onsdag 27 januari 2016

Christie's Terrorised Ten (or nine)

I approached BBC's new adaptation of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None with a certain wariness. The screen writer, Sarah Phelps, has been known to mess around with fundamental elements in the works she's adapted in the past (turning Oliver Twist into a thug in the making, for instance, or Miss Havisham's manner into that of a - poisonous - little girl lost). What would she do to Christie, who is apt to be underrated, when she sometimes gives the impression of wanting to improve on Dickens himself? However, I needn't have worried: The Beeb's And Then There Were None is a success. Some plot elements have been tampered with, yes, but not to any disastrous effect. There is only one change I take serious issue with.

The plot of And Then There Were None concerns ten people who are lured to an island and stranded there, while being picked off one by one by a ruthless killer. The motive is clear from the off: all of the ten are accused, in a gramophone recording, of having caused one or several deaths. The murders are a form of insane retribution: at the same time, the killer seems to be enjoying himself (I will call the murderer "he" out of convenience, but it may of course be a she). The victims are killed following the pattern of a nursery rhyme (called "Ten Little Soldier Boys" in the adaptation, completely understandably considering the original title). After a while, it dawns on the prospective victims that the murderer is not some lunatic hiding on the island, but must in matter of fact be one of them.

Christie's novel is rather an unpleasant one, but it is extremely cleverly constructed. One of the clever touches is that the killings of which the victims are accused are of the kind that they would never be convicted of in a court of law. They are indirect murders, with the odd accidental death thrown in. This gives the reader something to ponder while trying to figure out which of the ten is the one who wants to do the rest of them in. Are the actions the luckless island visitors are accused of really the equivalent of murder? How responsible are they for the deaths they are charged with, and would we put them in the same order depending on their "degree of guilt" as the murderer (the guiltier he thinks they are, the longer they have to wait before they're killed off)? Is there a clue somewhere hidden in the more vague or unsatisfactory accusations? After all, the murderer clearly feels himself to be morally superior to the rest of the crew - does this mean that he considers himself innocent, for some reason, of the charge against him? The fact that the ten suspects/victims are not hands-on murderers who've actually stuck a knife in someone is one of the main points of the novel.

Unfortunately, it is lost in the adaptation. Here, several of the indirect killings have been changed to actual murders. This is a real pity, especially as some beautiful indirect murder scenarios are done away with as a consequence. In the novel, the servant couple Mr and Mrs Rogers failed to give their former employer her medicine at the right time, resulting in her death and a nice legacy for them. In the adaptation, Rogers (considerably more Gothic than in the book) simply smothers the old lady with a pillow. On screen, General Macarthur is seen putting a bullet in his wife's lover's head; in the novel, he ingeniously sent the young man on a suicidal mission, with no-one - except a suspicious fellow officer, who of course had no proof - any the wiser about the fact that it wasn't an honest mistake. With several bona fide murderers among the ten, who would look more at home in Cards on The Table's Mr Shaitana's collection than U.N. Owen's (the murderer's alias), the plot loses an interesting dimension and the question of "degrees of guilt" doesn't really become an issue.

Having said that, the TV adaptation works very well as a thriller rather than as a clever conundrum. The focus is, as it should be, on the victims, and how they cope with the nightmare situation they've landed in. Mercifully, there is no "they had it coming" gleefulness over the proceedings. In spite of the fact that the story is divided into three whole hour-long episodes when the novel is only 220-odd pages long, the tension is kept up. The casting is absolutely spot-on, from the smaller parts (or are they...?) of Douglas Booth as reckless but eye-poppingly gorgeous Anthony Marston and Anna Maxwell Martin as the cowed Mrs Rogers to the more substantial ones. My personal favourite was Burn Gorman (Guppy in Bleak House) as the shifty copper Blore, sometimes funny when trying to salvage his dignity in trying circumstances ("I was in the lavvy if you must know"), sometimes clearly a man dangerously easy to underestimate. It's a shame that his role in the death of Stephen Landor is not only changed but also poorly motivated, but Gorman makes the best of it, and I doubt many could have grieved for the fate of Blore's allotment as convincingly. Casting Aidan Turner aka Ross Poldark as Philip Lombard is no audience-ingratiating move on the part of the BBC - well, not wholly; he's precisely the right type for this part, and as a bonus, he's allowed to shave as Lombard. I hadn't come across Maeve Dermody before, but she's exactly as I imagine Vera Claythorne: deceptively demure, but when it comes down to it a right calculating little minx. Ooh, and did I mention Charles Dance as the wintry judge? I could go on and on.

