R.I.P. Maureen O'Hara

Growing up, I always wanted to look like Mary Kate Danaher.

It's funny--I realized today that I've probably watched two of her movies every year since I was a kid--Miracle on 34th Street and The Quiet Man. And of course I grew up with The Parent Trap. Her performances are as much a part of my memories, my cultural grounding, as Monty Python or the Replacements.

O'Hara always seemed to play a woman who didn't need anyone's bullshit--you had to win her over. And I wanted to be that.

I've seen The Quiet Man probably 36 times, which is as long as I've been alive. My great-grandfather came from the area where they filmed it (though he left by 1904), and when the film came out, it became a family obsession, in part because of that, because we looked at it and said "we came from there"--and it's true, because we've met our family who still live near there, still have the family farm.

But not just my family--it was so popular in my neighborhood, that when I went to a funeral about ten years ago, I came across an old friend of my dad's, who, realizing he was one of the last of that crowd, sat there and told me about how he'd wished he'd moved away, and found his own White O'Morn. For some reason, it had a real hold on the men of my parents' generation, who grew up hearing about the Old Country from their fathers or grandfathers, treating the film like some sort of Irish-American Haggadah. I know people from Ireland hate this, because it can be patronizing--but it comes from a sincere place.

She had a good death, which is more than can be said for most people, famous or not. But it's hard not to feel a little sad--as others have already said, there's so little of Old Hollywood still living, I guess it's only Olivia de Havilland now.

This Could Be Gre--No, It's Probably Gonna Suck

So I come across this today:

Michael Fassbender and screenwriter Ronan Bennett are developing a feature film about the legendary Celtic warrior Cuchulain, with Fassbender set to play the leading role.

Cuchulain is the central character in the Ulster Cycle, an epic series of Old Irish legends that date from around the 8th century.

Set in the northern part of Ireland, the saga relates the story of the Ulaid tribe headed by King Conchobar, and particularly its conflict with the rival Connachta tribe led by Queen Mebh.

The most prominent figure in the legends is Conchobar's nephew Cuchulain, who has semi-divine ancestry and superhuman fighting skills. In the most famous story, known as the Cattle Raid of Cooley, he is the only man capable of resisting the vast army sent by Medb to steal Conchobar's prize white bull.

Now, this isn't meant to be a knock on Fassbender or Bennett, but it's not as if there've been many successful adaptations of mythology lately--not the dreadful remake of Clash of the Titans, nor the inexplicable Immortals, and especially not 2004's laugh-fest King Arthur.

I'm always wary of adapting mythology--which ultimately was (and still is) someone's religion. Usually in these big-budget adaptations, the gods are an evil to be defeated by mortals (which is an ugly bastardization of the meanings of those myths), or they're written out altogether (as in the otherwise watchable Troy). I can easily see this as being a "defeat the gods" film, given that the Morrigan is an antagonist, while Lugh, Cuchulain's divine father, could easily be ignored or forgotten. Really, the only film that hasn't been automatically dismissive of gods was Thor, and they aren't exactly gods, but aliens with god-like abilities.

And while ancient stories are all the rage, it's rare they aren't big, bloated, painful messes. I rather liked Tristan and Isolde--it wasn't a great film, but because the action was smaller and the conflict personal, it wasn't a terrible film, either. I dread to think of the Cattle Raid of Cooley being turned into 300.

On the other hand, the last film I saw that delved into Irish myth and history was the absolutely fantastic Secret of Kells, so it's not as if the task is impossible.

A (Very Late) Happy Imbolc!

For those who don't know, Imbolc--falling roughly halfway between the winter solstice and spring equinox (or, Christmas and Easter)--is the old Irish start of spring; it's a feast of purification¹, and comes a day after the feast of Brigit, the goddess and the saint. In the Catholic calendar, it's also Candlemas/the Feast of the Purification of Mary. But you probably know it best as Groundhog Day.

Using this day for prognosticating the future weather goes way back, certainly long before some Pennsylvanian marmot chewed his way out of the ground. Plus, before him, it used to be a snake. To read a good summary of how Brigit relates to spring and predicting the weather in February, check out Alexander Carmichael's classic Carmina Gadelica:

The serpent is supposed to emerge from its hollow among the hills on St Bride's Day, and a propitiatory hymn was sung to it. Only one verse of this hymn has been obtained, apparently the first. It differs in different localities:--

'Moch maduinn Bhride, Thig an nimhir as an toll, Cha bhoin mise ris an nimhir, Cha bhoin an nimhir rium.'

Early on Bride's morn The serpent shall come from the hole, I will not molest the serpent, Nor will the serpent molest me.

