SOKUROV'S NEW TAKE ON 'FAUST'

                                   

I AM immediately drawn to the name ‘Sokurov’ as I glance over the Melbourne International Film Festival guide in The Age. It all began at an earlier MIFF occasion- ‘Mother and Son’- going by, admittedly, a heartfelt recommendation by Nick Cave that was originally published in ‘The Independent on Sunday’:

 

'A FRIEND of mine invited me to attend an advance screen of a Russian film in Soho. I asked him what it was like and he said, "Well, nothing really happens and then someone dies. Come along. You'll love it." My friend was releasing the film in this country, so I felt obliged. Sitting through a Russian film is the kind of thing friends do for each other.

I arrived late and made my way to the front row just as the opening credits were ending. Ten minutes in, I started quietly crying and continued to do so for the 73-minute duration of the film. Now, I've cried in films before but I can't remember crying quite so hard, without pause, all the way through. When the film ended and the lights came on, a red-eyed woman sitting behind me pushed a Kleenex in my direction and asked me if I would write something about it for one of the newspapers.

The film is called Mother and Son, and is directed by Aleksandr Sokurov. It explores the final day in the life of a dying mother (Gudrun Geyer) and her adult son (Alexei Anaishnov). It is morning. The mother wants the son to take her for a "walk", which involves carrying her through a series of dreamlike landscapes, whereupon he returns to their bare, isolated home, feeds her, and puts her to bed. The son then leaves the house to walk on his own and returns to find that she has died. All this takes 76 minutes. But what we witness in that time is a thing of such beauty, such sadness, that to cry, for me, was the only adequate response.It was a profound experience.'





 Such a simple story of a love a son has for his dying mother. He carries her across stunning landscapes that are filmed with some sort of a distorted – known as anamorphic- lens, inspired by the craftsmanship of Caspar David Friedrich. She is lovingly cradled in his arms like the Pieta, and their image appears at the bottom of the screen, at the bottom of a path that reaches upwards along a kind of valley. It takes some time for the distant figures to reach the top of the screen, hence the top of the mountain. It reminds me of Van Gogh’s appreciation of the Christina Rossetti poem:

‘Does the road go uphill all the way?’

‘Yes, to the very end.’

‘And does the journey take all day?’

‘From morn to night, my friend.’

Thankfully, Sokurov has all the patience in the world as we celebrate the moving and beautiful portrait of this son’s love for his mother. There is very little need for dialogue. Dialogue would spoil the mood. There are insects, however, and the final inevitable release. The emotions for the mother are palpable.  It is no less tense, but far less complex, than Paul Morel’s love for Gertrude Morel in Lawrence’s ‘Sons and Lovers.’ Like Gertrude Morel, this Russian man’s mother dies too, but much more quietly and peacefully, accepting the inevitability of death. Her son has taken his mother on her final journey, so there must be a sense of relief for him, too.

Another MIFF brought us “The Sun’, about Emperor Hirohito, and the enormous sense of expectation on his shoulders as Japan’s role in the Second World War becomes increasingly complex and the war is ending. Hirohito is in a bunker underneath Tokyo. He is fascinated with marine life and in an extraordinary sequence marvels over a specimen crab. Equally interesting is his vision of flying fish as airplanes in the sky.  It is a very personal piece which examines Hirohito’s conscience and portrays him as a man who, although at odds temperamentally with General Macarthur, also in the film, is able to share dinner and a cigar with him. Hirohito seems timid and child-like, against the brash American. The American press corps take delight in photographing this strange, elusive man, which is the funniest moment in the film.

 

  

I saw ‘Russian Ark’ at the old Lumiere cinema in Exhibition Street. A stunning technical achievement, the camera and the film’s narrators wander through a multitude of rooms inside the Winter Place, recreating a tapestry of historical events, all done without any digital editing, in a single sequence. The scene in which the ghostly figure of the eccentric narrator pauses in front of Rembrandt’s ‘Return of the Prodigal Son’ is a personal favourite. Each room seems to represent a different historical period, including the time of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and the frightening world of Josef Stalin. The location is beautiful, as are the costumes and paintings. A long sequence of an orchestra being filmed is slow and seductive, and the large number of inhabitants inside the Winter Palace, drift out the exit and into the cold air during the closure of the film.

