Temeraire and the Challenge of Ambitious Fantasy

It's well-established that we here at Shades of Caruso love dragons. We love them so much that both of us independently paid money to see Dragonheart in the theater, a movie that features Dennis Quaid playing a hero with a voice reminiscent of a man in the late stages of emphysema, a dragon played by a surly, transmogrified James Bond saddled with lines like "I merely chewed in self-defense, but I never swallowed," and David "Nyeehh" Thewlis nasaling his way through another cringing, effeminate villain role. It might be a significantly less painful experience on mute, actually. Of course, it's bad for lots of other reasons too: terrible writing and plotting, corny "comedy" bits, lackluster CGI, muddy production values... Sure, it's got a talking dragon in it, but he's too busy making pseudo-sexual innuendos about eating people to save the movie.

Of course, the fact that we sat through D-Wars is even more damning proof (we may have even enjoyed it a little), as is our viewing of Eragon on Sky Movies last night (not as awful as D-Wars but infinitely more boring and cliched. The dragon was too cutesy-looking to be cool, and too sassy to be likable). But the truth is that dragon-related entertainment is hard to come by. Well, scratch that -- I should say that good dragon-related entertainment is hard to come by. I have to admit here that I know there are plenty of books about dragons out there that I haven't read (excluding the series I'll be talking about in a moment, obviously), so it's a bit unfair of me to say that; for all I know, there are ones out there that I'd love. It's just...well, take Anne McCaffrey, Dragon Poet of Pern. Here's a partial description I found on Amazon:

In earlier episodes, hero and heroine F'lar and Lessa summoned the captivating dragons and their riders from the remote past to save Pern from a devastating rain of Thread, while the later discovery of Aivas, the artificial intelligence that guided Pern's original human settlers, brought technological marvels like printing to Pern and helped shift the Thread-producing Red Star from its lethal orbit before it self-destructed.

First of all...F'lar? F'lar?? That's the best name you could come up with for your hero? A sound that is most reminiscent of a pirate spitting up a gob of mucous? It has an apostrophe in it, for fuck's sake! (This is a particular bugbear of mine, sci-fi and fantasy writers' insistence on putting random apostrophes in the middle of what are already ridiculous names. After all, what good is a name like Robert when you can invent a character named Ro'outabro'igle?)

Second, devastating rain of Thread? ("Look out! It's multicolored! Auughhh!!") Aivas? "Helped shift the Thread-producing Red Star from its lethal orbit"? I don't have a hate-on for fantasy, but it's these ridiculous concepts that turn me off to a lot of it, and I suspect turn off a lot of other people too. For all I know, those are thrilling stories that, if I read them, I'd end up championing. I love the concept of fantasy, the incredible range of ideas it has access to. But I probably won't read these books, precisely because they sound so silly. I'm sure they have a basis in solid dramatic ideas -- how to build a society, the effect of technology on human lives, the pitfalls of telepathic communication with winged lizards -- but unfortunately the marketing for them tends to be really bad. Plus, I don't know why this is, but they're always about a thousand pages long each and there's about twenty books in every series. Why? Even if the idea intrigues you a little bit, you're immediately put off by the incredible investment required.

Perhaps the core audience doesn't want publishers to pander to what's considered acceptably mainstream, but still, I think a lot of genre books get unfairly ignored because of their covers and their marketing copy and all the rest (I do realize the irony of me saying this, as I'm one of the people who gets turned off by these things). I edit children's books for a large company, some of which are fantasy or sci-fi, so I realize the conundrum here; the stories might draw a larger audience but also have to appeal to the people they know are going to buy them, and be true to the stories within.

Okay, so enough unfocused and contradictory tangenting. The real reason I'm here today is to talk about Naomi Novik's Temeraire series. To go back to my earlier point, I don't think I ever would have picked up these books based on the covers.


They look like standard-issue dragon fantasy novels. Actually that's what the US covers look like. The UK covers are interesting, but I'm still not sure they completely succeed.

