Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Preview Screening

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies offers exactly what the title promises, but little more. It is the familiar Regency England of Jane Austen’s world: balls, etiquette, chivalry, but with the added issue of rotting corpses which stalk the countryside. Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel of the same name takes the famous romance of feisty Elizabeth Bennet and moody Mr Darcy and places it in a world at the mercy of an insidious zombie outbreak. Life goes on for the aristocracy with romance, marriage and gossip, but young ladies are taught to hide knives in their corsets and stockings, while gentlemen must keep a musket on hand at all times.

This admittedly bizarre concept has given rise to a similarly ridiculous film, but one which at least harbours no illusions about being a serious literary adaptation. The scenes which use the differences between the original Pride and Prejudice and the horror reimagining subtly make up the most effective, amusing parts of the film. For example, an early sequence in which the Bennet sisters chatter excitedly about an upcoming ball while polishing their weapons at the same time is subversive and slick. Another interesting aspect of the social differences of the era is also created. Those who can afford it receive zombie combat training in Japan, while those who cannot settle for lessons in China. The charming young cast includes Lily James, Bella Heathcote and Jack Huston, who elevate the production with likeable performances. The stand out role, however, goes to Matt Smith, whose bumbling and awkward Mr Collins steals every scene he is in with hilarious physical comedy and improvised one-liners which brought the house down several times.

Despite these commendable aspects, however, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is never sure what mood to create, and tonal missteps in both romantic and action scenes lose their effectiveness accordingly. The bloody fight scenes are not translated well to a period setting, and appear muddled and over the top. Fans of Grahame-Smith’s novel will be satisfied, but Austen herself will be turning in her grave - which would ironically make her a zombie.

Film Review: Doctor Zhivago + BFI Love

'Turbulent were the times and fiery was the love story of Zhivago, his wife, and the passionate, tender Lara.' Thus gushes the original tagline of Doctor Zhivago, David Lean's rambling 1965 epic, which follows the difficult life of poet and physician Yuri Zhivago. Entering and exiting the story at various intervals are his long-suffering wife Tonya and his mistress Lara, who struggles under the desires of Victor Komarovsky, a rich businessman with dubious motives.

Despite a lengthy runtime of 200 minutes, this is but a fraction of the extensive narrative first published in 1957 by Russian novelist Boris Pasternak. The film misses many crucial details of the original novel, bookended by a cliché Hollywood framing device which provides the rather bleak tale with some sense of satisfying closure. Such trims cause the motivations of many of the characters to be difficult to understand. Zhivago's forgiving nature and romantic soul seem constantly at odds with the cold cynical world around him, and his wife seems impossibly accepting that he should suddenly leave her for another woman. Lara's desire for the corpulent Komarovsky is played too safe to be believable. Lean's attention to detail, however, is meticulous, and still stands up after fifty years despite the picture-postcard portrayal of a bloody revolution. Maurice Jarre's 'Lara's Theme' is iconic, if repetitive.

In the end, strangled by Production Code censorship, Lean's film rings emotionally cold compared with the charged remake from 2002. But it is nonetheless a classic, a triumph of colossal set design, daring vision and the clout of the studio budget. Its melancholy comes from the memory of the recently late Omar Sharif, his death echoing the film itself which heralded the end of the age of sweeping epics made to be seen on the big screen. I am glad I got to see it up there when I did, thanks to the BFI's Love season here.

Love is Patriotic... Wider Reading 16: Henry V

It is a commonly held belief that Shakespeare's Henry V was the first to be performed at the new Globe Theatre in the spring of 1599. Since then, the story of the victor of Agincourt has been performed and adapted many times, with the dashing king as a prominent historical figure. Many types of love are explored within the play, the most obvious of which is patriotism and love of one's country. When Henry calls for his army to "Follow [their] spirit, and upon this charge / Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!" they are portraying their strength in terms of their love for England and its king. During the play Henry also experiences the loss of many of his friends and family members, who he remembers gratefully as loving him as a man despite his high status.

