TIFF 2015: Room

Jacob Tremblay (Jack) and Brie Larson (Ma)

Room (Ireland/​Canada, 2015) directed by Lenny Abrahamson, Princess of Wales, 3p, 118 minutes

This Booker-shortlisted phenomenon by the Irish-Canadian novelist Emma Donoghue was a hugely  successful - both critically and commercially. It certainly shocked and entranced many of us when it was released. Expectations were very high for this film. 

Joy (Brie Larson) was kidnapped and held in a sound proof bunker disguised as a garden shed at seventeen. Two years later she was impregnated by her captor (whom she refers to simply as Old Nick) and gives birth to Jack (Jacob Tremblay). They live in a space that Jack calls the "Room". When the film opens, Jack is five. 

In the book, Joy (known as Ma to Jack) creates a complete and wondrous world for Jack - she is creative, mindful of his health, actively physically engaging him, all in one single room that contains everything they need to live in a very minimal manner: drinking water, food, heat, a toilet, a bath. 

Larson is wonderful here - striking the right balance between loving, fearful and very close to the edge as she struggles to survive under horrific circumstances. At night, the repulsive and sometimes violent "Nick" brings food and supplies and forces sex on Joy while Jack is confined to a wardrobe, unseen and unheard. 

The young boy Jacob Tremblay is a wonder here - the little boy is, by turns, loving and inquisitive, angry and confused, defiant and all five year old petulant when required by the script. 

When Jack turns five, Joy conceives a plan to escape and then the duo are forced to live under the scrutiny of the press and the pressures of existing in the wider world when they are successful in their escape.  

The script is constructed such that the tension does not diminish with the transition to the post-Room world. Joy is angry, sometimes unstable. sometimes rough with Jack. He has high anxiety dealing with new people and chaotic situations. Mercifully, we no longer see their captor and the film does not dwell on the abuse that Joy suffered or how she was entrapped by "Nick". 

It's balanced and non-exploitative in area that could easily slip into a very salacious re-working of the novel. 

View from the very very back row

TIFF 2015: Louder than Bombs

Louder Than Bombs (Norway, France, Denmark, 2015) directed by Joachim Trier, Ryerson Theatre, 12p, 108 minutes

It may be that Louder than Bombs is so appealing as a film because it depicts the dynamics of a family in the aftermath of the death of the mother as rather complicated and sometimes ugly. No one escapes scrutiny or censure here.

Gene Reed (Gabriel Byrne), a high school teacher and former actor, struggles with the death of his wife, Isabelle Reed (Isabelle Huppert), a highly respected and accomplished photojournalist who had killed herself four years before in a car crash. Isabelle's photographs are exceptionally beautiful and relevant (I would love to know who the real photographer is, they are mesmerizing). She travels the world and captures humanity at its most poignant. This makes the return home problematic; she always appears to be yearning for something else and seems ill at ease at home.

Gene takes solace in the arms of a sympathetic colleague at school unbeknownst to his sons. The two boys, Jonah and Conrad, vastly different from each other, pursue divergent paths in recovering from the tragedy. 

Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) is a gifted if intellectually overbearing young professor - highly talented, articulate but somewhat cold, much like his mother. He is also a new father who seems unsettled by the arrival of a new daughter and indulges in a dalliance with an old flame to alleviate some of the anxiety he is experiencing. 

Conrad (Devin Druid) is an awkward loner who is immersed in violent video games and obsesses over a girl in his class who doesn't even know his name.

Gene tries desperately to connect with the boys but mostly fails as many parents do. As we all do.

The performances are uniformly good. No one - perhaps with the exception of Byrne - appears likeable, least of all the sons but it is an honest portrayal. We are judgmental, angry, immature, in the face of tragedy. We blame each other, we blame ourselves. We are weak. We are confused. We are human. 

TIFF 2015: Janis: Little Girl Blue

Janis: Little Girl Blue (U.S., 2015) directed by Amy Berg, Scotiabank 2, 4p, 106 minutes

If you are like me and have a limited knowledge of Janis Joplin’s life, you might have shared the view that Joplin was a carefree, happy-go-lucky hippie. This film is important in that the filmmaker Amy Berg has discovered some previously unseen material that paints a fuller, more nuanced portrait of the singer.

