Vertigo (1958), starring Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak, is one busy film. Stewart's Scottie is a San Fransisco detective who retires after his newly discovered fear of heights manifests itself at a very inopportune moment and gets a beat cop killed. A few weeks later, old friend Elster asks Scottie to shadow his (Elster's) wife, and that's where things get interesting. Madeleine (Kim Novak) appears to be either posessed by a haunted spirit, or mentally unstable, and Elster needs someone skilled and discreet to help him get to the bottom of things. This, of course, is where things go a little awry.
Vertigo is considered by many to be the penultimate Hitchcock film. People love this movie. People think this is one of the greatest thrillers ever.
I am not "people". I found Vertigo to be overstuffed and often redundant - was it really necessary to spend around fourty-five minutes on watching Scottie follow Madeleine and listening to her spout ramble about a past life? Incidentally, Vertigo is notable for containing the single worst tailing job in the history of respectable film. How this guy ever made detective remains a mystery. Of course, there's the requisite not-founded-on-anything madly falling in love, also within the first hour, a device I've never held any empathy for. Things do start to get more interesting in the second half of the film, but it remains that Vertigo is two hours and eight minutes long, and I felt every minute of it. I've seen much longer films whose passage of time went unnoticed, because they were much tighter films. A lot of the compliments directed toward Vertigo revolve around the many elements and genres contained within. They're good elements - it's a detective story, an affair story, a thriller (kind of), and its legitimately creepy second half revolves around what could be construed as necrophilia on Scottie's part. There are writers and directors who can make that work; I'm going to brave the storm here and say bluntly that Hitchcock and co. were not a part of that club. In these hands, it was just too many stories, in competition instead of compliment. "Overstuffed" is definitely the word of the day here.
Perhaps the big allure of a Hitchcock film is the acting. He exhibited great care in casting, and the result was master performances, often fuelled by some pretty great dialogue. This is one area in which I doubt I can ever level negative criticism at a Hitchcock production.
Having now seen three Hitchcock films - Psycho, North by Northwest, and Vertigo - I can only say, what's the big deal. Okay, Psycho got my attention, and has a lot to recommend itself as a thriller and character piece. As for the other two, I'm getting the impression that most people love these films not because they're great films, but because they're important films, ergo we're supposed to love them. By "important", I mean in terms of influence of future filmmakers, and technical development (that wierd shot of zooming in while pulling the camera back was invented for Vertigo). Take Citizen Kane - now, that's one heck of a boring film. Being vastly influtential and very important to the development of moviemaking doesn't make it any less boring. But people love it (or claim to); it regularly tops "Best Movies of All Time" lists. If you want film cred, you don't say that you hate Citizen Kane, just like you don't say that you hate things like Vertigo, or Star Wars, or King Kong, or Casablanca, or John Wayne (or, if you're Canadian, The Tragically Hip). Incidentally, I do not hate any of the things listed above after Vertigo. If I want that kind of cred, I'll just brag about how the vintage silver bracelet worn by Kim Novak during and after the creepy shopping scene is either identical or very, very similar to one I inherited from Grandma Elly ("Oh yeah? I may hate Vertigo, but do you have a prop from it?" Or something like that).
Let me make one thing clear: I love classic film. I was steeped in it from a very young age, and it stayed with me. If you'd like, I can spout off a list of favourites to "prove" it. I also enjoy a good thriller. I also don't find Vertigo to be good or thrilling. I cannot express how bored I was yesterday. I think Vertigo is an important film; I don't think that that makes it a good film. If we're going to compare in the same era, I can think of at least three classic Twilight Zone episodes off the top of my head that kick Vertigo from here to Brazil for both quality and, um, thrilling-ness (?). The last fifteen minutes of the film were alright, the twist ending appropriately morbid, the acting was solid, but overall it was about fourty-five minutes too long, and kind of sloppy. It didn't know how to stop acts, how to transition before one of its many acts pulled an Energizer Bunny stunt. That could be one of the reasons I found it so dull and sloppy - poor or no definition between acts, which is an essential quality for the flow of any story.
