St. Patrick's Day + The Breadwinner
Mar. 18th, 2018 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerHappy belated St. Patrick’s Day! I meant to post this yesterday, but after work & making a cottage pie & icing a Guinness chocolate cake and then watched an Irish movie - I just ran out of energy. The Guinness chocolate cake was good but maybe not good enough to become my new St. Patrick's Day tradition, so the hunt will continue next year, I suppose. Perhaps I'll give the Guinness cookies a try.
Actually this has very much been a case where The Journey Is More Important Than the Destination: I've really enjoyed trying all these new recipes. (It helped of course that I found a cookbook that suited me well, which doesn't always happen. The book is David Bowers' Real Irish Cooking: 150 Recipes from the Old Country, should anyone else wish to look it out.) Clearly I ought to try it more often! Maybe I should start storming German cookbooks next.
***
The Irish movie we watched was Nora Twomey's The Breadwinner, an animated film by the same film company that made The Secret of Kells (which Twomey co-directed) and Song of the Sea, which are both very Irish and ultimately fairly upbeat although of course the Vikings in The Secret of Kells are a bit of a downer.
The Breadwinner is about a girl in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan who has to dress as a boy to support her family. (It's based on the Deborah Ellis book, which I haven't read, although they have to be rather different; the Ellis book was published in 2000, while the movie ends with the 2003 American invasion). This probably should have tipped me off that it wasn't going to be a festive holiday movie.
Not that it's all grimness! In fact quite a bit of it is lovely. I loved Parvana's family. Her tiny brother Zaki is a particular standout: very small children in stories are often either twee or completely inert, but Zaki has real character and often adds a note of much-needed levity. And Parvana's friendship with Shauzia, another girl who dresses as a boy so she can help support her family - in fact all the relationships in this film are really well-done and often poignant.
I also loved the story-within-a-story that Parvana tells, first to Zaki and then to Shauzia and later to herself - a tale of a boy on a quest to retrieve the seeds stolen by the wicked Elephant King and his jaguars, which weaves its way through the real-world plot, and offers the chance for some really lovely animation, like the shining mirror and the well full of emeralds.
The interweaving is especially effective because it offers a rest from the sadness of the real-life plot, which kicks off when Parvana's father is arrested. Women are not allowed out without a father or brother to escort them, but the only other male in the family is two-year-old Zaki - which forces Parvana to adopt her male guise as Aatish. Dressed as a boy, she can fetch water, buy supplies at the market, make money by reading letters to the illiterate public - and trek out to the prison where her father is held in desperate, futile attempts to see him.
It's not the most "Let's celebrate St. Patrick's Day!" choice, but it is a beautiful and sometimes emotionally brutal movie - and well worth seeing.
Actually this has very much been a case where The Journey Is More Important Than the Destination: I've really enjoyed trying all these new recipes. (It helped of course that I found a cookbook that suited me well, which doesn't always happen. The book is David Bowers' Real Irish Cooking: 150 Recipes from the Old Country, should anyone else wish to look it out.) Clearly I ought to try it more often! Maybe I should start storming German cookbooks next.
***
The Irish movie we watched was Nora Twomey's The Breadwinner, an animated film by the same film company that made The Secret of Kells (which Twomey co-directed) and Song of the Sea, which are both very Irish and ultimately fairly upbeat although of course the Vikings in The Secret of Kells are a bit of a downer.
The Breadwinner is about a girl in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan who has to dress as a boy to support her family. (It's based on the Deborah Ellis book, which I haven't read, although they have to be rather different; the Ellis book was published in 2000, while the movie ends with the 2003 American invasion). This probably should have tipped me off that it wasn't going to be a festive holiday movie.
Not that it's all grimness! In fact quite a bit of it is lovely. I loved Parvana's family. Her tiny brother Zaki is a particular standout: very small children in stories are often either twee or completely inert, but Zaki has real character and often adds a note of much-needed levity. And Parvana's friendship with Shauzia, another girl who dresses as a boy so she can help support her family - in fact all the relationships in this film are really well-done and often poignant.
I also loved the story-within-a-story that Parvana tells, first to Zaki and then to Shauzia and later to herself - a tale of a boy on a quest to retrieve the seeds stolen by the wicked Elephant King and his jaguars, which weaves its way through the real-world plot, and offers the chance for some really lovely animation, like the shining mirror and the well full of emeralds.
The interweaving is especially effective because it offers a rest from the sadness of the real-life plot, which kicks off when Parvana's father is arrested. Women are not allowed out without a father or brother to escort them, but the only other male in the family is two-year-old Zaki - which forces Parvana to adopt her male guise as Aatish. Dressed as a boy, she can fetch water, buy supplies at the market, make money by reading letters to the illiterate public - and trek out to the prison where her father is held in desperate, futile attempts to see him.
It's not the most "Let's celebrate St. Patrick's Day!" choice, but it is a beautiful and sometimes emotionally brutal movie - and well worth seeing.
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