Carrington

Year 14, Day 50 - 2/19/22 - Movie #4,052

BEFORE: OK, so it seems I still have a few movie-related demons to exorcise - I've avoided this movie for many years, mostly because my first wife went to see it without me, back in 1995.  I don't remember who she went to see it with, but it could have been with the woman that she left me for, I don't recall.  All I remember (and admittedly, not very clearly) is that not long after, she came out as gay, and that was pretty much the end of our marriage, barring paperwork and the splitting of personal items and cats.  But can I really blame the movie for that?  Probably not, not any more than I can blame her Queen and Melissa Etheridge albums, or anything else that helped her realize who she was or needed to become.  A movie or album can't turn anybody gay, however I still might hold some belief that portrayals of certain relationships in movies and TV shows can influence people to some degree - however, I still think I might have held this movie responsible for things which are not its fault.  

Jeez, it's funny how I can categorize a movie with some contempt, but then this can change after I determine that I need it to help my chain keep going, that's all. I haven't caved very often, but I have surrendered once in a while. Whatever happens tonight, can we chalk it up to personal growth? Jeremy Northam AND Janet McTeer carry over from "Wuthering Heights". 

THE PLOT: The platonic relationship between artist Dora Carrington and writer Lytton Strachey in the early twentieth century. 

AFTER: Eh, it's still not really my kind of movie, perhaps because the subject matter hits too close to home, and it will always remind me of the past and what could have been.  The road not taken, I suppose, involved me staying in a marriage that had become extremely problematic, and I could only see a future where my wife would be exploring her newfound sexual identity and I wouldn't be involved in that process, or allowed to go on any journey of my own, and that hardly seemed fair.  Years later, I stumbled on an interview in a running magazine where my ex discussed her inspiration for running marathons, and it touched upon the fact that her husband had "thrown her out", which of course is not how I remember it. Look, breakups are painful, often for both parties, and in the confusion of the situation I strongly advised that she move out, but I would never look back on that as "throwing her out", I just didn't see how we could have a future together, so then there was no point in continuing - and once you realize that, you kind of want to clear the deck as soon as possible, so that everyone involved can get on with their lives and start looking for the next relationship.  Eventually, of course, because these things take time. 

That's the story that I tell myself, at least, in order to maintain my sanity - now I don't know if it's true, maybe from another perspective I "threw her out", but again, it was a confusing time and once I resolved that things had to change, I set about changing them.  But none of that matters now, and none of that helps me understand the situation portrayed in "Carrington", which is about ten times more confusing than my first marriage ever was.  We tend to think of our very modern times as extremely confusing where things like gender and sexual orientation are concerned, but the truth is that you mixed-up non-binary teens these days don't know how good you have it.  You've grown up in a new society (America, at least) where gay marriage is legal in all 50 states (umm, for now, if you're in a red state) and I do support that, but you have to keep in mind that within the average lifetime, that wasn't always the case.  I remember a few years there where gay people could only get married in a few states, and the laws were new and were occasionally overturned, so what happened if a gay couple got married in one state where that was legal and then moved to another state, where it wasn't?  Exactly.  Or what if a state had a law making gay marriage legal, and then that law got overturned?  

We've witnessed great change within just a few decades - but with gay marriage also came gay divorce, because you just can't have one without the other.  Just remember, people fought for that and won, but is that really a victory?  Again, I support gay rights, but you have to take the bad with the good, and we're going to go through something similar with trans rights, there are legal issues coming, perhaps, that nobody has even foreseen yet.  Remember the fuss over transgender bathrooms and trans teens playing sports?  That's just the tip of the iceberg, I think.  But that's not what I wanted to talk about either, my point is that things used to be much, much tougher for gay people back in the early 1900's, where it was slowly becoming a time of greater acceptance, but also one of great challenges - and I'm thinking it was also a very, very confusing time for a lot of people, just because these topics weren't discussed openly, in polite society.  England, being a very polite society as a whole, was probably the hardest hit by this.  The main character here doesn't even know what a gay man really is, she's heard them called "buggers" but isn't quite sure what that means.  

When we first see Carrington, she's an aspiring artist with a boyfriend, Mark, only she's still a virgin and she's been fighting off Mark's advances for a long time, which has only made him more frustrated because he can't get what he wants.  This is something of a self-perpetuating problem, the longer he goes without sex, the more frustrated he gets, so he takes it out on her, which only drives them further apart, and so on. Dude, that's just not going to work, not in the early 20th century.  True, women were still considered man's property back then, but go figure, they were starting to develop minds of their own, it seems.  And what they wanted was to be free and not have men telling them what to do.  And voting, they wanted that too.

Some girls also wanted to be boys, or to be as important as boys, remember it was still a patriarchal society and men always had the inside track when it came to succeeding at business and government and stuff.  Carrington sort of wished she were a man, and author Lytton Strachey also wished she were a man, in fact he was at first attracted to her because he thought she was a teenage boy. Well, I guess you can't always get what you want, not back then, anyway.  Carrington and Strachey start enjoying each other's company, and Mark supports this relationship because he thinks it will calm her down, and then he can have sex with her - but he certainly didn't expect her to fall in love with Strachey, a gay man. Eventually there's talk of Carrington and Strachey moving in together, because they enjoy each other's company, only not sexually.  Except, of course, for the times when they did have sex. 

Yes, this is all quite confusing.  But is it any more confusing than finding out that Freddie Mercury, for example, had a long-term girlfriend, despite identifying as a gay man?  What about the fact that Elton John was briefly married, yes, to a woman?  Though the film "Rocketman" really skipped over the details of the honeymoon, I think we can determine that things just didn't quite work out. Then we get to icons like Lou Reed and David Bowie, who also messed around with sexual identity - I want to avoid being vulgar here, because all of these people are entitled to have private lives, despite being celebrities.  No, but seriously, how did it work for Bowie, being a "closeted heterosexual"?

I'm getting off track, but in the modern sexual confusion of the 1970's we can sort of extrapolate backwards, society didn't get there overnight, decades before that, there were English people like Strachey and Carrington, who sometimes followed their heart and sometimes followed, well, their naughty bits, and then sometimes there was a disconnect between who they felt love for and who they had sex with.  Those two things can be different, it's OK, it's been going on for years, and again, it's only in the past few decades that people have become comfortable talking about it.  

Anyway, Carrington's relationship with Strachey, whatever it was, really screwed up her chances with Mark, who couldn't understand why his girlfriend chose a gay man over him.  I don't know, maybe it was all the yelling Mark did?  The fact that he turned everything into a competition that he had to win?  His attempts to force Carrington to love him and choose him, forsaking all others?  You can't MAKE somebody love you, and you just shouldn't get frustrated that you can't do that, at some point you've got to wisen up and realize that's just not the way it works.  Love is given freely, not forced, or it just doesn't count. 

