Engine Summer

O my god it is exactly that. I have read The Shoddy Lands many times more than once (why ask why) and it did not dawn on me till you said it. Wow that is it exactly.

It is a lot easier for me to keep on loving and respecting C.S. Lewis than Terry Gilliam, and I think it is because whenever Lewis is awful and hateful, it is just me and him alone in a book and it feels pretty equal, but I had to see this movie surrounded on all sides who were laughing with pleasure at the blackface (so daring!) and the dwarf jokes and the GIANT SHOES and such, so it felt not like me against Gilliam but me against Gilliam plus the whole world.

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surrounded on all sides by people who etc, I mean. And thank you for making me feel less like a lonely shouty hysteric. Good god I was so mad all night after watching that.

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You are totally right about the Lewis v. Gilliam thing, because when I am reading Lewis I can yell at him and argue with him and say, hey, Jack, you know this is the worst part of your brain, right? And at least the worst worst parts of it are (mostly) buried in books read by completists such as you and I and these bits are not exactly incredibly famous, excepting the Problem With Susan.

But with Gilliam, and I have this problem with other movies too, it's not just Gilliam and it's not even just Gilliam and the audience, it's that there are all these other actors and camerapeople and key grips and who knows who all, and I know that a lot of them don't have the power to say anything about the content but the actors can really bother me. I mean, that was Johnny Depp, and the man has on occasion demonstrated a brain in his head. Let alone Jude Law or Verne Troyer.

tl;dr: agreed entirely

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without wanting to sidetrack the conversation or anything, re: Problem of Susan--do you know, in the third volume of his letters, he answers at least two or three letters from children wanting to know what happened to Susan (they aren't reproduced but I imagine they were somewhat anxious in tone). And to all of them he replies, I don't know what happens to her, perhaps you could write that part of it yourself if you want to find out. So I give him a billion forgiveness points just for that.

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sovay

if there is ever a point during a movie in which I say to myself, 'Gee, self, I did not think anyone would ever actually film C.S. Lewis's 1956 short story 'The Shoddy Lands'*, let alone that they would do so unironically', THERE IS SOMETHING VERY WRONG.

Ack.

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Also, I don't think there is such a thing as ironic blackface. If there is, it isn't your job to do it. Because you did not, in fact, manage to do so. If it is even possible. Which I think it may not be.

YES. AUGH. That moment I was just like ... Is ... that what I -- AUGH IT IS.

you clearly think little girls are people.

Apparently, you don't think the same of older women.

You know ... Here's what freaks me out the most about that whole thing. I've been thinking about this film off and on since having seen it in December, and I'm not convinced Valentina wasn't raped, given the fuzziness about the "stronger imagination taking over the weaker" or whatever. If she became a prisoner to his imagination later on, what's to say she wasn't a prisoner to his while they were having sex?

I enjoyed much of the film, but what I seek out most in a movie -- a good story well-told -- just wasn't there, at all.

Haven't read "The Shoddy Lands" -- am thinking I should, just for the rar.

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what's to say she wasn't a prisoner to his while they were having sex?

I wish that were the case, because it would mean that the bit where all she wanted (at SIXTEEN) after getting some was suddenly marriage and babies and to smother and trap the poor guy who just wanted to get laid, it would mean that all that was his fantasy. And I mean obviously that is a guy's dream of girls, not a girl's dream of freedom, but I think that is Gilliam being a dipshit, not because it was the intended inference. The sex with the sexy stranger was the only part of it that seemed like it came out of her own head at all, and the only part I had no problem with--he himself was never as interested in her as she in him.

(where was the clean, symmetrical, ordered world of her Home & Garden magazine she'd been clutching all through the movie? We never saw how she imagined that, it just disappeared out of the story. That was a giant cliche for sure but it was established as what she yearned for--that and sex--not this sudden TRAP A MAN AND HAVE BABIES business she all of a sudden came out with.)

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he himself was never as interested in her as she in him.

True. I think it was all mishandled, because it could have been really compelling -- a girl's tendency to project a false identity onto a male presence that is nothing more than convenient (and could have played well into the changing faces of Tony), her realising that, owning it, and moving beyond that need. Instead, Valentina has two options, Anton and Tony (which, brava, Gilliam? You ... win at subtlety? In Opposite Land?), and ... you know, I can't even keep up an attempt to analyse it, it's just all so wrong. You know what I'm talking about.

As to the Home & Garden magazine -- I initially appreciated that, because I saw her longing after the opposite of what she knew, and saw it also as a desire for material comfort and stability. I figured it could work especially given how girls in those homes might long for adventure and instability. But, yes. I would have loved to see that actually shown in the Imaginarium. Or more made of ANYTHING TO DO WITH HER. What does it MEAN for the Devil to get her soul? Or anyone's? Bah. I am going to write up a response to it at some point, but since I saw it in December, I kind of want to watch it again first.

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I think that a lot of the problem was that there wasn't a protagonist. Gilliam seemed really fascinated by the stories of just about everyone involved (though I think he short-shrifted Anton) and so the focus continuously switched from character to character.

I'm not arguing for protagonist-driven story-telling being innately better, but I think it would have helped this movie, because the switching wasn't well done and actively denied the audience enough information to be going along with. Like, the scene with the blackface &c.-- if I know that's Tony's POV, I'm going to think one thing of it, and if I know it's Parnassus' I'll think another; and if the film had done that scene having a) already established Tony as a douchebag and b) having made it crystal clear that this is Tony's viewpoint, I might well have felt better about that scene because the movie would not be espousing the douchebaggery. But instead the movie was switching from wildly subjective inner-self viewpoint of one character to wildly subjective inner-self viewpoint of another character without signalling the switch-- and Valentina got shortchanged in that, because we didn't get enough time in her POV for her actions at the end to hold up.

