Good Omens

It's the 30th anniversary of the publication of Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. For many of my friends, this is a very important and beloved book. I actually only finally read it this year, though I did listen to the radio version from a few years back - I somehow never quite caught the Pratchett bug in the way many others did. It feels more like Pratchett than Gaiman, particularly with the footnotes, but I think Gaiman had yet to find his own voice as a novelist (his first solo novel, Neverwhere, is heavily influenced by his friend Douglas Adams).

It's a perfectly fine and enjoyable novel. But it didn't quite grab me the way it's evidently grabbed others. I feel that perhaps it has suffered, for me, from the weight of expectations built up from what everyone else had said about it.

I read the novel because the tv series hit the BBC this year. That also came with a lot of baggage in terms of what people who saw it on Amazon last year thought of it - everybody loved it, as the perfect version of the novel that they also loved. Well, I'm pleased to say that I also love the series.  It's mostly a faithful adaptation, but Gaiman, who wrote the screenplay and oversaw the whole project, has at least been prepared to make changes where he felt it was necessary.

Most significantly, the balance of the story has shifted. The novel is fairly well split between the three converging stories of Adam Young and his friends, the demon Crowley and the Angel Aziraphale, and Anathema Device and Newton Pulsifer. Twenty-nine years later, Gaiman has evidently decided that it's actually the Crowley and Aziraphale show. Everyone else still gets their stories, but Crowley and Aziraphale get more. Only they get new scenes, giving their back story, and a new ending to the story.

It helps that both roles are perfectly cast. The radio series did okay, with Mark Heap as Aziraphale and Peter Serafinowicz, but TV gets Michael Sheen and David Tennant. Tennant in particular is on fire, often literally so, and Sheen plays off against him perfectly. There are some good turns in the rest of the cast - an almost unrecognisable Michael McKean as Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell, and a non-annoying performance by Jack Whitehall. And making Frances McDormand's voice of God the narrator is a touch of genius. I could do without Benedict Cumberbatch's voice of an unconvincing CGI Satan, but that's the only slight misstep, and I can forgive that for everything else (including the constant Doctor Who jokes). Very much recommended. And you should also seek out the new 'Lockdown' mini-episode.  

Good Omens was 2020 Books #3 and 2020 Movies #3.

2020 Movies #2: Boadicea

Boadicea. UK; dir. Sinclair Hill; scr. Anthony Asquith and Sinclair Hill; starring Phyllis Neilson-Terry, Lillian Hall-Davis and Clifford McLaglen; British Instructional Films; 1927

This is, at the moment, the earliest screen depiction of Roman Britain of which I am aware. It very much presents itself as 'authentic' - an opening caption proclaims that '[M]any incidents in this story were reconstructed in the neighbourhood where they actually occurred.' But this is misleading. Many incidents presented in this short movie have been invented for dramatic purposes, and sometimes flatly contradict the sources - so, for instance, Colchester is depicted with walls and gates, which Tacitus explicitly says it did not have.

It's still interesting (though clearly done on a shoestring budget). Phyllis Neilson-Terry, niece of the famous Ellen Terry, plays a more matronly Boadicea than some later portrayals. As is often the case with Boadicea/Boudicca narratives, the Druids are closely associated with the Queen. And clearly the viewer is meant to sympathise with the defeated Queen of the Iceni, even at the time when the identification of the British empire with the Roman was a major cultural theme. But because this is an 'educational' movie, the rapes of Boadicea's daughters are very much underplayed, to the point where no rape actually takes place - instead a daughter is roughly manhandled, causing Boadicea to strike the Roman. The Queen's flogging then follows.

2020 Movies #1: 1917

1917. UK; dir. Sam Mendes; scr. Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns; starring George Mackay and Dean-Charles Chapman; DreamWorks Pictures/Reliance Entertainment; 2019

Unsurprisingly, 1917 has been compared with all the great First World War movies of the past - All Quiet on the Western Front, La Grande Illusion, etc. But the movie it reminded me of most is the Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou? It has the same sense of a picaresque, episodic journey through the landscape, with encounters that can border on the surreal and transitions that can sometimes seem dreamlike.

There's a lot in 1917 that's very good indeed. There are two strong performances at its heart from Mackay and Chapman, even if individual episodes are sometimes over-burdened with celebrity cameos - look, it's Andrew Scott! And there's Mark Strong! Can Benedict Cumberbatch be far behind? (Spoiler: he doesn't turn up until quite near the end.)

The screenplay is clever, and doesn't play out the way you anticipate. People you expect to die live, and people you expect to live, at least until much later in the movie, die. Most unexpected, perhaps, is the treatment of the British officers. They are all incredibly reasonable - not a General Melchett or even a Captain Darling among them. Of course, it's good that there's a corrective to the typical Blackadder presentation (Richard Holmes' The Western Front is useful on this topic), but the lack of any venal glory-hunters at all makes 1917 feel a bit like Saving Private Ryan; this is a movie that pays lip-service to the idea that military commanders don't necessarily know what they're doing, but doesn't really tell that story.

It is, of course, a bravura technical achievement. The various long-shots are put together seamlessly to give the impression that this is one take, and it thoroughly deserves the Oscar for Cinematography (and it's a travesty that it wasn't even nominated for Best Editing). I am not in the least surprised that it won the Golden Globe and BAFTA for Best Picture, as it is the sort of technically impressive movie that seems to be saying something profound that appeals to those who vote in such awards.

But there's the nub of it. What actually is 1917 saying? What's it about? One might say that it's about comradeship, about taking on a task that you don't really believe in because it's important to someone else. Or it might be about the horrors of war. The trouble for the latter is that the dreamlike nature of parts of the movie distance the viewer from full engagement. Yes, there are dead bodies of men who have been buried by shellfire, or French civilians who have ended up in the river. But these scenes don't feel as affecting as they should. And the transitions from one episode to another, whilst clearly delineated, are sometimes done in such a way as to override logic (Mark Strong's company, for instance, appear out of nowhere, and disappear back into nowhere). A cynic might suggest that the prime motivating factor in making this movie was that Mendes enjoyed shooting the opening sequence of Spectre (the Mendes Bond movie that isn't mentioned in the publicity), and wanted to see if he could do that at full movie length.

In the end, beneath the extremely impressive surface gloss, 1917 feels a little bit hollow.