Trajan
The first historic figure is the Roman emperor Trajan. When I was studying Ancient Culture and Society, he was always my favorite emperor. A seemingly good man, caught up in a difficult time. Ironically, though he seemed to have no taste for war and fighting, he was the Roman emperor credited with achieving the greatest expansion of the Roman empire. His life’s work has been documented on a monument in Rome, Trajan’s Column. There you can follow his career on what could be described as a sort of cartoon. In some images of Trajan he looks quite handsome. I imagine they are from his youth. So there you have him, one of the few Roman emperors about whom even the ancient Roman gossip columnists couldn’t find anything scandalous to say.
The 1990’s
So, now it’s official. The 1990’s are retreating even further into the past. From now on, I’m going to have to consider stories/tv series/movies etc from the 1990’s ‘historic’. It feels odd, I had barely grown used to the ‘noughties’ and now we’re in the tens? Anyway, X files, Roswell and all those ‘big’ 90’s series are now historic in the sense that you can hardly see them as contemporary anymore. Not like Heroes, FlashForward, Being Human etc. Scary, but I guess you just have to accept it and move on. Maybe it would be easier if the tv series, movies and music were just better.
Pride and Prejudice
I’ve already seen Pride and Prejudice, at least once in some version or other, but that doesn’t matter. I love Jane Austen’s books (most of them anyway), but now I’m talking about the movie. One version was a tv series, but like I mentioned before, in whatever form, I love them. I’m not sure about a comics version, but who knows? Some Japanese comics can be really good and so are the French/Belgian ones.
In any case, the actors (Donald Sutherland, Keira Knightley, Matthew MacFadyen) did a great job. The funny thing is, I’d already seen McFadyen in a tv series, and I didn’t like him there at all. In the movie, he was a lot better.
The plot can be summed up in a few words, even if there is much more underneath, so it’s not the basic plot that is so fantastic, it has to be the way it’s done. Jane Austen was brilliant in her deceptive simplicity.
You might want to consider how people lived in those days. For families in this social class (not nearly as wealthy as you might think) finding suitable husbands for their daughters was vital. At the same time, a woman’s life was sadly limited.
Jane Austen herself, who was a published writer, lived more or less on sufferance. When some domestic chore perceived as more important, was to be done, poor Jane had to pack up her writer’s stuff and move.
That reminds me of our own Selma Lagerlof. Once, right after she won the Nobel Prize in Literature, she was invited to some house in her home province. She assumed she was the guest of honor, because of winning that prize. When it was time to sit down at the table, she entered the room first. Her hostess was quick to reprimand her. “Wives first, Selma, dear.” Apparently, we hadn’t progressed any further in the hundred years or so that had had passed since Jane Austen’s time. Just a little food for thought.
One interesting detail about the movie is that there were two different endings shot. One for the America audience and the other for Europe.
In the American version there was something sentimental and the one we got to see here, in Europe, was quite fun. Watch the movie if you like historic chic lit. If not, don’t.
Mysterious Skin
When I saw Mysterious Skin, I actually thought it would be more UFO-related than it was.
I knew it would be about children who were sexually abused, so I was prepared for it being upsetting. It was, but it was also fascinating and touching. I also have to say that I appreciated the fact that unlike in many other movies and books, it wasn’t girls who were abused.
I’m not sure what to say about this movie. It’s really good and interesting, but also sad. Despite that, you might say that it had a hopeful ending.
Perhaps I should mention something about the plot first. The main character is Neil, a little boy who is the son of a single mother. She has many different boyfriends, and from an early age Neil discovers that his mother’s grown up boyfriends turn him on. Naturally not in the way that he’d like to have a relationship with them, but he does like to watch his mother having sex with them.
One day he meets a man who is considerably more interested in him than other grown men usually are. It’s his baseball coach. Back in those days – the 1980’s – parents weren’t as suspicious of that sort of thing as they are today, so Neil’s mother is just grateful that there’s a male role model willing to take an interest in her son.
You realize early on that there’s something not quite right about this relationship. I read that the boys playing two of the characters as children, never found out the truth about what the movie was really about. They were told it was about alien abduction. In one particular scene I don’t know how they managed to keep up the deception.
Neil has a best friend/faghag, Wendy, who is a willing participant in all his stunts, until she leaves for New York to get a better and more interesting life. It’s typical for this movie that despite the fact that Wendy ‘only’ gets to be a waitress, she’s not the one who ends up being abused. She does well for herself.
