The Illusionist

This review contains spoilers.

We misuse the concept of tragedy in human life. Tragedies like Macbeth are about crises- something that happens that drives everyone to disaster. One minute the world is stable and the next through a tragic flaw and a sudden set of decisions, the world careers off into a darkened path. Those tragedies tell us a lot about the world and the nature and vulnerability of human life: but they are not the tragedy that faces most of us. Most of us won't have a tragic flaw that creates war between nations- we don't have tragic flaws that are completely irredeemable either. Most of us are flawed but Othello and Macbeth act upon a greater stage. Our tragedy is not that often but its what Konnie Huq describes here, its growing old, and feeling pain and suffering slowly unto death. Age itself is no tragedy, people age well and gracefully- just see John Pocock. However the wrenches of age are something we all have to, hopefully, face. Children leave, someone cleverer comes along at work and someone who can contribute more energy, fashions change, the world moves on.

The Illusionist is about the transition from one world to another. A magician lives in Paris and moves to follow his work. His work is declining though. Who wants to go to a magician when you can go to the Beatles. So the Illusionist- M. Tatischeff- moves over to London. His show closes there and various other shows collapse. He goes up to the North of Scotland through a series of accidents and eventually ends up in an inn there. He does some tricks and the crowd is more appreciative- but in particular one little girl believes in his magic. She believes his tricks are correct. He leaves the island to return to Edinburgh. She follows him, leaving home. He therefore becomes in a sense her father and in Edinburgh we see a series of charming moments in which father and daughter bond over the city and the experience of being in it. She slowly learns how to be a city-girl. He has some success and finds in the other acrobats and show people some solidarity. So you see a relationship evolving- a concern evolving between two people and the way that Sylvain Chomet films this concern developing is beautiful.

So what happens then is the film returns to its poignancy. The magician becomes ashamed of his lack of ability to provide for the girl, for his quasi daughter. His relationship with her is complex: she is slowly discovering his limitations and he finds that process difficult and disturbing. He finds his pride affected by that. Its another symbol of the way that the world seems to be moving on. Furthermore towards the end of the film she discovers someone else- she becomes located in Edinburgh, he still remains a flitting presence for whom Edinburgh is a location rather than the location of his life. This film is therefore one of the saddest you'll see and there are moments which reflect that universal tragedy of time passing. Chomet gets the mixture right: the Illusionist is losing his world- the world of the music hall- but he also has this personal separation from his quasi daughter.

You'll notice I've not mentioned a single actor- that's because there aren't any. Furthermore there is very little in the way of voicing- there are some words but they are in French or Gaelic. They don't really matter- the words are just sounds rather than meaning anything. Chomet draws so well that his characters act, appear very credible. You feel the film is magical- there is a magic in the animation that anyone adult or child can get. The animation is good enough though that the actions, the gestures make sense as actions or gestures. Its powerful both because its animation and because you forget its animation- because these characters matter to you as well as being mythical. Each character, even the minor ones, is captured. For example at one point an American in a white suit comes on to the screen, his casual arrogance is captured to a t from every part of his spotless white suit to the flashy smile he brandishes. Chomet captures Edinburgh brilliantly as well- there is one particular scene on a street corner which gave me a moment of deja-vu. I am sure I have been on that street corner and can remember it exactly. Edinburgh is portrayed as a traditional city, there are other parts of the city to see and this is a chocolat box Edinburgh but on the other hand, it has never been as beautifully animated before. The beauty of the city aids the spirit of poignancy in the film: Chomet makes wonderful use of the lighting and shade in his filming and it adds to what he wants to tell us.

What is that? I think there is something important here about ageing, the process of the world changing and the sadness of losing a career or a world that you inhabited easily, along with losing a child to the world they have grown into. The last shots of the film are about the acceptance of that process by the lead character. Sadness and poignancy does not mean that life has ended, but that one type of life has passed on and another form starts. So the film really offers us the poignancy of ending, but towards the end it shows the new lives on offer to its characters.

