"Water for Elephants," a Chick Flick, but I liked it too.

I just about passed up going to see this movie. With my 30 year old daughter and a couple of her girlfriends on Facebook gushing about how they HAD to see it, and when I saw that the brooding vampire guy from the Twilight series was the romantic lead, I figured it would just be another romantically overdone chick flick.

But finally we went ahead and bought tickets for it. I mean I needed SOMETHING to watch while I ate my popcorn, so we settled on “Water for Elephants.” Basically, we chose it through a process of elimination. One of the other three at the local quad was a Filipino flick—sorry, not much on those. And then there was “Thor,” an okay show that I’d already seen a few days before. And the third, “Fast & Furious Five” has no appeal to me at all—narcissistic jerks in flashy cars, thrashing and crashing to urban thug music—no thanks.

In hindsight, I never should have resisted going to see “Water for Elephants.” I enjoyed it from the opening scenes, which harkens back to the way Titanic opens, another popular period piece from 1997. Both “Water” and “Titanic” have centenarians tell their stories many decades after the events portrayed in their respective movies, recalling the times when the old tellers were still young, dumb and wrinkle free.

Titanic uses this device with 100 year old Rose Dawson telling her story as the camera fades back to April 1912, when she as a teenage Rose begins her sea journey aboard the doomed ship. “Water” starts similarly with Hal Holbrook playing a crabby old fellow named Jacob Jankowski, also almost 100 years young, telling his story to a modern day circus boss.

Holbrook, basically in a cameo role, starts off as a seemingly cantankerous curmudgeon before rousing the curiosity of the circus manager. This “Big Top” fellow, who up until then only cares about returning the old man to his nursing home, can’t help himself when he learns that Jankowski actually witnessed the legendary 1931 Benzini Brothers circus tragedy (fictional of course). The manager opens a file drawer and pulls out an ancient picture of a beautiful blonde woman atop an elephant, circa 1931, and hands it to Jacob who seems stunned by it. Jacob’s eye glaze as he gazes at the photo of his late wife as she looked when he first met her all those years ago.

It’s dark and stormy out. Holbrook as Jankowski is deeply affected by the old photo. He asks the circus boss if he has anything to drink. The circus manager breaks out a bottle as the two of them sit down. Jankowski begins telling a tale of how he ended up working for the ill-fated Benzini Brother’s circus, back when he was a homeless young man during the Great Depression. The voice of Hal Holbrook playing a centenarian in modern times starts out cracked and shaky. In midsentence, the aged narrator changes seamlessly to 23 year old Robert Pattinson. As the narrator’s voice becomes young and virile the viewers find themselves in 1931.

So that’s how the film starts and where my account of the plotline ends. It’s not my purpose here to recount the entire story start to end; you can read that on Wikipedia if you want. After watching “Water” however, I am compelled to develop some of the thoughts that occurred to me during the movie.

On that note, lately, I haven’t much remarked on films. For a while there I reviewed just about every one I viewed. Now, it takes an exceptional flick to inspire me enough to write about it. In this case I feel that inspiration, mostly because of the intriguing historical and social aspects presented in the film as follows:

• The era of The Great Depression: The film mostly takes place in 1931, two years into the Great Depression. The extreme hardships of those times play an important role in the film. Men are desperate to work and August, the German American owner of the circus, takes advantage of their misery by shorting their pay or by not paying them at all. There are times even, when his goons simply throw workers off the fast moving train, often to their death, to avoid paying them. In the movie this brutal practice is referred to as being “red-lighted.”

• German August vs. Polish Jacob: Eight years from 1931, Nazi Germany will invade and cruelly crush the people of Poland. I see it as no coincidence then that the classic conflict in this movie between the evil and the virtuous reflects the coming international conflict, when a malicious Nazi Germany attacks and subjugates an innocent Poland, an event that marks the start of WWII. In effect then, this film presents a microcosm of how Nazi Germany enslaves the rest of Europe, with Rosie the Elephant, representing the allies (USA, USSR), coming to Europe’s rescue and bashing the murderous Nazis into submission. Unlike the events of WWII however, where Germany had its way with Poland, in “Water” Jacob the Pole provides a much more satisfying ending when he becomes responsible for the end of the German’s reign of terror. This happens when a prostrate Jacob, himself just about to be killed by one of August’s henchmen, commands Rosie the elephant with his last breath to bludgeon the German with a spike as the crazed Kraut, using a bull pike, chokes the life out of his wife, Marlena, Jacob’s future wife as it turns out. As soon as I saw the actor who plays August, Christoph Waltz, I recognized him as the Nazi SS officer from “Glorious Basterds,” so it was no stretch to see him as the symbol of a nasty Nazi, especially with his slightly German accented English.


