Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical (2022)

 "This isn't school. It's a prison."

This is the first time I've seen a film at a cinema for a shocking three years, at the splendid and, I'm pleased to see, expanding Phoenix Arts Cinema in Leicester, and once again the reason was Little Miss Llamastrangler. Many thanks to my brother and sister-in-law for treating us.

The film is,of course, splendid fun for all the family, with delightfully witty lyrics courtesy of Tim Minchin. It is, as it necessarily had to be, a very different beast from the 1996 film, set in a very British 1980s of Irn-Bru and bikes from my childhood. Alisha Weir is a revelation and a triumph as our titular heroine, while Emma Thompson is magnificently evil as Trunchbull, whose cruelty is far more apparent here than in the previous film, although there are also hints of a possible actual hinterland..

It's all about the visuals, though, and of course the brilliant songs. There's far more of a whimsical, mischievous sense of humour here that owes far more to Roald Dahl's writing itself than the previous adaptation. There is, of course, a possible subtext- I love Matilda's comment, upon seeing Miss Honey's home, that teachers must be "really badly paid", plus it's easy to see Miss Trunchbull's Gradgrindian regime as a metaphor for the National Curriculum, which was very much an issue ij the late 80s when the novel was written and the film is set. If so, though, any such subtext is worn lightly. More than anything, the film is great fun. Both Little Miss Llamastrangler and I enjoyed it enormously.

The Death of Stalin (2017)

"I’m sorry you heard that, but he is a camel cock.”

This is my first opportunity in this blog to praise the great Armando Iannucci. I have, of course, seen all of The Thick of It, Alan Partridge and The Day Today, as well as some more obscure and older stuff. I am, it’s fair to say, quite the fanboy. And this film is in Iannucci‘s usual improvisational style and is rather good. So don’t expect a hatchet job.

It’s all historically accurate barring the odd bit of artistic licence- in reality Beria was executed a full six months after his downfall- and the inspired decision to ban cod Russian accents helps the film enormously. The cast is superb, with Steve Buscemi perfect as Khrushchev and Simon Russell Beale utterly evil as the loathsome Lavrentiy Beria. But it’s Michael Palin’s Molotov who steals the show, in a perfect bit of casting, as the fogeyish but utterly fanatical Vyacheslav Molotov, whose loyalty extends to believing his arrrsted wife must indeed be a traitor.

We begin with clear demonstrations of the evil of the regime, with one of Stalin’s “lists” being enacted as another load of random people are “disappeared” into Beria’s torture chambers, where he enjoys himself far too much for comfort. He’s an utterly repulsive and dangerous human being, yet it’s creepy that his downfall is in the end because of trumped up treason charges, with his very real history of extreme murder, torture and paedophilia a mere afterthought.

What disturbs, yet rings very true, is the sheer laddishness of the committee as a whole. They all plot for power, yes. They’ve all done terrible things for the party. But they’re nevertheless (the humourless Malenkov excepted) a bunch of immature “lads”. And yet there’s a fanatical groupthink here that is a scary ondictment of unchecked power with many lessons for us today. A superb film.

The Devil's Whore: Episode 4

"I took a husband from you."

"You took two."

Suddenly, from a series which has been exploring the heritage of the British Left from the Civil War origins of the Tory/Whig divide, we get what seems to be contemporary political commentary. Lilburne's final days in his Jerseyan Guantanamo may be straight out of the history books, but they have deep contemporary relevance for a drama made in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Cromwell, in choosing rendition over what were, even in 1654, the proper constitutional procedures, begins to look very much like a Blair figure, perhaps even a Bush the Younger, the type who would support ninety day detention and identity cards. His later debate with Angelica over security versus liberty makes this clear, and Lilburne's tragic last few years make it clear that power does not lie with us civil libertarians.

Interesting, then, that all this should be juxtaposed with Cromwell's dismissing of the Rump Parliament, with the prospect of his declaring himself King, and with an angry Sexby, fresh from shooting Percy through the head, confronting him over the circumstances of Rainsborough's death. If Cromwell is Blair here then the comparison is not a flattering one. But then, everyone on the British left considers Blair to be a cuckoo in the Labour nest. Indeed, even we on the non-Orange Booker, Guardian-reading, Coalition-opposing wing of the Lib Dems think of him as a true small "c" conservative, although no Tory. This is also an apt description of the historical Cromwell.

It's nice that, the night before Sexby meets his doom in failing to assassinate Cromwell, he and Angelica should have what the director makes very clear is good, meaningful, loving sex, sex which ultimately results in the birth of a daughter. 

History takes it's course, and a caption informs us of Cromwell's death and the Restoration. There is a happy ending, of sorts, as Angelica's young daughter sees no devil in the tree.

This is a brilliant, brilliant, unappreciated series, and you must go and watch it immediately. Please. It's really rather good.

The Devil's Whore: Episode 2

"How did your husband die?"

"Because I was not tamed."

"The world would have you tamed?"

"I know."

"Then the world is full of fools."

It's puzzling, watching The Devil's Whore again, that it was apparently intended to be twelve parts but was cut down to four. It's hard, not having seen the unedited version, to judge the wisdom of this decision; certainly the version we have does not seem unduly rushed, and is superb to boot. But perhaps this reflects how TV execs generally find the Civil War an unsexy period, with its suspicious lack of Tudors or Nazis.