Apologies and Fevers

Apologies for sparce posting this week- I got some kind of bug on Tuesday and have been suffering ever since. In a grotesque way, as I've been reading nothing more intellectual than Private Eye, Prospect and the Economist, I thought I'd look at the Old Bailey website under the common cold. What's interesting is that as these two anecdotes prove, people in the seventeenth century knew that a cold was related to the cold. The two anecdotes though aren't so much about that relationship as they are about those who operated at the boundaries of society. Both concern women who were, for whatever reason, exposing their children. The court deemed in both cases, as you'll see that they were committing infanticide; however the record doesn't provide a reason for suggesting that they might not have been merely abandoning rather than killing their Babies.

The records are short, so I'll include them in their totality. First this from 1678:

But of the women, two after Judgement pleaded their Bellies in respit of Execution, and by a Jury of Matrons were found Quick with Childe. Another condemned for murdering her Bastard Infant, died in Goal the next day after Sentence; It being supposed that by going abroad immediately after her Delivery upon the unnatural designe of exposing her Childe (as she did) in the streets, she might catch Cold, which together with the dejection of her Spirits, might hasten her End, and prevent an Ignominious by an untimely death.

Secondly from 1679, this:

Another Servant was found Guilty of Murthering her Bastard-Child ; She pretended to be delivered at the House-of-office, and that it was Still-born: but it was proved that she had privately wrapt it up in her Apron, and was carrying it in an Hand-basket to bury it; but being met by one that would needs see what she got there, was discovered; and all this within an hour after she was Delivered. So lusty she was to do so Villanous a Deed, venturing abroad, and going a considerable way from where she dwelt, enough in that respect to have occasioned her own Death, (considering her condition) as she had been the means of the Death of her innocent Infant. But though she escaped catching Cold, she did not escape Justice, but is Condemned to Die.

Both stories are suspiciously alike. I think they are fascinating though because they provide a real psychological account of breakdown (in the first case) and of determination in the second. Both accounts make the infanticide sound purely irrational- we don't know whether it was or not, these are the only accounts that survive. In both cases the women did what they did straight after the birth, immediately in the first case, one hour later in the second. What's interesting is that we have different levels of detail. In the first account we are told that the woman sickened and died from a cold and from dejection: we have evidence there of some kind of depression following from the infanticide. In the second case we have less detail on the woman's reaction and more on her method, she stole the baby away without anyone else seeing it. In both cases though the writer envisages that the woman risked suffering in other ways- from cold- the equation between risk and crime is definitely there.

The most powerful thing I get from both accounts is a picture of a woman on the street abandoning her baby. The interesting thing is that like so much of history I don't know what preceded that picture: I don't know why what followed it (death from cold or hanging) followed it and I am left completely in the dark as to the motivations of those involved. All I have is a vivid trace- I think these documents are fascinating both for what they reveal and don't reveal. What do you make of them?

Review: The Burning of Bridget Cleary

In 1895, in a cottage in rural Tipperary, a young woman named Bridget Cleary was burned to death by her husband and some of her neighbours and relatives. This shocking event became one of the cause celebres of the day. Tory newspapers used the scandal to cast aspersions on their nationalist foes: could the Irish peasantry be trusted with independence if they burnt their wives? The fact that the scandal happened at the same time as the Oscar Wilde case in London meant that, for some, the Irish elite and peasantry had been impeached at the same time. So what did the Cleary scandal mean? Angela Bourke's book about it is supposed to educate us as to the meanings of this event on Friday 15 March 1895: why did it happen, who was to blame, what did it mean?

