Musings on art and modern audiences

  Breakfast at Tiffany’s : glamour, romance, and gilded cages Breakfast at Tiffany’s is one of those stories people seem to know of but have never watched. You might know that Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard star in it, you might know Henry Mancini did the soundtrack, and that it features the song “Moon River” and perhaps you know that it was based on the novella of the same name by Truman Capote, published in 1958. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is, at first glance, utterly glamorous, and Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly is the epitome of class and effortless elegance. The opening titles are iconic, Hepburn’s rendition of “Moon River” well-loved, and the aesthetic of the film is just classy.  But there are demons which haunt this story and its characters. There’s a yawning chasm between the glamorous way this film is remembered and the content of its story, which is itself much sadder and darker than I think people anticipate when watching this film for the first time. Yes there...

Howl’s Moving Castle : Diana Wynne Jones and Studio Ghibli Most people who’ve heard of Howl’s Moving Castle have never realised it was a book first, then a film. Now that I’ve both watched and read the story, the primary question that arises is: why did Studio Ghibli choose to adapt this particular story? Diana Wynne Jones’ novel has not much about it that suggests an affinity for Studio Ghibli aesthetics (although she does say she admired Studio Ghibli’s work for a long time before her novel was adapted). There are really a lot of differences between the book and the film which are quite significant to the original story, but they both still work as stories in their own right. Let’s start with the basics. One version of Howl’s Moving Castle is a novel, and one is a film. That immediately creates some distance between the two stories because they’re working with different forms and techniques of storytelling and character- and world-building. For example, one of the big differences y...

  Oppenheimer : He's just Ken? Is it fair to say that J. Robert Oppenheimer was just another guy? Obviously he is (in)famous for his instrumental role in the creation and deployment of the atomic bomb by the USA during the Second World War, but in Christopher Nolan’s film what we really get to see is a man with an extraordinary talent who is drawn in by the power he sees in the ability to “become death, the destroyer of worlds.” It’s an unbelievably narcissistic statement to make, and although you probably have to admit his work did result in him becoming something close to that level of power, how ethical is it for us to celebrate the legacy of a man who was responsible for such unfathomable human losses?  The biopic as a genre itself tries to bring the audience closer to a particular public figure and dispel some of the mystery and mythology around them. And it seems this film has come at an interesting time for the biopic, released between two Elvis Presley biopics (with ve...

The Nightmare Before Christmas : film, musical, or poetry? Everyone who knows anything about this film is aware of the age-old question: is it a Halloween film or a Christmas film? No one can seem to agree! What people can make their minds up about is that we get to this vaguely Halloweeny vaguely Christmassy time of year and this film has to be played at least once at some point. Fair dues, it’s a classic. So what is it about Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas that people seem to love? Probably many different things, which goes to show how well all the different elements of the film tie together. This is a film of many forms, all working together to create a single, cohesive piece of art. We have poetry weaving through the storytelling and dialogue, musical numbers that bring new energy to scenes, Danny Elfman’s gorgeous score helping to tell the story and build characters, intricate plasticine figures and painstaking stop-motion animation creating the semi-real feel of the f...