Random thoughts on Stardust

But first… happy twentieth birthday to Debra, my little – uh, younger sister! She is in Copenhagen on exchange right now, but I think everybody who reads this and knows her should send her a “happy birthday” email right away. And make sure to do as our parents did and blow her one mention of friends offering to buy her shots wildly out of proportion. (Sample appropriate email: “Happy birthday! Are you drunk yet?”)

Anyway, my cousin, Emily, and I saw Stardust, based on the graphic novel and later novel-novel written by Neil Gaiman. Go see it. Yes, you. What’s that? You like hard-hitting documentaries, not fiction films? Too bad. Come on, how can you not like a story with a subplot involving seven wackjob brothers who all try to kill each other and then bum around together in the afterlife when they succeed?

(I really wasn’t kidding when I said my thoughts were random. Click on this link if you dare…)

Septimus, the youngest of said brothers, is definitely bamf(!!!) and may or may not deserve a place in my pantheon of favourite characters. ‘Cause the best characters are the ones who really are evil but still have to help the side of good by the end of the story. (Sidenote: if you don’t know what “bamf” means, check out Urban Dictionary . It’s what unhip people like me do when we come across an expression we don’t understand on the Intarweb. Then we waste hours using the “random entry” link and find expressions like BAMF to use improperly in nerdy blog entries. Rofl lmao lolz! You can tell I’m lame because I capitalize netspeak when it comes at the beginning of a sentence.)

I’d read the novel, but I couldn’t remember anything except for the basic hook and the fact that it had a sex scene at the beginning that shocked my then-preteen sensibilities. Still, there were points in the movie where a little voice in my brain would whisper spoilers like, “That character is related to the other character in such-and-such a way! Those two end up together! That person dies!” By the end, I was in such awe of the film that I was completely mystified as to why I couldn’t remember anything about the book. So, the next day, I went to Smithbooks and bought it. And I was like, oh yeah.

This happened to me with Diana Wynne Jones’s A Tale of Time City, too. When I remember the premise of a book I’ve read but not the ending, it’s usually because the latter didn’t work for me in some way. The really satisfying scene at the end of the movie where everything comes together doesn’t happen in the book. Because the book is more about evoking a sense of the world of Faerie, more about poetic ambiguities and the mysterious workings of life that, for whatever reason, don’t play very well on the screen. Or, apparently, in my memory.

I always like the beginnings of Neil Gaiman’s stories, but, often, at the end, I’m left with a sense that I Just Didn’t Get It. A friend insightfully compared this to the feeling you get when you read poetry you “know” is good but can’t for the life of you figure out what it means. On the other hand, I do love his work. (And his blog, for that matter – always with the fun links! (Him, I mean, not me)) And, when one of his stories works for me, it REALLY works for me. You can ask my housemates about my dazed grinning fugue that lasted for hours after I read “A Study in Emerald”. (Them: “So, for dinner, does anyone want to – Sarah? Sarah!” Me: “Huh?” Them: “Are you still thinking about that story?” Me: “… maybe.”) And Anansi Boys. And Coraline.

But back to Stardust. Robert De Niro’s character, the effeminate sky-pirate Captain Shakespeare, left me with mixed reactions. The first time he appeared onscreen, I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to laugh or not. It was like – he was supposed to be a rounded, interesting, realistic person, but he was giving off all the Hollywood cues for “I am a gay stereotype! But my character is archetypically masculine, and the actor who plays me is considered macho! The contrast is hilarious!” But then, later, in the scene where (SPOILER, BUT KIND OF OBVIOUS ONE WHEN YOU’RE WATCHING THE MOVIE) the ship is attacked by Bad Guys, there’s a much more interesting vibe. The typical sitcom trope of someone-is-about-to-be-caught-in-a-lie is mixed with the action trope of an-innocent-victim-is-about-to-be-attacked, and, somehow, out of that, a sympathetic and exquisitely human character emerges. Yay Offenbach!

There was only one thing that really bugged me about the movie. Evil mages of both sexes are happy to lust after immortality, but how come it’s only ever the sorceresses and witches who want to live forever AND hold down a job at Hooters? I mean, seriously, Lord Voldemort doesn’t care whether he’ll be winning The Daily Prophet’s Hottest Bachelor award in the years to come, as long as he won’t be rotting in the ground. But what about Snow White’s stepmother and the “fairest of them all”? And the witches in Hocus Pocus. And, hello, all those traditional myths of faerie in which some man meets up with a nubile young woman, succumbs to his decidedly un-politically-correct urges, and then finds out A Sucker Is Him, because that young, nubile female is actually an old, decrepit crone*! Ha! Woman are mysterious and flighty, and you can’t trust them! Appearances are deceiving**!

As we came out of the theatre, Emily and I were already waiting for the DVD to come out. And, when we passed an ad for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, even the most well-rounded of the Harry Potter characters felt flat and half-human compared to even the minor Stardust characters. When I watch or read Harry Potter, I find myself thinking, “Yeah, I know people like Harry/Hermione/Snape/Dumbledore”. But, when I watched Stardust, I thought, “I know absolutely nobody like these characters. But I can imagine meeting them in real life.”

And, on that note…

bamfdeb.jpg

Debra is so bamf, she doesn’t need to blow out her birthday candles. They pass out from FEAR.

* Admittedly, sometimes it works the other way – thanks, Chaucer.

** Also, to be fair, in the novel Stardust, the emphasis is not at all on “omgbeautyandsexappeal!!!!eleventyone!!!” but rather on aging and experiences of youth and such.

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