Are Brilliant ... Mark XXVIII

When you've been going through a lean patch (inspiration-wise in my case) what you can do is re-release some of your old hits, jazzed-up a bit. Seems to have worked for Taylor Swift, with whom I have never before been compared, not even by Chortley Chuckles.

Definitely not the Overgraduate

So returns the Are Brilliant thread, itself (as you may well have spotted) a limp regurgitation of a catchphrase from The Fast Show, Now there's a nice irony because The Fast Show is/was brilliant.

Definitely not Chortley Chuckles

Are brilliant ...

Beverley and East Riding Golf Club. Blasted moorland, cows wandering around, sunshine and a strong wind. This is how golf should be.

Howley Hall Golf Club. A Mackenzie course. parkland but with space to breathe and a second hole played to a green hidden behind an old wall. This, contrarily, is also how golf should be. Howley Hall and Beverley in combination cost us less than sixty quid. It's not grim up North.

The Rugby League Magic Weekend. The culmination of our Northern adventure. £41 for seven matches. Great sport. Good food. Even better company. The OG trinity was accompanied by TW, AO, BH, JS and TS. Brilliant.

Hill Dickinson

The Hill Dickinson Stadium where the aforesaid rugby took place. A model for new stadia on the just-less-than-gargantuan scale. How can a firm of solicitors afford the naming rights on the place? It wasn't like that in my day. 

Quiche. Heatwaves demand this.

 

Powerful Dialogue

The Groupie and the Pig are making their way through The West Wing for the umpteenth time. It seems strange to be back in a time when pagers were still a thing and mobile phones were not so powerful, but the basic brilliance of the show still stands. It may be my advanced age and my carefully nurtured cynicism but I occasionally get weary at the perfectly formed liberal diatribes that pass for dialogue, but just when one wonders if Aaron Sorkin is not perhaps the genius one had thought him, he reels you back into the game (the thinking game I think we should call it) by puncturing the self-righteousness of the major characters. If you want to know what I mean then check out episodes 1 and 2 of Series 3. Toby and Josh are in full and seemingly unchecked arrogant spate until a minor character (Doug, a political consultant) finally cracks and lacerates them with a dose of angry realpolitik. Well done Doug and, of course, well done Aaron. A serious show about serious matters. A great game to play is to watch The West Wing and then to switch to CNN to witness the evil, witless drivel that emanates from the Trump White House (and, I'm afraid to say, from the bulk of the compromised GOP) - if it wasn't so important it would be funny.

Whilst I'm on the topic of television, we've found another show that we like. It rather more than tips its hat to the tropes of film noir and it is, of course, no secret that Big Fat Pig loves a good film noir. The show is Sugar. We're only a couple of episodes in but it all looks very promising.

Moving on - from television to film. The cancellation of Woody Allen is a topic on which I don't have strong opinions beyond the vague unease that, no matter the state of the criminal law, there are some things you don't do when in loco parentis. But Allen remains one of my favourite film-makers, one who deserves the over-applied label of 'auteur'. We watched Hannah and her Sisters last night. An excellent movie with superb dialogue (better than Sorkin). 86/100.

       

An Enviable Fiction; A Damning Fact

 

The Search For The Good Nazi

I have been watching my way for the umpteenth time through the magisterial World at War (as an aside this reminds me that such compelling yet educational television just would not get made these days) and I am most intrigued by the contributions of that seismic fraud Albert Speer - a high-ranking Nazi who escaped from the Nuremberg trials with his life. It was the enigma of Speer that was brought to mind by recent cinematic encounters with interpretations of two other prominent National Socialists.

The Desert Fox is carried by James Mason's charismatic portrayal of Erwin Rommel, presented to us as an honourable and brilliant military man who came to see that Hitler was leading Germany over a cliff. When one considers that the film was made in the shadow of the War (1951) this is a balanced and generous work. 70/100. 

Nuremberg (2025) has an expert turn from Russell Crowe as the charming but malignant narcissist Hermann Goring. This is top grade acting. Rami Malek's efforts as the psychiatrist who endeavours to know Goring have attracted contrasting reviews (The Guardian is particularly hard on him) but I think he keeps just on the right side of manic. Juristically speaking the Nuremberg trials pose interesting questions for any sentient lawyer, particularly one like me who has always opposed judicial killing in the domestic setting. I still don't know where I stand on war crimes trials and I am grateful that I am not compelled to articulate one way or the other. Another worthy film. 70/100. Watch out as well for a fine subsidiary performance from Leo Woodall.    

