Change Your Image
Bryher-2
Reviews
Jack Holborn (1982)
Brilliant adventure series
This is, quite simply, wonderful. Just before I stuck the first DVD in my player, I was a little worried that "Jack Holborn" would look dated and silly in my jaded adult eyes. It did not, even for a moment. The occasional historical blooper that went completely over my 12-year-old head somehow seems endearing now, and the only mildly embarrassing moments are caused by a very cheesy piece of background music intruding at an inappropriate moment - but this happens perhaps twice in the course of the series. This is still the same piece of television that kindled in me an enduring fascination with and interest in all things nautical, the Age of Sail, and the 18th century, and even engendered some enthusiasm for my German lessons, which have stood me in immensely good stead in later life.
"Jack Holborn" is, vaguely, an adaptation of the Leon Garfield young adults' novel of the same name. I say "vaguely" because, although the main idea is still there and some details have been preserved, very important aspects of the story, as well as a lot of the characterisation, have been changed. For my money, however, the series plot works out better and makes far more sense than the book one. The title hero is a plucky 13-year-old foundling, whom we meet as his fate is being decided by Lord Sharingham, a magistrate in 1787 Bristol. Jack wants to be ship's boy, but he's assigned to work for a local family of sail-makers and cobblers instead, despite the magistrate's twin brother, the privateer Captain Sharingham, offering to take him aboard his ship, the "Charming Molly." The magistrate accuses his brother of dealings with pirates and vows to bring him to justice and clear the family name; meanwhile, Jack is plagued by a recurring hazy memory of a foggy night at sea ten years previously that appears to hold the key to who he is and to what happened to his parents, and in which Captain Sharingham and his ship seem to play an important part. The plot thickens thereafter, with never a dull moment in the roughly five hours the series is long. To reveal more would be spoilerific - suffice it to say that, as in any decent story containing twin siblings, mistaken identity comes to play a huge part in the plot, and there's rousing adventure in spades, both on land and upon the high seas: betrayals, loyalty, swordplay, pistols, muskets, belaying pins, stowing away, ruses, disguises, broadsides, boarding, spying, a duel, storms, shipwrecks, mutinies, flogging, romance, revenge, cruelty, mercy, courtroom drama, a mysterious lady, moral ambiguity, fraternal angst, swamp fever, hostile natives, transportation, slavery, escapes, a cynical parrot, dungeons, hangings, treasure... hooray! I will never forgive the script writers for what happens to my favourite character at the end, though. Twenty-two years on, I am still traumatised. I know Mr. Garfield wrote it that way, but the book character is a blood-thirsty psychopath with no redeeming features, whereas... Sigh. I suppose it adds to the dramatic strength and poignancy.
The casting is uniformly excellent, with not a single bad performance. Matthias Habich (Captain and Lord Sharingham) is not only phenomenal as always, but manages to look extremely attractive while wearing what is essentially a German footballer's mullet with a bow stuck in. Patrick Bach (Jack Holborn) is surprisingly good for his age, never slipping into preciousness. The exteriors were done in Croatia and on Rarotonga (one of the Cook Islands), and work very well, even the shots of Dubrovnik pretending to be both Bristol and the island of Nautia! For the "Charming Molly" and several other vessels they used an actual sailing ship, and it shows. The music by Christian Bruhn is, apart from the cheesy bit mentioned above, actually very good, in particular the haunting harpsichord theme. I understand it's even available on CD now.
The DVD picture quality is fine, perhaps even a little better than one would have expected of a TV-series from 1982. My only beef with the German edition that I own is the complete lack of any bonus features and subtitles, even German ones, so there are still little bits of dialogue that I don't understand completely. But I am immensely grateful this is on DVD at all! Unreservedly recommended.
