Fantastic Mr. Fox

While living at the Quincy House I developed a love of Wes Anderson films (and of one of Anderson's gurus, Whit Stillman). At the time I noticed that Anderson was working on a version of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox. At last, that effort is coming to fruition.



I remember enjoying Fantastic Mr. Fox quite a lot as a child. It would be interesting to read it again, (a) to see if I still enjoy it and (b) to see if Anderson's take is a faithful one. From the looks of it, he has taken certain liberties with the story. This is not, in my view, necessarily a bad thing. When translating a work from one genre to another, slavishness can sometimes fall flat. I am hopeful, however, that Anderson has produced a film which works well on the screen and is faithful to the heart of Dahl's work (even if not quite every line).

Thanks go out to the oodles of people who simultaneously brought this trailer to my attention.

A Few Interesting Passages

Three (completely unrelated) passages from things I have been reading lately:


In an interview with Psychology Today, Whit Stillman spoke of the effect on him of having spent his junior year abroad in Mexico: "It turned out to do the opposite of what it was suppose to do. It didn't make me a mushroom-dropping pothead; seeing another culture and the ways the less affluent in that culture coped with life actually made me much more conventional. It made me more respectful of conventional people in the United States." (Doomed Bourgeois in Love, 46)




I called myself a Marxist from the time I became a socialist. But, reading more history at Oxford, I began to feel that Marxism did not work. Consider the famous sentence in the Communist Manifesto: "The history of all hitherto recorded society is the history of class struggles." Very impressive but not true. Perhaps all history ought to have been the history of class struggles, but things did not work out that way. There have been long periods of class collaboration and many struggles that were not about class at all. I suppose my mind is too anarchic to be fitted into any system of thought. Like Johnson's friend Edwards, I, too, have tried to be a Marxist but common sense kept breaking in. (Accident Prone, or What Happened Next, republished in From Napoleon to the Second International, 5)


Calcutta is still my favorite city.... There was something... which if it did not transform the second city of Empire, lifted it at least a little from the depths. Everybody smiled. That may be at the root of Britain's three-century love affair with India. Nowadays it is taught (usually be people who never saw the Raj) that our passion for the sub-continent was mere pride of possession, arrogant satisfaction of conquest, and lust of exploitation, leavened only by a missionary zeal to improve. No doubt those feelings existed, among some, but they don't account for the undying affection that so many of the island race felt for that wonderful country and its people. Nor do all its great marvels: the beauty of the land and its buildings, the endless variety of its customs and cultures, the wonder of its art and philosophy and ancient civilizations, the glory of its matchless regiments. They may inspire awe, even reverence, but they don't quite explain why thousands of soldiers and merchants and administrators and traders left their hearts there, to say nothing of their mortal remains. One can babble about the magic of India, and convey nothing: I can only say that when I look back at it my lasting memory is of smiling faces, laughter in the bazaar, tiny naked children grinning as they clamoured for buckshee - and it wasn't an act, for they still laughed and joked and play-acted if they didn't get it. There was a life, a spirit about India that was irrepressible, and it outweighed all the faults and miseries and cruelties and corruptions. That, I think, is why the British loved it, and some of us will never get it out of our systems, even in an age when Indian and Pakistani immigration is about as welcome in Britain as the British were in India. (Quartered Safe Out Here, 179-80)

My Favorite Films of 2008

Advent is upon us and the year is winding down. With that in mind, I thought it might be time for the second annual "Aaron's Top Films of the Year." No, these are not my favorite films that came out in 2008; I do not see nearly enough to compile a list like that. No, these are my favorite films that I have seen this year.

Since I had a trifecta last year, I see no reason to break the habit.


The first of our winners is the 1990 Whit Stillman work of genius, Metropolitan. Stillman, a fan of Jane Austen, presents us with a comedy of intellect and manners, or perhaps of "mannerlessness". (As one critic points out, a comedy of manners usually turns upon the inadequacy of traditional manners in the modern world; Metropolitan instead points out the enduring value of such customs in a world that has forgotten them.) The story follows the lives of a group of upper-class New Yorkers ("urban haute bourgeoisie" or UHBs) and Tom Townsend (Edward Clements), an outsider. Tom initially provides a sense of distance, but is increasingly drawn into the circle as the plot unfolds. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay but has otherwise received little attention. A tragedy, I say.

Whit Stillman - whose other works include equally unknown Barcelona (1994) and The Last Days of Disco (1998) - has been claimed as an influence upon Wes Anderson (Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic) and Jason Reitman (Juno). In all of them I think you can find certain similarities: quirkiness and a kind of post-modern traditionalism.

If the trailer did not do it for you, try this clip with some dialogue about socialism. (There are some zingers in the film about literary criticism, but I could not find the clip. In any case, there is no point in ruining all the best lines.) And if you would care to read more about Stillman's films, check out Doomed Bourgeois in Love, a collection of essays by such lights as Mark C. Henrie, David M. Whalen, R. V. Young and Peter Augustine Lawler.


The two other films have a certain amount in common, both being stories of lonely couples - one or both of whom are away from their native land - who discover something in someone special. And yet, neither film is quite the standard story you might expect with that set-up.

Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003) tells the tale of Bob Harris (Bill Murray) and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson), two Americans who meet in Japan. Some people have said that Bill Murray always plays the same character: depressed, quiet, witty. Perhaps that is true, and perhaps it is out of place some times. But not here: Murray nails the role.

In talking to others, I find that those who have lived or studied abroad, by themselves, connect with this film in a particular way: the isolation of being in a foreign land can be terribly oppressive. To suddenly discover someone - not to mention a romantic interest - in a situation like that would be a godsend.


My third winner this year is John Carney's Once (2007). If you pay careful attention, you will notice that the main characters in this film, a man played by Glen Hansard and a woman played by the lovely Markéta Irglová, have no names, at least none that are ever given. (The credits list them as "Guy" and "Girl.") It is one of several clues that this is very much a fairy tale, a story of few characters, enacting eternal and archetypal themes.

Set in Dublin, our young couple is brought together by their shared love of music, playing and writing together. Which is fun because Hansard and Irglová - who have become romantically involved in real life - actually wrote and performed the film's music. The result is a work of art which, if sometimes a little rough around the edges - neither lead had any major acting experience and the total budget was a minuscule $160,000 - is strong on pathos and rings quite true.


Finally, while I saw plenty of other quality films in the last year, an honorable mention goes out to Amazing Grace (2006), a period piece about William Wilberforce and the abolition of the British slave trade. History, politics and virtue: what more do you want?