CELTIC LOVE STORY 2006 REDUX

With all the crap going on here and all the doom an' gloom around, a man would tend to forget there's still plenty of other, more pleasant things around to grab your attention. Like - if you're susceptible to knight stories peppered with some history - the movie adaptation of the old Celtic legend of Tristan and Isolde.



Which is what Outlaw and the wife did last weekend, a bit unplanned since looking for Mission:Impossible III and finding all dvd copies rented already. So we picked "Tristan & Isolde" by Kevin Reynolds, and never regretted it. It's not a tearjerker like Titanic, and its combat scenes are a far cry from Troy. It doesn't have the historical accuracy of Barry Lyndon, nor will it glue you to your seat the way Lord Of The Rings does. But almost as soon as we flicked off the dvd player, our appreciation started to grow.

The film is a loose adaptation of an old Celtic legend of which the origins can be traced back to either Irish or Welsh folk tales, and of which the story proliferated practically all across Europe, whence the multitude of versions. One of the best medieval authors to put the legend in crafty prose was the German poet Gottfried von Strassburg (died c. 1210). His Tristan is considered - together with Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and the Nibelungenlied - as emblematic cornerstones of the great romantic narratives of the German Middle Ages.

The film's storyline follows the version whereby Tristan (James Franco) is a young Cornish knight (Cornish, from Cornwall, a region in the southwest of England) adopted by King Marke (Rufus Sewell) after a battle with the Irish invaders. The timeframe Tristan and Isolde takes us back to is (very) early medieval, say around 600 AD. The Roman Empire perished 200 years earlier and unity is lost among the various English tribes, which weakens them so that they cannot withstand repeated Irish invasions. In the course of a battle in which Tristan successfully repels an Irish raid and kills the enemy commander Morold, principal warlord of the Irish King Donnchadh (David Patrick O'Hara), Tristan himself is mortally wounded. According to Cornish custom his body is posed for dead on a boat and delivered to the sea. However, the currents take the boat across the Irish Sea and it is King Donnchadh's daughter, Isolde (Sophia Myles) who discovers it and its precious cargo, still clinging to life by a thread. Isolde then carefully nurses Tristan back to life in a hidden alcove on the seashore with the silent knowledge of her servant maid Brangnae (Bronagh Gallagher). Because she doesn't want to reveal her identity to Tristan, nominally still an enemy warrior, upon asked her name she gives that one of her servant. By the time Tristan has regained his strenght again, the two have totally fallen in love, but then the boat's wreck is discovered by Donnchadh's men who now suspect an English knight is around. Sick with fear for her father's reaction, Isolde, who was promised as wife to Morold, urges Tristan to regain the sea and sail back to England, and thus happens.

The consternation in King Marke's camp upon seeing their hero returned from the dead quickly makes place for joy, but the young knight can't forget his Irish heartthrob. One day, King Marke receives a rather incongruous - given the state of war with Ireland - invitation from King Donnchadh for a tournament to be held at Donnchadh's residence, supposedly to herald a new era of cooperation. The price will be Donnchadh's daughter, Princess Isolde. Tristan, not knowing Isolde is actually his savior, volunteers to be King Marke's champion, who is a widower and to whom he feels indebted for having been adopted as an orphan. As could be expected, Tristan wins this tournament, and only then recognizes that he has won his lover for his Lord. Back in England, after King Marke's marriage to Isolde, the two try at first to suppress their emotions but soon see each other again secretly. Word of their affair spreads, and eventually reaches Donnchadh through Wictred, a renegade English knight who envies Markes' kingly rule. The two craft a plan whereby during a visit of the Irish Court to Marke, the latter will be publicly humiliated through disclosure of Tristan and Isolde's affair, and Donnchadh reckons that then is the time to dispose of a weakened Marke and replace him with the more trustworthy Wictred.

Thus happens. Marke, upon finding out he has been cheated on throws the two lovers in jail but it's too late: a number of his men, judging him a fool, have changed allegiance and Donnchadh's troops overrun Marke's stronghold. At the last moment Marke learns of the circumstances under which his first knight met his young wife, and forgives them. Even though Tristan and Isolde are set free and allowed to go wherever they wish, Tristan, not wanting to be remembered as a man who brought down a kingdom through a love affair, throws his weight into battle and narrowly tips the balance by killing Wictred. Although he himself is mortally wounded, the rest of Marke's men take courage and finally beat the Irish.

From then on Marke will oversee the ascent of a strong and unified English kingdom, undisturbed by Irish invasions. His young wife however, beside herself with sorrow over Tristan's death, fades away. So sorry, there's no happy end.

