Lady Bird

When I used to do stand up I had a routine about my hometown. The opening joke was, “Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home”... Well, Dorothy wasn’t from Watford.” I then proceeded to mock my birthplace with the kind of devastating wit that regularly saw me knocked out of amateur comedy competitions.

I was twenty-three at the time, puffed up on the arrogance of having seen different places. For five years I’d live in Bristol and Leeds, mixed with people from different towns and backgrounds; drank, danced and sang to songs outside the Top 40. I was now back home and didn’t want to be. Returning to Kansas wasn’t a relief, but a nuisance. From the shake, rattle and roll of the city to the dull drone of the town. Life was black and white. Colours had melted into the ground, leaving only a puddle, a memory of what was.

What university looked like.

The hangover didn’t last long. Soon the headache had receded and clarity was restored. Yes, on the face of it the town wasn’t a looker, but the constituent parts that made it – friends, family, football club and reminiscence – gave it shape and soul. Most of my friends had left the university cities, seeking fortune in the capital or maintenance at home. Other than nicer buildings, there was therefore nothing for me in these places. If I hadn’t migrated, I would never have heard the new birdsong of independence, accents and music; but coming home felt pretty great; the nest quite snug.

The self-indulgent naval gazing from above was brought to you by Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s comedy-drama, available while stocks lasts. Her film was this year's Moonlight: made on an independent budget, it found mainstream success following the patronage of film critics and Twitter attendees. At the Oscars it was recognised in picture, acting and director categories (Gerwig is only the 5^th female director to ever be nominated). And although it went home empty handed, it’s still packing out art-house cinemas.

Great Gerwig

The film begins with a mother and daughter driving back from a college open day. They’ve been in the car for over twenty hours together, listening to an audio cassette of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. As the story ends, their eyes water. Like an umbilical chord, this spool of tape has bound them, tying them in collective consciousness. The mother wants them just to sit awhile so they can digest what they’ve heard. The daughter, on the other hand, is ravenous for something new and reaches for the radio. An argument ensues between them. The chord has been cut and now the cries we hear are primal, not cultural. This switch from blissful harmonising to strangulated vocals is a motif that runs throughout the whole film. How a parent-child relationship can turn on a dime is something I’m sure everyone can relate to: Gerwig’s rendering of it is heartbreakingly beautiful.

Marion and Christine, mother and daughter, are at loggerheads over what parents and children are always at conflict over: children don’t think parents appreciate the pressure of playground hierarchy and grade stress, and parents don’t feel children have a fucking clue about the number of they've sacrifices made to keep the fuckers alive. Marion is also upset as Christine seems to reject everything she's given: she’s embarrassed by the house she lives in, the clothes she can ill-afford, the town she resides in and even her name – early on she announces to her teacher that she’s ‘Lady Bird,’ a name given by herself.

Christine "Lady Bird" (Saoirse Ronan) and Marion (Laurie Metcalf)  

The nomenclature of Christine is symbolic of the central conflict of the movie: Lady Bird wants to be everything her mother isn’t. She wants a bohemian life, free from paycheque strife, in a city that heralds individualism over collective grind. The audio tape of Grapes of Wrath is somewhat ironical then: in that story the Joad family moved to California because their situation was hopeless during the ‘Dust Bowl.’ Lady Bird, on the other hand, wants to migrate west out of California to find aesthetic fulfilment. In many ways this is the argument of the age: the older generation recognise the economy behind decisions, consequently they’re more pragmatic; the younger generation don’t see the dollar signs, as a result they’re more idealistic. Remember the film is set in 2002 as well, long before the credit crunch and the fall in standards of living. Mother and daughter then are tied by history, but disconnected by the futures they see.

There are other thematic concerns in the film; love and friendship being the primary two. The narrative takes place over Lady Bird’s final year in school, a time when sex possesses every fibre of your being, where you don’t think about intercourse every five seconds, but every single second. (It’s a wonder that exam answers aren’t just graphic illustrations of sex organs.) Over the course of the movie Lady Bird experiences love’s travails with Danny, a sensitive Catholic boy, and Kyle, a monosyllabic existentialist. These romances are necessary when you’re young, as although they’re not right and never work, it allows you to understand what one day will.

Kyle (Timothee Chalamet) affecting cool.

The relationship that does endure – despite its setbacks – is the one with Julie. Their friendship is tender and mischievous. Together, they pig out on communion wafers and feast on gossip and crushes. Even though she kicks against childhood, the scenes with Julie prove Lady Bird is still just a kid. She’s running into adulthood with child sneakers: she’ll get there, but they’ll be pain along the way.

