Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard has died. The playwright and screenwriter was 88. In his long career he wrote many films I admired, many of them without credit. Steven Spielberg has said Stoppard wrote more than the lion's share of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, despite going uncredited. The dialogue in that film is at times corny ("Twelve o'clock!" "What happens at twelve o'clock?") but also filled with surprising nuance and insight. I always like the moment where Indiana complains to his father that they never talked and his father counters, "Well, what do you want to talk about?" and Indiana can't think of anything. As is so often the case, long term resentment just evaporates when confronted.

Stoppard is said to have been most famous for writing Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead and then writing and directing the film adaptation of it. It's been decades since I saw it so I don't remember it very well but the concept is surely one of the most interesting Shakespeare pastiches. Life is bigger than the operatic stuff occurring on centre stage.

Of course, he co-wrote Terry Gilliam's Brazil, one of my all time favourite movies that's essentially tattooed on my mind. I watched it so many times in high school, college, and the years after and I'm always happy to return to it. It's funny, it's devastating, it's above all an uncommonly clear-eyed view of a human compulsion to reduce oneself to a machine. I'll always be grateful for that film's insight and honesty.

Thanks, Mr. Stoppard.

X Sonnet 1969

Comparing things results in stranger stuff.
The people 'round the block report on birds.
No freedom here, we traded all for fluff.
Conditions here presage the sleep of words.
Exchange a normal coin when times are weird.
You mustn't spend a dime where gold is sought.
These things the Scottish duck had never feared.
Advice forsook, a magic dime he got.
A tower held it nigh a liquid state.
The pool of wealth has driven workers mad.
It boxes ears and blocks the balding pate.
But Scrooge McDuck was never plucked or had.
And so the mansion grows with gentle ghosts.
And time has told on secret, vicious hosts.