1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 12: Restoration

This is Olivia Colman, portrayer of Anne, the last of England’s Stuart monarchs.

Anne succeeded her sister, Mary II …

… who reigned along with William III, her husband and first cousin …

… who was imported from Holland to replace James II, uncle of Mary and Anne …

… who succeeded his brother, Charles II …

… who was restored to the throne after the country’s experiment in Puritanism, succeeding his father, Charles I, who lost his head …

… having succeeded his father, James I …

… who succeeded his first-cousin-once-removed, Elizabeth I, the last of the Tudors.

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Restoration takes place during the reign of the aforementioned Charles II, played by Sam Neill.

The movie’s main character is Sir Robert Merivel, played by Robert Downey Jr. …

… who resembles the diarist Samuel Pepys.

Like Pepys, Merivel witnesses the Great Fire of London, as well as a year of plague. Indeed, he is in the thick of the plague, for he is a physician.

Merivel begins as a stereotypical medical student – which is to say, as promiscuous and drunk. But he has medical talent.

One day, King Charles tasks him with curing one of the court bitches (I mean that word in its literal sense). The procedure is successful. The King invites Merivel to remain at his court.

A year later, having tired of Merivel’s boorish behavior, Charles knights him, arranges his marriage, and banishes him off to an estate in Norfolk.

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Several notions of restoration come into play.

Charles’s rule has been restored to him. (It had been removed from him by the Puritans.)

Merivel also has gained a high position and lost it; it remains to be seen what, exactly, will be restored to him.

Then there are other restorations, such as of personal health, of social merriment (the Puritans who ruled before Charles were a dour lot), of professionalism, and of the soul.

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After his fall, Merivel has picaresque adventures. He keeps company with the manager of his backwater estate (Ian McKellen); with one of Charles’s mistresses (Polly Walker); with an aspiring painter (the hilarious Hugh Grant); with Quakers, among whom is his old medical mentor (David Thewlis); with a sexy Irish madwoman (Meg Ryan); and with gamblers, street folk, and plague sufferers.

Why are today’s picaresque stories invariably set in the past? Specifically, in pre-Victorian England? Is the genre not updatable?

I suppose that Restoration isn’t strictly a picaresque. Merivel does progress along a clear moral arc, as do many of the other characters. Restoration can be likened to the The Pilgrim’s Progress with its attention upon the moral journeys of various souls.

Watching it, I found myself in increasing sympathy with Merivel, with the King, and, I daresay, with the universe.

The movie depicts the period as an optimistic one. Cures were being invented. Attitudes were becoming more humane. Meanwhile, Quakers were responding to their inner light.

In one scene, Merivel and the Quakers try out a new therapy for the mentally ill. Instead of having them take their daily exercise by simply trudging around in circles, in the mud, they have them dance to music (in circles, in the mud). It’s a trite cinematic idea, but the execution is nuanced. The scene works because it shows how each character is affected.

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The movie is nice to look at. The colors are vivid. The sets are lavish.

And then there’s the joy of wig-watching. Hugh Grant’s wig, for instance:

His scenes by themselves are worth the price of a video rental.

A small gloat

Today I am happy because Olivia Colman, the world’s best female screen performer, won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role. She protrayed Queen Anne in The Favourite.

She gave a priceless “aw-shucks” speech.

She’s been the world’s best actress since the fourth series of Peep Show, which aired in 2007.

I’m happy that my judgment has been validated; even more, though, I’m happy for Olivia, who has been a delight to view.

With this award, justice has been done, and there is a tiny sliver of hope for humankind.

I also wish to note that Green Book won for Best Picture, as I predicted.

Actors in at least two movies that won the Best Picture Oscar

The Oscars cometh (tomorrow).

Here’s an interesting Wikipedia list:

Actors Who Have Appeared in Multiple Best Picture Academy Award Winners

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Three observations:

(1) The actors with the most appearances all worked in the first half of the twentieth century …

… when there were fewer movies and fewer actors and the top people all knew each other and voted for each other’s movies to win Best Picture.