When the film ended last night, a lady in front of us- who had been on her phone for most of the evening- turned to her partner and said, “That was so boring. Nothing happened. It was like a TV movie.” I’m loathe to invoke the adult put-down, “Only boring people get bored,” but for this film, in this case, it’s true. Lady Bird is a story where everything happens, it just isn’t spelt out by manipulative music. 

Gerwig has created a film that will make you want to ring home straight after and thank your parent for whatever it's they've done – the only reason to pick up your phone in the cinema.

Lady Bird is still available in some cinemas.   

Smile

When it comes to art and culture I’m not a completist. The Smiths are the only band whose back catalogue I’ve completed. With everything else I tend to dip in and out, wanting to hear new voices, experience different styles. I do have favourite writers- Orwell, Dickens, Townsend, Salinger and Heller – but I haven’t read everything they’ve ever written. The author I’ve come closest to covering is Roddy Doyle.

Aged sixteen I picked up a copy of The Commitments from the library and thought, ‘this is the author for me.’ It had what all great literature needs: ordinary characters, inventive swearing, comedy and soul. Prize-winning literature often negates this holy square, instead it has university professors endure personal crisis over whether their paper will be read by one or two people. Essentially, it’s ivory tower autobiography as opposed to real world reportage. I recognise all authors work from their study, but the difference between 'important' writers and great writers is the former live there, whereas the latter leave them to find their stories.

Roddy Doyle was born to a middle-class family in Dublin. After studying at University College Dublin, he became a secondary school teacher in a community school. Here, he met Paul Mercier, a talented teacher and moonlighting playwright; seeing his gritty plays inspired Doyle to capture the spit and sawdust of city life. His first book The Commitments was about a group of unemployed Dubliners seeking fame and fortune in a Soul band. Its protagonist Jimmy Rabbitte is aptly named: he has been a rabbit’s foot for Doyle’s career, being the leading vehicle in three other novels, The Snapper, The Van and The Guts. Just as we followed Adrian Mole from pimpled adolescence to middle-aged health scares, so to do we with Jimmy Rabbitte. To create an enduring character is something few authors achieve; to have a satellite of other great novels points to a master.

The last Doyle book I read was Roy Keane’s autobiography. It’s not often a Booker-Prize author (one of few winners to feature working-class characters) is tasked with ghosting a footballer’s life, but like I say Doyle isn’t like most writers. I love the fact Doyle has one foot in popular culture and the other in unpopular culture (the average literary author earns a £11,000 a year). Like Mike Leigh, he recognises that narrative shouldn’t be co-opted by the middle-class, the working people should have their lives, their heroes recognised.

Roy Keane promoting his fisherman lost at sea look.

Smile is Doyle’s latest work, I first heard about it on Jarlath Regan’s fantastic podcast An Irishman Abroad. Doyle talked about the story’s origins: whilst in a Catholic Brotherhood school he led a cheeky campaign against homework; his teacher’s response, ‘Roddy Doyle, I can never resist your smile.’ Fortunately, nothing happened to Doyle in school; however, since leaving he’s aware that others weren’t so fortunate. The comment got him thinking of how openly the Brothers abused their power. As totems in the community, they were impervious to attack. If a child went home and complained about their teacher’s behaviour, the family would side with the Church. These men were representatives of God: they had Divine Rule; to speak out against them would damn you and your family to Hell. Better to put the Brothers behaviour down to eccentricities and idiosyncrasies than face the cold, hard truth: these men were animals, wolves in God’s clothing, tearing children from innocence.

The book begins with Victor Forde in the pub, nursing his pint, licking his wounds after love's gone wrong. He’s broken, but not beaten. It’s a solitary life: the bartender now replacing his lady for confidences - it’s a life nonetheless. However, this lonely cocoon is broken when in one day slinks Fitzpatrick: a gut wearing shorts. Immediately, Fitzpatrick is upon him, recalling their school days and a sister Victor had a boner for. Victor’s memory stumbles across the girl, but it can’t unearth the man. Fitzpatrick goads him, invoking the story of them in class together, when the Brother made the remark: “Victor Forde, I can never resist your smile.” The premise is Pinter’s The Birthday Party, an unexpected visitor precipitating a character’s crisis – yet Doyle does it with such sleight of hand you’ll be open-mouthed when the rabbit’s revealed at the end.