Then things get even more confusing when Carrington brings home a new man, Ralph ("Rafe") Partridge, a big hunky World War I veteran who seemed to despise homosexuals, but possibly maybe was one himself?  This of course, is a bit unclear, but there's a lot here that's unclear - Strachey takes a shine to Ralph, but does Ralph even swing that way?  Seems like he does, but if he does, he kind of hates himself for it?  Did Carrington bring Ralph home for herself, or for Lytton?  I guess Carrington and Ralph got married, but then they both had other partners after that?  Geez, this is more confusing than the extramarital sexual life of Iris Murdoch, what is UP with the post-war British people?  

Carrington buys a big, drafty Mill House (it's practically "wuthering") and starts living there with Lytton Strachey, but eventually Ralph moves in, too, and it's a very weird sort of love triangle, which eventually becomes a quadrangle after Ralph's friend and fellow veteran Gerald Brenan comes to visit, and he falls in love with Carrington, too.  Nobody in this film is happy, it seems, unless they've got a steady relationship going on, plus a bit on the side as well.  Are all Brits this horny?  I had no idea - or is it just this lot? Ralph takes on another partner, Lytton takes on another partner, Carrington takes on another partner, and so on.  That big house gets pretty crowded after a while, and I don't know how they kept all the relationships straight.  There was so much bed-hopping and partner-swapping going on that I think one time, two people accidentally slept together and then remembered they were married, to each other!  What a confusing night THAT was!  

The problem is, it didn't seem to make any of these people flat-out happy, why do you suppose that is?  After all was said and done, it seems like they couldn't overcome petty jealousies, as if none of them were really as forward-thinking as they thought they were.  It's only natural for people in relationships to become possessive, the thinking is that they enjoy this person's company, that makes them feel good, and then they want to KEEP ON feeling good like that, again and again, but of course, everything is temporary.  Or maybe everybody just eventually gets bored and wants to move on to the next thing - but moving on to the next thing can be painful, as we all know.  So how, then, to have love, keep love and not feel pain?  Yeah, it turns out that's impossible. There will always be pain, things will always continue to end, and the best you can hope for is just to minimize the bad feelings and the down time, or at least learn to make peace with them.  

I had a conversation along these lines with a female co-worker today, where I said exactly that, more or less.  Of course these days you can't really have intense dramatic conversations about relationships with co-workers, we all took a sexual harassment training course to remind us that most talk about topics like this is not suitable workplace conversation, you just can't be too careful about this.  But the gist of it is that she's 30 years old, and I'm 53 with a bit more relationship experience - and she wants to make sure that the next relationship she has is the one that lasts, only you can never really know that for sure, there are no guarantees in life.  To give her advice, I had to reveal that when I got married at 23, and at 25 I thought I had everything figured out, only I was wrong, and everything fell apart when I was 27.  That's just how it goes, over the course of your life there could be several times when everything turns to crap and you essentially have to start over.  Yes, I rebuilt my life, but with a divorce in my past, that fear is constant, it never goes away, there's always the feeling that the relationship I have now could also dissolve, and the best I can do is work every day to prevent that from happening.

I'm not really sure any of this personal stuff relates directly to "Carrington", but maybe some of it does.  The past relationships the characters had certainly may have colored the present ones, we all travel around this crazy world and we bounce into others and all of our interactions change us as we move forward.  That's the plan, anyway, and I hope we all are growing stronger and smarter as we go, or that the pain, when it comes, doesn't stick around for too long.  And we can try to be friends with our lovers, and our lovers' lovers, but at times that all can become very difficult indeed, I suppose that's the take-away here. 

Also starring Emma Thompson (last seen in "Nanny McPhee Returns"), Jonathan Pryce (last seen in "The Man Who Invented Christmas"), Steven Waddington (last seen in "A Little Chaos"), Rufus Sewell (last seen in "Judy"), Samuel West (last seen in "Iris"), Penelope Wilton (ditto), Peter Blythe (last seen in "Frankenstein Created Woman"), Alex Kingston (last seen in "Like Crazy"), Sebastian Harcombe, Richard Clifford (last seen in "Goodbye Christopher Robin"), David Ryall (last seen in "City of Ember"), Stephen Boxer, Annabel Mullion, Gary Turner, Georgiana Dacombe, Neville Phillips (last seen in "An Ideal Husband"), Christopher Birch.

RATING: 4 out of 10 Welsh frumps

Wuthering Heights (1992)

Year 14, Day 49 - 2/18/22 - Movie #4,051

BEFORE: OK, so from Jane Austen to Oscar Wilde and now Emily Bronte, I've got this whole English lit thing covered this February, I think.  How did I get this far in life without either reading "Wuthering Heights" or watching any of the many filmed versions, I wonder?  I watched "Jane Eyre" a few years ago, that one was from another Bronte sister, I think.  Kids, I'm not here to help you with your book reports, the film versions often differ greatly from the source novels, so you're probably best off doing your own reading if you want a passing grade. 

Jeremy Northam carries over from "An Ideal Husband". 

THE PLOT: A man becomes obsessed with vengeance when his soul mate marries another man.

AFTER: Some people regard this story as the greatest love story ever - while others regard it as a sad Gothic tale about violence and abuse.  Can it possibly be both?  I'm seeing a fair amount of "Mansfield Park" in this one, of course that could be because I JUST watched the filmed version of that Jane Austen story two days ago - but Jane Austen came before the Bronte sisters, I think (yep, just checked, "Mansfield Park" was published about three decades before "Wuthering Heights") so it's very possible that Emily was influenced by Jane.  Austen's story is about a poor girl being sent to live with rich relatives, and in Bronte's novel, a poor boy from the streets in London is taken in by a rich (OK, richer) family.  And then in "Mansfield Park" the relationship between Fanny and Edmund is challenged when the Crawford family moves next door, and here the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff is challenged when she starts hanging out with the Lintons, from next door (relatively speaking, of course, this is set on the British moors so "next door" could mean ten miles down the road).  

In "Mansfield Park", Edmund and Fanny were raised almost as brother and sister, and so he doesn't realize that he loves her until she's engaged to Henry Crawford - and in "Wuthering Heights", Heathcliff and Catherine were raised almost as brother and sister, and so Heathcliff doesn't realize that he loves Catherine until she's engaged to Edgar Linton.  Austen and Bronte were definitely working from the same playbook, only "Wuthering Heights" is so much darker.  Heathcliff is portrayed in this film as some kind of noble savage, he's practically feral and most often shirtless.  But then after Catherine gets engaged, he disappears for a while, and when he comes back on the scene, he's a proper gentleman and he's got enough money to purchase the old family castle, Wuthering Heights.  I looked up "wuthering" in the dictionary, and it just means "very windy" or "pertaining to strong winds", so that must be one very drafty castle!

Catherine comes in contact with the Lintons while she and Heathcliff are peeking in their windows, and she gets bitten by their dog. The family takes her in and shoos Heathcliff away, and she ends up spending like three months there. For a dog bite?  Surely they don't take three months to heal, so let's just assume that the Lintons have a much nicer residence, probably one that isn't so Wuthering.  But she comes back, and she promises Heathcliff that she will "always come back" and I'll admit this sounds very romantic at the early part of the film but that's bound to get a lot creepier as time wears on.  