By and large I found Tristan & Isolde quite entertaining. It was also the third movie I saw with Kevin Reynolds as director, after Fandango (1985) and The Beast (1988), and I'd say that Reynolds lacks just that little bit that would make him a real powerplayer among directors. It's not that his productivity is low; Kubrick's was lower. But there seems to be lacking some drive. Either he chooses mostly mediocre scripts, e.g. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), or he isn't a tyrant enough on the set. Possibly a bit too much intimacy too (especially in Fandango). And then there's the fact Reynolds seems to have trouble finding budgets with clout to finance his films - you can see that Tristan & Isolde is really, really low budget. Not surprisingly perhaps, since the only time he really did oversee a huge project, Waterworld (1995), it flopped terribly. That said, Tristan... gets the green light from yours truly, not in the least because of the fine acting. Both James Franco (who was also in both Spidermans) and Sophia Myles (Underworld) glow in their roles - watch out for those two - and Rufus Sewell too plays a very plausible King Marke. The producer of Tristan and Isolde is Ridley Scott (Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven).

To dwell a little longer on Reynolds' curriculum, the one movie that really, really left a lasting impression on me was The Beast (1988), which came out here in Europe as The Beast of War. It tells the story of a Soviet tank crew who, after having destroyed an Afghan village in 1981, get lost in a dead-end valley and are chased by mujahideen. Not surprisingly, Reynolds too calls The Beast his best film. I saw it first in 1989 IIRC at the International Film Festival of Ghent, and back then it was really trendsetting as far as combat scenes go, if you discount Platoon (Platoon was very good for combat scenes and general atmosphere, but I absolutely disliked the pathetical way Willem Dafoe went down as well as the PC message that "the enemy was inside us"). Actually, I'm surprised that The Beast received comparatively little praise since all of it - crew, director, story, special effects - were top notch. After the performance, I walked into the lobby of Decascoop, Gents main movie theatre, and bumped into Mr. Reynolds, a guy from Decascoop and George Dzundza, who plays the bad sergeant Daskal, the tank commander. Dzundza, who I believe is from Georgian origin (that's Georgia in the Caucasus, not in the Bible Belt) is a chap who also played in Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter. I was able to exchange a few words with Mr. Dzundza about the tank which is more or less a star too in the movie, the way the F-14 Tomcat was a star in Top Gun. As a tank geek, I don't like it when directors fail to come up with "correct" tanks in depicting historical battles, think Patton tanks for Tigers in movies about the Ardennes Offensive. But the T-55 in The Beast was goddam real. I asked Mr. Dzundza how on earth they had managed to get a genuine Russian tank at their disposal (remember, it was still the Cold War) and it turned out it was a Syrian army tank captured by the IDF. For the tank nutters among you, see the poster to the left. The gap between the first and second wheel identifies it as a T-55, not a T-62. I read somewhere that Russian tank designers put in that space to allow for easily making a tank with a blasted track roadborne again in case spare tracks were missing. The idea was that the crew would simply omit "the missing links" and drape the remaining track along the shorter wheelbase.

OK, enough about adultery in the Middle Ages and Soviet Cold War era tanks.



Sorry, I can't help it. Like The Beast, The Beauty also seems to have made a lasting impression on me. Sophia Myles, you are a sight for sore eyes.


MFBB.

P.S.: it's useless to try to warn Mrs. Outlaw. She's computerphobic and doesn't even want an email account.

P.S.S.: for the ladies among you, sorry, but as long as there are no female staffers here at DowneastBlog (Kerry where are youuuuuuuu????), don't count on hulk pics anytime soon.

THE POLICE CARS HAVE TO BE WITHDRAWN IMMEDIATELY!!!

For one year and a half it's been car torching. Since January 2005, the total number of cars put on fire in France, by French youths, is about 62,000 (some 30,000 in 2005, another 32,000 this year alone).

Seems like it's beginning to bore them.

During the night of Wednesday October 25 to Thursday October 26, three buses were set on fire, and had it not been for the alertness of one bus driver who extinghuished the fire on his bus himself, there would have been four.

Welcome to France 2006.

L'incident le plus grave s'est déroulé vers 01H00 du matin, à la limite de Bagnolet et Montreuil, en Seine-Saint-Denis. A l'arrêt Delpêche sur la ligne 122 de la RATP, un groupe d'une dizaine d'assaillants cagoulés a pris d'assaut un véhicule.
Au moins cinq d'entre eux, selon un porte-parole de la Régie, portaient des armes de poing. Selon une source policière, un agresseur a placé son arme sur la tempe du chauffeur pour lui ordonner de quitter son siège.

"Ils ont ensuite dérobé le bus, qu'ils ont conduit sur une courte distance, puis y ont mis le feu", a ajouté le porte-parole de la RATP. Les passagers et le chauffeur, très choqués, n'ont pas été blessés. Selon la même source policière, le bus détourné a "fait un gymkhana" sur plusieurs centaines de mètres, a brisé une barrière puis s'est immobilisé sur le square Lénine, près de la cité de la Noue à Montreuil où il a été incendié. Jeudi matin, les chauffeurs de la ligne 122 se sont mis en grève.

