tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post1770191393092226580..comments2024-03-19T21:14:01.007-07:00Comments on The Compass Rose: Harold Pinter's THE SERVANT [1963]Curtis Favillehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-9687433453696134372009-03-29T17:23:00.000-07:002009-03-29T17:23:00.000-07:00I loved a movie that he scripted titled Turtle Dia...I loved a movie that he scripted titled Turtle Diary. The original novella is by Russell Hoban, an American who has spent most of his career living in London. <BR/><BR/>You probably have seen it: it's two loners in London who decide to set free two green sea turtles from the London zoo in which they have been kept for thirty years (green sea turtles can live hundreds of years).<BR/><BR/>I mostly dislike British people (they seem arrogant and loud, and I hate their accent), but in this instance they are quiet introverts with actual minds, and they come off well. <BR/><BR/>The zookeeper conspires with them to get the turtles out, and so the suspense is a little lost, as there's nothing really at stake, as no one seems to care that the green sea turtles are the property of the London zoo. I think it would be better if there was some kind of chase scene with bobbies blowing whistles and doing a Keystone Kops kind of finale, but the film just pokes along, with a quiet loveliness.<BR/><BR/>The idea is that the turtles deserve to be free as they are legitimate legal entities being kept improperly by the state for the amusement of its People. <BR/><BR/>But once they've freed the turtles, the two (a man and a woman) can now move on to have sexual relationships (the woman sleeps with the zookeeper) and the man sleeps with a woman who works at his bookshop alongside him. It's like some kind of karmic reward for being eco-friendly.<BR/><BR/>It was a quietly optimistic film. I loved it when it first came out (mid-70s?) and recently watched it again. The notion of animal rights in it is very contemporary, so I'm not surprised Pinter would have been on the left in every other regard. I ws once very much on that side, but I now see the whole thing as a terrible fraud. I think zoos and aquariums do have the right to keep animals, and that the state has the right to keep them. <BR/><BR/>You would like this movie if you got a chance to see it, I think. The lines in it are so clear. The Hoban original is very well-done, too.<BR/><BR/>Ultimately, the theme is a mess: animal rights for green sea turtles is a metaphor of some kind for finding one's own way -- it's perhaps two themes on top of one another, but they're not necessarily at odds. they're just moving in two different ways, connected by the notion of freedom, which seems very important, and is, at least in this film, within easy reach of everyone.Kirby Olsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05952289700191142943noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-91672001507581243012009-03-29T17:09:00.000-07:002009-03-29T17:09:00.000-07:00just r e a d the plays. make movies in your (own) ...just r e a d the plays.<BR/> make movies in your (own) mind of his writings/plays<BR/><BR/> some terrific dialogues define the characters.... precisely<BR/><BR/>try The Caretaker<BR/><BR/><BR/>after all<BR/><BR/>Pinter "comes out of" The Theatre of the Absurd<BR/><BR/>the rest is opinion and politics...<BR/><BR/><BR/>The Caretaker... Mick (who is intensely concerned with him self) reveals:<BR/><BR/>THAT'S WHAT I WANT!<BR/> ((He hurls the Buddha [Aston's] against the gas stove. It breaks.<BR/>(To himself, slowly, broodingly.)) Anyone would think this house was all I got to worry about. I got plenty of other things I can worry about. I've got plenty of other interests. I've got my own business...Ed Bakerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11285310130024785775noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-44055677948130922932009-03-29T15:54:00.000-07:002009-03-29T15:54:00.000-07:00Kirk:Perhaps my remark about Pinter's anti-war sta...Kirk:<BR/><BR/>Perhaps my remark about Pinter's anti-war stance is misplaced. <BR/><BR/>Certainly, any artist as ambitious and talented as Pinter is, in effect, if not overtly, optimistic about human agency--else why take the trouble to examine it and portray it with such care?<BR/><BR/>On the other hand, if you really believe people are, on the whole, not admirable, and probably not ethical, most of the time, then you must acknowledge their behavior as being, to a considerable degree, predictably bad. <BR/><BR/>I agreed with Pinter whole-heartedly in his criticism of Bush and Blair and the whole apparatus of unprovoked, preemptive, presumptuous warmongering.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-13334342561620998472009-03-29T15:16:00.000-07:002009-03-29T15:16:00.000-07:00The oddity remarked in the last paragraph appears ...The oddity remarked in the last paragraph appears less contradictory if you drop the unsupported conclusion that Pinter was "pessimistic about human relations." If The Servant is obviously about anything, it's about class relations, which are not necessarily universal or generalizable to all human social relations. (Although, of course, comparable vicissitudes may be apparent in any society dominated by money and ingrained power structures.) As a critic of contemporary life, Pinter may well have judged the underlying viciousness of the British class system and the overt viciousness of American foreign policy through the same lens.<BR/><BR/>As for "better works," take a look at Pinter's prose writing on cricket, a game that he loved from childhood on. His portraits of players he knew and admired are funny and filled with warmth and affection. In the end, "It's just not cricket" may have been his judgment regarding just about everything else.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12714098498354846094noreply@blogger.com