Here there is Silence; Meanwhile, at Filmwell....

So my fancy seems to have taken me into a month off. Never mind. I'll be back at the blogging grindstone in the next week or so. Meanwhile, here's my latest post at Filmwell, all about the Red Riding trilogy (which I've blogged about, briefly, before). A clip:

[T]he world of Peace’s novels—and of the Red Riding Trilogy—has no deeper order. Or, to be more correct, its deeper order is tentative, deferred. There is a truth to be found here, but it is less about re-establishing order and more about recognizing that disorder is the order of the day. It is, if you will, a literature (and a cinema) of protest, what David Dark might call an Apocalyptic “yes-and-no”: Yes, the world can be “as sad as it seems,” but no it must not be that way. Put another way (and here I’m echoing Katy Shaw’s discussion of Peace’s use of “faction”), the novels of David Peace rummage through the wreckage of the late-twentieth-century  West, reading its history against the grain and trying to salvage some hope in a world where business has increasingly “stepped in.”

I just completed my fourth watch-through of the trilogy, and it consistently impresses me (though, to be honest, the best is easily 1974)

Quick Update--David Peace etc

My love for the novels of David Peace--and of the film trilogy based on his Red Riding Quartet--knows very few bounds, so I'm always on the alert for a new book (c'mon Tokyo Regained!) or a new film adaptation. There are rumors of still another version of Red Riding and someone picked up the rights to Occupied City a while back.... Anyway, right now it looks like the most concrete thing moving forward is an adaptation of the only Peace novel I've not read: GB84. The adaptation was announced soon after the Red Riding Trilogy proved to be such a success, but things have been quiet since then. Until now.

Screen Daily has a set-visit for a movie called Ashes. I know nothing about it, but the direction--one Mat Whitecross--is apparently the guy who's taking on GB84:

Whitecross’ Ashes will be released in September; he also plans to direct Paul Viragh’s adaptation of David Peace’s GB84 as a TV project with Revolution Films. That is a political thriller set against the mining strikes of the 1980s and Whitecross calls it “one of the most amazing scripts I’ve ever read.”

So that's promising. We'll see, I guess.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Cardboard Box (Sarah Hellings, 1994)

I have sometimes speculated that there must be a direct line of descent from "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" to Blue Velvet. I'm not sure what that line would look like, but I know that it is bookended by severed ears--the ears in the box, the ears in the lot--ears that become, somehow, icons or symbols of a deep rot underlying the seeming perfection of everyday life. Perhaps it's the fact that ears let thing in; they are a kind of passage from the surface to the depths (here's another ear for you--Chekov's ear in The Wrath of Khan). I'm not sure; I do know that both the Holmes story and the Lynch film would be much less chilling if the severed body part were, say, a nose.

"The Cardboard Box" is the last episode of the Granada series. As such, it takes on a certain air of finality that it might not otherwise possess. Which is odd, of course, because the case is a very routine one; Holmes and Watson go about their business buying Christmas gifts for one another and investigating the mysteriously delivered ears, in no way suggesting that this case might be their last. Perhaps it's better that way--one last hurrah, as it were. But all the same--the episode is shot through with a distinct melancholy (as, of course, other episodes of The Memoirs have been). Brett is subdued, for one thing; and for another, Holmes is investigating a tangled mystery whose solution brings him to the edge of...something. More on that in a bit.

I admire the original story very much, because it absolutely refuses to let anyone off the hook.The murderer--a man who kills his wife and her lover, cuts off their ears, and delivers them to her sister via the post--may come off as sympathetic, but only just. After all--he's a man who kills his wife et cetera. The sister--and this is even more true in the episode, where Sarah is played by Deborah Findlay with a great deal of tenderness--is in some ways a grandmother of the femme fatale; but she's also sympathetic. Indeed, one would be hard pressed not to find all the characters sympathetic at one point or another.

It's especially true in the filmed version of the episode. Ciaran Hinds, who plays Jim Browner, comes off a bit too sympathetically in the end. One is almost tempted to say "Well, he's a drunken murderer, but at least he has a good heart." But, then again, that's kind of the point; all of these characters are deeply flawed, all of them are acting out from some sort of deep well of despair or desire, and the fact that Jim's despair and Sarah's desire happen to intersect the way that they do is what makes the whole narrative so very tragic.

Tragic and meaningless. Sarah connives to steal her sister's husband and only winds up getting that selfsame sister killed; Jim loves his wife and cannot bear for her to leave him--but his retreat into drunkenness only drives her further away until at last he resorts to murder. He kills the thing he loves, just as Sarah brings about her love-object's destruction.

