2019 – A New Year

Call Me Mother (2018 Korean Drama)

It has been some time since my last post – over six months. In that time, I have read many good books, watched many excellent films, and developed a new passion for Korean drama. I have not, however, been able to write about any of that, but I want to correct that this year.

I have been considering whether or not to include the occasional review of Korean dramas (called Kdramas) on this blog. They are often 16 episode series, which tell a continuous story. They can be thrillers or romances or comedies or fantasies…though Kdramas often seem very comfortable including random, unexplained fantasy elements in their stories: the ability to read someone’s mind, time travel, made-up medical syndromes. My own persona favorite Korean drama is the 2018 series called Call Me Mother, a low-level thriller that is really a drama about motherhood in all its manifestations.

But since Korean dramas do not exactly fit in with the general theme of my blog, I am hesitating about including any reviews. However, I might try one or two reviews, just to see how things go.

I have also been continuing with my passion for Japanese Cinema. I am thinking of writing a piece on some of the great Japanese directors of the 1950s: Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, Mikio Naruse.

Another lovely discovery has been the two French film comedians and directors: Jacques Tati and Pierre Etaix. They made films during the ’50’s, ’60’s, and ’70’s, but are heavily influenced by silent comedy, though they also make inspired and hilarious use of sound.

I would like to develop a post about my growing (highly amateur) appreciation of cinema as an art form worthy of the same respect as poetry, architecture, opera, drama, or any other recognized art. I would also like to air out a theory about the use of music in a film. I’m beginning to get very opinionated about that, actually. Maybe that will be my next post! I will include Tati, Etaix, the film Dunkirk, Lord of the Rings, Pre-code cinema, Ozu and silent movies.

Yasujiro Ozu – I cannot admire his films too much!

I’ve been reading a lot of British literature from the Victorian era, as well. I would like to perhaps write some reviews on some of the books I have read (and am reading). I am currently also reading Les Miserables, which I have decided is part history, part journalism, and part fictional story. Victor Hugo seems to have never met a literary aside that he didn’t like or want to share. He is positively brimming with opinions and things he wants to share with his reader. He makes Charles Dickens’ look positively restrained! But there is no denying the power of his story or his writing (when he isn’t telling the reader about the battle of Waterloo; it takes him about sixty pages just to get back to the story). But his story is well-nigh un-killable. It even survives bad adaptations (for a really good adaptation, try the 1934 French version of Les Miserables, directed by Raymond Bernard).

Sir Walter Scott has also been on my radar, mostly because he was so vastly influential on the Victorians (most notably the Brontë sisters). His poetry is mentioned in Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. There are a small group of dedicated fans who maintain that his literature is far more artful than is generally credited and I am willing to give him a try, focusing on his novels set in Scotland, rather than his most popular medieval work, Ivanhoe.

I hope everyone else is doing well. I would love to hear what everyone is reading, watching, thinking, music they are listening to. It should be a good year of movies, music, and books! I look forward to it.

 

A Christmas Potpourri

I’ve somehow largely been out of the mood for Christmas (not in a bad mood, just having trouble feeling like it’s Christmas), watching no Christmas movies, listening to very little Christmas music, and reading even less Christmas related material. It’s been odd. However, here three Christmasy things relating to music, literature, and cinema that are part of my December that I wanted to share.

Julie London and Christmas

Julie London did not have a very big voice. She said she had “only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of over-smoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate.” She manages to sound both sexy and classy.

My December has been rather warm, because I’m temporarily in California. Usually, my Christmas is damp and chilly (rather than snowy), but this year it is sunny and warm. In two songs, Julie London sings about a warm Christmas, but it’s not because of the sun.

“I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm” – written by Irving Berlin in the 1937 film On the Avenue.

And “Warm December”

“I’d Like You For Christmas” was written by Julie London’s husband, Bobby Troup, who acted with Julie London in the TV series Emergency!

Relating to John Milton

I’ve been reading about John Milton, author of Paradise Lost. One random fact I learned in a biography about him – The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography by Barbara K. Lewalski – is that the phrase “Hobson’s Choice” derived from Thomas Hobson, who owned a livery stable and rented horse and carriages to the students at Cambridge (presumably including John Milton). He reportedly would force the students to rent whatever horse and carriage was closest to the door, thus the saying “Hobson’s choice,” which essentially means “no choice.” I mention it because I had never heard the phrase before and caused the title of David Lean’s film Hobson’s Choice to make much more sense. I had previously and rather ignorantly assumed it meant that he really had a choice to make.

But the one Christmas work I have consistently been listening to is Ralph Vaughan William’s “Hodie,” which is a cantata with music set to texts from the Bible and various English poems from authors like George Herbert, Thomas Hardy, and John Milton. The most moving song is “It Was the Winter Wild,” which is adapted from John Milton’s poem “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.” Listen how, at the end, the music hushes after the soprano sings about how “Birds of Calm” brood over the music so that it forgets “to rave.”

It was the Winter wilde,
While the Heav'n-born-childe,
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in aw to him
Had doff't her gawdy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
And waving wide her mirtle wand,
She strikes a universall Peace through Sea and Land.