 

 

‘Father and Son’ was played as a one off at the Nova in Carlton, as part of a Russian Film Festival called, I think, ‘Russian Resurrection.’  The beauty and honesty and tenderness of a parent and a sibling is quite different here. I would love to see the film again. I remember a lot of shots on a rooftop somewhere in Russia, and some stained glass. Like some of his other films, there isn’t a lot of action. It is mostly meditative. The experience was almost as equally moving as the tenderness in ‘Mother and Son.’ This time it is like the touch between father and son in Rembrandt’s ‘The Return of the Prodigal Son’, except there is a homo-erotic element which I find fascinating. Their embraces are vigorous and warm and sometimes vaguely sexual.

 

      

‘Which takes me to ‘Faust’, which is based on Goethe’s version, not the Marlowe that I taught at Newent Community College in Gloucestershire, which is the one I am familiar with. The film went for over two hours, but it went by very quickly, and tired as I was, I concentrated on every frame, marvelling at the lighting, the depiction of a previous time, the ancient villages and rugged landscapes. Faust is impoverished and unfulfilled and desperate to know the secrets of the soul. He meets a bizarre Mephistopholean figure, who has a body that is more bestial than human, with a penis attached from behind rather than at front. Faust makes his pact, written in his blood, and finds himself unwittingly wearing armour in the loneliest and most desolate landscape imaginable. This, it seems, is his Hell- there is no way out and no food or water, not exactly the gates of Hell opening, as in the Marlowe, but devastating for him nevertheless.  I was hoping to see that horrific, doomed,  fiery opening. Faust gets his woman, the Gretchen, in this film called Margarete. She is pale and innocent looking, porcelain and quite beautiful, and rural looking. Faust is obviously desperate for his moment in time with her. When it comes it is surprisingly understated, rather than being lustful or overtly sexual. Faust does pore over her naked body but it is sensitively done. Sokurov uses the most intense close-ups I have ever seen, and her pale face and reddish hair lights up the screen in this incredible yellow glow. All else is dark. The heads of other members of the audience are lit up as well. Sokurov revisits the anamorphic lens, reminiscent of ‘Mother and Son’ again, but this time inconsistently, as if he wants to try it for a certain effect in some shots only. I read somewhere that the painterly influence is someone other than Casper David Friedrich this time- someone I don’t know called David Teniers, a Flemish painter, and a landscape painter from the same period known as Herri met de Bles. It is the latter that is the more obvious-  I have looked at these pictures and I can see the striking resemblance.

 

                                

 

 

The influence of a painter on a director and cinematographer is a fantastic thing. Ingmar Bergman admired Edvard Munch. I might be wrong, but I thought I could see Munch’s influence when I saw Bergman’s ‘Cries and Whispers.’ It is the stilted figures, the sisters, like in the sad, raw Munch pictures that show his grieving family.

 

                             

The vision of Hell in Sokurov’s ‘Faust’ reminds me a lot of the vision Shakespeare created for the musing Claudio, facing execution,  in ‘Measure For Measure:

‘‘…to bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world.’    


  

 

 

 

 

A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE: not just a study in voyeurism

A LONELY young man living somewhere in urban Poland lives in a crowded tenement apartment block and becomes fixated on a woman of around 30-35 who lives in a similar sized apartment opposite. Like James Stewart in ‘Rear Window’, he finds the goings on in the apartment interesting and becomes obsessed, watching with a well -trained pair of binoculars. The woman occasionally takes a lover, other times going to the fridge or unwinding from a busy day, often in underwear, oblivious to the hungry male eyes peering at her.

 

                               

 

Krzysztof Kieslowski is an imaginative and daring film director, somewhat in the style of Michael Haneke, in that his audience is often made to feel unsettled. Each time I see one of his films I know I am in for an engaging and truthful ride about ordinary people who somehow find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. ‘A Short Film About Death’ was about an unhinged young man, who seemed to be like many troubled people you might find anywhere on the streets, who happens to unexpectedly murder a taxi driver in bloody and gruesome circumstances. The murder is compelling in its unexpectedness and the taxi driver is totally vulnerable and unsuspecting. It is the manner of the killing that is compelling. He takes a long time to die, after prolonged attempts at strangulation, only to find that he is finally bludgeoned by a rock. Even the killer seems to be grimacing by this point. Like Macbeth, he goes so far, and there seems to be no turning back. Both ‘Death’ and ‘Love’ are part of a long series of films based on the 10 commandments under the title ‘Decalogue.’

 ‘A Short Film About Love’, begins with the young man named Tomek  breaking into what looks like some sort of laboratory, stealing a telescope, intercut with scenes of the young woman in her flat playing cards and pacing about with a paintbrush in a state of undress. When he gets home he begins what will become a nightly ritual of preying on her with his hungry eyes. Of course the film won’t be much unless, like ‘Rear Window’, the subject is interesting and complex in some way. The young woman doesn’t let him down.

