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Welcome to Tragic Tuesdays, where I review books, movies, tv shows, and other media based on how tragic they are. This week: WandaVision, the show about a witch and a robot that will make you sob. Obviously, this post will contain spoilers.
I realized the other day how all of my entries thus far have been very heterosexual and very white. I was very much intending to rectify that this week, but then WandaVision happened. So real quick I have to tell you about the witch and the robot that made me weep! Another spoiler warning here, because the finale only aired a couple weeks ago, but I think everyone who cares strongly has already seen it.
WandaVision is a Marvel show – the first of the Disney Plus releases and I believe the beginning of Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (don’t @ me if I’m wrong). All this to say, there’s a lot of history behind it, and for those of you who have not watched upwards of 20 Marvel movies over the last 15 years, let me see if I can break it down in a reasonable way. Wanda Maximoff is a witch. She grew up in Sokovia, a fictional Eastern European country, and lost her parents when she was young to an American bomb. Her brother died in a previous movie. So – she’s had a lot of trauma, and she’s sad generally. Vision is an AI system who was put into a synthetic body so, as I understand it, he’s basically a self aware and kind robot who looks like Paul Bettany. Wanda and Vision fall in love somewhere in the middle of the last 15 years of movies, but at the end of one of the most recent movies, he died as well, adding on to Wanda’s already long list of people who she loves who have died.
WandaVision takes place soon after Wanda realizes Vision has died (I realize I’m condensing a lot, again, don’t @ me). The first three episodes are pure whimsy, each a take on a different era of sitcoms – I Love Lucy and the Dick Van Dyke Show, then Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie, then the Brady Bunch. Each episode stars Wanda and Vision as two magical beings trying to live idyllic suburban lives while hiding their magic from nosy neighbors and coworkers.
Of course, we realize that this cannot be reality, and by the middle of the season it’s revealed the Wanda has, in her grief, created a giant hexagonal bubble over the town and is forcing them to role play her sitcom fantasies. To her credit, she’s not entirely aware of this, as this is her (magical) brain’s way of protecting her from the pain of her grief. We find out later that, as a child, she escaped into sitcoms and her parents died while they were all watching the Dick Van Dyke Show. She also created this version of Vision and their eventual children that pop up in episode 3 or 4, but they can only exist in the hexagon of Wanda’s magic. There’s a bunch of stuff about the government guys outside the hexagon doing stuff, but it’s not relevant to the tragedy, so I’ll leave it out.
Eventually Wanda becomes cognizant of what she’s doing, and we see how this all came about – she goes to see Vision’s disassembled body in a government lab, she finds a property deed of land that he bought (question how do robots buy property he does not have social security number) with the intention of building a house on – on the deed, he’s drawn a heart with the words “to build our life together.” It’s really fucking sad! Wanda explodes with grief, only her grief is also magic and so accidentally imprisons a bunch of people. Vision is eventually able to get her to see that mind controlling a bunch of civilians is not great – one of the most wrenching parts of the finale is when an extra says, “When we sleep, we have your nightmares” – but to dismantle the hexagon is to lose Vision and her children.
Of course Wanda does what’s right and frees the people of the town, putting her boys to bed and embracing Vision as the hexagon shrinks around them until she’s left by herself in the empty lot it all started in.
But is it tragic? Yes! The writing in the last few episodes, which show Wanda’s backstory of her family as well as what happened after Vision died, are exquisite. The now famous line, “What is grief if not love persevering,” broke hearts across America as we watched a robot help a witch grieve the loss of her brother. Elizabeth Olsen is perfect in this role (questionable Sokovian accent notwithstanding), and nails the tone of everything from Lucille Ball to Claire Dunphy (Modern Family) to a grief stricken woman who just suffered yet another devastating loss. At the end, she flies off to heal, and we know she’ll be okay. But it doesn’t make the loss of magic-Vision any less tragic. 4 out of 5 Juliets.
Welcome to Travel Thursday, in which I tell you about something cool or weird or dumb that I did while traveling! This week: the romance (and hangovers) of Granada.
I learned the best way to get rid of a hangover when I was in Granada, Spain.
I spent about a month in Spain after I left France, mostly because all the friends I’d made in France happened to be Spanish. I drove to Cartagena with one friend and spent two weeks there, then got on a plane to Asturias, where my roommate lived. After a couple weeks there, I spent a long weekend in Madrid with my roommate’s aunt, uncle, and cousin before busing it to Portugal. But the best part may have been the two days I spent by myself in Granada.
