1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 23: Twelfth night or what you will

The period has been moved up to the 18th century, and the dialogue has been slightly simplified and clarified, but Shakespeare’s language is largely intact (and easier to understand than in Baz Luhrmann’s new Romeo & Juliet). Also intact is the elaborate low-comedy subplot involving the servants, which gets too much screen time relative to the main story.
[Roger Ebert; emphasis added]

Well, I don’t agree. For some fans of Twelfth Night, the misfortune of the steward Malvolio is the main story. Or at least it turns out to be as important as the main story: for, when the aristocrats have sorted themselves into couples, Shakespeare permits Malvolio to dampen their happiness.

Some critics suggest that Malvolio even has the legal recourse to undermine their happiness.

This movie gives short shrift to that interpretation. What indicates this, I’ll tell but not explain: when the closing credits arrive, the heroine dances in a dress. (Check this against her lover’s last speech in the play.)

On this point, I side with the critics and against the movie.

“I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you!” is Malvolio’s parting line, and the other characters take him seriously for once. As the title suggests, it may be their last night of revelry. (The “twelfth night” is the last one of the Christmas season.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

As in Downton Abbey, the worlds that the aristocrats and the servants inhabit aren’t quite separate from one another. The servants grasp upward – the heroine Viola no less than Malvolio. And such aristocrats as the Lady Olivia, Sir Toby Belch, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek encroach upon their inferiors. All in fun, of course. But they realize too late that what counts as fun depends on the goodwill of those encroached upon.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

What Ebert calls the “main story” is too complex to fully describe here. Let this suffice:

Viola has a twin brother with a small mustache. He drowns at sea (or so Viola believes).

She puts on a false, small mustache and a false identity (“Cesario”) and enters the employ of a Duke. This Duke (Toby Stephens) has a small mustache.

She falls in love with him.

(Does she fall in love with him because he reminds her of her brother?)

(And does she love her brother because he looks so much like herself?)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The Duke and his courtiers are wimpy young men with small mustaches, and so it’s easy for Viola also to be taken for a man. Still, she’s the wimpiest-looking of the lot.

It’s amusing, then, to see her in military garb, leading a pack of officers: for the Duke has put “Cesario” in charge of wooing Olivia, the object of his unrequited love.

Olivia (Helena Bonham Carter) is in mourning. She, too, has lost a small-mustachioed brother.

She has many suitors besides the Duke. One is Sir Andrew Aguecheek (the great Richard E. Grant), a hapless friend of her frivolous and crude uncle, Sir Toby Belch (Mel Smith, the albino of The Princess Bride).

Olivia rejects all who seek her hand. With “Cesario,” however, she immediately falls in love.

As “Cesario,” Viola must resist Olivia’s advances and make the Duke’s case to Olivia while she herself pines after the Duke.

She woos skilfully, though she hardly can bear to. Her private pining only heightens her charm.

Viola is my favorite character in all of Shakespeare. In this version, she’s played by Imogen Stubbs (A Summer Story; The Rainbow; Sense and Sensibility), who specializes in compromised innocence. It’s a winsome performance.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Poetical though Viola, Olivia, and the Duke are, their passions are insubstantial, whimsical, changeable (recall the other title, “What You Will”).

The servants’ desires are more prosaic, more stolid, more worldly.

The ambition of Malvolio (Nigel Hawthorne) is to marry Olivia, his employer, so that he can fully take charge of her household. This is cynical. He doesn’t love Olivia. Unlike the Duke, who at least is in love with Love, Malvolio aims nowhere near the heavens. (This isn’t to say that his ambition is any likelier than the Duke’s to be fulfilled.)

However, it’s Malvolio’s self-righteousness that Sir Toby and Sir Andrew exploit. Always wreaking havoc, they play a cruel prank on the puritanical steward. The prank is designed and executed by Olivia’s maid, Maria (Imelda Staunton), who also loathes Malvolio. It exposes the rapacity beneath his veneer of forbearance. But it goes too far.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

There are other Malvolios on stage and screen – Jud of Oklahoma! and Dwight Schrute of The Office, to name two – frustrated, social-climbing misfits tormented by the revelry of those above them, those secure enough to preoccupy themselves with Love-worship (if not with loving their fellows). Malvolio’s is a compelling plight because it exposes the callousness of this sort of “love.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Whose side is Shakespeare on? The romantic revelers’, or Malvolio’s?