This is because of the framing sequence - at the start of the novel (and the film) Wuthering Heights is visited by Mr. Lockwood, the new tenant on the estate.  He visits during a violent rain storm and asks Heathcliff, the owner/caretaker for an escort back to the Grange, only he is turned down.  Forced to spend the night at Wuthering Heights, he's shown into a closed-off room and gets visited by a ghost - well, she did say she'd always come back.  And who is the young woman who looks so much like a younger version of the ghost, and for that matter, who are the other inhospitable people residing at this estate?  The book (and the film) then flashes back a few decades to explain the story of how Heathcliff came to own the estate and Catherine came to be a ghost.  

Thirty years prior, the Earnshaws lived at Wuthering Heights with their two children, Hindley and Catherine, and their servant, Nelly.  Mr. Earnshaw returns from a trip to London with a young street ruffian that he thinks would make a fine addition to the family, and that's Heathcliff.  He's so poor that he can't even afford a last name, although according to Wikipedia this is also his surname, so he's either got one name like Madonna or Cher, or his name is Heathcliff Heathcliff.

Time goes by, the kids grow up, Hindley abuses Heathcliff before he moves away to school, but when the father dies and Hindley takes over the estate, bringing his wife and son to W.H., he forces Heathcliff to become a servant if he wants to stay on the estate.  Heathcliff and Catherine had been growing closer over the years, but in the end, marriage is out of the question, because they come from different classes, and how can Heathcliff be with Catherine if he's a lowly servant?  

Then into this mix come the Lintons, and Catherine has feelings for Edgar Linton, while any love she has for Heathcliff is invalid, because she thinks of him more like a brother, ironically they're too close for her to feel romantic love for Heathcliff, she confesses.  Heathcliff overhears this dilemma of hers, and, well, let's just say he doesn't take it well.  This is when he disappears for a few years, and somehow comes back with enough money to own the place.  He appears to be interested romantically in Isabella Linton, but this could just be a way for him to regain Catherine's attention.  Edgar Linton disapproves of Heathcliff courting his sister, and kicks him out - a pregnant Catherine then takes ill and retires to her room.  Heathcliff elopes with Isabella, but the relationship is apparently a non-starter. 

Catherine gives birth to a daughter, Cathy, and dies shortly thereafter.  Heathcliff calls upon Catherine's ghost to come and haunt him for the rest of his life, and, well, I guess be careful what you wish for, Heathcliff.  Heathcliff, for some reason, digs up Catherine's grave, and I guess that will cause a floating ghost to come knocking on your window every night.  Is this the romantic part? 

The ending sort of explains who all those people living at the estate at the beginning were - Cathy (daughter of Catherine and played by the same actress), Hareton Earnshaw (son of Hindley Earnshaw and his wife Frances) and Linton Heathcliff (son of Isabella Linton and Heathcliff Heathcliff).  Cathy is attracted to Linton, but eventually takes up with Hareton, it's like a next generation remake of the love triangle between Catherine, Heathcliff and Edgar, right?  She's raised with the feral, savage one, but is ultimately more attracted to the refined, rich one.  The only thing is, as far as I can tell from the family tree, they're all cousins.  Again, this was a lot more accepted back in those times, but still, why are Cathy's choices limited to only getting married to either one cousin or the other?  It's a big world, with a lot of men in it who are NOT her cousins, I'm just saying.  

There is yet another framing device here, which seems like one too many - the author Emily Bronte is seen visiting the ruins of Wuthering Heights, and figuring out what must have happened here in the past (a lot of cousin-on-cousin action, apparently).  This is unnecessary, as the book already HAD the framing device of Mr. Lockwood visiting during the big storm - do we really need to see the author getting inspired enough to write the damn book?  Plus, this pulls out of the reality, and suggests that maybe NONE of this really happened, that it's all just some author's imagination. Well, isn't it? 

As for romance, yeah, maybe there's just a little too much violence for this to count as a romance. It's strongly implied here that Heathcliff beat up Isabella - for the crime of not being Catherine, I suppose - and that doesn't really make him a sympathetic character.  Jeez, dude, it's 1847 and not many people live past the age of 40 - 50 if they're lucky.  If you don't like the fact that the woman you love married somebody else, just wait a couple years, he'll probably catch tuberculosis or whooping couch or something, and then you'll be there to pick up the pieces.  Patience is a virtue, Heathcliff. 

Also starring Juliette Binoche (last seen in "Paris, Je t'Aime"), Ralph Fiennes (last seen in "Spielberg"), Janet McTeer (last seen in "The Woman in Black"), Sophie Ward (last seen in "Jane Eyre" (2011)), Simon Shepherd, Jason Riddington, Simon Ward (last seen in "Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed"), Paul Geoffrey, John Woodvine (last seen in "Miss Potter"), Jennifer Daniel, Janine Wood, Jonathan Firth, Jon Howard, Jessica Hennell, Steven Slarke, Trevor Cooper (last seen in "Vanity Fair"), Rupert Holliday-Evans, Sean Bowden, Dick Sullivan, Robert Demeger with a cameo from Sinéad O'Connor (last seen in "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project").

RATING: 5 out of 10 crooked trees

An Ideal Husband

Year 14, Day 48 - 2/17/22 - Movie #4,050

BEFORE: And just like that, this Movie Year is 1/6 over already.  I wish I could say the same about the pandemic, but come on, nobody really knows.  The stats are getting better every day, but I think every time we relax about that then people go out, stop wearing masks, go to some crazy event like the Super Bowl or Friday night dinner in a restaurant, and this causes another variant to develop, then we're right back where we started. Again. I saw the effects the other day of the Omicron wave on Manhattan restaurants, three places where I regularly got coffee or snacks were closed down or were in the process of being replaced by new pizza places or dumpling restaurants.  I'm all for ethnic food diversity, but I also need places that make donuts or serve coffee.  One was a deli with the second biggest set of steam tables I've ever seen in Manhattan - I didn't buy lunch there, but I'm sure a lot of people did, where will they all eat now? 

More to the point, when will people start going to the movies again in large groups, or will they never do that again?  I worked a screening last night that had TWO people in the audience, I mean, is that even worth it?  Is that going to get the film two more Oscar votes, and will that put this film over the top for Best Picture?  I kind of doubt that.  Maybe movie theaters are just done, now that everybody can see every film at home just by pushing a button.  OK, maybe not EVERY film, because if there's one thing I've proven, it's that for some reason, every film ever made is still not available at any given time.  Shouldn't they all be?  Or at least just the good ones? How about just the ones I want to see, I'll settle for that. 

Lindsay Duncan carries over from "Mansfield Park".

THE PLOT: In London, 1895, Cabinet minister Sir Chiltern and bachelor Lord Goring are victims of scheming women. 

