Fly By Night and Film-tastic!
Jan. 28th, 2018 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearOne of my Christmas presents was Fly By Night by Francis Hardinge, who seems to be winning a lot of awards for her novels. This is the first in a series about Mosca Mye, a little girl who gets embroiled in national politics and social unrest, accompanied by her faithful goose, Saracen. It opens with two pages of background notes to the world, and then a prologue that contains a potted history of the realm. This is a bold move, putting so much exposition at the very start, but the narrative itself is so well-written and the world so fun and interesting that it mostly works. Things really pick up once we get to Mosca in the present day of the story, fleeing her village with Saracen, after setting her uncle's mill on fire. What I loved most about this book was the language - really masterful description that serves more purposes than just explaining what things look like so doesn't slow down the narrative, inventive and distinctive imagery that adds tremendous colour, and a wonderful way with words, which fits with a protagonist who loves books and whose greatest desire is to expand her vocabularly. The plot flounders a bit in the middle, while Mosca wanders around a very adult world, not really understanding what is going on literarlly over her head, and not really having any agency. But it picks up dramatically towards the end when she decides to take action anyway, and also takes responsibility for the consequences of her previous choices. There's a bit too much explanatory monologuing at the very end, but there are also several satisfying twists, and overall it's tremendous fun. At one point, Mosca says, "I don't want a happy ending. I want more story." Me too! And I shall look forward to reading more of this series.
This weekend, I also watched four films, all of which took me a while to get into, but all of which got better as they went along.
First was The Post, which initially put me off because I wasn't keen on the 70s style direction, and I found it difficult to work out who was who because there were a lot of men in suits and most of them weren't adequately introduced. However, it was an engaging story of government cover-ups and the press fighting to publish political and military secrets. At the centre of it all was Meryl Streep, demonstrating in a somewhat heavy-handed way the difficulties of being a woman in what was considered very much a man's job, as the paper's publisher. I wasn't keen on her hesitant presentation to begin with, but it did add more significance to the moments when she took strong action. Tom Hanks was also excellent as the paper's editor and the film zipped along with lots of tension and intelligence.
Then I watched Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which I mostly found quite horrifying. All the main characters were deeply flawed and showed prejudice of one kind or another, several parts were offensive, shocking, violent or all three, and I really wasn't sure there was much redemption to go around, despite the criticisms that some have thrown at the film. However, it kept my full attention throughout, I was impressed by a lot of the performances, and it was certainly an uncompromising portrayal of real people in difficult circumstances. I think the unsung stand-out was Lucas Hedges as the protagonist's son, quietly and then not so quietly pointing out how much his sister's death and his mother's continuing behaviour are affecting him, the child who is still there.
Next up was Coco, which never really appealed to me for some reason, but kept getting such good reviews, I ended up going to see it anyway. The little boy, Miguel, was engaging and I liked the idea of his fight against his family's banning of music. But I found all the skeleton characters quite off-putting, and the land of the dead didn't really do much for me. However, it must have snuck up on me and got me invested at some point, because I was definitely a bit weepy by the end. Plus, the whole thing was so beautifully rendered, in such intricate and colourful detail, I couldn't help but be impressed.
Last came my favourite film of the weekend - Downsizing. I was apprehensive going in, because I'd read wildly conflicting reviews and couldn't get a handle on what kind of tone to expect. Was it a comedy? A drama? Technology based sci-fi? I was very pleasantly surprised, because what I got was an intelligent social commentary, with important lessons to teach about both big picture global consequences of human action, and the profound way in which we can touch other people's lives on a much smaller scale. The film was very long, and moved quite slowly, changing direction several times and introducing major characters very late, which made for a structure somewhat lacking in cohesion. But Matt Damon's very ordinary Paul held it all together, and I enjoyed following his bewildering journey from financial trouble, through despair and confusion to love and philanthropy.
This weekend, I also watched four films, all of which took me a while to get into, but all of which got better as they went along.
First was The Post, which initially put me off because I wasn't keen on the 70s style direction, and I found it difficult to work out who was who because there were a lot of men in suits and most of them weren't adequately introduced. However, it was an engaging story of government cover-ups and the press fighting to publish political and military secrets. At the centre of it all was Meryl Streep, demonstrating in a somewhat heavy-handed way the difficulties of being a woman in what was considered very much a man's job, as the paper's publisher. I wasn't keen on her hesitant presentation to begin with, but it did add more significance to the moments when she took strong action. Tom Hanks was also excellent as the paper's editor and the film zipped along with lots of tension and intelligence.
Then I watched Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which I mostly found quite horrifying. All the main characters were deeply flawed and showed prejudice of one kind or another, several parts were offensive, shocking, violent or all three, and I really wasn't sure there was much redemption to go around, despite the criticisms that some have thrown at the film. However, it kept my full attention throughout, I was impressed by a lot of the performances, and it was certainly an uncompromising portrayal of real people in difficult circumstances. I think the unsung stand-out was Lucas Hedges as the protagonist's son, quietly and then not so quietly pointing out how much his sister's death and his mother's continuing behaviour are affecting him, the child who is still there.
Next up was Coco, which never really appealed to me for some reason, but kept getting such good reviews, I ended up going to see it anyway. The little boy, Miguel, was engaging and I liked the idea of his fight against his family's banning of music. But I found all the skeleton characters quite off-putting, and the land of the dead didn't really do much for me. However, it must have snuck up on me and got me invested at some point, because I was definitely a bit weepy by the end. Plus, the whole thing was so beautifully rendered, in such intricate and colourful detail, I couldn't help but be impressed.
Last came my favourite film of the weekend - Downsizing. I was apprehensive going in, because I'd read wildly conflicting reviews and couldn't get a handle on what kind of tone to expect. Was it a comedy? A drama? Technology based sci-fi? I was very pleasantly surprised, because what I got was an intelligent social commentary, with important lessons to teach about both big picture global consequences of human action, and the profound way in which we can touch other people's lives on a much smaller scale. The film was very long, and moved quite slowly, changing direction several times and introducing major characters very late, which made for a structure somewhat lacking in cohesion. But Matt Damon's very ordinary Paul held it all together, and I enjoyed following his bewildering journey from financial trouble, through despair and confusion to love and philanthropy.
