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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Stephen Poliakoff

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yawn - thing's buddy

13:51 / 18.01.06

fair nuff.

Personally, (as is pretty fuckin obvious by now!) I didn't think the text allowed Lizzie's character that space.

16:32 / 18.01.06

Yup!

22:00 / 18.01.06

I think the point I'm trying to make here - but was distracted - is that despite poly telling us that there was no sexual tension between the two, and on face value that seems to be correct, I just didn't buy it.

But yawnnui, you're talking about a work of fiction as if it's real life. Are you really saying, that despite the writer/director telling us a thing about his characters, you don't think it's true? You think he's mistaken?

Your analysis of why we might not see much of Lizzie's home life, her motivation for selling a story to the papers, the subtext of the email thing, her denials that she found Paul attractive, his reasons for inviting her into the pool etc etc might make sense, but only if we know that she is in love with him. Otherwise you're just begging the question; 'We know she is in love with him because she goes to the papers because she's in love with him.'

Do you see what I mean?

As you say yourself:
Finally, boboss, your musings regarding how you could imagine the play being played out in another way such that the hubby proves to be the centre of Lizzie’s life [or equally, that Lizzie proves to be in love with Paul] is irrelevant because it didn’t happen and will not happen - poly didn't want to tell such a tale. surely you concede?

And yet you're not conceding.

22:37 / 18.01.06

But yawnnui, you're talking about a work of fiction as if it's real life. Are you really saying, that despite the writer/director telling us a thing about his characters, you don't think it's true? You think he's mistaken?

Well, I think the writer and director can be unclear about what they are telling us, or mistaken, and I think a text can want to go in a particular direction but can fail to do so because the writer won't let the story breathe. Surely that's an important part of the underlying thinking behind slash fiction, and "fixing" texts.

22:40 / 18.01.06

Oh, so you think Yawn is saying that Lizzie is in love with Paul in the same way that Spock is in love with Kirk?

07:21 / 19.01.06

I'm thinking maybe he is, I'm not entirely sure. He seems to saying something along those lines here:

I think the point I'm trying to make here - but was distracted - is that despite poly telling us that there was no sexual tension between the two, and on face value that seems to be correct, I just didn't buy it. and that's because of the script, rather than the acting.

My earlier point about blah blah parallel narratives was an attempt to address what I see as the core of Yawn's thinking on this issue:

See Lizzie is defined by her work. I'd say she loves her work more than her family. she has no kids, she seems absent from her husband. Her parents figured only as wedding guests. So work is her thing.

But work is Paul. [My italics]

It seems to me that Yawn goes a little far in his first posit, and seems to be mistaking the limits of the narrative for the limits of the character. My position is that the character of Lizzie is left a lot of space by F&C and we cannot say with any certainty that work is the be all and end all for her. We know it's very important to her, sure, but we don't know any more than that. That makes the next big leap, that she must love Paul because she loves work more than her family (which I believe we have zero evidence for) and "work is Paul", rather a bridge too far.

Of course, I don't buy any of this anyway because, even if I agree that work is central to Lizzie, and that Paul embodies her love of work, I can imagine that love being something other than sexual or romantic, and I think much of the incidental evidence Yawn has given seems to be predicated on the position outlined above, and that, regardless, much of it can be explained away quite satisfactorily without reaching for the love stick.

Or am I misreading you, Yawn?

yawn - thing's buddy

11:17 / 19.01.06

not sure any more boboss.

I'm saying Poly was unconvincing in his portrayal of Lizzie and paul's relationship because I did not believe in the supposed nature of it. And despite accepting that the directors intention was to portray it without romance, I think that as a result of poor writing and character development, it came across as a unconsummated love affair.

yawn - thing's buddy

11:20 / 19.01.06

also, spock just fucks kirk.

bones is the one in love.

yawn - thing's buddy

15:03 / 19.01.06

would anyone like to comment on paul's preponderance for placing lizzie within sexually charged environments during their time together?

naked girlfriends on the lawn while lizzie fluttered around bringing files to a sunbathing Paul

orgy type shit going down at the big party at the start

lap dancing club for their meet up after several years absent from eachother's company

nakedness in ther hippy swimming pool and a 'join us' invite.

a recurring theme in their realtionship? paul exposing lizzie to a sexually charged ambience i mean?

