Monday Movies ~ Winter's Tale & Olive Kitteridge

As I inched back to what I laughingly call normality last week, we watched a couple of interesting TV items, both on HBO as it happens. 1) the 2014 movie Winter's Tale, an adaptation of a 1983 novel by Mark Helprin; 2) a 4-hour mini-series, Olive Kitteridge, which, though shown in two chunks originally, was repeated on Thursday evening as a single 4-hour marathon, 6pm to 10 pm. This is also a book adaptation from the 2008 novel by Elizabeth Strout.



Winter's Tale

Critics hated it, something that never puts me off, in fact it can be of great encouragement ("nobody ever erected a statue to honour a critic").

I loved the movie. However I can appreciate that it takes a certain kind of... mindset to accept the fantasy, metaphor and mild mysticism involved.

It took a while for us to sort out the "who's who" of it, but that was fun. I'm not going to give the story away - for anyone who is curious, it's not hard to find detail online. I'll just say that it's a love story, set in New York, with a bit of time travel, a bit of magic and, I found, a lot of heart.


The first scene, on Ellis Island in (I think) 1895, shows a young couple with a baby being sent back to the country from whence they came, due to both showing signs of "pulmonary disease", presumably consumption - TB. The woman begs the authorities to keep the baby but they refuse. The couple board their homeward-bound vessel, but before it sets sail someone finds a tiny model ship named "City of Justice", into which the baby is set, then deposited into the river to float to shore.

Both movie and book span the years 1895 to 2014. Hat-tip to the lovely Colin Farrell for a superb and affecting performance.

Most observations on the movie say that the book is way, way better. I don't doubt it! The movie well-satisfied me though - maybe I'm easily pleased!



Olive Kitteridge

This was something else entirely! First, all hats have to be tipped to Frances McDormand who plays Olive - what a jaw-droppingly good actress this woman is!!

The 25-year span of the story takes us inside a marriage, right up close 'til you can almost see the pores of its skin. Not an entirely comfortable experience, and one which will likely hold the interest best of those who have matured sufficiently to recognise some characteristics the story portrays either in themselves or have observed them in others. It's a character study, and a relationship study. These people have complexities layered upon complexity, as do we all.

A slow-moving, densely detailed study of how we affect one another, and how we, in turn, have been affected by others - which then plays in to...well, everything. There's frustration, anger, temptation, danger - and how different personalities are able to deal, each in their own way.

Olive, the title character, the wife, is a very, very rough diamond: hard-edged, harsh-tongued but ultimately a well-meaning, steadfast and caring woman, married to an almost too saintly pharmacist (played beautifully by Richard Jenkins). They have one son, Christopher. They live in a small town in rural Maine, in a house with close views of the beautiful sea - it is just so gorgeous!

Drilling right down into its heart, this also is a love story, but realising as much takes time. I'm glad we saw this mini-series in one long dose - the continuity has to have been helpful to full appreciation. It was well worth the effort to concentrate, for four consecutive hours.

A keen astrologer could find an interesting study allocating possible natal aspects and signs to the lead characters - there are lots of clues, but I'm not going to dare to touch that!

Music Monday ~ Winter's Tales

Sidling past the dozens of choices of Christmas music available at YouTube, but wishing to stay "in season", how about A Winter's Tale sung by David Essex? The song was written by Mike Batt and Tim Rice in 1982 in response to a request from David Essex. I don't know how well the song was known in the USA, my husband had never heard it before - that's not necessarily a useful yardstick, he being a jazz enthusiast (but an avid Beatles fan too).

The song's title has to bring to mind Shakespeare's play, The Winter's Tale, about a jealous king who suspects his pregnant wife of unfaithfulness, imprisons her, banishes the baby girl to whom she gives birth, causes her to be taken to some far shore by his friend. His friend is then killed by a bear. The play contains Shakespeare's most famous, and decidedly quirky, stage direction at this point: "Exit, pursued by a Beare". There's a happy ending though. In the second half of the play, 16 years later, the girl, now a young woman falls in love....and somehow everything comes right in the end. David Essex's song doesn't have a happy ending, though he does seem resigned to his lonely fate.

In Winter's Tale , song or play, the season itself isn't the lead player. Stories known as winter's tales were stories told by firelight during the long dark nights of a medieval winter. In dramatist George Peele's play of 1595, The Old Wives' Tale a woman is asked to "tell a merry winter's tale" to pass the time "trimly". These winter's tales were, it seems, something akin to fairy tales, peopled by kings, queens, princes, princesses, courtiers, peasants, lost children, jealousy, love, death...all that good stuff, but always with a happy ending.

I took the long-winded but scenic route to arrive at this Winter's Tale: the video!



David Essex is still around in the UK, acting, touring, recording. See Wikipedia here. "Essex spent six years as an ambassador for Voluntary Service Overseas, which earned him an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 1999. On that he said: "That was a big day. I took my two eldest kids, and me mum even went out and bought a hat"