Angel: Not Fade Away

"Good night, folks."

This is it, then. The end. And, my God, that was magnificent.

The plot of the episode could be reduced to “the gang kill every single member of the Circle of the Black Thorn, and some of them die” but, of course, the plot is not the point. This final episode lives and breathes character, feeling, and the positively existential message that yes, doing good may make no difference in the long run in a world that will always be corrupt and unjust, but we do it anyway, with joyous defiance, as something much bigger than our lives. That message lies beneath everything in this final episode.

Angel must keep up appearances, of course, and early on he is made to sign away the Shanshu Prophecy. But then he is, of course, a hero. Heroes do good because of who they are and not because of any reward, just as one does not need to believe in a Heaven to be moral. Neither does Angel, and neither do any of his friends.

But it isn’t all grim; the gang get to spend one last day doing what they love before they probably die that night. So Lorne sings. Angel spends time with Connor, and sees what a well-adjusted and happy young man he is. Spike gets drunk and performs at a poetry slam. Gunn, wonderfully, does charity work with our old friend Annie who, as much as anyone, articulates what the episode is about- if there are, indeed, corrupt forces ensuring that there will never be justice or an end to suffering, the proper response is to get to work and comfort the suffering. Hopelessness achieves nothing, however justified. We do good regardless.

Wesley, tragically, has no possible perfect days; spending it with the god king inhabiting Fred’s body is the best he can do. There is no joy for him, only grim determination and, anyway “I don’t actually intend to die tonight.” Like Hamilton later, this is something he probably shouldn’t have said.

The Circle are all killed, but not without cost. Wesley dies in Illyria’s arms as she lies to him, his last words being to tell Fred that he loved her. Alexis Denisof is simply magnificent in portraying a character who has had a rich and deep arc, and the same must be said for J August Richards, as Gunn’s arc this season has been deeply satisfying. We are shocked to see a dejected Lorne murder Lindsey before walking away forever. We are less shocked to see Harmony betray her boss and then ask for a reference, but that kind of juxtaposition is something I’ll miss enormously.

And so the survivors gather to face the consequences, with no hope of survival but happy against the odds. And then it ends. Has any season finale ever been better than this?

RIP Angel. RIP Buffyverse. You were loved.

Angel: Power Play

“You’re my hero.”

“I may not always be.”

The penultimate episode. We’re scarily close to the end.

This is an episode of set-up for the grand finale, yes, but it’s also a suspenseful piece of self-contained drama in its own right as we wonder whether Angel truly has been reduced by the dark side, by a taste for power. Only with Nina, in hindsight, is he truly honest, if oblique, about his desires and feelings, and the way he dumps her is even more heartbreaking once we realise why. But much of the episode shows him indifferent to the suffering of the little people, agreeing to destroy the opponent of an evil senator, and generally doing things that seem to be evil in an attempt to ingratiate himself with the Circle of the Black Thorn.  Only at the end so we discover his true purpose- to strike a blow against evil which will not stop it, or apocalypse, in the long run but will be a worthwhile gesture, from which there is no coming back. And Wesley, Gunn and Spike are all with him.

It’s worth comparing Angel’s earlier speech about power to what he says here. Yes, the world will always be controlled by the powerful. Yes, evil can not be stopped and fighting it is in a sense futile. But that’s not the point. One can choose to be good as a glorious gesture, and give one’s life meaning. This is not a religious argument for morality but almost an existential one. And it’s glorious.

The Circle of the Black Thorn includes many people we have met before- the Duke of Sebassis, Cyvus Vale, that devil bloke that Angel plays squash with, a useful shortcut for the viewer. We also see Illyria being subtly humanised a little. Various characters play Crash Bandicoot, which Mrs Llamastrangler introduced me to a few years ago, and Illyria sees it as a metaphor for life- annoying but addictive. There’s still room for humour, and humanity. An epic episode, as ever for Angel, is leavened with humanity. That’s a big reason why I’m going to miss this programme.