• Prohibition: In 1931 the Prohibition Era still has two years left to go. This period in American history plays prominently in “Water for Elephants.” In almost every scene the circus workers are seen defying the law as they drink alcohol. In one scene August, Marlena and Jacob are drinking in a “speak easy saloon” when the cops raid the place. Marlena and Jacob escape together and get separated from August; this is when they steal their first adulterous kiss with each other.


• Adultery: The moviemakers seek to justify this wrongdoing by showing the extent of August’s horrible treatment of his wife, Marlena. Through much of the movie, Marlena attempts to resist her attraction to Jacob, but August’s viciousness worsens to the point that he actually pushes Marlena into Jacob’s arms. Jacob also struggles to do right, but his love for Marlena drives him to want to protect her from August whenever the circus owner goes into one of his out of control rages.


• Jamaican Ginger Extract: Also due to the ban against drinking alcohol at the time, one of Jacob’s circus buddies, an old man named Camel, who had come to Jacob’s aid when the young man first jumped the train, has the dangerous habit of drinking Jamaican Ginger Extract (also known as “Jake” back in the day). After years of indulging in this unhealthy so-called “patent medicine,” Camel develops a form of paralysis, as the extract actually contains a neurotoxin called Tricresyl phosphate. Camel’s sickness prevents him from any work, a kiss of death for anyone working for The Benzini Brothers Circus. Jacob tries to save Camel from being “red lighted,” but once August finds out about the bedridden Camel he has the stricken man tossed from the speeding train. Ultimately this sadistic act results in the end of August and The Benzini Brothers Circus.


• The string of “necessary” human foibles (as a cinematic device): The wanton murder of their paralyzed addicted circus buddy is more than several of the long oppressed workers can stomach. They exact their vengeance on August and his goons by releasing caged circus animals into the crowds at the height of a performance. It is during the ensuing mayhem, while the desperate circus goers seek to escape being mauled by the big cats, that the decisive act of the movie takes place. Innocent people are trampled, mauled and killed, this is when the disgruntled men murder August’s hated enforcers. So, one could say that without the desperation of The Great Depression, without Prohibition and the lawlessness it spawned, without Camel’s addiction to the toxic “Jake,” without August’s abject inhumanity, and without the forbidden love between Jacob and Marlena, the entire amazing story could not happen. Using a bit of alliteration, I guess you could say that human foibles, failings and folly make for fully fantastic fables! (Yes, I came up with that.)

One of the reasons I so thoroughly enjoyed this movie is that by the end of it, virtually every loose end is taken care of. Every bad guy is dead at the hands of the good guys and not so good guys (subjecting innocent circus goers to danger and death? That is NOT good). The REALLY good guy ends up with the good gal after rescuing her, along with a very good elephant. All in all we get to see one of those “and they all lived happily ever after” endings. I LIKE that.

But not every one likes it as much as I do. In doing some post cinematic viewing research, I see that a lot of professional critics, unlike the amateur reviewer that I am, fault the onscreen relationship between Jacob and Marlena. This is decidedly unjust criticism. Evidently, what these “critics” are all clamoring for is something more passionate between the two romantic lead characters; they claim that “chemistry” is lacking between Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson. I say bunk to that. When I watched them together I appreciated that the director was trying to capture what it feels like to be in a forbidden adulterous relationship. What these numbskull critics are doing, if you ask me, is projecting modern values on a time when doing such a thing would have made the participants extremely uncomfortable. THAT 1930’s discomfort and angst is what I believe was well captured by Pattinson and Witherspoon. Once again, being the contrarian that I am, the thing hated MOST by the professional reviewers is what I liked THE most. Besides, when you look at Pattinson’s so-called onscreen “chemistry” with Kristen Stewart in the Twilight series, it is not a whole lot different. And truthfully, I’m still a bit mystified by exactly what they are referring to when these supposed experts refer to “chemistry.”

