless as a body that’s been too long at the bottom of a swimming pool.” It may have got the 1920s/ Jazz Age look right, but it failed to capture the classic Americanness of this story.

All the more reason for a new interpretation. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Tobey Maguire in the three core roles, does Baz Luhrmann’s much-anticipated film achieve what Clayton’s could not? I sat down for a chat about the film with film critic and blogger JustMeMike, with whom I’ve analyzed films in the past — most recently Zero Dark Thirty.

JMM: Great question, Didion. Upon publication in 1925, the book sales were tepid: about 20,000 copies sold in the 1st year following publication. In contrast, the book has sold about 405,000 copies in the first three months of this year. And that number would not include the copy I bought late in April, after not being able to acquire one from my nearest public library.

But before we launch into a discussion of the film, I’d like to point out that the cost of this film was in the West Eggish neighborhood of $127 million. One would have to be quite creative to spend that much money on a movie. And just think of the clothing and accessories tie-ins with Prada, Tiffany & Co, and Brooks Brothers. I don’t think I’ll be trotting off to Brooks Brothers to pick up a straw boater at $198 a pop. How about you? Will you be going in for the 1920s look?

Didion: As long as I can score a new tiara, I’ll be all set. You know how us professors get paid so lavishly that a visit to Tiffany is, like, yawn.

So I’m curious, JMM — tell me your thoughts about the relationship between book and film. Obviously, literary adaptations are always tricky; directors want to make films that anyone can see, from big fans of the book to those who’ve never read it. Do you think Luhrmann succeeds?

JMM: Yes, he succeeds. As you said above, Gatsby is inscrutable which to me means that it is subject to many interpretations — almost as many as the number of bits of confetti and streamers that fell during the Gatsby soirees.

I think the transfer of the literary to the screen was well done. Especially if you consider that the charm of the book is less the story, and more the excellence of the writing.

Didion: I agree with you in part. I felt Luhrmann succeeded with the overall look and the vividness of the characters — no one is going to say, as Canby did about the previous version, that this is lifeless — but I disliked the hyperactive melodrama of the film. It missed, to me, the book’s soul: its narrator’s desire for something real behind all that glitz.

JMM: Yeah. In the film, the Carraway character was either in awe or watching with stunned amazement — or twirling a glass in his hand — but isn’t that what makes the book so difficult to film? The charms of Nick are all his internal discoveries rather than something he actually does?

Didion: That’s exactly right. Nick wants to believe that Gatsby really is “worth the whole damn bunch altogether,” as he shouts to Gatsby across the lawn. But the film doesn’t quite show us that Gatsby is anything more than an imperfect invention. Luhrmann couldn’t quite commit: are we supposed to attach to Gatsby? or are we supposed to see through him, and thus become aware of Nick’s naivete?

JMM: That’s a tough question. The story opens with Gatsby as a mythic person; no one knew his reality. Including Nick who befriends him. Didn’t Lurhmann (and Fitzgerald) go out of their way to make Gatsby mysterious as well as the subject of gossip? If so, can we call Carraway naive?

Didion: I suppose this is what makes the book so endlessly appealing to high school English classrooms! It allows kids to scrutinize the difference between surface appearance and the person within.

One of the things I loved about the book was Nick’s voice throughout: his eagerness to believe that Gatsby and Daisy really felt a true love for one another. Nick is the only character who wants to reveal his true self, and to believe that Gatsby is truly good on the inside, even when the whole crowd lies, hides things, and/or reveals their untrustworthiness. So I’m disappointed by the over-the-top emotional melodrama that Luhrmann laid on top of everything. Luhrmann’s style worked so well for me in capturing the excesses of the 1920s, but just fell down utterly when making me care about the characters — Tobey Maguire’s Nick included.

JMM: Well I will certainly agree about Gatsby being good. His problem was that he was a dreamer who couldn’t let go of the past. Daisy — not so good. Tom Buchanan not good at all. But Maguire’s Carraway is more of a Greek chorus, a chronicler, a reality mirror to Jay Gatsby’s unreality. Was it Maguire’s dull characterization of Carraway, or was it the script, or simply the way that Lurhmann directed? I can’t say for sure.

What I can say for sure is that I was quite involved with the melodramatic last two-thirds of the film, much more so than during the razzle-dazzle first third.

Didion: Really?!? Well, this might be our most substantial disagreement! I loved the film’s big middle — its second act — but the final act had me rolling my eyes.

You clearly didn’t like Maguire as Nick. I’m more on the fence. What better actor alive could capture that innocence, and the pleasure of entering into the excesses of the super-rich of the 1920s? I was less interested in the way that Luhrmann created a frame for the film — Nick, months later, installed in an asylum for nervous exhaustion and alcoholism, trying to capture the causes of his illness for a psychologist. Maguire was neither very good in those scenes, nor did the director use them in a way to compel the audience’s connection to the character.

