A Good Excuse

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone. I've decided, since I'm basically a day ahead here in Japan, I'm going to consider all one day holidays to be two day holidays. So I'll be celebrating Saint Patrick's Day to-day and to-morrow. Though, really, I started on Friday when I watched Miller's Crossing with dinner. It's about Irish Americans so I thought it would be a good way to ease in. Last night I watched a bit of The Butcher Boy, a movie I love just a little more every time I see it. I only watched part of it because I had to get up early to-day for a Second Life chess tournament and I'm frustrated to say I fell asleep while I was watching Miller's Crossing. I've been doing that too often lately. I didn't even fall asleep this often during movies when I was regularly getting just five or six hours sleep in my last days in San Diego.

To-night my plan is to have boxty, corn beef, and cabbage for dinner. I also have some Tullamore Dew. I'll probably watch The Quiet Man but I'm not sure. I'm in the mood for something angrier and darker, I supposed because, naturally, Shane MacGowan and Sinead O'Connor are on my mind, the latter of whom, of course, played the Virgin Mary in The Butcher Boy. I'm slightly tempted to watch The Banshees of Inisherin again, it being right there on Disney+ of all places, at least here in Japan. If you type "Irish" in the search, the top two results are The Banshees of Inisherin and Darby O'Gill and the Little People. Now there's a well rounded double feature for you. Banshees figure into both films, come to think of it, maybe it's not so strange.

X Sonnet #1825

McDonald's passed to us a cup to mark
The war that brought machines to rule the ash,
Remains of waitress lives becoming dark
As lightning struck, the metal skull was smashed.
"Reversing ghosts can make a kind of life,"
The killer shrugged and placed the gun beside
A worthy chump who climbed the ladder rife
With broken rungs and let the floor decide.
At home, the thoughtful lady bakes a score
And twenty cakes before the party kicks
Begin to honour whiskey oaths and more
Than lout or dame can hold for all their tricks.
A troubled rhythm shakes the cooling pie.
The path to-day is doused in verdant dye.

In a Neat Little Town They Call Belfast

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone, although it's already the 18th here in Japan. This year I bought a bottle of Jameson and watched Darby O'Gill and the Little People and Mike Leigh's 1984 film Four Days in July, the latter of which I'd never seen before. It was surprisingly relaxing for a movie about the Troubles though there is an underlying tension throughout the picture.

It's set in Belfast and follows a young Protestant family and a young Catholic family. The women in both families are pregnant for the first time.

Most of the film consists of slices of life. We listen in on conversations between the couples and friends visiting. Stephen Rea has a small role as a window cleaner for the Catholic family. He stops work to chat with them a while.

All the time, I was listening for some reflection of political or religious partisanship in the dialogue. Anything of that sort, though, seems to be incidental as when the Catholic wife (Brid Brennan) sings a revolutionary song in bed as a lullaby for her husband (Des McAleer), successfully putting him to sleep.

The loyalty to both sides is there. The Protestant husband (Charles Lawson) is with the British security forces and he has a clear enough contempt for terrorists. But he seems more concerned with swapping old stories about drunken bets or trivia about Northern Ireland.

The dialogue feels so authentic, it really felt like I was just hanging out with all these nice folks. Surely they needn't start killing each other.

Four Days in July is available on The Criterion Channel.

On Ondine Time

Trying to decide what to watch for Saint Patrick's Day last night, I searched for "Neil Jordan" on HBOMax and only Ondine and Mona Lisa came up. So I started watching Ondine, though I reviewed it back in 2013 and, though I liked it, I didn't remember it making a big impression on me. It still doesn't blow me down but the cinematography is awfully pretty, as is Alicja Bachleda.

Where's she been since Ondine came out in 2009? According to Wikipedia, she hasn't made a movie since 2016 and her latest credit is a 2019 Wolfenstein video game. I hope she retired out of choice.

She had a son with her Ondine co-star, Colin Farrell, in 2009, the same year Ondine was released, but she and Farrell separated the next year. So much for the fairy tale.

They both give good performances in Ondine, which is kind of like an anti-Secret of Roan Inish. Like Secret of Roan Inish, it's about a woman believed to be a selkie and there's an adorable, precocious little girl involved in the story. In Ondine, she was born with a diseased kidney and at her young age, Annie (Alison Barry) is forced to go about in a motorised wheelchair.

