No Solstice That.

I was slightly disappointed with the Re-Told Midsummer Night’s Dream. It stuck to the plot reasonably well and the fairies had nothing added and nothing taken away. The problem was that nowhere did it say Midsummer. The whole beauty of the play is that the late, light night of Midsummer comes through the whole thing and this version, set in a pine forest rather than the deciduous green clouds of a British wood seemed like any other time other than midsummer. I know the scene is a Wood near Athens but, as the programme on BBC4 later yesterday evening showed, the influences of AMSND are in the flora and fauna of the English countryside. My time in the sticks showed me this and maybe the urbanites that seem to run the country and the media these days just don’t get that connection with the land. (Maybe you think I should be joining The Countryside Alliance and while I do agree with some of their greenish credentials I don’t think this is going to happen because of the social differences.) Walk back down any country lane in late June, and you will get it, the feeling of so much life and atmosphere crashing down from the trees and out of the bushes, the echoing of various meetings at distance and close by. It is described well in Cider With Rosie and Stig Of The Dump. The BBC show just seemed to show corporate Britain and the whole idea of setting it in one of those forest parks must have been a contrivance to get in both the posh families and the mechanicals, in the form of the park staff. Having said that, the story was OK and Puck was a perfect 21st century counterpart to his cheeky Tudor predecessor.

On to Narnia now! I read this article about CS Lewis’ opposition to any live-action version of the Chronicles because it would fail as poor pantomime compared to the deep and believable imagery of the books. As it says in the article, I wonder whether the technical abilities which produce today’s special effects would have made a difference to his view bearing in mind he seemed more open to a cartoon where the human and animal worlds are rendered in the same style. This of course, indicates how the advances in computer animation have brought the world of the cartoon into line with live action rather than having the whole world brought down to a single blocky style. They will stop listing how many special effects shots a film has because in any blockbuster these days, every shot is pushed and processed to some extent. If you watch the deleted scenes on DVDs, you will sometimes find one which has not been through this process and it seems like a video diary, all raw lighting and bad bathroom sound. Sometimes I wonder if this has removed a good deal of the need for the actors to carry a scene, the ultimate triumph of style over content. Actually, going back to my first topic for today, maybe the Fairy play could have benefited from some more processing.