Lets start from the facts, as Bourke establishes them following court and media inquiries at the time. Bridget Cleary was a young attractive woman who had her own business selling eggs from her hens. Her husband Michael Cleary was a Copper, literate and educated (in the context of his time). On Monday 4 March 1895, Bridget walked to nearby Kylenagranagh to sell some eggs, she caught a cold and on the Tuesday was confined to her bed at her house in Ballyvadlea. Her father set off to the local doctor, Dr. William Crean, on Saturday 9 March and asked him to visit his daughter. The doctor visited on the 13th and suggested that she take some medicine but by that point Michael Cleary was so irritated with him that Bridget did not take the medicine. The local priest Father Ryan administered the last rites on the 13th. On 14th March Michael Cleary called in the assistance of a herb doctor and forced his wife to swallow some herbs boiled in milk. On the 15th Bridget felt well enough to come downstairs and dress: she met neighbours and relatives down in the kitchen. There was an argument about whether she was a changling rather than the real Bridget and Michael knocked her down to the floor, he then poured parrafin over her and set light to her. The body was buried and Michael told the local village that she had been taken by fairies: he performed a vigil out by Kylengranagh where he said he believed his wife would ride by in a fairy procession. On 21st March he and the others in the house were arrested for murder, on 23rd a coroner's inquest confirmed a death by burning, on 5 July Cleary was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years penal servitude with other lesser sentences being handed out. That is the substance of the case.

That's the substance of the case but it doesn't really explain anything. What happened in the kitchen of Michael and Bridget Cleary's house was not an ordinary murder, but something far stranger. It drew on myths from the Irish past and discontents from the Ballyvaldea present. We need to understand, as Bourke argues, both in order to understand what happened. What Bourke is good at is bringing out the nature of the Irish beliefs about fairies at this time. She takes material from Yeats and Lady Gregory and others and demonstrates that rural Ireland sat at a crossroads in the 1890s. A pre-literate culture, for which fairies were a useful way of passing on wisdom and warning through stories about common 'dangers', confronted the 'modern' world of the nineteenth century with its roads, railways and doctors. Bridget Cleary both faced a doctor and a fairy doctor during her final illness. Secondly she makes sure that we understand the particular dimensions of the situation inside that hut: Michael Cleary was challenged, his father died during Bridget's final illness and on the Friday Bridget may have implied that his mother was away with the fairies when she was a child. There is no doubt, having read Bourke's book, that Michael Cleary was under significant stress that night and that helped cause his actions.

However, Bourke turns towards the end of her book towards the question of blame- a question that she is interested in but I am not. She concludes that noone was completely to blame: ultimately this is sophistry. Bridget Cleary ended up being burnt to death, without Michael Cleary's involvement this would not have happened. However stressed Michael was, I am sure that many Irish husbands were so stressed but few Irish wives in 1895 ended up being burnt alive! But lets leave blame: the problem with blame is that its a moral judgement which each of us are entitled to make but for which we need facts. Bourke gets preoccupied with blame and therefore neglects the more interesting questions that surround the case, the relationship between husband and wife etc. She does capture some of the more interesting facets of the world in which Bridget and Michael lived: Bridget comes across as a self confident, pretty young woman who had her own business for example. But ultimately Bourke spends too much time pontificating about how we should not blame Cleary and about how fairies are a competing explanation to modern science for phenomenon and whether they are as 'useful'.

Where Bourke's wider context is more interesting is the ramifications of the Cleary case. It may have had an effect upon the crisis of Union as it spread across the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It happened with John Morley's Land Bill and at the same time as the scandal involving Oscar Wilde. Bourke tries to draw together the three events, suggesting that the scandal at the top of Irish society (Wilde) and at the bottom (the Cleary burning) destroyed the land bill. In part the Cleary case must have contributed to a sense that the Irish could not be trusted with voting: but the idea that it stopped the Morley bill I find less convincing. The Morley bill was a contentious bill coming from a weak and dying government: it was likely to fail despite any merits. Her point though about the event as an imperial event must be correct. Just like Suti in India or the primitive behaviour of British tribes under Rome, every barbaric act formed part of the metropole's justification for continued colonisation. If Bourke gets some points wrong, that point is definitely right.