Grist for the Mill
Thinking about the novel BURIAL RITES, some good films, one bad film, and an old podcast returned!
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The aim/hope is that every story I imbibe [film, comic, novel, tv, etc] gives me another arrow to slide into my quiver. Sometimes writing about it is what unlocks that arrow’s ability - the act of thinking and turning the story in my hands transforms a blunt wooden shaft into a Boxing Glove Trick Arrow. Maybe. Let’s find out.
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BURIAL RITES, a novel by Hannah Kent
This book is about Agnes Magnusdottir, the last woman executed in Iceland 200 years ago. Before she was beheaded, she was sent to a remote farm to await the final approval of her verdict and the date of her final day.
While on the farm, the book chronicles how Agnes lives with the family who do not want her there, and the greatest tension of the book comes from how we never get a full image of what occurred on the night of the murders of which she’s been found guilty.
The book is a true story, so I could easily have looked up more information I needed, but it was fascinating to watch Kent slowly unravel the information needed through first person recounts juxtaposed against the thoughts of others and the few court documents shown.
It reminded me of the film of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly where the main character is struck down by a catastrophic stroke that limits him to only being able to blink one eye. We know it occurred, it’s the main premise of the film, but the situation of the stroke isn’t revealed until quite close to the end and the emotional tension of this gap in knowledge is deployed at just the right moment to hit like a sledgehammer. I cry every time we watch the stroke occur, and I don’t think you would at the start of the film because Jean-Dominique is portrayed as a bit of a bad boy, so we would not have cared in the same way as we do by the film’s end.
In this same way, Kent could not lead with the information of the murders at the start as it would paint an absolute image of Agnes, and her desire was to create an ambiguous portrayal of this woman.
The book is also described as being written in “beautiful, cut-glass prose” and I found that phrase fascinating and absolutely a draw, on which the book delivered. Here are some quotes from the book that really gave me pause.
“I am knifed to the hilt with fate.”
“I can turn to that day as though it were a page in a book. It’s written so deeply upon my mind I can almost taste the ink.”
“What does Steina know of dead children? She is not like me. She knows only the tree of life. She has not seen it’s twisted roots pawing stones and coffins.” ← the image of this is just so beautiful and specific. The concept of life and death being flip sides, and that some people get to only see one side, but then the further idea that both sides are connected, they touch, it just depends on what we need to see due to our station in life. Absolutely fantastic.
“Rosa’s poetry kindled the shavings of my soul, and lit me up from within. Natan never stopped loving her. How could he? Her poetry made lamps out of people.” ← Putting into words that very specific and delightful effect that someone’s words can have on another person is a hell of a thing to capture, and it’s done here so delicately.
Imagine 300+ words of this kind of thing, it was an absolute joy to read as feverishly as life would allow me.
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RECKLESS: FOLLOW ME DOWN, a graphic novel by Sean Phillips and Ed Brubaker
This is the fifth book in the Reckless series, and it retains all levels of quality. We follow Ethan Reckless after a time of laying fallow and he takes a new case, not because of a desire to kickstart back into his mean business, but out of a friendly courtesy.
The case is to track down a woman who went missing and this initial step leads him on a path of nastiness and self-discovery that spans quite a lot of time, and quite a lot of Ethan. The way Brubaker plots these crime stories out is just sheer pleasure perfection. Each chapter brings Ethan closer to…something, and it also reveals something a little worse. Each chapter has an intriguing interaction that’s riveting and I read this all in one morning - not even gulping it down, just strapping myself in and enjoying the narrative slide. These books are the ultimate comfort food for my crime fiction loving soul.
Ultimately, this is a story about how adrift people feel in the world, but how if there are so many people adrift then there are good odds that you’ll bump into someone who matters to you, and even if you separate, the odds are you could bump again. For a book about breaking fingers and horrible families, it’s a beautiful sentiment that makes you want to see a happy ending for someone who doesn’t even really know if they can feel happiness anymore.