La vita è bella (1997)
NO, life is not always beautiful (some spoilers ahead)
*SPOILERS*
For me, there is a very obvious dividing point between the two parts of this movie: the scene where Dora comes home with her mother and realises her family has been deported. From then on, from that open door showing a devastated and empty apartment that painfully jerks you back from the fairylike world of comic knights rescuing princesses in puffy pink, nothing can be the same; yet the makers of this movie carry on as though it were. The first part works just fine in its way (that of course depends on whether you like Benigni's style at all or not), although it is pretty inferior to his other films. The second is quite simply awful. Fairytales can be incredibly cruel (and most of them in fact are), and there is nothing a priori wrong with trying to present a concentration camp situation in terms of a fairytale (although I suspect you'd need incredibly good writing and a totally different kind of actor). The problem is, here it was done badly and in a completely wrong way, because they had failed to understand they could not use the SAME fairytale as in the first half. As a result, what we actually get is a Viennese operetta. One feels one is watching `Die Fledermaus', complete with bumbling soldiers and in-and-out-of-the-prison-cell shenanigans.
The whole premise - telling the kid it's all a game and acting up to support the lie - that so many found noble and heart-rending, is for me simply beyond stupid and irresponsible. I can almost hear a chorus whining: `Awww. but he's doing it for the kiiid.!' It matters zilch whether he's doing something `for the kid' (filmmakers so often assume that they can simply put a child in the movie, and the audience immediately send their brains on a tropical holiday; sadly, it works); what matters is WHAT he is doing. And what he does here would have killed his son, himself, and many of his comrades (incidentally, it is made so very obvious that they really don't mean anything to him; what are so many lives compared with his own child's dubious emotional comfort? Their survival literally depended on understanding the camp rules, but of course they have to be made unwilling participants in a silly game devised for one child's benefit - and it's not even that - instead. So where is this humanism everyone is gushing about?) within the first few weeks. There are two things he could have done, for different reasons: he could either simply have told his son the truth, and thereby equipped him for at least trying to survive (after all, it's a very smart child, as we learn from the first part - although how a smart child would have gone for months believing Guido's story in that environment is beyond me) and prevented him from unknowingly jeopardizing others; or lied to him to shield him psychologically before inevitable death comes. Perhaps a fatalist would indeed have chosen the second option, but only an idiot would have mistaken it for a survival strategy, and from then on Guido looks more like a real fool than a clown playing one.
There are some powerful scenes in there: uncle Eliseo helping up a female guard who has tripped while herding him into the gas chamber; the riddle-obsessed doctor asking Guido for help (although you can see that one coming from miles away), but they are lost in all the incongruous clowning and sentimental schlock - like the inexcusable scene of Guido making a whole idiotic speech to his wife on the camp's loudspeaker system. Even leaving aside the implausibility of his ever getting the chance, the sheer stupidity of the very idea, and the certainty that he and Giosue' would have been killed on the spot for such a transgression (before that, we heard how every child is to be killed, and so Giosue' is hidden, yet now the Nazis find him happily babbling into the microphone and nothing happens?! Are we all supposed to be on the toilet at this point and so not notice?) - what is the purpose of that speech?! Having the oh-so-cute line `Buongiorno, principessa!' and similar inanities that just don't belong there repeated yet again? For the purpose of letting her know they're still alive, one word would have been enough. In the end, even his death somehow manages to seem unreal. Instead of shaken and saddened, I was left rather relieved I did not have to support this selfish and foolish person's annoying presence on the screen anymore.
"La vita e' bella" contains a lot of superficial "joie de vivre", and doesn't want us to think much, as though encountering unspeakable evil were the same thing as grabbing a quick bite; and this movie is a cinematic equivalent of a pizza fast food chain.
Boys Don't Cry (1999)
Very, very good
I saw it two hours ago and am still shaking. There were some slack spots and perhaps it would have been better if it were 10-15 minutes shorter overall, but it takes a hell of a good movie to make that sort of impact on the viewer. The last half hour was almost physically painful to watch. Some truly fantastic performances and some real characters to be seen in an Oscar movie, such a rare occurrence.
There are probably people out there who thought they were going to watch something that has nothing to do with them whatsoever, some sideshow freaks, and instead saw human beings. I just wish more people would bother to go and see something other than "entertainment" every once in a while.