I will say that Luhrmann’s casting was great. Every single character looked the part — I mean, damn, Carey Mulligan! Elizabeth Debicki as the golfer/socialite Jordan Baker! and even that shiny, tanned, and slightly creepy face of DiCaprio’s as Gatsby — it all looked exactly right.

JMM: Loved the casting myself. Except that I didn’t buy that Tom Buchanan and Carraway were classmates. Meaning Edgerton and Maguire looked about 10 years different. Maybe it is less about Maguire’s performance that gave me cause for concern. I’ll refer back to the statement I made earlier about Carraway’s charms being internal.

The framing device worked for me because it gave them a way of getting the words on the screen. Whether the sanatorium aspect was good or bad isn’t a major point for me.

But back to the casting. Many have said that Leo was a bit too old for the role. Maybe. But his tan and his weathered look come from his lifestyle and stress. I liked the way Leo brought out Gatsby’s loss of confidence when he first meets (re-unites) with Daisy in the Carraway cottage. And her fluttered look perfectly matched his.

Didion: Argh! I hated that scene! It didn’t work for me AT ALL. It was all so overdone … like a kabuki version of anxiety. And all the extended leadup to the actual meeting between Gatsby and Daisy — it went on forever — took away from what the scene should have done, which is to cement in Nick’s mind that these two share perfect, long-lost love.

JMM: Well I’ll agree to disagree. But that came from the book didn’t it? Gatsby leaving, going outside and standing in the rain until he was drenched. Beyond that, that scene had the one laugh-out-loud moment in the whole film. When Gatsby asks, Is everything okay, You have all you need for the tea? And Nick replies, “Well maybe more flowers….”

I also wonder about the “cementing”. Is it is Nick’s mind or ours?

Didion: Certainly in Nick’s mind, but isn’t that anchored to our minds as viewers? Don’t we need to believe, even for a moment, that Gatsby and Daisy aren’t just glossy pretty people, but truly in love — even if the film later throws some of that open to question?

That’s why I found the scene so needlessly goofy. I wanted it to show another side of Gatsby; to show that he wasn’t all self-assurance and polish. But this scene went for cheap laughs rather than more depth to his character. It made me think that Luhrmann is, above all, just a ham-handed director who can’t manage a single minute of emotional subtlety.

JMM: About Lurhmann, I won’t disagree with ham-handed. I won’t disagree with lacks subtlety — but I must give him props for showmanship, hype, and marketing — care to venture down that road for a bit?

Isla Fisher as the blowsy Myrtle

Didion: I’m completely down with you there. Which brings up another topic: the soundtrack, and especially the confluence of musical genres in the film (dotted with hip hop by Jay-Z, who also served as executive producer for the soundtrack).

The scenes of crazy parties are just awesome. No subtlety needed. And although I was a little taken aback when the Jay-Z’s song “100$ Bill” blasted underneath those scenes — because I love 1920s music and hoped to hear more of it — I ultimately loved the whole thing. The music also includes new interpretations of 1920s songs as well as covers of Amy Winehouse, Beyoncé, and others, altogether creating the most lush soundtrack I’ve heard in years. Loved it. And I was so glad to see those great party scenes on the big screen.

JMM: Yes the music worked for me too. I think the press has made far too much of the inclusion of hip hop, but coming out of the theater I only remembered two pieces of music — Lana Del Rey’s “Young and Beautiful” which was Daisy’s theme, and the famed Gershwin opus “Rhapsody in Blue.”

The party music was great — and would have been pleasurable no matter what.

Didion: Can I ask you about Carey Mulligan’s portrayal of Daisy for a moment, and in general the film’s view of women? I thought she was wonderful, of course — but we never learn much more about her. She functions more as a figment of Gatsby’s imagination than as a real, three-dimensional person. Let’s not forget how utterly absent her daughter is from the story. One of the things that affected me was Daisy’s comment that she hopes her daughter grows up to be “a beautiful little fool,” because a fool is “the best thing a girl can be in this world.”

JMM: Great thinking Didion. I’m with you completely. It is a scary part of the story. It is one thing for Daisy to be like that, and she was, and another thing for her to wish that for her little girl. Realistically, I think all the female characters came off badly in the book — even Jordan. But as we can see from both the book and the film, there are no likeable characters. Daisy was all surface, she not only hadn’t any depth, but I think we were supposed to see that immediately.

When we first meet Daisy and Jordan, Fitzgerald describes them like having the weight and substance of balloons. They flutter and quiver and so forth. Fitzgerald made it a point to make them lacking substance.

