OFF-TOPIC: Game of Thrones

Season 5, Episode 6: Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken

Seeing as everyone else has vented, angrily, about the most recent episode of Game of Thrones I thought I'd belatedly throw my hat on the pile too. Sorry if this makes you angry.

I've read all the "Song of Ice and Fire" books by George R.R. Martin, those currently being adapted into a multi-million dollar television show by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss - a show that has recently received a critical spanking over the controversial scene where a prominent female character is raped. My ability to read a book would, for many, place me in a certain subsection of a society - that of a passionate group of people, who, in between attending comic book conventions and refusing to wash, care very much about the sanctity of their beloved source material. They care so much, in fact, that if anything changes in the transition between the world of their imagination and its realisation on the screen in front of them, that if even so much as a single moustache hair on the lip of a plump lordling is placed askew they will take to message forums on the internet in their hordes and vent their displeasure in all its profane, irritating glory.

I enjoyed reading Martin's novels, and I enjoy watching HBO's show. Neither are masterpieces, of course, but for the most part each one has demonstrated a superior grasp of story and character, delivering all the right dramatic beats in all the right places. But even before this week's episode there was a great deal of moaning over the ruthless streamlining of books four and five of the saga. I should say that, from now on, I'll be giving away spoilers, so go dunk your head in a bucket of cold water if that bothers you.

For the most part, I can recognise (and even agree with) much of the show's criticism. While I think that both A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons were bloated books, their smashing together into one season of television has been messily handled. Big plots concerning the miserable Ironborn and the Targaryen usurper Aegon have been completely ditched, which is odd, and the one subplot deemed worthy - the slow-burning political tensions of Dorne - has been, quite frankly, butchered (if that awful fight scene with the bald women is to be believed). The creators of the show seem to be in a big rush to get to the big, dramatic moments, scared that investing too much time in building up tensions between characters will result in losing half their audience, without realising it's this that makes those moments so effective in the first place.

But I think the biggest problem with Game of Thrones, and one that runs throughout the entire series, is its treatment of women. While it does draw upon a series to feature some of the best female characters to pop up in fantasy for decades, there's a weird tension between the narrative and the demand from HBO to feature gratuitous sex and nudity. From the various unnecessary scenes in whorehouses to the uncomfortable acts of sexual violence throughout (including turning a regular sex scene from the books into rape), Game of Thrones seems comfortable to jettison the historical precedent of women being treated horribly in medieval times in favour of genuine audience titillation. The more breasts on screen at any one time, the better - and why have a straightforward conversation between two characters when they could be having sex instead? Yeah, The Sopranos did something similar by setting half its scenes in a strip club, but the stories were so good it didn't matter, and there was always something else going on besides the nudity - it was never just pornography.

So now we turn to the most recent episode, and the final scene where Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) rapes Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), while forcing Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) to watch. It was, in spite of everything, an effectively staged scene, and everyone performed well - especially Allen, perhaps the best actor on the show. But it was both representative of the show's adaptational problems and, possibly, its troubling representations of women.

If you can believe it, the scene in the books was even more horrifying. Ramsey Bolton marries Jeyne Poole, the daughter of one of the Stark's old stewards, whom the Boltons are parading around pretending to be Arya Stark. Ramsey invites Theon, or "Reek", into their bedroom and forces him to sodomize her, despite his lack of nether regions. It's a nasty scene but arguably necessary, in that it demonstrates both Ramsey's ruthlessness and Theon's underlying heroism - he later finds himself compelled to bravery in her rescue. Elsewhere, when we last saw Sansa (back in 2005) she was still leaving the Eyrie, on her way to marry a random suitor named "Harry the Heir" - at Martin's current rate we'll probably find out how that turns out in about ten years.

Dan, David, Bryan Cogman et al made the executive decision to smash two character arcs together. Okay. I guess it makes sense, seeing as no-one would remember who the hell Jeyne was anyway (was she even in the show?) But they've come across a double bind by this point, in that Sansa's independence would seem to be undermined by this decision, in that, yet again, she's having to play a victim. What she does next, while important, will be contradicted by much of what's come before it - one minute she was in control, telling off Ramsey's jealous girlfriend, the next she wasn't. Jeyne is a victim (which is fine) and Sansa isn't, but they're expecting her to play both roles. It doesn't make sense. And it's not encouraging considering the showrunners' previous handling of rape with that scene between Cersei (Lena Headley) and Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau).

