Little Dorrit

We are now three quarters through the recent Andrew Davies adaptation of Little Dorrit. How does it stack up against other Dickens adaptations? I think one must compare it to the more obscure Dickens, the 800 page table thumpers like Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend, Martin Chuzzlewit, and the like. The most popular books (and thus adaptations) consist of the lone, young male hero, making his way in the Victorian jungle (e.g. Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, etc.). Dorrit is not Dickens at his best, and suffers from the usual sprawling and tangled plot and a florid sentimentality. Dickens was best at creating memorable characters, endowing them with humor and sympathy. When he tried his hand at sketching human institutions in the same way he drew human characters, he was not as successful, and Little Dorrit features the lamentable "Circumlocution Office." Its intrusions are unwelcome and off-key, both in the book and this drama.

Davies, the master adaptationist, has succeeded with the material. Near as I can tell from having slogged through about a thousand pages, the center of the story is the contrast between the eponymous Amy Dorrit and her father, an inmate of the Marshalsea debtors' prison. In classic ironical fashion, Mr. Dorrit's life exhibits meaning and even grace within the confines of the prison. Once he achieves his dearest dream of release from the prison, however, he falls apart. Amy, on the other hand, maintains an admirable and beautiful equanimity in poverty and riches.


Claire Foy, as Amy Dorrit, has rescued the literary character from other-worldly sainthood. It's a perfect example of wonderful physical casting, as she has to be a slight person, while at the same time portraying great moral force. In these enterprises, there is always some minor character who steals scenes, and in this case it is the gruff but tender-hearted debt collector Pancks. A casting failure: Tattycoram is portrayed by black woman, which is anachronistic and a silly multi-culti conceit. The entire Miss Wade/Tatty subplot was further tainted by the barest whiff of injected lesbianism. The creative class must have its say.

Bottom line: you can't go wrong with Andrew Davies, though for my money the best in this class is still Our Mutual Friend.

Life Goals

• Write book [check]
• Quoted in New York Times [check]
• Find suitable wives for five sons [will start on that tonight]
  

Parents with Daughters: Boycott Pixar

I have become increasingly upset by an undeniable trend I've noticed in Pixar movies. Let's examine the lead roles in them:

Toy Story:	male toy
A Bug's Life:	male ant
Toy Story 2:	male toy
Monsters, Inc:	male monster
Finding Nemo:	male clownfish
The Incredibles:	male human
Cars:	male race car
Ratatouille:	male rat
WALL*E:	male robot
Up:	male misanthrope

Spot a pattern here? I do, and what's more disturbing is Pixar's handling of the secondary female characters. What do we find? A hapless insect princess, a brain damanged Regal Tang, rude French kitchen help, a curvacious German sportscar. On and on it goes. Reinforcing destructive stereotypes. Sending a loud and clear message to your girls: No You Can't. No, you can't save your colony from disaster. No, you can't expose corruption in Monstropolis. No, you can't compact trash.

I would have thought things would change when Disney took over. During the Disney animation renaissance that began in 1989, the studio progressed admirably from the mewling red-headed mermaid who collected forks to the awesome man-killer Mulan, who single-handedly slaughtered most of the Hun army.

When I take my five boys to see Coraline, I'll make sure to point out them that it's not a Pixar movie.

City of Ember

I have a short review of the movie up on Scott Nehring's site. Couple of things about this movie I did not comment on in the review:

Ember is built to shelter a remnant of humanity from a nuclear holocaust. This is not mentioned in the movie (my kids, who are fans of the books, told me). Seems like such a 1980's kind of worry. Kind of dates the author.

This movie is one of the most agenda-free kids movies I've seen in a long time. No ideology, no worldview, no moral, nothing. The only lesson learned is that when the lights start failing in your giant cave home, it's time to look for a way out.

The movie, though mediocre, gave me a plot idea, which I was going to share here, but perhaps I'll turn it into another of my extremely popular short stories.

Kill the Bat Man

Scott Nehring is always gracious in publishing my mutterings regarding the rare movie I catch in theatres. Like today.

I've Been Expelled

I granted Scott Nehring an exclusive on my "Expelled" review. You can find it here. Short take: disappointment.

Many are hyping this film as a skirmish in the culture wars and are therefore tracking theatre attendance closely. For what it's worth, the 7:20pm showing in Oakdale, MN was nearly sold out last night.