I went to Granada in the middle of my time in Cartagena, which otherwise mostly consisted of hanging out on the beach while my friend went to work. When I told my friend’s family that I was going to Granada, they kept hearing “Canada” because my Spanish pronunciation is not up to snuff, so there were at least three separate moments of confusion before everyone got on the same page about me going to Granada.
I took the bus to a hostel, where I dumped my stuff and left to explore. The city is absolutely gorgeous, and my favorite type – where you can spend hours getting lost down twisty streets and tiny alleys, where the locals look at you like they’re not quite sure how a tourist got this far off the beaten path, where you can sit in a little park and watch kids and street performers and daydream about what it used to look like when the Moors were in charge. Part of the magic is the different traditions and eras built on top of each other. Buildings that were once mosques and have been converted but retain their recognizable shape, old square churches with intricate wrought iron gates, canal paths overrun with vines and greenery. It was like I was dropped into a fantasy world.
Eventually, because I was young and without much money and didn’t want to spend $20 to get inside, I climbed the tallest hill I could find to look across the city at the Alhambra, the Moorish palace and fortress. From the pictures I’ve seen online, it’s absolutely gorgeous inside, but there’s also something about looking at it from a distance, imagining what it was like to live in the city when it was occupied and active, a constant presence overhead.
I got back to the hostel in the evening, checked my email on the hostel desktop (lol), and found an acceptance letter to a law school I’d been waiting on. Not only did I get to spend the day in a magical city, I got into law school! Since I was off the waitlist, I had to send a deposit within 24 hours, but I left that to be tomorrow Marina’s problem and went out for dinner and celebratory drinks. For the sake of my reputation, we’ll fast forward to the next morning, when I had to drag myself out of bed to send the deposit and check out of the hostel.
I managed to do both of those things, and my bus wasn’t until the afternoon, so I made myself go out and start walking. Following signs to an attraction I hadn’t made it to the day before, I found myself climbing stairs. And more stairs. With no end in sight, sweating my ass off, I bought a bottle of water, chugged it, and made myself keep going. By the time I got there, I felt nearly normal and got to enjoy the destination with a clear head – but I still slept the entire 3 hour bus ride back to Cartagena. So there you go – next time you find yourself having overindulged, find the Spanish sun and some stairs and get to climbing.
Welcome to Tragic Tuesdays, where I review books, movies, tv shows, and other media based on how tragic they are. This week: The 2018 movie A Star is Born. Obviously, this post will contain spoilers.
IN THE SHA A A A LOWS.
Ok, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way. Did you guys know how sad this movie was going to be? Because I had NO idea. It seems that everyone in the world has seen the Judy Garland version (1954) or the Barbra Streisand version (1976), or hell even the Janet Gaynor version (1934). There’s almost 100 years worth of this movie, and I managed to walk into a movie theater in this Year of Our Lady Gaga two thousand and eighteen without the slightest inkling of what was coming. Two and a half hours later, I was broken. I was so sad for so long that, when I rewatched it a couple of weeks ago, my husband asked me if I was sure I could handle it (two years later).
I went into this movie really only knowing that it starred Lady “Stefani Germanotta” Gaga and Bradley Cooper. I’ve been on board with Gaga since the beginning, and I have no problem with her popping up in random acting projects. Let her wail and give her an award. Great. In this version of A Star is Born, Lady Gaga plays Ally, a girl from a working class neighborhood who works catering by day and sings at drag clubs by night. Bradley Cooper is Jackson Maine, a rock star with a drinking problem. Jackson stumbles on Ally singing at a club, they spend the night singing in parking lots and getting into fights at bars, and the rest is history.
What I appreciate about this movie is that the main conflict isn’t a will-they-won’t-they romance. Once Jackson and Ally are together, they’re together. We don’t have to worry about current/past romantic partners or one of them being hesitant – it’s nice to watch two people just fall for each other and have that be it. We get flashes of their whirlwind romance – they ride around on a motorcycle, they go on tour, they show up at Dave Chappelle’s house and get whirlwind married. It’s nice!