After having watched this atmospheric nail-biter, which does not belittle Christie's story or her characters, I feel more positive in view of Phelps's rumoured involvement in one or several episodes of Dickensian. I wonder if original TV drama would not suit her better than adaptations, though. And I still would not trust her or anyone else than Andrew Davies with adapting Dombey and Son - a question which remains sadly academic.                         

onsdag 20 januari 2016

You know Who (again)

It's official: Peter Capaldi is the best Doctor in the new Doctor Who series. Well, in my opinion, anyway. (I still haven't watched the old series, except the odd episode: I have a feeling I'll get there soon enough.) He can make me listen with rapt attention to a pacifist speech. Thanks to his tour de force solo performance, I can put up with an episode featuring one of my least favourite private fears (the misnamed "Heaven Sent", which should have had the title of its companion episode "Hell Bent" - enough said). I know the Doctor gig is draining, but I certainly hope Capaldi will hold out for a while yet; he'll be an extremely hard act to follow.

Mind you, all the new Doctors have been excellent, which is one sign among many of the effort and brainpower invested in this series. I preferred series eight to series nine - in the end, the two-episode structure didn't add as much as one would have liked - but if I grumble, it should be remembered that I'm still very well aware of the high level even a comparatively lacklustre Who episode attains compared to most other shows.

So, though I admit I found "Sleep No More" incomprehensible, hated the twist at the end and sniffed at the railing against "filthy, greedy humans" - hey, look it's not as if we actually had banished bed-time, is it? - it was nice to hear the Doc quote Shakespeare in his defence of the blessings of sleep. Even if I smirked sarcastically at the clumsy political parallels in the two-parter "The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion" (and could we perhaps not equate red, blotchy aliens with minorities that are unquestionably human? I'm not sure it's very tolerance-furthering), it was great to have Osgood back from the dead - so to speak - together with the other gutsy women from UNIT. Though it was an overcomplicated cheat to back away from the tragic but dignified ending Clara was given in "Face the Raven", it feels churlish to deny the fans the possibilities of the new adventures sketched out for her at the end of "Hell Bent", complete with her own Tardis and her own distinctly impressive companion. Even so, given that poor likeable bit-part players are killed off in droves in Doctor Who, with the Doctor mostly snapping something like "you can mourn him/her later" (as they're in the middle of a crisis), how come he has such a hard time accepting his precious companion's mortality, and goes to such extreme lengths to reverse the natural order of things for her? Humans die - you would have thought he'd grasped that by now. Only saying.

Series nine frequently falls into the three Doctor Who traps of preachiness, grimness (it should be scary sometimes, yes, but like a ghost story with a happy ending, not like a horror film) and over-tricksiness. Luckily, it has enough of the Who virtues of heart and brains to compensate. As for the plot holes, I've started to believe that they are quite deliberate, in order to give the devoted fan base something to do. There are all kinds of opportunities to fill in the blanks, even through the official channels: the sheer mass of spin-offs in the form of novels, audiobooks, comics etc. is enough to make devotees of other fictional TV worlds green with envy (I should know). I was planning to be more severe on series nine, but the enthusiasm displayed in the behind-the-scenes features were heartwarming enough to put me in a better mood. Whovians - the ones in charge, anyway - must be some of the most loveable nerds around, and it's difficult to stay cross with them for long.                

torsdag 7 januari 2016

Star Wars: The Dark Side and its cookies

When finally visiting the market around Camden Lock last year, I couldn't resist buying a T-shirt with Darth Vader on it and the caption: "Come to The Dark Side - We have cookies". To me, it neatly summarises the appeal of The Dark Side in the Star Wars films.

