The Crown on Netflix: Peerless

We binge-watched The Crown on Netflix the past few nights.  It was especially welcome, entertaining, instructive, and appealing in view of what's going on in our current political news in the United States, on other screens.

The protagonist in this riveting 20th-century docudrama is Queen Elizabeth II (well played by Claire Foy), but I found the Winston Churchill story - a portrait of his final years as Prime Minister, after being ousted by the British electorate at the end of World War II as reward for his heroic service as PM and saving the nation during that war - to be a mini-masterpiece of politics and political philosophy in itself.   Indeed, speaking of portraits, my favorite episode was the penultimate, and the story it told of Graham Sutherland's painting of Churchill in 1954, which Churchill despised.  In this hour, we get a disquisition on the nature of art and the process of the painter and the subject - made especially compelling not only because the subject was Churchill, but because he was a painter by hobby himself.  John Lithgow gives a tour-de-force performance of Churchill in this episode, and in fact whenever he appears on the screen any time in the series.

Other than Churchill, my favorite character in the series is a tie between Elizabeth and King Edward (David), who in 1936 abdicated to be with "the woman I love," Wallis Simpson (a divorcee), which resulted in Elizabeth's father becoming King and eventually Elizabeth Queen.   Elizabeth and Edward are both bound by the monumental struggle about how to be a complete human being and wear the crown at the same time.  In a peak conversation, Edward tells Elizabeth, who is rent by a dilemma about whether to support her sister Margaret's intention to marry Peter Townsend (a divorcee), that even in abdication, Edward still feels himself to be two people, person and King, and he misses the King every day.

History repeats itself.   Edward and Margaret both want to marry divorcees, and Elizabeth is left in different ways to pick up the pieces both times.  It's easy for us in the 21st century - with Elizabeth still Queen - to congratulate ourselves on our moral superiority, which doesn't frown on divorce any more, let alone it being so unacceptable in the royal family.   That's progress, indeed.

But you know what?  When I think about who will soon be President of the United States, and I compare him not to Churchill but the worst politician depicted in The Crown, that doesn't seem like progress at all, does it.  See The Crown for an at-turns fascinating, at turns heart-breaking, narrative not only of how far we've come, but how far we've fallen.

Marseille on Netflix: Enjoyable and Relevant

I just finished binge-watching Marseille, all eight episodes released this month in this made-for-Netflix French TV series with English subtitles, and I liked it a lot.  I mean, it's a little over the top with key points in the plot hinging of suddenly revealed family relationships, but the grit and dialogue and relevance to politics today, and probably yesterday as well, more than compensate.

The series was savaged by French critics, at least according to Wikipedia, check it out if you're interested, but c'est dommage,  I couldn't care less what French critics or for that matter critics of any nationality think about a television series or a movie.  Ok, I do think André Bazin's Qu'est-ce que le cinéma is a masterpiece, and I often quote it, but he wrote that a long time ago, and though he was a film critic, the book presents a theory of how film works, what it does and is, and is not a critique of any particular movie.  Regarding those, I find they more often then not miss the mark.

But back to Marseille, it doesn't, and in fact presents what I suspect is a pretty accurate portrayal of the democratic process at work in any city in today's free world, that is, the part of the world that is free, in other words, in which elections count.   But those elections are so subject to such noxious manipulation and deceit on all levels that you can see why Churchill quoted some unknown source to the effect that "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others," and the venerable Socrates hated it outright.   Well, Marseille does a riveting, colorful job of exposing just why that is so.

Now, I'm about to start pointing out the special relevance of Marseille to what's going on in the United States today, and I know what you're thinking, and you would be right: Donald Trump represents the worst of the democratic process writ large.   E. M. Forster, another critic of democracy who thought there was no form of government that was better, expressed his views in Two Cheers for Democracy (published in 1951 but composed of material written earlier) - and had he known of Trump, he likely would have entitled his book One Cheer.

Fortunately, Trump has not yet won, and doesn't even formally have the nomination, so Marseille can be appreciated at least at this point as fiction with no quite analog in the real world, joining Boss, Borgen, and of course House of Cards as searing political drama, with lots of sex, crime, local flavor, and good acting - especially by Gérard Depardieu as the Mayor, Benoît Magimel as his deputy, and Stéphane Caillard as his daughter - as well as edge-of-your-seat vote counting.  So, see it and enjoy.

And if you're interested in the connection of Socrates to Trump, check out this little essay, Socrates, Time Travel, and Donald Trump, published just a few days ago.

