Pop Classics

A Proper Farewell and Where I Am Now!

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 19:49:00 +0000

It's been three years since I updated this blog, so I think it's time to acknowledge that I just don't have time to keep up with it any more. I didn't want to shut down Pop Classics because it's been a huge part of my career, but realistically I'm just not able to keep up with regular blogging. I will leave the site up as long as Blogger is willing to host it - I still refer back to the archives for notes myself on a regular basis!

I occasionally blog at my wordpress site at https://jgharrisson.wordpress.com/blog/ and that's where I'll put odd movie, TV and book reviews as and when from now on. That blog hasn't been updated in a while either, but I will try to get back to it when I can!

I write regularly for Den of Geek and still occasionally for Doux Reviews. I also run a podcast called Creepy Classics, where I re-tell and discuss ancient, medieval and early modern ghost stories.

Thank you to everyone who's read Pop Classics over the years and especially to everyone who has contributed in some way. It really has meant a great deal to me and it launched both my academic career and my writing career. I look forward to re-connecting elsewhere in cyberspace!

Assassin's Creed Odyssey: Thermopylae

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sun, 15 Nov 2020 22:01:00 +0000

A note on these reviews: I am not a gamer. I enjoy playing video games, but I have very little time available to play them, and when I do play them, I’m really bad at them. I have never finished a game in my life, not even Super Mario on the Gameboy, which I grew up playing. However, I really want to play through the Assassin’s Creed games. I want to explore the detailed historical re-creations in the games and play through their stories. Trouble is, even on the ‘Easy’ setting, this is something I find really quite difficult and it takes me a very long time. So, these reviews are following my very slow progress as a non-gamer, painstakingly working my way through these games. If you’re looking for a proper video game review, this isn’t what you’re after – but if you’re looking for a perspective on these games from a non-gamer who understands the history but is completely clueless about the game, read on!

So, after getting fed up of hunting for deer in Assassin's Creed: Origins, I decided to re-start Assassin's Creed: Odyssey instead, and use that to get better at the game before going back to Origins. Having played a little of it before, I seem to remember the training stages being more interesting.

Before choosing your character (another reason I prefer Odyssey - yay for having a female option!) and getting to the game proper, though, you play through a short opening sequence set at the Battle of Thermopylae. Most of the game is set during the Peloponnesian Wars in the late fifth century BCE (431 - 404), but this sequence is set decades earlier, during the Persian Wars in the early fifth century (490 and 480-479). This seems to have something to do with the overall story arc of the Assassin's Creed games, which, given I've only played tiny bits of two games and seen the movie, I don't know all that much about. Herodotus is correctly referred to as the first Western historian, and he did write a history of the Persian Wars including the Battle of Thermopylae, though not the Peloponnesian Wars, so I'm not super clear on his connection to the main story. But I figure this, and the references to some special spear of Leonidas, have more to do with the sci-fi aspects of Assassin's Creed, so I'm ignoring it for now!

The depiction of the Battle of Thermopylae itself is interesting. On one level, it's far more accurate than the best known version of this story, Zack Snyder's 300, based on the Frank Miller graphic novel. The Spartans are wearing clothes, for starters. The traitor Ephialtes isn't deformed, and the Persians appear to be normal humans as far as I could tell, all improvement on the movie!

However, it still falls prey to some common inaccuracies, primarily in the fighting style (which is ironic, since fighting is kind of the whole point of these games). Greek warfare at this point in history was hoplite warfare. Soldiers had a big shield which covered half of them and half of the person next to them. They lined up, linking shields, and essentially created a wall of men. Both sides would then push against each other while using long spears to attack. The idea was that you would poke the opposition with the long spear while remaining behind the shield wall. They also had a short sword for close combat if needed.

This is why it was so important not to desert, as if one person broke away, the line would be broken and the enemy could breach it. It's also how the Spartans and their allies held the pass at Thermopylae against bigger Persian numbers for three days, as by positioning themselves in a narrow pass, they reduced the advantage bigger numbers would otherwise give the Spartans.

Like just about every pop culture treatment of this battle ever, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey ignores this. You're dropped straight into battle, and the line has already been broken even though the betrayal that led to the Greek defeat in real life, showing the Persians how to get around the back of the Greek line, doesn't seem to have happened yet. What's far more annoying than that, though, is that you fight as Leonidas using his long spear.

The long spear is for fighting in hoplite formation. It's long so that you can stay behind the shield wall and still reach over the top of your shield to attack the enemy. If the line had broken and you were fighting hand to hand, you wouldn't be trying to fight at close quarters with a long spear, as you do here, you'd be using the short sword hoplite soldiers carried for exactly that purpose. The whole thing looks ridiculous, Leonidas jumping about and poking people with this huge spear instead of using a sword like a normal person!

On the plus side, this is so early in the game that I was able to get through it OK. I tried to pay attention to the instructions about two different types of attack, but mostly I used the fighting technique I learned playing Street Fighter on my cousin's Super Nintendo as a child, which was basically mash all the buttons as fast as possible and hope for the best. So far it's working, but I'm going to have to pay more attention to actual fighting techniques if I want to get much further, even on the 'Easy' setting!

If you're interested in the Battle of Thermopylae, this video is from the class I taught on the battle this year, which thanks to a certain worldwide pandemic, was recorded on Panopto rather than delivered in person.

This video is from a university class and is intended primarily for educational use and not for personal profit. It includes a short clip from the movie 300 (dir. Zack Snyder, 2006) and maps from the US Military Academy Department of History. It also includes images from Wikimedia Commons; details, attributions, etc. here:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_del_Belvedere_.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thermopilas_Batlle_art.jpg

Assassin's Creed Origins: hunting for frigging deer

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 18:42:00 +0000

My husband is currently furloughed and playing a lot of Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, which reminded me how behind I am on this! For anyone who didn't catch my first post - I am terrible at video games, and have almost no time available to play them, but I really want to play through the Assassin's Creed games, especially the ancient world ones. So I am blogging my very slow progress through them - these are not proper gamer's reviews, but experiences of the game from someone with very little experience of video games!

(If you're wondering, no, I still haven't managed to beat any of the Mario games. I had to start Super Mario: Odyssey again).

So, I tried to make some more progress with Origins, and spent an evening playing (for me, that is a lot of time - I am not awash with free evenings to spend doing these things!). But I came out of it very frustrated because I spent the entire evening running around trying to find some deer to shoot. And then working out how to shoot them. And working out why I kept missing out on looting their skin (some random panther or leopard or something kept nicking it!).

This frustrated me on several levels, many of them related to my gaming incompetence. However, it also frustrates me as an historian. The idea of this section of the game is that your character needs some better armour (and with my inability to fight properly, I need all the help I can get!). The first time I tried to play this, I spent absolutely ages wandering around looking for markets etc. before eventually resorting to Google and finding out that I was expected to make it myself. Not only that, I was expected to hunt down the animals for the raw materials first.

Now, I suppose if you were stranded in an ancient city with no money or something, you might have to resort to this. But Assassin's Creed characters find random chests full of money that they happily just steal all the time, and I've got a rather nice camel from somewhere (he's worth a fair bit, especially considering it was the Romans who brought camels to North Africa and they haven't arrived yet) plus various friends. So I'm not convinced this character has no money whatsoever for essential goods.

That being the case, there's absolutely no reason this guy should have to hunt down his own animals and make his own armour. He's in Siwa, a major town once visited by Alexander the Great, in the period just before the Roman conquest. There would be marketplaces and shops everywhere. At the very least, he could buy the raw materials, and almost certainly the armour itself.

I understand that this is largely a training exercise for the game - it's good practice at shooting things while your targets are still helpless animals and not people with swords. But it's not encouraging me to train and get better, because it's really, really boring. If you're an experienced gamer, you can probably whizz through this bit quite quickly. But for me, it takes hours. It takes ages just to find where the deer are in the first place. You're supposed to use your bird friend to find them, but I find working out how to set targets through the bird really difficult. Then you have to hunt them down - when you're inexperienced, this also takes ages. It's a really, really boring way to try to get the hang of the systems, when all you get at the end of it is some armour.

I want to play these games because I want to play through the stories they tell, and explore the historical worlds they recreate. The treasure room section wasn't so bad because at least it was exploring an ancient site. But wandering around on your own near the river looking for deer for hours is just not that exciting, nor is it offering any kind of experience of ancient Egypt (deer are deer throughout history!).

I think I might go back to trying Assassin's Creed: Odyssey again...

The Roman Quests: Death in the Arena, by Caroline Lawrence

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sat, 26 Oct 2019 18:34:00 +0000

I've got a little behind on my blogging of this series - I've actually already published an academic paper talking a little bit about this book, months ago! (It's on 'Fantastical History: Dreams in The Roman Mysteries' and is freely available open access from the Journal of Historical Fictions, Vol. 2.1). But hey ho what can you do, life gets in the way - better late than never!

Years ago in 2011, before The Roman Quests were written, I interviewed author Caroline Lawrence for this blog, and I asked her what happened to poor little Popo, Jonathan's nephew who disappeared. He had been kidnapped by his wet nurse and taken to Britannia - and in the previous book in this series, The Archers of Isca, we finally met him again, living as a British youth called Raven. This book is where the really satisfying resolution to this story is reached though, because it's in this book that Jonathan is finally reunited with both twins (not to mention Lupus, who features in much of the book). Much as I like the newer characters, my heart will always belong to the first four of Flavia, Nubia, Jonathan, and Lupus, so this is the point where I finally feel, all these years later, that the story has been resolved!

Although the books are told from several different points of view, the primary protagonist in this volume is Ursula, a character who is very similar to Nubia from The Roman Mysteries, but a bit louder and more confident (partly due to being raised as a well loved rich girl rather than kidnapped and sold into slavery). Ursula's story here is a conversion story, as she moves from Druid religion, through her ancestral Venus worship, to becoming a Christian by the end of the book. Much of the plot revolves around religious intolerance and the uncertain place of early Christianity in the Roman world, and young readers may be interested to see Jews and Christians confused and Christians referred to as 'atheists', because they don't believe in the many gods of the Roman world.

I especially liked the sequence where one Christian repented at the last minute and agreed to worship the Emperor Domitian. A previous scene had shown a Christian who stood firm and was killed in the arena, so the brave early Christian martyrs were represented. Ursula also has a prophetic dream that's very similar to that recorded by St Perpetua shortly before she was also martyred and torn to death by beasts in the arena. However, I have always thought that many early Christians - perhaps even a quiet majority? - must have simply worshipped the Emperor's statue when commanded to, from fear, or doubt, or simple self-preservation. I liked that the story considered that aspect of religious persecution as well - though the main characters are clearly unimpressed.

One of the things I talked about in my article was that this book is also the closest to fantasy of any of the Roman Mysteries or Roman Quests. Ursula has a set of experiences that can be interpreted several different ways - while with the Druids, she interprets them as magical experiences; Jonathan interprets them in a religious light, suggesting Ursula has been possessed by dark spirits, and modern readers can interpret them as hallucinations and visions brought on by taking drugs (drinking potion made from mushrooms and mistletoe, which is clearly condemned in the text by Jonathan on the grounds that mushrooms are 'tricky' and mistletoe is poisonous). There are a few things that are hard to explain within the story - whether the reader sees them as religious experiences or coincidences is up to them.

One of the sites the children visit is Viroconium,
Roman Wroxeter- I take my students there every
year for a field trip, it's a lovely and well-kept
site with a reconstructed villa and excellent gift shop!

As the title suggests, much of the action takes place in the arena, but in fact there is not too much to scar young minds for life here. There were moments were some of this story reminded me a little bit of The Hunger Games, but this is a little less horrific in content than that series, and could be read by slightly younger/more sensitive children. (For a horrible moment, I thought Caroline had killed the dog again, but thankfully not!). The tour of Romano-British sites is great fun and may, hopefully, encourage children and their families to visit any sites that might be nearby, as it covers a lot of the country.

This books has finally laid to rest some of the last dangling plot threads from The Roman Mysteries, which makes my completist heart very happy! There is just one volume in this quartet left, so now it's time to find out what will happen to these younger heroes, and finally shed some light on the still slightly mysterious Bouda...

Links to all my Caroline Lawrence reviews are available here

Horrible Histories: The Movie: Rotten Romans

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sun, 04 Aug 2019 19:00:00 +0000

The original Horrible Histories books (the first was The Terrible Tudors in 1993) came out while I was right in the target age group, and they were a huge part of how I learned about history, and how I learned to love it, as a child. The TV show came much later and is something I've seen a few episodes and other sketches from, and I've also watched the TV team's recent BBC sitcom Ghosts, which I definitely recommend!

Most of the story centres around the revolt of Boudicca (and some events are compressed to fit them all in to one film). Boudicca is a good entry point to ancient Rome for children (especially children living in Britain). Her story can be edited to be told without reference to non-PG things (leaving out the rape of her daughters, obviously) and it's an exciting tale, beautifully filmed here.

Accuracy-wise, Horrible Histories: The Movie: Rotten Romans (look at those colons and weep!) has the same issues as the TV series and, to a lesser extent, the books. Horrible Histories is designed to be educational so it's really well researched and includes lots of lovely little details about the ancient world. It's also really nice to see accurate depictions of the ethnic make-up of the Roman world after some people kicked up a stink last year about the depiction of black people in Roman contexts - the Roman Empire covered a huge area including North Africa, and others came in through trade and migration from outside the Empire as well.

However, because the aim is to appeal to children and catch their interest, both show and books tend to leap on the most weird, ridiculous, strange "facts" they can. And so this film includes a couple of odd things - the idea that gladiator sweat was highly prized is often repeated by tour guides but tricky to track down a source for, but the biggest offender is definitely the scene showing a dinner party where everyone vomits halfway through so they can eat more. This is something that happens in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, not real life! The persistent story comes from the Latin word for the exit to a theatre or amphitheatre - the vomitorium.

Quibbles aside, I enjoyed the film a lot. Most of it offers a fun romp aimed at children but there are some lovely pop culture jokes in there for grown-ups as well. The prize for Inception-Worthy Levels of Pop Culture Joke goes to "I'm Fartacus - and so's my wife!", a reference to a joke in Monty Python's Life of Brian, which is itself a joke referring to Kubrick's 1960 film Spartacus. But the whole film was worth it for the few minutes before the credits which featured an absolutely beautiful bit of casting - the fabulous Kim Cattral as Agrippina and, most importantly, Derek Jacobi as Claudius. No one else in the cinema had a clue why my brother and I bent over laughing and couldn't stop for the entire scene. It was just so wonderful hearing him speak as Claudius again! He sounded exactly the same! Though Jacobi looks a lot better than 1970s BBC make-up had him looking when they imagined Claudius towards the end of his life.

This is a fun afternoon out at the cinema - and here's hoping it'll get another generation interested in ancient Rome!

The Time Travel Diaries, by Caroline Lawrence

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 17:26:00 +0000

I recently wrote an article on Caroline Lawrence's children's historical detective series The Roman Mysteries, which will be published soon at the online The Journal of Historical Fictions, and Caroline is coming to give a talk at Newman University, where I work, on 20 March 2019. She was kind enough to send me an Advanced Reading Copy of her forthcoming children's book, her first venture fully into the world of science fiction and fantasy (though she's paddled around the edges of SFF before - which is what my article is about!).