Unfortunately, this means that their problems are more serious. Once Ally blows up after singing “Shallow” at one of Jackson’s shows, she goes on the road with him and quickly lands a record deal. She becomes a huge pop star, something that Jackson has a hard time dealing with, as she’s not “authentic” or making “real music” and has dyed her hair red. I also appreciate that this movie makes clear that Jackson is in the wrong when he says these things to her – a woman making pop music is just as valid as a bunch of men with instruments singing about whatever they’re upset about this week. Jackson is also struggling with his addiction problems, which lead to his estrangement from his brother, Sam Elliott’s moustache.
Jackson’s alcoholism worsens, culminating with him peeing himself on stage at the Grammys while Ally accepts the award for best new artist. It is horrible and humiliating! He goes to rehab, gets sober, and returns home to Ally, who has decided to put her European tour on hold to stay home with him. This spurs her producer to tell Jackson that he’s holding Ally back and she’s better off without him. I’m not sure what he was trying to make happen with this conversation, but when Ally leaves for a performance, Jackson dies by suicide. It’s really fucking sad! The movie ends with Ally singing a song in tribute at Jackson’s memorial concert.
But is it tragic? Yes, Jesus Christ, it’s one of the most tragic movies out there. It’s brutal from about halfway in to the very end. The hardest part for me personally is watching Ally turn to Jackson to celebrate her milestones – signing a record deal, getting nominated for a Grammy – and having him be too drunk to acknowledge them. From the beginning, she’s taking care of him, and the movie depicts addiction with nuance and sympathy. Then, just as Jackson is getting sober, just as they’re getting their relationship back on track, he dies, and their young love is ripped from them. When I rewatched it recently, it didn’t have quite the same impact, because I knew what was coming. Maybe if I’d known back in 2018, I wouldn’t have sobbed quite so hard in a movie theater (remember movie theaters?). 5 out of 5 Juliets.
Welcome to Travel Thursday, in which I tell you about something cool or weird or dumb that I did while traveling! This week: running aground in Maine.
Up until now I’ve been focusing on my international travels, but there’s plenty of cool or weird or dumb things that I’ve done in this, our own country of the USA. The occasion of running aground in Maine is not something I did, and more of something I was on a boat for, but it is certainly a good story.
One of the great things about living on the East Coast is that it’s relatively common that people retire up north, and as a result your friends have parents with giant, beautiful houses in Maine. In the summer of 2018, a big group of us went up for a long weekend, excited to spend a few days away from the burning swamp heat of D.C., enjoy the beach, and eat a lot of lobsters. While we did all of these things, we were especially excited to go out on the sailboat that our friend and his family often takes up and down the coast. I had never been on a sailboat before and was very excited to get my first taste of the New England nautical life, boat shoes and all (just kidding, I’m from California, you’ll pry my Rainbows off my cold dead feet).
The trip started off well enough. We all piled onto the boat, armed with snacks and swimsuits, and gamely pulled on ropes and tied knots until we were out into the open water. This is where I discovered I have no knowledge of knots or really any boat parlance, despite the fact that I rowed competitively for two years in high school. Still, plenty of others did, and soon we were sailing around the many inlets and bays of Maine. The sun was shining, the drinks were flowing, and we stopped in a small lagoon to swim and lounge. All in all, it was lovely.
As the afternoon began to stretch out, we decided to go back, given that one of our friends had to catch a flight later that evening and we were getting a little hungry. We turned our boat around, started to exit the lagoon, and – a very loud noise, and suddenly we weren’t moving. Someone figured out that tide had gone down just enough for us to maroon ourselves on a large, flat rock that sat not too far below the surface of the water. None of the other boats around had to watch out for it because they were on the small side, but we just caught it. So we were stuck.
We tried to get unstuck for a while, getting pulled by other nearby boats, everyone standing on one side of the boat to try
to slide us off the rock, but we didn’t want to pull too hard and damage the rudder, so eventually we figured that we would wait for tide to finish going out, then come back in . Eventually it would come back enough to get us off the rock. In the meantime, we would hang out. Also in the meantime, we became something of a spectacle. It would take more than one hand to count the number of times a boat came up to inform us that there was, in fact, a rock one had to watch out for underneath our boat. Others took pity on us, driving up in small motorboats to throw us water, beer, and snacks. One couple gave us some snacks, then went back to their boat to bake peanut butter cookies, which they brought over warm. Our friend who had to catch a flight managed to hitch a ride with some friendly strangers who were going back in the direction of the house. All in all, we were probably sitting on that rock for about three hours. We were sitting at such a severe angle on the rock that walking above deck was difficult, and going below deck resulted in instantaneous vertigo.
