non-exploding post

[kindkit]

Last week I rented Railway Man, the second recent Colin Firth film I've watched lately that has made me think Mr. Firth needs to be pickier about the roles he accepts. (The other was The Devil's Knot.) Railway Man isn't a bad film, but it's not as good as I was expecting. It's hampered by a script that has to accommodate people's ignorance of what happened to FEPOWs, and also by the fact that the war-era flashback sections necessarily feature younger actors. Poor Jeremy Irvine has the thankless task of playing young Eric Lomax, which means he has to play Colin Firth playing Eric Lomax, and while he tries valiantly his performance feels constrained. The most thankless task, though, goes to Nicole Kidman as Lomax's wife Patti, who in the script isn't so much a person as a romantic fantasy and a catalyst.

More seriously, the story suffers from the biopic tendency to idolize its subject, to the point where it's sort of implied that Eric Lomax's suffering was uniquely terrible. The appalling conditions for all the POWs on the railway are de-emphasized, and there's a near-pornographic focus on the details of Lomax's torture at the hands of the Kempitai: the climactic plot moment involves the revelation of what exactly was done to him. Worse, the story veers into actively offensive by making a big moment out of Lomax's former torturer saying "you never surrendered," implying the terrible old trope that only weak, non-admirable people "break" under torture.

Railway Man certainly has some powerful moments (I cried at the end, I admit it) and Colin Firth is as excellent as always, but the movie as a whole suffers from a failure of nerve, or maybe more like a failure of intelligence, an inability to get beyond clichés and explore its subject in a genuinely thoughtful way.



Also recently watched: Philby, Burgess, and Maclean, a 1977 Granada production starring Alan Bate as Philby, Derek Jacobi as Burgess, and Michael Culver (who played Major Brandt in Secret Army) as Maclean. The script is a bit stodgy and the music and other effects are almost hilariously overdramatic, but the acting is good. Jacobi gives Burgess a louche charm, and Culver is amazing as the unstable, doubting Maclean. Philby, the sanest character and therefore the least interesting, is unfortunately the focus of the story and I don't think Bate (not helped by the script) quite conveys a sense of hidden depths. Not something I can recommend unreservedly, but worth it if you're a fan of any of the actors, and there are standout scenes with Burgess and Maclean together and of Maclean's wife confronting Burgess.

And now, a pairings meme! Grabbed from flo_nelja.



1) my “FOREVER” pairing

I assume, given the next question, that "forever" means "pairing I've loved for ages and will probably love forever," so: Ralph and Laurie from The Charioteer. I am, as I've said before, completely irrational about them. They will stay together all their lives and they will be reasonably happy and Laurie didn't come back to Ralph out of pity, damn it!


2) my “sometimes” pairing (if I’m in the mood)

Right now I'd say it's MCU Steve/Bucky. I didn't love either of the Captain America movies, but there's fic that's better than the movies. This is a pairing where I want grim/dark/angsty (but usually with a happy ending) because the backstory is so bleak, so I have to be in the mood for it.


3) my “friends-with-benefits” pairing

Dick Player and Paul von Eissinger from Colditz. Paul's only in one episode, but his scenes with Dick are full of burning UST and troubled, impossible affection.


4) my “adele” pairing (“WE COULD HAVE HAD IT AAAAAALL”)

Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr, especially in XMFC and DoFP (which I don't see as in continuity with X1-3). Love at first sight, happiness that terrifies them both, and then disaster.


5) my “angst” pairing

Harold Finch/Nathan Ingram from Person of Interest. All angst all the time, happy endings precluded.


6) my “hate sex” pairing

I'm not usually interested in pairing people who I think genuinely hate each other (e.g. Harry/Draco). Love/hate pairings, on the other hand, I will eat up with a big spoon. There are a lot of options in this category, but I'll pick Giles/Ethan (BtVS) since their onscreen interactions show the hate strongly, the love less so.


7) my “working on it” pairing

Harold Finch/John Reese from POI. They've had a lovely long arc of growing closer, with some missteps along the way and some things they have actually had to work on.


8) my favorite threesome

I like the idea of an early Wimseyverse Peter/Bunter/Charles Parker threesome, but I don't think anyone's ever written one.


9) my “crack” pairing

This is not only cracky but features a crossover between two obscure fandoms: Biggles/Owen Triggers. Biggles is from the Biggles books, obviously, and Triggers is from the British TV series Wings. They're both RFC pilots during the First World War, and someday the fic fairy will grant my wish and there'll be a story where they meet and fall in love while in hospital suffering from "war neurosis."


10) my poly relationship

Poly's not really my thing even in fandoms where it's common (e.g. Top Gear, a fandom in which I sojourned briefly before running away as fast as I could). But there's an exception: if all the relevant parties had lived, Scott/Jean/Logan would have solved a lot of problems and, I think, made them all happy. Provided, mind you, that Scott and Logan were sleeping together and not just "sharing" Jean; the latter would make everything worse, in my opinion, whereas the Scott/Logan axis would stabilize the whole thing.


11) my ace pairing or aro/queerplatonic partnership

Also not a thing I'm really into. Or does "queerplatonic" mean friendship between queer characters? I'm into that! (halotolerant and I have a huge shared-headcanon thing in which the characters from a bunch of WWII stories all become friends postwar and hang out together and possibly start an underground queer newsletter ca. 1953.)


12) my “i love it but don’t want it to happen” pairing

I'm hard pressed to think of one, because it's not like m/m pairings become canon so often that I want to oppose even one! On the other hand, I do worry about how certain pairings would be written if they ever did become canon, such as Sherlock/John and, in a rare non-m/m example, Shaw/Root from POI. I think there's actually half a chance that Shaw/Root might happen, but I worry like hell that it would be a sweeps week lesbian kiss.


13) my “it started out crack but now it’s serious and i regret everything” pairing

I regret nothing, but when I was in the Buffyverse I got very seriously into a pairing, Giles/Oz, that most people would think of as cracky, considering they talk to each other maybe twice in canon.


14) my endgame pairing

I am choosing to interpret "endgame" as "end of the world," and therefore I'll say Troy/Abed from Community, if only because of this excellent Troy/Abed zombie apocalypse story (warning: bleak).


15) my “across time and space they will always find each other” pairing

I'm going to be literal-minded about this and say Doctor/Master, because they do and we've seen it happen over and over. It hasn't ended well so far, but someday!


16) my “settling for second choice” pairing

I . . . actually feel a bit like this about Harold/John (POI), in the sense that I think Harold was in love with Nathan for his entire adult life and that neither the love nor the grief is ever going to go away. I do genuinely ship Harold/John, and I don't think Harold thinks of John as second best, but if canon were to answer my fondest hopes and Nathan turned up alive again and gave Harold a big kiss, I think Harold would, after much agonizing and guilt, choose him over John.

Comments

[starlady]

So…I have a totally random question about Railway Man which you might be able to answer. Does it have shots of late 1940s/early 1950s British trains?

[kindkit]

Not that I recall. We do see some British trains (Lomax describes himself as a "railway enthusiast") but they're 1980s ones. Colin Firth's part of the film is set in the 80s, with the flashbacks in Singapore and Thailand during the war.

[(Anonymous)]

I never finished Wings but I adore Owen Triggers. He was at least twice as good as the series he appeared in. He was almost enough to make me plough through to the end, but not quite.

[kindkit]

Yeah, without Triggers the show wouldn't be worth watching, really. You should try to make it to the end, though, because there are important Triggers-related developments in the last few episodes.