I’m not sure that he takes a side. He merely observes a change.

There is one character in Twelfth Night who sees through all the others. He is Feste (Ben Kingsley), the aging clown who once gratified Olivia’s father. He continues to entertain but notices that his welcome is wearing thin.

Feste reads the signs of the times. He sees that a sterner, grubbier order is rising. His career is nearing its end.

Still, he’s an entertainer. His and the play’s last line is: “We’ll strive to please you every day.” And this movie is a pleasing version of the play, even if I don’t fully agree with its interpretation.

Like much of Shakespeare, the play is the sort of baffling work about which it’s hard to tell whether it’s appropriate to be happy or sad.

Gains and losses of our church

After a three-month hiatus, Karin & I have returned to our adult Sunday school class. Our attendance lapsed when Samuel was born, and, each week, we just kept on sleeping in through the Sunday school hour.

But now it’s good to be back. The current text is John Stott’s 1 & 2 Thessalonians: Living in the End Times. (The link is for a new edition that will be released this summer; Stott is the sole author of the edition we’re using.) It’s amazing how insightful the discussion is when we try to answer Stott’s study questions.

The class meets in a new room, around a stylish, curvy table. No, it isn’t quite like the table in the classic scene in 24 Hour Party People. The whole church is being frugally rearranged. Its basement rooms will soon be rented out to a fostering agency. The agency will pay less rent than it did for its downtown offices, and the church will recover a significant proportion of its maintenance costs. Everyone will win.

The church has another connection to fostering. It hosts a “foster closet,” in which donations of clothes, books, and other household items are collected for foster parents.

We attended our small group meeting tonight and heard some bad news: the church’s garage had been broken into. Nothing of value was stolen, but a lock was snapped off. Apparently, our church has been robbed for several years. It used to own a couple of vans which, from time to time, would be vandalized. Parts would be stolen, probably for resale in Chicago, and gas would be siphoned off. That’s the disadvantage of being located in such a picturesquely isolated part of town.

Moving, pt. 5

We did our last big move today. Family members and fellow churchgoers again helped us, completing the operation within two hours. Virtually everything, save dust and cat hair, is out of the apartment. Karin & I will return as often as possible before January’s end to clean. (We spent two hours there tonight.)

In the carpeted apartment, I found myself gasping and coughing. Not so in the new house, which has laminated floors.

One thing is sure: I’ve gotten more physical exercise this month than in any other since, oh, 2013.

A cancelation

I was supposed to have seen a doctor yesterday about what kind of CPAP machine to use. But a clerk decided I wasn’t properly insured.

I was, though.

He canceled my appointment without asking me first. Then he called: he had to, to tell me he’d canceled my appointment.

Had he called first, I’d’ve set him straight about my insured status, and he would’ve known not to cancel the appointment.

Now the consultation is slated for late March. I’ll sleep poorly for at least two more months. When I see a doctor again, it will have been five months since I first consulted my primary care provider about sleep apnea.

They say treatment in Canada is slow. I wonder if it’s slower than this. (Canadian readers: how does your experience compare?)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Samuel smiles constantly now, and he laughs by doing one giant wheeze at a time.

Moving, pt. 4

A brutal couple of days of packing and moving; then, after tonight’s supper, an evening of book sorting – until the capitulation of my back and legs. Karin’s mom, Karin’s dad, and Carol – Karin’s dad’s girlfriend – acted as beasts of burden. They helped us to make many trips between the apartment and the house, carrying our things in SUVs.

And this was only a fraction of the month-long move.

Here is a photo of the living room’s current state:

The photo shows the living room’s good half. Beyond the rightmost bookcase are more stacks of books and many boxes filled with books.

To the left of the book-covered armchair is our TV.

I’m sitting outside the photo in another armchair on the other side of the TV. It, too, used to be filled with books. We required about an hour to clear them away so that I could sit on a chair in the living room.

Observe the white cardboard box. We got it from a supermarket. It used to carry eggs. Such boxes are the best ones for hauling books, I’ve heard.