But it’s time to look forward, nervously. Forty-odd minutes to go...

Angel: Origin

"In gratitude, I grant you three wishes."

"Really?"

"Nah, I'm just messing with you."

Connor, inevitably, is back for an episode. This shouldn’t surprise us. What does come as a pleasant surprise, though, is how well it’s done, and how the fact that Angel altered reality and everybody’s memories acts to drive a wedge between him and Wesley in particular.

Connor’s life may be a lie, and his memories false, but these lies have made him into a healthy, pleasant, well-adjusted young man with a strong relationship with his family and a place at Stanford. He still has superhuman endurance, though, which brings him to the attention of Wolfram and Hart, and although Angel initially, to the gang’s confusion, runs away from the problem, he can’t keep himself away. He soon learns from Marcus that the Senior Partners have nothing to do with putting Connor back in his life- instead Cyvus Vail, the demon who changed Connor’s memories, no wants to use Connor to kill Sahjahn as is, of course, prophesied. Although why Vail didn’t try to do this earlier I have no idea.

I like Cyvus Vail. He’s a witty, likeable character as is Sahjahn. It’s a shame that one of them has to die, and so Sahjahn adds to this season’s growing body count. It’s a fun and entertaining set of scenes, paralleled with the horrifying Wesley discovering the truth about the reality shift, and restoring everyone’s memories.

This will, I suspect, affect Wesley’s trust for Angel, especially as early dialogue to Illyria highlighted how much he trusts his boss at that point. But the interesting effect on Connor; at first he seems to become his old, wild self and kills Sahjahn, only to return to his well-adjusted self. And the final scenes hint that, although he has his old memories back and knows the truth, he remains the man his new memories made him and chooses his current life- a mature, healthy response.

Meanwhile, Gunn is being regularly tortured in the cellar in a quest for redemption. So keen is he to redeem himself that he turns down an offer of release from Marcus- no more deals with the devil for him, no matter what the cost. This scene is here to show he’s learned his lesson; I suspect his days in Hell are numbered.

Another great episode, then. But aren’t they all at the moment?

Django Unchained (2012)

"Kill white people and get paid for it? What's not to like?"

This is, to date, the only film by Quentin Tarantino that I've seen since Kill Bill. It is, like all his films since then, removed from his particular strong point of witty, pop culture-peppered dialogue by being set in the past. It's as though Tarantino likes to challenge himself, but then that's what he does. He's doing a Western this time- well, a Southern- complete with classic style opening and Ennio Morricone opening tune.

He may deny himself the indulgence of cool dialogue here, but he delivers a hugely entertaining, gory and beautifully shot film as he always does, giving us the full graphic detail of slavery in the antebellum south. This is a refreshing antidote, brutal though it can be to watch, to the whitewashed Gone with the Wind version of the south. Before 1865 the place was backwards, feudal, pre-capitalist, savage. And it wasn't even that long ago.

Jamie Foxx is great as Django, a freed slave with a mission to save his wife who grows throughout the film from enslaved beginnings to the assertive badass hero he was destined to be. Leonardo Di Caprio is superb as the slaveowning baddie, the kind of part he should play more often. Samuel L. Jackson is deeply disturbing as the collaborator, Stephen. But it is Christoph Waltz, as Dr Schultz, the educated, witty German bounty hunter and the only civilised white person in the film, who steals the show, oozing coolness at all times.

Tarantino seems incapable of anything short of brilliance. This film is so good we can even forgive his brave attempt at an Aussie accent...

IT

Part One

"A clown brought us down here. We all float."

I hadn't heard of this before, but my uber-coulrophob ic fiancee bought this years ago and, in spite of her phobia, rates it very highly. It's a 1990 two part US TV adaptation of Stephen King's novel of four years earlier, a novel which, arguably, did as much as John Wayne Gacy to make clowns in the modern world figures of fear rather than fun. Also, Tim Curry is superb, John Ritter is in it and we even get a glimpse of a very young Oz from Buffy. What's not to love?

