Fannish5: Name the 5 most interesting fictional journeys.
Leaving out shows where the journey is the premise - like most Star Treks, and Doctor Who - as unfair, here are five of many that come to mind.
1) Thelma and Louise. I love well done road movies in general - this is, after all, the genre that matches inward with outward journeys - , but if pressed, this one is my absolute favourite. I love Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis in it. I love Ridley Scott doing his Ridley Scott thing, i.e. epic cinematography, and it always strikes me that even after all those years, his view of American landscapes is one of something slightly alien and fascinating in its alienness. I love that he reveals the faces of his actresses just as those landscapes as the characters grow. (Compare Thelma's strong make-up and lipstick look at the start to her sunburnt face near the end of the film, when she tells Louise "just keep going".) I love C. Khouri's script. I love the music. I just love this film.
2) Brief Lives. Many Neil Gaiman stories are journeys, especially in Sandman, and some days, I'd pick Lyta's journey to the Furies and back in The Kindly Ones as "most interesting", but today, it's Dream and Delirium on the road in Brief Lives. This particular volume is the big turning point of the entire Sandman saga, and it starts so deceptively low scale - Dream wanting some distraction from his latest botched romance leading to his agreement when Delirium asks him to search their brother Destruction with her. And of course, Destruction is whom and what they find, in more than one sense. Brief Lives is so many things, including a blue print of the later novel American Gods with all the former gods working in various jobs to survive these days; it features some of Sandman's funniest scenes (Dream asking Matthew whether he could teach Delirium to drive, Matthew replying "are you kidding? I died in a car crash the first time around" whereupon Dream wrily says "I am not sure that is a recommendation"), and some of the most heartbreaking (the entire sequence between Orpheus and Dream). The various sibling relationships between the Endless - Dream and Delirium of course, but also Destruction and Despair, Desire and Dream, Destruction and Dream, Destiny, Dream and Delirium - all come across so intensely. Death's short appearance when the millennia surviving Bernie finally dies sums up Death's philosophy in the entire series in a single line, her reply to Bernie's question: "You got what everyone gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime." The way Greece is used resonates with every mythology-digging bone in my body. "It is a beautiful day." Oh, Brief Lives.
3) Transamerica. Another road movie I love to bits, and not just because of Felicity Huffman's standout performance as Bree, a transsexual days before her operation. It combines so many things, the odd couple factor - proper Bree and teenage hustler Toby - the parent and child story (because Toby, though he doesn't know it, is the result of a youthful college experimentation of Bree's when she was still Stanley and struggling with her identity) - and a coming of age story for both Bree and Toby. You get a strong sense of personality even from minor figures like Graham Greene's character who flirts with Bree or her parents and sister. And the script is delightfully geeky, as when Toby, who wants to impress Bree, rambles on on why Lord of the Rings is "totally gay".
4) Lord of the Rings. Speaking of: Tolkien was a fantastic world builder, and whether we're talking of the WWI - inspired dead marshes en route to Mordor or the Last Homely House or the white city of Gondor, you can imagine those places sso very well, and you get a true sense of their history. (I always appreciated that the films managed to get that sense of history across as well.) The fellowship he created to undertake the journey to all these places was imitated and paid homage to, parodied and written against in countless fantasy novels in the decades hereafter, and there are actually fantasy sagas that I love better, but if it comes down to it, I'd never dispute the grandfather of all fantasy fiction the rank of most interesting. One ring to rule them all, indeed.
5) Cairo Time. Possibly after a few years I might put another fictional journey there, but right now, the impressions are still fresh, and to repeat myself: love the actors, Patricia Clarkson and Alexander Siddig, love that both they and their characters are middle aged (and beautifully so), love the way the meeting of cultures is handled, and both current day Egypt and the famous monuments (the way the film stays away from more than quick teases of the pyramids until the climactic scene late in the movie is a great example of emotional character journey and outward journey uniting, for example), love that we're dealing with a female director here, and her understated yet pointed commentary (for example, a belly dancer at an embassy reception for the tourists versus shared dancing at an Egyptian wedding in Alexandria later). And yes, it left me with a powerful longing to return to Egypt.