There's an incidental plug for the Irish healthcare system. A girl from a family of like economic circumstances in the U.S. would probably have to make do with crutches. Though I imagine crutches from a hospital in the U.S. don't go for less than two grand.

If there's a real problem with the film, it's that it spends too little time on the moral problem of the third act, when someone dying unexpectedly ends up benefiting the main cast. The movie completely glosses over how Annie feels about it.

The film's at its best when it's just a sweet, well photographed romance. When Ondine (Bachleda) is traipsing about half naked and Circus (Farrell) is watching her, perplexed by her beauty and her ability to summon salmon by singing a Sigur Ros song.

I had grilled salmon for dinner last night while watching the movie, along with boiled cabbage and potato I'd boiled then fried in butter. It seemed decently Irish to me.

Ondine is available on HBOMax.

The Discount Plough and Imported Stars

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone, from where it starts early, Japan. I decided to watch an Irish movie last night and chose 1937's The Plough and the Stars. Really it's an American film though it has an almost entirely Irish cast and was directed by first generation Irish American John Ford. Based on an Irish play of the same name about the Easter Rising of 1916, Ford was unhappy with the finished product due to changes made by RKO to it. It has its good qualities, particularly from the supporting cast, but it's far from the best of Ford's career.

The studio mandated the inclusion of Hollywood stars in the leads. Preston Foster and Barbara Stanwyck play Jack and Nora Clitheroe. Jack's in the IRA and has just been promoted to a command position despite Nora's desire that he stay out of the fighting.

I love Barbara Stanwyck but this was not her finest hour by any stretch of the imagination. She spends the whole film on the same whiny note, begging her husband not to fight the British and complaining to everyone else that her husband's fighting the British.

Some of the supporting cast would go on to be Ford regulars, most notably Barry Fitzgerald whose amusing antics in the pub are definitely the highlight of the film.

The Plough and the Stars is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1532

A syrup jam results in flooded cakes.
And yet, we never thought to break the fast.
For eating right we read for extra steaks.
Supplies exhausted, skies provide repast.
A thinning face revealed a working brain.
As time conspires now for twitching nose.
The little phantoms load a gun with grain.
The scattered seeds produce a picture pose.
Her latest int'rest seeks her only feet.
A tiny smudge of paint could change the house.
We built the palace steps of moss and peat.
The place exceeds the plans of dreaming mouse.
The screen in shades of green displayed the hills.
With hours, dimes, and sweat, we paid the bills.

Pookas and Changelings, Day II

I'm calling to-day the second day of Saint Patrick's Day--yesterday was March 17 here in Japan and now that it's the 18th for me it's the 17th for the western world. So I'm calling this a two day event. I indulged in the popular fantasy of Ireland last and watched Darby O'Gill and the Little People. I still marvel at the effectiveness of the special effects to make the leprechauns look small.

The Lord of the Rings movies really owe a huge debt to this one.

One of the few things I know how to cook is boxty--Irish potato pancakes made by mixing mashed potatoes with flour, grated potato, and egg, and frying the batter like normal pancakes (but five minutes for each side of each pancake). Last night I experimented and boiled and mashed cabbage along with the potatoes. I added lemon, thyme, and diced raw onion to the batter. As usual I splashed the finished cakes with Tabasco sauce and added butter and cheddar cheese. They were really good.

It's a bit ironic I'm enjoying a double Saint Patrick's Day for living in Japan since most people seem never to have heard of the holiday around here. Many people don't even distinguish Ireland from England--the Japanese word for Great Britain is イギリス--pronounced "Igirisu" or "English", something many people from Scotland or Northern Ireland might not like (I can imagine what Malcolm Tucker would say) and of course there's little awareness of the difference between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. But then again, I'm sure many people in the west can't point to Kyushu on a map of Japan.

I was thinking about all this last night when I was talking to a woman in an online chess club about Saint Patrick's Day. Over the course of the conversation, I realised she had no idea the Republic of Ireland wasn't part of the U.K. This was especially strange because she's claimed to be an Englishwoman living in England ever since I met her some years ago. I've long suspected this was an act--she was always up at the wrong hours and she mentioned the fact that she was English just a little too often. Last night I saw her confidently asserting that all of Ireland was part of the U.K. She also told me that all the Irish people in England are comfortable calling themselves British. Even if that's true, the fact that she felt comfortable speaking for all the Irish people in England was a bit silly, even if she personally knew more than twenty and had spoken to each of them on the topic.