 

                 

To add intrigue to the personality of the young voyeur, we get glimpses of the  lonely home life he shares with his doting grandmother. She ironically asks him to watch ‘Miss Poland’ on the TV, an innocent form of voyeurism, very different to his own version of Miss Poland across the way.

There are phone calls, ones he makes to her, as if the dispassionate distant view of her isn’t enough and he needs to hear her voice. Then he makes the discovery that she has a lover and the sexual embrace turns him away momentarily from the telescope, just when we thought this might ramp up his attention. So, it seems, he is curiously emotionally involved. Another lover.  The same response. This time, in one of the few  comic moments in the film, he picks up the phone when he sees the embrace and rings the gas company about an imaginary leak, in her apartment. He is going to do his best to interrupt things. The gas man’s voice on the phone says ‘don’t light anything.’ When he hangs up he immediately lights a cigarette. The gas men come around, superfluously of course, and it works a treat. The love making is disrupted, the mood broken. Tomek laughs devilishly, and in a sudden burst of anger punches a hole in his wardrobe door. It is unsettling and is the first sign of potential derangement.

There is the expected anger and disbelief when Tomek catches up with the woman in the street and tells her he watches her through her window. Later, when the woman challenges Tomek over the reasons he watches her, he tells her in candid fashion it is because he loves her. When she asks him if he wants to kiss her, sleep with her, her experience enters a new realm. She is an object of brutal desire for men, but Tomek is more complicated. He is simply different. He has an emotional need for her that her playboys don’t have. And she finds it fascinating, and appealing.

When Tomek does summon the courage to see her again, he appeals to her in traditional fashion by knocking at her door and asking her for a date for ice cream!  The date organised, Tomek whirls around in circles dragging his milk crate. Kieslowski is presenting Tomek as a child, emotionally stunted. He craves attention and affection and is spectacularly inexperienced. These two are a very unusual match. In a beautifully realised scene, played simply and almost without music, the woman can see two lovers behind her in the café, the male lovingly caressing the female’s hands. She wants this too. She establishes that Tomek has taken her mail, has watched her for a year, and has sent her false money orders via his job at the post office- basically acknowledges in an understated way that this is ‘harassment’:  and yet she wants him to caress her hands.

At her apartment Tomek can see where she lives for the first time without a telescopic lens. Her tenderness and close proximity are unbearable for him, and in a scene vaguely reminiscent of Ian McEwan’s ‘On Chesil Beach’, Tomek  suddenly runs home, humiliated.

Shifts occur. She turns casual lovers away. She has real feelings for another man. And she briefly turns into voyeur as she tries to tenderly watch over Tomek as she fears for his mental health. As a basin of water turns red with blood, we remember that Tomek has been associated with blood before, blood-red as in violence. Her colour has been white, as in spilt milk when she cried one evening and turned the milk bottle over. She has been in need of the milk of human kindness since the beginning and having found it, is desperate to keep it.

Towards the end of the film the roles are reversed as the woman’s tenderness is awakened and she continually looks out for Tomek who has been recuperating in hospital. She becomes a kind of tender voyeur, as his telescope is replaced by her opera glasses. In another interesting reversal at the very end, she watches over her apartment from Tomek’s telescope in a kind of fantasy play, and can see herself crying over the spilt milk from an earlier scene in which she is crying and at her lowest ebb. Suddenly Tomek appears in the frame and comforts her, tenderly. It is how things might have been. The tragedy therefore is the distance that the two lonely lovers can’t bridge. The music in these final moments is haunting and slow and meditative. This film is a kind of grown up Romeo and Juliet and moving in every way. The emotions may have initially appeared cheap but they have turned in the end to something profound.

 

 

 

 

ARIEL’S GIFT: TED HUGHES REMEMBERS SYLVIA PLATH IN 'BIRTHDAY LETTERS'

ERICA Wagner has written a fascinating book of analysis about a fascinating topic. It is a study of the poems that Ted Hughes published near the end of his life, about the time he met Sylvia Plath in 1956 in Cambridge, until the years of recrimination and grief following her suicide in 1963. I guess a lot of people in the literary world wondered about Hughes’ thoughts on this turbulent period of his life, and ‘Birthday Letters’ reveals what a huge emotional impact Sylvia Plath had on him, despite the fact that they only knew each other for eight years of their life.

