Sweeney Todd

Snow again this morning. I was pleased to have done the walks yesterday, in only half an hour or so, and afraid I'd need to get to them again. They are barely dusted, it seems, with anything new.

Went to the movies last night during the snowstorm. Drove on the highways to Grand Blanc to catch "Sweeney Todd" at the Trillium. I was anxious to see what Tim Burton's vision would reveal, and nervous, frankly, that it would be too gory for me to take well.

The opening credits oozed with blood, but it was surreal, too red, too viscous, drops too perfectly formed and too shiny. This was a relief as it indicated that the throat slittings, too, might be too perfect, to controlled, and thus, for me, bearable.

The darkness of everything was wonderful. The singing better than I imagined. The cuts, removing the "presentational" theatricality and replacing it with a more lyrical narrative, and richer personal relationships, worked very well. It was tighter, less comical, more gruesome, scarier.

I love Johnny Depp (did I actually need to say that?), and I think he was about as perfect as one could get for this film. A couple of singing quirks annoyed me, but that is par for the course. But he looked a mixture of intentionality mixed with genuine surprise as events transpired.

Helena Bonham Carter was spectacular, and I had had a hard time imagining her as Mrs. Lovett. Younger than I'd imagined, but then again, people then didn't live as long as we do. Watching her deal with insects and rodents on her pastry table was distasteful, upsetting and funny.

The lovers were as lovers are, the villains villainous. The story is repugnant, of course, but this one was told well. And yes, I did have trouble sleeping last night.

I'm reading the final chapters of a novel I love, Halldór Laxness's Independent People. (I'm told a better translation of "independent" is "free-standing" or "lone-standing.") Here is a quotation about morning--an early summer morning, true, when the sun rises at 3--that is rather pivotal:

"The sun was shining, the shadows cast by the croft long as those of some mighty palace. No part of night or day wears such a beauty as the time f the sun's rising, for then there is quiet, loveliness, and splendor over everything. And now over everything there was quiet, loveliness and splendor.

"The song of the birds was sweet and happy. The mirror-like lake and the smoothly flowing river gleaned and sparkled with a silvery, entrancing radiance. The Blue Fells lay gazing in rapture up at their heaven, as if they had nothing in common with this world. They had nothing in common with this world. And in the unsubstantiality of its serene beauty and its peaceful dignity the valley, too, seemed to have nothing in common with this world. There are times when the world seems to have nothing in common with the world, times when one can no more understand oneself than if one have been immortal.

"No one was awake, or anything like awake, on the croft, and yet the lad had never known such a day. He sat down in the grass, with his back to the garden wall, and began thinking. He began thinking of America, the glorious land across the ocean, the America in which he could have been anything he chose. Had he lost it for good and all, then? Oh well, it mattered little. Love is better; love is more glorious than America. Love is the one true America. 

"Could it be that she loved him? Yes, there was nothing half so true. There is nothing half so unlike itself as the world, the world is incredible. True, she had ridden away and left him, but she had been out on one of the famous Rauthsmyri thoroughbreds, and possibly it had wanted to get home. She had never looked around, never slackened her sped. but in spite of this seeming indifference, he was convinced, on this incomparable morning, that at some future date, say, when he had become the freeholder of Summerhouses, he would bring her back home as his wife. Since it had begun in such a fashion, how could it end otherwise? 

"What he had found was happiness, though she had ridden away and left him behind--and again and again he excused her on the ground that she had not been able to manage her horse. He was determined to spend his American money on a good horse, a first-class thoroughbred, so that in future he would be able to side side by side with his sweetheart. 

"Thus he lay stretched out in the grass of his native croft, looking up into the sky, into the blue, comparing he love he had won with the America he had lost. Leifur the Lucky had also lost America, Yes, love was better--and thus over and over again. He saw her still in his mind's eye as she swept over the undulating heath, flitting thought the lucid night like an airy vision, her golden locks streaming in the wind, her coat flapping against the horse's rump. And he saw himself following her still, from crest to crest--till she was lost in the blue. And he himself was lost in the blue.

"He slept."

Not an early morning, today, nor a warm one. Snow abounds, and my own sleepiness.

Nevertheless . . . good morning!