The Lady in the Van (2015)

 "You wouldn't get Harold Pinter pushing a van down the street."

I remember reading, some decades ago, some mention of the tragic and eccentric Miss Mary Sheppard, as she certainly wasn't called, in the memoirs of Alan Bennett. rather more recently, we lost the superlative Maggie Smith. So it's high time that I saw, and blogged, this film.

Much though Alex Jennings is magnificent in totally inhabiting Alan Bennett while also giving us not merely an impression but an actual performance, Maggie Smith is indeed utterly incredible here, in a role that perfectly fits her talents- a humorous figure, yes, but one who will, by the film, come to evoke such pathos. Not exactly likeable- but endearing, nonetheless.

Yes, as befitting a script by Alan Bennett, this film is about so much. The very English timidity that can lead one to reluctantly allow an imperiously haughty homeless old lady to live in a van on one's property. How easily one can become a carer without really intending to, or realising it. That very English issue of class- Miss Sheppard is from loftier origins than the nevertheless Oxford educated Alan Bennett, son of a Leeds butcher, yet he is now a feted playwright living in fashionable Camden whereas she is homeless- plays out in all its nuances, most deliciously as Bennett's mother avoids contact with her son's unwanted guest because "With her being educated, I wouldn't know what to say."

This isn't a film for those who like action- very little, I suppose, happens, and even the mystery of Miss Sheppard's past is not over-emphasised. This is a quietly philosophical, meditative film that is, above all, about the ethics of using real peoples' lives for one's writing, and I for one found it most enjoyable.

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Cardboard Box

 "Pushing women's work at me? You keep that to yourself!"

So this is it. The final episode, complete with a final philisophical and setimental coda about all the violence in the world as a parting gesture from Jeremy Brett's undoubtedly definitive Sherlock Holmes, much as health problems clearly led to much less physicality in his later years.

And the final episode is a good one, if not exactly standing comparison with the excellence that was routinely reached in earlier, better seasons. An adaptation of a fairly obscure Conan Doyle short story, it still suffers from the overly foregrounded attempts at narrative cleverness that have been too prominent of late: non-linear storytelling certainly has its place, but not here.

Nevertheless, this is a decent send off with a decent cast and a solid story, anchored by the conceit of two severed ears given as a birthday present. It is ulimately a tale of passion, social class, adultery and murder which is told well, much as the trope of the temptress who corrupts a simple man into ruin is worryingly present. This is also, however, a warning against the killjoy busybodies of the temperance movement, who could certainly all do with a drink.

So this is the end. No more Granada Sherlock Holmes. It's now clear that, despite high spots, the once superlative quality has not been so apparent as late, but the series- and the late, lamented Jeremy Brett- will be much missed.

Coriolanus (National Theatre Live, 2014)

“I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying water in it. One that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning."

I'm a Shakespeare geek, I suppose, but of his thirty-nine plays I have certainly neither read nor seen them all. So, having neither seen nor read Coriolanus, I'm caught between a first experience of the play- one extraordinary both in itself and in what it has to say in our sadly populist times, where militaristic demagoguery continues to plague us.

I can see why the play is not so popular and well-known as the Warwickshire lad's other late tragedies. It is austere, has a proud and abrasive protagonist who is not inclined to self-aware soliloquys, and assumes a knowledge of semi-mythical early republican Rome, in the 490s BC, where the last king has barely been deposed and where, with the first secession of the plebs, issus of class and war intertwine as the young city state conquers its neighbours.

One must surely imagine this play, with its emphasis on the people, the tribunes, the conflict between arrogant privilege and the popular will, would be much less resonant in early Jacobean times than it is today, where Coriolanus as a proud warrior and would-be tyrant evokes not so much the sadly delusional Trump as the much younger, leaner and more sanely arrogant Cummings. Tom Hiddleston is superb, succeeding in seeming authoritative and believable as a proud and reactionary soldier undone by hubris, his performance full of nice little touches, at limes leavening the tragic gloom with bitter humour. Mark Gatis is similrly superb as Menenius, the humour of his performance concealing dark depths. The sparse production, too, is a triumph, allowing the play itself to succeed by its words and performances. It's just a shame Birgitte Hjort Sorensen of Borgen has such a relatively small part.