Part of me wonders if she is English because it seems like a fraud would have taken the time to do some minimal research, particularly when this was an online chat with long pauses in the conversation during which she could have easily googled the information. The thing is, this isn't the first time I've run into a young person who seemed ignorant of aspects of the nationality they claimed to be. When I was getting my certificate to teach English as a second language, there was a guy in the programme who claimed to be Australian, despite not having a trace of an Australian accent--he sounded American. Sure, maybe he lost his accent somewhere along the way but there were all kinds of other little signs that he was a fake. One day, I heard someone ask him if Australia really had the enormous spiders people see in viral videos and memes about the country and he replied, "Yes, we have the . . . brown recluse." The brown recluse is native to North America. Like the "Englishwoman", he showed again and again that he was so badly informed about his supposed country of origin as to defy belief, not only that he was from the place in question but that he was actually attempting to pull off a charade with this level of research and preparation. It's led me to believe that this isn't so much an attempt to deceive people as it is an attempt to assert an identity, I guess not unlike Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who claimed to be black for much of her professional life.

It's like people are treating real life like a role playing game. The feeling I have is that it's much more widespread--I mean, I can see the inept pretenders. It stands to reason there must be some people who are good at it.

Twitter Sonnet #1433

We searched for suits to end the day in green.
The strangest pair reduced the deck to chips.
Potential dwells in some enchanted bean.
Across a sea the rain refuses tips.
A wild wave reports against the cliff.
In older pictures green resembles black.
The grains have bloomed in ev'ry graphic gif.
The words were writ upon the barley sack.
Reluctant nets would sleep instead of load.
The time a slide would take we'd browse a store.
And on and on, the train retook the road.
Romantic books occasion something more.
A wish from Reaper's coach was granted late.
With gold and whiskey, glad the poacher ate.

Sounds Like Ireland

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, everyone. It's also Sunday, the day I normally write about Doctor Who, but Doctor Who has always been light on Irish characters and actors and the show has perplexingly never gone to Ireland. So I turned to the audio plays and listened again to the bold 2006 story The Settling from Big Finish's monthly range. Set in Ireland in 1649, it takes place during Oliver Cromwell's conquest of Ireland and features Cromwell as a character, played by Clive Mantle. The tone is sometimes too light, particularly when it comes to some of Cromwell's dialogue, but mostly it treats the subject matter seriously with a score made up mostly of mournful strings that might overdo it slightly.

This may have been before the "fixed point" term came into use on the show but the sieges of Drogheda and Wexford are clearly regarded as fixed points by the Doctor, events that he can't effect substantial changes to. Instead of big things, he mostly focuses on individuals and helps an Irishwoman named Mary (Clare Cathcart) deliver a baby while her town is being ravaged by Cromwell's forces.

It's a Seventh Doctor story and Sylvester McCoy may be the most appropriate Doctor for this material since his mother was Irish and his father was English (he grew up in Scotland). I suspect he taught the rest of the cast how to pronounce "Drogheda". While he's concerned with townspeople, his companions, Ace (Sophie Aldred) and Hex (Philip Oliver), alternate spending time with a conversational Cromwell. Clive Mantle plays Cromwell as unambiguously villainous. The smug sense of constantly amused superiority that comes through in the performance conjures an image of an obese cat with a curling moustache.

The script is much subtler, though. As Ace and Hex start trying to argue with someone they know only as a monster, they're stymied by responses and examples of behaviour that indicate a man who believes in virtue and the value of human life. He teases Hex by pretending to think he's a witch and then laughs it off--Cromwell was out of step with his Puritan cohorts in that he didn't consider witches a real threat. But then he flies into a rage when Hex utters the casual blasphemy, "Oh my god!" Realistically, I think Cromwell would be more taken aback by Hex's comfort with the expression than enraged by it, even if it was a grave offence.

It's not until the end of the story that the Doctor has a conversation with Cromwell and Cromwell's questionable defence for slaughtering the inhabitants of two towns, that he saved thousands more by doing so and that his men acted against his orders in slaying women and children, is met with McCoy's low tone of ominous scepticism.

Mainly, I admire the story more for the boldness of its premise than for its execution but it's not bad. Maybe one day the show, too, will visit Ireland.