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In This Issue

 

If you are anything like as old as me you had better not go to a film called The Reader, as it will make you question everything you know. That is what the advertisement says, in big bold letters, and I think it is meant to be an inducement. I take it as a warning. It seems likely that a lot of people who go to it will never be seen again as they will come out questioning  everything they know, such as which bus to take home, or where they left their car, or where it is that they live. At my age it is already hard enough to
keep a grip on such essentials without having them thrown into doubt by a
stupid film.

I can also tell you that this film contains strong sex. While the advertisement is keen to tell you, in large type, about the mental confusion that it may bring on, the bit about strong sex is hidden in a murky, ill-printed little box which you can only make out under a bright light with a magnifying glass. This is clearly something about which they are very properly ashamed, but if so, why didn’t they just make the film with weak sex  instead? I am not at all sure how you judge the strength of sex and do not wish to speculate, as this column always strives to keep clear of impropriety, but I will just say that a murky box saying ‘contains weak sex’ would not put me off half as much as one of the strong-sex variety.

While I am on the subject of films I should also warn you not to see one
called Gonzo. The advertisement, with the same combination of murky box
and bold type, tells you that it contains strong language, hard drug use, nudity, a suicide theme and will make you cry with laughter, but I bet it doesn’t. You only have to be fifteen to see it, so I suppose that it is from watching such things that so many teenagers use foul language and hard drugs and commit suicide, which might make you cry, but probably not with laughter.

In issuing you these warnings I must also warn you that my judgement is, I
think, pretty reliable provided, as in this case, I have not seen the films in question. In respect of things I have actually seen I seem to go horribly wrong. Although the TV Little Dorrit was roundly damned by the Oldie editor, scoffed at by Valerie Grove and complained about in Readers Write, I thought it was excellent, in which I was obviously mistaken.

There were a few anachronisms, but I did not detect any of the hideous errors into which the BBC commonly falls, such as making soldiers turn to the left about or salute without a hat. I thought that Mr Dorrit was brilliant, Pancks and many other minor characters superb, and Little Dorrit lovely, so what more could I want? My only disappointment was in Mr Merdle, and that was peculiar to me. In the book he is said frequently to grasp his wrists in a way which Dickens calls ‘taking himself into custody’. I have tried grasping my own wrists to produce this effect but I have not quite got the hang of it, so I hoped to have it clarified in the fi lm, which it wasn’t.

Having warned you that if I praise a film I am generally wrong, I will tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed a film called A Bunch of Amateurs, so it was probably rotten. It had no sex, weak or otherwise, and only one obscenity, which was repeated five times in quick succession. As the Queen was there I thought this a bit off, but unless Her Majesty never watches television she must be hardened to such stuff by now. Just how we came to see a film at the same time as the Queen is too long a story, and we did not see her in person as she was upstairs with the superior people while we were downstairs with the inferior ones. We could see her on a big screen though, and I very much admired the way she deals with standup comedians. When such a person is presented to her she touches his hand for a couple of seconds and moves swiftly on, so making sure that he has no chance to loose off any stand-up jokes in her direction. I have recently been exposed to some stand-up comedians, and from what I saw the very best thing any standup comedian can do is to sit down, so Her Majesty had my sympathy.