“They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house.”

Didion: Oh, JMM, I love that catch — I’d forgotten that beautiful description in the book. Fitzgerald had little interest in giving them much weight. In fact, that line of Daisy’s about her daughter being a fool is the only glimpse we have of her dissatisfaction with her lot; otherwise she appears committed to being a fool, mostly at least.

Jordan is a bit more interesting; the book suggests that she might not be such an honest sportswoman. And in the film Elizabeth Debicki’s huge eyes and tall dancer’s frame make her tower over Tobey Maguire in a way that was always mysterious and evocative. But this isn’t really a film about female characters except as love objects for the men in the story.

JMM:  True. Let’s move to another smaller venue — the underground club behind the barbershop door where they went for lunch. Did you like Amitabh Bachchan as Wolfsheim, or did you feel this was a role incorrectly cast?

Didion: Loved the speakeasy scene, and Bachchan was perfectly cast as Wolfsheim — but (and this is a big but) Lurhmann cut out most of what made Wolfsheim such a crucial character.

Now, there are good reasons to cut it out: the book is unapologetically anti-Semitic, and racist in ways that only get a slight gloss in the film. On reflection, I’m not sorry that Luhrmann decided to cut down the book’s nasty white supremacy and the cartoonish portrayal of Wolfsheim as Gatsby’s main man.

So Bachchan doesn’t get much of a chance here, but his whole appearance — his unnervingly sparkling eyes — was ideal for the part. How about you?

JMM: I’ve seen many films with Bachchan and I knew what I was going to get from him. I think Lurhmann cast him as Wolfsheim because it would help market the film internationally — and also because who else might have been considered — Mandy Patinkin?

As for the racist and anti-Semitic remarks — I thought there were plenty of them included in the film to make the point, so even if Lurhmann cut back volume wise — he didn’t soft-pedal those topics in any way.

Another point — didn’t they include enough mysterious phone calls to have us consider that Gatsby was indeed involved in shady doings. And then once they’ve done this, who do we meet at the parties but NY celebs, senators, congressmen, and even the police commissioner was at the speakeasy — so I don’t think Wolfsheim needed any more depth on screen for us to see.

Didion: So this brings me to my last question: about the film’s use of 3D. Even though I’d sworn to myself that I’d skip seeing the 3D versions of film (after Tintin, which was meh), I nevertheless forked out the extra few bucks this time. And… big disappointment.

Now, I get it that Luhrmann’s filming ethos is summed up with, “why not?” But I think the 3D not only failed to add anything, particularly during the lush party scenes, but it detracted for me from the attractiveness of the set and costumes overall. I’d strongly recommend that people see it in 2D.

JMM: The 3D was added in not because of “why not” but because of the revenue stream. This was strictly a marketing decision and a gimmick. As you said if anything it was unnecessary at best, and a distraction at worst. The difference between the 2D ticket and the 3D at my theater was $5. So I think that was behind it.

As was the music. As was Bachchan.

I’ve a question: Do you have a favorite quote from the book/film?

Didion: I’ve been thinking about that. And honestly, I must admit that it’s not the beautiful famous final line of the novel, which Lurhmann uses here (to his credit): “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” A gorgeous line, but so self-conscious.

I had a whole pile of lines I loved in the book — they appear only occasionally in the midst of Fitzgerald’s generally sparse prose. But I think my favorite might be, “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”

JMM: That is a line filled with beautiful imagery. The one I liked best came on the next to last page. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Of course that is why we love the book. About the book and the film version — a thematic question — Lurhmann’s showed this at least three times. — workers with pick-axes working on the mounds of ashes. Is this indicative of a heaven (the palaces and mansions and the party-life) and indicative of a hellish existence — real life with work and sweat? I mean is this at the core of the story, or is it the more surfacey — the old money versus the new money that is one of the base themes? Any thoughts on that?

Didion: Loved the way he created the old optician’s billboard, of a god/death watching over this hellish middle place of sweat and hard work. But the scenes of workmen toiling just seemed, again, like a cartoonish Broadway set.

Your broader question still troubles me. Does the film do enough to satisfy me in capturing the snobbery of old-money types like Tom Buchanan? And the striving desire of new-money types like Gatsby for a glamorous object like old-money Daisy, whose voice “sounds like money”? No, but then our culture is much less concerned about old money than theirs was. I was also a little disappointed that the film didn’t make much of the divide between East Coast society and the Midwesterners (Nick, Daisy, Gatsby) who have arrived there — that is, arrived from a more innocent place.

JMM: Maybe because in the 20s there was so little new money, and the old money wasn’t that old. Tom was a Midwestern guy too. I also recall that Daisy’s mother, at the party, told Daisy about all the “eligible” soldiers attending — rather than the number of good looking men. So even though that party wasn’t an East Coast affair — it still had its own version of snobbery.