Eventually the tide rose enough that we could scoot off the rock and get ourselves home, by which time it was dark and we were hungry and cranky. I haven’t been on a sailboat since, but I’ll always remember with fondness the time I spent an entire afternoon on a rock in a lagoon in Maine. Just like a mermaid.
Welcome to Tragic Tuesdays, where I review books, movies, tv shows, and other media based on how tragic they are. This week: The 1996 movie The English Patient. Obviously, this post will contain spoilers.
I spent a lot of time on the internet searching for the MOST sad, dramatic, tragic, romantic movie. This past weekend, while I had the house to myself, I binged several recommendations: Belle (decent romance, not tragic), Water for Elephants (bad romance, not tragic), and The English Patient. I’ve seen The English Patient on almost every list, but I’ve been putting it off because all I know about it, courtesy of Seinfeld, is that it is so. damn. long. But if I can sit through two and a half hour movies about men punching each other, I can sit through a two and a half hour movie about people being sad at each other.
Normally I do a plot summary here, but…my god, there is so much plot in this movie. With apologies to everyone else, let’s focus on the relevant parts. The framing device takes place at an Italian monastery near the end of WWII: Hana (Juliette Binoche), a nurse, tends to a very badly burned Count László de Almásy (Ralph Feinnes). As she waits for him to die, he remembers and recounts the events that led to his disfigurement. He was a cartographer in Egypt in the 1930s, joined on an expedition by Geoffrey Clifton (Colin Firth) and Katharine Clifton (Kristen Scott Thomas) (and many others who are not, unfortunately, important to the plot). Almasy, as we’ll call him, and Katharine begin a torrid affair as Geoffrey goes off to Ethiopia to spy for the British that continues long after they’ve returned to Cairo.
There’s all the classic forbidden love devices here: sneaking around in plain view of just about everyone, secret hand squeezes in markets, sex in open pantries (okay maybe that’s not classic, I just liked it), a suspicious husband, and one party trying unsuccessfully to break it off before they fall into each others’ arms again. Honestly, they don’t try very hard to hide the affair, and I respect that. Unfortunately, Geoffrey returns to Cairo ahead of schedule, and instead of confronting them with evidence of the affair, he follows them around for a while, then puts Katharine in a plane and crashes it into Almasy while he’s out in the desert. As far as murder/suicides go, it makes a statement.
Geoffrey dies and Katharine is gravely injured, so Almasy takes her to a cave, telling her he’ll be back in three days. He’s desperate to save his lover, but the war has started in earnest by the time he gets back to Cairo, and British are no help to him as he’s not British and therefore suspicious. He escapes the truck they put him on, finds some Germans with a plane, and trades it for maps of the desert that eventually leads to the Germans invading Cairo. He makes the excellent point that if the British had just helped him in the first place instead of distrusting him based on his identity, the Germans wouldn’t have had the information to invade Cairo.
Almasy eventually makes his way back to the cave to Katharine, who has died in the extra time it took for him to get back. He puts her in the plane and sets off, but is shot down, which is how he receives the burns that Hana is tending to throughout the movie. He dies soon after he finishes relating his story, Hana reading him the letter that Katharine wrote on her deathbed as he does.
Whew. And that’s not even mentioning Willem Dafoe getting his thumbs cut off or Naveen Andrews almost getting blown up multiple times. However, even with everything going on, the core love story pulls the heartstrings, particularly when Almasy and Katharine are having their torrid affair in Cairo right under everyone’s noses. The movie takes its time building up their chemistry before the affair starts, and that’s really the most important part. We have to want them to be together, so we can cheer when it finally happens, and we can cry when it’s ripped away from us. Plus, the joy watching an actor of Ralph Fiennes’ caliber perform an excellent death scene, dying from burns and a broken heart (and a morphine overdose), while an actor of Juliette Binoche’s caliber reads him a letter from his dead love – if you don’t have two hours and 40 minutes, just watch that part.
But is it tragic? Yes, absolutely. There’s something about Cairo that will get me every time. 4.5 out of 5 Juliets.
Welcome to Travel Thursday, in which I tell you about something cool or weird or dumb that I did while traveling! This week: cosplaying Edmond Dantes in Marseilles.
