Jones on Dark Lords

As a disclaimer, you should know that I am already a fan of Diana Wynne Jones. I enjoy clever magic systems and the use of traditional fairy tale elements to construct a quirky and fresh story. I also like comedy, and though that's not always what Diana Wynne Jones writes, it's definitely an apt description of The Dark Lord of Derkholm. 

Imagine that your planet is under the rule of a sinister, dark lord. His troops are moving against the kingdoms of good, pillaging villages and burning fields along the way. Scary, right? Makes you want to take up arms, get a mortgage on your house, join a group of travelers, and start out on an epic, six week quest, doesn't it? But what if the Dark Lord hasn't been selected yet, and you're in between cleaning up from  last year (and all the hundreds of adventurers who paid to have the chance to take him down) and trying to find out how to stop the whole cycle in the first place. That's where The Dark Lord of Derkholm starts. The wizards' counsel is exhausted from repairing the damages of last years pillaging and plundering, and the Kingdoms are broke. The villagers have made reducing their towns to ruins into an art form, and the farmers are wondering if they will ever again see a harvest that didn't have to be helped along by magic after at troop of soldiers trampled it. The genius of this book, like the genius of Jones in general, is in the realness. Realness here is a word that means detail. Small details, details you wouldn't really think of unless you happened to live there. You can tell this is one of Diana Jones' early books because some of these details don't match up. The evil plot revealed at the book's end was, well, evil – but no worse than the forty years of misery that lead up to its discovery. You find yourself wondering why the wizards don't fake casualties for the fake wars, or why they don't just carve out a good stretch of land to be maintained solely for the purpose of the tourists so that the rest of the world can go on uninterrupted. Yeah, the demon-enforced contract probably has something to do with this, but then who signed that thing in the first place?  This is why a lot of fantasy books just use "magic-wagick" to explain things, because once you start making rules everything else has to confirm to them and that takes a lot of work. Jones doesn't play any other was though, which is why we love her, and why I enjoyed reading this book – with it's logical world that really turns – even when the logic was a bit bumpy and forced.

 Most of  Diana Wynne Jones' characters were fun too, but here the inconstancies were worse because they seemed less the snapping of  very tautly drawn boundaries and more the mere requirements of plot. The whole thing with Mrs. Derkholm was barely believable  (luckily she wasn't around enough for us to have to try), and the way the geese were treated seemed outrageously stupid – and that's the kindest way  I can think of putting it. The Benedict Arnold in the group bugged me a little too, because I felt there wasn't enough stuff in the beginning to give the reader a feel for how long he had been betraying everyone. By the end of the book we're given the impression he'd turned coat years ago, but I would have liked some small proof of this imbedded throughout the book instead of the outright cupidity crammed into the last couple of chapters. 

Now, if you've made it this far, I want you to know that I liked the book. I thought it was clever and funny. Clumsier than I've come to expect from Diana Wynne Jones, yes, but definitely worth reading.* In fact, despite the long list of faults I have just rattled off, the only thing that really bothered me (okay, besides the unnecessary deaths) was the way Derk played around with genetics. I'm fine with mythical beasts, but I'm not fine with genetic manipulation. Here's one place where I like my magic to be magic. Griffins: awesome. Griffins made up with your own DNA: wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. I'm sure I have really good, well reasoned, arguments against genetic experimentation. Fairly sure. Probably. Certainly the geese make up one all by themselves, but to be honest, the thing the whole thing mostly just creeps me out. I blame Fullmetal Alchemist.**

But seriously, what if Derk had messed up on one of the griffins (and I love the griffins as a whole), and had made an ugly, deformed thing with a fully functioning mind? Wasn't he ever forced to analyze Frankenstein? It was off setting to have this really sweet, creative guy whose hobby was playing mad scientist wandering around the book wondering whether to do something with bugs next or make a mermaid for a daughter.

So,

Content: Potentially Graphic Fantasy Violence - meaning, things that would only happen in a fantasy novel almost happen, but then they don't. Well, okay, there are a few carnivorous sheep bites, which leads right into the ever so appalling genetic experiments. Baaaaaaaaad move, Derk. 

Plot: Pure mad genius. A little hazy on where its lunch is, but at least its inventions work (it's the bologna).

Characters: Pretty clearly defined as main, secondary, and shadowy, but without having a single person as it's focus. Which means the world itself gets to be a kind of character. Cool huh?

I can't help myself and must add, in an aside to the title of this post, that I think Jones makes a pretty clear point here. Dark Lords you can fight against are a pretty easy to defeat – high casualty count notwithstanding – it's the ones that you don't see as dark, or who seem off limits for fighting, that are really hard to depose. Which, of course, is why we like our fantasy with blacks and whites. Let us flounder against our gray lords in real life and overthrow obsidian kings in our spare time.