I believe that Lurhmann could not do too much with the old money vs. new money because there weren’t any characters (except Tom and Daisy) to represent it with any kind if depth.

Didion: One of my Facebook friends said recently, with a bit of self-deprecation, that she loves anything Luhrmann does because it’s so pretty and shiny. “It’s art, not history!” she proclaimed to haters like me.

If I were to sum up my feelings about the film, I’d say that Luhrmann’s gift for creating shiny, pretty things is prodigious but ultimately I want more emotional depth. I’m glad I saw it on the big screen for those amazing party sequences, but I will never see it again.

JMM: Strong words, Didion! I want to ask for a one word description of how you felt when leaving the theater.

Didion:  Honestly, I felt a bit alienated by the film. Part of this is appropriate — that is, we’re supposed to be appalled by Tom and Daisy’s carelessness toward everyone around them. But neither did I feel especially upset by Gatsby’s end; I just hadn’t learned to care about him the way I ought to have. Although I appreciated Lurhmann’s eagerness to show us Fitzgerald’s fine prose — appearing as actual words on the screen — that final line about “boats against the current” remains opaque enough to me that I’m still not sure I know how to feel about it. So yeah, “alienated.”

How about you?

JMM: For me, I think a phrase rather than one word — and it goes back to Gatsby’s delusional behavior. Despite his lack of a reality — I still loved him — hated the Buchanans. Gatsby was a mystery — the Buchanan’s weren’t. So it is far easier for me to admire Gatsby than them. But having said that, I won’t call him heroic or anything like that. And yes, his ending isn’t anything that creates despair in me either. When I left the theater, I was positive about the film.

Didion: Can I ask whether you like Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge (2001)? Because I’m wondering whether this film will appeal more broadly than to the longtime Luhrmann fans who love his “shiny, pretty” things.

JMM: Thought you’d never ask. As for Moulin Rouge, I could only get 30 minutes into it before shutting down my DVD player. Gatsby wasn’t like that for me because I had just read the book. Moulin Rouge had no history for me — other than my travels to Paris. But I never finished it. I’m not a fan of Luhrmann’s but I do appreciate his skills. Or maybe I’ll say that Luhrmann can certainly spend money and make a fabulous looking recreation of another era.

I have Luhrmann’s Australia still unwatched. Guess I’ll be getting to that one soon.

But you know, The Great Gatsby is still an iconic American novel — so I do expect another film version down the road.

Didion: That made me laugh, because I watched maybe 20 minutes of Moulin Rouge before quitting, too! All that overwrought singing and Ewan MacGregor and Nicole Kidman looking at one another like speed freaks … not for me. I will say that this film is just not nearly that spastic.

It’s been a million years since I saw his Romeo + Juliet, which I liked at the time. I will never, ever, ever watch Australia, however.

JMM: And I’ll probably never watch Romeo + Juliet.

Didion: JMM, this has been a pleasure as ever. Even more so because I got to comb over some of the best prose in the book, and engage in the back-and-forth with such a worthy collaborator. Even though I’m more negative about the film than you are, I’m still glad I saw Luhrmann’s version of the Jazz Age onscreen. And I’m looking forward to planning another conversation with you sometime this summer!

JMM: Thank you Didion: It is always fun to work with you. I can safely guarantee that our next viewing won’t be a Luhrmann film. Until the next time — thanks!

Not to be a stereotype or anything, but …

Finished my last week of classes.

Hence, my afternoon will have two things in it: as much as I can get through of 1995’s deliciously 6-hour-long Pride and Prejudice …

… and a shaker full of this:

Ka-blam! Then, to be honest, there will probably be a nap. Best day ever.

 

How “Zero Dark Thirty” ruined me for “A Royal Affair” (2012)

Could I be any less inspired to write this? Reason being that I watched this film within about 60 hours of seeing the amazing Zero Dark Thirty, which makes other films look lite.

I ask you, who wouldn’t want to see this? and yet…

A Royal Affair (En kongelig affære) is the Danish nominee for Best Foreign Film this year and should have Feminéma written all over it: a period drama! featuring Mads Mikkelsen! set during the Enlightenment! Oh, if only I could muster the enthusiasm.

It focuses on King Christian VII’s new English bride, Caroline Mathilde (Alicia Vikander, above), who arrives pre-married in a country she’s never seen before only to find her new husband to be simple-minded and easily manipulated by various handlers. She has an affair with the German doctor brought in to manage the king’s mood swings and erratic behavior. This doctor is a freethinker named Johann Friedrich Struensee (Mikkelsen) who sneaks in many of the radical French enlightenment texts banned from Denmark at the time, texts the new queen had taken pleasure reading while growing up in England. Inspired by high-minded ideals as much as by one another’s hotness, Caroline Mathilde and Struensee conspire to subvert the highly conservative Court and institute for the first time free speech, democratic protections of rights, access to education, universal access to smallpox inoculations, and benefits to the poor.