Born in Port Arthur, Texas in 1943, it might surprise you to learn that Joplin was an early and vocal supporter of integration in Texas, a highly unpopular view in that era and place. She was an early Beatnik who loved the blues and black music and a loner with few friends. She was once voted “Ugliest Man’ by her schoolmates. 

That early ugliness and sense of alienation drove her, after high school, to embrace the scene in San Francisco amongst hippies and rockers and like-minded people. It was also her first taste of hard drugs.

As a member of the increasingly popular Big Brother and the Holding Company, she became a rock star but still, she wondered, “Why do the guys in the band go home with some girl and I go home alone?” Even when she was calling the shots with her own band, the Kozmic Blues Band, her insecurities did not seem to abate. 

What would drive this young woman, at the height of her fame, to return to her high school reunion ten years after she graduated in her feather boa and psychedelic glasses - to say "Look, I am better than you think I was."

I find it extraordinarily empowering to see a woman succeed on her own terms in the music industry - through sheer will power and talent rather than sex appeal and and the usual trappings of conventional - short-lived as it was.

A profoundly complex person of great sensitivity – we learn about a more this vulnerable and lonely person through rarely seen footage, interviews and her personal letters to her straight-laced yet loving family back in Texas who watched in wonder as she soared into the stratosphere.

TIFF of the Day: Wonderful to see artists such as Pink, Juliette Lewis and other female artists acknowledge Joplin's influence in the closing credits of the film. I could easily see Pink in a bio pic about Joplin's life. 

TIFF 2015: Hyena Road

Rossif Sutherland (Ryan) and Paul Gross (Pete)

Hyena Road (Canada, 2015) directed by Paul Gross, TIFF Lightbox 2, 120 minutes

Paul Gross wrote, directed and co-starred in his newest offering about Canadian troops in Afghanistan. Did you realize that our engagement there was longer than our involvement in WWI, WWII and the Korean War put together? 

There were words at dinner tonight as the husband teased me about how much I cried during the film. (It's true. It's not a testimony to its quality - and it is very good - but certainly a tribute to the intensity of the scenes it depicts.) 

The characterizations of both the Canadians and the Afghans are nuanced and fair-minded. I would love to hear from a solder stationed there to hear their sense of its accuracy. Wounded Warriors - a charity and veterans service organization that offers programs for the wounded veterans of the military actions following 9/11 - were involved in the making of the film. 

The Canadian troops are building a key road through the county - called Hyena Road - in a conflict zone. Sniper Ryan (Rossif Sutherland) patrols the region with three fellow snipers seeking out potential dangers, of which there are many. Paul Gross is Pete Mitchell, an intelligence officer seeking to engage "hearts and minds" in the region and secure information that will permit further engagement with the Afghans. 

Writer/Director Paul Gross

The men encounter a former mujahid known as The Ghost (Neamat Arghandabi), an elder marked by his distinctive and alluring eyes - one disturbingly blue, one brown. The Ghost shelters Ryan and his men preventing them being massacred by the Taliban during a fire fight. He harbours an important secret that makes him valuable to the Canadian forces. 

Their lives come together in a terrible and eventful manner - to say more would ruin the film and I want you to see it because it's a moving, nuanced depiction of the conflict. The men and women may, or may not, be uniformly heroic but they are realistically portrayed - neither saints nor demons. There seemed to be a number of servicemen and women in the audience (or people affiliated with servicemen and women) and they were openly appreciative of the film. I hope he got it right. 

TIFF of the Day: Objectification of the day and there has to be at least one - why else do we go to the movies and stare at beautiful creatures? When Paul Gross came out after the film to answer questions, I said to myself "Ooooh, his hair is silver now." (I was thinking of that Mountie from way, way back with the dark brown hair) But then I looked at him, really looked at him, from my perch in the third row, and thought, "Ooooh, his hair is silver now." Nice.

