Julia Strachey – Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, An Integrated Man
I often wonder why some books receive so much more attention than others, and whether time eventually weeds out the best. “Lost” books are constantly being discovered, so who knows how many gems have been buried… These two pieces (a short story and a novella) are so wonderful, yet a search on google for “Julia Strachey” came back with very few hits. Beautifully written, original, funny, complex – I was deeply entertained by this book. I hope it will be “rediscovered”. Cheerful Weather for the Wedding is about a miserable bride and her frantic, controlling, unbearable mother who is blind to everything that is going on around her, determined to create a bright, cheerful reality for the sake of appearances – a satire on English society but also a view of its suffocating effects on women. It was published in 1932 yet could easily have been written in 2008. An Integrated Man is also, I think, ahead of its time, and here to the themes include repressed desire and repression in general. Julia was part of the Bloomsbury circle, a niece of Lytton Strachey. Which brings me to…
Carrington (1995)
I always feel that biographical films are nothing more than anyone’s guess. But this film was based n a carefully researched book and it lets us know that we really do not have access to the internal lives of these people, we can only view them, as we view anyone, from the outside. It refrains from judgement and asks the viewer to do the same. We do mad things for love and we ask others to do mad things for love. This is perhaps a movie about desperation. A comment on imdb: “There are some who will dismiss the whole group [of characters] as “immoral” or as an effete corps of impudent snobs, but we won’t be that narrow- minded and judgemental, will we? If you allow yourself into ‘Carrington’s’ world I think you’ll find it rewarding. It’s full of good actors but I believe its success is largely due to director Christopher Hampton’s screenplay. It’s a full two hour movie without the benefit of car chases, explosions or kickboxing matches, so it’s a big plus to have something nice to look at for all that time. We can thank cinematographer Denis Lenoir and production designer Caroline Ames for that.” The exquisite music by Nyman is another major player in this film. I think it opens up many questions about feminism and sexual fluidity and sacrifice. The makers of this movie are very aware of the disturbing elements in the story and do not try to gloss them over, explain them, or justify them. This is what happened, they are saying – we are not telling you how to feel about it. And this sensitivity is what appealled to me here.