‘Birthday Letters’, in relation to the Hughes/ Plath relationship, covers topics like their initial meeting; their wedding in London; their honeymoon in Spain; their travels to the US and places like the Badlands, Cape Cod and studying at Yaddo; visits to Yorkshire to meet Hughes’ family and places like the setting for ‘Wuthering Heights’; having works published (Hughes much more successful here); living in Devon; their obsessions with the occult and mythology; the birth of their two children; working in universities; being full time writers; living in London; Hughes’ extra marital affair and eventual disintegration of their marriage; Plath’s enormous battles with depression and the impact of her father’s death; Plath’s suicide in Primrose Hill and the beginning of the recriminations.

Wagner discusses virtually all of the 88 poems Hughes published in 1988, the year of his death. She makes the point that, unlike his former wife, Hughes was not a confessional poet, but was rather intensely private, and preferred to look to subjects like anthropology and mythology as subjects for his poems. And furthermore, Hughes would never discuss his life with Plath, or his subsequent ill-fated relationship with Assia Wevill, the woman Hughes replaced Plath with, who also tragically committed suicide. It is surprising, therefore, that first of all Hughes suddenly published all these poems about Sylvia Plath in the first place, and secondly that they are so intensely personal by nature. Wagner calls ‘Birthday Letters’ ‘the artistic flowering of more than thirty years of pent-up emotion.’

Plath and Hughes were married in Bloomsbury on Bloomsday, June 16, 1956. It was a very small affair, with her mother in attendance, but none of his family. Writing to her brother, Warren, she tells him that she wore ‘a pink knitted suit dress’ supplied by her mother, and that the tears fell ‘down from my eyes like rain’, she was so happy. Hughes’ take on things was darker, probably due to hindsight. He says his wife’s eyes were ‘like big jewels/ Shaken in a dice-cup and held up to me’- a hint of chance or fate- and the precarious idea of fate is brought up again by Hughes in an encounter Plath also wrote about concerning her fear that she missed her husband in London when he was coming down from Yorkshire some months later, not on board a bus as she expected. Plath is ‘frantic’ and begs a taxi driver to drive her quickly to King’s Cross Station in the hope he is there, yelling through the streets of London. When Plath encounters him, she writes ‘He looked like the most beautiful dear person in the world; everything began to shine, and the taxi driver sprouted wings, and all was fine.’

This is just one example where we see the fascinating correlation with the mind of Hughes. Based on the same encounter, in ‘Fate Playing’, Hughes writes:

‘I saw that surge and agitation, a figure

Breasting the flow of released passengers,

Then your molten face, your molten eyes

And your exclamations, your flinging arms

Your scattering tears

As if I had come back from the dead

Against every possibility, against

Every negative but your own prayer

To your own gods.’



Wagner recognizes the ‘dangerous violence’ in the ‘molten face and eyes’, (reminiscent, incidentally, of words Lear uses when her discovers Cordelia after she has helped restore him on the ‘wheel of fire), and I see the desperation in the ‘Breasting the flow’ of the other passengers, which all adds up to a kind of maniacal extremity in Plath which would have made it challenging for Hughes to deal with. We see these extremities of feelings time and time again in these poems, and there are also references to it in Plath’s own words, in both her letters to her mother as well as her journals. In particular it occurs when Plath either succeeds, or fails, at her own writing, often measured misleadingly by whether or not her poems or stories were accepted for publication. Here is the desperation registered again by Hughes in ‘Fever’ whilst on honeymoon in Spain:

‘Your cry jammed so hard

Over into the red of catastrophe

Left no space for worst.’



This ‘catastrophe’ is the result of a bug, or food poisoning.

Sometimes Hughes and Plath have extraordinarily differing reactions to everyday occurrences in their lives. Prior to Spain they visited Paris, and Plath, according to Hughes’s account in ‘Your Paris’, was typically enraptured by the romance of the city, its streets evoking ‘Impressionist paintings’ and exiled writers like Fitzgerald, Miller and Hemingway. Hughes, however, has a different perception of things, and in just-post-war-time Paris, can’t keep more sordid images out of his head:

‘I heard the contrabasso counterpoint

In my dog-nosed pondering analysis

Of café chairs where the SS mannequins

Had performed their tableaux vivants

So recently the coffee was still bitter

As acorns, and the waiters’ eyes

Clogged with dregs of betrayal, reprisal, hatred.’

A couple of years later, in the summer of 1958, sees Plath and Hughes in ‘Child’s Park’ encountering girls taking flowers from rhododendron bushes, and Hughes’ image is of girls who ‘were so happy, rending the branches/ Embracing their daring bouquets’, and other such lovely carefree images of benign, happy behaviour. Plath, and this time it is not just Hughes’ take on it, but her own writing in her journal, writes with a thrilling but scary and deadly violence:

‘These girls were ripping up whole bushes- that crudeness and wholesale selfishness disgusted and angered me. I have a violence in me that is hot as death-blood. I can kill myself or- I know it now- even kill another. I could kill a woman, or wound a man. I think I could. I gritted to control my hands, but had a flash of bloody stars in my head as I stared that sassy girl down, and a blood-longing to (rush) at her and tear her to bloody beating bits.’

