If the name is indelible, the image is blurry. Cleopatra may be one of the most recognizable figures in history but we have little idea of what she actually looked like. Only her coin portraits — issued in her lifetime, and which she likely approved — can be accepted as authentic. We remember her too for the wrong reasons. A capable, clear-eyed sovereign, she knew how to build a fleet, suppress an insurrection, control a currency, alleviate a famine. An eminent Roman general vouched for her grasp of military affairs. Even at a time when women rulers were no rarity she stood out, the sole female of the ancient world to rule alone and to play a role in Western affairs. She was incomparably richer than anyone else in the Mediterranean. And she enjoyed greater prestige than any other woman of her age, as an excitable rival king was reminded when he called, during her stay at his court, for her assassination. (In light of her stature, it could not be done.) Cleopatra descended from a long line of murderers and faithfully upheld the family tradition but was, for her time and place, remarkably well behaved. She nonetheless survives as a wanton temptress, not the last time a genuinely powerful woman has been transmuted into a shamelessly seductive one.
Fascinating, right? Based on the interview and the excerpt, I’m definitely going to buy this book. And you can too, right here at Amazon US or Amazon UK!
I’ve been struggling to write this post for something like two months now. How do you tackle something as complicated and epic as Shakespeare’s King Lear, especially when it’s acted by one of the greatest actors of all time in one of the best performances of his life?
Shakespeare made him famous, but the story of King Lear dates back to pre-Roman Celtic mythology. Leir of Britain was a contemporary of the Biblical prophet Elijah, putting his reign somewhere in the 9th century BC.
(For the record, Leir was also the son of Bladud/Blaiddyd, who built Caervaddon, more commonly known as Bath, where he built the hot springs. Using magic.)
Magic!
Approximately 2450 years later, William Shakespeare turned his hand to the legendary leader’s tale.
But wait, you say — you don’t know the story of Lear? Allow me to illustrate using the excellent 1984 production, apparently the only one that actually places the performance in an appropriate pre-Roman setting (instead of Shakespearean? Will have to research and amend this post…).
Lear had three daughters and no male heirs, and was living a pretty happy life of power and riches, hanging out with his beloved Fool.
“I love you, Fool.”
But as he approached the end of his 60 year reign, he decided to divide his kingdom between his progeny, so that he could retire and be taken care of by the three, dividing his time between their houses.
LEAR
Give me the map there. Know that we have divided
In three our kingdom: and ’tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age;
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburthen’d crawl toward death.
Cordelia, the favorite
Goneril and Regan, two stone cold ladies
His two eldest daughters Goneril and Regan flatter him unrelentingly, but his youngest and by far the most favorite Cordelia can’t bring herself to speak meaningless words of flattery when her affection for him is so great, and nothing exists for her to compare her love.
LEAR
Tell me, my daughters,–
Since now we will divest us both of rule,
Interest of territory, cares of state,–
Which of you shall we say doth love us most?
That we our largest bounty may extend
Where nature doth with merit challenge.
CORDELIA
And yet not so; since, I am sure, my love’s
More richer than my tongue.
KING LEAR
Now, our joy,
Although the last, not least; to whose young love
The vines of France and milk of Burgundy
Strive to be interess’d; what can you say to draw
A third more opulent than your sisters? Speak.
CORDELIA
Nothing, my lord.
KING LEAR
Nothing!
CORDELIA
Nothing.
Awkward…
Lear obviously doesn’t take that blow too well, and casts Cordelia off with no property. Then he gathers up his cohort knights and decides to live in the house of his daughter Goneril. Little does he know that Goneril and Regan both decided he was an old fool, and both ladies team up to force him to reduce his party of knights and submit to their power.
Consumed with impotent rage, he bursts out onto the stormy heath, strips down, and goes mad.
Meanwhile a subplot about a power struggle between an illegitimate son and his father (who gets his eyes gouged out!) has brought about a huge battle, which the British win…but not soon enough to prevent the deaths of 99% of the characters.
Phew.
King Lear was so amazingly engrossing and dramatic, I’m shocked I’ve never had cause to see or read it before now. And this particular production was astoundingly powerful.
