onsdag 30 november 2016

Time to be a grown-up with The Crown

Sometimes I worry that, what with all my wallowing in animated films, sci-fi, fairy-tale-inspired fantasy and not least youtube clips commenting on these phenomena, I will no longer be able to appreciate more mature and sophisticated ways of entertainment when they come along. What if I've devolved into a mere "beast", like the Macra in Doctor Who? Is it maybe a bad sign that I know who the Macra in Doctor Who are?

My fears seemed to be confirmed when I started to watch the undoubtedly-for-grown-ups Netflix series The Crown, which has been praised by just about every costume-drama viewer in the world. The first scene shows the present Elizabeth II's father, George VI, coughing up blood in the bathroom, and my first reactions were childish enough: "Eugh!" and "Right. Bored now."

Luckily, things picked up from there. There's no denying - and who would want to? - that the series is very well done indeed, and can easily hold a candle to anything BBC or ITV at its most lavish produce. The acting is superb - once again Claire Foy shines, this time as the main character Queen Elizabeth - the setting breathes authenticity and the script creates entirely believable scenes for the characters. You keep thinking "yes, it must have been exactly like this". There's not even clunky exposition camouflaged as dialogue of the kind you otherwise always get even in the best costume dramas: this means that some bit-players' identity remains a mystery until it is natural for someone to mention their name, but it's worth it as we then don't get stilted explanatory remarks such as "Ah, Mike, my dear cousin/friend since childhood" (yes, I'm still not sure how Prince Philip and Mike know each other) or "do you really think I can take on Churchill, Lord Salisbury, also known for unfathomable reasons as Bobbety?". Peter Morgan also wrote the script to the film The Queen and the play The Audience - both of which I've seen and enjoyed - and you trust him implicitly when it comes to capturing the personalities of the Queen and her entourage. The tone is even more assured in The Crown than in the other Elizabeth II-themed pieces mentioned, where some things would grate (the too-laboured stag metaphor in The Queen and some PMs in The Audience who were caricatured rather than convincingly portrayed).

But - to be honest - not a lot happens, does it? I've watched six episodes out of the first ten to be released, and though, thanks to the smoothness and believability, the story doesn't creak, it certainly moves at a rather majestic pace. Maybe it is partly my devolved Macra brain: the timing for watching The Crown could undeniably have been better, as after the sugar rush of two seasons of Once Upon A Time, it felt very much like slow-carb TV. All the same, I'm starting to wonder whether Elizabeth II's reign is that interesting a chunk of English history, and whether (whisper it) the characters are as fascinating as all that. They're certainly likeable: The Crown ought to give the senior members of the British royal family a well-deserved popularity boost. Even so, inveterate consumer of royal gossip as I am, I still fail to be engrossed by the small niggles of the Queen's and Prince Philip's essentially stable and happy marriage. Each episode features one main plot-line with not many sub-plots to speak of, and I did find myself thinking more than once that they weren't really worth all the time and attention lavished on them.

Of course it's a good series. I don't even feel resentful when people call it "the new Downton", because I know what they're driving at. This is period drama of the highest quality, plus an enjoyable way to learn more about recent British history (I had never even heard of the killing London fog of 1952). But Downton (not being hampered by reality) had more intricate plot-lines and a larger cast of characters to engage in. With the risk of sounding like the philistine Emperor in Amadeus complaining about the Marriage of Figaro having "too many notes", I'd say that for me at least, The Crown has too few storylines and too few main characters to be truly addictive. Not to mention no villains whatsoever (an amusingly catty Duke of Windsor doesn't count).

In spite of its level of ambition, I think the rest of the series will do well as post-gym watching, when I feel in the appropriate calm zen mode. Right now, though, Once season three awaits: maybe Neverland is the best place for me.

onsdag 16 november 2016

Fairy tales, mash-ups and villains = magically addictive viewing

That idea I had about mixing escapist viewing with serious stuff like Danish crime dramas? Stuff that. Lately it's been escapism, in the shape of the TV series Once Upon A Time, all the way. I'm now halfway through season two, and planning to invest in the remaining seasons available on DVD in the very near future.