January’s poem

… is from David Gulpilil’s great movie, The Tracker.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

All Men Choose the Path They Walk

Some men are prone to misadventure / Questions of guilt aren’t always clear / Some men run from a fate they can’t avoid / All men choose the path they walk

Some can’t be faulted for their reasons / Feigning to justly intervene / Some men hide from the memories that haunt / All men choose the path they walk

Some men see everything through duty / Cast off responsibility / Some regret that their courage sometimes fails / All men choose the path they walk

Some men have attitude that’s righteous / Care not about the consequence / Some men fight with the violence inside / All men choose the path they walk

Some men have reached their destination / Finding their own serenity / Some men lead others till they recognize / That all men choose the path they walk

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(Archie Roach)

Domestic matters of the Americans

Karin is ill. She keeps on going to work.

Samuel has been fussy the last few days. I don’t think he’s ill, but he makes snorty noises in the mornings.

Even though it’s blurry, this is my favorite picture of Samuel so far. Karin took it yesterday.

He got a good look at Ziva this afternoon when she sat near him on the bed. He was very interested. I don’t think he’d noticed her before.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I continue to sort my books. I’m not sure what happened to my copy of Fanny Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans (which I’ve actually read).

Last night, Karin & I watched the Nic Cage tour de force, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans – one of those blessed movies every scene of which is entertaining. When it was released a decade ago, Werner Herzog, the director, denied having seen the earlier Bad Lieutenant (dir. Abel Ferrara; star. Harvey Keitel). I wonder if, instead, Herzog had been binge-watching House, M.D.

Moving, pt. 3

This organizing of my library is rather fraught. I’ve run out of shelves; worse, I must constantly say goodbye, for the time being, to this or that cherished volume. One of the books going into storage is called Ten Neglected Classics of Philosophy. They will continue to be neglected – which seems doubly cruel since, perhaps, they were on the verge of being attended to. … Also, the mere deciding is strenuous. Were I to pack away one book by Joyce Carey, I might as well pack them all. But what of, say, P.D. James? Should I keep available her omnibuses? If so, what of her mass-market paperbacks? And is my need for P.D. James lesser or greater than my need for, say, Colette or Ronald Firbank? Is this the year in which I begin to read through Dostoevsky? In philosophy, at least, things are more cut-and-dried. City of God and On the Plurality of Worlds must stay out no matter whether I manage to peek in them during the next couple of years.

On the familial front, little Samuel was just given a set of immunizations. He cried bitterly at this betrayal.

Moving, pt. 2

The cats have come out of hiding. They still aren’t totally at ease. Ziva rubs against us more insistently, and she swipes her paw at Jasper as if he were a stranger. Jasper paces and wails when one of us takes a shower. He is like the Llorona of Latin American lore.

Karin & I have been improving the house by bringing things over from the apartment in a piecemeal fashion. Tonight, in Karin’s Corolla, we brought over more things for the kitchen and bathroom, as well as five boxes of books.

I’ve begun a project that I haven’t tried to do since high school, which is to organize my library. Its main categories are (1) literature, (2) philosophy, (3) history, (4) religion, and (5) books for children. Within these divisions, I’ll admit a few ad hoc subcategories, but the usual rule will be to alphabetize by the authors’ surnames. The idea is to put all the books into order and then to begin winnowing. The winnowed books will go into storage (but they will be cataloged). This is an enormous project. But perhaps it will make the library easier to use.

The new Blandings

Samuel and Karin & I are in much better health than when I last wrote, and so this morning, with the aid of friends and family members, we moved into the house that my parents bought a few weeks ago. Or, rather, we transported our essentials, such as our bed, a few chairs, ourselves, and the TV. Since we’re renting our apartment all through January, we intend to spend the rest of the month transporting the littler things. The three of us will make innumerable round-trips, moving a few boxes at a time. We’ll conclude in several weeks with another aided move (of the bookcases and dressers) and then with a thorough cleaning of the apartment.

Today’s aided move was smooth. Sadly, one of our helpers suffered heart pains and had to be taken to the hospital by paramedics.

The move also was sad for Jasper and Ziva. Jasper promptly ran under our bed. Ziva, we couldn’t find; we worried she’d escaped into the garage and climbed up into the car engine. It turned out, she hadn’t left her pet carrier. Then, when we extracted her, she, too, hid under our bed. For several hours, we couldn’t coax either kitty out – not even by waving plates of tuna under their noses.

Jasper is recently emboldened, however, and has been walking around the living room. Ziva has burrowed herself into the bed blankets.

Karin tells me we’re without a shower curtain. Tomorrow I’ll have to re-teach myself to take a bath.