1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 83: Pride and prejudice

Karin wanted to sit through this BBC miniseries – one of her staples – while on (unpaid) maternity leave. So we did. It was my second viewing. I enjoyed it better this time, probably because we watched 50, not 150, minutes each night.

As you’d expect, the dialog is witty, and there’s lovely scenery, architecture, costuming, etc. But it’s the reaction shots that distinguish this production. Whenever some fool runs his or her mouth, Miss Elizabeth Bennet (Jennifer Ehle) and Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy (Colin Firth) cast exquisitely disparaging looks: Lizzy’s, half-pained, half-amused; Darcy’s, woeful. (Firth, who is always turning to the wall, seems physically ill in two-thirds of his scenes.) Other superior persons – notably, old Mr Bennet (Benjamin Whitrow) and Miss Caroline Bingley (Anna Chancellor, a.k.a. “Duckface”) – are more overtly contemptuous. As for the fools that these higher beings must endure: Mrs Bennet (Alison Steadman) and Mr Collins (David Bamber) are too ridiculous for my taste, but Miss Lydia Bennet (Julia Sawalha) is superb; she isn’t stupid so much as lively, ignorant, and selfish. (I knew a girl at school who looked and acted like Lydia. She was amusing – and rather a dear – at arm’s length; her closer associates suffered. Happily, she did grow up.)

I needn’t rehash the plot of Pride and Prejudice. The themes are matchmaking and, especially, money.

“How long have you loved him?”

“Well, it’s been coming on so gradually, I hardly know. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.”

As for the actors, it might be useful to list some of their other notable performances.

(1) Julia Sawalha (Miss Lydia Bennet): A Midwinter’s Tale, reviewed by me. She’s just as lively in that movie. She has kept on getting parts, but I know of nothing comparable to her mid-nineties work. Her looks haven’t deserted her. Her youthfulness has.

(2) Susannah Harker (Miss Jane Bennet): Midsomer Murders, s12e02, “The Black Book.” The most intriguing murder suspect in that hilarious episode.

(3) Barbara Leigh Hunt (Lady Catherine de Bourgh). Strangled in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy.

(4) Adrian Lukis (Mr Wickham): Blair Toast, Stephen Toast’s insufferable military brother, in Toast of London.

(5) Emilia Fox (Miss Giorgiana Darcy), of the prolific Fox family. Kind-faced, handsome, unremarkable. Such actors are necessary. Typical work: the everlasting autopsy/⁠forensics drama, Silent Witness. Atypical work: Cashback, as a supermarket checkout girl. Most effective work: as one of the blondes in Roman Polanski’s Pianist.

(6) David Bamber (Mr Collins). He is in absolutely everything. My choice is his turn as a harried piano teacher/⁠road accident victim in the miniseries Collision.

(7) “Duckface” (Miss Caroline Bingley): Four Weddings, of course. Honorable mention: Ken Stott’s love interest in the lurid crime series The Vice.

The best tribute to this Pride and Prejudice is this YouTuber’s, who re-enacted it by himself.

I am reminded of Snoopy’s unabridged sock-puppet show of War and Peace, which goes on for days and is viewed, in its entirety, only by Linus.

Correction (29 Jan): Lucy. Give her her due!

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 81: Midsomer murders: The killings at Badger’s Drift

[D.S. Troy:] “Why would they want to kill her? Unless it was adultery. I suppose it could have been ass bandits.”

[D.C.I. Barnaby:] “What?”

“In the wood.”

“You mean homosexuals, Troy?”

“Well, that’s what I said.”

“You are as politically correct as a Nuremberg rally.”

∙∙∙

[Mrs. Barnaby:] “Was that Sergeant Troy just now?”

[D.C.I. Barnaby:] “Yes.”

“I’d like to meet him one day.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

Poor Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby (John Nettles) must fight on three fronts: professional, domestic, and, of course, criminal. Bucolic Midsomer County is “the deadliest county in England.” People aren’t just murdered there: they’re speared with pitchforks, beheaded with guillotines and swords, poisoned with mushrooms, locked in freezers, tied down and then bludgeoned with wine bottles launched from catapults. Motives include: incest, ancestral loyalty, class hatred, religious mania, orchid covetousness, and every flavor of vengefulness. One outwardly mild killer, bored with England, murders while hallucinating that he lives in the Old West.

The first episode, “The Killings at Badger’s Drift” (1997), is based on Caroline Graham’s novel. A kindly old spinster, searching the woods for orchids, stumbles upon a person or persons in flagrante delicto. Horrified, she flees … is pursued … is dispatched. Barnaby and young Troy (Daniel Casey) are called to the scene. Troy is eager to conclude that the death was accidental. But a neighbor suspects foul play, and a nosey parker blackmails the killer. Bodies soon pile up.