For an audience to buy into the portrayal of a king, the actor has to possess the right mixture of bravado, reckless self-confidence and gravitas. I think Jonathan Rhys Meyers nailed this for The Tudors, and I think a lack of weight was what sank Colin Farrell’s Alexander.
Lear seems to be a definitive role for elderly male actors, the one that gets bragged on or quoted as a kind of proof of authenticity. So seeing Laurence Olivier have his turn is really something special.
The Fool, played by John Hurt, is amazing, and Brian Cox puts in a very convincing Burgundy. (Side note, kinda weird to see him so young in this, having seen him so old in our last film, Troy.)
Now that I’ve been exposed to it, I find myself kind of obsessed with the story. I think the story could easily translate to a contemporary corporate setting, with the relationships, lessons and drama intact.
But even without an update, there exist multiple versions of the play, including Shakespeare’s rough draft and a variety of endings, and there are all sorts of performance variations to check out. Up til the early 1800s the ending was revised into a happily ever after for Lear’s youngest daughter, even seeing her married off to the wrongly-exiled Edmund despite her having married the King of France in Act I.
And there are so many versions out to consume that if I were to pursue them all right now, we’d never move further down the Anglofilmia timeline. I’ll watch the latest version with Ian McKellen, though, and Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, plus a version with Al Pacino due in 2012.
It’s been a long working summer here at Anglofilmia HQ, and our movie-watching has slowed down accordingly. (Though the lapse may also be attributed to the intimidating 3.5 hour running time of our next film, Ben Hur.)
There has been some relevant media-related news trickling through, however.
The film version of Never Let Me Go is due out September 15, although it won’t go into wide release in the UK until January. (Why are they making movies of all the books that have made me cry? I’ve just seen the trailer for Norwegian Wood and I’m not sure my tear ducts are up to it.)
October will see Nowhere Boy, about John Lennon’s youth (also with that super-cute sloe-eyed little boy from Love, Actually as Paul McCartney).
They’re guessing it was a wooden henge that mirrored the original in its layout and orientation, similar to Woodhenge and Bluestonehenge, both stone circles found within two miles of the original.
Most excitingly, this discovery came within the first two weeks of the researchers’ three-year landscape survey using new imaging technology, so there’s no telling what other new finds lay on the horizon.
To keep us going in the meantime, I’ve put together a list of the best cameos of Stonehenge in films and television programs.
5. King Lear
To start us off, here’s a little preview of our next film post!
Shakespeare’s “King Lear” is drawn from the myth of Leir of Britain, a pre-Roman Celtic ruler. Most productions of the tragedy costume the players in Elizabethan garb, but Laurence Olivier’s 1987 production for the BBC takes the story back to its source.
A great deal of the action takes place in and around the Stonehenge monument, not just to place the story in its correct prehistoric setting, but to provide a stable center for the story’s swirling points of chaos: the assumed savagery of life on the misty heath, the king’s life amongst battles and political intrigues, and Lear’s mind as he eventually descends into madness.
4. Doctor Who, “The Pandorica Opens”
The penultimate episode of the latest episode of Doctor Who, starring Matt Smith (11th Doctor), Karen Gillan (Amy Pond), Arthur Darvill (Rory Williams) and Alex Kingston (River Song) has a lot of Stonehenge action. (Spoilers to follow, so skip ahead if you haven’t seen it yet.)
Doctor Who has often drawn upon various elements of English history and culture to inform its stories, and “The Pandorica Opens” is no exception. In this episode, the monument is surrounded by Roman legionnaires, though it conceals something far older and with deeper implications for the Doctor and his friends.
3. “Tess of the D’Urbervilles”, 2008
Like Lear, Tess Durbeyfield is a tragic figure. At the conclusion of the Thomas Hardy novel, she and Angel, finally reunited, flee through the misty countryside and come upon Stonehenge. Exhausted by her flight and her trials, Tess rests on a sacrificial alter stone, a victim of the will of the gods or her fatal flaw, neatly tying together the novel’s themes of modern development vs. mankind’s close relationship with the earth, and contemporary religious belief vs. nature-worshipping paganism.