 

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Peaky Blinders: Peak Television

Thought I'd check in with a review of Peaky Blinders, two seasons in with a BBC production, available in the United States on Netflix, and telling the story of a gang in Birmingham, England, same name as the show, a few years after World War I.

Like most historical dramas, Peaky Blinders on television takes a few liberties with real history, in this case, the main time of the real Peaky Blinders heyday, which was late 19th century and early 20th century.  Also, the sewing of razor blades into caps, so the caps when taken off the head could be used as weapons, may well be apocryphal - at very least, as the source of the Peaky Blinders' name.

But the series is so good, who cares  about perfect history?   From the moment the first scene opens, you're struck by a cinematography that's often breathtaking.  And the characters, story lines, and acting fit right into this high and clearly defined frame.

Cillian Murphy is superb as Tommy Shelby, the Peaky Blinders' leader, even though he's younger than his brother Arthur, deeply flawed and also powerfully played by Paul Anderson.   A young Winston Churchill is also a character, veteran Sam Neill of Jurassic Park plays the head cop bent on taming the gang.   Helen McCrory (Harry Potter) plays Tommy's aunt, who in her own way is at least partially in charge of the Peaky Blinders, and Annabelle Wallis (The Tudors) plays Grace, a major player and love interest of more than one character.

As is the case with many mobster television series, Tommy has his hands full fighting both the law and rival gangs, and enforcing loyalty in his own ranks.   But he does this with a patented mix of intelligence and violence, more or less carefully applied, and given this dancing on the edge, and the less than completely blind fidelity to history, you never know what's going to happen - well, you know that Winston Churchill won't be killed, but that's about it.

Peaky Blinders is reminiscent, in some ways, of Boardwalk Empire on the one hand, because they both take place in the 1920s, and The Black Donnellys on the other, which told the story of an Irish gang family in contemporary Hell's Kitchen in New York City.  But Peaky Blinders has a story and feel and compelling ethnic and proletariate depictions all its own, and I highly recommend it.

 
deeper history

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Da Vinci's Demons 2.2: Renaissance Radio

Radio had enormous influence on the world politics of the 1930s and 1940s, when it first became a device in many households in America and Europe.   As I detail in The Soft Edge, a radio broadcast from Adolf Hitler after a bomb put him the hospital in 1944 confirmed his leadership and kept him in power for almost another year.   Radio was also used by FDR, Churchill, and Stalin to rally their publics against Hitler, and, in FDR's case, to establish a direct relationship with the American people during the Great Depression.

Radio, of course, did not exist in the time of Leonardo Da Vinci, not even in his sketches, many of which were prescient about the future.  But radio played a major role in last night's Da Vinci's Demons 2.2, and worked perfectly as an instance of the historical science fiction in which the series really excels.   Much like Hitler, Lorenzo Medici is badly wounded (Lorenzo actually worse than Hitler). Much like Hitler, Lorenzo's tenure as leader is in dire jeopardy, because the populace is not even sure he's alive.  In Hitler's case, his Minister of Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment, Joseph Goebbels, went to his hospital room with a microphone and a hook-up to Germany's radio system, via which Hitler was able to assure the German people that he was ok and still in charge.  In Lorenzo's case, the genius Leonardo creates a radio system on the fly, via his understanding of acoustics, and Lorenzo uses it to assure the people of Florence and ratify his power.

Just to be clear, Lorenzo in both history and in Da Vinci's Demons has nothing else in common with Adolf Hitler.  To the contrary, Lorenzo was a benevolent despot, a classical Renaissance prince who brought his city and people much prosperity.  He actually helped maintain a measure of peace among the contentious Italian city states, and his reign is considered the high point of the golden age of Florence.

If the series moves to New World as it's been promising to do, I'll miss Lorenzo and Florence.  On the other hand, in real history, the real Lorenzo died in April 1492, so there's not much more of his story for Da Vinci's Demons to tell, if it wants to remain true to history.   In any case, the first two episodes of the second season have been outstanding, and I'm looking forward to more.

See also Da Vinci's Demon's 2.1: Science Fiction v Fantasy

And see also Da Vinci's Demons:  History, Science, and Science Fiction ... Da Vinci's Demons 1.7: Leonardo Under Water with a Twist ... Da Vinci's Demons Season 1 Finale: History, Science Fiction, Time Travel

 
Interested in a story with a passing reference to Leonardo?   Try The Plot to Save Socrates ...