TIFF 2015: Eva Doesn't Sleep

Eva Doesn't Sleep (Argentina, 2015) directed by Pablo Agüero, Scotiabank, 4.15p 85 minutes

Reviewing this film is problematic if you do not have a sense of Argentina's troubled history and the obsessive nature of the populace's devotion to First Lady Eva Peron (nee Duarte) - also known affectionately as Evita Perón. I knew very little of the history so have had to rely on a bit of post-screening research to understand the context.

Evita was the wife of the fascist-leaning Colonel Juan Perón, a member of the military group that orchestrated the 1943 coup that overthrew the civilian government of Argentina and became its President.

Eva Perón died of cancer at the age of thirty-three in 1952 (how like her to die at the same age as Christ sneers one of her detractors in the film). Her body was embalmed by the same man who embalmed Lenin (the director revealed this after the screening). There is a haunting scene of a beautiful woman floating in formaldehyde and another of a child peering at Evita through the lid of her coffin.

This might give you a sense of the importance of the event to Argentinians. Millions mourned her early death and Agüero has the archival footage to demonstrate it - waves and waves of the descamisados (the shirtless ones), the working poor, the indigent and the well-heeled who flocked to her funeral.

In 1955, Perón's government was overthrown by a military coup. Juan Perón fled the country but was unable to make arrangements for the transport of Evita's body.The military junta that had assumed control also seized the corpse of Evita. The body came to have such an intense symbolic and religious value to the country that they sent the corpse out of the country to Europe. The junta was so afraid of Eva's symbolic power that they even made it illegal to utter her name.

Agüero creates surreal, fictional scenarios surrounding true events - the veneration of the body by thepoor (a young cleaning woman who wishes to see the corpse in the beautifully candle-lit cathedral); the transportation of the body by the military by a frightening military man/driver (Denis Lavant) who struggles with a young recruit to keep the transaction secret; a general rumoured to have been kidnapped then interrogated by young Perónists in the 1960s about where Evita's body is truly buried (when he cannot reveal the information he is murdered).

The general tells a fantastic story to the Perónist revolutionaries who kidnap him - is it true, who knows? - that the body was shipped to Milan, buried by a nun who was unaware of Evita's true identity in an unmarked grave.

Gael García Bernal has a very brief appearance n the film (really just a red herring to entice Bernal admiring viewers such as myself as the role is so minimal) as Admiral Emilio Massera who was responsible for orchestrating Argentina's Dirty War (Guerra Sucia) waged from 1976-1983 by the military dictatorship of the time against suspected left-wing political opponents. The Admiral was responsible for burying the body of Evita under six metres of cement when the body was returned to Argentina in the 1970s. He demonstrates the obsessiveness, perverse sexual interest and misogyny that she elicited and, still to this day ... the power.

A more detailed history of the travails of Evita's body may be read here.

TIFF 2015: Freeheld

Moore and Page as Laurel Hester and Stacie Andree

Freeheld (U.S., 2015) directed by Peter Sollett, Ryerson Theatre, 12.00p, 103 minutes

In this reenactment of a recent true story, Julianne Moore stars as New Jersey police officer Laurel Hester who is engaged in a legal battle to allow her pension benefits to be passed on to her domestic partner Stacie Andree (Ellen Page) - an important story told with middling results as a drama.

Laurel Hester was a closeted but highly successful detective before she met Stacie Andree, a much younger mechanic who avidly pursues the older woman. Stacie is out, has an excellent relationship with her mother, and is anxious that Laurel come out and acknowledge their relationship. Fearing repercussions from working in an all-male and a seemingly homophobic environment, Laurel keeps mum, even with her partner, fellow police officer Dane Wells (Michael Shannon). 

Until ... Laurel is diagnosed with stage IV cancer. Laurel requests that her pension benefits be transferred to Stacie upon her death but is denied by county officials. Steven Goldstein (Steve Carell), an openly gay and observant Jewish activist, seizes on the issue to push forward the issue of gay marriage in New Jersey. Carell is flamboyant, comical and lends a certain lightness to a very intense storyline. "It's Steven with a "V" which stands for 'very' gay," he informs the initially reluctant women.

