I quite enjoyed it and thought the acting was really good and most importantly im happy it stayed true to the book, its an amazing book and im glad they have transformed magically onto the screen...can't think of anything bad to say about it
shareIt was ok, not great but well acted and nicely filmed. Hoping the pace picks up more next week, but it's a good period piece.
-Arbeit macht frei
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Yes they did stay very true to the novel which was good and it was beautifully shot, especially the scenes that were meant to be in Jamaica. The acting was great, although I'm not sure about Ashley Walters as Michael. I don't think he gave off the same charm that the actor who played Gilbert gave off. Gilbert had more off a goofy charm, but Michael just seemed a little slimey. I think a trained actor could have made michael a more attractive character. I didn't understand that casting at all. Overall though it's a really good depiction and I'm looking forward to seeing the second half.
shareI thought it was brilliant and even better than the book. I wasn't sure about Ruth Wilson playing Queenie, but she was better than I ever imagined her to be. Really nice performances from her. Naomie Harris as Hortense was brilliant.
The casting was pretty much spot on. However I have to agree with Zodiac12. Ashley Walters was not the right actor to play Michael. I can think of a few actors that would have been better choices. Richard Blackwood for one.
Rather disappointed. Despite a fractured timeline either side of WW2 and it's tone and pace are rather monotonous and it's too predictable.
And much as I love her, it's clear that what's concealed by Ruth Wilson's accent is an even posher Surrey accent, definitely not a Yorkshire pig farmer. She looked and dressed like Eva Longoria in the scenes on the farm. Charlotte Riley was the right choice. Ruth is still lovely to watch but she doesn't quite fit the bill.
Still, Episode 2 could pull it all back.
Oh Alfa - say it ain't so. I read the novel 8 months ago when I first heard RW had been cast. With each page I imagined she'd be the perfect Queenie. The lack of sentimentality was the real strength of the novel, making the reader empathize with the situation from both sides, with Queenie the touchstone between the two. I was prepared to find that actress and novel fit like hand and glove.
Now that I've had the luxury of watching Ruth in the Prisoner whilst all across the pond wait patiently for it, I was prepared to do the same for Small Island. Now I'll wander aimlessly through the house wringing my hanky that RW couldn't pull it off (no pun intended - I understand there is some baring of flesh involved - there certainly was in the novel, until I get to see it myself.
Though of course I'm not sure my ear will discern the subtlies of dialect you mention, maybe we'll manage not to notice...
Hope you'll post more as your comments are ones I usually agree with ;-)
cheers from
the deep freeze called Montana.
minus 22 and holding
I love the sound of where you live. There used to be a placeholder called Timber Butte on google earth. Any connection?
I'll be fascinated to hear what you think. I think it may look better to people who have read the book, which I haven't, as the narrative thread is a bit wobbly, to say the least and doesn't really zoom in enough on individual chapters. There is no sense of suspense or curiosity as you can see how the characters will fit together long before they start to interact.
Have you seen the recent Emma yet?
A butte in western parlance is essentially a hill in the middle of a valley surrounded by mountains. In Summit Valley where we live surrounded on three sides by parts of the Rockies, we have two buttes - Big Butte and Timber Butte.
Big Butte is at the north end of the valley, Timber Butte more toward the middle. The street on which I live dead ends into Timber Butte, thus inspiring my email address and various user names and other computer-related monikers. As for the Timber Butte on Google Earth, I've no idea but my curiosity is piqued - might have to investigate...
Regarding Small Island, admittedly the narration in the novel is a bit right-brained - back and forth before, during, and after the war, plus flashbacks to Jamaica... But I was never really confused when reading the novel. Then again, I'm a right brain type. It seemed to me that Levy's scene organization followed a kind of 'pop up memory' structure. You're talking to someone and all of sudden you find yourself thinking about the time that...
That said, the characters are extremely well drawn in the novel and with a deft touch. Levy manages to evoke a character trait with a tiny detail or a single bit of dialog - masterful writing. So while suspense may not be paramount, I never lost curiosity about the characters. And of course the ending was a complete surprise, unlike apparently the TV program which the Beeb has managed to spoil in the trailer. Too bad too, because I wept at the end of this novel (and that's rare for me) when it becomes clear what Queenie's intentions are.