Magnificent, both as a play and a performance. Not all tragedies have to be Hamlet, and there's a real power in letting the interior thoughts of the protagonist remain opaque. From Hiddleston I've never seen a finer performance.

Coalition

"I'm worried about Nick. He's in a bad place."

"Sheffield?"

I tend to write up my blog posts late these days, what with having become a father for the first time in February, but I just had to get this one out before the General Election and what looks like being a much more tortuous set of coalition negotiations over what could be a lot more than six days.

Also, cards on the table time: I'm on the left of the party, and some way to the left of all of the party's Cabinet ministers, with the possible exception of Vince Cable, but I've always voted Lib Dem until now. And the only reason I won't be voting Lib Dem on 7th May because I have now moved to a Tory/Labour marginal where a Lib Dem vote is fairly pointless under First Past the Post (why oh why is there not a site where I can swap my vote with a Labour supporter in a threatened Lib Dem seat?). I may not be a supporter of Nick Clegg (see below) or Orange Bookers generally, but I don't demonise him as many Labour tribalists do, but he hasn't been good leader since 2010 for various reasons, although he does have genuine achievements to his name and can, on the whole, be proud of his career. This one-off drama, with Clegg taking centre stage, is rather good at showing both his vices and his virtues.

Coalition is as good as this sort of thing tends to be, although you can never get a huge amount of dramatic depth out of a fairly straight reconstruction of recent political events. Obviously the standout cast member is Mark Gatiss who, as every review and preview has said, steals the show as a weary yet still dangerous Peter Mandelson, but all the portrayals ring true.

We begin not with the night of the election but with the leaders' debates, and those heady days of Cleggmania when everything seemed possible. This gives context for the slight deflation felt by many Lib Dems on election night, but the absurdity of election night is best portrayed by David Cameron receiving a call of misunderstanding congratulations from the Governor of California. Hasta la vista, baby. We also establish the relationship between Clegg and Donald Sumpter's elder statesman Paddy Ashdown, both a more left-wing and more substantial figure than Clegg, first shown consoling his protege on the mildly disappointing results, showing him to have rather more steel to him; it's not hard to see that the authorial voice sides with Ashdown rather than Clegg. So do I.

The morning after the night before sees Cameron make his big offer of coalition and Ashdown's prescient remark that "They'd string us up." The personal relationships are fascinating here; Camerpn subtly shows his dominance by insisting on immediate negotiations without sleep, and Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell puts pressure on both parties for a quick deal. Soon there are parallel negotiations going on with Labour, and the contrasts between Clegg's two suitors are fascinating; the Tories are hungry and devious, while Labour are half-hearted (sans Mandelson, a bit), unprepared and saddled by the fact that they simply haven't got the parliamentary arithmetic. Clegg's relationship with Gordon Brown is awkward, while Cameron runs rings round him; a Con-Lib coalition was inevitable, but a Blair clone like Clegg does not a good negotiator make and the script implies, not unfairly, that he was at least partly motivated by the prospect of power. He could have held out for a better deal, Brown leaving Number 10 prematurely notwithstanding. And, although a coalition of course makes it understandable that both sides have to compromise on their respective manifestos, that tuition fees pledge was different. It should have been inviolable.

Clegg's ultimatum to Brown- that he has to leave as PM for a coalition to happen- is both awkward and terrible, and Clegg is right to feel guilt. Brown deserved better, and Clegg cannot feel aggrieved if Labour were to make a similar demand in a week's time. Still, I have no doubt that all sides will be much better prepared. 

There's a nice cameo from Michael Crichton as an ancient Tory backbencher who remembers 1974, reminding us that Cameron too faces pressures, but the dramatic focus remains on a harried Clegg and a dignified Brown. We're reminded of how haphazard the final hours were, with Cameron becoming big PM, in the dark, before negotiations are complete. There will not, I suspect, be such chaos next time.

We end with the rose garden, and actual footage, bizarre in retrospect. Looking back the whole understanding of how coalitions were supposed to work looks extremely naive. I'm sure all parties are now much, much wiser.