Hello Gentle Reader
I am not a film person. A good movie is difficult to find these days. Comparing the Swedish “The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo,” with the Hollywood version of “The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo,” was a fifty/fifty both ways. The Hollywood version was a bit more glamorized and certainly had produced the thriller material that the book itself possess. That being said the Swedish version had stripped the book good with its grittier version. It felt minimalist on many accounts. Take the backdrops. Take the scenery at face value. There was no bright lighting. It all felt low key and low budget. This allowed for the world of the novel to be portrayed in the grey gritty light, of the Nordic countries. Noomi Rapace the Swedish actress that played Lisbeth Salander, looked the part so well. Rooney Mara who played the English version of Lisbeth also played her very well. Though had the appearance of a person posing or trying to be a Gothic person, rather than who actually was. In other words she should have kept the eyebrows for sure. Though I applaud her for going as far as actually getting her nipple pierced for the role. However in the end the both were good in their own ways. Personally I haven’t read the books. Not sure yet if I even want to. Stieg Larsson’s radical political views are and continue to be a large turn off for me. Though applause to him for taking up his own beliefs. He was a revolutionary socialist, and a man who stood by those views. He travelled to Eritrea, where in nineteen-seventy seven, he trained a group of Eritrean People’s Liberation Front Guerilla’s – what makes this most extraordinary? Those who he trained were woman. However the work had to be abandoned, after a kidney disease. From then on until nineteen-ninety nine Stieg Larsson worked as a graphic designer for one of Sweden’s largest news agencies. However when not at his day job, Stieg Larson was investigating and researching the far-right political movements in his homeland of Sweden and the racist and white supremacist organizations that had infested it – or at least had come to call the country a home base. This was instrumental in its documentation. However it is upon these grounds and his forming of Expo in nineteen-ninety five, had left him with living under death threats, because of his political views and the political enemies that had become the staple of his life. His most famous run ins and battles were with the political party Sweden Democrats. In the end Stieg Larsson died at the age of fifty years of age, November two thousand and four, from a heart attack, after he climbed seven flights of stairs because the lift wasn’t working. There had been speculation that the heart attack was induced. These speculations were proven false, and merely gossip and rumours, caused by the speculation of the authors political enemies and the death threats that he had experienced. In the end, both films did the books justice. However in the end neither one could truly grasp or deal with the authors political views and ideologies. Where he stands on woman’s rights, and the reasons why. Stieg Larson at the age of fifteen was helpless as he witnessed a gang rape of a girl. This lead to his abhorrence of violence, and his views on women and violence against them; which caused him to brand himself a feminist. The violence portrayed then in the books is not a violence that is displayed for a sense of graphic depiction of sadism in any sexual sensation. Nor is it on display for entertainment purposes. Stieg Larsson presents the vulnerability of woman, and their sex (but also their scorn and vengeance) and how it is appalling, and how helpless that one truly is when they are overcome and in the most intimate moments violated. It’s not some shock value writing. With it, Stieg Larsson is seeking forgiveness from himself for not being able to save that girl. With it he allows for her to get her own brand of justice.
George Moore was an Irish novelist. Probably best known for portraying the beginning of the artistic movement Impressionism. His novel “Confessions of a Young Man,” autobiographical allowed for the author to share his experiences in Paris in the eighteen-seventies and eighties, when he attempted and failed miserably to study art. This book allowed him to express in a naturalist style, and its depiction of Bohemian life of the Paris back then. It is also noted for its attack against the hypocrisy of the then Victorian England, which is now day romanticized on for its gothic and repressed sexuality – that for some odd reason gives people the sense of erotic kinkiness going on; personally Queen Victoria did not appear like much of a ‘experimental,’ woman. She appears more like an emotional constipated woman, with a repressed sexuality and someone who say duty first and any sense of personal pleasure of enjoyment as repugnant and often took a monastery routine and ritual to life. George Moore as a writer is often seen as a outsider in both Irish and British literature, but nonetheless he was a precursor to Literary Modernism that would take place in the early twentieth century. He was a great influence on the future Irish writer James Joyce. His work “Hail and Farewell,” infuriated friends, and was enjoyed by readers. In the end George Moore never really received any recognition as a writer. Not like his predecessor James Joyce, nor like his own literary influence Emile Zola. In the end George Moore died, and did not leave his then a accumulated fortune of eight thousand pounds to his now estranged brother.
Yet there has been a slight more interest into Moore’s work, since the release of a film that is based on one of Moore’s Novella’s. “The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs,” was a short novel written by George Moore. In his naturalist style, and containing his disdain of Victorian era morality and stuffy class system, as well as the clerical interference with life of Irish people – “The Untitled Field,” dealt specifically with the interference of the clergy with peasant life in Ireland. “The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs,” deals with the inequality of men and women in nineteen century Ireland. Albert Nobbs is the main character of this short novel, a well-mannered quiet man, who lives a solidary existence while working at a hotel. He serves the guests well. Mr. Nobbs also saves up his money in order to one day buy a shop; a tobacconists shop. What makes Mr. Nobbs so strange and so interesting, and a blasphemous character in nineteenth century Ireland, is that he is a cross dresser. He is in reality a woman. In order to make a sustaining life at best without being married, and without being a spinster Albert Nobbs, must now play the charade of a man.
