onsdag 24 februari 2016

War, peace and TV adaptations

Right then. War and Peace.

Not the novel, mind - I must admit that not only have I never read it, I'm unlikely ever to do so. Call me shallow, but I don't think I can face a 1000 page-long story set during the Napoleonic wars from an anti-Napoleonic perspective, especially as it includes the catastrophic Russian campaign. Moreover, it doesn't matter if a novel is 1000 pages long if the plot moves at a fair lick, but I suspect Tolstoy of being a digresser in the Hugo vein - and I wouldn't be too surprised if many of the digressions were soundings-off about a certain French Emperor.

However, I have watched the old, 15-hour-long BBC adaptation of the novel starring Anthony Hopkins as Pierre (something must have happened to my attention span since then), and so I do have something with which to compare the new, snappier Andrew Davies adaptation. What I found I enjoyed in the old version were the relationship dramas - a largish cast of characters were linked in intricate and sometimes unexpected ways, and it wasn't entirely predictable who would end up with whom. This seemed like promising material for the magic Davies touch.

The first episode was frothy enough, and included the suspenseful "get Pierre to his dying dad on time" storyline. Four episodes in, though (the whole series is six episodes long), and I can't help noticing that the pace isn't exactly frantic. When I first heard the melancholic Russian theme song I thought "get away with you, Andrew", but as a matter of fact, this adaptation is rather more pensive than one is used to from Davies, and contains scenes which don't advance the plot much but which Set the Mood. It is, not to put too fine a point on it, a bit dull at times. Sometime during episode three I thought "this is the peace part, I should be enjoying this more" - and got a feeling of déja vu when I realised I had been thinking much the same thing when watching much the same part of the story in the old 15-hour-adaptation.

Having said that, the Davies adaptation is an Express train compared to the old one, and the more sensible choice if you want a handy TV version of War and Peace which will give you an inkling of what's it all about. Let's face it, if you want an endurance test, you might as well read the novel - at a rate of 50 pages per hour you'd be on page 750 after 15 hours, with a mere 250 pages to go. All right, so if you skip the old adaptation you don't get Anthony Hopkins or Alan Dobie's handsome Andrei. But the new version's heroes aren't bad either - Paul Dano is sweet as Pierre, and James Norton gives Andrei an intensity of feeling which just about saves the character from being too much of a stuffed shirt. And then there's Lily James as a lovely but clueless Natasha, dangerously getting to grips with love and desire through trial and error. James (known as Lady Rose in Downton) is used to playing wilful teenagers, and the fact that Natasha is merely eighteen when committing a fundamental error which needlessly complicates her love life is much more convincingly brought home than in the old version.

The other characters are well-cast too: Stephen Rea as the scheming Prince Kuragin (!), regrettably more or less absent after the two first episodes; Rebecca Front  - always a joy - as the ambitious mum of personable but shallow Boris; Adrian Edmondson and Greta Scacchi as Natasha's parents, with Edmondson particularly poignant as a man seemingly incapable of anger ("it is a little difficult... we will have to close down our house in Moscow" is his reaction when his son contracts an astronomical gambling debt); Tuppence Middleton as Pierre's sluttish wife Hélène, who can be relied on to crank up the drama a bit; and so on. (I was a little disappointed in Hélène's brother Anatole, but maybe my expectations were too high, as this is a character who's supposed to be able to fell ladies with a glance. I don't think I'd have minded the same actor as, say, Sampson Brass in The Old Curiosity Shop.)

For lazybones like me, then, this War and Peace adaptation is a fairly pleasant way to acquaint oneself with the source material. I do wonder, though, whether it doesn't risk falling between two chairs, as being too frothy for the real War and Peace diehards and not frothy enough to costume-drama addicts who simply want a good time. But who knows? The same thing might be said about Davies's Dickens adaptations, and I thought they were brilliant, speaking both as a costume drama viewer and as a card-carrying Dickens fan. It is perfectly possible that those who have read and loved War and Peace will enjoy seeing both the available BBC versions.

tisdag 9 februari 2016

The Paying Guests - Painless ambitious reading

I wonder if it's a spoiler to say that a novel doesn't have a twist? As a matter of fact, I rather think it might be. Let me mitigate my spoiling, then, by saying that The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters does contain surprising turns of event - and not all of them unpleasant, either. What it doesn't have is the sort of rug-pulled-away-under-your-feet twist which makes you reassess the characters and what's been going on completely. I've come across twists like these in the other two books by Waters that I've read, Fingersmith and Affinity, and consequently I viewed Lilian, the heroine's love interest, with some suspicion. We know about those butter-wouldn't-melt type of women, don't we? She is no con artist, though: if the characters of The Paying Guests let each other down at times, it's because of other failings than cold-hearted deviousness.

Taking place in London in 1922, the novel opens with the protagonist, Frances Wray, and her mother receiving their new lodgers, Leonard and Lilian Barber. The Wrays are genteel (which is why their friends refer to their lodgers as "paying guests") but fallen on hard times, the Barbers are of the "clerk class". Frances doesn't much like having to share her house with strangers, and is at first a little contemptous of the Barbers, though she appreciates Lilian's kindness. Her positive feelings towards Lilian grow stronger as the two women become friends, until Frances has to admit to herself that she's fallen in love. With one failed love affair already behind her, this is unwelcome news, especially as Lilian's first reaction when realising that her friend's lost love was a actually a girl is shock and embarrassment. Will Lilian come round? And, it that case, how are they going to handle the small matter of her husband Leonard?

If you want to read a critically acclaimed novel which is also an entertaining piece of storytelling, bristling with the traditional virtues of character and plot, then look no further. For sheer page-turning value, I liked Fingersmith more: as the plot of The Paying Guests is that of a chamber piece, I did at times want the few characters involved to get on with it. But the prose has verve, and Frances is an engaging protagonist. Once you've resigned yourself to the fact that some particular plot point won't be resolved in a hurry, you can sit back and enjoy her take on things. The Paying Guests is also a kinder book than both Affinity and Fingersmith, and the characters (not just Frances - even Leonard is fairly, sometimes even sympathetically, treated) easier to like.

It gives one hope that critics can stoop to praising a good storyteller. Of course, this must mainly be because of the good writing. I suspect, though, that the all-female love affairs help, and that the supposedly challenging "lesbian angle" protects Waters from the accusation of being old-fashioned. Ironically, the relationships depicted by Waters are not in any way exotic: that's one of the points she very effectively makes in her novels. The heartbreaks, thrills, betrayals and reconciliations her female protagonists go through are the same as those a "man's woman" might experience - or a man, come to that. In The Paying Guests, the robust common sense with which the story is told (unlike Margaret in Affinity, Frances is no whiner) makes sure that the straight reader never feels preached to. True, you learn a thing or two about the situation for lesbians in Twenties England (not all bad - two girls can set up house together without any awkward questions being asked), but the story doesn't feel like it's written from any particular angle. It's just a love story.