Henry's wooing of Katherine - or as he calls her, Kate - at first superficially appears to be the charming comical awkwardness of a soldier talkinh to an aristocratic lady. But Katherine knows that "the tongues of men are full of deceits", and for all his insistences on lacking eloquence Henry's speech is lengthy and highbrow. Katherine asks, "Is it possible dat I sould love de enemie of France?". To the king, and probably most others, the match with Katherine is a marriage of national conquest, not of human love. Henry is obliged to answer that he is not the enemy of France - quite the opposite. That this marriage is about rapacity for land rather than love is clear from Henry's rhapsodizing about France itself. At best, after some banter about the language barrier, "I love thee cruelly", he protests, letting slip a Janus-faced adjective. He believes calling her "a good soldier-breeder" is an appeal to maternal instincts.

After substantially more dissertation from Henry, Katherine punctures the hypocrisy of all this - the pretense that any fate is in her hands - by noting that the match is entirely up to her father. Although the Princess and Alice insist it is not French custom for ladies to kiss before marriage, Henry kisses her. The French nobles return, and Burgundy explains Katherine's resistence as maidens' natural modesty regarding Cupid. Henry declares, "Yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and enforces". Historically, Henry married Catherine de Valois on 2 June 1420. Here, it may not be so much a marriage as a rape dressed up in ceremony. With the French conceding all, the "conquest" is achieved and all look forward, incorrectly as the audience knows, to a lasting peace.

Henry v - Quotations

Love is Everlasting... Wider Reading 15: Les Misérables

I dreamed a dream of blogs gone by, so went up to my castle on a cloud, sat at an empty chair at an empty table, looked down and saw red and black. So I decided to do a Les Misérables post. Victor Hugo began writing Les Misérables twenty years before its eventual publication in 1862, when he was still in exile. His goals in writing the novel were as lofty as the reputation it has subsequently acquired; it is primarily a great humanitarian work which encourages compassion and hope in the face of adversity and injustice. It is also, however, a historical novel of great scope and analysis, and it provides a detailed vision of nineteenth-century French politics and society. In publishing it, Hugo hoped it would provide inspiration for a more democratic future, for France and for the world.

Les Misérables employs Hugo’s style of imaginative realism and is set in an artificially created human hell which emphasizes the major predicaments of the nineteenth century. Many of the major characters in the novel symbolize one of these predicaments. Jean Valjean represents the degradation of man in the proletariat, and the voicelessness and injustice of the legal system of the time. His hunter, policeman Javert, is the overzealous authority who forget their real duties in the fever of the chase. Fantine represents the subjection of women through hunger, and the predicament of those who are judged unfairly. Finally, Cosette represents the atrophy of the child by darkness, but she also represents hope, the only real hope for life and love in the entire novel.

Hugo makes the contrast between good and evil transparently clear through visual imagery, referring to the men in terms of light and dark. The Bishop of Digne, M. Myriel, who trusts in and hopes for other people, operates in light, whereas the mistrustful Valjean operates under cover of darkness. The tension between light and dark reaches a peak when Valjean stops to look at Myriel before stealing his silver. As Valjean plans his theft, the clouds darken the sky; he then sees Myriel’s face in a beam of moonlight. Finally, we see Valjean standing in the shadows while he breaks into the cabinet of silver. In this description, Hugo uses pathetic fallacy. As Valjean contemplates stealing the silver, the sky is dark, as if it were frowning upon the crime he is about to commit. Once Valjean approaches Myriel, however, everything becomes light, as if Myriel were radiating purity and goodness. By using this technique of pathetic fallacy, Hugo is able to pass judgment on his characters and their actions without ever breaking the narrative voice.