The Count of Monte Cristo is my favorite book. By a lot. Who hasn’t dreamed of finding a ton of gold, assuming a new identity, and returning home to slowly but methodically ruin the lives of your enemies? And do it with style? Plus, on my last re-read I realized that the last time we see Eugenie Danglars, one of the next generation that the Count helps out of a bind, she has cut off her hair, put on men’s clothing, and run away with her (woman) art teacher, the implications of which I had missed in high school. I could write a whole essay about Eugenie Danglars. I could, but I won’t. (I might).
When I lived in Arles, home of les easily-broken into Arenes, the closest major city was Marseilles, where all the teaching assistants gathered periodically for regional events. If you remember your Count of Monte Cristo, the story begins in Marseilles, with Edmond coming home to his faithful girlfriend Mercedes and his loving father before being framed for helping Napoleon escape Elba by his jealous best friend and thrown in the dungeon at the Chateau d’If, a prison off the coast. A major portion of the story takes place there, where Dantes befriends Abbe Faria and inherits his fortune. For the longest time I assumed the Chateau was fiction, so imagine my delight when I realized that it was not only real, but I was going to be living close by.
Marseilles is gorgeous. The south of France is just as good as Southern California, weather-wise (minus the drought), and Marseilles is full of history, beautiful old buildings, blue skies, and the Mediterranean stretching out in front of it all. They don’t call it the Cote d’Azur because everything isn’t a brilliant, inspiring blue. The Chateau d’If sits just off the coast, a small, bright island of stone sticking out of the bay. My first few visits to Marseille were busy with errands and classes, so I was confined to walking up hills and gazing out over the water to the prison. It was a 45 minute train ride from Arles, but I had a friend who wanted to visit the Iles de Frioul, islands in the same area that had been used as points of first defense during World War Two. Finally, on a bright April day, we hopped on a train to Marseille, then a warm, windy ferry to the island.
There’s nothing quite like going to a place you’ve been holding in your imagination for so long. You get to see what you got right and what details you’d never considered (you should have seen me trying to scheme my way into the tunnels under the Paris Opera House). What struck me first was how close the island is to the mainland. Swimmable if you’re strong and can get out, but I guess that’s what they say about Alcratraz, too. The best part of it is that they really let you go into every nook and cranny – from the lower level cells, just empty squares in the surrounding stone, to the tops of the guard towers overlooking the island and the sea. My friend was extremely patient while I examined every corner of the building (she also had to deal with me when we went to the Coliseum and I wandered around quoting Gladiator for 45 minutes), talking about Edmond Dantes and Mercedes and Abbe Feria. I bought a silly souvenir and wrote something embarrassing in the guest book. We had a blast.
Afterwards, we took another boat to les Iles de Frioul, where I ate my first plate of mussels and we crawled around in some WWII bunkers to complete a perfect afternoon. Now when I read the Count of Monte Cristo, I can play these scenes in my head and I can remember when I, too, was Edmond Dantes.
Welcome to Tragic Tuesdays, where I review books, movies, tv shows, and other media based on how tragic they are. This week: The 1992 film Like Water for Chocolate. Obviously, this post will contain spoilers.
Like Water for Chocolate is on almost every list of most tragic romance movies – I’d heard of it but never seen it when I began my search for the most tragic romance out there, and it promised to be a true tearjerker.
The movie focuses on Tita, who lives in early 1900s Mexico with her mother, Mama Elena, and her older sisters. In this family, the youngest daughter is not allowed to get married and must take care of her mother until the mother’s death (the question of who takes care of this unmarried daughter until her own death is not answered). Since Tita cannot marry, she spends a lot of time in the kitchen with Nacha, the cook, learning how to make delicious food. She cooks so well and with so much emotion that she is eventually able to transfer the the emotions she feels while cooking to those who eat her food.
Tita attends a party one day and meets Pedro – it’s love at first sight and by first sight I mean first sight, like they don’t even really talk to each other, just stare at each other across the room, then Pedro professes his intention to marry Tita. Unfortunately, as you will remember, Tita is not allowed to get married, so Mama Elena decides that the best thing to do is have Pedro marry Tita’s sister, Rosaura. This is…not the decision I would have made, but hey, it allows Tita and Pedro to stare at each other moodily throughout the next several years. On the night of Rosaura and Pedro’s wedding, Tita feeds the guests a wedding cake she has cried into while making, creating a feeling of hopeless sadness among the guests. The night of the wedding, Nacha dies.
