On My Last Legs

NaBloPoMo is almost finished, but I find myself unable to concentrate on any of the posts I’ve had in mind.

I’m feeling a bit low these days, as it usually happens to me around the holidays. My family has gathered this weekend in America and as I cannot be there, I’m suffering the eternal sadness of an expat. Will you blame  me if I tell you that I wish I were at home?

Well, enough moping. I always try to have that “temper to be happy” that makes everything right again. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to the movie A Christmas Carol very much. I read it’s very faithful to the story, and as it is one of my favorites, that is very important to me. I had put up the trailer in this post, but the link isn’t working, so I’ve taken it down.

Onboard the Beagle

The Origin of Species has been on my To Be Read pile for at least five years. As 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, I am neglecting it no longer. I am diving right in and giving it my full attention.

Stay tuned, for I hope, nay, I expect, to have much to say about it.

And doesn’t the movie look great?

Julie & Julia

I finally saw this movie last night. I loved it. The clothes, the look, the setting, everything was beautiful. I’m surprised they filmed a lot of it in New York, finding that out made me really nostalgic for it, and I sighed with longing to the time when I lived there years ago.

I have never tried cooking French food and I don’t particularly wish to, except for a persistent desire to make my own puff pastry. I have more affinity for Italian food, with its bold, earthy flavors and simple, uncomplicated dishes, but I am in awe of Julia Child.

She was nearly fifty when her book was published, a full career behind her, and that gives me so much hope. I’ve spent the last five years as a stay-at-home mother, dedicating myself to my family, and sometimes I wonder if I will ever have the chance to build a career when I fear that my time is past.

I think Julia Child was such a remarkable, gifted woman, confident and full of life, and I’m so glad to know that she a had happy, fulfilling marriage to a man who saw her for the intelligent, vivacious woman that she was, and not an awkward, un-feminine misfit without any looks. Because, you know, even the ugliest man wants a pretty wife.

I had a great time, and I will definitely watch the movie again. My Life In France is going on my wish list too!

The Janeite Test & Becoming Jane

Someone at my favorite discussion boards posted a link to the Janeite Test. It’s a well-written quiz, difficult enough to make it interesting. I like the question about the male-only scenes, because it shows the author of the quiz knows her stuff. The answer is ‘false’, by the way.

I got 96 per cent book knowledge, and 94 per cent Jane Austen knowledge. Not bad, but not good enough. I’ll have to take it again to see if I can do better.

In a related Jane Austen note, I watched three quarters of the movie Becoming Jane on one of my flights from Honduras. What a farce! It’s appalling, a shameless attempt to cash-in on the popularity of Jane Austen, which should be resisted.

I have a theory: I think the filmmakers really wanted to make a movie of Pride & Prejudice, but their timing was off, as that adaptation was just done two years ago, so they thought they’d make it anyway, but would simply call it something different. They’ve taken the plot of Pride & Prejudice (even some of the lines), and pasted it on Jane Austen herself.

Had I gone to the theatre to see it, I would have walked out in disgust. Anne Hathaway was bad, so bad I was shocked. She was wooden, dull and charmless, her face a blank, expressionless mask without the humour and personality of a real person. I liked James McAvoy, though. He was believable as the Darcy-ahem-Tom Lefroy character. Other than that, it was all a waste.

Becoming Jane was so vile that I think it has replaced the 1999 movie of Mansfield Park by Patricia Rozema as the worst Jane Austen movie ever.

Every feeling revolts!

Someone has made a movie about Jane Austen’s life. It is called “Becoming Jane”, and it stars Anne Hathaway in the title role.

Anyone less suited to play Jane Austen I am hard pressed to find. I don’t know whose idea it was, but I find it insulting that they would give the part to such an inexperienced actress. I don’t think she’s qualified to play an exceptional woman like Jane Austen, and no, running around Manhattan in stiletto heels in The Devil Wears Prada does not count. Anne Hathaway’s talent is still unproven in my opinion, and I am even more upset because the filmmakers obviously think that having an American actress, any American actress, will help them make money. Whatever happened to talent? Whatever happened to art? In the words of Elizabeth Bennet “The more I see of the world, the more I am dissatisfied with it”.

The filmmakers have relied on the book “Becoming Jane Austen: A Life” written by Jon Spence, who takes reading between the lines to the limit and makes some highly improbable suppositions about Jane Austen and her life’s work. In short, Spence claims that a well-known flirtation from Jane Austen’s youth marked her for life, that it was a serious love affair that could have culminated in marriage, and that the recipient of her attentions inspired Pride and Prejudice and the character of Elizabeth Bennet.  

