Sophie runs away from the News and finds a) the vibe was already in her work in progress and b) a great film can make you brave enough to go back.

Image by Hieu Van from Pixabay

This week I really needed time out from the News. It seemed as if every time I listened to the radio or glanced at Facebook, some new horrible thing had arisen. Unkindness and unreason was everywhere. Not to mention injustice.

There there seemed nothing people of good will and sound judgement could do about it. People who tried were silenced.

Image by Bartek Zakrzewski from Pixabay

It was all horribly reminiscent of the research that I had been doing for my work in progress  Gentleman in Jeopardy.  The book is set in 1938, in England, Germany and Italy. At the start, my hero, Kurt, is shutting his eyes and ears to everything but his own little world.

How does he do it? I’ve been feeling as if a great grey cloud has settled down over life as we know it. And getting more solid every hour. It plays hell with my concentration. What is Kurt’s secret?

My Hero is Not Me

Image by Sabrina Belle from Pixabay

Mainly, I think it’s because he’s very busy. He runs the family estate and it hasn’t recovered from the Depression. Also he has issues of his own, mostly with his (absent) father. But not entirely.

There’s no social media, of course. But there is the radio and everybody listens to it. Thinking about it this week, I’ve realised that it’s an act of will for Kurt, this shutting out the bad things that are happening in the world. All tied up with stuff I already knew about him, of course. But I admit this wilfulness was a suprise. Not a welcome one, either.

It means he’s much stronger willed than I thought he was. Or than I am.

Oh well. Re-write Chapter One then. And go on from there.

… But We Have Thing in Common

By Robin & Bazylek – originally posted to Flickr as Dante’s Gate, CC BY 2.0, Link

This is actually a bit weird, because it’s already in the book. Something happens that shakes Kurt out of his self-willed ignorance. What’s more, it’s straight out of my own experience.

Back in the nineties I visited the Baltic countries for work. The Berlin Wall had fallen and the republics of the former USSR were moving from a centrally planned economy to the Wild West of capitalism. Everyone I met was motivated and even excited about it.

Image by Joseph Kebbie from Pixabay

So it was a bit of shock to find that every office I went into, from the analysts’ open plan garret to the most opulent room in the place, had a radio or television. And it was turned on all the time. (Indeed, several people gathered in the secretaries’ room for half an hour over coffee to watch a Mexican soap opera.)

I said to my interpreter how odd it seemed. How distracting I would find it! (Superior cow, or what?!)

Image by Th G from Pixabay

Oh yes, he said. I would find it strange. “But you see, if the Russians change their mind, and come over the border, that’s how we will hear of it. On the radio. We stay on our guard.”

Glug.

I was truly ashamed of my lack of perception. So is Kurt.

And then I started to wonder whether my friends in Estonia still had their radios on when Russian fighter jets invaded their air space this week.

That was the final straw that made me take time out from the News.

Escapism?

There are times when the only possible way to escape is into a sweeter, gentler world of pure fantasy. Lord Emsworth or Bertie Wooster will just take me off on a punt of delight.

But not, I find, when my horizon is grey and louring. The vileness of the world is just too intrusive. I can’t concentrate on the Empress of Blandings, though I long to, with all my heart.

No, at times like this, I need something with a bit more bite. Something not so sunny but that will yet give me hope.

Slightly to my own surprise, I turned to a film I have written about here before. It’s in my blog on Talking to Aliens, if you’re interested.

STARMAN

Starman is a 1984 science fiction movie directed by John Carpenter and starring Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen. And it is a little jewel.

I say little because it is intimately focused on the two main characters, who remain together throughout almost all the three days of the story. Their relationship swings from fear and loathing (on both sides and for excellent reasons) to mutual respect and affection.

It suffered from a switchback of writers and directors  although Executive producer Michael Douglas remained constant throughout the 5 years it was in development.

In that time it gathered and shed a number of aspects, including more science fiction tropes, a Supermanesque flying alien and “heavy political stuff”. It was also overshadowed, both pre and post production, by ET — largely because of the emotional connection between alien and human, I imagine.

My Love for Starman

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I came to it quite soon after it was released. A fellow Dr Who enthusiast rented it from Blockbuster, along with two or three other sci fi movies which I’ve forgotten. We had a weekend binge. Unlike him and the others, I was hooked from the first. And I am not alone – as this review shows.

Maybe that was my romantic novelist side in control. Carpenter himself called it “A love story”. Which it is. Though not at all in the usual way. And I see more in the film every time I watch.

Action and Change

Image by Nikhil Kurian from Pixabay

The opening credits take place over extracts from the messages that went into space on Voyager 2. It is essential information. The Alien’s civilisation has received that invitation.

But when his craft arrives in Earth’s atmosphere, we shoot it down. He decides to leave asap. That’s why he only has three days to get back to the originally intended landing site for his returning ride.

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

So humanity is hostile but he will need someone’s help to get to the rendezvous. Having arrived as pure energy, he clones a body using keepsake hair from a family album.

The guy’s widow has been watching a home movie of their time together and swigging wine. She is clearly in a bad way. The Alien, who looks exactly like her husband but moves like an awkward ostrich, scares  her to death.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

She tries to shoot him. He kidnaps her to get him where he needs to go. Both are afraid, angry, and unprepared. He is pretty nasty,too. Even when, as emerges somewhat later, he is trying to tune his behaviour to reassure her. “Not be little bit jumpy,” he says, groping his way through English learned from her.

She talks as freely as we heard her talking to herself in her drunken monologue.

For a long time he doesn’t say much more than “Greetings,” and “Define …”. But he is learning by observation all the time. It is what they do, rather than say, that changes the relationship, stage by stage, as they travel west through Las Vegas to Maybe Arizona.

Not your Happy Ever After but…

By the end, though, they cannot stay together. He will die on earth – he is already dying – she cannot go with him.

Image by reneebigelow from Pixabay

But she has evolved from a bereaved and frozen lush, to the tiger lover who saves him from dying on earth. And he … Well, more. Much more. For both of them.

It’s a real grown up love story about loving and being brave and growing. Above all, about being open-hearted. And kind.

Watch it. It’s wonderful.

And it’s put heart into me. So I don’t need to take time out from the News any more. For a while, anyway.

Sophie