It's a fairly straight, for which read long, adaptation. The first part is the atmospheric one, and thus the better of the two. We begin, though, with a little girl, and a little cultural difference between Yanks and us Limeys; apparently for them it's Itsy-Bitsy Spider, not Incy-Wincy, who falls down the spout. Fancy that. There are also cultural and visual differences between the two time frames within the film- the 1980s present day and the late 1950s, a time when I Was a Teenage Werewolf was a current film. Mike, our central character, is a black man living in the USA,a fact which has somewhat different connotations in our two time zones, either side of the Civil Rights era as they are. The contrast between these two particular time zones make it hard not to think of Back to the Future.

We have a small group of seven kids / adults, including Beverly, our one token girl, and we follow their contrasting fortunes, haunted by the awful Pennywise, up until the present. Mike, the only black character, is our point of view yet also an oddly passive and unambitious character. Bill, a successful writer, is Stephen King, but harbours a deep guilt over his brother's death. Ben is annoying as an adult, yet more vulnerable and likeable as a kid, and demonstrably the same person. He reminds me of Tony Stark. Stan is the intellectual Jewish kid who dies at the end of the episode rather than face Pennywise again. Eddie is the sexless, mother-dominated hypochondriac, a deeply tragic figure. Richie is, if you'll forgive me, the clown. And Beverly is an abused woman whom we desperately want to get together with Ben, her childhood sweetheart. All of them have character traits that, rather too neatly, reflect their future jobs as adults.

Glimpses of Pennywise are, rightly, rationed and put in a child's perspective, but are deeply effective for all that. He has a strong New England accent.I 'm not sure what this is meant to signify: is this a traditional Maine accent or does it paint him as an outsider? He represents, I think, paedophilia, a subject so awful that it is often wise to approach it obliquely. He's not the only villain, of course; there is also the deeply disturbed bully Henry Bowers, seen here only as a youth. He is left the most marked by Pennywise, becoming confined to an institution.

One of the creepier moments is where a photo is made to move; this is like something straight out of Sapphire and Steel and is deeply unsettling.We end with a showdown, some excellent use of stop motion, a pledge, and a suicide.


Part Two

"You're too old to stop me. You're all too old."

This episode is not as good. Having said that, though, it is perhaps inevitable that the atmospheric set-up episode will outshine the part that has to do the donkey work of resolving the plot; the two episodes should not really be considered separately.

Our protagonists, passive until now, are faced with having to go after Pennywise and destroy him, thus achieving catharsis over their childhood demon(s). They have quite a foe; we begin with Pennywise goading them with the above quote and a library soaked in blood. There's rather a lot of blood; even tea becomes blood, proving that nothing is sacred. That's before we even get to the fortune cookies. And a lot of people from our protagonists' pasts are possessed and say awful things. Henry, meanwhile, being weaker than our protagonists, becomes its pawn.

Our protagonist have a good wine-fuelled night, but the time comes to face what they have to do. Eddie is the most reluctant. His back-story is perhaps the most developed; his asthma is non-existent, he's a virgin and, it's implied, he's gay and closeted. The scary events continue apace, including a scene of a typewriter typing with no typist which may well have influenced one Steven Moffat for both Doctor Who and Jekyll.  There's a moment, where Henry stabs Mike, where we assume he's dead because of the "black guy dies first" trope. He doesn't, but there's still a bit of metatextuality there, methinks. Henry, rather predictably, dies next. There's nowhere else for him to go having fulfilled his plot function, besides he's both a baddie and a tragic figure. He has to die.

We approach the climax, and there's a rather good stop motion giant spider. Eddie dies a forty-year-old virgin.The rest all survive the showdown, but there's no conclusion; Pennywise will be back in  thirty years' time. If we're looking for a happy ending then we must make do with Ben and Bev finally getting together.