Other versions say:--

La Feill na Bride, Thig nighean Imhir as a chnoc, Cha bhean mise do nighean ’S cha dean i mo lochd.' [Imhir, 'La Fheill Bride brisgeanach Thig an ceann de in chaiteanach, Thig nighean Iomhair as an tom Le fonn feadalaich.' 'Thig an nathair as an toll    La donn Bride, Ged robh tri traighean dh’ an    Air leachd an lair.' [t-sneachd

The Feast Day of the Bride, The daughter of Ivor shall come from the knoll, I will not touch the daughter of Ivor, Nor shall she harm me. On the Feast Day of Bride, The head will come off the 'caiteanach,' The daughter of Ivor will come from the knoll With tuneful whistling. The serpent will come from the hole    On the brown Day of Bride, Though there should be three feet of snow    On the flat surface of the ground.

The 'daughter of Ivor' is the serpent; and it is said that the serpent will not sting a descendant of Ivor, he having made 'tabhar agus tuis,' offering and incense, to it, thereby securing immunity from its sting for himself and his seed for ever.

In America, the day has become associated with the 1993 movie Groundhog Day. In one of those wonderful cosmic convergences, the theme of the movie actually fits the original theme of the holiday: Phil Connors, the miserable, venal weatherman played by Bill Murray, spends lifetimes living the same day over and over again, indulging in every vice you can find in a small Pennsylvania town, before slowly learning to become a better person. What's funny, of course, is that the origin of Imbolc--like the Roman Lupercalia, or the Catholic Lent--is in a time of purification. Like Phil, we're all living the same day over and over again; sometimes we waste our time, which is easy, especially in winter when we're miserable. But hey, unlike Phil, we don't have an eternity to get it right.  We invent times like Imbolc to get ourselves back on track, to remind ourselves that winter doesn't last forever, that spring is coming, and we need to get our heads together. To purify ourselves, to make ourselves better people.

Hey--the groundhog called for an early spring. Better get crackin'.

1. Eric Hamp, 'Imbolc, Oimelc', Studia Celtica, 14/15 (1979/1980)

I Am Not Looking Forward To The Eagle

I have yet to be satisfied with a film treatment of Roman Britain (*cough* The Last Legion *cough*), and I have the feeling The Eagle might annoy me much like 2004's ridiculous King Arthur.

"But you haven't seen it yet."

No. I haven't. And yet I'm already annoyed. Why?

Well, The Eagle, much like the forgettable film Centurion, is about the legendary Ninth Legion, which supposedly disappeared during a disastrous run-in with the local Britons up north of Hadrian's Wall around the year 120. Of course, whether this actually happened--not so much a local uprising, which is pretty much par-for-the-course, but the disappearance of the legion--is a matter of debate.Still, it's not the historical ambiguity that bothers me.

It has 2nd century Picts speaking Scottish Gaelic.

Let me say that again.

It has 2nd century Picts speaking Scottish Gaelic.

There is so much wrong with this.

According to the London Times

Macdonald has a fairly free rein in recreating his ancient tribe; but he is determined to be as authentic as possible, with the tribesmen in the movie all speaking Gaelic. In order to achieve a little contemporary symbolism, the Romans will be played by American actors.

[snip]

They were a more indigenous folk than the Celts, who were from further south,” he argues. “They were probably small and dark, like the Inouit [sic], living off seals and dressed in sealskins. We are going to create a culture about which no one knows much, but which we will make as convincing as possible. We are basing it on clues gained from places like Skara Brae and the Tomb of the Eagles in Orkney, so that we will have them worshipping pagan symbols, like the seal and the eagle.

OK. Where to begin. First, if you want to be authentic, then you wouldn't have Picts living in the second century speaking Gaelic, which wasn't spoken by any sizable portion of people living in Britain at that time. For one thing, "Gaelic"--in this case, the Scottish dialect of Goidelic--didn't exist; there were dialects of Old Irish, mostly spoken in Ireland (I don't think there were any Irish settlements in Britain at the time, but I could be wrong). Having Picts speak Scottish Gaelic is like having King Alfred the Great speaking Elizabethan English and declaring it authentic.

Secondly, the Picts, insofar as they spoke a Celtic language, were Celts. "Celtic" isn't a race, it's a group of related languages/cultural output. That Pictish was probably a strand of Celtic--specifically P-Celtic, and thus distantly related to Gaulish and ultimatley Welsh--is largely accepted by academics, though there are always some who disagree; Wikipedia has a pretty decent introduction to the disagreements, and where the current thinking stands.Even as early as the 1500s, scholars saw the similarities between Gaulish and Pictish (yeah, I was surprised too by the early date; George Buchanan figured this out a full hundred years before Edward Lhuyd pioneered the use of "Celtic" to describe the related languages of Welsh, Cornish, Irish, Manx, etc.).