Was it that the genre-busting Zero Dark Thirty had ruined me for film? Or is A Royal Affair a highly romanticized, predictable piece of fluff — with only the extra layer of Enlightenment-era rights talk to give it a bit of fiber? I’d like to be generous, but I’m inclined to think that this is not worth the time and money when theaters are so crowded with great, Oscar-worthy films.

I’m still working on seeing the other Best Foreign Film nominees, of course. Everything seems to indicate that Michael Haneke’s Amour will be tough competition. Even acknowledging that I was in no shape to see such a film, I still maintain that this one is not a contender.

You will, of course, be forgiven if you want to spend $11 just to see Mikkelsen’s mouth and those haunted eyes for more than two hours, and the rest of him donned in eighteenth-century clothes — which he must shed for key scenes. Not to mention Vikander’s clothes and her perfect complexion.

Apparently critic Mark Kermode named this the best film of 2012. I do not understand how this can be the case, but hey, we’re all entitled to our opinions.

Pitch: a new look at “Great Expectations”

I watched the BBC’s recent 3-hour version of Great Expectations (2011) last night and was left with one thought: why hasn’t anyone told Estella’s story? She’s waaayyyy more interesting than Pip.

Nota bene: while this version is fine — and Gillian Anderson does indeed make an eery Miss Havisham — who can take seriously the notion that this Pip (Douglas Booth) hasn’t been kidnapped for use as a male prostitute?

Pip is a nice kid, to be sure, but he’s also self-pitying, predictable, and somewhat delusional re: Estella. In contrast, Estella is riveting. Adopted as a tiny child by Miss Havisham, the only life she has ever known has been within the weird world of Satis House, where her benefactress teaches her to destroy the hearts of men.

The “great expectations” people have for Pip consist of the notion that he might become something other than a blacksmith. Yawn. Whereas Miss Havisham expects Estella to enact revenge on men. Now that’s interesting.

The BBC’s most recent Estella (Vanessa Kirby, above) is very beautiful and conflicted indeed, but I liked the child version (Izzy Meikle-Small, left) even better — she’s got a set to her jaw and a cock to her eyebrow that indicate a relish for the lessons she receives from her adopted mother. It appears quite realistic that a 12 yr-old girl would enact such a persona con gusto, particularly if she has allowed herself to believe that she is beautiful and that there is no reality outside Satis House.

But she doesn’t, does she?

And thus begins their complicated relationship.

Jean Simmons in the 1946 film adaptation

Seen from Pip’s point of view, Satis House and its awful, decades-old decaying wedding decorations constitute a bizarre, topsy-turvy world, and he mixes his growing love for Estella with his fascination with this world of books and wealth and objects … as well as with his interest in saving her from its corruptions. Seen purely through his eyes, Estella has been led astray by Miss Havisham’s madness but retains an essential goodness in her soul.

Or so he believes. But then, these are the beliefs of an essentially boring person. What might it look like through her eyes?

Claire Redcliffe in a 2008 theater production in Manchester, Eng.

Estella is both better educated and smarter than Pip is, and has a strong sense of irony. When he asks about the house’s odd name, she explains that it means enough. “It meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house, could want nothing else. They must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should think,” she adds with a lovely bit of acidic implied commentary on how things have changed since it was named. Pip just stands there with his mouth open.

How might the story look if she were fleshed out, if we explored that odd life she lives inside Miss Havisham’s mausoleum? Rather than merely see her through Pip’s eyes — Pip, who loves her stupidly and believes she is truly good inside that heartless exterior (yawn, again) — how might she describe her own life?

Gwyneth Paltrow, of course, in the 1998 Alfonso Cuarón film that placed the whole thing in modern times

Such a tale could say a very great deal about the prisons inhabited by 19th-century women, in which their sole purpose as young, lovely things is to prepare themselves for marriage. Miss Havisham has sought to undermine this only insofar as she wants Estella to make herself as cold as ice, impervious to love and capable of destroying the hearts of that sex who ruined her all those years earlier.

Of course, we know Estella has a mind of her own. When Pip punches the pompous little Herbert Pocket in the eye, she lets him kiss her. She’s smart enough to know that Miss Havisham is not all wrong. What does love gain a woman? The deployment of her heart is the only way she might have a degree of power in society. It should not be seen as merely a “natural” sign of woman’s weakness.