They have another friend, Eric, who is clearly gay, but who hasn’t been sexually assaulted as a child, so he isn’t as disturbed as Neil. When Neil (who Eric is in love with) goes off to New York to visit Wendy, Eric meets a new guy, Brian, who seems to be completely asexual. They end up being friends, but Eric soon realizes that his new friend is trying to find out what happened to him as a child. He has mysterious memory lapses and sometimes he suffers inexplicable nosebleeds. It turns out that the two boys – Neil and Brian – have something in common.
I won’t tell you how the movie ends, but I do think the ending isn’t as unhappy as it might be, considering the fact that it’s about little boys being sexually abused, a young man selling sex to older men and contains a gay rape scene. I have to warn you about that one though. It very disturbing and upsetting.
I’d like to mention a minor character. During the course of his search, Brian runs into a woman who thinks she’s been abducted by aliens. Avalyn Friesen. She’s a really tragic character, who can come across as comical, but I feel dreadfully sorry for her. You soon get the impression that she’s been sexually abused herself, as a child, and that she can’t handle it, and has made up farfetched explanations to all the things that don’t add up in her memories. The actress does a great job, I think.
So do all the actors. They’ve appeared in many other tv series and movies before. Neil is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, from Third Rock from the Sun. Wendy (as a grownup) is played by Michelle Trachtenberg, from Harriet, the Spy and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The woman who plays the tragic Avalyn has been in 24, among other things.
I can really recommend this movie, but bear in mind that there are some upsetting scenes in it.
Bleak House
This time I’d like to mention Bleak House, based on a Charles Dickens novel. Very nice series. Personally, I love historic series as much as cop series – some of them anyway. For those of you not familiar with the series, Gillian Anderson from the X files stars as Lady Dedlock. There are other famous (and excellent) actors, too, mainly British ones.
This is a sad story about three orphans with a mysterious past, a court case that has been dragging on for generations and unrequited love, to name a few ingredients. It might sound like an ordinary soap, and in a way, that might be what Dickens intended, but I think it’s much better done.
There’s a lot of misery and injustice, but I suppose that’s how Dickens’ time was. Another thing which might surprise modern viewers is the excessive affection between many of the girls in the series. Perhaps people were more demonstrative back then or Dickens simply didn’t know much about young women.
Another thing that might not always come across for modern viewers is the way Dickens humourously named some of the characters. Dedlock – deadlock, Flite – flight (for a woman who keeps a great number of birds). Nemo – an alias for a man with a secret past. The list goes on. Some names might simply have been chosen to sound absurd, others have a meaning behind them.
In any case, if you like historic series, you can’t miss this one. Of course, if you love the classics, even more reason to see Bleak House. Go on, you know you want to.
C.R.A.Z.Y
On Christmas Day, 1960 Zac is born, as the fourth son in a family that eventually has five sons. Just when he’s been born, he dies, but the doctors manage to bring him back. Then one of the older brothers drops him to the floor. During the following twenty years, Zac almost dies twice more.
From an early age, Zac turns out to be different from his brothers. For instance, he has a white lock of hair. His religious mother soon has the impression that he can heal the sick. What he can do, without a doubt, is making his youngest brother stop crying and go to sleep quietly.
Zac has trouble getting along with at least one of his older brothers, but other than that, everyone loves him. He loves his parents, but soon he realizes he has character traits which make his father regard him with doubts and concern. Is Zac not a ‘real’ man? Even before Zac is grown up, he has to struggle with his personality. He doesn’t want his father to stop loving him.
Before long, Zac finds out that he isn’t like others. He’s attracted to other boys, for instance his cousin’s sexy boyfriend. The two of them smoke marijuana together in a rather intimate way.
In the end, Zac can’t hide his true preferences anymore, and there’s an explosive confrontation with his father, who tells Zac to get lost. Zac leaves the country (Canada) and goes to Israel to complete the pilgrimage his mother has always dreamed of making.
At the same time, the family is hit by a disaster, right when Zac has almost managed to make friends with his older brother.
In this movie, you get to see twenty years of youth subculture. There’s a lot of music and the fashion of the 1970’s. Something I really appreciated was that the movie was in French.
I really liked this movie, even though it was quite sad. Despite that, there’s a bit of hope at the end. If you’re interested in modern history and music, you might like this movie.
