We present this excerpt from Things I Learned at Art School by Megan Dunn as a tribute to the late, beautiful actor Julian Sands, a fan of the green film based on EM Forster’s novel A Room with a View.
I recently rented a Screening Room from a local movie theater. At home I put it in the player and got this:
– Play a video
– Scene selection
– Installation
– Pictures Pictures
Sit down
In 1991, a young man named the poet saw our new video game on a short trip to our great-grandmother’s house. ‘Even you have a VCR,’ he said.
His parents lived in a large house on top of the hill at Kawaha Point that they actually owned, but one feature they didn’t have was a video player.
I didn’t say anything. VCR was second. When mom brought it home it didn’t work at all – a fact I didn’t tell my friend. The VCR and I had a long history.
One night a cockroach came out of its place: purple, red and gold, tiny little antennae. Apparently that’s why the video player wouldn’t play the videos we borrowed from the store. The wind was very subtle. They had removed the machine inside the video player. Mom’s boyfriend was also smart. He turned the VCR on and released it. Inside he found a nest. Winds had snuck into a garage sale where mom bought a secondhand VCR. It was an embarrassing introduction to the tools that would play such an important role in my life. Fast forward a few years to art school, and video tape was my path. But what was my message?
Play Video
In 1991 my best friend Natalie and I rented A Room with a View from the shop. We pushed into the slot. . . but how to tell the story of The Showroom – uncut, uncut – without cockroaches coming out?
Birds have eyes – in fact their vision is very high. They have an almost 360 degree vision of the world around them. They can also see in the dark, which must have helped with their brief childhood inside our VCR.
How to Get Rid of Arthritis
– Cut the food.
– Removing their hidden space.
– Remove bait – but don’t spray.
– Open the entry point.
A Room with a View is a 1985 Merchant and Ivory film based on EM Forster’s novel of the same title published in 1908. Miss Lucy Honeychurch (played by actress Helena Bonham Carter, who was then nineteen) and her cousin and guide, Miss Charlotte Bartlett (played by actress Maggie Smith, who was fifty-six ), arrives in Florence on a European tour. They are staying at the Pension Bertolini and were promised a view of the Arno River, but when they get to their room they instead look out onto the terrace and the roof. WTF?
The opening chapter of the book and film is titled ‘A Room Without a View’.
“This is not what we expected,” said Miss Bartlett, the director of the original Lips.
“I thought we were going to see Arno,” says Miss Honeychurch, the hot girl.
All the while their faces – Helena is in a hat with a brim – framed by a window so we know exactly what we’re seeing. The final version of the classical aria ‘O mio Babbino Caro’ sung by Kiri Te Kanawa is on top of the action, and the bursts and bursts of music let the audience know that there will be a lot of good ideas ahead. . .
Selection of Forms
Natalie and I had two favorite pictures in A Room with a View. ‘Italian Adventures’ is a very interesting title and I am happy to tell you that the action in the film shows it. Helena Bonham Carter is driven by wagon to the countryside. She wears a white hat, a white dress and carries a parasol: her dress reflects her virginity, as if it is also a beautiful parasol waiting to be unfurled.
The driver is a badass, too – look at him smoking while waiting in the car – man, that actor was hot. Sex is everywhere – and Florence in the summer, Kiri Te Kanawa argues this. Phew. Maggie Smith is there too, like a Tupperware container sweating in the heat. The idea of anything about love happening to Maggie Smith is beyond question. Sex is for the young; the rest of us have to keep a tight lid on it.
Helena finds Julian Sands alone in a large meadow of tall grass. He is combing himself with his hat. It’s hot. Very hot. Julian turns, sees her, walking through the grass, grabs her waist and kisses her lips. Kiri goes up an octave. Desire! Helena is the right height – she’s hardly taller than Julian, she doesn’t weigh ten kilos more than him, they just kiss in the garden, everything moves in the right direction, including the grass. Helena shines in her hands, still holding her beautiful parasol.