Everyone has a miserable life from this point on. Tita and Pedro are sad because they can’t be together and Rosaura is sad because she’s convinced Tita and Pedro are having an affair (they are not, though I wish they were). Mama Elena sends Rosaura, Pedro, and their son off to Texas to keep Tita and Pedro apart. The son dies, Mama Elena dies, Tita meets a nice doctor who she agrees to marry, but Pedro comes back at hearing the news to tell Tita that he loves her (just really cool timing on Pedro’s part). They sleep together, giving Tita a pregnancy scare, leading her to tell the doctor about the infidelity. He says he’ll still have her because he loves her – this is a trope I’m seeing more and more, the overly forgiving man ready to marry the tortured woman who can’t be with the one she actually loves (remember Madame Bovary’s poor husband?).
Fortuitously, Rosaura dies suddenly, freeing Pedro and Tita to be together. The night of their wedding, as they go to bed, Pedro dies of a heart attack. Tita, heartbroken, swallows a book of matches and the whole house burns down around them. Tita’s cookbook survives and is found by Rosaura and Pedro’s second child, then passed down to her own daughter.
But is it tragic? I mean…kind of? A lot of really depressing stuff happens, but it feels less tragic and more of a random string of bad luck. Nacha dies suddenly, Mama Elena dies in a random attack by bandits, Rosaura and Pedro’s first son dies offscreen, Rosaura randomly dies in her sleep, and then Pedro just…dies of a heart attack. The timing is very unfortunate, but it’s too sudden to resonate emotionally. Additionally, and most importantly, we don’t get any time to fall in love with the idea of Tita and Pedro as a couple – they meet and instantaneously fall in love without any lead up, which, in my opinion, is the best part. To go from not in love to in love without the falling part is unsatisfying. Without that emotional hook, everything that comes after it feels only surface level. Maybe the book is better, but until I read it, I can only recommend the Common album. 2 out of 5 Juliets.
Welcome to Travel Thursday, in which I tell you about something cool or weird or dumb that I did while traveling! This week: how to almost get stuck on an island in Dakar, Senegal.
When you travel, they tell you not to bring everything with you when you’re out and about in case you get pickpocketed or lose something. However, I generally leave most of my cash and my passport at the hotel and just bring the whole shebang of my wallet with me like I do at home. This has served me well, with the exception of the time I got my purse stolen at a LAN party in France (another story for another day, also I was living there at the time so the hotel safe rules didn’t apply).
I say all of this to set the scene for the Saturday morning in Dakar, Senegal, when I set off for the Ile de Gorée. The Ile de Gorée (Beer Dun in the native Wolof language) is a gorgeous island that’s an UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its history as a major site of the Atlantic slave trade (this is, per historians, possibly greatly exaggerated by a President of Senegal to bolster tourism). When I left my room early in the morning, I decided, what the hell, let me leave some of my things in the room just in case. I took the rest of my cash and my credit card and left my debit card in the hotel room safe.
Today, Gorée is a small village that caters almost entirely to tourists and with restaurants, local art sellers, and museum of the history of a slave trade. To get there, I took the earliest ferry from the very industrial port in Dakar and was on the island by 8:00 AM. The museum didn’t open until 10:00, so I hung out on the beach and wandered the still-empty island while the locals woke up, able to enjoy the narrow streets and colorful flowers before the rest of the tourists rolled in. It was peaceful, it was beautiful, it was everything I love about exploring the world. Eventually I made my way to the north end of the island, where I watched fishermen in brightly painted boats rocking in the waves, then walked up to the tallest point, where the artists sell their wares.
I found myself hanging out with a local artist who had been born in rural Senegal. We talked city versus country, US versus Senegal, and I bought so many presents for the whole family that I used all of my cash. I still wanted to go the museum, have lunch, and possibly buy more goodies, but I remembered the ATM at the bottom of the hill. So! Down I went, into the vestibule I entered, and my wallet I opened, only to find, as you may remember, that I’d left my debit card at the hotel. I don’t have a PIN for my credit card, so couldn’t withdraw cash on it. So! It’s not even 11 AM and I’ve got no money left to do anything that I wanted to do.
