The theme of this month was the Middle Ages... give or take a couple of centuries. There’s also plenty of material left over from previous posts that I wanted to catch up on, from a movie that featured in Feud to a graphic novel holdover from last month’s Gothic Horror selection. And I only got through one book, though in my defense it was a Ken Follett, and those things are huge.
Terrifyingly, we are now halfway through the year.
The one with the return-trip home...
Time to dive back into this show! I’m desperate to get to the season finale, which is genuinely one of my favourite episodes of anything, ever – but we gotta get through the mid-season slog first. Okay, I’m exaggerating – these episodes aren’t actually that bad, relatively speaking, and this one involves the time-honoured fantasy tradition of Can’t Go Home Again, in which the hero does in fact go home, only to find that either he or it has been irrevocably changed.
It's very much a chance for the hero to deal with unfinished business, and so we get guest appearances from three previous characters: Jay Laga’aia as Richard’s best friend Chase (what happened to you Jay? You were pretty renowned in New Zealand for a while there), David de Lautour as Michael, Richard’s not-brother who turned on him the first chance he got, and Jessica Chapnik Kahn as Anna, Richard’s ex-girlfriend, which we’ve only seen before as an illusion controlled by Darken Rahl.
The Netflix adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone was a viewing event. I’d read all the available books (excepting Rule of Wolves) and put the release date on my calendar, opting to travel to my friend’s house and watch the whole thing across a single weekend (four episodes per night) on his big screen television. I took this seriously!
I’d consider myself a fan of the book series (currently made up of one trilogy and two duologies, plus a smattering of short stories) for their dark fairy tale ambience and moral complexity, especially in Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. Leigh Bardugo is a writer who knows her audience, what with her mastery of witty banter, traumatic backstories and shipping tropes, and yet she avoids certain pitfalls of other popular YA writers. There is little in the way of wish fulfilment here, and it’s replaced with a genuine sense of weight when it comes to her subject matter.
The whole thing was ripe for a streaming adaptation, and I sincerely hope that we’ll get the chance to see the entire saga play out, despite the “changing of the guard” when it comes to the protagonists: from Alina to the six Crows to Zoya and Prince Nikolai (not even introduced in the series yet) across the three sets of stories.
We’re off to a good start, with a first season that’s far from perfect, but which has a decent budget, an engaging premise, and spot-on casting. Seriously, everyone looks and behaves exactly like their book counterparts – even when some creative liberties have been taken. Alina and Mal were white in the books, and are here played by bi-racial actors, yet they embody their characters so perfectly I won’t be able to picture anyone but Jessie Mei Li and Archie Renaux in the roles from now on.
This rather negative (but fair) review points out that you can tell the show is YA by the way the material focuses on relationships over world-building, with romantic complications and love triangles taking precedence over what could have potentially been a genuinely fascinating political setup. I’ll delve more into that later, but watching the show and being aware of its target audience had the unexpected side-effect of making me feel old for the first time in my life.
Which is ridiculous since I’m still younger than Ben Barnes – and yet when I last skyped my sister and mentioned watching it, she (totally unprompted) said: “it made me realize I’m not a teenager anymore.” So it obviously had the same effect on other people too!
Even the show itself seems oddly self-conscious about the fact only one significant cast member is over the age of forty-five, to the point where a joke is made in which Jesper has to impersonate someone significantly older than him, and is indignant that anyone could think he would pass for that age – only for a snide official to tell him: “I thought you were older.”
The joke falls completely flat, since... my God, they’re CLEARLY all children! And to add another layer of irony on top of that, these actors are STILL at least a DECADE older than the characters they play in the books! Matthias is meant to be the only legal adult at eighteen!
So, if you plan on recommending this to co-workers or friends, do as I did and add the disclaimer that it’s the most YA thing they’ll ever see and may induce a premature mid-life-crisis.
Inej Ghafa from Shadow and Bone
Having enjoyed Leigh Bardugo’s “Grishaverse” books (man I hate that term though) I knew I was going to have a good time with the Netflix adaptation of her first book, Shadow and Bone. What was most fascinating to me was the choices made by showrunner Eric Heisserer, who insisted that he be allowed to bring several characters into the story that aren’t actually present in the trilogy – rather, they’re the main characters of the sequel duology Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom.
It’s easy to understand why this was a condition of his employment: the duology is a much more complex and polished work of fiction, and the characters less drawn from the typical YA mould (plucky heroine, broody villain, childhood best friend).
Among these characters is Inej Ghafa, who is safe to say, the fandom darling. And let’s be brutally honest here guys – it’s very rare that a brown girl ever becomes the undisputed favourite in fandom. Usually it’s difficult enough for female characters period to become so popular, yet Inej seems to be one of those rare “golden” characters that are universally beloved.
I recall actress Amita Suman saying in an interview that she was excited about playing Inej because the character was written as non-white (in the Grishaverse, her race is known as Suli) as opposed someone who was race-lifted to increase the diversity quota*, and was therefore a character who belonged to her entirely.
I get that, and Inej is certainly a gift to any actress, not only in getting to do loads of cool stuff (acrobatics, knife-throwing, stunt-work) but in the darkness of the backstory she’s given, and the way in which her every word, action and decision is a journey away from the trauma it has inflicted on her. In many ways she reminds me of Max from Black Sails; another young woman who has endured sexual violence, but who makes a clear and determined decision – over and over again – that she will not let it change her inherent goodness.
