Podcasting Them Softly

So the other day my wife had to go into the big smoke on a work assignment. I figured I’d tag along and since there would be time to spare, I’d go to the movies. After all the lure of the multiplex, its plush seating, its well stocked candy bar – a far cry it is from the local, tired twin cinema that hasn’t had work done to it since the week it opened – and that my friends, was a long time ago.

So the next item on the agenda, what to see? Well what was playing? Not a lot, at least nothing I was absolutely chomping at the bit to see anyways. It came down to two choices. The controversial Ghostbusters Reboot or Star Trek: Beyond. Time would be the factor which would decide and being that I missed the 10 o’clock Ghostbusters I had to look Beyond. Now I glanced at Vern’s review of the film the night before and he had gone on about, as he was a fan of Lin’s (Justin) Fast flicks, how they were connected in some aspects and the director had brought fluent and frenetic directing style to the table. Well, I haven’t see any of the Fast films and I was disappointed with Into Darkness. Abrams first outing I had so much fun at. it was the first time in a long time I had go in and come out and gone in again to the next screening. It was (for this dude in the audience) that much fun. It all worked.

Now I aint no Trekker or Trekkie or whatever it is y’all call yourselves – but, I love The Wrath of Khan. I saw that when it first came out and not knowing anything much of the whole Trek universe I loved it – and continue to do so. Into Darkness, took a lazy crap on a good movie. It brought back the rage I have against the Matrix Reloaded. It’s just sloppy storytelling. You start out with something vital and then you smoke eight packs of cigarettes, chow down on ten Big Macs, drink a case of beer and go make the next one. Sad, lazy, but I’ll save the my contempt for The Matrix Reloaded for another time.

Alright, Beyond. So we got a new director, new scribes, same crew, new villain. The movie opens with a return to traditional Trek formula: they are boldly going where no one has gone before but, there are folks there. The early exchanges between  Kirk (Pine) and a bunch of pissy little aliens is fun. Then he gets back aboard the Enterprise and when are reunited with the gang. I gotta say there is a lot of Scotty, and it is to be expected I suppose, since Simon Pegg is one of the writers. Turns out Kirk is bored. He’s Bored. He joined Starfleet on a dare and now he couldn’t give a hoot. So he’s throwing them back with Bones (Urban) who pinches Chekov’s booze, “thought he be a vodka guy.” Right, so he’s as bored as my son gets without his electronics and then come to this very cool space station. Everyone gets off. Uhura (Saldana) and Spock (Quinto)  are not sharing kisses anymore, turns out Sulu (Cho) has been made gay because it’s fashionable it seems for art to imitate life. I do care if you’re gay or straight or like to pull rabbits out of your ears. I really thought that was something that was thrown in for no reason except as social commentary. Let’s stick with plot shall we. Ok, so sadly Nimoy has passed away and Spock is discombobulated. Kirk tells the honcho at the space station he looking for a desk job and then its time to off and deal with a distress call. Enter the alien bad dude Krall (Elba) and his swarming hordes. They rip the Enterprise a knew butthole looking for the artefact that Kirk was offering as gift at flick’s opening.

First he has it then he doesn’t. Kirk and Krall fight as everybody jumps ship and are captured by the bad dudes so they can keep Krall alive. He sucks energy out of folks or something. So then we get to the planet and we are broken up into pairs. We got Spock and Bones, we got Kirk and Chekov (the late Yelchin), we got Uhura and Sulu and Scotty, that’s right, more Montgomery Scotty. Scotty hooks up with Jaylah (Boutella) and its turns out she is sitting on a hundred-year-old Starfleet vessel. Spock tells Bones he is going to go be more Vulcan and has him a laughing fit. Kirk and Chekov hook up with Scotty and the white alien chick and Kirk finds a motorbike just like the one dad used to have and then …

…then I had to go and pick up my wife, the only thing I love on this earth more than movies. She was done early and though there was a good portion of the flick to go, I walked because my wife need me. So you’ll have to tell me what happened and if it was any good cause I gotta go pick up my wife again. Kirk out.

I admit a hidden passion for the depictions of this age and the language used by the people of the period. I first read the opulent novel by Rose Tremain in the form of its movie tie-in edition. It is language that you can devour with glorious passages like:

“I am fond of Bathurst. His claret is excellent, and his table manners worse than mine. His conversation is pure drivel, but spoken with a perpetual passion, emphasised by his constant farting and thumping of the table.”

Sad it is, and I will spoil it for you here, Lord Bathurst does not survive the adaptation. But, take heart. This is a period film with a fart joke in it.

Robert Downey Jr. gives another silently beautiful performance as Robert Merivel, the son of a glove-maker, a talented physician. He and his friend John Pearce (played by the always dependable David Thewlis) work at the local hospital where the sick flock to in droves; so much so that as it is uttered in Merivel’s dialogue (and I’m paraphrasing here) “there isn’t enough time to eat, there isn’t enough time to sleep, and there is barely enough time for us to look after our patients.”