AFTER: Well, from Jane Austen I'm segueing over to Oscar Wilde. Still in the U.K., just moving fast forward a few decades, 1814 to 1895.  Still no fun to be found in England - well, maybe Oscar Wilde had a bit of fun, but in his own way.  I think he got in some trouble for it, too.  But watching these two films back-to-back has allowed me to discover the difference between the works of Austen and Wilde - in Jane Austen novels, the relationships of women are always being disrupted by scheming, manipulative men, while in Wilde's stories, the relationships of men were always being disrupted by scheming, manipulative women.  That's pretty telling, it seems maybe neither author got along very well with the other gender, if they were always portraying them as the villainous types in their stories.  Make of that what you will. 

The two male leads in "An Ideal Husband" aren't exactly saints, or proper gentlemen, but they do each enjoy a number of comforts - wealth, a certain degree of power, and I'm assuming a fair amount of leisure time.  Sir Chiltern is married and has a position as a government minister (Umm, I don't understand British government or Parliament, it's way too confusing) but there's a scandal looming if anyone should find out HOW he got his position, he helped cover up some other minister's corruption in the past.  Lord Goring is a confirmed bachelor (umm, that meant something different back then, not like now) who likes the ladies, he just doesn't want to marry one.  His ex-fiancée, Laura Cheveley, has been through two bad husbands and is, for some reason, looking for another one.  She's got a letter that's evidence of Chiltern's misdeeds, and is trying to leverage it to get back together with Goring.  Chiltern's wife is apparently also trying to get together with Goring, umm, I think, and also Sir Chiltern's younger sister is trying to date him, but she keeps getting stood up.  

It's not really a bedroom farce, that wouldn't be proper, too early in British history for that, but it does become a sort of "drawing room farce", where a bit of confusion about who's come to call and who's waiting in WHICH room to meet with Goring leads to this comedy of errors, and then there are schemes within schemes that lead to Lady Cheveley making a wager with Lord Goring - if Chiltern can be blackmailed into supporting her boondoggle project, a canal to be built in Argentina, then she'll hand over the letter.  But, if he doesn't support the project, then Goring will marry Lady Cheveley.  I think she wins either way, because if the canal gets funded, then she's behind the project and she gets money, but if the canal doesn't get funded, then she marries Goring and he gets his inheritance, so therefore she gets money.  Can you really blame women in 1895 London for trying to game the patriarchal system?  I mean, what were they supposed to do, get a job?  Run for Parliament?  That was unheard of at the time. 

This film apparently changed a few details, originally in the novel there wasn't a bet for Lord Goring's engagement, it was a straight exchange - the letter for his hand.  And then there was a whole bit with a stolen diamond brooch that isn't even in this version. But the rest seems to be more or less the same, the realization that nobody is perfect, so there's no real "Ideal Husband" after all.  I was just about to say that I think I've covered the major works of Oscar Wilde now, but that simply can't be true.  In fact, that film "Easy Virtue" that I dropped from this year's romance chain is an Oscar Wilde story, and I've never seen a proper adaptation of "The Picture of Dorian Gray", I should probably seek one out.  Ah, there's a 2009 version available on Amazon Prime, let me just add that to my list. It just never ends, does it? 

Also starring Cate Blanchett (last seen in "Spielberg"), Minnie Driver (last seen in "The Wilde Wedding"), Rupert Everett (last seen in "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"), Julianne Moore (last seen in "The Woman in the Window"), Jeremy Northam (last seen in "Official Secrets"), John Wood (last seen in "Heartburn"), Peter Vaughan (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2007)), Ben Pullen, Marsha Fitzalan (last seen in "The Importance of Being Earnest"), Neville Phillips (last seen in "101 Dalmatians"), Nickolas Grace (last seen in "The Lost City of Z"), Simon Russell Beale (last seen in "Operation Finale"), Anna Patrick, Delia Lindsay, Denise Stephenson, Charles Edwards (also carrying over from "Mansfield Park"), Nancy Carroll (last seen in "Iris"), Andy Harrison, Jill Balcon, Janet Henfrey (last seen in "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"), Toby Robertson, Michael Culkin (last seen in "Mortdecai"), Oliver Parker, Doug Bradley, Stephen May, Jeroen Krabbé (last seen in "Ever After: A Cinderella Story"), Oliver Ford Davies (last seen in "Christopher Robin").

RATING: 5 out of 10 Whistler paintings at the art exhibition

Mansfield Park

Year 14, Day 47 - 2/16/22 - Movie #4,049

BEFORE: Well, those last two films were a bit of a bust - so let's get back to basics with some, I want to say, Jane Austen?  Yep, I checked, this is based on an Austen book.  Hugh Bonneville carries over from "Iris" - technically I could have dropped "Downton Abbey" in here, it's been running on PBS except A) I have no idea if that movie qualifies as a romance and B) I never saw the series that the movie followed, so I fear I'd be totally lost.  Maybe not, but we're not going to find out this week, I've got a schedule to keep.

"Mansfield Park" had been on one of the streaming services, Netflix maybe, and I just didn't get around to it in time - but that turned out to be a sign that it might be moving to another service, or even back to cable, and sure enough a search turned up that it was on Hulu with the Starz add-on, and that meant, YEP, it was running on the Starz cable channel too, I caught it last month.  Sometimes it seems like the whole streaming and cable universe is complete chaos, but it's also possible that I might be STARTING, after all this time, to be able to figure out the patterns in the chaos. I put this on a DVR with another film on my list, "Easy Virtue", though I don't think I can get to that one this time around. 

THE PLOT: Fanny, born into a poor family, is sent away to live with wealthy uncle Sir Thomas, his wife and their four children, where she'll be brought up for a proper introduction to society. 

AFTER: "Mansfield Park", of course, is based on that Jane Austen novel where all the ladies and the gents in their fine dresses and dandy attire all go to that famous British water-park and all have a cracking good time, they let their hair down and change into swimsuits and they all get wet and wild.  No, that's not this one?  I must be thinking of something else - I forgot about my theory they didn't invent FUN in England until a few years after World War II. I think the four Beatles and the six members of Monty Python had a lot to do with that, when it finally came.

But I've now seen a fair number of movie adaptations of Jane Austen novels - two versions of "Emma" (also "Clueless"), one of "Pride and Prejudice" and one of "Sense and Sensibility".  And don't forget about "The Jane Austen Book Club", which I also tackled last year. Of the six major Jane Austen novels, that leaves only "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey", and I'm not sure if anybody ever made movies out of those books.  The BBC probably made some TV movies, for sure, but I'm just not aware of them. 

Clearly there's a Jane Austen "formula" that repeats again and again - the central character is a woman, she's probably a stand-in for Jane herself, two people fall in love but there's a miscommunication or a misunderstanding, and they can't get married, not at first, anyway.  Other suitors are entertained, there's probably a big fancy ball at some point, then a SCANDAL, and then eventually the two lovers who were always fated to be together can finally get together.  Put a ribbon on that novel, Jane, and move on to the next book with a nearly identical plot, just change the characters names, am I right?