No Bloody Masterpiece

My friend Scott Nehring has [finally] posted his review of There Will Be Blood. I still think I hated it more.

There Will Be Boredeom

I caught There Will be Blood last night with a couple of friends. I'm proud to say I hated it more than my movie-reviewing pal. It was deficient in plot, motivation, conflict, message, and purpose. But what it lacked in quality it more than made up for in quantity! One hundred fifty-eight minutes! I really hated the portentous (and pretentious) music that always, always built up to...nothing.

As for DD Lewis's oscar-winning performance, it was admirable, but his character was so opaque that I found it hard to be interested. The whole movie can be summed up in one of his lines: "I don't like to explain myself."

As an aside, Hollywood can't get revivalist-style preachers right. The pastor of "The Church of the Third Revelation" in this movie seemed to be reprising Robert Mitchum's phony performance in The Night of the Hunter.

No Country for Old Men

I saw "No Country for Old Men" last night. Sometimes, Scott Nehring deigns to publish my movie reviews on his review site. So as a favor to the friend I esteem so highly, I locked up my three old in a closet so I could concentrate better and then pounded out the following review this morning. After submitting it to him, he tells me he is on some kind of blog vacation 'til January and flatly refuses to publish. Fighting back tears, I quickly resurrected my own blog. Now you get to read the review as it was meant to be read - fresh from my keyboard.

No Country for Old Men

West Texastentialism

When I was living in Texas in the 80’s, I came across an article in the Houston Chronicle about rising crime in West Texas. It described local law enforcement thinly spread across thousands of square miles of barren territory. I’ll never forget the quote from one county sheriff. “We tell people that if they see something going on, to put the scope on ‘em and drop ‘em. And the grand jury will bless you for it.” Very early on in No Country for Old Men, we learn that as much as we long for that kind of simple and direct response to evil, this will not be that kind of movie. The villain tells a victim to “hold still” while he prepares to kill him. Shortly thereafter, the protagonist quietly implores an antelope in his rifle sights to “hold still.” And with this implicit comparison between animal and human slaughter, the film introduces the nihilism at its heart.

The movie concerns a hunter who accidentally discovers the loot from a drug deal gone bad, and the pursuit to recover the money that follows. The character most clearly in focus is Anton Chigurh, the sociopathic assassin sent to recover the money. Llewelyn Moss, the man on the run, is a human rabbit, who serves as an object of chase. The entire plot operates as an opportunity for Chigurh to blast a path of destruction across West Texas. He is as elemental as a force of nature, and much of the movie’s dialog would work just as well were he a tornado instead of a man. The third leg of the film’s character triad is a county sheriff Tom Bell. The sheriff spends his time futilely fretting over the randomness and meaninglessness in these events.

Through numerous quirky and cryptic speeches, the characters make much of chance and fate. In one memorable scene, which I can’t explicate in much detail for fear of introducing a spoiler, a character perfectly illustrates the existentialists’ “act of will” gambit to manufacture meaning in the face of an uncaring and cruel universe. But this defiance avails as little as any other response to inexplicable malevolence.

Philosophically, this movie is as empty as the West Texas landscapes on which it plays out. The Coen Brothers, however, demonstrate as they linger over the vacant vistas that there can be beauty in barrenness. The Coens show an obvious affection for the rough edges and throwbacks of regional America. They have a gift for casting salt-of-the-earth types in very minor roles. Their gift for dialog is also on display here. Their writing combines improbable and eccentric phraseology with authentic regionalisms. One effect is to make their films into sort of prosaic myths. Another is to introduce humor, though laughter seemed to me out of place in this story.

The acting is first rate. Javier Bardem as Chigurh probably draws the most attention, but Tommy Lee Jones’ sheriff is the best performance. He is laconic wisdom. He is laid back angst. Unfortunately, many of his monologues were so enigmatic that they seemed to be inserted solely so that film school professors could generate writing assignments.

The film would deserve a recommendation for technical skill, great acting and dialog, and as a kind of textbook specimen of nihilistic futility, but I have to refuse because of the completely muffed ending. The Coens inflict a mortal wound on their own creation, and it’s hard to understand why. An existential film should have an unsatisfying ending, even a deeply unsatisfying one. But this ending doesn’t even make sense in the context of the film’s own philosophy. I suppose some will come to the Coen’s rescue with tortured excuses, but when you fool around with purposelessness, it’s easy to lose your way in the end.