It seems barely worth pointing out that this is as close to a violent act as you can get, and the innate fury strongly comes across in the alliterative ‘bloody beating bits.’ And yet, it seems silly, and child-like at the same time it is shocking and disturbing.

Wagner, through Hughes’ poems, chronicles unfortunate domestic situations as well. According to Hughes, one day in 1960, where they are both living near Primrose Hill, he has misjudged the time: ‘..demented by me being/ Twenty minutes late for baby-minding’, she subsequently smashes his mother’s ‘heirloom sideboard-/ Mapped with the scars of my whole life.’ There are pages and pages of Plath’s unbridled fury, which charts a tragic decline of her mental state, dealing with her own personal demons. Hughes’ reaction to Plath’s violence receives an unexpected reaction:

‘Marvellous!’ I shouted, ‘Go on,

Smash it into kindling.

That’s the stuff you’re keeping out of your poems!’



She would, arguably, finally fulfil Hughes’ desires by writing the poems for Ariel towards the end of her life. If Hughes copped a smashed sideboard for being late for baby-sitting, the response is arguably worse for suspected adultery (with a producer from the BBC)- the ripping out of pages from his treasured edition of Shakespeare’s works. Wagner says Plath ‘saw rivals for Hughes’ affection everywhere, anxiously possessive.’

Some of the best parts of ‘Ariel’s Gift’ take place when Wagner matches up both Hughes and Plath’s differing perspectives on the same encounter, as with the example of the child’s park earlier. Whilst living in Devon Hughes took advantage of the opportunity of engaging in an ancient country custom- rabbit catching. Plath apparently tore up the snares that would catch the rabbits. She is coldly accusing: ‘How they awaited him, those little deaths! / They waited like sweethearts. They excited him.’ In Hughes’ poem, the perception is ‘You saw baby-eyed/ Strangled innocents, I saw sacred/ Ancient custom. At the time Hughes was unable to understand Plath’s fury- she was, according to him, ‘weeping with a rage/ That cared nothing for rabbits.’ It is only now, on reflection, he understands the trigger to be the catastrophic event which took place that same weekend- the arrival of Hughes fellow adulterer, Assia Wevill, and her partner David, coming for a short stay.

Plath evidently forced the situation with Hughes towards the end of 1962. She told her mother she didn’t want to see her again until she had found a better equilibrium in her life. She went to London with her children, renting, as it turned out, for the final few months of her life in Fitzroy road, near Primrose Hill. The house, once lived in by W B Yeats, is around the corner more or less from the house she rented with Hughes before they left for Devon, the house that Wevill and her partner subsequently took on.

The poems written post Plath’s suicide in the cold, cold winter of 1963, feature a ‘decided shift’ in tone and become more abstract. Some of them deal with the difficult role played out by Hughes as literary executor. Others reflect on the powerful forces that contributed to Plath being what she was- suicidal. A large number of Hughes’ poems deal one way or another with Plath’s father, who, as it is widely known, died prematurely when she was only eight. Plath’s portrayal of her mother in ‘The Bell Jar’ is shockingly harsh, just as harsh in a journal entry where she imagines killing her-‘what a luxury it would be to kill her, to strangle her skinny veined throat which could never be big enough to protect me from the world.’ These poems of Hughes centre largely on the many controversies surrounding the years after Plath’s death, dealing with the spectre of her sudden posthumous fame and the books about her that slowly emerged. The title of the poem ‘The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother’ says it all. These poems are about ‘the wars that began to be waged around the memory of Plath after her death’ with friends of Plath and of Hughes ‘lined up on opposing sides of the battleground.’

The final section of ‘Birthday Letters’ reminds us that after Plath’s death, Hughes’ new role was the bringing up of the two small children, Frieda and Nicholas (Nicholas himself tragically suicided some time after his father’s death). These are tender poems about children who have suddenly lost their mother and have to cope. In the aptly named Life After Death’, Hughes writes of feeding his youngest child and says his son’s mouth ‘betrayed you –it accepted/ The spoon in my disembodied hand/ That reached through from the life that had survived you.’

 

ON HAL DAVID, BRIEFLY

HAL DAVID has reportedly died, just yesterday. This morning, in the new September sunshine, I sang and whistled my two favourite Burt Bacharach/ Hal David songs on the way to work. They are THE LOOK OF LOVE (Dusty Springfield) and THIS GUY"S IN LOVE WITH YOU (Herb Alpert), both realised within a year of each other towards the end of the 6o's.

