The window rattled and I wondered if you'd just passed over

[sovay]

It is beautifully sunny outside, but I have slept three hours a night at most this week and consequently feel kind of like dropping dead. This morning spatch and I were awake at what choco_frosh once memorably dubbed the ass-crack of dawn to wait for the handyman who was supposed to fix and/or replace our bathroom door. Go on, guess if he's here yet. Several hours ago I gave up and made myself lunch instead of breakfast. I am about to e-mail the property manager and go for a walk.

I am having trouble feeling that I am not out of time in all ways: that I had time before the world fell apart and I wasted it. I'm sure it would be easier to deal with this feeling if the news were not so constantly apocalyptic. I suspect it would also help if I were in less pain and if the MBTA had not fallen over spectacularly so as to prevent me from seeing my therapist yesterday. I spent the evening with rushthatspeaks and Fox who has just started to identify objects by color and shout about them delightedly (they seem to have blue, green, purple, and pink down cold; they have more difficulty distinguishing red, orange, and yellow, which fascinates me; and they consistently mix up the white and black crayons, possibly because both are wrapped in the same shade of grey paper) and with gaudior when they got home from work. It was low-key and nice. Putting Fox to sleep involved Rush singing them "Scarborough Fair" and me singing "Oy Dortn, Dortn" and then gently closing the door on their heartbreaking wail of "Sing!" Then I got home and saw the news about Israel's nation-state bill, about which I had an instant detonation of feelings ranging from well, this will do wonders for the local anti-Semitism to we are right around the corner from Tisha B'Av, the day of remembering and grieving destruction, exile, dispossession, loss; this is not the way to observe it to that space rock probably never is going to hit Netanyahu. Just the previous night, I had read a recent article on a peace plan that looked like a real idea. I suppose there is no chance of it now. I wrote on Facebook that it is strange to feel betrayed by a country that never was mine, but here we are. I point to this post and I'm waiting to see if David Schraub weighs in.

I rewatched the 1986 LWT A Little Princess last night; it's currently, if a little patchworkily, on YouTube. Unlike the 1987 Hallmark A Secret Garden with the post-WWI frame story that I keep meaning to rewatch to see if I like it as an adult, it was not one of my childhood movies. nineweaving screened it for me just about ten years ago and I loved it. It's the most faithful adaptation I've run into: it does very little in the way of compression except for time and the places where it expands on Burnett are all to the three-dimensionality of the characters. Amelia Shankley who had just played the young Alice in Dennis Potter's Dreamchild (1985) brings some of the same unsentimentality to the role of Sara Crewe, not to mention the thin serious face and heavy dark hair of the novel; her vivid imagination and her half-acting poise are a lifeline, not an occasion for schmaltz. Nigel Havers makes a better-looking Carrisford than the jaundiced Indian gentleman of the book, but I like his interpretation—alcoholism feeding on depression makes him interestingly more Colin-like in his convictions of illness: he's not as sick as he feels he deserves to be—and I like his relationship with Tariq Alibai's Ram Dass, who is not above faking quotations from the Bhagavad Gita to puncture his employer's fretful moods. I have never seen Natalie Abbott in another role, but I love watching her downtrodden Becky become a co-conspirator in Sara's fantasies as opposed to just an audience for them. And the Misses Minchin are Maureen Lipman and Miriam Margolyes and they play off each other as classically as comedians or cartoons, one tall and thin and imperious and the other short and round and apologetic, but they too are three-dimensional and it pays off in their climactic confrontation. Lipman in particular gets a brief, piercing gesture which put me in mind of Peter Cushing or Peter Blythe—with her coldness and her pettiness and her self-justifying spite toward a defenseless child thrown unexpectedly in her face by the foolish, frumpish sister who has always tiptoed so submissively around her, Maria Minchin left alone in her office shuts the door hard behind her, turns to her desk with her usual expression of pinched exasperation, and all in one sudden motion pulls off her gold-rimmed spectacles, the frames crumpled in her hand as her face crumples behind them. Blink and you'll miss it; it works. It left me thinking inchoately about unsympathetic female characters, actual rather than antiheroic. There is a character I love in The Bletchley Circle (2012–14) even though she's present for maybe five minutes and two scenes because I don't usually see her female. This is Anastasia Hille's Angela Barker, a former contact from Electra House: tall, fair, blandly polite, with an impenetrable quizzical look and a plummier accent than any of the Bletchley women; worked for SOE, ran a sideline in the black market, "fiddled" the ration books. She's blackmailable. Jean blackmails her. I have seen that embarrassed genteel façade starting to slip and it is always, always male. I keep meaning to write about Caged (1950) because it is a masterclass in kinds of characters women don't usually play. I should probably see Ocean's 8 (2018) on the same principle.

