The genius of “Portrait of a Lady”

The Portrait of a Lady is a masterpiece bursting with refined substance – it conceives of dialogue and characters with a richness unlike any other literature. This formal success is an achievement which creeps up on you as you read; it takes you by surprise. Here is an undeniably realistic portrayal of human motivations and interaction; nowhere is it more ingeniously demonstrated than as James’ male characters interact with the objects of their desire. These complex actors play out their roles in wholly authentic ways.

The dramatic tension which frequently bubbles to the surface within Portrait is the work of a master realist.  James knows how to turn the screws on his readers with the subtletest of means; the mysterious machinations of his characters are a key focal point. Essentially we experience the truth of human ignorance and the unsettling mysteries of  relationship. Further, he rarely privileges us as the audience; we journey alongside his characters, weighing up information in the same moments as them. As untold relational vistas open up in the narrative, we feel the emotion of the participants – their deep surprise, their excitement, their anxiety, their disappointments, their suffering.

James seems to have an uncanny understanding of how men and women interact and dance about each other. A majority of the actors read the signs and the end-point of their coupling appropriately, modulating their behaviour accordingly. Many of the interactions between the highly valued female characters (Isabel, Pansy) and their endless queue of enchanted male suitors follow this pattern. One awkwardly bumbles (Lord Warburton), while another angrily grumbles (Edward Rosier). Still yet a third dynamic is in evidence – James’ cherished exemplar who stands aloof and merely wonders. A favourite scene of mine, between Isabel and her cousin Ralph:

They had wandered back to their chairs in the centre of the square again, and Ralph had lighted his cigarette…he liked immensely being alone with her, in the thickening dusk, in the centre of the multitudinous town; it made her seem to depend upon him and to be in his power. This power he could exert but vaguely…

But it is the sheer intensity of all these interactions, in the heat of the moment, which is palpable in Portrait. Sometimes it is amusingly witty, other times breathlessly dramatic. James has such a feel for moments of interaction one wonders if each of his scenes were drawn from real life; observed from leafy shrubs, jotted into a small notebook, painstakingly and photographically transcribed and elaborated with further details.

Finally, James’ characterisation is psychologically complex and astute. It is often when we are welcomed into the mind of his heroine that we as the reader glimpse the completeness of his creations. After she refuses Lord Warburton for the first time, we are taken into the catacombs of her thoughts:

Poor Isabel found occasion to remind herself from time to time that she must not be too proud, and nothing could be more sincere than her prayer to be delivered from such a danger; for the isolation and loneliness of pride had for her mind the horror of a desert place…She had promised him that she would consider his proposal, and when, after he had left her, and lost herself in meditation, it might have seemed that she was keeping her word. But this was not the case; she was wondering whether she were not a cold, hard girl; and when at last she got up and rather quickly went back to the house, it was because, as she had said to Lord Warburton, she was really frightened at herself.

James shows such affection for his creations, through beautiful sensitivity; I don’t believe he would ever delight in throwing them into despair or the path of impossible predicaments. Rather, he draws us into their brittle world and psyches such that we feel their fragility and their weakness. I see a shadowy glimpse of the great Triune Creator in this brilliant American – never delighting or rejoicing in the suffering and pain of his world.

Lord Warburton, Ralph Touchett, Caspar Goodwodd, and most importantly, Isabel, will live and travel alongside readers that meet them. This is a partial glimpse of James’ great capacity for genius. These scenes, the actors that populate them, persist as long as memory continues. I will be deeply shocked (though overjoyed) if I encounter another novel which garners more of my affection than Portrait.

 

 

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On vampire flicks – Near Dark (1987)

Of all horror films, the vampire sub-genre is perhaps the hokiest of the lot. It has an unfortunate tendency to take itself far too seriously, now to the absurd point of adding romance to its moribund recipe. However, two films of the last thirty years represent a bit of an exception to this general rule: Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right one in (2008), and Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987). They succeed, like a grand alchemist, in transmuting tired cliches into pure, refined cinematic gold.

Kathryn Bigelow has made a handful of films, with Point Break and The Hurt Locker garnering the most attention. Sadly the same cannot be said for Near Dark. It came out in 1987, the same year as yet another vampire film, Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys. It was the latter, inferior flick, with its ‘hip’ and youthful cast, which won the box-office dibs.  And yet, comparing the two pictures, Bigelow’s little cracker is far more interesting and rewarding. Like The Lost Boys, it follows a male protoganist unwittingly inducted by an attractive vamp into a coven of vampires. The accomplished cast is wonderfully creepy, with Bill Paxton, Lance Henricksen and Jenette Goldstein, all fresh from Aliens (1986), playing the roaming band of vampiric thugs. But it is in the way it defies the traditional aspects of the genre that it really succeeds  –  without silver crucifixes or wooden stakes anywhere in sight, it transforms the desert punks in Mad Max 2 into blood sucking freaks.