This one contains the lovely lines:

'My hands are shakin' don't let my heart keep breaking 'cause


I need your love, I want your love

Say you're in love and you'll be my guy, if not I'll just die.'

Try not to be too distracted by this clip, from 'Casino Royale'. I have included it because it features Ursula Andress, who is apparently the inspiration for this song. Clearly, she has 'the look of love.' I have always felt that Marilyn Monroe did too, especially around the time she married Joe Di Maggio. The clip also includes the lovers wandering by a large fish tank, a much more romantic couple than the two frauds in baz Luhrmann's 'Romeo and Juliet'!

QUEEN LEAR- AT THE MTC

                      



IN Queen Lear, currently playing at the MTC around the corner from the National Gallery, Robyn Nevin is the matriarch, instead of your usual patriarch in Shakespeare’s play. I’m not sure why the gender has changed, except to say that if the celebrated Robyn Nevin wants to tackle the great Lear, then she should, and being female should not be an impediment.

I saw a modernised version of King Lear several years ago with Frank Gallaher in the title role. He gave it everything, and it wasn’t his fault it was awful. Someone in their infinite wisdom thought it would be trendy to modernise it, and we got metropolis where there might be blasted heath, and a car on the stage, culprits being fingerprinted and mobile phones incongruously sticking out of people’s pockets.

So it was with some relief that this time I saw the blasted heath being replicated, and everything more or less pared back- not too muck trickery, nice and simple and relying on that beautiful, rich and evocative language.

I guess it was a bit disconcerting at first to see a queen when once there was a king, getting ready to retire, and looking forward to the easy life, living with her favoured daughter, and drinking champagne after the division of her kingdom. The three daughters of the queen looked on, expectantly. None of them overly impressed during the course of the play. For all its gender shifting, besides Nevin, it was the men who stole the play. Richard Piper, as Gloucester, was, like Lear, cocky and unsuspecting at first, and then convincing as the poor man brutalised by cruel, cruel people. In the printed version, the plucking of grey hairs from his beard by Goneril is truly shocking, and this wasn’t done to maximum effect, but the removal of his eyes more than made up for it, with the gut wrenching issuing of blood.

Kent, played by Robert Menzies, was mesmerising. He is a terrific actor. I saw him many years ago playing Hamlet, and he features as a blind man in ‘Cactus’, one of Paul Cox’s best films. I don’t know if his career has properly kicked on or not- does he enjoy making these local plays?- but he has always deserved attention.

Edmund began convincingly, but his role as the bastard son seemed to diminish, and the menace he provides in the play dissipated somewhat, overshadowed by the adoring daughters. His thirst for recognition from his careless father is a great aspect of the play- ‘there was great sport at his making.’

Edgar likewise diminished in stature. He appears on a bicycle at the start, which was unnecessary, and he was serviceable as the wary and gullible son, very good as ‘Poor Tom’, and then dull in the last thirty minutes or so around the time he answers the herald. The knife scene with Edgar was overlong and clunky. He seemed to me to lose energy, like he was going through his paces.

Oswald was suitably stupid, Albany was inexplicably in a wheelchair, and Cornwall was callous and efficient in his dealings with Gloucester. The men were, overall, by far the most interesting people, in a play in which the daughters are so crucial, and the main man has been turned into a woman.

Having said that, Robyn Nevin more than held her own. Over confident and arrogant at the start, she did need pulling back a little, as Kent unsuccessfully tried to do. Her madness was equally convincing. Her hair was tatty and had turned white, and there was pathos in how diminished her role had become as she languished in the storm and chose frightful partners in Poor Tom and the disguised Kent.

Regan was the best of the daughters. Her hair was slicked back tightly, her features severe, tall, thin and calculated, she had trouble written all over her stern countenance. Goneril was more womanly, less severe, but hardly maternal in her dealings with her ageing mother. She, with Albany, certainly had the nicer of the two husbands.

The biggest letdown for me, for the whole play- and she has been mercilessly castigated by some critics- was Cordelia, just about my favourite female character, along with Kitty in Anna Karenina, in all of literature. Cordelia, in the printed text, is so selfless, and beautiful, and moving, as she welcomes her poor father after such a long period of abuse, and attempts to heal him, even dies for him, as her heart is broken at the sight of his wretched condition. The stage actress in this instance seemed to struggle with her lines and at times spoke harshly in the manner of her evil sisters, losing the lovely soft cadences for which Cordelia impresses. I especially love the words ‘remediate’ and 'aidant':
'All blest secrets,


All you unpublish'd virtues of the earth,

Spring with my tears! be aidant and remediate

In the good man's distress! Seek, seek for him;

Lest his ungovern'd rage dissolve the life

That wants the means to lead it.'