Many types of love are explored within Les Misérables. It is implied that Valjean is in love with Fantine, risking his life to rescue and protect her and her daughter. Both of them have strong parental love for Cosette, who seems to elicit this emotion from many people who meet her. Later in the novel, a young revolutionary named Marius falls in love with her, and the two begin a secret relationship which must be hidden from Valjean. Marius in fact is so besotted with Cosette that he is blind to the feelings of Eponine, who has loved him for many years without his notice

Les Miserables - Quotations

Love is Unlucky... Wider Reading 13: Anna Karenina

All good blogs are alike; every bad blog is bad in its own way, though I hope Tolstoy would have liked this one. Almost every aspect of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy’s life is incorporated into Anna Karenina; the loss of his mother at a young age, his social awkwardness, antimilitaristic sentiments, his courtship of his wife, contact with peasants, and his overwhelming awareness of the power of death. This novel, his second most famous after War and Peace, is often viewed as the turning point in Tolstoy’s career, the point at which he shifted away from fiction and toward faith. The tug-of-war between these two forces helps create the rich portrait of Anna, whom Tolstoy both disapproves of and loves.

The novel explores the rich tapestry of mankind’s capacity for love, set against the opulent backdrop of the twilight of the Russian Empire. Despite the elegant settings, danger lurks and around every corner is the constant reminder that this powerful, precarious world is soon to drop. An impoverished train worker is killed; a privileged man who has seen the crisis coming leaves his duties to work with the commoners. The novel, however, centres on the lives and loves of families inhabiting the high societies of St Petersburg and Moscow. Anna is the wife of the respected but dull Minister Karenin. What love she lacks in her marriage she lavishes on her only son, Seryozha, and later her affair with handsome cavalry officer Count Vronsky. Meanwhile Anna’s brother, Oblonsky, is experiencing marriage troubles of his own. Dissatisfied with his wife’s fading attractiveness, he has been caught with the governess and must repent his infidelity. His wife’s young sister Kitty, at the same time, has her heart broken by Vronsky as he chooses Anna over her, but finds happiness in her friend and suitor, Levin.

In his depiction of Anna’s appearance at the train station during her first meeting with Vronsky, Tolstoy emphasizes Anna’s spiritual rather than physical attributes. This method of characterizing her is important, for it reinforces from the very beginning that although Tolstoy may harshly condemn adultery on an abstract level, he does not portray Anna as a passion-crazed vixen—as popular novels of the time often represented the straying wife. The parallel structure of Anna’s and Levin’s story lines was one of Tolstoy’s strokes of genius in composing Anna Karenina. Their stories begin on very different notes: Anna finds love with Vronsky just at the moment when Levin loses love with Kitty. Anna’s decision to act on her feelings brings her thrills and excitement, whereas Levin’s decision brings him dejection and depression. Both Anna and Levin seek truth in their personal relationships, unwilling to settle for anything less. Anna discovers that she would prefer to suffer with her true love rather than continue to lead a life of lies and deceit with a man she does not love. Her = unconventional actions are prompted by a desire not for rebellion for its own sake but for absolute sincerity in her emotional life. Similarly, Levin, after Kitty’s rebuff, does not go after the next girl on his list but resigns himself to eternal bachelorhood and withdraws to the country. Like Anna, Levin wants all or nothing in love.

Anna Karenina - Quotations

Love is Important... Wider Reading 11: A Woman of No Importance

A Woman of No Importance" is witty Victorian writer Oscar Wilde doing what he does best - portraying gatherings of 19th Century high socialites delivering egocentric quips on the trivialities of their daily lives, with an omnipresent underlying commentary on society's often dubious morals and ethics. The members of the party accumulate to engage in frivolous commentary on themselves and each other, determined to outwit one another while maintaining an air of boredom at all times. Sometimes described as Wilde's weakest, yet unfailingly most famous dramatic works, the play is bursting with dramatic irony, rhetoric strategies and humorous witticisms. Oscar Wilde produces a great play with subtle sentiment and an underlying theme of good triumphing over bad.

The main theme is obviously that of the "fallen" woman who becomes, in the eyes of society, "a woman of no importance." It is a subject which often occupied other Victorian writers and artists, such as Christina Rossetti and Mary Gaskell. They were acutely aware that the men who seduced and abandoned often naïve girls were still welcomed into society, while for the woman it meant social and often financial ruin. If she was pregnant, her child would be illegitimate, and she herself disgraced. Wilde felt strongly that men and women should be treated equally when it came to sexual matters. It is a main topic of "Lady Windermere’s Fan" as well as here. As several writers have suggested, it is not difficult to see that a concealed sin and a plea for forgiveness might well reflect Wilde’s own situation in a society where his homosexuality ultimately made him an outcast.

