Radical Innocence

I've watched more movies in the last few days than I'd previously managed all year, if you count the Sweeney Todd DVD as a movie. Over the weekend I finally got to watch the Little Dorrit films I recorded earlier this year - Nobody's Fault and Little Dorrit's Story, these comprising Christine Edzard's brilliant vision of the novel, and I use the word 'vision' with some exactitude.

I've been delaying viewing the films partly because you need a spare six hours to do so, which I haven't had until now, and also because Noi wasn't around at the weekend, having gone up to Melaka for some Raya-ing whilst I was involved at the end of the week in the Drama Camp, and I was reluctant to force them on her which I'd inevitably be doing considering the running time. This is not to say that I was sure she wouldn't appreciate them - she's enjoyed BBC adaptations of Dickens in the past, like the Martin Chuzzlewit that David Lodge wrote the script for - but I remembered Edzard's movie(s) as making demanding, if rewarding, viewing and I wasn't at all sure she'd take to them. And if she didn't the poor girl would be likely to still keep watching for my sake and six hours of unappreciated viewing is not something I care to inflict on her. As it is I might see how she fares with the first half hour or so of Nobody's Fault when I fancy watching it again and then keep it running if she's up to it.

Actually I'd intended to wipe my recordings and purchase the movie(s) on DVD but it seems they're just not available in that format, only on videotape. So for the time being I'll keep the recordings as I'm pretty sure I'll hanker for at least one more viewing reasonably soon, such hankering being the result of that visionary quality I mentioned earlier. This Dorrit is something very special indeed.

And why is this? It's extremely difficult to explain this simply as there are so many levels on which it succeeds, and a number of these are not quite what you'd expect. I suppose I'm saying the movies take an original approach, but curiously in visual terms there's something old fashioned about the whole enterprise (the costumes are superb, by the way) and the acting is also in many ways of the old school, with quite a number of outstanding veterans: Alec Guinness, Joan Greenwood and Max Wall to name but three. No, the originality lies in other, quirky, directions. One small example: in many scenes in the open you hear snippets of conversation in the background behind the principal players. These half-heard conversations seem thematically linked, but also have an oddly inconsequential quality as if they might just be accidental.

And another tiny point, amongst many: Little Dorrit herself appears curiously expressionless at moments, but this isn't weak acting as the girl playing her is often powerfully expressive. She sometimes becomes a kind of blank for us to project ideas onto as she scurries along in her simple blue dress (worn always, except for when the family becomes unexpectedly rich). And she's always doing things, you realise, tidying up, making beds, cooking food, while those around her are generally inert. Her strange simplicity, directness becomes the moral centre not just of the film but of a whole world. She's like something out of Blake - a radical, remorseless, questioning, unbearable innocence.

I can't pin this down. Just as the novel escapes any kind of comfortable summary.