Lear’s Fool is another memorable presence in the play, but (she) was reduced to being merely a sideshow. It seemed they couldn’t make up their mind whether they wanted to use her or not.
The cast received lukewarm applause. I was sitting in the second or third row, and felt embarrassed for them, delivering such a great and vital play to an audience that was hardly appreciative. I imagine the audience felt, like me, that there were things to recommend the play, but ultimately it all collapsed, especially in the final act of the play. Here we had actors going through the motions, with a struggling Cordelia, an awkward Kent looking on at the proceedings, Edgar hovering uselessly in the background, Albany sitting in his silly wheelchair, and, sadly, Cordelia unsure of the delivery of her lines, telling he mother she loves her and feigning bewilderment at her mother’s tragic condition.

‘You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.

Thou art a soul in bliss

But I am bound upon a wheel of fire

That mine own tears do scald like molten lead.’

                   

NEW DIGS

OUR new digs are not going terribly well. We all feel a bit dislocated and would like to return to our waterlogged home as soon as it is fully ready, which seems to be taking some time.

We have a dishwasher that is unpredictable and washes some things clean, but leaves some things mysteriously mucky and greasy. It also makes incessant groaning sounds. The stove is a problem. The hotplate seems to get hot reasonably efficiently but the heat somehow fades and then some things are ready for dinner on time and others aren’t.

The water in the shower is a bit passive, and although it’s not exactly coming in drips, it isn’t a torrent either, and would please nobody, with the possible exception of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

The kitchen table is firm and sturdy, however there is a plate of glass on top, and sometimes water gets under the glass which makes it messy and difficult to clean.

It’s good, some might say, to have three television sets, and even better, some might say, to have Foxtel, however the ‘movie channel’ isn’t operative and we can only access Foxsports 1, 2, 3. To the uninitiated, this is the difference between watching regular games of AFL football with robust football discussion programmes, and watching boring rugby league matches, insignificant golf tournaments, and darts.

There are not enough plates to go around if we have visitors, and the bowls are too shallow. The frying pan seems to have been scrubbed with sharp fibres in the past, and there are only two saucepans. The plastic tongs have lost their spring, the coffee plunger leaks and offers only watery coffee, and the amount of available and necessary bench space is a sick joke.

The beds are too soft, sinking in the middle, and the sheets are too thin and cold. The trams shriek and clang as they go by outside during the night and the walls are so thin that normal children’s voices carry all the way along the corridor to the lifts. The lifts, by the way, are a problem because you can’t access other floors unless you swipe a little plastic card, which you invariably forget.

Apart from all of that, one could say the temporary digs are satisfactory for a small amount of time, but obviously not ideal for extended stays. It is difficult enough for two adults- add two small children into the mix and it’s a nightmare.

                                            

A PREMATURE END IN GIPPSLAND

LAKES ENTRANCE (FORMERLY KNOWN AS CUNNINGHAME)- mid July 2012

 DAY ONE

WE arrived not long after midday after a brief stop at Bairnsdale to purchase supplies and visit the Catholic Church (St Mary’s) which was shut.

Our lodgings for a week are atop the fourth floor of a modern and fashionable monstrosity on the edge of town, its westward side overlooking the great expanse of lake.

We walked along the Esplanade into town. Unremarkable shops mostly closed, being a Sunday. It is winter here, at the end of June and the start of July. It is not quite ghost-like in its out-of-season way, like I remember Scheveningen in Holland to be many years ago, or Port Isaac in Cornwall the same winter, or Glenelg in South Australia in more recent times. But quiet nonetheless with mostly empty pavements.

We walked as far as the long bridge and sat down on the hard ground about half way across and snacked with the kids. Presently we discovered the ‘ninety mile beach’ and watched as aggressive grey waves crashed in.

The long walk home along the west side of the Esplanade, along the lake’s edge, watching the myriad bobbing boats, the occasional pelican and diving sea birds.

DAY TWO

A typically late start and then a walk along the Esplanade. At the hotel, a lovely warm swim in the heated pool and then languorous tennis. Focus on football on Foxtel. Discovering poems in the latter part of the evening. ‘Born Yesterday’ by Phillip Larkin and ‘Sister Maude’ by Christina Rossetti among others.