Out Of Ireland, Out Of Wales, Of England

I married my way into the Irish diaspora. It is a nice place to be. I was born into the Welsh diaspora and, despite the turmoil in Welsh rugby, that is also a nice place to inhabit. I am though English and there are aspects of that that concern me. Let me illustrate.

On Friday I took a journey to the doctors surgery I have used since the Groupie and I first married. We have moved three times since then but have never felt any urge to transfer to a surgery that occupies the same supposedly rarified area as Casa Piggy. The service I receive from my doctors is superb and I can say that they have played a central part in keeping me alive. The National Health Service at its best is a thing of wonder. 

My drive to the surgery (I had requested a PSA test and they had readily agreed - no symptoms but I am of the age) takes me through Kingstanding Circle, a place with tender memories for us because we lived round the corner when first married in a lovely little house that cost us the princely sum of £15000. The Circle has been ambush-swathed in Union Flags and Crosses of St. George. I am at heart a patriot but this sort of display has come to feel threatening and somehow indicative of division and rancour. I cannot tell you how sad this all makes me feel as I hunker down in my middle class redout. I feel vaguely estranged from my own homeland.

After my blood sample had been given and I had admitted that, yes, my blood pressure remains stubbornly a bit too high, I drove on down Short Heath Road and up Station Road to Erdington to see my aged mater familias. As I waited for the temporary lights on Station Road to change I observed a slattern coming out of a convenience store dressed in pyjamas and a seedy dressing gown. It was half-ten in the morning. It may be a little thing and I may be a terrible snob, but really is this what we have come to?

Back to Ireland and a question springs to mind. How can that sainted isle produce two such contrasting products as Mrs Brown's Boys (which I'm sorry but I have to say this, is pitiful) and Leonard and Hungry Paul, which in case you haven't seen it is delightful, a sort of Napoleon Dynamite meets Derry Girls.

I don't usually approve of early Christmas trees but tomorrow is a working day for our decorator in chief (the Groupie of course) and next Saturday will be a tad late, so our trees have gone up this weekend and this afternoon I will mount the step-ladder and put up the outside lights (for switching on tomorrow) - all is well, mostly all anyway.

That blood pressure thing - I have been out running on both days since my test.           

The Death Of The Public Intellectual

For those of us with second-rate minds and of a certain age, the doings of public intellectuals used to be important. A.J.P. Taylor, Kenneth Clark, Jacob Bronowski et al had an impact on our ability to reason. I deliberately select three academic practitioners whose wider impact was televisual. That says much about how I imbibed my learning. 

Intellect has been privatised. And what brought all this to mind? Two missed opportunities that's what. Melvyn Bragg and Simon Schama are definitely public intellectuals. Lord Bragg (an entirely justified enoblememt by the way) brings us the staggering In Our Time every week on Radio 4 and his South Bank Show was a beacon of high-brow television. As for Schama, he has been bringing us provocative television for decades. All of which means that their recent offerings come as a disappointment. In Why Art Matters (Bragg), and The Story of Us (Schama) both men come across as weary - understandable maybe, but disappointing nonetheless.

Bragg's lament (I was going to call it a rant, but it is too quiet for that) at the dying of the artistic light in  modern Britain preaches to the choir. His Lordship interviews a succession of creatives and asks them to agree with his proposition that the arts are in crisis. All agree. Duh! Dissenting voices would have been interesting - maybe there aren't any. An opportunity missed. As I write this it occurs to me that I am being ungenerous - this may be so and perhaps Bragg is fully entitled to be exhausted after a working lifetime spent carrying the torch for the arts. Nonetheless, a disappointment.

Schama's The Story of Us, purports to be a modern cultural history of the United Kingdom. Schama too comes across as tired of carrying that torch. The three part series (the shortness of the series says much about the poverty of BBC commissioning) only really comes alive in its final portion when it considers Northern Ireland. Of all people it is Bono (I know, bloody Bono) who, interviewed by Schama, sheds a discerning light on the interaction of culture and politics. 

I feel mean writing this since both Bragg and Schama have plenty of credit in the cultural bank. They have more than done their bit.   