“I don’t want to go any further, Angel,” she said, stretching out her hand for his. “Can’t we bide here?”
“I fear not. This spot is visible for miles by day, although it does not seem so now.”
“One of my mother’s people was a shepherd hereabouts, now I think of it. And you used to say at Talbothays that I was a heathen. So now I am at home.”
2. National Lampoon’s European Vacation
The National Lampoon series of films is the American equivalent of the British “Carry On” movies — colorful, goofy, cheeky slapstick comedies. In European Vacation, the Griswold family stumbles awkwardly around England, France, Germany and Italy, causing chaos and insulting the natives at every turn.
Their visit to England includes a day-long trip around a roundabout and several near-death encounters with Eric Idle, hapless bicyclist. Idle is, of course, unfailingly polite, despite having been run over by a car:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsM0CwqGrBs
“It’s just a flesh wound, honestly.”
Their visit to Stonehenge goes as well as one might imagine, given the above. Clark Griswold delivers a thoughtful speech about the significance of the venerable rocks and their importance for future generations, before…well, see for yourself.
1. This Is Spinal Tap
Perhaps the only movie on this list to pay an appropriately epic tribute to the monument, at least in theory, This Is Spinal Tap is a biting, hysterical mockumentary about a fictional British rock/metal band, consisting of four of the least self-aware humans to walk this planet.
The Spinal Tap Stonehenge moment is supposedly based on a Black Sabbath stage set that was built to scale, ending up too large to fit inside the building. The scene speaks for itself. Enjoy:
Bonus!
Stonehenge has, naturally, appeared in many films. Here’s a notable few that didn’t quite make the cut for the Top 5…
Night of the Demon: You know that line in the opening of Rocky Horror Picture Show that goes, “Dana Andrews said prunes/Give me the runes”? That’s a reference to this 1957 horror flick. Half Wicker Man, half hard-boiled detective story, this film is one of the more innovative creepy creature features of the era.
Shanghai Knights: A buddy cop flick set in Victorian England with a steampunk twist. Stonehenge has a cameo role here when the two main characters crash a car into it, exclaiming, “Who the hell would put a pile of stones in the middle of a field?”
Stonehenge Apocalypse: A made-for-TV movie about all the mysterious ancient monuments of the world…coming to life? Fighting aliens? Not exactly sure on this one.
We hit the theatre Friday to see the new Christopher Nolan flick Inception, and though I won’t discuss it at length here, may I just say, YES.
I also took away from it the trailer for the new 8-part miniseries of The Pillars of the Earth, based on the wildly popular book of the same name. It wasn’t until I saw this preview that I realized it’s actually set in medieval England, during approximately 1135–1154.
As far as this project is concerned, this is great news; there’s not a ton of stuff set in the Norman period that’s applicable. Our other material is a television series from the early 1990s called “Cadfael”, about a Crusader-turned-monk who solves mysteries, which frankly sounds pretty awesome.
But back to “Pillars” — it’s been recommended to me by people who do know my taste in books, and I actually have the book on my Kindle waiting for me. And though I’m a fast reader, it’s about as long as Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, so there’s no way I’ll manage to read it before the series premiere on July 23, this coming Friday.
As I mentioned in “The search for Living in the Past”, there’s a huge gap in film coverage of pre-Roman Britain. But I have managed to find a few offerings, mostly through the kind help of strangers on the internet.
Y Mabinogi, aka Otherworld, is an animated version of the Welsh mythological record Pedair Cainc y Mabinogi (the Four Branches of the Mabinogi).
Since it was an independent Welsh production with a limited run, we can’t easily get ahold of a copy of it in time for us to watch it in the right timeline order. Which is a shame, because it looks like something I’d enjoy (naked ladies portrayed above not withstanding), and it’s a famously complicated story to portray, with its four interwoven narratives. I hold out hope for future viewing though.