Re the recent Emma, I've watched part of it on the computer (not ideal but a good alternative to 90% of American TV). The program will be broadcast in the States in the spring. I'm luke warm on the performances of Romola Garai I've seen so far(Atonement, Daniel Deronda, Nickolas Nickleby). I did read that Poliakoff said she was the next Winslet, but I can't see it.
And of course, Austin (a bit too much fluff for me) isn't Bronte. But I'll watch, if for no other reason than to see the supporting cast like Jodhi May and Poppy Miller, who most Americans have never heard of but whom I find imminently watchable in small ways.
All of which begs the question, why do you ask about Emma?
Just interested. I wasn't a Romola fan until it turned up but I thought she did a terrific job. Certainly the best bit of period drama we've had since JE06, with the possible exception of Ellie Kendrick as Ann Frank.
Ruth is never less than fascinating to watch but I don't think she's caught Queenie the way she caught Jane and the other characters I've seen her play.
Poliakoff has good taste in actresses but i'm beginning to think he has nothing to say. He says it very stylishly but 30 minutes later, you can't remember what he was on about.
I remember being confused flying over all those circular fields in Montana. How do they happen?
Just heard about the Ann Frank program; will be on our PBS this spring (if it ever comes...) Will look forward to it.
I hear that Poliakoff's movie is getting a mixed reception. Will try to see it on the big screen when I go to the metropolis at Christmas...I guess I am a sucker for a stylish Brit (LOL). You would be too if you lived under the constant influence of Hollywood, and the drivel that they put out.
I admit too that I'm big on the process. So even if a director, especially a writer/director, is stuck on a recurring theme (which I think Poliakoff is), I'll give him some distance if his style is at least subtle enough to make me reach for what he's saying. I like exercising zee leetle gray cells once in awhile... Plus you have to admit, he writes wonderful parts for women...
Now about those circular fields, they're Mayan calendars; it's all over in 2012. Okay, okay, just teasing.
Out here in the arid west (would you believe the average annual rainfall in Montana is 12 inches - my cousin in Essex got that last week), we have to irrigate. One of the most common methods is a circular watering system which can be set automatically so the rancher doesn't have to oversee it in person. The fields do look odd from the air, especially if you haven't seen the set up on the ground. Even the acreage that lays fallow for a season or so maintains the circular growth pattern until plowed under again.
FAMOUS WESTERN SAYING - Whiskey's for drinkin; water's for fightin.
Alfa is half right and half wrong.
In fact RW pulls it off but it is her perception of a Surrey english rose which is inherent in a somewhat flawed script.
There are bits which irritate. No GI would have dared to make such a hostile approach in an English town. They would have been courtmartialled and jailed for a long time. In this case most likely shot.
The US military was that strict in wartime.
There is also a terrible aura of Political correctness running through the script.
Being the BBC there is a distinct possibility that this is revisionist history per the BBC but I might be wrong.
A lot of it is really good but the script veers at times from the book and each time it does this I see the dead hand of the BBC underwriting it.
Which is a great shame.
But most enjoyable in spite of this.
MY father was a Yank who married a "Land Girl," so this period of Brit history has its obvious fascination for me. My mom was plowing fields on an estate in Somerset and met my dad at a 'barn dance' arranged by the USO where tons of couples got together, including my mom's younger sister and her future husband. Of course they were all white, so I can't say what the official attitude toward black soldiers' socializing with the locals might have been.
I do know an 84 yr. old woman, here in Montana, who was from Nottingham, England, where she fell in love at age 19 with an American soldier who was a Chippewa Cree indian (and a rodeo rider, too - ha!). When they decided to get married, the American military required her to travel to London to meet with an army attache at the US Embassy who essentially said "Do you realize you're marrying an American Indian?"
My friend told me that her thought was, "so what, he's a gorgeous bloke." (He was, I've seen the photos). She had no clue about the social attitude in the US about 'so-called' mixed marriage. And she was greatly shocked and dismayed when she moved to Montana and suffered from the overt discrimination that Indians experienced then.
Now whether English girls who wanted to marry black soldiers were subjected to this I don't know. They would certainly have faced the same discrimination that my friend and her husband did, if not more...
Fascinating. I worked for a year on the buses in Liverpool between school and university and used to regularly pick up an American Indian who had married and stayed behind. I thought he might have been the only one. He was the only one he knew about.