The Time Travel Diaries tells the story of Alex, a London teenager of Greek descent who travels back in time to Roman London. I've always enjoyed timeslip and time travel stories - as a child, Tom's Midnight Garden was one of my favourite books, and as an adult, I've really been enjoying the Outlander TV series (I haven't read the books yet, but I plan to!). (I also loved reading Time Travelling With a Hamster a couple of years ago, but that was a bit different, as it involved travelling much less far back in time!).

One of the biggest benefits of timeslip stories, especially in children's literature, is that it's a lot easier for the author to describe the past clearly when they can use a common frame of reference with the reader. Lawrence uses lots of references to movies and to modern life to explain what's going on to readers as we see everything through pop culture junkie Alex's eyes. It's more than just a few modern references, though. Characters who come from the past don't take note of every aspect of their surroundings every time they walk out of the door any more than we would. In taking us to Roman London with a modern time traveller, Lawrence provides vivid descriptions of the sights and smells of the past world, drawing out all the sorts of things that would seem completely normal to a Roman but completely strange to us. I especially loved her descriptions of the smells of the ancient world, which can be the hardest part to imagine, but is often the most evocative.

Another of my favourite things in novels is a strong sense of place, and if it includes descriptions of real places, so much the better, so I really enjoyed the use of the London Mithraeum as the location for the time portal in this story. Lawrence's rules for time travel are quite strict (far more so than most timeslip stories) and I appreciated the emphasis on the physical location of Roman London (underneath the modern city). The scenes set there will also hopefully encourage children and their families to visit the site, which is free and very much worth experiencing, as the 'immersive experience' (plunging visitors into darkness and using light and sound to evoke an ancient ceremony) is very effective.

Of course, the other advantage to setting anything in a Mithraeum is that we don't know much about the secretive cult of Mithras, which gives authors lots of room to invent detail. The scenes that take place in the Mithraeum are thoroughly researched and follow current thinking about what went on in the cult, but ultimately we don't really know, so stories can take us to places history can't and fill in the gaps however they want to. I won't spoil Lawrence's visualisation of a Mithraic ceremony here, but it fits the known evidence and sounds just about the right level of strange but not too strange to me! (Particularly the symbolic - but not real - actions taken as part of the initiation ceremony).

Of course, my absolute favourite thing about Lawrence's strict time travel rules was that she doesn't hold back on the language issue. Alex is chosen to travel back in time to the Roman world because he's been going to Latin club, and he's able to communicate fluently when he gets there because he's fluent in modern Greek (modern Greek is quite closely related to ancient Greek, far more closely than modern English is to Old English). The other time traveller in the story is Romanian and is able to understand a little because modern Romanian is quite close to Latin. The book is full of snippets of Latin dialogue, so it will be a brilliant read for anyone with a little bit of Latin (or who needs to revise Latin for an exam!) - but all the Latin is clearly translated, so it's not a requirement to read the book! I love languages so I really enjoyed that aspect of the story.

The three main rules for time travel given to Alex are that he must travel naked, he must not eat anything, and he must interact as little as possible. The naked rule was quite funny and resulted in some amusing scenes as the boys try to find clothing. Interacting as little as possible is a good goal to have but, of course, will always turn out to be impossible or there wouldn't be much of a story! I have to confess I was a bit less keen on the rule about not eating or drinking. I would have enjoyed descriptions of taste as well as smell (the time travellers can drink, but tend to stick to water), and while I understand that fasting is something practiced all over the world for many reasons, for personal reasons I don't really enjoy reading descriptions of teenagers deliberately avoiding eating food.

The novel forms a neat and self-contained story. Only pre-pubescents can time travel according to Lawrence's rules, and the story centres around a girl who died shortly after the events it depicts. This is another link with the real world, as she is based on a real girl whose body was excavated from Roman London, and I love that readers can actually go and see her in reality. It does mean that there isn't anywhere else for the story to go, though! However, nothing is impossible in the world of fiction, whether we join Alex and his friends again, or follow new adolescents back in time (though it's hard to imagine a better qualified pair to time travel to the Roman world than a Greek and a Romanian! An Italian teenager maybe?). Plus of course, a time machine can go to all sorts of places, and isn't restricted to the Roman world - though since Lawrence is a Classicist I suspect if we see more of Alex or the time machine, we'll return to ancient Rome!

I really enjoyed this book, especially the really evocative descriptions of Roman London. I'm good with words but I have terrible trouble visualising things, and Lawrence's descriptions, combined with setting memorable scenes around mud flats and bridges (rather than just stating that they're there) and a clear map really helped me to picture Roman London in a way that I haven't before. It's also nice to be able to visit sites like the Mithraeum or read about the real girl with the ivory knife who inspired the story. I hope the scientists in Lawrence's fictional world find a way for older teens to time travel so that we can go back in time with Alex once again!

The Time Travel Diaries will be released on 4th April 2019 in the UK.

All Roman Mysteries reviews

Mission: Impossible - Fallout (dir. Christopher McQuarrie, 2018)

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 10:48:00 +0000

Contains spoilers for Mission: Impossible - Fallout and probably all the previous Mission: Impossible films as well - I don't know, I've only seen Rogue Nation and Fallout!

I've been listening to the Empire Podcast's extraordinary 3-part Spoiler Special on Mission: Impossible - Fallout, which features over 5 hours of in-depth interviews with writer and director Christopher McQuarrie on the making of the movie, plus a discussion of the film with Empire magazine's staff. It's a fascinating insight into the movie-making process and a must-listen for anyone with any interest at all in the art and the practicalities of film-making, so (as long as you've seen the film, or don't care about spoilers) I'd highly recommend heading over to listen to it. Part 1 is here. If I ever meet Chris McQuarrie, I'll have to thank him for taking so much time to explain how this process has worked for him and for being so enthusiastic about doing it!

During Part 2, Chris Hewitt, Helen O'Hara, Nick de Semlyen and James Dyer talk about the film's early scene set supposedly in Belfast (though, as Hewitt and O'Hara point out, it is clearly not Belfast as there is not a Tayto in sight), in which Tom Cruise's lead character Ethan Hunt is reading Homer's Odyssey. They talk briefly about how the Odyssey links to some of the themes of the film, but point out that the film's plot doesn't really resemble that of the Odyssey in any substantial way. I thought the choice of book was really interesting - and there's a lingering shot of it, so it's clearly meant to mean something - so here's my take on it.

There are a few over-riding themes in the Odyssey:
- A difficult journey, specifically by sea.
- Numerous adventures. However, please note that this bit occupies only three 'Books' (i.e. chapters) of a 24-Book poem, and there's a good chance Odysseus is making it all up to impress King Alcinous and his pretty daughter Nausicaa anyway.
- The homecomings of veterans returning from a long war (not limited to Odysseus himself).
- Marriage and the joy of coming home to a faithful wife (as opposed to an unfaithful wife whose lover murders you, like Agamemnon).
- Kingship and the importance of not letting the plebs take over your kingdom while you've been away for 20 years fighting someone else's war and then shagging a sea goddess. This part tends to get brushed aside by modern versions!

Safe to say, it's probably 'long and difficult journey' and 'homecoming of veterans' that McQuarrie and the film-makers are going for here!

As Team Empire point out, the plot of Fallout ends up going in rather the opposite direction to the Odyssey. Ethan is reunited with his wife, but she has left him and married someone else, and the film clearly implies that this is a good thing, that she is happy, and that Ethan should (as he has done) let her go. So why the Odyssey flag at the beginning of the film, if this Penelope has gone off and married one of the suitors?

I'd suggest that the Odyssey reference is implying the search for a home, including a partner of the desired gender (in this case a woman). OK, Ethan's Penelope has left, but there is another woman with him at the end of the film. Indeed, the reminder at the beginning of the film of Odysseus' desire to return to his wife plays into the scene near the end when Ilsa sees Ethan talking to Julia. She is concerned that, like Odysseus, Ethan will want to return to his lost love - but unlike Odysseus, Ethan is able to move on.

Both Rogue Nation and Fallout play with the idea that Ethan could, if he chose to, retire from his lifestyle full of dangerous adventures and create a more stable home with Ilsa, who is a veteran just like him, who shares his experiences and understands them in a way Julia never could, but who doesn't actually want to live that way. There is just a hint of a suggestion that perhaps, eventually, Ethan could finally come 'home', in the sense that he could create a home, instead of sleeping alone in a dark room with a sad lack of cheese and onion Taytos (the best flavour).

Northern Ireland take their devotion to Taytos crisps very seriously - this is the actual taxi rank shelter at Belfast City Airport, reminding everyone to buy Taytos immediately

There is another inversion of the plot of the Odyssey in this film as well. Odysseus famously manages to lose his entire crew over the course of his voyage, largely due to their own stupidity and inability to follow simple instructions. Ethan Hunt, on the other hand, is motivated throughout the film by his desire not to lose any of his crew, and is criticised for caring too much about their lives instead of his mission. In this way, his reading of the Odyssey at the beginning of the film acts as a warning, and a reminder of how important it is to him to avoid Odysseus' fate in that respect. Both inversions are reminders of what could have been - a happy ending denied (possibly prompting him to look for a new one), and a tragedy avoided.

Xena Warrior Princess: The Deliverer

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 11:10:00 +0000

This post contains spoilers for Xena: Warrior Princess season three as a whole, not just this episode - if you're watching Xena for the first time and haven't finished season three yet, stop reading now!

I'm watching my way through all of Xena at the moment - I'll catch up on blogging it all eventually! For today, continuing the Roman Britain theme, I'm going to concentrate on the first episode set in Roman Britain (otherwise known as Britannia, or 'the island north of Gaul'), season three's 'The Deliverer'.

One of the core arguments of the monograph I'm working on about screen depictions of Roman Britain with Antony Keen is that there are a few core plots that come up time and again - the invasion of Julius Caesar, the rebellion of Boudicca, the 'disappearance' of the Ninth Legion beyond Hadrian's Wall, Arthurian legend. Xena's going to get to Arthurian legend in the next episode - for this one, the writers decide to go two for one and throw Boudicca's rebellion and Julius Caesar's invasion together, regardless of the teensy issue of the 110-year time gap between the two (but then, Xena's lifetime has already encompassed the Trojan War, the reign of King David and Julius Caesar's early years, so by Xena's standards this is closer than usual!).

Xena has always been deliberately ahistorical, of course. One of the joys of the show is the way it throws together whatever stories take the writers' interest in whatever way they want, using history as inspiration for a fantasy world. It's not dissimilar to Game of Thrones, really, except that Xena doesn't bother changing anyone's name, and in fact relies on a certain amount of recognition for its twists on some stories to work. (Julius Caesar's introductory episode, intriguingly, is based in a lot of real history, but I'll get to that when I get to blogging it!).

I wonder if this deliberate playing with history is why Boudicca here goes by the name 'Boadicea'. By the 1990s, most people had settled fairly firmly on 'Boudicca' as the version of her name closer to ancient British (these days, 'Boudica' tends to be preferred, and there's some debate over whether it's a name or a title). 'Boadicea' was popularised by the Victorians, but by the 1990s was broadly considered to be 'wrong'. And yet that's the name Xena goes for - in what I think is a deliberate nod to the re-writing of history in the episode. This is a fictional character who embodies tropes associated with 'Boadicea', not a real British woman.

The episode doesn't really do much with Caesar or Boadicea in the end, though, because it's interested in the development of an entirely different story - Caesar and Boadicea are just the way we get there. This story is heading in a very different direction, which will determine the course of the rest of season three.

The episode sets up a major mis-direct leading up to a huge twist well into the episode. From the moment we meet Martin Csokas' Khrafstar, we're encouraged to think that his cult of the one god is our introduction to Christianity in Xena's world. We've already met the Israelites in 'The Giant Killer', and Hercules has taken part in the Christian Nativity story in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys' 'A Star to Guide Them'. There's clear precedent for including Christianity in a series set in any version of the ancient Roman world, where Christianity originated, even an ahistorical one. A cult of the Son that was a clear reference to Christianity appeared, for example, in Star Trek's Planet of the Romans episode, 'Bread and Circuses'.

Everything seems to be leading up to a positive depiction of Christianity, which is what might be expected (especially in those pre-Supernatural, pre-Luther days). Ares and Discord are worried about the cult, fearing it means the end of their worship (as Christianity eventually would). The god has a name but they aren't allowed to speak it. Direct confrontation is discouraged. We meet the cultists carrying cross-bars for crosses over their shoulders (in a random moment of historical accuracy) and Khrafstar and Gabrielle are crucified at one point, Xena rescuing them just before their legs are broken (which speeds up the suffocation that is the cause of death in crucifixion). Ares is obsessed with destroying the one god's temple (as the Romans would destroy the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, dedicated to the same God, in AD 70).

We realise something different is going on when the cult tricks Gabrielle into killing for the first time, so they embrace both human sacrifice (the priestess basically goes into this as a suicide mission as it's all clearly planned) and deliberately forcing Gabrielle into something that will traumatise her. Ares was right when he told Xena to trust him after all, which is an interesting twist in itself. At this point, the show makes it very, very clear that this is not, in fact, the Christian God. We discover the god is called Dahak (guess they could say his name after all). He is 'the dark one', the dark force who will sweep the world with war. Xena specifically says 'this is not the One God of the Israelites' and Khrafster says no, their dark god will 'take care of' the Israelite God later. Dahak 'appreciates rage'.

And then we see him, claiming to be the Deliverer, and of course, he's the Devil, horns and fire and all. This development gives the world of Xena a truly evil antagonist (as opposed to the love to hate him, conflicted relationship she has with Ares or the coldly human villainy of Caesar). Probably more significantly, this will lead to a Rosemary's Baby style plot development that will have all sorts of dramatic repercussions over the whole course of this season of the show.

This is not going to end well

Aside from being an effective plot twist, this is a really interesting take on the material. The cult sounds so much like Christianity and like something good when Khrafstar first explains it to Gabrielle, which is why she trusts him and ends up playing into his hands. In some ways, this plays into ideas about devil worship that were current in the 1990s and can also be seen in X-Files episodes like 'Die Hand Die Verlezt'. But it's also a reminder that sometimes, something can look and sound like Christianity, but at its heart, can be something very different indeed, and much less loving.

This episode is much more about setting up the rather grim arc plot of the third season than it is about Caesar, Boadicea or Britain. However, it's worth noting that Xena rescues the cultists and goes to Britannia in the first place out of sheer personal hatred for Caesar. The dark turn Xena and Gabrielle's lives are about to take, and Gabrielle's loss of innocence (established firmly as essential to her character) is all, ultimately, brought about by Xena's desire for revenge on Caesar - that desire for vengeance becomes the start of all sorts of darkness and suffering.

The episode stops being about anything resembling Roman Britain pretty quickly as it gets caught up in these bigger issues. The view of Britain it offers is unusual, though. Screen depictions of Roman Britain are usually produced by British people, in British television shows and films. Every now and again, Hollywood creates a character from Roman Britain to accommodate a British actor (as in Spartacus and Pompeii, though this is really unnecessary, considering how many British accents are all over Rome most of the time!), but most have their roots in modern Britain.

Because Roman Britain usually appears in British productions, it is usually depicted in a positive way. Granted, the weather is always awful, but the people are usually hardy, resilient, plucky fighters, while the occupying Romans are often beleaguered, suffering from colds, trying to do their best in a difficult posting. Both sides are usually presented broadly sympathetically, because modern British people tend to see themselves in both the native Britons and the occupying Romans.

This production, almost entirely lacking in British input, is very different. Our national heroine is suddenly French! (Xena knew her in Gaul and she escaped to Britain). British productions depict Boudicca as the ultimate British freedom fighter, especially following World War Two - she embodies the idea of plucky little Britain (enormous British empire notwithstanding - that gets left out of the British narrative) standing up against the Nazi invasion. Here, however, she just turns up after being in Gaul, fights a bit, and disappears.