So what's it about? Well, there's this town in present-day Maine, Storybrooke, where the Evil Queen from Snow White has entrapped various characters from different fairy tales, plus the odd character from other tales with a fantastic dimension, using a curse which wiped their memories and halted time, so that the town folk neither age nor have any memory of their previous fairy-tale existence. The only one who can break the curse is the daughter of Snow White and Prince James/David (long story) aka Charming, who was smuggled out of a magic portal before the curse hit. Once grown-up, she is brought into town by her son, whom she had given away for adoption, but who has figured out what's going on with the aid of a book, and so goes out to find her. The heroine, Emma Swan, naturally doesn't believe her son's fairy-tale fantasies, but she quickly grows attached to him and stays in the town for his sake. The big problem is, his adoptive mother is the Evil Queen herself, also known as Regina Mills the town mayor. And that's just season one.

Yep, it does sound extraordinarily geeky. When I try to explain the series' premise to an outsider, I usually drift off in the middle, embarrassingly aware of the fact. But then I am geeky, and fond of fairy tales and mash-ups/cross-overs where fictional characters from different stories interact. For anyone who feels the same, I think I can guarantee that a good time will be had with Once.

The series' attractions? Let's start at the top:

1) Rumplestiltskin's in it! Yeah, they basically had me at "You can't go to him. He's dangerous." Rumplestiltskin's my favourite fairy-tale villain, even if, in the original Grimm story, his appearance is not impressive (he seems to be some sort of gnome) and his motives unclear (what did he want with that first-born anyway? Eat it?). You can't fault that M.O. though - giving some hapless fairy-tale character exactly what they want, but at a price. In the words of the voodoo spirit friends of another purveyor of magical deals, Dr Facilier in The Princess and the Frog: "Well, you got what you wanted/But you lost what you had". It's the diabolical pact without the too-scary diabolical bit, and it works a treat as a villain storyline. Even Rumplestiltskin in Shrek Forever After, lisping silliness notwithstanding (one more reason why I'm no big fan of the Shrek franchise is that it tends to poke fun at its villains) managed to be the most formidable antagonist the green ogre's come across. It's hard to withstand an enemy who can use your own desires against you.

Rumplestiltskin in Once is the best version of the character one could hope for. For one, they've scrapped the gnome bit: originally, he's a man very much down on his luck who gets hold of almost unlimited dark magical power and is then understandingly reluctant to let it go, even it does turn him into a malicious, greenish kind of goblin. The goblin version of Rumplestiltskin may be a teeny bit OTT, not that I'm not still thrilled every time a character - especially the really good and worthy ones - is suckered into making a deal with him. But his Storybrooke persona, the wealthy businessman cum lawyer Mr Gold ("'He owns this place.' 'The inn?' 'The town.'") is just perfect - gangly, sardonic, super-clever, and with a deliciously impenetrable master plan. It is also worth noting that, like the original character and unlike, say, Facilier, Rumplestiltskin/Gold always delivers on his side of a deal. He doesn't cheat and fulfil your wishes in some horrible way. Many of the characters' happiness is dependent on deals they once made with him, which explains why they keep falling into his traps.

2) The Evil Queen has a case: Like most of the fairy-tale characters in Once, the Evil Queen Regina (not Grimhilde in this version, then) is nicely fleshed out with a strong back-story (the storyline in Once is split between Storybrooke and flashbacks to Fairyland). It provides the perfect villain motive in that it's good but not too good: you're not made to feel yourself that Snow White deserves all she gets, but you can see why Regina might think it. Her strongest case, though, is her present-day one against Emma. Imagine the natural mother of your adopted child showing up after ten years, settling down near you, getting all the affection of your boy, encouraging him to think of you as a wicked character from a fairy tale... And then to top it all your lover starts to make eyes at her. You wouldn't have to be an evil queen to be furious. In fact, if it weren't for the fairy-tale thing Regina would have right on her side, and for most of season one Emma doesn't even believe in the fairy-tale thing, which makes her feelings nicely conflicted.

