Mark Haddon: Swimming and Flying - Oxford Playhouse, 23 September

Mark Haddon was at the Oxford Playhouse on Friday performing a talk/essay especially written for the occasion, in support of the Playhouse‘s fundraising appeal. Haddon was alone on a stage set up for another play to be shown later that evening, there to deliver what was ostensibly an autobiographical talk, but what turned out to be a very intricately written, extremely engaging, and ultimately quite moving, work of poetry.

He ranged from school days, playing darts badly in the common room, to the moon landing, to strange fan mail after the success of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, via recitations of Henry David Thoreau and Louis MacNeice, with a bit of his own poetry seamlessly woven in.

As well as being an author, Mark Haddon also teaches students how to write, and he explained how he tells them that specific details are what brings writing to life, but that the gaps that the writer creates for the reader to fill are just as important. He subtly illustrated his own point by flowing undetectably from his own poem, Great White, about a terror of sharks, to a story about how he loves to swim in the Thames. This story wove in and out of another story about how he tried to combat his fear of flying by learning to fly himself. He would keep returning to these stories, and to a particular image of a single drop of rain on a floating feather, teasing poignancy out of the seemingly mundane.

Haddon managed to create a sense of wonder in tiny details, and clearly never wanted to lose his own sense of wonder at the universe. In writing, and in his approach to life, he said that it is not so much the answers that matter, but understanding the enormity of the questions. If said questions are being asked by Mark Haddon then I certainly want to listen.


Original review here

Warrior ***'

Warrior.  Grr.  It's manly.  It's tough.  It features a Tom Hardy so beefy his shoulders have shoulders.  But how will it fare in the ring against what is widely regarded (by me) as the best sports film ever made: Cool Runnings?  GO TO WAR!

Round 1: The Sport.  Bobsleigh vs Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)
Cool Runnings and Warrior are both about sport.  As sports films go, this is a good start.  But, even better, they are both about slightly obscure sport.  I don't care about football, or boxing, or baseball (apart from that one with Madonna.  And Field of Dreams, of course).  But bobsleigh - that's exciting.  It's a bit exotic and glamorous, in a lycra-clad sort of way.  And mixed martial arts?  That's even more exciting and mysterious.  Who's heard of mixed martial arts?  Oh, except for the fact that it is also known as cage fighting.  (I searched for cage fighting on wikipedia and got redirected to the MMA page, so it must be true).  And cage fighting makes me think of Alex Reid, ex-husband of Jordan, and it therefore rapidly loses its mysterious charm.

Round 1 to Cool Runnings.

Round 2: The Coach.  John Candy vs Nick Nolte
Every sports film worth its stripes needs a down and out coach who is offered a second chance at glory.  Cool Runnings has Irv Blitzer (John Candy), a disgraced former bobsledding gold medallist (this thought alone has to be worth extra points) who gets approached by the Jamaican bobsleigh team to coach them to victory at the Olympics.

Warrior has Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte), a disgraced former fighting coach who is approached by his estranged son, beefy Tom Hardy, to train him up for Sparta, the big MMA competition.  He's also an alcoholic.  He's also also the father of the other fighter we care about as well.  Ooh, juicy.

I just can't call it between them.  Round 2 has to be a draw.

Round 3: We're Gonna Need a Montage

All present and correct in both films.

Round 3 is a draw.

Round 4: Unlikely success of the underdog
Cool Runnings has the Jamaican bobsleigh team.  I think that's all we need to know.

Warrior has beefy Tom Hardy's brother, Brendan.  He's a school teacher.  He doesn't belong here.  He's just in it for the money so his family don't lose their home.  How can he possibly make it through round 1?  Trouble is, we know from the trailer that he gets to the final, so that he and his brother can sort out all their family problems by punching each other to near-unconsciousness.  So when Brendan meets Russian man mountain Koba, who we are told he can't possibly beat, it's not that much of a surprise when he does.

And Cool Runnings has the Jamaican bobsleigh team.  Round 4 to Cool Runnings

Round 5: The Pep Talk


Cool Runnings: "I see pride.  I see power.  I see a bad ass mother who won't take no crap off nobody."

YES.  Inspirational.  I try to use it as my own personal mantra when I'm not so overwhelmed by doubt that I forget how to form words.

Warrior: "You can do this"

Oh.  Um.  Quiet determination has its place as well I suppose...

ROUND 5, AND VICTORY, TO COOL RUNNINGS (because an MMA title fight has five rounds, and we want to do this authentically don't we?  Otherwise what is the point of this slightly laboured fight metaphor?)

But a quick pep talk in the corner for Warrior, while it catches its breath and has some water and an orange segment.  In most sports films, we follow one competitor, root for them all the way, and hope that they will win in the final.  But in Warrior our sympathies are pretty evenly split between the two finalists, and it is much more interesting than the average sports film for it.  Yes, it's been bashed about a bit by Cool Runnings, but come on, it's held its own.  There's no shame in coming second to perfection.

Beautiful Lies (De vrais mensonges ) ***

If you’re looking for a bit of mindless escape for a couple of hours, you can do much worse than Beautiful Lies. You can probably do quite a lot better too, but in terms of undemanding, frothy rom-coms, this one doesn’t fare too badly.

Audrey Tautou plays Emilie, a salon owner, who receives an anonymous love letter. In order to cheer up her mother, who is still struggling to get over the breakdown of her marriage a couple of years ago, Emilie secretly forwards the letter on to her. The audience know, but Emilie does not, that the letter is from Jean, the salon handyman. Wacky circumstances result in Emilie eventually paying Jean to take out the mother, and love triangle ‘hilarity’ ensues.

Regarding said love triangle hilarity, I did have some issues with a mother and daughter being romantically involved with the same man, and at times the light hearted tone sat strangely with the manipulative actions of Emilie, but maybe this is just my uptight Englishness ruining the French fun.

There are plenty of laughs to be had, despite the reservations, and Audrey Tautou manages to bring charm to a pretty unsympathetic character. Saying that, I could probably watch her watch paint dry and find her delightful.

Go expecting Amelie and you will be sorely disappointed. This doesn’t have a fraction of the warmth and heart of that film. But if you seek amusing, beautiful-looking distraction, and perhaps inspiration for a holiday on the Cote d'Azur, then this will do the job. Don’t expect to remember it ten minutes after the end of the credits though.


Original review here