On screen biographies & fictionality.
This is what happens when I watch too much TV! Reviews of fact-based and biographical feature-lengths I saw over the course of 3 days. If only writing my essays was this easy.
Over the past few days, I've totally overloaded on biographical films and feature-length TV films. First up was Toast, a BBC TV adaptation of Nigel Slater's childhood memoir of the same name. Toast' was great. It was a little heartbreaking and a little life affirming - as these things should be. I knew nothing about Nigel Slater before watching it and still know very little and don't care much either. The fact is that Toast is a powerful enough story that it can stand alone without requiring, on the part of the viewer, any interest in the celebrity on whose life it is based. I did not leap up afterwards to google Slater or fact-check - although, in part, this is because the programme was based on Slater's own memoir. I definitely watched it with an awareness that this story was based on an account of the action written by the real-life counterpart of the central character. Always question your narrator and all that.
I was a little more conscious of the fictionality of the next biographical film I watched. Or, at least, that the fictionality of it was more in question and more variable. Where I felt that the story of Slater's childhood had a reasonably solid basis in an autobiographical account, The Social Network definitely felt unstable in its relation to its real-life subjects. As I watched it, I had no idea what the source material for the script was and, of itself, it was a very compelling film. The pacing was good, the characters had interesting motives and didn't seem too oversimplified. In fact, the characters seemed much more rounded than I would have expected in a biographical movie. You would expect a film like The Social Network to be bound up in putting forward an objective, fact-based account. Given that it appears to have used Livejournal posts and court records as one of its major fact bases, you might expect it to be a cardboard recitation of those written records. The Social Network does nothing of the sort. Instead, it seems caught up in creating a Mark Zuckerberg character whose abrasive behaviour (which, one supposes, must be recorded in the abovementioned sources) is explained by Autistic Spectrum traits and an emotional longing for a girl who rejected him. I know there's also a book which forms some of the basis for the film but what I'm trying to say is that the film does not rely on the turgid details of reality and, instead, fictionalises to great effect.
Howl, the recent film adaptation of the Howl obscenity trail, does just the opposite. My first thought was that James Franco did a spectacular job of imitating Ginsberg's voice. Ginsberg's intonation, the rhythms of his speech and dryness of his voice are perfectly captured. I was amazed. Slowly though - which is to say, over the next five minutes or so, - I realised that the key to this was not so much a deep understanding of Ginsberg's voice but a complete mimicry. Almost all of the speech Franco delivers as Ginsberg is merely a reproduction of existing recordings. He reads 'Howl' and the similarity between his and Ginsberg's delivery is remarkable but it's not much more than a cheap trick. The whole of the film has a largely similar dimension to it - it is almost too true. The majority of the material is a reproduction of something which is already recorded. Many of the scenes are acted around photographs which are also shown at the end of the film. This is very cool in one sense but, in another, it takes all of the power out of the film. There is nothing new here. Like Franco's imitations of Ginsberg's voice, the film itself is little more than a recitation. It is a very good recitation, masterful and clever, but it is only that.
The final film in my series is another BBC TV film. This is actually the one I am least certain about the sources of. It was called ‘Eric & Ernie' and was an account of the early lives of Morecambe and Wise, the great TV comedic double act. I got the impression from the documentary that they played after the programme that most of the people working on it were big Morecambe and Wise fans. The biographical film recycled a lot of the double act's real material and mostly seemed to want to recreate the dynamic between the pair as well as exploring the role of Eric Morecambe's mother as their mentor & early manager. It played intelligently with Morecambe and Wise's real TV material and feed off the nation's familiarity with the pair and their feeling, as viewers of the original programmes, that they had actually seen them at home, in bed and in their living room, making breakfast and etc. Eric & Ernie recreated what audiences had previously seen on screen in the lives of the comics off-screen as well as looking at the trials and tribulations of the pair's early career. Its triumph was in how human the characters appeared and in its reproduction of the comedy - two things which you could easily have seen merely watching Morecambe and Wise's TV appearances. But it was a well-realised period piece with wonderful settings and costumes and minor characters who seemed almost as lifelike as the leads.