I'll say it because I can: I got more enjoyment out of watching that other vastly influential classic, Plan 9 from Outer Space. Watch Vertigo at your own peril. Now excuse me while I find a good place to hide from the Hitchcock fans.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
You Can't Make This Stuff Up, v.2.0
Well, technically you can make this stuff up, but if no one would read it if you did, because it's so stupid. On the front page of today's National Post:
1) Several doctors have been quick to point out that the part about "only affecting white people" a load of crap, and,
2) even if it were true, so what? Funding research for diseases that attack specific people groups is nothing new (and, I think it's safe to say, nothing wrong). This may, unbelievably, take top honours for stupidest political play of 2008. On a side note, the first person I ever met who suffered from CF was, it so happens, black On another not-so-side note, does this mean that the CUSA will, in the future, make a point of not doing charity fundraising for sickle-cell anemia, on the grounds of being not inclusive enough because it primarily affects Africans, specifically those from the Sub-Saharan region? And what about breast cancer, which primarily affects women, thus resulting in an insufficiently inclusive gender bias?
As Shaggy would say, zoinks.
The Carleton University Student's Association has voted to drop a cystic fibrosis charity as the beneficiary of its annual Shinearama fundraiser, supporting a motion that argued that the disease is not "inclusive" enough. Cystic fibrosis "has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men," said the motion read on Monday night to student councillors, who voted almost unanimously in favour of it.
1) Several doctors have been quick to point out that the part about "only affecting white people" a load of crap, and,
2) even if it were true, so what? Funding research for diseases that attack specific people groups is nothing new (and, I think it's safe to say, nothing wrong). This may, unbelievably, take top honours for stupidest political play of 2008. On a side note, the first person I ever met who suffered from CF was, it so happens, black On another not-so-side note, does this mean that the CUSA will, in the future, make a point of not doing charity fundraising for sickle-cell anemia, on the grounds of being not inclusive enough because it primarily affects Africans, specifically those from the Sub-Saharan region? And what about breast cancer, which primarily affects women, thus resulting in an insufficiently inclusive gender bias?
As Shaggy would say, zoinks.
The Foolish Man Builds His House Upon the Sand: The Quiet Duel
I was introduced to films older that I am from a very young age, and it is my experience that people who talk about how films used to be so clean and innocent and never deal with taboo subjects haven't actually watched too many classics. Usually, when people try to pull that stunt, I refer them to Rita Hayworth's eponymous Gilda, a black-and-white film about a sexual predator that is anything but subtle or gentle, and even includes strong suggestions that the reason Gilda and her husband have remained married in spite of her is because he's homosexual. A stunning, excellent film - and absolutely not family-friendly. I remember the wierd reviews of George Clooney's tribute to classic noir, The Good German, in which reviewers complained that the oldies didn't have such foul language or sexual elements. Yeah. Watch any good classic noir and you'll note that, in most cases, the only significant differences in content as compared to contemporary film is that the old-time characters say "damn you" instead of "fuck you", and things like gunshot wounds are depicted more realistically - but there's this wierd idea that not being graphic somehow makes something clean, or innocent, or naive, or repressed.
Which brings us to Japan, 1949. Four years after the nuking of Hiroshima and the armistice signed three months after that, in an era so many contemporary viewers think of as naive, out of a country broken in more ways than one and under foreign occupation comes Akira Kurosawa's The Quiet Duel. Opening in 1944, we watch as army surgeon Kyoji Fujisaka (Toshiro Mifune!) cuts himself during an operation on a badly wounded man. He knows that if he pauses long enough to properly clean and dress the cut, his patient may not make it, and so he just daubs on some iodine and finishes the surgery, which lasts another hour. His subsequent blood test confirms that he's contracted syphillis from that operation, but being shuttled from location to location in order to treat patients, he doesn't have regular access to his medication, and his condition is aggravated. Upon returning home, he immediately breaks up with his fiancee, Misao, because he knows that it will be anywhere between five and ten years (at least) for his syphillis to run its course, even with regular treatment, and he also knows that she would wait for him...so he refuses to tell her why he won't marry her. She would be too old to start a family by the time he's healthy, and he wants her to have a life, so he says nothing, suffering quietly.