Another helpful internet stranger, Sara C, recommended that we week out the BBC documentary series “A History of Britain” with Simon Schama, which ran from 2000 to 2002. The series looks great, and even better, is available through Netflix (though it’s also on YouTube for those of you who are feeling impatient). Nobody does historical documentaries like the BBC does historical documentaries. A highly valuable new addition to the timeline.
And finally, I never would have found the 1983 version of King Lear without the advice of Phanx, who pointed out that this particular production adheres to the appropriate setting (Stonehenge) for the myth of Leir of Britain.
This project wouldn’t be possible without all the helpful advice and collaboration we’ve received. Cheers to all of those who have helped so far!
Next up in our Heroic Age cycle is Troy, an interpretation of Homer’s classic epic poem “The Iliad”. We’re watching these as a bit of background leading up to the Roman invasion of Britain.
During a diplomatic trip to Sparta, while his brother Hector (Eric Bana) is busy with negotiations, Trojan prince Paris (Orlando Bloom) falls in love with Spartan queen Helen (Diane Kruger), and they decide to run away together.
Her husband Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), king of Sparta, is understandably pissed off, so he recruits his scheming and powerful brother, King Agamemnon (Brian Cox) of Thessaly. Agamemnon’s had his eye on Troy for a long time, so he brings along his army and his best warriors, including Achilles (Brad Pitt) and Odysseus (Sean Bean).
There’s the usual buff manly men…
The dialogue is so-so, and there’s some improbable stuff like everyone stopping in the middle of a battle to watch a significant personal duel. But the one-on-one fighting is actually really exciting. Achilles’ fighting style and spear-throwing is especially cool.
A lot of reviewers got down on this film because it completely removes the Greek deities from the story, except for a brief appearance from Achilles’ mother Thetis.
But it’s fine by me. Epic stories like The Iliad tend to be a bit inscrutable for modern audiences, because we can’t really grasp what motivates the characters, nor are we meant to.
When someone announces that they’ve received a message from the gods and everyone has to get in a boat and sail around the world, never seeing their families again, people just do it, instead of firing him, or inching away from him as quickly as possible.
Or, when someone’s brother leaves his partner, kidnaps a rival’s wife and sneaks her into the country, they don’t punch him in the face and turn the boat around, because they don’t want to spurn a gift of the gods, and it’s all been prophesied anyway.
Doooooooomed.
So, by removing the immortal elements, divine intervention and prophecies, the film is able to show much more reasonably why such an event might have occurred — in this case it’s the usual suspects: greed, jealousy, pride.
Despite this excoriation, when the film isn’t showing battle scenes, it’s subtly about the struggle of belief; characters are astonished when Achilles removes the head of a statue of Apollo and isn’t immediately struck dead, and the Trojan council members who rely on interpretation of symbols instead of military strategy only hurry along the city’s doom.
Yet in the end, Paris takes up a bow and strikes Achilles in the heel with an arrow, preventing his escape and ultimately killing him. Was it random luck that Paris, admittedly skilled, was able to strike the impervious-by-legend warrior? Or was it the will of Apollo, the god of archery, having his revenge in the end?
As far as epic war movies go, I thought this film was satisfactory, mostly because it shows people involved who were not kick-ass warriors (Paris), or who were insubordinate and in it for personal glory (Achilles), or who willingly followed what they knew to be flawed orders out of a sense of duty, knowing it would result in their death (Hector).
Wow, though, Paris is pretty awful. He’s a lame fighter even in The Iliad, but at least he has the excuse of being personally selected by the gods to be a patsy.
“‘Are you too cowardly to stand up to the brave man whom you wronged? You would soon find out the kind of fighter he is whose lovely wife you stole. Your lyre would not help you at all, nor Aphrodite’s gifts … But the Trojans are too soft. Otherwise you would have been stoned to death long ago for the evil you have done.” (Hector 1 to Paris. Homer, Iliad 3.45).” (via)
In the film, without the divine pot-stirrers, he’s merely short-sighted, selfishly stupid, and a total wimp.
“You left me for THIS?” Menaleus bellows, as Paris scrambles away and literally hides behind his older brother’s legs during a duel. Menaleus has a valid point.