Pinter's The Birthday Party must have been an inspiration. Pic. courtesy of FT.

I appreciate at the beginning of this piece I praised Doyle for his humour, and now reading this you might be questioning how a story with abuse at its centre could have any comedy. Well, for much of the book childhood trauma is down in the cellar, lost amongst the barrels. Out front, facing the customers, is Victor’s adult life: how he met, married and lost his wife Rachel. The pub conversations from recent work Two Pints is there, so too the family dynamic of his Barrytown Trilogy, meaning humour still holds a place in this eerie tale.

One of my favourite scenes involves Victor meeting Rachel’s father, the notorious Mister Carey. Here’s a sample for you to enjoy:

- Hello, Mister Carey.
- Jim
It was a threat, a verb. He was going to Jim me and it was going to hurt.
….
- What sort of a name is Victor?
- Dad - !
- I mean, where does it come from? What’s the history?
- It’s just a name, I said.
It was the best I could do. My notoriety, my adult credentials, were hiding behind the drum kit, shivering.
- Leave him alone, said Rachel.
She patted my arm and patted her father’s arm. We headed for one of the rooms at the front of the house. She patted my arse. She didn’t pat his. I was ahead.

 ______________________________________________________________________________

Look at the comic brio at play here. He captures  how a noun sounds like a verb in the wrong mouth. That personification of his front man 'notoriety' running for cover at the back of the stage is sublime. And the repetitious back-and-forth of ‘she patted’ allowing for the knockout blow of ‘she didn’t pat his’ proves the man knows funny. In possessing the blarney of the pub and the brain of the library, Doyle is the perfect writer.

If you like Smile, then I recommend John McDonagh’s Calvary on Netflix, which broaches a similar topic with black humour and grey pathos. Although the title might be ironic, having Doyle on your bookshelf really is something worth smiling about.

Smile is out now.  

A Room For Romeo Brass

Just before the holidays we had OFTSED in school. I was up half the night prepping and half the morning finessing - they didn’t even come into my class. I should have been relieved. No one likes being observed. But when you’ve done an all-nighter, you at least want to think the hangover was worth it. Fortunately as a school we performed well, which meant we could all retire to the pub, raise a glass to the clipboards and pens and wish them well on their future course: to bring misery to others. Whilst in the pub, I got talking to the film teacher about cinema. We exchanged notes on our favourite films and directors. (A note for aspiring pseuds: if you want to achieve your full license in pseudo-intellectualism, centre your talk on directors, as opposed to actors. Moreover, ensure you call them by their surname alone. For extra points, use the word oeuvre. If you’re feeling really flush, then circumscribe a time period, e.g. ‘Although Allen’s oeuvre is impressive, his best period was from 71-79.’) See: being pretentious is easy when you know how. Anyway, we discussed Shane Meadows’ Dead Man Shoes, a favourite of both of ours. I mentioned how I’d seen a lot of his later work, but not his earlier stuff, in particular A Room For Romeo Brass. 

The next day, the DVD was sitting in my pigeonhole.

A Room For Romeo Brass is the second feature of Shane Meadows. Having seen his later work, it’s interesting to see where his work began and how it’s developed. One of the lovely things about watching Romeo Brass is seeing the big screen debuts of Vicky McClure (Line of Duty and This Is England) and Paddy Considine (The Bourne Ultimatum and Pride). Like many good film directors, Meadows has a company of actors that he draws on for different projects, which is important given many of his movies deal with gangs and friendship.

McClure and Considine

The film centres on two children on the cusp of adolescence, Romeo and Gavin. Both boys are good humoured and disdain their fathers. Romeo is estranged from his, owing to his dad’s violent temper. Gavin is distant from his, owing to his dad being a complete wazzock. Although they live next door to one other, the two are classes apart: with Romeo having a knackered van in his back garden, and Gavin a shit pergola at the front of his. The two though are as thick as thieves, assisting the other in their schemes.

One day Gavin is walking home when he’s set upon. Since Gavin has chronic back pain, Romeo jumps to his rescue. The gang soon sees red and soon Romeo’s shirt too. A twenty-something is on the horizon. Gavin calls to him for help. The man Morell rides into the rescue. At this moment he’s the white knight, the Lord Protector and king. Later, he will become Gawain’s Green Knight, the spectre at the feast, an adversary that will test their friendship. Paddy Considine’s portrayal of Morell reminded me of Combo in Meadows’ later work This is England. Being in his twenties, he’s the perfect age to drive a wedge between the young friends. He is old enough to be an adult, but young enough to not be a parent. Both lads can vicariously experience adulthood through him. After all, most twelve year-olds would raise a middle finger to Peter Pan: Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to grow up? Why would you want to stay young and miss out on cigs, drink and sex? In his car, Morell is the elixir that allows them to experience a world without parents and rules.