I like the dragon-and-boats thing -- pretty accurate, and a bit more in the direction of "this might just be serious literature WITH DRAGONS IN IT OMFG" -- but the paperback covers look a bit too much like Jane Austen-esque beast-friendly chick lit, which is schizophrenic and sexually confusing. I appreciate what a tough job the designers have, though, and I like the idea behind the attempt. Part of the problem is that on none of them do the dragons look friendly -- they look like attacking war-beasts who could very well be ripping apart our society. This is a bit of a problem for Temeraire (the dragon of the title) in the book, but I don't think that's to a marketer's advantage -- but then how do you make the dragons look cool without making them too cutesy? The one I like best is the UK omnibus edition:


It's still a a bit too cheap-fantasy cover for me, but it's an arresting image -- I'd stop and stare at that cover much the way Masticator would at a picture of a woman on a magazine cover thrusting her bottom at the camera. But as I said, I didn't get the books because of the covers -- I read a review of them in Entertainment Weekly in which they were highly praised and I think described as a kind of Patrick O'Brian with dragons, which was enough to intrigue me (I haven't read any O'Brian, though I loved the film of Master and Commander, but the blending of genres sounded great). Meanwhile Admiral Neck heard that Peter Jackson bought the film rights for the books, and when they arrived from the States (they weren't published here until a few months later), he immediately grabbed the first one before I could. Damn you, Admiral, and your insatiable dragon love! He raced through the first book, though, and soon we were both staying up till four to read them. The first three were published all at once, and while I know I complained earlier about the length of fantasy series, these weren't too long (300-400 pages each), and the world they described was not too different from our own. In fact, the only difference was that this alternate universe contained talking, intelligent dragons. Can you imagine anything more awesome? I didn't think so.

Novik came up with an incredibly clever, simple idea -- what if dragons existed, and were used as a line of England's military defense during the Napoleonic Wars? She also started us out with a protagonist as green to dragons as we were -- Captain Will Laurence (note lack of apostrophes), a seaman in Her Majesty's Navy, who accidentally ends up with a very valuable Chinese dragon egg when he captures a French ship. The egg hatches some weeks later, while Laurence and his crew are still out to sea, and though Laurence knows almost nothing about dragons except that they need to be harnessed when they hatch (so that they can bond with the person who will become their captain in England's Aerial Corps), he ends up becoming the choice of captain for the egg who hatches -- the dragon he will name Temeraire.

The first book in the series largely concerns Laurence's gradual acceptance of his fate as an aviator -- he was a respected captain in a prestigious profession, happy with his life, and he is at first reluctant and resentful of his duty to Temeraire, who, despite this, takes to him instantly. We follow the pair as they embark on training and learn about life in the Aerial Corps, which is very different from the life Laurence knew. Aviators are the shabby black sheep of the military, treated by the rest of English society as something of a joke, their dragons feared as dangerous beasts. This despite the fact that dragons are as intelligent as humans -- perhaps even more intelligent; they show an incredible aptitude for math and science, and Temeraire in particular is something of a savant. At first Laurence thinks his growing bond with Temeraire is unusual and that the other aviators think of their dragons as mere war beasts, but he soon learns that the bond between a dragon and his captain is one of the closest relationships a person may ever experience.

Initially Laurence is a bit unlikable -- stiff and proper, with a rigid inclination towards what's considered right and mannerly by society. It's only when he meets Temeraire that he begins to soften, to become less self-serious. It's to Novik's credit that she doesn't entirely soften Laurence, though -- though he grows to love Temeraire more than he can express, he is still concerned utmost with what is right and good, with being an honorable man, with following society's strictures. Temeraire himself is a very intelligent innocent, always questioning why society is the way it is, why people are afraid of dragons when there is so clearly nothing to fear (he is often hurt and offended when people show fear at his enormous, 20-ton physique). This sounds like it could be simple and didactic, but it never is; it comes from character and not as a lecture. The push and pull runs through the series as a constant, with each party softening to the other's argument as they grow to love and depend on each other more.

Subsequent books have Laurence and Temeraire being forced to travel around the world -- to China, Turkey, Germany, Africa, and back to England to fight Napolean, whose ominous presence runs through the books like a harbinger of impending destruction. It's a clever idea to have the pair travel the world -- not only because there's only so much you can write about English battles against Napolean's army but also because it allows Novik to explore how dragons are treated all over the world.