In this episode, Britain is the home of literal devil worship, and one of British prehistoric ancestors' greatest achievements, a World Heritage Site, is a temple to the Devil himself that must be destroyed - Dahak's temple, once the main building is burned down, looks an awful lot like Stonehenge (which is in reality, of course, a deliberately open-air structure that's thousands of years older than the Roman Empire).

This sort of reflects Roman attitudes towards Britain in a way. The Devil is a medieval Christian concept, but Pliny the Elder, while claiming that everyone agrees magic comes form Persia, said Britannia was so full of magic it might even have been the Britons that first brought it over to Persia (how they bypassed Rome and the rest of Europe on the way, he doesn't say!). Even the Romans didn't think Britannia was literally the home of evil, but they weren't all that keen and were pretty suspicious of it, and of the Druid culture Britain shared with many other parts of Europe, beyond complaining about the weather.

Overall, a really unusual take on Roman Britain - and not just for the mashing up of history! This is a good episode, though, with a genuinely unexpected twist, and a grim plot that sets up more than a year's worth of story-telling across both Xena and Hercules.

Some other random thoughts:

- This part of New Zealand, as is well known from The Lord of the Rings, looks a lot more like Britain than it does like Greece or Italy!

- Of course, in the world of Xena, Julius Caesar looks a lot like Cupid, but that kinda works in its own weird way! He was a man fond of a lively sex life. And we get to see two very different sides of Karl Urban.

- The boobs on Boadicea's breastplate are really distracting, they look like saucepans.

Quotes

Xena: You half-witted toady to a third rate god, come and get me!

Gabrielle: Everything's changed. Everything.

Disclaimer: Gabrielle was slightly well done during the filming of this motion picture. However, the producers would like to recommend a zesty barbeque sauce to bring out the full flavour of this episode.

All Xena: Warrior Princess reviews

The Eagle of the Ninth: Esca

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sat, 09 Jun 2018 11:39:00 +0000

Having covered Marcus Aquila's arrival in Britain in the first episode, it is this second episode that really sets up the characters we'll be following through the rest of the story as our hero meets and buys a British slave called Esca.

Both the book and the TV series cover Marcus' relationship with another Briton, before Esca, in detail. He first meets and befriends Caradoc, and goes hunting with him. However, Caradoc conspires with other British to attack the fort and the ensuing battle, in which Caradoc is killed, is when Marcus received his career-ending injury. The film touched on this, but the television series is able to devote the whole of the first half-hour episode to it, making it a separate point in itself. When Marcus meets Esca, therefore, he has much more reason to be wary of making friends with any Briton, and to worry about how their loyalty to other Britons may conflict with friendship with him. The series also drives the point home with flashbacks of Caradoc, just to make sure no one has missed the point, so there is much more tension between Marcus and Esca on both sides here.

Esca has a Northern English regional accent. The lack of RP, in the 1970s, presents him as lower class (at that time, newsreaders and other television personalities all used RP). His geographical origins are, of course, important to the story.

The series also includes Marcus' love interest, who was left out of the film to focus on the relationship between Marcus and Esca. Unsurprisingly, she looks a lot older than 13, as she is in the book! That would be creepy. Camilla/Cottia is from the Iceni tribe and has reddish hair, because heaven forbid we should get through a story set in Roman Britain without a reference to Boudicca! Unlike the other British characters, Cottia has an RP accent though, presumably to emphasise the Roman upbringing she is getting from her Roman aunt and uncle.

We get to see some gladiatorial combat in this episode, and the set for the small provincial amphitheatre is fairly impressive. All of our heroes, while not necessarily against blood sport in humans, are against animal cruelty, as modern literary Romans nearly always are. Audiences can accept that these people of a different time are okay with humans fighting and killing each other, but not that they are okay with animal cruelty. This is why the dog never dies in action movies.

This is where we meet Esca and in another unsurprising move, he's fighting a retiarius. There's something about the retiarius (the fighter who uses a net and trident) that really appeals to film-makers, presumably because it looks so different to more familiar forms of single combat from other eras, like sword fighting. A retiarius is clearly, absolutley Roman. I really like the way the Roman and Esca the Briton take completely different fighting stances here, not just due to their different weapons, but as a visual reminder that they have been raised in completely different ways, with completely different fighting styles.

The series continues to make good use of its budget in several ways. I'm impressed with the full on pool in the bathhouse (with everyone wearing shorts because child audience!). The apparently mechanical wolf in one scene is a bit distracting though.

This is still essentially set-up, as the episode is entirely devoted to introducing the audience to Esca and Camilla/Cottia. To a generation raised on Classic Doctor Who, this would have been entirely normal. Six-part Classic Doctor Who stories often spent two episodes introducing new places and characters and wandering around a bit, and even the four-part stories are sometimes half set-up, half pay-off. How well this would go down with a generation raised on 45-minute stories is hard to say! On the plus side, it gives the setting and characters room to breathe, and we have time to get to know them - and it replicates the structure of the book, which also spends a long time establishing the relationships between Marcus, Esca and Cottia before the journey that forms the bulk of the plot. On the down side, we're an hour in and the story hasn't actually started yet...

The Eagle of the Ninth: Frontier Fort

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 11:22:00 +0000

The Eagle of the Ninth is a six-part television adaptation of Rosemary Sutcliff's novel, better known to modern audiences from the 2011 film adaptation The Eagle.

The adaptation was made for transmission on Sunday evenings in six half hour episodes. For years, the BBC used to show adaptations of classic children's novels on Sunday evenings during the autumn or in the lead up to Christmas, including The Chronicles of Narnia, The Borrowers and Merlin of the Crystal Cave. I used to love them, and looked forward to them as a child. The previous year, in autumn 1976, the BBC has transmitted its phenomenally successful adaptation of Robert Graves' novel I, Claudius for adults (definitely for adults) so it is not surprising that their choice of children's novel for 1977 was a Roman-set one.

The use of accents, as in any show about Roman Britain, is interesting. The Romans here have proper plummy BBC accents. They all speak Received Pronunciation, which implies they are educated and associates them with the ruling classes. This goes for all the Roman troops, not just the commanders, which is unusual - even I, Claudius the year before used regional accents for lower ranking soldiers. The British, meanwhile, speak with a vaguely West Country accent (which is clearly being put on, badly, by the actors) in order to associate them with farming, with the land and with lower social classes (think Sam Gamgee's accent from The Lord of the Rings).

This series follows the book much more closely than the 2011 film (unsurprisingly), so this whole first episode is basically set-up for the main part of the story. In this particular case, that works rather well for the story, as it allows Marcus' initial experience of Britain to stand as a story on its own, before following him out of the army in the rest of the series.

I like the opening of the show, with a bit of black and white filming and a marching song that, while written to have vaguely Roman-appropriate lyrics, is clearly an old British-style marching song, all about leaving a girl behind and so on (see this rather wonderful Tumblr thread about different types of folk songs!). The Roman soldiers are therefore clearly presented to the audience as figures to identify with, singing the sort of marching songs British soldiers might have sung during the wars that were still very much in living memory (the children watching this in the 1970s may have had parents who fought in World War Two). The British, so far, are rather wilder.

Despite being aimed at children and families, this show actually has a lot more action than I, Claudius. It obviously had a much bigger budget, as it includes actual outdoor filming. The battle scene is brief, shot in close-up and bloodless (the result of both budget and being aimed at a child audience), but we do get to see the testudo in action and it allows the series to do a bit more showing and a bit less telling. On the whole, though, like I, Claudius, the series relies heavily on small, indoor sets featuring a couple of theatrically trained actors crossly providing exposition to each other.

I happen to be watching it now on an old, scratched, slightly fuzzy TV/DVD player that was a kind donation from my partner's cousins, that makes a weird clicking sound as the DVD plays. This is probably the closest modern way to replicate the experience of watching it in the 1970s! It's certainly far closer to our family TV from the 1980s than the elaborate projector screen system my partner has set up downstairs. Still, if modern eyes can get past the old-fashioned filming style and sometimes stilted delivery, the series is well worth a look.

Britannia: Episode 1

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Fri, 27 Apr 2018 14:00:00 +0000

It starts with rain - of course. Roman Britain = rain. It is known.

Wikipedia calls this series 'historical fantasy'. On the basis of this first episode, it looks like it's somewhere on the border between fantasy and slightly weird historical drama.

The Outcast's visit to the underworld could be halluciantions brought on by a dangerous but survivable situation, while the smoke spirit inhaled in the initiation ceremony could be a drug of some kind. The hypnotism is a bit weirder, but still just on the border of the almost plausible. Maybe! Antonius' impersonation of Plautius' grandfather/possession by his spirit is the oddest and hardest to explain, and indicates that perhaps the series is going to venture into fully fantastical territory in future episodes.

Much of what we "know" about Druids and British culture before the Roman occupation is educated guesswork, from what archaeological evidence is available (much of it dating to after the Roman invasion and therefore showing Roman influences) and from texts written by Romans, most of whom, with the exception of Julius Caesar, had never been there themselves. Our knowledge of Druid religion and culture is, therefore, very patchy and focuses mainly on the more sensationalist bits that the Romans wrote about, like human sacrifice and strange divinatory practices. The advantage of this for film and television producers, of course, is that they can make up all sorts of things about the Druids and we can't really complain that they're inaccurate, because we don't really know that much about them in the first place.

(Of course, the one thing we do know a bit about is the position they buried people in, so that's handy when you're filming a funeral scene!).

This series seems pretty engaging so far. I like the opening focus on female initiation rituals, which don't always get as much attention as male ones, and I notice we haven't been told the young girl's name yet. It wouldn't be Boudicca, by any chance? Boudicca's revolt took place just under 20 years after the invasion, so the timescale just about works, assuming this girl gets married and has children within about 5 years. Boudicca was Queen of the Iceni, not the Cantii (called the Canti in the series), but that was because her husband was king, so it's possible she could have married into that tribe from another one. Her hair is brown rather than red, but henna hair dye to colour hair red was around in the Roman world, and Greek and Roman descriptions of hair colours are difficult to interpret anyway, so even that's not a deal-breaker. (Boudicca's hair is described as 'xanthe' by Cassius Dio, the same colour as Achilles' and the root of a common slave name in Classical Greece, meaning broadly blonde, ginger or red).

The suddenness and violence of the Roman invasion, appearing out of nowhere through the trees while we're completely wrapped up in the ritual, is really well done. David Morrissey is at his most grim and soldier-y, playing a Roman again, and Zoe Wanamaker has fabulous eyeshadow (though her character doesn't know how to do diplomacy).

The main historical issues so far relate to the series' firm insistence that the British and the Romans know nothing about each other. British culture was pretty similar to Northern French (Gaulish) culture back then - you can still see the similarities in Brittany (northern France) and Cornwall - so I'm not sure why the Romans are so taken aback by Britain considering they conquered Gaul years ago. And they had been trading with Britain and had several client kingdoms (British kings who paid tribute and were largely under Roman control) ever since the invasions under Julius Caesar. So the Romans should have some knowledge of Britain, and British girls living on the coast within sight of France should have some knowledge of the Romans. As indeed they clearly do, since Mackenzie Crook's Druid is able to communicate easily with Aaron Pierre's Roman solider of Numidian origin, which means they must both be speaking Latin, the language of communication in the Western Empire and, of course, the language of the Romans, as British Druids are unlikely to speak Numidian and Numidian soldiers unlikely to speak Celtic.

Historical issues aren't really the point, though. This is a drama series, not a documentary, and one that is clearly skirting the edge of fantasy. So far, the series has provided likeable characters (Cait/Unnamed/Possibly-Boudicca), intriguing characters (the Outcast), entertainingly vicious characters (Plautius and Antedia) and funny characters (the late Islene, but hopefully there will be more). It's got fairly high production values and seems well paced, so all in all the signs are good that this should be a fun ride - I look forward to the next episode!

The Archers of Isca (by Caroline Lawrence)

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Fri, 16 Feb 2018 22:06:00 +0000

I've been sitting on this book for two years and finally managed to read it! It's been a busy couple of years.

I'm very glad I did though - as ever with Caroline Lawrence's books, I thoroughly enjoyed this. After taking months and months to read a very long non-fiction book about America and American history (In America: Travels with John Steinbeck by Geert Mak, which I thoroughly recommend, but it took me a while to get through it) I devoured this one in a few nights. I was so pleased to finally sit down and spend time with these characters again. My heart will always belong to Flavia and Nubia, but Juba, Ursula, Fronto and Bouda are equally engaging and likeable characters with fascinating stories to tell.

As a British person living in England, the special joy of this series lies in the setting in Roman Britain, and in recognising familiar places. I love the Roman Baths at Bath, so the visit to Aquae Sulis was great fun. I've still never been to Caerleon, so this was another reminder that I really need to get there! I also really enjoyed the descriptions of British Iron Age village life (which made a refreshing change from Roman, though I sympathise with Fronto feeling more at home in Roman buildings!).

The story is framed by the Celtic festivals of Samhain and Beltane, and features two very different giant Wicker Men. These are best known from the film(s) but, as the book tells us, they are described by Caesar and Strabo, and I've been teaching these texts (looking at them together together with the evidence of human sacrifice from bog bodies) for years so I got a kick out of that. You can still see a sort of survival of this custom in some Guy Fawkes celebrations - I went to Bonfire Night in Oxford in 2010 and the 'guy' - usually a human-size figure in early modern dress sitting on the bonfire - had been replaced with a giant wicker man which was set alight.

It was impossible to get a decent picture,
but this is the giant corn dolly/Wicker Man on fire!

On the Classical side, one particularly effective scene has the two young girls, Ursula and Bouda, kidnapped while they are out picking flowers and making garlands in a spring meadow. This clearly followed ancient descriptions of the abduction of Persephone and was all the creepier and more effective for it. Thankfully, the girls' abductors had a different aim in mind than Hades did.

The first book in this series, although it followed all three Roman children's perspectives, focused primarily on Juba, and this second highlights Fronto. His story, in which he joins the army, reminded me a little of Rosemary Sutcliff's classic The Eagle of the Ninth, and brought with it another fascinating change of scenery. Presumably the third and fourth books will highlight Ursula and Bouda - I'm especially looking forward to the Bouda volume, as she is still a bit of a mystery here!

I've already ordered the next book, which promises to have gladiators in it, always one of my favourite ancient tropes. I'm confident it won't take me another two years to read it! (Come back in two years and find out...!)

Wonder Woman (dir. Patty Jenkins, 2017)

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Mon, 12 Jun 2017 14:02:00 +0000

I've been meaning to write up a blog post on Wonder Woman ever since I saw it last week, but there's so much to say, I hadn't yet had a chance! I'm going to focus here on Wonder Woman as portrayed in these films (this one and Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice). I'm dimly aware of some aspects of her comic-book origins - created in 1941, not long after Batman and Superman, and so on - but I don't know enough about them to go into any detail. I also think it's worth considering the film on its own merits, since movie makers have fairly free reign over how much they take from a comic book tradition anyway (Guardians of the Galaxy, for example, is fairly far removed in terms of detail from the comic-book versions).

OK, so I guess I'd better start with the Classics stuff, since that is the purpose of this blog! While her superhero identity is as the red, white and blue-bedecked Wonder Woman, Diana of Themiscyra is actually an Amazon, a race of warrior women from ancient Greek mythology that I've talked about here and in substantial detail here.