In Defence Of The Meta-Text: Two British Examples

You have to give it to the BBC, its iPlayer streaming service is a treasure trove. I have just finished watching two Le Carre adaptations with quiet enjoyment: Smiley's People (better as television than as a novel); and A Perfect Spy (a notably good novel and a less satisfactory, though stil meritorious, television series). But that is not what I want to talk about. My main concern today is two films that can be found on iPlayer.

You won't (or at least shouldn't) need telling that the Beatles are brilliant. I use the present tense because their music remains as fresh as the proverbial daisy. I'm listening to it now. Their first venture into film, A Hard Day's Night (1964), is a stylish, bordering on brilliant, film about a band called the Beatles, played by (and credited as playing - that point is important - pay attention at the back) John, Paul, George and Ringo. The meta-text - it's about their trials and tribulations on their way to making a television show. It is consistently good-natured and Richard Lester's direction is superb. A real treat and, oh, that music. 75/100. 

An even more self-aware piece of meta-text is presented by A Cock and Bull Story. This is a film about the making of a film of a famously unfilmable metatextual novel, Sterne's Tristram Shandy. If this was done with anything other than a very deft touch, it would be in danger of disappearing up ts own fundament. It doesn't. It is very, very clever without being alienating. There is a great line (delivered by the excellent Steve Coogan) about Shandy being a postmodern novel written two hundred years before there was any modernism to be post of. Also 75/100. 

 

A Lesser Tati

It is worth  checking out the schedules on Talking Pictures TV. They show old films and old television but there are some considerable goodies hidden among the predictable dross. It was on this channel that I found the utterly brilliant Monsieur Hulot's Holiday. Not quite up to that sublime standard but enjoyable nonetheless is Jaccques Tati's earlier movie, Jour de Fete. You have to put up with annoying subtitles offered in a ridiculous demotic American but at its heart this warm comedy does what comedies ought to do - it makes you laugh. 69/100.  

The Aping Of American Sports Coverage

I like my golf. Well, not my personal golf you realise - that will no doubt (once I have recovered from my bad back - getting there thank you) transpire still to be wayward. No, I like golf and golf courses. I like it done well and sympathise with it done badly. But there's a problem and it is one I have alluded to before. As Sky Sports throw more and more time (and one presumes more of that nice Mr. Murdoch's money) at their coverage, so it becomes less bearable. Overall the standard is dire - a sort of sentimentalised hard-core mediocrity.

Sky's coverage of the European Tour (must we really take the petro-dollars and call it the DP World Tour?) can largely be exempted from my denigration because the broadcaster generally puts the B Team on the commentary job - Richard Boxall et al. Even Rob Lee has become bearable. Problem is of course that the product (the golf itself) has beend devalued by the wrong-headed machinations of the PGA Tour and its European partner, such that the best players are siphoned-off to ply their trade in the States before an ever-diminishing televisual audience. The game has plummeted from meritocracy to a kleptocracy, running scared of that prize gobshite Greg Norman. Much gets more was how my Yorkshire grandmother used to put it. Quite. Unattractive. 

So what's so wrong with Sky's A Team? Ewen Murray is a great broadcaster but he has ceased to be the dominant voice. Instead we get too much of the pathetic Nick Dougherty and the over-promoted Wayne Riley. I can stomach Riley when he is out on the course but that is where he belongs. Dougherty has talent but bloody hell can a man get his tongue any further up Sir Nick Faldo's arse? Even Faldo (not the most unassuming of men) can seem embarrassed. Dame Laure Davies is excellent but gets drowned-out by the tidal wave of Dougherty's schmaltz and the inanity of Paul McGinley - that Blarney Stone has a lot to answer for. And as for Butch Harmon - well, really?

So what I am saying (ironically in a verbose McGinleyesque manner) is that there is too much blather and not enough objectivity. And it is not the OG pocket that drives this rant - I actually won money on the Masters this year but couldn't be arsed to watch the climax, waiting instead to check out the result when I awoke this morning.   

More Joy

iPlayer and Radio 4 Extra are the two reasons I don't bitch about paying the licence fee. Yesterday I was pointing you in the direction of the Christopher Nupen documentary and today it is my happy duty to direct you towards anything bearing the imprimatur 'A film by Ken Burns'. You most often find these prize pieces of intellectual Americana on PBS America (my most watched channel on the old telebox) but you can watch his Country Music on iPlayer. Brilliant, thorough and captivating.