Moore, always admirable in all she does as an actress, has a difficult role - playing a mortally ill person is a challenge, dying of cancer, a near impossible thing to portray realistically. Too little expressed or portrayed and it feels false, too much and it is devastating to watch. But she is sexily effective as the swaggering police officer taking down thugs and pursuing suspects (Laurel freaks Stacie out by pulling out a gun when the two women are menaced by a trio of foul-mouthed thugs - "Do you always carry a gun on a first date?" asks the bewildered Stacie.). Page is more successful in the film as the vulnerable and under-confident but determined partner of the stricken woman.

The drama feels forced and a bit cliched but the challenges the two women and the director face are formidable - the issues of inoperable cancer, homophobia, chauvinism in the workplace, bigotry at city hall - all difficult topics to handle without resorting to cliches and melodrama.

Sollett directed Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist (2008), much lighter fare, and with a defter touch. 

TIFF 2015: Rocco and his Brothers (Rocco e suoi Fratelli)

Simone (Renato Salvatori) and Rocco (Alain Delon)

Rocco e suoi Fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers) (Italia, 1960) directed by Luchino Visconti, TIFF Lightbox 4, 2.45p, 180 minutes

Visconti's family saga recounts the tale of the Parondis, an impoverished, Sicilian family comprised of a widowed mother and five sons seeking a new life in Milan. Despite its operatic dimensions and the sometimes histrionic performances, it is a tragically realistic portrayal of the Southern Italian diaspora in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Touted as the last of the neo-realist classics of Italian cinema, it tears at you with the ugly truths about the immigrant experience for the working poor in a hostile, alien environment - even if it is within a country that is presumably your own.

Poverty drove Southerners from Sicily and Calabria abroad and to the north of Italy in the early and mid 20^th century. Regarded as intellectually and racially inferior and buffoonish (one neighbor calls the Parondi clan “Zulus” – an crude allusion to the racial heterogeneity of Sicilian history, culture and blood) - the Sicilians are relegated to the poorest of living conditions and the most menial of employment.

The Milan pictured here is dreary, cold, shrouded in fog or cold weather. In one scene the family rejoices when it snows because it means work for the four older brothers shovelling snow. The boys do what they must to survive. In the same way that new immigrants in Canada may turn to manual labour or factory work, are forced into crowded, unsafe living conditions and engage in brutal sports such as boxing to succeed – the Parondis must do so as well in Milan. 

Each brother responds differently to the challenges of life in the north and the film is divided accordingly: Simone becomes, for a time, a highly successful boxer; Vincenzo, a devoted family man; Rocco (played by a dreamy and angelic looking Alain Delon) works in a laundry; Ciro works as a labourer in a Alpha Romeo car factory; the youngest Luca remains with his mother witnessing the family turmoil with alarm and vowing that he will one day return to Sicily.

The portrayal of Rosaria (Katina Paxinou), the matriarch, falls into the tropes that plague all dramas about Sicily – she is histrionic, possessive of her boys, suspicious of all women, irrationally protective particularly regarding Simone who is violent, abusive and troubled. 

When Rocco and Simone fall in love with the same girl – a high-spirited prostitute named Nadia (Annie Girardot) – the men are locked in a turbulent battle with Nadia as a sexual pawn to the extent that one brother rapes Nadia in front of the other brother to humiliate him and mark his territory. There is a disturbing religious element to Nadia's death when she is stabbed to death by Simone after she rejects him. Leaning against a pole, she raises

her arms as if being raised upon a crucifix. It is as if, Christ-like, she is sacrificing herself for the two brothers and their relationship. 

Visconti – northerner, Marxist, aristocrat and homosexual – clearly views the North as a corruptive influence destroying good and honourable men such as Rocco and his brothers. Ciro’s last words echo this accusation when he speaks of the improbability of returning to Sicily and of the South treating its villagers as “beasts of burden”, under the yoke of the padrone. And yet the last scene we see is of Ciro and his workmates, slowly advancing towards the factory in a meandering, bovine fashion – like calves to the slaughter.

