1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 61: Cold Comfort Farm
Samuel recovered. But then I threw up, and Daniel threw up, and Karin had other troubles, and I had other troubles and a miserable fever. My mom came over to take care of the children while I writhed in bed. After she went home, she threw up.
We’ve started to feel better. Yesterday I ate only jello, but this morning I was able to hold down some toast and eggs. Then, tonight, I was very hungry, and I had some McDonald’s. That may have been a mistake.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Cold Comfort Farm
I’ve read Stella Gibbons’s book. It has an undercurrent of, shall we say, nihilism? Anyway, it didn’t sit well.
The movie is, if not less mocking, then gentler, more humane. A lot of the same stuff happens, but it helps that the actors are so winsome in their self-inflicted despair. (A partial roll call: Eileen Atkins, Sheila Burrell, Freddie Jones, Ian McKellen, Rufus Sewell.) You could enjoy watching these people do just about anything. May as well watch them as dismal farmers trudging around in the mud, fornicating and birthing in the hay, giving themselves up to gloom and doom.
It’s funny.
It’s even funnier that a perky distant relation, a fresh-faced Londoner (Kate Beckinsale), recently orphaned, has come to live with them to learn about “life,” so that in middle age she will be able to write a novel in the manner of Jane Austen. She’s got one thing right: even though Austen’s novels are about rich people, a lot of their appeal is due to the not-infrequent trudging around in the mud that the characters are made to do. (Or maybe that’s just what I treasure from the movies.)
Flora, the city girl, proceeds to “improve” her country relations, the Starkadders. She aims to coax them out of their despair. The ruddy cheek!
No, that’s not how the Starkadders see it. They’re so insular, they don’t think of Flora as an entitled busybody. They’re likelier to suspect her of trying to steal their precious, miserable farm. Little do they realize, her ambition is more like an Austen heroine’s: she wants to arrange everyone’s life just-so.
But then, so does Ada Doom (Burrell), the matriarch who leaves her room but twice a year – in order to count her relations and farmhands – and who obsesses over a trauma of her girlhood, which is that she “saw something nasty in the woodshed.” This trauma is her justification for discouraging the other Starkadders from imagining that they could leave the farm. Only Flora’s cousin, Seth Starkadder (Sewell), spares any thought for the outside world, and that’s because he’s a devotee of the talkies. Oh, and so does old Amos Starkadder (McKellen). He preaches fire-and-brimstone sermons every week in the Church of the Quivering Brethren. His theme is that everyone is hellbound. Not hellbound yet redeemable through Christ – hellbound, full stop. The fire will never be quenched. There’ll be no salve for the burns: “There’ll be no butter in hell!” The Brethren quiver in the ecstasy of their damnation.
David, my brother, has noticed that it’s a very short step from this famous line to the Newsboys’ Christian pop lyric, “They don’t serve breakfast in hell.” One might suspect that the Newsboys are drawing from Gibbons’s book. (Or, just possibly, from this movie, which narrowly preceded the song.)
Anyway, Flora, like Austen’s Emma, channels these interests of Seth’s and Amos’s into meaningful, if not especially admirable, enterprises, and soon she is figuring out how to do the same to everyone else on the farm. But will her own destiny be tidied up so neatly? Will she detail and execute her own life-plan, or will she relinquish a little control to gain a little wisdom?
We’ve started to feel better. Yesterday I ate only jello, but this morning I was able to hold down some toast and eggs. Then, tonight, I was very hungry, and I had some McDonald’s. That may have been a mistake.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Cold Comfort Farm
I’ve read Stella Gibbons’s book. It has an undercurrent of, shall we say, nihilism? Anyway, it didn’t sit well.
The movie is, if not less mocking, then gentler, more humane. A lot of the same stuff happens, but it helps that the actors are so winsome in their self-inflicted despair. (A partial roll call: Eileen Atkins, Sheila Burrell, Freddie Jones, Ian McKellen, Rufus Sewell.) You could enjoy watching these people do just about anything. May as well watch them as dismal farmers trudging around in the mud, fornicating and birthing in the hay, giving themselves up to gloom and doom.
It’s funny.
It’s even funnier that a perky distant relation, a fresh-faced Londoner (Kate Beckinsale), recently orphaned, has come to live with them to learn about “life,” so that in middle age she will be able to write a novel in the manner of Jane Austen. She’s got one thing right: even though Austen’s novels are about rich people, a lot of their appeal is due to the not-infrequent trudging around in the mud that the characters are made to do. (Or maybe that’s just what I treasure from the movies.)
Flora, the city girl, proceeds to “improve” her country relations, the Starkadders. She aims to coax them out of their despair. The ruddy cheek!
No, that’s not how the Starkadders see it. They’re so insular, they don’t think of Flora as an entitled busybody. They’re likelier to suspect her of trying to steal their precious, miserable farm. Little do they realize, her ambition is more like an Austen heroine’s: she wants to arrange everyone’s life just-so.
But then, so does Ada Doom (Burrell), the matriarch who leaves her room but twice a year – in order to count her relations and farmhands – and who obsesses over a trauma of her girlhood, which is that she “saw something nasty in the woodshed.” This trauma is her justification for discouraging the other Starkadders from imagining that they could leave the farm. Only Flora’s cousin, Seth Starkadder (Sewell), spares any thought for the outside world, and that’s because he’s a devotee of the talkies. Oh, and so does old Amos Starkadder (McKellen). He preaches fire-and-brimstone sermons every week in the Church of the Quivering Brethren. His theme is that everyone is hellbound. Not hellbound yet redeemable through Christ – hellbound, full stop. The fire will never be quenched. There’ll be no salve for the burns: “There’ll be no butter in hell!” The Brethren quiver in the ecstasy of their damnation.
David, my brother, has noticed that it’s a very short step from this famous line to the Newsboys’ Christian pop lyric, “They don’t serve breakfast in hell.” One might suspect that the Newsboys are drawing from Gibbons’s book. (Or, just possibly, from this movie, which narrowly preceded the song.)
Anyway, Flora, like Austen’s Emma, channels these interests of Seth’s and Amos’s into meaningful, if not especially admirable, enterprises, and soon she is figuring out how to do the same to everyone else on the farm. But will her own destiny be tidied up so neatly? Will she detail and execute her own life-plan, or will she relinquish a little control to gain a little wisdom?