The Amazons in Greek mythology exist to be tamed. They are both a menace from nightmares - a race of powerful, warrior women, a threat to patriarchal Greek society - and magnetically attractive, Achilles falling in love with the Amazon Penthesilea at the moment of killing her (or, sometimes, with her corpse after death). Sameer's line in this film, "I'm both frightened and aroused", sums it up rather well.

But ultimately, in ancient mythology, the Amazons exist to be tamed. Their threatening aspect, their military skill and physical prowess, must be conquered and brought under control. Similarly, as women, they must be taken out of their all-female society and brought under the control of men - hence Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, ends up married to Theseus, King of Athens (and promptly dies leaving a wetter-than-wet son who gets cursed to death by his own father due to the evil machinations of his step-mother).

Wonder Woman's Amazons, unsurprisingly, have a very different purpose. Diana's story arc in this film is not to be tamed, but to discover her own power and strength. Indeed, if anyone is to be tamed in this film, it is men, who have gone completely out of control in their drive for destruction. In an interesting reversal of the ancient myth, the Amazons exist in this reality in order to tame men.

I have to confess I felt there was something a bit uncomfortably Rape of the Sabine Women-y about the Amazons' backstory and purpose. I'm going on my rough memories of one viewing of the film here, but the initial drive to create the Amazons, if I remember rightly, was implied to be Zeus trying to stop men from fighting (egged on by Ares) by placing wives, mothers and sisters around them, and I seem to remember an image used in the film inspired by the famous Jaques-Louis David painting of the intervention of the Sabine women.

The story of the Sabine women is that early Romans, lacking wives, kidnapped women from the local Sabine tribe, raped them and forcibly married them. By the time their brothers and fathers got their act together to rescue them, the women had children with the Romans and, motherhood being the most essential aspect of a woman's life as far as ancient societies are concerned, the women leapt between the men begging them to stop fighting because they loved them all equally as family. It's a political tactic the Romans continued to use in real life, using marriages to try to hold together fragile political alliances (not always successfully!). Women and their fertility become a tool to hold men together - in some real-life historical cases, if the woman dies, so does the alliance. However, the women themselves have no real agency - they are married off where their fathers and brothers find it useful and if their husband later rejects them, they are helpless then too.

Fortunately, the backstory of Wonder Woman's Amazons develops in a rather different way. Rather than non-combatants with babies, these Amazons become warriors themselves, intended to end warfare with... warfare. They live by the sword and in some cases die by the - well, bullet. They are fighting fire with fire. Umm, I'm not how I feel about that either. But they're awesome, kick-ass women so what the heck, let's go with it.

Warfare need not be their only role. Diana is, of course, the Latin name for the virgin huntress goddess, Artemis (nothing much to do with the Amazons in mythology), goddess of hunting, wild animals, childbirth and young girls up to the age of marriage (about 12-15). In Greek mythology, goddesses are generally only allowed to get involved in masculine things like war and hunting if they are virgins - and so, not really women, as they never have children (except for that one time Hephaestus tried to rape Athena but only got stuff down her leg, which resulted in her son, Erichthonius).

Thankfully, Diana defies this by allowing Captain Kirk to show her this thing called love, and implies she wasn't without options on her all-female island anyway (the line about men being essential for procreation but not for pleasure got a good laugh out of me!). In this film, she is able to be a sexually active woman without necessarily becoming a mother - one of society's (and science's, if we're talking about heterosexual sex) big steps forward since ancient Greece!

These Amazons completely defy the idea of motherhood as an essential characteristic of women, without which they are incomplete. Only one Amazon is a mother, but while Diana's note that men are essential for procreation might imply more of them might have been mothers if they had men around, none of the Amazons seem to be crying out for volunteers - they seem perfectly happy in their almost child-free environment. Women have an entirely different, very specific role in this world.

Of course, the film also features an appearance from the Greek god Ares, god of war. David Thewlis' Ares is a very interesting take on the character. I've heard a few suggestions that, while his casting works very well for the sections in which he whispers subtly in people's ears, portraying the creeping influences that bring about warfare rather than the fighting itself, people seem to be less sure about his performance as the revealed Ares at the climax. I was fine with it, to be honest. The traditional depiction of War embodied as the epitome of masculinity and strength gives War characteristics that I'm not sure it really has. I have no personal experience of war, so I may be completely out of line here, but it seems to me that the real, lived experience of warfare, rather than featuring strength and power and impressive feats, is more a nasty, insidious, unpleasant experience of pain and suffering that leaves its mark whether it results in physical injury or not, and Thewlis' performance did manage to imply some of that.

The World War One setting is also a very interesting choice. Wonder Woman's comic book origins place her during World War Two, but there are several reasons for choosing World War One instead. Probably most significantly for the film-makers, the story is already similar enough to Marvel's Captain America: The First Avenger, set in World War Two, as it is (right down to the fact they both feature a white man called Chris playing a man called Steve who goes down in a plane!).

But a World War One setting has other, thematic advantages as well. During the earlier part of the film, I was rather bothered by Steve's casual insistence that the Germans were the bad guys and the Allies the good guys. It's bad enough when World War Two is over-simplified in this way but at least the actions of the Nazis make that a little more reasonable. World War One, however, was a giant mess in which pretty much all parties were as much to blame as the others - explained here!

But of course, as the film goes on, it becomes clear that this is actually the point. Ares has been whispering into the ears of people on all sides. There are no good guys and bad guys, just humanity in a mess. I think the film could have done with emphasising that a bit more, as I feel like it got a bit lost in the final act, and it's not helped by the presence of Ludendorff (a real person who, in fact, resigned in October 1918, became very anti-Semitic and was for a while associated with Hitler, but later split with him and died in 1937) and Dr Maru, who seems to be a sort of proto-Josef Mengele. Still, if the ultimate messiness and pointlessness of war is one of the themes the film wants to drive home, the First World War is certainly a much clearer example of that than the second.

World War One is also an overwhelmingly masculine war. Wars in earlier periods of history featured men doing most of the actual fighting, but women and children frequently becoming collateral damage in raids, sieges and other attacks. From World War Two onwards, although women weren't on the front line, there were many more of them involved in the armed forces. In World War One, women were on the front line as nurses and ambulance drivers, and women and children were killed in French and Belgian villages and in aerial attacks. But the trench warfare that formed the greater part of World War One (something rather nicely explained to a generation who have never known veterans of that war in this film) was overwhelmingly masculine. This makes Wonder Woman and her mission really stand out, as, apart from the presence of her evil counterpart Dr Maru, she is a woman striding into an almost entirely masculine arena.

I seem to have talked about gender rather a lot here, but the fact is, at the moment, it's a conversation that's impossible to avoid. This is not the first female-led superhero movie, but it is the first to be well received. It also follows Marvel's mystifying lack of Black Widow merchandise on the release of Captain America: Civil War last year, on top of their continued refusal to give Black Widow her own film, so it's impossible not to have a conversation about its portrayal of gender and its female protagonist.

Wonder Woman has outperformed the female-led superhero movies that came before it at least partly because although Wonder Woman is beautiful (which is commented on) and wears revealing clothing, she is not shot as an object through the leering male gaze, but as an audience identification character, by a female director. It's also, quite simply, a good movie. It is one of the most frustrating truths about Hollywood executives that they don't seem to understand, no matter how much they are told, that audiences don't want "comic-book movies" or "sword and sandal movies" or "science fiction movies" or 'non-science fiction movies" or "movies in which Johnny Depp plays a pirate" or anything else in particular - they just want good movies, about whatever, starring whomever.

Of course, this is also the best-received movie in the DC Extended Universe. I have to confess, I didn't think it was as desperately amazing as some have found it (honestly, I've also seen Alien: Covenant, Pirates of the Caribbean 5 and The Mummy in recent weeks and enjoyed them all) but I did think it was a good, solid comic-book movie that did exactly what I wanted it to. My favourite moment was, I suspect, the same as many others' - the moment when Wonder Woman rose up out of the trenches to cross No-Man's Land. I was blubbing already by that point, and Chris Pine's performance at the climax had me going again. It's a good film. Asking it to reinvigorate the DC universe, educate a new generation on the basics of World War One and prove to studio executives that women can carry action films seems like a heck of a lot - but I think this film can do it. Good for Wonder Woman!

Kong: Skull Island (dir. Jordan Vogt-Roberts, 2017)

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 18:20:00 +0000

Contains major spoilers

Caught this movie this weekend (after seeing the live-action Beauty and the Beast, which is probably my favourite live-action Disney adaptation so far, though this may have something to do with it starring Dan Stevens, aka Matthew Crawley from Downton Abbey, aka an actor I have loved since he was in obscure BBC drama The Line of Beauty). Kong: Skull Island was quite a bit better than I was expecting, though my expectations were quite low and I'm not really that into monster movies anyway, so that may not be saying much!

One of the things I found very odd before going to see the film was the fact that it's a mash-up of a Vietnam war movie and the story of King Kong, which seemed a bit strange. Over the course of the film, that aspect of it did start to win me over, as it did seem to be doing some interesting things with that setting. The story had some interesting things to say about war - for example, one character points out that sometimes an enemy doesn't become an enemy until you make them an enemy, which is an important point that runs through the film, and is illustrated in reverse - an enemy can become a friend - in John C. Reilly's Hank Marlow's mourning for the man we first saw trying to kill him because they were fighting on opposite sides in a war.

The complexities of the issue are illustrated nicely through the group's changing attitudes towards Kong. Kong killed a number of the group when they arrive - that is an unassailable fact. However, the problem with Samuel L Jackson's character is, that fact is all he sees. He has no interest in either the reasons Kong behaved that way, which might seem valid from Kong's point of view, or in the ramifications of his desire for revenge on Kong, which might seem temporarily satisfying but will ultimately lead to more death and destruction for everyone. These are important issues and rather nicely brought out.

Of course the main reason for the Vietnam war setting is that this is basically a re-telling of the Heart of Darkness story that formed the basis of Apocalypse Now. The number of images and sequences in this film that come straight from Apocalypse Now are countless, from helicopters to sunsets to images of silent, staring indigenous people to journeys up a jungle river. Tom Hiddleston's character is even named after the author of Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad. At the centre of the story is Jackson's Colonel, echoing Apocalypse Now's Colonel Kurtz, a man who does not want to return home, who cannot see beyond his desire for revenge, who has been twisted into madness by war.

There is another story that is arguably the through-line of the film, however, and that is John C. Reilly's character Hank Marlow's story. It is with Marlow that we begin and end the film (discounting the post-credits sequences that refers to the wider cinematic Monsterverse) and his story is an even older one - the Odyssey. Like Odysseus, Marlow has been prevented from returning home for a long time, has a grown-up son he has never met, and worries about whether his wife is still waiting for him (though he has been gone 9 years longer than even Odysseus). It's no wonder, then, that the boat that brings salvation closer to him is named Athena, after the goddess who protects Odysseus and helps him. It's a tiny little Classical reference, easy not to notice, but it might just be a key to the true heart of the film - not the journey of Jackson's grim Colonel or those trying to stop him, but ultimately, really the story of Marlow and his long, epic struggle to get home.

Types of historical fiction

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 12:52:00 +0000

I'm at the Historical Fictions Research Network conference this weekend, presenting with Tony Keen on our ongoing project looking at screen representations of Roman Britain. While sitting here listening to very interesting papers and wishing I wasn't going to miss the panel on counter-factual history, I got to thinking about the distinct types of historical fiction and how they relate to each other.

Defining what historical fiction is probably seems like a pretty simple job - it's fiction set in the past. But several of the works being discussed at the conference aren't technically historical fiction, but science fiction. Alternative history stories draw on history but are set in alternative worlds where things turned out differently, like The Man in the High Castle, set in a north America where Germany and Japan won World War Two. Another SFF form of historical fiction becoming popular is retellings of real events with fantasy elements added, like Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

I wonder if there's another category that should be included under 'historical fiction' as well. In our project on representations of Roman Britain we'll be thinking, however briefly, about the Wall in Game of Thrones. I'm also looking at a new project on Classical reception in the works of Terry Pratchett, and have been discussing whether the Discworld novels set for a substantial section in a fantasy version of an ancient world (primarily Pyramids, and to a lesser extent, Small Gods, parts of Eric, and The Last Hero) belong in a different category to the Classical references found more generally in Pratchett's work. George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (the book series behind Game of Thrones) presents a pseudo-medieval world rooted in real medieval practices and including events, most notoriously the Red Wedding, based on real medieval incidents. These are works set in a secondary fantasy world, but clearly drawing on specific periods of real history. (We could even throw in pseudo-medieval retellings of the stories of King Arthur based on medieval literature rather than Anglo-Saxon history, though that's something else again). Aren't these also forms of historical fiction?

This ties in to our understanding of ancient literature as well. I have often pointed out to students that the Homeric poems are works of historical literature, though they are clearly also what would in modern terms be fantasy (I am sure the Greeks did not regularly encounter talking horses or battle rivers). For the most part, these of the type that puts fantasy elements into historical events, though the ancient definition of 'historical events' (e.g. the Trojan War) is a bit different from the modern one! Secondary world fantasy and portal fantasy are rather rare in Greco-Roman literature, perhaps because real world fiction so often included fantasy elements, though underworld narratives might be considered an exception there.

The biggest advantage of writing secondary world fantasy inspired by history rather than historical fiction with fantasy in it, of course, is that the author is released from any need for historical accuracy. All historical fiction takes liberties with history, but in this century, there is an expectation that it will be reasonably, largely, accurate to the current interpretation of what happened (this was not the case when either the ancients or Shakespeare were writing, of course!). I think Martin has actually discussed this though I can't remember where - but writing fantasy inspired by history gives the author so much more freedom to ignore potential objections from modern readers who are inclined to complain about inaccuracies in historical fiction. It also, of course, introduces doubt as to the outcome and allows the author to surprise the reader with events like the aforementioned Red Wedding.

In terms of reception, the clearest difference between these and more traditional historical fiction is that people are less likely to learn all they know about a period of history from these stories (though it might still happen!). But in terms of the way the author uses their material, they clearly exist in the same general sphere. And even audience/reader reception may be similar in some ways, for although the events may be different, where aspects of an historical culture are clearly represented, something of that representation is bound to stick in the reader's mind and colour their idea of that historical period.

This isn't a comprehensive summary of types of historical fiction, and one step further on from historically inspired fantasy must be historically inspired secondary world computer games like the Fable series, though the 'history' might become increasingly set dressing more than anything else in those cases. But it is perhaps a neglected area in research on historical fiction which, if it embraces alternative history (which is, essentially, secondary world fantasy or science fiction) should surely embrace historically inspired secondary world fantasy as well.

John Wick: Chapter 2 (dir. Chad Stahelski, 2017)

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Wed, 22 Feb 2017 14:41:00 +0000

He got a new dog!

This weekend I ended up, through a combination of timings, movie length and the preferences of my companions, going to see John Wick: Chapter 2 and The Great Wall at the cinema, despite the many other impressive movies I still haven't seen! I am a big fan of Keanu Reeves, who I think genuinely think is under-rated as an actor (OK, there's a certain similarity to his performances, but they work) and John Wick: Chapter 2 was by far the better of the two films.

Spoiler alert! I'm about to discuss the film in detail, including the ending.

The film is, of course, ridiculous. In interviews for the Empire Podcast Spoiler Special on the film, both director and star described it as such, with Reeves accurately describing it as 'ridiculous but fun'. It is over-the-top, totally amoral (enjoy watching people kill each other for money and/or over mafia business!) and, generally, nonsense. But it does what it does well and is an entertaining ride.