Rocco, though victorious in his boxing championships and forced to commit to an unsavoury boxing promoter for ten years to clear the family of Simone’s horrendous debts, is trapped as well. The only thing that appears to offer redemption for the Parondis is family – in the image of Ciro’s sweet-faced fiancée and Vincenzo’s small and growing family. This too is a trope in the depiction of Sicilian culture that we see repeated but it does offer the possibility of hope, of redemption from enslavement to the snares of capitalism, of industrialization and dislocation from one's home.

TIFF OF THE DAY: The presenter of the film noted that, though vilified by the critics, Rocco drew record crowds in Italy and was second only to La Dolce Vita, in box office, when released in 1960. 

TIFF 2015: Hitchcock/​​Truffaut

The masters ... Hitchcock and Truffaut

Hitchcock/​​Truffaut (U.S., 2015) directed by Kent Jones, 80 minutes, AGO Jackman Hall, 11.30a

First film of the festival for me! Nearly didn't make it to the film. Standing in line, I suddenly realized that I didn’t have enough cash for a rush ticket. I quickly texted my intrepid child who was attending classes at OCAD during his first week of classes and as J was leaving he quickly ran to the ATM and saved my proverbial bacon.

In the 1960s, French director Francois Truffaut proclaimed that Hitchcock was his favourite director. At the time, this generated a certain amount of surprise and perhaps derision amongst the admirers of the French New Wave of which Truffaut was one of the fresh, new creative forces behind the new movement. In 1962, Truffaut was determined to demonstrate the artistry of the British director’s work with a week-long interview, interrogating him on many of the films he made, with the assistance of a translator. Photographs and an audio tape was made of the session that eventually became the much admired tome of cinema history Hitchcock/​​Truffaut in 1967. 

The narrator of the doc, Bob Balaban, spoke of Truffaut’s desire to find a father figure – something he sought in many artistic mentors from Andre Bazin to Jean Renoir to Hitchcock. I admit I was more drawn to why Truffaut wanted to interview Hitchcock than to the work of Hitchcock himself.

The book that Truffaut produced became an influential publication for many aspiring filmmakers, many of whom are interviewed in this film: Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, David Fincher, Paul Schrader, Wes Anderson, James Gray, Richard Linklater. Where are the women you ask? Well, it appears that the director Kent Jones had three in mind and none of them could contribute for various reasons (he would not name them specifically, more on this anon).

The director, who also serves as the Director of Programming for the New York Film Festival, spoke before and after the film and said he did not want to dwell on the salacious material connected to Hitchcock. So … yes, I can see why so few female directors may not have wanted to laud Mr. Hitchcock. But let’s not dwell on what the film isn’t right now, let’s talk about what the film is, lest you throw the book at me for indulging in identity politics. You can't speak to all people in your artistic work, that's not your obligation as an artist. 

The documentary is beautifully put together. It covers a broad range of films in Hitchcock’s oeuvre from the 1920s to the 1960s (born in 1899, Hitchcock started making films in 1922). The directors are thoughtful, articulate, specific in their admiration of his techniques, and, sufficiently full of awe. I thought it important that Hitchcock wanted to employ a cinematic language that would, say, move audiences in Bombay and Stockholm. He strove to reach the audience; he respected that they wanted to be entertained. His attention to detail was phenomenal. I don’t know if he perceived himself to be an artist. The directors who spoke of him certainly did, as the audience I was in seemed to.

I don't agree that art should be judged by the behaviour of the artist - if I did, I would never be able to look at another painting by Picasso or see another Woody Allen film. 

But I can think of a few impediments for the female viewer/artist with respect to Hitchcock's work – specifically the concentration on the male gaze and what might be perceived as particularly “masculine” obsessions/proclivities.

James Stewart’s efforts to physically remake Kim Novak in the image of the wife he lost in Vertigo; Anthony Perkins’ psychotic delusions about his mother and subsequent adoption of her hateful, and ultimately, murderous persona (Psycho); the punishing manner in which Hitchcock tormented Tippi Hedren both during, and after, the filming of The Birds (a tortuous interaction that Hedren herself has written about) or the scene in which Marnie (Hedren again) is raped by her husband Mark (Sean Connery) after she admits that she can't stand to be touched by a man (Marnie).