15:20 / 19.01.06

I saw it more as Lizzie being exposed to Paul’s life, which was often sexually charged. Instrumentally, I read it as dramatic contrast between Paul’s louche decadence and Lizzie’s buttoned up propriety.

yawn - thing's buddy

18:57 / 19.01.06

yeah, fair point.

glad to see you've begun to really enjoy F&C too, smoothly....

19:29 / 19.01.06

Ha, you're right you know. This thread has made me think differently about it. I just didn't geddit when I first watched it, and I like it a lot more now that a few things have been pointed out to me.

yawn - thing's buddy

09:01 / 24.01.06

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1692024,00.html

review that dovestials with some of my criticisms (although reviewer admits to not really liking poli in the first place)

10:08 / 24.01.06

You know, Kathryn Flett is Polly Filler.

I suppose a lot of the disagreement over this comes down to whether you think F&C is about gender and sexual relationships. I don’t think it is (or at least, if it is then I don’t know what he was trying to say about it. In fact I dread to think what he might be trying to say about it). It makes more sense to me if it is about work and how ‘success’ is largely a matter of time and place rather than any particular qualities. Different times value different types of people, and neither of the types that Lizzie and Paul represent is inherently better than the other. In fact, real success depends on a synthesis of the two. So I think that criticising it for not being a very convincing love story is like criticising Our Friends In The North for not being much of a comedy.

I’m still a bit baffled as to why people might think this was a love story. Is it because the protagonists are attractive? Or that they were a man and a woman? If it was Paul and Lenny, would it still be read as a romance?

22:15 / 19.02.06

Embdy watch Shooting the Past then? I did, and really got very involved after missing the first 20 mins or so, but I'm not going to go on if youse're not.

05:42 / 20.02.06

I saw it the first time it aired, but that was years ago and I can't remember a whole lot about it except that I really liked it.

08:29 / 20.02.06

Duncan - I watched it. Was driving me mad who the American was, and he's in First Knight which I saw recently. Anyway... yes, really good overall. Same big houses, same music and same drawn out suspensfull stories.

I enjoyed Lindsay Duncan's performance as Marylin Truman the most and she was very believable as the custodian of the pictures. Oswald was less beleiveable as a character but oddly disarming at the same time.

I least liked Spig - who I think was supposed to be "the sexy one" but for all the dyed hair, leather trousers and furtive looks just left me thinking she was a bit derranged.

Lastly, and with most Poliakoff I've seen, I felt a little cheated by the denoument insofar as it seemed rushed and tied up the ends in a way which suggested that the story was over but some explaining was still called for and so a last few pages were rattled off.

09:18 / 20.02.06

Same as Boboss; loved it when I saw it, but that was a while ago. In fact, I wonder if it now reads differently in light of the arguments surrounding ID cards, the merging of databases, CCTV etc. What did you make of it, Duncan?

Tryphena Absent

21:15 / 26.02.06

I watched the last 5 minutes of Shooting the Past and yes it was about the collation of information but more about the piecing together of history and the stories of our past. Difficult to separate such stories from our own fascination with the past of our blood.

I enjoy the ambiguous endings that Poliakoff gives us. I often feel cheated by the way that stories are capped, as if any story ends so abruptly or we somehow need a Jane Austen finale- marriage, something significant. I find those endings that are so pervasive slightly insulting.

Gideon's Daughter - a nice offset between Friends and Crocodiles which is about the interlocking of contemporary life and affirming ongoing history through it and a retreat from that life in Gideon's Daughter. The complete change in the type of examined relationships interested me.

There's an interview on his recent work on the BFI site.

10:06 / 27.02.06

I watched the last 5 minutes of Shooting the Past and yes it was about the collation of information but more about the piecing together of history and the stories of our past. Difficult to separate such stories from our own fascination with the past of our blood.

You got all that from the last 5 minutes?
You know, I’m fascinated by people’s fascination with history of their blood, but I don’t think it’s been discussed on Barbelith, has it? No thread on Who Do You Think You Are? here, or one on genealogy more generally, is there? Might have to start one, but that’s by the bye.
Anyway, it’s not that I think Shooting The Past is primarily *about* the collation of information, just that the metaphor of the photo library might read differently now from how it did in 1999. Does the Tim Spall character represent something more sinister or threatening, for example.

