Miserable musical interludes

Every once in a while a student wants to know what's the point of reading a big fat novel when we can get the information from a movie "more efficiently," and I usually respond by reminding the student that if literature were primarily designed to convey information efficiently, no one would write a novel requiring more than 140 characters.

But I sympathized with that student recently when I viewed Les Miserables (the movie) and read Les Miserables (the book). The musical drastically condenses Victor Hugo's prose, which is a good thing because no one wants to watch a 20-hour musical. Some of the cuts lead to more efficient storytelling; for instance, in the film Marius  and Cosette follow the musical convention by falling in love at first sight, while the book follows Marius's lengthy journey from apathy to obsession to disappointment to love. Similarly, Eponine is an only child in the movie but has four siblings in the novel, most of whom barely impinge upon the plot.

And then there is the plot itself. The film focuses like a laser on the suffering and redemption of Jean Valjean, but the novel loses sight of that plot for long stretches, suggesting that Hugo was trying to dramatize the suffering and redemption of an entire people, which may explain why it seems at times as if he's intent upon providing a full character sketch of every single person living in France in the early nineteenth century.

And the man could pontificate. At length. About anything. It's tempting to call these long plotless chapters digressions, but if the goal is to thoroughly dramatize a particular cultural moment, then everything is relevant. (In this way, Hugo was an important precursor to Proust, who similarly strove to tell us everything about everything.)

Good thing Hugo's prose is so compelling or the novel would be simply unbearable. In fact, I found some of those long plotless passages so quirky and charming that I wish they'd been included in the musical as big, colorful production numbers. For instance:

1. Dance of the Nuns: Six chapters describe the convent on the Rue Petit-Picpus (its layout, character sketches of notable personages who play absolutely no part in the plot, details of its rules and relationships to other religious communities) and eight chapters explore the history of the monastic impulse and its possible future relevance. I can't imagine why none of this made it into the musical. I envision a Busby Berkeley-style production number filmed from above, with masses of bewimpled nuns forming flower-like patterns while singing passionately about the theological and practical distinctions between Benedictine and Bernardine rule.   

2. Wails from Waterloo. Hugo's compelling description of the decisive battle unfolds at a leisurely pace over 19 chapters, ending with an incident of pilferage tenuously linking this large digression with the Jean Valjean plot--but the battle is central to Hugo's larger concerns. Let's see the battle and its aftermath condensed into a five-minute medley involving martial drumbeats, a wailing bagpipe suddenly wiped out, and the Song of the Moonlight Pickpocket.   
 
3. Song of the Slangsters: Hugo devotes four long chapters to defending his decision to put street argot in the mouths of his thieves, which was apparently a controversial move at the time. Even while defending his use of slang, he personifies "that pustulous vocabulary" as a "frightful, living, and bristling thicket" in which "[o]ne word resembles a claw, another an extinguished and bleeding eye." Later he claims that the specialized slang of street thieves resembles the jargon used in other venues, including "the painter who says: 'My grinder,' the notary who says: 'My Skip-the-Gutter,' the hairdresser who says: 'My mealyback,' the cobbler who says 'My cub,'" and so on for several pages. Imagine all those slangsters slinging their specialized argot in song!

I could go on. Or I could just let Victor Hugo go on. For 900 pages, more or less. I would gladly see the movie again, but the book? I'm singing the "Glad-I-Read-it-But-Don't-Ever-Expect-Me-to-Read-it-Again" blues.
 

All in the same boat

Stanley Fish is pontificating about college composition (again!) over at the New York Times, while my college composition students bombard me with panicky e-mails about their first papers and schoolchildren everywhere serve as pawns in a heated debate over the President's message. At times like these, it behooves us to change the subject.

