movies
Last night I rewatched Withnail and I, which is one of those movies I enjoy more each time I see it. (Incidentally, I've been dredging my memory for the first time I saw it, and I've concluded that it was probably in early 1989 when I was studying in France. I remember there being subtitles, which is hard to explain otherwise. In those years I was deeply resentful of 1960s nostalgia--that's my parents' generation, and it's hard to care about your parents' generation when you're 19--so I wasn't nearly as sympathetic to the film's "end of an era" feeling as I am now. And the characters' sense of creeping middle age, of getting inexorably older even as you realize your life hasn't gone according to plan, is something you just can't grasp at that age.)
I also don't remember noticing, on previous viewings, how extraordinarily beautiful the young Paul McGann is. Don't know how I missed that. I saw that he was good-looking, obviously, but that's not quite the same. One sees rather a lot of his bare flesh in the film, too, which is both a treat and (because I now tend to think of him as the Eighth Doctor) a little disturbing.
And he's so titchy! Although standing next to Richard E. Grant probably doesn't help.
On a completely different note, tonight I watched Longford, which is about Lord Longford, the Catholic Labour peer who became infamous in the 1970s and onwards for supporting Myra Hindley's parole. (Hindley was one of the most notorious murderers in twentieth century Britain; she helped her boyfriend Ian Brady abduct, assault, and murder five children in the 1960s.)
The film handles an incredibly sensitive topic with evenhandedness and grace, and all the cast are absolutely stellar. Samantha Morton is amazing as Hindley, and Andy Serkis is even more so as Ian Brady. (I caught myself thinking, "I wish Brady was in this film more" and was suitably creeped out.)
One of the things I especially admired was that, while the film doesn't in any way underplay Longford's religious devotion, it also isn't preachy. Preachiness is a vice common to biopics about people who do good for religious reasons (Amazing Grace, about the abolitionist John Wilberforce, springs irresistibly to mind) and I dislike it intensely. Unlike Amazing Grace, Longford is willing to show that religious efforts to improve society can take deeply illiberal forms: besides his lifelong commitment to prison reform, Longford also campaigned against pornography, a cause for which I have no sympathy at all.
I highly recommend the film; in the U.S. it's available from Netflix.
*****
I also don't remember noticing, on previous viewings, how extraordinarily beautiful the young Paul McGann is. Don't know how I missed that. I saw that he was good-looking, obviously, but that's not quite the same. One sees rather a lot of his bare flesh in the film, too, which is both a treat and (because I now tend to think of him as the Eighth Doctor) a little disturbing.
And he's so titchy! Although standing next to Richard E. Grant probably doesn't help.
On a completely different note, tonight I watched Longford, which is about Lord Longford, the Catholic Labour peer who became infamous in the 1970s and onwards for supporting Myra Hindley's parole. (Hindley was one of the most notorious murderers in twentieth century Britain; she helped her boyfriend Ian Brady abduct, assault, and murder five children in the 1960s.)
The film handles an incredibly sensitive topic with evenhandedness and grace, and all the cast are absolutely stellar. Samantha Morton is amazing as Hindley, and Andy Serkis is even more so as Ian Brady. (I caught myself thinking, "I wish Brady was in this film more" and was suitably creeped out.)
One of the things I especially admired was that, while the film doesn't in any way underplay Longford's religious devotion, it also isn't preachy. Preachiness is a vice common to biopics about people who do good for religious reasons (Amazing Grace, about the abolitionist John Wilberforce, springs irresistibly to mind) and I dislike it intensely. Unlike Amazing Grace, Longford is willing to show that religious efforts to improve society can take deeply illiberal forms: besides his lifelong commitment to prison reform, Longford also campaigned against pornography, a cause for which I have no sympathy at all.
I highly recommend the film; in the U.S. it's available from Netflix.
*****