This "Mansfield Park" one manages to get a little political, there's some shade cast at the socio-economic system of the time, under which the oldest male child inherited like EVERYTHING and the other children got squat, so they really had to choose a promising career, or else marry well.  Splitting up the estate, nope, can't do it, wouldn't be proper, anyway that's how so many kingdoms crumbled during the Renaissance, by divvying up each estate among the heirs until every bastard child ended up with an apartment, and eventually there just wasn't enough land to go around.  So oldest child gets everything, and if you're not first, you might as well be last.  That's how Fanny started out, as the child of one of those poorer families, but that means she's got a rich aunt SOMEWHERE, and one day her mother packs her off to go live in Mansfield Park with him and his wacky, lethargic family of weirdos.  

Actually, Fanny's got two aunts, the middle of the three sisters is Lady Bertram, married to Sir Thomas Bertram.  The older sister is Mrs. Norris, who works at the Bertram estate. Young Fanny is given a room upstairs, and she makes the acquaintance of the other children - Thomas, Edmund, Maria (pronounced like "Mariah") and Julia.  Over time as Fanny grows up, she grows a lot closer to Edmund, who is her...cousin?  Well, I guess that was a bit more socially acceptable back then.  But maybe he's only a cousin by marriage, and they're not related by blood, because ewww....  Thomas is the older son, but at some point he takes ill, and we don't see him for the majority of the movie.  

It seems like maybe Fanny and Edmund are headed for romance, but a pair of neighbors gets thrown into the mix, they move into the parsonage after Mr. Norris dies, and they are Henry and Mary Crawford, a brother-sister combo that also acts a bit like a couple.  Again, ewwww.....

It seems like Mary's got her sights on Edmund, and Henry Crawford starts pursuing Fanny.  Sir Thomas thinks it's a great idea for Fanny to marry Henry, only we all know she's in love with Edmund.  She hems and haws and says something about how he "seems untrustworthy", but you know how it was back then, women didn't really have a say in who they were allowed to marry.  No personal choice, and if you didn't make the "right" move and marry who "they" wanted you to, you could easily get cut off and inherit nothing.  

Since she doesn't want to marry Henry, Sir Thomas sends Fanny back to Portsmouth, back with her mother and father, in the slums, until she decides to be reasonable.  Henry comes to visit her there and even manages to charm her family, but he still can't seem to win her heart - is it because she's still holding out for Edmund, or because she still thinks Henry doesn't have the best intentions?  She accepts his proposal though, but then wants to delay the wedding, so it seems she still has some misgivings about the idea.  But Henry freaks out over the delay, and really, that's what you want to see in a prospective husband, somebody who's impatient and not willing to wait for the woman he loves to make a decision.  That's a tip-off, Fanny, you're making the right move, he's shown his true colors now!  

Late one night, after returning to Mansfield Park, Fanny makes a wrong turn in a dark hallway and stumbles into a room and finds Henry in bed with Maria, who's at this point married to Mr.  Rushworth.  How long have they been doing this?  It's unclear, but perhaps they'd been secret lovers for some time, and true scandal hits the family when both lovers disappear the following day.  Mary Crawford has an extensive, detailed plan for allowing Maria and her brother back into the family, after a period of exile, of course, but Sir Thomas decides it's better to throw all the Crawfords out of Mansfield Park, and this re-opens the opportunity for Fanny to get back together with Edmund, which is really what should have happened in the first place.  Things look so bright that even the unseen brother, Tom, manages to get well, get out of bed and rejoin society.  

Meanwhile, the true scandal here is that the family's been making money from plantations in the New World, where the work is done by slaves.  I'm not sure if this secondary plotline was always part of Austen's novel, or the movie added this to be more "woke" and in-touch with the modern world.  Anyway, eventually the Bertrams give up their plantation in Antigua and instead invest their money in tobacco, which is harvested in the New World.  Umm, by slaves.  OK, so we'll call that one a wash, and we'll try to be more socially aware in the future, mmkay?  

Also starring Frances O'Connor (last seen in "The Importance of Being Earnest"), Jonny Lee Miller (last seen in "T2 Trainspotting"), James Purefoy (last seen in "Churchill"), Embeth Davidtz (last seen in "The Emperor's Club"), Alessandro Nivola (last seen in "Howl"), Harold Pinter (last seen in "Sleuth" (2007)), Lindsay Duncan (last seen in "Under the Tuscan Sun"), Victoria Hamilton (last seen in "Scoop"), Justine Waddell, Sheila Gish, Charles Edwards (last seen in "Philomena"), Hilton McRae (last seen in "The Sense of an Ending"), Sophia Myles, Anna Popplewell (last seen in "Girl with a Pearl Earring"), Hannah Taylor-Gordon (last seen in "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit"), Talya Gordon, Gordon Reid (last seen in "The Others").

RATING: 6 out of 10 doves released during a marriage proposal (classy!)

Iris

Year 14, Day 46 - 2/15/22 - Movie #4,048

BEFORE: As I said when I started this crazy month, there were probably a few hundred ways to put this chain together - but when I re-worked it, I needed to come up with something that removed the films that were currently unavailable, and still ended where I needed it to end. So this means that even though I've got a few choices coming out of Valentine's Day, I'm going to follow one particular thread - Kate Winslet carries over from "Romance & Cigarettes" - and I have to ignore the others. So I'll get back to Susan Sarandon and Bobby Cannavale in about two weeks, if I were to follow that link now, I'd either get to the end of the chain too soon, or I wouldn't finish it where it needs to be finished, in order to put together the late March that I want to put together.  Makes sense? 

THE PLOT: True story of the lifelong romance between novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband, John Bayley, from their student days through her battle with Alzheimer's disease.

AFTER: I'm cutting Kate Winslet off after three films - it's not that I've seen every one of her films, there are a few from her early days that are still left unwatched, but I don't think those films could be called romances, and anyway, they're not currently on my watchlist, so I'm comfortable moving on.  So far three films per linking actor seems to be the norm this year, and I'm OK with that, if no actor or actress dominates the genre the way that Bruce Willis kind of took over January. It's all bound to work out, provided I just keep my head down, watch a movie every night and resist the urge to keep changing the order around. The goal is to make it to June and start my documentary section, eyes on the prize, then I can start thinking about how I'm going to make it through the summer and get to horror films without breaking the chain. 

I've got four or five days of period pieces, "corseted dramas", so to speak, starting tomorrow, maybe that can pull me out of my funk, because a lot of those tend to happier endings, they were sort of the rom-coms of their day.  Wait, I forget, how does "Wuthering Heights" end, again, was that a comedy or a tragedy?  No spoilers, I'll find out in a few days - another Oscar Wilde adaptation, too, those can be semi-comic, too, but therefore also semi-depressing, too.  This "Iris" film today was another big downer, too, if you ask me.  I need comedy right now, not drama with all its harsh realities, people growing old, getting senile and then dying. Not. What. I. Need.