I've Got The Only Cure For Life, And The Cure For Life Is Joy

Not the first time I've purloined a masterful Clive James lyric (written for the music of Pete Atkin) and it won't be the last. Anyway, it came to mind as I mused my way out of the downer threatened by yesterday's speculations on asymmetric war. The cure for life is joy.

I have just watched (it's on iPlayer - seek it out) Listening Through the Lens : the Films of Christopher Nupen. It is no false modesty to say that I have a tin ear and zero musical talent but, rather as with wine, I have come to know what I like. The documentary about Nupen, himself a documentarist, reminded me that music is quite possibly the highest marker of human spirituality. As long as mankind is possessed of musicality there can be some hope.

Also there is running. My new shoes are working well and this morning I ran up the hill and back down into Benllech with the view out to Red Wharf Bay opening up before me. The cure for life is joy.  

A Shrinking Translation

Film versions of successful television shows often fail to expand into the big screen. For no reason of personal preference (I was with my Mum who had just had a cataract operation) I last week watched the second Downton movie - we ignored the first which was hidden behind a pay-wall. Downton Abbey: a New Era was in no manner displeasing but Julian Fellowes had obviously mailed it in. For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they will like. Of no note in cinema history. 50/100.

And wouldn't you know it, just like London buses, no sooner had one spin-off crossed my screen than along came another. We chose to view Luther: the Fallen Sun for the very good reason that the Luther television series had been one of the best things on the box in the past decade - dark, gory and carried by two central performers (Idris Elba and Ruth Wilson) from the top drawer. Instead of expanding Elba's character into the corners of cinematic possibility, the film shrinks into cliche and wild improbability. It perhaps best serves as Elba's screen-test to be the next Bond (a development I would not find unjustified). A missed opportunity. 51/100.

Laughter Is Permissible, But Not At The Expense Of Vigilance

In my world-weary way these things make me laugh even as I remember their significance. First some looky-likeys.

Trump

 

 

Mussolini

Silly I know (and not original) but it casts some light in the shade. Consider this, taken from the Afterword to Frank Dikotter's catalogue of twentieth century infamy, Dictators: the Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century:

Vigilance, however, is not the same as gloom. Even a modicum of historical perspective indicates that today dictatorship is on the decline when compared to the twentieth century. Most of all, dictators who surround themselves with a cult of personality tend to drift into a world of their own, confirmed in their delusions by the followers who surround them. They end up making all major decisions on their own. They see enemies everywhere, at home and abroad. As hubris and paranoia take over, they seek more power to protect the power they already have. But since so much hinges on the judgements they make, even a minor miscalculation can cause the regime to falter, with devastating consequences. In the end, the biggest threat to dictators comes not just from the people, but from themselves.

I buy books new and old and cannot resist a browse along even the dingiest charity shop shelves. In an Alnwick back-street I unearthed a fiftieth anniversay edition of Robert Penn Warren's novel of American politics, All the King's Men. Warren was a wise man and his novel is thick with insight, but I doubt that even a man so sagacious could have conjured up a character to match Trump - he would have found the whole thing too fanciful. We are cursed to live in interesting times. So laugh to scorn but remember that what you laugh at is real. 

More cheery stuff to finish. Almost eight years after it debuted I have finally got around to watching the twenty pacy episodes of Dickensian. Pacy and clever, bloody clever. Derivative, of course, almost by definition, but bloody clever. I really enjoyed it. It is on iPlayer. Just when I'm going all free-market I find something that makes me fall in love with the licence fee all over again. How gleefully annoying.

 

From The Desk Of The Author

bloody lovely

I have spent the last couple of days here on the island (that's Mon to you and me) in confinement with Shakespeare and Bagehot, pushing through the rather tedious task of correcting the manuscript of my thesis. I never thought I would say this but I can actually tire of exposure to my own purple prose. Who would have thunk it eh? Still, my efforts have been productive and as the afternoon slips into its seventh hour I have given myself permission to open a recently purchased bottle of Basciano Il Corto 2019. I do get some things right - it's bloody lovely.