It's also a film make with genuine care and attention, regardless of how daft the plot and setting may be. That applies to the care taken in the depiction of guns, cars and martial arts, and the artistic choices made throughout the film. Director Chad Stahelski talks enthusiastically in the interview about his love for Greek and Roman mythology (he even uses the word 'plebeians' in everyday conversation!) and the film is jam-packed with references to Classical literature and ancient history.

These include but are not limited to: the names of Ruby Rose's mute assassin (Ares, the Greek name of the god of war, Mars in Latin), Bridget Moynahan's dear, departed wife (Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world) and Lance Reddick's concierge (Charon, the ferryman to the underworld); the death of Claudia Gerini's Gianna D'Antonio (slashing her wrists in a huge Roman-style bath in the middle of an ancient ruin, rather than allowing herself to be executed, the traditional method of execution/death for disgraced or condemned Roman elites); the setting for the middle act of the film, in Rome with a strong focus on the ancient forums and Trajan's markets between the 19th century Victor Emmanuel II monument and the Colosseum, and the basic nature of the plot, concerning Italian organised crime (which has its roots in ancient Roman culture) and the eternal cycle of violence and vengeance.

It's the eternity and inescapability of this cycle that is main theme of the film, and one of the reasons for the substantial use of Classical allusions. Underneath all the cartoon violence, the film is about the difficulty of escaping a destructive spiral once in it. Unlike the personally motivated revenge story of the first film, in this case, John Wick is pulled back into the cycle of violence by a prior commitment he has no strong feelings about, into a situation with no way out (since the first rule of assassination is to kill the assassin). He tries to break the cycle by getting rid of Santino D'Antonio, but the rules he breaks in order to do so only drag him down deeper.

Hercules and Lichas, by Antonio Canova.
Ironically, the original is actually in Rome.

This is especially emphasised by my favourite Classical allusion in the film, one repeated several times. In a museum in New York City, several conversations take place in font of a series of sculptures of the Greco-Roman gods, with, front and centre, a late eighteenth-century sculpture of Hercules killing Lichas. In Greek mythology, Hercules (or Heracles in Greek) is dying from a poisoned cloak sent to him by his wife, who thought it was imbued with a love potion. The cloak makes him feel as if he is on fire as it slowly kills him. In agony, Hercules catches sight of the slave, Lichas, who brought the cloak to him from his wife. He grabs him and hurls the unlucky slave into the sea.

The statue is a perfect summary of the film itself. John Wick refuses to give up and die, fighting for survival, but he is dying nevertheless; he has lost his home and all traces of his life with his wife, and turned his back on his life as an assassin, and while Winston gives him a stay of execution at the end of the film, it cannot last forever. However, he is determined to take down those who condemned him as he dies, refusing to go quietly but creating as much suffering for those he blames in his rage as he is able to do. It's a dramatic, moving sculpture and nicely lends the weight of ancient myth to the film.

I enjoyed the film a lot, even if sometimes it was for the wrong reasons (I could not stop laughing at the Matrix reunion between Reeves and Laurance Fishburne). John Wick belongs very much to a particular genre, but that is not an excuse for careless film-making, and everyone involved in this is well aware that however silly the story, it still needs to be produced in a way that creates a satisfying experience. Reeves clearly loves what he's doing - I'd recommend listening to the Empire podcast interview, as well as his interview on Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's film review podcast, which are both a joy. It's that love and care that make this a thoroughly solid example of the genre and a good night out.

P.S. The Great Wall was pretty much the opposite of this film. Historical objections about the real reasons the wall was built are not really the point - it's fantasy, so of course the wall was built for different reasons in this alternative reality. The thing is, it's silly and reasonably entertaining, but displaying none of the love and care of John Wick: Chapter 2, and featuring millions of the green snot monster from outer space from a particularly poor episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Though Pedro Pascal was funny, and I did like Tian Jing's kick-ass commander Lin Mae.

Escape from Rome (by Caroline Lawrence)

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sun, 07 Aug 2016 14:29:00 +0000

Fans of The Roman Mysteries, rejoice! This book is the first in a new series that forms a direct sequel to The Roman Mysteries. Set a few years later and aimed at slightly older readers (as you can tell from the slightly smaller type!), although this story features new, teenaged, lead characters, it also includes appearances from some of the main characters from The Roman Mysteries. While not resolved in this first volume, the series also promises to wrap up the main significant dangling plot thread from the end of that series as well.

The new leads are a likeable group of children descended from an African freedman, forced to run away to Britain when the historically unpopular Emperor Domitian has their parents murdered. I liked the book's treatment of race, which is accurate to the period. Racism certainly existed in the ancient world, and we encounter it towards the end, when a rich black character chooses to keep blonde, pale-skinned slaves (including one albino) in a reaction to a white man who had kept black slaves. However, in the Roman world, status and money were far more important than race, and that is accurately reflected in the book; this also allows the story to showcase a predominantly black cast of main characters in an historical story that is not about Afro-Caribbean slavery or US Civil Rights, which seems to me to make a pleasant change (not that there is anything wrong with those stories, but they do tend to dominate, especially in the Young Adult market!).

Like all Caroline Lawrence stories, the cast of characters also includes characters with disabilities, the less physical ones not well understood in the Roman world (like the Western Mysteries, this series includes a main character on the autistic spectrum). In addition to exploring how the children deal with their disabilities, the story also explores in some depth the effect such challenges can have on other children within the family, and that was nicely done, acknowledging the effect of the problem without ever implying that it was unsolvable or excessively burdensome.

The story also evokes a wonderful sense of place and highlights several sites that children lucky enough to be able to reach them might like to visit - in particular, Fishbourne Palace in south-east England, and the Pyramid of Gaius Cestius, which now sits outside the train station for Ostia in Rome (as well as Ostia itself, of course, the main setting for many of the Roman Mysteries). Not being a very visual person, I always find it easier to appreciate a site when I can attach some kind of story to it, and this is a perfect way to get excited about a visit to Fishbourne! (More so than the Cambridge Latin Course, fond as I am of it!).

I also really liked the chapter headings, which are Latin words - a list with translations is provided at the back. Some are guessable from context, others need to be looked up to be understood - and I confess, I had to look one up myself! (For some reason 'fax', meaning torch, not electronic mailing device, has not been a major part of my Latin vocabulary so far). They are definitely a good way to improve anyone's Latin vocabulary. At the same time, it doesn't matter if the reader doesn't understand them or doesn't want to stop to look them up - it might even help to increase the suspense not to know what they mean.

This is a fast-paced, exciting and dramatic story that I really enjoyed. It reminded me of some of my favourite elements from classic children's literature, like the kitten that reminded me of a favourite Arthur Ransome character, and unsurprisingly the whole thing felt very much like a spiritual successor to Rosemary Sutcliff's The Eagle of the Ninth. I look forward to the next instalment - partly because there's still that dangling mystery from the earlier series that's oh so close to being solved...

All Caroline Lawrence book reviews

Eye in the Sky (dir. Gavin Hood, 2016): A modern Iphigenia

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sun, 15 May 2016 16:31:00 +0000

Greek tragedy often sets a up a moral problem in which the interests of the oikos - the household, i.e. the family and family unit - are at odds with the interests of the polis - the city, i.e. the political state. In some cases, we as a modern audience can understand the dilemma - surely Antigone, for example, should be allowed to bury her traitor brother? And yet, we understand that Creon is tenuously holding on to hard-won power and nervous of any sign of frailty.

In other cases, however, we might find it difficult to see the choice as a real choice. When the goddess Artemis demands that Agamemnon sacrifice his young daughter, Iphigenia, so that the Greek army can get the right winds to sail for Troy (for an aggressive attack supposedly intended to retrieve his sister-in-law), it can be hard for a modern audience to sympathise. How could we ever consider killing a young girl in the hope of gaining a better wind?

At least since the publication of Jonathan Shay's excellent Achilles in Vietnam if not before, though, a number of scholars have been working on interpretations of Greek myth as stories which allowed the Greeks to deal with real traumas in a metaphorical way, much like the best science fiction and fantasy does in the modern world. A myth about a hero who is driven mad by a goddess and attacks his family, for example, may be an expression of very real incidences of post-traumatic stress disorder experienced, though of course not diagnosed, by returning Greek soldiers. In myth, the gods are the cause of the trouble, but these divine figures may be metaphors for more human causes.

The sacrifice of Iphigenia does not bear any particular relation to post-traumatic stress disorder, but it may reflect real experiences of Greek soldiers and the agonising decisions they have to make. We see almost the same decision, minus the personal connection, play out in Gavin Hood's excellent Eye in the Sky (which is also Alan Rickman's final on-screen performance, and a fitting swan song for a great actor). In this film, British and American forces face a dilemma - they have a chance to kill a group of dangerous terrorists, but doing so will almost certainly kill or severely maim an innocent little girl. What should they do?

Of course, in ancient Greece, drone warfare did not exist and this exact dilemma could not have happened. But enemy camps would not necessarily have been devoid of women and children, even in the ancient world. Camp followers would have been present, and some of them may have had children. Officers also sometimes brought their wives and children with them - in the Roman period, a group of mutineers were famously pacified when they frightened away the two-year-old Caligula and his mother. It is not inconceivable that an attack that would provide a strong tactical advantage would also kill or harm innocent children, and of course, any attack tended to result in the enslavement of the women and children on the losing side.

Agamemnon's specific dilemma (killing his own daughter) is unlikely to have occurred, just as the specific set of circumstances depicted in Eye in the Sky, while plausible, is fairly unlikely. But both Iphigenia and Eye in the Sky's Alia stand for all the young girls and boys killed or maimed, directly or indirectly, in warfare. The decision-making process in reality may not be so calculated or so personal, but any military attack, especially if it is anywhere near a civilian habitation, may bring with it innocent casualties, and those in the military must weigh up impossible decisions concerning the rights and wrongs of any such attack, decisions the rest of us hope never to have to face. That was a dilemma that affected the ancient Greeks just as much as it affects the modern military, and the fates of Iphigenia and Alia are a reminder of the true weight of those decisions.

Imagining the Afterlife

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 21:18:00 +0000

Apologies for having neglected the blog somewhat lately - things have been very busy at work, but I haven't totally forgotten it!

One of the things keeping me busy is organising a conference to take place at Newman and the University of Birmingham next June. The conference is on 'Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World', and is part of a new project I'm working on about how people imagine the afterlife and how that relates (or doesn't) to real world afterlife beliefs. The conference will be inter-disciplinary and cover a broad range of topics relating to how people thought about the afterlife in the ancient world.

I'm planning to do some comparative work for this project, comparing modern Western depictions of the afterlife and how they relate to Christian afterlife belief with ancient depictions of the afterlife and how they relate to ancient beliefs. I may post a few related reviews here, some of which may not be Classical themselves, but useful points of comparison. Suggestions for useful books, films or TV episodes are welcome!

UPDATE: The conference programme is now in place here!

10 Classics-themed beach reads

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Thu, 27 Aug 2015 14:17:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I contributed to a Den of Geek article providing geek-specific recommendations for beach reads, so I thought it would be fun to do the same with a Classics-based theme as well. I'm aware that most of us the Northern hemisphere have probably come back from our beach holidays already but never mind, it's never too early to start planning for next year!

Other than being good books, these recommendations are based largely on what I'm looking for in a beach read. Although Kindles have made it possible to read even the biggest George RR Martin tome wherever you want, I still think a beach read should ideally be relatively short, so that if you prefer to expose the paperback to sand, sea, salt, and (depending on the beach) rain it's not too huge, and you can reasonably expect to read the whole book during one short holiday.

I also quite like to read something appropriate to the environment when on a beach, so tend to avoid stories set in snow-bound mountains or similar, though again, this depends to an extent on the beach. (Classics-themed novels have an advantage there, of course, as Greece and Rome are quite warm - if you're European, chances are the beach you are on was once part of the Roman Empire).

And they should be reasonably light in tone for the most part, as convulsive crying because your favourite character has been tortured/sacrificed/behaved like a an idiot while reading on a public beach can be a little embarrassing. I've also restricted this list to novels, though I've often enjoyed reading non-fiction (especially travel literature) on a beach as well. There are a lot of mystery novels here, mostly because I like the genre, but also because the stories tend to be self-contained puzzles leading up to the satisfying conclusion of finding out whodunnit, so they work especially well as beach reads. (If you're wondering where my one of favourite Classics-based novels of all, I, Claudius, is, it was discounted for not being quite light enough in terms of readability - all those ancient-historian-inspired digressions - or weight, especially if you wanted both the novel and its sequel, Claudius the God).

I've been pretty broad in what counts as 'Classics-themed' here, so some of these are stories set entirely within the ancient world, while others just use Classical themes or include hints and elements of Classical mythology or culture.

10. The Evil That Men Do, by Nancy Holder

Between TVs in hotels, films on memory sticks, laptops, portable DVD players and so on, two-week holidays with no TV are much rarer than they used to be. But if you want something to read without requiring headphones on the beach, but find you're missing your TV, what better to bring than a TV tie-in novel?! I'm rather fond of official tie-in novels. Essentially fan fiction that's gone through a professional spell check, they're usually light, frothy and often good fun. This particular Buffy the Vampire Slayer tie-in novel comes with ancient Roman vampires, Bacchae and an amphitheatre - close your eyes to historical inaccuracy and enjoy.

9. Dead in the Family, by Charlaine Harris

I recommended Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries among my suggestions for geeky beach reads, and the same reasons still stand here - nice, hot setting, good pace, a fun and light read. The second, seventh and tenth books all have major Classical elements, and the seventh is one of my favourites, but I'm recommending this tenth volume as a really interesting representation of an ancient Roman character thrown into a modern context. If you haven't read any of these before and just want to give them a go the second book, Living Dead in Dallas, might be a better bet.

8. Poseidon's Gold, by Lindsey Davis

This is the fifth of Lindsey Davis' Roman detective stories told by private investigator Marcus Didius Falco. This story is lighter than the first few and stands more or less alone, and is set entirely in Rome and Capua - no descriptions of wet and cold Britain or Germania here! It introduces Falco's father, a lively character, and features a plot revolving around stolen art and antiquities and is generally a good read and a pretty good introduction to the series if you haven't read any before (the first book, The Silver Pigs, is the one I think is the best, but doesn't reflect the slightly lighter tone of some of the later books so well).

7. The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still, by Malcolm Pryce

This is the latest entry in another series I'd recommended among the geeky beach reads. Not actually science fiction and fantasy, Malcolm Pryce's Chandler-esque pastiches set in the Welsh seaside town of Aberystwyth are perfect if your type of beach holiday leans more towards windy walks on pebble beaches and bracing gales (as my childhood holidays did) than sand between your toes and bikinis. The downside is you'd be skipping to the end of the series, but the Classical parallels in this story - which features a Welsh Hercules and katabasis ice cream - are good fun.

6. Arms of Nemesis, by Steven Saylor

This is the second full-length novel Steven Saylor wrote about Roman detective Gordianus the Finder (two volumes of short stories are set between the first and second novels, and he has now written two prequel novels). It's set around the Bay of Naples, which was a popular holiday resort for ancient Romans, so it makes great holiday reading, though the plot is pretty heavy in places. As only the second novel written, it doesn't require much foreknowledge of Gordianus or his family, so it's a pretty good place to jump in, though of course, the first novel to be written, Roman Blood, is equally good - but includes more Cicero. For me, that's a bad thing!