At the end of “Water for Elephants,” despite my determination not to, I misted up. It starts in the last few minutes of wrap-up when, back in modern times, we learn that Jacob, Marlena and Rosie have led a long and fruitful life together resulting in a slew of children, and that the two original “girls,” Marlena and Rosie, have both long since passed on, leaving Jacob behind.

What put me over the edge, taking me from tight-throat swallowing to full-blown teary blinking, is when Jacob asks the circus boss for a job. The manager pauses for a second to consider it and then warmly responds, “Sure, why not? You’ll be one for the record books—the oldest person ever to run away with the circus!”

Old Jacob merrily responds, “No! I’m not running AWAY. I’m coming HOME!”

At that, I lost it. “Sniffle, snuffle, choke. Dang it, I got something in my eye.”

I’d held it together pretty well until that doggone Hal Holbrook as old Jacob utters that final line. Brilliant!

Royalty, to the trash bin NOW

In September of 1982 I was home on leave in Birch Run, Michigan taking some time before heading overseas for four years. My parents were both at work so I answered the doorbell one sunny midmorning. It was a saleswoman. Immediately, she started gushing excitedly about the marriage of Prince Charles to Diana and that the result of that union had just yielded another little royal named William.

I cocked my head and grinned; I actually felt embarrassed for her. She was trying to sell me some kind of commemorative plaque or chinaware or something like that revolving around this cockamamie British royalty BS and I was having none of it. She noticed the wry unconvinced look on my face and stopped talking. She knew she’d run into a definite “no sale” and just asked me if my wife was home.

I told her, “Sure, my wife is here, but she’s from the Philippines and doesn’t know a Prince Charles from a Fred.” So much for that, the young saleslady went on down to the next house to try her luck there.

Even before I ever much contemplated the notion of royalty I was dubious about it. Then, over the years, after considering it every so often when it would come up in the news, I eventually came to the conclusion that the idea of royalty is nonsensical. In fact, the more I know about them—the royals that is, and especially the British royals—the more I came to loathe their continued existence as an institution.

What upsets me more than the survival of modern European royalty is that much of my fellow citizenry continue to fawn over them, as if “these people” are worth even a moment of our attention and even less of our respect.

My fellow Americans, (and fellow commoners!) do you understand how “these people” came to claim these ridiculous titles such as king, queen, prince, princess, duke, earl, duchess, ad nauseum? Well, I’ll tell you. They are nothing more than an invention; a ruse foisted upon our European “peasant” ancestors to convince them that “some people” were anointed by God to be their rulers and betters.

Does it not anger you then that people would continue to hang onto these kinds of obsolete notions? Americans especially should reject this crap, but for the most part, we don’t. It seems like we can't wait to scrape, bow and curtsy all along with the rest of the mindless fools everywhere who kowtow to these pretenders.

It’s pathetic when you think about it. The very idea of royalty is that God, through his divine intervention, caused certain bloodlines to be superior to others. This was rule by divine right—to be “God’s chosen,” so to speak. You would think that a secular Europe would stop lending credibility to this archaic convention, but they don’t. In fact, they seem to embrace it more than ever.

In America we fought a war 200 years ago not just for independence, but also to rid ourselves of idiotic concepts like “the divine right of kings.” My ancestors from Scotland and Ireland left the Old World to escape European heavy-handedness, and much of the excesses from which they escaped were due to their being stuck as “subjects” of a monarch and his royal henchmen, all generally titled as “Sir So-and-So.”

Being a subject meant being “subject to” the capricious whims of some duke or earl, all “sirs” mind you, and all due to the mistaken notion that these people are divinely better than people without the “correct” bloodlines. Almost 300 years ago my Scottish immigrant ancestors finally just said, “kiss my arse” to that idea and left all that garbage behind; and I agree with that sentiment every bit as much today.

