Today I went to see Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett (and the wonderful Bill Nighy) in Notes On A Scandal. (Warning: that link probably opens on a page that will start audio pouring out of your speakers. I wish web browsers had a “mute” button – some blasted advert started blaring as I was trying to Skype with my mother yesterday.) Judi Dench’s character is a delightfully ghastly piece of work, and (unlike some reviewers) I thought Blanchett’s fey ambivalence worked out well.
However the thing that struck me was the gasp.
A few weeks ago I went to see Pan’s Labyrinth with Jon and Laura. (You may remember that an earlier attempt had been fortuitously thwarted.) One of the most striking things about this account of fascist Spain in the 1940s was the juxtaposition of delicate, whimsical fantasy and callous brutality. At one point, the fascist officer performed a sudden and unexpected act of pure violence that was so shocking that the entire audience gasped in horrified disbelief. And in retrospect, it seemed an entirely appropriate reaction.
Today there was another collective gasp from most of the audience, when a 15-year old school boy said that he’d been “dreaming about your hot, sweet c*** all morning.â€. [Asterisked to avoid nanny-filters.] The thing that struck me was that this was a peculiarly American reaction; in England, where the film is set, George Carlin’s seven words are so unexceptional that they are routinely printed in newspapers (without asterisks). Yet here in Seattle the “c” word produced the same reaction as a brutal murder. How strange….
Anyway, back to the film. It’s quite good, especially Judi Dench’s performance, and the school scenes are particularly effective. It doesn’t have the magic of, say, Venus or The History Boys, but it’s still well worth seeing. Psychologists and teachers may want to give it a miss, though: it might be something of a busman’s holiday for them.