5. The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller

I have frequently compared The Song of Achilles to Twilight, and I stand by that comparison. It's fan fiction of the Iliad (which I suppose makes it 50 Shades of Grey rather than Twilight itself, but I haven't read that). The descriptions of Achilles are ludicrously over-done - I know, in the author's defence, that he is literally a demi-god but I don't think we need to hear how gorgeous and god-like his appearance is every five minutes. Two thirds of the book are teenage romance, followed by a final third in which it finally gets to the Iliad and gets really quite good. But, as I've said before, I read and enjoyed Twilight, which does what it does perfectly well, and I enjoyed reading this, too. The easily flowing writing, sweet romantic theme and, in the last third, fast-paced action make this a perfect beach read.

4. The Charioteer of Delphi, by Caroline Lawrence

All of the Roman Mysteries make great beach reads and I have, indeed, read several of them on a beach (or boat in Croatia, as the case may be). They're perfect for a holiday in Greece, Spain or Italy - appropriate setting, short length and fast-paced since they're middle grade books, hinting at a darker reality but keeping the tone reasonably light, again, because they're aimed at child readers. Most of them can be read independently of the others as long as you don't mind spoiling a few plot developments, up until The Slave-girl From Jerusalem, after which the last few books do need to be read in order so you can follow the story arc. The Charioteer of Delphi is the last truly stand-alone of the books before that final group, and the conclusion is one of the most satisfying of all - plus it's got exciting descriptions of chariot racing, which would have been my favourite sport if I'd been an ancient Roman (looking back at my review, I know a lot more about sport than I did when I wrote it, and about various motor sports in particular! I'd totally have been into chariot racing if I'd lived in ancient Rome). My absolute favourite of the books in The Gladiators from Capua, but for a slightly lighter summer read, this is the one I'd recommend.

3. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

OK, so this may not entirely answer the 'light' qualification, I confess. In fact, the first time I read it, I stopped after ten pages and had to be persuaded to continue by the hearty recommendation of OldHousematetheRomeone, because it was too depressing. But as soon as I got to the end of the first chapter I was hooked, because it is very fast-paced, making excellent use of the ancient technique of writing in the vivid present in a story on one of my favourite themes, gladiators. If you want something you can really get stuck into to the detriment of paying attention to anything else while you're on holiday, this is a good choice (and I can add, from personal experience, that hanging around Birmingham airport for hours on end is a considerably less frustrating way to start your holiday if you have this to read).

2. Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass), by Apuleius of Madaura

If you want to read something Classics-themed while you're away, why not read an actual ancient text? There are several ancient Greek romance novels involving pirates, kidnapping and main characters turning out to be African princesses, but I would always recommend this, the only complete surviving novel in Latin, sometimes known as The Golden Ass to distinguish it from Ovid's Metamorphoses (unfairly, I think - I enjoy reading this much more than anything by Ovid, Metamorphoses included. I don't care how beautiful his Latin is, I don't like his attitude). After a few isolated stories to kick us off, the main plot of the novel is about the trials and tribulations of Lucius, who is accidentally turned into a donkey while trying to turn himself into a bird. There's also a lengthy digression into one of the very few Greco-Roman myths with a happy ending. If you want some genuine and genuinely fun ancient literature to take to the beach, this is the one to go for.

1. Pyramids, by Terry Pratchett

Discworld is another series I recommended among my geeky beach reads, and there are several Discworld novels with a heavily Classical theme. The most Classics-y novels, conveniently, are both stand-alone novels that can be read alone without needing to know anything about the rest of the series, Small Gods and Pyramids (also Eric, a spoof of Doctor Faustus which, of course, features the Discworld version of the Trojan War, but which is a much shorter, illustrated novel and part of the Rincewind sub-series). Both are brilliant. Pyramids is slightly earlier in the series, but since neither are part of a wider group that doesn't make much difference. There are two reasons I've *just* given Pyramids the edge here. One is that Small Gods is heavier on the philosophy (both within the text, as in, it features philosophers, and as a reading experience) so for 'light' beach reads, Pyramids fits slightly better. And the other is simply that, though both are brilliant, I prefer Pyramids. If you've ever taken a British driving test, it's certainly a must-read, but even without that, it's a fast-paced, fun and occasionally moving novel, and a pretty good introduction to the Discworld if you haven't read any before.

Although, as you can see, I'm quite fond of children's and Young Adult literature, it's probably noticeable that there's no Percy Jackson on this list. I'm afraid that's because I literally tried to read Percy Jackson while on a beach a couple of years ago and just couldn't get into it. I ended up reading Michael Palin's Pole to Pole instead, which had a nice travel aspect even if not all of it fit the beach atmosphere! I'm sure I'll try Percy Jackson again some day.

My Favourite Ancient Historical Movies and TV Shows

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 17:21:00 +0000

I'm going to be a guest panellist at Nine Worlds fan convention in London next week, which I'm getting quite excited about, as it looks like it should be a really fun event, and a nice break from textbook-writing, which is how I'm spending my summer (and the reason my poor blog has barely seen anything from me for weeks on end!). I'm speaking at the History and Supernatural tracks on the Saturday.

One of the panels I'm on is 'Favourite Historical Movies: what we like and why', in which four of us professional historians will be talking about - well, you can guess. We won't necessarily be talking about movies that deal with our particular area of research, and I can promise you that this article is not a spoiler for what I'm going to talk about next week, partly because I'm still trying to decide which of the many historical movies I love set in various different historical periods I want to talk about! But I thought it might help me to think about which of the many, many movies and TV shows I've watched featuring ancient Greece and Rome (or other areas of the ancient world) are my favourites, and why. And I realised that despite all the lists I've done over the years, I've never simply listed my favourites! So here they are. Though the whole list will probably have changed by tomorrow...

In an attempt to keep the list down to 10, I've only included things that might be described as 'period drama' and which are set entirely or mostly in the ancient world - so no Star Trek, no Hunger Games, no Stargate SG-1, no random Classical references hiding in The Lord of the Rings, no Narnia or Harry Potter - otherwise we'd be here all day).

Spoilers follow.

10. STARZ Spartacus (2010-2013)

Why do I love it? Spartacus is totally bonkers, but in its own way it's can be one of the most accurate depictions of ancient Rome you could wish for - the dialogue reflects the structure of Latin, the characters' attitudes are, for the most part, recognisably Roman and only on Spartacus can you see characters using an accurately reconstructed Roman public toilet. Of course, it's not all accurate - the many, many orgies, for example, are probably a bit over the top... but then, the whole show is completely, ridiculously, ludicrously over the top. Why doesn't anyone wear clothes? Like, at all? Ever?! But it's that utter ridiculousness - and pumping rock soundtrack - that makes it so much fun.

Favourite character: Gannicus. I love me some Crixus and Lucretia, but Gannicus is not only the only character in the whole show with a sense of fun, he's also the only one with two brain cells to rub together most of the time. Honourable mention for Surfer Caesar, who I desperately want to see more of. Come on Steven DeKnight, there's decades more of Caesar's history just waiting to be given the Spartacus treatment!

Favourite moment: Season Two (Spartacus: Vengeance) is the weak link in the series, as it meanders about a bit trying to find its way before Caesar and Crassus arrive to kick things into gear in Season Three, but the moment in Episode 5 when the grand arena that had been such a focal point in Season One and the prequel goes up in flames is quite something.

Quotable: I am for wine, and the embrace of questionable women! (Gannicus)

9. Jesus of Nazareth (dir. Franco Zeffirelli, 1977)

Why do I love it? Zeffirelli's hyper-realistic approach to his material doesn't always work for me - I prefer my Shakespeare a bit more theatrical, for example - but I do appreciate it in this polished and well presented Jesus movie. What really makes it a favourite, though, is the incredible score by Maurice Jarre, which is sweeping, epic and moving. Robert Powell's performance as Jesus, while a bit wide-eyed in places, is also great and it's fun celebrity-spotting in the all-star cast.

Favourite character: Well, Jesus I guess. But I also have a great fondness for Peter Ustinov's wonderfully drawlly performance as Herod the Great (his delivery of 'you maaay saaaay triiiibe' is fabulous) and Rod Steiger's weary Pontius Pilate.

Favourite moment: The whole thing is beautifully shot and modelled after any number of famous paintings, but the moment when Jesus walks in to see Pilate after the whipping, wearing the crown of thorns and haloed (I see what he did there) in light is particularly beautiful.

Quotable: It's mostly Bible quotes so... you know, all the stuff about loving your neighbour and so on. Pontius Pilate says 'Ecce homo - Behold the man!' in Latin for no other reason than the cultural cache of the phrase 'ecce homo', which is quite amusing.

8. The Eagle (dir. Kevin Macdonald, 2011)

Why do I love it? I... I... I just really like Channing Tatum, OK?! And Jamie Bell. And it's beautifully shot, and well paced, and... I just really like Channing Tatum.

Favourite character: Jamie Bell's Esca is fabulously sulky. Not that he doesn't have good reason to be, what with being enslaved and all.

Favourite moment: I'm quite fond of the way our heroes limp out together right at the end.

Quotable: 'How can a piece of metal mean so much to you?' (Esca)

7. The Gospel According to Matthew (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)

Why do I love it? I love that Pasolini (mostly) sticks to one specific source and films that version. It's not that any screen version can ever reproduce the text exactly, but I like the idea that what we're seeing is, as far as possible, the writer of Matthew's version as interpreted by the director, rather than the director's/writer's choice of random selections from different things. You hardly ever see that in historical movies at all, never mind Jesus movies!

Favourite character: Well, again, Jesus... who is distractingly sexy in this version.

Favourite moment: The moment when Jesus tells the leper he just cured not to tell anyone, and in the background we see the former-leper run off waving his arms around excitedly and clearly telling everyone he meets. It's really funny!

Quotable: This film is literally all Bible quotes, mostly from Matthew's Gospel. So, you know, pick a quote. Something nice about love.

6. Rome (BBC/HBO, 2005-2007)

Why do I love it? Amazing production values from set to costume to music, awesome opening sequence, great acting (especially from Max Pirkis as young Octavian and I love James Purefoy as Mark Antony), humour, drama... Rome isn't perfect (it drags in places in Season One and I wasn't as struck on Vorenus and Pullo's story as I was on the actual historical stuff) but it's very, very good.

Favourite character: It's a tie between Mark Antony and Octavian. Though, just as in history, Octavian might just edge it. Both Pirkis and Simon Woods play him as so wonderfully intense, intelligent, Machiavellian and yet just a bit socially shy and uncomfortable and aware of his own oddness. It's a wonderful take on the character. I also love Allen Leech's nervous, nerdy take on Marcus Agrippa.

Favourite moment: Probably the execution of Cicero. Not because I hate Cicero that much (though I really don't like him) but because David Bamber's performance is so good.

Quotable: 'Early stages of an orgy!' (Agrippa trying to defend Octavia to her mother)

5. Hercules (Disney, 1997)

Why do I love it? How many of the songs would you like me to sing to you?

Favourite character: Meg is the other reason I love this movie. She's just awesome, which is why I inflict 'I won't say I'm in love' on my students every. single. year.

Favourite moment: The whole of 'I won't say I'm in love'. It's possible I over-identify with that song.

Quotable: 'You! Are wearing! His! MERCHANDISE?!' (Hades)

4. Jesus Christ Superstar (dir. Norman Jewison, 1973)

Why do I love it? Not only is Jesus Christ Superstar one of my favourite Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals (along with The Phantom of the Opera), this film version is brilliantly put together with spectacular performances from Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson as Jesus and Judas respectively, as well as great work from Barry Dennen as Pontius Pilate, Yvonne Elliman as Mary Magdalene and Josh Mostel as Herod Antipas.

Favourite character: See above. Saying 'Judas' feels odd, but he is also a brilliant character. And I do love Dennan's sneering Pontius Pilate.

Favourite moment: In the middle of Neeley's heart-wrenching rendition of 'Gethsemane', as the music breaks into dramatic chords, we see a series of classical paintings of the crucifixion which somehow get the torture and horror of it across more effectively than all the buckets of blood in The Passion of the Christ.

Quotable: So many great lyrics, including Pilate's fabulous 'Who is this broken man / cluttering up my hallway?' and Herod's 'Prove to me that you're no fool / walk across my swimming pool', not to mention the hilarious line sung by the disciples in the Last Supper scene, 'what's that in the bread? / It's gone to my head'. But for simple drama and emotion, Jesus screaming 'Just watch me die! / See how I die!' is hard to beat.

3. Monty Python's Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979)

Why do I love it? There are so many, many reasons (the Latin lesson from a Roman soldier, the very precise period setting of 'Saturday Afternoon - Around Teatime', the people at the back who can't hear the Beatitudes, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life...) but let's just sum them all up as: it's hilarious.

Favourite character: Brian, probably. Or the guy about to be stoned to death who points out it can't really get worse and starts yelling 'Jehovah! Jehovah!'

Favourite moment: I absolutely love the sequence where Brian falls off a tower, gets caught by a passing spaceship, is briefly involved in a space battle with aliens, then crash-lands right below the exact same tower. I've been to the tower, too. Lovely place.

Quotable: 'He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!' (Brian's mother)

2. Gladiator (dir. Ridley Scott, 2000)

Why do I love it? This is one of my favourite films of all time. The epic sweep of it, the cinematography, Hans Zimmer's fantastic music, Joaquin Phoenix's wicked performance as Commodus, Juba's final 'Not yet'... it's all awesome.

Favourite character: Djimon Hounsou's Juba. He's remarkably upbeat considering his circumstances.

Favourite moment: You know the one - this moment:

Quotable: 'My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the armies of the north, General of the Felix Legions and loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next' (Maximus. Obviously.)

1. I, Claudius (BBC, 1976)

Why do I love it? I, Claudius is one of my all-time favourite TV shows, and I watch it again and again. The performances are great, the story is compelling and it's just over the top enough to be brilliant without going quite as far as Rome or Spartacus.

Favourite character: It's got to be Sian Phillips' brilliant, evil, scheming, completely awesome Livia, though I'm also very fond of John Hurt's interpretation of Caligula and BRIAN BLESSED's put-upon Augustus.

Favourite moment: So, so many. But if anyone ever tells you Blessed does nothing but shout, show them Augustus' death scene. One of the most impressive bits of completely silent and almost motionless acting I've ever seen.

Quotable: 'Augustus ruled the world, but Livia ruled Augustus' (Claudius)

Argh - how was there no room for Carry on Cleo?! Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me...

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Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Sun, 28 Jun 2015 21:47:00 +0000

I read Susanna Clarke's novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell years ago - I can't remember it very well at all, but I do remember that I loved it! I especially loved the Jane Austen-style prose (right down to the spellings) and all the academic-history-style footnotes, which were brilliant. This isn't the only novel to use footnotes of course - all the Discworld novels have them - but the way these were constructed, as fake academic references, was particularly fun.

The BBC's seven-part TV adaptation of the novel just finished, and it was very good - it'll sit happily on my shelf next to Gormenghast and The Chronicles of Narnia (it shares one of the stars, Samuel West - a very nice actor who once took me and my friends out for a beer, and who played King Caspian in the BBC's Voyage of the Dawn Treader). I especially liked Lady Pole's description of the Gentleman's hair as looking like 'thistle-down' towards the end, reflecting his constant epithet in the book. I also loved how the Raven King looked just like Christopher Lee from The Wicker Man - not coincidentally, a reference to idea of survivals of Druidic, ancient magical rites in the UK.