My parents moved into assisted living last November, so all this just reminds me of them, tucked into a tiny apartment in suburban Massachusetts, I mean it's great that they don't have to cook for themselves any more, nor do they have to run around town getting take-out, they just have to walk down to the dining area.  And they're content for the moment, they don't have to worry about the upkeep on a big house, but the house is still THERE, just without them in it.  We're going to drive up in late March, probably, to stay at the house and visit them for a couple days, since we didn't see them at Christmas, but it's kind of sad to visit them now.  My mother knows where she is, but she doesn't remember how she got there. I suppose it's only a matter of time before she starts forgetting people and things from the before-time. I've helped my father change some addresses for them and straighten out some accounts, and there's not much more that I can do for them at this time.  I wish she could watch all her favorite movies again and listen to more classical music, I think all that's not really being provided for her right now.  It's sad that this kind of waits for us all at the end of life, being placed in a smaller and smaller box under more supervision as the clock winds down.  

I've never heard of Iris Murdoch until now, but she's apparently on some list of the top British novelists of all time - and as the film points out, she was also a teacher and philosopher who re-interpreted the works of Aristotle and Plato, wrote about moral psychology and anti-scientism, and championed a moral transition from illusion to reality, whatever that means.  Why do I get the feeling that if she were alive today she'd be protesting mask mandates and vaccines?  She was also a member of the U.K. Communist Party for several years starting in 1938, which made it difficult for her to visit the U.S. to give lectures.  Then once I dig a little deeper into her personal life, I'm starting to wonder why this film is considered a romance, because it turns out she had quite a few affairs with men and women over the years, so maybe there were special circumstances, but this counts as being unfaithful to her husband, doesn't it?  OK, maybe she believed in "free love" long before it was cool in the 1960's, but cheating is cheating, isn't it?  

Her husband here, by contrast, was a "slow-starter", he was a virgin when he met Iris, and I guess he looked the other way, time and time again, or maybe he didn't, maybe he liked to watch, I have no idea - to each his own, I guess, but I'm still having a hard time justifying somebody preaching about morality while basically making up her own rules regarding morality where her own personal life was concerned. Is history going to regard her as a proponent of free love or just a loose slut?  I'm thinking back to those documentaries I watched last year about Pavarotti and Frank Zappa, who during the last years of their lives both wished that they had been more faithful husbands and better fathers - OK, so then why didn't they just DO that?  Why does it take getting sick in order to have these regrets?  Then the poster for "Iris" has that big tagline "Her greatest talent was for life."  You mean, for screwing it up?  I don't get it. 

Then, once she got Alzheimer's, her husband became her caregiver, like the guy hasn't been put through enough already, watching his wife screw around with any number of college professors, just because she'd deemed them "good people", according to her rules.  Right, good people who were also cheating on THEIR spouses, so can somebody explain these rules to me, please? Maybe I'm the naive one, is that possible?  I became an adult during the age of AIDS and herpes and any number of other STDs out there, plus I was raised not to stick it all over town - high school and college pretty much taught me how pointless it was to date, so I just did an end run around the whole process and got married, twice. Was that wrong?  Again, to each his own, but perhaps John Bayley was just a poor judge of character. It reminds me of what Ferris Bueller said about his friend Cameron - "He's going to marry the first girl he lays, and she's going to treat him like shit."  Amen, Ferris. 

This film was made at the height of the "toggling" editing trend, where the film bounces back and forth between two timelines, the past one and the present one.  Ideally, this should create a greater understanding about the meaning of the events portrayed, in a perfect set-up the slowly-revealed past should cast more meaning on the present, and perhaps even vice versa, but I'm not sure that's really what's at work here.  There are a few scenes where it appears that the younger versions of Iris and John are interacting with the older versions, or at least they come very close to it.  Since older Iris has Alzheimer's, we're supposed to forgive the fact that she goes swimming in a river and somehow sees the older version of herself skinny-dipping in the same river.  Or young John entering their London flat, where he sees older Iris sitting at the table, writing.  These things shouldn't be possible, even with distorted memories, unless they're dreams or visions or this is really "Cloud Atlas" after all. But during this "toggling" trend this technique was perhaps viewed as rather innovative and insightful, I just see a distorted mess that's trying to make up for the fact that neither timeline is all that interesting by itself.  

I guess this couple never got around to having kids - who has time, what with teaching class, writing books and having so many affairs?  Ah, but then there's nobody around to take care of them when they get old, so they have to rely on each other.  How's that working out, with Iris walking out the door and wandering into traffic, while John doesn't even notice that she's left?  Whoopsie!  

I will say that some of the casting is quite genius - though I don't really see any resemblance between Kate Winslet and Judi Dench, plus it's a bit odd that there's no transitional phase, so I guess one day Iris just stopped looking one way and started looking like somebody else?  Ah, they skipped a few years in between, is that it?  But I really thought for a while that they somehow made Jim Broadbent look younger, and he was playing the same man at two different ages. No, they made Hugh Bonneville look like the younger version of Broadbent, and that was really well done.  In another instance, they cast two actors, a father and a son, to play their friend Maurice in the two timelines.  I couldn't really get a read on Maurice, though, was he another guy trying to sleep with Iris who was unsuccessful?  I guess he heard that she was a player, but he wasn't "good" enough to be one of the chosen?  What parameters did she use, anyway? 

Look, two people can have a relationship and not be on the same page, romantically speaking, I get that.  But the too-obvious metaphor here is the young couple riding bikes together, and he can't keep up with her, he can't "catch" her because she's riding too fast.  Talk about hitting the audience over the head with the symbolism, right?  Only nobody says that out loud, because that's not the point of riding bicycles together, is it - one person rides away and the other person tries to catch them? Nope, it doesn't work that way. Why can't they just ride two bicycles together, side by side, and just enjoy the journey?  Because essentially that's how it was with Iris, she kept riding away and he kept riding after her, but was never able to catch up with her.  Maybe there are relationships out there like that, but I've never heard of one lasting 45 years, who the hell would put up with all that?  Or, I don't know, maybe buy a tandem bike?

There must have been a better way to tell this story, though - after watching it, I still don't know one little thing about Iris Murdoch's novels, or why they were so good, because she spends almost the whole movie not letting anybody read them.  So really, I'm just left with the dementia and the cheating, and that's not really what I'm looking for in a romantic film, sorry. 