I would have preferred to learn more about his wife Alma Reville’s role in the creation of these films as she was crucial to their formulation. Or to learn what was at the root of Hitchcock’s seeming animosity towards women - especially the icy blonde variety. But that’s not the film that was made was it?

But perhaps it is best to follow Flaubert's edict: "We should not touch our idols; their gilding will remain on our hands."

TIFF OF THE DAY: Of the three female directors whom Jones approached, one said she had nothing to say on Mr. Hitchcock. The second was unsure of herself on camera and the third was immersed in pre-production work and unable to participate. That pretty much wiped out the number of female directorial voices in Hollywood. 

August Cultural Roundup

Faye Dunaway in Chinatown

Films:
Roman Holiday (U.S., 1952)
I am Chris Farley (U.S., 2015)
Diary of a Teenage Girl (U.S., 2015)
True Story (U.S., 2015)
Ghost (U.S., 1990)
The Last Picture Show (U.S., 1971)
Chinatown (U.S., 1974)

Books:
H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald 
Trans by Juliet Jacques

Theatre:
Macbeth - Shakespeare in the Rough, Withrow Park, August 23rd 

Art Exhibit: 
Camera Atomica at AGO, August 29th

On Chaz, on Caitlyn

I feel like we can’t talk about being Transgender without addressing the issue of the most well-known, highly publicized Transman and Transwoman currently on the planet – Chaz Bono and Caitlyn Jenner. Like many others who felt they had no connection or emotional investment in treating these persons with respect, I was cheerfully and blissfully dismissive of their trials and tribulations in the media.

I didn’t understand what I was witnessing on this very public stage when Chaz Bono transitioned from female to male. I was somewhat alarmed by the transition at some point, and, perhaps, mightily relieved I did not have to deal with this issue as a mother. More fool me. As they say, pride comes before the fall …

At best, I was condescendingly sympathetic at publicly witnessing his evolution from adorable little girl (daughter of the singing duo Sonny and Cher) to out lesbian and LGBTQ activist as a young adult to Transman and Transgender advocate. Now, because this hits so close to home, I am completely mortified by the manner in which he is sometimes referred to in the media. If it is not outright hostility, then it’s a quietly snickering attitude at times.

Flash forward to Caitlyn Jenner’s transition in the spring and summer of 2015 and I see it from a very different perspective as a mother of a Trans child and as a sentient human being.

Now, because I am so close to the situation with my own child I can no longer be blasé or amused at what I see. Whether it is the paparazzi provoking Jenner before she outed herself as Trans or seeing images of a “Caitlyn Jenner” Halloween costume for men posted on-line or pointless and insulting criticism of her high femme style as a woman – now it’s personal. And infuriating.

Is it really your concern if Jenner likes pretty clothes and makeup? Does it set back the cause of Transgender people if she favours manicures and weaves? I can’t help thinking that even the progressive people who purport to be feminists and Trans-positive criticize her style are anti-femme, as if things that are feminine (and I include even the supremely artificially feminine) are inferior, shallow, less than human. It’s as if the embracing of masculine style or an androgynous style is a superior political and personal stance. If femininity is a social construct, it’s my construct to employ or destroy and no amount of finger wagging likely will dissuade someone who chooses to embrace it.

If you knew someone who went through this transition, if you knew how hard it is to come out to the people who love you the most. If you saw how difficult it was to do the most basis things – purchase clothes, find a bathroom, change your name, feel comfortable in your own skin  – you might have second thoughts before you started snickering about it or making jokes.

It’s been a long, difficult journey in a very public forum for both of them – whether you think they have been successful at it or not – it’s their journey to make. If anything, I have felt intense empathy for Bono’s mother the singer Cher, now in her sixties, who sometimes has expressed sorrow, confusion, and resistance to Chaz’ decision to transition.

My child has said to us on more than one occasion, “If I had a choice, I would not go through this.” He has often expressed a wish that things were not so difficult for him. But this feeling almost always centres around trying to battle the fear and discomfort that other people feel towards the transition. I would say that my son is comfortable in his decision to transition but dealing with other people’s fears and insecurities is another matter.