—Just as I made the decision to send the e-mail, the property manager's husband who is the handyman arrived. Our bathroom door will need replacing, but in the meantime it is no longer sagging dramatically off its hinges in the way that suggests it might just fall on someone like a T. rex devouring a lawyer in Jurassic Park (1993). The brave cats who scrambled when the doorbell rang have been rewarded with treats, even Autolycus who tried to scramble past the handyman into the wide world of the stairwell. I am still going for a walk.

Comments

[ranalore]

I loved the Alfonso Cuarón version, but I was forewarned to go into it thinking of it as a movie inspired by the novel and the Shirley Temple movie (which is dreadful), and not actually a filmed adaptation of the novel. Had I gone into it expecting it to be an adaptation, I might have had an aneurysm. Some of the front end of the plot and most of the names are the same as the book, but the setting is World War I era New York, and Papa Crewe is off to fight. Also, rumors of his death are greatly exaggerated. I would be very interested to see the version you speak of here, though I can't watch anything for long online. I'll have to see if the library has it.

The Agnieszka Holland Secret Garden is more faithful, and is absolutely stunning. I very much think you would like the cast.

I must admit I didn't like the Hallmark version at all.

[sovay]

Some of the front end of the plot and most of the names are the same as the book, but the setting is World War I era New York, and Papa Crewe is off to fight. Also, rumors of his death are greatly exaggerated.

That is some of the textual infidelity I've heard about! I'm glad it holds up as a thing of its own; I'm not sure if I'd be able to separate it.

I would be very interested to see the version you speak of here, though I can't watch anything for long online. I'll have to see if the library has it.

It should at least be interlibrary-able; there's a Region 1 DVD. I hope you can get hold of it, and I hope you enjoy it!

The Agnieszka Holland Secret Garden is more faithful, and is absolutely stunning. I very much think you would like the cast.

I don't know any of the child actors, but I see John Lynch and Maggie Smith!

(I discovered John Lynch with The Secret of Roan Inish (1994): "I may be daft, girl—but I'm not blind." That was enough.)

I must admit I didn't like the Hallmark version at all.

Because of the frame story or for other reasons?

[ranalore]

That is some of the textual infidelity I've heard about! I'm glad it holds up as a thing of its own; I'm not sure if I'd be able to separate it.

That's fair. It is a beautiful film, but that's difficult to enjoy if you're distracted by the psychic dissonance of competing narratives.

I don't know any of the child actors, but I see John Lynch and Maggie Smith!

John Lynch and Maggie Smith are excellent, as ever, but it's the kids who have to carry the movie, and they are definitely up to the task. They are all very, very good, but Mary just blew me away. She is so very Mary-ish. This scene with Martha toward the beginning of the movie gives you a good taste of what I mean, as well as how perfectly the interior shots of Misselthwaite are framed. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find the whole movie available on Youtube; there are files claiming to be so, but they are misnamed uploads of the 1987 Hallmark version. Any clipped versions start with the scene I linked, too, rather than at the beginning. I suspect rights enforcement.

Because of the frame story or for other reasons?

Well, any frame story with an end game of not!cousins Colin/Mary in a romantic clinch and Dickon dead off-screen doesn't help. I recall objecting to the young cast, though, particularly the Mary and her arbitrary, indifferent attempts at an accent.