There’s several scenes in this little gem which pack a serious wallop, and resonate long after the credits roll: the intensity of the central coupling, especially when the vamp offers her open wrists for her boyfriend to hungrily feast upon; the spontaneous combustion of any member of the vampire crew whenever they expose themselves to daylight; the bar-room brawl half-way through the film – despite its unsurprising general trajectory, it is a scene to marvel at while it keeps building and building viscerally.

Near Dark doesn’t succeed merely because it does something new. Rather, every aspect of the production is well conceived. The witty script, the acting and the direction, all working together, spin straw into gold.

 

 

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Dostoyevsky – Notes from the Underground, Revisited

Dostoyevsky’s early Notes from the Underground is a white-hot riff on the experience of societal alienation and relational dysfunctionality. Packaged as it is, like a novelty showbag chock full of philosophical candy, it lays much of the thematic and stylistic foundation for the Russian’s great novel, Crime and Punishment. However, it is also a slice of absolute genius in its own right. I revisited it this week.

Notes presents the fictional ramblings of a very uptight little man. The unnamed narrator draws us into his world from the get-go:

I am a sick man…I am an angry man. I am an unattractive man. 

I think there is something wrong with my liver.

At first glance this intellectual steamroller (which persists for the entirety) has the appearance of just another proto-Nietzschean rant. Yet the Underground Man is a lot funnier, more nihilistic, and further predates his German cousin by over half a decade.

Notes is divided into two uneven halves. The ideas are put forth in the first, shorter section, entitled “The Underground”. We as the reader are drawn into a decidedly bitter worldview: this prophet of the new world (as Dostoyevsky describes him in the preface) is dismayed at the herd mentality of humanity and the enshrining by society of the stupid and the mundane. However, the consequences of these strongly held views are played out in the narrative following, entitled “A Story of the Falling Sleet”. It is far from happy reading; it is absolutely gutting. The Underground Man draws us in and then, while condemning himself, brings us down by implication. I won’t spoil the denouement, but it is truly devastating.

Notes is still a revelation some 150 years after its publication. It introduced the notion of the unsympathetic anti-hero to the modern world (think the biblical prophet Jonah), and in doing so brought a fresh dynamic to the Western novel.

Dostoyevsky crafts an abject lesson here. It speaks with a didactic fury, pointing a bony finger directly at the bitterness and hatred of mans’ heart. We identify with the anti-hero narrator all the way up until his attractive values are taken to their logical conclusion. And there Dostoyevsky pulls the rug out from under us.

In today’s world Notes has a special word to say to people like you and me; people who seek to define themselves apart from the majority. To find one’s identity in individuality and difference easily leads to lovelessness and alienation. Further, rarely in philosophical treatises is the reader privileged to see the raw outcome of a philosopher’s thoughts; yet here the perverse fall-out of a persuasive worldview is illumined with a bright light. Dostoyevsky presents the deeds which flow from the Underground Man’s nihilistic and conceited values – and it is horrifying. A brilliant little book to read, learn from, and then give to someone you don’t like very much.

 

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On Henry James

My earliest memory of the pleasure which buzzes through the mind while reading Henry James came a little late.

I remember standing among the claustrophic aisles of UQ’s Mayne Library, thumbing through a copy of James’ hard cover critical edition on the life and works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. It was the dissection of The Scarlet Letter which completely sold me. James was both perceptive and persuasive in his criticism. Further, he was very generous. Despite my dissatisfaction some years previous with James’ Turn of the Screw, I now saw this man as a fellow traveller and companion. He spoke my language.

Ten years have passed and I am now even more convinced than ever;  quite simply, he is one of the most rewarding writers in the history of Western Literature.

James was born in the States mid-way through the nineteenth century, though he would settle in London for much of his adult life. A number of his novels play with the clash of the cultures either side of the Atlantic, to which he must have been in some measure privy. Perhaps owing to his immigration, his writing often fits stylistically and thematically within the English Victorian tradition. There is a distinct lack of bravado within James’ canon (unlike a Hawthorne or a Melville). Nevertheless, he is singularly unlike many of his English peers; Henry James has not the fatalism of a Hardy, the gothic touch of the Brontes nor the social consciousness of a Dickens.

