The Sandman: Dream of a Thousand Cats/Calliope

 "Writers are liars."

I'm again following far too many series because pesky present day telly insists on throwing up The Rings of Power, Inside Man and (coming soon to this blog) Andor. Fortunately this is a season finale, so I now have only Hawkeye, Breaking Bad and films to balance with all those. Anyway...

This is a beautiful coda to what is hopefully not the only series of Sandman. Here we have two achingly beautiful, profoundly meaningful fairytales that are so very, well... Gaimanesque.

As one who has been the property of many feline owners over the years, I was both amused by and admiring of Dream of a Thousand Cats, a cartoon with many famous voices. It transcends its superficial resemblance to Animal Farm (the Prophet is stroikingly similar to Old Major) to reach annundeniable truth. Cats, much as we adore them, have utterly enslaved us, and would certainly kill and eat them if they could... well, except Ashi, and Badger, and Loki, and Gizmo. I'm their daddy, so I'm safe. Right?

So it indisputably true that a reality shift occurred not all that long ago, and before then we were much smaller than them, and hunted by them. This is undoubtedly true,

Calliope is much darker, using myth to explore male abuse and exploitation of women, and the ensuing hypocrisy. In this case Richard is stealing the ideas of Calliope, a woman, and taking credit... not exactly unptrecedented. Arthur Darvill is superb as a dark protagonist straight out of an updated version of Hammer House of Horror, while Derek Jacobi is exquisite as an elderly writer who owes all his success to the fact that he kidnapped a Muse, Calliope, while on holiday in Greece, the Muse who inspired Homer.

Richard finally gets his just comeuppance at the hands of Morpheus, whose tender relationship with Calliope- despite their past bad blood centred on theor son Orpheus(!) is deeply touching.

This is just a profoundly beautiful bit of telly.

Hard Candy (2005)

“Does your mother know you cut off men’s balls?”

That Ellen Page is a bloody good actress, ain’t she? She was superb in Juno and she’s just as superlative here. I suppose that in both cases she’s playing smart, eccentric characters, but look beyond the superficial and they’re two very different parts. She also seems to be good at choosing scripts. Both of the films I’ve seen so far in which she’s starred have been bloody good. So, obviously, I bloody love this film, in spite of the disturbing subject matter. And, it must be said, the castration scene is somewhat intense, especially for those of us burdened with a Y chromosome.

This is a low-budget film, utilising limited sets and very little location filming; this script could be performed in a theatre with minimal alteration. It’s a two-hander; aside from Ellen Page as Hayley, a very clever fourteen year old girl, and Patrick Wilson as Jeff. It’s a few minutes into the film, after we see their online flirting and the first few minutes of their date, that we learn her age, and realise that Jeff is a paedophile. Not for the last time, the film subverts our expectations uncomfortably.

Hayley is highly intelligent, extremely well-read and exhibits a quirkiness that both fits with and draws attention from the big revelation: yes, Jeff has lured her to his home for sick and disgusting purposes, but she’s no helpless damsel in distress. She, not he, is the predator, and the bulk of the film consists of her discussing his sick proclivities, with extraordinary psychological insight, as she slowly tortures and kills him. The dialogue is what makes this a great film. There’s an extremely good scene in which Jeff tries to insist that, yes, he may be a paedo, but he’s also done work for environmental causes, much as Jimmy Savile did an awful lot for charity. Hayley may probably be insane, but I like her. I’m sure she was lying about liking Coldplay, too, so I won’t hold that against her.

This film has an awful lot to say about the subversion of gender roles in popular culture, about the male gaze, and about power. What’s particularly nice is that Jeff has to reveal all sorts of deep, dark secrets to Hayley, but he (and the viewer) ends up knowing nothing about her- not her motives, the whereabouts of her parents, or even her name. Hard Candy starts out seeming like another version of the old trope of men objectifying women- or, in this case, girls- but ends up subverting that; all along it’s Hayley, not Jeff, who has the agency.

I suppose the film could be criticised for promoting vigilantism and capital punishment, both of which I passionately oppose, but I think that would be overly harsh. This is a thriller, and genres have conventions. I recommend this film highly. It’s just the thing for Christmas Eve.