Seeing all of this play out puts Holmes in a philosophical mood:

“What is the meaning of it, Watson? What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.”

 What, indeed. If, as I have suggested, the detective's quest is an inquiry into the hidden nature of things, it must inevitably come up against the wall Holmes faces here. For at the center of the detective story is nothing less than violent death, the senselessness of human striving. "We reach--we grasp--" Meaning eludes the detective in the end.

Of course, that is not the last word. In a sense, Sherlock Holmes is as mad as Don Quixote--as mad as Superman with his "never-ending battle for truth and justice." These are not sane goals, and Sherlock Holmes is hardly the arch-rationalist he pretends to be. He is a man possessed, a man driven to seek out the hidden truth of things because he is convinced that there must--there has to be--a reason behind it all.

Of course, at every turn he is stymied. It would hardly be a quest if the goal could be fulfilled; the Grail must never be found, can only be glimpsed ("What a lovely thing a rose is!"). And Holmes, through all his confrontations with criminals and with his own demons--with the Prince of Darkness himself--with vampires and mad dogs and Moriarty, battles on because he feels the burning need to make sense of the senseless. This is not cold bourgeois rationalism; it's bloody and bruised and wan. It's hopeless hope (hoping against hope). It's faithless faith. And that is why the void of meaning cannot have the last word--because Sherlock Holmes will not permit it to have the last word.

_______________________________

And that's the end of the Granada Sherlock Holmes series. I'm doing the Nero Wolfe series next, but that won't be until the end of May. Until then, I'm going to fill some space looking over Poirot episodes I've got stacked around and one or two other shows. Whatever catches my fancy, really.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Mazarin Stone (Peter Hammond, 1994)

"The Mazarin Stone" suffers under a double burden. On the one hand, it takes its title (and part of its plot) from one of the least well-regarded stories in the Canon, while the rest of its plot comes from another ill-thought-of story, "The Three Garridebs". Of course, weak source material can be overcome--as we have seen during the course of this series. And, to be fair, "The Mazarin Stone" improves on its source material in a number of ways by opening it up and permitting it to breathe a bit.

The other burden is less easy to overcome: Jeremy Brett's health was declining. He soldiered on, and turned in (I think) some of his most layered performances in this last season--but at last he needed to take an episode off, and so Holmes--Sherlock Holmes--the character for whom this series is named--is absent for nearly the entire length of the episode, minus a framing device that weakly removes him from Baker Street.

That leaves Watson needing a Holmes. Fortunately for the series, there is another Holmes ready to hand in Mycroft. Charles Gray has, at this point, already stood in for Watson, so it makes sense to bring him in to sub for his brother. Now, I've made no secret of the fact that Mycroft in this series doesn't work for me. His chemistry with Sherlock has always seemed off, somehow. So perhaps it's no mistake that I find Gray at his most successful here. Without Brett to jostle against, Mycroft acquires an expansive presence, a dry and brittle intensity--in short, he finally seems like he could be Sherlock's brother.

Of course, a good deal of this is due to the fact that he's speaking lines intended for Holmes--performing actions intended for Holmes. This means that Mycroft is at his least Mycroftian in this episode. He is active, he is motivated, he is nothing at all like the brilliant-but-lazy character portrayed in the stories. I'm no purist; if that's what it takes to make Mycroft interesting in this incarnation, I'm all for it. But it does mean that we see here yet another version of the character, a character who has been at least a little inconsistent with each appearance.

For the rest, I found this episode solid-but-unremarkable. Peter Hammond's direction, for the first time, looks a little cluttered--except for the final sequence, in which Mycroft chases down Count Sylvius. That sequence is wonderful--all shadows and fog, with a hint of noir stylings--like an Edwardian version of The Third Man.

This episode also brings us right up to the brink. There is one more episode to go, and we will have completed the Granada series. To be honest, I haven't quite decided what to take on next; I have a couple of ideas--and a couple of box-sets--laying around, but we'll probably not start a regular series until after this month is over.

And now, for anyone out there celebrating Easter--a poem. (And a happy Pesach, a happy weekend, a happy Sunday to anyone who isn't):

Meditation on Romans 5:8 by Edward Taylor

Thou pry'st thou screw'st my sincking Soul up to,
     Lord th'Highest Vane amazements Summit Wears
Seeing thy Love ten thousand wonders do
     Breaking Sins Back that blockt it up: us snares.
     The Very Stars, and Sun themselves did scoule,
     Yea Angells too, till it shone out, did howle.