This is perhaps Novik's cleverest idea of all. By far the greatest strength of genre fiction is the way it allows its creators to approach all the ordinary issues of domestic drama from unusual angles, usually through metaphor. Where an ordinary drama would tell a story as a standard teenage-daughter-hates-her-mother story, The Exorcist compares puberty to demonic possession. The interesting-but-flawed Ginger Snaps does much the same: a young girl getting her period for the first time realizes she is also becoming a werewolf, and the movie charts her wrestling with her newfound power and sexuality. Buffy, of course, worked on a throughline of a high-school-as-hell metaphor, and Battlestar Galactica gets us to sympathize with Iraqi insurgents by placing its characters in a situation where they are colonized by an oppressive regime.

The Temeraire series explores issues of feminism (a certain breed of dragon -- Longwings -- only accept female captains, to Laurence's surprise and profound comic embarrassment), racism, slavery, the question of animal intelligence, dragons as a metaphor for how we treat outsiders and minorities -- all without being didactic. In England, dragons are kept away from society at large, and are generally treated as if they were large, winged horses. Their captains and crews love them, but they have no autonomy, and they are generally not treated as intelligent beings. Laurence and Temeraire don't realize there's any other way to be -- until they journey to China and find out that there, dragons are independent and have their own lives and professions (ferrying people from one place to the other, doing manual labor, etc), eat cooked meals instead of raw cows and sheep, and live in sheltered, warm pavilions instead of making their beds on the ground. And some -- like Temeraire, for he is an extremely rare and special breed known as a Celestial -- are revered as thinkers and scholars, and spend their time in the life of the mind instead of being charged with defending the country as a mere unthinking tool of war.

As we go through each country, we find how each one treats its dragons, and with each book Temeraire grows more and more anxious about the way dragons are treated in England and feels more and more that he must do something to change it. Laurence too wants only the best for Temeraire, and for dragons as a whole -- he wants them to be happy above all -- but he knows the harsh reality he's afraid to confront his friend with; he knows how unlikely the possibility of change is, especially in a time of war.

The most touching thing about the books -- in which much is touching, as Novik has a deft hand with melodramatic but never mawkish storylines -- is obviously the relationship between Laurence and Temeraire, but it is also the way Laurence is changed by his love for the beast. Temeraire is part precocious child, part confidante, part comrade and colleague -- a true life partner and probably the closest relationship Laurence will ever know -- and he gradually opens Laurence's tightly closed and rigid personality. For me, good drama happens when we as an audience are torn between two points of view -- when two sides of an argument are presented as equally valid, and we empathize with and understand the views of those on either side. I find nothing more riveting than this three-dimensionality of character, and good drama always has it, no matter what the genre. And in this series, Laurence and Temeraire are always fascinating, always people we want to know.



The fourth book, which I read a few months ago (and am belatedly writing about, obviously), was a tiny bit disappointing in that it was a kind of transition book -- Novik is clearly building up to something exciting, but she has to get through certain story mechanics to get there, which is not so much her fault as just the way the story happened to fall. Getting the first three books at once spoiled me, and now I'm stuck anxiously waiting for the next story as she finishes it. I have no doubt it will be just as fascinating as the others.

I'm also anxiously waiting for Peter Jackson's film version and get more anxious every time he announces another unrelated project. OMG stop taking on goddamn Lord of the Rings movies! How many more drunken homoerotic hobbit songs can we suffer through? (I should explain that -- I think Jackson is an immensely talented director and that he is the perfect person to do justice to Temeraire. I just really don't care about the Lord of the Rings as a story, though I think they're beautifully made movies and he did the best job he possibly could have with them.) (Yet more heresy on this blog! What kind of anarchic free-for-all is going on here - Neck)

When July arrives and Victory of Eagles comes out, I will be first in line, brandishing my nerdy fantasy book with pride.