Even a quiet duel needs a louder one to help it along, and this comes along in the guise of the man Kyoji contracted syphillis from. Nakada is a careless, selfish, hedonistic man who refuses to believe that he could possibly be infectious, and Kyoji is outraged when he learns that Nakada is not only married, but has a baby on the way, courtesy of his unsuspecting wife. He ignores Kyoji's insistence on treatment, and lives in denial of his condition. You can bet this plot doesn't end well.
What sets this film apart, though, is the exploration of how sacrifical love can in fact be selfish. Kyoji's refusal to tell Misao the reason for their break-up is founded on his desire to not feel guilty about the fact that she would wait for him. In doing this, in not allowing her the choice to sacrifice, he condemns her to a life of second best - she loves Kyoji above all others, and though she eventually marries, it's plain that her husband will never be the one she wants. At the heart of The Quiet Duel is the exploration of the falliability of a conscience founded not on goodness or virtue, but the expectation of reward. This is what keeps Kurosawa's films from seeming dated - he tackles the human condition with thought and honesty, not through the lens of the decade's social mores. Some people find it easy to write The Quiet Duel off as a melodrama about a "saintly" man suffering due to the sins of another. I would suggest that those people, amongst other things, completely ignored the scene of Kyoji's confession, and the revelations therein.
There are other things I can't reasonably fit in this space, like the main secondary plot (oxymoron?) involving a single mother training as a nurse at Kyoji's practice, and how the writers used a fart as an apt metaphor for a heartbreaking conversation finished seconds earlier. That bit of relevant comic relief made me howl with laughter, which caused me to cry as well, because of how the laugh pushed forward the intensely sad emotions provoked by the aforementioned conversation. And, of course, there's Toshiro Mifune. Seeing him clean-shaven and not maniacal was a distinct change from what I'm used to (see: Seven Samurai, The Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress, Rashomon...), but man, did he nail this role. One of the greatest film actor's there's ever been.
I have no idea where to tell you to find this film; we found it at the sheer awesomeness that is the Edmonton Public Library. If you find it, go for it. And no, it's not in colour or English.
Which brings us to Japan, 1949. Four years after the nuking of Hiroshima and the armistice signed three months after that, in an era so many contemporary viewers think of as naive, out of a country broken in more ways than one and under foreign occupation comes Akira Kurosawa's The Quiet Duel. Opening in 1944, we watch as army surgeon Kyoji Fujisaka (Toshiro Mifune!) cuts himself during an operation on a badly wounded man. He knows that if he pauses long enough to properly clean and dress the cut, his patient may not make it, and so he just daubs on some iodine and finishes the surgery, which lasts another hour. His subsequent blood test confirms that he's contracted syphillis from that operation, but being shuttled from location to location in order to treat patients, he doesn't have regular access to his medication, and his condition is aggravated. Upon returning home, he immediately breaks up with his fiancee, Misao, because he knows that it will be anywhere between five and ten years (at least) for his syphillis to run its course, even with regular treatment, and he also knows that she would wait for him...so he refuses to tell her why he won't marry her. She would be too old to start a family by the time he's healthy, and he wants her to have a life, so he says nothing, suffering quietly.
Even a quiet duel needs a louder one to help it along, and this comes along in the guise of the man Kyoji contracted syphillis from. Nakada is a careless, selfish, hedonistic man who refuses to believe that he could possibly be infectious, and Kyoji is outraged when he learns that Nakada is not only married, but has a baby on the way, courtesy of his unsuspecting wife. He ignores Kyoji's insistence on treatment, and lives in denial of his condition. You can bet this plot doesn't end well.
What sets this film apart, though, is the exploration of how sacrifical love can in fact be selfish. Kyoji's refusal to tell Misao the reason for their break-up is founded on his desire to not feel guilty about the fact that she would wait for him. In doing this, in not allowing her the choice to sacrifice, he condemns her to a life of second best - she loves Kyoji above all others, and though she eventually marries, it's plain that her husband will never be the one she wants. At the heart of The Quiet Duel is the exploration of the falliability of a conscience founded not on goodness or virtue, but the expectation of reward. This is what keeps Kurosawa's films from seeming dated - he tackles the human condition with thought and honesty, not through the lens of the decade's social mores. Some people find it easy to write The Quiet Duel off as a melodrama about a "saintly" man suffering due to the sins of another. I would suggest that those people, amongst other things, completely ignored the scene of Kyoji's confession, and the revelations therein.