Poore sinfull man lay grovling on the ground.
     Thy wrath, and Curse to dust lay grinding him.
And Sin, that banisht Love out of these bounds
     Hath stufft the world with curses to the brim.
     Gods Love thus Caskt in Heaven, none can tap
     Or breake its truss hoops, or attain a Scrap.

Like as a flock of Doves with feathers washt,
     All o're with yellow gold, fly all away
At one Gun crack: so Lord thy Love Sin quasht
     And Chased hence to heaven (Darksom day).
     It nestles there: and Graces Bird did hatch
     Which in dim types we first Pen feather'd catch.

God takes his Son stows in him all his Love,
     (Oh Lovely One), him Lovely thus down sends
His rich Love Letter to us from above
     And chiefly in his Death his Love Commends,
     Writ all in Love from top to toe, and told
     Out Love more rich, and shining far than gold.

For e'ry Grain stands bellisht ore with Love,
     Each Letter, Syllable, Word, Action sounde
Gods Commendations to us from above,
     But yet Loves Emphasis most cleare is found
     Engrav'd upon his Grave Stone in his blood
     He shed for Sinners, Lord what Love? How good?

It rent the Heavens ope that seald up were
     Against poore Sinners: rend the very Skie
And rout the Curse, Sin, Divell, Hell (Oh Deare,)
     And brake Deaths jaw bones, and its Sting destroy.
     Will search its Coffers: fetch from thence the Dust
     Of Saints, and it attend to glory just.

My God! this thy Love Letter to mee send.
     Thy Love to mee spell out therein I will.
And What choice Love thou dost mee there commend,
     I'le lay up safely in my Souls best till.
     I'le read, and read it; and With Angells soon
     My Mictams shall thy Hallelujahs tune.

[source]

Not Detective Fiction, Not Sherlock Holmes--but Well Worth Your Time

My busy life just got busier (who'ld a thunk it) so it's going to be at least another day before I get a regular post up. In the meantime, permit me to direct you to Jeremy Purves' review of A Good War is Hard to Find. And not just because he gives me a shout-out; this is some seriously good stuff:

How we react to such imagery reveals facts about ourselves in profound ways that are still new. We are suddenly tempted to justify that which has no justification. We are encouraged to be so exposed to the horrific that it no longer has any effect upon us other than to sentimentally encourage us to view ourselves as superior. [...] Humility has advantages, even in foreign policy matters. It just might be true that only those who are willing to recognize corruption and evil within their own selves are those really able to successfully stand up to it elsewhere.

(I'll be honest, I'm tempted to quote whole swaths of the review--but go read it yourself. You won't be sorry)

Mr. Purves and I had an engaging back-and-forth about the book over at Arts and Faith. My own understanding of Griffith is pretty heavily informed by Žižek and David Dark (though who am I kidding--all of my thought is informed by Dark). To that end, permit me to offer a couple of books to be considered in conjunction with A Good War:

Violence: Six Sideways Reflections by Slavoj Žižek


The Gospel According to America by David Dark

I also recently read a very interesting book by René Girard called I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, which offers a reading of the Passion narrative as an example of what Girard calls “mimetic contagion.” For Girard—as for Žižek—violence underlies all of civilization. And Girard (like Žižek) sees the Passion narrative as intimately tied into that violence. But there’s a difference: for Girard, the death of Christ does not speak to an absence of God—a voiding of the Divine. Rather, it speaks to the radical presence of God in the suffering of the victims of violence.

This is, of course, wide to the point of what Griffiths is getting to in his book—which is a very particularized meditation on a very specific type of violence--though there are elements of what Girard is talking about, I think, in both the Abu Ghraib atrocities and in our own willingness/eagerness to write the wrongdoers off as “disturbed” or “psychotic”.  Again, if I can flog Žižek a bit more:

The problem is that the Abu Ghraib tortures were neither of these two options [i.e. individual psychosis or mandated atrocity]: while they cannot be reduced to the simple evil acts of individual soldiers, they were, of course, also not directly ordered--they were legitimized by a specific version of the obscene Code Red [the fictional order in A Few Good Men ] To claim that they were the acts of 'mutineers, deserters, or traitors in the field' is the same nonsense as the claim that the Ku Klux Klan lynchings were the acts of traitors to the Western Christian civilization and not the outburst of its own obscene underside [...] Bush was thus wrong: what we are getting when we see the photos [...] is precisely a direct insight into American values, into the very core of obscene enjoyment that sustains the US way of life.