Do not fret though Gentle Reader, this is not some gay movie or a movie about lesbian love or transgender politics or anything like that. It is a movie that surpasses these superficialities. It is a movie about identity. The main character Albert Nobbs has lost his identity, as a woman and has become simply Albert. There is nothing more to him. He has fallen into a trap. His life has become so routine that the lie and the mask has become his life and his face. George Moore also portrays the harsh realities of nineteen century Ireland. The rigid Victorian morality that has spread like typhoid fever into every home, and every person’s life. The clergy jumping about like fleas. Opening up religiously public services – orphanages and religious hospitals. In this naturalist style which will always be doomed in having some form of pessimistic overlap, because it sees the human condition, as something that is predestined. Fatalist until the end. Human beings never change the course of action, of their life. All decisions, and all actions will always lead to the same ending: death. It is in these respects that the naturalist writer is grounded in a sense of realistic pessimism.
One should thank Glen Close for bringing this film to the big screen. The actress herself had played the titular role in nineteen-eighty two, during a stage production of the novella. From then on she tried for fifteen years to turn the novella into a film production. It had a close break back in the early two thousands, with Istvan Szabo as the director. However financing fell apart. However seeing how close the goal came to fruit, Glen Close did not give up. Now it is made, and Glen Close co-authored the film with the author John Banville, and was director by Rodrigo García, the son of Nobel Laureate in Literature Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Life is full of small coincidences. However if you are looking for a great film, with some very interesting cinematography, and wonderful acting this is a good movie. One just needs to get past the superficial details. It’s not a discussion of transgender people, or lesbian love. It’s about living a lie that finally becomes the truth.
The last film that I had enjoyed as of recently was what would now be called a period piece, about a period in recent history. The cold war could not be called a real war. But it was a moment in history in which the threat of communism and nuclear war was the fear of all suburban American’s living a middle class life dream – which in today’s world, is on the decline, because of the recession. But now with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and fall of Russian Communism and cold war politics, one can now look back on it as a time of biting the bullet.
John le Carre is the author of numerous books of espionage fiction. Last year alone in two thousand and eleven he was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize, though the author himself had asked that his name be removed from the shortlist. In which the American author Philip Roth had won.
“Tinker Tailor Solider Spy,” is the critically acclaimed novel and now film, which depicts the deceit of the Cold War Era. This is not some Iain Fleming James Bond piece. There are no gadgets, no seductive woman. George Smiley played expertly by Gary Oldman, is a middle aged man. He is not some young stud (no that’s Peter played by Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy who plays Ricki Tarr) who is out fighting communism, jumping out of airplane or helicopters. Instead George Smiley is out to uncover the mole that is at the top of British Intelligence. The film is played with expert attention to detail. The very way a shot or scene is set up, presents a very interesting world. When Ricki Tarr watches Soviet Agents, and a presumed couple Irina and Boris; the windows are all open and display the comings and goings. In the room next to the two, a couple can be seen engaging in an act called fucking. When Peter is in the records, the scene shows the entire records department cut into different squares. There is always the feeling that all the mechanisms can be found out so easily. That one’s life is open. Anyone might be peering in. The film itself could be classified as classic noir. Not an action film. Its suspense is built on the characters actions, and the characters responses to their own mind games that they are playing. Always wondering if their own treachery to the other is found. Paranoia is found throughout.
John le Carre himself worked for the British Intelligence service himself. It is not something that he himself hides. Iain Flemming the author and creator of James Bond had also been part of the British Intelligence Service during World War II. Why is it that these two men have seen the world of intelligence collection in two different lights? If one looks closely Iain Fleming see’s the world as an action packed adventure. A game more or less. Where morally true people who have to do some more immoral activities at times for the greater good are seen as debonair. If one wants to get right down to it I think that the time periods that both John le Carre and Iain Flemming were entirely different. After the Second World War, there was a great sense of pride for the British and American and Soviet people. Though their trust in each other did not last long. For in no time flat, America and the Soviet Union soon grew suspicious of each other. But Iain Flemming had been on the winning side when he participated in the War. He had beaten the great evil of Hitler, and the Nazi ideology. Great Brittan had showed her resilience to the London Blizt. People got up and rebuilt their homes. Had a pint of beer laughed, and cooperated with each other. The fallen men were honoured as heroes. It was a battle and a war that the British people could be proud of. It is that allowed Iain Flemming to feel a sense of pride, in his own job when he worked for the government. This allowed for him to write the James Bond novels, of morally high people doing some more immoral activities were perceived as alright because they were communist or bad people. One cannot win a war by reasoning with the unreasonable. One must give a swift kick in the ass.
John le Carre on the other hand, worked during the Cold War. When Eastern Europe was full of Soviet Satellite states. The Space Age was in full swing – something Hitler himself had dreamed of doing; and his Nazi scientists were now continuing to refine and progress towards putting a man on the moon, and creating some very interesting and eloquent but also dangerous technology. John le Carre interviewed/interrogated defectors from East Germany, in his beginning career stages. He knew of the horrors of what was going on, on the other side of the wall. But his job’s duties and responsibilities also increased as time went on. Le Carre began to run agents, continue with interrogations, tap and tape phone lines as well as effect break in’s. He later left the service to dedicate himself to write full time. But it certainly can be said that John le Carre was quite sure of the morally ambiguous line of work that his character(s) were doing. The action is more personal rather than political – no Queen and Country here. There is almost an existential appearance to his work. John le Carre provides honesty towards the dubious life of a spy. Its inadequate and almost speculative work. One cannot say it’s moral; yet one can say it is necessary in today’s world. As long as there are people who wish to oppress and oppose, and enforce and force their opinions or ideologies or religions, or commit acts of terrorism be it state sponsored or independent, there will always be a need for human intelligence. John le Carre simply provides a honest depiction of it. In the end a wonderful film, certainly I recommend it.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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M. Mary
