Star Wars and Carrie Fisher – such a part of our lives

Star Wars was a global phenomenon. It’s such an obvious thing to say, now, 40 years on, that it’s hard to remember just what a shock to the system it was; a bolt out of the blue.

It was the first film that I ever saw without an adult relative. My sister (three years younger) and I saw it one afternoon in Ashton-under-Lyne, delivered there by my father and picked up by him later. How grown up we felt.

The cinema was packed. I remember so much – and yet so little. It’s fair to say, though, that it had a huge impact on my life, possibly to the point of changing it.

My teachers had decided I was set for a career in graphic arts, but I had already rejected that.

I thought ‘graphic arts’ meant designing adverts, and there was no way that I was doing that. I also thought, with the pretentiousness of youth, that I had ‘the soul’ of a fine artist, but, rather less characteristic of that age, considered that I had none of the talent.

I gave up art.

Yet for a while, I seriously hankered after going to work in the States, building models of spaceships for the likes of Star Wars.

However, there was nobody around to tell me that this might have been possible or to point me in the relevant direction – any more than they could point out that ‘graphic art’ could include animation or comics or so much more.

It has taken me until my fifties to work all this out. I’m a slow learner. Although in my defence, I’ll point out that, with no private income and no trust fund or similar, when I was thrown out of polytechnic after a year for having had the temerity to be injured as a direct consequence of the course, the only thing that I could hope to focus on was getting a job – any job. And this was the beginning of the ‘you’re overqualified’ era .

Yet for a few years I nurtured a dream of putting together a book about the blossoming of fantasy film. Before my polytechnic career turned very sour, I had been to the cinema on my own to see Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal, and remain in love with it to this day.

And yet …

Yet reality can batter you. As can the edict learned so well from both my father’s pulpit sermons and his dinner table ones. I have been so suckered by that stuff from 1 Corinthians 13:11.

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

I have wasted so many years believing that I should be so bloody bleeding boringly ‘grown up’!

True, I have reviewed and appreciated work by others that has included sci-fi and fantasy and that area where the two intersect. But probably until the last 12 months or so, any thoughts that I might produce any sort of work along such lines had lain dormant so long I had forgotten about it.

I have even attended events where I’ve met members of the cast of the first three films.

Yet this year it has all awoken again. And while I wouldn’t remotely suggest that that’s ONLY because of Star Wars: The Force Awakens that this is the year in which art – graphic art – has become a part of my working life, I have few doubts that it hasn't been part of a wider process. It was a reawakening of a certain kind of dream – of a certain kind of modern mythology.

For me, all those years ago, George Lucas’s vision opened a door to me – a teen still struggling in a home environment that was more of the 1930s than the 1960s and ’70s; an environment that considered any form of adults having pleasure with suspicion, that saw me carted to evangelical meetings in the hope that I would succumb to the emotion (I did).

Never mind air guitar –  my counterpoint to religion saw me wield an air light sabre and dream that The Force was real.

Since September, I have been using art – graphic art – in my work. Not something I expected. But it's been a massive leap forward.

On 1 January this year, when The Other Half and I got to see The Force Awakens, within a few moments of leaving the cinema I had declared, in a state of giddiness, that JJ Abrams had given us Star Wars back.

It was a quiet cinema when we saw it, but I wanted to cheer when Leia arrived on screen.

It’s been a shit year for the deaths of people whose talents and works have shone light on the light of others.

For me, not all of those people have meant a great deal, but even those who have not made the greatest impacts on me personally have added something to the creative mix.

Personally, I feel as though I have been most hit by the deaths of Alan Rickman and Victoria Wood.

And now, by the loss of Carrie Fisher.

Carrie … you were a crucial, feisty, fabulous part of all this: one of the few real and meaningful awakenings my teenage spirit felt – and that has been renewed in the last 12 months.

Wherever you are – go well: may the force be with you.

And thank you.

Through the Looking Glass: we're not really in wonderland any more

Alice In Wonderland, Tim Burton’s 2010 take on Lewis Carroll’s 19^th-century surreal classic, was generally given the thumbs down by the critics, but a global box office take of $1.025bm for Disney, for an outlay of around $200m, ensured that it was a success – and that a sequel was likely. 

Now, in Alice Through the Looking Glass, Burton has returned to Carroll. This time, though, he’s one of the producers, with the directing reins handed to James Bobin and Linda Woolverton returning for scriptwriting duties. 

The first film was messy, but still fun.

This is messier still and has been roundly trashed by the critics, but still has merits – although they’re perhaps harder to find.

Like the first film, it’s “based on” Carroll’s characters, with Alice as an adult.

It opens three years after the last film, with Alice – now the captain of her late father’s ship – steering it away from Chinese pirates and back home to Blighty after a three-year voyage.

This fantastic escape gives time to re-establish that she has lost none of her feistiness or bravery, and that ‘impossible’ remains, for Alice, a dirty word.