(For some reason, the film chose to ignore the story of Paris’ birth. He was prophesied to be the downfall of Troy, and so was “exposed” — left out in the wilderness to die. He survived by suckling on a she-bear for nine days before being rescued.)
Troy also shows how the war affects the women of the city, though in this case they’re all wives or partners of fighters who end up dying, and all the ladies do is take turns having sex, getting kidnapped, nobly mourning, and fleeing the city.
And speak of Trojan women, this film also leaves out the character Cassandra, a sister to Hector and Paris. In her original story, she’s blessed by Apollo with the gift of foresight, but when she spurns his advances, he curses her so no one will believe her prophecies.
In this immortal-free version of the story, this is perhaps a good thing. She’d either be River Tam or Bertha Mason Rochester, and either one would have meant a very different film.
Finally, Sean Bean plays Odysseus, so when he comes up with the idea for the Trojan Horse, I couldn’t help but picture him in his Lord of the Rings role.
Ohhh, I have been excited to watch this movie for a long, long time.
Ostensibly, Jason and the Argonauts is the story of the hero Jason — hero being defined in this case as a demigod — who embarks on a quest to recover the golden fleece.
(A note on the golden fleece: practically, the description of this (fictional) artifact might have emerged from the real-life practice of collecting gold from running water by laying sheepskins in the stream. Just as they demonstrated earlier, in “What The Ancients Did For Us”!)
In the classic tradition of Greek epics, the story starts when a king (Pelias) tries to prevent his eventual overthrow by killing off potential prophesied usurpers before they can come of age — but in doing so, he only succeeds in laying the path for the thing he feared the most.
Twenty years later, a grown-up Jason fishes Pelias out of a river, and the king decides to encourage him to take on a dangerous quest, hoping he’ll die without Pelias having to do it himself.
After some posturing and discus throwing, Jason recruits a bunch of his buddies and they sail off in a specially-designed ship, the Argo.
Then they do some hero stuff, but the rest of the movie is basically an excuse to show off the incredibly awesome stop-motion work of genre master Ray Harryhausen, who considered this his best film. And I agree.
Skeleton children of the hydra:
The awakening of Talos:
The skeleton clip lasts four minutes, but it took more than four months to create. Every tiny movement is the result of the touch of a human hand. Incredible.
A giant merman
Harpies that torture a blind man
The Hydra!
I’m resisting posting videos of the other cool stuff, so that I don’t overwhelm this post with clips. But seeing these makes me feel like the Cat from Red Dwarf. YOW!
Anyway, back to the story — most of the heroes die in the battle, but Jason escapes the spookies, gets the girl and returns home, where he gets to rule two kingdoms and have a lifetime of adventures.
But what does all that matter, when you remember that we’re all (literal!) pawns of the immortals, eh?
Summer is a time for relaxing by the pool, margarita in hand, Pet Sounds, Wilco and Vampire Weekend on the ipod, breathing in the faint odors of chlorine and sunscreen and lime. Or, if you’re unlucky enough to not be a student or a teacher, it’s a time for working indoors under florescent lights in a building with windows that don’t open. (Guess which one I’ll be doing?)
It’s also a time for theatre releases of the best and worst movies of the year.
Many of my summers as a teen were spent escaping the Texas heat in the blasts of A/C and stale popcorn offered by our many local theatres. It often didn’t matter what was showing, going to the theatre was the point, and that’s my only excuse for seeing House of Wax in cinemas, god help me.
It was also where I honed my taste in films. In high school and college, there were three indie screens in my immediate neighborhood, so I got to take in a lot of limited release pics and special midnight screenings of films I’d never otherwise have been exposed to. I loved piling into the car late on a Friday, full of all those teen feelings of freedom in the hot, quiet night, and heading over to the Inwood to watch Bottle Rocket, or City of Lost Children, or Following.
To this day, I get the same thrill whenever I go to a midnight showing the day before a great film is released. (Toy Story 3 this Thursday at 12:01am, holla!)
I’m mostly ambivalent about the Summer 2010 cinema offerings, but as far as historical fare goes, there are some okay options for moviegoers — though I still lament that there are so few films set in pre-history or pre-Roman Britain.