Once

On Monday night, we saw Once, another movie that came out roughly two million years ago in the States and is probably already being remade with Josh Hartnett and Kate Beckinsale (along with those "Irish" gangsters from Heroes as their band members). It comes out on DVD there in December and we could have just bought it then and had it sent over, but we'd waited months to see it already, listening to increasingly fervent reviews all the while, and couldn't wait any longer. Any longer than Monday night, that is, because our weekend was already booked up with Guitar Hero.

It was a wonderful movie, the kind that makes you glad to be alive in a world where people make films like this, and if you haven't yet seen it, please do, and then come back here and thank me, and maybe PayPal me a little of your gratitude as well. I also accept gift certificates -- we're not picky here at Shades of Caruso.

Anyway, though it was a beautiful movie in sentiment, that wasn’t the case when it came to locations, filming style, film quality, or leading actors (sorry, Glen Hansard; you are a very talented musician and singer, but your eyes are wicked googly).


The film was obviously shot handheld on digital video, and apparently they didn’t always get permits to film and had to shoot on long lenses for public scenes and use friends’ houses for others (apparently it only cost $160,000 to make, and I’m afraid it shows, though happily it’s grossed more than $11 million). The camerawork was distractingly bad in certain scenes, especially an early one in a piano shop, which is shot as if someone’s dad is holding the camera and breathing heavily after one too many Coors Lights. I know this movie was low-budget, but guys, you couldn’t have shelled out for a tripod? They cost like twenty bucks. You could probably return it after you were done, since your movie was shot in two weeks and most places give you a month if you’ve got a receipt. I’m just saying. For Twice (the sequel, of course).

Luckily these distractions soon become unimportant, and the unprettiness of the locations was integral to the story. Hansard and Markéta Irglová’s characters both live in flats so depressing that they sent us both into bad-memory spirals as we recalled some of the unsavory places we’ve lived or visited and unfortunate characters we’ve known. No wonder they want to get out of Dublin (to go to London, which seems better until you realize that’s where Hackney is). And though the movie is a sort-of musical, the songs (especially at the beginning) are recorded quite badly — they often seemed on the verge of blowing out the camera’s mic, and even sounded rickety on the theater’s speakers. Again, though, this works for the movie — the sound is bad when Hansard is busking on the street at the beginning of the story, but by the time he and his makeshift band go into a recording studio, the songs are recorded beautifully, and are as smooth as a cat’s eyeball (sorry — as I write this, our cat Sydney is staring at me with her usual expression of insane confusion).


The story is a fairly simple one, though you may not want to read on if you haven’t seen it yet. Guy and Girl (for those are their “names” in the movie) meet, Guy is a broken-hearted hoover-fixer-sucker guy who busks at night, perpetually lugging around his worn-in guitar; Girl is a flower-seller who plays the piano. They begin to make music together, eventually recording some demo tracks so that Guy can go to London to try to make it. They both clearly begin falling for each other, but Hansard's character is dismayed to find out that Irglová is still married to the father of her child (though he is back in the Czech Republic); in truth, he himself is still pining for his ex-girlfriend, who cheated on him. The ending of the movie is bittersweet; the characters part, having never so much as kissed each other (though Irglová's character confesses at one point, in Czech, "You are the one I love"), but having changed and bettered each other immeasurably. Perhaps it's better that they don't end up together, as the time they spent together was (as the title implies) a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence (a la Lost in Translation, another sob-inducing chaste romance). Still, I can't help being cheered by the fact that Hansard and Irglová are dating in real life. Aw! Bet that wouldn't have happened if they'd cast Cillian Murphy, as they'd originally wanted to. That creepy blue-eyed replicant.


As I mentioned, Once is a semi-musical; there are no flights of fancy where the characters suddenly break out into song, but musical conventions are cleverly sneaked into the fabric of reality -- Hansard and Irglová begin falling for each other when they play a song together for the first time; Hansard reveals his troubled romantic past with an impromptu song on a bus (an especially nice character touch, as it's easier for him to evade a real answer by singing instead of talking); Irglová sings along to a track she's listening to on a CD player while the camera follows her. And the music itself is absolutely lovely -- beautiful folk-pop songs that come alive when Hansard and Irglová croon to each other. The fact that both of them are professional singers, not actors, was an excellent choice -- they both have amazing voices, can handle difficult songs easily, and most importantly, infuse the songs with gallons of emotion. Their naturalistic acting styles fit the tone of the movie perfectly, though obviously Josh Harnett would have been my first choice.