Most of the magic in the story comes from Nothern European folklore, particularly relating to Faerie, to changelings and other worlds and 'Christians' kidnapped from their homes. I'm not much of an expert on folklore that dates later than AD 400, but I suspect the repeated references to 'English' magic at least partially reflect the folklore it's based on, as well early nineteenth century English imperialism. I think it's a mixture of Celtic (particularly Welsh, Scottish, Cornish and Irish, and maybe Breton) myth and folklore, and possibly some Anglo-Saxon and more broadly French elements that might go into the mix to create particularly 'English' magic. There's also an emphasis on the North of England as the home of magic, possibly suggesting a stronger Celtic and possibly Viking influence, and less French. (Did anyone else get distracted by mental images of Robb Stark every time they said 'King in the North'? And don't get me started on trying to kill off Thoros of Myr...!)

There are a few Classical elements included though. Vinculus has a Latinate name, which makes me wonder if there's an implication that 'English' magic goes back further than Normans or Vikings or Anglo-Saxons or even the Romano-British Celts left behind when the Romans left - although the Latin name suggests Romans, the fact that the story is set in Britain perhaps implies a Druidic influence there (not that Vinculus is necessarily intended to be an ancient Roman or Druid - though it wouldn't surprise me if he was - but the magic inscribed on his body is perhaps Romano-British or Druidic in its ultimate origin, the magic the Raven King originally drew on).

The Gentleman also knows his Classics, as he shows in the spell he puts on Stephen Black and Lady Pole to stop them from telling anyone about him. The nonsense they speak is a rather nice and thematic re-telling of fairytales from the fairies' point of view, as Honeyfoot and Segundus eventually realise, though somehow no one seems to realise they are all about fairy abductions, and do in fact explain what Lady Pole and Stephen are trying to say, in a roundabout way. But what Segundus sees when he looks at them is a twist on a Classical motif - a rose on their mouths. In Rome, 'sub rosa' meant in secret (which is why Steven Saylor's series of novels about Gordianus the Finder are subtitled Roma Sub Rosa), and this use persisted into English, either remembered or rediscovered during the Renaissance. So a rose over someone's mouth means they are keeping a secret of some kind, or being forced to do so. The Gentleman may simply have known the English use of the term, but it certainly has a Classical origin.

One of Jonathan Strange's spells also has its roots in Classical literature. During the Napoleonic War, in Portugal, Strange reanimates the corpses of some dead soldiers in order to get some information. This use of necromancy for information-gathering is highly Classical, and in particular is reminscent of the gory scene in Lucan's Civil War in which the witch Erictho raises the corpse of a dead soldier to obtain a prophecy (supposedly about the future of Sextus Pompey, though the dead soldier is more interested in prophesying and talking about the underworld in general). As in the series, the corpse is decaying and disgusting, but the dead have knowledge the living do not.

These are just hints and echoes of the Classical world in a story much more concerned with the
history of England since the Norman conquest. It is possible that Clarke and the TV crew were not concerned with using or referring to the Classical world at all. However, the fact that these echoes of the ancient world bleed through, surviving years of history to remain influential, is testament to the enduring impact of the ancient world on the modern, even when we can't see it directly.

Edited to add: As my colleague Louisa Mellor at Den of Geek points out, there's also a definite Orpheus and Eurydice vibe to Jonathan and Arabella's story.

Game of Thrones, Season Five

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 16:08:00 +0000

This post contains spoilers for all aired episodes of Game of Thrones, all published books, possibly published snippets from as-yet-unpublished books, material from online interviews, fan theories - it's a veritable spoiler-fest, is what I'm saying.

Now that the dust is starting to settle, it's clear that Season Five was the most Classics-y season of Game of Thrones yet, and all the more awesome for it.

Most obviously, of course, this season we got GLADIATORS! As many of you know, I am an absolute sucker for a good gladiator story. I love them. I can't get enough of them. I should probably worry about what that says about me as a person. But anyway, what's the one thing that could make a gladiator story even more awesome than it already is? DRAGON.

I was so happy with the way the TV series adapted Ser Jorah and Tyrion's story this season, which for me was much more effective than the books. Everyone involved has clearly seen Gladiator as many times as I have, and used it to frame their story, to great effect. And so we got the warm-up gladiator sequence, in a small fighting pit with fewer deaths and more optimism as Jorah fought his way to stand in front of his Queen/love of his life once more. That gave us the wonderful moment, as yet unreached in the books, when Tyrion and Dany finally came face to face and the various plot threads of the whole enormous saga finally started to converge.

It wasn't over yet though, as this was all build up for this year's Episode 9 Grand Climax. Like the earlier, smaller episode, this featured shots lifted directly from Gladiator, starting with a glorious pan over the huge amphitheatre - the book's description of fighting 'pits' wisely ignored in favour of the more spectacular Roman theatrical look. Then it's into the fight, and the drama plays out in a much more satisfying way than in the book. Where Book Dany inadvertently saved an unknown Tyrion from a death he didn't fully realise was planned for him, here Dany watches Jorah, a man she loves (even if not in the same way that he loves her) embark on a suicide mission (the audience knowing, as she doesn't, that he is already dying from greyscale). I was on tenterhooks with every look that passed between them - I love this couple and was so happy to see them sharing screen time again. With the series going so drastically off book and killing numerous characters still alive in the source material, it was also the first gladiator fight I've watched in a long time in which I genuinely didn't know what the outcome would be (Spartacus is hardly going to lose in his first fight, for example).

Then there's that heart-stopping moment when Jorah throws his spear towards the royal box. I'm sure I'm not the only one whose brain did a confused somersault for a few seconds. This shot comes straight out of Kubrick's Spartacus, in which Draba attacks Crassus et al in their box rather than kill Spartacus, the act that sets off the rebellion. In a twist here, Jorah is not aiming at Dany, but at a Son of the Harpy coming up from behind her to attack - here, the rebellion is already happening and he is trying to stop it. Then comes the moment when he offers her his hand and she takes it - a symbolic gesture that seems to me to indicate that she has finally forgiven him. As an incurable sappy romantic, for me it was the most satisfying moment in the show since Jaime jumped into that bear pit back in season three. And so Drogon swoops in to rescue Dany from imminent death, leaving her friends looking up in awe, and one very happy viewer who, wandering around the actual Colosseum two days later, was left half convinced every seagull was really a dragon.

Dragon-spotting at the Colosseum last week. Drogon sadly failed to make an appearance.

This wasn't the only Classical theme in this season, though. Stannis Baratheon learned the hard way that sacrificing one's daughter to the gods rarely ends well, though in his case he learned it a lot more quickly than Agamemnon did (after sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia to appease Artemis and get the winds he needed to sail for Troy). I loved the detail that Selyse broke before the end, trying to save her daughter and giving in to despair when she couldn't. Selyse Baratheon is no Clytemnestra - she was fine with this plan up to the last moment, and whereas Stannis had shown his daughter a lot of affection over the years, she had shown none. Her last second change of heart might be part of a rather irritating notion that women are especially vulnerable to the suffering of children, seen in Episode 8 in which the new, very likeable character Karsi dies because she can't bring herself to fight off zombies if they happen to be in children's bodies. But I like Selyse's sudden attack of conscience - it's a sign of just how horribly far Stannis has gone, and her ultimate fate is reminiscent of another Greek tragedy, as Creon's son and then his wife commit suicide following his condemnation of his son's fiancee Antigone, leaving him to realise just how terrible the consequences of his own stubbornness have been.

In ancient literature, while Iphigenia stayed dead in some versions of the story, in others she was miraculously saved by the goddess and whisked away to Tauris. Given the horror which greeted Shireen's death among fans, it's not hard to see why. In Shireen's case, it's unlikely that a miraculous escape is in the offing - Game of Thrones doesn't generally work that way, and her blood-curdling screams were as good as a dead body in terms of finality. But that brings us to the other major Classical moment of this season - the death of Jon Snow.

The assassination of Jon Snow is clearly set up and filmed to echo the death of Julius Caesar, as a group of men, some of whom were close allies, some of whom he'd pardoned for earlier opposing him, surround him and stab him to death. I swear, when Olly came up to deliver the final blow, I fully expected him to say 'And you, boy?' or 'You too, Olly?' or words to that effect. He stuck to just 'Olly?' in the end, but the point was more or less made. Then falls Caesar.

We're now left with a bizarre sort-of-cliffhanger. Jon Snow in the books is not permanently dead - Melisandre is right there, he can warg into Ghost, and George RR Martin has almost good as confirmed that we haven't seen the last of him in interviews. However, Benioff, Weiss and Kit Harington are all absolutely insistent that Jon Snow in the TV show is really, properly, definitely dead. It wouldn't be the first time a character raised from death in the books stayed dead on the show - Lady Stoneheart is still nowhere to be seen, and Mance Rayder appears much more definitely dead. But does it make sense?

Everything in this season and the preceding seasons seems to be building up to Jon Snow being resurrected by Melisandre. She comments on Beric Dondarrion's resurrections, she takes a great interest in Jon, she returns to the Wall just in time for the assassination. We also got a series of heavy-handed hints that R+L=J in Episode 4 of this season, which is all pointless if Jon is dead. (Unless, I suppose, Melisandre plans to use his blood for something, but that's fast running away into the snow. Perhaps she'll do some kind of spell over his dead body, with Jon himself the sacrifice?). Why set all that up and then ignore it?

I'll be sorely disappointed if Jon stays dead, not just because I'll miss Kit Harington (though, that too) but because it doesn't make narrative sense. Now obviously, in real life, death does not always make narrative sense and that's something Martin has consciously tried to replicate in his story, most notably in the death of Robb Stark. But the parts of history that we are the most keen to re-tell in dramatic form are, unsurprisingly, the parts with a strong narrative. Julius Caesar's death was a real event, but it also makes a great story, because he left behind a power vacuum into which Mark Antony and Octavian both tried to step, fighting it out until one survived. Robb Stark's death did something similar, taking one more candidate out of the War of the Five Kings and leaving Stannis and the Lannisters to continue their struggle to reign supreme.

But what does Jon Snow's death do? It leaves us with no one to follow or care about at the Wall except Melisandre, Davos, Tormund and Dolorous Edd. Of these, only Davos is really plausible as a key point of view character, and he can't take over the Watch. Are we going to watch two seasons of Alliser Thorne and Dolorous Edd fighting White Walkers? Are Sansa and Theon going to turn up, arm themselves and start leading the Watch? Actually, that'd be kind of awesome. But still, I find it hard to see a version of this story that provides a satisfying payoff to years of build up that doesn't have Jon Snow in it, what with him being the Ice of Ice and Fire, after all. Real history and narrative are, in the end, different things, and a narrative that tries too hard to be realistic in its randomness may prove ultimately unsatisfying as a drama. Classical historians knew that, and were fairly shameless about moving real events around for dramatic effect when they needed to. It remains to be seen whether Benioff and Weiss will understand the need for some kind of payoff, or whether they have a way to finish off this story without one half of the two central protagonists. Personally, I have my doubts about that, but only time will tell.

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Five Interesting Portrayals of Pontius Pilate

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 21:59:00 +0000

I know, I disappear for over a month and then come back with more Jesus films. But since it's Holy Week, this seemed a good time to collect some of my favourite portrayals of Pontius Pilate, an historical figure who often doesn't get much attention because, well, he's not really the focal point of the films and shows he appears in.

One of the things that I think makes Pilate interesting is that the main historical sources for him are all either Christian or Jewish, so we end up with only a very particular perspective on him, generally from outsiders with varying levels of hostility. One thing we can definitely say about him is that, despite being governor of Judaea for ten years according to Josephus, he did not get on well with the Jewish population at all - that much all the sources seem to agree on!

The main Jewish sources are Philo's On the Embassy to Gaius, a record of an embassy Philo joined along with other Jews from Alexandria in Egypt to ask the Emperor Caligula to do something about the Egyptian governor Flaccus, who was mistreating them in various ways, and Josephus' Jewish Antiquities, a history of the Jews written in Greek after Josephus went over to the side of the Romans during the Jewish Wars and got in with the Emperor Vespasian by correctly predicting he would become Emperor before it happened.

Both Philo and Josephus record that Pilate had some kind of Roman shields set up in the Temple at Jerusalem, which was of course completely sacrilegious from the Jewish point of view. (Most cults and religious groups in the Roman empire worshiped multiple gods and worshiping one didn't prevent anyone from worshiping another, but the Jews were much stricter monotheists and refused to worship any other god but theirs, which caused varying levels of tension at different times - though they had no interest in trying to convert anyone else to their religion, so this was less of a problem that it was later with the Christians). Josephus claims Pilate bowed to the pressure while Philo says the Emperor Tiberius had to write to him to tell him to behave, but either way, there seems to have been no love lost between the leading Jews in Jerusalem and Pilate. Josephus also records riots caused by Pilate using sacred money to build an aqueduct, and he was eventually recalled to Rome after a disturbance with the Samaritans.

The four canonical Christian Gospels are much more favourable towards Pilate than Josephus and especially Philo. All four blame the death of Jesus on the Jewish chief priests and elders, and absolve Pilate of guilt to varying degrees, presumably in an attempt to appeal to a pagan Roman readership by shifting the blame entirely on to the Jews and absolving the Romans. One thing that does seem clear from all the sources, though, is that Pilate and Judaea were simply not a good combination - between the incident with the shields and general violence referred to by Philo and Josephus, the reference to his previously bad relationship with the Jewish king Herod Antipas in Luke, the references to Barabbas being in prison for murder and rioting 'in the insurrection' (Luke and Mark; John says he was a robber) and the general implication that he might be persuaded to execute someone for fear of upsetting the crowd, it seems that if we can take one fairly clear fact away from all this, it's that Jerusalem under Pilate's governorship was not a happy place.

Of course, films and TV shows that portray Pilate tend not to be so interested in any of that (and whether any of them have read Philo or Josephus is doubtful - certainly their main sources are the canonical Christian Gospels). Following the Gospels, Pilate is generally portrayed as considerably less to blame for the death of Jesus than the Jewish elders, but the extent to which he is portrayed as a concerned, philosophical type, a disinterested Roman or just a guy having a trying day varies enormously. These are five of the most interesting takes on him.

5. Frank Thring, Ben-Hur

The interesting thing about the characterisation of Pilate in Ben-Hur is that nearly all of it is achieved in a short scene entirely unconnected to the story of Jesus.

We always know, when watching a Jesus film, that Pilate is a Roman. He may be presented to the audience as Self (a figure with whom they can identify, placing us as the practical Romans against the Othered Sanhedrin) or as Other (encouraging the audience to identify with Jesus and the Jews other than the chief priests, and see the Romans as a potentially dangerous enemy). Often he is a combination of the two; drawing on the Gospels' attempt to present Pilate as Self to their Roman readership and the Jews, especially the chief priests who are painted entirely as the bad guys, as Other but also maintaining a more general Othering of the ancient and sometimes barbaric Romans who thought crucifixion was an appropriate way to execute people.

Ben-Hur stands out, however, for introducing Pilate not as the authority figure who holds the hero's life and death in his hands, but as a fairly normal and somewhat snobby Roman we meet at a party in Rome itself. Since Jesus is not the protagonist of Ben-Hur, we are able to meet Pilate in very different circumstances, enjoying himself at a friend's party for his newly adopted son. We learn that he is not happy about being sent to Judaea, and he complains about the climate. This is something Roman characters usually do when they are sent to Britain because they hate the cold and the rain - in this case, Pilate wanted Alexandria and apparently feels that the deserts of Judaea will be substantially more unpleasant than the Nile delta. He is condescending and disdainful concerning the 'prophets and Jehovah' he expects to find in Judaea and generally unhappy about the whole thing.