Also starring Judi Dench (last seen in "Cats"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "Filth"), Hugh Bonneville (last seen in "Paddington 2"), Penelope Wilton (last seen in "The BFG"), Timothy West (last seen in "Ever After: A Cinderella Story"), Juliet Aubrey (last seen in "The Constant Gardener"), Samuel West (last seen in "The Gentlemen"), Siobhan Hayes, Kris Marshall (last seen in "Death at a Funeral" (2007)), Eleanor Bron (last seen in "Wimbledon"), Saira Todd, Juliet Howland, Stephen Marcus (last seen in "The Greatest Game Ever Played"), Pauline McLynn (last seen in "Angela's Ashes"), with archive footage of Tony Blair. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 suggestions from the Teletubbies

Romance & Cigarettes

Year 14, Day 45 - 2/14/22 - Movie #4,047

BEFORE: OK, so Super Bowl Sunday happened, I favored neither team, now that Tom Brady's retired, so I didn't care about the game, nor do I enjoy the rap music, never have, so the halftime show was also a bust for me.  Since I spent many years tracking animated commercials, especially the high-profile Super Bowl ads, I still watch the game out of habit, but mostly these days I fast-forward through the game, just to see the ads.  This might have been the WORST bunch I'd ever seen, except it was nice to get a longer look at the new "Dr. Strange" movie and the "Moon Knight" TV show.  But the other ads mostly left me scratching my head, I couldn't even tell what was going on most of the time - I must be getting old. Coinbase? Salesforce? Crypto-currency?  What happened to Pepsi and Burger King, even E-Trade and GoDaddy.com?  It's a diffferent world now...

But I was forced to conclude that after spending a cool $6 million for a 30-second spot, each advertiser simply had no money left to spend on, you know, making each ad GOOD.  This used to be a chance for a product to showcase an interesting story with cool special effects, and I just kept saying, "Where's the story?  Why are those people flying around?  Why is that robot dog chasing after that car?  Why is that woman climbing that tree with a bag of Doritos?"  It's like every ad agency copywriter suddenly forgot at the same time how to tell a story. I just didn't get it. 

I got more enjoyment out of watching the first half of the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet, even though I know that game is totally fixed.  Kate Winslet carries over from "Ammonite". 

THE PLOT: This down-and-dirty musical set in the world of working-class New York tells the story of a husband's journey into infidelity and redemption when he must choose between his seductive mistress and his beleaguered wife. 

AFTER: This film is a very weird one, in a way it also reminds me of those Super Bowl ads - I can't figure out the WHY of it all.  WHY did somebody determine that this was a story worth telling, because I'm not sure that it is, and then once they figured out the story, WHY did they tell it in this weird musical way?  I just don't get it.  I think the fact that this was directed by an actor (John Turturro) has something to do with it, because actors tend to be big on this "Greek chorus" method of storytelling, even though most audience members probably prefer a simple story with one point of view that doesn't look like it was heavily influenced by all the music videos made in the 1980's. I mean, some of the songs were from the 1950's, but the concept of filming people breaking character while also breaking into song is very 1980's music video.

It's hard not to think about "The Sopranos", either, even if this was set in New York and not New Jersey - but with at least THREE characters who were seen regularly on that show, I couldn't help but be reminded of it.  Also, there was a Super Bowl commercial that riffed on the opening Jersey montage from that show, so of course it's fresh in my memory, too.  It's been a fair amount of time since that HBO show ended in 2013, but the loss of James Gandolfini is still pretty tangible - and I have to remember to add the sequel film "The Many Saints of Newark" to my list.  Steve Buscemi is one of those "Sopranos" regulars who's also in this film, and I worked a test screening of his upcoming film about a week and a half ago. Thankfully I tend not to get starstruck (with a couple notable exceptions) so I didn't end up fawning over the only actor who managed to appear in both "Pulp Fiction" and "The Big Lebowski".

But when I say this is a weird film, it's not just about people breaking into song - montages of men collectively singing "A Man Without Love" or a church choir backing up Susan Sarandon on "Piece of My Heart", which all end up being weird. (Like, the men are all out on the street, where's the background MUSIC coming from?). The conversations are all very weird, like Sarandon's character shopping at the store where her husband's mistress works, and subtly dropping a lot of insults into the conversation, who DOES that?  Characters also have very weird names, like Fryburg or Tula or Rosebud (Rara?) - hell, the lead character is named Nick Murder, but I've never heard of anyone having the last name "Murder", and what is that supposed to signify? Murder? He's not a murderer, as far as I can tell. Just weird. And why is one of the three daughters not really their daughter?  That's never explained, and doesn't even seem necessary.

It feels like somebody knew these people, or gave them very specific names and traits when he wrote about them, and I can't quite figure out WHY.  The theme is a little more universal, it's about a man who takes a mistress and then gets caught, which as you might imagine, puts a strain on his marriage.  But then later on he gets sick and there is some form of redemption, like the couple never gets around to getting divorced because of his affair.  But shouldn't they at least consider that?  There are about a dozen other plot threads that just don't go anywhere, like the wife's former boyfriend who appears as a ghost, or Cousin Bo, who just got out of jail because he stabbed his girlfriend for cheating on him.  Umm, I think?  Also, why cast Eddie Izzard as a priest/church organist and then give him absolutely nothing to do?  Also weird. 

I think somebody had good intentions here, but just sort of forgot to connect some of the dots in the story, so as a result, no questions ever get answered, and as a whole, the story doesn't really go anyplace, it just circles around a bit before coming back in for a landing. The title was totally appropriate for Valentine's Day, as I mentioned, I just wish there had been an equally strong story to back it up. 

I've got a big NITPICK POINT here, and it concerns circumcision on an adult male.  Nick Murder gets circumcised for some reason, it's got something to do with his mistress, but honestly, the motivation is quite unclear.  BUT, I happen to randomly know that if an adult male should get circumcised, that operation would most likely require him to abstain from sex for several weeks, and in this film, shortly after the operation, he's back at it. Nope, that's not recommended.  The whole topic just seemed quite lurid, and didn't really add anything to the plot, so WHY is it there?  Like most everything else in this film, it just felt like a time-filler. 

Honestly, I feel like I could have skipped this one, since it's in-between two Kate Winslet movies, I could have easily dropped it, only I didn't know it would be so painful to watch.  Now I've stranded another film about adultery with James Gandolfini which is called "Welcome to the Rileys", maybe I can get to that one next year - only I could have doubled my chances of linking to it if I'd only held back on this one.  I think, though, that if I add that movie "Spencer" about Princess Diana, maybe I can work something out next February, I guess we'll see. 

Also starring James Gandolfini (last seen in "Cinema Verite"), Susan Sarandon (last seen in "Atlantic City"), Steve Buscemi (last seen in "The King of Staten Island"), Bobby Cannavale (last seen in "The Jesus Rolls"), Mandy Moore (last seen in "Midway"), Mary-Louise Parker (last seen in "Howl"), Aida Turturro (last seen in "Play It to the Bone"), Christopher Walken (last seen in "Spielberg"), Barbara Sukowa (last seen in "Atomic Blonde"), Elaine Stritch (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Eddie Izzard (last seen in "The High Note"), Amy Sedaris (last heard in "The Lion King" (2019)), P.J. Brown, Adam LeFevre (last seen in "Ode to Joy"), Cady Huffman (last seen in "The Company Men"), Tonya Pinkins (last seen in "The Book of Henry"), David Thornton (last seen in "Swept Away"), Kumar Pallana (last seen in "The Terminal"), June Stein (last seen in "Bob Roberts"), with cameos from Tony Goldwyn (last seen in "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House"), John Turturro (also last seen in "The Jesus Rolls").

