Swallows and Amazons
Apr. 24th, 2020 09:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerPart of the reason I wanted to read Swallows and Amazons was that I saw stills from Philippa Lowthorpe’s 2016 film adaptation, which looked absolutely charming, but of course I wanted to read the book first. And conveniently littlerhymes and I read the first three books in the Swallows and Amazons series over the past few months, so when I saw that my library had the movie streaming for free on Hoopla, I snapped it up and watched it with half a pan of brownies and a cup of tea.
I am pleased to report that it’s just as charming as the stills made it look! This is one of those films where you really have the sense that the people involved with the film love this story, and that they poured this love into all the details of the film: the beautifully decorated sets, the costumes, the wonderfully picturesque island, the sailing sequences, the excellent work by all six child actors.
The film plot isn’t totally faithful to the details of the book (partly because it’s such a long book that you couldn’t fit it all in a movie), but for the most part I felt it was in keeping with the spirit of the series. There were two major changes, one of which I really warmed to and the other of which I remain not so sure about.
The first big change involved making Captain Flint (a.k.a. the Amazons’ Uncle Jim) into a spy! who has top secret photos of armaments in Leningrad! which he is concealing by hanging them on the walls of his houseboat??? Look, just embrace it, as I said there’s a lot of story to get through.
Anyway, this is a bit more hifalutin than the burglary plotline in the book Swallows and Amazons, but it strikes a similar note of high adventure and gives the movie an opportunity to bring in a seaplane, while also leaving an ample amount of time for more prosaic lake sailing adventures, so in the end I quite liked it.
The other change is that the children quarrel quite a bit more than they do in the book. In fact, in the book I’m not sure they quarrel ever - oh, the Swallows and Amazons have a war, but they’re quite amiable about it - and I accept that this might strike a modern audience as perhaps a little preposterous (four siblings who never quarrel at all??), but I felt that the movie may have veered a little too far in the other direction.
However, although the children do quarrel, the overall feeling is still that they love each other very much and really do enjoy each other’s company most of the time, so really this is a quibble rather than a serious complaint. Overall it’s a charming movie, a cinematic mini-holiday to a beautiful summer in another time.
littlerhymes and I read the first three books in the Swallows and Amazons series over the past few months, so when I saw that my library had the movie streaming for free on Hoopla, I snapped it up and watched it with half a pan of brownies and a cup of tea. I am pleased to report that it’s just as charming as the stills made it look! This is one of those films where you really have the sense that the people involved with the film love this story, and that they poured this love into all the details of the film: the beautifully decorated sets, the costumes, the wonderfully picturesque island, the sailing sequences, the excellent work by all six child actors.
The film plot isn’t totally faithful to the details of the book (partly because it’s such a long book that you couldn’t fit it all in a movie), but for the most part I felt it was in keeping with the spirit of the series. There were two major changes, one of which I really warmed to and the other of which I remain not so sure about.
The first big change involved making Captain Flint (a.k.a. the Amazons’ Uncle Jim) into a spy! who has top secret photos of armaments in Leningrad! which he is concealing by hanging them on the walls of his houseboat??? Look, just embrace it, as I said there’s a lot of story to get through.
Anyway, this is a bit more hifalutin than the burglary plotline in the book Swallows and Amazons, but it strikes a similar note of high adventure and gives the movie an opportunity to bring in a seaplane, while also leaving an ample amount of time for more prosaic lake sailing adventures, so in the end I quite liked it.
The other change is that the children quarrel quite a bit more than they do in the book. In fact, in the book I’m not sure they quarrel ever - oh, the Swallows and Amazons have a war, but they’re quite amiable about it - and I accept that this might strike a modern audience as perhaps a little preposterous (four siblings who never quarrel at all??), but I felt that the movie may have veered a little too far in the other direction.
However, although the children do quarrel, the overall feeling is still that they love each other very much and really do enjoy each other’s company most of the time, so really this is a quibble rather than a serious complaint. Overall it’s a charming movie, a cinematic mini-holiday to a beautiful summer in another time.
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Date: 2020-04-24 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2020-04-26 12:14 pm (UTC)HE'S A WHAT NOW
This is Uncle Jim fanfiction.
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Date: 2020-04-26 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-26 12:58 pm (UTC)