I'm not sure how Macdonald can say "They were Celts, expect that they weren't; they spoke Gaelic, except they didn't; this is authentic, even though we don't know anything about the Picts, except that we do, since they were short and not Celtic" and not expect my head to explode.

I get that the Picts helped form the Scottish nation; but they weren't Scotti, the name of the people who conquered them; they probably adopted Gaelic as it became advantagous to speak the langauge of the political elite, but that was centuries after the events of the movie. The best evidence we have tells us that they were related to the other Britons just south of them, who went on to become the Welsh, Cumbrian, and Cornish peoples. If he wanted to be "authentic", he could have had them speak Welsh, which is closer to what we know of Pictish than Scottish Gaelic is.

Moreover, the non-Scottish history of Northern Britain is often glossed over in popular culture, which is very frustrating. (To see Y Gododdin called "The Oldest Scottish Poem" is completely anachronistic. Sorry, Kenneth H Jackson, but come on!)

I hope the music for the movie is by these guys:



Because their knowledge of Druids is as well informed as The Eagle's knowledge of the Picts.

Searching for Light in the Darkness of Insanity: a review of the Secret of Kells

Bitter is the wind tonight.
It tosses the ocean's white hair.
Tonight I fear not the coming over on the Irish Sea.
of fierce warriors of Norway

--9th c. Irish poem

So no doubt if you noticed this film was nominated for an Academy Award, facing off against Pixar's Up, as well as Coraline, and Wes Anderson's The Fantasic Mr. Fox, you probably said to yourself, "what the hell is The Secret of Kells?" Which is a shame, because you've missed out on one of the best movies of the year.

It's become a cliche to talk about how the Irish saved civilization--not that they did it alone, of course, but that the Irish monks helped keep literacy alive in the West is without doubt. They also, in the process, created one of the most beautiful books ever made--the famous Book of Kells.

The Secret of Kells is the story of that book... sort of. We don't know who actually created the Book of Kells, whether it was started by St. Columbcille on Iona, or whether it was the product of the Abbey of Kells, or whether it was started on Iona and finished at Kells, or even which artists put their hands to it. And so Kells puts its creation in its proper context, during the tumultuous period when Vikings attacked Britain and Ireland, sacking abbeys, burning books, looting gold, and scattering the literate communities to the winds. In this world we find Brendan, an orphan raised by his uncle Cellach, the abbot of Kells, who is understandably obsessed with fortifying the abbey in the face of the Viking raids. But with this determination comes a stultifying existence for Brendan, only alleviated when the illuminator Aidan comes, having escaped the destruction of Iona.



Aidan is an artist--for him the creative practice is a way to give hope in dark times. For when life is only struggle, when it's only about building walls out of fear of the inevitable, the very enjoyment of existence is extinguished. For Aidan, everything about life hold beauty and wisdom--not just what can be found in books or in the abbey, but the natural world, as well, like the best of those Celtic monks. So Aidan encourages Brendan's interest in the art of illuminating manuscripts, while Cellach only wants Brendan to focus on building up the walls of the abbey. Brendan naturally rebels against Cellach, and leaves the abbey for the first time. He heads for the forests, looking for plants to make the ink used in the manuscript.



Here he meets Aisling, a faery girl, one of the sídhe, who saves him and the cat Pangur Ban (!) from a pack of wolves. Like Aidan, she teaches Brendan not to fear the natural world, to enjoy it and and learn from it.



But the Vikings are a real threat, and the abbey is vulnerable, despite Cellach's best efforts. And Vikings aren't the only danger--there is also Crom Cruach, the dark spirit who haunts the edges of the woods.



But the book is most important thing. Aidan is old, his hands shake, his eyes are dim. He wants Brendan to design the Chi-Rho page:

The actual Chi-Rho page from the Book of Kells

The Chi-Rho page is one of the most intricate pieces of art ever created; I have a large copy of it, measuring twelve inches by about fifteen, and I still can't imagine creating such tiny, interlacing details; the picture above doesn't do it justice.

So that's the beginning of the story of the film; but what you should really go for is the art. This is easily one of the most beautiful animated films I have ever seen. From what I've read, it's mostly done in the traditional, 2D, hand-drawn animation, which rather neatly imitates the look of a manuscript. It doesn't rely on gimmicks like 3D, or the plastic-looking CGI of Dreamworks and (forgive me) Pixar--like the best and earliest Disney features, it uses the ability of the human hand to create a lush and vibrant world, intricate in detail and never condescending to the audience. (And the details are stunning--see if you can spot the ogham in the forest).



This is a film about the power of art to bring light--illumination--in times of darkness. To bring joy, to fire the spirit, to help us communicate, to give us a reason to communicate. This is a film about finding joy in the face of destruction, to live in spite of death.

Also, for those of you who have some knowledge of Old Irish poetry, stick around through the credits--it's no mistake that the cat is named Pangur Ban.