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.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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 messed-up world

Tonight, Karin and I watched The Big Lebowski. … And right now, as I type this, I’m listening to one of its best songs: “Gnomus,” from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This week, I had an especially good session with my eighth-grade tutee. We discussed the religious differences among Britain’s thirteen North American colonies. This required me to explain the relationship between being a Puritan and being a Protestant, which necessitated a survey of the Reformation.

First, I explained about Lutherans (led by Martin Luther) and Calvinists (led by John Calvin). “And then,” I said, “the English church also split away from the Roman Catholic church. This was so that King Henry VIII could divorce his wife.”

“That’s messed up!”

“Yes.”

“Who was the leader of that church?”

“King Henry VIII. He also cut off some of his wives’ heads.”

“That’s messed up!”

“Yes.”

Then, I explained how Puritans and Quakers, among others, emerged from the Church of England.

“The Quakers settled in Pennsylvania. They allowed other Christians to settle in Pennsylvania, too.”

“Were different kinds of people allowed to settle in the other colonies?”

“Not all the colonies permitted more than one kind of Christian group. The Puritans kept Massachusetts pretty much just for the Puritans.”

“That’s messed up!”

“Yes.”

Then, we went over Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” – line by line, just about, because my tutee didn’t understand a lot of the vocabulary.

As she grasped the meaning of each sentence, she exclaimed: “That’s messed up!”

But I had trouble getting her to finish reading the story.

When she told me she’d gotten to the end, I asked her how the narrator had killed the old man.

“I don’t know.”

So we checked the relevant passage, and I told her what its words meant. “So,” I explained, “the narrator held the bed against the old man’s face until he couldn’t breathe anymore.”

“That’s messed up!”

“All right, now: where did the narrator hide the body?”

“I don’t know.”

For someone so taken with the messed-upness of the world in general, and of the story in particular, my tutee was remarkably incurious about the story’s major plot points.

Which, I thought, was a little messed up.