There has been criticism levelled at Wilde about this play which suggests that the witty, clever repartee of the society characters sits very uneasily with the impassioned rhetoric of the ‘moral’ characters, and that either the drama drives out the wit or the epigrams are somehow passing the time for the audience in between the dramatic episodes. Some modern critics, however, have shown that because Wilde’s dialogue is both clever and enjoyable, it is possible to miss the underlying satirical implications that fit in very well with the more serious themes of the play. For example, Lord Illingworth’s apparently trivial comments, if analysed, contain echoes of the situation in which he left Gerald’s mother – out of society – but there is also a foreshadowing of the ending of the play in which the power of women and the need for their backing is amply demonstrated. This careful crafting so that moral and social comment are masked by seemingly trivial cleverness, is true of much of this type of dialogue, which is used to reveal characters and attitudes.

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A Woman of No Importance - Quotations

Love is Russian... Wider Reading 10: Doctor Zhivago

Doctor Zhivago is an epic, a romance, and a history. In the course of Yuri’s life, the modern history of Russia is revealed. He is born under czarist rule but lives through World War I, the Revolution, and the Civil War. He begins life as the member of a wealthy family, but is reduced to poverty by his father’s alcoholism. He remains a member of the intelligentsia, and he focuses his attention on questions of philosophy and religion. The revolution changes the face of Russian society, and he finds that his family history and his status as a doctor make him suspicious to the people who come to power. Yuri seems destined for a tragic end, and, ultimately, his life is characterized by brief moments of happiness surrounded by periods of darkness. He finds all of his convictions challenged, and is torn from all of the people he loves. After his death, Yuri leaves behind children born to three different women, all destined for different fates: exile is possible, poverty is probable, but uncertainty is certain.

Boris Pasternak’s epic tale about the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath was not permitted publication in the Soviet Union until 1987. One of the results of its release in the West was Pasternak's complete rejection by Soviet authorities; when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 he was compelled to decline it, or risk leaving his beloved Russia forever. The book quickly became an international best-seller. Doctor Yuri Zhivago, Pasternak's alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks. The poetry he composes constitutes some of the most beautiful writing in the novel.

The first image of the novel - Yura crying over his mother's grave--creates a sense of morbid expectation. The further knowledge of his father's lost fortune, revealed by the scene in the train, adds suspense. This is compounded by several shifts in time and location that occur. Pasternak draws the story line of Misha into the novel by describing his boredom and irritability, together with his dissatisfaction at being Jewish. When the man who kills himself is revealed to be Zhivago, the realization is both a means of integrating the different story lines and establishing the time flow of the novel. It is clear that Zhivago had a story to tell and that it was closely linked to the lives of Yura and his mother, though he has not seen them for some time. Early on, Pasternak establishes a sense of things unravelling backward through time, by revealing details about the past as the action of the novel marches forward.

Doctor Zhivago - Quotations

Love is Scandalous... Wider Reading 7: The School for Scandal

Richard Sheridan's comedy was first performed in 1777 and focuses on the superficial intrigues and scandals of the overfed, underworked upper classes of Georgian England, centring around two young brothers. Joseph Surface is hypocritical, "a sentimental knave," but popular in society. His brother Charles is considered to be a wastrel, who squanders his uncle's fortune in gambling, but is morally decent and generous, and greatly desired by the duplicitous Lady Sneerwell. Both men want to marry Maria, an heiress and ward of Sir Peter Teazle. Maria, however, prefers Charles over Joseph. In order to detach the couple, Lady Sneerwell and Joseph spread rumors about an affair between Charles and Lady Teazle, Sir Peter's extravagant new wife. Meanwhile, Sir Oliver Surface, newly returned from the East Indies, assumes various disguises in a vanity project to test his nephews' characters. Misunderstandings, mistaken identities, gossip, and bad behaviour abound in this comedy of manners.