Meadows.

Considine’s character though is only similar to Combo in spirit, not mind. His brain is stunted, which means he’s the child in adult form. When he tries to woo Romeo’s sister, he’s a teenage Romeo: an idealistic romantic that says things like, “I think I’ve been overcome with love’ – and “I would like to take you to Scarborough Fair.” He simply isn’t mature enough to deal with the fall-out that adult situations bring.

I’m really pleased I saw A Room For Romeo Brass as it documents a fledgling filmmaker in flight. It’s inspiring to see how good Meadows was twenty years ago, but how his themes of friendship, gangs and dysfunction has found true shape in the Indie classics Dead Man Shoes and This Is England. Meadows next work will tackle the care system and feature stablemate Stephen Graham – like his other work, I’m sure it will be great.

A Room For Romeo Brass is available on DVD.

Reservoir 13

During school time I find it difficult to read. I start a new term with noble intentions, resolving to read at least half an hour a day- to be the reader I wish my students to be. Unfortunately, it’s not long before this pragmatism undergoes a chemical change, vaporising into idealism, before reducing into absurdism. After marking assessments, correcting books and planning lessons, I’m mentally exhausted. 

Good prose should be a stimulant: lead to increased brain activity, prove pleasurable and invigorating. When taken on a busy working day though, its impact isn’t just negligible, but contrary. A writer’s finest passage is no match for tired eyes. Literary magic cannot compete with life’s sleepy dust. Yes, acclaimed authors your sentences are hypnotic: hypnotic enough to send me under, to put me to sleep. At least your harshest critic reads to the end of the book; I don’t even get to the end of the page.  If lauded authors saw the soporific effect of their writing, they would give up tomorrow, citing 'existential crisis' in their press release, wailing: “If my work meant anything, it should be able to sustain an English teacher into turning one page.” 

Do not be offended authors. I mean no offence. Its just reading- like sex- is a young man’s game: I can’t do it like I used to. Just give me a nap and I’ll try again in the morning.

In the holiday though I’m a different animal. I’m a man possessed. I’m popping books left. right and centre. I’m dancing to an author’s tune all night long. I’m having it large. A wild week of excess, a literary bender, a total blowout until responsibility comes calling. This week I’ve read Jon Ronson’s Frank and Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor. I’ve also started The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. I’ll try and finish Whitehead’s book before Monday, otherwise it will be the Easter holiday until I’ve found out what’s happened.  

Me on books.

McGregor’s book is the one that I feel compelled to write about. I try to read a lot. I often like what I read. I attribute this to my friends, who have great taste, and the Radio 4 show A Good Read, where famous faces nominate their favourite books. However, it’s rare that I truly love a book. The last book I got really fanatical about was Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. As a teacher I’ve taught Of Mice and Men for years: I still think it’s wonderful. What it is though is small, contained, a fable in many ways. I didn’t know Steinbeck could examine something with the rigour he does in The Grapes of Wrath. Its style is different too with the plainness of Mice replaced with something more ornate. I read it nearly two years ago. It’s taken me that long to fall for a book again.

McGregor’s book begins with the village disappearance of tourist and teenager Rebecca Shaw. From here on we would expect the book to be a generic crime-drama, a who and whydunnit. However, it never becomes that story. In an interview with The Guardian McGregor explained that he wasn’t interested in telling a murder mystery, rather he was more piqued in “the passing of time and routines of life, the dailyness of life.” For someone unwilling to write a Broadchurch­-type narrative, McGregor ironically uses the tricks of crime fiction: the red herring is there, only it isn’t a suspect, but the body. Rebecca is the MacGuffin that the reader focuses on, unaware the true mystery being exposed is life itself.

It isn't like Broadchurch.

What’s most impressive about this book is how it combines style and accessibility. McGregor’s story has thirteen chapters, each focussing on the year and subsequent years of the girl’s vanishing. To tell a story of a year in one chapter is something of an undertaking: David Nicholls managed it in One Day and McGregor executes it here. The latter’s approach is different though as where Nicholls adopted a fill-in-the-gaps approach to an annual form, McGregor gives us the details. Through sliding in and out of people’s lives in just a few sentences, he chronicles the major life events of villagers, somehow without leaving any out.