Plus tôt dans la soirée, un autre bus de la RATP avait aussi été pris pour cible non loin de là, à Nanterre, également par plusieurs personnes cagoulées, les passagers ayant eu juste le temps de descendre. Les agresseurs ne portaient pas d'armes visibles et personne n'a été blessé. Le véhicule a entièrement brûlé. Aucune arrestation n'a eu lieu, la police judiciaire des Hauts-de-Seine a été saisie.
A Athis-Mons, une autre banlieue au sud de Paris, un autre bus a été attaqué par trois jeunes gens au visage à demi-dissimulé par des capuches. Ils ont ordonné aux passagers de descendre et ont jeté un cocktail-molotov à l'intérieur. Après leur fuite, le chauffeur a réussi à étouffer les flammes, a indiqué la police.

Un autre bus a été la proie des flammes mercredi soir: aux Minguettes à Vénissieux, un véhicule appartenant à une compagnie privée a entièrement brûlé alors qu'il était stationné, vide, dans une rue.

In short: the worst incident involved ten hooded youths of whom at least 5 had revolvers, who forced a bus on the outskirts of Bagnolet and Montreuil, in the Seine-Saint-Denis Department, to stop. One gunman put a revolver to the driver's temple and ordered him to get off the driver's seat. The thugs then drove the bus themselves over a short stretch, rammed several obstacles in the street and came to a halt on, ironically enough, the Square Lénine (yes indeed, in Paris there are still squares named after a communist mass murderer). Thereupon the bus was torched. It is unclear when the shocked passengers and bus driver got off, but apparently they were still on it during the joyride.

In another incident earlier that evening, in Nanterre, another bus was made to stop by hooded "French youths" and immediately set on fire, whereby the passengers barely had the time to get out.

In Athis-Mons yet another bus was stopped by masked individuals who ordered the people off and then threw a molotovcocktail in the bus' interior. However, they very quickly left and the driver had the sang-froid to extinguish the flames himself. Give that man a cigar.

Finally, in Vénissieux, a bus belonging to a private company, standing empty in some alley, was torched.

Last night, it was a similar story:

BOBIGNY (AP) - Deux autobus ont été incendiés vendredi soir en Seine-Saint-Denis, au Blanc-Mesnil. La circulation des bus a été suspendue dans une large portion du département et devrait reprendre au plus tôt samedi matin, selon la RATP à Bobigny.

En fin d'après-midi vers 18h30, au niveau de la gare SNCF du Blanc-Mesnil, deux personnes encagoulées, dont l'une aurait eu une arme de poing selon des témoins, sont montées à bord d'un bus qui transportait une quinzaine de personnes, a-t-on appris de source policière. Ils ont fait descendre les passagers et le chauffeur avant de prendre le volant du bus et de lui faire percuter une rembarde. Ils ont ensuite mis le feu en répandant de l'essence, précisait-on de même source. Un deuxième autobus a été incendié au Blanc-Mesnil, a-t-on constaté sur place.

So, two hooded French youths of whom one had a revolver forced 15 people off a bus in Blanc-Mesnil, that's in the same Seine-Saint-Denis area, and torched it. A second one was torched in the vicinity, but on that incident no details are available.

The French haven't forgotten their old ways. No Pasaran! reports that "one of the socialist candidates for the French Presidential elections, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (nicknamed "DSK") has called for the removal of all riot police transport vehicles from the suburbs as a sort of peace offering in the hopes of calming things down during this One Year Anniversary of the 2005 riots. He referred to certain suburbs as "militarily occupied areas" and said that French youths who mill about aimlessly in these neighborhoods should not be treated as if they were on "Indian reservations".

PARIS (AP) - S'adressant "avec gravité" au ministre de l'Intérieur Nicolas Sarkozy, Dominique Strauss-Kahn a exigé jeudi soir le retrait des "cars de police des cités", un "signe" nécessaire selon lui si "on veut retrouver le calme dans les jours qui viennent" et "si on ne veut pas que l'anniversaire" de la crise des banlieues "soit un drame". "Il faut retirer maintenant les cars de police des cités. Ce ne sont pas des terrains conquis militairement et qu'il faut occuper, ce sont des villes où il y a nos jeunes, ce sont des villes où nous sommes tous!", a-t-il lancé.

I do agree to some extent with Mr. Strauss-Kahn though. In my humble opinion, the police cars should indeed be withdrawn from the banlieues immediately.

And replaced with these ones:




STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!
STOP MUSLIM IMMIGRATION TO WESTERN COUNTRIES!


MFBB