If we'd had a solidly-established Valentina protag view, the dance with the devil could have been profound. If we'd had a solidly-established Tony protag view, the scene with blackface et al. could have been ironic. If we'd had a solidly-established Parnassus protag view, the very end of the movie could have been tragic yet uplifting.

And, and this is what kind of burns me, if we'd had a solidly-established Anton protag view we could have had all of the above, no, really, we could, I know how I'd do it.

And so you are absolutely and totally right about Valentina at the end, and it's because we didn't get enough time in her head, and I also think that if we'd had more time in her head Gilliam miiight one hopes maybe have thought it through a bit more and not gone off into all those fucking cliches and inconsistencies you are so correct about.

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gaudior.livejournal.com

Oh, icon love. May I use it, with credit?

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Absolutely! Credit goes to

flightstothesea, so far as I know -- I got it at least one degree removed. :)

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gaudior.livejournal.com

Thank you! I needed that!

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In re: 'The Shoddy Lands': you will want to throw things.

I was okay with the sex because she kicked off her ankle bracelet, which she'd been using beforehand as either a metaphor or the substance of being unable to run away and go get what she wanted. I actually really liked the moment she kicked off the bracelet because I thought the actress's body language was perfect-- it was at one and the same time a very violent rejection of the chain, which I thought was probably what Valentina wanted, and a very sexual movement of the kind I thought he was expecting to see, but inextricably fused with her own self-expression. So that five seconds worked for me.

Then at the end she had the goddamn ankle bracelet back on-- that's how Parnassus tracks her-- and there is not enough facepalm in the world.

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seajules

and I'm not convinced Valentina wasn't raped, given the fuzziness about the "stronger imagination taking over the weaker" or whatever

...Wow. I am so very, very glad to have that piece of information before having seen the movie, and now I'm rather certain I won't. Even without the possibility of rape, that indication of the suppression/erasure of a woman's inner landscape in service to male desire, particularly in combination with the blackface, makes all the pretty visuals in the world not worth it (The Fountain was pretty too, and I still want to punch everyone involved in its making as hard as is humanly possible).

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zeborah

I love the title of that movie. It's a really awesome title and made me want to watch the movie.

Then I said to myself, "Self, why don't you find out something more about the movie than its title?"

And then I saw that the cast list was almost exclusively male and then I decided that I'd just keep on loving the title. It just seemed easier at the time.

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I was expecting better of Terry Gilliam, as he's had wonderful girl-POV films with an almost entirely male cast before. Both The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (a lot of people agree with me here) and Tideland (about which I am in the vast minority) IMO have strong compelling three-dimensional whole-people little-girl protagonists.

I guess he fucks up when sex comes into the picture.

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steepholm.livejournal.com

I must admit I've not seen the film, but I've been feeling icky about Gilliam ever since he came out in support of Roman Polanski last year (something I can't imagine Lewis having done, misogyny notwithstanding), and none of this lessens the ick.

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I've been feeling icky about Gilliam ever since he came out in support of Roman Polanski last year

WHAT. AUGH! *headdesk*

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He what? AAGH.

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steepholm.livejournal.com

Unfortunately yes.

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papersky.livejournal.com

I have been boycotting Gilliam since seeing The Time Bandits, the least suitable film for children ever made. I think it's perfectly reasonable to make films for adults, but I think they should have a 12 rating, not a PG rating and be shown in special matinee Saturday afternoon showings and marketed as being for kids. And everyone was laughing all around me as the little boy's parents were destroyed and when the fireman/Trojan guy drove away, abandoning him, and he was stranded at the end of the movie to cope. This isn't something you do at the end of a kid movie. Little kids are not ready for "and at the end of these interesting events, our hero lived in despair ever after".

So anyway, a version of The Shoddy Lands doesn't surprise me much.

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I've never seen Time Bandits, but I was really expecting better out of Gilliam, as The Adventures of Baron Munchausen took over my brain entirely when I saw it in-theatre at seven years old. It's still a movie I watch at least every six months: brilliantly done little-girl protagonist, moments of numinous that have directly influenced every piece of fiction I've written ever since, and the perfect but still complex happy ending. It has its flaws but it's always been my shining example of what a fantasy movie should be.

And I was one of the three people who liked Tideland.

So this was for me both a surprise and a serious shock of the has-he-been-taken-over-by-aliens variety. I see above that he also supports Roman Polanski. I am now actually starting to wonder if he has been taken over by aliens, or if having failed to see Time Bandits, which is one of two Gilliam films I haven't seen, means I missed the thread that turned into this (quite possible).

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eredien

Ick. I was thinking about going to see this movie. Now I am not.

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I think you would find the visuals lovely and the movie itself intensely squicky. Which is to say, I agree with not.

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zdenka

I did not think anyone would ever actually film C.S. Lewis's 1956 short story 'The Shoddy Lands'*, let alone that they would do so unironically',

Oh, that is so not a happy thing.

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It really, really wasn't.

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selenite.livejournal.com

I have a sudden temptation to read "The Shoddy Lands" to see how it compares to Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon. I think I can resist it.

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