Who cares. This is still top stuff. We're two years on, the programme is still lit to look like the paintings of the Dutch masters, and Angelica incurs the ire of a strangely nasty Percy from Blackadder after killing a man who tries to tape her, something for which she is unlikely to garner much sympathy in the less than enlightened times in which she lives. She grows close to Sexby, though. Both are philosophical and both are excluded from power, one by sex and one by class. Sexby may be rough trade for a lady of her background, but the two of them seem to have much in common.

John Lilburne continues to be in trouble, his ideas being far too radical for even the Parliamentarian establishment (for which read the mainstream, triangulating left), let alone the Royalists. Angelica and Sexby are on his side, though, even though his ideas extend even as far as putting the King on trial. 

Also radical, and sympathetic, is Thomas Rainsborough, an astute politician and military strategist yet, we feel, a little too radical for Cromwell and his ilk. He is immediately and passionately drawn to Angelica, preferring a "free spirit" to a woman who submits to privilege and patriarchy. Sexby, meanwhile, is in gaol and hence unable to seethe with jealousy when she sleeps with him.

Things then get complicated. It is only Rainsborough among the senior Parliamentarians who has the guts to have the King arrested, and it is only Rainsborough who is able to protect Angelica from Percy's nasty, sadistic, misogynistic urge to see her humiliated and hanged.

Lilburne is magnificent, and I'm not just saying this because I so hugely admire the historical Lilburne. Here, he insists to Cromwell that there must be no purge of Parliament without an election. The people will vote for the King's men, as Cromwell point out, but they must have their say, and Lilburne will not budge on that point of principle.

Ironically, Angelica is saved by the freed Sexby threatening Percy and not by any deed of Rainsborough, but she agrees to marry the glamorous general anyway. The lady and the republican have their marriage blessed by a stoic Sexby, and Cromwell agrees to free Lilburne as a wedding gift. The couple are happy ever after.

Except they aren't. Cromwell, embodying all the cynicism of Middle England, has Rainsborough murdered as he furiously prays. Angelica is widowed for a second time and, just to kick her when she's down, Percy arrests her yet again...

This just keeps getting better and better.

The Devil's Whore: Episode 1

"Both armies gave thanks to the same God for the same victory."

I loved this when it was first broadcast in 2007 and I loved it when rewatching it for the blog. It's a neglected gem; a magnificent cast and a script by the people behind Our Friends in the North. The English Civil War is a sadly neglected period in our history, which us a shame; it's a pivotal moment in English and British history and the tribal origins of both right and left in this country; this series is particularly interested in that aspect, and particularly in the heritage of the English left, whether Whig, Liberal or Labour, which has always reminisced about the "Good Old Cause".

The whole thing hangs on Andrea Riseborough's extraordinary performance  as Angelica Fanshawe at a time when she seemed to be all over the telly; remember her turn as the Evil One in BBC4's Long Walk to Finchley? She is exactly what this series needs; quirky yet likeable, with the charisma to be the necessary female need in a series unavoidably crammed with men.

Angelica begins as an aristocratic lady, unthinkingly in the midst of what we can anachronistically call the ancien regime. Angelica knows King Charles I vaguely, but her cousin, best friend and soon to be husband (this is, after all, the aristocracy), is a good mate of the very bizarre Prince Rupert.

Angelica's cousin and husband soon proves that his sexual politics are quite as reactionary as his class politics; in insisting that Angelica be silent in bed he not only shows himself to be crap in bed but gives us a pretty neat metaphor for the patriarchal repression of women.

Angelica has a kind of childlike innocence and a weirdness that makes her a fascinating character, although her vaguely non-Christian spiritualism is arguably a bit anachronistic. Our other audience identification character is the much more grounded and plebeian Edward Sexby, splendidly portrayed by the great John Simm. Sexby is a true everyman, if a somewhat violent and blood-soaked one, an uneducated but thinking centrist whose allegiances shift with his conscience. Any resemblance to the historical Edward Sexby is purely coincidental.

Yet to come into his own at this point is possibly the greatest ever Englishman, John Lilburne, played with an accurately Mackem accent (I'm married to a Geordie) by Tom Goodman-Hill. Dominic West, similarly, uses a very correct East Anglian accent as Oliver Cromwell, who is portrayed very accurately; religiously independent and politically conservative without being (to use a very slight archaism) remotely Tory. There have always been plenty of Cromwells in the Labour Party, of course. West's delivery of his speech defending Lilburne is, however, probably the best thing in what is a superb episode.

The slow descent into civil war is nicely done, with the camera at Edge Hill showing an almost abrasively sunny environment. We see the likes of Cronwell and the side-switching Sexby in the chaotic environment of battle and we get a good look at Michael Fassbender's Thomas Rainsborough who is, unlike Cromwell, a true radical.

The climax features Angelica, I'm the face of Roundhead beseigers, showing considerably more cojones than her foppish husband, only to be castigated by an arrogant Charles for her disobedience to male authority just before she watches her husband.'a execution pour encourager les autres. It is, appropriately, the end of the first chapter and a truly excellent forty-give minutes of television.