And yet, what does her lovelessness get her? She marries the cruel Drummle — for what? He has no heart, either, so in exchange for her coldness she gets abused. All those years of building a heart of ice, simply to learn that it has achieved nothing. The book tells us virtually nothing about their marriage, which is precisely why we need a retelling of this tale.

Such a tale would also have something to say about relationships between mothers and daughters. Later in life, when Estella returns from gaining her European education, Miss Havisham learns that she has done far too good a job with her adopted daughter, who lacks love so utterly that she can barely stand to be in her mother’s presence. We are supposed to receive this news as yet more irony for the bitter old woman — but how different might that scene appear if we knew that Estella was exacting revenge on Miss Havisham even more than on the entire male sex?

Even better, it would illuminate that divide between a woman’s exterior appearance — and all the baggage piled on top of the question of a woman’s beauty — and her inner life, a life and intellect she learns to conceal from view.

And finally there’s the rich vein of subject matter concerning Estella’s mysterious parentage. Considering Dickens’ near-obsession with lineage and family, Estella’s story could be far more interesting if one of her major goals in life is to find her true parents and the story of her adoption, rather than have them hidden from her forever.

I’m telling you, there’s meat on these here bones. Estella beats out every other character in the book for great character potential; in any reasonable person’s retelling, Pip would be reduced to a secondary or tertiary character. C’mon, creative friends: who’s going to take on this job of giving us The Girl of Satis House?

Saturday popcorn theater: “Farewell My Concubine” (1993)

You know how it is. It’s one of those days when the temperature goes so far up that by mid-afternoon you’re sagging. Clearly what you need is the sofa, a cool glass of iced tea with your popcorn, and a brilliant Chinese melodrama about tragic love.

By the way, if you see posters for the film you might be fooled into thinking beautiful Chinese film star Gong Li is the star of this film. She’s not. This is a film about love between two men.

Normally when I settle in for one of those sinful Saturday afternoon popcorn flicks, it’s something cheesy and action-packed — Michelle Yeoh’s magnificently silly Wing Chun or Jean Dujardin perfecting that cross between James Bond and Austin Powers in OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, just to name a couple of them.

In contrast, the tragic beauty and long durée of Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine might be termed the filmic equivalent of reading a 19th-century novel, except you can get through it in an afternoon.

The story is beautiful and horrible — the tale of two boys, effectively orphaned and installed at a school that prepares them to perform in the Beijing Opera, where they’re tormented by the school’s sadistic masters. As they mature into true opera stars, they face the changing tides of Chinese politics and history. Yet somehow the filmmaker’s gentle, persistent humanitarianism never makes you turn away, never indulges in the pornography of pain.

It’s not merely a film about their friendship. It’s a film about these men’s love for one another, a bond between them that is so overwhelming it must be experienced to be understood.

And oh, Leslie Cheung as Dieyi. As a small boy he trained to perform the Opera’s Dan (female) roles — a fateful casting that alters his life and self-identification forever. It’s not just that Cheung is in reality so beautiful, nor that he mastered the exquisite feminine movements of his roles so completely. The truly magnificent aspect of his acting comes from his ability to wear his life history on his face; all those years of loneliness and suffering and learning how to be a woman onstage have left him permanently changed. It is unfathomable (but true) that he did not receive a single acting prize nomination for this role, even as the film won Cannes’ Palme D’Or and some 11 other best film prizes.

Farewell My Concubine was released nearly 20 years ago, yet its subtle views of sexuality, transgressive gender roles, and male love all feel fresh today. It’s so much like the Beijing Opera (and other forms of opera) — histrionic, overwrought, colorful, and yet delicate.

Really. On a hot day you indulge in watching it and wonder how you could have stomached a cheesy popcorn vehicle like Devil Girl From Mars.

My life evangelizing for “North & South”

Here is how it usually goes: in the middle of chit-chat with a friend about, say, Downton Abbey, I say: “It’s good and all, but you know what’s a really great series that no one knows about? North & South. Do you know it?”

Argh! this is NOT the series I'm talking about!

The other person, looking at me as if I might be insane, replies, “Is that the one in which Patrick Swayze fights for the Union Army against his brother?”

Regrettable but true: there is only one American context for the idea of a North/South divide, and it always involves the Civil War. But I’m not going to talk about this 1985 series, nor am I going to talk about Patrick Swayze.

Argh! What was the BBC thinking in coming up with this uninspired DVD cover?

My North & South has a much more appealing male lead — Richard Armitage, who’s being celebrated at the center of this FanstRAvaganza — I mean, nothing against Swayze, but Armitage leaps off the screen in this, his breakout role.

