I confess to binge-watching the show Penny Dreadful, all three seasons on Netflix. Good God! What was I thinking? It is everything that I cringe about in movies. Blood and gore. Gratuitous sex and debauchery. I almost gave up and stopped watching when the Creature came bursting through the chest of Dr. Frankenstein’s latest creation. And yet for a monster to be introduced to the series in such a way, and then to become the one character that strives hardest for redemption… I was hooked.
Sin and redemption is the major theme of the whole series. And each character strives so painfully for redemption that you cannot help but love them… even though they are monsters.
You see, I, like all other people, am aware that one day, sooner than I would like, I will die and live no more. And life, though filled with heartache and suffering and regret, is a priceless treasure to be guarded for as long as I can hold onto it. There is poetry in that condition. The greatest beauty that can be beheld is soon to pass away into ugliness. The candle flame lights the darkness briefly and then is gone.
The story is built from Victorian era literature and includes Mary Shelly’s Dr. Victor Frankenstein, Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a couple of werewolves, numerous witches, demons, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll, and a character named Lord Malcom Murray who is obviously based on the African explorer Allan Quartermain from King Solomon’s Mines by H.Rider Haggard.
The characters all do a lot of suffering and striving. Friendships are formed and made blood-and-family deep by shared adventures and brushes with pure evil and death. The main character, Vanessa Ives, is variously possessed by a demon, courted by Lucifer, hunted by witches, and then seduced by Dracula. She uses her deep faith in God, which wavers continually, to defeat every enemy but the last. She is also aided by a cowboy werewolf and sharp-shooter who is her destined lover, protector, and killer. It all swiftly becomes ridiculous-sounding when you try to summarize the convoluted Gothic-style plot. But as it slowly unfolds and reveals new terrors with every episode, it mesmerizes. The sets, the cinematography, the costumes, and the horrifyingly sweet-sad orchestral background music puts a spell on you that, when you awaken from it, you realize you want more than is available. Three seasons was simply not enough.
As I believe I indicated previously, the character that almost made me give up on the series, Frankenstein’s Creature, became the most compelling character of all to me. He began as such a violent, repellent, selfish thing… and in the end became the most self-sacrificing and tragic character in the entire drama. He took the name of the English poet John Clare for himself, and became a tragically beautiful person.
Do I recommend that you watch this thing? This poetic and sometimes deeply disturbing depiction of what it means to be human and be alive? I cannot. It was a moving personal experience for me, one that made me weep for beauty and horror at almost every episode. No one can find that sort of thing through a mere recommendation. It is entirely between you and your God.
J
Yesterday, before the big game, I watched the DVD I bought of Tim Burton’s Golden Globe Award movie, Big Eyes. It is the true-story bio-pic of an artist I loved as a kid, Margaret Keane… though I knew her as Walter Keane.
Catch a Falling Star 
Only One Star?
There are certain books that simply have to exist in order for me to be me. I couldn’t be the person I am without The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien, Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain) by Thomas Mann, and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. These are all books that have an allegorical element, a trans-formative effect, that shapes how you think and how you live after reading them. Some of these books have not been made into a movie. Some probably still can’t be. Others have not been made into an effective movie. But, then, Disney in 2018 makes a movie version of A Wrinkle in Time that makes me relive the primary experience of the book all over again.
I was disappointed to see the critics being harsh about the movie. I had high hopes before going to see it. Yet, you couldn’t miss the one star rating on the box office rating system of the ticket and show time site I was using. But my daughter and I went to see it yesterday anyway. It was far above my highest expectations.
You see, the novel itself is magical. The essential characters of Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which have to be witch-like, super-real incarnations of inter-dimensional beings. It is the view of them with open-minded childlike eyes that makes the complex relationships of this story to reality apparent to anyone who thinks clearly like a child. It is the reason why this book is a young adult novel, written primarily for children, even though the concept of a tesseract is wholly mind-bending in a Stephen Hawking sort of way. It is the wonder with which the director of this movie lensed the dimension-tessering time witches that makes this movie the best version. Not like that failed attempt in 2003. That was almost there, but not quite by half.
Critics don’t like some of the special effects and the color schemes of some scenes. Many things about the final battle with evil are seen by them as inexplicably bizarre. They don’t like the over-use of extreme close-ups on the faces of characters. And they think the performances of some of the child actors are too wooden and unreal to carry off the story.
I wholeheartedly disagree.
This is a story that takes place in the heads of the people involved, including the viewer of the movie. The extreme close-ups pull you into the personal feelings and struggles of the main characters. Particularly Storm Reid as Meg. The story is about her struggle as an adolescent to be at peace with her own flaws and self-image while at the same time being responsible for finding and saving her father, as he has completely lost his way on his quest to “shake hands with the universe”. Meg undergoes a challenge to her self image as she is cruelly bullied by another girl in school. She has to come to terms with loving her super-genius little brother Charles Wallace. And she has to weather the changes that occur when she encounters a potential first love in Calvin. It is a coming of age story that really smart kids can relate to directly from their own personal experience.
This one-star movie with only a 40% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes is a far better movie than the critics would have you believe. It is doing quite well at the box office. Kids seem to love it. And in my wacky opinion, it is the best movie version of the book to date. I love this movie.
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Filed under art criticism, commentary, magic, movie review, science fiction
Tagged as A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle, movie review