It's also just another act of sexual violence on the show, which has happened before and will happen again. The only reason people are getting pissed off about this one is that it's happening to a character we care about. Remember that bit where the naked woman gets nailed to a bedpost by a crossbow? I didn't think so. There's a lot to be said about the subjugation of women in medieval fantasy, but Game of Thrones, quite simply, isn't the best show to do it. I'm not saying the books are that much better (at one point Martin describes a man's genitalia as a "fat pink mast") but they're certainly less gratuitous. Sansa's scene may not be titillating in the slightest, which made the smart move to not show anything, but I think it's symptomatic of a creative philosophy that prioritises shock and thrill, both violent and sexual, over consistent character development. And while I still enjoy this show, it's developments like this that make it harder to ignore a niggling voice at the back of my head.

REVIEW: Force Majeure

What a curious thing: a disaster film without a disaster. When an avalanche cascades towards the alpine skiing resort where Swedish businessman Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke), his wife Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and their two children, Vera and Harry, are staying, we expect them to get swept away or trapped under the snow, and for the subsequent action to follow the valiant efforts of those who try and save them. But this doesn't happen - the snow settles, the fog dissipates, and everything goes back to normal.

Only it doesn't. During the incident we briefly saw Tomas run away from his family and screaming children, a cowardly act of survival that, more than anything else, paints him as the world's worst father. He sheepishly returns and pretends that nothing has happened - but everyone else, from promiscuous Charlotte (Karin Myrenberg) to best mate Mats (Kristofer Hivju, fresh from Game of Thrones), knows better. And as Tomas continues to deny everything that's happened the marital troubles between him and his wife pile up until they threaten to burst out of themselves and cascade down the mountain of their relationship (sorry, too much).

It's an entertaining film, especially in how boldly it utilises its big-screen visuals to tell an atmospheric, mature, and sometimes very funny story. The film begins by layering a bombastic Vivaldi score over scenes of controlled explosions on the slopes, and features extended long-shots of characters scurrying through the snow like ants - I can't remember the last time a setting was used to such literal narrative effect, but it all works beautifully. The humour is black, sometimes excruciating, and some of the touches are surreal - one scene briefly adopts the view of a drone controlled by a child - but none of this is achieved at the expense of the characters, for whom our sympathies are constantly changing. Its only significant flaw is a marginally disappointing ending, which is forgivable. Good stuff.

★★★★

REVIEW: Spooks: The Greater Good

Adapting a popular television show for the silver screen can be a treacherous task, in that striking the balance between pleasing fans of the series and making the most of the medium has proved to be difficult. Will a film be a Mission: Impossible or a Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, will it be a South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut or, God forbid, a Sex in the City 2? Thankfully Spooks: The Greater Good doesn't disappoint much. We've still got spies running around London diffusing bombs and punching terrorists to the tune of orchestral music, except this time there's a lot more helicopter shots and all the action seems to go down near famous landmarks.

Following the trials and tribulations of MI5 agents between 2002 and 2011, the British counter-intelligence agency is in bad shape. Still at its helm is Harry Pierce (Peter Firth), who might not be a Hollywood leading man with perfect teeth and chiseled abs but nevertheless holds a place in the hearts of many British viewers. The film sees him in trouble, however, when an operation goes tits up under his command and a prolific terrorist (Elyes Gabel) escapes. Harry is fired, then disappears off the grid. Enter Kit Harrington, who might be a Hollywood leading man with perfect teeth and chiseled abs but at least he's from Worcester. His character Will is living a life of crime in Berlin, but as Harry's former protégé he's just the man the higher-ups want to find him. "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"

Most of the action revolves around a conspiracy that, you guessed it, goes all the way to the very top. Harry tells Will that the operation was rigged to fail by a person on the inside, who wants MI5 to collapse so the CIA can take over, those pesky yanks. There's some fun to be had trying to decide which nefarious government entity is the mole (Jennifer Ehle, David Harewood, and the brilliantly slimy Tim McInnerny all fall under suspicion), though that's not really the film's concern - for the most part it wants an excuse to have a foot chase through Terminal 5, or to stage a tense negotiation with a sniper planted on the roof of the National Theatre.

However, what distinguishes this film from every other dull conspiracy thriller of its type is that there's a real edge to the proceedings, something that's unique to the Spooks brand. The series distinguished itself as more than a British riff on 24 by being ruthless with its characters, such as the infamous "deep-fat fryer" scene, and it meant that you were always on edge about whether your favourite characters would make it to the end credits (they often didn't). There's a similar sensibility to the film - one important character gets knocked off 15 minutes in - yet you can't help but wonder if some of the impact is lost by not having the opportunity to develop its characters over time. Harrington, in particular, feels thin, as does his requisite female accomplice - though both drive the action with steely resolve, which I suppose is all they really need to do.