3) I actually like Snow White: Who'd have thought it? Films like Snow White and the Huntsman and Mirror, Mirror have tried to make something of Snow White, but not particularly successfully in my view. Simply giving a girl martial arts skills doesn't make her a memorable heroine. Snow White aka Mary Margaret Blanchard in Once, on the other hand, is just the right mixture of sweet and spunky to be likeable. Though essentially a good person, she has flaws which make her endearing, and you end up hoping she and her man will come together, even if a lot of potentially tiresome fuss is made about their "true love".

4) "Evil is made, not born" I recently rewatched all the Harry Potter films and was so fed up with the relentless smugness of the good characters by the end that I almost saw the point of joining up with the noseless one. In Once, both good and bad characters grapple with their motives, which prompts some discussion about what constitutes good and evil. In spite of the quote (a statement made by the two head villains, and they would say that), evil turns out to be very much a matter of choice. The wicked characters tend to go for the wrong choices - though redemption is possible, they pull back out of vindictiveness or love of power - but that doesn't mean the good characters always make the right ones. Simply, the characterisation is more nuanced than what one is used to in fairy-tale-themed stories.

Look, I'm not saying it's The West Wing. But the script is sassy, the cliff-hangers are effective and both the fairy-tale part and the small-town soap opera part work well. I'm not sure kids would enjoy it much, though, fairy-tale content notwithstanding: not that it's too scary, but relationships play a large part in the story, which I imagine could get boring for a child, as could all the am-I-a-bad-parent agonising. It's fairy tales for adults, then: nerdy adults, ideally with a penchant for villains. Does that description fit anyone but me? The series is a hit, so possibly yes.

Oh, and just for the record: I'm not at all keen on the matinee idol version of Captain Hook who turns up in season two, but I imagine those without my bias in favour of his (metaphorical) crocodile will probably think differently.                          

onsdag 2 november 2016

Let Maleficent be Maleficent

Poor Maleficent. She's not my favourite Disney villain by a long chalk - in fact, she's not even my favourite Disney villainess (that would be Ursula the sea-witch in The Little Mermaid). However, she deserves far better than she got in the live-action film bearing her name which was released in 2014 and which I've now finally watched.

I have to admit I was prejudiced against Maleficent from the start. Reviews of it suggested that the film was an attempt to rehabilitate the main character in the same manner as the book and later musical Wicked did the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. This seemed to me to defeat the very reason the film was made in the first place. Maleficent had been voted the villain Disney fans wanted to see more of, and the film was a consequence of that - but if you're an admirer of the bad fairy in the original animated Sleeping Beauty, chances are you're not interested in seeing her portrayed as not so very bad after all. What the original Maleficent has is style - she goes about her villainous business with panache and without a trace of regret or vulnerability. To attempt a whitewash would be to take away the only thing she has going for her.

Still, there's no denying that there's room for development as far as Maleficent's character is concerned. In the original fairy tale, the (nameless) fairy who curses Sleeping Beauty only appears at the beginning of the tale, and her curse is the result of her being miffed at not being invited to the christening. This is classic folk tale logic - according to them, supernatural beings are often notoriously thin-skinned, and you commit a breach of etiquette against them at your peril. Now, Disney's Maleficent in the original animated film not only curses the infant Aurora, she also sticks around to make sure that what she's foretold is fulfilled (which makes you wonder - why not just sit back and let the magic run its course? Doesn't she trust her own curses?). Her continued active efforts to ensure Aurora gets no happy ending do make the "not invited to the party" motive seem a tad threadbare. Maybe giving the character a back-story and a more credible motive to go with it would not be such a bad thing after all?