In point of fact, I believe that the “obscene underside” to which Žižek refers is akin to Girard’s mimetic contagion—though one would be hard pressed to discover what sort of imitation-and-desire is going on in the photos at Abu Ghraib (or perhaps not—desire comes in many forms). Perhaps we can speak of an excess of desire that demands release in horrible violence—the violence of the KKK or the soldiers at Abu Ghraib or any number of other atrocities throughout history. 

Or perhaps not; I’m just spinning some threads right now. The broader point is this: check out the review and then get a copy of the book. It’s a challenging, interesting—sometimes maddening—read.  

New Post at Filmwell

I'll have another Sherlock Holmes write-up later this week, if everything works out. In the meantime, I'm wrapping up my survey of big-screen adaptations of Sherlock Holmes over at Filmwell (and will be moving on to less classical-analytic stuff, if everything works out) with a few general observations:

 “One dumbbell, Watson!” Is there anything more stupid than a dumb bell? A wag might even be tempted to pun on its name. But for Holmes, there is nothing dumb about a dumbbell; it is shot through with significance, it means something. But its meaning is precisely that it is meaningless, that it is an aberration, a quotidian object that we take for granted, something that only becomes significant in its absence (other meaningful-because-meaningless clues are the dog in the night-time and the unknown speaker in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”). If I may be permitted a brief moment to pillage Theory for my own uses, we can call the clue a “blot”—that thing which unsettles our immediate impressions of reality and replaces it with a vertiginous feeling that we are being watched, that we are being played, that nothing is as it seems. And this blot does not reside in what everyday observers call the “miraculous”—in signs and portents and dark distressing utterances—but, rather, arises from the precise fabric of everyday existence.

In some ways, it's basically a re-iteration of my initial post there, but it differs in a couple of key aspects: first, I'm making use of Zizek's discussion of detective fiction in Looking Awry, though I pillage it for my own purposes (I make no pretense of understanding Lacan on more than general grounds). Second, I incorporate the work I've done at Filmwell to illustrate my basic thesis and to expand upon it.

This is particularly true in the last half, where I return to The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and suggest that Holmes himself is the dog-in-the-night-time, the absence whose very meaninglessness somehow conveys meaning. What I don't get into there is how Holmes in Wilder's film functions at one and the same time as Zizek's "subject-supposed-to-know" and as a noir hero. I think there's room to explore there.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Red Circle (Sarah Hellings, 1994)

"The Red Circle" does a pretty good job of explicating one of the points I made in the previous post--albeit in a negative way. That is to say, it's often the case that a superior style can make an otherwise unremarkable story watchable, just as a mundane style can be elevated by an exceptional story. But where the story is mundane--at best--and the style is merely functional, the episode itself suffers. I do not mean to dismiss Sarah Hellings' talents as a director; her work on "The Dying Detective" was reasonably solid, and my memory of "The Cardboard Box" is favorable. But in this case--when the story is so very bland and Holmes is reduced to standing around and watching helplessly as events unfold--the episode really needed an extra kick, something to make it feel "worth it."

As it is, we have a group of familiar themes--the wronged woman, the secret society, the mundane-turned-remarkable occurrence--but they lack a vital connective thread. To be honest, I'm not sure what that thread might be. Certainly, Holmes is no more passive here than he is in "The Solitary Cyclist" or any number of other cases. Here, though, his superfluity is so bald--what with two other very-competent investigators running around--that it makes the whole thing feel like an exercise in uselessness.

And yet, in spite of this, we're expected to believe that Holmes not only cares about the case, but that he will be willing--in what might be the most shocking closing-shot of the entire series--to shed a tear on behalf of a woman who gets away from the mob pursuing her. Why? Just because she and her husband had to stand trial for the death of the assassin who came after them? He's seen a little boy hang himself. Just one episode back, he saw a woman kill herself. And now we're expected to believe that he's deeply upset just because he can't let the two central figures in his investigation walk free?

Now, there's a bit to like about this episode. Rosalie Williams gets more to do as Mrs. Hudson, and Brett--in spite of his noticeably declining health--gives a champion's performance. Somehow, he is able to channel  his problems into an increasingly nuanced portrayal of Holmes--a Holmes with far more interiority than  we saw early in the series. I respect him very much for this kind of dedication.

That said, this wasn't really a very good episode; with more visual flair--or some improved sense of why Holmes cares about the case--it could have been much better.