So what (apart from the academic distractions which quite properly don't interest you) has been going on with the Pig? Well, he's strained his left calf muscle (in a new area - of the leg, not of the country) which is a pity because he's been feeling quite fit. He's played quite a bit of golf and after some encouraging signs has gone significantly backwards in the last couple of weeks, so we won't dwell on that.

Politics, bloody politics. What a shitfest. No I'm not going to depress myself by dwelling on the subject. Just for now. Oh I know what I can tell you about. You may remember that I was lamenting the deplorable adaptation of Great Expectations offered up by the BBC. Well the good news is this - the same organisation's 2011 offering of the same source material is on iPlayer and it's so much better that the it makes you suspect that someone at the Beeb left it up there because they were so ashamed of the newer pile of shite. It's teatime - spicy mussels are calling and that wine won't drink itsef. TTFN.

Televisual Excrescence

I gave it a chance for two episodes but I'm sorry, I can't be doing with the BBC's new adaptation of Great Expectations. Even the presence of the sainted Olivia Colman cannot rescue this piece of gratuitous vandalism. Yes, Dickens has a lot of darkness and we can perhaps afford, in these days of artistic licence, to spice it up a bit. But the profanity (they swear like me, that is to say, like a trooper) is unnecessary and feels like dramatic self-indulgence. The final straw was the insertion (Ooh aah Mrs) of a sado-masochistic sub-plot. On the whole, what's the word I'm looking for? Got it - crap.

The Other

I can handle a bit of science fiction/fantasy. I venture this peculiar piece of information because I have been working my way through the estimable BBC rendition of His Dark Materials, and I have also re-watched the original 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Otherness is an important element of both texts, different as they may be in their milieu. 

Invasion is a cheap studio product that properly became a cult hit and still works to this day, though not as effectively on later viewings as on the first. There is no shame in that - even the very best piece of the fantastic, Pan's Labyrinth, loses some of its lustre on repeated consumptions. Reactions to the 1956 film are gloriously mixed - mostly admiring but disputatious as to which side (if either) of the McCarthyite divide it sits. All good critical fun. Genuinely creepy without ever resorting to gore and, for this consumer at least, a spirited defence of the need for otherness. 74/100. 

Although it is a television production, the epic BBC His Dark Materials paints on an even broader canvas. I am an admirer of Pullman's source novels, definitley misunderstood by those who dismiss them as children's fiction. I was decidedly not an admirer of the botched 2007 cinema version, The Golden Compass. This is far better. Don't get me wrong - Pulmman's plotting can sometimes be sketchy and the adaptation does not attempt to hide this. However this remains high quality stuff from serious source material. A particular word for Ruth Wilson who is supreme as Mrs Coulter. So much better than the over-hyped Nicole Kidman in the movie version.

I am no ally of Pullman on the subject of organised religion but he richly deserves a wide readership and should no more be banned than should The Satanic Verses. There, I've said it now.  

Are Brilliant ... Mark XXVII

I've been awol from the blog for a few weeks. Sorry about that. Things happen - but I will tell you more once I am authorised to do so. That sounds a little portentous. Nothing to worry about but even the Big Fat Pig has to observe the rules from time to time.

I've been awol from the 'Are Brilliant' thread for even longer, so here we go. Older readers may detect some duplication (or even triplication) but, hell, I'm not a machine.

So here goes. The precious bike. I was out for a few hill-climbs yesterday. Enjoyed it. And along with the golf, this is the only exercise I am getting because my sore Achilles heel is into its fourth month of discomfort. There is no better explanation than that I am getting old (already there?) and that I have subjected this body to more battering than is good for it. That said, there is not a day goes by that I don't miss playing rugby. The ruck remains the father of the maul. 

Talking of battering, the Groupie and I had really disappointing fish and chips from the hitherto reliable Mere Green Takeaway. You must know how it is - you are really looking forward to something, you have a raging hunger, and then the food is all flabby. The disappointment is heightened because of the intensity of the anticipation. Well found the antidote only a few days later, which brings me to the second brilliant item - haddock and chips in the conservatory (one eighty degree sea views) at The Trecastell Hotel in Bull Bay. Washed down with a couple of pints of pale ale. Fish and chips redeemed.

Waitin' Around to Die, by the tragic figure of Townes Van Zandt. Search his stuff out.