So I'm going to babble a bit about a movie I saw on DVD over the weekend, the British film Happy-Go-Lucky. I tried to describe the plot to a friend yesterday and got nowhere, so let's skip that part. It's a clever and charming and sometimes annoying film about a woman whose attempt to maintain a happy-go-lucky attitude faces a few minor challenges. Doesn't that sound just dreadful? If this were a movie on the Lifetime channel, the main character's cheery disposition would eventually melt the hearts of all around her and provide instant solutions to the messiest human problems. Fortunately, this is not a Lifetime movie.

Let's go ahead and admit that the main character, Poppy, is a little annoying. She giggles a lot and acts pretty silly. I can imagine that many people (particularly men) of my acquaintance would find her unbearably lightweight. They might even sympathize with her driving instructor, Scott, whose bitter and misanthropic attitude comes into sharp contrast with Poppy's bubbliness during their weekly driving lessons. Their conflict raises a question that keeps nagging at the back of my mind: whose attitude is a healthier response to the human condition? Is it better to face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with an unreasonably optimistic giggle or with a melancholy gloom always willing to admit the worst?

After all, why couldn't Hamlet just laugh it all off?

If this were a Lifetime movie, Poppy's optimism would eventually cut through Scott's melancholy and convert him into an entirely new person--sort of like what happens to the Ricky Gervais character in Ghost Town, another film pitting cheer against melancholy. But Gervais's conversion in Ghost Town is the least believable part of an entirely unbelievable film (which is nevertheless very funny, particularly when the ditzy doctor is called upon to convey the cheery message, "Everyone dies!").

But Happy-Go-Lucky refuses to take the easy way out. When the conflict between Poppy and Scott finally erupts, the result is not cheerful or optimistic or conventionally satisfying but frightening. In the end, Scott's misanthropy separates him from the human community, while Poppy's cheer keeps her connected to a community that can help her cope with the very real and sometimes frightening insanities of everyday life. She may end up in a boat going aimlessly in circles, but at least she's not alone.

Failure to launch

Because we're done with band competitions, because my son is interested in aviation, because the film won lots of awards, because we never saw it when it was showing in theaters, we stayed home last night and watched The Aviator on DVD. All day I've been trying to figure out why I found the film utterly awful.

For one thing, it's too long by at least half an hour; I kept hoping another airplane would crash and burn and put the entire film out of its misery. But that's not the only reason. Too many of the characters are thoroughly one-dimensional, including Alan Alda's sleazy politician and Alec Baldwin's reprise of his role from Glengarry Glen Ross. Cate Blanchett's cartoonish caricature of Katherine Hepburn was laughable, one of the few amusing spots in an otherwise humorless film. She tromped and sputtered like Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, but in that film Hepburn's energy was more than matched by Cary Grant's. Poor Cate Blanchett has only Leo DiCaprio, who is just, let's face it, small--and I'm not talking about physical stature. I kept having this feeling I was watching an elaborate dream sequence in one of the Our Gang comedies, with DiCaprio as Alfalfa.

But there's one other thing that really annoyed me about this film, and it's taken me all day to put my finger on it: It's clear that Martin Scorsese wants us to view Howard Hughes as a sort of David righteously defying the twin Goliaths of the film and airline industries, and while it's true that Hughes was a victim of his own peculiar neuroses, he was, after all, Howard Hughes. Since when does the richest man in the world get to play the role of spunky little David? Especially when the penultimate scene features one of Hughes's minions reassuring him by saying, "Howard, everyone works for you."

Despite all the lovely airplanes, The Aviator doesn't work for me. My only consolation is that I didn't have to spend $8 on a ticket.

Desperately seeking dignity

At the beginning of Singin' in the Rain, Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) declares that his show-biz career has been characterized by a single-minded devotion to Dignity--but flashbacks suggest otherwise, portraying him as a checkered-suited buffoon willing to do anything for a laugh. It's difficult to maintain dignity while tap-dancing for quarters in the local dive or being pelted by rotten fruit in a grimy Vaudeville theater.