A “subject” is someone who owes allegiance to a king or queen, not necessarily to a country, not to freedom, not to a constitution, but to a flesh-and-blood person. That is old-fashioned archaic malarkey and yet the Brits still officially talk about owing allegiance to the Queen. Even our Canadian cousins to the north still consider themselves her highness’ “subjects.” If they can stomach such a thing then fine, but for Americans to continue to worry about how to correctly curtsy or bow to Queen Elizabeth is a nauseating thing for me to watch.

Speaking of the Queen, she came across the pond to “the colonies” not long ago, and much of the talk on the news was of the various foul-ups committed by just about any “crass” American who came within spitting distance of the old girl. I think Nancy Pelosi made a supposed booboo when she reached out and shook QE’s hand without the queen having proffered hers first. Oh my word! And when President Bush made another of his continuous speechifying faux pas and then turned and winked at the queen, from the reaction you’d of thought he’d just asked her out for a date. Unforgivable! I could hardly stand to watch and listen to any of that idiotic drivel and mostly didn’t.

I had the opportunity the other day to speak to an expatriate Englishman on this very topic. Mark is his name, and with his deeply tanned, well-muscled sleek physique combined with his long sun-streaked brown hair, he looks more like a surfer from Southern California than a Limey. He’s a good fellow and I thought I’d ask him how he and his “mates” feel these days about the British aristocracy.

Basically, he had nothing to say about the royals at all, and certainly nothing good to say about them. Mark claims that most of the people he knows back in the UK, including him, think it a complete waste of government money. He reminded me that there’s a heck of a lot more to the royal lineages than just the queen and the princes. He reminded me that the whole country is pocked full of these royal bastards, as he referred to them.

I asked him, “Why do you guys put with it? I mean, think about it Mark, these arrogant jerks have the gall to call someone not of their bloodline to be MERE commoners! Doesn’t that irritate you that they would dare to continue to call people COMMONERS? I mean for chrissakes, that’s the height of arrogance, don’t you think?”

“Oh yah, a lot of us have had it with them. But what can you do? And truthfully, I just don’t think of it all that much. I just ignore them.”

I yielded a little saying, “I have to say that I DO think it’s a good thing that Harry and William are serving in your military, but it almost seems like they do it more out of some kind of guilt complex or because its expected of them. I just wish some of OUR rich boys would find it within themselves to serve, but we haven’t had rich people like that since World War Two. So GOOD for the princes!”

Concerning the royals, for the most part what I got from English Mark was indifference, as if he has better things to worry about. Still, considering how little he cares about the queen, a woman he’s supposed to be pledged to as a citizen of England, his blasé attitude says a lot. It tells me that if most of the “commoners” of the UK feel as he does then perhaps the future of British royalty IS very much in question.

If I were British, I’d demand the immediate dismantlement of all things royal. I would consign its trappings to the trash heap of history. At the very least I'd consign them all to a musty old museum, the perfect place for old irrelevant things.

Historical "Explosion" in the Gym

Sometimes I get a little too smug and reactionary for my own good. Today, in the gym, my friend, Saul, and I were giving each other a good-natured ribbing, as usual. I challenged him to go two days without using the F word, at least while he’s around me. About then one of his drinking buddies from Canada came in. Turns out, his name is Rob from Ottawa.

Shaking hands, I told him about my own connections to Canada. My mom was born in Toronto and we still have cousins there. On my dad’s side, we have family that was forced off their Toronto farmstead by the Brits (Tories) after they hung my triple great grandfather, Samuel Lount, in 1838 for treason.

Rob kicked in, almost with a snarl, that he had family killed also, only by Americans way back when. Now that sounded interesting to me so I pressed him a little for details. He said it was during the border skirmishes of the War of 1812.

“Interesting,” I told him, “my family name changed a little because of that war. Originally, our last name, which is Scottish in origin, was spelled with an “i,” but after we beat the British, in a swell of patriotism one of my ancestors changed the “i” to an “a” after “America.””

Rob could have cared less. “You didn’t win that war, we did—the British.”

Oh my! Fighting words! I practically exploded on him. Before I knew it, I was only a foot away from him, full of challenge and ready to debate.

“How can you possibly say the United States lost the War of 1812? We fought the Brits to a standstill,” I let him know vociferously.