But I also want to get to a broader subject: how the series seems to address real and abiding social problems, the most overriding of which is the conflict between middle-class morality and an Adam Smith style “the market takes care of us all” ideology. It’s surprisingly hefty for a period drama, and I get absorbed every single time.

No wonder Americans don’t know the real North & South: the series never appeared on American television. This 2004 BBC series is based on the 1854-55 Mrs. Gaskell novel about the differences between the pastoral, patriarchal English South vs. its gritty, individualistic, industrialized North. Doing itself no favors, the BBC reproduced it using an uninspired DVD cover with lackluster photographs of its stars that belies the series’ high quality. Despite a campaign spearheaded by fans of the series’ star Richard Armitage to air the series, American PBS has thus far resisted — and thus, most of my peers have never heard of the series.

That’s where I come in. I have recently acknowledged to myself that I am an evangelist for North and South.

Who doesn’t enjoy spreading the good news about something that seems practically a secret?

Until now I would never have copped to such a self-description, because evangelist is just not how I see myself. I grew up in a family of atheists in a small town where my sister and I were the only kids in that category; my first memory of school is having other kids ask me what church I attended. (I also learned quickly that my answer, “I don’t go to church,” was not the right one.) There were points in seventh grade (i.e., age 12-13) when I really, really wanted to believe in God or have Jesus come to me in an ecstatic moment, but both of Them ignored me. (To be honest, my eagerness for Their attention can be chalked up to my eagerness for attention from the cutest guy in school, who was some kind of Baptist.)

But when I think about it, I suspect I protest too much. After all, isn’t teaching is a kind of missionary work? “This semester I am going to sing to you of the virtues of finding love, truth, meaning, and happiness in the form of cultural anthropology!” you might say to the assembled 250 students on the first day of class. Maybe I’ve always been an evangelist — and now that I think about it, I’m quite certain that I’ve tried to school people at cocktail parties with the 1001 reasons why they should be watching The Wire, and probably with the same unblinking religious fervor of those poor saps who knock on my door, wanting to talk about my immortal soul.

****

When I talked my Texas next-door neighbor into watching North and South with me, she was silent through the first 30 minutes or so until we got that glimpse of Mr. Thornton in the mill, looking down on the workers at their looms. “Oh, yeah,” she said approvingly.

This shot is closely followed by the one of Thornton beating up a worker who’s trying to catch a smoke. Every time I watch the series with neophytes, I almost jump for the brutality of the violence, as if I’ve never seen it before. My neighbor watched that scene and said, “I’d like to see how our heroine is going to win up going out with that guy.”

Considered solely for the romance between Thornton and Margaret Hale, you might say it’s a more serious version of Pride and Prejudice insofar as we watch through the heroine’s eyes as she hates him at first sight and reluctantly but completely changes her mind throughout the course of the show. It’s not an easy sell. I’ve seen the series about 12 times and each time Thornton’s early brutality, as well as his strange subsequent self-revelations about his family’s past, make him an oddly moody brute of a man.

Armitage is so good in this role. It’s the first thing that leaps out at you. We like Margaret (Daniela Denby-Ashe) right away — who wouldn’t, with those slightly sleepy eyes and arched eyebrows? — but she remains a far more private, unknowable character. Even if you layer on everything you know about nice middle-class girls in the mid-19th century, it’s hard to know what she expects for her future. When I finally got around to reading the Gaskell novel, I wasn’t surprised to find Thornton the protagonist and Margaret the sphinxlike, closed-off character whom he adores. Thornton’s waters run deep and he does, indeed, “have a temper,” but somehow we come to trust the guy.

Chalk that up to Armitage’s capacity as an actor.

My most successful inductee to the religion of North & South is Servetus, who became the Armitage super-fan and blogger – but it wasn’t watching it with me that did it. We had a great time watching, mind you. It was late summer and school hadn’t started yet, and it was a chance to forget the hellishness of the upcoming semester.

It was at the end of that semester that she borrowed a dvd copy from a colleague and spent a good deal of that winter watching it over and over that made her realize what a terrific actor Armitage is, and it got her started on following his career so closely. When she posts an image like this (a recent one, from Recognise Magazine), I can only feel that my job as an evangelist is complete.

You’ve got to admit — isn’t that just about the most beautiful man you’ve ever seen?

*****

Just recently I showed the series to a group of three academics I met here while on my research leave, two of whom I’d met at a holiday party back in December — people I’d grown closer to during Downton Abbey season. None of them had heard of North & South, nor had they read the book.

We ate a big dinner of bread, salad, and a hearty soup (in honor of Mary’s mill cookhouse near the end of the series), and sat down for the first two hours. I heard them murmur with approval when we got to the mill, and Margaret walked through the snowlike world of the loom floor:

They grew quiet as we watched the rest of the first two hours, at which point we took a break. Harry had made a fairly extraordinary trifle for dessert, so we spooned out lovely big globs of whipped cream, fruit, and rum-soaked cookies. He then asked about Richard Armitage.