But once back at home, all is not well, and she finds herself plunged back into a fight to retain her chance for adventure and wonder against conventional expectations and pressures.

Just in time, Absolem the butterfly (formerly the caterpillar), reappears and leads her to the mirror that offers a door back to Wonderland.

And once there, Alice discovers that the Hatter is dying – and that only she can help.

Absolem is, once again, voiced by Alan Rickman – his last performance before his untimely death at the beginning of this year, and it brings a lump to the throat to hear his voice.

At the heart of this film is the idea of time – you can’t get it back – and how you must live every day to its fullest extent and make sure you never live to regret any bad relationships with your loved ones.

And if that sounds clunky, it’s because it is: twee, sentimental and hamfisted.

Keeping the world running

Some of it – perhaps especially not being able to tamper with time and the dangers if you do – are laid on with a JCB: and for goodness sake, do the writers think none of us have ever seen Star Trek?

I love the characters and I loved how the first film developed them. But even though it’s good to see so many of these cinematic friends again, it’s hard to care much about what happens to them – especially as the bulk of the film drags.

We get backplots aplenty, explaining how the Red Queen became the nasty character we’re familiar with (and how she got her big head) and how the Hatter became, well ... the Hatter.

Dysfunctional families, eh?

And there is Time himself, in the persona of Sacha Baron Cohen, trying to prevent Alice from breaking time itself.

Now, as I said, there are compensations.

In the last quarter, it eventually gains real pace and a sense of tension and even passion. Finally, you are drawn into caring what happens. But it takes a long, long time.

If there is a sense that Johnny Depp is pretty much treading water as the Hatter, Mia Wasikowska turns in another enjoyable and solid (if not Earth-shattering) performance as Alice.

Anne Hathaway’s White Queen is as vague as before, but as we start to understand the reasons for the relationship breakdown between her and her sister, the Red Queen, the contrast becomes more understandable.

As for the Red Queen, Helena Bonham Carter returns and adds some much-needed energy to proceedings.

Baron Cohen, once over an initial bit of clowning, is actually very good.

Incidentally, how many times in mainstream Western cinema has a scene been played between actors with three names each – Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen?

We get a brief cameo from Sherlock’s Moriarty, Andrew Scott, who seems to have cast in order to bring that character to this film.

Wilkins tries to work out how to make things right

And I did like Wilkins, Time’s long-suffering, robotic butler – played by Muppets puppeteer Matt Vogel, with Toby Jones voicing, although why a character with such an English name should look and sound German is a mystery.

The biggest compensation is that it is visually superb – dazzling in places, not least in the time-travel shots and in Time’s castle, where there is also a rich, blue and gold palette that brings to mind Martin Scorsese’s Hugo.

And the visuals are not harmed by being viewed in 3D: having only seen my first 3D film 10 months ago, I’m certainly getting value from those glasses!

Alice Through the Looking Glass is ultimately disappointing. In some ways, having Burton’s name attached actually adds to the disappointment, because we expect such great things from him – and for a reason. But then again, whatever you may read or hear from the critics, it isn't some sort of cinematic version of the Titanic either.

And like its predecessor, it’s probably a fair prediction to say that it’s hardly likely to be flop.

A pressie from Auntie

It was National Poetry Day yesterday – don't run away; I'm not going to foist any of my own efforts on you! The attentive might recall that I had Keats for 'O' and 'A' level at school and, Ode to Autumn apart, rather hated it.

I have no concrete memories of any other poets that we studied, although it can't just have been Keats in the course of eight years.

It was some years later that I found my way to poetry when I was introduced to the Mersey poets – Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten. I loved their work – particularly Henri.

More recently, I've expanded my poetry reading: I tried a collection of John Betjeman, which I found enjoyable, if full of snobbery and with an idea of a chocolate box England that existed for only a few people; it's no surprise that his poems are so popular.

Among my recent 'discoveries' have been Wendy Cope and Thom Gunn, both of whom I like for different reasons.

Tonight, though, I've been introduced to a 'new' poet, Christopher Reid, by the BBC.

Good old Auntie: after so much dross for so long, kowtowing to the market god, trying to feed us on a diet of 'reality TV' and the exploits of Z list celebrities, they gave us something of actual quality. The Song of Lunch is a dramatisation of Reid's poem of the same name, which was screened for National Poetry Day.

It tells the apparently simple tale of a middle-aged, failed writer who leaves work at a publishing company one afternoon for lunch with an old flame that he hasn't seen in 15 years. Needless to say, the reunion doesn't go quite the way he had hoped.

It's almost entirely told in his words, as an internal dialogue, in voluptuous language. But language is part of the man's problem: his fetishisation of it is one of the causes of his own emotional immaturity, as we discover, while all the time taking pleasure in the language ourselves.

Brilliantly performed by Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, it's funny and moving and rather tragic and as delicious as the lunch the reunited lovers are served, with a plethora of ideas and themes to feed the viewer's mind.