Amlwch. I have a fondness for landscapes where the industrial melds with the natural. Amlwch is an old working port but if you head westwards from the port carpark you are soon met by cliffs and clear seas and, best of all, even on a beautiful Spring day, you are largely on your own. What you do after you have walked is to go to the Trecastell Hotel for fish and chips (op. cit.).

The National Trust. I put up with some of its woke inanities because of the cracking job it does in preserving places of interest. We called in at Bodnant Garden on our way home from Ynys Mon. Been there countless times before but there's always something new to observe. I do love a well-stocked garden. I'm attaching pictures of the fallen redwood and the helpful expanatory notice. In case you can't read the script (isn't age a pain) - it stood over 50m tall and was brought down in the Winter storms. 

 

Finally - the concluding episode of the awesome Derry Girls that aired last week. Even by the standards of this great show, the hour-long finale was funny, serious and, most importantly, moving. In amongst the dross of reality television, it is reassuring that such genuinely important work is still being done on television.

A Good Day On The Island

Mon being the island in question, Plas Piggy being the country residence of course. Today new flooring has been fitted in the front bedroom. Top notch. I have been here for three days waiting for the work to be done - there was a hitch with delivery of the materials but all's well etc.

I have watched three films today and abandoned a fourth because it gave every indication of being rather crap. In the gap left by the abandonment I rewatched an episode of the excellent BBC Watergate. You couldn't make it up.

First up was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Martial arts films are not really my bag but I enjoyed this. The fighting is hypnotically balletic and the plot has a tidy confection of love, honour and destiny. I could see what all the fuss was about. 76/100.

Rather different but also well worth the effort is the small but beautifully put together 1932 adaptation of A Farewell to Arms. Assiduous readers will recall that I recently reviewed the source novel in these pages. This movie takes considerable liberties with the plot but still manages to cram the romance and sardonic horror of conflict into its seventy-five minutes of drama. 72/100.  

The third and, by a small margin, best of these films was Munich, Steven Spielberg's worthy rumination on the state of Israel. The peg on which the picture hangs its questions is the massacre at the 1972 Olympics and a ruthless and clandestine Israeli response to it. It is a violent tale, of course it is, but the violence is never gratuitous and the overall effect is one of beneficial provocation. 80/100.

The crap film? I'm afraid that was The Eiger Sanction. I'm generally an admirer of Clint Eastwood but this is not his finest hour. No mark awarded.

 

The Two Funniest Scenes Of All Time

Don't say I never spoil you. I have mentioned both scenes before but I was put in mind of the topic last weekend when the Groupie and I revisited that glorious comedy The Philadelphia Story. To po-faced moderns the sexual politics of this film are no doubt unacceptable, but those with broader minds will see this for what it is - a truly great movie. And the scene from it that I cherish above all others? Virginia Weidler, of course, as the juvenile Dinah Lord plonking herself at the grand piano and singing Lydia the Tattoed Lady - 'On her back is the Battle of Waterloo / Beside it the wreck of the Hesperus too'. Priceless. As for the film itself - 95/100.

'The other scene', I hear you cry. Well it comes from a far coarser age but is equally sde-splitting. It is of course the 'dead box' scene from the first series of Green Wing. Also priceless. 

A Question Of Media

Our brief topic today is Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. A book, a television series, a film. I have reconsidered each of these media recently. The order of my original consumption was television, book, film. All are meritorious, indeed if I was to teach a course on literary adaptation I might take these texts as my basis.

The book is very good, not, I think, le Carre's best - that would be A Perfect Spy to my mind. Mind you my enjoyment of the novel was partially obstructed by having seen the television series and thus knowing who the culprit was in advance. To be precise I had in fact known that outcome the week before the final episode of the television production, thanks to a mean and small-minded hint delivered by Philip Purser in his Sunday Telegraph column the weekend before transmission - what a knob. I recall Purser's name with enmity even at the distance of four decades. 

The television series was (and remains) superb. It hoovered up awards and Alec Guinness as Smiley may just have given his finest performance. It can still be re-watched profitably even if the original suspense is absent.

The film is also well done but it is this version with which I have the greatest difficulty. Perhaps it is the lack of supense, perhaps if I came to it unburdened I would have enjoyed it all the more. But sometimes the longeurs are the thing. So in the novel, so in the television series. The film, admirable as it may be, is too short to do justice to this particular tale. The film - 69/100.