No War, or Battails sound
Was heard the World around:
The idle spear and shield were high up hung; 
The hooked Chariot stood
Unstain'd with hostile blood,
The Trumpet spake not to the armed throng,
And Kings sate still with awfull eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by. 

But peacefull was the night
Wherin the Prince of light
His raign of peace upon the earth began:
The Windes, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kist, [ 65 ]
Whispering new joyes to the milde Ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

A New Christmas Movie

I have yet to see a single holiday film this December, but thanks to Ruth at Silver Screenings, I have a new Christmas film to watch tonight that I have never seen, or even heard of before. It is called The Holly and the Ivy, starring Ralph Richardson, Celia Johnson and Margaret Leighton. It looks to be delightful. For more information and a link to the film, please check out her post, here.

Have a Merry Christmas! I’ll be back before New Year with a look at the past year and some thoughts about the coming new year.

 

Othello – William Shakespeare

Plot Summary – Othello is a black Moor who has converted to Christianity and fought for Venice against the Ottoman Turks for well over thirty years. At the beginning of the play, he has eloped with Desdemona, the daughter of a Venetian senator. Iago, Othello’s ensign, is at the same time angry that he has been passed over for promotion by Othello for the young and less experienced Cassio and plots to destroy Othello. Manipulated by Iago, Othello ends by suffocating Desdemona, believing her to be unfaithful to him.

Generally, when I have heard or read “Othello” discussed, professors and critics are primarily fascinated with the character of Iago, the villain who manipulates and destroys Othello. He often becomes, for these people, the main character, the one who drives the plot and possesses the most modern sensibilities with his cynicism, wit and amorality. The other characters are obsessed with virtue, personal honor, loyalty and military glory.

However, one of the aspects of the play that fascinated me is not so much Iago’s great genius – something that gets covered a lot – but Iago’s hypocrisy. Iago, a deeply twisted soul, has acquired the reputation of a good and honest man who tells it like it is. The kind of man everyone trusts and confides in. Even strangers confide in him and trust him.

Othello: “This fellow’s of exceeding honesty, And knows all qualities, with a learned spirit of human dealings.”

We tend to think of hypocrites as being like Tartuffe or Elmer Gantry. Often religious hypocrites, often gratuitous. Tartuffe is so obviously a hypocrite that nearly every character – except the one who matters – sees through him. But Iago is so successful and subtle a hypocrite that it is almost never remarked on, even by critics.

Iago: “In following him, I follow but myself. Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, But seeming so, for my peculiar end; For when my outward action doth demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart In complement extern, tis not long after But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at; I am not what I am.”

But his chief weapon is not his genius for understanding character’s weaknesses and exploiting them (though he does have a genius for this), but for being believed by those characters. It wouldn’t have mattered how well he understood their weaknesses if no one trusted him. He is able to plant little poisonous seeds into so many characters precisely because everyone expects him to speak the truth, no matter how painful it supposedly is for him to do so. As Othello says after Iago begins his campaign by implying that Cassio and Desdemona are in love:

“This honest creature doubtless Sees and knows more, much more, than he unfolds.”

Paul Robeson as Othello

Half Iago’s proof is his own word. The further “proofs” that Iago contrives are pretty flimsy, but he only needs a little something to seem to concur with his own word. Thus his scheme of stealing Desdemona’s handkerchief and planting it with Cassio. Not overwhelming proof. As the Doge  of Venice says at the beginning of the play when Desdemona’s father asserts that Othello must have used dark arts to captivate her, “To vouch this is no proof.”

Interestingly, it has been pointed out that there is a dichotomy in the play between Venice (law and order) and the Turks (uncivilized barbarians). Most of the play is set on Cyprus, an outpost for Venice, somewhat far away from the reassuring law of Venice. In Venice, everyone, including Desdemona, is allowed to state their case when her father complains to the Doge. In Cyprus, Othello does not investigate the matter, but merely believes.

Emilia, Desdemona’s maid and Iago’s wife, speaks in defense of Desdemona and shrewdly divines that someone must be playing on Othello’s jealousy, but is discounted by Othello as “a simple bawd.” He does not believe Desdemona, either. He only trusts Iago, his ensign.

In some ways, Othello shares some parallels with General Ulysses S. Grant. Both great generals, saviors of the country they serve, but both indiscriminately trusting. Iago knows that “The Moor is of a free and open nature That thinks men honest that but seem to be so.” This can serve one well as a general, who must trust his men, but is deadly in politics and relationships. Grant’s presidency was wracked with corruption and he lost his fortune near the end of his life because he trusted the wrong people. This trust in his soldiers, however, leads Othello to mistrust the words of others, especially those of the women.

The racial aspect of the play was less prominent than I expected. Othello is indeed an outsider, which makes him vulnerable, but although Iago makes a number of gross racial comments, most characters hold him in esteem and admire him. Desdemona says that “I saw Othello’s visage in his mind, And to his honors and his valiant parts Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate.” In fact, Desdemona goes so far as to say – after hearing his stories of all that he had suffered and done – that she wished she could have been “such a man.” His reputation is one of greatness and dignity and his fall is mourned. He’s a bit like a colossus from Greek times – a man known for thirty years of upright implacability and honor, brought low by petty human jealousy.