Chapter 21 - Happy Halloween from Crimson Peak

Happy Halloween everyone.

To celebrate I'm bending the rules of the blog a little bit to talk about a film that while set in the Victorian period doesn't feature any real life personalities or art but is still an excellent example of the tropes of the Gothic; Crimosn Peak.

As I mentioned in my post about Hellboy 2, Guillermo del Toro is my favourite director and this, his ninth feature, is one of his best films. There may be some light spoliers in this review but I will try to keep them as vague as possible. 

The story concerns Edith Cushing (Mia Wasikowska), a young American writer who falls in love with Sir Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleson), an English baronet who is seeking the investment of her industrialist father. After her father is murdered, Edith moves with Thomas, and his sister Lucille (Jessica Chastain) to Allerdale Hall, also known as Crimson Peak, the Sharpe's ancestral home in Cumbria, England. But the house is haunted and Edith has to investigate exactly what has happened there, 

Photo from playbuzz

To call this a ghost story is a misnomer though. It is not a Gothic Horror story but a Gothic Romance that harks back to the original Gothic traditions of  the Romantic and Victorian periods. The ghosts exist to aide Edith in her investigations not serve as menace. It draws on the works of writers like Ann Radcliffe, Sheridan Le Fanu, Henry James & Bram Stoker (the interest in new technology contrasting with old world mysteries reminds me a lot of Dracula) along with echos of Bluebeard and creates a story that would have not been out of place in 19th Century fiction. 

The acting is excellent. Jessica Chastain and  Mia Wasikowska in particular shine as the two female leads (It is a very feminine movie, suiting the Gothic traditions  it is drawing upon.)  Tom Hiddleson, one of my favourite actors, also impresses in his role as Thomas. 

Photo from digital trends

The costumes and sets are beautiful, It being a del Toro film means that a lot of care and attention has gone into everything from the elegance of the dresses worn by the ladies in the parties in America to the house itself which has to be one of the most amazing sets you will ever see in film.  The ghosts are for the most part practical effects rather than computer generated. As someone who grew up in the period before CGI, I appreciate this. 

del Toro on set with Jessica Chastain (photo from Los Angeles Magazine)

All in all this is an easy film to recommend and sits just behind Pan's Labyrinth as my favourite of the directors work. 

Chapter 15 - Nuclear Powered Victorians

I was 11 in 1993 and two things kick-started my interest in Steampunk. The first was a showing on British television of Hayao Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky and the second was seeing the cover and reading the description for Anti-Ice by Stephen Baxter. I sadly didn't get to read the book until many years later but when I did I enjoyed the alternative 19th Century it presented (I also didn't get to see Castle in the Sky again till many years later, but that is not a story for here) 

I love alternative histories, it is always so much fun seeing what could have happened if things had gone differently. Anti-Ice asks what if the 19th Century British discovered a substance (the "Anti-Ice") that generates energy analogous to nuclear power. The answers are obvious: not only do they have technology far beyond the same period in our reality, including space travel, but also the Crimean War is ended by the atomic bombing of Sevastopol. Many real world personalities appear throughout novel: most notably William Gladstone and Otto Von Bismarck. Victoria herself is absent from this world as she chose to abdicate after Prince Albert's death, instead Edward VII has become king much earlier than in reality. The Franco-Prussian War is also featured in the novel,of course with a much different outcome. 

If people are looking for a good introduction to Steampunk fiction, this is a excellent book to pick up. I enjoyed Baxter's alternative history and the characters that fill it. Yes it has all the weird science that we expect of the genre but it seeing how the world is effected by this science is the main draw for me. 

The Book is OOP but you should be able to pick it up for a reasonable price on amazon (US | UK) or ebay.

There is also a short story anthology ebook entitled Newton's Aliens: Tales From the Anti-Ice Universe. (US | UK). I have yet to read this but when I do I will review it on the blog. 

PS: I now have a like page on facebook. Don't have facebook? Alternatively can follow me on twitter to keep up-to-date with all entries on the blog. :)

Chapter 5: 1864

Yesterday I looked at one under-represented aspect of the 19th Century in English speaking nations: Japanese history and today I will look at another; The Second Schleswig War.

Earlier this year the 2014 Danish drama 1864 was screened on BBC 4. As a big fan of Scandinavian film and television I was really excited. After all it was set in the Victorian period and stared many of my favourite Danish actors (PilouAsbæk, Nicolas Bro, Søren Malling and Sidse Babett Knudsen in particular). I was not disappointed. Beautifully writen and acted it has some wonderful highs and some brutal lows (the Prussian storming of Dybbøl is extremely difficult to watch).

I knew very little about the war coming into watching the series, but it made me want to look into it more. The reasons behind the war are complex. As British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston (played by James Fox here) put it:  “Only three people have ever really understood the Schleswig-Holstein business—the Prince Consort, who is dead—a German professor, who has gone mad—and I, who have forgotten all about it.". The ending of the war would have a huge impact on 19th and 20th century history, however. The Prussian victory gave Otto von Bismarck (Rainer Bock in the series) the confidence to declare war on the Austrian Empire two years later, the resulting defeat of Austria giving Prussia total infulence over the German Confederation. Then of course a the same confidence resulted in a German victory over France in 1871 bringing about the unification of the country and leading, in part, to the Great War of 1914-18. The Schleswig War may be mostly forgotten but it did have an impact.

The series is, however, mostly shown from the Danish POV and doesn’t hold back from showing the horrors the vastly outnumbered and unprepared army went through. Alongside this we see the insanity of the politicians in Copenhagen, who believing they could win the war refused to withdraw from Dybbøl and ensured the bloodbath when the Prussians finally stormed the fortifications (Bro’s performance as the Danish Prime minister Monrad is a highlight of the series). Amid the horrors of war there are stories of love, jealously and personal tragedy. For us literature geeks, Hans Christian Andersen makes a cameo in a couple of episodes. I cannot recommend this series enough. 

1864: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Chapter 4: Japanese Clockwork

I finished reading The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley last night. It is an excellent Victorian based magical realist/clockpunk tale that touches on the Fenian bombing campagin of the 1880s, LGBT themes and challenging gender norms.

What really intrested me, however, was the use of Japan and the Japanese in the story. In western socities we tend to focus on the Euro-American history of the 19th Century, which is a shame as the end of the Edo period and begining of the Meji of the country are fascinating with the transition from a medieval feudal society to a modern one. Pulley symbolizes this period of change with flashbacks to the buying of a Samurai castle by the state, represented by future prime minster Ito Hirobumi.

Ito Hirobumi (photo from wikipedia)

Another plot thread involves the reserach undertaken by Gilbert and Sullivan (who both appear as characters) for their 1885 opera The Mikado.

Gilbert and Sullivan (Photo from http://arts.louisiana.edu)

This leads the reader into a world that I was totally unaware of: the mock Japanese Village bulit in London for an exhibition of the culture of the country in the 1880s. In fact, because of my lack of knowelge of the exhibition, when it was first encountred in the novel I belived that the characters had been magically transported to Japan.

I don't want to get too much into the plot as I believe this is a novel that needs to be read without too many spoilers. But I do believe that beneath it's magical realism and clockwork octopuses lies an excellent introduction to Japan and the Japanese in the 19th Century. It works on both levels, however, and comes with a strong recomendation from me.