I think my favorite thing about the movie, though, was that it was a low-budget indie that avoided all the usual indie cliches. No wacky dysfunctional families, no tweeness, no overly coincidental plot contrivances, no miserably "real" couples (tangentially, Tell Me You'll Procreate With Me is getting a bit better on this front, though nowhere near where it should be. Once basically kicks its ass in this arena). In fact, the only indie movie it reminded me of was Before Sunrise (and its sequel, Before Sunset), and that's no bad thing, as both of those movies are quite possibly my favorite movies ever, and the only reason I think Ethan Hawke shouldn't be squashed like the little rat-faced terrier he is. Both stories show us a heart-burstingly beautiful story of two people beginning to fall in love, and the movies ring so true that it's hard to believe they're fiction.

Now I'm off to watch 40 Days and 40 Nights.

Stalk the Line (Updated)

(Title courtesy of AdmiralNeck.)

Who doesn't love Johnny Cash? Besides his father? And who wouldn't want to see a movie about him, as played by Commodus from Gladiator? He's terribly vexed, you know! And he has a decent voice -- okay, he can't pull off Cash's voice, which is a bit of a hindrance, since he had the most distinctive drawl this side of Vincent Price, but though the tone is higher, he has the same resonant quality. It's not an impersonation, but he gets the spirit of it.

We decided to finally watch Walk the Line because Walk Hard is coming out soon, and we wanted to get the most out of the jokes. It wasn't a painful task -- it's a pretty standard biopic, charting Cash's poverty (spills!), rise (thrills!), and fall (pills!), complete with screaming harridan wife (Ginnifer Goodwin, before Big Love), screaming ungrateful children (Thing 1 and Thing 2), and enough barbiturates to make Steve Coogan cry like a little girl. Along the way, Cash bumps into notable figures like Sam Phillips and Elvis -- a bored-looking actor named Tyler Hilton (obviously David Morrisey was the man for the job, not this chump [this will make more sense after AdmiralNeck posts his Reaping review]).

But what's most notable about the movie is Johnny's approach to seduction: an unusual flirtation that I believe is commonly known as "stalking." He meets June Carter (ably played by Reese Witherspoon, who, surprisingly, has a great voice) when he's still in his miserable marriage to the wife from every movie about a man who's so obsessed with his career that he doesn't bother to learn his alternately sad-eyed and shrill (insert where appropriate) children's names. (Every time Johnny saw his children bounding up to him with demands for new shiny objects, I half-expected him to lean over and slur, "And just who the fuck are you? Talk to my manager, asshole.") Anyway, this wife is predictably horrible, using most of her screentime to find new ways to say, "Fuck you, Johnny Cash, with your layabout ways. Now where is my gold card..." Of course, June Carter, with her Pepsodent grin and plucky stage banter, looks like an angel comparatively. She is polite to Johnny and talks to him a few times, which he takes to mean that she is his soulmate (even though she's married to a succession of losers -- spoiler alert?).

Then June makes the mistake of having sex with him, and after that, the stalking comes out in full force. A typical conversation:

Johnny: Marry me, June.
June: Leave me alone, I'm on the toilet!
Johnny: June, I gotta have you now.
June: Will you please get out of here? This is making me very uncomfortable.
Johnny: Just tell me you'll be my wife. I love you and you love me. I know it because you still talked to me after we had sex!
June: I don't love you. I'm married! Please stop licking my toothbrush and get out of the bathroom.
Johnny: You know you love me, June.
June: I really, really don't love you!
Johnny: ::snores::
June: Wake up! You're high again! This is embarrassing!
Johnny: Bzzt. Dad? I didn't kill my brother with a rotating saw, I swear!
June: Johnny...please get out.
Johnny: ::getting angry:: Fine! But not before I rip this sink out of the wall for no reason! BLLYYEARGH!
June: I'm calling the police.
Johnny: Don't worry about the sink, it's just resting. We'll talk about our engagement after you've flushed. Watch out for those giant swirly toads in the bathtub, though. I don't like the look of 'em.