Franklyn Farnum had seven Best Picture appearances. Wallis Clark and Bess Flowers each had five appearances. Three other actors had four appearances.

Quite a lot of actors have had two or three appearances. The important boundary is between those who’ve had three and those who’ve had four or more.

The last Best Picture winner with any of the “four or more” appearers was Around the World in 80 Days (1956). It featured a staggering number of A and B list actors, and, consequently, received the most votes for Best Picture that year – even though it wasn’t very good.

(I will say this for Around the World in 80 Days. Except for David Niven, all those top people were billed behind Cantinflas. I don’t think another Mexican actor has been so prominent in any other Best Picture winner – though that will change if Roma wins this year.)

In what follows, I’ll focus on the period after 1950.

(2) You have to be a pretty darned good actor to make it onto the list.

Sofia Coppola is the exception who proves the rule. Widely disparaged as an actress, she’s listed by virtue of having performed in the Godfather movies, which her father directed. But even she has subsequently distinguished herself by directing a few very good movies.

On the other hand, M. Emmet Walsh typifies the rule. He’s played small roles in two Best Picture winners, Midnight Cowboy and Ordinary People.

In Ordinary People, Walsh’s part is small enough that just about any middle-aged male could play it. But then, the movie is populated from top to bottom by top-notch performers. That’s just the kind of movie it is: an “actor’s movie” first and foremost, directed by an actor (Robert Redford).

Walsh is the kind of actor who makes an impression in just a few seconds on the screen. Because he’s an actor’s actor, he earns this minor credit, which vaults him onto the list.

The list is full of actors like that.

Ordinary People has three actors on the list. None of them is Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, or Elizabeth McGovern, each of whom is much more famous than any of the three on the list. (Nor is Timothy Hutton, who won an acting Oscar for this movie, on the list.)

Which leads to my last observation:

(3) Being the star – even a star of the “Oscar bait” variety – doesn’t get you onto the list; if getting on the list is your goal, it’s better to act in movies that have many other good actors.

Humphrey Bogart and Steve McQueen aren’t on the list. Tom Cruise isn’t on the list, though he’s appeared in quite a few Best Picture nominees.

Paul Newman isn’t on the list, and he won an Oscar all by himself for a sequel (almost unheard of) and was also in a lot of movies with Robert Redford (including The Sting, which won Best Picture). Jack Lemmon isn’t on the list, and he also has his own Oscar, as well as an appearance in The Apartment with Shirley MacLaine. The legendary John Wayne, another Oscar winner, isn’t on the list. Nor is Spencer Tracy, a legend who won twice. More recently, Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Sean Connery, Jodie Foster, Tom Hanks, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Kevin Spacey, and Denzel Washington have all failed to make the list, even though they’ve won Oscars for themselves (some more than once).

Some stars specialize in “Oscar bait.” Even they find it hard to rack up Best Picture appearances. With all her nominations, Meryl Streep has the same number of acting Oscars as Best Picture appearances – three (a quite decent number, to be sure). Jack Nicholson also has three of each kind of achievement. Two movies for which he won an acting Oscar, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Terms of Endearment, also won Best Picture. Both had large casts with great actors from top to bottom.

Shirley MacLaine won two acting Oscars and appeared in three Best Picture winners. Those Best Picture winners have already been mentioned for the other good actors in them: Around the World in 80 Days, The Apartment, and Terms of Endearment.

Daniel Day-Lewis won three acting Oscars without appearing in any Best Picture winners. He isn’t on the list.

It’s the movies with great ensembles that seem likeliest to win Best Picture:

The ones in which the excellent Simon Callow (Amadeus and Shakespeare in Love) and Michael Peña (Crash and The Hurt Locker) hardly stand out.

The ones with M. Emmet Walsh or Beth Grant or John Gielgud, in just one or two scenes, playing the swimming coach or the mother-in-law or the old university don.