This is the 5th book, and Phillips and Brubaker are doing something different next, but I hope they come back to Reckless a few more times because I could fill a whole shelf with these easily, and I could gift them out to anyone that enjoys comics, enjoys crime fic, or enjoys a good afternoon’s worth of captivating, brutal, and yet completely heartfelt storytelling.
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EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL AT ONCE, a film by The Daniels.
This film came with a lot of hype, and it really does live up to it in a very strange way. It’s nice to see such a weird film get so many plaudits and I hope as much as this film is getting people to open up their viewing experience to non-English speaking families in films [outside of English speaking countries] that it also gets people to consider the quality and meaning behind strange genre films.
There’s a lot of quirky fun to point at in the film - the hot dog fingers, the butt plug fight, the googly eyes, etc - but beyond the sci fi helmets and multiverse jumping, I loved the meaning of this tale.
The way I see it, they could have ended this film by saying it was all a dream and the meaning of it all would have come down like more of a hammer, but instead they play this all seriously, but the overall meaning still resides within the bones of this story.
Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn who discovers she needs to fight against Jobu Tapaki, a being of chaos who she created in another universe by pressuring her daughter there until she breaks. The idea that parents see their children as absolute swirling clouds of chaos is a completely relatable feeling, like they’re actively working against you at most turns, like you could never understand them. Then the idea that you feel the need to defeat them, to stop them at this game, when the solution is to just understand them and allow them is a really powerful one.
To take that idea - that parenting little humans is the most chaotic ride of your life - and put it into a kung fu sci fi film is so exceptionally awesome to see. Big wild stories and ideas can also be mixed with really personal ideas, too.
I also want to mention Ke Huy Quan because he’s awesome in it. At a young age, he was Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Data in The Goonies. He found getting work difficult and eventually transitioned behind the camera for twenty years, but this film is a comeback and he’s really exceptional in it. He has to play 3 different variations of Evelyn’s husband, Waymond Wang, and the variety he brings is awesome. The dapper and rich version is really well done and it’s very cool to see him not only making an acting comeback, but also getting a few nods for awards for his role.
I also noticed a weird little thing on Letterboxd - where when you mark the film as watched/logged, instead of the site’s little green eye you get a googly eye - i thought that was cool :]
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AMBULANCE, a Michael Bay film
I just have so many issues with this film. The biggest is that I wasted over 2 hours watching this.
If there was one more flipping drone shot, I was about to get as furious as Gyllenhaal spends most of this movie - which on a scale of Mumbling Harrison Ford on talk shows to Al Pacino in Heat is a complete Al Pacino in that Dunkacino ad.
I appreciate a good titled camera from Michael Bay to show us the purity of someone, and the obligatory and pointless shot of an American flag waving, but between those things I usually want some logic to my story. There are so many plot threads and characters, all offered up like post it notes scrunched in the hands of a wired storyteller at 3am trying to convince you their idea is both ‘gnarly’ and ‘deep.’
It is neither. It is a new, worse, bland thing. It is not worth your time. Unless you really want to switch your brain off. Possibly forever.
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SEVEN TO ETERNITY by Jerome Opena and Rick Remender
I finally read the fourth and final volume of this series - though I needed to reread Vols 1-3 to remember certain plot threads, and really get my head in the game.
Ultimately, it’s a good comic. Opena’s art is just so insanely stunning at all times - I could get lost in the covers of this 17 issue run. And his character designs are always so interesting, especially left to run amok in this fantasy world.
I’m a huge fan of Remender’s writing when he’s completely on point - DEADLY CLASS being my world class example. This comic sits just below that. I had a few niggles with the world building - but it also reminds me of how I do a lot of that stuff; just dump the reader into it and give them what they need and assume they’re smart enough to get the rest. You don’t want to slow the narrative drive down, and that’s where Remender has come to play.