Barnaby studies a connection with a previous death, the (allegedly) accidental shooting of the first wife of a rich landowner. This odious man is now engaged to his much younger ward (Emily Mortimer), whose casual untruthfulness piques Barnaby’s interest. Her brother, an artist (Jonathan Firth, Colin’s brother), is quarrelsome and perhaps slightly unhinged. But he’s less alarming, and certainly less revolting, than the smarmy undertaker who drives a too-expensive car and lives too harmoniously with his mother. Familial relations in the County are, as a rule, either discordant or perverse.

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It’s with some relief, then, that we also view Tom Barnaby’s utterly bland home life. His daughter, the winsome Cully (Laura Howard), is an aspiring theatre actress who bounces from gig to gig (and, in other episodes, from boyfriend to boyfriend). Tom’s wife, Joyce (Jane Wymark), engages in cultural pursuits of virtually every form. Tom is the casualty of Cully’s and Joyce’s hobbies. In this episode, he complains of the daintiness of Joyce’s cooking: she serves him quail instead of chicken.

Unsurprisingly, then, he relishes eating out of the house – in the pub or police canteen – or would relish it, were he free of that obnoxious greenhorn, D.S. Troy.

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Barnaby – English for Barnabas – means something like Son of Encouragement. Grumpy as Tom can be, the name is apt. Barnaby treats suspects with respect, and he gives Troy his due. In time, Troy will earn Barnaby’s trust – and a promotion to Detective Inspector, away from Midsomer County.

Other young sergeants will come and go. (How many of them will fall for Cully?) Tom and Joyce will age into curmudgeonliness. After thirteen seasons, Tom will retire; John, his cousin, will replace him as Detective Chief Inspector. John’s family will replace Cully and Joyce. The parade of sergeants will continue. (Medical examiners, too.)

The body count will rise.

The show has now aired for twenty-four seasons and in twenty-seven different years, lampooning/​celebrating every English trope under the sun. Boys’ schools? Check. Pagan ritual? Check. C. of E. bellringing and grave-tending? Check. River punting? Racehorse breeding? Pub-keeping? Landscape painting? Check.

There’s the occasional sequence in Wales or on the Continent, but the scenery is overwhelmingly Southern English. Picture-postcard settings are preferred. (In the show’s first scene, the doomed spinster happily pedals by a sign commemorating Badger’s Drift’s “best kept village” status.)

Off-camera, cast and crew would rise early and ride trains to far-flung locations. Fed-up regulars would leave the show to escape the grind.

Meanwhile, the nation’s best actors would take turns as guests. Anna Massey, Toby Jones, Joss Ackland, Olivia Colman, agèd Bond girls, members of the sprawling Fox family: all lent their talents to this show, this national institution.

Midsomer Murders is a showcase for cottages and pubs and manors, for lawns and fields and forests, for customs respectable and insane; but also for actors trained in old-fashioned, theatrical, British craft.

Cat hospital

For gentle entertainment, I recommend Cat Hospital, a documentary TV series from Ireland. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Cute kitties; cute pet owners; cute veterenarians and volunteers; cute Irish accents. Lots of greenery.

Cats look funny when they’re anaesthetized.

Sometimes, Karin & I try out a movie or a show, and after fifteen minutes we decide it’s trash (tonight’s disaster was The Staircase, with Toni Collete and Colin Firth). To recover, we watch a nice episode of Cat Hospital.

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I finished reading The Premonition. I got madder the more I read. Is it very widely known that the Trump administration flew illegal immigrants from Texas to California to strain California’s public health system? I guess it is (though perhaps the story wasn’t previously told with quite the same emphasis). I’d never heard of this travesty; then again, lots of important news gets past me.

In this book, this episode is just an aside, a minor misdeed.

The book really is about the characteristic failings of bureaucracies. Two chapter titles summarize a couple of the key points.

“The L6”: The person who is capable of solving a problem is buried at the sixth level of the hierarchy (give or take a couple of levels).

The person at the top is pretty useless.

“Plastic Flowers”: Lots of effort goes into “dressing up” a bureaucracy, hiding its deadness, making it look nice. Making the top level look nice.

I already have another COVID book on my docket: Peter Baldwin’s Fighting the First Wave.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 50: Fever pitch

One more hour to go, and it looks like I’m going to miss my reading target by two titles. I would have done just enough, but Karin, Daniel, Samuel, and I were invited out to dinner. This occupied us for six hours.

I am going to be dismayed all year.

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Here is this month’s movie review. I expected that it would be on the short side, but it ended up being rather long and tangled.