There are other things I can't reasonably fit in this space, like the main secondary plot (oxymoron?) involving a single mother training as a nurse at Kyoji's practice, and how the writers used a fart as an apt metaphor for a heartbreaking conversation finished seconds earlier. That bit of relevant comic relief made me howl with laughter, which caused me to cry as well, because of how the laugh pushed forward the intensely sad emotions provoked by the aforementioned conversation. And, of course, there's Toshiro Mifune. Seeing him clean-shaven and not maniacal was a distinct change from what I'm used to (see: Seven Samurai, The Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress, Rashomon...), but man, did he nail this role. One of the greatest film actor's there's ever been.
I have no idea where to tell you to find this film; we found it at the sheer awesomeness that is the Edmonton Public Library. If you find it, go for it. And no, it's not in colour or English.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
The Art of Survival: North by Northwest
Some classics never feel old. Rashomon, Lawrence of Arabia, Gilda, to name a few. And then there are those which may need to be watched in context for a full appreciation of what they are. In this case, I refer specifically to Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest.
Starring Cary Grant, James Mason, and Eva Marie Saint, as a comedy and a character piece this film will probably never get old. The script is packed with zingers (but not overstuffed), and those zingers are delivered so very well. As a case of mistaken identity and counterespionage, it's a fine and thoroughly enjoyable film, especially because none of the characters are stupid, or ever get stupid for the sake of easy 'drama'. As a thriller, I can't say I was particularly thrilled, which is where watching in context (of era) may come into play. Then again, it could just be that, as a thriller, North by Northwest just - horror of horrors! - isn't that tight. It happens. Even with that factor lacking, it's still better than the average film. The players are fantastic across the board, and the only time I got distracted from the dialogue was in Grant and Saint's first love scene, wherein he has to very awkwardly hold his massive, giant hands in order to not obscure her petite face. It was quite funny, really. And James Mason is so very, very suave and sexy - if there's a male edition of the femme fatale, this is it.
As someone immersed in classic film from childhood, I was happy to experience a new (to me) Bernard Herrmann score. Herrmann worked regularly for Hitchcock, but I know him best from his regular collaborations with Ray Harryhausen. He was one of those guys like Ennio Morricone, who scored an absurd variety of films, and though he died in the late '70's, people have continued to use his compositions posthumously - Quentin Tarantino used Herrmann's work for two sequences in Kill Bill Vol. 1. What I'm trying to say is, any film with a Herrmann score makes me happy.
The most satisfying thing about North by Northwest? Finally finding out how Cary Grant got away from that crop duster. The most disappointing thing about North by Northwest? Finding out that the title is not in fact a clever metaphor or analogy, but simply a literal description, kind of like John Wayne's North to Alaska. Unlike North to Alaska, however, this film's title is one of the biggest product placement coups of all time, which I have to admit amuses me on a pure level.
Speaking of James Mason, someone borrowed my beloved 2-disc special edition copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea back when I was living in Oakville, and never gave it back or forgot that they had it when I asked everyone, "do you have my copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". If you have a copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, starring James Mason and Kirk Douglas, that you don't remember buying and are not sure why you would own such a thing, please look me up. I do miss it so.
Starring Cary Grant, James Mason, and Eva Marie Saint, as a comedy and a character piece this film will probably never get old. The script is packed with zingers (but not overstuffed), and those zingers are delivered so very well. As a case of mistaken identity and counterespionage, it's a fine and thoroughly enjoyable film, especially because none of the characters are stupid, or ever get stupid for the sake of easy 'drama'. As a thriller, I can't say I was particularly thrilled, which is where watching in context (of era) may come into play. Then again, it could just be that, as a thriller, North by Northwest just - horror of horrors! - isn't that tight. It happens. Even with that factor lacking, it's still better than the average film. The players are fantastic across the board, and the only time I got distracted from the dialogue was in Grant and Saint's first love scene, wherein he has to very awkwardly hold his massive, giant hands in order to not obscure her petite face. It was quite funny, really. And James Mason is so very, very suave and sexy - if there's a male edition of the femme fatale, this is it.