I'm pretty confident you'll enjoy this when you get your hands on it. It's not perfect and there's a few irritations to overcome but there's not a lot better around at the moment.
But what there is, COMbbc managed to spoil by stuffing half of the first episode of Cranford into the credits.
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Staged a bit of a recovery in the second half. I think Ruth and Naomi just needed a bit more to work with. Missed the first 20 minutes due to a Sky box malfunction, sadly, so I'll probably invest in the DVD when it comes out.
shareGreatly enjoyed this episode.
The flashbacks were a bit confusing until I realised that Queenie got pregnant on her second encounter with Michael. Until then, I'd been thinking "Wow, this is the longest pregnancy in history!"
I really warmed to Queenie's character in this half. And the acting of Naomie Harris and David Oyelowo was exceptional.
There were some faults with the production, but overall very enjoyable.
I'm glad we've come a long way in 60 years.
"Pray, do not use it ill. It fought at Waterloo".
I must say, the trailers didn't particularly appeal to me. But, as there was nothing else on, I gave it a go and I'm glad I did... It took a bit of getting into and I didn't find any of the characters 100% likeable. But, it was interesting, well-acted and ambitious - recreating the 1940s not only in the UK, but in also in Jamaica - and I'll certainly be watching the next episode.
shareWell, I was impressed. Ruth Wilson's Queenie was almost exactly as I imagined her when I read the book - her looks, her mannerisms, her hybrid accent... and I thought Ashley Walters was great as Michael too, which seems to be an unfashionable opinion. He seemed charming and caddish... some women seem to like that.
What's this rubbish about Small Island being 'politically correct'? Why is it so hard to belive that just 60 years ago, there were some white British people who *didn't* automatically hate anyone beacuse of the colour of their skin? There were loads of women like Queenie in WW2 - there was a whole load of first generation mixed-race men and women visible in London in the '60s and '70s, most of who were the product of wartime meetings between Windrush immigrants and young white women.
Why is it so hard to believe that just 60 years ago, there were some white British people who *didn't* automatically hate anyone because of the colour of their skin?
Tricky discussion. The vocabulary seems to have become almost the most important part, these days.
The woman in the cinema queue was pretty representative and the argument resembles one from 1944 my father described to me years ago. Two white American officers tried to hustle two African American soldiers out of a taxi in Lime Street. The officers got the same speech about 'this is England and we don't do that here.' and had to find another. West Indian, Asian and African American soldiers were fighting volunteers from abroad and treated with respect and whilst the British allowed the white American officer class to enforce distinctions they rarely bothered themselves when no one was looking. No one wanted any trouble over race and nationality during the war. Everyone did have their fingers firmly crossed that all the strangers would go home at the end of the war.
Integrating them permanently into British peacetime society was a different kettle of fish. Small Island did a pretty reasonable job of pointing out the difference, I thought.
glad to hear the series finished well. I'll get back to you in a couple of months after I've seen it...
Liked your analysis of the issue. I remember being in London in '81 when I felt an increase in the influx of Commonwealth folks as well as many Middle Easterners. One of my cousins complained that "'they' had no respect for a queue."
I found this humorous but also appreciated his open admission of his own racism - something Yanks would rarely do - being partial at times to white sheeted hoods instead...I come from the southern US, and have lived in the North as well as the West, so have certainly seen the issue from numerous fronts.
I saw a movie (title eludes me at the moment) last year, made in Morocco I believe, which explored the inequities of African soldiers, particularly Algierans and Morrocans, who fought with and under the French. Similar loyalties and dedication led to disappointment, especially when the soldiers got no pensions...
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The movie about the North African soldiers serving with the French is called Days of Glory (English) and Indigenes(French). It was nominated for the Best Foreign Film at the 2007 Oscars. It's a moving film and explores a similar theme as Small Island, although in the battlefield setting...Again, the issue of the treatment of these colonial soldiers had not been widely examined before.
shareIndigenes is wonderful.
The collection of second look films about the great ungluing that was WW2 is intensifying into a cascade, quite possibly as a reaction to Hollywood's conventional stance on WW2 and the Holocaust. I don't think Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan would look remotely similar were they made today.