I found this comic rockets along - especially in a 4 volume January read. From the initial scene on the homestead, to the finale coda in [THE REDACTED], the book moves. As it moves, it’s clearly about something - and this is probably my favourite thing about Remender’s work in the past decade. His books seem to very clearly about something that’s stuck in his brain and he’s trying to get out, but out through a deep and heavy genre lens.
DEADLY CLASS became this book about selling out and being true to yourself in a world that only ever wants you to compromise. It’s a deeply personal tale of youth and growth through decades, but told through a story of a school for assassins.
TOKYO GHOST was about online addiction and the pain it can cause in relationships [and society]. Even though the book appeared to be about all of this cool tech, and drugs, and bikes, to me if felt like someone trying to understand how quickly the world changed, and we changed with it, and how we could step away from that dark carousel.
BLACK SCIENCE was all about family, and whether your bad choices make you a bad person, and how people are just deeply compromised people trying to make the best of whatever situation they land in. It’s also about a dimension-hopping family just trying to get home.
So, SEVEN TO ETERNITY is this huge epic fantasy story, but to me it felt like it was about how no one is an absolute. Our villains are not all evil, our heroes are only golden as defined by their own standards - but our decisions affect everyone around us, so it’s important to know and understand people and place and context. It’s important not to bunker down into binary thought patterns, but to be open to new ideas, and that people can change, and that you also might change.
The story felt deeply personal in a way I feel Remender does often, and does well. To take that kind of therapy, and wrap it in genre, and then again in Opena’s art, well, it was a good time for my brain.
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SERIAL: WE WERE THREE a podcast from the New York Times - link
I didn’t even know there was a new season of Serial. I remember when the first one dropped and it was a phenom of social delights on everyone’s feeds. Then the second was good, but really hit that sophomore slump, and the third was kind of anxiety-inducing for me in how absolutely bleak it was. I didn’t remember there was a fourth, but I remember not digging it, but then I got in my car the other week after donating plasma and I found my phone had downloaded the first two eps of this new 3 ep season. I gave it a try, and I’m really glad I did.
This story, We Were Three, is all about Rachel McKibbens trying to discover exactly what happened in the lead up to her losing both her father and then her brother to Covid. It’s a really interesting and personal look into misinformation, the tribes we build and trust, and the way that it can go really wrong really quickly.
Both of the deceased men in the story were accessing info and people about Covid that were not there to help them, and in the end it stubbornly cost them both their lives. The show goes into their past, Rachel’s childhood, and the final days of her brother’s life as he texts her one thing, and another cousin a very different thing.
The show is fairly non-judgmental in that it doesn’t try to make this a dunk on people falling into misinformation - rather, it’s this sombre and heartbreaking tale of how hard it is to watch as someone is shut off from being able to believe some facts as facts.
It actually made me go back to look at some Covid numbers, which I haven’t done in any serious way in a good year. I was shocked to see that America’s Covid death rate still sits at 1% - with 100 million cases and 1 million deaths. In Australia, we have a 0.2% death rate, and in my territory, I am pretty certain it’s even lower than that. We feel a lot more impervious here, though there was a decent spike over the past two months which would result in 1-2 deaths a week [and most of them aged 70+, so no one seems to really care], and even though it’s dropping now, last week it suddenly claimed 6 lives in one week, and the youngest person was in their 40s. It’s a shame to see it all continuing on, and it’s a good reminder that this thing is not over for many people.
I definitely recommend the podcast as a listen into a personal tale and a good reminder.
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Be one of the good guys, because there's way too many of the bad.
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Who is Ryan K Lindsay?
I’m an award-winning Australian comic writer. I’ve been published by Black Mask, Dark Horse, ComixTribe, Mad Cave, IDW, Heavy Metal, Vertigo, and a few more. Kickstarter has been a home for many short comics. I often get to collaborate with great mates, and this brings me joy.
I write about balancing this creative game alongside a full teaching load [currently College English] and a lovely family load and the forever melting brain that is modern man. I think about a lot of stuff, I still don’t know if it’s the right stuff. ymmv.