Et cetera. I was really surprised that their, um, courtship was portrayed like that in the movie -- I'm no expert on Cash's life, though, so I don't know how accurate it is (for once I hope it is inaccurate). And their on-stage engagement is just as creepy! Look!



Her obvious distress and desperate attempts to change the subject are making me swoon! Apparently Cash did propose to June onstage, but could it have been that gross? How romantic -- love through belligerence! I know a lot of romcoms are based on this idea, that persistent stalking is actually really romantic, but it doesn't make it any less creepy (see also: latent-serial-killer Danny stalking Jordan on Studio 60, until he wins her over so completely that she forgets that she was ever annoyed or humiliated by his attention and thinks she always loved him).

Anyway, none of this is as important as the real reason for this post. I give you: WALK HARD!



ETA: AdmiralNeck reminded me of one of the more risible scenes in the movie that I forgot to mention: the scene in which June comes up with some lyrics. Sitting in a car, wrestling with her feeling(s?) for Johnny, she moans, "It burns...it burns...it burns!" Then we get a shot of her thinking, essentially, "Heeeeey, waaaaiittt a minute...burns like some kind of...ovoid...wait, I'm thinking of it...square of lead? Octagon of hate? Rhombus of cheese? I'll get it any minute now..." Ugh, it's awful.

Oh, and I've also updated the proposal scene to a longer clip -- one in which we see the full force of Joaquin Phoenix's scary laser eyes. He needs to play a serial killer before he becomes one.

The Shit House

Another awesome title. Am I on a roll or what? I’m like a not-very-bright copyeditor for Entertainment Weekly.

Anyway, we saw The Lake House last night, and as my title suggests, it was pretty crap. We watched it at the Admiral’s behest, I hasten to add, because of his fondness for Neo and his penchant for convoluted time-travel nonsense (here rendered even more ridiculously than usual because apparently 50-year-old post-menopausal women will buy any kind of time-related paradox as long as there’s a scene of Keanu Reeves crying). It’s quite dour, but there’s no discernable reason for it to be, especially because it ends happily (sorry, did I ruin it?). The Admiral admitted, quite endearingly, that if he’d watched it when he was 15, he would have sobbed the whole way through (I failed to admit that, when I watched the sappy remake of City of Angels as a 15-year-old, I did cry all the way through, and not just out of sheer joy when Meg Ryan gets run over by a bus). It wasn’t awful, certainly, but it was entirely humorless and it struggled to make its 90-minute running time – mostly by giving us lots of shots of people staring pensively into the distance. (Staring Through Time – now there’s a title.)

In short, I’m glad we waited for it to come on Sky Movies. Oh, and Christopher Plummer is entirely wasted as Keanu’s Bad Dad (who has, as Keanu explains, the grin of an architect. How this is different from, say, the leer of a sous-chef or the rictus smile of an ophthalmologist is left entirely unexplained).

The Lake House Stats:

Most Nonsensical Attempted Joke: “Oh, we have a comedian! What, did you eat clown for breakfast?” (??? As opposed to what? Eggs?)

Most Forced, Unconvincing Architect-Speak From Keanu: “Containment and control. This house is about ownership, not connection. I mean, it's beautiful. Seductive, even. But it's incomplete.”

Most Searing Indictment of Bad Dad: “He could build a house. But he couldn’t build a home.”

Scariest Line Spoken by Shohreh Aghdashloo (i.e., Emphysema Breath): “Your father had a heart attack. He is now stable.”

Number of Nose-Wrinkles and Daffy Asides from “Sandy”: Four. Quite restrained, on the whole.

++++

Update: My mom writes in with a helpful fact-check: "Meg was actually downed by a truck hauling logs, not a bus! And I think she actually paper-dolled herself on the truck; he was just making a slow left turn into her exuberant joy of life. But then, of course, it gave Nicolas the opportunity to do his look of sad-eyed horsey-faced silent pain."