After an extraordinary event where Merivel and Pearce are brought in to examine a man whose beating heart is exposed, save for a plate which he straps to his chest to cover it, he catches the eye of the visiting King Charles II (portrayed exultantly by Sam Neill). Merivel his hence plucked out his gloomy existence and is given a place at court after curing the King’s sick spaniel.

Oh what bliss, a life of sophisticated debauchery and decadence, all Merivel need do is at every moment please the King, care for the royal dogs, and make people laugh via his ability to fart at will. (told you, fart joke)

Things however, such as they are often disposed to do, take on an degree of complication when the King decides to offer Merivel up as a husband (in name only) to his mistress Lady Celia Clemence (Polly Walker). He is given a splendid wedding party, a knighthood and an agreeable estate in Suffolk. The King’s plan is to hide his mistress as Merivel’s wife and commands him only to not, in any way, shape or form, fall in love with her.

So leaving his new wife in the King’s bed, Merivel takes to the river and to his new home. Here he meets and becomes close friends with his steward Will Gates (a grand little performance by Ian McKellen). Merviel sets about making something of the house and takes also to drinking and entertaining until that is, his wife comes to the house. Celia, it turns out, has been temporarily banished from court for being too forward with his majesty. She is commanded to wait for return of the King’s favour, during which time she is to have her portrait painted by one Elias Finn (a deviously stuffy performance by Hugh Grant). Everything is going swimmingly but then love, O forbidden love rears its head. The one thing prohibited of the newly knighted Merivel sees him cast out of paradise.

Grudgingly the wheel turns and Robert takes to his horse, off to find his friend Pearce who has found his peace in Quakerism and a job at country mad house. Merivel lost and dismayed begins to rediscover his gifts as a physician and also becomes intrigued with the case of self-inflicted insomnia and she that is haunted by it, a young Irish woman named Katharine (an actorly turn by Meg Ryan). Thus life continues for a time and Merivel introduces alternative methods of healing such as the joy of music. This is not automatically welcomed by the Quakers but soon their elder Ambrose (Ian McDiarmid) begins to warm to these notions. But just as all seems harmonious the dark clouds gather and Merivel’s long-time friend Pearce is taken, try though he does to heal him.

The journeyman Sir Robert (Merivel) leaves the Quakers, taking Katharine with him: as she is carrying his child.

After a whimsical journey back to London, Merivel takes up his work again in the hospital under the guise of his deceased friend Pearce. He has arrived at the heart of darkness, the black plague is running rampant in the streets and the sick and the well are quarantined together. Merivel works tirelessly until he is marked again by tragedy. He loses Katharine whilst delivering his own daughter Margaret.

Little time passes and his reputation garnered for his work in the hospital sees him again summoned to court. Lady Celia is feared to have been struck by the plague. As John Pearce, Merivel examines her and finds that she is in the clear. Leaving the name of his friend as the man to whom the lady, his former wife, is indebted.

On his way back from the royal summoning, Merivel is just in time to witness the great fire of London. He rushes carelessly, with no fear for his own life, into the blaze in search of his daughter. The burning ruin that was his lodgings gives way and he tumbles into the Thames. The broken Merivel is carried in a small boat away from the fire and back into fate’s waiting hands.

When he awakes Sir Robert finds that he has returned to his former estate and is in the company again of his former steward Will Gates. Gates is not far into the explanation of Merivel’s unexpected arrival when another occurs hard upon it. The corridor is flooded by the royal dogs flowed by courtiers and finally the King himself. He explains that a nurse-maid came to the court looking for her master and father to the baby she is carrying, the physician Robert Merivel.

O for joy and happy endings, Robert has at last come full circle and is restored. His daughter is reunited with him, his title and house returned to him by the King, he wandered the path long and winding and has suffered and been blessed by the hands of fate.

This is a largely overlooked gem of a film that not only boasts a wonderful cast but has extraordinary work behind the camera. It is helmed handsomely by Michael Hoffman ( Gambit/ The last Station) and superbly adapted for the screen by Rupert Walters (Some Girls/True Blue). The look of the film garnered it an Oscar for Eugenio Zanetti’s (Flatliners/The Last Action Hero) sumptuous production design and it is stunningly captured by the eye of Oliver Stapleton (The Grifters/Accidental Hero). The film’s final architect is the hands of the skilled editor Garth Craven who has cut everything from Bloody Sam’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid to My Best Friend’s Wedding.

I find it hard I’ll admit to sugar-coat films I think are passable to mediocre. I also find it difficult not to gush or spew hyperbole about the films that I love. Still I have endeavoured to keep this one coming to you neat and off a measured tongue. But, don’t I beg you, take my word for it. Find this film and enjoy a story which is one that we can all identify with; a story about how we all go on journeys; about how we seize days and regret deeds. It’s about winning and losing and finding your way even in the midst of hopelessness. We are all travellers and are travelling still. Take a chance on this, I pray thee.