Fever Pitch

No, I don’t mean the 2005 Farrelly Bros. movie with Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon, which uses the sport of baseball as its window-dressing. I mean the movie it copies. The one based on Nick Hornby’s book.

The movie with soccer as its window-dressing.

There’s very little soccer in it. As I’ll explain, that’s kind of the point.

Colin Firth and Ruth Gemmell play nice-looking young schoolteachers. She’s very strict and professional and serious. He spends most of his day thinking about Arsenal F.C.

They get on each other’s nerves.

She wonders what makes him tick. He wonders if Arsenal will win the League.

One evening, he drives her home.

She asks if he wants to come upstairs, for some tea; and then, if he wants to stay the night.

It’s not like he hasn’t noticed her, but he stumbles into this relationship without trying to.

She has to will herself into it, with enough trepidation and determination for them both.

I suppose the movie is on his side. I certainly was, while I was watching it.

Karin was on Ruth Gemmell’s side.

He’s behaving like an idiot, Karin said.

She’s the idiot, I said.

This was some weeks ago. In hindsight, I think the Ruth Gemmell character comes off better than the Colin Firth character (though her motives also are questionable). She may expect too much of him, but he expects shockingly little of her; and yet, he ends up getting his way.

This is one of those movies in which the outcome is perfunctory, and what is more interesting is the underlying philosophical dispute.

It is expressed in this bit of dialog:

“It’s only a game,” Ruth Gemmell complains.

“Don’t say that,” Colin Firth tells her:

Please! That is the worst, most stupid thing anyone could say! ’Cause it quite clearly isn’t “only a game.” I mean if it was do you honestly think I’d care this much? Eh? Eighteen years! Eight-teen years! Do you know what you wanted eighteen years ago? Or ten? Or five? Did you want to be Head of Year at North London Comprehensive? I doubt it. I’d doubt if you wanted anything for that long. … I mean I don’t care what it is, a car, a job, an Oscar, the baby … then you’d understand how I was feeling tonight. But there isn’t, and you don’t, so …

There isn’t anything that I’ve wanted for eighteen years [Ruth Gemmell says], ’cause I was a kid eighteen years ago. And if I did still want the same things I’d think I’d gone wrong somewhere, because actually I don’t want to marry David Cassidy, I don’t want bigger tits, I don’t want to do better on my mock-Os. I’ve stopped worrying about that kind of thing and maybe you should try.

Well [he retorts], maybe there’s a big bit of you that’s gone missing somewhere; maybe everyone should want something they’ve always wanted.

His view is that having an object of lifelong loyalty of whatever sort – even one as trivial as a soccer club – is better than not having an object of lifelong loyalty at all.

In other words, lifelong loyalty, regardless of its object, is good in itself.

This is an interesting proposition, but, ultimately, I think it is not supported.

The intrinsic value of the thing would seem to matter to whether lifelong loyalty to the thing is worthwhile.

The movie goes out of its way to point out that Colin Firth doesn’t assume that there is any intrinsic value in Arsenal F.C. He doesn’t even really watch the games, despite all the time and thought he devotes to the club. When he’s in the stadium, he’s too busy chanting and jumping up and down to follow the action; and when he’s at home, he’s too skittish to stay put in front of the TV.

The Colin Firth character is the guy who isn’t in love with a beloved – not even a soccer club – so much as with being in love.

The Ruth Gemmell character perceives this, and she is so irritated by it, she tries to will him out of it.

Either she is a person of tremendous, monomaniacal will; or Colin Firth’s looks and charm are irresistible to her.

Or some combination of these things.

But both these things, arguably, are more substantial, more admirable, than the empty pretend-fanaticism of Colin Firth.

There is another possibility, which is that she, too, is in love with being in love; and that the reason she chooses the empty Colin Firth character as the ostensible object of her love is that she perceives that he is in love with being in love. If she can get him to love her, then she “repairs” him; therefore, symbolically, projectively, she “repairs” herself; she “fills up” the hole in the center of her being.

This, ultimately, is self-centered; but at least there is a person – herself – at the center of this concern. It’s better than only being in love with being in love.

It must be said that Gemmell and, especially, Firth are lovely to watch. The movie is pleasing enough; it overcomes the problem that these characters are (nearly) empty inside. Here are two attractive people who are not on the same page and dearly want to be on the same page (or, at least, the Gemmell character wants this, and, probably, in some dim, reptilian way, the Firth character does, too). It would seem that this is a classic case of “opposites attract.” But this is not enough for a relationship to be a success.

If my foregoing diagnosis of their motives is correct, however, then there is actually a pretty striking affinity between these characters.