The ones with Diane Keaton or Talia Shire playing the leading man’s girlfriend or sister.

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Winning the Oscar for Best Editing is thought to be the strongest statistical predictor of winning the Oscar for Best Picture. And that may well be true.

But consider that there is no Oscar for Best Cast.

I see that two of this year’s Best Picture nominees have actors who are nominated for individual awards and who previously appeared in Best Picture winners.

The Favourite has Emma Stone, who was in Birdman.

Green Book has Mahershala Ali, who was in Moonlight, as well as Viggo Mortenson, who was in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

I’d wager that the Best Picture Oscar will go to one of these two nominees.

February fragments

Four weeks after having sprained my ankle, I walk much better; but my ankle still hurts all day long.

Karin drives me to work each morning, what with my being injured; and when my shift ends, I walk home the scenic way, upon a riverside path that’s much less icy than my usual route.

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I’ve been trudging through Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. I just finished Ghosts, the second installment. Some fifteen years ago, I read the first book, City of Glass, and vowed not to again; well, now I have. The second time was better. I suppose it was effective training to have read, in the interim, novels like Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and 1Q84 in which the characters stay holed up for long periods with their thoughts. But in those novels, the long, inactive waits are punctuated with tasteful elevator music and wistful sippings of Cutty Sark. In Auster’s books, the waiting turns the protagonists into bums. Anyway, my objective is to get through the third book in Auster’s trilogy, The Locked Room, so that I can then read Sjöwall & Wahlöö’s Locked Room and write down the same title twice consecutively in my reading journal.

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The kitties have been chasing each other around the apartment all the last hour. Jasper trapped Ziva behind the couch for a while, but Karin coaxed him away.

Textbook hunting

I’ve been looking for a cheap, relatively short (400 pp., not 800 pp.) single-volume anthology of philosophical classics for use in an Introduction to Philosophy course.

That is, something along the lines of Robert Paul Wolff’s Ten Great Works of Philosophy (Signet Classics, $8.95), which includes:

Plato’s Apology and Crito, and selections from his Phaedo;

Aristotle’s Poetics;

Various proofs of God’s existence, due to Anselm and Aquinas;

Descartes’s Meditations;

Hume’s first Inquiry;

Kant’s Prolegomena;

Mill’s Utilitarianism; and

James’s Will to Believe.

(No women or non-Westerners, alas.)

All these works are usable, I think, except those by Aristotle and Kant. And perhaps even some parts of them are usable.

As for editorial guidance, there is none, except for some brief and sweeping historical commentary.

On the very far other end of the spectrum, at over a thousand pages and many tens of dollars, the book I like is the new edition of the Norton Introduction to Philosophy, which has minutely pruned excerpts of many, many readings, along with several newly commissioned essays, study questions, and loads of very clear editorial help (which students will be tempted to ignore).

Most other introductory collections are like the Norton one, though not nearly as well executed (and, often, more expensive).

So, I’m wondering: Is there anything in between? In particular, is there anything like Wolff’s collection, but with some recent articles to go along with the classics?

Nigel Warburton has a quirky collection out with Routledge, and I don’t hate it, but I think I’d go with Wolff’s book or the Norton book instead.

February’s poem

Its title is “The New Vicar of Bray.”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

In Queen Victoria’s early days,
When Grandpapa was Vicar,
The squire was worldly in his ways,
And far too fond of liquor.
My grandsire laboured to exhort
This influential sinner,
As to and fro they passed the port
On Sunday after dinner.

My father stepped Salvation’s road
To tunes of Tate and Brady’s;
His congregation overflowed
With wealthy maiden ladies.
Yet modern thought he did not shirk –
He made his contribution
By writing that successful work,
“The Church and Evolution.”

When I took orders, war and strife
Filled parsons with misgiving,
For none knew who might lose his life
Or who might lose his living.
But I was early on the scenes,
Where some were loth to go, sir!
And there by running Base Canteens
I won the D.S.O., sir!