But as it happens, the show (like the book) is very lightweight when it comes to depicting the full extent of Inej’s suffering. I watched this show with a friend who had no foreknowledge of the books, and he didn’t pick up the fact she was captured as a slave, separated from her family, and made into an indentured sex worker. On the one hand, I can understand why the show (and Bardugo herself) wouldn’t want to delve too deeply into the horrors of this; on the other... well, like I said – it’s left extremely unclear just what the Menagerie is and why Inej is so desperate to escape it.
But Amita Suman carries the trauma of Inej’s time there in everything she says and does. She’s always controlled and contained, but there’s so much sadness in her eyes and the expressions on her face. I honestly think she put in the best performance, all the more so because it wasn’t as showy as her main screen partners, Freddy Carter and Kit Young, which meant she was putting more work in.
And Heisserer even finds the space to weave in a clear arc for her to follow: namely that her religious conviction makes her hesitant about kidnapping someone she believes is a living saint, and that she must confront her reluctance to kill when the people she cares about are on the line.
They’re both unique to the show, and therefore not perfectly integrated with the rest of the plot, but it provides her with a thoroughfare that can be picked up on later down the track (just as they seeded Jesper’s gambling problems and explored Kaz’s proclivity as a flawed genius who will one day concoct the Ice Court heist – he succeeded here largely through luck, but you can tell he’s learning as he goes).
The best part is that, having read the books, there’s some fantastic material ahead of her. Let’s just hope they make it that far.
* This is not a dig at Jessie Mei Li and the choice to make Alina half-Shu. They did some interesting things with that casting decision and how it affected her character, but at the same time I can understand why Amina Suman would make these comments about how Inej is portrayed in the book itself.
The last week of May 2021, will go down as a famous one in my family history: it was the week my sister had her first child, and I bought my first house.
Yes, two of the most stressful things that can happen in a person’s lifetime happened to my family in the space of a single week, though I think my parents got the worst of it since: a. I wasn’t told about some of the complications during the birth until after they had happened, and b. my sister had no idea I was trying to buy a house until it was all confirmed.
In any case, I’m now auntie to a little boy called Finn, and I’m now at the start of the acquisition process of owning my first house – which is very small, and definitely a fixer-upper... but it's MINE.
So there isn’t a lot of reading material under the cut: whenever I’ve had a spare few minutes I’ve only ever had the energy to blob on the couch, though the theme for this month was Victoriana horror... more or less. What a week.
Also, you won’t find the first season of Shadow and Bone under the cut – my thoughts got so long that I’m going to put it in its own post.
I’ve been meaning to do a post on animation studio Cartoon Saloon for a while now, as their films are truly some of my absolute favourites – yet still woefully undiscovered by mainstream audiences. It drives me nuts that Pixar takes home the Oscar for Best Animated Feature every year, when Cartoon Saloon’s offerings are substantially and undeniably superior (somehow Big Hero 6 won out over Song of the Sea in 2014, and that Soul beat Wolfwalkers this year is just absurd).
The studio is based in Kilkenny, Ireland, and has managed to remain independent despite several offers to buy it out since 2009, which mercifully means their distinctive style and hand-drawn artistry remains untampered with. As of this post, they’ve released four feature films, seven short films, and worked on five television series, all of which have been wonderful. (If you haven’t seen Puffin Rock on Netflix yet, then what are you waiting for? It’s adorable).
I could have discussed The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea years ago, but knowing that writer/director Tomm Moore was always planning to release a third film called Wolfwalkers to complete what’s unofficially known as his “Irish triptych,” I’ve been holding off in order to comment on all of them together.
The three films are referred to as a triptych rather than a trilogy because they aren’t related to each other in regards to story; they’re not prequels or sequels to each other. But they all speak the same cinematic language, and are all of one artistic vision. The human figures have distinctly round heads and bodies, and exist within deeply stylized settings with recurring patterns and motifs: for example, circles denote safety and beauty, angles suggest danger and strife.
Each film is set in Ireland. All draw heavily from the mythology and folklore of that land. Each one features two children as its protagonists, one from the ordinary world and one that's more supernatural in origin. Also present is a stern father figure who isn’t really so bad. All have reconnection and reconciliation between two people (and by extension, two belief systems) as a central theme.
This is largely captured in the presence of both Christianity and paganism in each of the films, not necessarily in conflict with one another, but existing side-by-side – in practice, in symbolism, and in the way each one influences and illuminates the storylines.
All are directed by Tomm Moore, all are rendered in beautiful hand-drawn animation, and each one is extremely uplifting, thought-provoking and visually stunning. Like all good fairy tales, they touch on ancient truths and rhythms, but contain a freshness and originality that set them apart from anything you’ve seen before.
Oh, and though they can be watched in any order, the latter two films contain little Easter eggs that reference their predecessors (Aisling can be spotted on the bus in Song of the Sea, and Mebh casually pulls the Eye of Crom out of Robyn’s bag in Wolfwalkers).
SPOILERS BELOW
I haven’t done one of these in a while, so there’s a good chance I’ll have missed out on some good stuff...