------------------------------- Footnotes ------------------------

*The sequel, on the other hand, was excruciating even only two chapters in - I never made it past chapter three.

** Actually, I could probably create a whole list of media that feed into my dislike of the topic (The Midnighters, Animorphs, Aliens 4 . . . . basically not many things I'd recommend or normally admit to consuming– though the first Midnighter book was awesome: maath and magic, together at last).

Introducing February's Fictitious Foe

 Sixer: What was your first DWJ?


Bevity: Howl's Moving Castle . . . . After I saw the Miyazaki movie.


Sixer: Hehe. Nice introduction. I think my first Diana Wynne Jones was Witch Week. But I read The Homeward Bounders while getting my hair micro braided


Bevity: I haven't read that one yet.


Sixer: It's depressing. It's like The Lives of Christopher Chant, only he doesn't have nine lives, get the girl, or discover he's a powerful sorcerer. Instead he ends up being semi-immortal, which he doesn't realize until he meets his grand-niece.


Bevity: Sounds depressing.


Sixer: Unlike our randomly selected work for this month.


Bevity:  Which is brilliantly clever and traditionally Diana Wynne Jones  – by taking something well known and turning it on it's head in an unconventional and original way.


Sixer: Do you want to tell them what it is?


Bevity: Drumroll please . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  The Dark Lord of Derkholm (Exclamation point!)


Sixer: Which we've both already started at this point.


Bevity: We're bloglazy.


Sixer: Shouldn't that be hyphenated?


Bevity: Sure

Visible Prestige

After consuming numerous scones, cherry-cream filled puffs, and cucumber sandwiches - not to mention the large cups of tea - I feel fully authorized to say that The Prestige  is better than  The Prestige. In fact, it was mildly awesome. It's going to be a little hard to review the movie without re-reviewing the book, but I'm going to make an attempt. The Movie review itself should be fairly spoil-free, but I'm afraid that when I follow it with a comparison of book and movie, details will be divulged. With that being said, onward! 

The Movie:

              The opening scene (which, due to technical difficulties, I got to see three or four times) sets the slightly dark, tension-charged mood. It defines the three parts of a magic trick – the pledge, the turn, and the prestige – while letting you know that the story, in and of itself, is a trick. And not necessarily a nice one, we feel, as the voice over fades and we see Alfred Borden being framed and then charged with the murder of Robert Angier. Let me take this moment to mention actors: up until, oh, a few years ago I knew nothing about actors. I knew Harrison Ford, Richard Dean Anderson, and Patrick Stewart by name and could recognize a handful of other people but had no idea who they were. I have slowly been fixing this problem. My point is, though, that the actors that they picked for this movie were known even to me, and I think if someone had told me these two actors were going to be in one movie together I would have saw it in theaters when it first came out. After all, who wouldn't pay serious money to see Batman and Wolverine at the same time. 

As enemies. 

          Exactly. But back to the actual review, the movie starts us off at the "end" of the story and then uses Angier's journal to bring us back to the beginning. Now, I'm going to have to have Bevity confirm this, because I was too busy going "wait, that's not what happened in the book" to really pay attention, but even though the movie continually cuts back and forth between Angier and Borden reading each other's journals, they are not, in fact, reading them at the same time. That is, Borden is, for our purposes, reading Angier's journal in the present, while Angier is reading in the past.  The movie does a beautiful job of blending these narratives together, taking us back to the when their enmity started and following them both as they struggle for resolution. I was pleasantly surprised by how much acting the women in the movie got to do too, since the book really only made Angier's wife seem like a living person. Though, admittedly, the girls spent most of the movie in the victorian equivalent to a bikini. (excuse: stage clothes. In fact, in a hilarious juxtaposition of impressions, they often looked more dressed at home in their  . . . . chemises, then on the stage in costume. Weird, huh?).

         I was most delighted by the way the movie was able to keep the hate between Angier and Borden alive. You never really wondered why two grown men were still harping at each other like children, and when you grew a little aghast at what they were willing to do to each other (and themselves), you had a whole little pile of seriously nasty precedents as an explanation. That was what shocked me the most about this movie - aside from the major plot changes of course - it was not afraid to get its hands dirty and, because of it's very nature of grit and suspense, none of the violence was pretty. This isn't gladiator, with death choreographed and blood painted on after to make the action pop a little. This movie has birds being crushed, hands being mangled (three of them), suicide, and more drownings than  it cared to show (but it does show two). I don't mind goblins being beheaded, but this kind of "real life accident" turns my blood a little green, and if you are anything like that you might want to watch this movie with a friend who will tell you when you can open your eyes again (and then laugh at you loudly. Because that's what friends are for). That won't help you get over the main point of the movie, though, which is to horrify you. This isn't The Ring, but the build up at the beginning, and the revelation at the end, is engineered to make your hair stand on end - even if you already know what's coming.

