Golly, the Brits do have it lucky, they get Shakespeare, then they get all these other smart, wry, funny, observant authors, too. To be sure, they have their Darwins and Dickens (meaning: boorish authors who put you to sleep faster than chloroform), but the richness and depth and breath of writing one can choose from the œuvre is both daunting and humbling.
Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons, tackles this conundrum head-on: if everybody else has already said everything to say, and have already said it better, then ...
... well, give up?
"... the golden orb ..." Miss Post starts again, and stops again, in her writing at this point, groaning in frustration, reading what she's written.
Sounds familiar, authors?
But the thing is, she doesn't give up, she lives her life, which isn't a Romantic Novelization filled with Drama and Ponderous Poetry, but it's a bunch of farmers, bumbling though their lives. But the thing is: their lives are filled with Drama and Poetry, ... and silliness, and from abandoning what she thinks are the Rules of Writing, and living her life and observing the characters that populate her life, she comes up with a much more interesting story to write.
Miss Flora Post actually did have to give up. She had to give up her preconceived notions of "What a Writer Is" and "How a Novel Reads." When she gave these things up, she emptied her cup, so to speak (and, being a Proper British Young Lady, of course it was a tea cup), so that living life could fill it with something fresh and original and something that was entirely hers.
Cold Comfort Farm is a movie filled with expectation-subversions for this young aspiring authoress:
- What writing is
- What a novel is about
- Who people are
Because, in the end, she didn't write the characters, the characters wrote themselves, but only after she opened her eyes to them as living, breathing, three-dimensional people, and not the stereotypical Seth and Reuben she dismissed with a quick sniff.
And when she did that, she did get her Romantic Ending, being swept off her feet by the dashing-yet-unassuming Charles and whisked away in his æroplane.
Both Stella Gibbon's book and John Schlesinger's movie get the humor just right. They mock both the characters and the reader at the same time but they do so gently. Why? because the humor is cheeky, to be sure, but kind, at the same time. The characters are portrayed lovingly and with understanding, but not at all blind to their follies and foibles. In fact, the authoress is abundantly aware of their shortcomings, and her own, too, and so I got the sense that she wrote Cold Comfort Farm just so. 'This is not a Jane Austen novel,' she says, 'this is just my little roman à clef. Not serious, but silly: just like you, me, and everybody else who takes their lives so seriously are.'
Cold Comfort Farm is an easy ride and a delight to watch that, surprisingly, stays with you long after the end-credits.
What did I learn from this movie (and book, as they are nigh unto one and the same):
- Abandon what I am going to write, because that just doesn't work for me. What does work for me is wind up the characters and watch the sparks fly as the collide against each other.
- It was a dark and stormy night is the exact set-up of Cold Comfort Farm, but the book and the movie showed me that the thickened fens of setting and the broody, dark characters have a surprising depth to them, and they can be funny, and they can change, and it doesn't have to be a struggle all the time, either.
- As in Topsy-Turvey (another movie in this genre), taking a break from worrying over writing to live your life can actually inspire your writing, give you a fresh start, and be the impetus to give you the get-up-and-go to write or to rewrite that novel.
Remember, kids: 🎵 The Earth will burn and we will QUIVER! 🎵 Watch Cold Comfort Farm to spit out your tea, chorkling with mirth, when you get this reference, foreshadowed so delightfully by Flora's innocent "...but why are they called the Quivering brethren?"-query.
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