His writing is doubly concerned about the interior world of his characters: their domestic environments, their inner psychology. Unlike many authors of his time, the documentation of the quickly changing Western external environment was not one of his major concerns. This is no more exemplified than in the two major novels of his early period – Washington Square and The Portrait of a Lady. Both find their structure arranged around a multitude of dramatic scenes, largely taking place in drawing rooms and secret chambers.

Both of these early novels have significant points of correlation: they revolve around female heroines waylaid by unsympathetic men (a wicked suitor, a domineering father). Despite the many joys of Washington Square (it is consistently witty and immaculately written), Portrait is its far richer, more mature cousin. It is an astonishing read. I hope over the proceeding days to examine Portrait further (with not a small amount of affection).

Before retiring this introduction though, it is worth mentioning that James’ second period (after Portrait) was even more prolific and lauded than his first. However, much of the simplicity of his writing was traded in for prose marked by a new complexity. Novels like Wings of the Dove and The Ambassadors thrived off the semi-colon. The concatenation of myriad upon myriad of phrases and sentences via the-dot-and-squiggle, makes reading him far from a comfortable task. To my mind this is a shame; the many keen observations of human nature and life which James was capable of representing brings some of the greatest joys found in reading literature.

 

 

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Five great films from Woody Allen

A conversation with a friend from church on matters cinematic last Sunday had all the quirks of your classic film nerd discussion: what each of us had been watching, eventually lead to directors, finally landing our unfocused chitter-chatter on Woody Allen.

It got me thinking…what are the desert island picks from Woody’s massive back-catalogue? I’ve chosen five which pretty much ran the gamut, stylistically, of his oeuvre. They also, in my opinion, represent his greatest films…

 

5. Crimes and Misdemeanours  (1989)

Though by the late eighties Allen had not made a film as dramatically toned as this one, Crimes would ultimately become a blueprint for a number of his later, darker films (Match Point). It follows two stories, one a noirish crime narrative, the other a lighter revenge comedy. A big question is asked: how can we as humans leave our sins behind us in the face of moral culpability; the answer is some are forever burdened while others get on with life. The lead character in each (one played by Martin Landau, the other by the director) cross paths in the final scene for a brief but illuminating coda. Martin Landau is fantastic (in an academy award winning role), and the mixture of drama and comedy brings a freshness to the ‘Woody’ perspective.

 

4. Hannah and her Sisters   (1986)

I watched this for the first time today and loved it. Three quite different sisters brought up by showbiz parents, each affected to varying degrees by their dysfunctional up-bringing, live out their complicated relationships and careers. Of all Woody’s films this perhaps has the most pleasing form; each scene is introduced by a cue-card and an interior monologue by one of the main characters. More to the point, neither before or after this has Allen managed to enter into the female perspective with quite as much sympathy and beauty.

 

3. The Purple Rose of Cairo  (1985)

Certainly the most completely self-conscious Woody Allen ever got about the movies. Set in the Great Depression, Purple Rose wants to explain to us why we as creatures are inevitably drawn to the darkened room of the cinema. A woman (played by Mia Farrow) has an argument with her neglectful husband and retreats to see a film – “The Purple Rose of Cairo”. After several repeated viewings a character from the screen crosses the divide between fiction and reality to woo the lonely housewife. Not as hilarious as it sounds, this incredibly entertaining reappropriation of Buster Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr. is a spot-on and poignant analysis of why we watch movies – to escape ourselves and our lives.

 

2. Annie Hall   (1977)

The funniest of all his films and also his most famous. Sadly it is also the most pessimistic of his great films – it leaves a bitter taste. The narrative is a loose assortment of scenes around the theme of relational anxiety and disappointment, yet much of it is laugh out loud funny. The scene in the cinema foyer is so well observed and the subtitled rooftop encounter brilliant. However, it is Christopher Walken who steals the entire movie with some fantastic black comedy you’ll not quickly forget (and want to quote ad nauseam to your friends).

 

1. Manhattan   (1979)

The greatest directing work Woody Allen ever did; it is fitting it should be about one of his always present characters: New York. The black and white cinematography of the illustrious city is luminous. Of all his (or anyone else’s) New York films, this expresses the greatest affection and love. Many scenes are truly breathtaking, simply because they capture New York bathed in a romantic light. Some of the story is sadly prescient (Woody’s character dates a girl 25 years his junior), but this does not linger; it is New York which stays in the memory. A beautiful love poem.

 

 

Honourable mentions:  Husbands and Wives  (1992),  Sleeper  (1973).

 

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