Within five minutes he had not only finished off his own portion of trifle, but had updated his Facebook photo as Mr. Thornton, and had done several searches for more images of Armitage. “He’s going to appear in The Hobbit!” he squealed, and Merry and Ursula clapped their hands with delight. [See here for La Loba’s photos of locations, BTW.] When we sat down for the final two hours of that plot — the drama of Frederick’s appearance and departure; the growing body count; that marvelous moment when Margaret leaves Milton forever and, from his upstairs window, he begs her to “look back at me!” — my friends burbled with approval.

Some of my friends (aka “unsuspecting targets”) are taken aback by the darkness and seriousness of this series, particularly because at first glance the story deals with labor conflicts and social misery so much more serious than that in Downton Abbey. And the clothes, sadly, are just not as luscious. (That latter series seems so much more like a trifle, whereas North & South is more like a hearty boiled pudding.) But it’s the seriousness that ultimately appeals. Also: Mr. Thornton has excellent sideburns, which my new friend Harry has replicated in the weeks following our viewing.

When she left, Ursula said, “Would you mind if I borrowed the dvd? I’d like to think about whether I can use this in a class next year.” The rest of us teased her, but she wouldn’t be the first to find good use for it with undergrads.

*****

I’ve got only one more thing to say about my newly-acknowledged role as an evangelist for North & South: costume dramas were meant to be watched in groups. My history with costume drama goes way back: when I was a kid during the early 80s, my mom and I got in the habit of watching virtually everything Masterpiece Theater had to show us. The first of these — and therefore most memorable to me — was a BBC miniseries version of Pride and Prejudice (1980) with the wonderful Elizabeth Garvie as Lizzie Bennet (above) and David Rintoul as Darcy.

Sure, the 1995 BBC version outstripped this one. Early BBC costume dramas look prehistoric now, with their immovable cameras and bad lighting. I did a lot of group viewing of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice too — including one memorable weekend with all my best grad school girlfriends, piled together in a friend’s apartment, loading up on Colin Firth like too many candy bars. (Aldine, I haven’t forgotten that, nor the fact that you’re the one who introduced me to North & South.)

I’m always so conscious that when I write this blog, I do so anonymously — yet part of the pleasure is trying to find the right style and voice to allow you to know me. I’ve confessed all manner of odd things about myself here, but the real way I open myself up is not by giving you clues about my identity but by showing you my voice, the voice I show only to my close friends.

So here’s what I want to suggest: find someone new to show North & South to. It’s easiest to spread it out over the course of a couple of nights (4 hours, after all, is a lot of TV) but mix it up with some nice food and drink. Enjoy those rare light bits of humor, as when Thornton and his mother share a wry laugh at Fanny’s expense.

Feel what it’s like to be an evangelist for a series — that is, you’re not invested in having them fall in love with Armitage, any particular character, or any other specific aspect of the plot. Just enjoy the unfolding of a great tale in the company of friends. Don’t be surprised if one or two of them become super-fans like Servetus or my new friend Harry, whose sideburns are so barbed and delicious now (and they combine with his green vintage velvet jacket for such effect at St. Patrick’s Day gatherings!)

It feels like the best kind of religion, if you ask me — the kind that gives its adherents pleasure and comfort, and also pushes against their sense of comfort. It brings you back again & again. The next thing you know, you’re talking to someone new at a cocktail party, and they say, “Isn’t that the one in which Patrick Swayze is a Confederate soldier?” and you say, “Oh, no, my friend — let me tell you the good news.”

Cheers to all the FanstRAvaganza people out there! In particular Phylly3, who like me is writing today about her experience as a fan of Armitage. Check her post out below, as well as many other writers’ experiences!

Hey all, keep following the Richard Armitage FanstRAvaganza! Phylly3 reports on her fandom experiences • In the Hobbit chain, Ana Cris writes on her recent film location visit • Mrs. E.B. Darcy speculates about what our hero will do in An Unexpected Journey (spoilers!) • King Richard Armitage chain begins with Maria Grazia on a film adaptation of Richard III • Beginning the fanfic chain, fedoralady explains fanfic’s mainstream appeal • Annie Lucas woos us with a Guy of Gisborne one-shot, “One Chance” • In the freeform chain, Fabo files an eyewitness report on Richard Armitage’s visit to U.S. accent school • jazzbaby1 wonders “what were they thinking?” re: Lucas North’s women • and ChrisB opens the Armitage Alphabet, with “A is for Action” • Links to all FanstRA 3 posts appear here at the end of each day