DAY THREE

A long, lovely run, to the bridge and over it. Westward along the ninety mile beach about six km’s, the only thing spoiling it, the too soft sand- but utterly alone. Dark, mysterious water and moody skies. Rising briskly up the hill after the bridge, for the first full view of the sea, Mark Knopfler’s version of ‘Rocky’- ‘Coming Home- ’ from the ‘Local Hero’ soundtrack, booms out of the iPod. Then coming back, all loosed-limbed but weary, the Jet’s are claiming the streets in ‘West Side Story.’

DAY FOUR

We venture around the corner to the local museum to see old photographs of dazed looking Aboriginals, dressed in their best white clothes, doing an Easter Egg Hunt by the local shores. Rich and wise guardians of the poor bestraddle them. We find out that the huge motel we are staying at has always been a sore point for the locals; a large, ugly blot on their landscape.

We drive northward to lovely and opulent Metung, pristine boats tethered at the harbour, and a faint whiff of magical Cornwall in the air. Further inland is Bruthen, a very small town with a delicious bakery and about four or five shops. The local pub, nestled spectacularly on a hill overlooking beautiful green valleys and meadows, houses several photos of premiership football teams in their Footscray coloured jumpers. The Op shop is manned by two young schoolgirls whilst their mother is doing work at the back. One of them tells me something terrible happened at (primary) school in Bruthen recently- it makes her uneasy being there. The mother then saunters up and my antennae tells me to drop the subject. The first opportunity when the mother attends a new customer, I implore the child to tell me. I am expecting rape, paedophilia, suicide or murder. She tells me that someone dumped a whole lot of dead chickens on the school premises. The girls go to Bairnsdale for big school next year, and are excited, but would prefer to live in Melbourne. The mother wouldn’t, however. She grew up in Box Hill. In Bruthen, you can ride horses, fish and shoot. In Melbourne you would get arrested for this.

Back at Lakes Entrance, Aunty D has arrived, and we all play tennis, until dusk descends upon the court. Poetry again- ‘Manhunt’ by Simon Armitage, and ‘The Farmer’s Wife’ by Charlotte Mew- both interest me.

DAY 5

We are all agitated a bit earlier this time-cold sun is flooding the balcony adjacent to our room. There are four of us now, with the arrival of Aunty D, but the dynamic is more or less the same. She even manages to squeeze between the child seats in the back of the car, so we don’t become dislocated on our trip. The wife and her sister have this thing for Buchan, a small, pretty town somewhere out east. It’s a family tradition. They even dream outwardly about the prospects of owning property in this area. So it’s off to Buchan we go.

I drive 80 kmh all the way. As relaxed as you can be when driving along a highway, eyes on the rear vision mirror. It’s quiet on the winter roads. Still, I have to pull over occasionally to allow a more earnest vehicle to pull over. There are signs for Jindabyne. I think about the roadway tragedies that unfold in the film of the same name.


Buchan is a bit like the earlier Bruthen. The hills are green and they dip and dance about. Some of the hills are inhabited by sheep and baby lambs. However, whilst Buchan may lack a local football team like Bruthen, and a local post office and primary school, it more than makes up for its omissions with its famous caves.


We entered the Royal Caves with a guide and about fifty people. There were vast sea beds and customary stalactites and stalacmites, occasionally joining. I like the pencil thin straw-like stalactites emerging from the celings. We are told the formation has emerged over a period of thousands of years, maybe millions. I try to imagine what this vast subterranean world would have looked like then. It is an incredible phantasmagoria of foaming cream sheets of hard surfaces and glistening porcelain rock.

We emerge from the dimly lit caves into bright sunshine and kangaroos lazily reclining on the warm hillside. The Buchan Anglican church is small and lovely. There is modest stained glass and a detailed register of events. The café has a real fire and soup and a country feel that doesn’t quite match West Yorkshire in my heart, but is charming nevertheless.

DAY 6

Well, Day 6 has proved to be a disaster, as we have had a phone call from home telling us that there is water gushing out from under our home onto the streets.

I let some anxiety out by screaming from the balcony to a paddock two hundred metres away: ‘Get away! Move now! Get going!’ The children, a group of about ten of them, all flee, startled. You see, they are brandishing golf clubs and trying to decapitate the heads of bewildered swooping magpies.

Our relaxing trip has ended prematurely.

We are in the car in the dusk and late into the evening driving home to see what awaits. Dinner in Traralgon is awful. Fumbling with pizza whilst driving in the dark is not much fun.

At home, the floors are all wet. It has been caused by a broken pipe. Worse, it is hot water and there is considerable condensation dripping from the ceilings and the walls. The house is uninhabitable. Our holiday will end with emergency accommodation and dealing with insurance claims.