I enjoyed Gideon’s Daughter, but again, I feel I need to mull it over a little longer, or maybe give it a rewatch. Seemed more slight than Friends & Crocodiles, and PR, political spin, celebrity obsession and MTV attention spans felt simultaneously too contemporary for hindsight, and too old hat for satire. And the Diana phenomenon, as something that both epitomised celebrity culture and transcended it, was under-examined. It seemed a waste of something that was in some ways both point and counterpoint to the malaise he was exploring.

The stuff about love and loss worked better for me. I was a bit disappointed by the ending. Although the epilogue was largely unwritten, it smacked too much of resolution to me. I would have thought the point was that you lose people forever and you never get over this stuff. Dunno, but the scene at the end with the three of them walking down the street where the boy died, planning their new lives… just felt a bit Nick Hornby to me.

Hopefully, someone will now explain that I misunderstood it entirely.

Tryphena Absent

11:44 / 27.02.06

The counterpoint to all of that loss was that Gideon managed to regain his daughter.

I found the scene where he became catatonic very effecting, I almost felt catatonic myself as I watched it and all I could think was- will he ever move again? All that time he spent slowing down and then he simply stopped and when he woke up- she took over entirely. It took him all of that time to give up his control to another person and that I think is very politically important at the moment, reflected in government policy and law... very insightful because the government is quite literally behaving as if it will always be in control.

I think this piece is more difficult to read than the last because it the commentary is more embedded. I don't think, on reflection that it was more slight, simply more difficult to read because it was so current.

You got all that from the last 5 minutes?

I've seen it before but I think it's clear, discounting the scene with Oswald, from the last five or ten minutes filmed in the archives that there is a strong focus on that.

12:38 / 27.02.06

The counterpoint to all of that loss was that Gideon managed to regain his daughter.

I was talking about the counterpoint to the notion of celebcult as shallow, transitory, and apathy inducing. Just seemed like a missed opportunity to dig a little deeper.

I don’t think I wanted a counterpoint to the loss, because we are bombarded all the time by the idea that rifts get resolved, grief passes that is loss is regained; love and life ‘find a way’. I was enjoying seeing a drama where this was not the case, where the grief from the death of a child burned on and on and on undimmed. This seemed a little undermined by Gideon's salvation. So while I found Gideon’s breakdown in the comedy club very affecting too, I felt a bit let down by Natasha’s turnabout at that point. She should have walked away, or, better, she shouldn’t have been there. Yeah, I think it pretty much turned to shit at that point.

yawn - thing's buddy

14:03 / 27.02.06

thought this was considerably more engaging on an emotional level than friends and croc.

And I really enjoyed the tellling of the story - structurally quite strange in parts - and I thought the acting was . . . excellent.

but once again, i found his observations on 'society' to be rather slight and thought that much of the plot was contrived.

so lots of things to annoy - and enjoy - but the sheer oddness of it pulled it through for me - pulling hair incident for example, loved that in an awful kind of way. breakdown in comedy club too.

but really it was about gideon wanting to hump his daughter wasn't it? (smile with a wink)

Whisky Priestess

14:22 / 27.02.06

I watched F&C and Gideon's Daughter and my response to both - despite some excellent performances in both that were, IMHO, far better than the material*, was a considered "meuh".

I'm afraid the constant recurrence in Mr. P's work (what of it I have seen) of the brilliant, intuitive "futurologist/guru/planner/predictor" character (see Paul in F&C, Gideon in GD, St. Clair in Close My Eyes) seemed terribly lazy and formulaic - I suppose in one way he is giving the people (i.e. the Poliakoff fans) what they want, but I ached for just a leetle more imagination in the range and breadth of the characters. And their homes. If I see another fuck-off enormous Georgian drawing room in an SP production I'm just going to become catatonic with propoerty envy. Stop mocking me, Stephen! Stop it!

However, then I watched Close My Eyes, and realised that all that was really missing from F&C and GD (despite promising daddysex hints in the latter) was some really explicit incest. This magic ingredient has inexplicably been left out of his last two efforts, and on some instinctive level, my heart knew it and cried out to the heavens for shame.

So hurrah for Mr. Poliakoff, say I - I look forward to the third part of his new trilogy which surely, surely, must, for the love of God, have some taboo shagging in it. I mean, I assume that that's understood to be obligatory in this day and age, or what's the licence fee for?

(*this is another reason why I abhor and abjure the work of David Hare - only brilliant actors can make his stuff watchable. And he always gets them, the lucky bastard.)

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