1) Thelma and Louise. I love well done road movies in general - this is, after all, the genre that matches inward with outward journeys - , but if pressed, this one is my absolute favourite. I love Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis in it. I love Ridley Scott doing his Ridley Scott thing, i.e. epic cinematography, and it always strikes me that even after all those years, his view of American landscapes is one of something slightly alien and fascinating in its alienness. I love that he reveals the faces of his actresses just as those landscapes as the characters grow. (Compare Thelma's strong make-up and lipstick look at the start to her sunburnt face near the end of the film, when she tells Louise "just keep going".) I love C. Khouri's script. I love the music. I just love this film.
2) Brief Lives. Many Neil Gaiman stories are journeys, especially in Sandman, and some days, I'd pick Lyta's journey to the Furies and back in The Kindly Ones as "most interesting", but today, it's Dream and Delirium on the road in Brief Lives. This particular volume is the big turning point of the entire Sandman saga, and it starts so deceptively low scale - Dream wanting some distraction from his latest botched romance leading to his agreement when Delirium asks him to search their brother Destruction with her. And of course, Destruction is whom and what they find, in more than one sense. Brief Lives is so many things, including a blue print of the later novel American Gods with all the former gods working in various jobs to survive these days; it features some of Sandman's funniest scenes (Dream asking Matthew whether he could teach Delirium to drive, Matthew replying "are you kidding? I died in a car crash the first time around" whereupon Dream wrily says "I am not sure that is a recommendation"), and some of the most heartbreaking (the entire sequence between Orpheus and Dream). The various sibling relationships between the Endless - Dream and Delirium of course, but also Destruction and Despair, Desire and Dream, Destruction and Dream, Destiny, Dream and Delirium - all come across so intensely. Death's short appearance when the millennia surviving Bernie finally dies sums up Death's philosophy in the entire series in a single line, her reply to Bernie's question: "You got what everyone gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime." The way Greece is used resonates with every mythology-digging bone in my body. "It is a beautiful day." Oh, Brief Lives.
3) Transamerica. Another road movie I love to bits, and not just because of Felicity Huffman's standout performance as Bree, a transsexual days before her operation. It combines so many things, the odd couple factor - proper Bree and teenage hustler Toby - the parent and child story (because Toby, though he doesn't know it, is the result of a youthful college experimentation of Bree's when she was still Stanley and struggling with her identity) - and a coming of age story for both Bree and Toby. You get a strong sense of personality even from minor figures like Graham Greene's character who flirts with Bree or her parents and sister. And the script is delightfully geeky, as when Toby, who wants to impress Bree, rambles on on why Lord of the Rings is "totally gay".
4) Lord of the Rings. Speaking of: Tolkien was a fantastic world builder, and whether we're talking of the WWI - inspired dead marshes en route to Mordor or the Last Homely House or the white city of Gondor, you can imagine those places sso very well, and you get a true sense of their history. (I always appreciated that the films managed to get that sense of history across as well.) The fellowship he created to undertake the journey to all these places was imitated and paid homage to, parodied and written against in countless fantasy novels in the decades hereafter, and there are actually fantasy sagas that I love better, but if it comes down to it, I'd never dispute the grandfather of all fantasy fiction the rank of most interesting. One ring to rule them all, indeed.
5) Cairo Time. Possibly after a few years I might put another fictional journey there, but right now, the impressions are still fresh, and to repeat myself: love the actors, Patricia Clarkson and Alexander Siddig, love that both they and their characters are middle aged (and beautifully so), love the way the meeting of cultures is handled, and both current day Egypt and the famous monuments (the way the film stays away from more than quick teases of the pyramids until the climactic scene late in the movie is a great example of emotional character journey and outward journey uniting, for example), love that we're dealing with a female director here, and her understated yet pointed commentary (for example, a belly dancer at an embassy reception for the tourists versus shared dancing at an Egyptian wedding in Alexandria later). And yes, it left me with a powerful longing to return to Egypt.