To his credit, Rob didn’t back down and came back at me. “Well, we invaded (notice the “we?”) your soil and burned down your capital. Of course we won the war.”

I was having none of that… “Sure, they burned down the White House, but we ended up defeating that same British force as they marched on Baltimore. Hell, we killed their commander!

(“The Star Spangled Banner,” penned by Francis Scott Key, was written on a British ship during an attempt by those same “dastardly” English to force the capitulation of Baltimore by bombardment from the sea, which also failed, just like the British attempt to attack over land.)

I couldn’t help myself; I ranted on: “You know Rob, the English forced that war on us. They were upset that their sailors were deserting in huge numbers during their war with France whenever their ships made port in the U.S.. To teach us a lesson, they forced hundreds, maybe thousands of American sailors into “service” onto their navy and mercantile ships. It was a case of the Americans standing up to British bullying. They were basically enslaving our people on their ships. Damn, it was piracy man!”

Saul was getting a little uneasy with my tirade and tried to get me to ease up a little, but I wasn’t ready to calm down. I continued…

“Rob, ever hear of the Battle of New Orleans? Now THOSE particular British troops had just come across the Atlantic after beating the pants off of Napoleon. So, naturally, they were feeling their oats and THAT was their mistake—they underestimated us! Andrew Jackson smashed those overconfident Redbellies and threw them all back into the Gulf of Mexico.”

Saul was still trying to calm me down a little, “Phil, Phil…”

I kept at it, “To say the British won the War of 1812 is to re-write history man! WE won that war dude. Google it Rob.”

Rob, ever calm but looking a little hard-pressed, answered me in a placative manner, “Well, no one ever really wins in any war…”

I snorted, “Yah, Yah, right! If you say so…”

I started feeling a little foolish and began to think maybe I need to increase my meds by a dose or two. Later on, I approached him in a calmer manner and we talked of “normal” things. Still, I think he’s a bit leery of me now. I need to watch that.

Nevertheless, I was curious about his claim that the Brits won the War of 1812. Rob is a schoolteacher, he’s not an uneducated fellow, and so I did a little more research on what I thought was a very weird assertion. I mean, MAYBE I AM wrong... Sure enough, I found that Canadian history books actually claim that the Canadians and British defeated the Americans in that war! Ah Hah!

The reason they teach this quirky (or maybe not so quirky) account of the past is that at the beginning of the war the inexperienced and unprofessional American militia, mostly recruited from the unenthusiastic Northeast--lacking decent leadership and armed with poor weapons while dependent on even poorer logistics--were indeed forced into retreat. So, the fact that the half-hearted American attempt to invade Canadian territory WAS beaten back is THE reason Canadians teach and believe what they do concerning the result of the War of 1812.

Not yet knowing any of the above, but wanting to offer an olive branch, I endeavored to engage Rob in some less hostile conversation. I asked him if he’d ever heard of the Canadian Rebellion of 1837 in Toronto. He never had, and so has never heard of my triple great grandfather Samuel Lount, a good man who was found guilty of treason and hung by the Brits in 1838.

His last words on the gallows were, “"Be of good courage boys, I am not ashamed of anything I've done, I trust in God, and I'm going to die like a man."

Hmmm. Well, obviously Rob is an Anglophile, so I suppose it makes sense that he wouldn’t want to concentrate too much on some of the more distasteful aspects of past English rule in Canada, or that of their loyalist partners.

Funny what can come of a seemingly innocent meeting between two North Americans in a neutral location, such as a gym in Angeles City.

(Incidentally, in a way, Rob was right. By all accounts, the Treaty of Ghent basically reestablished status quo borders from before the beginning of the war, and The Brits agreed to stop fomenting and supporting the Indians against American settlers moving west. Their war with France was over and so they had already stopped kidnapping our sailors.

Even more interesting for me though, is that the War of 1812 caused a surge of nationalism in both Canada and the United States. No wonder Canadians teach their children that they won that war. In an important way, THEY did. If things had gone differently, there is a good chance that Canadians would be speaking American today! (grin)

But seriously, at the time, most Americans (like my name-changing forebears) felt a great sense of pride in having bested so often during that war the world’s most powerful armed force, and for the SECOND time, by TWO different generations!)