RATING: 3 out of 10 shovelfuls of snow (thrown in to the neighbor's yard)

Ammonite

Year 14, Day 44 - 2/13/22 - Movie #4,046

BEFORE: I know, I know, it's Super Bowl Sunday, which is like one of the biggest American holidays, somewhere between the minor arcana of Presidents' Day and Arbor Day and the major arcana of Halloween and Christmas.  In terms of an eating holiday, it's not quite at the level of Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July, but it's getting there.  We shopped for snacks yesterday - even though we'll focus more on the Puppy Bowl than football today - and felt we had to swing by a big supermarket on Long Island while my wife was buying cigarettes out there, just to insure we had a good selection to choose from.  

BUT, I watched all the decent football-based films years ago, so it's not a holiday that I can reflect in my movie-watching - am I going to put the romance chain on hold just to watch "Draft Day"?  No, I am not.  So, it's still Galentine's Weekend, and watching this one today sets up the movie with the best TITLE for tomorrow, even if it may not be the most appropriate film for V-Day - how could I even know that without watching it first?  

I've got a number of other period films coming up this week - two modern-set films right after this one, and then it'll be all corsets and frilly things for a short while. Fiona Shaw carries over from "Catch and Release". 

THE PLOT: In 1840's England, acclaimed but overlooked fossil hunter Mary Anning and a young woman sent to convalesce by the sea develop an intense relationship, altering both of their lives forever. 

AFTER: Mary Anning was a real person, back when collecting fossils was important, when humans were still trying to piece together what happened on this planet millions of years before humans made the scene, and honestly, it's all still a bit weird to speculate about.  Land dinosaurs, sea dinosaurs, flying dinosaurs, all interacting with each other and eating each other, and the only way we know for sure this happened is from their fossilized bones and their coprolite (look it up...). Mistakes were made, sure, skulls got matched with the wrong bodies and brontosauruses became apatosauruses for a while, and I'm sure there were people who were dino-deniers, who said that such creatures never existed, despite all the physical evidence.  

Whether Ms. Anning had lesbian lovers, or any relationships at all, is apparently speculation, but since we know that this was not something that people did openly back in the 1840's, it's certainly possible.  Or, another viewpoint is that queer people today benefit somehow from the gradual "queering-up" of past historical figures, and if you can make a book or a movie that suggests that Abe Lincoln was gay (come on, you can have James Buchanan, isn't that enough?) or Gandhi, this helps the cause, sheds a new light on history, or at least grabs enough attention for you to get more eyeballs on your book or your movie.  There's a streaming series now that's queer-claiming Emily Dickinson, obviously I don't have any evidence to the contrary, but she never got married (hmm...) and most of the dedications in her poetry collections were removed (hmm again) and was considered an eccentric, isolated genius (double hmmm).  Her correspondence was burned after her death, so we'll never know - so it's possible, however the lack of evidence does not constitute evidence.  

Back to Mary Anning - the film shows her growing closer to a younger married woman who's been placed in her care, to recover by the English seaside. Mrs. Charlotte Murchison is suffering from melancholia, which is Latin for "lack of fun", I think. Unfortunately for her, she lives in England, which didn't discover fun until after World War II.  Also, what they didn't know about depression and other mood disorders back then could probably fill a few textbooks.  Or maybe she just didn't want to be married, especially to the kind of man who wanted to study rocks, and would abandon her by the ass end of the English seaside for six weeks, hoping that would somehow improve her outlook. Look, I hate the beach myself for a number of reasons, but even I understand that some beaches are better than others. You don't want to spend time on the dreary ones by the rocky cliffs, maybe try the ones that have nice, soft sand, comfortable beach chairs, and those slamming tropical drinks with the cute umbrellas in them. (Maybe try Jamaica, I hear it's nice.). My point is that all beaches are not the same, and a doctor prescribing a seaside holiday should have taken that into account.  

Attempts to follow the doctor's orders fall flat, partially because "bathing" back then at a seaside resort meant being put in this portable wooden wagon that got wheeled out into the surf as the tide was coming in, and after putting on a "bathing costume", the patient was expected to walk down a rickety set of steps into the surf, or they could remain inside the wagon as it filled with water and then they would slowly drown.  As I said, the Brits wouldn't quite understand the concept of fun for a few more decades, and this is further evidence of that.  And this "bathing" probably took place after a proper English brekkie that included baked beans, grilled tomatoes and black pudding. (I'd probably like that, but it's not for everyone.)

So after the near drowning and fever caused by the bathing incident, Mary is forced to get Charlotte some salve, and that means visiting Elizabeth Philpot, and it's strongly implied here that Mary and Elizabeth once had a relationship, and it ended badly. (It's OK, they all do, one way or another.)  The salve works, but it also turns Charlotte gay. (I'm KIDDING, but for the Conservatives out there, this is one possible interpretation...). Once Charlotte recovers, she starts accompanying Mary on her rocky-beach walks to look for fossils.  The women are also invited by the town doctor to attend a musical performance, and when they do, Mary sees Charlotte talking to Elizabeth Philpot.  Whoops, there's the opportunity for a little love triangle between the three lesbians in town, and this doesn't sit well with Mary.  However, it does force the issue, and Mary and Charlotte become lovers shortly after that.  

It's funny, but this film, contrasted with another, highlights the essential difference between women and men, generally speaking.  Think about "The Lighthouse", which I watched last year - if you take two men and place them in an isolated location by the dreary British shoreline, they'll go quite mad and try to kill each other.  But if you do this with two women, well, you get a completely different result.  

As Mary and Charlotte get intimate, the question still remains, however - did Charlotte's husband leave her for six weeks, or did he leave her for good?  Ah, that would be telling. And can these two women thrown together by circumstance make their relationship work out, or would that perhaps be a little naive for two people stuck in a very conservative time and place?  And what is the metaphor created by all these rocks and fossils, anyway?  Does it all just symbolize what's hiding beneath the surface of what we can see, or is there another point being made?  Mary's mother's little figurines have a deeper meaning here, so what's up with all the little cowrie shells and the relics on display in the museum cabinets?  If you figure it all out, please let me know. 

Me, I can't wait to see what movies that Hulu and IMDB recommend for me, after watching this one...

Also starring Kate Winslet (last seen in "Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond"), Saoirse Ronan (last seen in "The French Dispatch"), Gemma Jones (last seen in "Rocketman"), James McArdle (last seen in "Mary Queen of Scots"), Alec Secareanu, Claire Rushbrook (last seen in "Spider-Man: Far From Home"), Nick Pearse, Mladen Petrov, Sam Parks.

RATING: 5 out of 10 "magic lantern" slides