Rhapsodies

For this weeks selection I sort of went with dreams or to put it more closely films about personal fantasies… or at least that was the best explanation I can give at the moment for why I thought these two films would go together.

The first on my lis,t Dreamchild, was a film that as a Muppet fan I’d been wanting to see for a whole long time. It tells the story of an 80 year old Alice Hargreaves ne Liddell , the “real” Alice in Wonderland, who has been invited to New York to accept an honorary degree in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carrol.

Alice is the last surviving member of her family and has accepted her mortality as this sinks in to her she begins to remember the events of her complicated relationship with Reverend Dodgson played with wonderfully by Ian Holm as well as starting to relive events of the book with all of the characters wonderfully recreated by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. This is a poignant film about regret, mortality and the fantasy of memory.

For me the best part is how the Mock Turtle sequence is used to frame our story with the Mock Turtle becoming a stand in for Dodgson who, as the Gryphon says, “Has no sorrow, it’s just his fancy”.

The next film on my list was Heavenly Creatures by Peter Jackson. This film tells the story about the lead up to the 1954 Parker–Hulme murder case in Christchurch, New Zealand. Primarily dealing with the friendship between Pauline Parker, played by Melanie Lynskey, and Juliet Hulme played by Kate Winslet in her first role. The two girls meet at school and become fast friends together they start to create an elaborate fantasy world that is far more interesting than the real life in New Zealand. It’s only a matter of time before this world is better than the real thing and becomes tainted by sex, a bond between the two girls that goes far more that mere friendship and fear of being separated eventually leads to their brutal murder of Pauline’s mother.

I’m not sure what to make of this film it certainly is beautiful, written and performed and up to Jackson’s usual level of craft but ultimately I’m afraid I was not the target audience and didn’t really get into it.