So, scoring:

Plot: After a miraculous surgery, the crash victim walks once more across the stage of her beauty pageant. Her gait is unhampered and graceful, her dress is gorgeous without being distracting to the event, and her words are delivered with such confident, casual poise that you know she's practiced them for hours in order to get them just right. Everything just flows really well, and no one can doubt her motivation. Logic with legato - it works if you like beauty pageants. 

Content: Death, gunshot wound, knife wound (which we get to see), corsets, yadayadayada. The content moves this out of the kids section, but the plot would have done that even if all the violence was taken off stage. Obviously, being a prude, I think there was a (non-gruesome) scene or two that was unnecessary, but I can also admit that the story was so fast, and so focused on the men, using more screen time to show affection in a less invasive way would have thrown off the pacing.   

In summary, I could probably watch this movie again with someone who had never seen it before, but the characters weren't likable enough to merit any kind of emotional attachment, and in the end the little birds still die.  

The Book and the Movie (Spoiler Version):

Angier's wife is dead. Okay, yes, Borden never goes to prison in the book either. But Angier's wife is dead. In the book the enmity between Angier and Borden is started when Borden, in a fit of stupidity  conscientiousness, disrupts Angier's seance. Borden later feels sorry and tries to apologize ("later," as in, like, six months after the event) but Angier's reply is filled with bitter rage. This is understandable, since what Borden doesn't know, and actually never knows, is that when he disrupted Angeir's play he caused Mrs. Angier to miscarry. The pain Angier feels from this is palatable but . . . . . it goes no where. The book allows him to be more concerned about his wife than revenge, and then before you know it a year or two has passed, and then five, and then he suddenly has three happy kids and - hey, Borden's getting famous? Well, we can't have that - lets tune up the enmity again. 

               The movie changes this, not so much by giving us a "worse" death, but by radically revising Angier's reaction to it, and reducing the amount of time he has to react in. When Borden causes Angier's wife to drown ( accidentally, but with a lot more premeditation than was in the book), Angier responds by shooting him in the hand. Yeah. Not good for a magician. So Borden's successful counter-attempts to sabotage Angier's own performances are understandable, if no less admirable. Getting Angier's wife out of the picture changes his character in other ways too. Besides making his war with Borden a kind of continued declaration of his love, it brings Angier's relationship with Olivia to a place I can understand. In the book Angier meets Olivia when he is at the height of his success and is happily married with kids. In the movie neither of the magicians reach anything like real fame and Angier is consumed, not with bliss, but with revenge. He's attracted to Olivia, but he's married to Borden's complete destruction and will not be found unfaithful. Argh! The more I look at the movie Angier and the book Angier the more obvious it becomes that they are two completely different people. Neither of them are good at seeing the prestige of a trick, but one is intelligent in other ways, and has a dark side to his character that makes sense. When the Big Reveal happens in the book you're kind of like "Angier did that? No, not quiet little Angier." But movie Angier: we see the corrosion of his soul. When his Big Reveal comes it fits right in with his other acts - more horrifying only as the last act of a show is more spectacular than the first. And the fact that Angier's prestige in the movie is more whole, and therefore requires more blackness of soul to preform, makes more sense to the modern reader than the book's half prestige, which comes across as disney magic for being so stringless. 

                So what about Borden? I still think he's a megalomanic. He's willing to maim himself in order to protect his secret, and he watches his wife drink herself into suicide, which is unforgivable. But the movie does a much better job of splitting his character, and, once split, we find we are able to define him. Once defined then understood, and we can feel for the man who apologizes to Angier for his wife's death, even while wanting to shake the man who caused it in the first place with his pride. A lot of his attacks from the book become counter-attacks in the movie, which helps him look like the misunderstood protagonist that he sort of becomes. Why he wouldn't just tell his own wife the secret, when it was obvious even half way through the movie that,  though she didn't know, she knew, neither of the Christophers can answer, and I will always think of it as this story's Achilles' heel. 

                   I'm not sure how I feel about him walking free at the end. Yes, he's half the man he was, but he's still alive while Angier is very, very dead. However the fact that a) Borden never tried to kill Angier (before), even when not his most moral self; and b) he has a daughter to take care of - a symbol of a bright and simple future - while Angier never had anything but revenge, not even Olivia, makes me willing to call it a redemption story and back away.  I still feel Borden "deserved" to die, but seeing that he did – and seeing his reaction to Angier's prestige –  I'll concede he was no worse than a dozen other movie heros who I have cheered on. As the story proclaims: presentation is everything.