It's also difficult to maintain dignity while reading a pile of student papers analyzing Singin' in the Rain. I love Singin' in the Rain. I love writing about Singin' in the Rain. I love reading about Singin' in the Rain. What I don't love is singing about Singin' in the Rain, but I can't help it: my students' papers infect my brain with all those peppy songs, and the next thing I know I'm sashaying into the classroom singing "Moses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously."

That's where dignity flies out the window. English professors are not supposed to sashay down the hall, and we are definitely not supposed to sing nonsensical tongue-twisters while approaching students preparing to take a difficult midterm exam. An English professor who enters the classroom singing about Moses's erroneous supposition re: toeses is unlikely to be looked upon as entirely respectable, particularly if said professor can't carry a tune. Good thing I'm too much of a klutz to attempt to tap-dance. If my students start carrying rotten fruit to class, though, I'm in big trouble.

Fortunately, this Singin' obsession will be over soon and my students will be moving on to the next topic of conversation: The Conversation, a film utterly devoid of peppy tunes and tap-dancing. The only danger is that I might end up creeping stealthily through the halls while mumbling incomprehensibly--in other words, acting like an English professor.

Dignity. Always dignity.

Been there, done that, bought the soundtrack

Today a student in my film class commented on how fantastic life would be if we all had our own soundtracks: everywhere we would go, music would follow, and not just any music but music to express the appropriate mood. Yes, I said, but unless we were all equipped with mute buttons, public gatherings would be cacophanous, with dissonant snippets of music constantly competing for attention.

But wait! This already happens every day--with cell phones! The ringtone is the equivalent of a personal soundtrack expressing information about our lives, our values, and how we feel about the people who call us. I'm waiting for the day when someone makes a movie in which the entire soundtrack consists of little unrelated snippets of music bursting out incongruously--but wait! It's already been done! It's called Moulin Rouge!

Rats. All the great ideas are already taken.

Something's coming

Anyone who spends any time attending high school marching band competitions quickly becomes aware of the West Side Story Rule: at every competition at least one band will feature music from West Side Story. I've been a loyal band parent for seven years now and I have seen many bands take a stab at the music, with results ranging from outrageous to charming to spectacular. Now I love West Side Story; before I was 12 years old I knew all the words to all the songs and I can still sing most of them, albeit off-key--but that doesn't necessarily mean I want to hear a marching band play the music every Saturday from now until November.

It started yesterday at the first competition of the season when a band opened its show with "Something's Coming," long a fixture in the Unsingable Song Hall of Fame--and if its odd intervals and unsettling rhythms make it virtually unsingable, I don't know why anyone would try to march to it. Nevertheless those band members in bulky polyester uniforms with bits of braid and plumed hats obediently charged about the field playing tubas and clarinets and bass drums to "Something's Coming," and then they went on from there. Instead of focusing on songs of conflict, this band selected the more tender love songs from West Side Story; they get points for originality, but I'm not sure how a band is supposed to march to the delicate "I Feel Pretty" without looking like a troupe of dancing hippos.

This band performs in many of the same competitions as my son's band, so I expect to see their show several more times before November--and at some larger competitions, there may be even more bands playing music from West Side Story. After November, I don't care how many bands decide to play music from West Side Story because this season marks the end of my career as a Band Parent. The air is hummin' and something great is comin'--but meanwhile, I've got one more season of West Side Story.

Fresh as a daisy

Today in American Lit I showed a brief clip from the wretched 1974 film version of "Daisy Miller" starring Cybill Shepherd, who fulfills no one's ideal image of Daisy. So I asked the class: whom would you cast? "Paris Hilton" said one, and another suggested Angelina Jolie. Daisy Miller with tattoos? Come on, we need someone who can convincingly portray an ambiguous innocence tinged with recklessness, and Angelina ain't it. A student nominated Reese Witherspoon. "Too perky," said one. "Too old," said another, but at least she can act! Finally someone suggested Scarlett Johansson. She could be Daisy...but she'd better start filming soon because, as everyone knows, Daisies lose their freshness fairly quickly.