One of Sheridan's most famous plays, The School for Scandal disparages the behaviour and customs of the upper classes through witty dialogue and an intricate plot, with comic, farcical situations which expose the shortcomings of the individuals involved. These C=characters consist almost entirely of stock types — the bore, the flirt, the gossip, the wastrel, the rich uncle, etc.—rather than individuals with unique qualities. Comedies of manners in Sheridan's time typically avoided the romantic sentimentality that characterized many other stage dramas of the eighteenth century. The author mainly satirizes malicious gossip and hypocrisy in the fashionable society of 1770s London. Underlying the comedy, however, is a serious theme: condemnation of the odious practice of slander and, in the case of the written letters, libel. Spreading scandal was commonplace in London's high society at this time, when conversation in drawing rooms, at balls, in spas, and across card tables was a form of entertainment.

Amid all the wrongdoing in the play, it is it is worth commenting upon the moral resolve of Maria, and, to a lesser extent, Charles. She refuses to gossip and repeatedly denounces the practice. She tells Mrs. Candour, "'Tis strangely impertinent for people to busy themselves so [with gossip]." Maria also steadfastly refuses to become involved with Joseph Surface even though her legal guardian, St. Peter Teazle, pressures her to do so. For his part, Charles Surface, despite his extravagance and devil-may-care lifestyle, refuses to compromise the basic goodness that defines his character. In particular, he refuses to sell the portrait of his benefactor and uncle even though the bidder, Sir Oliver in the guise of Mr. Premium, offers him a large sum of money. Moreover, even though he has little money left to support his wastrel ways, he contributes a generous sum to the destitute Mr. Stanley.

The School for Scandal - quotes.docx by

Love is a Journey... Wider Reading 6: Song of Achilles

Greece - in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles's mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfil his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

Despite its fame, the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus is one that has puzzled scholars and readers for hundreds of years. It is hard to make a character like Achilles, who drags his enemy's body around the beseiged Troy several times a day sympathetic - especially to modern eyes. This is the writers challenge in this novel, and for the most part she succeeds convincingly by taking his story back to its roots, and imagining the development of Achilles' relationship with his beloved Patroclus. Using the latter's gentle narrative voice, Miller deftly paints the picture of a boy, and later a man, in love, and the way in which he is stunned and grateful for that love being returned.

Although not explicitly stated in Homer's epic "The Iliad," some accounts have placed the two men, always depicted at least as close friends, in a homosexual relationship and it is on this that the novel rests. Its strengths lie not so much in evoking the passionate love story, although the writer does so elegantly, but in creating an almost distressingly real setting in the 'age of Heroes' - despite the matter-of-fact intervention of gods and the lauding of values that seem alien to modern eyes. The argument between Achilles and Agamemnon evolves from a petty spat between raging warlords into an inevitable clash of personalities driven by prophecy, love and loss.

Love is Unquantifiable... Wider Reading 5: Sonnet 43

Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning was initially unwilling to publish her collection of 44 love sonnets, feeling that they were too personal. Her husband Robert Browning, however, persuaded her that they were the best sequence of English sonnets to be written since Shakespeare, and the collection was published under the title "Letters from the Portugese."

Sonnet 43 mainly describes Browning's love for her husband, and there are many examples of the romantic, unquantifiable love which she must have felt. The sonnet is the length of a traditional one, that is, 14 lines but otherwise does not conform to the traditional rules of the form. The rhyme scheme is fairly irregular and flexible, and Browning often makes use of assonance, for example "Praise" and "Faith". Strikingly so, because the poem is about defining one's love, and yet it avoids perfection. The sonnet liberally employs repetitive language; "I love thee" is used eight times, reflecting the persistent nature of the poet's love. This could also suggest breathlessness and excitement. Repetition is also used in a list on line 2 "depth and breadth and height". To suggest that one could measure this love is to imply that it is comprehensive and all-encompassing.

The poem also has a religious element underlying the sentimentalities - perhaps the poet has exchanged the worship of God for devotion to a much earthlier being. Interestingly, Browning also compares herself to men - "I love thee freely, as men strive for Right", possibly implying that if she were a strong man she could love him more.

Sonnet 43 - quotations by