This last week I've seen Defiance, in which a ghetto in Belorussia is give the chance of escape but prefers to take its chances with the Germans, Monsieur Renard (starring the late John Thaw) a frank look at France during the occupation and Good, a silly and terrible piece of exculpatory tripe which has Viggo Mortensen cast as a 'good' German who becomes one of the chief concentration camp without intending to or doing anything wrong.
However, you should accept no substitute for the real thing. If you want to fill a whole afternoon having a look at the French taking a long hard look at themselves (and you haven't done this already) rent Marcel Ophuls Le Chagrin et La Pitie. http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0066904/
...the great ungluing that was WW2...
...Hollywood's conventional stance on WW2 and the Holocaust.
Alfa, would you mind enlarging on that for me (a bit of an ignoramous)?
Am I right in saying that Monsieur Rénard is set in Vichy? And does Le Chagrin at La Pitié deal with similar themes?
"Pray, do not use it ill. It fought at Waterloo".
Monsieur Renard is set in St Jos near Boulogne-sur-Mer. You'll have to rent it, even though it's being shown in some Sky backwater, as you need to see the first two episodes before watching the others. It came out after the success of the first Foyle's War series and the two ran together one summer, a while back, each taking an interesting mildly revisionist viewpoint. Monsieur Renard shows that for many French people, especially those living in the Forbidden Zone, a 5km belt along the coast facing the UK, the war actually finished in June 1940 and a new peacetime life began and continued almost until the Invasion.
Set in Hastings immediately opposite St Jos on the English side of the channel (and around where I live) Foyle's War attempted to show that not everyone on the home front was heroically supporting the war effort. I think you'd like both.
As far as general trends in WW2 movie making are concerned, I'm hoping, foolishly no doubt, that inaccurate and sentimentally overwrought heroics like those in SPR, however realistic the historical reconstructions are, may be giving way to more interesting and enlightening views of WW2.
LC&LP isn't part of the trend. It is made from an unusual French viewpoint for 1969 and has masses of primary source material from both French and Germans involved at the time.
Thankyou, alfa.
I suppose the honesty and objectivity that you desire from film-makers will become more widespread as the wartime generation dies off (maybe?)
Although the "inaccurate and sentimentally overwrought heroics" must be galling to the viewing men who actually fought.
"Pray, do not use it ill. It fought at Waterloo".
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"Hitler, a baddie was sui generis. He tried to murder all the people he considered to be Jewish. Defeating him was a great moral crusade which was the apotheosis of American freedom. Oh and some other contries had cameos."
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§§ Hmmmm, I suspect a passive-aggressive trap has been laid to see how much conceit you can get out of me §§
Wot an unkind thought that is, guvnor . . . </Dick van Dyke>
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Cheers for the recommends, Alfa. Have already lined up a copy of Le Chagrin et La Pitie, all on one disc even. Still looking for Monsieur Renard. Have cousins in Eastbourne so was glued to episodes of Foyle's War...
One of the reasons I love these boards is that I get recommendations for films/TV programs unheard of in the States. We like to keep it sheltered...
I will say that Spielberg has made a fortune catering to the romantic view that comes with age. We all want to believe our fathers fought the good war for the right reasons. Personally my father would never talk about what he did, and was openly supportive of my brother's decision to become a conscientious objector during Vietnam.
Still the military-industrial complex in this country has been around since the Revolutionary War (the colonial uprising?...) and despite the best efforts to warn us about its evils, we continue to feed the beast.Films such as Saving Private Ryan and the like are usually part of the rationalization...
§§§§ Cheers for the recommends, Alfa. Have already lined up a copy of Le Chagrin et La Pitie, all on one disc even. Still looking for Monsieur Renard. Have cousins in Eastbourne so was glued to episodes of Foyle's War... §§§§
If you liked one, you'll like the other - may be a bit hard to find though.
Some English historians are tending to treat the colonial conflict in 1770's as the first American Civil War, these days. Whilst an independent American state was definitely the result, almost a third of the population of the 13 newly independent colonies upped sticks and moved to Canada, where the Continental Army made little or no impact. The British won almost all the encounters that the war triggered in the Caribbean, decisively crushed the French in India and strengthened its naval dominance to a global mastery that lasted throughout the 19C. Although the war resulted in the establishment of a new, independent and ferocious economic competitor, France went bankrupt and suffered a Revolution and Spain and Holland both decided that there wasn't much to be gained in conflicts with the English.