As someone immersed in classic film from childhood, I was happy to experience a new (to me) Bernard Herrmann score. Herrmann worked regularly for Hitchcock, but I know him best from his regular collaborations with Ray Harryhausen. He was one of those guys like Ennio Morricone, who scored an absurd variety of films, and though he died in the late '70's, people have continued to use his compositions posthumously - Quentin Tarantino used Herrmann's work for two sequences in Kill Bill Vol. 1. What I'm trying to say is, any film with a Herrmann score makes me happy.
The most satisfying thing about North by Northwest? Finally finding out how Cary Grant got away from that crop duster. The most disappointing thing about North by Northwest? Finding out that the title is not in fact a clever metaphor or analogy, but simply a literal description, kind of like John Wayne's North to Alaska. Unlike North to Alaska, however, this film's title is one of the biggest product placement coups of all time, which I have to admit amuses me on a pure level.
Speaking of James Mason, someone borrowed my beloved 2-disc special edition copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea back when I was living in Oakville, and never gave it back or forgot that they had it when I asked everyone, "do you have my copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". If you have a copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, starring James Mason and Kirk Douglas, that you don't remember buying and are not sure why you would own such a thing, please look me up. I do miss it so.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Don't Hate Me 'Cause I'm Beautiful
This week's episode of Life was, start to finish, the tightest, best thing the show's done to date, and the kind of TV that's supposed to at least make Emmy shortlists across the board. If you've never watched Life, there's not an overabundance of character plot in this one, so it's a great place to start. It's also just some great TV that's worth the fourty-odd minutes of your time. Of course, Global doesn't stream it, and I can't get it from NBC because I have a Canadian IP address, so it'll take some time and discretion for you to find this in a legal way. Especially as the title of this episode is, "Badge Bunny", the nickname given to (adopted by?) women who have cop fetishes and are essentially groupies, hanging out at cop bars, dating cops, sleeping with cops, etc. So google "badge bunny" alone and your chances of porn or extreme creepiness are high. So be sure to toss the following information into your search query: Life episode 209 (standard online abbreviation for season 2 episode 9).
Ah, come on, just do it - the show will be dead soon, anyways. NBC just barely gave it the green light to complete the second season, and Global has moved its time slot from Fridays at 8 (we're not sure, but we'll give you a fighting chance) to Fridays at 10 (industry shorthand for, "screw you, show! We hate you!"). In the immortal words of Rahm Emanuel: Dead! Dead! Dead!
In other cancellation news, of the "neither great nor horrible show" variety, light-'n-fluffy occasional enjoyments Pushing Daisies and Eli Stone have been axed by ABC. Not cancelled, but axed - cut off, not allowed to finish a season, left dangling. Now that's just rude. Unless ABC is cooking the books, it's not like they have to chop a show in the middle of a story arc because they can't afford it. Or maybe, in the case of Eli Stone, all those George Michael appearances were starting to add up...
Ah, come on, just do it - the show will be dead soon, anyways. NBC just barely gave it the green light to complete the second season, and Global has moved its time slot from Fridays at 8 (we're not sure, but we'll give you a fighting chance) to Fridays at 10 (industry shorthand for, "screw you, show! We hate you!"). In the immortal words of Rahm Emanuel: Dead! Dead! Dead!
In other cancellation news, of the "neither great nor horrible show" variety, light-'n-fluffy occasional enjoyments Pushing Daisies and Eli Stone have been axed by ABC. Not cancelled, but axed - cut off, not allowed to finish a season, left dangling. Now that's just rude. Unless ABC is cooking the books, it's not like they have to chop a show in the middle of a story arc because they can't afford it. Or maybe, in the case of Eli Stone, all those George Michael appearances were starting to add up...