First, there's Dark Side poster boy Vader. We villain-lovers have Darth Vader to thank for a lot. Talk about misleading the young: I think I've yet to meet a child who doesn't think Vader is really cool. I thought it myself as a kid, and I still do to some extent. The mask; the swirling black cape; the under-water breathing; the stentorian voice; the great sound track which I keep meaning to download as a phone signal: DA-DA-DA-da-da-DA-da-da-DA. And then he turns out to be Luke's father. I mean: wow.

Of course he is not a subtle character study - in spite of efforts in that direction being made in the prequel films. But as a bad guy in an epic fairy tale set in space, he will do nicely. And we get to see that old friend, the road-to-redemption plot line, also known to villain-lovers as the having-your-cake-and-eating-it plot line. See, we weren't weird for having a soft spot for Darth Vader after all, because he turns good at the very end. Admittedly, for such a short time that even the characters in the new film - which is excellent: I will be getting to that eventually - have a problem remembering his conversion (or, to be precise, re-conversion) to the light.

What about the cookies, then? My first fond memories of the original Star Wars films are from my childhood. When I rewatched them as an adult, it slowly dawned on me that being a Jedi didn't sound like much fun at all. At one point, Yoda (whom I had found unfailingly delightful as a child) upbraids Luke for wanting to break off his Jedi training in order to help his friends. Mere friendship is not something a Jedi should get hung up about, it seems: it's much more worthwhile getting stones to fly around in a deeply meaningful way. The same message returns in the prequel films (I've only seen them once, so forgive me if I'm a bit hazy about the details) where Anakin Skywalker - the future Darth Vader - becomes vulnerable to The Dark Side because of his excessive love for his pregnant wife. Well, excessive for a Jedi (they're not even supposed to have a wife). There is a lot of guff about how these petty worldly concerns get in the way of a Jedi's spiritual enlightenment. Family? Friends? Forget them. They only come between the perfect Jedi warrior and the Force.

It's interesting, and not a little distressing, that some thoughts keep recurring in wildly different contexts and belief systems throughout the ages. Take the idea that self-denial and emotional restraint are good in themselves, even when they do not lead to any discernible increase in happiness for any human being. Don't enjoy yourself. It's sinful/common/bourgeois/decadent/hostile to the environment/unsolidaric to the Third World/harmful to The Force. From puritanism to "fat shaming" and faux mysticism in sci-fi films, there always seem to be people about who equate being virtuous with being a killjoy.

No wonder Supreme Chancellor Palpatine found it child's play to scoop up Anakin Skywalker. No more harnessing emotions, no more denying instincts, no more self-abnegation. Here, Anakin, have a cookie.

Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens is mainly good because it is an expertly crafted yarn with engaging characters, thrilling action and some truly moving moments (plus better dialogue than the original films). But an incidental pleasure is the relative absence of waffle about the Force. Instead, it's all about the human relationships: friendship, romantic love and family ties are what makes the protagonists care about each other and what inspires them to heroism. In spite of the fact that The Dark Side still has some cookies at its disposal - like Kylo Ren, who is seriously yummy behind his mask, and General Hux (I'm a sucker for a redhead) - it's really not hard to root for the good guys when they're as likeable as this. And honestly, at the end of the day, and all sophistry apart: when you find yourself serving a giant lizard straight out of Evil Noseless Creatures' Central Casting and destroying a world looking suspiciously like a planet-sized Manhattan you know you've gone wrong somewhere, cookies or not.

Incidentally, what was is that finally turned Darth Vader against the evil Emperor in the original films? His love for his son. Put that in your transcendental pipe and smoke it, Yoda.