It being not yet 11:00AM, the restaurants were only just opening, but I figured that I could at least eat something before the next ferry back to Dakar at 11:30 (which I figure I’ll take because what else am I going to do until the following one at 3:00? I’ve already walked around literally the entire island). I asked around and found one restaurant with a card reader that worked – maybe. I made sure they knew I didn’t have cash, but they insisted that I eat before I pay. I ate what is some of the best chicken and rice I’ve ever had because they only had one dish ready that early. Afterwards, it took three people to figure out how the card reader works. It did, however, work! The best part of the day was the relief I felt when I realized that I’d bought round trip tickets before leaving Dakar, so I wasn’t, at the very least, stranded.
Once back on the mainland, I had to get back to the hotel. I had, obviously, no cash for a cab,, but I’d already planned to try to walk back to the hotel – it was only about a mile and seemed like more or less a straight shot. However, all of this was before I had international data on my phone, so I had to go on memory. I asked some nearby port officers the direction of my hotel, and they kind of gestured in a direction that I thought was wrong, so I trusted my gut and set off until I got to a major intersection. I thought I knew the way, but my gut was less sure, so I ducked into a pharmacy to ask, where I met a very nice French woman who spoke perfect English. She drew me a map that was basically a straight line (in the opposite direction that I thought, so much for my gut), and cautioned me that it was a very long walk and, when I say I enjoy the walk, looked at me like I’m an alien.
I girded my loins and set off down the crowded streets, mostly walking in the streets as the sidewalks are taken up by cars and spillover from storefronts. Within 10 minutes I recognized the restaurant around the corner from my hotel – I almost walked right past it because I’d been expecting such a trek, per the French pharmacist. I made it back to my hotel, put my debit card back in my wallet, and watched TV until I left for my 10 PM flight back home.
It has only now just occurred to me that I could have gone back up to the top of the hill and returned some of the goodies I’d bought for extra cash.
Welcome to Tragic Tuesdays, where I review books, movies, tv shows, and other media based on how tragic they are. This week: The 2001 novel Atonement by Ian McEwan. Obviously, this post will contain spoilers.
I tried to read this book for the first time in 2008, not long after the movie came out, which I saw in theaters and loved. I started the book, got about a third of the way into it, and remembered how sad I was at the end of the movie. Did I want to be even more sad at the end of the book? I did not, so I put it away until recently, when I began my search for the most tragic book in existence. (Side note: this is also why I stopped watching Game of Thrones halfway through the second season and didn’t pick back up until the show started deviating from the book.)
Atonement is the type of book that one has to be extremely talented to write, because not much happens but I still couldn’t stop reading. As the characters prepare for a dinner party in their fancy British house, Cecelia Tallis and Robbie, the caretaker’s son, flirt and fight while Cecilia’s sister Briony watches. Briony tries to force her cousins to perform a play she’s written, Mrs. Tallis lays in bed with a migraine, and big brother Leon comes home from the big city for dinner. Before dinner, Briony catches Cecelia and Robbie getting hot and heavy in the library. During dinner, the twin cousins run away, and during the search party, the elder cousin Lola is raped.
McEwan manages to stretch this one evening out into the first half of the novel by playing with perspective. We get to see events through multiple points of view, most importantly Briony’s. A preteen with a wild imagination, she thinks that everything she sees between Cecelia and Robbie is evidence that Robbie is a wild, dangerous man, when in reality he and Cecelia are locked into some pretty top level flirtation. Briony sees them in the library and assumes Robbie has attacked her sister, so when cousin Lola is raped, in her mind there’s only one possible perpetrator. And she makes sure everyone knows it. There are enough clues along the way for the reader to let us know the rapist is definitely Paul, Leon’s friend, but Briony blows past these in pursuit of what she is certain is the truth. The first half of the book has you screaming for Briony to get over herself and see what’s right in front of her, for Cecelia and Robbie to get together, for someone to pay attention to Lola’s signaling that Paul was her attacker.
Though Cecelia defends him, Robbie goes to prison, then joins the army to fight in World War Two, where he’s wounded and fights to get to Dunkirk and get on a boat home. Cecelia becomes a nurse and refuses to speak to her family for sending Robbie to prison. Cecelia and Robbie don’t forget each other, and they live their lives with the sole purpose of finding their way back into each other’s arms. Eventually Briony also becomes a nurse, seeks out her sister, and finds her living in a small apartment with Robbie, who made it home and back to Cecelia. Happily ever after, right?