I hadn't seen much of Maleficent, however, before I realised that it fulfilled my worst fears. It wasn't only an attempt to whitewash Maleficent, but a singularly bad attempt. A pompous female narrator tells us of two neighbouring countries, one peopled by selfish, greedy humans, and one an idyllic place full of magical creatures whom the humans envy. Argh - please not the "greedy humans versus peaceful species living in harmony with nature" plot, one of my all-time pet hates! It gets worse. We see a young Maleficent - why is she even called that if she's not evil yet? - flying over the enchanted woodlands and sunnily greeting various revoltingly cutesy CGI critters. She's plainly as good as good can be, so her descent into baby-cursing must be entirely due to those pesky humans. True enough, it's when her childhood sweetheart Stephan betrays her that she goes off the rails. When the King decrees that whoever kills Maleficent will succeed him, Stephan drugs her, steals her wings - he can't quite bring himself to kill her, though with hindsight that would have been wiser - and becomes king on the strength of it. On the plus side, no-one hunts Maleficent any more, as it's assumed Stephan killed her when he nabbed the wings. On the minus side, she's really upset.

You'd think the whole betrayal-and-wing-stealing setup would prove a better motive for Maleficent than not being invited to a christening, but it's so clumsily done it adds nothing to the original story, quite the reverse. Maleficent's back-story is for the most part narrated rather than built up by potentially character-developing dialogue - it's a schoolbook example of telling rather than showing. I found myself far preferring the old, un-reconstructed Maleficent: she was plainly a bad fairy by profession, and cursing newborns is the kind of thing bad fairies do - all part of a usual day in the life of a fairy-tale villain. New Maleficent, on the other hand, seems to think she has some moral justification for making sure Stephan's child fell into eternal sleep on her sixteenth birthday - but fond as she was of her wings, this is a wildly disproportionate retaliation. By making the newborn-cursing part of a revenge-on-the-ex plot, Maleficent actually manages to highlight the horror of it rather than making it more understandable.

The film then gets even sillier as Maleficent warms to Aurora and eventually tries her darndest to break her own curse - at this point, there's no longer any attempt made to align what's happening with the plot in the animated film. And in the end, I kid you not, it is not the Prince's smooch that wakes Aurora, but Maleficent's repentant kiss (on the forehead - there are limits). She's grown to love her, see, so this is "true love's kiss". Not that that's much of a comfort to the girl's real parents - her blameless mother who's died not knowing what will happen to her child and her increasingly unhinged father (and wouldn't you be if someone cursed your kid? It's not paranoia if it's real). And don't get me started on Maleficent's treatment of the three good fairies - charming comic sidekicks in the original Disney classic, inept and woefully unfunny in this film.

Fleshing out the character of fairy-tale villains is a tall order, as they're pretty hardcore, and the original tales - not being exercises in psychological realism - don't give you many hints regarding the inner workings of their mind. But it can be done. I recently watched the first season of the TV series Once Upon A Time and was completely sold on it - which, let's just say, is not particularly surprising. I'll be gushing more about its attractions at some later date. Suffice it to say, for now, that the fairy-tale villains in Once may be rendered more complex by a tragic back-story or two, but they are nevertheless still villains - they choose to become bad, and to remain bad. Real affection towards a select few people in their lives doesn't make them less of a menace to everyone else. This, I think, would have been an approach which could have worked with Maleficent too: an attempt to enrich her character without prettifying or excusing her obvious malevolence. In fact, Maleficent does appear in Once, but only as a minor character: it will be interesting to see if she is reintroduced later, and what in that case this franchise's take on her will be.

As it is, I will let yet another version of Maleficent have the last word: the cheerfully messy teenage romcom Descendants shown on Disney Channel, about the second generation of Disney villains navigating high school, features a thoroughly rotten-to-the-core Maleficent, interestingly not the least bit inspired by the 2014 film, only by the animated classic. She tries to persuade her increasingly doubtful daughter (there's no clue as to who the father is - the film doesn't really address where villain babies come from) to carry out her wicked plans in a catchy musical number which includes the lyrics (abbreviated): "Don't you want to be evil? Don't you want to be cool?" In its simplicity, I think this sums up the character of the bad fairy - at least in her Disney version - far better than anything in Maleficent.