And very suddenly, after what seems like ages stuck under cloud cover and kept damp by a constant rain that sometimes dwindles to a drizzle and occasionally escalates to a torrent, the sun has returned to Seattle. It's quite warm again, not yet, but the presence of natural light is cheering. Last weekend I pulled up all of the blinds in my apartment and was reminded just how much sunlight my wall-of-windows lets in. I left them open and lay on the futon to nap like a cat stretched out in the sun.
At work, the circulation desk faces a wall of tall windows that look out onto the Quad, where the cherry trees are in bloom. The first day of sunlight, last Friday, the scene looked like a campus cook-out, minus the barbecues: students reading as they lay on blankets, cross-legged and eating lunch in the grass, taking photographs of each other perched in the branches of the trees among the blossoms. Sunday it was windy, and a large number of blossoms were blown off the trees and were carried around in the air like giant snowflakes. Yesterday, as I walked to work, I passed a rehearsing string quartet and an undergrad dressed like George Washington, pretending to chop down one of the cherry trees with a cardboard axe.
I often get frustrated with Seattle, but despite the overwhelming passive-aggression and the constant winter drizzle, one thing I love about this city is the fact that no one seems to take a sunny day for granted.
Paula and I have been about town lately, desperate to soak up as much culture as possible. In the past four days alone, we have seen a movie and a play, both deeply moving and in completely different ways.
I will admit to having been initially skeptical about The King's Speech, especially after it trounced my Oscar-favorite, True Grit (I was impressed with The Social Network, but it also failed to make me sympathize with any of the characters, and without that connection, I did not feel the film was as effective as it could have been). However, it was showing at the Metro across from my old apartment building, we had a free Saturday night, and Paula and I are both self-professed to have been born on the wrong continent. And, oh. My goodness. As she said to me after we had left the theater, "A movie has to make you really, really care about the characters immediately, or it spends the rest of its time trying to build up to that. And in his first speech, you're there. You hurt for him. You're Helena Bonham Carter, sitting there and wanting so badly to give him a hug, but you can't." The best thing about The King's Speech, I think, is that it could have been really, intensely dry, another costume-drama Merchant & Ivory biopic about the lives of British royalty. But it wasn't. Instead of presenting King George VI as an uptight royal with an unfortunate speech impediment, this film--and especially Colin Firth, who was heartbreaking--portrayed him as a man with a wife who loved and supported him, forced into a role he did not want by events beyond his control. The scene in which he reveals to Geoffrey Rush's character a major traumatic event from his childhood gutted me--it wasn't dwelt upon, but neither was it a one-off statement. One sung line, which I won't reveal here in case any of my three readers haven't seen the film yet, added an entire new aspect to the character.
And then there was Frankenstein.* Paula and I planned this excursion for weeks, and bought our tickets well in advance--good on us, as the performance we saw was completely sold out. Frankenstein was a recorded performance of the London National Theater production, directed by Danny Boyle (who, although he won an Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire, will always be "the fellow who directed 28 Days Later" to me), and starring Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch, who alternated nightly the roles of Frankenstein and the Creature. Unlike The King's Speech, which broke my heart and then put it back together again so completely that I wanted to give the entire world a hug afterward, Frankenstein broke me down entirely and then kept going. There is an extended sequence at the very beginning of the play in which the Creature is "born" and then must learn quickly how to use his limbs--this is how the audience is drawn into immediate sympathy with him. When he finally manages to hold himself upright, the audience feels his sense of triumph. When he is immediately rejected by his horrified creator, who has not witnessed the rapidity of his ability to learn, we feel his despair. The troubling thing about being endeared to a character so quickly is that when the Creature begins to emulate what he perceives to be human action, seeking revenge against his abusers and committing unspeakable acts of violence (during one of which I had to hide my eyes, because I could not watch), the audience's collective gut gives a sudden wrench. Benedict Cumberbatch, whose sociopathic detective I loved in Sherlock, horrified me as the Creature, and exhausted me emotionally. This is, I'm sure, the effect Danny Boyle was hoping to create in his production, and I admire him for it. Also incredibly effective was the production's use of music--this is something at which Boyle's productions excel (I am thinking particularly of 28 Days Later and the scene in which the uninfected travel on foot to find Jim's parents, who they learn have committed suicide, all set to a solo female vocalist singing "Abide With Me" a capella). The sunrise. The sunrise! It was beautiful, even when you knew that everything was about to go terribly wrong. I was still very sad when I returned home from the theater, and needed to listen to Beethoven and look at the paintings of Van Gogh to even begin to set my emotions back to rights.
I'm feeling terribly philosophical today, but more or less at peace with the world. Maybe it's the sunlight and the flowers and the fact that I listened to the finale from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on the bus to work this morning. Either way, I am less concerned about how the events of this evening (recital jury, recital dress-rehearsal, &c.) will turn out.
*The trailer for Danny Boyle's Frankenstein can be seen here on YouTube.
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