Each chapter begins at New Year fireworks.

In some respects the book reminded me of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood. In that play for voices, Thomas dropped in and out of character’s lives, registering triumphs and tragedies in poetic prose. Other reference points in my eyes were Keats and Heany’s nature poems, To Autumn and Blackberry Picking respectively. Since McGregor doesn’t just record the life cycle of humans, but nature too. So good is the depiction of the natural world, I thought the author must be something of a naturalist. According to an interview with Booker Prize winner George Saunders this isn’t the case: McGregor likes a stroll just like the rest of us, but most of his descriptions he argues comes from Google research and ‘a lot of smoke and mirrors as well.’ Expanding on this he reasoned, ‘There’s not a ton of detail about any one thing. There are a ton of things about which there is some detail.’ I think the writer doth protest too much. There’s not many layman that could write: 

The last days of August were heavy with heat and anything that had to move was slow. At the allotments the beds were bursting with beans and courgettes, the plants sprawling over the pathways. The bees stumbled fatly between the flowers and the slugs gorged. 

Lazy writers couldn’t capture listlessness so well. McGregor hasn’t experienced the countryside vicariously through search engines, he’s walked amongst it, breathing it in; his exhalations are seen on the page.

At school I was more interested in Human Geography than Physical Geography: the same applies to the book too. I still read the passages on nature, because I’m keen to know about a world I never experience; however, what I really enjoyed was tracking the characters. The whole of human life is here: the schoolteacher, the caretaker, the farmer, the landlord, the hotelier, the journalist, the student, the outsider, the vicar. Not one of these characters takes priority. There is no leading man or lady. This is an ensemble cast that coalesce to form a drama every bit as enriching as Chekov or Dickens. Look below at how he achieves this:

Along the river at dusk there were bats moving in number, coming down from their roosts to take the insects rising from the water. They moved in deft quietness and were gone by the time they were seen. The Spring Dance ended early when a fight between Liam Hooper and one of the boys from Cardwell spilled back in through the doors. It was soon broken up but by then there’d been damage and the Cardwell boys were asked to leave. Outside in the car park Will Jackson was seen again with Miss Carter from school.

The book and author.

The bats are returned to throughout the book. As in Of Mice and Men, the natural world mirrors the human one with them doing what they can to survive. Then, it’s the Spring Dance, an annual village fixture that we come back to in future chapters. The rivalry with the neighbouring town (Cardwell) is touched upon here, a motif that’s developed further through allusions to cricket. And look at that last line: a single sentence on a blossoming romance between farmer and teacher. This is the village condition: a dichotomy of public and private life where everything is observed (‘was seen again’), and nothing remarked upon. A surveillance state of compassion. Nosiness resting in seclusion.

That’s the thing I think I will take away from the book: society in action. No character is without fault. One may even be a killer. But all are of virtue. A favourite passage of mine involves Les Thompson, a parishioner, and the vicar Jane Hughes. After service, he asks her to come over. A village enjoys the benefits of a bygone age – closer community ties- but the disadvantages too – outmoded ideals. Les’ sister is dying, yet he can’t just come out with it. Therefore, it’s down to Jane to visit him on his home turf where he feels strong and masculine tending his cows. His avowal is beautifully rendered:

It took him a while to be out with it, and the cows were making a racket in the shed by the time he was done. She chatted to him a bit longer while he worked, and he turned down the offer of help. She collected these confidences from people, and carried them around. It was like piling rocks into the boot of a car, she told her dean once, and sooner or later there are too many rocks and the suspension bottoms out each time you hit a bump in the road.

Les struggles to open up, even in private to someone whose job it is to listen. His refusal to accept help could be viewed as a show of strength or the price of masculinity. For Jane, God’s work is both salvation and burden. Like a hobbyist, she enjoys collecting- only with her its problems, not stamps. The shift in verb from ‘collected’ to ‘piling’ indicates how there is a cumulative cost to her obsession: there’s only so many lives one can keep before you begin to lose a sense of your own.

In writing a book about a missing tourist, McGregor has unearthed a village’s soul. The book will be a disappointment to people who enjoy the big headlines of disappearance and murder; and catnip to those fascinated with park benches, headstones and obituaries: micro story dedications to quiet, remarkable lives.

Reservoir 13 is available in paperback now.