At least this handful of flicks is taking a stab at history, even if their aim is a bit off.
First up is Centurion, set in 117 AD:
From the trailer, I gather that the film focuses on the last stand of the invading Ninth Legion against the native Picts, and while I applaud the depiction of a lot of kick-ass women warriors, I suspect the film sides with the Romans in the end.
Funnily, Dominic West is one of the stars — he’s been in a lot of historical films and serials lately, but it’s still always strange to hear him using his natural British accent instead of the American one he put on for The Wire.
Anyway, reviews of Centurion have been pretty savage, garnering it a mere 50% on Rotten Tomatoes. I’m not too keen on this one, as others have recommended the 1977 BBC television adaptation of the novel “Eagle of the Ninth” (and another film version of that story will be released in September this year), but I may have to suffer through it for the sake of the project.
US release date: 23 July (Video On Demand), 27 August (cinemas) UK release date: 23 April
Next is Agora, set in 391 AD.
Agora is the fictionalized story of real-life Greek philosopher Hypatia during the clash between Roman paganism and Christian forces in Alexandria, Egypt.
This one is a lot more appealing to me, despite its Rotten Tomatoes reviews (currently it’s at 56%, yowch). I love Rachel Weisz, the city of Alexandria is depicted using real sets and not just CGI (plus they show the sacking and destruction of the library), and I think the premise is pretty interesting — more than just an argument between religion and science. I like the idea that while all of this is happening down here on earth, time and time again, the stars that Hypatia studied remain the same.
“I kept saying the movie is about astronomy and I wanted to express concepts that we study in school—science, mathematics—that don’t show how fascinating the topic is [the way the subjects are taught in modern education]. I wanted to translate [man’s] fascination with the pursuit of knowledge. I wanted to show astronomy and those who study it in the most appealing way. Those are the real heroes of the movie.”
- director Alejandro Amenábar
US release date: limited, possible wide release in December UK release date: 23 April
Then comes the newest incarnation of Robin Hood, set in the reign of King Richard I (between 1189 and 1199).
So, Maximus is in ye olde England, kickin’ butt in that same flippy frame rate as Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan. This version of Robin Hood seems to focus more on his time as a crusader, but it’s hard to tell, what with all the rockin’ guitars.
I wasn’t too excited when this first came out in May, and it’s only got 44% on Rotten Tomatoes. Might be worth seeing when it hits the dollar theatre, if nothing else is on.
US release date: 14 May UK release date: 12 May
And finally, Black Death, set sometime around the 1340s.
Starring Sean Bean and that kid who played Angel Clare in the 2008 version of “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” as various religious figures who go to a small village to investigate why it alone has been spared the taint of the Bubonic plague.
It looks like a zombie movie, or at least a horror film filled with creepy violence and torture, which is a big turn-off for me. I mean, consider the last images in the trailer: Man being drawn by ropes. Woman saying, “Crucify them all.” Man screaming, “I’ll slice you open!” Ick.
But so far, reviews are limited, but fair — 67% on RT. And at least two compare it to The Wicker Man…making it extremely tempting. I’ll wait til I hear about the levels of gore, as I am definitely NOT okay with seing guts and their spillage, but this one has potential…if I can find a copy, since I’m not sure it’ll actually be released in the US.
US release date: Unknown UK release date: 11 June
Want to get into that summer state of mind? Here are two playlists from StereoMood, an internet radio station with stellar playlists based around moods and emotions:
Picking up where the schools left off - by watching movies!
We are learning about the whole of British history by watching films sorted into chronological order. In this way, we hope to place history's figures and events into a visual context, for easier understanding and retention. Our comprehension is supplemented by research and reading.
We started with Carl Sagan's Cosmos and films about cavemen, and we'll end with movies set in the future (Brazil, if..., A Clockwork Orange, Children of Men).
We will also be doing a branch of American history films when we reach that point in the timeline.
View our film list and offer us suggestions by commenting or emailing us at lehall-at-gmail-dot-com.