WRONG. Cecelia did become a nurse, and Robbie did make it to Dunkirk, but everything after that is Briony’s fictional account that she’s written and published in an attempt to atone (get it) for her earlier sins. In reality, Robbie died at Dunkirk from an infected wound and Cecelia was killed in London by German bombs after pining for each other for years and without ever seeing each other again.
But is it tragic? Yes, I would say so! There’s a reason it took me over a decade to read the book after I’d seen the movie. Because the first act, the dinner party, is so detailed and rich with each character’s thoughts and desires, we get attached to them. Even when they are being foolish (looking at you, Briony), we sympathize. We watch two young lovers discover each other, then get ripped away from each other. And then, just as you think you might get a happy ending, the rug gets pulled out from under you. It’s fucking brutal, and honestly, I can’t recommend it. 10 out of 5 Juliets.
Welcome to Tragic Tuesdays, where I review books, movies, tv shows, and other media based on how tragic they are. This week: The 2006 movie Tristan + Isolde starring James Franco and Sophia Myles. Obviously, this post will contain spoilers.
It’s extremely embarrassing how much I like this movie, but I’m going to talk about it anyway. I saw this movie in theaters when I was a freshman in college, back when I was a full sucker for impossible romances. I still love them, but as a full adult, I have a much healthier perspective on them. For example, I now understand the Phantom in the Phantom of the Opera was a bad guy. It took me longer than it should have to figure that one out.
The movie follows a Hollywood-ized version of Tristan and Isolde, of the many stories in the Arthurian legend family. Tristan is an orphan taken in by Lord Marke, ruler of part of the still fragmented Britain. He is wounded during battle with the Irish and his family, thinking him dead, put his body in a boat and send it to sea. He lands in Ireland, where Isolde finds him and saves him. The only hitch is that Isolde is daughter of King Donachadh, who would love nothing more than to take over Britain and generally murder everyone who stands in his way. Tristan and Isolde fall in love, but she doesn’t tell him her real identity. Eventually Tristan must go back to Britain, where he receives a hero’s welcome, but he returns to Ireland to participate in a tournament that Donachadh has set up to create infighting among the British lords – the winner will get to marry Isolde (gross). Tristan participates on behalf of Marke, wins, and then realizes that he has won his true love as a bride for his adopted father (yikes).
Isolde goes to Britain to marry Marke and begins an affair with Tristan. The sticking point is that Marke is genuinely a good guy and both Tristan and Isolde love him and feel terrible about betraying him. There’s a lot of tears, a lot of sneaking around, a lot of passionate make outs in corners of the castle. Eventually Marke’s nephew Melot, resentful because he feels he should be Marke’s right hand man, begins to suspect the affair. He tells another lord, who tells Donachadh, who manipulates the situation to his advantage and uses his daughter’s affair as an excuse to attack the Britons, which is what he wanted all along (seriously, this guy is not a good dad). Marke tells the Tristan and Isolde that if they love each other so much, they can go be together elsewhere.
Melot realizes that he’s screwed everyone over and brings Tristan back to help them fight the Irish. With Tristan’s strength, Marke’s army wins, but Tristan must sacrifice himself for the victory. He dies, Isolde gets to him to say goodbye, and Gavin Degraw plays over the end credits. Eighteen year old Marina cries.
This movie is one of the better mid-2000 classic lit retellings because it doesn’t try to do anything other than tell a good, straightforward story. Seriously, don’t even get me, an OG Keira Knightly stan, started on 2004’s King Arthur. We get James Franco back when he was a brooding love interest, not a pretentious sexual predator. We get Sophia Myles, who to be honest I haven’t seen in anything since, but she’s great as a frustrated woman in a time where she could literally be auctioned off for marriage. We get Rufus Sewell, who I absolutely love for some reason, as the soft spoken Lord Marke, overcome with sadness and anger that his son and wife have betrayed him. And we even get baby Henry Cavill as the pouty, pissed off Melot!
But is it tragic? Yes! This movie is silly, but it knows how to get you right in the gut. You know exactly where it’s going, but you’re still heartbroken when it gets there – familial disappointment, courageous sacrifice, doomed and tortured love, what else could you want. I recently rewatched it and it absolutely holds up. The leads are believable as passionate, impossible lovers against the backdrop of wet, grey England. Four out of five Juliets.