“Lucy!” Maggie Smith as Miss Bartlett leads the scene. The kiss ends suddenly but is as sweet as a gentle breeze. Everyone is rocking it. In The Viewing Room This kiss means everything. Only love. Happiness! Whereas in real life, kissing usually means nothing and sex can mean sweet taste, but maybe that’s why books and movies are so comforting.
Everything means something in a book or movie.
Photo Gallery
Mom and I hung Monet’s Poppy Field above our fireplace. In the summer, the large sign would come off the wall like a hurricane or a small breeze would blow through the open windows and pass under it. Monet’s painting is also set in a grassy field and figures with bonnets and parasols pass through it. First countdown!
Monet showed Poppy Field, now one of the most famous paintings in the world, to the public at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874.
I also wanted to be a painter, but my first paintings did not make a lasting impression. I couldn’t paint a tree, an ocean, or even a work shoe with Monet’s words on it. Mrs drawings have been blown up. One day I was so upset about my bad life drawings that I threw a shoe in our room and saw that I broke my mother’s favorite ornament: a ceramic church from Trade Aid.
“My desire is to be like this all the time, to live quietly in nature,” said Monet. His wishes were fulfilled. In grandma’s room a Poppy Field painting was placed behind the TV. Outside the window, poplar trees and Lake Rotorua. It was beautiful, beautiful from nature until my shoe flew off.
Selection of Forms
Natalie loved Rupert Graves, the young actor who played Freddy Honeychurch, Lucy’s brother. Rupert had brunette hair and good looks.
I loved Julian, because it helped if we didn’t love each other.
Another thing that really pleased us was the English countryside near the pond. Bonus: both Rupert and Julian remove their weapons. The boys decide to take a bath, along with the Reverend Mr Beebe, played by middle-aged actor Simon Callow. The three men undressed and jumped into the pool, and there was a great storm, splashing and riding around. This experience is contagious – this is a very good life – running with a good shepherd. Also: mouse shooting. Julian and Rupert get out and run around the pool. Their buttocks are not straight and can only be seen in passing, but it is equally rare to see a penis on the screen. Julian gets out of the pool and puts on a white shepherd’s collar and then goes back in. I believe that Mr Beebe’s disgust in this picture is very important to Forster’s novel and maybe he wants to say something about the confusion of the church against the normal sexual desire. As with healthy sex, this is difficult.
We really liked it.
“Oh, Rupert!” Natalie screamed.
“Oh, Julian,” I replied.
Portly Simon Callow ran over with his hands on his hips and we laughed. In the screen, Helena and her mother and her boyfriend, played by the hard-working Daniel Day Lewis, are stumbling across the pond. Julian rushes in their direction, makes a loud noise, and dangles his bait and strikes. Helena unties her white parasol, finally. Julian then shoots into the bushes. Obviously Helena can’t wait to marry Daniel Day Lewis now.
“Rupert is spunk,” said Natalie.
“So does Julian,” I said.
Mom watched us all pass out in the lounge and laughed. She sat at the kitchen table in her white smock, her red cardigan draped over the chair. He drank his cup of tea, during his break from the night shift. His legs were crossed with animal-the colored stockings and those white shoes with the laces, coming unaltered. Her face – I can’t picture it here because I’m not Monet – just so beautiful, so beautiful, so young and beautiful. He saw me and Natalie pretending to be pregnant, trying to rub our swollen bellies, and then we went into labor, our legs propped up on big brown chairs. “Push, push!” We laughed until our cheeks turned pink like Hubba Bubba. “Oh, Julian!” “Oh, Rupert!” Outside the window I can see poplar trees and Lake Rotorua to Mokoia Island. When I think of that view now my heart overflows to a dreamy crescendo. . . then the cockroaches crawl.
Things I Learned at Art School by Megan Dunn (Penguin NZ, $35) can be purchased from Unity Books Wellington and Auckland.
#Fall #Julian #Sands