Pilate appears again in the chariot race scene, over-seeing proceedings and forcibly reminding everyone present that they all belong to Rome. He greets Ben-Hur as a fellow Roman and calls him 'the people's one true god, for the time being', representing the low point of Ben-Hur's journey away from his roots and into a dangerous obsession with vengeance.

All of this serves to ensure we have a full sense of Pilate's character before his crucial scene, which is even shorter than the version in Pasolini's Gospel of Matthew discussed below. Ben-Hur and his family return from a leper colony to find the streets deserted and are told everyone is at the trial - Pilate himself has no dialogue but merely washes his hands with a supercilious expression on his face, the audience presumed to understand what's going on and know the context. The earlier scene sets up enough of his character for us to understand what's going through his head at that moment. But it also presents us with an unusually human view of Pilate as neither wannabe philosopher nor cold Roman authority, but simply a rather snobby member of the elite who doesn't understand the first thing about the people he's governing and isn't really interested. It's probably one of the more historically accurate portrayals around.

4. Alessandro Clerici, The Gospel According to Matthew

The most fascinating thing about the portrayal of Pilate in Pasolini's film is that, like Thring in Ben-Hur, he's hardly in it.

For most of the film, Pasolini follows the Gospel of Matthew pretty closely - one of the things that makes his take on the story stand out is the way he presents one particular source's version of the story rather than the amalgam of the most memorable bits you get in most Jesus films. But when we come to the crucial scene of the trial of Jesus, suddenly Pasolini departs from Matthew almost all together, while at the same time distancing the viewer from Pilate in a way no other Jesus films that I can think of do (even Ben-Hur features a shot from behind Pilate, placing us briefly with him in the scene).

Pasolini shows Jesus' trial through the eyes of John, who according to his own Gospel was there because he knew someone - none of the other Gospels mention this. Perhaps Pasolini wanted to follow the eyewitness account, but I don't think this was the primary reason. Not only does he leave out the details specific to Matthew's Gospel (Pilate's wife's dream, Pilate literally washing his hands of the case) but he also leaves out Pilate's question in all four Gospels, 'Are you a king?' The scene is extremely brief and to the point, with Pilate offering the choice of Jesus or Barrabas only to the Jewish elders and then dismissing everyone saying 'I am innocent of this man's blood'. We only see him at a distance, barely in focus, looking past the backs of people's heads as John is, having come into a trial clearly already in progress.

The effect is primarily to completely Other Pilate. We are an outsider, looking in with John. We see close-ups of Jesus' eyes, bringing us back briefly to his point of view, and we are with John and Mary, but at no point do we see any of this scene from a Roman point of view. Later we will see more of some of the soldiers at the cross, but this process of the Roman trial (following the chief priests' earlier one) is perfunctory and alienating. Presumably this is part of Pasolini's realism and his desire to show Jesus as a man of the people. Pilate, the representation of Imperial Rome, is impersonal, barely characterised, uninterested. It's a fascinating approach to a character who usually holds much more weight in other versions of the story.

3. Michael Palin, Monty Python's Life of Brian

Michael Palin's Pontius Pilate is, of course, somewhat different to the others listed here. He's primarily a simple figure of fun, with a terrible lisp and good friends called Biggus Dickus and Nauteus Maximus. He is, though, noticeably a Roman figure of fun, with nude paintings from Pompeii on the walls of his palace. Romans are often presented as Self in Life of Brian, rolling their eyes at the stoning of a man for saying 'Jehovah' and generally just trying to get on with their jobs (like another of Palin's characters, who so pleasantly tells people to line up for their crucifixion). Pilate, however, is one of the more Othered and exoticised Romans, representing the Rome of film and television in a way most of the soldiers don't through the art on his walls and his costuming.

Still, there is a little more to the Python version of the trial scene than just mocking those with a speech impediment. In his travel documentary Sahara, when he re-visited the ninth century Islamic fortress that provides the location of the trial both here and in Jesus of Nazareth, Palin talked about how much he liked the way Pilate's authority is brought down by laughter, the crowd defying the might of Rome by laughing at it.

This is also an interesting and refreshing depiction of the mob. Jesus Christ Superstar emphasises the fickleness of the crowd reported in the Gospels, who will glorify a man one week and demand his crucifixion the next (they don't talk much about the fact that in between these two events, he started some kind of riot in the Temple and over-turned all the bankers' tables, which might have had something to do with it). Other depictions, like Jesus of Nazareth, show the people being manipulated by the Jewish elders who persuade them all to vote for Barabbas to be set free. Here, however, the crowd are actually largely apathetic. They are simply looking for entertainment, and their choice of who they want saved is entirely down to which name sounds the funniest when Pilate tries to pronounce it. These are the disenfranchised masses looking for bread and circuses so famously described in Juvenal's satire, and Pilate is no more than a figure of fun to them, a circus. They are almost completely detached from the politics of the situation.

We've got a general election coming up soon - it remains to be seen which version of the mob we'll collectively resemble the most...

2. Barry Dennen, Jesus Christ Superstar

The thoughtfulness of Pilate in Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Tim Rice's musical is established early on when the dream Matthew says Pilate's wife had the night before Jesus was brought to him is given to Pilate himself instead. This version of the dream includes visions of the future of Christianity, and Barry Dennen infuses the song with a wonderful mix of sadness and a mildly self-interested horror at the idea of millions of people 'leaving me the blame'.

Pilate's re-introduction at Jesus' trial is quite different; approaching from on high accompanied by images of Roman eagles and dressed up like a king himself, in purple and wearing a gold laurel wreath, he embodies earthly power. He manages to be even more supercilious than Thring - Dennen's delivery of 'Who is this broken man / cluttering up my hallway?' is a thing of beauty. He seems very Othered - but the audience have seen the more thoughtful dream sequence, which provides a particular interpretation of his motivation for sending Jesus to Herod as he does in Luke's Gospel. This incident isn't always dramatised, and when it is Pilate is usually trying to avoid being blamed for Jesus' death by the crowd, knowing how popular Jesus is and, as in every version and indeed in history, concerned about the possibility of riots. Here, we understand this as Pilate trying to shift the blame of history, rather than immediate mob, on to Herod rather than himself, making this a slightly more philosophical action more than a practical one (since the crowd in Jerusalem have turned against Jesus here).

Pilate's final appearance combines these traits. He starts out trying to continue to appear superior but clearly unnerved by the growing crowd, slipping into desperation to help Jesus as he cradles his bleeding body after the flogging, and culminating in the powerful image of him literally washing Jesus' blood off his hands in a glass bowl, shot from underneath. His lyrics sum him up - 'We all have truths / Are mine the same as yours?', and 'He's mad / Ought to be locked up / But that is not a reason to destroy him!' This is one of the most three dimensional Pilates around, and Dennen's performance embodies snobbery, disdain, fear, empathy and guilt beautifully.

1. Rod Steiger, Jesus of Nazareth

OK, I confess, Rod Steiger is my number 1 not so much because this is a particularly academically interesting portrayal, but because it's a personal favourite of mine. Steiger's performance is wonderful; subtle, nuanced, weary and strangely charismatic. Reading the extra voices in the Passion reading last Sunday, it was all I could do not to do an impersonation of the way he says, 'Are you a king?' (Though that's nothing compared to the difficulty of resisting the urge to do a John Wayne impression on 'Truly this man was the Son of God').

Steiger and Zeffirelli's Pilate is a man on the edge. As he rides into shot, he is already being hounded by a mob wanting Barabbas released, and he repeatedly says how tired he is, Zeffirelli carefully setting him up as a weary man with a difficult job whose options are limited. This is for the most part very much a representation of Pilate as Self - we the audience are encouraged to see ourselves in a hard-working man who doesn't understand the Jewish priests and their customs, or the desires of the mob.

This is a very thoughtful Pilate. He questions Jesus with a mixture of disdain and sincerity, and appears to be genuinely reluctant to crucify him. It's implied that the custom of releasing one prisoner at the Passover is not one he feels especially bound to obey, but he does it in the hopes of having Jesus released without angering the chief priests. He seems almost hurt by the reminder that the Jews will be 'defiled' if they enter a Roman building during Passover. It's a Pilate we as the audience are very much encouraged to identify with, someone who comes across as sensible and practical. We are only really reminded of his Other status as a Roman when his second in command says Barabbas is an enemy of Rome and he looks thoughtfully at Jesus and wonders who the real enemy is (presumably a reference to the Gibbon-led idea that Christianity was ultimately responsible for the fall of Rome).

I doubt Steiger's Pilate is much like the real Pilate, who seems to have been more inclined to stir up trouble than desperately try to avoid it if Philo and Josephus are right, and more likely to ignore religious customs than take a philosophical interest in them. But as a representation of the Pilate we see in the Gospels, Steiger's downtrodden governor is hard to beat.

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The Gospel According to St Matthew (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)

noreply@blogger.com (Juliette) — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 23:05:00 +0000

I'm trying to practice my limited Italian before going to Rome this summer, so to help me out, Mum and Dad kindly bought me Pasolini's classic 1964 film for my birthday, which I hadn't seen before.

Although I'm familiar with various choral versions of particular Gospels (I seem to remember singing Bach's St John's Passion with the university choir once) most of the Jesus films I'm familiar with (Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, The Passion of the Christ - oh, and The Life of Brian) blend elements from all four Gospels into one. Over the years, I've sometimes rather forgotten which bits belong to which Gospel, so it's really interesting to see just one of them set out here. Even some elements I did remember as being particular to one Gospel were fascinating to see fully separated out. I know that the Nativity story exists only in Matthew and Luke, and that Matthew covers Joseph's dream, Herod and the wise men, while Luke includes Mary, Gabriel, no room at the inn and the shepherds, but after decades of school Nativity plays, it's very strange to actually see only the Matthean parts of it without the Luke bits.

Pasolini does very slightly veer from strict adherence to Matthew at the end, as John is clearly present at the crucifixion, a detail recorded in no uncertain terms by John but not by the others. Jesus' cross is also inscribed with JNRJ, more usually rendered INRI - an abbreviation for 'Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews' (the Latin Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudæorum), a notice John's Gospel states was written in Greek, Latin and Hebrew and put up on Pilate's orders (John 19:19; as far as I can remember, only The Passion of the Christ has actually shown a sign with all three languages on it, partly because it has to be quite large and the writing quite small). Matthew's Gospel mentions the sign, but quotes it as saying 'this is Jesus, King of the Jews' (27:37; Hic est Jesus rex Judæorum in the Vulgate). John, who is depicted as one of the younger disciples in this film, is also shown holding hands with Jesus at one point, presumably reflecting the frequent references to him as 'the disciple Jesus loved' in his own Gospel.

Matthew is an interesting choice for a Marxist director as well. I vaguely remember reading an article which I think was by Ste Croix years ago while I was revising for my final exams about economics, class and the Gospels. Possibly-Ste-Croix argued that Luke's Gospel was aimed at the poor (hence, the shepherds) while Matthew's was aimed at the better-off (the wise men paying homage emulating the elite from the east paying homage to a king or emperor). Luke's Beatitudes say simply 'blessed are the poor', implying that the fact of being poor makes one more worthy than the rich, whereas Matthew's say 'blessed are the poor in spirit', implying you can still be rich and blessed. Having said that, Matthew's Gospel does include the story of the rich man who wants to be perfect and the saying that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle (the English subtitles clearly saying 'the eye of a needle' not 'the Eye of the Needle') than a rich man to enter heaven, and Pasolini emphasises the working-class status of Jesus and his disciples through costume and location.

The dialogue is taken directly from the Gospel, with minimal additions if any, so several scenes which are described in the Gospel but feature no dialogue are done without dialogue in the film, expressed largely through facial expressions. Pasolini makes some very interesting choices in casting and direction. Salome, in particular, looks quite different to many other interpretations. Her dance for Herod Antipas is often used as an excuse to have a sexy woman perform an alluring dance, allowing the audience to enjoy the dance at the same time as morally condemning it, just like Roman orgy scenes. Here, though, Salome is a much younger girl, and while her dance is pretty, it's not overtly sexual. Herod's reaction simply makes him look more leering, while Salome is clearly being ordered what to do by her mother Herodias and she herself comes across as more innocent than usual.

Pasolini's film is well known for being made in Italian neo-realist style, though as far as 'realism' more generally goes, I couldn't help comparing it to Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth. Pasolini uses non-professional actors and films on location, where Zeffirelli used an all-star cast of well-known actors, creating more of a barrier between audience and film as we recognise Ernest Borgnine or Anne Bancroft as themselves. However, where Zeffirelli tried to make a film as historically accurate as possible, Pasolini uses distinctly non-Roman architecture (Zeffirelli used a ninth-century Islamic fortress, but less obviously), non-Roman hairstyles and his Roman soldiers look like they've stepped straight out of a Renaissance painting. Their round helmets are especially egregious. I also had some trouble with the fact he'd cast Mary realistically young in the Nativity scenes, but cast his own mother as the older Mary - a woman far too old at the time of filming to have believably given birth to a 33-year-old at around 12-15 years herself.

Interestingly, Pasolini also depicts some of the more ostentatious miracles left out by Zeffirelli - Jesus walking on water, and the dramatic earthquake that occurs as he dies - as well as depicting the healing of leprosy far more viscerally and physically dramatically than most. (That was a great scene - in the Gospel, Jesus tells the man not to tell anyone, but Matthew tells us he went around telling everyone. In the film, with Jesus in the foreground facing the camera, we see the man run behind him and immediately start exclaiming to everyone around him, waving his arms around frantically). Perhaps, being an atheist who believed none of it anyway, he felt more comfortable with the more obviously extra-natural elements of the story.

The whole film also has a surreal feel to it, partly thanks to the direction, but also thanks to the habit of Italian films of the 1950s, 60s and 70s of post-synching all the dialogue, so no one's lips quite match their speech. (For a long time I thought this was just Fellini being weird, but when I watched Suspiria for a Den of Geek article last week, I discovered it's a quirk of Italian cinema of that period in general). Indeed, several of the main characters are voiced by entirely different actors to those portraying them on screen. It gives everything an eerie, other-wordly sensation. This feeling is further enhanced by the wide variety of music used in the score, including sweeping classical orchestral music, guitar-twanging American blues, Christian music and a joyous theme in a style I didn't recognise.

I enjoyed this film very much. The focus on one specific Gospel makes it slightly different from other Jesus films - yes, the story is still familiar, but it's an interesting way to focus it. Pasolini could perhaps have been slightly less thorough in covering everything in Matthew's Gospel, as the section covering Jesus' various teachings, in which we simply see Jesus declaim various well-known sayings, was a bit like sitting through a slightly dull sermon in church. On the other hand, the actor playing Jesus was distractingly sexy - not that the other actors I've seen play him are unattractive (especially Caviezel, though he's too horribly mutilated for much of his film to distract in that way), but this guy oozed sexiness, and the fact he spent much of the early part of the film staring intently at people and telling them to come with him didn't help. He also had the most wonderful head of slicked-back 1960s Italian (actually, Spanish) hair, which did not entirely go with his very traditional white Jesus-robe.

All in all, I'd thoroughly recommend this to anyone interested in Jesus films, ancient world films or Italian cinema. If you want to watch something in Italian to practice the language, this is definitely my favourite of the films I've tried so far.

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