The book has received several mentions in the press, due to the film’s publicity, and I’m sure the author will get quite a bit of ‘pewter’, as Jane called it. Good for him, but I think it’s shameful that he had to come up with a theory that has no foundation outside of his willful imagination so he could give his biography an interesting twist.

Much is made of the fact that Jane Austen lived a quiet life, unmarred by unspeakable tragedy or self-destructive tendencies. The scant corroborated details of her life come from her letters and from family recollections given many years after her death. She was not famous in her lifetime, she published her books anonymously and her sister Cassandra destroyed who knows how many letters after Jane died. All this makes it difficult to spin out the story of her life into a sensational money-maker and so her biographers usually concentrate on a specific angle to distinguish their work. Jon Spence (and the makers of the movie) have taken an arguably important part of Jane Austen’s early life and stretched it far beyond its bounds. 

Tom Lefroy is mentioned in Jane’s first surviving letter, and she describes him as “a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man”. He was the nephew of a friend and neighbor and though she might have “exposed herself” by being “most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together,” she knew all along that his visit would be short and he would leave. She says so herself in the same letter. I’m sure she probably always remembered him, but there is just no proof that it was anything more than a fun, youthful flirtation. Deidre Le Faye, the editor of Jane Austen’s Letters, says so in this article.

The problem with a fictionalized biography is that it gives the wrong impression about the subject. I dread to think of how many people will see “Becoming Jane” and think the story is true, and will forever think of Jane Austen as a forlorn woman, unable to write an original story purely from the genius of her imagination.

And it’s already started. This article made me fume and bristle. I fear the worst for the coming months.

“The Queen”

This movie should really be called “The Prime Minister”. Tony Blair is the one who comes off as the real protagonist of the story. The actor who portrays him did very well, adopting the little mannerisms and speech patterns that make the character a real, recognizable person.

I cannot say the same thing for Helen Mirren, whose work I admire, even though she created a compelling character that is wonderfully regal, stubborn, and sad. I didn’t see her as the be-hatted 80-year-old woman who smiles and collects flowers at charity events. This is probably not Mirren’s fault, but simply the nature of her subject. Queen Elizabeth II remains, after more than fifty years on the throne, an undisclosed figure, who appears on the news for thirty seconds and gives a speech on t.v. every Christmas.

I wonder what kind of research the filmmakers did when creating the character. Did they talk to the Queen’s friends? I doubt they would risk her displeasure. Her family? Right. The Queen herself? a ridiculous suggestion.  I don’t think it’s possible to garner an accurate picture of a person’s inner life from snippets of news reel or so-called documentaries that do nothing but revisit the well-known facts of her public life.

My biggest complaint about this movie isn’t that the film is not well-made, or well-acted and directed. It is that it professes to depict an event that happened in real life, with real people, who have a historic role in their own country, but does nothing but mix truth with speculation, fiction with history, partiality with objectivity. I was appalled by the use of real footage of Diana in the moments before the crash, as if she were public property, to be used at will. Her sons should have prevented it.

I question the propriety of making such a film at this time, barely ten years after Diana’s tragic summer, when the inside story of her death and burial cannot be known for a lifetime. Who knows what really happened? only the people concerned, and they will probably never speak candidly. As it is, this movie, however beautifully done, seems better suited for Lifetime (Television for Women), and their woman-as-victim movie of the week than for the Academy Awards.

I have read some criticism of the movie’s use of the killing of a stag as a metaphor, either for the monarchy or for Diana herself. I think the filmmakers sympathize with the Queen, and they used the striking image of the stag as a symbol for “the end of the monarchy as we know it”. As if Diana had brought down the House of Windsor. It is still standing, and most Britons either support it, or are too indifferent to want its removal. The only thing Diana brought down was herself, and I think her ex-husband and his family probably consider her death, deep down, as the best thing that could have happened to them. Charles has married Camilla Parker-Bowles, he has two handsome heirs and their problematic mother is dead. 

Somebody said the Queen could not possibly be more moved by the death of the stag than by the death of her former daughter-in-law, but I remember the Queen’s public tears during the ceremony to de-commission the royal yacht Britannia, not long after Diana’s death. She couldn’t help being moved by the loss of her luxury yacht, but there was no public sign of personal sorrow for Diana Spencer.