Saturday, November 22, 2008
My Sidekick Has a Mustache: EW's Top 25
Click here for the completion of Entertainment Weekly's 50 Greatest Sidekicks (Everrrrr). It's not their best list ever; pretty standard, pretty 'meh', and I'm far too young for their number 1 pick to be in any way meaningful...which is ironic, in a way, seeing as how I was able to grin and nod at their inclusion of Barney Fife (Andy Griffith) and Tattoo ("Da boat!"). Ah well, I guess you can't really re-run no.1's show for us young un's to see. Some of my favourite sidekicks, the sort who don't get on official lists, and not ordered in any preferential way:
But my favourite sidekick of all? Gordito Delgado, pre-pubescent gunslinger extraordinaire and sidekick to Dr. McNinja, Dr. McNinja. New on the scene and relatively obscure - it's only a three-year old webcomic, after all - Gordito is a boy with the mustache of a man, sprouted by the sheer stregnth of his will so that adults would respect him after his trapeze-artist single father was assassinated by PETA. After throwing in with a gang of raptor-riding banditos, Gordito was so impressed by the doctor's mad ninja skills that he assigned himself as sidekick, thus helping to fulfill another chapter of the doctor's quest to be more like Batman. What makes Gordito my favourite sidekick above so many classic and excellent sidekicks? He is an excellent mirror and foil to Dr. McNinja - and I really do mean excellent. His twelve-year old boy sensibilities, ludicrous as they are, hold up perfectly agains the doctor's straight man sensibilities - which, in the case of Dr. McNinja, are equally if not more ludicrous than Gordito's. It's a truly masterful take on the odd couple/Abbot and Costello archetype, and hilarious to boot.
Click here for the introduction of Gordito's character in Dr. McNinja #3, "There's a Raptor in my Office", and pop ahead to #7, "Spooky Stuff", for a backstory unashamedly ripped from Batman and Stephen King's Dark Tower series. All the usual warnings about toned-down Shaun of the Dead-esque zombie etc. violence prevail.
- Zeus Carver, sidekick to John McClane, Die Hard 3
- Mr. Bingley, sidekick to Mr. Darcy, Pride & Prejudice
- Morgan Grimes, sidekick to Chuck Bartowski, Chuck
- Vir Kotto, sidekick to Londo Mollari, Babylon 5
- Al Giordino, sidekick to Dirk Pitt, Sahara
- Martha Jones, sidekick to the Doctor, Doctor Who (series 3)
- Sherif Ali, sidekick to T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia
- Fezzik, sidekick to Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
- Cosmo Brown, sidekick to Don Lockwood, Singin' in the Rain
- Dr. McCoy, sidekick to Captain Kirk, Star Trek
- Binabik, sidekick to Simon, The Dragonbone Chair (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn)
- Sandy "Mac" MacDonald, sidekick to Roger Bartlett, The Great Escape
- The Littlest Hobo, sidekick to all in need, The Littlest Hobo
- Hank Yarbo, sidekick to Brent Leroy, Corner Gas
- Cordelia Chase, sidekick to Angel, Angel
- Millie Thompson, Meryl Strife, and Nicholas D. Wolfwood, sidekicks to Vash the Stampede, Trigun
- Radar O'Reilley, sidekick to Col. Potter, M*A*S*H
- Jet Black, sidekick to Spike Spiegel, Cowboy Bebop
- Bishop, sidekick to Ellen Ripley, Aliens
- Archie Kennedy, sidekick to Horatio Hownblower, Horatio Hornblower (TV only)
But my favourite sidekick of all? Gordito Delgado, pre-pubescent gunslinger extraordinaire and sidekick to Dr. McNinja, Dr. McNinja. New on the scene and relatively obscure - it's only a three-year old webcomic, after all - Gordito is a boy with the mustache of a man, sprouted by the sheer stregnth of his will so that adults would respect him after his trapeze-artist single father was assassinated by PETA. After throwing in with a gang of raptor-riding banditos, Gordito was so impressed by the doctor's mad ninja skills that he assigned himself as sidekick, thus helping to fulfill another chapter of the doctor's quest to be more like Batman. What makes Gordito my favourite sidekick above so many classic and excellent sidekicks? He is an excellent mirror and foil to Dr. McNinja - and I really do mean excellent. His twelve-year old boy sensibilities, ludicrous as they are, hold up perfectly agains the doctor's straight man sensibilities - which, in the case of Dr. McNinja, are equally if not more ludicrous than Gordito's. It's a truly masterful take on the odd couple/Abbot and Costello archetype, and hilarious to boot.