As director Greg Wise says on a BBC blog about the film: "I know Auntie gets a kicking a lot of the time, but all I can say is God bless public service broadcasting. I know no other broadcaster would have the vision, the bravery and the commitment to undertake a piece of work such as this, and for that the BBC should be praised."

I'm going to allow myself a 'Hear, hear!" at this juncture.

And thanks to The Other Half who pointed out that it was on. I love Rickman. I first saw him in the 1980s as Jacques in As You Like It at Stratford: in a rather muted production, when I was half ready to doze, he arrived on stage to give us the "All the world's a stage" speech. An unknown actor at the time, you could feel the entire audience sit up and pay attention. He's got such a wonderful voice, like dripping velvet.

One night some years ago, after attending a first night in London's West End (it might have been a production of Waiting for Godot with Ade Edmondson and Rik Mayall), a friend and I were taken by fellow critics who had expenses accounts (and decent pay packets) to Joe Allen's restaurant in Covent Garden. Shortly after we'd been seated, Rickman came in with friends and sat at the table next to us, his back almost directly to mine.

I can't remember what he said, but listening to his voice was almost enough to induce an orgasm. And for some reason or other, I can't remember a thing about what I ate.

Anyway, catch The Song of Lunch on iPlayer if you haven't seen it thus far – although I'm sure it'll be repeated. And personally, I'm going to get hold of Reid's poem to read it too.

In the meantime, the theme of this year's National Poetry Day was apparently 'home'. Now I really can't think, off the top of my head, of any poem on that subject that I like (or even know).

So in the spirit of poetry in general, here's one that I do love – although its idea of home isn't what most people would first think of.

It's epic and romantic and it still gives me goosebumps every time I read it.



Ballade von den Seeräubern (Ballad of the Pirates)

Frantic with brandy from their plunder
Drenched in the blackness of the gale
Splintered by frost and stunned by thunder
Hemmed in the crows-nest, ghostly pale
Scorched by the sun through tattered shirt
(The winter sun kept them alive)
Amid starvation, sickness, dirt
So sang the remnant that survived:
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

No waving fields with gentle breezes
Or dockside bar with raucous band
No dance hall warm with gin and kisses
No gambling hall kept them on land.
They very quickly tired of fighting
By midnight girls began to pall:
Their rotten hulk seemed more inviting
That ship without a flag at all.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Riddled with rats, its bilges oozing
With pestilence and puke and piss
They swear by her when they're out boozing
And cherish her just as she is.
In storms they'll reckon their position
Lashed to the halyards by their hair:
They'd go to heaven on one condition -
That she can find a mooring there.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

They loot their wine and belch with pleasure
While bales of silk and bars of gold
And precious stones and other treasure
Weigh down the rat-infested hold.
To grace their limbs, all hard and shrunken
Sacked junks yield vari-coloured stuffs
Till out their knives come in some drunken
Quarrel about a pair of cuffs.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

They murder coldly and detachedly
Whatever comes across their path
They throttle gullets as relaxedly
As fling a rope up to the mast.
At wakes they fall upon the liquor
Then stagger overboard and drown
While the remainder give a snigger
And wave a toe as they go down.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Across a violet horizon
Caught in the ice by pale moonlight
On pitch-black nights when mist is rising
And half the ship is lost from sight
They lurk like wolves between the hatches
And murder for the fun of it
And sing to keep warm in their watches
Like children drumming as they sh1t.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

They take their hairy bellies with them
To stuff with food on foreign ships
Then stretch them out in sweet oblivion
Athwart the foreign women's hips.
In gentle winds, in blue unbounded
Like noble beasts they graze and play
And often seven bulls have mounted
Some foreign girl they've made their prey.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Once you have danced till you're exhausted
And boozed until your belly sags
Though sun and moon unite their forces -
Your appetite for fighting flags.
Brilliant with stars, the night will shake them
While music plays in gentle ease
And wind will fill their sails and take them
To other undiscovered seas.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

But then upon an April evening
Without a star by which to steer
The placid ocean, softly heaving
Decides that they must disappear.
The boundless sky they love is hiding
The stars in smoke that shrouds their sight
While their beloved winds are sliding
The clouds towards the gentle light.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

At first they're fanned by playful breezes
Into the night they mustn't miss
The velvet sky smiles once, then closes
Its hatches on the black abyss.
Once more they feel the kindly ocean
Watching beside them on their way
The wind then lulls them with its motion
And kills them all by break of day.
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Once more the final wave is tossing
The cursed vessel to the sky
When suddenly it clears, disclosing
The mighty reef on which they lie.
And, at last, a strange impression
While rigging screams and storm winds howl
Of voices hurtling to perdition
Yet once more singing, louder still:
Oh heavenly sky of streaming blue!
Enormous wind, the sails blow free!
Let wind and heavens go hang! But oh
Sweet Mary, let us keep the sea!

Bertolt Brecht, 1919