[sovay]

John Lynch and Maggie Smith are excellent, as ever, but it's the kids who have to carry the movie, and they are definitely up to the task. They are all very, very good, but Mary just blew me away.

Oh, wonderful. I will try to find it.

Well, any frame story with an end game of not!cousins Colin/Mary in a romantic clinch and Dickon dead off-screen doesn't help.

That answers the question steepholm asked me below. I didn't remember Colin and Mary not being cousins, but I don't automatically think of cousin marriage as incest, so the relevance might have passed me by; I remembered that Dickon died. The thing is that from our point in history, WWI would always have been waiting for these characters even if Burnett didn't know it, so I understand that any future fic has to take it into account, but I also object to any forecast that resolves them from three inseparable friends into a dyad and a fridge. I think of them as an emotional OT3 if not necessarily a romantic one and I don't want any components dropping out.

This is reminding me of how much the musical of The Secret Garden annoyed me with "Lily's Eyes," because the whole point was that Colin has his mother's eyes—agate-grey and fringed round with black lashes, looking gaily out of her portrait as his look unhappily out of his face and his father can't bear to meet them. Change that and you change the whole dynamic between them.

[ranalore]

That answers the question steepholm asked me below. I didn't remember Colin and Mary not being cousins, but I don't automatically think of cousin marriage as incest, so the relevance might have passed me by; I remembered that Dickon died. The thing is that from our point in history, WWI would always have been waiting for these characters even if Burnett didn't know it, so I understand that any future fic has to take it into account, but I also object to any forecast that resolves them from three inseparable friends into a dyad and a fridge. I think of them as an emotional OT3 if not necessarily a romantic one and I don't want any components dropping out.

Oh, it wasn't the World War I framing I had an issue with, just the decision to, as you say, fridge one and canonically entangle the other two in an exclusive romantic relationship. As a child, I knew them all to be best friends, and as an adult I recognize them as an OT3. If I were inclined to seek out futurefic in the fandom, I'd be looking for them as a threesome. I would still have been cross had Dickon lived and Mary and Colin been paired off, but really, Dickon was the wound and Mary/Colin the lemon juice, there.

This is reminding me of how much the musical of The Secret Garden annoyed me with "Lily's Eyes," because the whole point was that Colin has his mother's eyes—agate-grey and fringed round with black lashes, looking gaily out of her portrait as his look unhappily out of his face and his father can't bear to meet them. Change that and you change the whole dynamic between them.

Hmm. In that case, I'd best warn you that the 1993 movie goes the route of Mary looking like the mothers, and Colin's father not being able to look at him because he doesn't look a thing like their mothers. It's a rather odd choice, because Colin looks exactly as he should, and Mary's just a bit darker than the book, and the actress playing the mothers is a brunette we barely glimpse, so telling us Colin has her eyes and Mary has her mother's face shape and coloring would have worked fine. Or, y'know, casting a fairer actress as the moms (or putting a wig on her). The dynamic functions the same in the movie, however, so it's not as big a change as it could have been, and John Lynch and the young actor playing Colin really make their scenes work (and John Lynch's reaction to Mary due to the resemblance is note-perfect).

[sovay]

If I were inclined to seek out futurefic in the fandom, I'd be looking for them as a threesome. I would still have been cross had Dickon lived and Mary and Colin been paired off, but really, Dickon was the wound and Mary/Colin the lemon juice, there.

Entirely understood. I'm not actually sure I've seen anyone write post-war fic where they all survive, but I'd want to read it. It's not like the theme of healing and returning to life would be irrelevant in the wake of World War I.

[edit] HEY REMEMBER THIS CONVERSATION I FOUND EXACTLY THAT.

The dynamic functions the same in the movie, however, so it's not as big a change as it could have been, and John Lynch and the young actor playing Colin really make their scenes work (and John Lynch's reaction to Mary due to the resemblance is note-perfect).

I appreciate the heads-up. I think I will be able to stand it.