Right, now I'm off to watch another feature-length BBC production. Don't fear, this one's based on a novel.
Over the past few days, I've totally overloaded on biographical films and feature-length TV films. First up was Toast, a BBC TV adaptation of Nigel Slater's childhood memoir of the same name. Toast' was great. It was a little heartbreaking and a little life affirming - as these things should be. I knew nothing about Nigel Slater before watching it and still know very little and don't care much either. The fact is that Toast is a powerful enough story that it can stand alone without requiring, on the part of the viewer, any interest in the celebrity on whose life it is based. I did not leap up afterwards to google Slater or fact-check - although, in part, this is because the programme was based on Slater's own memoir. I definitely watched it with an awareness that this story was based on an account of the action written by the real-life counterpart of the central character. Always question your narrator and all that.
I was a little more conscious of the fictionality of the next biographical film I watched. Or, at least, that the fictionality of it was more in question and more variable. Where I felt that the story of Slater's childhood had a reasonably solid basis in an autobiographical account, The Social Network definitely felt unstable in its relation to its real-life subjects. As I watched it, I had no idea what the source material for the script was and, of itself, it was a very compelling film. The pacing was good, the characters had interesting motives and didn't seem too oversimplified. In fact, the characters seemed much more rounded than I would have expected in a biographical movie. You would expect a film like The Social Network to be bound up in putting forward an objective, fact-based account. Given that it appears to have used Livejournal posts and court records as one of its major fact bases, you might expect it to be a cardboard recitation of those written records. The Social Network does nothing of the sort. Instead, it seems caught up in creating a Mark Zuckerberg character whose abrasive behaviour (which, one supposes, must be recorded in the abovementioned sources) is explained by Autistic Spectrum traits and an emotional longing for a girl who rejected him. I know there's also a book which forms some of the basis for the film but what I'm trying to say is that the film does not rely on the turgid details of reality and, instead, fictionalises to great effect.
Howl, the recent film adaptation of the Howl obscenity trail, does just the opposite. My first thought was that James Franco did a spectacular job of imitating Ginsberg's voice. Ginsberg's intonation, the rhythms of his speech and dryness of his voice are perfectly captured. I was amazed. Slowly though - which is to say, over the next five minutes or so, - I realised that the key to this was not so much a deep understanding of Ginsberg's voice but a complete mimicry. Almost all of the speech Franco delivers as Ginsberg is merely a reproduction of existing recordings. He reads 'Howl' and the similarity between his and Ginsberg's delivery is remarkable but it's not much more than a cheap trick. The whole of the film has a largely similar dimension to it - it is almost too true. The majority of the material is a reproduction of something which is already recorded. Many of the scenes are acted around photographs which are also shown at the end of the film. This is very cool in one sense but, in another, it takes all of the power out of the film. There is nothing new here. Like Franco's imitations of Ginsberg's voice, the film itself is little more than a recitation. It is a very good recitation, masterful and clever, but it is only that.
The final film in my series is another BBC TV film. This is actually the one I am least certain about the sources of. It was called ‘Eric & Ernie' and was an account of the early lives of Morecambe and Wise, the great TV comedic double act. I got the impression from the documentary that they played after the programme that most of the people working on it were big Morecambe and Wise fans. The biographical film recycled a lot of the double act's real material and mostly seemed to want to recreate the dynamic between the pair as well as exploring the role of Eric Morecambe's mother as their mentor & early manager. It played intelligently with Morecambe and Wise's real TV material and feed off the nation's familiarity with the pair and their feeling, as viewers of the original programmes, that they had actually seen them at home, in bed and in their living room, making breakfast and etc. Eric & Ernie recreated what audiences had previously seen on screen in the lives of the comics off-screen as well as looking at the trials and tribulations of the pair's early career. Its triumph was in how human the characters appeared and in its reproduction of the comedy - two things which you could easily have seen merely watching Morecambe and Wise's TV appearances. But it was a well-realised period piece with wonderful settings and costumes and minor characters who seemed almost as lifelike as the leads.
Right, now I'm off to watch another feature-length BBC production. Don't fear, this one's based on a novel.