You may have read “The Very Light” –
A book of verse that I penned –
The proceeds of it, though but slight,
Eked out my modest stipend.
My grandsire’s tactics long had failed,
And now my father’s line did;
So on another tack I sailed
(You can’t be too broad-minded).

The public-house is now the place
To get to know the men in,
And if the King is in disgrace
Then I shall shout for Lenin!
And though my feelings they may shock,
By murder, theft, or arson,
The parson still shall keep his flock
While they will keep the parson!

And this is the law that I’ll maintain
Until my dying day, sir!
That whether King or Mob shall reign,
I’m for the people that pay, sir!

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(Colin Ellis)

Nickel and dimed

At church, a nice old lady took me aside and gave me an envelope. “Don’t let your wife know about this,” she said.

The envelope contained a Valentine’s Day card and $25.

“Take your wife out for a nice meal,” the card said.

So I did, at the local Vietnamese restaurant, on Monday. (We figured we’d beat the rush.) Our nice meal consisted of a bowl of rice noodles, herbs, meats on a stick, and assorted flavors. It was exceedingly pleasant, except that the server kept telling us how good our food was while we were trying to eat it.

And she said I couldn’t order a sandwich because the nail parlor had been ordering ten sandwiches at a time, and the restaurant had run out.

She also hung around and talked about how beautiful Vanna White still is after all these years. I’m not sure why she said this. Wheel of Fortune wasn’t on TV in the restaurant.

It was a little kooky, not unlike the last time when we were in that restaurant and she attended to us very professionally until the last minute, when she told us that she was desperate to quit her job. But, as of Monday night, she hadn’t.

Karin thought the server was kooky, too, but she may have harbored some sympathy for her; afterward, when we went to the used-DVD store, she bought the movie Waitress.

I bought Pale Rider.

The documents in the case

Karin is combing through my academic printouts, alphabetizing and punching holes in them and storing them in binders. This is very helpful: I’ve been reminded of several articles that it’d be good for me to read or reread.

Occasionally, she finds an amusing personal document mixed in with the other papers.

There are some birthday cards that I never managed to send off. (Reader, don’t be surprised if you receive one.)

There are voided checks, old letters, business cards (“So-and-So, Independent Beauty Consultant”), and legal documents from Ecuador.

There are response papers that I handwrote – handwrote! – for a course that I took in my first semester of grad school. The early papers got Cs and Bs; the last one got an A＋. The professor for that course went on to supervise my dissertation.

My writing was less technically proficient then, but more inventive.

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Congratulations to Ecuador’s Sub-20 men’s team, which just won its first South American championship and qualified for the Pan American Games and the U-20 World Cup.

There’s not many in tonight

After last week’s polar vortex, a week of thaw.

But it cools again.

A song from Toast of London captures the mood:

Here is an interpretive quandary. Does the song go like this?

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

There is a chill within the air,
The still of the night;
The stalls and theatre, bare:
There’s not many in tonight.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Or like this?

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

There is a chill within the air,
The still of the night;
The stalls and theatre bear [witness],
“There’s not many in tonight.”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

I ponder this, mustachioed, during bouts of sleeplessness.

A dud

If most Super Bowls were like tonight’s, I wouldn’t make it an annual priority to watch the game.

Patriots 13, Rams 3.

This was the Patriots’ sixth victory in a Super Bowl.

It also featured their largest winning margin in a Super Bowl. It was their “blowout” victory, so to speak.

Their defense played lights-out. Then again, the Rams’ once-great offense had been pretty well contained by several teams late in the season. (And let’s admit it: hardly anyone who watches football really knows how defending works; I certainly don’t.)

It was a good game to watch with Karin’s dad’s family (hardly football purists). They talked all the first half about the newest Pokémon and superhero movies, then complained because at halftime Maroon 5 didn’t play what they wished to hear.