It’s not a choice about a lifestyle. Now I finally understand why some gay people are so dismayed by the term “gay lifestyle” as if it’s some sort of fashionable attire you’ve acquired for a season or two – it’s an honest, brave embracing of being true to one’s inner self. It’s not a question of wanting to be something else, it’s a question of needing to be something else – to have the external correspond with the internal and to have it validated by the people you care about, as well as those you don’t.

An excerpt from The Unfinished Dollhouse. 

A House Filled with Wildness

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (Penguin-Random House, 2015) 300 pages

I would not have thought that as a frightened as I am of animal violence (and birds) that I would grow to love Helen MacDonald's descriptions of the fierce goshawk named Mabel that she trains in this memoir. She recounts her acquiring and training this particularly fierce bird in the aftermath of her father's death as a way of coping with the grief.

Something unravels in Helen when her beloved father dies - a photographer and as avid a lover of nature and birds as Helen - she has lost a soul mate. She sinks into a depression that, oddly, only the purchase of a goshawk seems to alleviate. Does she require the taming of something wild, might that tame her tumultuous heart?

Her love of fierce birds comes early to her. One day, as a young girl, her father brings her to a group of men who practice falconry. She describes her first encounter with goshawks and the quiet, stolid men who own and train them. The birds were described in historical texts that Macdonald pores over as "ruffians, murderous, difficult to tame, sulky, fractious and foreign". They perched in trees above the men at times, refusing to return to their owners.

These men did not seem annoyed, fatalistic merely. They shrugged their waxed cotton shoulders ... we trudged on into the gloom. There was something of the doomed polar expedition about it all, a kind of chivalric Edwardian vibe.

Her first goshawk, imported from another country, is so intimidating that she requests a smaller one. In the process of reacquainting herself with goshawks she re-reads T.H. White's The Goshawk - the T.H. White of the Arthurian novels including The Once and Future King. White was a brilliant but troubled man who harbored sadistic fantasies and repressed his homosexuality. The violence of the goshawk becomes a conduit for all his violent and unruly feelings and, consciously or unconsciously, the same may be true for MacDonald. 

White's early life was harrowing, volatile. His parents fought viciously and violently with each other and the boy often feared that he might be murdered (one night he woke to find both parents struggling with a pistol over his bed - he presumed that one of them meant o to shoot the boy). 

When his father built a child-size castle and installed a real pistol into the brick work, he told his son that he would fire the gun on White's birthday. The boy became convinced that his father had planned to kill him on that day. Hi childhood was filled with "dictators and madmen", vicious corporal punishment from school masters, marital turmoil - no wonder that his thoughts were filled with senseless violence. Perhaps MacDonald sought some of this violence too ...  She notes:

The hawk had filled the house with wildness as a bowl of lilies fills a house with scent. 

MacDonald ponders why goshawks have such an intense reputation amongst falconers. She surmises, after a thoughtless comment from a friend's husband, that " ... unlike other animals that have lived in such close proximity to man, they have never been domesticated. It's made them a powerful symbol in myriad cultures, and a symbol, too, of things that need to be mastered and tamed". Like women, she adds wryly.
 
If she is not mad, she is very close to it at the time. Bills go unpaid. She is unkempt and does not eat well. She lives alone and sees hardly no one. When she sees a woman scraping a decal of a skylark off a window in a business in town she is apoplectic. Mabel's sometime lack of response drives her to misery and insecurity.

I'd turned myself into hawk …  I was nervous, high strung, paranoid, prone to fits of terror and rage; I ate greedily or didn't eat at all; I fled from society, hid from everything, found myself drifting into strange states where I wasn't certain who was or what I was ... I had assumed [Mabel's] alien perspective.

Eventually Macdonald pulls herself out of her depression long enough to seek professional help - but it is a long and tortuous process and she is largely alone during it.

I must admit that I had to read the book in short passages - its melancholy was too fierce and I felt myself being pulled into its emotional trough at times. I was exhilarated to find her resist the pull of madness, of violence, and to thrive again amongst the goshawks in us all.

Helen and Mabel