Overall it's what you'd expect from a Spooks film, and that's not a bad thing. It's exciting, taut, and has none of the patchiness that we like to gloss over when talking about the show. The downside is that some of its personality is lost, and there's no equivalent to the charismatic performances of Rupert Penry-Jones or Hermione Norris - though Firth is as engaging as he's ever been. Maybe for Spooks: 2 Great 2 Good we could have old cast members returning for revenge against their writers? Charlie Kaufman could write it. Just a thought.

★★★

OFF-TOPIC: Baltimore

I don't usually write about stuff outside the world of cinema on this blog, save for the odd review of a TV show or something. But sometimes things happen that shake your worldview, damage your sense of right and wrong and worthiness and critical direction, and just can't be ignored lest your writing turn to shit and you go insane.

Right now I'm working on an essay on The Wire for a module in my degree. It's all about 21st Century America and has proved to be one of the more enriching experience of my academic life - while I'm still struggling over what, exactly, neoliberalism means, I've come across materials that have changed my world view, analysing everything from the Occupy Wall Street movement to the politics of Homeland. It was a radical experience, yes, and there were times when I felt out of my depth as a mild-mannered student with a modest left perspective. But there were also times when I was angered, incentivised, compelled to take a stance on issues where injustice was being most keenly felt, where the world wasn't programmed correctly or acting in the way I imagined it would be when I was growing up in a small white town in Kent.

One of such instances was studying David Simon's televisual essay to the world of Baltimore, a show about cops and drug dealers and how good guys and bad guys weren't really one or the other - just like real life, I guess. It was a show I'd watched and considered myself a fan of but, unbeknownst to me at the time, it was a show I still didn't really understand. It wasn't until I'd read Michelle Alexander's piece on "The New Jim Crow", or Loïc Wacquant's re-thinking of race in the US, that I began to see the full extent Simon's aims and the intense scrutiny and incredible moral resolve with which he carried the show's details and themes to their eventual end.

On the other hand, reading these materials made me realise that, more than anything else, I couldn't possibly consider myself schooled on the socio-economic state of an American city through watching something on TV. The Baltimore Simon and his team constructed seemed accurate, considered, enriching, and ultimately disturbing in the way it mercilessly chewed up its individuals. But it still existed within the boundaries of hour-long segments of television, composed from actors, sets, lighting, sound design, scriptwriting, music, and so on. It wasn't Baltimore, it just looked a hell of a lot like it.

When I saw reports of looting not two days ago I had a crisis of conscience. Up until that point I had considered The Wire as an abstract concept, with the same distance I had treated Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian when I wrote an essay on it last week. It's a cultural product that certainly has contemporary commentary to offer, more so than most of its type - when discussing the show in seminars, the footage of the death of Eric Garner had been released not two weeks before, and Ferguson still loomed in recent memory. Yet, as ghoulish at it sounds, these were still far removed enough from the content of the course so as not to keep me awake at night. I could forget about it, much as I could forget about the Holocaust after watching Schindler's List, or that, surely to the author's chargrin, I could forget about the horrible details of the Cambodian genocide after reading Michael Paterniti's brilliant article (alright, that's a lie - I've never forgotten that bit of journalism, I'm just able to accept it and move on).

But the riots of Baltimore, while still more than an ocean away, have brought the content of my essay to my doorstep. When I write about the show's sensitive depiction of black communities, or of its intelligent dissection of poor economic landscapes and isolation of structural flaws within the most hallowed of institutions, what am I doing? Nothing. One or two people will read my essay, they will offer feedback, and then they will forget about it. I will not have affected anyone's opinion, I will not have offered anything culturally, I will certainly have done nothing to change anything except, perhaps, my own outlook on race, which will likely be strengthened.

Unlike the terrible events in Nepal, there's no way for me to donate money to Baltimore - even if there was, I doubt it would do anything. You can't throw money at everything, and when the problems run this deep, it's a natural reaction to simply shake one's head in disbelief, maybe write something like this then forget about it until it happens again and again and again. Some have expressed themselves through vocal criticism of the protesters, and I can understand why. Deep-running frustrations of this kind should not be expressed through setting fire to local business, through instigating aggressive acts of violence and bloodshed. But there's a deeper issue running here that seems to become fainter and less boldly pronounced between each news broadcast - thus far the best perspective I've read is from a writer of The Wire itself, though perhaps I haven't been looking hard enough.

I'm going to finish my essay, and maybe I'll get a good mark, and maybe not. It doesn't matter to the people of Baltimore. When thinking about culture, society, and whether the former makes any difference on the latter, it's easy to become pessimistic. Did The Wire effect any kind of change on its city? No. But it tried, dammit, and maybe that's all you can do until people pull their heads out of their arses and say, "Hey, what are we doing here?"