Click here for the introduction of Gordito's character in Dr. McNinja #3, "There's a Raptor in my Office", and pop ahead to #7, "Spooky Stuff", for a backstory unashamedly ripped from Batman and Stephen King's Dark Tower series. All the usual warnings about toned-down Shaun of the Dead-esque zombie etc. violence prevail.
Your Vote Counts: The Prefect
Freedom
never came for free
patriots are bleeding their veins clean
that's me in the corner, singing
"God save, God save the Queen."
- "Independence Day", Brave Saint Saturn
One of the most striking things about the collected novels of Alastair Reynolds is how they highlight his ability to shift to and from, and combine, grand and intimate scales. Pushing Ice takes place over thousands of years (grand scale) - but all the action is contained within a few square kilometers. Chasm City takes place simultaneously over hundreds of years and a few weeks, using dreams and mirrored plots to pull it off. Century Rain covers roughly forty-eight hours, as does my most recent Reynolds encounter, The Prefect (2007), a very well-done policeman's tale that questions whether unfettered democracy can actually erode freedom.
Set in the universe of Chasm City, but before the plague, The Prefect focuses its action on the Glitter Band, the collection of ten thousand-odd habitats that orbit planet Yellowstone. These habitats are the ultimate expression of democratic freedom. Housing anywhere from a few hundred to a few million citizens, each is the embodiment of a distinct theme or overarching ethic. House Perigal is a center of hedonism. The Chevelure-Sambuke Hourglass is built on living out classical, beautiful fantasies, by doing things like bioengineering flying horses - the majority of the habitats are some sort of Bioshock-style state wherein artists and scientists can create without legal or ethical restrictions, with varying degrees of benigness and horror. People voluntarily go into comas in order to allow their minds to run free in virtual reality in the Persistent Vegetative State. Some citizens have even decided that their greatest freedom is the abdication of all responsibilities, and so they democratically elect tyrants to rule their lives and rob them of the need to make decisions. The inhabitants of the Glitter Band are, in many ways, the most powerful collection of ordinary people in history, because there is literally nothing they can't vote on. Elections happen every millisecond, on everything from leadership to what shape a fountain should be, and democracy is the one unquestionable quality of human existence. Even the Glitter Band's legal body, Panoply, is completely subject to the will of the people, who have democratically denied Panoply's agents, the Prefects, the right to bear arms. But that's okay with the Prefects, because observance of democratic exercise is the only law they uphold - in the Glitter Band, its the only law there is.
The Prefect launches with Panoply's discovery of someone exploiting a loophole in the voting system, followed by the unprecedented destruction of an uninvolved habitat. While young prefect Thalia Ng embarks on a twenty-four hour tour to upgrade the polling cores of four habitats in order to close the loophole, her boss, Tom Dreyfus, turns his attention to the mass-murder. Along the way, a traitor does his thing, the eighty people converted into digital format mentioned in Chasm City come into play, as does a terrible machine thought destroyed and known as the Clockmaker, and at the center of it all is the question of how much freedom is necessary for the greater good. It's a cautionary tale, as is most great sci-fi, and it's also far better than the average. This exploration of freedom is one of those ideas which, in a democratic country, is often controversial amongst academics and activists, and those are the sort of ideas that Reynolds has no problem tackling in a thoughtful manner. On a personal note, the healthy limits of freedom have been on my mind lately, and The Prefect has made a very interesting contribution to that mental stew.
Great for any with an interest in political science, and even for those who have a carpet policy against sci-fi, The Prefect is a physically short but mentally challenging read, and highly recommended by me.
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